Brownie Points

I am a selfish person.

What the frig is Brownie Points? I have used it all my life and stupid bugger I was I thought it is something to do with the fem of scouts the Brownies. Now I know better. All right you live in a facade of intelligent logical summations and end up with fantacy. Of course you guys don't do it.

So do you know what it means?

Here is the Brownie!



If it is a girl guide I have gone off me fantacies for now. Seriously it is something which started a long time ago in Scotland.

Customarily brownies are said to inhabit houses and aid in tasks around the house. However, they don't like to be seen and will only work at night, traditionally in exchange for small gifts or food. They take quite a delight in porridge and honey. They usually abandon the house if their gifts are called payments, or if the owners of the house misuse them. Brownies make their homes in an unused part of the house. They were also known as the guardians of dragons

AH my fantacies are intact without a blemish. Now they can be of different nationalities of your own choice init? or alien - I likes that.

For more info




If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

The Documentary PBS Does Not Want You to See Before Jan 21, 2009

I am a selfish person.

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4



Part 5



Part 6



Part 7



Part 8



Part 9



Part 10



You can read the Transcript here.



If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Credit Crunch? MIC Is The Place To Be

I am a selfish person.

But here in the Merrimack River Valley, and over the state line at several industrial sites around Massachusetts, defense contractor BAE Systems is hoisting "Help Wanted" signs.

BAE develops technology in fields like electronic warfare and cybersecurity, sophisticated systems that are key to combating a new wave of threats around the globe. At a time when 1.7 million jobs have been lost in the United States this year, the company is hiring 200 engineers and manufacturing workers in Nashua, Hudson, and Merrimack, N.H., and Burlington, Lexington, and Marlborough, Mass.

Other defense electronics contractors, such as Waltham's Raytheon Co. and General Dynamics Corp.'s communications systems center in Taunton, also continue to ramp up. Such companies remain awash in orders from the Pentagon and American allies increasingly worried about terrorism and missile proliferation. They are also facing the pending retirement of many baby boomers in their labor force, a factor lending greater urgency to their hiring efforts.

"We're acting very aggressively when we find a good match," said Christopher Sherman, engineering manager at BAE's Electronics & Integrated Solutions division here.

The company has already hired 475 people in New Hampshire and Massachusetts this year, mostly to meet growing demand, but in some cases, to replace departing workers.

Back-to-back BAE job fairs Tuesday and Wednesday drew 1,462 candidates, including recent college graduates in pressed suits, Cold War-era defense industry veterans with salt-and-pepper hair, and commercial engineers who had previously worked at computer software or telecommunications companies. All hoped to land jobs at BAE's electronics programs, some of which are highly classified.

Pentagon's contractors are looking for help



If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

You Got To Laugh Init?

I am a selfish person.

A hoax telephone call almost sparked another war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan at the height of last month's terror attacks on Mumbai, officials and Western diplomats on both sides of the border said today.

Pranab Mukherjee, left, denied making any phone call to President Zardari (AP/AFP/Getty Images)Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani President, took a telephone call from a man pretending to be Pranab Mukherjee, India's Foreign Minister, on Friday, November 28, apparently without following the usual verification procedures, they said.

The hoax caller threatened to take military action against Pakistan in response to the then ongoing Mumbai attacks, which India has since blamed on the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), they said.

Mr Zardari responded by placing Pakistan's air force on high alert and telephoning Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, to ask her to intervene.

But when Dr Rice called Mr Mukherjee, he said that he had not spoken to Mr Zardari and that his last conversation with Shah Mahmood Qureishi, the Pakistani Foreign Minister, had been quite civil.

Hoax Phone Call 'Almost Took Pakistan to War'



If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Indian Style Spy Service

I am a selfish person.

Police preparing for a visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh near Calcutta hired high-school children for the equivalent of $2.50 each to sit in trees for the day and look out for suspicious people.

Local police chief L.N. Meena defended using children in the prime minister's security detail, saying there were too many trees in the area and not enough policemen.

"The area is full of trees, so to check them to see if there were any anti-social elements or anyone making mischief, we employed the youths," he said.

Television footage showed dozens of the youngsters perched in trees, with yellow paper badges that read "security pass" pinned on their chests.

Arrests made in Mumbai terror attack, but one may be Indian undercover officer, igniting controversy




If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Sponsor An Execurtive

I am a selfish person.



If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Do you know Why

I am a selfish person.

Do you know why I wish I am a suicide bomber?

At least he beleaves in something.


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

The Wedding

I am a selfish person.





If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Government black boxes will 'collect every email'

I am a selfish person.

Home Office officials have told senior figures from the internet and telecommunications industries that the "black box" technology could automatically retain and store raw data from the web before transferring it to a giant central database controlled by the Government.

Plans to create a database holding information about every phone call, email and internet visit made in the UK have provoked a huge public outcry. Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, described it as "step too far" and the Government's own terrorism watchdog said that as a "raw idea" it was "awful".

Nevertheless, ministers have said they are committed to consulting on the new Communications Data Bill early in the new year. News that the Government is already preparing the ground by trying to allay the concerns of the internet industry is bound to raise suspicions about ministers' true intentions. Further details of the database emerged on Monday at a meeting of internet service providers (ISPs) in London where representatives from BT, AOL Europe, O2 and BSkyB were given a PowerPoint presentation of the issues and the technology surrounding the Government's Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), the name given by the Home Office to the database proposal.

Whitehall experts working on the IMP unit told the meeting the security and intelligence agencies wanted to use the stored data to help fight serious crime and terrorism, and said the technology would allow them to create greater "capacity" to monitor all communication traffic on the internet. The "black boxes" are an attractive option for the internet industry because they would be secure and not require any direct input from the ISPs.

During the meeting Whitehall officials also tried to reassure the industry by suggesting that many smaller ISPs would be unaffected by the "black boxes" as these would be installed upstream on the network and hinted that all costs would be met by the Government.

"It was clear the 'back box' is the technology the Government will use to hold all the data. But what isn't clear is what the Home Secretary, GCHQ and the security services intend to do with all this information in the future," said a source close to the meeting.

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Climate Changed?

I am a selfish person.








If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Prisoners' complaints

I am a selfish person.

These are some of the prisoner complaints in UK. There is a funny side to be a lag.

*Inmates at Whitemoor said their in-house curries were inedible. At Eid, officers made a 40-mile round trip and spent £3,500 on takeaway beef madras and lamb rogan josh.

*Lags in HMP Wymott, Lancashire, complained of too much sex and violence on their film channel, saying films such as Rambo and Basic Instinct only fuelled desire to commit crime.

*Female prisoners at HMP Peterborough said their meals were too fattening and they were struggling to fit into the issue clothing.

*Gay prisoners at HMP Wakefield recently won the right to hire porn films from a DVD rental firm after they said they were not getting the same human rights as the straight inmates.

But at the same time it is not as rosy as we imagine in some of the prisons.

Lags at one Victorian jail say they are being treated worse than dogs during the cold spell. Inmates of HM Prison Preston claim some prisoners with circulation problems could lose "limbs or even lives" through cold.

They have written to their local paper, saying the temperature in their cells has plummeted to 5C at night, half that allowed in dog-breeding premises, and they are suffering "inhumane treatment". But prison authorities said they were not allowed thermometers in their cells so they would not be able to tell.

In a letter to the Lancashire Evening Post, an unnamed prisoner says: "The temperature in these residential sections is utterly unbearable and totally inhumane. In a culture where we show concern for inhumane treatment of prisoners at establishments like Guantanamo Bay, let us remember that while these men are criminals, many are there on remand and all are still human beings, supposedly living in a Westernised society. For older prisoners or those with circulation problems, diabetes or other problems with their extremities this is potentially dangerous and could cost limbs or even lives."

A prison spokesman, Gareth Cheetham, insisted the central heating in the cells was fully functional. Temperatures might be slightly lower at night, he said, but the thermostat kicked in if they fell below a specific level. "We respond to prisoners' complaints," he added. "In fact, last week we actually turned the heating down on B Wing."

Kath Thomas, chief executive of Lancashire Victim Support, said: "There are elderly people out there who are worried about whether they can feed themselves and put their heating on. And victims of crime aren't going to be having a very good Christmas, either. The inmates could wear an extra layer." A spokesman for the Prisons Reform Trust said a recent Chief Inspector's report had raised concerns over the antiquated conditions. These problems were made worse by overcrowding. He said: "Preston is a really old, Victorian prison and it has lots of problems."

In September 2007, the number of Preston inmates harming themselves had soared by 90 per cent in a year; a total of 239 incidents of self-harm were recorded in 2006 compared with 126 in 2005. The jail houses 850 Category B prisoners. One in six inmates failed drug tests in the year 2006-07, Home Office figures show.

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

The Mumbai Attacks

I am a selfish person.

Well documented account. You decide the truth?


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Afghanistan....Is This the real History?

I am a selfish person.

Some Real History

Since feudal times the landholding system in Afghanistan had remained unchanged, with more than 75 percent of the land owned by big landlords who comprised only 3 percent of the rural population. In the mid-1960s, democratic revolutionary elements coalesced to form the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). In 1973, the king was deposed, but the government that replaced him proved to be autocratic, corrupt, and unpopular. It in turn was forced out in 1978 after a massive demonstration in front of the presidential palace, and after the army intervened on the side of the demonstrators.

The military officers who took charge invited the PDP to form a new government under the leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki, a poet and novelist. This is how a Marxist-led coalition of national democratic forces came into office. “It was a totally indigenous happening. Not even the CIA blamed the USSR for it,” writes John Ryan, a retired professor at the University of Winnipeg, who was conducting an agricultural research project in Afghanistan at about that time.
The Taraki government proceeded to legalize labor unions, and set up a minimum wage, a progressive income tax, a literacy campaign, and programs that gave ordinary people greater access to health care, housing, and public sanitation. Fledgling peasant cooperatives were started and price reductions on some key foods were imposed.

The government also continued a campaign begun by the king to emancipate women from their age-old tribal bondage. It provided public education for girls and for the children of various tribes.

A report in the San Francisco Chronicle (17 November 2001) noted that under the Taraki regime Kabul had been “a cosmopolitan city. Artists and hippies flocked to the capital. Women studied agriculture, engineering and business at the city’s university. Afghan women held government jobs—-in the 1980s, there were seven female members of parliament. Women drove cars, traveled and went on dates. Fifty percent of university students were women.”

The Taraki government moved to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppy. Until then Afghanistan had been producing more than 70 percent of the opium needed for the world’s heroin supply. The government also abolished all debts owed by farmers, and began developing a major land reform program. Ryan believes that it was a “genuinely popular government and people looked forward to the future with great hope.”

But serious opposition arose from several quarters. The feudal landlords opposed the land reform program that infringed on their holdings. And tribesmen and fundamentalist mullahs vehemently opposed the government’s dedication to gender equality and the education of women and children.

Because of its egalitarian and collectivist economic policies the Taraki government also incurred the opposition of the US national security state. Almost immediately after the PDP coalition came to power, the CIA, assisted by Saudi and Pakistani military, launched a large scale intervention into Afghanistan on the side of the ousted feudal lords, reactionary tribal chieftains, mullahs, and opium traffickers.

A top official within the Taraki government was Hafizulla Amin, believed by many to have been recruited by the CIA during the several years he spent in the United States as a student. In September 1979, Amin seized state power in an armed coup. He executed Taraki, halted the reforms, and murdered, jailed, or exiled thousands of Taraki supporters as he moved toward establishing a fundamentalist Islamic state. But within two months, he was overthrown by PDP remnants including elements within the military.

It should be noted that all this happened before the Soviet military intervention. National security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski publicly admitted--months before Soviet troops entered the country--that the Carter administration was providing huge sums to Muslim extremists to subvert the reformist government. Part of that effort involved brutal attacks by the CIA-backed mujahideen against schools and teachers in rural areas.

In late 1979, the seriously besieged PDP government asked Moscow to send a contingent of troops to help ward off the mujahideen (Islamic guerrilla fighters) and foreign mercenaries, all recruited, financed, and well-armed by the CIA. The Soviets already had been sending aid for projects in mining, education, agriculture, and public health. Deploying troops represented a commitment of a more serious and politically dangerous sort. It took repeated requests from Kabul before Moscow agreed to intervene militarily.

Jihad and Taliban, CIA Style
The Soviet intervention was a golden opportunity for the CIA to transform the tribal resistance into a holy war, an Islamic jihad to expel the godless communists from Afghanistan. Over the years the United States and Saudi Arabia expended about $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The CIA and its allies recruited, supplied, and trained almost 100,000 radical mujahideen from forty Muslim countries including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Afghanistan itself. Among those who answered the call was Saudi-born millionaire right-winger Osama bin Laden and his cohorts.

After a long and unsuccessful war, the Soviets evacuated the country in February 1989. It is generally thought that the PDP Marxist government collapsed immediately after the Soviet departure. Actually, it retained enough popular support to fight on for another three years, outlasting the Soviet Union itself by a year.

Upon taking over Afghanistan, the mujahideen fell to fighting among themselves. They ravaged the cities, terrorized civilian populations, looted, staged mass executions, closed schools, raped thousands of women and girls, and reduced half of Kabul to rubble. In 2001 Amnesty International reported that the mujahideen used sexual assault as “a method of intimidating vanquished populations and rewarding soldiers.’”

Ruling the country gangster-style and looking for lucrative sources of income, the tribes ordered farmers to plant opium poppy. The Pakistani ISI, a close junior partner to the CIA, set up hundreds of heroin laboratories across Afghanistan. Within two years of the CIA’s arrival, the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland became the biggest producer of heroin in the world.

Largely created and funded by the CIA, the mujahideen mercenaries now took on a life of their own. Hundreds of them returned home to Algeria, Chechnya, Kosovo, and Kashmir to carry on terrorist attacks in Allah’s name against the purveyors of secular “corruption.”

In Afghanistan itself, by 1995 an extremist strain of Sunni Islam called the Taliban---heavily funded and advised by the ISI and the CIA and with the support of Islamic political parties in Pakistan---fought its way to power, taking over most of the country, luring many tribal chiefs into its fold with threats and bribes.

The Taliban promised to end the factional fighting and banditry that was the mujahideen trademark. Suspected murderers and spies were executed monthly in the sports stadium, and those accused of thievery had the offending hand sliced off. The Taliban condemned forms of “immorality” that included premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality. They also outlawed all music, theater, libraries, literature, secular education, and much scientific research.

The Taliban unleashed a religious reign of terror, imposing an even stricter interpretation of Muslim law than used by most of the Kabul clergy. All men were required to wear untrimmed beards and women had to wear the burqa which covered them from head to toe, including their faces. Persons who were slow to comply were dealt swift and severe punishment by the Ministry of Virtue. A woman who fled an abusive home or charged spousal abuse would herself be severely whipped by the theocratic authorities. Women were outlawed from social life, deprived of most forms of medical care, barred from all levels of education, and any opportunity to work outside the home. Women who were deemed “immoral” were stoned to death or buried alive.

None of this was of much concern to leaders in Washington who got along famously with the Taliban. As recently as 1999, the US government was paying the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official. Not until October 2001, when President George W. Bush had to rally public opinion behind his bombing campaign in Afghanistan did he denounce the Taliban’s oppression of women. His wife, Laura Bush, emerged overnight as a full-blown feminist to deliver a public address detailing some of the abuses committed against Afghan women.

If anything positive can be said about the Taliban, it is that they did put a stop to much of the looting, raping, and random killings that the mujahideen had practiced on a regular basis. In 2000 Taliban authorities also eradicated the cultivation of opium poppy throughout the areas under their control, an effort judged by the United Nations International Drug Control Program to have been nearly totally successful. With the Taliban overthrown and a Western-selected mujahideen government reinstalled in Kabul by December 2001, opium poppy production in Afghanistan increased dramatically.

The years of war that have followed have taken tens of thousands of Afghani lives. Along with those killed by Cruise missiles, Stealth bombers, Tomahawks, daisy cutters, and land mines are those who continue to die of hunger, cold, lack of shelter, and lack of water.

Well the rest of the article is "Afghanistan: Another Untold Story"


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

UK Money

I am a selfish person.

I like the stand the Gov takes to dilute the effects of the problem created by themselves and the Bankers.

So it is nice to see that the Gov is reducing the interest rates. I personally think it should go down to 0 to 1/2 % by summer next year.

And then the Gov reduce the rate of VAT. Yeah; you can argue that what the hell is 2% on a 10 quid stuff we, on average, buy. But if you think about the 2%, at the manufactuuring level or the farming level then you can see it goes up by the time you and me buy the product or service. Wise move.

Moral of all these is, as I can see, the Gov is trying to spread the fucking shite, they got in the first place, to everyone of the tax payers evenly. Well wise move at the moment I think.


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

How To Keep Your House Clean And Fresh

I am a selfish person.

One of the problems which causes air in your house go bad is Ciggy smoke. AS:

Smoke at home can cause rhinitis, pharyngitis (inflammation of the throat), a congested nose, persistent cough, headaches, wheezing and irritation of the conjunctiva (the membrane that covers the white of the eye and lines the eyelids). In addition, it can worsen respiratory conditions. Children—even more so, babies—are particularly vulnerable to problems from tobacco smoke. The smoke can trigger the onset of asthma and make an existing asthma condition more severe and more difficult to control. Long-term exposure to tobacco smoke is linked with breathing and lung disease, as well as exacerbated respiratory and cardiovascular disease and changes in the body’s immune system.

Place a few slices of lemon in a shallow dish of water to rid a room
of the smell of cigarette smoke.

Fuel Burning.

When we burn fuels like butane, propane, and benzene; we always produce gaseous pollutants eg. carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide,
soot, formaldehyde, and hydrocarbons.

Wood stoves and open fires Both wood and coal smoke contain numerous
pollutants, including carbon monoxide. Most of these by-products should go up
the chimney, but in the case of inefficient and poorly designed flues, some may
enter the room. Wood smoke also contains carcinogens, while coal smoke
contains sulfur dioxide—once responsible for city smog. Open fireplaces are
romantic, but wasteful of energy and polluting. Sealed units, such as sealed
combustion stoves, are more efficient, safer, and also environmentally cleaner,
especially if you burn matured, dry wood.

Gas appliances These appliances for cooking, hot water, and central heating
produce carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, small
amounts of formaldehyde, and sulfur dioxide. Old models with pilot lights or
faulty burners produce more toxins than newer, well maintained ones.

Kerosene (paraffin) heaters These heaters release numerous noxious gases
and much moisture and are not recommended for long-term use. It is essential to
keep a window open or ensure other ventilation while they burn.

Miscellaneous burners Even oil lamps, incense burners, candles, and
aromatherapy lamps produce combustion by-products.

WHAT COLOR IS YOUR FLAME? The flame on a gas burner—for instance,
the stove or water heater—should burn blue. If it’s orange, it may be faulty and
need servicing.

IS YOUR HEATER SAFE?
Faulty or incorrectly installed or maintained heaters can produce elevated levels of
pollutants. Check that your heater is running efficiently and safely.
1 Make sure that vented appliances are properly installed with external vents.
2 Investigate any odors produced when a heater is in use.
3 Have all heating devices such as water heaters, clothes dryers, and furnaces
regularly serviced by a professional.
4 Clean fireplaces and stoves for wood and coal seasonally.
5 Old heaters may lack safety devices such as cutoff mechanisms, which shut the
heater off if poisonous carbon monoxide reaches a dangerous level. Consider
investing in a new one.
6 Never try to heat the room by leaving your gas-oven door propped open or by
burning charcoal in a portable grill.
7 Reduce the total number of combustion appliances in your home.

TO REDUCE BIOLOGICAL HAZARDS

Good living practices can significantly decrease your exposure to dangerous levels of
biological pollutants.
1 Check that all your living spaces are adequately ventilated—open windows
regularly and let air blow through the house.
2 Make sure all air-conditioning, humidifying, and dehumidifying equipment is
maintained according to the manufacturers’ instructions and that no water is
allowed to stand in them.
3 Repair leaks and seepages promptly. Thoroughly clean and dry water-damaged
carpets and building materials within twenty-four hours of damage or consider
removing and replacing them.
4 Use exhaust fans in the bathroom and kitchen, and vent your clothes dryer to
the outside.
5 Be aware of the family’s exposure to pets.
6 Vacuum carpets and upholstered furniture regularly.
7 Cover mattresses with anti-dust-mite covers.
8 Wash bedding and soft toys frequently at a high temperature to control dust mites.

Thats all for the now. I will post some more in the future.

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Zionism At Work In UK?

I am a selfish person.

Every secondary school is to get a Holocaust specialist to ensure that the subject is taught comprehensively and sensitively.

One teacher from every school will be offered a place on a Holocaust education training course to combat racism and intolerance.

One in ten of those who take the course will also be able to take a master’s degree module in Holocaust education, as part of a £1.5 million scheme run by the Institute of Education.

Teachers will discuss parts of the subject that they find difficult to teach and work on lesson plans with experts on how to broach the issue.

Every school to get Holocaust specialist under anti-racism initiative

And check the comments please.

If you would like to see what I mean by zionist connection see the google link:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22Institute+of+Education%22+jewish&meta=

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Afghan article says US Bin-Ladin hunt phoney

I am a selfish person.

The USG Open Source Center translates an article from the Persian Afghan press alleging that French troops were at one point close to capturing Usamah Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, but that American forces stopped them from doing so. It says that a forthcoming French documentary containing interviews with the French soldiers provides proof for the allegation. The argument is that the Bush administration needed Bin Ladin to be at large in order to justify its military expansionism.

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Hugo Chavez

I am a selfish person.

I was very impressed by this guy a long time ago. When he became the president of Venezuela in 1998 it became a day of reckoning for the rich oligarchy in the country. But now after 10 years I have some doubts about the whole clan of Charvez.

This is apparently true of the entire family. Since Hugo Chavez, a former paratrooper who later staged a military coup and is now the leader of the Latin American Left, was elected president in 1998, his once-humble mestizo family has become a wealthy clan. The Chavez family is believed to own 17 farms, several of them, as the opposition claims, acquired through straw men. "The Chavezes are the new oligarchs of Barinas," says Antonio Bastidas, a former neighbor and member of the opposition today.

Hugo de los Reyes Chavez, a former village teacher who is now called "El Maestro" in Barinas, has six sons, and all of them are extremely well provided for. Adelis is a vice president at Banco Sofitasa, which handles the business dealings of the Barinas government. Anibal is the mayor of Chavez's hometown of Sabaneta, Narciso heads the government's office of Venezuela-Cuban cooperation and Argenis is the head of his father's cabinet. Argenis became the de facto head of the family when "El Maestro" suffered a stroke a few years ago. Chavez's cousin Asdrubal is vice-president of the refinery business of the state-owned oil company, PDVSA.

Adan, the eldest of the Chavez brothers, has the reputation of being the family intellectual, and he has held posts as Venezuela's ambassador to Cuba and its education minister. Of all his brothers, Chavez trusts Adan the most, which is why he has now entrusted him with a delicate mission: Adan is running as a candidate to succeed his father in the gubernatorial election on Sunday. His task is to protect the president against the possibility of an ignominious defeat in the "Cradle of the Revolution," the term Chavez likes to use to describe his native state.

Read the "Pressure Mounts for Entire Chavez Clan"




If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Russian intelligence sees U.S. military buildup on Iran border

I am a selfish person.

Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by U.S. Armed Forces near Iran's borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.

"The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran," the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.

He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran "that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost."

He also said the U.S. Naval presence in the Persian Gulf has for the first time in the past four years reached the level that existed shortly before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

URGENT STATEMENT BY ANTI-ZIONIST ORTHODOX JEWS WORLDWIDE

I am a selfish person.

23 Nov. '08 '
URGENT STATEMENT BY ANTI-ZIONIST ORTHODOX JEWS WORLDWIDE
How long will Jewish and non-Jewish leaders who claim the mantle of civilization and morality remain silent in the face of the ongoing state terrorism practiced by the Zionist state against the Palestinian People, most visibly today in Gaza, where the Zionists believe they can starve the Palestinians into submission in violation of all tenets of international law, all religious values ineneral, INCLUDING the values of the Jewish faith???!!
HOW LONG WILL THIS BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE??
WE URGENTLY PLEA TO THE WORLD COMMUNITY AND WORLD LEADERS TO PUT AN
END TO ZIONIST STATE TERRORISM!! IN THE NAME OF G-D!
IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY!
The terrorist regime of the State of Israel has been repressing, expelling and persecuting Palestinians for 60 years, and expects the Palestinians to simply sit with their arms folded while this goes on! Are the Palestinians supposed to be collaborators in their own destruction? Are they simply supposedly to surrender in order to compensate the Zionists for what happened during World War II thousands of miles away?
It is time for leaders with a sense of morality and courage to stand up and finally declare ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!! The State of Israel must no long be granted a blank check to commit crimes!
This wicked rogue ethnocratic state must be dismantled and the rights of the Palestinians restored!
We pray that our appeal will find its way into the hearts and minds of those who have the power to put an end to the madness unleashed by the State of Israel, which is armed to teeth with the most sophisticated weaponry used on the Palestinians, and held over the rest of the Middle East as the Zionists demand the entire world surrender to their agenda!
The Zionists know that their state is on the threshold of disintegration, and they
are prepared to take millions of Jews and non-Jews down with them!! The world
is in grave danger if the Zionists are not stopped!!
May G-d in Heaven hear our prayer!
Rabbi Meir Hirsh
Neturei Karta Palestine


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

7.4 Trillion Dollars And Counting

I am a selfish person.

But think about this: according to Bloomberg, the US government has now pledged more than $7.4 trillion to rescue the financial system in the past 15 months.

How much is 7.4 trillion?

1) It is "half the value of everything produced in the nation last year," according to Bloomberg.
2) It's enough to cut a check for almost $25,000 to every single citizen of the USA!
3) If you had 7.4 trillion pennies, you would have $74,000,000,000.
4) That's enough money to buy the New York Times Co. 86 times over.
5) If we say that 100 pennies stack up 4 inches high, 7.4 trillion pennies would stack up 4,671,717 miles high.
6) That's enough to go to the moon and back ten times.

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Mobile Karma

I am a selfish person.




If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Forgotten but not gone: leprosy lives on in America

I am a selfish person.

I bin Away for a while without internet connection. If is my own fault. I made my puter do lots of things which it is not supposed to do. I call it.... break through the bubble which I persistently live in. For some people it might be crazy but for me it is the only way I like to live without the perspiration of boredom. And it went gnarly and I had to go back to basics like reinstall the whole thing.

I fucked my system so much the cd recorder will not work. I reinstalled lots of software and drivers which come with my laptop. Nada. So I had to depend on my memory stick with 7 gig of stuff to take out before I reformat the bugger. Man O Man do not get into that level. Sort yourself out before, is the only moral I can get out of that saga. Not the first and I don't think it is the last either.

In the meantime in Science news I heard about our 'Top' Dog of the World having sone skin problems on the vast scale. Read All About It, link on the Headingski.





If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

MPs seek to censor the media

I am a selfish person.

Britain's security agencies and police would be given unprecedented and legally binding powers to ban the media from reporting matters of national security, under proposals being discussed in Whitehall.


The Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary watchdog of the intelligence and security agencies which has a cross-party membership from both Houses, wants to press ministers to introduce legislation that would prevent news outlets from reporting stories deemed by the Government to be against the interests of national security.

The committee also wants to censor reporting of police operations that are deemed to have implications for national security. The ISC is to recommend in its next report, out at the end of the year, that a commission be set up to look into its plans, according to senior Whitehall sources.

And then the article says:

The committee has focused on one particular case to highlight its concern: an Islamist plot to kidnap and murder a British serviceman in 2007, during which reporters were tipped off about the imminent arrest of suspects in Birmingham, a security operation known as "Gamble". The staff in the office of the then home secretary, John Reid, and the local police were among those accused of being responsible – charges they denied. An investigation by Scotland Yard failed to find the source of the leak.

Yeah right what if these very people who wants to gag the papers, leaked the information. Its happened before and it will happen later in our life times.



If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Voters OK pot measure

I am a selfish person.

Nice one, and its happening in one of the US states. I heard from another reliable source that most of the Hawaiians want independance from the US. Yeah!

Voters passed a ballot measure that would direct police to take a hands-off approach to the adult personal use of marijuana.

With all precincts reporting, the measure passed 53.1 percent (35,329 votes) to 38.6 percent (25,658 votes).

Voters were asked whether the Police Department should regard marijuana as the lowest law enforcement priority.

The law would put the enforcement of laws against marijuana to each police officer's personal discretion, and would direct the County Council not to accept state or federal funds for marijuana eradication.

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

TV Adverts

I am a selfish person.

I is pissed off with the continious showing of the same advert in the same program. So i decided to boycott them, atleast for a while. Today I decided not to order a delivery from Asda. I will go for the Tesco. See I got a frigging choice, ha.


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

US Elections 2008

I am a selfish person.

It is very difficult to say that a black guy won the US precidental elections, without being a racist, but he did. About fucking time; a many of us will say. Welcome to the Obamian era for US history, and not the whole world's. Hopefully it won't be a Bombamian era in the world!


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Secrets of the CIA

I am a selfish person.




If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Britain’s largest corporations pay no tax

I am a selfish person.

I was dumbfounded when I saw this article and I did a bit of googling and found out that it is a bloody disgrace, when you think about the bloody profits these companies are making, and how much we the poor people suffer. Here I give you little bits of the aricle. For the full article click the heading.

A massive 220 firms, almost one third of Britain’s largest 700 companies, including Cadbury, Standard Chartered Bank and British American Tobacco, paid no Corporation Tax in 2006-2007.

In addition, a recent report from parliament’s Public Accounts Committee reveals that a further 210 firms paid less than £10 million each. Just 50 firms (7 percent) paid 67 percent of the total. These firms came from 3 of the 17 industry sectors: banking, oil and gas, and insurance.

Small and medium-sized businesses paid nearly half of all Corporation Tax. Not only did large corporations pay just 56 percent of all Corporation Tax, but they paid £0.5 billion less in real terms than in the previous year.

Corporation Tax from large firms raised just £23.8 billion in 2006-2007. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) spends just £28 million in collecting tax from big business.

The Missing Billions: The UK Tax Gap, a report prepared by Richard Murphy of Tax Research for the Trades Union Council (TUC) in February 2008, examines the accounts of the 50 largest companies, and calculates the tax lost to the government from tax avoidance by the very wealthy at £25 billion annually. This comprises £13 billion from tax avoidance by individuals and £12 billion a year from the 700 largest corporations—and the figure is rising.

To get some sense of perspective of what all this means, the amount lost due to tax planning by those earning more than £100,000 a year would increase child tax credits by enough to halve child poverty. Recovering just under half the total amount lost due to tax avoidance would be enough to increase the state pension by 20 percent, or reduce the basic rate of income tax by 3p in the pound or build another 50 hospitals.

Unpaid tax by the rich and major corporations costs every British worker at least £1,000 a year.

Corporate refusal to pay tax is not just a British but a universal phenomenon. A report by Christian Aid, Death and Taxes: The True Cost of Tax Dodging, published earlier this year, argues that illegal tax evasion by companies is depriving the world poorest countries of US$160 billion a year. The sums lost globally due to tax evasion, which is illegal, are approximately equal to nearly one and a half times the amount of foreign aid given to poor countries. Adding in tax avoidance, which is entirely legal, this would be several times greater than all foreign aid.

The money lost due to illegal tax evasion could save the lives of 350,000 children, 250,000 infants, every year. Christian Aid Director Daleep Mukarji said that “illegal, trade related tax evasion alone will be responsible for the deaths of some 5.6 million children under the age of five between 2000 and 2015.”

The Missing Billions The UK Tax Gap

Death and taxes: the true toll of tax dodging

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Shimon Peres to be knighted by Queen Elizabeth

I am a selfish person.

I am not sure whether Queen will do this as this man is a bloody butcher of many palestinians. Hope not. This comes from a Zionist rag. I will have to do some research on this.


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Things We Are Not Told By The Media

I am a selfish person.

Aldermaston, England - More than 30 people were arrested yesterday during one of the biggest anti-nuclear protests at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston for 10 years. The gates of the site were blocked as people attached themselves to concrete blocks which had to be broken apart by police. Others climbed scaffolding or lay in the road at the demonstration by about 400 people to mark the start of the UN World Disarmament Week.

Pat Sanchez lies blocking the gates at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston yesterday morning. (Rochdale online)They were protesting against a decision to modernise the Aldermaston plant in Berkshire and plans to develop a new warhead for nuclear missiles that the government wants to buy to replace the Trident system.

The government plans to spend nearly £6bn on Aldermaston over the next three years. Ministers claim the money is needed to preserve Britain's ability to manufacture nuclear warheads safely; they say a decision has not yet been taken to develop new, "more usable" warheads with the help of American knowhow.

The Guardian revealed earlier this year that one of the MoD's senior officials told a private meeting of arms companies that a decision to replace the existing stockpile of nuclear warheads had already been taken despite ministers repeatedly denying there were any plans to replace them and insisting that no decision would be taken until the next parliament, probably sometime after 2010.

More Than 30 Arrests at Aldermaston Anti-Nuclear Protest


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Bush Trying to Avoid War Crimes Charges

I am a selfish person.

This is top dog democracy in the world today. My My My... I can only laugh at the hypocracy of it all. Check it out, only 2 minutes.








If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Things We Are Not Told By The Media

I am a selfish person.

An Open Letter to Defense Minister, Ehud Barak

Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

By Bassam Aramin

30/05/08 "Counterpunch" -- - Honorable General Ehud Barak, you don't know me personally. I am a seeker of peace, and I struggle with all my strength and ability for the realization of a just peace that will bring calm and prosperity to Palestinians and Israelis together. I have suffered personally from your criminal occupation and I have paid a heavy price. Firstly, I was imprisoned when I was 17 years old and wasted seven years of my life in your barbaric prisons. Secondly, have you perhaps read or heard about what happened to the young girl Abir Aramin? She was a ten-year-old whom your soldiers killed with a rubber bullet from a distance of 15 feet on January 16, 2007 in front of her eleven-year-old sister Areen. Despite this I, the father of Abir — may she rest in peace — believe in the right of the Israeli person, as in the right of all people, to exist and to live in peace and security. So why do you not believe in our right to enjoy these same things, sir?

Where was the democratic nature of your state when your heroic soldiers killed my daughter before the eyes of her friends at the entrance to her school in Anata? Where were your democratic ideals when you closed the investigation file into Abir's murder for lack of sufficient evidence, this despite the fact that the crime is clear and was committed in front of more than ten witnesses? Was Abir really a threat to your soliders, sir?

I carry in my possession the weapons with which Abir threatened those soldiers. I have in my hand her school backpack, reinforced and armored, of course — the mechanical pencil she had, laden with dangerous lead cartridges, and her math book in which class she had a test the same day, which of course included detailed instructions on how to prepare chemical weapons. In addition to all this, she had a sharp ruler, which could for sure be used as a weapon to stab someone. Lastly, I found in her possession two pieces of chocolate that perhaps contained a bit of enriched uranium that would have certainly brought devastation upon your state, if she hadn't been tempted to take them in her hand for a taste seconds before she was shot.

Here I have to give your soldiers credit in their incredible ability to incapacitate and kill with such deadly accuracy. The bullet hit Abir exactly one centimeter from her hypothalamus—this caused her to immediately enter a coma and she died thereafter and went to dwell in the presence of God, sparing her the continuing pain and heartache herein expressed.

Thus, Abir Aramin can be added to the list of great successes and security accomplishments in the name of the state of Israel. But I request, Minister and General, in that I am the father of this young girl, at the very least an admission of responsibility for this murder, or its cause. It is your duty to bring the soldier who murdered Abir to court so he may be tried and judged a murderer and criminal.

I believe that there is no military solution to the conflict and when those cowards murdered my daughter, I announced that I did not want revenge, I wanted justice, even though revenge is much easier. The real fighter is one who chooses the harder path of the two for the sake of peace, and revenge is the path of the coward.

Sir, the Palestinian people cannot forever pay the price of the fear and suspicion of the Israeli people. Free my people from this abominable occupation so that your people may live in prosperity and be free from fear.

For sixty years, the Palestinian people have paid the price of the Israeli military occupation an occupation which, in celebration of the Israeli state's inception, carries out acts of outright antagonism that spill the blood of Palestinian fighters, women, children and elders indiscriminately. It is the Palestinian general public that provides a target for your war machine that does not protect the small from the grown. Our people has faced the same murderer since Gaza in 1956 — and the never-ending series continues.

I will not remind you now of the massacres that your government committed against my people; you know them far better than I. I read about them, heard about them — but you took part in them.

The question I pose to you is this: in light of your rich military experience, and as someone who himself has seen sixty years of conflict go by, when will Israel have the strength to finish the conflict militarily and realize a complete victory over the Palestinian people? Do you continue to believe that what cannot be done by might may be done by more might? Does the occupation conceal in its bag of tricks additional methods of killing that the Palestinian people have not yet had the misfortune to know?

If this is the case, perhaps it is a good idea for the Israeli government to try and use those methods. And perhaps they will be able to accomplish that tantalizingly complete victory…in another 60 years.

Sir, when will you understand that the conflict between us cannot be ended with an army? For despite all the effort and conceit of the occupation, it could not stop the stones of our children from hitting your occupying soldiers. How will you be able to stop the Palestinian uprising? This is a dream that will never come true, even in another 1000 years. Why are you not telling this truth to the residents of Ashkelon and Sderot, that there is no solution that will stop the Qassam missiles flying at them from a destroyed and blockaded Gaza except if there would be an end to the occupation?

This is the truth you've been running from for a long time.

Believe me, sir, that you will gain nothing out of continuing to detain people. More than 750,000 Palestinians have been detained from 1967 until today. What result has been achieved except an increased determination on our part for confrontation and resistance?

The policy of occupation only creates more and more people who rise up to fight occupation and refuse to accept its burden. The Palestinian prisoners who sit in your jails are among the most learned and erudite of our people, those are the most sensitive and humanistic. They have become educated in the tradition of liberty and democracy—and for this reason they will never agree to accept the occupation and subjugation. It is these men and women who will fight for peace, and if you want to realize peace you have no option but to set free these soldiers of peace first and foremost.

How much have you really benefited from your strategy of home demolitions, uprooting of trees, confiscating lands for questionable reasons and then establishing illegal settlements on those same lands? How much has it helped you to set up disgraceful checkpoints in every corner and every road of the West Bank and Gaza and at each intersection for the purpose of humiliating the residents of those areas, among them workers, students and political leaders. What is the expediency of all this, sir?

When will the bloodthirsty bullets of your soldiers be sated by the blood of our children? When will you be satisfied with our blood that you have already spilled and leave us? When will you leave our waters and our heavens? Do you not see the helmets upon which your soldiers write, "I was born to kill"? Do you not see your brave men killing children every day? How can you decide to prevent the people of Gaza from acquiring cooking gas and at the same time send them teargas and tanks and warplanes?

Only now do I understand the will of an Israeli woman in Italy — my colleague Eidan and I met her when we participated in a peace march from Perugia to Assisi as representatives of Combatants for Peace. When I asked her, "You aren't planning to return to Israel?" She answered me: "I swore that if Ehud Barak won the election, I will leave Israel forever." She continues to live there because you act according to a policy that says there is no Palestinian partner.

I cannot begin to express in this short letter the enormity of the moral failures that have harmed Israeli society. The newspaper Yediot Ahronot said that 40 per cent of new recruits to the IDF have criminal records and this may go a long way in explaining the long list of acts against Palestinian civilians that they commit during their service. This is supposed to be the most distinguished, moral army in the entire world, no? Is this why we find that 25 per cent of the soldiers of the army of the occupation took part in instances of torture and punishment of innocent civilians or were witnesses to such acts?

Sir, I want to submit that I have read the shameful report that every person of conscience should be horrified by, that talks of the torture of children in Hebron. And this — the strangling of Palestinian children by soldiers to test how much time they can stand without breathing, incidents that were committed by captains in your army, the most moral army in the world, this is the crown of shame on the brow of the occupation.

Sir, how do you justify your soldier's use of children aged 10 as personal shields that they tie to the front of your patrols when they search for wanted persons or break up a demonstration? Where does international law permit this? I am trying to understand if this use of children as human shields is in some way related to the science of modern warfare, for the accusation that I hear in all instances of the killing of children in particular and in the killing of Palestinian citizens in general is that the Palestinians fighters use citizens for human shields to hide behind. How can there be a legal justification and distinction even in the Israeli terminology, but not in the international terminology, between Israelis and Palestinians?

How can you justify the deaths of those innocents just trying to peacefully pass though the checkpoints that your soldiers put up at all entrances to villages, cities or camps that prevent pregnant women from walking to hospitals to deliver? Would you ever agree to let this happen to your wife? What would you do then?

There are, however, military men, Israeli soldiers that used to do battle with the Palestinian people who at the moment of truth found that they are no more than pawns in the hands of the occupation. They had the courage and the valor to announce unanimously that they refuse to be occupiers. They exposed the falsehoods of their leaders who claim that Israel is reaching out her hand for peace but she has no partner on the Palestinian side. They discovered that they had never met a real Palestinian fighter face-to-face in combat, and that instead their day-to-day work was chasing schoolchildren, enforcing closures, destroying houses and putting up checkpoints and roadblocks to stop children who aren't even 13 years old. They took a moral and courageous stance and without any difficulty found themselves a Palestinian partner from within the heart of the Palestinian movement, people who wasted the spring of their youth in the prisons of your occupation. Together they founded the organization Combatants for Peace. The name itself exposes the false promises and the policy that says there is no partner for peace. This organization, united in courageousness and and morality, is made up of people from both sides who understand that there is only one shared enemy that conceals the path of realization of peace and life together as two nations. This enemy is the illegal and immoral Israeli occupation. I am a member of this organization, and I call upon all who are searching for a true peace to join us.

We tell our peoples the truth, only the truth. We are committed to nonviolent resistance to the occupation, and I call here, in this very missive, to the people of our Palestinian nation that have been inscribed in the pages of history as the epitome of resilience, that have had the humanity to withstand decades of abuse and occupation with the purest steadfastness. I call also upon the people in Israel to accept moral and historic responsibility for the establishment of these two states together, and for a national, humanistic, peaceful intifada, a rising up against this unjust occupation that has transformed your children into war criminals and to abject murderers. You Israelis — stop sending your soldiers — your sons — to kill our children, because the blood of our children and the blood of all those Palestinian innocents will chase your soldiers and the generals of your army to judgment in international courts as the rest of the war criminals in the world. You must learn this lesson. The honorable general must surely be aware that the majority of captains and generals in the Israeli army are forbidden from entering any European state for they will be wanted persons there, to be arrested and taken to court as war criminals and for crimes against humanity?

One last word – the blood of Abir will remain as a black crown on the brow of every Israeli and every Jew in the world until her murderer is brought to justice and passes the remainder of his days in jail, among the murderers and the criminals.

Bassam Aramin is co-founder of Combatants for Peace. Translation by Mimi Asnes

An Open Letter to Defense Minister, Ehud Barak




If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Things We Are Not Told By The Media

I am a selfish person.

“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.

Read the rest here.

And Here






If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Things We Are Not Told By The Media

I am a selfish person.

June 27, 2008
DENVER — Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

Much of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land in the West is ideal for solar energy, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts.

Galvanized by the national demand for clean energy development, solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies’ desires to lease public land to build solar plants and then sell the energy to utilities.

According to the bureau, the applications, which cover more than one million acres, are for projects that have the potential to power more than 20 million homes.

Read the rest here


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Will You Publish This Story?

I am a selfish person.

Will You Publish This Story?

By Nida Mariam

23 October, 2008
Combat Law

Lubna, a young woman from Baghdad, mother of four, stranded in Cairo, narrates her ordeals to Nida Mariam

She left al Doura, south Baghdad, in the darkness before dawn.
At five a.m. one morning, in mid-2006, 40 days after her father had been murdered by militiamen in front of her mother's eyes, Lubna Hamed Rasheed, 35 years old at the time, bundled up her belongings, collected her courage, and told her toddler, "As soon as we cross the Iraqi border, we will be out of danger."

There was a stream of cars moving together from her street. And when she, her children, and her neighbours got into the bus station, to take the land route to Syria, it felt as if all of Iraq was waiting to flee.

***
In the moments before Lubna was to arrive for our appointment, I quickly scanned my email to find the record I had been sent of her. No testimony about her experience in Iraq showed up. Five short depressing sentences describing her situation since she had come to Egypt—that was all I had.


The doorbell rang. Dressed in a black abaya, clutching her phone and a loosely wrapped headscarf casually under her chin, she walked in. She had something of a spark in her smile. She greeted us with warmth.

Few minutes later, seated side by side on the comfort of a couch, I suggested something through Omaima, our translator, who sat in front of us, “We can keep your name and other details anonymous, if you’d like.” Lubna stirred some sugar into her tea, set the spoon down on the metal tray, and shook her head resolutely, “No, I wish you could publish this. I want everyone to know.”

***
They shot her father in the leg when he tried to escape. They shot him eight times in all.. But the hospital report said it would have made no difference had they not shot, at all. By the time they took out their guns and fired, his spleen was already bleeding. They had beaten him up badly enough.


That morning, Lubna's mother ran out of her home in al Khadra, west Baghdad, to save her husband from the militiamen. Again and again, she kissed their feet, begging them to stop, begging them for mercy, begging them to leave.

***
I requested Lubna to tell us about her life in Egypt.


Lubna left Baghdad in the darkness before dawn in mid-2006. She bundled up her belongings, collected her courage, and told her toddler: "As soon as we cross the Iraqi border, we will be out of danger"


“I will speak in an Iraqi accent,” she stated, checking with Omaima that her speech was comprehensible, before offering us the first-round, watered-down version, of the trial that was her life.

“I have four children—three daughters and a son. In Iraq I was married to this Egyptian man, when I came here with my children, he divorced me.”

Trite and tragic, that’s how she began.

“We didn’t find any housing. I didn’t know what to do. For six months we were homeless. We slept in the street.”

That the divorce was ugly and unfair and unresolved was sad, not surprising. But the legal particularities of her marriage to that man unravelled a little later.


Her four children, though born in Iraq, were by virtue of their father, registered as Egyptian citizens at birth. Now that he had abandoned her, she had no one else to turn to in Egypt. “And we can’t go back to Iraq because my children are Egyptian and I don’t have anyone in Iraq. I don’t have a house in Iraq. I have nothing there,” she explains. But even if Lubna were to decide to go back to the dangers of Baghdad, she could not take her children with her. They would be denied entry. These were the citizenship laws of the Arab world. Despite their mother’s nationality, as children of an Egyptian immigrant, they had no current legal status in Iraq.

She lay down her cup of tea and reiterated for a second time that afternoon, “My children are not in school. I am very upset because my eldest daughter is 14 years old and cannot read and write.” She explained that her daughters had been out of the classroom for three years now.

But why, if they were Egyptian nationals, were her children not able to enrol in public school?

When Lubna finally found a place to live in October 6 City just months ago, she had approached the local school authorities, “But they wanted the children's documents from their schools in Iraq, and I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t bring them. My father was killed in the war. My brothers are in detention. I don’t have anyone to run for this and bring the papers.” For all she knows the teachers at that school are dead; and from what she remembers the US Armed

Forces occupy the building now.

And then there was the issue of rent. For five days the landlord had been knocking on the door, demanding the payment, threatening to throw her out again. The last time he had come she had pretended as if she was not home. She could not bear the thought of being back with her children on the street.
Was there anywhere that she had tried to go for assistance?

When Lubna went to the Cairo offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), she was turned away at the gate. The security guards informed her that, despite her Iraqi nationality, she was not eligible for refugee status. “Because my children are Egyptian, we can stay here, so they don’t consider me a refugee.” Omaima, who works extensively with all refugees and helps them with their applications to UNHCR, explained that though Lubna was, in a sense, a refugee, she had a better legal standing than other Iraqis in Cairo, who are granted recognition as asylum seekers primarily in order to be issued residency permits. These other Iraqis do not have the right to employment. As a mother of Egyptian nationals, Lubna has the right to live and work in Egypt.


Lubna’s life has been triumph more than tragedy. For one, despite the legalities surrounding the fact that her nationality is different than her children, she managed, against the odds, to bring them with her to Egypt


Lubna tried to work as a housemaid, but had a lot of problems because of that. She can’t leave her children out of her sight, often afraid to even take them outside. She thinks someone might kidnap them. She gets frightened every time the doorbell rings; she thinks someone has come to attack even though she knows ‘these things’ don’t happen in Egypt. “I have something like a phobia”, she reveals, “Maybe from Iraq, because our life was just in horror. I was seeing people being killed and being raped and being abducted and everything.”

Her mind switched tracks for a brief moment. “Will you publish this story?” she asked in anticipation. “Maybe someone will have a good heart to help me,” when the idea of what we had just begun started to sink in.

***

Lubna decided to leave al Doura because of "those men who cover their faces and only show their eyes". She doesn’t know who they are. Sectarian tensions erupted in this part-Shia, part-Sunni neighbourhood where people once inter-married. These men had gone in and mutilated her neighbour's son. These men started breaking in, looting houses, murdering people, and raping girls. There were blackouts, randomly. She no longer felt safe for her daughters and stopped sending them to school.

She used to make a good living off the lorry that was in her name. She didn’t ever have to work as such, as the lorry driver would transport cement and other building material from construction companies to markets around Baghdad. Then the men stole her lorry, and she lost everything.

The war did not leave anything behind.

II

The second time I met Lubna I drove out to her place in October 6 City, with my friend, Mai, who was kind enough to come and play translator. The weather was gorgeous and Lubna came out, her younger daughter and youngest son trailing behind, to the main street to meet us. Once again, her headscarf draped loosely around her head, she held her phone in her hand. And as before, there was warmth.

As we sauntered back to her block, and up her building stairs, I prepared myself for what I knew from the email would be in her apartment. Nothing. “Lives in a bare flat with not a single piece of furniture; needs clothing—has only one blanket for all five of them to sleep under,” part of it had read.

As we entered, Lubna’s two elder daughters emerged from the bedroom and gathered around us with shy smiles. The younger two children went out to the small balcony to play. We sat down on mats on the floor in the living room, and I gleaned from her manner a newfound sense of belonging, “We didn’t have a place before, but now this is considered our place,” she said. The worst had come to pass, and she was picking up the pieces and beginning to provide for her children a notion of normality that she knew she must maintain.

“You know what you’re like when you don’t sleep for a day?” Lubna directed the question toward me, to get me to fathom what it had been like when she was homeless on the streets. “I would take the children to many places, from morning to night, we would want to sleep but couldn’t. We were very tired.”

Poignant and pointed, she continued, “We’d stay around Saeeda Zainab, or outside the Iraqi embassy. Sometimes, if I had money enough from people at the masjid, we’d go to Mansoora, other times we’d go to Alexandria, and stay at the homes of other Iraqis. For example, in Syria, I met this Iraqi woman, so I went to spend the night with her. In Alexandria, I knew some Iraqi people so I went to spend the night with them. Sometimes I’d stay at some person’s place, sometime in the street, sometime in another person’s. I would just go because I needed to sleep.”

But it wasn’t as easy as that; there were issues of personal pride and cultural etiquette involved, “As soon as I started to feel that they were not very welcoming anymore, I would leave. I would take my children and walk in the streets again.” I hadn’t noticed, but Haneen, her eldest daughter had gone into the kitchen. She came out carrying a tin tray with three small glasses of tea. She set it down between us and rejoined our circle of conversation.

***

Months after Lubna’s husband had divorced her, her husband’s uncle’s wife called and asked to take her eldest daughter, Haneen, to their family home in upper Egypt for a wedding. Lubna went to the police station and signed papers to ensure that she was the sole legal guardian of her four children. She then made her husband’s uncle’s wife put her palm on the Koran and swear that she would return her daughter to her. Then she let Haneen go.

When her husband’s uncle’s wife returned to Cairo after the wedding she told Lubna that Haneen had decided to stay on with her father.

In upper Egypt, Lubna’s mother-in-law told Haneen that Lubna was dead. She then put Haneen to work in the field and to milk the cows in the shed, which Haneen did not want to do.

One day Haneen managed to call Lubna. She was crying. Her grandmother, Lubna’s mother-in-law, was planning to sell Haneen’s hand in marriage to a much older man for a sum of 9000 LE.

From then on, with the help of a sympathetic aunt, Haneen would call Lubna crying almost every week. Lubna used all the tactics she had. And even threatened to fax President Mubarak and inform the police until she had her daughter back. It took eight months before Lubna had Haneen back in her custody.

***

Lubna’s life has been triumph more than tragedy. For one, despite the legalities surrounding the fact that her nationality is different than her children, she managed, against the odds, to bring them with her to Egypt.

When coming to Egypt via Syria, the fact that she was Iraqi and her children Egyptian caused her much trouble. She explained, “I had my passport, I could easily get into Syria with no visa, because I am Iraqi. But as Egyptians, my children should have a visa, even simply to pass through.” Furthermore, as they were minors they were all registered on her husband’s passport, and he had already left. With no Egyptian embassy operating in Iraq at the time, Lubna had to issue them some strange one-way transit document that nobody had seemed to recognise and sign a paper promising to leave Syria for Egypt in two weeks time. But the authorities wouldn’t let her in easily, the bus driver begged the police on her behalf. Lubna faced much harassment from then. Then they let her through into Syria but refused to let her take the road to Jordan. They insisted she take a flight. And then there was a ray of luck, “The Egyptian ambassador sympathised with me, when he saw me crying at the Egyptian embassy. He called me in, asked them to bring me food, and he took the children and got their photos taken for the travel document, even though it was after hours, and at 2 pm the embassy closed its doors. But he sympathised with me when he saw the little one crying. He was a young man, and had very good, kind manners.” She considers him the one who saved her life, kept her family intact. By then, however, Lubna was already out of money, so she sold her cell phone, borrowed money from some generous refugees and bought five plane tickets to Cairo. She arrived in Cairo with not a guinea in hand.

Lubna’s present legal predicament is her own nationality. Her passport has expired. “I wanted to renew my passport and when I went to the Iraqi embassy they ask me where my mehram is! I went three times to Iraqi embassy in Mohandiseen last month.” Lubna is 37 years old she and is still considered a minor and requires an immediate male relative in order to renew her citizenship documents. The male relative has to be Iraqi so even her husband coming, were he to oblige her, would not do. Lubna has no other relatives in Egypt. With her father dead, and her brothers traumatised, she has no one to help her from Iraq.

“How can I bring those here?

Everyone has their own problems and we are all scattered around the globe, I cannot reach any of them. How can I bring you someone if I don’t have anyone?” she asks rhetorically. As for protection for her children, “They said, ‘we are not responsible for them, they are Egyptian, ’” explaining how she is falling through the crack. Lubna’s situation presents the precariousness of a woman’s legal status in the current socio-political milieu of the Middle East.


Despite her divorce and everything else, Lubna has kept her children together, and when I asked if they have any physical or psychological problems because of everything they’ve been through, she praises God, “Besides Mohammed’s cough, the kids are fine, mashallah.” The toll has perhaps all been borne by her, “I have a problem. I get nauseous quite often. When I put cold water I feel better, and it affects this area,” physically indicating a searing pain around the crown of her head. “The pain stays,” she says, “And sometimes I feel faint.”

***

Before the fall of Baghdad, Lubna says she would never bother to have breakfast at her home in al Doura: "I would take a cab, and go to my mother's in al Khadra to have breakfast there every morning. Every morning, I would go to have breakfast with her. We would have thick cream and hot bread.”

“We were something beautiful back then."

That is:


> before her father was killed;

> before her mother withdrew from social life;

> before her brothers were tortured;

> before her family was scattered—her sisters seeking asylum in Syria, her brothers getting detained in Buka prison and Abu Ghraib;

> before her brother-in-law was caught in a landmine;

> before her cousin was cut up;

> before another was blown up;

> before yet another went to the market and never returned;

> before all of that,

> before the fall of Baghdad, while still sitting around and chatting in the garden over breakfast, they were something beautiful.

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Things We Are Not Told By The Media

I am a selfish person.

I know this is the past. At that time I was homeless. So I could not bring this into the blog. But here we are with the facts of Sadam Hussein And The West prominantly US and Israel, but UK, France and the others were closely associated. Just watch the Utube movies and make up your own mind.



















If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Life In a Garage For One Person

I am a selfish person.

This is what I wrote thrre years ago when I was sleeping in a garage, homeless.

My day started at 9 am in a garage in Washington Avenue, which I rent to keep my worldly goods . I sleep there. I am homeless person. I am 39 years old. I grew up 'ere in Bristol. Came here as a 14 year old kid and liked the place. It became my home. The reason I am sleeping in the garage is because the Bristol City Council cannot find a home for me.

So first thing after taking a leak outside is to see that I gulp down the painkillers and go back to bed for a little lie down for the pain killers to hit me. After about 15 minutesI shut the garage and went down the post office to get my mail. I go to the delivery office when I can walk a bit. No letters but never mind. Now I have to go to do my business with a toilet. I go every morning to Dan's - a good friend - to have a cup of tea and a shit. Dan and Ben share a house in High Street. That is where I spend most of the time apart from a few pubs and other friends. There is an Internet connection cable-wise and a laptop. Answered the emails and serfed the net. Put TV on watched the BBC news 24 for my daily injection. There I get the government and the corporate view of the total scene. But to be serious about news there are other outlets on the net I serf into. For example two men were arrested in Lancershire with the largest amount of chemical explosives, rocket launchers, and BNP literature in how to make bombs. This item did not appear on todays news. Why? Because they are British National Party -a Nazi party. So we have to go to these web sites to find out what really is happening in the world today. I like Information Collection House by Tom Feeley. Another good web site is Democracy Now from America. Now the time is 1 PM. I am going to have me bath. It is essential I have a bath everyday as that is where I do my exercises for my bent back.

Time to go to the pub. Pint of Guinness and a sandwich will do me fine as there is not enough money to make ends meet. I used to get incapacity benefit when I was living in Bloy Street. Now as I am homeless - when I need it most - the benefit agency took the incapacity credits off. The pub I went to is called the Green Bank. It is situated at the junction of Greenbank Road and Bellevue Road in Easton, Bristol. It is one of the oldest buildings in the area. There I had a drink with an old timer called John. He is in his mid seventies I think and have lived all his life around Easton. Likes techno music and enjoys sitting there drinking his pint and doing a cross word puzzle. I don't go to the pub everyday as the money is not enough to do that; but today is good day with a bit of sunshine and showers.

A friend of mine Jef turned up after work and invited me for a splif and a cup of tea at his place. It is in Green Bank Road, Smoked a couple of joints of high grade bud and two mugs of tea went down.

Excused myself from my friends place and went for a walk. I bumped into another mate of mine and he was happy to invite me for a drink. Went to the Whitehall Tavern,.a builders' pub. Lowest price for a pint in the area. Couple of youngish kids who looked like ravers joined our table and one of them asked me whether I want any acid - LSD. I told him "Well give us a sample and I will buy some tomorrow." Always on the blag and it worked. He gave a Da Vinci Code acid tab. So I popped it in me mouth and washed it down with Tequila. Next half hour was the waiting time to get the acid working. I stayed put and downed couple of more tequillas.

Got out when the acid hit me and went for a walk on the cycle track on me own. This Bristol to Bath cycle track is great. I remember doing work on it in the 80's. Now I am walking it. Acid is the best painkiller after speed & amphetamine. I know I will be very stiff and suffer the next day but what an opportunity to go walking. I don't remember how long how far I walked but I enjoyed it. Came back to the garage and as I got a bit wet from a shower, I changed. What can I do now. No money. Went to bed!

Washington Avenue,homeless,Greenbank Road,Bellevue Road,Easton,Bristol

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!