Quite Random

“I want to know you have a RIGHT TO BE HERE”

The attached leaked government document, annotated by NO2ID, makes for interesting reading.

UK campaigners NO2ID this morning enlisted the help of bloggers across the world to spread a leaked government document describing how the British government intends to go about “coercing” its citizens onto a National Identity Register. The ‘ID card’ is revealed as little more than a cover to create a official dossier and trackable ID for every UK resident - creating what NO2ID calls ‘the database state’.

As if Facebook’s privacy policy and the UK government losing CDs of personal data left right and centre weren’t enough, the attached document describes using “various forms of coercion” to introduce the ID card to the UK. It’ll feel like flying into the US before too long.

File Attachment: NIS_Options_Analysis_Outcome.pdf (1200 KB)

It’s Friday and it’s time to arse about on the Interweb

Cookie says to me I should be linking to more interesting websites – I’m spending a bit too much of my time going on about one-legged lesbian Fairtrade jam makers in Malawi, or something like that.

With Cookie reading it, this blog must have a readership of, meh, four. Some people stumble across it by accident (I look at the web stats, and all I can say to the people who found this site by Googling ‘Kerry Katona masturbating’ is there’s nothing to see here, move along).

OK, so anyone looking for interesting stuff to waste away their afternoon at work on a Friday should look at digg.com (a site where people vote for content they find interesting, which despite apparently being dominated by fifteen year olds who use works like ‘n00b’ and ‘w00t’ actually turns up some interesting stuff).

Apart from Digg, reddit.com is another useful source for links. To save time, you can just go to popurls.com, which presents the most popular content from digg, reddit, del.icio.us, YouTube, and stacks of other websites. Fail to find something interesting to read on Popurls and you really should turn off your computer and go and read a book.

I’m currently enjoying pictures that are very long. The ones below are examples, click on the tiny pictures below to see them full size:

The second picture above, a human evolutionary timeline, suggests that humans have spent the ages either shagging or violently killing each other, so I’m thinking it’s quite accurate.

The amusingly named Japanese company Nobby Tech make very high speed cameras. Very, very high speed cameras. Cue some cool videos of a samurai sword slicing through an egg, a bottle of tea, and a tomato.

Apparently people can read this blog in China – I know as I have tested it using this website. But before getting all steamed up about BBC News and the rest being blocked in China, it’s also worth remembering that it is pretty difficult to get Al Jazeera English in the USA – TV networks in the Land Of The Free are doing a good job of restricting access to Al Jazeera, possibly because:

Al-Jazeera is no friend of America, the American people, or the American government….

and…

if Al-Jazeera makes waves on American cable, then the possibility of suicide bombers in America could lurk close behind.

These quotes are from where? Accuracy in Media’s article, The Invasion of Al-Jazeera. Yes, you heard it folks, Rageh Omaar and Sir David Frost are seeking to subliminally program Muslims everywhere to strap bombs to their bodies.

Sorry, nearly got political there. A lesbian jam-maker nearly felt her ears burn. Back to the stupid stuff, I’ve been laughing like an idiot at Arnold Schwarzenegger sharing his deepest feelings and signing for the deaf on BBC News.

Finally, I am in awe of these photos.

Monday bullets

All unrelated…

• To give the fox in my garden a glossy coat, I should feed her Marmite sandwiches with garlic.
• Sky TV shows so many adverts, they should pay me to watch.
• With Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai just having been arrested and beaten by police, it is all the more exciting and timely to be meeting the human rights campaigner who has twice performed a citizen’s arrest on Robert Mugabe, and been beaten for it himself – I’m looking forward to meeting Peter Tatchell on Thursday evening, and if you’re interested in human rights and green issues, you should come too.

An undignified end

Saddam is dead, and cameraphones and internet video come into their own. The jerky style of footage you’d normally associate with bad dancing at weddings will now become synonymous with the rather undignified end of a dictator.

Bush described Saddam’s execution as a milestone. That’s not how it looked. It looked and sounded rather shambolic – shouts of ‘Allahu Akhbar’, someone helpfully suggesting Hussein ‘Go to hell’, and the flashing of several cameras as Hussein hung crumpled, his head at an incongruous angle. In the end, there is little satisfaction to be had from this. I’m not quite sure what kind of person relishes the sight of a human being being killed. I didn’t feel like justice had been done, I felt a little sick. All of the executioners wore ski masks – this was probably for fear of reprisals by Saddam’s supporters, but it mainly brought to mind images of the masked executioner from TV and movies. Much as firing squads never knew whose gun contained live rounds, apparently for executioners, anonymity is still essential. Someone has to pull the trigger, flip the switch or open the trapdoor – we’d just rather not know who.

Justice is defined as “the administration of law or some other authority according to the principles of just behaviour and treatment”. Just therefore requires definition in order to understand justice. Just is “morally right and fair, or appropriate and deserved”. Did Saddam get what he deserved? Yes, almost certainly. Few will miss Saddam, and he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. Still, does it make you feel good to see him hanging? Not me.

I’m not quite sure why I put his photo here. Probably some morbid fascination with what happened. The fact that the photo of his dead body is on the front page of the BBC website suggests that this morbid fascination is shared by at least a few other people, the kind of fascination that sees the crowds gather at public executions. What Bush describes as a milestone seems more like a sad anti-climax. It might give a few people a little satisfaction to see him dead, but it won’t now make the slightest difference in Iraq or anywhere else. Saddam was a spent force when they pulled him out of his bunker, so all we got was a good ole’ hanging.

Yeah but it will always be with us…

…is a common response to the question of what to do about prostitution, a debate which heated up again in the light of the murder of five prostitutes in Suffolk.

Yes, it’s a bit strange that it isn’t legal to solicit sex but it is legal to buy it, if I have that right. No, it’s not a simple issue. Yes, apparently it’s the oldest profession. No, it really isn’t like Pretty Woman, it’s more like the mother in Hull who does heroin with her son before going out on the game. Yes, women gain from it, as do men. No, I don’t partake thanks.

Read this from this blog, and this discussion and feel free to join in.

Dat der big hole wuz maid ba Gawd aalmighty’s holy flud

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: News Releases.

Oh, the horror. The horror.

Hang ‘em high

So it appears that time really is running out for Saddam Hussein. His belongings are to be collected – he is likely to be hung soon. No-one will know until after it has been done – expect to see the image of another dead arab on the television, final incontrovertible proof, just like when we all had to see the corpse of Nicolae Ceauşescu. It seems we need to see a body to be satisfied, or at least someone thinks we do.

And yet George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Tony Blair are free, no closer to seeing the dock than ever. Hussein is being hung for his role in the deaths of 148 Shias in the 1980s. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Blair and others are responsible now for more deaths than 9/11 and Hussein combined, hundreds of thousands of people. Civilians and children. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the whole war stinks of corruption and hypocrisy, Iraq now has a civil war to add to a shattered infrastructure, the whole world is afraid of Al Qaeda, and they never even caught Osama Bin Laden.

I would suggest that if these people never end up on trial for what they have done, there is something very wrong with this world – but there already is something very wrong, or this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.