Alexander Cockburn is a cockweasel

This bloke is so hideously sociopathic that he actually claims that peer-review is a corrupt process that has allowed climate science to become dominated by climactic-apocalysts. Now, no-one who understands peer-review thinks its perfect but you have to be utterly ignorant of the process to call it corrupted. Read Monbiot's rebuttals and see how sad this Cockburnweasel is.

The God Who Wasn't There

I just saw this and was very impressed. Its a pleasantly involving polemic against religion in general and Christianity in particular with some excellent insight from Brian Fleming into the irrational nature of evangelicals and particularly their concept of The Rapture whereby sometime in the next 50 years or so Jesus will come back, take all his devout followers up to heaven abd everyone else gets rogered silly by demons for the rest of eternity. Nice.

This quote stuck out when he was interviewing one Richard Carrier:

BF: “Let me give you a scenario- you’re dead- I hope of old age. . . . and you find yourself in hell and your being roasted on a pit and every hour, on the hour, you have to suck Satan’s greasy cock, or whatever they make you do there, its really bad. Don’t you wish that you’d have believed? I mean it would have been so easy just to have believed?”

RC: “Well no, because it wouldn’t really be any better. If I had to sit in heaven for ever knowing that there are these people- these millions and millions . . . probably billions of people- suffering these eternal, horrible torments and knowing that there was nothing I could ever do for them. That, for me, would be hell.”

This has never occurred to me before but as a humanist it is inherently inhuman to condone such fates for other humans. Therefore the concept of heaven and hell is profoundly inhuman.


Here's a new quote from the bible for all you Jesus freaks to follow to the letter too:

“Those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them- bring them here and kill them in front of me.”

--J. Christ

Luke 19:27

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHahhaHAHAHAHAhAHHAHAhHAHahAHA H ah HAHAhAH ah AH ah AHAHahhahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa . . . . . . cunts.

Portugal, la la la la la la laaaa, lal aala lalalalaaa

Yes, I am going to sunny Porto to SETAC Europe's annual meeting. There I will hobnob with professors and dine with doctors. Surely a satisfying way to network and expand my understanding of the science behind my PhD. Life is surely sweet!

Ignorance is bliss in Blair's world

Johann has some fascinating gems here, particularly with reference to Blair's complete ignorance of the bloody and tyrannical history of US covert intervention in the ME and Latin America. He didn't even know who Mossadeq was.

Big, fucking surprise.


Additional:

Some chap called Avi Shlaim agrees.

Money quote:

"Blair has the audacity to say that God will be his judge over the Iraq war. This is a curious attitude for a democratic politician to adopt. History will surely pass a harsh judgment on Blair. He has the worst record on the Middle East of any British prime minister in the past century, infinitely worse than that of Anthony Eden, who at least had the decency to accept responsibility for the Suez debacle."

Britain's pseudo-democracy stolen by the Tories again

The dirty fucking tories seem to have come out as winners of the elections. The curse of the first-past-the-post system has condemned many excellent councils to change hands, instantly reversing any gains made in levels of service. Winston Churchill once said: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." If you accept this, as the vast majority of civilised individuals do then you cannot argue against making that political system as fair and representative as possible. FPTP does not provide anywhere close to that. The Electoral Reform Society will tell you why and what we should use instead.

On a similar subject, a passage from the first link really made my blood boil:

"research from professors John Curtice and Pippa Norris shows that those with the least political knowledge are far more likely to vote under proportional systems, up from 38% in first-past-the post systems to 54%."

I would like to know why it is a good thing for those with the least political knowledge to vote? Why should we be bothered that the Sun readers of the country do not vote? Does no-one comprehend the danger of letting people vote who don't vote rationally? This is a recipe for the sort of reactionary politics that runs much of the US system and look where its got them. I'm not saying that people should be prohibited from voting, quite the opposite- I believe strongly that democracy requires every single person to register their political stance be it Monster Raving Loony, BNP (cnuts) or a simple abstention. The obligation to vote would require that people take an interest and would encourage engagement with the political system.

Brown appears to be moving towards a stronger position on Israel

He's not got a place for Lord Levy in his government and he's made clear that he's going to engage with Iran. He's also got other plans involving a bold, new stance on the Middle East. I don't trust him but I'll wait to see if his words turn into action before I brand him the new Cockweasel In Chief I suspect he'll turn out to be. Fucking politicians, two faced wankers the lot of them.

The Israeli government must be fuming! Ha!

when will the absurdity of the formula, more roads = less congestion finally be perceived by government?

I thought this was sort of proposal was a thing of the past but apparently not. Can anyone ever imagione the government allocating £5.1bn to the rail network? Yeah. Right.

These links might elucidate the matter further.

1. link 1
   
2. link 2
   
3. link 3
   
4. link 4
   
5. link 5
   
6. link 6
   

Additional:

In response to the comments I would like to rephrase a sentence above. It should read: "Can anyone ever imagine the government allocating £5.1bn to spend directly on the rail network and rolling stock instead of penalty payments to the regulator, director's bonuses and marketing campaigns?

South Pacific nations agree to end bottom trawling

At a conference in Chile the nations surrounding the coast of the Southern Pacific have agreed to restrict bottom trawling less than 5nm from any area with vulnerable deep-water marine ecosystems or within 5nm of any area that is likely to have the same. The New Zealand delegation whinged a lot because they are responsible for 90% of the bottom trawling but sanity won through in the end and the agreement was signed. Yeay!

There is hope, yet.

The problem with nuclear generation . . .

. . . is that there are so many hidden costs and its green credentials are not at all proven. Yeah, I know the French have been running nukes for years and have made it shine but the government really really needs to pour money into a comprehensive costings study comparing renewables and nukes before they make any rash decisions. . . . .Oh. What? . . . . They already have? . . . . . .

Oh well then.

MPs to push through new generation of nuke stations

The consequences of the failure of successive UK governments to act on good scientific advice and embrace renewable generation has finally come home to roost with the endorsement by "ministers" and "senior Whitehall sources" of a nuclear power stations instead. 20 GW of generation capacity is scheduled for decommissioning in the next 15 years and there are only plans to replace 20MW - 1/1000th of the loss, so they had to come up with something pretty substantial. And it was the nuke option.

The way I see it, this demonstrates misgovernment on an enormous scale. How can you neglect to plan for the long-term security of your country's energy supply? The opportunities offered by development of renewable technology, the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions and the significant returns on offer for those who develop such technology have been made clear to government time after time. The continued failure to take the difficult decision to move away from conventional generation- for whatever reason, be it economic, strategic or environmental- has been passed from one administration to another. I am fully aware of the enormous cost involved in constructing such generation capacity but there is no excuse for avoiding it because it was too difficult or too expensive when this government is pissing money into an illegal war, illegal weapons of mass destruction, a near-mediaeval education system and a struggling NHS that haemorrages money like a cash-cow impaled upon the spear of New Labour's arrogance.