What's Really Happening In Syria?

The first victim of war is the truth and when the bombs and bullets start flying it is hard to know who did what to whom and when but the tension between Syria and Turkey doesn't look like it's going to end well after six days of firing mortars at each other after a Syrian shell landed on the Turkish side of the border and killed an adult and four children.
Turkey responded with shells of their own and they have been firing them at each other ever since.
So why did Syria fire a mortar into Turkey, a NATO member, in the first place? If it was by accident, apparently their target town is situated right on the border and a slight over calculation would see a shell landing in Turkey, then to do it once is bad enough, but to do it six days in a row? When NATO is itching to get involved? Are the Syrian military that stupid?
Apparently so because it's continuing but there are a few media outlets not quite so sure that the events are how they have been explained.
RT is claiming that the mortar that landed in the Turkish town is a design specific to NATO and was given to Syrian rebels by the Turks and the same ones which the rebels have been firing at downtown Aleppo for the past week.
Of course RT is the Russian state mouthpiece and the Russia Government is siding with Assad and the Syria military but the German state TV channel, ZDF, reporting on the attack,
initially reported that it was the Syrian rebels who fired on the Turkish village, even claiming that the Syrian rebels officially claimed responsibility for the attack and quoting a local Turk saying 'The Syrian rebels try to draw us into their  conflict. We have to be very careful here.' Turkey today called for 'international action' on Syria.
Who to believe? I certainly don't trust the Syrians military or Assad but nor do i trust the rebels who today killed dozens of people in two suicide bombings in Damascus. Anything from NATO should be filtered through a filter of an organisation that has been looking for a legitimate way into the conflict for months and the UK and US lost all right to be considered a fair and balanced broker a long time ago.
Who to believe then? The rebels would be the largest beneficiary of Turkey entering the conflict and Syria have nothing to gain and everything to lose by aggravating Turkey but who knows the truth and as they argue it out, civilians die and once you are dead it doesn't really matter whether it was a Turkish, rebel or Syrian army shell that took you out. The second victim of war is always the innocent civilian cowering in the middle just trying to stay alive.

The Boy Done Good

Listen. Can you hear that?
It's either the bearings on the washing machine need replacing again or the loud gnashing of teeth of the right wing as news comes through that Hugo Chavez has won another six years as the President of Venezuela.
Ain't democracy a bitch!

Banks Apologising For Any Inconvenience

Hot on the heels of the Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest and Ulster Bank computer systems failing, now account holders of the the Lloyds TSB,
Halifax, Co-operative and Smile are this weekend unable to access their accounts, withdraw money from the cashpoint or use their cards in shops.
This is becoming a bit of a habit with our high street bank's and the answer is obviously to double the bank directors salaries and hand each one a million pound bonus.
At least they are apologising for any inconvenience which is nice but still, this may be a good time to use the 'oi Lloyds, what happened to the £500,000 i had in my account before the computers went down?' trick.

What About Us Then?

Some call it the the Stars and Stripes, others say Old Glory or even The Star Spangled Banner but in some Asian streets it is mostly known as that pile of ashes over there.
It seems that you can't turn on a television lately without watching some pyromaniac Muslim dancing around a flaming American flag, especially after the film 'Innocence of Muslims' put in an appearance and rather predictably wound up a good portion of the Asian world.
While it might not be a good time for makers of inflammatory films that mock Mohammad, it is boom time for flag makers and irate Muslims with a box of matches.
'Whenever we have these demonstrations, I make 10 times as much money as normal' said the manager at Panaflex printers who charges 120 and 1,500 rupees depending on size and quality but all are guaranteed to catch fire easily which is, of course, important.
The Israeli flag is the second flag of choice for the arsonist but as hard as we look, our very own Union Flag is staying relatively flame free these days which beggars the question, are we not as worthy as Israel and America that our flag doesn't deserve a good burning also?
I understand that America with it's drones and foreign policy that seems to revolve around invading oil rich countries in your region and Israel with its policy of trying to start a war with a neighbouring country whenever there is a number in the month, but Britain is usually involved somewhere.
Granted it is mostly cheering from the sidelines and making the tea but we are one of the Worlds busiest arms sellers so there is a good chance that the bullet currently zinging through your front door has 'Made in Britain' stamped on it somewhere. 
We also have a decent record of supporting the guys who have been oppressing you for decades so come on Asia, give a little country who has long since lost its place in the World a bit of an ego boost and give the Union Jack a flick of that lighter because there are other nasty Governments around outside of Washington and Tel Aviv. 

Remind Me What Men Are For Again?

If your home is lacking dirty clothes beside the laundry basket rather than it in or you are fed up being able to use the remote control or perhaps there is just not enough urine on your toilet seat when you go to use it, then you need a man. 
Better move sharpish though because there are two big events today that male ego may have taken a bit of a bash.
Firstly scientists have created and fertilised egg cells made from skin tissue taken from laboratory mice and have fertilised them in IVF experiments to produce normal, healthy offspring. This is part two after last year they generated sperm cells in a similar manner by converting skin cells of a mouse into stem cells. Ouch, that's mans primary function gone but at least we still need them to park the car for us.
Oops, Nissan have developed a car that can park itself and is controlled remotely with a mobile phone.
Don't worry guys, as long as we are incapable of opening jars or have the coordination to throw things in the air and catch them in our mouths, we will need you big lugs around.

Savile & Those That Knew

As all decent lawyers knows, the dead can't sue which is why 40 years after the event, it is safe for all the showbiz types to come out and say that they knew Jimmy Savile was a pervy child abuser.  
With hindsight you can look at him and think 'it's obvious, he is exactly what a child abuser would look like' but there he was front and centre on our television screens, even hosting kids shows on prime time, and all the time he was doing god knows what to children in his dressing room and in the back of his car.
If that isn't bad enough, it is now that his BBC colleagues step up to tell us that they always knew what he was up to but didn't dare say anything. Janet Street Porter last night claimed that she kept quiet about it because 'nothing would have been done' rather than 'it would have jeopardised my career' which is what she really meant.
Her career went onwards and upwards while more and more teenage girls had their life's ruined by the paedophile. At least everything turned out okay for you then Janet and the rest who looked the other way.
Stories are now emerging how Savile shared his victims with Gary Glitter and another celebrity who has yet to be named but is suspected to be the comedian Freddie Starr who had an injunction removed yesterday although he strongly denies that he was the 'third man' at the dressing room sex parties Savile and Glitter hosted.
It is also unsettling that a thankfully small minority are asking what's the point in all of these allegations being fired at him now if he's dead?.
True, he can't be prosecuted but he can have his reputation torn to shreds, his statue has already been removed from a Glasgow leisure centre and a memorial plaque fixed on his home in Scarborough has been attacked with graffiti.
Vilification is the very least he deserves but it could have been stopped and he could have been properly prosecuted years ago if only some of those who knew about it had not looked the other way muttering that nothing would be done.

Democracy & The Will Of The People

Winston Churchill said it was 'the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried' and Abraham Lincoln defined it as 'rule of, by, and for, the people' but is Democracy really such the great thing as we are led to believe?
Politics is vital to all of our lives, almost everything depends on political decisions from how we travel to how our children are educated to how much tax we pay on our wages. 
We have elections, parties tell us what they will do if elected, we vote, and the winners governs until the next round of elections a number of years later.
My biggest gripe about Democracy is that the voters have no way to force another election if the party who won turn out to be a disaster, the argument being that what we have is representative democracy, where we choose others to decide for us and the winner is serving the will of the majority, but are they?
In Britain, David Cameron became Prime Minister with just 36% of the voting public voting for him, 64% of the population wanted someone else so is he really in his position due to the will of the British people when two thirds specifically said they didn't want him ruling over them?
In America which has a population of 311 million, only 70m said Obama could represent them leaving the other 241 million to watch on as he acts as he sees fit. If he starts a war, over three quarters of the population can rightfully say that he is not acting in their name, nothing to do with them. 
In most countries there is a minimum age that a person can vote at so you could argue that Julie Gillard's 6m votes in Australia represents 50% of the voting public but you could just as easily argue that she still doesn't represent 16m of the 22m in her country by virtue of not receiving their permission either because they couldn't, or didn't, give it to her. 
Stephen Harper of Canada is in power despite 61% of the countries voters not wanting him, in Japan 69% of the country wanted someone else except Yukio Hatoyama, 67% voted against Angela Merkel in Germany and a huge 74% said a resounding no to Mark Rutte but he still sits as Prime Minister making the laws and rules that dominate the lives of the three quarters of the voting population that rejected him in the Netherlands.
The will of the people in the last Finnish election was for 80% to look at Jurki Faymann and vote for another party but he took power representing just 2 out of every 10 of the voters.  
Looking at the numbers of the Democracies around the World, most of the ruling parties are not representing the vast majority of people in there countries, Norway 32%, India 35%, Ireland 36%, Iceland 29%, Sweden 30%, Switzerland 26%, Austria 29% and in Israel Benjamin Netanyahu can only declare to be representing 21% of his population.
As Churchill nodded towards, Democracy is deeply imperfect but with no real alternative to turn to, it is what we have. It's just obviously not that representative of the 'will of the people' which is it's whole point.

Quietly Watching

Imagine a World, far away in another Universe where a race of aliens exist. Over millions of years, unbeknown to them, we watch them grow and evolve and they settle different parts of the planet. We see that sometimes the different collections of aliens meet with each other and when they do, they fight. As time progresses the aliens develop more efficient ways of fighting each other and killing each other as one group takes over the part of the planet from another.
Time passes and the aliens develop ways of leaving the ground and they use this as a means of killing even more of each other and still we watch as thousands of years go by and tens of millions of aliens have been killed under out gaze.
Then the aliens build a rocket and manage to make the short hop to reach one of their moons, meanwhile on the planet the killing goes on and larger and larger numbers die.
Unknown to then we watch as they move out further into space to land on another planet, and then another, and them another until finally they find one they can inhabit. Then they find another one, then another one.      
We then have a decision, as the stronger, more advanced race, can we allow this breed of aliens, who have been murdering and slaughtering each other since time began, to expand out into the universe? What if they discover Earth? Would we want them here? Should we try and stop them?  
Makes you wonder if we are being watched by Aliens, how would they feel about such a race as us humans expanding out into the universe?
Just mention it as we landed on Mars recently and UFO sightings are up by around 50% this year. Probably just a coincidence. Probably.

Nicotine Fuelled Nightmares

I don't mean to keep banging on about my giving up smoking, plenty of people have done it before and not gone on about it, but it is day 19 and i have been on the e-cigarette with the strongest nicotine fluid, 24mg, and so far so good but there has been one side-effect that i wasn't aware all nicotine users go through until today.
Apparently, because you are inhaling nicotine, you actually get more from the e-cigarette than you do from smoking a cigarette, mainly because you don't know when you have had a cigarettes worth and you just keep inhaling.
The side-effect is you do get some very vivid, lucid and weird dreams thanks to the extra nicotine in your body, especially if, like me, you have a good blast before you go to bed.
Over the past few weeks i have woken up more than once from a realistic dream and spent the first few waking moments wondering if something had really happened or if i had dreamt it. Friends who have used patches or e-cigarettes reported the same thing happened to them also. 
It was kind of fun but then the other night i had a nightmare about something slithering out of the bedroom wardrobe and it shook me so much that i could actually feel myself tensing for days afterwards whenever i had to open that wardrobe door.
Then last night another nightmare where something was trying to smother me in my sleep and my husband had to wake me up as i was shouting for him in my sleep. I woke up panting and fighting for my breath. So realistic that it was scary and i had to go into the kitchen for a sit down and a hot milk for a while afterwards.
I have never suffered from nightmares, especially not ones that stay with me for days afterwards and i am going to have to drop down the strength of nicotine i use but what a weird, wonderful and terrifying experience. Much more effective than cheese before you go to bed but an insomniac at the best of times, being apprehensive about going to sleep probably isn't a good thing. 

Don't Go Hugo

Some would describe him as a man of destiny and hero of the poor who swept away decades of corruption that brought the world's third largest oil-producing country to its knees while others just call him the fat dictator in a stupid beret but any man who is loved by the poor and hated by the rich must be doing something right.
For 14 years Hugo Chavez has ruled over Venezuela and dragged his country up by it's heels but the talk is that this election campaign may be his last, either through ill health or being replaced by Presidential hopeful Henrique Capriles this weekend.
While Chavez's campaign promises more of the same that has done so much to improve the lot of the poorest Venezuelans, Capriles is promising a review of oil deals that has bankrolled Chavez's social programmes.
The smart money is on Chavez being the one celebrating Sunday evening, there are many more poor who will vote for the beret wearer than rich who would vote for Capriles and a return to the pre-Chavez days. 
Besides being a brilliant leader, Chavez is loved by the left not just because of his socialist policies but because he takes pot shots at the same targets we do.
At the UN in 2006, after following George W Bush onto the rostrum, he described George W Bush as the Devil and and donkey said that the he could still smell the sulphur. After Condoleeza Rice described Venezuela as a menace to democracy he went on TV to blow her a kiss and called her Condolence.
Tony Blair also came in for verbal abuse when he berated the British Prime Minister for invading Iraq, calling him 'shameless, immoral and an imperialist pawn who attempts to curry favour with Danger Bush-Hitler, the number one mass murderer and assassin there is on the planet.Go straight to hell, Mr Blair'.
I will be shocked if us Chavistas who will be sobbing into our lattes come Sunday evening.