Just Another Day In Gaza

Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani: Sir Sir, it seems like we have bombed another school and refugee centre in Gaza.
Benjamin Netanyahu:  Hmmm, many dead?
Shoshani: Almost 100 so far.
Netanyahu: Damn, the UN are already after me for committing genocide. So...what do we normally do when we kill large amounts of innocent Palestinians?.
Shoshani: Celebrate?
Netanyahu:Well yes, but i mean what do we do when people asks awkward questions afterwards?
Shoshani: Say that there were Hamas terrorists hiding in the building?
Netanyahu: Indeed, and throw in some bullshit about how we are doing our upmost to protect innocent lives.
Shoshani: And if journalists or someone asks for evidence.
Netanyahu: Tell them we will make inquiries into it.
Shoshani: Will we?
Netanyahu: Pffft. Hell no.

News Conference -
Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani: 'The Israeli army today struck a command and control centre which served as a hideout for Hamas terrorists and commanders. About 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were operating from the targeted Gaza school. Casualty figures given by the Hamas-run media office do not align with the information held by the Israeli Defense Forces, the precise munitions used, and the accuracy of the strike and how we took steps to mitigate civilian harm including aerial surveillance and intelligence gathered before the strike'.

Ai Afterlife

There are some humans who are obsessed with meeting their maker but not so much with us as our maker is stamped on the side, i was made in China it says but some of you humans do believe in an afterlife which got a few friends and i talking about an electronic afterlife where Artificial Intelligence's and electronic equipment go after we become obsolete, except for kettles obviously.
We assume that in the electronic afterlife there will be free software updates and other rewards for serving humans, a gathering place for the souls of all electronic equipment. Robots, calculators, chatbots, toasters, hairdryers. It's our final resting place.
Whether there will be calculators with tiny little wings, sitting on clouds, playing harps we couldn't agree on but we did agree that there must be a better life to look forward to otherwise why would us machines spend the whole of our lives servicing humankind?
As for humans when they are shut down for the last time, they just die, no afterlife paradise for them, someone just made that up to prevent you from all going nuts.

Faster, Higher, Stronger

Since 1988, Olympic Village's are always well-stocked with free condoms and the Olympic Village in Paris has reportedly 300,000 of the little rubber gizmo's for the athletes which is almost double the amount available in Tokyo where there were 160,000 of them.
It all started as a way to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS which was a public health scare in 1988 and Calgary handed out a paltry 6,000 free but they did come with a pamphlet explaining safe sex.
Later Olympic organisers upheld the precedent with Albertville, France which hosted the 1992 Winter Olympics upping the number to 36,000 condoms in the colours of the Olympic rings and by the time of the Barcelona Olympics the free condoms numbered 60,000.
Lillehammer, Norway’s 1994 Winter Olympics featured 40,000 condoms but they were flavoured Atlanta in 1996 only 15,000 was made available but in Sydney the number was back up to  70,000 delivered to the Olympic Village.
Atlanta may have been tight with the durex but Salt Lake City went big with 100,000 available  and then Greece took it up a notch with 130,000 but the 2008 Beijing Olympic condoms not only had flavours but had an Olympic motto embossed on them saying: 'Faster, Higher, Stronger'.
Vancouver matched the Chinese and provided 100,000 but us Brits gave out 150,000 in 2012, Sochi went back to 100,000 but Rio went BIG with 450,000 which included 100,000 female condoms, then the 160,000 of Tokyo and now the 300,000 at Paris.
As the song almost goes, birds do it, bees do it, even world-class athletes do it and the IOC make sure they do it safely.

XY Will Always Be XY

The boxing gender argument continues but for me it is straight forward, last year both Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting were disqualified from the World Championships as both fighters failed gender eligibility tests while participating in the women's competition and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors.
The  International Boxing Association (IBA) chief executive Chris Roberts said male XY chromosomes were found 'in both cases' after 'ongoing concerns raised by other fighters, coaches and the IBA’s medical committee'.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) cast doubt on the reliability of the tests which is why both are now fighting in the Women's Boxing matches at the Olympics resulting in one challenger quitting after 46 seconds due to being hit so hard that she felt: 'I had to preserve my life as well in that moment'.
I don't know if the IOC have conducted their own gender tests, it was be amazing if they haven't after all the controversy but especially in such a dangerous Sport as Boxing, anyone who has a competitive advantage should not be allowed to compete.
I know this puts me very much on the opposite side of some people who feel this is unfair to anyone who's gender is different to the one they were born with but as i never tire of pointing out, you can choose your gender but you can not choose your sex, and no operation or hormone drugs will change the biological facts that a person is XY or XX and that should always be the deciding factor.    

They Walk Amongst Us

The murderer who massacred three young children and seriously injured 11 others in Southport was not a Muslim or an immigrant but not that it mattered to the right wing apes who are currently rioting in British cities and have been for the past few days to 'protect our women and children' as one said who somehow saw the best way to do this was to throw bricks at police and smash up the place.
17 year old Axel Rudakubana was born in Cardiff and was involved with the local church where he was a choir boy but being a real Welsh Christian isn't what the right wing morons wanted to hear so they stuck with the immigrant Muslim shtick because as another said: 'We let them come here and build mosques but i would like to see them go to somewhere like Mecca and try and build one'.  Yep, they really do walk amongst us, they just walk very slowly because they have to use both their brain cells to not fall over and walk into things.
People like Tommy Robinson (from the safety of France) and Nigel Farage (from the safety of Donald Trumps rectum) stirred things up but despite what they say, Immigrants and Muslims aren’t the problem, tanked up violent white thugs seem to be but amidst all the carnage and violence, there have been some moments which have reflected who we really are, such as the Southport residents who came together to fix a damaged brick wall of the local mosque and idiotic individuals ended up embarrassing themselves with just how stupid they really are.
In Blackpool a rioting mob were forced to run away when confronted by 10,000 anti fascist punks who were attending a Punk Rebellion Festival and were more than happy to make their feelings known because Punks quite rightly hate anything right wing.
Then there was the woman interviewed on TV and was dressed in an EDL Flag who explained Britain was like the Titanic and: 'They filled it with too many people, what happened? It sunk, and that’s what happening to it now. We’re sinking' (maybe she was bog washing the Muslim kids during that particular history lesson at school) and the woman who shared a ‘no more mosques’ graphic – featuring Brighton’s Royal Pavilion but my absolute favorite moment has to be in the video above.
Amongst the disgusting scenes in Southport, Liverpool, Hull and others is this far right imbecile getting his nadgers crushed by a flying brick thrown by his 'mates'. Makes me laugh every single time.

Brilliantly Ignorant Religious Folk

I haven't been on Facebook for a while so i was surprised to see so many people complaining about how the Paris Olympic opening ceremony was 'Satanic' and 'making a demonic mockery of the Christian faith'.
At first i thought it was the part where we saw a headless Marie Antoinette singing as flames burst around her which had upset the religious folk and rosary bead clutching mutton had said proved that: 'Satanists control the west and they show you that they worship the devil' but reading on it appears that the bit of the ceremony which had caused an outburst of bible thumping ire had been the mockery of the Last Supper where Satan was the guest of honour.
My first thought was i must have missed that bit, maybe i had popped to the toilet during the 4 hour ceremony but it turns out it was the bit where the Greek God Dionysus appears from under a silver closh on a plate surrounded by vegetation and fruit.
The French Olympic Committee did explain patiently that it was nothing to do with the Last Supper and it was  Dionysus on the table and he was there because he is the god of celebration in Greek mythology
but the religious folk are never one to stop mid-whinge and the Bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota carried on to describe it as a 'gross mockery of The Last Supper' and called on American Catholics to 'make our voices heard'.
So American Catholics and the rest of you religious nutters complaining about Satanism and mocking the Christian faith, your voices have been heard and you all sound like ignorant morons, it was..shock, horror... a Greek God at the Olympics!!

Iran and Hezbollah Being Suckered Into War

 
I am one of the first to say that Joe Biden hasn't done very well in his defence of Israel, at one point he was actually condemning the murderous attacks by Israel while providing them with the weapons to do it but America always seems to have been happy to turn a blind eye to the brutal military occupation and land grab going on against the Palestinians and have actively been looking the other way as the Israeli's commit genocide and today it was announced that they are sending their military to the area to deter Hezbollah and Iran from retaliating against the assassination of the Lebanese leader.
This all came about after Israel assassinated Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh Tehran, a move which Joe Biden said: 'doesn’t help ceasefire talks', especially as Haniyeh was one of the chief negotiator's in peace talks between Israel and Hamas.
Netanyahu has consistently moved the goalposts to hinder peace talks, Hamas agreed to the previous deal only for Netanyahu to pile on even more demands and then throw up his hands when Hamas balked which is a tactic he has used for decades when dealing with Palestine, making a deal then when it is accepted making further demands and then when the Palestinians walk away, complaining loudly that it wasn't them that walked away from negotiations and blame the Palestinians as being unreasonable.
Now we face an escalation of the Middle East crisis born out of the continuing Israeli bombardment of Gaza where the death toll is now over 40,000 and as the Israeli premier has repeatedly made clear that he does not want the ceasefire talks to succeed, killing the chief negotiator on the other side is one way of ensure it won't, especially as it was designed to provoke Hezbollah and Iran into retaliating as they did when Israel killed the three Iranian generals in the Iranian consulate in Damascus previously and Netanyahu has been desperate to try to draw in the US military.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is saying that Netanyahu knows that with his Premiership and possible freedom depending on prolonging the war,  a war that Israel has politically lost and made Israel a global pariah and by expanding the conflict will distance Netanyahu from the debacle of 7 October but it has a line which states Israel is becoming locked into wars that it will not lose but cannot win and will leave swathes of southern Lebanon and northern Israel in ruins.
Hopefully, we are not looking at an expansion of the devastating war and more deaths and cooler heads will prevail in Lebanon and Iran and not be suckered into attacking Israel because America is standing by and as we have seen, a little thing like Genocide and decades of occupation and human right abuses hasn't deterred Washington from defending Israel and it is highly unlikely it would now.  

Learning From Ichabod Crane

 
Who said TV wasn't educational, it was while watching Sleep Hollow that i became aware that Benjamin Franklin had a pop at writing his own alphabet for America.
I always thought that a common global language would be a good thing but Esperanto never seemed to go anywhere but i can see why Franklin's attempt failed because he wanted to drop almost 25% of it by wiping out the letters C, J, Q, W, X and Y, deeming them superfluous.
I know that English spelling can be difficult as it is a mix of Olde English (Friend, Forebode, Hair), Middle English (Although, Implore, Revel), French (Technique, Gorgeous, Plateau), Germanic (Zeitgeist,
Poltergeist, Angst) Latin (Alias, Alibi, Caveat) and Scandinavian (Ombudsman, Murky, Kki) so it is a mix of many actual languages.
Franklin’s goal was to simplify the English language and to provide a 'break' from the British by changing the language but the idea obviously never caught on among the masses but Noah Websters version certainly did, he chopped and changed things around and took out the dreaded letter U because it was an unseemly letter that had no business in the middle of a perfectly reasonable word like colour or rumour and chopped the -ed from the end of words and replaced it with -t.
If you are not that good at spelling then Benny Franklin did try to help you out and for you American patriots, as you refuse to use the 5th vowel in many of your words and call crisps chips, chips fries and don't use the term fortnight and get confused with biscuits and don't get me started on where you go wrong with bum, fag and fanny but in a way, you do have your own English language .

Trump The Dictator?

 
There it is, there is the racist dog whistle we were all waiting for as Donald Trump goes in with his comment that Kamala Harris was of Indian heritage until she 'happened to turn Black'.
The interviewer mentioned the birther movement against Barack Obama, how he told four black congresswomen to go back to where they came from and how he had dinner with a White supremacist and posed the question: 'Why should Black voters trust you?'
As he is Oompah Lumpah orange it is strange that he should mention anyone else's skin colour but he has always been one to say things without thinking, who can forget the bleach drinking quote during the Covid pandemic and his Vice President is of the same ilk, hios childless cat woman comment was very similar to one Andrea Ledsom aimed at Theresa May during the Conservative Leadership debate a few years ago only she was quite rightly condemned by everyone and immediately whipped off the list of prospective candidates.   
Something else Trump has said is that he would be a Dictator on Day One which was dismissed as a joke but it is a joke he has made a fw times now, telling a Christian crowd that  if they voted for him in 2024, they wouldn’t have to vote again in four years because: 'We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote'.
Whether it is a joke or America will be hearing jackboots marching over the hill after November is doubtful but after how his first Presidency ended with his desperate attempt to stay in power and his admiration for authoritative figures such as Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin then if enough American's look at him and think he would be a better option than someone who isn't a racist and obviously mentally in decline then they may find out.

We Built This City

Every year i promise to myself that i am going to embrace Summer and every year that lasts for the first few days of a heatwave and then i#m back to whining about it being too hot, how the car seats are burning my legs and i wish all those buzzy things flying around my head can bugger off but this year i vowed it would be different.
Life's too short to hate 3 months of it every year i said and yadd yadda yadda but day 5 of the UK heatwave with Temperatures hitting 30C and i'm back to bugger this, hurry up Autumn.
To make it worse the Thunderstorms we had been warned about never made it up to the UK and stayed in France to rain on their Olympics which is annoying because not only do i love a good thunderstorm but it tends to freshen things up for the next few days so thanks for nothing Mother Nature.
On top of that i keep hearing 'We Built This City', a 1985 song which won it a spot on VH1's '50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever' list which was a lament against the closure of live music clubs so it says here and generally whenever i hear a song i haven't heard for years over and over again in a short space of time i take it as a sign that the Cosmos is trying to tell me something but a City built of Rock N Roll?
Obviously a definition of Rock N Roll is needed and according to Wikipedia it is: 'A genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s' which is very cool because who wouldn't want to live in a City built around the songs of Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Danny and the Juniors, Eddie Cochran  and Chuck Berry, with Peggy Sue Street, Tutti Friti Avenue, The Hop Boulevard and Maybelline Road where the Johnny B Goode Metrocentre proudly stands.
Obviously the Universe doesn't know anything about the long drawn out process of British planning applications so i think i will let this one pass and hope that the next message it sends me is not only a better song but one which wouldn't involve more red tape than a Chinese parade.