Special Guest Blogger: Gao Jianli

During the Warring States Period, I lived in Yan which was a small and fairly weak state in the north-east of China, King Zheng armies were not particularly pleasant to Yan and a committee met and a plot was hatched to assassinate the King.
The chosen assassin was my friend Jing Ke, and it all went horribly wrong. Jing Ke was killed, and Yan was overtaken by the Kings troops rooting out the committee and as a close friend to Jing, i knew that my days were numbered if i was recognised so i changed his name and found work in a wine shop.
I may not have been a great planner but i was a master at playing the Lute and my fame grew quickly which with hindsight was not so clever given i was trying to maintain a low profile but finally King Zheng heard about the wonderful lute player in Yan and commanded an audience which is when things went wrong very quickly because someone in the King's Palace recognised me as an associate of the former attempted assassin and I was immediately arrested.
Fortunately for me, the urge to brutally lop off my head was set against my wonderful lute playing so we reached a compromise, i would live as long as i continued to play for him oh, and they would pull my eyes out to render me harmless which i weighed up as better than the alternative .
So, i continued as the King's lute player, faithfully playing my lute from a safe distance from the Ruler and as time went on, I gained the King's trust and he beckoned me closer and closer so he could hear my beautiful music which is when i hatchd my plot and began slowly filling my lute with little bits of lead and bided my time to act.
After a few weeks my Lute was heavy and by now i was literally playing at the Kings feet and when i finished that day, i stood up and with a mighty swing, aimed my lead-filled lute at the King's head.
Being blind, i obviously missed completely but the big man with the axe never and i was executed on the spot.

Improving Democracy

Politics is a vital part of all 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 and we are always told that if we don't like what the Government is doing, then we can always vote them out of Office.
That sounds great in practise until you consider that  once in power a Government is there for four or five years until the elections roll around again and having no way to force an election if the Government turn out to be a duffer is my biggest gripe but it isn't just me, a poll from Pew Research asked 30,000 respondents in 24 countries if they were satisfied with how Democracy was working in their country and 65% replied that it sucked so they asked a follow up question: 'What do you think would help improve it?'
The overwhelming answer in 19 nations was 'better politicians' and by that they mean ones that are more responsive to their needs and are more competent and honest.
Second was curbing the influence of special interests and combat corruption and in third place is focusing policy on economic conditions such as taxation, inflation, wealth inequality.
The fourth answer is better informed citizens who are more willing to participate in politics and fifth is greater citizen representation by making it easier to vote and the people consulted more via referendums on important topics.
I agree with the poor standard of politicians and christ the UK have had more than their fair share over the years and i am behind the more referendums part, I have banged that drum for years but in truth there are many forms of Government, some are better than others, but we can look around now and honestly say something has to be better than what we have but with AI becoming more important in running our lives, there must be something said for removing humans from the decision making process because we have made a bit of a pigs ear of it so far.

Special Guest Blogger: George Foreman

The road from ruthless boxer to grill master isn't a very well worn one but it is one i made with a little stop to meet Jesus in between.
As one of seven children, we grew up poor and the way i sort out of it was by taking things that other people had by threatening to beat the crap out of them if they didn't hand over their money but as lucrative as mugging was,  it was an advert on TV bought with the money i nicked off other people that changed my life.
The TV ad was for an organization called the Job Corps and i signed up and did some training for jobs like bricklaying and carpentry and got a job in San Francisco, California and after work i would go to the local gym and one evening they were showing the Ali fight against Floyd Patterson and i thought, 'You can earn money for punching people'? So I thought i would have a go at it.
Turns out i was good at it and got picked to go to the 1968 Olympics and got to the final where i beat a scary guy from the Soviet Union and turned Pro.
In my first 32 fights i won they all, 29 by knockout but then i had the brilliant and unbeaten Joe Frazier stood in front of me and so i slapped him about for two rounds and the referee stopped it before I killed the man and i was crowned the World Champion.
One thing a boxing champion needs is an adoring fan base but i didn’t do anything to help this along, i was pretty anti-social back then and saw no reason to get warm and cozy with the fans.
The big name at the time was Mohammad Ali and we got offered $5 million and the location was set as Zaire, mainly because the promoter Don King was pals with the dictator there.
The Rumble in the Jungle they called it  and Ali sat on the ropes for seven rounds while i punched him and then exhausted, he knocked me out in the eighth.
I carried on fighting after the loss but after one bout, and feeling like i was going to die,  i asked God to spare me and if he did I would hand over my boxing prize money to him.
Obviously i lived and became a  minister at the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ but i had that promise to hand over my Boxing purses so aged 38, i made  a comeback and put my healthy lifestyle down to reducing the fat in my diet and that opened the door to my next venture, as a grill salesman for the George Foreman Grill which made me more money than my entire boxing career.
My last TV Appearance was on the The Masked Singer dressed as a Venus Fly Trap but i died  as a two-time world heavyweight champion and an Olympic gold medalist with 81 fights, 76 wins and 68 by knockout and to some i was a Boxing Legend, to others, the guy who made grills on an angle.

Naming And Shaming Israeli Genocide Enablers

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has published her report into what she calls: 'the transformation of Israel's economy of occupation to an economy of genocide' and has not held back in naming and shaming the companies that assist and enable Israel in their genocide against the Palestinians and ashamedly 'enable and profiting from crimes including illegal occupation, war crimes, apartheid, forced displacement and genocide in the occupied Palestinian territories'.
In the first part she names the companies who provide the technology and weapons to commit the genocide as Lockheed Martin, Leonardo S.p.A, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and FANUC Corporation and points the finger at companies delivering the components, parts, weapons and raw materials as A.P. Moller and Maersk A/S transport.
Providing the technology for Israel for surveillance are IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Microsoft, Alphabet Inc. (Google), Amazon.com, Inc and Palantir Technologies Inc.
Providing the heavy machinery for purposes settler and colonial destruction are Caterpillar Inc, Leonardo DRS, HD Hyundai, Volvo, Heidelberg Materials AG, Construcciones Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles and Keller Williams Realty LLC.
Companies accused of helping in the denial of the basics for life are Drummond Company, Inc, Glencore PLC, Chevron Corporation, BP PLC and Paz Retail and Energy Ltd while those trading in the illegal settlements are Bright Food (Group) Co., Ltd, Orbia Advance Corporation, A.P. Moller, Maersk A/S, Booking Holdings Inc. and Airbnb, Inc.
Financial Institutions financing the Genocide by providing loans and buying Israeli Government bonds are BNP Paribas, Barclays, Blackrock, Vanguard, Allianz, AXA, the University of Edinburgh and the Technical University of Munich.
She ends the report by explaining that in her view: 'While life in Gaza is being obliterated and the West Bank is under escalating assault, the present report shows why the genocide carried out by Israel continues: because it is lucrative for many.'
She recommends that: 'The corporate sector, including its executives, must be held to account, as a necessary step towards ending the genocide and disassembling the global system of racialized capitalism that underpins it' and sanctions and an arms embargo must be applied to Israel, all trade agreements must be suspended and  corporate entities face legal consequences for their involvement in serious violations of international law and reparations paid to the Palestinian people along the lines of post-apartheid South Africa.
She also urges the International Criminal Court and national judiciaries to: 'Investigate and prosecute corporate executives and/or corporate entities for their part in the commission of international crimes and laundering of the proceeds from those crimes.'
You have the report and the names of those enabling the genocide so over to you United Nations.

Special Guest Blogger: Shah Jahan

My full title was Shah Jahan the Magnificent and i was, when my father died i defeated my brother and crowned myself Emperor of Hindustan and leader of the Mughal's.
When i wasn't executing most of my rival claimants to the throne, i commissioned many monuments and presided over the aggressive campaigns against the Deccan sultanates, the Portuguese and the Safavids while suppressing several local rebellions.
I may have been the Emperor but i was also a ferocious soldier which meant a lot of killing and a lot of pillaging. People would say please don't pillage me and i would say no, i'm pillaging everyone, you included and vastly expanded our territory but my real love was my wife, my second wife not the first one, the lovely Mumtaz Maha, and together we had 14 children and 18 happy years of marriage until she died in childbirth and i was so distraught, i had the Taj Mahal built as an enduring tribute to her and her body laid to rest inside.
It really did upset me, so much that i only took three more wife's after her but it was with another enduring erection that created a far less savory legacy.
In 1657 i fell ill with what was called 'stangury' and it turned out that the aphrodisiacs that i had been taking to perform with my much younger fifth wife led to the retention of urine for three days, and left me almost at death’s door.
News of my supposed imminent death reached my four sons who, upon learning of my illness, immediately went to war with one another over the succession. Aurangzeb won and I was disposed and relegated to a prison for the rest of my life with my eldest daughter to nurse me in my dotage.
I did recover but by then Aurangzeb had launched a bloody religious war in India that eventually killed millions and i did try to rebel, even trying to arrange the assassination of my usurping son who had been kind enough to send me the severed head of one of his brothers.
In the end, though, nothing came of it and i remained in prison, staring out at the Taj Mahal until i joined my wife there seven years later.

New Party For Disaffected Labour Supporters?

The Labour Party has always been the Party for the left and how we chortled like drains when the hard right Reform Party came along and split the vote on the more stupid side of the ideological fence  and Labour swooped into power amidst a chorus of the Red Flag.
A year on and Labour have been, well...not great as they picked up the clothes dropped by the Conservatives and went headlong after the pensioners and the disabled to which Labour supporters cried WTF Keir???  
Hiding in the shadows and with his Labour membership ripped from his hand, stood Jeremy Corbyn who was one of my favourite Labour leaders as he was more radical than most but the 2019 election came too early for him but now he is back and the signs are that he is forming a new, left wing party with the more Socialist members of the Labour Party.
Zarah Sultana has announced that she is setting up a new political party with Jeremy Corbyn as an alternative to the Labour Party which is great news and it will be atractive to Labour supporters who feel that their Party has moved too far away from it's Socialist roots although it does come with the risk of splitting the left leaning vote and allowing one of the god-awful right wing parties back in.
We will have to wait and see who joins and if any of the Big Beasts at the current Labour Party step across which will be key to it being a success but as i said in a previous post, if this current Government are not willing to pull their heads out of their arses and remember they are the Party founded on Socialism and the party of the downtrodden and working person, then the best they can do is step aside and allow in a proper left wing Party that does.

No Guns For You Catholics

It is said that Great Britain has an unwritten constitution so it was surprising that i managed to find one, the 1689 British Bill of Rights which waffles on about things like free elections, freedom of speech within Parliament, freedom from government interference, the right of petition, just treatment of people by courts and the right to petition the monarch as well as a few Doe's and Soe's and the odd Abrogated but the bit that caught my eye was that: 'Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law.'
As I am Church of England, after first checking exactly what a Protestant was and if i was one ( I am) i set out to look about ordering myself a gun and was deciding between a Pistol, semi-automatic, Rifle, Machine gun, Shotgun or a Revolver and deciding between a Kalashnikov or a CZ75 when i thought i had better check that it hadn't been removed later on and apparently it is still on the books so i plumped for a CZ75, small enough to fit in my purse and not cause too much of a bulge under my blouse because i would have to get one of those cool leather shoulder holsters like they had in Cagney and Lacey.  
I was practising my best Dirty Harry 'Go Ahead Catholic, make my day' drawl in the mirror with my hairdryer when i noticed the last bit of the sentence '...as allowed by Law' so i checked with the local Police and it turns out that although the ruling is still valid, the Firearms Control Act of 1903 which prohibited the sale of guns to individuals makes it a no-no.
Turns out that it was decided that allowing citizens to own guns was considered madness and no sane nation would allow such bat shit crazy laws so banned them.
Fair enough, would be a bit insane to allow people to own and keep guns in their homes but luckily I didn’t order the CZ75 but I might still get shoulder holster as i could keep my vape in it.

Special Guest Blogger: Pope Adrian IV

After the Pope Joan debacle, it used to be that to become Pope, you had to sit pants-less in a horseshoe-shaped chair and let a couple of cardinals see if you had the goods. If you passed, they'd yell 'Testiculos habet et bene pendentes!' (He has testicles, and they hang well!) It's true, in those days it took real balls to become Pope because in 12th Century Europe, every nation was intent on killing each other and the Roman Emperor hated me personally.
I began life in Hertfordshire, England and travelled to the south of France to study law but i felt the Church calling me and went on to Avignon and the joined the Abbey of Saint-Ruf.
I was appointed Abbot and in my role met Pope Eugene III who liked my no nonsense style of strict discipline and religious zeal and thought i could do a job ending the conflict between the Christian
Catalonians and the Muslim Al-Andalus which i did by saying i would bang their bloody heads together if they didn't stop fighting which got me promoted to the Bishop of Albano.
The Pope then sent me to Scanidaniva which was a much tougher task as the Swedes and Norwegians were in the middle of a vicious, full blown war and I thought this would take some special negotiating, either that or i just reorganise the Church in both nations and say you can't kill each other now because you are all the same which worked but when i excitedly got back to Rome to tell the Pope the good news, i found out he had died and the Cardinals were in the process of choosing a new one and in i stepped, flavour of the month, and got given the job, the first Brit to gain the role.
My problem was that Italy was divided with the  Byzantine emperor in the North and Norman Kings in the South fighting over it and me stuck in the middle and it didn't help when i argued with the Romans that the Church is the defender of Christians and not them which really did not go down well.
I had better luck with the Irish though and solved all their problems by giving Ireland to the English and passed a decree that serfs should be free to wed whoever they wished, without their master’s blessing, since marriage was sacrosanct but the Byzantines were causing me a real headache so i planned to excommunicate the Emperor to rid me of him but never got a chance.
Quite embarrassing really, but i choked to death by swallowing a fly which had been floating in my goblet of wine but i was a trailblazer and proof that anyone can become Pope and the Church welcomes all, as long as you’re not gay or into science or anything like that anyway.

Not Trusting Israel In Any Peace Deal

Donald Trump has claimed that Israel is ready to agree to a peace deal with Hamas as he seeks to broker a ceasefire to the war in Gaza that has claimed almost 60,000 lives, 600 killed by Israeli troops over the last few weeks when they arrived to collect food at aid stations.
The details are sketchy but we know Israel has agreed to a 60-day ceasefire and immediately we must ask if Israel is keen on the deal, then it must be seen as overly favourable to them.
Unfortunately we have been here before, it was only a few months ago that Israel reneged on the last ceasefire and began attacking Palestine again so hard to think that this will be any different especially as it is only a 60 day pause to the genocide Israel has been conducting.
A temporary ceasefire rather than a permanent one is due to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knowing that if he agreed to a permanent ceasefire, his Government full of warmongering right wingers hell bent on continuing the war and eliminating the Palestinians would collapse and bring forward his many court cases alleging fraud and corruption which carries a ten year prison sentence.
With the prospect of jail, Netanyahu is in no rush to permanently end the war and a temporary ceasefire, which means he could restart it any time on any of the trumped up charges he used last time, could see a return to the slaughter.
I am no friend of Hamas but i would say to them if a murdering maniac is keen to pause the war, and if Donald Trump is behind it who we saw was only willing to throw Ukraine under the bus to satisfy Russia and end that war, then i would proceed with extreme care because if it is satisfactory to Israel, it will certainly not be for the people of Palestine and we would see a return to the status quo which saw Israel murder the Palestinians and steal their land with impunity for the past 75 years.

The End Is Sort Of Nigh

So far, human beings have managed to avoid being completely eradicated like so many species in the history of life on Earth but scientists put the Earth at halfway through a 10 billion year life-span after which it will run out of energy, expand and engulf us all but hey, we got another 5 billion years to worry about all that so party on, or so we thought.
Scientists at  the University of Toho in Japan have crunched the numbers and come up with a date when life will become hospitable, and it is a lot less than 5 billion years.
The Sun's death will be a slow process but they have taken into account atmospheric conditions and the reduction in Oxygen, rising temperatures and deteriorating   air quality and pegged the date for when life will be completely unable to survive on Earth as the year 1,000,002,021, give or take a few years.
My calculator shows that we've got around 999,999,995 years left which seems a long time but it's a lot shorter than the original 5 billion years we thought we had although the way things are going, we will be long gone by then anyway.