Psychic Predictions 2010: Results

New Years Eve so time to cast our minds back to fonder times when people still liked Nick Clegg, nobody even knew there was a volcano in Iceland and the only black things bobbing around in the Gulf of Mexico came courtesy of the KKK.
We also had Craig Hamilton-Parker of the Psychics & Mediums Network telling us what would unfold in 2010 and i had high hopes for the man television programmes turn to whenever they want a bit of psychic seeing.
He also charges £1.50 per minute (credit cards accepted) for a telephone call to contact your dead relatives so you would think he would be good otherwise you are wasting your money. So let's have a look at how Craig did:

1. Bin Laden dies. Bit unfair to put a cross next to this one as nobody knows if he is dead, alive or starring as an extra in Les Miserables.
2. MP caught in indecent act in public toilet. A lot of MPs were caught being indecent but none in public toilets.
3. Secret human cloning experiment attempts to clone famous person. Unless it is still a secret, this one missed.
4. X factor (UK) in 2010 will be won by a group of friends who were choir boys together. X Factor 2010 won by singer Matt Cardle.
5. Iran gives up its quest for a nuclear bomb. Iran's nuclear ambitions are still full steam ahead.
6. Celebrity is kidnapped and a ransom demand made. As much as i wished Susan Boyle or a few other celebrities would be kidnapped, all remained safe and sound.
7. Barack Obama expresses an interest in holistic healing and ‘world healing’ becomes a dominant theme and key phrase to his 2010 speeches. Amount of times Obama used the words holistic healing - 0
8. Higher than normal tremors on San Andreas fault line. The U.S. Geological Survey advise that 2009 was a busier tremor year.
9. The last Big Brother series (UK) ends with tragedy as someone on set is seriously hurt. A charitable tick here as one of the contestants broke her ankle
10.Japanese bullet train terrorist attack attempt is foiled. The only attack google showed was an attack by graffiti artists.

For someone who describes himself as 'the most accurate and sincere mediums working in Britain today', Hamilton-Parker scored a miserable 1 out of 10 which doesn't say much for the rest of the mediums.
My advice would be if you are approached by a psychic with a double barrelled name, keep the £1.50 in your pocket and consult your tea-pot instead. You won't learn anything about the future but you won't hear Craig Hamilton-Parker laughing all the way to the bank with your one and a half quid while learning nothing about the future either.

Obama Just As Bad As Bush

I remember the time when George W Bush moved out of the White House and Barack Obama was feted as the one who would backtrack on the carnage that Bush inflicted on the world and Americas reputation.
Guantanamo Bay would close, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will end, the increasingly downtrodden Palestinians would be treated fairly and extraordinary rendition would cease. America would no longer be run by cowboys riding roughshod over smaller, weaker nations.
He was even the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize largely in anticipation of the peace that he will be bringing but as we reach the halfway mark in his administration, he seems to have not only picked up where George W Bush left off, but taken it a few steps further.
Guantanamo is still operating, he has backed down on his demands for Israel to stop building on occupied Palestinian land and American boots are still on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan while the torture and rendition policy has been continued.
So far, so his predecessors policies but in one area he has gone far beyond what even George W Bush achieved with his escalation of drone attacks inside Pakistan.
A damning statistic is that the current President authorized more drone strikes inside Pakistan in his first 9 months in office than George Bush did in his final 3 years in the White House.
If Bush had authorized this scale of attacks inside Pakistan, the human rights section of the population would rightly be screaming about the bombing of a sovereign country and the number of civilians killed.
A February 2010 report by the New America Foundation found that a third of the 1200 Afghans killed so far in drone attacks have been civilians. That's a horrendous amount of innocent deaths in a country counted as an ally and who has protested about the use of drones but it is hard to find a mention of Obama being a murderer or wanting him dragged before the Hague on crimes against humanity as was regularly on the protest banners directed at Bush.
America is not at war with Pakistan but Obama has not only picked up where George Bush left off, he has escalated it and is directly responsible for the decisions that have left over 400 innocent civilians dead in yet another country that has the misfortune to have terrorists hiding in it.
We hated Bush and rightly berated him for all his disastrous foreign policies and although Obama did not create the problems, he is continuing the same policies and adding his own murderous twist to them.
Obama promised change and hope but he has turned out to be George Bush mk 2 albeit with a better public image and we should be giving him as hard a time over his murderous foreign policy in Pakistan and his failure to adhere to human rights as we gave Bush.

Right Wing Madness Explained By Science

Of course we all know those on the right wing are a bunch of odd-balls with crackpot ideas who, left to their own devices, would probably end up stapling their own hands to their heads.
Us on the left look at them with a mix of sympathy, pity and exasperation as they go about their nutty way and we just thought it was because they were a bit dim. Turns out having right wing views is a medical condition.
Neuroscientist researchers at University College London have discovered that those who hold right wing views have a more pronounced amygdala which is the part of the brain associated with social interaction and emotion stability.
Wikipedia states that research on primates shows those with an enlarged amygalda were observed to have significant social and emotional deficits.
So it took a team of neuroscientists all this time to deduce that people holding right wing views are socially inept and emotionally unstable? We could have told them that ages ago and they could have spent the time on how best to treat them.
Until they come up with a cure for right wing madness, i suggest a simple test where you hand the expected social cripple a plastic bottle and ask them to place it in the recycle bin. If they stand there looking confused then lock them in a room with no sharp objects and do not allow them anywhere near a Government.

2011: End Of The World

What would you do if you knew the world was going to end? Definitely end, that is, there being nothing that could be done by governments, science or superheroes to avert the end of human life on earth.
Personally my last day would feature a few rolls of industrial strength parcel tape and Johnny Depp so i have pencilled in a trip to the Post Office on the 20th October next year because according to the EBible Fellowship, the 21st October is Judgement Day.
These helpful chaps have deciphered the Biblical calendar found in the book of Genesis, (chapters 5 and 11) which, as they explain 'can be trusted entirely because they come right out of the Bible'.
So on the 21st May, Judgment Day will begin and the rapture will occur and on the 21st October 2011, the world will be destroyed by fire.
If that date is not good for you, how about the 24th December 2011 which is when the sacred Aztec calendar advises us that the fifth epoch, which began in 3113 BC, will end on Christmas Eve and destroy all human life on Earth.
The Aztec's and the Biblical calendars may be helpful with the exact dates of our demise but there is also a warning of our impending doom next year from the Sci-fi community.
Not alien invasions or massive comets hurtling towards us, but the Photon Belt which apparently is a band of intense photon energy on a collision course with the Earth.
Electricity won't function and there will be three days and three nights of retina scorching blinding light and radiation.
Although we are not given an exact date except next year some time, i'm sure we will notice it when it starts. You might want to stay indoors when it does.
The final proof that 2011 will be our last comes from St. Malachy, an Irish Priest from the 12th Century who prophesied the end of time with the election of the 112th pope from that day in 1143.
Worryingly, Herr Ratzinger is Pope number 111 from when St Malachy made his utterances and is 83 years old so we could be watching the white smoke coming from the Vatican chimney to welcome number 112 in 2011.
I know it is a long shot but if we do all make it through 2011 unscathed, i know where there will be some rolls of industrial strength parcel tape going cheap.

Blame Drinkers, Not Smokers

In an effort to reduce the amount of people smoking, the Government are offering free nicotine patches to smokers at a cost of £250M.
Obviously this is a good thing as smoking is not a healthy habit and i have to grudgingly give Dave C some credit for this initiative although i doubt i will be taking them up on their offer. I try to give up annually and have worn patches and found that they didn't work for me but i do know people who have given up whilst wearing them.
What i would like to do is dispel the often repeated misinformation that smokers drain costs on the NHS for treating smoking related illnesses because according to the Centre for Health Economics, the cost to the NHS for treating smokers is between £1.4bn and £1.7bn.
Granted that is expensive but tax from cigarettes raises £9bn annually for the Government so that argument is a non-starter because the NHS bill is safely covered 6 times over by smokers.
If you want to point fingers for self inflicted illness, Alcohol Concern state that alcohol misuse costs the NHS up to £3bn a year and is implicated in 33,000 deaths every year and one in six people attending accident and emergency units has alcohol-associated injuries.
The Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) claims that tax receipts from alcohol in 2008-09 raised £730m which means that it is drinkers and not smokers who should be accused of draining the NHS.
Maybe the Government should be aiming its schemes at drinkers, also not a healthy habit and much more costly in terms of treating and the resulting social consequences.

Boxing Day

Who said we learn nothing from these late night phone-in shows. Last night on Talk Sport Radio there was a live 3-way link up with the presenters of an American and Canadian radio station whose names i never caught.
After the initial Barack Obama bashing where all 3 agreed he had turned out to be a bit of a dud, talk turned to Boxing Day.
I wasn't aware that only the Australians, Canadians and us celebrated Boxing Day (or St Stephens Day for the pedantic among us) although i'm not really sure what it is or what we are supposed to do with it.
We use it mainly to return Christmas gifts to the shops and exchange them for the correct size, an alternative to the same value or make up stories about how it was broken when we got it and can we have the money back please.
So you Americans are not missing out on much, a national holiday to get over Christmas Day after all those mince pies and anyway you get July 4th off which is kinda ironic.
If you hadn't have thrown all that tea into Boston Harbour all those years ago, you wouldn't have had to get up so early this morning and you could have exchanged that Sarah Palin autobiography for something of equal value at the 99c store. Thank your ancestors for that.

Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign

Possibly taking a leaf from the Atheist bus campaign last year, buses in Seattle are to carry this advertisement bringing attention to Israeli war crimes.
Paid for by the the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign, their mission is to break through the silence over Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians. The SMAC website states that they are a number of national and international groups using mainstream advertising media to increase public awareness of U.S. taxpayer complicity in Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights.
Stop30billion is a reference to the $30 billion in military aid that the United States has pledged to Israel over the next decade and the campaign is timed to coincide with the second anniversary of Israel's horrific assault on Gaza.
"The ads are to raise awareness that our tax dollars are being spent in one-sided support of the state of Israel and particularly of those policies of Israel that violate human rights and maintain the bad situation" said a SMAC spokesman.
Asked in the Seattle Times about if the ad could incite violence against Jews, the spokesman explained, 'My experience is that those who want to defend Israel right or wrong want also to stop dialogue, stop discussion, stop education, stop public awareness, and will use a wide range of tactics, and this is one.'

Israel will continue to treat Palestinians with impunity until America and others stop funding its military and have to pay its own way which will force it to the negotiating table so this is a small start in bringing to attention what the American media doesn't tell, Israel is using your money to kill civilians, steal land, destabilise the Middle East and run an apartheid system worthy of South Africa.
Maybe you are happy with your money going to support all that or hopefully you will go off and find out a bit more about it and realise what has been going on.
Well done the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign, i wish you luck because i guarantee the anti-semitism chorus will be in full voice.

Europe Rises Up

It seems almost an everyday occurrence now that a riot breaks out somewhere in Europe.
Greece, Italy, France and Britain have all seen rioting in the past week and this year has also seen riots in Turkey, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Greece, Iceland and Austria.
That's a lot of angry people on our continent and their rage is at the politicians for their economic mismanagement and their resulting austerity measures.
Banks have been the main target, petrol bombs were thrown through the windows of some Turkish banks and in France over 3 million people protested in a day of action against President Sarkozy's economic recovery plan.
In Moscow, over 2000 demonstrators gathered by a statue of Karl Marx calling for a return of communism.
These are not minor incidents by an angry few, this is an unprecedented outpouring of anger by the masses at the people who caused the spending cuts, rising unemployment, delayed retirement, wage cuts and fear of the future.
Protests, demonstrations and riots do change government thinking and have bought down Governments before although as yet none except Iceland have succumbed but a few are looking unsteady.
I have heard the demonstrations being called 'anti-capitalist' which to a degree is true, this economic crisis has exposed the frailties of the Capitalist system and the greed that drives it but most importantly, it has exposed abhorrent financial mismanagement by our Governments, financial markets and big business.
The political fallout is going to be long, messy and violent and we can expect to see a few ministerial scalps before we emerge on the other side hopefully wiser and with a better system which doesn't punish those who can least afford it.

Nazareth To Bethlehem 2010

Little donkey, little donkey
On the dusty road
Got to keep on plodding onwards
With your precious load.

It is a 90 mile trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem so how different would the trip the donkey made on that dusty road over 2000 years ago be today?
The Bible is unhelpful about the exact route so let's take the direct route and the donkey has a relatively straightforward plod until it reaches the first of numerous Israeli military checkpoints, this one at Jalame where the wall separates the occupied West Bank from Israel.
Once past the heavily armed soldiers, lookout towers, razor wire and gun turrets we come to Jenin, stronghold of Islamist militant groups and regular recipient of Israeli military incursions.
On the other side of Jenin lies another four Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks, then the Palestinian city of Nablus surrounded on 3 sides by refugee camps.
Israel soldiers control the entrance and exit from the city and then it's onto route 433.
Being Jews, Mary, Joseph and the plodding donkey would have no problem using this 12 mile stretch of road through the West Bank as it was only closed to Palestinians until this summer.
We get off the tarmac at Ramallah and through another set of Israeli military checkpoints who control who comes in and who goes out of the City.
South again and Jerusalem appears in the distance, entry and exit to the city through 4 military checkpoints and finally, after negotiating the way through the refugee camps of Aida and Azza, we reach the city of Bethlehem flanked by 30ft high concrete walls and military roadblocks and checkpoints.
The donkey can have a rest and Mary and Joseph can find a nice stable and hope that the 3 wise men have all the right permits and make it through unscathed.

Kosovo: Another Western Intervention Failure

When the United Nations refused to sanction the 1999 Kosovo War, it became a NATO campaign although critics pointed out that the NATO charter specifies that NATO was created for defence of its members, and the bombing of Serbia was an attack on a non-NATO country which was not directly threatening any NATO member.
With the KLA painted as the good guys and the Serb forces as the baddies when in reality they were both as bad as each other when it came to killing civilians, NATO stepped into a civil war regardless of the lack of legitimacy and three months of bombing later, the Serbian Army was in retreat and Kosovo became an interim civilian administration under the authority of the United Nations.
Ten years on an a report from the Council of Europe tells us that it is now ruled by gangster thugs involved in murder and selling body parts.
The report alleges that the newly re-elected Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, was the head of an organised crime ring involved in organ trafficking, assassinations and other crimes.
It seems that all NATO achieved was to foist a gang of gangsters into power who have been exerting what the EC called 'violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics.'
Part of the report suggests that after the 1999 war the KLA took revenge on the
Serb civilians who stayed behind by dragging them off to a network of KLA run detention centres in northern Albania where they were 'subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, before ultimately disappearing, murdered for their kidneys.'
It concludes 'Thaçi’s Drenica Group 'bear the greatest responsibility'.
The first commander of U.N. troops in Bosnia, Canadian Gen. Lewis MacKenzie said 'We bombed the wrong side. The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius.'
They certainly did and once again Western intervention has made a horrific situation a whole lot worse.