Solving The Arafat Death Mystery

Its probably the worst timing possible but the remains of the former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat are to be exhumed to examine whether he was the recipient of a lethal radioactive dose of polonium-210  courtesy of Israel.
Arafat's death in 2004 was always mysterious and the mystery deepened after French authorities began a murder enquiry in August following the detection of traces of polonium-210 on Arafat's underwear, toothbrush and hat. Those tests were inconclusive and Swiss, Russian and French experts said
they need to check his remains to learn more although they have already warned that polonium-210, the same toxin Moscow used to assassinate Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, is known to rapidly decompose, and there may not be enough remaining samples sufficient for testing.
'These stories are simply ridiculous' blustered Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev but the medical records of Arafat appear to show that doctors could not determine the underlying cause of his death at the time and his death came a year after Israel's then vice prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said: 'Arafat can no longer be a factor in what happens here. The question is: How are we going to do it? Expulsion is certainly one of the options, and killing is also one of the options.'  
During the three years leading up to his death, the Israeli siege prevented Arafat from leaving his bullet-riddled government headquarters in Ramallah.
Mahmoud Abbas's political adviser, Nimr Hamad, has said 'if we find polonium in his body, it is 99.9 percent certain that it was Israel' and you know that spells trouble as and just from Gaza this time as the whole Middle East will erupt so we can only hope that no radioactive material is found and Israel is not the responsible party for Arafat's death.

Merry Christmas, I Don't Want To Fight Tonight

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in all things Christmas that we forget the real reason behind Christmas, the birth of Santa Claus.
Though the vast majority of us will spend the day eating, drinking and sleeping through the Queen's speech, some couples will be having a less then merry time according to the divorce industry.
A survey by insidedivorce.com and the Family Mediation Helpline found that 1.8 million couples will have contemplated divorcing their partner during the Christmas period which translates into some very long queues outside the offices of divorce lawyers in the New Year.
Unfortunately, Christmas in the midst of a recession can only add to tensions and another survey found relationship counseling had risen during the economic downturn which all must make Baby Santa very sad indeed.
Relationship counsellors, Relate, commented: 'It’s a really sad fact that we see a huge surge of calls for help during and after the festive season. This year, all we want is for families to enjoy a happier and more peaceful Christmas.'
The most common problems for festive fireworks over the plum duff were identified as personality clashes (14%) and not agreeing on what to do (10%) but Relate do offer some advice on how to get through Christmas with your partner, recommending that we do as much planning and organising before the festive day and remembering that alcohol has a way of making tongues loose and problems larger if an argument does erupt.
This Christmas let's have less Wham 'Last Christmas' and more Ramones 'Merry Christmas, I Don't Want To Fight Tonight' because as Joey tell us 'Cause Christmas ain't the time for breaking each other's heart'.

It's Called What?

When the protests erupted in Burma in 2007, i remember a bit of a spat developing between bloggers who called it Burma and those who insisted on calling the country Myanmar.
Seems in the United States and UK it is Burma as they do not recognise the junta who overthrew the Government in the 80s and changed its name to Myanmar so not to lend any legitimacy to the usurpers, they carried on calling it Burma. 
To add to the confusion of what to call where, the Mexican President wants to rename Mexico as Mexico.  
The country's formal name is the United Mexican States, but President Felipe Calderon wants to make it simply Mexico which i venture, is what everybody thought it was called anyway until he piped up.
It might save on ink and reduce the cost of sign making which might trigger changes in the Plurinational State of Bolivia and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, or Bolivia and Luxembourg as anyone without a copy of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names handy calls them.
To confuse things even further, Greece isn't even called Greece, but saying beware Hellenic Republicans bearing gifts isn't quite so snappy and i don't know how Uruguay got the official name Oriental Republic of Uruguay but they might want to have a words with the Mexicans about simplifying it.

Solutions To Peace In Gaza

Of course it is great news that the ceasefire in Gaza is holding but we have been here before haven't we?
Israel pulverises Gaza and then after international pressure a ceasefire comes about and we hear big noises about peace before it all breaks down and once again the Israelis are running from missiles coming from the Palestinians side and Palestinians are digging their relatives out of the rubble of their houses.
A cynic may say that neither side wants peace as both Governments use the other as the reason they should be elected, to keep their own people safe from the barbarians on the other side of the wall.
This has gone on for decades and will continue all the time that the Palestinians are criticised more heavily when they fire rockets into Israel than Israel who are an occupying army illegally seizing and building settlements on Palestinian land, defying UN resolutions, killing Hamas politicians, holding over 9000 Palestinians in its prisons, destroys farms, bulldozes homes and businesses and maintaining a monstrous wall deemed illegal by the international court of justice amongst numerous other violations.
There are only two solutions that will bring about peace and stop this cycle of violence.
The first is that America stop bankrolling Israel, especially its military. It could not maintain such a large military presence without US help, so it would have to make peace with its neighbour or it would be bankrupt.
The second solution is for Israel to finally agree to a Palestine state.
The problem with the first is the American religious voters who would not stand for America cutting Israel loose.
The second is if Palestine became a country and a UN member then it will be under the protection of UN and international law and more importantly the International Criminal Court where it could take up the legal case against Israel for war crimes and challenge the settlement building in the occupied territories.
Netanyahu shared what vision he had for a state of Palestine in his 2009 speech where he envisioned a state which would be 'without an army, without control of its airspace and obviously, the Palestinians will not be able to forge military pacts'.
Netanyahu's Palestinian state would be defenceless, have no sovereignty, and hand control of its geographical space over to its decades long oppressor.
Hamas are not good for the Palestinians and they should be rightly berated for firing missiles into Israel but the vast majority of the problems are due to Israel and its abhorrent treatment of the Palestinians and until Netanhyahu is replaced, Israel stops military incursions into Palestine, lift the blockade, stops stealing Palestinian land and remove the wall that acts as an open air prison to 1/7 million Gazans, we will be watching this scenario repeating itself over and over again just like it has been for the past 60 years.

Prisoner Voting

It is often said that as you get older you turn more to the right, something that i have scoffed at but today i'm worried because i find myself in absolute agreement with the Prime Minister, and he is a Conservative.
David Cameron has said that the thought of giving the vote to prisoners makes him physically sick and although i haven't upchucked over it yet, i agree that prisoners and voting booths should not meet.
If a person has been removed from society for whatever reason, then it seems a bit mad to then give them the opportunity to choose who makes the laws of the land that they couldn't co-exist in.
This is one time that the European Court of Human Rights who is pushing for Britain to allow prisoners to vote, should be ignored but if Europe compels us to follow then just pass the law that prisoners can vote but it must be done at a proper polling station, if they can get there.
The worst thing about becoming more right wing is that as my IQ drops i will have to get rid of all my books that contain words of over two syllables, stop recycling, not show any concern for my fellow man and argue cluelessly about the fairness of our capitalist system with the man who lost his livelihood in yet another recession and now lives in his van and bang on about how global warming is a hoax to the lady whose house has just been flooded.

Bashing The Bishop

After 12 years of debate, The Church of England has decided it won't let female clergy become bishops after all.
Not sure what the big bearded bloke in the clouds would make of it, i thought we were all equal in his eyes but apparently not and the Church of England refuses to join the rest of us in the 21st Century.
Maybe us women should start up our own religion, it all nonsense anyway and we can leave out the bits about killing gays, people Who Don't Listen to Priests, Witches, fortunetellers, anyone who hits their parents, anyone who curses their parents, adulterers, anyone who follows another religion, non-believers, women Who Are Not Virgins On Their Wedding Night, Blasphemers and people who work on Sunday.
Yes, would be very much nicer than that male dominated religion we have been stuck with for the past 2000 years.   

Eat Chocolate, Get Smarter

Not being a regular subscriber to the New England Journal of Medicine, i almost missed the latest scientific breakthrough and i would of just been stuffing my face with chocolate not knowing that rather than just stuffing my face with chocolate, i was actually improving my intelligence.   
The studies author, Franz Messerli of Colombia University, was apparently wondering one afternoon about the power of chocolate after reading that cocoa was good for you and reached the conclusion that the higher a country's chocolate consumption, the more Nobel laureates it spawns per capita.
Apparently regular cocoa intake leads to improved mental function and there is data in rats showing that they live longer and have better cognitive function when they eat chocolate, and even in snails you can show that the snail memory is actually improved.
So Messerli took the number of Nobel Prize winners in a country as an indicator of general national intelligence and compared that with the nation's chocolate consumption. The results were, he said 'striking'.
"When you correlate the two - the chocolate consumption with the number of Nobel Prize laureates per capita there is an incredibly close relationship," the prof explained before turning into geek mode and continuing 'This correlation has a 'P value' of 0.0001. This means there is a less than one-in-10,000 probability that this correlation is simply down to chance.'
No idea what that means, i haven't eaten enough Snickers today obviously, but what it boils down to is eat chocolate and your chances of winning a Nobel Prize go up.
I'm on it Prof and booking that plane to Sweden as we speak.

Why Is The UK Backing Israel?

When you look at Israels past history its a wonder that anyone supports them but as the latest war against Palestine grows we hear the two usual suspects, the US and the UK, providing the diplomatic cover for what they are doing.
As the Israeli interior minister comes out with quotes such as 'we plan to bomb Gaza back into the Middle Ages', US President Barack Obama 'reiterated US support for Israel's right to self-defence in light of rocket attacks from Gaza' and the British Government claim that Hamas 'bears principle responsibility for the Israeli attacks on Gaza' and 'creating an intolerable situation for Israeli civilians in southern Israel, who have the right to live without fear of attack'.
I have asked before just what does America get out of continuing to back a country that acts with such disregard for human life while blatantly defying every UN security council ruling against them, continuing an illegal occupation of another people and hands out collective punishment to the Gazan's and the answer seemed to be political.
America has a lot of religious voters and no President can afford to lose the backing of the 75% of Conservative Christians who strongly support the Jews.
That explains America's dizzying refusal to condemn Israel but the UK hasn't got a big religious block vote so why not join the rest of the World and condemn Israel when it uses its superior military against an already battle scarred Gaza?
David Cameron's words justifying Israeli aggression on the Palestinians on grounds of self-defence seems a bit thin when you consider Israel is a country of 7.5 million people with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery, helicopter gunships and F-16s and F-18s, plus 400 nuclear warheads set against the Gaza which is a small occupied territory of 1.7 million which has no heavy weaponry except some largely ineffectual rockets.
The Palestinians are heavily criticised when they fire their rockets into Israel but when Israel seize land and building settlements on it, defy UN resolutions, kill innocent Palestinians with rocket attacks, hold over 9000 Palestinians in its prisons, destroy farms, bulldoze homes and businesses, builds a monstrous wall deemed illegal by the international court of justice amongst numerous other violations involving war crimes, it is all quiet from the UK and US.
Not that the attacks on Palestine have ever really ended, an Israeli gun-ship shot and killed a teenage boy playing football last week which escalated the rocket attacks from Gaza which allowed the Israeli side to launch their latest adventure into Gaza, but in the last full scale incursion in 2008, the United Nations found the IDF guilty of using Palestinian children as human shields, deliberate bombing of civilian houses and UN buildings and targeting innocent civilians.
The enquiry rejected Israel's argument that the war was a response to Palestinian rocket fire and therefore an act of self-defence, instead, it found the war was 'a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population'.
So what is in it for the UK to stand by such a nation with such a terrible record, especially as it is actually seeking the removal of the Syrian and Iranian Government who have no such black marks on their record?
Even in it's own backyard, Israel is disliked and distrusted by it's neighbours and is very much a pariah in the Middle East and is blamed for most of the tensions in the area. There is no political leverage we gain from such an alliance and by standing by Israel we attract even more vitriol from the other countries in the Middle East. It's military is one of the strongest in the World so it isn't in any danger of being wiped off the map and there is no oil in Israel and no other natural resources that we need so again, i am stumped on what we can get from being so intrinsically linked to a small country virtually the same size as Wales.
It not only seems morally wrong for the UK Government to back Israel while it goes about its deadly business of bombing the Palestinians back to the Middle Ages but it gives us a real headache with our allies in the area and has no military, financial or political benefit so why are we doing it?
While most of the World find it hard to unearth any likable quality about Israel, the only conclusion i can find for the UK's wrong headed backing for Israel is that America backs Israel and once again we are running along behind it wagging our tail like a good little puppy.

Rolling Jubilee

I think i understand the new strategy by the Occupy Wall Street group in their latest venture Rolling Jubilee.
The Rolling Jubilee website describes it like this: 'Banks sell debt for pennies on the dollar on a shadowy speculative market of debt buyers who then turn around and try to collect the full amount from debtors' so if i owed the bank £100, they would sell this debt to someone for a few pence and the newcomers would then come after me for the £100. What the Occupy people are doing are paying the few pence to become the new debt owners but rather than chase the debts, they are writing them off.
The Rolling Jubilee has already made its first debt purchase, spending $5,000 to acquire $100,000 of debt and sending out letters to the borrowers, telling them the debt is abolished and as the Rolling Jubilee website is showing it has raised $327,397 from donations, it could wipe out over $6 million worth of debt.
I always thought the Occupy movement had great potential but it needed a focus to make it a real threat and although this is a great idea, i'm not even slightly convinced this is the killer idea to change things, that will only come when they make use of their numbers and force a few of the banks and financial houses into collapse which would scare the others into line, along the course of the idea that they have previously of moving accounts into other banks because a drastically dropping share price is the only way they can be frightened and this isn't going to do that.
At least they are doing something and helping countless families and that has to be applauded though and all the time they are in there swinging, they have a chance of happening across the killer idea.  

Who Britain Hasn't Invaded

Back in the day when we believed that ruling over an Empire was a good thing, almost a quarter of the world map atlas was coloured pink, showing the extent of British rule.
Putting to one side the horror and damage we forced upon other nations, Britain did punch way above its weight for a tiny little island off the coast of France but a new book has found that at one time or another, the British have invaded almost 90% of the countries around the globe.
Only 22 countries have not heard the sound of British boots upon their soil, countries such as Guatemala, Tajikistan and the Marshall Islands, as well some we missed a bit closer to home, such as Sweden and Luxembourg.
It may look worse than it actually is because included are countries that the British were found to have achieved some sort of military presence in the territory either through force, the threat of force, negotiation or payment and the book includes incursions by British pirates, privateers or armed explorers, provided they were operating with the approval of their government.
Not that it is anything to be proud of but anyone else would be hard pressed to match our record although America seems to be having a  good go at it.

The countries never invaded by the British:
Andorra, Belarus, Bolivia, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Republic of, Guatemala, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mali, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Mongolia, Paraguay, Sao Tome and Principe, Sweden, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Vatican City.