Personal – Page 6 – John Leach

Guardian Warming

This article on the Guardian website is amusing. They tell the tale of Al Gore’s new Documentary about global warming, named An Inconvenient Truth.

The Guardian, as most mainstream media, make the vast majority of their income from advertising. And the majority of advertising revenue comes from the automotive industry. So, obviously, the Guardian cannot afford to discourage automotive advertising in its newspaper and on its website by taking global warming seriously.

The article reduces the film to “wooden vice-president and failed presidential candidate, wheeling his suitcases from town to town and presenting a slideshow about climate change”. It goes on to suggest that it’s only popular because it was produced by the same guy as Pulp Fiction (huh?).
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7/6/2006 3 Comments

Desmond Dekker Dead

Desmond Dekker played at my local university (Leeds) earlier this month. We saw the posters and planned to go but messed up the dates and missed it.

15 days later the man is DEAD. Last gig he did too.

26/5/2006 2 Comments

Chávez is a threat

Chávez is a threat because he offers the alternative of a decent society.

Fact-deprived attacks on Chávez in the Times and the Financial Times this week, each with that peculiar malice reserved for true dissenters from Thatcher’s and Blair’s one true way, follow a travesty of journalism on Channel 4 News last month, which effectively accused the Venezuelan president of plotting to make nuclear weapons with Iran, an absurd fantasy.

In contrast, Tony Blair, a patrician with no equivalent democratic record, having been elected by a fifth of those eligible to vote and having caused the violent death of tens of thousands of Iraqis, is allowed to continue spinning his truly absurd political survival tale.

John Pilger – http://informationclearinghouse.info/article13026.htm

15/5/2006 1 Comment

Leeds Bus Crash

This bus narrowly missed a Subway franchise in Leeds and crashed into an Ainsleys instead. Ethical dilemma: if you were a dissenting bus driver would you choose to plough into Subway rather than Ainsleys knowing that whilst it’s a bigger and eviller chain, you might hurt more people?

I think the easy answer to this is to crash into both places, but make sure you do it after hours when the place is closed. More photos here. I didn’t take them though; I plucked them from the grape vine.

25/4/2006 5 Comments

RAF doctor Iraq court martial

The BBC has done a pitiful job of covering the court martial of RAF doctor Flt Lt Malcolm Kendall-Smith who defied orders to return to Iraq citing the illegality of the war.

The prosecution said “it was not Dr Kendall-Smith’s responsibility to question the legality of orders given to him”.

Well, actually, it is. In fact, by law, not only is he to question the legality, he is to question to morality of orders too. As was established before the Nuremberg trials, a soldier cannot use “just following orders” as a defense against criminal prosecution. The London Nuremberg Charter explicitly stated that. The US Uniform Code of Military Justice was ammended after World War II to reflect it. This was all part of the reformation of International law.

I didn’t happen to notice any of this relevant information in the BBC article. I guess they had diverted journalistic resources to covering the all-important Da Vinci Code trial.

11/4/2006 1 Comment

Condoleezza Rice Liverpool/Blackburn protests

George Bush’s No 2, Condoleezza Rice, is coming to En-ger-land. She’s not leading an invasion (ha!), she was invited by Jack Straw. During her time here she’ll be visiting Liverpool and Blackburn. Get yourself down to the organised protests on Friday 31st March in Liverpool and Saturday 1st April in Blackburn. Read more at www.condiwatch.co.uk.

UPDATE: I took some photos on Friday night at the Royal Philharmonic in Liverpool. I hearby throw this set of photos into the public domain. Do with them as you wish.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Fixed the link to the rest of the photos. Duh

30/3/2006 Add Comment

Grammatica, Proofreading and copy editing

Sylons - defend humanity Louisa has started a proofreading and copy editing company. It’s based in Leeds and is called Grammatica. As in Battlestar Grammatica. My guess is that the Cylons probably had a built-in spelling and grammar checker, but they weren’t likely to help the humans, who instead turn to Grammatica.

They’ll help out with lots of stuff including (but of course not limited to) sales brochures, reports, research bids, university assignments, academic articles and even proof read your CV.

27/2/2006 2 Comments

Cottage in Staithes, North Yorkshire

Louisa and I went on a little Holiday to Staithes in North Yorkshire at the end of January. We stayed in a tiny cottage 20 steps from the sea with no Internet and no mobile phone reception. It was the most relaxing holiday I’ve had in years. Usually we’re storming all over whichever city we’re staying in to make sure we see everything.

17/2/2006 33 Comments

Iran is dangerous nuclear threat

Media Lens Alert: Iran – The media fall into line

The “liberal” “left-wing” media are, once again, falling into line to support another war to enforce the status-quo (along with all the “right-wing” media too, but that’s rather a given). Iran is 10 years away from creating even one nuclear weapon (assuming that’s what it’s trying to do) yet the mainstream media are telling us they are a major threat.

This is how it always works. When the powers that be announce a new threat (Iran) the mainstream media fall over themselves to support it without question.
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9/2/2006 Add Comment

Identity Project Status Report- Homeoffice misdirection

“We are extremely concerned at the ongoing culture of secrecy endemic in the planning of the identity cards proposals. The Home Ofﬁce has conducted most of its work in a covert fashion, refusing to disclose information that would inform debate, and conducting negotiations in a closed environment. This process is inimical to the creation of trust. This situation also makes further research on the proposals impossible.”

The London School of Economics has published their latest Identity Project Status Report concerning the governments Identity Cards Bill 2005.

The last report was immediately damned by the Government at every turn in what can only be described as behaviour of the intensely insecure. Why are the Government so insecure about the details of their Bill?

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16/1/2006 Add Comment

Principles, Software and Freedom

Benjamin Mako Hill has written a great post over on his blog titled “Principles, Software and Freedom”. It’s something I’ve been trying to put into words for a while and he does it very well.

“Sure, everyone uses Firefox. Sure, everyone uses Apache and GNU/Linux for their web servers. Sure, everyone uses Drupal, Mambo, Plone, or another free CMS. But one can’t help but notice that Firefox, Apache, and free CMSs are higher quality, more featureful, and easier to use than the proprietary alternatives.”

“People arguing for free software from a principled position need to remember that principled positions are sometimes inconvenient. Free software is no exception. It’s frequently different, sometimes incompatible and a bit more work. In some situations (dare I say it?), it’s not as good as the proprietary alternatives.”

Free software isn’t always easy and isn’t always the best solution. Personally I believe freedom is important enough to weigh in heavily in the face of this.

15/1/2006 Add Comment

Mass murderer death race

And they’re OFF!

And remember folks, it’s not the winning that’s important, it’s that they all die as soon as possible (ensuring they never face war crime trials)

9/1/2006 Add Comment