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Anyone who’s been out of touch with the world for the last few days, I have news. The Olympics have started.
Yep, that ritual athletic testing that started in an ancient foreign land as a way of challenging soldiers has returned once again. (Which, by the way, means that I’ve been away over 8 years. I arrived in the UK before Sydney 2000. Egads!) The best of the world have gathered in Bejing for two weeks of testing before their peers and the world.
Talk about your stage-fright – estimated 4 billion people watching the opening ceremony? Bloody Hell! But from what I could see there was only one stuff up – and I imagine some poor little Chinese guy getting a slap around the ear for letting the torch-bearing air-runner guy catch up with the unravelling scroll.
All the athletes look lean & hungry. That’s how they’re supposed to look, right? Lean & hungry? Are we not feeding these people regularly? They all look ready to defend their country and themselves from repeated embarrassment of failing dismally. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over my 30something years on the earth, there’s always someone better than you. Sorry.. Maybe I’m feeling a little too reflective today.
But along with the lean & hungry come the joys of a fiercely patriotic crowd, and billions of televiewers everywhere, screaming and shouting, clapping, laughing, crying along with their team. The Olympics is the only time people can be most vehemently patriotic with no fear of recrimination, verbal abuse or attack. It is expected at the Olympics, encouraged. Over two hundred countries coming together to wage mini battles with each other.
Question: Have the Olympics become our pseudo world war? Instead of taking out your emeny with bullets and bombs, you take them out with skill and expertise, with a fine throw or blistering speed. You take them out honestly and directly, with no cheating or sly actions, no backstabbing or sabotage. You do it directly in front of them, to their face, and you wait for the words ‘bad sport’ to start fizzing about between their ears, at which point they’ll come and congratulate you on a good match/race/battle.
And I even understand why it’s being held in China, despite their air quality and human rights record, despite their environmental and foreign policy. It’s being held there because the IOC reached a point where it had to say yes for to be seen as being influenced by politics. See, China is the most populated country in earth, they send ridiculous amounts of althletes to each and every games, they do very well in each and every games, and they haven’t hosted in over 100 years. The IOC proclaims itself a non-political animal, and under that guise had reached a point where they could no longer refuse China’s application to host. They had no choice. To do otherwise was to rebuke China, which no-one seems willing to do. I mean, geez, Moscow hosted in the middle of the cold war. Germany hosted, Hitler opened their games. The IOC had to do it to stay apolitical. I’ll stop there, I don’t want this post to be an anti-China rant.
I realise from the above that it may seem I sneer at the Olympics. But I don’t. Honestly. I’ve got nothing but admiration for the athletes who can devote themselves so completely to their sport. I don’t think I could do it. And I’ve nothing but admiration for the medalists themselves. To be the acknowledged best in the world at anything must be a fantastic feeing and worth every second of that seemingly endless training.
And, of course, there’s the fact that I’m Australian and we love and respect sportsmen and women. We’re a sporting nation. Comes with the sunshine and being able to go outside. The Australian press are whipping up a patriotic frenzy, I find myself trying to program my tele-watching to times when there’ll be coverage of Aussies (and I understand totally that the UK coverage is all about the UK team, I just wish they’d interview a winner every now and again! Oh, but they did interview that Zimbabwe swimmer with the american accent, thought I’m not sure why..)
I find myself digging my wee aussie flag out of the box and drapiing it proudly around the house. I find myself suddenly shouting “Go Aussie!” at the screen, freaking out cat and flatmate. But I can’t help it. And gorram it, I shouldn’t have to!
So GO AUSSIE! Go, you good things! Enjoy yourselves and bring us back some neckwear, huh?
Oh, and.. ahem.. good luck to everyone else too. :)
xx
Heard on the news this morning that Lloyds TSB, one of the UK’s biggest banks, has had a 70% drop in profit this quarter. I started cheering, thinking perhaps this can be a score for the little guy, to prove that everyone’s feeling the pinch, not just those of us on lower incomes.
However, the news went on:
Profit before tax was 70% lower at £599m ($1.18bn), compared with a profit of £1.99bn in first half of 2007.
Oh right. So they only made £600M as opposed to almost £2billion last year. Poor, poor bastards. That’s some serious belt-tightening! How will they ever cope!
And just in case you didn’t catch the sarcasm, I’ll take my point further.. With the price of oil and gas going up so much this year, many people in the UK won’t be able to afford to keep themselves warm this winter.
The government estimates 2.5 million households are in fuel poverty – defined as when more than 10% of household income is spent on fuel bills – but watchdog Energywatch says the figure is more than four million.
You know what the Head of UK’s biggest domestic energy supplier said? “maybe it’s two jumpers instead of one”.
Oh the compassion! He should be up for a humantiarian award! Warms your heart don’t it, big business showing such understanding and mercy for their fellow man.
So what’s the world’s most ineffectual Prime Minster to do? Luckily for us, Gordon Brown’s on his summer holidays at the moment – giving us a brief respite from his smarmy face constantly on the tele trying to justify himself and his party. The time has come for an election Gordon. You screwed up. Big time. Fall back into obscurity like a good boy and let someone else have a turn now…
Rant ends.
xx
Finally the Australian Government, and more specifically our new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, is going to apologise to the ’Stolen Generations’.
It’s well past the time for the goverment to apologise to the Aboriginal Community as a whole for the ridiculous policies of previous governments – when it was thought that Aboriginal children would have a ‘better life’ when taken from their families and communities in the bush and placed with adoptive white parents in the cities of Australia. This misguided and utterly foolish practice continued from the mid 1800’s to the 1970’s – despite outcry from Aboriginal and white communities alike. (Find more information HERE - or go see the film ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’)
A short bit of the above link outlines the depth of the issue:-
The term ‘stolen generations’ refers to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians who were forcibly removed from their families and communities by government, welfare or church authorities as children and placed into institutional care or with non-Indigenous foster families. The forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children began as early as the mid 1800s and continued until 1970.
This removal occurred as the result of official laws and policies aimed at assimilating the Indigenous population into the wider community.
The 1997 Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, conducted by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission found that between 1 in 10 and 3 in 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families and communities in the period from 1910 to 1970.
The Western Australian and Queensland governments have confirmed that in that period all Indigenous families in their States were affected by the forced removal of children. It’s not possible to know precisely how many children were taken because government records of these removals are poor and many government files are inaccurate.
The first National Sorry Day was held in 1998 after the ‘Bringing Them Home’ report was published by the National Sorry Day Committee. This report listed recommendations that both Aboriginal and white Australian committee members agreed would go a long way to help the bad blood that had festered because of the policies, and because of previous government’s reluctance to just simply say sorry. Sorry we took your children. Sorry we destroyed your communities and your lives. Sorry we disrespected you, your culture and your place as Australians.
Good on you Mr Rudd – this is bloody long overdue and I’m really glad that you’ve got the balls to finally do it. There’s a patriotic glow in my heart today. It seems we’re finally on the good road…
On Wed 13 Feb at 09:00 aussie time, a televised event will be held and ‘The Apology’ (which now deserves capital letters!) will be issued. Sounds like an excuse for a party to me!
Now we just have to get the Church to apologise for it’s part in this nasty business. Can’t see that happening – Mother Church won’t apologise for anything. Still, we live in hope…
And thanks to Pavlov’s Cat for the head’s up!
Some common sense from our European partners!
It all started when a quick blurb in Nature Vol 449 (11 Oct 07) caught my eye:
“Creationism is a potential threat to human rights and any attempts to incorporate it into science must be resisted, says the Council of Europe.”
Hmmm! Something gone right in the world? Tell me more!
A brief internet snoop brought me to the Council of Europe website , which says:
“Strasbourg, 04.10.2007 – Parliamentarians from the 47-nation Council of Europe have urged its member governments to “firmly oppose” the teaching of creationism – which denies the evolution of species through natural selection – as a scientific discipline on an equal footing with the theory of evolution.
In a resolution passed by 48 votes to 25 during its plenary session in Strasbourg, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) declared: “If we are not careful, creationism could become a threat to human rights.”
Presenting the report, Anne Brasseur (Luxembourg, ALDE), a former Education Minister, said: “It is not a matter of opposing belief and science, but it is necessary to prevent belief from opposing science.”
“The prime target of present-day creationists, most of whom are Christian or Muslim, is education,” the parliamentarians said in the resolution. “Creationists are bent on ensuring that their ideas are included in the school science syllabus. Creationism cannot, however, lay claim to being a scientific discipline.”
The parliamentarians said there was “a real risk of a serious confusion” being introduced into children’s minds between conviction or belief and science. “The theory of evolution has nothing to do with divine revelation but is built on facts.”
“Intelligent design, presented in a more subtle way, seeks to portray its approach as scientific, and therein lies the danger,” they added.”
For those not quite up to speed on creationist doctrines, on the Council of Europe website you can find this describing creationism and its many varied theories:
“The most intransigent of the supporters of Creationism claim that the world was created by God in six days and maintain that the transformist or evolutionist theories that conflict with the Bible, according to which God created each plant or animal species individually, can only be lies. They say that science is wrong because, in the strictest possible sense, the Bible says something else – which reminds us, incidentally, of the trial of a man called Galileo.
This strict Creationism is subdivided into two branches, one that categorically rejects the scientific discourse and another, also called “scientific creationism” or “science of creation”, that thinks that the science versus religion conflict is only an illusion.
According to “scientific Creationism”, the author of creation, as described in the Bible, is always present and intervenes in the various processes that bring about evolution. Within scientific creationism, the debate on the Earth’s age divides the so-called “young-earth creationists” (YECs) from the “old-earth creationists” (OECs). The first apply a literal interpretation of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, while the second group admit that creation may have taken place over a long period and seek to reconcile the scientific data with the story of Genesis.”
It seems that the creationists themselves can’t agree on one theory! And the above doesn’t even touch on Muslim creationist theory!
I don’t have any specific problem with religion – people are free to believe whatever they want to believe. To quote John Lennon, whatever gets you through the night.
No, my specific problem isn’t with religion itself. I have a problem with the level of blind faith involved with most organised religions. Sorry Mum, but I do. At least with science you have the opportunity for empirical research and to test the facts for yourself. The fact that there are so many differing views of creationism can only make for bigger confusion, more ammunition for schoolyard bullies, and the ostracism of those kids who don’t believe as other kids do. Kids have a tough enough time as it is without having to defend something they’re too young to understand! And what sort of an argumentative defence is “But it says so in the bible! / koran! / teachings of buddha! / insert your own religious book here!”??
The other danger with accepting creationism and letting it be taught in schools is that it would involve legislating peoples beliefs, imposing rules on how people think! And that’s a minefield that no-one, not even the gung-ho Americans, want to try tiptoe-ing over. There are too many religions in the world to single out just one doctrine as being correct – and no-one wants to upset a majority of the globe by rejecting all religions but one. I mean, that’s how the whole Taliban nastiness got started! Right?! No-one’s silly enough to argue that there weren’t human rights abuses in Taliban ruled Afghanistan. We’ve all seen the videotapes.
Don’t we have enough religious wars in the world without throwing a big ol’ creationist log on the fire?
I’m very glad that Europe has voted that creationism isn’t a scientific discipline. As if it’s a science to distort facts, and even totally disregard them, to fit your argument.
Well done Europe! Blessings upon your sensible brains!
thanks to ninglun for pointing to THIS BRILLIANT BLOG!
to quote:
“I was contemplating John Howard’s retirement the other day (as all Australians do from time to time) and I thought to myself, “Sure, that’ll be great for us, but what about him? What does 30 years serving the battlers of Australia qualify John Howard to do with himself in his declining years?”.
Realising how unAustralian a self-centred, I’m-alright-Jack attitude like that is (okay, perhaps I’m ten years out of date, but hankering after the Good Old Days is extremely non-unAustralian and I wasn’t around in the 1950s, so the nineties will have to do) I set up this blog which generously proposes to offer no fewer than 101 helpful suggestions (with diagrams) for things that John Howard can go and do with himself when he finally declares his innings closed.”
(Note: opinions expressed are mine – except for official allegations. I have no wish to start an international incident all on my own!)
OK – you might have heard something about UK & Russia going head to head over ping-pong and turning it into a diplomatic incident. Not entirely accurate.
UK and Russia are going head to head over the extradition of an ex-KGB agent to stand trial in the UK. This ex-agent allegedly put hundreds, if not thousands, of Brits at risk by trotting a highly radioactive compound (polonium-210) around London before dropping it in the tea of a fellow ex-KGB agent, who was now a UK Citizen. Alexander Litvinenko died a truly horrible death in November 06, wasting away after 23 days of painful and terrible radiation poisoning, knowing that he was dying and that there was no cure. Indeed it took doctors a good long while to actually figure out what he’d been poisoned with. The day after he died it came out that he had definitely been poisoned with radioactive material and that Litvinenko suspected that those high in Russian government were involved.
And before you can say cold war, ta-dah! International incident!
Highly radioactive elements were discovered in different locations in London (in a hotel, a sushi bar and at Litvinenko’s home) and lots of people were suddenly at risk from radiation poisoning. Litvinenko made a statement on his last day on earth, read after his death:-
In it he accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin of involvement in his death and says his killer was “barbaric and ruthless”.
Protest from around the world “will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life,” he said.
Friend Andrei Nekrasov says that just hours before Mr Litvinenko fell unconscious, he told him: “The bastards got me but they won’t get everybody.”
In January this year…
The Health Protection Agency reveals that 120 of the 596 people tested for polonium-210 showed traces of radiation.
But it says just 13 of those who tested positive following Mr Litvinenko’s death are deemed to have a health risk, and that the long-term risk is very small.
The agency says it has identified 450 people worldwide who may have been affected by radiation, and is working with 48 different countries on the matter.
In February…
Alexander Gusak, a former head of the FSB (the successor of the KGB) says Mr Litvinenko was a “direct traitor” for betraying other Russian agents to British intelligence.
He told BBC’s Newsnight show that in Soviet times Mr Litvinenko would have been sentenced to death, and under current law would face up to 20 years in prison for treason.
Mr Gusak says one of the agents who believed he had been exposed by Mr Litvinenko offered to assassinate the former spy.
So what seemed to have started as a nice tidy little murder, before Litvinenko could spill any of his ex-KGB beans, is a big nasty matter affecting 48 countries and a hell of a lot of people. Someone must have been showing off – Litvinenko could have just as easily been killed by bullet, cyanide, hell they could’ve fiddled with his boiler and carbon monoxo-dized him. Someone must’ve got a slap around the ear for such a big fuck-up. But Litvinenko was now a British Citizen, and they must have known what sort of shit-storm would come down around them – let alone to bring such nasty radioactive material onto British soil …
But now, 6 months later, after sifting through acres of evidence and digging through dirt from in the UK and abroad, the Crown Prosecution Service are ready to charge former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi with his death and seek his extradition from Russia. Russia refuse to extradite, saying the Russian Constitution does’t permit it, but offer to try Lugovoi in Russia for the crimes. UK say (and I’m paraphrasing and hyopthetising, of course) ‘no way, since it’s possible a trial will never happen, let alone the truth of the matter ever come out, and that this isn’t just about Litvinenko but about British citizens being poisoned by Russia,’ and start ejecting Russian diplomats.
And now you’re all caught up. With me so far? (If you want to catch up more, check the BBC’s timeline).
Russia’s turn now (and here comes the ping-pong bit)…
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov said: “We don’t want to be provoked into a ping-pong game, although of course the Russian side will provide a necessary response.”
And now the world holds it’s breath about what exactly a necessary response might be.
Russia have been waving their hands in the air and digging their heels in a few times over the last year or so – and I’m wondering if they don’t feel their slice of the international-respect-pie is big enough. Considering the chummy-ness of UK and USA over recent years, the world focus hasn’t really been on Russia, and maybe they’re a bit upset. Maybe the insular Soviet attitute continues, that Russian problems have Russian solutions and are no concern of anyone else.
Whichever way it is, this is a scary situation. Scary enough that someone could be killed by an obscure radioactive isotope in central London, scarier still that spies are involved. Secrecy issues, double-agents, traitors and patriots. This could turn nasty really quickly. UK/Russian relations and, by default, Russia/Rest of the world relations could be irreparably damaged.
Visa restrictions and reviews are now being discussed on both sides, and still Russia has made no response to their diplomats being ejected from UK… Meanwhile Russia are asking for extradition of 21 people living in the UK who are wanted for crimes in Russia ranging from embezzelment to terrorism – UK refuse to extradite. I can see Russia’s point – it does seem like a bit of a double standard. And I don’t know why the UK Govt refused to extradite, I can only speculate.
Please tread carefully, Mr Brown. Please tread carefully Mr Putin. This situation needs a solution and you two are responsible for the effect on millions of lives.
This post makes 200 posts Adrift in the ether-web!
Some days, you know, I never thought I’d be able to keep this up. But it’s really nice now to say that I’ve kept with this… I know I’ve got some way to go yet, and I’m still learning, but it’s a milestone I wanted to celebrate…
And what a news day to have my 200th post on! By 1:30pm today Tony Blair will no longer be Britain’s Prime Minister. The job, the house and the glory will pass to that smarmy one – former Chancellor Gordon Brown. He’s been practicing his sleazy grin for a while now, it’s nice for him that he finally gets to take it somewhere. Meanwhile I’m having flashbacks to when former Treasurer Paul Keating became Prime Minister of Australia. Yeah, the budget was fine, but everything else sucked.
I have no idea how the hell it works, but apparently Tony had to resign as Labour Party Leader, which also meant he had to resign as Prime Minister. The Labour party then voted a new leader who instantly becomes Prime Minister (sort of as a lucky door prize, I guess), and Britain gets a leader it didn’t vote for. I don’t know what sort of ancient convoluted laws produced this bizarre system of democracy, but there you go. I haven’t been able to find out if Smarm-master Brown has a time limit before he has to call a general election and an actual elected official takes the top job – it’s difficult finding information on how this whole thing works.
My office mate has just arrived and filled me in on some of it. Apparently Smarmy started feeling pressure when Tony was re-elected (again) and stated to one and all that it would be his last term as PM. Smarmy was scared that if Tony went all the way to a general election that Labour would be voted out and Smarmy’d never get his chance to be PM – so he pressured Tony into giving a date to step down. Now Smarmy gets about 18months to totally unite a country against him before a general election must be held. And it’s a fairly wide view that Labour won’t win, as far as I can gather.
Devious smarmy bugger. Underhanded sleazy ‘dour Scot’. It seriously makes my skin crawl to look at the guy. *sigh* We’ve had the charm with Tony, now we get the flipside…. But I guess he can’tdo toomuch damage in 18months.. Right?
Meanwhile Lewis Hamilton made the cover of Nature science journal last week – he’s causing a storm all over the world! The reason he’s on the cover of the most read science journal in the world? F1 are apparently looking into using bio-fuels. Considering that it’s the most enviromentally damaging sport on the planet (what with the engines buring so much fuel, the massive amounts of equipment and people that have to be transported around the world week to week) it’s really about time motor-sport caught up with world opinion. Can only be a good thing really, since it would definitely increase bio-fule production and exposure – get people thinking about bio-fuels.
In other news, there’s storms and flooding rains all over the world – America, China, Australia, India, Pakistan and the UK. And people still don’t think climate change is real. *virtual head shake* A team of monitors will shortly be allowed inside North Korea’s nuclear reactor. Russia is calling for volunteers for a simulated human trip to Mars, where they get to spend 17months in a deprivation tank. They must be beating them off with a stick. Still in space, a ‘asteroid-hopping’ ship will be launched on 7 July to check out two dwarf planets, among others. IBM have launched the world’s fastest supercomputer, and Parky is hanging up his clipboard . Oh, and the best one? It seems Germans don’t like scientologists – they’ve stopped Tom Cruise filming! (although a chillingly scary social commentary that Germany takes offence to a particular religion {again!} it’s still right funny that Cruise is finally picked on!)
Oh, and Mum? My stitches are healing just fine – no signs of problems. :)
Happy 200th post, dear readers. Wishing you a lovely day. :)
