I wouldn't mind a part-time job but they don't pay any money so there's no point. There's little point going for a permanent job cos I could be off anytime to BG. So this could be a summer of earache.

keep to the Fen Causeway

P.S.  I may be up to April 26 diaries already, so check new comments.  I have not even reached mine yet.

</boo>

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.

I believe I want one...

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

A secret interrogation centre in Pakistan where British terrorism suspects are alleged to have been tortured after UK authorities had them arrested has been found by the Guardian.

The centre, run by the country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), is in the Saddar district of Rawalpindi. It is surrounded by high walls and watchtowers, and bristling with surveillance cameras.

So notorious is the ISI that local photographers are reluctant to take pictures of the centre, although satellite images are readily available...

North Carolina and Virginia are now virtually tied between Obama and McCain (demonstrating again why people should listen to me), despite the peak of Pastorgate.  Throw a popular Virginian on the ticket (cough not Jim Webb cough), and it probably goes Blue.  So score one for Governor Timmeh's Veep hopes.  Peyote Bill easily gets you New Mexico and (probably) Colorado, I think, so score two for him, undoubtedly to AT's liking.  I'll be interested to see how Missouri and Kansas poll once the nomination is done, as they relate to Kathy Sebelius.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Guardian - Jackie Ashley - Beware cosy deals between politicians and their pundits

Nobody interested in how people in power manipulate public opinion can afford to miss the exposé of the Bush administration's use of "experts" to sell the Iraq war and defend itself over Guantánamo. This is an old-fashioned investigative scoop by a New York Times reporter, David Barstow, that is convulsing the US media with accusation and counter-accusation - a huge story there that has made surprisingly few ripples here. It should.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Thousands dead in Chinese quake

A powerful earthquake has killed at least 8,500 people in China's south-western Sichuan province, up to 5,000 of them in just one county.

Many more are feared killed and injured in other parts of the country after the 7.8-magnitude quake struck at 1428 local time (0628 GMT).

At least 50 bodies have been recovered from the rubble of a school where an estimated 900 students were buried.

President Hu Jintao has urged "all-out" efforts to rescue victims.

The epicentre of the earthquake was about 92km (57 miles) from Chengdu, Sichuan's provincial capital.

That's not a duck.  That is a drake.

No one could have predicted

More arrests in Zim as Tsvangirai prepares return : Mail & Guardian Online

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's government intensified a crackdown against its political opponents on Monday, as the leader of the opposition prepared to return home to contest a run-off election.

Journalists, union leaders and hundreds of political activists have been arrested since general elections in March that were lost by the ruling party, but Monday brought news of the first lawmaker to be taken into police custody.

Heya Shoko, a Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) parliamentarian who won a seat in the Masvingo province formerly held by Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, was arrested in connection with post-election violence in his constituency, a colleague said.

"I was with him in town when three detectives ... took him away saying it was in connection with some incidents in his constituency," fellow MDC lawmaker Ernest Mudavanhu said by phone from Masvingo, south-east Zimbabwe.

News of the arrest came as the president and secretary general of the country's main labour organisation, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), were denied bail as they made a first court appearance on charges of incitement to rebellion in connection with speeches delivered at a May Day rally.

Also, I've on and off reported about my contact who went back into Zim a few weeks ago for the purpose of arranging the paperwork for him and his two children and to get them into SA legally ASAP. He was supposed to travel to Joburg past week - but was refused to exit Zimbabwe at the (Zimbabwean) border. He was told his children could go on alone. They returned, he re-applied today and was officially denied border movement now. He now is going to take the dangerous route and will have to attempt bribery - he does not want to be locked in Zimbabwe. It suggests that a (targeted?) border lock-down may be in place.

Furthermore, there are rumours that Mugabe has called to kick out the illegal Zimbabweans out of South Africa and back to Zim. Whether true or not, these rumours have resulted in riots in Alexandra township - where I do my volunteering work on Saturday. Two people are reportedly killed. The Children of Fire NGO has been asked (by the governmental department!!!) to supply aid and food for the immigrants who have been kicked on the street. The volunteers couldn't go in tonight - it was to dangerous without a police escort, and they didn't get one.

It's getting scary.

TWENTY British Euro MPs are milking taxpayers' cash to bankroll wives and family | News | News of the World

OFFICIAL documents obtained by the News of the World reveal TWENTY British Euro MPs are milking taxpayers' cash to bankroll wives and family as highly-paid "assistants".

Tory toff North West MEP Sir Robert Atkins, pictured above, has admitted paying his pensioner wife Lady Dulcie Mary Atkins, also pictured above, over £30,000 a year as his secretary.

She squeezes this role in alongside her work as a busy member of Wyre Borough Council, and Garstang Town Council, as well as holding down a string of community and charitable commitments.

[Murdoch Alert]

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Privex

I did think of tipping off the FSA, but they can look after themselves, whereas anyone who operates out of that well known financial hub

Unit 13, Shakespeare Ind Est
Watford
WD24 5RR
United Kingdom

needs all the help they can get...

Good luck, guys....

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

Wild Polar Bear vs Dogs

The Polar Bear returned every night that week to play with the dogs.

As to our children and their inheritance of the world, they will have to deal with it on the terms its presents itself to them in their own times. At some level, I am happy that the shallow materialism that kept us so numb is ending. Yet, quite naturally, at this point they are succumbing to it as we did. But it's unsustainable, regardless of what the powerful and rich of the earth may think. Hubris is the most common element of power. When the game is up, the game is up.

Meanwhile, we stand here at the edge of a new age, aware of what comes next. An undetermined period of horror. Still, there is a certain liberation in that if we apply ourselves we can understand what those before us could never have hoped to realize -- Liberation not as a species or a select group, but as individuals who pass through this veil as anonymously as did billions before us.

Truth be known, I'd rather be here at the crest of the tectonic shift in humanity than in the numb age in which I was led to such illusion as has plagued Americans and the Western World for the past hundred years or so.

And the despots and the liars? I suspect we will have to suffer them for some time to come, but collapse has no favorites. It falls upon us all equally as a species. Somehow, in that there is sort of a cosmic justice. You may not like such a term as cosmic, I dunno. But it's the only term I can think of that alludes to the scale of change we are about to encounter as an insignificant smear of biology hurtling through the interstellar void.

Disillusionment is not everything, and it is the rightful inheritance of the privileged. And in looking at the Third World half the year as I do (and by no means the worst conditions of the Third World) I hopefully grasp that we are far, far beyond privileged. We are princes of the earth and rightfully have fallen, or soon will have. To have seen a specter is not everything (to quote Neal Cassady). And yes, there are skulls piled clear to heaven. But the purpose at hand, in as much as there ever was any purpose for you and me, is to savor realization, not mourn it.

yeah joe!

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower