Nestle

So Nestle, not content with trying to claim credit for using cow's milk as a laxative despite the fact that Indian medical texts have been recording that knowledge for a thousand years, is now trying to patent the extract of Nigella Sativa, otherwise know as the fennel flower.  This small plant has been used as a cure all remedy for a thousand years, treating everything from vomiting and fevers to skin diseases among the poorest people of the Middle East and Asia.  It has been widely available where Western produced pills and potions have not.

 

But now Nestlé is claiming to own it, and filing patent claims around the world to try and take control over the natural cure of the fennel flower and turn it into a costly private drug.

In a paper published last year, Nestlé scientists claimed to “discover” what much of the poorest of the third world have known for millennia: that nigella sativa extract could be used for “nutritional interventions in humans with food allergy”.

But instead of creating an artificial substitute, or fighting to make sure the remedy was widely available, Nestlé is attempting to create a nigella sativa monopoly and gain the ability to sue anyone using it without Nestlé’s permission. Nestlé has filed patent applications -- which are currently pending -- around the world.

Prior to Nestlé's outlandish patent claim, researchers in developing nations such as Egypt and Pakistan had already published studies on the same curative powers Nestlé is claiming as its own.

 

So not only is Nestle hijacking other peoples research, it is also trying to do the impossible.  The pharmaceutical companies while not do clinical trials on herbal and natural remedies because they cannot be patented and therefore cannot make the companies money.  So how come Nestle, a chocolate and cereal company, can patent a herbal remedy? This does not make sense until you look at Nestlé's bank budget.  It seems if a business has enough money they can do any thing they please.

 

And among companies Nestle has a long track record of not caring about ethics. After all, this is the corporation that poisoned its milk with melamine, purchases cocoa from plantations that use child slave labour, and launched a breast milk substitute campaign in the 1970s that contributed to the suffering and deaths of thousands of babies from poor communities.

But Nestlé is sensitive to public outcry, and that it's been beaten at the patent game before. The easiest way to put pressure on this company is to go to the website of consumer pressure group SumOfUs and sign their petition.  After that it's time to vote with your feet.  If a packet has the name Nestle on it, don't buy the product.  It is seriously annoying when you realise your favourite cereal, Cheerio, are a Nestle product (I'm speaking from experience here) but the only way we can hurt the Big Guys is if we kick them where it hurts - their wallets.  If the big corporations realise that every time they try to put profit before human rights and health their consumers are going to stop buying from them and their shareholders are going to get bad quarterly statements, then they will have to stop doing these violations.

 

The Big Companies may look big and scary but they rely on consumers to buy their stuff.  If we don't buy their stuff they go into administration and they then have to either change their practises so we go back to buying their stuff or they fold.

 

In the end, the power to make or break these big companies rests with us.  We can make them take responsibility for their actions and change the world for better.

Differences in Equality

I am going to take umbrage with Brendan O'Neill's article in the Big Issue Festive Edition out last week.

He dislikes the fact that it has been reported that researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have claimed that they have discovered that men's brains are built for perception and action while women's brains are more adept at reasoning and intuition.  He rounds out his argument saying that this is a "classic example of 'neurosexism'" - the use of neuroscience to propagate gender stereotypes.

Well excuse me but the last time I looked I, being a women, didn't have a penis and boys don't have wombs.  We are different, both physically and hormonally, so why is it wrong to suggest that we maybe different mentally?  Why is it wrong to suggest that we might have brains that are built differently?

As for it propagating gender stereotypes - I was under the impression that women were keep out of careers like politics and writing and the sciences because we were stereotypically less able to reason.  Therefore these researchers are suggesting the very opposite of stereotypes - they have said that "women's grey matter is more adept at reasoning and intuition".  As long as I understand the rules of language properly these researchers are saying women are better at reasoning than men.  So, if we take that science to the end of language, that would suggest that men should step out of jobs that require reasoning - like, say, running the country - and leave it to those who are better at reasoning i.e. women.

The other reason I dislike Brendan's article is because it smacks of hypercritical values in science - it's O.K. to use science to work out how an autistic's brain differs from the neuro-typical but it's not O.K. to use it to work out what the neuro-typical brain is shaped for men and women is normally.  So just how are the researchers meant to understand how the autistic brain differs in the first place?

Oh and enough thing that pocks a hole in Brendan's argument is that other researchers have use brain scanning to discover that the brain of an autistic women i.e. someone like me, is closer to the brain of a neuro-typical man in some areas, where as the brain of an autistic man is different from both the brain of a neuro-typical man and the brain of a neuro-typical women.

Conclusion - autism affects the brains of men and women differently!

They have also concluded that it is possible that there are more autistic women than first diagnosed and it is a certainty that the treatments and behavioural plans that help autistic men are highly unlikely to help an autistic woman.  Therefore more research is needed to discover what help autistic women the best.

This would certainly bare out my own experience because I have observed the autistic men I know to have very little understanding that their behaviour is sometimes unacceptable, where as I know that sometimes my behaviour is sometimes unacceptable, I just don't know what mask I need to put on to make my behaviour acceptable.

So if autism affects the brains of men and women differently, doesn't that suggest that there is an underlying difference in the first place.  However, just because we have different brains doesn't mean we aren't equal.

Why can't we be equal and different?  Why can't we celebrate that we have different talents and different strengths?  Why can't we use our different talents and strengths to help each other out?

Surely that is what equality is all about because if God wanted us to be all the same he would have made us as cans of beans!

Religion

With the run up to Christmas, known to Christians as advent, I've been thinking a lot about my religion and the fact that I don't believe everything in the Bible with just blind faith.

I know that many religious groups demand that you accept the Bible in totality, without question but I'm sorry that's just not possible because if you read the Bible from start to finish, it contradicts itself.  St Paul managed to contradict himself within one paragraph at one point.  Granted that was a bit about the rights of women and widows to remarry and St Paul always seems to go to pieces when ever someone mentions women.  Makes me wonder what he was afraid of.

So what do I believe?

I believe in the loving father, the Lord God Yahweh.  I believe in his son, my brother, Jesus Christ.  Before anyone starts phoning the men in white coats consider this - it says in several places that those who believe in God are sons and daughters of God.  Therefore, by the rules of language, Jesus, another son of God, is the brother of believers.

I believe that the soul is the immortal part of us, the part that goes on beyond the death of the body.  In short I believe the soul is the part that was created in God's own image, the energy that echoes the pure, wild energy that was there before the Big Bang and the creation of this universe.

I also believe that you don't have to be a Christian to go into Heaven.  I'm sorry but that is not the act of a loving father, that is the act of a fat old tyrant.

If God wanted us to be all the same he'd would have made us all black or all white or all sky blue pink with yellow dots.

That and it doesn't take a genius to work out that the finite cannot contain the infinite and the mortal cannot fully comprehended the immortal.  Think about it.  Could you bare to live through all the years from the rise of the Egyptian Empire to the rise of the British?  Humankind cannot do it and the only creatures we can image walking this earth through all those years are vampires.  Does that tell you something about how small our minds are.

So how can a human fully comprehend the fullness of God?  We can't.  So perhaps it's time we realised that when Christians say that 'God is this' and the Jews say 'God is that' and the Muslims say that 'Allah is this', we are like the three blind men all grasping different bits of the elephant.  The blind man who says that the elephant is like a rope is correct and the one who says the elephant is like a pillar is also correct and the ones who says that the elephant is like a fan is correct as well.  They are all right but they are all grabbing different parts of the elephant, which is why none of their descriptions match up.

Wouldn't you think the three blind men are stupid for going to war over the fact that they all describe the elephant differently?  Then how come we think it's alright to go to war over the different descriptions of God?

I believe that God is a loving father who doesn't care if each of his children calls him by a different name.  I believe that God doesn't care if you call him Father, Dad, Daddy, Dadda, Pappa, Pop or Abba (the Hebrew word for Daddy).  I also believe that he loves his children who don't know what to call him but spend their lives doing their best to make this world a better place when they leave it than when they arrived in it.  Because if you read the Bible that's all Jesus asked us to do - 'love one another as I have loved you'.

What is more I couldn't tell you where this belief comes from because it's not in the Bible.  All I can say is that I was attending a Bible study group that started on the whole 'Only Christians get into Heaven' reel and everything inside of me began screaming 'NO!'  Everything inside of me said that they were wrong.

What this force that tells me what I believe is, I don't know.  All I can say is that some where in either Isaiah or Jeremiah it says along the lines of:

"No more will they build God Schools.
No more will they tell each other
This is the Word of God or that is the Word of God.
For I will write my words upon their hearts
And they will listen to their hearts
And they will hear me."

Mandela

"I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul."

It is a sad fact that even the best and the brightest of us are going to die.  Yesterday we lost one of the best men of the modern age.

I will not say that Nelson Mandela was perfect for he was not. He was human like the rest of us. It has been said that it is a shame that he didn't manage his family as well as he did his country but there again the same charge could be levelled at Gandhi.  Unfortunately great works in the service of mankind take their toil and it is often the family who suffer.

That a side without him the world is a slightly darker place and we mourn a great statesman who's example of forgiveness saved the soul of a nation.  The end of apartheid could have resulted in the same blood and fury that has marred the modern history of Ireland.  It is a great relief to my soul that the land of my great grandparents is finally letting go of the hatred that has torn it's people apart.

South Africa could have gone the same way.  Lets face it, Nelson's people would have almost been justified if they had told the white people where to get off.  However, instead of taking his people down the road of vengeance and retribution, Nelson Mandela encouraged them to take the path of reconciliation.  Though the Residents that have followed him into office have quite lived up to his example, he laid a fountain that can't be removed from history.
Tributes have been pouring in from all corners of the globe today but I would say his greatest tribute is the peaceful South Africa that exists today.  That is what people will remember in a century's time.

"I am the master of my fate.
I am the captain of my soul."

E-mail Disaster

I was going to be doing a post about the latest campaign that I'm involved in, thanks to SumofUs but I had a very nasty shock when I tried to open my e-mail account so that I had all the information at my finger tips while I wrote.

The last time I opened my e-mail account I found that some one had hijacked it.  I had two alerts from friends who said that the last e-mail they received from me was not my normal content and they suspected that someone was playing silly buggers.  I also had a bomb load of 'Delivery Failure Notice's.  When I opened up the message that had failed to sent I didn't recognise it so I knew that someone had hijacked my account.

Since I had no idea what to do about it I simply signed out.  Having had a talk with a computer whizz friend, the other thing I was going to do today was change my password before starting on my blog.

Ha bloody ha!

I tried to sign in only to find that Hotmail had got wind of the hijacking and before I could deal with it myself (by changing the password) had locked my account out.  I now have to somehow verify that it is me trying to use my own e-mail account!

What is more the number that it had to send the verification code to was wrong and it wouldn't let me change it so I had to fill out a survey.  How many people could tell you the subject matter of the e-mails they sent yesterday?

Now I have to sit here and wait to see if I could remember enough to get my e-mail account back.  It could be as much as twenty four hours before I'll know and if I couldn't remember enough I'm looking at having to set up a new e-mail account.  Then I'm going to have all the fun and games of trying to remember all the people I'll need to contact to change my e-mail address.  That's assuming that I'll be able to open my current internet accounts with an invalid e-mail account so that I can change my listed e-mail.

However, I'm not really anger with Hotmail.  After all, they are only trying to do their job.

No the one I am right royally pissed off at is the little oik who hijacked my e-mail account in the first place.  Where do these people of doubtful heritage get off?  A Hotmail account is FREE!  Absolutely tossing free!  You don't need to hijack somebody else's account to avoid paying or anything.  So why'd you go and hijack somebody's else account when setting up your own account takes less than five minutes?  Hijacking my account probably took you longer, you dumb ass.

Do these people get off on the knowledge that they have just screwed up somebody's day? Do they enjoy sniggering at the thought of all of us panicking as we watch our contact list go down the pan?  Is this what they find funny?

Well if it is then I feel sorry for them.  They obviously have such pathetic little lives that the only joy they can have is screwing up those that have a better life than them.  Pity is the only possible response to such putrid uselessness.  They really must be totally ignorant if they cannot come up with something more productive with which to fill their time.  Granted, aspiring to a Darwin Award would be a more productive occupation for these pathetic pieces of pond scum but there you are.

For those of you who don't know, a Darwin Award is only awarded to people who do the human race a favour by removing themselves from the gene pool. I think I have just had the unfortunate moment of coming into contact with the actions of another candidate for said award.  I wonder if they would like me to explain how to make sure they receive said award?  After all if all they can do to have fun is mess up someone else's life then they are probably too ignorant to understand what I mean when I say 'removing themselves from the gene pool.

Bitter, I know but I'm the one who's just lost control over my own e-mail account.

A Beginning

I have to say that I have been thoroughly impressed by Pope Francis.

Since his election his attitudes and more importantly, his examples have given me the hope that the Catholic church is going to get the long needed reboot that its been waiting for.

O.K I'll admit that he's not budging on the Catholics stance on woman in the clergy or abortion.  Personally though, I agree that abortion has become too easy and that not enough thought is put into the fact that it is a baby that is killed.

Before someone else can say it, to those women who say "it's my body" I'd like to point out one thing - if your immunity system knew that the baby was there it would view the baby as an invading disease and kill it.  A baby is genetically different from both parents and therefore is a separate, living entity from the moment of conception.

However, in a change from his predecessors Pope Francis has said:

"it is also true that we have done little to adequately accompany women in very difficult situations,... especially when the life developing within them is the result of rape or a situation of extreme poverty".
"Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?"

That is more than many in the Vatican has given in the past.

However, what has impressed me more than anything has been his efforts to decentralize the Catholic church.  For too long the church has been this huge, distant figure of authority that nobody can relate to and therefore, don't respect.  Personally that is what has lead to the flood of apathy which is drowning the church in the so-called Christian West.  While the church is preaching one thing to the masses and yet is living securely behind it's high, rich walls people are going to drift away.

Pope Francis seems to be the greatest chance to change this destructive trend and I wish him great success in it.  If the church can reawaken it's original purpose i.e. 'those that have give to the have nots', then perhaps it can be the answer to the selfish agendas that the current crop of politicians seem to be set upon.  And even if it can't then I agree with Pope Francis on this:

"In his "apostolic exhortation", Pope Francis said he preferred a Church that was "bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security"."

The failure is not the one who did not succeed.  The failure is the one who didn't try in the first place.

Slamming the Youth

So it seems that the Government is now no longer content to blame immigrants, pensioners, disabled people and the unemployed for this countries problems.  Now they have to have a go at the youth of today.

A front cover of a Spectator September edition featured a sulky teenager being carried on the back of a speedy old gentleman.  Message = the youth of today are lazy yobs who rely on their parents to survive.

Excuse me?  The youth of today would like to have a job thank you very much, if the Government would make sure that there is one going.

Take for example the case of the health food shop Julian Graves.  Earlier this year it shut because nobody was willing to buy it.  So, sure, there are Internet alternatives but the Internet does not provide jobs on the shop floor.  Sure the warehouse and delivery jobs are still there but the shop floor ones are now gone so that's what?  A third of a business' potential jobs gone?  This was a perfect opportunity for the Government to make a economic and public relations coup.  If the Government had bought Julian Graves then those jobs would have stayed and the Government would have had a business, simple model of goods out money in, to help pay off the national debt, the debt that they helped cause.

The youth of today is being penalised at every turn.  More and more business are going solely Internet based so there are less jobs going.  With less jobs more and more people aren't buying so more and more companies, both high street and Internet, are shutting down, which means even more jobs being lost.

The Government says that it is plugging the gaps with benefits but it is cutting back on them as well so that's even less money to spend on keeping someone else in a job doing, making, selling the service that the people want.  Instead of trying to discover ways to make new jobs, the Government is trying to cut 'expenses' by selling off every public service it can think of. You only need to look at the train system of Britain to realise that this model of 'economic saving' doesn't work.  You just sent yourself up for a nasty collapse as the share holders demand the prices are pushed up so that their quarterly statements look good and then everybody starts using their cars instead because they can't afford public transport.  Come to think of it that can't help the environment either can it?  All those extra exhausts on the road.

A better model of 'economic saving' would be if all the MPs took a ten per cent pay cut and used that money to invest in a business like Julian Graves, a business that could then start exporting it's wears to places like America and Europe so that we could start paying of our nation debt.  Oh wait, a moment that would take common sense and common sense is just too common for the likes of the elites that sit in the Houses of Commons.

After all, why else should students now have to pay £9,000 for their tuition at University in a world were further education is becoming a must, where as fifteen (15) years ago they would have received it for free?  It is so that the little darlings of the upper crust rich don't have to mingle with us commoners because we just might corrupt their minds with the idea that every human being, from the lowest working class to the riches old money, has a right to a worthwhile job and a secure future in this world.  Now that we can't afford to go to University the rich are secure in their fastness while the rest of us slid into poverty.

That is why I applauded the youth of today, who using their technology know-how, have created websites, apps and software that they can then sell to the big companies such as Yahoo for a slice of the rich man's pie.

Well done to the Youth of Today, who keep finding ways around the road blocks the elites set up.  Now all you have to do is find the Holy Grail of science - a clean, renewable, non-polluting energy source - and we're away.  Then the old gentleman of Parliament can realise that the only thing he's been carrying has been his own prejudices.

Come on, Youth who's up for proving the elites wrong?

Nyumbani

It sounds like a type of sweet does it?  And with what it is doing it could well be the best sweet in the world.

Nyumbani exists between Nairobi and the Kenyan desert.  It is a village with a difference.  Built around a central football pitch it expands out in sections like a budding flower that is slowly opening it's petals.  Each cluster of four houses has a garden and each house of each cluster has its own water tank.  Complete with a farm and rows and rows of trees Nyumbani is full of children, hundreds of them running to and from the two schools where the only 'parent' age adults come to teach during the day before going home at night.  For that is what sets this village apart - there are children, there are 'grandparents' but there are no adults.  There is a missing generation in this place.

Nyumbani is an experiment.  Africa has been gutted by two modern plagues: the AIDS pandemic and the food crisis but the founders of Nyumbani think they have the solution to both ills - house the orphans of AIDS with grieving grandparents and teach them the mixture of modern and ancient farming techniques which allows them to grow enough, precisely, to feed them.

Joseph Lentunyoi, a sustainability manager says:
“This village is unique”, he says. “You see we are not diverting the children into a quite different life, like other orphanages, but are managing to maintain their culture.”

There are thousands of orphans in the surrounding area and those lucky enough to be taken care of usually grow up in school-like buildings in Nairobi, sleeping in long dormitories far from their villages. Re-integration to rural life, at 18, is almost impossible. Nyumbani has another vision, which Joseph explains:

“The children stay in touch with their villages, which are near. The kids they secure their ancestral land. When the child is an adult, independent, they can go back to the land they came from.”
There are other advantages, too. “We place them in a family set up, which is of course an African set up.” Each grandparent will take on 10 children, and they share a home together which is provided for them.

There is a great advantage to this set up - mental care.  These 'grandparents' have seen it all; war, disease, famine, there isn't one of them that hasn't come their way.  They have lost sons and daughters and felt the bewildering chaos of grief, experience that they can then use to help the traumatised children that come under their care.

Africa is one of the few societies were age is the ultimate badge of honour and respect.  If you have made it to being a grandparent you have seen the world and your knowledge is the knowledge of mountains.  While 'parents' teach education, it is to the 'grandparent' that the child turn to for wisdom.  By enshrining that at the centre of the 'families' of Nyumbani, the village founders have captured part of the soul of Africa.

Out of the stability of the village has come sustainability.  Some of the children that went back to their homelands at eighteen have now returned as teachers and the village has reached out hands to the surrounding villages, both feeding them and feeding from them.  In this way it has become the model, in an insecure continent, for food security.  The simplicity and generosity with this has been done is mind boggling.

For instant, the village is too big for a perimeter fence. So instead the outer plots were given away to surrounding villages, which could then feed themselves instead of stealing from Nyumbani and what is more, sell the surplus back to Nyumbani.  Now if someone tries to damage this community, it is the communities surrounding it that leap to it's defence.

 “They have become our fence, but also our friends”, one resident of Nyambani says. “Once you put up a fence, they are not your friends.”

Local knowledge is used too. “We have a gentleman who digs the wells here and he has been doing it for years”, says Joseph. “He knows how to find water just using a stick. This saves us money – we don’t have to hire guys from the ministry of water.”

There was a long drought in east Africa between 2007 and 2009, particularly in east Kenya. But the wells at Nyumbani, built using modern techniques which sink water slowly into the soil, never ran dry.  These shallow sink-wells have fertilized the soil and helped form a microclimate around the village, which is noticeably cooler and breezier than the area around it. Growing trees is a long term project, nourishing the soil and producing timber to sell, while vegetables and the farm will feed the village in the short term. The place is moving steadily towards its target: self-sustainability by 2018.

Another benefit that the trees bring is that, once there is enough of them to cool the atmosphere above the village, they will encourage the rain to fall again and when it does the trees will help hold it to the surface.  The man who planted trees would be proud of these people.

This village may have been started with aid but a huge lump of its success is down to the ideas with which is was founded, the gusto that the ordinary, 'little' people have worked on making them work and the fact that some of the people who founded the project are still here, making sure that it will be able to stand up on its own two feet before they leave.

Sister Mary Owens, a nun from Ireland, was here at the project’s conception. Such a completed vision, she says dryly, is rare, as  other charities often come in only to leave again before projects are able to stand up on their own.

“The World food programme, for example, is now having to pull back. They worked in 3 month targets, which is too short a time to get anything done. Practically, there needs to be a much more comprehensive approach to solving this, and that is a government task.”

But with such success, just why is the village so unique? Joseph says government ministers have been to see the village, but have no plans to replicate it. “They are very good at saying yes. But then nothing is done.”
The concept, though, he says, is very straightforward: act locally, and use the resources you have.
“It’s really quite simple, but people complicate it. You need to work with nature and not against nature. The moment we work against nature is the moment we are preparing to die.”
“At the moment I am thinking about buying fertiliser from Nairobi, which is too expensive, is not affordable, is not sustainable, and I am preparing to die. Why can’t I just make my own compost? It is friendly to the soil.”

The concept is certainly working here. An artificial village?  Yes, but aren't all villages man made when you stop and think about it?  The only creatures that come close to building permanent 'towns' akin to the ones humans build are ants and termites.  Doesn't that give you something to think about?  A test tube?  Certainly, but when a test tube is growing something this healthy, happy and undeniably sweet you just can't break it.  Not if you love your fellow human beings.

Murder and the Eton Scholarship Exam

Here's a brilliant one from the elites of our country.  To double check that any prospective scholarship candidate will fit right in with the sons of the country Eton recently had this question in it's entrance exam:

So to become the Prime Minister in the good old tradition of your forebears of Eton you have to be able to justify the murder of civilians by your armed services, when civil order breaks down because of your incompetence and acceptance of the quick buck over the long term good of your people.

Apparently the headmaster of Eton has claimed that "this was an intellectual exercise, based on Machiavelli’s The Prince, and was taken out of context."  Oh really?  I was under the impression that intellectual exercises where brain exercises used to prepare the mind to respond to situations.  The intellectual version of the combat drills you have to do when you are in the armed services.  So if this was an 'intellectual exercise' then it is obviously one designed to prepare the young men of Eton to defend the indefensible solely in the name of 'order' and the party's good.  In short to win at all costs.

It doesn't matter how many are hurt and killed in the process, as long as you win, or your party wins that is all that is important.

Then people wonder why perfectly decent young man get carried away defending genocide by poverty in these public speaking competitions, which are modeled on Parliament for the reason that the winners add another point to their chances of getting into that august body.  Those that are unable to defend their subject, be that nuclear power or abortion of the disabled, are taught that they have no right to hold political opinions.

The people being trained to be the future elite of our world are not rewarded for the humane, compassionate or even sensible answer.  They are rewarded for smashing apart the argument of the 'enemy'.  That's why we have politicians who are willing to argue on forever defending their point, even when it is blatantly obvious that their point of view is wrong.  That's how they have been conditioned to view success.  Success to the future politicians of Eton is measured in destroying your 'enemies' in any way possible and enacting any policy your party tells you to, no matter how many people are hurt.

What is more it is a self perpetuating circle.  The masters of Eton were Eton boy's themselves and will do their best to pass on their grand 'vision' of Eton tradition to the next generation.

This wasn't a homework question - it was a question in the scholarship examination.  The examination sat by the young hopefuls who want, or their parents want, to join the ranks of the privileged and powerful by merit of brains rather than old family money.  Most of the fee-taking schools have this system in place as they have to keep up the appearance of public conscience so they can hang on to their tax exempt charity status (yes, Eton college is actually a charity).  However, by including questions like the one above, it makes sure that the middle class swots it takes on are mentally mouldable enough that they can be fashioned into little replicas of their High Born class mates.

If you want to be part of the ruling elite you have to share the elites values and one of those values is holding on to power at any cost.  That's telling, isn't it?

Also one other thing, Machiavelli's 'The Prince' is a satire, not an instruction manual.  Do any of those Eton 'boys' understand what a political satire is?

In Service

O.K. call me behind the times but I was recently clearing out the magazine draw and I came across a Big Issue that contains something that I would like to take issue with (if you will pardon the pun).

The thing that bugged me was Noel Hoey's letter in the September 2-8 issue of the Big Issue.  There again I correct myself, it wasn't the whole of the letter, just the last to paragraphs that I objected to.

The main body of the letter, which tackled the issues of the 'single point of view' that is becoming mainstream in our newscasts (are we surprised when most of them are owned by one person) and the fact that forty per cent (40%) of the newspapers output is used up by fashion addicts and royal gossip.

Now I am not adverse to knowing that Will and Kate's little un made it into the world healthy, good on both Mother and child as far as I'm concerned, but I don't need an update about it every single week.  And as for the fashion columns, what planet are they on?  People are having to decide between heating and eating, we don't have the money for those fads.

I also heartily agreed with Noel Hoey's summary of the US and UK politicians who sit there in judgement of the 'Arab Spring':

"without seeking to impart a big slice of the fact - that a large part of the blame for the Middle East turmoil lies squarely at the doors of our UK and Us politicians, who put in place and funded the dictators in Iran, Iraq and Egypt and turned a blind eye to their atrocities."

The other thing that they have tried their best to sweep under the rug of history is the fact that the UK is directly responsible for the shape of the modern Middle East.  The British Empire and Common Wealth stuck it's big nose into the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, sending troops to Egypt and Turkey and bringing about the fall of one of the longest lasting Empires of history.  The UK then had a direct hand in divided up the land of the Ottoman Empire and setting out the boundary lines of the modern countries.

We did it in Africa and we did it in the Middle East and guess what?  It hasn't brought lasting peace in either place.

So for the most part I thoroughly agree with Noel's view of the world.  However, I dislike his comments about:

"we feel browbeaten if we dare to question the hypocrisy of the wars we are engaged in and the fact that every returning soldier must be named a hero, fearing we might be hospitalised if we dare question the moral right of the jingoistic charity Help for Heroes, which demands we all pay homage to injured or fallen soldiers, ignoring the countless dead and injured victims left behind in these war torn countries."

For one thing, just about every soldier in Her Majesties Armed Forces did not want to go to war in either Afghanistan or Iraq, especially Iraq.  However, they were told that they either went or were dishonourably discharged.  If you are dishonourably discharged from the Armed Services your chance of getting a job any where else are slim to nothing, in the most part nothing.  So getting dishonourably discharged is passing a sentence of poverty and destitution on your family.  When you are facing that you have to obey orders because how are you going to explain to your children that you have just destroyed their chances of growing up normally?

Or, if they want to, going into work for the police force because if you have a parent who has been dishonourably discharged from the Armed Services you can't join the police force.  It is illegal to join the police force if one of your parents has a criminal record and a dishonourable discharge counts as a criminal record in the eyes of the police.

For another, Help for Heroes only exists because if it didn't then those soldiers who have come home leaving half of themselves on the sand of the desert would have no help at all.  After all there is one young man who had his leg blown off by a landmine and his local Council refused to give him a blue badge for disabled parking because "his condition might improve".  Oh really?  Just how, exactly is 'his condition' going to improve, may I ask?

Also, if Noel Hoey had read 'It's All About Treo' by Dave Heyhoe, he would understand that, particularly in Afghanistan, the Armed Forces were not just removing landmines from areas of military activity.  They were also removing them from civilian areas to try and protect those civilians from the Taliban.

So question the hypocrisy of the politics that has embroiled our country in these illegal wars by all means, but leave the men and women who are being blown up on the front line out of it; at least until you've listen to 'Letters Home from the Garden of Stone', sung by Everlast, written by an unnamed soldier in his last letter home to his family before his death.

Unnatural

What do you see in the mirror?

According to the What I See project, a lot more and a lot less than a twenty seven year old with not quite brushed hair and a blood shot eye from doing too much computer work all in one go.

The self style 'online platform for women's voices' has spent months asking the above question of women around the world and they have had responses that range from the affirmative 'I see me' to the hurting 'I see flaws that need covering up' to the one that sums up the entire problem 'I see a society obsessed with appearances.

Coupled with the Dove 'Real Beauty Sketches' and The Daily Mail 'silhouette test' they underline just how many women have been indoctrinated from birth to find flaws with the way we look.  Women are not allowed to be content with how we look.  We are too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too young, too old.

This can be seen every time we walk down the 'beauty produce' aisle in the supermarkets.  Compare the number of beauty produces on sale for women and the number on sale for men.  Without getting out a tape measure and measuring it I'm pretty sure that four fifths of the shelf space is for women and only a fifth for men.

Women are not allowed to believe that we can be naturally beautiful.  We must have a beauty routine, we must have thing we buy and use to make ourselves look better.

In short the female body is an unnatural thing that must be washed, powered, painted, scented, coloured and splashed to be acceptable.  A whole industry has grown up around this obsession that women cannot be proud of who and what they are.

Being passive and modest are the tradition female attributes and part of that is the belief that you must be continually striving to improve yourself to be acceptable.  What is more while you try and reach the bar of what society believes you must do to make yourself acceptable to it you will be accused of crimes as varied as supporting feminism ("If women have such bad judgement, why should we let them become board directors?") and existing in the first place. (See the comments from the Mail readership on the response page to the silhouette test on Mail Online.)

And yet if you try and break the model and say 'I am a women who is comfortable with her beauty and I don't need all that stuff' you will receive a torrent of abuse for being , among other things, vain, selfish and not feminine.  Is it me or can we not seem to win either way?

If we feed into society's demands that we aren't comfortable with ourselves we are abused for having poor judgement but if we take the stand and say that we are comfortable with ourselves and don't need all that crap we are slayed for being 'unfeminine'.

It seems that we have been fed this idea that only 'women who aren't like women' or 'women who don't like women' succeed.  In other words, the only women who is comfortable with her appearance and is therefore not distracted from her chosen path in life by it, is a ball breaker who is an unnatural woman.

Why can't we be women who are comfortable in our own skin and feminine?  After all, men can be comfortable in their own skin and be considered masculine.

I'd say it's about time we stopped listening to all those voices that say that we aren't 'natural' and start supporting each other to enjoy who and what we are exactly as we are.  And to Hell with the commercials!

Sluts

That's the word that has been doing the rounds in the media again this year, in connection to Milney Cyrus.

I don't like the term.  It has a very bad meaning.  I'm sorry but it does.  If a girl is deemed a slut then all she cares about is sex, sex and more sex.  It's a case of you don't even have to have the right moves, if your males she'll spread her legs.

Quite frankly, it's disgusting, the meaning of that word that is.

It seems that any woman who is open about the fact that she is a sexual creature, that she has needs for physical contact, that she enjoys or talks about or simulates or even 'invites' sex is a slut who wouldn't say no, or if she does then it's only a joke.  How you 'invite' sex depends on which misogynist you are talking to but is not limited to your clothes, your make-up, whether you are drunk or if you are saying no.  I had an experience in High School where the more I said no the more they put their hands where they weren't wanted.  Considering I wore dress that reached at least my knees in an effort to stop that sort of thing you would think that I would not be 'slut' material but apparently if you say no then you are a slut who's giving the come on.  Thankfully I have developed a good set of lungs over the years and when the enraged shrieks started drawing attention to the boys loos where they had dragged me they decided to leave off.

And that's the major problem.  We were meant to have a sexual liberation when we went through the sixties and seventies but I'm sorry, we are still stuck in the same old cycle where boys are encouraged by various medias to think of girls as 'only good for just one thing' and any woman who speaks up against this is shouted down as being 'unable to take a joke'.

Woman should be able to be open about the fact that we are sexually alive and active creatures but any woman who does speak out about the fact that she's had more than one sexual partner risks being judged as 'demeaning sex itself' rather than a real live human being.

Then people wonder why hordes of young girls go crazy over boy bands.  Most are too young for the mad wanting to be labelled 'lust', its the safety of a boy band crush.  By fixating on someone securely unobtainable you get to practise all the wildness of desire without making too many mistakes, embarrassing yourself too badly or hurting anyone too much.

What does it say about me that when I caught up with my peer group my crushes were always on the older actors?  Maybe that I'm drawn to maturity more than most.

But anyway, the question remains of why do we keep pretending that 'sexualisation' is something forced on girls from the outside?  Yes, I agree that twelve years old shouldn't go out wearing skirts so short they are non-existent but when you get to eighteen talking about desire and sex and relationships should be considered normal and natural.

It's a disservice to both genders that girls are still being taught that boys 'only want one thing and they mustn't give it'.  Sex stops being a collaborative pleasure and becomes a thing of take and very little give because while girls are being taught that the only 'consent' they are allowed is the ability to say no, boys are being taught that 'affection equals sex'.

Both my relationships suffered and ultimately broke down because of the 'affection = sex' syndrome.  I'm sorry but there is a lot more to a relationship than how often you are in bed.  Every kiss and touch and cuddle does not need to end with his hands in your pants and your hands in his.

Affection is the little things, like hugging you while you are washing up, giving him a kiss while his working on the computer, sitting with your sides touching when you are having a read in the evening.  This affection!  Yes affection is part of sex but sex is not the whole of affection.

This is where we are going wrong, we are teaching about sex and contraception in school (so again, a girl can say 'no') but we are not teaching about affection and we are certainly not teaching about how to build long lasting relationships.

As far as I can see, while this one sided education goes on, women who are open about their sexual desires are going to continue to be called 'sluts' and girls who say 'no' are going to continue being ignored.

Mental Health

Some of you may recall the Sun's drooling headline '1,200 killed by mental patients' last week.  The Sun claims that it isn't really trying to stigmatise people with mental heal issues but rather draw attention to the number of people who have been let down by the poor mental health provision of this country.

Well, if that was true then they would point out that there has, according to the most recently available figures, been "a fall in homicide by people with mental illness, including people with psychosis".  They would also lead, as the Eastern Daily Press did, with a headline about the number of vulnerable people who have committed suicide while supposedly receiving support from the mental health profession.

Across the global north, one in four people will experience mental health problems in their lifetimes.  Most make a full recovery, some of us need on going care.  However a huge number of us struggle on without help, mostly because we fear what we will get if we speak out considering the 'Mental Patient' and 'Psycho Ward' Halloween costumes on sale this year.  That's just brilliant Tesco and Asda, just encourage the cruel stereotypes 'cause that's exactly just what we don't need.

Then people wonder why places like the Winterbourne View care home and Rycroft go on for years without anything being done about them.  It's because people with mental disabilities and mental health problems have been depicted as animalist, sub-human, violent monsters for years.  That's why the Government has been able to leave the mental care system so beggarly short of funds.  It's easy to syphon money away from the benefits of mentally ill 'animals' and give it to 'real people'.

I can well believe that people with severe and on going mental health problems are ten times more likely to be the victims of violent crime than they are to perpetrate it.  I should know I've been there.  I've been to the bottom of that deep, dark pit called depression and far from knifing someone else, all I wanted to do was curl up in a corner some where and just die.

Depression like that leaves it's marks but I did not have any help, either during my mental breakdown or for ten years afterwards until I was offered mental support while I was nursing my Mother during the treatment for her diagnosed terminal cancer.

This is why people with mental illnesses won't speak out - if we do, half the time we are ignored and the other half the time we might get help but only if it's coupled to people looking at us as if we are a threat to society.

One last thing, By law anyone who has been sectioned due to mental health problems has no human rights.  So all those nursing staff that beat them up can be done for cruelty and a breach of the Hippocratic Oath but not for a breach of human rights because the patients have none.

Shame

I remember noticing a poor kid at school.  She was spotty, had greasy hair and her clothes were about a decade behind the fashion.  The only time she ever updated her equipment was when it literally fell apart on her.  I should know, the only time I saw her was when I looked in the mirror in the girl's loos.

Yeah, that spotty, greasy geek was me.  The joys of growing up being a benefits kid.  No matter what you do when you are a benefits kid your differences stand out.  Even then being on benefits came with a heavy does of shame, a thing that seems to be increasing as more and more benefits are reduced or cut all together.

It seems the current Government is good at shame.  Stay at home Mothers who bring their children up themselves instead of leaving up to a child minder are stigmatized, single Mothers even more so.  Disable people only have fifteen minutes visits from their carers, elderly people have to choose between staying warm or having something to eat.

Paul Maynard (Conservative MP) is quoted as saying last week that emergency food parcels shouldn't be given out because people might become reliant on them, stating:

"I value responsibility.  I do not believe that immediate food relief should be the role of the Government."

In other words, "people who are struggling to stay out of debt because they were made redundant in the job cuts we caused should be left to starve because helping them might send the wrong 'message'."

As JK Rowling wrote in 2010,

"Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say 'it's not the money, it's the message'.  When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans and your child is hungry, it is the money."

Yeah, she is now one of the riches people in the UK (though not as rich as she once was, she dropped out of Forbes' billionaires list because she pays her taxes and has given away an estimated $160m to charity) but JK Rowling once was an immigrant, a single mother and a benefit claimant.  She knows how tough it can be when you are living on the bread line.

There isn't anything noble about going hungry.  There isn't anything uplifting in having to choice between feeding yourself or feeding your children.  And there certainly isn't anything character building in being abused at school because you're "the brat of a thief who takes the public's money and hides it by calling it benefits" as one of my younger sister's classmates said when they were in Year Four.

This seems to be genuinely surprising to the current Government and though people like to try to forget this, the previous Government as well (believe me I should know, I was there, remember?).

It seems that governments believe that poverty is caused by personal failing and not the failing of the Government to provide us with stable, sustainable jobs and the using benefits is the result of a lack of personal responsibility rather than doing what you need to make ends meet, just.

Responsibility?  Does the Government actually know what that word means because right now we seem to be using different dictionaries.  It lets children get poorer, to the point that one in five children are now considered to be in poverty and blames "workless" parents for this 'crime'.  Well if you'd provide us with jobs that we could do then we'd darn well do them!

It's about time that made/produced/grown in Britain actually had some pride to go with that label.  Stop taxing every single company that tries it's best to keep it's work force in Britain to its knees, give them a tax break to encourage them to take on even more British workers and then tax the ones that send their work force over seas.  We could still have industry is the Government wasn't so keen on strangling it with taxes.

Poverty causes shame, it's just it's coming down on the wrong side of the scales right now.

Why Do People Make Predictions of Doom?

In answer to the question asked on the BBC News website today I'd like to say this.  It is because the world is such a mess that it looks like it's going to end in seventeen years or so.

Given that there are more pollutants in the air than at any time previous in mankind's history, we are still making bombs while children in Britain starve to death, cancer is on the rise, there are drought threats in our temperate climate zones and the Western World still buys the blood diamonds and gold of Africa, then I'd say that there is plenty of reasons to say that the human race is going to hell in a handcart.

Perhaps the people who make these predicts hope that if they say that if mankind doesn't buck up it's act in seventeen years time then we are going to start suffering then the human race might just take notice of what it is doing and buck up its act.

However, I don't think that it will.  If you read the book of Jeremiah then you will know that people have been making these predictions since the time of Babylon.  Nobody listened to them then and nobody is going to listen to them now.  Why?  Because people don't care.  They want to carry on their lives, not bothering to change, taking what they want when they want it.  It's a case of 'today's alright and we'll deal with tomorrow when it comes'.

Well what if tomorrow comes and you can't deal because the time to deal was today and today has already become yesterday?

It is why I signed up to receive e-mails from SumOfUs .  It takes me, what, five minutes max to sign an online petition to tell Bayer to accept the pesticide ban from the EU and stop trying to sue the EU for 'loss of profits'.  SumOfUs has already done the hard work, they have tracked down the lawsuits and set up the petition to tell the greedy where to get off, all I have to do is put my name on the line and then do my best not to buy stuff from Bayer and other companies like it.

Think about, five minutes out of your day and then being more conscientious of where you buy your stuff.  Doesn't take much does it but it could just change the world.

Cause its not the big things that change the world, not really.  It's not the big predictions of doom that make people sit up and take notice.  It is the little things.  Things like, instead of having a large coffee at the Café, you settle for the medium and use the spare change to buy a Big Issue.

And if you don't believe me about how the little things change the world, think about how much the world changed when one black man walked out of a jail cell in South Africa and decided to forgive those that put him there?

To Cull or Not to Cull

So the government has decided to go ahead with the badger cull.

Alright, I can see why some people might not like these creatures, especially the urban variety that is highly destructive of peoples gardens and other such property.  I, myself, could see the point if they said that, as we now have about 290,000 badgers running loose in the UK and they are now being forced out of the countryside and into the cities were they are a pest, they were going to trap and cull the urban badger.  If nothing else it is probably a mercy on the badgers as all animal surveys that study the urban populations say that the urban variety suffer from more diseases than their country cousins due to their association with humans.  What does that say about humans.

But no, apparently they are going to cull them out in the countryside because they spread TB.  At least that is what the head government vet said so that is what everybody is expected to believe.  Rather like the report of weapons of mass non-existence, I mean destruction, out in Iraq.

And that's rather the point as to why the badger has become such a point of passionate protest for so many people.  There is no correlation between badger population and bovine TB, despite what some farmers think.  Scotland has a widespread badger population and is virtually TB free.  Northern Ireland has numerous badgers but no TB cases in their cattle. Why is this?  Because Scotland and Ireland still have yearly TB vaccines for their cattle, whereas in Britain the cattle have a yearly TB test and if that flags up positive then the cow is destroyed.  In short Scotland and Ireland still run by the maxim 'prevention is better than cure' and it shows.

When people protest against the badger cull, they are not so much protesting against the culling of badgers as protesting against the ignorant mind set that is behind it.  If the government had used the argument that the urban badger was a danger to children and pets and therefore had to go then fair enough.  Badgers aren't meant to live in a city anyway .  But it is because the government tries to fob it off with a phony excuse that people get mad.  We are not stupid and we object to being treated like it.

The only thing is if badgers must be culled because they spread TB to cattle, when are cattle going to be culled because they spread TB to humans?

Abortion

Does that word make you uncomfortable?

It should do, especially in the light of something I recently discovered.

After 1991 the legal upper limit for 'social' abortions (i.e. abortion instead of contraception) was lower to 24 weeks of pregnancy.  However, abortion on the grounds of disability became allowable up to birth.  Before this all abortions had to be done before 28 weeks.

Apparently many people are aware of this provision but I wonder if they realise that the actual wording of the bill is not 'disabled' but rather 'seriously handicapped' and what some medical practitioners have take this to mean.

Some medical practitioners have decided that 'seriously handicapped' includes conditions such as a cleft palate or a club foot.  While both these conditions are unsightly, they are so easily corrected by cosmetic surgery after birth that it's almost routine so nobody in their right mind should consider the children born with these conditions 'seriously handicapped'.

Considering that the UK has signed up to all the laws that protect minority groups (that includes the disabled) from unjust discrimination and forbid the unfavourable treatment of one person by another due to disability, then why are we allowing this anomalous denial of the equality of disabled people to continue.  This law clearly states that a disabled baby is less worthy of life than a non-disabled baby.

While members of all three main parties from the House of Commons and the House of Law formed a Parliamentary Inquiry earlier this year to review the law and how it is put into practise, there still needs to be a public response to this law.  Only then will the lives of unborn disabled people be protected.

One way of responding is to visit www.abortionanddisability.org

Another is to simple talk about it.  Talk to your family, talk to your friends, talk to social clubs.  One of the major lacks in our society that leads to babies being aborted on grounds of disability is the lack of support for Mothers' with disabled new-borns.  Being the mother of a new born baby is stressful and exhausting in the best of circumstances.  Being the mother of a new born who's disability leads to strangers turning away in pity is heart breaking.  One of the joys of motherhood is people coming over to coo at the baby.  Now imagine that being taken away because people don't want to look at a baby with a cleft palate.

There needs to be a mental shift in society towards people with disabilities.  We need to start looking at people in wheelchairs, talking to those with deformities and scarring, exploring the minds of those with mental difficulties to find their talent, their gift that means they can give back to society.

Because it occurred to me there other day when I watched the film 'Warm Bodies' - what fantasy creature most reflects the popular perception of autistics?  Well let's see - can't co-ordinate properly, can't communicate properly, have very little empathy with those they hurt and have been referred to as an "epidemic".  I do believe that's a zombie.

Well in 'Warm Bodies' they save the world by teaching the zombies how to interact and connect again and the metaphor still holds true, autistics can be taught how to connect and interact and relate to people.  It just takes a lot of time and effort on the part of so-called normal people when we're a little slow to catch on to what you're trying to teach us.  Time and effort that people won't be willing to give while the attitude that autistics should be "euthanized" (to quote that truly offensive letter sent to the mother of an autistic boy in Ontario) is still present in our society.

The only way to get rid of that sort of ignorance is to start breaking the taboo that still surrounds disability and the easiest way to do that is to talk about it.

Big Companies or Governments - Who's Running the Show?

On a cold October last year a group of twenty one people dashed across the grounds of an EDF owned gas-fired power station, scaled two of the chimneys and forced the company to turn the station off.  What for?  In protest that, after intense lobbying from big energy companies like EDF, the UK government now plans to build forty new gas-fired power stations.  According to their own committee on climate change, this would destroy our climate change targets and the rising price of gas would add around £600 to the average household's bills by 2020.   This 'Dash of Gas' would push millions into fuel poverty but do the big companies care about this?

Well EDF certainly don't seem to.  In response to the protest they planned to sue the protestors £5 million for 'significant knock-on costs by delaying its buildings work'.  I do believe that translates as 'they caused us a loss of profits'.  Thankfully the internet and social media resulted in a petition over 64,000 signatures long condemning EDF's actions, which resulted in EDF dropping their ridiculous law suit, which to my mind was nothing more than legal bullying.

However, EDF are not the only company who engage in this sort of behaviour.

Bayer, the company that manufactures the pesticide that resulted in the death of 35 million bees on a single farm in California, is now in the process of trying to sue the EU for loss of profits. The reason?  The greater majority of EU countries banned the use and production of said pesticide within their boarders.

So, in answer to my question of is it the big companies or the governments who run our world, I conclude that it is the governments but only when the big companies let them.

The only thing that gives me hope is that people power still counts for something.  A petition made EDF back off and there is a petition in the making on line to tell Bayer to do the same.  If you are interested then check out the website of pressure group Some of Us.  If they are not running the petition themselves then they have the links to find it.

But for one final sting from Bayer - Bayer is the only company that produce a treatment (Advocate) for lungworm in dogs so the only way to boycott their produce is to run the risk of your pet dying a hideous and agonizing death.  And here's me thinking that monopolies are illegal.

Virunga: Africa's Oldest, Most Beautiful... Oil Field?

Virunga.  It is actually Africa's oldest and most beautiful National Park.  If you were looking for the National Park that started the drive in Africa to preserve at least some of it's natural history then this is it.

It covers a large chunk of the rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo and is home to quarter of the remaining population of mountain gorillas.  The land of 'King Solomon's Mines', it is the most diverse national park in Africa, thanks to its long history.  If Africa has managed to keep part of its land untouched by the ravages of mankind's industrial occupation of the land then this is the place.

However, this long and glorious history may soon be destroyed.  The UK oil company Soco is planning to drill within the borders of the park for oil, hence the title of my blog.

Soco claims that it will provide a boast to the local economy and will do minimal damage to the environment.  However, anyone who does a little research into even ultra-modern drill techniques will know that the sites of the drilling will be striped of trees, the water quality in the surrounding area will decrease and the noise pollution alone will drive wildlife from the area, assuming that it can make its way across the roads that will be driven into the heart of the forest.

There are also concerns that it will do quite the opposite for the local economy and population as several thousand people rely on the park for their food (they are allowed controlled gathering within its borders) and many more rely on the lake it contains for their water.  The lake that will be one of the first points of contamination if the pollution makes it into the water supply.

The oil field will also encourage poaching as it will make what is under the ground more valuable than the wildlife on top of it.  Time and experience has show that the best way to prevent poaching is to provide jobs for the local people guarding the creatures and acting as guides for eco-tourists.  As Congo's civil unrest finally begins to calm down, the best way to reunite the people is to give them something they can be passionate about apart from money because money all to often goes back to be the realm of the haves and haves not, which restarts the violence.  The wildlife and the beauty of the land that they have been given to guard is, to my mind, the best receiver for that passion as it can give something for those that were either side of the divide of the unrest something that they can talk about with each other without risk of blame and anger entering the conversation.

There is also the fact that the scientists who study the global weather patterns have noticed that there is a direct correlation between the destruction by logging of the Congo rainforest and the increase in the frequency and violence of the storms that are racking Europe and the East Coast of America.  I'm sure the oil below Virunga will provide the board members and share holders of Soco with some very nice quarterly statements but how much worth will they be when the hurricanes blow your house down on top of you?  Or when the American government sues you for damages to the Eastern Sea Board?

Then there's the threat of Ebola to consider.  Scientists still have no idea where this hideous disease comes from or how it spreads.  All that is know about it is that every now and then someone stumbles out of the depths of the jungle vomiting up their stomach and spreading it to every one that comes into contact with them.  So I would say that carving a road into the heart of the rainforest and setting up an industrial site with a large population is the height of folly, unless you don't care about being remembered as the person who gave the green light to the project that unleashed something worse than the bubonic plague.

Finally, if Soco is having to go so far abroad to find a new source of oil, coupled with the drive to introduce Fracking to England's green and pleasant land, does that not give the impression that the current oil fields are all running dry?  If that is so then surely, instead of scrambling around destroying the last few pristine places of the world, it's time to start really researching alternatives to oil and gas.  Or is mankind going to continue to push aside the problems, saying 'let our children deal with the problems we could have solved'?  What happened to Mankind the Great Explorer and Problem Solver?

If you agree that letting Soco destroy somebody else's back yard is a crime then the WWF is running a partition online.  Signing up takes less than two minutes (I should know, I've done it).

The Lone Ranger

Just been to see the film of the above title and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I will agree that it is most definitely worthy of it's 12a rating due to some of the details of the story.  For me the most upsetting scene in the film was the Native Americans charge against the cavalry position that is armed with a couple of the early versions of a machine gun.  The words 'no chance and no hope' come to mind.  For me it brought home the hopelessness of the American peoples efforts to defend their homeland against the invasion of white man.

I also thought Armie Hammer played the part of John Reid aka The Lone Ranger very well, as the character moves from a newly qualified lawyer who trusts absolutely in the justice of white man's law to a man who has realised that white man's law too often defends those who have money and no conscience.  I wonder how many people who watch that movie know that 'justice' is based on the idea that the law guarantees that the poor man has a come back against the rich man when the rich man kicks him.  Think on that and then go away and read modern social history, particularly the bit about the poor farmers and natives in Brazil who are being walked all over by the rich landowners and logging companies.  Makes me start wishing that there was a couple of real life Lone Rangers out there willing to walk on the wrong side of the rich man's law to make sure the poor man has a come back.

Johnny Depp as Tonto was, in my opinion, a very good choice.  Other than the part where he uses a ladder to step between two speeding trains, I did not think that the character was a rehash of Captain Jack Sparrow.  The way I would describe it is that Captain Jack is over the top, laugh out loud comically crazy, where as Tonto is very serious with his craziness.  In fact after a while I found myself thinking 'is it that Tonto is crazy or is it that he is sane and it is the rest of the world who is mad?'  "It is difficult."

Helen Bonner Carter was great as the Madam of the local brothel who has her own grudge against the outlaw who kills John Reid's brother.  That character is a very good contrast between the over the top scarlet woman appearance and a very down to earth speech when she opens her mouth.  She is in many ways the character that shows the old maxim of 'don't judge a book by it's cover' because she may run a house of sin but when the end game comes she knows her right from wrong and which side of the rich man/poor man divide she wants to be on.

All in all a film well worth the watching.

Fracking - The Hidden Danger

I know that there has been a lot said about fracking in resent weeks as to the pros and cons of this highly controversial process of breaking rock to get at the oil contained there in and I'd like to point out two things to those that support the industry.

One it is not 'new' technology, both America and Russia have been using it for year, hence why scientists know that the pollutants from this process end up in the local water system, killing marine life and making the water unsuitable to drink.

Two, if it was just plain water that was pressurised to break the rocks a lot more people would be happy with the idea of using fracking.  It is because a bundle of highly toxic, carcinogenic chemicals are added to the water that so many people are against using this technology.

Plain water is more than powerful enough to break rock.  If any body is interested then they should watch the two episodes of 'What Happened Next?' broadcast on Quest last night.  In one of those episodes there is the footage of a jet of water erupting out of a drain and lifting the back of the large car parked above it two metres into the air.  And that was just water pushing back out of the drains after a higher than average rain fall.  Think what man could do with just plain water.

Further more there is a danger in the location that the oil companies want to drill in the South East of England.

As reported by the BBC series 'Coast' there is a battle ship grounded in the Thames.  She ran aground sailing out to the battlefields of Europe during the Second World War, stuffed to the gun rails with armaments.  In that running aground she cracked her hull in half, rather like the Titanic in her death throws, and has sat there ever since.  The Army run regular patrols to gather up the explosives washed out of her by the tide and control explode them.  However they cannot risk sending in divers to clear her out because if they disturb her balance on the river bed and she rolls all the explosives could go off all at once.  They have calculated that if that happens it will cause a level five earthquake centred on the Thames valley.

So if a minor earthquake caused by fracking (they know it has happened before) rolls that ship over and she explodes the force of it is going to rip right up the river to London.  Now imagine what could happen if the tide is in when she blows.  I imagine all the other countries around the North Sea are going to be rather put out with us when the tsunamis start bouncing of their coasts.  Come to think of it I imagine that at least one of those killing waves will take a visit in London.

I wonder what will be left of the Houses of Parliament when it's done.

Girls and Boys - The Differences

Besides the obvious ones that I'm sure I don't have to go into, a new study has shown that autism affects the male and female brain in different ways.  See BBC News.

This is not really a revelation to me.  Having attended a support group for Autistics in the past, I not only observed that there were a far greater number of boys affected with this condition but also that they seemed to be affected in a different way.  I also gave up going in the end because none of the advice I was given helped me and none of the advice my Mother was given helped her in dealing with me.  One piece of advice was outright harmful.

I will admit now to not being properly certificated for autism.  This is directly due to advice my Mother received at that support group.  She was told that even if she some how convinced the necessary authorities that my diagnosis of autism was correct, then by the time they issued the certificate I would be out of school and the certificate would be as good as useless and therefore not worth the distress that I would go through to get it.

We have since then found out that such advice was wrong beyond all belief but since I am now nearly fifteen years older and I have learnt how to 'mask' many of my symptoms receiving the certificate is going to be nearly doubly harder than before.

This 'masking' is apparently a common response to living with autism in girls and means that less of us are diagnosis and sometimes even leads to stigmatising.  What is more the majority of these 'masking' techniques are used to cover up when we feel stressed out by situations and hide the resulting 'brain storms' that rip through our heads.  (I'm not just being metaphoric here, when we are stressed out it literally feelings as if an electric storm is ripping through our brains and we can't think around it.)  The study has said that girls with autism are more likely to go on to develop anxiety, eating disorders and depression.

If that was a check list then yep I've had all three of those at some point in my life, the worse one being suicidally depressed after leaving school.  The only reason I'm here now to write this is because my family loved me so much that I didn't want to hurt them by leaving a mess for them to clean up in the morning.  Strange the things that make us keep on living.

Thanks to the study, the doctors now want to study girls with autism more so that we can have the proper support and help to get by in this world.  I just hope they are careful about how they word 'help and support' as Mark Neary points out in his article '10 jargon phrases used for my autistic son'.  I know his son is a boy (obviously) and we are talking about autistic girls but the principle is the same.

This is my favourite of his list:

"4. If I shout or swear, I'm angry about something. If Steven shouts or swears, it is challenging behaviour and new behaviour management plans need to be drawn up."

I also really liked:

"6. I have friends. Steven has a circle of support and influence."

Just goes to show how many fences are drawn up between us (autistics) and you (normal) people in the minds of the so called support structure.

Why am I less entitled to friends than a normal person?

Russian Gay Laws - Hitler Would Be Proud

A friend of mine went to University to study history because he was advised that, since his ambition was to become a politician, history was the best degree he could have.  Not economics or business planning, studies that you would think would prepare a young man for the rigors of running a country a lot better, no history because apparently a knowledge of history will enable you to avoid the mistakes in the past and improve on what went well.  So how come the mistakes of history are being repeated and repeated?

As reported by the American Prospect the anti-gay laws passed in Russia earlier this year have been supported by such statements as:

"I believe it is not enough to impose fines on gays for engaging in the propaganda of homosexuality among adolescents. We need to ban them from donating blood and sperm, and if they die in car accidents, we need to bury their hearts in the ground or burn them as they are unsuitable for the aiding of anyone's life."

Thank you, Dmitry Kiselev, anchorman and deputy director of VGTRK, the Russian state broadcast holding company for that illuminating statement as to how deeply rooted the Kremlin has made it's anti-gay propaganda.

Am I the only one who can see the parallels with a certain country in 1935?  As Alexei Davydov, Russian LGBT activist has said:

“The Kremlin has taken a page from the Middle Ages. Incapable of solving the country's pressing problems, and with Putin's ratings falling, the Kremlin has decided to consolidate society through fear—and to this purpose is engaged in a search for enemies both internal and external. Gays have been chosen as these victims.”

Not so Middle Ages.  In the last Century it was the Jews who felt the beating stick of a dictator while the rest of the world thought that winning a few races at the Olympics would make him open his eyes to how wrong he was.

Well it didn't work then and I seriously doubt whether it will work this time round.  What some people forget is that the Nazi not only prosecuted Jews, they also killed homosexuals, gypsies, objectors to the war and disabled people.

So how long before those with autism have to start looking over their shoulders in Russia?  How long before they are the targets of the gangs "of Neo-Nazi vigilantes luring gay teens with online ads, then kidnapping and torturing them—a process they like to videotape and post online for their admirers to enjoy."

For that matter, where next Putin?  Has Europe gone back to sleep just as the monsters are about to come crawling out of the closet?  Is the Cold War about to become Hot?

I hope not but I don't like the idea of what is happening over the horizon in Russia.  I think that Europe had better wake up again and damn fast, although if the newspapers don't stop harrying the children of celebrities and start reporting real stuff that's not going to happen.