Kester Brewin

A little dated now, but still a great video from Knife Party, with polemic text by Barry Mcnamara, outlining one perspective on American militarism. With Gordon Brown giving evidence at the Iraq inquiry today, it seemed resonant, especially the astonishing statistic that the US has been at war with someone around the world at all [...]

Interesting video with Bill Nighy talking about the ‘Robin Hood Tax‘ that would see 50p raked off all financial transactions that didn’t include members of the public. This would raise around £200bn globally each year which could be put into projects helping the poor:

Obviously raising money to help the poor is a wonderful idea, and [...]

Interesting piece in The Times yesterday about the meeting of two of the happiest men in the world. Well, one of them – the monk Matthieu Ricard -  is apparently the happiest (on average, surely – I doubt he’s ever been happier than me when United won the Champions League in the last minute [...]

Craft:

Kraft:

Enough said.

Occasionally two things from the news catch your ear and resonate together. Today it was the news that Obama has cancelled Nasa’s new moon programme. And [ht Barry Taylor] that Gil Scott-Heron is back with a new album.
The connection? I’ve always loved Scott-Heron’s early, hard-hitting social commentaries. And the lyrics of ‘Whitey on the Moon’ [...]

Says it all. The $100m ‘loan’ from the World Bank to Haiti could be paid off like that by a fraction of the banking bonuses paid out on top of enormous salaries. Sickening.

Peter Brooke’s cartoon in The Times today:

I’d amend one thing, to be honest. The child in the blue shorts is most likely dead.

Despite Nick Griffin making an ass of himself on television last week, fascist and extremist parties never talk complete nonsense. There is always a dangerous fraction of truth within their rhetoric – a miniscule grain upon which they then build racist and mindless policies.
Unless serious politicians are willing to admit these small fractions of truth, [...]

There is a lot of debate in the news at the moment about what should be done with the wbankers. Should there be a ‘maximum wage’? Should they be allowed to earn obscene bonuses even though their banks have virtually collapsed? Should we all be held to ransom with the argument that they will go [...]

David Cameron – currently oppostion leader in the UK, but likely to be Prime Minister this time next year – announced a worrying policy today: the recipients of UK Overseas Development aid could be partly decided in an ‘X-Factor’ style public vote. Apparently this will initially begin with a small percentage of the overall budget, [...]