alfa.org.uk

Pakistan cartoon violence spreads. This headline gives me images of crowds of Pakistanis all fighting Tom’n'Jerry style - using ACME dynamite and the like :-)

There’s been a lot in the news about Google’s decision to provide “search” technology to China. I think there are two URLs that really sum up the issue:

http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen

http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen

Quite, quite terrifying.

The BBC is reporting that Hamas had been invited to form a government by Mahmoud Abbas. This is all highly ironic.

The Americans spent years while Yasser Arafat was President trying to wrest power away from him and into the hands of the Palestinian parliament, which at the time was weak compared to the powerful president.

They succeeded eventually, and by the time of Arafat’s death the parliament had much greater powers than it had had previously.

However, now the situation is reversed. Mahmoud Abbas is the moderate President which America wants to deal with, and the parliament is controlled by Hamas, whose stated main aim is the destruction of Israel. Maybe America wishes they’d never pushed for the increase in power of the parliament.

America has claimed that the ballot box is a panacea - “give the people a vote and freedom will triumph”. Well, the Palestinians have had their vote, and America doesn’t like the outcome.

How are they going to respond?

I’m sorry - I just find this way too funny: Sparrow knocks over 23,000 dominoes before being shot. Before being shot?? Do domino enthusiasts routinely carry firearms to protect against rampaging wildlife?

As you’ve probably noticed, my website has moved. www.alfa.org.uk is the new link. Wordpress is the new software. Dreamhost are the new hosting provider. Many apologies to everyone who has commented on here in the past - unfortunately the comments were lost during the blosxom->wordpress database conversion. I hope it doesn’t put you off commenting in the future.

You never know - I might actually start to write here now.

“Bosnia holds three suspected suicide bombers”.

That seems a remarkably stupid thing to do, to me…

An article from Richard Dawkins.