Israeli troops this week have seized over $8 million US dollars in raids on Palstinian banks, claiming the money was ear-marked for terrorism. An Israeli bank robber, sorry, spokesperson, said from his new Penthouse flat that the money seized would be used to improve the lives of ordinary Palestinian people. This would include paying for an extension to the wall being built to protect the Palestinians from themselves, along with a new swimming pool for his wifes servants tennis partner...
from the Australian Newspaper: ' My hairdresser sucked me in; she told me it had happened only last weekend. Her best friend in the whole world, a legend in the iconoclastic world of straight blow-dries, had been clearing up the salon on her late-night shift. Caught up in the intricacies of separating hundreds of small pieces of foil in readiness for the next day's bleachings, at first she didn't hear the rapping on the glass door. When she did, the hapless young man standin...
I recall reading this in a paper several years back. It's probably not true, hence the title, but what the hell, I'm in a storytelling mood. I proably made it up, who knows? Some years back, a Welsh couple were travelling through a remote part of the outback when a kangaroo leaps in front of their hired car. The driver desperately wrenches the wheel to try and avoid hitting the roo which simply stops in the road and observes its impending destruction by the four wheel ...
Dear all, I was shocked last night to see a debate on the Larry King show, carried by the moronic CNN news channel. I was shocked in many ways. Firstly the level of the arguments on both sides was so childish that it was almost unwatchable. I have never seen people present arguments that you could literally drive a truck through. The background is that in California, the mayor? has given approval for some 300 same sex couples to be married. This is important, because this all...
About one hundred years ago, a speaker at the Royal Academy of Science stood up and proudly announced that the time was fast approaching where mankinf\d would fundamentally understand all that there was to know about the entire universe. All that really remained was a matter of dotting the i's and crossing the t's. He recieved a standing ovation. A century and a bit later, that statement has never seemed so foolish. It's an old truism, but we've learned one sure thing, that the mor...
The reason that people cling to religeon is because it is the one constancy in their lives. Secularity cannot provide this, because secularity begets human institutions and is therefore corrupt. Everything human is corrupt, no matter its noble aim. No human institutions can be pure. We can concieve of purity, we can imagine Utopia, but we cannot bring it about, deem it to be so. We are imperfect and so each and every action, invention or institution that we concieve of is doom...
It is rare that one reads something that makes one stop and think. It is rarer when that wisdom comes from the mouth of a child. The following is a transcript given by Severn Suzuki at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil: "Hello, I'm Severn Suzuki speaking for E.C.O. - The Environmental Children's organisation. We are a group of twelve and thirteen-year-olds from Canada trying to make a difference: Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me. We raised all the ...
In the news over the last few days comes the revelation that Bush had the occupation of Iraq very much in his sights if not on his agenda within days of his dubious nomination to the Whitehouse. Since 9/11 the occupation of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam became central to his tenure. However, lacking any substantial evidence to implicate Iraq, a web of lies and deceptions was set in motion. As the US troop deaths climb to some 500, with some 3000 more seriously injured, the Iraqi ci...
There is much controversy as to whether global warming exists or not. Here in New Zealand they have had the worst summer in living memory, with rain, hailstones and barnstorming winds wreaking their familiar havoc. Giant waves in the Cook Strait mean't mountainous seas, ferry cancellations and capsized boats. In Britain there is now a regular cycles of inclemently hot summers and torrential autumns. In France last summer, some 10,000 people died of heat related causes and forest ...
Human Experimentation. There's an unusual parasite called a brainworm that has an extraordinary life cycle. Its prey is the humble ant Here's its story. It lives in the guts of sheep, cows and rabbits and lays eggs there which are then passed out with the faeces of the animal. The faeces are eaten by snails where the eggs undergo asexual reproduction and these are eventually excreted as tiny capsules within the snails mucus. These capsules are then eaten by the ant. Once t...
It's that time of the year again. The pulse quickens and the heart starts to pound, in the Middle of Winter, the finest competition outside the Rugby World Cup gets under way. The Six Nations Tournament Brilliant, or it would be if I weren't stuck in dismal Auckland, New Zealand. I can't believe that I cannot see any of the games, or at least I haven't yet found a pub that carries the Rugby Channel. All the six nations are being shown on the Rugby channel here, but most people don...
Dear all, Well, loved and loathed as I am, I am shortly to undergo another Odyssey to unchartered lands. Yes, that hotbed of ingrown slack-jawed and recidivist peoples otherwise known as Orstralians. Or Oz. I'm going hiking in the Tasmanian interior for a few weeks, a holiday in Sydney watching the World Cup, have a few weeks to kill thereafter until I leave for Thailand early in December. Then I plan on an intial foray into the sub-continent. I haven't yet worked out the India...
Dear all, High in the McDonell ranges in Central Australia, and indeed in much of the surrounding terrain you will find standing a lonely, beautiful tree swaying gently in the hot desert breath. It is a ghost gum. It is lonely because there is only so much water to go around. And it stands like a white fingered sentinel among the distant bloodwoods and the spinifex littering the red-gold soil. Fifty years ago, no-one would have dreamed that this ancient gum, would be instrument...
Dear all, Australia Day Part II On this, Australia day 26th January 2004, Billy Young was honoured with the Medal of the Order of Australia. This story is not so much a fete of Billy Youngs remarkable life, this has been told elsewhere, notably by Lynette Silver, who has painstakingly compiled Billys history and those of his fallen companions. It is rather the consequence of a elderly chap I met at a little know secluded oases in the heart of Sydney, where away from the madness o...
Dear all, Australia Day. It is Australia day here, unsuprisingly, in the land of Oz. Strolling through Sydney, everywehere is crowded with flocking Australians, while bemused foreigners such as myself stare in wonder at all the flags and the overt patriotism. Trying to get lunch is a formidable obstacle, a madness in itself, but fortunately I have made friends with a Latvian owner of a Bavarian restaurant and am able to find a table, and more importantly to be fed, in a reasonabl...