Blog - 2007 Archive

There have been ten thousand Islamic terror attacks all around the world in the period Sept 2001 - Nov 2007, killing about 60,000 men, women and children. And sadly, probably decades more of such senseless killing to come before the vile global jihad ideology burns itself out.

Nice to have something both left and right can agree on - that the Burmese regime has no right to exist and should be ended. Solidarity with the brave pro-democracy protesters. May Burma be free soon.

Salman Rushdie reads from "The Satanic Verses".
Start at 47:50.
This is a witty, intelligent and profound attack on the origins of all religions.
Every religious person should listen to this and think about it.

Ireland basically trusted FF to keep running the economy.

It was a bad election for the left. SFIRA made no progress. The Greens made no progress. Labour made no progress. The Socialist Party lost their only seat.

On the minus side, the PDs were wiped out. I have no idea why. They were what was good about FF.

Unfortunately, the anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-GM, anti-free trade, anti-capitalist Green Party are going to be in coalition government. There could be a threat to the use of Irish airports by the U.S. military.

• Fianna Fail are not allowing this as part of their deal, though. And the anti-war left are horrified (and here and here) by the Greens' "betrayal".
• The Irish Anti-War Movement chairman said: "I am very disappointed ... We worked very closely with the leadership and the rank and file of the Greens since 2003 on the issue of Shannon and Irish neutrality. ... As recently as May 22nd, we had a message from Mr Gormley assuring us that the Green Party would always have the issue of Shannon in the forefront of their political agenda."
• Anti-War Ireland urged Green Party members to vote down "this shameful deal". "The alternative is to have your party co-equally responsible for the US military presence at Shannon".
• Richard Boyd Barrett said it was "a tragic betrayal of the anti-war movement and many of those who voted for the Green Party". So maybe it's not all bad.
• PANA's Roger Cole says: "A FF/PD/Green Party supported by a range of independents including Finian McGrath totally committed to actively supporting President George Bush's Imperialist war to gain control of the oil of Iraq and to consolidate US/Israeli military domination of the Middle East for years to come, will be elected to run the country for the next 5 years." Let's hope so!

Sarkozy wins France, May 2007. After Merkel's win in Germany and Harper's win in Canada, it feels like the West is back to normal now. The "Axis of Weasels" is finished. A depressing day for the West's enemies. Maybe they should just give up.

Power-sharing in Northern Ireland. After so many false dawns since 1994, it is hard to believe again. But I hope it works.

And sharing power does not change my opinion that the DUP and Sinn Fein / IRA are both extremist parties that no normal person should belong to, and that do not belong in any normal western government. The DUP are still 17th century religious fundamentalists. SF/IRA are still a criminal gang of Marxist-Leninist gunmen. But I still hope it works.

300 clip.
The King of Sparta declines to listen to
the "grievances" of Islamism the Persian Empire.

A bizarre, once-off, flash crowd took my site down in Dec 2006 - Jan 2007. Here's how it happened:

At some point, this page on my site became the no.1 hit in the world if you searched for "saddam" on Google Images. This would normally be odd (I certainly don't think it should be the no.1 hit), but not a problem.

But when Saddam was executed, this became a problem. Vast numbers of people typed "saddam" into Google Images, looking for images of the execution (there were no such images on my site). My site was hosed with about 10 times the normal amount of traffic. I got about an extra 100,000 visitors in a 1 week period, starting on 29 Dec 2006. The bandwidth quota I pay for was rapidly exceeded, and my site went down. It seems like it was a bizarre, once-off flash crowd that is unlikely to happen again.

Later: My site is no longer no.1 on Google Images.