I was linked to this graph earlier today.
Ask yourself why we hear so much about a disease with such a relatively small death-toll.
Ask yourself why we don't hear about all the other much more important diseases.
Ask yourself why we countenance motor vehicles but not war.
Ask yourself why we're so bad at judging risk.
Ask your local pharmacist how much money he's made in the last 300 days on face-masks, hand-wash, Tamiflu and so on.
Making comparisons between modern-day Britain and 1984 or Brave New world is becoming rather trite at this stage, so I won't bother.
BoingBoing posts about Council bans parents from play areas. Watford Borough Council is banning parents from public playgrounds, since they cannot be trusted around other children, perhaps even their own children.
Sadly, in today's climate, you can't have adults walking around unchecked in a children's playground and the adventure playground is not a meeting place for adults.
What is "today's climate"?
Is the ambient air temperature particularly conducive to the creation of paedophiles?
Caravans on the runway
Airline jobs once inspired respect and envy. But at Los Angeles International Airport about 100 airline employees - from mechanics to pilots - are living in mobile homes parked just yards from one of the busiest runways in the world.
BBC News link here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8186690.stm
This story of mechanics and pilots living under the planes they fly is really quite depressing, and quite Ballardian. The article details how the dream of flying, the mystique and chic, have been stripped away. These men who followed their dream have found nothing at the end of the road.
Bob Poster, airline pilot, even looks like a Ballardian hero/anti-hero:
Bob Poster, airline pilot
First, watch this video. Watch the letters. See what he did there?
Yes, that's right, he got it all wrong. Anti-intellectualism disguised as false intellectualism, and spelt wrong to boot. I wish this man was joking.
At the same time, James Murdoch from News Corporation (who proudly own Fox News) has been attacking the BBC for being too "dominant", saying that it threatens journalism.
I know which I'd rather have.
FIT Watch campaigner Emily Apple assaulted by police
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/jun/21/fit-watch-kingsnorth-arrests
You must watch this video.
Another extremely worrying video from The Guardian showing the British police acting like the fascist thugs they are.
The two women are campaigners with FIT Watch, who undertake 'sousveillance' of the British police teams who monitor and record campaigners at marches and other events. The FIT Watch campaigners photograph and catalogue the police who are cataloguing and photographing them. They watch the watchers.
They are assaulted, restrained at the arms and legs, arrested and thrown into the back of police vans and held without bail for 3 days for nothing more than asking a police officer who has removed his badge numbers to identify himself.
This is Britain today.
More and more the regime in Iran seems to ape the reactions of the Shah's regime to the popular uprising. If they continue to ignore the will of the people, and the people remain as united as they seem to be, the days of the ayatollah and the dual political system in Iran could be numbered.
I urge everyone to watch this video and see the increasingly desperate and violent efforts of the Iranian state to put down its people.
Video from Iran of clashes between riot police and protesters
Riot police on motorbikes in Iran
