I've been robbed!

Some prick cloned my ATM card and has been withdrawing money willy nilly from my account - so that has been stopped. No the ATMs I use weren't "funny" and I always hide my PIN (and it is far from an obvious number).

So the hunt is on - the prick used it up in my part of town too.

When he is caught (it's bound to be a man!) he will be a useful shield for Hizbullah rockets or Islamic militia in Baghdad.

Three strikes and you're out - that means in prison for life. I don't give a shit whether or not mummy didn't love you - you're worthless scum (same goes for the short Maori kid who nicked my car 17 years ago as I watched from four floors up, I only hope he ran off the road).

So what's coming next??!!

Terrorist threat thwarted

In the past few hours, the following has happened:

- All UK domestic and European flights to and from London Heathrow have been cancelled for today and tomorrow, for all airlines. Some flights also cancelled to and from London Gatwick.

- All flights leaving the UK are subject to a hand luggage ban until further notice. The only items passengers are permitted to carry on board are travel documents, prescribed medication, keys (without electronic fobs!), wallets/purses, glasses/contact lens holders, babyfood, female sanitary items and tissues (so your long flight to NZ wont include a change of underwear or a book!);

- Duty free or any shopping departing from UK airports largely useless unless for pick up on return (can't take it with you);

- Milk for babies must be tested by an "accompanying passenger" (good luck if you have one, presumably your baby!);

- Shoes are all being x-rayed;

- 21 people have been arrested in the UK for plotting a terrorist attack, which apparently included letting off explosives in hand luggage on ten flights on three US airlines (American, United and Continental) flying between the UK and the USA;

- The UK terror threat rating is now at the highest "critical";

- Flights from the US to the UK facing similar measures (presumably includes Air NZ's daily flight from LA to London Heathrow).

So people flying wont have toothpaste, makeup, books, ipods, magazines, laptop, work papers, umbrellas and changes of clothes on flights. Bad luck if you're in the back of the plane flying to NZ today or tomorrow, especially in the latter parts sitting next to bored, smelly people! Great news if you are fed up with people flying with babies of course.

No doubt the mystical or atheist socialist avowedly egalitarian anti-sexist, anti-racist, peace loving, pro "human rights" apologists for sexist, stone-age, execution advocating, sexist, racist and jihad promoting Islamist terrorists will say it is "our" fault. That the dispossessed middle class of Islamist England, living in relative comfort and peace, want to commit suicide and murder men, women and children from different countries, faiths (or no faiths), backgrounds, ages, races, all because of the oppose the policies of the democratically elected governments of the UK, US, Israel and others, and because they believe their ghost says it is ok.

I await the "it's horrible, so glad the plot was thwarted BUT..." phrases, with the but saying "if only the "coalition of the willing" hadn't invaded Iraq, if only Israel had let Nasser destroy it, if only Israel tolerated the lobbing of rockets from Hamas and Hizbullah and given up land to them, if only Al Gore had won the 2000 election, if only people caught the train instead of driving (because it's all about oil and the Bush-Cheney-Blair Jewish conspiracy to take over the world and nuke the bejesus out of all the heretics).

My main comment is to be grateful that the police and Scotland Yard are working, glad that there have been no attacks since 9/11, but angry that there continues to be people in the UK organising to commit mass murder. Nothing justifies this, nothing, no "but you have to understand", or "but if only we hadn't"... you wouldn't excuse a man murdering his wife because she annoyed him, or ran up a large credit card bill, or changed churches or didn't like that her brother was fighting in Iraq... don't start to excuse this initiation of force.

Reports on this are extensive:

Daily Telegraph quotes UK Home Secretary John Reid "We are involved in a long, wide and deep struggle against very evil people." Reid was a member of the Communist Party once, but has been quoted saying ""I used to be a Communist. I used to believe in Santa Claus". He's moved a bit!

Daily Telegraph report on delays at UK airports.

The Times on how Pakistani intelligence helped foil the plot! (Imagine if Islamists took over Pakistan - nuclear weapons in their kit!)

The Independent reports on the terrorists' moral if not financial backers, the Taliban shooting a 13yo boy and his grandmother in Afghanistan for being alleged government spies. Yes, some people think this is the same as bombing terrorists.

Death of one of Castro's minions

The death of Eduardo Bernabé Ordáz Ducungé should please all those who give a damn about individual rights, freedom and common decency.

Ordáz was a deputy of the Cuban National Assembly and director of the Havana psychiatric hospital (Mazorra). One of the functions of the hospital is (this has not changed) to hold political dissidents, to treat them and administer electric shocks. Ordáz admitted it, exiles of the regime described it. Ordáz’s main crime was to let the security forces use the psychiatric hospital for torture and detention, and we shouldn’t forget the Marxist-Leninist view that opposition to communist is, in itself, a psychiatric disorder.

I don’t expect many of the mindless pricks who wear Castro’s image on the chests or cheer on the Cuban regime know this, after all, the regime doesn’t like showing its darker side.

He remarkably got a Pan American Health Organisation award for his treatment of psychiatric patients. Tours by foreign psychiatrists of the Mazorra were the typical Potemkin tours of clean, functioning parts of the hospital – they weren’t shown the dark side. North Korea is more cautious, it never lets anyone see their psychiatric hospitals, though I doubt people with mental illnesses have much chance there.

This is a description of what would happen at Mazorra:
“Every morning at 5 a.m., Heriberto Mederos, and his sadistic assistants, one of whom was nicknamed El Capitan, would select the unfortunate ones who would undergo ECT after being doused with cold water (for better electrical conduction!) and thrown on the hard cement floor where they would undergo the procedure. El Capitan would later sodomize young prisoners. Others would be brutally beaten. One of them was found hung and incinerated with gasoline. Everyday 80 to 90 of the inmates would have to stand like animals en La Perrera, "the dog kennel," the small enclosure measuring approximately 10 by 30 meters on a slab of cement which was in the courtyard behind the Sala Carbó-Serviá. They would stand on the crowded floor, under the sun, pitted against each other surrounded by other strangers and madmen, excrement and urine stench everywhere.”

By the way Mederos moved to the United States, lied to immigration officials about his past and had a low profile until he was convicted of the lying. He died before serving out the five year sentence he was given.

It is true that Ordáz apparently did some good. The hospital was in a dire state after the fall of the Batista regime, with many patients naked and manacled without running water. The hospital is in a somewhat better state, perhaps for some – but he ran a hospital that allowed the likes of Mederos to torture patients, for the facility to be used to torture and incarcerate political prisoners.

The Cuban regime of Castro is nothing to be proud of – for the likes of Matt Robson and other felchers of such regimes to cheer them on, is exactly the same as Margaret Thatcher being an apologist for Augusto Pinochet. The system that happens to deliver improvements in standards of living (and let’s face it Cuba isn’t exactly wealthy) are not justified when those who question the regime are tortured and killed.

Hopefully Castro will die swiftly and his brother will also be overthrown (what is it with this monarchist like inherited leftwing dictatorship fetish? Kim Il Sung did it, Hafez Asad did it, now Castro?), and Cuba will become free.

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However, when Castro dies I expect to see the local worshippers of authoritarianism come out and glorify him. The sort that pilloried (rightly) military dictatorships that once had US support, the sort that criticise Israel and the USA, the sort that only care about freedom of speech when it gives only them the freedom to speak.

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UPDATE 1: A group called Appropriate Technology for Living Association Inc (ATLA) is sponsoring a film to be shown in Wellington about how Cuba "coped" with peak oil, which of course was not "peak oil", it was the end of "sugar daddy" the USSR giving it oil for nothing. Being dependent on something you get for free isn't exactly clever. However I am sure Cuba copes wonderfully without oil, after all since car ownership is exhorbitantly expensive (private car ownership threatens authoritarian regimes) and the government is totalitarian, not only can the Cuban government "make things happen", but it also writes the statistics and the outcomes, and if you dare criticise, woe betide you. The film of course was made with the consent of the authorities in Havana, ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room. The fact that anyone critical of the Cuban approach will face prison will be ignored - just like producing a film in the 1930s about the great German success in building autobahns ("but that's not environmentally sustainable" I hear some 14yo Greenie bleat). You see, you could go to Pyongyang, North Korea and make a film about how successful it is in keeping street crime low.

Back in the Blogosphere

Well having a diagnosis and keeping on top of things, I have time with my ill relative. Duke’s C stage colon cancer is serious and well progressed, but not incurable (33% chance of lasting five years apparently). So I will see her in a few months and keep in touch in the meantime and just be there.

I am now more willing to write as I did before. Though less frequently and more focused.

Carpe Diem

You all probably have someone you love very dearly, whether it be a partner, relative or friend.

I just have one piece of advice, cliché’d though it may be, but it is carpe diem.

Life is finite – enjoy it with the people you love. Seize each day with them as if it is your last.

While often every day may seem like the one before – it wont always be that way. Although often it is easy to get into a routine of expecting things to remain the same, to expect people to always be there, even though you know that it is probably not true. It is always better to live as if you are alive, than to live as if death is upon you.

Some of the people you love the most will be gone one day. The point of your time with them is to savour each moment of being with them, to enjoy what you like, to share that, to smile and to know that this is living.

Sometimes you wake up and find that person is gone, sometimes you get a warning about how terminal life is – you should take that warning.

I can’t blog about politics or philosophy right now. I was going to mention the last Top of the Pops on BBC2, Jeremy Clarkson being considered as Tory candidate for Mayor of London and to expand on Not PC’s great column about collective responsibility for child murders as “we” are responsibe. I had written shreds about these things yesterday. For the moment, I can’t write about such things as they are not important to me right now.