The Damascus Dimension

On the face of it, events in Syria are not much different from the recent pattern of "Arab Spring" events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya: stir up trouble and then come in to arbitrate in order to achieve regime change. It marks a departure from the standards of international law which were upheld until then, namely the integrity of a nation's internal affairs and the illegality of outside interference. The humanitarian argument is weak. Imagine somebody had armed the Manchester and London rioters with machine guns so that they could go on looting for longer. This would then be followed by declarations that the looters were deeply unhappy with their government and that they were an expression of the will of the people. Finally, after more heavy-handed policing attempts, outside interference would recognise them as the real representatives of the British people and justify military action against the government due to their continued suppression of the revolt. The only key difference in the Western stance regarding Syria, and other Arab countries before, is that they had a hand in organising the nascent rebellion from the start.

Using this new ploy of political and, in Libya, military intervention without the need to declare hostilities or obey the rules of war, the USA, Britain and France redrew the political map of the Middle East with great ease whilst the people of those countries, long fed up with their rulers, fell for the rhetoric. In all those countries, the Muslim Brotherhood was installed in government. Not many people are aware that this organisation has been a tool in the service of imperial America since the second World War (see my book Surrendering Islam). Populist democracy remains well out of reach for the people of Egypt or Libya. In Egypt, the democratic process has been postponed. The one thing the West cannot afford is to give the people a real voice, knowing their opposition to Israel and support for the Palestinian cause.

In Iran and Syria, however, the price has evaded the West, not because those countries are inherently stronger, but because they are protected by China and Russia. Russia has not forgotten the humiliation she was subjected to by the West after having effectively been bankrupted and bought out and is gradually regaining her national pride. Whilst still a formidable military power, she has realised that she can't put up much resistance on her own and has finally teamed up as a junior partner with China. China in turn, has stepped up to a new phase in establishing its supremacy vis-a-vis the United States after having quietly waited for a long time for the only super power surviving the "Cold War" to weaken. Its oil deal with Iran in exchange for commodities is a direct affront to the supremacy of the dollar and, in particular after the US and European sanctions banning the import of Iranian oil, nothing short of a declaration of war. India did a similar deal with Iran at the same time, and the US has been powerless in preventing it. The gradual weakening of the dollar as the universal reserve currency means that the "free trade" ideology that served as a justification for imperial expansion in the past is irretrievably damaged and the empire will have to retreat slowly back into more clearly defined borders, in other words: the end of Pax Americana.

Like the British Empire before, we can expect that the American empire will not contract quietly or peacefully. We may well be heading for full-blown confrontation any time soon, but with a Chino-Russian alliance the USA is facing a superior enemy and one that also holds an economic trump card in that China owns much of America's debt and can thus accelerate the dollar's demise. Since Israel is also forcing America's hand, making the case for the supreme importance of her own security needs, this war is likely going to spark off in Syria once the exchange of insults goes out of hand. Already China has rebuffed Hilary Clinton for her arrogance with regard to comments about the alleged in-humanitarian Russian and Chinese veto of a UN security council resolution on Syria. China pointed the finger at America's poor human rights record in occupied Iraq. No mention was made yet of America's long history of using its veto to protect Israel against being censored for its human rights abuses against Palestinians.

In spite of the ongoing polemics against Iran's nuclear programme as well as numerous attempts of portraying Iran as an international terrorist threat, albeit so amateurish that one could conclude that if this is the best the Iranian government could manage, then we needn't worry about its nuclear capability, from the alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the recent bodged terrorist attack in Bangkok - Syria remains the more likely candidate for the start of hostilities between the old and the new super power, not only because it is right at the doorstep of Israel, but also because Iran is a much more difficult target due to its excellent defence capability against an attack from the Persian gulf and, recently, its demonstration of the ability to interfere with drones that would be used in an aerial attack. China is already fighting a proxy war with the USA in Afghanistan, just like the USA fought on Afghan territory with Russia, and the war is not going well for the Western coalition. China also has bought support and forged alliances in South America and Central Africa, the latter being an added reason why the West needed to take a more direct control of North-African countries. However, China is moving at a slow pace and unlikely to go for an all-out confrontation unless the US forces her onto the battle field.

For the West, China remains a closed world, and likewise, China is not sufficiently aware of the way Western propaganda operates. Therefore, she missed many an opportunity at scoring points. Hosting the Olympics, for example, did not assist China in repairing its tainted image in the West. It seems, China also fails to fully comprehend the economic warfare in which the West engages through monetary manipulation. Instead of, for example, pledging to support the stability of the Euro, without giving much detail, however, probably in an attempt to impress on Western opinion or to gain a greater stake in policy deliberations of the IMF, China could have through bilateral arrangements assisted troubled European countries, such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland, to exit the Euro zone, thus gaining direct political influence in the midst of Europe without risking a collapse of its European markets due to the break-up of the Euro. Such a strategy would have isolated the United States even further and would have been extremely smart given the American approach of trying to weaken the European Union on the one hand whilst resting assured, on the other hand, that Europe completely depends on her in political and defence terms.

A further dimension, highlighting the crucial importance of what is currently being played out in Syria, is the religious and prophetic narrative: Both Christian and Muslim prophecies describe the region as a key battle field during the end times. According to Muslim tradition, the dictator of the united Western (one-world) empire, as-Sufyani, will emerge out of the conflict in Damascus and wreak havoc in the Muslim world. He will be confronted by a re-united Muslim army which eventually rallies around the Mahdi. After their victory, the Dajjal, or Anti-Christ, emerges, and finally his slayer, Jesus, the Messiah, who descends again to earth at a mosque near Damascus. Watch this space!

Europe's stunning arrogance

Whilst the European is mainly making the news for its strenuous efforts of cancelling even the pretence of democracy to preserve the interest (pun intended) of the bankers, they have not entirely taken their eyes off the "Muslim menace" within their midst, maybe because the Islamic faith remains the last and final obstacle in the secularists dream of technocratic government unhindered by conscience or reference to divine commandments. As I am preparing for a talk at Greenwich Islamic Centre (my "Greenwich Mean Talk") on Friday, 9 December, about whether Fortress Europe will ever accept full Muslim integration, I am stumbling across yet another article on the BBC News website giving publicity to the Dutch campaign for outlawing Jewish and Islamic slaughter methods. If it wasn't for the Jews fighting their corner, we Muslims would already be on a hiding to nowhere, but luckily they have picked holes in the argument of the so-called scientific and humane method of stunning animals prior to slaughter as well as the associated terminology. Dutch chief rabbi Benjamin Jacobs is quoted as taking issue with the term "ritual slaughter", saying that "it's not dancing around a cow". "In my opinion", he says, "stunning is torture. Just because it can't say 'moo' or move anymore, it's very nice for the human eye, but the animal is alive and the scientists don't actually know if it's suffering or not."

Well, the "scientists" do know, but don't want you to: In my article The halal slaughter controversy I have quoted and provided a translation of a study performed by veterinary scientists in Hanover, Germany, in 1978, comparing the Jewish shechita method of slaughter (identical to the Muslim halal method) and the captive bolt stunning method. The results were clear-cut: Cows and sheep dispatched using the shechita/halal method were fully unconscious quicker and suffered less pain, measured by EEG, than those stunned prior to slaughter. For sheep slaughtered using the Jewish/Muslim method, a zero brain activity line was recorded after a maximum of 14 seconds, whereas for sheep slaughtered using pre-stunning, brain activity responding to pain stimuli could still be observed until 200 seconds from the animal having been stunned. So, in the worst case scenario, sheep slaughtered Islamically suffer and feel pain a whole 186 seconds less than those subjected to captive bolt stunning. For those who have been brainwashed into believing that animals slaughtered Islamically suffer unduly, I highly recommend a demonstration video produced by a Muslim small holding in Texas.

These results are, of course, not palatable to animal rights campaigners whose real agenda is to deter people from eating meat altogether, using the "barbaric" Islamic slaughter as a welcome weapon in their arsenal of tricks. In past discussions I had with them, they tend to dismiss the German scientific study as outdated, but when asked to commission a new study, they argue that this would not be ethical since animals would be subjected to pain in the process. Hence, due to this circle never potentially being squared, and Jewish and Islamic slaughter only affecting less than one percent of all animals slaughtered for food, they happily acquiescence into the other ninety-nine plus percent of animals suffering a good two to three minutes longer than those mercifully killed the Jewish or Muslim way.

The minute numbers involved and the large hysteria created by everything presented in the media as the Islamic threat are in themselves telling. There are a dozen Muslim women wearing the full niqab in France, yet the French parliament sees the need to pass a specific law outlawing this attire in public places and prosecute a woman for her defiance. Here in Britain, the Daily Mail has run a whole series of articles about unsuspecting British consumers being served "halal" meat, for example from New Zealand, conveniently forgetting to mention that such meat is about as halal as the proverbial halal or kosher pork chop (or the so-called Islamic mortgage, for this matter), since all meat in New Zealand is by law stunned prior to slaughter. At the Commonwealth Business Forum in Perth, British prime minister David Cameron had the nerve to suggest the giving of foreign aid by Britain should be tied to a commitment to accept homosexuality as a basic human right, a suggestion flatly rejected by African nations. The attack against Muslim, (orthodox) Jewish and (traditional) Christian values coming out of the corridors of power of the European super state and its constituent emasculated nation states is of a purely political nature.

Comparisons with the Spanish inquisition are not entirely inappropriate. The difference is one of scale rather than mindset. And Europe no longer wants to be Christian, but secular, a goal pursued with equal passion and fanaticism. Nobody is suggesting that Jews and Muslims ought to convert, confess and eat pork as a sign of the sincerity of having mended their ways or else they would be expelled or culled. In today's Europe Jews may remain Jews, provided they subscribe to the secular Zionist Israel project, and Muslims may remain Muslims, provided they abrogate the Qur'an as being no longer above human-made law, denounce the heretic idea of an Islamic state, pay lip-service to democracy as the best thing since sliced bread (as long as they don't demand popular rule for themselves), become vegetarian or eat only stunned meat, and concede that homosexuality is an entirely acceptable lifestyle for everybody but maybe themselves. Europe is willing to tolerate Muslims as long as they are moderate, non-Islamic and non-interfering. If not, they are radicals, potential terrorists, and must be monitored, locked up or sent "back home", where they can then be assassinated, preferably by remote control drone strike.

So far, our self-appointed leaders have made a good job of compliance on our behalf. They are apologetic and accommodating. They are grateful for being tolerated and receiving the occasional grant or other state funding. They try to outdo each other with ingenious arguments how Islam must evolve and its traditional sources be re-interpreted. They happily approve a "halal" seal for stunned meat now making up the majority of alleged halal produce in the UK. Thankfully, they have not yet managed to delivery us, the Muslim public, wholesale to the altar of Europe, which is why they vehemently object for genuinely halal meat to carry the added label "Derived from animals that have not been stunned prior to slaughter." And the popular (democratic) mood is expressed by the increasing presence of outlets approved by the Halal Monitoring Committee, who only approve non-stunned meat.

If there are enough Muslims to stem the tide of the commercialisation and emasculation of Islam, the rest of the European public may one day thank us for it. The public is suspicious of Europe whose structure is not democratic and has already blessed us with plenty of unnecessary bureaucracy of the type previously only seen in the Soviet Union of yesteryear. The centre of power has shifted to being more remote and less approachable. Make no mistake: Secular Europe (or European secularists) want total control. On the back of the excuse of the Muslim threat of terrorism they are introducing laws aimed to be used to control their own, increasingly disenfranchised, populations. As a contrast to heavy-handed policing of demonstrations, they let rioters run wild without much police interference to spread fear, a proven recipe to make people surrender their freedom to the state. Airport security serve the same purpose, frightening, harassing and controlling a compliant public: Never mind the idiocy of liquid explosives carried in hand luggage: if it is perfectly save to let planes land at European airports arriving from destinations where liquids are not controlled, why do Europeans have to have to surrender their water and coke bottles when they go abroad?

If our leadership hadn't sold us out and we weren't so trusting of them (and possibly ignorant of true Islam, including its animal welfare provisions), then maybe we could start to fill the political vacuum and provide much needed leadership at a time where the people rise up against the slavery brought unto them by fraudulent fractional reserve banking (The People against the Banks), and it could no longer be said of the "Occupy Wall Street" and "Occupy the City" movements that they lack a programme and an ideology. Until then, we will continue to be stunned by the arrogance of our self-appointed masters and remain the "scum of the sea" as in the prophetic warning: "You shall be numerous, but you will be like the foam of the sea, and Allah will take the fear of you away from your enemies and will place weakness into your hearts.". Until then, let them re-interpret Islam for us and reshape the Middle East and the rest of the world to their liking. An Islam, in which Allah is stripped of His sovereignty, is not going to impress anybody, even if it is momentarily still tolerable to European supremacists.

Monkey Science

You might think scientists have gone mad when you read about a project involving millions of "virtual" monkeys tapping randomly on "virtual" keyboards. The project is an extension of a previous attempt to get real monkeys type on real keyboards, but the monkeys hit the same key until the keyboard broke. So costing only around £5000 a year using virtual monkeys and virtual keyboards works out a lot cheaper.

What's the point of the exercise? The idea is that by random chance if keys are pressed in no particular order and given enough time meaningful sentences would eventually result. And yes, by simplifying the task and not insisting on punctuation, the virtual monkeys have apparently managed to produce a part of a poem of Shakespeare. The wonders of "cloud computing".

Computer programmers have long been living in some kind of parallel universe. There is a pet theory amongst many of them that if all, or most, of human experience could be uploaded to a powerful computer, that computer would eventually be more intelligent than any human being, making human beings kind of obsolete. In other words, we humans would evolve into a higher form of intelligence not dependent on our physical existence but existing in some kind of virtual reality instead. Besides this sort of life form not being much fun, the theory is also seriously flawed.

Besides the mathematical probability of eventually arriving at a flawless copy of the complete works of Shakespeare suggesting it would take longer than the age of the universe, there is still nothing intelligent about any of it. To the computers a poem of Shakespeare makes no more sense than the single letter sequence typed by the real monkeys. The poem only attains meaning by having been written by a conscious poet and read by an appreciative audience. Computers compute or count, they do not create or appreciate meaning. The random sequence matching Shakespeare's poem only stands out from the crowd of random sequences because we distinguish it as something meaningful. Without our aesthetic sense of beauty the sequence would simply remain a string of characters.

In his book "You are not a gadget" computer guru Jaron Lanier provided a lone voice of dissent, warning against the depersonalisation of human experience through the "hive mind" to which his colleagues aspired to. His key argument was that computers, however refined they may be, do not, will not and cannot have consciousness or a soul. Unperturbed by such warnings, computer scientists like Jesse Anderson, who set up the monkey project, will want to prove that intelligence can evolve and higher forms of intelligence are entirely accidental.

The folly is not refined to wacky programmers: it is the expression of the materialist mindset which gave us the theory of evolution, denying both the existence of God and of a soul. The problem they need to face up to is that each time they run this kind of experiment, the results provide clear evidence against them. If it will take millions of virtual monkeys hitting millions of virtual keyboards longer than the age of the universe to produce the complete works of only one writer in human history, what are the chances of humans and other higher life forms having evolved by pure chance (and without the aid of virtual computer networks) from a single cell in a mere fraction of that time, namely life on earth? In his excellent "Atlas of creation", which mainly demonstrates that the fossil record of life on earth does in no way support evolution, Turkish author Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar) provides detailed evidence that even the formation of a protein as the building block of higher organisms had a zero probability of coming about by chance. He quotes the mathematician and astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle as comparing it to the probability that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."

None of that will deter the continuation of monkey science providing evidence that no matter of how powerful the tools at their disposal, scientists are ultimately no more reasonable or intelligent than the "average" human being. And without divine guidance, the average human is guided by ambition and dogma.

The occident is coming apart

Dynasties rise and fall, and the decline of the British-American empire has been long in the making. Of late, pax americana it is unravelling fast. Ever more ambitious and hasty wars, such as the support of a hotchpotch band of Libyan dreamers as the official rebel government, increase the overstretch of NATO armed forces who are gradually getting worn down and suffering defeat across the globe. At the same time, international law is in tatters and economic stability and security at home a thing of the past. Painting Muslims as the universal enemy has emboldened home-grown self-styled patriots who, having been ignored by the political establishment shocked Western civilisation with the recent Norway massacre. Not wanting to deflect from the war against Muslim terrorists, the bombing and shooting has quickly been described as the work of a lone madman, however, the reality is that over 95% of terrorist attacks in the the US and over 99% of terrorist attacks in Europe over the last decade were perpetrated not by Muslims but by indigenous secessionists, people who want to break away from the ever more oppressive and all-permeating power of government. Meanwhile the financial markets are collapsing in Europe and America as the scam of bank-created credit is once more spiralling out of control. Whereas Iraq, Iran and lately Libya paid a high price for daring to challenge the supremacy of the dollar and suggesting oil to be traded in a different currency, China, de facto owning the American economy, is emboldened to demand the end of the dollar as world reserve currency whilst at the same time ensuring that the US cannot establish itself near her borders in Afghanistan. With the dollar nearly gone as the tool to command the obedience of the world, American hegemonic influence is finally coming to an abrupt end.

Of course, like fish out of water, we cannot expect present-day power elites to go down without throwing a fit. They have tried to re-arrange the geopolitical situation in Africa and the Middle East with limited success. After the Norway massacre by one of their own and the Tottenham riots out of frustration against the increasing encroachment of the police state, with riots also plaguing Italy, Greece, and Spain due to austerity measures to placate the banking oligarchy, and violence returning to Northern Ireland, Western security forces would need to stage another false flag Islamic terrorist attack to re-focus public attention where they want it. Yet, even when they had plenty of time for planning the perfect crime before callously sacrificing their own people in 9/11 and 7/7, the cracks of the official story soon showed with endless inconsistencies, discrediting the official story, to the point where a UK jury, not usually a group of people known to be gullible or inclined to support political protesters, found the maker of the "7/7 Ripple Effect" film John Hill alias Muadib not guilty of the offence he was charged with, in other words, they found his questioning of the official story of events of the tube bombings entirely justified. So we can expect for anything they might cook up in a hurry to come unstuck rather quickly, and in the face of the death toll caused by Breivik in Norway the simple arrest of a Muslim for the thought-crime of glorifying terrorism without the means or wherewithal to harm a fly just won't do. There is, of course, the other option of staging an extra-terrestrial invasion to create sufficient fear to rally people behind their self-appointed leaders and give up their freedom willingly. Interestingly, UFO sighting stories are all the rage again lately in the UK.

So what does the immediate future hold in store? With Western armies being driven back at most fronts, their own people will question the need to sacrifice and tighten belts whilst wasting money on unwinnable wars abroad. The power of the state will increasingly be directed at people at home to prevent unrest and "keep the peace". People no longer trust their governments whom they perceive to be living off them rather than serving their interests, and being seen in bed with corrupt and powerful international media corporations has not helped to ward off the accusations of sleaze. Democratic systems are not very apt at keeping an angry populace under control, so expect the powers governments awarded themselves to fight alleged Muslim terrorists to be used more and more to placate their own people. No doubt, the scaremongering against Islam and the alleged deluge of immigrants will continue in the hope that people will fight amongst themselves rather than unite against the abuses of government. There is little hope, of course, that Muslims will be the catalyst for unity. Whilst Islam is well placed to rally a new liberation movement, including an uprising against the usurers who have enslaved most of the world into their "global village", Muslims world-wide lack even a basic understanding of political Islam and most Islamic movements have been subverted from within. If the British-American establishment simply hand over to China, it is yet again another change of shift without change of management, as the same mafia banking cartels running the show in the West, have also succeeded in pulling the strings in the East, China having become another economy manipulated and controlled through interest-based fractional reserve banking based on the power of fictitious money. Not having stepped into the breach will be Islam's greatest global failure so far.

Magistrates Courts: if you plead not guilty you will be!

I've been attending a couple of magistrate's court hearings in England as press observer for contested speeding charges. Mobile speed cameras operated by rogue police officers are the British equivalent of third world countries' police road checks extracting bribes. They're about generating revenue rather than enhancing road safety. In a letter to a local newspaper an outraged motorist recently compared the police speed enforcement action to that of cowboy clampers who immobilise cars on allegedly private land in order to cash in on a hefty release fee.

Modern laser speed detection guns do not provide a print-out of recorded speed. They display a speed figure to the operator and the charge of speeding relies entirely on a single police officer's claim or memory. It is therefore easily open to abuse. Most motorists will not contest speeding charges in the knowledge that magistrates courts rarely find against the word of a police officer. However, there are cases where the police officer operating the equipment makes such major blunders or has such blatant disregard for established procedure that challenging the charge in court appears reasonable. My observations of a number of such cases reveal more about the courts than the police and lead me to the conclusion that in the interest of both justice and reducing public expenditure we might as well do away with magistrates courts altogether.

Whilst more serious offences are tried by a judge and jury in the county court, magistrates or justices of the peace deal with "summary" or petty offences. Magistrates are lay people, drawn mostly from the upper middle classes, with no formal legal training whatsoever. In passing judgment they rely on the legal advice of the clerk to the Justices, and given the magistrates' lack of legal knowledge and experience, these court clerks in a way "own" the court. So instead of keeping up pretences and running the whole show of theatre justice, offenders might as well present before a court clerk in an administrative office to be told their sentence. As there is an automatic right of appeal against the decisions of magistrates courts, not much would change. Contested changes would go to the county court and for the rest the tax payer would be saved considerable sums of money.

My experience of numerous cases is that the clerk always sides with the prosecution, and the magistrates always side with the clerk. There are very few notable exceptions to this rule. Knowing this, the police act with impunity. I have witnessed the very same officer stating under oath in the same magistrates court the exact opposite to what he stated under oath in a case a few weeks prior, in other words, he lied under oath, but even if the defendant had knowledge of the previous case, he would be prevented by the clerk from raising his concern as it would not be "relevant" to the case. The above reference is to a police officer stating when questioned under oath about the code of practice issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers of England and Wales (ACPO) regarding police conduct during speed enforcement action that he had never heard of it. In a subsequent trial the same officer stated with regard to a speed enforcement action at an earlier date that he was fully aware of those guidelines and had observed them throughout. This was an officer who had taken readings of traffic from the opposite side of the road, then jumping out into the road to stop cars on double yellow lines - so much for road safety through speed enforcement action!

Those guidelines contain recommendations for police officers to follow when carrying out road enforcement checks, e.g. that they must wear high-visibility clothing, on which side of the road they must be positioned to take a reading, that they must form a prior opinion of a vehicle speeding (i.e. no fishing operations by taking a continuous reading of oncoming traffic in the hope some motorists might eventually exceed the speed limit), the necessary checks to be carried out on the equipment before and after use, and that if there was any doubt in relation to any of those procedures not having been followed properly, then a prosecution should not be brought. It appears the guidelines were issued in an attempt to placate the public who has long taken the cynical view that speed enforcement by the police is a money-making exercise. However, unless an officer can be held accountable in court for following this code of practice mandated by his superiors, it is hardly worth the paper it is written on and thus a rather pointless waste of tax payers' money. I requested clarification from the ACPO's press office as to the degree to which the guidelines were binding on individual police officers, but they chose not to reply, confirming my suspicion that the guidelines were more of a public relations exercise than serious advice to police officers on the road.

Almost all officers' witness statements I have seen as well as their competence certificates contain a reference to the ACPO guidelines in accordance with which training was received and devices were allegedly operated. It should therefore be only right that a defendant be allowed to question officers on their adherence to those guidelines, yet I sat in a magistrates court hearing in Milton Keynes where the prosecution claimed that since these were only guidelines and, furthermore, they were currently under review, they were not relevant, after which the clerk in a hysterical voice told the defendant off for asking any questions relating to those guidelines, shouting at him as if he was a little school boy that "you were already told that these guidelines are not relevant to your case". The same clerk, who hardly opened her mouth when the prosecution spoke, also constantly interrupted the defendant during his questioning of witnesses. Frequently she would demand: "What is the relevance of this question?", thus making it near impossible to conduct an effective cross examination. For if you were to try to catch a witness out to show that he was either lying or his memory was defective, then having first to explain why you were asking a question and with what purpose ruins the exercise. Imagine the following explanation: "I am asking the officer about the timing of the check he carried out because I want to show that what he says contradicts the evidence given by his colleague earlier who gave a different time. So officer, are you still sure you carried out the check at 14.20 hours?". Being forwarned, the officer is likely going to avoid getting himself into a pickle.

A magistrate's court hearing starts with a plea of guilty or not guilty. The expectation is that you plead guilty. If you plead not guilty, the clerk will give you a long lecture that it could cost you a lot more money in court costs if you do so. So from the outset the case is about how much justice you can afford, not whether you committed an offence or not. In the past, a defendant had the right to a "duty solicitor" who would represent him or her free of charge. This provision has been axed and remains available only for offences which carry a prison sentence. In any case, a duty solicitor would normally go through the motions only and not stick his neck out for a client except that he might negotiate a lighter sentence at the end. Since the outcome of a case at the magistrates court is a foregone conclusion, it makes little sense for a defendant to hire an expensive private solicitor; that cost is best deferred for the appeals stage. Inevitably, when pleading not guilty, people rely on defending themselves. This is when they are at the mercy of the court clerk.

One should normally expect that the court try to assist a "defendant in person" who is a lay person not versed in the law. After all, the purpose of the proceedings ought to be to arrive at the truth. Not so in magistrates courts, it seems. Defendants in person are routinely intimidated and gagged by the clerk to the justices who wants to get the hearing over with as speedily as possible. In some rare cases a magistrates court hearing is presided over by a District Judge, and I have witnessed a judge tell the over-confident clerk to shut up. Of course, a proper judge knows the law and can opt to ignore advice or guidance offered by a clerk. Lay magistrates, on the other hand, lack the competence and confidence to do so and are thus at the clerk's mercy who runs the court as his or her personal fiefdom.

Motorists are well aware that short of giving up to drive they are an easy target for government tax collectors. There road taxes and fuel taxes, the cost of car insurance as well as parking fees and congestion charges, and all of those tend to go up regularly year after year. Since the tax income goes into central government coffers, local partnerships composed of local councils, local police forces and other agencies are regularly using speed checks as a means to complement income at a local level. If this is the intention it would be a lot easier to simply add a speed levy on all motorists using certain roads or use road tolls, like they do in France, instead of criminalising the motorist. The effectiveness of speed limits as a means of road safety is doubtful in any case. German motorways without speed limit are no less safe than British ones, but they are a lot less clogged up because you don't find cars hugging the overtaking lane at 70 mph. Speed limits are sensible at certain dangerous stretches of road, but their overuse for monetary purposes means that they are generally ignored, having the opposite effect on safety. Drivers who know where speed cameras are (and there is equipment on sale which superimposes those locations on GPS navigation systems) will temporarily slow down before and speed up after that location. Those who notice the cameras late will brake suddenly, endangering traffic behind them.

As for magistrate's courts, they are a total waste of time. Given that they are neither willing nor able to challenge police authority, no matter how little regard an officer might have for the law he is meant to enforce and uphold, they become "Kafka" courts where the outcome is almost predetermined and procedure, not justice, is the main objective. Instead, both police misconduct and miscarriages of justice are encouraged. In the interest of justice, and for the benefit of the public purse, the magistrates court system in England and Wales ought to be abolished.

Fifty ways to loose your luggage (The budget airline song)

The budget airline song - Fifty ways to loose your luggage

to be sung to the tune of Paul Simon's Fifty ways to leave your lover

This song is inspired by the endless frustration at airports where the glamour of air travel has given way to an experience not far removed from that of the coach stations of old. To make up for their government-subsidised cheap ticket prices budget airlines have resorted to all kinds of surcharges combined with cost savings which can tire the most seasoned traveller. Whilst the situation is global, in Europe, Ryanair, the airline whose executive pondered about charging for the use of toilets whilst in flight and suggested the introduction of planes with standing room instead of seats to pack in more passengers, is the most notorious contender, charging you for the privilege to print your own boarding cards, offering you "priority boarding", which is really "priority waiting", since after you've been allowed to go first through the barrier, you simply wait at the end of the corridor whilst the remaining passengers wait to be let through, after which all passengers are let out to the aircraft together scrambling for any available seat. As the saying goes: Time to spare, go by air. To make you buy expensive low quality food on board, the airline insists that even the sandwich you bought at the airport has to fit into your one piece of hand luggage. Many passengers are going through the embarrassment of repacking their bags to match the prescribed dimensions. Should your reading book not fit inside you will have to conceal it somewhere on your body to avoid being surcharged, which lead me to paraphrase Paul Simon's song. I could have added many more rhymes but wanted to keep as close to the original song as possible. You're welcome to add your own version via comments.

Air travel used to be a joy some time ago
Service was good but prices were not too low
Then along came budget flights at prices you'd afford
And with it came limits of how much to take on board
There must be fifty ways to loose your luggage

She sad it's really not my habit to be rude
But to defeat the constant checks, the method must be crude
To stop yourself from being pursued
There must be fifty ways to loose your luggage
Fifty ways to loose your luggage

Hide it under your hat, Pat
They'll never spot that
Put on an extra coat
And get yourself free
Hop on the plane, Jane
Don't let them drive you insane
Just fill all your pockets, Lee
And get yourself free

She said why don't you get a waist belt to conceal
All your belongings, so they don't look as real
Plus all the duty free you bought for the in-flight meal
There must be fifty ways to loose your luggage
Fifty ways to loose your luggage

Hide it under your hat, Pat
They'll never spot that
Put on an extra coat
And get yourself free
Hop on the plane, Jane
Don't let them drive you insane
Just fill all your pockets, Lee
And get yourself free

Did Osama kill Obama?

The news that Qaddafi's son and three grandchildren were killed in a bomb raid in Tripoli was soon eclipsed by the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been found, killed in combat and quickly buried at sea, some seven hundred miles away, and thus not the most obvious choice of burial location unless you wanted to hide something. But these days, journalists don't ask difficult questions anymore, and the world media were full with world leaders grasping the opportunity to sound jubilant and reassert their unswerving loyalty to America and the so-called war on terror. That war, we are told, is not dead with Osama, but likely to be intensified. Al-Qaeda, by now having outdone even McDonald's as a true American brand name, lives on and the soap opera continues.

For a soap opera it is, and bin Laden, one of the main actors, had eventually to be written out of the script, since he no longer participated in any of the episodes and his occasional appearances by audio or video tape lacked the credibility of the real actor in the flesh. The war on terror needs its success stories, and tracking down, confronting and eradicating bin Laden fits the bill perfectly. It also puts to rest the pertinent questions about the whereabouts of the absent actor. Happy with the "mission accomplished" statement, there is no longer any need to speculate about the frail man on a dialysis machine who could not possibly have survived the aerial bombardment at the start of the Afghan war hiding out in a cave in Tora Bora.

Does it matter? Actors change and the show goes on. Now and then a "radical" Muslim youth guilty of the equivalent of the pub banter that those in authority "all ought to be shot" and that "he'd be the first send them to hell" gets arrested, as recently in Germany, proof that terrorism is alive and kicking although incapable of going beyond the stage of wishful thinking, possibly helped by a good measure of entrapment from the security services. When this doesn't suffice and people stop tuning into the series, something more dramatic gets orchestrated to attract the crowds back to the set: a real explosion in a place where security is easy to evade, for example Marrakesh. The entrance roads to all major Moroccan towns now sport police check points where police do exactly what their Western counterparts do: cash in on the suffering of ordinary people. In Morocco they specialise in taking bribes of motorists (akin to the use of speed cameras in the West), whereas in Europe and America they sell expensive body scanners.

Incidentally, amongst the innocent victims of the carnage in Marrakesh was an Israeli who lived in Shanghai and visited his relatives in Morocco for Passover, putting paid to the lie that Jews (at least those who were not persuaded by the Zionists to migrate to Israel) could not live peacefully amongst their Muslim neighbours in Arab countries. But who pays notice to the facts? Who goes back to the original 9/11 videos and wonders how comes that airoplanes made from lightweight metal penetrate undamaged through buildings made from concrete and heavy steel, melting into the structure and even popping out the other side? It does not matter whether the attack happened as presented on the television screens, what matters for the ordinary viewer is who ordered it, and since Osama has now sunk to the bottom of the sea, the good guys have finally regained the upper hand again in this cops and robbers show. Two questions are never asked (or allowed to ask): who wrote the original script and who benefits from the outcome?

Since the war on terror is mainly fought in the media, anything goes. New wars can now be fought without a declaration of war upon the spurious excuse that we must protect rebels who want to overthrow their government against the repercussions from the the machine of state. By that logic America should have supported the IRA aforetime against the British government who did not willingly give in to their demands. Or the Palestinians against Israel, for that matter, but for sympathy for the underdog to go quite that far is, of course, unthinkable.

Sadly, the people are always the losers. Playing on their hopes of real democracy and fears of terror and violence, the world is being restructured. European countries are turning into police states in order to deal with the expected disquiet over the economic meltdown caused by fraudulent bank created credit. Sudan is partitioned in order to put an end to the war over the oil fields found at the disputed border line. Egypt retains a military government but is given a secular, rather than Islamic, constitution. American stooges who willingly agree to be written out of the script are rewarded with a gracious pension, from Idi Amin to Husni Mubarak. Those who refuse and want to carry on playing a major role, are punished severely, such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. And with some, the script writers had simply forgotten to carry on their story, so Osama, long since dead, had to be publicly killed once more to achieve closure. Maybe Obama, having only just recently released his own birth certificate after many years of agonising hesitation, can now proceed to fake his near namesake's death certificate.