Orinoco obituary...

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RIP Franklin Brito.

"[his] body became a symbol for all struck by the arrogance of power, for those offended by the arrogance of the rulers".

After falling critically ill last week the Venezuelan farmer died yesterday. He had gone on hunger strike to protest against squatting and seizure of his lands and in protest at the government's land policies. He received no compensation for the land taken nor was it returned even after the government had promised to do so; after breaking the promise the government had him arrested/kidnapped: Amnesty International issued an alert and the Interamerican Comission on Human Rights 'requested protective measures when he was kept captive, isolated and watched as a dangerous criminal'.

"Franklin Brito, who went on a hunger strike to defend his property, was later kidnapped by the Government to hide his truth and never received an answer, died today of a heart attack at the Military Hospital where he had been held against his will."

[Source: The Devil's Excrement]

Obeisance of oxidising ore...

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Paying homage to the Iron Lady. Iron lady, Iron Curtain, strike while the iron is hot: "Margaret Thatcher blocked Soviet aid for striking miners, files reveal". Had the iron will - the iron fist in the velvet glove - not been made of such stern stuff, the end of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall may have been delayed; is it too much of a stretch of the imagination to believe it may not have taken place at all.

"...newly released Downing Street documents have shed fresh light on the relationship between Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev, exposing how Thatcher exerted intense diplomatic pressure on the future leader to successfully block a Soviet donation of much-needed cash to the strikers."...

"...Thatcher's diplomatic offensive worked: no donation reached the British miners during their year-long strike. Gorbachev had embarked on his effort to reform the sclerotic Soviet state and concluded that the wiser option was to continue cultivating the British prime minister for the sake of relations between the two countries. Sacrificing the interests of the British miners was the price to be paid for not upsetting the so-called Iron Lady." [The Guardian]

Had that donation taken place, apart from prolonging a country-damaging strike and weakening the UK government, the relationship between Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev would have been entirely different; despite the Maggie and Ronnie show, maybe Gorbachev wouldn't have been "someone [she] could do business with".

Opposition, oppositon III...

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Well, I thought Diane Abbott had the core Labour vote about wrapped-up but it seems Ed Miliband might rob her of these votes: why? Because Blair, Campbell and Mandy have ALL warned against "Red Ed"; clearly any "natural" Labour voter will see this as a reason to vote for him!

[Conservative Home]

Official offer...

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At last he's trying to help: last year he claimed that he avoided a CIA plot to kill him; before that he claimed he was in possession of intelligence showing that the United States had plans to invade his country; before that we all know he blamed the US for the 2002 coup-that-wasn't. More recently, last month, he cancelled a trip to Cuba due to the possibility of 'US fueled' aggression from Colombia. Now, it seems, Hugo has finally realised what the US troop withdrawal from Iraq might mean for him...I'm joking of course...look at the picture: "diana" also means target/bulls-eye in Spanish! The news story about the record number of expropriations (click on image) even has the headline "Give to me!". I guess martyrdom would the best exit strategy, not for him personally of course, but for his 'Bolivarian Revolution'. Watch your back Hugo. (File photo: El Universal)

Opt-out oblocutors...

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NUTTY Union bullies revealed. "The stakes could scarcely be higher", says Nelson Fraser after praising to the rooftops the City Acadamies set up New Labour (you haven't misread that). You may think after I posted slagging Blunkett's letter that I wouldn't be happy but in fact the opposite is true, as Nelson says:

"Seldom has a social policy been so quickly vindicated. Independence works. So who would want to stop pupils getting better a education in an independent state school?"

Who? You guessed it, the union NUTters and their 'accomplices' who are using the FOI to find out the list of anyone supporting campaigns to opt out of local authority control and become one of Gove's Academies. Read it at The Spectator. Remember, 'The stakes could scarcely be higher'.

Oesophageal oncology obese observation...

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The Press Association report that rates of oesophageal (food pipe) cancer "spiked by 50% over the last 25 years". In the Cancer Research UK press release they say poor diet and higher levels of obesity could be behind the increase:

"But we think the obesity epidemic may be a big reason behind the increase. We know that being overweight significantly increases the risk of adenocarcinoma – the main type of oesophageal cancer that's on the up. Our changing diets are also likely to be influencing the rise with people eating less fruit and vegetables."

That, at first glance may sound like a handy PC excuse - like blaming speeding on not having speed cameras - but there is growing evidence that has been looked at for years now and not just the 'overall impact of obesity on population health [and] health-care costs' but the 'underlying adenocarcinoma pandemic in the new millennium'. Adenocarcinoma is on the rise, not just in the throat; there are "consistent upward trends observed worldwide across both sexes"; the odd thing is that the pipe cancer increase is in men and another seeming sex-specific adenocarcinoma is the relatively steep increase in lung adenocarcinoma incidence in younger females despite a downturn in overall "normal" lung cancer.

However (and in no way am I meaning to cast doubt, I just love the quote) in all this one thing should be clear, Sherlock (ACD):

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

Oblatrating one's oblectation...

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Oblatrating one's oblectation: inveigh against one's pleasure; that 'one' being David Blunkett who in today's letters to the Guardian states his "Pride in Labour's education legacy". DB seems to want to equate entry into universities and staying-on at 16 (and passing the exams) to be "proof of the change in life chances of youngsters who in the past would have been written off". Written off, or left school and got a job, got an apprentiship, joined the services, went to night school/college while they worked, etc? Why is having the "third lowest rate of entry into universities and one of the lowest staying-on rates at 16 in the country" seen as a bad thing: somewhere has to be lowest and in an industrial city surely it's the norm.

Should we really be proud that some of 'the most disadvantaged areas' and 'the most underachieving schools' have jumped - to use DB's example - from 6% (probably something to do with the 'wonderful example of liberal education' you speak of...20% truancy) to 82% of its pupils getting five A*-C grades? If you're proud of that surely you should want 100%, maybe then, at last, you'd realise how meaningless it is. A social engineering paper exercise to try to equalise an unequalisable range of abilities, dumb down to a level of all-the-same pointlessness...part of the New Labour fucking shite fest. Cunts.