Last year 5 US nationals claimed asylum in the UK. There’s a lot of frustration about how failed applicants remain in the country.

Frontline aired a programme about the Taliban, which is fully viewable online, about the return of the Taliban.

Well, given the way the vote was swung by national governments in the last referendum for the consitution, it’s starting to look like the people might have something of a say, but given it’s track record on eg. Patents, I’m still waiting and seeing.
Now one million signatures have been collected to stop the EU parliament from going on holliday once a month to Strasbourg at a cost of EUR. 200 million per year. Aside from the ministers, aides and paperwork having to be carted around, the rent in Strasbourg (for buildings only used 12 times per year) is inflated.
France especially wants to keep it’s parliamentiary perks.

Over 100 countries, mainly third world, but including some large first world ones such as Venezuela and Malaysia, make up the Non-Aligned Movement, who are neither pro the US or Russia.
They have decided they don’t like the ‘Axis of Evil’ type sayings the US has been making, and that they see no problem with Iran’s enrichment of uranium.
Due to the size of this majority, this is being called a new kind of ‘cold war’ – and that there’s fighting talk, led by President and nutcase Chavez. I somehow doubt that the NAW has the coherence to stick up for each other in a NATO kind of sense, so I don’t see that the US will be seeing this as a somehow credible threat – but who knows, with time it could evolve into one.

A presidential hopeful, Dennis McCauley has had a campaign stop in Second Life, to talk to the citizens there. Apparently there is room for improvement, but considering this is the first time it’s been done, I’d say it was a bold move. The political commentary is all about whether this is genius or suicide, which is kind of missing the point IMHO.
The point is that this guy has found a large and hopefully receptive audience which has been untapped politically – most hardcore MMO players don’t do politics at all, and this is a great way to reach them. From the experience they will have learnt lessons, and hopefully will put those into practice next time it’s done.

Yup, Japan is talking pre-emptive strike. Remember, this is because N Korea is testing long and medium range missles that are fallling into the sea short of Japan itself – even though once in 1998 a missle was launched that flew over Japan itself. The threats are where you see them.

Because the USA isn’t allowed by START treaties to build more nukes, they’ve taken to refurbishing old 1960s nukes. Why? North Korea maybe? Nuclear racing is back in town.

The North has been having a field day, launching seven missles after a moratorium starting from 1998, when they fired a medium range missle over Japan. The ranges they fired aren’t reported, but apparently the long range missle failed.

Don’t fuck with N Korea or they will launch “annhilating strikes” on the US. This in response to the calls to N Korea to not testdrive their shiny new superlongrange missle.

So they’re old and seem to have been manufactured in 1991, so no ongoing WMD programme can be proved by this, but it does prove that Saddam was lying about having WMDs.

The finds started in 2003, but oddly enough the Bush administration has been sitting on this, probably in the hopes of proving an ongoing programme before going live with the information.

Looking for SEX shows that the countries that search for it most on Google are Muslim 🙂

Apparently they don’t understand it’s only for 1 day, not the whole month!

Now that missle is not only undetectable, it also has guidance systems that can’t be scrambled. They discovered that on the test of the second one.

Of course, you can’t complete this with now stating that as Iran, you can handle any invasion.

Yet again we see how deranged the whole situation with the cartoons is. Really sad that outside of Iraq the news is deliberately shifting the blame, whereas within Iraq people are shocked. But still no riots. Are the muslims trying to widen the gulf between our cultures?

Now it’s the Chinese spying on the Americans – and sending F-16 and Black Hawk engines as well as missles back home to China!

… to the Argies…
Hugo Chavez is doing a really good job making friends isn’t he?! Oh well, at least he called them the Falklands!

Well, Blackberry has infringed patents and stuff and it’s illegal and stuff, but we can’t shut down Blackberry service in the US and stuff, because – it’s a hazard to national security, and there are 200,000 government users who absolutely NEED Blackberry or they’ll, like, die and stuff!
How is this clash between the US government vs the LAW going to work out?

Well done that man – but surely the rest of the world will hate him for giving a rats ass for his country instead of just going for himself alone?

Yeah! It is safe to drive quickly – especially if you know what you’re doing! I want to take my car to the maximum speed: DAILY!

The new man of the city in Manchester has decided to not go for making money for the government, but to focus on actually targeting criminals! What a radical idea!
And most surprising of all, he’s doing very very well – more criminals caught and less handgun discharges!

Random roundup of political news and opinion sites

• European Voice
  
  EU news, Eurocrats, opinions and current affairs. Excellent site for tracking what’s happening in the EU on a political level.
• Le Monde Diplomatique
• Le Monde Diplomatique (English version)
  The French version is naturally better (more background, documentation, etc), but the English version is easier to read (for me, at least..)
• Power and Interest News Report
  

  The Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an independent organization that utilizes open source intelligence to provide conflict analysis services in the context of international relations. PINR approaches a subject based upon the powers and interests involved, leaving the moral judgments to the reader.

  PINR, it’s what’s for breakfast.

• Global Security
  US-based security news site.
• Jane’s Information Group

Our most beloved dictator du jour, not satisfied with kicking out all the farmers (who happened to be white) in his country, then blaming it on the Americans, launching a massive famine, has found the solutions to his problems: kick out the city dwellers too!
est. 10,000 people dehomed in the space of 24 hours… maybe he should advance his progressive ideas about urbanism vs agriculturalism to the Iranians – they have a lot to learn yet from mr. Mugabe.

There must be a plan, but when it involves

either something’s going wrong, or it’s not such a good plan…

.. or Democracy, or whatever. Anyway, El Reg reports that various militaries are somewhat uncomfortable with the detailed Earth Imagery presented on Google Maps/Earth. With some detailed images explaining exactly why they’re a bit nervous..

Good stuff! 4 pages, so keep reading.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/13/google_earth_threatens_democracy/

In the Ukraine ALL traffic cops were fired in one fell swoop – and what changed to the safety and traffic situation? Exactly NOTHING!
Get rid of them here!

From his subordinates Yushchenko demanded – and received – a plan to dissolve the DAI and by the beginning of July the deed was done, the executive order signed.

Ukraine’s once-feared traffic police ceased to exist.

….

But that’s not the way it turned out. Drivers in the Ukrainian provincial cities of Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Lviv reported traffic was moving quite normally and most drivers were obeying regulations, even though there were few, if any, traffic cops around to enforce them.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Bush, in a dramatic policy shift, promised India full cooperation on Monday in developing its civilian nuclear power program without demanding that it sign a major nuclear arms control treaty.

From Reuters

What about Pakistan? They sure won’t be happy… will this jeapordise the ongoing peace processes that are finally progressing in Kashmir?