Volcano ash cloud over Europe

So the whole hoopla that gets all air traffic in Europe grounded is because one planeback in the 90s flew RIGHT OVER an erupting volcano and got into trouble. Yet another clear case of governmental knee-jerk induced by the mass media hysteria.

Swine flu vaccine: a profit-generating myth

Following the bird flu and atypical pneumonia, these days the swine flu is the focus of a massive media hoopla. After 300 people died worldwide, it has been proclaimed a pandemic. Give me a break, more people die every year choking on fish bones but I don't see a war on fish waged anywhere.

The real reason for this well-orchestrated hysteria may be in what is peddled as the salvation: the so-called vaccine. Anyone whose ever peeped into a school textbook of anatomy and hygiene would know that there in principle can be NO anti-viral vaccine.

As usual, the USA is the trend-setter for this kind of nonsense: they kicked it off back in the days of the Bush administration when a 7-billion bird flu vaccine contract was awarded to a company owned by Rumsfelld, Dubya's best crony. Now this get-rich-quick scheme has become adopted all around the world, scaring millions in spending on something that accomplishes nothing.

Jade Goody's Legacy

Now the extreme poor taste media saga of Jade Goody's televised battle with cancer is over. She is dead, and like The Chaser sings: "Even an asshole turns into a good bloke after death." Her only legacy will be our knowledge that one can make a career based solely on a shameless display of ignorance, bad temper and racism on reality TV. Anyway, rest in peace, Jade!

BBC and Newspeak

In the foreword to his 1984 Orwell wrote that this was not a criticism of socialism but a warning for British society. A brilliant example of latter-day Newspeak I found on the BBC website:

Taxpayer 'set to control Lloyds'. Then the articles go on how old boys at Lloyds' Banking, a private company, gambled and screwed it up huge time and their Whitehall cronies bailed them out to the tune of 260 billion pounds. Which exactly the opposite if the title, typical Newspeak.

The article goes on. According to BBC political correspondent Carole Walker , many people in Westminster think that "it would be simpler and easier for the government to nationalise the banks, and that in the long-term it would save the taxpayer a lot of money..." Now how on earth is that going to save the taxpayer any money at all?

New Faces Of New Russia

Gone are the days when Russian big brass looked olive drab and oblivious of modern facial care. Gone are even the not so remote days of ill-advised attempts at classy act with the help of flashy Italian garb and bling-style accessories.

Russia's new image financed by the seemingly unlimited oil and gas profits is all about understated top-notch luxury and designer-approved colour schemes. Beastly faces of former Communist bosses have vanished into the dusty archives of history. The state-of-the-art spin machine has fixed everything down to good boys' facial expressions and impeccable manicure. Gorbachev's broad Southern accent and Yeltsin's habitual malapropisms have given way to intelligentsia-style vocal inflections and even English fluency.

New leaders of new Russia are, as Marx would remark, the products of the system. Capitalism requires products to be well designed and presented and politicians are no exception. Even tough cookie Condie Rice was impressed: 'Medvedev is of the new generation', she conceded warmly.

Who Is Actually On Our Side?

It must be in human nature that whoever gets to power immediately starts craving more and more control. The fear of not knowing what is going on in citizens' minds must be unbearable. Just over a decade after the demise of the KGB as a not so successful attempt to keep people's minds in check, its very original foe, the US, introduces the Patriot Act that aims at the exactly same objective. UK, the 51st state of the current Empire of Evil, achieves the highest density of CCTV cameras per capita. The Culture of Fear is slowly creeping up on the European continent too: even water bottles and nail-clippers are potential weapons these days.

But the most fierce opponents and decriers of the Western democracies' newest trends in mass conscious control and manipulation are guilty of the same crime. Our flamboyant Mr. Hugo Chavez who rose to power as the champion against the malign US influence in Central and South America is currently trying to institute an anti-spy law. The gist of it is: "if you don't squeal, you'll get in the dock" - not cooperating with intelligence agencies will land you for 4 years behind the bars. I remember how I used to morally side with Chavez's cause but now he too is going down the typical power usurper's way.

Quickly spreading worldwide paranoia as well as technological advances are getting all sides to beef up on surveillance. It's a new arms race and the loser this time will be the common-and-garden Joe like you and me as now it is a perfect perpetual war and its real objective, as unobtainable as it may be or seem, is a total subjugation of your mind. Globalist or anti-globalist, militant communist or hard-nosed Neo-Con, they all are after your brains.

There Goes The Beeb Too

Trashy tabloid-style news - is that what we all want?

Here's the list of the most popular news of the hour - no, not on the Daily Mail website, but on the good old BBC International:

Girl, 15, found stabbed to death

Skydiving plane fails at 7,000ft

Kennedy brain surgery 'a success'

US sect children set to go home

French train crash kills children

BBC prides itself on its mix of analytical and factoidal news as thus they can "address all audiences [including imbeciles and illiterates]". Their Most Popular News pick is actually based on what pages people read the most. Day in, day out, from 3 to 5 headlines out of Top 5 would not be out of place on the Sun's front page.

The Beeb, the last bastion of sense and good taste has been brought down by our own hands clicking on the links to pseudo-news about crime, disasters, sex and glamour.

Eurovision 2008: UK's Sour Grapes

'Tis the time of the year when the UK habitually goes on a diet of sour grapes - the Eurovision Song Contest takes over the hearts and minds of the extended Europe from Iceland to Israel. Year in, year out UK ends up in Top 3 from the bottom and very time everything is blamed on the political voting by "those Eastern Europeans". The failure of his personal pick, Andy Abraham, to score any this year got Sir Terry Wogan so pissed that he hinted at resignation from the whole Eurovision affair. We all know it is but a figure of speech and we are still in for many years of his dyspeptic commentary.

It is true that at least half of the Russian win was based on the douze points from the countries with sizeable Russian-speaking populations but that alone could have never landed Dima Bilan a victory. Wogan's allegation that it is all about "those Eastern Europeans" simply does not hold water: how come then every nation in Europe - including Western ones - except Ireland and San-Marino gave zero points to the UK? On the other hand, Bilan's Timbaland-produced power ballad was rewarded with scores from 6 to 10 by Hungary, Romania, Georgia, Croatia, Czech Republic and Poland that have little or no reason to be pro-Russian - if you know a bit of history. But such intricacies are completely lost on our toffee-nosed Terry: to him they all are just "those pesky, cliquey Eastern Europeans".

What UK's massive track record of nul points proves is that even when it sends its best national contest entries, it still shoots off the mark: the very sound of British songs is too foreign to the Continental ear. As Britain's separate identity from Europe has been underlined, celebrated and at times exaggerated throughout history, so the Anglo-Saxon musical aesthetics doesn't cut it with the listeners from across the Channel.

Even Britain's idea of what can make it in the Eurovision turns out way off the mark each year: this year's bookmakers' favourite, Botox-intensive Ms. Perelli of Sweden only managed to score high from Finland and ended up No. 18. It can be that Britain is not in tune with what Europe likes because its nose is too deep up America's butt in their glorified "special relationship". Instead of bridging gaps with the rest of the continent, it likes to imagine that the Atlantic Ocean is narrower than the English Channel and mimics every cultural or economical trend of its former colonial Big Brother and voilà le resultat.

Britain's best attempts at faking the "Eurovision winning sound" never-failingly end up too drag, comical and tongue-in-cheek. This year, UK's honest attempt at presenting itself well in the Eurovision fell flat for a different reason: original indigenous British music sound is not what the rest of Europe likes. Last year's Scooch was just too gay and tacky, this year Andy Abraham stood no chance because he was too cool - the Anglo-Saxon way, which in Europe makes little impression. Nice try but no cigar, bud.

There is a dogged tendency on the UK's part to underdo it or overkill it every time, will it ever be able to get it right or will it walk away huffed, puffed, miffed and pouty to never play with other children again?

Desperate Production Of Desperate Housewives

It started off so well: created by the same producer as Sex And The City, Desperate Housewives promised to be original and captivating. However, the pressures of keeping the public titillated and excited about such a, let us admit it, boring and easily exhaustible subject as suburban married life, season in season out, finally proved too much. The Desperate Housewives went shark-jumping.

First, with the producers having to keep the ratings high and the writing team going through some major writer's blocks, they had to put Mike Delfino in coma. That was the beginning of the end, the show went down the daytime soap opera way. More trite gimmicks followed with hastily contrived and unnaturally ended sub-plots crammed into a very limited episode time frame.

While Sex And The City at least purported realism and natural kind of acting, the way the desperate housewives get lined up in a row to deliver punch lines reeks of As The World Turns and The Days Of Our Lives. Scores of relatives and old time friends conveniently popping out of nowhere and vanishing into nothingness again, story lines cropping up and abruptly getting cut (probably prompted by the actors' raise demands), stock facial expressions and mannerisms - all signs tell of how desperate the production team must be using all the oldest tricks of trade to sustain viewers' interest.

One thing missing from Desperate Housewives now is canned laughter.

Iraq War Started By A Hoax! It Is Official

Last night on Jeremy Paxman's Newsnight it was revealed by people such as Colin Powell and Wilkinson (the head of the CIA's European operations) that the premise for war Iraq was a hoax.

Even more, it turns out that it was known prior to the war to both the US and British intelligence services that the ONLY informer on whose testimonial of Saddam's biological, chemical and nuclear thereat was based was a fabricator. The man in question - an Iraqi chemical engineer who defected to Germany - made up lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction hoping to speed up his asylum application and German citizenship procedure. His former boss alleged that he "was doing it for his family".

But if you look at the headlines line-up of the BBC World Service, there is no sign of this scandalous revelation. We are treated to such defining moments of the humankind's history as a Norwegian house collapse, Singapore grounding an A380 and a Finn held over an Easter Island ear.

That is exactly how information is controlled in free societies - by swamping important news with an ocean of factoids and anecdotal pieces.

Same Old Friends Forever?

This was my favourite show and I think it was brilliant. Each and every one of the Friends cast has starred in feature films since the show ended and it couldn't be more disappointing for a former fan: it turned out they can only play themselves.

Same mannerisms, same facial expressions, same ways of delivering gags, same everything as in the good ole days minus Phoebe's songs (which she didn't write herself anyway). It is as if they are afraid to scare away their luck by trying something beyond their Friends characters. What a dud, they really should have retired with the millions they earned when on Friends and stop disappointing their fan base time and time again! Yawnorama.