Bush is most likely the most corrupt, oppressive and heirarchal president we've ever had. The economy is in absolute shambles, and put bluntly, could very well be f***ed beyond repair. He's handing enormous deficits on to the next generation of Americans, and somehow still managed to take all the social security money from the elderly. He's wasting money we don't have, as well as American soldiers' and innocent Middle Eastern civilians' lives.

I get very frightened when I think of the shape America is going to be in when Bush is done with it. I don't know if we were the best country in the world, but we were damn close. Look at us now. We're the laughing-stock of the world, and everyone hates us. It's a shame to see what used to be the land of the free, the land of liberty, collapse into this oppressive, right wing hellhole. Email me if you would like. I would love to hear a right wing Republican actually give me solid, backed - up reasons why they support Bush. I'll be waiting.

Now I see why I considered it a good thing to have about the house. It will go on my stairs so I get to see it every morning.

Very interesting article, just a question.

Quote: "For starters, George Galloway, the BNP, Robert Kilroy-Silk and the mad hatters of UKIP."

Please explain why UKIP are the Mad Hatters?

How much more 'one-sided' could an argument be?
You are far from alone in your opinion however, most of the Western world has the same misunderstanding of events.

I think this is a very good, factual and interesting article, it should certainly be spread throughout many websites.

It would be nice if you had more on the ideology of the Labour party over the last 100 years.

I am so appreciative to find someone who has taken time to write something in favor of our great president. Look at all the negative things on the internet, and it's nice to finally have a positive page.

Is this what the US really wants, though? The first two big policies of the new Ukraine are 1) pulling out of Iraq, and 2) renationalising the privatised economy. Hardly a neocon free market attitude.

Businesses exist to make profits. A bank does not kill anyone or sell drugs to make money; it is in the business of using money to make money. So what if RBS or HSBC make those profits? That does translate into wealth for their shareholders. It is called the market economy at work.

Also some of the advice here is faulty and misleading. Naive people, who think they can switch around without damaging their credit score, would be in for a rude shock. The customer, who borrows a few hundred thousand quid, is not just a customer; he is a risk taken in return for an interest charge.

I do not work for a bank and the only reasoning I have used here is that of a business professional.

So 'Blogs' are 'merely' to be fact checkers for the mainstream media eh?

Is this the kind of patronising attitude that is the best reaction the corporate media can come up with as a 'rearguard' response to the rise of independent media?

For so long, we have not only been ignored but have been slandered with the label that we're not 'real' journalists, as if being the paid hacks of giant corporations makes you a 'real' journalist. Moreover, the contradiction of being used as 'fact checkers' after many years of being accused of not being accountable is rather galling.

Furthermore, my own site is used as a regular source of news and information for the corporate media (and all for free of course), a further irony considering the vast resources the corporate media has at its disposal.

Is it that so-called professional journalists are simply incompetent insofar as they have the same (if not better) access to the plethora of news sources available as I do?

Or perhaps it's much simpler; corporate bias in reportage of the news. Sifting through the large databases available to corporate media does not in and of itself make for good journalism.

John was summarized as saying that right-wing bloggers were after the media which they perceive as liberal. I grew up in an era where the liberal side of most things had a proprietary sense about their causes and they were not shy about inimidating "regular folk" into silence with their tactics.

It's interesting to see the right-wing using some of the same tactics that have been used by the other side for generations.

Certainly we can all share our embarrassment at how both sides bulldoze the opposition with their rhetoric, but I can only applaud the development that there are now two sides to the media. What's also interesting is the way that this blogging has brought global issues, which most of us have felt unable to be part of, down to a level where the individual has a voice.

Is there a futurist in the house who can see where this will lead us in the next five years?

Just a quick response to say that all is not lost. There will always be countries that haven't got massive reserves of oil where nefarious leaders such as Mugabe will be left to carry on their merry way without fear of American intervention. So we can all live safe in the knowledge that the species, however rare they may seem from the limited western coverage, is far from extinction.

The sausages are flat because it affords a far larger cooking surface area than a wiener shaped sausage, therefore allowing a faster cook time.

Efficiency!

There might be 10 reasons to love him, but there are thousands to hate him.

You see what happens when you lock intelligent people up and remove them from exposure to the real world? Goldman Sachs has got the right idea - making its staff perform charitable work. Makes them focus on reality, not reality as interpreted by diagrams, charts and - the bane of our life - statistics!

I read "Ten reasons . . . to holiday in Iraq" by Katie Melville, and as in many cases, I was full of sadness.

How many times have I read a piece by European or American writers who read a thing or two about the Kurds and assumed that they got all there is about these people.

Before I continue, Melville states that the population of the Kurds is two-fifths of the Iraqi population. This is not the truth. The Kurds make about 20% of the Iraqi population (meaning one-fifth at best and not two-fifths).
Second, it is well-known fact that the Kurdish war lord Masuad Barazani, and his KDP party, was an ally of Saddam Hussein. In 1996, it was Barazani that invited Saddam and the Iraqi army to enter the city of Arbil and kill hundreds if not thousands from the fighters of the other Kurdish rival faction of Talabani and his PUK party. The killing continued until Arbil was completely cleansed from the Talabani supporters.

Additionally, since the establishment of the Safe Haven in north of Iraq and the north of Iraqi Kurdish regional parliament in 1992, the Kurds exercised hundreds of cases of assassinations, acts of oppression, attacks, rapes, and forced migration against the Assyrians (ChaldoAssyrians) in those region, which is historical Assyria. Today, the Kurds continue to change the demographic picture of north of Iraq and change the name of historical Assyrian cities, such as Arbil, which the Kurds call today Hawler. It is a historical fact that north of Iraq was an Assyrian Christian region and it was only in the last few hundred years that the Kurds have increased in numbers as they continue to push the native Assyrian Christians out.

During the Iraqi elections, the Kurds deprived some 250,000 Assyrian Christians in the Mosul (Nineveh) Plain from voting. The Kurds are anything but democratic people. The only reason that the world is not aware of such atrocities is because such news is suppressed somehow.

Furthermore, North of Iraq was never known as Kurdistan, as the Kurds have been referring to it lately. Kurdistan was referred to the region of the Zagros Mountains that extended through from Iran, into Turkey, and to southern Armenia.

Kurdish region is that which has been built on the blood of the native Christian Assyrians beginning from 1842 when thousands of Assyrians were massacred by the Kurdish war lord Bedr Khan and later 750,000 Assyrian Christians were massacred during World War I by the Kurds with the blessing of the Turkish government.

I beg of you to visit the below link and read the details of such atrocities committed by Kurds against Assyrian Christians in north of Iraq since 1992.

http://www.f21.parsimony.net/forum37811/messages/32211.htm

Thank you,
Fred Aprim
California

There are none . . . not the way some Christians use that term. The heritage of the Assyrians lives on: that part is true. But the idea that anyone today is a direct descendant of the original Assyrians is too silly to merit serious consideration. In fact, the great Islamic Empire was in many ways merely another expression of the incredible wealth of human development that had preceeded it in that region. The Assyrian Heritage is the heritage of all the people of Iraq, regardless of religion and the Muslim Assyrians, at least, acknowledge that. However, to satisfy Christian claims to exclusity, Muslims would almost have to convert to Christianity before Christian Assyrians would accept them and who needs their approval?

This constant refrain that Iraq belongs to a minority group of Christians, because they insist they and ONLY they are the true and original inhabitants of the land, not only makes them look foolish but has caused real harm to those who wish to live in peace in Iraq and elsewhere because Western Christianity has always had quick and easy access to what is potentially a Fifth Column - citizens of a Muslim country who, for the sake of the religion they share with foreigners, have been too willing in the past to help any Christian invading force that promised to "honor their rights".

It is nothing more than a Church ploy to get a Christian enclave and as such will never succeed. However the calls that continue to go out demanding such an outcome continue to harm the safety and status of wiser and saner Iraqi Christians. This peculiar point of view can be attributed directly to the fact that these people come from the villages where only the local and impoverished Christian Church has anything approaching a school and these "history" lessons are learned at an early age from ignorant and uncultured priests.

All Iraqis are descendants of the Assyrians and to claim that ONLY the Christians among them are the original or true Assyrians is . . . well, patently absurd.

I was raised to believe these same things and never felt comfortable with them. I take great pride in all the people of BetNahrain, Mesopotamia, including the Muslims.

I was born in Baghdad and am a sculptor. In 1988, members of the Assyrian community installed a bronze monument I made of Ashurbanipal in San Francisco. I made another monument of Queen Shumirum that was due to be installed in Chicago, until some Christian Assyrians threatened to sue the city. My last attempt to give our young people some pride-of-place for their heritage was a monument of Hammurabi for Detroit, which was also gratefully accepted by the city, but again shot down by local Christians who resent the fact that an Assyrian does not hold fast to their ridiculous notions of what the world owes them in Iraq.

I know all about pride in being Assyrian. I`ve demonstarted that, in action, over a twenty year career. I did manage to get one Assyrian monument installed in San Francisco, in a most prestigious location. I could have done more if not for the monumental stupidity of these Christian claims to being the original people of Iraq.

I am disgusted to see that even a liberal commentator such as Mr John Elledge persists in conservative rhetoric in his reference: “Few would deny that excessive drinking, gambling or shoving your smoke down other people's lungs is anti-social.”

Well, I would take issue with this point. In my mind, smoking, drinking and gambling are not anti-social but pro-social. All three manage to promote bonds between people through entertainment, thrills and intoxication. They contribute to the greater good by making people happy and getting people together.

For this reason, I do not believe such activities should suffer further taxation, but should be given tax incentives because they are ‘pro-social’ activities. This is because of the basic socialist principle that if you further tax such victimless crimes, they become the preserve of those who can afford it – ie. the rich.

By banning smoking, drinking and gambling, one is allowing the rich to indulge in these activities because they can afford to run their own private smoking rooms, private gambling halls and can afford to bulk-buy alcohol and run their own 24/7 private bars. Labour’s proposal, to democratise victimless crimes (and in the future, we hope, prostitution) is a great levelling policy that brings indulgence to the masses.

Great work, Kate. Your sense of irony makes this history lesson go down better.

But, you might include a crumb about the Assyrians - the last compact speakers of Aramaic left in the world. We are the Christians in Iraq who have undergone periodic pogroms, mainly at the hands of the hands of Kurds now fast metamophasizing into the most adorable teddy bears of the Middle East.

After trying beatings, abductions, shooting up churches during Christmas mass and making sure no ballots were delivered to Assyrian villages on the Nineveh Plains, the Kurdish peshmerga, now forming all the national guard, police and militia throughout Iraq's north (in and out of "Kurdistan") made sure that the 40 ballot boxes that actually got on the helicopters to Baghdad, were so mutilated that the votes had to be thrown out.

So Kate, throw the Assyrians a bone. They were in Mesopotamia before it had a Greek name. They are indigenous as no others are, including the Kurds who are driving them out of their villages even now. Tell your readers that without worldwide protection for these last Aramaic speaking people of any size to preserve the language, the oldest continuously spoken and written language of the Middle East will die. At least, we should have some museum value, if not value in preserving the diversity of Iraq.

Write something about the Assyrians and their attempts to revive Assyria. According to the prophet Isaiah, the Assyrians will have their own country back. 19:23-25 - the Assyrians wants to govern themselves in this area:
http://www.aina.org/maps/assyrian_region_1.pdf
North West Iraq

BTW, this area is NOT Kurdistan.

Jonn writes "the Act gives local authorities the discretion to decide their own licensing laws." Not if you read the official "Guidance" on how the Act is to be implemented, which says among other things that by no means can the local government reduce opening hours, and neither can it take :need" into account in deciding on a new license -- "need" is a matter to be strictly determined by the market, it says. Nor is public health, for instance, to be a legitimate consideration in licensing decisions. Take a look at the Guidance (it's on the web of the DCMS). It is hard to imagine a more control-freaky document.

Interesting viewpoint, but missing it. The middle classes have been bribed into subservience by the rise in house prices. Will they allow the incompetent to return from the grave that they had been thought to have been interred, with or without the requisite wooden stake in the appropriate place?

I agree totally that the "poor" working classes have improved their opportunities and chances, and also that the so called ruling classes have been shown to be at most irrelevant. But the middle classes have never had it so good, and they will be the ones who will vote Blair back into power, with Brown following him as the next PM. Why rock the boat if it is sailing nicely along, and the passengers are not getting their feet wet or even slightly chilled?

The next leader of the opposition will probably be Wee Malkie Rifkind, who will lead the Tories to another glorious defeat, as the baggage he carries will make Mikey Howard look like a ladies purse rather than even a handbag.

Complain all you like about Iraq, but if Saddam had the weapons he actually believed he had, would he have not used them - or allowed some totally deniable group to use them if he felt it would have advanced his, or his sons' power. And just think of having the Tories back in power for another twenty years as the only party who could Little England safe.

Blair was given the information, and he had to make the decision - and put yourself in his position - YOU are responsible for the safety of the citizens of this country, what would be your decision, and what would your thoughts be if the country was attacked, and the thoughts be of those who survived, and which noose would you like to have your neck placed for the incompetence that would make the Major administration look like Andy Pandy and Looby Loo (OK but Ken Clark still looks like Teddy Bear, and Lamont in Scotland is still pronounced Lament).

Live Long and prosper under Labour.

GLobal warming is bad!!!! The earth could be come nothing but water because of the polar ice caps melting. There would be no starbucks!!!

Red Tom is wrong. The anti-global movement has failed to find the right vocabulary and message for its voice in the wake of September 11. It has re-oriented its fight against war and has thus strayed from its original focus of limiting poverty. There is not always a direct link between poverty and war - but people such as Red Tom still seem to throw the two things in together - witness in his letter comparing the anti-war demo with the critique of neo-liberalism. This is as bad as linking Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden.

The central thesis of Naomi Klein's book No Logo remain (exploitation of third world workers, anti-union measures in the third world, poor working conditions and a tyranny - for good or evil - by the IMF/World Bank/WTO axis that would rival a Soviet state-planning infrastructure). If the anti-globalisation crowd ignore the war, drop the stupid catch-all term of 'globalisation' and reorient their campaigning in the direction of a fair deal for workers around the world (which has nothing do with Iraq), they will start to find more sympathy and more efficacy in their ambitions.

Fantastic, although I was wondering what the Costa del Bognor could translate to "coast of the bognor" - what is a Bognor? - as opposed to "coast of the sun". I do believe this concept is going to make a lot of people very rich, but Mother Nature will have her way to the naughty people, ie. litter bugs, dogfowlers, polluters etc. Here's to the earth.

John arrives at his depressing conclusions by only looking at the world of offical politics and culture. Beneath the surface new and interesting things are happening: the anti-war movement (the biggest demo in history), the critique of neo-liberalism from inside and outside the mainstream, the success of radical documentries like The Corporation and growth of social forums like the current World Social Forum in Brazil etc . . .

I'm in Amman, Jordan, working on the Iraqi police training mission. Before I got here, I'd never seen a McDonald's delivery car: little KIAs, completely covered in the McD logo. And big display ads on the walls of bus stops, touting the "McArabia," and I'm not making this up: described as koftas on bread . . . flat, round koftas, but still. A friend tells me that when the first McDonald's opened here there were 2 hour waits, such were the crowds. And my apartment kitchen came with four tumblers - each commemorating the opening of a McDonald's somewhere in the Middle East - with date.

Although McDonalds won't outright admit it, a lot of their food involves soy protein. Their shakes are not made from milk and most of the burgers (except the plain hamburger and cheseburger) have some amount of soy or similar vegetable product.

Not only are they serving a slightly vegan meal to people, but they are selling it to people who would otherwise eat meat and drink milk, not just to vegans.

Saying he actually won might still be a bit of a stretch (certainly less of a stretch than last time). Didn't they mysteriously halve the number of polling booths in the poorer areas of Florida? I'm sure there are other such tales of shinanigans as well.

Mr. McDonald, you must get up awfully early in the morning. I can't even get down to the gym . . .

The McDonald's in Preston, Idaho recently closed. I've heard the rumor that it might get bought by a local small Arctic Circle.

I'm one of the lucky few. Got it from eating a McChicken. Worst 12 hours of my life - sick as a dog, ended up in the emergency room. They couldn't prove it was food poisoning, but they were 99% certain it was. This was about 6 years ago, and I've since been to McD's only 2-3 times. Now I get all my food poisoning from Jack in the Box.

If i had a $squillion, I would landfill all of the outlets especially in Oz. We are running up an incredible health crisis in Oz. I hate the stuff and the stench that comes with the surrounding outlets. Move? Where to? They are everywhere.

He is the devil, I spit on GWB JR and his little doggy too.

So, in regards to number 3, the Happy Meals are like a coke dealer giving away his product to a new drug user. Sure he takes a hit on the first couple transactions, but then he's got a customer for life afterwards.

I don't know why everyone is attacking McDonalds. I was checking out the calories list the other day and McDonalds has the least between KFC, hardees/carls jr, and Burger King.

In Kuwait, we have the McArabia; in Israel, they have the McShawerma. In Turkey, they have McLaban drink. It's all good.

Although your ten reasons might be sarcastic, I do think McDonalds is the healthiest fastfood burger place.

They have banned forced molting, increased the the space that each chicken is allotted, and put restrictions on debeaking procedures.

Although its not club med for chickens, it has made their brief stay on this rung of the karmic ladder a little less tortuous.

Those shakes aren't ice cream. They're made of milk and seaweed gel.

Actually, they're probably healthier than ice cream. Except they're probably flavored by high fructose corn syrup, which is bad stuff.

The British Empire was imperialistic in its endeavour. The will of the people was overlooked as the British Empire plundered the country. Pogroms and the incitement of xenophobia was inherent in the Empire. As an Irish man, reprisals and torture are the legagy of occupation. A fact compounded by the miasma that is the North, where racial tensions were exacerbated by the British, who often projected an image of ambivalence - fatiqued by the 'barbarous' Irish. The Empire mentality is a scar on the British people. Ergo, the British Empire was wrong.

After your first heart bypass procedure, you will find yourself cured of the desire to eat that stuff.

I am offended by the mention of Mr Milosevic as a typical Serbian relic. Serbia is about a lot of things, but after all that it has done to be rid of Mr Milosevic, with really no help from the outside, the minimum respect it deserves is not to be constantly associated with his person. That does not help this country move forward. Let's continue being a serious journal, and let go of such unnecessary cliches.

Patriotism

12. There's nothing more American than McDonalds on a world stage. Do your own part to support the troops - fight the War on Terror, not the battle of the bulge.

The same sausage is used in sandwiches and so must be flat. Which brings up two more reasons to go: it's always the same no matter which location--you know what you're going to get. And, it's dry--no round sausages rolling down your shirt as you drive thru to work.