Webfooted Weblog

I’m not a huge fan of political celebrations. Nevertheless, I have to say I was actually quite moved by last night’s goings on over there on the other side of the pond. It’s not just the obvious: USA ’s 44th president being a black man and the signal that ends out to the rest of the planet. Don’t forget that before the changes forced by the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s, some states did not even allow black people to vote! And it’s end of the Bush dynasty and a massive poke in the eye for the the appalling Republican neo-cons who enabled “Dubbya” to rule over the most inept and corrupt administration the USA has ever suffered.

I was also very taken with the conciliatory nature and graciousness of both John McCains concession speech and of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. I felt both men actually displayed great dignity and wisdom - and I am not exactly a big fan of politicians. It was also quite reassuring in an age when one could be forgiven for thinking that democracy is dead, to see the massive turnout and how many young Americans actually took part.

Obviously the devil is in the detail and many observers suggest this will probably be the shortest election honeymoon period in history. But for now, I’ll suspend my usual scepticism and disbelief and wish all concerned all the best in what some have described as “America’s Mandela moment”.

Honk! Honk!

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7644238.stm

The US Senate just agreed George Bush’s $700 BILLION bailout for failed Wall Street financial institutions - though Congress actually rejected the plan on Monday. Similar rescue plans are afoot all over the planet. But should the taxpayer be bailing out the fat cats - giving them a so-called golden parachute made out of our hard earned cash? Or is that the price we have to pay? Will it work anyway? Trouble is it seems the banks no longer trust each other, so why should we trust them?

I think we should be talking less about bail and more about jail for those responsible for this monumental cock-up. But who is to blame? George Bush? Gordon Brown? Greedy bastards in Wall Street & London’s “Square Mile”? Or perhaps our “leaders” are correct and we should blame the “great unwashed”, for borrowing more than they can afford to pay back? Fortunately, I can’t borrow any money even if I wanted to because UK banks don’t lend to geese.

Anyway, what are good quiet little geese like me supposed to do next? Sit tight, with our heads in the sand and our wings up our big, white, feathery bottoms, hoping for the best? Or perhaps should we pawn everything we own, spend our last few quid on a handful of gold Krugerrands and head for the hills?

And if all this isn’t depressing enough then check this out:-

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston

Honk! Honk!

I’m not really a fan of violent protest. But in this incident, I think the Hungarian egg terrorist deserves a medal. It took place in Budapest, Hungary on 2008-05-19. Note the way the egg thrower just wanders off after the event. Also note the caption on the back of his shirt: “Microsoft = Corruption”

Seems this young man wants Monkey-Boy-Ballmer to return the 25 billion Hungarian forints Micro$haft has extracted from the Hungarian people for its overpriced but under-performing products. Indeed, Hungarians, like many other computer users around the planet have a lot of reasons to be severely displeased with Micro$haft. For example, Charlie Barcza:-

http://www.garfnet.org.uk/joomla/content/view/118/57/

Mind you, with a target as large as Ballmer, this Hungarian guy must have been a rotten shot! Or perhaps the eggs were formatted with Vista? Or perhaps he should use goose eggs next time. They are bigger!

Honk! Honk!

Interesting that folks this side of the pond are starting to talk in terms of recession. The situation really is very worrying indeed. Home repossessions have doubled, paid work is becoming harder to find and I think there is much worse to come. There are number of very serious contributing factors in my view:-

• The sub-prime lending fiasco - people lent far more money than they could afford to pay back.
• Big banks no longer trusting each other and unwilling to lend money to one another. This inter-bank lending is what lubricates the wheels of free-market capitalism. If it dries up then basically we are buggered.
• A totally decimated industrial base. What do we actually make here in the UK? Bugger all.
• UK and the United States having economies that are tied together too closely. If Washington sneezes we catch the flu.
• UK (& US) wasting billions of dollars on a long, drawn-out and utterly pointless foreign war. I still don’t understand how Blair got away with this. The guy should be standing trial for war crimes, not swanning about as Middle East Envoy.
• The Iraq war has also resulted in oil-price-instability and hence a massive hike in raw energy costs.

What seems to be forgotten is that wars cost money. This money and this has to come from somewhere. It has already cost the US three trillion dollars. Our Government won’t actually tell us what it’s cost. I suspect it doesn’t know how much it has cost!

Finally, I think these national current account figures make particularly depressing reading. Note the three countries way down at the bottom - i.e. those with the biggest national debt - are the United Kingdom, Spain & United States. Remember, these are also the three major players in the Iraq fiasco:-

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html

And remember these are the CIA’s own figures!

We are really in the poo methinks…

This allegedly US-produced map of the world, simplified to the point of stupidity, sums up graphically how many people around the planet regard the average American view of the world…

^{(full size http://www.garfnet.org.uk/coppermine/albums/archive/misc/humour/made_in_usa.jpg)}

But is it really fair or wise to write off all Americans as dumb or arrogant?

Firstly there are plenty of dumb, arrogant and generally unpleasant individuals here in Old Blighty. There’s no chav like a British chav! I’d say that Springer’s flow of “trailer trash” actually seems quite bright compared to some of the specimens one sees dragging their knuckles along Shirley High Street, here in sunny Southampton.

Secondly, I think the current incumbent in the White House has probably done more to damage America’s reputation abroad than all other US presidents put together. But you can’t damn a nation because of its damned president! Remember that only 25% actually voted for him - and the vote-counting in several states was far from transparent.

Thirdly, America has done some great things, (e.g. Man on the Moon, Arpanet, Unix, GPS, Hubble Telescope, Maglites etc.) - along with some fairly dreadful ones of course (e.g Macdonalds, Microsoft Windows, Iraq war, Vietnam War, Jerry Springer Show, etc .)

Fourthly, there are a lot of Americans who are deeply distressed by their image abroad. There is a definite sense of , “Hey, when did we become the bad guys?”. I remember one American friend ringing me on the eve of the Iraq War saying she felt ashamed to be American. Another young American lad I got chatting to on a bumpy bus ride across one of the Hong Kong Islands told me that in his travels around the Far East he seldom admits his nationality, for fear of attack. He tells people he is Canadian.

On the bright side there are voices of resistance and they are growing stronger. We don’t hear much about it here - not unless you spend a bit of time on the internet.

This is my favourite. It is excellent. These people actually tell the truth! Bush’s administration don’t like them very much but it makes one think there may be hope for America - and the rest of us - after all..

• http://www.truthout.org

I’m not awfully keen on Mondays. Actually I’m not particularly keen on mornings generally - being something of a creature of the night.

Just been rudely awoken by the planet’s noisiest bin men. Never understand why they just settle for kicking my wheely bin round a few times and thumping the side of the dustcart whist revving the engine till the governor cuts in. Go on Why not go the full hog? Blow the bloody lot up with some gelignite and let me get back to sleep!

I have a shed load of work to do but no energy or inclination to do it. Coffee has gone cold again and I can’t be bothered to waddle over to the microwave to heat it up again. And I can’t find my goose shoes. In fact, I am of the opinion the world is full of bastards and they are all out to get me. As as the late Kenneth Williams observed in his toga-clad role as Julius Caesar in Carry on Cleo,

“The infamy, the infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!“

I had a small car accident the other day. I drove the goosemobile into the back of someone else’s car at some traffic lights. Little bloke, less than one metre tall got out of the other car, banged on my window and shouted, “I’M NOT HAPPY!”

I wound down the window, looked down at him and asked, “Sorry mate, which one are you then?”

:-)

When I was a mere gosling, I remember visiting Paris and thinking how much dirtier it was than London. Today completely the reverse is true. London must be Western Europe’s grubbiest capital.

Nothing seems to work properly in London any more, does it? Bin bags strewn across the pavement. Unintelligible or non existent road signs. Short bits of wide road joined by ridiculously narrow ones so that nothing actually joins up. Congestion charging. Potholes. Dog turds. Litter. Chewing gum on the seats of all the buses and tube trains. Great ugly lumps of concrete dumped in the street to “prevent terrorism” but actually just prevent the traffic moving.

And then, when you are stuck on the South Circular at virtually the same spot for two hours waiting for the smoky poison-pumping wreck of a bus in front to move forward another two centimetres, you have to read some smug advertising hoarding commissioned by Ken “newt-brain” Livingstone telling you how bloody marvellous London is since he took the helm!

And don’t get me started on that mismanaged cesspit they call Heathrow!

This made me chuckle. Hopefully one day the law enforcement agencies will get the bastard - before he emigrates to the 40,050 hectare ranch he has just bought in Paraguay. This was the same country that many Nazis escaped to after 1945. Seems the Bush Gang plans to do the same. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that Paraguay has a loophole in its extradition treaty with the USA that excludes “political crimes”!

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1928928,00.html

Of course once the law gets after Bush and his criminal cronies, even if it can’t actually catch them all, there is a very good chance that we can finally get that grinning, lying, two-faced shyster Blair.

This was lifted from…

• http://www.motherearth.org

There is a bigger version that you can download and use to print T-shirts or scale down for desktop wallpaper. You can also print it out and perhaps send a copy to Tony Blair just to make the lying two-faced bastard pee himself in anticipation of the fate that eventually awaits him.

As you all know, I am a very busy, international, jet-setting sort of a goose. This means I don’t have much time for mundane things, such as washing, tidying my pond or keeping my blog up to date.

Basically, I never bothered to change the look of my blog from the default “Kubrick” template that the Wordpress software came with. Trouble was that frankly it looked rather boring. It was not the sort of image that a glamorous goose-about-town such as yours truly really desired. So last night I sat down with the latest GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) and had a good splash around to see if I could perk up my blog just a little bit.

Now there is much debate online regarding GIMP versus a commercial product called Adobe Photoshop. I accept that Photoshop is generally pretty good. Lots of graphics professionals use it. But it costs a wing and a leg. And I am far too mean to pay for expensive, proprietary, American software. Besides, there isn’t a version for Linux yet - though I did make Photoshop version 7 for Windoze run under Linux using WINE, once upon a time. Buggered if I can remember how!

Granted, “GIMP” is a bloody silly name for a product that should really be taken very seriously. On the other hand, GIMP offers cross-platform compatibility in a manner that totally eludes Adobe. There are versions of GIMP for Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Apple Crapintosh and Windoze. But its real difference is that GIMP is 100% open source. This means that the source code is freely available to all. It also means that GIMP can be recompiled for virtually any modern graphical operating system.

Even better, it is 100% FREE of charge too. Yes FREE! No strings, no adware, spies or nasty stuff. It’s just good, solid software for your computer with no damage to your wallet whatsoever.

So, whilst the arty types slug it out over on Slashdot & Purestorm, the debate round these parts never really left the pond. GIMP is now the official image editor of choice for all good little geese everywhere. Check it out…

• http://www.gimp.org

Honk! Honk!

PS. No wallets were harmed in the making of this site!