blessed britons

- The UK's ability to feed itself is still declining: for all food, the UK's self-sufficiency is now 27 per cent lower than it was in 1990, and has dropped seven per cent since 2002. ... Our ability to feed ourselves, without depending on imports from overseas, is at its lowest ebb for half a century.

- The UK is less able to meet its own energy needs: since losing self-sufficiency in 2004, our 'energy dependence' has increased almost four fold. In 2004, the UK lost its status as an energy independent nation. Since then we have relied on imports to balance supply and demand. Even though the country has huge untapped renewable energy sources, including some of the best supplies of potential wind energy in Europe, our dependence on energy imports is increasing.

- Britain's dependence on international trade is increasing despite rising fuel prices and fears about climate change: International trade makes up a growing share of the UK's income. Trade as a share of GDP is at its highest point for over four decades and on an upward trend.

— New Economics Foundation in ‘China-dependence' going up for life in UK... October 2007

mad world

The million Iraqi deaths from the “sanctions of mass destruction” of the 1990s is unmentioned in Samantha Power’s ludicrous treatise on genocide (“A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide), just as she fails to deal seriously with the Indonesian massacres in East Timor. The U.S.-coalition invasion-occupation of Iraq from 2003 has added another million to the Iraqi toll, but the idea that this is “genocide” is inexpressible in the U.S. mainstream media, which is focused on the more politically convenient killings in Darfur - attributable to a Western target, the Arab government of the Sudan, hence subject to the invidious word genocidal. This is implicit but real denial, which follows from the political basis of naming and concern.

— Edward Herman

Genocide inflation is the real human rights threat

deportation and death

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Submitted by antarchi on May 3, 2008 - 14:43.

Zarine Rentia was a 15-year-old Indian girl who had been severely disabled by an extremely rare disease. On a visit to Britain in 2005, she was diagnosed and began a course of treatment at Great Ormond Street, the world famous children’s hospital. In the meantime, she attended a local London School, where she impressed children and staff alike. With the support of Zarine’s doctors, her mother applied to the Home Office for leave to remain in Britain on medical grounds, but was refused. After an immigration judge turned down their appeal in February, mother and daughter returned to Gujarat, where Zarine died weeks later.

— Mike Marqusee, No Sanctuary