[continental airlines] removed for coughing

So what about this 16-year-old girl, Rachel Collier, who was removed from a Continental Airlines plane as it was about to leave Newark, New Jersey, for Honolulu. She'd caught a cold during a spring break trip, had fallen asleep on the plane and then had woken up coughing and gasping for breath as it was about to take off.

The flight attendants gave her water and a doctor on the flight said she would be OK to make the 10-hour flight. But the captain returned the aircraft to the gate to drop off Collier and one of her teachers, Maile Kawamura. Continental said in a statement that Collier was coughing "uncontrollably" and that "the captain felt he was acting in the best interest of the passenger and other passengers on the flight."

Doesn't seem to have affected her too badly - she's planning to fly again soon with Continental. Did the captain do right? Girls that age can be so total in their reactions - it would have been well nigh impossible to deal with. Besides, he was no doctor and he was near the terminal. What do you think?

[dodgy agents] named and shamed

Here's a good one:

Beijing will name and shame dodgy tour operators in the city's major papers in a bid to clean up the industry ahead of the 2008 Olympics, state media reported on Friday. Monthly reports from May would list "the most complained about" tour agencies and their offences, the China Daily said.

Most complaints were directed at travel agencies breaking contracts and providing poorer accommodation and transport than advertised, but also included tricking tourists into buying counterfeit goods, the paper said.

Mindful of an extra 2.5 million people expected to swamp the city during the Olympics, China has also pressed tour guides to act as defacto etiquette police, and to quell uncouth behaviour, such as spitting and littering, in their tour groups.

I'd love to tour round Lewisham, say, quelling uncouth behaviour and advising citizens neither to spit nor litter. I'd be on a mission from Tony so those of unsound thinking could be detained and incarcerated. Important job, tour guide.

[hallelujah] the blog is back

I take back what I said about Blogger on this occasion and apologize to them. It was Internet Explorer which was guilty this time. I've just converted to Firefox and away we go. There'll no doubt be glitches, as I learn it - it's all in Russian - but it looks positive.

I'd like to thank Neocon for this - he put me onto the help page and I did the rest. would you all do me a big favour please and bomb his site forthwith. It's the only way I can say thanks.

Blogfocus Saturday is over at my Wordpress site- please click in the sidebar. Blogspotters - are you also having trouble posting?

Blogger still down, only title possible, Blogfocus ready and other posts - frustration ...

[country quiz] ten to tickle your talent

This country ...

1 … has the highest tea consumption per head in the world, a tourist attraction in the south is a stone high in a castle, the capital in the south translates as black pool and their arms seem paralysed when they dance.

2 ... falls into tropical and non-tropical zones, is fertile in the south east and south west, with rainforest up the north east coast and across the top and they don't much drink billy tea any more. They use a kettle and pot instead.

3 … likes to decorate the roofs of its houses in the capital in bright colours, has many sulphur springs, has a very old parliament, people usually work two jobs if they can get the work and they have just had a record catch of fish.

4 … has a mainly red and blue flag, was the only nation ever to form from a successful slave rebellion, lost its leader when he was supposedly kidnapped by the U.S., does not appear to have the tonton macoutes any more and many live in Florida.

5 … is not sovereign in itself, it was fought for by 'two bald men over a comb', is situated west of the Shag rocks, its first settlers came from St. Malo, was visited by the American sloop USS Lexington and the capital is twinned with Whitby.

6 … has 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, has a 4% Christian and 2% Islamic population, is hot on calligraphy, may have invented football around 1000 AD and even the elderly keep physically fit.

7 … called Aotearoa by much of the populace today, it was originally the name for the north island, the south being known as 'the waters of jade' in translation, it's a keen sailing nation, its sporting colour is black and it has no written constitution.

8 … lost its nationhood in reality in 1603, one of its main rivers was linked to the Seine, its summer temperatures can reach 38 degrees but not often and it invented the bagless vacuum cleaner.

9 … had a long history of free will, had a famous mathematician and poet, was told by the Germans that the Kaiser had converted to Islam and was a centre for the manufacture of scientific instruments well into the 19th century.

10 … is bounded by the river plate in the south west, is larger than Surinam, its political parties are the Colorado and the National, the natives often drink yerba mate and it's administratively divided into 19 'departments'.

Answers here.

[eu] next step in the backdoor agenda

This item has come from the Eurosceptics group but unfortunately, they have no way to link back to them. I've written to Euroserf about this but in the meantime, the whole article, with references, is here. This is the import of it:

German think tank, the Bertelsmann Foundation recently presented a draft paper to top politicians from twenty EU countries and the USA over the “strategic reorientation” of the EU in which it recommended, as a first step, that the national armed forces of all member states should be combined into a single EU army.

'Think tanks' can present papers all they like but will they be adopted by the legislatures? In the case of Germany - yes.

The German Chancellor has taken up this suggestion. Frau Merkel warned against refusing so-called integration. She said “The ideal of European unification is today again a matter of war and peace”.

Why? Why war? Against whom? Against America? Against the infidels in the Holy Land? Or against their own people?

Government circles have let it be known that the method of instituting the “Berlin Declaration” is “ of value in itself because we wish to use this method for progressing the second half of our presidency and the road map for the constitution, if member states can live with it and something useful comes out of it”.

The method referred to here is to ignore referenda results and bring in what you wanted anyway, without reference to either national assemblies or the European Parliament, to present it as a fair accompli.

The foundation funded by the German media group Bertelsmann is demanding further large steps. At the end of February it called together 45 high ranking participants from 21 countries to a “Strategy Group”.

The Bertelsmann Foundation publicised the event, claiming that “the hand-picked circle of participants (…) covered all the great geographical areas of today’s European Union, EU candidate states and the USA,” aimed at “the strategic reorientation” of the EU. (4)

According to the report, further development of the EU “is only possible on the basis of an altered treaty”. (5)

The EU constitution proposed in Berlin today is “simply the point of departure to enable the achievement of totally new goals”.

“Europe wishes to be acknowledged alongside the United States of America as the voice of the West,” it states in a “memorandum” upon which the debate was based.

“For this, considerably greater efforts are necessary on the world stage, from world trade through global environment up to civil and military crisis management”. (6)

Civil and military crisis management? What sort of crisis from the people themselves would necessitate 'crisis management'? How would they facilitate this?

As the next step, the members of the “Strategy Group” took into their consideration the merging of European national forces into a unified EU army. The German Federal Chancellor has now made this suggestion her own.

“In the EU itself we must move closer to a common European army,” demanded Angela Merkel in Berlin’s tabloid press last week. (7)

This drives the EU debate far beyond the EU constitution and limits the elbow room of those previously opposed to it. The same goes for another suggestion by the Bertelsmann foundation which was laid before the “Strategy Group”.

According to this proposal, the internal hierarchy of the EU should be more strongly formalised than proposed in the constitution. Increased powers of political decision should be conferred on those states which have adopted the euro currency.

“The euro group should have a special role in designing the future of the EU”. (8)

So, if you're not on the Euro, you're not on the inner - formally.

To increase pressure on the smaller EU members, the German government is portraying their EU plans as a method of avoiding descent into a new catastrophe – war.

That word again. Why speak of war when we are in an era of unprecedented peace in terms of national conflict within Europe?

The Federal Chancellor announced, “We should not take peace and democracy for granted. The ideal of European unification is still today a question of war and peace.” (9)

Why should we not take them for granted? Isn't that what the EU is for - to ensure this?

Similar threats already enabled the Federal Government to force through the Eastern expansion of the EU against massive resistance in the mid Nineties.

Then the present Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schaeuble, declared in a strategy paper that, “Germany might be required or compelled by its own security considerations to achieve the stabilisation of Eastern Europe alone and in the traditional manner”.

It never alters, does it? The Bruderheist then financed Hitler's rise from street thug to Chancellor and now, in yet another manifestation, the Bertelsmann Foundation is at it again.

This paper was published on 1st September 1994, the 45th anniversary of Germany’s attack on Poland. (10)

Interesting, don't you think? Of course, the main obstacle to their plans is France and Britain - France because she'd want to be the glorious leader of the Euromonolith [and she has more claim to this than the Axis] and Britain because she must be onboard to facilitate the process.

Unless, of course, Britain broke into little pieces. One way to ensure this would be to covertly assist Scotland to 'devolve', causing England to boot them out and they'd then take up the promises which were made by the EU.

Then England, the main difficulty, would be given an ultimatum on rejoining the EU. If she refused … well …

The numbered links are referenced here.

[fresh fields] a thought for this sunny day

When the sun bursts out from behind the clouds and spring is in the air, WC Fields sums it up:

"Start every day off with a smile and get it over with."

[prostitution] does iceland have the answer

Prostitution has become legal in Iceland after a new provision in the Penal Code was accepted by parliament on March 17. It is both legal to solicit sex and to buy sexual services, but it is illegal for a third party to profit from prostitution. The government argues most people who solicit sex do so because they have no other choice or because they are forced into prostitution by others.

By making soliciting sex legal, the government believes individuals who have been forced into prostitution would rather come forward and lead police to those responsible. A new clause has been added to this paragraph making it illegal for a third party to organize sexual relations between others for money, even though he or she does not profit from it. With the new law provision it has also become illegal to advertise prostitution.

Maybe they're onto something here. What do you think? Personally, from the male point of view, I can't see the point of prostitution. Lots of good ladies around without running those risks.

[gerry adams] how can he live with himself

Gerry Adams, in Before the Dawn[1966], wrote:

"It might or might not be right to kill but sometimes it is necessary."

This post says much about Gerry Adams.