Could humans colonize Mars?

 

Mars

The video footage we've seen of the planet Mars compiled by NASA is absolutely amazing and is a tremendous technological achievement. I know that Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars with humans but how could human beings possibly live on Mars and who would want to?

Mars is a toxic planet and it takes seven months to get there in a spaceship. It's also difficult to make a landing on the planet's surface and to get off it. The Martian atmosphere contains hardly any oxygen and the soil is toxic. Humans would also be exposed to radiation. It's a very cold planet with average temperatures of minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit and Martian gravity is only a third of what it is on Earth. A human weighs less on Mars but the lower gravitational pull would lead to muscle atrophy. The planet is prone to dust storms that can go on for long periods of time. If a human was exposed to the Martian atmosphere, they would asphyxiate as air would be sucked out of their lungs causing the lungs to implode. The blood would also boil because fluids in the human body would vaporize. It's all because of low pressure and the thin atmosphere of Mars. A human would also freeze to death. They say a dead human body on mars would not decompose as it would on Earth because it would dry out and mummify. It's not surprising that they've found no life on Mars.

We should consider ourselves fortunate to live on the blue planet with its diverse forms of life, abundance of water and oxygen. It's a beautiful planet and we should take better care of it and one another. We inhabit a rotating planet that is suspended in a black void called space, with scarcely a clue, why we're here or what real purpose we serve in the overall scheme of things. We may well be the only form of human life in the entire universe. It's truly amazing and difficult to comprehend.

Sunak accused of having "blood on his hands"!

 

Rishi Sunak

In a heated intervention in the House of Commons, Tair Ali, the Labour MP for Birmingham Hall Green, accused the UK's unelected Conservative Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, of "having the blood of thousands of innocent people on his hands" over his stance during the Israel-Gaza conflict. He told the House of Commons that while Sunak had spoken of Israel's respect for international law, recently released documents showed that the "Foreign Office had serious concerns with Israel's compliance with international humanitarian law and its ongoing assault on Gaza." The Labour MP said this assessment had been hidden from parliament. He called on Sunak to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and to end the British arms trade with Israel. Sunak's rather pathetic response was to declare "That's the changed face of the Labour Party."

In a tweet on X, Bella Wallersteiner, called this an "Utterly appalling intervention from an elected representative." While Israeli indiscriminate carpet bombing and Israeli military intervention in Gaza have led to the deaths of over 26,000 people with more than 64,000 wounded, many of whom, are innocent women and children, Wallersteiner has the gall and effrontery to say that Israel is fighting for the values we hold dearest in the UK and that this country will continue to stand by Israel. 

More than 10,000 innocent children have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and ground operations in Gaza since the 7th of October. According to a press release issued by Save the Children on 30 November 2023, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 63 children in the West Bank since the 7th October and yet we're expected to believe, that racist apartheid Israel, is fighting for the values we hold dear in Britain.

How Sunak can talk of Israel's respect for international law and keep his face straight at the same time, is mind boggling. Israel's military occupation of the West Bank since 1967, is illegal under international law and so are the Israeli settlements built in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Apart from the Americans, the rest of the international community considers the Golan Heights to be Syrian territory held under Israeli military occupation.

In total some 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank in contravention of international law along with 220,000 settlers in East Jerusalem and 25,000 in the Golan Heights. They are considered to be Israeli occupied territories and in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The recent ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) restraining Israel from committing potentially genocidal acts in Gaza, is rather embarrassing for the U.K. and U.S. governments, who belittled South Africa's case that Israel was guilty of "genocidal intent." Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state called South Africa's case meritless and Britain's Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, warned South Africa not to bandy around with words such as genocide.

Tameside MPs abstain on Gaza ceasefire vote.

 

Both Jonathan Reynolds and Andrew Gwynne have connections with Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). Gwynne is a former Chairman of LFI and Reynolds is a vice chairman of LFI.

In 2018, Reynolds and Gwynne were criticised for visiting Israel as part of a delegation, at a time, when over sixty Palestinian demonstrators had been shot dead in Gaza and thousands seriously wounded. The visit or jolly, had been organised and paid for by LFI.

Angela Rayner is a supporter of Labour Friends of Palestine & the Middle East and so is the former Trotskyist, Sir Keir Starmer-oid, who is also a supporter of LFI. As the leader of Labour Party, Starmer-oid has said publicly, "I support Zionism without qualification." He's also said that Israel 'has the right' to withhold power and water from Gaza, which some regard as a war crime. With friends like Starmer-oid who needs enemies.

At a Chanukah event in 2018, Angela Rayner, expressed regret and apologised for quoting from the book 'The Holocaust Industry' by the anti-Zionist, Norman Finkelstein, who claims that the U.S. Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Holocaust for political and financial gain. In a Facebook post, Rayner wrote:

"As Norman G Finkelstein writes in his seminal book The Holocaust Industry it is important to fight for and preserve the integrity of the historical record."

The Board of Deputies of British Jews had faced calls to disinvite Rayner from the Chanukah event because she had cited Finkelstein. Ivor Caplin, chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement, called on Rayner to 'apologise immediately' adding, "There is nothing seminal about accusing the Jewish community of collectively abusing the memory of the Holocaust." Angela Rayner said the quote had been taken out of context and that she'd been reflecting on her visit to Auschwitz and how important it was to remember the Holocaust and to continually challenge and confront antisemitism.

Last November, all three Tameside MPs, abstained in a House of Commons vote calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. On Friday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ordered Israel to take action to prevent acts of genocide but stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire. It also called on Israel to improve the humanitarian situation for Palestinian civilians and to ensure that its troops commit no genocidal acts in Gaza. Israeli officials responded by accusing the ICJ of anti-Semitic bias.

The pervasiveness of English 'Podsnappery'.

 

As I write this, it's absolutely freezing outside. I can't believe that anybody would choose to sleep outside on a night like this if they had other options. You're literally putting your life at risk of dying of hypothermia.

 Some fools like  Cruella Braverman, the former Tory British Home Secretary, would have us believe that being homeless is a lifestyle choice. It might be for the odd individual, but make no mistake, homelessness can happen to anybody.

 I think many of us in Britain could learn a great deal about British society from reading the novels of Charles Dickens. When Dickens wrote 'Our Mutual Friend' during 1864-5, starvation, want and neglect, claimed more lives over the course of any given year, than the later Jack the Ripper Whitechapel murders did, over a period of three years. It wasn't unusual to find people dead in the streets of London.

 The theme of food and hunger pervades throughout much of Victorian literature. While half the Victorian population subsisted on almost nothing, the other half, as V.S. Pritchett noted, was "disgustedly overfed." The Victorian upper classes, enjoyed the luxury of eating fifteen-dish meals. The wealthiest of Victorians often believed that the poor had only themselves to blame for their pitiful existence and shouldn't be helped or they were indifferent.

 In Our Mutual Friend, Dickens satirizes the English middle-classes through the character of John Podsnap, a rich, pompous, self-satisfied complacent upper-class Englishman. 'Podsnappery' has come to symbolise smugness and complacency and a refusal to recognise unpleasant facts. It needs to be rooted out like knotweed and disposed of.  

 In Britain, we're still living with the legacy of much Victorian thinking about sturdy beggars and the deserving and undeserving poor. There is a great deal of Podsnappery about. Braverman could easily have fallen out of the pages of a Dickens novel.

 

The French see the English has politically docile. Is this true?

 

The best thing I like about the French is their militancy. There's a tradition of revolution and taking direct action in France. The barricades were always going up in Paris. Now and again French people take to the streets to show the politicians who's really in charge.

The French see the English has being supine. They think the English allow themselves to be used as doormats by capitalists and politicians. There's a germ of truth in this, but in the 18th century, England was considered one of the most riot prone countries in Europe. In the years leading up to WWI, strikes and industrial unrest, were a common feature of life in Britain. Moreover, the English have never had a Vichy France or a Petain and Laval who collaborated with the Nazis. As Winston Churchill couldn't be certain which side the French would join, he sank the French navy to stop their ships falling into enemy hands. France wasn't liberated by the allies until 1944.

England certainly had Nazi sympathisers like Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists. Nazi sympathisers could also be found amongst the English aristocracy, the Tory Party, and the House of Lords. Many of these aristocrats, like the Duke of Windsor, would have sold us out to the Germans. Lord Semphill, spied for Japan, but was never prosecuted.

The author George Orwell, said that the English upper classes didn't really understand Hitler, but what they did understand, was that Hitler was an anti-communist and on the side of the dividend drawer. There's no doubt that Winston Churchill had fascists sympathies and had initially admired Hitler's political skills and nerve. He also detested Stalin and communism. He visited Italy in 1927, and said that Mussolini - who he called the 'Roman genius' - had done the world a favour by crushing Bolshevism in Italy. Churchill also said that had been Italian, he would have been a fascist. But Churchill was an English patriot, a racist, and a staunch imperialist. He saw Hitler and the Germans has a direct threat to the British Empire and its interests.

As for the 'dividend drawer', we should not forget that while millions of people were being slaughtered in Europe by the Nazis, the German arms manufacturer Krupp, always paid the Dividend on time to its shareholders including its English shareholders.

At the end of the war, the directors of I.G. Farben, including its Jewish directors, were tried for war crimes at Nuremberg. I.G. Farben made the Zyklon-B gas that was used in the gas chambers. The Nazis had called I.G. Farben the citadel of Jewish capitalism.

Turkish journalist beaten up by Israeli soldiers

 

When they're not killing Israeli hostages, Hamas fighters, or innocent Palestinians, the Israeli Army are known to target and kill journalists. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 63 journalists have been killed since 7 October while covering the Israel-Hamas war. The majority have been killed in Gaza. The picture in this posting shows Israeli soldiers attacking a Turkish photojournalist called Mustafa Haruf. He was first struck in the head by a rifle and then dragged to the ground and kicked in the head. The incident occurred in occupied East Jerusalem. Haruf who works for the Turkish news agency Anadolu, was hospitalised with severe head injuries.

Last month the news channel Al-Jazeera, reported that eight BBC employees had written to them criticising the BBC's "pro-Israel bias and insufficient coverage of Palestinian civilians compared to the Israelis in their broadcasts on the Israel-Palestine issue." The authors of the 2,300-word letter said the BBC had "failed to critically approach Israel's claims, couldn't tell the story accurately, and therefore couldn't help the public understand human rights violations in Gaza." They said the BBC used terms like "massacre" and "brutality" only for Hamas, and portrayed the Palestinian group as the sole provocateur of violence in the region. They claim the BBC carefully portrays Israeli suffering by telling audiences the names of the victims, covering funerals, and interviewing families. Yet, in comparison, the BBC journalists say that humanising coverage by the BBC of Palestinian civilians, has been singularly lacking.

Why is it that we're told the names of the Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas, but not the names of the innocent Palestinian women and children who have been killed in their thousands by Israeli carpet bombing? Obviously, to the BBC, some lives are more important than others. The eight BBC journalists, who have requested anonymity, "fearing reprisal", accused the corporation of "double standards' in how it reports on war crimes and the war in the Ukraine, with its reporting on the conflict in Gaza which has seen over 17,000 people killed, including many women and children. Over 10,000 children have been killed or are lost under the rubble and presumed dead following the Israeli carpet bombing of Gaza.

The Israeli authorities claim that 1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas in the  attack on 7 October.  In Britain, neither the Conservative government of Rishi Sunak or the Labour Party led by Sir Keir Starmer-oid, have called for a ceasefire in Gaza. In failing to call for a ceasefire, are they condoning genocide and ethnic cleansing? In October, Paul Bristow, a Conservative MP, was sacked from his government job when he called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Are all men potential rapists? Some women seem to think so.

 

Russell Brand

The feminist pitchfork mob seems to have it in for the comedian and TV presenter Russell Brand. Has Brand been charged or convicted of any crime?

Jess Phillips, Labour's former Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding, said that women who accused Brand of sexual impropriety, which he denies, were effectively "made to feel like they have to prove themselves." Really? Isn't tangible evidence the basis of any prosecution in English law? Aren't people supposed to be innocent until proven guilty?

In 2018, Jess Phillips claimed to have been bombarded with 600 rape threats in one night. Jess seems to think that all men are potential rapists. Rape or any kind of sexual assault is a serious business, but so are false allegations of rape or sexual assault which do occur.

Last January, Eleanor Williams, aged 22 from Barrow in Furness, was sentenced to eight and a half years imprisonment after falsely accusing men of rape and trafficking her for sex. These false allegations devastated people's lives. A court found that her allegations were totally made up. She was in fact a rape fantasist who self-inflicted injuries on herself with a hammer and then posted it on social media to get attention.

Biased BBC reporting.

 

What sort of news service is the BBC offering the British public? It claims to offer impartial, factual, unbiased news reporting.

Last night, I watched a BBC news report about the U.S. and U K. military strikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen who are targeting shipping in the Red Sea. Anybody who watched this BBC news report wouldn't have had a clue why the Houthi rebels were targeting shipping because the question was never brought up. We were led to believe that they were doing this at the behest of Iran who supply them with weapons. We heard from the former CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr and a Pentagon official, but not from anybody representing the Houthis.

The Houthi rebels say they have been targeting shipping in the Red Sea that is heading towards Israel and will continue to do so for as long as the war on Gaza continues, but this was never mentioned in the BBC news report. They now say that because of the attack on Yemen, all U.S. and British assets have become "legitimate targets."

Wife Selling. The perils of being a nagging wife.

 

I first heard of the practice of "wife selling" when I read the Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. I didn't think it was historically accurate but it seems that it was. In Hardy's novel, Micheal Henchard, sells his wife Susan and baby daughter to a sailor at a county fair.

At Carlisle on 7th April 1832, a farmer called Joseph Thompson, sold his wife to a pensioner called Henry Mears for 20 shillings and a Newfoundland dog. According to the Lancaster Herald, Thompson's wife was about 22 years of age and "appeared to feel a pleasure at the exchange she was about to make." The Herald noted that "She appeared above the crowd, standing on a large oak chair, surrounded by many of her friends, with a rope or halter made of straw round her neck." Thompson told the crowd that his wife could "make butter and scold the maid, she can sing Moore's melodies, and plait her frills and caps; she cannot make rum, gin or whiskey, but is a good judge of the quality from long experience of testing them."

Although the practice of wife selling was rare and of questionable legality, Thompson seems to have put his wife up for sale because she nagged him too much.

Henchard, a farm labourer, sold his wife and daughter in a fit of drunkenness and regrets doing so when he sobers up. He gives up drinking, becomes a prosperous corn merchant, and the Mayor of Casterbridge. After a period of twenty years, his wife returns with their daughter and Henchard remarries her. He later discovers that his daughter, Elizabeth Jane, is the child of the sailor to whom he sold his wife. There's always a twist in a good story.

 

Blair denies involvement in Israeli plan to relocate Gazans to the Congo!

 

Tony Blair

There have been numerous reports that the former British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, has held talks with Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials about 'resettling' displaced Palestinians in Gaza to other countries including the Congo and Saudi Arabia.

On Sunday, Israeli TV Channel 12, reported that Blair had been in Israel last week and had held talks with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the war cabinet minister Benny Grantz.

The Channel 12 news report came after two far-right Israeli government ministers called for Jewish settlers to return to the Gaza Strip after the cessation of hostilities and for Palestinians to be encouraged to emigrate.

News reports have said that the Israeli government see Blair playing the role of a 'go between' to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and to see where they can be relocated.  Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, said:

"We must promote a solution to encourage the immigration of Gaza residents."

The Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, has called Hamas and the 2.4m people who live in Gaza "Human Animals" and called for the people of Gaza to be denied electricity, food, water and fuel.

On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported that 70 per cent of homes in Gaza and half of the enclave’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed in Israeli air strikes.

Since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October which Israeli officials say killed 1,200 people, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed 21,800 people including 9,100 children, according to the government media office in the Gaza Strip. Both sides are accused of committing war crimes.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change have said the report is "a lie." They added: "The story was published without any contact with Tony Blair or his team. No such discussions have taken place. Nor would Tony Blair have such a discussion. The idea is wrong in principle. Gazans should be able to stay and live in Gaza."

The Palestinian presidency in Ramallah condemned Blair's alleged involvement and said they would demand that the British government "not allow the meddling with the fate and future of the Palestinian people...We also consider Tony Blair to be an unwelcome person in the Palestinian territories.”

South African government calls on ICJ to issue arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

Gerald Kaufman

What happened to European Jews and other minorities and races in WWII, was absolutely shocking. Mass murder on an industrial scale by the Nazis.

But it's not uncommon today to see graffiti written on walls in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, which says, "Gas the Arabs". The Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, has described the Palestinians and Hamas as "Human Animals." Where have we heard that kind of language before?

I remember parts of the speech that Sir Gerald Kaufman, the Labour MP for Manchester, Gorton, made in the House of Commons in January 2009. He congratulated David Miliband on steering resolution 1860 through the United Nations Security Council and asked him what the international reaction would be if Hamas had slaughtered nearly 900 Israelis and subjected nearly 1.5 million Israelis to degradation and deprivation? He added:

"Is it not an incontrovertible fact that Olmert, Livni and Barak are mass-murderers and war criminals - Yes. And they bring shame on the Jewish people..."

Kaufman told the House of Commons that his grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. He added:

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count."

What would Gerald Kaufman make of the destruction of Gaza today? Some 30,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defence Forces, two-thirds of them, innocent Palestinian women and children.

Today, most MPs would be far too afraid to make a speech like that made by Gerald Kaufman (a Jew), who would now be denounced as a self-loathing Jew and an anti-Semite.

The South African government have accused the Israelis 0f "genocidal intent" and have have asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ), for an interim measure to prevent Israel from committing acts of potential genocide by calling for a halt to combat operations.  The have also asked the ICJ to issue an arrest warrant for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Police arrest pro-Palestinian activists for posts on social media.

 

Tony Greenstein

Although we're supposed to enjoy freedom of speech in the UK, it looks like the British bobbies are trying to silence people with pro-Palestinian sympathies who speak out against Israel and who condemn the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, in Gaza by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). Like George Orwell's 'thought police' or the Gestapo, they've been arresting people or 'thought criminals', for posting comments on social media that expose the atrocities taking place in Gaza following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October. 

I recently posted a video on Facebook of Sarah Wilkinson, a disabled mother who was arrested by the police in front of her children for simply reposting on social media, articles about the current conflict in Gaza. Sarah maintains that’s all she did. After her home was raided by five police officers and her property confiscated, including vegetable plants that her children were cultivating, she was arrested under section 12 of the Terrorist Act and taken on a one-and-half hour drive to Swindon police station where she was held in custody for seven hours. She was told by police officers during her interview that she must "denounce" Hamas and Palestine and if she did so, she wouldn't be charged. The police told her that some people in this country might be offended by her being offended by talk of genocide and war crimes taking place in Gaza. One of her bail conditions was that she agree not use social media which she refused to accept. Sarah Wilkinson told the police she wouldn't be silenced or tell lies and that they should read out the Terrorism Act to the Conservative Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who’s government are acquiescing with atrocities taking place in Gaza by supporting Israel and refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire. It looks like the police will be wanting to prosecute her under the Malicious Communications Act rather than the Terrorism Act.

It has just been reported on Skwawkbox that the veteran pro-Palestinian activist and anti-Zionist, Tony Greenstein, was arrested by the police in Brighton in the early hours of the morning of 20 December. It seems he was arrested for posting a Tweet on social media that the police have found objectionable. Greenstein was recently given a 9- months prison sentence suspended for two years, after he was found guilty with three others of intent to cause criminal damage to the Israeli arms company Elbit, in Shenstone, near Walsall. No actual damage was caused to the factory because the plot was thwarted by the police. All the defendants were part of Palestine Action and had targeted the factory because it makes drones and parts for drones used to kill Palestinians.

Unlike America, there is no First Amendment in the UK that protects freedom of expression. Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998, does protect your right to hold your own opinions and to express them freely without government interference. Article 10, is not an absolute right as it contains restrictions where the rights and freedoms of others, public order, and the general welfare, are concerned. However, the right of not being offended is not one of those restrictions.

We should always remember that all governments are capable of becoming repressive and authoritarian dystopias and that includes governments in liberal democratic societies. The ancient Greeks recognised that eternal vigilance was the price to be paid for freedom.