Week to forget Cont'd

Friday morning. Still carless & relying on public transport, which when you live out in the provinces and don't have access to the Tube, a regular reliable bus service ,oyster cards etc can be a royal pain in the arse!! although I have to thank my Sister for bringing me home last night and I cant say that having an enforced week off has been entirely unpleasant, on top of the nervous tension I've been doing a fair bit of walking and my trousers feel a bit looser around the waistband so it aint all bad I suppose. I'm off to catch the foot ferry to Point Clear so I can get the bus into Clacton...a nauseating thought at the best of times.

Week to forget

Who knew? the week started out full of promise, so much was going to get done.. I'd raised the cash to get Rival out of the water, I'd ordered all the materials to do the job & monday had been a good day workwise. then Monday evening my son & I jumped in the car to go home and the car decided it was going to die; never mind thought I, havent got time for this, car can be sorted tomorrow afternoon so called a taxi & went home. woke up on Tuesday morning & the wind was blowing a houlie, Cats done a dissapearing act. Never mind thinks I & as the tide comes up & im casting off lines & moving things that might fall over One hour before high water I'm ready to move & after 40 mins of sawing back & forth & the yard owners faliure to appear with his launch to throw a line on my prow to turn me round as promised I'd missed my window & had to make the old girl fast which i did im afraid with very bad grace, much to the amusement of the people helping me. After a phone call to explain why I wasnt up St Osyth creek ready to go onto the slipway we agreed to try again the next day. In the meantime, I bummed a lift back to Clacton in order to get the Car sorted out. I had to be towed to the garage and at the time of writing it is still clinically dead. So now im stuck in Clacton, and have to grovel AGAIN to my friend Tony who comes over from Brightlingsea to pick me up and we head home Via St Osyth to explain in person what has gone on and to grovel to the only man in the area with a slipway big enough to take Rival. Having grovelled and scraped off we go back to the yard where I parted with a very expensive bottle of wine in gratitude, and slept the sleep of the dead. Got up this morning (Wednesday 25th) Got the foot ferry to Point Clear & bus into Clacton only to find my car still dead so cant work, cant do sod all! so tonight stayed round Mums & had a curry Just hoping the car is fixed tomorrow.

Oil, Plane crashes & Rabid Senators.

Theres a lot of brit bashing going on in the States at the mo isnt there? It seems to me that we can be blamed for just about anything at the moment, Im only surprised that Senator Robert Mendez hasnt tried to pin the Vietnam war onto BP. As to demanding that British MP's fly over there to validate his personal witch hunt ( Oh yes Mid terms are almost upon us) I dont see any soul searching going on for the 290 victims & the relatives of Iranian air A300 Airbus flt 655, which was "accidentally" vapourised by the skipper of the USS Vincennes When it was "Mistaken" for an incoming hostile bloody hell, I ask you! How do you mistake an airliner with a military fighter? I always thought that it was funny how quickly that went away, equally odd how the Reagan & the Bush Snr administrations expressly told M Thatcher that they didnt want an inquiry into the crash. All those Americans dead & no inquiry.. all of this is well documented as is the fact that Abdelbasset ali Mohammed al Megrahi had nothing to do with the downing of Pan Am 103 Someone did it, but after 22 years of titting about it is highly unlikely that we shall ever know who it was but that doesnt matter does it? so long as "Justice" has been seen to be done. in the eyes of the world (for world read Washington DC) There are some that say that Lockerbie was a Quid Pro Quo & endorsed by the Whitehouse just to keep the peace I personally choose not to believe that, but only because the ramifications of that are just too nauseating to contemplate. As to that other outrage In the Gulf of Mexico, isnt it funny how Haliburton have managed to keep their hands relatively clean? When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska in March 1989, 257,000 barrels of oil were spilt and massive public outcry swept through America. In the Niger Delta, between 1976 and 1998, over 2.5 million barrels of oil were spilt into the Delta environment; and that is only spills officially recorded by the Department of Petroleum Resources. Leaking pipelines, running through villages, farms, creeks and rivers in the Niger Delta, are a major source of pollution, sickness and economic ruin for the people of the Niger Delta. Farmland polluted by oil is rarely rehabilitated, destroying livelihoods. Fish contaminated by oil cause sickness among the people and further economic ruin as fish stocks decline. The spillages are a regular feature of life in the Delta. They are rarely dealt with promptly. In some cases, minor leaks are left for months, resulting in major pollution Where the spills are due to failing equipment, the oil companies are clearly responsible. But where they are blamed on sabotage, the companies and government blame local people and criminal gangs. However, who is really responsible for a situation in which people will rupture pipes on purpose? Individual incidents can not be separated from the overall malaise in the Niger Delta. The people are desperately poor and they do desperate things. Clean up? Whether caused by industry neglect or otherwise, the clean up rates are appalling and more and more land in the Delta is being destroyed. Exxon claims to have spent over US$2.1billion cleaning up the Exxon Valdez oil spill. There is no clean up operation in the Niger Delta worth mentioning. No one knows exactly how much oil has been spilt, how much land is polluted, how many people are affected, what species are threatened, what the economic or environmental costs have been. But hey as long as it isnt on Uncle Sams doorstep. Whilst I find it appalling that tens of thousands of people have had their lively hoods destroyed by this unfourtunate accident I feel that a little perspective is needed I may seem to come over as Anti American, absolutely not! It is a wonderful country that has much to be proud of. Im just anti politician those bastards give us all a bad name! Be you American, British,Iranian.....Need I go on? Bfn Mudrat

Do the US know more than they are letting on?

I cannot say dear reader that I am a great one for conspiracy theories, in my opinion they are usually started BY the parties that have something to hide to blow up a smokescreen and every so often the odd red herring is cast in just for good measure.
However my attention was recently drawn to an article that was published in the Guardian (Known throughout the UK as the Grauniad because it used to contain a wealth of spelling & grammatical faux pas.)

I don't intend to splatter my blogs with other peoples reportage, but this time I will make an exeption.

Was Lockerbie suspect working for US?

Published Date:  27 October 2008

By David Maddox

CAMPAIGNERS yesterday renewed calls for the United States to answer fresh questions over a Lockerbie bombing suspect.

Former Labour MP Tam Dalyell and Edinburgh law professor Robert Black urged the Scottish and UK governments to answer reports there is evidence Abu Nidal was a US agent.

They have long believed Abu Nidal, who died in Iraq in 2002, and his Popular

Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command were responsible for co-ordinating the bomb that blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December, 1988 with the loss of 270 lives.

Intelligence reports, said to have been drawn up for Saddam Hussein's security services, said Kuwaitis had asked Abu Nidal, whose real name was Sabri al-Banna, to find out if al-Qaeda was present in Iraq.

The reports referred to Abu Nidal's "collusion with both the American and Kuwaiti intelligence apparatuses in co-ordination with Egyptian intelligence".

And campaigners said the latest evidence adds weight to the claims that Libyan secret agent Abdelbasset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi  who was found guilty of the atrocity in 2001; and the Libyan government were scapegoats to cover up a wider plot.

Mr Dalyell said the reports added weight to the theory that Lockerbie was a "tit-for-tat" attack for the shooting down of an Iranian passenger airliner by the warship USS Vincennes in 1988, and was allowed by the US administration.

He said the claims that Abu Nidal was working for the Americans would explain some of the mysteries that surrounded the Lockerbie outrage. These included a notice that went up at the American embassy in Moscow warning diplomats not to travel on Pan Am flights, and senior South African figures being "hauled off" the plane before its final flight.

The diplomats were replaced by students, who lost their lives.

Added to that is the mystery over why then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher overruled her transport secretary, Cecil Parkinson, and stopped a public inquiry into the attack. It has been claimed this was because the US administration did not want an inquiry.

In a joint statement issued yesterday, Mr Dalyell and Prof Black said: "If the American public had known of a link with Abu Nidal, and had known that the US government knew enough to pull VIPs off the plane and let home-going students take their place, there would have been fury at a time of transition between the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr.

"The fact that the Iraqi government either executed Abu Nidal or forced him to commit suicide suggests they had discovered he was an American spy."

Mr Dalyell and Prof Black who with Lockerbie relative Dr Jim Swire persuaded the Libyan government to hand over Megrahi for trial said they were "deeply and personally concerned" about the Libyan, who is suffering from cancer.

There are some pretty awful allegations in there. One can only hope & pray that It's rubbish............Cant we?

Bfn     Mudrat