Death Row gets another death to add to the others!

John Allen Muhammad was put to death yesterday. He was the so-called Washington Sniper. Apparently he was a schizophrenic. Plus he was paranoid and psychotic and delusional. Just the type to bung in the Death Chamber. There's a lot of death around at the moment. By that, I mean not by natural causes. There was the Brit gunned down by a trigger-happy guy in Amarillo. Then the Muslim soldier went on the rampage killing as he went in the army compound. Death in Afghanistan, now too much for many to bear. And a young footballer in Germany sends himself to the next world by getting hit by a train.

Death all around us. Many Americans think death is something of a punishment. In that they've got some kind of religious schizophrenia. The victims of Muhammad's gunfire were encouraged to visit the execution. All grist to the vengeance mill, quite out of keeping with Dominical Teaching. "Vengeance is mine saith the Lord. I will repay". Not a message that the Correctional Centers like put to them. One visitor welcomed the death. "He basically watched my dad breathe his last breath," she told the Associated Press news agency. "Why shouldn't I watch his last breath?" No reason, but is that going to be repeated at the Last Judgement?

This execution will do not one jot of difference to the safety and wellbeing of Americans and visitors to the United States. I take it as read that if I set foot in the country I may not leave as I arrived. The answer to the justice question is to keep schizophrenics off the streets and to curtail their ability to buy guns. One wonders where the madmen actually are. My guess is that quite a few are sitting in Washington cleaning out their porkbarrels!

'Hello America, I'm a British Muslim'

Here's a story to gladden your hearts. Whilst the Afghan plains are being bombed and battered, and much of the world is wary of Muslims - most of it imaginery - a British Muslim has gone over to the USA to talk to groups about Islam, peace and Muslim moderateness. He wasn't sure of the reaction he would get.

Well, he's been very touched by it all. He says, "Upon my arrival at Chicago O'Hare airport, I wasn't detained for secondary screening. The immigration officer, a pretty Hispanic woman, looked at my passport ("Cute picture!"), stamped it and wished me well. I was relieved and surprised. Now, I'm eight dates into my tour. It is tiring, but the audiences are giving me the energy to keep going. They have been, without exception, warm and receptive. Even people I meet outside the events (generally hotel and restaurant staff) have been delighted to hear I am a writer from England on a speaking tour around America on the subject of relations with the Muslim world."

What a great guy! And it only goes to show that ordinary Americans are the salt of the earth. It's the leaders of business and government that let them down!

Barack Aitch Obama!

The man with the sonorous tones announced the entry onto the world stage of the President-elect. "Barack Aitch Obama!", he said, with the most manly voice an American audience could hear. For BBC viewers, Huw Edwards mumbled something about the name Hussein being "controversial in America" and then went on to say that he would have to have it known when he, Obama, took the oath of office. Can't think why Edwards would think to say that. After all, hundreds of Americans have odd names, at least to the WASP community!

That all got me thinking. "Aitch" - what would it be for if not Hussein? Would it be happy, or hope, or heavenly? These are probably words that would sit well with the assembled masses, and what a lot of masses there were! It wouldn't be hell, or hopelessness, or handicapped. Those are words that should be for yesterday's politics.

It was hell for the victims and families of 9/11. It was hell for those caught up in the hurricane that was Katrina. There has been the hopelessness of seeing greedy people play Monopoly with other peoples money and not to be able to change it. And we have been handicapped by the credit crunch, the lack of transparency and such. We hope now to get away from that and to be happy. Is that so much to ask?

President Obama will no doubt have a few setbacks but if we all work together, as he rightly said, Americans and all around the world can overcome the setbacks and move on.

Welcome President Obama!

Today sees the Inauguration of a new president in the United States for the people of the USA and elected by the people of the USA. Even those who voted for McCain and others are, in large part, happy and expectant of great things.

Barack Obama is not Superman, neither is he a special envoy from God, but he is a man of the people. I suspect he will be the most relaxed man ever to walk around the White House and to sit in the Oval Office. After all, if he is willing to work for change with this mess and not get flustered, how much more can he achieve when things get easier. He is clever, he is quick thinking, he ruminates on things, and he appears not to suffer fools gladly.

A new broom is coming, and we all together can sweep away the trash!

Uncle Sam's got more paperwork!

Christopher Columbus only had to contend with crossing the Atlantic ocean. We on the other hand have to contend with crossing the I's and dotting the T's otherwise "it's on your bike, mate!" at the immigration lines.

On Monday, if you are travelling into the United States, you will need to have completed an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) form, which will give the American authorities all they need to know about you.

According to the Daily Mail, the move to more form-filling is likely to frustrate holiday firms, travel agents and holidaymakers - particularly elderly travellers less at ease with computers. They expect chaos! The changes have not been widely publicised beyond the embassy website. So I'm doing my bit, although it's somewhat late in the day.

Rick Galbraith, of the customs and border protection office at the U.S. Embassy, said, "Esta will not be optional - it will be required before they get on that plane." Which will be they won't get on the plane if they haven't got it..

Travellers will have to state whether they have a range of communicable diseases - including some sexually transmitted diseases and TB - any mental or physical disorders, and whether or not they are drug abusers or drug addicts. I can't believe those suffering from a mental breakdown brought about by the credit crunch are going to admit it on a form. Kind of double whammy. And are all those suffering from "unmentionable diseases" going to admit to anything? I've not seen the form, but it's all a bit iffy in the knowledge department. I wonder if Al Quaeda operatives have any sexually transmitted diseases. Nutcases and fruitcakes, yes, but that is already known.

The rules state: 'If your admission is denied, you have no right to appeal.' Well, Big Brother speaks. He should set up home with Big Sister!

Cereal abuser?

Following on from my last post, I was surfing around concerning fundamental Christians and I alighted upon the entry in Wikipedia of John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of corn flakes. One thing I always knew about Kellogg was that he came from Battle Creek, Michigan. This was because idle reading at the breakfast table told me so as it was on the carton. Idle reading has now got me thinking about Kellogg himself.

He was not just a cereal maker but a man who felt obliged to look after the moral degredation of others as he saw it. As a doctor he was more taken by the bowels and the sexual organs than mere corn flakes alone. In fact I would say that he was a tad flaky all round. He was a Seventh Day Adventist (which is how I came upon Kellogg in the surfing) but he took anything they said a step or two further.

He seemed to think that eating well and aiding your digestion kept sexual stimulation at bay. He should have met Dr Ruth! "Vat iss it viv you? You are so unhealthily obsessed, you are!" She'd have run rings round him. The medical Dr.Kellogg was obsessed. He was an advocate of sexual abstinence. He was a crusader against "self-abuse". He wrote Treatment for Self-Abuse and Its Effects. I wonder how many were traumatised by his stern lectures. He stated "A remedy for masturbation which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment. In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid [phenol] to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement."

Isn't it rich! A man who professed some belief in God purports to cause pain and suffering to God's handiwork. It never occurred to him that God thought all this out and found it to be perfect. Even today, American doctors are following his advice and coining the cash with such operations. And I doubt very much if the circumcised of America have abstained from masturbation!

Kellogg wrote another book entitled Plain Facts for Old and Young which outlined his beliefs. Hardly facts! It is apparent that those who are zealots for a cause are blind to the facts.

Kellogg was a "cereal abuser" of the facts!

How American are Americans?

I've met so many different types of Americans. All see themselves as Americans. Well, there's one I met on a boardwalk in Florida who was previously British in that she had assumed citizenship about ten years before I met her. She said "I am now an American, but I still think I'm a bit British. In fact, the local British Consul told me it wouldn't make any difference, because you can't stop being British". Actually, I think you can. You can stop being anything and start being something else. It happens all the time.

In a country that was formed by immigration, there is a grading. Some are more indigenous than others. A grand lady told me she was a Daughter of the Revolution. I was told these were women who could trace ancestry back to the founding fathers. The way she told it, there was a kind of purity about it. Others are only just becoming citizens today.

But not all Americans are as american as the most american Americans. Take Bob Hope. He was born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, South London. He went to the USA at the age of four and ended up as a presidential entertainer and nation's favourite. But he wasn't home grown. He became an American. Same with Jerry Springer, Cary Grant, and Ray Milland.

Some become Americans later in life, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. There's a whole variety. But the most american of all Americans are those who are aged 35 or older and are natural born citizens. A sort of Grade A Fancy! Only these can become the President of the United States of America. Maturity and native status combined.

So why all this stuff? Well, some legal eagle has again popped up with the idea that John McCain is not in the Grade A Fancy league. He's in the level just below! This is because his mother gave birth in the Panama Canal Zone. This fact is not enough to satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president must be a “natural-born citizen” according to an analysis by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, a law professor at the University of Arizona.

McCain is not eligible, so he says. This is even though the law was amended in 1937 to take account of such occurrences. McCain was born in 1936.

It is a load of hokum of course. Not legally, but practically so. “No court will get close to it, and everyone else is on board, so there’s a constitutional consensus, the merits of arguments such as this one aside,” said Peter J. Spiro, an authority on the law of citizenship at Temple University.

McCain is safe. Nobody will test the law. But it still means that some Americans are not as american as all Americans should be or think they are. It's a version of primus inter pares, except the primus is far more that one, and on different levels!

Uncle Sam saw you drive from Bognor to Brighton!

For those who keep bleating about the anti-terror laws and how effective they are should think again. Saying, "well, if you haven't done anything you shouldn't be worried", and sounding all prim and proper about it is no good. Jacqui Smith is living up to her status as a typical prying New Labour Home Secretary. All apparatchik and no common sense.

She has discreetly (or by stealth!) introduced new measures which will allow images of cars captured on road-side cameras, and "personal data" derived from them, including number plates, to be sent overseas to such august organisations as the CIA. The Daily Telegraph has uncovered her weasley ways. When she announced last year that British anti-terrorism police could access "real time" images from cameras used in the running of London's congestion charge, she did not imply that it could be used by "others". A statement by Miss Smith to Parliament on July 17, 2007, detailing the exemptions for police from the 1998 Data Protection Act, did not mention other changes that would permit material to be sent outside the European Economic Area (EEA) to the authorities in the US and elsewhere. Typical New Labour. All spin and deception.

So when you are out for a drive this weekend with the family, give a wave to the cameras as you pass by. After all, Uncle Sam wants you to know he appreciates your co-operation.