Off with their heads!

So now they are talking about cutting off your Internet connection for downloading songs:

The notion of turning service providers into copyright cops has been gathering momentum since November, when Sarkozy announced the French plan, which was negotiated with the record industry and Internet providers. If the plan is approved in Parliament, service providers would cooperate with a new, independent authority to identify and warn pirates who could eventually face the cutoff of their Internet accounts.

It would contribute to more balanced discussion of this topic if Nicolas Sarkozy's wife's personal interest as a recording artist were to be declared. He is certainly not acting in the general interest of France, whose trade deficit with the USA would only increase if all pirating were to stop.

If his poppet's pockets are really in such dire need of additional lining, His Majesty should simply punish those who download Carla Bruni songs. The guillotine could be wheeled out of retirement for the purpose. Why cut off their Internet when you can cut off their heads? A romantic gesture indeed.

Can she knit?

Come back Genghis, all is forgiven!

Chinese cannot be blamed for believing what they have been taught to believe - among other things that the biggest "rogue" of all, whose huge portrait still hangs in Tiananmen Square, was only 30% wrong. This was the man who was responsible for 70 million deaths. Had he been 100% wrong he could have wiped out half of the Chinese population of the time!

Now here's something else they won't teach in Chinese classrooms. The period when Tibet is supposed to have been "part" of China, is also the period when China was part of a Mongol, then a Manchu, Empire. So if one applies the Chinese government's own specious historical arguments to the true facts, Tibet should be returned to Mongolia.

By the same token, Algeria should still be a French département, and as for Ireland... time was when Gay Byrne could joke "we should apologise to the Queen and ask her to take us back." Wouldn't wash these days, though.