Belfast Blogs.com

I stand corrected.I have been languishing under the delusion that blogs were a time-killing online goof, something that people slightly too intelligent for Bebo read and post in between checking their email compulsively and viewing hilarious clips on Youtube during the quiet times at work.For sure, there is the odd blog in America or someplace that breaks news about political scandals. Or there's the occasional one by some British chick talking about her sex life or living in France, who got to turn her blog into a book.But basically, apart from these rare and well-known exceptions, it seemed to me that blogs don't really make an enormous impact in the world. I can see their potential, the benefits of the medium and the format. But at this point in time, they're below the tipping point...

Ever get the feeling that air travel is becoming impossible?I don't mean that the physics underpinning flight has been found false. To my knowledge, planes do still take off.But in recent years, air travel has come a long way from the luxurious pampering and glamour which it was known for in the Sixties and Seventies.These days, Ryanair flights resemble cattle trucks, with the lame and the disabled abandoned on the tarmac as the other passengers scramble into the world's least comfortable space for a seat.Other airlines are little different, and totally indifferent to the cares of customers as a recent run-in I had with allegedly decent airline Qantas revealed. (The allegation about Qantas being decent is one I can happily refute, incidentally.)But now I get the impression that...

I know it's a hard call.After all, malaria kills up to three million people and infects over 500 million every year.Fundamentalist religious beliefs not only cause repression among those who espouse them, but also lead to the oppression, usually by violence, of those who don't.But of all the evils incomprehensibly permitted by God to ravage this poor planet, is there any greater cause of human misery than that rip-roaring cunt Michael O'Leary?We are informed by experts that experiencing misery is an essential part of truly comprehending happiness in life.But surely there is absolutely no excuse, no lesson to be learned, no mitigating factor in the unremitting evil that is Michael O'Leary and his army of hellspawn?By now you may have gathered that I broke a vow I made to myself, the...

Lhasa is burning today. The town on the roof of the world, the inspiration for Shangri-La, the spiritual home of Tibetans is aflame.Tibetans are demanding their freedom, which was taken from them by a military invasion nearly fifty years ago by the Chinese communists.Tibet is NOT part of China. It NEVER WAS part of China historically. The Tibetans speak their own language, have their own venerable history, their own religion and their own rich culture. They aren't Chinese and never will be.So instead, China seeks to eradicate them. This is the world's quietest genocide, a murder of an entire culture by the slow process of murder, arrests, tortures but also mass immigration into their land from Han China, the Sinization of their towns like Lhasa.In an astonishing display of compromise, the...

This piece of walking faeces has been raping young boys for years and posting the pictures for other perverts on the internet.Interpol are very keen on finding him, so much so that for the first time ever they've publicised the pictures of him.If you know this man, or know where he is, or can identify him in any way, please contact your local cops ASAP.Or, if you prefer, simply torture the prick to death, since he clearly doesn't deserve to live. No jury on the planet would convict you for doing that....

When it's conducted by the American government, of course!If I kidnapped you and held you against your will, slapped you repeatedly about the head, held you in freezing conditions and plunged your head regularly under water threatening drowning, you wouldn't be best pleased.In fact, you might well describe such behaviour as torture.And it would be, as long as I'm not a member of American security forces. If I was, then I could slap you around the head all I want, deprive you of sleep, humiliate you, keep you in freezing cold conditions, and simulate drowning by holding you underwater as much as I liked.And it would only be 'taking action to protect the American people from further attack.' And I would be a 'highly trained professional interrogator', not the medieval torturer you thought I...

And about time too. German prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for the CIA spooks who kidnapped a German man and took him to be tortured in Afghanistan.Mr Masri, right, is German of Lebanese descent. He was kidnapped by the CIA while living in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, on New Year's Eve, 2003.Happy new year, waking up in Kabul about to be tortured by America's proxy medieval inquisitors, I don't think.Obviously Mr Masri wants compensation for being flown across the planet with a bag over his head and being subsequently tortured for no good or legal reason.Italian prosecutors are also about to indict CIA operatives and Italian nationals for arranging and carrying out a kidnapping on Italian soil.The whole world knows that America is kidnapping people at will in any country they...

Like the song goes, idiots rule. But for them to rule, then a large proportion of the rest of us have to follow. Which makes us the even bigger idiots. How does this work? Let's examine a few current examples:1. China expects to be short by about 30 million marriageable women by 2020. This one's not rocket science. They couldn't have seen it coming?Okay, so first the Government tells you to stop breeding under pain of death and prescribes stringent laws punishing people for having more than one child. What to do? Overthrow your mad-as-a-brush government is what.Don't listen to the idiots - if you do, you end up killing your girl children and your sole son will have no one to marry when he grows up, which he will have to do entirely surrounded by other lads, which will probably make him...