h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>...prisoners serving less than a year have the highest reoffending rates...<<

Of course they do.
They get released sooner and more often and have more opportunity to recommit.

Obviously the ones still in jail are not re-offending.
That's the point of keeping people in jail. Innit.

The real crime here appears to be that someone got paid to calculate these statistics
just to prove the obvious.


~jwf~

>> World Headline : Canada has an unusually warm winter ...is it? <<

Warm is a relative term.

But yes, a 'milder' winter generally across the 4000 miles that is Canada,
especially the northern bits where the differences are really obvious.


~jwf~

Teh Interwebz 'in running' for Nobel Peace Prize

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8560469.stm

lol

Will they be giving it to Al Gore then?

>>Teh Interwebz 'in running' for Nobel Peace Prize

Clearly the Norwegians have never read the Dawkins thread.

Heaven forbid

'More than two million people in Zimbabwe, or close to one-fifth of the southern African country's population, are in need of food aid, the Red Cross said Thursday.

The International Red Cross renewed its call for support for the region in a statement, saying an estimated 2.17 million people are in need of food aid, a number it says will rise on the back of an expected failed 2010 harvest.'

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/11/zimbabwe-food-crisis.html#ixzz0htsZt7yn


Is it not time for the International Community to remove Mugabe from power, by force if necessary, under our collective Responsibility to Protect?

http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/

Let´s finish the other wars first. Then we can look at it.

Mind-reading experiment uses brain scans to eavesdrop on thoughts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/11/mind-reading-brain-scans-thoughts

I'd love to see Mugabe thrown out, but it's not going to happen. it should be a pushover, but the country is landlocked and surrounded by friends and neutrals.

And all the manpower and money is needed for existing wars.

A pushover? Why not try a pullback?

>>it should be a pushover

Not necessarily. The ZANU-PF goons are well armed and well trained, largely by the Chinese (who, incidentally, are increasingly demonstrating that they have colonial interests in Africa). And the goons are shit scared of change. We should expect a certain degree of murderous rampage.

not going to be popular for this one.....

before the land reforms, the majority of the food was produced by white farmers running large industrial farms

zimbabwe was known as the breadbasket of affrica and used to export its surplus to other countries

nnn...although that was unsustainable, given that it relied on an economically disadvantaged majority. It was a case of 'The centre cannot hold'

That's not to say that land reform as enacted by Mugabe was the right way to go - but *something* was going to happen.

i have an affrican friend who puts the point over rather simplistically as......

the white farmers were a bussiness and did it for profit
after the land reforms
the affrican farmers are subsistance farmers and do it to support themselves and family, and maybe make a little money,

the out come of this is the citys start to go hungry

The M&S sweet wrapper that grows into flowers when buried in the garden

http://5z8.info/38--start.spamBot--this-ip--_e6b1s_heroin-od.avi

Maybe they can plant them in Zimbabwe.

let them start growing "weed" thats a cash crop that would bring in forign currency$$$$$$$$

BNP teachers

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8563044.stm

bad choice of photo, school children with their arms up.........

"i pledge alligance to adolf griffin"

The oft-referred to "bread basket of Africa" thing is a crock. I've read a lot on the history of, and current situation in Zimbabwe, mostly books and articles written by white Zimbabweans (unsurprisingly). They all refer to how successful the agricultural sector in Zimbabwe was when the majority of the land was white-owned. And they all refer to the fact that the white farmers owned their farms legitimately because they "bought" them "fair and square" from the Zimbabwean government after independence.

They also all refer to the fact that Mugabe's "land reform" was really just a land-grab aimed at keeping his cronies happy and preventing the hundreds of thousands of unemployed, uneducated and poverty stricken ex-soldiers, the so-called "wovits", from getting all restless and revolutionary and de-stabilising his government (a description which I agree with).

Not one of them that I've seen goes into any depth about the fact that those white farmers purchased their farms from the government for a fraction of their real value (if we're valuing them in western terms as farms that mass-produce food) from a government that was extremely cash-strapped and who had no one else to sell the land to because the majority black population was so poor; all this following the exploitation of the country by their former colonial rulers and the mis-management of it by the white, racist, post-independence government. And none of them that I've read go into depth about the reasons (at least partly, if not mainly stemming from the exploitation of the system by the whites) why there were hundreds of thousands of unemployed, illiterate, poverty stricken Zimbabweans who were so disillusioned and disenfranchised in their own country by their own government.

I detest Mugabe's very existence and I strongly agree that he has brought what should be one of the wealthiest countries in Africa to it's knees. And I'm not blaming "the whites" for everything. And I acknowledge that my rant above is a generalisation - I'm sure that lots of white Zimbabweans are wonderful people who were just getting on with their lives in their home country and have been as devastated by all that has happened as their black neighbours, friends and compatriots have been. But this over-repeated bread basket of Africa story, with the implicit suggestion that all was well and good in Zimbabwe before Mugabe lost the plot, is a crock of *@#$ and it makes my blood boil!!!

Thus endeth this morning's rant!!