TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - An Iraqi town has unveiled a giant monument of a shoe in honour of the journalist who threw his footwear at former U.S. President George W. Bush.

The two-metre (six-foot) high statue, unveiled Thursday in former dictator Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, depicts a bronze-coloured shoe, filled with a plastic shrub. "Muntazer: fasting until the sword breaks its fast with blood; silent until our mouths speak the truth," reads an inscription, in honour of journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who hurled his shoes at Bush and called him a "dog" at a news conference during the former president's final visit to Iraq.

Zaidi has been held in jail in Baghdad since the incident, facing charges of assaulting a visiting head of state.

Fatin Abdul Qader, head of an orphanage and children's organisation in the town, said the one-and-a-half-tonne monument by artist Laith al-Amiri was titled "statue of glory and generosity."

"This statue is the least expression of our appreciation for Muntazer al-Zaidi, because Iraqi hearts were comforted by his throw," she said.

It is hard to miss nowadays what the effects are from the credit crunch that we currently see around the world.
The new US president, Barack Obama, has said in his inauguration speech that he will work hard to change the status of the economy into something better. But what needs to be done to change a global crisis like this?

Most important is to find what caused the situation to become the way it is.

I have a few points that I think play an important role which would need to be changed in order to get things back to “normal” again, which I like to highlight here.

First is the US Central bank. This is the only bank that can decide to create money (ie. print new banknotes).
Why is this so important that it has to change?
In order to print banknotes, there should be something with the same value (usually gold) available that covers the value of these banknotes. This is also what used to be the case with the US Central Bank, before it came into private banker’s hands.
The US government has no or limited visibility of the amount of money being created and nobody knows whether there is enough gold to cover the value of the banknotes.
If there is not enough gold to cover the value of all the money that has been produced, this will cause a huge inflation and will probably lead to bankruptcy of the USA and many companies and countries who are depending on the dollar, which is still the main currency for international trade, so it will heavily affect the whole world.
Because of this it is vital that the US Central Bank becomes State owned again.

A second thing, not less important, is the greed of higher management nowadays in Businesses.
The managers make millions of dollars (or whatever currency is used in the country of the business), and even if they fail in their job and are dismissed, they still get several millions with them.
Instead this money should be used for the benefit of the business instead of for the benefit of one or a few managers who’s wages are already so high that it is hard to spend all the money.
Also we have seen businesses make huge profits in the past decades, which meant good times for management and shareholders, but now that times are turning we see the same businesses get into troubles over losses that are not even near 10% of the profits they have made before.
This makes them close businesses, and fire hundreds or thousands of people, which means these people lose most of their income, and in some cases even end up in poverty, while the managers of these companies can still live in luxury by only the interest they receive over the money they put in their private accounts from the earlier profits.
If these managers cared about their business more than about their own bank account they would have used the money to cover for a period when it all goes less well.
Because working businesses is what is needed to keep the economy going. People who are out of work cannot keep the economy at a healthy level, huge bank accounts for a very limited group of people also have no positive affect (apart from that it would be funny to see them if the inflation makes their money completely worthless).
So there should come a limit to how much someone can earn, and although I would prefer to say everyone should earn the same, that will not be possible to achieve fast enough, so I would say just keep allowing the people in higher positions to make more money, but keep it reasonable and create a limit for the top, just like there is a limit for minimum wages.

…To be continued

This you gotta hear............................It's for real!

The Barack Obama Irish song

Moneygall is a small village in County Offaly , Ireland .  It has a population of approximately 300 people, has a Roman Catholic church, five shops, a post office, a national school, a police station and two pubs.

President-elect of the United States Barack Obama's great-great-great grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, emigrated from Moneygall to New York City at the age of 19 in 1850 and eventually resettled in Tipton County , Indiana .  Kearney 's father had been the village shoemaker, then a wealthy skilled trade.

And now for the SONG...Crank up your speakers.

http://www.oneeyedparrot.org/obama.html

THE GRANDCHILDREN OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS FROM WORLD WAR II ARE DOING TO THE PALESTINIANS EXACTLY WHAT WAS DONE TO THEM BY NAZI GERMANY …
BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISONS

Les sionistes (Israel) font la même chose que les Nazis avaient fait aux juifs, mais aux palestiniens! Tous les colons et fachos du monde face au mur!

CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT

ARRESTS & HARASSMENTS

DESTROYING HOMES & LIVELIHOODS

GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES

THE CLASSIC PROPAGANDA MACHINE - YOU WILL FIND THE PICTURE IN BLACK & WHITE IN ALL AMERICAN AND SOME OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES HISTORY BOOKS, ENCYCLOPAEDIAS, LIBRARIES, MUSEUMS… THAT DEPICTS A YOUNG JEWISH BOY WITH HIS HANDS UP WHILE NAZI TROOPS POINT THEIR GUNS AT HIM AND HIS FAMILY IN ORDER TO EXPEL THEM FROM THEIR HOMES… (IT’S SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU SYMPATHIZE WITH THE VICTIMS & TO SUPPORT THEIR CAUSE FOR JUSTICE & A HOMELAND)

THE ISRAELIS PRACTICE THE SAME TACTICS

UN NUREMBERG POUR ISRAEL !!

The new, German made, cameras look different to the normal speed cameras, so  I have included a photo, in order that you are familiar with them and are able to make sure YOU DO NOT SPEED when approaching one of these devices.

Please take this warning seriously as you will not get another chance.

Wat betreft YouTube - Amazing Hand Shadow show by Raymond Crowe
  

BERLIN (Reuters) - Three German children aged five, six and seven who said they were fed up with cold weather at home set off on a voyage to Africa but only got as far as the local train station, police said on Monday.

The boy and the older girl were planning to get married in Africa and brought the girl's five-year-old sister along as a witness. They left their home in the city of Hanover, which they shared with the boy's father and the girls' mother, early on New Year's Day as their parents slept.

"The children wanted to do something really special for the New Year," said police spokesman Holger Jureczko. "They had it all planned out. They had three suitcases, filled with food, swimming costumes, a lilo and even sunglasses."

He said they took a tram to the central station and were about to board a train to the airport when police stopped them.

"They said they wanted to go to Africa 'because it's so nice and warm there'," Jureczko said. The boy had once been to Italy and convinced the girl that Africa would be even warmer, he said.

The police told the trio that it would be difficult to get to Africa without money or tickets and instead gave them a tour of the police station before handing them over to their parents.

Since almost a week israel has now been bombing Gaza, and although the media do mention it, it is still mostly as an understandable attack on terrorists who shoot rockets into israel.
However, this issue requires a closer look instead of simply judging on the way the israeli government wants us to look at it.

First, why are these rockets fired by Hamas?

For this I can write a lot about the history of israel and Palestine, for instance referring to the bible, where Palestine is mentioned as a country, and israel is not (only as a people). I can also go back to the illegal formation of the country israel in 1948 after England and the UN gave it to the zionists, but these are historic facts that everybody should already know by now, in this case I would like to look into more recent history.

The current situation in Gaza is that it is governed by Hamas, who have been elected in UN-approved and US backed democratic elections. Hamas is a party that does not approve the state of israel, and therefore israel does not approve of the Hamas government. Since then Israel has closed down the Gaza strip. People in there are not allowed, there is a shortage of the most basic needs for survival, including food and medicine. Basically Gaza is nowadays a huge open-air prison, where israel is the warden who comes in every now and then and kills a number of prisoners.
In a situation like that it is no more than understandable that the people will try to regain their freedom from the oppressor. Since the palestinian country does not have an army to defend itself against oppression the people have formed their own little army, which israel and many other western countries call terrorists, because they are Islamic and because they are fighting against a “western” country.
Basically they are fighting for their freedom and instead of terrorists should be called freedom fighters.

Then a next issue that I wish to raise here…

In the declaration of the human rights, which is also rectified by israel, every human being has the right to a fair trial. israel has denied hundreds of people this right by just sending in soldiers, choppers or fighter planes and killing the people without any form of trial.

israel has in the meantime already defied more resolutions from the United Nations over the decades than any other country, and as long as the United States allow them to do so, there will never be peace in the middle east.

At least I hope this article makes clear that to me israel is the only side that uses acts of terrorism in this story, and for this it does not matter that these acts are done by an government’s army of fanatics and not by a small group of religious fanatics.

The last year was reasonably save for air traffic. According to NLR-ATSI that keeps track of these figures, 504 people lost their live in airplane accidents in 2008, while the average is at 840.
The safest was to fly in the United States, but also in Europe there were relatively few accidents. Still Europe had the biggest crash of the year. In August 154 lost their lives in a crash with a Spanair plane in Madrid.
Worldwide there were 127 accidents with large commercial flights, of which 22 ended in fatalities for passengers.