This World, This Life

  I do wish the media would stop using the term "Israel - Gaza War" - it is NOT a war, it's a slaughter.  With a war, generally, both sides are more or less equal in terms of armaments, forces and objectives.  The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a war (of aggression, prompted by one sovereign state invading a neighouring sovereign state).  No-one could suggest that is the case in the Israel - Gaza conflict because Gaza has no sovereignty. Hamas committed an awful terrorist attack, and has rightly been condemned for doing so.  Israel's response is anything but proportionate, no matter what that state's government might say. There have been around 1,200 Israeli deaths, and 253 citizens captured (some of whom have now been released by Hamas) according to press reports. In Gaza, there have been almost 30,000 deaths and over 70,000 injured by Israeli forces. And that ignores the tens of thousands, on both sides, who have been killed or injured over the past 75 y

  Seriously, I do. For my entire life, the United States of America has been a beacon of hope and peace and democracy, whether under a Republican or a Democrat Administration. Amidst all the gung-ho posturing and often angry rhetoric - and sometimes it could be very angry indeed (and often about what in my view were the wrong things) - and despite a pathological Superiority Complex the size of the Andromeda Galaxy, I always felt the country could be relied upon to Do The Right Thing.   And mostly it did. The Government and its spokespersons always trumpeted its successes, its "American values" and the sanctity of its Constitution; how there was no alternative - indeed, could never be an alternative - to Freedom, Democracy and The American Way, while at the same time leaving millions of its citizens in unemployed misery in ghettoes in every city, every large town, because of the colour of their skin or the place of their birth. I turned a blind eye and a deaf ear as they tri

  Privacy matters.  And not just on your internet browser of choice.  Nor on the internet as a whole.   It's one of the reasons Vivaldi is now my daily driver.  As well as being fast and offering more customization options than you can shake a stick at, and a host of productivity tools that for me, at least, are completely irrelevant, it has excellent security and privacy features baked in.  Specifically its own ad- and tracker- blocker that ensures my browsing choices and history are not flogged off to the highest bidder, nor am I peppered with ads all the time.  It gives a running count of the number of ads and trackers it's blocked too, which makes interesting and sobering reading - I've been using Vivaldi pretty much constantly for around 15 months and I'm told that in that time (as I write this...) I've had close to 300,000 trackers and nearly 150,000 ads blocked......  But even these tools are no match for the world's biggest advertising agencies (that'