Brian Greene

The former Fianna Fáil minister, Ray Burke, has been jailed for six months by the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for tax offences.

Yes only 6 months for not decaring taxes in an amnesty. He has received what amounts to one tenth of the maximin sentence.

Judge Desmond Hogan told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that he took account of Burke’s age, state of health and guilty plea in sentencing.

On Dec 10th my old blog hosted here died, the DB has been restored and here it is. My old rants and pics are all there, this was my blog using my homespun blog tool newsvendor.

NewsVendor is still available as a news site tool for CMS at www.newsvendor.com via the design works of Dublin based design company doop design. NewsVendor has a good few advantages over blogger such as photo upload local to the news DB but for full portability I am flirting with blogger.com a full install example of NewsVendor can be seen at SiliconRepublic.com

Gúna Nua presents dinner with friends By Donald Margulies

ANDREWS LANE THEATRE BOOKING: 01 679 5720 Previews from Wednesday November 10th All seats ?17.50 Opens:Tuesday November 16th Mon/Tue All seats ?19 Wed – Sat All seats ?24
more from guna nua www site

RANT START
Predicting elections: who will be first to air the winner? are the candidates in the Iraqi elections really hoping to not win? so they wont have to govern the US mess post Sadam? Exporting Freedom is a difficult process! even if your trade deficit is as large as uncle sam’s. Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom, say it 20 times before ever meal, you?ll start to believe in it, Freedom Justice Liberty: All Words, Just who is in charge of PR in the white house?

Pres Bush: slowly but surely the grip of the empire takes shape, “first we take Baghdad then we take Tehran”.

Whom ever bought that atlas for Bush? He now knows where all these countries are, and that worries me.
END RANT

Ireland: Minister for Justice Michael McDowell today announced two initiatives, Electronic Tagging & a national identity card. Some would spread out the bad news over different days but McDowell brings it on thick and fast.

ID cards? we’ve nothing to hide, we?re not involved in terrorism so cool lets all have them. Wait a minute, why should they (who are they GOV? spooks mystery men) get me to carry my personal details linked back to their database on my person for their agents the Gardaí to request from me as I go about my life in a private & lawful way?

Freedom has a price which we must realize and treasure, if Bertie (PM) can investigate and look up every tree in North County Dublin, and find no wrong doing, ID cards are sure as hell not going to help Fianna Fail stamp out corruption and other white collar crimes. ID cards wont stop illegals (how can flesh & blood be illegal) try to come to stay in Ireland, It wont stop May Day marchers heads being cracked open, It wont prevent drug lords ply their trade. ID cards will be a quicker route to harassment of citizens. On stop & search, ID card please, DB look up on ID number, confirmation of identity and supplementary data on status of individual, in this presentation the data about oneself has become property of the state and the ITC company that wins the PPP contract to provide the system. More later..

I’ve been surfing to long without waves. Long Medium and Shortwaves. I stopped logging SW (incl. all bands 0-30Mhz 30Mhz – 1300Mhz) in about 1994, the year I bought my first house. I got active in politics I got active in work and the internet zapped all of my time. I also got married and have 3 daughters 1,5 & 8 year olds.

So I gave no time to DXing until 2002 when I got into DXing satellites, scanning Clarke’s belt is like trying to get a Taxi after deregulation, there are plenty of them but not a lot in them. TV or video never really sparkles for me. I’m more a audio / text (teletext not SMS) kind of person, and the whole spectrum on offer on FTA DVB radio and TV is very sterile and safe.

My gateway drug for a return to SWL was a €14 JWin SW radio from power city, it covers the main broadcast bands and is a fairly poor receiver, but very portable. When I turned off SW 10 years ago the prophets of doom were claiming SW was dead, internet and digital would see it replaced. They got it wrong again.

By the way the WiFi card in the laptop is burning my legs…. killer radiation.

SW is alive and well, some great shows have passed away like Sweden calling DXers, but it lives on in ezine format which has graced my in box now for 10 years (Thanks, George Wood). The bands are alive with the sounds of the World, there is as much Eastern Europeans as there were before the wall fell and the voices are telling stories of the 10 years of capitalist chaos after Socialism, there are also advertising East Europe as a good destination for the race to the bottom, and falling over themselves to embrace American foreign policy. I wont single out any country its rampant.

The out of band areas are buzzing and crackling with life too, Air traffic Morse amateurs even number stations continue to send code. Pirates from central Europe and Ireland still QSO and QSL and their playlists are mainly unchanged.

But its the alternative world views that pour in that keeps SWl’ing interesting. Every country (except Ireland) has a world service (even Wales) their national spin on world happenings makes for good listening. Radio unlike TV has time to explore a good story. My new Log started two days before the Asian Tsunami, if you want alternative views of what is happening out there I would rather hear it from Thailand Radio than from a Sky reporter on the shoreline of disaster. Once you apply your own filter and understand that the text of a SW radio report from foreign world service radio stations is slanted to the country of origin then your set up for hours and hours of free feeds and facts and sounds from countries I will never visit.

I hope to publish my Log in near real time online, after I have digitized it off the envelopes and scraps of paper I scribbled it on, by real candle light that flickers above my Phillips D2999 monitoring station.

Surfing suspended, gone to check out the waves.

Jury sentences Graner to 10 years in military prison: “Army Spc. Charles Graner Jr. was sentenced to 10 years behind bars Saturday for physically and sexually mistreating Iraqis in the first court-martial stemming from at Abu Ghraib prison scandal, an embarrassment to the U.S. military fueled by the release of graphic photographs.

But the Military has a differenent set of pictures, “This annual year-end special features the best of Army.mil’s feature photos, drawn from a variety of Defense Department sources. These photos capture our Soldiers on camera, living the Warrior Ethos and serving a Nation at war.”

Abu Ghraib its not. but war games its. Camera Phones & Digital technologies are changing the way imperial forces are exposed in real time.

3G is here, dwarfing HSCSD & GPRS its goals goals goals, at broadband speed.

But what if your a 7 year old child, the UK mobile industry watchdog for radiation wants your parents to know that a mobile phone is bad for your health.

So how come a big phone company can install (with out need for planning permission) a 3G array of masts 15m from the 7 year olds classroom.

The 7 year old shouts “Take it down”. Another own goal for the telco’s.

Why can’t they site these masts far away from children who absorb 60% more electromagnetic radiation than an adult? How can a Minister for Communications, Dempsey allow it to happen? Because Minister Dempsey was the Minister in enviornment that granted the planning exemption to the multinational radiation companies.

Don’t let the Third Generation wipe out the youngest generation, kids not quids, please site UMTS masts somewhere where children don’t sit 35 hours a week.

Bus Éireann has apologised after a simulation of a bus crash in Co Wicklow this morning was reported to the media as a real event.

The company’s statement that 11 people were injured, two seriously, as a result of the crash near Rathnew was broadcast on radio and television.

Bus Éireann has apologised to the media, emergency services and the public for issuing the false report.