An interesting day for news. Arctic ice coverage is 20 percent below average for this time of year. Climate change deniers will no doubt be telling us soon it is normal for the Arctic to have 20 percent less ice than normal at this time of year, and that, in fact, this is evidence that the world is cooling not heating. This story comes soon after stories of global warming recently hitting a tipping point with the thawing of frozen Siberian marshes, and those extra vicious hurricanes … Tom DeLay, close pal of and fundraiser for George Bush, has been indicted with criminal conspiracy, apparently over an election campaign scheme, which is yet another demonstration of democracy in action. The elections were evidently conducted on strict free market principles, the foundation of Western freedom: first to buy the votes wins. US troops in Iraq have been accused of trading photos of dead Iraqis and Afghans for pornography but the army has declined to conduct a proper inquiry. The army concluded they couldn’t prove who was submitting the pictures of dead people. Good point. Perhaps Iraqi people were sending pictures of their dead relatives so that they could cop a look of some bare Yankee bottom. The UK took a step closer to thwarting world terrorism by evicting an 82-year old party member from the Labour party conference when he heckled Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Straw was busy telling fairy stories to the party faithful when Walter Wolfgang made his view that the tales were ‘nonsense’ and heavies ejected him, and another individual who complained at them, out of the conference. Most interestingly, Mr. Wolfgang was denied re-admittance and had his pass confiscated on police powers granted through anti-terrorism legislation. I seem to remember that supporters of this legislation assured us that it was introduced to protect us from anyone detonating bombs on, say, the London Underground, but would not curtail individual freedoms enjoyed by ordinary citizens such as Mr. Wolfgang. Back to global warming. Has Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, chum of climate-change denying George Bush, decided that Venice is under threat from his friend’s policies? He is building expensive defences to combat the increasingly frequent flooding suffered by the city.