USA is chasing Assange harder than they chased the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqarwi

The reaction to Wikileaks can accurately be described as hysterical, in the sense of uncontrolled emotional outbursts. Prominent North Americans including Sarah Palin have issued death threats against Julian Assange. In Canada, the Prime Minister's former campaign manager issued such a death threat, and a lawyer has issued a legal challenge against the threatener. It would seem that in the USA there is no law against issuing a death threat, or if there is such a law, nobody cares about it. We shall see.

What is notable is that there has been swift and effective action taken against Wikileaks' financial assets. I was among the last to make a Paypal donation, before Paypal closed the Wikileaks account. They have frozen about 60,000 Euros of Wikileaks assets according to the BBC.

The Swiss have also frozen Julian Assange's personal accounts, on the technicality that he was not domiciled in Switzerland. I wonder what proportion of accounts in Swiss banks would have to be closed if that principle were generally applied.

The US is attacking Assnge with more efficiency than they attack terrorists, organised crime, arms dealers and the like.

 I took an interest in the freezing of terrorists' bank accounts back in November 2004. Basically, I had been writing to the FCO asking about this. Naturally, they said it was all covered, then it turned out that they had not touched the assets of a very prominent terrorist. More here.

 Interestingly, Bush had avoided touching that terrorist, despite twice having a chance of topping him.

His name was Abu Musab Al-Zaqarwi.

So they regard Assange as worse than a terrorist, at least in terms of the

Student demo in Bristol, from the outside.

Went into Bristol to meet son Joe for lunch in Park Street, prior to a Chopin recital in St George. Saw a whole bunch of lemon coats going down Park St, tightly surrounding about 100 citizens. Realised it was a protest, went out onto the street to give solidarity, and saw a Green Party comrade in the protest, so stepped inside the police line to chat briefly, then stepped through the line of freedom to go and have lunch. After lunch, we walked down to College Green where there was a line of police vans including the dreaded Stazi Support Team. Chatted with police at the edge of the kettle. My man said the protest had sinned by stopping traffic, therefore stopping citizens going about their normal business (this was Sunday mind, with not many citizens about, mostly sight-seers, and the demo was offering a sight to be seen. I said the kettle was of dubious legality, (he frowned), but he did not frown when I said that Osborne's cuts were doing damage not just to the fabric of society, but also to police budgets. And that we have a duty to civil disobedience if Government is not acting in the interests of the people.

The crowd inside were doing a bit of chanting, but mainly acting as people who have been trapped.

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Snow chaos: roads understandable, rail fail inexcusable

Snowbound Britain. Well, of course. Regular transport requires friction, and snow is slippery. To get around on snow easily you need Nordic skis.

I cannot quite see the point of snowshoes. Well, I know that the idea is to spread your weight, but my point is that snowshoes have no point. Why plod when you can slide?.

The idiots who whine and complain that they cannot make their beloved motorcars work in the snow are the selfsame idiots who want low taxes. Finland (pop. 5.4 million people) spends twice as much as the UK (pop. >54 million) on coping with snow. So is spends 20x as much per capita. And much of the expenditure is on expensive capital items that Finland uses for say 5 months a year and we would use maybe five days a year.

In short, the demands on and complaints against local authority provision for snow are mainly unreasonable, unless the complainers are willing to pay more taxes. Why, in the wall to wall media coverage, is this question not put to complainers? Is it because journalists are constitutionally unable to think creatively, or is it because they are institutionally unable to question the dogma of small government?

As ever, there are efficient new methods that could be used, such as commissioning farmers to do snow plough work.

So, as far as road travel is concerned, we simply have to grit our teeth if we cannot grit the roads. And stay home and have a national holiday if it snows, and just forget the use of cars except for vitally necessary journeys. As it is, we have less holidays than mainland Europe. Sure, we lose production, but we can catch up. There is a cost implication in crashing cars into one another, which could be avoided if people left the bloody things at home.

Railways though is a different matter. Passengers have been trapped for hours in stranded trains. I experienced a 4 hour wait (in clement weather) a few years ago, and my experience is written up here.

In short, the train operating company (Virgin) had no logical plan to deal with a breakdown. They faffed around, there was no co-ordination, and in the end, the solution was simple and swift: they sent out an engine to pull our train away.

Virgin refused to consider or discuss having a sensible policy for dealing with stranded trains. Privatisation has made this problem worse, because of contradictory incentives for train operating companies and the rail networks.

There is absolutely no excuse for 9 hour isolation of trains. Unlike roads, there is only 4 inches of steel to be kept free of snow. Engines can be fitted with snowploughs, and the rails can be scraped clear, blown free with air jets, which can use waste heat from the engines in the case of diesel (and to a lesser extent, of electric trains). Trains can spray antifreeze as they go. Point can be treated with antifreeze.

In short, there is little or no excuse for trains to fail because of snow, and every excuse for motor cars to fail.  I hope stranded rail travellers sue the companies.