Apple is going to replace my laptop battery. Like the Dell computers that were in the news a week or so back, the Powerbook uses a battery by Sony that has the unfortunate likelihood of catching fire.

Now all that I need to do is wait four to six weeks until the new battery actually arrives at my door. I think that Apple suggests that I remove the battery and use the laptop only with the power cord.

An interesting side note is a suggestion via David Akin’s blog that the reason why Dell, Apple, and Sony are suddenly so interested in replacing millions of batteries is not because of some newfound love of their customers, but because the airport security poobahs were threatening to ban these products from airplanes.

Yes! A sign that includes not only a big old inappropriate apostrophe (Bra’s what? I must ask!) but a stunning misuse of quotation marks.

And not a cheap sign by the looks of it.

It still amazes me that sign makers can have such a limited grasp of grammar and spelling, and that people paying them wouldn’t have the copy checked out before taking delivery.

Everything about the latest round of arrests of supposed airline bombers seemed somewhat sketchy to me. From what I could glean from the media there were just too many vague notions to make the arrests of the alleged terrorists seem all that reliable.

Today I’ll direct you to blog of Craig Murray. Murray was Britain’s Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, and helped expose vicious human rights abuses by the US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. He is now a prominent critic of Western policy in the region, and more to the point, a thorn in the side of Tony Blair.

In a recent post he examines the claims made about the alleged airline bombers and finds much to question. Excerpts:

I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year – like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. … Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes – which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn’t give is the truth.

…

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few – just over two per cent of arrests – who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.

Crazy? How about a group of non-pale guys who were arrested this week in the US for buying cel phones? Somehow they figured that they could hit a string of Ohio and Michigan Wal-Marts, buy lots of cheap throw away phones, and resell them at a profit. Phones that do not require you to register them with a name and address, which apparently is what makes purchasers likely to be suspected of terrorism.

A crack Wal-Mart check out person called the police because of their “suspicious” activity and had them all arrested. Apparently – I am not making this up – that’s what Wal-Mart does if you buy more than three cel phones at once.

These guys, looking for nothing more than to make a quick buck, found them selves facing Homeland Security charges! At last word even though the FBI had cleared them, the local sheriffs were still insisting on taking them to trial.

Apparently the clincher is that they had pictures of the Mackinac Bridge on their camera. Damn – NOW THE TERRORISTS ARE POSING AS TOURISTS!

Did I mention that these poor guys were not of a pale complexion?

Last week we set out to go swimming at the Rock Point Provincial Park, on Lake Erie near the town of Wainfleet.

After an uneventful drive we arrived at the park gates only to find a large sign telling us that the beaches were closed because of “excessive levels of bacteria.”

We drove up and down the area and found that every beach had a similar sign warning that swimming would be unsafe.

Now, I know that beach contamination can come from any number of things, not just sewage, and I know that one small sewage problem can effect many people for quite a distance. We once lived down the road from someone with an unmaintained septic system and at least five houses had undrinkable well water.

Still, what I saw in Wainfleet was a densely populated shore community, with hundreds of houses and cottages packed together, all relying on septic fields for sewage disposal. The kind of area that probably doubles in population during the summer, and which relies on tourist dollars to stay alive.

It’s not a posh or rich community, which is all the more reason why It was distressing to see signs on many lawns declaring that the owner did not want public water and sewer service.

Let’s see … tourism community … beaches closed by bacterial pollution … towns people don’t want a sewer system.

Surely I wasn’t the first to connect the dots.

Intrigued, I went to visit their web site. After all, maybe the problems weren’t from the lack of proper septic fields, maybe they didn’t need a proper sewage system.

Well, as it turns out the town of Wainfleet has some pretty big septic problems, has been under a “boil water” advisory for a while, and has residents who are actively fighting to prevent a sewage system for being brought in.

Bizarrely, no-one disputes that there are problems. Mostly they just don’t want to pay to fix them.

A survey of 217 residents found that, even though they are unable to drink their own well water and 75% drink bottled or other water, 87% think that they would not be “safer drinking city water.”

99% of people surveyed don’t want a water and sewer system if they have to pay for it. 80% don’t want it even if someone else pays!

At the end of the day only one thing seems obvious.

The days when Wainfleet has a tourism economy are ending.

Step One: Don’t maintain your septic field.

Step Two: Pollute your drinking water and beaches

Step Three: Put up signs on beaches telling tourists not to swim there.

Step Four: Refuse help to fix the sewage problem

Step Five: Put up lots of signs telling tourists that you refuse to fix the sewage problem.

Boy, that’s marketing…