A new President.

Wow does President Obama face a number of challenges or not as he takes office?

But probably the most urgent is addressing the state of the US economy, much as Brown’s is over here.

The US economy has already been in a recession since the beginning of 2008 whereas we have just gone into recession, and that slowdown is expected to last at least another year, making it the longest recession since World War 2.

The rate of job loss is accelerating, with 2.6 million jobs lost in 2008 alone, and the unemployment rate has soared to more than 7%. Not good!

Some economists believe the real jobless rate, including discouraged workers and those working part-time, is closer to 14%.

The housing market is still in freefall after two years of declines, and the number of repossessions, is at a record high.

The credit crunch has spread from the housing market to other sectors, with credit cards, car loans and commercial property lending all affected – as well as loans to businesses.

All this is likely to push the Federal government’s budget deficit to over $1 trillion, the highest in history and more than double what it was during the last financial year.

Tackling the jobs crisis President Obama will take office with 11 million citizens out of work, and he has signalled that his highest priority will be job creation again very similar to Brown’s pronouncements. Well let us be thankful that Bush is gone both for the sake of the US people and even more so for the sake of the rest of the world. At last we have a man in the White House who realises what’s really important, not crappy messages about how powerful the US is and how we are defending freedom but playing a responsible global role that is inclusive and not divisive.

Interesting reaction!

I got only one reaction to that previous post probably as no one reads this blog. However it was interesting as it was basically a stream of vitriol from a young woman in the states who had obviously (a) not read the post or else she would have seen that it was not written by me and (b) she hadn’t read my profile (less surprising). The level of bitterness and hate in her words was truely worrying.

Rather than e mail it to 20 people I thought I’d see what reaction I get here!

Bring it on

Makes one stop and think after reading this :
Michael Richards is better known as Kramer from tv’s Seinfeld series.

This was his defence speech in court after making racial comments in his comedy act.
He makes some very interesting points. He said :
I’m proud To Be White.
Someone finally said it..
How many are actually paying attention to this ?
There are African Americans, Mexican Americans,
Asian Americans, Arab Americans, etc.
And then there are just Americans.
You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction.
You Call me ‘White boy,’ ‘Cracker,’ ‘Honkey,’
‘Whitey,’ ‘Caveman’ … and that’s OK.

But when I call you, Nigger, Kike, Towel head,
Sand-nigger, Camel Jockey, Beaner , Gook, or Chink ….
You ca ll me a racist.
You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you,
so why are the ghettos the most dangerous plac es to live ?

You have the United Negro College Fund.
You have Martin Luther King Day.
You have Black History Month.
You have Cesar Chavez Day.
You have Yom Hashoah.
You have Ma’uled Al-Nabi…
You have the NAACP.
You have BET.
If we had WET (White Entertainment Television) we’d be racists.
If we had a White Pride Day, you would call us racists.
If we had White History Month , we’d be racists.
If we had any organization for only whites to ‘advance’OUR lives we’d be racists.
We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, and then we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce.
Wonder who pays for that ?

A white woman could not be in the Miss Black American pageant,
but any color can be in the Miss America pageant. If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships you know we’d be racists. There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US . Yet if there were ‘White colleges’, that would be a racist college.

In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights,
you would call us racists. You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you’re not afraid to announce it.
But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.

You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us.

But , when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or
beats up a black drug-dealer running from the law and posing a
threat to society, you call him a racist.
I am proud.
But you call me a racist.
Why is it that only whites can be racists ?

There is nothing improper about this e-mail.

Let’s see which of you are proud enough to send it on

You couldn’t make it up!

1. Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.
2. A man in Johannesberg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other’s head.
3. A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film’s depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.
4. The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.
5. A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.
6. Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused the copier with the shredder.
7. A convict broke out of jail in Washington D.C., then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.
8. Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message “He’s lying” was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn’t telling the truth. Believing the “lie detector” was working, the suspect confessed.
9. When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.
10. A Los Angeles man who later said he was “tired of walking,” stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.
11. A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise’s car into a river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window, climb out and swim to shore — where a tree blew over and killed him.
12. Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas was filming a movie in 1983 on the dangers of low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on passed under a low-level bridge — killing him.
13. Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so afraid of dentists that in 1979 he asked a fellow worker to try to cure his toothache by punching him in the jaw. The punch caused Hallas to fall down, hitting his head, and he died of a fractured skull.
14. Two West German motorists had an all-too-literal head-on collision in heavy fog near the small town of Guetersloh. Each was guiding his car at a snail’s pace near the center of the road. At the moment of impact their heads were both out of the windows when they smacked together. Both men were hospitalized with severe head injuries. Their cars weren’t scratched.
15. George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, R.I., narrowly escaped death when a 1983 blast flattened his factory except for one wall. After treatment for minor injuries, he returned to the scene to search for files. The remaining wall then collapsed on him, killing him.
16. Depressed since he could not find a job, 42-year-old Romolo Ribolla, in 1981, sat in his kitchen near Pisa, Italy, with a gun in his hand threatening to kill himself. His wife pleaded for him not to do it, and after about an hour he burst into tears and threw the gun to the floor. It went off and killed his wife.
17. In 1983, a Mrs. Carson of Lake Kushaqua, N.Y., was laid out in her coffin, presumed dead of heart disease. As mourners watched, she suddenly sat up. Her daughter dropped dead of fright.
18. A man hit by a car in New York in 1977 got up uninjured, but laid back down in front of the car when a bystander told him to pretend he was hurt so he could collect insurance money. The car rolled forward and crushed him to death.
19. Surprised while burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium, a thief fled out the back door, clambered over a nine-foot wall, dropped down and found himself in the city prison.
20. In 1976 a twenty-two-year-old Irishman, Bob Finnegan, was crossing the busy Falls Road in Belfast, when he was struck by a taxi and flung over its roof. The taxi drove away and, as Finnegan lay stunned in the road, another car ran into him, rolling him into the gutter. It too drove on. As a knot of gawkers gathered to examine the magnetic Irishman, a delivery van plowed through the crowd, leaving in its wake three injured bystanders and an even more battered Bob Finnegan. When a fourth vehicle came along, the crowd wisely scattered and only one person was hit, Bob Finnegan. In the space of two minutes Finnegan suffered a fractured skull, broken pelvis, broken leg, and other assorted injuries. Hospital officials said he would recover.
21. While motorcycling through the Hungarian countryside, Cristo Falatti came up to a railway line just as the crossing gates were coming down. While he sat idling, he was joined by a farmer with a goat, which the farmer tethered to the crossing gate. A few moments later a horse and cart drew up behind Falatti, followed in short order by a man in a sports car. When the train roared through the crossing, the horse startled and bit Falatti on the arm. Not a man to be trifled with, Falatti responded by punching the horse in the head. In consequence the horse’s owner jumped down from his cart and began scuffling with the motorcyclist. The horse, which was not up to this sort of excitement, backed away briskly, smashing the cart into the sports car. At this, the sports car driver leaped out of his car and joined the fray. The farmer came forward to try to pacify the three flailing men. As he did so, the crossing gates rose and his goat was strangled. At last report, the insurance companies were still trying to sort out the claims.
22. In a classic case of one thing leading to another, seven men aged eighteen to twenty-nine received jail sentences of three to four years in Kingston-on-Thames, England, in 1979 after a fight that started when one of the men threw a french fry at another while they stood waiting for a train.
23. Hitting on the novel idea that he could end his wife’s incessant nagging by giving her a good scare, Hungarian Jake Fen built an elaborate harness to make it look as if he had hanged himself. When his wife came home and saw him she fainted. Hearing a disturbance a neighbor came over and, finding what she thought were two corpses, seized the opportunity to loot the place. As she was leaving the room, her arms laden, the outraged and suspended Mr. Fen kicked her stoutly in the backside. This so surprised the lady that she dropped dead of a heart attack. Happily, Mr. Fen was acquitted of manslaughter and he and his wife were reconciled.
24. An unidentified English woman, according to the London Sunday Express was climbing into the bathtub one afternoon when she remembered she had left some muffins in the oven. Naked, she dashed downstairs and was removing the muffins when she heard a noise at the door. Thinking it was the baker, and knowing he would come in and leave a loaf of bread on the kitchen table if she didn’t answer his knock, the woman darted into the broom cupboard. A few moments later she heard the back door open and, to her eternal mortification, the sound of footsteps coming toward the cupboard. It was the man from the gas company, coming to read the meter. “Oh,” stammered the woman, “I was expecting the baker.” The gas man blinked, excused himself and departed.

Worlds Largest Model RC Plane

My son went through a model aircraft phase a few years ago but we NEVER saw anything like this. It is, to use one of his words, ‘Awsome!’

A Mum (Anita Renfroe) has condensed everything a Mum might say to her kids in 24 hours into less than 3 minutes – to the tune of the William Tell Overture.

I can’t lay any claim to writing this but I wish I had!

‘Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:Knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; life isn’t always fair; and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Elastoplast to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I’m A Victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.’

And a little extra……………………

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 600 employees and has the following statistics?

29 have been accused of spouse abuse

7 have been arrested for fraud

19 have been accused of writing bad cheques

117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses

3 have done time for assault

71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit

4 have been arrested on drug-related charges

8 have been arrested for shoplifting

21 are currently defendants in lawsuits

84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year

Which organization is this?

It’s the 635 members of the House of Commons, the same group that cranks out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.

A post at last!

I just noticed the date and thought that I must post about something otherwise June 07 would be the first month without a post since I started this blog what seems ages ago.

Why haven’t I been posting I guess is the question. Well I have just been very uninspired, busy with a new job and found other blogs seem to be developing into either the ranting type , the my life MUST be interesting to you all type (NO) or the specialised blog on a particular subject. My blog by the very nature of its name is not one of these.

I guess I could have written about the terrible loss of the little girl in Portugal but then what else is there to be said, I could comment about Gordon Brown but he is too awful to contemplate let alone comment on. The weather’s been awful, in fact the worst June on record but then anyone who thinks that the weather is as it should be worldwide is in cukkoo land.

So what’s left, well I had a birthday a couple of weeks ago – so what I hear you cry, and quite right too it’s of no interest at all. Son 1 has just finished his A levels, a fact of no interest to anyone other than his parents and himself.

Time to stop methinks! 

Battle at Kruger

An amazing piece of amateur wilodlife photography, well worth watching.

Question?

As anyone who has read this blog before will probably know I am a fan of F1. Now today was not a vintage race but yet again Lewis Hamilton drove superbly and quite unbelievably after his 4th Grand Prix is now leading the championship. He is  a huge talent. Note not a ‘huge black talent’. Now here’s the question, Mr Hamilton has a black father and a white mother, so why is he called ‘black’. Indeed why does it seem that anyone with even a drop of black blood in them goes around calling themselves black? I am genuinely curious. Hamilton is as white as he is black, isn’t he?

Great post!

Bound to piss off many but here goes.

I do wish that I’d written it!

There’s an interview meme doing the rounds and it goes like this:-

I joined in via – http://www.comejoinin.blogspot.com/

Malinda’s got a good blog over in Reno Nevada and I responded to her by saying interview me. If you fancy a go then these are the

“DIRECTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW MEME:

1. Leave a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by e-mailing you five questions (if I don’t have your email address, you can email me instead.) Please link back.

3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.”

 So here goes with Malida’s 5 questions to me:-

1. If you ever held a political or civil office in your community, which issue led you to running for that office, and what difference did you want to make?

Having just run (yesterday) for the lowest level of political office in the UK, that is to say District Councilor and lost out by 24 votes I’m not sure I know what difference I wanted to make! I guess I wanted to improve the village that we live in for all residents both young and old, I wanted to represent them all rather than just one section of the population. I believe that local politicians need to be less ‘political’ and more in touch with their fellow citizens.

 2. You are from the UK, England, the USA’s strongest ally. Please explain to “us” the Royal Family. What exactly is their current purpose? It appears that they don’t decide absolute country policy, but they are so very revered and important. Do you love them? Do you not think much of them? OR…would you prefer NOT to make any statement either way other than an educational explanation of them? We in the USA are fascinated by them, but we have no clue…

Firstly I guess that I am a royalist in that I have no desire to see the monarchy abolished. The Queens role is that of head of state, she has no political power at all but she does meet with the Prime Minister each week when I am sure that she speaks her mind. She has after all had audiences with Churchill, Eden, McMillan, Douglas Hulme, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major and Blair so she has a bit of experience! She is a symbol of the country and very much a stabalising influence. It would be worth your while to have a look at

http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page1.asp

The royals are in the news regularly, as the public are intersted in what they get up to, for a variety of reasons. For example there is great debate going on here about Prince Harry (third in line to the throne as Prince Charles’s second son) who is in the British Army over whether or not he should go to Iraq. It has been decided that he will. Can you imagine Bush’s children fighting in Iraq? But the news could just as easily be about Princess Anne’s daughter who is the World Cross country champion (on horses).

 3. You have a love for Formula One racing, dating back to your childhood. You love the fast cars and the talent that it takes to win. Can you remember when, and what circumstances led to that excitement and the rush for speed? Share your dream and love of Formula One.

This is a really tricky one as I can’t remember at all when I got into car racing. I saw my first Grand Prix at Brands Hatch in 1974 but I can’t remember much about it. I suppose that I have always regretted not trying my hand at racing when I was younger and now I live the dream through watching to be frank! Oh and I also have a 1973 MGB Roadster.

4. I’ve read your blog fairly regularly now for about a year. You are a REALLY DECENT guy. You have a great love and admiration for your wife and children, and seem to be a man of great integrity. However, with all your brilliance, and I mean that sincerely…you also seem to profess no particular affiliation with religion or any belief of such things. This isn’t a judgment question, it’s a question for me and others to learn from. If you don’t believe in any God or particular religious affiliation…from where do you gain your faith? When you’re in personal turmoil, and have your head in your hands, from where do you gain your strength, and do you believe in anything that you can’t touch, see, smell, feel, or hear?

Ah, that old chestnut, religion! You ask from where do I gain my faith, I would answer – what faith? I have no nead in any shape or form for such an abstract concept as faith. I would prefer to ask how any educated, thinking person can believe in things that are so obviously not the truth? I am sure that religion is the single most dangerous and divisive thing that has ever been invented by man. I can understand how many hundreds if not thousands of years ago man required a set of beliefs to make sense of the world because he had no idea how any of it worked, it was flat after all! I can see no reason why such beliefs are continued to be believed. Let’s take just one strand of religion, ‘God created the earth’. Well firstly which God, as there are many? The majority of people in the world certainly don’t believe in your god, so why are they wrong and Christians right? Secondly are we really saying that the god believed in by some of the people on this planet also created galaxies tens of thousands of light years away? Or how about Noah’s ark and all the animals surviving the flood? Noah was in the mediteraenean area, how did he get all the animals of the Amazon rainforsest or Australia onto the ark when he had no idea that these areas even existed? How did he get animals that have only been discovered recently, etc etc. Its palpably ridiculous. Religion is both unnecessary and in many ways dangerous.

You also ask about when one is in personal turmoil, well I would turn first to my wife and secondly to my friends for advice, love comfort whatever. I would never close my eyes and hope!

Lastly I can’t touch, see etc atoms or quarks or radio waves but science has taught me that they exist.

 5. Blogging…The Blog… Without your blog, none of us would ever know the amazing person you are, and the great stories you share. How did you ever find out about blogging, and what is it about having a blog that keeps you doing it?

I stumbled across a couple of blogs purely by accident and just drifted into it. I am getting a bit disillusioned by it all as I am finding it increasingly difficult to find things of interest top write about and so many blogs seem to be self indulgant ramblings.

Problem?

Received from Debbie – ‘viewing your page in Internet Explorer your sidebar seems to drop ALL the way to the bottom of the page. The correction to this problem is not always fun. You see why this happens is that the pictures that you are posted are too large a size for the width you have available. ‘

The blog seems fine on my PC in IE, is anyone else having this problem, if so would you let me know and I’ll have a go at rectifying the problem?

Thanks

Spitfire Flyover

Fromm cool and collected to ……….!

Digitalfreethought’s Atheism 101 Part 4 of 6

4 of 6 and the arguement continues.

Digitalfreethought’s Atheism 101 Part 3 of 6

The series continues!

Proof of what can happen if a wife or girlfriend drags her husband or boyfriend along to Tesco!

I have no idea if this is actually true or not, but I really do hope it is.
This letter was recently sent by Tesco’s Head Office to a customer in Oxford :

Dear Mrs. Murray,

While we thank you for your valued custom and use of the Tesco Loyalty Card, the Manager of our store in Banbury is considering banning you and your family from shopping with us, unless your husband stops his antics.

Below is a list of offences over the past few months all verified by our surveillance cameras:

1. June 15: Took 24 boxes of condoms and randomly put them in people’s trolleys when they weren’t looking.

2. July 2: Set all the alarm clocks in Housewares to go off at 5-minute intervals.

3. July 7: Made a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading to feminine products aisle.

4. July 19: Walked up to an employee and told her in an official tone, ”Code 3″ in housewares….. and watched what happened.

5. August 14: Moved a ‘CAUTION – WET FLOOR’ sign to a carpeted area.

6. September 15: Set up a tent in the outdoor clothing department and told shoppers he’d invite them in if they would bring sausages and a Calor gas stove.

7. September 23: When the Deputy Manager asked if she could help him, he began to cry and asked, “Why can’t you people just leave me alone?”

8. October 4: Looked right into the security camera; used it as a mirror, picked his nose, and ate it.

9. November 10: While appearing to be choosing kitchen knives in the Housewares aisle asked an assistant if he knew where the antidepressants were.

10. December 3: Darted around the store suspiciously, loudly humming the ”Mission Impossible” theme.

11. December 6: In the kitchenware aisle, practised the “Madonna look” using different size funnels.

12. December 18: Hid in a clothing rack and when people browsed, yelled ”PICK ME!” “PICK ME!”

13. December 21: When an announcement came over the loud speaker, assumed the foetal position and screamed “NO! NO! It’s those voices again.”

And; last, but not least:

14. December 23: Went into a fitting room, shut the door, waited a while; then yelled, very loudly, “There is no toilet paper in here.”

Yours sincerely,
Charles Brown
Store Manager

Friendly fire!

A catalogue of errors were responsible for the “friendly fire” death of a British soldier in Iraq, it has been reported.

The Sun claims to have obtained a cockpit videotape recording showing the moment that a US jet launched two devastating attacks on a British armoured convoy, killing Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull.

In the recording, the pilot of the second American plane involved in the attacks says after their mistake is realised: “We’re in jail dude”, the paper reports. The other pilot then weeps, saying: “God dammit”, it adds.

The Ministry of Defence initially told L/Cpl Hull’s family the recording did not exist but it found its way into the hands of Oxford coroner Andrew Walker, who is hearing the inquest into the soldier’s death.

The MoD refused to comment on the alleged contents of the videotape.

Last week Mr Walker adjourned the inquest in frustration at what he said was the MoD’s failure to get the permission of the American authorities, who are said to own the tape, for him to show the recording.

The Sun claims six errors led to the attack near Basra in southern Iraq on March 28 2003. Four other British soldiers were injured.

These included that on several occasions the pilots either questioned or appeared to question the orange panels on top of the armoured vehicles which were being used to identify them as coalition, rather than Iraqi, forces.

However, the conclusion is reached that the orange panels are rocket launchers.

L/Cpl Hull, 25, from Windsor, Berkshire, died in the incident and four other members of the Household Cavalry Regiment were injured.

The above is from www.yahoo.co.uk .

In this day and age of massive military expenditure especially by the USA just how is it that their armed forces make such high level of fatal errors? Not withstanding the enormous tragedy of each individual case it has such a damaging effect on the reputation of the west’s largest military force to such an extent that due to the number of UK personnel having been killed by US forces, in Britain the term ‘friendly fire’ is used in a semi-ironic way to imply perceived US military incompetence, and is a frequent source of satirical humour. Examples of the latter include the third (2005) series of Monkey Dust, in which a British military vehicle in Afghanistan is targeted by an American pilot, despite a large Union Flag on its roof (the sole surviving soldier then runs through a series of British stereotypes, such as pouring a cup of Tea and donning a Bowler hat, but is bombed again, anyway), while in the 19 October 2006 edition of “Mock the Week”, host Dara Ó Briain noted that British soldiers in Iraq were being, “shot at on a daily basis, although obviously it’ll get much safer when the Americans leave and it’s only the Iraqis firing at them.” There is even a “joke” in the dialogue of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas developed by Rockstar North, based in Scotland about an American aircraft deliberately engaging a supposedly friendly target with an excuse that it can be claimed afterwards that it was thought to be “a British tank.”
 2001 – American FA-18 dropped 3 Mk-82 bombs on a friendly observation post killing six and wounding 11 at Al Udairi Range, Kuwait.
2002 – American F-16 pilot Harry Schmidt killed four Canadian soldiers in the “Tarnak Farm incident”
2003 American aircraft attacked a friendly Kurdish camp; US special forces convoy killing 15. BBC translator Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed was killed and BBC reporter Tom Giles and World Affairs Editor ohn Simpson were injured. The incident was filmed.
2003 American Patriot missile shot down in error F/A-18C Block 46 Hornet 164974 of VFA-195 50 miles from Karbala, Iraq, killing the pilot.
2003 American Patriot missile shot down a British Tornado of 13 Squadron killing the pilot and navigator, Flight Lieutenant David Rhys Williams and Flight Lieutenant Kevin Barry Main, both from 9 Squadron.
2003 Two British Scimitar armoured reconnaissance vehicles of the Blues and Royals attacked by a pair of American A-10 Thunderbolts, killing Lance-Corporal of Horse, Matty Hull, during the invasion of Iraq. Trooper Christopher Finney was awarded the George Cross for bravery under fire during the attack, rather than the Victoria Cross, which can only be awarded for valour under “enemy fire.
2004 Pat Tillman, a famous American football player and friendly fire victim in Afghanistan.
2005 American soldier Mario Lozano is suspected of killing Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari and wounding Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena in Baghdad. Sgrena had been kidnapped and subsequently rescued by Calipari. However it is claimed that the car they were escaping in failed to stop at an American checkpoint, and US soldiers opened fire.
2005 American troops opened fire on a Bulgarian convoy. Junior Sergeant Gardi Gardev was killed.
2006 – Two U. A-10 Thunderbolts accidentally strafed their own NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, killing Canadian Private Mark Anthony Graham, and seriously wounding five others when soldiers were trying to seize a Taliban stronghold along the Arghandab River. Graham was a former Canadian Olympic athlete who competed on the Canadian 4×400 Men’s Relay Team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

Jerome Murat

This is well worth watching, it’s innovative and different.