'... when Raytheon won a contract to develop a new missile system for the Israelis in 2006, a spokesman boasted they would "Provide all-weather hit-to-kill performance at a tactical missile price." Next they might have adverts, that go "Hurry hurry hurry to the Raytheon springtime sale for lasers, tasers and civilian-erasers that will make flesh sizzle through snow, sleet or drizzle WITHOUT making a casualty of your wallet."Despite this, the government in Northern Ireland welcomed the new plant, claiming they'd been assured it wouldn't be making weapons.'

The Mark Steel column the Independent dare not publish is at White Rabbit's blog, here -
http://ohdearohdearishallbelate.blogspot.com/

When is a cult not a cult?
When the thought police tell you it's a church.
Can a scientologist join the Masons?

"Remember the way the TGWU betrayed the Liverpool dockers? I bet you thought no union could ever sink so low again. I did too. We were wrong. The way Unite has treated the Belfast Airport workers is a disgrace. Unite's leaders should hang their heads in shame." (Jimmy McGovern)

Unite hunger striker Gordon McNeill in bad shape.

Gore Vidal on the South Bank Show, Sunday evening; the old fellow's looking very frail, but still managed to entertain with his comments. I can't think what Melvyn Bragg was up to, defending christianity and showing resentment at Vidal's remarks about all the evil christians have perpetrated throughout history.Was he playing devil's advocate or has he found God, the christian version of course?
Something Vidal said surprised me - only three American writers came out in opposition to the Iraq war; Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and himself, "the three old men". Of the three only Vidal is left standing. What a sorry state of affairs. Has the whole of the USA's community of letters moved to the far right? Or have the neo-cons created such a climate of fear that only those with nothing to lose dare express dissent?

I watched "Fergie and ITV do Hull" last night. That was an hour wasted. One hour (minus ads) of self-promotion trying, and failing, to pass itself off as altruism. "I live to give" says she. Well it's full marks for chutzpah, but fail in every other category.
It seems that local people are already up in arms about this representation of the town and its denizens. I'm all for it if it puts off the chancers, carpet-baggers, developers, and all those looking for a business opportunity.

A quote from "Technology Guardian" of Thusday May 8 (I will catch up), "... a senior policeman said that only 3% of street robberies are solved using CCTV". Still the cops have a nice little earner flogging the footage to the makers of crappy television programmes, so the cameras are here to stay.
Then there are the more sinister purposes, but most people are not too concerned. Today Big Brother is just another piece of piss-poor television which could just as well be entitled "Voyeurism for All". The name no longer connotes the menace of such surveillance methods when they were presented to us as the monopoly of the Soviet "Evil Empire". Strange how totalitarian surveillance became respectable after the Soviet system collapsed. Just as we found we could no longer afford a welfare system as soon as the self-styled "socialist" state disappeared; the same welfare system that began to come into existence following the Russian Revolution with it's Marxist and collectivist rhetoric.
Another quote from the same article (I love this):
"If you keep within the law, and the government keeps within the law, and its employees keep within the law, and the computer holding the database doesn't screw up, and the system is carefully designed according to well-understood software engineering principles and maintained properly, and the government doesn't scrimp on the outlay and all the data are entered carefully and the police are adequately trained to use the system and the system isn't hacked into, and your identity isn't stolen, and the local hardware functions, well, you have nothing to fear."
That's from Nigel Shadbolt, author, with Kieron O'Hara, of "The Spy in the Coffee Machine: the End of Privacy As We Know It".
So bring on the ID cards and the National Database.

"In a certain sense the movement towards globalization where capitalists are trying to leap over nation state barriers, creates a kind of opportunity for movement to ignore national barriers, and to bring people together globally, across national lines in opposition to globalization of capital, to create globalization of people, opposed to traditional notion of globalization. In other words to use globalization – it is nothing wrong with idea of globalization – in a way that bypasses national boundaries and of course that there is not involved corporate control of the economic decisions that are made about people all over the world." (Howard Zinn)


Whenever I start thinking that all Americans are as thick as the cretin they elected president, I have to remind myself that most Americans didn't vote for anybody, that more voted for the other bloke than for the cretin, and that there are people like Professors Zinn and Chomsky in the USA. Unfortunately it's the moral bankrupts and pimps for Wall Street whose voices are heard over the airwaves.
Soldier on, Counterpunch.

DOG BITES MAN, no.12

Literally this time -

prisonlawinsideout: Police dog bites the 'wrong man'#links

Funny thing -
Whenever there's an earthquake anywhere in the world the TV news shows film of food, tents and other essentials being loaded onto aircraft destined for the disaster area. We see trained rescue workers with sniffer dogs and sonar equipment ready to fly out. Later we see these same workers in operation and learn how important their contribution is.
There has been a major earthquake in China. The news is full of it. The reporters are out in force bringing us harrowing stories. Meanwhile at the airports, no story worth covering it seems.

The BBC and the charity racket. Now there's a story I must get round to, but first a little research.

An article in the latest edition of the Radio Times gives us the lowdown on a programme in which the Duchess of York teaches poor people how to live healthily and frugally.
First a quote from Her Grace, "I could live in a council house and below the benefit line, of course."
Next a personal detail from the article; the duchess, while living well above the benefit line (albeit from the public purse), managed to get into debt to the tune of £4million.
How can anyone take this woman seriously?
Two things I want to know -
i) How much the notorious freeloader was paid for this exploitation of the disadvantaged for amusement of the middle class?
ii) The identity of the shit-for-brains hooray henry who spawned this joke in bad taste.

It seems that the programme is an attempt by the duchess to improve her image in Britain as she wants to return from the United States. So the Eurotrash circuit has done with her and the freebies have dried up. Now she's a proud Brit.

It would be hypocritical of me to propose a boycott of the insult when I intend to try and watch it, if only because it is my concitoyens, the people of Hull, who are once more the target southern middle class baiting.

'Obsolete' on the New Labour for Cameron cabal.
http://www.septicisle.info/
Of course Andrew Marr is never able to hide his Tory credentials. He'll be doing his
damndest to widen the divisions.