"When Yeltsin left office, his family had become inexplicably wealthy ...", Naomi Klein "The Guardian", 27.4.07. Not really inexplicable, but - you know - English libel law.

Ms. Klein's article, "The World Bank has the perfect standard bearer", is about the hypocrisy of that organisation and its media claque in attacking Wolfman Paul and his idea of "good governance". I quote further:
"The truth is that the bank's credibility was fatally compromised when it forced school fees on students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; when it demanded that Tanzania privatise its water system; when it made telecom privatisation a condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; when it demanded labour "flexibility" in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami; when it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post-invasion Iraq. Ecuadoreans care little about Wolfowitz's girlfriend; more pressing is that in 2005 the World Bank withheld a promised $100m after the country dared to spend a portion of its oil revenues on health and education. Some anti-poverty organisation."
The World Bank is a creator of poverty on a mass scale. It makes a few politicians rich by bribing them to attack their own people's living standards. It encourages them, coerces them if necessary, to dismantle all welfare structures, and to wage war on organised workers. According to Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist to the World Bank, "The new global order has condemned people to death. They don't care if people live or die". That's the global order as advanced by the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations as an instrument of US foreign policy, and the G8; insofar as any of these organisations can be said to exist independently of the others.

www.nologo.org
www.globalissues.org

"I think the Owl of Minerva will spread its wings only with the coming of dusk." John Reid in Parliament yesterday. Heilige Blumenkraft! The right-wing paranoiacs will be in a frenzy. This is too reminiscent of Illuminati-speak. Is J.R. an initiate, or was it a Hegelian slip?
The coming of dusk could herald the "the Sleep of Reason", which might well accord with the Doctor's plans.

Addendum (sed non corrigendum): I realised afterwards that I'd got the password wrong, but I'm loth to change it. Why? Is it because I fear the wrath of the adepts? Is it because I'm being controlled by the hidden masters? Perhaps the paranoiacs are right, and the organisation I thought was dead by 1790 lives on. So stet!

STS, bulletin no.2
Social Responsibility - benefit cuts

So farewell then, Boris Nikolaievich, you served your masters well; Washington, the World Bank, the kleptocracy. Now you will have a state funeral, but your friend Berezovsky won't be able to attend. The Western Media will sing your praises, with a few indulgent references to your "colourful" behaviour on the public stage. They'll forget that you were a Stalinist hack until the day it was possible to hold power without a party membership card. On that day - not one day before - did you tear up your party card before the world's cameras. Communist one day, anti-Communist the next, a truly Pauline conversion. From then on you changed hats frequently - dictator in the cause of democracy; bagman for the Mafiya; licenced clown of of global politics. Then the Russian people had had enough, and you were gone.

"Yeltsin has taken the opportunity to imprison & torture socialists who have a far longer record of opposing stalinism than he has, who were indeed imprisoned by the Communist regime when he was part of that regime, & who now profess the views in opposition to both stalinism and Yeltsin, that they always held." ("The Two O'Clock Knock Now Comes at Three", a Syndicalist Bulletin publication, October 1993). So old Borya was consistent in one thing, belonging to a ruling class that persecuted socialists.

The Sceptic's Translation Service, Bulletin no.1
Private Equity Funds - formerly known as asset strippers.

Bernard Matthews imports bird flu into the country and his punishment is a £600,000 handout from the British people. Isn't capitalism wonderful!

The Tooled-up Tools of America - "Guns don't kill people, profiteering arms-mongers kill people" - have spoken; the answer to classroom massacres is ... arm your kids and send them to school with a handgun or two. Why not? It's the logical epilogue to the American Century, mutually assured destruction. E Pluribus Unum could translate as "last man standing".

Bryan Ferry, love him or hate him you have to despise him. The poseur supreme who uses the pseudonym Max De Winker when travelling incognito (I thinks it's Winker but I might be a letter out). He gets all gooey over Nazi art, Albert and Leni and all those beautifully choreographed rallies. What a pity no-one painted Zyklon-B canisters Andy Warhol style.
I suppose now we know what he calls his studio we should stop calling him Max and address him as "Mein Führer".

"Look lads, Rupert Murdoch's Sun has taken over. He's got the big cheque books and if he's prepared to pay to hell with any rules or regulations, any understandings, any customs, any traditions, it's all up for grabs.' That's called New Labour. I am profoundly shocked.
"What an extraordinary story, that people who every day take calculated risks with their lives are expected to earn relatively small sums of money whilst people who get themselves taken hostage, in circumstances which are worth exploring, can make a killing. I have never heard anything so appalling."
Thus spake Heseltine (Guardian, 10th April), and once again I find myself agreeing with a Tory. "I wasn't raped", says Fag-ash Faye, and that's her story. They kept me apart from the others, she complains. In the navy they all bunk down together you see. Having abolished rum and the lash it seems that the Andrew has decided to eradicate the third fine old naval tradition by mixing the sexes below deck.
Then there's that other naval tradition, wearing pyjamas over day clothes.Why else would that poor fellow complain, "They made us strip and put on Pyjamas"?
Then there was poor "Mr. Bean". How did he survive the ordeal? Bad news for him, I'm afraid. He's going to find that it's not only those wicked Iranians who'll be calling him Mr. Bean from now on.
So now the British Navy is a joke all over the world, except in Britain where disgust is the common reaction.
There used to be an Official Secrets Act, signed by all armed service personnel. Has that been quietly dropped, along with resisting capture, and volunteering only name, rank and number?
When I was doing my bit even telling a civvy the colour of army issue socks was, in theory, a chargeable offence. If they wanted to shut you up they had means to hand. Now , it seems, the MoD wrings its hands and claims it is powerless to act.
So when will the Bloody Sunday killers be talking to the press?

"When the British sailors were in Iran, they read statements of Iranian propaganda; when they returned to UK, they read statements of British propaganda". (angryarab.blogspot.com)