'A former communications intercept operator says U.S. intelligence snooped on the private lives of two of America's most important allies in fighting al Qaeda: British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Iraq's first interim president, Ghazi al-Yawer.'

'David Murfee Faulk told ABCNews.com he saw and read a file on Blair's "private life" ...
A spokesman for Blair, who stepped down as Prime Minister in 2007, said there would be "no comment" on Faulk's allegations.'

Special relationship, eh? Did nobody trust that "pretty straight sort of guy"?

Linked video on the Hull accent - one clown tells us that Hull people say "er ner" for "oh no", "sner" for snow, and "fern" for phone. He then reads a poem containing the words toad and folk. Does he pronounce them TURD and FURK? Of course not, he says tawd and fawk. I think it's called cognitive dissonance; or maybe it's brainwashing.
Anyone who wants to hear the Hull accent in all its glory should listen to the actor Peter Martin. I don't know, maybe he's retired, he used to be in Emmerdale. Barry Rutter, another Hull-born actor, does it when playing rough-arses, but, being a stage actor, he probably has other accents. Tom Courtenay, however, has gone all posh on us, though I seem to recall him doing "Hull" in "King and Country", when he played a squaddie sentenced to death for desertion.

They just won't let it lie
Two examples -
i)The Vatican has decided to forgive John Lennon for saying, forty years ago, that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. I always thought he'd said that they were more famous than Jesus. Whichever word he used he was right at the time. He didn't say that they were in anyway superior to J.C., or that they'd taken his place in the hearts of the Church Militant, just that they were better known.
Of course the nutty devil-dodgers in the Land of the Free did their pieces over the remark and built a bonfire of the inanities, but that's the Yanks. The rest of the world, most of whom were not Christians, wondered what the fuss was about, if they even knew about the fuss. What did the Pope of the day say? Probably, "Trouble with beetles? Send for pest control!"
Whenever the Pope or one of his minions makes one of these anouncements I hark back to the Maid of Orleans, the girl the Catholic Church burned as a heretic in 1431, and pronounced a saint in 1920.

ii) Diego Maradona, one of the greatest players to grace the beautiful game comes to Britain. What do the British (English?) media want to talk about? The bloody "Hand of God!" Let it go, for Christ's sake, let it go!

An interesting statistic on the radio (BBC Radio4) this morning; 50% of respondents to a survey on religion in Britain stated that they didn't believe in God. Now where are their opinions heard on the airwaves? I've listened to homilies from practitioners of Buddhism, Judaism and Sikhism on the BBC, but if you lumped the adherents of all those religions together they wouldn't amount to 10% of the population. Naturally I would expect no other policy from the BBC, voice of the established order. Shut us out, it makes no difference, our numbers increase.

I liked Paul Ross's comment on his brother in hiding, "He's on the Sachs offenders register."

"Despite being the 7th richest man in the United Kingdom (Guardian, 2003), with extensive business and political dealings in the UK, and being a person of interest in the US Presidential election, Nadhmi Auchi's name has, as far as we can establish, not appeared in a major British newspaper since May when the censorship attacks began."

A tale of censorship featuring in the latest Private Eye.

URGENT: Kidnapped by the Israeli Navy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Date : 11-18-2008

Fifteen Palestinian fishermen along with three internationals have been kidnapped in Palestinian waters by the Israeli Navy. They were fishing seven miles off the coast of Deir Al Balah, clearly in Gaza fishing waters and well within the fishing limit detailed in the Oslo Accords of 1994.

The fishermen and the human right's observers were transferred from 3 separate boats to the Israeli warships. Other Palestinian fishermen reported that the 3 boats were seen being taken north by the Israeli Navy.

The three internationals are Andrew Muncie from Scotland, Darlene Wallach from the United States and Victor Arrigoni from Italy. The U.K., U.S. and Italian embassies in Tel Aviv have been contacted and know about the abductions.

Please call the Israeli Ministry of Justice at +972 26 46 66 66 and register your outrage over these illegal actions by the Israeli Navy. Then call the Embassies in Jerusalem and make sure they know that many of us are appalled by Israel's illegal search and seizure.

Stephen Brown, UK Consulate +972 25 41 41 00
U.S. Consulate General + 972-2-6227230
Luigi MATTIOLO, Italian Ambassador +972 3 5104004

Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that (N-word) in the head." Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.

_At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."

_Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.

_Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.

_University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.

_Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.

_Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.

_A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'

_In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."

Ho-hum!

"All these people that run studios - they go to Washington, they hang around with senators, they hang around with CIA directors, and everybody's on board."

(Bob Baer, ex-CIA)
Or how the CIA runs Hollywood. I knew "Animal Farm" was a propaganda job, I didn't know the CIA owned the film rights. Did you see "The Quiet American (disowned by Graham Greene), "The Recruit", "The Good Shepherd", "Charlie Wilson's War"? Then you've been got at by the American Stasi. Any deprogramming courses available?

I see that Plastic-Features Ronaldo can't manage on £120,000 a week and wants a £40,000 pay rise.
How much is it that United owe? £667,000,000? In for a penny in for a pound, more cream for the fat cat. The punters will stand for it, they always have.

Armistice Day
I joined all the other grey heads at the cenotaph to remember the fallen. Some younger people there as well, but mostly grey panthers. Only three left of the WWI veterans, so they say. Fred Karno's army, parade dismissed.

We are Fred Karno's army
The ragtime infantry
We cannot fight, we cannot run,
What ****ing use are we?
And when we go to Berlin
The Kaiser he will say
"Ach,Ach, Mein Gott!
What a bloody rotten lot."
We're the ragtime infantry.

I think it went like that.
Also the ninetieth anniversary of the death of the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who died of his wounds as the church bells rang out to mark the ceasefire.

Où sont Raynal Billy Dalize
Dont les noms se mélancolisent
Comme des pas dans une église
Où est Cremnitz qui s'engagea
Peutêtre sont-ils morts déja

Some lived , some died.

Speaking to reporters in Downing Street, the prime minister said: "What I have learned from this byelection is that people are prepared to support governments that will help people through the downturn and offer real help to people."

Ed Balls, the children's secretary, and Yvette Cooper, the chief secretary to the Treasury, have launched an attack on the so-called London living wage – the £7.45 an hour recommended minimum for all workers in the capital. They claim it would be "artificial, inflationary" and not "necessary or appropriate."

Barack Obama -> Rahm Emanuel -> Benjamin Emanuel -> Irgun Tzvi Leumi ->
The bombing of the King David Hotel
The Deir Yasin massacre
British soldiers hanged with piano wire.

Barack "Skinny Legs" Obama -> Arnold Schwarzenegger -> Gustav Schwarzenegger -> the Nazi Party.

Obama's next selection, the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan? Well, maybe his son.

I really resent having to listen to all that meaningless guff about the stock market with every news bulletin. I wonder, what percentage of the population actually owns shares? Certainly a minority, and anyone with a real interest in this form of gambling will need more than the basic information giving that comes with the news. No this is propaganda. It's saying "If this doesn't concern you then you are a nobody. You count for nothing, and don't forget it."
Dr. Joe Moran of Liverpool John Moores University described these messages from our masters as being " ... like a prayer or an incantation", and " .. a daily tutorial in neoliberalism, the lesson is always the same: you can't buck the market."
Utah Phillips also commented on this in his own way.

The Talking NPR Blues
By U. Utah Phillips

I turned on my radio… spun the dial
Thought I'd listen to some news for a while
I grabbed the knob, spun it around,
Got NPR… here's what I found…

Real news? Hardly a trace
Just one damn marathon market place
The Nasdaq's up, the Dow's in the cellar
And NPR sold out to Rockefeller

Hostile take over… Real hostile.

Well I hear about all the anti trust
And all the day traders who bit the dust
Mergers, buyouts and acquisitions
Low down crooks in high positions

Wheelers, dealers, and CEO's
Fired and paid off through the nose
Buying yachts and fancy homes
With the bail out money from the savings and loans

And I get pissed… Off that is.

It's dot com this and dot com that
The underwriters are getting fat
On airwaves stole from you and me
By a bunch of thieves called the FCC

They don't give a damn what we want and need
They've all caved in to corporate greed
And sold us out to the ruling class
Well the whole damn bunch can kiss my… …Dot Com!

This is a family show folks
The FCC says watch your language
English
What's yours?

I got tired of being treated like a veg
So I called up the station and canceled my pledge
In a mighty act of liberation
Sent the money off to my community station

I said "I love you"

But if you blow it
I'll sure as hell let you know it
I'll knock the radio off the shelf
Buy a transmitter and do it myself

Whitebeard the Pirate

This is radio station H O B O
Broadcasting on a vagrancy of 60 to 90 days
Signing off
For now.

A couple of people making points that I'd like to endorse -

First Jo Brand in the latest edition of the Radio Times: "Too much comedy these days attacks the same targets. There's a huge anti-chav/anti-poor people thing going on; almost an Orwellian situation, where we set up poor people to laugh at them. That's why I've never been much of a fan of Little Britain. I think the targets are just too easy. I'd rather see comedy having a go at rich people, powerful people, right wing people."

Next Gore Vidal to David Dimbleby on US politics: "I know the territory. I'm surprised you even asked me, because I know too much about the subject - you like to get people who don't know much about the subject." (from yesterday's Guardian)
The old fellow knows the BBC well.

Angry Arab writes -

"Remember me when Obama will endorse an Israeli war on a refugee camp and on a Lebanese village, and he will call that justified self-defense. Remember me when Obama will mourn the deaths of Israelis and will celebrate the deaths of Arabs and Muslims. Remember me when he orders his first bombing campaign on some remote area of Pakistan. Remember me when he betrays the poor in favor of Wall Street. Remember me when he will betray the aspirations of black people in favor of the white middle class that is now the headline of the Democratic Party. Remember me when Obama will not fight for his health reform plan, and will he not deliver on many of his promises. Remember me when Obama will stick to his campaign promise of opposing gay marriage. Remember me when when Obama will continue to blame the failure of the American occupation of Iraq on the Iraqi people themselves."

Well I got it wrong, the old white man couldn't rely on his fellow party members to rig the election. This is not a new experience for me; before the last presidential election I predicted that Bush would win a second term, and would immediately reintroduce the draft.
Now we have to ask; how long before someone makes an attempt on Obama's life. Place your bets, Messieurs-Dames. Next question how long before he bombs somebody? Angry Arab says within six months, I give him 18 months if he can survive the "lone nut's" bullet that long. I reckon the CIA will be training some lone nuts up in case Obama does attempt something radical. I should add that the odds against him doing anything to upset the 2% who own 50% are long indeed. I quote, "Look, I am a pro-growth, free-market guy, I love the market."

"Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama?"

That from Ralph Nader's open letter to Obama (linked).
Over here it was a short step from "Things can only get better" to war crimes. Or as Pete Townshend put it
"Here comes the new boss,
Just like the old boss".