Let's get one thing clear, the BNP will not guarantee "British jobs for British workers". They cannot do any such thing, nor do they intend to. Their Fuehrer, the Welsh cyclops, has already assured British business that, should his party obtain power, they will not interfere in the market. Capitalism will be safe under BNP stewardship. Of course the BNP lie constantly, but their lies are designed to deceive the powerless, not to con the ruling class. Being a hierarchical and authoritarian organisation, they regard that class as an ally.
Nor will the Conservatives do anything different. They cannot - nor can, or will, the Liberal-Democrats. All of these parties are committed, like Labour, to the current deregulated, privatised, globalised economic midden. They will assure us that narrow nationalism, protectionism, isolationism are not the answer and will only make the situation worse.
The BNP, along with the crypto-fascist UKIP will (hypocritically)advocate just these policies, but the chances of them getting the opportunity to deliver on their promises will be slim in the extreme (mot juste). The BNP, should it achieve an electoral breakthrough, will continue along it's present route to the centre-right, divesting itself of the stormtrooper element on the way. This last will return to the wilderness and the true Nazi thuggery that is momentarily being contained by the dominant ballot-boxers.
So who will represent our disenfranchised British working class? As usual it has to be a do-it-yourself effort. The unions are there, but the full-timers will try to take the lead and head off any effective action. After all a strong rank and file threatens their places at the trough as much as it threatens employers and sell-out politicians. A strong rank and file movement, distrustful of union officials, and refusing to surrender direct action in return for fruitless negotiations and delaying tactics, is the only hope.
The signs of a fightback are already in the wind. The media are now calling the walkouts "wildcat", a favourite union-bashing term. Mealy-mouthed politicians "understand, but cannot condone". The lies, the talk of "extremism", are in the pipeline. Remember "the enemy within"?

"The reality is that EU directives and, even more so, British legislation have encouraged employers to exploit deregulated labour markets to play off one part of the workforce against another and drive down employment costs. Now that jobs are at a premium, organised workers in Britain are no longer prepared to put up with it and are ignoring anti-union laws to make their voice heard. So long as their protests continue to target employers and the government, rather than other workers, that will intensify the pressure on Brown to stop tinkering, come up with what is now long overdue: a serious programme of investment in public housing, infrastructure and transport to replace the jobs now haemorrhaging across Britain."

(Seumas Milne)
We can but hope.

Mick Hall writes on the walkouts on "Organised Rage" (See links)

"Hamas should be part of the Middle East peace process, said Tony Blair, former British prime minister and envoy to the region of the international quartet of powers, in comments published on Friday."

This from the peace (sic) envoy who has never met Hamas, and can't visit Gaza because the Israelis won't let him.

Investors in Northern Ireland's Presbyterian Mutual Society have got the begging bowl out and are asking the government to compensate them for their losses.
Surely the Lord will provide?
Or as Joe Hill put it -

Work all day,
Live on hay.
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

A recent obituary of one Cardinal Pio Laghi caught my eye - a catalogue of machinations on behalf of the far right, and against democracy. The Vatican is probably crawling with such individuals.

John Paul wanted US support for the practical assistance he was providing for the Solidarity trade union. Their cooperation spread wider than Europe, however. Laghi lobbied hard and successfully to obtain Reagan's support to cut US funding to development programmes that included provision of abortion. He also effectively tore up an outspoken anti-nuclear letter, drafted by America's Catholic bishops in 1983.
Most controversially, he conveyed to Washington that the Vatican shared Reagan's dislike of the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua. John Paul objected in particular to the presence in that country of three radical Catholic priests. Laghi was therefore privy to US efforts to undermine the Sandinistas.

...

In 1974, he was sent to Argentina. His six years there coincided with the worst excesses of the military dictatorship in what was known as the "dirty war". Many in Argentina believe that the church hierarchy supported the generals in their misrule, and that Laghi - who played tennis regularly with one of the leaders of the junta, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera - turned a blind eye to the murder and "disappearances" of thousands. "Perhaps I wasn't a hero," Laghi said later of his time in Buenos Aires, "but I was no accomplice."

"No accomplice" can be interpreted as not physically participating in the kidnapping, killing and torture.

Gabi Ashkenazi

On 27th December 2008, the suspect, as Chief of Staff, ordered the Israeli army to attack densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip. For three weeks, 1,500 tons of bombs were dropped from the air on residential neighborhoods in Gaza and tens of thousands of artillery shells were fired from tanks. For 3 weeks, the army damaged and destroyed houses, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, water and electrical plants, killed more than 1,300 people, hundreds of them children, and injured about 5,300 people. Thousands of houses were bombed or shelled and 50,000 residents were made homeless, without shelter.

Prior to this, the suspect was part of a group, which implemented a siege on 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip, denying them a regular supply of food, water, medicine, fuel and electricity for 18 months.

According to international law, it is absolutely prohibited to bomb residential areas in a way that interrupts the lives of civilians; to carry out executions without trial, to collectively punish; to destroy or damage hospitals, schools and homes. The prohibitions against collective punishment were enshrined in the Geneva Conventions after the behavior of the Nazis in Europe during World War II when they destroyed entire villages to punish residents for sheltering the resistance. 194 countries agree with the prohibitions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

In December 2008, a complaint was filed in the Hague against the suspect, on suspicion that he had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for ordering the siege of Gaza.

Description of the suspect: male, about 55 years old, black hair, olive skin above average height. The suspect is armed and could be dangerous.

My attention was drawn to the linked article ( 29 November 2005)by someone styled "indiscrutable" posting a comment on a Guardian article -

The BBC is often accused of an anti-Israeli bias in its coverage of the Middle East, and recently censured reporter Barbara Plett for saying she "started to cry" when Yasser Arafat left Palestine shortly before his death.
Fascinating, then, to learn that its director general, Mark Thompson, has recently returned from Jerusalem, where he held a face-to-face meeting with the hardine Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Although the diplomatic visit was not publicised on these shores, it has been seized upon in Israel as evidence that Thompson, who took office in 2004, intends to build bridges with the country's political class.
Sources at the Beeb also suspect that it heralds a "softening" to the corporation's unofficial editorial line on the Middle East.
"This was the first visit of its kind by any serving director general, so it's clearly a significant development," I'm told.
"Not many people know this, but Mark is actually a deeply religious man. He's a Catholic, but his wife is Jewish, and he has a far greater regard for the Israeli cause than some of his predecessors."

Craig Murray writes on BBC "impartiality" -

What is Really Happening
I watched BBC World News for a timed hour yesterday. In that time I saw:
Pro-Israeli (including US government) speakers - 17
Pro-Palestinian speakers - 2

Mentions of Hamas Rockets as reason for war - 37
Mentions of illegal Israeli settlements - 0
Mentions of Palestinians killed by Israel during "ceasefire" - 2
Mentions of Sderot - 12
Mentions Sderot used to be Palestinian - 0

If you don't believe me, try it yourself.

Greg Dyke, meanwhile has defended the Thomson crapout -
"Outside of Iraq, the single biggest issue that caused complaints was the coverage of Israel."
This probably means that the BBC is cowed by the Zionist propaganda machine.

The BBC - Impartial or immoral?

Well we all know the answer to that. The complaints are flooding in.

THE BBC SHOWS ITS TRUE COLOURS
The blue and white of Israel with a yellow streak overall.

A BBC spokesperson said: "Along with other broadcasters, the BBC has decided not to broadcast the DEC's public appeal to raise funds for Gaza. The BBC decision was made because of question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story.

That's impartiality BBC-style.

Also -
No TV station is going to broadcast Saturday's Kettering v Fulham cup match. Nothing to do with the fact that the Kettering players wear shirts emblazoned with the words "Palestinian Aid".

"My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."
(Gerald Kauffman, M.P., in the House of Commons)

Listening to the news this morning I learned that 2000 Zimbabweans have died in a cholera epidemic. I'm still waiting to be informed as to how many Britons have died in the current flu epidemic.
I suppose that information will be made public in 30 years time.

I watched the re-enactment of the de Menezes killing (ITV1) last night. I don't know how accurate it was, I suppose much of it was based on police testimony to the inquest, so handle with care.
One thing became obvious; once the cops decide that you're their man everything you do is seen as confirming your guilt, nothing you do will shake that conviction. At one point J.C. got off his bus to enter a tube station. The station was closed because of the security alert, so J.C. walked away and got back on the bus to travel to the next station. "He's sussed us!" cried one observer. No need to look for another explanation.
The thing that really pissed me off about this programme was the amount of advertising that accompanied it, I estimated about 20 minutes in an hour. Diabolical! I don't often watch ITV1, like many others, so I wasn't prepared for the commercial overkill. Something else we have to thank the deregulators for.

A spokeswoman for the BBC said no complaints had been received about the Auschwitz joke but there had been five complaints about the gag cracked at pop star Will's expense.
She said: "Anyone who listens to the Chris Moyles Show will know he has an irreverent style."

Anyone who listens to this individual's turdfest will know that he is a homophobic, misogynistic (in fact, all-round) bigot. This is what the BBC calls "edgy". But there's "edgy" and there's EDGY; as the BBC producer screamed at Johnnie Walker, "Stop asking questions about the [Iraq] war!"
Anyone who listens to the man ugly people call ugly deserves to be defecated on from a great height, and the fat twat will oblige.

The Israelis have declared a ceasefire and an intention to withdraw from the killing fields, having achieved what they set out to do.
Now the stated aim was to stop the rockets directed at their communities, and they have singularly failed in this aim. So was there a hidden agenda? Of course there was; the plan was to slaughter large numbers of Palestinian men, women and children and to lay waste to a squalid patch of land peopled by those they have dispossessed, impoverished and, finally, starved. The plan was also to tell the world "We don't give a shit about the opinions of goyim. We are the Herrenvolk; live with it or die of it."

Bye Bye, Bush
Everybody's queuing up to have a pop at the poor fellow. Even the puppet, al-Maliki, has turned on his master; Saeb Ireykat of Fatah (Israel's clients); now Milliband criticises the war on terror. He says it was a mistake. It was a mistake from the start, Davy boy, when you and your party were all for it. So how are you going to clear up the mess you made? I suggest that you arrest Tony Blair and charge him with crimes against humanity. That will be a start.

STS Bulletin no.16

"Fog of War",
MarkRegevspeak for Israeli war crimes.

White phosphorus,
= Napalm
= chemical warfare
= war crime.

The linked article, from which the following quotes are taken, is by Uri Avnery, Israeli author and activist, a founding member of the independent peace movement Gush Shalom.

"Almost all the Western media initially repeated the official Israeli propaganda line. They almost entirely ignored the Palestinian side of the story, not to mention the daily demonstrations of the Israeli peace camp. The rationale of the Israeli government ("The state must defend its citizens against the Qassam rockets") has been accepted as the whole truth. The view from the other side, that the Qassams are a retaliation for the siege that starves the one and a half million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, was not mentioned at all."

"Immediately after the incident became known throughout the world, the army "revealed" that Hamas fighters had been firing mortars from near the school entrance. As proof they released an aerial photo which indeed showed the school and the mortar. But within a short time the official army liar had to admit that the photo was more than a year old. In brief: a falsification.
"Later the official liar claimed that 'our soldiers were shot at from inside the school'. Barely a day passed before the army had to admit to UN personnel that that was a lie, too. Nobody had shot from inside the school, no Hamas fighters were inside the school, which was full of terrified refugees."

"THE FAILURE to grasp the nature of Hamas has caused a failure to grasp the predictable results. Not only is Israel unable to win the war, Hamas cannot lose it.
"Even if the Israeli army were to succeed in killing every Hamas fighter to the last man, even then Hamas would win. The Hamas fighters would be seen as the paragons of the Arab nation, the heroes of the Palestinian people, models for emulation by every youngster in the Arab world. The West Bank would fall into the hands of Hamas like a ripe fruit, Fatah would drown in a sea of contempt, the Arab regimes would be threatened with collapse.
"If the war ends with Hamas still standing, bloodied but unvanquished, in face of the mighty Israeli military machine, it will look like a fantastic victory, a victory of mind over matter."

STS Bulletin no.15

Human shield,
Israeli for
civilian target

I note that Lucy Pinder is the first celebrity to be ejected from the Big Brother house. Just one question: who is Lucy Pinder?

Oh come on! The video is three years old. "Paki", "raghead" and "queer" were quite acceptable terms in 2006. And there was no malice. So if you're going to refer to the lad as James Hewitt's bastard please do so without malice.

From the current issue of "Private Eye" -
"According to the latest Foreign Office figures, Britain exported £18,847,795-worth of weapons to Israel in the first three months of 2008. This was a sharp increase compared to the £7.5m of weapons sales to Israel in in the whole of 2007."

Doing our bit for genocide.

"Saudi Arabia is very nervous: as is Mubarak. The Hashemites do what they do best in crisis and they lie: or they try to have it both ways. They conspire in private, and decry conspiracies in public. Israel may have crossed the thresholed when it could have made the Gaza attack into a political asset." (Angry Arab)

'Andrew Copson, director of public affairs at the BHA [British Humanist Association], said: "Reflective thoughts on the events of the day do not come only from people with 'a faith' so it is wrong for the BBC – which has obligations to its many humanist listeners just as to its religious ones – to exclude non-religious contributors from Thought for the Day.'
It's suggested that the BBC is rethinking its policy of suppressing atheist and agnostic opinion while forcing the opinions of people with all kinds of strange beliefs down our throats. We shall see.

Meanwhile the devil dodgers are up in arms about a slogan that reads "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life". They've had the gall to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority. Forget about all the claptrap they display outside their churches. They demand that the Humanists prove their claim, but don't offer to disprove it. The fact that "probably" tells us it's an opinion, not a statement of fact cuts no ice with these fanatics. Don't question the existence of Big Daddy in the Sky, don't even think about it, just believe. And if you can't swallow the fairy tale, pretend to believe.

OBAMA SPEAKS
He is "deeply disturbed" by the events in Gaza. Oh! Why?

Meanwhile -
Gordon Brown says that a ceasefire depends on the Palestinians halting the smuggling of arms from Egypt.
Angela Merkel says that a ceasefire depends on the Palestinians halting the ... (etc.)
Peace Envoy Blair says that a ceasefire depends on the Palestinians ... (etc.)
Sarkozy tells Bashshar al-Asad that he should put pressure on Hamas to halt the ... (etc.)
What happened to Berlusconi? Did his script go missing in the post?

One question - what weapons? What is the source of this intelligence? As the Israelis have been preventing food, medical supplies and fuel getting to the people of Gaza they have resorted to smuggling these essentials from Egypt. Are these the weapons that the Israelis refer to?
Why can't those Palestinians lie down and die? Don't they understand that their struggle to survive is making the Israelis unhappy?

I had to laugh when an ITN reporter asked Blair if he would condemn the slaughter of civilians by the Israelis. Bomber Blair! Of course he wouldn't.

Peace Envoy Blair has spoken at last on Gaza killing fields. I haven't bothered to read what he said as I've already read what G.W. Bush said last week.

Hooray, hooray! Peace (sic) Envoy Blair has broken cover. He has been spotted listening intently to a lecture from Ehud Barak. He appeared to have nothing to say himself.
Now on to meet some Palestinians? Of course not, silly me! The Israelis have told him that the Palestinians are all terrorists, so they won't let him meet any - for his own safety of course.

Isn't it strange - the Israelis start a bloodbath to stop the rockets being fired from Gaza. They bomb, bomb, bomb; then swamp that little patch of land with thousands of troops. Result, the rocket launching continues.
Now let me think. Once the rockets are stopped the Israelis will have to find another excuse to slaughter Palestinians. As long as the rockets fly the killing continues. Will they ever take out those rocket-launching sites?

I see that the Israelis have located the Hamas HQ under a hospital. So the hospital is a legitimate military target. I can imagine the BBC reporting it - very sad, but it had to be done. Nasty Hamas, nice Israelis, etc.

STS Bulletin no.14

"By spending its resources on rocket launchers instead of roads and schools, Hamas has demonstrated that it has no intention of serving the Palestinian people." (G.W.Bush)
Means
"Roll them tanks, Ehud, kill, kill, kill!"

Anybody seen peace envoy Blair?

(Nir Rosen)

"According to the latest figures the Israeli armed forces has 500,000 men and women under arms, Hamas has approx. 600-6000. Israel 3,501 tanks, Hamas 0. Combat aircraft, Israel 393, Hamas 0. Israeli defense budget, 9.5 Bn, Hamas total annual funding, 50 million for civilian and military projects. Israeli dead since bombardment began, military 0 civilians 5, Palestinian total, 408 dead, 44% of whom were women and children." (Organised Rage)

One man, George Bush, can open his mouth and stop the slaughter immediately. The fact that he does not tells us that he approves, and probably ordered it. I'm damned if I know why. Is it connected to his love of frying people when governor of Texas; his keenness to order air strikes on Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis? Is it pure unadulterated bloodlust? Does he wish to go down in history as another Pol Pot?