Over 5,000 people marched through Hull city centre today to show their opposition to pension theft being perpetrated by the millionaire clique in Whitehall. I believe it was the biggest demonstration in Hull that I've ever taken part in. As we made our way through the streets bystanders applauded us. I don't recall that ever happening before.
Many people were filming and taking photographs. I hope someone filmed the whole march from start to finish, and that they'll post it on the net. I saw one acquaintance with a camera on the roadside, and hoped he was filming, but it seems, looking at his website, that he was only taking photographs.
In the meantime, a short burst from the local paper.

I wonder if Malaysia is on Tone's money-spinning lecture tour itinerary.

I found this on facebook. Seems appropriate.

British companies targeted for investment in Israeli agricultural export companies

"The government of Goldman Sachs is getting a grip on one European country after another. On Wednesday we will get a glimpse of an alternative – not on paper or a petition, but when millions stand up for themselves."

According to a BBC poll 61 percent of the population support Wednesday's public sector workers' strike. So all the government lies are not working.
A missing figure from this survey is the percentage of the population opposed to the strike. It can't be high, as the BBC tells us that the strongest opposition is among the over-65s, but then tells us that just under half of that group support the strike.
The survey results, which must have come as a disappointment to the BBC, don't get a big splash. Slithy Gove's attack on the unions is higher up the running order. That's the little chap formerly known as 'Red Mike' Gove. The BBC's diffidence won't prevent the "Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation" tomfoolery being aired by the hominids on the government benches.
The Conservatives are making noises about increasing the restrictions applied to the legally most restricted unions in Europe. Personally I hope they make unions illegal. Then we'll be forced to build working class organisations that cannot get into bed with the class enemy.

Another statistic: people admitted to hospital at the weekend have a ten percent higher chance of dying. This is being blamed on lack of staff on duty.
The government's going to have to come out fighting on this one if it wants the NHS to continue shedding workers and closing down hospitals.
We may soon hear that the research that led to this result is based on out of date figures, and matters have improved markedly.
Or we may be informed that the research was flawed.
Or someone at the Department of Health will declare that these figures are intolerable and action must be taken to bring them down.
Apart from a search for a method of massaging the figures nothing will be done.

Conservative MP Richard Ottaway said strikes should be banned unless at least 50% of members voted for them. The prime minister replied: "Just one quarter of Unison members voted to strike, just 23% of those balloted at Unite voted in favour."
Unison and Unite only balloted members who belonged to the affected pensions schemes. Unison had a 30% turnout for its members in local government who voted 75% in favour of a strike and a 25% turnout for its NHS workers, 82% of whom backed strikes.
Unite workers voted 75% in favour of strikes - on a turnout of 31%.
Downing Street aides said the prospect of banning strikes which did not get the backing of at least 50% of a union's members was never "off the table" but added: "We are not at that stage."

Let's see now. General election 2010 - turnout, 65%; Conservative share of the vote, 36%: Percentage of electorate voting for Cameron's Conservatives, 12-. Post-Liberal share of the vote, 23%: percentage of electorate voting for Clegg's clique, 8.5-. Combined percentage of electorate electing (though not voting for) the Con-Dem conspiracy, circa 20%.
Not at the 50%+ stage yet.

Every time I've gone to wikipedia recently there's that unshaven, needy face giving me the Evil Eye. I was going to boycott the site for a while until I learned that there's an unobtrusive x in the upper right-hand corner. Press that and the bad screws are gone for good (I pray).
I've been trying to find out how much the randroid Wales is worth. No luck so far, apart from his claim that he's only worth $1 million. Nobody believes him.

While searching for the information I found this site, and learned that I'm the 655,895,612th richest person in the world. This places me in the top 11% globally. Still, Cameron and Osbourne are working on that. Third World, here we come!

I've just discovered the works of a lady who goes by the name 'Sedulia Scott' on the internet - very informative. I had to copy these definitions of French nouns (she is only responsible for the English translation) -

* Un gars : a young man
* Une garce : a whore

* Un courtisan : someone close to the king
* Une courtisane : a whore

* Un masseur : a masseur
* Une masseuse : a whore

* Un coureur : a jogger [someone who runs]
* Une coureuse : a whore

* Un rouleur : a cyclist [someone who rolls]
* Une roulure : a whore

* Un professionnel : a top athlete [a professional]
* Une professionnelle : a whore

* Un homme sans moralité : a politician [a man with no morals]
* Une femme sans moralité : a whore

* Un entraîneur : a man who trains a sports team
* Une entraîneuse : a whore

* Un homme à femmes : a ladies' man
* Une femme à hommes : a whore

* Un homme public : a well-known man [a public man]
* Une femme publique : a whore

* Un homme facile : a man easy to live with [an easy man]
* Une femme facile : a whore

* Un homme qui fait le trottoir : a paver [a man who does the sidewalk]
* Une femme qui fait le trottoir : a whore

* Un péripatéticien: a pupil of Aristotle
* Une péripatéticienne: a whore

The mother of Guillaume Apollinaire was described as an 'entraîneuse' when she was thrown out of Monte Carlo. I thought it meant 'hostess'.

Afterthought (24th November): 'coureur' can have a meaning other than 'jogger', which might be considered disapproving. I would consider it at best a euphemism.

After-after: I neglected to add a link. Rectified below.

I've had a couple of messages from my cyberstalker, who uses two IP addresses.

Just read your debate with vza on aacs. She destroyed you. Haha Yessss sure, business is evil.....Jemmy, do you have a brain the same size as a rabbit's? Meanwhile he can't explain why capitalism has worked so much better than anything else in building wealth the world over. But damnit, common sense and logical thinking never held much sway for Jemmy Whemmy! LMAO!

As I should have expected you misrepresented, mostly, my post here to vza. Deception being your hallmark, it comes as no surprise. But let me affirm her denunciation. I have always confirmed caitalisms flaws. It has many, some that are hard to stomach, perhaps. But that is just like mother nature. Even at it's worst capitalism is 10000 times better than any other system. As "bad" as you potray capitalism, you have no examples of where your preferred system has produced anything besides misery and decay. Cuba? N korea? The USSR? Pathetic. The tiny country of Sweden, with it's homogeneous populstion and singular culture, is the classic choice of all who defend your philosophy. Tell us, why not implement that system in Hatii and expect wondrous prosperity to ensue?

"Why not implement that system in Haiti ..." Haiti is capitalist country, also a country occupied by capitalism's most enthusiastic missionaries. This fool thinks that any other economic system would make it worse. To borrow from his vocabulary, hahaha. Of course, the fool could fall back on another of his arguments, that he deploys with care - the Haitian people are not white, so it will take them a thousand years (I think that's his usual figure) to attain the standards of the white man.

More on the name Emily, and its saintly bearers.
Aemilia (yes there were some), two virgins, both martyred at Lyon (Lugdunum) anno 177. Their joint feast day, 2nd June.

Émilie de Rodat, born 1778 at Druelle near Rodez France. This lady founded an order called the Sisters of the Holy Family, apparently an offshoot of the Ursuline nuns. She died 1852, and was buried at the convent she founded. Feast day, 19th September.

Émilie de Vialar, born Gaillac, near Albi in the Pyrenean Midi, 1797. Founded, 1832, the Order of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition (?). Died at Marseille, 1856; canonised 1951. Her feast day, 24th August.

The above was taken from this site.

Emilia Bicheria, reliever of headaches and gout, appears to be this lady, Emilia Bicchieri. Born Vercelli, in the Piemonte region, circa 1238. The obit, 1314, is the same for both Emilias. However this Emilia is only a 'beata', Blessed Emilia, not Saint Emilia, which wouldn't preclude her from effecting those cures; continue your devotions, cephalalgics and hyperuraemics.
This is another nun, and founder of a convent - "Beata Aemilia de Bicheriis de Poenitentia Sancti Dominici, fundatrix monasterii Sanctae Margarethae de Vercellis extra muros." She was beatified in 1769. Who knows? Maybe she's been canonised recently.

(Lifted from Uruknet)

"If you miss me at the back of the bus
You can't find me nowhere",
That's because I'm banged up in an Israeli cell.
(Apologies to Pete Seeger)

"Is there a neo-con cell of senior ministers and officials, co-ordinating with Israel and the United States, and keeping their designs hidden from the Conservatives' coalition partners?"

We-ell ... neo-con cell, yes. Keeping the Post-Liberals out of the loop, maybe. But why would the Post-Liberal leadership have a problem with zionism or warmongering?
Clegg called the Iraq war illegal. His party, under a different leader, opposed that war. That leader paid the price for breaking ranks with his Privy Council colleagues.
One assumes that Clegg doesn't consider the Libyan adventure illegal, as he was part of the government responsible for that war. Personally I also assume that if Clegg had been party leader before the Iraq invasion and occupation he would not have paused for one minute to question its legality. He is a Conservative in Lib-Dem clothing.

The quote is from "Matthew Gould and the Plot to Attack Iran" by Craig Murray. This is an article that no British newspaper wants to publish.

Some thoughts of Professor Richard Falk on blogging and an approaching birthday (the (the internal quotations are from Yeats' poem "The Second Coming") -

"Overall, doing a blog reminds us of the art of amateurship (affirming the French root meaning of ‘lover of’), almost lost in our age caught between the mind of the specialist and the nihilistic effects of various cynical brands of postmodernism. The specialist impact on language exhibited by its impoverishment of the word ‘amateur’ to mean dabbler, or superficial idler who should never be taken seriously, and of the nihilist postmodern success in discrediting all forms of belief in a better tomorrow."

"Yes, ‘the center cannot hold,’ but that might, if true, be welcomed rather than lamented as it is the center that is mainly responsible for ‘the blood-dimmed tide’ that has been ‘loosed upon the world.’ Instead of (re)constructing centers, especially governmental centers, more responsive to our needs and desires, maybe we should think more about revitalizing peripheries or finding ways to dispense with or at least all centers of hard power for a while."

"My most abiding lifelong political commitment is to side emotionally and actively with the underdog in conflict situations without attention to ethnic, religious, and class differences."

"It is strange how we never manage to move much beyond the shadows cast by our parents ...

"I do wish that a year from now the lines from the Yeats poem will seem quaint and obsolescent so far as the surrounding world situation is concerned, and will be replaced in 2012 by a more life-affirming lyric that thanks time’s angel for spreading its joy to the world. Maybe by then we will think about people as much as we now dwell on the perils of the Euro! Of course, happily, life didn’t begin or end for me at 80, and so I can only become 81 in a state of expectant bemusement!"

Europe, as viewed from Hopetoun -

The Masters of the Universe are getting anxious about pseudo-democracy. Everything was hunky-dory until the subservient political class, once "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich", could no longer hold the line. The people are on the streets demanding that their elected "representatives" take control of the economy, start taxing the filthy rich and super-rich, and put a stop to the depredations of the the crooks and privateers.
The politicians are turning to the people they sold their souls to and asking, "What do we do now?"
The crooks, the financiers and bankers, seeing their frontmen wavering, some making sympathetic noises to the masses rising from their knees, turned to their trade union, the IMF.
Now the kleptocrapts' "beards" (the politicians) are being discarded. Time for the experts to take over, govrnments are resigning to be replaced by the so-called technocrats, who turn out to be bankers and financiers. These latter may co-opt some of the more docile representatives of the people to be thrown to the wolves when the sans-culottes bay for blood.
A bloodless coup, one might say, or the end of the puppet show.

Cameron knows what he must do to stay in Downing Street. He may have to increase police numbers instead of cutting them. There are streets to be cleared of riff-raff; banks and finance houses to be defended; scabs to be escorted through picket lines.

Addenda (14th November)
The new Greek Prime Minister - "A former ECB vice president (2002 - 2010), he earlier served as Governor of the Bank of Greece from 1994 - 2002. In 1980, he was Federal Reserve Bank of Boston senior economist. Afterwards, he became Bank of Greece's chief economist.
"Since 1998, he's also been a Rockefeller-controlled Trilateral Commission member."

The new Italian Prime Minister - "Earlier he served as European Commissioner for Internal Market Services, Customs and Taxation. He also chairs the Breugel think tank, is Trilateral Commission European chairman, and leading Bilderberger Group member close to Goldman Sachs."
(Stephen Lendeman)

R.I.P. Joe Frazier - maybe now they'll put up that statue.

"Not that most people would know, however. Philadelphia is the birthplace of American independence, yet its biggest tourist draw is probably the Rocky Balboa statue at the foot of the art museum steps. What makes the statue so depressing is that not only is it a tribute to a fictional boxer, but that Sylvester Stallone burgled Joseph William "Smokin' Joe" Frazier's life story for his Rocky movies. It was Frazier who worked in a Philly slaughterhouse, pounding the huge sides of beef in his down-time; it was Frazier who trained by running up those steps; and it was Frazier who went head-to-head with Muhammad Ali in the 1970s in a trilogy of fights now known as the pyramids of boxing."

(John Dower)

"City of London shame on you."

Film of IWW cleaners' protest on BBC website.

Cameron's al-qa'ida allies

"Remembrance Day is not long off and the period of poppy wearing will start in a few weeks. It is normal for the BBC to agree dates between which, for those wishing to do so, poppies may be worn on screen.
"This year, David Jordan (Director, Editorial Policy and Standards) suggests that poppies may be worn on screen from 06.00 am on Saturday 29th October to 23.59 on Sunday 13th November - Remembrance Sunday."
(from the BBC's Director of Editorial Policy and Standards)

So now we know, poppy wearing is "for those wishing to wear them". Now the BBC is going to have to designate a token non-poppy wearer, in order to garner some credibility for this line.

A more legible version here.

Reminiscent of Wu Ming's declaration -
"They say that they are new, they christen themselves by acronyms: G8, IMF, WB, WTO, NAFTA, FTAA… They cannot fool us, they are the same as those who have come before them: the écorcheurs that plundered our villages, the oligarchs that reconquered Florence, the court of Emperor Sigismund that beguiled Ian Hus, the diet of Tuebingen that obeyed Ulrich and refused to admit Poor Konrad, the princes that sent the lansquenets to Frankenhausen, the impious that roasted Dozsa, the landlords that tormented the Diggers, the autocrats that defeated Pugachev, the government whom Byron cursed, the old world that stopped our assaults and destroyed all stairways to heaven.
"Nowadays they have a new empire, they impose new servitudes on the whole globe, they still play the lords and masters of the land and the sea.
Once again, we the multitudes rise up against them."

"Historian" Sebag-Montefiore, at it again -
"Montefiore reminds us, Yasir Arafat 'shocked the Americans and the Israelis when he insisted that Jerusalem had never been the site of the Jewish Temple.' He also forbade Palestinian historians to mention the fact."

No he didn't -
"Who on earth believes that Arafat--as much as I detest him--has ever forbade Palestinian historians from writing on anything, and who but an idiot would believe that Palestinian historian would ever take orders from Yasser Arafat. Imagine if Anis Sayigh, for example, received an order from Arafat along that line. But this reveals the extent to which those Zionists are so ignorant of the nature of Palestinian society and of the political dynamics of the PLO. Arafat never ever had the power to forbid any Palestinian academic from saying or doing anything."
(Angry Arab)