The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Tel Aviv 2012–Berlin 1938: "Today, Israel moved one step closer to Nazi Germany circa 1938. In Berlin, Nazis walked the streets terrorizing Jews, smashing windows, b...

From Martin Deane's facebook wall -

Guy who wrote report for government saying bosses should be able to sack workers more easily: His name is Adrian Beecroft. Guess what BBC etc neglect to mention?
He's the chairman of Dawn Capital, the owners of payday loan firm Wonga—which charges interest at 4,214 percent.
A survey this week found that more than six out of ten people who get payday loans need the cash to pay for essentials like food and nappies. Sky-high fees then trap them into a “downward spiral of debt”, it added.

So an individual who gets rich by gouging the most vulnerable members of our society - and donates some of his ill-gotten gains to the Conservative Party - demands that the Conservative government increase the pool of potential victims of his usury.

"Lower than vermin" (Aneurin Bevin)

"The gombeen like a spider sits,
Surfeited; and, for all his wits,
As meagre as the tally-board
On which his usuries are scored."
(Joseph Campell)

"The Israel-Palestinian conflict has always been one in which whenever Israel breaks international law or UN resolutions, it uses the international media to turn their Palestinian victims into the aggressors and thus they become in the eyes of the political and media elites responsible for their own oppression. It is almost fascistic and reminds one of the way the Nazis blamed the French resistance for the reprisals the SS inflicted on villages like Oradour-sur-Glane. Myself I cannot see much difference between the latter and the way in 2008 Israel treated the Palestinians in Gaza after Hamas had fired home made rockets into Israel proper."
(Mick Hall, Organized Rage)

Abdelbasset al-Megrahi has taken his secret to the grave (bullshitting newsreporters).
Megrahi should never have been released (Lord Snooty Cameron).

Same old crap! Megrahi had no secret of interest to those who want to know the truth about the Lockerbie bomb. He always protested his innocence because he was innocent. He was released from prison on condition that he dropped his appeal against the sentence. The planted evidence, the paid off witness - the disgraceful fit-up would have been officially recognised and the criminals exposed if the appeal had been allowed to proceed. Luckily for the criminals and their dupes in the Scottish legal apparatus Megrahi had prostate cancer which would kill him eventually. So he was released on compassionate grounds with a prognosis of imminent death.
When he didn't die within three months he was accused of faking his illness. No accusatory finger was pointed at the doctors responsible for the statement.

Pity that Washington, along with its British "special relations", can't admit the truth. Evil Gadhafi's gone and Iran's in their sights. If only they could say "We lied about Libya, we knew all along that Iran was behind the bombing, but Gadhafi was the Enemy of the Month. Now we're going to take our revenge on the real culprits."
Dare they do it? They could say, "We got it wrong. We now know who really did it." Dare they? All those relatives of the American victims, who took Gadhafi's blood money would be outraged. They might have to pay it back.

They need a new reality show entitled, “America’s Dumbest Politicians”. Competition would be stiff but the State of Alabama would surely take first place. After they passed a draconian immigration law last year, undocumented farmworkers fled the state to avoid arrest & deportation. This of course, left thousands of agricultural jobs unfilled & tons of produce rotted in the fields. The half-wits at the statehouse then devised a plan to use unemployed workers instead & what do you know? They too fled the state leaving no forwarding address. Then they decided to use prison labor to work those fields. That didn’t even work with the guys in jail for life without parole. Those tomatoes rotted. Proving they learn nothing from experience, the boneheads yesterday added new provisions to the law making it the worst in the nation (& if you’re worse than Arizona & top Jan Brewer, you need to have yourself committed). One of the new provisions allows someone to be arrested for up to 48 hours until their immigration status is verified. That should cut down on tourism in the state. Soon enough the state will be a wasteland run by feral politicians eating each other. Immigration rights activists have been protesting this bill for a while & held one yesterday at the statehouse. In this photo, seven activists are being arrested & hauled away. They make us proud! (Photo by Mickey Welsh/Montgomery Advertiser)

Lifted verbatim from Mary Scully's posting here.

Several Palestinian prisoners still on hunger strike in Israeli jails

Lucky Rio Ferdinand, he'll escape all the recrimination that will follow the coming débacle.

Hunger-striking detainees sign deal with prison authority

I hear that Viktor Bout* is to be held in a supermaximum security unit. A maximum security unit would be the most secure unit possible. I take it that a supermaximum unit will be the most secure unit impossible.

*Viktor is -
a) A merchant of death
or
b) A victim of a corrupt and vindictive judicial system.
I have no idea which version is correct.

Lawyer: Halahla could die at any moment

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Prison doctors have told Thaer Halahla that he could die at any moment after 72 days on hunger strike, his lawyer Mona Neddaf said Thursday.
Neddaf visited Halahla, 33, in Ramle prison clinic on Thursday, the prisoner rights group Addameer said in a statement.
He is vomiting blood, bleeding from his gums and lips and has extremely low blood pressure, she said. His temperature is fluctuating at dangerous levels and the prison doctor said he also has an infection.
He has refused food since Feb. 29 and now weighs 55 kilograms.
...
Prison authorities have told the hunger strikers they must stand for a "daily count" or they will not be allowed to see their lawyers, she said.

BREAD INSTEAD OF GAMES!
In June and July 2012, Poland is going to host Euro2012, the European Football Championship. Workers' Initative is an initatior and a co-organizer of a protest on 10th of June in Poznan, during the first footbal match. The coalition of Polish feminist, anarchist and worker activists is mobilising for a protest on 10th of June in Poznan, West Poland, where the first football match is going to take place.
...
Today, we know that it will be the inhabitants of the cities who pay for the “sports spectacle”. The cities that have invested in the tournament are already on the verge of bankruptcy. The debt related to the Euro2012 accumulates up to billions of Euro. The estimated sums spent on the tournament is about 25 billion Euro. The money spent on the stadium in Poznan – 190 million Euro – could, for instance, cover the costs of about 6,000 missing spots in public day nurseries.
The preparations for the Euro2012 demand extraordinary expenditures, which will not be reimbursed by foreign tourists or investors. Economists from major Polish economic schools have calculated that the organization of the Euro2012 will contribute 7 billion Euro to Poland’s GNP until 2020. That is only one third of the overall costs of the whole project – what about the other billions?
...
The institution that will earn the most on Euro 2012 is UEFA that thanks to a contract signed with the Polish government will not have to pay any taxes, including VAT and CIT, as well as local taxes and customs!

Minimalist drawing of a hedgehog by a junior member of the family. I think it has merit.

The seal of the burgh of Culross in Fife, Scotland. Depicted is the ancient Abbey of Culross, whose legendary founder, St. Serf, or Servanus, is seen in the foreground.
The photograph is of the Old Kirk of Tulliallan, where, from about 1730 when they settled in the parish, until 1825 when a new church replaced it, my forebears (male line) were baptised and wed. The kirkyard will hold their remains, but not their names. Poor then, poor now.
The neighbouring parish of Culross is where my kin were settled before the move to the burgh of Kincardine in Tulliallan parish. Since then we've always been town-dwellers, that's over a quarter of a millenium. "Town air makes free" was the German proverb.

(Photograph by Ms. Marion M. of the Kincardine Local History Society)

"Can anyone doubt that if there were more than 1300 hunger strikers in any country in the world other than Palestine, the media in the West would be obsessed with the story?"
(Richard Falk)

A snippet from the obituary of Diana Parikian, antiquarian bookseller.

In all she issued 82 catalogues in 50 years. She knew she had arrived when a distinguished old-timer in the trade put his arms around her shoulder to say
"Diana, your latest catalogue, I've read it from beginning to end and there isn't a single author that I recognise."

(Nicholas Poole-Wilson in the Independent)

A story I like to tell.
Being chronically ill I have to have a blood test every few months to see if anything has changed. A few months ago I went for the test, the nurse looks at my details on the computer and says, "Seventy-three, you look really well for your age."
Now I look like something that crept out of the crypt; greyish coloured skin, jet-black rings under the bloodshot eyes, a shambling wreck of a body. I couldn't really let her remark go unquestioned. "Do you really think so?" I asked. "I think I look pretty rough."
"Well, look at it this way", she said, "At your age most people are dead."
My own attitude is similar, apart from the 'living = well' equation. I may look and feel dog rough, but I'm alive.
Since then I've read that life expectancy for people living in my home town is 72 years, so I am a bit past the mean. Does that place me among the elect? Have I outlived most of my concitoyens of the same age? I know that I'm missing several contemporaries, friends, comrades, even a sister born seven years after me.
"La vida es una tómbola" (Manu Chao)

All doom and gloom at the moment, I fear.

HELP PUT BRIAN HAW ON A PLINTH IN PARLIAMENT SQUARE

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/4898

It won't happen, we know, but anything that gets up the noses of the cheerleaders of illegal wars can't be bad.