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?

"All civilian deaths are to be condemned, but since Israel is their principal practitioner, Euro-American cant serves only to expose those who utter it. Overwhelmingly, the boot of murder is on the other foot, ruthlessly stamped into Palestine by a modern army equipped with jets, tanks and missiles in the longest-armed oppression of modern history." (Tariq Ali)

A good article by Comrade Tariq, though he soft-pedals a little too much on Hamas for my taste. I suppose anybody would look good when compared to the mass-murderers of Mount Zion.

I will also copy the words of Dr. Schlomo Schmeltzmann quoted by one commentator -
"In my childhood I have suffered fear, hunger and humiliation when I passed through the Warsaw Ghetto, through the labor camps, to Buchenwald. Today, as a citizen of Israel, I cannot accept the systematic destruction of cities, towns and refugee camps. I cannot accept the technocratic cruelty if the bombing...I hear familiar sounds today...I hear "dirty Arabs' and I remember 'dirty Jews'. I hear about 'closed areas' and I remember ghettos and camps. I hear 'two legged beasts' and I remember 'Untermenschen' ('subhumans')...Too many things in Israel remind me of too many things..."

"Voilà, voilà, ça recommence" ... (Rachid Taha)

"Obama has made no public comment on the strikes, which Israel launched on Saturday. Aides have repeatedly said he is monitoring the situation and continues to receive intelligence briefings but that there is only one U.S. president at a time."

While the above is true Obama has sent one of his errand boys, one Axelrod, to remind the media of what he said before the campaign for the presidency. This was basically - go ahead Israel, kill more Palestinians.

Terrorists start young in Gaza; the youngest of these little girls was four years old. I'm sure the hero who ended their short lives will receive a medal.

"I wish to bathe in the blood of Palestinian babies." (Condoleezzaa Riice)
Did she say that, or have I got the quote slightly wrong?

"Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas."
(Haaretz, via Angry Arab)

Eighteen months ago a wise man wrote -
"Now the Palestinian people have a government vilified by western governments and media. Hamas are 'terrorists', so anything that happens to the Palestinians now is of their own doing. Let slip the dogs of war. The world's third most powerful military state feels threatened by its sickly Islamic neighbour. The Hamas fighters will be easily defeated, unlike the better armed Lebanese Hizbullahi fighters. Then the massacres can begin, and we in the West can stand by and watch with a clear conscience."
No, wait a minute, it wasn't a wise man, it was me. The US/Israeli game plan was that obvious. My conclusion is - the Palestinian people have been sentenced to death by Washington. They are to be snuffed out. "La question arménienne n'existe plus", said the Turk. A similar fate awaits the Palestinians; first Gaza, then the West Bank, then the Israeli Arabs. It may take some time, but it's achievable. Who will prevent it? The UN? The EU? The Arab League?
There will be hand-wringing, but the FINAL SOLUTION is in the interest of all the world powers.

EVIL, EVIL, EVIL -
What is to be done to stop these savages? As long as the most powerful state in the world continues to bankroll the genocide, it will continue unabated.
Where, I wonder, is Peace Envoy Blair today? Let me guess, halfway up some billionaire's arse.

Sad to hear of the death of Harold Pinter, our most important playwright. When I first saw Donald Pleasance in "The Caretaker", I heard people I'd been listening to for years - dossers, drifters, misfits. Pinter got it down, nailed it. I thought "This bloke's met the same people I've met". Had anyone done it before? I don't know, but Pinter's was the first that I heard doing it, That made him brilliant in my eyes, and ears.
I listened to the BBC report on his death last night. After talking about his work the reporter got on to his politics, the phrase "champagne socialism" was used. His anti-war, pro-human rights stance was treated as some sort of mental aberration that detracted from his work and somehow diminished his stature. It causes one to wonder if BBC reporters and commentators are required by the conditions of their contracts to belittle anyone whose political position is too far to the left (which, for the BBC, need not be far).
If someone like Pinter can go from relative poverty to achieve fame and fortune through a talent that brings pleasure, and perhaps, enlightenment to others, and then use an influential voice deliver a progressive message, that is no bad thing. Break out the champagne, comrades. But continue to speak for the the disadvantaged, the disenfranchised, the imprisoned, the tortured; and bollocks to the begrudgers the BBC.

The general thrust these days is: "Oh come on, it's all in the past, nobody's interested any more, it didn't work, that's all, everyone knows what the Americans are like, but stop being naive, this is the world, there's nothing to be done about it and anyway, fuck it, who cares?" Sure, as they say, sure. But let me put it this way – the dead are still looking at us, steadily, waiting for us to acknowledge our part in their murder.

(Harold Pinter)

Goodbye too to Eartha Kitt, who told Lyndon Johnson what she thought of his South-East Asian war, and found herself out of work in her native land for four years. What did Orson Welles call her, the sexiest woman alive? Something like that.

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."

"However, a briefing paper obtained by the Mail on Sunday said the government was looking at plans to abolish some of the £500m in interest free loans from the social fund handed out to more than 1 million benefit claimants each year.
"The document suggested that, in future, some of the loans would be made through credit unions, which charge interest rates of up to 26.8%."

"Why don’t 90 percent of the abuses of power we look at on this site get covered by the national media?" Asks a reader of the linked (US) report. Simple, the mainstream media have power and they abuse it. "Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot", as some hypocrite who could have curbed that power once said.

DAVY GRAHAM

"At the age of 15, Davy Graham was filmed playing an incredibly complex guitar arrangement of Cry Me a River," says McTell, looking at his copy of Graham's debut album. "All of us guitarists - Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Jimmy Page, myself - owe it all to this wonderful musician. For my 19th birthday, a friend of mine bought me a copy of Anji and I was the first person on my block to learn to play it. That was my big achievement. But Davy never runs out of ideas, and there has not been anyone who has come close. He was on the same level as Miles Davis and all of the jazz guys, and the rest of us couldn't really pretend to understand what he was doing."

I was looking for an article on Davy to link to when I came across these words of Ralph McTell's. I didn't find the article, so I'll just copy out this story from a clipping. The article is by Will Hodgkinson who called Davy "gracious but eccentric".

"A trip to a nearby pub ended in disaster, when hearing Roll With It by Oasis on the pub stereo induced a panic attack in Graham. We returned to his flat, and for the rest of the evening he stood in the middle of his bedroom and played the mandolin with his eyes closed, smiling in beatific concentration."

Quite understandable really.

I've just learned of the death, yesterday, of the great Davy Graham. One of the giants of British music, on whose shoulders others stood in order to see further. I've seen and heard him on TV, in films and on the net; I have most of his recorded output, but I never saw him live. Now I never will. This is sad news for me, and, I'm sure, for many others.
The Guardian (per Ben Myers) has collected the video clips which are on the internet, and published them in one place. I've linked to them.

Muntadhar az-Zaydi - good idea, poor execution. Or was "the dog" too nimble for him? As someone has pointed out, Bush got plenty of practice in dodging the draft.
I hope the poor fellow gets out alive, but I fear the worst. Bush's request for clemency is one that the Iraqi puppets will feel able to ignore.
He is a journalist, let's hope his colleagues show some solidarity.

There's one born every minute, goes the saying - and any one of them would qualify to run a British bank.
"Cupidity plus stupidity", whose definition was that?

Should have joined the Euro.

Re yesterday's comment that the assassins of Jean Charles de Menezes would soon be promoted - it turns out that the officer who gave the order to kill has already been promoted.
Why is it that a police officer who kills is guaranteed promotion?

The two Doncaster lawyers have been struck off by the Law Society for ripping off sick miners. Now they're out of work and will have to survive on the £150 million they stole from their clients. Sorry, did I say stole? My mistake, they didn't steal anything, it seems. So they won't be paying anything back.
They took advantage of their position to exploit the working class - that's capitalism, folks, nothing wrong with that.
All this reminds me of the VENDSIDE scam; a firm set up by officers of the scab union UDM to cheat sick miners out of their compensation money. Whatever happened to those thieving, belly-crawling parasites? Nothing, I suppose. After all they did sterling work in their day for the boss class and its agent, the Thatcher government.
Interestingly Beresfords and Vendside/UDM were in cahoots at one time.

Now it can be told. The coroner at the Menezes inquest tried to clear the court of the public and the press while he addressed the jury. The public refused to leave (God bless 'em!). The coroner placed a gagging order on the media, preventing them from reporting such unusual occurrences as the defence team's boycott of his summation.
All his machinations were in vain, the jury returned a verdict he didn't want, but not, unfortunately the one that the one they would have returned had he not forbidden it.
The Home Secretary has issued a statement sympathising with the police in their inability to do the job properly.
I predict that the killers will be soon be promoted.

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."

That was then, this is now -
"James Purnell was accused of introducing a version of the American 'workfare' today after he published plans to ensure that most benefit claimants are preparing for employment.
"The work and pensions secretary said that under the proposals in his white paper on welfare reform 'virtually everyone' claiming benefits would have to do something in return for their money."
...
"Chris Grayling, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said that, while the Tories were supportive of the plans, they were almost identical to their own ideas, published in January."

"The minister also criticised the treatment of some customers forced to pay higher charges because they use pre-payment meters or who can only be served by a single supplier, warning that the government would take action to stamp out unfair charging."

Oh yes, It's going to happen one day.

I bought some stamps, second class, yesterday. What did I get? A special Christmas print depicting transvestites, ugly men dragged up as ugly women. What is it about men dressed as women that people find comical? And what is it about this exercise in bad taste that the Post Office deems aesthetically pleasing?
I'm at a loss.

March 19, 2008
I will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. We can responsibly remove 1 to 2 combat brigades each month. If we start with the number of brigades we have in Iraq today, we can remove all of them [in] 16 months. After this redeployment, we will leave enough troops in Iraq to guard our embassy and diplomats, and a counter-terrorism force to strike al Qaeda if it forms a base that the Iraqis cannot destroy.


December 7, 2008 (Meet the Press)
We are going to maintain a large enough force in the region to assure that our civilian troops--or our, our, our civilian personnel and our, our embassies are protected, to make sure that we can ferret out any remaining terrorist activity in the region, in cooperation with the Iraqi government, that we are providing training and logistical support, maintaining the integrity of Iraq as necessary. And, you know, I--one of the things that I'll be doing is evaluating what kind of number's required to meet those very limited goals.

THE KISS OF DEATH
Henry Kissinger, mass murderer, sponsor of terrorists, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has given his seal of approval to Obama's security appointments.
I suppose "change" could have meant bombing different countries.

A school in Chesterfield is closing down its library and sacking the librarian. The school is to become a "virtual learning environment". Is that virtual as opposed to real? I expect we'll soon hear a statement from the department that used to be "of education" that students, who used to be pupils, are to be reclassified as customers. It's all about choice, you see.
It seems that books are no longer "cool", to use a middle class expression. Schools all over the country are closing down their libraries and joining the Microsoft dependant multitudes. Soon their student-customers will be able to work towards qualifications in text messaging,video gaming, and operating a Mcd.n.lds till.

De Menezes coroner rules out unlawful killing verdict (today's Guardian)

Who could have predicted that? Not me, my money was on him recommending an open verdict, but he's gone further and said he wants "lawful killing". Cheeky bleeder!

One leader of the Bajrang Dal (a paramilitary Hindu right-wing group) described his own role with pride: "There was this pregnant woman, I slit her open. ...They shouldn't even be allowed to breed. I say that even today. Whoever they are, women, children, whoever, nothing to be done with them but cut them down. Thrash them, slash them, burn the bastards. ... The idea is, don't keep them alive at all; after that, everything is ours." ... All of this is terrorism, but most of it doesn't reach the world's front pages. When it does make it into newspapers outside India, the word "terrorism" is rarely used. The result is a perception, in India and abroad, that Muslims are the bad guys in every incident of terrorist violence.

(via Yasmin and Molly's blog)
More than 2000 Muslims were massacred in Gujarat in 2002 - poor people, native people, and no Europeans. Hovels were ransacked and destroyed, hotels, airports and railway stations were untouched. So not such a big story then?
When I first heard reports of the Battle of Mumbai I thought, "This is Muslim payback for 2002", but not so according to the Indian authorities. So what is the truth? We're not going to get that from the Indian authorities, or the Pakistani government, or for that matter from the British or US intelligence apparatus.
Is there a "Deccan Mujahidin"? Were the terrorists trained and equipped in Pakistan? Could the attentat have been executed without local support and intelligence? The Indians appear to be peddling that line. Could just ten gunmen have caused such mayhem and held out against armed police and military for so long?
The British media were selling a line that this outrage was directed at westerners, and that people holding British and US passports were being singled out. The casualty figures don't support this claim - 188 dead, of whom 28 were foreigners, one being British. It appears from these figures that no particular group was targeted; that this was the kind of atrocity favoured by fascists (stategy of tension) and religious terrorists. That is, there was no goal beyond maximum human casualties and maximum destruction of property; in other words terrorism in its purest form.

Addendum: I forgot to mention that governments sometimes use this form of terrorism in order to make their populations less resistant to their arrogation of excessive powers, and suppression of civil rights. An external agent is always blamed.
I also forgot to acknowledge the linked article by Professor Martha Nussbaum.
There is some unconfirmed information on the terrorists on wikipedia under the title "Deccan Mujahidin.

'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".

Further to yesterday's remarks about the misrepresentation of our pronunciation. After writing it I did a search and hit upon the linked article. Hardly a word in it represents correctly the way we speak. Still if it gives visitors a laugh at our expense then it's all worthwhile I suppose.
The phrase that really got my goat is the one including the spelling "curld" for cold. Anyone with the slightest acquaintance with Hull should know that we pronounce that word "cowld". Gowld for gold, sowld for sold, owld for old, towld for told, there's no mistaking that pronunciation for anyone that listens. I left a comment to that effect on the page. I'll wait to see if it appears there.

" ...when his hire was announced I sent an email of protest to her, the only one I have sent in my entire career. I knew this would end in tears because it could only end in tears."

Paul Gambaccini

"If the BBC still has the courage to take risks it should do so on issues of significance - through journalism, not comedy. With the news industry in crisis, the BBC has a superb opportunity to advance the cause of investigative reporting and the classic fourth estate ideal of holding power to account. The sadness of Mark Thompson's term as DG to date is that it has attempted too little of this. His post-Hutton BBC seems terrified of serious, significant risk. That is among the reasons that it employs fools to boast about who they have slept with in preference to tough, "edgy" journalists. Andrew Gilligan does not insult harmless grandfathers. His targets deserve the attention he gives them."

Tim Luckhurst

"Summatup wi' yer peas, pal? Stop mernin'. Tha'll get nowt else from us tonight"
That's the way we're supposed to talk in Hull, according to somebody who writes for the Guardian, and thinks Hull is a suburb of Rotherham.
First sentence passes muster, but "tha"? The only people in Hull who say "tha" are John Godber and the South Yorkshire crew he's brought in to play Hull people at his Hull Truck Theatre. I'm assuming that that's the source of this hack's version of the Hull dialect and accent. Oh yes, and that abortion called "Learn Yourself 'Ull" or something similar, which was slapped together by some piss-taking southerner who came up here on the make. He's responsible for the "mernin'" myth. In Hull moaning and morning have the same pronunciation, and it's mornin' not mernin'. We don't call the Pope the Perp, we call him the Pawp, and we make fawn calls, not fern curls, you tin-eared twat!
Too late now; look up the Hull accent on the internet and you'll find all that fern curl nonsense. The wikipedia article on Hull repeats the falsehood, though qualifying it with "in and around parts of Hull", otherwise it's description is acceptable. What really annoys me is I see this crap repeated by Hull people who would rather believe what's written by some middle-class southerner than the evidence of their own ears. Is this the Hull version of the cultural cringe?

PEOPLE POWER! While you're at it, Thomson, why not give the Augean Stables a complete going over? Get rid of all the filth.

Correction (31st October): Thompson, not Thomson.

I nominate Seán Hughes to replace J.Ross on his radio and TV shows. After all he's already stood in for him elsewhere without any problems.

Bête Noire time -
This morning the BBC reported the US army's incursion into Syria and subsequent killing spree. Correction: the newsreader stated that the the Syrians were claiming that the raid had occurred and the Yanks weren't commenting. For the BBC this means it might not have happened.
This was followed up by a reporter in Syria giving further details of the raid that may not have happened. If the Yanks issue a denial, I expect the reporter to come back on air to say it was all a dream. He ended his report with a suggestion that the Syrians had been asking for it.

Meanwhile we are presented with the edifying spectacle of the BBC defending the perverts Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand.

"In October 2008, Ross and Russell Brand made a series of allegedly 'obscene' phone calls to 78 year old actor Andrew Sachs as part of Brand's pre-recorded BBC Radio 2 show. During the first phone call, Ross shouted out "He fucked your granddaughter", referring to Brand's previous on-air claim that he had sexual intercourse with Sachs' granddaughter Georgina, a member of the group 'The Satanic Sluts'. Mr Sachs and his daughter Kate were said to be left deeply upset by the incident"

We may expect the broadcasting of obscene telephone calls to become a regular feature of the BBC Radio entertainment output.

On the subject of obscenities, the fat saviour of Radio1 -

" ... I was suddenly confronted by a terrifyingly plausible vision of the future in which Chris Moyles is suddenly only the second most gormless and insufferable prick on Radio1."

(Charlie Brooker, "Dawn of the Dumb")

STS Bulletin no.13
Oligarch, a successful Russian thief. A successful British thief is an entrepreneur. Richard Branson is not an oligarch because he is not Russian.
The oligarchs of Russia were originally referred to in their homeland as the kleptocracy, another Greek word and a favourite of mine. No British media outlet would use this word (British libel law) so oligarch is the acceptable label.
"Behind every great fortune there lies a crime." (Honoré de Balzac, "Il y a un crime caché à l’origine de chaque grande fortune.")

No punches pulled; no holds barred; no lie unspoken; no bigot silenced. US politics, just a sack of shite.

How strange! Yesterday I opened my paper and my prayers were answered. The first thing I saw was a photograph of a couple identified as Tom Cruise and his wife Katie Holmes. How is it that I never heard Mr. Cruise's name mentioned along with the lady's?
So no subliminal message, apart from, "These people are important to you. You must take an interest in them". I suppose it's human being as brand.

Also, in the same edition, an opening salvo against the greenwash industry. A weekly column is promised exposing all the lies, and all the dodges. Then I open the paper this morning and am greeted by a full page advert by Captain Ahab (*$$), scourge of the third world. In it the captain defines "sustainable" as = "good". This may be a corrective to the previous day's article which declared "sustainable" to be one of those meaningless words favoured by the greenwashers. The Captain also boasted of his cooperation with those saviours of the planet, Conservation International.
Sat sapienti.

Deripaska, a name I'd heard and that's about all. Russian, filthy rich, sniffing around Arsenal, no doubt bent as a poker.
Well it seems we're going to hear a lot more about this gent for a while, so I looked him up on wikipedia, and linked to his entry.

On the subject of names that are just that, something puzzles me. There is always a name kicking around that seems to have no person attached to it, at least as far as I'm able to discern. The current non-person is Katie Holmes. Who or what is Katie Holmes? Could be a film or a book for all I know. Could be a real person or fictional. All I know is, not a day passes but that I hear the name, but never hear anything else. It's like that Derren Brown act, where he plants words in people's minds, to be activated later as behavioural prompts. Maybe one day I'll be walking round a store, see some product emblazoned with the words "Katie Holmes", and I'll feel an urge to buy it.
Of couse I could just look the name up on the net, as I did with Mister Deripaska, but I'm playing along, anticipating the outcome.
A previous name that kept occuring and recurring was Hannah Montana. I now know that this is a fictional character used by Disney to gouge money out of kids, but for a long time I kept hearing this name without a clue as to its meaning. I did realise, however, that I needn't concern myself as I wasn't part of the target audience.
Soon the mission of Katie Holmes will be revealed to me, by which time the hucksters will be peddling another name-in-isolation.
I suppose I should accept that, if I have to be told who or what these names represent, I'm just not in the swim, in the loop, up to snuff, or ... (whatever the correct term is).

Further to the jolly rogering of our citizens by NHS Hull:
The local paper has published two interviews on this topic, both in favour. One interviewee was the bloke lined up to skipper the yacht, the other was some bloke from another quango. It seems that the SS Profligacy scheme is not going to get any heat from the local press, though its readers are singing a different tune.
I liked the suggestion by one reader identified as "Julia, East Yorkshire", as did others, so I take the liberty of posting it here. I hope that I'm not breaking any rules.

Why on earth are they thinking of buying a yacht, I have teenagers and even they dont think its a good idea, get real, this is not going to get kids working after they have done some sailing. If the money cannot go into our hospitals where it is desperately needed then get the kids to do some real work and start some allotments from scratch, this will teach them team work, in all weathers, and everything they grow can be sold and money put back into nhs or use the food to give the local hospitals and underprivileged families fresh vegetables instead of processed ready meals this will give the kids a better sense of satisfaction and will teach them the values of real food which will in years to come save the nhs a fortune.

Was it yesterday or was it the day before? I'm watching the telly, there's this woman talking, and I hear her say "My legs literally turned to jelly". Literally, Missus? Jelly, Missus? Go on!

Listening to the news programme on Radio 3 this morning I heard Professor Eric Hobsbawm discussing the current economic situation. HOBSBAWM? What's the matter with the Adam Smith Institute? Has their hidden hand bullshit become so unfashionable? The BBC giving aid, succour and appearance fees to Marxists, what will their masters at MI5 have to say about this?

Next: the BBC hires John Pilger to to film a series of documentaries.
"That'll be the day" (C.H.Holly).

I still think the old white man will win, whatever the polls say.
Apparently the key state of Colorado has already rigged the ballot in favour of the Republican.

Brown and Darling said they'd do anything necessary to support the finance sector.
Brown says he'll do anything he can to help the unemployed.
Spot the difference.

This may be hard to believe. Something called NHS Hull, which calls itself a "primary care trust", is buying a yacht for £400,000. This is for the benefit of young people's health, nothing else.
When I see the word "trust" in the name of any organisation my suspicions are aroused. I get the impression that once any bunch of chancers identify themselves as a trust they become answerable to nobody. Am I wrong? This removal of the National Health Service from any sort of meaningful oversight was step one in the Thatcherite privatisation plan. Bring on the quangocrats, dodgy businessmen, Tory placemen and their wives, concubines and catamites. Throw in a few consultants sick of serving the great unwashed, and the whole idea of a public service is undermined.
Suddenly the funding begins to disappear down the proverbial black holes. Everything becomes more expensive when competition is introduced - why is that? Still there's always enough for the managers to award themselves a juicy pay rise. Then there are the other perks. How about a yacht, gang? Of course we'll have to find some tenuous link to primary care. I know our primary care is reserved for ourselves, but we can't be too blatant, can we? We let the young offenders play with it for part of the year till the furore dies down, then it's OURS.

At the moment our local politicos are accusing each other of rubber stamping this insult to the people of Hull. We await further revelations, but expect none from the local media. Off to the lodge with you all!

There is a firm of coffee vendors that is advertising its product on the telly at the moment by telling how kind it is to the coffee growing communities. I never believe this sort of propaganda. I'm assuming the fair trade movement is making inroads into its profits.
Anyway this particular outfit is boasting of its collaboration with the Rain Forest Alliance, lovely name. So off to the world wide web to learn about the Jolly Green alliance; OH, OH, OH! it's a greenwash scam. It's one of those PR outfits paid to shout louder than the objectors and drown out their protests. There's another bunch called Conservation Internamtional that whores for some of the most evil organisations on the planet; Monsanto, McDo...., Exxon Mobil. It must be cheaper to throw money at these professional liars and tricksters than to ease up on the destruction of the planet.
I don't believe the stuff that these thimble-riggers spew out, but I have to admit as well to a degree of scepticism about the whole fair trade business. Just as protest movements are always riddled with police spies and provocateurs, so I expect any organisation that threatens unbridled profit-making to be subject to subversion and manipulation.
What little faith I had in the fair trade movement was quickly dissipated when I picked up a leaflet listing fair trade outlets in my area. On that list was one multinational corporation that cheats and mistreats its employees, cheats its suppliers and lies to its customers. In addition I'm told its product is crap. It was, at the time (maybe still is), behind the eviction of indigenous people from a fertile coffee producing area in Mexico. And, surprise, surprise! It funds Conservation International. I hate to advertise - let's just say it's a coffee peddling outfit called Ahab's, or something like that.

In dramatic contrast, in the neoliberal phase after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, the US treasury now regards free capital mobility as a "fundamental right", unlike such alleged "rights" as those guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: health, education, decent employment, security and other rights that the Reagan and Bush administrations have dismissed as "letters to Santa Claus", "preposterous", mere "myths".
...
"Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business," concluded America's leading 20th century social philosopher John Dewey, and will remain so as long as power resides in "business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda".

Professor Noam Chomsky (via Angry Arab)

'The Little Mommy Cuddle ‘n Coo dolls feature realistic baby sounds including cooing, giggling, and baby babble with no real sentence structure. The only scripted word the doll says is “mama.” There is a sound that may resemble something close to the word “night, right, or light.”'

Claim Fisher-Price, but American Christians (you know the type)know better. That doll says "Satan is king", and "Islam is the light".

Wal-Mart is removing the dolls from its outlets, possibly to forestall an affray with the talking Jesus dolls.

I've heard a rumour that sporting folk who place a losing bet at the bookies can now demand that the government pays them out as if they'd won. I'm sure that can't be true - can it?

A neat summation I read in Gary Trudeau's "Doonesbury" strip today,
" ... privatizes profit but socializes risk".
Maybe it's not original, maybe it's common currency in certain US circles, but it's new to me.

"On run-of-the-mill stories too, the demand from the news desk was the same: could I get an official source to confirm the story? It happened even when I had seen something with my own eyes. And an official source meant an Israeli source. It felt almost as if the Israeli government and army had to give their seal of approval before a story could be published"

Jonathan Cook

“Editors hardly ever need to bare their teeth against an established journalist because few make it to senior positions unless they have already learnt how to toe the line.”

There's more on Organised Rage.

Return of the Eminence Grise
... or should it be Eminence Verte Avocado? Welcome back Don Niccolo Machiavelli. Now Gordon has allowed you within striking distance he'll probably hand you the knife to insert between his shoulder blades. Or do you intend to leave that foul deed to the Milliband Tendency who are taking over the cabinet piecemeal?
Will you be reciting your mantra as confidently as ever, "Deregulate, Deregulate!" Maybe that's why you're leaving the EU job, now they've seen the end result of your blueprint for chaos. But Gordon wants you, I wonder why. Maybe he's thinking of old Don Vito's advice to keep one's friends close, but one's enemies closer.
I wonder, weren't the super-rich of the mainland Europe as free with their largesse as your rich and powerful patrons back home? Surely Bela Lusconi could have found some dirty work for you at Strasbourg, in return for the freedom of his Sardinian condominium? Or maybe he saw someone as devious and corrupt as himself, that is, someone against whom a ten foot bargepole wasn't long enough to prevent contamination.
And Gordon let you back in.

... and Flogger Kelly - out of the cabinet for the sake of her family, and on notice to quit Parliament altogether. I wonder how long she'll be doing the domestic thing. How long before she puts her inside knowledge to good use in the job market. Then it'll be, "Stuff the family, I'm gonna get rich!"

Joe Kinnear addresses the jackals of the press (not for the faint-hearted)

I'm looking at this bloke and wondering who he reminds me of - oh aye, Donald Fagen.
But I'm also listening to what he's saying, and that reminds me of Chuck D. - "Don't Believe the Hype".

A quote from an article by Senator John McCain in a magazine for actuaries, just published -
"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation ..."

Food for thought there.

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

(via Angry Arab)

Meanwhile back home the three main parties are banding together to give their combined, and unconditional, support to the incompetents and the fraudsters responsible for the meltdown. No-one demurs, no privy councillor sworn to maintain the status quo at all costs can demur. We are now without a parliamentary opposition at this time of "crisis" (their description, not mine). Bush and Paulson must envy our sellout politicans, and their unelected shadow government.

"I think the media has assumed up to now that this inchoate left-right revolt would have a walk-on part in the near inevitable passage of the TARP. Wrongly as it turns out. This is now a river that has burst the banks of official politics."
Paul Mason

I know that me and my kind are going to pay for all this eventually, but seeing share prices tumble, and seeing houses stolen from those who need public housing losing their value, SCHADENFREUDE.

Arsenal 1, Hull City 2
Arsene Wenger, Nicolas Sarkozy, Nick Hornby, Kevin Costner, Usama Bin Ladin, Alisher Usmanov - your boys took a hell of a beating!

http://notinhisname.blogdrive.com/

"The Dems have sunk so low that they would rescue a proposal by a President with a 19% approval rating which is being opposed by House Republicans. Really pathetic."
(Yasmin, at http://angryarabscommentsection.blogspot.com/ )

Speaking to reporters on the eve of his performance, McCartney said: "The world knows about the conflicts that have been in that region and I like to think that if I go to a place it becomes evident that my message is a peaceful one and I hope that the idea will spread." He added: "People ask this question through the years: 'Do you think music can change things?' I think it can. I think it's good for people's souls. I think without music it would be a seriously bad world. I'm bringing a message of peace, and I think that's what the region needs."

What a creep, and so full of himself - as pompous and as useless as Nobo.

"Israel asked US for green light to bomb nuclear sites in Iran"

(Headline from the same edition)

Half the population has seen very little real growth in recent years, and the bottom third has suffered an absolute fall in income for five years. People feel it, yet no one says it. As Labour blathered on about high GDP growth, whose growth was that? Official figures show it was among the top 20%, and mostly the top 5%.

...

Centrica's chief executive has just had a £1m pay increase, up to £4.8m, despite - or because of - this winter's 35% gas bill rise.

(Polly Toynbee, no wonder the rich vilify her)

Lance Armstrong getting back in the saddle (yawn), the biggest cycling bore since Miguel Indurain, a return to robotic riding.
Now if I were a genuine cynic, instead of an idealist in fear of drowning in a sea of hypocrisy, I might be thinking along these lines -
L. A., well advised, always managed to stay a step or two ahead of the dope testing technology. When it began to catch up, time to retire. New advances in test beating techniques, back into competition. No, no, perish the thought!
I wonder what Dr. Ferrari's doing these days.

Ruth "Flogger" Kelly to resign from government to spend more time with her family. Let's see - she married in 1996 and has four children. It took some time to realise that her family needed her. Didn't I hear that she was due for the push?
Now, I wonder, who will be the Pope's representative in Her Majesty's Government?

I forgot to comment at the time on the passing of former Detective Sergeant Challenor of the Met. who slipped off the hook three weeks ago. The Challenor case was a big deal back in the sixties; that and the Sheffield Rhino Whips case - heady days!
Challenor had a proud career in the CID, blithely fitting up anyone he didn't like. He was, for some reason, particularly vindictive towards people with disabilities and people of a Mediterranean appearance. Possibly this was connected to his wartime experience in Italy as a POW.
Challenor slipped up when, at a political demonstration, he nicked one Donald Rooum, a peace activist, along with some others. He charged them with possession of offensive weapons, to wit, carrying bricks about their persons. Rooum refused to roll over, did not cooperate, i.e., avoided all contact with the magically manifested brick, and so was able eventually to prove his innocence. In the course of doing so he exposed Challenor as a bent copper, more than that, a nutter out of control.
None of which fazed the judge, who found Rooum not guilty but refused his application for damages. He also found some other poor joker guilty on the same discredited evidence from the same discredited copper. The Met. of course was not interested in delving into Challenor's murky past; too much perversion of the course of justice, too many compromised coppers.
But the genie was out of the bottle and some sort of action had to be taken. Challenor was declared to be a bad boy, but a nut case (true), therefore unfit to stand trial for his many crimes. He was committed to a mental institution, and after a few weeks, quietly released, later to obtain a job in the legal system (no kidding!). We may assume that he received a full pension for his contribution to the maintenance of law and order. After all he was never found guilty of any offence.

Addendum: after writing the above I took a look at wikipedia to see if there was anything on the Challenor case there. I found the linked article. Reading it I learn that I was too dismissive of the Metropolitan Force's response to the affair. Though Challenor got away with his crimes three other tecs were jailed.
I also learn that "doing a Challenor" became police parlance for retiring on grounds of illness to avoid investigation. If memory serves there was a lot of that about at the time of Operation Countryman and during the Stephen Lawrence investigation.
Wikipedia also has an article on Donald Rooum.