"It's official - British kids are the worst in Europe. So what's the government going to do about it?" That from the evening news on ITN, Nick somebody or other (why are so many male newsreaders called Nick?).
I have a pimple on my arse. What's the government going to do about it? Why hasn't Gordon Brown stopped the rain? What's the government going to do about all the idiots filling our TV screens? Can't they organise a cull?

The Department of Trade and Industry has been given a New Labour title - "The Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform". For the last read "Deregulation"; for the whole read "Calling all foxes, the chicken coop is open".

How fortunate we are in the UK to have public servants who are incorruptible. Otherwise it could be a matter of concern that the head of the Energy Unit at the Department of Trade and Industry was living it up at Wimbledon courtesy of Chevron Oil. Jim and his crew are very popular with the oil-slickers, according to Friday's Guardian.

"From May 4 2006 to April 26 2007, EDU staff received a total of 170 gifts and invitations from companies including Shell, Total, Exxon Mobil, Amerada Hess and Chevron. The hospitality has to be recorded in an EDU register, which has now been disclosed to freedom of information campaigners. It shows that Mr Campbell, the head of the energy unit, recorded receiving a benefit of some kind more than once a month."



Today I heard a newsreader on BBC News24 pronounce the word "harass" correctly. I imagine his colleagues laughed at his faux pas.

Now that the new Prime Minister has appointed his cabinet we can expect to hear from the old crew about how they were opposed to the Iraq adventure, but felt that they could do more good inside government than on the back benches. I wait to see how many will say "I was with Tony all the way on Iraq". I predict a very small and leprous band.

More revisionism; Abd-al-Basit al-Megrahi is to appeal once more against his life sentence for his part(?) in the Lockerbie bombing. Now that Libya is coming in from the cold and Bush has his sights on Iran it's going to be OK to revive the other version of Lockerbie; that the perpetrators were the Ahmad Jibril group, hired by the Iranians. If Megrahi's sentence is quashed, and Libya's involvement is finally refuted, perhaps Gadafy will demand repayment of all the compensation he shelled out to get back onside with the Great Satan.

It sounds like a bad joke, but like the one about Kissinger and the Nobel Peace Prize, it turns out to be true. Blair ("carry on bombing, Ehud") is going to be international Middle East peace envoy. Confirmation, if any were needed, that the last thing the NeoConnnards want is peace in the Middle East. I'm betting that Blair ("Let's invade Iraq, George") will have a whopping big golden handshake written into his contract for the job. Even he, Walter Mitty incarnate, cannot believe that he will last a full year in the job. Get in, grab the money, get out; the Eurotrash circuit beckons. Then the Bushwacker can appoint Alan Dershowitz to the post.
Let's hope that Putin puts the block on this insult to be added to Middle East's injuries.

Dog Bites Man!
"No Officers To Be Charged Over Finucane Murder" - headline in today's Guardian

After Hamas won the election in the Ruritanian Republic of Palestine the incumbent President, Abbas, acting on behalf of the US, refused to cooperate with the newly formed government. Eventually Abbas's Fatah militia attempted a coup. It failed, and the result was complete control of Gaza by Hamas, and an end to the little authority that remained to Abbas.
ITN yesterday referred to these events as a "military coup" by Hamas. Why?
What the British media pretend not to know - Hamas was a pathetic little religious party with hardly any support among Palestinians until the Israeli mass murderer, Sharon, decided to build it up to weaken support for Fatah. Zionist money was lavished on Hamas who spent it on community welfare projects. By this time Fatah, under Arafat, had settled for a virtual Palestinian state controlled by Israel. All the leading Fidayeen had been killed by the Israelis, or had been marginalised by the new men, who had taken no part in the armed struggle, but were determined to win the peace. As corruption became the norm under Fatah, support for Hamas grew and grew. All the western propaganda portraying them as terrorists was wasted on the Palestinians. In fact it was not intended for the Palestinians, for no US or UK goverment was ever interested in Palestinian opinion. 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.

When I first heard about Blair's speech on the telly the word chutzpah sprang to mind. Looking around I found that the word had already been used -
Obsolete: The worst, most sensationalist newspaper? Why, the Independent, of course!
As I heard more (I always avoid direct contact with Blair's lies) another word suggested itself - cowardice. I thought at first that Blair was biting the hand that had massaged his ego. But no, he was just arse-licking and complaining about the taste at the same time. It was like the bloke who gets a bollocking at work, then goes home and kicks the dog. Blair who for years has been kissing Murdoch's arse has decided to bite the Independent's in protest.
Can we read from all this that the big cheque from Murdoch for his memoirs/apologia/pack of lies has been cashed and can't be recovered?
Perhaps, now that Brown is taking over, Blair's doing a spoiler, stirring things up between the "feral beasts" and the Labour Party. Brown has done the hand-kissing and genuflecting to the White House war party and the Dirty Digger, but they still don't trust him. He doesn't have that eager to please manner of the Great Sycophant.
Phrases not used in the Blair whine: weapons of mass destruction, forty-five minutes, war crimes.

ITN is going to great lengths to rubbish the Luguvoi version of events leading up to the death of Litvinenko. Their reporter was almost sneering as he gave his account of the Luguvoi press conference, making it clear that, in his opinion, Luguvoi had no credibility. In fact the Luguvoi version is as credible as any other.
Question - has Berezovsky the "dissident" (ITN) got friends on the staff at ITN? Big Boris's "friends" can make a lot of money, but they sometimes die in mysterious circumstances. Another explanation might be that MI6 has "assets" at ITN, reporters who are given juicy stories to run with. We know that the all BBC news staff once had to be vetted by the security services. Has that practice stopped? It's hard to tell. But if MI6 controlled BBC news output they would surely want to do the same with ITN by one means or another.
ITN still refer to Luguvoi as an ex-KGB agent, while describing the other ex-KGB agent, Litvinenko, as "Russian exile".

Disinformation.
Reports on the Lebanese army's attack on a Palestinian refugee camp refer to the Islamic militia, Fatah-al-Islam, as Syrian-backed. In fact this group is financed by the Saudis and, according to some, is made up entirely of Saudi nationals, not Palestinians. So why are the British press and TV news linking the group to Syria? Let's think now ... Bush and Co. are gunning for Syria; Bush and family are business associates of the Sa'ud family, and the Bin Ladin family; Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil and Syria has none. All together now - SYRIAN-BACKED FATAH-AL-ISLAM.

From yesterday's ITN news - "former KGB operative Andrei Luguvoi", "Russian exile Alexander Litvinenko". They could just as easily have said "former KGB operative Litvinenko", but that would be sort of neutral and disinterested, like news and unlike propaganda. They could have said "former Berezovsky associate and professional assassin, Litvinenko", but that's not the way the story's being skewed.
The previous day ITN had referred to Berezovsky as a "Russian Dissident". You know, a bit like Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky or Alexander Ginsburg.
And Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Two quotes from yesterday's Guardian -

'The capitalist/socialist debate has in general ceased to dominate modern politics. From Beijing to Brussels, the free market has won the battle of economic ideas.' Oliver Letwin, Conservative Party spokesman on big ideas(?).

'A new book, Second Chance by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the cold war hawk who served as national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, includes a startling phrase. No leftist, Brzezinski detects what he calls a "global political awakening", a stirring across much of the developing world, among those who are "conscious of social injustice to an unprecedented degree and resentful of its deprivations and lack of personal dignity". Thanks to television and the internet, the global have-nots can now see all that the haves are enjoying at their expense. The hard-headed Brzezinski sniffs revolution in the air.' Jonathan Freedland

Letwin talks of a battle won, Brzezinski writes of a war to come. Letwin views the transformation from state capitalism to liberal capitalism as a defeat for socialism. He doesn't quite proclaim that the class war is over.
The "end of history" soundbite has been laid to rest alongside the "no such thing as society" madness. Greed may still be good for the City thimbleriggers but they don't shout it from the rooftops anymore. The Conrad Black trial in the US has revealed that not even among a population bombarded day and night with capitalist propaganda is it possible to find twelve people who accept that the rich have a God-given right to take, and take, and take.
Are the American dreamers rousing from their slumber?

In the same edition is a right of reply piece by one Michael Carter, World Bank country director for Russia, 1997-2001. He objects to Naomi Klein's article on the World Bank. On Russia he writes, "With hindsight there was much the bank could have done better in the extraordinarily complex challenge it faced in Russia...". With foresight too. Carter was lucky to be appointed to the Russian job as a rise in oil prices kick-started an upturn in the Russian economy. Previously the World bank had been overseeing the impoverishment and immiseration of large sections of the population.

"Russia's economy sank into deep depression by the mid-1990s, was hit further by the financial crash of 1998, and then began to recover in 1999–2000. Russia's economic decline was far more severe than the Great Depression, which nearly paralyzed world capitalism following 1929. It is about half as severe as the catastrophic drop borne out of the consequence of the First World War, the fall of Tsarism, and the Russian Civil War.
"Following the economic reforms of the early 1990s, Russia suffered from a sharp increase in the rates of poverty and inequality.[7] Estimates by the World Bank based on both macroeconomic data and surveys of household incomes and expenditures indicate that whereas 1.5% of the population was living in poverty (defined as income below the equivalent of $25 per month) in the late Soviet era, by mid-1993 between 39% and 49% of the population was living in poverty. Per capita incomes fell by another 15% by 1998, according to government figures.
Public health indicators show a dramatic corresponding decline. In 1999, total population fell by about three-quarters of a million people. Meanwhile life expectancy dropped for men from sixty-four years in 1990 to fifty-seven years by 1994, while women's dropped from seventy-four to about seventy-one. Both health factors and sharp increase in deaths of mostly young people from unnatural causes (such as murders, suicides and accidents caused by increased disregard for safety) have significantly contributed to this trend. As of 2004, life expectancy is higher than at the nadir of the crisis in 1994, yet it still remains below the 1990 level.
Alcohol-related deaths skyrocketed 60% in the 1990s. Deaths from infectious and parasitic diseases shot up 100%, mainly because medicines were no longer affordable to the poor. There are now roughly one and half times as many deaths as births per year in Russia.
"While the supply shortages of consumer goods characteristic of the 1980s went away (see Consumer goods in the Soviet Union), this was not only related to the opening of Russia's market to imports in the early 1990s but also to the impoverishment of the Russian people in the 1990s. Russians on fixed incomes (the vast majority of the workforce) saw their purchasing power drastically reduced, so while the stores might have been well stocked in the Yeltsin era, workers could now afford to buy little, if anything.
"By 2004 the average income has risen to more than $100 per month, emblematic of the mild recovery in recent years thanks to a large extent to high oil prices. But the growing income is not being evenly distributed. The social inequality has risen sharply during the 1990s with the Gini coefficient, for example, reaching 40%. Russia's income disparities are now nearly as large as in Argentina and Brazil, which have long been among the world leaders in inequality, and the regional disparities in the level of poverty are still growing sharper." (Wikipedia, "History of Post-Soviet Russia")

Sarkozy: "La France sera du côté de tous les opprimés"
MON CUL!

New Labour apparatchiki, Mandelson and others, are helping Sarkozy's campaign in the French presidential election. Honour among thieves takes precedence over solidarity among social democrats. And poor Ségolène has tried so hard to demonstrate her liberal-capitalist credentials. Not good enough for the Blairites doing the Bushwhackers' dirty work in Europe. They prefer the real thing, a dyed-in-the-wool bastard.
Time to play the race card, Madame R., everyone else has. Le Petit Nicolas, c'est le Petit Le Pen.

http://sarkostique.over-blog.com/article-1198852.html

On the midday news on Channel 4 on Wednesday one Barry Stickings of BASF was telling us all how safe his GM potato is, safe enough to plant in the open fields of East Yorkshire. Preceding him was a scientist from ACRE who said the potato had been tested by ACRE and found to be safe. Unfortunately the interviewer neglected to ask him who funded the research, so I'm trying to fill that gap in my knowledge.
It would appear that not everyone is as confident as Mr. Stickings and his friends in ACRE; certainly not the Dutch government.

"Last Wednesday, March 7th, The Council of State in The Netherlands judged in a appeal by Greenpeace that the field trials of BASF had been illegally permitted by the Ministry of Housing, Spacial Planning, andEnvironment (VROM) and destroyed the permits immediately. The court decision was based on the grounds that1) these potatoes had been insufficiently tested in a controlled environment (like a greenhouse or laboratory) to be release in the open, and 2) the Ministry had not been able to do a proper environmental effect assessment (as required) since BASF had failed to provide information specific enough for this purpose on the location of the trial sites. It concerns three BASF GM potato varieties, two with changed starch content similar to the Amflora-potato and one with hightened late blight resistence. All three are also herbicide-resistent."

What a difference a couple of months make, especially in the Britain of GM- embracing Blair.

http://www.gene.ch/genet/2007/Mar/msg00031.html

"When Yeltsin left office, his family had become inexplicably wealthy ...", Naomi Klein "The Guardian", 27.4.07. Not really inexplicable, but - you know - English libel law.

Ms. Klein's article, "The World Bank has the perfect standard bearer", is about the hypocrisy of that organisation and its media claque in attacking Wolfman Paul and his idea of "good governance". I quote further:
"The truth is that the bank's credibility was fatally compromised when it forced school fees on students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; when it demanded that Tanzania privatise its water system; when it made telecom privatisation a condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; when it demanded labour "flexibility" in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami; when it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post-invasion Iraq. Ecuadoreans care little about Wolfowitz's girlfriend; more pressing is that in 2005 the World Bank withheld a promised $100m after the country dared to spend a portion of its oil revenues on health and education. Some anti-poverty organisation."
The World Bank is a creator of poverty on a mass scale. It makes a few politicians rich by bribing them to attack their own people's living standards. It encourages them, coerces them if necessary, to dismantle all welfare structures, and to wage war on organised workers. According to Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist to the World Bank, "The new global order has condemned people to death. They don't care if people live or die". That's the global order as advanced by the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations as an instrument of US foreign policy, and the G8; insofar as any of these organisations can be said to exist independently of the others.

www.nologo.org
www.globalissues.org

"I think the Owl of Minerva will spread its wings only with the coming of dusk." John Reid in Parliament yesterday. Heilige Blumenkraft! The right-wing paranoiacs will be in a frenzy. This is too reminiscent of Illuminati-speak. Is J.R. an initiate, or was it a Hegelian slip?
The coming of dusk could herald the "the Sleep of Reason", which might well accord with the Doctor's plans.

Addendum (sed non corrigendum): I realised afterwards that I'd got the password wrong, but I'm loth to change it. Why? Is it because I fear the wrath of the adepts? Is it because I'm being controlled by the hidden masters? Perhaps the paranoiacs are right, and the organisation I thought was dead by 1790 lives on. So stet!

STS, bulletin no.2
Social Responsibility - benefit cuts

So farewell then, Boris Nikolaievich, you served your masters well; Washington, the World Bank, the kleptocracy. Now you will have a state funeral, but your friend Berezovsky won't be able to attend. The Western Media will sing your praises, with a few indulgent references to your "colourful" behaviour on the public stage. They'll forget that you were a Stalinist hack until the day it was possible to hold power without a party membership card. On that day - not one day before - did you tear up your party card before the world's cameras. Communist one day, anti-Communist the next, a truly Pauline conversion. From then on you changed hats frequently - dictator in the cause of democracy; bagman for the Mafiya; licenced clown of of global politics. Then the Russian people had had enough, and you were gone.

"Yeltsin has taken the opportunity to imprison & torture socialists who have a far longer record of opposing stalinism than he has, who were indeed imprisoned by the Communist regime when he was part of that regime, & who now profess the views in opposition to both stalinism and Yeltsin, that they always held." ("The Two O'Clock Knock Now Comes at Three", a Syndicalist Bulletin publication, October 1993). So old Borya was consistent in one thing, belonging to a ruling class that persecuted socialists.

The Sceptic's Translation Service, Bulletin no.1
Private Equity Funds - formerly known as asset strippers.

Bernard Matthews imports bird flu into the country and his punishment is a £600,000 handout from the British people. Isn't capitalism wonderful!

The Tooled-up Tools of America - "Guns don't kill people, profiteering arms-mongers kill people" - have spoken; the answer to classroom massacres is ... arm your kids and send them to school with a handgun or two. Why not? It's the logical epilogue to the American Century, mutually assured destruction. E Pluribus Unum could translate as "last man standing".

Bryan Ferry, love him or hate him you have to despise him. The poseur supreme who uses the pseudonym Max De Winker when travelling incognito (I thinks it's Winker but I might be a letter out). He gets all gooey over Nazi art, Albert and Leni and all those beautifully choreographed rallies. What a pity no-one painted Zyklon-B canisters Andy Warhol style.
I suppose now we know what he calls his studio we should stop calling him Max and address him as "Mein Führer".