News of the World

US, Europe concealed organ trafficking by Kosovo Liberation Army

Guatemala escalates drug war with a declaration of martial law

In the USA - double dip recession looks more likely:
House prices down
Oil prices up

The War You Don't See

Click on the little square in the bottom right of the image to get a full screen version

An Open Letter from Gaza: Two Years After the Massacre, a Demand for Justice

by Gazans Seeking Justice

December 27, 2010 - We, the Palestinians of the Besieged Gaza Strip, on this day, two years on from Israel's genocidal attack on our families, our houses, our roads, our factories and our schools, are saying enough inaction, enough discussion, enough waiting -- the time is now to hold Israel to account for its ongoing crimes against us. On the 27th of December 2008, Israel began an indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The assault lasted 22 days, killing 1,417 Palestinians, 352 of them children, according to mainstream human rights organizations. For a staggering 528 hours, Israeli Occupation Forces let loose their US-supplied F15s, F16s, Merkava Tanks, internationally prohibited white phosphorous, and bombed and invaded the small Palestinian coastal enclave that is home to 1.5 million, of whom 800,000 are children and over 80 percent UN registered refugees. Around 5,300 remain permanently wounded... continua / continued [73324] [ 27-dec-2010 19:30 ECT ]

The History of The Cat In 100 Objects

Object Number One

Inspired by the radio four series, and the Collins and Herring version on 6Music, I've decided to do my own. I have no idea where this is going to take me over the course of the next 300 days or so. Hope you can follow me throughout this blogging experiment.

The first object is this:

I'm cheating slightly as my Mother isn't one of those sentimental mums who kept their kid's stuff in the attic; she started giving away my stuff even when I was still a kid - so therefore I do not own this toy any more. I first noticed when I couldn't find my Asterix books, which I hadn't even stopped reading!! No doubt she'd been giving my old stuff away for years but it was the Asterix books that were the first thing that I noticed because I hadn't finished with them! I was pretty upset at the time and still can't forgive and forget.

A few years later when I tried to retrieve my Top Trump and Mini Trump sets she'd done the same with them. No good trying to look after anything when you're living in my mum's house!

As for school books, drawings and that sort of thing - no chance!!

Last year she even told me that she'd begun considering chucking out the old photographs. I quickly made it clear that she was to pass them to me for scanning before throwing any of them out. So far I've got a couple of albums worth. I want to start working through my childhood photos asap, but that is for another blog.

This toy was one I owned around 1977 (I was about 10). It tied in with a Bond film - at that time I went to see every Bond film as it arrived in Plymouth, though that stopped when Octopussy came out. It looked like complete shite to me. Still haven't seen it.

The car had little hidden wheels to drive around on, and when you clicked the button it sprouted fins and a tail for submarine use. It also fired little orange missiles which inevitably got lost over time. Or the parents put them in the bin to stop me firing them across the living room while the news was on.

I had craved the all dancing version of the Aston Martin James Bond car which my friend had, and to be honest, the Lotus wasn't as good.

I used to have a lot of toy cars at the time - and pretty much wrecked most of them over time. When I got fed up with playing with them I used to try to wreck them - by putting in dents, smashing them together, etc. Though toy cars were pretty tough in those days. I think this Lotus was probably the last of the toy cars I ever owned as I started asking for records from about 1978 onwards, and toy cars suddenly became childish.

Ch Ch Ch Changes

Christmas day is over, but we're still right in the middle of the Xmas period - the week that follows Xmas where we sit about stuffed with Turkey and Ham, suffering from acid reflux, and still drinking port and expensive beer from 11.00 in the morning.

I excused myself from the gorge fest this year. It does me no good at all. It's not as if I exactly deny myself the good stuff through the year. All Xmas offers is the chance to fill up on stuff I really like very much, like meat, cheese, chocolate, puddings and cakes. Meat does not suit me, I have an intolerance to both sugar and dairy, and my abilty to put down alcoholic drinks is much less than it used to be. Somewhere along the line I stopped practicing, so really after three beers, I've had more than enough.

I stayed in London. Two years ago I spent it with my parents and my sister. Three years ago I spent it with my wife and her family. This year I had one of those "sad lonely" Xmas that we're all programmed to recognise as some sort of failure. But it was absolute bliss. I had a chance to catch up (a bit)with all my backlogs - reading, listening and surfing. I also caught up with my laundry, sorted out my paperwork, and got a couple of stress free early nights.

Now that I've shrugged off the stress from work, I have a week to get some good stuff done. One of those things is sort out this blog. I have been rearranging the sidebar (right). I want it to stay up to date - which will require a lot less neglact from me. In the bar I'm going to link to the many good websites I come across during my daily surfing. i've started a few new sections - people's history - which so far has an excellent web page about the 1984/85 miners' strike. It's the best article I've seen so far recognising that agent provocateurs were used, that the police personalised the dispute and went well beyond their legal powers, and that press coverage was anything but balanced. also, lest we forget, the Labour Party disgracefully refused to support the strike, and once again let down the ordinary working people who they were set up to work for. No wonder they remained out of power for so long. Ed Milliband's slapping down of the new Unison boss, Len McClusky, implies that Labour Party will continue down its road of sitting on the fence when it comes to standing up against a destructive Conservative government.

Under News Of The World I will attempt to link to recent news articles that I think have far reaching global importance. We'll see how long I can keep that going.

Apart from that trying to finish what I started when I intially set the side bar up several years ago. There's some good links on there, but I realise it hasn't changed in a long time, and some of the links are hideously out of date.

Here are some of the new links:

SHTF Plan telling us just how much in the shit America's economy is - recovery? what recovery?

One of the best websites challenging the pure liquid shite being passed as science or informed opinion by the fucktarded self styled "climate skeptics" or deniers, or climate wankers as I have decided I quite like to refer to them when slightly inebriated two days after xmas.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

Comments from a front line Tory - hates the LibDems and thinks there may be a 2011 general election: - how typical are his views I wonder?

Strangely, for different reasons I sort of agree with him. This coalition is one forged in the depth of the fictional and Christian hell, and by Satan himself. It deserves to be strangled in its infancy. Any chance that it should continue beyond the next few months is an affront to God himself. Am I being too dramatic? Whatever, bring on the General Election, I say, things are not looking good for the Evil Coalition.

Happy Christmas

Italian Bombs

Here we go again. In these days of the left being systematically attacked by the establishment, no surprise that anarchists should be targeted too.

Before damning Anarchists with these crimes, consider this quote from Francesco Cossiga, former head of secret services and Head of state of Italy, advised the 2008 minister in charge of the police, on how to deal with the protests from teachers and students:

“He should do what I did when I was Minister of the Interior. [...] infiltrate the movement with agents provocateurs inclined to do anything [...] And after that, with the strength of the gained population consent, [...] beat them for blood and beat for blood also those teachers that incite them. Especially the teachers. Not the elderly, of course, but the girl teachers yes”

Full text from http://rassegna.governo.it/testo.asp?d=32976406 - translated into English by google so it doesn't quite work :/

More on Agents provocateurs in the coming weeks...

Another Reason Why You should Never Vote Labour Again

The link is to a Guardian article

"Lady Taylor of Bolton – Ann Taylor – was minister for defence equipment for a year until 2008[, then] minister for international defence and security...has become an adviser to a French arms firm that supplies the government with billions of pounds worth of equipment."

Good to see that Labour is continuing its traditional of pacificism ; I like to see a poltician with prinicples(sarcasm - Ed). Ann Taylor's principles are clearly only about her bank balance and her personal standing.

Isn't it time we consigned the Labour Party to the rubbish bin of history for good?

Ann taylor's record as an MP? I think warmonger would not be too strong a word. I got this from a very useful website called They Work For You:

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/peer/baroness_taylor_of_bolton

• Voted very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals.votes
• Voted strongly for Labour's anti-terrorism laws.votes
• Has never voted on replacing Trident.
• Voted moderately for introducing ID cards.votes
• Voted very strongly for the Iraq war.votes
• Voted strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war.votes

Here she is having a go at the Tories for appointing ex-army chief General Sir Richard Dannatt as adviser to the Tories during Lords questions on 3 November 2009.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_lords/newsid_8332000/8332254.stm

Is that worse than a "socialist" using their privileged position in an elected left wing government to secure, first, a position in the unelected House of Lords, and secondly a position with an arms dealer selling arms to a British Tory government?

Captain Beefheart

December Will Be Tragic

I've made it another December. My birthday uncelebrations were two weeks ago - I've never understood why people celebrate getting older, or is it that people celebrate still being alive as it becomes ever more likely that you might just not wake up, or keel over in a second?

This week I was confirmed in my post at work. I scored highly in a skills and performance assessment and so have been saved from cuts this time. London Underground's Safety and environment Department - where I work - is undergoing cuts of around 33% to its personnel. the cuts are pre-entive; not yet due to government cuts, we won't see them until the conclusions of Project Horizon being conducted for TFL. Contrary to expectation, it turns out it has nothing to do with building a military base on the Moon, but is a re view of everything that TFL does - street maintenance, bus stop maintenance, regulate and run buses, etc. It will eventually dictate the course of budget cuts which will arrive in the next financial year.

Cuts to LU's Safety Department are being justified by the huge improvement in our safety performance in the few years. Less accidents = less safety staff required. But the counter argument would be, whether the huge improvement in safety can be sustained without proactive safety advisors being able to put themselves out on the front line where they need to be. For safety please read safety and environment, a bit much for me to keep typing. The feeling amongst advisors is that we may end up being stretched far too thinly, and my fears that environment will be taking a back seat to safety, and that environmental advisors will be required to take up quality and safety work possibly to the detriment of our environmental work. Still all this is up in the air and to be seen when I go back to work in 2011.

Personally, my main concern is to keep myself in gainful employment until this bunch of charlatans and crooks that call themselves a government are cast back into opposition. Though of course, by then the Labour Party may have reconstituted itself back into being the useless pro-capitalist warmongering neo-fascists (not a word I use lightly) that they were under Blair, and therefore fit for government once again.

Anarchist groups threaten to target Royal Wedding

This article from the Telegraph, written by good old Andy Bloxham again:

My fatuous comments in the cooper black font

Protest groups yesterday threatened to target the Royal Family and promised the riots that turned parts of central London into a battleground on Thursday were “just the beginning”.

By Andy Bloxham and Martin Evans 8:30AM GMT 11 Dec 2010

Groups of rioters said the worst was yet to come and warned of “many more assaults on royals [sic]”.

The organised groups are likely to be joined by the loose gangs of masked teenagers who were responsible for much of the violence and vandalism in Parliament Square.

The threats raise the spectre of a vicious circle of increasingly hardened rioters forcing the police into tougher action, which is used as a pretext for further violence. [which will be used as a pretext for preemptive police violence – or threats; similar to how the MayDay protesters were thwarted starting in the late 1990s]

According to the Daily Express, an internet campaign is already building to stage a major demonstration on Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding day. Websites linked to a range of groups have posted obscene messages [cunts!!] about the couple while trying to combine a demo against the Royals with a May Day protest against big business.

One website says: “Royal Wedding marks the beginning of the end of capitalism.”

It says: “The weekend of the 29th April 2011 is the date that will mark the raising of consciousness of mainstream society and their subsequent thinking and debating a money-less world.”

[Such good publicity from the telegraph there]

A wide range of organisations have mobilised their supporters into action in recent months and scores of splinter groups with varying political agendas were in evidence at the tuition fee protests on Thursday.

Among the more peaceful groups were Coalition of Resistance, which was launched by Tony Benn in August, which campaigns against the economic cuts in general; and Stop Fees and Cuts, which has similar aims.

However, others were more inclined to violence.

One was UK Uncut, a group campaigning against businesses accused of avoiding British tax.

Members of the organisation – which supports direct action – were successful in forcing Sir Philip Green’s flagship Topshop store to close last week.

Protestors claim the cuts being forced on the public sector would not need to be so harsh if large firms paid their full tax burden.

It is thought some of the demonstrators responsible for the attack on the car containing the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall were on their way towards the Oxford Street branch of Topshop when the incident occurred.

The Whitechapel Anarchist Group, which admitted being involved in trouble at the first demonstration at Millbank in November, promised the riots were “only the beginning”.

It threatened: “In order to win we need more violence on the streets. More smashed windows, more hospitalised coppers and many more assaults on royals.”

The [sic] praised every person who “landed a blow to a copper, a brick through a window or a dent in the car of the parasitic royals” as a “working class hero”.

The Socialist youth movement Revolution - some of whom stormed Millbank Tower - also urged its followers to take part.

Ahead of the demonstration, the group used its website to call for people to “shut down institutions, blockade and picket schools, colleges and universities”.

But among the anti-capitalist groups, the far left political organisations and anarchists was a large number of perhaps the most sinister individuals intent on hijacking the day and causing as much trouble as possible. [what apart from the police you mean?]

Gangs of teenage boys, most wearing balaclavas or scarves across their face, hid themselves among the students before forming groups of 20 or 30 once the police had sealed the area.

The youths, carrying weapons including hammers, attempted to lure other protesters into fights, systematically smashed windows of any building close by and burned anything flammable. Many students complained that they had been mugged or had their pockets picked.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “Whenever a demonstration is planned, an appropriate policing plan will be put into action.” [kettling and treating all protesters the same regardless of any actual illegal acts being committed]

A spokeswoman for the Royal family declined to comment.[cunts!!]

More Anti-Fox News From the Tory Press

This article is by someone called Andy Bloxham:

A couple discovered the problem when they took their car to a mechanic after noticing “small bits of debris” on the ground under the spot where they park their car.
The driver said: “The brake pad warning light came on when we next started up and the local garage cited fox damage.”
The mechanics then remembered a spate of similar problems being reported to them and the damaged parts were sent off to wildlife experts, who found teeth marks similar to those made by a juvenile fox.
The driver added that the experts warned “they like the taste of brake fluid and know how to find it”.
It is not the first such series of incidents.

A year ago, Kent Police investigated when several motorists said their cars had suffered damaged brake pipes and cables.
Professor Stephen Harris, an environmental scientist Bristol University, who studies urban foxes and helped in Kent, said at the time: “They love chewing things
“They also love lying under cars, particularly on cold nights. What could be better than resting out of harm's way, next to a large lump of warm metal and playfully passing the time by gnawing on the nearest piece of plastic or rubber?
“I told the police they were almost certainly looking for a young fox, under a year old, which was simply playing the games he had learnt as a cub.”
Experts believe the behaviour could be a result of the habits of vixens, which often bring old leather gloves or discarded rubber boots back to the den for her cubs to chew on.
Others speculate that foxes enjoy the slightly sweet flavour of brake fluid, a phenomenon which has been reported among stone martens in mainland Europe.
Nor are foxes the only culprits. In October, Wiltshire Police launched an investigation into vandalised brake cables in Swindon only to find evidence those responsible were grey squirrels.

Grey squirrels mind you - not decent BRITISH RED SQUIRRELS!!!!!!

(foams at mouth)

Student protests

The Telegraph's view

The Telegraph claim that the "trouble-makers" were boys, keen to keep their faces covered, but not mentioning the routine photographing of ALL protesters by police. These boys, branded "teenage vandals" by the Telegraph "strutted" around with sicks in their hands. These boys, far from being vandals, are intelligent and politicised by recent events. They have lived through the war on terror and the wholesale attack on citizens' rights, seen the violence carried out in the name of democracy and wetsenr values, upon thousands of innocent Afghani, Iraqi and Pakistani families, endlessly justified by faceless PR people and sold out politicians who go on about "spreading democracy" and "combatting terrorism". It seems that to the establishment violence is good. To them violence can promote freedom and democracy. The violence that states wield of course, is far more than the odd broken window or a smashed up police van. The violence of the state is unmanned drones wiping out villages, friendly fire, missiles aimed at demonstrating civilians or news agencies and journalists who refuse to tow the US official line; waterboarding, death squads wiping out suspects and their families and their associates, and anyone who might get in the way including many who innocent who were identified as "terorroists". This way we create more violence as the politicised children of the tortured and killed grow up with hatred in their hearts, and a burning desire for justice.

Violence is not good but you wouldn;t known that from the way our governments behave. To be honest, with the provocation of the last 31 years of right wing govenrment in the UK, I'm surprised the anti-state violence has been so restrained. If violence is OK for states to wield in the name of creating democracy then violence from citizens in the name of protecting rights and opposing the injustices of a government with no mandate is entirely justified.

I haven't even mentioned the way the police behaved in this demo - disgraceful!

police comments here

Student protester operated on after being 'hit with police baton'

I support the use of limited violence and damage to property in order to oppose the violence of the state. why shouldn;t I?

As for the poor royal couple who's good fortunes are entirely based on state violence

Oh boo hoo!

Can't wait until I see your heads on poles. The French know a thing or two about how to deal with Royals!