Coresect

Israeli forces storm humanitarian aid ships in international waters and shoot dead at least ten pacifists (perhaps as many as 19).

"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
- Noam Chomsky

UK political comedian has released a book called  The People's Manifesto based on proposals for UK politicians given by audience-members at his stand up shows. Some are genius:

MPs should not be paid wages, rather loans like students which they pay back once they leave parliament (and inevitably walk into highly paid jobs thanks to their "political experience").

Those in favour of ID cards should be banned from having curtains.

Ganked from Boing Boing.

"Can we really strain our naivety far enough to imagine there's no connection between this



and a sudden slew of announcements from the Conservatives of policies that will benefit Murdoch's empire enormously? Are we really meant to be that dumb?"

Ganked from enemiesofreason.blogspot.com

"The Suicide Terrorism Database in Flinders University in Australia, the most comprehensive in the world, holds information on suicide bombings in Iraq, Palestine-Israel, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which together accounted for 90 per cent of all suicide attacks between 1981 and 2006. Analysis of the information contained therein yields some interesting clues: It is politics more than religious fanaticism that has led terrorists to blow themselves up."

Article.

"As a member of the Italian parliament and former magistrate who ensured that many corrupt politicians and businessmen were brought to justice in the 1990s, I wish to apologise to the editor and staff of the Guardian newspaper for the utterly predictable reaction of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and our foreign minister, Franco Frattini."
Read the rest of the article in The Guardian.

Amid reports that North Korea is preparing to launch another missile and fears it may conduct additional nuclear tests, KCNA has released one hell of a statement.

"...At present, some countries were shocked at the news of the DPRK’s second nuclear test. But an exceptional act has its exceptional reason.

The recent nuclear test conducted by the DPRK is the 2054th one on the earth.

The five permanent members of the UNSC have conducted 99.99 percent of all the nuclear tests.

Those countries have posed the biggest nuclear threats to the world. But they took issue with our first nuclear test, which was conducted in October 2006 as a self-defensive measure to cope with increased nuclear threats by the U.S., terming it a “threat to the international peace” and adopted the sanctions resolution against the DPRK. This is exactly the UNSC Resolution 1718..."

Read it all

When this man opens his mouth, nothing pleasant ever comes out.



Allegations have been made about how some 30 to 40 girls spent the New Year holidays at his villa in Sardinia. One thing is for sure, one of them was indeed underage.

If you made this up people would say it was unbelievable.

"Of the seven main national television channels, three are answerable to him as the principal shareholder and another three, run by Italy's public broadcasting service, RAI, are indirectly answerable to him as prime minister. In the latest Freedom House report on the ­international media, Italy was downgraded from "free" to "partly free", putting it on a par with countries such as Albania and Ukraine."

Quote taken from The Guardian.

Berlusconi has his hands firmly around Italy's throat.

"`Faith` means not wanting to know what is true."

Between The Wars
Billy Bragg I was a miner
I was a docker
I was a railway man
Between the wars
I raised a family
In times of austerity
With sweat at the foundry
Between the wars

I paid the union and as times got harder
I looked to the government to help the working man
And they brought prosperity down at the armoury
"We're arming for peace me boys"
Between the wars

I kept the faith and I kept voting
Not for the iron fist but for the helping hand
For theirs is a land with a wall around it
And mine is a faith in my fellow man
Theirs is a land of hope and glory
Mine is the green field and the factory floor
Theirs are the skies all dark with bombers
And mine is the peace we knew
Between the wars

Call up the craftsmen
Bring me the draughtsmen
Build me a path from cradle to grave
And I'll give my consent
To any government
That does not deny a man a living wage

Go find the young men never to fight again
Bring up the banners from the days gone by
Sweet moderation
Heart of this nation
Desert us not, we are
Between the wars

Article from The Guardian

 

The last-minute rules passed during the "midnight hours" of the George Bush presidency differ from his predecessors because they are basically a project of deregulation - not regulation. Among the most far-reaching:

• Industrial-size pig, cow and chicken farms can disregard the Clean Water Act and air pollution controls.

• The interior department can approve development such as mining or logging without consulting wildlife managers about their impact.

• Restrictions will be eased so power plants can operate near national parks and wilderness areas.

• Pollution controls on new power plants will be downgraded.

• 2m acres of land in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado opened to development of oil shales, the dirtiest fuel on Earth.

MINNEAPOLIS — In an outrageous series of state-sanctioned actions, police raided an activist “Convergence Space” and several homes in the past 24 hours, detaining multiple people on extraordinarily flimsy pretences, arresting several, confiscating computers and laptops, and even handcuffing a small child.

Last night, police raided an activist meeting location. All occupants, including a five year old child, were detained, handcuffed, and photographed. Computers were removed from the space, and some personal property (like notebooks) were seized;

• A private residence on 17th St. was raided this morning and had its door kicked in. The same five year old child was again terrorized by armed law enforcement.

• A private residence in St. Paul, occupied by local residents and out-of-town journalists, was raided on the basis of an identical search warrant to the one presented last night at the Convergence Space (it specified “bomb-making materials,” though nothing of the sort was apparently seized);

Source.

Now think a minute: when the British secret services executed suspected IRA terrorists in Gibralter, these materials were actually an alarm clock, some wire, and sticky tape. You have them in your house? Shame. IF they say they think you're a terrorist they can lock you up without charge, without lawyers, for as long as they like, and then you'll discover whether waterboarding is torture or not.

Hey, cheer up, over in Russia they are still killing journalists.

Source.

Sleep tight, children. It's too late to do anything now.

"a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house."

Massive, warrantless raids on peace protesters in Minneapolis, ahead of RNC.

The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been told that if we leave we will be detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun, which someone told me is an M-16. We are suffering a preemptive video arrest. For those that don't know, I-Witness Video was remarkably successful in exposing police misconduct and outright perjury by police during the 2004 RNC. Out of 1800 arrests, at least 400 were overturned based solely on video evidence which contradicted sworn statements which were fabricated by police officers. It seems that the house arrest we are now under and the possible threat of the seizure of our computers and video cameras is a result of the 2004 success.

So the Olympics are finally over, and the closing ceremony was quite spectacular, even if not quite the level of the opening ceremony. But then there was the bumbling mayor of London with his hands in his pockets half the time, the cheap video presentation of London itself (apparently all London has going for it are bus queues and rain), and a cheapo bus prop and some has-been footballer kicking a ball (that was carefully given to a British child by a Chinese clone, thanks but no thanks) into the crowd. Gosh. How can Britain compete with thousands of drummer, dancers, singers, acrobats, and millions of volunteers..? Answer: it can't. Not unless they start threatening the natives with torture and work camps. Now there's an idea... We should be able to put on a decent fireworks show though, seing Britain is one of the world's largest arms dealers. Maybe the video should have focused on that..?