"“We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.” "


Chinese premier Wen Jiabao 12th March 2009


""We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we'd like to do our best to preserve that system."


Timothy Geithner US Secretary of the Treasury, previously President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.1/3/2009

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

The Joker with his Pack








KILL THE POOR
Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the Neutron bomb
It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done
Away with excess enemy
With no less value to property
No sense in war but perfect sense at home…
The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonight
Gonna Kill Kill Kill Kill
Kill the poor…Tonight
Behold the sparkle of champagne
The crime rate’s gone, feel free again
Oh life’s a dream with you, Miss Lily White
Jane Fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals it’s okay
So let’s get dressed and dance away the night
While they…Kill Kill Kill Kill
Kill the poor…Tonight


Dead Kennedys 1980

Sarkozy stirs the merde ... then it hits the fan.

Argenteuil, N Paris (LATimes) October 26 Sarkozy led a media (and heavily policed) contingent to this poverty stricken area. He engaged in a test of wills with (what the reports describe as) gang leaders and Islamic fundamentalists, declaring that poor areas would be reclaimed with tough policing. Youths at the scene reacted to Sarkozy's comments by throwing objects and Sarkozy responded by calling them "thugs."

This was before the riots started.

Schadenfreude

It's a day for long German words. Schadenfreude - enjoyment at the misfortune of others. Watching the Pompous ass of a Prime Minister lose a personal vote for support on detaining citizens for 90 days whilst they fish around looking for something, anything, to charge them with.... because PC Plod told him it would be a good idea.

The same Plods who had a secret plan to shoot people dead, in public, and when they did, their most senior Plod lied about it repeatedly.

Portugal referendum on Abortion thwarted by Supreme Court

The BBC on 29th October reported that Portugal's constitutional court has thwarted the government's plan to hold a referendum next month on relaxing the country's strict abortion laws.

Judges said the vote could not be held before September 2006 because the same referendum had been rejected by the president in the current legislature.

The government wants voters to decide whether abortions in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy should become legal.

Abortions are currently only legal in certain situations such as rape.

Previous post on this story here

Malta, who signed up to join the EU in 2004, negotiated a clause safeguarding its ban on abortion. In Poland, abortion is once again illegal.

Ireland currently relies on Protocol 17 to the Treaty of Rome, which says community law cannot override the Irish Constitution's prohibition of abortion.

A Night to Remember

In Germany in July, 1938, a law was passed requiring all Jews to carry identification cards, made easier after the census using IBM equipment , when racial classification was introduced. On October 28, 17,000 Jews of Polish citizenship, many of whom had been living in Germany for decades, were arrested and relocated across the Polish border.

Herschel Grynszpan, a German Jew who had fled to France, repeatedly tried to see Ernst vom Rath, Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, about the concerns he had about his family who were being deported to Poland , Rath had no intention of being helpful.

Realising the futility of his pleas, on Monday, November 7, 1938 Grynszpan shot vom Rath in the stomach. He attempted and missed 3 additional shots. Two days later, on November 9, the secretary died.

That night a fateful message was sent from Heydrich, who was head of the Nazi Party security Police the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) which had been formed in 1931 and was quite distinct from the Uniformed Schutzstaffel (SS).

Message from SS-Grupenführer Heydrich to all State Police Main Offices and Field
Re: Measures against Jews tonight

Following the attempt on the life of Secretary of the Legation vom Rath in Paris, demonstrations against the Jews are to be expected in all parts of the Reich in the course of the coming night, November 9/10, 1938. The instructions below are to be applied in dealing with these events:……

b) Places of business and apartments belonging to Jews may be destroyed but not looted. The police is instructed to supervise the observance of this order and to arrest looters.
c) In commercial streets particular care is to be taken that non-Jewish businesses are completely protected against damage.
d) Foreign citizens – even if they are Jews – are not to be molested. ...more


So started the destruction of Jewish property in a orgy of broken glass resulting in the popular title of Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) a handy and popular name, but better known by the Nazi party as Pogromnacht or the start of the pogrom or cleansing of the Jews. Now academics call it Schicksalstag , meaning, "Day of Fate."

It was the start of what Jews now call the Holocaust.

Palau

I suggest Tommy Esang REMENGESAU, Jr doesn’t travel to Havana on holiday. As President and chief of state of Palau, who voted along with Israel and the US against ending the US Embargo on trade with Cuba he might have trouble finding a taxi that will take his fare. Previous Presidents, Haruo Remeliik was assassinated in 1985 and Lazarus Salii in 1988 by suicide.

This tiny (Twice the size of Washington DC says the CIA Factbook) Pacific Island archipelago ( Pop. 20,303 (July 2005 est.)) westernmost in the Caroline chain, (500m E of Philippines)consists of six island groups totaling more than 300 islands; including World War II battleground of Beliliou (Peleliu). They opted for independence in 1978 rather than join the Federated States of Micronesia – who it must be noted abstained on viting for the UN motion to end the embargo.

The economy consists primarily of tourism, subsistence agriculture, and fishing. The government is the major employer of the work force, relying heavily on financial assistance from the US. Business and tourist arrivals numbered 63,000 in 2003 – the diving is apparently superb – said to be Number One Underwater Wonder of the World. The population enjoys a per capita income twice that of the Philippines and much of Micronesia.

…and here’s the kicker … the Compact of Free Association with the US, entered into after the end of the UN trusteeship on 1 October 1994, provides Palau with up to $700 million in US aid over 15 years in return for furnishing military facilities for up to 50 years which includes ability to launch nuclear weapons and use of the worlds deepest marine valley the Marianas Trench for the new submarine base on nearby Guam.

Tommy Remengesau Jr knows which side his bread is buttered on and allows Ambassador Hersey KYOTA to keep up a swell Chancery (in between voting at UN) at 1800 K Street NW, Suite 714, Washington, DC 20006. Website

The whole area is of course down range for test firings from coastal CA based Vandenburg Air Base home of The 4th Space Launch Squadron which was established 1 December 2003 to lead the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program on the west coast. The squadron's Delta IV (Boeing) and Atlas V (Lockheed-Martin) launch vehicles provide the nation's sole medium/heavy lift capability to polar orbit (i.e for space command vehicles). The 4 SLS combines military, government civilians, and contractors working together to ...bring a vision to life... 100% mission success; one professional launch team defending the U.S. through assured access to space.

Recent blogs on same topic here

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

John Bolton busy blustering at UN today

Iraqi Ambassador Samir Shakir Sumaidaie said "The political process is moving forward. We will succeed, and we will defeat the terrorists in Iraq and we will build a new country based on the principles of the rule of law, respect for human rights and equality for all.” … after the UN Security Council voted unanimously to let the 178,00 Coalition military force remain in Iraq until end 2006 at the request of the Iraqi Government.

The Security Council can at the request of the Israeli Government ask for a review at any time until then.

The measure requires Iraq to keep depositing the money from its oil sales (in US$ not in Euros as under the Saddam regime) into an international account held in New York and monitored by a UN monitoring board .

The multinational force is also empowered to continue taking and holding its own prisoners in Iraq. There are said to be nearly 14,000 detainees in Iraq, including 5,074 at Abu Ghraib prison.

Ambassador Sumaidaie said "This is part of the operational rules of the multinational force and this is a subject of continued coordination between the Iraqi government and the multinational force," when asked about the issue of U.S.
prisoners. He has a of course a personal interest as his 21 year old cousin Mohammed al-Sumaidaie was killed by US forces near the western town of Haditha on June 25th this year.

"This tragic event is only one example of many. Transitions in countries which have suffered for a long time are generally messy and real human tragedies take place," Sumaidaie said.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton termed the council's unanimous vote, "a vivid demonstration of broad international support for a federal, democratic, pluralist and unified Iraq." He is of course the architect and driver of the US policy to deprive countries of US aid unless they refuse to ratify the protocols of the International Criminal Court having jurisdiction over American Military Forces …

Bolton was busy otherwise as the UN General Assembly voted for the 14th straight year to call for an end to the 43- year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba,``This is a complete exercise in irrelevancy, for a General Assembly that has not yet seriously attempted to reform the UN Human Rights Commission to adopt this exercise in Cuban propaganda really tells you something.''

Israel as expected sided with the US , with those mighty warriors the Marshall Islands and Palau (?) in voting against the non-binding resolution, which urges the U.S. to ``repeal and invalidate'' the embargo that has been in effect since 1962. Micronesia abstained.El Salvador, Iraq, Nicaragua and Morocco didn't vote. The resolution was adopted today by a vote of 182 to 4.

Recent blogs on same topic here

French Riots - differing voices

Predictably immigration and multiculturalism come to the forefront in Europe. Is France a powder keg ? This is an issue France, Europe, and other Western countries ought to take very seriously - some diverse opinions

IsraelNN.com sees the trouble spreading and reports "Muslim Riots Break Out in Denmark As Well."

Souhail, a French Muslim of Moroccan origin, shouts "THIS is a war."

Barbara J. Stock shockingly asks "How Long Before Europe Falls?" and answers it.

Islam Online reports that the Interior Minster, Nicolas Sarkozy, said the violence was "perfectly organized."
Sher Zieve reports "France Riots Now Urban Guerilla Warfare."

Newsweek asks "Will the riots swell the ranks of jihadists in Europe?"

James Dunnigan ;ooks at French loyalty among Muslim troops.

John Armor says "French Muslims Issue False Fatwa."

ParaPundit has a great breakdown.

A USA Today editorial writes that there are shouts of "it's Baghdad" and calls for "jihad," or holy war.
Mark Steyn yells as usual "Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands!"

Paul Mirengoff realizes that these riots in France are fundamentally different than America's in the 1960s.

Mike Tate thinks Tony Blankley's "Nightmare Scenario" in his new book, The West’s Last Chance, may be coming true.

US Congressman Tom Tancredo believes many Muslims don't want to become "European." And he says the French and Danish riots are part of a larger militant Islamic movement perpetually at odds with the West.

Gilles Kepel, an advisor on Islamic affairs to Chirac, says the creation of “a new Andalusia” in which Christians and Muslims would live side by side and cooperate is the solution. However, it does not address the important issue of political power: Who will rule this new Andalusia — Muslims or the largely secularist Frenchmen?

Elisabeth Pineau sadly says there is no end in sight.


Danes clamp down on Giant Hogweed

Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) (also Finnish Kaukasianjättiputki Swedush ;Kaukasisk jättefloka )is a giant species of hogweed, and grows up to 12 feet in height. An alien species in Europe and N.America, introduced into parks and demesnes in the 19th Century as an ornamental, but now 'escaped' into the wild and spreading along most major rivers. The Danish Government is proposing to fine landowners who do not eradicate the plant.

It is large, riparian, hairy perennial herb in the Parsley Family with stout taproot of fleshy, fibrous roots; hollow green stems with purple spots; dark green, coarsely toothed leaves divided into 3 large segments; lower leaves can exceed 2.5 metres in length; small white flowers are produced in large flat-top umbrella-like terminal clusters up to 0.8 metres across. The greatest concern from giant hogweed is human health. The blister like pustules on stems and stalks exude a clear watery sap that sensitizes skin to ultraviolet radiation. Affected areas are subject to severe burns that usually result in blistering and painful dermatitis. Blisters often result in purplish to blackened scars. Giant hogweed's tenacious and invasive nature allows it to readily occupy and crowd out native vegetation. In riparian areas it forms a dense canopy, out-competing native species and causing streambank erosion.

· can produce 50,000 seeds per plant
· an escaped garden ornamental originating from Caucasus region of Asia

· Warning: small hairs on stems and leaves contain a poisonous sap that can cause severe irritation, blistering and dermatitis – very dangerous if children use the stems as peashooters.

I now discover there is a Manchester based GIANT HOGWEED SOLUTIONS contact them here

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Paris riots - a European view

Spiegel has a roundup of the German press view on French rioters. Today (Tuesday) There is a report in the Berliner Morgenpost this morning about five cars torched in the Moabit neighborhood yesterday.

Mass sale-circulation, tabloid Bild, is asking the inevitable nightly news question: Could this happen here? Bild asks coming German interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble of the Christian Democratic Union. "Conditions in France are different than here," he tells the paper, noting that Germany doesn't have any sprawling ghetto apartment complexes like the French banlieues. He does warn that "in Germany, too, there are immigrant areas that are becoming increasingly shut off from the rest of society" and that integration must be improved.

Fresh on the heels of the "multiculti is dead" campaign it launched last year after the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, the conservative daily Die Welt chisels away at the French system of integration, long seen a model for Europe. "The French were often praised for their republican integration model according to which the pride of the great nation would give everyone a joint identity if they could master the language, take on citizenship, accept religious neutrality and enter the schools in a spirit of law and civility," the paper writes. It suggests the French model is more ineffective than others in Europe. Elsewhere , most immigrant violence happens in parallel societies -- there are honor killings within families, fights between rival ethnic gangs and assassinations of people accused of disparaging Allah. Not to mention drug / human trafficking turf wars ?

The paper then goes on to draw a comparison to race riots in the United States. "Europe has to face up to the kind of situation that the US was confronted with during the 1960s race riots."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, jumps on the news as an opportunity to call for a new public debate on immigration and integration in Europe. (As if it ever stopped) For the past week, the paper opines, you've been hearing the usual oversimplifications from sociologists -- that the agitators need to be given "prospects" in life. "No one would deny that these people lack prospects," the paper concedes, "but who is supposed to offer them these prospects?" Jobs are created by companies and industry, not Sarkozy. "One of the greatest dishonesties of European policy and intellectual discourse," the paper concludes, "has been that multicultural issues can only be discussed in one direction -- the 'accepting society'. Whoever calls on the immigrants themselves to integrate better is seen as a nationalist monster who lacks 'openness.'"

The leftist Die Tageszeitung says a dispassionate observer looking at France and Germany, should be warned if they think this couldn't happen in Germany - they need to take a closer look at the parallels that do exist between the countries. "Despite the differences between France and Germany, there is one core similarity," the paper observes. "In both countries, entire sections of society are becoming impoverished. Politically and socially they are increasingly shut off from the prosperous rest of the population," it adds.

The paper calls this a policy of "social apartheid" that disproportionately affects the descendents of immigrants and adds that this is, unfortunately, "the political dogma in all European Union countries." It concludes by warning that immigrants in other ghettos in Europe could follow the example of the "self-confident" rioters in Clichy-sous-Bois.

The police had better get ready too. The dominant images of the events in France have been those of competent rioters and incompetent cops who have been unable to restore order to the Parisian suburbs. This is what appalls the Financial Times Deutschland. "Under the watch of the state, the suburbs are threatening to splinter off from the state and become 'lawless zones' as Interior Minister Sarkozy calls them or a zone with its own law," the paper warns.

That, of course, would have nothing to do with a functioning civil society. "It may be comfortable for the state to leave problem areas to fend for themselves in the short term," the paper writes, "but the price in the long-term would be a total loss of state authority." The paper then appeals on French leaders to use force to restore order.

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung takes shots at Sarkozy for fanning the flames of the riots with what are seen his insensitive comments about the rioters – but according to the polls very popular views. Now, the paper warns, the rioters have a target for their hate. To them, Sarkozy, who called the rioters "scum" and "riffraff," (racaille = rabble) embodies exactly the evil they are battling against. Sarkozy may be "a politician who regrets nothing, but this crisis may yet bite him in the ass. "

Will he still be the candidate with the best chances of succeeding Jacques Chirac once the crisis has past?" the paper asks. Some are already calling for his resignation. But it's unlikely Chirac will let his interior minister fall prey to the masses. Pragmatically, the paper says the president must appear before the nation and do more than just read pre-written statements. But the Süddeutsche doubts the moral authority he holds as president will be enough to stop the chaos. "The republic is helpless," it concludes.

See oiece by Pat BUchanan (The Death of the West) here

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Monday, November 07, 2005

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"We do not torture" ...sneh ...sneh ...

"So we just turn this and its a zillion volts up his ass ?"

War abets repression by demanding obedience

Listening to Tony Blair today about how we should obey police advice. "We intend to get people to understand the importance of giving the police and our security services the powers they need to prevent terrorism in this country." This quotation may be worth further circulation ..."war labels dissent treason" ... yes Tony, we can hear you loud and very, very, clear.



U.S. elites like war. War sends the message that laws do not bind U.S. elites, that morality does not bind U.S. elites, that nothing binds U.S. elites but their estimates of their own interests. It trumpets that everybody else better ratify our plans, or at least get out of the way. Likewise, for U.S. elites, war preparedness is good economics. Military spending primes the capitalist pump and spurs its engines, but crucially military spending doesn't give those in the middle and at the bottom better conditions or better housing or more education or better health care or anything else that will make people less afraid, more knowledgeable, more secure, and particularly more able to develop and pursue their own agendas regarding economic distribution. War empowers the rich and powerful, but its real virtue is that it disempowers working people and the disenfranchised poor. War annihilates deliberation. It elevates mainstream media to dominate communication even more than in peacetime. War abets repression by demanding obedience. It labels dissent treason, or in this case, incipient terrorism. Elites like all this, not surprisingly.

Michael Albert "Peace Movement Prospects" September 2001
Michael edits Z-Magazine and Z-Net

Rudi Dutschke Strasse

Events in France bring to mind Paris May 1968. A friend reminds me of the East German Rudi Dutschke who had escaped to West Germany the day before the Communists commenced building the Berlin Wall.

At first, his generation wanted to examine why Hitler had been allowed to gain support. They were met with silence and concentrated their efforts on protesting about, and removing former Nazis from office. Dutschke joined the German Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS) and became central in organising demonstration and protests especially against the war In Vietnam. The publisher Axel Springer , publisher of the tabloid Bild-Zeitung campaigned against Dutschke ..."Stop Dutschke NOW" was the headline.An impressionable young house painter(!) stalked the vilified “Red” Rudi Dutschke, shooting him five times in front of his apartment. Shocked and outraged German students immediately cried for vengeance, and attacked the hated Springer Press headquarters (they believed that Springer’s relentless campaign against Dutschke inspired the attack on him). Ulrike Meinhof attended the massive protests against Springer that night and a friend persuaded her to use her car as part of the blockade of Springer’s printing plant. Worried about damaging her car, she parksed it on the very end of the blockade. As tenuous as it is, this is Ulrike’s first timid steps towards putting her Marxist beliefs into action.

Rudi studied at (the then) Berlin Free University, (designed by Shadrach Woods et. al - new building recently by Norman Foster), now with the half the student numbers and 1% of the idealism of the founders.

Bild was famously attacked by German novelist Heinrich Boll in his novel 1974's The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. Boll said that Bild, “isn’t cryptofascist anymore, not fascistoid, but naked fascism, agitation, lies and dirt.” In an attempt to put their violent campaign into perspective, Böll would call the Baader-Meinhof Gang’s efforts “the war of 60 against 60 million.”

At this time, with the Baader Meinhof gang acheiving a huge cultist following , with their oenchant for stealing the easily hot-wired BMW 2000, it rapidly became called the Baader-Meinhof Wagen - some say it saved the ailing Bavarain morot company from oblivion.

Naturally after the excesses of the Baader Meinhof gang the Bundestag rammed through changes to the Basic German Law aimed squarely at the Baader-Meinhof Gang. The laws, which become known as Lex Baader-Meinhof.

With his American wife Gretchen Klotz, whom he married in 1966 and their three children, he struggled and eventually ended up in England at Cambridge University. In 1971 he was expelled by the Tory Government (along with his family) as an undesirable alien who had engaged in subversive activity.

He moved to Denmark and died there, drowning in the bath having an epileptic seizure 24th December 1979.

Rudi Dutschke had re - entered the German political scene after protests against the building of nuclear power plants activated a new movement in the mid-1970s. Dutschke recognized that this movement (The Green Party) had a far broader base than the student movement had, and that its ecological orientation was going to define the progressive direction for the next generation. He also worked with dissidents in eastern Europe, in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and what was then Czeckoslovakia.

This August the City of Berlin decided to rename the Kochstrasse (seee map) after him… and from his grave, he cocks a snook , crossing the Axel - Springer Strasse where you can visit the Springer Publishing HQ.

The Revolution is not an event that takes two or three days, in which there is shooting and hanging. It is a long drawn out process in which new people are created, capable of renovating society so that the revolution does not replace one elite with another, but so that the revolution creates a new anti-authoritarian people who in their turn re-organize the society so that it becomes a non-alienated human society, free from war, hunger, and exploitation.


Rudi Dutschke on March 7, 1968 as quote by the obese Andrea Dworkin in Woman Hating, 1974

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Sunday, November 06, 2005

Paris/ French Street wars - Shadrach Woods and The Man In The Street

Shadrach Woods was pupil of Corbusier, He formed a partnership with George Candilis, and Alex Josic and was responsible for buildings urban areas in Morocco and Algeria,. Famously they built Toulouse le Maireau and the Berlin Free University.

Woods wrote the essential book (well it is for me) for understanding the modern city ,“The Man in the Street” A Polemic on urbanism, it was available in the mid – 70’s as a Penguin but no longer, the recently published book by Tom Avermaete, Another Modern, The Post-War Arch-itecture and Urbanism of Candilis-Josic-Woods Nai Publishers Rotterdam Paperback, 432 pages / ISBN 90-5662-473-3, € 42.00 helps put their work in perspective.

The Man in the Street is the tale of the urban space that we all, rich or poor, young or old, do inhabit at some time; where we find a place to live out our destiny in its houses , factories, offices, schools, buses, and streets. A series of questions might be asked. The question is, who shall decide, govern and profit from the machines that cities are? (Vide Corbusier "a house is a machine for living")

There is the current answer, the national rulers. (Central Government Grants – with ring fences, targets etc.,)

Woods hoped for another possibility: The man in the street, in the city.

The question ? What will be the basis of the city system? The traditional answer is, one one hand the system of speculation and privilege, the other, disenfranchisement despair and poverty.

There could be another answer, a system of communal action and tranquillity, public service and shared amenities. The question is, what form shall the city take? The traditional answer is the centric city with power concentrations and suburban dispersal, slightly modified into a automotive megapolitan mess with peripheral power concentrations and more widespread dispersal.

Another answer might be the communal, non-hierarchical, continuous, de-centered city of integrated, close-by activities designed for human intercourse restoring neighborliness and urbanity as human pursuits. This vision is the city that Shadrach Woods described, in words and maps, and that he made in his buildings.

Read his book and the problems of the city he outlined – mainly from a French perspective with a deep knowledge of the North African diaspora – and the riots in France were foreseen 30 years ago.

Deterioration and squalor he saw as a variety of urban chaos, interacting negatively with efficiency, safety and liveability. The public realm is particularly damaged by the violence of decay and collapse: "we have been unable to create and maintain even a minimum standard of environmental decency across any of our western cities." In addition, pollution of the public air, water and and sound-space has proceeded apace. Overcrowding is endemic in the ghettos of the poor and a common feature of middle class redoubts, (brown field site congestion, overloaded roads) adding to the forces of deterioration and abuse of every part of the urban fabric.


In a struggle for power and growth, human values become perverted: the bureaucrat becomes timid and power hungry, public service is demeaned, jobs lose their value in the interest of consumption, love of country becomes the chauvinism of the military state or the nationalism of hatred, the man in the street is disenfranchised from the planning process and is set against his neighbor in the struggle for economic power.

Woods' description of the problems that the city was facing was a mild tonic compared to his outcry at the shortcomings of our society: a society that he saw as devoted to endless economic development - with expansion and exploitation joined together; top of the heap individualism; management by overwhelmed, unresponsive bureaucrats (Surely not ?); rabid nationalism (BNP, Le Pen, Islam); and misuse of resources on a global scale. He saw the city as the front-line battlefield in this societal system, where interest groups, ethnic or economic or both devoted the lion's share of the worlds resources to the seizure and maintenance of their own hegemony. (Sound familiar)

On November 14th his personal Archive is being donated to Columbia University NY NY and his work celebrated with seminars, talks, and a massive exhibition.

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Outrage in Beirut



Phil Collins holds Concert ... immediately leaves country... to be in Jaffa, Israel for Monday night, 7th Nov. on his Final Farewell Tour.


UNSC Resolution 1636 (2005) ... hang on lets look at 497 1981


Resolution 497 (1981)
Adopted by the Security Council at its 2319th meeting
on 17 December 1981

The Security Council,

Having considered the letter of 14 December 1981 from the Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic contained in document S/14791,

Reaffirming that the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible, in accordance with the United Nations Charter, the principles of international law, and relevant Security Council resolutions,

1. Decides that the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect;

2. Demands that Israel, the occupying Power, should rescind forthwith its decision;

3. Determines that all the provisions of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 continue to apply to the Syrian territory occupied by Israel since June 1967;

4. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the implementation of this resolution within two weeks and decides that in the event of non-compliance by Israel, the Security Council would meet urgently, and not later than 5 January 1982, to consider taking appropriate measures in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.


.....WEl the 2 weeks is up ....After this has been considered can we then get round to UNSC Resolution 1636 (2005)


13. Requests the Commission to report to the Council on the progress of the
inquiry by 15 December 2005, including on the cooperation received by the
Commission from the Syrian authorities, or anytime before that date if the
Commission deems that such cooperation does not meet the requirements of this
resolution, so that the Council, if necessary, could consider further action;

…..which as we all know is the important bit which provides the fig leaf to allow any sort of activity that the US decides to take, in conjunction with Israel.

Strangely Jack Straw forgot to mention 497 ... must have slipped his memory ...


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Uncle Sam's Bomb Farm

This is a view of the "Bomb Farm" on the deck of the US Fifth Fleet's aircraft carrier "Abraham Lincoln" days after Desert Storm commenced and the surreal son et lumiere sound and light Shock and Awe show got under way.

Imagine the damage each one of these High Explosive 2,000 JDAM bombs produces, (Cost US$260 plus US£232,000 for the Boeing retro-fit JDAM Guidance pack) - maybe you could make the comparison with the 4 back pack devices that killed 52 people in London on 7/7.

Compare the size of the bombs with the flight deck personnel.

December 2004 Boeing announced that they had delivered 10,000 JDAM kits and were producing at the rate of 3,000 per month.

On September 17th 2003 a B-2A dropped 80, 500lb JDAM’s simultaneously – basically a city wide cluster bomb.

Placing maximum steel on the target is what we get paid to do as Air Force bomber pilots and that happened today in a big way,” said Major William Power, 419th Flight Test Squadron B-2A project pilot. “Dropping 80 JDAM MK-82s in less than 30 seconds, with each attacking their own individual targets, is truly revolutionary.”


The Lockheed Martin F/A-22 Raptor, demonstrated in May ’05 the supersonic delivery of JDAM’s in which a Laser JDAM was released from a U.S Air Force F-16 flying at 20,000 feet approximately four miles from an unmanned truck moving at 15 miles per hour. A second F-16 trailing the test aircraft targeted the truck with a laser. The inert JDAM tracked the laser to the target and scored a direct hit on the truck.

“Adding the capability of supersonic JDAM provides a substantial increase in bomb range to destroy lethal threats well outside of their engagement envelopes,” he said. “The Raptor is essential to the Global Strike concept, and supersonic JDAM optimizes that capability.” (Courtesy of Air Force Materiel Command News Service)


... a bunch of ragheads can apparently do the same trick with an improvised IED made out of old artillery shells, a mobile phone and some ingenuity.... and at a slightly lower cost.

...of course if you needed a precise hit on a seafront motorcade in Beirut ..

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(C) Very Seriously Disorganised Criminals 2002/3/4/5/6/7/8/9 - copy anything you wish