Something for the weekend

A whole bunch of antagonisms....

Following the Israeli bombing of the Jiyyeh power station, an oil slick ensued. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report that satellite imagery shows the resulting slick covering 80 km of Lebanese coastline and having reached Syrian waters. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), estimate that "some 10,000 tonnes escaped and there is potential altogether for up to 35,000 tonnes to be spilt," and note the slick now affects around a third of Lebanon's coastline. The BBC's Richard Black underlines the severity of the incident, suggesting that the bombing may have resulted in as much oil entering the water as during the infamous Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. (Via The Disillusioned Kid)

Of course, an invasion of Lebanon planned for five years (shhh... don't tell anyone) - justified by kidnappings - is likely to have been well planned to ensure little is left of the land, sea or humanity that once constituted Lebanon before the corporate-capitalist, Zionist Armageddon visited upon them.

Elsewhere, Davide Simonetti Fisks another diatribe from the 'frayed and waxy zombie programmed by the CIA to spout the language of the White House', from which Fisking comes:

"After all in World War II thousands of innocent civilians were also deliberately targeted by superpowers levelling cities with WMD. And there were also resistance groups, only they weren’t called “terrorists” in those days; partisans, maquis or just the resistance, but not terrorists."

What's going on in this crazy world of ours? What's it all about? What is it all about?

Fill in your own blanks..... Want to know why your gas/electricity/water bills are higher than ever before? Want to know why your council tax is higher than ever before? Want to know how and why every single public service has been heisted and hijacked and run into the ground by private firms? Want to know why baker's dozens of passengers can be killed on public transport with nothing more than a slap on the wrist under health and safety regulations for those responsible? Want to know why The State can execute an innocent man and get away with a fine, the tab for which will be picked up by the taxpayers who already paid for the executioners? Want to know what the incessant and ongoing death and destruction in the Middle East is all about? Want know why no amount of council tax, nor road tax, nor fuel tax is considered sufficient taxation by The State to allow you to park outside your own fucking front door without first having been a 'decent, law abiding citizen' once more and having an additional regressive taxation extorted from you, else run the risk of being fined/clamped/towed - probably by a firm associated with NCP - and ultimately thrown in jail - if you haven't followed the ever changing rules of the ever more expensive game? Want to know why there are no pensions for the working classes who gave the best years of their lives, all for a free TV license in their twilight years? Want to know why international war criminals, money launderers and terrorist financiers are all allowed to roam free around the planet in suits and ties, while ordinary working class kids who have fuck-all to look forward to other than the continuation of the misery of their cyclic predicament of getting pissed in bus shelters, are being tagged and prevented from leaving their homes or associating with their families? Want to know why you can buy cigarettes but can't smoke them anywhere without breaking the law? Want to know why 20% of the whole world's CCTV cameras are in the UK and still can't produce any images of all four alleged suicide bombers in London on 7th July 2005? Want to know why go to the expense of ID cards instead of having numbers tattooed on your arm like they did in the old days? Want to know why merely replacing Blair, Bush or any other fake figurehead won't change a thing? Want to know why interest rates have just gone up? Want to know why there are record numbers of bankruptcies, house repossessions and levels of poverty, everywhere?

Feel the pinch? Squat now, while stocks last.

FASCISM What It Is and How To Fight It

What Next? Vital Question for the German Proletariat, 1932

After fascism is victorious, finance capital directly and immediately gathers into its hands, as in a vise of steel, all the organs and institutions of sovereignty, the executive administrative, and educational powers of the state: the entire state apparatus together with the army, the municipalities, the universities, the schools, the press, the trade unions, and the co-operatives. When a state turns fascist, it does not mean only that the forms and methods of government are changed in accordance with the patterns set by Mussolini -- the changes in this sphere ultimately play a minor role -- but it means first of all for the most part that the workers' organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat. Therein precisely is the gist of fascism....

Leon Trotsky
(via Lord Patel of the Internet)

The solution to the global woes of humanity that arise when too many suffer at the hands of too few? Simple also:

"It is time for revolution."

- Damon Albarn, Musician
Evening Standard Print Edition

Don't follow leaders, watch your parking meters....