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The objective of Common Purpose UK is to destroy the national identity of Britain - says the masthead of the Stop Common Purpose website.

This is a (so far) anonymous site that wants to focus attention on the insidious way that the Commpn Purpose organisation is infiltrating many parts of public services. One of their major claims is ..."One of the main targets of Common Purpose is the police because CP wants to create a police state in Britain."

Well somebody does, as the last ten years have seen the massive transfer of powers not only to the Police but as the recent case in Poole chasing parents for registration of their children at school but also other civil arms of the state.

Where for example does the Suffolk Police get the titles "Head of Protective Services", "Head of Citizen Focus", "Director of Criminal Justice Change" and "Director of Knowledge Architecture".... these suggest a mindset going beyond nabbing car thieves and burglars.

Today ,Greater Manchester Police has announced they have become the first police force in the country to use the social networking website Facebook. This will they claim will help them fight crime.

A special application has been developed by the Force's Web Unit to raise awareness of local incidents, operations and appeal for information, allowing members of Facebook to install it on to their profile for regular updates.

"Facebook has 59 million users, 7 million of which live in the UK, so we realised that this was an excellent way of spreading our messages to people on a more personal basis", says Assistant Chief Constable Rob Taylor .

Around 750 people have installed the application since it's official launch yesterday and can be shared amongst a user's friends or can be added directly from htttp://apps.facebook.com/gmpupdates.

Just look what they would like you to sign up to ..

If you are unwise enough to sign up and accept their Platform Application Terms of Use this is just one item you sign up to ..

II. Consent Regarding Use of Facebook Site Information

(b) Examples of Facebook Site Information. The Facebook Site Information may include, without limitation, the following information, to the extent visible on the Facebook Site: your name, your profile picture, your gender, your birthday, your hometown location (city/state/country), your current location (city/state/country), your political view, your activities, your interests, your musical preferences, television shows in which you are interested, movies in which you are interested, books in which you are interested, your favorite quotes, the text of your "About Me" section, your relationship status, your dating interests, your relationship interests, your summer plans, your Facebook user network affiliations, your education history, your work history, your course information, copies of photos in your Facebook Site photo albums, metadata associated with your Facebook Site photo albums (e.g., time of upload, album name, comments on your photos, etc.), the total number of messages sent and/or received by you, the total number of unread messages in your Facebook in-box, the total number of "pokes" you have sent and/or received, the total number of wall posts on your Wall™, a list of user IDs mapped to your Facebook friends, your social timeline, and events associated with your Facebook profile.

A Police state doesn't need the help of Common Purpose.

Peter Andreas Thiel who helped invent PayPal put in the first US$500,000 that got Mr Zuckerman and his pals off the ground to build up Face Book. Not only a Board Director of Face Book he is also an activist with TheVanguard.Org which is an offshoot of the Soros funded MoveOn (as is Grover Norquist) ....."We empower regular people to exercise their rights and fulfill their civic responsibilities, by organizing with them for effective action; by training candidates and citizens in the nuts and bolts of how to win; and by promoting policy ideas calculated to reshape America and the globe."

Many of TheVanguard's staff and advisors are members of the secretive conservative group the Council for National Policy.
Peter Thiel is also involved with the strange Singularity Institute...

Götterdämmerung

Financial Collapse will End the Occupation by Mike Whitney Information Clearing House

How Will It End?

The Bush administration has decided to pursue a strategy that is unprecedented in US history. It has decided to continue to prosecute a war that has already been lost morally, strategically, and militarily. But fighting a losing war has its costs. America is much weaker now than it was when Bush first took office in 2000; politically, economically and militarily. US power and prestige around the world will continue to deteriorate until the troops are withdrawn from Iraq. But that's unlikely to happen until all other options have been exhausted. Deteriorating economic conditions in the financial markets are putting enormous downward pressure on the dollar. The corporate bond and equities markets are in disarray; the banking system is collapsing, consumer spending is down, tax revenues are falling, and the country is headed into a painful and protracted recession.

The US will leave Iraq sooner than many pundits believe, but it will not be at a time of our choosing. Rather, the conflict will end when the United States no longer has the capacity to wage war. That time is not far off.

Mike Whitney has an apocalyptic view of Iraq .. much of which also applies to Afghanistan. Sooner or later the Presidential candidates are going to have to anser the hard questions.. abortion, the collapse of Wall Stret, the lack of support for the war. Read what he says.

Visitors - queueuing up

Mr Goody Two Shoes

Twat, Spyess and Iraqi Sanctions buster get seats in the House of Lords.

Sir John Mogg KCMG is the feeble and totally fucking useless Non-Executive Chairman of OFGEM and is also Chairman of the EU Energy Regulators which he fits in with also being Chair of the Board of Governors at the University of Brighton.

He is one of 3 Three new non-party-political peers recommended by the House of Lords Appointments Commission announced yesterday.

Which is odd, because he has been a lifelong member of the Labour Party.

The others are Lady Handbag and top spyess Dame Elizabeth Manningham-Buller DCB who will join all the other spyesses alongside us.

Sir Robert Smith is Chairman of both The Weir Group (Board members include Ex Nato secretary-general Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (George) GCMG, FRSE, PC) and of Scottish and Southern Energy. He was once a Director of Maxwell Communications Corporation. Many will remember that the Weir group were heavily involved in sanctions breaking with a Mr Saddam Hussein. (Hansard )

A Mr Andrew Macleod a low level meber of the Weir group staff made an illegal paymentof £4.3 Mn to Mr Saddam Hussein who said in his defence, "I did as I was told".

Chairman, Sir Robert Smith, said: "It is most regrettable that previous statements, whilst made in good faith, were incorrect. The problem dates back to 2000.

"We undertook a thorough review of these contracts and although the investigation has not yet concluded the board considered it essential that we make public the current information." BBC

Weir Group chief executive (he still is) Mark Selway has admitted that the company did make payments to Saddam's regime, saying: "The company did wrong. We are not proud of this."

On January 18th 2006 Mr MacLeod left the Weir Group... he is not a member of the House of Lords.

To justify the description of Mogg go here Wednesday, February 06, 2008 There is something very badly wrong at OfGEM... The UK consumer is being suckered and they stand by and do nothing but bleat. and Thursday, February 21, 2008 OfGEM - a case for a clean sweep, bag and baggage, Chairman and Directors.... and Monday, July 24, 2006 Energy price riser for UK

British Bankers Association caught lying about LIBOR rates

The Daily Telegraph has an extrordinary article today;

First things first .

The London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) is the rate at which members of the British Bankers' Association (BBA) lend money to each other for a variety of currencies. This is a benchmark reference such that , for example the Granite Bonds isued by Northern Wreck were offered in different tranches paying above Dollar LIBOR. Rates are calculated by 16 panel banks across 10 currencies and 15 lending periods ranging from overnight to one year. (Helpful BBA notes here)

This is calulated (see below) and published daily by Reuters and is accessible here - along with historic data in the form of Excel files which can be downloaded.

Yesterday LIBOR soared 8 basis points (0.08% the largest jump since it rose 0.12% on August 9th 2007), this followed commentators who have begun to question the credibility of the published figures suggesting it was being deliberately understated in an attempt to minimise the extent of the banks funding problems..

In brief they are fiddling the published figure because borrowing is more costly than stated.

WSJ report that Thursday was a different story. The highest quote of the morning was submitted by HBOS PLC, which submitted a 2.86% rate for a three-month loan. That was up 0.10 percentage point from Wednesday. HSBC Holdings PLC posted a rate of 2.85%, up 0.12 percentage point from Wednesday.

The DT reports that BBA Libor director John Ewan acknowledged that banks, " were likely to have reconsidered the information they supplied for use in setting Libor."... this was due more to "concerns about difficult market place conditions than questions about credibility," Mr Ewan said.

The DT quote Nomura rate strategist Sean Maloney who says the jump in dollar Libor was "an account to honesty". i.e after a period of fibs they had decided to 'fess up.

Mr Ewan said the reason for the jump in dollar reference rates yesterday, while sterling and euro-denominated Libor were broadly steady, was "tricky to call because it's difficult to disentangle cause and effect". Dollar three-month Libor rose to 2.8175pc, while three-month sterling Libor dipped to 5.90625pc and three-month euro Libor edged up to 4.78pc.

Mr Ewan said the association board had discussed the Libor concerns at a regular meeting yesterday, and added: "I think as a result of that, banks have been looking again at the definition of what they should submit to us." i.e they decided to 'fess up.

But market effects had also played a role and the dollar-denominated Libor was more volatile as a key reference for the derivatives market, "which is almost exclusively a dollar market", Mr Ewan said. Blather, blather, blather ...bollocks.

Anyway (who regularly pummels the Today presenters) to issue a notice :

Commenting on today’s movements in interbank lending rates, Angela Knight, Chief Executive of the British Bankers' Association, said:

"The continued rise in BBA LIBOR rates reflects increasing liquidity pressures in funding markets internationally. These were referred to in the coordinated statement by the major central banks last Tuesday."

"This is the quarter–end reporting period for many banks internationally: it was always anticipated that rates would tighten further at this time."
i.e PR ese for - we decided to 'fess up.

How is LIBOR calculated? (This is the BBA explanation )

The BBA uses Reuters to fix and publish the data daily, usually before 12 noon UK time. It assembles the interbank borrowing rates from 16 contributor panel banks at 11am, looks at the middle 50 per cent of these rates and uses these to calculate an average, which then becomes that day’s BBA LIBOR rate.

This process is followed 150 times to create rates for all 15 maturities (ranging from overnight to 12 months) and all 10 currencies for which a BBA LIBOR rate is quoted.

Plenty of room for wriggle room there then. What is plainly obvious is that the recent figure for LIBOR (especially $LIBOR) have been fiddle / adjusted / amended / reviewed to provie the market with a misleading impression.

How strapped the banks are for cash is the notice by the RBOS of the neeed to shore their Balance sheet with £10Bn from the shareholders. The success or otherwise of this offer will really tell us how flush the banks are with cash. It will be fascinating to see who the underwriters are and what discount they want.

Similiar reports in Reuters WSJ ..."The world's most widely used interest rate took its largest jump since the advent of the credit crisis in a sign that banks could be responding to increasing concerns that the rate doesn't reflect their actual borrowing costs."

....In a note to clients Thursday, UBS AG strategist William O'Donnell suggested that banks were responding to the heightened scrutiny, saying that the BBA's announcement of its inquiry was an attempt "to bring publicly posted rates back into line with the shadow interbank money rate market."

The WSJ also report William Porter, credit strategist at Credit Suisse, says the 3 months LIBOR is 0.4% undersated, Scott Peng, of Citigroup Inc. says it is 0.3 % below the actual level.

Ian Campbell offers this postscript at L'Agefi
Is there no end to the unhappy saga of banks’ loss of prestige? The suitability of the London Interbank Offered Rate, known to its familiars as Libor, as a benchmark interest rate is now being called into question. The reason is that banks themselves supply the figures upon which Libor is based—and now do not trust them.

Meanwhile the job cuts have started

Senlis Council produce yet another despairing report on poppy cultivation, heroin production and trafficking in Afghanistan

"In the past year (2007-2008), opium production in Afghanistan reached a record level, estimated at 8,200 tons of raw opium. Traffickers also refined much of the opium into heroin before exporting it. The Taliban-led insurgency supported by al-Qaida spread to new areas in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The level of terrorism, especially suicide bombings, set record
levels in both countries, hitting high-profile targets such as Pakistan’s most popular politician, Benazir Bhutto, and the Serena Hotel in Kabul. After six years of assistance to the Afghan government by the UN, NATO, the world’s major military powers, the world’s largest aid donors, and international specialists on all subjects, the expansion of both the illicit industry and the insurgency constitutes a powerful indictment of international policy and capacity."

"In Afghanistan, nearly a third of the economy and probably an equal percentage of the population depends economically on the opium economy. Drug production affects not just farm income. It affects the balance of payments, tax revenues (through imports), the rate of exchange, employment, retail turnover, and construction."

Counter-Narcotics to Stabilize Afghanistan: The False Promise of Crop Eradication by Barnett R. Rubin & Jake Sherman, Senlis Council April 2008

This paints a bleak picture of the program for poppy eradication and that any such program will takes many years , if not decades. This brief sentence sums up the whole desperate and futile campaign .... " .. law enforcement cannot defeat an elite consensus. And the elite consensus in Afghanistan right now is that foreigners have offered no credible alternative to the opium economy."

Child trafficking

One remarkable fact (if true) is contained within a survey by Charney Research Page 12 .."
one out of seven respondents in poppy growing provinces and one in four in Helmand said they knew of farming families who had sold their children (most likely girls) in payment of opium debts as a result of eradication.

Farmers are advanced money "salaam" as a sort of futue contract on their crop, if this is destroyed b the US / NATO forces the debt stands.

Antique Gollywog biffs Brown whilst he is out - "The Invisible Hand" at work

My geriatric colleague Lord Desai (108), has taken the opportunity whilst Gordon Brown is interviewing the Pope and George Bush in the US to make some unfortunate remarks about both English and Scots cooking.

In the cookery pages of the Eveming Standard he says mysteriously that the Prime Minister is like porridge or Haggis. Such tosh, this foreigner has probably never wielded a porringer nor been involved in a haggis hunt in his life.
He is right however ... Gordon does dither and his answers to Parliamentary answers are a serious rival to sleep inducing narcoleptics.

However the fonctionnaires of No 10 have resolved this as we pointed out some time ago by skilful editing of the record...Friday, November 30, 2007 Nu Labour - Daggers out as the blame shifting starts over dodgy donors

Now here's a funny thing .. if you want to go to the No 10 Downing street site to get the official record of the PM's Press Conference you will find that a great deal is missing / redacted / removed . e.g it starts ....

Prime Minister:
[party political content]
Question:
[party political content]
Prime Minister:
[party political content]
Question:
[party political content]
Prime Minister:
[party political content]
I think everybody has known that when Lord Hayden Phillips was looking at party funding that things had to change. We have been waiting for the results of his review to see what has to be done.
[party political content]
Question:
[party political content]
...and so on until we get to the naming of Teddy Bears.

If you follow the link to helpful notes on transcript editing you get ..

Sometimes it is necessary to edit the transcripts. This is either because in accordance with long-standing practice under the Ministerial and Civil Service codes, government websites cannot carry party political content, or because the audio quality has made it impossible to transcribe

Regretfully the NU Labour spin machine has no such control over the sweating Hansard hacks who faihtuflly reproduce his interminable drivel and mind crushing delivery.

Well done Lord Desai! This nice nurse will get you a cup of tea and then you can go back to sleep, and she will wake you up in time for the General Election.. The Nu Labour Party needs more people like you, so the Cameronian Low Lifers can get back again. Meanwhile here's a nice fat brown envelope (gedditt!) from that nice David Milliband - you used to know his Dad.

Meanwhile over at Threadneedle Street my other friend Lord King is attaching the "Get Well" cards to the bundles of money ready to throw out of the helicopters over Bishopsgate and Canary Wharf.

PS : Lord Gollywog wrote a book : Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism

Dmitry Shorin - darling of the silovaki

Dmitry Shorin is a young Saint-Petersburg artist who has an exhibition opening today at the Marble Palace in St Petersburg of the Russian State Museum.

He was born in Omsk in 1971 and initially studied at the Omsky Technological University , folowed by four years at the Textile Institute, St. Petersburg. He won a prize in the St. Petersburg Camel exhibition and has initiated joint projects with other artists in St. Petersburg. He has held solo exhibitions in Russia and Belgium.

As the centre of gravity moves toward St Petersburg fluttering around Putin and his silovaki Shorin achieves notable status with the oligarchs by these bright, clean images. The image above was promoted by Red Bull in their Hangar 7 exhibition of modern artists ..."Fly By"

Victor Bout - Thai charges dropped

The Thai authorities have dropped all charges against Victor Bout and he is still held in bangkok awaiting extradition to the US.

Putin to marry world class Uzbek gymnast Alina Kabaeva

Lord Patel posted this fascinating story Thursday, September 27, 2007 Alina Kabaeva - World Class Uzbek / Russian artistic gymnast with a fascinating life story - Amazing pictures !

Now Vladimir (56) has pensioned off Mrs Putin (June 16th in St petersburg) and he will soon marry the graceful and beautiful gymnast (aged 25)whom we explained was not only friendly with Mr Alisher Usmanov, part owner of a struggling North London football team but also with President Mr Putin.

Not many people were interested at the time.

We also had a nice photograph of her Friday, September 28, 2007 Northern Rock plc given £7.75 Bn. of tax payers dosh by thrifty, prudent Scots, Brown + Darling - technically a loan but actually thrown away

"Pic is of the beautiful, delightfully athletic, and artistic gymnast Alina Kabaeva who can do remarkable things with balls and ribbons accompanied by music and the Russian President, Mr Putin, with whom I would be delighted to discuss the complex world of global finance especially in relation to the beautiful country of Uzbekistan.

Alina retired as a gymnast in February and joined the United Russia party at the suggesion of Putin. Svetlana Khorkina, 28, Olympic champion and Olympic speed skating champion Svetlana Zhurova, 35, both became members at the same time - they were called "Putin's Babes" a la Blair's Babes . Here is her official Duma website page

Ex President Vladimir will solemnize the union at Tsarskoe Selo, th magnificent Summer Palace of the late Russian Tsars.

Many thanks to Mr Vagit Alekperov who does not infrequently slip the odd interesting nugget of pure gold our way.

Enjoy


UPDATE : Wednesday The Daily Telegraph catches up with the news

UPDATE Thursday : Now the Daily Mail catches up

Condi - she likes bombing AS WELL as torture

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Remarks At Air University, Maxwell-Gunter Air Air Force Base - Montgomery, Alabama April 14, 2008 Secretary Rice receives the first honorary degree at Air University, Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, Alabama.

"General Lorenz, General Trey Obering, Secretary Beth Chapman, Dr. Bruce Murphy, distinguished guests, faculty, again, members of the Board of Visitors, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to speak with you today about one of our most important missions and, indeed, one of our strategic opportunities, and that’s Afghanistan. But I want to thank all of you by helping to make possible what we are doing there. Much attention is paid to what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan and, of course, in Iraq. But we can never forget that our gains on the ground are possible because of our superiority in the sky. With our soldiers, sailors, and Marines, many of you, both active duty and reservists, have deployed to the Afghanistan theater, often for multiple tours. And we are winning in Afghanistan because of you.

Our Air Force is essential to that difficult form of warfare that we have had to learn, or perhaps I should say relearn, in recent years. We tend to think of counterinsurgency warfare as a ground-based activity. But again, our entire effort on the ground depends on the lift, precision strike, and reconnaissance that our Air Force provides."

Condi must Go - Fucking Lying Bitch ™ - Amazing Pictures

You must watch this



Don't hesitate and sign the petition now


This film is a follow on to Lord patel's post Wednesday, December 07, 2005 - Fucking lying bitch™

7/7 Show Trial - Stooge tells of Government funded Iqra bookshopwho employed ex SAS Muhajiroun " muslim converts "

Yesterday Shabaz Fazal explained to the court trying Waheed Ali, 24, Mr Ali, Mohammed Shakil, 31, and Sadeer Saleem, 27 on charges of aiding the 7/7 bombers, that he was involved in running the Beeston area's Iqra bookshop.

This would of course be the Iqra Islamic bookshop which shared the same building as Leeds Community School, which obtained a Goverment grant of over £106,000 for 'staffing and construction costs.'

The 'al-Qaeda gym' in the basement of a nearby mosque used by the alleged Edgware Road bomber Khan, 30, was also equipped with money provided by Leeds City Council.

Leeds City Council also funded the nearby The Hamara youth centre, which received two huge £200,000 grants for building costs and an £189,000 EU building grant.

Both Iqra and the Leeds Community School were registered as charities but neither have never
filed accounts.

The Iqra bookshop was also of course a home from home for ex (?) SAS/ SBA/ Royal Marines
special forces soldier Martin Abdullah McDaid who was an eary (if not founding member) of member of MI5/6/7/8/9/ sponsored and run Al Mahajaroun.

When The Sunday Times approached McDaid (in late 2005) asking about a man called Yacoub , McDaid said: "Whether he was at the Iqra bookstore or not is none of your business you should fear Allah. "

The man called Yacoub who the Sunday Times wanted to meet was of course Mohammed Yacoub who was also better known as a Scots born Roman catholic (Dundee) James McLintock AKA "The Tartan Taliban".

McLintock, who lived in Bradford in the 1990s, was arrested by Pakistani police near the
Afghan border in December 2001 and questioned by the CIA and Scotland Yard anti-terrorism
officers. He claimed he was working for a charity and was released a month later.... unlimke anyo else who the Pakistani police arrested after 9/11 who either ended up ;
1. Dead
2. In Bagram prison
3. Eventually in Guantanamo
4. Like James McLintock AKA "The Tartan Taliban" back in the UK.

Two years ago he was arrested in Manchester and questioned by police investigating possible
al-Qaeda links but released without charge. He has always denied having terrorist links or
knowledge of terrorist activity.

Martin Abdullah McDaid was also associated at the bookshop with Mohammad Tafazal,
and Naveed Fiaz - Mohammed Afzal worked as a volunteer at Iqra bookshop after 7/7 and a spectacular raid by the police on the bookshop arrested by police (They were given the keys but smashed the door in in front of TV cameras) was taken to Paddington Green police station in London, some 200 miles away. He was quizzed for 13 days then released without charge.

More information was contained in the TV fillum, " Cult of the Suicide Bomber" . Channel 4, 8pm September 11 2006.

Martin 'Abdullah' McDaid and James 'Mohammed Yacoub/Yaqub' McLintock don't only share conversio to Islam , a life in Beeston, involvement with the Iqra bookshop, but neither of them are mentioned in the Home Office report / timeline for 7/7. Which is not suprising because of course they had no involvement or connectuion with the event. Did they ?

Here is another fine tangle to unravel ...

18 Alexandra Grove flat was said to be the bombers laboratory and the kicking off point for their fatal journey on 7/7 when they kissed their "industrial size regrigerator "goodbye before
slipping off their rucsacs , scattering their ID's Mobile Phones about, and dlipped off their mortal coils.

Their kicking off point was the 18 Alexandra Grove flat owned by a housing association but apparently let to or in the charge of Shakir Mahmoud Al-Ani (AKA Adnan Shakri) which he allegedly rented / allowed to use an Egyptian chemist Magdi El-Nashar pursued at one time as the mystery Fifth Bomber . He skipped to Egypt jusy before 7/7 and hasn't been seen since and was "was later eliminated from police enquiries. "

Shakir Mahmoud Al-Ani (AKA Adnan Shakri) is said to be a 'respectable hospital consultant'
who has a business registered at 2A The Drive, in the swanky northern Leeds suburb of Adel,
which is called Samara Medical Services
Directors are/ were

Shakir Mahmoud Al-Ani (AKA Adnan Shakri)
Zahra Alani (Wife - daughter ?),
Hassan Al Katib (Chairman of Leeds Muslim Forum - Arshad Chawdhry is also said to be the chairman of the Leeds Muslim Forum. )
Ahmed Albazie ( fined £3,000 under Health and Safety regulations in October 2002.)
Lena Al-Bazie
Daniel James Dwyer (a director of Resourcing the Community along with Rifhat Malik)
Philip Mark Croshaw - He had held over 2,400 directorships by the time the DTI handed down a
12-year disqualification in 1999 as a director of Oldham Vehicle Contracts,
which went into liquidation. He is mentioned in a Fairplay article regarding fraudulent online
job search sites and was rumoured 4 ears ago to be living in Cyprus. His court case in Manchester (which he failed to attend) is covered here . It appears his Sark background (former resident of the Isle of Sark (the Avenue Sark)) allowed him to peddle himself for companies registered offoshore for a "nominal" fee.

Croshaw has featured regularly in job offers as the president of Caledonian Offshore. In his letters to applicants, he claimed that salaries of $42,000-$46,000 were achievable. But the catch is that applicants had to pay $438 as a joining fee, with “£189 to be paid immediately as the retainer’s fee to start processing.

Two websites to follow by indefatigable researchers : here and here

King of the Bank of England caused the Credit Crunch

The annual speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet for Bankers and Merchants
of the City of London at the Mansion House by the Governor of the Bank of England has a lengthy history - it is a tradition. It is the time of year when the Governor provides a broad review of past activity and future expectations. The Oracle speaks.

What he said last year at the Mansion House on Wednesday 20 June 2007 to the City Glitterati as they fumbled over their 3rd or 4th brandy, adjusted their weskits and lit up their vast cigars .... on expectations for inflation (and how totally fucking wrong they were) has been examined here before.

Our central view remains that inflation will fall back this year as the rises in domestic gas and electricity prices last year drop out of the annual comparison, and the recent cuts in prices feed through to household bills.

How wrong could he be ?

As ever, there is room for differences of judgement as to the appropriate level of Bank Rate – as shown by the differing views within the MPC. But every member of the Committee is determined to bring inflation back to target and keep it there – or as close to the target as possible – indefinitely.

So as a result he and the MPC have three times reduced Bank rate since then. ... resulting in what the Daily Mail has today ... (Brent is US$114 a barrel as the market open today)

Elsewhere he delivered a surprising (and in retrospect a shattering message) ...

Your decision to grant independence to the Bank of England ten years ago is widely and rightly regarded as a fundamental improvement to the conduct of economic policy in this country, and we in the Bank are grateful to you for giving us the opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of an independent central bank.

This is of course a delusion - for example King , 30 odd working days later he was asked by Loyds Bank to be allowed to take over Northern Wreck with support from the BOE but handed this hot potato very swiftly (within hours) to the Chancellor in the lievely expectation that he would refuse. Which he did.

Financial stability more generally is a topical concern in financial markets. More than
one banker and merchant in the City has said to me recently, “I cannot recall a time when credit was more easily available”. How worried should we be?

His answer takes some time to deliver - it is one that changed the world. It's force has been overlooked, misjudged and largely unheard.

Securitisation is transforming banking from the traditional model in which banks
originate and retain credit risk on their balance sheets into a new model in which credit risk is distributed around a much wider range of investors. As a result, risks are no longer so concentrated in a small number of regulated institutions but are spread across thefinancial system. That is a positive development because it has reduced the market failure associated with traditional banking – the mismatch between illiquid assets and liquid liabilities – that led Henry Thornton and, later, Walter Bagehot to promote the role of the Bank of England as the “lender of last resort” in a financial crisis.

Distributing credit risk around may spread it, but it fails to reduce it. The result is that the "the mismatch between illiquid assets and liquid liabilities" is further from understanding, monitoring and control. The total risk is the same but identification is more difficult and deliberate concealment on many, many more balance sheets, not only within the control of the FSA but often offfshore is not only made possible , but certain. Control by the Central Bank has evaporated.

New and ever more complex financial instruments create different risks. Exotic instruments are now issued for which the distribution of returns is considerably more complicated than that on the basic loans underlying them. A standard collateralised debt obligation divides the risk and return of a portfolio of bonds, or credit default swaps, into tranches. But what is known as a CDO-squared instrument invests in tranches of CDOs. It has a distribution of returns which is highly sensitive to small changes in the correlations of underlying returns which we do not understand with any great precision. The risk of the entire return being wiped out can be much greater than on simpler instruments. Higher returns come at the expense of higher risk.

Mervyn has identified the increase in risk - he fails to say what he intends to do about it, unless the key is here ...

Whether in banking, reinsurance or portfolio management, risk assessment is a matter of judgement as much as quantitative analysis. Ever more complex instruments are designed almost every day. Some of the important risks that could affect all instruments – from terrorist attacks, invasion of computer systems, or even the consequences of a flu pandemic – are almost impossible to quantify, and past experience offers little guide.

Then he adds a lesson we all learnt at a very early age... are we to assume this modest understatement encapsulates a policy ?

Be cautious about how much you borrow is not a bad maxim for each and every one of us here tonight.

The wonderfully understated double negative is a kicker - he continues....

The development of complex financial instruments and the spate of loan arrangements without traditional covenants suggest another maxim: be cautious about how much you lend, especially when you know rather little about the activities of the borrower. It may say champagne – AAA – on the label of an increasing number of structured creditinstruments. But by the time investors get to what’s left in the bottle, it could taste rather flat. Assessing the effective degree of leverage in an ever-changing financial system is far from straightforward, and the liquidity of the markets in complex instruments, especially in conditions when many players would be trying to reduce the leverage of their portfolios at the same time, is unpredictable. Excessive leverage is the common theme of many financial crises of the past.

To which he adds ..

Are we really so much cleverer than the financiers of the past?

So there we have it , Uncle Mervyn's Old fashioned Home Remedy for Financial Stability ...be careful how much you borrow - be careful how much you lend

The result ... well, 200 miles up the Great North Road the Northern Wreck were getting ready to ready to close their accounts for the half year 11 days later. Within a month the FSA had approved their Basle II arrangements so they could having seen a massive 40% growth in lending with a rise in attributable profits of less than 1% agree on a dividend rise (eventiually of course to remain unpaid) of 33%.

Nearer at home the rate at which bankers charged for interbank lending reflected Uncle Mervyn's Old fashioned Home Remedy for Financial Stability be careful how much you borrow - be careful how much you lend .... was kicking in.

36 days later Northern Wreck released their accounts and the shares dropped £1 in minuutes - a gleeful and unconcerned CEO had unloaded all his shares at the top of the market in January.

Another 9 days after that the gap between Bank Rate and Libor had reached the limit - the bankers had absorbed Uncle Mervyn's Old fashioned Home Remedy for Financial Stability - be careful how much you borrow - be careful how much you lend

The Bankers stopped lending and borrowing ....

Read the full speech here

Big Knobs and Royalty found to hang out in all the best places

This curious story which appears in the Daily Telegraph ..

Has absolutely no connection with this November 2007 post - Royal Blackmail - a long history ... Amazing Pictures

Nor has it any connection with the remarkable story in the Daily Telegraph about.. (They are short of helicopters for bad guys to do ..er. er bad things ... er in Afghan ...er )

which probably has no connection with a Hooray Hazz Peter party at the Anchor ...

... as Autumn draws on for the mother in law from hell. Apparently the stagger shares a cottage ...

The CIA don't like Alex Salmond - their mouthpiece Tom Gallagher carries the mesage of his paymasters

If you go to the George Soros backed, CIA funded "Open Democracy" site you can at the section on Authors select the person calling himself Tom Gallagher.

The brief biography explains that he curently holds the chair of East European Studies in the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford University and that he is the author of two recent books , The Balkans in the New Millennium (Routledge, 2005) and The Balkans After the Cold War: From Tyranny to Tragedy (Routledge, paperback edition, 2005). His Theft of a Nation: Romania since Communism (Hurst & Co, 2005) is published in the United States as Modern Romania (New York University Press, 2005)

In further notes to the article discussed below he is also confusingly called chair of Ethnic peace and conflict studies at Bradford University.

He is described ... "Tom Gallagher has written extensively on sectarian and religious issues in modern Scotland, including : Glasgow, The Uneasy Peace: Religious Tensions in Modern Scotland (Manchester University Press, 1987). He is currently embarking on a research project exploring the reaction of the British state and society to the emergence of Muslim radicalism from the Salman Rushdie affair of 1988 to the present "

An article is reprinted , dated 9th September 2007 "Scotland’s nationalist-Muslim embrace" but there is no mention of which publication it first saw light so presumably this is its onlyl .

A sub heading accurately reflects the main thrust of the article - "Scotland's establishment has responded to an abortive terrorist operation by reaffirming support for the country's Muslim minority. The silences as well as the words are politically significant"

What follows is basically a polemic against the SNP and its leadership. This commences by considering the "official" reaction to the puzzling Glasgow Fire / bomb attack . Describing the SNP, the police , the Church of Scotland and the Trade unions, who organised a 1,500 strong George Square June 7th rally as "the cream of Scotland's establishment" he riles against them for having offered bridge building to the country's 60,000 Muslims. "Nobody wondered aloud about the religious dimensions of the religious dimensions of the violent ideology that had evidenty motivated the would-be massacre".

He heaps condemnation on Osama Saeed, who is 1. Young 2. Articulate 3. Muslim. 4. a political activist - he is a former SNP candidate and is also head of the Scots branch of the Muslim Association of Britain.

The ruling SNP has, he claims "assiduously cultivated " Muslims and quelle horreur elected as an MSP Bashir Ahmad who is brown and most likely has a beard. Their leader, immediately after the Glasgow near Apocalypse sought , by a personal visit to Glasgow's central mosque assuring leaders of his determination that their members would not become the focus of attack. (Apparently he also failed to commend "have a go hero" , Mr Smeaton - whom we now know was a fraud and tackled no-one although feted wearing a kilt in the US - organised by whom ?)

In doing so ( the SNP is, he claims the grievance party par excellence) he appeals to the Muslims in a co-ordinated attack on Whitehall Government.

Naturally his ire is saved most for Salmond, (a man who has never worn a uniform) the man who spoke out against the illegal bombing of Kosovo, which he perceives simplistically as solidarity with Milosevic , not as a stand against illegal wars and bombing civilians from 20,000 feet, and that he ignores his atttacks on Albanian Muslims ( bunch of mafia thugs and gangsters to a man) and recalls that Robin Cook called Salmond "Belgrade's stooge".

Salmond he sees leading a separate Scotland , not as a modern efficient state but a sort of leftist London authority "committed to redistributionist policies and a neutralist foreign policy garnished with fashionably right-on rhetoric in the hope that a durable patriotic consensus would emerge."

In this some Scottish Muslims " that see Islam primarily as an ideological tool to create a revolutionary new state" will see this "Scottishness" as an acceptable way to further their own agenda which he has identified elsewhere as the establishment of the Caliphate.

There are 9 comments on the site which are almost universally hostile to this juvenile nonsense - "To attack Salmond as a handmaiden of terrorism, which basically this article tries to do, is Daily Mail journalism at its worst."..."This was a disgraceful article attacking a leaders efforts to maintain calm in a volatile situation" ...

Professor Gallagher fights back ..."The trouble is if unquiet spirits like me don't occasionally rock the boat, all the signs are that an SNP-led Scotland, whether inside or outside the UK, will be a very narrow and conformist place" ..."The SNP is now an Alex Salmond fan-club and sections of the media are in danger of going the same way."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article3735949.ece
Now in the Sunday Times yesterday , Profesor Gallagher is afforded the space to vilify the Scottish leadership "Salmond must shun Iran - Salmond's anti-English stance and courting of radical Muslims could turn Scotland into a new East Germany"

Apparently when Salmond was in the US for some hoopla event called Tartan Week, he glided over the recent remarks of the Iranian regime through its ambassador in London, that their joint hostility to British imperialism provided the basis for a solid partnership between Edinburgh and Tehran.

The Scots under the "supremely opportunistic" Salmond , instead of condemning an Iranian regime, which is covertly arming thugs who have killed Scottish soldiers in Iraq, Salmond instead courts it and other dangerous regimes .

This "slippery operator " (as distinct from any other politician perhaps ?) makes "questionable alliances in order to drive forward the electoral ambitions of the SNP". Again the young, Muslim Osama Saeed is the object of his evident dislike ( an islamic zealot) with a working chance for gaining the Glasgow central seat (Polls show Labour and SNP equal in March) and has been appointed as a member of the Scottish government's working group to look at the issue of Trident replacement.

This " cocky but inexperienced politician " (Salmond is inexperienced ? has this guy been living in a cave for the last 30 years ?) )and Scotland with its heavily subsidised economy and crumbling social fabric, bears comparison to the old East Germany and is only kept afloat by liquidity of the banks and the solvency of the state - imperilled it appears by Salmond's reckless posturing.

All this will exact a price says the professor ... but Salmond is "unlikely to be the one to pay for it."

Again the comments , pithy and brief suggest the Professor is pissing ddirectly into the raw scottish wind of change. " Where is this man coming from???" .... "Tom Gallagher also seems to speak an utter load of tosh." ...and from Brussels ... "So this is what happens when you question the status quo.....If I were Salmond I'd take this as an endorsment that whatever he is doing is working. The mud slinging had to start sometime......" May I on behalf of all Scot/nats thank the contributer for this piece, even if he must have been drunk when he wrote it. - More votes for the SNP, keep up the good work" ..." This is exactly the type of pontificating nonsense that riles people in Scotland. "

Finally the location of where he comes from emerges when we discover that the author is "a research fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC "... supporting Freedom around the world." This organisation's funding comes almost entirely from a governmental appropriation by the US Congress and it was created by a Reagan era act of Congress.

The NED was a response to the wave of exposure of covert CIA activity - in the UK, suporting Encounter, Jim Haynes and the Traverse Theatre etc., So effectively they are a branch of the CIA - a quasi public face for them and their proxies and fellow travellers like Professor Gallagher.

"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA" said Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, during a 1991 interview with the Washington Post.

Lord Patel's advice to Alex Salmond is ...Don't go for solitary walks in the countryside.

Aangirfan has an entertaining dialogue found on a lap top computer in Glasgow recently...

PS : Must make more enquiries about who promoted Smeaton so much and organised that trip to the US , medals etc.,.... Hmmmmm

Tools for urban terrorism ™ # 4 Black Pepper

It is well known that the Metro is now the national newspaper of record ... therefore it is unnerving to read this report from the trial of Sadeer Saleem, Mohammed Shakil and Waheed Ali today ...

"The deadly devices were made of a mixture of black pepper and hydrogen peroxide so 'unique' that the bombers must have had help designing and building them, Neil Flewitt QC, prosecuting, told the jury at Kingston Crown Court.

The 'improvised' explosive mixture was made in a bath at the Leeds house, packed in plastic bags and kept cool with ice-packs."

Lurking in every spice draw, indeed on every table top is explosive Black Pepper. THIS PICTURE SHOWS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE - there is enough here to blow a Jumbo Jet out of the sky or disable a Chieftain Tank. TAKE CARE. If you have to move it, the best safety precaution is to do so wearing oven gloves.

Just when you thought it was safe to go into the kitchen.

DO NOT PANIC.

Touch nothing. Simply pick up your phone NOW

Dial 999 and explain that you have explosive Black Pepper in your house and request the emergency services, Bomb Squad and the local Counter Terrorism Unit to attend immediately.

SPEAK CALMLY AND QUIETLY.

... AND WAIT FOR YOUR LOCAL EMERGENCY SERVICES TO RESPOND

If you are blond and bleach your hair, you are advised to inform the Police officer you speak to of this fact.

Bonza scheme for body ornaments to raise the beer coupons

The Australian sense of humour which seems to extend to shitting in your shoe has found new ways to disgust foreigners. A new range of T-shirts, which is described as "provocative" is now on offer by 2 Sydney loafers Peter Legras and Adam Hunt.

Mr Hunt, who used to work, is proud of the different designs at a A$49 (US$45)and A$59 (US$55) and are not on retail sale, but only through their website goatboy.com.au

Eva Cox , who sounds like a harpy representing some ranting feminist bitches from an outfit called Women's Electoral Lobby said the T-shirts talked . What they said was "They're tasteless, crappy, crass and stupid and if people want to be seen as tasteless, crappy, crass and stupid, they'll wear the shirts."

The Diana T-shirt, which has been superimposed on to the bodies of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip in on site adverts has been attacked by Professor David Flint who says he is a monarchist.

A striking similarity

The Daily Mail reported last week ....Neil Flewitt QC, prosecuting, said: "On 16 December 2004 the defendants travelled from Leeds with one of the London bombers, Hasib Hussain, to London where, over a period of two days, they conducted a reconnaissance of potential targets."

"While they were in London they met and spent time with another of the London bombers, Jermaine Lindsay."

"It is the prosecution case that the locations visited by the defendants on 16 to 17 December 2004 bore striking similarity not only to the locations visited on 28 June 2005 by three of the London bombers, Mohammed Sidique Kahn, Shezhad Tanweer and Jermaine Lindsay, when they carried out another 'hostile' reconnaissance of possible targets but also to the locations at which the bombs were actually detonated less than two weeks later on 7 July 2005."

The locations visited included 3 locations crowded usually with tourists, above ground....The London Eye, The Natural History Museum and the ..er .. London Aquarium - 3 bombs were triggered in underground tunnels and one (intended for a tube) on a bus.

" ..a striking similarity"

The three defendents are all from the Beeston area of Leeds where 3 of the 7/7 crew came from have a "striking similarity" ...they are brown men with beards. Salim and Shakil's telephone numbers were on the remnants of a phone found at the Edgeware Road bomb site later linked to Mohammed Siddique Khan.

Rachel North reports on the CCTV film the Police have produced from 7/7 bombings - nobody else does. yet.

Rachel North has done a sterling service by providing the best account of the CCTV provided by the Police on Friday at the 7/7 supporters Trial.

Your can read her full account here . This is an attempt to provide an annotated list thast extract the fact from the opinion - not necessarily in the order she reports them shown.

We saw CCTV footage - never seen in public before

1. The departure from 18 Alexander Grove, (the bomb factory address.) - of the 7/7 bombers sky blue Nissan Micra, hired from a Leeds car rental firm, leaving for London in the early hours of 7 July 2005. No time given.

2. Woodall Services on the westbound M1 (this probably means South bound) at 4.53am, 7/7/05 Shehzad Tanweer in white trousers and white branded sports top with a black coat stopping to put petrol in at 4.51am, then entering the petrol station shop at 4.54am, returning with a carrier bag of goods, ( sandwiches and snacks) - and the car driving away at 5.14am. (Total 21 mins)

3. Germaine Lindsey, waiting at Luton station. Walking from the car park where he parked his burgundy Fiat Bravo near to the entrance of Luton station at 6.41am. Moving about, sometimes off-camera in the ticket hall for three minutes. Walking to the exit again, his mobile in his left hand, at 6.44am. Getting back in his car and repositioning the Fiat nearer the ticket hall.

4. 6.51am the Micra arriving containing the 3 from Leeds and parks next to Lindsey's Fiat Bravo. At 6.53 there is movement between the two vehicles and the boot is opened and closed several times. At 7.14am Lindsey goes back into the ticket hall, a minute later, he returns to the group and at 7.16am the men put on their rucksacks and leave the car park for the station.

5. At 7.25 the men are on the concourse, getting onto a Thameslink train bound for London. At 8.25am the men arrive at Kings Cross station, move to the London Underground network and separate at 8.26am.

6 . Various shots from station CCTV of actual blasts from tunnel. Exploded train at Edgware Rd. We saw footage of the Aldgate train explosion, seen from the Liverpool St platform it departed from. Passengers crouching in shock, smoke pluming and billowing, two police officers going to the platform. Then the same platform again from a different angle. Then stills of the exploded carriage are shown. Torn apart, as lives of the living and dead were torn apart. (No film on board trains)

Next, stills of the Piccadilly line train, (on which RN was a passnegr) externally of carriages.

7. CCTV of Hasib Hussein, exiting Kings Cross Underground station at 8.54am, then heading through Boots at 8.59am. Moving across the main railway station concourse at 9am, bending over outside next door shop WH Smiths

7a. We heard how witnesses saw Hussein waiting on a bench on the Northern line platform at 8.45am, exiting the Northern/Victoria line escalator, Making a purchase, something that looks like a battery at 9.04am.

8. At 9.05, Hussein leaves the King's Cross concourse, heading out of the railway station, and by 9.07am he is out of the station, crossing York Way and heading into McDonalds at 9.15am , as rain falls. Two minutes later he is out of McDonalds and heading up Gray's Inn Rd, towards Euston Rd, making calls on his mobile. By 9.20am he is in Euston Rd, having slipped on a pair of sunglasses.

10. He took the 91 bus to Euston Square, where the driver told the passengers to get off. (Unclear if there is film of this.)

11. Hussein boards the number 30 bus, heading for Tavistock Square. (Unclear if there is film of this.)

12. CCTV footage of the exploding bus shot from inside the reception of the British Medical Association. The man at the desk, a woman in reception, ducking for cover, as the explosion happens, then the receptionist man going to the door, where the red bus, torn apart is smoking outside. Thirteen more people are dead.

13. Next we saw the footage from the bus in front of the No.30, the passengers jerking in shock as the bus explodes behind them.

14. Home movie (?) of Khan leaving for Pakistan. November 2004 apparently given by his wife to a friend who gave it to Police.

Without actually seeing the films and stills it is difficult to comment but 2 principal queries come to mind immediately.

1. Where and why were cameras overlooking 18 Alexander Grove - presumably dark at that time.

2. At film 4 the times to not conform to the times showing on (some) of the famous (and only) shot of the 4 together seen so far - 7.21. Apparently film shows them "At 7.25 the men are on the concourse, getting onto a Thameslink train bound for London" .. so why was there any complication / confusion about which train they caught ?.

Again, there is nothing that contradicts a theory that the bombers were not under the impression that they were on a drug courier run.

RN says that lawyers for the 3 defendents .."The defence are not contesting it; they are not contesting these facts " ... Surely the time for contesting the evidence is when it is considered and the people responsible can be cross examined on the source, accuracy of timing.. when perhaps the press copies will be available.

Anyway we must be grateful to RN for this snapshot so far... it is nice to see that the 8,000 pieces of CCTV have yielded some evidence.

There is some interesting discussion at Blairwatch. as well as at Rachel North's and R has contributed to discussion at 9/11 .

Cannot find anything in the weekend papers.

Mugabe - exactly what do you think Mbeke can do ?

"There is no crisis in Zimbabwe," President Mbeke told journalists in Harare after holding talks with President Robert Mugabe on the way to Lusaka, to the despair of the liberal elites , more effective in observing wars of colonialist overthrow than undertaking them.

In this they betray their apparent and common inability to understand that not only is Mbeke is virtually powerless, his own hold on power is remarkably tenuous.

As chronicled here endlessly, the lights are going out all over Africa - more so in the rainbow state as the rolling power cuts from struggling ESKOM fails to power what was a booming economy - now suddenly jammed into reverse.

Decades of political indecision, benign neglect, unwillingness to listen, have finally hit, coinciding with a public eruption of the swelling crime, corruption and factional ANC strife. Outside political circles the the national police chief faces trial for corruption with charges of deals with a local mafiakingpin and dealer in hard drugs.

Inside the tent, the freshly elected African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma who waits to adopt Mbeke's mantle just escaped jail for raping an HIV-positive woman last year. This year he faces trial - unless a deal can be done - in connection with South Africa's very murky multi-billion-pound arms dealings with British, German and French arms manufacturers.

The new / old ANC leaders today are still framed by the jargon of their exiled years in the eastern bloc - yet they and their families splurge in excesses of consumerism of must have Mercedes 4x4s. Overseas hideaways fed from fraud, strutting wives and mistresses with Marc Jacobs bags bought in the shopping malls of Europe , shod by Jimmy Choo and supported by a claque of seedy Europeans hidden away in Cape mansions who watch as the bag of gold at the end of this rainbow is rapidly disappearing.

Crime soars in the neglected townships, swollen with refugees from Zimbabwe, food costs soasr and shortages mount against this desperate background of lawlessness.

Only now is the power shortfall, long predicted, throttling the returns of years of foreign investment . Result. Stocks sold off and the rand slides and the big boys start looking elsewhere, the world now being their global oyster.

In a post Westphalian world where the sovereign state - which was never very sovereign in this this region - has collapsed , the money moves and the market moves on.

Power cuts have hit the country's platinum, gold, manganese and high-quality export coal mines with a hammer blow, with no production on some days and only 40% to 60% on others, exports decline, employees lose pay ...... health services - with over 6 million HIV positive patients, under the under his eccentric , alcoholic health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who recently jumped the public queue for a liver transplant, wither as cash dries up.

In December Mbeki and Zuma stood for the leadership of the ANC at the party's five-yearly electoral congress in what must increasingly be seen as a watershed in post Mandela politics. Pithily put by one blogiste as "from rascist hellhole to 3rd world shithole in 3 Presidents"

Thabo Mbeki, gained an M.A. degree in economics in 1966 from the University of Sussex at Brighton and after working for three years until 1970 for the ANC - often seen as sitting out the war . Although he subsequently underwent military training in the Soviet Union.

Mbeki, prevented from standing again as state president beyond next year's parliamentary and presidential elections, wanted to remain the power behind the throne of a new state president of his choosing.

Zuma, a Zulu populist with some 20 children by various wives and mistresses, hoped to prove that last year's rapecase, and the trial he faces this year for corruption and other charges, were part of a plot by Mbeki to use state institutions to discredit him. A former detainee on Robben Island and leader of the ANC’s military wing, Mr Zuma has long been one of the most popular leaders among the party’s militants.

Mbeki and the old warfighters assumed that the notion of corrupt Zuma , taking on Nelson Mandela's role thought the election was a formality.

It wasn't.

Mbeki was blind to his unpopularity - a wicked combination of his arrogance , his failures in solving health and crime problems, and above all his failure to deliver to the poor , made him a loser. He lost. The defeat was humiliating by 2,329 votes to 1,505 and pro-Zuma candidates took a clean sweep of the top six positions on the party’s National Executive Committee. .

Now Zuma insists that he is the leader of the country and the ANC , Ruthlessly he expects (and largely gets) MPs in parliament to take its orders from him.

An elderly and failing Mbeki soldiers on until next year as state president, asking MPs to toe his line.

Without authority at home he has none to wield abroad - and soon FIFA will withdraw the 2010 World Cup.

Meanwhile in Zimbabwe , Mugabe ignores what he can and resists what he must. This week he secured the endorsement of his party to stand in next year's presidential elections, when he will be 84 years old.

He has't the slightest intention of leaving and will do anything to remain in power - he murdered tens of thousands of Matabele , has forcibly and happily exiled anywhere between 2-4 Mn to surrounding states and has a large corrupt and fiercely loyal clique who will cling to his power.

Surrounded by nations wallowing in the failings of the African Energy Pool, who will increasingly find it difficult to feed their people, calls for Mugabe to maintain and observe the Constitional niceties is pointless.

Mbeki says there is no crisis. 2 weeks after elections , Zimbabweans are being denied the results. Mbeki says there is no crisis, but the people are living under martial law. Mbeki says there is no crisis but Opposition MDC lawyers have been harassed, brutalised.Mbeki says there is no crisis yet South African equipment and property has been seized. Mbeki says there is no crisis and thousands of soldiers, police and members of youth militias are roaming the streets.

Mbeki says there is no crisis.

Will Nu Labour get Balls at last ? Brown to go in shock psycho - drama - queen

Department of Special Collections and University Archives
McFarlin Library. University of Tulsa
Has the manuscript of a poem by Malcolm Lowry - Tashtego believed Red

Stubbs the quirky, fatalistic second mate on the Pequod had a harpoonist, Tashtego a "native" Gay Head Indian from Martha’s Vineyard. One of the last of his tribe which is about to disappear. The role of the noble savage is one he shares with Queeqeg , a prince from a South Sea island . Fuelled by rum he is more practical and less intellectual than Queequeg.

It is a popular belief that Tashtego's Polynesian friend was the origin of the name for Captain Queeg in Herman Wouk's "Caine Mutiny" made memorable by Humphrey Bogart in Stanley Kramers 1954 film of the book.

Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, takes over the command of the Destroyer / minesweeper "Caine" a run down World War One ship.

Abandoning his girl May, he starts immediately losing respect of his officers by browbeating officer to sell him their liquor ration , smuggles liquor on board and swiftly and certainly loses the crews respect in a series of calamities.

On the first voyage the ship runs aground and Queeg blames the helmsman, they lose a gunnery target by over riding the cable, due to Queeg's inattention whilst disciplining a sailor for leaving his shirt tail out.

These failings culminate in the loss of a portion of strawberries the recovery of which becomes an epic enquiry which seals the dislike of the crew faced with his cowardice in action, when he leaves a dye marker to cover his premature retirement from action resulting in his being called "Old Yellowstain".

Lieutenant Stephen Maryk makes an amateur self diagnosis of him as a paranoid and maintains a diary of his increasingly eccentric behaviour to justify his analysis. This includes Queeg's obsessive habit of rolling steel ball bearings in his hand, both within and outside his pocket.

In a momentous typhoon Maryk seizes command and the story continues to dissect Queeg's actions in the form of a court martial not for mutiny but a lesser charge of Conduct to the Prejudice of Good Order and Discipline (the sort of charge that might apply to say a Chief Constable shagging WPC's on his staff).

Brown as Queeg

Gordon Brown has always appeared as a solitary and remote, isolated and driven character - widely believed to be a supressed homosexual - marriage has not stilled the rumours. Since assuming power - an assumption like a monarch and not the result of a populist party wide vote, his isolation has become more evident.

His curious physical tics have become morbidly amplified - Guido pokes relentless fun and obtains some schoolboy merriment at an episode when he picked his nose and ate the result in the House of Commons to be captured on the in house cameras and widely circulated as a vicious prank.

In public speech - of which we necessarily see more - and under stress, his odd open mouthed mouth breathing, his rapid claw like hand dragging down documents - scrawled over with huge type in blunt black Magic Markers have become increasingly evident.

The consequences of his famed indecision or as the Cameronian low lifers prefer, "dithering" are now framing his office... the call for an Autumn election, the Northern Rock extended debacle, troop levels in Iraq, signing the Lisbon treaty, appearance/ non appearance at the Beijing Olympics ceremonies.

The bizarre personal appearance - a combination of his own negligence and no doubt the despair of unheard helpers - trousers tucked in his sock, his persistently ragged necktie, inexpertly applied and hideously coloured face make - up and persistent facial tics and tricks all re-inforce a troubled person - not made any more likeable by has pallid face and the unfortunate asymmetry of his glass eye.

There are also the consistent stories of staff falling out, leaving - Spencer Livermore at his side for a decade departing for Saatchi & Saatchi (Some reports said Brown made Livermore cry with one of his tirades) .. or not starting such as David Pitt-Watson he personally selected as Labour Party Secretary.

Now we have the bizarre story in the Sunday Mail as the juvenile Ed. Balls (Maryk) is lobbying to mutiny and take command as the financial typhoon finally hits, and the Local election looms with premonitions of disaster as the Labour vote slumps in the polls, Bae corruption, Beijing, the kalaidoscope is shaking......

Balls, even if he is a simpleton is ambitious , he is not without allies, the Guradian says yesterday that Gordon is "clinically depressed" . Although he has his enemies - the craven war criminal Jack Straw apparently offered to biff Balls at a cabinet meeting last week.

Others lurk, and sensing danger to their own over arching personal agendas - Zionist Foreign Secretary the Boy David Miliband and Zionist backed Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell are scuttling about ... preparing their legions... and the funds to catapult them into the lead.

...and Queeg is in his cabin , fiddling with his balls.

UPDATE : Famous for 15 megapixels has some filthy film that is relevant if the sight of a grown man fiddling with his balls is not too much for you.