Richard Cottrell's blog

Usually at this time of the year the unlovely concrete mess that is the sprawling Greek capital is settling in for the usual swarthy summer of hot, sticky heat, relieved at dusk by breezes, parfumed by slight hints of the Orient, blowing in from Homer’s wine dark sea. This year the only scent in the Athens air comes from the huge quantities of highly toxic tear gas sprayed by the thugs who pass for what is known as the police force. Policemen in Greece belong to that species of the law enforcement class who form a race apart from all others around them.

The Central Intelligence Agency thinks there may be a military putsch in Greece, thanks to all the turmoil as the Wall Street readies itself to bury Greece under the salt, just like Carthage. Well, those folk in Langley, Virginia should certainly know. In 1967, the CIA and NATO installed a fascist junta led by a group of obscure junior officers, following a NATO blueprint called Prometheus to 'forestall a communist coup.' This was the usual smokescreen.

Nudge nudge, wink wink. In a military coup d'état against the people and constitution of the United States, General Betrayus Petraeus is named the first military commander to head the CIA, a happy hour or two before Osama bin Laden is pepper-potted in a heavily-guarded Pakistani military compound. I try to believe at least three improbable things before cappuccino hour ends at eleven 'o clock after sunrise every morning here in Italy, thereafter receiving old-fashioned looks the Italians reserve for the infidel straniere who demand such refreshment thereafter.

"The war is not necessarily proceeding to Japan's advantage."  So we are told the emperor of Japan solemnly informed his subjects after the US vaporized two large, undefended, non-military targets with the concentrated energy of the sun. Barak Obama, along with his sidekicks Bomber 'Dave' Cameron and Little Napoleon Sarkozy, are having similar bother with their own lovely little war in Libya, which is definitely not proceeding according to plan.

OK, it's safe to emerge from the bunker and start to make some sort of sense, if anyone can, of the on-going burlesque in Libya. But first to state what is merely obvious. The headline stories of saving lives are crude propaganda. Nor is it correct the 'war' was started without any clear rationale of the intended outcome, beyond some vague conviction that a few pre-armed rebels stirred up by American, British and French secret services, would knock over the old bogeyman in Tripoli before anyone could say Nobel Peace Prize in Arabic and then skip off with the oil.

The National Socialist party was set up and funded by Wall Street. The Big Daddy of the Bush dynasty, old grand-pappy Prester, a great lion of finance, was a significant fixer buzzing between the White House and Hitler's coterie. No wonder Hitler's economic programme so closely resembled the New Deal. No explanations needed how Bush presidents One and Two got the New World Order hook-up, either. Think the modern Bushes and the Bin Laden clan and you get the picture.

About twenty years ago, I was incarcerated for several memorable days in the legendary insalubrious Strand Hotel in Rangoon, once a famous watering hole of the imperial boxwallahs. The old pile had descended considerably from that state of grace. The last sound one heard at night before finally surrendering to the pillow was the scuttling of thousands of cockroaches across the teak floors. Come morning the room would be thoroughly fumigated, but by nightfall the indomitable creatures of the night were back in force. I can hear that same sound of rapacious scuttling right now.

Hey Govn'r Walker, you're doing a heck of a job! Crunching them darned blood-sucking unions like Saturn devouring his children, searing those Democrat butts with scorching breath hotter'n a Labor Day picnic in Death Valley, raising the flag at last over socialist-FREE Wisconsin, the first sovereign bastion of the truly liberated United States. Huey Long, eat your heart out, wherever you are, and here's hoping it "aint so damn freezin" as it is up here.

In London right now four young men, three Pakistanis and another Jamaican-born, are on trial for mass murder. Their right to silence is being duly respected, since they are conveniently dead. This interesting demonstration of British justice is in fact a blatantly rigged 'inquest' into the deaths of 52 passengers on London Transport services, supposedly blown up by these young men on the 7th July 2007.

The United Kingdom is run by an aloof pair of ex-Etonian toffs who once belonged to an exclusive Hooray Henry Oxford boozing club renowned for trashing restaurants on gala nights. Between them, the Woosterish David Cameron and his sidekick, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Finknottle Osborne, have an ear for public opinion as finely tuned as a deaf organ grinder. The Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition -- already dubbed The ConDamned by its growing band of critics -- has distinguished itself in less than year by sinking below so recently defeated Labor in the polls.