In a wide-ranging interview with the New Left Project, Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook describes the increasingly repressive nature of Israeli society and the prospects for a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

TECHNOLOGY to fight terrorists is being used by “town hall Stasi” to hike parking fines and rake in cash from motorists, the Tories said yesterday.

Councils routinely use Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology to clamp down on parking offences, they claim.

The device scans 3,000 vehicles an hour and cross-checks in seconds with police, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and insurance databases.

This allows parking tickets to be issued by computer.

On Thursday, 360-degree pictures from Penzance to the Shetland islands go online, encompassing nearly a quarter of a million miles of British roads.

Google's Street View service has been available in 25 cities since last March, but the increased coverage makes an additional 210,000 miles of detailed mapping public.

Street View images are captured by Google's car, fitted with a special panoramic camera on its roof. Pedestrianised areas were shot with Google's tricycle, including Stonehenge and the banks of Loch Ness.

A peace deal between Royal mail and the Communication Workers Union will mean unlimited quantities of junk mail can now be delivered to homes.

Already, 4bn flyers, leaflets and fast food menus are placed in British letterboxes each year, but that figure is set to skyrocket thanks to the agreement that removes a limit of three items per household per week, which was put in place to keep mail bags light.

Patients are routinely being treated in kitchens, mop cupboards and corridors because hospitals are so overcrowded, a shocking survey reveals.

Third World conditions are commonplace, with hospitals housing patients for days in storage areas, offices, TV rooms and outpatient clinics.

The Armed Forces had to make cuts every year while troops were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan because Gordon Brown did not provide sufficient funding, the military’s top civil servant said yesterday.

Sir Bill Jeffrey told the Iraq inquiry that the military had been left with “significant” financial problems when Mr Brown ordered cuts six months after the start of the campaign.

The comments came three days after the Prime Minister told the inquiry that as Chancellor he had never turned down any request to buy military equipment for the campaign in Iraq.

Sterling fell on the currency markets again this morning following fresh concerns over Britain's soaring deficit and its trade gap.

Biological warfare is to be declared on an alien invader, Japanese knotweed, that swamps gardens and rivers, with the release of an insect to eat the virulent weed.

The decision by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is the first allowing one non-native species, a flying insect resembling a miniature moth, to control the seemingly unstoppable spread of an alien plant.

However, it is likely to cause concern among wildlife lovers because of a long history of human interventions in the natural world ending in failure, and sometimes causing worse problems than the original, as with the cane toad in Australia.

Hundreds more town hall staff and private security guards are to be handed police-style powers in a fresh Home Office drive to create an army of civilian "spies".

BRITAIN’S special forces have suffered the worst blow to their fighting strength since the second world war, with 80 members killed or crippled in Afghanistan.

Serious injuries have left more than 70 unable to fight, while 12 have been killed. It means the forces have lost about a sixth of their full combat capacity.

If you believe that I've got a watch to sell you

DAMNING reports on the state of the National Health Service, suppressed by the government, reveal how patients’ needs have been neglected.

They diagnose a blind pursuit of political and managerial targets as the root cause of a string of hospital scandals that have cost thousands of lives.

The harsh verdict on the state of the NHS, after a spending splurge under Labour between 2000 and 2008, raises worrying questions about the future quality of the health service as budgets are squeezed.

One report, based on the advice of almost 200 top managers and doctors, says hospitals ignored basic hygiene to cram in patients to meet waiting-time targets.

Every police force in England and Wales will soon start using mobile fingerprint scanners to check suspects' identity in the street.

Security officers on patrol will be able to use the devices, which are about the size of a mobile phone, to check the fingerprints against national records.

The imposition of VAT on groceries is being actively considered by Whitehall officials as a radical means of reducing the national deficit.

Alan Hart highlights the double standard displayed by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Iraq Inquiry on 5 March, where he sought to justify the aggression against Iraq on the grounds of Iraq’s non-compliance with international law – something Israel has been doing for 62 years.

”for 62 years the Zionist state of Israel has been, and continues to be, the biggest single violator of international law. No state on Planet Earth has been allowed to get away with defying UN resolutions for so long. And, I say, no state poses a bigger threat to the peace of the region and the world than Israel on its present course.”

Moves to close a loophole in the law that has led to war crimes arrest warrants being issued against high profile politicians including a former Israeli foreign minister have been postponed until after the general election, the Ministry of Justice announced today.

The Met Office is to stop publishing seasonal forecasts, after it came in for criticism for failing to predict extreme weather.

It was berated for not foreseeing that the UK would suffer this cold winter or the last three wet summers in its seasonal forecasts.

The forecasts, four times a year, will be replaced by monthly predictions.

The Met Office said it decided to change its forecasting approach after carrying out customer research.

Explaining its decision, the Met Office released a statement which said: "By their nature, forecasts become less accurate the further out we look.

Drivers have been hit with petrol tax rises as much as six times higher than the rest of Europe, it is revealed today.

Tax paid at the pumps in the form of fuel duty and VAT has soared in the past 15 months, analysis of official figures shows.

And motorists are warned the pain will continue when another 2.5p is added to the price of a litre of petrol and diesel on April 1.

Gilad Atzmon considers the role of Britain’s Israel lobby and stooges in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s announcement that soon the UK would be turned into a safe haven for suspected Israeli war criminals.

High street retailer Argos has compromised its customers' security by sending their credit-card details - including the vital security code - in unencrypted emails.

The company has been including the customer's full name, address, credit-card number and three-digit CCV security code in order confirmation emails, which are sent once a customer has placed an order on the Argos website. Although the credit-card details don't appear in the text of the email itself, they are contained - in plain text - in the HTML code of the order confirmation.

Perhaps someone should ask workers at the Met Office to take a rain check on their optimism.

After predicting just a 20 per cent chance of a colder than average winter, they were left embarrassed again when official figures revealed it was the coldest for more than 30 years.

Temperatures in December, January and February struggled to stay above zero, with the UK's average a chilly 1.5c (35f), making it the deepest freeze since 1978-79.

And in Scotland and Northern Ireland it was the coldest winter since 1962-63.

Drivers who leave their car engines running while their car is parked face being fined as part of a new town hall initiative.

North Lincolnshire Council will issue £20 tickets to ‘irresponsible drivers who are not considering the environment’.

They say it will help reduce carbon dioxide emissions and tackle climate change.

The pound tumbled today after gloomy figures on mortgage lending compounded worries about the impact of a potential hung parliament.

Polls showing the Conservative Party's lead dwindling heightened concerns that efforts to reduce the budget deficit could be stymied by deadlock at Westminster.

Sterling dived more than two cents against the dollar to $1.5021 and also hit a one-and-a-half-month low against the euro of 90.63p.

Christopher King argues that “a situation exists in which it may be in the interests of the United States to seek a ‘cold war’ situation with Russia and China as a pretext for defaulting on its external debt, attacking Iran, taking direct control of all Middle Eastern oilfields and effective control of Europe”.

Britain's official UFO investigation unit and hotline were closed down at the start of December.

Since then reports of strange sights in the skies sent to the MoD have been kept for 30 days before being thrown out, the newly released policy document shows.

This stance was adopted so defence officials would not have to publish the information in response to freedom of information (FoI) requests or pass it to the National Archives.

Last night his wife, Denise, 53, who is also a publican, said she was disgusted that her husband would be in prison alongside murderers and rapists.

'Criminals and bad people go to prison not law-abiding businessmen like my husband who are trying to earn an honest living,' she said. 'Nick doesn't deserve to go to jail, all he has done is speak his mind and people simply don't like it.

'Ninety per cent of people who come into my pub want to smoke, even the non-smokers think there should be a choice. These laws are ridiculous.'

After all, Blair joined Bush in the Iraq charade (Blair insisted that “history would vindicate” them, but history isn’t smiling.) So now a British “expert” demands that Obama bail out the Brits again and live up to the requirements of a mysterious “special relationship” that has never been put into treaty form, publicly debated, and given the advice and consent of the Senate as required by the Constitution. “The core of the problem is a simple inability to recognize and support our friends over adversaries,” pouts the Brit, who wants the US to blow a hole in its hull so we can follow England’s sinking ship.

What do you call some of the most unlucky people in Britain?

Justin Case, Barb Dwyer and Stan Still.

It sounds like a bad joke, but a study has revealed that there really are unfortunate people with those names in the UK.

Joining them on the list are Terry Bull, Paige Turner, Mary Christmas and Anna Sasin.

And just imagine having to introduce yourself to a crowd as Doug Hole or Hazel Nutt.

MI5 and MI6 have a "dubious record" on human rights and torture, and have "an interest in the suppression" of information about the treatment of former terrorism suspects, the Master of the Rolls has said.

Nearly 9,000 working families have been dragged to court over the last year because of Gordon Brown’s chaotic tax credits system.

The number of working parents who have been treated like criminals thanks to the complicated regime has soared by 750 per cent in the last 12 months.

Washington refused to endorse British claims to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands yesterday as the diplomatic row over oil drilling in the South Atlantic intensified in London, Buenos Aires and at the UN.

Despite Britain’s close alliance with the US, the Obama Administration is determined not to be drawn into the issue. It has also declined to back Britain’s claim that oil exploration near the islands is sanctioned by international law, saying that the dispute is strictly a bilateral issue.

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Background

Baroness Jenny Tonge, a member of the House of Lords in the UK, has been under attack for the past few years as she supports freedom and justice for Palestinians. Just this week, she was dismissed from her position as spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats' shadow health minster.

Billionaire financier Jim Rogers has predicted that the British Pound could completely collapse within weeks, sending shockwaves throughout the global economy and heralding the beginning of a downturn that would make the recent economic crisis look tame in comparison.

The Royal Navy has intercepted an Argentinian warship near British waters in an apparent escalation of the row over the Falkland Islands.

Controversial proposals that would give Lord Mandelson unprecedented powers to amend copyright laws will be jettisoned next week when the Government suffers the first large defeat of its flagship media plans.

Conservative and Liberal Democrat lords will unite to vote down Clause 17 of the Digital Economy Bill, which has been criticised by internet giants such as Google and Yahoo!, when the Bill is put to vote in its report stage.

England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have all had their coldest winter season for more than 30 years, weather experts said.

As more snow fell in parts of the UK, MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association, said the provisional average winter temperature of 2.4C (36.3F) in England was the lowest since 1978/9.

There is one week left of the season (December to the end of February) to go.

MeteoGroup said that using the Central England Temperature series, which covers a large area from Lancashire in the north-west to Oxfordshire in the south Midlands, this winter is the third coldest in the last 50 years and 10th coldest in the last 120 years.

American architect firm Kieran Timberlake was selected to design the carbon-neutral glass-sided structure in Wandsworth, south London.

The US State Department agreed to sell its current base, in Grosvenor Square, London, after it began showing ''signs of wear and tear''.

Copying your favourite CDs to your iPod has become a routine part of modern life for music lovers.

But millions of consumers are unaware they are breaking the law every time they transfer an album to their MP3 player or home computer – despite having purchased the music legitimately.

Now, the threat of prosecution could be lifted after a customer body called for copyright laws to be updated for the technological age.

The Ministry of Defence has been criticised after thousands of battlefield radios went missing - raising fears they have fallen into the hands of enemy fighters in Afghanistan.

The Commons' Defence Select Committee said it was 'unacceptable' more than 3,900 state-of-the-art Bowman digital communications systems - or 11 per cent of the total handed out - had vanished.

Amina Taylor asks if Channel 4 TV’s “Dispatches” programme of November 2009 on the power of the Israel lobby has encouraged other broadcasters and public figures to question whether it is right that the interests of a foreign state – Israel – should be so predominant in Britain’s main political parties, especially the Conservative Party.

Energy suppliers are making more than £100 out of every customer by refusing to cut bills during the record freeze.

Wholesale prices of gas and electricity have fallen dramatically, but hardly any of the benefit has been passed on to customers.

As a result, the Big Six suppliers have seen their profit margins soar to a five-year high.

They are now making an average profit of more than £105 a year from every dual-fuel customer, according to the industry regulator Ofgem. The figure has increased by 40 per cent in just three months.

Against the background of allegations that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is a bully, Stuart Littlewood remind us that bullying is endemic in politics, as shown by the UK Liberal Democratic Party leaders’ bullying of Jenny Tonge for speaking the truth, and the continual bullying of UK politicians by the Israel lobby.

People who use social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook have been warned that they could eventually face rises in their home insurance premiums of as much as 10pc.

Services such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Buzz can alert criminals when users are not home, according to Confused.com, the price comparison service. Foursquare, for example, shows that people are in a specific spot and, more importantly, that the user is definitely not at home, Confused.com added.

An anti-bullying charity revealed yesterday that it has received a string of complaints about Gordon Brown.

The founder of the National Bullying Helpline said it had received 'three or four' calls in the last 18 months from those working for the Prime Minister.

Stuart Littlewood challenges UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband – and the rest of the British Establishment – to explain to the British public his government's support for Israeli crimes and criminals.

Maybe swine flu has woken people up to the benefits of vitamin D

So here, for any of you who might have forgotten, is a quick reminder: some £76bn from the Treasury to buy shares in RBS and Lloyds Banking Group ; £200bn worth of lender-of-last resort liquidity support provided by the Bank of England to stricken banks at the height of the crisis; £250bn of wholesale lending guaranteed by the Bank through the credit guarantee scheme; £185bn of loans to banks through the Special Liquidity Scheme; £40bn of loans and other funding to Bradford & Bingley and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Then, deep breath, there is the £200bn of liabilities taken on board from the Asset Protection Scheme, and the £200bn of cash poured into the economy through quantitative easing .

Town hall chiefs have blown £1.4million of taxpayers’ money on ‘morale-boosting’ trips for staff – while telling the public they are strapped for cash.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed council officials have paid for away days to £200-a-night hotels, spas, go-karting tracks and even holiday village Center Parcs over the past four years.

Ironically, the junkets, called ‘team-building trips’ or ‘planning meetings’, are often used to discuss the councils’ financial constraints.

Britain’s most powerful police body, which is run as a private business, has spent millions of pounds meant for counter-terrorism work on luxury London flats for senior officers.

The spending on an undisclosed number of apartments in the Westminster area is understood to be about £1.6million a year.

The money is taken directly from taxpayers’ cash given to the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) by the Home Office to tackle the terrorist threat across Britain.

The funding – £33million last year – is supposed to be used to beef up regional police forces’ anti-terrorism response and pay for crucial equipment and facilities.

Gordon Brown's abusive behaviour and volcanic eruptions of foul temper left Downing Street staff so frightened that he received an unprecedented reprimand from the head of the civil service, an explosive new book by the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley reveals today.

Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, became so alarmed by the prime minister's behaviour that he launched his own investigations when he received reports of Brown's bullying of staff. O'Donnell then gave the prime minister a stern "pep talk" and ordered him to change his behaviour. "This is no way to get things done," he told Brown.

AS befits Britain’s most senior spy, Jonathan Evans is noted in Whitehall for being cool under fire. That quality will be tested this week when MI5’s director-general learns whether his service is about to be engulfed by one of the biggest crises in its 100-year history.

For the past 10 weeks a senior lawyer in the office of Baroness Scotland, the attorney-general, has been studying the cases of five British men alleged to have been unlawfully detained and tortured in Pakistan with the complicity of MI5.

Scotland may rule there is insufficient evidence to call in detectives but if she does refer the cases to the police, it could in effect paralyse the agency that Evans has led since 2007.

Christopher King expresses the hope that the fall of the Dutch government over participation in the US-led aggression in Afghanistan could be the start of a trend that will see Europe regain its independence from the USA.

Councils have been told to cut bin collections to just once-a-fortnight across the country in order to slash costs, it was revealed last night.

The Audit Commission has written to councils suggesting the move as a way to fit their spending within the limits of reduced government budgets.

Their downbeat perspective contrasts dramatically with the exhortations of George III and his ministers in London who come across as hopelessly out-of-touch and absurdly optimistic.

The documents, part of a collection that have been in private possession for more than two centuries, reveal a much gloomier analysis by British generals than previously believed.

Wholesale energy prices have fallen by 60 per cent from their peak in the middle of 2008.

However, customer bills have come down by less than 10 per cent.

There were 36,700 more deaths among the elderly last winter than in warmer months, according to the Office of National Statistics.

This was up 12,000 on the previous year.

At the same time, there are millions of pensioners among the 5.4million who are in fuel poverty.

Labour is telling its workers not to campaign on the party's record in power, a leaked document showed yesterday.

The revelation came ahead of today's launch by Gordon Brown of Operation Fightback, at which he will tell activists to wage a political scrap for survival.

Mr Brown wants to use the launch rally to give Labour some momentum after months of dire economic news and setbacks.

But the leaked document is an astonishing admission that voters have little to show for 13 years of Labour rule.

MI6 was tipped off that Israeli agents were going to carry out an 'overseas operation' using fake British passports, it was claimed last night.

A member of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, said the Foreign Office was also told hours before a Hamas terrorist chief was assassinated in Dubai.

The tip-off did not say who the target would be or even where the hit squad would be in action.

But the claim from a credible source that the Government had some prior knowledge of the abuse of UK passports will strengthen calls for ministers to come clean about what they knew and when.

original post by Edmund Conway at blogs.telegraph.co.uk

This episode serves as a reminder of the scale of this effort to shift debt offstage, and of how many different avenues politicians explored in order to live today, pay tomorrow. For those who believe that we’ve just come to the end of an endemic super credit cycle, this episode provides yet more supporting evidence

Gilad Atzmon argues that, given the close relationship between the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and the Mossad intelligence agency, Premier Binyamin Netanyahu must be held to account personally for the murder of a Hamas official in Dubai by Israeli Mossad agents travelling on cloned European passports.

Argentina has taken control of the waters around the Falkland Islands in an escalation of its row with Britain over the disputed territory.

The move would effectively grant it the power to blockade the British-ruled archipelago.

It comes as relations between the two countries hit a new low earlier this month following the recent discovery of oil reserves buried in the Falklands seabed.

A record 2.8million workers are trapped in unsatisfying or lowly paid part-time jobs.

One in ten of the workforce - including thousands of graduates with good degrees - settle for work which either does not match their skills or financial need, according to the Office of National Statistics.

The number in so-called 'underemployment' has soared by 600,000 in just a year as the recession forces more people to accept fewer hours and take home less pay.

Whether they need to or not!

Credit card interest rates have climbed to a 12-year high, leaving millions facing crippling repayments on their debts.

Despite historically low Bank of England base rates, the average interest charged on a credit card has soared to 18.8 per cent - the highest level since 1998.

Some consumers now paying more than 40 per cent on the cash they have borrowed.

"We need the money for our bonuses" - a complete banker

The use of body scanners at UK airports may be unlawful, the Equality and Human Rights Commission warned today.

Scanners already in place at Heathrow and Manchester Airports may be breaking discrimination law as well as breaching passengers' rights to privacy, the commission said.