(photo: dongga BS/flickr)

The coffee’s freshly ground, there’s a wide variety of teas and the sticky buns are homemade.

As the capitalists line up to feed on the people

  • “Twenty-five of the EU’s 27 member states have agreed to join a fiscal treaty to enforce budget discipline. The Czech Republic and the UK refused to sign up. UK Prime Minister David Cameron said his government would act if the treaty threatened UK interests.”
  • “Germany’s campaign to set the terms for saving the euro was crowned with success when EU leaders sealed agreement on a new “fiscal compact” for the single currency zone, enshrining Berlin’s insistence on rigour and discipline and establishing a new punitive regime for budgetary profligacy. Chancellor Angela Merkel returned to Berlin with the new treaty in the bag, but also appeared more isolated in Europe in her hard line on Greece and how to save the country from defaulting on its debt.”
  • “The government here appears to be losing patience with Greece’s unconvincing attempts at reform. With the debt bailouts highly unpopular among German voters, Berlin is loath to be seen throwing good money after bad. On Monday Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble directly warned Athens that a second bailout was not inevitable. ‘Greece needs to decide,’ he said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, when asked if the euro zone would be coming up with the second bailout.”

Then there’s Pollyanna’s worst nightmare

  • “As street fighting raged near the Syrian capital, a diplomatic battle loomed in the United Nations where the Arab League, backed by the West, wants the Security Council to act on an Arab peace plan that would call for President Bashar al-Assad to leave power. The fighting on Monday subsided by nightfall as members of the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army (FSA) pulled out to the edges of the capital’s suburbs, activists said by telephone, adding they believed 19 civilians and six FSA members had been killed.”
  • “The past few days have seen a significant rise in violence on the streets of Syria. Activists say around 120 people died on Thursday and Friday alone. Before suspending their observer mission in Syria on Saturday, the Arab League warned of the significant escalation of violence over the last three days.”
  • “For once, Tawakul Karman‘s busy entourage of tour organisers and interpreters is nowhere to be seen, as she waits in a quiet corner of a London hotel for our photographer to take her portrait. She may have won an international award for it but peace is a rare thing in the sprightly Arab’s life.”
  • “Egypt’s governing military council has set out the rules for the country’s first presidential election since the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak. The rules stipulate that candidates have to be born in Egypt to Egyptian parents, not be dual nationals, and not be married to a foreigner.”
  • “Mullahs, militants and retired military men in Pakistan are forming a powerful alliance to promote an anti-US agenda, pressuring the Pakistani government at a time when relations with the United States are dangerously frayed. Among these men, Hafiz Saeed is the most notorious.”
  • “Robert Fisk: The present stands no chance against the past The Palestinians are not only, it seems, an “invented people” – courtesy of Newt Gingrich – but the only Arabs on the Mediterranean not to enjoy a Spring or an Awakening or even a Winter.”

Finally, reasonable men talking

  • From lawanddisorder.org: Tariq Ali discusses the book On History – Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone In Conversation (1 hour) (h/t to BearCountry)

The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off.