Thursday 15 December 2011

Steptoe and Son live on

coming soon

the whole crisis, for those with short attention spans

In cartoon from Hera is the whole stoopid shooting match.

Punch line-
Right: Is this a joke? is this America (indignation)?
Left: no this is not..... a joke.


Ron Paul catches the Grinch

the Gingrinch.

He's being ignored by the media, and they keep trying to replace
him with any number of candidates, because the Powers
don't want Ron Paul to win.

If the 'grinch wins, that'll be the end of Christmas for millions
of American kids, because evermore of their parents will be broke.
Paul is trying to stop the wholesale looting of the US economy.

checkitout: Mish Shedlock
Blatant Reporting BiasI posted more paragraphs than necessary in the above clips. I did so on purpose to prove a point. It was not until the 6th paragraph that Ron Paul even got a mention.
I also call your attention to the second-to-last paragraph. "The poll has a plus or minus 4.2 point margin of error."
Given the margin of error, and the momentum, Ron Paul has surged into a statistical tie with Gingrich.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock

score: OWS 5500 Wall St 0

coming soon

when democracy becomes an apprehended war, the sports metaphor works
best.
The more people from #OWS that are put in jail, the more visible it
is to everybody that nobody from Wall St has been put in the slammer.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/14/corzine_grilled_over_mf_global_collapse

I will take you to our leader: Paul Krugman


It has been said that Paul Krugman, who hangs out at
the New York Times,
believes in military Keynesianism so much that he
spoke out in favour of their being an alien attack,
to get humans to fix their economic woes.

This was his speech at the United Nations:

Transcript-
I consider it a challenge before the whole human race
And I'd never lose
And I need to go on and on and on and on

We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fightin' till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions of the world





[let's invade, using fruits and veg to destroy the flora and fauna of Mars]

Monday 12 December 2011

the wheels on the debt go round and round

coming soon

The Wheels on the Debt Go Round and Round
The wheels on the debt go round and round
Round and round, round and round
The wheels on the debt go round and round
All across the Web.
(wave hands back and forth)

The CDOs on the debt go "Ssh, ssh, ssh,
Ssh, ssh, ssh, ssh, ssh, ssh"
The CDOs on the debt go "Ssh, ssh, ssh"
'Coz they're in the shadows.
(put your index finger over your lips, or hide behind the curtain)

The door on the bus goes open and shut
Open and shut, open and shut
The door on the bus goes open and shut
All through the town.
(Cover eyes with hands on 'shut' anduncover them on 'open')

The horn on the bus goes "Beep, beep, beep
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep"
The horn on the bus goes "Beep, beep, beep"
All through the town.
(Pretend to honk horn)

The gas on the bus goes "Glug, glug, glug
Glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug"
The gas on the bus goes "Glug, glug, glug"
All through the town.
(Pretend to fill tank using pointer finger as gas nozzle)

The money on the bus goes "Clink, clink, clink,
Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink"
The money on the bus goes "Clink, clink, clink"
All through the town.
(Pretend to put money in cash box on bus)

The baby on the bus says, "Wah, wah, wah!
Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah!"
The baby on the bus says, "Wah, wah, wah!"
All through the town.
(Fisted hands in front of eyesand rub them like baby crying)

The people on the bus say, "Shh, shh, shh,
Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh"
The people on the bus say, "Shh, shh, shh"
All through the town.
(Put pointer finger to mouth to 'shhh')

The mommy on the bus says, "I love you,
I love you, I love you"
The daddy on the bus says, "I love you, too"
All through the town.

Shopxmas is upon us


In the never-ending battle between good and evil.
Morality and selfish bourgeouis-ism.
Love and superficial showmanship.
Bankers and the rest of us

we have a message from the oligarchs, telling us
that evil has taken hold for good.

Let's sing :
I Saw Santa pepperspraying Jesus

(to the tune of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus)

Sunday 11 December 2011

I got that special power, too

latest graphic novel to become a movie.
Scarlett get's new mystery powers.


Who lit the match?

[loo' a' ma bu']

Scarlett always had a butt with special powers.
[Lost in her underpants. I know I am]
If you ask me, this is the only reason that Lost in Translation
was a candidate for an Oscar. That's a powerful butt.
And, just in case you think it's sexploitation, the director
was a lady: Sophia Copolla

From the dark shadows comes a banker


You thought I was going to say 'thief'. Well, I did, didn't I?

Shadow markets
derivatives, CDSs, CDOs
exist so that nobody can understand markets and thus
people remain in the dark
,
not recognising when they are being cheated,
until it’s too late.

Zerohedge is changing the balance, back in favour of the public.
That’s why the Powers are crapping themselves.
As the oligarchs ratchet up the debt and tricks,
ZH and others are there, watching their every move and
they can prove what it is they’re saying. It’s not just conjecture.

That’s the knowledge. When you have the knowledge and
you know the government and media are corrupt ,
what do you want to do? Protest angrily.
Well, it seems that we are protesting in a new way as well.
We know full well that angry protest will bring the
full force of the army on our heads,
regardless of the country and its love of democracy.
So the OWS is ‘going long’ protest and
waiting for their Gandhi action to start
getting semi-powerful people of the upper 10%
(but not the top 1%) who also see the game is coming to an end,
to help change things. This is a great plan of action, and
I congratulate both parts of the protest. Even without
the media ‘megaphone’, we are all discovering the
state of the game, down to the minute.

When politicians get together to ‘calm markets’,
they’re actually trying to trick the people who still believe
that a government will be just, in a time of crisis.
Those kinds of fools have already been bitten, as have the fools
on the markets. Pretty soon the government will have
no voters and the banks will have no deposits.
Maybe then, we’ll see some change.
In the meantime, I’m enjoying the camaraderie of the 99%.
We’re gonna help one another, and build a new society
out of the ashes of the old. It will never be perfect, but anyway.


checkitout: zerohedge
Shadow Rehypothecation, Infinite Leverage, And Why Breaking The Tyranny Of Ignorance Is The Only Solution
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/10/2011 13:10 -0500

In the aftermath of the "rehypothecation" analysis exposing the quantum differences between the US and the UK, where the former at least tries to put some breaks on "fractional reserve" synthetic liquidity creation by Prime Brokers (which these days would be virtually anyone) while the latter believes that virtually boundless risk is a welcome thing, there has been a barrage of inquiries seeking further clarification of the nuances of shadow banking, a topic Zero Hedge has covered since July of 2010 (for much more see here) and which we will update on tomorrow for the latest Flow of Funds report (spoiler alert: in Q3 US shadow banking declined by at least $300 billion, a trend started at the credit bubble peak,
over $6 trillion higher).

In order to bring some clarity to the matter we present two of the seminal pieces on the topic: first, fro the IMF: "The (sizable) Role of Rehypothecation in the Shadow Banking System" and then from one of the best scholars of shadow banking, Gary Gorton, "Haircuts." We will let readers digest the wealth of information contained in these two pieces on their own, however, we will point out the two key messages: on one hand we get a definitive explanation of why not NY but London is true hub of financial engineering and infinite leverage (recall that the UK is in fact the most levered nation on a GDP basis in the world when one takes into account all outstanding debt, not just sovereign - a fact well known to S&P and explaining why the UK will be the last to be downgraded as this would bring attention to the last domino in the chain) as follows: "Mathematically, the cumulative ‘collateral creation’ can be infinite in the United Kingdom" - that's from the IMF basically telling everyone that courtesy of no rehypothecation haircuts one can achieve infinite shadow leverage. And the other one comes from Gorton who explains why haircuts are the functional equivalent of information arbitrage: "Increases in repo haircuts are withdrawals from securitized banks—that is, a bank run. When all investors act in the run and the haircuts become high enough, the securitized banking system cannot finance itself and is forced to sell assets, driving down asset prices. The assets become information-sensitive; liquidity dries up. As with the panics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the system is insolvent."

And the punchline: "Liquidity requires symmetric information, which is easiest to achieve when everyone is ignorant. This determines the design of many securities, including the design of debt and securitization." Reread the last statement as it explains perhaps better than anything, the true functioning of modern capital markets and why they are terminally broken: in order to preserve the system, the banking cartel need to make everything of virtually infinite complexity so that no one has a clear understanding of what is going on! Which is where sites like Zero Hedge step in - to expose "shadowy" places where things are best left unseen.

Incidentally one of the catalysts of the market collapse in the Lehman aftermath was not some market scalar metric being breached, or a bunk shutting down physically, but the seminal report by Citi's Matt King "Are The Brokers Broken" from September 2008 which explained all of the above (and below) in clear and concise detail, in effect bringing the proverbial Eureka moment to every market participant, of why everything was terminally broken. Since we are now again at the same stage, we will shortly repost the same report from King to stop "everyone from being ignorant" and comprehend just how broken both the traditional and shadow banking systems are
....

Monday 5 December 2011

Zombie Banksters of London

It's the banks, my friends. They are the living dead.
They're broke, but they're hooked up to Dr Osbourne's
Franken-banker machine and being fed our money and our
future money.



By the way, this below is not a money-making venture,
so call off your lawyers,
and sing along.


Zombies Banksters of London
writer: Cos67, with help from
ZEVON, WARREN / MARINELL, LEROY / WACHTEL, WADDY (ROBERT)

I saw a zombie bankster with a Sushi menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of the City in the rain
He was looking for a place called This Ho Fooks
Gonna get a big bowl of coke, and whore tricks

UUUUguUguuuuggggugghhhhh!
Zombie bankers of London!
UUuugughhhgHhguuuuu! (Repeat)

If you hear him howling around your front door
Better not let him in
Little old lady got expropriated late last night
Zombie banksters of London again

uuuuuughhuuughhh!
Zombie bankers of London!
uuuuuuggghhuuuughghgghhh! (Repeat)

He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Ghent
Lately he's been overheard in Canary Wharf
Better stay away from him
He'll chomp your savings, Jim
I'd like to meet his tailor

uuuuhhnhhhh! oh, my hernia.
zombie banksters of London!
hoo-ha, heh, gonna kiss myself! (Repeat)

Well, I saw Mervin King walking with the Queen
Doing the Zombie bankers of London
I saw Mervin King , Jr. walking with the Queen
Doing the zombie banksters of London
I saw a zombie bankster drinking a 12-year old scotch at Trader Vic's
And his hooker's hair was perfect

UUUuuuUUUuggghhhhuuuughhh!
zombie banksters of London!
uuuugughhhhhuuuuugghh! (Repeat)
Braaainsssss...

it's hard work being a driver

When the UK had its latest class crisis, the 2 million-strong
public sector strike , last week, we were looking for
public intellectuals to chime in with their opinion.

Was it right for public sector workers to keep their
good pension while the private sector was being
screwed royally? Well, some people see that public
sector workers should have no choice.
Every millionnaire has the right to criticise public
services, because he doesn't pay tax anyway.

So, Jeremy Clarkson said this about public workers:
"I'd take them outside and execute them in front of their families."He added: "How dare they go on strike when they've got these gilt edge pensions when the rest of us have to work for a living."
So, I'll tell you why Clarkson may have shot himself in the foot.
Now everybody is discussing his million dollar paycheck, while he
is himself a public servant, of sorts.
He 'works' (larks about) for the BBC, on the Top Gear show.
He prepares an hour-long show, with help, almost every week.
Maybe even 30 weeks a year.

To top it off, the UK makes everybody pay for the BBC, through
the Tv licence, which is a huge bureaucracy that breaks into
your home to see if you're watching tv.
In sane countries, this sort of public utility is paid for
through general taxation, so that the rich pay more than
Joe Sandwich Bag.
So, Joe is paying the same as Prince Charles so that we
can watch Jeremy Clarkson prance around, insulting everybody.

[it's backbreaking work, I tells ya]

Imagine there are no ... banks

[the wheels on the debt go round and round, so hang on tight!]
[anybody want some debt? I got too much.]

I wonder if anyone can dare to imagine the end of the banks.

Perhaps the governments will start considering it soon,
because it will be either the heads of the bankers, or their own
rolling in the streets.

Well, let's party like it's 1789. Guillotines , anyone?

Imagine no Banksters
Writer: Cos67, with help from John Lennon

Imagine there's no interest
It's easy if you rent
No bankers on us
Above us only tent
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no politicians
It isn't hard to do
No one to kill or die for
And no derivatives too
Imagine all the people living life in solvency

Yoohoowooohoo may say
I'm a schemer, but I'm not a criminal
I hope some day you'll tweet us
And the world will camp as one

Imagine no repossessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or bonuses
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the land

Yooohoowoohooo may say
I'm a schemer, but I'm not the smartest one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one

coming clean takes on a new meaning

[showers: not always used for washing, especially at Penn State]

Nowadays, crime pays. In the US and elsewhere,
bankers can do whatever they want, and live
the high life, with government protection.

Although, at some point, they'll need the
witness protection programme, even though
the only thing they might witness is their
attempted beheading by a mob of starving proles.

It's the same 'business as usual' chant that
sweeps immorality under the rug. In Pennsylvania,
that meant that boys who were looking for a
chance to escape poverty fell into the hands
of a pedophile coach at Penn State.

The powerful people in any environment will
make it so that crime pays, because nobody
dares to speak out against them.

As Sandusky has discovered, 'coming clean' does not mean
doing young boys in the showers.

checktitout: Dialy Mail
In 2002, graduate assistant coach Mike McQueary claims that he saw Sandusky raping a young boy in the team showers. He then told Mr Paterno, and Mr Paterno told Mr Curley.
This was not the first time that concerns about Sandusky had been brought to the attention of university officials- there was a complaint filed by the mother of another boy in 1998 that was investigated by campus police- but little seems to have happened.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069497/Delusional-Jerry-Sandusky-reveals-shocking-new-details-Penn-State-sex-abuse-scandal.html#ixzz1fYtds5Wp

Monday 28 November 2011

why trim the Xmas tree when you can bling your trim

[right this way to the Bermuda triangle]
deck the malls with vajazzle stores

This is latest craze from the Daily Mail and Essex, a match made
in trailer-park heaven.

Women now want to dress up their landing strip, perhaps
with some lights for incoming traffic.

[soft landing ahead]

If they use precious stones, then they could become part of a split
of assets at breakup time. I'd like to see a bailiff try.

the Occupy movement is opening new chapters

It's one thing to protest, but to stay there , through thick
and thin shows everybody how determined people are to change
the world.

As a result, many of the activists of the 'net and tv world
have started to combine forces, and support the protesters
with legal advice and media punch.

Right here we have David Degraw of Amped status blog,
which has been at the forefront of the cyber-battle
between good and the oligarchy, talking with William
Black, the S&L 'prosecutor' who has been instrumental
in spreading the word about corruption in the US
oligarchy, on the Dylan Ratigan show.

They noted how, when the police attack the protesters,
support for the protests goes up.


Monday 21 November 2011

Al Qaeda strikes at an amusement park



manifesto and passports found on the killer plane, or as they called it
the AirBlane. The perps are now in custody at the Gitmo theme ride,
where they wear orange overalls
and shout anti-American taunts at the passersby,
who, in turn, throw tomatoes in the hope of
winning a stuffed toy.


[a stuffed Thatcher]

let the martyrs' suffering give strength to the believers

[the tough wing of the Occupy movement]

I believe it was I, a few months ago, who said we need some martyrs in this movement.
The time has come. My prayers have been answered.

We have a pepper-sprayed granny in Seattle (?)


assorted Iraq vets who have been dismembered and deafened


bankers have a sense of themselves

[banker threatens to ask for another bailout. Must destroy markets first.]
Now that the poverty-making industry is feeling the heat,
they are starting to strike back.

messages in Chicago: Ya, we're the one percent.
advice in Chicago: sprinkling the crowd with MacDonald's applications
insulting the homeless at the foreclosure-mill law firm :
Hallowe'en parties dressed as homeless with sarcastic signs making fun of the poor who are made homeless by themselves

checkitout:
Top US foreclosure law firm threw Halloween party where staff dressed as homeless, foreclosed-upon Americans
By Xeni Jardin at 8:10 am Saturday, Oct 29
xeni jardin
Boing Boing partner, Boing Boing Video host and executive producer. Xeni.net, Twitter, Google+. Email: xeni@xeni.net. Upcoming speaking appearances include Amnesty International Conference, Nov 4-6, Los Angeles.

From a NYT opinion piece by Joe Nocera, "What the Costumes Reveal"—
On Friday, the law firm of Steven J. Baum threw a Halloween party. The firm, which is located near Buffalo, is what is commonly referred to as a “foreclosure mill” firm, meaning it represents banks and mortgage servicers as they attempt to foreclose on homeowners and evict them from their homes. Steven J. Baum is, in fact, the largest such firm in New York; it represents virtually all the giant mortgage lenders, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

The party is the firm’s big annual bash. Employees wear Halloween costumes to the office, where they party until around noon, and then return to work, still in costume. I can’t tell you how people dressed for this year’s party, but I can tell you about last year’s.

That’s because a former employee of Steven J. Baum recently sent me snapshots of last year’s party. In an e-mail, she said that she wanted me to see them because they showed an appalling lack of compassion toward the homeowners — invariably poor and down on their luck — that the Baum firm had brought foreclosure proceedings against.

I'm not one to incite illegal activity, but christ, guys: if there were ever a house that deserved T-P-ing on Halloween? This firm's headquarters is it. May not be justice, but it's a start.

Read the rest, and see all the photos, here. (via Chris Hayes)

83
Traders talk back to Occupy Chicago
By Xeni Jardin at 8:01 am Saturday, Oct 29
xeni jardin

Boing Boing partner, Boing Boing Video host and executive producer. Xeni.net, Twitter, Google+. Email: xeni@xeni.net. Upcoming speaking appearances include Amnesty International Conference, Nov 4-6, Los Angeles.

Someone in the Chicago Board of Trade dropped this printed rant on top of “Occupy Chicago” protesters this Wednesday, as demonstrators and union workers gathered in the city's financial center:

We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.

Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours.

remembrance of unknown soldiers means they died for nothing

[Vee hef ways of making you kill. AaaahhhahhAHAHAHHahaahAHAhah]
How many people have to die before Remembrance Day becomes a day that symbolises
the END of war.
I'm a refusenik. I don't wear a poppy because it just encourages the government.

If I'm wrong, it certainly doesn't make them respect the people who die daily in Afghanistan.
It limits respect to 2 minutes per year, maybe a half hour.

When it comes to war, it doesn't matter if you live in a democracy. You're
going to war, whether you like it or not. At least now, it's just poor
boys looking for a job and some glory, and foreign hookers.

Hermann Goering, Nazi:
"Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."



Here are three more takes on the meaning of war, for the people

checkitout: 1 hand of justice, on Guardian comments
handofjustice

12 November 2011 11:26PM

Just packing my kit bag to come and join them....this old ACC cook can still rustle up some hot army tea and brown stew to feed my comrades in arms. The parasites who lord it over us are the dregs of humanity and not one of the arseholes are fit to lick a squaddies boots....the next war THEY create in this vile world, let them take arms for a change, they can even have my old Enfield 303 rifle if they can carry it and get onto the front line and take the bullets for us....

Your Country Needs You


Wars are fought for the priviledged few.

Who goad you on "behind the queue".

These sick little men, with twisted minds.

Who sing out the songs of barbwire and mines.

"Give your life in blood and sweat".

"Your life today we will not forget".

"Your country needs you, young or old".

This fable sung by men of old.

But heed these words, do not bother.

Your nothing more than cannon fodder.

They promise the Earth if you win the war.

But you end up crippled, disabled and poor.

THEY want the wealth of others lands.

Like gold or oil in desert sands .

So question that fable your fathers sung.

If THEY want a war, give them your gun.

Put THEM in uniform and watch them all run.

handofjustice


2 octopus8 on guardian comments
13 November 2011 6:42PM
There is a most enlightening article on the Sunday Telegraph's website by Lord Ashcroft.It tells how he is donating £1,000,000 to a memorial to Bomber Command and how he has a gallery named after him at the Imperial War Museum with his collection of stamps (oops, his collection of VC medals).
This article is written by him, and his great generosity features well in the article. But nowhere does he suggest the party he bankrolls should do anything for living veterans.The word that comes to my mind rhymes with "banker".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/britainatwar/8885885/Save-our-war-memorials-Why-we-must-honour-the-memory-of-our-fallen-heroes.html


3 Stefan Molyneux

Remembrance Day - By Stefan Molyneux
I wonder what the dead of war would say, if they stayed past their demise, and wheeled around the fading battlefield like invisible kites of regret. I wonder what they would say - the hundreds of millions slaughtered by swords and bombs and guns, vaporized into shadows on broken walls, ground into jam beneath the curled feet of tanks - I wonder what they would say to us? I wonder what they said to themselves, in their last moments, before their eyeballs bled from the crushing weight of war descending upon their lives.
I wonder if all the words that herded them like bitter vacant shepherds off the cliff edge of death - I wonder if those words evaporated just before their lives did? All the words like - patriotism, nationalism, religion, country... soldier. I wonder if all of the words that wrapped around them like a strangling anaconda mummy tape flew away from them before they died, and revealed only the sand - the dead sand - of nonexistence. I wonder if they realized, just before they died, that they were going to go the way of the words that led them to their graves, the words that did not exist, that made them not exist... The countries that do not exist, the patriotism - that is to live on bended knee to violent masters - the class that does not exist, that led them to lay down their lives for nothing, for rulers emptier than the words that hung them. And I wonder what they would say, if they could still fly above the ruin of the world that smashed them - and that they smashed… I wonder what they would say, as they saw all of these ghastly, deadly, empty, strangling words - still roaming the human landscape, still slithering like spindly, spiderly snakes through the books and teachers and priests and parents and lies and media and print of this world… The words like, ‘honor’ - the words like: ‘medal’ - the words, not that they had been ground out by the empty illusions of their elders, but that they had ‘fallen,’ like a toppling domino that was a human being...
I wonder what they would think of the music played for the dead, who died from words… I wonder what they would think of the tears of the people who stood by their graves; the tears of those whose agony at their loss went as deep and as wide as a bloody ocean. I wonder what they would think of the tears of the people who cried their graves, the people who did not move heaven and earth to stop them from going and marching and falling into the whirling blades of warring death.
I wonder what they would think of those who sobbed at their passing, but did not stop their journey to their end, that did not throw themselves in front of this train of death that scoops and sweeps and grinds and sprays over the bodies of all those it runs into, and over…
And I wonder what these billions of ghosts would say to the young, whose hearts and minds and bodies are currently gripped in the talons of these empty, dead, dying, murdering, cancerous words… The young who are snatched from the dead classrooms of State propaganda, and the dead pews of religious praise for the dead and the dying and the killing and the murdering… To the young held aloft and carried aloft in the steely and stealing talons of these empty words, being carried high above the lands that they're supposed to be ‘protecting’ - but that no one is invading – and, in the name of ‘defense,’ being carried thousands and thousands of miles across oceans, across frightened white upturned faces, and being dropped from these great heights, to fall like dead drones onto houses, onto hospitals, onto electricity plants, onto useless sand - but most of all, onto people - because these dead words carry live people and drop them to merge in a horrible embrace with victims of mass murder. I wonder what they would say to those being carried off by these words and dropped on the innocent…
And I wonder - I think most of all - what these ghosts - who learned too late what it is to die by words, to be slashed by syllables, to be murdered by mouths - what they would say to those of us who still continue to praise this murder, to salute this savagery, to stand stiff before these slumping corpses, to cheer these deaths - and to continue to mouth these empty phrases – ‘national defense,’ the ‘war on terror,’ ‘patriot acts,’ ‘protection,’ ‘honor,’ the ‘fallen,’ the ‘brave,’ the ‘few’…
........ Read the rest and watch the video here........

Thursday 17 November 2011

Looking 4 love in all the wrong places

there's a Guardian story that has got it all wrong
"Female orgasm captured in series of brain scans"

As any guy will tell you, you don't want to get into the mind
of a woman. It's a scary place. That's why most guys don't much
care for women's minds. Just enough to know that flowers and
chocolates help start the orgasm, even before the nice
dinner and the wine.

Truth be told, smart guys know that women's orgasms are strange
things, if they are affected by chocolate. The only thing that most
men know is that the stuff works.
How are they supposed to know that it is foreplay to the female
mind.
Guys can barely comprehend the need for physical foreplay. All
the we know is that it means more sex for us, with them.

Now, we also know conclusively why , when women don't feel like
having a horizontal cha-cha, they claim to have a headache.
Something must have disturbed that delicate balance, like a
toilet seat being up.

[where are you looking?]

checkitout:
Female orgasm captured in series of brain scansThe animation will help scientists understand how the female brain conducts the symphony of activity that leads to an orgasm
Ian Sample, Washington DC
guardian.co.uk, Monday 14 November 2011 21.00 GMT
After orgasm, activity in the hypothalamus and nucleus accumbens gradually calms down. Illustration: Corbis
Scientists have used brain scan images to create the world's first movie of the female brain as it approaches, experiences and recovers from an orgasm. The animation reveals the steady buildup of activity in the brain as disparate regions flicker into life and then come together in a crescendo of activity before gently settling back down again.

To make the animation, researchers monitored a woman's brain as she lay in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner and stimulated herself. The research will help scientists to understand how the brain conducts the symphony of activity that leads to sexual climax in a woman.

By studying people who have orgasms, Professor Barry Komisaruk, a psychologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey and his team hope to uncover what goes wrong in both men and women who cannot reach sexual climax.

The animation was compiled from sequential brain scans of Nan Wise, a 54-year-old PhD student and sex therapist in Komisaruk's lab. "It's my dissertation," Wise told the Guardian. "I'm committed to it."

Speaks with Forked Fingers, as the Indians call her

Baroness Two-fingers
"Baroness Trumpington sticks two fingers up at colleague after age insult"

The House of Lords is the place for doddering old farts to collect a nice pension
and faff about, talking about nothing. They all of a sudden woke up this week.
and started insulting one another and flipping the bird.

Who needs the X-factor?

How one’s ex got the other axed

Cro vs magnon in the world of rugby

I'm not making this up, for those readers who have never heard of rugby or of the English team. They stank up the place in the latest world cup, in New Zealand recently.
It wasn't bad enough for them to play badly, and they did. They had to mess around off the field, too. They were messing with a chick working at a hotel, insulting her and treating her like a piece of meat. Of course, British journalists love this stuff.
One of them, Mike Tindall, who happens to just have been married up with a minor princess was just doing what comes naturally when your ex-girlfriend just shows up, out of the blue, in New Zeland. You give her a kiss in front of cameras, on the lips.
I mean, he was just married, a month ago.

The worst of it is that they're all walking calculators. They can figure out how much money their each action will bring in. Unfortunately for them, they didn't get the winnings from many games, because they lost most of theirs.
Anyway, to top it off, the coach, who seems to be a softy, and an ex-player, Martin Johnson, could not coral the boys, so he quit.

Now, the secret report on the English Rugby RFU has leaked out, wiki-style.

checkitout:


Damning reports expose something rotten at heart of England rugby
The leaked reports into England's Rugby World Cup fiasco reveal a culture of avarice, division and confusion in the national team set-up
o Robert Kitson
o The Guardian, Wednesday 23 November 2011

The reputation of English rugby has already received a hammering but the leaking of the confidential reports into the squad's recent Rugby World Cup debacle is as heavy a blow as any. Any pretence that England were unfortunate victims of circumstance in New Zealand has been blown out of the water and replaced by a litany of examples of avarice and muddle-headed thinking.

Some of the details contained within the documents published by the Times will cause apoplexy among those supporters who paid good money to follow the squad. To hear players openly criticising their team-mates for being money-obsessed and detailing the full extent of the divisions within the squad makes it obvious why Martin Johnson felt the need to resign last week. It may even be that the latest revelations will make it considerably harder for the RFU to find a coach prepared to dip his toes into such toxic waters.

The culture within the squad would appear to be even worse than it felt to onlookers at the time. The captain, Lewis Moody, has already stepped down from international rugby but it would seem inconceivable that the bulk of the squad can possibly be retained for the start of the Six Nations, even with Johnson gone and a new broom appointed. Of the coaches, only Graham Rowntree emerges with any credit. Sponsors will recoil in horror, as will anyone remotely connected with the RFU. It is impossible to think of a squad which has returned home so openly at odds with itself. Divisive senior players, ineffective leadership, weak management – every single depressing box has now been ticked....
Further trouble could yet be brewing, with Mike Tindall's appeal against the £25,000 fine imposed on him by the RFU due to be heard on Thursday. The 33-year-old was fined and dropped from the elite player squad following an RFU investigation into his conduct during the now infamous evening out in Queenstown. The Rugby Players' Association described Tindall's fine, which was handed down by the RFU's elite rugby director, Rob Andrew, as "extraordinary" and "unprecedented". The appeal will be heard by the RFU's acting chief executive, Martyn Thomas, whose own time at the union is about to end. As judicial processes go, it has already been interesting to say the least.

Monday 14 November 2011

I get it. It's a new way of life

[this is a people's general assembly in Athens, like the one in London]

more on the #OLSX crowd.

from my visits, from ideas of Matt Taibbi and others,
I've begun to understand the meaning of the Occupy
movement. It is not an attack on politics, a replacement
of politics or a manifesto.

The people there are living a lifestyle. They want
to show us that if you don't have a good job
you can still live if you believe in community
and work together.

There' a kitchen there with free food for all.

You may find (I don't) the people a little grimey
but you need to keep looking.

It is also an attempt at being re-born democrats.
There are regular assemblies that try to gauge
public opinion. This is a good thing. There are
no tyrants, or four-year-program democrats.

How long will the rest of us be able to keep up
appearances with the employment opportunities
crumbling before our eyes?

More soon

wooley bully


the bullingdon club as an ASBO factory.

Davey
Georgie
Borrrrisss


Coming soon.

Sunday 13 November 2011

Just Dave wants us just to go home

more on the #occupy london stock exchange

Just Dave, the PM, has the quaint idea that protestors are just supposed to go away.
That's funny. I thought the idea of protest was to piss off the powers so that
something might get done. That's the way every revolution, or almost revolution has happened.
The almost revolutions were cases where the government understood the protest and the size of the protest, and then did something to fix the problem that was causing the protest. Like when the Bolivians rampaged after the US multi-national company running the water works demanded that people pay for rainwater.

Anyway, we're in one of those situations. Austerity, it's called. Austerity for us, socialism for the banks.
Maybe Dave is making fun of us. That's the first stage according to the immortal Gandhi.
First they make fun of you, then they fear you, then they attack you , then you win.

Some speeches, music and DEMOCRACY from London:

[Justice at OWS ]
[Nicholas Shaxson at St. Pauls ]
[Alessio Rastani at London Bank of Ideas]
[Preacher Rev. Billy ]
[Billy Bragg ]
[Assange]
[Assange on banking and offshore tax havens]



Here's what the Occupiers are upset about, the end of normality:


[from Diran Lyons and Vruden Jakov and the voice of Gerald Celente]

whoa, Nelly. We got a new whip rule

[Donegan for Getty]

I didn't know that horses were allowed in the stands. Neh!

There actually was a big horse race in the UK, at Cheltenham, I think.
That's why the famous ladies were dressed up with the hair and the
flowers and stuff. Most of the guys though only had eyes for
the phillies. The equine ones.
If you could find a way to gamble on famous "actresses",
then we'll talk.

Anyways,
I never understood how anybody could keep from laughing or wretching
whenever the idea of sex and that chick on the right were occuring at
the same time.

Please look at that bird!

I know how that show was sold. They just tacked the word 'sex' on it,
did some embarrassing stuff that even comedians won't touch, and
badda boom, badda bing,
it's on the tip of everybody's tongue, literally.

Monday 7 November 2011

Zombie Bank of England

[Metro]
I was wondering why they've been so silent of late, what with the #OLSX
occupation. Perhaps the BoE had become the ZBoE. The economy is certainly
zombified.

Guy Fawkes has been vindicated- Anonymous

I'm quite amazed how the myth of Guy has been turned into the Robin Hood
image of Anonymous and the revolt of our days. I supposed the politicians
were to blame for the Fawkes fiasco after all. They're certainly to blame
for today's problems.

Guy fawkes has been vindicated. Despite what guardian says.

checkitout: Guardian

Occupy's V for Vendetta protest mask is a symbol of festive citizenship
The real meaning of the Guy Fawkes mask seen around the world is sophisticated, self-knowing and carnivalesque
o Jonathan Jones
o guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 November 2011 10.30 GMT
V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask. Photograph: Ted S Warren/AP
The skin is pallid, the cheeks touched with pink. The eyes are holes. And the smile is frozen, set forever, a fixed uncanny moustachioed grin above a devilish goatee beard.
This is the face of protest in 2011. At Occupy demonstrations from Wall Street to St Paul's people choose to wear the same mask, an eerie phantom face of a diabolical musketeer, a cheerfully sinister underground d'Artagnan. The mask started its revolutionary career as the public face of the Anonymous movement. All in all it marks a massive change of fortune for one of British history's greatest villains.
For this is the face of Guy Fawkes, transformed into the mask of a modern avenger by artist David Lloyd and writer Alan Moore in their 1980s graphic novel V for Vendetta and popularised by the 2006 film of the comic book – not to mention merchandised; the mask is an official movie byproduct licensed by Time Warner, which has thus found a way to profit from the Crisis of Capitalism. A man demonised for centuries in British culture has become an icon of dissidence and defiance.
Guy Fawkes has taken to the streets, just as he disappears from his traditional starring role on Bonfire Night, 5 November. When Moore and Lloyd started their comic serial V for Vendetta in 1981 in a magazine called Warrior, British children still made rude effigies of the great inflammable Catholic and wheeled their lumpen creations around demanding "a penny for the Guy": today Halloween has taken over in children's culture and, in many parts of Britain, Guy Fawkes Night is merely Bonfire Night, with fireworks but no effigy.
Moore – whose wildly imaginative scripts for comics that also include From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen prove him one of the most original writers in Britain today – has acknowledged in an essay called Behind the Painted Smile that it was his artist collaborator David Lloyd who invented the Guy Fawkes persona for their modern freedom fighter. Lloyd wrote: "He'd look really bizarre and it would give Guy Fawkes the image he's deserved all these years. We shouldn't burn the chap every 5 November but celebrate his attempt to blow up parliament!"
It was, says Moore, "the best idea I'd ever heard in my entire life". It was certainly prophetic. Who knew that by 2011 the old Protestant demonisation of Guy Fawkes would be virtually forgotten and his attempt to blow up the mother of parliaments reclaimed as a great democratic act? In the 2006 film (which credits only Lloyd as it was disowned, with good aesthetic reason, by Moore) the culminating, triumphant scene has a mass movement of Guy Fawkes avengers removing their masks to reveal themselves as you and me, the 99%, as they proudly watch the Houses of Parliament explode.
Outside the world of sublime comic books and ridiculous films, is it really such a great idea to identify with Guy Fawkes? The impulse crosses political divisions: the Conservative blogger Guido Fawkes also uses the name, and the logo on his site resembles the V for Vendetta visage. This is all a colossal forgetting of history. There is not much to romanticise in the career of Guy Fawkes. Religious violence was a dark reality of life in 17th-century Britain, and the plot hatched by a group of Catholics in 1605 reflected decades of frustration at their faith's proscribed status. The would-be mass murderers planned to blow up the new King James I and his entire parliament in assembly at the Palace of Westminster on 5 November. They dug a tunnel from a nearby rented house, piled up enough gunpowder beneath the palace to send it into the sky in flames, but when Fawkes was caught down there with the barrels and kindling, the failed assassin went down in popular memory as a demon to be ritually burned by Protestant crowds on smoky Autumn evenings.

Kicking the Cannes Cannes down the road road

Yes they cancan, like the best. That's a French birthright.





I'm not talking about the gals above when I say:
Wasn't that some of the best kabuki acting you've ever seen?
I mean the Euro politicians.

I say! The end of the world and all that.

And, You'll take it up the arse, and like it! George?
What's that democracy stuff you're talking about? George?

Merkozy are, in this order:
fl%&^&cking Greece,
saving their banks,
saving the euro,
then saving their arses.

Anybody have any democratic requests? Please hold.

Merkozy have been exposed as the two headed monster.

Oddly, GPap got them to open pandora's box.
They finally said, Greece can leave. They weren't serious,
but everybody's gonna go for that as a solution,
which will end up destroying the Euro if no the EU.

GPap's referendum idea was also brilliant. Now the Germans want
a referendum. This is working out marvellously.


checkitout: Mish Shedlock- strategy for GPap

I encourage Papandreou to go "All In". He has nothing to lose. He will not win the next election and he is tired of playing puppet to Merkozy.Bear in mind Greece desperately needs reforms. However, the manner in which the IMF, EMU, and Merkozy have forced various issues is in a manner that helps only Greek and French banks, and not Greece at all.
Most Greeks would agree with that assessment, whether it is truer or not. That is the likely reason Papandreou's cabinet went along with the referendum idea, after initially rejecting it.
In short, this was a brilliant series of perfectly timed maneuvers that shoves the ball smack back into the face of of the arrogant Merkozy coalition.
Stuff the Ball Down Merkozy's Thoat Until they Puke
Papandreou's next move should be to stuff the ball down the throats of Merkozy so hard that both of them puke.
All he has to do to accomplish that would be to go ahead and word the referendum how he wants. In short, the referendum needs to include a proposal to stay in the Eurozone, as well as a proposal to reject the terms of the EFSF as presented.
Look at the beauty of this setup from the point of view of Papandreou.
Assuming the proposal to stay in the Eurozone passes but approval of the terms of the EFSF does not, Merkel and Sarkozy will have to do one of two things:
1. Kick Greece out of the European Monetary Union
2. Renegotiate terms of the EFSF
Either way, Papandreou wins.
Explanation of My Position
Please do not read any more into this than exists. The facts of the matter are French, German, and other European banks made stupid loans to Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, etc.
Banks that make stupid lending decisions (and not taxpayers) should pay the price for those actions.
Greece desperately needs reforms, particularly in the public union area. I support those reforms.
However, I do not support the bailing out of banks. Unfortunately, all this alleged "help" to Greece is nothing more than an obvious attempt to bail out banks at the expense of Greece and European taxpayers in general.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock




2
Guardian

The Greek prime minister's decision to put the debt deal to a public vote has shocked Europe – but he is confident of support * Helena Smith
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 November 2011 21.08 GMT
.....A networker par excellence, Papandreou is also betting on Greece being a bigger problem for Europe than Europe is for Greece.
Just as he dismayed his EU counterparts, revealing the depths of Greece's corruption, inefficiency and public sector dysfunctionality shortly after assuming power, aides say he is now bent on telling them that he is determined to uncover the "vested interests" thwarting reform.
Papandreou has repeatedly blamed a nexus of media, banking and financial concerns for blocking his government's efforts at modernisation.
"The referendum is a declaration of war against all those who have made Faustian bargains, all the special interests killing Greece," said an aide.
"It is the beginning of cathartic process that is going to see a lot of corruption and wrongdoing aired. That is why George is certain that rational Greeks will vote in favour at the end of the day."

Saturday 5 November 2011

the Mother of all excavations

Let rotting soldiers lie.
Research into WW1 discovers the truth about life as a soldier.
Dead ones to be interviewed. What'dya think they'd say on their last day?
God, it's great being human, isn't it?

I swear the BBC was announcing a sh*tload of money going to digging up the recent
bloody past, as if we haven't had enough documentaries.
I just can't find any proof on the net, so screw it.

Dead end, so to speak.

oddly, Merkel is hinting at war as the result of this fiscal meltdown, and Sarkozy is saying how the heart will be ripped out of the EU. Oh, the sky is falling!



this is the bloodiest, craziest crap I could find off those panty-waists
at Youtube



shell shock http://youtu.be/SS1dO0JC2EE

trench ass


more Bodies
I want these guys in front of me in any war

old smoothie cannot be taken seriously

William Hague of the Baskervilles

This guy was a lapdog to Thatcher, when he was a kid. His accent is so smarmy
that I cannot take him seriously.

He could be saying the most profound things and I'd be on the floor, laughing.

Imagine:
"The end of the world is niiiiigh."
"That asteroid will destroy us ooooooaaaaaaall"
"We shall fight on the beeeeeeaches,
in the coooooountry clubs and
on our gooooolf caaaaaaarts..."

the kid's got...marbles in his mouth

a deadringers joke


the tired old Ballad of Tony I

Now, don't get me wrong. I like their music and they've
pulled a pretty good one, those Sabbath boys, but
just because you're famous doesn't mean you need
to write a biography.

If a boring guy writes a biography, I just want the data.
Who, what , where, when, on which chick, in which position.
that's it.

It's that way with Tony, and a lot of others.

BTW, there was a great song by an Ottawa band called the
Ballad of Richard Iomi about a crazy fan of Black Sabb that
went around telling stupid fantasy stories that he'd dreampt
up about Black Sabbath, until one Canadian rocker chick singer
told him to get a life. Quite a song. Did well on the radio.

Now that guy deserves a
biography more than some of those illiterate, lucky, drunk,
stoned bastards who get millions for repeating their hits
ad infinitum while I got work like a maniac to survive.

the song. Maestro.



checkitout: Metro

Tony Iommi: Black Sabbath could record with Ozzy Osbourne again

Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi discusses writing his new autobiography, life as a rock star and whether Ozzy Osbourne will ever rejoin the band.


Did you learn anything about yourself from writing the book?


I shocked myself with the amount of things I’ve done and the things I forgot about doing. I look back and it all seems a bit confusing.


Are you more proud than confused?


It’s been a long battle but it’s been great. I’ve had great times with different line-ups of the band. That’s as far as the music’s concerned. The marriages have been a different story – the current one’s great but there have been some ups and downs with the others.


What are you proudest of achieving in your career?


I’ve got hundreds of gold and platinum discs, so I can’t complain. We’d heard: ‘You’ll never make anything of this, get a proper job,’ from our families. So when the first album got in the charts that was a proud moment, and our families were proud too.


Do you see your influence on new rock bands?


Yes, and it’s not me saying that, they tell me themselves. Metallica, Soundgarden, Nirvana – they all said Sabbath influenced them. And there’s people who I’d never have thought of such as Ice T and Lil Wayne, he does a bit of Iron Man on one of his tracks. Sometimes they say: ‘You’ve influenced my music.’ I can’t see how but it’s a nice compliment.


Does touring get harder as you get older?


The travelling is the hard part – we travel in the best way but it still tires you out. It’s worth it for the hour and a half I play on stage.


How has the music industry changed since you started?


When we started you had people who followed you for a long time, we still do, but it turns over fast now. In the old days you’d get a five-album record deal, now it’s one album and if it doesn’t sell a million, you’re gone. Its sad record stores have gone. It was great to go into them and look at album covers and have a look around. It’s all online now, which is more convenient I suppose.


What lessons has the music industry taught you?


I’m still learning. For years, when we were meeting producers and executives, we were told: ‘You should be doing this and that.’ But I just got on with it and did what I believed in. That’s pushed us through.


What’s the worst advice you’ve been given in your career?


‘Sign this.’ In the early days we signed so many deals with management, not thinking, just wanting to go out there and play. You learn the hard way.


What’s your relationship with Ozzy Osbourne like now?


It’s good. We’ve had our ups and downs in the past but it’s been blown out of proportion to the point where, from the outside it looks really bitter, but we’ve never really fallen out.


He sued you over who owns the name of the band though.


Yes, but we’ve sorted that out now. These things crop up. You sort them out and then they go away.


Will you record with him again?


Who knows? It’s like when we had Ronnie James Dio with us, we broke up, got back together, did another album and tour. You can never tell. We got back together with Ozzy in 1997 and toured so you never know what’s around the corner.


You live in the Midlands – why don’t you have a big LA mansion?


I lived there for five years but I missed sarcasm. My solid friends are here. You’re on your own a lot of the time on tour so it’s great to come home and see friends and be yourself without having to meet people and sign things all the time.


What have you got left to achieve in your career?


I’m doing the soundtrack to three horror films, which I’m looking forward to. I’ve got a lot of ideas but won’t know where to start until I see the films.


Iron Man is out now published by Simon and Schuster.

Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/music/878743-tony-iommi-black-sabbath-could-record-with-ozzy-osbourne-again#ixzz1d3QKbOJh

Monday 31 October 2011

From duck soup to Won Ton soup



Wonton can-kicking Europeans go kerplunk in the South China Sea

I can't believe that the Europeans are going cap in hand to the BRICs.

What a bunch of wankers. They're so f%^&*&ked up that they can't
control their own bankers and they want the Chinese and Brazilians
to pay for it.

Keep on samba-ing, you lazy, corrupt European sons-a-bitches.
Then you'll discover the true meaning of life.


definition: duck soup= in deep shit.

checkitout: from Mish Shedlock
Sarkozy Under Fire for Seeking China’s HelpPlease consider Sarkozy Criticized for Seeking China’s Help
French President Nicolas Sarkozy came under fire from opposition leaders for seeking China’s help to resolve the euro area’s debt crisis.
“It’s shocking,” Martine Aubry, the general secretary of the Socialist Party, said in the Sunday newspaper, Journal du Dimanche. “The Europeans, by turning to the Chinese, are showing their weakness. How will Europe be able to ask China to stop undervaluing its currency or to accept reciprocal commercial accords?”
Sarkozy reached out last week to his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao to build support for an enlarged rescue fund designed to solve the region’s sovereign-debt crisis. The leaders talked just hours after a euro-region summit on Oct. 27 ended with an agreement to boost the European Financial Stability Facility to about 1 trillion euros ($1.4 trillion), leveraging existing guarantees by as much as five times.

Thursday 27 October 2011

dem bones are boning, from now on


just f^&*kin around, from hereafter into eternity.

I'll write up something on this soon. It's just magic.

This does so much speak to the human condition.
So much culture has gone into making us forget that we have
an animalistic side that pushes us to procreate ad infinitum.
Regardless of whether we heed that message, it's there.

That act is a sign of life itself. For many, sex, drugs and
assorted debauchery are the only way they can prove to themselves
that they are alive.

We're just borrowing some skin for a while.

For those who think that you need a museum of sex (that's where the bones
are hanging it out),
it now sounds as stupid as taking S&M seriously.
Public abusive sex.
Public lionising of a basic human act.
Both stupid.
YOu'd have to be
totally numb to appreciate either one. Now the cover has come off
the urge for sex and shown itself to be a key aspect of our mortality.
We're born, we screw, we die. No matter how you dress it up.
I wish they had put some of the stupid accessories found in that
Museum onto the skeletons just
to highlight the ridiculousness of it all.

here's the right attitude. Find gal. follow the urge.


If any of our female readers is having problems, may I
recommend a visit to Dr. Cheryl Kinsey, or was it Kinkey.



checktitout: juxtapoz.com

French sculpter Jean-Marc Laroche has carefully crafted life-sized skeletons out of varnished resin, held together in ecstaticly sensuous positions by an invisible steel framework for his new installation up at the Museum of Sex in New York City. The show “Les Amants du Néant,” or “Lovers from the Hereafter,” will run through November 4th.

aaaargh , mateys. the voting box is over thaaaargh

we be taking over the parliaments of the world!

these are not your garden-variety Somali pirates, they're anti-politicians
with a message of free speech and against the coprighting. Companies have been trying to copyright everything up to and including oxygen and human body parts.

Their name is a sarcastic stab at the way the rich copyright holders (particularly of music) are calling anybody who transgresses against them. These dick-holders are trying to push ever-stronger copyright theft penalties in the US and beyond, and
stifling democratic dialogue in the process.

If we're gonna be guilty until proven innocent, it's better to be a pirate
than a music-buying fool.

if you want to join the Pirate Party, you need to learn to speak with a
pirate accent. Get your behind to Bristol.


checkitout:
Falkvinge
As German Pirate Party Hits 10%, Some Thoughts On The Next Five Years

This morning, the German Pirate Party hit double digits in a nationwide poll. That was a landmark event, no matter how you look at it. As the first double-digit poll reverbs in the five-year-old Pirate Party community, I’d like to take some time to reflect on these and the next five years.

Not only is the German Piratenpartei polling at double digits, by the way: they are also in Kingmaker Position, holding the balance of power between the German political blocks. If this was the next election result, that means that they can ask for basically anything and make it happen in Germany and Europe. Next German elections are two years out, but this is already turning a lot of policymaking around.

(Side note: with polls around these numbers, it is imperative that the party leader with support is available to be visible faces of the party on all available media time. While completely not my decision, I would therefore suggest that some of the Berlin money for assistants go to hiring the PPDE federal party leader and one admin person at the federal level. That’s how we did it in PPSE and it has worked well: after all, a Pirate Member of Parliament don’t need an assistant to print their e-mails and tell them what’s happening on Twitter. Same goes for any other PPxx in the same situation. But anyway, that’s beside the point of this article.)

Anyhow.

After founding the first Pirate Party, I had expected the PPSE [Pirate Party Sweden] to be alone in the world for the first couple of years, until we had had our first major success (which happened in 2009, in my fourth year as party leader, when we took two seats in the European Parliament and became the largest party for voters under 30). Instead, four sister parties sprung up just in the first week as news of the party’s foundation hit social media — then, meaning mostly Slashdot. Most of the ones in place now already existed by our 2009 success. Today, the Pirate Parties International lists 61 Pirate Parties that have started or are starting — we exist in practically all corners of Europe and the Americas, and with a scattered presence in Asia, too.

At the set-sail, I imagined that five percent in an election would be all that we needed to convert our narrow agenda into actual policy. But as five years have passed, I have realized three connected things:

■The old parties are not just assaulting free speech and exchange of opinion in general. They are assaulting the entire lifestyle and outlook of success of the entire young generation, turning free market mechanisms into mercantilism and corruption. The venerable kings of the hill are locking their privileges into law, and this goes way beyond copyright and patent monopolies.
■This means that we are not just a party for the free exchange of TICKS (tools, ideas, culture, knowledge, and sentiments). We are a lifestyle party for the entire younger generation, starting somewhere at 35-40 years of age. This lifestyle — digital natives, as some have called it, or the connected generation which I prefer — is being actively condemned and demonized by the old parties.
■As a result, the young generation today is feeling completely disenfranchised. (We once had a poster with a girl alone at a laptop, using the same image twice. Under the first, we wrote “ANTISOCIAL” over the image, signed with all the oldparties’ logos. Under the second, we wrote “SOCIAL” and ours.) All of this taken together means that we are not primarily a five-percent party for technical people, but closer to a twenty-percent party for a connected generation, including the technical people. The first sign of this materializing was PPDE’s strong breakout of the five-percent area.
One example of the Hindenburgean policymaking of oldparties is when one of the major Swedish parties left Twitter yesterday, citing “lack of manpower”. One can’t help but wonder if they have manpower to read the news? It’s not lack of manpower, it’s lack of a basic knowledge of today’s conversational landscape. (Translation by Google; not perfect but good enough:)

Futile and stupid gesture

the very definition of US foreign policy.




We used to joke that the US was trying to be Global Police, but now
you can see they're knocking off easy countries for their oil, as
well as knocking them off to raise the price of oil. That makes the
oil companies and speculators richer.

What happens when the US government needs the price of oil to fall
to keep the public from lynching them? Well, the government creates
some new tax loopholes for the oil companies, and pays to clean
up their messes. In udder words, we end up paying for it, twice.
Once at the pumps and again in the tax settlement.

It's the final countdown, Europe

The favourite phrase of big-hair bands and #Occupy Wall Street

Of course, the banksters of Europe were facing ruin this week, but EU leaders
decided to kick the can down the road, so it's still game on
for
the FINAL COUNTDOWN
before the banks implode.

What Europe has done this week is choose slavery over freedom.

as the song says "we're living together", which means some are living in the palace and others have to sleep in the cellar with the rats.

The banks cannot lose, but governments and normal people (the 99%) can always be
robbed when you know the Prime Minister or President or Capo.



The answer to all the messing around in Europe is with another super-group

ASIA . They noticed the Heat of the Moment, this week, but also noted that
it's just a lot of heat and not a lotta light. More rightly, a blimp full of
hot air.


Wiki-definition
Supergroups were formed when guys could still use brushes and hair spray without
being punched out. It was the time when the EU was also created and when the
banks were truly let loose by the two-headed libertarian Reagan/Thatcher monster.

It was a "heady" time; the birth of Too Big to Fail.
Where are those super-groups now, anyways?

Monday 17 October 2011

Wiki-Letwins

How one man chooses to leak information about the government to the media:

Through the park litter bin.

Others do it in the park toilets.

Or, they leave it on the train, or in the pub.

This time the arch-two-timing spy is Olie Letwin.

more later

Essex girls are breeding


They're breeding fashion ideas.

I gotta tell you, I've had run-ins with the mythological
'Essex girl' all femininity and a 4x4 to run you down.

I'll recount my experience with a housemate, some other day.

For now, we can see that the Essex sense of self and fashion
actually has a good side. Cash.


[they look strangely Russian, to me. That's not a bad thing.]

checkitout:
Forget London, Milan, New York and Paris – the only way for fashion is Essex
Faiers sisters from 'structured reality' TV show days away from selling own high-glamour clothing line in House of Fraser stores
Lauren Cochrane guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 October 2011 19.21 BST Article history
Billie and Sam Faiers at the launch of fellow TOWIE star Jessica Wright's lingerie line. Photograph: Mike Marsland/WireImage
The fashion world may have spent the past month focusing on London, Milan, New York and Paris to find the latest trends, but British consumers are looking to Essex, the biggest sartorial influence of 2011. The county's style has been shoved to the fore by The Only Way is Essex, the "structured reality" show now back with a third series.
And what style it is: the women featured in ITV2's series – also known as Towie – favour an ultra-glam look with false eyelashes for a sleep-over, heels for paintballing and Botox for the under-25s.
The wider public will soon be able to emulate the style of Towie's Lauren Goodger, Lauren Pope and Lydia Bright by buying items from the clothing line of the show's sisters Billie and Sam Faiers.
GraciEve, a "fast fashion" line featuring items retailing for £30-£90, is due to be launched at House of Fraser stores nationwide next Tuesday. The line has been financed entirely by the sisters' savings and created in partnership with Essex-based stylist Jeff Mehmet.
Its "Essex look" features short lengths, body-conscious shapes, and girly prints – and the collection was snapped up by Louise Bailey, House of Fraser's contemporary and young fashion brands buyer. "It was the right timing," Bailey said. "Essex is very on trend at the moment, isn't it? It's Essex chic. I can see it translating up north and in the rest of the country."
The Faiers run a clothes shop, Minnies, in Brentwood's high street, which has been featured in the show since the start of season two. It sells labels such as Forever Unique, and Maggie and Me, and has become a magnet for hen parties from Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow.
The holding page of the Minnies Boutique website received 10m hits before it launched and the site had 380,000 hits in the first 10 minutes it was live. "The response is mad," said Sam. "There will be comments asking where we got anything we wear on the show, even if it is just a new Alice band."
Up until now there have been few Essex natives in the world of fashion apart from the designer Hannah Marshall and Harlow-born Victoria Beckham. But, after years of being the subject of ridicule and bad jokes, Essex girls are in the spotlight, and their look – evolved from the white stiletto 80s stereotype – is imitated across the UK.
The pavements of Chigwell "are now more influential than the catwalks of Milan when it comes to determining the tastes of a Britain's new flash-fashion brigade", said Martin Raymond, editor-in-chief of the Future Laboratory, a trend forecasting agency. Essex style is said by its champions to be inclusive as well as aspirational – and unapologetically funBritish way of dressing.
During last week's X Factor show, the judge Tulisa Contostavlos commented that "Essex is so current right now", and the . Towie stars have featured in fashion magazines including 10, Vogue, Grazia and i-D.
Amy Childs, who was named the "ultimate Essex girl" by the magazine, has already left TOWIE and is set to star in her own show, All About Amy, next year.
Though the Faiers sisters did not train in fashion they say their retail background allows them to move into design.
A career change could yet be a shrewd move: Towie has had falling viewer figures (down 40% from the million who watched the new series' first episode) and rumours of a new MTV reality show, based in east London, surfaced on the fashion website Vice this week.
Other Towie stars are also keen to make use of the show's popularity while it lasts. Jess Wright launched a lingerie line called With Love, Jessica on the show last week, and Nicola Goodger who appeared in season two, has produced a range of Essex-themed T-shirts with slogans such as: "My heart belongs to Essex but the rest of me is up for grabs."
The Faiers insist that GraciEve is not "cashing in" on all the publicity but is a long-term plan. "I'd like it to be an empire," Sam said.

martyrs and the devil's handymen



more to come