Monday 29 August 2011

Flying Texans lock up your children

[herpes]

[yeast infection- and a lack of talent. can't even grab her own piece]

[kinda cute]

As Radiohead said "you do it to yourself". and you can, if you want, but not to anybody else's kids.

Kids are disadvantaged in the US, these days. It used to be, you had to be
in the wrong Catholic diocese to have your kids molested. Anyway, there
are often sick uncles around as well, but it's still a 1% minority that have had
to live with that kind of sick memory and feelings. Now, it's rampant in the US.
two stories-

"15 will get you 20"- common phrase told to those caught looking at underage
females

Now, in the US, if you want to fly and don't pass through the x-ray bum-looker
machine, you'll get groped by a TSA employee. You'll get over it, if you've had your
share of orgies.
However, your kids are being victimised. How can you allow an adult to check
your kids' virginal stuff? Life is different after you've been molested.
And, you're just thinking that "let's get this over with". Meanwhile,
the kid is speechless for a couple of weeks. Then, the kid starts
to withdraw from society. If you see these signs, get a diagnosis, and sue TSA.
It's a legal issue as well. Consent to fondling? Even if it's not enjoyed by anybody,
it's still fondling.
What if the TSA gorilla is a pedophile?

Just in case I "run into" your daughter... by mistake

Life is doubly hard in Texas for female children. Even if they don't fly,
they have to deal with the philandering 'conservative' governor, Rick Perry.
Apparently, he was the only wise man who sought to protect young ladies
from venereal disease by giving them an antidote shot.
This goes REAL well with his abstinence and chastity message, as a
bible-thumper.
Beyond that, some girls have died. Why is he the only one making these
mandatory?
As you'll see below, there are rumours that he beds more than a few of whatever
he can find.
That's why he'll become the next president. Because he can readily be
blackmailed.

Is it just me, or have these things only started happening since the time
they started selling GM food?

checkitout: 2 things
1 infowars
A Monetary Maze From Which There Is No Easy Escape
By Bob Chapman
International Forecaster
Aug 28, 2011
... Worse yet, the current front runner for the Republicans is Rick Perry, twice a guest at the Illuminist Bilderberg meetings, the Texas governor who tried to tie the Texas corridor on the people of Texas for the New World Order, who ordered inoculations for young girls, some of whom died, and who happens to be a philanderer with both sexes.
Is this the kind of pervert we want as our President? These are the kind of candidates that are proffered to us by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
These are the characters that are funding Mr. Perry. This man is far more dangerous to our country than George Bush and Barak Obama. This is the man the elitists have sent to us to neutralize the candidacy of Rep. Ron Paul for our presidency.

2
Karl Denninger
Outrage(s) Of The Week

So many to choose from this week.... Buffett and BAC (which I already wrote on), Bernanke's continued mendacity and of course the destruction of real liquidity in the markets due to all the gaming and schemes that the "Wall Street Capitalists" have engaged in over the last few years.

But today's column is reserved for those topics I haven't explored this week. We'll begin with this:

The Elko County Sheriff’s Office was notified in July of possible sexual contact between David Ralph Anderson, 61, and a girl younger than 14.

According to Elko Justice Court records, the victim told investigators that on seven to 10 occasions between 2010 and this year, Anderson allegedly taught the victim about various sexual acts and had sexual contact in the form of touching each other’s genitals.

Alleged perverts aren't anything special, right? Well, this one is. The article says he's a TSA employee.

Still want to go through that security line to fly, do you? There wouldn't be anything special about being a TSA employee that might be attractive to an alleged pervert, is there? Oh yeah, there is - you get to grope the balls of little boys and fondle little girls breasts, and it's part of your job description.

Why do we allow this as citizens of this nation again?

You can never eliminate as a prospective matter all perverts - by definition until the first time they get caught, arrested, tried and (hopefully) imprisoned you don't know they're perverts. But you can refuse to create government-sponsored and mandated positions where people like this can molest thousands of kids as part of their job!

What sort of sick society have we become that we're willing to subject not only ourselves but our kids to sexual abuse simply to exercise our constitutional right to travel? And don't give me this "privilege" crap - you (as an adult) may be able to consent to being groped (legally) to get on a plane (the difference between sexual assault and simple sex is in fact consent) but the premise of someone being a minor is that they cannot consent as a matter of law and you cannot consent for them. Arguing that this is acceptable is identical to arguing that a parent should be able to "consent" to their child sleeping with an uncle - or anyone else for that matter. Disgusted yet? You should be - with yourself.

it's 1963 flashback time in housing

What a wonderful trip down memory lane this US Housing Bubble has brought us.

It reminds us of a better, simpler time, when the US population was around 200 million.

New homes are now selling at the same rate as they were in 1963.
Isn't that a sign of a depression?
Isn't capitalism supposed to grow and progress?

I prefer 1969, myself.


and 1970


checkitout: Mish
New Home Sales at 1963 Levels
The Los Angeles Times reports New home sales drop to six-month low
Sales of newly built homes fell in July to the lowest level in six months, as the nation's housing market continues to struggle.
Newly constructed single-family homes sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 298,000, putting the industry on a pace to post the lowest annual sales since the Commerce Department began keeping data in 1963.
Is the eligible buyers' pool getting bigger or smaller?
The trend says smaller, in spite of falling interest rates and falling prices. Many items on my 7 point list are more important than interest rates, notably 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7.
That is the psychology of the situation and
I see little reason for it to change until the labor market changes first.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock....end
[ignore that last line. Mish often tries to blame labour and unions for some of the problems we see, which is nuts. He's lucky he gets paid to pound a keyboard-Cos67]

Friday 26 August 2011

Mad Vampire Squid Men

a new office comedy brought to you by the folks at Twitter.

the GSElevator is a column that exchanges all manner of silliness
overheard in Goldman Sachs elevators from Hong Kong to London.

[crash diets for crashing markets]

[joke's on you, then]




http://twitter.com/#!/gselevator
GSElevator GS Elevator Gossip
Suit#1: "Was that really an earthquake?" Suit#2: "No, I just dropped my wallet." (laughter)
[seismic perhaps, but still fake, fiat money-Cos67]

GSElevator GS Elevator Gossip
(Palin blah blah Romney blah blah) #1: Cut Perry some slack. It's damn hard 2 pass any science class when u write 'God' for every answer.
[jesus lives and Perry's chanelling-Cos67]

GSElevator GS Elevator Gossip
[Attractive Canto girl gets off elevator] 2 white guys behind her not-so-subtly exchange "I totally would" glances.
[standard male behaviour. would, but can't&won't-Cos67]

GSElevator GS Elevator Gossip
#1: Saw someone using Groupon yesterday for ice cream. #2: thats f**ked up. #ACSOI
[I'll bet Groupon will scratch your arse for ya-Cos67]

new winning streak for retail markets

the next trick from the hat of the average citizen is naked buying, or naked retail.

naked shorts are short contracts on the stock market when the bettor doesn't
own the stock.
So, if you have most of your credit cards maxed out and no cash, soon after payday,
then you can still shop with:
Naked buying.
You know that you don't have the money, and you have no intention of paying,
but the bank will give you credit anyway.
In the end, you default on all of it, but if you can
offshore some of your pirate booty to Canada or Mexico, you can live like a
peasant with the finest store-bought Chinese clothes.

That is Custer's last charge card.
The Alamo of the middle class.
Bonfire of the Bourgeois Boutique Vanity.

You can double your chances with
Double Naked Buying
if you are also yourself naked.
imagine that:
AhahahaAHHAahHAhahahaHAhahh f^&*kin hairy hippies

prepare.
suss out the market beforehand.
the market report:


double synthetic naked buying
in honour of Reggie Middleton
shopping naked with fake boobs
[easy to spot. too much top-end. Could also squeeze test them.]

[aggressive positioning, high and tight; akin to torpedoes]
stick 'em in the salesman's face and make a threat.

still in theme, this most excellent editorial pantses the politicians
while putting the one truly brave active man in US politics on a plinth.
Look way up, it's a Schneiderman.

checkitout: from Yves Smith's Naked Capitalism [my comments]
Matt Stoller: Power Politics – What Eric Schneiderman Reveals About Obama
By Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He is the former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson [they done AG wrong, son- Cos67]. You can reach him at stoller (at) gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller
A lot of people have asked why New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is going after the banks as aggressively as he is. It’s almost unbelievable that one lone elected official, who happens to have powerful legal tools at his disposal, is doing something that no one with any serious degree of power has done. So what is the secret? What kind of machinations is he undertaking that no one else has been able to do?
I’ve known Schneiderman for a few years, back when he was a state Senator working to reform the Rockefeller drug laws. And my answer to this question is pretty simple. He wants to. That’s it. Eric Schneiderman is investigating the banks because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. So he’s doing it. This guy has thought about his politics. He wrote an article about how he sees politics in 2008 in the Nation, and in his inaugural speech as NY AG he talked about the need to restore faith in both public and private institutions. Free will still counts for something, apparently.
In all the absurdly stupid punditry, the simple application of free will to our elected officials goes missing. Yeah, Obama got money from Wall Street. But Obama is choosing to pursue a policy of foreclosures and bank bailouts not because of any grand corporate scheme. He just wants to [there go all the conspiracies. I’ve always said the oligarchs don’t need a conspiracy. They’re all in the same choir reading off the same song sheet. They're more circle jerks than conspirators. Cos67].
He thinks it’s the right thing to do, and he’s doing it. If you don’t think it’s the right thing to do, then you shouldn’t be disappointed in him any more than you might have been disappointed in Bush. Obama is not trying to do the opposite of what he’s doing, he’s not repeatedly suckered by Republicans, and he isn’t naive or stupid. Obama is simply doing what he thinks is right. So is Eric Schneiderman. So is Tom Miller. So are any number of elected officials out there.
In positions of power, the best expression I heard is that “up there the air is thin”. That is, you have enormous latitude, if you want to use it. Power can be wielded creatively and effectively on behalf of whatever it is the wielder wants. Now of course there are constraints, plenty of them. Smart politicians spend their time working to maximize the constraints they want to impose and weakening the ones they want to overcome. But the basic Reaganite liberal argument defending supplication towards Obama these days is that Obama is “disappointing”. In this line of thought, powerful corporate interests and Republicans are preventing him from enacting what his real agenda would be were he unfettered by this mean machine. Eric Schneiderman, who is in a far less powerful position as New York Attorney General, shows that this is utter hogwash. Obama is who he is, and anyone who thinks otherwise is selling something.
The banking system is really at the heart of our politics, which is why it’s such a great test of one’s political theory of change. I’ve been following the foreclosure fraud story for a few years now, because it’s the tail end of a massive economy-wide fraud scheme that started as early as 2003. The securitization chain failure can’t be put back in the bottle, the housing system it collapsed is simply too big to bail. So elites keep trying to patch this up [the other main motif. There is no plan. Just blind theft, in ignorance of the possible consequences-Cos67] the way they have everything else. It isn’t working. And their scheme has been obvious and obviously dishonest. Along with Obama (who I criticized as empty as early as 2004, ratcheting this up to dishonest and authoritarian by 2006-2007), I pointed out that Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller was engaged in serious bad faith only a few months after the negotiations started.
I’m no genius, I just listened to what these people actually said and did. Obama mocks the idea that he is an honest politician, overtly, lying about NAFTA and FISA very early on in power. Miller lied to activists about being willing to put bankers in jail, and then said he was negotiating with banks in secret. It was overt. For Miller, as with Obama, few people really picked up on the lies until recently. Iowa activists who heckled Miller got it, as did Naked Capitalism readers. Now it’s becoming more and more obvious. That’s just how it is, I suppose, people in the establishment are paid to not notice corruption until the harsh glare is too bright.[excellent observation. At the key moment, you'll notice the feigned shock on their faces-Cos67]
The crazy thing is that robosigning is apparently still going on. Right now, the “settlement” talks are the equivalent of law enforcement negotiating with a serial killer over whether he’ll get a parking ticket, even as he continually sprays bullets into the neighborhood. Even having these “settlement” talks when the actual crimes haven’t been investigated or a complaint hasn’t been registered should be example enough that this process is rigged as badly as Dodd-Frank. It should not be a surprise that the administration is putting pressure on Eric Schneiderman, that Tom Miller is kicking him out of the club house. That’s who these people are. It’s what they believe in. Just as it should not be a surprise, though it is laudable, that Schneiderman isn’t knuckling under to the administration. I suspect he probably is laughing at the idiocy of Miller’s pressure tactic. I mean, this is a guy going up against some of the most powerful entities in the United States: Bank of New York Mellon, Bank of America, the New York Fed, etc. And the Iowa Attorney General isn’t going let him on conference calls? Mmmkay.[it’s a hint of more to come. Check Cath Austin Fitts' experience, below. GABAGOOL-Cos67]
When you look closely at most significant areas of government, it becomes clear that the President and his administration are enormously powerful actors who get a lot done. Handing over our national wealth to the banks and to China is not nothing. These people are reorganizing the economy and the political system so that there are no constraints on the oligarchical interests that fund and pay them. That is their goal, it has been their goal from day one (or even before that), and anyone who says otherwise is just wrong or deluding him or herself. Obama spoke at the founding of Robert Rubin’s Hamilton Institute, and his first, and most important by far policy initiative, was his whipping for TARP, a policy that was signed by Bush but could not have passed without Obama getting his party in line. That was his goal, and he’s still pursuing it. The numerous “what happened to Obama” wailing editorials overlook the consistency of his policy agenda, which stretches back years at this point.
... From 2006-2008, the Bush administration’s failures crashed down upon conservatives, and they in many ways could not cope. But their intellectual collapse was bailed out by Obama. Faux liberals are seeing their grand experiment in tatters, though right now they can only admit to feeling disappointed because the recognition that they have been swindled is far too painful. [wrong. Most Democrat politicians are in on the game. They’re upset because their stock portfolios are set to evaporate due to their own malfeasance. Those Democrats (not small 'd') are star insiders and investors first, politicians second.-Cos67]
....Eric Schneiderman’s willingness to go after the banks and stand up to the corruption of the Bush and Obama administrations should be a reminder to all of us of this. We have free will. He is doing the right thing for no other reason than because he wants to, because he believes in it. He is going to face serious consequences for this, very nasty stuff. Eliot Spitzer was taken down and his name dragged through mud because of who he took on. Paying ugly costs for standing up is routine, unfortunately, in modern America. And the least powerful among us face far worse consequences than politicians who are embarrassed. But integrity exists, and Schneiderman is showing that free will can be exercised in its service. This fact is true of many people, not just Schneiderman; Bill McKibbin, Jane Hamsher, Dan Choi and others just got arrested in front of the White House to register dissent. So next time someone tells you that you have no choice but to support one of the two branches of the banking party, just remember, you also have free will. And the only person who can take that away from you, is you.

I referred to CA Fitts, above. "It’s not a crisis , it’s a plan"
[check the mafia tactics at 18:45, for 3 min.s, including her own victimisation, and her vindication through the Sopranos- it figures.]


Thursday 25 August 2011

Stock ticker-oke, the empty stock market

If you know a bit of Japanese, you know that kara-oke, the Western craze of the 90s actually means 'empty orchestra'. Well, apparently the stock markets are emptying of investors. As I mentioned, when you're in a FIRE economy, head for the EXIT.

HFT trading is now upwards of 60% of all trading, and it's not liquidity, okay?

Most stocks are owned by the rich, as the diagram shows. So, that's why the oligarchs are losing their cool. Their scamming is affecting their stock portfolios and they should have realised that long ago, and bought gold.
Everybody else who can, is leaving the market because of
fraud, cheating, secret government loans, visible government loans, QE1,2, & next,
main street being boarded up, unemployment being 20% in most countries.

the poor and homeless: have nothing to lose by their socks. no stocks
the working poor: stocks mean stocking shelves at the local giganto-box
the middle class: taking stock of their dwindling purchasing power
moderately wealthy: have stockbrokers on call, who are divesting rapidly
wealthy: light their cigars with stock certificates while on the beach, "offshore"
brokers: programmed their computers to work for them while they work on politicians
if they trade at all it is for their account to incur fees.
politicians: trading on insider information, except they never thought gold would win

the lower 90% know this is a stacked game; the odds are stacked against us.

So, nobody is singing their tune in the world of the bottom 90%.
They get a much better reaction in Washington than this:
[stockbrokers performing, but nobody in the audience likes them]

UPDATE: right on cue, a great review by Karl Denninger (part)

Real People Say "Screw You" To The Markets
The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets
Posted 2011-08-26 10:11
by Karl Denninger
Nobody is talking about this. That's 27 - twenty-seven contracts - on the bid at 1146.75. During the trading day. There's less than a thousand up and down the stack through the entire visible portion.
This is a tiny fraction of normal liquidity and those sub-100 numbers are more-akin to what you expect in the middle of the night when everyone's sleeping!
All that's left is the computers. The humans have gone home. True liquidity and participation has ended. The people have given up. This is not an isolated incident - as I write this I'm seeing it literally minute-by-minute, and it's been very common all month. A few minutes ago I saw seven contracts on the bid at the money. Seven - at 9:57 (ET) in the morning.
The fraud, the phony bids and offers and the high-frequency ripoffs have driven everyone away.
Go ahead politicians, tell us how important "Wall Street" is to the economy and to you. Let the thieves and liars continue to pollute the markets and screw everyone. Volatility is as high as it is precisely because people are tired of getting buttraped and after a few instances of it they simply say "screw this", take their money and go home.
They don't need the markets, the markets need them, and they're gone.
With no depth in the market huge moves become commonplace and are essentially impossible to trade.
I've never seen the market this illiquid during the day as it has been the last few weeks. It's ridiculously bad and getting worse. When you see two-digit bids and offers during the trading day in the stack you may as well be playing with a loaded six-shooter pointed at your own head - you can't possibly trade ahead of these jackasses and they can and will steal your money,******your stops and then reverse the market right out from under you before you can react. All you do is churn your account and waste your capital.
Don't even try to "invest" in this market folks, and if you decide to trade, realize that you're playing in a rigged casino and the entire force of the government is not only behind rigging the casino but explicitly endorses and permits the rigging to go on and continue, despite being fully-aware of it.
Remember, "Wall Street is Main Street" to them - and if that means your retirement and investments get destroyed that's just fine provided that big buildings in downtown Manhatten continue to be infested by the thieves guild that pumps tithes into campaign coffers.

Wednesday 24 August 2011

Repo105 Man drives around & nobody can stop him

The repo man is driving around with toxic derivatives in the trunk.
Nobody can stop him. Thieves will try.
Governments will shy away. Policemen will dare.
The driver is of no consequence.
Sitting on the toxic cargo is Lloyd Blankfein. And since he's doing
god's work, he needs his own -mobile, the Fraudmobile:

In his journeys he has seen that:
-Eliot Spitzer was liquidated
-the latest prosecutor of New York state, Schneiderman is being strongarmed.
-the disease has spread to every state and city in the US, and most of the EU
-government toll passes and seed money go a long way

and he just drives on.



more later

the prophetic movies might be right



there are lots of recent movies wherein the eastern US is destroyed by
bombs, aliens, floods, etc.

However, wouldn't it be the coolest thing if the capital of the superpower
were to be destroyed by the greed of the oligarchs?

Who is fracking for gas in the Burgess shale that lies under the eastern US?

Well, Dick Cheney and Haliburton for one.

The conjecture is steaming up about the fracking causing fisures in the rock
and thus causing earthquakes in areas where they don't usually happen.

When Obama says "the Republicans caused this quake and I'm gonna clean up",
he was not kidding.

Anyway, regardless of conjecture, the Washington Monument is now cracked.
The symbolism is there for the taking.
[it's a pyramid, no it's the cracked Washington Monument, brought upon DC by a former big man about town?]



more later

checkitout: 2 things
1 Daily Kos
Was The August 23rd Earthquake Man-made?
by kavips
You all felt it on the East Coast, shaking windows and hanging lights; moving top floors a few inches in each direction....

The USGS provides some rather interesting data. Originally listed as being <.1 kilometer, that correlates to 316.8 ft. The data has sensed been revised to stand at this writing, at 6 km, or 3 miles and 1281.6 yds,,, Only once before did this area experience a quake. A quick satellite look at the epicenter shows an area crisscrossed with drilling roads and well sites. What is at stake is the natural gas buried under the Marcellus Shale. This shale is impermeable and trapped the methane gas decomposing underneath. Most old wells went down to the shale level and stopped. Since 2009, new technology uses wastewater and high pressure to fracture that shale layer. Once fractured, the gas can escape upwards..... Now, imagine filling up an old bathtub with sand... then going to sleep on it.... It would be quite comfortable... Now suppose your significant other brings in a garden hose, turns it on and leaves it. At first the water goes into the sand. Eventually the water gets too much, that the sand/water mix can no longer hold up your weight, and you go splat, to the bottom of the tub. That is what happens to whole layers of rock when this process is applied. All the layers of rock on top, suddenly drop several feet. Whoomp... This whoomp covered the whole east coast.... Two years ago, a team fracking (fracturing the shale layer) in central WV, caused a tremor felt outside of Pittsburgh, PA... In the past year, West Virginia, a state that has never had seismic activity, is suddenly being shaken with 2.2 to 3.4tremors... This video gives you some insight into the problems that come with fracking. And this industry video shows the protections that are in place when frakking is involved. Take note of how the drill sites are set up. Officials in WV, usually company operators themselves have dismissed any connection between the new technology being developed across their state, and all the new earthquakes that have come out of nowhereduring the same time. The same occurrence took place in Arkansas. Fracking and novel earthquakes. And not just on this continent, but a 3 mile deep well drilled near Basil, Switzerland caused a 3.4 earthquake in that geologically tame region, so the well was shut down. (Unlike WV, neither Switzerland or Arkansas receive 75% of their income from energy) Out of Memphis, Steve Horton, an earthquake specialist at the University of Memphis and hydrologic technician with the U.S. Geological Survey notes: "Ninety percent of these earthquakes that have happened since 2009 have been within 6 kilometers of these salt water disposal wells," Likewise, ever since the West Virginia Oil and Gas Commission forced the disposal companies to cut back on their injection rate and pressure, the professor said, the earthquakes there seem to have dissipated. (Recently WV put emergency rules in place that require operators to file water management plans when using saltwater for fracking. The emergency rules require operators to file water management plans when using more than 210,000 gallons, citing the source and anticipated volume of withdrawals, as well as measures to protect aquatic life. The companies also must list their "anticipated additives" and say how they plan to dispose of wastewater. Arkansas went one step further. They place a moratorium on fracking to see if there was a correlation between the two. The data was implicating, but not totally conclusive. In ten days preceeding the moratorium, Arkansas experienced 100 quakes with it's largest quake in 35 years at 4.7. In the following six months, 60 quakes occurred and only one was over a 3. Most were between 1.2 and 2.8. After shocks. Just two Virginia counties away, permits to frack have already been sought in Rockingham County by a Carrizo Marcellus, LLC, a Texas company. And as any driller in Central Virginia knows, there is a wide belt of phyllite bedrock that extends across central Virginia through eastern Albemarle and western Louisa counties. This is a very soft rock that does not have the ability to hold open fractures under the confining pressures that exist beneath the surface. As a result, groundwater is scarce, and successful wells are difficult to construct. Compare this map with this satellite photo and see how the area of phyllite bedrock matches the area that is too poor a quality to farm and remains forested for that reason....

2 a compact version
Washington Monument closed indefinitely after rare earthquake
By the CNN Wire Staff
August 24, 2011 -- Updated 2012 GMT (0412 HKT)

* NEW: The Washington Monument may remain closed until after all repairs are completed
* Washington's National Cathedral remains closed after sustaining "substantial damage"
* Alert levels are lowered at the North Anna nuclear power plant
* Lincoln and Jefferson memorials reopen

Washington (CNN) -- The Washington Monument was closed indefinitely Wednesday as engineers studied ways to repair cracks at the top of the capital's iconic structure -- one day after a rare 5.8-magnitude East Coast earthquake.

Among other things, several pieces of mortar fell inside the monument's observation area during the earthquake, a National Parks Service spokesman said.

An outside structural engineering firm will conduct a more thorough damage assessment, and the monument may not be re-opened to the public until after any necessary repairs are completed, the spokesman added.

Washington's National Cathedral also was closed after sustaining what its staff described as "substantial damage," including numerous cracks in the building's limestone blocks and broken pinnacles on its towers.
"It's still kind of a state of shell shock here," CNN's Brian Todd said Wednesday, reporting from the town. "People still just can't believe this happened. This is a natural event that just does not happen on the East Coast."

With so many along the coast unaccustomed to earthquakes, many people were left wondering whether all that rumbling could have been caused by a truck, helicopter, an explosion or some other force.

Desi Fleming, a resident of Mineral, said the quake arrived with a rumbling "that sounded like a train coming to a stop." It knocked down two chimneys on the converted 1900-vintage home that now houses her parcel-shipping business.
...
Kate Duddy was alone in an office building elevator in Manhattan when the shaking started.

"I have never felt a quake before. It was scary having no idea what the cause was," she said. "I felt the vibrations, and the elevator stopped for a period of about five minutes."

At Washington's National Zoo, some animals started reacting moments before the earthquake was felt by their human caretakers.

About five or 10 seconds before the earth shook, several apes abandoned their food and climbed to the top of a treelike structure, according to a statement from the zoo. A gorilla named Mandara grabbed her baby -- named Kibibi -- and also moved to the top of the structure.

At the same time, a flock of 64 flamingos grouped themselves together and remained huddled until the shaking stopped.

Further south, the earthquake triggered an automatic shutdown of Virginia's North Anna nuclear power plant after it lost electricity.

Early Wednesday, Dominion Virginia Power said primary power was restored to the cooling systems of two nuclear reactors that had been affected. The plant, located less than 20 miles from the earthquake's epicenter, used back-up diesel generators after power was lost, the company said.


Robbing Muamar to pay Hugo

It's not mature to cover your debts by stealing from somebody else.
or, so we're taught in school.

One letter writer on zerohedge brought up an interesting point.

what if NATO wants us to think that Libya will be cleaned up soon?

What if they are in a rush to clean up Libya, because they want to
get their hands on Libya's gold, which lies within its borders.

The reason is the fact that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela wants his
country's gold back and the British banks don't have it, because
they gambled it away. They leased the gold and then leveraged
the gold that was not there 100x over in paper gold (GLD).

Of course, this is not the responsibility of governments. This is a banking issue.
So, why would governments do the bidding of the banks?
Because that's what they do every day.
They'll send soldiers to die so that bankers and oil oligarchs will have more riches,
from which to pay politicians.

UPDATE:
Apparently, the Lib's couldn't do it themselves and have recruited American and British commandoes, perhaps from Blackwater. Careful, they'll eat up their oil revenues.


checkitout:

Usgold.com
Not easy for bullion banks to put golden Humpty Dumpty back together again
Aug 20th, 2011 11:26 by MK
In plain terms, it is unlikely that Venezuela’s gold is sitting prettily in the above named bullion banks just waiting to be loaded on a cargo plane and sent to Caracas. It was probably loaned out long ago, and then perhaps, redeposited at some other bullion bank and loaned out again, etc. on down the line until it was fractionalized, atomized, and otherwise depleted from its unified whole. In short, it will not be easy for the bullion banks to reassemble this golden Humpty Dumpty.

1741 black riots of New York, a pattern?




Slavery in the British colony of New York has a tumultuous history.

The slaves of that city rose up regularly to throw off the shackles of
slavery.
One of the factors that aided this rioting was unemployment in the city.

I wonder what today's wage slaves will do if times get too tough in New York.



Sunday 21 August 2011

media watchdogs do the journalist's job for him

Don't you hate a journalist that just delivers the "facts" as he hears 'em?
Forget about those facts being bullshit produced from the backside of the self-serving
bankers that the man is quoting.

Luckily for the Telegraph, the readers are brief, succinct and to the point,
and thoroughly trash the writer.

witness:

TELEGRAPH vs READERS
UK ‘faces slump’ if banks are ring-fenced
Leading companies warn on ICB plans to segregate wholesale banking from retail
City of London hits back at US Treasury Secretary Geithner over 'light touch' remarks
The Independent Commission on Banking is due to publish its final recommendations on September 12.
By James Quinn, Deputy Business Editor, Sunday Telegraph
9:47PM BST 20 Aug 2011
Britain’s leading companies have warned the UK’s £2.5 trillion bank lending market will be drastically reduced if the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) places a strict “ring-fence” on the UK’s leading institutions.
The warning, from the Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT) – the group which represents finance directors and treasurers from the FTSE 100 and across UK business, goes to the heart of concerns that the ICB may jeopardise economic growth and job creation if its final proposals are too restrictive.....[i.e. don't touch us banks, you geddit?- Cos67]
LETTERS
morgan
6 minutes ago
As much as the fallout from the banks being cut down to size may pain the economy it is necessary medicine to put us on the path to a sustainable recovery.
The policies we have seen 2008-present have only served to preserve the rot. More debt, more over-leveraged banks and more money printing is not the solution.
BoiledCabbage
9 minutes ago
Mutual building societies must be re-created so the public have a sane choice. The amoral management of the big conglomerate banks just dont get it - and they will all be bust again within six months.
wattys123
18 minutes ago
Recommended by 1 person
I would imagine everyone apart from the bankers themselves would like to see retail and investment banking completely separated , most of us can't believe it isn't already. In fact, given the pathetic rates of interest, self-serving investment advice, extortionate charges and incredibly shoddy service most of us would just want the bank as a "safe" place to deposit our monies and for it to carry-out the electronic transactions that are now necessary to live.
It is now widely appreciated that the UK banking sector has expanded uniformly with the indebtedness of the UK, the fastest way to reduce our public and private debt is to reduce the parasite (banking sector).
sweetness_light
19 minutes ago
Recommended by2 person
AH didums. Where should they look for the money, howabout £14 BILLION in bonuses and 20% average pay increases
You recommended this
drjonathanwilson
40 minutes ago
Recommended by2 person
What is interesting about this piece of banking propaganda is that Mr. Quinn and Mr. Grout do not ask the one question that screams out by its absence - "what is the UK taxpayer's liability under their proposals for all possible scenarios?"
Never again must the UK taxpayer be held hostage by the decisions made by the banking industry - that is what they have shareholders for. No more moral hazard.
The new legal arrangements must be quite explicit - risks (and rewards) taken by banking executives fall entirely on themselves and their shareholders - their customers must know that as well.
Next time you report on this issue Mr. Quinn please do not take the pose of a lap dog rather start asking real questions of your banking contacts.

how to reduce an Englishman to a blithering racist

just mention the Welsh.

The English have a special place in their spleen for the Welsh. Otherwise normal-sounding
English folk go all Medieval when you mention the Welsh. I've tried it.

A colleague one day, made a rude comment about the Welsh and I came to their
defense. The next day she told another colleague who "set me straight."
"she's right, you know" was her answer.
That's it.
sum total.
It just IS.

Now this young lass in the Guardian has lots of good stories (more later)
about things which usually pass under the radar, like the following of
an anti-Cymru-ite Welshman, who's been living in England too long, I assume.

-Cos67

checkitout:
Esther Addley @ Guardian
Seems to be quite the season, indeed, for people making tits of themselves by spouting offensive rubbish about language. Witness Roger Lewis's review in last Friday's Daily Mail of Bred of Heaven, an account by author Jasper Rees of his attempt to rediscover his Welsh roots. "Not many people in full possession of their faculties would find it appealing or necessary to try to turn themselves into a 'real Welshman'," it begins. Oh goodie, a nice measured piece coming up. "In his quest to call himself a Celt," continues Caerphilly born Lewis, the author "actually learns Welsh". Go on, this will be inoffensive we're sure. "I abhor the appalling and moribund monkey language myself." Sorry, the what? The Welsh language has been "foisted" on people "for political reasons" writes our bard, turning Wales into "a foreign country" – ding dong! There it is again! Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards has now referred the article to the police and written to the home secretary and the Press Complaints Commission in protest at the "disgraceful slur" on his compatriots. Which seems, under the circs, rather measured of him.

Saturday 20 August 2011

D-oh BART!


[Hugs Anonymous 12-step program]
the whole San Fran free speech on a train issue has blown up.

Anonymous has been called in to spank the Frannie government and
their rent-a-cops with the itchy trigger fingers.

Remember, we're talking about free speech and the right to protest peacefully.

I'll highlight the key parts later, but I think the Anonymous guy
who appears on the transcript (from a radio show) should
reveal his name and face on live tv, via skype link and we can all watch
to see how long it takes the government to snare him. And remember, Anon
has not harmed anyone, but the government hates dissent.
This would truly show the evil of government, in case anybody was still wondering.
It would be like a reality show. Catch Me If You Can

Democracy Now! / By Amy Goodman
Disguised Member of "Anonymous" Defends Action Against BART's Anti-Protest Censorship

BART officials were forced to close four train stations during rush hour on Monday as free speech advocates, organized by Anonymous, attempted to disrupt the evening commute.
On Monday, officials with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) were forced to close four train stations during the evening rush hour as free speech advocates attempted to disrupt the evening commute. The protest was called by the activist hacker group Anonymous in retaliation for BART’s decision to shut down cell phone and mobile-internet service at four stations last week in an effort to disrupt a protest over the shooting of a homeless man. As part of its self-described "OpBART" campaign, Anonymous hacked into the BART website, myBart.org, and leaked the names, phone numbers and passwords of train passengers. We’re joined by a disguised Anonymous member who took part in "OpBART," speaking under the pseudonym "X."
AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about what happened at the BART stations in San Francisco and then take this global, we are turning to a closer look at a shadowy hacker activist group known as Anonymous. The group made headlines again this weekend when it hacked into the BART website mybart.org and leaked the names, phone numbers and passwords of passengers in retaliation for BART’s decision to shut down cell phone service at the four stations last week. Anonymous dubbed the campaign OpBART. This is a part of the message posted on YouTube about the operation.
ANONYMOUS OPBART MESSAGE: Today, we’ve seen America come alive. In the Bay Area, we’ve seen people gagged. And once more, Anonymous will attempt to show those engaging in censorship what it feels like to be silenced. Operation BART is an operation geared toward balance, toward learning. You do not censor people because they wish to speak out against the wrongful occurrences around them. The Bay Area Rapid Transit has made the conscious decision of ordering various cell phone companies to terminate services for the downtown area, inhibiting those in the area from using cell phones, even in the case of an emergency. To BART, we will not tolerate censorship. We will do everything in our power to parallel the actions of censorship that you have chosen to engage in. We are a legion. We will be free to speak out against you when you try to cover up crimes.
AMY GOODMAN: A video message posted online by hacktivist group Anonymous.
In recent years, online hackers who identified as being part of Anonymous and other groups have carried out dozens of high-profile online operations. When MasterCard and Visa suspended payments to WikiLeaks last December, hackers with Anonymous briefly took down the websites of both credit card giants. Other targets have included Sony, PayPal, Amazon, Bank of America, the Church of Scientology, and the countries of Egypt, Tunisia and Syria.
In recent months, law enforcement agencies across the world have begun cracking down on the hackers. In July, 16 suspected members of Anonymous were arrested across the United States. Police in the Netherlands, Britain, Australia, Spain and Turkey have also made arrests over the past year.
We are going to first go to an anonymous member of Anonymous, who joins us now. He’s calling himself X. He was at the BART protest last night, has been up for two days working on the collective’s response to BART’s action shutting down the internet and phone system at four stations.
Welcome to Democracy Now! I understand that it’s not going to be easy to understand you, because your voice is kind of encrypted, disguised for security reasons, but tell us what it is that you did in response to BART’s action.
X: Well, I think the video summed it up. We gave them a little taste of their own medicine. We began with a campaign that we call a black fax and an email bomb, and that’s basically—we took every inbox at the BART—I don’t know—organization, whatever, several hundred inboxes, both email and fax, and we filled them with thousands and thousands of copies of our message of indignation at their act.
And then we took it a step further, and we removed—for six hours, we removed the main BART website from the internet, www.bart.gov. We took that offline for about six hours. I’d like to point out that we were cognizant enough to do it on a Sunday, when we felt like it would present the least inconvenience to the commuter, who might need the website for information. So we did try to think that through, and we did the main site hacks on Sunday.
And then we took it one step further. We found a huge security hole in mybart.com, which is a sort of a side website to the BART site, place where people can sign up for an account and get daily updates on BART and whatnot to your email box and that sort of thing. So you put a lot of personal information into that website. Found it to be terribly insecure, and all that information, all that user information, over 2,000 BART users, was just sitting there unencrypted, where any 12-year-old script kiddie could have gone in and basically grabbed this stuff. So we went ahead and did just that. We took it and—in order to show the world how [inaudible]—
AMY GOODMAN: In so doing, X, did you release people’s personal information, BART riders, passengers?
X: Yes, we did. Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And your thoughts on that, on going after the actual passengers themselves, people who might not want that personal information out?
X: Well, if we had told them, do you think they would have believed us, Amy? I mean, if we would have simply sent them a kind email message, "Hi, this is Anonymous. And guess what? We found all your information, unsecure, where anybody in the world could have gotten it." Any—it didn’t take a hacker to do this. Trust me. This information was very easy to get." And if we just wrote them a kind email, do you think that they would have believed us? How else do you get the world to respond and secure your information? How else do you get these companies and these big governments to keep your information, the information you give them voluntarily, safe? I think we got our message across, and I’ll bet you one thing: I’ll bet you they fix that.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me play another comment from BART spokesperson Linton Johnson, who appeared on the public radio station KQED in San Francisco on Monday.
We’re going to—we’re going to try to bring that to you in a second, but let me introduce some of our other guests right now, who are here. Peter Fein is an agent with Telecomix. He’s also an activist with Anonymous. He was one of several moderators on the internet rally chat for OpBART. And we’re also joined here in New York by Gabriella Coleman, assistant professor of media, culture and communication at New York University. Her first book, Coding Freedom: The Aesthetics and the Ethics of Hacking, is forthcoming with Princeton University Press, and she’s currently working on a new book on Anonymous and digital activism.
Talk about what Anonymous did here in the case of BART and taking down the BART website and releasing information, Gabriella.
GABRIELLA COLEMAN: What’s so interesting about Anonymous is that they tend to not have one tactic, but many tactics and many operations and many networks and nodes at once. And I think the OpBART campaign reflects this. On the one hand, they did everything from black faxing to the stations to organizing a protest, to the more controversial hacking operations, as well, that we just heard about.
AMY GOODMAN: And Peter Fein, explain your role—I said that you’re an agent with Telecomix; most people will not know what Telecomix is—and what it means to be a part of the team that was involved with the whole BART action. Peter is joining us from Seattle.
PETER FEIN: Sure. So, like you said, I’m an internet activist. I work with a couple of different groups, one of which is called Telecomix. We have been trying to keep the internet online throughout the Middle East, most notably in Egypt over the last several months. I see that work as sort of the flip side of the coin to what Anonymous does, that if Anonymous takes sites down, Telecomix keeps them up.
My role in Anonymous has been—obviously I’m not little-A "anonymous," you can see my face and hear my voice—to help facilitate discussions. I write some propaganda. In OpBART, I was one of several moderators on our internet relay chat room. It’s an old-school form of multi-user chat. We had about 200 or so people in that room last night. And I just kind of help keep discussion moving, help keep things flowing, deal with people who are being abusive. But yeah, like that.
AMY GOODMAN: What does it mean to keep the flow going, the chat going, as these protests are taking place?
PETER FEIN: Just sort of setting a topic for the room, kind of asking questions, pointing people to links. You know, as my role in moderator, I’m really not very active, and I’m certainly not limiting what people can say, but just sort of—when you have that many people all talking at once, sometimes you get folks who are a little less mature and, you know, sort of will abuse the system, flood the channel with messages. And so, we just kind of manage that. But, you know, in the last five days, I probably, you know, actively spoke directly in the channel less than, you know, 50 or 100 lines.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me play another comment by BART spokesperson Linton Johnson, the one we tried to play just a minute ago, on the NPR station KQED in San Francisco.
LINTON JOHNSON: There is this whole push right now to try to find out why BART violated some constitutional rights, when in fact I don’t believe we did. What I do know that happened was this group Anonymous violated a fundamental constitutional right of our customers, and that is their right to privacy. They took the personal information and exposed it on the web for all to see—the home phone numbers, email addresses[WHY SEEK THE INFORMATION?]. Despite BART’s best attempt to protect that information, they were able to get a hold of it and violate the constitutional right to privacy for thousands of customers. And we find that shocking. And they do that under the cloak of protecting a different constitutional right, and that is the right to free speech. I am just stunned. And I think our customers are upset, as well. I know they’re upset, as well, that their rights to privacy were violated. We have the FBI looking into it, investigating, in fact, and other law enforcement agencies, to find out who this group Anonymous is and why they thought it was appropriate to violate our customers’ constitutional right to privacy.[DOESN’T EXIST]
AMY GOODMAN: That was BART spokesperson Linton Johnson. X is still on the line with us, of the group Anonymous. Your response to the BART spokesperson?
X: My response is an equal dose of indignation. Why was that information stored—again, I would ask you, your listeners and this BART fellow, why this information was stored on a server with a security that could have been broken by any 12-year-old script kiddie on the internet. It was for anybody to take. At least somebody took it who cares. At least somebody took it who used it to send a message not only to the world that censorship is wrong and intolerable, but that their information is being held in trust by a government they cannot trust, because they don’t know what they’re doing. [inaudible] don’t know whether BART didn’t care to secure that information or whether they didn’t know how to secure that information, but in [inaudible] case, they’re a government, and they should have been—they should have known better, they should have done better. If they want somebody to blame, blame the people who they gave that information to with trust. We took it in good faith, and we gave it not only to the world, we gave it back to the people who gave it to BART, to let them know that they need to fix that, everybody needs to fix that. We did that for the safety of the passengers.
And where’s the safety of the passenger who needs help, who needs to call 911 on his cell phone because he’s getting mugged at the end of a—dark end of some platform somewhere, but he can’t do it, he can’t call 911, because BART has cut off the cell phone service over less than a hundred protesters? And if this was a great tactic, why didn’t they use it against us last night? I was there. I was down there at the platform. We were using our smart phones. We were tweeting. We were surfing on the internet. There [inaudible] cutting of the service. They closed the stations, but how come they didn’t cut the cell phone service last night? I’ll tell you why. Because they know they’re wrong. They know we got them. And they know if they do it again, we will hurt them even worse than we’ve hurt them already.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask you, X, you heard the BART spokesperson saying the FBI is involved right now. Are you concerned about this? There have been a number of arrests of Anonymous members throughout the country in the last month. What are you doing about this?
X: I’m concerned to the extent, Amy, that I don’t want to get caught. And that’s why I’ve disguised my voice. I would much rather be [inaudible] for 20 years. I’d love to tell you who I am. I’d love to speak with a normal voice and have a normal conversation with you, with America, with anybody. I don’t want to hide like an animal. I don’t want to be hunted. I am literally running from coffeehouse to coffeehouse, from city to city, from state to state, to try to avoid this massive, multimillion-dollar manhunt that they’ve put out for Anonymous.
And for what? What have we done, Amy? Anybody [inaudible] point to one thing where we’ve hurt a single human being, where we’ve hurt a soul. You know, free Topiary [inaudible], because, you know, that’s a young man who anybody would want to have as their son. And he’s not a criminal; he’s a kid, a kid with a conscience who wanted to change his world and make it better. That’s all we all are. We’re all just activists. We’re information activists just trying to make our world a bit freer and a little better. But we’re filled with indignation, when a little organization like BART, a little transit cop police, like, kills its innocent people, two or three of them in the last few years, and then has the nerve to also cut off the cell phone service and act exactly like a dictator in the Mideast. How dare they do this in the United States of America? Amy, how dare they?
AMY GOODMAN: X is speaking to us. His voice is disguised. He’s with Anonymous. He was at the BART protest last night. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.

he just had an addadicktome operation

don't you hate it when your new phallus feels like somebody else's.
AHAHAhahahahHAhAhaHAAHhahah

Is it possible to have a penis transplant?
Yes. The first penis transplant was done in China several years ago and it was deemed to be successful. However, it had to be removed after a few weeks because of what they described as a severe psychological reaction. I think he couldn't feel it and his wife thought it was a bit weird.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14507872

strip show. take it all off


back in the old days, asset stripping was the task of the
market raider. The guy who came in and chopped up a company
into little bits and sold them off for profit.
It was kind of like a vulture ripping apart a healthy viable
animal.


[lawyers at the ready. the banks are gonna need them all the more]

Anyway, enough sweet talk about economic canibalism, and
more talk about the struggle of the man on the street, literally.
the Mean Streets "take it all off"


Applied Economics
How quick people learn. Even though there's no college course
in Asset Stripping, people have started to scrounge for anything
they can sell.
They've seen labour demand falling and noticed that they will
need to supply the needs of the markets for scrap metal. They
are getting back on their feet and thinking outside the box, or
rather the railroad switch box, which will get you £23.95 at
Honest Hank's Scrap and Deli.
Also on the menu:
manhole covers
telephone poles
copper wire from train lines
copper pipes from houses
fire hydrants
basketball hoops (from the ground up)
gazeboes
saunas

Don't you just love human ingenuity?

They're copying the bankers. cheeky monkeys.


[stripping stuff is such a human activity]

I've got a deal for all my American readers. Go for the houses that the banks are
going to bulldoze anyway. They gotta get rid of them or else house prices will
continue to fall.

Those of you anxious, nosy types who are burning those empty homes
because of the squatters, should think first, and strip them of
all their highly-liquid assets.

double-glazed windows
security doors
gas fittings
the list goes on

forget the fact that the rest of the house is a monumental waste of resources, for nothing
other than speculation. Leave that to the anthropologists of the next millenium, if we last that long.
You need cash, fast.

It's not that difficult to move from this to looting hot assets from stores.
so, bankers are to blame for everything. That's news to me. @sarc

-Cos67 ¬(%^D>

gambling addicts. Libor-ace plays Vegas

what would say about people who insist on gambling even after their company
is bankrupt and on handouts, and even though their manipulation of
the economy has meant that the only game in town is their form of gambling?

are they addicts or what?

Or is it bigger than that? Is this mass psychosis when we, sensible blog
writers and readers, cannot muster even an internet hack-fest to show
the bankers that we're here and watching.

Rome is burning and we're just pulling our saint peters.

There's a fat market in derivatives, to the tune of 600+ trillion.

of that, 400+ trill are based on the European LIBOR (London rating) for interbank
loans. Well, one bank is suing a bunch of others for manipulating that rate.
And the reason is so that 400 trill won't have to be paid out. D-uh, winning. corruption!

checkitout: from Mish Shedlock
LIBOR Underpins $400 Trillion in Financial Derivatives
The IMF Global Financial Stability Review states "LIBOR rates are estimated to underpin some $400 trillion of financial derivatives contracts".
That is a direct quote on PDF page 16 if the IMF review. It clearly shows why banks have a huge incentive to lie.
Am I the only one who thinks $400 trillion tied to a made up number is insane? Hells bells, $400 Trillion riding on LIBOR would be insane even if the number was real. Heck, $400 Billion would still be insane.
Here is an interesting snip from PDF page 93 (report page 74) "given the huge outstanding amounts of derivative contracts and other financial instruments linked to term LIBOR and Euribor, these benchmark rates need to be maintained. Although the survey methodologies have been effective at eliminating most biases at the individual contribution level, proposals by the British Bankers’

FIRE. stop, drop and roll

The antidote to the FIRE economy is nigh.

Now, pay attention....

STOP

DROP

ROLL

because of globalisation, the banking crisis is made even worse.

checkitout:
Financial sense-World Economy Hanging By A Thread
By Chris Puplava09/02/2011
... You Go, I Go, We all Go
As mentioned in the opening paragraph, investors and economists cannot look at the U.S. in isolation as globalization has become a dominant theme over the last decade. For the past two years corporations have had record earnings with a large portion of revenue coming from overseas, also partly explaining why U.S. markets have performed so well despite this being one of the worst recoveries since the Great Depression. Large-cap blue chip names are benefitting from globalization as they are increasing exposure towards faster growing foreign markets.
That said, globalization is also a double-edged sword. As you can see from the figure below, starting from the early 2000s many global economies started to synchronize, minimizing the previous benefits of diversifying their corporate revenue bases geographically to shield from regional downturns. Now, the leading economic indicators calculated by the OECD for various regions and countries show we currently have an economic slowdown where everyone is getting dragged over a cliff.


Tuesday 16 August 2011

oh please Bono, end world starvation

There's a few comedy sketches in this land that have taken the piss
out of Bono for saying he wants to end hunger.

He's full of it, like everybody else in his line of work.

He wanted African debt cancelled. But, you know, the City has
the charity money that was siphoned off by corrupt politicians
in Upper Burkina and everywhere else. That money
was sent to offshores, illegal centres of money concentration;
that's the very definition of tax avoidance. Well, London is the king of offshores.

So, no dropping of debt. That's not Bono's fault.

Well, then. Bono has decided to invest his wealth in a few
lucrative areas and he' s come up roses.
If can't beat 'em, might as well join 'em.

I just don't see any of that lucre being used for even a teaspoon
of pablum for a starving baby. Call me cynical.

There was a Scouser comedian (John Bishop's Britain) on BBC2 who recounted a story of a concert by U2, which was interrupted by Bono asking "do you want to end world hunger",
and the demand they send an sms to a phone number. Nice multi-media
show, but kinda idiotic because they were all involved in commercial activity.
Rich musicians separate idiots from their money in exchange for hearing substandard
renditions of their songs.

That redistribution of wealth from idiot to rich musician is the main reason why
I don't buy much in the way of music anymore. Music is a social event, for joy, sharing,
dancing, drinking. It's not about bank accounts and investments. You wanna be famous?
good luck to you.

It's dangerous pinning your name to a cause and then seeming to be the exact opposite.
Charity man is a billionnaire. That's more than Dublin's worth now.

So, Bono was up his own butt. That was the punchline of another BBC comedy
show that I've forgotten.

checkitout:
Bono's Facebook stake worth nearly $1bn
Elevation Partners' stake is now valued at $975m - more than four times the $210m it paid in November 2009
U2 frontman Bono's investment firm could be looking at a profit of almost $800m on its stake in Facebook, it has emerged.

The social networking site has just been valued at an eye-popping $65bn - up from $50bn in January - following the sale of a stake by advertising and marketing giant Interpublic Group.

Interpublic was an early investor in Facebook and has just sold half of its 0.4% share in the group for $133m (£81m), valuing the site at more than $65bn.

This values the U2's Elevation Partners' stake at $975m - more than four times the $210m it paid in November 2009.

Interpublic Group chief executive Michael Roth said an "attractive opportunity" to sell some of the stake had presented itself and it "made sense" to do so.

throw your tv out the window

this is SCTV. Are you tuned in?


If you ever needed another excuse to chuck your set out the window.
Apparently, sitting is bad for your health. Sitting to watch tv
is therefore out of the question.

In the UK , you have a PBS tax that means everybody pays cash for
their TV license. it's about 150 quid, or so. I don't know, I've
never paid it.

This is enforced by a whole army of private snoops who use tech to
spy on people who haven't paid and then charge them a grand
for not paying up.
I met with one of them once and told them I don't believe in
regressive taxes. I said Prince Chuck has my fee, cuz he pays
the same as I do.
The man, bless him, was close to retirement, with a gut that
would sideline an elephant.
I didn't have a tv, but the guy was too old to spy on anybody.
and he said "you know you gotta have one" (a tv license)
as if it's a requirement like oxygen and water.

I hate the attitude that you gotta take your medicine, i.e. your tv,
whether you like it or not. F%&*k that sh*t.
I grew up hooked on that idiot box, and look at me now.
I'm blogging. It's the antidote to tv.

So, chuck your tv out the window. Just don't hit the tv license guy on the head.


checkitout:
Too much television may shorten your life
Six hours of TV a day can cut life expectancy by nearly five years, research shows
* Alison Rourke in Sydney
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 August 2011 11.14 BST
Watching too much television could shorten your life, a study suggests. Research carried out in Australia, and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, showed that every hour of TV watched after the age of 25 may shorten lifespan by 22 minutes.

According to one of the report's authors, Dr Lennert Veerman, from the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland, it puts long hours spent in front of the box "in the same ballpark as smoking and obesity". "While smoking rates are declining, watching TV is not, which has implications at a population level," he said.

Last year, another Australian study found an hour of TV a day led to an 8% increase in the risk of premature death.

"We've taken that study and translated it into what it means for life expectancy in Australia given how much TV we watch," said Veerman.

Australians watch about two hours of TV a day. As a result their life expectancy at birth is reduced by 1.8 years for men and 1.5 years for women, according to the study. Britons watch more than three hours of TV a day, according to the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board.

Too much sitting, as distinct from too little exercise, is associated with higher mortality risk, particularly from cardiovascular disease. "Logically we know that physical activity is good for health and so it's not so strange that the reverse is not so good," said Veerman.

The report was based on an observational survey conducted in 1999-2000 with more than 11,000 participants aged 25 and over. Participants reported the amount of time they spent watching TV or videos in the previous week, when it was their main activity (ie, not doing the cooking or the ironing at the same time).

The report also showed that a person who watches an average of six hours of TV a day would live on average 4.8 years less than someone who watches none.

it's never too late for an academic to change his spots

Rubini has been accused by the French of being an apologist for Wall Street.
However, he now seems to be making heads spin by citing Karl Marx.
Naturally, the dense writers at CNBC jump up and shout, "commie",
when Marx had nothing to do with the manifestation of communism
in the Soviet Union. BUTT, it makes a nice title, innit?

Of course, it's been 2 years since I brought Marx back from the dead to
triumphantly claim that the fall of communism has allowed capitalism to eat itself.
That's what Rubini said of Marx, too.
If there's no regulation, hording of cash by the rich will lead to
a crash. So, share! you greedy halfwits.

checkitout:
Is Nouriel Roubini a Communist?
Published: Monday, 15 Aug 2011 | 3:30 PM ET
By: Jeff Cox
CNBC.com Staff Writer
Nouriel Roubini & Karl Marx
Karl Marx, meet your 21st century acolyte: Nouriel Roubini.
Nouriel Roubini a communist? It sure sounded like it, when the head of Roubini Global Economics, reputed Dr. Doom and forecaster of the financial crisis indicated sympathy with the Das Kapital author.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Roubini delivered a fresh prophecy of disaster for the US economy, but amped it up a bit by agreeing with Marx that capitalism ultimately will collapse under its own weight.
“Karl Marx said it right. At some point capitalism can self-destruct itself because you cannot keep on shifting income from labor to capital without having excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand,” Roubini said. “That’s what’s happening. We thought the markets work. They’re not working.”
Marx predicted that capitalism would fail because people would act for their own self interest and ultimately doom society as a whole.
For that reason and others he said capitalism was inherently immoral.

Monday 15 August 2011

as best as we can do


techdirt advised us of the Conservative party of Canada
and its attempt to charge a widow, whose husband died from
asbestor poisoning, with copyright for using their logo
in her desperate attempt to bring attention to the
fact that Canada still deals in the deadly stuff
that killed her husband.

So, I give that widow my full attention.
here's the offending logo and may it
get lots of mileage on the 'Net.

I agree with that page gal,
(not to be confused with the Page 3 gals in the Sun)
who stood up in the Senate and help up a protest sign;
Stop Harper


psy-ops delivered to your front stoop

This is why we're fighting oligarchy bullsh*t:

Stuart Jeanne Bramhall opednews:

The lesson I derive from the food theory of revolution is not that progressives shouldn't organize -- but that they need to focus less on political oppression (low wages, attacks on unions and civil liberties, cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Wall Street criminality, etc) and more on psychological oppression. Wilhelm Reich makes the same argument in The Mass Psychology of Fascism. It's pointless trying to organize the working class around political and economic injustice without addressing the psychological rigidity that imprisons all of us as products of a profoundly authoritarian social and family structure.
... Otherwise I totally agree with Keiser's and Zoellick's food theory of revolution, especially in countries like the US where psychological oppression is a bigger problem than political oppression. Psychological oppression is much less prevalent in countries like Greece, France and Spain (and apparently Britain), where strong working class consciousness enables workers to instantly identify when the government and corporate elite are screwing them. In these countries, workers are far more willing to take to the streets over less life threatening issues -- for example, hikes in student tuition, high youth unemployment, pension cuts, an increase in the retirement age, unpopular wars and evidence of corruption in the criminal justice system.
The second problem with opting for inaction is that we greatly increase the probability the capitalistic political-economic system will collapse into utter chaos.[we can do something by being vigilant. Yeeee-ah- Cos67] If we simply wait for global capitalism to self-destruct, we will most likely end up with a violent, fragmented failed state -- like Afghanistan, Somalia or post-Soviet Russia -- controlled by criminal gangs and sociopathic warlords.[this is where our leaders are taking us, by default. They don't have a plan- Cos67]

What Branhall's trying to say is that Murdoch and the other circle jerk media moguls
are using their position as information peddlers, in North America and other colonies,
to encourage the colonials to take their medicine, in suppository form.

I say. White riot only? Pity

Richard Starkey made a race faux pas.

In discussing the particulars of the riots in London, etc.,
he said whites are going black.
I'm not sure what he meant, and the Brits
will not discuss it. They just discuss the fact that he said something
that he shouldn't oughta.
So , anyway...

UPDATE: I figured it out. He's saying that blacks are rioters by nature, and
the whites are merely joining them. And, remember, this isn't the toothless
guy at the pub. This is a historian whose been all over the BBC. The upper
classes have really shat themselves over this riot stuff. Scratch a public
school boy and WHOOP, out comes a racist, or a fascist in Cameron's case.

I thought it fitting to introduce this song for Starkers.
One of my favourite songs in University was White Riot by the Clash.
1 minute and fifty one seconds of barely-controlled mayhem.

We're now celebrating 35 years of punk anarchy in the UK.
That's when an explosive force (Brit Youff) met with the Ramones.
Apparently, Strummer snuck in a window to see the show.

Those guys (Clash) at least tried to foment riots. RIP Sir Strummer.
and a damn good strummer you was!


-Cos67 ¬(%^D>

checkitout: the importance of White Riot

billybragg.co.uk / By Billy Bragg 13 COMMENTS
Billy Bragg: Music Needs to Get Political Again
The Legendary rocker speaks on recent British protests and his love for The Clash.
How ironic that The Clash should be on the cover of the NME in the week that London was burning, that their faces should be staring out from the shelves as newsagents were ransacked and robbed by looters intent on anarchy in the UK. Touching too, that the picture should be from very early in their career – Joe with curly blond hair – for The Clash were formed in the wake of a London riot: the disturbances that broke out at the end of the Notting Hill Carnival of 1976.
At the time, the press reported it as the mindless violence of black youth intent on causing trouble; now we look back and recognise that it was the stirrings of what became our multicultural society – the moment when the first generation of black Britons declared that these streets belonged to them too.
The Notting Hill Riots of 35 years ago created a genuine ‘What The Fuck?’ moment – the first in Britain since the violent clashes between mods and rockers in the early 60s. While west London burned, the rest of society recoiled in terror at the anger they saw manifested on the streets of England. In the aftermath, severe jail sentences were handed down and police patrols stepped up in areas where there was a large immigrant population. Sound familiar?
But something else happened too – in the months that followed, bands appeared that sought to make sense of what went down on that hot August night. Aswad, Steel Pulse and Misty in Roots were among the reggae bands that stepped forward to speak for the black community.
Punk was galvanised into action by The Clash, whose debut album featured a picture of police charging towards black youth under the Westway on the back cover. Their first single, ‘White Riot’, was an explicit attempt to make a connection between the frustration faced by unemployed white youth and their black counterparts whose employment prospects were blighted by racism.
In the Clash interview from 1976 that was reprinted in the NME ‘riot issue’, Joe Strummer boldly said “We’re hoping to educate any kid who comes to listen us, just to keep them from joining the National Front”. That certainly worked in my case. When Notting Hill went up in smoke, I didn’t get it, yet, a year or so later, the first political activism that I ever took part in was the first Rock Against Racism Carnival in London. I’d been drawn by the fact that the Clash were top of the bill.
That event brought me into contact with some of the aforementioned British reggae bands, acts that had previously struggled to find white audiences. This coming together led directly to Two-Tone and to Artists Against Apartheid. These bands, black and white, didn’t end racism in Britain, but they helped me to understand why it had to be confronted.
Fast-forward 35 years to the present day. Much has changed, yet we find ourselves in the same quandary. The August riots of 2011 are another WTF? moment, when society recoils in horror and says ‘I don’t understand you’.
Everyone who has seen the footage of the ‘Bad Samaritans’ pretending to come to the aid of the injured Asyraf Haziq Rossli, while their mates rummage through his rucksack and rob him, will have made an instant judgement about the kind of people who would do such an unspeakable thing.
Undoubtedly, many people in the 15-24 age group will know people like that and be quick to condemn them. For the rest of us – who know nothing but what we see - we’ll damn you all, because of your clothes, your music, your haircuts, your attitude. You can already hear the generational disdain in mainstream reactions to the sentences handed down to looters.
Now, you don’t have to do anything about this. You can simply shrug your shoulders when politicians speak dismissively about feral youth leading futile lives. But it won’t end there. The authorities are going to lean on your generation and hard. You are being set up as the new enemy within. ‘Feral’ is a word that is virtually interchangeable with ‘vermin’.
The disturbances of the past weeks have stirred up a shit storm of opinion in the mainstream media, much of it from people who have no real experience of the pressures faced by this generation, the first in a century that are likely to grow up worse off than their parents. Though this situation has been building for some years, the disturbances have created an opportunity for young people to provide an alternative commentary.
I know things are different now, not least in the music industry. Back in 1976, we only had one medium – pop music - through which to speak one another and the world. The internet has changed that. Now, if you have an opinion about something, you can blog, tweet, and post your thoughts for everyone to see. It makes you feel like you’re making a contribution, but are you really?
Nobody ever got rich writing snarky remarks in the comment section nor got to tour the world performing to thousands of people on the back of writing a blog. Sure, you may get a lot of ‘likes’ on your comments, but nothing beats the thrill of making an audience of 50 people cheer a line in a song that you’ve just written that hits on something that they feel strongly about.
I know that there are artists out there who already understand this, but I am also aware of the atmosphere of cynical post-modernism that has warped the music scene to such an extent that musicians who write ostensibly political songs spend their interviews desperately back-pedalling to avoid being ‘divisive’. Joe Strummer is spinning in his grave.
I can understand why young artists might be unsure of how to approach politics. Since the ideological battles of the 1980s, the whole distinction between left and right has disappeared under the rubble of the Berlin Wall. Even I have trouble making sense of it all - does anybody know what Tony Blair really stood for?
But making political pop should not be a matter of setting Karl Marx to music. I’ve heard that stuff and it never sounds right. Pop becomes political when it stops being self-pitying and self-aggrandising and starts to speak truth to power.
Punk was born in a time of rising unemployment and stultifying boredom among young people. It contained a strong nihilistic streak that claimed to only want to destroy, an impulse that bands like the Clash constantly had to fight against. I’m not looking for a nostalgic trip down memory lane nor for a punk revival. That was another time. Yet, it at its core, punk contained a revolutionary idea that remains relevant today: ‘Here’s three chords, now a form a band’.
Of course it doesn’t have to be a band – technology has put the means of production into the hands of anyone with a computer and some beats. The riots last week were a spark – what is needed now is an alternative commentary. Some of you who are reading this need to produce songs with spirit that tell us something we don’t know about what the fuck happened last week, how we got to such a place and where you think we should be going from here.
A truncated version of this article appeared in the NME 27.8.11