Thursday 29 August 2013

Cyrus Twerking downgraded to Bump & Grind

This incident has become a cultural bomb, heard all
around Africa as an affront to Afro-culture. Is it
because a skinny-ass white chick has become
famous for a centuries old come-get-me move?

First of all, if anybody views the video, what
Miley is doing is nowhere near a Twerk.
Firstly, twerks are not done in the vicinity of 
a shlong, be that shlong clothed or not.

 It is a cultural artefact, like the
Moulin Rouge, not a strip club.

Secondly, rich white chick cannot
move her buttocks at all, 
despite the rhythm of a song

Thirdly, even if it were a 
genuine Twerk, whites are 
always stealing African ideas,
not to mention money and oil.

Fourthly, it was so poor,
little Minney Disney would
have flunked the 
Pole-Dancing Academy's
Snake Charming 101

Fifthly, she showed us enough
butt for us to see that she
has no butt.
[mirror]
I'm more concerned with the mental health of the former
child star. As the confessions of Carrie Fisher attest, being
a star and developing your sexuality are two very big
colliding forces- CERN could only be so lucky.

The reasons I think she's nuts and not just sowing wild oats,
are two: The hair . even punks would say "the bitch crazy".


[misstv online]
The tongue. it's one thing to wink and stick out your 
tongue at someone. She ain't looking at nobody. Her 
tongue seems to be responding like that of a dog, in heat.
[daily mirror]
[eonline]
Essentially, I think that this young lady has not been able
to handle her fall in stature. I think indeed, that she's 
operating on auto-pilot. She's just following the noise to 
the next big scene.
I don't know about her music, because I haven't had
time to check it. It can't be much worse than her kiddie
stuff.
For a guy who likes immaturity when it takes the form
of art, Milli is just too immature, and too Vanilli
& too psycho.

checkit: The Guardian
Miley Cyrus's twerking routine was cultural appropriation at its worst

Cyrus's act was less a homage to hip-hop and more a minstrel show. For cultural cross-pollination, give me the Notting Hill carnival any day
Hadley Freeman 2013 pic
Hadley Freeman
Tuesday 27 August 2013 17.00 BST
Jump to comments (836)

Exactly half a century ago on Wednesday, Martin Luther King described his dream, a dream in which "one day right there in Alabama little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers".

So it seems deliciously apt in terms of reflecting how race relations have progressed in the US since Dr King's era that, just a whisker short of the anniversary of his speech, the world bore witness to one of the more intriguing examples of cultural appropriation. Sadly, King omitted to say whether he also dreamed of "little white girls from Tennessee mimicking anilingus on little black girls wearing giant animals on their backs", so it's impossible to know how he would have reacted to Miley Cyrus' performance at the VMAs on Sunday. But it seems likely that not even he could have foreseen how the American celebrity world would manage to twist his image into something quite so, if not actually racist, then certainly race-ish.

As I watched Cyrus's performance on Monday morning on my laptop, the first floats in the Notting Hill carnival parade went by outside my window. I have lived in the middle of the carnival route for 12 years now and going by my wholly unscientific observation, the carnival is one of the lovelier forms of cultural cross-pollination. Yes, there are lots of white people trying to dance, not too appallingly, to reggae soundsystems, as well as an increasing overflow of aggressively drunk white men who seem to have got lost on their way to Reading festival. But in the main, the carnival is one of the closest adherents to King's dream that I have encountered in my four decades living in four different cities, with its happy celebration of African-Caribbean traditions, which most of the white attendees excitedly cheer along.

Which brings us back to Miley Cyrus' VMA performance – a perfect illustration of just how the celebrity world appropriates black culture and female liberation. The song Cyrus sang, We Can't Stop, was written by Timothy and Theron Thomas and given to Cyrus when she told them, presumably without a wince: "I want something that feels black." Instead of giving her something by, I don't know, John Coltrane, the Thomas brothers gave her a song originally written for Rihanna which, to be fair, was almost certainly the image of blackness Cyrus had in mind as I don't think Coltrane did much twerking.

Cyrus is hardly the first female celebrity to try to prove her maturity through sexuality and, to be fair to her, she probably felt that she needed more than a pixie haircut to compensate for the Billy Ray Cyrus factor. Whether that had to involve sticking her tongue out repeatedly as if Gene Simmons never happened is something only cultural historians will be able to chart later. Plenty of male singers grab their crotches while performing, but it seems to be only female singers these days who feel the need to strip down to their underwear and simulate sex acts on stage. As nice as it would be to imagine a world in which young women weren't taught to equate hypersexuality with maturity and independence, that remains as unrealised a dream as much of King's speech.

Cyrus, though, twerked the formula as well as her body by adding in a racial element while she copied the dance moves of strippers and bellowed her love of drugs. (Billy Ray's heart must be pretty achy breaky these days.) On stage as well as in her video she used the tedious trope of having black women as her backing singers, there only to be fondled by her and to admire her wiggling derriere. Cyrus is explicitly imitating crunk music videos and the sort of hip-hop she finds so edgy – she has said, bless her, that she feels she is Lil' Kim inside and she loves "hood music" – and the effect was not of a homage but of a minstrel show, with a young wealthy woman from the south doing a garish imitation of black music and reducing black dancers to background fodder and black women to exaggerated sex objects....

Tuesday 27 August 2013

Crowds line up to scuttle up Snowden's back passage

I don't know why people immediately think a public
figure can become the possession of the masses. Do you
think that you can sniff his butt, CNN, just because he
tried to save the US from tyranny? I know that tyranny
is a fundamental part of media ethos, but this is too much.

Why are they all looking for this man? Why is
the US government looking for this man?

He certainly isn't up a mountain. Nevertheless,
Brits are lining up, in the north, to search for him.
[take a number folks. the CIA has first dibs]

Punchline: actually, this is a photo of Snowdon,
the popular "mountain" in the UK. I just
couldn't resist the pun.

People like climbing Snowdon, and last weekend
there were traffic jams, like in the photo. BUTT,
I'm sure the name Snowden had more people
thinking about hiking on Snowdon. Plus, I think
there's a Shit Creek, on that mound, and Snowden
is certainly up it, himself.

Sunday 25 August 2013

Insane spying. Cypress Hill

UPDATE3: despite the fact that British planes are
getting nervous on Cyprus, the government there,
if it actually makes decisions for the base, has
said it will not participate in any way, as a host
to attacking armies. -Zerohedge (4 below)

UPDATE2: Turns out Cyprus is spy central, AND the
staging ground for an attack on Syria. Snowden moves to
page 4. This from Twitter:
@RickAaron 
I've been watching the news all day. Apparently some
woman named Miley has taken over Cyprus. Or Montana.
I'm not sure.

--
UPDATE: the Independent newspaper was duped by gov
spies into thinking they were getting Snowden info. It
seems the gov is trying to build "a case" against Snowden
that he's divulging national security issues, and thus a
terrorist. [see guardian story - 3]
--
As if it's not dangerous enough in the middle east, we've
got the UK spying in there. I wonder where such a spy
hive could be located.
I'm scanning all the British colonies and satellite
governments, with the puppet in charge.
I just can't think of where it could be.



Of course Edward Snowden knows because of what
he got from the leaks he saved. The Independent did
tell us what Snow-man knows, but would not reveal
the location because it's of "national security". 

I call bullshit.

It's being hidden because the less knowledge there is
of official and unofficial British colonies there is, the
better the British argument in favour of Gibraltar seems.
So, the Independent is either under pressure to keep it
quiet, or the Independent is cooperating with the UK
authorities.
the plot thickens

Checkit:
1
Independent

Exclusive: UK’s secret Mid-East internet surveillance base is revealed in Edward Snowden leaks

Data-gathering operation is part of a £1bn web project still being assembled by GCHQ
Duncan Campbell , Oliver Wright , James Cusick , Kim Sengupta

Friday 23 August 2013

Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, The Independent has learnt.

The station is able to tap into and extract data from the underwater fibre-optic cables passing through the region.

The information is then processed for intelligence and passed to GCHQ in Cheltenham and shared with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States. The Government claims the station is a key element in the West’s “war on terror” and provides a vital “early warning” system for potential attacks around the world.

The Independent is not revealing the precise location of the station but information on its activities was contained in the leaked documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden. The Guardian newspaper’s reporting on these documents in recent months has sparked a dispute with the Government, with GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives containing the data.....

2 Press TV
Letter
A. Freeman
Aug 25, 2013 9:43 AM
I think the base they are mentioning is on the Trodos mountain range in Cyprus. It has an appropriate altitude for electronic signal surveillance. They have massive white geodesic domes up there which can be seen from really far away, they look like golf balls. It would make sense as well, seeing as they have two other "sovereign" bases on the islands coast, Dekelia and Akrotiri, overlooking the Middle East. When Lebanon was being bombarded there was huge movement in the area, with all sorts of advanced military equipment and vehicles being brought in.

3 theguardian.com,

Snowden: UK government now leaking documents about itself

The NSA whistleblower says: 'I have never spoken with, worked with, or provided any journalistic materials to the Independent'

Glenn Greenwald
 Friday 23 August 2013 12.42 BST
Jump to comments (1998)

(Updated below)

The Independent this morning published an article - which it repeatedly claims comes from "documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden" - disclosing that "Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies." This is the first time the Independent has published any revelations purportedly from the NSA documents, and it's the type of disclosure which journalists working directly with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have thus far avoided.

That leads to the obvious question: who is the source for this disclosure? Snowden this morning said he wants it to be clear that he was not the source for the Independent, stating:

I have never spoken with, worked with, or provided any journalistic materials to the Independent. The journalists I have worked with have, at my request, been judicious and careful in ensuring that the only things disclosed are what the public should know but that does not place any person in danger. People at all levels of society up to and including the President of the United States have recognized the contribution of these careful disclosures to a necessary public debate, and we are proud of this record.

"It appears that the UK government is now seeking to create an appearance that the Guardian and Washington Post's disclosures are harmful, and they are doing so by intentionally leaking harmful information to The Independent and attributing it to others. The UK government should explain the reasoning behind this decision to disclose information that, were it released by a private citizen, they would argue is a criminal act."

In other words: right as there is a major scandal over the UK's abusive and lawless exploitation of its Terrorism Act - with public opinion against the use of the Terrorism law to detain David Miranda - and right as the UK government is trying to tell a court that there are serious dangers to the public safety from these documents, there suddenly appears exactly the type of disclosure the UK government wants but that has never happened before. That is why Snowden is making clear: despite the Independent's attempt to make it appears that it is so, he is not their source for that disclosure. Who, then, is?

The US government itself has constantly used this tactic: aggressively targeting those who disclose embarrassing or incriminating information about the government in the name of protecting the sanctity of classified information, while simultaneously leaking classified information prolifically when doing so advances their political interests.

One other matter about the Independent article: it strongly suggests that there is some agreement in place to restrict the Guardian's ongoing reporting about the NSA documents. Speaking for myself, let me make one thing clear: I'm not aware of, nor subject to, any agreement that imposes any limitations of any kind on the reporting that I am doing on these documents. I would never agree to any such limitations. As I've made repeatedly clear, bullying tactics of the kind we saw this week will not deter my reporting or the reporting of those I'm working with in any way. I'm working hard on numerous new and significant NSA stories and intend to publish them the moment they are ready.

4
Russia Restructures Cyprus Debt; Cyprus Prohibits US Strikes On Syria
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/31/2013 15:00 -0400
...
Cyprus UK Bases (via Bloomberg)

The U.K. has 2 sovereign bases on Cyprus; and despite its vote against a strike, the U.K. Ministry of Defence said today 6 RAF Typhoon interceptor fast jets deploying to British base at Akrotiri in Cyprus as precautionary measure "to protect British bases on island"

Cyprus Refugee Camp (via Bloomberg)

Cyprus Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides says his country is prepared for any influx of foreign nationals in the event of military action against Syria, in comments to reporters in Nicosia today. Cyprus can accept up to 10,000 people daily on basis they remain for 48 hours before repatriation (Cyprus received more than 40,000 evacuees from Lebanon after 2 weeks fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters in 2006).

Cyprus Refuses To Allow Strikes From Its Territory against Syria (via Bloomberg)

Cyprus assured its territory won’t be used to launch military strikes against Syria, Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides said, according to a transcript of his comments posted on govt’s press-office website

Kasoulides commented that "Cyprus wants to live up to its responsibility as a shelter if needed for nationals of friendly countries who evacuate from Middle East"