BBC Newsman takes blaming the victim to a new low.

In essence a BBC News presenter accused a severely disabled man of provoking and posing a threat to the police and thus justifying them forcibly removing him from his wheelchair twice during a protest. Jody McIntyre stood up to the absurd questioning very well but jeez those questions should not have been asked by anyone with any kind of grasp of reality.



To better understand why this happened I suggest two older posts:

Firstly Noam Chomsky explaining to another BBC man of a very similar mode to the above asshole interviewer about the propaganda model. Note Andrew Marr's reactions and how that thinking might well lead to how Ben Brown behaved above.

Secondly Mark Ames' coverage of anti-IMF protests in 2000. Note the media reactions and behaviour to that situation and the inherent similarities.

Weekend Watch

Well my second ever weekend watch is two days late. Doing well.

Anyway here is part two of the Power of Nightmares:

Buy Silver, hurt JP Morgan

I've heard rumblings about this before but didn't really know what was going on. Heres all round cool dude Max Keiser explaining it in less than a minute:



More details here

Adventures in wikipedia bias.

For reasons that are beyond me I decided to look at the wikipedia page for Libertarianism: this page. I noticed that there is no mention of any criticism of Libertarianism nor a link to a page that does cover criticism. I thought this odd because I was sure the page for communism did have such a link, entirely reasonably, its important to know the flaws of every ideology. So I checked the communism page. Yes, theres a whole section dedicated to criticism AND links to other criticism pages.

Not a huge deal, afterall Communism isn't the most popular ideology and different wiki pages have different formats anyway. So I looked at the socialism page (it was linked at the top of the communism page and I'm lazy). Of course Socialism's failings also have their own little section. at this point I stopped and went in a different direction but we'll come back to that. Lets look at other ideologies' pages on wikipedia. Anarchism... no, theres certainly no section and a ctrl + f of the page doesn't turn up anything. Liberalism sort of has a criticism section but not really. Conservatism has no section or links. Fascism, perhaps unsurprisingly, does have a section one in need of expansion no less.

So from a brief sampling of ideology pages it seems the only pages to escape mention of criticism in their summary are Conservatism and Libertarianism. While I readily admit the Liberalism criticism isn't quite the same it is mightly convenient for right wingers only their articles don't directly mention criticism at all.

Anyway, back when I first discovered this I mentioned it to a friend and he jokingly suggested editing the page. I decided to first look at the talk page to see if this was an issue. At the top of the talk page is this:
and absolutely no mention of a criticism section on the talk page. So it seems that wikipedia is a site anyone can edit as long as it doesn't affect right wing interests.

However, while searching the archives of the libertarianism talk page I did find a link to the Criticism of libertarianism page so its nicely well hidden but it does have some good information:

Of particular interest to economists is the "New Zealand Experiment," which began in 1984 when Roger Douglas became Minister of Finance and began radically restructuring the country's economy to fit the libertarian model.[10] Over the next 15 years, New Zealand's economy and social capital faced a steady decline: the youth suicide rate grew sharply into one of the highest in the developed world;[11] the proliferation of food banks increased dramatically;[12] marked increases in violent and other crime were observed;[13] the number of New Zealanders estimated to be living in poverty grew by at least 35% between 1989 and 1992;[14] and health care has been especially hard-hit, leading to a significant deterioration in health standards among working and middle class people.[15] In addition, many of the promised economic benefits of the experiment never materialised.[16]

which is pretty darned damning. You can find it with the footnotes etc here

Twitter censoring wikileaks hash tag?

This was indirectly linked by Wikileaks on twitter but its worth repeating. Basically theres a fairly compelling argument that twitter, for political reasons, is not showing wikileaks as a trending topic.

Freedom of speech only matters if it is related to regimes that are the enemy of America, such as Iran, it would seem.

Another possible attempt to undermine Wikileaks

It seems someone is leaking cables before Wikileaks or perhaps ones Wikileaks never intended to release: Something weird is going on


thanks ahm

Bernie Sanders is a good Senator.

Hell probably the only good senator:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5OtB298fHY

Weekend Watch

This is a new feature that is neither innovative nor requiring effort on my part so maybe, just maybe, I'll keep up with it. As you may well be able to infer this feature is about encouraging you to watch worthwhile stuff, generally documentaries and lectures. At least for now I'll try to alternate between the two. For the next three weeks we'll be watching babby's first geopolitics aka The Power of Nightmares by Adam Curtis. A three part documentary about the similarities between the rise to prominence of the Neo-conservative and Islamist movements.

This is part one.



http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1320822957676559056#

I highly recommend you watch it if you haven't before.

The final nail in net neutrality's coffin?

The FCC Chairman has announced his plans for the Net Neutrality Bill. No one seems especially happy about what they have to say but I'm inclined to believe this reaction given how much of a friend to Corporate America the Obama Administration has been.

I suppose anything this good wasn't going to be allowed to last.

Chomsky talks about the latests Wikileak (and other stuff)

Democracy Now! have spoken with Noam Chomsky on a range of topics related to the cables leaked by Wikileaks. It covers a range of topics, notably the nature of the cables consistently supporting USA biases. If they are legitimate Chomsky points out that while Arab leaders, who are dictators to a man, may see eye to eye with the US in wanting to attack Iran the actual Arab populace not only view Israel and America as far bigger threats a majority, 57% actually view the prospect of a nuclear Iran positively. For some reason Arabs think only Israel having nukes in the region is dangerous.

A lot of other excellent points are made and he draws inferences and connections between various things that are obvious when he says them but very unlikely to occurred to most of us.

Please watch it: Part 1 and Part 2

thanks jonny

As an interesting post script the wikileaks twitter highlighted a cable from the leaks describing Prince Andrew. He seems like an absolute fucking idiot.

Another Hero Sullied.

Please note nearly none of this is original research and just me parroting stuff Mark Ames and Yasha Levine dug up in case that wasn't obvious.

I liked Glenn Greenwald... maybe I still do, I'm not sure. He certainly has done some good stuff in the past but recent events have certainly raised some questions.

Lets go back to the beginning. About a week ago self described Libertarian John Tyner wrote a blog post about an unpleasant encounter with the TSA that he just so happened to have set record devices up on his person before it occurred. This post got a surprisingly large amount of coverage very rapidly. This wasn't especially suspicious because the TSA are far from popular and from time to time the internet does throw up unlikely success stories.

Alas Mark Ames and Yasha Levine of Exiled.com dug up the fact those trumpeting this issue had alterior motives. In short various libertarian Koch Brothers minions were using this as a chance not to push for less security at airports, but privatised security at airports. Their article (which you should read) attracted an awful lot of criticism very quickly. Not just from right wing flaks either; renowned liberal luminary, techno-fetistist and Steam Punk fan Cory Doctorow was among the liberal voices screeching about at the duo for daring to question the narrative of their little pet project. Alas though the most prominent and widely heard critic was Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald's article is full of very annoyed accusations of baseless criticism on Levine and Ames's part. He then goes on to accuse them of being hardline democrat supporters moved into action by anger at Tyner upsetting Barrack Obama, their favourite person ever's plans.

With a Koch-related mind like that, the next thing you know, Tyner will be calling for endless war in the Muslim world, escalated civilian-slaughtering drone strikes, a covert war in Yemen, war crimes trials for child soldiers, and due-process-free life imprisonment and presidential assassinations. Then maybe he'll decide he can become a Good Democrat and will be able to remove the cloud of suspicion that, in the eyes of these Nation writers, hangs over him.

to quote one of several instances.

Yet if one were to do the most cursory of research, say a single search on their website for the word Obama you would realise that they are in no way democratic party allies, fans or even well wishers. Still this isn't the end of the world, Greenwald is a busy man and while Exiled.com is cool they're hardly big fish in the media pond. It is a shame he is wholly unaware of the fact Ames and Levine, through journalistic hard work, were the first to break the news that the Tea Party is an Astro Turfed movement, a sham funded by Billionaire libertarianism proponents the Koch Brothers but you can't expect him to know everything.

Ames and Levine provided a response to Greenwald's letter on The Nation's website which Greenwald then responded to again in Update III of his article. In this Greenwald defends his strident attack on the origianl article and his ignoring the wider facts of Libertarian influence on the anti-TSA movement by claiming he merely wanted to defend the innocence of John Tyner. Which is kinda nice if rather myopic, sure the inference Ames and Levine made about Tyner is perhaps questionable but the wider issue of the right's support for the anti-TSA movement being about privatisation and not loosening of security is noteworthy and perhaps something he should've noted in his attack?

Well it turns out Glenn Greenwald has good reason to be unwilling to criticise the Koch Brothers in regards to Airport Security issues. He wrote a report for the CATO INSTITUTE about Airport security. You can read the report by Glenn Greenwald of the CATO Institute here: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/08/09/glenn-greenwald/the-digital-surveillance-state-vast-secret-and-dangerous/. Just in case you are unaware the CATO institute is one of the Koch Brother's principle propaganda mills and sources of succour for academics shills who'll spout the glories of Libertarianism. Greenwald has taken their dime at least once before too.

So what conclusion can we draw from one of the most prominent liberal voices in the US being willing to take at least a sip from the Koch Bros' teat in regards to his strident defence of John Tyner (and just so happening to poo poo the other important criticisms of the Kochs by association?). Well essentially I think theres two main possibilities. Firstly his pride and desire to appear academically consistent have caused him to persist with the CATO point of view and defend other proponents of it, nobody likes to be called on their mistakes and Ames and Levine's usual offensive tone doesn't bring out the best in people generally.

Secondly the money and access his connection to the CATO institute brings to him has lead him to compromise some of his values, maybe he even feels going along with the Libertarian Agenda, with all the media attention and money it is currently getting, can further causes he believes in more than it harms them. In that case attacking relatively minor investigative journalists he hasn't heard of (or at least thats the impression he gives) to further his goals against a creeping surveillance state may be a tradeoff he thinks worth making. Making deals with the devil is seldom wise in any case.

Neither scenario is great but hopefully it is the former.

So in conclusion while I think Greenwald still does a lot of good work my respect for him has dropped considerably and there are major questions hanging over him.

I took two days to write this and in that the hornets' nest seems to have been stirred up even further. Another person mentioned in the original nation article, Peter Eyre, got himself in a tizzy about having some light shined on his activities. He also revealed his ideology is a perverse corporate friendly version of Anarchism oh and he rounds out with a threat of violence against Mark Ames (Yasha Levine is below his notice):

Let me know if you ever want to arm wrestle. And I know Josiah Neff on that page said he’d go a couple rounds of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu if you’re interested.

Sadly the liberal mainstream is siding with these assholes over Levine and Ames because they don't want to acknowledge they got played over hating the TSA.

Irvin Kershner 1923 - 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R66FvPTj2Yw

Mark Ruffalo is a traitor and a member of the rebel alliance!

I am of the mind that Mark Ruffalo is the next Gary Oldman, his skill as an actor combined with some excellent makeup / styling has allowed him to convincingly play a variety of roles without me realising they were same guy until I later checked on the internet. But hes been playing one role I don't think anyone suspected apart from the brave men and women of the Pennsylvania Homeland Security office. For Mark Ruffalo is a terrorist.

Oh whats that you've read the article and all he did was show people a documentary critical of dangerous drilling practices, his only crime threatening corporate interests? Well comrade I'm just glad more perceptive people than you work in homeland security and were able to understand his true motives. Oil and Gas companies pay millions of dollars in taxes and create huge numbers of jobs, Mr Ruffalo's attempts to attack them were an attempt to weaken the American economy and deprive the American government of funds.

He must be stopped by whatever means necessary or maybe energy companies wont be able to maintain America's healthy democracy due to a lack of money to donate to campaigns.

A good day to bury bad news and Iranian Scientists.

On 9/11 New Labour spin doctor Jo Moore stated it was a "good day to bury bad news" which while an excellent idea in PR thinking it was very bad PR for her (she lost her job) when it became more widely known and the media and political opponents etc voiced hypocritical anger about it.

Personally I think it was a piece of timeless wisdom and it seems I'm not alone in that. With the ongoing Wikileaks diplomatic cable leak US or Israeli (ah but I repeat myself) intelligence officers have seen fit to try and murder two Iranian nuclear scientists with bombs in two separate incidents, succeeding in one case. The current leak provides excellent cover because as I said the documents that have been released take Iran having a nuclear weapons programme for granted and normalises this unproven scenario in the public mind. In which case murdering a scientist, if anyone notices, is easier to justify as necessary to keep the peace in the region or suchlike.

One should also note that Iran has killed none of the Israeli scientists involved in the wholly illegal Israeli nuclear weapons program but no one cares about that.

Leslie Nielsen 1926 - 2010

This blog now has a twitter feed.

Mainly for links I'm too lazy to blog about but also to justify me cataloguing every waking moment of my life I've set up a new twitter account (I had another one I never used, so fresh start).

http://twitter.com/LamentablyAwake

If you so choose you can follow me on it, I have very vague plans for it but we'll see what happens for now, it may get about 3 updates and then cease to be.

Something to bear in mind re: Iran.

One rather suspicious thing about the most recent Wikileaks leak is how much it is getting America's favoured message that Iran will imminently have nuclear weapons (or indeed that there is any evidence they are developing nukes at all.)

An international panel of experts recently stated Iran WILL NOT have nuclear weapons in the near future.

The leaked US cables.

Probably the best place for up to date information about this stuff is The Guardian's sub-website devoted specifically to the leaks.

Man theres a lot of fun stuff up there already, Arab puppets of the US want Iran nuked, The state department (CIA) spying on the leadership of the UN and sundry other unpleasant things.

Le Petit Nicholas and the journalists that wont shut up.

As well as his deeply unpopular pension policies and mini-pogroms French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his government are nursing a couple of major scandals. Firstly there is the Bettencourt affair essentially an allegation that Mr Sarkozy both in his campaign for the presidency and earlier on in his career received illegally large donations from a single donor. Secondly there is the accusation that Mr Sarkozy and others in the UMP (his party) received kickbacks from arms sales to Pakistan in the 90s. Mr Sarkozy and others implicated in these scandals have strenuously asserted their innocence.

Of course Nicholas did what any innocent man slandered and libelled by the media. He set the secret services on them. Oh and also accused journalists of being paedophiles for not revealing secret sources to the government, something which could be construed as a direct threat given the increased monitoring of journalists by the secret services. Further the French government is showing a fondness for the British way of doing things with a number of libel lawsuits threatened (but not yet carried out) against those who are investigating these scandals.

There have also been mysterious burglaries targeting those investigating the aforementioned journalists. Another blow to American Exceptionalism as Europe proves it can do COINTELPRO too.

It would seem that when the Propaganda Model fails supposedly and enlightened and freedom loving "democratic" governments in the west are more than willing to use harsher means to suppress the truth.

Obama clarifies his position on Turkey.

Egypt and Ethiopia (+ other countries on the upper Nile) heading for war.

Essentially about a century ago the British Empire and Italian "Empire" made a number of unilateral treaties about who could use the water resources of the Nile. Unsurprisingly both nations had a bias towards the Mediterranean and thus the nation / British colony closest to the med, Egypt got the lion's share of the water. Due to Egypt geo-political position throughout the C20th it was both politically and militarily impossible for nations on the upper Nile to get a more equitable agreement. Consequently nations like Ethiopia and D.R. Congo could not benefit economically or agriculturally from one of the most fertile rivers in the world.

Things are however changing, in 1999 the UN and World bank helped the upper Nile countries set up the Nile Basin Initiative and after a decade of negotiation are moving forward with an initiative. Egypt's ability to quash this has been limited by a number of recent events. Firstly their standing in the Arab / North African world has diminished greatly, willingly accepting US bribes to recognise and not attack Israel, a weak or non-existent stand on issues important to the region, the end of the cold war removing the need for Russia and the US to woo / appease them and the simple fact memories of Nasser have long since faded mean their clout, while still significant, is a shadow of what it once was.

Secondly Ethiopia's star is rising, their little excursion in Somalia was a solid favour for the US. In addition the War on Terror (or whatever the arms and security industry subsidy is now called) is starting to focus increasingly on the horn of Africa, Yemen is just a thin, Somali pirate infested strip of water away from the horn. While Eritrea, Ethiopia's mortal enemy, is also considered an ally by America the simple fact remains Ethiopia is Christian and most of its' neighbours are Muslim. They may not be as powerful as Egypt right now but their recent actions have likely given the Nile Basin Initiative considerable leeway.

Thirdly there is the issue of continued Chinese colonisation of East Africa and America's AFRICOM response which requires a large amount of cooperation from and with African countries given America's relative manpower shortage compared to China in the region. Again this means leeway for the NBI countries, after all there is at least five of them. It may or may not be noteworthy that Sudan, a benefactor of considerable Chinese largess, is siding with Egypt. They are also benefiting from the 1958 treaty though so I'd be wary to say its a thing. Also there is little reason for America to worry about Egypt going Chinese even if they don't back them, they have other incentives to stay friendly.

However while Egypt is unlikely to be able to get this manoeuvre quashed by my powerful agents it still seems to be trying good old fashioned violence. Is war actually likely? I'm not sure. At a very shallow level I think there are convincng reasons for Egypt to go to war and for them not to. The not to side is the fact in the conflict over a river's water supply being downstream and relying heavily on it for your economy makes you very vulnerable to upstream enemies. Plus while Ethiopia's military is definitely weaker than Egypt's it is known to be a very able fighting force and Ethiopia's terrain makes it very difficult to invade. The use of funded guerillas is workable to an extent for Egypt but sugar daddy America likely wont be too pleased about Ethiopia having to waste the War on Terror weapons and aid its been given on rebels being indirectly funded by the US also. Why bring military action? Well at this point Egypt has no real non-violent means of compulsion as aforementioned but they really do want to keep their preferential access to the Nile. It might be deeply iniquitous but their economy is and has for a considerable time been dependent on that unfairness, this is a compelling reason to use whatever means necessary to keep things as they are.

Also there is the issue of "President" Hosni Mubarak's son succeeding him as ruler of the country. While Egypt pretends to be a democracy it is in reality a brutal dictatorship and a client state of the US (ctrl+F Egypt). It seems the people of Egypt even under great repression than usual are not happy about the country's lack of democracy being thrust in their faces so brazenly. Hosni's failing health means this is a time sensitive issue. The economic impact of the NBI would just add injury to insult and make the future of the dictatorship uncertain (likely someone else would step up to be US client but for the current oligarchs that might not be a good thing). On the other hand a successful military adventure and the nations' interests protected would definitely ease the transition.

At this point it seems very likely the Nile Basin Initiative will happen which, stepping away from realpolitik for a second, is definitely a good thing for the upper Nile region and the sweeping away of a negative legacy of colonialism. What reaction this will cause from Egypt is much less certain at this time.

Zizek on the inevitable apocalyspe Capitalism is causing.

I will let Zizek speak for himself because his command of language and passion is far beyond my own. I do recommend you watch it though.

Rory Bremner does excellent sung epitaphs of Prime Ministers.

Yeah that title could've been a bit more catchy but its true. Heres Gordon Brown's Swansong:



and going a good way into the past Tony Blair's:



(some knowledge of British Politics required for you to fully understand these)

Tories announce end to Net Neutrality in the UK

Companies will now not even need to maintain the pretense that all websites deserve equal bandwidth. Websites ISPs don't like will get short shrift and big companies will be able to pay their way to prominence. This means dissenting views can be marginalised on the internet and startup companies will now be even easier for corporate juggernauts to crush or "convince" to join their team so they get decent bandwidth.

I suppose it was inevitable but its annoying to live in a country on the vanguard of the end of the egalitarian internet.

The guardian have a full pdf of the speech where this was announced here: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Media/documents/2010/11/17/EdVaizey.pdf

UK Police shut down prominent opponent.

Fit Watch used to provide criticism and oversight over FITs (Forward Intelligence Teams) essentially watching the watchers by taking photographs of the police taking photographs of people at protests and suchlike. So as is the way of things they were shut down. The police were able to do so without a court order or anything else.

Dissent and opposition to what the police wants is naughty so just don't do it ok?

Tories endorse Police Racism.

A couple of months ago it was revealed that black and brown people in the uk are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched. So now the Tories are in power they've decided that the best thing to do is fully back this behaviour and amend stop and search powers so that a person's race can be a legitimate reason to accost them! Along with this the plans also remove the need for the police to record each time they stop and search a person, giving them even greater carte blanche to be racist.

Why is this happening? Well apart from the general fact rightists are pretty much evil to their core and this is just another example it is likely an attempt to appease police officers over the slash and burn cuts the Tories are imposing, especially given the news yesterday Manchester Police are facing 25% spending cuts cuts. This does not reflect well on the police that this would appease them and it doesn't reflect well on the Tories that they would attempt appeasement in this way.

This however should dispell the myth of the Tories being in any way tolerant or decent.

A shadowy group offers the UK govt £5 billion and a Tory Lord admits to the house he laundered lots of money for the IRA but this is not news.

Credit to Jonny on this one, he caught it on Reddit and then fact checked it on Hansard (the British government's official records).

The title is not hyperbole, the source of this stunning revelation is a tiny blog: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/11/conspiracy-theories.html and the relevant corroboration by hansard can be found here. I highly recommend you read this stuff but I'll give you a taster quote just in case you're too lazy to click links:

Lord James of Blackheath: Not into my pocket. My biggest terrorist client was the IRA and I am pleased to say that I managed to write off more than £1 billion of its money. I have also had extensive connections with north African terrorists, but that was of a far nastier nature, and I do not want to talk about that because it is still a security issue. I hasten to add that it is no good getting the police in, because I shall immediately call the Bank of England as my defence witness, given that it put me in to deal with these problems.

All credit to Charlie Stross for finding this out. Its good that hes getting a lot of traffic from Reddit but jeez its scary the mainstream media aren't covering this at all.

Giant Bomb's finest hour.

You might not like computer games, you might not like Giant Bomb. This is irrelevant, this video is so awesome it wont matter. You have to watch it:

You know how people say Feminism has already won and those ladies should shut up?

Turns out they don't know jack. The same old 50s style women hating beliefs that the woman should feel bad for being raped live on. They live on with the support of the lower federal courts too! Still this particular story is almost surreal with the whole being required to cheer for your rapist thing. Attractive women really are public property it would seem.

I'm pretty glad I have external genitalia all things considered.

And now; some Propaganda Model news.

A hagiography was originally a biography of a saint listing all their positive virtues and painting them in the best light possible, subsequently it has come to mean a highly positive portrayal of a person, usually in print.

The propaganda model would suggest that if an event that is negative to US interests occurred and it could not safely be ignored then it will be belittled, diminished and "spun" to lessen its' impact on US policy as much as possible.

The Wikileaks document release last week was just such an event and I betcha can't guess what happened. It is consistently fascinating to me (though unsurprising) that the NYT is held up as an example of extremely liberal journalism when it is such an obvious and blatant establishment supporter. The reasons for things being such is simple and twofold: 1)It is to keep the Overton Window (do note the depressing fact right wing uber shill Glenn Beck has tried to co-opt the term just as he has tried to co-opt Martin Luther King's actions) in the very right wing place it is currently, American political discourse will stay right wing as long as people think what the NYT offer is in any way left wing. 2) To people who want to be left wing and suchlike but aren't that well informed (what with how subservient the US media is and all) will read the NYT and unknowingly consume right wing propaganda.

Glenn Greenwald while at no point referring to the propaganda model (Chomsky is Haraam in American mainsteam political discourse) does a very good job of showing how the reaction to this release of information by Wikileaks is a case study of just how the propaganda model works. Greenwald draws some solace from the fact people are questioning just how in the pentagon's pocket the NYT writers were and I suppose to an extent it is. But if nearly of ample evidence of just how blatantly Burns and his ilk lied about Iraq and Afghanistan is only now drawing some criticism rather than hair teared out outrage it would seem that the Propaganda Model is functioning well enough for the elite and US interests.

Bankers always win but this time they've won even more:

Found here.

So yeah America's Plutocratic Aristocracy is incomprehensibly rich and able to spend as much as it wants on elections. Things are going to get a lot worse for everyone on earth bar that tiny elite.

McDonalds franchise owner gives glimpse of America's future.

Just to be extra clear this is not (yet) McDonalds central policy, just one scumbag in Ohio but thanks to corporate power mushrooming the pesky laws preventing this sort of thing will likely be gotten rid of by bought and paid for candidates soon enough. What is this sort of thing? Well employees at an Ohio McDonalds got a note in their most recent paycheck telling them who to vote for or else. So the libertarian dream of those who are richest getting to make all the decisions gets one step closer!



thanks jonny

Men Against Pornography

Ok, we've been here before, another article pointing out the range of deeply questionable aspects of pornography and specifically focusing on male feminist objections and reservations about the sex industry. However a couple of things that hadn't occured to me before needs highlighting:

Kimmel remains open-minded about pornography – what's needed is a much broader conversation about it, he says – but the picture he paints in Guyland is nonetheless troubling. "Pornotopia is the place where [young men] can get even," he writes, "where women get what they 'deserve' and the guys never have to be tested, or face rejection. And so the pornographic universe becomes a place of homosocial solace, a refuge from the harsh reality of a more gender equitable world than has ever existed. It's about anger at the loss of privilege – and an effort to restore men's unchallenged authority. And, it turns out, that anger is worse among younger men."

Which is, in hindsight really obvious but for some reason just hadn't clicked. Privilege is hella addictive and as women slowly gain more rights young men who exist in a culture largely shaped by total male dominance are feeling deeply short changed by the deficit between the extremely easy and privileged life society leads them to expect and the merely quite easy and privileged life they receive. They're angry and want to see those awful bitches punished.

Secondly:

The anti-sexist educator and activist Jackson Katz, author of the 2006 book The Macho Paradox, suggests the porn industry has an obvious interest in undermining intimacy between men and women – if couples were to find sexual fulfillment together, the market would plummet. And this opposition to intimacy, says Jensen, helps explain why porn has become so cruel, degrading and humiliating – why, to quote Martin Amis, it has become "a parody of love" addressing itself "to love's opposites, which are hate and death".

Which pretty mind blowing and hard to deny. Pornographers do not want their audience to be happy or content in any way or they'll stop buying. So as with all Patriarchy while women suffer most men suffer too with the exception of the tiny elite who actually benefit from the deeply unfair system we exist in.

Does this mean pornography in all cases is unacceptable? Maybe I'm not sure but as long as porn exists both in the mainstream and and unquestioned and simultaneously a "dirty" but glamorised production process that not nearly enough attention is paid to and not enough scepticism is used against it will have no hope to be anything other than a bad thing.

Then again in a world where chocolate is made from cocoa picked by child slaves and fashionable clothes are made in 3rd world sweatshops focusing on the negative aspects of one specific capitalist product is probably myopic. Pornography is a deeply unpleasant business but it is a business and not that different from many others in its' methods.

Guess who's going to get raped and murdered!

This person:

That person right there is going to get raped and murdered. She didn't have much of a chance to start with lets be honest but with this being the main Americas story out there today. The chances this attractive young woman seeing out the year dropped to pretty much zero. Not only will she present an exceptionally alluring target for the cartels but she's unlikely to see much support from the more veteran officers either.

The commoditising of dissent.

This is a funny quick look about a new skateboarding game:


But it is also a good insight into how youthful rebellion has been completely taken over and made into a product. Mostly because this game doesn't do it particularly well but still it really is noteworthy how "youth culture" has made questioning the status quo and how society into a deeply conformist and profitable venture for "the man". Channel what you can't prevent I suppose.

The Skynet of stealing.

This is finance so I can't really speak to the content but I get the feeling it is important. Essentially the big banks are using computer programs to manipulate and control the market. Happily the US Govt is merrily looking the other way about this because it worked out so well last time.

Jonny linked by a different article about this a long time ago but I forgot to link it so thanks to him for at least making me aware this is an important issue.

Banksy status: Still owning.

He was invited to do an intro for the simpsons and its really good. Somewhat surprising they aired it but it is all free advertising even if it is controversy. Google around a bit and you can find people defending the conditions depicted in the video, what a wonderful world.

Israel ever more openly fascist.

Will try and do a proper post on this soon but the Israeli cabinet has approved legislation to force all Israeli citizens to recite a loyalty oath to the country as a Jewish Democratic State. Or to put it another people who live in Israel who aren't Jewish or refuse to regard it as a solely Jewish state, which would affect dissenting Israelis of European origin as well as the Arab minority, will no longer be Israelis and can be expelled. Yay

Lobbying in action.

The EU is trying to promote free, open source software and big software companies like Microsoft are using their lobbying firms to quash it as much as possible. A Spanish blogger (excuse the slightly odd way its written) has highlighted their efforts via a policy document the lobbyists had modified so as to better meet their views.

Wikileaks is a good thing.

thanks jonny

A case study of a corrupt occupation.

John Dolan is one of the good ones. He is a bitter and pessimistic man but such are the wages of speaking truth to power. People far better informed than me have suggested he has a further curse, he is an unrecognised artistic genius, doomed like Van Gogh or Nietzsche to have his literary work recognised only after his death. I mean sure you can be high minded and stuff but I'd imagine all things being equal those with gifts would like to be recognised in their lifetime, especially by young attractive people and rich people of any shape size or colour. I mean damn, who wouldn't?

He was one of the main people behind The Exile and is still an occasional contributor to The Exiled. While he did a lot of good work under his own name his most popular stuff was probably when he posed as http://exiledonline.com/cat/war-nerd/>The War Nerd where he did quite probably the best analysis of modern conflicts you're likely to read, stripped of jingoism and bolstered with the context we're seldom provided with. To actually make a living, for the powers that be make sure dissent isn't profitable, he worked in academia all over the world until a few years ago while at the University of Victoria he was fired for encouraging students to criticise George Monbiot. Now I'm not sure of the specifics and since I like Monbiot I'd like to hope he didn't personally push for the dismissal but who knows. He wrote of the trials of extreme poverty in North America and one can thus understand how he came to be employed at the corrupt right wing institution that is the America University of Iraq.

He got fired after working there for little over a year but he experienced enough to write a lengthy article about how messed up the place was. I feel little need to criticise a formerly destitute man for selling out in order to eat. The way things work you either sell out or start off rich enough not to need to worry about an income, the game is rigged. Indeed the concept of selling out seems to me to mean you get nice and rich off of betraying your ideals but you don't go into academia to get rich (except maybe if you're an American sports coach):


Bear that in mind when reading the article for if an institution like a university which one generally wouldn't associate with a bonanza of graft ("suck on it losers, I got three of my monographs bought by the library!") you can begin to guess how terrible the corruption and fraud is in occupation institutions that are associated with fabulous wealth. That is not to say the American University of Iraq is simply a cautionary hint to the wider Iraq situation, it the people who are paying considerable amounts of money to learn there are being shafted by the cronyism and blind right wing ideology touting of a faculty so cowed and intellectually timid as to no longer really be able to call themselves academics.

Still when it comes time to bomb Iran we will likely sell the Kurds out to gain Turkish support, and dead Kurds wont need universities.

Facebook in not protecting people's privacy shocker.

For all the positive benefits users of facebook speak of, arranging overconsumption of alcohol, recording and sharing pictures of your overconsumption and helping employers decide if your alcohol consumption matches up with their corporate ethos, we all know that really all it exists to do is to get as much of your personal information as possible so as to sell it off. Kind of like how people often don't like to say they're going to the toilet but instead use a euphemism (which can be more vulgar than the truth but w/e) the general populace likes to pretend Facebook actually cares about you and your views instead of just a fungible data node. Ya know, like with shop loyalty cards.

A couple interesting privacy issues that have come up of late: The new Groups "security" feature is easily exploitable and far from under the control of the group creators. Oh and thanks to an indifference to personal privacy on the part of both Apple and Google your phone number is probably easily available on facebook even if you didn't put it there.

why yes it is ironic I am posting about this stuff on a google owned blog

Oregon congressional candidate thinks law is more of a guideline.

pretend I made an Oregon trail joke here, something about only being able to carry 15lbs of illegal funding back to the wagon or whatever

A Republican candidate for a Congressional district in Oregon has received mysterious support to the tune of $150k from anonymous donors which if it is from a single individual is extremely illegal. He appeared on the Rachel Maddow show to... well allegedly to address this issue but mostly to rant and gurn like a crazy old man. What clear message he did give was that because his Democratic opponent has around a million dollars of funding (to his ~$350k) and because Maddow can't account for every penny said Democratic candidate has spent (which is not really relevant as long as it was donated legally) then him receiving $150k of highly suspicious funding is of no consequence. I suppose he sees campaign funding laws as a kind of handicap system so the less likely you are to win the less they apply to you.



To save you from having to watch the later parts of the video, he is quite uncomfortable to watch, I will point out the guy is... how should I say it? Adamant in his claims he is a scientist but in possession of insights and views that the majority of the scientific community is not. To wit, he is fucking crazy. Hes a Republican so his denial of global warming and Evolution aren't especially shocking. Nor is the fact he supports home schooling (he has home school curriculum business) but his vehemence is noteworthy, he believes the public school system should be abolished:

He also believes Women and African Americans don't have the mental capacity or inclination for science and that the best place to store nuclear waste is in the foundations of buildings, why? because it is good for you!

Robinson is an advocate for nuclear power and a proponent of radiation hormesis, a theory claiming that very low levels of radiation can be beneficial to humans. He writes in a 1997 issue of Access to Energy, “The most sensible use of low-level radioactive waste is as a concrete and insulation additive in residential homes — especially in areas where there is insufficient natural radiation for optimum health.” He told EW that a state like Oregon, with its lower radiation rates, suffers from higher cancer rates than Colorado, which has higher background radiation. The damage done at a very low level of radioactivity keeps the immune system in shape, he says. In response to a question regarding whether this is similar in principle to homeopathy, he says, “Homeopathy is so strange; it’s outside of my field of specialization.”

Both the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements and United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation say there is no evidence to support the theory of radiation hormesis. What has been proven is that high levels of radiation are indeed pretty bad for our health.

So really I suppose his disinterest in the law is unsurprising, he seems pretty disinterested in reality as a whole. But after a few depressing posts of late I can bring you a ray of hope in regards to this guy. As things currently stand he has a 0.0% chance of winning the election. All the more reason to cheat I suppose.

The study of myth and legend to be promoted in British schools.

The Tories have decided to follow the American propaganda method of only teaching national history in schools. In a way I shouldn't care after all everything in school is a lie to children anyway and anything of worth is taught at degree level or learnt by people off their own back, school gives you the foundations to learn more and nothing else really. But damnit I like history and while yes the overwhelming focus on WW2 is perhaps a problem but it is a subject separated to some extent from national identity and children can be encouraged to explore the range of potential reasons for the start of the war in the face of the perception it was all Hitler's fault. But with British history, especially for children up to the age of 13 parents will likely feel compelled to complain and attack teachers that send any other message than Britain was good.

This of course leaves aside problems such as inability to empathise with other cultures and the insularity only knowing your own history causes but that is very likely the aim of the Tories in doing this. Now lets look at a few quotes:

He attacked the current approach to history teaching, which he said denied children the chance to learn "our island story" in favour of a mix of topics at primary level and a brief study of Henry VIII and Hitler at secondary.

Why on earth would one want children to learn about anywhere other than a small island, who gives a shit about the vast majority of the earth and its' population?

Gove said: "Our literature is the best in the world – it is every child's birthright, and we should be proud to teach it in every school."

Following on from the previous quote one really gets a clear view of the level of nationalism going into this decision, it is a clear step backwards in understanding the rest of the world. But this is a right wing government so not really a surprise. Also if anyone can tell me how one can define how one culture's literature is better than another's please do let me know, I am keen to learn.

It is a source of dismay to Conservatives that Winston Churchill is currently left off the history curriculum for 11 to 13-year-olds, while two anti-slavery campaigners, William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano, are the only historical figures mentioned by name.

Not that freeing the slaves was a bad thing or anything, just really people seem to focus on it a bit too much. I mean yes human beings were stripped of all their rights, treated as property and generally abused in every manner possible but that isn't going to indoctrinate children into liking the Tories now is it?

I am very keen to know what children will get to learn about Winston Churchill, will it be his support for gassing Kurds (that which nasty old Saddam was hung for)? His desire to turn the BBC into a state propaganda organ during the General Strike? Or perhaps his (at best) total indifference to the deaths of four million Indian colonial subjects due to an avoidable famine during WW2?

LOL

Gove also said he wanted GCSE maths and science exams to be made tougher, adding: "We urgently need to ensure our children study rigorous disciplines instead of pseudo-subjects.

"In Massachusetts, 16-year-olds are asked in their science exams, to identify the shape of a carbon tetrabromide molecule as predicted by the valence-shell repulsion theory.

"In England, 16-year-olds are asked in their science exams whether we sweat through our lungs or our skin."

In both Britain and Massachusetts there aren't different levels of science exams nor are there questions weighted with different marks to acknowledge some questions are easier than others. This is a scientific fact.

Oh and the history expert who is advising on all this just happens to be a TV historian who did a rather flattering history series about Britain's history. The best person for the job was obviously chosen.

Dissent in the age of Obama.

Cindy Sheehan has a short editorial about the COINTELPRO-esque raids on peace activists last week.

Among other things she raises the interesting point that Obama is still portrayed as the good guy to most Americans and in the US media to the extent people can't really conceive of him being in charge of a regime that is doing plenty of evil things. In effect because of Obama the entire apparatus of US imperialism is more or less given a free pass.

Things are going to get a lot worse part II

normally when I post a link jonny sent me I thank him, it is after all only polite and it is important to cite your sources. on this occasion I'm not really sure I'm grateful for finding this out, it is terrifying.

So what is an America of "limited government" under resurgent superfunded Republicans in serverly cash strapped times going to look like? Well bearing in mind the obvious caveat that limited government never applies to the military or apparatuses of control (CIA, FBI, DHS etc) it means unless you're very rich things are going to get worse and the poorer you are the more things will get worse. This is Reagan's legacy and in abstract terms middle class people have known it was bad and had to rely increasingly on credit since real wages haven't risen since the 80s but they got by just about. With the credit crunch that perception is shifting but it looks like a sledgehammer blow of reality is about to hit.

In the past , the glorious past, with an article entitled Ayn Rand Conservatism at Work -- Firefighters Let Family's House Burn Down Because Owner Didn't Pay $75 Fee Americans could shake their heads at the Libertarian insanity of a small township or whatever but slowly but surely this horrific logic is being applied to whole states such as Arizona:

Arizona governor Jan Brewer’s response to her state’s fiscal crisis. Earlier this year, Brewer signed a budget that eliminated the Children’s Health Insurance Program, denying health care to 47,000 low-income kids in Arizona. She also proposed a hike in the state sales tax—the most regressive tax, whose burden falls disproportionately on working people.

Tennessee:

which cut 100,000 people from its Medicaid rolls, including 8,000 children. One of those people was Jessica Pipkin, who lost the use of her arms and legs in a car accident in 2005. Pipkin requires round-the-clock care—at $37 per hour—but was told she would lose her benefits because she and her husband earn too much to qualify. Are they rich? Well, her husband makes $19,000 as a satellite television repairman, and Pipkin receives another $14,000 in Social Security benefits.

Minnesota

In Minnesota, Governor Tim Pawlenty, a contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, submitted a budget that slashed funds from student aid, financial assistance to counties and municipalities, a job program for the blind and the mentally ill, low-income housing programs, mass transit in the Twin Cities, and a state insurance program that helps cover people with costly preexisting medical conditions. It was approved by a Democratically controlled legislature; lawmakers justified their budget by pointing out that they’d rejected Pawlenty’s proposals for deeper, even more painful cuts.

Georgia, Oregon, Florida, New Jersey and Maryland:

Clayton County, Georgia, a mostly African American suburb of Atlanta, eliminated its bus service into the city, leaving tens of thousands of Georgia’s working poor without a way of getting to their jobs. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” a 57-year-old worker told the Los Angeles Times. “So many people here, they’re going to be sure enough messed up. We need this bus bad.” Oregon, Florida, New Jersey, and Maryland are also looking at deep cuts to public transportation systems to make up budget shortfalls.

and to round it all out Ohio:

Perhaps the most striking vision of the libertarian utopia comes from Ashtabula County, Ohio. It reduced the number of sheriff’s deputies patrolling the 720-square-mile county from 112 to 49 and cut the number of prisoners in detention from 140 to 30. More than 700 people were put “on a waiting list to serve time in the jail.” Some were facing relatively minor charges, but the list also included, according to Sheriff Billy Johnson, violent offenders

So even local policing is subject to cuts under limited government, as long as the status quo isn't affected for the elite then poors can wallow in crime and with the number of Americans in poverty rising dramatically that means a whole lot of people just having to suck up dealing with crime.

That said a Judge from the county offered this advice for citizens:

“Arm themselves ... Be very careful, be vigilant, get in touch with your neighbors, because we’re going to have to look after each other.”

Advice I would strongly endorse although not for the same reasons the Judge did. Americans are going to have to band together as best they can because no one else can help them and the elite are even more openly than usual out to get them.

Welp things are going to get a lot worse

Theres not really much I can say but thanks to the right wing's victory in Citizens United v. FEC and corporations now allowed to spend an unlimited amount Republican campaigns already have a 5 to 1 one funding advantage that may well hit 10 to 1 this month. These midterms have already received more funding than the 2008 Presidential election.

I suppose though now corporations have stolen all that money from the American people what else are they going to do but buy more politicians so they can steal more?

Theres no real positive spin I can put on this, there is very little chance unlimited corporate spending will be curbed in the foreseeable future.

Australian Racism Addendum

Defenders of Australia might well point out the racism highlighted the other day occurred in the Northern Territory, a harsh and unpleasant area and that everywhere has places where unpleasant things can happen and this Australian "wild west" cannot be used to judge the whole country.

Fair enough so let us today visit Perth, the capital of Western Australia and the fourth largest city in the country. In 2008 an unarmed Aboriginal man already in detention was surrounded by nine police officers and because he refused a strip search was tasered 13 times. As is par for the course with these things none of the Police involved have been charged with any crime.

As was brought up when that pitch invader was tasered the argument Police made all over the world when scrabbling to get their hands on a new weapon was that stun guns were an excellent replacement for firearms so in dangerous situations Police would have been forced to shoot someone they could instead just stun them. Thus the question was asked was pitch invasion now a crime worthy of shooting? Perhaps we civilians just don't "get" it. Similarly this evil not-white should be grateful his attackers had tasers or they'd have been forced to shoot him 13 times.

It cannot be over emphasised how similar late capitalism and feudalism are.

You hear people talking about a new aristocracy or how certain behaviour is "medieval" and you understand it as hyperbole. After all this is an age of progress ever moving forward and regression is a bogey man to be rolled out to demonise a policy things aren't really getting worse. But of course that isn't the case, things are getting worse and anyway the past is always with us.

Nonetheless the feudal nature of the actions of the elite slip by unnoticed because it is very unpleasant to realise just how undemocratic and deeply unfair their attitudes and wielded power are. Mark Ames has profiled one of the Koch brothers' evangelical propagandists and I'll be damned if I can tell the difference between the patronage system he operates within and a medieval clergyman retained by a local lord to keep the peasants in line.

Nuclear Artwork

Jonny linked me this ages ago and I've consistently intended to but not actually managed to link this It is a piece of Artwork created by Isao Hashimoto which using simplistic images and sounds shows when and where every nuclear explosion occurred on earth between 1945 and 1998 and who caused each one. It is well worth a watch even if you do get the impression at the end of it that the leaders of powerful industrialised nations have a great deal in common with Chimpanzees that screech and fling their poop when angry or threatened.

thanks jonny

China continuing to ramp up soft conquest of Europe.

A good while ago I mentioned how China was taking advantage of Greece's current financial problems to to buy into the EU. Well that was just a contracted that was helpful to Greece's economy at a bad time. Now China is offering to buy up Greek debt especially in key areas of infrastructure that are of vital importance to Chinese export markets. Since Greece solving its' debt problem of vital importance for the whole of the EU this would give Beijing considerable leverage over the EU. The article mentions how this might cause the EU to be less critical of the current value of the Yuan. I agree but almost certainly not for the reasons the author meant. Interestingly this is quite similar to how the IMF and World Bank operate in service of US foreign policy.

As I said before, it is all smiles and kindness now but once they have that leverage China could well try to do some unpleasant things to the EU and more to the point disincline the EU from criticising far more unpleasant things China does to its' citizens and near neighbours.

Australia is racist as all hell.

I know I know, it is pretty shocking a country that had a whites only immigration policy until 1973 and still has one that is considered racist, that keeps the remnants of the Aboriginal peoples the British didn't kill in squalid camps in the wasteland no one else wants and then blames Aboriginal people for the outcomes of such treatment and then following a "remedy" to those problems by further punishing Aboriginal people and treating them as untermensch, all of which was imposed by the Australian military is Racist but there you go. I aim to shock.

In this fun and happy read one learns about the conditions of Aboriginal people, the indifference of white Australians to institutionalised racism and how a town was happy at the lenient punishment for a group of young white men who killed an Aboriginal man who stood up them driving their 4x4 at and otherwise harassing Aboriginal people. To be honest it makes me violently angry but thats not the way, the racists are always better armed and far far better at inhuman violence, a more community based solution is required. Though first white Australians need to acknowledge there is a problem to start with.

The legacy of the British Empire is quite a thing.

Pretty good news RealID didn't come in really.

So yeah I play computer games, you know this but people who don't know me that well don't know this because computer gaming is a mark of shame to some extent. Now while I would say some of people's dislike for gamers is a problem on their part there is good reason not to hold the hobby in high esteem.

RealID was Blizzard's (maker of the ever popular World of Warcraft) bully idea to make WoW and their other games more like Facebook. For a range of reasons users reacted very strongly against the plan and Blizzard backed down from the plan albeit without acknowledging any of the actual concerns of their customers. Instead they chose to pat themselves on the back for listening to the community. But anyway corporations exist to be hypocritical and evil so this isn't news.

However Kieron Gillen in his final Sunday Papers for RPS (he will be missed) linked a good example of why gaming isn't as culturally acceptable as some people would like and also just how horrible RealID would've been for women (and likely minorities, homosexuals and anyone else prejudiced people might not like).

Starcraft II is another game made by Blizzard and it widely agreed to be a very good game. It came out twelve years after Starcraft and to live up to the massive expectations highlights Blizzard's talent for game development. So with the myth that the majority of computer games players are teenage males is being dispelled one would expect women to play such a popular game. One of the biggest Starcraft fansites, team liquid however did not share this view.

A week The Hathor Legacy did a post about a woman posting on the team liquid forums wanting advice on how to set up an all female clan (a group of people who compete against other clans for prestige and sometimes in proper competitions). The response was the depressingly common mix of sexual harassment and the whining of privileged white males because there is one little thing their privilege doesn't allow them to do. The kicker was though that a moderator of the forum came out in support for the sexists and admonished the woman. However a second post shows the staff of team liquid trying to entrap and then intimidate the author of the original post. Calling people out on their prejudices just isn't right and deserving of retaliation apparently.

The Hathor Legacy posts explain things far better than I could but I do want to repeat their assertions about RealID. This level of harassment was directed towards a woman for volunteering she was female. If every woman (and other potential targets for the unpleasant types the internet abounds with)'s name was out there for easy datamining, harassment and stalking it would've been terribly unpleasant and struck the acceptance of gaming a near deadly blow. Now the death of gaming thing might seem a little selfish, a little myopic but this potential death blow wouldn't be delivered by a hostile act but by the general population of male gamers being given enough power to show the world what they're actually like. The views and culture of gaming is rotten and needs to be seriously addressed by everyone who considers themselves a gamer.

Legality has nothing do with right and wrong.

It is a wise person, a legitimate person, who looks upon the world and only respects that which is worthy of respect. This is such a person.

Russell Brand interview

Russell Brand is generally portrayed as a bawd but if you actually listen to what he has to say the fact he is a former drug and sex addict isn't relevant and in this interview he brings up the point that narratives about himself and everything else cloud the meaning at the heart of issues. He is a lot of other things but he is also someone who overcame considerable hardship and unpleasantness as a child to get to where he is, perhaps people should bear that in mind more than they do. I recommend you watch it. One odd thing I consistently notice is that he uses big words it sounds like he is using them for their own sake but they are always correct to the conversation and convey his meaning, I wonder if it is simply the Essex accent, have I been trained to assume certain accents make you thick?

As a reward for watching the interview (which to be honest was pretty rewarding in itself) here is Brand utterly destroying Murdoch's The Sun at a charity gala event for Amnesty International:

Net Neutrality drifting away.

I can't be bothered to even act surprised or feign credulity in regards to the excuses given but essentially the Democratic dominated congress has backed away from any kind of legislation protecting people's rights. So now its all on the FCC heralding another round of secret meetings with those who oppose net neutrality and at best the FCC expanding its' remit which will then be undone by either the supreme court or the Republicans next time they get into power. Still who really though the plebs would be allowed to keep a medium that allowed such freedom of speech?

Depress yourself here.

MLK's plagarism and lies by omission.

This article examines the mainstream in general and NYT in particular's favourite conspiracy denier Gerald Posner. Oh hes also a massive plagarist and a self proclaimed thieving cocksucker but now he is no long a "journalist" and instead works PR for some of Hamid Karazi's relatives including Ahmed Wali Karzai a drug lord on the CIA's payroll.

So really it would be quite a leap to assume his popular lone gunman theory books about the assassinations of JFK and MLK could in any way be deliberate pieces of propaganda supporting the US government's line on the issue!


Yet this is exactly what the article does!. It is quite convincing that this thieving cocksucker omitted evidence that calls into question his conclusion that the official story that James Earl Ray killed MLK was wholly correct. The author does a much better job of explaining it than I could so you should read it.

Doctor's union speaks up for the NHS.

Of the many plans of the Tory government to privatise the public sector one of the more prominent is the stealth privatisation of the NHS. The plan is relatively simple, under cover of all sorts of positive buzzwords Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is pushing for GPs to take on control of chunks of the NHS's budget but GPs are busy enough as it is so it is very likely they will pass on these duties on to private contractors. The motivation to do this is a big pay raise, big enough that it will absorb the fee GPs will pay the contractors and still leave them better off.

This was a pretty clever plan, doctors, in the main, certainly didn't get into their profession to help people or at least people who aren't themselves. But maybe even their greed has a limit. While this could be a holdout for an even bigger bribe it would seem the doctor's union isn't too fond of the plan calling it a slash and burn approach. I don't know if this is going anywhere but Doctors potentially turning down more money is a pretty big thing in itself.

First Honduras, now Ecuador?

Things aren't especially clear yet but it looks like the democratically elected socialist president of Ecuador may soon be ousted in a coup. After Bush's focus on the middle east it looks like Obama is returning America's imperialism back on South America, the traditional stomping ground.

German group points out website blocking is wholly ineffective.

When dealing with child porn at least which is the wedge strategy being used across the western world to make such censorship seem acceptable. The key point they make is so obvious as to be a "why didn't I think of that" moment. Simply put by blocking child porn sites the authorities are not dealing with them and shutting them down. In contrast simply contacting webhosts caused all the child porn sites they found to be shut down within hours.

The summary and report can be found here and is worth looking at. They destroy pretty much every excuse for site blocking that exists with short to the point arguments.


thanks jonny

A fifth of Britons are homophobic.

Or at least that many are willing to admit they are in a poll, lets be honest the real number is probably higher. The BBC commissioned a survey to investigated the population's opinions of homosexuality on television and the results are broadly positive. I obviously can't comment on gay people's perceptions of TV but that they think portrayals are improving is a hopeful sign. If nothing else this shows the immense importance of culture in society.

Then again with the fifth of the population who are made uncomfortable by gay storylines maybe there are other causes. Good looking happy straight couples make me uncomfortable so alone...

"Whats the deal with Transubstantiation?"

Turns out US Atheists and Agnostics are more knowledgeable about religion than Theists. Smugness aside this isn't especially surprising and well explained in the article:

merican atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

"These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

People who just go with the flow and take comfort in their idea of what religion is have no need or reason to know much about their religion.

As the title suggests however what I did find interesting was the complete ignorance of both Catholics and Protestants to key facts about the reformation. Protestants not knowing who Martin Luther was is just sad really, I wonder why those people think Protestantism is different from Catholicism. The flip side is more interesting if you know the history, that 40% of Catholics think the bread and the wine in communion symbolisesChrist's body. This is Protestant thinking, Luther, Zwingli and Calvin et al put forward this interpretation of Communion as part of a general opposition to Catholicism's general claims to holy powers, as seen in things like Indulgences. However the Catholic and Orthodox view of Communion has always been God magics the wine and the bread into the actual blood and flesh of Christ, essentially holy cannibalism. Back during the reformation this was a big issue.

I just find it really funny through apathy and ignorance people have switched doctrine. At the same time I find it intriguing an issue that was of paramount importance in a disagreement that lead to centuries of very bloody warfare in Europe now doesn't matter at all to most people. Maybe in a future centuries time people wont go to war over who would win in a fight between Batman and Superman. That is the dream anyway.

Just in case you thought COINTELPRO had stopped...

Sure during the 2008 Republican National Convention we saw clear evidence of politically motivated suppression but that was under Bush, in spite of COINTELPRO officially ending in 1971 (lol), and with Obama in power everything is fine.

Of course not. This is part of a wider pattern of suppression of groups the US Government doesn't like, such as the judicial harassment of the guy who left water for Mexican immigrants. Sure it go overturned but after much stress and cost for him and a general discouragement to others who might consider offering basic humanitarian aid such as that. While the usual media disregard for these events is contributory probably the biggest problem in regards to these tactics is the widespread belief that law = morality and the general assumption that police are only honest servants of the people. With that mindset it is easy to just assume these suppression tactics were honest police work.

This culture of fear means good people fear to do anything and less well informed citizens think those trying to do good are criminal.

Scientology still awful.

John Sweeney has performed another investigation into scientology three years after his first expose that was accompanied by an extensive campaign of harassment that culminated in a public outburst Scientology spread far and wide in an effort to discredit him. I don't think it succeeded particularly, it brought more attention to Scientology, something they don't want. Regardless his first investigation was interesting and got some of the unpleasant stuff Scientology does into the open.

Maybe he is a glutton for punishment but it is interesting the man who was in charge of harassing him the first time around, Mike Rinder, is now talking to Sweeney about the negatives of the cult. He was disgraced within the organisation for failing to undermine the first documentary and chose to leave rather than accept the severe punishment he was given for this. So his criticisms could be rooted in bitterness, nonetheless they are corroborated by more credible and long term critics such as Xenu.net.

Certainly Sweeney deserves credit for his perseverance.

A final thing I'd like to point out is a detail from this part of the BBC article.

That is why I was somewhat grateful to Scientology's UK lawyers at Carter-Ruck when they sent the BBC photographs of me hugging Amy Scobee at the end of a long and at times harrowing series of interviews about her experiences.
[...]
This was, oddly enough, welcome proof that the people who had been following and filming us in the States were indeed working for the Church of Scientology.

Scientology's favoured law firm in the UK is Carter Ruck, known to the excellent Private Eye as Carter Fuck. They are embody the awful culture of libel tourism to the nth term and love to help powerful entities cover up the truth. Perhaps the most famous suppression of free speech they were involved with was attempting to gag reports of the Trafigura toxic waste dumping in Côte_d'Ivoire. Truly delightful people.

How is Israeli formed??

CNN is running a breathless story of redemption about a married neo-nazi couple who found out they were Jewish and over time have become orthodox Jews. Now call me cynical but stopping to subscribe to a hateful ideology because you are the group it hates the most isn't really a selfless or laudable act, it is simple self preservation. Had a pair of atheists neo-nazis realised hatred and violence then that'd be something special, they would've grown as people. Plus the article seems to imply that Judaism and Fascism are incompatible which simply isn't the case.

Calling it now these two will living on an illegal settlement in Gaza within the next 5 years hating on Palestinians just as they used to hate on Jews.

"Look at us, look at what they make you give."

Alternative title: Too much is never enough.

So serving in imperialist wars lost you limbs? Stop being such a big baby and get back to it, the super rich elite need more profits! That is to say "the Pentagon says 41 American amputee veterans are now serving in combat zones worldwide." So pretty soon Republicans are going to getting very angry about anyone claiming disability benefits, if these brave men and women can do their part in spite of their injuries why should we give any money to the free loaders eh?

Coming soon, combat wheelchairs that allow IED victims to return to convoy duty.

The onion is supposed to be satire damnit

May death come swiftly to his enemies.

Red Ken has been selected again by the Labour Party to be their candidate for London Mayor where he will take on the utterly worthless sack of shit posh boy Boris Johnson. I'm no nationalist but it still is embarrassing as heck to live in a country whose capital and largest metropolitan area is governed by him. Seriously the reason Johnson is known to most people is because he consistently makes a tit of himself on have I got news for you:


Now this is almost certainly an act, fake affability to appeal to the voters but the depressing fact is that it worked. After eight years as mayor doing what certainly seemed to be a good job, introducing landmark schemes such as a the congestion charge Red Ken was ousted by Johnson, the silly man off the telly.

I hope to goodness Livingstone wins this time around or I might have to seriously re-evaluate my position on vanguardism.

There is something mucky about Katy Perry.

I dunno specifically what it is about Katy Perry that seems so dirty (and not in a good way) to me, we live in an age of porno-chic but she bothers me in a way even pornstars don't. Maybe it is the sheer crassness of the commercialisation of her sexuality or maybe it is the hollowness of her faux naivety but since seeing the video of California Girls seeing her has made me uncomfortable. Now the producers of Sesame Street have cut her appearance on the show. With good cause I think, I mean yeah objectification of women is everywhere but if there can be one island safe from it, one place where it is unacceptable for starlets to dress up as whores for their appearances then goddamn Sesame Street should be it.

Maybe I'm turning into a prude but Perry specifically is getting to me.