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.

Yet more Tech-Cartel news.

Angel investors are super rich people who invest their own money in tech startups at a very early stage. This is opposed to venture capitalists who generally invest other people's money at all stages of a firm's growth. Angelgate is the allegation that these angels regularly meet to fix prices and ensure they all make as much profit as possible, that is to say they are the very definition of a trust.

This accusation has brought us the non-news that Nerds are terrible, covertly racist and greedy selfish assholes in the form of an incoherent incensed word vomit of denial from David McClure, one of those who profited from Paypal. His APS (ad hominems per second) and anger level suggest there is some truth to Michael Arrington's claims. Even if there aren't by God McClure is just awful. I thought YOSPOS was the exception, alas it seems to be the rule.

UN states the obvious.

A UN investigative panel has found that attacking a convoy in international waters flying a foreign flag is illegal for good measure the panel also called the blockade of Gaza unlawful.

In response Israel has likely mentioned the holocaust and anti-Semitism being the only reason international law exists.

Ok free climbings is bad but what about free running?

look forward to a link from jonny explaining how I inadvertently endorsed neo-nazism with this video.

Instant opinion UK Public sector pay info.

I'm in a bit of a rush atm but I just looked at the BBC investigation's public sector pay figures. While I'm not condemning or anything and I am aware there are issues of context and we're never going to see how private sector salaries leaked in a similar way but still. Also it is in the interest of the current government to paint public sector workers as overpaid.

Anyway here is the list (you might need to click around different headings) but the maddest thing I've seen initially is that a number of GPs are earning more than Sir Jock Stirrup head of UK Defence staff.

Weird things are occuring. anyway gotta go, hopefully will offer my analysis later.

There already was a Mosque at ground zero.

Jonny linked me this a while back and it fell into the elephant graveyard of tabs. Anyway as the title suggests the proposed Muslim Community centre, if it were a mosque, wouldn't be the first Mosque at the site of the two towers. Man this would've had more impact if I posted it when I was linked it. :sigh:

sorry jonny

Cuba isn't giving up on communism.

There has been a lot of bluster over the past week about the reforms in Cuba being a sign of the end of communism. However it would seem instead that Cuba is realigning its' economic system to be more in line with Hugo Chavez's system of co-operative based local economic systems. Since Chavez receives plenty of slander and hatred from the US this isn't quite the victory of capitalism most journalists have been portraying it as. But the truth of this, as with the truth of how Cuba survived peak oil likely isn't of interest to the corporate media.

Myths about Spiders.

I have been pondering recently on why we find small rodents cute when as a species they're a threat to our food supply, spread disease and so on, apparently its a consequence of the evolutionary need to find babies cute. Regardless that lead me on to wondering about why human beings generally don't like and are often afraid of spiders who are supremely beneficial to humans in their consumption of numerous pests. I don't know that but I did google to see if I was mistaken in thinking spiders so useful, I wasn't but I did find this great website that dispels various myths about spiders.

While I'm not very good at science I like to read any kind of academic subject and find out things I'd just assumed to be fact aren't correct at all and this list has several myths I'd completely bought into so it was fun to have my perception of the world shifted a bit. Also even if you're an arachnophobe its worth a look because the list explains how spiders are often less dangerous than they're thought to be.

More proof of an IT Cartel

Its not just in the area of IP law that high tech companies are acting as a cartel. It turns out that the US Justice Department has uncovered what it believes to be a deliberate suppression of IT worker's wages via agreements not to poach other company's employees. Of course these agreements wont be applied to small tech startups whose employees will be ripe for poaching (which again echoes how things are with software copyrights). I hope the Justice department ends it one way or another but it is kinda funny how this has happened to an industry in which the majority of its' workers are libertarian scum.

thanks jonny

(I'll try not to link the WSJ again for a long time).

I'm not the only one with the jibblies.

In that antenna repair video I linked the other day the narrator happily claims that under OSHA the dangerous free climbing depicted is legal. This caused people with far stronger constitutions than myself to get the jibblies. Yes indeed such dangerous behavior isn't acceptable under the law but the creator of the video and the companies that need to have their antennas repaired from time to time seem oddly unwilling to unequivocally state this.

So essentially I unwittingly spread corporate propaganda that weakens worker's rights. Sorry about that.

thanks jonny

A good thing has happened.

I am hopefully not going to make a habit of linking the Wall Street Journal, it was the newspaper of choice for capitalists even before Murdoch took over and added in some Fox News populist lies for good measure. Nonetheless this is a special occasion, for the WSJ is angry with Obama. Not angry in their dismissive faux manner they usually are with Obama because they've got to keep shifting the overton window ever rightwards. No, this is straight up real anger. They're angry because something good has happened.

Elizabeth Warren has been appointed to oversee the creation of the Consumer Protection Agency. It does longer term she almost certainly wont lead it but given continuing GOP tactics to block any and all appointments and legislation that is in any way positive for America that wasn't likely anyway. Hopefully under her wise hand will built into something capable of doing some good.

A good example of why I like Elizabeth Warren so much is this lecture she gave a few years ago:


And I'm putting this mea culpa at the bottom of the page under the video so maybe you wont have your perception of me as infallible pierced: I strongly believed that after her capable overseership of the TARP program she'd never get any higher in government. I am glad Obama has done a rare good thing and proven me wrong.

What should be done about British Schools.

I've commented before on Tory efforts to privatise state education or at the very least cater to middle class voters and everyone else be damned.

Now veteran broadcaster John Humphreys has taken a look at British schools and how he thinks they need to be fixed. I don't agree with some of what he has to say but it is still an interesting read. One thing I certainly don't agree with is his assertion its naive to want private schools to close, having an escape from the state sector for affluent parents so they can avoid having to care at all about anyone else's children is a very bad thing.

A better class of News.

thanks jonny

A cool mashup by RX2008

Sometimes the unfairness of the world makes me very angry.

This is one of those times:


(apologies about the MS Paint highlighting that was put on before I got it)

thanks jonny

THe Jibblies, now I have them.

Being a convicted criminal not reason enough to stop recieving full pay as police officer

Its seems the Catholic Church isn't the only institution in the UK that feels the law doesn't apply to it. A copper was given six months in prison for assaulting a 57 year old woman in his custody but because hes out on appeal his police force thinks that is reason enough to put him back on full pay. To be fair given police officers are now allowed to kill with impunity and not just once either AND with those who killed innocents even appointed to the Independent Police Complaints Commission one can hardly blame Wiltshire police for thinking there is nothing untoward about keeping paying a police officer who merely grossly abused his power and beat up a middle aged woman.

Your knowledge of salaries.

BBC Radio 4 have made a fun little quiz where you look at 12 jobs and see how much you think they're paids and how much they should be paid then you get to see their actual salary. Worth the five minutes it takes, especially for the salary comparison you see if you do all 12.

Super special Papal visit prelude summary!

With the imminent arrival of the absolute monarch of a European microstate (as Stephen Fry would describe him) in the UK that is costing Britain £12m + policing costs (so a lot more than £12m) theres been a fair bit of mention of Catholic stuff lately such as:

The Catholic Church in Britain said they'd kick out any priest found guilty of abusing children. But they didn't obviously it takes more than raping a few kids to stop being a messenger of God's word to the laity.

One of the Pope's aides has sadly gotten a rapid onset case of gout and can't come to Britain. The Papacy would once again like to assure you the Cardinal's recent comments to the press that Britain is a third world country has absolutely nothing to do with his decision to withdraw (which of course every good Catholic should) from the visit.

Curious about what a Papal head of state visit will entail? Well the Guardian have done a "tongue in cheek" guide that holds some decent information if it all does feel a bit forced.

If you are a British worshipper of Cathol do be aware there are still plenty of tickets still available.

However in a bit of positive news for the Catholic Church one of the worst men alive Ian Paisely is vehemently opposed to the Pope's visit so at least there will be someone more despicable than the Pope around as a nice distraction.

The practice of Simony by the early modern Catholic Church was one of the key causes of the reformation. Happily the Catholic Church has stated this isn't simony. Good news for all those Catholics who love tat and are on the verge of becoming protestants I suppose.

And to round us out we travel a few dozen miles across the North Sea to Belgium where their Catholic Church has recently become the latest to admit to large scale systematic abuse of children by Catholic Clergy.

The 2010 Republican Candidate for Governor of New York:

Paladino beat his mainstream Republican rival by about 2:1. Though there is some good news in that by securing 30,000 signitures state wide his rival Rick Lazio will also be on the November ballot as the Conservative Party candidate which should split the Republican vote to some degree. Of course theres always the happy chance right wing Democratic voters go over to the Conservative party or something.

Google Engineer had access to pretty much any personal info he wanted...

...used it to taunt children. He doesn't seem to be a paedo or anthing he just liked showing off how much data he could access by bullying young teenagers. Probably the more worrying aspect about this given how apparently IT people in any company have access to huge amounts of data wherever they work, Google just has more than most (posted on a google owned blog - Tony), is that Google took 4 months to realise this was going on and then made their investigations increasingly opaque to the families of the children involved and the wider world.

Random tangent; for some reason this lead to discussion of Roz Ho who is pretty bad at her job in that she has lost Microsoft literally billions of dollars. So here is a fun compare and contrast activity, search both Google and bing for just her name:
Google
bing

Oddly it seems Bing can't find any articles critical of Ms Ho.

thanks tony

DO NOT CUT FUNDING TO THE KILLFORCE, YOU WILL REGRET THIS!

little sim city joke for y'all there

British MPs are warning that if funding is cut to the British Military (which is higher than Russia's) then bad things will happen its harder to be clearer than that since it just seems to be general scaremonger on behalf of military interests rather than anything specific. Threats to Britain are mentioned but what on earth threatens Britain these days? We have nukes and even if we don't replace Trident we'll still have them and be able to nuke people in one way or another. Even so no one capable of invading Britain has any real interest in doing so. Occupying Afghanistan seems to cause Islamic terror attacks rather than preventing them and anyway all the expensive helicopters and tanks etc seem pretty unsuited to fighting asymmetrical warfare which in an age of nukes is the only kind of war that seems to take place.

But you kinda give up trying to understand what these "threats" are when you read:

Mr Arbuthnot told Radio 4's Today programme: "We are worried that this process appears to be money-driven rather than driven by the threats to our country which need to be worked out and assessed in order to work out whether, and the extent to which, we can defend against them.

A review of the British armed forces in a long term and ongoing financial crisis is focusing on money?? MY STARS. If we don't give the arms industry a blank cheque we wont win The Great Game. To be serious that this kind of blank cheque, we need even more money to pretend we're still a world power and brutally enforce corporate interests thinking can be printed in a report about a military spending review without it being questioned is pretty depressing.

Upbeat article of the day: "Matecrime" against those with learning disabilities

Its not just the Conservatives who want to abuse those with special needs it is apparently a loathsome pursuit that transcends class boundries.

There appears to be a growing trend of people taking advantage of people with learning disabilities to make money off them, from stealing to forcing them into prostitution, or to simply bully them for fun, sometimes to the point of murder, all the while they think those abusing them are their friends because they're lonely or naive. Hence "matecrime".

Why are these vulnerable people being put in such a dangerous situation? Well Thatcher's government realised it was cheaper to have social services look after people in the community than to maintain expensive institutions and care programs. Thus care in the community was born. Of course Thatcher and subsequent governments didn't bother to adequately fund this new scheme and large government cuts looming it is likely even more vulnerable people will be turfed out on to the streets. Yay.

Delaware victory for Tea Party

The Guardian puts a positive spin on it by saying shes probably unelectable but after eight years of W Bush sensible people know not to underestimate the potential achievements of the right in the US. The she in question is Christine O'Donnell who managed to beat a veteran Republican in a primary for the senate seat vacated by Joe Biden.

She is a straight up fucking loony so of course she had the backing of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, along with the usual unpleasantness right wingers claim as ideology Ms O'Donnell also opposes masturbation something that might well alienate Penn and Teller style libertarians in the Tea Party but then again expecting Tea Partiers to know whats going on within their corporate sham movement is probably expecting too much. Certainly the establishment GOP is not pleased with the result, having already stated they wouldn't fund her if she won, before the primary took place.

More important, is to wonder why the brothers Koch, corporate overlords of the Tea Party, chose to fund this woman to the tune of $250k. Pessimism aside it does seem unlikely she'll win especially with the GOP against her. If anything gives us a hint as to why they backed this lost cause it is the film Fight Club. You see while it is never definitively stated Fight Club is inferred to take place in Wilmington, Delaware, the reason for this is the explosive finale. Tyler Durden's plan to blow up several credit card company's buildings so as to reset society to zero suggests a city with a high concentration of CC companies and thanks to favourable tax and corporate welfare schemes Wilmington Delaware has by far the highest concentration of Credit Card Company headquarters in the US, if not the world.

Now if a Democratic candidate was up against a more mainstream Republican candidate then some discussion of the role of credit card companies, predatory lending etc might have come up given the current financial crisis. One of the key reasons the Tea Party exists and is a wise investment for its' corporate owners is to distract people's anger from the failings of capitalism and the crimes of the super rich and onto racism, homophobia, xenophobia and religious absurdities so a mainstream candidate running in Delaware was a problem. With Christine O'Connell spouting insanity on the campaign trail however nothing important will be focused on, there will be no need for a Democratic candidate to risk alienating big donors by posturing about finance and even if for some reason Chris Coons did so (he wont) the media will be too distracted by reporting on the outlandish things the Tea Party lady is saying.

So another win for the absurdly rich guys!

Oh and to finish off have a look at the BBC article and learn to hate Mark Mardell's smug fat face as he goes on about Republicans caring about ideological purity and pretending the Tea Party is some kind of grass roots movement.

Tories gain another excuse to abuse the weakest and most vulnerable!

Breaking the chain already with a current news story but I think its worth pointing out. Essentially Ofsted (national school inspection body) has very conveniently for the government published a report today that lots of schools are stating that schools claim more children have special needs than actually do. That is entirely possible but it also means that funding for special needs children (which is higher than for other pupils) can be cut. In the aftermath of the cancellation of a lot of school building and repairs and the creation of "free" schools, all of which undermine the state school system one has to greet this latest possibility for cuts with some scepticism.

In addition I am reminded of the piece that I know I linked before but was probably back when I was on Buzz. It is Johann Hari's report from before the general election in which he looked at a Tory controlled council which was held up during the Tory election campaign as a model for what they wanted to do to the country. One of the things the council did to save money was find every possible excuse to cut funding for services to the needy and disabled for instance:

Each year since the Conservative council was elected, the pressure on the housebound has increased. Meals on Wheels brings one good, hot meal a day to people who can't get out. The council jacked up the charges for it by £527 a year – so half of the recipients had to cancel it. A local Labour councillor documented that the council rang up a 79-year-old woman with dementia, and when she seemed to say she didn't need any food, they cut off her meals.

Which does make me rather dubious about this sudden discovery that schools are getting more money than they should to help children with special needs.

A short summary of how unequal the distribution of wealth in the US is.

Please note, I am really quite lazy and have allowed a huge backlog of tabs I intend to read and then link to accrue so I am now trying to clear that backlog (I have strongly considered just closing all the tabs and starting from scratch but a) they're good pieces of info and b)thats just a bit too Pol Pot for my tastes). Because of this for the next few days (my aren't I optimistic) you may get quite a lot of "old" news with brief summaries. Nonetheless if I have kept it around this long its probably pretty useful stuff.

I have had the 2007 Striking it richer guide for quite a while, so long in fact that the 2008 revision has come out. If you only look at one look at the 2008 one but comparing the predictions in 2007 (pretty much the first few paragrapghs) and the outcome in 2008 is quite worth looking at.

The Striking it Richer guide is produced annually by the economics department at UC Berkley with a lag time on the data it covers of two years. It examines how the gap between rich and poor is growing in the US and also who among the rich is benefiting most and by what means they are gaining their increased share of the national wealth. Not fun reading but interesting summaries.

Oh do be sure to look at fig 1 (PDF Page 7 in 2008) and then wave your fist at Reagan's legacy.

Nelson Mandela: Cool Guy.

Nelson Mandela angrily addressed a UK cabinet meeting in 2003 strongly opposing Tony Blair's decision to invade iraq. Nice to know some leaders aren't totally awful.

A more serious 9/11 post.

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.

- Henry Kissinger 1973.

September 11th 1973 is a date which should be remembered by all citizens of the United States but it is unsurprisingly a date brushed under the carpet, unworthy of mention on Wikipedia's front page "on this day section."

September 11th 1973 was the culmination of a 3 year long US plot to overthrow the left leaning democratically elected government of Chile lead by Salvador Allende. During this plot strenuous efforts were made to destroy Chile's economy and to encourage the Chilean military to overthrow civilian government by the CIA and other US government agencies which was accompanied by a massive propaganda campaign both within Chilean and internationally to undermine Chilean democracy.

On that day 37 years ago the military finally moved in to end democracy in the country and Allende killed himself rather than be captured, his death one of around 3200 people killed by the Pinochet dictatorship that ruled the country after the US backed coup. Around a further thirty thousand Chileans were placed in concentration camps and tortured. This is in contrast to the 2977 who died on September 11th 2001. But hey a predictable backlash given US foreign policy is so much worse than the destruction of South America's oldest democracy and replacing it with a Military dictatorship that killed more people.

Predictably for a US backed regime the plight of the poor got worse under Pinochet, with the gap between rich and poor widened and Trade unions banned. Absurdly Chile under Pinochet is held up as an economic success story by Friedmanites, these free market advocates neglect to mention that Chile's biggest source of income and economic growth during the period (as it is today) was copper mining. The copper mines were publically owned, nationalised by Allende and kept hold of by Pinochet. But as ever with rightists, theres nothing wrong with government interference in the market if it benefits them.

You can read a much more indepth summary of this here. I highly reccomend you do.

Turns out Porn is pretty bad.

Apparently using a capitalistic model to make women into a sexualised commodity has negative consequences for women and society as a whole. Of course the counterargument that comes to mind that pretty much every job out there uses people as an exploitable commodity that doesn't care about their health as long as they make money turns out to be a pretty damning indictment of modern society rather than any kind of justification. I do wonder somewhat about her dismissal of humans being able to tell fantasy from reality, its the same kind of argument used against computer games and unless I've missed roving bands of clockwork orange-esque nerds that has been shown to be false.

Oh also the article says Jenna Jameson made the porn industry work for her, that really wasn't the case.

Happy 9/11

Let us wallow in the deaths of rich asshole bankers and DoD apparatchiks, bemoan how terrible it is a bloodthirsty and imperialistic foreign policy has consequences and then use our deliberate blindess to reality to justify killing 300 brown people for every 9/11 victim. USA! USA!

American elites like totally annoyed about Qur'an burning.

Yeah so some shitty little 50 member congregation church in Florida is going to burn some Qur'ans because gubmint wont let them burn crosses where black folk live no more. Its an unpleasant but minor act of intolerance in a state, heck a nation, which sees a good deal of unpleasant acts of intolerance. But the "great and the good" are falling over themselves to condemn it, heck General Petraeus has entered the public sphere to boost his image for a presidential run taken a break from killing Afghanis and Pakistanis to publicly complain about this minor event and how it threatens the TRoops"

Of course this is because the powerful in the US care about the lives of the poors they send off to die in the middle east and how their favourite punching bag minority is treated. What they certainly aren't doing is deliberately making a big deal about this in the hopes it inflames anger among Muslims around the world (which it has) and makes westerners afraid of Muslims and their possible retaliations, people who are divided, afraid and angry and thus unable to realise their common interests are certainly not something they find desirable. Of course the absolute worst case scenario they'll do everything in their power to prevent is this anger over a storm in a tea cup leading to another terror attack, the further curtailment of civil rights this would force our leaders to impose is something that turns their very stomachs to think about.

Unemployment benefits are federally taxed in the US.

Thanks Reagan

thanks jonny (hes not responsible for federal taxation, just for linking this)

Time, now in an adult format

(yes I know this is old)

Protesters force Blair to run away and hide.

War criminal and sycophant to imperialists Tony Blair called off a big signing event in London yesterday because he was afraid of protesters. Sure it isn't much of a victory but at least it made him aware just unpopular he is and prevented him from strutting around wherever he wants to go. Fun fact Blair no longer lives in Britain, so you can tell he left a pretty popular legacy here.

However he did give the topic of yesterday's favoured liveblog Sunrise a quote that shows what hes all about:

Mr Blair earlier told ITV it was "not as if we need" to do signings to sell copies of his memoirs.

Deeply unpopular with the people of the country you lead? Not a problem, dudes just in it to get paid.

Privatised water means less water for the poor

Sure the UN might think it's a basic human right but what those bureaucrats don't realise is that the pursuit of profit at the expense of all human life and dignity is the most basic human urge, at least if you ask the elite. So we see Manila's poor going without water and the Philippine government nearly using the army to protect a private company's profits all because said private company had skimped on maintenance so as to have bigger profits, still what more can you expect from a de facto US colony?

Let us hope that Philippine citizens are able to mobilise in a similar manner as Bolivians did a decade ago.

thanks jonny

Software patenting has lead to the creation of a defacto IT cartel.

I know little about tech so I can't really speak to this but it seems due to control of patents big companies hold control over all future innovation and can quash any start-up competitors. Read about it here.

thanks jonny

Tory attempt to privatise the UK school system an offensive farce.

Michael Gove as Education secretary is all about climb downs, first the election pledge of all children having a reading age of at least eleven when they left primary school stopped being mentioned and now his "free school" mission (privatisation by the back door) has been reduced from initial claims of hundreds of school champing at the bit to be free of the national curriculum to sixteen schools that will be "free" by the start of the 2011 academic year. Still, these sixteen harbingers of free market manufactured ignorance do manage to cram a great deal of awfulness in.

For one thing they're definitely preparing children to be able to function in the modern world:

The government backed plans for the West London Free School, which includes the journalist and author Toby Young on the steering committee. The school will have compulsory Latin for pupils aged 11 to 14, and a choice of either Latin or classical civilisation at GCSE

I mean sure people are moaning not enough people are taking foreign language GCSEs for living languages but our kids really need to know a dead one (yes pedants a small population in Switzerland does still speak something akin to Latin, this hardly justifies it as a GCSE). The reality however is an attempt to wag the dog, private schools in the UK still teach latin and the classics (a throwback to when it was considered a decent way to learn about ancient history) so by teaching children these two things it is hoped that they will be as socially mobile and as well educated as private school children, which is patently absurd. For a good example of the perception poshness /success being connected to knowing latin and the classics watch this video:



We also get the further entrenchment of faith schools, in Britain you don't need to home educate to warp your child and protect them from reality:

There is a distinctly religious strand to the first wave, with seven of the 16 having faith affiliations. Among those expected to open next September will be two Jewish schools in London, a Hindu school in Leicester, a Sikh school in Birmingham and three with a Christian ethos.

It should be noted than in none of these schools is there a requirement for the standard type of RE lesson, wherein children are educated about world faiths with (at least in theory) no overt bias towards any particular one. In faith schools the RE requirement can be met simply with lessons from the scripture of the schools' chosen religion.

Well into the article we also get a carefully worded hint about the true aim of these "free" schools:

The new schools, many more of which are expected to be approved in coming years, could also pose a challenge to the teaching unions because they emphasise raising standards through longer hours and more flexible teaching. Both methods could prove contentious.

and then a little bit later on

Two schools in London will be run in partnership with Ark, an academy sponsor backed by hedge fund money – and at least one of these will also be backed by the Sutton Trust, set up by the millionaire philanthropist Sir Peter Lampl.

Why I'm sure these rich folks with their hedge funds are undermining teacher's rights for the good of the kids, there can't be any aspiration to private profiteering from these ventures now can there? That was sarcasm btw

What idiots thought about Election

John Dolan, acknowledged by people who know a lot better than me to be perhaps the greatest writer of his generation, lets us enjoy a little schadenfreud thanks to Amazon user reviews. He also liked The Big Lewbowski so take that haters.

This is what proper journalism looks like.

Enjoy a rare chance to see such a precious thing. The Exiled explains it better than I can but I will give you an interesting question to ponder. Aside from simple whineyness, you have to wonder how much of the reason she complained Ratigan was a bad moderator was because she was, like most of us, used to "journalists" weakly accepting both sides of the argument as equally valid and how much it was because she believed it is bad journalism to disagree with her. Now obviously you lean towards the latter but she is so deer in the headlights by the end of things you do have to wonder.

The wheezings of a Behemoth

A narrowly focused look at a couple of, admittedly major, problems facing the Catholic church with a bit of analysis. This sounds dismissive but unless the article was a several inch thick book with 8pt writing it would not be able to achieve even a shallow overview of the state of an organisation as large as the Catholic church and its' context in nearly every country on earth. Still though the article is good, it just is what it is. Most interesting is Benedict's belief that smaller congregations could be useful for the catholic church, this is an odd aspiration for an organisation that has dominated western christendom for millenia, was the inheritor of the influence of the Roman Empire and has been accurately described as the world's first corporation. A bit like Steve Ballmer hoping MS's waning power will allow them to focus on making the best possible iPhone apps. then again...

A nice accompaniment to this piece is something jonny linked me, showing that aside from the big problems that are causing Western European congregations to wither away Catholicism also faces the problem of its' consistent dickishness.

Mark Ames on the Anti-I.M.F Protests In Washington D.C. April 20th 2000

Its depressing as fuck but its still interesting to see how the elite stiffle dissent in the US. The IMF and World Bank are evil as all hell and yet they're still getting to impose their wholesale destruction of the poor, just look how they got their tentacles further into Pakistan last week.

Liveblogging can be good.

Its quite simple really, just as you're happy to listen to a friend's humorous anecdotes about a bad holiday it rapidly becomes wearing to listen to the boastful exuberance of someone regaling you with what a wonderful time they had, the only good liveblog is a critical liveblog. Someone discussing how great it is as a product reveal or whatever? Fuck them it just makes you jealous you're not there. Nor is it pleasant to read someone being relentlessly positive about something mediocre, as is typified by the work of Jason Chen at Gizmodo but happily such people are eventually dealt with.

No the best liveblogs are essentially MST3K crossed with 24, Cynicism in real time. In that manner I bring you a guardian liveblog whose author's powers of hatred were strengthened by the need to begin it at 6am. He was watching ITV's (Britain's worst terrestrial channel) brand new morning show which is the standard format less plausible version of ONN's today now! Read about it here.

Top tip: Don't be a children's author.

Starts off as a review of a new biography of Roald Dahl but goes on to list how several children's authors were awful people with shitty lives. So yeah don't be a children's author and it'd probably be a bad idea to associate with them either.

They're going to allow adverts to be plastered on the Coliseum

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11191377

Operation Gladio was more successful than even the most optimistic estimates! Take that communism!

A moral grey area.

This one has been lingering in the elephant graveyard that is the ever expanding number of tabs I really am going to post about soon it was old when I was linked it about a month ago so perhaps I can get away with it being a little older still.

I understand that This American Life is quite popular with liberals in the US and this is an episode from it. It is also counter to the righteous indignation that usually characterises my posts, as the title states, this really is a moral grey area. It is about three individuals who are part of an online community that likes to scam Nigerian scammers which seems a reasonable thing to do but these three in particular have put those they target in some pretty extreme danger. Plus you have the usual problems vigilante justice brings and the nagging question of why obviously white and affluent first worlders decided the group they most needed to bring justice too was relatively poor Africans, plus their choice of terms such as "Safari" further muddies their motives. Nonetheless it is also made clear the Nigerian Scammers are really not pleasant people and false payoff the vigilantes use against the individual highlighted in this episode involves them defrauding a fictional church that is trying to distribute aid to war victims.

In the end its hard to say the Nigerian scammers they target are in any way nice people but you do still have to wonder if this is the right way to deal with them as well of the question of if two wrongs make a right.

PATRIOT act used mostly to persecute minorities..

...but different ones from the ones you'd think! Turns out 69% of all sneak and peak warrants, a mechanism allowing law enforcement to search people's homes without knowledge or consent, were used against "drug dealers" (page 7 on the PDF). While Sneak and Peaks did exist before according to Senator Feingold the PATRIOT act "codified and expanded" the practice. Anti-Terror sneak and peaks accounted for 0.39% of the total, less than those used by the FDA.

Huffington Post expands on it here.

thanks jonny

A product of the Propaganda model vs Chomsky.

If you don't know what COINTELPRO is/was please read up on it here. Its important for smugness later.

Andrew Marr studiously claims to be neutral but personal observations he is at the very least an ardent supporter of the status quo. However I can put forward a fairly damning piece of evidence, he was Tony Blair's chosen sole TV interview, which aired last wednesday, for the launch of his autobiography. If you're allowed to interview people that powerful you sure as hell wont say anything the elite consider controversial.

Anyway back in 1996 he interviewed Chomsky about the Propaganda model, its especially fun for British people to see him squirm uncomfortably but it has a more universal worth, it shows how those who merrily work within the propaganda model react to being confronted with the reality of things.




Chomsky does seem to be competing with Zizek for the most uncomfortable speech patterns of a leftist in public in these videos but I hope you enjoyed them anyway.

Just in case things were too upbeat...

...it turns out a paedophile ring existed among some of Portugal's elite and plenty of other powerful people looked the other way to let them keep abusing children for several decades. The trial has concluded successfully but those convicted seem to be getting sentences of only around a decade, with the chance they wont go to prison until after they appeal, something which may take years just as the original trial did.

In a world of billionaires and cliquey groups of international elites one has to wonder what other horrors lurk unknown, or at least unreported and uninvestigated.

The most obvious thing in the world.

Turns out Sarah Palin is an utterly horrible person. This was a revelation to nearly 50% of people who've been kept in isolation tanks since 2007! Still never hurts to have hard evidence to back up what seems blatantly obvious.

Breaking Month old news ahead of nearly everyone.

I really should have my finger more on the pulse and check everything more regularly than I do so I have to apologise that I'm linking this video a month after it was posted:


So yes, those rumblings that Wikileaks is at least tacitly approved as a leak point / dumping ground for getting info out there in overwhelming bulk seem somewhat more plausible but I feel it more likely the novelty of the wikileaks phenomena is what prevents the media from ignoring it as they are so doing with the medical survey of Fallujah.

The Patrick Cockburn article mentioned by Chomsky can be found here. Fun quotes:

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".

Yes of course the pacification of Fallujah occurred in 2004.

US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.

Hmmery, the same white phosphorous that was used by the Israelis during Operation Cast Lead(page 21, paragraph 48)? Still the Palestinians and Iraqis deserved it eh Amber?

He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."

Oh well, all those assurances DU rounds were completely harmless before and during the invasion were wrong, boy are those advocates' faces red (with the blood of Iraqi children) now!

Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.

The residents of Fallujah should be grateful the Coalition of the Willing freed them from the oppression of genetic orthodoxy and allowed Iraq to become a future centre for Oncology research. And by doing all this the west has certainly been saved from vague threats to their way of life or something.

Again apologies I'm only posting this a month late but at least I'm beating most of the mainstream media I guess.

Edit Whoops forgot to add this feature by Democracy now about it. http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/29/patrick_cockburn_on_missing_billions_in

Theres a new Red Letter Media Review!

This time they've done the new Star Trek film (technically again but not really). Now most if not all of y'all aint fans of the RLM method probably cos you're all drunk. I however like em so I'm going to keep posting them. So there!

New Homepage found!

An Iranian website offering the same kind of critique the Mainstream Media gives them. They are rubber, Fox News, you are glue.

http://barackobama.ir/

Its a good thing submarines look like dildos...

...because Caroline Wyatt sure as hell wants to get intimate with HMS Astute. I really hope for Ms Wyatt that all she is doing is printing verbatim a Royal Navy press release because otherwise she really is getting overly enthusiastic about £3.9bn a killing machine that has no real role or purpose in the modern world other than to maintain the delusion Britain still matters on the world stage. It is great to know that while other government departments face cuts of up to 25% the Ministry of Defence can still buy white elephant war toys.

Fun fact: Hitler was Austrian.

A far right party in Austria, one of the most intolerant and racist countries in the EU (something there is hot competition for) has launched a web game on their website in which you attempt to kill muezzins and blow up mosques. This comes days after a German banker and members of the Social Democrats said Jews and Muslims were to blame for all of Germany's ills, his bank are yet to fire him. You know how after the Wall Street Crash lots of anger was directed towards the Jews rather than addressing real problems? Well this is totally different because,

Admit you're being shit on? Get shit on some more!

Really this is the main reason I despise gun nuts so much, they rant and scream about rights and how guns are essential to protecting freedom and such and yet outside of 2nd Amendment rights they really don't care, either out of ignorance or myopia. Employment rights are so poor in the US that a flight attendant who was paid so little she qualified for food stamps was fired for admitting on telly she qualified for food stamps. However she belongs to a union so the gun nuts will most likely oppose her, or they wont notice being too angry about gay marriage or muslim presidents or whatever other piddling crap Fox News tells them to be angry about.

Another good Webcomic

SHOCK: Man who took all the credit and money for successes not responsible for failures.

Dick "apt first name" Fuld informed a congressional committee yesterday that the failure of the bank he got paid a fair amount of money to run was not his fault because at his heart he was a socialist who supports government intervention at the drop of a hat (except when it comes to taxes of course) and because they didn't act fast enough his perfectly run bank failed.

The full depth and nature of the crisis was simply unknowable even to one as great as he, as he informed the committee:

However, Fuld told the panel, he would have needed a "crystal ball" to take more radical action – such as pulling Lehman out of the troublesome mortgage market earlier.

For those of you mortals who are lesser than Mr Fuld (PBUH) you may not realise but one can only read the details of Asian economies in the late nineties with a crystal ball. Otherwise he would've been able to predict that following exactly the same policies Japan in particular followed a decade earlier might have negative consequences.

America: Land of the unfree!

Now sure everyone knows theres all sorts of things the dupes of the Tea Party following the corporate agenda of their billionaire masters should be getting angry about lots more important things than people not reading Ayn Rand (because if they did there wouldn't be a Black president!) but seldom do you such a simple illustration of just how far off the mark they are:


hint: look at the bottom line of the graph

This graph comes from an editorial by an American living in Britain talking about the culture of taking time off work in the UK and the US. Which brings up the fact once again that Thatcher and Reagan were monsters who completely screwed over the vast majority of the population in every way possible. Its an interesting comparison and reading it as a Briton to an extent gives me that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you're all snug and warm indoors and you look outside and see it raining/snowing. That is to say sure workers rights in Britain are pretty shitty across the board but daaaaamn we're doing better than America.

But anyway, he covers that stuff better than I could, what with him having experience of working in both countries so lets look at something slightly different. The title is slightly more than a play on words but relates to my very limited knowledge of medieval peasants in Britain and the distinction between ranks of the peasantry. The details aren't particularly interesting or noteworthy but at the start of the feudal period the harshness with which peasants were tied to a particular bit of land varied. (Tying peasants to the land was a very important part of feudalism because until the industrial revolution the wealth of the elite was generated by the land they owned, the more and the better the land you held the more wealthy and powerful you were but that land was only valuable if it was worked, in the early medieval period the population across europe was too small to work all the land so the elites needed ways to keep the lesser sorts working their land.)

Anyway the reason this is important in regards to the plight of Serfs. At the start of the medieval period Serfs pretty much free men, a clear step above villains (the lowest class of peasants, the current meaning of the word derives from when these near slaves got uppity and rebelled against their rightful rulers) who only had slaves and those who lived on the very margins of society to look down upon. However as time went on Serfs became unfree, in the same general position as Villains. This did not mean they were slaves but it did mean their duties and obligations to the owner of the manor they lived upon became more stringent, their property rights weakened and their freedom of movement greatly diminished. Slaves were generally prisoners of war (nowadays they're prisoners of the war on drugs, how things change) or criminals.

This concept of unfreedom is especially salient for all citizens of the west (with Americans being in the vanguard of being shit on). Real wages haven't risen since the early 1980s, civil liberties are being eroded rapidly and other rights are starting to disappear, as we see in America even though holidays are technically available in many jobs people don't feel free to take all the vacation they're technically owed. This of course stems from the loss of another freedom of sorts, the freedom to believe you have long term employment, these days of course no one is secure in their job so they're less free to exercise other rights they technically have. Then there's the manner in which Thatcher and Reagan weakened the unions so workers were even less free to exercise other rights and on and on it goes.

Now its not a one to one match but still it is something one should be very much aware of, the gradual of erosion of rights and freedoms makes it easier to weaken other rights and generally lower the social status of huge chunks of society. People should be as mad and as vocal as the Tea Party are but about radically different things.

Charles Darwin: Building Better Worlds.

Terraforming, a concept familiar in sci-fi for decades now is rapidly coming into the mainstream. In fiction it has generally been shorthand for the alteration of planets for colonisation, forming planets to be more like Terra, Earth. In reality while it is brought up from time to time in relation to Mars the reason it is starting to move into public knowledge is that it is (and will increasingly prominently continue to be) Industry's favoured solution to climate change. Instead of cutting emissions or adapting to less polluting ways they instead want to continue as usual and hope that future science will magically fix things. The fact that the impact of climate change and dwindling resources will almost certainly lead to larger and larger wars and thus less chance for innovation in peaceful areas is irrelevant in their world. After all the quarterly financial report is all that really matters anyway.

However it seems terraforming has been around a lot longer than most people had assumed, back in the middle of the C19th Darwin, the Royal Navy and Kew Gardens botched together their own forest eco-system that turned a barren volcanic island into a lush expanse of greenery. But hey, creationists could've achieved something even better if they cared to pray hard enough.

Liberal points out the key flaw in rightist thinking.

Liberalism to my mind is a halfway house, a truth is somewhere in the middle piece of bullshit that isn't as bad as rightist ideologies but certainly isn't an ideology that promotes a humane society. Regardless though, an American who blogs for the Guardian gives his reaction to Glenn Beck and his corporate masters' first move to hijacking the 50th anniversary of the I have a dream speech. Bear in mind we're three anniversaries away from it, if they can make this Beckathon an annual thing then by the time the 50th anniversary comes around they can claim it is their day and the Blacks are johnny come latelies who are impinging on their rights to assemble etc and they can have their own celebration for noted Republican MLK elsewhere. Which the corporate media will back them to the hilt over. But thats not relevant to the discussion here.

Michael Tomasky really does sum up the rightist mindset excellently and while I recommend you read all of it this paragraph is particularly good:

The two problems here are, first, that while they think they owe government nothing, they actually owe government a great deal. If they're small business people, they depend on the freight rails and the roadways and the utilities and the regulation of interstate commerce and the laws that keep their crooked competitors from undercutting them and the courts' abilities to enforce those laws. Without question the government is an annoyance in their lives in dozens of ways. But they don't see any of the good, only the bad. If you tote it up, the government helps them a lot more than it hurts them, and if they think not, let them go open a hardware store in downtown Mogadishu and see how that works out.

So yeah, Rightists are short sighted hypocrites.

Bitches, you want a raise? Clean your goddamn cunts!

Alternet covers this issue with the sarcasm it deserves but basically a full page ad in a woman's magazine claims the best way for a woman to get a raise is to make her special area extra special clean with their products.

Laugh or cry at the absurdity of it here

Heroes only do profitable things.

To display conspicuous bravery while ending the life of others will get you medals, acclaim and perhaps even a promotion and higher pay. However to risk your life for the good of others or the environment is to open yourself to condemnation. Sure in a few decades you might get retrospective praise, editorials that devote a paragraph to praise and the rest of it how the author "got it".

So we come to an event even the considerably left leaning guardian can't really bring itself to praise. Greenland is probably sitting on a lot of oil and gas albeit it a long way under the ocean, so to get at it oil companies will need to use deep drilling. Greenland's water is much colder (so the oil will take much longer to disperse) and the area of proposed drilling is far more remote thus making recovery operations much slower.

So Greenpeace stepped up to the plate. Sure most of us don't want the precious eco-systems of the Arctic region destroyed but... ya know freecell isn't going to play itself. Facing off against Greenland police boats and the Danish navy four activists somehow managed to evade these patrols and then somehow mountaineer themselves onto a drilling platform scouting out this alleged oil. I mean thats some James Bond shit, zipping about on rubber dingies and then through mad physical exertion boarding the bad guy's floating base. No one killed, no one harmed and all for an admiral ideological goal that doesn't benefit the activists in any material way.

So how does the Guardian decide to headline it?

Greenland's prime minister lambasts Greenpeace for raiding Arctic oil rig

fair enough

Wikileaks leader is/isn't/is/isn't/is/isn't...

So Julian Assange has had charges against him dismissed and now re-levelled at him. Sure is convenient how this is running his name through the muck in way more news cycles than a normal investigation would. The truth may well set others free but it seems its likely to get those who reveal it locked up.