Take two suicide bombers into the car with me? I just want to crash and blow

There's an absolutely fantastic assessment of the terror threat now facing the UK in tomorrow's News of the World, written by former London Police Commissioner John Stevens. A special sneak preview can be found here...


"Make no mistake, this weekend's bomb attacks signal a major escalation in the war being waged on us by Islamic terrorists,"

"The terror of July 7 was awful enough, but now al-Qaeda has imported the tactics of Baghdad and Bali to our streets. And it will get worse before it gets better."

"The involvement, influence and even leadership of al Qaeda veterans both from abroad but also now on the ground in Britain has grown significantly,"

"It is a sign of the new maturity and sophistication of al Qaeda in Britain that they have moved to this car bomb style campaign."

"And make no mistake -- strike again they will."


No doubt, the masterminds behind 'Al Qaeda', whoever they may be, are profoundly grateful to John Stevens for boasting about the the tremendous power of their organisation and doing his best to scare the crap out of the people of Britain on their behalf


Who are the terrorists again?




Though I think Johnny is jumping the gun a little bit with the line 'imported the tactics of Baghdad and Bali to our streets' - unless the streets of Baghdad and Bali are under attack from suicide bombers who strike in pairs, have no bombs and pour petrol all over themselves instead.

Buddhist suicide bombers?

Some very peculiar things have happened this last day or so and the establishment is running the risk of overplaying its hand. Those who believe in a Melanie 'EVERYONE hates Jews when they should be hating Muslims instead!!' Phillips style Muslim Menace don't need any further convincing. Those of us who don't are starting to think that, as nobody was killed, they might be able to get away with joking about how crap today's supposedly 'mature' and 'sophisticated' attack was




A word of warning though. Anyone writing a spoof headline (and it was a very good spoof headline) like...

LONDON BOMB 'NOT SCARY ENOUGH', BROWN TELLS MI5

...on a Friday runs a very real risk of having their joke blow up in their face, or at least burn a little bit, on a Saturday

('borrowed' from 'The Daily Mash')

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Hmmmm, Reichstag-tastic

Well, many of us were expecting something in June/ July. The rhetoric our government and newspapers have been coming out with over the last couple of months made the probability pretty clear

On the bright side nobody appears to have been hurt. On the not so bright side there are plenty of shady characters who'll be creaming themselves today, including our lovely shiny new PM. No doubt he will be horrified at today's near miss but also just a teensy weensy bit pleased that he is being presented with an opportunity to demonstrate his Churchillian qualities so early in his premiereship

And no, just because I'm one of those conspiraloons who has doubts about 9/11, 7/7 and 'Al Qaeda', that doesn't mean I deny the possibility that there are loser-fanatics out there capable of contemplating terrorist attacks, particularly crap ones. So I'm not going to start crowing that this is some kind of staged, false-flag operation. The timing is bloody convenient though

It looks like there's going to be tons of physical evidence and live terrorists/ patsies - the next few days and weeks are going to be, er, interesting...


(It's worth bearing in mind that there's still debate about whether the Nazis were actually behind the Reichstag Fire or whether they took opportunistic advantage of an incident they had no direct hand in. It didn't actually matter very much. Whether they were responsible for the fire or not, they were still Nazis and they still milked the incident for everything it was worth)

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Connections

On Tuesday I had lunch with three people I used to work with. They’re a globe-trotting bunch and for some reason (my fault probably) we got round to discussing the reach and scale of the Find Madeleine campaign...

• One of my chums had just returned from a few days in Croatia and confirmed that, yes, Find Madeleine posters were all over the bus stops there, in English of course. He didn't take any photographs though :(
  

• Another mentioned how bemused he had been to see a longish and, to his mind, totally pointless Find Madeleine video played before the start of the England v Brazil friendly at Wembley a few weeks ago

• Another had just got back from the Philippines and confessed that she hadn’t seen any material there
  

So, based on a highly unstatistical sample, the effective radius of the campaign can be estimated as being further than Zagreb, nearer than Manila.

As for me, since I wrote a post about the Madeleine thing a few days ago, virtually everywhere I look now I’m seeing Maddie-related material that I hadn’t noticed before



I’ve started noticing it because, of course, I’m now sensitised to it. What had previously been subliminal is now visible




In fact, I’ve gone way beyond simply seeing all the explicit material that’s out there and I’ve started seeing what may be implicit connections with the Find Madeleine campaign



Take a post I wrote about A Clockwork Orange a few days ago…




Are the parallels between a film about mass mind control, featuring a hero with a decorated right eye and a bizarrely overblown, creepy campaign about a missing little girl with a peculiar right eye meaningful in any way?

I’m buggered if I know

And that’s the challenge facing those of us who suspect that a little more may be going on in the world than we are led to believe. Any account or explanation for an event is essentially a series of links between a series of facts, observations and conclusions. It’s easy enough to demonstrate that many mainstream media narratives are based on suspect links to suspect facts, observations and conclusions but if you apply the same strict criteria to most alternative accounts they don’t stand up too well either.

Which is why, even though I take inordinate pleasure out of seeking anomalies in mainstream narratives, I’m too much of a wimp to ever stand behind alternative explanations – maybe I should hand in my membership of the Conspiraloon™ Alliance and form my own breakaway Conspirapussy™ Alliance

And now comes the real reason for this post…

Thanks to DE for making me aware of the magnificent obsession that is the…

Postmodern Research blog

A veritable treasure trove of links to Masonic and occult symbolism in TV shows such as Family Guy, The Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants. Like DE I am not too sure just how serious the mind behind Post-Modern research is but it’s damned entertaining (if you like that sort of thing) whatever their intention is. The article entitled ‘The Simpsons, saturated with Freemasonic messages!’ is a triumph



But that is but nothing compared to my next link…

The 911 Stargate

A piece of work that is virtually impossible to describe without accompanying hand gestures. Suffice to say that it is the most perfect example of the kind of Internet Conspiracy Theory video that leaves those of us concerned about the crimes of the rich and powerful shaking their heads with dismay, as evidence of those very earthly crimes gets mixed up with everything from Biblical Prophecy to Alien Space Lizards...

9/11 Stargate - absolutely brim-full of the kind unverifiable 'connections' that are so loved by certain conspiracy theorists and also by people in the mainstream media paid to ridicule all conspiracy theorists

On the other hand, it is bloody funny. But only if the spectacle of someone connecting 9/11, Freemasons, the Great Pyramid, Alastair Crowley, Sacred Orbs. My Pet Goat, the god Pan, The Simpsons (them again), Fight Club, Alien Intelligences and The Wizard of Oz makes you laugh...




What was that I was saying about making peculiar links between things…

If you do watch it and if it starts to get too much after the first minute or so (highly likely), may I recommend fast forwarding to 8:47 when they narrator utters the immortal line ‘Now things get a little weird’. That’s by far and away the best bit…

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Day Two in the Big Brother House

Anyone who has read, watched or listened to any British political programming over the last few days cannot have helped but encounter the nauseating spectacle of virtually every pundit and commentator pushing the idea that now that Gordon Brown is Prime Minister, instead of Blair, everything is going to be just fucking peachy.

The social inequalities that have increased rapidly over the last ten years will now start to narrow, our involvement in Iraq will somehow come to an end, the debt bubble will shrink painlessly, CCTV cameras will wilt on their posts, and all that money that has been spunked away in the name of the health and education services will magically reappear.

At the same time, those same pundits and commentators have been falling over themselves wanking off Tony Blair in public. Rewriting the history of the last ten years of government as the story of a fundamentally decent man who set out to modernise the country and bring peace to the world and who made a few perfectly innocent and understandable mistakes in his eagerness to do good. He's only a fucking saint, that's what he is

The most surreal commentary I think I've seen this week was an article on the supposedly New Labour-sceptical Blairwatch website entitled 'Tony as Middle East envoy - Why It Makes Sense'

You couldn't make it up

So, Gordon Brown's a good bloke. Tony Blair's a good bloke. The government is sound. The puppet-masters have lost their influence and all the awfulness that has gone down happened by accident.

Talk about a triumph of hope over experience

and Operation 'Same Old Shit - Different Frontman' trundles on virtually unopposed

The best comment I've seen on this nonsense cropped up in the Conspiraloon™ Central blog earlier today, in response to news that the police averted a spot of 'bomb carnage' this morning...

**Geordie accent**
Day 2 in the Big Brother House,and Gordons found a bomb.

It comes as some comfort that not everyone is buying the party line

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Pyramid Spotting with Stanley K - redux

A few weeks ago I linked to what I thought was an amusing fan review of A Clockwork Orange

I linked to it because a) I'm a big Kubrick fan, and b) I'm also more than a little keen on symbolism hidden amongst us within popular culture.

The insight offered by the review into the possible symbolism of the movie's iconic poster was worth the admission price alone...




A couple days after I linked to the video the author, Rob Ager, pulled it off Youtube

He's just uploaded a revised version in three parts which can be seen here, here and here

Ager has included an interesting explanation for his behaviour at the start of the first segment

Apparently, he received some shit for being a 'conspiracy theorist'. Not so much from ordinary people but from professional on-line journalists




Consequently, he felt a need to withdraw his original piece and replace it with a slightly updated version

The pussy

The interesting part to me is that even in the original version it was clear that he wasn't advocating any conspiracy theories. All he was doing was suggesting that Kubrick had included some particular imagery and themes in his film




Kubrick himself was definitely into some weird stuff and his last film, Eyes Wide Shut, makes absolutely no sense unless you recognise that Kubrick was referring to a covert ruling elite who are into even weirder stuff

But two minutes spent on Ager's site will make it pretty clear that Ager is simply a movie buff who is exploring the themes and ideas in some of his favourite films

And if a film includes some peculiar symbolism, so be it




And we've come to a state of affairs where even that is reason enough for professional journalists to call him a nutter and describe his work as 'wank' not on its inherent merit but on the basis that they've labeled him a 'conspiracy theorist'

How well those fuckers have been trained

Which, given the film in question, seems more than a little ironic

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South London - The Cultural Centre of the Universe

Now that all that Glastonbury nonsense is out of the way those of us who are serious about live music can concentrate on looking forward to the real highlight event of the year...

Bermondsey Beat 2007

Bermondsey Beat 2005 - Woodstock Eat Your Heart Out

Once again the organisers have scoured The Land for the finest has-been acts and spared no effort in bringing them all together in a park in Southwark for a day of magic and enchantment

After dropping a nut a couple of years back and booking The Proclaimers; a band that some people under 40 had actually heard of, this year’s line-up is much more in keeping with the event’s prestigious track record…

• Dave Edmunds’ Rockpile
• The Real Thing
• Rose Royce

And if that’s not enough, the following day the people of Southwark will be cheering on the Tour de France and seeing if they can nick a few bikes as it passes through the borough, before being serenaded by Chas and Dave AND Geno Washington (?!)

I’m in Heaven

Chas and Dave - Undisputed Masters of Mockney Rock

The adoring masses singing along to Chas and Dave's magnus opus 'Rabbit' the last time they played at Southwark Park

And whilst on the subject of Legends of Rock, I was hanging around City Hall, as I do, yesterday when Rod Stewart appeared out of nowhere and signed a twelve foot tall guitar. Unfortunately, I was only carrying a wide-angle camera and dislike Rod’s persona intensely so I couldn’t be arsed to walk the necessary 25 yards to take a decent picture of him…





This is the kind of excitement and rubbing shoulders with stars that people who don’t live in London miss out on and can be yours if you can service a £400,000 mortgage (for a year or two anyway) or don’t mind sharing a bunk bed with two other people trying to live off £4 an hour whilst still having some money left over to send home.

Live The Dream...

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edit: it has just come to my attention, by way of a comment made under this post, that this year's Bermondsey Beat clashes with Live Earth

Live Earth is a monumental music event that will bring together more than 2 billion people to combat the climate crisis. Live Earth's 24 hours of music across 7 continents will deliver a call to action and the solutions needed to answer the call

all the more reason to pick up a brace of four packs at the fortress off-licence on Jamaica Road and get pissed in a park in Southwark whilst being pleasured by pub bands - unless listening to millionaire rock twats and corporate sponsored activists preaching to do as they say, not as they do, really strikes you as a clever way to spend a Saturday

Armoured off-licence, Jamaica Road

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My weekend

Well, Summer's here. So I thought I'd spend most of the weekend doing what so many British people love doing for the weekend at this time of year...

Sitting in traffic

Sunday was particularly special - we managed to cover the 240 miles between Devon and London in only just over nine hours - an average speed of just over 26mph

This was partly due to the fact that directly in my path between my home and my destination lay the Glastonbury Festival - that annual celebration of youthful counter-culture where people pay £150+ for a non-refundable, non-transferable ticket so they can grub around in mud for four days and listen to the kind of music used in car adverts

There's no way that event has been subverted and co-opted to serve the interests of large corporations. Not a chance

Glastonbury Summer 2007 - similar to Ypres Summer 1917, only with less poison gas and more Shirley Bassey

Another reason for our near intergalactic travel speed this weekend was the rain...

Lots and lots of rain

June has turned out to be a bit of a wash-out. No doubt at the end of the month someone will announce that this has been the wettest June for the last however many years and attribute that to man made global warming. Just like April when we apparently experienced one of the warmest, driest Aprils for 350 years - which was also attributed to man made global warming

...because every single variation in the weather is now attributed to man made global warming. Surely by now everyone must realise that the weather isn't supposed to show any variation from one year to the next

which is my way of linking to an essay called - Global Warming: Truth or Dare? It's on the long side but it does include gems like this...

The fact that the global warming myth has now attained this degree of media promotion and entertainment industry integration means not only that the issue is not threatening to power but that it has also come to be understood by power to be quite useful. In this regard, the global warming myth has joined the other useful media-supported myths that include: increasing crime rates, the terrorist threat, the American dream, that we live in a democracy, that greed and selfishness are unavoidable overriding consequences of human nature, that we all attain the economic status that fits our talents and efforts, that we help developing and Third World countries, etc...

Anyway, back to my weekend...

We spent Friday night in Exeter. A city that, I am glad to say, even though it lies 800 miles away from the site of her disappearance, with the Bay of Biscay in between, is still 100% behind the Find Madeleine campaign. There were posters all over the shop. Several shops actually...




Presumably this heart-warming behaviour is replicated all over the country but I wouldn't know as this is the first trip I've made out of London since Maddie disappeared and the shops in my part of South London refuse to put pictures of small children in their windows unless they include a price.

(Not) Finding Madeleine has become such a popular passtime that Sky News has set up its own page dedicated to all things Madeleine where you can discuss the latest advances in the search for Madeleine (none), see what the weather will be like tomorrow when searching for Madeleine (wet) and vote on how well you think the police are doing (badly)




The reason why we were in Devon was to attend a wedding in Salcombe. A town with the dubious honour of having the second highest property prices in the country outside of London

Salcombe also appears to be protected by some kind of invisible force field that keeps brown people out

Salcombe does however have a healthy community of minimum-wage East European migrants who tend and serve the kind of people who live in and visit a town with the second highest property prices in the country outside of London.

It's not that I'm picking on Salcombe but the place does typify the voodoo economics that now hold sway in this country and the massive and growing disparities between those who have (usually as the result of property ownership) and those who do not and a virtually unchallenged orthodoxy which maintains that rising asset prices are good but wages, particularly poorer people's wages, rising at anything like a similar rate is bad.

We are sleepwalking into a world where the majority of people will be indebted for their entire lives and never able to escape from economic serfdom. This might also explain, as discussed in this lengthy but occasionally gem-studded piece, why music is so shit these days (cf. Glastonbury Festival)...


"...The economy of the sixties cut us a lot of slack, leaving time to travel, take drugs, write songs and rethink the universe. There was a feeling that nothing was nailed down, that an assumption held was worth challenging. The meek regularly took on the mighty and often won—or at least drew. Debt-free students with time on their hands forced the Pentagon to stop using drafted American kids as cannon fodder and altered the political landscape of France..."

"...What you're getting is a contribution of hundreds of millions of lower-cost workers coming into our economy. It's very positive for all economic activity…"

"...The tightening of the fiscal screws that begain with the 1973 oil crisis may not have been a conspiracy to rein in this dangerous laxness, but it has certainly worked out to the advantage of the powerful. Ever since, prices have ratcheted upwards in relation to hours worked and the results of this squeeze can be seen everywhere..."


One thing did amuse me this weekend though...




The wedding service took place in Salcombe's Holy Trinity Church - the very epitome of a rural English place of worship. The grey haired, slightly dotty priest also looked the part. As did the choir of middle-aged women all dressed-up in matching green costumes; chanting and smiling at each other like they all shared some kind of secret that city folk could only guess at.

Part way through the service the priest communicated a few of his thoughts on the subject of marriage which went something like this...

"What is Love?"

"I'd like to answer that question by taking the word apart, letter by letter and exploring the symbolism of each"

"L reminds me of someone holding one arm up to God and beckoning people to share God's love with his other arm"

"O reminds me of infinity and the eternal nature of God's Love. This is also symbolised by the exchange of wedding rings"

"V reminds me of someone holding both arms up to Heaven and praising God with joy and love in their heart"

"And the final letter..."

"I've been thinking a lot about E lately"

"In fact only a few days ago I was up most of the night thinking about E..."


at which point three people in the congregation, including me, started to giggle uncontrollably

I guess you would have had to be there


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Other things that pleasured or interested me this weekend included...

• seeing this picture taken by Lord Patel of police at an anti-war demo looking like they're about to launch into a Busby Berkeley style song and dance number...
  

• being sent a link to a picture of another policeman who looks like he has more than a song and a dance on his mind

• reading about how Britain's burgeoning underclass managed to kill no less than eight of its own number in the space of a couple of days. No doubt much to the delight of the kind of people who cultivate underclasses and who work very hard to ensure that those underclasses never get round to figuring out who they really should struggling against

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Stuff I would love to research if I had enough time pt627

Today sees the launch of the Council of Ex Muslims over at Portculis House. The organization is going to headed up by Marxist women's right campaigner and Iranian exile Maryam Namazie and is intended to provide a voice for Muslim apostates.

Now the thing is about outfits like this is that people end up supporting them because they appear to stand for free speech, the separation and church and state, women's rights and good stuff like that.

Well, they do

Sort of

They are also very good at perpetuating myths, fuelling conflict and exacerbating or even creating divisions between people.

I'm mindful of the stellar career of that other radical ex-Muslim atheist women's rights campaigner Ayaan Hirsi Ali who got caught telling lies and now works for the super-fluffy, totally unfascist American Enterprise Institute.

I'm also mindful of the fact that much potential Left Wing opposition to the invasion of Afghanistan was neutered by portraying the occupation as somehow being about women's rights and nothing to do with oil pipelines, opium production and Central Asian military bases. Yes, of course it was.

And I couldn't help noticing that the Council of Ex Muslims appears to feature a fair number of Iranian exiles who left the country as part of the exodus of ex SAVAK operatives and other potential prisoners of conscience who fled Iran back in 1980. Though I'm sure they would not have the bad taste to follow in the footsteps of all those Iraqi exiles who earned a tidy living making up all sorts of bollocks intelligence as part of the preamble to the 2003 invasion of their homeland.

However, something tells me that spokespeople for the Council of Ex Muslims will be getting plenty of opportunity to put their views about Iran across in the weeks and months ahead. The kind of radical atheist Marxist views that will be music to US Christian and Israeli Neocons' ears

None of which amounts to anything conclusive other than grounds for some wariness about the Council of Ex Muslims but it would be lovely to know who's going to be paying their bills

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Like The Truman Show - only bigger?

In response to a comment left under my previous post I have just spent the last few hours immersed in all things Madeleine McCann.

I think it is fair to say that a lot of people out there are reacting somewhat, er, negatively to the behaviour of the McCanns, the McCann media circus and the relative docility of the mainstream press. These people are quite keen to get their hands on some material, any material, that incriminates the McCanns in some wrong-doing.

Well, I've just ploughed through an awful lot of shit; including some unsubstantiated hypotheses that even the most open-minded people would consider to be plain mental, and I haven't found diddly on the McCanns.

Sadly, my most promising lead, this picture I found on Flickr...


...and its tantalizing suggestion of a connection with organized crime in Thailand proved to be a dead end

That's not to say that the Find Madeleine campaign and its media coverage are not weird and suspicious.

Of course they bloody well are

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As far as I can tell there are two key reasons why people are smelling a rat...

1. The Find Madeleine campaign is very well-organized, well-connected, well-publicized and got rolling very quickly. That in itself is not particularly suspicious. What is peculiar is the sheer number of countries and organizations that have been caught up in this business - often on the flimsiest of pretexts. There are also some aspects of the campaign that suggest that the people behind it were preparing for a long-haul from its earliest days. Put bluntly, the campaign seems to be about something more than 'Finding Madeleine'
   
   
2. With one notable exception, the media have given the McCanns an astonishingly easy time over the fact that they left three small children unattended and appear to have told fibs about what they did. The number of mainstream voices criticizing the sheer lunacy of the scope of subsequent campaign is also small

It's one thing to be open to the possibility that parents with guilty minds might be engaged in a distraction exercise but that doesn't even start to explain why so many other people and organizations are playing along and complicit in hyping this thing up to nonsensical proportions.

And then there are the questions over the role played by Clarence Mitchell. Depending on what newspaper you read, when Mitchell's name has been mentioned he has either been described as the McCann's 'Press Adviser' or the 'Foreign Office liaison' appointed to assist the family. In fact, Mitchell doesn't work for the McCanns or the Foreign Office but is the Director of the Government's totally unspooky Media Monitoring Unit.

I've known a fair few people who've got into shit overseas and none of them were appointed a full time liaison officer sent over from Whitehall, and certainly not a liaison officer seconded to the Foreign Office whilst being the head of a government department.

and this may or may not be relevant but in his previous incarnation as a BBC reporter Clarence led the BBC's coverage of the Soham murders - which was also characterized by some frankly bizarre government and media behaviour.

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There is the faint whiff of an exercise in mass psychological manipulation (purpose unknown) about the Find 'Maddie' campaign, like Soham before it, and the Princess Diana schmaltz-fest before that. Non Conspiraloons™ will maintain that there is nothing deliberate or managed about these outbreaks of collective hysteria. Conspiraloons™ will, on the other hand, depending on what kind of day they've had, tell the Non Conspiros™ to either go fuck themselves or at least try and maintain an open mind and accept that such things may be possible. It's not like anyone is talking about having to believe in space aliens here, just screwing with people's heads through application of mass media.

And that's as far as I'm going with this one. I have no doubt that something truly peculiar is going on but short of making research into this business a full-time occupation I don't think anyone on the outside is going to be able to come up with any useful answers until after it has run its course.

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Camera recommendation of the Week

Fujifilm have just announced the UK release of their new heavy-duty, shock resistant HD-3W digital camera - aka The Fuji 'Big Job'. And because it is shock resistant the Fuji press release includes the strap line...

Fuji drops the Big Job

Methinks we are witnessing possibly the most convoluted attempt at voluntary redundancy undertaken by a UK employee of the marketing arm of Japanese company since the short-lived Nikon Skidmark 9000

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are your baconburgers kosher?

Found via the B3ta website...

McDonald’s UK ‘Make Up Your Own Mind’ website

McDonalds has harnessed the interactivity of the Internet to give ordinary members of the public an opportunity to ask serious questions about McDonalds products and receive some serious answers

I don’t know what’s funnier. The questions themselves or the dogged resilience shown by the people at McDonalds as they answer each question without letting the corporate veil drop, not even once…


What happens to the bacon in a crispy Mcbacon before it reaches our mouths?

I read in the paper that some burger contain poo. Is this really true? If so, what proportion of burgers contain poo?

My Wife and I often visit New York and, whilst waiting at Newark Airport on the homeward leg, i often have a McDonalds, very nice it is to. Could you tell me why the Burgers in Newark actually taste like Beef whereas those we get at home in the UK taste like nothing even remotely animal falvoured? Surely meat is meat...or is it?

how do you make cheese burgers and chips so nice ? what is the special ingredient what you use to make your food like this?

Is it true that you use worms to thicken the meat in your burgers?

you say its 100% beef, but its actually beef fat too isn't it?!

do you put brain cells in your burgers

are your baconburgers kosher?

isit true that there has been a case where a person has found a eyeball in one of your burgers??

I used to think your burgers were horrible, believing they were all mashed chicken head. I've only found out recently that it isn't. Is there any other way to get this good message to other people like me?

If your beefburgers are 100% beef why don't they taste like it? If I go to buy or make my own beef burger using beef from the butcher/shop it tastes infinitely different and better. I'm sure this is a popular question..


I’m sure it is


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The Death of an Honourable Profession

One of the things that really ticked me off about being moved away from the British Oppression demo last week was the excuse used by the policewoman to move me on.

I didn’t have a press pass.

Given that I was standing in a public place presenting no risk to public order or obstructing anyone, demanding that I produce a press pass was, how can I put it?, bollocks.

What really bugged me was the thought that if I could prove I was working for some rag somewhere – The Wisconsin Weekly Advertiser or Celebrity Hairstyle Magazine or whatever – she would have had to lay off.

And why should that be?

-

The guy I was with in Whitehall on Friday has just sent me a link to an interesting story in the Guardian from a few weeks ago.

It’s interesting because it’s yet another example of a mainstream media hack whining about the death of professionalism and the Cult of the Amateur in today’s media. In this case, he’s complaining about the death of the ‘honourable profession’ of newspaper photography.

Yes, very funny.

Because we all know how honourable newspaper photographers are.

Really, you couldn’t make it up.

And the key difference between a professional and an amateur is?

"A talented, hardworking and lucky amateur can produce wonderful pictures on the best days. But that will be one picture in a hundred. A professional can produce something that is nearly as good as their best 50 times in a hundred. That's why they are worth employing."

Nope. The only consistent difference between an amateur and a professional photographer, or even an amateur or professional journalist, is that one gets paid, the other doesn’t. Full stop

Or is the writer genuinely trying maintain that if you pay someone to do something that will guarantee a higher standard of work than if someone works for non monetary reward?

Could it possibly be that some people have the skill to write or take pictures but for some reason are unable or unwilling to work for a big news outlet?

After all, with any pay cheque there comes an obligation to photograph or write about what your employer dictates.

Which is why people like Nick Ut who started their careers photographing images that had the potential to change the world now make a living snapping daft celebrities who are only famous for being daft celebrities

And that is a major reason why more and more people are being drawn to the work of amateurs.

Sure, there are plenty shit amateurs out there. But there are plenty of shit pros too and many happen to be whores, or working for whores, as well as being shit

...as transmitted around the world by the honourable mainstream media

...as not transmitted around the world by the honourable mainstream media

Coincidentally, round about the same time one chum sent me a link to a newspaper article about how sites like Flickr are contributing to the death of honourable newspaper photography, another chum invited me to join a Flickr group established to protest against Flickr censoring the images its German-based viewers can see

Forget about the mainstream media’s incessant wanking on about Russia or China – there are plenty of free speech issues nearer to home that need dealing with.

I’m presuming that Flickr is implementing filters because of the Nazi thing – though how being able to see images of fat bastards dressing up as Ernst Roehm who end up looking more like Oliver Hardy is likely to corrupt German democracy eludes me.

Oliver Hardy

Ernst Roehm

It’s the thin end of a very thick wedge IMHO and I can’t help but make a connection between politicians and the mainstream media whining like bitches about the rise of the amateur and the incessant attempts being made to filter the output of those amateurs.

On the other hand, this talk of things German presents me with another opportunity to link to the video of Rammstein’s – Amerika still available here

I’ve already linked to it only a few days ago – but I just watched it again and it still makes me laugh. Especially the line...

"Coca - Cola…"

"Sometimes War"

I was chatting with a mate about 'Coca Cola, Sometimes War' a few days ago and he’s of the firm opinion that the US should adopt it as the new national motto and put it on the money and on banners draped from all large public buildings

A tad harsh but understandable…


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edit: I just got another email from a chum pointing me towards the kind of high-quality photojournalism that sites like Flickr are facilitating - check it out here

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What if they gave a race riot and nobody came?

As we were in the general area of Westminster last Friday afternoon to see how the British Oppression demo turned out, and we were early, we decided to check out what Brian Haw and his chums were up to

They seemed a bit grumpy...

and like they’d had a rough night...

and like they really, really, really were trying to get arrested

Haw was having a serious argument with a policemen and recording everything that was being said with voice recorder

Someone else was marching up and down with a loud hailer calling out to bemused tourists with lines like ‘That man in the yellow jacket is full of shit’

Someone else was waving a placard with ‘Bollocks 2 Blair’ in front of every car that was driving into and out of the Houses of Parliament




But the police were stubbornly refusing to arrest anyone in Parliament Square. Not that day anyway




To be honest, I had mixed emotions about what was going on. I’m totally behind what Haw is doing but I’ve always maintained that the police are simply maintaining laws made by the real bastards and getting into scraps with them is pointless.

On top of that, protests and demos do need some form of police presence. At one march a couple of years ago a few coppers saved my rear end when I was about to get my arse kicked by a bunch of ‘loyalist’ Irish psychos.

I was grateful

-

A little later on, five minutes walk away in Whitehall, we got to see what had come of all that publicity for the much heralded British Oppression demo

Not much actually

About 60-80 Union Jack waving White Nationalists had turned up. Most of them seemed to know each other and they were acting more like they were at a works picnic than looking for any physical confrontation




There were slightly more Muslims, maybe 100. Most of them also appeared to have come from one group and the majority were women; fully suited up and waving placards that all came off the same printer. There were maybe 30 or 40 men – their heads uncovered and acting quite relaxed

The Muslim Horde

and policing all of this there were at least 300-400 coppers. Most of whom were sitting eating chocolate bars and playing Nintendo in the 40-50 vans parked in the immediate area

And that was it

It was quite dull actually




And then a policewoman came up to me and tried to pick a fight.

I was standing on an empty traffic island in the middle of Whitehall, miles away from anyone, fiddling my camera when a little trog of a WPC brandishing a clip board walked up to me, stopped no more than a couple of inches from my chest and demanded…

‘Who are you’
‘I’m me. Who are you?’
‘Do you have a press pass?’
‘No? Do I need to?’
‘This area has been reserved for the press so I’d like you to cross back over to the far side of the street’
‘Um, OK but can I wait for the traffic to stop’
‘Yes’

a minute or so passes, she’s standing even closer to me, smirking

‘Um, do you want me to run in front of the traffic’
‘No. Of course not sirrrr’
‘Why are you standing so close to me’
‘I’m waiting for you to move. I’m here till 10 o’clock and I can stand here till then’

another minute or so passes, the road is still full of traffic

‘look sirrrr a perfect opportunity’

I weaved between the traffic and crossed the road. Meanwhile WPC Ewok is pointing me out with a biro, marking my card, to a group of policemen

I spent the rest of the afternoon pissed off with myself for letting her get away with it. In my defence I am looking to get a residence visa in a country that requires a police check on me in the not too distant future. So I am a little sensitive about dealing with the police at the moment but that’s no real excuse.

The thing is a few minutes before my little encounter a drunk Australian bloke was walking down Whitehall, saw the BNP demonstrators, stopped and to no-one in particular said ‘Fucking racists’. At which point a policemen turned round and said ‘They have a right to demonstrate’. The Aussie said something back to the policeman that almost certainly included the word fuck and bamn! three coppers had slammed him against a wall and arrested him.

This was uppermost in my mind when my turn came. The policewoman was standing so close to me that virtually any move I made could have been presented as assault, she opened her confrontation with me with a line taken from ‘How to start pub fights by asking questions that can’t be answered as rudely as possible’ and was hassling me going about my lawful business in a public place.

I’m a 42 year old white man with enough sense not to rise to provocation and it was all I could do to bite my lip. I doubt very much if someone younger, or browner, could have shown that restraint

That’s the great thing about being a copper. You can pick a fight with someone on the flimsiest of pretexts and if they react you can arrest them

Nice

The Full Monty

I suppose I could have told her I was about to join one of the demos but I’m not sure the Muslims would have had me and I didn’t have a Union Jack.

I’m still not sure why she picked on me. It was probably something to do with the fact that I obviously wasn’t a tourist and wasn’t part of the press pack. There was a big question mark hovering over my head and if there was thing that really irritates the shit out of The Machine it’s the thought of people it can’t classify. So back into the crowd of gawping American tourists for me.

Alternatively, maybe I was paying too much attention to the police presence rather than the demonstrators. People who take pictures of demos are supposed to focus solely on the most provocative placards they can find...

• They are not supposed to photograph those spooky police photographers who now attend every demo and jam their frame-mounted rigs into everyone’s face.

• They are supposed to only photograph those tiny, micro-sized coppers the Met thoughtfully places in front of the largest Muslims and most provocative placards (see previous post) not the 300+ other, considerably larger, coppers in the immediate vicinity
  

• And they are most certainly not supposed to giggle at the police ‘spotters’ walking up and down the length of the demo surreptitiously peeking at comical laminated A4 handouts filled with pictures of wanted Islamists that all look exactly the same...
  
  

The bottom line – I still think picking on the police is a distraction but I have absolutely no doubt that within the police there are some cunters in uniform who are absolutely loving the way the environment is changing in this country

And I still do not know who was behind that frickin’ demo...


.

BO Pics

A few pics from a stroll around Whitehall and Westminster today. There's piles more to download from my cameras, and my brain, but it's time for some dinner and a mindless movie. I am in a very grumpy mood...

Please note: Muslims BIG!
Metropolitan Police MicroCopper™ SMALL!

.

And today's forecast

... scattered showers with the outside chance of some Sunni outbreaks in the Downing Street area

Personally, I think now that this little do has been rumbled nothing will come of it. But we'll see...

.

Memorable quotes from NonConspiro™ World

Some wise words from the foremost classical thinkers of NonConspiro™ World...


"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to something."

Edmund Burke


"Eternal complacency is the price of liberty."

Wendell Phillips, (1811-1884)


"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve both."

Benjamin Franklin


“There is no safety for honest men except by believing nothing possibly evil of evil men.”

Edmund Burke (again, he was a lad)


"The greatest tyrannies are rarely, if ever, perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes."

Thomas Paine


"If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then that's an absolutely fantastic idea."

Thomas Sowell


etc etc

.

Welcome to NonConspiro™ World

You may or may not have detected that there’s been one of those periodic upsurges in mainstream attacks on 'conspiracy theories' and 'conspiracy theorists'

Tony Blair’s frankly breath-taking assault on the supposedly conspiracy theory obsessed mainstream media being the most high-profile example

Yes, of course, the mainstream media is absolutely riddled with conspiracy theories. You can’t open a broadsheet or visit an on-line news portal without being deluged with articles that highlight the factual inaccuracies and omissions in the Official Accounts of 7/7 and 9/11

Bollocks

The mainstream media are not my friend, even if the biggest dickhead in the country has a go at them once in a while




However, all things considered, the continuing assault on 'conspiracy theorists' is excellent news.

Every time BBC2 or Channel 4 host a documentary that, shock horror, scientifically proves once again that mistrust of government, newspapers and corporations is a sign of mental illness I indulge myself and have a little chuckle. By their own admission, the bitches who pedal this stuff have to concede that the number of people who adhere to 'conspiracy theories' is growing…

Apparently, mental illness is contagious

There are at least a couple of good reasons, as yet unexplored by television psychologists, for why this sickness is so virulent

First off, it’s incurable. Once you’re infected it’s almost impossible to recover. If you ever discover that someone is lying to you it’s virtually impossible to ever trust them again

Secondly, the parameters of what constitutes a 'conspiracy theory' are being expanded constantly – rather like the way pharma regularly enlarges the list of what diseases are symptomatic of ‘African’ AIDS.

It’s got to a point now where anyone gifted with perfectly healthy levels of paranoia and mistrust of the interests that have subverted democracy to fuck us over and slaughter innocent people in our name is now labelled as being psychologically damaged

"Yes yer Lordship. I know's me place. I'll just sit here with me beer and fags and not be asking any 'awkward questions. I don't wanna to banged up fer being a loonie do I?"

Yup, welcome to NonConspiro™ World. A world free from vested interests, lobbies, corruption, organised crime, ruthless elites, corporate misbehaviour and dodgy intelligence operations. Everything there is to know about how NonConspiro™ World works is known

What a lovely fluffy place NonConspiro™ World is

NonConspiro™ World (artist's impression)

Apparently, some of us believe in a fantasy parallel Conspiro World™ because that helps us come to terms with a scarily random universe. NonConspiro™ World adherents are, on the other hand, rational pragmatists who can deal with frightening realities.

Yes, yes it all makes sense. I just wish I had the kind of razor sharp intellect, education, personal honesty, social standing and mental stability needed to perceive these Scientifically Proven Truths™

.

The Chip Shop of Terror!!

Well, if today's Thursday 14th June tomorrow must be BRITISH OPPRESSION!! demo day

Oh goodie

To be honest, I can't tell if tomorrow's march is going to be a non event or a scrum but Britain's 'favourite newspaper' is getting mileage out of it anyway...




If you read the accompanying article it turns out that...

"The Ocean Fisheries chippie used to be owned by the family of suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer, 22"

Perfect, just perfect

I'll be posting links to all those other British blogs, concerned about the newspapers and government using suspicious fringe demos like this as an excuse to call for stricter laws on all of us, which are commenting on tomorrow's event/ non event, just as soon as I find any


(PS And if you're reading this Ian, you're always complaining that most demos these days are boring and not worth photographing. Methinks there may be an opportunity to put your camera where you mouth is)

-

edit: And the best response to the Sun's article I've seen so far is this post...

the sun really does make me cockle

cod minnows why cray keep trout-ing eel this stuff about 'hake', makes me sick to the gills it does - where's the hake in catfish poster then ? the sole thing i saw was a load of poor cods being badly mis-trout-ed - i couldn't see any hake, bata tuna what ? i think this plan will flounder, as it's increasingly known to be a load of hoki red herring whitebait pollocks set up by whitefish prawns - whelk thanks to our dogfish and brill blogger friends The Anchovy fish and others (they've got boals i tell you what), thanks to them this has been exposed as sucker carp, it really is taki the fish

i sincerely hope the police squid end up scampi about redfish-ed when no grouper protest takes plaice and there's no-one there to gudgeon

time this nonsense was knocked off its perch

the sun really needs to stop carp-ing on about Islam, skate-ing round the truth, shrimp-ing on the facts, and outright flatfish ling, it's so snook-y and sild-y...what a bunch of puntis

:winkle:

Who says you have to pay a professional big newspaper journalist £100k+ to write shit puns and pass them off as news?

.

Video recommendations of the week

A couple of examples of how far video editing technology has come, or hasn't come, since I don't know, say 1969 or July 7th 2005...

From Antagonist's blog a link to a clip of the definitely dead Bob Monkhouse making a charity appeal not so much from beyond his grave as next to it...



(I've always had a problem with what isn't said on those 7/7 'confession' videos and am not sure that there's any need for sceptics to invoke technical trickery. Bob's post mortem appeal does, however, show what is possible)


And the video of Rammstein's Amerika which I have to admit had me pissing myself, a lot...

Nice Pyramid...

(Lyrics here)

All together now

We're all living in Amerika. Amerika ist wonderbra...




(I should mention that's there's a shed load more going on in that Rammstein video than might first meet the eye. One example, if you do watch it, is the contrast between the nicely defined boot print left by the 'astronaut' on the lunar surface and the not so nicely defined footprint left by the guy walking on dry sand a little later on in the video. There are plenty of others. Genius...)


.

Album recommendation of the week

As mentioned in a earlier post, thanks to me answering a question someone asked in a comment a few weeks ago, this blog now appears in Google results if you search for 'Brown Gordon Rocking Horse Photograph Nappy'.

For anyone interested in what I'm talking about an explanation can be found here and some context here.

Which is not the same thing as an endorsement of the blog that gave this particular story a new lease of life. Personally, I hold 'right wing' and 'left wing' blogs in equal contempt as being prisoners of the same bullshit dichotomy. To paraphrase Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann 'There is no political bigotry here. I do not look down on tories, lefties or liberals. Here, you are all equally worthless.' Representative Democracy is dying on its all too easily corrupted arse and the sooner people can figure out a way of making Participatory Democracy work the better (or at the very least have 'None of the Above - Please find someone better' as an option on our ballot papers).

But I digress...

Now as it happens, as with the stories I posted about yesterday, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the nappy story is true. However, it does have some utility in that it appears to piss off some of those Labour party supporters who are trying to convince themselves that Brnwo is somehow going to be a less disgraceful Prime Minister than Blair has been.

But that's all by the by. The reason why I'm posting is that I happened upon this moderately synchronous photograph of an old album cover that I've just uploaded with the catchy file name...

gordonbrownrockinghorsenappyphotograph.jpg

Nappy Brown's Rocking Classics - Best of Both Worlds - Now available at Amazon

Feast on that Google Image Search. Feast my Lovely...


-

and yes, I know our politicians have a such a difficult job and they can't please all the people all the time etc etc. My response is that by their action or omission of action those bastards haved killed people and they lie through their teeth about it. Fuck them, I hope they burn in Hell.

.

L'orologio sparito di Bush

Just in case anyone bumping into this blog doesn't subscribe to the same feeds as I do...

There's a cracking photo story on the La Republicca website that graphically tells the heart-warming tale of how George W. got his watched nicked in Albania last (oops) this year week

"Mistero sull'orologio di Bush dopo il bagno di folla di domenica in Albania. Stando alle immagini della televisione locale il presidente esibiva un orologio all'arrivo. ma, dopo i tanti abbracci e strette di mano, il suo polso era nudo. Che fine ha fatto l'orologio?"

"It's the old "you are our hero!" steal the watch trick. Works every time"

I am particularly enjoying the grin on the chap's face in the third photo

Hats off to the whoever (literally) pulled that off. Bush is surrounded by some of the most highly-trained, heavily armed bodyguards in the world and they still had a go

Kudos

edit: also now available on Youtube

.

No more kiddie porn for you Mr Government Minister (?)

Just in case anyone has missed this post from the Yorkshire Ranter...

"You probably don't know that the government wants to implement wholesale filtering of URL requests from the end of next month, do you? Not that the national press, TV, or anything else has reported on it, nor has there been any serious parliamentary debate. Nuh. But the Home Office is pressurising British ISPs to install a system BT has been using since 2003, at the behest of (guess who) David Blunkett, called Cleanfeed..."

-

Apparently the Cleenfeed system is being rolled-out to combat online kiddie smut. Though it would seem that people who know a thing or two about the Internet can circumvent it easy enough. Which means that, as with so much of the new measures implemented by our government, it has the potential to affect ordinary law-abiding people a lot more than ordinary non law-abiding criminals

Whilst reading around this issue I encountered the tastefully named and executed NonceWatch web page and a section entitled - TWO LABOUR BIGWIGS IN CHILD PORN INVESTIGATION. There's plenty of stuff out there about what the police may have stumbled upon as a result Operation Ore. Virtually all of it is hearsay and rumour, as the newspapers backed off from the story pronto. It's still an amusing, albeit completely unsubstantiated, read though. So why not pop 'Labour Minister Child Porn Operation Ore' into Google and have a browse around before it all gets 'filtered'

And what better time than now to reproduce a picture of George Robertson, former UK Defence Secretary and Secretary General of NATO...

"Robertson attracted some public criticism for his alleged role in the Dunblane massacre, most notably his alleged prior involvement with Thomas Hamilton, the two men's Masonic connections and the quashing of psychiatric objections to Hamilton's gun license. The allegations were groundless, and Robertson won a libel case against the website that had hosted the claims"

Thanks to the superb British libel laws we can now be sure that if there is any basis to the rumours that senior figures in the Labour party were involved in a child porn case, details of which were subsequently D-Noticed into oblivion, it definitely wasn't him

One down, several hundred to go...

And for an alternate take on the kiddie porn issue it's worth reading a couple of pieces by David Aaronovitch here and here, where he makes the distinction between viewing sick child smut and engaging in sick child smut. Maybe David could have a word with his old friend, former Labour cabinet minister Peter Mandelson and get him to pull a few strings in the government. Because the Conspiraloon™ in me is saying 'today they're filtering kiddie porn, tomorrow whatever the fuck they want'

-

edit: just for clarity's sake all this stuff about Labour MPs is completely unverifiable. My concern is not about who may or may not get off on looking a sick pictures it's about how an issue such as child pornography is elevated and shaped because it serves a wider purpose. That is until the hysteria that's been whipped up starts to splash back onto the people doing the the whipping - at which point the story changes

please also note the exceptional restraint I have shown by not writing a sentence that includes the words Brown, Gordon, Rocking Horse, Photograph and Nappy, even though there is some evidence that an awful lot of people are plugging them into Google

edit2: oops, I've just discovered that this blog does comes up on the first page of Google results if you search 'Brown Gordon Rocking Horse Photograph Nappy' so I must have written that sentence at some point in the past. What with one thing and another, if there really is a NWO that is planning to take over the world I am going to be so fucked

Ah well, in for a penny in for a pound, you may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, etc etc..

.

An open comment for Inayat Bunglawala

As mentioned in an earlier post. Inayat Bunglawala, Assistant Secretary-General Muslim Council of Britain, left a comment under his own article in the Guardian’s Comment is Free saying that people who have doubts about the Official Narrative of 7/7 are ‘nuts’

This struck me as a inconsistent position to be taken by someone who claims to represent the ‘Muslim Community’ in Great Britain so I submitted my own comment under the article yesterday

I had a look this morning to see if my comment had passed moderation and discovered instead that comment submission had been closed and the following message had been appended to the comment thread

Our policy is to close threads after three days. Comments have now been closed on this entry.

Which isn’t exactly true as they’re not posting comments that were accepted for moderation and reproduction. There’s a little bit of retrospective malarky going on over at CiF

Nice

Anyway, I’m reproducing my comment here just in case Inayat ever Googles his own name. I liked it and it seems a shame to waste it...


Given that 59% of Muslims polled have expressed doubts about the Official Narrative of 7/7, Inayat has a couple of honourable courses of action open to him IMHO

Establish why so many Muslims have those doubts and either :

• explain to them why those doubts are ill-founded by addressing the grounds for their concern directly
  
  
• represent their point of view

I can’t see how simply dismissing a large group of people as nutters whilst claiming to represent them can be tenable

He’d also be doing us non-Muslims who feel uneasy about the 7/7 narrative a favour too, one way or the other

And BTW does anyone actually know if permission for a march was given and, if so, who applied for it?



Of course, the irony of all this is is that if people who are sceptical about statements made by the proven liars in our government really did suffer from some form of mental illness all the choppers who call them 'nuts' couldn't get away with it.

.

The Face of Conspiraloonacy™

Just did a google image search for 'Conspiraloon™'' and, joy of joys, whose fizzog came up in the top row of results?




That's me, just to the left of some fan art featuring Private Pyle from Full Metal Jacket and to the North East of a photo of a death camp guard.

Oh dear

.

And on Newsnight tonight

It looks like BBC's Newsnight is starting the week as it means to continue it...


===========================================
NEWSNIGHT - MONDAY 11 JUNE 22:30 BST - BBC TWO
===========================================

————————————————————
FROM PROGRAMME PRODUCER KAVITA PURI
————————————————————

Hello,

Newsnight exclusive tonight:

We have an incredible interview with the former wife of a British Muslim extremist. She tells us how her husband tried to persuade her to carry out a suicide attack in the UK. She explains in detail how her husband showed her how to wear an explosive belt. We’ll be discussing how such extremism can be tackled.

Iraq Inquiry

The Conservatives are calling for a full inquiry into the war in Iraq. Gordon Brown, visiting Baghdad today, said it would be wrong to hold an inquiry now while British troops are still serving in Iraq. We’ll be debating the issue.

Iranian Influence in Afghanistan

A high tech “shaped” bomb has been found in Kabul today. These are similar to the ones used in Iraq against Allied vehicles, and the military say could come from Iran. Alastair Leithead reports from Afghanistan on the extent of Iran’s influence in the country...

Can anyone else see a pattern here?

"And in tomorrow's episode of Newsnight - Could the Iranians be close to developing their very own
Death Star?"

An acquaintance of mine insists that the increase in volume of propaganda like this is a good thing as it's a sign of desperation. That it might be. It might also be part of an orchestrated build-up to something quite nasty in the not too distant future. I'm fucked if I can tell which it is. Whatever the answer, those cunts at the BBC are definitely singing someone's song

and remember, arming extremist insurgents is only a good thing to do when our governments are doing it…

.

Whimpering kids - Then and Now

There's a thought provoking little post over at the State of the Art photoblog.

Exactly 35 years to the day after he captured this iconic image...




...AP photographer Nick Ut grabbed another front page scoop with a photograph of another whimpering child - though this one hadn't been splashed with napalm...




This did strike me as being a slight waste of his skills and experience

I've been prattling about how disgraceful our media is over the last few posts. The irony of these two very different pictures of sobbing kids, separated by 35 years of conditioning of what to expect from our newspapers, captures one aspect of what's so very wrong with our media today. When they're not recycling lies they're distracting us with irrelevant bullshit.

And we lap it up

-

And whilst on the subject of Vietnam in 1972, it's worth remembering that even though the US realised that it was fighting an unwinnable war by '67 or '68, direct US involvement continued for another four years and indirect involvement for another three after that. Some of the worst horrors and most gratuitous slaughter of civilians of the entire war took place long after everyone knew what the result was going to be.

So, next time you hear anyone, the entire leadership of the Labour Party for example, saying that whatever the circumstances of our entry into Iraq, that's all water under the bridge (yeah, right) and we are now honour bound to stay until the situation is somehow magically 'fixed', it's worth asking them, if you can get an opportunity, what the fuck they're on about.

Just because you can break something that's no reason to kid yourself that you can put it back together.

(Of course, we Conspiraloons™ believe that US and UK forces were always going to be kept in the region, however the occupation worked out, but we're mad and our opinions can be safely ignored)

.

Vlad does stand-up

I've just been reading through the transcript of a press conference given by Vladmir Putin last week as part of the G8 conference. No doubt what Putin had to say was extensively covered by the UK's press. It's just that I haven't found the coverage yet

It's a long slab of text but worth skimming through as it covers an awfully large number of hot button topics that are currently being covered by the English-speaking media in a distinctly 'unipolar' way. It's always nice to hear what people have to say for themselves, first hand without prior filtration by hard-working, objective and completely independent professional journalists.

Personal favourite highlights from Putin's conference include (my super-favourite bits in italics)...


On Russia being ringed by US missile bases

We have not just stated that we are ready to comply with the treaty, like certain others have done. We really are implementing it: we have removed all of our heavy weapons from the European part of Russia and put them behind the Urals. We have reduced our Armed Forces by 300,000. We have taken several other steps required by the ACAF. But what have we seen in response? Eastern Europe is receiving new weapons, two new military bases are being set up in Romania and in Bulgaria, and there are two new missile launch areas — a radar in Czech republic and missile systems in Poland. And we are asking ourselves the question: what is going on? Russia is disarming unilaterally. But if we disarm unilaterally then we would like to see our partners be willing to do the same thing in Europe. On the contrary, Europe is being pumped full of new weapons systems. And of course we cannot help but be concerned...

Again I would not want you to suffer from the illusion that we have fallen out of love with anyone. But I sometimes think to myself: why are they doing all this? Why are our American partners trying so obstinately to deploy a missile defence system in Europe when — and this is perfectly obvious — it is not needed to defend against Iranian or — even more obvious — North Korean missiles? (We all know where North Korea is and the kind of range these missiles would need to have to be able to reach Europe.) So it is clearly not against them and it is clearly not against us because it is obvious to everyone that Russia is not preparing to attack anybody. Then why? Is it perhaps to ensure that we carry out these retaliatory measures? And to prevent a further rapprochement between Russian and Europe? If this is the case (and I am not claiming so, but it is a possibility), then I believe that this would be yet another mistake because that is not the way to improve international peace and security...

And I am also against an arms race. I am opposed to any kind of arms race but I would like to quickly draw your attention to something I said in last year’s Address [to the Federal Assembly]. We have learned from the Soviet Union’s experience and we will not be drawn into an arms race that anyone imposes on us. We will not respond symmetrically, we will respond with other methods and means that are no less effective. This is called an asymmetrical response. The United States are building a huge and costly missile defence system which will cost dozens and dozens of billions of dollars. We said: “no, we are not going to be pulled into this race. We will construct systems that will be much cheaper yet effective enough to overcome the missile defence system and therefore maintain the balance of power in the world.” And we are going to proceed this way in the future.


On BP and Shell being cheated out of making billions from dodgy, African-style agreements made with criminals

Did you like what was written? You know, that is a colonial treaty that has absolutely nothing to do with the interests of the Russian Federation. I can only regret that in the early 1990s the Russian officials allowed such incidents to take place, incidents for which they should have been put in prison. Implementing this treaty resulted in a situation in which, for a long period of time, Russia allowed its natural resources to be exploited and received nothing in return. Almost nothing at all. But if our partners had been fulfilling their obligations correctly then we certainly would have had no chance to rectify the situation. But they are guilty of violating environmental laws and this is a generally accepted fact that is supported with objective data. And I must say that our partners do not even deny it. Environmental experts have corroborated this evidence. Incidentally, Gazprom has received various proposals from its partners to join the project even earlier, before any environmental scandal, but refused to do so. But after the environmental problems arose and there was the threat of fines, I believe that Gazprom’s entry quite simply saved the project.


On the Litvinenko murder investigation

And now about the request itself. I have very mixed feelings about this request. If the people who sent this request did not know that the Russian Constitution prohibits the extradition of Russian citizens to foreign countries then their level of competency must certainly be questioned. In general the heads of such high-ranking law enforcement agencies should know this. And if they do not know this then their place is not in law enforcement agencies but somewhere else. In parliament, for example, or in journalism. But on the other hand, if they did know this but made the request anyways, then it is just a publicity stunt. In other words, you can look at the problem from any way but in all cases you see stupidity. I do not see any positive aspects to what was done. If they did not know then they are incompetent and we have doubts about what they have been doing there. And if they did know and did it anyway then that is pure politics. Both options are bad.

One last point. I think that after the British government allowed a significant number of criminals, thieves and terrorists to gather in Britain they created an environment which endangers the lives and health of British citizens. And all responsibility for this lies with the British side.

(and I don't think Vlad was talking about Muslim jihadists)


On why the International Debt-based Banking System is such a big fan of Putin's Russia

We had enormous debts, simply catastrophic for our economy, but we have paid them off in full now. Not only have we paid our debts, but we now have the best foreign debt to GDP ratio in Europe. Our gold and currency reserve figures are well known: in 2000, they stood at just $12 billion and we had a debt of more than 100 percent of GDP, but now we have the third-biggest gold and currency reserves in the world and they increased by $90 billion over the first four months of this year alone.


And to cap it all he managed to work a joke in at the expense of a German correspondent at the end...


GLOBE AND MAIL: If NATO had advantages in terms of missile defence, it could perhaps be of use? The U.S. is taking unilateral action, but if NATO were to get involved instead it would not look like an imperialist step. Everything might look different if NATO or Russia were to become involved in these missile defence plans.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: If NATO were involved this would not fundamentally change anything because we know how decisions are made in NATO. They were made in the same way in the Warsaw Pact. There was a joke in East Germany: How can you tell which of the telephones on Honecker’s desk is the direct line to Moscow? Do you know this joke?

DER SPIEGEL: No.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: The answer is: it’s the one with only a receiver and no mouthpiece. (Laughter).

"Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week..."

Like I said at the top of this post, I'm sure what Putin had to say was extensively covered and analysed in the British press, I just have to find it...

.

A Little More British Oppression, A little More Action Baby

An interesting little update on that 'British Oppression' demo that may or may not be organised by Muslims that may or may not be held outside Downing Street on June 15th....

Inayat Bunglawala (aka Lackey Pak), an Assistant Secretary-General at the state-sanctioned, partially state-funded, voice of British Islam that is the Muslim Council of Britain, has now written a piece for the Guardian on-line on the 'Mystery Demo'

Hallelujah!!

The mainstream media and the official voice of British Islam are now on the case.

Everything is going to be OK




One thing though, like a couple of other people I couldn't help noticing the more than passing similarity between Bunglawala's piece and a blog post someone else made on the same subject over a fortnight ago. However, I'm sure any similarity is entirely coincidental as Bunglawala would doubtlessly have included some credit or reference to it if he had ripped it off (less some of the original's more provocative analysis). He hasn't, so obviously he didn't

The comments underneath the Bunglawala article are worth skimming through. Top of the list of 'must reads' being a reply from Inayat himself...

"Yes, I agree that a worrying number of people continue to believe in conspiracy theories. The sad fact is that the 7/7 tragedy - just like the JFK assassination - lends itself to conspiracy nuts."

So much for a man who purports to represent the 'Muslim Community' in Great Britain. Over half of Muslims polled have expressed doubts about the official narrative of 7/7 and he calls them 'nuts'.

Presumably the Muslim Council of Britain has engaged someone else to represent the views of the sceptics who constitute half of its constituency

Personally speaking, if someone set up the Mouthy South London White Boy Council of Britain that claimed to speak in my name and then called me 'nuts' in the national press I'd be inclined to think that he was a bit of an arsehole




Some of the comments under the Bunglawala article even attempt to equate 7/7 scepticism with actual support for terrorism (WTF?) and others are just plain deluded...

"You don't really think that the behaviour of these idiots in holding their dumb rally is something that our parliament will take into account when deciding whether to adopt further measures to combat terrorism, do you? What an idiotic thing to say."

'My own theory is that security services want this demo to happen so they can draw out these nutters.'

Who was it who was telling me the other day that people aren't as stupid as some of us think they are? ;-) Would he like to consider rephrasing or qualifying that statement?

.

That 2012 logo reassembled...

In another world exclusive scoop* for the Conspiraloon™ Alliance, the true form of the fragmented 2012 Olympic Logo is revealed...




Of course, the crucial requirement for any good satire is that it must, whether knowingly or unknowingly, include an element of truth...



The fascinating thing about BINGOs (Big International Non Governmental Organisations) is that, with a little research, you discover that all of them stink. Which I suppose is obvious really. Otherwise they wouldn't be permitted to exist.

Now what do those five rings represent again? Oh yes, the seven continents...

-

* = sort of
.

Let’s Play Boris Bingo!!! aka Welcome to Londongrad

There’s a little game I’ve been playing with every news story about Russia I've seen or read since Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned.

The game simply involves doing a Google search for the name of every Russian quoted in the story combined with the name ‘Berezovsky’

Names such as Stansilav Belkovsky, ‘The National Strategic Institute of Moscow’, the ‘The International Foundation for Civil Liberties’, Yuri Felshtinsky (quoted in Counterpunch no less) and, above all, Alexander Goldfarb…

Alex Goldfarb is frequently described in the press as a ‘family friend’ of the murdered ex-FSB assassin and freelance 'security consultant' Alexander Litivinenko (described by one stupefyingly well-informed member of the audience on Question Time last night as ‘a good man’) and has co-authored a book with Litvinenko’s widow - Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB (Hardcover).

And, strangely enough, virtually all of the Russians quoted as first-hand sources of how Russia under Putin is sliding into barbarity turn out to be employees 'associates' of Boris Berezovsky.

You could write a book about the fascinating Mr Berezovsky, though I wouldn’t advise it. The last person to do that got shot.

Suffice to say, unlike all of the Muslims being arrested in this country on terrorism conspiracy (ho ho) charges, Boris has helped fuck up the way of life and democracy of an entire nation and he is attempting to orchestrate the violent overthrow of that nation’s democratically elected government, behind the protection of a British passport sold/ given to him on the basis that he is a political refugee...

Boris Berezovsky is to honesty and democracy what Gary Glitter is to the child care industry




But strangely, media whores like fellow Question Time panelist Melanie Phillips don't seem that fussed about London becoming a home from home for anti-democratic foreign criminals - unless that is a) they don't exist, or b) their skin happens to be brown

Welcome to Londonistan Londongrad

(Possibly the most amusing moment in last night’s Question Time was listening to people complain about the Russians not allowing murder suspect Andrei Lugavoi to be extradited to the UK. Someone had the temerity to point out that the UK has resisted requests to extradite Berezovsky to Russia for years but that was neatly dealt with by general agreement that the Russian legal system was crap and ours was ace. So, double standards are OK provided they are British double standards)

"And tonight’s guests on Question Time are Charles Manson, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, The Evil Hood from Thunderbirds, Gary Glitter, The Yorkshire Ripper ...and Melanie Phillips"

Curiously, in spite of a CV that would have made Al Capone blush, Boris and his ‘associates’ are quoted verbatim in the British Media and have contributed in no small part to the latest outbreak of anti-Russian feeling being stoked up by those media.

-

The hypocrisy being displayed by the Western Media and Politicians is breath-taking. When you actually try and quantify just what it is that Putin’s Russia is doing that is supposedly so repugnant to decent people, especially when compared to the actions of our own governments, it’s difficult to get a handle on what the problem is...

• Putin was democratically elected – by a stonking majority in comparison to, say, Tony Blair
• Aside from the Chechen mess that Putin inherited from the Saintly Boris Yeltsin, Russia hasn’t invaded anywhere on the basis of lies, unlike, er, Tony Blair
  
• All of the ordinary Russians I've met, whilst cautious about Putin becoming a dictator, are profoundly thankful that he stopped their country imploding, unlike what ordinary people in this country think about, er, whatshisface...
  

The Russians have, however, kicked out a few (though not all) oligarchs, got a little pissy about the Americans ringing their country with missile bases, and they are using their copious energy resources as a geopolitical tool on the international stage

The bastards

Don’t they realise that having their country turn to shit is a price worth paying for Western energy security?

All this talk in the West of civil rights and democracy in Russia is a lie. None of the people spinning this rubbish care two fucks about the Russian people, no more than they cared about the Iraqi people. They didn't give a toss when Russia was slipping into the void and I doubt very much if ordinary people in Russia would want to see their government ever talking advice from the West again.

The West had the option of investing in Russia in the 1990s but chose to crater its economy instead. And the forward thinking people in our establishment know that down the line we’re going to have to buy essential commodities off the Russians with nothing to offer in exchange except for our own increasingly worthless currencies.

And, bizarrely, such diverse, supposedly libertarian, characters as Peter Tatchell and Craig Murray have spontaneously (?) joined in the Russia baiting. Peter Tatchell has always been a self-publicising tool so his behaviour comes as no surprise. However, along with his recent suggestion that punching policemen on the nose will stop the encroachment on our civil liberties (a very curious thing for a former establishment figure to say), Murray’s recent writings on Russia have been a, ummm, disappointment.

-

As far as many Russians are concerned the antics of Berezovsky and his ‘associates’ are so crude and so transparent that they actually suspect him of working with Putin (contrary to popular belief, Putin didn’t crack down on all the Oligarchs and many are thriving in Russia)

Apparently, British journalists don’t think there’s anything crude or transparent about Berezovsky at all and faithfully repeat any old crap Goldfarb puts out on his behalf without even a whiff of criticism or context

Stuff like this picture…

"But as I lie here I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the Angel of Death... and Alex Goldfarb telling the photographer to take more close ups"

or Litvinenko’s surprisingly wordy death bed statement

... because staging pictures and extracting statements from someone dying from late-stage radiation-induced cancer is the first thing close family friends would want to do

Is it that our journalists are simply out of their depth when faced by such Machiavellian goings-on and reduced to mere 'repeaters' as a consequence?

Sorry, I’m not buying it.

And here’s where, as a unrepentant Conspiraloon™, I diverge from the majority of people when considering the role of our Press in this shameful business. I just cannot accept that all of the people shoveling this stuff are that ignorant

If there’s one thing Berezovsky has shown us in the UK it’s how easy it is to hoodwink or buy our press with the aid of a compliant establishment

Forget worries over the freedom and objectivity of the press in Putin's Russia what about this country?

Five minutes of research would encourage even the most mentally-challenged but honourable journalist to inject at least a little scepticism into their coverage. And there is something more than a little outrageous about quoting people as being representatives of sham organisations such as the ‘International Foundation for Civil Liberties’ without at least mentioning that they are the creation of a billionaire exile wanted in his home country for theft and fraud. You wouldn’t get away with putting an unknown football commentator on television on the basis that he’s the spokesperson for the made-up ‘International Football Skills Foundation’ - total membership two people.

But there again, your average brain dead cunt takes football more seriously than matters of life and death. Probably because the sheer irrelevance and triviality of sport means that it’s OK to follow it in depth. No nasty surprises that will fuck up your perception of the world and the part you play in it.

OK that’s not entirely fair. Many people I meet are receptive to alternative explanations for current events to the ones permitted in the mainstream press, provided those accounts are cogent. However, they don’t have the time to dig this stuff out for themselves. And that’s the challenge. How to reach to them?

-

Alex Goldfarb Boris Berezovsky has very kindly offered to answer viewer's questions in response to last night's episode of Question Time. I'll be sending in one or two of my own...

.

Best Episode of Question Time ever?

Melanie Phillips and Boris Berezovsky?!!




Fuck me

Why don't we just nuke Iran and Russia tomorrow and get it over with?

.

The Cult of the Whore

Today’s subscription email from BBC’s Newsnight had me almost choking on my coffee…

==========================================
NEWSNIGHT - TALKING POINT ==========================================

------------------------------------------------------------
The Cult of the Amateur
------------------------------------------------------------

"If we are all amateurs, there are no experts."

Andrew Keen's new book, The Cult of the Amateur is the latest addition to the Newsnight book club. In it, the author expresses his concern for the profligacy of online amateurism, spawned by the digital revolution. This, he feels, has had a destructive impact on our culture, economy and values.

He says, "[They] can use their networked computers to publish everything from uninformed political commentary, to unseemly home videos, to embarrassingly amateurish music, to unreadable poems, reviews, essays, and novels".

He complains that blogs are "collectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture".

He claims that Wikipedia perpetuates a cycle of misinformation and ignorance, and labels YouTube inane and absurd, "showing poor fools dancing, singing, eating, washing, shopping, driving, cleaning, sleeping, or just staring at their computers."

He warns that old media is facing extinction - "say goodbye to experts and cultural gatekeepers - our reporters, news anchors, editors, music companies, and Hollywood movie studios."

What do you think? We've published two extracts from Andrew Keen's book on the Newsnight website. Have a read and share your thoughts - is he being alarmist about the effects of the Web 2.0 revolution, or raising genuine concerns? Are we at the mercy of the amateur? Can kids tell the difference between credible news sources and the amateur's blog? What, in any case, can be done?


Presumably the Newsnight production team are talking about the kind of credible news sources which...

• Label anyone who doubts proven liars in our government and security forces as being mentally unbalanced

• When the number of people with doubts gets so large that the insanity claim doesn’t stick they try and sow a little racial division instead

• Act as an unofficial marketing arm of the pharmaceutical business
  
  

• Repeat any old propaganda passed onto them by greasy Russian PR gurus working for organized criminals (more of that anon)

• Demonstrate amazing psychic powers and report buildings as having collapsed half an hour before they do

• Slavishly report each high-profile terrorist arrest and terrorist scare without application of even the slightest trace of common sense or reason
  
  

• Unashamedly try to stoke up enthusiasm for a couple of wars of aggression, even whilst the last couple of wars they helped lie us into are still raging
  
  

Yes, I suppose the Newsnight team must be referring to those kind of credible news sources.

I’m still waiting for Newsnight’s credible take on Andrei Lugovoi's claim last week that MI6 was involved in some way in the Litvinenko poisoning

The press conference was on Thursday morning

per Newsnight’s Thursday email, the stories covered by the program that night were

- TORY U-TURN?
- BUSH AND CLIMATE CHANGE
- AFGHANISTAN
- MADELEINE McCANN

Then on Friday…

- ALAN JOHNSTON
- CHILD PORNOGRAPHY
- BLAIR IN SOUTH AFRICA
- ENGLAND FOOTBALL FRIENDLY

Now you could argue that those other stories were more important than the Lugavoi press conference. I would counter by saying that if Muslims had been involved in smearing radioactive crap all over London, Newsnight would have run a hour long special on Lugavoi’s claims. Still, I’m sure the Newsnight team will get round to covering the story as soon as Alex Goldfarb faxes them with the details of what to say. That's how they've handled the Litvinenko story so far

What really baffles me is where are all these British based blogs that represent such a dangerously-flawed alternative to the established media?

I’m buggered if I can find them

If you do a Google search on the name ‘Mark Urban’; that purveyor by Royal Appointment of the finest spooky disinformation about the 7/7 bombings, Islamic Terrorism and the Occupation of Iraq, this blog, this poxy personal blog, comes in at number one


If I have achieved nothing else tapping away at this keyboard for last couple of years that achievement alone has made it all worthwhile. However, patting myself on the back aside, the fact is that the number of blogs out there that are really getting stuck into 'professionals' like Mark is tiny. If the Internet really was such a hotbed of media subversion, I shouldn’t come out on top (there’s a cracking piece on Urban Myths here BTW)

Someone recently included a link to this blog in a viral exercise to name and link to five blogs that each person in the chain approved of. My particular branch stopped with me as I couldn’t think of three, let alone five, regularly updated British blogs that I thought were worth reading that were not tainted in some way.

What there is a lot of out there is a mass of really fucked off people who, even though they don’t have the time or inclination to maintain their own platform, do make their feelings clear on other people's sites, including the Internet arms of mainstream news organisations.

And the reason why those people are annoyed is that they know full well they are being systematically lied to by those mainstream outlets.

This is not some abstract game and people have good cause to feel hatred towards the whores who peddle this muck. Their lies pave the way for exploitation, war and death.

So, my suggested answer to Newsnight's question 'What, in any case, can be done?' is 'At least try telling the fucking truth for a change' and then people might stop switching off

.

A very crafty piece of work from Channel 4

Jon Snow introducing C4's report on the 'The Muslim Question' - no Final Solutions have been presented at this stage

OK, I've seen the Channel 4 piece about British Muslims and their doubts about the Official Narrative of 7/7

And, fuck me, how surprised was I to discover that I hated it

You could have knocked me down with a feather

I won’t bother with what would be a very long list of the snide little presentational tricks used in the film but they are there and once a copy gets put up on Youtube (I have it on VHS if all else fails) any vaguely media literate person will be able to spot them.

edit: the video is currently up on Google here and here

However, it’s worth running through some of the more blatant devices used...


Attributing doubts about 7/7 to a sense of alienation on the part of Muslims

The message of the piece was that 7/7 scepticism is a Muslim specific issue and not grounded in the weaknesses in the Official Account of 7/7. The possibility that C4 was putting the cart in front of the horse and that some Muslims were feeling alienated because of the bullshit surrounding 7/7 was not touched

And the last time I looked at my baptism certificate I was a Roman Catholic


Misrepresenting Luton CCTV footage

C4 showed a few frames taken from another day whilst the presenter was talking about 7th July. The timestamp was there to see but the vast majority of viewers would have come away with the impression that the footage was from 7/7. In fact, the absence of images from 7/7 is a major cause for scepticism. An issue not mentioned in the piece


Presenting people’s concerns without context

The film showed lots of clips of Muslims saying they doubted the official account of 7/7 but did not show lots of clips of Muslims explaining why they had doubts. The impression given was that their concerns had no credible basis. The most blatant example was the part where a young Asian man explained why he thought the Luton CCTV image had been doctored. A shot of the photograph was included but not in a way that you could see what he was talking about.

Somebody I know personally was interviewed for the film. He is well spoken, intelligent and would have had no problem communicating why he has questions about 7/7, which is presumably why his contribution was edited down to something like one and half sentences (they were good sentences though)


Gatekeepers, straw men, loonies and shills

The piece managed to work in some clips from Alex Jones, a ‘witness’ called Daniel and a sliver of the film Ludicrous Division with an emphasis on its spooky X-Files style soundtrack. Presumably the producers didn't have enough time or couldn't get hold of 'ex' MI5 operative David Shayler or 'ex MI6 operative' and alien tunnel aficionado James Cockasbolt

I’ve written about Daniel here. I don’t recall writing much about Alex Jones’ coverage of 7/7 in his film Terrror Storm but suffice to say it’s the sloppiest account of 7/7 issues and riddled with perplexingly (if you trust Mr Jones that is) obvious factual errors


I could go on but what’s the point? Tonight’s effort by C4 asserted that there were no grounds for scepticism about 7/7 without actually covering the issues. The xenophobes in the audience will come away with their belief that Muslims are a bunch of disloyal bastards who hate our government and therefore our country reaffirmed. Non xenophobes will be satisfied with the psychological tosh about alienation and exclusion.

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. Any time someone from the mainstream media or an associated production company gets in touch with any of us 'who doubt', their only objective is to make us look like idiots or lunatics. They are not going to help


edit: someone has just dropped me a line pointing out that C4's web site does give a little more coverage on the inconsistencies in the Official Narrative of 7/7. That it does. It also includes web links to some right old shit

edit #2: someone else has pointed out to me that I should at least be pleased that C4 addressing the issue of 7/7 scepticism is a sign of progress. Well, yes. But I don''t think that's because the folk at C4 are nice guys. Their treatment of the material pretty much disproves that possibility

edit #3: it is heartening to see that C4 was clearly bombarded by emails from people who weren't biting the 'mistrust of the government is a Muslim specific problem' line taken by the piece. One thing that always makes me laugh about the 'public response' to this sort of thing is that it appears to be mandatory to include the thoughts of some random cunt who starts talking about Elvis Presley (in this case it's you 'Russ Singleton'). Play another tune for fuck's sake...

Chinese Elvis - so convincing an Elvis impersonator that you'll actually start believing that The King isn't really dead...

"We're caught in a trap
I can't walk out
Because I love you too much baby

Why can't you see
What you're doing to me
When you don't believe a word I say?

We can't go on together
With suspicious minds
And we can't build our dreams
On suspicious minds..."

.

On C4 News Tonight...

I can't wait to see how C4 is going to play this one (though David Cameron and some of our more reactionary blogging bretheren have already made their feelings clear on the disloyalty of British Muslims suffering from the mental affliction of 'denial') ...


J7 on Channel 4 News Tonight
===================

Tune in to Channel 4 News tonight at 7pm to see the results of some independent research commissioned by ITN to gauge opinions about the events of 7th July 2005. The research findings indicate that at least 60% of British Muslims have issues with the official story of 7/7, as outlined in the Home Office report and, further, the research also reveals that a substantial percentage of the non-Muslim population also question the story that has been spun by the government.

The exact details of the survey results were not made available to J7 but - we have been informed - tonight's Channel 4 News features an interview with a member of the July 7th Truth Campaign to discuss the research findings, and the events of 7/7, from a Muslim perspective.

Tune in to Channel 4 News tonight, Monday, 4th June 2007 at 7:00pm.

.

By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes

Paul over at Conspiraloon™ HQ has just put together a useful and comprehensive style guide to recreating the David Icke cosmic vibe on your own web pages




Unfortunately, as Paul himself admits, the mainstream media is already starting to copy the distinctive and attractive Conspiraloon™ look




Though the classier newspapers are still presenting their rabid, warmongering bullcrap in their traditional, more high brow format




And this week’s competition for all those non Conspiraloons™ out there – Complete the following statement in 100 words or less:

‘I believe that the mainstream media is not preparing public opinion for another war of aggression with the aid of lies and bullshit because…’

Non conspiratorial explanations for the apparently co-ordinated nature of the media campaign and the fact that no journalists appear to remember how they were fooled (sic.) before the invasion of Iraq will earn particularly high marks

.

Most Original Spam of the Week

> -----Original Message-----
> From: andraz ***** [mailto:andraz.*****@gmail.com]
> Sent: 29 May 2007 16:12
> To: ********@gmail.com
> Subject: Photo experiement
>
>
> Hello,
>
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> as many pictures taken from different digital cameras in complete
> darkness. So, if you own a digital camera and you are willing to
> help please do the following: set your camera to lowest ISO
> setting possible, set the timer and put the camera in a box or
> somewhere else where there will be no light available. After the
> picture is taken, please send it to andraz.*****@gmail.com. thanks.
>
> andraz
>
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.1/822 - Release Date:
> 28/05/2007 11:40


Well, as he asked so nicely...



.

The Labour Party is Full of Wankers pt1

Flickr is hosting a group called How We Are Now as part of an exhibition of the same name currently showing at Tate Modern

How We Are Now Tate Britain, 22 May — 2 September 2007 takes a unique look at the journey of British photography, from the pioneers of the early medium to today’s photographers who use new technology to make and display their imagery. To demonstrate the evolving nature of photography in the twenty-first century, Flickr photographs will be featured in the exhibition.

The answer to the question 'How We are Now?', for many of the contributors, seems to be self-indulgent, narcissistic, middle-class and white

Which is probably more reflective of the composition of the British Internet rather than Britain as a whole.

But not all of the photos lick donkey nuts and the group is worth a peek if you like looking at photographs

My contributions to date are…







… though whether they’ve actually made it to the slide shows in Tate Modern I don’t know. Some of more narcissistic and self-indulgent contributors have admitted to visiting Tate Modern to see their pictures. Given that something like 4,000 photos have been submitted to date that strikes me as scoring a solid ‘9’ on the Sad-o-Meter

Only after I submitted by humble selection did I realise that I’d been to drawn to them not because they were particularly good but because they show a London that doesn’t get much representation in the mainstream media – and when it does it’s normally with a sneer

When it comes to being demonised, being a member of the white working/ under class is second only to being a Muslim

And if you read most of the papers you’d be forgiven for believing that everyone in that underclass woke up one day and consciously decided...

‘I know, I’m going to spend my shorter than average life-span eating shit food, watching shit television, living in a shit council flat, getting tanked-up and siring illegitimate children as often as my social security money allows’

Yes, of course, that’s what they’ve all done.

And it’s nothing a few ASBOs can’t solve

© BBDO

There’s something I’ve been thinking about since someone posted a link the Mario Savio’s famous (in America anyway) ‘gears of the machine’ speech under a post I made about the forthcoming ‘Taking Liberties’ documentary...

The most dangerous group to any Ruling System are those people who are both excluded and educated. And if exclusion is an integral part of that System, well, you can't include those people so there’s only one way to neutralize them...

Fuck their schools up

I am acutely conscious of the fact that if I had been born in the same circumstances as I was but 25 years later, both my primary and secondary schools are now seriously sub-standard. And even if I had got past that obstacle and still been eligible for University place I would either have not gone because of the cost or gone and been saddled with debts that would have turned me into a compliant debt-bitch for at least a good chunk of my twenties in the run up to becoming a mortgage bitch.

And, in the words of the great Sheryl Crow, I got a feeling I’m not the only one

The angry, educated, mouthy pleb has become an endangered species.

This country is still producing an angry, mouthy underclass but, without a decent education, they don’t know why they’re angry and are more than likely to lash out at the nearest person rather than the people who have fucked them over.

By any measure, social inequality in this country is increasing rapidly and the astonishing thing is that this is happening under a Labour government

A Labour government composed of such staunchly principled MPs as London’s very own Diane Abbott – the kind of Left Wing politician who is resolutely against any form of selective education, unless it's her son’s education, in which case selection by ability to pay is just fine. Well, not really fine, 'indefencible' actually, though I’ve no doubt Junior’s godfather, Tory arms dealer and convicted perjurer Jonathan Aitken was very supportive.

I’m not really sure who I find most repugnant. Her for her hypocrisy or the Muppets who voted her back in.

Diane ‘She’s Black, She can’t be part of the Machine’ Abbott

And if anyone feels the need to post a comment under this blog saying that Abbott is actually a very nice person could they please try a little harder than the person who tried sticking up for Johann Hari the other day.

.

More British Oppression

Postman Patel has just blogged a follow up story in the strange case of 'British Oppression' demo that's supposedly due to take place outside Downing Street in a couple of weeks time. That would be the demo being organised by persons unknown, featuring the kind of inflammatory publicity that plays straight into the hands of our government

Now you can watch 'British Oppression - The Video' on Youtube

One, two, three, four, some spooky bastard is trying to start a race war

Of course, it would be easy enough to kill this nonsense stone dead if a few more British bloggers ran with the story but the suggestion that someone might be conspiring to start something nasty means that the majority of Lefty British bloggers won't touch the story with a barge pole - the useless shower of fucks.

That's the power of Conspiraloonacy™ for you

There's one aspect of this that's really bugging me. Whoever is behind British Oppression is doing such a crude job that itself is a cause for suspicion. Could it be that it is such a sloppy job deliberately? I wouldn't even start to try and fathom that one.

There is something very peculiar going on here

What I do know is that if people do actually turn up to Downing Street on 15th June they will need prior permission to protest. And if such permission is given the Police/ Government, unlike anyone foolish enough to attend, will know who the organisers are in advance and be quite happy for the demo to take place. Which should say everything.

.

Hurry, hurry, hurry whilst hope lasts

Someway, somehow I have managed to resist writing anything about the 'Maddie' McCannn story

That was until now

I have been waiting for the most perfect, the most tasteful expression of this sad tale to manifest itself

And here it is...

madeleine McCann - yellow&green band of hope wristbands - now available on ebay

Any Fundamentalist Christians interested in picking one up should get their skates on, according to the listing the End Time is due in less than nine days

.

Not Part of the Secret Elite?

DEPRESSED BECAUSE YOU WEREN'T INVITED to the secret Bilderberg conference?

(yes I am, how did you know?)

NOT PART OF THE ULTRA-ELITE?

The next best thing: Get your own Secret
"Bilderberg" Conference Items right here!

http://www.cafepress.com/Bilderberg

(From Sal by way of comment on a previous post - thx)


Got to go now, Rambo III is on TV - complete with some of the most hysterical geopolitically-dated movie dialogue of all time...


Colonel Trautman: The Kremlin's got a hell of a sense of humor.
Zaysen: Please explain.
Colonel Trautman: You talk peace and disarmament. And here you are wiping out a race of people!

...

Mousa: This is Afghanistan... Alexander the Great try to conquer this country... then Genghis Khan, then the British. Now Russia. But Afghan people fight hard, they never be defeated. Ancient enemy make prayer about these people... you wish to hear?
Rambo: Um-hum.
Mousa: Very good. It says, 'May God deliver us from the venom of the Cobra, teeth of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan.' Understand what this means?
Rambo: That you guys don't take any shit?
Mousa: Yes... something like this.

.

On Conspiraloons™ Two

Someone has just reminded me of an article in The Independent written by Man of the People and world class cunt Johann Hari explaining why people like me are mentally unwell. There's nothing new there ... David Icke ... David Shayler ... the musings of a psychologist at Royal Holloway ... but that doesn't stop him presenting his piece as if it were something original and insightful. Personally, I think Hari is at his very best when writing about smug rich people as if he wasn't one himself but this piece is still classic Hari.

Hari also appears to find nothing unusual in the fact that the much delayed inquest into Princess Diana's death has changed coroners more times than most people change their underwear and he also claims to have located a certain Blofeld-esque cave complex in Tora Bora that both the US and British military are fucked if they can find, or be sure whether it exists at all

My favourite comment about the Hari piece was made by someone else, somewhere else. And it goes something like this...

"They (conspiracy theories) are a natural attempt to rebel against the cruel randomness of life"

So said, Johann Hari ...

Cruel randomness of life? What a cunt!

There's nothing random about everyone getting up five days a week to drone off and do the same mundane job they do every day -- the same job that they fucking hate with every carbon atom in their bodies -- at precisely the same time everyone in the same timezone is doing the exactly the same thing.

There's nothing random about seeing the same shit in the newspapers day after day, nor is there anything random about watching the same shit on TV every day.

I tell you what is fucking random though, that cunts like Johann Hari can get paid to write shit about cruel randomness that doesn't fucking exist in much the same way as Johann Hari shouldn't.


To be honest, if I weren't a conspiraloon already I'd feel obliged to become one just to put as much ideological distance between myself and that unctuous, insincere creep as possible.

And apologies for the high number of swears in this post but if you start talking about Johann Hari that's going to happen

cf. After three years, after 150,000 dead, why I was wrong about Iraq - A melancholic mea culpa by Johann Hari

The short version = because he's a cunt


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On Conspiraloons™

There’s a particular word that’s been bandied about in the comment section of this blog and elsewhere recently that could do with a little explaining…

Conspiraloon™

To the best of my knowledge it was originally coined to denigrate people who were asking, and continue to ask, questions about the ‘Official Narrative’ of the bombings in London almost two years ago.

But it could just as equally have been applied to people asking questions about lots of other things that are going on in the world right now.

All of the Conspiraloons™ I have encountered in the context of 7/7 issues share one thing in common. A fundamental mistrust of government and other power structures.

That’s all that it takes to join the club

And most of us can go toe to toe with anyone who disagrees with that mistrust and we can cite a whole litany of well-documented reasons why we believe that our mistrust is well-founded

Which is presumably why people who disagree with our point of view prefer to confuse the issue by behaving like children and chucking names around

Which is why a couple of us have started to refer to ourselves as Conspiraloons™. It is our way of saying…

“OK, now we’ve got the insults out of the way, do you actually have anything else to back up your position or challenge mine?”

This is most certainly not about trivialising serious issues that very often involve unpleasant things happening to ordinary people.

Nor am I denying that there are legions of people peddling conspiratorial nonsense via the Internet – some are misinformed, some are disinformed and others know full well what they are doing. However, most of them are easy to spot - tosh about UFOs is normally a dead give-away for starters, people claiming to have definitive answers from shadowy sources another. Besides, why should the Internet be different to any other form of communication? Books, newspapers, movies and TV shows were peddling crap long before the Net existed and those people gifted with more than half a brain cell learn soon enough to develop the critical faculties to distinguish between sense and nonsense.

The practice of labeling anyone who has a counter point of view to mainstream accounts of events as a 'conspiracy theorist' in lieu of debate or reason is becoming increasingly over-used and tired.

The most recent example I can think of is yesterday’s press conference in Moscow, when a man accused of poisoning a Russian exile in London declared that MI6 was involved. The mainstream media in the UK has been scornful and described the claim, initially anyway, as being, yes, a ‘conspiracy theory’ and as 'stretching credibility'.

MI6 is the UK’s external intelligence agency and Russia is an increasingly important supplier of energy to the UK. Now, call me old fashioned, but if MI6 isn’t recruiting Russians to be intelligence agents what the hell is it doing?

Asking that question is not the same thing as asserting that MI6 was involved in the poisoning in some way, but to deny the possibility on the basis that some people with a stake in the system have labelled it a ‘conspiracy theory’ is both ridiculous and insulting.

Fuck them. Fuck them all

/ rant ends

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Observer fears Islamic takeover of France imminent

This is quite special...

A story from a Christian, and I use that term extremely loosely, news site based on the US called ‘One News Now – The One Site for Your News Right Now’ written by a bell-end called Chad -

Observer fears Islamic takeover of France imminent

“A U.S. national defense expert and Pentagon advisor says that, even with the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as France's new president, it may already be too late to stop the eventual Islamic takeover of that country and much of Western Europe…”

"It probably is too late for Great Britain and France and maybe even the Netherlands and Germany," the military advisor contends. "They have very sizeable minorities that refuse to integrate, that impose Sharia law on the ghettos, and as a result have created what I think is a series of smaller countries within a country," he says.

With a high Islamic fertility rate and "notoriously low" fertility rates among indigenous members of the population, these "little islands of ghettos of Islamic Sharia law" are going to continue to expand and eventually engulf the culture of the region...

Now the thing is, no matter how insane this article sounds, the use of the word ‘imminent’ being a particular stand-out achievement, this nonsense is still firmly in the same ballpark as the thinking that underlies declared US and UK domestic and foreign policies. Crap like this gets spouted, albeit in a slightly more subtle form, in the UK media every day. This kind of thinking is apparently what passes for sanity in the English-speaking world at the moment. Suspecting that palpable nonsense like this is being deliberately pumped into the minds of the ignorant and feeble minded to serve powerful vested interests is apparently insanity

Go figure

The amusing thing is, of course, that Chad and his buddies are going to have to learn Spanish and how to make burritos long before any of us on this side of the Atlantic are going to have to come to terms with the intricacies of Sharia Law

Personally, I prefer kebabs and curries anyway...

"It's beautiful ... Aaaaaaarghh!!!"

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Creatures of the Night

At the risk of sounding nuts/ crackers or some other form of salty bar snack, and sticking with a few themes that have cropped up in recent posts, Alex Jones' site is claiming that this year's Bilderberg conference is to be held this weekend at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Istanbul

Crackers

That would be the same Bilderberg Group MP Norman Baker (when not banging away at the David Kelly thing) keeps pestering other elected representatives of the people, including Gordon Brnwo, with questions about whether they've attended or not - to be met with such helpful answers as...

"Treasury Ministers and officials have meetings with a wide range of organisations and individuals in the public and private sectors as part of the process of policy development and delivery. As was the case with previous Administrations, it is not the Government’s practice to provide details of all such meetings."

A simple 'yes, Gordon's mad for it' would have sufficed

I'm just fucked off that they forgot my invite this year. Again...

But that's not important right now. What did tickle me, given the subject of a post I wrote earlier this week, was seeing a picture of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Istanbul...




Ooops, sorry wrong picture...




Ooops again, how could I be getting these photographs all mixed up? Here's the correct picture - The Ritz Carlton Hotel Istanbul...




Well, it was just a thought
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