Beware the Blobfish

A September Surprise? OK, maybe not that much of a surprise

A couple of things have come up which mean that I won’t be making any posts for a week or two. However, my regular reader will be pleased to know that I will be leaving the blobfish on guard duty

One of those ‘things’ that came up had me seeing someone off from Heathrow airport earlier today. I haven’t been there for a few months and concrete crash barriers and other obstacles seem to be sprouting up all over the place like mushrooms; presumably a process that has been accelerated by the recent chilling (?) attack on Glasgow airport

The new look Heathrow Terminal 3

There’s a certain, um, Maginot Line quality about Heathrow these days and keen students of history will doubtlessly remember how stunningly effective that was in protecting the people who built it from their attackers…



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Unfortunately, I won’t have enough time to get my head around a story and a couple of links posted by anon under an earlier post but it might be one worth keeping an eye on...

There’s a distinct possibility that someone with a lot of money is betting very heavily that the US stock market will crash in September

I don’t propose to give a lesson in financial options trading here – it’s way too complex and it's not an area I claim to be proficient in but there seems to be some unusual activity going on with ‘SPDR’ options. SPDRs being an exchange traded fund directly linked to the value of 500 of the top US companies

The peculiar thing being the large volume of options being traded and their low exercise prices – in the range $60 to $95 – when SPDRs are currently valued at $146




So, taking the $60 options as an example (and keeping it simplistic), someone is writing options to buy $146 stocks for $60 and charging $86 ($146-$60) for each option.

Now the whole point about options is that they normally only make sense if there’s a chance the person you sell them to won’t exercise them – that way you pocket the money you sold the option for. However, the options in question are priced so low in comparison to the current market price it is virtually certain that anyone buying them will exercise them before they expire in September.

Unless, he can buy the same stock on the open market for less than $60

There are several possible reasons why someone might be writing so many low exercise price options...

• it could be an indirect way to unload a large holding of SPDRs in one go without driving their price down by selling them directly on the market
  

• it could be a particularly desperate ruse to raise a short term, risky and expensive loan

or

• someone is extremely confident the US stock market is going to drop by 30%+ in the next month

It’s difficult to put net values on all this but the numbers involved are certainly much larger than the anomalous trades on airline stocks immediately before 9/11

There is already some talk that whoever is placing the bet may have advance knowledge of some ghastly terrorist incident that will panic the markets. However, as someone else commented underneath one of my posts...

You don't need to be much of a financial analyst to predict a market crisis in September. Every summer market shock in history has directly lead to a crisis in Sept/Oct because ... the big hitters get back from holiday.

This time around its as good as a dead cert. Just you have to get the day right to make a killing and it wouldn't surprise me if someone tries to tip the market over the precipice on purpose; it won't take much.

(see also: Mystery Trader bets markets will crash by a third)

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Anyway, time to put the Blobfish on guard duty. Barring the complete economic and social collapse of Western Civilisation I’ll be standing him back down in a week or so.

Or maybe I should use a seagull instead...

from The Daily Mash

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Cameras I wouldn't advise taking to Canadian demonstrations - Number 427...

The legendary Zenit Photosniper...

Hmmm... that's a whole lot of camera

and, yes, they're still available - collapsible stock and all

Admittedly, for similar money you could buy a Japanese digital camera with an image-stabilised lens with 50% more reach that fits in your pocket. But it wouldn't include parts that are cross-compatible with Kalashnikovs, still work even if you poured a bucket of mud in the mechanism or have that oily, tank-factory smell, reminiscent of five year plans, that comes as standard with all Russian-made optical equipment

Go on. You know you want one

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Conspiracy theories rool suckers!!

And what a fab week this has been for those of us who desperately wish a few more of our fellow citizens would join us in being at least open to the possibility that bad people sometimes do bad sneaky things without, horror of horrors, confessing to doing them in national newspapers afterwards

Yup, just having that kind of open mind is all that all it takes for dickheads to follow their programming and label you as being mad and wicked these days

It's getting harder though...

First, we were treated to copious footage of rock-wielding policemen dressed as anarchists infiltrating a peaceful demonstration

And now Robert Fisk - the journalist who 'despises the Internet' has just put out a piece in the Independent that suggests, knock me down with a feather, that there are one or two unanswered questions about 9/11

Robert Fisk: Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

Even I !!

What a pompous knob

Well, he's only six years too late. I wonder how long he would have taken to write that piece if that Internet he despises so much didn't exist.

So, at the current rate it's going to take our national newspapers another four years to cotton onto the fact that the 'Official Narrative' of 7/7 is bollocks and that Jean Charles de Menezes clearly wasn't carrying a bomb.

I make that some time around June 2011

It's just as well that all these events aren't being used as an excuse to pull off all sorts of heinous shit in the interim. No real hurry then...

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A big disappointment for 'Due South' fans

In case anyone hasn't seen this yet, this is fucking marvelous...

Three agent provocateurs getting rumbled during a demonstration against an SPP meeting in Quebec earlier this week...





What seems to be going on is that the demonstrators very wisely set up a line of grannies between the riot police and the main body of the demonstration. Which meant that to stage a confrontation that would unleash the Cops of War our three unfortunate masked heroes were obliged to mix with the grannies

granny - masked man in combat gear - granny - masked man in combat gear

hmmm...

Coverage in the Canadian press, including the RCMP admitting that the three guys were theirs but only collecting intelligence (with rocks?), can be found here and here

By far and away the funniest bit is seeing the police go through the farce of 'arresting' their own men even though by that point everyone knew what was going on

Comedy Gold!!

And it's great to see Canadians maintaining their reputation for social inclusion by finding useful roles for their senior citizens such as deploying them tactically in urban warfare

Fortunately for us in the UK, this sort of false flag stuff only ever happens in other countries and anyone who believes different is an insane Conspiraloon™

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Aaron Russo Commemorative Post

Aaron Russo...


Alive - 23rd August 2007

Not Alive - 24th August 2007


A sad loss for Conspiraloons™ around the globe. Many of whom will mourn the passing of the producer of From Freedom to Fascism, an expose of the Federal Reserve banking system, with great regret.

but it's also worth mentioning that, earlier in his career, Russo also produced Trading Places, so that's another reason to celebrate his life, actually two reasons...

That Jamie Lee Curtis (Janet Leigh's body - Tony Curtis' face) scene from Trading Places. A few seconds of cinema that were single-handedly responsible for the development of the frame by frame slow play function on early VHS players. A landmark moment in the evolution of home entertainment systems

As well as devoting his last few years to the senseless and unjustifiable persecution of the entirely benevolent Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Service, Russo also found time to make some frankly startling, uncorroborated claims about what some of his billionaire friends said they were planning for the world. The fun part being trying to pick out which of those claims may have some basis in truth and which are the product of the kind of twisted sense of humour you presumably develop when you're a) richer than Croesus and b) bored...




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My President could take Your President

The Western media has recently given a lot of coverage to the theme of a 'resurgent' Russia - Russian bombers buzzing British and US airspace, our growing reliance on Russian energy exports, stuff like that

but nowhere near enough coverage has been devoted to just how cooooooool Vladimir Putin is trying to look these days...




so thanks to Noel for sending me a link to this Pravda photo-story entitled...

'Photos of bare-chested Putin send women and men in ecstasy'

Hmmm, now that's what I call cross-gender appeal.

Warning!! Heterosexual men looking at this picture run a serious risk of turning Gay

What's it going to be next week? Speedos?

F*ck me I hope this isn't giving Gordon Brown any ideas

But wait, what's that I see at the top of Pravda's on-line front page...




Zoom and enhance...



"Since ancient times the exploration of the North was of immense interest to humans. It was an attraction for adventurers and researchers seeking mysterious land and unexplored islands there...."


The full, astonishing story in Pravda's science section (where else) here

Fans of this sort of thing will no doubt be reminded that the super-fruity Thule Society once promoted ideas along these lines, before it morphed into the ruling political party in Germany in the 1930s and '40s. Fortunately, we live in more enlightened times and the possibility that fruity little occult clubs or their members could ever wield political power is now virtually zero.


Pictures of the head of state with his tits out AND a Hollow Earth article - that's my kind of a national news agency...


cf. Gorbachev the new Face of Louis Vutton

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It couldn't happen here

The War on Democracy by John Pilger

...featuring a little more Chavez arse-kissing than I personally feel comfortable with but nevertheless worth watching for many reasons. Not least...

• A complete loon of an ex CIA guy totally unrepentant about his agency's track record of political assassination, terrorism and overthrow of democratic governments

• A section on Bechtel's outstanding humanitarian achievements in the field of monopolising Latin America public water supplies. This is the outfit that tried to charge people living in slums for collecting rain water. In the past I've tried pointing out to people that, with the connivance of our governments, a handful of multinationals are busily developing a stranglehold on global water supplies, including our own here in the UK. However, it is proving to be a hard sell on my part because, apparently, things like that 'don't happen here'

• On the subject of things like that not happening here, the film also rattles through a tour of the kind of subversion and destabilisation operations employed by Western intelligence agencies to ensure that the 'right' kind of governments run the world. The key fascination this subject holds for me is how Western Liberal journalists are perfectly willing to discuss this kind of rather well documented and virtually undeniable sort of thing, provided it is in the context of someone else's countries. Anyone who even so much as raises the possibility that these sort of tactics have been applied considerably nearer to home is widely denounced as a nutter.
  
  Remember, cognitive dissonance is your friend
  

Of course, if you've lived in one of those Latin American countries which have, like Russia, suffered from having their economies and currencies deliberately and systematically imploded as a prelude to oligarchy and corporate neo-feudalism you're likely to be just a tad more open-minded about 'conspiracy theories' than your average Guardian or BBC journowhore

It's just such a damned shame that the majority of people have to be personally reamed senseless before they start to wake up a little. Sadly, things do have to get worse before they can get better.

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The prospects of performance related pay being implemented at the Met Office are looking ...slim

Met Office Weather Forecast for Summer 2007 (dated 11th April 2007)

The latest seasonal forecast from the Met Office issued today, reveals that this summer is, yet again, likely to be warmer than normal.

Following the trend set throughout 2006 and the first part of 2007, seasonal forecasters say there is a high probability that summer temperature will exceed the 1971-2000 long-term average of 14.1 °C.

They also suggest the chances of temperatures similar to those experienced in 2003 and 2006 are around 1 in 8.

The forecast for rainfall is less certain, and currently there are no indications of an increased risk of a particularly dry or particularly wet summer.

The Met Office forecast of global mean temperature for 2007 issued on 4 January 2007 in conjunction with the University of East Anglia, stated that 2007 is likely to be the warmest ever year on record going back to 1850, beating the current record set in 1998.

Through the summer we can experience periods of very hot weather which has implications for people's health. The Met Office works extensively with the Department of Health (DoH) to raise awareness of how we can protect ourselves in hot weather.

Each summer the Met Office and DoH operate a Heat-Health programme aimed at alleviating the effects of the hottest weather on vulnerable groups. During the 2003 heatwave there were more than 2,000 directly attributed excess deaths in the UK and over 20,000 in France. Dr Tish Laing-Morton, Clinical Director at the Met Office is clear about what the benefits of the service are, saying: “The very old and the very young are particularly susceptible to extreme heat, particularly when very warm nights prevent the body from recuperating from very hot days. Also, people who suffer with breathing difficulties are likely to find their symptoms heightened.”

Met Office Weather Forecast for Summer 2007 (dated 24th July)

The forecast update below is based on latest indications for the remainder of summer (i.e. until the end of August).

Temperature

Near average temperatures are likely to continue for the rest of July. However, during August there are signs of a change of weather type, with an indication that most regions will experience some periods with above average temperatures.

Precipitation

Above-average rainfall is likely to continue in most regions for the rest of July and at first in August. For the remainder of August current indicators favour a trend to drier-than-normal conditions for most of the UK.

Summer 2007 so far

Temperature

The forecast issued on 30 May indicated a high probability that the UK mean summer temperatures would be above the 1971-2000 long-term average. The forecast also stated that weather patterns of the type that bring particularly hot weather to the UK were likely to be fewer than in some recent hot summers (e.g. 2003 and 2006).

The UK mean summer temperature so far stands at 0.4 °C warmer than the 1971-2000 average. The UK average daily maximum temperature has been close to average. Also, sunshine has been generally near or a little below normal though eastern Scotland has been particularly dull. Less than normal sunshine is consistent with a forecast for fewer hot weather types than in recent hot summers.

Precipitation

The forecast issued on 30 May indicated that rainfall would be more likely to be average or below average in southern UK; and more likely average or above average in northern UK. The characteristic feature of the summer so far has been the exceptionally high rainfall experienced in many regions. For England and Wales as a whole the summer so far is the wettest since 1839. Parts of north-west Scotland however have been drier than normal.

Extremely high amounts of rainfall, such as those experienced in many regions this summer, are not currently predictable at the long ranges addressed by seasonal forecasts. Within the bounds of the broad three-category classification used for seasonal forecasts (below, near, above normal), the rainfall forecast for the north is currently consistent with observed conditions. However, the outcome we considered more likely for the south (average or below average) is at odds with the above-normal amounts experienced.

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F*cking off out of it aka Things to do in London before you fly

A few people have written to me recently concerning a comment I made about migrating from the UK...

And, coincidentally, figures out today from the Office of National Statistics show that more people (385,000) left the UK last year than in any year since current records began in 1991



It’s worth remembering though that our establishment has an unparalleled track record for misstating migration figures and they should always be taken with a small shovel full of salt.

Taking the current figures for example, something like half the 385,000 people who reportedly left the country weren’t originally British nationals and were simply people returning home. If you look at the inward migration figures, 74,000 people reportedly came to the UK from Eastern Europe which doesn’t match up at all with the 200,000 Eastern Europeans who registered to work in the UK (plus however many others didn’t sign up for what is essentially a voluntary scheme).

Whatever the true figures are for inward and outward migration, they are huge, arguably unparalleled in modern times and netting out to produce an increase in British population

None of which is a prelude to a spot of migrant-bashing on my part. Many of those migrants coming into this country have the potential to be the economic salvation of this nation – if only more of their initiative and energy was applied to activities other than packing supermarket ready meals and changing nappies

As things stand, through no fault of their own, migrants are being used to develop and sustain an increasingly unequal society that is reliant on a huge pool of minimum wage (i.e. maximum wage) labour. And on top of the legal migrants, there is also a not insignificant number of illegal migrants who are vulnerable to even seedier forms of exploitation.

Understandably, there are a lot of British-born nationals who don’t relish the prospect of bringing up their kids and growing old in a country that appears to be on an unstoppable course towards the kind of demographics and authoritarian, corporate-controlled government that would put a 1960’s-style banana republic to shame

Many of those that can are leaving

And don’t think for a minute that this mini-Exodus is restricted to the professional classes. I know plenty of skilled, blue-collar types who have fucked off out of here for good.

There is some irony at work though. Large numbers of people moving into and out of somewhere tend to bring their own problems with them. People moving in from low wage, shitty economies will force down wages in the country they move into. People selling their over-priced houses and taking that money somewhere else will invariably kick-up house prices and the cost of living wherever they settle.

Mass-migration doesn’t solve any problems it just smears them around a bit

Having said that, I am one of those people exploring the possibility of leaving the UK. There are personal reasons why I would feel the pull to leave whatever the state of the country but the course it is currently set on has made the decision a whole lot easier.

We live in a country enslaved and corrupted by the Culture of Fear - Fear of Terrorism, Fear of our Neighbours, Fear of burning too much oil, Fear of not having enough oil, Fear of the young, Fear of not being able to pay our bills… the list is enormous. Who in their right mind would sign up for more of that?

The answer, actually, is the majority of people.

Otherwise the fuckers peddling all that crap couldn’t get away with it

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Anyway, I’m currently updating my list of things I want to do in London/ Britain that I haven’t yet tried, before and if I do clear off

It’s very much work in progress…

• Take a trip on the London Eye

• Avail myself of the services of a mid-price East European prostitute/ teenage sex slave

• Try Crack

• Buy a National Lottery scratch card / Enter a late night premium rate TV phone-in competition

• Pay to download a ring tone (be ready for naughty words if you click that link)

• Fly Tip (even if I don't have to)
  

• Catch an infection inside a hospital (though having seen my father in torment from one in the last year of his life and having lost a friend in her mid thirties from another maybe I'll give that a miss)
  

• Get screwed by my Oyster Card

• Pay the Congestion Charge

• Wire dirty money to some overseas shit hole

• Eat a swan

• Get fucked by rising mortgage costs

• Kit myself out with a fake ID (this story about there being 76.7 million National Insurance numbers issued in a country with an adult population of 49 million makes excellent reading for anyone who thinks the National ID Card is a good idea)
  

• Buy an iPod I cannot afford on credit and have it taken off me at knife point

• Pretend to be Polish

(That last one may seem to be a tad obscure but based on the fact that most of the ‘Poles’ I know who have worked for family and friends in the catering trade are actually from the FSU and using hooky Polish passports. A couple of Ukrainians I know even managed to get their hooky Polish passports renewed by the Polish Embassy in London, which is particularly impressive as they don’t actually speak any Polish)

and, yes, all the pictures I've stuck in this post were taken in Lambeth and Southwark. Hmmm, South London...

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The Great Global Warming Swindle - now with extra Swindle

A few months ago Channel 4 broadcast a show called The Great Global Warming Swindle which enraged many Anthropogenic Global Warming advocates with its polemical style and crude, sensationalist presentation of scientific data

which, when you think about how many advocates of Anthropogenic Global Warming go about their business, is a very funny reaction indeed

Well, some previously unseen footage filmed for TGGWS has just appeared on Google....



The guy who posted it is someone called Clifford Rutley. At the moment I don't know very much about Cliff (though I have discovered that he includes reviewing his own books on Amazon amongst his interests) but his homepage includes what appears to be a periodically updated 'Cliff Quote'. The current quote being...

You so called environmentalists are all hypocrites. This MAN MADE global warming is nothing more than a distraction from the REAL environmental issues & a creation of fiction to tax us more either directly or indirectly. What about the depleting of the rain forests, cross species DNA research, the bees dying off, mutated food experiments, toxins in our food, government and military dumping of toxic waist, mercury in our vaccines, eugenics, the millions that die in Africa because they're not allowed to industrialise and use their natural coal and oil reserves, the radioactive shells that the military uses in Iraq and Afghanistan? The problem with the MAN MADE global warming hoax is that it is nothing more than an unproven distraction.

Nice one

but what's a toxic waist when it's at home?

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Odds and Sods pt2

Where was I?

Oh, yes…

Whilst on the subject of 9/11 and gaps in ‘official narratives’, kudos to Channel 4’s Darshna Soni. She was the journalist who reported the story that getting on for 60% of British Muslims who were polled believed that the government hasn’t told the truth about the 7/7 bombings.

I squawked at the time that this was a potentially divisive story which implied that British Muslims stood apart from everyone else on the subject of 7/7. I believed then, and I still believe, that to be meaningful and objective that 60% figure should have been reported in the context of what an average cross-section of the British public think about the ‘Official Narrative’ of 7/7.

My guess is that the proportion of sceptics would not be as high as 60% but still a healthy enough percentage to indicate that your average British Muslim isn’t as out of step with everyone else as Darshna’s report implied

However..

Darshna did take the point, has responded constructively to criticism she received after her report was broadcast and has included caveats such as the following in her subsequent writing on the subject…

‘And of course, it's not just Muslims who question the official version of events.’

She has also recently posted a piece on her blog on the subject of calls for an official inquiry into 7/7. She makes the point that even if there were an inquiry it would now be subject to the Inquiries Act 2005. A piece of legislation that was quietly enacted and didn’t receive a great deal of attention (from her colleagues in the ‘news’ business) at the time.

Under the terms of the Act the Home Secretary can…

• decide whether there should be an inquiry
• set and amend its terms of reference
• appoint its members
• restrict public access to inquiries
• prevent the publication of evidence placed before an inquiry
  

Now the thing is, I know a lot of people who are very hot under the collar about this particular piece of legislation and I can understand why. However, our current government has managed to stage some absolutely disgraceful inquiries even before the Inquiries Act became law so I’m not entirely convinced that it changes very much. Did many people think the inquiry culture in this country was straight before 2005?

But, like I said, kudos to Darshna for being one of the tiny handful of journalists who has actually acknowledged that public scepticism does exist about 7/7 and that any inquiry into 7/7 runs a real risk of being as crooked as a nine pound note.

It will be kind of interesting to see where she goes, or is allowed to go, from here now

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Um, what else have I been toying with?

Oh, yeah

I’ve commented on a few blogs that have been kicking around the subject of inheritance tax (IHT) and Conservative party proposals to abolish IHT if it won the next election

The reason why I mention this is that a lot of the Left-leaning people I know are labouring under the misapprehension that IHT is somehow a mechanism that ensures more equal redistribution of wealth, less economic inequality and therefore a ‘good thing’

Hmmm, maybe in theory

But what’s actually going on is that Forces of Darkness have always used the tax system and promises of wealth redistribution to yank Left Wing knob.

Our tax system, along with interest and inflation, is one of the key tools used to keep poor people poor and to prevent the slightly better off from accumulating any significant amounts of capital

And, right now, it's working a treat

You don’t have to be Planck Einstein to observe that, after ten years of rising taxation and supposed wealth redistribution, economic inequality in this country has actually risen sharply. And that will be even more evident when the credit bubble is popped and people can no longer make up for shortfalls in their income through borrowing




Taxes are what the poor and middle income earners pay, not the wealthy. If, as I believe, our system of government is bent, increased taxation simply leads to increased wealth concentration not redistribution

This is not a Left vs. Right issue. It’s about honesty vs. dishonesty, the 99% vs. the 1%.

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Um, what else?

Oh yeah, LWTC247’s blog included a post a few day’s ago which pointed out that whilst all that economic carnage was taking place over the last few weeks the price of gold, usually a safe haven in times of crisis, actually fell




Which is an indication, just an indication, that the ‘smart’ money may not have been taken that far away from the stockmarkets and was kept on hand to re-enter those markets once prices had fallen for a few days

The possible conclusion being that there were big hitters out there confident that this particular slide wasn’t the Big One so many people are expecting

I do believe that LWTC247 is suggesting that this recent slide was actually an example of market manipulation

Bloody Conspiraloons™...

Whatever is going on, it’s always worth remembering that the market price for gold is actually ‘fixed’ by the banks which gives them, how can I put it?, some leeway to fuck around a bit

And that’s the scary thing about this business. The entire global financial system is totally interconnected, controlled by a handful of interests which operate with zero transparency and accountability, and manipulated to serve that small handful of powerful interests

Or does anyone honestly believe that altruism is a key personal quality required to hold high office in the Banking System?

We are all serfs of that System and we could hold democratic elections every day until the end of the time and it wouldn’t change a fricking thing

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Odds and Sods pt1

I'm currently going through a bit of a catch-up session with comments, links and emails that have been left under or in response to posts in this blog

A few chunks of fallout from that exercise...


For starters, there's this rather special graphic from The Daily Mash...



The Daily Mash has also recently managed to punch clean through the Taste Barrier with this tribute prayer to Princess Diana...

Princess Diana, who art in Hermes,
Chanel was thy favourite brand name.
Thy King did come.
But he fancied another one, as did you anyway.
Give us this day a flash of your smile.
And forgive us our paparazzi,
As we forgive those who paparazzi against us.
And drive us not into the side of a tunnel,
When we aren’t wearing our seat belt. Amen.

Outstanding work ...which I won't be showing to my Mum


and whilst on the subject of daft fuckers in the financial markets, someone also left a few links relating to the very interesting Nassim Taleb and his work on randomness, especially 'Black Swan' events

'Black Swans' being large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events beyond the realm of normal expectations. The problem being that many of the people earning large sums as risk professionals appear to have no conception of Black Swans and carry out their business on that basis

Where I personally disagree with Taleb is when he maintains that Black Swan events, and Taleb cites 9/11 as an example of a Black Swan, are undirected. Maybe in the natural world but in the realm of human affairs at least some of the Swans are the result of deliberate planning - after all, people may differ over who it was exactly but someone did plan 9/11


And on the subject of 9/11 and the markets

There are a couple of key elements of accepted and often quoted 9/11 Conspiracy Lore that have always bothered me

The first being the short-trading of airlines stocks before 9/11. There did seem to be informed trading before the attacks and those trades certainly were widely reported after 9/11. However, if the people behind the trades really did know about 9/11 in advance they should have expected their trades to attract attention and be traced back to them after the event. You can't play the markets anonymously.

Unless the traders knew they were somehow immune from investigation - which is effectively how things panned out

On top of that, the potential profit was only a 'few' million dollars. So, why take a risk on exposing an operation with a multi-billion $ outcome for what was, relatively speaking, peanuts?

And then there's the story about Larry Silverstein, the lease holder of WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7, admitting months after 9/11 that he gave his consent for WTC7 to be 'pulled'

Many conspiracy theorists quote Silverstein's comment as being a confession that 9/11 was a staged event, that WTC7 along with WTC1 and WTC2 was wired for demolition but the plane that was supposed to hit WTC7 (Flight 93) was destroyed over Pennsylvania and so WTC7 was blown up anyway, without being hit by a plane beforehand

Of course, the big problem with all that is the question why would an alleged key figure in the carefully planned covert 9/11 plot casually blurt out a confession after the event?

This video attempts to address those and other similar anomalous issues...




If anyone is interested in 9/11 and hasn't seen it, it's worth a spin


Whoopsies, Richard Dawkins is back on tele tonight up to his usual, 100% intellectually honest, self-effacing tricks which only leaves me an hour or so to find some rotting fruit to chuck at the box. I shall have to finish this post later...

Contrary to what some people believe, ammonites (foreground) offer inconclusive evidence for the theory of evolution and actually appear to have evolved 'backwards' in the later stages of their existence - as has the enormous G8 in the background of this picture

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The Importance of Local Knowledge

One of the big banking groups runs an advertising campaign that stresses how important knowledge of local customs and idioms is when doing business globally

A good example of that kind of awareness is manufacturers avoiding the use of the number '4' in naming their products because that number is associated with Death in China and Japan

Hence, no BMW 4 series

Anyway, Canon have just announced their latest line-up of new camera models, including the successor to its G7 compact camera...



The G9

There has been some talk on camera fanboy sites today discussing why there will be no G8 model and I have just seen this credible explanation...


I am a Chinese from Hong Kong. I speak Mandarin as well.

In Mandarin, G8 reads as ji-ba, which is a slang for Penis.

==

jībā (Simplified Chinese: 鸡巴; Traditional Chinese: 雞巴/鷄巴, IM abbreviation: G8) = cock (used as early as the Yuan Dynasty)
==


...which is not to be confused with the French slang word for penis, 'bite', or the memory of me talking to some French people once about computers only to have them burst out laughing when I started referring to mega-penises

None which has ever made its way onto a HSBC advert

Group photo from the annual economic summit of the world's largest penises

Still, I may never be able to get my hands on a shiny new Canon G8 but there will always be the Fuji Big Job

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Cash and Carry

I have to confess that I'm partial to downloading financial graph porn off the Internet; domestic or imported, and the stronger the better

And what a hardcore treat this week has been

Here are a couple of examples I found particularly arousing...


Man Group plc

A 200 year old company with its roots in the colonial sugar trade. In recent years it moved into the equally ethical hedge fund management business with an astonishing degree of success. I like to follow what Man is up to because I used to work there and even though I don't have any particular beef with how the group is run I'm just a teensy wee bit bitter and twisted that I didn't end up holding any of its stock. The fact that I know people who own lots doesn't help.

So, imagine my absolute delight at looking at this graph of the Man share price this week...




However, as extremely funny as this is, anyone who understands hedge funds and the influence they now have on the world's financial markets should probably take this as a very bad omen indeed


The NZ $ / British £ exchange rate

Another graph I have a personal interest in watching. For reasons I didn't fully understand at first, New Zealand's economy and currency have behaved peculiarly in recent years. New Zealand has been booming - with house prices going through the roof, high interest rates, a strong dollar and a growing trade deficit. The only problem being understanding 'why'?

Anyway, let's check out the NZ$/£ exchange rate graph




Whoopsies

What's going on there?

The explanation has actually got a lot to do with the Man share price going south and the turmoil in global markets generally

Oh yes, we're talking the Carry Trade here




The Carry Trade (as practiced by hedge funds amongst others)...

1. Borrow absolutely insane amounts of money in Japan and Switzerland where the interest rates are virtually zero

2. Exchange those borrowed Yen and Francs for Kiwi dollars or Icelandic Krona

3. Invest that money in New Zealand or Iceland where the interest rates are 7% or 8% or more

4. Sit back and make 8% a year on someone else's money (in reality, money that was made up out of thin air by a bank in Japan or Switzerland)

5. Actually, the original loan is made for something like 10 times your available security, so your real return on the carry trade is something like 80%

And the best part is that, to earn that 80%pa, you haven't produced anything of any intrinsic value whatseover

This works great until the Kiwi Dollar starts to weaken against the currency your loan was made in. At which point you have to scramble like fuck to turn your Dollars back into Yen so that you can pay your loan off. Only everyone else is trying to do the same thing at the same time so you'll end up getting a really shitty exchange rate, cannot pay your Yen loan off and go bust. If you were playing this game with someone else's money, they go bust

Here's a sleazy bloke sitting in a hot tub on Al Jazeera TV who can explain it better than me (*very* highly recommended)...







...first broadcast on 5th August - now that's what I call timing

And it's not just the carry trade. There are all sorts of sharp practices, scams and outright frauds out there just waiting to fall apart. And that's the question that will decide if the markets really will melt down or not - will the big financial institutions, the media and the politicians stop the current slide before one of the many greasy little frauds that have been hidden by the rising markets is exposed and starts a chain reaction?

And here's the same bloke off Al Jazeera doing a quick tour of some of those greasy little frauds on which the global system that passes for capitalism these days is so precariously balanced







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Special collectors' edition Elvis memorial post

The legendary Hardee's Monster Thickburger - 1,420 calories of All-American goodness. Why not upgrade to the meal combo with medium fries (520 calories) and a soda (about 400 calories)? In the words of Hardee's CEO - "This is a burger for young hungry guys who want a really big, delicious, juicy, decadent burger. I hope our competitors keep promoting those healthy products, and we will keep promoting our big, juicy delicious burgers."


For devout fans of Americana such as myself a visit to Graceland is the equivalent of a smack addict mainlining 100% pure heroin. The only baking soda in the needle being that, for perfectly understandable reasons, the upstairs bathroom is completely off limits

Is this an authentic picture of the Bathroom of Doom?

Of the many treasures we brought back from our magical visit our favourite has to be the Official Presley Family Cookbook (now available from Amazon UK). For a while after my return from Graceland I was inspired to set about the ambitious task of eating every single recipe in the book

but I gave up about a third of the way through because I was afraid I would die




I can only use the word genius to describe how the book manages to sneak big dollops of vegetable oil, lard or margarine into virtually every single dish, not matter how gratuitously...




The real mystery about Elvis' death is how the poor bastard managed to live as long as 42 years

Anyway, I asked Herbie the Hedgehog to pick out his favourite recipe in tribute to the 30th anniversary of the passing of The King. Even though it was a very difficult decision to make, with lots of astonishing and life-expectancy reducing choices on offer, he finally selected the classic cheeseburger sandwich...




Good choice Herbie

And whilst celebrating the man and his music this week may I recommend a couple of sites...

Bloggers on the Run currently features a post on 'The Church of the Militant Elvis'. I freely admit to not having the faintest fucking idea what that's all about but I enjoyed the illustrations that accompany the post immensely, especially this one...



Junkfoodnews.net - no need to read any of the articles, just scroll through with the pagedown button and treat yourself to a virtual tour of the latest and greatest in processed convenience food products. I almost went hyperglycemic just looking at them




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NB! Tucked away by way of a footnote in the Wikipedia entry on Elvis there is an explanation that once and for all puts to rest the conspiracy theories that are based on the Fact™ that the name on Elvis' tombstone is not Elvis' real name and therefore proof that he is not really buried there...




Presley's genuine birth certificate does actually say "Elvis Aaron Presley" (as written by a doctor). There is also a souvenir birth certificate that reads "Elvis Aron Presley." When Presley did sign his middle name, he used Aron. It says 'Aron' on his marriage certificate and on his army duffel bag. Aron was apparently the spelling the Presleys used to make it similar to the middle name of Elvis's stillborn twin, Jesse Garon. Elvis later sought to change the name's spelling to the traditional and biblical Aaron. In the process he learned that official state records had always listed it as Aaron. Therefore, he always was, officially, Elvis Aaron Presley. Knowing Presley's plans for his middle name, Aaron is the spelling his father chose for Elvis' tombstone, and it is the spelling his estate has designated as the official spelling whenever the middle name is used today. Interestingly, his death certificate says "Elvis Aron Presley".

Well, that's settled then

-

NB!!

A Youtube clip of hard-hitting news documentary The Day Today including a report on the ultimate in Elvis tribute executions...




followed by this exchange of comments underneath...



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How in the world did you get hold of so much silk?

And today's readings from the Good Book and it's movie adaptation are...


Chapter. 35

"Milo had been caught red-handed in the act of plundering his countrymen, and, as a result, his stock had never been higher. He proved as good as his word when a rawboned major from Minnesota curled his lip in rebellious disavowal and demanded his share of the syndicate Milo kept saying everybody owned. Milo met the challenge by writing the words 'A Share' on the nearest scrap of paper and handing it away with a virtuous disdain that won the envy and admiration of virtually everyone who knew him."


Chapter. 28

"The escape hatches in the front and rear sections flew open while the sea was still foaming white and green around the plane, and the men scrambled out as speedily as they could in their flaccid orange Mae West life jackets that had failed to inflate and dangled limp and useless around their necks and waists. The life jackets failed to inflate because Milo had removed the twin carbon-dioxide cylinders from the inflating chambers to make the strawberry and crushed-pineapple ice-cream sodas he served in the officers' mess hall and had replaced them with mimeographed notes that read 'What's good for M&M Enterprises is good for the country'."





Movie transcript:

"Where the hell's my parachute? All right, which one of you bastards stole my parachute? Hello, this is the bombardier here. We gotta turn back. Nately, we gotta turn back now. Nately! Do you hear me up there? We gotta turn back. We're gonna turn back now. Nately, let's turn back. We're gonna turn back!

What is it this time, Yossarian?

Some bastard stole my chute!

Anything the matter?

My parachute. It's gone!

Don't worry.

What do you mean? What do I do if I have to bail out? Use my handkerchief?

That kind of humour in the face of adversity keeps America strong. I like you.

Aardvark, I' d like to kill you, but I haven't got time.

You could have my chute but I gave it to Milo.

You gave it to Milo?

He's got all the chutes. He's got a hell of a deal going for silk in Alexandria.

Maybe I do have time to kill..."

-

and what a fascinating few days it has been in the world's financial markets. I've been taking immense amounts of childish pleasure making a series of crank phone calls and sending abusive emails to friends who work in the City - paying particular emphasis on a couple of guys I had a drink with only a few weeks ago who were confidently insisting that the fallout from the losses on US mortgages had already been priced into the markets.

That's the kind of razor-sharp financial acumen which has made London the global finance centre that it is

We are now at one of the most amusing stages of the farce that is the managed boom-bust cycle when the people responsible for selling equities and financial instruments are busy telling their clients that now is an excellent buy!! opportunity, whilst quietly unwinding their own positions just in case everything really does go tits up

And maybe they're right. Maybe this isn't the Big One. Maybe the bubble won't burst just yet. It could have popped two, three or four years ago but it didn't. Only the people holding the needle really know when that's going to happen and they're not in the business of telling

.

We're all suspects now ... well, maybe not now but soonish

A few days ago I linked to what in a sane world would be described as a bonkers article in the Australian press that talked about virtual Jihadist training camps being set up on the web

Virtual terrorists

Here’s another, this time courtesy of the NYPD…

Internet is the new Afghanistan

The One Laptop per Child project - The AK-47 of the 21st century?

As well as repeating much of the virtual terror bollocks being promoted in the US, UK and Australia, this article also goes on to shed light on the mysterious ‘radicalization’ process, which is often referred to but rarely explained by politicians and the media, by breaking 'radicalization' down into four stages:

• pre-radicalization
• self-identification
• indoctrination
• jihadization

which is a pretty effective exercise in supplementing one meaningless, goobledigook expression with four new ones

I've linked to this table before but I do love it so - The CIA Fact Book 2007 - Countries ranked by Current Account Balance - It's heart-warming to see the US, the UK and Australia displaying solidarity in owing the rest of the world shit loads of money as well as fighting the global war on terror (no connection, obviously)

Even those of us who suspect at the least the possibility of ‘false flag’ terrorism would be hard put to deny the existence of real terrorists. In fact, one of the historical uses of false flag terrorism has been to goad target groups into doing something stupid.

However, use of bullshit, essentially meaningless terminology such as ‘pre-radicalization’ and ‘jihadization’ is a linguistic trick designed to mask the real motivations for terrorism; a sense of injustice (real or imagined), desperation or tribalism, underneath a blanket of voodoo science

And shit like that doesn’t get pulled by accident

I’m mentioning all this is because I believe that the definition of who is a potential terrorist and what constitutes terrorism itself is set to be gradually widened to include non-violent, non-Muslims.

There are clues to that widening in the article I’ve linked to at the top of this post.

The bullshit ‘radicalization’ terminology that makes being a potential terrorist sound like some kind of predictable mental condition which anyone could suffer from is one such clue

As are lines like...

"Individuals who have been radicalized but are not jihadists may serve as mentors and agents of influence to those who might become terrorists of tomorrow,"

or

"It is a phenomenon that occurs because the individual is looking for an identity and a cause”

or

"the transformation of a Western-based individual to a terrorist is not triggered by oppression, suffering, revenge or desperation"

or even

The report found that the challenge for Western authorities was to identify, pre-empt and prevent home-grown threats, which was difficult because many of those who might undertake an attack often commit no crimes along the path to extremism.

This is perilously close to the language of fascism and the terminology being used in this ‘War on Terror’ is becoming increasingly generic and requires only a little more refinement to include all sorts of people.

On top of that, an increasing number of people have been given, or faced the possibility of, long prison sentences for such relatively trivial offences as accessing information on the Internet or giving someone a SIM card and 'recklessly' not checking that they were a potential terrorist first (up to 15 years for such an unspeakable act).

No, I’m not saying we’ve reached a state where anyone can be rounded up and incarcerated for 15 years on bullshit charges. It’s just Muslims for now but I’m not sure many people realise how easy it will be to widen the net to include virtually anyone or that there are interests out there working towards that very goal.

If that sounds a tad paranoid is it really far-fetched to believe that people engaged in, or even just talking about, peaceful direct action against corporations or government could be treated as terrorists in the not too distant future?

And it doesn't require psychic powers to predict that people will increasingly turn to direct action and protest to compensate for the well-documented decline in faith in the democratic process in countries like the US and the UK - with or without crooked voting machines

How long will it be until newspapers and politicians start using terms like 'anti-corporate jihadists' or 'radicalized activists'? Language is, after all, very fluid ...and malleable

But hey, it’s all worth it. Look at how effective all those new laws and wars have been in reducing the terror threat over the last six years.

Really really really really...

really

... effective

.

Every cloud has a silver lining ... apparently

Thanks to anon for sharing a link to this -

Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter

and its newly established partner site -

Hedge Fund Implode-O-Meter

Admittedly these pages are currently US centric. However, there's a good chance they will soon to be part of a flourishing international network of similar sites - as soon as Central Banks stop bailing-out criminally negligent institutional investors with massive injections of made-up money. Made-up up money that will ultimately be paid for by ordinary people through inflation, taxation and interest charges.

Lee van Cleef is The Ninja - No INcome - No Job - no Assets - give that man a big fuck off loan straight away and then sell it on before everything goes tits up - Hmmm, you like that house price bubble don't you bitches...

As it happens, I have worked and retain acquaintances in the mortgage, hedge fund and foreign exchange trading rackets. Virtually everyone I still know in those rackets businesses now accepts that things are going to get a little rough from here on but they retain faith in the underlying strength of the System they've been doing so well out of in recent years

God knows why

Still, look on the bright side...



um...



er...


-

and whilst I'm on the subject here's a link to (yet another) video that attempts to communicate the problems that accompany a debt-based money system





as one glowing review of the video gushed...

"it might not be very high budget and its even kind of boring. but its just so intelligent that i had to watch it. great job."

which is a reasonable summary

I'm linking to it because, unlike many similar presentations, it attempts to communicate how our current banking system pushes our economies towards the kind of unsustainable and exploitative growth patterns that will very possibly result in all of us choking on each other's shit. The kind of issues that intrepid environmental adventurers such as David Mayer de Rothschild don't comment on very much at all; preferring to wank on about lightbulbs, telling people who are poorer than them (i.e. 99.999999999% of people) how to live, the establishment of world government and the Original Sin of being born human instead

LOL!

.

Constructive Dialogue

July 7th Truth have just published an interview with a guy called Thomas Ikimi

He's the cousin of one of the victims of the London bombings that took place on July 7th 2005 and he has made and is marketing a film about 7/7. In his own words...

My cousin Anthony Fatayi-Williams was one of the 52 lost in the attacks. I wanted to let you know that I have been working on a project since July 2005 in relation to the bombings and my experiences as a family member affected by it. It is a documentary and it was released two days ago online via the website www.thehomefrontmovie.net

One of the most encouraging aspects about Thomas engaging in a dialogue with July 7th Truth is that he is not someone who could easily be labeled a conspiracy theorist. He believes that the bombings probably were carried out by four Muslim suicide bombers. Many of the people on J7T are a lot less sure

However, in spite of that difference of opinion, Thomas and J7T appear to respect the sincerity of each other's opinions and have been able to engage in a dialogue which explores areas of shared concern.

Which is excellent

A little bit more of that sort of behaviour would go a long way

Alternatively, you take the Jon Ronson approach and go on national radio, as he did recently, and label anyone with doubts about July 7th as being vicious, insane and, apparently, anti-semitic to boot.

What a star

Hmmm, I'm not too sure about the anti-semitic thing but I am a 7/7 sceptic and I am definitely anti-twat

(the most illuminating part of Ronson's broadcast is when he says he doesn't understand why bloggers write so much even though they don't get paid for it. As someone else said, using that kind of logic it is reasonable to conclude that Jon advocates fucking whores rather than doing it with someone who likes him for who he is)

Anyway, for anyone with a concerned interest in 7/7 the interview with Thomas is worth a read. The first half covers the curious lack of media coverage given to the second anniversary of 7/7 (I must confess I was expecting a lot more than we actually got). The second half concentrates on the frankly obstructive behaviour of our establishment with regards to resisting calls for an inquiry, the suppression of evidence, and shoddy treatment of survivors and their families

All of which touches on one particular concern that I have about 7/7 and the aftermath. With one or two conspicuous exceptions there has been relatively little published testimony from the victims of 7/7, public transport staff or the relatives of the alleged suicide bombers. And the little that has been reported has clearly been tightly controlled

Something is not right about the official narrative of 7/7

As Thomas says...

"Anyone who thinks the [Home Office] report is a full account is not being serious or realistic. The holes are so glaring, that even as a story, it isn't a very good one."

.

David Shayler and the Holy Grail

In case anyone is a) interested, and b) missed David Shayler's interview on BBC Radio 5 Live last night here's a chance to catch up on what was said



Monty Python fans will no doubt become aware, at least subliminally, that David makes the following claims in the interview

- he is definitely not Jesus

(though apparently some people did confuse him for Jesus in Judea 2,000 years ago)

- but he is King Arthur

Ringing any bells?



Shayler delivers a truly inspirational mix of discussion concerning matters of life and death that many of us are seriously concerned about, skillfully blended with a Messiah complex that would have made Colonel Kurtz blush and assertions that he is the reincarnation of a fictional(ised) English king and a splash of a homage to Graham Chapman

The second time I Iistened to this interview through I actually started to get quite annoyed

I take my Python very seriously

As a fellow member of the Conspiraloon™ Alliance has already said...

"Imagine if Shayler were still under the control of the secret services? Imagine the damage he could have done rather than the good work he continues to do?"


.

The Controlled Demolition of David Shayler?

I think most people who pass through this blog will have some conception of who David Shayler is

David has been working very hard in recent years to become a de facto spokesperson for the British based 9/11 'Truth movement' and for people who have doubts about the official narrative of the July 7th bombings

(though he is nothing to do with the July 7th Truth website and forum and has never, to my knowledge, been endorsed by the folks over there)

The thing about David is that he's always come across as being a little, er, dodgy and there are many of us in Conspiroworld™ who believe that there's no such thing as an 'ex' Meye5 operative. Bit by bit, David has been mixing 7/7 and 9/11 with Crop Circles, Ancient Sumerian tablets, Space Aliens and any other old toss he can come up with

On top of that David has received more than his fair share of access to the mainstream media - and there is another absolutely fundamental Conspiraloon™ maxim which states that any 'conspiracy theorist' who gets on telly a lot is definitely a knob

So, imagine my complete and total lack of surprise to discover, via Lord Patel's blog, that Shayler appeared on More4 News last night claiming to be Jesus

David Shayler - reportedly the victim of a catastrophic collapse even though he wasn't struck by any aircraft

The tributes on Shayler's wikipedia page are already appearing, and disappearing, thick and fast...




Sadly, I was otherwise engaged and missed David's appearance but Lord Patel's post is corroborated by a couple of snippets I found in the Times Online...

"David Shayler, the whistle-blowing former spy who chose to denounce the security services on television while wearing a Middlesbrough Football Club shirt, is long overdue an image makeover. People was delighted to be in attendance, then, when he attempted just that at the Glastonbury Symposium, a lecture on Investigating Crop Circles and Signs of our Times lecture at Glastonbury Town Hall.

Shayler announced to a bewildered audience that he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, King Arthur and Leonardo da Vinci. As he neared the end of his hour-long talk, in which he repeatedly declared his divinity, he raised his arms like a Somerset equivalent of Christ the Redeemer. As rebranding exercises go, it rivals even David Icke’s elevation to the deity from goalkeeper for Coventry City."

and

"On Tuesday this page reported, perhaps a little dismissively, that David Shayler (the whistle-blowing ex-MI5 officer) had declared himself the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, King Arthur and Leonardo da Vinci.

Shayler himself now gets in touch to set the record straight. “I’m afraid I didn’t claim to have been Jesus or to be ‘divine’, as you suggest,” he writes, patiently. “The Jesus of the New Testament is an archetype. His name derives from the 13th Name of God in Qabalah, which helps activate the Messiah consciousness within us. I was, though, crucified with a crown of thorns and nails when incarnated as Astronges, a Jewish revolutionary put to death by the Romans at around the end of the last century BC . . . It would therefore be good karma for you to correct the wrong impressions you have given in your article.”

Obviously this is a different claim entirely, and not nuts at all. We do apologise for any embarrassment caused."

Of course, the only problem with setting up Shayler to become a spokesperson for 7/7 scepticism and then imploding him publicly as a means of discrediting everyone with doubts about 7/7 is the fact that Shayler has always been a bit suspect and few hardcore 7/7 sceptics have ever taken him seriously


...unlike Markos Moulitsas Zúniga over at the extremely popular 'liberal, progressive' US website Daily Kos who appears to be taken very seriously by his readers.

It turns out that Zúniga is probably another one of those 'ex' intelligence service guys 'who saw the light'; setting up the Daily Kos in 2002, shortly after a stint with the CIA.

Hmmm...

There's a lot of this kind of bullshit going on these days


-

edit: it's only been up on blogger for 20 minutes but this post is already the Internet's No.1 destination for news about David Shayler claiming to be Jesus...




If anyone stopping by actually has any additional information I'd be grateful if they would share....

-

edit: Shayler's appearance on More4 News now available on Google (thanks B.)...





see also - 'I'm God, says renegade spy David Shayler' in the Daily Mail, complete with mandatory photo and references to David Icke

-

edit: a couple of images I originally downloaded to illustrate this post but didn't manage to work in. Waste not want not...

Yet another White man with a God complex

Amanita Muscari

and if David Shayler really isn't consciously trying associate 7/7 and 9/11 scepticism with bizarre behaviour I sincerely wish him all the best in getting his shit together

.

Urgent!!! Man Made Global Bollocks now at critical levels

Reuters have put out a story today with the headline...

“Tourists hurt by giant wave after glacier breaks”

"A chunk of an Arctic glacier broke into the sea and triggered a huge wave that injured 18 people on a sightseeing boat, almost all of them British tourists, Norwegian officials said on Thursday…."


The best part of the story is the very last paragraph, which reads like a cut and pasted stock phrase drafted by lawyer…


“Glaciers naturally break apart as they slide downhill but many are shrinking more quickly than usual because of global warming, blamed by almost all scientists on human emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels.”


Which is all very educational but what the article neglects to mention is that it’s the middle of fucking summer

-

See also the Daily Mash’s lead article on the global warming threat…

GIANT MAGNIFYING GLASS REVEALED AS CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING

“…now we know it’s there we can easy smash it to bits with a great big fucking missile and then just get on with our lives as normal, without having to heat our houses with our own farts, or whatever else it is we are supposed to do these days.”




George Monbiot, the leading climate change activist and regular guest blogger with the Daily Mash, said he was “overjoyed” to hear that global warming was nothing to do with the human race or its modern lifestyle, and vowed to scrap his “crappy bike” immediately, and buy himself a new Jaguar and an Aston Martin “straightaway”.

-

See also SolarDeathRay.com

.

A spot of local and not so local history

An intriguing Kubrick-esque monolith appeared in Kennington Park (my local) a few months ago...




For the first time since its erection I spent a little time looking over it yesterday

It’s a memorial to the 100+ local residents who were killed in a bombing raid back in 1940

And the reason why it took 66 years to erect what is effectively their headstone illustrates one or two issues that, I think, are still relevant today




During the Blitz on London in 1940 decent air raid shelters were in short supply. There were very few purpose built shelters and only about one in four Londoners had gardens in which they could erect the laughably crap Anderson shelters they were issued with - handy for keeping your garden tools in, not so useful if a bomb landed anywhere near them...



Everyone else either huddled under their stairs, in cellars, in public shelters or, when they were allowed to, in tube stations.

I say when they were allowed to because, contrary to myth, the government discouraged people taking shelter in the tube system. Taking my local area for example, people were turned away from the barbed-wire festooned entrance to Oval tube station and directed to the nearby public shelter in Kennington Park instead.

The problem with the public shelters, Kennington Park being one of the very worst examples, was that they were poorly designed and hastily built with sub-standard materials. The shelters were essentially no more than WW1-style trenches covered with thin slabs of crumbly concrete. They flooded easily and were prone to collapse even if a bomb didn’t land near to them. They were, effectively, prefabricated graves

Some ordinary people were so pissed off with the poor provisions that had been made for their safety compared to the more than adequate provisions made for better off people that there were at least some demonstrations outside purpose built shelters that had strict admissions policies based on social standing. (I only know about this because a couple of old guys told me about them - for some reason this story has not made its way into populist Blitz mythology)

Anyway, one night in 1940 a small bomb landed on the Kennington Park public shelter and the trenches collapsed. At least a hundred people died, though only fifty bodies were pulled out before the authorities had the site sprinkled with quick lime and then filled in

The bodies are still there

You can just about pick out the outline of the old trench system/ mass grave from Google Earth views of the park



And that was that. The incident was barely reported and effectively excised from the establishment-endorsed History of the Blitz. Tales of chirpy cockneys being buried alive and left in unmarked mass graves were presumably considered not conducive for national morale.

I think the story has relevance to today for quite a few reasons. It’s a decent illustration of historical myth making – even with 67 years of separation from the event you’d be hard put to find any depictions of the Blitz that show fucked-off working class Londoners huddling in damp pits cursing the people charged with their safety.

It is also interesting how in one time and set of circumstances fifty blown up Londoners get buried in an unmarked hole and receive barely any press coverage because their story doesn’t fit in with a particular state-endorsed narrative. Yet, in another time and set of circumstances, another fifty murdered Londoners are elevated to the level of national martyrs because that does suit establishment objectives.

-

But, hey, what are fifty or a hundred people in the scheme of things. Three hundred times that number of people died on a bad night of RAF fire-storming over Hamburg.

And I’ve just realised what today's date is. A lot of time and effort has been expended over the years anguishing over the whys and wherefores of dropping an atom bomb on Hiroshima. So much so that the follow-up attack on Nagasaki three days later is treated almost as an afterthought. Which is unfortunate, not least because the people of Nagasaki were equally dead but also because nowhere near enough airtime has been devoted to the question ‘Why the fuck did the Americans bomb Nagasaki anyway? What exactly did obliterating a second city so shortly after the first achieve?’

There are several possible answers to that question. None of them very nice

When I was younger and there were more survivors of the London Blitz still around, I’d sometimes get into some fairly heated discussions about the question of bombing cities and civilian populations. The usual response to my concerns was that I was young, wasn’t there and could not understand what it was like to live through it. It was war and the British and the Americans struck back in any way that they could. And besides... wait for it ... the Germans started it

The problem is that we didn’t strike back any way we could. Particularly in the latter stages of the war, Allied numerical and technical superiority in the air was such that we could bomb pretty much anything we liked. Yet, curiously, German industrial production peaked in 1944 and only tailed off because of shortages of raw materials and disruption of its transport network. We left many of their factories untouched yet continued to bomb the shit out of population centres and slaughter tens of thousands of non-combatants right up to the last few weeks of the war

Not so good for German civilians, considerably better for the owners of the factories and also those interests that set about dismantling, crating and sending some of those factories home immediately after the war ended

What the fuck was that all about?

And if all that seems too far back in history, what about Iraq?

Where’s the military sense in reducing a country’s essential infrastructure; its water, its sewerage, its electricity, in the run up to military campaigns that are only planned to last for days or weeks? How does sentencing an entire nation to drink polluted water for a decade or more (whilst, of course, leaving its oil production facilities in pristine condition) help your tanks roll into Baghdad?

.

Herbie the Hedgehog recommends...

And in my post this morning…

The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories (Rough Guides) (Paperback)

I think it’s worth mentioning because it’s a substantial, well-written book and even though it makes a couple of token nods in the direction of Elvis and Space Aliens it devotes most of its content to para-political conspiracy theories. Which is bad news for the Crop Circle / Ancient Sumerian Tablet brigade and potentially good news for those of us who don’t think you have to believe in Space Aliens to suspect the motivations and actions of the people who are currently running things.

However, because of my inherent mistrust of anything published by mainstream sources, I thought I’d ask my good friend Herbie – The Conspiracy Hedgehog to check the book out and share his objective opinion on its quality…




Herbie didn’t like it

Did you Herbie?



Actually, Herbie barely got past the Introduction, because generalisations such as the following made his fur stand on end…

“Nazi Germany was, admittedly, one of history’s most conspiracist regimes. But other totalitarian governments – Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia, Cuba and many contemporary Middle Eastern states, for example – have been equally conspiracist in their thinking…”

“It is curious that the majority of conspiracy theories seem to emanate from the right – notably when right wing beliefs are combined with fundamentalist religion…”

“Whether on the right or the Left, it seems that the world’s most conspiracist cultures tend to be those where people feel most disenfranchised. Without any chance to witness the chaotic workings of the machinery of power, it’s easy to believe that political affairs can be driven by sinister, implacable forces. Where there is no understanding of history, conspiracy theories are sucked in to fill the intellectual vaccuum…”

Whist enjoying the internal inconsistencies of the authors’ generalisations immensely Herbie thinks that what they are saying is a load of old bollocks and he’s a bit pissed off with me for rewarding them by buying the book



Sorry Herbie

But in my defence, the book is better written, more comprehensive and contains a lot more information than other attempts at this sort of thing I‘ve read and it’s worth the seven quid Amazon are asking for it as long as you keep the writers’ fairly evident bias in mind.

-

Herbie did, however, enjoy a video on the subject of consumer debt I showed him recently...

In Debt We Trust

In particular, The Herbster was really pleased to discover that he was not the only person to believe that, by accident or by design, student debt in the UK and the US was being thrust on young people to introduce them to a lifetime of debt slavery as well as a weapon to curb any inclinations they might have to rebel against the system.

He also liked how a couple of people in the film pointed out that traditional class divisions of working vs. capitalist classes had less and less meaning in increasingly consumerist, post-industrial societies and that future struggles within these societies would be between debtors and creditors.

All in all, Herbie enjoyed the film and thinks the first half is stronger than the second.

Unfortunately, the makers of the film have their own debts to pay and have not (yet) made it freely available

Herbie did do a spot of Chris Langham-style research on the Web and discovered that it is available as a torrent but also points out that Langham got busted

-

As a brief aside, whilst carrying out his research into bit torrent downloads Herbie noticed that some wicked characters are making versions of recent Hollywood blockbusters available via torrent with the added bonus of spliced-in spoilers for the latest Harry Potter book…



Herbie thinks that a well-classy thing to do

-

And finally, Mr H. also recommends watching Adam Curtis’ excellent series Pandora’s Box (an exploration of the dangers of technocratic and political ‘rationality’) currently available on Youtube - especially Episode Three…

Ep3. The League of Gentlemen

Thirty years ago, a group of economists managed to convince British politicians that they had foolproof technical means to make Britain great again. Pandora's Box tells the saga of how their experiments have led the country deeper into economic decline, and asks - is their game finally up?




Though Herbie is a little confused as to how someone as brainy as Mr Curtis can make a documentary about money supply, inflation and recession without making any reference whatsoever to expansion of money supply through expansion of credit.

Curtis implicitly endorses a notion that is still very prevalent today that inflation is primarily caused by wage rises, as opposed to lending silly people tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds they’re never going to be able to pay back to spend on shit.

The notion that increasing wages by a few percent will fuck an economy up but lending people shed loads of money at bonkers interest rates instead is good for the economy is a curious one and quite insane, unless you're a lender that is - in which case it's quite clever

Herbie thinks Mr Curtis is a very naughty boy

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It's all in the contract…

Catch-22 is my favourite book

Hardly original I know, but there you go

A lot of people who say that Catch-22 is one of their favourite books go on to describe it as being all about the lunacy of war

Which is a bit sad...

...saying something is your favourite book and then demonstrating that you probably really don’t really get it at all

Catch-22 is about being trapped living life by the rules of others and just how wicked and insane those others often are

To think the themes of the book are only applicable to wartime is, I think, to miss the point entirely

The scary thing is that when I first read Catch-22 as a teenager I assumed that most of the characters and scenarios in the book were exaggerated parodies crafted to drive the themes, and the humour, of the book home

Silly me

I’ve now spent the subsequent 25 years or so meeting people and encountering situations that could have been taken straight out of the book and realising that Heller didn't have to employ very much imagination at all

Probably one of the most over the top moments in the book occurs when the Americans make a deal with the Germans to bomb their own airfield to make good losses they incurred trading commodities futures…




Yossarian: You made a deal to bomb our own base?!!

Cathcart: A contract is a contract. That's what we're fighting for

Milo: Will you clear the field, please? We will soon begin to strafe.

Yossarian: Strafe?!!

Cathcart: It's all in the contract…

"Strafe?!!"

The passage concludes with the line…

"This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him...Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made."

Obviously, the idea of the US supporting its enemies in wartime to suit some twisted corporate agenda is totally over the top and nothing like anything that could happen outside of a satirical novel

But then I read stories like this…


190,000 weapons 'missing in Iraq'

The US military cannot account for 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to the Iraqi security forces, an official US report says…

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Pentagon cannot track about 30% of the weapons distributed in Iraq over the past three years.

The Pentagon did not dispute the figures, but said it was reviewing arms deliveries procedures.

About $19.2bn has been spent by the US since 2003 on Iraqi security forces.

GAO, the investigative arm of the US Congress, said at least $2.8bn of this money was used to buy and deliver weapons and other equipment.

Correspondents say it is now feared many of the weapons are being used against US forces on the ground in Iraq.


And I start to wonder…

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Freedom Next Time

Found via LWTC247's blog (ta)...

John Pilger - Freedom Next Time

Nothing new for veteran Conspiraloons™ here but we all enjoy listening to eloquent people saying things we already know about and agree with don't we

And, in time honoured fashion, Pilger follows the well-trodden Chomskyesque path of talking about corporate propaganda and the corruption of professional journalism but shies away from getting stuck into the nitty gritty of who's driving it all ('it's not about individuals, it's a system!') and what we can realistically do about it.

On the plus side, at least Pilger doesn't write off everyone on the Internet as a bunch of insane c*nts - which puts him miles ahead of most of his ilk

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The Wizard of Ounces

Quite a few blogs and alternative news outlets are starting to identify the recent slides in the US stockmarket and exchange rates as being harbingers of the global financial meltdown so many of us have been expecting

For some, it’s just like its 1929 all over again

And we all know what happened economically and politically in the ten years after 1929 don’t we?

Actually, to tell the truth, most people don’t, which is why it’s been so relatively easy to stage the rerun.

-

A frequent response ordinarily financially astute people who I have discussed this with have given to me when discussing impending recessions/ depressions goes something like this...

'Yeah, the bubble will burst eventually but the people who will get hit hard will be those who were stupid enough to over-extend themselves borrowing money to buy over valued houses or consumerist shit. It will serve them right'

Hmm, the problem with that line of thought is, of course, is that it's bollocks. Only the ultra-rich will benefit and will be able to hoover up assets at fire-sale prices. Everyone below that level will have to shoulder the costs of having several million of their fellow citizens wiped-out financially. They will pay through increased taxation, job insecurity, and exciting but not so new forms of government. Everyone will get it up the rear end

-

Still, it would be good news for people who like to dabble in documentary photography. Some photographers, like Martin Parr (more of him another time), have adapted to the times and have set about recording the horrors of faux prosperity and over-consumption but for most socially-aware photographers there’s nothing like a really good fucking depression and lots of people looking fucked up and wretched.

You can really display your humanity photographing people who are in the shit

Enter stage left, Dorothea Lang and the most iconic photograph of the 1930s Depression – Migrant Mother

'Migrant Mother' aka 'Oh look! Poor People! How quaint' - Someone made an entire career and a comfortable living off the back of this photograph - and it wasn't any of the people in it

I love that picture. I used to love it when I was younger because I thought, as I was told to, that it documented the despair of the excluded and was a powerful call for people to do the right thing. I now love the picture because I know that it was taken by a ‘champagne socialist’ under false pretences and totally misrepresents its subjects. In the words of the ‘Migrant Mother's grandson…

“…a shiny new car (it was only two years old) pulled into the entrance, stopped some twenty yards in front of Florence and a well-dressed woman got out with a large camera. She started taking Florence's picture. With each picture the woman would step closer. Florence thought to herself, "Pay her no mind. The woman thinks I'm quaint, and wants to take my picture." The woman took the last picture not four feet away then spoke to Florence: "Hello, I'm Dorthea Lange, I work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the plight of the migrant worker. The photos will never be published, I promise." Florence said, "Okay, if you think it will help." The woman turned, walked away, got in her car, and was gone. The next day the promise was broken: Florence's picture taken by the well-dressed lady was on the front page of all the newspapers…”

'Be Vewy, Vewy Quiet... I'm Hunting Poor People'

The moral of the story being, I think, that that the ruling class, be they industrialists or chattering liberals, always exploit the poor – they just go about it in slightly different ways.

-

And whilst on the subject of Depressions, the 1930s and people called Dorothy, somebody made a comment under one of those ‘It’s 1929 all over again’ articles that reminded me of a theory that has always amused me…

The comment claimed that The Wizard of Oz was a political and economic allegory of America in the late 1890s and the not entirely dissimilar economic and political situation of the 1930s

"We're off to get fucked by the Bankers, the wonderful Bankers of Oz!!"

A few examples to illustrate the thesis...

• Oz is the abbreviation for Ounces, the traditional measure of Gold. The price of which was manipulated by financial ‘wizards’ such as JP Morgan
  
  
• The Yellow Brick Road leading to the Emerald City are allegories for the Gold Standard and Washington
  
  
• The Wicked Witch of the East (Coast) represents the money men from New York
  
  
• Dorothy herself represents the honest ‘everyman’ farmer from agricultural Kansas who eventually realises that she had the power to change the world for the better all along in the form of her silver slippers (a free currency/ the vote)
  
  
• The Tin Man represents the industrial proletariat held back by monopolies such as JD Rockefeller’s Standard Oil

…and so on and so on. There’s even a nod to the international drugs trade in the form of a field of sleep-inducing poppies that almost do our heroes in

There’s an entire article on the subject up on Wikipedia (so it must be true). Normally, I’m a tad sceptical about people reading things in books or lyrics without explicit acknowledgment from the author but the Oz thing seems solid to me … and very, very funny

It makes you kind of wonder what’s really going on in Teletubbies. It’s pretty clear that kids understand every word they’re saying but they won’t tell us grown ups

-

And finally, on the subject of people reading too much into books or lyrics, my favourite example is the undoubtedly excellent Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix. The opening line goes...

After all the jacks are in their boxes and the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness staggering on down the street
Footprints dressed in red and the wind whispers mary…




Now you could, as some Hendrix fans have done, try to decipher the complicated psychedelic allegories woven into these words…

Or, you can just believe, as I do, the story that Hendrix was piss drunk, late one night in front of a television and only had this to watch…



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The IPCC and the Stockwell Shooting - It really is that bad

Welcome to Daily Expresso World - located in a parallel universe where Latinos look like East Africans (or is it Mongolians?). Well, they're all fucking foreigners ain't they?

Now that the ‘Stockwell 2’ IPCC report is out of the way it is now pretty likely that’s the end of any further investigation into what really happened on 22nd July 2005

The case is, to all intents and purposes, closed

As well as being effectively closed, the events of that day have been so clouded with disinformation and irrelevant bullshit most people can’t even comprehend why the treatment of de Menezes' execution is so outrageous…

• Don’t be drawn into the bullshit that is Stockwell 2 and a minute by minute timeline of which policeman claims to have known what in the aftermath of the shooting
  
  
• Forget the dodgy witnesses and policemen who gave accounts of the shooting that lied about de Menezes running from the police, wearing a heavy coat with wires sticking out of it, or refusing a verbal challenge
  
  
• Forget the ‘disappeared’ CCTV footage
  
  
• Forget the fairy stories about SAS-trained military surveillance specialists turning off their cameras and taking a leak at a crucial moment
  
  
• Forget the fact that armed men threatened and held a gun to the face of the driver of the train for reasons unknown
  
  
• Forget that, by their own account, the police trailed a suspected suicide bomber for half an hour and then allowed him to enter the Underground system without challenge
  
  
• Forget the orchestrated establishment smear campaign that started while de Menezes' body was still warm. A campaign that put about suggestions that JCdM was running away from the police because he had no visa or was a rapist
  
  
• Forget the fact that we don't even really know whether it was the police who shot de Menezes
  
  
• Forget the fact that there hasn't yet been an inquest into de Menezes' death
  
  
• Forget the fact that the first IPCC report hasn’t even been made public
  
  
• Forget the fact that, in spite of all the flimflam and bullshit, even the IPCC had to concede that the police did lie about the shooting and tampered with records

Forget all that stuff and the fact that no-one has been held accountable for any of it

Just concentrate on the most important unanswered question from that day. A question that two expensive and protracted official inquiries and acres of newsprint and television time haven’t answered...

Why did the police execute an innocent man who clearly wasn’t carrying a bomb?

I don't see anything that could have been a fucking bomb. Do you see anything that could have been a fucking bomb?

More than any other incident in the past couple of years that I can think of the fact that this question can remain so conspicuously unanswered tells me that, yes, our media and our other institutions are terminally crooked, to a degree that most people won’t even want to start thinking about

(edit: for clarity's sake I should point out that the picture of the 'live' de Menezes above is taken from a reconstruction made by the BBC. Reconstruction was necessary because the actual CCTV tapes from Stockwell were either 'worthless' or wiped clean after the shooting, depending on who you choose to believe - the police or the station staff)

And to anyone who slags me off for sniping at the police who are doing a very difficult job protecting us from those who would destroy our way of life my answer is this 'If something as outrageous as this is allowed to happen what the fuck are our police really protecting?'

That's a question for the increasingly-politicized bastards in charge of our police forces. Ordinary coppers are just trying to do their jobs and are no more immune to bullshit than the rest of us

-

And if anyone needs a reminder of just how bent our media is, here’s the BBC Panorama special on the JCdM shooting...





Yeah, it’s special alright

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Making a comfortable living...

Fellow George Monbiot fans everywhere should enjoy this nigh faultless Monbiot impersonation from the ever-excellent Daily Mash...

Do We Really Need Ambulances?

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Virtual Terror Bollocks

A few days ago I wrote a post about Al Qaeda training camps being supposedly located in regions so inaccessible that dinosaurs still lived in them

But that was a few days ago

And, as we are being always being reminded, the terror threat is a constantly evolving one

According to an article in The Australian (an article that just has to be read to be believed) Al Qaeda terror training camps are now being moved into cyberspace...

Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qa'ida, says it is a new phenomena that, until now, has not been openly discussed outside the intelligence community.

But he says security agencies are extremely concerned about what home-grown terrorists are up to in cyberspace. He believes the dismantling and disruption of military training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan after September 11 forced terrorists to turn to the virtual world.

"They are rehearsing their operations in Second Life because they don't have the opportunity to rehearse in the real world," Gunaratna says. "And unless governments improve their technical capabilities on a par with the terrorists' access to globalisation tools like the internet and Second Life, they will not be able to monitor what is happening in the terrorist world."

"Right, first we pick up the chapati flour and then it's off to Glasgow Airport"

Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments.

Zuccato told an Australian Security Industry Association conference in Sydney that people intent on evil no longer had to travel to the target they wanted to attack to carry out reconnaissance. He said they could use virtual worlds to create an exact replica and rehearse an entire attack online, including monitoring the response and ramifications.

"We need to start thinking about living, working and protecting two worlds and two realities," Zuccato says.

The word bollocks just doesn't seem adequate

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Stopp torturing me by the electromagnetic microwave weapon

Thanks to anon for pointing me, by way of a comment on the previous post, towards an article in the Daily Express on the subject of mind control. Apparently the Express has discovered that CIA MK Ultra program really did happen and, even more shocking still, was conceived as a sophisticated PR stunt for the latest Matt Damon movie

or something along those lines

but wait, that Express article contains even more rich Conspiraloon™ goodness than first meets the eye

On perusing the readers' comments underneath, the name 'M. Tahani' and an impassioned plea on the subject of electromagnetic torture caught my eye




could this be the same M. Tahani who I blogged about several moons ago in the context of the virtual hand-job that is the 10 Downing Street E-Petition site



Yes, I jolly well believe it is




The really sad thing is that M. Tahani might have a point

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Internet Dream

Discovered by way of a posting on The Alliance blog...

"Internet Dream" Original Song by Tay Zonday



One way or another this guy is going to go far - if his singing career doesn't pan out I hear that voice-over work for flame grilled hamburger ads and Simpson and Bruckheimer action movie trailers pays ridiculously well

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The IPCC and the Stockwell Shooting - What's another day?

Today was the day (or at least that's what I read somewhere) that the IPCC was going to publish the report of its investigation into police behaviour after the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes

A few papers, especially The Guardian, had gone so far as to disclose some of the report's contents in advance of its release

But, whoopsies, it’s looking like the IPCC has decided to hold back the report just one more day to make some final, final, last minute alterations to its contents

Apparently, the report included some faint residual whiff of a hint of a suggestion that someone was actually responsible for the Head of the Metropolitan Police lying to everyone about the circumstances surrounding the shooting

Ah well, it’s been two years already so what’s another day

And if anyone thinks the timing of the report is conveniently slap bang in the middle of the summer holidays look on the bright side – the IPCC could have published between Christmas and New Year which would have been even an quieter time

There again, at this rate, it still might

I've been watching the big news organisations' coverage of this story on and off all day and there's been some serious retrospective 'updating' of their relevant pages and 'shaping' of the story in the last couple of hours.

I've also noticed that somebody appears to have slipped some Sodium Pentothal in The Independent’s James Macintyre’s afternoon tea…

“The Stockwell shooting could yet turn into one of the great public scandals of the decade. Initially, police - who blacked out elements of the CCTV footage - claimed that de Menezes was in a bulky coat and sprinted over the underground barrier. These claims turned out to be false.”

Well, quite



This entire business stinks to high heaven and a lot more people have lied about what happened that day than just Sir Ian Blair. Not that you would notice from the mainstream media's treatment of the story

And still we are no nearer the answers to the questions…

‘Why did the Metropolitan Police shoot an innocent man in the face seven times when he clearly wasn’t carrying a bomb and why hasn't the person responsible been held to account?’

And we never will be

-

(and yes, that clip I've linked to was ripped off from an Alex Jones video)

-

edit: On the 22 July 2005 the Tube Drivers' union the RMT published a press release on its website relating to the incident at Stockwell. I've linked to it a couple of the times in the past but it is now no longer available on the RMT website (edit: it's been moved to here). It read...

"Our members and all LUL staff have shown immense courage and commitment through the awful events of the last two weeks, but their concerns at the way yesterday’s alert was handled are serious and there are many other issues that remain to be resolved.

"Their concerns will have been fuelled by the revelation that an innocent Tube driver today found himself with a police gun at his head during the incident in Stockwell station in which a suspect was shot dead.

"No apology could ever be enough ever take away the trauma that that driver has suffered and there should be a full inquiry into the handling of the incident

Now WTF is that all about?

-

NB! When I refer to the IPCC above I am of course referring to the Independent Police Complaints Commission and not the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which is a very different beast altogether. One of them publishes supposedly objective investigative reports which in reality are selectively edited and distorted to suit covert political agendas...

and the other is the IPCC.

Anyway, after the publication of tomorrow's report there's a good chance that the Independent Police Complaints Commission will be simply known as the PCC and that should be the end of any potential confusion

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Best fish ever?

For reasons that are gradually becoming harder and harder to remember, this blog includes a special 'Fish of the Month' feature which involves me selecting a species of fish that has either made an outstanding contribution to world events or has distinguished itself in some other way over the course of the month.

And August's winner is...


The Blobfish

The blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) is a fish that inhabits the deep waters off the coasts of Australia and Tasmania. Due to the inaccessibility of its habitat, it is rarely seen by humans.

Blobfish are found at depths where the pressure is several dozens of times higher than at sea level, which would likely make gas bladders inefficient. To remain buoyant, the flesh of the blobfish is primarily a gelatinous mass with a density slightly less than water; this allows the fish to float above the sea floor without expending energy on swimming. The relative lack of muscle is not a disadvantage as it primarily swallows edible matter that floats by in front it.

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Suspicious Minds

Alex Jones…

Love him or hate him, his portfolio of websites, ‘truth’ videos and Internet radio programming is a significant conduit for information about many subjects we Conspiraloons™ hold dear to our hearts

His portfolio of websites, ‘truth’ videos and Internet radio programming is also a significant conduit for disinformation about many subjects we Conspiraloons™ hold dear to our hearts

Jones and his team are particularly concerned about issues relating to government snooping, electronic tagging and the rise of an Orwellian surveillance society

So, imagine my delight when perusing the Propaganda Matrix site today and clicking on the first hyperlink in the ‘Other news’ section entitled ‘Internet Filters’...




to be greeted with this advert…




Use PC Pandora To Find Out What Your Partner Is Hiding From You!

9 out of 10 women who feel their partner is cheating are correct
50% of men who feel their partner is cheating are correct

More people than ever before are using the Internet to cheat on their partner. With online dating sites, social networks, chat forums, email and instant messengers, it is incredibly easy to meet people, have an affair, and get away with it, all in record time. Do you feel your partner may be having sex with somebody else, but you're not sure?

DOWNLOAD PC PANDORA TODAY TO DISCOVER IF YOUR SUSPICIONS ARE TRUE!

Most people who are cheating have used their computer to either start the affair, or are using the computer to keep in touch with that person. Many of the people who do this are covering their tracks by deleting browsing history so you never find out, or go one step further and use various programs and tools to cover up their tracks. They think that their wife, husband, or significant other will never find out.

PC Pandora was developed with all of these "cheater helper" programs in mind. PC Pandora is like your own private detective that will take snapshots and record everything that your spouse/significant other does on the PC, whether they try to cover up their tracks or not - it won't matter.

Thousands of new users like yourself are downloading and using PC Pandora every single month. And there's a reason why. PC Pandora is the most stable, feature rich, and user friendly monitoring software on the market. We're #1 for a reason. PC Pandora has been featured on Talk shows, news shows, radio, newspapers... you name it. Find out why we're the best and try PC Pandora yourself. Purchase right now or take PC Pandora for a free spin. But don't wait - take action right now.


Oooh, you can smell the integrity

Given what happened after Pandora opened her box, I'm half inclined to think this ad is a spoof. If it is could someone please put me straight

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edit: as Muncher has pointed out, I should clarify that Propaganda Matrix is not run by Alex Jones but by Paul Joseph Watson, an employee of Jones - maybe Alex could bung Paul a few more $'s so he doesn't have to include ads for spyware on his website to make ends meet.

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