Saturday, November 08, 2008

Political Puppets ...now available in Black

Back again

After a couple of weeks away in the Boondocks I returned home to discover that billions of people around the world appear to be gripped by post-election euphoria...



The astute voters of New Zealand can now look forward to a future of glittering prosperity, packed with the kind of economic 'reforms' much beloved by the likes of the IMF and the World Bank, delivered by an
ex.(?) employee of the Federal Reserve

There really is nowhere to run to

-

Meanwhile, in the wake of a only slightly less globally significant election, quite a few people appear to be whacking off deliriously at the prospect of America's first Blackish President




Yay!

Presumably, the people who think that Obama's election is going to change anything are the same kind of fucknuts who thought that the election of Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago heralded a new era in gender equality or who didn't feel like vomiting when exposed to the 'Things Can Only Get Better' mediawankfest that accompanied the 1997 General Election

As it happens, clips of people dancing in the Millennium Dome to 'Things Can Only Get Better' in 1997 are thin on the Internet - I suspect eternal, irredeemable shame has got something to do with it - and I've only been able to locate this partial record put up by a Labour Party droid...





One comment underneath that clip's page on Youtube really did bring out the misanthrope in me. Does any species capable of supporting even a solitary individual as stupid as this really deserve to survive...


"The Conservatives may be leading in the polls at the moment, however, would David Cameron be able to take on the world banking system like Gordon Brown has? I think not..."


Fast forward back to 2008 and anyone who expects true change for the good from a President-elect who surrounds himself with psychos like
Emanuel, Volcker or Brzezinski truly is an uttter, utter fucknut

One comment I saw over at Lord P.'s blog sums up my own feelings about the US Presidential Election nicely...


"What happens when you replace a sociopathic lunatic with an eloquent, sane man who espouses the exact same policies?




A very good question imho. One we're about to find the answer to

.

47 comments:

tony said...

well at least the Americans were spared Mick Hucknall.........

Stef said...

...reasons to emigrate from the UK #23

Anonymous said...

You do realise the rest of the Commonwealth is pretty going the same way as the UK, right? :p

Anonymous said...

pretty much*

Stef said...

right?

'fraid so

Anonymous said...

wassup?

Anonymous said...

can somebody please confirm or deny the rumour I keep hearing about Saint Barak.Was he born in America or Africa?

paul said...

The single joy of the coverage was gore vidal going severely off medication at David Dumbledore

Stef said...

lol

deranged, unmedicated Gore Vidals rock

Anonymous said...

to me what is scary about mr Obama is that he is a far better smooth operator and all round smart guy that will have the ability to fool the good folks of the US far better than the clumsy inarticulate Bush could.
The guy would make a wonderful door to door salesman.The clincher is that he has a well dodgy character called Rahm Emmanuel in his midst.

In strikingly racist remarks, the father of Rahm Emanuel has said Israel will benefit from Obama's choice of White House chief of staff.

"Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House," Benjamin Emanuel, father of Rahm Emanuel, told the Israeli Ma'ariv daily.

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_M._Emanuel

hurry up before the delete it!

This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy.
Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page.

Benjamin M. Emanuel (né Auerbach) is a Chicago pediatrician and former member of the Irgun[1][2]. He is the father of NIH bioethicist Ezekiel J. Emanuel, U.S. Congressman and White House Chief of Staff-designate Rahm Emanuel, talent agent Ari Emanuel, and adopted daughter Shoshana.[1] Benjamin Auerbach was born in Jerusalem in 1927,[1] the son of pharmacists who had fled Russian pogroms.[3] The family adopted the surname Emanuel in 1933, after Benjamin’s brother, Emanuel Auerbach, was killed in a skirmish with Arabs in Jerusalem.[1] In the 1940s, Benjamin Emanuel interrupted his medical school training in Switzerland to take part in an unsuccessful scheme to smuggle guns from Czechoslovakia to the Israeli underground.[3] He later served as a medic in the 1948 Israeli war of independence.[3] In 1953, his medical training brought him to Chicago's Mount Sinai hospital, where he met X-ray technician Martha Smulevitz, the daughter of a Moldavian immigrant and union organizer.[3][4] The couple married and briefly lived in Israel before returning to Chicago.[3] They had three sons within four years, and according to Benjamin Emanuel, named their second son in honor of Rahamim, a Lehi combatant who was killed.[2] They later moved to Wilmette and adopted their daughter.[1] Benjamin sent his sons to summer camp in Israel, and Marsha insisted they take ballet lessons and accompany her to civil rights protests, where she was arrested three times.[3] Dr. Emanuel's pediatrics practice grew to one of the largest in Chicago


seems to me Obama is an Israeli rent boy.

paul said...

And his brother manages the man who put the zany into zionism, sacha baron cohen.
It's a small world (at the top)

Stef said...

Emanuel's brother also manages Michael Moore*

Michael Moore made his first firm Roger and Me with the assistance of one of George Bush's first cousins

and George Bush, of course, was generously financed by members of the Bin Laden family

a small world?

it's positively fucking claustrophobic

Stef said...

*=Michael Moore is, of course, the man who made a much-promoted film about the Columbine shootings which shed absolutely no light on the events of that day

...followed by an even more promoted expose of the 9/11 attacks which was just as (un)informative

Stef said...

seems to me Obama is an Israeli rent boy

Obama was the bankers' candidate

McCain the MIC candidate

not that the distinction means very much, as the bankers own the MIC anyway

and whilst on the subject of controlled faux dissent, as typified by Michael Moore (and Naomi Klein whose latest tome I'm wading through at the moment), the likes of Moore (and Klein) and US Demotwats in general, do an excellent job of blaming of Waspy outfits like Coca Cola, McDonalds, McDonald Douglas and General Motors for all the world's ills, whilst simultaneously doing and equally excellent job of not mentioning the top-level controlling role played by the banksters and their manipulation of fantasy finance capital

the fact that these people a) get on tele lots and b) do not get shot in the face is a bit of a give away

Stef said...

...the term MIC really should be ungraded to MIFC (Military Industrial Financial Complex)

as well as being a more accurate expression of the situation it would also look a bit like, and might even be confused on occasions, with MILF

which amuses me

Numeral said...

What has the Moro Islamic Liberation Front got to do with this?

Anonymous said...

Small world indeed. Yeah, the false leftist opposition is still out in force (well I say leftist - there isn't really any distinction if you look closely).

I'm expecting Obama to be just as bad as Bush on gun control, if not worse.

You know, I came across discussion about the latest stabbing here in London, and once again people dismissed allowing carrying of weapons because it would create "an arms race". What the ****? was pretty much my response. The criminals already have guns, its the youths that can't afford them that use knives...

The Antagonist said...

Stef said...

and whilst on the subject of controlled faux dissent, as typified by Michael Moore (and Naomi Klein whose latest tome I'm wading through at the moment), the likes of Moore (and Klein) and US Demotwats in general, do an excellent job of blaming of Waspy outfits like Coca Cola, McDonalds, McDonald Douglas and General Motors for all the world's ills, whilst simultaneously doing and equally excellent job of not mentioning the top-level controlling role played by the banksters and their manipulation of fantasy finance capital


Forget all the publicity-riven radical bullshit that seeks to blame only corporations with nary a mention of the role of the State, it's the radicals you don't hear about that are worth a look.

In response to the highly lauded (by the establishment, of course) Hardt & Negri book, Empire (implied without Imperialism and Imperialist design, intent and collaboration), James Petras' EMPIRE WITH IMPERIALISM -
The Globalizing Dynamics of Neoliberal Capitalism
is well worth a read.

Welcome back, btw.

Stef said...

The Shat on Gun Control

Stef said...

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front

Unfortunate acronym overlap or stroke of marketing genius?

Anonymous said...

I mentioned in a previous post the Edinburgh airport police wandering around the airport lounge(after security) with machine guns,,,over the fuckin top I thought,,,I felt like asking the couple of hard cunts what they were up to,,images of de Menzes kept flying through my mind,,,the kids thought it was novel if not a little creepy,,,I had to tell them about it was for "security"
reasons,,,kinda like when the teacher at out school used to walk around the class with the belt slung over his shoulder

Stef said...

@not anon

am still working through the backlog of emails/blog comments that built up whilst I spent a fortnight in the land of my forebears

a land which, funnily enough, is enthusiastically deploying its army far beyond the confines of its airports

first to combat terrorist immigrants

and then to battle the Mafia

A welcome, partially martial, turn of events for some of my more insane elderly relatives who miss the good old days

paul said...

Klein seems to be the epitome of 'ooh they are awful' infotainment.
I think the shock idea is stretched a bit thin, and the idea that these shocks are taken advantage of, rather than administered, is a glaring lacuna in the thesis.
Like saying torturers only go to work when they come across someone tied to a chair.

Stef said...

I think the shock idea is stretched a bit thin, and the idea that these shocks are taken advantage of, rather than administered, a glaring lacuna in the thesis.

Coincidentally one of the other tracts I took with me on my travels is Taleb's Black Swan book which also sports an almost identical lacuna - in that he constantly bangs on about his 'Black Swan' events, such as stock market crashes or the 9/11 attacks, being inherently unpredictable

unpredictable that is unless you work for Odigo, are in the business of shorting airline stocks, producing X-File spin offs for Fox or are in the habit of drafting extensive Patriot Acts and PNAC mission statements just on the off-chance

both Klein and Taleb are essentially 'shit just happens' merchants who go out of their way in their books to support the official 9/11 conspiracy theory and as such, regardless of the merits of anything else they come out with, can go fuck themselves royally imho

Stef said...

...and I'm that fucked off that I actually paid for both books

Anonymous said...

"Political Puppets ...now available in Black"

Judge him by his deeds.

For example, will he follow through with,

"

"...As you know, the CEO of Aegis Defense Services Tim Spicer has been implicated in a variety of human rights abuses around the globe. Given his history, I agree that the United States should consider rescinding its contract with his company."

Barack Obama
United States Senator

?????


Retrieved from the Pat Finucane Centre", 09 Nov 2008.

To read about Finucane, try this court case here (not for the faint hearted - it isn't possible to tell yourselve that this was some sort of fiction).

Stef said...

Sadly, I'm old enough to remember, and haven't ingested enough aspartame to forget, the Labour Party talking about how it would implement an Ethical UK Foreign Policy when it came to power in 1997

as it happens, I suspect Robin Cook actually meant it - and we all know what happened to him

paul said...

I take it you didn't have your eyes forced open by the world changing 'No Logo' which blew the lid off the entire capitalist system?

Stef said...

You take correctly

I only invested in the last book off the back of a couple of folks I know commenting positively about it

I haven't finished it yet so maybe it all comes together in the last reel

Stef said...

can somebody please confirm or deny the rumour I keep hearing about Saint Barak.Was he born in America or Africa?

no

Anonymous said...

meanwhile paranoia levels are running high.

http://www.northcom.mil/News/2008/110508.html

November 5, 2008

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. — North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command will participate in Exercise Vigilant Shield 09 Nov. 12 - 18.

The focus of VS09 is on homeland defense and civil support. The exercise will include scenarios to achieve exercise objectives within the maritime, aerospace, ballistic missile defense, cyber, consequence management, strategic communications, and counter terrorism domains.

VS09 will run concurrent with other Department of Defense-sponsored and international exercises to more realistically test the synchronized response of federal, state, local and international mission partners in preparation for homeland defense, homeland security and civil support missions in the United States and abroad.

Concurrent exercises include U.S. Strategic Command GLOBAL LIGHTNING 09 and BULWARK DEFENDER 09; Canada Command DETERMINED DRAGON; California National Guard VIGILANT GUARD; and the State of California GOLDEN GUARDIAN.

Elite combat brigade for homeland security missions raises ire of ACLU
Tags:

http://coloradoindependent.com/13321/elite-combat-brigade-for-homeland-security-missions-raises-ire-of-aclu

In the next three years the military plans to activate and train an estimated 4,700 service members for specialized domestic operations, according to Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of U.S. Northern Command, which was created in 2002 for homeland defense missions.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has asked the government for information on these military deployment within U.S. borders but didn`t received any satisfactory answer until today: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/37274prs20081021.html
It`s worth to remember that the 9/11 "terrorist attack" happened precisely the day an anti-terrorist exercice ivolved the US Air Force so that New York and Washington were practically deprived of their protecting combat jets... We also remember that the 7/7 "terrorist attack" in London happened precisely the day an anti-terrorist exercice was on in the area... What is going to happen now? All what is known from the Northcom is that the projected exercice beginning on November 18 will involve the simulation of three simultaneous nuclear explosions on the US territory.

paul said...

well, every one's been saying mr obama is going to be 'tested' early on.
I somehow think he'll pass with flying colours.

Anonymous said...

paul said...

well, every one's been saying mr obama is going to be 'tested' early on.

ok I guess its time to start getting the tinned foods and bags of rice and bottled water stored!

Anonymous said...

Ralph Nader, who ran against the Democratic candidate as an independent, believes Obama will not be able to overcome the vested interests of big corporations and lobby groups, and that policy will remain largely unchanged from the Bush era.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8H92fcSOdY

Anonymous said...

"I only invested in the last book off the back of a couple of folks I know commenting positively about it"

Blackswan isn't meant to be a politicial analysis, rather a critique of the popular misunderstanding of the analysis and use of probability. It is also critical of "epistemic arrogance" ...

Anyway, 'tis a valuable tome.

Check out his new essay on the Fourth Quadrant.

Isn't that where Jane Greenaway ended up?

Anonymous said...

Any coders out there?

Got any code so that I can post a "playlist" of youtube links, such that they play sequentially?

Stef said...

Blackswan isn't meant to be a politicial analysis, rather a critique of the popular misunderstanding of the analysis and use of probability. It is also critical of "epistemic arrogance" ...

understood, but some of the examples Taleb cites were eminently predictable, and very probably planned or at least managed, events

Taleb is also so keen on advocating his thesis that he gives nowhere near enough attention to the human capacity for dissonance, or dishonesty come to think of it

just because culpable individuals claim that particular 'Black Swan' events were not predictable does not mean that it was so

I spent the better part of 20 years working in risk related fields and highly paid, supposedly astute, people pretending that whopping, and eminently predictable, risks didn't exist or would never come to pass were pretty much the norm

is the current financial crisis a Black Swan event?

that would make myself and countless others psychics

Stef said...

Taleb is strong on sceptical empiricism though which does get a thumbs up, even if he tries to claim way too much turf for his pet idea

paul said...

That's the problem with 'insight' literature. The big idea is usually a fairly small one inflated to book length and usually forced into signifcance beyond its carrying capacity.
It's a marketing gimmick, not that far from self help literature.
I have, of course, not read black swan, but I would think that it is entirely predictable that using processes which no one understands and no one regulates will result in a mess, the nature of which might be unpredictable.
A good empiricist would have noted that the august, nobel prize nonsense of Scholes and Black fucked up completely in its LTCM form and should have been binned back then.
However its occult opacity was very useful in disguising profitable but damaging behaviour.

paul said...

anon:
create playlists

ziz said...

Welcome back to civilisation - we had hoped to have the Savile enquiry on Bloody Sunday (et seq)published in readiness for your return.

Could you perhaps go away again .. perhaps for several years , we might just have the draft copy ready by then.

Stef said...

A good empiricist would have noted that the august, nobel prize nonsense of Scholes and Black fucked up completely in its LTCM form and should have been binned back then.

One of the people in this clip from the distant days of 2006 is now probably invoking the Taleb defence. The other isn't

Anonymous said...

One of the people in this clip from the distant days of 2006 is now probably invoking the Taleb defence. The other isn't

nice clip stef.here is 10/28/08 Peter Schiff predicts doomed economy under Obama

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sMdF1CiQAkA

Anonymous said...

Peter Schiff BLOOMBERG 28 Oct 2008 Part 1

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TP_aJ7LcAAA&feature=related

Anonymous said...

some funny stuff here.

South Park - About Last Night

obama wins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-Ch3ut1p6M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K267BmpACnk&feature=related

Anonymous said...

I say they are related:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/03/obama-declares.html