Michael Hudson explains Neo-serfdom pt27

Scroll forward to 13:30 and sit back whilst Prof. Hudson lets rip with his smooth, easy-listening, duck-like tones...

IMHO it's worth spending a little time switching onto what Hudson has been saying all these years because the explanatory and, more importantly, the predictive power of his model of how economics works is solid. If you want to know how things are expected, by the powers that be, to play out in Austerity UK he most definitely is worth listening to

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The Big Picture(s)

The most thought-provoking collection of G20 Protest pictures I've seen so far...

Boston Globe - The Big Picture

(caution - contains Big Pictures)

That's the future boys and girls. A future that the Establishment has been busy preparing for, whilst the majority of the population were gorging themselves on crap, which they now have to pay for, and the minority of us who saw this coming were being dismissed as mentally unwell




Both Antagonist and Craig Murray are on the case




Craig Murray, in particular, appears to have gone totally berko in recent days and has laid into the Met, the British Government, the Israeli Government, the US Government, the EU, Nato and Tory bloggers. He also also raised the issue of agent provocateurs posing as Muslim and anti Capitalist protesters

I think someone must have upset him .

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Plus ça change pt231

Some classic Retroloonery from Harry H. Corbett, who really gets going about two minutes in...

...from a visual gag featuring a bag of underpants falling on someone's head to talk about the machine-gunning of trade unionists in the space of 60 seconds. British comedy was certainly different back then. Certain other things clearly haven't changed at all

Steptoe and Son was, of course, miles funnier when you found out that the two actors really did hate each other

cf. "In 1976 as Prime Minister, Wilson wished to have Corbett awarded an OBE, but the middle initial "H" was lost in the bureaucratic process, and the award went to the Sooty puppeteer Harry Corbett instead."



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Murderers also lie

"I so direct you that the evidence in this case, taken at its highest, would not justify my leaving verdicts of unlawful killing to you."

"I'm not saying that nothing went wrong in a police operation which resulted in the killing of an innocent man"

"All interested persons agree that a verdict of unlawful killing could only be left to you if you could be sure that a specific officer had committed a very serious crime: murder or manslaughter,"

"Many people tell lies for a variety of reasons … [including] to mitigate the impact of what might be a … tragic mistake"

"Put aside any emotion - put them to one side."

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Don't talk to the Cops

And whilst on the subject of Kafka-esque criminal justice systems, thanks to Tony for sharing a link to a couple of videos with the theme 'don't talk to the cops'







The first clip is a presentation by a hyperactive American law lecturer, who if he's not on drugs should be, explaining why suspects, even the totally innocent (if such people actually exist), should never volunteer information to the police.

The second clip features a remarkably candid policeman sharing an insight into suspect interview techniques and some of his favourite, er, lies he uses in his interviews

Whilst the legislation mentioned in the clips is specific to the US, to the best of my knowledge most of the principles discussed apply just as much to the UK

...except that our law enforcement agencies get to lock people up for a lot longer in the UK and therefore have a lot more time to work some of the special magic described in these videos on Evil Doers

Because, as we know, police all over the world only ever arrest people who've done something wrong

They might take their time figuring out what exactly but they get there in the end


and remember boys and girls, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law - but never for you

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Feeling Odd?

Legendary pie-aficionado and Flickr regular Thomas Hawk recently made a comment about a certain poster being used in the latest Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorism publicity campaign

I won’t reproduce the original poster here but the text reads…


Thousands of people take photos every day

What if one of them seems odd?

Terrorists use surveillance to help plan attacks, taking photos and making notes about security measures like the location of CCTV cameras

If you see someone doing that we need to know

Let experienced officers decide what action to take


Hmmm, given that I and most of my chums a) take pictures of stuff in public places and b) look a bit odd, it’s difficult not to take this latest heap of fear-mongering bollocks personally

It’s also worth remembering that here in the UK we have something like 25% of all the world’s CCTV cameras and that most of those cameras are privately controlled, by poorly-regulated c*nts. So it’s a bit rich, or rather a bit fascistic, when our publicly funded police force is essentially easing towards criminalising anyone who might take photographs of those wretched, corporately-operated, things

Anyway, Thomas’ post (itself picked up from another blog) was picked up by Boing Boing and people have started to post ‘remixes’ of the original poster







There is also a chirpy radio ad to accompany the poster campaign that can be accessed on the Met site here (transcript here)

When a time comes when it’s virtually impossible to distinguish between real anti-terror publicity and satirical anti-terror material that’s a time to start feeling really quite uncomfortable about where we are being led (if, perish the thought, you haven't already)




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Fans of dystopian sci-fi movies will, however, with all these Orwellian ‘public service’ announcements about generic terrorists and the accelerated blurring of state and corporate power and interests, be feeling right at home…

"Quaid, activate the reactor Quaid…"

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edit: and whilst on the subject of not being able to distinguish 'truth' from satire and dystopian sci-fi, cheers to anon for this little nugget...



Next Week on Fox News - Al Qaeda only 'months away' from completing a Death Star?...

edit#2:

Everyone's friend Henry the Hoover - unlike the Al Qaeda Dalek, a Weapon of Love not War

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Official Press Release from the Conspiraloon™ Alliance

The text of an official press release issued by the Conspiraloon™ Alliance earlier today...

"It is with a heavy heart that we at the Conspiraloon™ Alliance feel the need to issue a public announcement distancing ourselves from recent statements made by honorary Alliance member Mohamed Al-Fayed



Whilst giving evidence at London's Royal Courts of Justice at the inquest into the death of his son Dodi and Diana, Princess of Wales, Mr Al-Fayed made a series of allegations identifying a number of senior public figures; including Prince Philip and former Prime Minister Tony Blair, as being murdering Nazi scum involved in a gigantic Establishment conspiracy. Outside the court, Mr Al Fayed did not halt his invective. Asked by the BBC's royal correspondent Peter Hunt whether he was lying, the Harrods owner shot back: "You work for MI6, you idiot!”

Mr Al-Fayed, stricken by grief at the loss of his son, has clearly boarded the last train to Funkytown and is no longer able to distinguish between fact and fantasy

BBC royal correspondents work for MI5 NOT MI6

We wish Mr Al-Fayed a speedy recovery and the swift return of all his faculties"

Unlike Mr Al-Fayed I personally have every confidence in the objectivity and outcomes of Official British Inquiries and my only regret is that this all-too short inquest simply didn't have enough time to get to the bottom of the peculiar, and illegal, collapse of Paul Burrell's trial or end the rumours about an exceptionally dodgy (and missing) dossier Princess Diana had compiled on her beloved husband's hobbies which even my dear old mum, someone who has never connected to the Internet in her life, has heard about

Best Royal Portrait ever?

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You know when you've been Tangoed

So, Peter Hain has finally come a cropper for being (allegedly) a corrupt fucker

Whoopee feckin do

Peter Hain

Nasty Orangey Thing

For a while towards the end of last year there was just the slightest possibility that people's attention would focus not on corrupt, and essentially expendable, politicians but the people and interests who do the corrupting

Well, it was only a slight possibility

So, instead, let's just sit back and watch the journo-political whores employed to fob us all off with bullcrap get stuck into some good old-fashioned 'Left' vs 'Right', false choice party politics whilst the serious business of running the country for the benefit of the deserving few carries on as usual

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And I wouldn't trust the supposedly anti-establishment bloggers who spearheaded the controlled demolition of Peter Hain for a second - they're very careful about what they say, and what they allow commentators to say, and are clearly aware that they can only go so far...

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Maybe not all but quite a few roads lead to Goldmans - redux

My new Fish of the Month, and a strong candidate for Fish of the Decade, the bottom-feeding Ratfish

It's nice to see that my old spooky psychic powers haven't eluded me

A couple of days ago I slap up a post whittering on about Northern Rock and the not so Hidden of the Market that is Goldman Sachs and today I discover (via Lord Patel) that Goldman Sachs have been 'hired to aid Northern Rock rescue'

Well fancy, fancy that

Fancy

This decision on the part of HM Treasury?/ The Bank of England/? Northern Rock's board?, which is somewhat akin to putting Vlad the Impaler in charge of a blood bank, has apparently been made because of Goldman's 'global reach'

which is one way of explaining how the world really works I suppose

That Northern Rock rescue bid in full swing...

but, fret not children, we won't be footing Goldman's bill (the least of the opportunities they now have to make lots of luvvly, luvvly money out of Northern Rock) because...

"The Treasury spokesman said the U.S. bank's fees would be paid by Northern Rock."

because, as we all know, Northern Rock has got loads of spare cash knocking around to pay Goldman's fees

Oooh, oooh, the pyschic powers are tingling again

...and they're not telling me happy things

As I, and others, have said to anyone who would listen to us, like the Titanic when it was first holed, there was an almost mathematical certainty about Northern Rock's fate which none of the distractive bullshit of the last three months could change. An unbelievably large sum of money has been effectively stolen from all of us in broad daylight and it seems more than likely that the perpetrators are going to get away with it.

And there is every reason to believe that Northern Rock is not the end of it.

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Hypno-Teddy gets a canoe

I subscribe to Channel 4 News daily email

Here's a small selection of some of the more recent emails C4 has sent me...

Do you enjoy having your intelligence insulted on virtually a daily basis? Subscribe to Snowmail today!!

That's not all of them, I deleted some immediately upon receipt purely on reflex, but I think there are enough there to illustrate a point that is verging on being so bleeding obvious that it almost seems a waste of time making it

How the f*ck does this guy sleep at night?

There have been several rather blatant and shameless attempts to assist the media in its effort to distract people's attention away from Northern Rock as well as recent revelations about the corruption of our political system. The two most cynical have been IMHO...

• Our home secretary trying to scare the shit out of us with tales 'credible' intelligence which indicated that Muslim extremists were going to give us all a dose of dirty radiation for Christmas ('They hate us for our seasons')

• That video reminding us of the plight of five British hostages who have been held captive in Iraq for 173+ days who 'feel that they have been forgotten' - not any more guys, everyone in charge has started remembering you now

but, to be honest, all that stuff is just a little bit too highbrow and serious to serve as a really good distraction

What people really want to take their mind off things is teddy bears

...and nutcases in canoes

Yes, teddy bears and nutcases in canoes

...and if at all possible, bearded nutcases in canoes




Meanwhile, a group of bankers has made off with all that lovely risk and debt free £30,000,000,000 in cash that was shoveled into Northern Rock in our name and rumours are starting to appear that there's a spot of predatory market shorting of debt-burdened, insolvent high street stores taking place as well as of the debt-burdened insolvent banks which the folks at C4 News and all their fellow media idiot-whores aren't talking about

There really seems to be little doubt that something catastrophic will take place in the UK economy. It's not about 'If' any more, the question merely is 'When? - before or after the holiday season?'

Average London house prices (£) per the Halifax: Apparently, the house price bubble is entirely a result of shortage of housing supply and the market definitely won't crash but will simply settle down to a 'soft landing' - and anyway if prices do drop sharply we can just deal with any fall in demand by knocking a few thousand houses down and everything will turn out just peachy...

Meanwhile, let's not worry about the people in the know getting their mates and bitches to bullshit for a few more weeks' or months' worth of time so that they can siphon their (our) money out of their f*cked system. Let's all keep thinking about teddy bears nutters in canoes instead

Think only of the canoe...

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Taken from my outbox today...

A couple of extracts from emails I've sent to some fellow Conspiracy Loons over the course of the day in the context of the frankly remarkable developments arising from the David Abrahams story. Well, it saves writing it all out again...


"...The current Labour sleaze crisis is even more significant than most people have yet realised and if it isn't closed down pretty damned quick it's going to shine a light on a hidden world that only Conspiraloons have dreamt of. There's a good chance one of the Establishment's bagmen has been exposed for all the world see. The Iraq War? The War on Terror? The debt mountain and f*cked up banking system? We are closer to public exposure of some of the answers as to how all these things came about than we ever have been

Given all that, it's not surprising that the blogging 'Commentariat' (promoted by The Guardian and Julia Hobsbawm's (a name well worth googling) very Common Purpose feeling 'Editorial Intelligence'), as well as the Alex Jones' of this world, are somewhat at a loss for words. They're either too compromised or too f*cking stupid to comprehend what's going on. They simply don't have the ideological tools to make sense of the implications

Sad to say, it's the right wing libertarians that are running with this - along with all the distasteful baggage that goes with it..."


and to another Loon...


"(Is there) Something nasty in the woodpile? Certainly, and I'm still trying to figure out if Brown's unprecedented catalog of closely spaced woes really is just a case of coincidental timing, the result of some kind of tipping point having been naturally reached, or half a dozen shady blokes puffing on cigars in a room somewhere deciding that their interests are best served somehow by imploding the whole f*cking shambles..."

"Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the Conspiraloon™"

It's been a good week for us Loons so far but, sad to say, a good week for Loons invariably involves shocking or ghastly events that shake people out of their complacent slumber. So it's not exactly something to gloat over

nor is the fact that I fully expect plenty more good weeks for Loons in the not too distant future...

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A cracking week for Coincidence Theorists™ who don't ask too many questions

Unless you’re one of those insane Coincidence Theorists™ it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that we in the UK are not witnessing some kind of deliberate, controlled demolition of our current government

And today’s entirely coincidentally occurring disaster for our governing political party, in a seemingly endless chain of coincidentally occurring disasters, is the resignation of the Labour Party general secretary, Peter Watt

Apparently, he saw nothing illegal in someone circumventing political donation disclosure laws by making political donations in someone else’s name

Now the thing is, whilst it is admittedly early days for the mainstream media’s coverage of this particular scandal, it is already pretty clear that there are a couple of questions our corporate press have little appetite for asking...

• Why did the donor in question, David Abrahams, wish to hide his identity?

David Abrahams

• What was he after and did he get it? (I suspect that establishment of a UK Sharia State can be safely struck off the list of possible answers)
  

Father Abraham

... speaking for myself, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for someone in the mainstream to start asking those questions

Colonel Abrams

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Le Morte d'Alistair

"The Phisher King or the Wounded King figures in Arthurian legend as the latest in a line charged with keeping the Holy Grail. Versions of his story vary widely, but he is always wounded in the legs or groin, and incapable of moving on his own. When he is injured, his kingdom suffers as he does, his impotence affecting the fertility of the land and reducing it to a barren Wasteland. Little is left for him to do but phish in the river near his castle Corbenic. Knights travel from many lands to heal the Phisher King but only the chosen can accomplish the feat..."

(flagrant counter-rip from LWTC24/7's blog)

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A tragic schoolboy error...

What better time could there be to dust off the link to ‘The Iron Triangle – The Carlyle Group Exposed’?



- complete with an introduction in Dutch to have you thinking you’ve clicked on the wrong link. Unless you’re Dutch that is. In which case you'd probably be quite pleased

Carlyle Group was, of course, the driving force behind the recent float of QinetiQ which is making the news today because, apparently, there are still some people out there who don’t realise that UK plc is a corrupt banana republic

Right now, in a parallel universe somewhere a dozen or so ex-civil servants are facing 30 years hard labour for relieving the British public of £100,000,000+. In this universe the Business Editor of the State Broadcasting Company is putting out articles which explain that the theft of £100,000,000+ is not the result of top-level globalist corruption but rather a tragic ‘schoolboy error’.

Schoolboys these days must have access to a lot more capital than when I was a lad

And what better time than now for a bunch of Rothschild cronies in the House of Lords to start demanding extra funding for Our Brave Boys fighting in far off fields around the world? Because, especially after so many keenly-priced floatations of national offence defence assets, you just know that every extra penny spent would go straight towards improving the welfare of ordinary soldiers; just like all that extra spending on health, education, railways, water, the environment…

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edit: a picture of a rather fetching RFID chip manufactured by a company called Matrics inc whilst it was a subsidiary of Carlyle Group...


Matrics was subsequently sold on by Carlyle in September 2004 to the appropriately named Symbol Technologies.

You really couldn't make this stuff up

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A little something for your Amazon wish list...

for the phisherman in your life who hasn't quite got everything...

Link to the full page here (thx yet again Tony)




Looking on the bright side, at least the disks that have gone missing didn't contain biometric data (not this year anyway) - imagine all those people affected having to change their fingerprints and retinas rather than a few on-line passwords. Messy...

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Good Quotes from Shite Movies #427

The RMS Northern Wreck

Andrews: "Water, 14 feet above the keel in ten minutes, in the forepeak, in all three holds, and in boiler room six."

Ismay: "When can we get underway dammit?"

Andrews: "That's five compartments. She can stay afloat with the first four compartments breached. But not five. Not five. As she goes down by the head the water will spill over the tops of the bulkheads, at E Deck, from one to the next, back and back. There's no stopping it."

Smith: "The pumps, if we opened the pumps-"

Andrews: "The pumps buy you time, but minutes only. From this moment, no matter what we do, Titanic will founder."

Ismay: "But this ship can't sink!!"

Andrews: "She's made of iron sir, I assure you, she can. And she will. It is a mathematical certainty."

"Oh, bugger..."

Not long to go now...


and anyone who likes to play the markets and who is not currently shorting Northern Rock, Alliance & Leicester or Bradford & Bingley really should think about taking up a new hobby

"Shhhh, don't tell anybody but we're fucked..."

and for anyone stuck for Christmas present ideas for their grannie may I suggest buying them a thermos flask and some sturdy queuing shoes

and it's great to see that the same team of high-class professionals who closed down Craig Murray's blog are working hard to ensure that a particularly greasy memo published on behalf of the Northern Rock board bragging how the British public will be obliged to shoulder the financial losses resulting from their incompetence won't see the light of day


Personally, I think the biggest problem many people have with comprehending this Northern Rock business, aside from the huge numbers involved, is that in their heart of hearts they still really, really don't want to face up to how bent their country is

And the answer is...

A lot

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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

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

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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?

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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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Euphemisms 2

"Er, we've come on holiday by mistake"

Just in case anyone needs a translation from Parliamentary Committee speak into plain English...

When a parliamentary committee says...

"We conclude that there is evidence to suggest that the map of the Shatt al-Arab waterway provided by the government was less clear than it ought to have been"

what it is actually saying is that the government was

"lying through its fucking teeth"

when it published the map, claiming it was definitive

HMS Cornwall

Detail from the infamous Piri Reis map compiled in 1513. Scholars are strongly divided as to whether it does depict an ice-free Antarctica or not but one thing is for sure - it's coverage of the Shatt al-Arab is just as accurate as anything published by the Ministry of Defence

(See also The Tale of Iran Air Flight 655 or 'How to steam into Iranian waters, claim that you are still in international waters, shoot down a civilian airliner carrying 290 people as part of a campaign of violent intimidation in support of Saddam Hussein and then sail back home in time for tea and medals')

The USN Commendation Medal - as awarded to serving US Navy personnel for the 'heroic achievement' of shooting down 747s filled with children

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Like a banana republic without the bananas - episode 9,027

Lord Levy - obviously delighted at today's news

And the best response so far to the news just in that the BBC 'understands' that No-one is to face charges after the 16-month cash-for-honours police inquiry comes from The Daily Mash...


BROWN GETS GREEN-LIGHT TO MURDER HIS ENEMIES

"Whitehall sources said the decision not to bring charges in the cash for honours inquiry, despite the piles of invoices, receipts and signed confessions, means Brown can begin working through his 200-page 'bastards list' (more)


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Constitutional Democracy

The Constitution of the Russian Federation. Chapter 2 Rights and Freedoms of Man and Citizen. Article 61 ...

1. A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deported from Russia or extradited to another State.

2. The Russian Federation shall guarantee to its citizens protection and patronage abroad.

Article 62 ...

1. A citizen of the Russian Federation may have the citizenship of a foreign State (dual citizenship) according to the federal law or an international agreement of the Russian Federation.

2. The possession of a foreign citizenship by a citizen of the Russian Federation shall not derogate his rights and freedoms and shall not free him from the obligations stipulated by the Russian citizenship, unless otherwise provided for by federal law or an international agreement of the Russian Federation.

3. Foreign nationals and stateless persons shall enjoy in the Russian Federation the rights and bear the obligations of citizens of the Russian Federation, except for cases envisaged by the federal law or the international agreement of the Russian Federation.

Sadly, the British 'Constitution' is not available in such a succinct form but I think it would be fair to say that giving a British passport and the full protection of the state to a Russian national wanted in his own country for stealing from widows and orphans, wanted in other countries for laundering dirty money and who by his own admission is funding attempts to violently overthrow the democratically elected and hugely popular government of his homeland is hardly something to be proud of

I'm certainly not

British constitutional democracy in action

If anyone doubts that UK plc is bought and paid for the behaviour of our politicians and media in this shameful business should be reason enough to kill those doubts once and for all

Absolutely fucking disgraceful...


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