Make room for the Mushrooms

I can’t speak for the rest of the country but it’s turning out to be a rubbish year for mushrooms, especially porcini, in South East England

Photograph of porcini in action - NOT taken this year

Though, having said that, there’s a least one person who seems to be getting his hands on adequate quantities of his favourite edible funghi…



and in case anyone is a) interested and b) missed it, David Shayler has set up his own Youtube TV Channel - ‘Shayler TV’

Episode 1 (in all its excrutiating messianic glory)…



I find it difficult to be totally scathing about someone who is advocating universal compassion and understanding but that’s not the stuff I have a problem with

Painful, simply painful…

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Shitipedia - Redux

Kudos to DE for trying to set up a Wikipedia entry for ‘Common Purpose’

Though, sadly, it doesn't appear to have lasted very long

I did manage to catch sight of the entry before it was deleted but I didn’t have enough time to make my own edit or contribution

The reason I saw given for the entry’s impending deletion was that the article didn’t indicate how important ‘Common Purpose’ was

So, that’s something to bear in mind whenever using Wikipedia as a resource. Only important stuff gets in there...

(edit: The entry for CP on Wikipedia appears to be back up now - thanks Tony)

I’ve linked and referred people to Wikipedia a lot over the last few years and, even though I’ll probably continue to do so in a limited way, I’m going to consciously cut down on my implied support for what is increasingly turning out to be a bag of old shite

My 'favourite' recent example of Wikipedia’s shiteness is its entry on the anthrax attacks that took place immediately after 9/11. Anyone who has read around the subject will be aware that the anthrax in question came from a US military lab and that the FBI investigation into the attacks dropped off the media radar rather quickly once the source of the anthrax was established. Anyone doing some reading will also be aware that a guy called Philip Zack has one or two questions to answer about the goings on in that particular lab

"Death to Zionist-loving American Pigs!! Yours Sincerely, A. Muslim ( PS If undelivered please return to Fort Detrick, Maryland) "

And yet, for some reason, Dr Phil doesn’t get a single mention anywhere at all in Wikipedia’s copious entry on the anthrax attacks

That’s one example. I have plenty of others

…as does the guy behind the software which traces Wikipedia edits that got so much publicity a couple months ago

Given all that it seems only fair that Wikipedia’s entry on Operation Mockingbird (the name given to the Central Intelligence Agency operation to influence domestic and foreign media) is currently itself under threat of the axe...

If Winston Smith were a real person he'd feel right at home with Wikipedia

Because, as we all know, in spite of all those ex-spooks who claim that 90%+ of intelligence operations are about planting information rather than gathering intelligence, our intelligence services wouldn’t dream of covertly influencing the media in any way at all

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The Police State is Here

Yes, I know this guy is obsessed but his work, and the way he goes about his work, pleasures me immensely

and top marks to him for pointing out to a couple of our policemen that, whether they are happy about it or not, their uniforms are plastered with Masonic symbolism...

This electronic All Seeing Eye appears to have a policeman in a silly hat attached to it

A honorary lifetime Conspiraloon™ Alliance membership is winging his way because, as we all know, being the servant of a fruity little secret club is not insane but pointing out that other people are is

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edit: and whilst on the subject of police logos, I noticed that a member of the public has thoughtfully submitted their own suggestion for a new Metropolitan Police motto on a sign on the Brixton Road today; written in Latin, no less, to give it that extra touch of class...





Sarcasm aside, I think it's great that our police put up notices all round South London to remind people that they are actually operating here

Very reassuring...

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The Common Enemy revisited - pt2

and back to Common Purpose for a moment...

Unlike the ‘Little Englanders’ I referred to in my earlier post I personally doubt very much if an organisation like Common Purpose could ever be the all powerful demon they think it to be

What it could very easily be is part of that network of unaccountable, droid-nurturing lobby groups and think thanks which now envelops the political process and has replaced ideology and conviction with 'glittering generalities'

I have a particularly big problem with the Fascistic (that word again) blurring of the conceptual lines between a public service such as the police or prison service and privately owned companies - a blurring process which organisations like Common Purpose help to promote

Maybe I am prisoner of my personal political ideology but I believe that there is a big difference between running a supermarket and running a police force

There are some services that are arguably best run as monopolies – water supply is the first that comes to mind. Unless that is someone can make a compelling case for laying two competing sets of pipes in our towns and cities

And giving monopolies on essential services over to private ownership is rarely a good idea

There are other services which potentially could compete with each other but it is probably best if they don’t – I’d suggest that having two different police forces or armies competing with each other on the high street would be insane

Another point to consider is that many of our public services exist because we, as citizens, give up our rights to act for ourselves on the understanding that certain activities, such as dispensing justice, might be better achieved collectively

"You know I am no stranger. I know rules are a bore. But just to keep you from danger I am the Law"

But what happens when the politicians we have given up our freedom of action to hand those powers over to privately controlled corporations?

Is a policeman still a public servant if he works for a privately controlled company?

...or thinks, acts and talks like he's working for a privately controlled company?

Would that make someone like Jean Charles de Menezes a dissatisfied customer?




Mentioning JCdM is not quite as gratuitous as it might seem, as the person who gave the order for him to be shot in the face is a Common Purpose graduate

And no, I am not implying that Common Purpose style leadership training turns people in psycho killers but if I had been the person who paid for that particular graduate’s leadership course I’d be looking for my money back...




That’s one story that hasn’t made it’s way onto the Common Purpose graduate case history webpage

It makes much more sense to think about these kind of leadership courses not so much as being about training as being part of a selection process. You can’t turn someone into a leader in a couple of weeks. You can however identify the kind of people your system of control is based on and equip them with the language they need to be identifiable to each other

... a way of looking at things which can help make sense of the fact that the person in command of the Stockwell operation was promoted to even higher office shortly after presiding over what was, even by official accounts, a murderous fuck up

Competence and preferment do not necessarily go hand in hand in our system of governance. There are other qualities much higher on the list of selection criteria

Given the increased blurring of the distinction between public service and private enterprise, it seems only appropriate that the only court case to be heard as the result of JCdM’s execution is being held under Health and Safety at work legislation. Even though I doubt very much if anyone will be held accountable as a result of the case it has at least forced the papers to report a curious incident which happened immediately after JCdM was shot...




Aside from a press statement issued by the driver’s union the following day, the news that the police (sic.) chased the train driver down a tunnel and jammed a gun in his face has not been investigated by any of the mainstream media. Come to think of I don't even think the press release was reported at the time

The significance of this story is, to my mind anyway, that if the police had followed an alleged suspect suicide bomber all the way from his home to Stockwell station why on earth would they feel the need to start running around pointing guns at other people, especially the driver of the fucking train?

And as for the $64,000 question – ‘Why did the police think a guy in thin clothing, carrying no bags, was a suicide bomber in the first place?’ – well, forget it…

The official story continues to make no sense – big time



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PS - The Antagonist appears to be in the process of resuscitating 'Anything that defies my sense of reason' - a blog that has frequently touched on the events of July 2005 and their consequences, as well as all sorts of other bits and bobs. I'm glad to see it breathing again


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The Common Enemy revisited - pt1

Just to clarify a couple of points from that last post...

My suggestion that people with contrasting ’Left’ and ‘Right’ Wing views might have a common enemy and their own common purpose is not the same thing as suggesting that racism, xenophobia or Hate in general is something that people can overlook.

However, I do find it fascinating how people’s opposition to something like expansion of the role of the EU for example is framed and shaped by their political views

• Those with right-leaning beliefs who oppose the EU may do so on the basis that it impinges on national sovereignty

• Those with left leaning beliefs who oppose the EU may do so on the basis that it is undemocratic and initiatives such as a common currency make it much easier for corporations to shift capital and jobs from place to place, playing one group of workers against the other

The underlying causes for their rejection of the EU as it stands are essentially very similar – a fear of unrepresentative elitist hegemony – but that shared concern is obscured by some of the baggage associated with Left and Ring Wing belief systems

…and the language people use

When I think about the possible negative impact of the EU my concern is that it may become a fully Fascist entity - a seamless integration of industry and government, controlled by an unaccountable few

Yet other people, more Right Wing people, chuck terms like ‘Communist’ and ‘Marxist’ around when talking about the EU

So, is the EU really all things to all people - Communist, Marxist and Fascist - or is the language we use letting us down?

I am not discounting the fact that there are fundamental differences between people with Left and Right Wing views of how the world should work but I do believe that flexibility of thought is constrained by mass media promotion of restrictive terminology and pre-packaged ideology

I also believe that this is deliberate

Maybe I’ve read Orwell too many times

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The Common Enemy

Further to my previous post about Islamo-Fascist Awareness week and the traditional anti-Muslim knees up being planned in London on 26th October…

One of the reasons why the organisers of the demonstration selected the 26th was to coincide with a rally calling for a referendum of the proposed EU treaty/ Constitution the following day

The implication being that they anticipate a large overlap of those against further EU integration and those who believe that Muslims are taking over the country

Because, as everyone knows, the EU is completely controlled by militant jihadists

Over the weekend, someone very thoughtfully sent me a link to a two hour long film on google video of someone in a church hall making a presentation about how the EU is attacking UK society from within via an entity called ‘Common Purpose’...





Common Purpose is a peculiar wee organisation which provides what it calls 'leadership-training' courses to select individuals within the private and public sector. It also offers extensive networking opportunities to its ‘Graduates’ after their training.

From what little I’ve been able to pick up from the bland yet creepy Common Purpose website and other little snippets I’ve encountered here and there, Common Purpose gives off a vibe of some kind of cross between Scientology, EST therapy, the Stepford Bureaucrats and the Masons

Leadership Training selection process...

Which I would, under other circumstances, find amusing, except for the fact that literally thousands of people from the police, the armed services, the education service, local government, national government, the NHS, and the prison service have all been subject to Common Purpose indoctrination at public expense

And yet hardly anyone has heard of Common Purpose

Common Purpose is also, by its own admission, actively selecting children it judges most likely to be future leaders and giving them a spot of training too

Well, that’s not sinister at all




Common Purpose is part of a much wider malaise and a component of an interlocked network of dodgy think tanks, quangos, lobby groups, and consultancies, populated by the kind of bloodless, sociopathic droids who now dominate our political parties and public sector. I don’t know whether they were born or made but they’re a bunch of fuckers wherever they came from.

Now the problem with the video about Common Purpose I was given the link to and have, in turn, pasted into this post is that the person making the presentation and the people watching it are just a teensy weensy bit, er, reactionary

OK, make that extremely reactionary

Which means that even though quite a lot of decent and informative research is contained within the presentation the conclusions that people in the film draw from that research are shaped by some pretty ropey world views

And this, for me, is the tricky thing. When presented with evidence of the existence of murky, unaccountable and powerful organisations exercising malign influence on our lives, independent Right Wing thinkers will start talking about Marxist conspiracies. Yet, when presented with exactly the same evidence, independent Left Wing thinkers will start talking about Fascist conspiracies

My own take is that Left and Right Wing independent thinkers are hampered by their existing terminology and are therefore both wrong. But, in a way, they’re both correct and they could achieve much if they would look past their differences and realise that they have a Common Enemy in organisations such as Common Purpose and, more to the point, the elitist bastards behind them. If those bastards win we're all fucked - Left and Right Wing alike


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PS As an aside, the last time I posted about Common Purpose, and the equally creepy Tavistock Institute, was back in May. The thread of comments underneath that post catalysed the creation of the Conspiraloon™ Alliance which is destined to one day eat Common Purpose for breakfast and ask for seconds, MuahahahHAAAAA!!!

PPS Conspiraloon™ Thought for the Day (courtesy of JD)...

"both the left wing and the right wing are flapped by - and attached to - the same bird, which unfortunately continues to fly on its chosen course - and we continue to blame its flight upon one of the wings, when blame should be apportioned to a limited degree to both wings, and in particular to the supporting frame to which they are secured, and without which neither would exist"

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Shiny Happy People

Just in case anyone doesn’t know about it yet there are only 28 hating days to go until Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week kicks off

Uh-Oh, We're In Trouble, Something's Come Along And It's Burst Our Bubble
Yeah, Yeah! Uh-Oh, We're In Trouble,
Gotta Get Home Quick March On The Double!

A quick peek at the cast list will give a fair indication of the kind of selfless, humanitarian interest groups and personalities who are behind this little party

Apparently, these interest groups and personalities are profoundly worried about the oppression of women in Islam

Yeah, and I’m fucking Danish




To mark Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week an organisation called Stop Islamisation Of Europe is planning to hold a rally in London on 26th October on the theme of Islamic Persecution…


“Persecuted minority groups likely to be represented are

Armenians
Assyrians
Copts
Hindus
Sikhs
Indonesian Christians

And others

There will be speakers from these groups”


A pretty broad church indeed which seems to include just about everyone except for the Cornish, probably because the Cornish couldn't bear to be in the company of so many foreigners

"Fuck Off"

I’ve never really understood what the expression Islamo-Fascism is supposed to mean. Maybe it’s the Italian, oops sorry, Danish ancestry but I’m a bit old school when it comes to defining Fascism and believe its core feature to be an unholy merger of state and corporate power

and Islam, however extreme, doesn’t qualify.

I believe the expression to be a deliberate exercise in sophistry, crafted to associate Muslims with Nazis and all the pre-packed baggage that goes with that. However, I can’t help thinking that if Islamic fundamentalists really are Fascists they have would probably have quite a lot in common with the people demonstrating against them

Fascists demonstrating against Fascists - what is the world coming to?

Maybe they should all sit down and have a nice cup of tea and a chat

Maybe they could be friends

"Do you know what Islamo-Fascist Man, we're not so different after all and together we're stronger. Now let's go and kick some Commie butt"

And this Islamisation of Europe thing does seem just a teensy wee bit overblown. It’s not as if our governments, media, banks, police forces, armies or legal systems are swarming with Muslims or even likely to be in the foreseeable future

Convenience stores and kebab shops definitely

The organs of state, financial and cultural power, um no, not really

In short, the Islamisation of Europe is lie. A chimera conjured up to distract people from the de-Islamisation of one particular part of the world and to be a focal point for their rage at all the shit that's going on around them

That’s the plan

There’s a lot to be angry about out there but Muslims aren’t responsible

And anyone thinking about joining in with this Islamo-Fascist awareness crap might want to think about who’s yanking their chain and for what reasons

... or are the objectives of a war mongering neo-con lobby and a ruling elite that demonises the lower classes as ‘chavs’, a ruling elite populated by people who view those lower classes as being only slightly less loathsome than shit on their shoe, really worth fighting for?

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Rory Winter has more on this latest exercise is getting two groups of people to stand in a street yelling each other, whilst the Powers That Be get on with the serious business of fucking both groups over here

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Great Minds think alike

From today's Private Eye...

thanks to Lord P.

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edit: and whilst on the subject of banking industry look-alikes, this extract from a post in Scott Adam's blog tickled me for some reason...

Did you hear that scientists discovered a new use for men’s balls? Apparently they are loaded with stem cells.

This is great news because stem cells have potential to help against many health problems. For example, men’s balls might someday help with their strokes.

If you have balls, you have probably looked at them and wondered aloud “What else can I do with them?” Until now, their utility was limited to the following:

1. Producing sperm and male hormones
2. Target for projectiles
3. Sexual stimulation
4. Impersonating Alan Greenspan



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New Customers Only pt3

Thanks to Lord Patel and Paul for pointing me towards Richard Murphy’s ‘Tax Research’ site and a couple of posts on Northern Rock here and here

The posts are a little, um, technical and I’m not at all sure that Murphy has fully supported his conclusions but, even though I think there are some gaps that need filling in, what he has put up indicates outrageous behaviour on the part of Northern Rock’s management…

If you look at Northern Rock’s statement of assets and liabilities for 31st December 2006 (its most recent accounts), its assets comprised…

• Liquid assets 13%
• Residential Mortgages 77%
• Other stuff 10%

(There's an obvious caveat to be made here that all sets of accounts are bollocks, especially audited ones, but sadly it's all people have to go on)

If you look at Northern Rock’s liabilities for the same period they comprised…

• Bonds 46%
• Wholesale Funding 24%
• Depositors’ Cash 22%
• Share Capital 4%
• Bits and bobs 4%

The outrageous part comes from the fact that the bonds, and maybe the wholesale funding (though I can’t see where Murphy demonstrates that) get first call on the residential mortgages in Northern Rock’s books as security in the event of liquidation.

And that seems to have been achieved, at least in part, by issuing the bonds via a supremely shady and complex structure of shell companies referred to by HM Treasury as the 'Granite' securitisation programme.

Northern Rock's favourite rock

The inclusion of a holding trust in the Granite structure which purportedly benefits a Down's Syndrome charity is a nice, if somewhat twisted, touch...




I’m not pretending for a second to understand how the 'Granite' securitisation programme operates. However, at least one of its possible purposes is to ensure that the financiers who lent money to Northern Rock via Granite get first call on Northern Rock’s assets in the event of the company going bust.

So, here’s the funny thing. If Northern Rock does go bust it is very likely that the depositors sit only just below the shareholders in the pecking order for bearing any loss.

And the shareholders stake can only absorb 4% of any loss on the break up and sale of Northern Rock’s assets.

And, generally speaking, fire sales usually command an ever so slightly higher discount than 4%

And then it would be the depositors' turn

And the anonymous people who really fund, really benefit from and probably really control the bank through Granite are nice and safe behind a big fat financial buffer provided by mug punters

I’ve tried to keep things simple but putting it crudely…

• Northern Rock shares are probably worth fuck all, unless you’re daft enough to believe that intangible assets such as the Northern Rock brand or the commercial acumen of its crack, integrity-packed management team are worth something on their own
  

• Until the moment when HM’s Government gave an explicit guarantee to back depositors’ cash, those depositors queuing outside the branches were 100% doing the right thing
  

• Northern Rock’s management team may have employed some seriously grubby and, more to the point, poorly disclosed devices to separate depositors from their money in the event of serious difficulty

The last point is potentially the scariest as it’s hard to believe that Northern Rock is the only retail bank out there with this kind of shit in place. If people get wise to what Northern Rock was up to the next logical step is to find out which other banks have done something similar and yank deposits out of them as well, pdq

Hmmm, that could be fun

Let's all play the 'Hunt the thinly capitalised bank with shady, complex offshore funding arrangements and start a catastrophic bank run' game

It’s also worth pondering upon the fact that ordinary cash depositors are the only fuckers out there dumb enough to lend commercial institutions money without demanding either security or a level of return commensurate with a risky, unsecured loan.

When Northern Rock lends money to people, for instance, it demands their house deeds in exchange. On the other hand, the ordinary people who lend money to Northern Rock via their deposits are given a pretty little book with their name and some numbers printed in it in exchange for their money...

How fucking stupid is that?

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Blobfish's Human of the Month

I've kindly allowed Blobfish access to my blogger account so that he(?) can have his own blog and run his(?) own 'Human of the Month' feature in parallel with my own much sought-after 'Fish of the Month/ Week/ Day' award

And it should come as no surprise that Blobfish's first ever Human of the Month is...

Alisher Usmanov!!

Alisher's the one wearing glasses btw

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edit: this is nothing to do with Usmanov but thanks to b. for leaving a link to this important message by way of a comment




Go there now!! and be informed

And then play it to small children

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edit #2: Now available on Youtube!! - my Joy is complete...




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