Smoke and mirrors, indeed

Hat tip: Infowars. Music RJD2

David Laws: sacrificed on the altar of gay rights

If it wasn't for the gay-righters banging on constantly about homosexuality, enforcing a thoughtcrime block on anyone straying from the new orthodoxy on the subject, David Laws could probably have continued to have a private life. In his words:

“In 2006 the Green Book rules were changed to prohibit payments to partners. At no point did I consider myself to be in breach of the rules which in 2009 defined partner as ‘one of a couple … who although not married to each-other or civil partners are living together and treat each-other as spouses. Although we were living together we did not treat each other as spouses’.

Quite so. He should have stuck to his guns, but unfortunately we are on the road from 'everything permitted that isn't forbidden' to 'everything forbidden that isn't permitted, and everything permitted is mandatory', so now that gay men can enter into civil partnerships, bestowing a similar legal position as marriage, poor David is obliged to espouse his secret lover.

Talk about fur coat no knickers

How our Second Chamber has been dragged down. From being a vital counterweight to the demagogues of the Lower House, it has been stuffed by party hacks and bearers of brown envelopes, determined to undermine any challenge to the constitution-trashing Commons.

The final insult must be elevating John Prescott to the Peerage, even though he swore many times that he'd refuse it. And his reasoning? Well, his wife's making him do it, as pay-back for his shameful behaviour in office. So, to be clear, John Prescott fucked one of the civil servants in his department, spent tax-payers' money getting his rocks off, so in order to get his wife off his case, he gets made a Lord.

Bring back the hereditary peers. They cannot possibly be worse than Prescott and the rest of Labour's failed generation of crooks, hypocrits and 'ex'-communists.

Herman tells the truth: 'we lied to you all'

Here's President Herman from the European Union of Corrupt Bureaucrats, Crooked Politicians and ex-Maoists:

"Nobody ever told the proverbial man in the street that sharing a single currency was not just about making peoples' lives easier when doing business or travelling abroad, but also about being directly affected by economic developments in the neighbouring countries. Being in the 'Euro zone' means, monetarily speaking, being part of one 'Euroland'."

Not so fast, Rompuy. Even when you try to be honest, it comes out a stinking lie. It's clearly not the case that 'nobody' told the man in the street. Many, many people said this was the case. It's just that those people were dismissed by you and your fellow bureaucratic collectivists as europhobes, xenophobes, racists, conspiracy theorists etc.

Now your empire is teetering on the brink, and why is that? Because no lie can live forever.

The Tesco Temperance League

How ridiculous is Tesco and their crazed nannying, denying a 33 year old man the facility to buy a bottle of Rose. When his wife stepped in with her ID (she's 28) that was also refused, on the grounds that she might be buying it for an underager (what? A teacher sedducing a pupil?). The unfortunate bloke still paid for the rest of his shopping - £140. Incorrect! You should leave it at the till and walk out.

Tesco defend themselves. 'We operate a strict Think 25 policy' they coo. The legal age is 18 for fuck's sake. How about operating a Think 18 policy instead? The puritan government bears blame as well, of course.

Dr Wakefield: guilty of nothing

The long drawn-out heresy trial of Dr Andrew Wakefield has ended according to the script. Usually the General Medical Council are dealing with one of their brethren who has sexually assaulted a patient, junked themselves with stolen pills or killed somebody, and they can generally be relied upon to close ranks around the miscreant. Dr Wakefield, however, has done something far worse: he published a report that broke the party line.

His research has never been debunked. These trumped-up charges reveal more about the medical establishment, its craven obeissance to big pharma and control-freak politicians, who tried to prevent supplies of the single measles vaccine entering the country, in order to force the MMR upon children. When this strong-arm tactic fails they have the gall to blame Dr Wakefield.

This auto-da-fe-style show trial convinces no one.

Rand Paul: a new hope

Excellent news from Kentucky, with Rand Paul selected as the Republican candidate for the Senate race. This leaves the Establishment with a problem: how to demonise this man, whose libertarian, constitutional message speaks for many? Naturally, they decide to play the race card, their favourite smear, and manufacture a fake issue out of a forty-year-old piece of legislation - the Civil Rights Act back from the days of LBJ. Anything but ask him about the issues of today; the unconstitutional laws of Bush and Obama, the futile foreign wars, the banker bailout must be kept off the agenda, for fear that the people will hear Rand Paul and agree with him.

The Mainstream have never looked so desperate. The sad thing is how incomprehensible to today's so-called (and falsely so) liberals is Rand Paul's wholly liberal (original meaning) argument.

A world turned upside down

I've been sucked into a parallel universe or something. How else to explain Roy Hattersley's comment that the Labour Party should become 'a libertarian party AGAIN'?

What a cunt. Roy, your party is not, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be anything other than the deadly enemy of freedom. Moving on through your ridiculous article, and going by the straight, dictionary definition rather than the tainted political slogan, there's nothing progressive about Labour, and as for being radical, indeed you are: radically wrong. It's all very well you celebrating, like the rest of us, the fall of your party from government, but don't think you can sneak away whistling from the crimes of New Labour. You don't get a 'clean slate' to start again. You wrecked our country, and think yourself lucky you're not all hanging from a gallows for your collective(ist) treason.

Hat tip: Libertarian Party blog

Max on the Euro bailout

My country: right or left

And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land

One day in...

... it's already looking dire. Sailing under the false flag of 'democratic reform' we see the destruction of the House of Lords, some kind of crazy 55% majority needed to bring down the government, and a predominantly tory administration with a get-out clause from implementing anything remotely conservative, and an imperative to implement every bullshitty notion that Cameron came up with to win over the floating voters he believed he needed.

The only hope in the Con-Dem government is that it will reverse the worst of Labour's authoritarian excesses and return us to our former, hard-won liberties. But instead of that, we're likely to get another layer of fake 'rights' culture. There may be a few other crumbs that fall from the table, in the area of schools policy for instance, but we will not have the leisure to ponder future permutations of the political parties for long, before the wider world intervenes with bigger agendas, if not the fraud-driven financial blackhole created by the bankster oligarchy threatening to engulf the world economy, then perhaps an attack on Iran and a new front in the futile imperialistic Middle Eastern war.

Hip hop thunder

Yeah, there's important stuff happening a few miles away in Westminster... Here's the Wu Tang Klan.

Another country

Margaret Thatcher's famous Bruges Speech - in edited form. Read the full text here.

The Wall Street Syndicate

William Black, from April 2009, ex-regulator sheds some light on the superfraud-on-steroids at the heart of the financial slo-mo meltdown, and the (still) on-going cover-up.

Bring back the rope

How shall I argue this? Well...

Maybe I'll start here.

Or here.

Or here.

I'm not short of examples of evil men who deserve to face proper justice. To the 'liberals' I say this:

We've tried it your way for fifty years. It hasn't worked. Time to go back to the old system that did work.

My suggestion to Greece

Rather than handing over your country and everything in it to the New World Order banking oligarchy, how about growing a pair, getting out of the Euro and taking back your sovereignty by printing up some of the above? Better to be poor but free, than poor in slavery.

Tickling the ivories

If only I could play like Abdullah Ibrahim.

Did you know...

It's Europe Day? Oh yes! The 9th May is Europe Day. The day when we all celebrate how much we love the EU and what it's done for us.

According to the JEF - the Young European Federalists:

"What makes Europe Day 2010 even more special is the fact that it will be the 60th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration.

On the 9th May 1950, Robert Schuman changed the course of European history. Schuman was bold and visionary, yet also down to earth. He presented his proposal for an organized Europe as an indispensable tool for the maintenance of peace on the continent. This proposal led to the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community which immediately provided for the setting up of common foundations for economic development between France and Germany. The forefather of the EU was founded."

Shit! If only I'd known, I'd have bought an EU flag and burnt it.

Progressive? Was that on the ballot paper?

From Longrider's dissection of the election aftermath:

"Then there are the progressives themselves – a term that is becoming increasingly bandied about. When someone declares themselves a progressive, my hackles rise. What they mean in reality is that everyone else must be forced to bend to their vision of society, to conform to the socialist utopia they espouse, to be a good little prole. Progressives have no place for independently minded individuals. Progressives are the enemy of individualism, and are, therefore, the very essence of misanthropy. They choose to forget that society is composed of individuals. Progressives are to be despised utterly and completely. Perhaps, most of all is their mangling of the language. Progressives do not want progress, but regression to the dark days of the cold war eastern bloc style of living – the tractor stats will always be going up, despite the enslavement of the population and the collapse of the economy. There is nothing progressive about a progressive, just as there is nothing liberal about a liberal."

In short, 'progressive' is just another pretty cloak draped over the hideous body of freedom-hating collectivism.

The IMF Riot

The events unfolding in Greece follow not a vague pattern, but a documented plan, and it seems they have reached step 3 1/2: 'the IMF riot', as named by Joseph Stiglitz, one-time chief economist of the World Bank.

"The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, "down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up," as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots, but there are other examples - the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost get the impression that the riot is written into the plan.

And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that, while in the States, BBC and The Observer obtained several documents from inside the World Bank, stamped over with those pesky warnings, "confidential," "restricted," "not to be disclosed." Let's get back to one: the "Interim Country Assistance Strategy" for Ecuador, in it the Bank several times states - with cold accuracy - that they expected their plans to spark, "social unrest," to use their bureaucratic term for a nation in flames.

That's not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador's currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line. The World Bank "Assistance" plan simply calls for facing down civil strife and suffering with, "political resolve" - and still higher prices.

The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and teargas) cause new panicked flights of capital and government bankruptcies. This economic arson has it's bright side - for foreign corporations, who can then pick off remaining assets, such as the odd mining concession or port, at fire sale prices."

Read the Greg Palast article from 2001, because it could be us next.

Funny line

From an article at El Reg, entitled 'Election losers? Our clapped-out parties'

"...What about the fringe parties? Enthusiasm would for them might indicate that the antipathy was directed to the Big Three, not to party politics in general. Well, they failed too - they also had rotten elections.

UKIP didn't build on its 2005 success; the Greens won an MP in the enclave of Brighton, but their share of the vote fell. I find this quite amazing, really. After five years of relentless environmental yakkery in the mass media, bombarding us on all channels at once, the Greens received a lower share of votes than the BNP. All that most Greens can now look forward to is to return to their yurts, and prepare for recycling."

A wasted voter speaks

With all this debate about our electoral system, the one question I'm sure has been resonating up and down the nation is: 'what does the Trooper say?' Well, my dear people...

It is important to remember why we have a 'first past the post' (FPTP) system. It was not designed to be unfair, but has become so, because of the rise of party politics. It is the predominance of party politics that has undermined the concept of selecting the best individual from a particular place, because MPs no longer represent their constituents, but rather follow a party line. Sure, there are still a handful of 'mavericks', and others will occasionally go against the whip if the question concerns a factory in their own backyard shutting down or some such event, or if the issue is of such controversy that they manage to locate their cojones, but if they know what's good for their career, they'll do what they're told.

Some people want to keep alive the old principle of constituency MPs, but it's largely gone. The local branches of the political parties have very little power. When an MP decides to stand down, they will often do so at the last minute, to allow Central Office to parachute one of their pals into a safe seat. We cannot expect the electoral system to compensate for the lack of local democracy in the political parties, and no party is going to surrender its prerogative powers over local branches.

If the aim is to make the House of Commons the most representative of the people of this country, then the best system would be based on party lists, so instead of an individual, you vote for a party. This would be resisted by those who value the access to an MP which is afforded by their role as representative of a particular constituency, but there would be nothing to stop political parties running local 'surgeries' as MPs currently do, and/or nominating particular MPs to cover particular geographic areas. Personally, the loss of a local representative would bother me not at all. My MP does not represent me in any way, and my constituency has no particular identity, it was just drawn on a map.

The trouble with any kind of reform is that it will be done by the main political parties, who will each want to ensure the best deal for themselves. Turkeys rarely vote for Christmas, and they will not want to put in place a system that favours the rise of new political forces. It's far more likely that they will use voter dissatisfaction as a pretext to destroy what's left of the House of Lords, whilst further entrenching themselves in the Commons.

Interlude

Enough politics.

Labour: undead, unburied

Considering the results in my local borough, Lewisham, I realise I had a lucky escape when I went down to the polling station. Remember the scene in 'Shaun of the Dead' when they try to pass through the crowd of zombies outside the Winchester pub, by pretending to be zombies themselves? That's the electorate of Lewisham. They'll vote for a stinking pile of shit, as long as you lay a red rosette over it. In places like this, Labour have been in power for decades, feeding the poverty and dependency of their serf-like supporters and nothing short of dynamite will ever shift them.

I suppose I should comment on the election...

The result was about as good as it could have been. I didn't want the tories to win an outright majority. They don't deserve one, and seeing the problems facing the country, they'll probably be glad they don't have one.

Funny to hear the labourites talking up the 'progressive front'. Yeah. One million dead Iraqis - that's progressive. ID cards, naked body scanners, all that Orwellian shit they get their kicks from, that's progressive. Thank God they got kicked out. I shouldn't forget that this in itself is a great thing.

A shame Nigel didn't win.

Zieg heil, you fucking rats

It's the good guys, keeping Amerika safe. You can tell they're good guys, cos they're all dressed in black, like stormtroopers from hell, and they point loaded rifles at little children. And they work for the same people shipping in the heroin from Afghanistan.

Hat tip: Infowars

"Selling the cow, then buying the milk"

Helen Skopis from Athens International Radio interviewing Max Keiser on 23 April, 2010 on the subject of the Goldman/IMF hijack of the Greek economy.

Funny

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, summing up the election for our cousins across the sea.

Hat tip: Obo

For the undecided

I stole this from here, after seeing it here and here.

Welcome to hell

I don't really seek out music, but I occasionally stumble across things I like, such as Plan B's last album 'The defamation of Strickland Banks', so here's another track.

During times of universal deceit...

Peter Hitchens is a true conservative, whereas I am a libertarian. As such, we walk the same road for much of the journey, before branching out in different directions at the end. I would say, I agree with about 90% of what he has to say on any particular issue. His appearances on 'Question Time' are few and far between, but are always worth hearing, if you can bear to listen to the tiresome blather of the other guests. Thankfully, someone has taken the trouble to edit down some of his appearances.

What is art and what is not

This is an example of art - Giovanni Bellini's 'Drunkenness of Noah' - I could have chosen anything really. This, in contrast, is not art, it's just a bunch of fucking morons with no clothes on.

Steve Hughes in Sweden

Subtitles a bit annoying, but funny nonetheless.

1999: while America pondered the stains on a dress

Watching the international financial system unravel, it is imperative not to see it as some kind of unforeseeable 'act of God', but rather to understand how it happened, and why. Some people will say it's been caused by greed, which is about as meaningful as saying human nature caused it, one step away from declaring 'we're all to blame'. No, it is not caused by greed, but the absence of effective regulation. Such regulation existed, but it was dismantled by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (inter alia).

Watch Senator Byron Dorgan from 1999, explaining to us what is to come, because now it has come, and he's chillingly accurate.

Brown's worst nightmare

Some of us fear gangs of marauding feral youth. Gordon Brown is terrified of little old ladies armed with the truth.

Ah ha ha ha

Ah ha ha ha aaah ha haaa haa he he he ho ho ho bwaah haaa haaa ah ... ahem.