Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

Monday, May 16, 2011

Link roundup

1. An explanation for why "illegal immigration is the best immigration."

2. "Jon Stewart is misleading stoned smart-alecks in dorm lounges across America about how things really work."

3. Jennifer Aniston recently bought an apartment in her dog's name.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Illustration roundup

Lots of great (and silly) Thor by Kirby pages in this gallery. You can buy Kirby's Thor collection at Amazon.

This is a dating don't.

Editorial illustration by Tomer Hanuka for the NY Times.

Spider-Man and Daredevil by Moebius (from a gallery of Moebius art). (It's interesting that Moebius is so famous, yet doesn't have a single comic in print at Amazon.) Via.

Pen Ward looking for a drinking buddy the other night.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Link roundup

1. This Reddit thread has links to several iPhone wallpapers, including Pac-Man and Tron.

2. Why are most livable city lists always so lame?

In fact, Vancouver’s boringly consistent topping of the polls underlines the fundamental fault that lies at the heart of the idea of measuring cities by their “liveability”. The most recent surveys, from Monocle magazine, Forbes, Mercer and The Economist, concur: Vancouver, Vienna, Zurich, Geneva, Copenhagen and Munich dominate the top. What, you might ask, no New York? No London? No LA or HK? None of the cities that people seem to actually want to emigrate to, to set up businesses in? To be in? None of the wealthiest, flashiest, fastest or most beautiful cities? Nope.

This article tries to explain. Via.

3. It's always good to be reminded how politicians (in this case Obama) stage photos.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Link roundup

1. NERF stands for NonExpanding Recreational Foam. Via.

2. Lots of interesting anecdotes in this article about Tina Brown (including how much money The Daily Beast and Newsweek have lost recently). For example:

As is not uncommon in preparation for Brown’s parties, that afternoon the room’s furniture was loaded into a truck, which was waiting, out of sight, for the last guests to leave before unloading its contents back into the apartment. Sir Harold Evans, Brown’s 82-year-old husband, has been known to joke with friends that he’d prefer to be in the truck, where he could circle the block in the comfort of his own home.

And:

As her guests said goodbye, Brown and Evans looked eager to get their furniture back. Suddenly the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy wafted in, dressed in black and trailing a cloud of cologne and his mistress, Daphne Guinness, who was wearing a revealing black cat suit and heelless Alexander McQueen platform shoes. Lévy was fresh from Paris, where, he proceeded to tell Brown and a few stragglers, he had just single-handedly persuaded his old friend President Nicolas Sarkozy to go to war against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya. (A few days later, Steven Erlanger of The New York Times reported that this had, improbably enough, been the case.)

3. "An ongoing fight between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has taken a turn for the weird, as several of the president's closest advisers have been arrested and charged with being 'magicians' and invoking djinns, or spirits."

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Link roundup

1. FYI, you have to pay $150 to $495 to be nominated for a Webby award.

2. If you missed it, Minnesota House Majority Leader Matt Dean said he "hated" Neil Gaiman and called him a "pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota." Neil Gaiman responds here. His response includes a link to Dean's contact page and encourages you to share your thoughts with Mr. Dean.

3. Here's an explanation for why eating asparagus makes your urine smell. Via.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Matt Drudge on Osama's death

Drudge on Osama's death via.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Link roundup

1. SF Chronicle:

In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.

Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.

2. The time Jim Carrey went totally nuts for new year's eve on David Letterman.

3. How law schools trick students into attending by promising them merit scholarships, and then keeping secret how likely it is that they will lose the scholarship after their first or second year. Via.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Link roundup

1. Thomas P.M. Barnett applauding the utilization of weaponized drones in Libya:

This sort of response sends a lot more signal than the heavy hardware or brigades. It says America will continue to fight as it always has: by generating more stuff than you can possibly imagine. The old model was big stuff. The new model is small and disposable and unmanned stuff. It comes with willpower attached. It's staying power is its dwell time.

China thinks it has a grip on the future with a carrier killer, but it's protecting itself from the 20th century. The name of the game going forward is what it has been these past two decades: globalization's advance, the remapping of fake states, the liberation of people long oppressed by their conditions and cruel leaders, and the new matrixing of supply chains and labor pools as this magnificent process continues to unfold.

2. Octopus ride. Via.

3. Writer discusses how incredibly easy it was to create a fake photograph of an iPhone 5, and get the photo on the main tech blogs.

*Buy iPads at eBay.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

FreeDomination

Quick political post. If you are still not convinced about the Country Music industry's fundamentally 'evil' nature (drug smuggling... not just the music!), then look no further than Sean Hannity's 'Freedom Concerts' (these things are always ironically named), featuring all the standard MK'd Country Music stars (LeAnn Rimes performed for Bush etc), including.... Billy Ray Cyrus [Miley's dad]! His comedy show really cracks me up; Billy's involvement has bewildered Hannity's robotic fans naturally (Billy Ray supported Bill Clinton [wonder why?... all MK'd], has some album cover that is "anti-American" or something); their ignorance is rather adorable. If Barack Obama is murdered by random neo-nazi nuts, it will be almost entirely Sean Hannity's fault (if you've seen his show you'll understand why); I posited that this sort of thing could be the case in this post. FreeDomination. "Can the 'black Jesus' escape an assassins bullet?"

Anne Pressly played an 'Anne Coulter-type character in the film W' by the way, then was subsequently murdered in a "random" frenzied attack; no doubt a blood ritual sacrifice (her appearance in W was all a part of it) like I said in the last post. She worked for Channel 7 so had 7's all over her, more Freemasonic blood ritual indications.

Check out these cabbage-patch dolls they made of these political puppets [cheers commenter pointing them out], here's a link. Video below showing Sarah Palin's confused state.

And below, how these campaigns are never about real issues or anything that has any basis in reality (it's all about fear); it's all about dividing the people, keeping the masses constantly arguing amongst themselves over nothing-issues to keep them distracted from actual problems and actual criminals that need to be dealt with. [Edit: Added in another Colbert vid showing more fearmongering leveled at Obama.]

And one more loosely interesting one from TDS.

Who's Nailin' Palin?

Previous posts on Palin/McCain/Obama/election (click on below labels)... it's all a meaningless sideshow; seriously vote Paris (note her red shoes; if she's not on the ticket just write it in, she is our only hope for "change" ;p).

FreeDomination

Check out these cabbage-patch dolls they made of these political puppets [cheers commenter pointing them out], here's a link. Video below showing Sarah Palin's confused state.

And one more loosely interesting one from TDS.

Who's Nailin' Palin?

Saturday, September 27, 2008

More McCain Madness

'An Alice In Wonderland Event' 'It's a chess game'

Why so aggressive McCain? [this is a subtle hint at his trauma based mind control here imo]

Palin in NY/OZ

By the way, I decided to watched one Eastenders episode and a bit of Corrie to check up on their suspiciously similar story-lines lately [here's the Daily Mail's standard perverse take on it; "Lolita-style seductress"]; and was v shocked to see anything... but right there on the wall of the girls house were Eyes Wide Shut style masks [attempt to get a pic, might write it up]. Also, all these "Islamic Fundamentalists" have never been religious at all (they're just playing their part in the global puppet theatre); as evidenced by this story [also the "9/11 Hijackers" used strippers, they were in it for the money/girls/probably mind controlled/probably not even dead, the CIA/MI5 have been/continue to desperately seeking and funding/encouraging Islamic Fundamentalism for years (training/programming the mujahadin etc); which wouldn't have gotten anywhere (it always was designed to get big though because that was their intention from the start) without the Intelligence led operations 9/11, 7/7, etc].

Also, remember P Diddy's vote or die thing [which he himself hilariously didn't vote in... it's all just a pointless circus]? Putting these MK'd celebrities in bondage type situations (for this campaign) seems to have a similar morbid feel to it [Alba; Jessica played the mind controlled assassin type thing in Dark Angel and various other suggestions (check out her wiki too, daughter of an Air Force officer and things) in the Eye and other movies, I'll cover her at some point. Christina obviously Mouseketeer etc]. I see no point in contributing to a completely corrupt system by the way; back away from the madness. This campaign was done by David LaChapelle who is so obviously involved it's unreal, check out his website. He did Rihanna's total MK Disturbia video amongst other things, here's his image page on that voting thing with other celebrities.

Are the tears really necessary? [to tear= to split, you get tears during trauma] These have pretty obvious alternative meanings if you understand mind kontrol.

Edit[02/10]: Added this new one of Alba in, they're really going over the top with the masks and cannibal resonance (Hannibal) now... it's all for the noble motive of getting you to vote of course, no ulterior motive whatsoever!

Thought this was a pretty funny synch, That Darn Cat is on Channel 5 right now! :S [Edit: It has all the usual symbolism (got half an eye on it), currently they are on a checkerboard floor... her family's house # is 303... and Ricci wears an all seeing eye ring on her thumb... I should stop editing this post now.]

More McCain Madness

'An Alice In Wonderland Event' 'It's a chess game'

Why so aggressive McCain? [this is a subtle hint at his trauma based mind control here imo]

Palin in NY/OZ

Are the tears really necessary? [to tear= to split, you get tears during trauma] These have pretty obvious alternative meanings if you understand mind kontrol.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Apocalypse Now?: New world order could have devastating implications for Western nations

[You have to read between the lines in mainstream pieces like this, everything is planned an organized, including all the apocalyptic chaos (wars/weather/financial/etc) from which they will bring order out of in a few years.] It's a Peter Oborne opinion piece which makes sense, I was quite impressed with his Shouldn't Happen to a Muslim. The world won't end, but billions will die; when I refer to apocalypse this is all I mean, not some biblical literally everyone on Earth perishing in fire and brimstone. Things like this (they are desperate to get Pakistan under extremist control, an extremist they have total control over obviously; or at least attacks like these help portray Pakistan as being an extremist nation thus putting it on the same side as Iran in the coming global conflict) are all about setting up the sides for World War 3. The new world order he refers to in his title is the one we are all familiar with, the one that will come out of all the chaos he is writing about, all of which is fully organized. Here's the link.

Almost exactly seven years ago Al Qaeda terrorists targeted their hijacked planes into the Twin Towers at the heart of New York’s financial centre — and the world was transformed.

There were no deaths this week, but the effects of the carnage on the financial markets will be far more profound and destabilising than the 9/11 atrocity.

For almost all of us, it will, I predict, be a change for the worse, and for a large minority the consequences will be extremely distressing.

Here comes the apocalpse: Is the Western world entering a nightmare scenario, as depicted by Edvard Munch?

The Western world — Britain, Europe and the U.S. — has moved from excess to austerity overnight. This week’s financial typhoon will savagely impact living standards.

In due course, it will topple governments and lead to a permanent transfer of economic and political power from Europe and America to the emergent and, in some cases, such as China, semi-barbarous economies in the East.

I know I will be accused of being unnecessarily apocalyptic and irresponsibly negative, but I believe that the greatest mistake we can now make is to downplay the seriousness of the situation and bury our heads in the sand.

The seismic events which have seen the near-destruction of the investment banking sector and the collapse of insurance giant AIG are on the scale of the Great Crash of 1929.

That was such a disaster because it created conditions for the emergence of fascism in continental Europe and then World War II.

Although it is hard to predict the consequences, we should expect ramifications of equal significance — including the re-emergence of violent Far Right parties across the globe.

Some experts were talking this week as if the financial crisis was nearly over. They
could not be more wrong. The downturn has only just begun — and for most citizens
uninvolved with finance the consequences have not been felt at all.

But they will be felt very soon and very brutally. The British economy is in the same position as the Texan coast earlier this month as Hurricane Ike approached — apparently calm, with life going on as normal, but an almighty storm is raging just over the horizon and heading our way with terrifying speed.

We can expect a sharp increase in personal bankruptcies. Yet the numbers will not peak until this time next year at the earliest.

Hundreds of thousands of people will lose their jobs, with many forced to sell their houses. Property prices will slump.

There will be extreme human suffering, panic and despair. Many careers will be destroyed. This is considerably worse than the downturn of the early 1990s.

The orthodoxy from the British Government, the Confederation of British Industry and elsewhere that there will be a mild slowdown ending late next year is nonsense.

This crisis is vicious, dynamic and only just beginning.

Even those of us lucky enough not to lose our jobs and our homes will have friends and relatives who do.

Let us examine, first, the fate of City bankers from firms such as Lehman Brothers — all summarily dismissed when their firm went under this week.

They will receive no severance payment and almost no chance ever again of benefiting from the six-figure salaries and massive bonuses they have taken for granted over the past few years.

That means they cannot service the huge mortgages they have taken out on hugely expensive houses. So this weekend they have become forced sellers — which means that thousands of new For Sale signs will be going up in London and the South-East in the coming weeks.

Personal bankruptcy:Traders and investment bankers face an uncertain future

If these unemployed investment bankers had the misfortune to buy anywhere near the top of the market, they now face the prospect of personal bankruptcy.

This is because they will find that their houses are worth much less than they paid for
them, and will therefore be unable to repay their loan.

With so many vendors on the market obliged to sell at any price, it can be assumed that any London house will fetch 25 per cent less this weekend than it would have done this time last week.

Many of the younger bankers — those in their 20s and 30s with young families — now face utter disaster.

Of course, there is scant public sympathy for these former ‘masters of the universe’ who enjoyed good times.

But we already know that Thursday’s merger of Lloyds Bank and HBOS (supposing it
is completed: contrary to statements by Chancellor Alistair Darling, this is by no means certain) will lead directly to the loss of some 40,000 jobs among
bank workers.

There will be bloodletting on every High Street where there is both an HBOS and Lloyds outlet — one branch will undoubtedly be closed.

But that body-blow is just the start. Over the coming months, the financial typhoon will mercilessly spread outwards and wreak devastation on the economy.

Banks will foreclose on thousands of small businesses. Massive corporate failures are inevitable.

These disasters will then rebound on the financial sector, as company bankruptcies
and plunging house prices force fresh balance sheet write-downs and yet more sackings.

Unemployment — already rising fast and up 80,000 over the summer — is set to surge ahead and will increase well above the two million predicted by economists.

This will produce a vicious spiral. Every worker out of a job means less tax receipts and higher welfare payments.

In last March’s Budget (a work of fiction when it was published), Alistair Darling forecast borrowing this year of £43 billion. Even at the time, this figure was shockingly large.

It meant that only Egypt, Pakistan and Hungary among significant world economies had more profligate government spending than Britain.

As of this weekend, Government borrowing is out of control.

It will soar nearer £100 billion next year — more than double Darling’s estimate. This will cast doubt about Britain’s ability to finance our debt in the international
credit markets.

The International Monetary Fund has already warned Darling about his reckless spending. In the months to come, it will demand cuts in government spending, just as it did in the 1970s when the then Labour Chancellor, Denis Healey, had to beg for an IMF loan.

Warned: Government borrowing is twice Chancellor Alistair Darling's estimate and has bought a rebuke from the IMF

Darling will have to take urgent, painful action to reverse the splurge of recent expenditure — welcomed by financially ignorant Labour MPs — on public services, in particular health and education.

And whereas the responsible wing of the Labour Government, as it did in the 1970s, will support this prudence, the Left will call for extra spending to save jobs.

It is likely that the Labour Party will split on this issue — just as it did in the aftermath of the Crash in 1931 and again at the start of the 1980s. In the medium term, the only resolution to this debt crisis is a rise in inflation, as governments are forced to print money to fend off depression.

Savers should thus brace themselves for the return of double-digit price rises not seen since the early 1980s.

Driven by poverty, crime will also soar — particularly crimes against property. We should also brace ourselves for a return of political violence to the streets.

Certainly the British National Party will use the economic downturn to agitate against immigrants, accusing them of having ‘stolen British jobs’.

The BNP made some striking gains at last May’s elections, and these will continue in the European elections next June.

This is the troubling prospect we face. But the worldwide consequences are just as significant and we can expect the Euro to fail under the strain of economic collapse.

The Euro has never been tested by adversity. The single currency’s architects made one foolish mistake when they set it up ten years ago: they established monetary union ahead of political union.

In long-established democracies such as Britain and the United States, it is natural for one area of the country to help the other in times of difficulty.

For instance, there was no strong objection when taxpayers in the South were asked to bail out Northern Rock, even though its operations were concentrated in the North-East.

Fascist threat: Far right parties such as Jean-Marie Le Pen's FN in France could exploit the situation

However, that is not the case in mainland Europe where French taxpayers would refuse to contribute huge sums to bail out, say, the Italian banking sector.

That is why the Euro is likely to be destroyed by the coming economic storm — just as Britain’s membership of the European monetary system was smashed on Black Wednesday 1992.

The truth is that this week’s seismic events will come as a crashing humiliation to the European political class.

Like in Britain, this crisis will be exploited by the Far Right in countries such as France, Holland and Austria.

These countries have powerful neo-fascist parties which will relish recession, in particular singling out for blame ethnic minorities, just as the Nazis did in Germany after the 1929 crash.

The good news is that Britain — despite the efforts of Tony Blair and others — remains outside the Euro.

It means we can control our interest rates and allow the pound to depreciate, unlike so many European countries, some of which (such as Ireland) are already being devoured by recession.

Wall Street Crash: The US became more insular after the stock market crashed in 1929

But the biggest worry is what will happen in the U.S. Ever since the end of World War II, America has been the world’s policeman.

It has been able to play this role, and see off perceived enemies, such as Soviet Russia and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, because for the past 60 years it has been the greatest global economic power.

The most important question facing the world today is whether the U.S. — already crippled by the estimated $2 trillion cost of financing the Iraq occupation — can afford to continue its global role.

The historical precedent is far from encouraging.

After the 1929 crash, the U.S. turned in on itself, resorting to protectionism.

It re-engaged with the world only after the attack by Japan at Pearl Harbour in December 1941.

It is too early to say for sure, but it is possible that America is at a similar turning point in its history.

President Bush’s decision to pour taxpayers’ money into so many bankrupt financial institutions has led to an explosion of U.S. national debt which will be hugely exacerbated by yesterday’s move in Washington.

As a result, U.S. global creditworthiness is in jeopardy, and it is likely that at some stage over the next decade the dollar will lose its unchallenged status as the world’s reserve currency.

There are signs that this process has already begun.

For this weakening of the currency was the fate of sterling in the economic crisis of the 1930s.

Indeed, the subsequent decision to take the pound off the Gold Standard in 1931 marked the effective end of the British Empire.

Rising power: China has emerged as a threat to US power, and the recent Beijing Olympics have only added to its stature

America’s global dominance — already threatened by the emergence of rival economic powers such as China — may soon be coming to its end.

The U.S. will probably retreat inwardly, becoming isolationist, at any rate temporarily — opening the way to a new and even more menacing global order.

It is inevitable that America will soon withdraw from Iraq, leaving its bitter enemy, Iran, unchallenged as the dominant regional power.

China will become ever more assertive and will want to humiliate Washington by seizing control of Taiwan, something the White House will be powerless to resist. It will move on to threaten nearby India.

Africa will become the scene of proxy wars between China and the West, just as it was the scene of proxy wars between the United States and Soviet Russia for much of the post-war period.

China, much to U.S. fury, will also start to meddle in Latin America.

The world that will emerge from the Great Crash of 2008, therefore, will be dark and unpredictable.

This weekend, all sensible families will go through their finances, anticipate the inevitable problems that lie ahead, and cut back at once on unnecessary spending such as eating out, second cars and foreign holidays.

For the past 25 years we have lived through a glorious party.

We have all — governments, companies, banks and, of course, consumers — lived beyond our means and are paying the price.

This weekend the hangover begins. It will be prolonged.

Life will be much closer to the austerity that followed World War II than the frenzied, debt-fuelled boom of the past two decades.

Perhaps our lives will be none the worse for all this. Our values will certainly change — many will say not before time.

Material objects should count for much less.

Almost overnight we have entered a new world, and we must learn to make the best of it.