THE GERMAN ABROAD

Travelling around you do meet some very different people.

When I was in Nepal I went to a football match in Kathmandu. The teams were dreadful and one of them was winning 5-0 at halftime. The team that were winning were playing a 3-5-2 formation and the other team quickly degenerated into the old playground formation of 1-0-9 (I want to score I want to score me me me).

Quite by accident I happened to be sitting next to the only other foreigner in the crowd. He was about 50 years old, German, and had a crazy story to tell.  

I asked him if he was a scout looking for players and he said no so I asked him if he was on holiday and he said no. Running out of options, I asked him if he worked in Nepal and he said no.

“What are you doing here then?”

“I travel the world and watch a football match in each country. I want to see a game in EVERY country in the world. This is my 85th country.”

“Wow, thats great. Do you make a holiday of it every where you go? Is your family with you?”

“No, I come on my own. I got here yesterday and I leave tonight. I am going to Bhutan to watch a game and then I am going home to Germany the next day.”

“Let me get this straight… you have come all the way here from Germany and you won’t see anything else in the country other than the airport, the football stadium and a hotel room?”

“Yes. I have been trying for years to get into North Korea to watch a game but they won’t let me.”

It seems very odd to me to go to all these places and never try to go and see anything. I try to go to a game wherever I go too but I certainly wouldn’t go to the game at the expense of seeing the other things which the given country has to offer.

I do still wonder what number the guy is onto now and if he did get into North Korea.

HOW TO DO IT, PARTS 1 & 2

Ska..

Funk

TEARS OF A CLOWN

He really does look like he is crying in this photo.

Good.

He probably isn’t right enough.

John Howard has been a staunch backer of Bush and the bLIAR in everything they have been doing in Iraq. He has been complicit in doing a hatchet job on vital environmental legislation (even though that legislation in itself is not enough).

That his party has lost and that he might even have lost his seat will be pleasing to majority of Aussies I know and the vast majority of random ones I have met.

PREOCCUPIED

I am a little busy at the moment, in the meantime, here is something from the archives…

SPIN

18 05 2007

First published over at www.spinwatch.org
Spin - Behind the Scenes Manipulation of Mainstream News

Documentary by Brian Springer

Review by Michael Greenwell

I don’t often buy into all the hype at election time. The difference between the main political parties has narrowed so much that in the US in particular and in the UK to a lesser extent, elections are usually about a small group of people from roughly the same background and the same fruity little clubs amusing themselves and each other at our expense.

That said, I did find this documentary which focuses mostly on the 1992 US presidential election quite interesting. The US election that year was an important year for the TV companies in that for the first time advertising revenues from the campaign coverage made more money than the cost of the reporting.

It consists mainly of footage taken from satellite feeds and it mostly lets the recorded material speak for itself.

In 1992 satellite TV was still in its infancy and hardly anyone had it. This documentary opens with the filmmaker (Brian Springer) explaining…

“In 1992 I bought a couple of satellite dishes and spent the entire year looking through the channels for feeds. I’d lock on to a satellite and go channel by channel through its transmission, recording the feeds. Then I would move on to the next satellite, then the next one and the next one. By the end of the year I’d recorded more than 500 hours of feeds.”

I have no idea if this is still possible but the maker of this documentary recorded what politicians, journalists, spin doctors, advisers, producers etc were saying that wasn’t broadcast as part of the edited and polished TV cut.

The myth of an adversarial, hostile and critical media is blown away here by the simple method of showing us the velveted conversations before the cameras roll. There is the pillow talk between interviewer and interviewee but there are also little asides with media advisers, particularly with Pat Robertson. The aides are most often telling whoever it is how to deal with difficult questions .

Larry King gets it in the neck as he is seen fawning over all the candidates at almost every point and lobbying for himself to be the moderator in one of the presidential debates. Apparently his show was pivotal in this campaign and made the cover of the New York Times 57 times in the course of it.

Here is an off-camera exchange with Clinton…

Larry King - Ted Turner changed the world. He’s a big fan of yours.

Bill Clinton – Is he?

Larry King – He would..ah..serve you, you know what I mean?

Bill Clinton – You’re kidding?

Larry King – Oh you’d be surprised…what’s he got left in life to gain? I’d call him after you’re elected. Think about it.

The new technology also allowed new kinds of campaigning. Campaigns set-up their own satellite feeds in order to get round the traditional method of giving interviews the major TV networks which would then be filtered out to local stations. This meant that campaigns could do ‘The Satellite tour’ where interview after interview is done in the same room by satellite and goes direct to each local station. There is footage of Barbara Bush and Bill Clinton saying almost identical things time and again for each station. Therefore, each station will have a more local feel to its coverage but nothing substantively new is said – it is like the image of the rock star reading the name of the town they are in from the back of his guitar and saying “________ has always been our favourite town to play in.”

Another feature that has unfortunately become much more common since 1992 is video news releases made by people with explicit agendas and given free to local stations complete with intro texts for newsreaders. In this film it is campaign pieces made by the government or people trying to get into government. Nowadays it is a favourite tool of corporations. Then as now, many of the TV stations did not report that the releases were produced by people with an agenda.

The comfiness of the presenters with the major candidates is not the only problem, there is also the matter of the media actively freezing out some of the candidates. For example, who was Larry Agran? I didn’t know till I watched this.

Well, Larry Agran was attempting to become the Democratic candidate. He was cut out of pictures, barely reported and barred from most TV debates. Agran heckled the other nominees from the audience at a TV debate he was excluded from and was arrested. His court date came on the first day of the democratic national convention where he would have had the chance to campaign. Coincidence or conspiracy, you decide!

“With Catch-22 logic, Agran has been told by news media executives that he has not earned the right to media exposure because, among other things, he has not received enough media exposure.”

Why was this person so objectionable I hear you ask? I am not sure but one of his policies was a 50% cut in defence spending and reinvestment of that money in the inner cities. He said

“I’ve challenged my own party for its continuing complicity in cold war thinking, cold war rhetoric and cold war budgets.”

I think that may just have something to do with it.

The documentary talks briefly about the L.A. riots and notes that American audiences were allowed to hear what Bush Snr and Clinton thought of it all but not what the people protesting (peacefully) and rioting (not so peacefully) thought. To prove this there is footage of a peaceful march. Someone from the crowd grabs the microphone and starts speaking to camera whereupon the live coverage is immediately stopped. As for the rioters, do you remember all those helicopter shots? That is as close as anyone went.

I particularly liked this line…

“The voiceless scenes from south central LA, where nearly 50% of the children live in poverty was contextualized by the $600,000 year TV news anchors.”

In passing it mentions the coverage of Columbus Day celebrations where dissenting views about what Colombus was up to are not exactly given a fair hearing. When it comes to African Americans you can’t mention the ‘N’ word, when it comes to Native Americans you can’t mention the ‘G’ word .

Finally, when I review these documentaries I usually watch them three times. The first time just to watch, the second to take quotes and the third to see if I missed anything. Unfortunately, doing that with this documentary I had to see more of Pat Robertson than any sane individual could wish.

It is still worth a look.

You can watch it free at spinwatch video (via google)

Here is its IMDB page

PERFECTION

Guitar, bass, drums, singer, lyrics, everything.

Turn volume up as high as possible for maximum effect..

The Smiths - Barbarism Begins At Home

Unruly boys
Who will not grow up
Must be taken in hand
Unruly girls
Who will not settle down
They must be taken in hand

A crack on the head
Is what you get for not asking
And a crack on the head
Is what you get for asking

 

Unruly boys
Who will not grow up
Must be taken in hand
Unruly girls
Who will not settle down
They must be taken in hand

 

A crack on the head
Is what you get for not asking
And a crack on the head
Is what you get for asking

 

No … a crack on the head
Is what you get for not asking
And a crack on the head
Is what you get for asking

 

A crack on the head
Is just what you get
Why ? because of who you are !
And a crack on the head
Is just what you get
Why ? because of what you are !
A crack on the head
Because of :
Those things you said
Things you said
The things you did

 

Unruly boys
Who will not grow
Must be taken in hand
Unruly girls
Who will not grow
They must be taken in hand
Ah … oh, no … oh, no
Ah … oh, no … oh, no
No … no, no, no
No … no, no

THE PUB DOWN THE ROAD

In the pub down the road from me ( the Lios Mor) , if you go to the toilet there are three names on the urinal. You are invited to show what you think of the people whose names are there by doing exactly what you normally do at a urinal.

There is an explanation of why they are there written on the urinal but as I didn’t particularly want to stand writing it down next to people doing their business I thought I would give you some other information about them…

Two of those names are Patrick Sellars and George Granville Leveson-Gower (the 1st duke of Sutherland).

This is to do with the highland clearances. For those not in the know about Scottish history, the highland clearances was the forced removal of the population of the Scottish highlands from their land to make way for grazing animals. This was done in a particularly brutal way. It was done at the behest of rich English and Scottish landowners.

Many of the displaced people moved to Glasgow or elsewhere in southern Scotland but many went abroad. If you are in the USA or Canada and have Scottish ancestry it is highly probable that your ancestors left Scotland because of the highland clearances.

 The duke is infamous for in large part initiating the highland clearances. Patrick Sellar was the butcher-in-chief. Of course, like most murderers and tyrants he claimed he was doing it in the name of civilisation…

… a man who became a byword for brutality and inhumanity while carrying out his instructions. That man was Patrick Sellar. He and his compatriot, James Loch were ruthless but efficient buisnessmen. The name of Patrick Sellar is perhaps the most hated name in this woeful tale. Sellar wrote of Lord and Lady Stafford:“Lord and Lady Stafford were pleased humanely to order the new arrangement of this country. That the interior should be possessed by Cheviot sheperds, and the people brought down to the coast and placed in lots of less than three acres, sufficient for the maintenance of an industrious family, pinched enough to cause them to turn their attention to the fishing. [of herring] A most benevolent action, to put these barbarous Highlanders into a position where they could better associate together, apply themsleves to industry, educate their children, and advance in civilisation.” In 1807, the Most Noble Marquess began evicting his Scottish Highland tenants beginning with a trifling ninety families: men, women and children. This can be seen as a learning experience.

In 1814 during the clearance of Strathnaver, Patrick Sellar ensured his place in history. His methods - on the order of his employers - was reminiscent of the ‘Butcher’ Cumberland. Tenants were ordered out of their homes which were then set ablaze. If anyone was slow getting out or went back for possessions, the fire was started with them inside. All possessions, including furniture were burnt. Women, children, old men and animals stood in huddled, fightened groups whilst the savage work went on. To make the land more suitable for the Sheep, the burned homes were levelled so the Cheviots could browse with ease. This also made it impossible for the tenant to rebuild or take refuge in the remains of their homes. The land was to be devoid of all human habitation as not to intrude upon the grazing sheep.

The evicted lost all their possessions, their clothes and cooking utensils, not to mention their dignity and sometimes their lives. Now they had no place to go, and nobody thought (or cared) to provide them with one. They were, as was said at the time, “driven out like dogs.”

In one incident, a woman of perhaps more than ninety years old, was to old and weak to be moved from her home. The neighbours pleaded for Patrick Sellar, the agent, to show mercy for the old woman. Sellar responded,

“Damn her, the old witch. She has lived too long. Let her burn.”

Her house was put to the torch, even the sheets on her bed were set ablaze. Local clansmen and clanswomen tried to rescue her by taking her burned body to a nearby barn, but she died five days later in agony, as surely murdered as anybody could be.

One of those burned out of Grummore was ninety year old William MacKay. He remembered the Jacobite days and had already been evicted once. His wife, Janet, died as a result. When he was evicted again from Grummore he went to the churchyard and stood over her grave and said “Well, Janet, the Countess will never filt (evict) you again.” He turned and walked, alone, to Wick where he died alone and unmourned.

…

An elderly woman, who was partially paralyzed and in absolute pain if moved or if she tried to walk, was ordered out of her home by Lord Stafford’s agent (Sellar). She could only sit in a motionless chair. Sellar told the neighbours she must immediately be removed by her friends or the constables (Lowland sheperds) would be ordered to do it. Her family lifted her from the chair, and four boys of the township cried as they carried her out in a blanket. As she was taken towards the coast,
http://thebloodisstrong.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=3275

Sellar was eventually put on trial but

the trial was delayed for nearly a year. The forty witnesses against him had been interviewed by a sheriff-Substitute McKid, but only 15 were called to give evidence. There were nine witnesses on Sellar’s behalf, all of them his own men.

The Judge, in summing up to the Jury, lent heavily on the low character of the chief prosecution witness, a tinker, William Chisholm, who had seen his mother-in-law die during the evictions. The middle-class jury brought back a Not Guilty verdict in just 15 minutes. The Jury had been bought; bribed by the rich and powerful Lord and Lady Sutherland, although this could not be proven at the time. The Sheriff-Substitute was driven from office, and even sued by Sellar, and simply disappeared. Sellar was a free man.

No compensation was paid in respect of homes destroyed, far less the personal possessions destroyed. Lord Stafford could have easily cleared his estates in a far more humane way, for his possessions were vast. Perhaps they could have been given the time to resettle on the coasts, although that land might have been useless, at least it would have been an attempt. No attempt appears to have ever been made, one wasn’t needed for these savage ‘Highland barbarians’.

The fact is that, even though Patrick Sellar was brought to trial, even though it was a both a travesty and a miscarriage of justice, he was not the prime mover. His employers should have been in the dock with him. They should also – all of them- been found guilty – of multiple counts of murder.

So you now know what you need to do the next time you go for a piss.

JUMP IN THE LINE

The redoubtable Reverend Gisher gives us all some sound advice about what to do in the event of a terrorist attack…

SCOTTISH BLOGGER IN BLOG-SUBSIDY APPEAL ROW

This is an appeal from a leeching Scot to all of you bloggers in the south of England.

You see, as the man about the house points out the Scots are constantly accused of taking money from the poor impoverished people of the south of England.

This is an easily disproved lie but it doesn’t stop the papers going on about it so.

The strange thing is that it is the people who complain about this that are also the ones in favour of keeping the union. The only answer to this is that they must like giving us money (even though they don’t and it is actually the other way round).

So from now on, in keeping with the narrative, I am demanding that you people from London and the south in general keep me supplied with ideas for things to blog about.

Furthermore, I expect you to pay me and keep me in the manner to which I am accustomed.

Get to it.

———————————————————————————————————————— 

This is from the Herald

Myth 1: Scots get more public cash than anyone else.
The Truth: Public spending in Scotland is just £9631 per head, lower than the £10,271 for Northern Ireland and London’s average of £9748.

Myth 2: English taxes pay for Scotland’s high spending.
The Truth: Scotland brings in £9593 per head in tax - more than anywhere in the UK outside of London.  Latest estimates show the tax take from Scotland is £49bn compared with total spending of £49.2bn …[1]

Myth 3: Scots milk the welfare state
The Truth: Latest figures show people living in North-East England claim on average £3284 per head.  Northern Ireland £3256 and £3136 in Wales in state benefits.  Scotland’s pension and benefit cost is £3086 per head.

Myth 4: Scots enjoy better public services than the rest of the UK
The Truth: The Welsh, not the Scots, get free prescriptions, while NHS waiting times in Scotland are broadly in line with England …

Myth 5: State subsidy pays for Scots “big ticket” projects
The Truth: London’s Crossrail project is to cost £16bn - seven and a half times the annual Scottish transport budget.  The 2012 London Olympics means a loss of £9.3bn lottery funding for the rest of the UK.

[1] This is accurate in one way but the figures are skewed to begin with as the oil that comes from Scottish waters is not included in the figures for Scotland.

CONVERSATIONS WITH GEORGE - NUMBER 1

 This is a repost but I like it….

It also appears at Dissident Voice

The Following did not occur but by god how much do I wish it did. It may continue not to occur in instalments on this blog. The place where it does not occur is in a TV studio…

Presenter - Welcome, tonight we have a very special guest with us. The recent breakthrough in cloning technology has allowed Eric Blair aka George Orwell to come and speak to us. We hope to fill him in on recent events and that he can give us his perspective on them. Good morning Mr Orwell.

GO - Good Morning.

Presenter - First of all, I suppose we should start with the man who is, nominally at least, the most powerful on earth and that is the President of the United States, George W. Bush. [Shows him picture]
GO - [I looked] through the photographs in the New Year’s Honours List, I was struck (as usual) by the quite exceptional ugliness and vulgarity of the faces displayed there. It seems to be almost the rule that the kind of person who earns the right to call himself Lord Percy de Falcontowers should look at best like an overfed publican and at worst like a tax-collector with a duodenal ulcer. But our country is not alone in this. Anyone who is a good hand with scissors and paste could compile an excellent book entitled Our Rulers, and consisting simply of published photographs of the great ones of the earth. The idea first occurred to me when I saw in Picture Post some ’stills’ of Beaverbrook delivering a speech and looking more like a monkey on a stick than you would think possible for anyone who was not doing it on purpose.[i]

PRESENTER - You have a reputation as a stickler for the correct use of language so you should be aware that Mr. Bush is not often noted for his eloquence, in fact he admits himself that “I am not one of the great linguists.” He often trips over his words and it is not always clear what he is trying to say. Yet when quizzed about this he sometimes appears to revel in it and many Americans seem to think it means he is a more down to earth and genial person, therefore not really a politician therefore more likeable. He even said he has coined new words like ‘misunderestimated’ and ‘hispanically.’

GO - The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When the general atmosphere is bad the language must suffer. It is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes, but an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration.[ii]

Presenter - What form of regeneration though? In the 50 years since you passed many things have changed. The Soviet Union has collapsed and opposition to capitalistic forms of government have been marginalized for some time, though they occasionally appear to be on the rise again.

GO - Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets and war. Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship and war. There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect, which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is restored to politics.[iii]

Presenter - Ah, but who is to judge right and wrong? Most politicians believe they have right on their side. Mr Bush remarked that ‘I know what I believe. I will continue to believe what I believe - I believe what I believe is right.”
 

GO - ?

Presenter - How can you or anyone else claim to have the definitive answer on what is right or wrong? Is disseminating your opinions not just a form of imposing them on someone else?

GO - It can be argued that no unbiased outlook is possible, that all creeds and causes involve some lies, follies and barbarities: and this is often advanced as a reason for keeping out of politics altogether. I do not accept this argument, if only because in the modern world no one describable as intellectual can keep out of politics in the sense of not caring about them. I think one must engage in politics - using the word in the wide sense - and that one must have preferences: that is, one must recognise that some causes are objectively better than others, even if they are advanced by equally bad means.[iv]

PRESENTER - will the ideas of an individual person not always have a contaminating effect on others? Do the prejudices we all hold not make us all unsuitable to enter into politics?

GO - I do not know, but I do believe it is possible to struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort. It is a question first of all of discovering what one really is, what one’s own feelings really are, and then of making allowance for the inevitable bias. If you hate and fear Russia, if you are jealous of the wealth and power of America, if you despise Jews, if you have a sentiment of inferiority toward the British ruling class, you cannot get rid of those feelings simply by taking thought. But you can at least recognise that you have them and prevent them from contaminating your mental processes. The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort.[v]

Presenter - Thanks, we’ll talk again soon.

[i] ‘As I Please’ 7th Jan 1944
[ii] From ‘Politics and the English Language’
[iii] From ‘Capitalism and Communism - Two paths to slavery’
[iv] ‘Notes on Nationalism’
[v] ‘Notes on Nationalism’

HALLELUJAH!

Well, I don’t know about you but that is me convinced…HALLELUJAH - I am a new man..

thanks to nadia and aaron

Seriously though, regular readers will know I am not the religious type but I know many people who are that still believe that evolution is the simply the method that god used (is using).

Personally I don’t but I think little cartoons like this one, which is obviously designed to warp the mind of a child, are pernicious and odious.