Only an Accident 2:28 am / 23 April 2013 by John Jacobsen, at Seattle Free Press

By BRUCE MACHART from the New York Times: JUST after lunch break one infernal Houston afternoon in 1995, I slammed the door of the company truck, cranked the engine, and punched the gas so hard that the truck fishtailed onto Jensen Drive. Beside me sat my co-worker Charlie. In his lap, he clenched a blood-drenched [...]

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Bullshit Economics. 2:26 am / 23 April 2013 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.



      Well they came in swing their hatchet, cut, cut, cut, pain is necessary to get “the economy” going again. Of course the cuts and the pain were not for them, no, that part was for you and I the ordinary people. Millionaire Osborne, took the economic reins two and a half years ago with his pompous know-all statement that the UK's triple "A" credit rating was the hallmark of success and he would make sure we kept that rating. His next guarantee he made was his cut, slash and burn policies would lead to the UK deficit being reduced and the land would be covered by lovely green shoots. Well what a load of cobblers all that has been, the UK triple "A" rating has been downgraded by two of the three rating agencies and the figures out this week show public sector borrowing in March this year was £10.6 billion, up from £9.7 billion the previous March. So it looks like the first estimate of net borrowing in 2012/13 is similar to last year's £120 billion.
      Two and a half years of austerity, a nice way of saying poverty, heaped on a people for the prize of a deteriorating society. All the Cameron/Osborne bullshit exposed for what it is. I have never swallowed this crap about the “deficit reduction” would lead to growth, to the financial Mafia it was irrelevant whither it did or didn't. The plan was a little more multifaceted than that. “Deficit reduction” was plain and simple, a transferring of public wealth to the coffers of the financial Mafia to make up for their gambling losses, a way of legitimising the selling off all public assets to the corporate world, and of course to get wages down and create a UK sweatshop economy to compete with their Eastern sweatshop competitors. So it is working well at the moment.
     This is capitalism, all this chatter about deficit reduction, credit ratings and growth, is not with your welfare in mind, it's all about corporate profits, you and I are incidental to these calculations. We are an inconvenience to the corporate world, they need us to buy their crap, and sadly we need to be fed, and that means paying us, that in turn hits their profits. They will of course, always struggle to keep that cost down and they have this system of so called “representative democracy” which puts the stamp of legitimacy on policies to keep us in our place and to protect and enhance their profit margins. Until we change that system, we will continue to be screwed. They need us, we don't need them.

ann arky's home.

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Stella Artois : She is a thing 9:23 pm / 22 April 2013 by @ndy, at slackbastard

What with all the excitement over the fabulous redecoration (above) of the Tory Party’s hateful and deceitful billboard about asylum seekers I was naturally drawn to the Billboard Liberation Front website. There I came across the Stella Artois advertisement. Y’know, … Continue reading →

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Rethinking Sex and Gender, by Christine Delphy 7:29 pm / 22 April 2013 by Francois Tremblay, at The Prime Directive

If you have some time to read a good article on the subject of sex and gender roles, I recommend this one.

Feminist (and many other!) theorists generally accept that values are socially constructed and historically acquired, but they seem to think they must nonetheless be preserved. There are two typical variants on this position. One says we must distribute masculine and feminine values throughout the whole of humanity; the other says that masculine and feminine values must each be maintained in their original group. The latter view is currently especially common among women who do not want to share feminine values with men. I am not sure whether this is because they believe men are unworthy or incapable of sustaining these values, or because they know men do not want them anyway. But we might well ask how women who are ‘nurturing’ and proud of it are going to become the equals of unchanged men—who are going to continue to drain these women’s time? This is not a minor contradiction. It shows, rather, that if intellectual confusion produces political confusion, it is also possible to wonder, in a mood of despair, if there is not, behind the intellectual haze, a deep and unacknowledged desire not to change.


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idt update 2 4:51 pm / 22 April 2013 by Captain Capitulation, at cheese it, the cops!

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insufferable diva tour update 4:40 pm / 22 April 2013 by Captain Capitulation, at cheese it, the cops!

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What BP doesn’t want you to know about the 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill 2:59 pm / 22 April 2013 by John Jacobsen, at Seattle Free Press

BP mounted a cover-up that concealed the full extent of its crimes from public view. This cover-up prevented the media and therefore the public from knowing — and above all, seeing — just how much oil was gushing into the gulf. The disaster appeared much less extensive and destructive than it actually was. BP declined to comment for this article.

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The Lonely Wynd. 2:04 pm / 22 April 2013 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.


      Today's poem was written shortly after the death of my mother, so is a very personal out pouring, but I'm sure lots of you have been there.

The Lonely Wynd,

At the bed, death's waiting room,
the family muster,
with empty words, wrapped in thoughts of death,
gaily chatter.
Outside, hungry birds feed, sing and fly,
their chirpy songs seem to call her death a lie,
but summer's sun
reaching through the window pane
sadly smiles,
knowing they'll never meet again.
I wonder,
in coma wrapped, what were your thoughts.
Pleasure,
looking back at what used to be?
Pride,
at how, to this life happiness you brought?
Perhaps it was a welcome rest from pain,
a just pause in your long struggle;
alas, too late, this enigma with me remains.
So rest, in that rest, peace be your gain,
for you dear mother, an end to trouble,
as love's boundless force could not break
death's firm grasp upon your heart,
passionless devouring cancer
unmoved by prayer on our part,
took your hand along that lonely wynd,
death took time
fused the moment on our mind.
In the midst of family,
alone dear mother you had to die. 


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Boston Military Lock-down. 1:42 pm / 22 April 2013 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.



      The Boston bombing was a very serious affair and must have been frightening for those runners and spectators near the scene. However, what was also frightening to see, was how tenuous is the citizen's hold on the right to freedom of movement. In one swift movement an entire city was shut down, businesses closed, Amtrak and Boston public transport to New York shut down, and people warned to stay inside and lock their doors. The city was swarming with what looked like the cast of Star Wars. A million people willingly locked down, why, because a teenager was on the run. Obama, of course said all the right things to make the citizens of Boston compliant, he praised them for being resolute, brave and not cowed, when in fact they were all sitting at home behind locked doors, leaving the streets to the state's muscle. It would seem that when push comes to shove, even that slim semblance of Madame Democracy, can so very easily be locked down. The scenes beamed across the world were a perfect portrayal of a warrior nation moving into overkill, a perfect example of how to lock-down a city when desired. The manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was a massive exercise in over reaction, creating a state of siege on the city of Boston, imposed by a military state. In spite of this, it was not the professional state muscle men that found the teenager, it was one of Boston's citizens.
       I can't remember who said it but this was a perfect example, “What's the difference between the state and a terrorist? The terrorist is the one with the small bomb.” Killing innocent people is always unacceptable, but let's not forget, the state is the biggest killer of innocent people on the planet.

ann arky's home.

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Gasland- film shoiwng, Wed. April 24th at 7:30pm 12:39 pm / 22 April 2013 by jason clatterbox, at SubRosa - a community space


Can you light your water on fire?

A documentary film by Josh Fox
at SubRosa, 703 Pacific Ave.
Wed. April 24th at 7:30pm, free

Oil and gas "fracking" is a looming threat to the lands and waters of central and southern California.  Companies are currently rushing to secure drilling rights to the vast Monterey Shale formation, which is estimated to hold 15.4 billion barrels of potentially recoverable oil.


Gasland exposes the dangers of hydraulic fracking.  Part travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part banjo bluegrass meltdown, part showdown.  The film is a cross-country odyssey with unexpected humor, uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination.

The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a "Saudia Arabia of natural gas" just beneath us. But is fracking safe?

http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
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