"I'm preaching love and modesty." Signed Ben, B.A.,M.A., PhD, descendant of G.o.d. Himself

Don't you despise people who take every opportunity to remind you that they have a doctorate.
They seem to be telling you:
"You must not argue with a 'doctor',

for he is educated beyond all reason!"

It's especially poignant when his stock in trade is
love, peace, modesty, sacrifice
when actually he's got nothing to do with those wonderful things.
He's all about
power, money, manipulation of politics and law,
nationally and internationally.
Nazi cover-ups.
Pedophile cover-ups.
Against Aids prevention.
Sitting on a stash of money large enough
to wipe out all hunger and disease.
Support for Latin American despots,
against the grassroots work of his very own employees,
with the downtrodden poor.
Liberation....theology

You won't be surprised
to disover that I'm talking about a man with a title
and an ego big enough to choke an elephant.
He's known in Italy as Papa Ratzi (paparazzi, LOL)
He is "Benedict XVI,
Episcopus Romae,
Vicar of Jesus Christ,
Successor of the Prince of the Apostles,
Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church,
Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City,
Servant of the Servants of God"
and Phd.

Yup, he's all about love, alright;
of himself and of power!


shepherd, or

inquisitioner/executioner/tyrant ?

UPDATE: 20 Oct '09
seeing that the Anglican Church is fighting over
Openly gay & female clergy
The RC church is doing the only thing it knows how.
It's negotiating a deal that will make Anglicans nominally
call themselves Catholics, so as to fatten up the books.
They pulled this very same trick on the Ukrainians 400 years ago.
It's 600 years that they've been waiting for this revenge
against the schismatists!
checkitout: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091020/ap_on_re_eu/eu_vatican_anglicans

-Costick67 (8^P
postscript: So what, if most of Papa Razzi's titles are open to criticism as fraudulent? Who has time for that?
pics- fotosearch.com

Atlas the stock broker shrugged, "So, the rich have an unfair advantage. Big whoop!"

[under construction]
Ayn Rand thought of doing two things concurrently,
which is saying a lot for someone

of her limited mental capacity.
She, at once, wanted to give wanton greed
the appearance of having a philosophical basis
and also desired to make herself rich.
With "Atlas shrugged",
she took a swipe at both.
I can only assume that she knew
what rich people everywhere wanted to read,
and if so, she was actually fairly intelligent.
Rich folk and their hangers-on
have been eating up her crap for decades.
Her work has a biblical-size following among some big names (more later).
On the academic side,
her ideas are full of holes
that a bus could drive through.
So, either she hadn't the brains to think it through,
or there is no way to legitimise might-is-right, philosophically,
or the last choice is ....
she was too busy getting rich to think about true philosophy.

Anyway, the T.H.E. trashes her, once and for all. More to come

The last insult is how all greedy Richies who read Rand think that her story's entrepreneurs are fantastic, which in some ways they are. They created something or realised its manufacture. Not bad.
However, that has nothing to do with the lazy layabouts pushing fradulent paper around the world. They are about as important to the world as bagel delivery boys. King of them all is Alan Greenspan, Rand's biggest (i.e. most destructive monetarist) fan. He oversaw the biggest financial collapse the world has ever seen.
What does that say for Rand's ideas when Greenspan that said he "learned everything" from her?
She's bankrupt, like all her big fans.
It gives the morally bankrupt "an easy-to-follow protocol and a glamour that serves as both corporate feelgood and marketing tool." This quotation is actually about the benefits to the real Mafia of reading (or watching- for illiterates) and following the tactics of fictional Mafia stories. Do you see the similarities to Rand and the Randies?

Mafia is as mafia does. Gabagool!
Bada-bing, it's a hedge-market thing.

-Sources:
Gerald L. Houseman 'Objectionable content' Times Higher Education no 1914 ppg 16-18
Aditya Charkrabortty 'Brain food: why the mafia study gangster movies' Guardian G2 pg13
-Costick67 (8^P

PORCA Miseria*

Stick around here for a discussion:

pigs vs philosophers. place your bets.

This idea comes from an article on mbs.ac.uk which fellow blogger urbancrazyman (see link on the right) responded to.

UCM mentioned a quote by John Stuart Mill which more or less separated people into two groups- philosophers or pigs. more later

If we, the non-philosophers are to be called pigs, it may be that we have realised that life is a big charade, orchestrated by and for rich people, philosophers and non. And as common wisdom has it, pigs are clever; "they get bored with playing the same game over and over again." The game I'm referring to usually finds the pig on the losing end of a skewer.

-Costick67 (8^P
notes:
-source: Sharon Stanford, 'Another view' Guardian G2 pg.21
*"The misery of a pig" is an Italian expression of exasperation.
-mbs article by Phillip Collins, and comments: http://tm.mbs.ac.uk/comment/why-are-there-so-few-public-intellectuals-in-britain/comment-page-1/#comment-21

a bit of tax for the little people

[under construction]

Rampant hedging, derivatives and speculation have made a dog's breakfast of our economies.

Nevertheless, some very nice people think that there's nothing wrong with speculation, and particularly currency trading. So, they want it to keep going, so governments can tax every currency trading transaction.

Where's the money gonna go? If experience is a good teacher, it'll go straight back to those same banks to bail them out when their scamming fails again. and it will.

It'll probably be 1% of the trader's fees, or about 100 quid per trade. Do you think it will stop currency speculation, which is all about gossip and band-wagon jumping? Not at all.

By the time the lobbyists are done with it, only travellers getting Euros at their travel agent's will be paying any of the tax.

coming soon: Guardian story from September
"G20 urged to fight poverty with currency tax" by Nick Mathiason

-Costick67 (8^P

Holocaust photographer rejects invite from Isr.

[pic banksy]
It makes me both

sad and happy that Janina Struck,

a person who knows a thing or two about human suffering
has seen the similarities between Nazi Germany
and a certain well-connected middle-eastern country*.
So much so, that she doesn't want to go there to speak about her work
on the Holocaust.

You no believe?
This is the blurb that appeared in Haaretz newspaper:

Janina Struck, the photographer and author of the highly acclaimed book ‘Photographing the
Holocaust’ was invited to give a paper at Yad Vashem about the subject matter of her book. She decided not to go, writing that “Since the Israeli attack on Gaza in December and January, during which time the IDF killed more than a thousand people, and due to Israel's continued violation and disregard for international law and human rights, I am afraid that as much as I respect the work of Yad Vashem, I find it impossible to accept an official invitation from an institution of the State of Israel.[..]
During the research for my book [] it was images that portrayed cruelty, humiliation, the disregard for human life and the most basic principles of human decency that I found among the most disturbing. Now I find similarly disturbing the images from Gaza that show vast areas reduced to rubble, grieving homeless families, and distressed and hungry children – the result of the abhorrent activities of the IDF.”
Apparently, the organizers did not act on her request that her statement be read out at the
seminar.
Source http://www.haaretz. com/hasen/spages/1110830. html
--
by Tim Goheen McClatchy
We're starting to wake up from a big bad nightmare, folks.
-Costick67 (8^P See my older blogs on the subject: 'Tony Blair', 'UK universities', 'prophet part 3 & 'news flash'
*Talk about your history repeating itself, the shoe being on the other foot this time. Victim becomes victimiser, without even flinching.
Oh, the humanity of it all!

Halleluyah! Oil deal with minimal loss of life

Unlike in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere, but who has time),

the oil politics of the West only cost 270 lives, THIS TIME.

What am I talking about?

That was the cost, in lives, of the oil deal with Libya.

Is anybody counting the bodies in those other places?

Byline: Oil deal between UK PLC
(otherwise known as 'BP and its democratic partners')
and Libya

I know that the world is fighting a war on terror, but terrorists are pawns
just like everybody else.
I think that Britain signed over Megrahi to get an

oil&gas deal with Libya.
Rather cheaply, too.

Reminds me of the beads the Indians got for Manhattan Island.

Anyway, let's look at the other collateral 'costs'.

270 lives.

The people killed on Pan Am 103.

Not bad for an oil deal. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan.

They've cost the UK 400 soldiers and millions of quid, not to mention

the innocent civilians they've killed and maimed [but who's counting them anyway].

So, you pissed of the Yanks!

Well, when are John Bolton, the CIA and the FBI NOT pissed off.

Who cares? All that counts is
you Brits beat 'em to the oil this time!

Cheeky monkeys!

And remember,

the crude shall always flow, until it's all finished,

my friends.

-Costick67 (8^P

queennie to the rescue

Byline: the first woman to lead an army since

Boadicea or Joan of Arc.

[pic: anyone for martyrhood?]

Hey, warmongers!

Just when you thought that Britain just couldn't take watching any more

soldiers coming home in body bags,

along comes a queen to bribe spouses with a hunk of precious metal

in the form of a cross (they ain't POPSICLE STICKS)

with her name on it.

no, not him/her. Queen Elizabeth Windsor, numbskull.

Isn't that just what we need. More women surrendering their beloved house-husband layabouts.
More martyrs for the cause.

oil, that is.

See the Queen? Look at the pawn. That's you if you support the war,

or are unlucky enough to need a job in the army.

Sure, it's a career! riiiiight!
At least the government is saving on a lot of nasty, expensive pensions. You gotta get to 65 to collect.
I'm not betting on any soldiers reaching that milestone.

UPDATE ! [this story came up 5 days later. I swear, I feel like a prophet!]
The Queen of England has started to take her job as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces seriously. From Aol.com:

Queen 'furious' at troop shortages
The Queen has reportedly raised her concerns with Prime Minister Gordon Brown over equipment shortages in Afghanistan, a historian has claimed.

Andrew Roberts told Tatler that the monarch, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales were all worried about alleged sub-standard resources for troops serving in the war-torn country.

Mr Roberts, who once chronicled the modern monarchy in his book The House of Windsor, wrote: "I've now heard the same thing from a minor member of the Royal family, a serving general and a recent ex-Cabinet minister, so I'm certain it's true and worth passing on."

He continued: "The Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles are all furious with Gordon Brown over sub-standard equipment in Helmand, principally the under-armoured armoured cars and the lack of helicopters, and have been making their views known to him in no uncertain terms."

---the end

And I thought she was just satisfied giving out Elizabeth Crosses. Maybe she's also trying to embarrass the government by highlighting all those deaths.

Watch out for the royalist coup, folks! Prince Harry is boning up on strategy, over in Afghanistan (in other words, his fellow soldiers are being paid to protect him). Prince Chuckles is sounding out MI5 (the ones who recorded him whispering sweet nothings to his bird over the phone). You can't control the country without the spies on your side.

Costick67 (8^P
pics from fotosearch.com