Friday 24 September 2010

Socialists say "Fuck the State"

I'm a socialist but i hate the state.

Isn't a state education dreadful?


[WHAT OTHER FUCKING EDUCATION CAN YOU GET?]

Monday 20 September 2010

A good thing

More than 600,000 plant species have been deleted from the dictionary of life after the most comprehensive assessment carried out by scientists.

For centuries, botanists from different parts of the world have been collecting and naming "new" plants without realising that many were in fact the same. The humble tomato boasts 790 different names, for example, while there are 600 different monikers for the oak tree and its varieties.

The result was a list of more than 1 million flowering plant species. Although experts have long known that it included many duplicates, no one was sure how many. Later this year, the study team, led by UK and US scientists, will announce that the real number of flowering plant species around the world is closer to 400,000.

The project - which has taken nearly three years - was the number one request made by the 193 government members of the Convention on Biological Diversity at their meeting in 2002. There were concerns that without this work, it would be impossible to work out how many plants were under threat and how successful conservationists were in saving them.

The information will also be vital for any organisation or researcher looking at "economically important" plants, such as those for food and nutrition or medicine, said Alan Paton, assistant keeper of the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, west London, one of the four leading partners in the project.

"On average, one plant might have between two and three names, which doesn't sound a great deal, but if you're trying to find information on a plant, you might not find all [of it] because you're only looking at one name," Paton said. "That's even more critical for economically useful plants: because they are more used, they tend to have more names."

In one example, researchers calculated that for the six most-used species of Plectranthus, a relative of the basil plant, a researcher would miss 80% of information available if they looked under only the most commonly used name. On another database, they found only 150 of 500 nutritionally important plant species using the names cited in current literature.

"By going for one name, we missed the majority of information mankind knows about that plant, which isn't too clever," said Paton. "What's really a breakthrough is we have a place which allows people to search through all the names used."

Kew Gardens joined up nearly three years ago with Missouri Botanical Garden in the US, and experts on two of the biggest and most valuable plant families: legumes, or peas and beans, and Compositae, which include asters, daisies and sunflowers.

They have since attempted to search existing plant lists and work out an "accepted" name for each species, and then list all known variations. One of the databases was originally set up using £250 left in the will of Charles Darwin. The full results will not be published until the end of the year, but so far the researchers have found 301,000 accepted species, 480,000 alternative names, and have 240,000 left to assess.

Although work will continue to assess smaller plant groups in more detail and check for missed duplications, Paton said they now believe that the true number of plant species will turn out to be "400,000 or just over".

"You can't give an absolute number of names, but we have narrowed the possibility," he said. Previous estimates, without the help of a full assessment, put the figure at between 250,000-400,000.

Most of the work of the study group was sifting and sorting different names allocated to one species, often because scientists were simply not aware of the work of rivals and colleagues who had previously "described" the plant in a scientific journal, or because of confusion caused by superficial differences such as different sized leaves in different climates. In some cases, plants thought to be the same have also been judged to be different species because of differences which have been revealed by later scientific discoveries, such as DNA.

As well as the likely 400,000-odd flowering plants, there are thought to be 15,000 species of ferns and their allies, 1,000 gymnosperms such as poplars and conifers, and 23,000 mosses and allies making up the plant kingdom. For comparison there are more than 1 million species of insects listed by science, 28,000 living species of fish, 10,000 birds and 5,400 mammals.

A meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in October in Japan is likely to declare that targets to halt biodiversity loss by this year failed and set tougher new aims to halt the problem.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/19/scientists-prune-world-plant-list

Sunday 19 September 2010

Antisemitism on the Left - David Hirsh & Jane Ashworth

This article appears in the current issue of Progress Magazine

By denying the right of Israel to exist, anti-Zionists on the British left are in danger of pandering to anti-semitism, believe Jane Ashworth and David Hirsh

When British Jews gather to worship, sing songs or educate their children, they have to be guarded by armed police and community security people. Cars are discreetly placed across entrances to impede suicide bombers. Attacks on Jews and synagogues and Jewish cemeteries are still at a much lower level in the UK than other racist attacks, but they are growing year-by-year, and anti-semitic attacks peak at times when the Middle East is in the news.

Anti-semitic worldviews and narratives have also been making a comeback within and around the labour movement. There have been a number of angry controversies about the legitimacy of Israel, about the use of particular kinds of metaphors and images and about the role of Jews in relation to global imperialism and the Bush regime. Jews have been held responsible for taking the world into unjust wars – in which they themselves are unwilling to fight – and for forcing the great powers to alienate Muslims by supporting Israel. The integrity of Labour activists and progressive journalists has been called into question. Either the ‘Zionists’ – that is the epithet thrust onto people who think that Israel has the right to exist – are guilty of conspiracy, racism, imperialism, genocide and taking over other people’s countries, or there is a problem of anti-semitism on the left.

“Anti-Zionism creates a movement and a worldview that singles out Jews as being a central force for evil and imperialism in the world”

Some recent incidents, like the nighttime stripping of the Trade Union Friends of Israel stall at TUC Conference, are fairly trivial and may only be evidence of isolated cases of hysteria. Some, like the Labour general election campaign pigs and Fagin posters, are open to other than anti-semitic interpretations. But Ken Livingstone’s warm embrace, on behalf of London, of Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an openly anti-semitic cleric, shows a disregard for the importance of anti-semitism. The campaign for a boycott of Israeli artists, teachers, musicians, writers and researchers, which had some short-lived success in the Association of University Teachers, similarly refused to recognise the significance of singling out only Jews and the Jewish state for special punishment.

During the David Irving defamation trial in 2000, in which he denied there were Nazi gas chambers and claimed that the Holocaust had been invented by Jews and Zionists, there was a widespread mood of ambivalence, disquiet and cynicism. Holocaust denial has re-emerged recently with a call on the government to recognise the conflict between Israel and Palestine as being similar to the industrialised rounding-up and killing of millions of Jews, gays, Roma, Poles and Russians by the Nazis.

Each example of anti-semitism should sound alarms, but add them together and a serious structural problem begins to emerge. There is a problem of anti-semitism in British society and parts of the left peddle a particular version.

These days, nearly all anti-semitism is expressed in the language of anti-Zionism. Now, skinheads in Berlin affect a concern for Palestinian rights; Tory grandees and Republican isolationists worry that the existence of Israel is pulling the world into new global wars; open racists like David Irving and David Duke parrot George Galloway’s arguments for opposing the war in Iraq; Hizb'ut Tahrir and other fundamentalist groups make openly anti-semitic propaganda. It seems that everyone is now an ‘anti-Zionist’.

It is in this context that genuine friends of Israeli-Palestinian peace and those of us who want to support the Palestinian struggle for statehood operate. We, therefore, have a particular responsibility to be clear in our own minds where the boundaries lie between legitimate criticism of some of Israel’s oppressive actions and the demonisation of Israel, ‘Zionists’ and Jews. We have a responsibility to educate ourselves in the history of anti-semitism, in the way that anti-semitism operates now and has operated in the past and, especially, in the way that it has infected parts of our own left tradition.

It is sobering, therefore, that many people in the Palestine Solidarity Movement take the opposite view. Many deny that anti-semitism is a problem nowadays, particularly in relation to ‘real’ racism. Jews are not ‘oppressed’ and Jews do not suffer from social exclusion or particular poverty, they say. Anti-Zionists may sometimes get a little over-enthusiastic, they admit, but this is caused by Israel, by those who try to silence all criticism of Israel as anti-semitic. Besides, it is not real racism; it will disappear when the Jewish state is destroyed and there is justice for Palestinians.

The anti-Zionism that worries us is not the same as criticism of Israel. Israel is occupying and settling Palestinian land. In order to sustain this occupation, it uses racist violence and humiliation against the people that live in the West Bank. The occupation and some of Israel’s actions should be, and are, criticised by a large number of Israelis, Jews, and people around the world who are bothered by injustice. It is not those who protest against the injustice of the wall and the checkpoints, which control every stretch of road in the West Bank, who we worry about. It is not the just Palestinian aspiration to independence and statehood that worries us.

The anti-Zionism that worries us does not object to the policies of Israeli governments in the way that we might object to our own government’s policies. Rather, it understands those policies to be the necessary outcome of the existence of Israel. No other Israeli policy is conceivable to the anti-Zionists. So they do not criticise what Israel does. Rather, they criticise Israel’s very existence.

We are worried by the anti-Zionism that asks Israeli Jews – who are nearly all descended from victims of anti-semitism in Europe, in the Middle East and in Russia – to give up any aspiration to the possibility of self-defense by becoming the first nation in the world to voluntarily disband. If they refuse to do so, then the anti-Zionists would support the military conquering of Israel and its destruction as a nation state. Israel, and Israel alone for the anti-Zionists, must be incorporated by force into some larger political form.

We also worry when people are so much more enthusiastic in their anti-Zionism than they are in their criticism of regimes and movements that carry out much greater human rights abuses than Israel. Why do they seem unable to muster similar enthusiasm for criticism of China’s occupation of Tibet, for criticism of Saudi Arabia’s gender apartheid or for criticism of ethnic cleansing in Darfur? The list of more serious human rights abusers than Israel is long.

Left anti-Zionism inflates Israel into a symbol for all that is wrong with a world dominated by US imperialism. The details of the Roadmap or other actual, real-life political developments are rendered insignificant because the conflict is understood only though this symbolism. It is Manichaeism: the world is a great struggle between heroes and villains, only to be resolved by a great revelation and final undoing.

Conversely, the Palestinians have come to symbolise all victims, and their struggle has become the defining struggle against imperialism. Symbolic Zionists and victims replace real Jews and Palestinians in the left anti-Zionists’ imagination.

Some on the left seem to think that the only role that Muslims are able to play in this global showdown is to transform themselves into human bombs. They imagine glorious and tragic deaths as the only option left open to Muslims. The anti-Zionist imagination is filled with hopes for a symbolic victory over imperialism rather than with the actual struggle for a real Palestinian state alongside Israel. But painting Israel as an inhuman demon damages this real-world aspiration.

Terrorism may express anger and desperation but it, as the Palestinian leadership often points out, is not in the Palestinian national interest. The heroes of Palestine are not those who encourage teenagers to end their lives with a dramatic act of hatred and revenge. The real heroes are those Palestinians who find ways to educate the young, to look after the sick, the hungry and the desperate, to make links with anti-racist Israelis, and to invigorate the peace process. Real Palestinian heroes also engage in the political fight against those who want to build a new Palestine that is free of Jews, where women are barred from public life, where homosexuality is punished by death and where the rulers will be men of power who claim the right to speak on behalf of God.

We worry about the anti-Zionists that declare Jewish nationalism and only Jewish nationalism to be essentially racist. The reality is that Jewish nationalism, like all nationalism, contains an inter-woven tapestry of different threads and traditions. Some of these are right wing, some are ultra-nationalist, and many more are routine mixes of romance, desperation and abstract notions of nationhood mixed with a nod in the direction of a better tomorrow. Historically, many Israeli nationalists, thought of themselves as socialists. They wanted to build a new kind of state where Jews would work for themselves and would neither exploit nor be exploited.

Anti-Zionists, however, use a simple shorthand: Zionism equals racism. The effect of this is to encourage and to license people to treat those Jews who think that Israel has the right to exist as though they were racists. And the vast majority of Jews do support the right of Israel to exist. Many think of Israel as protection from a future genocidal threat. In this way, anti-Zionism sets itself up for a fight with Jews.

Anti-Zionism is not motivated by anti-semitism. It is motivated by concern for the oppressed. But it nevertheless creates a movement and a worldview that singles out Jews as being a central force for evil and imperialism in the world. Naturally, such movements are beginning to spawn people who are indeed motivated by anti-semitism. And this is where anti-Zionism begins to borrow from older forms of anti-semitism. It insists that Israel’s privileged role as the partner of American imperialism is protected by Jewish influence amongst the neo-conservatives and in American public life more generally. This easily sounds like, and becomes like, the Jewish conspiracy that was the myth at the heart of the ‘protocols’. It still sounds like it, and becomes like it, even if the word ‘Jew’ is replaced by the word ‘Zionist’.

Israel did not come into existence because of the utopian nationalist longings of early Zionists like Herzl. It came into existence because Europe tried to sweep itself clean of Jews. European fascism and anti-semitism transformed Israel from an idea into a reality. It is particularly unpleasant, then, when some anti-Zionists argue that Israel is a colony of European settlers representing European ideals of ‘progress’ and racism.

We learnt these lessons as children (when we read the Silver Sword), as teenagers (when we watched Cabaret and read Isherwood) and as grown-ups (when we read Jewish writers of fiction and twentieth century histories). It would be reasonable to expect products of such a liberal education to have a self-awareness that sets off alarm bells when anti-Zionism functions as a racist conduit. We might have expected political people to notice the racism of the movement around them. That this self-awareness or safety mechanism does not cut-in is testament to the power and pervasiveness of the anti-Zionist story.

Engage, an organisation dedicated to combating anti-semitism on the left, co-ordinated the campaign against the boycott in the AUT. Engage realised that a boycott is more likely to promote anti-semitism in the UK than it is to help Palestine. Engage was particularly disturbed by the boycotters’ analogy with apartheid South Africa. Like the analogy with Nazism, it is not intended to illuminate the problem of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but rather to demonize Israel. The boycotters’ argument was simple and effective. That Israel is an apartheid state is ‘demonstrated’ by an emotional speech giving a few nasty examples of Israeli institutional racism. We know what to do with an apartheid state: we boycott it. Discussion finished. It relies on the certainty of our hatred of apartheid and it links this with a half-accurate nostalgia of a victorious campaign.

In South Africa, the fight against apartheid was the fight to remove the white monopoly of political control and to create a new democracy – in effect to make a new type of country with a new political class. In Israel, the task is to force a negotiated withdrawal to the 1967 borders and to create a Palestinian state. The analogy relies on ignorance.

Writing for Engage, John Strawson explained the difference: ‘The whole argument about South Africa in the apartheid years was that it was quite exceptional. The racial classification board declared your race at birth, which would decide where you would live, what school you would attend, what job you could have, what wages you would earn, whether you could vote and what papers you carried. This does not happen in Israel, where Palestinians do have the vote and do participate in elections in all parties. Higher education is quite integrated. There are discriminatory laws, there is social discrimination and there is equivocation for equal rights on the designation of the state as ‘Jewish’. However, this is not apartheid South Africa where any organization opposed to the regime was banned and criminalized.’

The pro–boycotters have declared their intention to mobilise again in the universities. Some boycotters will be Jewish, some will certainly not be anti-semitic, but they will rely upon anti-semitic justifications. They will find amongst their friends and allies people who hate Israel more than they love Palestine. And they will find amongst their opponents anti-racists who will not tolerate their threat to create an anti-semitic current within the British labour movement.

Jane Asworth and Dr David Hirsh
SOURCE
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Excellent article. A great summary of the position, I think.

Thursday 16 September 2010

Welsh National Socialist Flag












It kinda goes. I wanted to see what a Nazified Welsh flag would look like. I've never seen it before - thank god! haha. (Thanks Grandpa - an anti-aircraft gunner in the Battle of Britain) It's strange to look at. The red flags in Wales were surely of socialism not of Nazism, though it's a very conservative sort of socialist revolution the Welsh folk must of had. They're internationalist, maybe - but not if it includes the saes. I mean England. Whoopsie.

The Protocols of the LaSt NaMe LeFt

Wednesday 15 September 2010

Early Prince - Live

Amazed to find this on YouTube, Prince usually removes the least thing of his from the net. Twat.

I think he's rubbish now, and has been since Sign O The Times. But the early stuff is still very good, especially live. Prince really is an amazing live performer: I went to see him in London, August 1986 - his first shows in UK for 10 years or so. It blew me away, he was simply amazing. And tiny, of course.

Here's Controversy from 1981, Houston. He's already pretty much the finished article, though his dancing improved from this point, hehe. I love his ease with his guitar (spot his volume adjustments?) and these early shows have a raw quality totally lost in his later work. Guitar always dominates his live shows, and that's been lost on the records over the years too.



Next up, Dirty Mind from 1983: the dancing is better ;) and he's pretty much the finished article here. The microphone juggling stuff is in now. I think this video, though fairly poor quality gives a pretty good sense of how he can rock a joint. It's amazing to be in a place rocking like that - it's 2 hours of genuine magic.



Computer Blue, 1st Avenue, 1983 (!) Shame about the quality again, but it's good and raw. Interesting that the main solo is clearly still unfinished in this version, few notes missing. Important ones too. Shame the vid misses afew seconds of the solo near the end too.



AUTOMATIC from 83, again. No guitar, but it's still edgey and somehow quite subversive. I don't know how, but it seems it. What a performer..... Nearly 30 years ago. Christ, I'm getting old. Prince is 50 now? Shit........



I only got into Prince because I had bought my first LP but hadn't liked it and I'd taken it back to exchange for Purple Rain. (That's something you can't do now!) Here's a great track from the then new album I;d taken back, because I didn't like it! I can't believe I didn't like it. Still, Purple Rain really got me into Prince so I really can't complain. Win some, lose some.



Actually, I imagine that's when I first ever heard of MLK - I loved that single, Pride. Crikey. 25 years ago? Shit......

It must be 15 years since I went to one of Prince's famed after-gig shows in London somewhere in some tiny little plafce setup for a gig. I was about 10-20 feet away from him, hobknobbing with the stars apparently (I didn't know nor care). It was getting light by the time we left. I felt very lucky.

Bob Marley family loses copyright fight

An attempt by the family of singer Bob Marley to obtain the copyrights to some of his best-known recordings has been thwarted by a judge in New York.

Judge Denise Cote ruled Universal Music Group (UMG) owned the copyright to five albums the late star recorded between 1973 and 1977 for Island Records.

Marley's widow and children had sought millions in damages for UMG's alleged attempts to "exploit" his recordings.

Bob Marley died of cancer in 1981 at the age of 36.

The albums in question - Catch a Fire, Burnin', Natty Dread, Rastaman Vibrations and Exodus - were recorded by Marley with his band The Wailers.

They include some of his best-known songs, including I Shot the Sheriff, One Love and No Woman, No Cry.

Marley's family had accused UMG of intentionally withholding royalties from their Fifty-Six Hope Road Music company.

They also claimed UMG had failed to consult with them on key licensing decisions, among them the use of Marley's music on ringtones.

On Friday, however, Judge Cote ruled that Marley's recordings were "works made for hire" as defined under US copyright law.

This, she said, entitled UMG to be designated the owner of those recordings as the parent company of Island Records.

Robert Nesta Marley was born in Jamaica in 1945 and died in the US in 1981.

His greatest hits compilation, Legend, is the biggest-selling reggae album of all time.

BBC
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I don't suppose he would have been surprised. Ya nah razz wid me mon, ya man claat!

Tuesday 14 September 2010

More on ICNC, AEI, Al Giordano

A good resource for investigations and discussion of the ICNC, AEI, etc (Institute for Non Violence, and issues over its relationship with neo-imperialism)

http://michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com/icnc/

It has a whole list of related articles moving the arguments along someway since Socrates wrote his piece on Al Giordano and his connections with the ICNC, AEI.

Indeed, the list includes Socrates' article -

"Annon, Fake Peace Activism Tied to the Military and CIA, Dave From Queens, November 17, 2009. (Include long and enlightening debate with Al Giordano.)"
------------

Nice to see someone noticed it.

Sunday 12 September 2010

Bradblog lies again, censors criticism of anti-semitism and manipulates its audience

Bradblog are at it again.

When Brad Friedman and others working for Bradblog are unable to respond to arguments they simply traduce the commentator, resort to personal insult, manufacture lies and finally censor any right of reply. This happens even as they make such a deal about how the MainStreamMedia operates in such a fashion. Bradblog likes to pretend it has much higher standards, but it doesn't. It has far lower standards.

I'll post what was deleted from the thread over at Bradblog later. Essentially Brad Friedman denied ever deleting criticism of anti-semitism but when the evidence was presented, he deleted it and prevented my posting any further responses. Brad and Canning proceeded to traduce my character and completely misrepresented my position, whilst taking measures to prevent my having a right to reply. Hypocrites / liars / manipulators.

The evidence I'd posted against Bradblog follows - it's only a partial illustration of behaviour at Bradblog, but make no mistake - such behaviour is characteristic of BradBlog, whatever they might say by way of denial. Why else would they delete the evidence instead of simply mocking it viciously as they usually do to any criticism?
Let the reader decide? Sure.....

The charge against BradBlog is that it iundulges anti-semitism, even using a moderator whom promotes sources and content from Hitler, Charles Lindbergh, Ford's "International Jew", William Pierce, Willis Carto etc. Bradblog has repeatedly censored such claims - even censoring the evidence when it was given at their request. Shameful.

The evidence which Bradblog asked for but deleted follows. The content essentially comprises illustrations of what Bradblog censors, and what it indulges (extreme anti-semitism):

http://the-last-blog-left.blogspot.com/2009/09/just-posted-this-at-bradblog-will-they.html


http://the-last-blog-left.blogspot.com/2009/08/bradblog-hypocrisy.html


http://the-last-blog-left.blogspot.com/2009/08/insight-bradblog-censorship.html

If one follows the links given in those posts, one can clearly see that Bradblog has been censoring criticism of anti-semitism, even as they deny it. On the other hand, Bradblog indulges anti-semitism, giving those whom hold some despicable views "free-rein".

The following provides further evidence against Bradblog: charges of hypocrisy over "demonisation" and "dehumanisation" which Bradblog makes a deal about exposing, but which they indulge, protect through censorship, and transmit (through their comments section and associated venues). The following evidence refers to interactions with Big Dan's Big Blog which is/was frequented by a coterie of posters at Bradblog, including Brad's moderator "Agent99". What is Brad doing associating with such people? How come these people find BradBlog so sympathetic to their views? How come Bradblog employs a moderator (!) whom hangs with such people and whom hold such repulsive (anti-semitic/fascist) views. People pushing anti-semitism are embraced whilst those criticising it are censored, traduced and banned. Some standard, huh?


http://the-last-blog-left.blogspot.com/2009/08/deleted-at-big-dans-big-blog.html


http://the-last-blog-left.blogspot.com/2009/08/banned-from-big-dans-big-blog.html

http://the-last-blog-left.blogspot.com/2009/08/big-dans-big-blog.html

http://the-last-blog-left.blogspot.com/2009/10/this-is-what-big-dans-big-blog-deletes.html

More here.

I'll post the deletions from the latest episode of censorship later. Just for the record, like....

Friday 10 September 2010

According to Madman Larry Simons

According to Larry the Conspiracy Twit,
“If collapsing by fire alone NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE [which it has NOT], how would anyone know what the characteristics are of a building that "was going to collapse?"
The building below has never collapsed before (it's never even been built):

Larry claims that as it has never happened before (as it has never been built) it would be impossible for anyone to suspect this building might collapse. Imagine the building supports caught fire, and caused damage similar to below. According to LArry, it is impossible for anyone to suspect the building might collapse, because "it has never happened before!"


So, no matter how obvious it is this building would collapse in its present state, Larry insists it would be impossible to even suspect it might collapse, because 'it has never happened before'.

Ridiculous.

And according to Larry The Madman this is a picture of smoke *not* coming from WTC7!


How is that smoke *not* coming from WTC7? Even better, Larry posts this picture:


How on earth can anyone claim that smoke isn't coming from WTC7? But Larry does claim exactly that.

All one need do is watch this video: where's the smoke coming from?


According to Larry, that smoke is not coming from WTC7! Larry says it is coming from WTC6....downwind!!! How does smoke move upwind towards WTC7 and then proceed downwind? Ridiculous.

Wednesday 8 September 2010

Sharansky's 3D Test for Anti-Semitism

Recognizing the "New Anti-Semitism"

Moreover, the so-called "new anti-Semitism" poses a unique challenge. Whereas classical anti-Semitism is aimed at the Jewish people or the Jewish religion, "new anti-Semitism" is aimed at the Jewish state. Since this anti-Semitism can hide behind the veneer of legitimate criticism of Israel, it is more difficult to expose. Making the task even harder is that this hatred is advanced in the name of values most of us would consider unimpeachable, such as human rights.

Nevertheless, we must be clear and outspoken in exposing the new anti-Semitism. I believe that we can apply a simple test - I call it the "3D" test - to help us distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism.

The first "D" is the test of demonization. When the Jewish state is being demonized; when Israel's actions are blown out of all sensible proportion; when comparisons are made between Israelis and Nazis and between Palestinian refugee camps and Auschwitz - this is anti- Semitism, not legitimate criticism of Israel.

The second "D" is the test of double standards. When criticism of Israel is applied selectively; when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while the behavior of known and major abusers, such as China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria, is ignored; when Israel's Magen David Adom, alone among the world's ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross - this is anti-Semitism.

The third "D" is the test of delegitimization: when Israel's fundamental right to exist is denied - alone among all peoples in the world - this too is anti-Semitism.
SOURCE

Rivero claims proxy-registrars are for "cointel" (!!!!!)

Nevermind that sooooo many of the links Rivero provides go to domains registered with Go-Daddy's proxy-registrar? HAHA. Rivero was even sponsored by one - ProgressiveIndependent.com


I found this one elsewhere too:


Interesting, no?

Friday 3 September 2010

How to play like Keef



Great riff. Nice to see how it is played. I am trying on accoustic, but it's very hard to give it the zing Keef does. What a riff - one of my absolute favourites.

Deconstructing songs as required to learn to play them can really demystify music: I used to have real concerns about it when I first started playing guitar. "Is that all it is?", I'd be thinking.

I'd love to get this riff down pat though. I can do a fair pass at Wish You Were Here, Marley's Redemption Song, Karma Police.....

I'm trying to learn this on guitar atm - sounds very nice, though I'd prefer it on pianoooo: