Rolling Stone 53


Genuinely sad to be leaving Florianapolis. Wonderful place and lovely people. I haven’t liked a new place so much in a long time. I found my ideas very well received indeed. That seems increasingly to be the case in places as diverse as Brazil, Germany, South Africa and India. There genuinely seems a renewed interest in radicalism among young people. Wars of resource grab, state transfers of money to the bankers and the general lack of genuine democratic choice or deep media inquiry are bound to produce this kind of reaction. Otherwise the human spirit is dead.

It isn’t.

Signed hundreds of books. The publisher sold all the new copies brought down to Florianapolis, despite the fact that most of the copies I signed were brought along by the owners, already bought and evidently much read. It seems they get handed around, which is great. At book signings everyone wants a photo, which actually I find rather nice. It is always good to have an excuse to put a photo of a pretty girl on the blog to cheer everyone up!!

Off to Sao Paolo next, then home which I am really looking forward to. It is lovely here but I miss my family. One great advantage of being here is that I don’t have to see the war criminal Blair and his smarmy self-justification at the Leveson Inquiry.

I don’t think that there is a video record of my main speech in Florianapolis, but I will check.


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53 thoughts on “Rolling Stone

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  • Clark

    Angrysoba, from the Computing.co.uk article:

    The malware appears to have first been uncovered by Iran’s Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CertCC), which refers to it as Flamer. It claims to have conducted research into the malware for a number of months, and to have delivered the code to selected organisations and security software companies in early May.
    .
    The program is up to 20MB in size and researchers are still unsure about the full scope of its capabilities. Kaspersky claimed that the programme could have been released as long as five years ago and had infected machines in Iran, Israel, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – even getting as far afield as Hungary.

    Nevermind, I wrote “any machine”; I should have written “any Windows system”. Data entering or exiting the TOR network via any TOR routers hosted on infected Windows systems would be vulnerable. Anonymity of data within the TOR network should be unaffected.

  • Komodo

    @ Angrysoba…we can agree on Toynbee at any rate.
    What I am now looking for is a complex little group of companies in a tax-opaque country. It is not enough for Blair to claim his profits are expenses, he has to disappear them completely, while remaining a squeaky clean UK tax resident as a prerequisite for his anticipated peerage for services to himself… While Windrush #3 LLP and its clone Firerush #3 LLP constitute the exit portal, there is as yet, and intentionally, no hint as to its final destination. (legal disclaimer: in my opinion)
    So…might Blair’s consultancy for Zurich Financial Services (memories, here: http://www.ifaonline.co.uk/ifaonline/news/1345697/blair-joins-zurich )
    and his consequent access to the well-known gnomes, have a bearing on the problem?

  • Guest

    You got to watch all of this video, you just got to
    .
    “I thought id post this video diary i made when i was forced to do mandatory work related activity by Working Links, the company now being accused of systematic fraud along with A4E. The real issue for me was that despite being told i would receive appropriate work wear (which is a legal requirement) i got none, i had to work alone which is also a very bad working practice in these sorts of conditions”
    .
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rz23HiXf-l4#!

  • Mary

    Guest – . Sorry for the treatment you are receiving. I did not vote for them btw not that this helps you. This just came in showing how people who do not belong to the Bully Boys’ set are being ostracized.

    …..
    Last week, I got a call from my manager at work asking if I’d be happy to be interviewed by Newsnight about working as a young single parent.

    Of course I’d be happy to do that, being a working mum is something I’m proud of but I didn’t expect to be personally scrutinised.
    .
    So I was devastated to see the interview that went to air on BBC2 on Wednesday that had been edited to make it look like I was an unemployed scrounger, questioned why I didn’t live with my parents and made no mention of my job with Tower Hamlets Council.
    .
    I’ve worked since I was 16 and I only get help towards my rent because it is so high. The way that the programme has portrayed me is totally unfair so I’ve started a campaign on Change.org asking Newsnight to tell me why they felt it was OK to humiliate me in this way and publicly apologise for it.
    .
    Please click here to watch the interview and add your support.
    .
    In the full interview, the reporter even asked me if I thought it was right to have had my daughter. I couldn’t believe the question. I am proud of being a working mum. I do my very best, and these questions were really offensive.
    .
    Please join me in calling for a public apology from Newsnight and ensuring that others aren’t inaccurately represented.

    Thanks,
    .
    Shanene Thorpe
    .
    http://www.change.org/petitions/bbcnewsnight-i-deserve-an-apology

  • Que

    What really happened at Houla, Syria?

    Mary, I agree, the Libyan template is being used where the news is slanted so that the incumbent (Syrian) government appears malign, but it is all the work of the spooks/western governments & a complicit mainstream media.

    Even the BBC has admitted using a fake photograph in it’s Syrian news story…..

  • Komodo

    Here’s Mandelson @ the Kazakh-British Chamber of Commerce bash in 2010.
    “Lady” Barbara Judge (dual-nationality Yank, sometime executive director UKAEA, ditto News International, now private equity aka making money out of thin air and dead pension funds…etc) was also present. There are other familiar faces on this site, but the photos are not documented.
    .
    http://kbcc.org.uk/en/wp-content/uploads/KBCC_6013.JPG

  • Mary

    That unlovely pair of freeloaders will go anywhere for a free meal. I expect they will be appearing somewhere in this coming weekend’s jamboree. A silly old man was in front of me in the supermarket queue buying TEN Union Jack baseball caps. What is the matter with people? Does this royal flummery and obscene display of excess make them feel safe and secure?

  • Anon

    Not content with broadcasting images from Iraq, which the BBC claimed to be of Syrian atrocities, the BBC has now jumped completely into Science Fiction LaLa Land.
    .
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/29/united_nations_space_command_bbc_mixup/
    .
    BBC report urges Halo troops to end bloodshed in Syria
    .
    United Nations Space Command criticised for al-Assad soft touch
    .
    By Anna Leach • Get more from this author

    Vid The BBC has apologised after criticising a fictional space empire from the 22nd century for not intervening against ongoing atrocities in Syria.

    In a News at One telly segment reporting Amnesty International’s disapproval of the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) lack of action in the blood-soaked nation, the Beeb mistakenly broadcast a United Nations Space Command (UNSC) emblem from the smash-hit computer game series Halo. The real security council uses the UN’s famous blue globe design.

    The incorrect insignia could be seen behind anchorwoman Sophie Raworth as she introduced a piece about the Bashar al-Assad-led regime. A clip of the gaffe has appeared on YouTube.

  • Rose

    What has depressed me this week was listening to a couple of very nice (i.e.charming,capable,interested and good at their jobs) private school teachers frothing at the mouth at the prospect of meeting somebody they call Kate when she visits School later this year; the really sad thing was that they are in their thirties, possibly early forties.

    It’s as if people like me – the old fifties, working class Grammar school brigade who worked and believed in the comprehensive model, never existed.

    I take a little comfort in the fact that members of my own family will be dodging Madge on her scooter in Benidorm next week.

  • Komodo

    The blank and expressionless eyes on the Tesco masks aren’t a patch on the real thing, Mary.
    I was looking at Alexander Mashkevitch (allegedly owns 1/4 of Kazakhstan, great chum of Nazarbayev) and not laughing at all. Looks like Groucho Marx…similar antecedents… but unfunny.

  • Mary

    True Komodo
    http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=252262
    and amoral with an excess of testosterone too
    {http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3966384,00.html}
    .
    A DSK copycat. No wonder DSK wanted the IMF job. ‘Let them eat cake’ Lagarde apparently pays no income tax on her near £400,000 salary from the IMF because she has diplomatic status.
    {http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/anger-over-lagardes-taxfree-salary-7801028.html}
    .
    Q Does that mean that all diplomats pay no tax?

  • Mary

    It always surprises me that there are enough reserves of minerals, gas and oil for these oligarchs from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Russsia, Uzbekistan, etc etc to get their hands on.
    .
    ‘Mashkevich started out an academic career but became a businessman during perestroika. Mashkevich, Patokh Chodiev, and Alijan Ibragimov form “the Trio,” a group of Kazakh businessmen who became billionaires.[1] The Trio gained control of the recently privatized chromium, alumina, and gas operations in Kazakhstan (some of the largest ones in the world).[2][3]
    .
    With his partners Chodiev and Ibragimov, Mashkevich helped to develop these assets, and is a major shareholder in Eurasian National Resources Corporation (ENRC), now one of the world’s leading natural resources groups. ENRC, based in London, operates a number of metals assets in Kazakhstan and Africa, having acquired numerous mining operations in Eastern Europe and Africa. In 2009, ENRC generated a $1,462 million profit on sales of $3.8 billion.
    .
    ENRC was floated on the London Stock Exchange in December 2007, with a market capitalisation on Admission of approximately £6.8 billion.
    .
    [..]
    Mashkevich is one of the owners of Alferon Management. Based in London, Alferon Management has acquired mining operations in different places: Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Kosovo, Russia, and other countries. As of 2010 he is on the Forbes list of billionaires at #287.
    .
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Mashkevitch
    .
    {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alferon_Management}

  • Mary

    Guest I did not know of that couple but am aware of the hundreds of thousands of desperate people living on or below the breadline. The damnable BBC trotted out increasing child poverty statistics yesterday whilst at the same time they are promoting a war in Syria and putting out this hideous Jubilee/Olympic Torch/Olympic Games propaganda. Half a million people are relying on food banks now. That was according to Frank Field in a recent PMQ session. CaMoron could only make this facile and Orwellian reply which of course was no answer.

    .
    Frank Field (Birkenhead, Labour)

    Some of our constituents would be hungry today if it were not for the work of Foodbank and similar organisations in our constituencies. If current trends continue, Foodbank reckons that by the next election it will be feeding half a million of our constituents. Might I therefore ask the Prime Minister, before he completes his engagements today, to plan what the Government might do to counter that terrible trend and report back to the House?
    .
    David Cameron (Prime Minister; Witney, Conservative)

    First, let me join the right hon. Gentleman in welcoming the work that Foodbank does. I have visited one of its sites myself to see what it does. What is absolutely vital in these difficult economic times is that we do what we can to protect the poorest people in our country. That is why we have frozen the council tax, increased the basic state pension and uprated benefits in line with inflation, which has protected the people who need protection the most. Yes, we have had to cut tax credits for those people on £30,000, £40,000 or £50,000, but we have actually increased the tax credits that the poorest people receive.

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