General Debate 19 August 2012

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Luke Mutton

Free Pussy Riot.

It is not Pussy Riot who are guilty of hooliganism, it is religion.

The women of Femen have the right idea as they support their Soul Sisters.

http://youtu.be/hG6-6HD7_HA
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August 19, 2012 8:13am
Akaroa

If you read nothing else today read ‘Axeman’ posting at 1.04 this morning on the track record of the Labour party in Government.

Excellent stuff!!

(That’s my ten cents-worth! Back to bed!!)
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August 19, 2012 8:15am
Andrei

LOL – Luke Mutton

Shows how dumb these protesters are – to demonstrate solidarity with women who desecrated a Russian Orthodox cathedral in Russia they chop down a Latin cross erected in Ukraine to commemorate Ukrainian victims of
Stalin’s Atheism.
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August 19, 2012 8:32am
Luke Mutton

No cathedral was “desecrated”. The only desecration that occurred was a challenge to the orthodox stupidity of religious believers.

Are you aware that the religious leaders “forgave” Pussy Riot whilst insisting they be persecuted? Hypocrites all.

Two top clerics in the Russian Orthodox Church said Saturday that it has forgiven the members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot who were convicted of hooliganism and sent to prison for briefly taking over a cathedral in a raucous prayer for deliverance from Vladimir Putin.

Tikhon Shevkunov, who heads Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery and is widely believed to be the Russian president’s spiritual counselor, said on state television Saturday that his church forgave the singers right after their “punk prayer” in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow in February.

“The church has been sometimes accused of not forgiving them,” the bearded and bespectacled cleric said. “We did forgive them from the very start. But such actions should be cut short by society and authorities.”

Yes, we forgive you. But we don’t forgive you. Doublespeak alright.

If anything it is religion that is part of the hooliganism in society. What could be more hateful and obscene than a two year prison sentence for singing in a church? Maryam Namazie, apostate and campaigner for freedom from religion.

As to the latin crucifix, that, too, is a symbol of oppression, a chain around the necks of Free Men everywhere and an affront to humanity.
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August 19, 2012 8:44am
Pete George

A view from the leftwing (at The Standard):

Despite what the rightwing might thunk, the leftwing is made up by very reasonable people. Do the right thing and cop less flack… Ipso facto.

I have different views on The Standard, of Whale Oil and Kiwiblog.

There’s certainly a fair bit of abuse here at times – but in the main it is issue orientated and is not used as ongoing harassment as it is at The Standard.
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August 19, 2012 8:47am
Puzzled in Ekatahuna

In the comment Akaroa refers to, made by Axeman 1.04 this morning on yesterday’s General Debate, there is –

7) Refused to pay the money back until a public outcry forced them to. Passed retrospective legislation to make the pledge card illegal, and wipe out a court case by Bernard Darnton against the pledge card for breaching the Public Finance Act (see point 4).
– http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/08/blackham_on_heartland_tour.html#comment-1010752

– for the record [an impressive litany of faults] should not the word ‘illegal’ there indeed be ‘legal’. I thought the legislation was to retrospectively approve what they had done illegally.
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August 19, 2012 8:50am
David Garrett

PG: Ignoring the appalling English (“made up by…”) isn’t it astounding that they really believe they are “reasonable people” !

I wonder if any of the young lefties who stray over here from time to time ever pause to ponder how it is that you can say almost anything over here – so long as it’s not defamatory or truly vile – and almost no-one ever gets banned, while over at the “freedom loving” Stranded, they ban people constantly simply for disagreeing with them! Even the mildest of men like you, FFS!

It was that kind of “pausing to think” which began my change from a leftie to a rightie. Such as finding out that the unions for which I was a delegate weren’t particularly interested in the welfare of members, it was all about “the cause.” Such as finding out that the much vaunted free speech they were defending was “free speech – so long as you agree with us.” Come to think about it, that could part of the Stranded’s masthead…
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August 19, 2012 8:56am
Pete George

“free speech – so long as you agree with us.”

I think it’s more complex than that, but simplified it’s another very union thing – class war. They are happy to disagree and argue (and abuse) amongst themselves. but anyone they label as the enemy should be despised, shouted down and shut out.

It was that kind of “pausing to think” which began my change from a leftie to a rightie.

Could be the same for me, on some political issues anyway (I’m more business orientated than many lefties).

If the Labour Party had been receptive to fresh input and ideas from the outside I may now be doing much more with and for them. Instead, because I wasn’t prepared to just be a faithful follower they didn’t want me.

If The Standard had been receptive to fresh input and ideas from the outside I might have become a significant contributor to discussion there. Instead they chose to attack and harrass me from the very beginning, and didn’t let up until Prentice finally issued his wimpout ban.
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August 19, 2012 9:23am
Fletch

And so it begins…
Opponents or critics of the new Egyptian regime are being crucified.

The Arab Spring takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood has run amok, with reports from several different media agencies that the radical Muslims have begun crucifying opponents of newly installed President Mohammed Morsi.

Middle East media confirm that during a recent rampage, Muslim Brotherhood operatives, “crucified those opposing Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi naked on trees in front of the presidential palace while abusing others.”

Raymond Ibrahim, a fellow with the Middle East Forum and the Investigative Project on Terrorism, said the crucifixions are the product of who the Middle Eastern media call “partisans.”

“Arabic media call them ‘supporters,’ ‘followers,’ and ‘partisans’ of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Ibraham said.

Ibrahim also says the victims can be anyone, including Egyptians and Christians.

“It’s anyone who is resisting the new government,” Ibrahim said. “In this particular case, the people attacked and crucified were secular protesters upset because of Morsi’s hostile campaign against the media, especially of Tawfik Okasha, who was constantly exposing him on his station, until Morsi shut him down.”

Ibrahim said extra brutality is reserved for Christians, but the crucifixions are because of Islamic doctrine, and are required by the Quran. The time and other details about the crucifixions were not readily available.

Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow Clare Lopez cited chapter and verse from the Quran to explain that crucifixions are not simply normal for Islam; they’re demanded.

“Crucifixion is a hadd punishment, stipulated in the Quran, Sura 5:33, and therefore an obligatory part of Shariah,” Lopez said. “It’s been a traditional punishment within Islam since the beginning, even though it’s not exclusively Islamic. The Romans used it too.

“So, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood haven’t the option to not include crucifixion within their legal code. It’s obligatory to comply with Shariah. And yes, it’s for shock value also to be sure,” Lopez said.

Lopez includes a warning for Egypt’s Christians and compares the coming treatment of the Christians to the Jews in Germany.

“The Copts must get out of Egypt as soon as possible – for the many millions who will not be able to get out, I expect things will continue to deteriorate – just as they did for Germany’s and Europe’s Jews from the 1930s onward,” Lopez said.

“The warnings were there long before the ghettos and round-ups and one-way train trips to the concentration camps began in the 1940s,” Lopez said.

MORE

So much for the wonderful “Arab Spring” that was going to bring democracy etc..

Video HERE of a convert to Christianity being beheaded on TV in Tunisia (WARNING: VERY, VERY GRAPHIC!).

Liberal talk show host Tawfiq Okasha recently appeared on “Egypt Today” airing a video of Muslims in Tunisia slicing a young man’s head off for the crime of apostasy, in this case, the crime of converting to Christianity and refusing to renounce it. …

A young man appears held down by masked men. His head is pulled back, with a knife to his throat. He does not struggle and appears resigned to his fate. Speaking in Arabic, the background speaker, or “narrator,” chants a number of Muslim prayers and supplications, mostly condemning Christianity, which, because of the Trinity, is referred to as a polytheistic faith: “Let Allah be avenged on the polytheist apostate”; “Allah empower your religion, make it victorious against the polytheists”; “Allah, defeat the infidels at the hands of the Muslims”; “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.”

Then, to cries of “Allahu Akbar!”—or, “God is great!”—the man holding the knife to the apostate’s throat begins to slice away, even as the victim appears calmly mouthing a prayer. It takes nearly two minutes of graphic knife-carving to sever the Christian’s head, which is then held aloft to more Islamic cries and slogans of victory.
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August 19, 2012 9:26am
tom hunter

A few weeks ago, in a thread where DPF made some harsh crack about Joe Biden not being allowed to order his own lunch, I made the case that he could well be the stupidest VP in history. This caused some mild disagreement, but it looks like the discussions about his fitness to be VP may finally entered the MSM arena – where they should have been all along after the treatment of Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin. But it’s only a may, and I did like this comment:

Gravitas? Nope.

Stability? Nope.

Respect? Nope.

Judgment? Nope.

Policy understanding? (mystery)

Someone whose finger we want on the button? Three letters, N.O.

Of course that would then lead to the obvious follow-up question: what does the selection of this moron say about Obama’s judgement? I doubt many journalists want to go there.
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August 19, 2012 9:38am
Reid

Yes Fletch, let’s remember who were the ones who installed the MB into Egypt and who’ve done the same thing to Libya and are in the process of doing it to Syria. That’s right. Guess who, folks. It’s those lovely people in the US and UK and various EU govts over the last 5-10 years who’ve done this. Let’s watch as everyone gets all confused and blames the Muslims for it though. But what do we expect. Sheep don’t have too many brains, do they.
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August 19, 2012 9:41am
Fletch

So, it’s looking like the hit bestseller 50 Shades of Grey could be all about paedophilia – the man in the book a Jerry Sandusky kind of character. The woman’s age in the book is given as being 21, but a closer look shows that that could just be a cover –

The problem for her, and it was a BIG PROBLEM, was that the narrator in the story, was in fact, an underage girl. My friend indicated, based on the use of language in the narration, that this girl was likely no more than 12 or 13 years of age. I made mention that the girl in the story was actually getting ready to graduate college. My friend, a woman with years of experience as a clinical psychologist, whose expertise I had personally witnessed a number of times over the years, shook her head and told me that she would not be able to convince me by simply talking about it. She said I should read the book myself, but do so with the eyes of somebody whose job it had been for many years to try and protect children.

[…]

The main character had no sexual experience. None. She was an innocent. She was a kid who had just had her first drink of alcohol. No way that was an accident by the author. That author had to have purposely made her, despite her given age of 21, by any other measure, a little girl. At that point, it struck me as odd. In my business, we call that a warning signal. A sign we may have a problem.

The main character is described in pigtails, given words like “Holy Cow” “down there”, “jeez” “double crap” she can’t operate a computer (but is supposedly a college graduate), describes skipping and doing cartwheels, repeatedly says she is made to feel like a child, has her imaginary friend (inner goddess) feels shame, is spanked and slathered in BABY OIL, told what to say, what to eat, what to do, until finally and sadly so predictably, is physically beaten. (But she returns to him soon after, which is again, a very common theme of abuse, including pedophilia)

MORE
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August 19, 2012 9:42am
lilman

luke mutton its sunday FFS.
Who gives a shit about three dykes in Russia?
I know I dont.
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August 19, 2012 9:45am
Other_Andy

Apocalypse Not

Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times

Over the five decades since the success of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and the four decades since the success of the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth in 1972, prophecies of doom on a colossal scale have become routine. Indeed, we seem to crave ever-more-frightening predictions—we are now, in writer Gary Alexander’s word, apocaholic. The past half century has brought us warnings of population explosions, global famines, plagues, water wars, oil exhaustion, mineral shortages, falling sperm counts, thinning ozone, acidifying rain, nuclear winters, Y2K bugs, mad cow epidemics, killer bees, sex-change fish, cell-phone-induced brain-cancer epidemics, and climate catastrophes.
So far all of these specters have turned out to be exaggerated.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot/all
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August 19, 2012 9:45am
kowtow

The comparative lack of news coverage on persecution of minorities in so called Arab Spring countries as opposed to Pussy Riot is both sinister and disturbing.

Given our media s’ and government fear of Muslim violence and financial power it is not surprising.
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August 19, 2012 9:46am
wat dabney

Fletch,

Thanks for that.

Religion is indeed disgusting.
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August 19, 2012 9:47am
Reid

But I see a difference. On Whale Oil and Kiwiblog the abuse is more fleeting, often a blast on a specific topic, but then left behind, people move on to the next debate. In the past I’ve had ding-dongs with people on Kiwiblog who have later turned around and supported me strongly. It’s more of an issue by issue thing. Arguments, but not feuds.

On The Standard it seems to be that once you are labeled an enemy you are a permanent enemy and treated as such, day after day, week after week, year after year.

Pete if you haven’t already worked it out this is simply the living evidence that left and right people think differently. The left are ideologues. Once you sign up, everything is mapped out for you. You’re expected to think not as an individual but as a group. What would the group do, in any given situation. The left are indifferent to individual perspectives because to them the critical thing is solidarity. That’s the source of their strength. Individuals in the group give up their intelligence to their leadership. Once you enter leftist politics, you become a pack animal and its the head of the pack who makes the calls.
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August 19, 2012 9:55am
Longknives

The Crucifix is a “symbol of oppression”??

Dude, seriously, get a life….
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August 19, 2012 10:14am
Tauhei Notts

Axeman’s 1.04 posting on yesterday’s Kiwiblog is possibly the best posting I have ever read on this site.
Well done.
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August 19, 2012 10:22am
Luke Mutton

Yes, Fletch, thanks for pointing out that the struggle for freedom is a long one, often with many setbacks.

What would you have said to the Hungarians in 1956?

The Jews in Poland?

The East Germans?

Maybe you would have told Thomas Jefferson and George Washington that they were wasting their time.

Freedom doesn’t come easy.

And why do you get so emotional over a xtian being beheaded and yet are quite calm about the thousands of other deaths?
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August 19, 2012 10:25am
Reid

the struggle for freedom is a long one, often with many setbacks.

Luc given you have this view it’s very surprising then you are so very disparaging of the Christian struggle in Russia which is one of the reasons why the Pussy Riot disturbed so many Russians. Is it possible you care about freedoms for others but not for Christians? It certainly sounds like it.

You see Luc the original cathedral which took 40 years to complete and was the finest Russian Orthodox cathedral in the world was destroyed on Stalin’s orders and rebuilt only in 1990.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Christ_the_Saviour

Pussy Riot could have chosen another place to make their protest against Putin but no, they decided instead to turn it into both an anti-Putin and an anti-Church protest. But that’s OK isn’t it. After all, it’s only Christians, so it doesn’t matter. Imagine what the media would have said if they’d similarly desecrated the largest synagogue in Russia. I don’t imagine the spin would be the same at all, then.
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August 19, 2012 10:41am
wat dabney

‘The Crucifix is a “symbol of oppression”?‘

Strangely enough, the cross was indeed a symbol of oppression. The twist being that it was a symbol of oppression for other Christians.

For many Christians – Puritans and various Separatists – non-Scriptural trappings such as the use of the cross were symbols of evil Papistry. People killed and died for such crap. Europe was wracked by oppression and bloody wars because of it. Christians burned other Christians to either enforce or eradicate it. It’s how the Pilgrim Fathers came to up-anchor and disappear off to the New World.

For the truth about Christianity in practise you have to look at its record when it was in a position of power, rather than today when it has thankfully had its teeth pulled.
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August 19, 2012 10:44am
Chuck Bird

“Axeman’s 1.04 posting on yesterday’s Kiwiblog is possibly the best posting I have ever read on this site.
Well done.”

I agree it can be found at

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/08/blackham_on_heartland_tour.html#comments
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August 19, 2012 10:52am
Scott Chris

Re Pussy Riot:

The women were probably guilty of disorderly conduct so a fine should have sufficed. Funny how the Andreis of this world can’t see the wider freedom issues at stake here so blinded are they by their beloved faith.
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August 19, 2012 11:03am
tristanb

Andrei:

to commemorate Ukrainian victims of Stalin’s Atheism.

A troll comment, but to give you the benefit of the doubt…

Atheism is the lack of belief in gods, just like you don’t believe in Buddha and the Tooth Fairy, atheists don’t believe in ridiculous made up entities including that nasty Christian/Muslim you call “God”.

Atheism can’t have victims – it doesn’t seek to do anything. Stalin’s victims were of Stalin’s greed, insanity and callousness.

It’s what happens when you believe strongly in something (e.g. Communism, Mohammed) without any evidence, and continue to believe it despite the harm it is causing. And remember, as the Labour Party says: Labour Party values are “applied Christianity”.
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August 19, 2012 11:10am
Viking2

Here it is. A short list of the crap the NZ Labour Govt. dished out to its taxpayers and citizens.

axeman (63) Says:
August 19th, 2012 at 1:04 am

“Labour is the great New Zealand political movement: You are kidding Hamnesia? Take a look at the real bad things they have accomplished in recent history (and this is a long list) :

1) Having Jim Anderton and other MPs (quite possibly illegally) remain in Parliament after they broke the law they (and Labour) voted for requiring MPs who leave their parties to resign their seats.
2) Calling a snap election because of an extra 10 minutes a day question time (due to points of order related to the above) supposedly made Parliament unworkable.
3) Cancelling the New Plymouth by-election by retrospectively changing the law to allow Harry Duynhoven to stay in Parliament, when he had no legal right to be there (due to a previous law requiring MPs to resign if they applied for citizenship of a foreign country)- a constitutionally outrageous action.
4) Spending $800,000 on the pledge card in possibly in breach of the Public Finance Act (we will never know because Labour in point 8 passed retrospective legislation to stop the courts ruling on this area)
5) Choosing to breach the electoral act and have the pledge card come out at election time, putting their spending over the limit. And this wasn’t a simple mistake. THEY WERE WARNED THREE TIMES (YES THREE TIMES) IN WRITING BY THE CHIEF ELECTORAL OFFICER THE PLEDGE CARD WAS AN ELECTION EXPENSE.
6) Broke a lie they told to the Chief Electoral Officer the pledge card would be included as an election expense. They told this lie to stop the public knowing of their overspending before the election.
7) Refused to pay the money back until a public outcry forced them to. Passed retrospective legislation to make the pledge card illegal, and wipe out a court case by Bernard Darnton against the pledge card for breaching the Public Finance Act (see point 4).
9) After all the above, had the gall to complain about National agreeing to a deal to repay GST owing on broadcasting money as escaping the legal consequences of its illegal actions.
10) When allegations first surfaced about Taito Philip Fields corruption, took no action
11) When a public outcry resulted from this, set up a toothless inquiry, into whether he acted improperly as a minister, and since Taito Philip Field held no portfolio for Immigration, it could only find there was nothing he did wrong as a minister, and could not look at the bad things Field did outside his ministerial portfolio.
12) When the above report came back, despite listing all the bad things Field did, Labour defended him. Michael Cullen and other MPs praised Field as a model MP. Cullen saying “the only thing Field is guilty of is trying to be helpful to someone”.
13) Continuing to defend Field, despite a public outcry.
14) Having Field expelled from the Labour Party, not because of his corruption, but because he threatened to stand against Labour in the 2008 election.
15) Phil Goff releasing notes taken in confidentiality from a meeting between Brash and some US congressmen, including the disputed “gone by lunchtime” quote.
16) Rewriting our election rules to their partisan political advantage in the Electoral Finance Act, which was done under then Justice Minister and now Deputy Leader Annette King.
17) Defending and standing by Winston Peters, despite all the Owen Glenn claims against him.
18) Having the government spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising promoting Working for Families, and other achievements of its, around the 2005 election (maybe to win votes?)

This list is only unethical behaviour, and does not include bad policy, like high taxes and the anti-smacking bill. And gives Labour the benefit of the doubt on who leaked the Brash e-mails to Nicky Hager for the Hollow Men book, or the fact that Damien O’Connor had a close relationship with Field as Minister of Immigration, and almost definitely knew about the corruption of Field, and covered this corruption up.

What’s worse, is the list is only the beginning, and if it covered every issue, such a Paintergate, Doongate, David Benson-Pope, the political interference in the sacking of Madeline Setchell, one could write a whole book. Oh wait, Ian Wishart in ‘Absolute Power’ already has.

It should be remembered that they were elected in 1999 on a promise to bring new standards on ethics and integrity into government. That is one of the few promises they kept.
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August 19, 2012 11:22am
tom hunter

Pussy Riot appear to be the same sort of dimbulb protesters who made up the now-extinct Occupy Wall Street groups – people whose fanaticism leads them to focus on the wrong enemy.

The enemy they should have been going after is Vladimir Putin.

But instead of keeping the focus on this tool – who undoubtedly dreams of re-creating the Soviet Empire of his KGB past – the grrrrls of Pussy Riot decided to have a crack at the Orthodox Church as well. While the church has been befriended by Putin – and been more than happy to accept this cuckolding – they might have also been enlisted in the fight against him. After all, the church was brutally suppressed by thousands of little Putin’s for decades, and those memories cannot have faded entirely.

But no! Instead of playing a smart game of political protest aimed at the real enemy, it was decided to stick a fork in the eyes of the religious groups. Brilliant! Now Putin can cast himself even more as the defender of all that is good and right with Mother Russia, and lock his many enemies into the corner that they painted themselves into, as people who want to destroy her.

And it appears that most of their supporters in the West are more than happy to indulge in this idiocy by marinating away in the juices that they really love, which is Christian hatred, a safe, cheap and easy thing to do nowadays.

As Garry Kasparov points out in this WSJ article, the jailing of these woman is simply another step in Putin’s long-term program to crush all meaningful resistance to his rule. There is no doubt that Pussy Riot are, as he says, political prisoners, and I support their being freed and Putin being condemned. My support may be meaningless of course in the context of power politics:

Mr. Putin is not worried about what the Western press says, or about celebrities tweeting their support for Pussy Riot. These are not the constituencies that concern him. Friday, the Russian paper Vedomosti reported that former Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann could be put in charge of managing the hundreds of billions of dollars in the Russian sovereign wealth fund. As long as bankers and other Western elites eagerly line up to do Mr. Putin’s bidding, the situation in Russia will only get worse.

But even meaningless protests in the West need to be smart. Harping endlessly on about the awful Christians who colluded with Putin is not the way to do it.
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August 19, 2012 11:37am
tom hunter

Kasparov’s article is here: When Putin’s Thugs Came for Me .
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August 19, 2012 11:43am
Redbaiter

“I wonder if any of the young lefties who stray over here from time to time ever pause to ponder how it is that you can say almost anything over here – so long as it’s not defamatory or truly vile – and almost no-one ever gets banned, ”

Actually that’s (as usual) crap Mr. Garret.

I was banned for using the word “fuckwit.”

The oh so politically correct David Farrar is always tolerant of criticism and abuse from his left wing friends but is extremely sensitive to criticism from the right.

Furthermore, those on the real right are expected to tolerate all kinds of abuse from the left, but retaliation often brings threats of censure from Farrar.

Sure, the Standard is Stalinist, and I was banned their yonks ago. Farrar of course runs a totally different ship to Lynn Prentice, but he is still a Progressive, and carries the personal baggage that all of them do in terms of an intense dislike of Conservatives.

Just keeping things truthful and in perspective with reality.
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August 19, 2012 11:52am
wat dabney

Redbaiter’s here.

Now we’ll get to the truth.
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August 19, 2012 11:53am
wat dabney

“I was banned for using the word “fuckwit.””

North-Korean-style self-criticism I’m guessing.
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August 19, 2012 11:57am
Redbaiter

“It was that kind of “pausing to think” which began my change from a leftie to a rightie.”

Another pause is needed, and thats where you change from a liberal and a progressive to a Conservative.

We will never defeat the left while you fake right wingers continually undermine our efforts with your political confusion and your weak superficial submission to Progressive ideas.
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August 19, 2012 12:15pm
Andrei

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot in happier times, definitely nsfw nor to be viewed on a full stomach

http://plucer.livejournal.com/55710.html
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August 19, 2012 12:24pm
Luke Mutton

OMG! Young people fucking, andrei. How disgusting.

Fucking bluenosed wowser religious freak can’t keep himself away from porn sites; so typical of religious nut bars.
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August 19, 2012 12:37pm
thedavincimode

Just keeping things truthful and in perspective with reality.

pffft. The prospect that Colin Craig’s new bitch has any perspective or notion of reality is the chortle of the week.

What a fuckwit.
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August 19, 2012 12:44pm
Redbaiter

Whereas you might write letters to the host complaining Davinci, I never would.

Never been a dobber, and never would be.

..and of course you know that as the host shares your Progressive political views, and as you are one of those considered untouchable in Progressive dominated society, (a homosexual) you are quite free to abuse me as you see fit, and you will never be demerited.

PS- please check out my latest blog post. You’ll enjoy it.
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August 19, 2012 12:50pm
kowtow

How very interesting.
Andrei brings a unique perspective and insight to Pussy Riot.A perspective that the MSM does not/refuses to give.

Luke Mutton chops then attacks that perpective with disgusting smears ,does anyone else see the irony?

and on cue DVM does the same using language like “Colin Craigs new bitch”,my goodness how demeaning.
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August 19, 2012 12:52pm
Redbaiter

Luke Mutton- The Davincimoron

Apart from a few differences on economic issues Kowtow, they’re the same morally and intellectually bankrupt Progressives.
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August 19, 2012 1:07pm
thedavincimode

Hilarious. “Homos” are now referred to as “homosexuals”. 🙂

Trying to go respectable are you m’bator (in between having your usual little sook)?. Has Craig told you to smarten your act up? Ah, for the good old days of knuckle-dragging homo leftist scum … But that was before you became somebody’s bitch.
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August 19, 2012 1:58pm
Redbaiter

Obsessives like you have always followed me around Davinci.

Get over yourself.
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August 19, 2012 2:05pm
Pete George

Oh, I tell you baby this increases my paranoia
Yeah, like looking in my mirror and seeing a police car
– David Crosby
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August 19, 2012 2:10pm
nasska

The only people seriously following Baiter Boy round will be carrying butterfly nets & syringes.

Any others are disaster tourists waiting for the train wreck. 🙂
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August 19, 2012 2:18pm
Redbaiter

Remember the note to Peter Davis on Klark’s fridge?

There’s one on your fridge to Davinci Nasska, and it says-

“Your turn to buy the Vaseline this week sweety.”
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August 19, 2012 2:22pm
hj

Peak Oil Declared Dead…. (don’t bet on it)

Most people living in our modern industrial society take air travel for granted. We think very little about hopping on a plane and travelling around the world for little more than a couple of weeks wages. As jet fuel prices bounce along with the price of crude however many airlines are increasingly struggling to break even. Fuel prices now account for 35 percent of operating costs compared to 15 percent a decade ago. The future of the global aviation industry is in big trouble.
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-08-18/running-empty-big-airlines-big-trouble
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August 19, 2012 2:26pm
Redbaiter

Overall, government imposed regulations and taxes are probably 90% of the price of fuel.
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August 19, 2012 2:31pm
hj

“The world is improving better than pessimists know, but dangers are worse than optimists indicate.”

This year’s report verifies that the world is getting richer, healthier, better educated, more peaceful, and better connected, and that people are living longer; yet, half the world is potentially unstable. Protesters around the world show a growing unwillingness to tolerate unethical decisionmaking by power elites. An increasingly educated and Internet-connected generation is rising up against the abuse of power. Food prices are rising, water tables are falling, corruption and organized crime are increasing, environmental viability for our life support is diminishing, debt and economic insecurity are increasing, climate change continues, and the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen dangerously. However, the most recent data from the World Bank shows that the share of world population living in extreme poverty has fallen from 52% in 1981 to about 20% in 2010.
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-08-17/world-improving-better-pessimists-know-dangers-are-worse-optimists-indicate
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August 19, 2012 2:32pm
thedavincimode

Jesus ‘bator. Great comeback – for a bitch! LOL.
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August 19, 2012 2:34pm
hj

Michael Kumhof explains the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Research Department’s new, strikingly more accurate, oil supply/price/demand prediction model, and says that according to the model oil prices will need to double in a decade to grow world oil production by 0.9%, in line with published EIA predictions*.

The world economy could not cope with a doubling of oil prices, which begs the question of whether world oil production can be increased at all, at a price that anyone can afford.

Kumhof is very careful to stress the uncertainties surrounding the IMF’s predictions (see Working Paper below), but brings the world a message that any reasonable growth in world oil production will be accompanied by serious episodes of demand destruction.
http://www.energybulletin.net/media/2012-08-17/peak-oil-%E2%80%93-oil-prices-need-double-decade
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August 19, 2012 2:37pm
Pete George

Sea ice disappearing faster than predicted

Sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected, according to data from a satellite launched to study the thickness of Earth’s polar caps.

Preliminary results from the European Space Agency CryoSat-2 probe indicate that 900cu km of summer sea ice has disappeared from the Arctic ocean over the past year.

This rate of loss is 50 per cent higher than most scenarios outlined by polar scientists and suggests that global warming, triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions, is beginning to have a major impact on the region. In a few years the Arctic ocean could be free of ice in summer, triggering a rush to exploit its fisheries, oil, minerals and sea routes.

Using instruments on earlier satellites, scientists could see the area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic had been dwindling rapidly. But the new data indicate this ice has been thinning dramatically at the same time.

For example, in regions north of Canada and Greenland, where ice thickness regularly stayed at around 5-6m in summer a decade ago, levels have dropped to 1-3m.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10826458

And

Record Arctic melt season possible this summer

According to atmospheric scientists, more of the Greenland ice sheet has melted this summer than any previous summer on record, and this seasonal low has come a full four weeks before the close of the melting season.

http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/08/wheres-the-ice-record-arctic-melt-season-possible-this-summer/

It might be an unusual season – or a sign that some scientists have been right.
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August 19, 2012 2:43pm
Other_Andy

@Pete

Must be one of those famous ‘tipping points again’.
Better sell all your worldly goods and move to higher grounds Pete!

Did you check what timespan they are using for those ‘records’?
Is it realy “disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected”?
You should check the statements from 2007 by NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally and others.
The Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071212-AP-arctic-melt.html
So again, is it realy “disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected”?
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August 19, 2012 3:51pm
krazykiwi

A good essay in Wired.com:

Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times

Over the five decades since the success of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and the four decades since the success of the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth in 1972, prophecies of doom on a colossal scale have become routine. Indeed, we seem to crave ever-more-frightening predictions—we are now, in writer Gary Alexander’s word, apocaholic.

The past half century has brought us warnings of population explosions, global famines, plagues, water wars, oil exhaustion, mineral shortages, falling sperm counts, thinning ozone, acidifying rain, nuclear winters, Y2K bugs, mad cow epidemics, killer bees, sex-change fish, cell-phone-induced brain-cancer epidemics, and climate catastrophes.

So far all of these specters have turned out to be exaggerated. True, we have encountered obstacles, public-health emergencies, and even mass tragedies. But the promised Armageddons—the thresholds that cannot be uncrossed, the tipping points that cannot be untipped, the existential threats to Life as We Know It—have consistently failed to materialize.

To see the full depth of our apocaholism, and to understand why we keep getting it so wrong, we need to consult the past 50 years of history.

Edit: O_A, you beat me to this one 🙂
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August 19, 2012 4:34pm
Reid

What a depressing choice the American people are being presented with this year. …The Democrats are running the worst president in American history, and the Republicans are running a guy who is almost a carbon copy of him. The fact that about half the country is still supporting Barack Obama shows how incredibly stupid and corrupt the American people have become. No American should have ever cast a single vote for Barack Obama for any political office under any circumstances. He should never have even been the assistant superintendent in charge of janitorial supplies, much less the president of the United States. The truth is that Barack Obama has done such a horrible job that he should immediately resign along with his entire cabinet. But instead of giving us a clear choice, the Republicans nominated the Republican that was running that was most similar to Barack Obama. In fact, I don’t think we have ever had two candidates for president that are so similar. Yes, there are a few minor differences between them, but the truth is that we are heading into Obama’s second term no matter which one of them gets elected. The mainstream media makes it sound like Obama and Romney are bitter ideological rivals but that is a giant lie. Yeah, they are slinging lots of mud at each other, but they both play for the same team and the losers are going to be the American people.

Yes, Barack Obama has been so horrible as president that it is hard to put it into words.

But Mitt Romney would be just like Barack Obama.

…The following are 40 ways that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are essentially the same candidate….
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August 19, 2012 4:36pm
Other_Andy

@Reid

“…The following are 40 ways that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are essentially the same candidate….”

And the BIG difference between Obama and Romney….

Romney has Ryan and Obama has Biden.
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August 19, 2012 5:12pm
Fletch

Romney is a carbon copy of Obama? Not from what I’ve read, and the political ads I’ve seen.
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August 19, 2012 5:58pm
nasska

It had promised to be a sensational divorce case,
with the Yuppette accused of incredible escapades.
Testifying before her own attorney, she projected
an image of sweet innocence, and told a tale of
wifely fidelity and sacrifice, and was quite believable.

When it was time for cross-examination though,
the husband’s lawyer said, “Isn’t it true on the night
of June 12th, in a driving rainstorm, you had sexual
intercourse with two circus stunt-men on the handle
bars of a careening Harley Davidson motorcycle,
that passed through Columbia at speeds in excess
of seventy-five miles per hour?”

The Yuppette turned pale, but retained her
remarkable self-control and composure. Her
voice was almost serene in its innocence as
she asked, “That is ridiculous! His Harley does
not go that fast!”
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August 19, 2012 8:00pm
hj

have consistently failed to materialize
………
“Fuel prices now account for 35 percent of operating costs compared to 15 percent a decade ago. The future of the global aviation industry is in big trouble.”

Michael Kumhof explains the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Research Department’s new, strikingly more accurate, oil supply/price/demand prediction model, and says that according to the model oil prices will need to double in a decade to grow world oil production by 0.9%, in line with published EIA predictions*.

time will tell.
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August 19, 2012 10:13pm
hj

“have consistently failed to materialize”:

from John Maudlin:

Today we will look at what complexity theory tells us about the reasons for phenomena as apparently diverse as earthquakes and the movement of markets. Then we’ll look at how New Zealand, Fed policy, gold, oil, and that lone investor in St. Louis are all tied together in a critical state. Of course, how critical and which state are the issues.
//

Ubiquity, Complexity Theory, and Sandpiles
We are going to start our explorations with excerpts from a very important book by Mark Buchanan, called Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen. I HIGHLY recommend it to those of you who, like me, are trying to understand the complexity of the markets. Not directly about investing, although he touches on it, it is about chaos theory, complexity theory and critical states. It is written in a manner any layman can understand. There are no equations, just easy to grasp, well-written stories and analogies. http://www.amazom.com/ubiquity.

As kids, we all had the fun of going to the beach and playing in the sand. Remember taking your plastic buckets and making sand piles? Slowly pouring the sand into an ever bigger pile, until one side of the pile started an avalanche?

Imagine, Buchanan says, dropping one grain of sand after another onto a table. A pile soon develops. Eventually, just one grain starts an avalanche. Most of the time it is a small one, but sometimes it builds on itself and it seems like one whole side of the pile slides down to the bottom.

Well, in 1987 three physicists, named Per Bak, Chao Tang, and Kurt Weisenfeld began to play the sandpile game in their lab at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. Now, actually piling up one grain of sand at a time is a slow process, so they wrote a computer program to do it. Not as much fun, but a whole lot faster. Not that they really cared about sandpiles. They were more interested in what are called nonequilibrium systems.

They learned some interesting things. What is the typical size of an avalanche? After a huge number of tests with millions of grains of sand, they found that there is no typical number. “Some involved a single grain; others, ten, a hundred or a thousand. Still others were pile-wide cataclysms involving millions that brought nearly the whole mountain down. At any time, literally anything, it seemed, might be just about to occur.”

The piles were indeed completely chaotic in their unpredictability. Now, let’s read this next paragraph from Buchanan slowly. It is important, as it creates a mental image that may help us understand the organization of the financial markets and the world economy. (emphasis mine)

“To find out why [such unpredictability] should show up in their sandpile game, Bak and colleagues next played a trick with their computer. Imagine peering down on the pile from above, and coloring it in according to its steepness. Where it is relatively flat and stable, color it green; where steep and, in avalanche terms, ‘ready to go,’ color it red. What do you see? They found that at the outset the pile looked mostly green, but that, as the pile grew, the green became infiltrated with ever more red. With more grains, the scattering of red danger spots grew until a dense skeleton of instability ran through the pile. Here then was a clue to its peculiar behavior: a grain falling on a red spot can, by domino-like action, cause sliding at other nearby red spots. If the red network was sparse, and all trouble spots were well isolated one from the other, then a single grain could have only limited repercussions. But when the red spots come to riddle the pile, the consequences of the next grain become fiendishly unpredictable. It might trigger only a few tumblings, or it might instead set off a cataclysmic chain reaction involving millions. The sandpile seemed to have configured itself into a hypersensitive and peculiarly unstable condition in which the next falling grain could trigger a response of any size whatsoever.”

The Critical State
Something only a math nerd could love? Scientists refer to this as a critical state. The term critical state can mean the point at which water would go to ice or steam, or the moment that critical mass induces a nuclear reaction, etc. It is the point at which something triggers a change in the basic nature or character of the object or group. Thus, (and very casually for all you physicists) we refer to something being in a critical state (or use the term critical mass) when there is the opportunity for significant change.

“But to physicists, [the critical state] has always been seen as a kind of theoretical freak and sideshow, a devilishly unstable and unusual condition that arises only under the most exceptional circumstances [in highly controlled experiments]… In the sandpile game, however, a critical state seemed to arise naturally through the mindless sprinkling of grains.”

Thus, they asked themselves, could this phenomenon show up elsewhere? In the earth’s crust triggering earthquakes, or as wholesale changes in an ecosystem – or as a stock market crash? “Could the special organization of the critical state explain why the world at large seems so susceptible to unpredictable upheavals?” Could it help us understand not just earthquakes, but why cartoons in a third rate paper in Denmark could cause world-wide riots?

Buchanan concludes in his opening chapter: “There are many subtleties and twists in the story … but the basic message, roughly speaking, is simple: The peculiar and exceptionally unstable organization of the critical state does indeed seem to be ubiquitous in our world. Researchers in the past few years have found its mathematical fingerprints in the workings of all the upheavals I’ve mentioned so far [earthquakes, eco-disasters, market crashes], as well as in the spreading of epidemics, the flaring of traffic jams, the patterns by which instructions trickle down from managers to workers in the office, and in many other things. At the heart of our story, then, lies the discovery that networks of things of all kinds – atoms, molecules, species, people, and even ideas – have a marked tendency to organize themselves along similar lines. On the basis of this insight, scientists are finally beginning to fathom what lies behind tumultuous events of all sorts, and to see patterns at work where they have never seen them before.”

Now, let’s think about this for a moment. Going back to the sandpile game, you find that as you double the number of grains of sand involved in an avalanche, the probability of an avalanche becomes 2.14 times more likely. We find something similar in earthquakes. In terms of energy, the data indicate that earthquakes become four times less likely each time you double the energy they release. Mathematicians refer to this as a “power law,” a special mathematical pattern that stands out in contrast to the overall complexity of the earthquake process.

Fingers of Instability
So what happens in our game? “…after the pile evolves into a critical state, many grains rest just on the verge of tumbling, and these grains link up into ‘fingers of instability’ of all possible lengths. While many are short, others slice through the pile from one end to the other. So the chain reaction triggered by a single grain might lead to an avalanche of any size whatsoever, depending on whether that grain fell on a short, intermediate or long finger of instability.”

Now, we come to a critical point in our discussion of the critical state. Again, read this with the markets in mind (again, emphasis mine):

“In this simplified setting of the sandpile, the power law also points to something else: the surprising conclusion that even the greatest of events have no special or exceptional causes. After all, every avalanche large or small starts out the same way, when a single grain falls and makes the pile just slightly too steep at one point. What makes one avalanche much larger than another has nothing to do with its original cause, and nothing to do with some special situation in the pile just before it starts. Rather, it has to do with the perpetually unstable organization of the critical state, which makes it always possible for the next grain to trigger an avalanche of any size.”

Now, let’s couple this idea with a few other concepts. First, Hyman Minsky (who should have been a Nobel laureate) points out that stability leads to instability. The more comfortable we get with a given condition or trend, the longer it will persist and then when the trend fails, the more dramatic the correction. The problem with long term macroeconomic stability is that it tends to produce unstable financial arrangements. If we believe that tomorrow and next year will be the same as last week and last year, we are more willing to add debt or postpone savings in favor of current consumption. Thus, says Minsky, the longer the period of stability, the higher the potential risk for even greater instability when market participants must change their behavior.

Relating this to our sandpile, the longer that a critical state builds up in an economy, or in other words, the more “fingers of instability” that are allowed to develop a connection to other fingers of instability, the greater the potential for a serious “avalanche.”
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August 19, 2012 10:26pm

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