Damn right, aresholes: Goldman Sachs bankers arm themselves in fear of uprising

It seems the corporate elite are getting a little scared.

It isn’t hard to imagine why.

They do, after all, run a world in which ordinary people face all-life-on-Earth-threatening climate change, severe global poverty and inequality and Tony Abbott.

I want to say that Carlo Sands tried to warn the fuckers. I tried to offer them the honourable way out.

“Jump!”, I said. “You have no option.”

Yet, with a small number of honourable exceptions, few chose that option.

Well, what choice do the rest of us have but to take the issue into our own hands?

Would the liberal ideals of the French revolution have lasted if the queen, as a living symbol of the barely toppled feudal tyranny powerful forces that sought to restore, did not lose her head?

Could the slavery that helped make the United States into the wealthiest nation in human history have ever been abolished except through winning a war?

Can any Australian ever forgive themselves for not assassinating Daryl Sommers before the ever-present threat of a Hey Hey its Saturday comeback became a reality?

History’s lesson is clear. Power is never ceded peacefully. Arseholes never leave the stage of their own accord. You give ’em an inch and they host racist blackface sketches on prime time TV.

These are things the mega-rich motherfuckers are more than aware of. And the financial oligarchy is taking action.

Yes, Boingboing have broken the story of execs at Goldman Sachs (the “vampire squid on the face of humanity”), arming themselves in fear of a violent uprising, in a post entitled “Goldman Sachs bankers ready themselves to kill peasants in the inevitable uprising”

* * *

Bloomberg columnist Alice Schroeder reports that Goldman Sachs vampires are loading up on handguns to defend themselves against popular uprising:

“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit”, said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol.

The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

* * *

If there is an uprising, indeed.

The answer is clear. We make our move ASAP, before the fuckers get even more prepared.

Carlo Sands is ready. Are you?




“This is a stick up. Our freedom or your life.” Carlo Sands says it’s time to kick in the township rebellion.

Cooking with Conehead

I have written on Conehead the Barbituate’s woes in his ongoing struggle to kill the pain of late monopoly capitalism with the help of an illicit plant.

Well, Conehead’s troubles have worsened, he tells me, due to a somewhat uptight neighbour complaining about the smell of the smoke from his bedroom window.

As a result, we have Conehead’s latest sent to this blog, posted as a comment to the post on drug dealers inspired by his less-than-enterprising Man.

As these comments were educative and instructive, I have posted them in full below.

Of course, Carlo Sands does not encourage using this information for anything but academic studies. I've said it before and I'll say it again, abuse of the demon weed is known to lead to terrible scourge of swimming addiction.

* * *

conehead the barbiturate said:

Cooking with Conehead

Ingrediants:
½kg self raising flour
125g cocoa
¾kg sugar
½kg butter
½oz Indian hemp [important for flavour]
3 cups water
4 eggs

Method:
1. mix flour, sugar & cocoa
2. chop up hemp
3. melt butter
4. cook hemp in butter on low heat till butter goes green
5. mix hemp and butter with flour, sugar & cocoa [HINT: do not strain hemp out of butter. to do so detracts from the subtle flavour]
6. add eggs
7. mix some more
8. stick in greased baking tin and put in oven at 180°C for an hour.
9. use bamboo skewer to see if its ready. if nothing sticks to skewer take out of oven.
10. if stuff does stick to skewer, take it out of oven anyway because you can’t be fucked waiting to see how its turned out.
11. panic when liquiddy uncooked stuff in the middle starts pouring out everywhere. Try and get all the uncooked stuff back in baking tin and stick it back in oven.
12. In the process of following step 11, eat lots more than you were planning to as you stop bits of it falling on the floor.
13. get really shitfaced because you've eaten half the cake, forget how much you've eaten so you think its really strong, give small bits to your friends telling them they'll get really shitfaced [HINT: if you don't have any friends, anyone around will do].
14. wonder why the people you've given bits to aren't as trashed as you are & seem a bit disappointed.

At last, an example of sanity in a truly mad world

The world plunges faster and deeper into climate chaos (to such a degree that, today, Sydney feels like Adelaide and that is never a good thing).

The disastrous Afghan war sinks deeper into a bloody mess with the only ideas that seems to have occurred to the occupiers being to send more soldiers they don’t have and spread the war to Pakistan.

The CEOs of the big investment houses have started giving themselves seven, eight and nine figure bonuses once more, while millions of citizens of the world’s richest country go hungry and the United Nations sends in investigator who reports gross abuse of millions of homeless.

Bon Jovi score a number one record in the US.

People are upset because Rove McManus quits TV.

I could go on. It is indisputable. The slide into barbarism is all around us.

But finally, there is a ray of light.

Amid all the insanity, bloodshed and impending apocalypse, something sane happened. Something right. Something that makes perfect sense and is as it should be.

Johnny Depp has been voted the Sexiest Man Alive in the 2009 People magazine poll.

In case you think that would just be automatic, last year the award went to Hugh Jackman. For christ’s sake.





“Finally, something sane in the papers.” For the first time since he won the Sexiest Man Alive award in 2003, Johnny Depp finds something in the news that is neither insane, infuriating nor bloodcurdling.

I suspect this could be computer generated

I am always looking for correspondence from the great legion of fans of this blog, or indeed any acknowledgment at all from anyone that this blog exists.

So I was over-the-moon to revieve an email from someone wanting to share links!

Yet, and yet, I cannot help feeling this might be computer generated.

I don't know this for sure, and possibly I am just being unnecessarily paranoid. Possibly Shiela, spelled wrong (and I do love bad spelling) is genuinely a real fan of the blog.

But there is something about it... Well, unkind readers, you can judge for yourself:


Hello,
This is Shiela from substance-abuse-counselor.com.

We stumbled on your blog while searching for substance abuse related information. I understand that your website is realted to this topic. We operate the largest website featuring more than 30,000+ websites and blogs. Our site averages 200,000+ uniques visitors. As a kind note We have featured your site at http://substance-abuse-counselor.com/blog_awards/index.php?id=189 We would be grateful if you could add the following details to your blogs main page.

Looking forward for your confirmation.
Thanks
Shiela
Substance-Abuse-Counselor.com


I, of course, am thrilled to be linked from Substance-abuse-counselor.com, although I am not familiar with their work. I am more of a Modern Drunkard Magazine sort of a guy.

Still a friend of Carlo Sands willing to link to his blog from their site is a friend of mine.

That is my criterion in fact.

Never forget, never forgive: Castle reminds us fleetingly of what we could be watching

An episode in the second season of the US TV show Castle, which stars Nathan Fillion who formerly stared as Captain Malcom Reynolds on Joss Whedon’s Firefly, has made an in-joke reference to the late Whedon series cancelled by Fox before it completed its first season.

This is a cruel move that brings back painful memories.

The 21st century has already seen some truly great crimes against humanity: the invasion and occupation of Iraq at the cost of a million dead; Sri Lanka’s ongoing genocide of the Tamil people; and Shannon Noll’s recording career are three that come to mind.

But what the Fox Network did to Joss Whedon's brilliant, groundbreaking “space western” TV series Firefly is surely a contender for top spot.

They cancelled it after only 14 episodes of the first season had been produced, with only 11 screened.

This was after badly undermining the show, screening episodes out of order and forcing a new first episode to be written after disliking the pilot.

The feature-length pilot was of course one of the truly great episodes ever produced for television. It was beautifully shot, capturing the colour, feel and breadth of its highly original setting — the outer-rim of civilised space done Wild-West-style.

It packed a remarkable amount of information, introduced a wide cast of characters with their drama and tension driving the plot, told a multifaceted story the product of a remarkable imagination, and did so at a cracking pace littered with brilliant one-liners.

Fox executives hated it.

The fuckers sabotaged the show then dumped it.

Poor ratings were blamed for the series cancellation. Yet DVD sales of the aborted series were through the roof and the show, despite its forcibly short run, is regularly voted the best sci-fi show ever.

But Fox saw little value in it and had no interest in giving it the appropriate treatment for TV success. It was much cheaper and easier for them to churn out another reality TV show.

That was bad enough.

But it was not the first time Fox had killed.

In an act of presumably unintended irony, Fox announced it was dropping Whedon’s show Angel just as season five was investigating the question of whether it was possible to work within an evil corporation and still do good.

As a result, the final episode of the season and series understandably ended on the somewhat bleak note — concluding “No, not really” in a somewhat bloody, if heroic, conclusion.

Of course, season five was easily the best Angel season. If there is one thing a Fox executive cannot stand it is quality. It makes them uneasy.

And now, Fox seems determined to kill again. Like a serial killer, Fox has in its sights another potential victim that fits its profile: Joss Whedon's latest show Dollhouse.

Dollhouse has at least fared better than Firely. Not only did it make it through season one, it was even reluctantly granted a second run.

Now, the news is it is very likely to be its last, with Fox pulling the show for the entire of November.

The result of this killing spree is the actors are forced to turn their tricks in shows of far less quality.

Fillion is a class act and, in some ways, it is good to see him as Richard Castle in yet another inevitable variation of the police/detective murder drama.

Yet, while his charisma raises the show above the 100,000 other slight variations on the same theme, it exists as a permanent reminder of what could, and should, have been.

In Australia, Channel Seven seem determined to torment Whedon fans by showing Castle as well as Bones — the yet another variation on the murder drama featuring the former star of Angel, David Boreanaz.

In a particular act of cruelty that should prompt an amendment to the Geneva Conventions, it has been known to run them straight after each other.

If Dollhouse, which has never even screened on free-to-air TV in Australia, is finally cancelled, we can confidently expect Channel Seven to bombard us with prime-time repeats of Dollhouse star Eliza Dushku’s Tru Calling — a less memorable venture for someone so talented, to be polite about it.

In the episode of Castle with the Firefly in-joke, Richard Castle dresses up for Halloween in his ol’ captain Mal outfit.

There is a half-minute scene in which he tries to explain and defend the outfit to his teenage daughter.

Castle's annoying brat of a kid, supposed to ingratiating in that horrific stomach-churning way US TV shows imagine to be cute, asks: “Don’t you think it is time you moved on?”

Fillon/Castle/Reynolds speaks for us all with is to-the point reply: “But I like it!”





“Didn’t you wear that, like, five years ago?”

Fillion is amusing in the scene, but is it too soon? At what point does it become acceptable to joke about such an atrocity?

For my part, the actions of Fox executives raises series questions about the sort of society we live in.

The social-economic structures are, to my mind, utterly condemned by the treatment of Joss Whedon. No further proof is needed of late monopoly capitalism’s terminal decline.

These are the things by which a society is judged, and one with any decency would throw as much cash at Joss Whedon as it could possibly spare and shout: “Go away an entertain us!”

Unfortunately, in this society, “entertainment” is left in the hands of the likes of Fox executives. In other words, the lowest form of human life — an even greater symbol of moral bankruptcy of the capitalist “entertainment industry” than Kyle Sandliands.

There are some things that can never be forgiven.

Go about your daily lives of continuing to cancel Joss Whedon shows, Fox network executives, but Carlo Sands is watching you.

And one day, justice will be served.





“What did y’all order a dead guy for?” A quote from a Fox executive in a meeting in the not-to-distant future.




“I'm right there with you.” A quote from said Fox executives’ meeting about unlimited funding for any project Joss Whedon decides is appropriate after a persuasive presentation by Carlo Sands.

‘The bulls set us an example’: transcript of Lateline interview with controversial National Party Senator

I swear to God I saw this the other night on Lateline.

I had never heard of any Senator Ernest Smythe, but I was quite impressed with his ability to outdo in the logic stakes none less than Christian fundamnetalist Family First Senator Stephen Fielding. Senator Fielding, of course, is a a climate change sceptic who nonetheless mananged to blame divorce as a cause of global warming.

I believe the Dylaneqsue Mr Tony Jones handled him very well, as usual.


LATELINE TRANSCRIPT:

MR JONES: We have with us tonight Ernest Smythe, the National Party Senator for Queensland. He joins us via satellite from his cattle farm in Werethafukami, which is located about 600 kilometres north-west of Idunno. An outspoken MP, a loose cannon his enemies say, he is undeniably popular with the hardline wing of the Nationals, many of whom view current leader, Barnaby Joyce, as far too liberal. Thanks for speaking with us, Mr Smythe.

SENATOR SMYTHE: Always a pleasure, Tony.

MR JONES: You have built a reputation as being very outspoken on a number of controversial issues of the day...

SENATOR SMYTHE: Out here, in the bush, we speak our minds. We say what we mean, Tony, and we don't care who we offend. That's how it is out here, that's how this country was built. You find the salt of the earth out here.

MR JONES: And some people.

SENATOR SMYTHE: Some people, yeah. Not too many. It is a tough life out here, most young people prefer to get as far away as they can the minute they get their drivers licence. We breed 'em tough out here. For some reason they then leave.

MR JONES: You have been very outspoken in your opposition to the “hot-button” issue of same-sex marriage. What is your opposition to allowing two people of the same sex, who love each other, having their relationship granted equal legal standing with a marriage between a man and a woman?

SENATOR SMYTHE: Well, I'll tell you something you learn when you spend your life out here, on a farm. It's a tough life but it’s full of lessons. Tough lessons, lessons maybe those in the cities don't learn. I'll tell you a lesson you learn very early out here: that is ... what was the question?

MR JONES: Same-sex marriage.

SENATOR SMYTHE: Right, well you learn something about that on a farm. For instance, we breed cows. Now, if you want to breed a cow, you don't put two bulls together. That's one of the tough lessons you learn out here. You take the road of trying to mate two bulls, you're screwed. [Said off to one side] Isn't that right love? Two bulls wont get you a cow? Sorry, that's my wife, June. She agrees. Two bulls are useless.

MR JONES: Okay, well...

SENATOR SMYTHE: You don't see that sort of a thing on a farm. Growing up round these parts, you don't have a mardi gras. You just don't see it. You don't see two bulls asking to get married. You don't see two bulls play around about together. No, well, was that time, [to the side] when was that love? Last month.

MR JONES: Two bulls...

SENATOR SMYTHE: Two bulls last month, yeah, it was ah, Jack and... [looks to the side questiongly] oh Jack, yeah that's right. We caught Jack and Jack. We call all our bulls Jack, much easier that way. They were up to, well you know.

It was unfortunate. But you know the thing is, Tony, they didn't then ask to get married.

MR JONES: They didn't?

SENATOR SMYTHE: No. I can't say I personally approve of their activities, but say what you will about Jack and Jack, at least they don't go around seeking to wreck the sacred institution of marriage. Jack and Jack are not trying to destroy the very pillar of family life, on which this nation was built.

MR JONES: Okay, well how about the times when your bulls do mate with your cows. It could be said with the same logic, surely, that this too is destroying the institution of the family if all of this mating occurs outside of marriage?

SENATOR SMYTHE: Absolutely Tony. We always marry our bulls and cows before mating. We like to do things properly out here. Maybe that’s old-fashioned, maybe we seem like hicks to the trendy inner-city set sipping lattes. Maybe they find that a bit strange...

MR JONES: Marrying your bulls and cows?

SENATOR SMYTHE: Quite possibly they do, I don't know. And frankly, Tony, I don't care. We don't apologise for standing by the values that built this country, for which the Anzacs died.

MR JONES: I assume you would expect the bulls and cows to follow their marriage vows. But presumably, in order to run an economically viable farm, you can't afford to allow one bull to only mate with one cow?

SENATOR SMYTHE: That is a problem and the bovine species are not that different in this sense from humans. They too are born in sin. It is in their nature. A bull has no desire to only mate with one cow and the cows don't seem bothered about what else a bull gets up to. This is not unlike many people these days, unfortunately, and, like in our society, this causes many social problems.

MR JONES: Such as?

SENATOR SMYTHE: The divorce rate is shocking. It is a tragedy, but we can't allow our stock to live in sin. So once the marriage has occurred and the mating done, we have no choice but to perform a divorce so a new marriage, and new mating, can take place. The bull has no thought for the sacred institution of marriage, unfortunately, so the process repeats itself many times.

It is a sad fact but true: the divorce rate out here is very high. It is a tough life.

MR JONES: So to summarise, Senator, this is why you oppose same-sex marriage?

SENATOR SMYTHE: Yes. I think the example of Jack and Jack is very instructive. Whatever their weaknesses, whatever their sins, they know that God made Adam and Eve not Jack and Jack and they respect that.

MR JONES: If I may more on, now, to another major issue in which you hold outspoken views. You have caused a lot of controversy with your repeated insistence that there is no such thing as global warming. How do you make such a claim in the face of overwhelming evidence from the scientific community?

SENATOR SMYTHE: Global warming is a conspiracy theory. That’s not a popular thing to say. It’s not politically correct. But out here we call things as we see them. It is a hoax. It has no basis whatsoever in science.

MR JONES: But, surely, as a farmer you would be well aware of the long-lasting drought rural areas have been suffering. How do you respond to those scientists that have linked this with climate change?

SENATOR SMYTHE: Homosexuality.

MR JONES: I'm sorry?

SENATOR SMYTHE: The one answer most of the scientific community refuse to investigate, in the middle of all their talk about “scientific evidence”, is that the drought is punishment from God for the rise in homosexual activity.

That’s a tough call, but is hard to blame Him. It is getting out of control.

MR JONES: Right, well...

SENATOR SMYTHE: I've tried to tell Jack and Jack. I tried to explain to them that they’re only hurting themselves. For whatever momentary pleasure they get out of their perverted activities, they’re only denying themselves the green grass they need to eat.

But like so many humans, they refuse to look at the reality, at the cold hard facts. Rather than face up to our sins, we prefer to invent fairytales about “global warming”. That is much easier for people to believe in.

MR JONES: People find it easier to believe in human-induced global warming than drought being a punishment from God for homosexuality?

SENATOR SMYTHE: Exactly. The scientific community are very closed-minded. They refuse to even consider the alternatives. I have not found a single so-called climate scientist willing to debate me on the topic of homosexuality versus human-induced global warming.

MR JONES: Well, unfortunately, I think that is all we have time for. Thanks, again Senator, for that illuminating conversation and we hope …

SEANTOR SMYTHE: [to the side] What’s that? Shit! [to camera, getting up] Sorry, Tony, I am going to have to … it’s Jack and Jack again. [to the side] Get the hose love — we can’t afford another year of drought, not with our bills. [Walks off]

MR JONES: That was Ernest Smyth, National Party Senator for Queensland, from his farm at Werethafukami.




“So you say it’s not okay to be gay, well I think you’re just evil.” English pop star Lily Allen responds to Queensland National Party Senator Ernest Smythe. Senator Smythe was unavailable for comment.

Orwell belatedly recognised (or the Nobel Peace Prize — just like the Grammys only bloodier)

Well it’s that time of the year again, when the world stops and waits with bated breath to discover who a committee of Norwegian people have decided to honour with the Nobel Peace Prize.

This year, they made a seemingly brave choice.

The distinguished committee has gone for a literary reference — a somewhat unsubtle acknowlegement of the works of George Orwell.

As the panel on literature is left in the safe hands of the Swedes, we can only assume this sideways foray into the field is a swipe at the Norwegians hated Scandinavian rivals — who never saw fit to give Orwell his due in his day.

Of course, the Norwegians fail to realise the Swedes were talkin' Orwell before the author was even born.

War is peace, indeed. It has been the case from the beginning.

The Nobel Peace Prize, after all, is named after Alfred Nobel, the renowned 19th century Swedish arms manufacturer.

In fact, the Norwegians themselves have been making the ironic point for years — without anyone appearing to have gotten the reference. So they keep atryin’.

In 1919, the “peace prize” was won by then-US president Woodrow Wilson — whose thoroughly Orwellian commitment to peace involved him taking a reluctant USA into the pointless, mass slaughter of World War One just two years earlier.

1973 was the year for possibly the greatest acknowledgment to Orwell's celebrated concept of “double-speak” — in which a totalitarian regime insists, in his nightmare novel 1984, that “War is Peace”.

The winner that year was Henry Kissinger.

Then-US secretary of state, Kissinger was one of the truly great war criminals of the 20th Century — a century that featured so many top mass murdering names.

Among his many unpeaceful acts, Kissinger was an architect of the Vietnam War (and the bombing of Cambodia, which helped pave the way for the Khmer Rouge to seize power).

And Kissinger famously helped organise the 1973 Chilean military coup that brought the dictator Pinochet to power.

Kissinger uttered the immortal line about the elected left-wing government he helped bury under the corpses of tens of thousands: “I don't see why we need to stand by and allow a country to go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.

“The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

Never, I have always believed with good reason drawn from personal experience, trust a Chilean.

In that, I am entirely with the former US secretary of state, as well as the Bolivians.

But should legitimate mistrust ever be allowed to degenerate into barbaric and unseemly mass slaughter?

I fear I must draw a line.

Kissinger, of course, also gave Indonesian dictator Suharto the green light to invade to invade East Timor in 1975.

Before Indonesian occupation, supported and armed by the West, finally left in 1999, around one third of the population had died.

Suharto had come to power in October 1965 in a military coup coordinated with the US embassy. (That old joke — “Why has there never been a military coup in the US? Because Washington has no US embassy.”)

In the aftermath of the coup, one of the 20th century’s great mass murders occurred. As many as half a million members of the Indonesian Communist Party, suspected members, suspected sympathisers, and general leftists and suspected leftists, were butchered.

The Australian PM of the day, Harold Holt, said with glee about Indonesia in a speech to a dinner party in New York, as the bodies were still being buried: “With 500,000 to 1 million Communist sympathisers knocked off, I think it safe to assume a reorientation has taken place.”

It is a truly severe tragedy that Holt disappeared while swimming a little over a year later.

This most unfortunate circumstance no doubt is the sole reason Holt was not, justly, awarded Australia’s first and only Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his humanitarian spirit.

I still, to this day, do not see why the Norwegians could not have granted it to him posthumously.

And here we are in 2009, and the Norwegians are as canny and sharp as ever.

In keeping with an understanding of peace that only a prize named after a man whose fortune was made selling things that explode in order to rip human flesh apart could uphold, this year’s prize has been won by the leader of the nation with the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.

A leader of a nation actively using the weapons on civilians in three countries, while happily supplying them for a profit for active use in a number of others.

Yes, US President Barack Obama is the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Some cynics and/or communist agents (just because the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago doesn't mean the Laos People's Democratic Republic does not have its agents working to undermine the Free World) suggest there is something odd in this choice.

It is true that in Obama, the hopes of millions of ordinary people desperate for change and an end to his predecessor’s policies of war are embodied.

It is also true that this is a peace prize handed to a man not just overseeing, but escalating an actual war.

It is a bold choice. Even when they handed Kissinger his award, it was for the Paris peace accords that recognised that, more or less, the US had lost the Vietnam War.

Kissinger was at least being rewarded for losing a war.

Obama, on the other hand, is yet to even be defeated. And, by the looks of Afghanistan, it isn't as if the Norwegians would have had to wait that long.

There is not much peaceful about Afghanistan. The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner has sent more US troops that his predecessor.

There is increasingly little peaceful about Pakistan either, to which Obama, in a stroke of military genius akin to Kissinger’s brainwave that the way to win Vietnam was to invade Cambodia, has decided to extend the Afghan war.

It makes perfect sense. The Afghan war is being lost, the solution is to start more war next door in a nation more populous.

I try this technique all the time. Horribly drunk after far too many beers, I solve the problem by following each further beer with whiskey chasers.

The results for me are about the same as for the US Empire — pain, tears and stained carpets.

It may well be true, as Spinoza said, that peace is more than the absence of war.

But it is usually considered that an absence of war is, at the very least, a precondition for peace.

Life is more than breathing oxygen, but try it without the fucking stuff and sees how you go.

Drunkeness is more than one beer too, but you can’t reach the nirvana state with only iced water.

The US-led occupation forces was, presumably, working for peace when the US Airforce, as it has repeatedly throughout the war now in its ninth year, bombed a gathering of civilians killing more than 100 in September. And in May. And this month.

Such stories actually occur week in and week out.

No doubt Obama is working for peace when pilotless drones, controlled from a bunker thousands of kilometres way, bomb a Pakistani village that the Taliban have long fled.

No doubt the Obama administration is also working for peace in Honduras. Certainly no one can doubt that, in endless state department press releases, the administration is claiming it is.

In Honduras, the elected president Manuel Zelaya annoyed the hell out of US corporations by raising the minimum wage by 60%.

Not long after, he was kidnapped in his pyjamas, bundled into a place and exiled to Costa Rica.

This act being carried out by a military in which every officer is trained by the US School of the Americas.

The head of the military (and coup) is so keen he graduated from the SOA twice.

Zelaya was flown out of the country from the US military base in Tegucigalpaa.

Despite a public response of, “Hey! Guys! C’mon that’s not nice”, the US continues to train Honduran military officers.

And, claims by state department press releases notwithstanding, has still not cut off the large majority of its aid to the regime.

The military Obama refuses to cut ties with is right now killing and torturing unarmed civilians demanding the president they elected be returned.

In case Latin America didn't get the hint, straight after the coup occurred, it was announced that there would be five new US military bases in Colombia.

Colombia is the third largest recipient of US military aid, which it uses to further world peace by killing civilians pretending they are guerrillas.

It also is home to the highest rate of assassination of trade unionists each year of any other nation. In fact, some 60% of the world total occurs in Colombia.

Of course, the biggest recipient of US military aid is Israel, of which Obama is such an outspoken supporter.

Standard rhetoric about the need for a peace deal, contained in the same state department press releases circulated for the last 15 years, notwithstanding, this continues under Obama without any risk.

Enabling, of course, Israel to commit crimes against humanity.

Whatever the intention of those inscrutable Scandinavians, it does appear that, to win a Nobel Peace Prize, no actual talent in the field of peace is required. The very opposite seems rewarded.

Not unlike the Grammys really.

And, if we look it at it, we must admit: the Obama administration’s contribution to world peace is not really all that different to multi-Grammy winner Mariah Carey’s contribution to music.

Their effects on their respective fields are, in fact, strikingly similar.

And I do find listening to Mariah Carey enables me to feel, in a small way, something of what it must be like to be a prisoner held indefinitely without charge in the US-run Bagrahm prison in Afghanistan.

Those lucky enough to have trialled the services available to a prisoner in both Bagrahm and Guantanamo say they prefer Guantanamo.

Obama made the high-profile pledge to close Guantanamo. Bagrahm, continues unhindered in its torture policy.

And Orwell is at last rewarded with a belated Nobel Prize.




“When you left I lost a part of me, it's still so hard to believe. Come back baby,
'cause we belong together”. This Grammy-winning song’s contribution to the field of music is similar to Barack Obama’s to world peace.