Research in Germany found that German shepherds (sometimes also called Alsatians) can sniff certain types of cancer in humans.
Great news! So if you own one (or more) of these lovely pooches just let them sniff you daily. Be it your testicles, your head or your breasts. It’s for a good cause. As long as they don’t start licking the same spots….
Human behavior can be guided by dogs’ sniffs.
Meanwhile Tripoli is free. The mad dictator is – as this is being blogged – just in charge of a couple of square meters. From an absolute ruler to a cornered fool. The rebels, with NATO air support, have rushed to and through the capital like nobody could have expected. Gadhafi’s regime and military has imploded faster than a cake that is being taken too early out of an oven. His threats of an impending bloodbath and annihilation of all opponents have been hot air. Evaporated faster than the eye can witness. His sons already arrested and enroute to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Sadly the US still hasn’t signed on to this international judicial body. Although it’s the only permanent international court the world has to charge, arrest and trial leaders for crimes against humanity.
Gadhafi’s spokesman who regularly briefed the media in the Tripoli hotel looked more and more like that famous Iraqi spokesman who kept denying there was anything happening,…. even as the US troops were camping on the main square in Baghdad. History as a merry go round and round.
And as Tripoli was witnessing the end of a dictatorial era, the Yemeni ruler put tanks on the streets of the capital Sana’a out of fear that the unfolding events in Libya would give the freedom forces in Yemen a boost. Dictators are not sleeping too well these days. The butcher in Syria must also be a bit more nervous. Yesterday he quickly went on state TV to announce more promised reforms. But all very much just promises we heard before and that sound very hollow in comparison with his onslaught against all forms of protest against his dictatorship.
The Arab spring, turned summer, has got another scalp. Who’s next?
For sure any overthrowing of the autocratic rulers in Tunis, Egypt and now Libya does not automatically mean what comes next in those countries will be a simple and smooth transition to democracy and the rule of law. These countries have lived for so long under the crushing boot of oppression that democracy – and all its values and institutions – are practically unknown to the citizens there. And thus it takes time for the seeds to grow. And during that period lots of things can go wrong and off-track. So the world, the so called free world, needs to nurture these democracies carefully but without too much interference. More monitoring than taking the lead. Challenging times. Like bursts of fresh air across the Arab world. Keep it going!!! Roll on, roll on!!!
Human behavior can be strong as a force of unity for good.
Meanwhile back in the US of A, tea party presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann has slipped up again.
In the last blog entry we wrote she urgently needs classes in politics, history, etc…. And we wrote that she should know that the Soviet Union is no more. But guess what….. there Michele speaks about the Soviet Union in the present tense. The American schooling system must really be bad. The right-wing lady who wants to make history by becoming the first female US president, is lacking serious historic knowledge. She’s gotta hit the update button in her brain urgently. Dear Michele, the Soviet Union has collapsed many many many years ago. Let’s not go further into details because that might just cause some wire-tripping in your head.
So the need for some serious after-hours studying is more than ever needed. Avoiding it might become a clear and present danger…. to the world.
So Michele, maybe write the following yellow post-it notes and stick them on your fridge. So when you reach for the milk to put in your morning tea you can have a quick refresher kick about world history (and related developments).
Yes the US has already been on the moon. And JFK is dead. No America is not at war with Japan anymore. The US bombed them into submission in 1945. Yugoslavia has imploded. The Soviets have left Afghanistan. The Taliban is not a Christian rock band. These days the US has troops deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, not in Vietnam. And the US is also assisting NATO operations over Libya. But don’t worry about this because that’s over by the time your presidential race really becomes important. Strangely but yes The Rolling Stones are still around,…and this despite all the booze and drugs. Such an anti-Christian behavior! But John Lennon is dead. Yes there is a black man in the White House. Strange things happen indeed. Even in America. Ronald Reagan is dead. And his movies have still not made it as blockbusters. No the Titanic doesn’t sail anymore, and the QE2 is not a space ship but a British cruise liner. China still considers Taiwan a renegade province. Ai,… I know that’s a complicated issue. Yes, the United Kingdom is still…… a kingdom. Oh, and the Boston Red Sox owner has bought Liverpool football club. You know, that funny sport where one kicks a round ball. Those funny Europeans! Global warming is not a fashion trend, but about CO2 concentration in our atmosphere. Oh sorry,… are you too confused now. Reality TV is not about reality. Oh that’s really pushing the confusion limits! The American hostages have been freed from Tehran. Some decades ago. So no need to send SWAT teams to Iran for now. But keep an eye on the mad ruler there. He is really evil. The boss of the axis of evil. With cheerleaders in North Korea and Syria.
We know Michele, it’s a complex, and crazy world out there. But you’re a big girl now,…. so act up!
Human bahavior needs wikipedia. A simplified version for some. Like a starter pack.
Throw out. Italo-German rocker Unantastbar (untouchable) just released their sophomore full-length called “Schuldig” (guilty). Kick ass tunes with a tight production. Send a copy to Gadafhi,… and an Arabic-German dictionary.
C -Ya
collateral – August 2011 is the end of an era
The earth is not flat
Here we go again. Politicians and their slips of the tongue. Or is it brain damage?
Following Alaska’s ex-governor Sarah Palin’s outbursts of lack of general knowledge, now tea party hopefull Michele Bachmann follows the trail of stupid uttering.
It’s kind of basics that if you wanna be the next White House resident you should know better. Much better. It seems a Republican habit. Bush Jr was full of verbal tripping, then Palin with her worldpolitics mishaps and now Bachmann. And ofcourse before all of them we had b-actor Ronald Reagan who only spoke about nuking the Soviets.
Especially populist politicians, like the tea party folks, should really watch what comes out of their mouths because they only focus on 20-second soundbites with not too much content nor depth. So it’s gotta be right and tight. They got the tight right, but the right is not always right.
It started when Buchmann launched her presidential bit in a town called Waterloo. Now Waterloo is a town in Belgium (“oh heck, where’s that”, Michele screams…) and was the battlefield that brought Napoleon’s rule to a halt in the 19th Century. And the term ‘meeting your Waterloo’ is very commonly known as one’s ultimate defeat. So launching your presidential ambitions in Waterloo might be a bit of a public relations disaster. But then again, Buchmann probably thinks that her tea party lovers wont know jacksh*t about Napoleon nor Waterloo, and thus what the heck. And explaining Napoleon in 20 seconds is not possible anyway. So just stick to the hometown label without further thoughts. Easy.
And then came cowboy-hero John Wayne. Well not really. Buchmann confused the NRA symbol with the serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Confusing a gun hero with a gun madman is like slipping on 7 banana peels in one go. Especially for gun loving tea party, presidental hopefulls. Oeps! John Wayne might be turning in his grave. From riding away on your horse as sun sets to an ugly looking bloke on a killing spree is just a brainflick away. For some.
Then she wished America’s sweetheart Elvis Presley a happy birthday….. on the anniversary of his death. More banana action! Maybe sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll are taboo subjects within the tea drinking circles. Evil stuff for conservative minded folks and thus banned from knowledge-gathering efforts.
So one gotta start thinking what’s next. Scary thoughts.
Maybe Buchmann needs an urgent crash course before the presidential race really kicks off early next year. Crash course in….. well, mostly everything. Politics, geography, culture, understanding a calendar, Hollywood, history, proverbs,…. For tea party followers her dress sense seems spot on and her short quick US politics soundclips – aka short barks – seem mostly enough to get the tea lovers shouting and screaming like they’ve reached nirvana.
Anyway. Guide to the Buchmann crashcourse. The world is round, not flat. Think about a globe. Or a basketball. Africa is not a country. It’s a continent with more than 50 independent nations. Canada is not an American State. It’s another independent nation. The Somali pirates do not have an eye patch on, nor a skull and bones flag. Japan is not a member of the European Union. North and South Korea are two different countries and the US likes the south and hates the north (don’t make the Palin mistake on this one, especially when your finger is on the nuke button when / if you reach the White House). The White House is on Pennsylvania Avenue, but is not in Pennsylvania. I know, it is confusing but try to remember! A passport is an official document every citizen needs to have when going to a foreign country. I know, it’s a scary idea to leave the USA but maybe one day you might wanna go to the United Kingdom and meet the Queen. No, the rockband Queen is no more since the singer died of the AIDS virus (“He must have been gay!” “Oh he was! You see, it’s a gay disease. God's punishment.”). The Soviet Union is no more. Karl Marx is also dead. Long time ago. Don’t worry about him anymore. When you step on a bus on the campaign trail make sure it’s yours and not Obama’s. No Michelle Obama did not steal your first name. Yes, the White House will pay for your hairdresser appointments… if you make it to that white, big building in Washington DC. And no, Washington DC is not a suburb of Seattle in Washington state. Sometimes Mexicans do not eat chicken and beans. Yes Fidel Castro is still alive…., but probably not for long. You have good Muslims and bad Muslims. The good ones are those the Bush family has business dealings with. The bad ones are terrorists. Yes sorry, Ronald Reagan is dead. Yes yes, if you become the next US president you can dig up Obama’s basketball field and built a shooting range. Yes, in theory you can invade nations, just check first with your advisors if they are on the allied list or not. Yes you can bring your own pen to the White House to put on X on documents now and then. You are probably right that they speak a funny language in France. No, it’s not an English dialect. Sony is not an American company. Neither is Toyota. Yes they use the US dollar across all states of the US of A. And no, the Canadian dollar is not the same. No, America doesn’t occupy Japan anymore. But yes for sure, China is still communist and has these limitations on free speech and religious gatherings. Don’t send the cruise missiles yet. Yes you can have your own Facebook page and a Twitter account.
That will do for the next weeks.
Can you imagine a Buchmann-Palin ticket? Their acceptance speeches at the republican convention would be hilarious. It would be sold on DVD afterwards on the comedy-shelve at your local DVD rental store. A winning Buckmann-Palin poll would be very scary. Too scary to even think about it. Even the Martians will start building bunkers.
Human bahviour is just for fun.
To erase those tragic visions of a Buchmann-Palin ticket; which in human evolution is going 4 species backwards; lets have some wine.
The Australian, nearly-pensioned hardrockers AC/DC are releasing their own wines. Yep, indeed. High voltage wine. It’s called parallel investments. So you gotta look out for Back To Black Shiraz, Highway To Hell Cabernet Sauvignon, Hells Bells Sauvignon Blanc and You Shook Me All Night Long Moscato.
But if you gonna have it all night long, it will feel you’re on a highway to hell. You will hear hell’s bells as you are passing out again and again. Back to black.
Human behavior can be like TNT.
Throw out. Playing AC/DC’s live album from 1992 feels like like a thundering train through misty valleys. The sound of a whole generation. A devine classic in musical history. Nearly 2 decades old (that album, not the band) but still standing like a rock.
C -Ya
collateral – August 2011 is just full of inspiration. Amen.
Following Alaska’s ex-governor Sarah Palin’s outbursts of lack of general knowledge, now tea party hopefull Michele Bachmann follows the trail of stupid uttering.
It’s kind of basics that if you wanna be the next White House resident you should know better. Much better. It seems a Republican habit. Bush Jr was full of verbal tripping, then Palin with her worldpolitics mishaps and now Bachmann. And ofcourse before all of them we had b-actor Ronald Reagan who only spoke about nuking the Soviets.
Especially populist politicians, like the tea party folks, should really watch what comes out of their mouths because they only focus on 20-second soundbites with not too much content nor depth. So it’s gotta be right and tight. They got the tight right, but the right is not always right.
It started when Buchmann launched her presidential bit in a town called Waterloo. Now Waterloo is a town in Belgium (“oh heck, where’s that”, Michele screams…) and was the battlefield that brought Napoleon’s rule to a halt in the 19th Century. And the term ‘meeting your Waterloo’ is very commonly known as one’s ultimate defeat. So launching your presidential ambitions in Waterloo might be a bit of a public relations disaster. But then again, Buchmann probably thinks that her tea party lovers wont know jacksh*t about Napoleon nor Waterloo, and thus what the heck. And explaining Napoleon in 20 seconds is not possible anyway. So just stick to the hometown label without further thoughts. Easy.
And then came cowboy-hero John Wayne. Well not really. Buchmann confused the NRA symbol with the serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Confusing a gun hero with a gun madman is like slipping on 7 banana peels in one go. Especially for gun loving tea party, presidental hopefulls. Oeps! John Wayne might be turning in his grave. From riding away on your horse as sun sets to an ugly looking bloke on a killing spree is just a brainflick away. For some.
Then she wished America’s sweetheart Elvis Presley a happy birthday….. on the anniversary of his death. More banana action! Maybe sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll are taboo subjects within the tea drinking circles. Evil stuff for conservative minded folks and thus banned from knowledge-gathering efforts.
So one gotta start thinking what’s next. Scary thoughts.
Maybe Buchmann needs an urgent crash course before the presidential race really kicks off early next year. Crash course in….. well, mostly everything. Politics, geography, culture, understanding a calendar, Hollywood, history, proverbs,…. For tea party followers her dress sense seems spot on and her short quick US politics soundclips – aka short barks – seem mostly enough to get the tea lovers shouting and screaming like they’ve reached nirvana.
Anyway. Guide to the Buchmann crashcourse. The world is round, not flat. Think about a globe. Or a basketball. Africa is not a country. It’s a continent with more than 50 independent nations. Canada is not an American State. It’s another independent nation. The Somali pirates do not have an eye patch on, nor a skull and bones flag. Japan is not a member of the European Union. North and South Korea are two different countries and the US likes the south and hates the north (don’t make the Palin mistake on this one, especially when your finger is on the nuke button when / if you reach the White House). The White House is on Pennsylvania Avenue, but is not in Pennsylvania. I know, it is confusing but try to remember! A passport is an official document every citizen needs to have when going to a foreign country. I know, it’s a scary idea to leave the USA but maybe one day you might wanna go to the United Kingdom and meet the Queen. No, the rockband Queen is no more since the singer died of the AIDS virus (“He must have been gay!” “Oh he was! You see, it’s a gay disease. God's punishment.”). The Soviet Union is no more. Karl Marx is also dead. Long time ago. Don’t worry about him anymore. When you step on a bus on the campaign trail make sure it’s yours and not Obama’s. No Michelle Obama did not steal your first name. Yes, the White House will pay for your hairdresser appointments… if you make it to that white, big building in Washington DC. And no, Washington DC is not a suburb of Seattle in Washington state. Sometimes Mexicans do not eat chicken and beans. Yes Fidel Castro is still alive…., but probably not for long. You have good Muslims and bad Muslims. The good ones are those the Bush family has business dealings with. The bad ones are terrorists. Yes sorry, Ronald Reagan is dead. Yes yes, if you become the next US president you can dig up Obama’s basketball field and built a shooting range. Yes, in theory you can invade nations, just check first with your advisors if they are on the allied list or not. Yes you can bring your own pen to the White House to put on X on documents now and then. You are probably right that they speak a funny language in France. No, it’s not an English dialect. Sony is not an American company. Neither is Toyota. Yes they use the US dollar across all states of the US of A. And no, the Canadian dollar is not the same. No, America doesn’t occupy Japan anymore. But yes for sure, China is still communist and has these limitations on free speech and religious gatherings. Don’t send the cruise missiles yet. Yes you can have your own Facebook page and a Twitter account.
That will do for the next weeks.
Can you imagine a Buchmann-Palin ticket? Their acceptance speeches at the republican convention would be hilarious. It would be sold on DVD afterwards on the comedy-shelve at your local DVD rental store. A winning Buckmann-Palin poll would be very scary. Too scary to even think about it. Even the Martians will start building bunkers.
Human bahviour is just for fun.
To erase those tragic visions of a Buchmann-Palin ticket; which in human evolution is going 4 species backwards; lets have some wine.
The Australian, nearly-pensioned hardrockers AC/DC are releasing their own wines. Yep, indeed. High voltage wine. It’s called parallel investments. So you gotta look out for Back To Black Shiraz, Highway To Hell Cabernet Sauvignon, Hells Bells Sauvignon Blanc and You Shook Me All Night Long Moscato.
But if you gonna have it all night long, it will feel you’re on a highway to hell. You will hear hell’s bells as you are passing out again and again. Back to black.
Human behavior can be like TNT.
Throw out. Playing AC/DC’s live album from 1992 feels like like a thundering train through misty valleys. The sound of a whole generation. A devine classic in musical history. Nearly 2 decades old (that album, not the band) but still standing like a rock.
C -Ya
collateral – August 2011 is just full of inspiration. Amen.
Silence
Politicians are really a strange breed. Too often clearly detached from reality. And certainly always spinning and focusing mainly on opinion polls and re-election strategies.
The fires of the UK shopping-riots are only just been put out but the political class (and related agencies) are fighting over who was the diving force behind the change of police tactics during the unrest.
It’s crazy. So much wasted energy and time is going into tit for tats between the British government and the police bosses on who was running the show. Is that the priority now? So off the rails!
And the list of riot suspects appearing before the courts – which stayed open for business 24/24 – is getting really ‘interesting’. A derailed society in the dock. A teacher, the daughter of a millionaire, an Olympic ‘ambassador’, an 11-year-old kid,…. So it’s certainly not just down-and-out youths from the empoverished, forgotten, parts of London. Just greedy opportunists gone over the edge. Humans with a need to have the latest Ipods, game consoles, cell phones, plasma screens,… to have a meaning in their lives. To feel ‘real’. To feel somebody. These people were already over the edge before the first window was smashed.
Human behavior is consumer driven. And image driven.
One rioter made an interesting comment on British TV. He said the banks stole so much more from the common people. True….. to a degree. Banks didn’t go burning down furniture stores that have been a family business for decades. There is financial looting – as the banks certainly did – and there is mob-raging looting and burning as those yobs did. You can’t compare apples and pears. Both issues need to be raised for sure but not put in the same trash bin. And don’t use one for an excuse for the other. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
An older man outside a job-outreach center said he doesn’t see the same energy when it comes down to seeking work. Maybe right. Maybe too simplistic.
What’s guaranteed is that the British Prime Minister will use it to talk tough and look like a real leader. The real truth is that what happened is complex and a result of decades of neglect on all levels. From investment to social-family aspects. You don’t cure the rot with a lick of paint.
For politicians human bevahior is dictated by the next news bulletin. Long term visions stretches till the next opinion poll.
From the ashes of London to…. the disgust. In the same metropolis.
A female medical expert (in HIV – but that’s not important here) was arrested and sentenced to 6 months in jail for keeping a 21-year-old Tanzanian woman as a slave in her London home. Crazy. But crazier is that she only gets 6 months penitentiary. That seems really little.
From London via Tanzania to the other side of Africa. The tiny nation of Benin in West Africa has seen piracy soaring off its coast. The Somali pirates off Africa’s east coast are a well-known, and expanding, threat. But now it seems that the same phenomenon is kicking off on the other side of the old continent too. The oceans are wide and vast, but it still seems somewhat strange that the world can’t really deal with this threat. Because obviously it’s not just an African problem as ships from many nations are being hijacked. From China to Saudi Arabia to Holland. There is so much military capability around, from planes to subs to satelittes, that it is astonishing that the pirates can still roam reasonably freely. Seek and destroy!
Staying in Africa. Corruption, financial wastage and lack of accountability are a disease that is keeping the continent from really advancing. In South Africa the president’s son-in-law got a contract worth some US$ 142.857.000 to built a new headquarter for one of the departments. But officials within that department say that there is no budget for a new building. And the normal procedures to decide on such a big spending haven’t been followed. It stinks and is one of those examples how the cancer of corruption is eating away at the building blocks of society. Sad. Very sad. Rotten to the presidential core.
Back to Africa’s West coast.
University students at Sierra Leone’s Fourah Bay College could not write their final exams some weeks back because……. there was no paper. Just no notebooks or printing-paper to do the exams. Crazy. The 4000 students were angry. Rightly so.
Human careers can depend on the availability of stationary.
It’s slightly insane how the US presidential race kicks off so early. The elections are next year November. Before that you have the parties’ conventions to elect their candidate. Before that you have a money-wasting rollercoaster of primaries starting early next year. And before that you have informal ‘straw polls’. And all that process costs billions of money that could be spent more wisely. For sure democracy can and should cost some cash because it is precious, but the campaigns in the US seem to start earlier and earlier and thus costing more and more. And money needs to come from somewhere and thus the question of whom is funding whom – and for what return – is a very pertinent one. The dirty underbelly of political financing. Very murky. Very.
And all this amidst a nation which is totally broke. So deep in the red we soon have to invent new digits.
So we just saw some Republican pre-pre-pre-selection happening and that tea-party lady seem to have come out top of the pile. For now. And after that straw-poll the Republican governor of Texas came out saying he also wants the key to the White House. So is the pre-race on republican side set for the tea party lady against the governor,…. with Palin waiting in the wings? For sure populism will get a boost.
Obama, corned it seems, then went on a mini-bus tour. So campaigning has clearly kicked off. The 2012 poll seems to be going as a contest between a second term for a bold-ish, black Democrat and either a right-wing chick or a Democrat-turned-Republican governor-with-a-reasonable-good-economic-track-record. The Democrat-in-the-White-House struggled – and still struggles – to put his dreams into reality and tackle the economic foes….., which without a doubt started already under his republican predecessor Bush Jr. The tea lady rides the populist wave but her hard-hitting rhetoric sounds good in 20 second clips but lacks content. And the govenor seems to be the balance between content and sloganesque tactics. The road is still politically long and thus it’s wait and see. But for sure the starting-gun has been fired and the race is on.
Forget Iran, Syria, Mexico, oil spills, melting ice, currency issues with China,…. It’s gonna be a race focusing on basic economic realities. And the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will linger on the sidelines. Memories to the Clinton-Bush Sr race. “It’s the economy, stupid!”
Sadly it’s gonna be loud, and full of numb slogans. An avalanche of hopes and promises. A deafening ghettoblaster of dirty attacks and money-wasting TV clips. Silence will be a luxury.
Or as Phillip Levine once wrote down. “Fact is, silence is the perfect water: unlike rain it falls from no clouds to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes, to give heart to the thin blades of grass fighting through the concrete for even air dirtied by our endless stream of words.“
Throw out. NY’s punkrockers House Boat have just released a well-received new album called “The thorns of life”. It’s the lads’ second full-length. It’s cathy, acerbic punkrock with a raw pop edge. And with song titles like “A song in which I convince myself to stop being such a f* idiot” and “I live directly across the street from the outback steakhouse”,…. one can see their no-holds barred approach. The House Boat residents previously played in proven punkrock establishments like The Dopamines, Dear Landlord, The Steinways and Off With Their Heads. “The thorns of life” is the perfect album to survive the traffic rush hour.
C -Ya
collateral – August 2011 is still breathing
The fires of the UK shopping-riots are only just been put out but the political class (and related agencies) are fighting over who was the diving force behind the change of police tactics during the unrest.
It’s crazy. So much wasted energy and time is going into tit for tats between the British government and the police bosses on who was running the show. Is that the priority now? So off the rails!
And the list of riot suspects appearing before the courts – which stayed open for business 24/24 – is getting really ‘interesting’. A derailed society in the dock. A teacher, the daughter of a millionaire, an Olympic ‘ambassador’, an 11-year-old kid,…. So it’s certainly not just down-and-out youths from the empoverished, forgotten, parts of London. Just greedy opportunists gone over the edge. Humans with a need to have the latest Ipods, game consoles, cell phones, plasma screens,… to have a meaning in their lives. To feel ‘real’. To feel somebody. These people were already over the edge before the first window was smashed.
Human behavior is consumer driven. And image driven.
One rioter made an interesting comment on British TV. He said the banks stole so much more from the common people. True….. to a degree. Banks didn’t go burning down furniture stores that have been a family business for decades. There is financial looting – as the banks certainly did – and there is mob-raging looting and burning as those yobs did. You can’t compare apples and pears. Both issues need to be raised for sure but not put in the same trash bin. And don’t use one for an excuse for the other. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
An older man outside a job-outreach center said he doesn’t see the same energy when it comes down to seeking work. Maybe right. Maybe too simplistic.
What’s guaranteed is that the British Prime Minister will use it to talk tough and look like a real leader. The real truth is that what happened is complex and a result of decades of neglect on all levels. From investment to social-family aspects. You don’t cure the rot with a lick of paint.
For politicians human bevahior is dictated by the next news bulletin. Long term visions stretches till the next opinion poll.
From the ashes of London to…. the disgust. In the same metropolis.
A female medical expert (in HIV – but that’s not important here) was arrested and sentenced to 6 months in jail for keeping a 21-year-old Tanzanian woman as a slave in her London home. Crazy. But crazier is that she only gets 6 months penitentiary. That seems really little.
From London via Tanzania to the other side of Africa. The tiny nation of Benin in West Africa has seen piracy soaring off its coast. The Somali pirates off Africa’s east coast are a well-known, and expanding, threat. But now it seems that the same phenomenon is kicking off on the other side of the old continent too. The oceans are wide and vast, but it still seems somewhat strange that the world can’t really deal with this threat. Because obviously it’s not just an African problem as ships from many nations are being hijacked. From China to Saudi Arabia to Holland. There is so much military capability around, from planes to subs to satelittes, that it is astonishing that the pirates can still roam reasonably freely. Seek and destroy!
Staying in Africa. Corruption, financial wastage and lack of accountability are a disease that is keeping the continent from really advancing. In South Africa the president’s son-in-law got a contract worth some US$ 142.857.000 to built a new headquarter for one of the departments. But officials within that department say that there is no budget for a new building. And the normal procedures to decide on such a big spending haven’t been followed. It stinks and is one of those examples how the cancer of corruption is eating away at the building blocks of society. Sad. Very sad. Rotten to the presidential core.
Back to Africa’s West coast.
University students at Sierra Leone’s Fourah Bay College could not write their final exams some weeks back because……. there was no paper. Just no notebooks or printing-paper to do the exams. Crazy. The 4000 students were angry. Rightly so.
Human careers can depend on the availability of stationary.
It’s slightly insane how the US presidential race kicks off so early. The elections are next year November. Before that you have the parties’ conventions to elect their candidate. Before that you have a money-wasting rollercoaster of primaries starting early next year. And before that you have informal ‘straw polls’. And all that process costs billions of money that could be spent more wisely. For sure democracy can and should cost some cash because it is precious, but the campaigns in the US seem to start earlier and earlier and thus costing more and more. And money needs to come from somewhere and thus the question of whom is funding whom – and for what return – is a very pertinent one. The dirty underbelly of political financing. Very murky. Very.
And all this amidst a nation which is totally broke. So deep in the red we soon have to invent new digits.
So we just saw some Republican pre-pre-pre-selection happening and that tea-party lady seem to have come out top of the pile. For now. And after that straw-poll the Republican governor of Texas came out saying he also wants the key to the White House. So is the pre-race on republican side set for the tea party lady against the governor,…. with Palin waiting in the wings? For sure populism will get a boost.
Obama, corned it seems, then went on a mini-bus tour. So campaigning has clearly kicked off. The 2012 poll seems to be going as a contest between a second term for a bold-ish, black Democrat and either a right-wing chick or a Democrat-turned-Republican governor-with-a-reasonable-good-economic-track-record. The Democrat-in-the-White-House struggled – and still struggles – to put his dreams into reality and tackle the economic foes….., which without a doubt started already under his republican predecessor Bush Jr. The tea lady rides the populist wave but her hard-hitting rhetoric sounds good in 20 second clips but lacks content. And the govenor seems to be the balance between content and sloganesque tactics. The road is still politically long and thus it’s wait and see. But for sure the starting-gun has been fired and the race is on.
Forget Iran, Syria, Mexico, oil spills, melting ice, currency issues with China,…. It’s gonna be a race focusing on basic economic realities. And the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will linger on the sidelines. Memories to the Clinton-Bush Sr race. “It’s the economy, stupid!”
Sadly it’s gonna be loud, and full of numb slogans. An avalanche of hopes and promises. A deafening ghettoblaster of dirty attacks and money-wasting TV clips. Silence will be a luxury.
Or as Phillip Levine once wrote down. “Fact is, silence is the perfect water: unlike rain it falls from no clouds to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes, to give heart to the thin blades of grass fighting through the concrete for even air dirtied by our endless stream of words.“
Throw out. NY’s punkrockers House Boat have just released a well-received new album called “The thorns of life”. It’s the lads’ second full-length. It’s cathy, acerbic punkrock with a raw pop edge. And with song titles like “A song in which I convince myself to stop being such a f* idiot” and “I live directly across the street from the outback steakhouse”,…. one can see their no-holds barred approach. The House Boat residents previously played in proven punkrock establishments like The Dopamines, Dear Landlord, The Steinways and Off With Their Heads. “The thorns of life” is the perfect album to survive the traffic rush hour.
C -Ya
collateral – August 2011 is still breathing
Joe Strummer
Late 1979 London punkers The Clash released their album “London Calling” and frontman Joe Strummer sang the lead-song.
“London calling to the faraway towns.
Now that war is declared-and battle come down.
London calling to the underworld.
Come out of the cupboard, all you boys and girls.”
Not that most of the rioters in UK’s capital know much – if anything – about The Clash. And what a riot it turned out to be! A world metropolis gone mad. Anarchy in the UK. Another punk anthem from the 70s.
London’s burning. Literally. Well parts of it. And Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, Wolverhampton,….
Crazy. Mad. Insane. Lunatic. Over the edge. Unacceptable. No (real) reasons why.
Yes, the first fire was started in north London’s suburb of Tottenham after cops killed a resident (suspected gang member?). All the reasons behind that tragic incident are still not clear, but we know now that the dead 29-year-old man did not fire his gun. He was for sure in possession of a weapon but no bullet left that gun that night.
Dead man. Angry community. Mob mentality. Flames of anger.
So far understandable. To a degree.
But what followed was just pure pillage. Shopping-riots somebody called. And that was spot on. No politics. No social agenda. Just mobs of very young thugs going on a stealing rampage. And their prime targets? Sports wear stores, upmarket fashion retailers, cell phone shops and electronic stores. Nights of riots for a new cellphone and TV plasma screen. That’s what it is all about!
Human behavior can drop very low.
Shops set alight without thinking about the flats (and its inhabitants) above it. A middle class, family, furniture store that has been around for ages torched to the ground. The store survived both world wars and a couple of economic hard times, but not the mad rioters. Nuts. Three men who were protecting their little carwash shop run over by a speeding car, which fled the murder scene. Nuts.
Rebels without a cause and rebels without a brain. Rising up against banks’ outrageous payments to their bosses amidst economic recession is a reason to fight. Rising up back in the 70s and 80s against apartheid South Africa was a real cause. Fighting for your environmental rights in the oil-polluted delta of Nigeria is a worthwhile cause. Rebelling against the destruction of the amazon forest in Brazil is worth the fight. Expressing anger over small sentences for child rapists is totally fine.
But this nonsense across the UK is just a bunch of losers stealing goods to feel more trendy. What the hell has happened that some feel unhappy and ‘rejected’ if they don’t wear the latest Nike footwear, have the newest cellphone, the up-to-date game console and the same eye-wear as that football/soccer player on the billboard? That’s very low self respect and very low general feeling about what life is really about. Sad but true.
Find a job. Paint your house. Help in a soup kitchen for the homeless. Clean up the neighborhood park. Study for a higher degree. But don’t be a f*cking faceless thug. Mob mentality of the weak. What’s the point? Really, what is the point? No future? Certainly not with such behavior and mentality. We are all angry at how politics and economics are going worldwide. And with the environmental disasters. And with the wars and the famines. And with the rapists and the scammers. And with the increasing prices of goods. But tell us one thing, what the f*ck are you achieving now? Zero. Nothing. Less than anything. Anger and rebellion is good because being complacent is numb, but going on a destructive journey and destroy what middle class workers have built up for years is just beyond acceptance. It’s flippin’ bonkers!
Spotted that a 31 year old teacher has pleaded guilty to being part of the looting of a music / sound store in London. A teacher!!! So she destroyed her own future for an ipod or a new set of trendy headphones? How stupid is that? And for a teacher?!? Self-destructive numbf*ck! Blame who you wanna blame, but first of all look in the mirror!!!
And another looter in police cells is an 11-year-old kid. 11-Year-old! Speaking of bad examples in your community. Speaking of seeing your young life only through the eyes of trendy consumerism. Sad, sad, sad.
Human behavior can be the price of an Apple.
And where are the parents of these kids? What do they have to say when the kid comes home late and with a new Ipod in his heand and new tracksuit trousers? Do the parent(s) care? Are they awake? Aware? Not drunk or doped up? Too busy shagging the 16 year old neighbour’s daughter? Or just hardly home because doing double shifts to survive as single parent?
Something’s just gone wrong. Well probably a multiple set of conditions, expectations, fake representations…. It’s mainly which way to turn when you hit a T-junction.
Human behaviour can be a off-track.
Meanwhile, as London is burning, Syria’s onslaught of its own people is just going on like flipping burgers at McDonalds. Still amazing how people with (near-) absolute power looses all sense of values and reality. They become un-humanized. Power is really a brain disease. It transforms humans into something extraterrestial. And there is no normal turning back for dictators. Once they are in their unique but sickening headspace then can never by their own willing or abilities come back to senses. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mugabe, the junta in Burma, Mubarak, the Iranian nuke freak, Gadaffi, Fidel, Pinochet, the Chinese communist party topleadership, the lunatic in North Korea, bunch of other African let’s-hold-on-to-power-forever nutters,…. They’re not all in the same league, but they are all dillusional, powerhungry, should-be-in-a-mental-hospital politicians. Willing to kill their own folks to keep the key to the palace. Willing to exterminate all dissident views. Lost in their own labyrinth of insanity. Power is a deadly disease. And against such disease you can only rebel with brute force. May the force be with the freedom fighters in Libya and Syria!
Human behavior easily slides into mad behavior.
And there you have it. An enormous jawbone found in Kazakhstan adds weight to the idea that giant birds existed at the same time as the dinosaurs. A flying T-Rex! Are you reading this Hollywood?
Throw out. “Life’s a journey” is the brandnew album by New Zealand’s punkers The Rabble. Fine collection of in your face songs with a clear Rancid-touch of punk with reaggea touches here and there. Great production. Nice to discover good music from far nations on thee dge of the planet. Don’t like the hairstyle, but like the musical expression.
C -Ya
collateral – August 2011 is just burning onwards
“London calling to the faraway towns.
Now that war is declared-and battle come down.
London calling to the underworld.
Come out of the cupboard, all you boys and girls.”
Not that most of the rioters in UK’s capital know much – if anything – about The Clash. And what a riot it turned out to be! A world metropolis gone mad. Anarchy in the UK. Another punk anthem from the 70s.
London’s burning. Literally. Well parts of it. And Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, Wolverhampton,….
Crazy. Mad. Insane. Lunatic. Over the edge. Unacceptable. No (real) reasons why.
Yes, the first fire was started in north London’s suburb of Tottenham after cops killed a resident (suspected gang member?). All the reasons behind that tragic incident are still not clear, but we know now that the dead 29-year-old man did not fire his gun. He was for sure in possession of a weapon but no bullet left that gun that night.
Dead man. Angry community. Mob mentality. Flames of anger.
So far understandable. To a degree.
But what followed was just pure pillage. Shopping-riots somebody called. And that was spot on. No politics. No social agenda. Just mobs of very young thugs going on a stealing rampage. And their prime targets? Sports wear stores, upmarket fashion retailers, cell phone shops and electronic stores. Nights of riots for a new cellphone and TV plasma screen. That’s what it is all about!
Human behavior can drop very low.
Shops set alight without thinking about the flats (and its inhabitants) above it. A middle class, family, furniture store that has been around for ages torched to the ground. The store survived both world wars and a couple of economic hard times, but not the mad rioters. Nuts. Three men who were protecting their little carwash shop run over by a speeding car, which fled the murder scene. Nuts.
Rebels without a cause and rebels without a brain. Rising up against banks’ outrageous payments to their bosses amidst economic recession is a reason to fight. Rising up back in the 70s and 80s against apartheid South Africa was a real cause. Fighting for your environmental rights in the oil-polluted delta of Nigeria is a worthwhile cause. Rebelling against the destruction of the amazon forest in Brazil is worth the fight. Expressing anger over small sentences for child rapists is totally fine.
But this nonsense across the UK is just a bunch of losers stealing goods to feel more trendy. What the hell has happened that some feel unhappy and ‘rejected’ if they don’t wear the latest Nike footwear, have the newest cellphone, the up-to-date game console and the same eye-wear as that football/soccer player on the billboard? That’s very low self respect and very low general feeling about what life is really about. Sad but true.
Find a job. Paint your house. Help in a soup kitchen for the homeless. Clean up the neighborhood park. Study for a higher degree. But don’t be a f*cking faceless thug. Mob mentality of the weak. What’s the point? Really, what is the point? No future? Certainly not with such behavior and mentality. We are all angry at how politics and economics are going worldwide. And with the environmental disasters. And with the wars and the famines. And with the rapists and the scammers. And with the increasing prices of goods. But tell us one thing, what the f*ck are you achieving now? Zero. Nothing. Less than anything. Anger and rebellion is good because being complacent is numb, but going on a destructive journey and destroy what middle class workers have built up for years is just beyond acceptance. It’s flippin’ bonkers!
Spotted that a 31 year old teacher has pleaded guilty to being part of the looting of a music / sound store in London. A teacher!!! So she destroyed her own future for an ipod or a new set of trendy headphones? How stupid is that? And for a teacher?!? Self-destructive numbf*ck! Blame who you wanna blame, but first of all look in the mirror!!!
And another looter in police cells is an 11-year-old kid. 11-Year-old! Speaking of bad examples in your community. Speaking of seeing your young life only through the eyes of trendy consumerism. Sad, sad, sad.
Human behavior can be the price of an Apple.
And where are the parents of these kids? What do they have to say when the kid comes home late and with a new Ipod in his heand and new tracksuit trousers? Do the parent(s) care? Are they awake? Aware? Not drunk or doped up? Too busy shagging the 16 year old neighbour’s daughter? Or just hardly home because doing double shifts to survive as single parent?
Something’s just gone wrong. Well probably a multiple set of conditions, expectations, fake representations…. It’s mainly which way to turn when you hit a T-junction.
Human behaviour can be a off-track.
Meanwhile, as London is burning, Syria’s onslaught of its own people is just going on like flipping burgers at McDonalds. Still amazing how people with (near-) absolute power looses all sense of values and reality. They become un-humanized. Power is really a brain disease. It transforms humans into something extraterrestial. And there is no normal turning back for dictators. Once they are in their unique but sickening headspace then can never by their own willing or abilities come back to senses. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mugabe, the junta in Burma, Mubarak, the Iranian nuke freak, Gadaffi, Fidel, Pinochet, the Chinese communist party topleadership, the lunatic in North Korea, bunch of other African let’s-hold-on-to-power-forever nutters,…. They’re not all in the same league, but they are all dillusional, powerhungry, should-be-in-a-mental-hospital politicians. Willing to kill their own folks to keep the key to the palace. Willing to exterminate all dissident views. Lost in their own labyrinth of insanity. Power is a deadly disease. And against such disease you can only rebel with brute force. May the force be with the freedom fighters in Libya and Syria!
Human behavior easily slides into mad behavior.
And there you have it. An enormous jawbone found in Kazakhstan adds weight to the idea that giant birds existed at the same time as the dinosaurs. A flying T-Rex! Are you reading this Hollywood?
Throw out. “Life’s a journey” is the brandnew album by New Zealand’s punkers The Rabble. Fine collection of in your face songs with a clear Rancid-touch of punk with reaggea touches here and there. Great production. Nice to discover good music from far nations on thee dge of the planet. Don’t like the hairstyle, but like the musical expression.
C -Ya
collateral – August 2011 is just burning onwards
Full
The morgue is full.
Sacked cop kills police station commander in Johannesburg. Being a cop in South Africa is a pretty dangerous occupation. An average of 2 cops per week have been killed in South Africa so far in 2011. That’s lots of blood on the blue uniforms. Plenty of cop killers out there.
In Syria the unrest has turned into a slaughter in the opposition town Hama. And as history goes, the wheels keep turning round ‘n’ round. Same town saw a previous onslaught against the regime’s opponants some decades ago under the iron fist of the current president’s father. Butchering seems a family affair for the past and current tyrants in Damascus. Tanks vs people. Bullets vs stones. Madness vs cries of freedom. But people don’t forget. If the tyrant can’t be silenced and stopped now, the future will come. Revenge has no expiry date. The uprising wont be deleted from memory.
A train crashed in China, but the local media are banned from reporting on it. Free flow of information is not a communist idea. Big shows when the olympics come to town, but back to old tactics of repression when the circus leaves.
Another African famine. History is really repeating itself. Somalia has had no fully functioning central government for more than 2 decades. US , UN and AU soldiers have died in the sandpit. But it’s still a very Darwinistic country. The weak are left to die. The rule of the gun is the only one in town. Weapon salesmen are having a field day. Muslim fundamentalists are now even hijacking this famine. Control by all means necessary. By the gun. By religion. By food availability. How low can humans fall? Religion is a killer. No hope in Somalia. Death is certain, life is not.
Knocking on the morgue’s door.
From starvation to self-destruction. Amy Winehouse apparently died because she abruptly stopped drinking. That’s what some family members claim, although the police toxicology report ain’t out yet. Sounds like an advertisement for vodka or so. Drink more, live longer. Stop drinking can seriously harm your health. Anyway, Amy didn’t reach her 3 decades on planet earth because of 1 person only: herself. Sad but true.
Out of the limelight. A ferry sinks in Congo. Many dead. Crocodiles’ paradise. 80 Bodies found. 100 Passengers rescued. 20 Or so still missing.
Libyans are fleeing their country but some drown in te Mediterranean as they were trying to reach Italy. Flee a revolution to let your life been taken away by the swells of the high seas. Sad. Killed by Gaddafi’s soldiers. Killed by Nato bombs. Killed by rebel mortars. Or killed while fleeing war. Roll of the dice.
Some Libyan rebels have been killed in a government counter attack not too far from the capital Tripoli. The civil war is stuck in the dessert. Divided nation. Politics of hate.
Pakistan seems never at peace with itself. If it ain’t religious fools going on a killing spree or sending out a suicide bomber, it’s political violence. More than 30 people were killed in Karachi amidst political warfare. Armed groups supporting one or the other political party go out and battle it out. Madness to the next level. And it seems a merry go round and round because last month some 200 people were killed during deadly games of political insanity.
Human behavior is a speed train to the morgue.
Leaving the blood stains aside for a while. Chinese authorities have discovered – and closed down – fake Ikea and Apple stores. So we’re not talking about some alleway secret store or backroom handlings, these were shops with the ‘real’ Ikea and Apple signs on main streets. Copyrights have never been an important issue in China. Copy, fake, steal.
Stealing.
A crime syndicate in a town in South Africa has been ‘buying’ criminal dockets to attempt to get cases thrown out of court. Nice one. Land of opportunities. Wondering how the syndicate adverstises its services. Ads in the paper? Website? Call us and pay us cash,…. and your court records will vanish into space. No more trial dates thanks to us. We are the judicial exterminators.
It’s one way of clearing the courts’ backlogs.
Human behavior can be criminal and inventive at the same time.
So the US is financially alive it seems. Far from healthy but alive. The debt figure is so high most of us just can’t even grasp it. Millions, trillions,… Sounds like mad monopoly. The amazing thing is that when intern-loving-Clinton left office the budget was balanced. Then came Bush and his business pals. Then came the mad bankers going over the edge. Then came a housing crisis. Then came a recession. And amidst all that wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that keep chewing money faster than the speed of light. Memories of Clinton feels nice at once. Cigars and all.
Maybe, just like with Amy and her booze, cigar smoking is good for you and thus stopping lighting a Cuban might cause your health to fail. Maybe a whiskey and a cigar will become the new healthkick for the Hollywood plastic surgery stars (and lesser ones). Forget the veggies and therapeutic sessions with oils and candles, give them a J. W. black label – make it a double – and a smoke. Spa retreats with free booze and a joint! Who said the future is f*cked?
Chill, relax, enjoy…. while out there in that distant world the morgue labourers are doing overtime.
Throw out. Singer and bassist Dan Andriano from Alkaline Trio fame has released a fine album under his side-project’s name Dan Andriano In The Emergency Room. “Hurricane Season” brings 10 well-crafted songs with strong lyrics.
C -Ya
collateral – August 2011
Sacked cop kills police station commander in Johannesburg. Being a cop in South Africa is a pretty dangerous occupation. An average of 2 cops per week have been killed in South Africa so far in 2011. That’s lots of blood on the blue uniforms. Plenty of cop killers out there.
In Syria the unrest has turned into a slaughter in the opposition town Hama. And as history goes, the wheels keep turning round ‘n’ round. Same town saw a previous onslaught against the regime’s opponants some decades ago under the iron fist of the current president’s father. Butchering seems a family affair for the past and current tyrants in Damascus. Tanks vs people. Bullets vs stones. Madness vs cries of freedom. But people don’t forget. If the tyrant can’t be silenced and stopped now, the future will come. Revenge has no expiry date. The uprising wont be deleted from memory.
A train crashed in China, but the local media are banned from reporting on it. Free flow of information is not a communist idea. Big shows when the olympics come to town, but back to old tactics of repression when the circus leaves.
Another African famine. History is really repeating itself. Somalia has had no fully functioning central government for more than 2 decades. US , UN and AU soldiers have died in the sandpit. But it’s still a very Darwinistic country. The weak are left to die. The rule of the gun is the only one in town. Weapon salesmen are having a field day. Muslim fundamentalists are now even hijacking this famine. Control by all means necessary. By the gun. By religion. By food availability. How low can humans fall? Religion is a killer. No hope in Somalia. Death is certain, life is not.
Knocking on the morgue’s door.
From starvation to self-destruction. Amy Winehouse apparently died because she abruptly stopped drinking. That’s what some family members claim, although the police toxicology report ain’t out yet. Sounds like an advertisement for vodka or so. Drink more, live longer. Stop drinking can seriously harm your health. Anyway, Amy didn’t reach her 3 decades on planet earth because of 1 person only: herself. Sad but true.
Out of the limelight. A ferry sinks in Congo. Many dead. Crocodiles’ paradise. 80 Bodies found. 100 Passengers rescued. 20 Or so still missing.
Libyans are fleeing their country but some drown in te Mediterranean as they were trying to reach Italy. Flee a revolution to let your life been taken away by the swells of the high seas. Sad. Killed by Gaddafi’s soldiers. Killed by Nato bombs. Killed by rebel mortars. Or killed while fleeing war. Roll of the dice.
Some Libyan rebels have been killed in a government counter attack not too far from the capital Tripoli. The civil war is stuck in the dessert. Divided nation. Politics of hate.
Pakistan seems never at peace with itself. If it ain’t religious fools going on a killing spree or sending out a suicide bomber, it’s political violence. More than 30 people were killed in Karachi amidst political warfare. Armed groups supporting one or the other political party go out and battle it out. Madness to the next level. And it seems a merry go round and round because last month some 200 people were killed during deadly games of political insanity.
Human behavior is a speed train to the morgue.
Leaving the blood stains aside for a while. Chinese authorities have discovered – and closed down – fake Ikea and Apple stores. So we’re not talking about some alleway secret store or backroom handlings, these were shops with the ‘real’ Ikea and Apple signs on main streets. Copyrights have never been an important issue in China. Copy, fake, steal.
Stealing.
A crime syndicate in a town in South Africa has been ‘buying’ criminal dockets to attempt to get cases thrown out of court. Nice one. Land of opportunities. Wondering how the syndicate adverstises its services. Ads in the paper? Website? Call us and pay us cash,…. and your court records will vanish into space. No more trial dates thanks to us. We are the judicial exterminators.
It’s one way of clearing the courts’ backlogs.
Human behavior can be criminal and inventive at the same time.
So the US is financially alive it seems. Far from healthy but alive. The debt figure is so high most of us just can’t even grasp it. Millions, trillions,… Sounds like mad monopoly. The amazing thing is that when intern-loving-Clinton left office the budget was balanced. Then came Bush and his business pals. Then came the mad bankers going over the edge. Then came a housing crisis. Then came a recession. And amidst all that wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that keep chewing money faster than the speed of light. Memories of Clinton feels nice at once. Cigars and all.
Maybe, just like with Amy and her booze, cigar smoking is good for you and thus stopping lighting a Cuban might cause your health to fail. Maybe a whiskey and a cigar will become the new healthkick for the Hollywood plastic surgery stars (and lesser ones). Forget the veggies and therapeutic sessions with oils and candles, give them a J. W. black label – make it a double – and a smoke. Spa retreats with free booze and a joint! Who said the future is f*cked?
Chill, relax, enjoy…. while out there in that distant world the morgue labourers are doing overtime.
Throw out. Singer and bassist Dan Andriano from Alkaline Trio fame has released a fine album under his side-project’s name Dan Andriano In The Emergency Room. “Hurricane Season” brings 10 well-crafted songs with strong lyrics.
C -Ya
collateral – August 2011
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