Show Trial Traffic

For an example of my getting miffed at lack of attention - see here

And for an example of my getting too much attention, from racists, bigots, fools and looneys in rapid succession, see here.

Ha ha ha.

To a certain extent I could understand the lack of reference to a book you'd read but decided to ignore. Fine fine - chronic paranoia aside, I am mostly only sensitive to the ways recognition, or should I say ego-affirmation, is withheld, in the academy, insofar as it relates to relatively weak buying power in the midst of this core global capital urban mash up city of not-so-cheap diners and astronomical transport charges etcetera etcetera. Reckon I am due a raise for putting up with this, but really, rereading Max Weber's 'Science as a Vocation' essay is always a kind of calming reassurance.

But these other, anonymous, right wing, anti-student, anti-education (full fees because students benefit! - spare me, what about employers who benefit much more from the added value corporate leaders ask us explicitly to put into the heads of our clearly automated charges... grrr) lunatic fringe, god-botherin', Islamophobic, middle of the tarmac, shitbrains... are accurate and informed about very little. Except that they are right of course on the tragic fact that I take myself far too seriously, mum.

PhD students who might dare think for themselves within the CCS are of course subject to show trials. With text/phone-in voting for the verdict. Stay tuned (and thanks for visiting).

Rumour - evil Rio Tinto Sucked into vortex of evil - the dark side eats its own kind.

Rio shares surge amid BHP takeover rumour

The Age May 7, 2007 - 5:24PM

Shares in Rio Tinto Ltd surged above $90 for the first time today amid speculation that BHP Billiton Ltd could take out its rival in a $122 billion-plus deal.

The stock closed up more than five per cent after Citigroup analysts fuelled takeover talk about the company.

Citigroup said while Rio Tinto's strong cashflow could make it an attractive target for private equity firms, BHP Billiton was a more likely bidder given the synergies that could be generated.

"Rio Tinto's strong cashflow and nominal gearing may bring it into the crosshairs of private equity, but we think BHP Billiton is a much more likely bidder given synergies and nationalistic control issue of Australian assets," Citigroup said.

"Applying even a modest bid premium means that any party will need to finance $US100 billion ($A121.99 billion)-plus through debt and equity.

"The deal is highly earnings accretive using conservative assumptions, with the major obstacle being concentration iron ore/coking coal market share and lack of BHP CEO-elect."

Rio Tinto shares surged $4.53 or 5.22 per cent to end a closing high of $91.38 while BHP Billiton put on 96 cents or 3.14 per cent to $31.56.

Rio Tinto's closing price gives the company a market value of $105.92 billion.

A union between BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto would create the world's largest producer of coking coal, thermal coal, copper and position the company as the equal largest iron ore producer with Brazilian giant CVRD.

"The greatest gains would be achievable in the iron ore assets in the Pilbara through optimising product specifications, mining fleet, rail distances to the port, etc," Citigroup said.

"Considering the scale and importance of these businesses to both companies, it is hard not to see $US500 million ($A609.94 million)-plus in synergies and cost savings in this area alone."

The brokerage said cost savings and synergies would also be achieved at the Australian coal assets, Canadian diamond mines, product marketing, logistics and global procurement.

Apart from competition concerns, Citigroup listed the lack of an anointed chief executive to replace Chip Goodyear as a major near-term impediment to any bid.

The brokerage said the disposal of non-core assets could overcome the competition concerns.

Citigroup ruled out any interest in Rio Tinto from the major oil companies and suggested private equity would need to team up with an existing industry player like Xstrata to formulate a potential bid.

"From a pure market capitalisation perspective, the major oil companies like BP and Royal Dutch Shell have the size and balance sheet capability to entertain such a transaction, but we do not believe they are interested in returning to investing in the Metals & mining sector after exiting the space in the 1980s and 1990s," Citigroup said.

"Strategic and diversification drivers could prompt other corporates to bid, but ultimately BHPB can pay the most given it has the most synergies to extract."

May Day in Kennington

I Link a lot to Transpontine's Neil, but missed him in the Park. This below is his latest post (somewhat truncated)/J

"Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Workers of the World Relax

The May Day picnic in Kennington Park was fun yesterday, with about 50 people hanging out in the sunshine. The maypole, featuring an imitation surveillance camera on top, was taken in a procession from Camberwell Squat Centre with a banner reading 'Workers of the World Relax'. Another said 'Kennington Park - A common place for all', referring to the park's pre-enclosure history as a common, where the Chartists gathered in 1848. A leaflet given out stated 'Today the Park is still being enclosed, this time socially, as groups of people who use the place collectively to hang out and have fun - playing volleyball or football - are being forced out'.



Later down at Brockley Social Club, the Strawberry Thieves Socialist Choir hosted an evening of songs including 'Bandeira Rossa' and 'Power in the Union'. I gave a short talk on the history of May Day in South London.


Judging by Baggage Reclaim's fine photos, the Jack in the Green procession from the Borough also went well yesterday...."

Do You Love Me?

This video posted on Hawgblawg by the always engaging Arkansasawian Ted Swedenburg deserves wider airing:

Is this the best video clip of Arabic music ever?

"Do You Love Me?", from the Bendaly Family عائلة بندلي
Kuwait, 1978.

EMERGENCES AND EMERGENCIES: NEW SOUTH ASIAN FILM-MAKING FROM BRITAIN

If you are in New York City this weekend (20/4/7-22/4/7) you can go see this 'must see' collection of films. If you are not able to attend, the texts are worth reading - collected below. Excellent.

Emergences & Emergencies
New British Asian Films
Curated by Sukhdev Sandhu


From the companion catalogue:
1. Sukhdev Sandhu on "India Calling" (Sonali Fernando, 2002)
2. Michael Vazquez on "Otolith" (The Otolith Group, 2003)
3. Naeem Mohaiemen on "Bradford Riots" (Neil Biswas, 2006)
4. Jon Caramanica on "Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music" (V.Bald, 2001)
5. Vijay Prashad on "The Road To Guantanamo" (Winterbottom 2006)
6. James Brooke-Smith on "England Expects" (Tony Smith 2004)
7. Karen Shimakawa on "Skin Deep" (Yousaf Ali Khan: 2001)
8. Kamila Shamsie on "A Love Supreme" (Nilesh Patel, 2001)
9. Mohsin Hamid on "My Son The Fanatic" (Udayan Prasad, 1997)
10. Bharat Tandon on "The Warrior" (Asif Kapadia, 2001):
11. Gautam Malkani on "Young, Angry and Muslim" (Julian Hendy, 2005)

Thanks to Naeem Mohaiemen for the collection of texts - visit Shobakorg.
.

one evening on a Melbourne side street there was a bloody foreigner... (though this is a bit of an in-joke ... for an in-group of one)

The Queen's duck

When someone mentions the English Queen, I'm afraid I always think 'unaccountable and irredeemably wicked shareholder of major corporations of the likes of Riotinto' (though that is spurious rumour of course). Well this week, while Riotinto reels under the PartiZans activist intervention at its annual shareholders meeting, and while the Queen's grandson Billy dumps his consort (already I forget her name - [Capital Kate I think]), I found this on the Community Radio 3CR radio compere Suzanna's news round-up. The wooden and pale imitator of celluloid glam Helen Mirror is still doing her bit for commodity sales. This time ducks (made in China I expect - which is fine - [sing the song]):

"Rubber Duckie shares Royal bath
The Queen is reported to share her bath with a yellow rubber duck that wears a crown
According to The Sun, the toy was spotted by a decorator as he refurbished Her Majesty's Buckingham Palace living quarters
The newspaper also says a spokesman for the Queen would not comment on the duck
The paper reports the unnamed decorator saying: "I was repainting the Queen's bathroom walls in the same colour she's had for the last 50 years when I glanced down at the bath. "I nearly fell off my step-ladder when I saw the yellow rubber duck with an inflatable crown on its head
"I suppose she was given it by her grandchildren as a joke." It was revealed recently the Queen has a mobile phone and a Big Mouth Billy Bass novelty singing fish
Now sales are soaring"

At least that has the merit of being a little funny, whereas unaccountable Royals and their filthy riches, even as they do duty as faded tourist attractions and tabloid fodder in the low season, are not always so amusing.

Australians of course voted her to stay in power (it was rigged - the only other choice was a Howard appointee - ie, Georgie B2's appointee...) but here in England she is in power by habit and by default. Still in power.

Fear & Loathing In Teheran - by Sarah Gillespie

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Fear & Loathing In Teheran - by Sarah Gillespie

‘The blood drained from her face and Faye whispered, 'there's going to be a rape involved in this' Operator Maintainer Arthur Batchelor Daily Mirror 9th April 2007

Faye Turney, the ‘she-man’ Seaman captured in Shatt al-Arab last month, claims her captivity in Teheran was marred by fear of rape, torture and a lifetime of incarceration. Despite having been released unharmed, a bizarre scene is emerging from the dark recesses of Turney’s imagination in which the saintly mother of little Molly (3) was subjected to floundering indefinitely in a dingy jail wearing nothing but pair of knickers and a floral headscarf. According to Faye’s ‘worst fears’ her ‘evil captors’ spied on her through her cell door slat, cracked jokes about her imminent martyrdom and most bizarrely of all, felt compelled to fit her out with her very own hand-crafted, bespoke coffin. Here is our first hint that we are dealing with the humiliation fantasies of a serious narcissist; while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard indeed have affiliations with the Moral Police responsible for public executions, I doubt very much that they throw a made-to-measure coffin service into the deal.

Nothing here adds up. But it doesn’t have to because the press have finally dispensed with the pursuit of truth altogether. Faye Turney’s fears are being treated by the media as if they were facts. Do a Google search on ‘Faye Turney rape’ and over 80,000 results appear. Remarkable really, given the woman has not been raped at all and is even claiming that she was not. Such is the ravenous appetite in Britain for titillating tales of defenceless damsels and wicked Arabs, the Sun-reading British electorate doesn’t care anymore if the narrative is absolute fantasy or not, so long as the victim is a westerner and the aggressor is a Muslim.

Thus, it doesn’t matter that Turney & Co were well-fed, clothed, even supplied with Marlborough Lights and Presidential ‘goodie bags’. It doesn’t matter that none of the 15 were exposed to torture, sexual abuse or humiliation. It doesn’t matter either that the worst trauma they endured was having their I Pods confiscated and forced to wear outfits that looked a bit ‘last year’. Arthur Batchelor, one of the Seaman, who we can assume has received at least some Military training for coping with stress during captivity, said: ‘Those suits were an insult. Not only did mine not fit, but it was cheap and tacky and the Hugo Boss shirt was a fake.’ What? So this is the ‘mental torment’ he insists on peddling for cash? The message is clear, the Seamen were treated well. Another message is also clear; the news-consuming public refuses to internalise this. Fay's abuse was in her disturbed mind and what is even more disturbing is the fact that our minds are deviant enough to consume her sickening fantasies. Without delving too deeply into the collective perversion of an entire nation, it is crucial to note that the British, who built their pseudo-egalitarian, post-industrial, mega-economy on the backs of two centuries of colonized labour, just love to feel like they are the victim. Check out the streets of Soho if you need proof.

What is more alarming, is that British media are quick to mobilise this penchant for humiliation in order to spoon feed us fictional narratives that reinforce the binary underpinning Anglo-American-Israeli foreign policy: Muslim=terrorist/Westerner=liberator. Since Turney traded in her phantasmic trauma for a substantial wad of Rupert Murdoch’s cash we are inundated with stories about her not being raped. Without the popular fear of Islam bestowing a veneer of feasibility into this narrative, Turney’s confessional would be exposed for the absurd non-event that it is. Try to imagine an equivalent news flash without the anti-Muslim agenda: ‘Man Thought He Was Being Followed Home by Rabid Gunmen, But Then He Realized It Was His Mum & He Was Just Being Paranoid.’ Or ‘Footsie Share Index Plummets to Record Lows Thought City Worker When He Accidentally Leant on His Apple Mac Keyboard Earlier Today.'

The rape, the torture, the execution didn’t happen but still it is reported over and over again simply on the proviso that it was temporarily imagined to be true in the mind of one woman. Truth is elusive, murky territory, impossible to fix or locate, impervious to the tyranny of technological mapping devices that offer objective comprehendible absolutes. Truth is relative, deceptive, it is in process, it never arrives at its destination and yet, we all insist on chasing it into oblivion. What has happened in the case of Faye Turney is that we seem to have given up the quest altogether, we have willingly surrendered to the absolutist reassurance of fear, at the expense of truth. Not only are we cut adrift from facts, we are not even pretending to look for them anymore, we are heading for a terrain were facts no longer matter.

On 9th April 2007 Blair, a man who, among his many sins, incarcerates Muslims for months on end without charge, dubbed Iran a ‘cruel and callous’ nation. So complicit are we in the demonisation of an entire civilization, we knowingly consume this fantasy of cruelty rather than consider the real possibility of humanity. We are invited to believe that Turney, the giant Viking of the Gulf Sea, is the ultimate victim, while Ahmadinejad, who hopes, albeit naively, one day to defend his country from foreign invaders, is the ultimate evil. The tragedy is we are no longer concerned as to whether this is true or not.
# posted by thecutter @ 17:12