This is just a quick note.
The developments in the ongoing unrest throughout the Middle East and North Africa are, in my opinion, building up pressure for another eruption and this one will meet greater opposition.
In Egypt massive protests have again occupied Tahrir Square. Only this time there is no Mubarak to sacrifice. Not only has there not really been the radical move from military dictatorship to democracy that the protesters fought for, but the massive inflation in food prices have increased rather than decreased. Inflation in Egypt rose from 10.7% annual rate to 11.5%. But this figure, because it includes items that have lost value due to the unrest, disguises the real rate of inflation. The real pain for ordinary people is what they have to pay to feed themselves. Food inflation in Egypt is 20.5% and rose in the last month by 3.3%.
After Mubarak’s fall both the military and the security forces were left virtually unchanged and in power. The figure head was removed not the machinery which underpinned his rule. If the protesters start to confront that machinery directly I think we will see a propaganda operation swing in to place which will start to claim that the protests are no longer peaceful Democratic protests but claim that they are being highjacked by or infiltrated. The military has already started to say the protests are being used by elements who supported the old regime. This is a clear attempt to try to sap its popular strength by driving a wedge between protesters and the wider public. When this does not work, as I think it won’t, I think the propaganda will start to say the protests are being used by radical elements from Gaza and Palestine. The propaganda will also try to paint the unrest as being a cover for radical Islamic groups. Such a propaganda move will be more for Western public opinion than for anyone else.
If this is what happens then things will turn ugly and I fear we will see Israel and Iran getting drawn in with the US and Europe making noises about ‘ensuring order’ etc.
In Lybia there is a festering stalemate as behind the scenes negotiating tries to settle who gets what. The US keeps claiming it does not want to lead. What it means is it does not want to be seen to lead. But Lybia sits on too much Sweet Crude and gas for me to believe the US to be truly disinterested. Plus I find it hard to believe that the UK, France and the US do not already have special forces on the ground.
The kind of precision bombing NATO is after is very difficult unless targets are spotted and ‘painted’ from the ground. And that requires special forces with the right equipment in place.
Then there is the real flash point, Syria. Unrest in Syria is growing and with it the increasingly brutal and dangerous escalation in government attempts to crush it. People are now being killed in Syria. The ‘problem’ is that any uprising in Syria is always going to be mixed up with western and Israeli fears over any expansion of the power and influence of Hamas, Hezbollah and, via them, Iran. Syria has links to Iran. The dictatorship in Syria has been softly supported by the West and Israel because it is largely seen as a restraining and powerful force in the Middle East. What would happen to Israel’s ‘secret’ agreement with Syria over Golan and water rights would be a major worry in any uprising.
Unrest in Qatar, Bahrain, and particularly in Yemen has NOT gone away nor been addressed in any lasting or meaningful way. It has slipped from our news agenda but not gone away.
The first round of uprisings were allowed to be what they in fact were, largely peaceful protests in favour of democracy and in the hopes of a fairer distribution of wealth. As pressures build again and spreads, I worry that the local militaries and the global players watching from the wings will start to feel enough is enough and radical Islam will be the cover for supporting oppression once again.
Just a quick additional note – which I will pick up again. There seems to be a pervasive narrative which says, Democracy (by which we really mean a market based capitalist system in which some bits of democracy are allowed) has struggled along against a backdrop of ignorance and backwardness and is now being attacked by the rise of Radical Islam. I think this narrative is absolutely wrong. What I suggest as an alternative is that for 50 years or so the Western agenda of capitalist, free markets with its thin sugar coating of democracy-lite has failed utterly to deliver on its promises. The reality of the Western system has been endemic state corruption, wealth expropriation, indebtedness and the corrupt quasi-military rule of a western supported elite.
The rise of Islam has NOT been been because most people have become hugely funadamentalist but because Islamic organizations on the ground, like Hamas, DELIVER. Islam is not first and foremost ‘radicalizing’ people, it is feeding and clothing them. Some of them it radicalizes thereafter. It has their attention because it helped them. You want clean water in a poor area, you want relief from police corruption – the radical islamic groups deliver. In exactly the way the mafia in the US would offer people ‘protection’ from corrupt policeforces.
I suggest that the story is NOT of radical Islam seizing control, but of the utter failure of the Western model creating a vacuum into which Isam is being drawn. The hearts and minds of the people are not being won by Islam but lost by the West. If any Western powers simply made it a point of foreign policy to support a truly law abiding government which shared its wealth with its people Islam would have not hold there. But our financial sysytem does not want to share.
Islam is not winning the argument. We are losing it. There is a difference.
Hi Golem,
Thanks for these posts – I really do appreciate your wide ranging perspectives.
On a side note – I recently read this http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/04/apropos-of-everything/ via the big picture.
Now I don't necessarily agree with it's "Austrian" perspective but I think it a interesting read particularly in regards to a point you made a while ago about the make up of US stock investors vs income.
I get the feeling that we are all on a runaway train, the different systems you have descibed of finance, politics, the ecology etc seem to me to be accelerating out of control & descending into chaos. I think it's pretty obvious that even if they think they are, nobody is in control. The powers that be, I think are dealing with a hydra, no sooner they chop one head off, another 2 replace it.
I recently watched a 3 part series on the BBC that gave a brief history of ancient civilisations, I can;t remember who made it. The basic premise of this series, to me anyway was that these political entities of various colours were all trying to establish " Good Order " meaning, I think, a system that works. They all eventually fell due to the breakdown of this concept. Do we now have " Good Order " ?
I hope I am being too apocalyptic.
On an earlier blog Pat suggested the idea of a Global Peoples Network, which I found interesting. I found this article which explores this concept, fascinating stuff, I like the idea of memes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2011/02/twenty_reasons_why_its_kicking.html
Re: propaganda, when protests against dictatorships were first perceived by the media and political elites to be "spreading" from region to region, I was very struck by the fact that they labelled this phenomenon "contagion" as if it were a disease.
StevieFinn: thanks for the Paul Mason link. I will reread it – several times. It is right on my thinking.
"Peer-to-peer" (P2P) will undoubtedly be the technological vehicle of the new "Global Peoples Network" to which we seem to be groping towards through social networking. The power of decentralized peer-to-peer file distribution is only just beginning to be understood by governments because of their battle with Wikipedia. It took them a long time to understand that there is no longer any need for central servers that they could shut down. It must have come as a huge shock to them.
The public image of P2P became tainted during the Knapster copyright lawsuit but the technology is about much more than illegally downloading copyrighted material. Skype, Twitter and Facebook keep quiet about the fact that they use variations of "peer-to-peer" technology pioneered by Knapster.
The proliferation of powerful personal computers with almost limitless disk space has spawned companies like BitTorrent Inc. that has brought together a world class team of young engineers who are leading the way in legal online file distribution. Right now this legal online distribution technology is creating a whole new generation of music superstars who would never have made it through the traditional commercial channels. The same will soon happen with news and opinion. They key is the use of new, independently-owned content.
Content creators worldwide are eagerly awaiting BitTorrent Inc. to roll out their much anticipated video streaming software using p2p "swarm" technology.
You ain't seen nothing yet folks! Every village will have its own local Internet TV station.
Have you seen the latest vid from 'Liberation Square'Tahir Square
Liberation aint what it used to be.
Golem,
I think you're dead on that the fundamentalists are increasing their audience by doing things that ideally the state should do, especially in underdeveloped nations. The Irish Catholic Church knows all about the power that can stem from providing hospitals and education, and getting a kind of national monopoly on these things.
Not that I want to entirely shit on institutions run by the Church because some of them were first class, and the hospitals were spotless. But despite some truly dedicated and humble front line staff, they were all unfortunately used, some way or another, by the hierarchy, to force certain Catholic morals onto the whole nation).
The good hospitals and schools were part of the reason why such horrors as Gormanstown and the laundries and all the abusers couldn't be acknowledged or discussed.
I also think that many Islamic societies have the same mix up of national pride and fundamentalist religion as we did. In the face of the massive technological success of the AngloSaxon culture that would try and change them and talk down to them, they have their holiness. And that is why I think they will sometimes be so savage, so merciless to each other when that purity is threatened – its not just about religion and sin – its about national (and not just local) pride. It’s about something to throw in the faces of Westerners (or in the Irish case – the English) who are constantly trying to force an alien culture down their necks.
Slightly off-topic, but as the ICB interim report is out today, here's my take on the somewhat elaborate obfuscation underway:
http://forensicstatistician.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/its-the-credit-creation-stupid/
Forcing Western democracy onto nations is every bit as stupid and self defeating as forcing religion on them. If it does manage to take root its likely to have such strong local flavour as to be only partially recognisable, and therefore ultimately unsatisfying to those who did the forcing.
I don't know if even an effective socialist democracy will immediately result in the kind of Islam that Westerners would label moderate. It is very likely that for some at least the first thing they want to use democracy to do is to loudly express the very culture that Western sponsored dictators kept in check.
There are many clearly stated thing in the Koran that would seem to us to contravene everything that democracy should bring – the idea that you can't leave Islam being perhaps the most glaring example. For along time there would have been many Muslims who had not read a full translation of the Koran in their own language.
And whether educated by the state or the Mullahs, and whether with full stomachs or not, it is likely that as more and more Muslims have access to such translations we may the position of 'radical' Islam and antagonism strengthen.
For many Muslims a strong plank of their faith is the idea of the directness and unquestionable purity of the Koran as a text. They rely on this plank in the same way that many Catholics/Hindus rely on miracles and appearances (which conversely I think allows greater them greater interpretative freedom, as opposed to the American strains of Christianity which tend, like Islam to rely more on a very literal belief in the veracity of the Old testament)
Because of this it is likely that Islam is in for a bumpy ride as education increases, regardless of anything else. Personality and temperament are as likely to decide whether you take a poetic or a literal approach to the Koran. And if you take the literal approach you end up squarely in medieval Europe – oscillating between graceful romantic civility, and striking savagery with the same potential for constant upheaval. I think the protesters who are taking on both political Islam and the West at the same time are heartbreakingly brave and I hope there are enough of them that they succeed but I don't think it will be a short struggle.
From our point of view I think we should be prepared for the fact that democracy (as in Palestine) may be used to support a political Islam that we don't exactly admire. It is their right to choose that kind of society.
All we should do, if that happens, is to offer refuge for those who are mostly likely to suffer under that strain of Islam, and concurrently those who are most likely to appreciate rather than revile European freedoms. We should not get involved in any way other than that. At the end of the day their were no deus ex macina to free Europe from religious authoritarianism, it was all very long drawn out and bloody.
No matter who they vote in we should be happy for them that they have regained their sovereignty as peoples. And that is a very necessary first step towards any kind of religious/societal growth. We just shouldn't expect that growth to look pretty all the way along.
R they could show us up and handle the whole process ten times faster and more maturely than Europe ever did – if we keep our noses out of it.
At the end of the day its none of our business unless they set out on some global Jihad. And they will only do that if we can’t keep our noses out of their political decisions and our hands off their national resources. If we could do that then the number of Muslims interested in blowing themselves up for ‘Jihad’ would be about the same as the number of Christians who actually give everything up and go work with lepers – i.e. not very many.
And if we can’t resist then we can’t complain.
When I look at what happened/ing in Iraq I want to join Al Qaeda, and I’m not exactly a fan of the Global Caliphate. And if I was Iraqi and it was a choice between my liberal views and revenge trust me I'd take revenge first and leave the liberal views till later – no question
I have a question for WhistleBlower:
Did you consider loans originated by your bank but sold to an MBS trust, as part of your bank's portfolio or "loan book" for regulatory/risk purposes? If "yes" please explain how your bank could still be liable for losses on a loan that it had sold and was paid for?
As a licensed California mortgage broker and an originator of many mortgage loans myself, it is my understanding that once I or your bank sold a loan we originated we were no longer responsible for that loan (except for the veracity of items we verified, such as borrower's income). It is my further understanding that a bank originating and selling a loan incurs no greater residual liability than I as a licensed broker.
Therefore what "bank liability" did the Irish government guarantee in September 2008?
Good morning Pat,
May I ask you for an email address to which I can send my response and explanation?
My email address is [email protected]
Having noticed your interest and involvement in the Irish situation, you may want to have a look at my latest blog post. Given the traffic to my blog since this last posting, I can conclude that there have been some very late nights at government and corporate offices in Ireland and other countries in which UniCredit and its subsidiaries – Pioneer and Bank Austria, have an active presence.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
WhistleblowerIrl
Whistleblower
On a slightly related subject, my recent submission to the ICB asks some pretty firm questions about the very premise of securitisation:
"This paper recommends further investigation into the contribution played by securitisation on masking debt deterioration through deceptive (but currently permitted) tactics of creative accounting. Suggestions for mitigating these issues revolve around the gradual cessation of securitisation practices and further encouragement of the re-mutualisation of lending institutions."
I'd really appreciate the views of someone who works in the industry, as from my point of view this is the achilles heel of modern banking, and the primary source for risk ownership obfuscation:
ICB Submission: Potential flaws with securitisation
Unfortunately, the ICB here in the UK completely ducked this issue in their interim report yesterday (see my comment above)!
Hawkeye on ICB recommendations …
Good morning Whistleblower and Hawkeye. I have read what you asked me to.
Remember, you guys have an 8 hour head start on me. It is only 8:00 A.M. here in California as I write.
What I am trying to establish here on Golem's excellent blog is an understanding of the "bonds" everybody is talking about. In my opinion they are "trusts" which were sold on the bond market. That does not make them "bonds".
If you actually read any of them, I have read several, you will be struck by their difference from government or corporate bonds.
My position is that once a bank or anybody else who sells something, receives cash for it they no longer own it. Holding me or a bank responsible for loss in value of a loan after selling it is like holding me responsible for damage incurred in an accident involving a car I sold two years ago.
In other words once a bank sells a loan to a "bond" amalgamator it is no longer part of fractional reserve banking and therefore no longer subject to bank regulation, which is precisely why "securitization" was so popular with banks.
This means that loans sold by Irish banks to mortgage-backed securities consolidators were never covered by the Irish Government's bank guarantee.
I think one of the key factors in both the many problems in the Middle East and with Islam here is the pervasive and regressive influence of Saudi Arabia. They have been a secret support for many of the governments in the region and where they can they have pushed their own religious agendas including often terming the Shia as apostates. They espouse a particularly virulent form of Sunni Islam- Wahhabism which they have also tried to spread both in the Muslim communities in the West and in Muslim societies in crisis like Sudan. They have managed to exert this influence because of the vast sums of money they can draw upon. Most of the newly built mosques in the UK and Europe and the US were largely funded by Saudi front organizations so their effect has been out of all proportion to their real support. In a way they could be compared to a very right wing evangelical sect of Christianity.
It will be interesting to see the effect of a newly emergent democratic force in the Middle East which might well take its lead from the more liberating elements of the West while yet remaining Muslim. Radical Islam holds fewer attractions for either Libyans or Egyptians than is often feared. It is the young who are driving these changes and their agendas are not so far apart from our own. Maybe at last there will be an alternative vision to the baleful one of the Saudi's.
What a load of twaddle.
Ive just come back from Aswan from visiting a sick friend, for the first time in a year, and there is a sense of absolute jubilation being liberated from Socialism, even though its cost them in tourism.
No mention in your post, about price controls the hallmark of a socialist state, and a feature of the former socialist republic of Egypt? or the fact that if the Gulf arabs choose to pump more oil, food prices would fall. Maybe you should open up the Koran and you will read that only god can set prices, maybe us free market worshipers and Muslim followers have more in common that you realize a shares hate for socialism and statism.
If you want peace between Mulsim, Jew and Christian or anyone else for that matter, as was shown in Levantine for a thousand years, then the way its done is through free trade and free prices.
Free trade and free prices! If only.
OK I will just note that the three Mubaraks- pere et deux fils, are currently under arrest, and the Washington Post (generally conservative) reckons that there are about $700 billion to be accounted for in the web of interests created by the Mubaraks, which have been salted away by them in various ways too nefarious to mention. And that is not mentioning the other cronies who had parallel activities, such as Sulieman, and many others in key positions.
For a country like Egypt that is a lot of money-a transformative amount of money.
The point I suppose is that you described Egypt as 'socialism' but 'kleptocracy and tyranny' seems closer to the mark if you are looking for an all inclusive term. 'Socialism' doesn't seem to fit.
I don't want to get into a huge debate here but simple nostrums such as 'free trade and free prices' and 'socialism' are the real rhetorical problems we have, ones which has been exploited by the neoliberals and other psychopaths, who have hijacked such appealing and intuitively good and simple principles, to wrap up their less than simple designs.
The problem is accountable democracy-not the deceitful terminology used by vicious psychopathic, manipulators and deceivers.
The painful reality is that the scale and complexity of humanity and the technology we employ has moved well beyond simplistic ideas such as ‘free trade’ and the types of democracy we see in the west, which have managed to avoid accountability or have stripped what little accountability there may once have been.
….continued rant below.
……
At the moment I think we are seeing more deeply than ever into the charade of democracy that has existed in this country, as we watch the scandal involving parliament, the Met, the PM/Coulson/News International/phone hacking etc. It is becoming palpably clear that the UK is and has been in the grip of a nexus of corrupt , non-elected manipulators, in ways other than just the financial system and that the so called elected representation-parliament, has been marginalised to the point of irrelevance. It has become serious when a senior police officer( Yates) feels entitled to go to a parliamentary enquiry and make a statement which seems (ahem) so full of inconsistencies. It is an effrontery to the whole democratic process. So, what bodies does he know the existence of that permits such brazen disrespect of the public?
The Mubaraks are just another example of the privatising principles of the 'free trade' rhetoric- more aptly described as 'mee trade and my prices' because I have the guns-and you lot can go f*** yourselves.
Good vid of a speech in the Irish Parliament-calling for a referendum on those senior bonds…
Another on the Health Privatisation Lobby – just to remind wotta loada well-organised sharks they are…
And a little thing on psycho and sociopaths.
G'day !
dave from France
Good luck to Mr. Donnelly. The Irish were the only EU country given a choice on the Lisbon treaty, but they didn't give the right answer, they managed to get it right 2nd time though, thanks to EU / FF scare tactics. I'm not sure they will get anymore referendums.
HPL:- Somebody commented on that blog about privatisation = efficiency, savings etc. My Father had a collapsed lung & was rushed into an NHS hospital, lung sorted, however my Mother, a couple of days later, found him unconscious, lying in a pool of blood, which had dripped, from the drain in his side onto the floor forming quite a large puddle. He was then diagnosed with MRSA which nearly killed him. Since Thatcher privatised cleaning it's estimated that 5,000 people have died as a result of shoddy practise & cutting corners wherein hides bacteria breeding in filth.
I think when all the big buildings were to the Glory of God & not to Mammon, as now. These psychos were working for religion, who at that time were the force that subverted sovereign powers to their ends. Torquemada, the boys from the inquisition & plenty of others I would suggest fit the bill.
10 o'clock live should be worth watching tonight:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/10-oclock-live/episode-guide/series-1/episode-13
max keiser, tessa jowell and some bod from Goldman Sachs!
Seems like the chickens are coming home to roost in Japan, but don't worry according to the BBC news resident nuclear expert Malcolm Grimston, Chernobyl wasn't all that bad.
http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/about/directory/view/-/id/86/
Two rather less comforting views :-
http://theintelhub.com/2011/04/13/real-experts-speak-japanese-radiation-risk-in-us-400000-t
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbje3ub5Dio&feature=player_embeddedo-develop-cancer-in-japan/
One
Two !
html is not all that complicated !
My apologies, please have patience for an old codger who's trying to learn a new language. I have mentioned this problem to my partner, she says that these things get trickier with age, but she will help me with it & the best thing to do, is to not get worked up, as that will only make the problem worse. She also says that I am pretty good in other areas & that nobody can be good at everything, bless her.
I will invest in a HTML for dummies book, & will try to resist the urge to throw it through the window.
Watched Max Keiser on 10'clock show. Feel like I am living in a parallel universe. James Max sees no connection between austerity measures and banking crisis AND does not think bankers are responsible for the crisis AND thinks new regulations are the solution despite the fact the existing ones are not enforced.. let's stop bashing the poor bankers!?*
Quote from a Zerohedge piece today:
The conclusion is that America now has a dual justice system: "One for ordinary people and then one for people with money and enormous wealth and power."
"If someone robs a 7-11, they took $500 and they were able to settle the next day for $50 and no admission of wrongdoing, they'd knock over that 7-11 again."
Sigh, same old story..
ahimsa
I sent an email to James Max this morning about his stance in the show.
I'll keep everyone updated if I ever hear anything!
—————
James,
I was intrigued by your stance on the Ten O'Clock Live show yesterday evening. Max Keiser clearly stated that fraudulent conduct had taken place in the financial sector and yet you responded by calling him a "conspiracy theorist".
This seems somewhat dis-ingenuous given the enormous scope for fraud to take place in the financial sector, especially when regulators don't regulate and Governments underwrite failed institutions.
I'd very much welcome your considered response to my ICB submission.
Page 7 uses the concept of "bankruptcy for profit", or "looting" postulated by Nobel economist George Akerlof. By your logic both Dr Akerlof and myself are also conspiracy theorists, are we not?
Indeed, do you also accuse the following people of harbouring "conspiracy theories"?
Former US Regulator William K. Black
Former NY Attorney Eliot Spitzer
Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz
Former CFTC Regulator Brooksley Born
Each of these people has raised serious concerns about illicit conduct and poor supervision of the sector.
Are you 100% confident that the financial crisis was not (at least partially) an "Inside Job"?
Did you see the ex-Goldmanites face?
He was backing up what Max said. The guy with Stockholm syndrone was a cock.
Dunno about mailing him, leaving a burning paper bag with dog dudu outside his front door ringing the bell and running maybe…
" Economics professor James K. Galbraith testified as follows to the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime:
" I write to you from a disgraced profession. Economic theory, as widely taught since the 1980s, failed miserably to understand the forces behind the financial crisis. … Economists [argued that] widespread fraud therefore could not occur. Not all economists believed this – but most did.
Thus the study of financial fraud received little attention. Practically no research institutes exist; collaboration between economists and criminologists is rare; in the leading departments there are few specialists and very few students. Economists have soft-pedaled the role of fraud in every crisis they examined, including the Savings & Loan debacle, the Russian transition, the Asian meltdown and the dot.com bubble. They continue to do so now. At a conference sponsored by the Levy Economics Institute in New York on April 17, the closest a former Under Secretary of the Treasury, Peter Fisher, got to this question was to use the word “naughtiness.” This was on the day that the SEC charged Goldman Sachs with fraud".
Linked at Washington's blog
Jamie– you're only excused if very very ancient, much more than 64 . . . 🙂
I forgot my html when not needed for a few years, and then had to learn it again, but it's only a small handful of things for this.
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail ?
"Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them"
And another good article from Rolling Stone, here
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411
for anyone interested in where the bailout money is going: the wives of Wall St, and the Cayman Islands, apparently.
mohenko — thanks for that more recent Matt Taibbi
Mind-boggling larceny in full daylight.
This morning's FT
…. "Germany is drawing up plans to restructure Greece’s sovereign debt in the event that Athens’ economic reforms fail to heave the country out of its budget crisis.
Its intentions fly in the face of the European Central Bank, which fears that asset write-downs could trigger a financial crisis at a time when the banking system is still bruised from the last one.
But Berlin reckons it and eurozone partners could avoid such desperate straits if they persuade Athens to offer bondholders a voluntary restructuring with tools used before by the International Monetary Fund.
One idea is to encourage bondholders to swap risky Greek sovereign bonds at about market prices for safer paper guaranteed by the eurozone – akin to “Brady Bonds” issued to South American countries in the 80s." …
……………………………………………..
We've had hints on this for many months now, but of course it doesn't address the various German, French, British banks exposure to Greek and other non-sovereign debt.
The only people who take conspiracy theories seriously are those who look at the evidence, so it's a fair comment from james max. Anyone who wants to become a conspiracy nut should start by looking at the 'gulf of tonkin' incident and it's ramifications, all in the public domain, then look into 'uss liberty' incident after that it's just where you think 'they' would draw the line, if at all, don't prick the bubble.
Thanks for all the links everyone
Ahimsa et al, on justice, shakespeare as usual, says it best:
Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.
Stevie, you won't need to buy a book, unless you are planning on a career change or building your own site?
Just look online –
HTML Tutorial
Ianu, thanks for the link, I will try & get the hang of it. It has the same effect on my brain as algebra once did. I was planning on building my own site for my business, but as I am presently, designer, sculptor, mouldmaker, caster, polisher, general labourer, photographer, graphic designer, reluctant salesman & have to write marketing crap (Forgive me Bill Hicks) I think I'll get someone else to do that.
Just going back to Chatham house & the BBCs use of their experts, their slogan is "Independent thinking on international affairs" Their corporate members pay £12,000 per year for membership, it's some list, I don't suppose there would be any chance of the tail wagging the dog ? According to this crowd the mainstream media will win the propaganda war on the internet.
I did a bit more digging & found this site which lists other examples of bodies who exert corporate influence, such as the International crisis group. I KNOW ITS NOT A PROPER LINK !!!, I will wear a hair shirt & put barbed wire in my underpants as penance, honest.
http://empirestrikesblack.com/2011/04/naming-names-your-real-government/
on the issue of bodies exerting influence, here's a link on those exerting influence on our dear UK gov't. Particularly chilling is the existence of the 'Behavioural Change Unit' within the Cabinet Office…
http://www.ukcolumn.org/articles/quisling-plan-change
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