Grinderman deny plagiarism

Nick Cave responded to claims by an unknown Dundee-based musician that he plagiarised a song on the new Grinderman album at the band's Hammersmith Apollo gig last Friday.

The accusation was made by Frankie Duffy, who says that 'Palaces Of Montezuma' from the 'Grinderman 2' LP is actually 'Grey Man', a song he wrote for his former band Rising Signs in around 2005.

Duffy told Scottish newspaper The Courier in an interview published last Friday morning: "I couldn't believe it when I heard that track. It stood out a mile, it's exactly the same chords and the same hook as the intro to 'Grey Man'. I was never really a Nick Cave fan, but I really like Grinderman, that's a different kettle of fish. But when you hear that track you can totally spot the similarities".

He continued: "I sat down with my guitar and played along with it and it's exactly the same A, E and B chords, which to be fair anybody could use to write a song at any time. But it's the chord progression and when the vocal hook comes in with some ooohs, it's exactly the same, you can just hear it's the same thing".

As for how Cave came to hear and steal the song, Duffy postulated: "It's been up on our MySpace even after Rising Signs split, and I don't know, I can't help thinking that Nick Cave was sitting in his house one night and decided to surf some unsigned bands and saw our site, saw we were split up and thought, 'I'll have that track, nobody will ever know'".

He conceded that it could actually be "a really huge, amazing coincidence", though added: "It's really obvious they sound the same and on the Grinderman album you can hear the band talking and you can hear the words 'grey man' being said, so maybe it's not as much of a coincidence after all".

Duffy went on to say that he was going to get in touch with Cave's management "to see what they've got to say", adding that he wasn't quite sure how to proceed after that, but thought he "might have to sue [Cave] in court".

Certainly by Friday evening Cave had got the impression things were heading down the legal route. On stage at the Hammersmith Apollo, the singer introduced 'Palaces Of Montezuma' by saying: "You may have read that some seventeen year old kid in Dundee is trying to sue me and is claiming to have written this song. That's funny, because I wrote it for my wife".

In fact, Duffy is 29, but I'm not sure you can sue someone for accusing you of being a teenager. Whether the plagiarism case will go any further remains to be seen. With the utmost respect for both musicians, that guitar riff has been used at least twice by 78% of all bands that have ever written more than three songs. And as for where Grinderman can be heard whispering "grey man" on their track, I have no idea.

@'CMU'

Next Liverpool FC manager?

Current standings:

M O’Neill - 2/1

K Dalglish - 6/1

J Mourinho - 7/1

G Hiddink - 12/1

M Pelligrini - 12/1

S McClaren - 14/1

O Hitzfeld - 14/1

L V Gaal - 16/1

M Hughes - 16/1

@'Bettingpress'

Youngsters eh?

The XX - VCR (Four Tet Remix)

  download link

England's greatest soccer teams and American owners, a match made in hell

Debt, Lies, and Cowboys

The Billionaire Test

How to tell if your club got a good one.

"I have a new piece in Slate about the Hicks-Gillett-Glazers tycoon implosion and the fan protests at Liverpool and Manchester United. While I was working on the piece, it occurred to me that in this age of billionaire owners, in which every club, no matter how Portsmouth-y, can be plausibly linked to a gasp-wrenching imaginary stock portfolio, there are really two kinds of billionaires: billionaires and fake billionaires. Billionaires live in space, sleep in chocolate and eat a helicopter as a snack. Fake billionaires drive around looking important on the way to being yelled at by suburban bank managers. Somehow we’ve evolved a culture in which it’s possible to have some contacts, borrow a fortune, and get a profile in the US Airways in-flight magazine, even though at the same moment real billionaires are playing badminton on the moon with movie stars only millionaires have even heard of. It’s a confusing time to be a soccer fan.
The problem, of course, is that, while we’re all getting savvier by the second, the deals are often still so secretive and the facial expressions all so billionaireish that it can be hard to tell a fake billionaire from a real one. When the ousted crown prince of G______ comes sniffing around your club, should you start worrying about Wachovia or let yourself dream of a future of massively overpaying for Craig Bellamy? After some serious thought, and a sandwich, I’ve put together a simple two-minute test that will help you determine whether your club’s new billionaire is pregnant, or still praying every night and crying a little, secretly, in the kitchen, at his best friend’s baby shower.

Question #1: Can you envision your billionaire belonging to a country club?
From the moment Tom Hicks and George Gillett first showed themselves in the stands at Anfield, with their weird, googly-craggly, “I’m trying so hard to look like a billionaire that my eyeballs are popping out of my head at different speeds” faces, it was clear that the only place on earth they could truly be comfortable was in the yacht room at the Sandy Pines Country Club, where they could go around shaking hands and loudly saying other men’s first names. No billionaire should ever belong to a country club, for the same reason that Oprah should never go on The View. Rich people clump together in country clubs for mutual protection and assurance. A real billionaire doesn’t need protection, because he can afford a private security force, and he doesn’t need assurance, because he is a billionaire.

Question #2: Does your billionaire sort of come off as a soap opera character?
Having unlimited wealth allows one’s ego to expand without restraint, like gas in a hot air balloon the size of infinity. Conversely, soap operas foster the pinched intensification of conventional fantasies enforced by profound limitations on one’s ego. The lifestyle of a soap-opera billionaire will revolve around widely accepted status symbols, with minor eccentricites (an eyepatch! weird facial hair!) at the fringes. The eccentricities of the true billionaire are his status symbols. Tom Hicks has a yacht. Roman Abramovich has a yacht with its own submarine. Malcom Glazer used to have a $27-million mansion in Palm Beach. Lakshmi Mittal has a house decorated with marble from the same quarry as the Taj Mahal. You couldn’t set As the World Turns there, because the world only turns if he says it does. It’s not even his only house in London.

Question #3: If your billionaire broke the law, would there be repercussions?
A true billionaire is essentially his own country. He transcends the apparatus of any single state and acts as an independent principle of order, like gravity or a weird idea on Lost. Wherever he goes, he’s three mean Beatles and the world around him is Ringo. If George Gillett woke up with a headache, a slippery flashlight, and a bloody corpse in a Donald Duck costume, he would feel the chill of a man who dreads the movements of justice. With pristine clarity, he would realize that somewhere in the world was a DA who yearned to take him down. If Alisher Usmanov woke up in similar circumstances, he would yawn, yell for his slippers, and note that the day was Tuesday. Why do you think Putin is always expressing fatherly disapproval of Abramovich and inviting him on orca-wrestling expeditions? Because even for Putin—especially for Putin—it’s easier to wrestle an orca than to go against a billionaire.

Question #4: Is your billionaire kind of a prissy killjoy who throws his weight around?
Usmanov may live without fear of legal consequences, but he’s still not a real billionaire, because he’s constantly hopping up and down and pointing one finger and sending his lawyers after bloggers who dare to repeat that he was once imprisoned in Uzbekistan for cooking and eating every chicken in the country. Pale, impoverished bloggers with many children to feed are rhythmically dotting a conveyor belt aimed at prison because Usmanov does not want you to know that he once ate an entire nation’s chicken supply in one sitting. He may not be afraid of the police any more, but he’s afraid of something, even if it’s just public disapproval. The real billionaire isn’t thin-skinned. The real billionaire doesn’t have skin at all, having long since replaced it with a bulletproof carapace that’s indistinguishable from the real thing except in extremely bright sunlight.

Question #5: Is your billionaire worth more than $10 billion?
I’m sorry, but billionaires who are only worth between one and nine billion dollars are pathetic. It’s odd. When a guy is worth $990 million, he’s unimaginably rich, but when he crosses over to $1.1 billion, you can bet that it’s all unpaid taxes and outstanding furniture debts. Somehow or other, it’s just impossible to sustain real billionairehood on less than ten stacks, meaning that the Glazers of this world are always taking out little piggish loans from Manchester United, while Paul Allen literally doesn’t know that the city of Seattle exists. Go by Forbes, go by Wikipedia, whatever, but check out your man’s bottom line. If it’s lodged in the mere ten figures, he is a man without dignity who can’t really afford your club. Condolences.
—
There. Now you can look at your own club’s billionaire and make an informed decision about your populist reign of terror. Please enjoy reading the conclusion of this “blog post.”"

BRIAN PHILIPPS - The Run Of Play

♪♫ Guided By Voices - Tractor Rape Chain

American Rock Royalty reunites for “Classic Lineup” tour!!!
(coming to my city this Saturday night!)

Report Casts World’s Rivers in 'Crisis State'

The world's rivers, the single largest renewable water resource for humans and a crucible of aquatic biodiversity, are in a crisis of ominous proportions, according to a new global analysis.

The report, published today in the journal Nature, is the first to simultaneously account for the effects of such things as pollution, dam building, agricultural runoff, the conversion of wetlands and the introduction of exotic species on the health of the world's rivers.

The resulting portrait of the global riverine environment, according to the scientists who conducted the analysis, is grim. It reveals that nearly 80 percent of the world's human population lives in areas where river waters are highly threatened posing a major threat to human water security and resulting in aquatic environments where thousands of species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction.

"Rivers around the world really are in a crisis state," says Peter B. McIntyre, a senior author of the new study and a professor of zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Limnology.

The Nature report was authored by an international team co-led by Charles J. Vörösmarty of the City University of New York, an expert on global water resources, and McIntyre, an expert on freshwater biodiversity.

Examining the influence of numerous types of threats to water quality and aquatic life across all of the world's river systems, the study is the first to explicitly assess both human water security and biodiversity in parallel. Fresh water is widely regarded as the world's most essential natural resource, underpinning human life and economic development as well as the existence of countless organisms ranging from microscopic life to fish, amphibians, birds and terrestrial animals of all kinds.

Over many millennia, humans have exerted an increasingly pervasive influence on fresh water resources. Rivers, in particular, have attracted humans and have been altered through damming, irrigation and other agricultural and engineering practices since the advent of civilization. In recent times, chemical pollution, burgeoning human populations, and the accidental as well as purposeful global redistribution of plants, fish, and other animal species have had far-reaching effects on rivers and their aquatic inhabitants.

"Flowing rivers represent the largest single renewable water resource for humans," notes Vörösmarty. "What we've discovered is that when you map out these many sources of threat, you see a fully global syndrome of river degradation."

What jumps out, say McIntyre and Vörösmarty, is that rivers in different parts of the world are subject to similar types of stresses, such things as agricultural intensification, industrial development, river habitat modification and other factors. Compounding the problem is that some of the negative influences on rivers arrive in indirect ways. Mercury pollution, for example, is a byproduct of electricity generation at coal-fired power plants and pollutes surface water via the atmosphere.

"We find a real stew of chemicals flowing through our waterways," explains Vörösmarty, noting that the study represents a state-of-the-art summary, yet was unable to account for such things as threats from mining, the growing number of pharmaceuticals found in surface water and the synergistic effects of all the stresses affecting rivers.

"And what we're doing is treating the symptoms of a larger problem," Vörösmarty explains. "We know it is far more cost effective to protect these water systems in the first place. So the current emphasis on treating the symptoms rather than the underlying causes makes little sense from a water security standpoint or a biodiversity standpoint, or for that matter an economic standpoint."...

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Terry Devitt @'USNews'

Field of screams - Transgenic crops’ built-in pesticide found to be contaminating waterways

One of the main arguments offered in support of the wide use of genetically engineered crops is that they reduce overall pesticide use. This is particularly the case with Monsanto's "Bt" line of corn, soy, and cotton seeds, which are able to produce their own pesticide, a "natural" toxin from genes of the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis. Ironically, commercial pesticide derived from Bt also happens to be one of the only chemical pesticides approved for use in organic agriculture, because it's produced through a biological process.

Biotechnology companies thus consider Bt seeds some of their most "eco-friendly" products. In theory, farmers don't have to spray pesticide as much or as often on these crops, and therefore pesticide runoff into waterways is much less of a concern. Well, after years of denial, Monsanto finally admitted recently that superbugs, or pests that have evolved to be able to eat the Bt crops, are a real and growing concern. And now, researchers at the University of Notre Dame have shown that the Bt from genetically engineered maize is polluting waterways in Indiana (the study area). They found Bt toxin in almost 25 percent of streams they tested, and all the streams that tested positive were within 1,500 feet from a cornfield.

Bt gets into streams and rivers by leaching out of crop debris left on fields through the now-ubiquitous industrial "no-till" farming technique, in which fields aren't plowed after harvest so as to prevent soil erosion. As a result, leaves and stalks get washed into streams through large-scale farms' irrigation canals: the Notre Dame scientists found such debris in almost 90 percent of streams near cornfields. And while the Bt levels detected weren't shockingly high, the tests were performed six months after harvest. The debris had been sitting in the streams and leaching Bt pesticide into the water for quite a while.

The fun part? No one has any idea yet of the effects of long-term, low-dose exposure to Bt on fish and wildlife. Perhaps it's high time somebody did a study on that since, as the researchers dryly observed, the presence of Bt toxin "may be a more common occurrence in watersheds draining maize-growing regions than previously recognized." Apparently.

So. Not only do genetically engineered crops have worse yields than conventionally bred crops, cost more, lead to pesticide resistance, contaminate other plants with their transgenes, possibly cause allergies and even organ damage, but now we also learn that the plants themselves are possibly poisonous to the environment.

These kinds of genetically engineered seeds keep being touted as the only way we're going to feed the world. Isn't it about time we started investing in less toxic alternatives?

Tom Laskaway@'grist'

Surveillance State: Government Snooping, Prying, and Informing Worse Than You Think

The dried blood on the concrete floor is there for all to see, a stain forever marking the spot on a Memphis motel balcony where Martin Luther King, Jr. lay mortally wounded by a sniper’s bullet.

It is a stark and ghostly image speaking to the sharp pain of absence. King is gone. His aides are gone. Only the stain remains. What now?

That image is, of course, a photograph taken by Ernest C. Withers, Memphis born and bred, and known as the photographer of the civil rights movement. He was there at the Lorraine Motel, as he had been at so many other critical places, recording iconic images of those tumultuous years.

In addition to photographing moments large and small in the struggle for black civil rights in the South, Withers had another job. He was an informer for the FBI, passing along information on the doings of King, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Ben Hooks, and other leaders of the movement. He reported on meetings he attended as a photographer, welcomed in by those he knew so intimately. He passed along photos of events and gatherings to his handler, Special Agent William H. Lawrence of the FBI’s Memphis office. He named names and sketched out plans.

In an exhaustive recent report, the Memphis Commercial Appeal detailed Withers’s undercover activities, provoking a pained and complex response from the many who knew him and were involved in the civil rights movement. His family simply refuses to believe that the paper’s report could be accurate. On the other hand, Andrew Young, with King during those last moments, accepts Withers’s career as an informant, saying it just doesn’t bother him. Civil rights leaders, including King, viewed Withers as crucial to the movement’s struggle to portray itself accurately in Jet, Ebony, and other black journals. In that Withers was successful -- and the rest, Young suggests, doesn’t matter. Besides, he told the Commercial Appeal, they had nothing to hide. “I don't think Dr. King would have minded him making a little money on the side.”

Activist and comedian Dick Gregory, hearing Young’s comments, turned on his old comrade. “We are talking about a guy hired by the FBI to destroy us and the fact that Andy could say that means there must be a deep hatred down inside of him,” he said. “If he feels that way about King only God knows what he feels about the rest of us.”

This is the way it is with informers, so useful to reckless law enforcement authorities and employed by the tens of thousands as the secret shock troops of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Surveillance has multiple uses, not the least of which is to sow mistrust, which in turn eats at the cohesion of families, social and political movements, and ultimately the fabric of community itself...

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Stephan Salisbury @'AlterNet'

You just don't get it America do you?

More US States Allowing Guns in Bars and Restaurants

The Ultimate Guide to Rapper Names

(Click to enlarge)

@'Fast Design Co.'

Warehouse Trax Mix - Carl Taylor

Tracklist:

Todd Terry - Keep On Jumpin (Original Edit)
Maurice - This is Acid (K and T mix)
Carl Taylor – Warehouse Trax – j1
Adonis – No Way Back
DJ Sneak - Acid Digestion
Phuture - Acid Trax
Mike Denhurt - Black Smoke
Andy Vaz - Bygone Times (Trusme Remix)
The Black Dog CCTV Nation Redshape (Analog Mix)
Carl Taylor – warehouse trax – O19
Dave Clarke – Gonk
David Holmes VS Alter Ego – The Evil Needle
Carl Taylor – Warehouse Trax – DS27
LFO – Freak
Motor - Tete En Plastique
Dimitri Andreas - Tiger (James Ruskin Blueprint Mix)
Speedy J - Edlx_(Toy)
Phil Weeks - We The Brand
Fix - Dope Computer (Original Mix)
Radio Slave - Ego Trippin (Original)
joel Alter- Soul Clap (Savas Pascalidis Edit)
Richard Belson – Drums Go – (Carl Taylor rmx)
Seiji - Elevator (Original Mix)
Carl Taylor – Warehouse Trax – j11
Afro Jack - Pacha On Acid - Original Mix
Daft Punk – Rock n Roll
Carl Taylor – Warehouse Trax – ds28
Mr Lee – Pump Up London
Carl Taylor – Warehouse Trax – ds26

Download

Radio: Jon Savage – Savage Music 007 / Motorik

If you enjoy the cosmic/kraut/motorik sound, or elektronische musik as Soul Jazz recently called it, then this radio show is for you. Jon Savage, our presenter, has interviewed many of the main players within the scene and here presents a show focusing on the sound, his love of it and interviewing the likes of Conny Plank. If you haven’t listened to any of the Savage radio shows this is a fine place to start.

Download 

@'Test Pressing'

Source claims Andy Coulson knew about phone hacking

...Tabloids, Tories and Telephone Hacking is being screened on Channel 4 tonight at 8pm. Hosted by Peter Oborne, the programme says that it “investigates the paper’s working relationship with the police and claims of undue influence together with claims of intimidation against politicians, and explores the broader links between News International and the current government”.

Dominic Ponsford @'PressGazette'

redhalf Actors and musicians join Hollywood producer to record Liverpool FC protest film http://ow.ly/19heSH 2 minutes ago via HootSuite

Is There Any Evidence for the 'Porn-Addicted Brain'?

Is There Any Evidence for the 'Porn-Addicted Brain'? 

Ahmadinejad calls for US leaders to be 'buried'

Two Israeli troops guilty of using human shield in Gaza

An Israeli military court has convicted two Israeli soldiers for using a Palestinian child as a human shield during an offensive in Gaza in 2009.

The soldiers were found guilty of reckless endangerment and conduct unbecoming for forcing the nine-year-old boy to check suspected booby-traps.

It is reportedly the first such conviction in Israel - where the use of civilians as human shields is banned.

The sentencing will be decided at a later date, the court said.

No protection

On Sunday, the southern command military court found the two Israeli soldiers guilty of "exceeding their authority to the point of endangering life" and conduct unbecoming in the incident in Gaza City's suburb of Tel al-Hawa on 15 January 2009.

A summary of the verdict said that - when rounding up residents of Tel al-Hawa - the soldiers came across bags in a home and ordered the Palestinian boy to search for suspected booby-traps.

"The boy, who feared for his fate and was under the stress of the situation, wet his pants," the three-judge panel wrote in the summary of the verdict.

"The court has noted that, unlike the soldiers, the child was, naturally, bereft of any form of protection."

However, the court acknowledged that at the time the soldiers - whose names have not been released - had been under "difficult and dangerous conditions".

The bags that the boy - identified only as Majd R - had checked did not have any hidden explosives and the child was later returned to his family unharmed.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive in December 2008, saying it was aimed at halting Palestinian rocket attacks from the territory controlled by militant Hamas movement.

Some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed during the 22-day fighting.

Last year's report by UN investigator Richard Goldstone accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes during the fighting.

@'BBC'

David Byrne on Detroit

Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck

Our first date was the last day of his life

Blackpool???

@'Liverpool Daily Post'

Liverpool FC 1 Blackpool 2 - Reds season hit by latest embarassment

Partially Buried - A Burial Mix

  
Burial - Untitled
Burial - Exit Wounds
Burial & Breakage - Vial
Jamie Woon - Wayfaring Stranger (Burial Remix)
Burial - Untrue
Bloc Party - Where is Home? (Burial Remix)
Burial - Distant Lights
Burial - Ghost Hardware
Burial - Archangel
Burial - Nite Train
Burial - Near Dark
Burial - South London Boroughs
Burial - Southern Comfort
Burial - U Hurt Me
Burial & Goldie - Deity
Burial - Unite
Blackdown - Crackle Blues (Burial Remix)
Burial - Fostercare
Burial - Endorphin
Burial - Night Bus
Burial - In McDonalds

download link

via murdelta

♪♫ John Martyn - One World (OGWT 1977)

UK Soundmap

What does Britain sound like?

Join the British Library in creating the first nationwide sound map.

Take part by publishing recordings of your surroundings using the free AudioBoo app for iPhone or Android smartphones or a web browser.

When uploading soundscape recordings via Audioboo, add the tag 'uksm' and they'll appear on the SoundMap

Visit the SoundMap and enjoy listening to sounds.

HERE

Fugn brilliant!

The best use of King Crimson since King Crimson!!!

Smoking #83

@'Black&WTF'

(Thanx Kristy!)

Psych Meds In Jails

A ground-breaking, year-long investigation by Youth Today has uncovered ample evidence that many youths incarcerated in American juvenile facilities are getting potent anti-psychotic drugs intended for bipolar or schizophrenic patients, even when they have not been diagnosed with either disorder.

The findings are derived from records of state juvenile systems that provided sufficiently detailed information on their use of these anti-psychotics – called “atypicals.” Only 16 states responded to a nationwide survey by Youth Today, meaning that a majority of states either would not or could not demonstrate that they were even monitoring the use of these medications on incarcerated juveniles.

The atypical anti-psychotics were being used to treat a wide variety of diagnoses, including intermittent explosive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and even the more common attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.

Critics believe most of these diagnoses are simply a cover for the fact that prisons now use drugs as a substitute for banned physical restraints that once were used on juveniles who aggressively acted out.

“Fifty years ago, we were tying kids up with leather straps, but now that offends people, so instead we drug them,” says Robert Jacobs, a former Florida psychologist and lawyer who now practices psychology in Australia. “We cover it up with some justification that there is some medical reason, which there is not.”...

Continue reading

John Kelly @'Youth Today'

♪♫ Gypsy & The Cat - Time To Wander

   

(MOPP Remix)

Medicalising Melancholy

Rock Arena: John Cale interviewed by Suzanne Dowling 1986

Aaah Suzanne. Aaah John!

I actually had just arrived in Australia when I went to see John Cale at The Universal Theatre (long since gone...) in Fitzroy on this tour. 

It was strange as he sang "...she came in from Amsterdam, the change has done her well" at the opening of the set as that was where I had previously lived.

I still have a nice recording of this show somewhere in a storage shed in deepest, darkest Seaford!

HA!

domknight Someone just stole an hour out of my life. I'd better get it back in six months or else.

BTW

Was not such a great day in Melb today!

File under: Fugn Tories!

Funny that!!!

Paul Kelly @ Basement Discs yesterday

(Photos: TimN)

Was a great day here in sunny Melbourne yesterday. 
Got my tickets for the Leonard Cohen gig at Hanging Rock with Paul Kelly supporting and then trooped off to the city to see a little lunchtime session with PK reading and performing  from his new A-Z collection down at Basement Discs, which I have never seen so packed for one of their instore gigs. 
 A much more eloquent review
HERE

The "legal blackmail" business: inside a P2P settlement factory

Read Hollywood producer Mike Jeffries open letter to Tom Hicks [extract]

So Tom Hicks wants to refinance and hang on to LFC. Hasn’t he got the message?

Doesn’t he know he has become the most despised person on Merseyside since Kelvin f***ing McKenzie? Doesn’t he realise the damage he’s doing to our club?

Just look at what he’s been doing:

•He promised that the acquisition of LFC would not be a Glazer-Style LBO. It ended up being as bad – if not worse – with all the debt being loaded onto the club’s balance sheet. The net result is that the club is now up to its ears in debt. And it could get worse!

•He’s been behind a policy to sell many top players and replace them with (significantly) cheaper alternatives. This, despite promises of “Snoogy Doogy” and “Big Summer 2010”.

•Despite promises made to the contrary, he’s failed to start work on a new stadium – despite circa $100M being spent on Architect fees.

•He undermined Rafa Benitez by (scandalously) having public discussions with a possible successor, Jurgen Klinsmann.

•He resorted to nepotism and appointed his son to the Board of Directors, who soon had to resign after sending an email to a fan in which he wrote: “Blow me f**k face”.

•He’s treated the King with sheer disrespect. Apparently he has “bigger things” in mind for KD than being Manager of LFC.

•He’s embarrassed the hell out of us in the media (and amongst our peers) with endless reports of trying (unsuccessfully) to shop the club like a clapped-out second-hand car – all over the world from Hong Kong to India, and from Saudi Arabia to the good old USA. Even to Syria! Everyone’s said no. Because of his ridiculous valuation(s).

The above list of ‘Crimes Against LFC’ is pretty shocking. And it’s why we are now languishing above the relegation zone. And out of the Carling Cup (to fourth Division Northampton… @ home!). And with no Champions League football. And with not much likelihood of it next season.

But Tom Hicks doesn’t care. By trying to refinance – instead of showing some class and cutting a reasonable deal with someone and cutting his losses - he is saying “f**k you”.

So what should we say in reply?

“ENOUGH!”

The only way we – as fans and stakeholders – can get him to change his arrogant mindset is to shame him and embarrass him in front of his family, friends, business associates, investors, and political contacts etc. And of course in the media. Especially in the USA. Especially in Texas!

He doesn’t give a s**t what we do in Liverpool….

We have to take this to him in America!

Therefore, I just flew up from Cape Town last night to come to Liverpool to make a short film here this weekend in which Liverpool fans and stakeholders will tell Tom Hicks – and the world! - exactly what they think of him.

And when friends of Tom Hicks see it, they will either start asking him some very painful questions, or they’ll no longer take his calls. We are going to shame him.

Liverpool fans everywhere are coming together this weekend with LOADS of local celebs, former players, high profile Redmen, actors, musicians, politicians and everyone who cares about our unique football club to send a simple, powerful and definitive message to Tom Hicks: GET OUT OF OUR CLUB.

But we want the fans to be included too. So if YOU want to come along and tell Tom Hicks what you think of him, we will be filming on Saturday from 10.00am – 6.00pm at the Hope Street Hotel in Liverpool. Please form an orderly queue and be prepared for a wait....

And we'll be filming on Sunday too around the ground and in the pubs.

Our aim is to work night and day so that we can have the film uploaded onto YouTube by Tuesday and we would like the fans to then email the URL to their entire address books. Spread the word! To the media. To the financial community. To everyone. To the world!

Imagine if we can get a MILLION HITS on YouTube! If we achieve that, then we can rest assured that everyone who counts will know that Tom Hicks is utterly despised. And more importantly, Tom Hicks will know….

Walk on Tom. Jog on Tom. We are LIVERPOOL!!!

Mike Jefferies

Martyn - Left Hander/Shook Up