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Lawdamercy!

Nine-point deduction could scupper Liverpool takeover

CNN Poll: Was Bush better president than Obama?

...and the answer is...

Dalglish says:

These have been depressing times at Anfield. It is never nice when your football club are making as many headlines on the front pages as the back.

This week looks set to be huge for Liverpool but there is still a feeling of uncertainty because nobody can guarantee what is going to happen next.

I feel particularly for the fans, who must find it difficult to know which way to turn. I am sure the majority of them are quite happy that the club might be sold but what they really want is to see Liverpool move onwards and upwards from here.

Not happy: Liverpool fans show their frustration

Let's hope we can and that things work out. Liverpool is usually a glass half-full kind of city, and the Kop are renowned throughout the world for their humour and spirit.

But the turbulent three years under Tom Hicks and George Gillett have had an effect.

It is essential for any potential new owners to assure the supporters they have a long-term plan for the club that will see the club's debt problem resolved, investment made for new players and a solution found where Liverpool's match-day revenues increase either at an enlarged Anfield or a new stadium.

Bill Shankly talked about Liverpool being a 'bastion of invincibility', he couldn't have believed one day people would be talking about Liverpool in the same breath as administration, High Court cases and ownership issues.

Martin Broughton, Ian Ayre and Christian Purslow have got the responsibility of trying to do the right thing for the club and we must wish them well.

Fans stop me in the street and ask me what is going to happen. I can't give them a precise answer but I do know this club's DNA will ensure they survive and are successful in the future.

Just don't expect the scepticism from supporters to disappear overnight, not after the journey they've been on.

Liverpool will always be big news given the success and history of the club.

Once this episode is over, I hope the 'news' will all be about football.

@'Daily Mail'

Gorillaz Live @ Letterman

45 minutes
guests: De La Soul

The pirate's parrot

Remember...

 It
ain't 
piracy unless
there is a parrot involved 
!!!

Mine all mine...

billybragg #edl want same thing as 9/11 terrorists - violent conflict between Islam and the west

Mark E. Smith's fave book you know...

Ridley Scott Returns To Philip K Dick 28 Years After Directing ‘Blade Runner’

♪♫ Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill

Iggy Pop Talks Shelved Biopic, Lindsay Lohan

Speaking to Australia’s Triple J Radio recently, Iggy Pop discussed a biopic that was in the works with Elijah Wood attached to star as the Godfather of Punk. Suffice to say, the project remains indefinitely shelved as Pop has said on multiple occasions that he isn’t on board to participate in an extensive promo campaign (i.e. “jump out of cakes and do promotional things”). While Pop supports a “very artistic” Stooges documentary helmed by friend and past collaborator Jim Jarmusch, he doesn’t mince words regarding his interest in a film solely about his life: “They can wait for me to be dead.” And now for provocative Iggy quote #163,721:

If somebody did want to make a biopic of me I think they should get Lindsay Lohan actually. She looks like me and she’s the only one with enough attitude too. They could tape her boobs up or something. She’s been in jail at the right age and everything so I thought she could do it.

@'TwentyFourBit'

(Thanx JA!) 

Why Do Some Songs Fade Out At The End?

The answer is

HERE

For Women, It Pays to Be Very Thin

 

Don't Stick It In

ggreenwald As the Obama DOJ will undoubtedly argue, whatever happened to this person is a state secret that no court can review: http://is.gd/fPvdG less than 10 seconds ago via web

♪♫ Tricky - Murder Weapon

Drug users are turning to legal highs - report

Young adults are turning to so-called legal highs as they seek alternatives to other drugs, according to experts.

The National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse report warned the drugs had emerged as an alternative to the "low quality" of other substances.

Over the past years, the number seeking help for cocaine, crack cocaine and heroin use all fell.

But this was largely down to large reductions in the under 25 age group, as the number of over 40s actually increased.

The NTA believes this reflects the fact the "Trainspotting" generation who got hooked in the 1980s are now ageing and increasingly developing problems linked to their sustained drug use.

Treatment

The findings also chime with British Crime Survey figures which show overall drugs use has been steadily falling in recent years.

Less than 1% of the population use the most harmful drugs - crack cocaine and heroin.

The NTA figures showed that over the past year the number of people needing treatment for cocaine fell by 15% to 7,304, for crack cocaine by 17% to 3,686 and for crack and heroin together by 16% to 21,341.

This is almost entirely due to large falls in the under 25s seeking treatment as the over 40s have been rising in recent years.

For example, the number of over 40s being treated for crack cocaine or heroin use has risen by a third over the last four years.

The report, compiled with the help of Glasgow University, warned there was some anecdotal evidence of a move towards synthetic compounds known as legal highs, such as mephedrone, among younger age groups.

However, the NTA said it had yet to see many people wanting treatment for these, although it warned that could happen in time.

Peter Kelsey, of Lifeline Redcar and Cleveland, which helps drug users, said: "People hear the word legal and they think safe. Yet it's anything but.

"We're seeing a big rise in people coming to use because of legal highs, which we think may be down to the poor quality and price of coke and the legal aspect."

The government has already responded to the use of so-called legal highs.

Mephedrone - also known as Meow, Bubbles and M-Cat - was banned and made a class B drug in April.

The Home Office has also announced plans for year-long bans that could be introduced quickly if new drugs take off.

NTA chief executive Paul Hayes said the agency now had to "refocus" the treatment system in response to these trends.

@'BBC'

Just FUCK OFF Hicks...

Hicks set to fight Liverpool sale to NESV in High Court 

 However:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4746910/LFC%20company%20articles.pdf

"Appointment and Retirement of Directors

81. (a) Each director appointed to the office of chairman of the board of directors of the Company may appoint any person as director of the Company and may remove and director (other than George N. Gillett Jnr and/or Thomas O Hicks). Any appointment or removal shall be made in writing and signed by the then current chairman."

The Current chairman being Martin Broughton.

The timing of this deal being made known is also important as 10 days are required to change the structure of the board so if Hicks found a way to do so he'd still run out of time before the RBS loan repayment deadline kicked in. The deal was made known 9 days before that deadline.

This was followed by a comment from a Guardian writer:

That 81a) is exactly the paragraph in Liverpool's articles of association which Broughton is relying on. They were changed on May 28, which has to be done with the approval of 75% of a company's shareholders, which means for them to be valid, Hicks and Gillett had to approve them.

Broughton insisted on that as a condition of taking over - that only he has the right to change directors. That meant he, Purslow and Ayre would always have a majority on the board.

He is also saying, confirmed by RBS yesterday, that Hicks and Gillette signed undertakings with the bank to commit to a sale and not do anything to frustrate "best endeavours" to find a buyer.

Broughton will say in court that he and the board clearly made "best endeavours" because they had a team at Barclays Capital working full time on it, and everybody in the world has known Liverpool is for sale. Throughout the whole search, this US consortium and the other, unnamed Asian one, were the only solid ones which came through, with proof of funds and a genuine commitment to buy.

Despite the brief and not very clear statement from Hicks' US-based spokesman yesterday, it is not at all clear what he is going to argue against that. Possibly claiming that he never approved the articles of association change - even though they require the approval of shareholders. Perhaps that he never actually gave those undertakings to the bank, or that Broughton's efforts do not add up to "best endeavours."

None of which is exactly where he promised Liverpool would be when he and Gillett walked on to the Anfield turf in February 2007 after buying the club with their borrowed money, promising - in their own official offer document:

"To strive to ensure the club is in the best position possible to achieve sustained on pitch success and long term stability. To do everything in their power to uphold the chierished traditions and contrinue to enhance the reputation of the club."

HERE

Future of Music 2010: Copyright czar outlines file-sharing agenda at odds with how many Americans consume music

Why Are We Underusing A Cure For Drug Overdose?

Girlz With Guitarz # 6 ('ooer-missus!')

REpost: Why I don't go out much...(still!)

GREAT NEWS FOLKS

...speaking to a philosophy student earlier who brought up Peter Singer. "Vegetarian?" I asked, yes she said. Wear leather shoes I asked "Only second hand" she replied!

THE COW DOESN'T GET KILLED TWICE!

Kurt Albert RIP

Kurt Albert in lederhosen, holding a stein of beer while dangling from a precipice!!!

Obituary

♪♫ Die Antwoord - Evil Boy

Girlz With Gunz # 130

DAVE STEVENS

via goldenagecomicbookstories

FOR MONA!

Giovanni Bortolani - Fake Too Fake

via

Backyard astronomer discovers supernova

The signs of the major celestial event, a colossal detonation, flashed across the universe for millions of years before reaching the first person on earth to become aware of it: a man in a shed in Dublin.

The achievement of an amateur star-watcher in spotting a supernova, one of the most dramatic events of the heavens, has been hailed as "the biggest thing ever discovered in Irish astronomy". A supernova is a cataclysmic explosion during which a star self-destructs with such force it destroys nearby suns and planets. They are spotted reasonably frequently from Earth, but this is the first ever identified from Ireland. Dave Grennan, a 39-year-old software developer who is a committed watcher of the skies, devotes many hours to astronomy.

He said it was "mind-boggling" to be the first person to witness something which happened in the time of the dinosaurs. "We are watching an event as it is unfolding, yet that event happened nearly 300 million years ago," he said. The time-lag is on a scale almost as difficult to comprehend as Ireland's astronomical debt. The far-away star has been designated "2010ik" after its supernova status was confirmed this week by international astronomy bodies.

Mr Grennan said: "I was going to wrap things up and go to bed, and then I thought, 'Dave, you don't make discoveries in bed – at least not those sort of discoveries'." He said his wife, Carol, was "more excited about this discovery than I was", adding with a certain inevitability: "She was over the moon." A former chairman of Astronomy Ireland, Mr Grennan made his discovery while poring over photographs he had taken of a galaxy called UGC 112 from his compact but well-equipped backyard observatory. The signs were tiny but his long experience helped him spot them – he has been interested in astronomy since he was a boy.

He has examined thousands of galaxies over the past decade, and in recent years has also identified two asteroids. "I find myself wondering if there were some poor souls living on planets surrounding the star when it exploded," he said. "We'll never know."

David Moore, chairman of Astronomy Ireland, said it was an unusual supernova which would interest scientists worldwide. "We could not find words to explain it, I've been waiting for this to happen for decades," he said.

The star will be visible through powerful telescopes for up to three months.

David McKittrick @'The Independent'

October 16th: International day of Action against Agribusiness and Monsanto

On the occasion of the meeting of the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan, and to mark World Food Day on October 16, 2010, La Via Campesina calls for actions around the world to denounce the role of agribusinesses such as Monsanto and their destruction and corporatization of biodiversity and life.

Even though the UN declared 2010 the International year of Biodiversity, the CBD is meeting at a time of unprecedented biodiversity destruction. As well as animals, insects and birds, the world is also seeing the disappearance of thousands of plant varieties as agribusiness destroys, contaminates and privatizes the World Heritage stored inside the seeds and plants nurtured by generations of farmers over thousands of years of agriculture on Earth. Since 1900, approximately 90% of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost from farmer's fields. Biodiversity is also endangered by land-grabbing and the displacement of communities who are actually protecting biodiversity.

Agribusiness corporations are attempting to monopolize seeds through the use of hybrid seeds, patents and laws that make farmers' seeds illegal. Intellectual property rights systems that are upheld or enforced by institutions such as WTO or TRIPS are putting nature into private hands. Monsanto has become a true giant – the company owns almost a quarter of the patented seed market worldwide, and keeps taking over seeds companies particularly in Europe. The top ten biggest companies control almost 70% of the world's seeds. The company is now entering the “aid business”, selling its seeds in Africa with the Bill Gates Foundation through the “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)”.

Not only do the TNCs sell seeds, they also provide toxic chemicals with devastating effects. Huge monocultures treated with cocktails of agrochemicals will further destroy the world's biodiversity as well as peasant communities. In the world of Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and others, there is no space for biodiversity, just uniformity, biotechnology and profit.

Within the decision making spaces on climate change, agribusiness promotes aggressively technologies that destroy biodiversity such as transgenic trees plantations or GM seeds, solutions which are fasly presented as better adapted to the new climate.

La Via Campesina knows that the future of our planet depends on our ability to protect, nurture and promote agro biodiversity. We, peasant men and women propose to develop the richness and diversity of our farms, plant varieties, cultures and traditions. Seeds are part of the World Heritage and should remain into public and community-based use, not private ownership.

It is the model of peasant agriculture in its diversity that will allow us to adapt to the demographic and climatic changes which are already upon us.

As we confront the agribusinesses in our fields through promoting our alternatives, we refuse to recognize their “rights” as owners of the planet's biodiversity and we will also confront them through political actions in the coming weeks, at the FAO, the CBD and the UN Climate Talks (UNFCCC).

We call for Actions worldwide around October 16th to protect biodiversity and confront transnational corporations such as Monsanto.

HERE

IFC Finalizes €100 Million Deal to Push Water Privatization

The International Finance Corporation, the private investment arm of the World Bank, quietly finalized its €100 million investment in a corporation poised to expand water privatization across Eastern Europe at the exact moment when the same approach is exploding in failure in the Philippines and elsewhere."The IFC's attempt to simply let this deal sneak onto the books is telling, considering the size and profile of the investment," says Joby Gelbspan, senior Program coordinator for Corporate Accountability International, a 33-year-old corporate watchdog organization. "The IFC may be growing less proud of an investment in water privatization when, at this very moment, the same approach in the Philippines is resulting in protests, water shortages and a deepening political crisis there."

The IFC announced June 2 its intention to double its 2009 investment proposal and make a €100 million equity investment in Veolia Voda, the Eastern European subsidiary of the world's largest private water corporation. The investment was quietly transferred to Veolia Voda on June 24, the corporation confirmed to Gelbspan, though no news release was issued by either Veolia or the World Bank. Traditionally, months pass between announcement of the IFC's intention to make such an investment and the deal's execution.

The investment reflects a belief among World Bank institutions that creating access to safe drinking water in the developing world requires greater corporate control of water. By taking such a large ownership stake in Veolia Voda, however, critics charge that the IFC has created for itself a troubling financial incentive to ignore evidence that their belief is misplaced.

Despite repeated affirmations by the United Nations that access to safe water is a fundamental human right, indeed the "precursor to all other human rights," nearly a billion people still lack access to this essential resource.

A similar equity investment by the IFC in a Veolia competitor operating in the Philippines produced disastrous results for people living in and around Manila, Gelbspan says, who now face alarming water shortages. The seeds of this summer's crisis there were planted with the shift to water privatization, she says - a mistake the IFC is repeating with its investment in Veolia Voda. Numerous spokespeople in the Philippines, from water justice activists and economists to government and church officials, have spoken publicly this summer about the causal relationship between privatization and lack of sufficient water access.

"For these big water corporations, it's all profit and few pipes," Gelbspan says. "Veolia Voda has made clear it will not be investing in infrastructure to improve water access in Eastern Europe. Rather, it plans to squeeze out profits in the operation and maintenance of water systems by tightening up billing and downsizing staff. How this will bring clean drinking water reliably to more people is a mystery."

@'Common Dreams'

The Tea-Partiers: Christianists, Not Libertarians

George Gillett and Tom Hicks stand to lose £144m from Liverpool sale

♪♫ The Bug - Catch A Fire

The Bug - Skeng (Autechre Dub)

(click on the arrow symbol for download)

via disquiet

Steve Albini GQ Interview

“I'm not really interested in participating in mainstream culture. Participating in the mainstream music business is, to me, like getting involved in a racket. There's no way you can get involved in a racket and not someway be filthied by it. You're another catalog item, another name on the list of people who are collaborating with the enemy. But by the same token I don't know what circumstances every other band is in and what they feel forces their hand at some point. I know some bands feel like they have the choice between working with someone at the independent level who they think is inept, or working with someone in the mainstream—who may also be inept, but at the very least may give them some money. That's the kind of choice I never want to have to make for myself. If I had been approached by a big record label when I was eighteen years old, after I had just made my first demo—that happens quite often now, bands get approached quite young—I have no doubt whatsoever I would have signed the first thing anybody waggled in front of my nose. I can't fault someone who operates out of ignorance and gets involved with a corrupt industry. They literally don't know any better. I can fault the people who put them in that position—agents, lawyers, music business professionals who put him in a position of signing away the next twenty years of his life. But the kid who's in those circumstances, I can't really cast any judgment.”

Steve Albini@'GQ'

Jewish group lashes out at Pink Floyd star's 'anti-Semitic' imagery

Roger Waters' performances of 'Goodbye Blue Sky' accompanied by images of planes dropping bombs in the shape of Stars of David and dollar signs, says ADL.
The Anti-Defamation League has lashed out at rock star Roger Waters, claiming imagery used in his latest tour is anti-Semitic.

Waters is a vocal critic of Israel's policies and his 2010-2011 'The Wall Live' Tour that takes aim at Israel’s West Bank security fence.
While Waters had every right to express his political views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through his music and stagecraft, the images he has chosen had crossed a line into anti-Semitism, Foxman said.

We wish that Waters had chosen some other way to convey his political views without playing into and dredging up the worst age-old anti-Semitic stereotype about Jews and their supposed obsession with making money," he said.

Waters used a 2009 tour of Israel to highlight his criticism of Israel's controversial barrier surrounding the West Bank, calling it an “awful thing” amounting to a land grab and openly hoping that “it was destroyed soon.”
@'Haaretz'

Roger Water's Reply at His Website:
In a recent news item on Foxnews/online, subsequently abridged in The London Evening Standard, Abraham Foxman, head of the ADL,(Anti Defamation League) in the USA, accuses my new production of "The Wall" and by implication me, of anti-Semitism. A serious charge that demands a response. Had Mr Foxman come to my show before passing judgement and commenting publicly he might, I hope, have held his peace, as there is no anti Semitism in "The Wall" show. The song to which he refers, "Goodbye Blue Sky", describes how ordinary people, military and civilians alike, suffer trauma in the aftermath of war. The visuals that accompany the song show waves of B52 bombers dropping various symbols from bomb bays on a war ravaged landscape. The symbols are: in no particular order, a Crucifix, a Hammer and Sickle, a Star of David, A Crescent and Star, a Mercedes sign, a Dollar sign, and a Shell Oil sign. Mr Foxman's concern was that potentially the juxtoposition of a Star of David and a Dollar sign might incite hatred of Jews. Contrary to Mr Foxman's assertion, there are no hidden meanings in the order or juxtaposition of these symbols. The point I am trying to make in the song is that the bombardment we are all subject to by conflicting religious, political, and economic ideologies only encourages us to turn against one another, and I mourn the concommitant loss of life.
In so far as The Wall has a political message it is to seek to illuminate our condition, and find new ways to encourage peace and understanding, particularly in the Middle East.
Incidentally, being from England, I had never heard of the ADL until today, but I have googled them and I see from their mission statement of 1913 that their brief is not only to defend the Jewish people from defamation, but also, and I quote, " to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens". Perhaps we should all focus on that lofty ideal and stop cowering in our corners throwing stones at one another.

"The visuals that accompany the song show waves of B52 bombers dropping various symbols from bomb bays on a war ravaged landscape. The symbols are: in no particular order, a Crucifix, a Hammer and Sickle, a Star of David, A Crescent and Star, a Mercedes sign, a Dollar sign, and a Shell Oil sign." No mention of the other symbols used in the concert visuals by the ADL, symbols a number of groups might take offence at, and a timely reminder in Roger's response from the mission statement of the ADL," to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens", if only their mission included Palestinians in the equation, it seems their selective choice of images presented is only equalled by their selective choice of citizens eligible for just and fair treatment and an end to unjust and unfair discrimination.

Karam's Story - Confiscating Childhood in the Occupied Territories

Thirteen is the age for a lot of things; it carries a certain significance for every boy that reaches that age with all the promises that life has to offer; it's a time when boys get their first bike, enjoy their favorite video games, make it into the school's football squad, it's a time when boys begin to marvel at and appreciate the mysteries of life pre-adulthood, and for some; it's even a time when they experience their first innocent crush; but if you're a thirteen year old boy in occupied Palestine; you're placed under house arrest by the Israeli authorities.
Thirteen year old Palestinian boy; Karam Khaled Da'nah was sentenced by an Israeli court to five months of mandatory house arrest in his uncle's house –away from his parents and siblings- and a 2,000 shekel bail after a shameful charade that isn't very well masquerading as a court hearing last Tuesday September 28th 2010, in complete disregard for anything even resembling human rights (or even common human decency for that matter); Karam was first arrested on the 20th of September right in front of his school in the old city in southern Hebron, dragged away from his friends and classmates and savagely beaten by Israeli forces before being thrown into the back of their military jeep and driven away; and the charge is... wait for it… lopping stones at (illegal) Israeli settlers.
And here you thought that peer pressure was the biggest source of anxiety for most parents, however; Palestinian parents will always have something else to worry about when it comes to their children; whether it's sudden arrests, deadly assaults, torture, you name it; the list of horrific –and very possible- scenarios that Palestinian families are made to live with day in and day out are endless; indeed parenthood carries a whole different meaning in Palestine.
What's particularly troubling though; is that the Zionists have -over the years- committed so many crimes and gross violations of international laws that I can't believe the rest of the so-called civilized world haven't called them out on it yet, they insist on placing "the only democracy in the Middle East" on a strangely unparalleled, high pedestal as the ultimate paragon of virtue; whereas when it comes to Palestinians it seems; the concept of human rights suddenly blurs, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) becomes a hazy afterthought; is it acceptable only if the victim is a Palestinian kid? Is it acceptable to snatch minors off the streets, torture and browbeat them into submission in Israeli prison chambers? Is all of this acceptable if everyone is practically silent about it?...

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Ahmad Barqawi @ 'Counterpunch'