Undulating Ungulate

Huh. So two days after making the editorial comment I linked to yesterday, Olbermann received an envelope of “anthrax” in the mail. They were asked not to talk about it openly. Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch owned NY Post reports it on their gossip pages, basically mocking him for overreacting.

Watch Olbermann’s response to the distortions and inaccuracy and give his side. I particularly like when he explains that they had to melt his keys and burn his wallet during the ten hours they held him at a hospital…

The transcript is here.
(search on the page for “As the current administration is so fond of pointing out”, it is the section continuing from that)

The money shot is right at the end of the video (which skips some time), in his summary of the worst people in the world:

But our winner, Roger Ailes the Ming the Merciless, of FOX News and congrats, incidentally Roger, on having achieved the perfectly circular shape. He says today that President Clinton‘s reaction to Chris Wallace the other day was “An assault on all journalists.” No, Roger, what he said was an admonishment, somebody sending terroristic threats to me and others is an assault to all journalists.

(Oh, and the original piece he is responding too can be found here, with comment. Interestingly, that makes it clear that the attack was a response to his speaking out in editorials…)

(Hat tip: American Samizdat)

Filed by billy at 1:40 pm under politics
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Watch this. Right now.

It is a stunning response from Keith Olbermann of MSNBC to the Fox ambush of Clinton.
It is the first piece of real journalism on American TV in god only knows how long. It will make you weep for the standard of journalism.
Amazing.

(via LVX23)

Filed by billy at 2:24 pm under politics
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Undulating Ungulate proudly presents: Hit’n’Miss Aotearoa #6: Boss Christ

Okay. The tiny red walled Pit bar, crammed full of drunks. Enter Boss Christ, a one man hoedown. A bloughy farmboy in a cut off t-shirt and the most enormous fluffy blonde mutton chops you’ll ever see, “Fuck” written on one bicep, “Yeah” on the other, and a D-size EverReady battery used to play sit down slide guitar over a backing track.

How classy was this gig?

As Boss so eloquently put it in his lengthy song dissing Bruce Springsteen, “Why be born in the USA, when you can be born in Masterton?”

Awesome. The recording captures a slice of primo kiwiana, mate. Easily the most vibe and fun captured on a recording yet – the shenanigans are at least as important as the music. Do your self a favour and check this out, or better yet, check out the Boss live.

Filed by billy at 2:08 pm under Podcasts
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Think what you could achieve in 20 years, if you worked just one hour a day at a task.
Actually take a moment to think about this. Close your eyes and imagine the scope of it, big and wonderful.

Now let’s put it in mathematical terms:

One person
One hour a day
For 20 years

1 x 365 x 20 = 7300 hours of work for positive change, to achieve what you just imagined

Let’s adjust the equation slightly

20 people
One hour a day
For one year

20 x 365 x 1 = 7300 hours of work for positive change

This is the power of community

A community of just 20 people working one hour a day for a year can achieve as much as you alone can achieve in 20 years of work at one hour a day.

Something to think about, yeah?

Filed by billy at 3:14 pm under consciousness,culture,politics
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Watched the second part of this last night. (Available to watch free on the web here: and I strongly urge anyone interested to do so. I linked to part one in the earlier post.) This stuff is the best account of how international banking and the money system works that I have yet encountered.

Anyway. Wow. All the detail in the world. Seemingly endless freaky quotes from former Presidents and Mayors saying basically “the international bankers are running the country and they’re bastards”. Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman saying every recession ever coincided with a sharp drop in the money supply – this being the prerogative of the central bank to control.

Depressing in that the scope of the problem is enormous, uplifting in that solutions are simple and practical (though not likely to be enacted… sound like a familiar description of human social problems?). It fundamentally boils down to who has the right to create money out of nothing – leaving aside for a moment the way that money is entirely a function of our belief in it – unnaccountable people or elected accountable people. The solutions section at the end explaining how to completely remove debt and create a stable economy in under two years was pretty worthwhile.

As an added bonus, there was an hour long Q&A afterwards with a woman who had once been offered a job on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, which was really fascinating.

Filed by billy at 1:16 am under research
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You’ve probably heard of this series at some point. A documentary team filmed a disparate group of children at the age of seven and went back every seven years. The library has a box set of the first six, following their lives at the age of 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42. I’ve watched them over the past week.

It’s really remarkable. Kind of like having relatives who you never see or hear from for seven years at a stretch and suddenly appear. The shapes of people’s live rendered before your eyes. The unexpected turns and vicissitudes. The ups and downs. The extent to which people’s lives work out the way they think they will or not.

Dunno what to say, really. Quietly profound filmmaking. All of human life, in some quite literal sense, is contained within. Absolutely worth the watch; I struggle to imagine anyone not getting a lot out of it.

Filed by billy at 2:19 pm under culture
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Sometimes I think the appeal of zombie type movies is in the simplification of life. Survival is paramount. The situation is clear. There are no hard choices.

It is the antithesis of modern living.

(Yes, this is just one angle on zombies, which make an interesting metaphor in lots of ways, but that’s an essay I’m not going to write today.)

Filed by billy at 6:45 pm under culture,Uncategorized
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“Dr. Emile A. Nakhleh served in the CIA for 15 years and retired on June 30, 2006, as the Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, the intelligence community’s premier group dedicated to the issue of political Islam.”

This is his first interview since leaving the CIA. A really worthwhile, lucid and fascinating insight on the situation.

Now the only question is whether Iraq will become a haven for sectarianism, or follow either the Iranian model or the standard Arab authoritarian model. It’s only three years old, but the once-touted model of a secular, democratic Iraq is all but forgotten. This casts a dark shadow on American efforts to spread democracy in the region.

(via American Samizdat)

Filed by billy at 12:41 pm under politics,the world
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I would like it if the world, and particularly humanity, would impress the fuck out of me sometime really soon.

Sometimes I think we are wilfully ignorant of our history and true nature. We prefer the shining image of civilisation, and attribute barbarism to the far off past, before neckties and cups of tea.

Savagery never went away, it just got given power tools.

Filed by billy at 9:20 pm under the moose
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Went along to the free movie at the Cross again. This one was the total other end of the spectrum of lucidity and research from previous conspiracy styled stuff.

They showed The Money Masters (part 1), an absolutely stunning hidden history of the international banking system, and the open battle for control between central banks and governments.

(Through the magic of interweb, you can watch it here, though if you can afford it, I’d recommend buying it.)

If you have the slightest interest in money, power, and what the hell is going on in the world, I really urge you to check this out. Really really amazing information. Watching it I was really stunned that we are not taught this.

All the perplexities, confusion and distresses in America arise not from defects
in the Constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.” (John Adams)

The doco is densely researched, and, frankly, kind of dull to look at, but the content is staggering as we are taken through an extensively quoted history of the set up of banking systems – an amazing con job – and how swiftly this turned to controlling the government. Who controls the creation of money controls the government – and why the hell anyone other than the government would have that power is beyond me.

Probably the most fascinating angle to me was that central banks have the power to create a boom or bust essentially at will by controlling the amount of money available. Due to fractional reserve lending, only a small minority of the money in circulation has backing in reality. If the bank calls in its debts and refuses to make new loans, you get a choked economy. That the private owners of the bank would do this for political gain comes through as a documented fact. Further, the logic of war as a means to indebt nations comes through, and wars can be prompted through economic crises…

Aaaagh. There is way more here than I have mentioned above. Check this stuff out. Really.

They are showing part 2 next Monday, 7:30 pm.

Filed by billy at 5:15 pm under new zealand,politics,research
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