Saturday, 11 December 2010

Nobel Committee Criticised For Usurping China’s Sovereign Right To Embarrass China

Call that embarrassing?
China’s embarrassing national press has condemned the Nobel Peace Prize Committee after a presentation ceremony for pro-democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo was held in Oslo with an empty chair symbolising the imprisoned dissident.

Now, this is embarrassing
“How dare the Nobel Committee presume to embarrass the glorious People’s Republic of China in this way?” thundered the English-language China Daily. “That right belongs first and foremost to the completely and utterly democratic Chinese government. Whether the industrious comrades in Beijing are democratically banning anyone who has ever met this dangerous criminal from travelling to Norway; demanding that the Norwegian government shut down the entire Nobel Foundation; propping up North Korea’s reckless dynasty of congenital nutters; shamelessly buying third world countries’ support with exploitative ‘development’ contracts; launching denial-of-service attacks on an innocuous internet search engine because it dares to find criticism of the leaders of the glorious revolution; or swamping the internet with botware to spy on the grovelling national servants of the evil, parasitical plutocrats, who have cynically moved their production here in humbled recognition of the vastly superior productivity of our enlightened proletariat – our political masters will always strive tirelessly for the greater shame of the everlasting Chinese revolution.”

And this is embarrassing
“And furthermore, never let it be said that our new capitalist comrades are shirking from their revolutionary duties,” continued the turgid prose. “These glorious Bentley-owning exploiters of the people have not neglected their duty in the embarrassment of China - cheerfully transforming our rivers into toxic sludge and poisoning the very air we breathe, fearlessly operating the most collapsible mines in the world in order to provide our heroic miners with glorious deaths in the name of revolutionary socialism, and industriously herding the rejoicing suicide regiments of the people’s revolution into vast slave camps to produce subversively defective goods for decadent and corrupted Westerners.”

And this makes an empty chair  look pretty feeble, too
“Let the upstart lackeys of the so-called Nobel Peace Prize Committee also reflect on the embarrassment of the Chinese media, for fearlessly suppressing the truth whenever it presumes to undermine the revolutionary socialist policies of our glorious leaders,” the report droned on remorselessly.

“And finally,” the article concluded on page 104, “May the whole world observe the exemplary enthusiasm with which the patriotic Han proletariat strives gloriously towards its own embarrassment, by its revolutionary racist treatment of ethnic minorities - like the wicked, reactionary Uighur parasites - in response to their misbegotten counter-revolutionary differences.”

"Not to mention their revolutionary fervour for eating endangered animals' penises," added a later supplement.

Friday, 10 December 2010

Noddy and Big-Ears Narrowly Escape Toyland Lynching

How dare they
Lovable brownie Big-Ears and his friend, Noddy, had a narrow escape yesterday evening, when naughty goblins Sly and Gobbo launched a vicious attack on their lovely car as they drove innocently through Toyland on their way to see a performance by the Clockwork Clown.

Sly and Gobbo had been running amok through Toyland after Mr Plod steadfastly refused to let them anywhere near the big house belonging to the conniving Bunkey and his friend Mr Wobbly Man, who want all the goblins to pay them an awful lot of money to go to Miss Prim’s little school.

After Mr Plod chased the angry goblin duo away from the house by hitting them with his riot whistle, Sly naughtily painted a very rude word on the side of Jumbo’s statue while, not to be outdone, Gobbo went one stage further and did a wee-wee on it.

But it was the ferocity of the goblins' unprovoked assault on poor Noddy and Big-Ears as they sat terrified in their lovely red and yellow car, frantically parp-parping the horn to attract Mr Plod’s attention, which has lost them the sympathy of decent, hard-working toys throughout Toyland.

Art history, the pair of them
“What have Sly and Gobbo got against poor old Noddy and Big-Ears?” frowned Noddy’s puzzled next-door neighbour, Mr Tubby Bear. “I could understand them having a go at that bone-idle brother of his, Little-Ears, who has a potty mouth, shows no respect for Mr Plod and hands out water pistols to all the bad toys - but Big-Ears’ Trust actually helps lots of struggling new toys to start their own little businesses.”

“Poor old Mr Plod’s been puffing to and fro on his bicycle all day long, looking to give them both a stern telling-off,” pointed out his wife, Mrs Tubby Bear. “Well, he can lock them up in his cells and throw away the key for all I care. Putting Noddy’s little car back together again is certainly going to pose a bit of a challenge for Mr Sparks the handyman.”

Just then, however, the papers were delivered, and poor Mrs Tubby Bear promptly fainted with dismay at front-page pictures of her son, Master Tubby Bear, disgracefully clambering all over the toy soldiers’ shiny monument and burning down the town square’s lovely Christmas tree.

Later, Mr Wobbly Man and Bunkey appeared on Toyland TV, with Mr Wobbly Man desperately trying to explain to all the toys how, thanks to his new best friend Bunkey, he no longer had any problems with lying.

A smiling Bunkey then assured law-abiding toys that he would be asking Mr Plod why he had failed to hit Sly and Gobbo hard enough. “Lessons will be learned,” he promised, “If you pay Miss Prim the new bargain rate of £9000 a year.”

Andy Coulson Delighted To Overhear DPP Telling PM No Charges Will Be Brought

Mr Coulson just can't seem to keep his ear from flapping
Top Downing Street spin doctor and former News Of The World editor Andy Coulson had a happy accident at work today, in which he fortuitously knocked the receiver off his office phone and chanced to overhear Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, telling David Cameron that there was insufficient evidence to support fresh claims of phone hacking at the paper during his chief communications hack’s editorship.

“I was just bending over to tie up a loose shoelace, and I must have banged my head against the handset somehow,” a tittering Mr Coulson told reporters. “Normally of course I would have replaced it immediately, but I happened to hear my name mentioned. Just imagine my surprise on hearing Mr Starmer informing the prime minister that, due to a tragic workplace disaster involving a tube of superglue and a stack of ‘Property of Rupert Murdoch’ labels, neither Sean Hoare nor any of the other reporters now seem able to enlarge upon their initial brief statements to the Crown Prosecution Service.”

“I should think my former lackeys must be feeling pretty hacked off right now,” spluttered Mr Coulson, before collapsing in a fit of laughter.

Thursday, 9 December 2010

Media Student Poignantly Films Baby Trundling Down Steps

Amid angry protests outside the hated Winter Palace of Westminster, a hero of the Media Studies comintern bravely liberated an oppressed baby from the state, seizing control of its buggy and pushing it down a long flight of steps whilst heroically filming its headlong tumble on his mobile as a poignant metaphor for the pitiless crushing of the student class by the brutal coalition forces of reaction.

And it'll do as a piece of coursework, too
“The lo-fi authenticity of this MPEG will stand forever, right, as mute witness to Tsar Nicholas Bastard Clegg’s totally cynical and utterly two-faced state subjugation of the downtrodden student proletariat and their mums and dads in the squeezed middle, yeah?” proclaimed the committed young auteur, uploading his cinematic milestone to YouTube with revolutionary fervour.

“It’s best viewed in black and white, actually,” he added with zeal. “I’ll do that in Premiere, when I get back to the multimedia lab.”

The revolutionary masterpiece of Marxist cinema-verité propaganda has already drawn critical acclaim from web users around the world, with accolades ranging from “ur fukkin SPOT ON mate clegg your next” to “BURN IN HELL u comunist limey fagot!!!!!!!!!!!”, and is widely expected by idealistic students to bring about the overthrow and swift execution of the despised Liberal Democrat elite in the glorious May Day local elections.

Anonymous Hackers Bring Entire Capitalist System Crashing Down

Die, PayPal, you scheming neocon bastards
Millions of computer users all over the globe today flocked to download a piece of malicious code they don’t understand, but are nevertheless certain will somehow save self-appointed Wikileaks martyr Julian Assange the embarrassment of having to explain his hide-the-sausage antics to Swedish police officers.

“What it is right is the New World Order, i.e. Visa, Mastercard and PayPal, in league with Amazon which is like totally controlled by neocons are trying to stifle free speech yeah,” explained hacker ‘Coldsweat’ to the Nev Filter. “They claim right that making donations to Wikileaks right breaches their terms and conditions yeah but how can that be like right when you can buy a Ku Klux Klan coffee mug or buy stacks of hardcore porn from Russia er not that I’d know anything about that.”

“What it is right is that everyone can like join the Anonymous botnet and like hit the enemies of freedom right by like crashing their systems until the entire like global economy like totally collapses right,” he explained. “When the entire system of global commerce is like totally on its knees right and people are starving then the secret cabal of like politicians and multinationals will have no choice right they’ll have to let Assange walk yeah?”

Asked if the unleashed bots would, at that point, simultaneously cease attacking the world’s financial networks, politely delete themselves and allow billions of essential everyday transactions to resume, Mr Coldsweat replied, “Er I’ll like er get back to you on that right” and left before he could answer the next question, namely whether the botnet malware might have any less philanthropic tricks up its cybersleeve for its enthusiastic downloaders.

An anonymous spokesman for the anonymous Anonymous collective later denounced the anonymous Coldsweat, saying: “Whoever he is, he doesn’t speak for our organisation, whoever we are, whatever it is, and if indeed any of us exist at all. Which we don’t.”

Wednesday, 8 December 2010

Why I'm Not Screaming For Julian Assange's Release

As a self-proclaimed Alternative Voice, I seem to be upsetting a few people by decrying the clamour for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's immediate release. Perhaps I ought to take a little time out to explain why.


To begin with, let me say that I agree that the timing of Mr Assange's arrest on an extradition warrant, so soon after Wikileaks' massive release of US diplomatic documents, looks like a clumsy attempt by The Powers That Be to smear and silence him. I'd be blind not to recognise this. And, of course, as soon as he was under arrest, the US government was not slow in issuing its own request for extradition; they could hardly be expected to ignore such a golden opportunity.


But let's be clear on this - this correlation is insinuation, not proof.


First of all, how much harm has actually been done to the 'embarrassed' parties concerned? We now have documents which reveal, to the shocked amazement of a touchingly naïve public, that diplomats often send frank and often less than complimentary assessments of their host countries and their leading figures back to their superiors. Well, strange as it clearly seems to many, that is the purpose of diplomats. Did people think they simply passed their time the Ferrero Rocher around? We have also learned that a member of the Royal Family is a bit of a twit, several Arab monarchies are less than favourably disposed to the Iranian ayatollah state which gave its monarchy the boot, and allied nations find fault with each other. Strangely, however, none of this will exactly come as a surprise to anybody with an ounce of political awareness.


Secondly, there is more to the question of timing than meets the eye. The allegations are not new; indeed, Julian Assange has given his side of the story on numerous occasions previously. It was only a matter of time, once his whereabouts were ascertained, before an extradition request was sent to that country's authorities by Sweden. But there is another party involved in this sequence of events - namely, Wikileaks itself. With the Swedish net inexorably closing on Assange, it could be argued that the timing of their publication was calculated to cast him in the role of folk hero - and martyr - just when he most needed a huge injection of popular support. That, after all, has certainly been its effect.


This also begs the question: why does Wikileaks need a public face in the first place? Mr Assange has made his name synonymous with Wikileaks, but what for? Surely the greatest protection of such an organisation is its very anonymity?


Perhaps it's time to make a sober assessment of what Wikileaks actually does. It receives secret documents, then disseminates them on the internet. By their very nature, these documents are unverifiable; a fact which is generally overlooked in the ensuing media feeding frenzy as one of the basic tenets of responsible journalism - namely, obtaining independent corroboration - is cheerfully thrown to the four winds. Whatever denials or qualifications are issued by the authorities concerned, the natural reaction to their protestations is to say (to paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies' comment during the Profumo scandal many years ago), "Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?" However, the fact remains - and this is the crux of my argument about Assange - that the leaked documents do not carry the authority of absolute, incontrovertible proof.


To get back to Mr Assange's current predicament, his supporters are vehement in claiming that he is now a political prisoner, being led to his doom over vaguely-defined claims of sexual misdemeanour. These claims are nothing but fabrications, they assert, designed both to discredit him in the eyes of the world and deliver him into the grateful hands of the US government. (Or, depending on who you listen to, a suspiciously convenient Dr Kelly-style death.)


In other words, the man who publicly represents an organisation which exists to disseminate unverifiable assertions which his supporters claim as incontrovertible fact is now being defended with unverifiable assertions which his supporters claim as incontrovertible fact. What has been lost from sight amidst all the shouting, it seems to me, is that the truth is known to only three people: Mr Assange himself, and the two women claiming he assaulted them.


Throughout the world, the establishment of guilt or innocence on the basis of evidence and probability is the preserve of the courtroom. If we fail to suspend our own judgement until the due process has been observed then we are displaying a lamentable disrespect for the very truth we claim to hold so dear.


So pardon me if I hesitate before proclaiming Mr Assange's saintly innocence across the internet. I'd rather wait and see how this plays out.

Tuesday, 7 December 2010

Assole Arrest Causes Internet Burst

He's already been put aboard the alien mother ship. FACT
The internet burst today, as all of the available bandwidth in cyberspace was swamped by an unprecedented flood of uninformed yet insightful outrage from the English-speaking world’s army of conspiracy theorists concerning the arrest of Julian Assole, the Wikileaks founder and top nutter-prophet.

Before the internet exploded, all of the world’s free thinkers were united in saying that it is now only a matter of time before their new high priest Mr Assole is dragged to evil Sweden, where it is a foregone conclusion that he will mysteriously die screaming in agony in the cruel ‘blood eagle’ sacrifice ritual whilst helping bloodthirsty police berserkers with their inquiries.

It has also been determined by millions of people who know more than you do that Mr Assole’s bloody carcass will then be flown to Russia, where it will be beaten to an unrecognisable pulp by a crazed Vladimir Putin. It will then travel to Saudi Arabia, where its mangled hands will be chopped off. The remainder will then be shipped to China and shot by dozens of firing squads, and the remaining bits will be gathered up in a binbag for extraordinary rendition to Guantanamo Bay for electrocution.

A few sheep who raised their voices to suggest that perhaps Mr Assole might have perhaps been hoist by his own petard after shamelessly courting publicity to become the instantly-recognisable public face of the Wikileaks organisation were collectively scorned before their pitifully unenlightened comments were finally squeezed out of sides of the cracking internet by the unceasing squeals of the tinfoil hat community.

In the unlikely event that Mr Assole lives, self-appointed experts suggest that he will end his days as a team captain on a weakly satirical news quiz, a tool of the very establishment of which he will unconvincingly claim to be a critic.

“You know - like Ian Hislop,” tweeted several thousand fiercely-independent members of the paranoid hive mind collective. “He went to a public school, you know. They all have lunch together once a week, that lot.”

“FACT,” they chorused.

Monday, 6 December 2010

Panorama Accuses Games Industry Of Addicting Players To ‘Fun’

Hard-hitting BBC current affairs flagship Panorama will tonight blow the lid on the computer games industry’s despicable use of a dangerously addictive ingredient in their products, which scientists have identified as ‘Fun’.

The Panorama team spent weeks playing various Fun-packed games on a range of computers and consoles, all of which can be bought over the counter in any town in the UK without a prescription from a medical practitioner. Within a single day, say psychologists, each and every one of them soon developed classic patterns of compulsive behaviour.

What a tragic waste of young lives
Undercover reporters say there is mounting evidence to show that cynical game designers try to cram as much Fun into their products as possible, and are demanding government action to outlaw it completely.

Canadian software developer UbiSoft, however, was singled out for praise.

“Because you can’t save a game until they say so, every time you get killed you have to wade through the same old crap time and time again. Tests have proved that the typical player would get more Fun out of an Excel spreadsheet,” said investigative reporter John Sweeney, who is now in recovery after throwing his laptop against a wall. “Canada must have some sort of law against it.”

According to the programme makers, the television industry has become a world leader in the abolition of Fun.

“Unbelievably, there was once a time when Fun was a regular part of the television schedules,” droned a hatchet-faced Jeremy Vine. “Disturbingly, we have uncovered evidence that this was even targeted specifically at children - leading to a lifelong craving for Fun programming which has left many victims, now in their forties, sad and depressed because it is no longer available in these more enlightened times. These tragic cases desperately tune into shows like The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing hoping to find just a trace of Fun, but producers now follow strict guidelines to ensure that any element which suggests even the slightest hint of Fun has been ruthlessly excised from the content - leaving these pathetic addicts disappointed, twitching and moaning about their fix.”

A spokesman for the Department of Health said that politicians from all parties were deeply opposed to Fun, pointing out that the coalition government had, in six months, done more to eradicate the Fun from people’s lives than any previous government.

“Gordon Brown - a moral paragon who has never had Fun in his entire life - made it a personal crusade to eradicate it completely from our society,” he pointed out, “So it was a tragic irony that, as soon as he became prime minister, an entire industry immediately began making Fun of him.”

Although the present government has already made rapid progress in taking all the Fun out of life in Britain for the foreseeable future, some observers have suggested that many senior Conservative ministers are secretly having huge amounts of Fun.

“Just look at George Osborne,” pointed out a lobby correspondent. “Every time he jumps up with another cut to make your miserable existence even less tolerable, you can plainly see the Fun in his eyes.”

The only entirely Fun-free politicians, he added, were the Liberal Democrats.

“When they contemplate their impending local elections wipeout next May, it’s obvious that all the Fun has gone out of their lives,” he observed.

He’s A Very Naughtie Boy

A completely unjustified and gratuitous minger shot
James Naughtie, the presenter of Radio 4’s Today programme, has humbly apologised to shocked listeners after ill-advisedly announcing a cunt live on air.

“I made an unpardonable slip-up this morning when I told listeners that I had Culture Secretary Jeremy H*** with me in the studio,” the red-faced broadcaster admitted. “I’m terribly sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Squirming BBC bosses confirmed that long-standing guidelines specifically banned the cunt from the airwaves.

“In this day and age pretty much anything goes, particularly after the nine o’clock watershed,” said embarrassed Director-General Mark Thompson. “But this cunt is utterly objectionable, and should never be broadcast under any circumstances.”

The government confirmed that anybody would, quite rightly, be mortally offended by the slightest mention of Jeremy H***.

“It’s disgusting and there’s simply no need for it,” admitted a spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. “Believe me, you don’t want to see the filthy obscenities scribbled on the lavatory walls round here by civil servants who have to work with that unmentionable cunt.”