“It’s Not Radioactive, It’s Not Even Green, But We’re Working On It”

That was what the Rio Tinto spokesperson said on the radio just now about their discovery of naturally-occurring kryptonite:

[…]

A new mineral matching kryptonite’s unique chemistry has been identified. It will be formally named Jadarite later this year.

A new mineral matching kryptonite’s unique chemistry, as described in the film Superman Returns, has been identified by scientists at the Natural History Museum and Canada’s National Research Council.

The large green crystals of kryptonite have a devasting affect on the superhero. However, unlike its famous counterpart, the new mineral is white, powdery and not radioactive. And, rather than coming from outer space, the real kryptonite was found in Serbia.

Geologists and mineralogists from mining group Rio Tinto discovered the unusual mineral. It didn’t match anything known previously to science so they sort the help of mineral expert Dr Chris Stanley at the Natural History Museum.

‘Towards the end of my research,’ says Dr Stanley, ‘I searched the web using the mineral’s chemical formula, sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide , and was amazed to discover that same scientific name written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns’.

[…]

Comment of The Day: French Framing

Democracy, though sickly and a bit nauseous from repeated blows to civil liberties, is not yet dead in Europe: 85% of the electorate, a tribute to banlieues activism, came out in France yesterday and made a statement – no more wishy washy middle. France seems to want a clear choice between neoliberalism or socialism; ether more of the Blair and Bush-led globalisation agenda, or a President that thinks that ‘liberte, egalite, fraternite’ applies to more than just middle-aged white men with a comfy bank balance.

No prizes for guessing which candidate I prefer; although my preference is irrelevant given that I can’t vote there, nevertheless I think it would be a triumph for all European women should the French elect a female socialist president at the heart of the ‘old’ EU.

But now the election will move into a whole new phase. The stakes get much higher. In comments to Peter Preston’s Guardian article on the election this morning, a French commenter points out the election has wider implications – that it’s not just a left-right battle, but a question of the basic legitimacy of public leftwing ideas:

Being french, I found this article quit interesting, but even more the reactions some people have posted here. Indeed, france does have some things it can be proud of (good health care, excellent rail network, free education – from primary school to university – , and state subventions to sport, art, environmental groups, …), and of course some bad things that go with it (people abusing the health system creating a great debt, a very heavy bureaucracy, many taxs that few people understand). But it is true that this “France in a state of decline” narrative is indeed the corporate media’s ploy to break what was left of, not the socialist party, but the credibility of left wing policies. We hear all the time that Mrs Royal has no program, but that is not true. She has solid a program, many ideas,not all brilliant, but dominantly a pragmatic left wing.

But medias today spend their time telling us that we can be left wing untill we are 30 year’s old, but then, “please, be serious, a globalized society doesn’t have room for such nonsense. Get back to work and stop being childish”. Because problems in our welfare system do exist, we are made to believe that any welfare system is doomed to faliure. Indeed corporations big and small, and individuals do abuse of this system, but it does not mean that this system is a bad one, that it couldn’t be repaired. When your car has a flat wheel (or even two flat wheels), do you just scrap the car ? By ridiculizing the system, corporation and media are just slowly killing the idea that people can be left wing, by promoting a new idealic society of which their corporations would be at the center making the money and dictating their policies. This election isn’t just an election between RIGHT and LEFT, it is an election where the existence and legitimacy of LEFT ideas are at stake.”

Framing affects everything we see in the media. There is little reported in any media that is not intermediated by another person in some way even if it’s only uploading a clip. Someone still chose that clip. They framed the picture you see.

You cannot ever completely exclude the editorial voice, no matter how hard you try. Because worldwide media as currently constituted is corporate and profit making in structure, its larger editorial voice is also corporatist and the information put out is framed to support the making of those profits. To do otherwise would be fiscally irresponsible and negligent towards the shareholders: sensation sells more than fluffy bunnies and hope so that’s the course the media follows.

Thus the narrative of permanent decline that suffuses everything we read and hear – we’re under attack, an amorphous ‘they’ is trying.to take our stuff, we’re being swamped, invaded… unimporant threats are hyped into planetwide scourges while imporant yet dull, worthy, complicated yet important issues are trivialised or go unreported.

The commenter has spotted the biggest frame of all in modern western democratic politics in action. It’s been the ur-narrative of all western politics since the industrial revolution and the concomitant rise of the newspaper barons, advertising and then the PR industry. The philosophy is so all pervasive that it was built in to EU institutions too.

Capitalism is not only the best way, it’s the only way. The Free Market is a pure and ineluctable product of nature, like sunlight or a mother’s love, or butterflies’ wings. Capitalism’s been ordained by God to make all for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Anyone who says otherwise is a dangerous lunatic and one of the amorphous ‘they’ trying to take our stuff.

So, put very crudely, goes the story and so goes the editorial direction of the US and European corporate media-at-large.

Now, at least in France, the mainstream media will have to engage publicly with actual socialist politics again. That certainly seems to be what the public want – not just, as in the UK, a non-choice between one bunch of incompetent neoliberals and another but a proper public debate and a real choice between ideological directions for the country.

But the socialists had better be on the ball media-wise and not give their usual ‘our ideas will shine through because they’re right’, naive tv and radio performance. In Spain and the Netherlands socialist parties have shown that it’s perfectly possible to handle the media on your terms and be elected on principled positions. I hope the French socialists are ready for this coming campaign – because it’s not just Sarko v Sego now, it’s Sarkozy and the whole media and cultural establishment’s framing v Segolene.

Ve Haff Ways Of Hearing You Talk

The shadow of fascism is creeping up on us again in Europe.

Blah3:

The further US-ification of Germany… …appears to be firmly in place.

From German News:

Telephone surveillance expanded

In Germany, all telephone and internet connection data will be stored for half a year in the future. The federal Cabinet approved a resolution to that effect today. The information to be filed will be who called whom when. In the case of cellular-phone calls, the location at which the call was made will also be kept. The contents of telephone conversations will not be saved. The bill also introduces other changes to the regulations governing telephone surveillance. It is a subject of controversy because the data will be filed regardless of any concrete suspicion of a crime. Privacy advocates have already announced that they will challenge the changes on constitutional grounds. The bill represents the implementation by the federal government of a directive from the EU.

There is also this:

Schaeuble opposed to presumption of innocence

Federal Internal Affairs Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble wants to abolish the presumption of innocence when it comes to preventing terrorism. “The principle cannot apply for self-defence against threats”, he told the magazine ‘Stern’. Schaeuble also defended plans to allow police automatic access to digital records of passport photos. Karl-Dieter Moeller, a legal expert for ARD television criticized Schaeuble’s comments. He told the news website ‘tagesschau.de’ that “that would call a fundamental principle of the rule of law into question”.

Martin had a letter from some government quango yesterday inviting him to register the details of all our phone accounts.

To which my own response is “make me”.

This is all part of a quiet sea change in controls on the freedom to of Europeans to communicate with one another. The NYT, February 17:

PARIS, Feb. 19 — European governments are preparing legislation to require companies to keep detailed data about people’s Internet and phone use that goes beyond what the countries will be required to do under a European Union directive.

In Germany, a proposal from the Ministry of Justice would essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account, making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal.

A draft law in the Netherlands would likewise go further than the European Union requires, in this case by requiring phone companies to save records of a caller’s precise location during an entire mobile phone conversation.

Even now, Internet service providers in Europe divulge customer information — which they normally keep on hand for about three months, for billing purposes — to police officials with legally valid orders on a routine basis, said Peter Fleischer, the Paris-based European privacy counsel for Google. The data concerns how the communication was sent and by whom but not its content.

But law enforcement officials argued after the terrorist bombings in Spain and Britain that they needed better and longer data storage from companies handling Europe’s communications networks.

European Union countries have until 2009 to put the Data Retention Directive into law, so the proposals seen now are early interpretations. But some people involved in the issue are concerned about a shift in policy in Europe, which has long been a defender of individuals’ privacy rights.

Under the proposals in Germany, consumers theoretically could not create fictitious e-mail accounts, to disguise themselves in online auctions, for example. Nor could they use a made-up account to use for receiving commercial junk mail. While e-mail aliases would not be banned, they would have to be traceable to the actual account holder.

“This is an incredibly bad thing in terms of privacy, since people have grown up with the idea that you ought to be able to have an anonymous e-mail account,” Mr. Fleischer said. “Moreover, it’s totally unenforceable and would never work.”

Mr. Fleischer said the law would have to require some kind of identity verification, “like you may have to register for an e-mail address with your national ID card.”

Jörg Hladjk, a privacy lawyer at Hunton & Williams, a Brussels law firm, said that might also mean that it could become illegal to pay cash for prepaid cellphone accounts. The billing information for regular cellphone subscriptions is already verified.

[…]

In the Netherlands, the proposed extension of the law on phone company records to all mobile location data “implies surveillance of the movement of large amounts of innocent citizens,” the Dutch Data Protection Agency has said.

More…

It’s all very well us Eurobloggers sitting here taking potshots at Bushco – and heaven know there’s cause enough – but meanwhile, quietly our own governments are drawing the net tighter on the expression of dissenting views and as individuals we’re doing bugger-all to fight it.

10 years down the line when your children ask you “What did you do in the information war, Mummy/Daddy?” what will you be able to say?

“Nothing really, but I moaned a lot?”

Another Shoe Drops

Condi has a thing for Italian shoes, as is well known. she was buying Ferragamos on 5th Avenue as New Orleans drowned – and remember this 2005 picture and the way the US media salivated over those boots?

“Rice’s coat and boots speak of sex and power — such a volatile combination, and one that in political circles rarely leads to anything but scandal. When looking at the image of Rice in Wiesbaden, the mind searches for ways to put it all into context. It turns to fiction, to caricature. To shadowy daydreams. Dominatrix! It is as though sex and power can only co-exist in a fantasy. When a woman combines them in the real world, stubborn stereotypes have her power devolving into a form that is purely sexual.”

Condi had better stick to buying those Italian spike heels on the mainland US from now on, because according to the former Milan CIA Chief, now indicted in Italy, it seems that whole dominatrix thing was even truer than the slavering US media thought.

Around that time, strutting around in her Italian boots, Condi Rice was ordering the abduction and torture of an Italian resident. From today’s Der Spiegel :

CIA AGENT ON THE RUN‘I’ve Got Nothing to Lose’

By Georg Mascolo in Washington

Robert Lady, the former CIA chief in Milan, has gone into hiding. He is the subject of an extradition order from Italian authorities for the role he played in the kidnapping of radical Muslim cleric Abu Omar in Milan. Washington is seeking to derail the trial — perhaps because Condoleezza Rice may have given the operation the green light.

[My emphasis.]

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