Panama Papers just proves how right Jarvis Cocker was about who runs this fucking world

"The Panama Papers are a massive and historic leak of confidential documents that reveal how the rich and powerful from many countries around the globe use tax havens to hide their wealth."

So says TeleSUR English, which goes on to note: "About 140 high-level officials and millionaires, and about 113,000 shell companies are exposed in the documents, including at least 12 current or former heads of state."

In other words, the rich and powerful are a bunch of dodgy, greedy pricks whose morally offensive activities strip wealth from whole nations -- many trillions in badly needed revenue. It is almost as if the poverty affecting billions is directly related to the obscene wealth of a tiny minority, while all the while the same system enriching these corrupt fuckers is rendering the planet increasingly uninhabitable at a rapid rate.

Well, who could have guessed they could be so mean? Asides, you know, from Bernie Sanders and any other politician, journalist or just plain straight up human being not in the pocket of these pricks.

One individual exposed by this massive leak is Iceland's prime minister, whose government took over failed banks and was the centre of countless fucking Facebook memes about the heroic acts of the Icelandic government in standing up to the banks and the IMF and probably for slaying all the fucking trolls on the island (with no concern about the Icelandic troll-based tourism industry). Yes, it seems leaving the same corporate, financial and political elite in charge of a country that helped cause a disaster, whatever concessions they may give you, doesn't actually change the nature of that elite or the system they run. A bastard is always a fucking bastard.

The lesson here is two-fold:

1) Facebook books memes are not fucking history or news or fucking anything other than grossly over simplified points aiming to distort facts and/or reinforce the meme sharers pre-existing prejudices. WHO THE FUCK KNEW? WHO THE FUCK KNEW FUCKING SOCIAL MEDIA MEMES WERE JUST EMPTY BULLSHIT AND NOT FACTUAL HISTORY??? WHAT NEXT??? BUZZFEED IS NO ACTUAL SUBSTITUTE FOR FUCKING NEWS?????

2) Jarvis Cocker was right.

Former frontman of 1990s Britpop band Pulp, Jarvis Cocker was right way back in 2005. Watching the G8 summit summit with its smiling politicians and rock stars pledging "debt relief" to African countries, while putting forward a deal that actually worsened the debt slavery of the poorest  African nations, an angry Cocker immediately wrote a song in response. It is especially targetted at the smug grinning "New Labour" clique running Britain's government at the time,

It is below and it remains to the point*.




Well did you hear, there's a natural order
Those most deserving will end up with the most
That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top
Well I say: Shit floats.

If you thought things had changed
Friend you'd better think again
Bluntly put in the fewest of words
Cunts are still running the world...


* POSTSCRIPT It is worth noting there is a particularly cynical line in the song about the prospect for popular protest to achieve anything.  Just after the glorious line "The free market is perfectly natural -- do you think that I'm some kinda dummy?" Jarvis sings: "if you don't like it then leave or use your right to protest in the streets. Use your rights but don't imagine that it's heard..."

The line is hardly surprising, coming just two years after the largest global protests in human history failed to stop the criminal invasion of Iraq. But Cocker later took the sentiment back and argued popular protest was all we had left, that it was essential to protest against the cunts to have any chance at saving the planet.

In a 2014 op-ed in The Guardian entitled "Climate change is real. Want to live? It's up to people like you":

Remember 15 February 2003? If you’re taking the trouble to read this, then you probably went to an anti-war march that day. Didn’t turn out so well, did it? Nothing really changed. The “largest protest event in human history”, as we remember it today, was effectively ignored. That left a nasty taste. It might even have put you off the idea of protesting forever. The marching boots were thrown to the back of the cupboard and you went into a major sulk. Maybe you even wrote a song about it ...

And you thought: “Yes! Smash the system!” And then ... time passed. Until you got this email [about globally coordinated l climate change protests...

Can you be arsed? Do you risk being disappointed again? Or do you sit this one out?

...

Back in 2008, I sailed the coast of Greenland on a vessel chartered by the organization Cape Farewell and saw the effects of global warming firsthand. It exists. On the way home, we spent a few hours in Reykjavík’s international airport waiting for a connecting flight back to the UK. I bought an ashtray made out of lava. When I got back home, I turned the TV on. It was the morning of the stock market crash and I learned that Iceland, the country I had been visiting not four hours previously, was effectively bankrupt.

That gave me a strange feeling because I hadn’t noticed. The sun had still been shining as I walked through the airport terminal. People had gone about their everyday business as usual, there had been air to breathe and nothing to betray the cataclysm that had befallen the entire country. How could that be? This was a financial crisis! The Big One! THE ECONOMY was at risk! Why was the world still turning?

You whisper now, but could it be that there is a higher power than … THE ECONOMY? I know that sounds a bit sacrilegious, but could it be that THE ECOLOGY is actually the biggie? That maybe having air to breathe, water to drink and land to inhabit could be more important than the fluctuations of the FTSE or the Dow Jones? It’s just a thought – a thought that most people instinctively understanding, but that the political classes have yet to grasp ...

Exactly when did “government for the people” become “government of the people”? When did the function of government change from public service to crowd control? From protector to pimp?

The People’s Climate March this Sunday is important. Because governments won’t put the case for action on climate change too strongly – no, that might be interpreted as being “anti-business”. It might dissuade corporations from building factories in countries that sign on to climate agreements. It might be harmful to THE ECONOMY. So once again it will be left to ordinary people to point out the blindingly obvious fact that destroying the place you live in is not a good idea. It really isn’t. And the powers that be would do well to heed the cold, hard truth that there are more of us than them, that we are heartily sick and tired of being ignored.

That’s not a threat, you understand. I just thought I’d point it out.

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/5-Key-Points-About-the-Panama-Papers-4-About-Tax-Havens-20160404-0038.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/5-Key-Points-About-the-Panama-Papers-4-About-Tax-Havens-20160404-0038.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/5-Key-Points-About-the-Panama-Papers-4-About-Tax-Havens-20160404-0038.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

A song for Tony, a song for Malcolm

So the glorious reign of Tony Abbott has come to a bloody end, knifed by his own party due to his unique capacity to combine hated anti-people policies with 12th century social views and a competency level that'd see him sacked as a trolley pusher at a supermarket, probably for winking lewdly at pensioners or throwing lumps of coal at the English backpackers trying to fleece people's cash for Greenpeace.

He's been replaced as our Overlord by Malcolm Turnbull, who is basically the same thing with better social skills, a nicer smile and less a shill for the corporate elite as an actual direct member of the ultra-rich. The richest man in Australian parliament, a multi-millionaire merchant banker and venture capitalist, Malcolm is evidence that anyone can make it in this country, even those who own it.

To mark this occasion, here is a song for Tony.



'You're just some racist who can't tie my laces, your point of view is medieval...'

Written by Lily Allen apparently about George Bush, it is word-for-word a perfect goodbye for the biggest, dumbest prick to ever call the Lodge home.


And here is one for Malcolm.



'Well did you hear, there’s a natural order
Those most deserving will end up with the most
That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top
Well I say: Shit floats
If you thought things had changed
Friend you’d better think again
Bluntly put in the fewest of words...'

Written by Jarvis Cocker for New Labour when Blair was still PM (directly inspired by the bullshit of the "Make Poverty History" G8 summit in Britain in 2005 where world's leaders pretended to help Africa's poor while finding new ways to screw them backwards), change "world" for "Australia", it applies perfectly to the take over by the shiny, slick prick Turnbull.


BONUS SONG FOR TONY!



'Oh, oh, onion skin
Walking around with
Your heart caved in
When you start to roll
Your skin flies off
And the teardrops flow'

No explanation needed.


BONUS SONG FOR THE FUCKING LOT OF THEM!

'Those peaceful protests just were not cutting it...'

Yeah sure technically Trevor Moore's call to chop the heads off our rulers is about the United States, but no reason the blood can't flow right across our wide, brown land too. Some decent rivers of blood would probably help a few drought-afflicted farmers.

They want our way of life...

“They want our way of life... well they can take mine any time they like.” Jarvis Cocker answers those insisting we need to defend Western civilisation from the barbarians trying to destroy it — be it by flying planes into our buildings or by the old “trojan horse” trick of turning up in leaky boats asking for protection from wars backed by our governments.

I posted that clip coz I WAS FUCKING THERE! WATCHING HIM! IN SYDNEY! But actually, this acoustic performance done on the spot for some interview Jarvis did about songwriting is much better and I recommend you play it.




They want our way of life
Well, they can take mine any time they like
Cause God knows I know I ain't living right
I'm wrong
Oh, I know I'm so wrong

So like the Roman Empire fell away
Let me tell you; we are going the same way
Ah, behold the Decline and Fall
All hold hands with our backs to the wall

...

Not one single soul was saved
I was ordering an Indian take-away
I was spared whilst others went to an early grave
Got stoned
Yeah, went out and got stoned

Well, if your ancestors could see you standing there
They would gaze in wonder at your Frigidaire
They had to fight just to survive
So can't you do something with your life?

It's the end, why don't you admit it?
It's the same from Auschwitz to Ipswich
Evil comes I know from not where
But if you take a look inside yourself
Maybe you'll find some in there

Here it comes
Why don't you embrace it?
You lack the guts needed to face it
Say goodbye to the way you've been living
You never realised you were on the wrong side
And nobody's going to win

They want our way of life
Well, they can take mine any time they like

Jarvis Cocker is coming (pun intended): thoughts on some Pulp songs

The ’90s. If you can remember the ’90s you were probably there. I mean, that is a pretty good indication you were and I got no reason to call you a liar.

Of course, it is possible you had false memories implanted by some evil government body as part of some sort of depraved brainwashing experiment.

Regardless, if you remember the 90s you will remember Britpop.

It was one of those media-invented fads that took a range of English bands reasonably popular around roughly the mid-90s that, to one degree or another, played some sort of variety of catchy indie pop and/or rock music (sometimes with heavy overtones/outright plagiarism from British bands of the 60s and 70s) and invented a grab-all term to describe them.

This was all bound up with attempts by British “New Labour”, along with the media, to create a strange myth called “Cool Britania” on which to ride into government so they could slash the remnants of Britain’s welfare state and invade a country or two — like in the old days.

Some of Britpop was forgettable, some not bad, a lot of it compares rather favourably to the even less original, tired hackneyed sounds being vomited from the radio these days.

And some of it was Pulp.

In short, to summarise, Jarvis Cocker, former Pulp lead singer, is a fucking legend and he is playing in Sydney tonight and Carlo Sands is going to fucking see him.

Pulp were the greatest band tarred with the Britpop brush. A combination of irresistible indie pop with Cocker’s highly stylised dramatics, utterly unique dance moves, and largely sordid (and frankly often disturbing) lyrics

No one else came close.

In Pulp, Cocker told dramatic, deeply felt first-person stories of ordinary people trying to survive life in late monopoly in its the death throes.

Which is to say, the lanky, bespectacled art-school-style attired Cocker sung about sex and drugs.

Especially sex.

To which he added angst.

No one has ever combined such lustfulness with such angst over the consequences who was not an ordained Catholic priest or perhaps Morrissey.

All coated in a highly ironic wit and performed with *those* dance moves.

Since Pulp’s demise, Cocker has released two solo albums. On the most recent, Further Complications, Cocker simplifies his lyrical style.

That is, he drops all the messy broader background and social commentary stuff and gets straight to the heart of the matter: sex.

It is an album of rock songs about a middle-aged man and his relationship to sex.

With classic Jarvis lyrics, like: “I met her in the museum of paleontology. And I make no bones about it. If you're looking for a dinosaur, I know a specimen whose interest is undoubted.” (“Leftovers”)

And, “Well, if every relationship is a two-way street, I have been screwing in the backseat while you drive”. (“I never said I was deep” — well, he didn’t)

Yes. Jarvis’s latest effort deals with the topic less as “sex as a metaphor for class society and the inherent alienation of the working class in late monopoly capitalism”, and more “I'm a middle-aged man, what else do you expect?”.

“Leftovers” goes on to make the point clearly: “I wanna love you whilst we both still have flesh upon our bones. Before we both become extinct.”

So before enjoying a live show featuring songs dealing with that sort of raw lust and sexual desperation combined with some truly stunning dance moves, I thought I would look back on on Cocker’s days with Pulp, and ask what was the best song?

My aim was to offer choices, with commentary, divided according to album. I planned stick to picking two or three songs from the three key Pulp albums, 1994’s His’n’Hers, 1995’s Different Class, and 1997’s This is Hardcore.

But I have run out of time. So I will post this with two songs from His’n’Hers.

This is the most appropriate — as it is really the songs I found time to talk about that truly capture the depth of angst-ridden lust that he has made the centre of his new album.

I will save for another time my commentary on sex-as-a-metaphor-for-class-struggle in Different Class, and sex-as-a-metaphor-for-emptiness-of-fame-and-success in This is Hardcore.

His ’n’ Hers

This is the album, from 1994, that started to make Pulp’s name in Britain, and not without reason. A brilliant combination of catchy pop tunes with often savage lyrics by Jarvis on the society around him (especially, but definitely not exclusively, in the minutia of the bedroom), it clears that path for the breakthrough Different Class.

Babies: “Well it happened years ago”. A classic teenage tale. And we have all been there. Boy meets girl. Boy likes girl. Boy goes to girl’s home.

Discovers girl’s older sister has boys in her room. Hides in the wardrobe to spy.

Boy gets caught and “has to get it on”. Boy gets sprung with older sister by younger sister. Loses younger sister. Which is a shame because boy’s feelings toward younger sister are: “I want to take you home, I want to give you children.”

Now, who among us can honestly say we have not experienced the exact same thing?. Those who claim it, I declare liars!

The key to the song is the contrast between the somewhat sordid lyrics of teenage lust and confusion with the amazingly brilliant, catchy pop tune.

I mean, if Jarvis was to just read those lyrics spoken word, it would be pretty fucking creepy... And so it is.

Key lyric: “I know you wont believe it’s true, but I went with her coz she looked like you!”

Watch it here.

Do You Remember the First Time?: “Do you remember the first time? I can’t remember the worst time.” No prizes will be handed out for guessing the what he is on about.

Here, Jarvis introduces what is a recurring theme in some later songs, an affair with a married, or otherwise accounted for, woman.

Again, what might be somewhat tacky is made by its contrast to the sublime pop tune it is put to. The tune works to undercut, and is ironically contracted with, the growing bitterness of the lyrics.

Cocker starts out ironically disdainful at the mundaneness of the married life of the woman he is seeing, but a sense of despair at the emptiness of the affair and his own life grows through the song.

It starts with this put down on her main relationship: “You say you got to go home, coz he’s sitting on his own again this evening. And I know you're gonna let him bore your pants off again. Oh now it's half past eight — you'll be late.”

And by the end of the second verse, Cocker has switched to a bitter envy: “Well, at least there is someone there that you can talk to. And you never have to face up to the night on your own. Jesus, it must be great to be straight.”

This shift from a stand-offish irony and to deeply felt bitterness is a Cocker trademark, later perfected in “Common People”.

Key lyric:“Now I don’t care if you screw him. Just as long as you save a piece for me.”

Watch it here.

* * *

Now I must go and see Jarvis Cocker live. I will offer you this below. It isn’t about sex. But it does give a pretty good introduction to his stylish dance moves.




Carlo Sands will be up the front tonight shouting “Play ‘Eye of a Tiger’ and do that dance!”

Tosser thrown out and replaced with tosser

Corporate "democracy" is such a wonderful thing.

Yesterday myself and fellow Australians went to the polling booths under threat of being fined hundreds of dollars (for we have compulsory voting). And — let the world hear our cry! — we voted for change.

Oh yes, we told our former prime minister John Howard to go and get fucked, in no uncertain terms. So decisive were we that we even kicked him out in his own electorate in the seat he has held since 1974. This is the first time since 1929 a prime minister has lost their seat in an election.

Why did we vote for change? Because Howard is a fucking racist anti-worker, anti-poor warmongering, democracy-hating extreme right-wing fascist. Howard bashed one too many sectors of the electorate.

He bashed welfare recipients, he bashed trade unionists, he bashed refugees and migrants, he bashed Indigenous people, he bashed women, he bashed gays and lesbians and finally he bashed the ENTIRE WORKING CLASS with "Work Choices".

(This was not a good idea, because the views of post modern sociologists about the non-existence of the working class notwithstanding, most people still actually need to go to work for a living.)

Having attacked pretty much everyone but the CEOs of BHP — assuming they are aren't women (pretty likely) or gay (I wouldn't be wagering money on that one) — strangely enough he struggled to find enough people willing to throw a vote in his direction.

So, like I said, we threw the bastard out. And what did we get for our troubles? THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING IN RETURN!!!!!

(Actually, it is quite a clever trick. Kevin Rudd gets elected because he isn't John Howard, and does so promising to continue doing what John Howard did. The genius of the trick is he wont have to break his promises because he never really made any.)

What a wonderful system, thank *christ* we live in a democracy where the will of the people prevails.

The whole debacle brings to mind that classic election slogan from the last time a long rule of the conservatives was ended, back in 1972... It's Time. It's time, alright...



Damn right! On election night, I drank in celebration at the defeat of John Howard. Ever since I have been drinking in commiseration at the victory of Kevin Rudd.

Now, if *only* there was a singer out there with the guts to say "fuck you"... Thank you Jarvis Cocker. This song is aimed primarily at "New Labour" in Britain. It applies, word for word, to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Jarvis has even been kind enough to include the words to sing a long to in this clip.



There is nothing else to say.