Google Pulled my AdSense Account!

Just got this from Google AdSense!

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we have decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We realise the inconvenience that this may cause you and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions that we have taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by visiting

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153&hl=en_GB.

Yours sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Well! It seems their policy of matching keywords in a blog with advertisers may have a fatal flaw. The pro $cientology advertising foisted on me by Google purely because I write about it a few times obviously didn't sit well with me. Or, it seems, $cientology itself. If I could have removed their ads from my blog i would have. But then again, there's always the view that it's best to read both sides of a subject and the old mantra of "There's no such thing as bad publicity!"

Mind you, i've also written about my distaste for Google's policy in China so perhaps when the clams called up the Google AdSense team they could find reasons for both parties to be upset about my blog.

Never thought of myself as a significant risk for anyone. Do unto others (ie; The Golden Rule) is the way I live and treat others. Happy to argue my case. I enjoy debating and relish a damn good conversation. But running and hiding by pulling my account seems pretty cowardly. Sneaky 'phone calls, mock indignation. The actions of faceless vested interests. Didn't even have the courage to leave a comment and enter into a discussion. If they are so sure of themselves they wouldn't need to resort to tactics like this. They would be able to meet us critics head on in honest debate, each side making points they can defend with pride.

Obviously not their way of doing things...

Prescient or Reckless?

After nearly the whole of the news this morning commenting on big market falls the BBC in all it's wisdom comes out with this straight after!

The City: Is the Party Over?

Greg Wood reports on the effect of the credit crunch on the City. From the trading floors of Canary Wharf to the private equity Houses of the West End, he hears tales of fear, greed and the most serious convulsion to hit the City in a generation as bonuses are cancelled and jobs cut. Is the party over for one of Britain's major industries, and is the rest of the nation going to have to pick up the bill?

OK, the programme must have been in production for quite a while. But if I had shares and had listened in horror to Today, then heard Woods' missive of doom, gloom and imminent 1930's style depression i'd have been running to my stockbroker instead of writing this. More shares then enter the market. If there's a lot of anything in any market the price will drop. Causing more people to sell. The trouble is is that now much of this is computer based. If the market falls below a certain point automated selling cuts in and the price drops even further.

If they'd had a programme ready about the wave of stabbings on London's streets but 3 kids died last night in the same manner they would have pulled the programme to save the blushes of the parents. Can't help thinking it can't have helped jittery market traders and the credit banks listening to this watching the markets drop like a stone.

Does the Pope Really Beleive?

I'm thinking that the relationship between the ideas of the devout masses to the clergy is much the same as that of the voting public to the government.

The higher echelons know it's just smoke and mirrors but realise it's their ticket onto the gravy train. Whilst the sheep in the pews / voting booth swallow the thin veneer of spin, lies & "bread & circuses" laid before them as "gospel".

You don't get to be pope or prime minister without knowing how the system works and how to play it to your advantage. This takes intelligence. A firm belief in the supernatural would seem to point to an IQ not up to the task of clambering up that greasy pole.

This raises questions about why Blair, Bush et al seem to be very religious, at least in public. I contend that they are merely reflecting the state or accepted mindset of the societies they wish to function in.

Blair turned catholic just as he leaves the quite secular UK to go work in the highly religious US. Bush, of course, can put over no other image in the US at the moment. And the pope has to appear devout as per the job description.

Seems to me religiosity amongst the intelligencia is a cloak worn to disguise plain old low, scheming, political cunning in the face of the poorly educated masses already occupied with TV, comfort food, booze, celebrity and a large dollop of bronze age superstition.

"Why did you invade Iraq / arrest Galileo / burn the outspoken wise woman at the stake? Self interest and the protection of your own status or did god tell you to do it?"

We all know it's the former, but presented to the drooling great unwashed as religious fervour. Religion is nothing but social control invented for subjugation and the protection of the top 2%...

Politics as presented on Fox, CNN, BBC is just the same. A few journalists burst the bubble once in a while but mostly they let the politicos get away with their doublespeak, lies and shameless greed for power and status.

As the US is finding out. The danger comes when the two, politics and religion, are conjoined. Hastening the rapture with a nuclear Armageddon is no longer the stuff of sci-fi.

Huckabee voters take note! If your president thinks the earth is only 6000 years old, that jesus will haul his sorry arse off to heaven if Armageddon arrives, that there is no point saving the world from global warming because the end is coming soon anyway and that he can make all this happen at the push of a big red button... has he really got your best interests at heart?

Laz

Tom Cruise Scientology Recruitment Video

The Tom Cruise Scientology Recruitment Video ,

This from the BBC

A four-year-old video of Tom Cruise talking about his Scientology beliefs has been leaked onto the internet.

Cruise is shown discussing how he wants to spread the message of Scientology, saying: "You're in the playing field or out of the arena".

In the edited video, which features the Mission Impossible theme, he says a Scientologist driving past an accident is "the only one who can really help".

A Scientology spokeswoman said the full video could be seen in its churches.

What appeared on the internet was a "pirated and edited" version of an acceptance speech Cruise had made in 2004 after receiving a "freedom medal" from the International Association of Scientologists, she said.

If you want to find out about the total madness that is $cientology pop over to xenu.net

Mr. Deity is Back!

At last! Season 2 of Mr. Deity is here. For those of you who haven't seen the first season pop over here to take a look.

Shot simply but with great production values Mr. Deity runs through god, the trinity, creation, the whole jesus thing and, of course, Mr.Deity's beautiful ex wife Lucifer (Lucy to her friends). Just about the funniest thing on the web.

If you're new to Mr. Deity you're in for a real treat. And if you have already watched season one then the news that they've made a second season is... erm... a godsend!

The Mr. Deity theme tune is now available as a ringtone too... :)

Anyway... enough of me hyping it up. Check it out. Where else can you get the lowdown on the inner workings of creation, life and G.W.Bush's hotline to god?

The Chicken Out! Campaign

We always used free range eggs but often gave in to the cheap chicken on the shelves of our local supermarkets. Two birds for £5.00 etc. But after viewing the programmes made by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver we have now decided to only eat free range chicken from now on.

The conditions these birds live in to give us cheap chicken are disgusting. No daylight, no space, 30 minutes of dark every 24 hours, cannibalism, 39 days from egg to slaughter and standing in their own excrement for all this time. No more!

I'll shamelessly nick a few lines (below) from the Chicken Out! website as Hugh puts the point so well. So over to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the Chicken Out Campaign.

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Roast chicken is an iconic dish in British culture. It probably ranks close to the top of most people's list of favourite foods. It may be affordable for the masses, but it is also fit for a king.

But how many of you know about the life your fresh supermarket chickens lead before they reach your table? That their short, intensively farmed indoor existence is managed like a factory production line, to ensure the big retailers can sell them to you for as little as £2 a bird? Is that all the life an animal, born and raised to feed us, is worth?

I would like to see the industry 'de-intensify' by lowering stocking densities and including environmental enrichment programmes in all its chicken sheds. Existing models for this reform include the RSPCA Freedom Foods system. I believe that this, or similar audited systems very close to it, should be the new minimum welfare standard for indoor-reared broiler chickens.

Supermarkets and fast food outlets should adopt these higher welfare systems as their new baseline standard, and should in turn insist that all their suppliers adopt them.

I would like the supermarkets to end their poultry price wars, as they put pressure on farmers to maximise the intensity of their operations. I also urge them to pay a fair price to farmers, for higher welfare birds, and to support them with clear labelling so that consumers can understand what they are paying for.

Above all, I would like to see more birds reared outdoors, on assured free range and organic systems. I believe this is the natural and appropriate way for a chicken to live.

I feel so strongly about our chickens that I'm launching a national campaign, which I'm calling Chicken Out! Part of it will be a new TV series on Channel 4, which will help you to understand the conditions in which most table birds are reared, and to put pressure on the industry to raise its standards. Chicken Out! is being led by River Cottage locals, especially in and around Axminster, who are boycotting intensively-reared chickens and choosing free range instead. I need you to do the same.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Sigur Ros

Just discovered Sigur Ros from Iceland. Beautiful! You can hear some of their music here .

I think it must be something about the Icelandic landscape that seeps into their music and gives it an ethereal quality. Make me want to load it up on an mp3 player and catch the next flight to Reykjavik and hack off into the wilds...

Well worth a listen. The Culture Show on the BBC did a splendid documentary on them. Here's the song that hooked me. It's called Njosnavelin and it still haunts me.

The more I read / hear / see about Iceland and it's people the more I think something special is happening there. Their music, landscape, culture, temperament makes me want to go and find it for myself.

Violent Acres Catchphrase Contest Entry

To be found here at Violent Acres Blog

1 VA goes metric for 2008; Read Vicious Hectares!

2 Hey! Walmart! We ain't gonna be your bitch!

3 “LADY! CONTROL YOUR TARD!”

4 3.8 billion years years of evolution for this???

The End of Rational Thought

I used to think the barrier for our species was the cold war. We got through that without a nuclear exchange... just.

But then islam reared it's ugly head and I realised it was not the east /west communist / market economy rift we had to fear. It was the rational / religion divide that will be the conflict that will be the one we need to break through to make it, finally, out of the dark ages.

The worrying thing is that we here in the west are currently swinging towards a theocracy as well as the middle east taliban maniacs. I never foresaw the 21st century christian / islam fundamentalist conflict we are now falling headlong into. America is such a frighteningly religious country and getting worse it seems. Casting off any progress made towards rational thought during the reformation, matched only by the unreformed islamic hoards who wish to take the planet back to the 14th century.

The fact that both sides are willing and able to go nuclear is overloading my irony circuits. Creationists and muslims using the fruits of the european scientific revolution that started in the reformation to threaten this species very existence is truly chilling. The very science both sides refute to pursue their deluded aims is a divided mindset Orwell would have been proud of.

Doublethink may well bring about the end of this civilisation. It's time the liberals woke up to the fact that this is not the time for respect of others beliefs, no more the misguided concept of multiculturalism or making allowances for the other side's never ending ability to be "insulted". It's time to train, arm and fight for a technological, secular civilisation that we thought we had but is now being taken away from our grasp by the religious morons on both sides.

Nehemiah Scudder meets Big Brother meets Kenghis Khan

Tarred with the Same Brush

Walking back from the shop on the corner late at night a few days ago. I was perhaps ten paces behind a young woman. She sensed someone behind her and looked back. She quickly turned back to avoid eye contact and doubled her walking speed... I crossed over to the other side of the road so as not to freak her out, you could read her fear in her body language.

This is what i mean by tarred with the same brush. She was right to be fearful, but not of me. But there is no way she could know that. Just by inhabiting this body i trigger her fear. It's horrible!

I know it's not all men... but just take a look around the planet and make a mental note of which sex is causing most pain and hurt. There were no women in the 911 aircraft, no women taliban, Bush, Blaire, Hitler, Mussolini... all men. Since the birth of the three Abrahamic religions the dominance of men and the subjugation of women has been engrained into society and is to this day. The bible, torah and qur'an are testament ( no pun intended ) to the paternalistic sky gods of bronze age society. Men as the only true conduit between their invisible friend and humanity, women seen as unclean and as little more than chattels. Fantasies invented by men to retain and sanctify their dominance.

It's about time things changed... long, long overdue.

This mechanism of engendering fear and triggering memories of abuse in women by the simple fact of my gender depresses me greatly. I'm at a total loss how i can change this.

The OT Challenge

9 out of 10 Galactic Overlords said their Thetans preferred a million bucks!

Now you have progressed up the rickety bridge to the dizzying heights of OT you are now able to claim your free million bucks.

No kidding folks... just think of all that auditing! No more rice and beans! Clean clothes! Toilet paper! There's no end to the luxuries a million could bring. A lick of paint round the old org? A decent car to go hassle wogs in? Think of all the things you could do to help clear the planet and that nasty little worm Miss Cabbage will love you for it! Talk about upstat!

Pop over to http://www.randi.org/research/index.html and it'll be a doddle. Well... it would if the tech works.

Here's their spiel...
"The Foundation is committed to providing reliable information about paranormal claims. It both supports and conducts original research into such claims.
At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. The JREF does not involve itself in the testing procedure, other than helping to design the protocol and approving the conditions under which a test will take place. All tests are designed with the participation and approval of the applicant. In most cases, the applicant will be asked to perform a relatively simple preliminary test of the claim, which if successful, will be followed by the formal test.

Preliminary tests are usually conducted by associates of the JREF at the site where the applicant lives. Upon success in the preliminary testing process, the "applicant" becomes a "claimant."

To date, no one has ever passed the preliminary tests."



I wonder why it's never been claimed?