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BEFORE I GO INTO THE MEAT-AND-POTATOES, AS IT WERE, OF THIS WEBLOG, READERS, MAY I EXPLAIN A RECENT HABIT OF MINE in connexion with my using my Twitter adjunct in conjunction with my Amazon.com affiliation in the hope of attracting online shoppers, especially with the holidays coming up:

You may have noted on occasion my having certain online-shopping-related lead-ins read "Amazon.com will serve best to the needs of your [insert department of the moment here] whenever and whatever you are!!" or some such ... and you're probably asking about the inspiration therefor: It comes by way of the English-language product line page of the Japanese website for Mitsubishi Motors (since removed, IIBC) as proclaimed "Abundant product line of Mitsubishi Motors will serve best to the needs of your living whenever and whatever you are!!" (And it can get to be rather tricky trying to distill the Tweet, URL link included, into the 140-character maximum Twitter alloweth.)

In a similar vein as well, and also with the desideratum of attracting trade and custom, is the phrase "Looking for [insert product of the moment here]? We are just what you need." That being inspired by "spam" e-mails a few years back for counterfeit or pirated OEM computer software from dubious or spurious channels as asked "Looking for not expensive, high-quality software? We may have just what you need." (Here again, it can be a challenge trying to keep it within the 140.)

As well, I acknowledge allusion to Monty Python and/or the likes of the movie Surf's Up in so attempting to supplement disability benefits I get as income through Twitter's agency.

As the late Paul Harvey said, "Now you know ... The Rest of the Story."

So how about maybe buying something for once? I could use the income.

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AS WE ALL KNOW, THE BRITISH USED AUSTRALIA AS A DUMPING-GROUND FOR CONVICTS AND "TROUBLEMAKERS," REAL OR SUSPECTED, from the First Fleet in 1788 until the penal sentence of "transportation" (as the practice was officially referred to) was abolished in 1869 on the complaint of free settlers who claimed that convicts so sentenced were causing no end of trouble. (Especially so in Van Dienen's Land, a/k/a Tasmania, where the worst offenders were sentenced.)

In that same spirit(?), then, British welfare authorities, aided and abetted by the charity now known as Barnardo's, routinely removed white children from "culturally-deprived" or otherwise "dysfunctional" homes across England's Green and Pleasant Land under what turned out being false pretenses (all the while officially excused as one with "colonisation") between 1920 and 1967 ... in the end being subjected themselves to abuse, neglect and maltreatment in "resettlement homes" and, later, in foster care while being expected to play along with the official story of their being "orphaned" or some such. (Which would be deflated later on when it emerged that the real reason for their separation from birth parents was because of "unfit home," "alcoholics," "unwed mother" or other signs of "moral risk," all without parental consent more than anything.)

Now, with some 7,000 specimens of this so-called "noble experiment" in "social betterment" still around across Australia, there have been calls for some time for an apology vis-a-vis such displacement, their not being given a truthful explanation for same beforehand--and probably some compensation. Which Canberra is about to issue within measurable distance, and Great Britain likely to follow sometime around the New Year's holidays.

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OF LATE, "SAVE MONEY. LIVE BETTER" HAS BEEN THE SLOGAN @ WALLY WORLD IN THEIR ADVERTISING, which unwittingly conceals some Dirty Little Secrets as to how such can be possible (and which Bentonville wants to take considerable pains in concealing from public knowledge lest Public Confidence and Trust Be Compromised Adversely All The More, especially among such In Clear and Compelling Need of Wally World--as in the Working-Masses):

For one, collusion with manufacturers, importers and suppliers to such an extent that competitors, not to mention smaller "mom-and-pop" stores in the High Street, are unable to compete on like terms.

For another, the deliberate location of stores in lower-income and socioeconomically-disadvantaged areas to maximise tax benefits they're technically not entitled to, especially considering their own resources being more than adequate to build locations without tax assistance.

And for still another, much of the merchandise being made by deliberately-subsidised child, convict or forced labour in the so-called "People's Republic of China" especially--the last point being something of a fresh issue among especially discount retailers (including "dollar store" chains like Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Family Dollar, 99¢ Only and suchlike, again concentrating on lower-income and working-class areas being driven all the further into gross poverty, fecundity and stupidity thanks to the unhealthy influences of Fox Prolefeed and conservative talkback radio) in light of Customs considering a tightening of import restrictions and/or increased tariffs on consumption goods so manufactured.

(Yet so hard to verify, when you get right down to it.)

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ALFRED PACKER AND ED GEIN WOULD PROBABLY BE AMUSED DEPARTMENT: Police in the western Russian city of Perm are looking for someone who ate some human flesh recently following a Notorious Murder, only to sell the residue to a disreputable kebab shop in that city who, in its turn, may have served human flesh to patrons in a manner that The Plainfield Monster would have found hilarious.

Which, in any event, has caused police and health officials to look for anyone patronising the kebab shop in question over recent days for tests.

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FELIX THE CAT IS NOT AMUSED THAT HIS BELOVED BAG O'TRICKS IS BECOMING AN ESSENTIAL ARSENAL AMONG WEIRD AND UNWHOLESOME ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS in conservative propaganda targeting Joe Sixpack in particular.

The sort as requires use of an Emmanuel Goldstein-stylee "Enemy of the People and Nation" to maintain fear as well as loyalty and national unity through various Tools and Answers so contained to willfully and yet consciously mislead, deceive or otherwise confuse Boobius Americanus such as can be easily misled into supporting so-called "tea party" causes in the guise of "saving American workers from themselves," only to wind up parroting the line of "the Four Hundred" as are behind these "tea parties" through Scientologist-stylee techniques.

And not be expected all along to know he's being used and misled into expecting a "pure," Ayn Rand-stylee capitalism with American characteristics to be their Great White Father--preferably through unconscious use and application of cartel behaviour.

Methinks it was time to attempt a major reeducation of these Unwashed Masses towards explaining to them their actually being misled to think against their own best interests, all the while expected to hold dear an idealised vision of The America We Once Knew and Loved as one that will Save America From Herself ... one, it turns out, as never existed in Reality (refer to Stephanie Coontz' The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap for further details), yet all the while still seeing mutual self-help as among its articles of faith.

So what stands in the way, let alone ponder how best to approach it (and, perhaps, in the same sort of conservative stylee)?

"...and that is is a way."

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