Gay Star News: New Website 'Hacked By Pranksters'

A new website, Gay Star Travel, is believed to have been hacked by queer anti-capitalist prankster hackers, Fagburn can exclusively reveal.
The site has been covered with messages saying it is "Supported by MONEYCORP".
"I can't believe it," Dave Made-Up told Fagburn. "Is there really a company called that? Surely this has to be a piss-take of Gay Star News legendary prostitution to and rimming of any big business they can get money out of?"
A mysterious email by a group called USUQ [United Situationists! United Queers!] and seen by Fagburn reads; "Gay men will never be free until GSN's last shitty piece of corporate advertorial is strangled with the entrails of their last reprinted press release".
Gay Star News editor Tris Reid Smith was unavailable for principles.

PS A quite appalling example yesterday of Gay Star News reprinting a corporate press release uncritically as "news" - this one from "Out Now Consulting, a global marketing agency" (!). See comments.

Update: Coincidentally, on Thursday GSN ran some advertorial - for a new housing development in Surrey near 10 golf courses! - that was marked as "Sponsored editorial". I think this maybe a first...

Fagburn: On Saying Nothing

The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than “that which appears is good, that which is good appears.” The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance.

• Still taken from Guy Debord's 1973 film of his book, Society Of the Spectacle.

Sometimes I read something so banal I can only imagine that the person writing it must have had this mantra going round in their head on a loop;
"That which appears is good, that which is good appears. That which appears is good, that which is good appears. That which appears is good, that which is good appears. That which appears is good, that which is good appears. That which appears is good, that which is good appears. That which appears is good, that which is good appears..."
It's not just the manufacture of consent, but the feigning of dissent. 
The hell of this hegemony.
Propaganda's K-hole.

Watch Pollyanna pretending to be angry
about the things Polly's allowed to be angry about.

Hear Pangloss, oblivious to our disasters
"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"

"And I? May I say nothing, my lord?"

Le Scandale de Notre-Dame: Encore Une Fois!

Today, Easter day of the Holy Year,
Here, under the emblem of Notre-Dame of Paris,
I accuse the universal Catholic Church of the lethal diversion of our living strength toward an empty heaven,
I accuse the Catholic Church of swindling,
I accuse the Catholic Church of infecting the world with its funereal morality,
Of being the running sore on the decomposed body of the West.
Verily I say unto you: God is dead,
We vomit the agonizing insipidity of your prayers,
For your prayers have been the greasy smoke over the battlefields of our Europe.
Go forth then into the tragic and exalting desert of a world where God is dead,
And till this earth anew with your bare hands,
With your PROUD hands,
With your unpraying hands.
Today Easter day of the Holy Year,
Here under the emblem of Notre-Dame of Paris,
We proclaim the death of the Christ-god, so that Man may live at last.

Proclamation read from the pulpit of Notre-Dame Cathedral by Lettrist Michel Mourre, while dressed as a Dominican monk, during mass on Easter Sunday 1950. 
For some reason I was reminded of this today.

Brighton Alternative Pride: Fuck Tha Police

"A former Brighton Council employee who used Facebook to invite friends to join him on Brighton Beach for a picnic on Saturday, August 13 after the Pride Parade had finished, has been served with a 'Notice to abate a statutory nuisance environmental protection act order' at his home which could result in a fine of £20,000 if not observed.
"Waiyne Jones set up a page on Facebook inviting friends to join him on the beach for a picnic rather than pay an entrance fee for Preston Park where he considered the conditions of entry to the park an infringement of his civil liberties..."

From GScene.
Fagburn on the privatisation of Brighton Pride - and Sussex Police's role in it.
It was the police who pushed for Brighton Pride to be made a ticketed event.
Makes it easier to police, and they charge to attend paid-for events, unlike free ones/protests.
On the free alternative beach party etc; Brighton & Hove Community Pride.
Remember: It's your beach - you don't need permission for anything.