Sunday 30 September 2007
Who loves ya, baby?
One of the best from the Beastie Boys, "Sabotage" from the seminal "Ill Communication" album, something of a homage to the cop shows I grew up with in the '70s.
Operation Iraqi Genocide: depleted uranium
Here's an extract from the film "Beyond Treason" which discusses, amongst other things, Gulf War Syndrome. This section talks about the effects of depleted uranium. To anyone who needs convincing at the inhumanity of the monsters who unleashed this poison on Iraq and, due to the nature of uranium, the whole region if not the world, knowing as they do its incredible toxicity, this second clip may do the job, showing some of the terrible birth defects it causes. The callousness of the masters of war is not reserved for the "hajis", as the health problems of Gulf War veterans amply shows. Depleted uranium does not discriminate between civilians or soldiers, Iraqis or Americans, which is why using it is a war crime.
Common Purpose: who the hell are these people?
I came across this presentation on "Common Purpose", an organisation that I have never before heard of, but from what I can see, some light needs to be shone into this corner of the corporatist state. Browsing the net, I discovered Philip Davies, tory MP for Shipley, had tabled a number of written questions on how much money had the government ministries handed over to their chums in "Common Purpose", which turns out to be on average over £250K per year over the last five years (the period that was asked about). This only involved sixteen government departments, and doesn't cover all the manifold local authorities, commissions and quangos who have put money in this organisation's pockets - all at our expense. Time to start digging, I think.
Saturday 29 September 2007
"Talk to me, Gal ... I'm a good listener"
Here's a snippet from one of my favourite films of recent years, “Sexy Beast” starring Ben Kingsley and Ray Winstone. A british gangster movie, but one that doesn't fall into the usual pitfall of trying to ape the American genre, and inevitably coming across as false. England does not have vaste deserts and cities of skyscrapers. A panoramic style doesn't convince. The closer, almost claustrophobic, atmosphere is far more fitting for this crowded isle.
Ron Paul attacks the "war on drugs"
More good sense from the Doctor. The Ron Paul Revolution keeps picking up momentum.
A true leader
"It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle; to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths; to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance and fear.”
Aung San Suu Kyi
from her 1991 book "Freedom from Fear"
Two Woodstock moments
Jefferson Airplane kick some shit with "Volunteers"
The one and only Janis gives a rendition of "Ball and chain"
The virtual James Purnell
I wouldn't bother commenting but then I stumbled upon this rather priggish account of the embarrasing incident. According to Gracchi at "Westminster Wisdom" (sic):
"This is precisely the kind of media bias that hurts us all- not a bias leftwards or rightwards but a bias towards stupidity and triviality." James Purnell is a spiffing bloke, we are told, so "to all involved, just stop, this is hurting us, hurting democracy."
Yeah, right. Whilst I agree that there are indeed far more important things, politicians who live by media spin deserve to die by it too. If it's any consolation to this Gracchi character, my view of democracy, the political class and the media in this country is already so cynical and hateful, this really changes nothing. The best I hope for is the occasional laugh at their expense.
Friday 28 September 2007
It's never enough
The "we know best" attitude that pervades the administrative class sickens me to the soul. It was always the case that the ban on smoking in "public places", including train platforms that are completely open to the elements, was never going to be the end. So - quelle surprise - the little Hitlers are now building the siege engines for their next assault.
The new Highway Code says you shouldn't smoke at the wheel. That doesn't in itself ban it, but it gives the dumb coppers a reason to persecute drivers and it gives the spy camera industry an incentive to get to work installing driver-level cameras which will generate money by snapping people not wearing seatbelts, taking a sip of water and now smoking. As with most of these new rules, you will be guilty because they say so.
The fact that there is not a shred of evidence that smoking is the cause of accidents or bad driving is, of course, neither here nor there. The safety issue is merely the trojan horse for the anti-smoking fanatics. It is not remotely comparable to driving whilst speaking on a mobile phone. Frankly, if you can't safely smoke a cigarette while driving a car, you shouldn't be driving at all. England's slide into a tyrannical prison state continues.
What a complete Titley
Gary Titley is apparently an MEP for the Labour Party (but who can be sure?) He proclaims that "the debate must end" over the referendum that Labour promised in their manifesto and has now stolen. He expects us all to forget what we read in that document, and to shut our mouths and trust our illustrious leader Gordon Brown to get the best deal for us. "The truth is this," he says, "the battle over the reform treaty is a battle being fought against the neo-conservatives on the right."
That's right, neo-conservatives like Bob Crow of the RMT, and the rest of the unions at the TUC conference who voted to urge this lying government to honour it's promise. Titley knows that if the people ever get a choice, his free-loading porkbarrel lifestyle will come shuddering to an end.
Thursday 27 September 2007
The sickening truth
Reports in the spanish newspaper El Pais (and picked up here and here) reveal the sickening truth that the invasion of Iraq and the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, not to mention thousands of US and hundreds of British troops could all have been avoided.
Saddam, seeing the writing on the wall, offered to go into exile for $1 billion. A lot of money, but only a minute fraction of the cost of this war in money, now currently running at $1 trillion, spent to turn Iraq into a wasteland, and God knows what to rebuild it. The cost of human life is immeasurable.
It could not be clearer that this terrible war was nothing to do with “weapons of mass destruction” or Saddam's atrocious human rights record. Instead it was a callous, calculated act of genocide against the Iraqi people and the guilty must be brought to justice. Bush, Blair, laugh now motherfuckers - the lake of fire awaits.
Monday 24 September 2007
Wisdom from a founding father
"The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war."
"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. "
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. "
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. "
James Madison
Are you listening, America?
Sunday 23 September 2007
I spy the pyramid eye
Who are they, you might wonder.
"Freedom is truth and truth is power"
Like many lovers of liberty, I am watching the progress of Ron Paul in his attempts to win the GOP presidential nomination with great interest. No other candidate in either main party offers any hope whatsoever of restoring the Republic. Here's a short clip from one of his supporters in South Carolina.
Who the fucking hell are you?
Fans of the Beautiful Game will be familiar with the above enquiry; an ironic, feigned ignorance of the opposition. My team Arsenal have started the season well, and are sitting pretty at the top of the table, but their opponents aren't limited to the football field. A hideously ugly oligarch from torture capital and “War on Terror” ally Uzbekistan has now bought 21% of Arsenal's shares.
The heart of Arsenal's strength has always been their way of 'keeping things in the family', which means that problems are dealt with behind closed doors and everyone sticks together. Therefore, it is disgusting to see the role played by former vice-chairman David Dein, who has flounced off from the club and come back carrying the pennant of the ham-handed Usmanov. But we'd better not say too much about Ugly, as his lawyers Schillings have been firing off threats to all those who have spoken out against the man and his plans. Of course, the lapdog media know their place these days, so these jackals in suits have been trawling the blogosphere looking for people to duff up, and if the bloggers themselves have enough backbone to tell 'em to fuck off, their gutless service providers can be got to. Hence the disappearance of Craig Murray's and Tim Ireland's blogs (although they can still be read via google cache).
The British libel laws, like the Law in general, are designed to serve the party with the most money and screw the commoners, so that even a completely spurious claim of defamation can set many a-quaking, in the fear that by the time they are vindicated in the courtroom, they have been utterly destroyed by the costs. These vampiric attacks have produced an outcry amongst fellow-bloggers, we realise that we'll all hang separately if we don't hang together.
Perhaps if the neck-biters happen upon this lowly backwater of the blogging world, they could convey this message to their pay master: Mr Usmanov, we don't need your filthy lucre. If you really care about football, why don't you use your money in your own country, to build stadiums and facilities, and help the kids there?
Wednesday 19 September 2007
Shut up, be happy!
"Shut up, be happy" featuring Jello Biafra, the intro track to Ice T's excellent 1989 album "The Iceberg/Freedom of speech ... just watch what you say", used to seem a little far out. Not any more.
Monday 17 September 2007
England's Freedom, Soldiers' Rights
Sunday 16 September 2007
Music for buzzing ears
4Hero featuring Carinna Andersson - a track called "Les Fleur", originally by Minnie Ripperton. It has a sort of dodgy Hair-esque feel to it, but in spite of this, I like it.
A constituent writes ...
As I noted below, I recently decided to suspend my disdain for our political class and attempted to contact my local MP, to ascertain her position on the referendum. I have now received a reply. Sadly the green shoot of optimism has been stamped back into the mud by the boot of experience.
She tells me:
"This treaty makes the EU more effective but does not make it more powerful. I therefore do not feel a referendum on this issue is appropriate. The amended treaty improves decision making in the EU, especially important since enlargement, and safeguards democratic accountability through an enhanced role for both national parliaments and the European Parliament. Crucially the treaty preserves Britain's ability to take an independent course if we think it necessary for the UK's best interests. It is also important to note that the treaty does not change Britain's ability to act in 4 'red line' areas. This means there is nothing new in the treaty which requires us to change our labour and social legislation, our common law system and our police and judicial processes have been protected, our tax and social security system has been protected, our independent foreign and defence policy is maintained."
Unfortunately for her, I have read the Labour manifesto from 2005, which states:
"The EU now has 25 members and will continue to expand.The new Constitutional Treaty ensures the new Europe can work effectively, and that Britain keeps control of key national interests like foreign policy, taxation, social security and defence.The Treaty sets out what the EU can do and what it cannot. It strengthens the voice of national parliaments and governments in EU affairs. It is a good treaty for Britain and for the new Europe.We will put it to the British people in a referendum and campaign whole-heartedly for a ‘Yes’ vote to keep Britain a leading nation in Europe."
I have now reminded her of this particular section of her "contract with the people" and have asked her to reconsider, to "stand up for this manifesto commitment and the principle of democracy rather than bow to pressure from government whips." Who knows? Perhaps my powers of persuasion will tip the balance.
Saturday 15 September 2007
Cor, don't she look like her mother?
I've got a soft spot for Charlotte Gainsbourg. This is called "the songs that we sing."
Friday 14 September 2007
Friday Quotation
" It must be admitted that the tendency of the human race toward liberty is largely thwarted, especially in France. This is greatly due to a fatal desire — learned from the teachings of antiquity — that our writers on public affairs have in common: They desire to set themselves above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it according to their fancy."
Frédéric Bastiat - "La Loi"
English translation
Bill Hicks: gentleman, scholar, goat boy
There was something about Bill Hicks. From the first time I heard him, something marked him out from his fellow performers at a comedy festival in Canada, one of those times when you scramble for a pen to note down a name.
It isn't always easy to remember the initial impact of something that influenced you, once time has flown on, and the novelty has passed. Our minds cluttered with the knowledge and experience we have acquired since, we forget that there was a time when we didn't know the punchlines.
Mr Hicks could be harsh. He didn't always want you to laugh, but he always wanted a response, even one of anger or hate. If he was heckled he'd hand back a verbal pistol-whipping. If audiences failed to get the joke, he'd berate them: “y'all look like a dog whose just been shown a card trick” he would say. Had he lived longer, his trajectory would have taken him further away from the definition of comedian. "There are dick jokes later" he would promise, pausing in the middle of a long screed on the first Iraq war or the Waco massacre. Those dick jokes would have become fewer and further between. The series in England that was planned but never realised was no sitcom.
One of the last interviews he gave was to a public access show in Austin, Texas, called CapZeyeZ. This followed the occasion when his segment had been excised from the "David Letterman Show" - for him a final confirmation of the rotten heart of the mainstream media. He never was never going to compromise, it was on his terms or not at all, and this incident made him realise that the kind of fame offered via "Letterman" was not worth having.
When asked (by someone in a terrible fake English accent) where he got his humour from he said:
"I don't look outside myself for answers. I kind of feel that everyone has a voice of reason inside, and I believe that's been quelled to a large degree by our multi-media society that we live in, but anything that defies my voice of reason comes out and you hold it up to the light of reason – that's the premise – and then you start nailing it, and those are the jokes, until what's left is a laughter, I think, of recognition of a truth."
Later, he continues:
"I think there's a change coming out, man. You can't put out purile crap 24 hours cos eventually there's gonna be chaos in the streets, which there already is, because people are frustrated not having their voice of reason confirmed, and everyone has that voice of reason that goes “this is bull, man, what I'm watching is bull” and yet the media does not confirm it, so after a while people begin to think they're insane, and that's the bummer about it. But that's why I love non-mainstream stuff, because you actually hear honest emotions, and that's what you won't hear on mainstream TV ever is honest emotions."
Therein is the explanation of what it was that marked him out from his peers. He spoke to that inner voice of reason and expressed things we secretly feel but would often rather not admit, and if sometimes he could be brutal, at least it was brutal honesty. And he was damn funny. Bill, I salute you.
Sunday 9 September 2007
Alex Jones arrested in NYC
Alex Jones is a hero, though he would dismiss such praise and instead exhorts us all to be leaders in this struggle against the global crime syndicate. NYPD - THE WORLD IS WATCHING! GET YOUR HANDS OFF ALEX AND OBEY THE CONSTITUTION!
Saturday 8 September 2007
Crooked Commissar warns against democracy
As most will recall, Peter Mandelson gave up UK politics when he was forced to resign for the second time, and was then sent to fill his boots in a shadowy Brussels-based organisation, known as "the Commission."
In response to the growing demands for a referendum in England, he has crawled out from under the rock where he usually resides during the hours of daylight, to threaten the political class to toe the line. Debate is poisonous, he says, debate is past.
Roland Rudd from something called "Business for New Europe" joins in: "Don't be fooled, Britain could only lose from a referendum on the EU reform treaty."
Oh really? Notice how this little devil doesn't even consider that the people could vote "yes" to their infernal treaty. Notice how they both recognise the threat that democratic participation represents to their plans. Don't let them win!
Requiem pour un con ... ou deux
Unmistakable signs forewarned Caesar of his assassination. A few months previously the veterans who had been sent to colonize Capua under the Julian Law were breaking up some ancient tombs in search of stone for their new farm-houses - all the more eagerly when they came across a large hoard of ancient vases. One of these tombs proved to be that of Capys, founder of the city, and there they found a bronze tablet with a Greek inscripton to this effect: 'Disturb the bones of Capys, and a man of Trojan stock wiill be murderd by his kindred, and later avenged at great cost to Italy.' This story should not be dismissed as idle fiction, or a lie, beacause our authority for it is none other than Cornelius Balbus, a close friend of Caesar's.
Soon afterwards news reached Caesar that a herd of horses which he had dedicated to the river Rubicon, after fording it, and allowed to roam untended in the valley, were beginning to show a repugnance for the pasture and shedding bucketfuls of tears. Again, during a sacrifice the augur Spurinna warned Caesar that the danger threatening him would not come later than the Ides of March; and on the day before the Ides a little bird, called the King Bird, flew into the Hall of Pompey with a sprig of laurel in its beak - pursued by a swarm of different birds from a near-by copse, which tore it to pieces there and then. And on his last night Caesar dreamed that he was soaring above the clouds, and then shaking hands with Jupiter; while his wife Calpurnia dreamed that the gable ornament, resembling that of a temple, which had been one of the honours voted him by the Senate, collapsed, and there he lay stabbed in her arms! She awoke suddenly and the bedroom door burst open of its own accord.
These warning, and ill-health, made him hesitate for some time whether to go ahead with his plans, or whether to postpone the meeting. Finally Decimus Brutus persuaded him not to disappoint the Senate, who had been in full session for some time, waiting for him to arrive. It was about ten o'clock when he set off for the House. As he went, someone handed him a note containing detalis of the plot against his life, but he merely added it the bundle of petitions in his left hand, which he intended to read later. Several victims were then sacrificed, and despite consistently unfavourable omens, he entered the House, deriding Spurinna as a false prophet. 'The Ides of March have come,' he said. 'Yes, they have come,' replied Spurinna, 'but they have not yet gone.' ...
Suetonius - 'Julius Caesar'
translated by Robert Graves,
musique par Serge Gainsbourg
Friday 7 September 2007
Gordon Brown ate my referendum!
Trying to give our sham of a Parliament the benefit of the doubt, for the first time I have been contacting my local (Labour) MP, to discover what line she'll be taking over the issue of a referendum on the new EU treaty. As I have reminded her, the referendum was promised in the 2005 manifesto. So far and three emails later, I have had a reply from her office boy, but nothing from her good self.
Still, it won't be going away any time soon. A cross-party group has formed to push for the referendum that all three majors endorsed at the time of the last election. However, I don't see either of the opposition party leadership making much of the issue, beyond a little grandstanding.
There are those that pretend that all similarities between this treaty and the supposedly defunct “constitution” are neither here nor there, – to which I reply HOW STUPID DO YOU THINK WE ARE? Elsewhere in Europe, where they are not so terrified of admitting the obvious, the politicians and imperial commissioners affirm that the treaty is to all intents and purposes the same document.
One of the favourite justifications for not holding the referendum is the one about our system being a representational democracy. In fact the only reason they have against this referendum is that the people are likely to reject what our parasitical rulers want to foist upon us. Thus the system is one of unrepresentational democracy.
Thursday 6 September 2007
Ron Paul speaks sense, again.
Wednesday 5 September 2007
9-11: the truth must be told
With the sixth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks approaching, it is time for people of good will to stand up and publicly challenge the monstrous lies of the elite, their government minions and the lapdog media that serves their agenda.
Seeking the truth – a moral imperative on us all – starts with a personal decision. This first decision is the hardest one; to face up to the possibility that the official story is not only flawed (as any account may be) but a tissue of lies. The implications of this are so huge, many people continue to shy away from examining it, even though they secretly suspect the so-called truthers are right, or at least harbour doubts as to what really happened.
Once you have managed to override the mental conditioning that we have all been exposed to ever since the first plane struck, the scales quickly fall from your eyes. The official story crumbles to dust. There is virtually no aspect of the official account that stands up to more than cursory scrutiny.
Of course, for those not ready to “take the red pill”, comfort can be found in the loving embrace of falsehood, thereby confirming Hitler's chilling observation that:
...since the great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big. Such a falsehood will never enter their heads and they will not be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous misrepresentation in others; yes, even when enlightened on the subject, they will long doubt and waver, and continue to accept at least one of these causes as true.
The time for doubt and wavering is past. Now is the time to stand up for truth, love and justice – tomorrow may be too late.
Sunday 2 September 2007
Rest in Peace - Aaron Russo
February 14, 1943 - August 24, 2007
If I'm gonna get anywhere ...
... I'll have to do as Peter Tosh says, and pick myself up.