Disreputable Lazy Aliens

Tattoo Designs

2006-03-07T20:28:00.000Z

So, the top one is my favourite font: "Durrow" from Scriptorium, with my embellishments. But it not only costs $18, which, uncharacteristically perhaps, i'd probably pay, but i don't have a live credit card anyway at the moment. Still, if i had, i'd have maxed it on albums i've heard on Tormented Radio recently: i've ordered VNV Nation's "Matter + Form" (which, incidentally, fucking rocks!) and BlutEngel's "The Oxidising Angel" anyway, on Switch from Amazon.co.uk... Combichrist, Seabound, Covenant, Velvet Acid Christ and Massiv In Mensch would surely have followed; possibly Suicide Commando, Icon of Coil and/or Apoptygma Beserk also; so sick of mp3's.

I can extract a 72 font size rendering from Scriptorium's preview page, but blowing it up to size leaves it jaggy as fuck and, as you can see, my Photoshop skills don't quite stretch far enough to doing it proper justice, going over it. I want it a little scruffy, but not that bad.

So, the second one is an idea for a 'tribal' stylee border, for the top one really, but again, i'm just not really that good at visual arts. The last one is an idea in case i can't get it sorted, but i don't think i'll get something permenently across my left breast that i'm less than happy with, in fairness...

My new paramour is going to have a look, as visual arts is her field, but any input would be greatly appreciated.

Polls...

2006-03-07T04:01:00.001Z

Well, they've been running for ages now and we have opinions with which to go forward. The new windows will continue to open: you can always right click/control click a link to open it in a new tag. It seems politics has just edged it, along with Galloway and Bush in a boxing ring. DLA's, i can but try! But given the close run nature of things, the rest will get a look in and the unwarned language may creep back in, also (fuck it, eh?). Interestingly enough, it seems that those of you who have bothered to vote have come out in favour of stern punishment for the lick-spittle lacky scum, Bliar. Again, i can but try, LOL! New one now: >>

UPDATE: Oh yeah, more shameless self-agrandisement too, thus;That's more like it. But then again, i wasn't on the phone and doing something else as well...

Ou est l'og?

2006-02-20T10:50:00.000Z

DLA's, i'm more than a little touched that many of you have emailed or commented to question my diminished cyber-presence: thank you all! Whatagwaan is that i've been doing some more intensive work on my head, with a fellowship of people for mutual support. It has proved to be necessary for me to be undistracted, hence my disappearance. This isn't, however, the whole story: i've been slacking with my novel for a while, a state of affairs which i'm trying to remedy, and i'll also confess that, rather predictably for this old hog, there are a number of the fairer sex involved also... oh dear, it'll end in tears. Yes, if past experience is anything to go by (and, in fairness, what else is there, ultimately?), it almost certainly will. But one of them is such a walking goddess: intelligent, beautiful, witty, prodigeously talented, also (OMGs save me from the dark seductresses) young and equally black-hearted as i, myself. DLA's, my narcissism but a moth to her combustion... i'm doomed!She sent me this photo of herself the other day... really... what can a man do? I frankly don't care how much it hurts later. So i'm listening to Tormented Radio (it's in the tuner, check it) a lot right now.

That said, i've got a backlog of stuff to put up here: including, but not limited to (oh haha), a reply from my MP, a request for my name & address from the Vermont Legislature, more Imperialists Anonymous, and a full-on political manifesto. Oh, i shit (excuse my French, ahahaahahaah, get it?) you not, DLA's: the mighty edjog is going global... so, soon... I'm learning teasing from this sparkling darkling darling, too... actually i'm lying: i'm merely being reminded of dormant skills...

The Shame!

2006-02-06T21:00:00.000Z

Well, there we have it. The Channel 4 Political Award for the most inspiring person in UK politics for 2005 goes to Jamie Oliver. What a bunch of navel-gazing, imaginationally challenged saps we are. I couldn't decide between George Galloway and Shami Chakrabarti, so I used two email addresses and voted for them both. Apparently he's got onto Africa now, and fair fucks if he can use his platform to support the cause, but I do wonder if this isn't going to turn into something like Jamie's lessons to Oxfam workers on how to turn EU surplus milk powder into fillet mignon, with a wild herb salad, of course.

I'm depressed.

Technorati Tags: Oliver Channel4 Awards Politics Shame

Kid gets it both ways

2006-02-02T23:44:00.000Z

Mr [Nick] Griffin [BNP] told reporters: "I was speaking the truth to an audience of decent working people in West Yorkshire who in some cases are facing terrible problems, including the grooming of their children by paedophiles."
~ The Grauniad

What can one say really? What on earth has paedophilia to do with race? Well, these questions speak directly to this blog's raison d'etre. I'll refer you all to my second ever post. The answer, IMHO, is simply this,

"You can take your 'decent working people' and shove 'em up your arse. I'm a Disreputable Lazy Alien and proud of it!"

The Kid's on it though: censorship is not the way. As he says, it's a two edged sword, but also, we cannot defeat The Man by being seen to use The Man's methods. Which is why we must encourage these morons to speak out so that we can use exactly the same kind of rhetorical devices to destroy their arguments and discredit them personally, invisibly. After all, there's no point trying to use reason against the tactic of trying to conflate emotional issues like paedophilia, job security and xenophobia. Any reasonable person has already rejected the patent absurdity out of hand. It is those who are duped emotionally we need to reach.

Nod: the Disillusioned kid: Pleasure and pain

Technorati Tags: decent decency racism bigotry xenophobia hate hatred BNP censorship disreputable lazy aliens

Imperialists Anonymous

2006-02-02T02:08:00.000Z

[Ghost of Adam S] Welcome to the Thursday Morning meeting of Imperialists Anonymous. My name is Adam and I am an Imperialist.

[All] Hello Adam.

[Ghost of Adam S] Will somebody be so kind as to read "Who"?

[Ghost of Winston C] My name is Winston and I am an Imperialist.

[All] Hello Winston.

[Ghost of Winston C] Who is an Imperialist?

Most of us do not have to think twice about this question, we know! Our whole life and thinking was centred in domination in one form or another: the getting and using of resources and finding ways and means to monopolise more. We lived to dominate and dominated to live. Very simply, an Imperialist is a man or woman whose life is controlled by the need to control resources. We are people in the grip of a continuing and progressive compulsive obsession whose ends are always the same: inequality, oppression and war.

[All] Thank you, Winston.

[Ghost of Adam S] I'll be obliged to the person who reads "What".

[Ghost of Golda M] Hi, my name's Golda and i'm an Imperialist.

[All] Hello Golda.

[Ghost of Golda M] What is the Imperialists Anonymous programme?

IA is a non-profit fellowship or society of men and women for whom domination had become a major problem. We are recovering Imperialists who meet regularly to help each other remain civilised. This is a programme of complete abstinance from all domination. There is only one requirement for membership: the desire to stop monopolising resources. We suggest you keep an open mind and give yourself a break. Our programme is a set of principles written so simply that we can follow them in our daily lives. The most important thing about them is that they work.

There are no strings attached to IA. We are not affiliated with any other organisations, we have no initiation fees or dues, no pledges to sign, no promises to make to anyone. We are not connected with any political, religious, or law enforcement groups, and are under no surveillance at any time. Anyone may join us regardless of age, race, sexual identity, creed, religion, or lack of religion.

We are not interested in what or how much you dominated, who your allies or victims were, what you have done in the past, how much or how little you have, but only in what you want to do about your problem and how we can help. The newcomer is the most important person at any meeting because we can only keep what we have by giving it away. We have learned from our group experience that those who keep coming to our meetings regularly, remain civilised.

[All] Thank you Golda.

[Ghost of Adam S] If we might continue with "Why"?

[Ghost of Joseph S] My name is Joe and I am an Imperialist.

[All] Hello Joe.

[Ghost of Joseph S] Why are we here?

Before coming to the fellowship of IA, we could not be satisfied by civilisation. We could not live and enjoy life as other people do. We had to have everything and we thought we had found the means in domination. We placed dominion ahead of the welfare of our families, our wives, husbands, children and countries. We had to monopolise resources at all costs. We did many people great harm and also harmed ourselves. Through our inability to accept a civilised approach to life, we were actually creating our own problems. We seemed to be incapable of facing life on its own terms.

Most of us realised that in our Imperialism we were slowly corrupting everything good about ourselves, but Imperialism is such a cunning enemy of life that we had lost the power to do anything about it. Many of us ended up in jail or sought help through political doctrine, religion and economics. None of these methods was sufficient for us. Our compulsive obsession always resurfaced or continued to progress until in desperation we sought help from each other in Imperialists Anonymous.

After coming to IA, we realised we were sick people. We suffered from an obsessive compulsive disorder from which there is no known cure. It can, however, be arrested at some point and civilisation is then possible.

[All] Thank you, Joe.

[Ghost of Adam S] And now "How", if you please.

[Ghost of Harry T] Hey, my name's Harry and I'm an Imperialist.

[All] Hello Harry.

[Ghost of Harry T] How it works.

If you want what we have to offer and are willing to make the effort to get it, the you are ready to take certain steps. These are the principles that made our civilisation possible:

We admitted that we were powerless over our Imperialism, that our lives had become uncivilised.
We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him/Her/It.
We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
We humbly asked Him/Her/It to remove our shortcomings.
We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him/Her/It, praying only for knowledge of His/Her/Its will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to Imperialists, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

This sounds like a big order, and we cannot do it all at once. We did not become Imperialists in one day, so remember: easy does it.

There is one thing more than anything else that will defeat us in our civilisation; this is an attitude of indifference or intolerance toward spiritual principles. Three of these that are indispensible are honesty, open-mindedness and willingness. With these we are well on our way.

We feel that our approach to the obsessive compulsive disorder of Imperialism is completely realistic, for the therapeutic value of one Imperialist helping another is without parallel. We feel that our way is practical, for one Imperialist can best understand and help another Imperialist. We believe that the sooner we face our problems, within our society, in everyday living, just that much faster do we become acceptible, responsible and civilised members of that society.

The only way to keep from returning to active Imperialism is not to dominate that first resource. If you are like us you know that one is too many and a thousand never enough. We put great emphasis on this, for we know that when we dominate resources in any form, or substitute one method for another, we release our Imperialism all over again.

Thinking of oil as different from other resources has caused a great many recovering Imperialists to revert to barbarism. Before we came to IA, many of us viewed oil separately, but we cannot afford to be confused about this. Oil is simply a resource. We are people with the obsessive compulsive disorder of Imperialism who must abstain from dominating all resources in order to attain civilisation.

[All] Thank you Harry.

[Ghost of Adam S] I'll take this time to ask if there any newcomers or visitors present and also request you identify yourselves by your given name only.

[George B] Er... my name's George. I'm not sure why I'm here... er people call me...

[All] Hello George. Welcome.

[George B] See I'm the... I mean, huh, I have a righ...

[Ghost of Adam S] That's quite alright George, we surely do understand. If you listen to this gathering here tonight, things may become clearer. I'll ask that all symbols of oppression be left outside the meeting place, for the protection of the group, and that any newfangled contraptions of communication be rendered silent.

We will proceed with a formal system of sharing which will remain free from interuption if possible. Any questions should be reserved for the end of the meeting. The penultimate ten minutes will be set aside for newcomers or those who find it difficult to share and I'll add that, if anyone has exerted dominion today, that they should save their comments toward the end of the meeting and be certain to speak to somebody before we go our separate ways.

With that, I'll hand over to Ronald who has come here tonight to share his experience, strength and hope.

[All] Thank you Adam.

[Ghost of Ronald R] My name's Ron and I'm an Imperialist.

[All] Hello Ronny!

We'll leave this IA meeting now, but stay tuned for Ron's share and comments, observations and identification by the likes of Nicollo M, Ghengis K, Gaius J, Adolf H, Cecil R, Rameses P, Asa G C and of course more from those already introduced...

Technorati Tags: Anonymous Empire Imperial Imperialist Imperialism Addict compulsion OCD greed domination oppression Bush Dubya Smith Churchill Meir Stalin Truman Reagan satire civilisation

2006-02-02T01:34:00.000Z

Sounds fair enough to me...

2006-01-31T05:51:00.000Z

URGENT: They've kidnapped Pinochet
WE NEED YOUR COLLABORATION [translation from Chilean Spanish]

AN HOUR AGO A GROUP OF DELINQUENTS (taking advantage of a negligence of the Security Forces), KIDNAPPED GENERAL (R) AUGUSTO PINOCHET! They have demanded $100 million for his liberation and warned that, if their requirements are not met within 24 hours, they will sprinkle him with fuel and set fire to him...

We are organizing a collection, appealing to your humanity to donate what you can...

Currently we have managed to amass:
7,800 liters of PETROL...
2,231 liters of PARAFFIN...
1,986 phosphorus boxes...
126 blowtorches and
231,985 lighters...
even so... we fear that it is not sufficient for the task, all donations, however small, are welcome... otherwise the unthinkable, he may be left alive...!!!
(thanks The GuNNer for the joke) jajajaja! xD

Rally the troops!

2006-01-30T22:01:00.000Z

So DLA's, in the comments of my last post Michael the tubthumper drew attention to the plight of Rosemarie Jackowski, an American journalist in her 60's who has not only been convicted of "Disorderly Conduct with Intent to Harass and Annoy" for peacefully demonstrating against the war in Iraq (she joined with others to halt traffic so that drivers would see their placards; her case is under appeal), but is also a litigant against the corrupt State of Vermont after being almost killed in a traffic accident involving a state owned truck, whilst on the way to visit her 89 year old sick mother. The State's Attourney's office have been giving her a rough ride and it has taken about 6 years to get her case heard. Check it.

I'll urge you all to go there, read the article, consider just how disorderly, harassing or annoying this unarmed woman in her 60's (pictured above) can actually be, what relevance to the fact that she was run into by a logging truck her political stance, her divorce 35 years ago or her brutal rape 40 years ago have, and email Dick Sears, Chairman of the State Judiciary Committee and Gaye Symington, Speaker of the State House, to let them know that the eyes of the world are watching. I've also emailed Ms. Jackowski herself to let her know that she is heard: it seemed the proper thing to do; i'll bet she must feel very out on a limb right now. If you are a US citizen, you can also contact Governor of Vermont, Jim Douglas, through his website. In case anyone is stuck for what to write, here is what i said:

Dear [Dick Sears/Gaye Symington/Jim Douglas],

the treatment of Ms. Rosemarie Jackowski by the State of Vermont is a calumny against The Constitution of the USA.

Be in no doubt that the whole world knows of this and similar hypocrisy. Do you find it at all surprising then to find US foreign policy the subject of open derision?

Quite apart from the morality of the issues relating to Ms. Jackowski and others like her, I'll ask you to consider this: with a $650 billion Trade Deficit, the US cannot afford much more war. If you want to promote US interests abroad, you will have to address the culture of institutionalised corruption at home, sooner or later.

Why not start now? Be bold. Be a true patriot. We're watching.

[insert your name]

UPDATE (while i was typing this): Ms. Jackowski replied to my email thus:

"Great letter. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I need all the help I can get.
rosemarie"

So there we are, she needs our support. Do it. Do it now.

UPDATE (04:05 2006/02/01 GMT): so Rosemarie emailed to say we can keep up with whatagwaan at Mickey Z's where she is a contributor. It's now in the TEXT LINKS also.

Technorati Tags: Jackowski Vermont corruption victimisation

Remiss of me.

2006-01-30T16:31:00.000Z

DLA's, you know i try to bring you the best the net has to offer, but i must confess to having failed in one area. The website in question first came to my attention a couple of years ago, when we all had a good laugh about it @uni, and has since been updated a bit.

I'll ask you to understand that, without my constant vigilance, i am prone to becoming a mentalist and this is precisely what happened for a couple of years. Standard quality of service having been resumed and after a timely reminder from Guerrillasinthemidst (who also goes into the blogroll) however, the situation is rectified:

Lest we forget.

It'll go into the links also, as soon as i finish here. Let us hope that they have internet access in heaven, so when The Chimp finally goes to the great tyre-swing in the sky, St. Peter will have all the amunition he needs to tell him to fuck right off.

Technorati Tags: Bush Dubya lies dishonesty mendacity idiot moron

2006-01-30T01:13:00.000Z

Pots, kettles and "a daughter of a whore".

Blims & snippets new stylee...

2006-01-29T22:53:00.000Z

So yeah DLA's, it seems to be the thing to have an alternate post style for tiny segments that don't need much or any additional waffle. This will be mine.

UPDATE (03:12 2006/01/30 GMT): Oh for the love of beating old ladies with a stick! It's fucked in Internet Excrementer again! It's the tiny bit of the Alien Abduction image that sticks out at the side, i think (which i actually thought was rather stylish: not quite symmetrical; interesting). Fucking Microshit! BTW, new link: "Stop IE". TBH, i'm really not sure that i can actually be arsed to sort it out again. There are limits. I've got to be able to have some pride.

The fucking Holy Market... again!

2006-01-29T17:54:00.000Z

So DLA's, the Disillusioned kid points up more of Dubya's dick-headery:

"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."

This whilst addressing the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, check it. Orwellian certainly, but i'm no longer surprised by the neo-cons contempt for the possibility of accountability.

What never ceases to amaze me though is how he gets away with spouting such utterly transparent bollocks. This time he even refered to how it's done: education. As if his meaning of indoctrination wasn't plain enough, he then told us clearly how it will be reinforced: "faith groups" "educating" poor Americans about home ownership. Now, i'm not a great bible scholar, so i'll admit i might have missed it, but then again, i'm sure that someone would have pointed it out by now, but i don't recall any mention of home ownership in fucking scripture, nor the righteous proselytising said in any attempt by Caeser to diffuse public unrest by extending a vested interest in the status quo. In fact, i'm fairly certain that Jesus was reported to have taken rather the opposite view, with his "Render unto Caeser" and "Camel to pass through the eye of a needle" quotes: give the government precisely its due but keep your hearts and minds fixed firmly on God.

No, it's the religion of The Holy Market again: it worked for Thatcher, why not give some ground in the US. After all, the amount of wealth redistribution we are talking about is actually miniscule in comparison to what's at stake should civil unrest topple the neo-con agenda.

Bush also refered to the method by which this indoctrination of the young will be more jealously guarded. Those schools which do not teach children to adequately "read, write, add and subtract" will have their federal funding removed. That surely begs the question, 'By whose reckoning?' The academic performance of American children is already subnormal by European standards and that after, here in the UK at least, a general dumbing down of the required syllabus. You just know that the real demarcation will be over attitudes toward primarily The Holy Market, and also Sex Education, Abortion and "Creationism", eh?

The symmetrical beauty of this particular foray into mendacity though comes at the end. After a rousing call to support Homeland Security through the economic security of being stuck in a low paid job for fear of losing one's investment in the meanest structure which can be built and still bear the appellation "home", thus allowing the continued crusade to convert heathens to the righteousness of The Holy Market worldwide, the witless chimp then explains how this will be done. Deregulation to stimulate growth and competition in the market? It get's a slight mention near the very end. Tax-breaks to directly stimulate supply? Nary a word of it. No, it seems that The Holy Market has been so efficient that Federal Grants will be all that's required for first-time buyers and the poor. In the face of this blatant hypocrisy, did anyone throw their screwed up pamphlets at him, even boo or heckle? No. The benighted fools applauded!

For any US readers, a couple more points:

Margaret Thatcher's policies of house-market deregulation and increasing home ownership led to a short-term boom in the UK domestic economy which proved unsustainable, being as it was, based on credit. It also lead to an increased Trade Deficit. This was fuelled by home "ownership" allowing consumers to further extend, what was for many, the unrealistic credit of a mortgage. When the bubble burst, many people were left with debts which were not able to be covered by the suddenly depressed value of the property they were secured against: "negative equity" we call it.
In Britain, even a multi-story structure made from wood is called a 'shed'. Even to the poor, a 'trailer' is a temporary dwelling used for holidays, unless the owner is a Gypsy, in which case the potential mobility is its salient feature.

If you're going to sell yourselves out, at least do it for something worthwhile.

Technorati Tags: Bush Dubya US USA America economics rhetoric lies homeland security Orwellian capitalism monetarism Thatcherism neocon neocons indoctrination education propaganda religion market deficit

Shoutbox!

2006-01-27T12:53:00.000Z

So DLA's, we have a new tool: The ShoutBox! This is for those of you who want to say something that doesn't seem to go with the threads of discussion, or just to say hello/plug your site, and can be found under the site polls. It's a NeoWORX [title link] creation and is on free trial for 14 days, at which time it will revert to a "free version" which will not have all the same features of customisablity. It looks ok for now i think, because i've been able to adjust it's colours and fonts to match DLA, but whether it stays or even just gets moved somewhere less obtrusive will depend on how much use it gets and just what kind of pumpkin it turns into at midnight!

I'm also going to add a link to an online translator, underneath it, to facilitate the bigging up of starlike international chests!

Technorati Tags: shoutbox chat message messages blog blogs blogging weblog weblogs website websites blogtools sitetools webtools communication translation

Blogging, blogs, whatever: i just need the link!

2006-01-26T21:31:00.000Z

Don't bother reading: this is just to get my google ads back a sec while i get the url for advertisers to bid to place targetted ads here. So, keywords? Well, what have we? Telescopes. Soft toilet tissue. Organic vegetable dyes. Curtains, funerals, rabbit hutches, dog breeders. Garden sheds, lawnmowers, grass seed. Moss killer, Kate Moss, modelling agencies. Cameras. Tripods, 35mm film, digital data storage. Magazines, life style, no style, no brain, brain surgeon. Beluga caviar. Rotten fish, rotten bastards, Johnny Rotten. Sex Pistols, gun clubs, gay clubs. That'll do it surely? Come 'ed lads?

Qu'est-ce que c'est, cet 'Overwhelming'?

2006-01-26T12:56:00.000Z

So, it has reached through my haze of ostentation that some people have found this blog a bit 'overwhelming'; hence this attempt to underween, if you follow. For sure, there's a lot of stuff around the sides of my usual waffle, but hey: this is my browser homepage so it's got plenty of the stuff i'm into. It occured to me also that the waffle itself might be something of a problem, because i have a tendency to juxtapose some fairly abstruse language with street vernacular. Some of this is purely for the love of words, but mainly because my vocabulary is a de autodidactic product of intense reading whilst also living, if not actually on the street the whole time, then close by. I try to aim for my precise meaning concisely with what i have at my disposal. One word can save a sentence. Of couse, i think it's funny sometimes too.

So i've added a Dictionary/Thesaurus/Reference search box to the table above, to compliment Urban Dictionary. It has to be said that the 'go-behind' ads from Dictionary.com can be a pain in the arse, but it streams much faster than Wiktionary (in the TEXT LINKS also) and unlike said, if you mispell a search term, it comes back with alternatives. I find this last well cool.

My spelling is actually appalling, without reference. I put this down to the fact that i had the rudiments of reading before i went to school aged 4, but once there had to learn 'ita', the 'initial teaching alphabet', which was confusing enough, but then i had to miss a bit of school aged 7, when my class mates where presumably getting whatever coaching was deemed necessary to help them with the transition to correct english spelling, because i needed a tendon graft in my right hand and also my Grandfather died. It was all made worse because i was already fairly ambivalent about 'handedness' and had to switch to my left, which i had been forced to abandon the almost equal use of (apparently it was essential that i make up my mind; the sharp application of a ruler to the hand in question being the prefered method of mediation between 'the realities' and my neuronal pathways), so it was all a bit retrograde and rebellion inspiring.

Of course, the icing on the cake was, when the cast came off and, after extensive physiotherapy, i could start to gingerly use my right hand again, the left was no longer de rigueur. I had also to 'relearn' what i'd been made to pretend to forget, as if i hadn't been reading my parents newspaper for the last 2.5 years. Looking back, i can't imagine what i could have thought, other than what i did: that it was all a, perhaps not pointless, but punctiliously challenged, waste of mine and everybody else's time and energy. As i was realising is the case with almost all human activity. I'm sure i was a difficult kid.

Oh yeah, check out the "OR PORNOLIZE IT!" link in the "DESTROY THIS BLOG!" (left sidebar) section! But not if your easily offended by foul language. It's pretty funny stuff mind.

Technorati Tags: ita english spelling vocabulary autodidact overwhelming metalanguage porn porno pornspeak pornolize

My bloody MP speaks! My god, it's ali-ive!

2006-01-26T00:52:00.000Z

This relates to my ongoing attempts to get my MP to do something useful against the UK Government's complicity in Uzbek torture [title link].

Dear Mr [edjog]

Thank you for your e-mail of 14 January.

I believe that the United Kingdom Government have been less than forthcoming on the question of extraordinary rendition and all the issues which it raises. That said they have been at length to point out that they are against the use of torture and would certainly not accept within the United Kingdom's jurisdiction evidence that was obtained by that method.

I will certainly ask the Government to comment further on the additional information you have provided but in matters such as this, where it is difficult to obtain personally corroborated alternative evidence, it very much leaves the Government in the driving seat when it comes to dealing with the types of issue which have been raised forcefully in the House of Commons about this whole subject.

To that end I know, having talked to one of the members of the All Party Group on Extraordinary Rendition, that they are doing their best in the terms of the information available to Backbench Members of Parliament on this matter to probe the Government further.

Yours sincerely

The Rt Hon [name supplied on request] MP

Well, it's not good, really, is it? He manages to side-step a number of issues i raised in the email, pleads helplessness and asks for patience. It's something of a fault of mine, i'll admit, but patience is not one of my foremost virtues, nor is tolerance in the face of well paid claims of ineffectuality. I'd be prepared to bet my left bollock that there are people in Uzbek cells right now whose patience and tolerance are in even shorter supply when considering the continued "probing" they have in store.

I'm possibly getting somewhere though, as he agrees that the UK Govt. "have been less than forthcoming". Lying out of their arse, i'd say, but that's "potty-mouthed" me. That he repeats the Foreign & Commonwealth Office position in the opening paragraph however, fills me with suspicion. Certainly, the FCO would not accept "evidence" within their "jurisdiction", as it would be illegal to do so under the UN Charter Against Terrorism. This does not seem to be preventing them from accepting the self same information for "operational purposes" though; which is the heart of the [aaarrrggghhh can't swear anymore, i promised!] issue.

Uncharacteristically, i'm not going to bombard him with more correspondance yet, or take him to task over his perpetuation of this casuistry: i'm trying to get him to do something and coating him off is not likely to produce results at this stage i feel. Obviously, i'll not rule irritating and embarrassing him over this issue out, at some future point, if he doesn't get with the sodding programme; but for now, i'll wait and see what he has to say about my later email of 18 Jan 06. I'm not done with UK Criminal Law either. For sure, they can get away with it under the Criminal Justice (Terrorism & Conspiracy) Act 1998, but i reckon there must be some law somewhere that makes those provisions illegal in themselves, precedes or overrides them.

Technorati Tags: activism torture rendition Uzbekistan UK Britain MP UNCAT

Wow! ClustrMaps is cool!

2006-01-25T12:35:00.000Z

So i've got a reader in either Iran, United Arab Emirates or Oman! I wouldn't have thought there was anyone interested in anarchist viewpoints over there, going by the media. Fucking go on my son!

It's difficult to tell from the ClustrMaps representation [title link] because the dot looks to be right in the middle of The Straits of Hormuz. Ay, maybe it's the CIA, by satelite phone or something? Considering my last post! Well, if it is and you come back lads, i hope your fucking boat sinks.

And someone in what appears to be The Dominican Republic. Excellent!

All welcome, come back and tell us whatagwaan?

UPDATE (09:44 2006/01/26 GMT): So, a large dot in the Sydney area, either Jo has been busy with DLA or the word is heard, plus Perth and someone around the border between Northern Territories & Southern Australia, possibly Kulgera: g'day!

Shout outs also go to: Sibu, Sarawak Province Malaysia | Pocheon or Seoul South Korea | Kyoto, Shiga or Fukui Province Japan [these last 2: it's difficult to tell from the dots]. I did start looking for online translators to say hello to you lot in your native languages, but i got nowhere quickly enough with Korean/Hangul, so i ended up thinking that if you're reading this page, you must understand English; so yeah, hey, cool, what's happening? Don't be offended if you're one of my European or American/Mexican visitors, but i hope you'll understand that from where i'm sitting, these other places just seem more exotic.

So, i'll probably not bother to come back to this subject, unless i get a hit from somewhere well off my beaten track, like Congo DRC, Paraguay or Bhutan, but i've put a link to Windows [ptuh!] Live-Local powered by Virtual Earth beta in the text links for anybody interested.

UPDATE (11:27 2006/01/26 GMT): Ha! The cyber-skills of the mighty edjog prevail!
Helo, apa khabar?

No Arabic or Farsi? No mate, give's a chance!

Technorati Tags: Iran UAE Oman Hormuz Gulf Dominican Australia Malaysia Korea Japan Congo Paraguay Bhutan anarchist CIA Un-American

That much?

2006-01-24T21:55:00.000Z

I am 17% American

You're as American as Key Lime Tofu Pie
Otherwise known as un-American!
You belong in Cairo or Paris...
Get out fast - before you end up in Gitmo!

How American Are You?

So it seemed like a laugh at the time... I think i probably only scored that high because there were questions i had to answer falsly due to a lack of choices relevant to my life/attitudes. Quite what the picture is supposed to imply, i cannot imagine: i am a scantily clad young woman with an innapropriate taste in hats? Un-Americans like such women? I cannot afford clothes? She's waiting for me in Cairo or Paris? Er... hang on a minute... maybe i'll just get my coat!

UPDATE (03:24 06/01/25 GMT): is that Dubya's dog about to go down on her?

Technorati Tag: un-American

Guido Fawkes is a spineless shitbag

2006-01-24T20:09:00.000Z

So, i wasn't going to link to this post, because i made something of a dick of myself in the comments, but the story goes on.

BACKGROUND:
Guido Fawkes is a blogger who has claimed to have been instrumental in the "outing" of Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat MP who has been rumbled in a scandal involving male prostitution. Whatever, i say: it's none of our business who he fucks or how much he pays for the service. I'll add though that considering the shameful prejudice in action against Charles Kennedy (the Lib Dem ex-leader) and his drinking, i have little sympathy for Oaten's being forced out of the race to succeed him. Attempting to avoid the issue of whipping up prejudice for which he was being taken to task, Fawkes scorned those who were not "in the gutter", claiming a spurious superiority to those perceived as 'intellectual'.

So, i had mistakenly castigated Justin @ ChickenYoghurt [title link] for this comment:

"Ah Guido, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at Mark Oaten's arse."

I'll confess to having gotten bored and skim read the comments, so not realised it had been made by Justin, who was certainly implying that Fawkes was the one fixated upon Oaten's arse. He was understandibly irritated and held me to account, adding that i should take anything i had to say further to it's source; for which dick-headedness i apologised and took his suggestion as the proper thing to do. At Guido Fawkes' blog, i opined thus:

At 7:35 AM, edjog said...

Guido Fawkes, you're a nasty little proselytiser of prejudice and your wit is substandard to boot (oh how i wish i could be bothered). Far from "in the gutter" as you claim, you are the gutter's raison d'etre: the small walleted in pursuit of the small minded.

Get to fuck.

To which came the following replies:

At 9:17 AM, Guido Fawkes said...

Edjog,

I see you have more hair than brains. Bothered.

At 12:02 PM, Lagwolf said...

Edjog...wow impressive...did you need help writing out that little paragraph? Is it painful to pick your knuckles off the floor long enough to type?

To which patently absurd denigration of my intellect, i replied thusly:

Booyaka!

It seems the shitbag Fawkes cannot stand to be refuted by evidence of my intelligence combined with wit, or the thought that someone far more acquainted with "the gutter" than he could lead him into such a simple trap, because my last comment has been deleted. What a spineless tosser!

Nod: Chicken Yoghurt: Oaten

UPDATE (02:25 06/01/25 GMT): so Guy Fawkes emailed me to whine!

From: Guy Fawkes

Date: 2006/01/24 Tue PM 09:18:31 GMT

To: edjog

Subject: Re: [Guy Fawkes' blog of parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy] 1/24/2006 09:13:52 PM

You seem to be under some delusion that this is not my private property, from which I will exclude and delete you. It is not a commons.

Goodnight.

On 1/24/06, edjog wrote:
Deleted twice? A comprehensive and witty, but non-vulger, one word rebuttal and my previous gloating over it's deletion both gone? Wow! Your humiliation must be intense. Good. Delete away... the truth is out there, as you well know!

--
Posted by edjog to Guy Fawkes' blog of parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy at 1/24/2006 09:13:52 PM
--
Guido Fawkes Esq.

So not only spineless and lacking wit, but a pompous prick to boot (needing the latter applied to the anus, sharpish). A fact i was sure to point out to him in my reply, as i'm certain you can all imagine.

Technorati Tags: Oaten Mark Oaten blogger blogging etiquette censorship cowardice IQ Test Guido Fawkes cowardice shitbag

Doctrine of Shite.

2006-01-23T15:58:00.000Z

What do we call a system of beliefs which has millions of adherents, it's own meta-language, proscribed behaviour, ritual, seeks to spread it's influence at the expense of other belief structures, often causing war, and maintains it's tenets in the face of evidence to the contrary?

Religion, right?

I am the The Holy Market, who bringeth thee out of bondage. No form of interaction shalt thou haveth outside me. Nor Virtuous shalt thou considereth anything not for Sale, neither anything which Falsely preventeth Holy Sale.
Thou shalt associateth not the name of The Holy Market with disaster: for The Holy Market shalt holdeth him guilty who denigrateth Its Holy Name.
Observeth the Sabbath day, to keepeth it Holy, as The Holy Market commandeth thee. Six days shalt most of thee Labour, and do all Work thine; but the seventh day a Sabbath is to The Holy Market whenst must thou spendeth thy Surplus in Worship of The Holy Market.
Honoreth thy Father and thy Mother, as The Holy Market commandeth thee; that thy Business may be Profitable and thy Righteousness prolonged in Children thine.
Thou shalt not Murder thy Customers.
Neither shalt thou Adultery committeth; an Abomination it is the Holy Commerce of Marriage to undermineth.
Stealing shalt thou not be caught at.
Nor discovered in False Witness without Holy Profit shalt thou be.
Neither shalt thou ceaseth thy Neighbour's Estate to coveteth.
In all things shalt thou planeth, plotteth, schemeth and, failing these Holy Trinity Three, worketh the Goods of the World to Own, in accordance with The Holy Market.

Why doesn't free market economics fucking work? Because, in a pursuit of profitability, there is no incentive to plan strategically. Investment in infrastructure and research which will be necessary to the progress of a nation in 15/25/50 years costs money now, but shows no return, now. Which is why, whilst we have the cash economy we presently do, it is essential for Government to remain apart from the processes of the market, so that it can mandate spending in those areas business is not equipped to deal with: strategic considerations.

Hopelessly inefficient? Quite possibly. But the alternative is not to make adequate provision for the future at all. Do we imagine that countries in Asia which are developing modern communications infrastructure are waiting around for market forces to cobble together existing systems with small scale new developments? Obviously not. They are installing state of the art systems countrywide, with built in expandability.

What are we in the UK doing? Hanging onto the coat-tails of a desperate US economy which is doomed by it's inability to see beyond oil, which is only going to get more expensive and require more war to secure. Instead of spending billions on infrastructure (and lets have it fucking right, Britain is not a massive place, comprehensive modern information systems infrastructure would be a lot cheaper here than many places) which could be the backbone of a new, post oil, high tech industrial model, the UK Govt. proposes spending billions on the infrastructure of control. Why would it need such control? If we were moving into a prosperous new era, we would be happy.

No. They want it because they know full well that the world is heading for fucking disaster and civil unrest will be the inevitable result. We'll blindly follow the US down its garden path and when the oil runs out, because their corporate elite will have made off with the personal wealth (just like Enron) we'll be even more fucked than them. A victim of the short-sightedness of

The Holy Market.

UPDATE (09:11 06/01/24 GMT): check this (broadband needed) It's from the website of equinox housing co-op. Nod: Existential Angst So, i've messed with 'the commandments' a tad to make my point slightly clearer.

UPDATE (14:02 06/01/27 GMT): Part two! Nod: Michael the tubthumper.

Technorati Tags: free market market Ten Commandments 10 Commandments market forces economy economics religion strategy economic disaster

Crime & Identity

2006-01-22T04:53:00.000Z

I don't usually go into much detail about offences I committed whilst in active addiction, for a number of reasons which are beyond the scope of this post but, with the UK Government's headlong rush toward ID Cards seemingly based in much part around the notion that such a scheme will reduce crime, it seems appropriate. I've been prosecuted for what I'm about to talk about anyway: paid my debt to society and no longer commit crime. You don't think a self-confessed law-breaker has anything relevant to say about this issue? Fine: bury your head in the sand; it's your taxes paying for the scheme.

The first and most important thing to consider is just what sort of crime are we talking about?

The most emotive would surely be Terrorism. As many have commented before however, a police officer knowing a person's identity would not stop that person from perpetrating a terrorist attack if s/he was unknown to the police beforehand. If they were known, suspected of being a danger to the public, they would be under surveillance/detention anyway.

There is a common link between all offences which involve the concealment of one's own, or adoption of another's, identity and that is bare-faced lying. To be fair, it's not as simple a matter as that makes it sound: it's an art which has to be honed and also requires a good deal of charm to carry off. Take for instance the training of actors/actresses, it is a skill-set to subsume your own personality and portray another convincingly in its stead; it takes tuition, repetition and dedication to learn. But be under no illusion, in either case: a skill-set is what it is; not a moral deficiency which automatically conveys the ability. Fortunately for those who would practice deception outside a legitimate acting profession, there are many societal norms which can be taken advantage of to make discovery less likely.

The most heavily relied upon is that, in normal circumstances, for one person to imply that another is lying is just plain rude. People have a natural tendency to want to be accepted, a disinclination to upset their fellows, hence rudeness is not only shied away from, but also expects an outraged reaction. It is a relatively simple matter therefore to imagine a little back-story to an assumed identity and, if one's artifice is questioned, to act as if one is wounded by the very idea that one may be disingenuous; which puts the onus of apology on the questioner, who may well then be particularly helpful in recompense.

Before I go into the second point though, consider this scenario:

It's a few years ago. You have recently purchased your first VCR. A work colleague, who has also got one recently, hearing of your acquisition, asks the favour that you record their favourite TV programme whilst they are away next week. For the purpose, they provide you with a video cassette. Now, you are not that technically minded, you don't have to be: whatever technology your job entails the use of has been designed so that, after a fairly simple demonstration of its operation, you can perform the tasks required. Let's assume that, unlike the vast bulk of humanity, you have actually read enough of the instructions to know how to operate the VCR. It's all very complicated though, so rather than try to set the timer, because after all, you don't want to be seen to be a dummy, turning up without the requested recording, you decide to just be there in person and manually press 'Record'.

But it doesn't work. You try again. Still no joy. You take the cassette out, shake it, realise that this tells you precisely nothing and put it back, once more pressing 'Record'. Maybe you need to press 'Play' and 'Record' at the same time, like old music tape cassette machines. Nothing doing. You know the machine works, because you've recorded a few things for yourself already. What are you thinking at this point?

a) The machine has actually broken down since the last time you used it?
b) The cassette is broken?
c) There is some aspect of the operation of the VCR which you do not understand?
d) The person was lying about the usability of the cassette for some nefarious purpose?
e) Any combination of the above.

Let's imagine that (d) was not such an outrageous proposition; perhaps that colleague is the 'office joker', or maybe might maliciously try to undermine your position at work. Would you try to phone them to tell them what you thought? No. Having considered that it was possible for something to be faulty, you might think to try a cassette of your own. But you don't want to record over what you have saved for your own viewing. You've got to make a decision now. The programme in question has been running a couple of minutes already.

Whatever you think you may have decided, I think you'll agree that if you wanted to appear helpful to that colleague, or in the eyes of your boss, you would have been more likely to have tried recording over your own cassette, taking a personal loss rather than seem rude or incompetent. At any stage however, not familiar with the full working of the technology, would you have thought to look at the back of the cassette to see if the tabs which prevent accidental recording over something saved were intact? Of course not.

How is this relevant to ID Cards? In this simple way: nobody who uses the card readers will know how the technology actually works. If a criminal wishes to carry another's ID Card and get away with it, all they have to do is look vaguely similar to the tiny photograph and damage the chip so that the biometric data cannot be read, without leaving any obvious marks of tampering. As long as they don't behave in any way suspiciously, it will be assumed that the card or machine is broken or that the operator has made a mistake. In the presence of other forms of ID, the criminal will be accepted as any other member of the public frustrated by temperamental technology would be. Off the top of my head, I'd suspect that connecting the thing into an electric circuit, including a bulb as a load to use up the energy, would be enough to scramble the contents without leaving any marks from a short circuit. There are likely many other ways, including magnetic flux and extreme temperature.

Remember: whatever can be engineered can be reverse-engineered. Perhaps you have the prejudice that criminals would not be intelligent enough to do such a thing? Disabuse yourself of it. I'll give you a few examples:

Within two months of the introduction of car stereos that required an identifying PIN number to be punched in before operation, it was widely known, amongst my criminal associates, that placing such a machine into a deep freezer for a couple of days would make the chip reset to its factory default, thus overcoming this barrier to its resale;

Within weeks of certain luxury cars arrival on Britain's streets, it was known that a hard kick to the bumper would trigger a collision safety device: unlocking all the doors with the central locking mechanism. Yes, the alarm would go off, but one could quickly jump in, pop the bonnet and use a small pick, of the type normally used for knocking holes in roofing slates, to skewer a hole through the alarm mechanism, shutting it off;

Once silent alarms which alerted the police to a potential break in via the phoneline became more common, it became standard practice to use a small hatchet to knock the metal covering from a telegraph pole and chop through the thick cable, thus disabling any such system, before breaking into particularly business premises;

When magnetic stripe cash machine cards were first introduced, one could use a Betamax video recorder to read the stripe and thus decode the PIN number;

Attempts to 'lock' mobile phone handsets can be overcome by connecting them to a small computer which resets the phone's chips to the factory settings.

Thirdly: information of this kind gets widely disseminated and quickly because, whilst the most hard-nosed capitalism is common in criminal circles, the very nature of criminality requires close bonds of trust amongst practitioners. Don't be fooled by the media portrayal and the old saw, "no honour amongst thieves", certainly when pushed to it by extreme circumstances, like anybody else, criminals will think only of their own welfare and betray their cohorts, but generally this is not true. My mates and I stuck together, probably because we had nobody else. The currency of this trust is the gift economy of information. Whatever one can trade for better standing, one does.

I used the knowledge of much of the above to gain goods and services by deception, fraudulently using other people's credit cards. I would simply imagine myself into somebody's shoes who had a perfect right to expect those goods and services, behaving accordingly. Even when I was very ill from the amount of heroin I was taking. It's not surprising. I'd get a good scrub-up, some freshly laundered clothes from a charity shop, and present myself as anybody else would. Drug addict criminals are dirty, shifty looking people aren't they? Whereas somebody who is clean and tidy but looks ill probably is ill, maybe with something terrible like AIDS or cancer, to be pitied and helped. Occasionally, something would go wrong. At such times, on the rare occasion that a vendor was suspicious, I would feign utter indignation, snatch the card back, and, with the appearance of high dudgeon, either present them with another card (if I had a person's wallet), or leave quickly. There were also times when it was possible to take a shop assistant into confidence and pay them to just go through with the transaction.

I also used this and other knowledge, of how the criminal justice system works, to conceal my identity from the police on more than one occasion. One time I was so off my head on drugs that in giving another person's details, I had not considered that that person's date of birth would have made me a fair bit older than I was and I looked young for my age anyway. So I was arrested. Despite an investigation, including reference to Special Branch, and the fact that I was a wanted fugitive, plus my being remanded in prison for a few days, I got away with it for long enough to be released. Eventually this perversion of the course of public justice was found out, but not for several months and it was only that I had pressing personal reasons to remain in the same city that I was actually arrested anyway. If I had ran, I suspect I could have remained at large for at least another year, as I had already been a fugitive for 11 months at that stage. This was achieved partly by interfering with how my fingerprints could be sampled, in the police station, not beforehand.

Now, I'll grant you that if a working ID Card was required for every financial transaction or encounter with the police to go smoothly, there would be difficulties for criminals. But it would not stop criminality. If one could not purchase things with money fraudulently, there would be other ways sought, such as suborning a shop assistant with the offer of drugs, sex or a variety of goods and services to turn a blind eye to direct theft (which is already a lot more common than many people might think). This is the fourth point however. Experience shows that any technology will have bugs, whether they be caused by some fault in design, manufacture or usage. Is anyone seriously expecting that the British public will accept being arrested and held in custody until such time as reliable witnesses can be sought, found and testify as to their identity, with the high probability that the problem was a technological bug? The idea is absolutely preposterous. Despite Bush & Blair's posturing over the matter, The War On Terror isn't actually a war. We're not about to be invaded by ravening hordes of Al Qaida stormtroopers over the channel.

The only crime which this will make next to impossible is benefit fraud. Are we really to believe that benefit fraud costs this country anything like the staggering amount the scheme's implementation would cost? That it's worth the risks of the system being open to abuse by overzealous or corrupt policing, deliberate suppression of dissent, or targeted corporate advertising to make benefit fraud very difficult? It seems a bit over the top.

I've talked about the simple methods of subverting technological usage for criminal purposes, my fifth point is that some criminals are highly intelligent and with considerable understanding of the way digital data systems and encryption work. As we know, it is already possible to clone bank and credit cards. You may believe that the complexity of the system would prevail over any such attempts, but consider this: the complexity we are talking about is deemed suitable by those working for a government sponsored development team now. Who knows what even the very near future may bring in the private sector? It is eminently possible to take an example of a system and reverse engineer it privately. That is exactly how the IBM compatible PC market boomed, which 4/5 of you are using to read this page. Compatible, not made or licensed by IBM. Some guys took the chip and ran inputs into it and recorded the outputs and from that deduced what must be happening inside and then wrote their own machine code to imitate it, thus not infringing copyright, and gaining the ability to mass produce the chips and sell them much cheaper than IBM were prepared to consider. Once the system was hacked, it would only need a bare-faced liar to use the results with absolute impunity.

But this would only be a few individuals, not the vast bulk of criminality. Possibly, although I don't doubt that the information would get about, probably even spawning an underground market for technology with which to do the deed, without the requisite understanding to actually hack the system: which brings me to my last point. If we start to rely on a seemingly all powerful tool instead of what might be called "good honest coppering", people will become dependent on it and lazy in other areas. One only has to look at statistics on obesity and fitness to realise that our dependence on various means of transport has led to walking/cycling etc. becoming a much less favoured practice. What if the large donations from oil-rich individuals throughout the Gulf States to Al Qaida, which we hear about, were used to pay somebody to hack the system and produce fake ID Cards? The system was not able to stop me, in the usually terminal stage of addiction, from running rings round it and I was very ill, physically and mentally, because it relied on technology which it deemed infallible. How on earth would it deal with a well motivated terrorist with the means at his/her disposal to immediately counteract suspicion?

It is the nature of humanity to be lazy. Many people are just not very bright. It is the nature of criminality to exploit the niches such laziness, ignorance or incompetence engender. Even if we accepted the Orwellian nightmare of the harshest application such a scheme might allow, it would not stop criminality.

Technorati Tags: crime criminal criminals deception fraud lies identity ID identity card identity cards ID card ID cards NO2ID

Crime & Punishment

2006-01-21T14:12:00.000Z

What, has edjog been reading Dostoevsky? Not for 20 years and while i'd recommend it as an important text: be prepared for a long wade; it's a bit impenetrable, possibly because of the translation. This is in response to the on going poll about what you'd like to see more of, i.e. philosophy. I've wandered into a few logical inconsistencies here, but i'll stand by the bulk of it.

I originally posted this in the forum "Infinite Directions" in a thread entitled "Is ultimate fantasy immoral?" [title link] @ BetterHumans.com. The subject is whether it would be right to allow acts which we deem morally unacceptible in real life to take place in a Virtual Reality game, as we currently do with killing in video games. I've mirrored the original post "Off The Main Page" also. The discussion goes on a fair wander and, as i recall, without going back and reading all of it, nobody really get's into the original question, which the author Cemiess, elaborates on:

I've long believed that if someone thinks something, no matter how horrible it is, then they aren't being immoral unless they act up that thought.

Which reminded me of a post "A few words before we go: Finders Weepers". But i got dragged into the wider debate thus:

"I was only thinking of the criminals. If they commit extremely serious and violent crimes, the penality they'll have to pay is to have their memories extensively edited, in addition to removal of addictions or other forms of organically caused mental illness. They would be forced to assume totally new identities, including altering of all biometrics. Lesser crimes wouldn't rate this obviously."
~ Mr. Farlops

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear... Yes, clearly deviants are easily recognised and their behaviour is the result of a simple defect. They are the ones wearing the black hats who don't behave as i do. [/class="also sarcasm;"]

I'm guessing you've never been in a situation where a serious breach of the law seemed like the lesser of the evils available as options?

Now before anybody wades in, i'm not for one moment attempting to justify murder/rape/child molestation, because clearly these are all heinous acts which we would all be the better for seeing the less of. However, nothing to do with human behaviour is ever simple. Nobody wakes up one morning, having been a perfectly well adjusted person the day before, and thinks, "Today, for no reason, i'll become a murderer/rapist/child molester. That sounds like a laugh!" There may well be a genetic predisposition to these behaviours, however, by and large, terrible behaviours spring out of terrible environments.

The reason for this is simple: empathy. If our environment is safe, we engage with its other inhabitants emotionally and whilst occaisional destructive thoughts/feelings may enter our heads (and who doesn't get frustrated to the point of fantasy violence occaisionally), the reason we don't act on them is not because it's against the law (otherwise murder would be as common as illegal drug taking), but rather because we have some intimation of how terrible it would feel for the victim/s or surviving loved ones.

If our environment is unsafe, the opposite is true: we do not empathise with anyone, we become all about self, therefore the same level of inhibition is not present. This is surely part of our survival instinct. The answer is not to attempt to stigmatise 'deviants' and change them, but rather change the environment. After all, as CP rightly points out, who knows when these traits might be very necessary. The planet has undergone radical change before and, no doubt, will again. This is quite apart from any hostile environments we may end up colonising off Earth.

This is without considering the fallability of criminal justice systems, malicious prosecution for personal gain or simple governmental oppression.

"I believe that two versions of these programs should be available to the public. One version should be available to the general population and the other to prisoners."
~ FISH OUT OF WATER

Personally, i'm hoping we'll have come up with something better than prisons. I don't know what, because i certainly wouldn't advocate any kind of memory edit, but some kind of supervised re-integration with society, maybe. Possibly even with temporary restrictions on access to some parts of society. After all, rights are a privilege with which come responsibilities. I see nothing wrong with their temporary suspension, until such times as a person has been taught the ability to respond to their environment, rather than react to their feelings about it.

The trouble with prison is that it does not do this, but rather abrogates rights almost totally, which actually further increases a convict's alienation from society, thus making it that much less likely that they will ever be integrated.

"the pain and such will remain in the victims if they aren't assured the criminal is punished. It's a natural thing." ~ CP

It may well be natural to seek revenge however, i'd suggest that it is equally as dysfunctional as committing crime. It is a pandering to a feeling of outrage. In a Judeo-Christian moral framework, we may well identify with that feeling more readily than we do with the feelings that led upto a crime, however this does not change the fact that it is simply a feeling, the strength of which may have outlived its original purpose, which was surely also survival related.

The victims of this unhelpfull feeling could also be helped to re-integrate, without the necessity of a further moral outrage being perpetrated (in the mistaken belief that this would somehow assuage it). That seems to be one of the functions of law, to temper outrage, because if people were to go around seeking revenge biblical stylee, it'd be an eye for an eye until we were all blind.

"Vile deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air, it is only what is good in man, that wastes and withers there."
~ Oscar Wilde
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

The discussion went on for a bit before:

"I was merely stating a possibility for future punishment of certain kinds of crime--complete personality and body alteration. Functionally this is the same thing as capital punishment; the old person is killed.

And yes, I am fully aware of the possibility for abuse of this potential.

Obviously governments can use these technologies, as they emerge, to silence dissidents, political prisoners, revolutionaries and so on. The situation could rapidly degenerate to a point were we have the perfect police state where people's brains have been rendered physically incapable of thinking subversive thoughts.

I assure you I'd hate to see such a society come into being. I quite agree there are unjust laws and unjust societies and we should all work to change them."
~ Mr. Farlops

Good man yourself! I'd ask you to consider this though:

Quite apart from the morality of capital punishment, given your experience of human nature and knowledge of history, which do you think we would likely be at more risk from, if such technology were available while government per se exists;

that in a safe environment with universal provision of high quality education, health care, food, sanitation and shelter, crime would be a significant problem or;

our rulers would seek to maintain a position somehow demonstrably better off than us 'ordinary people', possibly even going as far as reserving for themselves and cronies the right to remain unedited, and use said to stifle dissent?

There was more until:

"Punishment discourages a repeat of the same aggressive behavior by individuals."
~ CP

No, it does not. Behaviour in individuals which is aggressive enough to constitute a crime is a result of an inability to respond to feelings rationally or the result of a pathological problem which precludes them in the first place. A person who has this inability can no more control their reaction than a person who has the ability can control their empathic response. This is why it takes intensive training, including elements of controlled brutalisation, to make average young persons into soldiers and why, despite that training, many are still emotionally crippled by the experience of killing their fellow human beings.

This is also why many of us who are like that become drug addicts and/or alcoholics. We must self-medicate, because otherwise we would go mental, conflicted between intolerable feelings and our limited sense of empathy. However even after self medication, the unresolved feelings are still simmering away under the surface. The next time something occurs which threatens to release them, maybe we'll be ok by taking still stronger drugs or more, maybe we'll freak right out and mess somebody up really badly.

In a subject with a personality disorder of this kind, the fear of potential punishment may actually make us worse, by adding that much more stress to an already explosive potential. In somebody who is really far gone, totally divorced from empathy, it may lead to the murder of a witness/police officer.

At best, punishment deters those who are rational enough to appreciate the full consequences of their actions. It's telling that you use the word "discourage", CP, because, even in a controlled environment such as a boxing ring, doing violence to another whilst in full possession of one's faculties takes considerable courage: more than your average person comes equipped with, unless they are subject to tremendous emotional stress, or have been brutalised in some way prior, which tends to remove the inhibition. One gets used to it. But the truth is that if a person is concerned about punishment enough to deter them from aggression, they more than likely haven't the nuts to do anything anyway. How many times have you heard,

"Oh whatever... You're just not worth it!"

When you know full well that what the person actually meant was,

"I daren't face the potential consequences of continuing this argument because i'm afraid I'll get hurt or punished if you attack me and what's more, I daren't attack you for the same reasons."

I have to tell you, i was a hardcore lunatic but the first time i went to deliberately inflict serious injury on somebody, i puked my guts up afterwards, despite being off my head on drugs and i never got used to being shot at. The fear of the consequences of not doing it though outweighed the fear of getting hurt. Getting caught never entered into it at all.

"Or, if the next time I'm in your neck of the woods I might drop by, clobber you repeatedly with a baseball bat, take whatever of value you have and rape any females there. It would be wrong to do anything in return, right?"
~ CP

In fairness mate, i wouldn't if i were you: i'm a reformed character but i'm as liable to severe emotional triggers as the next person, but i'm also experienced. This succinctly makes the point though, because you almost certainly wouldn't. Not because of anything i might do to you, nor because it's illegal, because you know it's wrong.

Why is it wrong? Because you know you wouldn't like it if i did it to you and yours first and you have enough connection with reality and your feelings to take that twinge of fear at the thought that somebody could (which immediately grows, becoming a complex mix of emotions, as the realisation sinks in) and transfer it onto me. Having instantaneously realised that i would have a similar but worse experience should you proceed, you don't. You may even feel shame for thinking it.

But why, if it's wrong to do it, to deliberately cause suffering, is it not wrong to deliberately cause suffering to the perpetrator? You know it is. Put yourself in that person's shoes for a second, how would you feel if you flipped your lid and thus did terrible things, but had now calmed down, were once more as rational as you get, remorseful even, and then somebody comes along and fucks you over good stylee? If it happened at the time, it would be all part of the same experience, it would seem right. After the fact, with the callous brutality of the law, being made to suffer for something you did whilst you were out of control would do nothing but engender resentment in you.

This is why it's just not on to have mass gun ownership in a civilised society. Because with a gun, you don't have to be completely mental or brave or even under that much stress to kill somebody. All you have to be is unable, or temporarily unwilling, to empathise with your victim's loved ones and pull the trigger. You don't necessarily even have to watch.

However, that is not to say that that person is any less sick. Nor that should somebody do what you have suggested that my reaction to it would be any less sick. Because, lets have it right, fucked in the head is fucked in the head, whichever way you look at it. The trauma would have made me mentally ill. However, whose responsibility is it? Without trying to assign culpability, who is able to respond to the fact that we clearly have some sick people, on both sides of the altercation, when this kind of outrage goes on in our community? Who isn't? Only those who are so sick themselves that they cannot, or will not, empathise with those involved. The only question that remains is what to do about it.

Now, according to John Bradshaw a leading behavioural therapist and researcher, in the US %85 of people are emotionally dysfunctional to a degree which he considers impacts negatively on their lives. He says that in Europe and elsewhere it may be as high as %90, because of an increased social stigma attached to seeking therapy. If you've read him, you'll know he's got a powerful argument, if you haven't, his CV stands as proof that he's not an idiot who would wildly speculate without solid evidence.

Emotional dysfunctionality leads to a sense of isolation, because to some degree dysfunctional interactions with others are dishonest, to protect ourselves from a feared assault on our self esteem. Dishonesty takes effort and breeds shame. Lazyness and shame make us withdraw from the situation; actually, emotionally or both. Isolation is painful because we are naturally social beings. We don't like pain. If something hurts but we are unable to properly examine our own part in the situation for fear of damaging our self esteem (and if we feel ashamed, this is more likely), we look for other causes. The most ready to hand, as it were, is the person/s who we associated with the pain of isolation from in the first place. This becomes a resentment. Resentments inhibit our communication further and we're into a vicious circle which deepens and multiplies them. Our ability to empathise has been curtailed, because we are now all about protecting our very survival from despair by focussing on that which we hate and long for at the same time. Others. If we are focussed entirely outside ourselves, we do not acknowledge or internalise the feelings associated with potential harm to another so there is no transference to them. We never imagine what they feel like with any attendant emotional depth. We are now able to contemplate harm without empathy, we are in fact 'cold hearted'.

Now surely we are not surprised then when our societies are filled with hate, callous disregard, self congratulatory ostentation (the sign of hollow victory), arrogance (the poor man's defence), needless aggression, greed, unhappiness and despair. Yes, in fairness there's a lot of sickness about and actually, unless we start trying to heal some of it, will anyone be left who is able to respond to the tragedies of life?

There'll be those who read this who think yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah... er... hang on a minute! I'm not having that. If you do wrong, you should be punished! Fair do's, tell me where my argumant falls down and let's get into it.

And then:

So you're saying that responding with force to illegal violence doesn't deter the latter but if someone did that to you you'd respond with violence and that would deter someone from trying it again.

I see. ~ CP

No, CP. I'm saying that responding to illegal aggression with force is perfectly understandable, however that it is still the result of one's equilibrium being disrupted by the original act and is unhelpful in terms of resolving the situation, except where it immediately prevents further harm.

As i stated, it would only deter a person from similar acts who was able to fully appreciate the consequences of their actions and that person would be highly unlikely to have the courage to do violence anyway, except in circumstances where they were emotionally traumatised, like defending themselves/loved ones.

Nor am i saying that we should do nothing about it, before anybody embarks on the 'if it's not black, it must be white' train of thought. Rather, i'm saying that in a civilised society, the humane response to sickness is an attempt at healing. Once both parties' problems have been unravelled to the point where they have a grasp of what those problems are and how they can proceed without being unhinged by them, some form of restitution by the offender to the victim is very likely to be a useful part of a final resolution.

Technorati Tags: crime violence dysfunctional empathy punishment prison jail morality morals mental illness

We have a clear opinion emerging!

2006-01-21T05:19:00.000Z

As you can see from the title link or the 'view' button on the poll, >> a favourite is pulling ahead! I have to say, i'm trying my best to accomodate you, but for now, << this will have to suffice.

Not that i'll be ignoring the other options. It seems that somebody would rather see less foul language, but some want more. I'm going to try a compromise: from now on the profane content of a post's title should give some indication of how much of the same to expect in its body. Nobody should take this to mean that a dignified title will preclude the odd 'bollocks' or such popping up [like that one], but merely less than of late, and also that if there's a lot at the top, there'll be plenty more beneath.

(illustration: Peter Scanlan)

Technorati Tags: Bush boxing knock-out KO swearing profanity strong language self-censorship

Well, it had to happen...

2006-01-20T16:02:00.000Z

So i've got a ClustrMap too! I had resisted the temptation because i found this really cool french site services page that offered a much cooler looking map, but they weren't taking new submissions until they'd got more bandwidth. But i've lost the url somehow and can't find any reference to it in search engines or remember the site i saw it on first.

Any suggestions on that would be cool. I've also added some directions on the site polls, because you can vote on the 2nd one more than once if you want and select a few things at once. In fact any suggestions are always welcome; even the lewd or abusive ones. Actually, i haven't had a proper ding-dong with anyone here yet. Need more extensive readership! Hard to imagine i know, but there must be someone out there who thinks they can take on the mighty edjog? That'll get someone's goat surely? Actually, maybe i just need some sleep: i just had a right go @ jarndyce!

I did briefly consider leaving my url on some of the wingnut sites i occaisionally visit, in the spirit of "Know thine enemy", but i don't want any brainless trolls on here. Still my Technorati number has dropped by another 200K-ish to 309,219 so with that in mind:

Technorati Tags: blog blogs blogging weblog weblogs anarchist wingnut wingnuts argument

Most Bizarre Fiction Strangely Truthful >>

2006-01-19T14:05:00.000Z

Check it out DLA's! Over there, >> the new bit at the top of the right sidebar, >> the Mechanical Contrivium trivia search engine. >>

Amongst topics i would urge you to investigate are:

George W Bush

Michelle Malkin

my cock or simply: cock

Come back and tell me of your own adventures!

Nod: Michael the tubthumper

Tony Blair is also a hypocritical cunt!

2006-01-19T03:42:00.000Z

Justin @ Chicken Yoghurt: The Smoking Gun has unearthed, from a "credible source", that

TONY BLAIR IS A LIAR

You possibly already know, but check away, i have unearthed that

TONY BLAIR IS A

TWO-FACED CUNT

I could not have said it any better...

2006-01-18T10:24:00.000Z

Nod: Micheal the tubthumper [title link]

Channel 4 Political Awards - 2006

2006-01-18T05:45:00.000Z

So the search for the most inspiring political figure of 2005 @C4 has been shortlisted to six nominees [title link]. Who to vote for, eh?

Bob Geldof: who, as the frontman for Live8, and despite raging cynicism surrounding his efforts, once more brought the plight of millions of suffering Africans onto the world stage, thus wringing concrete promises out of those wankers at the G8? (or phone 09011 27 27 05 - alt. text AWARD GELDOF to 83188)

George Galloway: who, as an MP for Respect - The Unity Coalition, and despite a concerted media campaign to discredit him, handed a US Senate Committee it's arse as a hat, thereby guaranteeing a continued platform from which to criticise war and US led oligarchic hegemony? (or phone 09011 27 27 04 - alt. text AWARD GALLOWAY to 83188)

Shami Chakrabarti: who, as director of Liberty, has often quietly, but nonetheless tirelessly, cogently and passionately campaigned against the erosion of our civil liberties, often in the face of what amounts to nothing less than fucking hysteria, roundly demolishing arguments designed to whip up more of the same? (or phone 09011 27 27 03 - alt. text AWARD CHAKRABARTI to 83188)

You could, of course, choose to vote for Tony Blair, David Cameron or Jamie Oliver, but in fairness, if you want to do so, you can fuck off and find the links yourself. Not that i've got anything apart from the meat-eating against Jamie you understand (i'm so used to people doing that these days that i hardly ever forget myself and mistakenly warn them that they are about to put something dead in their mouths), but he's just not really in the same league, is he?

Surprisingly for me, i'll not go on, i'll just leave you with this:

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
~ Henry Louis Mencken US editor (1880 - 1956)

Shit! ...SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!!

2006-01-18T02:24:00.000Z

So, this relates to my allegation that the UK Govt. is guilty of a Criminal Conspiracy to Torture [title link]. A nod goes to D-Notice for ferreting out the latest law which supercedes the Crimianl Law Act 1977 which is the Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act 1998. The later Act does indeed clarify the issue of jurisdiction:

Section 5.-(1) 1A.

(6) In the application of this Part of this Act to an agreement in the case of which each of the above conditions is satisfied, a reference to an offence is to be read as a reference to what would be the offence in question but for the fact that it is not an offence triable in England and Wales.

All of the other conditions having been met, the title of this post was to have been "Hoist on your own petard" [a lovely phrase which means, in yonks old english, 'blown up by your own bomb', in case you were wondering, and which i have been wanting to get in here ever since, "The nadir of base perfidy!"]. Sadly, it'll have to wait. Instead, i have to report, DLA's, that this bunch of hypocritical, dishonest and downright double dealing dastards [like that?], who had the audacity to attempt to lecture us about "respect" and the need to remove the fear of crime from modern British society, have reserved to themselves and their agents licence to engage in Criminal Conspiracy on behalf of The Crown. I'm not fucking around for one moment:

Section 5.-(1)

(14) Nothing in this section-

(b) imposes criminal liability on any person acting on behalf of, or holding office under, the Crown.

So there you have it: the absolute sine qua non of showing their bare arse to the concepts of law and democracy. We can do it, but if we even suspect that you might be upto something in a similar, but necessarily less far reaching and, in this particular case, much less despicable, vein; we want the right to summarily punish you, without proper due process of law.

Just fuck off, innit?

JUST FUCK RIGHT OFF! AND DIE.

UPDATE (04:51 06/01/18 GMT): I'm not done with this. I've emailed my MP to ask him to ask how the government expect to be taken seriously over their "respect" bullshit and also to find out the history of the Bill so we can find out which scumbags voted for it. An edited version of my email can be found "Off The Main Page" and, as before, i'll urge you to do the same. You can find your MP's contact details here.

The Devil's Kitchen: Bloody Devil Awards

2006-01-17T10:26:00.000Z

DLA gets a Bloody Devil Award! << There it is, in all it's graphiti-ed splendour. To Devil's Kitchen, the mighty edjog says,

"I thank you sir, by fuck!"

The instigating invective was from "What the fuckin'ell do you think you're upto Tony & Co?" and i reproduce it here in the spirit of waving a massive knob around:

"In my name? In my fucking name? You disgusting cringeworthy shitbags: not in my bastard name you don't. I've done some fucked up shit in my time, but you lot are proper fucking scum. Oh aye, you need them fucking steel gates and armed police alright, and the way you're going it won't be to protect you from terrorists either. You horrible bastards: you honestly make my fucking stomach turn."

Devil's Kitchen had this to say:

"Definitely a good few gratuitous insults there, and we are happy to include our government under the definition of "objects of public derision" so that qualifies nicely; good work!"

DLA's, i have to tell you, i meant every fucking word of it and it was only the fact that you'd have got bored of reading it that stopped me there; the slimey little excuse peddling cunts.

Nods: Great Britain, not little England: Brighton Regency Loony [my fellow awardee and now in the blogroll]

Theorists aside: as defined by UK Law, it must be a fucking Conspiracy!

2006-01-17T03:38:00.000Z

So this relates to "I'm not arsing about here..." [title link]

Right, so get this:

Person A is an otherwise law abiding citizen, with money to invest in business.

Person B runs several successful businesses in many countries and is known for agressive investment tactics and managing a portfolio which contains high risk/high return enterprises.

Person C is suspected of dealing drugs and murder in his own country, indeed is an infamous gangster with an international reputation.

A meets B, with whom he has made substantial investments before and who tells him about an investment opportunity including C, in C's country. They plan to open a large casino.

"But C's a crook," we might expect A to say, to which we would not be surprised if B replied, "Don't worry about it, you won't have to meet with him, I'll do that. Besides, this will be in Uzbekistan, no one will know and even if they do, what can they do about it?"

So they proceed. Several business rivals of the newly formed cartel suddenly disappear and evidence emerges that C has had them murdered, but the casino is built and shows a return on A's investment. C however is not satisfied with his share of the proceeds and continues his gangster activities. Corruption being what it is, he buys and intimidates his way out of any local investigation.

At this point we may imagine that A is getting cold feet, but B assures him everything is fine, B himself has used some of the funds of the company to buy off the most serious investigation and there is plenty more money to be made he assures A. Some investigation reveals that B has made large investments in ancilliary services to the casino and other associated businesses in the area and is thus financially slightly over-extended, so it is important to him to keep A's investment in place, because he cannot afford to buy A out and nobody else would want anything to do with the place due to C's involvement. A decides that, since he has a number of other investments with companies in which B is a major shareholder, he can't afford to take the risk that B might have to rationalise his position, especially since B would likely blame A and shut down those operations in which A had large investments first. So he leaves his investment where it is.

At this point, the US Drug Enforcement Agency take an interest in C's activities and he is all but kidnapped and arraigned before a US Court for his part in supplying drugs to the USA. The whole sorry business comes out into the open. Now tell me, if you were A, you'd know damn well you were going to jail, wouldn't you?

The question is not:

"Does the UK Govts. position relating to US policy and Uzbek torture constitute a Criminal Conspiracy?"

But rather, if Tony Blair & Jack Straw manage to slime their way out this:

What the fuck is wrong with our ability to have the clear intention of international and domestic criminal law applied?

A glimpse of oligarchic methodology.

2006-01-16T23:08:00.000Z

This follows from the comments to "I'm not arsing about here..." [title link] and a nod goes to Dave Hansell (who provides no link to his own stuff) for urls and thoughts.

In Cheney's Shadow, Counsel Pushes the Conservative Cause

From TomDispatch [Apparently. I couldn't find this text, but it seems a good site so it's going in the blogroll]:

“Last week, in an important, if somewhat overlooked, front-page piece in the Wall Street Journal ("Judge Alito's View of the Presidency: Expansive Powers"), Jess Bravin reported on a speech Sam Alito gave to the right-wing Federalist Society in 2000 in which he subscribed to the "unitary executive theory" of the presidency ("gospel," he called it) which puts its money on the supposedly unfettered powers of the President as commander-in-chief. This theory has been pushed by administration figures ranging from the Vice President and his Chief of Staff David Addington to former assistant attorney general and torture-memo writer John Yoo. As Alito put the matter in his speech: "[The Constitution] makes the president the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that. The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power -- the whole thing." And Yoo put it even more bluntly while debating the unitary executive theory recently. In answering the question, "If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?" he responded, "No treaty."”

What does "unitary executive theory" mean then, if it isn't a euphemism for dictatorship? To take this view however would be to be seduced by spin: to miss the extent of the wood due to the proximity of a large tree obscuring one's view, to rail against a straw man. Because it is not Dubya who is being invested with the powers Cheney and his terrier Addington are engaged in clawing from the wider democratic process of Congress, but the Office of President: itself more firmly in the gift of a few corporate masters than the potential for popular support makes Congress; thus the oligarchic nature of the arrangement is strengthened.

The combination of civic duty and the role of Commander-in-Chief seems to allow for excesses in one sphere to be plausibly excused by claiming authority from the other, however Yoo is quite plainly lying out of his arse, because the conduct of armed forces and intelligence services is the subject of international treaty both under the UN (which i've covered previously) and The Geneva Conventions:

Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949.

Part I. General Provisions

Art 1. The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances.

Art 2. Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations.

Art 3. In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely... To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time...
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) the passing of sentences... without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court...

Art 4. A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories...

(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

(6) Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.

So then, quite clearly, members of Al Qaida, or any other informal militia, are covered by this Convention when captured whilst resisting US invasion of territory, whether the territory's sovereign Power is a signatory to the Convention or not. The fact that they do not have "a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance" is pure nonsense: US troops wear camouflage in an attempt to prevent their being seen at a distance at all, but this is superceded, in many cases anyway, by Art.4.A. (6). The sticking point comes there though, regarding "customs of war," however precedent has been set amply by the US & UK themselves: the bombing of civilians in furtherance of the aims of military conflict, without warning, is customary. As are 'covert operations'.

The fact that we don't like being on the receiving end of it doesn't alter the fucking facts one jot and Dubya's Yapping Crew's attempts to blur the line between civil policing and military conflict won't wash: there would be no jurisdiction for policing without armed invasion in the first place but; either a person is suspected of criminality, thus entitled to a fair trial and humane treatment under criminal law, or a combatant and thus entitled to be treated humanely under this Convention. As we all know: one cannot have one's cake and eat it.

Dave is right to point up the sinister nature of the increasingly "presidential style" of Prime Ministerial power. I'm not entirely sure of the facts regarding where responsibility for the conduct of armed forces and security services in an international arena ultimately lies here in the UK: from what i can tell, Whitehall has a whole raft of arcane procedures and precedent, which may well have accreted spontaneously, as a result of the evolution and powers of existing and new agencies, but the main function of which today seems to be as a barrier to the understanding of just what the fuck is being done, by whom, in our name and whose responsibility it is. However, regardless of that, there is no squirming out of criminal culpability for personal crimes, trying to claim 'military authority', for our Government. It seems that there is no single "UK Commander-in-Chief" with whom the buck would stop, but various senior figures who collectively command the different services in various theatres, reporting to and receiving direction from Cabinet.

But i'm on the case, DLA's: plumbing the depths of, i suspect, largely disorganised and probably mainly pointless bureaucracy, so you don't have to. Over the coming months (because i don't expect this to be easy), i'll be reporting here just exactly who is a cunt and why they deserve the appelation.

It's The Sun: my bum!

2006-01-15T18:19:00.000Z

I'd have posted this yesterday but i got a headache and then i had to get to bed early for football this morning. So, i found a copy of The Sun 'newspaper' (14/01/06 edition) in my local chinese takeaway yesterday. On page 2, at the bottom was a tiny paragraph claiming that Bill Clinton had tipped Tony Blair to become the next Secretary General of the UN. I'm fucking serious! That's what it said! I've had a look at The Sun online [title link] but couldn't find the story referred to amongst it's usual tits and assorted arsery, by all means try yourself, but i'm telling you i saw it with my own two, fucking incredulous, eyes. I'll have a look for some other references to the story and put links in the "Nods" below.

Apparently, Downing St. press officers would only say that the lick-spittle lackey was happy in his current job. Think about it though: what is his current job, in wider, Bilderberg Group terms? Wouldn't he be better placed to do it, as UN Sec. Gen? So let's not be fooled, it's a likely possibility.

Then again, "Set a thief to catch a thief," eh? Who would be better placed to know the methodology of those excuseniks for US led government/corporate oligarchy? Is it possible that Blair has been keeping his powder dry? Or will we see an even more profound and heart-wrenching betrayal of everything socialism stands for? One thing we know for sure: he's certainly got the downright brass bollocks for the job, either way.

Not if i can fucking help it though, unless he can fullfil his duties from a fucking jail cell, the disgusting quisling little shitbag.

UPDATE (20:45 2006/01/15 GMT): So, it seems Bill Clinton made this recommendation in an interview with BBC Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman on Friday (2006/01/13), suppose i should watch more TV, then again: maybe not. What makes me think this is even more of a credible possiblity is that apparently Clinton is after the job himself, but would require the backing of the US Govt, and who knows if Bush will agree to that. Check it.

Nods: SF.INDYMEDIA.ORG BBC Newsnight The Scotsman Chicken Yoghurt

I'm not arsing about here...

2006-01-15T02:07:00.000Z

This relates to my post "Well i'll be dipped in dogshit" about my correspondance with my MP about the UK Govts. complicity in Uzbek torture. It strikes me that the post is a long one, you may not bother to read it all. Very simply it marshals the evidence of Craig Murray and compares it to the UN Charter against Torture (UNCAT), concluding that there are, at the very least, grounds for an investigation into possible offences committed by the UK Govt. mainly under Article 4 of UNCAT. I also go on to detail why the existing policy is almost certainly an offence under UK Criminal Law.

If i'm the only one trying to do this, i'll be ignored or somehow silenced. If many of us bring these concerns to our MP's, sooner or later, one of them will realise there is political capital to be made out of running with it and do so. I frankly don't care about the partisan aspects of this: it's far too important for that. It is imperative that the establishment get the message loud and clear that we will not stand for the abrogation of law and democracy. Otherwise who knows what they'll do next?

I've made an annotated and edited version of the letter i sent my MP available "Off The Main Page" so that you can simply copy & paste it, making minor adjustments, to fill in your and your MP's names, and remove my annotation. You can find your MP's contact details here.

Well i'll be dipped in dogshit!

2006-01-14T00:59:00.000Z

So, DLA's, further to my post "Whatagwaan? Well, not nothing at least..." [title link] which is itself a developement from "What the fuckin'ell do you think you're upto Tony & co?" about the UK Govt. complicity in Uzbek torture, after former Ambassador Craig Murray's revelations [whose website seems to be unavailable again, fuck's sake!], you may remember that i had received a somewhat unsatisfactory, but not entirely soul destroying, reply from my MP's Private Secretary about my concerns over this matter and that i reported i'd emailed back.

Well, bugger me backwards with a broomstick! I got a reply from the man himself today, typed but signed in his own fair hand (the relevance of which will become apparent as we progress). I reproduce it for your perusal:

Dear Mr [name supplied on request]

Thank you for your further email of 7 January.

You specifically ask what I may be going to do about the issues contained in your email of 29 December. The first and most important thing is to seek a view from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office as to how they see the situation and, as you know, I have already done this. To date, in the light of parliamentary concerns which has[sic] been expressed about the use of torture, the Government have publicly made it clear that they deprecate these procedures and will not accept evidence in legal or other cases which are derived by the use of torture methods.

If you believe that the Government are stating their position correctly then clearly some form of international prosecution, as you suggest later in your mail, would not be possible to sustain. If, however, you do have evidence to the contrary then I would be happy to take the matter up directly with the secretary General of the United Nations. I will, of course, make certain you have a copy of the Foreign Office reply to my earlier representation as soon as it is received.

Yours sincerely

The Rt Hon [name supplied on request] MP

So, 'Get to fuck you jumped up little bastard, you'll get precisely what I'm required, as your MP, to do and you can fuck right off for anything else' then, which is bluntly what i'd been expecting the first time around. Oh ho, never mind the complete ignoration of my request for his views and that he join the All Party Parliamentary Group established to raise these issues (as mentioned on Liberty's website), no he asks me for "evidence" which he can take up "directly with the Secretary General of the United Nations." Well, he's got me there hasn't he? What can humble little forelock tugging me do, when confronted by the prospect of the staggeringly powerful Kofi Annan, whose title my estimable MP tosses out like he can waltz in there at his whim? Fucked now aren't i?

No. What, has the mighty edjog scooped the world? Have i fuck! I can barely be arsed to scoop the detritus of daily life off the floor of my flat, but i don't have to. If there's one thing this spikey one has learned through bitter experience: it's not to get into something like this without knowing my arse from my elbow. Craig Murray has already done the bulk of it for us, and a little trawling has provided the rest:

Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 39/46 of 10 December 1984

entry into force 26 June 1987, in accordance with article 27 (1)

PART I
Article 1

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession...

2. This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 4

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture. 2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature. [my emphasis]

Article 5

1. Each State Party shall take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over the offences referred to in article 4 in the following cases:

(a) When the offences are committed in any territory under its jurisdiction...

3. This Convention does not exclude any criminal jurisdiction exercised in accordance with internal law.

Article 6

1. Upon being satisfied, after an examination of information available to it, that the circumstances so warrant, any State Party in whose territory a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is present shall take him into custody...

2. Such State shall immediately make a preliminary inquiry into the facts.

~ Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

There we have it then, the International Law to which the UK is a signatory. If you fuck somebody up to coerce them to do/say anything in any circumstances: you've fucked it; you're guilty. If you get somebody else to do it for you, stand by whilst they do it or encourage them to do it: you've fucked it just the same. By this Convention, Torture or Complicity in Torture must be an offence under Domestic Law and each State is responsible for dealing with it. The sticking point comes with Article 6, but we'll get to that. Let's have a look at what Craig Murray who was the most senior UK Govt. official on the spot in Uzbekistan, had to say first:

16 September 02

Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured to death in jail apparently with boiling water. Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being drugged, for demonstrating on human rights...

18 March 2003

I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up.

I watched George Bush talk today of Iraq and "dismantling the apparatus of terror and removing the torture chambers and the rape rooms". Yet when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in international fora. Double standards? Yes.

JULY 04

We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US...

I gather a recent London interdepartmental meeting considered the question and decided to continue to receive the material...

We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state.

In the period December 2002 to March 2003 I raised several times the issue of intelligence material from the Uzbek security services which was obtained under torture and passed to us via the CIA...

I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to use intelligence acquired by torture. He said the only legal limitation on its use was that it could not be used in legal proceedings, under Article 15 of the UN Convention on Torture.

On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and understood.

a meeting was convened in the FCO at the level of Heads of Department and above, precisely to consider the question of the receipt of Uzbek intelligence material obtained under torture...

I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured...

I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact.

At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

Then there's the 'legal advice' of Michael C Wood to the UK Govt:

13 March 2003

Craig had said that his understanding was that it was also an offence under the UN Convention on Torture to receive or possess information under torture. I said that I did not believe that this was the case, but undertook to re-read the Convention.

I have done so. There is nothing in the Convention to this effect. The nearest thing is article 15 which provides:

"Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made."

This does not create any offence. I would expect that under UK law any statement established to have been made as a result of torture would not be admissible as evidence.

Now we get closer to the nub of the issue. The UK Govt. clearly knew it was in receipt of information which had been obtained in contravention of International Law to which it is a Party, because it was told so repeatedly by it's Ambassador to the country where it was happening. The matter was so serious that the EU attempted to do something about it but were stymeed by the US and the UK Govt. took the matter seriously enough to have 'high-level' meetings about it. They also sought legal advice. Are we seriously to believe that this kind of thing goes on routinely? No. It is patently obvious that they knew.

At the very least then, since Murray reports that there was no SIS presence in Uzbekistan, the UK Govt. is guilty of not seeking to implement the provision that "any State Party in whose territory a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is present shall take him into custody" (Article 6) and Article 4 does not say anything about where the offence may have taken place, then for all the UK Govt. knew torturers could have been wandering in and out of it's Embassy or Aeroplanes (jurisdiction) on a daily basis, but they had no means to establish whether or not they should be nicking them. Actually, while we're on this point: they should have fucking nicked that CIA cunt Murray was on about; he fucking admitted complicity!

This however is to engage in what Murray rightly calls "casuistry" in the full text of his July 04 telegram. It is quite clear to anyone with even less than half a brain that the purpose and spirit of the UN Convention against Torture was to strengthen earlier law in an attempt to finally stamp out the fucking disgusting practice. In the opening statement, after listing that previous legislation and the relevant parts of the UN Charter, it says

Desiring to make more effective the struggle against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment throughout the world

What this appalling situation all boils down to is this: what is the definition of "complicity" under international law and how much more blatantly obvious does the evidence have to be before the UK Govt, a "State Party" will be "satisfied" and "immediately make a preliminary inquiry into the facts?" Are we to accept that a Foreign & Commonwealth Office meeting, without directly sourced data from its own intelligence service, "at the level of Heads of Department and above" constitutes such and fullfils the UK Govts. obligation to "take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over the offences?" Who knows, but given the "grave nature" of the possible offences, these are questions which should be heard before an International Court and i'll be urging my oh so flippant MP to seek precisely that, as he personally signed a promise to do.

Now i'm sure you're getting bored, but there's more. Because whether or not anything comes of this on the international stage is, let's face it, highly unlikely. Western Governments make the rules, they don't submit to them. However, as DLA's know, i've fallen foul of UK Domestic Law on a number of occaisions and, believe me, you pick up a thing or two.

Criminal Law Act 1977

Section 1

(1) Subject to the provisions of this Part of this Act, if a person agrees with any other person or persons that a course of conduct shall be pursued which, if the agreement is carried out in accordance with their intentions, either . . .

(a) will necessarily amount to or involve the commission of any offence or offences by one or more of the parties to the agreement, or

(b) would do so but for the existence of facts which render the commission of the offence or any of the offences impossible,

he is guilty of conspiracy to commit the offence or offences in question.

What can one say? Booyaka! Suck on that you fucking quisling shitbags! That's what. There's also a provision in UK Law which talks about the "Mens Rea" or "Guilty Mind" but, to be honest, i'm way out on a limb here, however since they took legal advice seeking to excuse their conduct, they can hardly claim to have not had a guilty mind, eh? Now far from any International Court or hi-falutin' nonesense, in this country all that's necessary to instigate a prosecution for a crime committed here within the UK is for any plain old copper to go and nick 'em for it. So go on! Have you no shame? Do something decent for once.

Is Galloway a Stalinist?

2006-01-13T19:12:00.000Z

So, DLA's, this comes from the comments of my earlier post "He is a dick, but he's our dick. (George Galloway)" but i've decided it needs a more visible place on the front page. Nod goes to wardytron who provided this exerpt and a link to the original [title link] interview which sparked off the squealing and hair pulling.

"He says his political position is no different now than it was then; that while there are so many politicians marching across the ideological spectrum without explanation, he has stayed put. What is that position? "I am on the anti-imperialist left." The Stalinist left? "I wouldn't define it that way because of the pejoratives loaded around it; that would be making a rod for your own back. If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe." [my emphasis]
~ Simon Hattenstone Monday, September 16, 2002 The Guardian

From that isolated paragraph it would be easy, if one were of a mind to, to conclude that the only reason George would not describe himself as a Stalinist was because it would alienate him politically and possibly socially also. One could further postulate that in reality he is one, just not prepared to say so. I'd urge you all, DLA's, to read the entire thing however. [title link]

Simon Hattenstone's piece for The Grauniad, of Monday September 16, 2002, begins with a description of George which frankly borders on the homo-erotic and, having thus placed 'the thrust' (fnah fnah) of his article firmly into George's person rather than his politics, Simon proceeds to subtly caress the notion that George is in fact nothing more than a fop whose political ideas are hardly worth even considering, they are so outr�. What he actually achieves is as subtle as a grab of the bollocks.

Now, do you see how easy it is to take the "inverted pyramid" style of writing to set the whole tone of a piece so as to rubbish a person's image whilst seeming to be merely commenting on their efforts? Here i've called the credibility of The Guardian into question by repeating Private Eye's satire which referred to a propensity for spelling mistakes way back in the day. I've then gone on to suggest that Hattenstone's objections to Galloway are based in homosexual jealousy or, for the nastier of mind, simply that he lacks credibility because he is gay. Is he gay? I have no idea and i'm not interested. I further compound the notion that he is however by the use of first names, sexual innuendo, pretentious French and sexual idiom.

That's not what we're about at DLA however: we're not interested in Hattenstone; what we want to know is, "What the fuckin'ell is Galloway about?" Well, i'll tell you what i think, based on this evidence.

We do not get a verbatim report of the full interview and, given the tone of the piece, if Galloway had said something like, "I abhor the atrocities committed under Stalin's regime as much as I oppose and have consistently protested, as an MP and private citizen, against Human Rights abuses by the US, UK and Saddam Hussein's regime." It's unlikely to have made it into Hattenstone's copy. Why? Not simply because the purpose was to marginalise Galloway, but to marginalise the issues by concentrating on personalities.

That is the purpose of bringing Stalin into it in the first place. Wooo, Stalin: "The Man of Steel;" death camps; brutal suppression of dissent; plain grey uniform and 'uncompromising' moustache; wasn't he a course jumped up peasant too? In response to Galloway's "anti-imperialist left" the question wasn't, "Marxist-Leninist left?" Because, whether one believes in it's tenets or not, Marxism-Leninism is widely understood to be a political, economic and social belief structure which cannot be dismissed as a 'fringe lunatic' idea, but rather begs debate about the issues it seeks to address. Then again, what is Stalinism actually about? Find out. Of course, my perspicacious DLA's, it will not have escaped your attention that "Uncle" Joe Stalin was our ally, as was the similarly moustachioed Saddam Hussein, when it suited us.

If asked, the fact that Galloway is likely to have said something very similar, to that which i've postulated, not only chimes with what we've heard from him elsewhere but is reinforced by Hattenstone's later:

"Galloway is quick to remind you that he, and his comrades on the left, were among the first to condemn Saddam's human rights record, even if the chief motive was that the country had become a virulently anti-communist puppet of America." [my emphasis]

Of course in the context of the piece, he is trying to further the undermining by suggesting that Galloway is merely blowing his own trumpet. Is he? Well, he's not shy anywhere else, so i'd say yes, but not "merely," as what he says is the plain and simple truth. Hattenstone goes on to state his opinion of the "chief motive" and suggest it would have included glossing over similar in the USSR. But Galloway never said any such thing, because if he had, Hattenstone would have delightfully reported it verbatim.

There are countless examples of this kind of arse in the piece, but i'm sure you're getting bored: read it yourself; draw your own conclusions. There are two points i'd like to draw to your attention however:

1. Galloway's

"Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability,"

statement to Hussein. Was he really speaking to the Iraqi people, or was it a serious political mistake? I suspect the latter. However, i have to tell you that i salute the skill with which the team that put Dubya in The White House undermined the US electoral system and manipulated the media to get away with it. If i ever get within two feet of him however, his broken nose will be all anyone needs to determine my opinion of the man himself, but that's me. I'm not a statesman: i'm not trying to build bridges. The fact that Galloway is capable of admiring facets of a man despite what he may think of that man's overall contribution to humanity is pointed up later in the article when Hattenstone reports Galloway's admiration of Churchill, surely not a person one would expect to find in the list of a self-confessed "anti-imperialist's" list of heros.

2. Harold Pinter thinks Galloway rocks. If you've got this far in this article of mine, you must be interested in left issues: the word of a Nobel Laureate must surely carry some weight.

Actually, it occures to me that i may have done Simon Hattenstone an unwarranted disservice here, because it's possible that by concentrating the critical rhetoric into the beginning of the piece, but including these tidbits later, he may have been just pandering to editorial policy, but that achieved, sneaked some balance in by the back door, as it were (fnah fnah) [i'm sorry but i couldn't resist it! But see how easy it is?].

My hole is greater than the sum of any government's respectable parts.

2006-01-13T18:41:00.000Z

So DLA's, I actually wrote this yesterday but Blogger had an outage so i couldn't post it. Then i spelled "respectable" wrong: twice, for fuck's sake! Justin, in his "Chicken Yoghurt: Reject Action Plan" post [title link] has done us all the inestimable favour of saving us the ballache of trawling through The Govts. new document "Respect Action Plan" ~ download away: i can't be arsed. This is why i'm thankful for Justin's efforts, as we all know full well what a load of shite anything with that as it's title will be coming from a bunch of lying cunts like this crew, eh? I'll urge you to read his analysis though, because it points up some of the spin and speculates over what the real purpose of the thing might be. I was moved to leave this... steaming behind me:

At 3:28 AM, January 13, 2006, edjog said...

You're obviously right Justin, to suggest that taking money from the poorest will only make us rely on crime more. I believe though that ever since this policy really started with the introduction of legislation that allows for benefit to be paid at half rate if you lose your job through some reason deemed to be your fault (in the early 90's sometime, i forget: i was wasted), for 6months, a major social change has been underway. The low-level criminalisation of the poor continues with the likes of ASBO's and now we hear this frankly fascist idea that it is somehow better to have innocent people found guilty than the guilty go free, for the minor crimes of the poor.

The trouble is that the change is in precisely the opposite direction to that which is it's stated intent. You say that a �100 fine is a lot if it would prevent someone from eating. This is actually nonesense to all but the most deluded of law abiding citizens. The plain fact is that when you have little or no disposable income, the amount the courts will set as a payment installment has to take this into account. Even then, if you are already inured to the process of criminal law, no longer cowed by media driven hype about prison rape or social stigma attached to being sent to prison, you simply refuse to pay.

Not to the magistrates face of course, but nonetheless, we don't pay. Eventually after several court appearances you get the idea that the next time you are summonsed it will be jail. The trick then is to fail to appear in court, wait for the warrant to be issued and then turn up at the Police Station on Thursday at 6am, penniless, brief in-tow, and surrender to custody. Later that day you get sentenced to less than a week in jail which writes off the fine. You automatically only serve half the sentence barring bad behaviour, but you can't have a half day inside so it's 3days tops. Jail releases don't happen on a weekend, but they cannot keep you longer than the set tarif so you are free Friday at 6am.

If you find yourself continuously in trouble, with a lot of fines, by evading capture for a while (claiming to be somebody else when a civilian comes to the house looking for you) these can all be dealt with in the same overnighter, because these offences are all the same and thus sentence is concurrent. We call it 'a lie down.' Even if you've really hammered it, the worst you'll get is 'a long sleep' where you get released Monday or Tuesday at 6am. Half the people in the place are your mates, so who cares? You hit the streets well fed and rested, ready to have another crack at it.

In the 90's the attempt to shut down the party scene combined with social unrest made low-level criminals of a lot of people. As a hardcore criminal, it became possible to rely on the discretion of people who perhaps only 5years previously would have thought of me as the scum of the earth. The Police were still grappling with technology which was not fully integrated with all Forces and the sheer amount of petty crime being committed as part of the party scene gave us a smokescreen behind which to disguise our more concerted efforts. It was a mini-golden age of crime.

Now, i have to confess that one of the reasons my cohorts and i were so blas� about such things as surviellance and private securuty measures was because we were off our heads on drugs, but the overwhelming factor was that we knew damn well that as long as we didn't do anything too outrageous, the Police might know exactly who was doing what, but they simply didn't have the manpower to do anything about it.

This is the social change i'm on about. Being a criminal is no longer seen as an 'us and them' issue to a growing section of society, but rather a case of it being that one person might be prepared to dare slightly more than another and is therefore a useful person to know. With the combined rising costs of caring for our ageing population and greater expectation from health care and education, there will come a time when this confluence of phenomena happens again.

The ugly truth of the matter however is that this time it will be far more about drugs like crack cocaine and guns. People will remember the times when they could rely on 'geezers' like i was, a little bit woo, i little bit weah, to help them out with something a bit dodgy as the golden age it was: when we see american stylee gun battles in the streets.

How long can the policy of prohibition of drugs which fuels gangsterism continue? As long as the costs to society can be spun bearing in mind the jobs it creates, the oppression it facilitates and the personal fortunes to be made by the very rich who are the only people who can actually afford to invest in high level manufacture and supply.

DLA proudly supports Al Chaeseda!

2006-01-12T23:10:00.000Z

Further to my post "Flaming Mouse," [Title Link] i added this in the comments and then decided it was quite funny so posted it on The PBA. It may as well have it's own post here as well.

The sad truth of the matter is that far from learning a lesson about cruelty, if the daft old bastard [the 81 year old American shit-for-brains whose house was burned down by a mouse he had thrown into burning leaves] is at all like what our society would seem to suggest the vast bulk of westerners believe in, he'll make it his life's mission to eradicate mice from the face of the earth.

It'll be "The war on Rodentism," New Mexico stylee, "Tough on mice, tough on the causes of mice." By extension of course, that means vegetarians also, the pinko cheese eating liberal scum! In fairness, i'm one and i'm eating a cheese and onion pie right now. So there we have it: a clear link between vegetarians and Al Chaeseda: a militant underground network of state sponsored rodentism!

State sponsored? That's right: Holland! The dirty Dutch with their pot smoking, legal prostitution and Edam. We'll ignore Switzerland, because as long as we keep stashing our money there, we'll be in a position to disuade them from the evils of fondue.

I can hear you thinking, "But mice don't even eat cheese." What kind of pinko leftist rodent supporting anti-American anti-Semite enemy of the people are you? Haven't you ever watched Disney? Anti-Semite? Oh yes: mice aren't Kosher are they? Anyway, were mice on Noah's Ark? I've heard Pat Robertson will be interviewed for Fox News this very evening, where he'll explain why this question is at the heart of the matter, because mice are clearly the work of Satan. After all, even if they were on The Ark, they must have sneaked on because they are evidently evil, how else would anyone in their right mind explain this unprovoked and cowardly attack on innocent American Citizens?

War Against Conservativism

He is a dick, but he's our dick. (George Galloway)

2006-01-12T14:51:00.000Z

I originally posted this in the comments of a post on Chicken Yoghurt entitled:

Let's play house

But there's more. I've mirrored the relevant parts "Off The Main Page" to preserve the train of thought from the leaves of technological failure, or human whimsy, on it's track. It seems that the infallible logic of my position has defeated all comers there because nothing more was said, either that or they just thought that if they ignored the horrible little twat he'd go away (oh no, DLA's, oh the fuck no indeed: you know me better than that, eh?).

At 1:31 PM, January 10, 2006, edjog said...

Tell you what nosemonkey, let's assume we're both adults and leave Hitler out of it for a change, eh?

[Which relates to a previous comment, obviously, but that's why you might want to read them "Off The Main Page" or at the original thread. It makes no odds to me, there's no ads OTMP (precisely so i can rip off other people's stuff without bugging them copywrite wise) and anyway the derisory micropence i get for the ads here is never likely to be actually paid me because Google AdSense only pays out once you've earned $100. It's also a condition of the contract that i don't solicit you to click on the ads, so i'm not doing, right? Because that would be wrong! Of course one lives in fucking hope.]

I'm not saying that Galloway isn't a dick and as far as i can tell from what he actually says, rather than overinflated media reportage taking some of his illconsidered statements out of context, he's got some ideas which i disagree with. His much vaunted 'stance' on Stalin would be one of them, however i must confess to having been too lazy to find out what his full position actually is.

The fact remains however that he is vociferously anti-war and has got off his arse to provide himself with a platform to be heard on the matter. Whether his prime motivation for this is actually, as i suspect, self-aggrandisement matters not at all: anyone who challenges widely trumpeted ideas will inevitably come in for ad hominem criticism. It is both the nature of our personality driven culture and the first fallback of those who cannot debate the issues. (i don't mean you BTW [nosemonkey], i'm on about what passes for 'journalism' in this age of bullshit) [or as i will henceforth be calling it: the misinformation age]

To the extent to which i have a "Galloway logic" [also relates to previous comment] it is simply that he is doing the do. He is an MP and able to get on Celebrity Big Bollox: you're not and neither am i. In fact if i was to try what he's about, assuming i had the wherewithall to succeed, the headlines would read,

"Stop The War Coalition: bunch of junkies and criminals!"

So more power to his elbow, it's not like he's going to be forming the next government or anything. To take 'your Galloway logic' to it's absurd conclusion (and thus, hopefully, illumine the fallaciousness of this style of debate) we should wait for the second coming of Christ to champion the cause, because only 'He' could be immune to the criticism of our detractors.

No, he is a dick, but he's our dick.

Now, i must confess that, since writing the above, i still haven't bothered to find out exactly what George's views about Stalin actually are, but i do remember some hair-pulling and shrieking going on about it on Harry's Place when i first entered the blogosphere last year. As i remember, the gist of it was that George had apparently said that the day The Soviet Union fell was the worst of his life.

So hey, leaving aside the sheer fucking idiocy of taking someone's idiom literally, how can anyone conclude that he is a Stalinist, when the USSR had undergone massive changes from Gorbachev onwards? I wasn't best pleased myself, not because i wanted oppression of the ordinary Soviet Citizen to continue but because the Sino-Soviet accord was a credible counter-balance to the forces of rampant capitalism in the west and it seemed such a shame that just when 'left-wing' politics was emerging from the bad old days (and let's have it right: cruelly oppressing one's populace in the name of political leadership is far from confined to communist governments), despite the difficulties they've faced as a result of the combined weight of economic and scientific restrictions and western propaganda sapping the will of all concerned and promoting corruption, the only new political model which has ever held out even a hope of an alternative to top down oppression was overcome, literally, by the forces of reaction.

Was it working? No. Quite apart from the effects of western propaganda, the Soviet Citizens were pissed off: there were shortages, people had to queue for basic foodstuffs which sometimes ran out. But just bear this in mind: before the revolution it was not uncommon for people to starve and/or freeze to death there; that wasn't going on under Gorbachev (go on, find a few links to isolated incidents where the system failed completely and that did happen, while you're at it: you'll no doubt be able to find similar about disadvantaged people here in the west also; so fuck off before you even start). Who knows where communism might have led however, if they weren't labouring under punitive trade and scientific restrictions? Who knows where the reform process of Perestroika and Glasnost Gorbachev instigated might have led despite that? We'll never know.

Ah, but the people would never have been happy to accept their leaders living it up in luxury whilst their own lives only improved in incremental minutiae. Absolutely. It makes my fucking blood boil to see that happening here too! But somehow the vast majority of people seem able to accept it, even if they don't like it, and at least communism as a starting philosophy might have allowed that situation to change, whereas we are stuck with the blatant hypocrisy of

"In God We Trust"

printed on a Dollar bill, and no possibility of anything except civil disobedience on a scale never seen outside India at the end of the British Raj, or States in open Revolution, shaking the power of government/corporate oligarchy. Don't be fooled by the oft-touted idea that we live in a Democracy (from Greek (demokratia), (demos) the people + (kratein) to rule + the suffix (ia), literally "the people rule") [greek letters deleted due to the failings of Blogger in reproducing them]: in the vast majority of cases, and certainly always when regarding anyone with a chance to form a government, the only people we can vote for as our representatives belong to a select group who are acceptible to those with the money and/or power to support a political campaign. The word for that is Oligarchy (from the Greek words for "few" oligo and "rule" arkhos). "Ah but" all you like, you'll not get away with trying to redefine the english language to suit political spin on this blog, pal.

So yeah, i was well pissed off when The Soviet Union fell and, given the events we've had to endure since, me an' George (best mates we are mind! Ha!) were proved right to be. Does anyone think that the US would have got away with Iraq when the USSR had it's clout?

So then, what's actually the problem with him? I suspect it's because he's a flash cunt, coming over as pretty egocentric: he offends the sensibilities of often self-effacing liberals. He gets up my arse with it, frankly, and on balance i think he rocks. What can we do about it? Well, i'm not sure, i don't know him personally, but it seems likely to me that a lot of it is a defence mechanism he's built up over the years in the face of relentless ad hominem criticism. It's no good repeating said and expecting him to suddenly go all "turn the other cheek": when people start into me, for my personal mistakes when i'm trying to expound a viewpoint, the only cheek they see of mine is my skinny backside while i fart in their face. If he did anything less, people would start having a go at him for 'not having what it takes' or 'lacking the courage of his convictions'.

What about these allegations of financial irregularities then? Who knows? He's involved to some degree in international business which, as far as i can tell, is a wide open vista of the dodgiest practices known to man, where it's open season on anyone who cannot or will not defend their own position by engaging in them. Has he used companies headed up by his wife on paper to move money around thus keeping his own name out of it? Well, he wouldn't be the first one, would he? Do i give a shit? No. What i'm looking at is what he's done with whatever wealth he has aquired, which is maintain and increase his public profile and thus make himself heard on the scandalous, immoral and illogical position we find our society in over oil. Given that he has dedicated his life to these issues, i find it a much more likely proposition that any moody transactions on his part are the result of mistakes rather than outright rapaciousness anyway and so what if he's a bit woo, a bit weah, who do we believe is a bigger thieving cunt? "Gorgeous" or Rupert Murdoch?

Fucking leave him alone, he might calm down a bit and stop being such a dick.

[Right, you're definately gonna have to wait for the one i promised in "Promises, promises..." i'm off to the chippy!]

Promises, promises...

2006-01-12T05:28:00.000Z

See how the mighty edjog jumps through hoops to recode his blog!

Oh yes, faithful DLA's, we are now fully Excrementer� compliant for those poor benighted souls still wandering lost in Microshit� land. We have a new colour scheme after a complaint about the old white-on-black stylee, which i have to admit was a bit glaring, and if you don't like the new look, feel free to utilise the new "DESTROY THIS BLOG" link in the left sidebar (under the Babel Fish panel), where you can visit all kinds of disasters from the biblical to the farcical on my efforts. Thanks go to The OPINION for the idea. We also have a new meta tag which details the correct characterset encoding for Western (MacRoman), which should deal with any funkyness in the special characters department. If you see any, please let me know, along with what platform and browser you are using.

BASTARD! The new meta tag works in the preview but not live! I dunno, i'm fucked now anyway: going to bed, i'll have another look into it tomorrow. Any help would be appreciated: Meaders?

Stay tuned for a very serious political one which is, even as i type, festering away and is due to be lanced onto this fair page soon. Serious, DLA's, i have finally sussed what's going down: i shit you not, it's worthy of Machiavelli and absolutely appalling.

Update (2006/01/12 14:31 GMT): No news on the characterset encoding, but the colour scheme has been extended to the comments blocks and blog title header with a fraction of variation for that delicate touch! Oh mate, my sisters are both well into matching colour schemes: it must be rubbing off! BOLLOX! In fairness to me however, they go with shades of "Teal" "Mushroom" and "faux suede" textures, whilst i can tell you that the room i'm typing in now is primary yellow, scarlet trim, turquoise top and ceiling, black floor boards and my bedding is black and red (what else, really?). I have to report some inertia on the politics front: it's going to take a lot of research or nobody will believe me, but there'll shortly be some mirrored musings on Galloway to keep the pot simmering.

Flaming Mouse!

2006-01-11T02:39:00.000Z

So, some 81 year old American tosser threw a mouse into some burning leaves right... and the mouse ran into his house which caught fire! The place and contents were totally fucked. How fucking cool is that? It's fucking hilarious as well mind: poetic justice. I'm serious: check it.

Nod: The OPINION

Well, tickle my bollocks do...

2006-01-10T22:46:00.000Z

So, i've just completed an online IQ test at Tickle�. I know, but it seemed like it might be a laugh... You can get straight to the test from the title link, if you're interested: it's 5 pages but it doesn't take long.

Apparently i'm a "visionary philosopher," with an IQ of 140 and "significantly above average": which was nice. I'm not all that about it however as, although i've not completed an IQ test for ages, twice in my earlier life psychological profiling has predicted a score significantly higher than that, once when i was very young and again, despite being both traumatised and very confused, as a result of my drug intake. There were 3 questions i had to actually think about and 2 of those i had to guess; i feel sure i'd have pissed the lot of it even 5 years ago. At 38 now, i'm getting old, there's just no denying it. Fucking BASTARD!

Charles Kennedy

2006-01-09T16:36:00.000Z

So, i wasn't going to say anything, as i am biased. But then again, much of the blogoshere consists of nothing more substantial than prejudice, rumour, misinformation and lies so i thought, bollox, at least i've got 25 years experience of what i'm on about here.

Now, i don't know the man so i cannot comment on whether his drinking has actually made his conduct any more unmanageable than anybody else involved in the endless round of self-aggrandisement and defence that modern politics seems to mainly consist of, however i suspect not, or we would have seen more evidence of it. It's not as if he or any of his supporters is wealthy enough to have kept the ravening dogs of war-pedling media at bay and given Charles Kennedy's stance over that matter, if there was anything with which to properly trounce his good name, we would have seen it.

No. I suspect that what we have here is more of the casual prejudice of which the title link is a towering example, seemingly not unsympathetic but nonetheless reinforcing the idea that a person who has developed an inability to prevent their use of mood altering substances from negatively impacting upon their lives is forevermore untrustworthy, regardless of the fact that they no longer indulge in the offending behaviour. If this is the first time you've come across it stated baldly and still agree with the notion, two points: firstly, i hope you and yours never have to undergo the kind of traumatic life situations that lead to addictive behaviour, but until such time as it happens, you have no idea what you're on about and secondly: fuck you!

Of course, if this is your considered view, you are a fool, but fuck you anyway. A perusal of even a basic psychology text will be sufficient for an understanding that casually dismissing another as flawed has its roots, in fact, in exactly the same problem which leads to addiction. This deliberate lack of empathy is itself a defence mechanism used to bolster low self esteem. It's common in high acheivers as the drive to be seen to be successful is also part of the condition.

Now, quitting the Liberal Democrat leadership may turn out to be easiest for Charles' personal life, but i think it's a shame. When the rest of 'em were giving it the large one: Saddam this; WMD that; smokescreen, misinformation, bullshit the other; he at least used his platform to ask some questions. He didn't go anywhere near far enough, in my opinion, but it can't have been easy to stand up to one's peers like that (go on, if you must). I think i'd have prefered it if he'd admitted his problem, frankly oulined his solution, and then said, "Come an'ave a go if you think you're 'ard enough!" To my mind, a man who knows he has some problems and genuinely seeks to address them is eminently more trustworthy than someone who pretends to be whiter than white, using media spin to carry off the Teflon act, and certainly has more credibility than someone who claims to be a devout christian whilst starving and bombing people into the stone-age with the stated intent of saving them from an evil regime.

So i wish him well, hopefully he'll be back and if his previous performance is anything to go by, woe betide any who try to get in his way when his head's sorted.

Sour Grapes at Harry's Place

2006-01-09T13:52:00.000Z

Still, what can you expect from excusenik war-pedlers, eh?

The problem, apparently, is George Galloway's lack of credibility. Check it. Check Galloway's own statement about his reasons for doing it too. Personally, i've not watched Big Bollox yet, although i dare say i might if he stays in for a while. Whether he makes a tit of himself or not remains to be seen, he's sanguine about the possibility himself: it's an occupational hazard that comes with the requisite monumental ego it seems, quite apart from any editorial policy which may come into play. However, lest we forget that he is in fact the dude, let us remind ourselves of another performance of his, here.

I actually think it's quite brave: much of modern politics is about image and he's taking a big risk with his. Remember what happened to Edwina Currie on Hell's Kitchen? It's hard to contemplate that somebody who now lives by the media could have voluntarily made such a twerp of herself.

Nod: Dead Men Left

Whatagwaan? Well, not nothing at least...

2006-01-09T08:05:00.000Z

So, further to the email i mentioned sending to my MP, about Britain's complicity in Uzbek torture [title link], i received a snail-mail reply from his office the other day. Sorry for the tardiness of this post: tings a gwaan in my personal life and i've had flu (again, bastard!); what can you do?

It seems the Member is away but "would not wish representations on [my] behalf to be unduly delayed" and so his estimable Private Secretary is "drawing [my] concerns to the attention of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office." Apparently, my MP "will be in touch with [me] when he receives a response from the Minister."

Well, one has to draw some comfort from the "when" rather than 'if', eh? I felt bound to request that, given the fact that the FCO have previously done little despite the expressed concerns of their senior employee, Craig Murray, on the spot, since 2002: she'd forgive my scepticism that they would suddenly take any notice of my humble quieries. I've repeated my request to know the Member's views on this issue and what, if anything, he intends to do about it. I've suggested that it would be good if, if he's not already into it, he were to join the All Party Parliamentary Group Liberty mention on their website, to tackle this issue, and expressed my desire that he go further, trying to get Tony Blair and Jack Straw prosecuted.

It is far from clear that the 'legal advice' of Michael C Wood [bottom of that post] to the UK Govt. is the last word on the legality of our acceptance of material extracted under torture and this should be tested in the courts. There is also the matter of lying. I don't know if it is actually a criminal offence to lie to Parliament, nor do i know if TB or JS have actually repeated what they've said to the public in The House of Commons, but it clearly is not the case that agents of the UK Govt. have never knowingly received 'intelligence' from tainted sources, as both have maintained, and this is surely a very serious matter.

Now, as i felt obliged to point out, i am not a Tory [he is BTW] (and just between us: it's a proper ballache to have to have anything to do with something which will no doubt be used to make political capital out of at some point) but i will not stand by while this government flouts the impartial rule of law and democracy. This is why i've got the fuckin' arse'ole about this mind: i don't know any of these Uzbeks and frankly, if they are devout moslems, just like christian fundamentalists, they can get to fuck. But torture is just too fucked up and the minute we turn a blind eye to any State abrogating human rights for whatever reason, history shows us that it will only get worse. If we give 'em an inch, they'll take a mile. Just ask Holocaust survivors.

How long will it be before British Citizens are being whisked off for a good hiding somewhere else? In fact, how do we know it's not already happening? So what, fuck 'em, they're terrorists right? Well who isn't Osama bin Laden's best mate once your fingernails are off and its the boiling water next? I have to tell you, i've been in some well and truly fucked up situations, kicked to fuck and left for dead twice, so i'd be likely to cope with torture better than most of you, but let's have it right: when your only way of preventing further serious harm to yourself is to admit you're a terrorist and give up 'the conspiracy', i know i'd remember the exact dates and locations when my Mum shagged Osama and which of my relatives made the video, know what i'm saying?

In the meantime, i also emailed the RT Hon John Prescott MP, asking that he give Tony Blair and Jack Straw a 'rendition' of another kind, "The ballad of the good slapping," as he can hardly deny he knows the words. Perhaps unsurprisingly: no joy so far!

So again, DLA's, get onto your MP about it: contact details here. It'll only take you 5mins.

Goodbye Sharon!

2006-01-06T06:54:00.000Z

Don't even start. I'm 1/4 Jewish myself, so you can just fuck off with it.

It seems reports from Iran's IRIB NEWS about Ariel Sharon's demise are somewhat exaggerated [BBC ~ Title Link]. Oh well, he's as good as dead and thank fuck for that. Apparently, he underwent eight hours of brain surgery after a stroke. I'm not surprised: i'll bet it took them six hours to find his brain hidden away in the dark recesses of his cavernous pride and grandiosity. Fuck him and all bitter old bastards like him.

Don't be fooled into thinking there's a chance for meaningful negotiation with the Palestinians though. The US will have another right-wing puppet waiting to pick up where he left off and the dollars will keep flowing; the walls and minefields springing up; the Palestinians dying; the world wringing its hands in impotent despair and hastily flinging lime on the trail of ordure left in the wake of the Empire of Shame, lest they be next.

So why is it good he's fucked up? Because fuck him, that's why. For every Palestinian house bulldozered, for every pregnant woman left wondering what the fuck she should do now her bloke's been shot dead 'accidentally', for every child maimed by shrapnel, for every old dear burying the remains of her last child, for every youngster driven to the point where death by suicide bomb seemed like a viable alternative to life as it was; fuck him. There'll be a few grim smiles on The West Bank today, that's why.

Nods: D-Notice Chicken Yoghurt

Wot no goodwill?

2006-01-06T04:13:00.000Z

"I've got all of my fingers and all of my toes
I'm pretty well off I guess, I suppose
So how come I feel bad so much of the time?
A man ain't an island, John Dunn[sic] wasn't lying

It's been a hard day on the planet
How much is it all worth?
It's getting harder to understand it
Things are tough all over on earth."
~ Loudon Wainwright III
(A Hard Day On The Planet)

"No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."
~ John Donne Meditation XVII
English clergyman & poet (1572 - 1631)

So, given that i'll not be satisfied by anything less than the dissolution of almost everything that most people are, have, aspire to, or stand for: there's not much room for goodwill, no. If you can find any, your welcome to it, otherwise it's the usual, "Get to fuck"-age from me. For those fellow travellers who happen by, let's hope we all "live long and prosper."

Yes, we have backlinks now, too! So feel free to make use of the facility, if you'd prefer to write about what i've written on your own site rather than in the comments. I don't mind what you say, i'll not be censoring them. Knock yourselves out. Although: expect replies in kind.

You may notice a bit of weird character-age going on also. This is because i've switched the encoding to MacRoman (finally: i don't really know why i didn't do this yonks ago, ho hum) and i just can't be arsed to go back and sort any misidentified " or @'s etc.

FAR-RIGHTEOUS EXCUSENIK SUPPORTS TORTURE

2005-12-31T00:40:00.000Z

Check the title link DLA's, the 'backlash' has started. Like most US 'conservatives' Michelle Malkin does not allow comment on her drivel; she does however solicit "TIPS", so i wrote her an email instead.

Subject: TIP from Britain
From: edjog
Date: 2005/12/30 23:13 GMT
To: malkin@comcast.net

Message body:

There is no excuse for torture.

To seek to hold one's government accountable for complicity in it is not a 'left' issue.

It is democracy.

The tone of your piece "THE NEW MOONBAT CRAZE IN BRITAIN" is not only misleading, but also, by casting aspersions on those who would challenge the continuation of this hideous state of affairs, tends to excuse the original act.

That you do not actually state your own opinion, whilst casting these aspersions, points to your own cowardice.

You are also factually in error.

Craig Murray wrote the book as a further continuation of his fight against Uzbeki torture, a fact he was certainly in a better position to judge the reality of than you, as he was the British Ambassador there. The 'documents' prove that this was his concern, showing as they do his opposition to UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office policy as far back as 2002. He also stood for parliament against our Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in an effort to get these concerns a public hearing, after being continually rebuffed by the FCO. He states quite categorically that his book contains "his own thoughts" on the issue and that one need not buy it to read the documents, since he has made them widely available. The book itself is not available anyway, because by law, he must obtain permission from the UK Government before publishing, which has been refused. Hence the leak.

The torture referred to is not "British-outsourced" at all. The information, that Murray claims was obtained under torture that has been used by British Security Services, has come to them via the CIA. So if it is "outsourced" at all, it is by the US. In fact Murray's correspondence calls for an MI6 presence in Uzbekistan, which was apparently lacking: "We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state."

Craig Murray did not "organise" anything. He made the documents available to some popular bloggers and the rest of us, seeing the importance of the issue, mirrored the documents so that the UK Government could not stifle their publication with D-Notices or threats of prosecution under The Official Secrets Act.

In short, your piece is dross, with all the credibility appertaining to me, should i compose a rebuttal entitled "FAR-RIGHTEOUS EXCUSENIK SUPPORTS TORTURE". Then again, given that your purpose is simply to support what you mistakenly perceive as your short term interest, perhaps i will.

Here's the TIP:
You need to wake up and stop trying to view the world's events as ideological stances.

edjog

Nod to Jesus' General.

What i did not add to the email, in the spirit of politeness you understand, is that in her picture at the linked site, she looks to have been the victim of some rather poor plastic surgery and so, perhaps this is why she doesn't think torture's so bad, since she must live with anguish every day.
http://www.michellemalkin.com/mt/oct05-tb.cgi/3520

What the fuckin'ell do you think you're upto Tony & co?

2005-12-29T19:23:00.000Z

So, DLA's, below you'll find the expert opinion of Ambassador Craig Murray, The UK Foreign Office's man on the spot, that information being used by British Security Services was being extracted under torture in Uzbekistan. Afterwards you will find the legal opinion of a government legal advisor Michael C Wood, who says that as long as the information is not used as evidence in a court of law, no offence has been committed under International Law.

So, it seems that Murray has been smeared and sacked. But he was having none and is attempting to publish a book to put forward his side of the story, however the UK Government have refused permission for him to reproduce the documents you see here, demanding them back or that he destroy them. Whether he actually said 'bollocks' is a matter for conjecture, but what is not is that he has made them available to Blairwatch and other bloggers to make it impossible to suppress this information. Craig, DLA's everywhere salute you as that rarest of examples in these cynical times: a principled man. You rock and more power to your elbow! Check him at his website, DLA's: follow the title link.

Now, it's a long one so i'm not even going to get into the unreliability of 'evidence' obtained under torture, but what i am going to get into (big time) is this:

JUST WHAT THE FUCKING HELL DO YOU FUCKING POWER MAD WANKERS IN WESTMINSTER THINK YOUR MANDATE TO RULE BRITAIN ENTAILS?

Because i'd be fucking surprised if you could find 10% of the electorate who would agree that it includes creating a demand for torture by accepting any information gained thus and what's more, those rabid enough to do so almost certainly didn't vote for you anyway, but rather are so mental that they'd probably be happy to see the same methods applied to you and your cabinet. In my name? In my fucking name? You disgusting cringeworthy shitbags: not in my bastard name you don't. I've done some fucked up shit in my time, but you lot are proper fucking scum. Oh aye, you need them fucking steel gates and armed police alright, and the way you're going it won't be to protect you from terrorists either. You horrible bastards: you honestly make my fucking stomach turn.

Now, it has not escaped my attention that i could be prosecuted under The Official Secrets Act for reproducing these documents, but like i've said before on this blog, fucking bring it Babylon. Apart from the fact that you'll find it a far from simple matter to arrest me, i'll fucking gladly do my bird if my prosecution, by highlighting your inhuman policy, spares even one Uzbeki two minutes of the kind of shit you're contributing to. Fucking boiling water? Fuck you, scum.

Update: (22:08 2005/12/29 GMT) So, this has pissed me off so much i've emailed my MP. Sadly i forgot to copy the contents i filled into the form on his website, but it basically said that this is appalling, horrible, cringeworthy and shameful; whatagwaan? I'll let you know if anything comes of it. Do it yourself. You can find out your MP's contact details here.

Update: (00:45 2005/12/30) So, Craig Murray's website has been pulled already! The WANKERS! Read it while you can.

Update: (03:36 2005/12/30) Apparently Murray's site was briefly live at 02:06, but went down again by 03:18, so i may have been hasty/paranoid earlier and it may be simply too much traffic after all. That doesn't change the fact that they're WANKERS though.

Update: (04:09 2005/12/30 GMT) Murray's site is live again but looks a whole lot different to when i viewed it earlier: i'm guessing it's been re-hosted. Now that's what i'm talking about: Democracy, not some pathetic choice of shades of oligarchy.

Update: (11:47 2005/12/30 GMT) Murray's site is back to how it was. Hmmm. Mysterious wee hours skulduggery. Perhaps whoever was responsible thought that nobody would notice, after all: we'd all be asleep so that we'd be able to continue our daily mantra;

"Be Good, Be Vigilant, Behave!"

Update: (03:57 2006/01/06 GMT) OK, so the documents are now widely available and need no longer take up so much room here. They can now be found 'Off The Main Page' where they belong, with the other ripped off stuff.

Don't believe the hype.

2005-12-21T15:45:00.000Z

So, i originally posted this at BetterHumans.com, in the sub-forum "Infinite Directions" but it needs an airing here also, where the language can properly decend to the correct level for the subject matter.

From the thread "Pat Robertson says something stupid, again"

"a man this vile has a platform in the most powerful state on the planet" ~ Marduk

Don't believe the hype mate. The basis for the claim that the US is the most powerful nation on earth has been fallacious for some time. It is based on the seeming potential power of the american economy, however as recent events have proved, even the dollar's value being artificially propped up by the fact that it is the currency OPEC chose as the standard for the sale of oil (thus like a magic chequebook, in that the redeemable value would never be required to be payed by the Federal Reserve), has not prevented a massive Trade Deficit ($650
billion, i believe).

The domestic economy is in such poor shape that the President was forced to levy a %30 import tax on foreign steel imports not long ago, in an illegal (by the standards of the WTO) effort at protectionism, this despite the sheer fucking hypochrisy of that, whilst at the same time championing 'Free Trade'.

The domestic motor industry is so unable to cope that the big 3: Ford, GM & Chrysler, successfully negotiated a freeze on the application of law which would require their vehicles to meet minimum standards for fuel efficiency (so called CAFE law) for at least 3 years running, this despite that the required mpg was something like 27 point something for cars and 20-ish for light vans. Can you imagine European customers, never mind environmental lobbyists, standing for anything so piss poor?

Oh yeah, but it's ok because gasoline is so cheap in the US, right? In 2000, foreign imports of oil topped %50 as the source of domestically produced petroleum products, at a bill of a staggering $110 billion/year, at the time 1/4 of the Trade Deficit, as it was.

Funnily enough, this was about the same time that Iraq decided to convert all of its foreign currency reserve, derived from the sale of oil in Dollars, into Euros. Financial advisors were horrified, because by doing so Iraq would seem to be taking a massive loss at the then current rate of exchange. They went ahead anyway and wey-hey, the price of the Euro started to rise on the international market. Seeing that this strategy had worked profitably for Iraq, some other countries followed suit. The price of the Euro went right up, the Dollar's arse fell out briefly. Care to guess which countries they were? You've guessed it, "The axis of evil" Syria, North Korea and Iran. (I'm not certain, but i think Venezuela may have waded in also) Of course this has nothing to do with the reasons for war. After all, with such a massive Trade Deficit, which world leader wouldn't run his country further into debt with their most diametrically opposed ideological foes (China), in an effort to bring "democracy" to a fucked up patch of desert half way round the world, with all the potential to make war of a bunch of half starved fucking mentalists, with knackered equipment cobbled together from spare parts over ten years old, despite the desert/scrub terrain being notoriously hard on military materiel? (which obviously cuts both ways)

Fucking WMD? read this.

Ah, but they're rich over there! The most recent figures released by the Federal Reserve put the 'average income' of an American family, including the monetary value of such things as welfare payments, employee benefit/voluntary contributed health insurance, county based free emergency health provision, project housing, food stamps, and fucking charitable donations of food to poor families (!), at $47K-ish. This in a country that has probably the widest gap between the rich and poor of any industrialised nation, which tends to bump the figures higher. Think about that, just under 27 grand Stirling, for a family with no NHS. When you factor the benefits in, a single person would be hard pressed on that, never mind a family, in Europe. Bear in mind also that when a person becomes unemployed in the US, if they qualify for welfare payments, they only receive them for 6 months. Then it's food stamps, project housing and charitable food donations.

I've read about seasoned professional firefighters' family members being treated for fucking malnutrition because the 'man of the family' was too proud to collect the food stamps he was entitled to, considering that his wage would not support his family. For fuck's sake, what? Oh aye, streets paved with bastard gold over there! There'd be riots on the fucking streets over here.

Well, they've got the most powerful military machine! Possibly, i hardly know anything about China, let alone what its military strength might be. But consider this, where's the fucking wedge? It costs a fuck of lot of money to keep an effective fighting force in a state of readyness. The Bomb though! 'The most powerful man in the world' has 'the football', he's got his finger on 'the button' of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world! Again, i don't know what China's nuclear arsenal consists of, but so what? Past a certain point, like a rock dropping on your head, it just doesn't matter how big the cunt is is anymore, it's fucking good night Irene. The issue is, could they survive the political fallout of using even 1 nuclear weapon?

Consider this also, China has had a policy whereby no state benefit would be payed out to support more than 1 child/family, in an effort to reduce overpopulation. I mean, there's 1.4 billion of them already! Despite this, many Chinese families do manage to have 2 or even 3 kids, so there is some robustness to their domestic economy. How many extra children does $650 billion buy? OK, knock off the price of a uniform, a bit of extra food and a Khalashnikov.

Tell me now, and take all the fucking time you need, who is the most powerful man in the world?

Hu Jintao

That's who.

China's currency is pegged to the Dollar, at half its rate i think, but they've been on about floating it internationally for a while now. How much will the poxy Dollar be worth then? And oil is running out...

After the depression of the 30's, where did the readys come from to build the infrastructure necessary to turn out the war machine which rolled up Hitler and 'won' the cold war arms race? From the cost of selling Britain it's obsolete equipment and then the further costs of lend-lease for the new stuff, once the factories were able to produce it. By stripping the British Empire, we mortgaged ourselves to the hilt to keep Nazism at bay. So where has it all gone now? Fuck knows, the arms race used up a lot i suspect, but also, i'm guessing they just haven't kept pace with infrastructure investment.

Like i say, don't believe a word of it mate, they're done. They just don't know it yet. That is the difference between short sighted pursuit of immediate gains, seeming luxury, and long term political strategy. Unsurprisingly, nations which have been around for yonks are better at it than relative newcomers. I mean check out Vladimir Putin, he doesn't seem like a man who gives a shit about his political situation, eh? Personally, i think that is one of the reasons why the media in the UK are always so quick to whip up anti-european sentiment. The media barons' empires are built of stock holdings, if the Dollar does take a terminal dive, much of their wealth will be wiped out overnight. If the UK joined the Euro, the Dollar would be truly fucked. The sad thing for us in the UK is that through the short-sighted Thatcher/Major years we have not made the most of our international position, much of our overseas trade is tied up with the US.

I'm sure that's why Tony Blair can regularly be seen kissing Dubya's arse and why he looks so constipated doing it. A lifelong committed socialist pally-pally with a far righteous, religious fruitcake, Republican? It just makes no sense unless there's a plan behind it. Perhaps we are consolidating our position, preparing to cut our losses? Who do you reckon has got the best handle on what's going down, Gordon Brown, with the most impressive record as Chancellor we've seen for yonks, or Paul Wolfowitz another far right monetarist, the policies of which have fucked the US right up the arse?

It seems a shame that the last to realise it will be the American public. Things are going to be fucked right up over there. They already murder each other at the drop of a hat, for fuck's sake. I genuinely wouldn't be surprised to see civil disturbance and rioting on a hithertofore unforseen scale shortly followed by a military coup d'etat and the sort of oppression not seen since the Nazis.

Now, i fucking hate the US anyway, so on the one hand i think so what, they've fucked themselves properly this time, the daft cunts, they can fuck off and die. But on the other, it will be truly fucked up. A lot of people who might not be strictly innocent, having lived it up off the bullshit leading up to my scenario, but who aren't exactly culpable either, having been consistently fucking lied to for so long, are going to suffer and die. Then on a third hand, as it were, do we seriously expect them to go quietly? Will they fuckerslike! Who knows what depraved war and planetary devastation the soulless wankers are capable of? They're the only country to have ever dropped The Bomb, when Japan was already virtually defeated and suing for peace through Russia.

Which leads on to nightmare scenario #2. No, not nuclear war, because if that happened, we'd all be fucked and the last thing i'd give a flying fuck about is your opinion on it. What if the rest of the world, realising what a bunch of fucking lunatics we're dealing with here, sort of 'club together' to allow the US to get out of the worst their moronic economic mismanagement has wrought. Do we seriously expect that they'll fucking learn? The country that somehow managed to almost deify Ronald Reagan as a 'Great President' in the lead up to his death, an administration that fucked them over almost as badly as the one they've got now seems intent on doing? Will they my steaming shite! They'll be back, skanking money left, right and centre and spanking it on running all over the bastard world fucking pillaging the last few currency units out of their fucked up dead system (oil/steel economy), proclaiming the virtues of:

The Land of the Free-Lunch and
The Home of the Brave Talkers.

The fucking useless, brainless, pointless wankers!

Some of you DLA's will have read some of this stuff from me before, much of the new stuff (especially the Trade War stuff) comes courtesy of my having seem Rob Newman & Mark Thomas live, so thanx lads, top show. Leave the fucking singing/rapping off the end next time, eh? It wasn't that funny and compared to what had just been said, fucking banal.

Some of it is my own humble research, some tidbits from the blogosphere. Of course, i could have plastered the post with links to illustrate the veracity of my assertions/reportage, but then again: fuck off you lazy bastard! Check it out yourself, hey who knows, perhaps i've fucked some of it up, you'll be able to come back and tell me what a twerp i am. Still, maybe it's as serious as i suggest and you'll realise that far more effectively if you suss it for yourself.

Oh yeah, and just in case you are working for the US government keeping tabs on 'sedition' or some such cleg-nut rattle-age (yes, i know that you have no idea what that means, check Urban Dictionary, it's probably in there, ^Top of the Page^ moron) i am a UK citizen with the right to call anybody a cunt on my own website, should i so please, and believe me: i do please, oh how do i fucking please. I'm sure you can probably find out where i am and i know you're certainly not above malicious dirty tricks: hey bring it, i've no door bell and i live at the top of the building, so you'd have to break in. Funnily enough, that would give me the right to brain you with a suspiciously handy blunt instrument, do it soon Babylon, i'm in just about the right fucking mood.

Spiritual

2005-12-19T22:30:00.000Z

So yeah, hey DLA's, PaulEdward Snyder has done it again, follow the title link to check him at PBA.

Now, before anyone starts in with the 'mutual appreciation society'/'intellectual masturbation' et al., because PaulEdward was complimentary about some stuff i wrote in response to his post "Soul", let me just remind you that this is my blog and if you don't like the things i'm interested in, fuck off elsewhere!

Oversensitive? Paranoid even? Maybe, but i've had a cyber-mauling recently so i thought, "Fuck it, i'll get my digs in first."

War Against Conservativism

2005-12-16T22:41:00.000Z

So, after sober reflection (oh haha), i've decided this needs its own post.

That's right, DLA's, it's another war against ideas and it's even got a logo.

The difference here is that, far from seeking to erode your civil liberties, this moronic campaign seeks to ridicule those who would do precisely that. So start campaigning today for the ban of lettuce in our schools. Lettuce contains small quantities of a drug called Lactucarine, an opiate which, although 10x weaker than Morphine, could be habit forming if consumed in sufficient quantity. We should protect our children further, it's no use teaching them to form their own opinions about adult behaviour, after all they should do as they're told, no the way to protect them from paedophiles is to make clothing like this compulsory! Just don't get me started on actual war, i'm sure you get the idea anyway...

Copy and paste away, join up today and WAC your most hated conservative website!

The nadir of base perfidy!

2005-12-16T17:21:00.000Z

OK, so maybe i'm going over the top a bit here, but it's a great phrase, and people who nick lighters are scum. I'm perfectly prepared to accept that my addictive personality makes me react to finding that i can't light my fag in a more extreme way than your average nicotine addict but, really, come on!

Picture the scene: you're walking home after a pleasant evening, maybe it's 03:30 am or so, perhaps you've inhaled some Ganj (if you don't know what that is, you're on the wrong site: go away), not enough to give you the fear (perhaps just 2nd hand fumes), you don't feel any cold, the sky is clear, burglar's moon, beautiful stars... you feel content and contemplative, you're in no hurry to get home. A fag as you dawdle along will go down nicely right now, eh?

So you get one together but no light! You frantically search your pockets, but no joy! Now you really want this fag, the more stressed you get the more you want it! The peace of the night is shattered, especially if you live in some 19th century stylee benighted hole that doesn't have 24hr shops. It's at this point that you remember giving somebody a light earlier, but not getting the precious article back. Now, am i wrong, or does that person need a kick in the crotch?

I've resorted to attaching my lighter to my keyring with a clip before, but they still get nicked. For some people it seems to be a form of kleptomania, sometimes they genuinely don't even realise they're doing it. Of course, in this latter instance, the swift application of a fist to the offending biceps will bring the gravity of the situation home adequately and i commend this course of action to DLA's everywhere.

So, have any of you had one of the new Swan refillable lighters? The black ones are well cool: matte rubberised finish, very tactile. Oh aye, gotta have a refillable lighter, innit? Disposables are a resource wasting calumny. For sure, refillabes wear out eventually, even though you can replace the flint, because the strike-wheel stops working. You can extend their life by using a needle or pin to clean the dead skin/scuzz, that builds up, off them. Of course, if it wasn't for fucking lighter thieving cunts, we could get a decent lighter that lasts even longer, thus wasting even less resources, but who can afford to keep replacing them?

Now, there'll be some non-smokers out there, especially reformed smokers, who think this is funny and that the simple answer would be to give it up. Well as i've mentioned before, i'm trying to get up the will power to do so, but should i succeed, i'll not be having a go at those who continue. Why would i do that, since i know all to well how pernicious an affliction nicotine addiction is? As i've also mentioned before, in the meantime those of you who take this attitude can feel entirely at liberty to fuck right off!

In a similar vein, as it were, you'll notice that just because i can no longer consume recreational drugs without very negative consequences, i've not suddenly started supporting the ridiculous policy of banning them. Yes, they do fuck you up, if you're not careful, and if you're unlucky even if you are careful, but so does a lot of things, the most common being the nuclear family (which we will get to at some future point). You'd have thought that the example of US Alcohol Prohibition would have been enough to dissuade people over the advisability of attempting to legislate over what a person can or cannot consume, eh? Then again, given that Prohibition had to be repealed and we see a similar public flouting of the law, with all it's attendant costs to society, perhaps the fact that drug laws remain has little to do with the supposed purpose of restricting their use? After all, there's a huge infrastructure involved here and fortunes to be made by those rich enough to import container loads of whatever. It's not as if it's the, usually poor, people who typically get busted for drugs who can afford to keep the supply flowing, eh?

Obviously drug laws will be relaxed eventually, because the cost of enforcing them will be seen as an increasingly frivolous waste of money when the costs of caring for our aging populations, here in the west, start to really bite. When that happens and, for those of you who currently enjoy a hassle free supply of your favourites, i'd ask you to remember that your freedom of choice has been bought by the efforts of many who were prepared to flout the law in times when doing so was a much riskier enterprise, many of whom have become casualties in the War Against Conservativism.

While you're at it, check out Ky-mani Marley's tune 'Warriors' from his album 'The Journey'. You can hear it being played by DJ Dread@It's Reggae.com (from the radio selector above) a lot right now. In fairness, it goes off into some of the usual self-agrandising arse, but hey, what can you do? It's a proper tune...

One time for my warriors, my last smugglers and all my buffalo soldiers
One time for my warriors, my heat carriers and all my buffalo, yo

Full Lyrics
The Journey: hear snippets/buy it.

More American Idiocy

2005-12-15T11:09:00.000Z

So this is my reply to a post on Mike G. Gaither's blog libertyWatch, about an American Town having to formulate a payment plan to pay the legal costs of losing law suits over insisting on saying prayers at the start of council meetings (which is against their Constitution). The full text of which is also available 'Off The Main Page', incase it should change there.

dude,

that's so funny! Only because the money wouldn't have gone on anything worthwhile anyway, i mean even assuming it went on a teacher, what sort of teacher would be acceptible to these morons? Probably one who was prepared to teach 'creationism' as a 'theory'. Shame it didn't bankrupt the entire town i say!

We have a saying in the UK, "Only in America!" The accepted behaviour upon this utterance is to snigger and shake our heads. This is to prevent us from having to consider the planetary cost and worrying ramifications of a bunch of under and ill educated barbarians pillaging their way through everything civilisation has acheived, because if we did, we'd cry bitter tears of frustration, like a crack addict murderer's mother.

I don't follow any organised religion, but it's like Malcolm X said, "When the Bible mentions Soddom and Gomorrah, that's America!"

Fuck's sake!

2005-12-09T04:27:00.000Z

Oh aye, it's all going off @DLA today (2005/12/08).

You may remember that i was trying to get a sidebar on the left also from a previous post. Well, my knowledge of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) code has finally caught up with my wish: TADA!

So the panther .gif looks a bit naff now that it's expanded to fill the same width as the Babel Fish panel, which is an arse because, even though it was only meant to be temporary, i've got quite fond of the thing ceaslessly plodding along. New link to the 'Off The Main Page' area of this blog which deals with stuff blatantly ripped off from elsewhere, it's the Jolly Roger on the right.

Still no joy on the menu front. Sadly it seems i'm going to have to really study to get that sussed, because all the decent looking ones that i've attempted to rip off require a link to an external Style Sheet and/or Javascript file, which would need to be accessible online somewhere, unless i wanted to use my own Mac as a server, which i'm just not that dedicated to do. Free web hosts don't seem to like you parking files for use by other websites on their servers, so i'll have to actually work out how the fucking code works so i can write it directly into DLA's page here @ Blogspot.

Pretty much the same goes for Navigation Tabs on the iframe that still only looks in on PBA and fuck knows what the gobshites @ Power-Counter are upto, i mean fucking hell, what is this, an H2K bug? I suspect i'll end up going with Site Meter. Anyway, fucked now, off to bed...

Update (10:48 GMT, 2005/12/09): so the fucking right sidebar now appears halfway down the fucking page in microshit IE. What a ball-ache. I'll have to sort it, but dude(tte)s, just get Mozilla, or even just Firefox as your browser (if you're somehow wedded to Outlook). That's laughing in Safari, but the footer appears at the end of the right sidebar! Give me strength...

So, do these changes mean that DLA is going to get ads now? Yes it does, as soon as i get round to dragging the ripped off stuff onto 'Off The Main Page', and work out why my Google Adsense enquiries didn't work properly. In fairness, i was probably still using Internet Excrementer™.

Update (15:05 GMT, 2005/12/09): well i've tried but my tags are correctly closed etc. it seems that IE is well known for fucking up margins and padding values and as for Safari: fuck knows! Get Mozilla people, it's the way forward.

Bloody hit counter!

2005-12-08T00:36:00.000Z

So, i dunno what's happened to the thing, but it seems to have reset to zero when it reached 2000 hits. I've emailed for tech support... i'm thinking of swapping to some other thingyo anyway, with more stats info, we'll see what power-counter have got to say for themselves.

Make Poverty History Campaign

2005-11-25T07:15:00.000Z

So, after much pondering, i've decided to join.

As DLA's know, far from wishing to vote for Trade Justice, i'd like to make the WTO, IMF and World Bank history, however, anything moving in the right direction has to be supported, i feel. Check it out people, click the band at the top of this page for info.
While you're at it, check this blog out as well: D-Notice.
Seen the NO2ID banner? Go there, DLA's, and make the pledge. It worked with the Poll Tax...

Soul

2005-11-25T06:40:00.000Z

So this comes from The PBA and, in the light of my recent experience with a Goddess of my understanding, i'm reproducing it along with my reply, because it made me think. The original post was by PaulEdward Snyder and to check it you can follow the title link or go to: PaulEdward Snyder's blog. The full text of PaulEdward's post can now be found 'Off The Main Page'.

Much of which post I sort of agree with, but not wholly, so i replied thusly:

I think that's too simplistic.
From my own experience, it is possible to apprehend one's environment and those others in it as unpredictable variables and still choose not to compete in consumption, leaving almost everything to chance, whilst knowing chance will inevitably affect the outcome of one's actions anyway. Having said that, it is a lonely perspective and one which may well have contributed to my having spent years consuming drugs. No longer however, life is precious to me these days, too precious to destroy through inordinate fear of pain.

There are other variations and surely ones I haven't thought of. I'm suspicious of any doctrine which has, at it's core, a dichotamy. Life has taught me that, in as close to objective reality as my subjective experience of it can get, there is no "on the one hand this, on the other: that" however, as well as biology, insecurity makes people attempt to see life in this way. We have two hands, we look out at the world and are comforted by the notion that "in this hand which I see before me is one thing, in my other: the sole rest of the dilemma" therefore i can "hold" this problem, it is not beyond "my grasp".

Of course, this is not true. Most situations in life have to do with other people who are, as you rightly point out, very complex and ultimately, just as we are to ourselves, unknowable, merely approximately predictable. Those others are similarly affected by still more people and there are also a whole raft of other possibilities involved. This train of thought multiplies the variables exponentially, not even a millipede would have enough limbs to "grasp" them all. However, as Aristotle pointed out,

"All men by nature desire knowledge."

Which statement would tend to suggest that we must somehow plot a course through these variables, engage with our experience and extract meaning from it. Certainly, survival without knowledge would be difficult, but not impossible, or else how would creatures without much, if any, conscious thought survive?

I think the truth is more complicated again, because we don't have a conscious will to survive and thus a 'natural' thirst for knowledge, but rather a disinclination to repeat actions that seem to cause us pain, unless there is some greater factor of fear involved. I would also disagree with your notion of the soul, for me my soul is that quiet part of myself which has always been there, regardless of what my knowledge, feelings or others' opinion tell me, it says there need not be a point to life in order for it to be worthwhile. That in fact, if there is a point it is ineffable, life is all the more beautiful for that and, despite many people's best efforts, will continue. It holds a compass which, should I choose to take note of where it points, will steer me toward what is best, not just for me either. The sad truth is that this is often incompatible with modern civilisation and perhaps why so few of us choose to look there, because having to comply with that which one knows is wrong is surely one of the most overwhelming sources of pain.

"To know that you do not know is the best.
To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease."
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu
Chinese philosopher (604 BC - 531 BC)

So that then is true faith, to realise that one will never understand, but to crack on anyway and be at peace with that. Personally, I wish I could keep that notion firmly fixed in my mind at all times, but no... I get sucked into the whirlpool of striving and before I know it, my choices are being limited, my fear of undesirable outcomes has me making poor decisions based on a desperate need to mistakenly apply Ockham's Razor. It's not until I've cut myself with it and that hurts enough that I then remember, not me... I don't have an answer to everything nor need I. Then I'll be quiet, then I hear my soul and whether I survive or not seems of little consequence, but seemingly at odds with my instincts, that is when I make my best decisions.

Art vs commerce: case closed - really.

2005-11-19T02:31:00.000Z

Please note: if you would like to view this photo in portrait mode, you may need to rotate your head to one side by approximately 90 degress.

Irrefutible proof that Starbucks are evil.

2005-11-14T19:25:00.000Z

I was in London last Saturday with my mum. I am ashamed to say that we went into Starbucks for coffee.

To make up for this terrible lapse of iconoclasm, I made sure my subconcious was aware that I was only in the place for ironic gratification. The stupidly smiley staff, the psuedo-bohemian visual design of the place and the fake jazz playing quietly in the background, all conspired to drive the guilt home and shake the very core of my soul.

The coffee was relatively good - strong enough for a bit of buzz, but not quite strong enough to stop you considering a second cup.

But everything felt wrong.

My mind wondered and I started examining the artwork on the walls. I decided to take some photographs, just for sheer thrill of breaking copyright laws. Really. It was then that I noticed this:

Yes that's right folks - it's the all seeing eye on top of the pyramid! The same symbol found on every dollar bill. The symbol of the Illuminati!!!

What could this mean?

what's going on with the links then?

2005-11-11T18:04:00.000Z

Yes, it's a bit fucked right now, but i'm trying to get the links and archives organised into drop down menus using a combined javascript & CSS but in fairness, i may well be trying to run before i can walk. It'll be cool when it's done though, i think. I'm planning some tabs to the iframe above to swap between PBA, probably ZNet, Corpwatch and possibly some others also.
Anyway, got to go and get some cheap tobacco, so back to it later.

Update: (04:00 GMT) So i've got the 1 menu working but when i try to add more it makes them part of this 1, but without the links visible. New colours too, natty eh? Also, we've got a 'base target=_blank' tag in the header so links should open in a new page, but it doesn't work with the radio tuner as of now. Bummer! There's not many of the radio stations that have links direct to their playlist url's anyway (seemed a bit rude), only if i had to copy&paste it from the station's home page into Real Player, so, barring inspiration, i might use the CSS menu in the radio section and go with summat else in the links fields.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGG
what an absolute cunt! it fucking works when previewed but not when live! BastardShitCuntMuthaFucka!

Update: (06:00 GMT) As you can see, i thought i'd go for a simple drop down menu in the end and worry about the look of the thing later, but of course, the form has no event handler to send it to the embedded url's and the only example of such i have to hand is the radio tuner, which stubbornly refused to obey the 'base target=_blank' tag. (which has temporarily gone west) However, do not despair! I've sussed it, DHTML is the way forward and after some sleep, onwards and upwards we will follow Aslan!

Update: (21/11/05 03:34 GMT) So, it's ugly but it works. more to follow.

Self obsessed or just a dick?

2005-11-11T14:26:00.000Z

So, DLA's, H5N1's photo used to link to my blogger profile! This is because, when i added the code to put it there, i simply copy&pasted it from my own and forgot to change the 'href' tag at the same time as the 'src' tag. Sorry to disappoint those budding armchair psychiatrists out there, but i'm not suffering from anything that bi-polar, just yet!
It's sorted now.

Step 2

2005-11-09T02:38:00.000Z

Some of you may remember that i'm engaged in a 12 step program of recovery from drug addiction, to read what i had to say about step 1, follow the title link. This is what i've been writing to help cristalise my thought around step 2:

“We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
p. 17 NA Basic text ISBN 0-912075-02-3

This time around, I believe that more has been revealed. With that in mind, I suspect that my thinking has been disordered ever since I can remember, even as a very young child. Whether or not it would qualify as insanity, I’m not sure, but what I am certain of is that my personality was such that the first time I used a mood altering substance, I was an addict and from there on in, I had no choice but to continue using until it became clear to me that drugs were making my problems worse, not better.

For this, I have the fellowship of NA [Narcotics Anonymous] to thank. It was there, working through various individuals, groups and sub-committees telling and showing me that there was another way. When I did finally get clean, without a 12 step program, and thus had a choice over what to do next, it was still there. A power greater than myself. Since then I have achieved a level of conscious contact with a spiritual Higher Power, a Goddess of my understanding, but I chose to go my own way and finally relapsed. [i attended regularly for 3 years, staying drug-free and doing very well, but stopped participating and went back to drugs after a further 2 years]

I have experienced a degree of sanity in recovery and I have every reason to believe that I am now and will again. I do not believe, however, that this time it will be about ‘restoring’ but rather rebuilding. Hopefully, a process of continuous re-evaluation of my attitudes and beliefs, with the help of my sponsor [a person with more experience who helps me work the program], other recovering addicts and the security of knowing that I am fortunate enough to be looked after by my HP.

Now, to the present: there will be many of you who are cynical about spirituality, i know i was and can still be, at times. All i can do is tell you about my experience and hope that you have, at least, enough sense to read with an open mind. Yes, it's entirely possible that everything that has happened in my life is purely by chance and that the times where i have felt a direct contact with something that i cannot explain, within the model of current science, was a hallucination. If you had any notion though of the amount of times that my life has been saved by some seemingly random action taking me out of harm's way or even just being resuscitated after consuming vast quantities of drugs, you might well agree that i have led a charmed life.

Believe me when i tell you that i'm not on about your run-of-the-mill dangerous activities here either. A lot of people like to say things like, "I'm crazy!" Or my personal favourite, "I'm mad for it!" When what they actually mean is that, within the safety of their peergroup, they occaisionally find some benefit in doing or saying something a little contraversial. I'm talking about the kind of things that happen on a regular basis during 16 years hard drug abuse and criminality. Clinical personality disorders, insane people trying to murder me and The Rozzers on my case 24/7. In fact i could fill this blog with war stories of amazing coincidences, weird goings on and remarkably lucky escapes (a small portion of it is forming the novel i'm writing), however, i'm going to limit myself to just one thing that happened last sunday night.

I'll preface by saying that i haven't consumed anything directly mood altering for 5 months (to 05/11/05), however it's true that i am taking a serotonin enhancer Mirtazepine and, whilst it has been giving me weird dreams, i was wide awake the other night, having just switched my Mac off and lay down on my bed. So far it hasn't been responsible for any hallucinations, but rest assured, if i do start having any, you'll hear about it here.

So, i'd been thinking about how frightened of giving up smoking i am (because last time i did it, in '98, it nearly drove me to using heroin again). The fear seemed quite overwhelming and so i resorted to The Serenity Prayer:

Goddess grant me the serenity
to accept the things i cannot change,
the courage to change the things i can
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Full unadapted text attributed to Reinhold Neibuhr

As i was saying it, eyes closed, i felt a sharp rap on the top of my skull like somebody had knuckled me, but it didn't hurt. This was accompanied by a vision which i'm not going to go into, partly because it faded so fast that i can only just remember it, partly because it's private: bugger off and get your own conscious contact with spirituality. I'm serious, do it DLA's... i've been on a chilled one ever since, smoking less, doing my stepwork, eating well and without the never-far-away sense of impending doom which has characterised much of my life without drugs. As a starting place, i'd suggest this as a meditation:

imagine yourself on the planet Earth
hurtling through space
you are a tiny speck on it's surface
feel how enormous the sphere is beneath you
you are almost nothing at all
and yet your mind encompasses so much

First one to see God get's a free iPod! Want an iPod now?

On The Origin of Speciousness

2005-11-04T18:56:00.000Z

Today, 'Darwinism' and 'Darwinian' have entered into our common vocabulary. To read the Origin is therefore to grasp an opportunity to estimate how closely that common understanding relates to its supposed source. - Jeff Wallace [from his introduction to "The Origin of Species", Darwin, Charles. (1998, Wordsworth Editions Ltd. Ware, Hertforshire UK) ISBN 1 85326 780 5 itself a reprint of the 1st (Nov 1859) edition of "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." Darwin, Charles]

So, although i had not yet read Wallace's invitation, when i bought the book, i had already decided to do exactly that. It has been something of a wade, not because the book or it's scientific information is at all difficult, but rather that there is much exhaustive detail in expounding Darwin's positions that is nothing new to anyone who has been taught elementary biology and while this may be of interest to historians or biologists, i am neither.

OK, so Survival of the fittest, right? No. That phrase was first used by Herbert Spencer in his 1851 work Social Statics, relating to free market economics. Only in his fifth edition of The Origin, did Darwin himself use the phrase, which had become popular and indeed popularly synonymous with his own descriptive phrase Natural Selection. As the linked Wikipedia article further states, however: At this time the word "fittest" would have primarily meant "most suitable" or "most appropriate" rather than "in the best physical shape". In fact, much of the revision and clarification Darwin added to his work, in later editions, was precisely to clarify his ideas in strictly evolutionary biological terms, both to answer his critics and distance himself from often Malthusian influenced social theories.

Of more importance to the understanding of the 'common vocabulary' use of 'Darwinian' ideas however, is the fallacious idea of 'Survival'. What Darwin was saying is:

that natural selection is continually trying to economise in every part of the organisation. If under changed conditions of life a structure before useful becomes less useful, any diminution, however slight, in its development, will be seized on by natural selection, for it will profit the individual not to have its nutriment wasted in building up an useless structure (114).

The 'organisation', a plant or creature, itself will not survive, obviously, unless we assume it to be immortal, whether or not it has useful or useless structures upon which to expend its nutriment, but rather, the 'individual' that may or may not profit from a genetic alteration will be the former's offspring. What will 'survive', in the sense of being genetically perpetuated, is any advantageous adaptation, because those individuals which exhibit it will tend to leave more living offspring, which will do the same, compared to those without, or with an expensive adaptation which no longer functions advantageously.

Debate continues over whether the phrase 'survival of the fittest' is a tautlogy, the point being that those that survive are, de facto, the most aptly suited to their environment and thus 'survival of the survivors' has nothing useful to teach us. Well, in a strictly biological sense this may be true, assuming that we already accept the truth of evolution, and, in fairness, those who promulgate Creationism as a 'theory' not only cannot be taught, but, sadly, cannot be killed in sufficient numbers or fast enough for my peace of mind. However, a deeper understanding of the idea promts us to realise that should an environment quickly change, which is quite common on Earth, then those 'survivors' may find themselves at a sudden massive disadvantage, in comparison to a more generalised 'organisation'.

So, what about 'Darwinian' ideas in sociology or economics? Since we are talking about entities which can and generally do, in fact, survive the death of individuals, surely it is tautologous? Well, i would argue not. In actuality, it is a fundamentally flawed concept because it assumes that any human group, such as a nation state, social class or business company exists separately from the entire human race. Eh? What am i saying, mate? Yes, you read me correctly: The Entire Human Race. Every individual supplements a variety of voluntary or involuntary social groupings, the interests of which can seemingly compete, and which also accomodate others who themselves may well belong to yet other groups and so on. Thus the fallacy is demonstrated, because how can an organisation prosper which is in competion with itself? The biological simile is obvious: when a structure within a body continues to grow at the expense of other constituent parts it is a cancer.

Yet this is exactly the situation we are faced with in modern socio-economic practices, much of which is based on exactly this misconception and misrepresentation of 'fitness', whilst justified by spurious claims to be 'only natural'. I'm not interested in any questions of supposed morality, because it is my belief that anyone who claims to know what is right and/or wrong in this sphere has either never been faced with a tough decision or has an underdeveloped sense of empathy (usually both), but rather in facts and what logical conclusions can be drawn from them.

Firstly, it is a fact that the management of 'leaner, fitter' economics using theories based on supply and demand market forces has not prevented downturns and depression. Indeed The Great Depression of the 20th century was crippling to the world's economy at the time which did not see real recovery until governments were forced to intervene, both directly and in response to war. How is this possible when the world population was steadily rising? More population should equal more demand, supporting more supply and thus generating more business. Ah well... but.. it's more complicated than that... Is it?

Secondly, to a scientist, a theory which has any 'ah buts' is bºllºx. It may be used, with appropriate caution, in matters of short term engineering, until something better is discovered, but certainly not as the basis for fundamental decisions about the nature of the subject at hand. In fact, many observers, including the influential Kondratiev, have believed that global slumps are actually a product of capitalism. Well, surely we can say that a company which has a minimum of manpower with a maximised productivity will do much better in the market place than one which has neither of these characteristics? Possibly, in the short term. It will depend how much that company's activities damage the interests of other social groups.

Thirdly, it is a fact that only a person with a mental disorder measures the value of their own life based on economic output alone (i would argue that you've got a problem if it comes into the equation at all). Now we get to the nub of the issue, which is: what is the function of commercial activity? It seems that a prevailing view would be that it is to provide the owners/shareholders with as much income as possible. This is where it comes into direct competition with the rest of human activity: in an arena of finite man hours of work, it is the current western model of business to convert as much of that global activity as possible into resources which can be used by a small group of beneficiaries. It is my contention that the actual function of commerce, in society, is to provide a living for its employees whilst making resources more widely available than they would otherwise be.

What we have now is like a peacock transplanted into a local park. A huge effort gone into producing a gaudy decoration which, in reality, makes the bird far more likely to become prey to a neighbourhood cat or dog than a more generalised bird such as a seagull. You don't believe there is an analagous predator waiting to do for us? What about disease, or terrorism? Still a better analogy, describing all humanity, would be something like a creature whose head has become so large that it requires the support of its limbs. Fine, and great for flights of imagination, whilst it is sitting around on its arse but fucked if it suddenly needed to swim. So, there we go, we can apply Darwin's theory in this area somewhat, only far from supporting the kind of reactionary politics it has traditionally been used to justify, we see that, much as the Abstractionist Artists like Mondrian of the early 20th century believed, this individual must die to make way for more aptly suited offspring.

Hang on! We're getting into Trotskyism here! Well, only in as much as the idea of a permanent revolution accords nicely with a theory of evolution, i.e. that in a changing environment the inhabitants' offspring must necessarily keep pace with their adaption to that environment or die out. Wait though, why does this dinosaur have to die? After all it's not actually a single creature but the conglomeration of many individuals, it can evolve and survive! No, it isn't like that at all, The World Trade Organisation is not the beast, merely the cancer on the beast. What has marked this particular body politic we share for the evolutionary list of also rans is the very nature of it: a shortsighted effort on behalf of its members to blindly foist the responsibility for policy onto any self serving individual who will take it up so that they, themselves, can then persue their own ends free from self reproach.

Fourthly, the trouble with any form of Communism is that it requires a level of trust in our fellow man which most of us are incapable of, having been raised in a dog-eat-dog, pseudo-Darwinian crucible. In order for individuals to work hard for the state they must first believe that they will reap the benefits, that their fellows will also work as hard as they and that nobody will take the piss by living it up off the sweat from their back. Hardly likely eh? No, the only hope we have is the abolition of government per se. You think not? Ask yourself this: how do you feel when somebody tells you what to do? Exactly. That is why government doesn't work, because people resent it. It has us by the short hairs though and will never relinquish power voluntarily: it must be undermined and poisoned from within. The beast must die! Only then can humanity evolve better structures.

Penultimately, a word about the even more ludicrous attempts by people to apply 'Darwinian' ideas to individuals. Look what happened to the 'fittest' of the 20th century, it's still going on: sacrificed on the altar of war. Oh yes, we can apply the theory of natural selection quite correctly here. Those who were most aptly suited to their environment did indeed prosper. Those men who were in a position to avoid having to fight, through societal position, age, or minor infirmity were veritably presented with better mating and/or business opportunities than they would have otherwise expected. In truth many did so well that they advanced their finances and thus status to the extent that, barring unforseen recklessness, their successors will never have to actually fight a war. Some seem to have gone further, realising that causing war will allow them to elevate themselves further and thus lending veracity to the aphorism: Scum always floats to the Top. I've started wondering if the fact that every 3rd person seems to be wearing glasses these days might have something to do with the lost generation of WW1 mostly having had good eyesight, because spex were not only beyond the means of most but deemed unacceptable for a soldier. Presumably, they had to be able to clearly see the machine gun fire, as it cut them in half, in the pre-dawn dimness.

Finally, what has this got to do with DLA's? We're a bunch who are not only disenfranchised, but can't be arsed to do anything about it, aren't we? Well, it comes down to another, and most pernicious, codswalloping of Darwin's ideas, namely when they are used as justification for downtredding the poor and those whose skin isn't white. You'll have heard it: they're just like that naturally, etc.

Until the philosophy which hold one race
Superior and another inferior
Is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned
Everywhere is war, me say war

That until there are no longer first class
And second class citizens of any nation
Until the colour of a man's skin
Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes
Me say war
- Bob Marley RIP [from the song "War"]

Follow title link for full song lyrics, or Go!

Personally, i'm sick of it and even more sickened by the arms trade/oil conglomerates/stock market in general making me a party to it without my consent. Fuck off the lot of you, you disgusting, cowardly, profiteering shitbags. And die.

Audio stream ripper

2005-11-02T05:20:00.000Z

So, the title link takes you to a freeware mac ripper to download mp3's from some of these radio stations. For those of you in microshit land, i'm tempted to just tell you to fuck off, but:
This page should give you all you need.

PC vs MAC: let battle commence...

2005-11-02T02:03:00.000Z

Yeah, nice one, typical Edjog PC baiting with the animated GIF down the bottom!!

Heard it all before - yawn... ;)

Oh wait, hang on a sec I don't need to defend PCs anymore! I have a mac - I have two actually, although one of them is a next to useless nubus mac with a G3 upgrade that I use for OS9 stuff only.

But yeah finally I agree, PCs totally fucking suck!!! It's getting to the stage now where my mum can operate Windows XP on her PC better than me (okay, I'm exagerating...), but yes Windows XP is the work of the devil. For a short time I was a fan of Windows 98 - if you strip it down with 98Lite it is a kick ass operating system and boots in about the tenth of the time it used to take macs to boot OS9. You could also run a hacked version of Pro Tools Free that gave 32 tracks - none of this needing an M-Box crap or being restricted to eight tracks on the mac Pro Tools Free.

But mac-intel...

Could my dream finally be coming true?

OS-X released for PC???

(Yeah, I know there's a hacked version but it runs next to no software)

I've never really bought into the mac hype, I still think their computers are over-priced shite. The keyboard on my Powerbook flexes when it gets hot because Apple in infinite wisdom decided to *glue* it to the computer rather than use screws! The battery only last two and a half hours. I could have bought a PC laptop for half the price that runs four times the speed! Of course that would mean running XP with some similarly shite music turdware like Cubase SX...

If wasn't for Apple bundling all the instruments into Logic Pro, I would have never got one. It is the software that makes Apple, which is odd considering they've always claimed to be first and foremost a hardware company. With OS-X though I have never looked back - these days, it *hurts* using my mum's computer - if only she had listened to me! We could have got one of those lovely shiny iMac G5s.... drrrlllll.....

No, bollocks to that! I want OS X released for PC! Fuck all this iNonsense, in a few years it will be a beige Mac-Intel for me!

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/iProduct.gif
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/AppleHaters.gif

i've gotta .gif animator...

2005-10-28T06:43:00.000+01:00

And by fuck am i gonna use it! There's a new 1 as a footer too...

Radio

2005-10-25T18:52:00.000+01:00

So, as promised, it's here.

The sites are arranged in order of mellowness, starting with the most laid-back and progressing to full on hard as. I've only dipped into many of them, so they may well get a reshuffle at some point. I'm planning to add more and categorise them, with submenus into: Chill, Lounge/Downtempo, Out There, On One, Kickin & Nails. So far, if the site loaded before i got impatient and i could get a decent tune with minimal effort, it went on the list. Any suggestions as to other links (and from what category please) are welcome in the comments of this post, but no: constant ads, chat, or pop/top40. If you want any of that, or don't understand the terms, you're on the wrong site: fuck off. I might add a Chat section, depends on requests and if i find anything i like the attitude of. Also, any complaints about arse content, instability or anything else that irritates you about any of the stations should go here.

Obviously i recommend them all so far, but of special note:

tormented radio ~ a bit unstable @128kbps but worth it, definitely Out There.
DFM RTV INT ~ all cool, some bizzare, some very weird stuff.
DJ Dread @itsReggae.com ~ almost non-stop Marley & re-mixes of.
Minimal-Dub.de ~ not dub but mmmmmmmm & good mixes.
Philosomatika ~ 100% Psychedelic Trance (no vocal bullshit).
Mysteria: The Club Experience ~ swedish: click 'Lyssna Nu!' for sublime mixes.
Phuture Frequency Radio ~ despite some dickhead chat: cool Drum'n'Bass.

Re: Dogpile has been put down ~ Nothing against 'em but Avenue-it is better, it offers more search engines, including Dogpile.

Why is there a big black space?

2005-10-24T12:01:00.001+01:00

Next to the Dogpile Search form... i know. Crap innit?

Working on a radio tuner for there right now.

Spamdunk!

2005-10-22T21:34:00.000+01:00

What?

Nothing to do with The War on Spam, this is my own viral anti-marketing campaign which starts right here. Currently it focuses mainly on free iPods, but i expect there'll be more. Not that there's anything wrong with iPods: brilliant things and not surprising, since they're made by Apple. However, offering one for 'free' when what they actually mean is that you need to generate around £1000 worth of business for subsidiary offers in order to qualify for one seems a bit of a liberty with the english language.

Are you irritated by the ridiculous and quasi-legal practices of online advertisers? If so, follow the title link of this post. You'll need to have Popups enabled in your browser to get the full effect. Don't forget to email the link to your friend(s).

If you'd rather skip the ironic 1st page, or don't want to risk being bombarded with Popups originating from any other pages you may also have open, you can get straight to the iPod section at: iPod spamdunk. Again, don't forget to send it on.

{OK, some technical difficulties there but iPod_spamdunk is now live. 22:42 GMT}

{23/10/05 01:10 ~ So, i've just been told that the script to open iPod_spamdunk doesn't work on a pc! What's this then, selective javascript, or just junk? Obviously, with the world under the Gates-ian heel, i'll be looking into this, because there'd be no point trying to run a viral strategy otherwise. DLA's already know this but, for those poor benighted souls out there: get a Mac, they're tools not toys.}

yes, it's all gone a bit pete tong...

2005-10-21T03:00:00.000+01:00

So, the scrollable news/comment has arrived but it seems to have stopped the panther .gif from working. Also, there's no way to navigate back inside the frame yet. And it's all a bit scruffy, eh? Well, i'm doing my best. Can't seem to suss how to get a sidebar on each side of the main text area. Any suggestions here would be welcome...

Anyway, i'm fucked so i'm off to bed. Back at it tomorrow.

David who... who cares?

2005-10-20T19:19:00.000+01:00

So the battle for the leadership of the UK Conservative Party comes down to a choice between David Nice-but-dim and David Lurkin-like-a-gherkin. The former: an Etonian Tony Blair wannabe who learned his politics working for the Tories during the last gasp of Thatcherism before, probably wisely, buggering off into business for a while, or the latter: a somewhat sinister presence behind much of the farcical recent Tory 'shakeups', who is nonetheless, a hardline right winger wedded to the same market economics that the Neo-Cons are currently ruining the USA with.

To be fair, who gives a shit? It's not as if either of them will ever hold power. Thankfully, it seems that we in the UK have had the scales lifted from our eyes regarding all forms of Conservativism, its blatant hypocrisy and frankly ludicrous economics. Really, are we surprised? With the state of the place in the 90's? Are we fuck! All that remains for us, DLA's, to do is see off the most despicable of the revisionist tendencies of New Labour in order to maintain and expand the opportunities for education and co-prosperity which have characterised Britain since shortly after 1997.

Yes, dude(tte)s, it's time to get political again. It's not about keeping the jackboot off our necks anymore, in that battle, we've won. No, it's now about sticking it to 'em, good and hard.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. Henry Louis Mencken

That's right! And DLA's, what we want is sufficient education and co-prosperity, worldwide, to make government itself obsolete. Forget the Tories as opposition, they're all washed up. The only viable alternative to reign in Tony & Co. is the Liberal Democrats. So, if you don't want to just moan about the way things are, vote. It's the only opportunity to engage in the process of political change.

How does an anarchist reconcile engaging in the status quo with a desire to see all government cease? Simple. It's realpolitik. You must know that short of a natural disaster overtaking the world, there is no way to overthrow the hegemony of big business and its lap-dog, government. What is possible though, is to subvert government to our aims and so doing, allow them to go blithely on, thinking they are in control, until a critical mass is reached. A point where enough people in the world are able to conduct their affairs peacefully, without recourse to law enforcement etc, that anarchy will be a fait accompli.

The future is bright, and given that this will, in all probability, be an information age, technology led revolution: it may well be orange!

Due thanx

2005-10-19T22:27:00.000+01:00

Thanx for the panther animated .gif go to Oslo Cyclotron Laboratory at The University of Oslo and although it looks like they might well be upto some moody business, whilst pining for the fjords, the .gif looks pretty cool against the Anarco-Syndicalist Flag, i think, which comes from anarchism.net. It will do for the time being anyway, until my mate gets round to providing DLA with a proper logo.

So, the panther is now hosted here, along with the new Smack X avatar, because it was hanging up whilst i was helping myself to OCL's bandwidth!

Good dog!

2005-10-19T19:54:00.000+01:00

So, DLA's it's out with Google, we're going Dogpile.

Why? Because Dogpile includes Google in it's searches plus Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and msn (well, what can you do?). The good thing with Google was that the results page could be customised to look more like this blog, but, in fairness, it wasn't that much like it anyway, because the font colours wouldn't match. The background was black certainly, which helped, because i find it easier to read light text on a dark background than vice versa, however the text stubbornly refused the subtler tones Douglas Bowman has designed into this template, rather going for the nearest garish version. So fuck 'em.

What's next? Well, i've been looking at RSS feeds, to get some updating news/comment on here, but so far they all seem to take up a huge amount of space on the page. What i'm aiming at will be a fixed frame with its own navbars, just under the Dogpile search field, but you'll have to wait for my understanding of javascript to reach that level of complexity. My HTML's coming along nicely though, eh?

I've also added this, the Dogpile 'Compare Search Engines Tool', below the Links field, but this may end up on a one way trip to the vet's, because when i tried to use it, it didn't seem to work properly. This may be because i'm using Mozilla, rather than MS Internet Explorer (boo, hiss!) now, but we shall see. Should it go the the Great Kennel-in-the-Sky, you can still find it in this post.

Licensing Maneuvers

2005-10-17T12:05:00.000+01:00

So, i've shifted the Creative Commons License and Black Ribbon Logo to the foot of this blog to make room for more avatars... let's see 'em lads.

In case anyone is wondering what a License and a free speech movement logo are doing sharing the same paragraph, it's like this:

ANARCHISM , THE NAME GIVEN TO a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government--harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.
Piotr Kropotkin from The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition

(pasted from anarchism.net)

For the sake of not being harassed by the forces of reaction the License freely gives anyone the right to do whatever they like with the content of this blog, so long as they attribute it to the author and this website (also a link back to here would be polite, or a prominently displayed url in offline works). It's free and fair exchange: Disreputable Lazy Aliens wouldn't nick anybody else's work without proper attribution (unless they demanded a ridiculous payment for the use of it) and we hope to be treated similarly.

But, aren't we submitting to law, by displaying such a license? No. Are we bollocks. We are negating the need for the involvement of law by giving you the respect due to a reasonable person and hoping you will return the courtesy.

So, we won't be hearing about any litigation on behalf of DLA's over any infringement of this license then? That's right, you won't, but if we should discover that somebody has been so rude, be assured we will not take it up the bum... Let me repeat the warning from elsewhere in this blog:

BEWARE THE REVENGE OF THE FISH PEOPLE!

For more info, follow the title link and check:
THE ANARCHIST BLACK RIBBON CAMPAIGN

Otherness & Alienation

2005-10-17T02:44:00.000+01:00

So, DLA's, i've been conducting a rather unscientific experiment into the effects of the perception of 'otherness' on two unsuspecting constituencies of individuals whom one might normally expect to have a healthy, openminded attitude toward what they perceive as different from themselves. A bit mean perhaps, however, as it turns out, certainly not uncalled for and definitely instructive.
The method was simple: on September 29th 2005, i began posting on two internet forums using dark red text, like this, rather than the usual black. In all other ways I simply wrote as i would normally. I agreed with the gist of some threads, disagreed with others and offered my own experience and opinions where i thought they might add something to the debate. The Forums were MTCP.co.uk Forums and UKNA Message Boards. i had originally planned to run the experiment for a month.
The results showed a clear delineation having been reached after merely 18 days however, so i see no need to carry on. It is true that i roundly abused a member of the former for obvious bigotry however, not in language uncommon for an unmoderated site and indeed, reflecting the strength of feeling often encoutered there about just such subjects. This is one difference between the forums though, personal abuse is not tolerated on the latter, however, bearing this in mind, i did make several posts & elaborated upon them in Private Messages in something of a high handed tone there and suggested to several vocal posters that their use of the english language could be improved, to even up the balance, whilst using the scary looking picture at the top of this blog as an avatar. As i say, not scientific, but the best i could be arsed with...
It was clear after a few days that the denizens of MTCP.co.uk were taking offence at the red font and many questioned and/or persecuted me for it's use. I do have a slight visual impairment which makes it easier for me to read red text on a light blue background, (the unalterable default background of the forum) because i have to wear tinted specs, so i exaggerated this ailment to see if i would get any sympathy... my arse did i! On UKNA, i merely received two polite PM's asking me about it. The tone being set, i further undermined the 'scientific rigour', cross-pollinating by inviting some NA members onto a MTCP thread to see if a little support for my cause would make any difference... again, my arse!
I did end up posting more on NA eventually, 88 vs. 69, mainly because a lot of what i wrote on MTCP was self-defence, it got tiring... so i'm packing the red text in there.
Oh, i know, it's too late now, they hate my guts, but hey, i've already drawn your attention to my brass neck and it hasn't miraculously become any more tender!

So, what has any of this got to do with an excess of right thinking? Follow the title link & find out... In conclusion, it seems that, as a rough guide, one can expect more tolerance from those who have experienced a large degree of intolerence themselves. Shame this doesn't seem to hold true in Israel though, eh?

Professor Richard Sennet LSE

The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity & City Life

Rodent Relief

2005-10-16T21:42:00.000+01:00

Victims of Animal Rights Extremism website 'VARE'
anounces that harassing vivisectionists & their suppliers works!

The full text of which announcement can now be found 'Off The Main Page'.

Check the title link for info about how these guinea pigs were treated and become an extremist today, i say!

Now That's Fucked Up!

2005-10-11T04:50:00.000+01:00

Thanks go to Michael Moore for bringing this to my attention. It's another one from MTCP.co.uk Forums.

Perhaps you think i'm exaggerating when i bemoan the sickness of the states. Well, follow the title link and then tell me in the comments if you still do...

Mozilla!

2005-10-10T02:44:00.000+01:00

So i'm out from under the bonded servitude to MicroSoft, DLA's. The Gates-ian yoke has been lifted from my neck! Ah, it feels good...

Mozilla has been giving me no problems so far, unlike Internet Explorer, which would constantly be telling me i needed to install something else to access web content and then failing to connect to the relevant site, or failing to load the new software when it was downloaded.

i have to report having initial problems getting hold of Mozilla, because when i downloaded it, using IE, what landed on my desktop was labelled as an Excel file. As you may know, on a Mac, the file type is not usually determined by the extension, but rather by metadata stored in its resources, so the only way to change it is with a resource editor such as MacArmyKnife or Resorcerer. This would have been more aggravation than i wanted so i finally plumped for downloading a disk image for Netscape 7.2 and using that to achieve my goal. Funny how IE wouldn't let me get its competitor though, eh? Just coincidence, i'm sure!

You can also get great skins or themes for Mozilla too. i'm using one called LCARStreck myself, it's black with attractive coloured text/buttons etc, like this blog.

Mozilla isn't just a browser though, it is a suite of software for Browsing, Client Email & Newsgroups, IRC chat, Address Book and Composing web pages.

Click the title of this post, DLA's, go get it...

You've got to see this!

2005-10-08T08:12:00.000+01:00

Thanx go to Jack Frost on MTCP.co.uk Forum ~ Bush for this absolute gem! Click the title, turn up the volume and enjoy...

The Fish People

2005-10-08T05:34:00.000+01:00

Now, you may think you know a few things about The Fish People. You may even think that, somewhere out there, you'll be able to get some information...

Click the title: it's a ready made Google search!

Ah, but you, my faithful and perspicacious DLA's, know in your hearts that something's not quite right, eh? Well, come closer... i'll tell you a little... too much could put you in danger!

In 1984 (an auspicious year for weirdness: seeing the illegal distribution of Smiley Mushroom, Superman, Windowpane, White Lightning, Pink Panther, both Black & White Microdot LSD), a little known organisation called Mentla: The Official Opposition to Mensa was having one of it's usual head-wrecking sessions in my flat, close to the sea...
Though some of the mentla regulars had travelled from the hated coast of the Eastern Sea, well known to be cold & Grim, nevertheless, the denizens of the warmer Western, fission fueled, deep made contact. The plan was simple: World Domination!
Our weapons? Only razor sharp wit, honed through weeks or months long escapades into drug diseased paranoia. They were the descendants of Atlantis and would no longer make use of the terrible technologies that had brought their erstwhile empire to wrack and ruin.
We were inducted into the mysteries, swearing, by our new piscine siblings' fishy Goddess, never to reveal the nature of the rituals and oaths we conducted or the extent of the order we had joined. The coven was formed: we set about reading works by famous former members: Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' & Machiaveli's 'The Prince' to name but two and soon realised that the scaly sages had armed us with all we needed. Lasting power is not gained through force of arms, but by manipulation of information, nor kept by armies either, but by the effective ridiculing of one's enemies. In this way, a victory can be assured by simply being assumed, by sapping the opposition's will.
How come I'm able to let you know so much now? Well, that's crucial: it's all part of the plan. The balance has tipped, the die is cast, The Rubicon has been crossed, the bridges burned and the biscuit well and truly dunked in the tea! What do you think really happened to the production budget of Waterworld?
The first stage was to announce our presence, but subtly: we couldn't risk outright conflict before the doctrine was firmly established. You may have heard us, on late night discussion radio programs, before James Whale was even invented. The modus operandi was simple but ingenious: we rang up, engaging in a long waffle that was sufficiently bizarre as to keep the Station's personnel mesmerised, no longer thinking about using the delay function to prevent the message going to air and when we judged the timing to be right declared:

BEWARE THE REVENGE OF THE FISH PEOPLE!

Cocksucker!

2005-10-07T20:48:00.000+01:00

So, it's a term of abuse, right? What's edjog on about now, the cocksucker?

No, DLA's, that's more of that Star Spangled Sickness.
Why should there be anything pejorative about giving a guy a shine? As anyone who has ever been blown will tell you: it's great! Why then the negative attitude? Perhaps we should say, "You hairdresser, you've just cut my hair and it looks excellent, you brainless twerp!" It's more of this desperate need to bring domination/subservience into sex and actually, as is often the case with with moronic attitudes, completely arse about face.
Check this...
Check the link from the title of this post and tell me who has the power, the heroically poised fellatee or the person with the fairly fragile penis between their teeth? But again, that's focussing on entirely the wrong aspect of this delightful display of affection/highly prized service: what does it matter who has control? Unless you're obsessed by that aspect of life, of course, and in which case: you're missing out on a lot of fun.

Lad's, when you get sucked off, do you think less of the person who did it? Perhaps you think along the lines of, "Ha! What a twat, I've had that cunt right off!" Well, if you do, i suggest you modify your attitude. See it for what it is and be grateful...

You'll get more of it that way!

Bigotry & Disrepute goes on...

2005-10-04T11:58:00.000+01:00

i'm serious, DLA's. Now i'm the first to admit that i've got some brass neck, but even i would have realed it in after such a trouncing. Not OOPz though, or their supporters. No they waded in, heedless of the spines, & are getting what they most definately deserve: check it out!

'And at last ends the age of cant'... 'No more deluded by reaction'

It's great to have my mind working reasonably well again!

Bum Sex

2005-10-02T09:58:00.000+01:00

So, what is it with all this bum sex then, eh?

i'm not on about traditional homosexual shirt-lifting here, but rather: man on woman booting the back door in. Is it because it's 'the last taboo'? Well, frankly it's not is it? There's underage sex (which seems also to be on an alarming rise). There's Bestiality, Necrophilia, Incest, Rape, doing it in public places, dangerous places, with unusual people, or any combination of the above...

Is it about domination? Well, i suspect we're getting to the nub of it now (fnah fnah). However, i don't believe this is an adequate explanation for the recent surge in the activity. In times past, men have been in a much more powerful position relative to women and yet we don't find references to rampant ring invasion in Shakspeare for instance, when it was customary for a visiting man to fondle the breasts of the wife of the house as a greeting, whilst we do get such veiled hints as 'country matters,' refering to your common or garden shagging. Perhaps it's a backlash then? A desperate need in men to try to retain an upper hand in a world where women are becoming increasingly powerful? Closer, i consider, but still no cigar. Women have always and will always hold all the aces when it comes to sex, because they decide when, how and if it happens: anything else is rape. It's a broad generalisation for sure, but not too wide of the mark, to say that most young men would be prepared to have sex at almost any time and, given that they wouldn't have to suffer any negetive consequences as a result, with almost any woman. Therefore, a woman's right to decide has always given her enormous power, that hasn't changed recently.

So what has? Well, i put it down to american porn. In a country that has an order of magnitude more murders than anywhere else, a bitterly divided population living in what is tantamount to armed seige, some of the richest individuals yet an income for the average family that would not keep a single person in europe, the men over there are fucking stressed. That's before you factor in their ridiculous, outmoded and hypocritical religious standpoints or far rightous moralising, plus a very poor education. Are we surprised that these men seek to turn on women and degrade them as easy targets to bolster their flagging egos? Or, at least, fantasise about doing so? I'm not.

Oh, i've heard all sorts of arguments for the chocolate starfish approach: it's tighter, you can't get pregnant, i'm curious, etc. but the bottom line is that shite comes out of that hole, it can be painful for the woman and dangerous. If you click on the title of this post and read the site it takes you to, you'll see what i mean. Now, i must confess that i've tried it, in the name of curiosity, both with a condom and without. In fairness, i've done a lot of mental things whilst off my fucking head and i generally wouldn't recommend many of them unless you have a pressing reason. With the former, the smell of nonoxynol-9 mixed with anal mucous and shit was almost enough to make me vomit; in the latter case, you're left with a nasty residue on your cock. It's just not nice. We also have birth control now, you know?

Tight's not everything: so you've drank a fair bit or taken some other intoxicant and no matter how hard you bang away, you're not going to come; getting tired, perhaps? Well just have a break, try something less physically tiring, like getting her on top, mutual oral, a soapy tit wank while you finger fuck her or something, for a bit. Don't be so selfish, it's not all about you coming, just because you've got a hard-on. Have you ever thought that this might be the perfect time to slow the whole thing down a bit and pay close attention to how your partner responds to different techniques? You're not going to come soon anyway, so you might as well see if you can do something for her that will really float her boat, the sort of thing that you can't do when you can only just hold out long enough for her to get a mild orgasm (and half the time she's faking mate, believe it). It's much more stimulating when she's trembling and delirious, her cunt muscles clenching on your knob, drawing it in spasmodically, from another powerful orgasm anyway and then more satisfying for you.

Lads, do her in the vag where she wants it for fuck's sake, leave them transatlantic no-hopers to their nasty humiliation, you're better than that.

Bigotry & Disrepute

2005-10-02T08:37:00.000+01:00

So after a bit of internal debate over whether this was purely self agrandisement, or not in fact instructional in the struggle, i thought, 'Fuck it, it's probably both, but it's my fucking blog and i'll agrandise away if i want to...'

This also comes from the MTCP.co.uk Forum 'General discussion' in a thread entitled: Children's names 'spell trouble' the relevant parts of which can now be found 'Off the Main Page', since it contains material which may be subject to copywrite.

You may remember that i propounded the view earlier in this blog that it was time to have the argument, in the post: Decency Revisited. (April Archive). Well DLA's, i suggest that this is precisely how to go about it and wish you every success in your own efforts. If you should get anywhere with it, please let me know, either commenting here or email me (edjog@37.com) and, if i like what i see, i'll add it to this trophy room/black museum.

Step 1, this belongs here too

2005-10-01T01:01:00.000+01:00

i originally posted this on the UK Narcotics Anonymous web forum under the title 'i think i have actually got step 1' in the General discussions about Recovery section. For those of you who may not know, Step 1 is the first part of a 12 step recovery program:

"We admitted that we were powerless over our [insert obsessive, compulsive lunacy here], that our lives had become unmanageable."

So I was having a discussion the other day with a person who was trying to convince me that, had I had the same upbringing he had, I would see that killing your own daughter for the sake of your own integrity, because she had sex with a person from another religion, was perfectly understandable.

I begged to differ, maintaining that: a person's integrity is very important, but maintained through keeping their own affairs in order.

The discussion became a little heated because, apparently, I didn't understand. I was happy to inform my antagonist that I didn't, and what's more, I was glad of that.

Now, three months ago, I could not have left it at that. I would have shouted the odds all night if necessary and may well have been up for a fight. Today, I realise it's just not about me being right anymore. I'm powerless over his opinions and I genuinely feel sorry that he has them. Not because they are contrary to my own, but because they are very likely to cause him, and those he loves, grief.

However, I'm not powerless over mine and am able to state them respectfully, relatively calmly and best of all, with real good intentions.

That's what I call integrity and it feels great to actually have some at last!

Looking back on the evening in question, I also realise that I didn't have to go through my usual process of reacting to a feeling, catching myself at it, apologising for whatever acting out [bad behaviour resulting from trying to defend oneself from uncomfortable feelings] had already begun, getting flustered while I tried to apply my program [12 steps] to the situation, not really doing myself justice thereafter because of being flustered and being in feelings [resentment/self pity/anger/etc.] about that for days afterwards, whinging along to my sponsor and local fellowship [fellow recovering addicts].

I just behaved pretty appropriately.

GODDESS, THANKYOU!

Not that any of this will stop me from using this blog to, with the least respect possible, decry those opinions and/or persons whom i despise. The arse-wanking cunts...

I'm not so worried as I used to be...

2005-10-01T00:17:00.000+01:00

So i originally posted this on the MTCP.co.uk Forum 'Bush,' but then decided it belongs here also:

Not that long ago i used to get pretty stressed out about dubya & co. Not that if i met him, i'd be able to restrain myself from giving him a swift kick in the knackers you understand, it's just that it's been dawning on me for a while that although they are scum, they're not actually as rich or powerful as they'd like us to think they are. And this disgraceful bullshit he's been spouting since Katrina tends to confirm my view for me.
It's all very well to go fascist bully boy-ing your way round the world, with the threat of a modern army etc. and 'the most powerful man in the world'* with his finger on the button to back you up, but at some point the rhetoric has to become reality: where's the fuckin wedge? The mula? The readies? Keeping a large military force on active service has bankrupted more than one country before.
(* and that's bollox. the only thing that backs the claim up is the nuclear arsenal. However, like a large weight dropping on your head, past a certain point, it really doesn't matter how big it is, just whether they could stand the politcal fallout of using even one H bomb. i can't see even lick-spittle Tony slurping that one up)

Whether the US likes it or not, we have entered the information age. Their bloated posturing and sabre rattling to secure a strong position in the middle east is just that: a vain effort to squeeze the last few dollars out of an economic system which is geared up for the trading of physical things, heavily dependant on steel and almost wholly on oil. It won't last. The djinn is out of the bottle once more and after fifty thousand years waiting for us to leave stone axes alone, it's fucked if it's going back in. Nicholas Negroponte's switch will drag us by the gonads into the future, no matter what we do now, because emerging nations, especially in the east, aren't going to sit around feeding off the scraps from our western table forever. As soon as countries like India and China decide to equip their populaces with modern communications infrastructure, they'll do it with what's at the cutting edge, not relying on some hackneyd notion about market forces or healthy competition to provide the poorly integrated and strategically unplanned systems which we have here now. We in the west will have to modernise to keep up.

Now, do you think that the US, whose oil deficit could be all but wiped out, so they could rely on domestic production, by the simple expedient of requiring US cars to meet the same efficiency standards as we have in europe, but refuse to do so, is in any shape to take on a dynamic new world? My skinny stinking arse it is.

From where i'm sitting, this is no bad thing. It's not just the neo-cons i've got a bone to pick with. For sure, you get some decent americans, but by and large i'd be happy to see actual newsreel footage of the Statue of Bigotry swamped under a trillion ton tidal wave and an economic disaster would do just as well. Their only lifeline is whatever can be swindled out of the world and turned into controlling shares in the industries of the rest of the world, because it seems obvious that US industry has no chance, but considering their beligerent and uncooperative attitude now, who's going to be concerned about honouring trade agreements/treaties etc. when they can't afford to do anything about it? Nobody suddenly becomes mates with the school bully and helps them out when we're all grown up, eh?

Sadly, this seems to be what they are attempting to do, but with very little sophistication. Like a two year old screaming 'mine' at the top of it's lungs. The trouble with this difficult child though, is that right now it has got a gun in its hands. Well, if it was a kid you might feel minded to try to take it away, knowing full well that you might get hurt. Not me, it's not my child and lock the fucking door behind us, i say. Wait for the bang. Hopefully it'll get one right through the head and save us all any further greif. Don't do business with 'em.

i know i should have added links to back up or illuminate this long waffle, but hey, i just couldn't be arsed. If it gets much feedback i'll do so post-prandially. Have a good munch,

ex

Site Counter

2005-09-30T11:28:00.000+01:00

so i thought i'd see if i'm just rambling to myself...

i got it from power-counter.com because they don't ask you for an email address @ which to spam you.

don't mind giving the people @ Cerebral Palsy Information a free plug, the way i'm going: i'll probably end up with brain damage meself!

on top of what's already been done

Oh yeah, and i forgot about this, from yonks ago...

2005-09-30T08:56:00.000+01:00

Sadly, we're not likely to see the US destroyed in the near future, even if the globe continues to warm. So we'll just have to hope that Americans voluntarily pack it in. It's a cat in hell's chance, I know, but this gave me a little hope to go on with... Go!

In fairness to them, there's always Michael Moore as well.

Plus: Green Day, my Goddess love 'em for tryers!
(and whose site was down when i tried to get to it just now. sheer idiocy, but what can you do?)

Check This...

2005-09-30T01:39:00.000+01:00

it's fucking hilarious! Go!

thanx to Celestia on MTCP.co.uk: Mark Thomas's website, for this link.

It's been a long hard road...

2005-09-28T23:40:00.000+01:00

Well it seems I was a little premature in announcing my return earlier...

The old metabolism is working well now though.

Did any of you miss me?

Like fuck did you!

Read the comments on the last post?

Don't fuckin bother. But if you must...

I've left 'em there as an example of what we're up against:
unbridled bullshit in the pursuit of capitate capitalism.

Capitate means 'having a knob' by the way, although, in this instance I'm thinking they are knobs, but hey, the aliteration scans well.

And what, I hear you type, is the old spikey one upto now?
Writing a novel.

Is it any good?
Hmmm, course it is, fuckwit!

Will we see it in print?
Dunno. 90 odd A4 pages of size 12 Times New Roman in...
It's going well, but there's a lot of swearing, stuff that could well be construed as inciting religeous hatred or blasphemy plus explicit sex, violence and drug taking... hey, they do say 'write about what you know!'
There are also a few passages which may be illegal to print because they explain how certain crimes are done and got away with, plus some stuff which might be an incitement to suicide...
I think it will need a risk taking publisher,

We'll see.

Acronyms & Alienation: NEFOC

2005-06-14T12:27:00.000+01:00

So acronyms are taking over the world, eh? They are a handy way of saving time by reducing the effort of communication, eh? Well what about www then? It takes longer to say than World Wide Web.

No, they're handy to type when you know that the intended recipient understands what you mean but, in conversation, acronyms are a pernicious influence whose primary function is to alienate those other than the cognoscenti.

NEW ETYMOLOGY FOR OLD CONCEPTS
When i hear people rattling them off, in that smug way that springs from having their insecurities massaged by a spurious inclusivity (yaknow: Nimby this, Dink that, LOL, oh aye i'm just as guilty!), it just depresses me. I mean it's not like we don't already have a word for Nimby: it's arsehole. Some are quite funny though, eh? I particularly liked Lombard (Loads Of Money But A Right Dick) & this prompted me to wonder if DLA's shouldn't wade into the fray with a NEFOC of our own: agronyms.
So how about this for an epitaph:

Went Around Neighbourhood Keeping Everything Right
or:
Clearly Undervalued New Thoughts.

Post your own suggestions in the comments.

THE CONTINUED BUILDING OF AN EMPIRE

2005-06-08T20:47:00.000+01:00

ONE DAY
WE WILL
RULE
DA

WORLD

3.14 PIES

2005-06-08T20:45:00.000+01:00

http://pirateindustries.blogspot.com/

BASTARD
SHIT & FUCK.BLOGSPOT

FUCKING MICRODOT
KILL DE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT

smack X UP

2005-06-08T20:40:00.000+01:00

FUCK DE UNIVERSE

I GOT ONE TOO
MAN

CHECK IT OUT

&

AND CHECK

www.pirateindustries.co.uk

SIGN DAT FUCKING GUESTBOOK
MOFO

LATERZ...

SMACK

Ascending from the Abyss to the Heights of Depravity

2005-06-08T14:33:00.000+01:00

So a friend emailed me saying that, on a blog I had been commenting on, somebody had suggested that since I had to be away for a while, I had been forcibly carted off! Oh no, my friends, when it comes to evading the forces of Law, Order, Common Decency, Psychiatry et al. I am a past master. No, I merely had to allow some time for more red blood cells to grow in my alcohol & drug system and that mission successfully completed, I'm back with that much more spleen to vent.

Apparently, much of his flaming & my righteous(LOL) defence were deleted from the thread, but since my antagonist was clearly a supporter of war-mongering & also a moron to boot (and I mean this last quite literally), I frankly can't be arsed to investigate. Besides, after a 2 week Chlordiazepoxide fuelled detox, it's not like I can actually remember much of the argument now anyway!

Got to go for a while.

2005-05-03T11:02:00.000+01:00

Yeah, so if you're watching this blog, sorry, I'm going to be away from it for a while and I'm not entirely sure when I'll be back. But I will.
A bit like Arnie, but without the machismo, or the muscles, or the brainlessness, alright, nothing like Arnie at all!

From:	Guy Fawkes
Date:	2006/01/24 Tue PM 09:18:31 GMT
To:	edjog
Subject:	Re: [Guy Fawkes' blog of parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy] 1/24/2006 09:13:52 PM