Gaza - The Human Protest

STOP THE WAR

June 5th. 2010.

Downing Street. Piccadilly. Kensington Road. Kensington Barracks. Israeli Embassy.

Speakers included:

Alf Filer • Sarah Colborne (flotilla survivor) • Shahrar Ali • Ken Loach • Garth Hewitt • Caroline Lucas MP • Jody McIntyre • George Galloway • Glyn Secker • Kevin Ovenden (flotilla survivor) • Kate Hudson • Tony Benn • Lowkey • Ismail Patel (flotilla survivor) • Salma Yaqoob • John Rees • Baboo Zanghar • Daud Abdullah • Lindsey German • Tariq Ali • Jeremy Corbyn MP • John Rose • Yvonne Ridley • Maryam Abu Daya • Mohammed Kosbar • Ewa Jasiewicz and Alex Harrison • Lauren Booth • Martin Linton • Keith Sonnett • Afif Safieh • Sally Hunt...

I've just been accused of racism again for objecting to Israel's siege of Gaza. I wish some people would buy a dictionary.

There was no racism on display at the demonstration on saturday in London. Only justifiable outrage, sadness, and concern about the security of people of the entire region, Israelis included. The only thing the anti-zionist movement wants is justice.

Anti-Zionism is not racist, as everyone who respects language accepts. Zionism is just another squalid ultra-nationalism. Politically unidentifiable from Slobodan Milosevic' mythical prophesies of the return of an exiled people to its ancient tribal Homeland.

An increasing number of Jews now realise the monstrous folly of mangling Bronze Age cosmology to modern industrialised society. It isn't just jews like Glyn Secker who oppose Zionism. Even some of the most orthodox jewish groups reject the state of Israel on theological grounds. Notably, Neturei Karta.

Lebanon Solidarity. Parliament Square. 2006.

The international reaction to the Siege of Gaza is entirely human. And has created a battlefield which the IDF cannot control without totally alienating itself from world opinion. The murders on the Marmara represent a 'Sharpeville' moment, when world opinion decided that Gaza should be allowed its Weapons of Mass Construction. Israel cannot win this one by force. And it has no moral or intellectual arguments for stealing the cargoes of the inbound flotillas.

If it wants security it has to first reveal a humanity which deserves security. But hitherto, the political face of Nuclear Israel is the only one visible to the world. And it is not a pretty sight.

The event on Saturday in London was the most moving demonstration I remember seeing in over 30 years of witnessing such events. And represented a shift from Activist campaigning to something much more popular. Hence the lack of trouble, hence the lack of news coverage.

There was a tiny breakaway march by about 20 young people who looked really cool. But their ritual flag-burning after the day had ended was the most defused display of outrage I've ever seen. Their teeth had been drawn by the force of the emotions on display. After that much sheer humanity, they had no real alternative but to dispersed peacefully, which everyone was very relieved at. Surely, if that force can forge ploughshares from the swords of their anger, it can rouse a massive moderate international community to action.

WHATABOUTERY

I seem to remember hearing that there were Kurdish representatives on the march. If true, it should be made much more visible in order to try to pacify the wave of Whataboutery, which is the only thing threatening to drive the campaign off-course.

Nick Cohen is the prime Neptune of this storm. Whatabout the Kurds? he asks. How can anyone support a Turkish-backed attempt to break the siege when their actions against the Kurds are almost indistinguishable from the treatment of the Gazans by the Israelis? No doubt he also asks the same question of the Kurdish supporters now that Israel is supporting them.

Whatabout all the other injustices and inhumanities committed by members of alliances all over the world since the dawn of time? Should Churchill have refused to co-operate with Stalin or Nixon with Mao?

Is that a genuine answer to the charge of hypocrisy and short-sighted opportunism? That all governments have always been gangsters and that until we come up with something better, all alliances will continue to be compromised? Pragmatism?

Many speakers on the day, and there were a lot, argued for more pressure on elected officials and governments. Perhaps it is time that we all ignored governments for the obsolete, corrupted, compromised machines of steam age tax-gathering that they are.

This could be one of the great humanitarian alliances of history. But everyone involved must realise that they have to trim their individual ambitions and ideologies to achieve the collective goals. This means no barbaric treatment of people in the name of any ideology, religious or commercial.

Each will know what their personal incompatibilities are, women in particular, but there can be no real success unless the human feeling expressed towards Gaza rubs off on all the regimes and ideologies involved. Including Hamas and Turkey. Human Rights For Gaza cannot happen in isolation. It has to be Human Rights for All, Israelis included.

When that agenda becomes credible, the campaign for peace in the middle east will stand a chance - assuming no commercial interference.

Death and Taxes And Derrick Bird

It emerges that Cumbrian mass-killer Derrick Bird was inflamed by money-problems. A combination of an inheritance vendetta which wouldn't look out of place in Shakespeare or Dickens, and a resulting tax situation which threatened to land him in jail, not unlike Al Capone. He killed his twin brother... Any critic reading that or seeing it on stage would harrumph about cliches and sharpen his pen for the critical slaughter. But it happened, like mashup of the book of Genesis, King Lear and Bleak House.

This surely teaches us that the main reason people still go nuts and kill everyone in sight is because of money. And the more central money becomes to our lives, and all the status and power and 'respect' it delivers, the more deranged we are likely to become when we feel cheated of it.

And when we have a gun under the bed, we will use it, just to prove to the world that we deserve respect, as we understand it - namely as a direct result of the amount of money we possess. Which is a reversion of cause and effect and retreat to primitive superstition, or borderline madness, as it's also known. Such is the talismanic power of money, and of course, guns. The two go together like bacon and eggs or the Stock Market and BAE systems.

If we'd had a nuclear arsenal under the bed, we would use that to destroy the world. But luckily, at the moment, we don't consider that the individual possession of atom bombs is helpful to anyone's protection. They are considered unneccessary. The same is true of guns, especially in Derrick Bird's case. And the burden of proof for would-be gunsters should be on them to demonstrate need in order to be granted a licence. Derrick Bird did not need a gun, and if he hadn't had one, he would not have killed as many people - no matter what his crazed mind had press-ganged to its use.

The alternative is simply too close to a police state. The applicant of every licence to be investigated down to their toenails, and their psychological profile analysed and computer-projected to reveal the forehead-tattooed crack-head lurking in the future - (where applicable, naturally, only ten percent of gun owners will ever suffer any form of serious clinical mental illness). It is the current burden of paperwork in the application procedure which enabled Bird to slip through the net. This is because policy still panders to a microscopic minority of gun-fetishists and fossilised adolescents who cannot live without their regular dose of action at-a-distance. Without the magic wand of ballistic power. The so-called 'sportsmen' (and women).

Screw them all. Their arguments are infantile and brutally callous, a real revelation of how the power of fire-power corrupts, just as political power does. An insight into how a troubled mind like Derrick Bird's can be distorted even further by the House of Parliament he had under his bed. Owning a gun can help make you into a killer, if that's what you want. It also allows you to bi-pass all democratic social conventions with a simple wave of the hand. If you don't like democracy, or paying taxes, or persuading people you are right by force of argument, simply blow them away because they would do the same to you. Money can help with all those annoying interventions of other people's lives on our own too, but guns help get money. And money gets more guns. It's a harmonious, organic, symbiotic relationship in the capitalist ecology. Isn't that nice?

Derrick Bird was a very sick man. But not necessarily much more so than most of us today. We live in a very sick society indeed, in case anyone had forgotten. We need people to be ill enough to make the wheels go round. Which means that even the clergyman's daughter peddling home to her cup of tea after evensong could perpetrate a massacre like this, given a gun. Nobody can guarantee their future sanity. So nobody should have gun to go crazy with unless they can demonstrate that they actually need it for their living.

That would eliminate acres of paperwork, and save money all round, Mr Clegg.

Foxes Versus People. Cumbrian Catch-22.

Just how many foxes did Cumbrian farmers shoot last year? Apart from that use, I can't see any other need for guns in the area. I wouldn't mind betting that the fox fatality figures weren't vastly greater than yesterday's death-toll. So how many dead foxes are a human life worth? How many have to die in our war to defend sheep against the ruthless Reynard Bin-Raider?

Less than 2% of applications for firearms certificates are rejected. This figure is a scandal. Taxi drivers don't need to own guns. Not as long as everyone else doesn't. Criminals and chronic psychotics will always find their weapons of choice, given time, but Derrick Bird's sudden rage was not given that time to cool as he had the weapons to hand. And now 14 people are dead and a community traumatised.

The gun lobby is already making the case that the death toll would have been drastically reduced if everyone had guns. Some public-spirited citizen, or the nearest available police officer, would have wasted Bird somewhere along the route of his 'killing-spree', as the TV is describing it. There is no Road-rage in Texas, we are told, because the petulant toot of a horn might get your head blown off. All society is bathed in the warm embrace of citizen-policing and individual empowerment.

This wisdom ignores the inconvenient fact that in those cordite utopias a Cumbria will happen far more often, not less. And one reason for that is that the constant fear of death at the expression of mild irritation will naturally cause most people to suppress that anger. And the results of suppressed anger and emotion are no secret to anyone.

If we really do need to repel the attack of the evil Reynard on our civilisation and way of life, then let sheep farmers own shotguns. Personally, I worked on a farm for ten years and the creaky old single barrel must have been fired at least five times. Mainly to scare away roaming dogs from the local village. But nobody else should have legal access to guns, especially during a period of history which is creating so much psychosis in so many 'ordinary' people. And nobody over the age of ten should want to own a gun. To do so is not a sign of a mature mind. And therefore any application can be confidently and responsibly rejected. Catch 22 doesn't always work on the side of the devil, it seems.

As for the War Against Sparrows, and their evil plans to undermine civilisation by ravaging the nation's gooseberries, Gardener's Question Time does not recommend military grade hardware. An airgun or even a water pistol will do the job. And won't cost any massacres of human life at all. Everyone's happy except the neurotics with their inferiority complexes. They will have to find another way to over-compensate for their personal lack of emotional growth and indulge their penis extension fantasies. And the arms manufacturers will be upset of course. God forbid we should ever upset them.

The truth is that if Bird had not had any guns, he probably wouldn't have snapped at all. The nearness of the shortcut solution to his problems was too irresistible. It made it easier for him to snap, because he knew he had the means at his disposal to make a point that no one would forget.

We are taught every day that we are defined by what we own. That our carefully chosen possessions provide us with an 'image', and are a positive addition to our armoury in the battle of life. You know. Sex and the City. And the truth is that as an object, a gun is a very beautiful, sensual, compelling thing. It is almost the ultimate conceptual sculpture.

But as such it has does have more of an effect on the owner than most consumer durables. So it is hardly surprising that in the vulnerable, or at the most challenging times, the role inherent in the design comes to the fore,. and the tool controls the user. Just as a beautifully tailored suit will make most people stand up straight.

Why should a taxi-driver in a sleepy Cumbrian town need two guns? That's all any application process has to consider. There are about 37 million adults in Britain. Statistically, if we all applied for a shotgun or semi-automatic, only about 74,000 of us would be rejected, leaving well over 36 million guns in legal circulation.

While violence among the mentally ill is no greater than in the general public, neither is it any less. And that figure is much bigger than the paltry 2% rejection figure for gun ownership. And anyone can go insane as Derrick Bird did. Owning a gun might even have caused his problem, as well as seeming to solve it.

There but for the grace of god go I.

Gaza Weapons of Mass Construction Flotilla 2

At the beginning of next week a new flotilla ariives. One of the main ships is Irish owned.

"The MV Rachel Corrie, a converted merchant ship bought by pro-Palestinian activists and named after an American woman killed in the Gaza Strip in 2003, set off yesterday from Malta, organisers said.

It was carrying medical equipment, wheelchairs, school supplies and cement, as well as 15 activists, including Northern Irish Nobel peace laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire and Denis Halliday, an Irish former senior UN diplomat."

Naturally there will be more to follow. In its demented state, Israel has chosen the wrong battlefield and the wrong weapons. The apologists for Zionism will now have a massive task on their hands as the body of world opinion exploits this weakspot in the armour of the Nuclear Israeli apartheid state.

While stereotypes are the work of the devil, the Frankie Boyle in me is relishing the idea of shelelaghs drawn at dawn. Not to mention the prospect of an Israeli ministry robot on Newsnight seriously trying to label a peace laureate as a terrorist. Go Kirsty!

Now that Egypt has blinked first, and decided to open its border with Gaza, the days of the siege are numbered anyway. Israel's moral blindness has lost it two of its remaining allies in the region, and branded it as a rogue state throughout the world. Proving yet again that the wars of an Information Age are not won with bombs and tanks.

Cheap Booze Ban? (Condem Watch)

Condems to ban cheap booze? N.I.C.E. is demanding a 50p per unit minimum!

The ridiculous arguments on both sides are fluttering up the bandwidth, and will be repeated when other similar Neo-Nanny State actions are considered. More interesting is the fact that if adopted, this will be just another measure which will be justified by The War on Deficit, just as NuLab used The War on Terror to justify its policies.

As time goes by, it will become clearer and clearer that the Condems are not as different from NuLab as the Daily Mail and those who put their faith in the Westminster Fairy Godmother would like to believe. Just like their predecessors, they will exploit the threat of a common enemy to impose unpleasant policies. In some ways, the Condems will need TWOD even more than Blair needed TWOT. And their original plans will be even more distorted and blown by their storm of events than NuLabs' were by war. Their 9/11 has still to happen (unless you count Lehmann Brothers) but when it does it will destroy as many hopes and delay just as many good intentions.

Gas, Gaza, And Weapons of Mass Construction

On the anniversary of Dunkirk, with TVs flickering to the Pathe News footage of a heroic rescue mission, Israel has attacked a cockleshell convoy delivering cement and windows to the victims of the Blitzed Gaza strip. The Israeli army's murderous act of thuggery at the weekend is being justified on the grounds of 'provocation'. Crack commando units, armed to the teeth with the Uzis were 'provoked' by a few activists with sticks. And so they killed them. They deserved it.
If you have the temerity to knock over the local thug's drink, it will provoke him, and he will beat your brains out in the car-park. And you will, by the street laws he lives by, deserve all you get. Why he is the local thug is the question. What made him that way? And it isn't difficult to answer in the case of Israel. We know the family history well. But his abusive parentage still leaves him subject to criminal law.
Moral law condemns his actions but is compassionate to his condition.
When he will see through his blind sociopathic paranoia and return that compassion is a matter of nurture, but as every shrink knows, the patient has to want to be healed.
The object of the attack on the Marmara is quite clear. To scare away any further attempts to break Israel's illegal stranglehold on the Gazan people. It will fail, and there will be more and better prepared convoys, with even more committed people, bearing equally innocuous cargoes.
And each time Israel will need to choose between repeating its atrocities, or be forced to back down and lose face. It has chosen to fight on the wrong battlefield this time.
You have to worry about the collective mental health of Zionist nationalism. The paranoia is reaching Stalinist levels, which is understandable in a state under seige, but only when that state is truly vulnerable, as Stalin's was.
When that country is armed to the teeeth with nuclear weapons, and backed by the most powerful country on earth, the need to invert reality becomes less defensible.
Piracy is generally committed for wealth and power. And one reason this Zionist piracy of the high seas is destined to continue is the presence of carbon fuel off the Gazan shore.
"Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline." 
Naturally, no Gazan authority, elected or not, will be allowed its full rights to these deposits, and the people of Gaza will not benefit from them. Just as the West Bank Palestinians are being deprived of water and land.
The tragedy of Israel is the confusion of religion and land. But the sincerely religious, those to whom worldy politics are as irrelevant and petty as they should be to anyone truly in awe of a Divine Onmipotent Being, go by the motto: Keep Politics Out of Religion and Religion Out Of Politics..
I think everyone of good will could agree on that. Afterwards, the sky's the limit, really. Once belief isn't threatened by the state and the state not threatened by belief, the problem of Jerusalem disappears like morning mist in the sun.
Neturei Karta is a prime example of such clear thinking, believing that the Talmud actually proscribes the creation of nation states. It seems a prime candidate to promote a new religious realism, especially in the faiths of the middle east.
It's useful also to remember that Israel was directly instrumental in establishing Hamas. The idea being to divide Palestinian solidarity and undermine the PLO. But since then, Zionism has become even more demented, and its current wave of paranoia looks more like an invitation to Tehran to build its atom bombs - if it thinks it's hard enough.

Cuts-Baron Laws in Gay Expenses Scandal

Barely 3 weeks into the Smug Alliance, and Chief Axe-Wielder David Laws takes us back to the good old days.
David Laws has resigned from the Coalition Cabinet after revelations that he claimed £40,000 of taxpayers’ money to pay rent to his boyfriend. Too late now to say: One Laws For The Rich... he's gone. And him looking such a natural Tory too. I'l say one thing. The Condems are off to a flying start.
So who will the tories use now to take the flak for the cuts in public services?
The idea was that the tories in general could escape the old Nasty Party image, and the leadership outmanoevre its right-wing by using the nice LibDems as a human shield. Step forward self-made millionaire Slim Laws with his lean and hungry look.
But he now goes into the Guiness Book Of Records as the briefest cabinet post ever.
Who's next?
And who will be the first card-carrying tory to drop a clanger? Who has the most outside business deals which could go wrong?
Peter Tatchell rightly accuses Laws of a lack of solidarity, and of benefiting from the struggle of others. But this is missing the point. In spite of the achievements in taking society out of the 'dark ages' of the fifties, a prominent liberal-democrat still felt too intimidated to reveal his sexuality. He felt career aspirations would be compromised by doing so, presumably. The entire story is a sad reflection on the society we still live in, and on the decrepit culture of the Westminster political machine. But it also shows that you don't get to be a millionaire by passing by the odd £40,ooo when it's going begging, even if it is taxpayer's money, the same taxpayers you were about to make even poorer.

Symbol Of Brown The Terrible Destroyed

2 weeks in, and the new Lovely Cuddly Condems are bulldozing a protest which stood throughout the reign of Gordon The Terrible, and has arrested the dissenter on unspecified charges. Free at Last! Free at Last!
Apparently, people thought it looked terrible in a place that so many overseas visitors come to. They naturally agree we need the right to peaceful protest but the tents and signs were just ridiculous. If they have to be so tiresome, why can't they go and be ugly somewhere just as ugly and leave respectable people to ignore everything as they always do. Protesting against war is just too inconvenient and too untidy to be allowed. And then there are the property values to consider.
The sensitivities of the genteel classes have always been wheeled out to defend suppressions of all kinds, and their willingness to sacrifice freedom for order is a characteristic of their class and the part it played in the nastier parts of C20th history. But today's Marie Antoinettes must be told to get back to their ornamental cows and pastoral idylls and leave real life to the grownups.
As for tourists, they presumably come just to see such free expressions of dissent. Otherwise, there is nothing in Parliament Square but a shabby patch of clods and trampled turf. For eye of toad and adder to watch, as the poet says.

Stephen Fry and the Schmaltz of Gotterdammerung

Stephen Fry on Wagner. BBC4. 25/5/2010
I don't understand Fry's bewilderment at his admiration for the antisemitic Wagner. He believes that his Jewishness must rebel against anything produced by anyone so genuinely racist. If it doesn't, something is wrong, either with him or with the music he loves, or with his Jewishness and his respect for the Holocaust dead.
But it isn't at all surprising that he should be moved by Wagner, however detestable his racial opinions. Wagner's intensely nostalgic nationalism can be expected to appeal to the rootlessness within Jewish culture. The yearning for a divine homeland in a godless time. It is nationalism calling to Zionism, in the nicest possible way.
Fry also misses the point in blaming the nazis for besmirching the memory of Wagner, so that we only see him through the keyhole of the locked fascist door.
Nazism is in a direct line from the romantic nationalistic re-invention of political mythology during the industrial chaos of the C19th. The reinvention of the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne, and the entire NeoGothic and pantheistic fantasies which swept the newly industrialised world in response to mass-production and the emergence of a dangerous army of discontented, de-skilled, disobedient workers. And anti-semitism was also a natural product of that process.
Fry would like to warn Wagner that his single putrid essay would compromise his memory forever. The converse might also be true. If he had not conformed to the conventional racism, Wagner might never have acquired the respectability and wealthy patrons he did, and we might never have heard of him at all, much, since his greatest works would never have happened.
It is sadly clear that even Stephen Fry has gaps in his education. He might like to consult Orwell's classic text on enjoying the work of the despicable, 'Politics Vs Literature'.

ConDemNation Day 2. Jolly Hockey Sticks.

The trouble for NuLab now is that they are discredited and dis-trousered. Between them ConDem have bought up the electoral stage set, just as NuLab did to the tories all that time ago. Once the liberals are shed in a year or two, the tories only have to employ the right PR company to be in power for ten years, unless Labour can resurrect its ideas and principles. The theory that the party that won this election will never rule again, due to the cuts it will have to enforce, is wild fancy-pants speculation. Most governments are elected by their opponents, not their policies, or even their well-moisturised frontmen.
It really is no good the party whining, from Bigot-Gate it was all over, and even without that monumental stupidity, the best Brown could have hoped for was another day or two in Downing Street.

ConDemNation

Clamday 1. Mood of the day: Smugg.
Warm bath of columnist approval - Valiant exploits ahead - Deficit Monster Quest - New Age of co-operation and consensus - Dave Disraeli? Why not Good Queen Bess?
- Evil Crookback Gordon well and truly Martson Moor'd - NuLabour delusion dead.
The lesson of NuLabour is that the markets just won't agree to play nice. That if you mess with them, you will eventually wake up one fine morning-after in the bloodstained bed of a dead hooker.
But the ConDems will soon find out that compromise is not co-operation, which the world is crying out for. And Cameron will soon find that his Big Society is co-operating to survive his cuts in public services, and eventually to get him out of Downing Street as soon as possible.
But at the same time, they won't want to replace him with anything resembling NuLabour. Which again leaves room for a genuine alternative to the current poodle-politics. Whether people choose the dark warm burrow of hatred and fascism, or something which celebrates and enables human potential will be largely a matter of presentation. And the message which needs to be delivered is that those who support the BNP are people making a choice according to their lights, not evil mental-defectives. And that they have exactly the same natural needs and enemies as everyone else in their class. That this is not a war among the working classes, but for genuine social justice, with no utopian lies on either side.
Sadly, at present, there are too many so-called socialists who indulge in this kind of Daily Mail language. Who slip into football terrace tribalism whenever the BNP achieve some squalid gain in a windswept Essex estate. The slogan All BNP Supporters are Idiots is as divisive and alienating as the BNP could want. It supports their myth that socialism is just another sneering exploitation of the working classes.
What makes them think that Nye Bevan would have stood on the steps of Dagenham town hall and denounced BNP supporters as being too stupid to have the vote? As being beyond the persuasive power of progressive politics.
To fill the political hole of the future, progressive politicians have to reject completely the language and vocabulary of reaction. Politics are a matter of the words used as much as the policies advanced. It is not possible to advance radical policies with fascist rhetoric. Which doesn't mean simply not insulting natural allies who happen to have found themselves supporting the political enemies of their own class. As we saw with Bigotgate. It means having enough confidence in the ideas to express them clearly and unapologeticaly. This was the failure of NuLabour. The only thing they communicated with their daily drizzle of ungrammatic grunts and mumbles was their political emptiness. They abandoned their principles to get market approval, but had nothing to put in their place.
ConDem have something new and shiny to have faith in. A palpable lie. So they sound convincing. It's just a shame that they have nothing to offer but another compromise with market forces, one even more craven than NuLabour's.
So when the next crash happens, will they be able even to repeat Gordon Brown's goalmouth heroics of autumn 2008? Or even match his part in the negotiations to prevent the collapse of the Euro-Zone? His last act in office, taken when he knew he was an ex-prime minister. Bereft of life, resting in peace.
It is interesting that the period of deepest Brown-Hatred was book-ended by two achievements any politician would be proud of, and which may yet be what he is remembered for.
Cameron and Clegg will definitely be remembered for the embraces of today's fragrant opening ceremony. And for their accidental arranged marriage. But unless Clegg is even more of a sycophant to Cameron than Brown was to The City, and prepared to surrender all principles, and work with corpses like David Davis, Duncan-Smith and Michael Howard, the alliance won't have much time to achieve greatness. It's all hearts and flowers today. But when the looting begins, who will take the blame?
Right through the hard winter, and the long election campaign, and right until yesterday lunchtime, my bird-table was a busy little trattoria for dozens of perky little visitors. Today, nothing. The birds have all gone.

SUN BUGS CLEGG PHONE

Is one possible twist left in this coiled snake of British history. And would not only destroy the Cameron tilt at fame and fortune, but also put some NewsCorp executives in prison and raise a strom of demand for overseas media magnates to pay their taxes like everyone else.
So let this be a warning to Wapping. We know what you're thinking, but forget it, if there's still time.

Britain Votes for Labour Policy

Whatever happens in today's backstairs deals, there will be an election within 18 months, at the latest. Everyone seems agreed on that.
The key issue of this election was whether to Tame the Deficit with cuts now or cuts in a year's time.
The result of this election was that cuts will be postponed for a year. In fact, everyone might just as well have voted Labour.

Obama Wins British Election

While Blair was operating at the same time as a democrat president in America, he was on the rails. Northen Ireland. Minimum Wage. Kosovo. Sierra Leone - all that. When the warmongering nutter Bush got in it all went pants.
Now it looks like The Shrimp Cameron will be Prime Minister alongside Obama. Another cross-political Special-Relationship era.
But which works best and for who? Conservative America with Social Democrat Britain, or the other way around, or an ideological consensus, as with Clinton and Blair, and Reagan and Thatcher?
What influence will the next 6 years of an Obama administration have on British politics, whoever ends up in Number 10 tomorrow? And how much does Cameron breath a sigh of relief that he isn't having to deal with John McCain?

Too Much Democracy, Says Cameron

In a blatant invitation to Gerrymandering, the tories are planning to cut the number of MP's by at least 50.
They don't explain how MPs will cope with the extra workload, or which section of the electorate will be allocated to which new constituency.
The democratic representation of hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, depends on how their consituencies are restructured. It would be a very simple matter for a government to rig the process and create a massive false majority.
It will be interesting to see how this feeding frenzy for votes develops, and which party comes out ahead, and how much it will cost. The backstairs deals and infighting and political resentment should keep the media happy for years.

Racism Is Natural Says Another Nutty Professor

Writing in the Journal Experimental Social Psychology, Dr Michael Inzlicht said he believed people are born with a tendency to group with others on how like themselves they are. He has tested the brains of several people, he says.
Tripe. This research doesn't suggest that racism is in any way genetic or hard-wired or natural or inevitable or in any other sense a practical, necessary aspect of human perception. And anyone spinning it that way is merely indulging in wishful thinking.
It merely records how a brain works now, in response to a series of contemporary stimuli,with all the cultural baggage it carries. And after centuries of systemic racism, the fact that some people's brains have learned racist responses is hardly surprising.
During Apartheid, little children were subjected to sustained aversion therapy to the colour black, and to thick lips and frizzy hair.
It worked fine, as all conditioning does.
If the brains of the adults those children grew up to be were tested in the same way, they would undoubtedly produce the same results.

TinTin In The Congo Banned Again

Would the publishers of this sad racist trash be prepared to include a preface briefly outlining the genocidal Belgian exploitation of the Congo for its rubber by King Leopold the Demented?
What's that you say? Too political? No place for such a thing in children's literature? Kids should be protected from these unpalatable truths?
But I thought that was good for them...
The fact is that kids do get their preconceptions from fiction, far more so than from the newspapers or Newsnight.. Many have grown up to kill and be killed in Afghanistan as a result.

Botox Politics

BIGOT-GATE
The most disappointing aspect of all was probably the fact that the Guardian, of all outlets, chose to run the apparently damning image of Brown with his head in his hand, listening to the playback on the Jeremy Vine show for the BBC.
Anyone who actually watched and listened to the footage from which this was decontextualised will know that in fact, Brown leant forward before the tape started playing. He was adopting a fairly standard position many people use when concentrating on anything, and one which seems characteristic of him. He was not collapsed in despair at his gaff as he hadn't yet heard it.
In fact, I seem to remember similar frozen footage from earlier in the campaign, and that was also briefly spun against him.
Appearance is now much more important than reality. Every single frame from a video can now be used at print resolution, which increases the ability to lie by a factor of 125 frames per second. Which means that no politician will be able to be a normal human being again. Every second of footage will be scrutinised for the killer moneyshot of him gurning, sneering, squinting or drooling. If we wanted a generation of Botox politics, that's what we've got.

Bye Bye Gordon

You simply can't insult little old ladies and win elections. It doesn't matter if they are bigots, you have to schmooze them til it hurts, and remember to turn your mike off.
So that's the end of that chapter. It means a Cameron government of some sort, and a hung parliament is a lot less likely now.
The only interesting question left is who makes the most from this? Clegg or Cameron?
How exactly will the tory and libdem party machines cash in on Brown's disaster?
The overriding lesson to all members of double acts is, don't try the solo career. It never works. It means the boarding house in Rhyl for you. And as for the straight stage - only if you want to play a tragic clown to patronising reviews. And that this massive flop should happen in Rochdale, as in the Rochdale Pioneers, the Godfathers of the English co-operative movement, is surely some sort of revenge by the gods of socialism at Brown's heresies. His presence there was a little like flaunting the Golden Calf at the foot of Mt Sinai.
As far as tomorrow night's planned appearance in Leaders Got Talent, he might as well turn up drunk and punch out cameron's lights on national TV. That would get him more votes than anything else which might happen. And would be much more fun for everyone, except toryboy, of course.
But he'll have a new trainset to play with in a couple of weeks.
We will all have to be very understanding about the massive tax hikes he is forced to introduce by the back door, as Thatcher and Major both did as soon as they took office. After all. We're all in this together, y'know. Rich and Poor in patriotic union. Dunkirk Spirit and all that.
Sun headline tomorrow?
GOTCHA!

The Triangle of Talent. Round 2

Last night was Spudface Cameron's best chance to tickle all the core tory nerve centres. The war, immigration, europe... And he blew it. He still has all the charisma of a John McCain who's had an accident in his pants.
Brown was obviously on Garland-strength doses of benzedrine, until he met Gracie, when he slowed down to carehome speed.
And Clegg didn't implode, and even consolidated LibDem occupation of the soft-left vote, shielding Labour from any of the traditional bogeyman attacks.
This idiotic Talentshow, however superficial and bogus, has at least bypassed 50 years of newspaper-manipulated democracy. But from now on, any political party hoping to get elected will have to choose the sort of leader who will perform best in the triangular TV bearpit.
That is the real legacy of this experiment, not the rise of the LibDems as a credible political force.

Humiliated and Embarrassed

For decades The Sun has paid its rent by demonising the unemployed. Whenever it feels the need, it labels them as layabouts, scroungers, and generally does what it can to ensure that anyone not in work feels humiliated and embarrassed by their misfortune.
So it is hardly surprising that someone raised in that culture, and unable to find work, should feel like a worthless loser. Especially if they were a sensitive, intelligent young person who had worked hard at school, and who expected some return for that effort and commitment.
And today the Sun splashes that one young woman felt humiliated and embarrassed enough to kill herself. On the day after official figures report a rise in unemployment, which naturally makes the government look bad - in the middle of an election campaign which has seen the shine taken off the Sun's candidate.
So what looks like an expression of sympathy for a bereaved family is in fact nothing more than a cynical exploitation of her tragedy for political ends. 'Brainy girl' Vicky Harrison will not have died in vain if she can help get David Cameron elected. What parent could wish for a fitter memorial for their child?
It would be an interesting exercise to wade through the Sun's archive to find a similar report on one of the many suicides caused directly by Margaret Thatcher's sabotage of the mining industry. Or even among the 3 million dumped on the dole by her mad Utopian experiment. And especially today, it would be very interesting to have access to the Wapping darkroom store for images of the police thugs who killed Blair Peach.
Every government deserves a kicking for rises in unemployment. But the unemployed do not deserve to be made to feel like scum and blamed for economic forces beyond their control. This does not make them Get On Their Bikes, but it definitely drives some of them to kill themselves.
But this suits the Sun perfectly. It humiliates and embarrasses the unemployed and stigmatises unemployment itself as a personal failing. The Sun demonises the unemployed and benefits from every unemployed person it drives to suicide , just as it benefits from every gullible recruit to the army it kills by glorifying war.
It makes money from generating contempt, then is rewarded by the resulting tragic stories. And if those accounts can be used to further Rupert Murdoch's political ambitions, so much the better.

NAZI CLEGG THIEF SWINDLER SHOCK TRICK SMEAR

The Telegraph jumped the gun a bit with this lame piece of muckraking. Not only is it completely harmless, but also exquisitely badly timed. Now Cameron looks like the pampered poodle of press bullyboys. Which is of course true.
All Clegg has to do is turn casually to Spudface, flicking a speck of dust from his immaculate cuffs, and ask:

'Is this the best your bosses can do to get you elected?'

By launching this pathetic dirty Nick trick in a blatant attempt to scupper tonights debate, the Telegraph has panicked like Corporal Jones, and fired its musket long before it could see the whites of their eyes.
As for the Mail conflating CLEGG and NAZI all over their front page, that is hardly surprising. In the dark columns patrolled by its hitmen, Clarkson and Littlejohn, almost everybody, including cyclists, vegetarians and council workers are routinely referred to as NAZIS. And now almost everyone loves Click. And if he's a nazi and they are nazis, someone is either lying about them and Clegg, or lying about the nazis. The trick was bound to backfire sometime, and this is probably it. It has confirmed everything Click has been saying about both tories and Labour, but Labour can sit in the shade again and let Cameron take the heat.
You have to say, well played Peter Mandelson. Hot favourite for the Bernard Ingham Spindoctor of The Year Award at this years' press bash.
 Cleggmania aside, last week's show was dominated by Cameron's Deflation. He looked like a fretful Maris Piper most of the time. Like Wayne Rooney's bank-clerk older brother when opening his winter gasbill.. And by failing miserably to outperform the Ultra-Lite Clegg, he showed his true worth.
The fact that Click Negg beat Spudface in the beauty contest means that Brown won on the night. If Cameron was the tories' Great White Hope, he wouldn't have been outsmarted by the no-hoper. Gathered around their screen in the Carlton Club, tory grandees must have been crying in their Asti Spumante.
Tonight, the leader who manages to properly pronounce Eyjafjallajökull first will see his digital approval worm will hit the roof. And if Click gives it its new name - E15 - the Cleggometer will blow a fuse. Mt Stratford would be even better.
If the election is decided by this farce, there will be demands for proportional representation to replace the current system.
It won't make any difference. All we need is a fixed term, and a total ban on any electioneering during the month before the poll. In fact, all politicians should be locked into the Palace of Westminster, and the election fought purely on the basis of the real experience of the electorate during the term of office. That would make us pay attention a bit more. And not just for a week or two every four years.
The first 'debate' saw Clegg clouding the political sky, grounding Cameron Air, but leaving Gordon Brown sipping Pina Coladas on his Barbados holiday beach for an extra week.
What kind of freak political devastation we can expect out of tonight's Sky is still unclear. Something to do with helicopters, presumably.

Pope Adolf on Ashmageddon

While we're blaming people, where was His Holiness during the current Armageddon?
Preparing?
You'd have thought that this would have been a golden opportunity to show a bit of something. To show what religion and all that is meant to be good at.
Maybe he was pre-occupied or something. Maybe He's learned that Silence is Golden. That feudal superstition should keep itself to itself and not try to set up global corporations designed to make money and force people to live their lives in imitation of the C13th.
Meanwhile, thousands - if not millions - can breathe a sigh of relief. Eyjafjallajökull has been renamed E15.

How Will the Ash Cloud of Death Effect the Election?

How will the Ash Cloud of Death Effect the Election? Because it will.
What could the killer volcano question be on Thursday night's debate?
'Can you name the volcano?' That would be a start for Foreign Affairs Nite.
The first to competently pronounce Eyjafjallajökull will gain enormous respect. I suppose they're all practising in front of mirrors now, otherwise the massed Simon Cowells beyond the cameras will shake their heads in tired old-pro resignation, and call:
'Next!'
It might be tempting for the deflated Spudface Cameron to appeal to the Old Duffer vote, who have been ranting online in the last few days about how the country has no guts, and how it's all a sinister conspiracy by the Elf'n'Safety Brigade of the Nanny State.
In the good old days when men were men they'd have just fixed a pair of stout military tights (W.A.A.Fs for the use of) over the engine intakes and barrelled that kite over the White Cliffs of Dover like a partridge in season.
Dammit, all of civilisation runs on someone's blood. Without 1,000s of road deaths a year, there would be no supermarkets, and riots in the streets. And the Nanny State worries about a few hundred possible deaths in the air. This isn't the spirit which beat the Frogs at Waterloo or the krauts on the beaches of Normandy.
etc etc etc.
The professional hacks have moved in on the game, spewing out doublethink by the yard, all amounting to the samne thing. It's the Millenium Bug all over again!
A load of namby-pamby stuff and nonsense. In their day they would have donned their goggles and white scarves and ploughed intrepidly through the bit of dust, while others quivered like white mice in their shadow. Mercenary Onanism of the highest order.
Rightist Nutter extraordinaire Alain de Botton has naturally joined in:

"In a future world without aeroplanes, children would gather at the feet of old men and hear tales of strange flying machines..."

and hear tales of Noggin the Nog, and his heroic deeds in the land of the far north.
Gimme a break please. Romancifiers like Botton never miss a chance to stuff their version of the past down the throat of the present.
If he were to seriously apply his imagination more to a future without Consumerist Free Market Worship, then he would be doing his job as a philosopher. But as a devotee of the free market, this would make his head explode. Just as it did to those who always condemned powered flight as blasphemous. Botton would have been one of the loudest crying: 'If God had meant us to fly he would have given us wings.'
Ultimately, what he might as well say is 'imagine a world without the vote, where sage old men who had proved themselves in battle, took all the major decisions on behalf of everyone, who were then 'liberated' to enjoy their lives.' Ultimately, like Rabid Littlejohn yesterday, he can go Eyjafjallajökull himself.
Brown, of course, just has to play a straight hand, and he's almost home to a famous draw. 
Meanwhile, the conspiracies run to fantasy. The eruption is Iceland's Revenge for losing the credit war. The Icelandic PM on Newsnight was like having a visit from The Boys.

"Now about our little arrangement over the banks. You have a very nice civil flight industry. Shame if it were to get all clogged up and grounded. Clogged up with - oo
Now can you think of anywhere that might cause that kind of trouble?... If you can, let us know and we'll do our best to see that any problems go away. If you're reasonable about our credit arrangement...." I dunno - some kind of ASH. Maybe even VOLCANIC ash, blown thousands of feet into the air by some huge natural force.

They've never got over losing (or winning) the Cod War. Either way, they want to make us pay for making them pay back what they owe your local council, and the rest of us are left praying to Woden or Odin or Wotan to not plunge us back into recession. I blame that Click Negg. Until he opened his mouth everything was fine. The gods were offended by his overturning the political applecart.
So will that be the tactics of the Browneron on thursday? Blame it on the boy. They could do worse. It won't be the worst joke we hear all campaign, it's just a matter of who gets in first.
Watch this space.

Pontiff-igate - Pope Adolf In The Bunker

Given a doctrine which demonises natural sexuality as much as the Catholicism does, and which makes eternal damnation the price of involuntary normal, natural sexual feelings, and it is inevitable that custodians of its children will feel duty bound to purify the child of such feelings for as much as their souls are seen to be worth. And since the custodians will also be victims of the same psychological torture, it is also inevitable that there will be a large number of qualified paedophiles installed deeply within the instution, and that the institution should be a magnet for such emotional cripples. Add in the fact that until its first communion, the child is an inferior species, and you have a lethal combination. One that, since it is all in the child's best Eternal interest, is worth any amount of lies and worldy pain to preserve.

The systemic problem reducing the Catholic superstition to ruins is not about the celibacy of priests, that is an easy and silly excuse. Men without sex are not monsters waiting to explode. The deeper cause is the doctrinal phobia of sexuality inflicted on generations of catholics. This self-disgust is what makes it possible for a priest to believe that a child requires torture in order to expel the demons which are causing the sexual attraction he feels. In his mind, the priest is battling the Devil himself, not torturing a child.

GIVE ME THE CHILD, AND I WILL MAKE IT SUFFER

Any doctrine which requires lifelong irrational commitment in the face of massive evidence to the contrary (like most organised religions) is going to naturally target children for indoctrination as early as possible. It is their only means of survival. In practice this means scaring the bejasus out of them. Terrifying children into obedience and even 'Love' with threats of infinite torture. This is a form of psychological abuse worthy of Orwell's Room 101, and a permanent distortion of one of the core social concepts we know - Love. In this construction, 'Love' can be demanded with threats. No wonder history is as blood-stained as it is.
The systemic Irish abuse is not an aberration from the practice of organised religion, but a core element of it. And since, to a child, almost anything an adult does is moral and acceptable, even if unpleasant, it is not difficult to keep the vicious cycle of abuse spinning.

DON'T WORRY. THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT!

It is deeply diseased to derive involuntary sexual pleasure from torturing the vulnerable. It is, as the tabloids keep saying, SICK. Sickness is not healthy. But in spite of routinely labelling child abusers as sick, they refuse to accept that they are ill. Which is an abuse of the language worthy of Orwell's Room 101. To accept it as a disease would rob the media of the possibility of punishment, and of a topic for another profitable Two Minutes Hate. Which is pretty sick in itself.
Sexual reactions are involuntary. You cannot control what you find attractive. So to be stimulated by inflicting pain on those too young to understand or consent is not a sexual reflex, but a cross-wiring, which (as in pornography) becomes a demand for power.
This is pathological, and socially intolerable. But the paedophile still persists in spite of social pressure. Not because this is their only way of achieving gratification, but because it is their only identity. Which is a severe disability. Guilt feeding obsessive behaviour in a vicious cycle. How many more definitions of sickness do the popular hate-press need?
Being subject to reflexes which deliver a reward for inflicting pain instead of the natural instinct which is to nurture and protect the vulnerable is sociopathic and diseased. The fact that the diseased mind knows it is despised is incedental, but significant. And even contributory.
Everyone accepts that it is a natural instinct to protect and defend children, I hope. That those who seek to harm them are the opposite, and that in this case, their sexual reflexes have become entangled with their need to harm. It doesn't take a vote to decide when someones neurology is damaged. The evidence is all too clear. And not much will improve until paedophilia is researched dispassionately, without the howlings of the tabloids for vengeance.
The word 'Evil' has been thrown around a lot lately. Only the problem is not real 'Evil', because there is no such thing, but our sloppy dependence on the word itself. We don't need a medieval concept to explain child abuse. It is perfectly explicable through real evidence. No need for metaphysical malevolent intervention. Whatever else it is, the Catholic Church is not the Whore of Babylon. Whatever that is, Dr Paisley. By pandering to medieval models of thought, we are perpetuating the catholic world-view which makes possible both child abuse, and the reduction of women to beasts of burden.

CATHOLIC SHARIA LAW

On the general point: Should any state-subsidised organisation be allowed to undermine the democratically determined ethics and laws of the society which feeds them?
Should the tax-relieved Catholic Church be allowed to traumatise children with threats of eternal torture if they express their sexuality in a natural, healthy way?
If religions want independence, then they should be allowed it, and the relieve the burden on the taxpayer in the process. If the teaching of all religion were made illegal before the age of ten, most organised superstitions would shrivel back to an appropriate size, limping along on the bounty of a few rich eccentrics and the desperate scrapings of the gullible, ill, and old. But at least they would be sincere congregations, and only able to damage their own.

POPE ADOLF SLEEPS WITH THE FISHES

Each technological advance has had deep repercussions on the history of religion.
The printing press meant that the delegated authority of the Catholic Church gave way to a personal interpretation and relationship with the godhead, and Protestantism (and the Enlightenment) was born. Today's explosion of personal communications can hardly be expected to defy this precedent.
And now it is entirely likely that the credibility of the Vatican has been fatally undermined. But the blame must not be allowed to rest with the 'rotten apples', or the slipshod selection procedures or even the full blooded corruption.
Child abuse in Catholicism begins in its doctrine that sexual feelings are the Devil at work, and must be bludgeoned out of existence, and any evidence of them mortified without delay. That's 'deadened' in my book. A doctrine of death and desensitisation and perversion. Fine for the Middle Ages, possibly, ludicrous and obscene now. Also, sexual instincts have to be perverted from the norm, or the child will go to Hell for playing with themselves. The historic effects of such insanity can only be guessed at.

IT'S SO UNFAIR!!

The real coverup at work here is the power-struggle between reality and illusion, Between God and Man. The very idea of mere elected governments interfering to protect children from ritual abuse? It's Political Correctness Gone Mad!
The trouble with laws against torture and child abuse is not just that they discriminate against the torturers and child abusers. They also challenge the authority of the church, and its important Friend. So they must be discriminatory against Catholic priests and their beliefs, and therefore a denial of the freedom of worship, and therefore 'hypocritical'. Easy to appreciate if you're a sulky teenager. Not very becoming in a semi-divine 'ex'-Nazi leader of one of the world's leading superstitions.
What next? The Vatican demands its God-given right to burn heretic protestants at the stake? Why not? That was unshakeable orthodoxy once too.

CASTING THE LAST STONE

Now that Catholicism's 1500 year Reich appears to have collapsed, like the Walls of Jericho at the blast of the Information Era, where does that leave Islam? Which is hardly any less sexually repressive than Catholicism. The British taxpayer is due to pay for the pope's visit to London in September. The British taxpayer is not known for its Christian tolerance of paedophiles. Their red-eyed wrath can even spill over on to innocent paediatricians, just to make sure. So in practical terms, Rome has until September to do something meaningful. If it doesn't, the spectacle of mass anti-papal demonstrations in London could be as historic as the footage of the demolition of the Berlin Wall.
The wider shame is that this country hates children as sytemically as the Catholic Church. It is institutionally paedophobic. How can it be anything else? It has destroyed play by building roads and sub-standard profiteering housing on anywhere children used to play.
The bloodtop media has terrified parents into believing that if they allow their children out of their sight they will never see them again, in spite of the figures, which show that such crimes are falling, as are the figures for child murder in general.
And so we now have more than one generation of adults who have grown up deprived of normal learning and socialisation, and seem doomed to repeat the same suppression with their children.
As if that were not bad enough, we also now see children as a status symbol. A commodity, with all the formal expectations of any other expensive product. And when they do not conform to these stereotypes or model specifications, we are outraged. And demonise them as hoodies, ferals, chavs, and other hate-words.
The nett effect is to dehumanise children, cripple the adults they become, create and intensify another layer of alienation in society (make even more people hate and fear each other) and help to create the ideal Consumerist society in which nobody talks to anyone except via some profitable media, and people become so deraged that only possessing sparkly objects can give their lives any purpose.
It isn't only the best minds of the C13th which have to change. Modern consumerism has to end its ritual abuse of children too.

Religious Parents Refuse Children Sex Education

November 2009
The only 'choice' for religious maniac parents is between having their 15 year old daughters educated about sex by qualified teachers, or by children a year older than them. Or simply by the practical method, up to and including the highest level - or childbirth, as it's also known.

The argument in favour of preserving sexual ignorance in children is that 'children are not the property of the state', or similar nonsense. Whereas they ARE the 'property' of their parents? Since when? This is typical of the psychotically individualistic attitude of those who to whom consumer 'choice' means 'freedom'. In fact, it is the darkest prison. The fact that they can refer to their children as cattle means they are not qualified to make any choices regarding their welfare.
For primary school children denied professional tutelage because of their parents' paranoia and neuroses, the other source of sex education is, of course, internet porn. This perverted veiw of sex might be even worse than no education at all, especially as far as girls are concerned.
Those who would exclude the state from all influence on education sing a different tune when they are told about a single mother of three claiming benefits and jumping the housing queue. Who's fault is that? Normally The Parents.
Either way, the state has an obligation to take decisions which will benefit the majority. Hordes of sexually-malfunctioning teenagers, spawning unintended dysfunctional state-dependent families onto the taxpayer's bounty is in nobody's interest.
That's why we have an education system in the first place. I'm sure the discombobulated genteel classes think that 'the whole theory of education is radically unsound' but luckily, they also prove that 'in Britain, education has no effect whatever.'

Society Not As Sick Cameron Wants Shock Horror! Social Workers To Blame!

It seems that we are more terrified than we should be. An inconvenient report by the University of Bournemouth, under Prof Colin Pritchard, is very clear.
The number of violent deaths among children in England and Wales has fallen by almost 40% since 1974, research has suggested.
David Cameron, and his raggletaggle band of reactionaries, must be delighted.
Even worse, social workers - of all people - are responsible for a shameless demonstration of the welfare state in action.
'Better monitoring by social workers and improved liaison between health visitors, paediatricians, GPs and police had led to the drop, it said. The US and Germany had the highest violent death rates, the study found.'
But where did this increased fear and loathing of our broken society, with its increasingly bottomless depths of depravity and squalor, come from?
Whoever turns out to be the evil arch-villain responsible, the benefits to some are clear.
If the fear exists that your children will be killed if they set foot out of the house, you will quite naturally keep them under supervision. This clears any traditional open spaces and playgrounds of children, effectively killing the demand for play. At least, for play which cannot be 'monetised' as they say on blogs. This tends to reduce the chances that profitable property developments will be challenged at the planning stages by crank parents and communities which value their children's welfare before the share prices of Barratt and Wimpy.
Keeping children indoors also creates a massive market for consumer goodies to keep them amused and not killing each other. Plus all the supervised activities and recreations with their lucrative added options. For over ten years, society has run on fear. It has been a cash cow, a significant job-creator in this phase of late Consumerism. After all, skipping ropes and skatebords don't need upgrading. And they don't wear out easily. From a business point of view, they're a disaster. As is any play which children invent for themselves out of their imagination and resources available. Because play cannot be weighed and sold by the pound, it is the defacto enemy of industrial consumer society. Just as free air is.
That is the real sickness of society, which Cameron & Cronies are genetically incapable of grasping. But then, he is only following Brown's example. But that is Brown's shame for life, not Cameron's.

Pope Adolf Rides Yet Again!

The Vatican demands its God-given right to burn heretic protestants at the stake. Why not? That was also unshakeable orthodoxy once.
The idea of mere elected governments interfering to protect children from ritual abuse? It's Political Correctness Gone Mad!
The trouble with laws against torture and child abuse is that they discriminate against the torturers and child abusers. So they must be discriminatory, and therefore hypocritical.
This kind of logic and morality are easy to appreciate if you're a sulky teenager or degenerate bigot whingeing that nobody is willing to be bullied anymore. Not very becoming in a semi-divine 'ex'-Nazi leader of one of the world's leading Superstitions.
According to Pope benedict XVI, and the current generation of internet liberationists, freedom is the freedom to make someone's life a misery if you want to, or if God tells you to.
It is a truism that all laws which discriminate against child-molesters, thieves, murderers and rapists are discriminatory, and therefore a denial of freedom. And so all attempts to assert the right of the individual to freedom from such abuse are transgressions of the freedoms of the abuser.
And that is against 'natural justice' and the word of God. And so any organisation which advances Human Rights is unmasked as an absurd heretical vanity. And all progress, which is an affront to divine order, is halted in its tracks.
All you need to appreciate that is a lifetime's indoctrination and a degree in Divinity and the mind of a sulky teenager.

Blair in Chilcot Land

It's a joke. Endless circular arguments and inverted reality. All that incense has obviously liquified any adult intelligence he ever had.
Nice is nicer than nasty, he reveals. And Saddam was nasty. And (get this) nasty people with nasty weapons are nastier than nice people with nice weapons. And 9/11 was the perfect excuse for a war to secure oil prices. 'We had to deal with' Iraq because of 9/11. 'And how were you going to do that?' 'By dealing with it'...
Essentially, Blair took advantage of American panic after 9/11 to look like a Bigshot, end of story.
In a 'connected world' invasions and bombings are fine, he says, on the mere suspicion of attack. So by that logic, Iran had better organise its centrifuges as soon as possible. Then it will be as safe as Israel. And be able to atttack its neighbours with impunity, or even attack the US if it feels it is under threat. The American Way.
The 'connected world' means, in reality, oil prices. Any moral justification is neglible compared with the threat Saddam posed to the cost of energy, which he could control with the turn of a tap. If only Blair would admit that, as Alan Greenspan eventually did, it would be possible to have a shred of respect for him. But wars mustn't be about money, even though they all are.
And so Blair will always be remembered as the murdering liar of Iraq, not the saviour of Kosovo, or the PM whose government introduced the minimum wage and the Freedom of Information Act.

Stuff Their Rifle Barrels With Gold

At last a glimmer of common sense. But too little and far too late.
Instead of the orginal disastrous invasion, which was lost on the day it was launched, it would have been simpler and quicker and far less bloody to simply have cashed in one or two Tomahawk missiles, minted small denomination gold coins, and parachuted them in family-size portions all over the country.
The creaking economy of the Taliban state would have collapsed overnight, as would any power they had over the peasantry. As would the opium industry. By instantly inflating the middle classes, and giving them instant access to capital, the religious solution to poverty would not have been necessary or attractive any more.
The Al Jazeerah report mentions a paltry billion dollars. When the invasion began, promises were made for a total renovation of Afghanistan. It was to be the ultimate reality makeover show. All lies, of course.

Wootton Bassett War-Worship

When the Facebook fascists of Wooton Bassett care as much about the innocent victims as they say they do about their killers, they might be qualified to call themselves British.
Until then, they are just glorifying war and enticing more British teenagers to their deaths. And naturally, for each vainglorious unemployed Brit they kill, several more Afghani women and children will die first. That's war. I wish they would find out a bit more about it before seeking to turn this country into a police state where freedom to demonstrate is totally eliminated, and the crimes of the armed forces are suppressed.
The deaths of Afghani civilians are just as worthy of memorial as those of their killers. And as Wootton Bassett seems to be the place to get maximum publicity, that's where this week's demonstration should happen. The deaths of Afghani civilians are just as worthy of memorial as
those of their killers. And as Wootton Bassett seems to be the place to get maximum publicity, that's where this week's demonstration should happen.
The process of exploiting this war for political purposes (and the tourism helps too, ask the local Rotary Club) was perfected in Wooton Bassett, so for its citizens to whinge about the venue for an anti-war demonstration is rich. In fact it is very revealing. It is an insistence that the death of a British soldier is worth more than the death of an Afghani civilian, which means their lives are held to be worth more too. The lives of the Afghans we are ostensibly fighting for are negligible. We don't even talk about how many die. That is why this demo is essential, and couldn't be held anywhere else, and why talk of disrupting it is symptomatic of the inherent fascism of people who idolise the military and their power of summary death.
The fact that it took an extremist group to bother is no condemnation of them, in fact it is a sad comment on the fact that expressions of common humanity with those we are meant to be fighting for has been crushed by the war-mania of the media and its willing, death-worshipping suckers.

A Christmas Carol By Edward de Bono

Act 1.
Scene 1. Antechamber to Scrooge's Office. Bob Cratchet hunched over desk left.
Enter Scrooge's nephew leaving Scrooge's Office right.

Scrooge (concealed inside office)
Bah! Humbug!

Scrooge nephew. (closing door)
Well a merry Christmas anyway Uncle - and a happy New Year!
(turning to Bob)
And how are you Bob? And all the family. How is Tiny Tim?

Bob.
We're hoping he'll see out the winter perhaps God willing but it is so dreadful cold and we are so poor sir.

Scrooge nephew.
Then tell you what Bob, why not bring them all round to our place for Xmas? We're determined to enjoy ourselves with all our nice friends, and we've all got got plenty of money, and you're a nice man, and Tim is very ill, perhaps it would do him good even. What do you say? You and your family can pretend to be nice people for a day.

Bob.
Fine. Sorted.

EXEUNT ARM IN ARM.
CURTAIN.
END.


And Scrooge's nephew was as good as his word. And when it was eventually explained to Old Scrooge that Christmas was, in its pagan origins, naught but a celebration of a positive fourth-quarter projection which augered well for the next fiscal year, his post-Darwinian doubt was justified, and furthermore his Utilitarian pecuniary instincts were reconciled with the prevalent mood of merriment, and his misgivings were mollified. 
So much was he intrigued by his revelations that he was among the first to envision the possibilities of the midwinter festival in an age of mass-production, to provide adequate Good Cheer for a growing middle class market. And before long was importing and dispensing all the latest seasonal fashions from Germany and Norway and America, to the delight and joy of all. There was not a glass bauble or recipe book for the turkey fowl which Scrooge & Marley were not interested in. Scrooge himself became particularly partial to turkey breast, cooked with sausage meat and sage stuffing, and the potatoes roasted with a whole onion, which he reserved until his last mouthful.
He did it all, and infinitely more; his efforts were so profound that the entire nature of the celebration became inverted, so that the primitive act of stock-taking became a source of profit in itself. The measure of the midwinter granary floor became a new harvest, almost as large as the real one, and no less essential to the maintenance of the economy. In making us all dependent upon the profligacy and ceremony of the time, Scrooge and his peers can truly be said to have indeed made our time, and all its bounty, charity and peace to all men.
Some people doubted this reversal of cause and effect, but Scrooge let them doubt, and little heeded them; for he was cunning enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for profit, at which some people did not have their fill of doubt in the outset. And took their warnings as a verification of his ways.