Where There Were No Doors

All over now, baby blue

2006-03-05T20:43:00.000Z

All good things must come to an end. And yes, even the not so good things too. This is the last post.

But fret not, dear reader. For as one thing fades, so another blossoms.

Please join me on The Quiet Road.

(oh, and update your links and bookmarks and whatnot if you get a moment).

Farewell.

A round up

2006-02-15T23:23:00.000Z

Well, I'm off to Dublin in a little over four days. All a bit hectic to be honest, and I don't really have the time to write much just now (I did write a great piece about ID cards last night... one of my better essays; succinct, funny and devastating; as is always the case when your browser crashes and you lose the bloody thing!) I don't have the time to rewrite it, and I doubt I'd recapture some of the better turns of phrase anyway. Sorry about that.

I've also got a long essay about the 'Muhammed cartoons row' in the works. Unlike many of the bloggers I regularly read, I find it to be a fascinating and very important story. My article has already wandered off on several tangents... the potential for idolatry to act as both cultural powderkeg and cultural safety-valve depending upon the historical context... the role of symbols in shaping human behaviour... the nature of religious belief...

you get the picture. Let's just say I'm unlikely to finish it very soon, given how little time I can devote to blogging just now. However, should you find yourself in need of some fine web-based writing, then you could do a lot worse than read some of the best of recent blogging:

It almost goes without saying that Harry Hutton has written the funniest thing about the Dick Cheney hunting accident.

Meanwhile John Reid (Secretary for Violence Against Foreigners) is neatly skewered and roasted over at Chicken Yoghurt. Justin hits the nail right on the head when he writes,

It's almost as if he's saying, if you want us to respect your religion you need to accept that our lads may want to give one or two of you a kicking now and again and be expected to get away with it.

David Byrne recently published a piece on a subject that's been on my mind a lot lately. Go read Selfless if you're in the mood for something philosophical.

Joel has written another excellent piece.

The Curmudgeon reveals the revelling of Rifkind in the notion of limited military strikes against Iran. After all, Iran is more serious than Iraq was wrongly claimed to be.

I Heart Zoe Williams

2006-02-11T17:23:00.000Z

While I waste time droning on about Orwell, or semiotics, or emergent intelligence, Zoe Williams manages to completely eviscerate Reality Television with a few short paragraphs about children's fiction.

Go read House of Cards now.

- End -

Eighteen (9 x 2)

2006-02-10T20:23:00.000Z

It's a blog meme thing. If you're looking for something highbrow to read, check the Orwell quote in the previous post. Quality stuff. I'm planning a big essay on why the essays of George Orwell should be compulsory reading for everyone between the ages of 14 and 18. We'd have to set up some sort of surveillance system to make sure everybody complies of course...

But back to the matter at hand. Merrick (of the Orwell essays) completed the 7x7 blog meme thingie that I'd tagged him with. However, he decided to expand it to make it the 9x9 blog meme. Then he requested (in the comments) that I complete the additional two questions. Which I'm doing now.

Nine Things I've Only Done Once And Don't Expect To Do Again

Build a soft-drinks factory in Saudi Arabia.
Spend three days driving around the UK in a van with my best friend and three big bags of cash desperately trying to find somewhere he could buy a fake passport because he had pissed off both the police and some quite violent drug dealers.
Run naked across one of London's major bridges.
Get shot at (expect? well, it's more a fervent hope).
Datura.
Vote Labour.
Laugh derisively and call someone "a sad fuck" when they proudly show me their new tattoo.
Lose my virginity.
Get arrested and interrogated by the KGB.

Nine Songs I Don't Think I Could Live Without

Madame George - Van Morrison
Listening Wind - Talking Heads
(This song is from the first album I ever bought - Remain In Light - and it holds within it almost everything that's made music such a central part of my life. It deals with politics through the poetry of magical realism and reveals a timeless wisdom... all the while keeping you mesmerised by the rumbling music behind Byrne's imagery.)
All Is Full Of Love - Björk
Life on Mars? - David Bowie
(I just can't imagine never hearing that lilting "It's a god-awful small affair..." opening again.)
Back to the Old House - The Smiths
It's Only Love - The Beatles
Tomorrow Never Knows - The Beatles
(To be honest, there's about a dozen Beatles songs that spring instantly to mind when I try to imagine "songs I couldn't live without". These were merely the two that muscled their way to the front and provided a good cross-section of the band's music. Lennon's gloriously ragged voice on the chorus of It's Only Love gives me goosebumps nearly every time. And well... Tomorrow Never Knows needs no justifications from me.)
Until The End of The World - U2
(from Achtung Baby when the band were at their peak. For those of you who can't see past the whole 'Bono' thing, it really is your loss. During the early 90s, for about about 4 years, U2 made truly sublime music. And this track captures the whole period perfectly. It also drags me right back there... to a very groovy period of my life indeed. Ace.)
Gloria - Patti Smith

Read some Orwell

2006-02-10T18:23:00.000Z

My friend Merrick recently gave me a very lovely gift... a weighty tome entitled 'Essays' by George Orwell. It is 1,300 pages of the finest, wisest, most insightful writing of the last century. Indeed, ever.

Every essay in the book; whether a newspaper column from the war years or a one page review of a long-forgotten book or a lengthy piece assessing the cultural impact of the work of Charles Dickens; every one of them contains within it at least one line or idea that forces you to think in a new way about something you'd previously taken for granted.

That's the essence of great political writing. Indeed, for me, Orwell is easily our finest political writer. Certainly he didn't have as great an impact as some others (Marx springs immediately to mind), but I'd argue that may be because - ironically enough - he's far more revolutionary. I don't have time to write my big "Read Orwell's Essays!" essay just yet, but I came across this wonderful paragraph and I felt compelled to share it with you...

Marx's famous saying that "religion is the opium of the people" is habitually wrenched out of its context and given a meaning subtly but appreciably different from the one he gave it. Marx did not say, at any rate in that place, that religion is merely a dope handed out from above; he said that it is something the people create for themselves, to supply a need that he recognized to be a real one. "Religion is the sigh of the soul in a soulless world. Religion is the opium of the people." What is he saying except that man does not live by bread alone, that hatred is not enough, that a world worth living in cannot be founded on "realism" and machine guns? If he had foreseen how great his intellectual influence would be, perhaps he would have said it more often and more loudly.
- George Orwell
Notes on The Way (April 1940)

- End -

7x7 blog meme

2006-01-28T17:23:00.000Z

In the name of all that's sacred, I said I was going to be busy for the next few weeks! So what makes you think I have time to be doing this 7x7 blog meme thing!? Honestly Justin, it boggles the mind.

Still, if that's what people want to read, who am I to blow against the wind? I guess it's just one of those crosses we bloggers must bear. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

I wanted a blog post, and for my sins they gave me one, and when it was over I'd never want another.

Seven Things To Do Before I Die

Fall in love one more time.
Write something that sets off the same imaginative fireworks in the head of one reader, that Vineland by Thomas Pynchon set off in mine.
Meet David Bowie.
Rent a car and drive down the west coast of America.
Grow my own food and learn to live sustainably.
Become God-Emperor of earth and rule the planet as a benign dictator bringing an end to needless suffering and ushering in an Age of Enlightenment.
Come to terms with my mortality.

Seven Things I Cannot Do

Speak Russian.
See the words "Aloe Vera" written down and not think 'Allo Vera in an exaggerated cockney accent.
Eat red meat (or broccoli or cauliflower).
Surf.
Lift trains.
See any way of affecting - via democratic means - the political, economic and structural changes that will be necessary to shift our society towards sustainability.
Catch a falling star and put it in my pocket.

Seven Things That Attract Me to... (a woman)

A pulse.
Well whaddya want? I've been single for a long time!
Anyways, what is this? Some kind of online dating meme?
SWM WLTM SWF GSOH LSD CND BBC. I ask you!
Intelligence, compassion, decency, anti-authoritarian outlook, wit, sincerity and creativity. What did you expect?
And look, I'm a man, so yes it does help if the person in question is easy on the eye.
Most importantly though... someone who enjoys my company and considers me easy on the eye. Those are very attractive qualities indeed.

Seven Things I Say

Oh bugger!
Well, it's like what Einstein said...
Groovy.
Bong anyone?
Shush! Everyone be quiet! Check out this bit... the way the guitars kick in...
Well, it's like what Orwell said...
WHAT?!

Seven Good Books

Vineland - Thomas Pynchon
Love - Mahalia
Relativity - Albert Einstein
1984 - George Orwell
Stone Junction - Jim Dodge
Tales of Ordinary Madness - Charles Bukowski
Vermillion Sands - JG Ballard

Seven Good Movies

Seven Blogs To Tag

... and a Happy New Year

2006-01-17T23:23:00.000Z

It's like the old gag about the guy with the New Year's Resolution "to stop procrastinating". At the end of January a friend enquires as to how it's going. The guy replies "Ah, I'm too busy at the moment. I'm gonna phase it in sometime in March".

Anyways, better late than never... The "so that was 2005 then? hmmmm"-post

Yes indeed. Another year over. And what a thoroughly shit one it was too. Mind you, it was keeping me an extra year from the grave, so in that respect I'm sad to see it gone.

I'm aware that Her Parasitic Majesty, The Queen of England made a similar observation about the general shitness of 2005 in her traditional Chrimbo Speech (she used that very phrase in fact... "general shitness"), and I don't want to appear as though I'm jumping on the royal bandwagon (a crime still punishable by death if done within sight of Windsor Castle), but all the same... 2005 was a shit year.

Leastways it was for me.

Of course, it was much worse for lots of people. Billions of people in fact. Whether it was hurricanes or earthquakes or war or famine or recovering from tidal waves, or just not having enough, there's no question that my year was significantly better than the 2005 experienced by many - indeed most.

All the same, I'm going to write about my year. The best teacher I ever had gave me some advice 'on being a writer'. He insisted that every human life was interesting enough to read about, so long as the person living it was a good enough writer. And I believe that to be true. I also believe that - on my good days - I kick ten shades of shit out of Martin Amis. And he gets on telly and everything.

Anyways, this is my blog, and my readership is self-selecting. So I'm sure that neither of you will be too put out if I prattle on a while about my 2005. I'll also fill you in on my plans for 2006 with regards to this blog.

2005 II: The Prequel (2004)

At the end of 2004, I said to myself (and to anyone who would listen) that I'd had a crap year and that 'oh-five would be an improvement. Life is a succession of peaks and troughs and I was convinced that 2004 was the bottom of the trough I'd been sliding into since the turn of the century. "2005 will see me heading in the direction of the next peak... it will be the year I turn things around". That was the theory.

And what a lovely theory it was too.

But it was wrong. Deeply deeply wrong. 2005 saw me continue my downward progress. Not only that, but the bastid slope got steeper.

Summer 2004 I discovered that I was ill. For several years I'd been "feeling like crap" (apologies if you find the medical jargon confusing), but attributed it to a general malaise. Depression even. I was in a deep blue funk and concluded that I'd emerge from it when I was ready - emotionally speaking. But in 2004, I was persuaded to consult a doctor for the first time in a decade. And a saga began.

Brain scans, body scans, injections, x-rays, surgery (minor), hospital stays and a shit-load of pills. Doctors with concerned looks on their faces consulted test results and shook their heads with a mixture of puzzlement and disbelief. Complex pieces of equipment were recalibrated and their readings were called into question. It was unsettling.

In the end, I made a temporary deal with The Man and I'm now dependent on Merck and Pfizer and Wyath Laboratories to sort me out with my daily fix. I find myself consuming pharmaceuticals in daily doses that make even my university years look tame. And - sadly - these ones don't allow me to see music. Or to intuit the fundamental interconnectedness of all things (though thankfully that one sticks with you). In return for downing these prescribed drugs, I have been "stabilised".

For most of 2005 I felt a tad gloomy about this. A dependency on The Man is not a sustainable state of affairs. Even if the large pharmaceutical corporations don't succumb to the coming global economic meltdown (in my view, they have a rather slim chance of survival) and specialist medications don't become the preserve of the powerful; I'm certain it's far from ideal - biologically-speaking - to take a handful of powerful drugs every day for decades.

I spent most of last year under the impression that this situation was fundamentally unalterable. Chances are, so long as I kept taking the pills, something else would eventually kill me. (It might be a bus. Tomorrow. We are none of us guaranteed anything.) But if I stopped taking the pills... well... "eventually" would almost certainly not be too far away.

I dunno... here's my thing... maybe it's all a big scam... maybe the 'doctors' are actually agents of Merck feeding me weird experimental psychoactive drugs and I'm really a 72-year-old woman living in a top-secret institute on the shores of Lake Lafayette in Tallahassee staring blankly at a screen detailing the events in the life of a 34-year-old man in London. Ever consider that? And if that's the case, the question that immediately springs to mind is why the hell aren't they changing the channel?

What with all those shows about millionaire playboys solving crime and sleeping with beautiful women. Or as Edward Ka'Spel might say...

We're the spectres on your screen
We murmur sweet transparent lunacy

Anyways, 2005 got a bit grim for a bit. But then suddenly a degree of grooviness and light. A possible route to actual health, as opposed to chemically-simulated health. However (and what a "however" this turns out to be). Amongst other things, it involves a fundamental change in how I live my life. Which brings me to...

The Future

As a result of all this and for lots of complicated reasons, I have decided to get the hell out of the city. My time in London has finally come to an end. I am moving to pastures new. Or rather, old.

I'm off to Dublin. The city I was born in, but left as a child. I've not spent more than a couple of weeks in it as an adult. My visits back to Ireland have always been to see my parents in West Cork. So although I've spent a few weeks in the country since my childhood, it's always as a tourist. A visitor. And almost none of it in my home town.

Of course, the city of my memories bears little resemblance to the Dublin of today. Which is no bad thing. I have no fondness for those memories... no nostalgia about Dublin in the 1970s. Indeed when I look back at my life, the decision of my parents to emigrate represents a massive liberation for me. Those who meet me today may be tempted to mutter something about frying-pans and fires.

In response allow me to point out that you get burnt by both, but at least the fire is interesting to look at.

The place I'm moving to is basically as far south and west as you can get in Dublin while still being on the transport system. Rathcoole to be exact. Intriguingly, within easy cycle-range of an area densely populated with prehistoric sites... burial mounds, tombs, stone circles and the like. I suspect if the Irish economic boom were to last another decade, Rathcoole would no longer be a relatively rural area on the edge of a big city. It would become a city suburb.

However I don't imagine that will happen (not that I plan to be in Rathcoole very long... it's very much a stepping stone... possibly to somewhere even more rural). No, my regular reader can probably guess the kind of odds I'd give on the Irish economic boom lasting another ten years.

See, although Ireland would be one of the least badly affected Western economies were a shortage of fossil fuels to play havoc with global capitalism, it's very much a relative thing... the difference, say, between a really really really hard kick in the balls and a really really really really hard kick in the balls. An altogether academic distinction to the man sobbing on the floor.

Home from Home (or: I Guess I'm Already There)

I left Ireland when I was twelve and I called seven countries on three continents "home" before I'd finished university. I've spent most of the time since university living in London. Living in nine separate places, though never south of the river. Of course. During that period I had extended stays living / working / travelling in Saudi Arabia, Germany, Brazil and the US (I spent almost the entirety of 1998 in Chicago). All that time though, I kept a flat in London. So by default London became the place I called "home" when I was living in hotels or tents.

It's the place I'm most familiar with. The place I have the longest uninterrupted connection with. It is my home. And now I'm leaving it "to go home".

Which, frankly, is all a bit fricking weird. When a cousin telephoned out of the blue and told me we'd have to go out for a drink "when I get home" I got a strange urge to whistle the Twilight Zone music.

All the same, Dublin is incontravertibly my "home town". I was born there, and lived there until the age of twelve. I was educated by the christian brothers and steeped in the unique mythology of Dublin at school and home alike. When I first set foot in Greece, I was definitely a child from Dublin. And so, for quite a few years I've known that one day I'd have to live there as a adult. Not for any exorcising demons bullshit (though there may well be a few ghosts lurking here and there), but simply because my understanding of who I am as a person will be forever lacking an essential component without a greater understanding of the place I came from.

Then I can piss off to the sun again.

Well, who knows? Neither my childhood memories nor my more recent short visits give the impression that it's a place I'd want to spend my life, but a confluence of external factors have made Dublin a good place for me to spend a year or two, so it makes sense to take this opportunity and learn a bit about the place while I'm there.

What about this place?

Well, there's a thing. To be honest, with my emigration / return being a shade less than five weeks away, I expect things to get a wee bit hectic and blogging to be light. Not that it could be much lighter than the past couple of months (I know, I know, I'm sorry... but I like to think I offer in quality what I lack in quantity. Matron.)

However I'm giving some serious consideration to reinvigorating my blogging efforts. Redoubling even. I have this hazy idea of tidying up my writing (just a very little bit), losing the nom de clavier, and focussing somewhat on Ireland (as seen through the eyes of someone who spent their childhood there, then spent 22 years all over the place, then came back).

Anyone who objects by saying that a switch of focus from the UK to "little old Ireland" might result in my writing becoming somehow less relevant, or less accessible, will be soundly beaten to death with a copy of Ulysses. Wielded by Shane MacGowan.

Not really. I'll do it.

I've no doubt that the same staggeringly destructive short-termism that I delight in revealing in British politicians is amply illustrated by their Irish counterparts (and if it isn't... well, that'll be a story in itself). And I'm curious to discover just how much damage the Celtic Tiger has done to the nation, how deeply the roots of Catholicism still go, and whether the spirit of a long and extraordinary history still lingers enough to be savoured without commodification or mediation.

We shall see.

Anyways, that's roughly the shape of things. Expect little activity between now and - say - the end of February. Then I'm going to launch the new site (probably using WordPress) with the new agenda, and threaten to firebomb the home of any bloggers I know who don't put me on their blogroll and big me up.

So yeah. Happy new year.

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-24T15:23:00.000Z

It's that time of the year again; when paganism, christianity and consumerism collide. And just like a three-truck pile-up on a motorway, even those of us without a great identification with any of them find ourselves slowing down and taking in the spectacle.

Paganism

To be honest, I don't really know what this word means. According to the charming dictionary people of Oxford, a pagan is synonymous with a heathen... which means simply "someone who isn't Christian, Jewish or Moslem". Obviously this isn't very satisfactory. I feel certain that whatever unites Buddhists, Hindus, African Animists, atheists and modern self-styled pagans is too ephemeral to be considered worthy of it's own word... let alone two of them.

Yet, being a friend of several self-proclaimed "pagans", there seems to be a great deal of disagreement amongst even them as to what the word means. The beliefs of one pagan don't often match the beliefs of another, and indeed often seem rather more fluid and ill-defined than the dogmatic / sacred-text religions against which the nice folks of Oxford would contrast them.

So would it be fair - therefore - to describe paganism simply as "spirituality without the dogma"? Religion without a book? Again though... it's hardly satisfactory... it still lumps Buddhists and Hindus and Animists and self-proclaimed Pagans together (only the strictest of atheists escape), and I don't feel there's enough to unite the beliefs of all those people beneath a single banner.

Perhaps we should merely extend Oxford's definition... pagans are those with a "spiritual belief system" who are outside the Big Five (Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism). After all, surely Animism can be considered a form of paganism? Can't it?

Well, no. It can't.

Modern paganism - thanks to the lack of ancient texts, the only paganism we can truly know anything about - is a very different beast to traditional animism, as still practiced in much of Africa, parts of America (north and south) and Asia. Modern paganism has no tradition and is instead a set of individual beliefs derived primarily from the speculation of 18th and 19th century English academics and poets, and informed by the modern environmental movement.

This is not meant to denigrate paganism in particular. A spiritual belief based upon the speculation of 18th century Romantic poets and current ecological theory is just as valid as a spiritual belief based upon the writings of 1st century or 6th century or pre-Common Era mystics.

Christianity

On the surface, this appears to be an easier one to define and understand. But as the many disagreements with my flat-mate demonstrate; appearances can be deceiving. Having had a strict Christian upbringing (within the Roman Catholic tradition) it's my view that Christianity is found in books. A Christian is essentially a person who follows a set of rules and beliefs laid down in specific texts (and not merely "the bible" either; Catholicism - for instance - is a form of Christianity informed both by the bible, and the bible as interpreted by certain theologians... Saint Thomas Aquinas being the foremost of course).

My flat-mate (amongst others), however, would argue that Christianity can be better defined as the amalgamation of beliefs and behaviours of those who consider themselves christians. It isn't, therefore, what's found in the texts. Rather it's the visible manifestation of those texts.

Whilst studying theology, I always found the distinction between 'sacred-text' religions and other belief systems to be an essential one. Indeed it is the primary distinguishing feature of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Individual interpretation is irrelevant to these religions, which makes it possible for a christian to act in a non-christian manner. So long as a modern pagan doesn't openly admit to contravening their own belief-system, it is impossible to describe them as "unpagan"... for "pagan" is simply what they define it to be. A modern christian, however, who fails to "turn the other cheek" is clearly acting in an unchristian manner for example (cf. Dubya Bush, Tony Blair, et al).

There is a clear set of rules which must be followed in order to be acting in a christian manner. And failing to follow those rules ("forgive us those who trespass against us") means that one is betraying one's christianity. Just because Dubya Bush claims to be a Christian and claims to have God on his side, does not make cluster bombs "christian". Sacred text religions allow a person's actions to be judged against an ideal. That is what makes them what they are.

Consumerism

Now this one is uncontroversial. Let me restate that... the definition of this one is uncontroversial. Consumerism is a modern socio-cultural system derived from the economic system known as "capitalism". This is not to say that a form of consumerism couldn't have developed out of some other economic system. But historically we have what we have.

In essence, consumerism tells us that the consumption of products and services gained through economic exchange is a primary function of individual members of society. Indeed it goes further; it implies that such consumption is one of the primary purposes of individuals within society, and confers fulfillment to those individuals who engage in it.

The Collision

There's no question that a dedicated capitalist-consumerist cannot at the same time be a good christian. There's far too much decrying of material wealth and attachments within the sacred texts of christianity to allow a life dedicated to the consumption of economically-derived products and services to be considered anything other than unchristian.

Similarly, modern paganism - though undefinable - is clearly informed by modern environmentalism. And one cannot be a good capitalist-consumerist without doing unnecessary environmental damage.

And finally, it's clear that Christianity - whatever else it is - is a rejection of all forms of paganism. By locating itself within a dogmatic text (or texts) christianity refuses the individual's right to define their own spirituality. The only interpretations considered valid are those provided by a qualified or appointed member of the clergy. "Picking and choosing" those christian rules which best suit the individual is not the christian way.

As mentioned at the beginning of this piece, however, this collision of three entirely incompatible belief systems is a culturally special time, even for those of us who fail to subscribe to any of them. It's a time of hope; a time when our common humanity - whatever our beliefs - should be celebrated; a time of peace and goodwill to all men and women.

So please dear reader... have a very Merry Christmas!

The whirlwind

2005-12-01T12:23:00.000Z

Hallo there my loyal reader. I'm surprised you're still here to be honest; I've not been online very much of late. I find myself in ill-health and it turns out that medical stuff both takes up a lot more time than you'd give it credit for, and also makes a person less interested in prattling on about top ten albums or the utter idiocy of those in power.

Please don't feel too sympathetic though... if anything's to blame for this, it's my own mis-spent youth. So I am merely reaping what I've sown.

This, sadly, means somewhat sporadic blogging as I'm not turning this blog into "Jim's Health Journal". I can't imagine anything less interesting. I do have a piece of writing in the works about the phrase "History will be my judge" (and just how much it annoys me), but you'll have to wait a wee while longer for that. Be good.

Two items for your consideration

2005-11-16T00:23:00.000Z

The main news is that Joel has started to blog again, though as he mentions in his email, "blogging may be seldom". Nonetheless, even a solitary post per month from Mr. Biroco is probably more than the internet deserves. Head over there and read the only blog I wouldn't hesitate to describe as "literature".

Next. I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating. Astral Weeks genuinely is the finest album ever recorded. If you don't own it then you're going through life in a strange, empty shadow-world. And I pity you.

(there's nothing below the fold)

Traitor! (and other short observations)

2005-11-14T01:23:00.000Z

Traitor!

It's just been brought to my attention that the Right Rev. Ian Paisley was one of the MPs who voted against the 90-day internment law. Therefore, in the eyes of The Sun, the man is a traitor to the United Kingdom.

Now, while I'm no fan of Reverend Paisley, I'd still pay good money to watch Rebekah Wade tell him he's a traitor to his face. That'd be some Reality Television I'd approve of.

Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is shite. OK? And anyone who says otherwise has simply been brainwashed by the British education system. Deal with it.

His dialogue is stunted beyond belief... stunted to the point of unintelligibility. All this horseshit about "wonderful use of language" is just that... horseshit. I mean, it's not the archaic nature of the language, it's the sheer badness of it. Cultural imperialism has meant that Shakespeare gets revered all round the world, but it's perhaps the biggest example of Emperor's New Clothes syndrome that exists within literature.

The plots are unimaginative and flawed on almost every level. The characters never inspire the slightest bit of empathy and are often crude racist stereotypes. And dear god, that wooden dialogue.

Yes, I do have a wee chip on my shoulder about the fact that I - as an Irishman - spent some time in the British educational system and was exposed to the myth that Shakespeare is the pinnacle of literature in the English language. At the same time that I was studying Henry IV (1 & 2) I also happened to read Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

Night and fucking day.

Which isn't saying that you have to look to the Irish for good writing (though that's never a bad idea), and there's plenty of truly excellent literature to be found in this country. But I find this sycophantic lauding of 'The Bard' to be vaguely nauseating.

Oh yeah, and Falstaff just isn't funny.

Last.fm

There's an interesting website that I've just encountered (via Curious Hamster) called Last.fm. The basic premise is really very simple. You download a wee plug-in for your media player which then uploads the track information for every song / piece of music you listen to on your PC. This data is then put into charts and can be cross-referenced in all manner of interesting ways.

A very groovy site indeed if you listen to a lot of music on your computer. You can check in on what I'm listening to at any point by heading over to my own Last.fm page (which I've also conveniently made the top link on my left sidebar).

Coming soon

I'm starting to get the urge to write about stuff again (can you tell?) I think we can thank (or blame) The Sunt for this reawakening. Silver linings and what have you.

Currently in the works is a piece about just why it is that artists selling their music to advertisers is so shoddy (lots of stuff about fugue states and psychological imprinting / manipulation... kind of highbrow but with enough swearing to make it sufferable I hope).

I'm also a little tempted to get involved in the nuclear energy debate currently going on between Rochenko over at Smokewriting and Tim Worstall.

I'm aware that my off-hand dismissal of economists has irritated Tim in the past, and I'm genuinely sorry about that. He's a smart chap with some interesting stuff to say (for an economist). And I'd like to point out to Tim that my flippant remarks about economists are merely an attempt to prick the bubble of self-importance which surrounds the discipline. A bubble that I'm sure Tim (if he was feeling honest) would admit is there. It's no different to the habitual use of the phrase "tree-hugger" to prick exactly the same bubble that environmentalists frequently disappear into.

Economics can be an interesting and useful model of human interaction. But my problem is with those (and they are many in number) who confuse the model with reality... the map with the landscape.

Anyways, I'm part of the anti-nuke crew. For a whole bunch of reasons. And I hope to get round to expanding on those reasons soon. Though it's possible I may use the comments facility on Tim and Rochenko's blogs to do so. If that's the case, I'll provide a handy link from here.

Weekend wittering

2005-11-14T00:23:00.000Z

I'm feeling miserable. So bear with me.

"But why", asks my loyal and sympathetic reader, "why are you feeling miserable jim?" Well, it's for a number of reasons really... but the main one being that this weekend was the *mumble mumble*-year anniversary of me becoming single. That's a whole *mumble mumble* years of celibacy and waking up alone and not having anyone to hold onto during those long dark nights of the soul. And *mumble mumble* years is a long time believe me. About *mumble mumble* years too long in fact. So if I seem a tad more bitter than usual over the next few days, you know why it is.

And as if to rub salt in the wound...

As I was walking up to the postal sorting office yesterday morning to pick up a package (a spindle of blank discs from a well-known online retailer) I noticed two very lovely women walking towards me. It was a bright but cold morning and as we neared one another, the prettiest of the two stopped, smiled and said "good morning!" to me.

Now, I'm not Brad Pitt so I ain't exactly well-versed in how to handle this situation (that said, I don't make small children spontaneously burst into tears either). Nonetheless, there was an obvious response, and I hit upon it... I smiled and said "Good morning!" right back.

I felt pleased with myself. "This whole conversing with gorgeous strangers thing isn't nearly as hard as I'd imagined", I thought. Though I did desperately hope that my lovely new friend would speak next. I had no idea where to go after "good morning".

And my hopes were fulfilled. She did speak next. She said, "I'd like to share the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ with you".

The Romans had it right: throw 'em to the lions!

I'm not entirely sure that anyone can honestly claim to understand the word "crestfallen" until they've been in this situation.

I silently wished I'd been wearing my "Catholic School Survivor" t-shirt under my jacket. But I wasn't. So instead I realised that I'd have to fall back on one of the classics. Choosing one, I allowed the smile to drain from my face and - narrowing my eyes - I fixed her with a steely gaze. Then, quietly but forcefully I responded with the three words guaranteed to make her think twice about evangelising to strangers.

"Satan Is Lord" I said. And walked briskly past her.

Now, the great thing about the 'satan is lord' strategy is the vast disparity between the meaning those words have in my mind, and the meaning they have in the mind of a True Believer. From my point of view I've said something very silly indeed. From her point of view, however, I've said the worst thing imaginable. And now, every time she approaches some poor schlepp with her desire to share God's infinite love, she'll have a vague worry that they might be another plainclothes satanist.

That may seem sadistic - or at least gratuitously disruptive - to you, my dear sensitive reader. And I'm afraid we'll just have to differ on that. To me the buggers are fair game.

See, evangelicals really wind me up. I have nothing against people believing in imaginary beings in the privacy of their own homes. Indeed, I've been there myself. And I guarantee, if you munch enough mushrooms, you'll be there too. More than that, I'm happy to let them gather and believe in imaginary shit together. They can even build special buildings to do it in. Hell yeah, knock yourselves out. Believe in a race of 6-inch high rhinocerous people from the planet Spunk if you want. Seriously, you have my blessing.

But evangelicals aren't happy to leave it like that. Oh no, they won't be happy until everyone else believes in their rhinoids too. And frankly that annoys me. It's the reason for so much of the truly nasty shit that people have done to each other historically... it's not just annoying and - when done by someone fanciable - a tease. Though it's that too obviously.

My first thought whenever I'm spiritually assaulted by one of these missionaries is "The fucking gall! How dare they!" There's nothing more patronising than stopping me in the street and telling me that - as far as the important stuff goes - my understanding of the world, and of life, is infinitely inferior to theirs. But that if I listen to what they say, I can be cured of all my misconceptions and ascend to their level.

I want to shake them by the shoulders and explain that, actually, I've been studying theology pretty seriously since I was nine fucking years old! I have debated the existence of god with jesuits who have Phd's in theology and divinity coming out of their ears. There is nothing that some street-evangelist in East London can tell me that I haven't already heard and dismissed for extremely good reasons.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying "I know all the answers". Because I really don't. But I do have a far better set of questions than any street evangelist.

And I'm also not saying that every christian preacher or missionary earns my contempt. That used to be the case, but I've since met some quite staggeringly admirable people whose faith has taken them to some of the shittiest places on the planet, where they are - quite incontravertibly - doing very good work. But wandering the streets of London harrassing strangers just doesn't cut it... too little Jesus Christ and too much St. Paul.

Remember... Satan is Lord.

More about 'The Sun'

2005-11-11T12:23:00.000Z

I will spend an hour researching, drafting and submitting an independent complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about Rebekah Wade's conduct and/or material published by the Sun before and after the 90-day terror law vote, but only if 50 other people will too.

To be honest, I really couldn't wait until 50 others signed up, and I've already made a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission with regards to the cynical manipulation of Mr. Tulloch's image to further the agenda of a national tabloid newspaper.

I urge my reader to do the same.

I've got some links below the fold to help you do just that, as well as the text of my complaint (note: it's important that people draft their own text - though basing it loosely upon a template is probably fine - as obvious carbon copies will be ignored).

There are two distinct issues which have left The Sunt open to legitimate complaint this week. The first is the use of Mr. John Tulloch's image juxtaposed with a headline that completely contradicts his views (discussed in my piece yesterday). The second is the attack on those who voted against the 90-day measure, and labelling them "traitors".

I have chosen to focus on the first of those (for no other reason than it angers me in a way that newspapers haven't done for some time) but people should feel free to complain about both.

Links and ting

First head on over to "Report Rebekah Wade to the PCC - and do it today" at bloggerheads and read Tim's piece. He includes all of the important links, but just for reference...

The Sun front page that pissed me off.
The 'Traitors' one.

The Press Complaints Commission:
- Home page
- Code of Practice
- Online complaints form

Notes for making a complaint:
- it is important that a link to the piece in question is included.
Tulloch:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2005050000-2003410033,00.html

Traitors:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2005050000-2005082056,00.html

- it is important that the relevant clauses of the Code of Practice (the ones you feel have been breached) are listed in your complaint (you can identify them simply by number and don't have to cite the full text):

1 - Accuracy
i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.

ii) A significant inaccuracy, mis-leading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and - where appropriate - an apology published.

iii) The Press, whilst free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.

5 - Intrusion into grief or shock
In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively. This should not restrict the right to report legal proceedings, such as inquests.

And finally, this is the text of my complaint. I don't suggest you use it as a template as I'm actually quite unhappy with the wording. I suspect you, dear reader, can come up with something better...

Clauses breached:
Clause 1 (i) and (iii) plus Clause 5.

URL of story:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2005050000-2003410033,00.html

To Whom It May Concern:

The Sun's front page on November 8th initially angered me for the blatant piece of political manipulation that it is. However I assumed that the pictured bomb victim had permitted his image to be used and had expressed the sentiment of the headline (though I did assume it wasn't a direct quote as it did not have quotation marks). Therefore it seemed like just another example of a tabloid being its usual shameful self.

The anger I felt, however, was as nothing compared to my anger and dismay when - two days later in The Guardian - it was revealed that the gentleman in question (Mr. John Tulloch) had not been consulted about the use of his image and indeed held views which directly contradicted those expressed in the headline!

It is appalling that a national newspaper can feature a full - front page - image of a person in the midst of an extremely traumatic event and clearly imply that the person holds a particular view in the hope of making readers more sympathetic towards that view. If this cynical manipulation of facts, images and reader opinion is allowed to go unchallenged it makes a complete mockery of everything that a newspaper is supposed to stand for. It erodes trust in British journalism in general, as well as causing clear distress to the individual pictured (as expressed in the Guardian piece).

Mr. Tulloch is owed an apology from The Sun which is as prominent as the piece which deliberately misrepresented him. And perhaps almost as importantly, The Sun has a duty to inform its readers about the nasty manipulation of their views and emotions it engaged in through the deceitful use of images and headlines.

Please folks, do make a complaint about this. We all accept that tabloid newspapers engage in shoddy journalism and corporate propaganda. However The Sun have stepped way over the line this time and need to be held to account.

Rebekah Wade needs to resign

2005-11-10T19:23:00.000Z

I'm not the first to make this call. Tim over at bloggerheads (in a post entitled Rebekah Wade hijacks victims of terrorism) beat me to it, as I'm sure have many others.

And of course, it's probably a bit silly to criticise The Sun in its capacity as a newspaper. It is a shameful and sordid publication whose pages rarely if ever contain anything resembling "news". The editorial and journalistic staff are scum. Opportunistic, money-grubbing hacks with no integrity and a willingness to misinform the public in order to push a foul corporate agenda.

There's nothing new about that of course, but it seems clear that they have crossed a line with regards to recent politicial events and must be held accountable in some way. The resignation of the editor, Rebekah Wade, is the very least that should happen (I'd also favour a hefty fine for the newspaper's owner and perhaps a slap around the face for everyone who works there).

On the day of the House of Commons vote on whether to allow the police to detain people for 90 days without charge, The Sunt ran with the following front-page...

Tell Tony He's Right

Now, as I've already argued; it makes no sense to bestow legislative powers on individuals merely because they, or a family member, have suffered a traumatic experience. Indeed while those people should be listened to, sympathised with, and comforted; they are the last people we want creating new laws. Laws need to be drawn up, voted upon and enforced with objectivity. The victims of the terrible attacks in July may well possess that objectivity but it should be assumed that they do not (human beings have emotional responses to extremely traumatic experiences, which typically have a tendency to cloud their objectivity).

Also, and I don't wish to sound callous here, but the fact remains that in a society that's democratic (in name at least) we don't decide who gets to pass laws and who doesn't based upon whether or not they were injured in a suicide-bombing. The chap on the front page of The Sun has suffered more than I have at the hands of extremists. But I'm afraid that doesn't mean he gets to vote more often than me in the next election, and it doesn't mean that his voice should be listened to more than mine on the subject of legislative policy.

(assuming I wasn't asleep during the meeting when we decided to choose our law-makers by suicide-bomb-lottery rather than one-person-one-vote)

But I'm not calling for Rebekah Wade's resignation because of her piss-poor understanding of representative democracy. You'd have thought her incredible ignorance on this issue would be a hindrance for someone editing a national newspaper, but that's really a matter for her employer.

And I'm not even calling for her resignation because of the decision to exploit the suffering of an individual to further a political agenda. That - after all - is one of the primary functions of The Sun. It's the sort of unethical and objectionable behaviour that should merit resignation of course. But Rebekah Wade works for a tabloid... objectionability and a total lack of ethics is a job requirement.

No. The reason Rebekah Wade needs to resign is this.

When Tuesday's Sun featured one of the iconic images from 7/7 alongside the headline 'Tell Tony He's Right', the implication was clear: the victim backed the PM's tough anti-terror measures. There was just one problem: John Tulloch doesn't. In fact, [...] he is angrier with the politicians than the bombers.

You see, it appears that The Sun ran that front-page image without consulting the person pictured in it. Not only that, they have clearly misrepresented him in a manner that I'm shocked is not actually criminal.

This is using my image to push through draconian and utterly unnecessary terrorism legislation. It's incredibly ironic that The Sun's rhetoric is as the voice of the people yet they don't actually ask the people involved, the victims, what they think. If you want to use my image, the words coming out of my mouth would be, "Not in my name, Tony". I haven't read anything or seen anything in the past few months to convince me these laws are necessary.

Another music post

2005-11-10T00:23:00.000Z

Don't worry, I'm not about to bang on about artists selling their music to advertisers so that they (the advertisers) can better manipulate us. I have a long piece about that (less about the Eno thing / more about the general principle) in the works. Hopefully it'll be finished soon.

No, this is a much more benign (some might even say "throwaway") post. I was recently asked by an acquaintance how many songs were on my mp3 player. She's a lovely person but she isn't a music geek, so when I responded with "probably about 6,000 or so... if you assume an average of 8 tracks per album" she was somewhat flabbergasted.

She told me that her music collection comprised roughly 25 CDs. Most of them "best of" collections from bands I wouldn't piss on if they were on fire. Still, if people wish to travel through life surrounded by bad artists (or worse... "musical entertainers") then so be it.

But this person was clearly intrigued by someone whose mp3 player alone (i.e. not my entire music collection) currently contains about 700 albums. When did I have time to listen to all this music? Have I actually heard every one of the 6,000 songs? How long would it take to listen through every album, single and EP in my collection? And importantly... which ones were the best? Which ones did I listen to most often? Which ones did I never listen to?

I answered all of her questions, and will do so again for the benefit of my poor beleaguered reader.

When did I have time to listen to all this music?
I have music playing almost constantly. And I probably spend a good two hours every day devoting my full attention to it. I think I'd probably go a bit mad if I didn't (or at least "madder"). Losing myself in music is kind of like sleeping, in that I start to get a bit frayed around the edges if I don't do it for a few days.

Have I actually heard every one of the 6,000 songs?
To the best of my knowledge; yes. Though it's probable that I've heard a small minority no more than once. I've been assured, for instance, that William Shatner's recent album, "Has Been", is a worthy and surprisingly beautiful album. Maybe one day I'll give it another chance...

How long would it take to listen through every album, single and EP in my collection?
Well, bearing in mind the amount of vinyl and cassettes that remain as yet undigitised, I can really only tell - with any degree of accuracy - how long it would take to listen to the stuff already ripped and whose ones and zeroes are neatly filed on my hard-drive. And the answer to that is "a shade under three weeks".

Which ones were the best?
Well, I didn't answer this directly. Instead I suggested ten albums which she should add to her collection and which would provide a window on the world of good music (I wasn't quite that patronising in person of course). These are the ten albums that no person should ever be without. Albums which should be at the heart of any music collection and which mark a person out as a person of discerning taste, impeccible intelligence and staggering good looks...

1. The White Album - The Beatles.
2. Astral Weeks - Van Morrison.
3. Sign 'O' The Times - Prince.
4. Horses - Patti Smith.
5. Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys.
6. Low - David Bowie.
7. Ambient 4: On Land - Brian Eno.
8. Vespertine - Björk.
9. Remain In Light - Talking Heads.
10. Closer - Joy Division.

Now, naturally no list of ten can possibly be exhaustive. Indeed, the above list barely scratches the surface. But with those ten in your collection, a person can hold their head high and point out that they have some damn fine music for almost any occasion or mood.

Which ones did I listen to most often?
I took that to be a question about current listening habits, rather than a request to total up all the hours listening to Another Green World and establishing whether there's more of them than there are hours spent listening to Disintegration. And right now, the ten albums I've got on heaviest rotation are:

1. Faith (remastered edition) - The Cure.
2. Hatful of Hollow - The Smiths.
3. The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses.
4. You Are The Quarry - Morrissey.
5. Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury - Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.
6. Strangeways, Here We Come - The Smiths.
7. Graceland - Paul Simon.
8. Dub Plate Selection - Twilight Circus.
9. Lead Us Not Into Temptation - David Byrne.
10. Achtung Baby - U2.

Which ones did I never listen to?
Well, never say never. I scrolled through the albums on my mp3 player and listed ten that I hadn't listened to this year (except when a track has come on 'shuffle'). It's important to note that (with the possible exception of Item #5) all of these are fine albums...

1. Animals, Suns & Atoms - Tarwater.
2. Rite Now - Julian Cope.
3. Music for Prepared Piano Vol. 2 - John Cage.
4. The Madcap Laughs - Syd Barrett.
5. Gold - Prince.
6. Woman's Gotta Have It - Cornershop.
7. Live In Philadelphia - Atari Teenage Riot.
8. C'est Si Bon - Louis Armstrong.
9. National Hijinx - Journeyman.
10. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan.

Internment

2005-11-09T21:23:00.000Z

This afternoon the government of the United Kingdom tried to pass a law giving the police powers to detain people on suspicion of terrorism for 90 days without charge, trial or representation. Spearheaded by Tony Blair and his authoritarian chums in response to demands from "the police" (interestingly, I have heard high-ranking police officers claim that internment would be a disaster and would make community-based intelligence gathering next to impossible... so when Tony Blair says "the police" it's wise to keep in mind that he means "those police I choose to listen to and who say roughly what I want them to say").

Of course, there are those who complain that this policy is not internment (in the Northern Irish sense) at all. "Look at the details of its implementation!" they cry, as though the people alienated by this policy - the very people the police are trying to woo as part of their intelligence gathering - will be interested in the minor procedural differences between "being locked up without charge or representation for 90 days" and "internment".

Internment proved so good at recruiting disaffected people into extremist organisations in Northern Ireland, that one can only assume Tony Blair is actively seeking to increase the number of terrorists in this country. The theory must be that more terrorists means more arrests, and so makes the police look better. Hence why "the police" want this law so much I guess.

That more terrorists may also mean more carnage on our public transport is clearly not worrying Blair or his minions who only use buses or the tube for photo-ops when they want to seem like they're doing something for the non-chauffeur-driven plebs.

Over at a blog called Harry's Place, a commentator called "brownie" has explained just why we need those 90 days of internment. Actually, no they haven't. Brain-dead brownie, in the piece entitled "Uncivil liberties", has instead merely trotted out sub-Daily Mail wankery, irrational prejudice and deeply flawed reasoning in a demonstration of intellectual paucity unrivalled since Oliver Kamm's recent book (which I haven't read, but the man's an oaf so I'm comfortable with my prejudice).

However, as I'm feeling in a particularly foul mood, let's have a closer look at brownie's "reasoning" and allow it to unravel before our eyes. We begin with the classic tabloid tactic of demanding new laws based upon whatever shocking hypothesis the writer chooses to invent.

So the next atrocity occurs and it transpires that all three perpetrators were known to the security services and had in fact been in police custody some weeks earlier, only to be released before charges could be brought. Police had indicated that insufficient time was available to collate data they were in the process of extracting from the hard disks of several computers. Incriminating documents that had recently come to light in another EU country had also yet to be delivered by the relevant authorities when the 14-day detention period expired.

There's no evidence at all that any of the bombers that struck London were ever investigated by the police, let alone arrested and held for any period of time. This bears repeating... the extension of the current internment period from 14 to 90 days would have had precisely zero impact on any recent terrorist acts that occurred in the real world (as opposed to the imagination of fevered authoritarians). There are reports that one of the bombers was "known to the police". This is rather vague, and is only relevant if the police are also expecting to be granted powers to detain everyone they know for 90 days.

Brownie's point, above, invents a specific danger that might be alleviated by the imposition of a 90-day period. But let's imagine that the 90-day thing had passed through the House of Commons and was now law. Let me restate brownie's opening paragraph as an argument against that 90 day period...

So the next atrocity occurs and it transpires that all three perpetrators were known to the security services and had in fact been in police custody some weeks earlier, only to be released before charges could be brought. Police had indicated that insufficient time was available to collate data they were in the process of extracting from the hard disks of several computers. Incriminating documents that had recently come to light in another EU country had also yet to be delivered by the relevant authorities when the 90-day detention period expired.

See? It turns out we actually need more than 90 days. In fact I have no problem imagining a scenario where the police would require powers to lock up suspects for 5 years without trial. Y'know... so long as we're using imagination as the basis for important legislation.

Brownie continues with the convenient fiction...

The Independent newspaper devotes 12 page of copy to a system process failure that has left 50 people dead and scores of families missing a father, mother, son or daughter. The Prime Minister, a stalwart defender of civil liberties who ignored the advice of the security services and police chiefs to permit suspects to be held without trial for a maximum 90 days, even with the safety net of continuous 7-day judicial review and an annual sunset clause, is forced to resign amid opposition claims that he has "blood on his hands".

Just so you get the point, by the way, let's restate the above paragraph...

The Independent newspaper devotes 12 page of copy to a system process failure that has left 50 people dead and scores of families missing a father, mother, son or daughter. The Prime Minister, a stalwart defender of civil liberties who ignored the advice of the security services and police chiefs to permit suspects to be held without trial for a maximum 1,825 days, even with the safety net of continuous 7-day judicial review and an annual sunset clause, is forced to resign amid opposition claims that he has "blood on his hands".

"Ah, but hang on", you say, "the police aren't asking for five years... they only want 90 days". And that's true. But when 90 days doesn't stop the next attack (bearing in mind it wouldn't have stopped the last one) then who knows what the police will ask for?

Which brings me conveniently to the important point. "The police" are not asking for 90-days. "The police Blair's listening to" are asking for it. Some others may be asking for 42 days, or 28 days, or 5 years. But listen; even if all of them... every single person wearing a police uniform... agreed that 90 days was required, so what?

The police do not make the laws. They enforce those laws that we, the people, believe are required. They work for us and they do what we tell them to do. They do not tell us what powers they should have. We grant them such powers as we choose to grant. If they cannot fulfill their duty using their existing powers, then I suggest we fire them and hire some who can.

To repeat: internment for 90 days without charge would not have prevented the July bombings in London. These extra powers are being requested based upon hypothetical scenarios. And the fact is; I don't trust the police. Sorry, but there you have it. I trust them slightly more than soldiers and slightly less than drug-dealers. So when they tell me that they want additional powers to detain people without charge, I'm naturally sceptical.

"Show me evidence", is my natural response, "that these powers will make me safer, and will not merely make you more powerful and the rest of us less so". No such evidence exists. And giving additional powers to the police based upon the stated desires of those officers favoured by Tony Blair, as opposed to actual evidence, is a shoddy way to draw up legislation.

Brownie continues the demand for more powers with the classic tabloid trick of holding a tragic image under our noses and claiming that means whatever they say it does. In this case, we have poor Mrs. Johnson...

Mrs. Johnson, newly widowed and childless after her family was wiped out en route to football match, is asked by Jon Snow of Channel 4 news about striking the right balance between preservation of civil liberties and defence of the realm and its citizens.

Except she isn't, because such questions posed in the aftermath of yet another atrocity, directed at a grieving relatives, just sound like so much offensive, platitudinous hogwash.

Of course she isn't asked those questions! Not only doesn't she exist (which makes asking her anything at all very difficult), but if she did exist it would be insensitive in the extreme to discuss her recent loss in the abstract terms of national legislative policy.

But, and let's be clear on this; that does not mean that national policy on issues such as terrorism-prevention and civil-liberties should be set by the families of dead victims. Perhaps it is brownie's intention to hand over the running of our country to policemen and grieving parents, but it's not something I want to see. Imaginary Mrs. Johnson doesn't get to pass laws for the rest of us just because her family was murdered. She has no more right to lay down the rules of society than do the police.

France burns

2005-11-08T12:23:00.000Z

Could someone explain what the hell is going on in France? I stop watching the news for a few days (figured I could do with a short break) and return to discover that France is being burnt down. It's all very strange.

One theory I've heard is that the recent deaths by electrocution of two Moslem teenagers from a socially deprived background have been like a spark to a pre-existing powderkeg of seething resentment and social alienation. Some people believe the police are responsible for the tragic deaths, and emotions that had been steadily building over a long period have finally erupted.

The response from the government has been draconian (instigating curfews and rounding up hundreds of people each night), insensitive and massively divisive (comments from the Interior Minister seemed to imply that anyone who sympathised with the stated reasons for the violence... even if not condoning the violence itself... were apologists for, and no better than, thugs and extremists). This has provoked an escalation in the violence.

Another theory is that the terrible deaths of the teenagers was the last thing the police wanted. Yes, they were pursuing the kids in response to an alleged crime. But the decision by the teenagers to hide in an electricity substation was completely outside the control of the police and had nothing to do with race, religion or social class. A tiny minority within the poorer communities... agitators, thugs and perhaps something even more sinister... have leapt upon this terrible accident and are ruthlessly exploiting it to forward an extremist agenda.

The deaths of those teenagers wasn't part of some great social exclusionary principle, but just plain bad luck. And while there's no question that inequity within society and racial and religious tension all need to be urgently addressed, the rioters are deliberately exacerbating the situation and dragging France further away from any kind of solution, not towards one.

Both of those theories (rough, ready and incomplete though they are) can adequately explain the events in France during the past two weeks. But neither of them really satisfy me. I think there's something going on that's being missed or ignored in the media.

My theory (also known as "The Truth") is that French automobile manufacturers and importers are secretly distributing flyers in the poorer parts of France promising a "bounty" on each car torched. In an era when high oil prices are making car ownership more expensive, people are far more likely to delay replacing their cars. A high oil price might mean record profits for oil companies, but it hits the automakers hard.

And of course, in these times of social inequity and increasing economic hardship within some French communities, there will always be a ready supply of unemployed young men who see no future. And they can be easily recruited as agents of the car industry to artificially raise demand for their product.

Think about it.

Still little to say

2005-10-27T17:23:00.000+01:00

Well you can't say you weren't warned. The days pass and still I'm bereft of inspiration. Adrift on an ocean of something-or-other.

The world keeps turning. Hurtling towards all manner of very scary and inconveniently scheduled disasters. But the seething rage that best inspires polemical wittering (sometimes known, quaintly, as "political blogging") is currently absent without leave as I suffer a bout of post-Catholic Understanding.

The rage did flare briefly with the Brian Eno thing, which frankly I still find appalling... there's just no need for it. But that was merely a spark as the capitalist breeze blew across some banked-down coals. Lately I've found myself watching Question Time, and where I should be filling with the fire of righteous retribution and storming the Houses of Parliament baying for "the head of Tony Blair" or demanding that "the streets run red with the blood of our leaders" (the normal, rational and perfectly justifiable response to modern politics) I instead succumb to an involuntary attack of empathy.

Is it not possible, I wonder, that our leaders may actually be fools and fuck-ups instead of evil scum? We're all just a bunch of cursed monkeys after all... maybe there's just no other way for it to go down. The fuck-ups at the top are just as trapped in a system programmed to self-destruct as those right at the bottom. And in return for their material comforts they'll be forced to watch in horror as they're blamed for the whole mess.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
- Albert Einstein

The world is going to hell in a handbasket. War, famine, pestilence and death are riding their monstrous steeds roughshod over the face of our battered planet. Earthquakes that "wipe out a generation", hurricanes that rip the beating heart from the most powerful nation on earth and tsunamis that obliterate the coastline of half a continent. Tsunamis for crying out loud! Tell you what... if I was living next to a volcano, I'd be feeling pretty damn twitchy right about now.

Most of this stuff is avoidable though... those four horsemen are only metaphors for human failing and not the literal and physical embodiment of the apocalypse as a certain US president would have you believe. No, I don't mean the tsunamis and hurricanes are crafted by human hand (though, with a greater danger of climate-change-related sea-level rises, it probably makes sense for us to begin the methodical evacuation of particularly vulnerable areas). But the famine and the war and the pestilence are - theoretically at least - within the power of humanity to control and eliminate. The fact that we are not, and are not likely to do so, can be primarily attributed to a crisis of leadership.

But this crisis of leadership is itself a product of modern political culture. Our combination of neo-liberal consumerism and representative democracy has created a society that is pathologically short-termist. It is to Tony Blair's credit (and it's not often you'll find me opening a sentence with those words) that he recognises and publicly acknowledges this fact. Earlier this year, in a speech to the World Economic Forum on the subject of climate change, Blair stated:

if we put forward, as a solution to climate change, something which involves drastic cuts in growth or standards of living, it matters not how justified it is, it simply won't be agreed to.
- Tony Blair (27/01/2005)

And he recently reiterated this in a speech to a conference in New York (organised by Bill Clinton) on the subject of "global challenges" when he pointed out:

The truth is, no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem.
- Tony Blair (25/09/2005)

Blair accepts that climate change is one of the most important (if not the most important) of the global challenges facing us today. This is a view echoed by the overwhelming majority of climate scientists and informed commentators. Mind you, the author of Jurassic Park and Congo thinks otherwise, as do numerous pro-fossil fuel, oil-company-financed lobbying groups... so it would be wrong to imply a complete consensus of opinion.

But, ignoring the silly paranoia of writers of bad fiction and those with a vested financial interest in selling as much fossil fuel as possible; everyone agrees that we need to address the issue of anthropogenic climate change in some fashion. There are - broadly speaking - two approaches to addressing the issue.

Approach #1: Efforts are begun right now to massively reduce our carbon emissions. This would not be done in cases where such reduction would actively endanger human life. However, while we would clearly seek to minimise economic disruption where possible; the fate of the planet will be considered a higher priority than present economic growth. Therefore, until a practical alternative to this course of action is demonstrated, economic growth will be sacrificed in order to minimise the danger that anthropogenic climate change poses to future generations.

Approach #2: We continue roughly as we have done. Obviously the gratuitous addition of carbon to the atmosphere will be discouraged (using market forces, not political intervention) but individuals and companies will remain free to burn fossil fuels if they can afford to do so. However, economic incentives will be introduced to encourage cleaner technologies and alternative methods of dealing with waste carbon.

The first of these (active intervention to reduce carbon emissions) requires sacrifice on the part of the wealthy nations and is primarily a decision based upon ethics. We decide that our immediate wealth and personal gratification are less important, from a moral perspective, than the well-being of generations as yet unborn. This in turn can only be secured by strong political leadership, and given that type of leadership... someone who can demonstrate the value of making this economic sacrifice... then Approach #1 has a high chance of reducing human impact on the climate as well as setting us upon the road to a more sustainable future.

The second of these, however, requires neither sacrifice nor strong political leadership. It assumes that carbon emissions can be reduced while maintaining economic growth. It assumes that someone else will deal with the problem at some point in the future and aims to place market mechanisms in place to increase the likelihood of this occurring. So there is simply no way - barring the invention of a time machine - to assess the chances that Approach #2 has of reducing human impact on the climate. It is a matter of faith.

The two statements made by Blair must therefore be viewed as an acknowledgement that he is incapable of providing the political leadership required to implement Approach #1. That despite his belief that climate change is a very serious issue, he will nonetheless choose Approach #2 - placing the safety of future generations (his own children) - in the hands of an act of faith.

Which should inspire at least enough ire to warrant a lambasting, right? Except it doesn't. At least not right now (though these bouts of serene acceptance rarely last very long). Right now it seems to me that Blair's attitude towards Climate Change, and his statements on the issue, are no more than confirmation of that dark truth spoken by Einstein.

Sell out

2005-10-19T00:23:00.000+01:00

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Fuck it all.

You think you've grown as cynical and jaded about famous artists as is possible to get. But every now and then, something comes along that reveals a small, shining glimmer of idealism still remains. And then that something stamps it into the ground with a dirty great boot.

Brian Eno was one of the artists I felt had genuine integrity. I've met the man a couple of times and - along with his book (A Year With Swollen Appendices) and various interviews - that was my overwhelming impression of him.... intelligent and honourable. A man of integrity. And I respected him hugely for that. Quite aside from the fact that he made some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard.

Sadly my respect for the man was dealt a potentially fatal blow a few moments ago when I switched on the TV and saw he'd taken on a new job. He's now a corporate salesman for a large telecommunications firm.

One of the most beautiful albums ever recorded is Eno's Music For Airports. The haunting, fragile music has lulled me to sleep more often than I can possibly recall. It may well be the most-listened-to album in my collection for that very reason. It has coloured my dreams for many many years. But no longer, I'm afraid. The subtle colours of Music For Airports have been crudely painted over with a single gaudy shade of orange.

One viewing of that 30 second hard-sell has altered forever the opening piece on Music For Airports and by extension the album as a whole. Television can do that, you know. A visual medium has that power. And I'm damn certain that Eno is aware of that too. His past work clearly means very little to him if he's content to have it remembered as "that music from the Orange ad".

What's next I wonder? Shilling SUVs with Neroli? Or maybe he'll do a sales pitch for McDonalds? Nike and The Gap are always looking for new music to sell the products of their sweatshops... maybe he could give them something off his last album? Or perhaps dig into his back catalogue again... take another piece of music that was once worth something to some of us and reduce it to an advertising jingle for pensions.

Now, I'm certain that there are many people out there working in sales for Orange (or some other mobile phone company) who are decent people with integrity... trapped like the rest of us in this rat-race and making a living as best they can. But they haven't shat all over a piece of art; one that had real value in the eyes of many; in order to earn an extra bonus.

And even if he's donating his fee to charity (he's a patron of War Child after all) it's still a shoddy thing to do. Helping a global corporation sell more environmentally destructive tat to a population already saturated with consumer bullshit in the name of charity just doesn't cut it. Not when he could donate the proceeds of an album, or a year's worth of royalties, or whatever.

I mean, it's not like the man who produces U2 and David Bowie albums is short of a few quid... quite aside from the fact that he's had a successful recording career himself and - in the past - also produced highly successful albums for the likes of Talking Heads, James and many others. How much fucking money does one person need?

Sadly, I suspect I'll no longer drift off to sleep to the gorgeous strains of Music For Airports. The last thing I want, after all, is to have my dreams coloured by advertising jingles.

The universe is made of 'Frustration'

2005-10-07T13:23:00.000+01:00

Via Mark at Strange Attractor comes this wonderful short video of 91-year-old telescope-maker, John Dobson, and his theory that Frustration is the basis of the continued existence of the universe. You'll need Media Player to view it, but it's well-worth the download. Check it out here.

(there's nothing below the fold)

So what's up then?

2005-10-06T22:23:00.000+01:00

I know, I know; I've been incredibly slack (blog-wise) of late. There's two reasons for this... firstly - believe it or not - it looks like by the beginning of next week I'll have finally caught up with the notional schedule of mine that's been eluding my grasp since midsummer. The three projects I've been working on should have all their loose ends tied up by Monday (just in time for the start of another major project... this time for The Government, so I'd like to thank all you taxpayers for my Christmas paycheque). And a couple of other (non-work) things that have been consuming my time are starting to slack off too.

So in theory I'm ready to return to (semi-)regular blogging very soon. Leastways I would be if it wasn't for the second reason for my lack of blogging: a lack of inspiration.

I've got five or six half-written posts and a couple of almost-done articles. But nothing that makes me tingle. Nothing that makes me think "people need to read this". Don't get me wrong; they're as well-written as anything else I write... they all have that trademark mixture of intelligent analysis, inexplicable tangents and irreverence that my reader knows and loves. I don't have "writers block"... I just don't feel like I've got an awful lot to say right now.

When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed

Of course this blog isn't always about having something of great import to impart. But there's so much "serious" stuff happening in the world right now that it seems weird not to have anything to say about it. I mean, I could rattle on about the Tory Party's farcical leadership contest, or about nuLabor's suppression of dissent. I could analyse the many news stories about oil pricing and availability or I could discuss Iraq and the increasingly weird news surrounding that particular debacle.

And yes, of course I have stuff to say about all that... but it all seems so obvious and basically not-worth-listening-to.

So yeah, I'm going to try and get back to regular blogging, but you'll have to forgive me if I get a bit lightweight for a bit until I find my political inspiration again (expect blog memes, music posts, amusing links, tales of pot-induced silliness... that sort of thing). And in that spirit, allow me to unveil that old blogging stalwart...

The last 10 tracks to play on my media-player

Kathy's Song - Simon & Garfunkel
A dizzyingly beautiful song of love and loss. It always calls to mind an old girlfriend from many years ago whose name was not Kathy.

I Just Wasn't Made For These Times - The Beach Boys
This song - of course - is one I identify with personally. But you already knew that, right?

Marching Through The Wilderness (live) - David Byrne
Samba percussion and Byrne's exquisite guitar playing make this version of the Rei Momo classic a real joy to bop along to. "I'm marching through the wilderness / Crying out for tenderness / They call me Mr. Pitiful... but everything is wonderful"

Because (Anthology 3 version) - The Beatles
Ethereal and strange without the instrumentation... very lovely indeed.

Mutherfuker - Beck
Dirty and incoherent and nasty and fantastic. Turn up really loud! And remember... "EVERYONE'S OUT TO GET YOU MUTHERFUKER!"

Shine A Light (live) - Spiritualized
I go all the way back with Spiritualized. I can recall listening to their first single on a lot of acid back in uni and feeling tears well up in my eyes... "This music is too beautiful". "I know", replied Richard, also teary-eyed. I was actually at the gig that this was recorded at (Albert Hall, Oct 97). I was on silly amounts of hash-cake and was again moved to tears. Ain't music marvellous?

Happiness Is A Warm Gun - The Beatles
If I could only take one record to a desert island (what a horrible thought) it would almost certainly be The White Album. It's not necessarily the best album of all time but there's something on it for every single mood and I'm not sure I can think of another album like that.

Hidden Place - Björk
I'm finding Björk a bit difficult to listen to at the moment... there's an eroticism to much of her music that's become a little grating in these days of involuntary celibacy. Which is not to say that this isn't one of the most gorgeous pieces of music you're ever likely to hear.

Beats Around The Bush - norlonto audio department soundsystem
Ummm... this is one of my own. Dubya Bush cut-ups over the top of electronic beats. "America will accept no law of morality and will have no limits to our violent ambitions"

The Diver - Stina Nordenstam
This track has a harder edge, musically speaking, than most of Stina's stuff, though lyrically it's not nearly as dark as many of her songs. "Look up, don't look down / Now's the time / Don't look down / Look up, face the sun / Breathe and climb / Don't look down / Love is hard to get / But don't give in / Not now not yet"

Thinking out loud

2005-09-27T15:23:00.000+01:00

It's possible I was abducted by aliens last night.

Well, it's one of my theories. It goes a bit like this... I was kidnapped by aliens for reasons I cannot yet fathom and whisked across the universe at impossible speeds to a planet almost identical to my own. In fact, it's so much like my old planet that I almost didn't notice anything was different. But then I checked the BBC News website. And although I'd be the first to acknowledge that our political leaders are mad as baked batshit on the planet where I'm from, none of them would propose anything quite as mad as your Charles Clarke did today.

Did he really say what I think he said?

I've decided to start taking screengrabs of BBC news items, rather than link to them. This is purely down to the BBC's policy of re-editing live stories without providing an archive of the previous versions. Twice now I've found myself citing facts reported by the BBC which then just disappeared from the article in question. This obviously makes the BBC next to useless as even a short-term reference source until they sort out this problem.

Of course there's a very serious problem with posting screen-shots of a news story. You have no way of knowing for sure whether or not I've altered the image in some way prior to posting it here. You can check it against the actual story if I provide a link, but if the whole point of my posting a screen-shot is the BBC's tendency to alter their stories on the fly (which I have no problem with) without providing a permanent archive of each published version (which I have a big problem with), then how can you possibly be sure that any discrepancy between my version and the "current version" isn't a result of the BBC's editorial policy?

Naturally this water is further muddied by the fact that I have in the past photoshopped screengrabs for comedy effect and will doubtlessly do so again. It's up to you, dear reader, to distinguish the two.

I have faith that you'll make the right choices.

Which is not something I'd have said about Dubya Bush until recently, and probably still won't, but he made a pretty intriguing announcement yesterday which I believe bears examining (that's a New York Times link by the way, which needs a login)... I'll reproduce the opening paragraphs below and you'll just have to trust me on them, OK?

With fears mounting that high energy costs will crimp economic growth, President Bush called on Americans yesterday to conserve gasoline by driving less. He also issued a directive for all federal agencies to cut their own energy use and to encourage employees to use public transportation.

"We can all pitch in," Mr. Bush said. "People just need to recognize that the storms have caused disruption," he added, and that if Americans are able to avoid going "on a trip that's not essential, that would be helpful."

Mr. Bush promised to dip further into the government's petroleum reserve, if necessary, and to continue relaxing environmental and transportation rules in an effort to get more gasoline flowing.

- President Calls for Less Driving to Conserve Gas
New York Times (September 27, 2005)

Hmmmm... even though it's couched very much in "temporary / brief time of emergency" terms, Bush's comments seem rather foreboding. For Dubya, of all presidents, to suggest that Americans should begin taking fuel conservation measures is quite startling in my view.

Haaaaang on a second... I really was abducted by aliens, wasn't I? The Dubya Bush on my planet would never say that.

In 2001, [...] Ari Fleischer, then Mr. Bush's press secretary, responded to a question about reducing American energy consumption by saying "that's a big no."

"The president believes that it's an American way of life," Mr. Fleischer said.

Can Katrina and Rita really have dealt such a savage blow to Bush's "American way of life"? I suggest people have a gander at George Monbiot's column in today's Guardian (It's better to cry wolf now than to wait until the oil has run out). To be honest, it covers a lot of the same ground as I covered on this blog and elsewhere (so my loyal regular reader can expect to feel well-informed whilst reading it) but it's written with Monbiot's usual clarity and straight-to-the-pointedness (i.e. you'll not have to deal with quite so many made-up compound words if you get the info from him) and is well worth a read.

I've been writing on the subject of peak oil for approaching eight years, and while I can't speak for others like me, I can assure you that I don't feel any great sense of vindication to finally see the issue enter popular consciousness. If anything, the gradual appearance of the phrase "peak oil" in the mainstream media has brought with it an eerie sense of dislocation. Watching people thinking the thoughts that horrified and scared me 6 years ago is unlikely to be a barrel of laughs from my perspective. And the more real the problem becomes, the less I feel like talking about it. It doesn't feel like I'm warning people against a possible future any more, so much as being the bearer of bad news.

Incidentally, my web-stats show a major spike in traffic coming through the article published on Head Heritage over the past couple of days. Has it been referenced somewhere new? I can't help but be a little interested in who chooses to cite me (either as a reference or a cautionary example).

Way back when talk on the internet consisted of Usenet newsgroups, I wrote a piece about drug law reform which took a much more libertarian philosophical stance than I might do today. The piece was then forwarded to a far right newsgroup - perfectly legitimately, I stress (crossposting, particularly without permission, is frowned upon... but it happens an awful lot and is actually one of the dynamics that made Usenet so interesting until it got drowned in spam).

But in this instance I suddenly got a barrage of hatemail from people who clearly sent nasty messages to anyone who might post a prominent article on an extremist newgroup. Interestingly they were all, without exception, profoundly apologetic when I responded and explained the situation, and all admitted to not having read my article.

I've no idea why I wandered into that particular anecdote. Please don't assume that I was making some point about giving articles on extremist rightwing hate sites more consideration than you normally would (though I guess it wouldn't hurt to actually read an article prior to hatemailing the author).

Anyways, given the possibility that western civilisation may not have long left, I'll finish by urging you to check out Serenity sooner rather than later. This film from film-and-TV-making genius Joss Whedon will probably be a bit more enjoyable to fans of his cruelly-cancelled and unfinished Firefly TV series, but I'm confident it'll still rock like a bag of bastids to those of you coming to it new. Go see this film. It'll be great.

Minister for Energy

2005-09-25T18:23:00.000+01:00

A new shadow cabinet has recently been coaxed out of the blogosphere over at Devil's Kitchen. A group of bloggers (I propose "blather" as the collective noun for bloggers)... a blather of bloggers have each been assigned a government department and asked to propose policies. I requested - and was given - the energy portfolio; at which point I immediately went on holiday and left my department rudderless; scurrying around like a headless chicken and making a nuisance of itself.

I feel confident, therefore, that I can at least claim the prize for most true-to-life performance as a government minister.

Unfortunately for the rest of the cabinet, I've returned from holiday with some rather radical policies. The likelihood of them being adopted by the PM is precisely zero, but I'm still going to use my brief appointment to the front bench as a platform from which to push for a genuinely sustainable energy infrastructure.

Proposal #1: The immediate nationalisation of the energy industry.

The government shall levy a windfall tax on all companies deemed to be part of the essential national energy infrastructure (a list of companies to be drawn up by the Department but likely to include power generation companies; oil, gas and coal exploration and production companies; national fuel distributors and retailers, etc.). The windfall tax will equal - in all cases - the physical and cash assets of that company. The government may elect, at its discretion, to also take on any debts owed by the company which the government believes are in the public interest to honour.

This programme of nationalisation will be a necessary first step towards streamlining and restructuring the energy supply infrastructure.

Proposal #2: Implementing a phased rationing of fossil fuel resources and derived products.

This policy; which will include controls over both raw resources and end products; will be tailored towards achieving specific social goals which will themselves lead towards energy resource self-sufficiency and sustainability. As these goals will include the phasing out of private car use within two years, I suspect my colleagues in the department of transport will go apeshit when they hear the details of this policy.

Proposal #3: Education, training and incentives for individuals, regions and organisations to achieve energy self-sufficieny and sustainability.

The ultimate aim of Proposal #1 is the creation of a national public energy system. In the long-term however, this national system is designed as a back-up to regional self-sufficiency. Towards this aim, the government will help co-ordinate the skills and resources (plus provide strategic infrastructure and planning) for this policy of regional and local self-sufficiency in energy.

Question Time (episode 1)

2005-09-25T14:23:00.000+01:00

British politics got back from holidays this week. And although parliament itself is still out for summer; taking advantage of the off-peak holiday deals; the politicians and pundits are back doing their thing. This was heralded by two events in particular... the Liberal Democrat Annual Party Conference and the return of BBC television's Question Time.

Of course the LibDem conference was competing for column inches with some massive news stories. A second hurricane, as powerful as the one which only a couple of weeks ago so effectively ripped apart the fabric of modern America, was bearing down on the Gulf coast. Oil prices were through the roof and Matt Simmons appeared on Channel 4 News warning that "Winter demand for crude oil may outstrip supply by 2 to 5 million barrels per day". That's a recipe for social and economic chaos. Upon which subject... in Iraq, UK Special Forces were arrested by local police and then sprung from prison by the British army. Oh, and let's not forget that a supermodel might have taken some recreational drugs.

The LibDems never stood a chance.

Which can only be a good thing from the LibDems perspective. As I'm sure anyone who noticed what happened in Blackpool would agree. The conference was initially billed as "A Celebration" of the wonderful results achieved by Charles Kennedy's LibDems at the election. 6 months ago.

Look Charles, you came third. OK? Bronze medal. Third fricking place. What's with the celebration? Seriously.... think back to school, and think about the kid who came third in the 500m inter-school backstroke. I was that kid, so I know whereof I speak. That kid does not prance around like an arse with his bronze medal, holding it aloft for all to see. That kid takes the bronze medal, hides it away, broods for a month and decides to give up competitive sports completely and smoke pot and listen to music instead.

OK. So maybe that's a bit specific.

But you get my drift. I guess the other productive option would be to get pissed off at putting in all that effort and still only coming third. You'd use that frustration and anger to get yourself focussed and examine exactly what went wrong, and you'd vow to train harder and better so that next time you'd win.

But if you're that kid and you are genuinely celebrating your bronze medal... well, it's because some part of you knows that's the best you're capable of. And either you're oblivious to the condescension of those cheering you on, or they too feel third place is worthy of celebration in British politics.

It wasn't enough that they were celebrating their poor showing at the polls (no third party in this country has any cause to celebrate until they are no longer referred to as "the third party"). But they were trying to celebrate while simultaneously having a leadership challenge! Except they weren't really. That was just a bit of high-jinks and giggles by bored journos sat in Blackpool watching a third party celebrate a small reduction in the amount by which it loses.

I'd like to be able to segue into the second of this week's political events with the line; "Unlike the LibDems Conference, however, the first in a new season of Question Time saw the return of genuinely informed political debate". But that statement would be ludicrous in principle. We live in the age of political soundbite... repressive legislation is soon to be introduced that will mean that - by law - the phrase 'informed political debate' must always have '[archaic]' in italics after it when used written English; and must be followed by a satirical "m'Lord" or "m'Lady" when spoken.

But even accepting the narrow constraints of the hour-long stream-of-soundbite format, this was as lacklustre a Question Time as I can recall.

For overseas readers: Question Time is a political TV show. A panel of guests sit before a studio audience of a couple of hundred. The panel usually comprises one member of each major party plus a couple of other guests - journalists or cultural figures (for example, one of this week's guests was a playwright and one was a hack from spiteful tabloid; The Daily Mail). The discussion is chaired by the amiable David Dimbleby and is prompted by questions from the studio audience. It's an interesting show as it provides time every week for the public to demand answers to their questions from those they have elected. Prior to the last general election, each of the three party leaders appeared before a Question Time audience. It was the closest they got to a head-to-head debate.

I was going to write a little about how the various parties responded to the questions asked of them. But they were all so unlikeable that I can't be arsed (with the exception of the playwright who wasn't unlikeable, but wasn't hugely insightful either). I couldn't help imagining a person who succeeded in smuggling a custard pie into the studio... they'd be physically paralysed, shocked into inaction, by the impossibility of having to choose between David Miliband and Theresa May. They each so perfectly represent all that is unlikeable about their respective parties.

So fuck 'em. Instead I'll answer the questions posed by the studio audience...

Q. Prior to the Iraq war, Saddam Hussein warned that the soles of the feet of his enemies would burn. Given the spectacle on Monday, is it time we pulled our troops out?

Yes it is time. Though nothing to do, specifically, with the pictures on Monday (of British servicemen on fire). That is after all what happens when you send soldiers overseas to fight wars. Some of them end up on fire. If it took Monday's pictures to make you think "haaaaang on a second... you mean people are getting burnt out there?" then can I humbly request that you seek voluntary sterilisation? The world has plenty of people already. It doesn't need your kids.

Fact is, people have been on fire plenty of times in Iraq lately. They rarely did it wearing a British uniform while appearing live on TV, but if those details are really your primary concern then you should be deeply ashamed of yourself.

People have been burning out there because of our policies for quite a while now. That's one of the many compelling reasons for the US/UK to pull out their troops. Neither the nationality nor the notoriety of the burn victim should factor into what is essentially an ethical decision.

Q. Does the panel agree with Trevor Phillips' comment that Britain is "sleepwalking" into a kind of segregation that so disfigured New Orleans?

I have no idea to be honest.

It seems unlikely to me that race-relations in Britain would develop along similar lines to America. I've lived in both places and they're very different cultures. Race exists within separate historical contexts. But as I said, I don't know enough about this subject to agree or disagree with Trevor Phillips.

Q. Does the panel think that role models should behave impeccably?

This is actually a question about the Kate Moss non-story, and I really don't want to add any more internet chatter to this topic. Except to ask, in an incredulous voice, "role model?"

Q. Is the apparent U-turn on council tax a genuine response to the need for further assessment or a cynical political move?

Couldn't care less. The whole system of government finance should be ditched and replaced. However, this should be accompanied by a programme of nationalising essential industries and resources; as well as a massive public consultation on the issue of sustainability.

So you can see why I might not be all that interested in decisions about tweaking the numbers in an existing local taxation system. "Actually Carruthers, I think that deck-chair would look far better next to the large chunk of iceberg over there"

Q. Should Charles Kennedy lead the Lib Dems into the next election?

The tories will win the next election. Labour will be defeated by a significant margin but the LibDems will still come a distant third. I suspect this outcome is guaranteed no matter who runs the third party.

See what I mean about it being a lacklustre Question Time? Add to that the overwhelming unlikeability of Miliband and May, plus the general silliness of the audience participation, and it wasn't a very good advertisement for British democracy.

Fingers crossed for next week.

Silly hurricane season

2005-09-22T16:23:00.000+01:00

Well my short break in Ireland is over, but for all manner of reasons it failed to contain nearly as much cliff-top tranquility as I'd hoped.

There's always next time.

Mind you, with the exception of a few hours of Irish talk-radio (which was excellent) I managed to completely avoid the media for the best part of a week. That alone is tranquility of a sort. And it only took the briefest of glances at the world headlines upon my return to tell me that a few hours of local talk-radio per week is a far saner media-lens through which to view the world.

... and the decision of the editors is final.

There's more writing being done about the fact that a supermodel is a bit of a cokehead, than is being done about Sony slashing it's workforce by 10,000; and about the extradition of one of the failed London bombers; and about a new study on tobacco; and about a copyright dispute with potentially massive repercussions; combined.

To repeat: A supermodel is taking cocaine.

I could easily add to the sorry clamour over this story of staggering obviousness. My tactic naturally, would be to get all meta about it. Justify my own involvement in the spectacle with claims of objectivity. Why not delve into that pop-psychoanalytical goldmine, get all riled-up about mediation and use a phrase like "the inevitability of self-destruction within a fundamentally mediated personality"? I might even get to cite Irigaray...

The use, consumption, and circulation of the sexualised bodies [of women] underwrite the organisation and the reproduction of the social order, in which they have never taken part as 'subjects'.
- Luce Irigaray
The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine

And it's not often you get an opportunity to do that.

But while I find the whole thing eerie in scale, I find the actual details of supermodel drug-binges to be like most cokeheads... tedious and a bit crap. So onto something a tad more important

It was very strange to arrive back from a week or so of media-blackout and discover that the US Gulf Coast was about to be hit by a hurricane even more powerful than Katrina. I'm not going to bang on about global warming and the possibilities that these events may be becoming more severe as a result of human activity. But I would say this... even if we're not going to do anything about it (as Tony Blair pointed out when he said "if we put forward, as a solution to climate change, something which involves drastic cuts in growth or standards of living, it matters not how justified it is, it simply won’t be agreed to"), we're complete idiots if we don't at least take onboard the very real possibility that this is occurring and start factoring it into our planning.

As an example: New Orleans should not be rebuilt.

Imagine the psychological significance of a live televised speech by Dubya Bush announcing that as great a land as America is, even we must accept the limits of nature's bounty and help protect that which has been given into our care by God. The natural world is ever-changing. Some say this change is being wrought by human hands. Others disagree. One thing we all agree upon however is that a change is indeed underway. The resources to reclaim, rebuild and then protect New Orleans on an ongoing basis can be far better spent by constructing new housing for the inhabitants elsewhere and recompensing those who have lost their livelihoods. We can no longer guarantee levees against ever more powerful storms, so it makes little sense to expend time and resources building homes in the shadows of those levees...

Hell, the speech practically writes itself!

Why don't I think it'll be delivered though? While I was away, the news that the London bombers carried out a so-called self-styled "dry run" before they actually committed the horrific murders also broke. It's a story with all the obviousness of "Supermodel indulges in recreational drug use" and apparently worthy of almost as much coverage.

My particular fascination, however, is with "anti-terrorist police chief Peter Clarke" and his use of language. He explains that the idea of "conducting a reconnaissance" is "part of terrorist mythology". What a curious choice of words. And I can't make up my mind whether it's predominantly "curious strange" or "curious sinister". With evil ideologies and terrorist mythologies abounding, you just can't be too careful these days.

Awaaaaay

2005-09-15T18:23:00.000+01:00

I'm in West Cork until Tuesday and the steam-powered dial-up connection isn't conducive to lengthy blogging. Nor is the fact that I can spend the day sitting on a clifftop watching the ocean rather than sitting on a broken office chair watching google news.

Even the lack of pot isn't an issue when you have air this fresh and a view this glorious.

I might get round to posting something else while I'm here, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you... chances are you won't hear from me until next Tuesday.

Stay groovy.

Press Release, Owl Farm 31/05/1990

2005-09-14T14:23:00.000+01:00

Last night I was searching for a particular piece by Hunter S. Thompson and was horrified to discover that it currently exists only in the google-cache of a geocities website (as well as in Songs of The Doomed of course). In order to keep this wonderful piece alive, I've decided to reproduce it here... it's a press release written by Thompson after he was acquitted on various charges.

WOODY CREEK, COLO., May 31, 1990 - Famed Gonzo journalist Dr. Hunter S. Thompson waves to a frenzied mob of his "supporters" at yesterday's press conference on the steps of the Pitkin County Courthouse... where all charges on Sex, Drugs, Bombs, and Violence crimes against The Doctor were Dismissed Without Prejudice by District Court Judge Charles Buss, who called Thompson "a perfect gentleman" and excoriated the District Attorney for Negligence, Malfeasance, and Criminal Abuse of Police Power. Spectators applauded as Dep. Dist. Atty. Chip "Shiteyes" McCrory wept openly at the verdict and was led from the courtroom by bailiffs.

Thompson denounced the Dismissal as "pure cowardice" and said he would "appeal it at once" to the Colorado Supreme Court.

Thompson described the District Attorney's "whole goddamn staff" as "thugs liars crooks" and "lazy human scum... These stupid brutes tried to destroy my life," he said, "and now they tell me to just forget it."

"Fuck that!" he screeched. "They are guilty! They should all be hung by their heels from iron telephone poles on the road to Woody Creek!"

The crowd roared and surged forward, chanting, "Yes! Now! Hang them now!"

A man with a pitchfork rushed up the ancient stone steps and attempted to enter the courthouse, but he was hurled away by Thompson, who blocked the doorway and told the mob to "be calm."

"Not now!" he shouted. "Not today! But soon! Yes! We will PUNISH them! We will chop off their fingers and gnaw on their skulls and feed their flesh to our animals!"

The crowd responded by ripping up trees in the courtyard and hammering crazily on the hoods of nearby police cars. "Death to the Weird," they howled. "They shall not pass! PUNISH them!" At this point Dr. Thompson was seized from behind by his two high-powered attorneys and rushed to a waiting car, which departed at high speed.

Later, from his heavily guarded fortress called "Owl Farm," Thompson's lawyers issued a statement that called him "a hero, a saint... and the bravest man in America... Dr. Thompson is a great poet," they said, "who often speaks in apocalyptic terms.

"His comments earlier today about Death, Cannibalism, and Vengeance should not be construed in any way as a threat to the physical safety of any living thing."

The statement was hailed by the press as "further proof that Dr. Thompson should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace."

"The Doctor will have no further comment on The Case," his attorneys said, "for legal reasons stemming from his $22 million civil lawsuit against the District Attorney's Office, which will be formally filed next week."

Later that night, however, the restive Gonzo journalist issued a mysterious "personal statement" that local authorities called "very gracious, very strange, and very bloodthirsty all at once."

He spoke of a "historical mandate," citing mysterious blood feuds. He refused to talk about his rumored blood relationship to Genghis Khan, Cassius Clay, John Gotti, and other legendary warriors.

"But you forget," he said. "I am Lono. I am He. When the great bell rings, I will be there."

Thompson refused to elaborate on his claim to be Someone Else, and his aides brusquely turned aside press queries. Reporters who persisted were roughed up by burley "advisers" wearing bulletproof vests and "Owl Farm/Security" badges. One TV journalist, who begged not to be named, said he was taken to "a cistern somewhere in the compound" and forced to strip naked while standing knee-deep in "ice-cold water rushing up from an underground river." For "many hours," he said, he was tormented by drunken lawyers and mocked by what appeared to be naked women.

Coming soon: A post about oil

2005-09-13T19:23:00.000+01:00

I've been (apparently "conspicuously") silent on the current oil / gas / petrol thing. Massive price rises, queues at the pumps, protests, shortages... the kind of things you'd expect a Peak Oil Evangelist like myself to be harping on about. But I made a conscious decision to keep quiet on the issue for a while.

Matt Simmons was recently interviewed on Channel 4 news, the New York Times had a major story on the global peak of oil production, and even our politicians have started to wake up ("Britain must use less oil, says Brown" was a recent headline in The Guardian). So I figured that my job was over. Why should I continue telling people "this is happening" when they only have to look outside their window (or inside their newspapers) to see it for themselves?

However, a friend of mine has convinced me that I may yet have something to add to the discussion (though he's already done a fine job at elucidating my general position) and in truth I really should put the finishing touches to the article I had been writing for The Sharpener. However, as it happens I'm inundated with work right now and in a couple of days I'm jetting off to Ireland for a week (I refuse to own a car... so I guess I have to find some other way of contributing to fossil fuel depletion).

So yeah, expect me to address this issue again. I'm just not 100% sure when that'll be.

Surprising revelation

2005-09-13T18:23:00.000+01:00

This pisses me off. Really, really, really pisses me off.

Shot By Both Sides (SBBS) was one of the interweb's best blogs. By a long way. John B was often criticised for choosing to own, and host his site on, www.stalinism.com. I, on the other hand, would gladly buy him a pint for that very fact (I'm not a Stalinist by the way, and neither is he).

The style of SBBS was deliberately provocative and controversial. Calling for the assassination of anyone who complained about bad language on TV, or for holding particular objectionable views, was bound to annoy those poor sods whose brains are incapable of processing irony or humour. Certainly it's a particular type of humour (dark, dry and deceptively intelligent) but it takes a particular type of person (small-minded, tedious and very ugly) to take genuine offence at it. SBBS was never guilty of racism or sexism, but refused to bow to contrived notions of political correctness. If John was guilty of anything, it was of overestimating the ability of his readership to discern the real target of a particular barb.

Recently he made a remark which was so genuinely outrageous as to make me gasp in astonishment before I burst out laughing. I knew, however, that he was going to get into trouble for it. As my flat-mate pointed out; in our current political and cultural climate it shouldn't have come as a surprise to John that people were going to react explosively to his remark. It's a goddamn dirty shame that he's come under such fire, but hardly a surprise.

Well, between the jigs and the reels, SBBS has been forced to close. I suspect the fact that John was posting under his real name (silly boy! He should have grabbed a name like 'Bliss') was ultimately his downfall. Presumably those who have initiated their pseudo-fatwah against him threatened to take their indignation beyond the blogosphere. In such circumstances, he took the only route available to him and closed down the site.

I am not - incidentally - repeating the remark that (I believe) was the straw that broke the blackmailers back. Those of you proficient enough with google-cache could probably track it down, but if John is being hassled so much that he's decided to remove it from the web, I'm hardly going to cite it here.

Shot By Both Sides will be sorely missed, and although he'll continue to contribute to The Sharpener, the biting humour that helped define SBBS will inevitably have to subside a little, so long as John's petty tyrants keep up their vendetta. Fingers crossed, then, that they all develop serious diseases of the genitalia leaving them in far too much pain to hassle Mr. B any further.

Gone with the water

2005-09-06T20:23:00.000+01:00

My friend Matt emailed this to me today. I'm not going to bang on about the failings of the US government to adequately protect the people of New Orleans from hurricane Katrina. But I would like to point out that not only was this disaster and the aftermath predictable. It was predicted. And it's not like National Geographic is an unknown or fringe news source.

It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.
- National Geographic Magazine.
(October 2004 edition)

Am I a Londoner?

2005-09-06T19:23:00.000+01:00

Via Pixeldiva comes this little questionnaire. The essence of the thing is to find out whether or not you can legitimately call yourself "a Londoner" irrespective of where you're actually from originally.

I recall, many moons ago when I was living in Cairo, reading a vaguely humourous piece called "20 ways to tell you've been in Egypt too long". It included the line "You no longer bother removing flies from your drink, merely sift it through your teeth to avoid swallowing them". I was actually doing just that as I read the list (sifting my beer through my teeth to avoid chugging down the large fly floating in it). I'm told that it's a good deal more stressful being an ex-pat in Egypt these days, but my memories of Cairo are wonderful and far from being there 'too long', I'm a little sad that I didn't spend more time there before it too became a place where suspicion of The Other gained a solid foothold.

With regards to how much of a Londoner I am, though, there's really two answers to most of these questions. Me at 24 and me now, a decade later. There was a time when I immersed myself in London. The city coursed through my veins and I'd say to people "I'll never live anywhere else again... everywhere would be so dull... a step backwards from London". And I said that, having lived in far more places by my mid-twenties than most people do their entire lives.

London hasn't changed very much since then. But I have. Anyways, onto the "Are you a Londoner?" thingie...

1. You say "the City" and expect everyone to know which one.
Let's face it, if an American says "The City" they should be referring to New York. If a European says it, they should mean "London". London is The City. Anyone who doesn't know that is being willfully ignorant.

2. You have never been to The Tower of London or Madame Tussauds but love Brighton.
Half point. I've never been to the Tower or to Madame Tussauds (passed by them umpteen times of course), but I'm not a big fan of Brighton either... I used to hang out there during a less than sane period of my life and still recall the dark and scary underbelly of the place. Back when I was 24 though... full point.

3. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Shepherds Bush to Elephant & Castle at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can't find Dorset on a map.
'Fraid so. Though I'm fairly certain Dorset is down near Cornwall.

4. Hookers and the homeless are invisible.
Part of me wishes they were... and another part is glad they're not. Indeed they've become more and more visible over the years. Again, I could probably answer "yes" 10 years ago. These days though I can't help but see the suffering around me, and that's one of the reasons I need to get out of the city. To quote the late, great Lester Bangs...

If you accept for even a moment the idea that each human life is as precious and delicate as a snowflake and then you look at a wino in a doorway, you've got to hurt until you feel like a sponge for all those other assholes' problems, until you feel like an asshole yourself, so you draw all the appropriate lines. You stop feeling. But you know that then you begin to die. So you tussle with yourself. how much of this horror can I actually allow myself to think about? Perhaps the numbest mannekin is wiser than somebody who only allows their sensitivity to drive them to destroy everything they touch - but then again ... just to recognize that that person exists, just to touch his cheek and then probably expire because the realization that you must share the world with him is ultimately unbearable is to only go the first mile. The realization of living is just about that low and that exalted and that unbearable and that sought-after. Please come back and leave me alone. But when we're along together we can talk all we want about the universality of this abyss: it doesn't make any difference, the highest only meets the lowest for some lying succor, UNICEF to relatives, so you scratch and spit and curse in violent resignation at the strict fact that there is absolutely nothing you can do but finally reject anyone in greater pain than you. At such a moment, another breath is treason.

5. You step over people who collapse on the Tube.
No. And I never would have. But I have seen it happen.

6. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multilingual.
I've lived all over the world. I know people who are properly multilingual. So no. And never.

7. You've considered stabbing someone.
Never. I've been stabbed and wouldn't ever consider it. My usual daydream about, for instance, my ex-boss involves public humiliation rather than physical harm (I'm essentially a non-violent person, though admittedly the guy who stabbed me wouldn't agree with that).

8. Your door has more than three locks.
Back when I lived in Hackney; yes. These days I'm in a more chilled-out part of the city and don't feel the need for quite as much home security.

9. You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.
No. Indeed the refusal of Londoners to make eye-contact irritates me considerably.

10. You call an 8' x 10' plot of patchy grass a garden.
I call an 8' x 10' plot of cracked concrete with a couple of weeds growing through the cracks a garden. Leastways that's the garden I have right now.

11. You consider Essex the "countryside".
I visit my family in the wilds of West Cork quite frequently. I know what proper countryside looks like.

12. You think Hyde Park is "nature".
Nope. But Hampstead Heath does actually qualify.

13. You're paying £1,200 a month for a studio the size of a walk-in wardrobe and you think it's a "bargain".
Essentially yes. The details aren't quite that extreme, but when I tell non-Londoners how much I'm paying for this pokey flat they tend to think I'm joking.

14. Shopping in suburban supermarkets and shopping malls gives you a severe attack of agoraphobia.
No. But I find them depressing as hell. I could never live in the suburbs or in a small town - or even in another city - after London. All of the shitty elements of civilisation with none of London's saving graces (e.g. the ability to see a gig you'll enjoy every single week if you so choose).

15. You pay more each month to park your car than most people in the UK pay in rent.
If I owned a car this would certainly be true. However I'm philosophically opposed to car ownership in places where there is adequate public transport (and London certainly fulfills that criteria).

16. You pay £3 without blinking for a beer that cost the bar 28p.
I no longer drink alcohol. But when I did... yes.

17. You actually take fashion seriously.
Hahahhahh ah hah hah ha ha ha.

18. You have 27 different take-away menus next to your telephone.
Kind of. There's a ton of them lying around, but these days I only need one... The Bengal Curry House on St. James Street. Reasonable prices for incredibly tasty food (and in large portions too).

19. The UK west of Heathrow is still theoretical to you.
No. I briefly lived near Reading. Wouldn't recommend it.

20. You're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.
I have to make an effort not to be.

21. Your idea of personal space is no one actually physically standing on you.
Another reason why I need to leave the city. London's idea of personal space really conflicts with mine. Thankfully I'm quite tall, so tube journeys don't involve feeling like I'm in a contest to see how many sweaty people can be squeezed into a phonebox.

22. £50 worth of groceries fit in one plastic bag.
Scandalous isn't it?

23. You have a minimum of five "worst cab ride ever" stories.
I rarely take cabs. But if I cast my mind back I can come up with at least twenty "worst nightbus experiences ever" stories.

24. You don't hear sirens anymore.
In my last flat, my bedroom window (not double-glazed) overlooked the junction between Mare Street and Graham Road in Hackney. Upon hearing this, people who know the area will often give a low whistle whilst shaking their heads slightly and then offer me the number of a good therapist. Sirens, gunshots, gang-warfare... it's not so much that I became immune to these things; I simply learnt how to sleep with loud music blasting through my earphones.

25. You've mentally blocked out all thoughts of the city's air/water quality and what it's doing to your insides.
Damn straight! I'm neurotic enough as it is without having to think about that shit.

26. You live in a building with a larger population than most towns.
A decade ago that was true. These days, thankfully, no.

27. Your cleaner is Portugese, your grocer is Somali, your butcher is Halal, your deli man is Israeli, your landlord is Italian, your laundry guy is Philippino, your bartender is Australian, your favourite diner owner is Greek, the watch seller on your corner is Senegalese, your last cabbie was African, your newsagent is Indian and your local English chippie owner is Turkish.
Wellllll... I don't have a butcher; not being a meat-eater and all. I dunno about the cleaner yet (as we've only recently decided to hire one) and the chippie owner is Greek-Cypriot. In principle though... "yes".

28. You wouldn't want to live anywhere else until you get married.
Used to think so. Now I can hardly wait to get out (pity all the high-paying work happens to be here).

29. You roll your eyes and say 'tsk' at the news that someone has thrown themselves under a tube train.
Again no. I tend to spend the next hour empathising with the person and get thoroughly depressed about the whole thing. I'm clearly no longer wired correctly for the city.

30. Your day is ruined if you don't get a copy of Metro on the way to work.
Thankfully I work from home. And even when I didn't, my journey to work was always accompanied by whatever book I was reading at the time. The Metro comes from the same stable as The Mail and The Standard and I'd rather drink the urine of Mark Knopfler* than sully my mind with that right-wing propaganda.

In truth I used to be a Londoner. But I'm not anymore. I think the city will always grind down people like me after a while. I loved it for a long time, but that's gone now. However, if you're in your early 20s I can think of no better place to live.

* A prize to whoever first identifies that reference.

Satan's evil rays

2005-09-01T17:23:00.000+01:00

I honestly believed that the final word had been spoken on the Intelligent Design Vs. Evolution debate. But despite having elected a president who proves the theory of evolution beyond any doubt, scientifically aware people all over America still find themselves under siege from kooks and crackpots who believe that the universe is a shade over six thousand years old and was created by an angry white guy in period costume with a bushy beard.

Not content with filling their childrens' heads with the insane ramblings of 2,000 year-old desert nomads who'd perhaps snacked on one too many of the local mushrooms; creationists are now demanding the opportunity to fill everyone else's kids with the same lunacy.

The theory of Intelligent Design is a pseudo-scientific term for bullshit creationism. Religious groups in America want it taught alongside evolution in public school science lessons. This, you see, gets around the whole "separation of church and state" thang. The bible isn't a religious text at all... it's science!

What?!

President Chimpfeatures apparently supports the teaching of Creationism as a scientific alternative to Evolution. Which means that the legal challenge currently facing the University of California system may turn out to be more than the bad joke and waste of time it should be. A religious group - representing hundreds of American schools - is challenging the right of the universities to refuse to accept highschool courses in creationism as adequate qualifications for degrees in science subjects.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised... though I reserve the right to be horrified, distressed and unsettled. After all, President Chimpfeatures apparently governs a nation in which 20% of the population believe the sun revolves around the earth and 90% of them don't know what radiation is.

Note to Americans: It doesn't. And it's the emission of energy in the form of particles or electromagnetic waves.

[Aside: When I was working in the American Midwest I installed machines in several packaging factories which contained radioactive sources. They were multi-function units which - among other things - displayed the contents of each package passed through them on a screen using X-Ray photography. The radioactive source was well-shielded and there was no danger to the operator. In one of the plants, however, the line-supervisor insisted on affixing a large crucifix to the side of the machine to protect the operator from the "evil" of radiation. I didn't press the issue; he was also an active member of the NRA and it's rarely a good idea to argue with religious nuts who carry guns.]

There's nothing wrong with religious belief per se. Indeed all of us, from Darwin to Dawkins to Dubya, are guilty of acts of faith at one time or another. We all hold beliefs and assumptions that can't be supported by 'the scientific method'. And there's nothing at all wrong with that. However, there's something very wrong when a group of people start demanding that their particular unsupported beliefs are given the same weight as scientific evidence in our schools and in society at large.

The United States, even as it projects military might across the globe, is becoming more insular and less rational by the day. I would feel very uncomfortable raising a child in a culture that is degenerating into medievalism, even as it relies ever more upon technology provided by the very sciences it holds in such suspicion.

I suggest that Europe demonstrates the true depth of its compassion and high-culture by offering asylum and naturalisation to any American citizen who can demonstrate that they know what radiation is and who don't consider it the work of the devil.

Good article by Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne in the Grauniad.

The North

2005-08-31T19:23:00.000+01:00

I don't spend much time reading the deluded witterings of right-wing journalists or bloggers. I'm not a great fan of left-wing writing either, but at least the witterings of the left often contain traces of self-deprecation and humour. Left-wingers tend to be better writers, but a dogmatic adherence to any political party or the willingness to locate yourself within any exclusive part of the political spectrum is a clear sign of mental retardation. Those on the right are, with a very few exceptions, as thick as pigshit and twice as smelly.

The left merely has a slightly higher proportion of exceptions.

Today though I found myself clicking on a link to Peter Cuthbertson's Conservative Commentary blog. Peter's writing contains as much humour as most left-wingers manage, but this humour is amplified considerably through being unintentional. These days, sadly, the poor chap is too busy to be a conservative commentator and ConCom is updated even less than this place. When it is updated it tends to be in the form of a quotation lifted from elsewhere.

However one recent post caught my eye. It's a photograph of Gerry Adams and Fidel Castro under the title Hey, don't hog the sniper rifle! Presumably intentional humour, though he missed an opportunity to make it more topical (I suggest "Where's a suicide bomber when you need one?" would've been funnier, but that's just me).

Anyways, beneath it Peter lists the source of the image. A blog called A Tangled Web and specifically the post entitled Interview with a Vampire. This blog is also listed under the heading "Great Blogs" on Peter's site, so I expected a thick-as-pigshit right-winger who smelt bad.

I wasn't disappointed. It turns out to be a group blog, so even stinkier than I'd imagined (if there's one thing that smells worse than a right-winger with their mouth open, it's a bunch of right-wingers with their mouths open). Rarely have I encountered such nauseating hate-filled wankery. And there's something peculiarly worrying about nasty hate-mongers who find it necessary to asterisk out the word "piss".

Within just 5 minutes of reading I'd discovered the following gems:

The person called DV was actually sickened by the conclusion of the British Government's chief scientific adviser that an increase in hurricane ferocity is linked to anthropocentric global warming. However, Sir David King (the advisor in question) was actually reporting the conclusions of research carried out by climatologist Kerry Emanuel (of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and research meteorologist Tom Knutson (of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory) published last month in Nature magazine. I suspect their research would sicken DV too. Poor, sensitive DV. I recommend dramamine prior to reading any scientific literature.

DV also likens the chances of a bird-flu epidemic to the chances of the earth getting hit by an asteroid and demands that attention is paid to that issue. The fact that a government can take simple practical steps (stock up on vaccines and anti-viral drugs) to prevent bird-flu from being too damaging, but would have to invest the entire national budget several times over in order to have even a slim chance of dealing with an asteroid seems to have escaped DV. As has the fact that a bird-flu epidemic is far more likely than an asteroid strike during the term of this government. DV also objects to ensuring medical staff and other emergency workers will be the first to receive anti-viral treatment in the case of an outbreak. DV is a moron. I think most non-morons would agree that doctors, nurses, police and firefighters - plus any other workers who might actually have to deal with sick people - should be the first treated in any outbreak of any infectious disease.

It's also DV who appears completely unable to grasp why Muslims might feel more stressed by the London suicide bombings than others. Truly not the sharpest tool in the shed, poor DV fails to appreciate that Muslims will feel roughly the same amount of stress at the idea of being blown up by a random suicide bomber, but will also have certain additional stresses (being part of a community that could be targeted in revenge-attacks, being shot by the police by mistake - though that additional stress also applies to South Americans too - plus plenty of other shit; like having to explain to their kids why there's been a sudden increase in bullying and why the bullies are calling them "the enemy" of the country they thought they belonged to). Of course Muslims will be more stressed by random suicide attacks carried out in the name of their religion than non-Muslims. To fail to appreciate that is either wilfully thick. Or just thick.

But it's A McC's piece, Interview with a Vampire, that really got my goat. A McC lives in (as best as I can make out) Northern Ireland. However, he's clearly one of the people who prefers the term "United Kingdom". He's a Unionist who insists on putting the letter 'O' before the words Ireland and Irish. It's difficult to know whether this is because he's actually too stupid to learn how to spell the name of the island he lives on properly, or is just being wilfully offensive towards the majority of people who live on that island.

Usually I'd assume it was the latter, but with this guy it really is difficult to know. Thick as pigshit doesn't even begin to describe him.

I'm from Ireland in case you were wondering... the southern part. So when I title a blog entry "The North", it means something very specific. And many people reading the title will interpret it in a different way. Some English people would assume I'm about to wax lyrical on the subject of Manchester or Leeds or - heaven forbid - Newcastle. While a Texan reader may automatically think I'm gonna wail on some yankee sons'a'bitches.

And although English or American friends of mine - knowing I'm Irish - might understand that by "The North" I mean the six counties of Ireland currently under British occupation, even they won't get the full connotations of what's meant when someone from a very republican Irish background capitalises 'The North'. In the same way as I'll never fully capture the wave of subtle emotion and memory that The North may evoke to someone from a different background.

I have a large extended family, and three generations ago it was split right down the middle by the civil war. The Irish civil war wasn't between Republicans and Someone Else. It was between two groups of republicans who had different notions about how to go about it. And it got nasty. So even three generations later, family gatherings could explode into heated arguments and slammed doors. Shouts of "that treacherous bastard de Valera!" or "To hell with you! And to hell with That Great Sell Out!" echoing through the house (the last bit refers to Michael Collins by the way, when hissed through the teeth of a de Valera republican).

One thing however, that would immediately unite the whole clan is the issue of the future of The North. Stated simply; the Irish Republic should encompass the entire island - all 32 counties. Having the British parliament set laws for part of Ireland makes as much sense as giving legislative power over parts of Bradford to the government of Pakistan.

It's political bias that makes someone describe Belfast as being part of the United Kingdom. Whereas it's simple geographical observation to say it's in Ireland.

If nothing else, given the history of these islands, isn't it just tasteless for English people living in London to be still passing laws over a third of the people living in Ireland, and taxing them for the privilege? Every single time The North hits the news, I (and countless other Irish folk) feel a nagging sense of injustice. It's not a voluntary reaction and until Ireland is reunited it'll never go away. Because it's entirely justified.

Unionists living in the north are essentially in the same position as British muslims, born and raised in Yorkshire or Lancashire or London, but who wish to see Sharia Law implemented in Britain.

And I'm frankly amazed that the British haven't left in embarrassment by now. Have they no shame? The continued occupation of almost 20% of the island is keeping one of the ugliest chapters in British history wide open. Why would Britain want to do that? Except perhaps as some kind of sackcloth-and-ashes-self-flagellation thing, maybe? Is that what it is? But if that's the case, I do wish they'd choose somewhere else to prostrate themselves and roll in filth. My little island deserves some peace... it's about time it got it.

Now, I don't for a moment suggest that the British occupation has been particularly "tyrannical" in the recent past. Certainly not in my lifetime, though the policy of internment during the 70s and 80s came damn close. But that's not the point... not to a people with a sense of their history (and the Irish would tend to fall into that category).

In an historical context, the current occupation is merely the continuation of a long-term policy which has in the past been implemented and maintained via some of the vilest attrocities imaginable. Oliver Cromwell slaughtered the entire population of a city and countless towns and villages to enforce an occupation that still continues to this day.

Is it any wonder republicans have a serious problem living in the shadow of British army watchtowers?

Of course, Cromwell was a long time ago. But he was followed by the Penal Laws, which was essentially a strategy of cultural extermination. The Penal Laws criminalised the use of the Irish language, the playing of traditional Irish music or sports, the performance of any Catholic or traditional religious services, and so on... it succeeded in killing the language pretty much, and that's arguably the most important thing to save, but in the long run it strengthened many traditional Irish cultural values (not all of them positive... I doubt The Church would have had such an influence in the Ireland of my youth had the British not suppressed it for a few hundred years).

To be honest, I wouldn't know how to hold another position on the matter. Like a number of political issues I see it as less a battle between two reasoned positions and more a bunch of mad people refusing to face up to reality. And when the opposing view is expressed by the kind of people who are sickened by the suggestion of anthropocentric climate change, would rather prepare for an asteroid attack than a flu pandemic (and would deny front-line health workers any special privileges during such a pandemic), and who can't understand why suicide bombers acting in the name of Islam might stress out Moslems a little more than the rest of us; well... clearly my view that they are "a bunch of mad people refusing to face up to reality" is soundly validated.

I'm not a nationalist per se let me point out. Certainly I feel "at home" when I arrive in Cork (or even Dublin) in a way that I don't when I'm in London or Athens. But the difference between Dublin and London is far smaller than the difference between London and Chicago. So if anything, I must feel more "European" than "Irish". Similarly I take a guilty pleasure in seeing an Irish sports team do well (even though I don't follow sports and have no connection to anyone on the team except a geosynchronous birth). But I take far more pleasure in seeing one of my English or Swiss or Greek or American friends doing well at something.

Being from the same island as James Joyce and Van Morrison always thrills me a little. But there's no rational reason whatsoever for it to do so. I might just as well get excited by the fact they both expressed a preference for the same flavour ice-cream as me. People aren't always rational about these things.

What? Really Jim? You're saying people don't always act rationally when it comes to matters of nationalism? Next you'll be telling us the earth moves round the sun and isn't the centre of the universe!

Yeah. Sorry for stating the obvious.

All I'm saying is I fully admit that I have an overwhelming cultural bias when it comes to The North. But that's not the same as being barking mad. Fecking mentalists!

Scots "don't know what's good for them" report says

2005-08-30T19:23:00.000+01:00

A study commissioned by the Scottish parliament has revealed that Scots are too fucking stupid to know what's good for them. At least, that's the spin put on it by the BBC.

According to the BBC article, research suggests that "a 10p tax on plastic bags would bring only limited environmental benefits to Scotland". Given that a similar tax brought significant environmental benefits to Ireland, the assumption must be that Scotland isn't capable of reaping the same level of benefit from the scheme as Ireland does. It doesn't openly say "because Scots are so fucking thick", but what other possible reason could there be? Are Scottish plastic bags different to Irish ones in either composition or function? No they are not. So the problem must be with the people who use them.

Morons.

I should warn you, however, that the article linked to above has been rewritten since I first read it, and may very possibly be rewritten again by the time you read it. The beeb's policy of failing to archive each version of a story and instead altering sections over time, fundamentally undermines the usefulness and trustworthiness of the BBC as a news source.

When I first read the article it concluded with the line, "In Ireland a similar scheme has reduced the number of new plastic bags entering circulation by more than 90%" (that's paraphrasing... I can't sadly check the source). That statistic is no longer mentioned at all in the story and the success of the Irish scheme is now only reported as an allegation by Green and LibDem MSPs.

Why was the line removed? Well, it was removed for either editorial or accuracy reasons.

If it's the case that the "more than 90%" figure is inaccurate (the Worldwatch Institute claims it's actually 95% incidentally, and therefore accurate) then I would expect a supposedly reliable news source to issue a retraction and correction.

If it was for editorial reasons, however, then one needs to analyse the overall effect that such a decision would have on the article. I'd argue that by placing the success of the Irish scheme into hearsay rather than fact, it significantly weakens the arguments in favour of the Scottish levy. The BBC, therefore, have retrospectively altered a news story to lend weight to the commercial arguments of the Scottish Retail Consortium.

So long as they have policy of rewriting published stories without providing an archived "original version", the news as presented by the BBC must clearly be taken with an extra pinch of salt. The original article in this case contained a very significant fact that was then removed without explanation. Shoddy journalism and very shoddy editing.

I don't - of course - believe the Scots are morons (though clearly no nation can scale the intellectual heights that we Irish are capable of achieving). Indeed I'm fairly confident that a plastic bag tax north of the border would have roughly the same impact as it did in Ireland... a massive reduction in plastic bags finding their way into the environment and a smaller, but significant, reduction in overall waste. Certainly many people will simply switch from disposable plastic to disposable paper, but the majority will switch to reusable bags and will press that pile of old plastic bags under the sink into action until they've worn out.

Leastways that's how the Irish reacted. Maybe the Scots are thick (though the ones I know would seem to make a lie of this assertion). Maybe they'll not realise that reusable bags will save them money. Maybe the Scottish perception of waste in general can't be shifted in the way the Irish perception is beginning to shift (thanks not only to the plastic bag levy, but also to a switch from charging households a flat fee for rubbish collection to charging them based upon the volume of waste they generate). Maybe Scottish retailers, as they claim ("store owners said the proposals would be an "administrative nightmare" which would actually have the effect of increasing waste) are simply not as competent as their Irish counterparts. Given that we in Ireland managed to handle this supposed "nightmare" without increasing waste, it seems odd that Scottish retailers don't think they have the skills or intelligence to do the same.

They must have a very low opinion of themselves, poor little buggers.

The Scottish research also claims that "paper bags [have] a greater effect on the environment than conventional plastic carrier bags". I'd be interested in how this "effect on the environment" is quantified. I'm fairly well-versed in the processes required to produce conventional plastic carrier bags from fossil fuels, and know a little about the manufacture of paper. I'm also well aware of the difference in environmental impact between a biodegradable substance (such as paper) and a non-biodegradable one (such as plastic), and any research which sees the former as worse than the latter is clearly not taking a very long-term view (and what the hell other view should be taken when researching environmental impact?)

And of course, then there's the long-term sustainability of oil, gas and coal (our primary sources of plastic) but that's another discussion altogether.

Apparently there's also a worry that the levy "could result in 700 jobs being lost". This is the sort of thing, of course, which will affect the decisions of politicians. Lost jobs equals lost votes. And what's more important than that? Right?

Well, "the environment" for one.

If these 700 jobs are environmentally destructive then, I'm sorry to say, I couldn't be happier that they'll be lost (assuming they will... that claim comes from The Carrier Bag Consortium and so, like the BBC itself, should be taken with a little salt). If Japanese whalers lose their jobs, I'm ecstatic. The same goes for Australian uranium miners, Canadian oil shale workers and the Irish lads building the natural gas pipeline on the west coast.

Jobs do not trump sustainability or environmental responsibility. In fact, jobs trump very little, and "jobs will be lost if we don't" is simply not a valid argument in favour of doing something. Besides which; why not pass a parallel law insisting that all paper bags must be manufactured from recycled paper? The boost to the recycling industry would be bound to offset some, if not all, of the potential job losses in the plastic bag industry.

To reiterate... the Scots are not morons. They are probably the closest relatives to we Irish, which naturally makes them the second least moronic bunch of people on the planet (you can find idiots anywhere; I'm talking statistically here). Let's start taking sustainability seriously folks. A plastic bag levy would have a positive environmental effect north of the border, and commercial objections to the scheme (backed up by insidious reporting from the BBC) should be run roughshod over with all haste and glee.

The blogs are alive with the sound of outrage

2005-08-18T15:23:00.000+01:00

A week ago I wrote a piece, though never published it, about the violent death of Jean Charles de Menezes at the hands of the police. It expressed outrage all right, but the article is filled with equivocation and "mitigating circumstances".

After all, the guy did vault the ticket barriers after the police had challenged him and told him to stop moving. And he ran through Stockwell station and onto the tube. And he was wearing a fairly bulky jacket on a warm day. And he'd been positively identified (mistakenly, but that - sadly - can happen) as one of the suicide bombers that had failed to blow up trains the previous day.

My article of course is out-of-date. If we're to believe the leaks... none of the above is true.

Jean Charles de Menezes was shot eight times (seven in the head), after being restrained, by police who had only that moment identified themselves. He had not been identified as one of the bombers (merely someone who should be checked out), he was wearing a light denim jacket, had taken a bus to the tube station, stopped to pick up a newspaper, used his season ticket to get through the barriers (did, admittedly, run the last few yards to the platform as every Londoner does when they hear a train pull in) and made no attempt to disobey anything shouted at him by his pursuers... who he was completely unaware of up until a handful of seconds prior to being leapt on and executed.

So how did my original article get it so wrong? Sadly I made the mistake of basing it on "the facts" as announced by Sir Ian Blair (no relation), the boss of all our police. Either the top policeman in the city failed to ascertain himself of the facts prior to making a public statement on television and issuing a press release, or he just plain told lies.

This makes the man's position untenable. There is now, and will continue to be - so long as Blair is the boss - a serious question mark over any "facts" as officially released by the Metropolitan Police. It's really not acceptable to have a demonstrably untrustworthy police force. Not at any time, but especially not during times of like these.

For more, I suggest you read the statement from Harriet Wistrich and Gareth Peirce, lawyers for the family of Jean Charles de Menezes.

And then read how Sir Ian Blair actively tried to prevent an independent investigation of the shooting on the grounds that it "could impact on national security and intelligence".

And then read Larry's piece which is worth reading in itself and also provides a handy round-up of other blogs covering it.

Spearhead at Camden: An Extended Monologue

2005-08-18T03:23:00.000+01:00

Spearhead played Camden tonight. Yay!

Just returned from Camden where the best live band in the world played tonight (well, technically last night - Wednesday the 17th). They play the Jazz Café again tomorrow night (well, technically tonight - Thursday the 18th) and, except that I'm fairly skint at the moment, I'd have no hesitation in heading down to see them again. In fact it pisses me off royally that I won't be (but going to see a great band once is obviously 'an essential item'... two nights in a row though is technically 'a luxury item' and I've made a decision to cut out luxury items until I next get an invoice paid... a week or ten days away). Seriously though, if you have the opportunity to see them tonight, I urge you to do so. The music is just incredible... and if ever there was a time for us to turn out in numbers to see intelligent and positive protest music; it's now.

Please tell me the reason
Behind the colors that you fly
Love just one nation
And the whole world we divide

I first encountered Michael Franti when he was one of the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. They recorded a stunning album with William Burroughs and I'm a big fan of Uncle Bill's work. From that it was a short step to the Disposable Heroes criminally under-rated Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury (most people will know the track Television, the Drug of the Nation but nothing else... which is a great shame, 'cos it's an excellent album. Shit, just thinking about it, I don't think I have it anymore... I think I got that during the weird two years when I was buying everything on cassette and that's one of the few really good albums I've not got round to replacing in shiney-disc format... needless to say my cassettes are long gone. Man, I've not listened to that album in ages). Anyways, after Disposable Heroes Franti got together with a group of musicians from different musical backgrounds and Spearhead came to be.

They blend jazz and hip-hop and rock and reggae and folk and funk and blues and soul and dub and pop and... well, you get the picture... there's a dash of samba, a sprig of salsa and a pinch or two of tropicalia in there too. That it works comes down to two things I think; firstly the fact that the band are tight enough and accomplished enough to feel completely comfortable going into extended jams that never ever flag. Ever. I mean, people were getting up on the stage - complete strangers - and jamming along with them and the band were (a) cool enough to vibe off that, and (b) good enough to make it work flawlessly.

We can chase down all our enemies
Bring them to their knees
We can bomb the world to pieces
But we can't bomb it into peace

The second thing that keeps this almost overpowering fusion of styles together is Michael Franti's incredible stage presence. I don't say this lightly, and some may even see it as faintly sacreligious, but Franti's stage presence is on a par with Prince in 1988. No, I'm quite serious about that. I saw Prince at an aftershow gig in Camden Palace on the Lovesexy tour when he was - arguably - at the peak of his live performances. So I know whereof I speak.

Michael Franti blows away almost all of the "London Audience" syndrome. And I saw him do it - somehow - at the Festival Hall, so it's not just a small venue thing. Also, small venues often bring out the worst examples of the London Audience thing anyways... people who'd much rather remain cool and aloof so that they don't.... what?... look uncool? Is that it? Chin-stroking wankers who stand with a faint frown on their face and furrow their brows furiously should you dare bump into them whilst you're grooving. I mean... really!

Violence brings one thing
More more of the same
Military madness
The smell of flesh and burning pain
So I sing out to the masses
Stand up if you're still sane!
To all of us gone crazy
I sing this one refrain

And I sing power to the peaceful
Love to the people y'all
Power to the peaceful
Love to the people

But with Spearhead there's none of that aloofness... no separation from the music... from the front, right to the back, everyone is whooping and singing and jumping up and down and waving their hands in the air and clapping in time and singing every line that Michael asks them to, joyously, at the tops of their voices... or quietly as he asks them to do the harmonies. It's three hours (and as many extra minutes as they can get away with) with a crowd of people really getting into what's going on around them... both on-stage and off. And the things they're singing! It'd shock The Daily Mail for sure (another reason to go, if ever there was one!)

I don't understand the whole reason why
You tellin' us all that we need to unify
Rally 'round the flag
And beat the drums of war
Sing the same old songs
Ya know we heard 'em all before
You tellin' me it's unpatriotic
But I call it what I see it
When I see it's idiotic
The tears of one mother
Are the same as any other
Drop food on the kids
While you're murderin' their fathers
But don't bother to show it on CNN
Brothers and sisters don't believe them
It's not a war against evil
It's really just revenge
Engaged on the poorest by the same rich men
Fight terrorists wherever they be found
But why you not bombing Tim McVeigh's hometown?
You can say what you want; propaganda television
But all bombing is terrorism

So the band take to the stage and everyone cheers and the music doesn't stop for three hours, and Michael never stops moving (well, actually, he does sit down for some of the acoustic guitar stuff now that I think about it... but the energy never stops pouring from the stage, put it that way). And it's infectious.

Along the way, some bloke in the audience made his way to the crowd and caught Michael's eye. He was holding a flute. Michael helped him up onto the stage with the line... "I have no idea who this guy is, but I guess he wants to do his thing" and the flautist joined in with the jam for a couple of minutes. Half an hour later another guy ended up playing some of the most vibing piano I've heard in a long long time (he looked about as chuffed with himself as I would have looked had I just climbed onto the stage with Spearhead and impressed them with my piano playing; i.e. Very fucking well-chuffed indeed. His name was Simon, the flautist was Robbie, the guest saxophonist was the astonishingly beautiful Heather (and can she play!) and I didn't, sadly, catch the name of the guest vocalist but she was incredible too.

You'd have to be really.

you can make a life longer, but you can't save it
you can make a clone, and then you try to enslave it?
stealin' DNA samples from the unborn
and then you comin' after us
'cause we sampled a James Brown horn?

The three hours seemed to whizz by... they came on stage at nine, and it felt to me like maybe eleven o'clock when we finally emerged at half midnight. The set was very heavily weighted towards the recent stuff... Stay Human, Everyone Deserves Music and the new one, Love Kamikaze (which I only got hold of at the gig tonight... so there were more than a couple of songs I didn't even recognise, but I was jumping along to them all the same... seriously, how many bands get the entire audience jumping along to songs many of them don't have yet? In London!?)

It's great to see that the trademark Spearhead trait of dropping out of a song into a cover; so that you're suddenly unsure what song you're listening to; is still there. Last time they played London, Smells Like Teen Spirit suddenly emerged from the music and rocked like a bag of bastids falling down some stairs. It really rocked. Tonight it was less inyerface, but still amazing to hear snatches of Grace by U2 and a Jackson-5 song and a couple of others the names of which have just been liberated from my mind by a little pot, sadly.

Well politicians got lipstick on the collar
the whole media started to holler
but I don't give a fuck who they screwin' in private
I wanna know who they screwin' in public

The quieter times of the gig were dominated by Michael in acoustic mode. Or at least... sitting down. He told some stories about his recent visit to Iraq which were funny and sad and uplifting and depressing. He played music on street corners in Baghdad as well as in people's homes and what have you. That's a pretty full-on thing to be doing in this climate of bombings and kidnappings, but the man's a committed activist and it's fucking inspiring to hear him talk... not just of his own experiences but of the work of others and how people can make a difference even in these seemingly apocalyptic times when if the bombs don't get you then the cynicism will.

Spearhead make some of the funkiest music around today. And Michael Franti stands tall (literally... he's an incredibly good-looking, athletic and sexy man who towers above my paltry six foot two inches) as possibly the finest protest singer-songwriter-musician-poet of our times. He's not half as important as he deserves to be, because not nearly enough people know about him for reasons that I'm simply incapable of understanding. Why Stay Human didn't sell 20 million copies is just beyond me! And he fires up an audience with such a positive energy that I seriously have to hark back to Lovesexy '88 to find a worthy comparison.

Go see Spearhead if they're playing near to you. It's good for you.

20 Best Debut Albums In The World Ever

2005-08-17T18:23:00.000+01:00

Elsewhere on the web, a discussion has begun regarding the best debut albums of all time. It's an interesting topic as it would seem to exclude quite a few of the musicians and bands that make it into most Top-10 / Top-1000 lists.

I'm a huge fan of The Beatles for instance and although I love the vibrancy and charm of Please Please Me, I wouldn't put it into my Top-20 debut albums list. At least not if we're judging the albums by their individual merit, rather than the promise they show or the cultural earthquake they foreshadow. And although Prince's debut (For You) contains some glorious songs and demonstrates the man's incredible mastery of the studio and multi-instrumentalism, it doesn't really have the consistency of a great album (arguably it wasn't until his third, 1980's Dirty Mind, that he really hit his stride).

There are also some technical issues when compiling a list like this. Do you include the debut solo albums of people who have made records in the past as part of a band? And - importantly - can Space Oddity be considered Bowie's debut, given the existence of the Deram tracks?

I have decided to answer both those questions "Yes". Because to respond "No" would remove a bunch of the finest debut albums of all time from my list. So, without further ado...

The 20 Best Debut Albums In The World Ever

The Smiths - The Smiths (1984)
I'd be surprised if there's a serious music-head of my generation who wouldn't acknowledge the right of The Smiths to top a chart like this (even if said music-head were to choose someone else themselves). Featuring a half dozen of the best tracks they ever did and not a duff one amongst the rest, this album - following hard on the heels of some fine singles - announced the arrival of one of the world's best lyricists as well as musically influencing an entire generation. Personal high point: Still Ill
Debut - Björk (1993)
Björk of course was fairly well known as the singer from The Sugarcubes prior to her solo work. But with Debut she abandoned some of the convention and restriction that working in a band - however groovy - inevitably brings. Sometimes that's not always a great thing (it's hard to argue, for instance, that any member of The Beatles worked better outside the group than within) but for Björk it provided the creative freedom to produce a gloriously idiosyncratic album that was both stunning in its own right as well as just hinting at the greatness to come. Personal high point: Venus as a Boy
'77 - Talking Heads (1977)
David Byrne is one of the musical giants in my life. His solo work continues to excite and inspire me to this day, but it's almost certainly as the frontman for Talking Heads that he's best known. An art-rock band that found a home in the New York punk scene, TH were the perfect blend of intelligence and raw energy... spikey and inyerface but with a subtlety that was to elevate them far beyond their roots. Personal high point: Don't Worry About the Government
Space Oddity - David Bowie (1969)
As mentioned earlier, this was - arguably - not Bowie's debut album at all (1967's David Bowie on Deram UK would qualify as that if we're being pedantic), and it wasn't even until the 1972 re-release that it gained the title "Space Oddity" having been originally put out in 1969 as "Man of Words / Man of Music". All the same, there are plenty of Bowie-heads who would agree that this was the album that really defined the starting point of Bowie's career as we've come to know it. There's a distinct 'hippy' quality to Space Oddity which is a comparatively acoustic affair that closes with the ultimate flower-child anthem, "Memory of a Free Festival". All the same, Bowie's intellect, wit and darkness seep through into almost every song. Personal high point: Letter to Hermione
Here Come the Warm Jets - Brian Eno (1974)
Looking at the line-up, this appears for all intents and purposes to be a Roxy Music album with the addition of the godlike Robert Fripp and without the rapidly lounging Ferry. But in practice it starkly reveals the reasons why Eno chose to leave Roxy Music and the creative shadow of Bryan Ferry... and the radically different musical directions both were moving. Here Come the Warm Jets builds on and expands the experimentalism of earlier Roxy albums at a time when Ferry was moving towards the mainstream. It's glam, it's raucous and it refuses to conform. Personal high point: Driving Me Backwards
Soulmining - The The (1983)
Like Space Oddity (above), it would be prefectly valid for someone to object to Soulmining being described as the debut album from Matt Johnson's The The. Two years previously 4AD had put out Johnson's Burning Blue Soul under the singer's own name (it was later re-released as an official The The album). All the same, Soulmining can claim to be the first album originally released under the "The The" moniker. This album probably has more of my emotional baggage attached to it than any other. It kept me sane through some of the darkest moments of my teens and early 20s with the gritty despair tempered by such lines as "Death is not the answer / for your soul may burn in hell". Cheery stuff! Interestingly the album also contains a piano-solo which (in my view) single-handedly justifies Jools Holland's otherwise questionable career. Personal high point: I've Been Waitin' for Tomorrow (All of My Life)
Memories of a Colour - Stina Nordenstam (1991)
Stina Nordenstam is a relatively unknown singer / songwriter / producer from Scandanavia. Comparisons are often made with Björk, and while that's fair enough to some degree, it also does her an injustice by failing to recognise the sheer originality of her work. Her fragile, almost broken, voice seems to haunt her dark and claustrophobic music... she dwells within her music rather than singing over the top of it. This debut album contains some of her more accessible and commercial-sounding songs (though she's never exactly had "commercial success" to any great extent - possibly partly due to the fact that she never performs live) but at the same time nobody could think of Memories of a Colour as a commercial or mainstream album featuring - as it does - several examples of the dark and brooding atmosphere that defines her later work. Personal high point: Soon After Christmas
Deep in the Heart of Nowhere - Bob Geldof (1986)
Saint Sir Bob of Geldof is probably better known these days as a political activist than a musician. But that doesn't detract from the great music he has created over the years. Deep In The Heart of Nowhere was Geldof's first album post-Boomtown Rats and the first new music he released after Live Aid (it's also the single-most underrated album of the decade). It's a dark, introspective and sometimes challenging album which was a huge departure from the post-punk jangle of The Rats and brought Geldof closer (in tone and spirit) to early Van Morrison. Now and then the music is a little too "of it's time" - the mid-80s, but that never overshadows the depth of feeling contained in the songs and the gloriously ragged voice of Geldof himself. Personal high point: Pulled Apart by Horses
Marquee Moon - Television (1977)
Easily one of the best albums of the decade, it's perhaps no surprise that Television never managed to really emerge from its shadow and what followed sounded like a pale imitation of this explosive debut. In many ways, Television are the Orson Welles of music; creating an early masterpiece which couldn't help but be a millstone round their necks and led to the band breaking up prematurely after only their second studio album. Nonetheless, Marquee Moon isn't an album illustrating wasted potential... because it's all there, wrapped up in this sublime slice of punky new-wave guitar poprock. Personal high point: Marquee Moon
Horses - Patti Smith (1975)
This album gave birth to the American new wave, and deserves a place in all our hearts for that alone... would Marquee Moon have sounded anything like it did without Smith's arrival on the scene? Would Talking Heads have been able to carve out a place for themselves among the New York punks if Smith's imaginative and penetrating lyrics hadn't brought an intellectualism to the American scene that was not only missing - but positively discouraged for some time - in British punk (it later arrived of course, with the more political punk bands that followed). But Horses was not only culturally transformative, it's also one of Smith's best albums (which says a lot given the amazing quality of her work over the years). It opens with a reinterpretation of Van Morrison's Gloria that's possibly the finest opening track of a debut album ever, and the quality never drops. Literate, beautiful, violent, tragic and filled with enough inspiration and energy to justify most careers. Personal high point: Birdland or Gloria
Maxinquaye - Tricky (1995)
Jane's Addiction - Jane's Addiction (1987)
Piper at the Gates of Dawn - Pink Floyd (1967)
Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) - The Wu-Tang Clan (1993)
The Lion and the Cobra - Sinéad O'Connor (1987)
Surfer Rosa - The Pixies (1988)
Three Imaginary Boys - The Cure (1979)
Viva Hate - Morrissey (1988)
Original Pirate Material - The Streets (2002)
Private Revolution - World Party (1987)

A poem (sorry)

2005-08-15T22:23:00.000+01:00

In the past couple of years I've written perhaps a hundred or so short poems (usually in 5-7-5 format... haiku-like). I came very close to publishing them as a collection last year, but didn't have the time or money to do it the way I really wanted. Perhaps one day I shall.

The poem that follows is not haiku-like. And it's even got some rhyming going on! I don't think it's all that great, but I'm publishing it because I wrote it in my dream last night and was surprised that I could still remember it when I awoke.

"This is where it all begins"
said the man with the medals

His listeners grinned
their fingers twitched
(there were buttons that needed pressing)

"Collateral damage
will be kept to a minimum"
(but that's just window dressing)

So the missiles fly and the bombs fall
And the cities in the desert burn.

"This is where it all begins"
said the man with the fat cigar

His listeners grinned
their fingers twitched
(there were contracts that needed signing)

"The taxpayers loss
will be our gravy train"
(and it'll be some politician who ends up resigning)

So the desert oil flows into American cars
And the corporate waistline expands.

"This is where it all begins"
said the man in the armoured car

His listeners stared
their fingers twitched
(through nervousness and confusion and fear)

"We'll be in and out in seconds
they won't know what hit them"
(his tour into its second year)

But the roadside bomb has other plans
Now his mother protests in Crawford.

"This is where it all begins"
said the man in the green headscarf

His listeners stared
their fingers twitched
(through nervousness and confusion and fear)

"We'll drive them from our land
return to us what's ours"
(to him his purpose is clear)

Patriotism, greed, duty and anger
People kill and die for many reasons.

Iran removes seals from nuclear plant

2005-08-13T03:23:00.000+01:00

TEHRAN, Iran (ASBC) -- In a move which has shocked many world governments as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), uranium enrichment operations have recommenced at the Esfahan nuclear facility in central Iran.

Although the Tehran regime is not contravening any international laws, and is indeed working within the framework specifically provided by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to enable nations to become self-sufficient in the production of nuclear fuel, words of warning have nonetheless been sounded from around the globe.

In the United States, President George 'Dubya' Bush has refused to rule out the use of military force should Iran not cease it's nuclear activity. Bush stressed that he was still seeking a diplomatic route towards preventing Iran from carrying out the perfectly lawful enrichment programme, but insisted that "all options" were still being considered. "Hell, we've got a quarter million troops down there already!" pointed out the president before adding "And Dick thinks the Iranian oil fields would make a perfect acquisition for Halliburton".

President Dubya sends a clear message to Iran

In response to Bush's announcement that a military attack on Iran was "an option being considered", Cyrus Nasseri, Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA, told the Anarcho-Syndicalist Broadcasting Corporation that Western nations should "think twice" before taking any action that might be considered "coercive."

"That would be a course of action that would lead to a situation where everyone would lose," he said during talks on Wednesday. Nasseri also dropped a clear hint that Iran was prepared to push world oil prices "much higher" if the West tried to block its nuclear program and pointed out that the Iranians were in a position to help ease - or worsen - trouble spots in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

The threat came on a day when crude oil futures hit a new high of nearly $65 a barrel in trading in New York.

Meanwhile European negotiators are still trying hard to bring Iran back to the table. "Certainly it's true that they're not breaking any laws", admitted Hans-Pierre Smith spokesman for the EU-3, "but unlike other governments, Iran has lied in the past about it's nuclear activities. So clearly we have an obligation to refer them to the UN security council because of their resumption of this legal activity".

On Thursday, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a religious decree declaring the "production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons" to violate the tenets of Islam.

"The leadership of Iran", he announced, "has pledged at the highest level that Iran will remain a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the NPT and has placed the entire scope of its nuclear activities under IAEA safeguards and additional protocol, in addition to undertaking voluntary transparency measures with the agency that have even gone beyond the requirements of the agency's safeguard system."

This was confirmed by IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky who agreed that the IEAE had indeed received such assurances, and said that the plant at Esfahan "is fully monitored by the IAEA" and does not produce enriched uranium which can be used in nuclear weapons.

Nevertheless, he admitted that the actions of the Tehran government were of concern to the Agency. "It's not that we specifically don't trust the Iranians", sighed Gwozdecky, "but when you've been doing this as long as we have... well... we've heard it all before frankly. India and Pakistan both lied to us consistently for a decade, and now they've just been rewarded for their deceit with major US arms-trade deals. I mean, how the hell are we supposed to keep a lid on this thing when every time some maverick regime starts researching nukes they get threats and sanctions, but as soon as they actually test one it's all F-16 contracts and anti-missile systems. And don't even get me started on Israel! Oh, but of course we're not allowed talk about that, are we?"

Gwozdecky then muttered something along the lines of "I don't know why I bother" before cutting the interview short to "go and get drunk". There was, he insisted, "bugger all else to do".

The crisis follows almost two years of negotiations during which the plant at Esfahan was rendered inoperative by trained IAEA seals put in place to monitor the facility and alert the agency should uranium enrichment begin again. The seals, which are each the product of a 15 million dollar training programme according to the IAEA, have "been removed humanely" according to authorities in Iran.

An IAEA seal is removed from the Esfahan plant

"We will, of course, return the seals to the IAEA at the earliest possible time" insisted Cyrus Nasseri. "Right now they are being debriefed in Tehran zoo where they are being very well treated". Animal rights organisations, however, have lodged several complaints with both the IAEA (claiming that nuclear facilities are not suitable habitat for aquatic mammals, however well trained) and the government of Iran (claiming that Tehran zoo does not have adequate space to house the almost two dozen seals deployed by the IAEA at Esfahan).

An IAEA seal monitors a plant in Japan

Matthew Boland, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to international organisations, said that the actions of the administration in Tehran were "yet another sign of Iran's disregard for international concerns." He attacked the track-record of "a nation which has consistently lied about it's nuclear activities" and also raised concern that some of the seals were being mistreated in the hope of gaining information about previous nuclear facilities at which they were stationed.

A seal monitors construction at the Esfahan facility

"Frankly I find their claim that all of the seals are being treated well to be laughable", Boland stated. "We have photographic evidence of seals being transported in barrels with the lids fastened shut and only the smallest of airholes through which to breathe. Under IAEA regulations, seals must only be transported in their specially designed barrels with the lids removed so they can have adequate access to both light and air."

Alleged seal-barrel cruelty

Despite the concerns of the United States and the insistence of Boland that "this is an issue that needs resolving urgently. We cannot allow it to drag on for months allowing the Iranians to develop a nuclear bomb", Western intelligence sources have told ASBC that Iran is still five to 10 years from being technologically capable of building an atomic weapon, even if it restarted its entire nuclear program today.

Because of this, IAEA board members appear sharply divided on a response to the Iranian moves with many not sharing the hardline stance of the US. In fact the United States initially wanted Iran to give up its entire nuclear program but has since been forced to fall in line with the EU-3 in search of guarantees Iran will not produce weapons.

The IAEA's Mark Gwozdecky claimed he was confident the board members would come to a consensus in this week's talks - but he said the larger issue at hand was "Iran's relationship with the rest of the world." That ultimately would require the United States - which has no diplomatic relations with Iran - to enter the European-led negotiations. "I think this [the work at Esfahan] is a concern, but ultimately the bigger question for us and the global community is how to normalise a relationship with Iran that's been strained for almost 25 years," Gwozdecky said.

The IAEA website calls for the reinstatement of the seals

Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, member nations are allowed to develop nuclear energy under the watchful eyes of the IAEA. The only states that have declared they have nuclear weapons but have not signed the NPT are India and Pakistan.

Israel is also not a signatory: It neither confirms nor denies having nuclear weapons but is widely believed to have a significant arsenal.

Some links and ting

2005-08-12T22:23:00.000+01:00

Infinite Wheel. If you like well-produced web-toys then you will love this site. If you also happen to enjoy dub music, then you will really really love it. One of my favourite websites ever (and I've only just discovered it). Needs sound.

"President Bush unveiled an aggressive initiative Monday that would make the U.S. free of petroleum dependence by the year 4920, less than three millennia from now." (read more) I'm a big fan of The Onion. There are - as with everything groovy - those who say that it's past it's best. Well I've been reading it for 10 years now, and what impresses me most is the consistency. In fact, if anything it's gotten sharper. "Our distant relations will have some hard work to do," Bush said. "But hard work is what built this nation, and I have every faith that they will succeed."

Of course, the grim truth of the matter is that The Onion story wouldn't be half as funny if we didn't suspect that Bush really does think that way. Why else would the Hirsch report go missing, after all?

Incidentally, there hasn't been a new Get Your War On for a while now. Well worth giving the old ones a re-read though.

Federal Agent Jack Bauer thinks so.

By the way, if you're not a regular reader of George Monbiot's columns in The Guardian, then you should be bloody well ashamed of yourself. You can start making amends by reading his excellent piece on Patriotism which was in this weeks paper.

In the words of Albert Einstein, "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."

Blog Against The Lords

2005-08-11T17:23:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was - apparently - "National Blog About How Ridiculous The House of Lords Is" Day. Leastways so say the self-styled arbiters of these things, Chicken Yoghurt and Tampon Teabag (I love citing people by their blog titles; though it does make me wish I hadn't chosen a 'private joke' to title this place... I'd much prefer it if people could say something like "As Jim over at Wanking Tossbuggery says..." or maybe, "In the words of Jim at Exploding Rectum...").

I didn't find out about this national holiday until after it had passed, though on my sidebar I do have an Elect The Lords banner in constant readiness for such eventualities.

That said, being an Irishman in Britain I must admit to being secretly (and constantly) delighted by the absurdly anachronistic system of governance still being employed by my former colonial oppressors. Of the three branches of government, two are unelected and one is entirely ceremonial. Britain is a country where you can claim a position of power and governance based entirely upon who your Mum and Dad were.

And they still claim to be "a democracy".

Ah that famous British humour.

Robin Cook

2005-08-11T16:23:00.000+01:00

It's terrible really. When I think of the recently-snuffed-it Robin Cook, the first thing that always springs to mind is Chris Morris on The Day Today discussing "tomorrow's front-pages" and bellowing "Robin Cock!" with comic intonation of absolute genius.

And that's how the man will live on in my memory for as long as I have one.

Other tributes to Our Ethical Politician can be found at Bristling Badger and Chase Me Ladies...

Religious jokes

2005-08-11T14:23:00.000+01:00

So the Buddha walks into a pizza restaurant and says "Make me one with everything!"

OK, OK, so hardly the most original... but it's not easy being funny about religion in this environment. I was watching a documentary recently about the phenomenon of suicide bombing. Needless to say, the film-makers appeared to skirt over the fact that most suicide bombers are not in fact Islamic terrorists. The Tamil Separatists are Hindus engaged in a political / nationalist struggle against a larger Hindu state... so when they use the tactic, it can hardly be described as "religious". And they were the most prolific suicide bombers prior to the Iraq debacle (which I'd describe as an ongoing war rather than a series of terrorist actions - and certainly as much political as it is religious).

Update: See comments for clarification on the Tamil thing... I was wrong about the "Hindu State" point, but still maintain it's a political rather than religious conflict.

Also, when it comes to terrorism in general (suicide and non-suicide)... the single largest sufferers; making up almost a quarter of all global deaths due to terrorism; are not Israelis, or Americans, or Brits or Spaniards. They are Nepalese people at the hands of (technically atheist) Maoist guerrillas.

Just a perspective thing.

Nevertheless, the documentary (or the part I caught... I surfed into it while it was already on; so perhaps they discussed the Tamil Tigers earlier?) focussed on the religious aspect of suicide bombing. In particular, from an Islamic perspective. I guess this is to be expected given recent events in London, but I can't help feeling that the film-makers (as well as the media and public in general) are making way too much out of the link between Islam and suicide terrorism.

As the documentary progressed, an interview was carried out with an accomplice of a Palestinian suicide bomber (in prison). He was clearly an educated and intelligent young man. On the surface he appeared rational and even displayed a subtle sense of humour and irony that one doesn't usually associate with psychopaths.

He discussed, sensibly, the political background to his struggle. He explained that when he was a child he had been assaulted by an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint (anyone who has dabbled in psychology and understands the pressure-cooker environment that must exist in a Palestinian refugee camp will see the roots of the man's psychosis right there). He explained the hopelessness felt by himself and everyone around him. And he claimed that what gets described as "terrorism" is merely "asymmetrical warfare". Palestinians don't have the tanks or bulldozers that would allow them to adopt the Israeli tactics of destroying the homes of the families of enemy combatants. They don't have jet fighters armed with powerful missiles ready to target enemy combatants (and anyone within a quarter mile blast radius). And they don't have helicopter gunships to hunt down and kill enemy combatants (and anyone else visiting the same market-stall at the time).

And so - claimed the bomber's accomplice - how else can they fight back against an occupying army which does have and does employ these weapons?

There are those, of course, who declare that Israeli tactics target combatants, and any civilian deaths are "collateral damage". On the other hand, Palestinian tactics target civilians. They are therefore morally reprehensible in a way that Israeli tactics are not.

But this simply doesn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny. Those targeted by Israel are suspected terrorists. Israel makes the claim that it is an enlightened democratic state (the only one in the area, it is often said!) and indeed bases much of its moral authority on that claim. However, the use of military force by any government to carry out extrajudicial executions in crowded public areas, with the clear foreknowledge that many more "random" people will die than "targeted people", does not conform to any standard of "enlightened democracy" upon which moral authority can be based.

An analogy... I find myself in a pub in an unfamiliar part of town one night. The pub is packed with strangers, all out for a fun Friday night. But two tough-looking skinheads are sitting in one corner. As I pass their table, one of them pulls a knife out and promises me that at some point in the evening, he's going to plunge it into my back. So I step outside the pub door and throw a hand-grenade back into the building killing 40 people, including the two skinheads.

Question: Is there a court in any "enlightened democracy" which would accept my plea of self-defence?

All of this is pretty standard fare of course. And to be honest, it's all been said a thousand times. There are those who will claim I'm being "anti-Israeli" and will extend that to "anti-semitic" based upon the fact that I'm criticising the policy of a supposed enlightened democracy (aren't you supposed to do that... isn't it part of the very definition of enlightened democracy?)

One thing though that should be mentioned... the rational and ironic suicide-bomber's accomplice on the recent documentary was asked how suicide terrorism fit into his religious beliefs. Without missing a beat, he transformed from an outwardly rational young man into a complete nutter.

Paradise awaited the dead bomber / murderer, he claimed. Allah will marry him to 72 beautiful virgins, and he will live in a land where there are rivers of purest water, of milk, of honey, and of non-alcoholic wine.

It was the specificity of the non-alcoholic wine in heaven that truly revealed the man's madness (set aside the whole 72 virgins thing... though that makes as much sense as eating soup with a fork). He was simply repeating dogma... this man who could clearly analyse and interpret complex political issues was content to parrot nonsense in the name of religion.

There's absolutely no question that adding religion to a conflict (as it has been done by both sides of the Palestinian conflict... and as Dubya Bush seems eager to do in his crusade to rid the world of terror - anyone heard of his plans for Nepal by the way?) is a surefire way of taking existing psychosis and magnifying it to the point where it's almost all that remains. The tendency to conflate Jewishness with current Israeli policy is just as much a manifestation of this as the tendency of an apparently intelligent Palestinian to suddenly spout ludicrous beliefs about 72 virgins and Allah making the distinction between alcoholic and non-alcoholic wine after you've already made it to heaven.

Personally I think all religious dogma needs to be exposed as the tasteless joke that it is.

So the Buddha goes to a dentist for some extremely painful root-canal surgery. He point-blank refuses the Novocaine offered to dull the pain, however. His reason? To Transcend Dental Medication (of course).

Like nails down a blackboard

2005-07-31T14:23:00.000+01:00

I just got a piece of spam with this subject: "Today is the first day of the rest of your life!!!" For a brief moment I gave serious consideration to physically tracking down the sender of that email and throttling them with my mouse cable.

And I bet there's not a jury in the land would convict.

(though over in Russia that may soon be put to the test)

Doomsayer

2005-07-31T11:23:00.000+01:00

"Do'nt (sic) you ever get tired of being a doomsayer?" asks one correspondent.

Now normally I'd correct the typo rather than draw attention to it like the cheap shot it is. But the correspondent also called me "a fucking idiot", signed his name as "Proud American Citizen!" (including exclamation mark) and made some remarks which suggests that not only has he read far more of my blog than I ever expected of any one person, but has been building up a whole frustrated grudge thing for quite some time. So he doesn't get any freebee copy-editing from me.

Anyways, Proud American Citizen!, how can I ever get tired of something that clearly makes people like you very angry? "Doom!" I'll say, just when you're least expecting it. And then I'll just run off.

Often if I'm buying something from a shop, the exchange will go something like this... "Hallo there my dear man! Could I have a copy of 'The Guardian', a pint of soya milk, some king-size cigarette papers, 3 magazines of your finest pornography, a cadbury's creme-egg, and 6 litres of tequila please?" To which the shopkeeper will reply; "That'll be fifty seven of your excellent new pounds, my good sir" (we really speak like that over here in Europe... but it's just to piss off Americans... when there's no Americans around we've all got natural Texan accents and eat beefburgers 'til we're sick). Then, just as the shopkeeper is handing me back the change from the three twenties... I look nervously over both my shoulders to make sure nobody is eavesdropping, lean over the counter a little closer to the shopkeeper, and loudly whisper "Doom!" Immediately afterwards I sprint out of the shop at top speed.

So you see, I take my doom-saying seriously. And doubt I'll ever get tired of it.

Monday - the exclusion zone protest

2005-07-30T16:23:00.000+01:00

I hope to be there. If it's at all possible, then I think you should be too.

Back soon

2005-07-29T17:23:00.000+01:00

Leastways I hope so. Contrary to L's speculation, I've not been attacked by terrorists (or "terr'ists" as Dubya called them on the news a few nights ago) thankfully. Though I do feel a bit like I have. Not physically, of course, but I'm in a kind of semi-shellshocked fugue that's been ebbing and flowing for a few weeks now, and which is not conducive to writing.

Basically the past month or so has been spectacularly stressful and unpleasant. There's been a major downer of one kind or another in almost every area of my life. The timing would be real interesting from a "paranoid: there's a concerted effort to fuck with my life" standpoint (if that was my bag). But I'm not big on conspiracy theories these days, not now that I understand just how little of anything is in the control of human intent.

Hopefully I'm past this cluster of disasters and will soon rediscover my irreverence.

"Wondering what will come next..."

Update on the pledge

2005-07-14T17:00:00.000+01:00

Hello,

Many thanks to all of you who took the time to sign the pledge and send messages of support.

We hope you will have heard that a gathering has been called by Ken Livingstone to take place in Trafalgar Square at 6pm this evening (Thursday).
http://www.tuc.org.uk/newsroom/tuc-10190-f0.cfm

For those unable to attend this evening, a free concert is being held in Burgess Park on Saturday (16th) from noon to 8.30pm.
http://www.xfm.co.uk/Article.asp?id=100130

But why not go to both?

Now that London has its gatherings, we will be closing the pledge.

The pledge was not about us and "our" gathering, we merely wanted to provide a focus for the spirit and bravery shown last week. Hopefully we've done that in some small way.

We hope very much that you will honour your pledge and attend at least one of these events to remember those who have died, to hope for the swift recovery of those who are injured and to show solidarity and defiance against those who would bring terror to our streets.

Many thanks again.

The Sharpener Team.

Ranty Film Review: Constantine

2005-07-14T16:23:00.000+01:00

So, these four suicide bombers walk into a bar...

What? Too soon, y'think?

OK then. I'm going to talk about something other than the London bombings. I do have a fairly long piece written about the events of last Thursday, but I've decided to wait a while before publishing my analysis (if indeed I ever do). In truth I'm a little concerned about the reaction it'll receive. I decided to examine some of the philosophical issues involved rather than the overt political ones (after all, according to my academic certification I'm a philosopher by trade*). Unfortunately, though, that kind of dispassionate philosophical analysis doesn't always present us with neat and popular conclusions. Sometimes keeping schtumm on an issue is the best course of action.

So instead of politics and philosophy, how's about a film review? After all, if I stop writing about the films and music I like, well... well then the terrorists will have won.

(That line, incidentally, has been used by at least half of all active UK bloggers during the past week. As a gesture of solidarity I decided to use it too.)

* I take a peculiar delight in the combined look of exasperation and dismay on my father's face when I describe philosophy as "a trade".

Constantine

Oh yes indeed. I'm talking here about the film adaptation of the DC-Vertigo comic book series, Hellblazer. This review will contain massive big fuckoff spoilers by the way. Plot elements from film and books will be revealed, compared and contrasted. But before I give you my opinion of the movie I should point out two things...

Firstly, Hellblazer is the comic book I followed longer than any other. It's the book that got me into comics in the early 90s (I didn't read comic books when I was a kid) and via Hellblazer I discovered writers like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman and many others (who all did books or stories in the DC-Vertigo range at one point... or were connected to them in some way).

Secondly, John Constantine - the central character in Hellblazer - is easily my favourite comic book character. In fact, he's one of my favourite characters in all of literature.

To me, Hellblazer and John Constantine are one and the same. The comic book is the character. That he's a powerful sorcerer in a world where angels and demons are fighting a bloody battle for the destiny of humankind is merely the headtrip backdrop against which is played the real drama... what's happening inside Constantine. He's a finely nuanced character... part film noir private eye, part faithless preacher, part brutal murderer, part messiah and part shaman. One part of each of those to five parts fucked-up nihilist punk.

More importantly, John Constantine was clearly the creation of writers who hung out with the same kind of people I did. So although he's a larger than life character in a fantastical world, he's also more true-to-life from my perspective than anyone in a TV soap opera, or even on (spit!) Big Brother. He uses language in the same way I do. His internal monologue takes the same kinds of tangents as mine. His attitude towards the world was - at the time I was reading Hellblazer - very similar to mine. He laughed at the same sick shit.

One thing about John Constantine though... he's a far bigger bastid than even the wankiest of the bastids that I've ever encountered. We love John as a character; but we'd emigrate to avoid the fucker in real life.

So how does the film approach this complex character? Well. It doesn't. John Constantine, the scouse punk living in London is now John Constantine, the keanu reeves living in Los Angeles. And despite being a fan of both Bill and Ted films as well as the first two Matrix movies, when you turn John Constantine from a scouse punk into a keanu reeves it's just not going to work. Seriously.

Here's my thing... what Warner Brothers have done is put Keanu Reeves into an occult action blockbuster and used Hellblazer as a "brand" for marketing purposes. They haven't actually filmed the books. At least, not if you believe the books are about the character rather than the specifics of the various plot devices (which are wonderful and horrifying and enthralling, but not actually what Hellblazer is about). They've merely exploited it as a commercial opportunity.

And when an artist does that; allows something of genuine artistic merit to be transformed into yet another random piece of pop-cultural flotsam on an even footing with car adverts and boy bands; then it's unavoidable that the original work gets damaged.

And that irks me.

If Da Vinci were alive today, what would we think if he painted a ruddy great Coca-Cola logo across the top of the Mona Lisa and insisted that every official reproduction included it, as part of his multi-media merchandising deal? And before you act all pretend-outraged that I would compare the Mona Lisa to the comic book character John Constantine, let me say that I've seen that painting and was singularly unimpressed. I mean it's nice, but the reason it's so revered is because of what a far-out bloke Da Vinci was and the Mona Lisa has become his icon and - by extension - the icon of the entire Rennaissance and of European rationalism.

So yeah, it's a good painting and all, but the true importance of the Mona Lisa lies in what we've invested in it. Which is not to say that intrinsic artistic value doesn't exist. I believe very firmly that it does as it happens, but it's rare and it tends to be drowned out by the hype and garbage masquerading as it, and outnumbering it ten thousand to one.

On which note, back to Constantine. Warner Brothers could have improved the film immensely had they bought the rights, used the world and the plot devices, but had the original John Constantine appear in a cameo role played by either David Bowie or Rhys Ifans (depending on which side of Constantine they wanted to show in the scene)... Johnny Depp or James Marsters if they insisted on using an American actor... he arrives briefly, helps out Keanu Reeves (playing some American Constantine-wannabe) in a crucial scene, and disappears into the night.

Those of us who knew the comics, therefore, could enjoy the film on the same level as the 90% of the audience who never read the books (i.e. as a big-budget action blockbuster). And we'd get the extra thrill of seeing the various plot devices that we knew and loved being reworked cinematically. That stuff would all be in-jokes to existing fans. But by presenting the film as a version of the John Constantine story, the fans of the books are the butt of the joke rather than being in on it. We're being laughed at by a few cynical Hollywood bastids with obscene bank-accounts and desperately sad inner lives. Because the mainstream audience doesn't get the joke either.

My flat-mate defended the film by suggesting that it was conscious iconoclasm. That the film was about change, that it tells a story of John Constantine's transformation, and that criticism of such changes are therefore missing the point.

And y'know, I agree that's a perfectly valid way to approach a comic book character with a cult following. Confound the bastids! That's what Alan Moore would do!

But that's not what the film does. There's a couple of cute, knowing lines in the script about how "it's not like the books". But the character portrayed by Keanu Reeves (and this, I guess, is the real problem) actually isn't John Constantine. He's got the same name, he lives in the same world, he faces some of the same situations and shares some of the same acquaintances... he's clearly meant to be John Constantine.

But he isn't.

So the whole premise of "change" is flawed. He doesn't start out as John Constantine and end up as Keanu Reeves. He starts out as Keanu Reeves and ends up exactly the same. They even changed the entire motivating back-story to Constantine's character, turning him from a bastid into a victim.

When we first meet John (in the film and relevant book), he discovers that he has lung cancer. But he can't die because the devil will claim his soul and torture him for all eternity. Why does the devil get his soul? Well, in the film he was driven to suicide in his teens because of his visions and lack of understanding parents. But he was rescucitated after 2 minutes. Suicide is a mortal sin, however, so the devil gets his soul once he eventually snuffs it. Constantine spends his time trying to atone for his suicide and earn his soul back from Satan.

In the books, however, Constantine was an angry punk who got into black magick. He wasn't in control of what was going on, but nonetheless found himself involved in a satanic ritual in Newcastle where a young girl was sacrificed to a demon, damning her soul to an eternity of (gruesomely portrayed) suffering... Constantine is left in shock, holding the girl's severed arm and realising that he's going to pay for what's he's just done.

As you can see... right from the get-go we're not dealing with the same character. John Constantine is supposed to be haunted by metaphorical demons as well as real ones! It's not iconoclasm to simply leave out pretty much all of the essential facets of a character... it's just bad film-making.

It's a Big Dog's Cock of a film. Which is so near to, yet so far from, the dog's bollocks. It assaults the senses in exactly the way a blockbuster occult action thingie is supposed to. It chugs along at a great breakneck pace. And then, every minute or two, you remember that Keanu Reeves is supposed to be playing John Constantine from Hellblazer and everything screeches to a halt. You don't see iconoclasm on the screen, you see laziness. Turning subtle and inventive writing into a 90 minute rock video is actually piss easy if you're a rock-video director and someone bungs you a shedload of cash.

Attacking the shallowness and ineptitude of Hollywood may be like shooting fishing in a barrel, but whenever Hollywood consumes and shits out something of worth... well, frankly I feel it's appropriate to break out the gatling gun and let rip. Water, dead fish and bits of broken barrel flying in all directions. Fuck it.

And just in the cause of gratuitous fun-making, I want to close with a comparison of how another plot element is handled in the books and in the film.

As the movie draws to it's sorry conclusion, Constantine realises that hell is just about to break out on earth and humanity will be consumed by demons and it'll all be very grim indeed. This was engineered by an unholy alliance of angels and demons. Constantine decides that to prevent this he must kill himself and persuade Satan to intervene ('cos Satan will be collecting his soul after all). This he does... and his sacrifice not only saves the world, the love interest, and the eternal soul of her twin sister; but it absolves him of the suicide thingie and Satan doesn't get his soul. However rather than allow him entry to heaven, Satan cures his lung cancer, keeping Constantine on earth in the hope of claiming his soul in the sequel.

"Fair enough", you say, "that's pretty much what I'd expect from an occult action movie".

Contrast that with how the book handles similar material. Constantine realises that his various wheelings and dealings (already resulting in several deaths) haven't cured his cancer and he now faces imminent death. So he decides to sell his soul to three extremely powerful demons (Lucifer is AWOL at this point and hell is ruled by a trinity of nasties). Should he die, therefore, all three would be duty bound to collect and it would spark a civil war in hell. Constantine is aware that this would result in an upset in the cosmic balance and be catastrophic for humanity. At which point he slashes his wrists.

All three demons arrive to collect his soul, realise that he's screwed them, and are forced to cure his cancer to give them time to work out how to deal with the situation. So the story ends with him placing all of humanity in jeopardy of eternal horrors in order to save his own skin. Then he sparks up a cigarette.

People have the power

2005-07-08T16:23:00.000+01:00

Sign the pledge.

"I will at the earliest opportunity, assemble in London in a public demonstration of respect to the victims of the July 7 atrocity, defiance of the murderers who carried it out and solidarity with the people of London."

The streets belong to us not terrorists. Sign the pledge.

And spread the word.

A Letter to the Terrorists

2005-07-07T21:23:00.000+01:00

This is excellent.

Full text of Mayor Livingstone's speech

2005-07-07T20:23:00.000+01:00

This was a cowardly attack, which has resulted in injury and loss of life. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been injured, or lost loved ones. I want to thank the emergency services for the way they have responded.

Following the al-Qaeda attacks on September 11 in America we conducted a series of exercises in London in order to be prepared for just such an attack. One of the exercises undertaken by the government, my office and the emergency and security services was based on the possibility of multiple explosions on the transport system during the Friday rush hour. The plan that came out of that exercise is being executed today, with remarkable efficiency and courage, and I praise those staff who are involved.

I'd like to thank Londoners for the calm way in which they have responded to this cowardly attack and echo the advice of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair - do everything possible to assist the police and take the advice of the police about getting home today.

I have no doubt whatsoever that this is a terrorist attack. We did hope in the first few minutes after hearing about the events on the Underground that it might simply be a maintenance tragedy. That was not the case. I have been able to stay in touch through the very excellent communications that were established for the eventuality that I might be out of the city at the time of a terrorist attack and they have worked with remarkable effectiveness. I will be in continual contact until I am back in London.

I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.

That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I'm proud to be the mayor of that city.

Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others - that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.

They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.

Thoughts about the bombs and their aftermath

2005-07-07T19:23:00.000+01:00

The past nine hours or so have been pretty hectic. Not for me personally, you understand, but for London in general. I'm a long way from the bombs, sat in front of a computer screen reading about them and writing my thoughts. Strange days indeed.

Based on media reports, the picture (as of the time of writing) is this:

- There were 4 explosions in London this morning during rush hour.
- 3 of those were on tube trains or in tube stations. One was on a bus.
- Between 33 and 45 people have been killed. Between 250 and 1,000 have been injured.

Having said that; right now I'm far more interested in the reactions of people than in any specifics about the bombs. Simply because we all know that the media reports in the immediate aftermath of these things are sketchy at best. It'll be at least a day before we can start to feel confident that any given piece of information won't be revised wildly almost as soon as it's broadcast.

So our immediate reaction to these things can sometimes be very telling. We are after all, in no small part, reacting to our own preconceptions. This also means, if we're feeling honest enough, that we can tell a little about ourselves by examining those reactions.

And around the web, on bulletin boards and blogs, those reactions have been there for all to see. I opened my own blog entry with a pretty crap joke. I make no apologies for that as it was an inoffensive bit of humour (although I received two private communications from people questioning my "tact" and one telling me I'm as bad as the bombers... why do people always email me directly rather than use the comments, by the way? Are the comments broken in certain browsers, I wonder); and I have witnessed savage online maulings on two separate bulletin boards for jokes which were only a little less innocent.

Some people react to these things with humour. Yes you can point out that it's misplaced (or at the very least mis-timed) but it's just the way certain people deal with shocking events. And you should note that in life-threatening situations - of which I've been in more than a couple - and immediately after suffering serious injuries I have tended to react with the same dry humour (so it's not "at someone else's expense", merely an involuntary reaction that - in my view - is my unconscious attempt to somehow neutralise violence). Polite reminders to be tactful are in order (and have been noted) but any anger is badly misdirected.

Anyways, if anything I just wish the joke had been funnier... John B over at Shot by both sides had a far better one.

Over at Conservative Commentary Peter reacts by posting a very large (and badly optimised) image of a Union Jack flag. This of course typifies another common reaction to this kind of outrage.

Personally I'm of the opinion that jingoism and knee-jerk nationalism are extremely unconstructive responses and will exacerbate things in the long run. However I don't for a moment blame or denounce anyone for having those reactions. They are just as instinctive for those people as dry humour is for me.

The hope is that after the smoke clears; when people begin to rationally take stock of these events; that we can put aside our gut reactions and work towards a world where they don't happen.

However, there are responses to tragedies like this which do deserve denuciation.

You Brits need to wise up. Of course this is the work of a few "extremist" muslims, and the majority are "peaceful" and will "condemn" the attacks, but that is all smoke and mirrors - DECEPTION.

They all send money and support, they will take over your country and make your dhimmitude formal.

Set an example and hang some Dune Coons from the tower gates!
Mike from New York

This kind of shit pisses me off. Yes, it's probably some 13-year-old boy with emotionally distant parents desperately seeking attention. But it nonetheless illustrates a certain kind of reaction to these events which is profoundly dangerous if it gets any traction.

Thankfully that's not something that seems to happen too much in Britain. I recall living in London during an IRA bombing campaign... my soft and sexy Irish accent only got me into trouble once (with a couple of pissed-up skinheads) and I never felt as though I was viewed with suspicion or hatred because of my nationality.

That said, there's already a degree of tension between the Islamic community and a certain element of White Britain and these bombs will make that worse if we're not careful (all assuming it's been carried out by Islamic terrorists of course... let's not forget that the last bombing campaign in London was carried out by a nutjob nail-bomber who hated gay men and immigrants).

Unlike we Irish who insidiously blend in with the native population, the Islamic community tends to stick out a bit more. I say "tends" as reminder that there are plenty of black and white moslems who don't look in the slightest bit "Arabic" and who blend-in just as insidiously as Irishmen like me. But because there is that ease of recognition (a combination of dress code, accent and skin colour) for perhaps a majority of moslems, suspicion of The Other can often be highlighted, manipulated and amplified as part of an unsavoury agenda.

This needs to be minimised at all costs. Those who already speak of the Islamic community with suspicion or distaste need to rein in their vitriol right now. And those who view international terrorism as merely an extension of US foreign policy need to do the same.

George Galloway's response has, naturally, been to jump the gun...

We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings.

Now, I'm not a fan of Galloway at the best of times (though I loved his testimony in the US) but this is a new low for the man. It smacks of a nasty kind of opportunism. In the days and weeks to come there will be many words written (some of which will be by me) trying to place these bombs into a wider geopolitical context. But it's just plain crap to start pointing fingers and claiming "I told you so!" before the dust of the explosions has even settled.

Meanwhile someone called Cliff May wonders: Won't it be interesting to see whether those gathered in Scotland to protest the G8 will -- or will not -- protest the terrorist bombings?

How exactly do you protest the terrorist bombings? I happen to know for a fact that a meeting was held at the Stirling RCC (one of the G8 protest camps) earlier today in order to thrash out a statement regarding the bombs. This was done as a response to initial radio reports reaching the camp which speculated about whether the London bombs were the work of Islamic terrorists or part of the G8 protests (seriously! that was the speculation at one point!)

However there's a lot of problems with a statement coming out of the RCC, and many of the activists have a serious problem with any press release claiming to represent the G8 protest. The almost 3,000 people gathered at Stirling are not part of a single organisation with a policy and a common philosophy. In fact, the only thing that unites the G8 protesters is the fact that they want to protest against the G8.

So (a) What would any statement from any of those protesters actually mean, beyond what one from any other random member of the public would mean? Does Cliff May find it interesting, for example, as to whether or not those gathered to watch England play Australia at cricket will protest the bombings? and (b) how could any statement issued possibly be representative of all of the individuals at Stirling? (with the police making it next to impossible for protesters to actually travel and meet-up, organising a thorough collective response beyond the confines of the RCC is physically impossible).

It makes as much sense as wondering what the collective response of dog-owners would be, and whether they plan to protest the terrorist bombings. The G8 protesters share a single unifying factor, but are otherwise a wildly diverse group of people. There are committed pacifists (a group of whom seek to disrupt the G8 summit by chanting "Omm" at certain times, for instance) and there are extremely angry nihilists (who, if asked, would probably insist that the bombs should not be condemned as they are the understandable response to US/UK policy). And in between there's the 98% who are horrified by what's happened and have spent the day trying to get in touch with loved-ones in London and feeling just as appalled and dislocated and freaked-out as everyone else.

Painting the G8 protesters as some kind of homogenous organisation with a structure, policies and mission-statements is simply a falsification of reality. It's a group of disparate people with disparate aims and a single uniting factor.

So go away hassle the dog-owners Mr. May.

In summary, and at the risk of repeating myself, this vile act must not be allowed to inspire other vile acts (I read two separate calls to burn down the Finsbury Park Mosque online today). Those of us who genuinely seek a peaceful world, free from political and religious violence, on whatever side of the fence we usually stand, must let it be known that we are united in our defiance of the people who use bombs to further their aims.

London hit by bomb blasts

2005-07-07T12:23:00.000+01:00

Thankfully I work from home.

Unfortunately I live in Aldgate Station.

(no, not really)

Well, needless to say - what with me writing this and all - I haven't been blown up by G8 protesters, Al Qaeda, the Paris Olympic Bid Team, the Real IRA, or whoever it was that decided to plant bombs around London today.

It appears that by timing them to explode during rush hour, the bombs were calculated to cause the maximum damage, injury and loss of life to ordinary Londoners and tourists. I have three wishes to make regarding the aftermath of this despicable act.

1. That the scum who planned and carried out these attacks are brought swiftly to justice.

2. That the government does not use this as a pretext for even more draconian legislation.

3. That this horrible event does not further inflame tension between groups of people who had no involvement in these bombings.

Unfortunately I fear that none of those will come to pass.

Eye-witness news:

I've just got off the phone with my flat-mate, G (this morning he arrived back in London after a month in California!) whose tube from the airport was stopped at Euston Station. An announcement was made that power surges were closing the line and everyone was asked to leave the train. G - inconvenienced but thinking nothing of it - wandered out of the station to catch a bus, at which point all hell broke loose when the muffled sound of a massive explosion from underground was heard.

Not long after getting on a bus, G said that a passenger got on-board with a radio. Almost immediately news of the bus-bombing was announced and everyone piled off the bus unsurprisingly.

He made it to safety and is fine, thankfully.

At least one person is liveblogging the events. Check out Europhobia.

G8 Protests - news from The Front

2005-07-06T18:23:00.000+01:00

LONDON WINS OLYMPIC GAMES IN 2012... DAVID BECKHAM SAYS THE OLYMPICS WILL BE NICE... LONDON WINS OLYMPIC GAMES IN 2012... GOOD OLD SEBASTIAN COE... LONDON WINS OLYMPIC GAMES IN 2012... DAVID BECKHAM SAYS THE OLYMPICS WILL BE NICE... LONDON WINS OLYMPIC GAMES IN 2012... "... good afternoon, this is Jim Bliss of the Anarcho-Syndicalist News Network broadcasting live from our helicopter above Gleneagles..." ... LONDON WINS OLYMPIC GAMES IN 2012... LONDON WINS OLYMPIC GAMES IN 2012... "... can you boost the signal somehow...?" DAVID BECKHAM SAYS THE OLYMPICS WILL BE NICE... "that's it, I think they can hear me now..."

Sorry about that, but you wouldn't believe the trouble protesters are having getting heard just now. Apparently London is to host a big sports event in seven years time, so that's obviously what the media need to focus on today. We're just happy to do our bit and provide an "In other news" story for when they run out of semi-famous sports people saying how nice it's all going to be in seven years.

And so... good afternoon, this is Jim Bliss of ASN broadcasting live from our helicopter above Gleneagles, where it appears one of the most successful direct action protests in recent memory has taken place despite the presence of over 10,000 police officers drafted in from as far afield as West Sussex and South Wales. However it does appear that a lack of video images showing young people in face-masks throwing things at the police has - up until now - kept this series of actions out of the mainstream media. Members of the Black Bloc have promised to address this situation should it become necessary, however.

While the Make Poverty History march and various Live-8 events are rightly lauded for encouraging mass participation and attempting to instill a sense of inclusion in people; a sense of "we're all in this together"; there are those who feel a greater sense of urgency. Individuals who see the very mechanisms of power themselves as The Problem, and who view direct acts of disruption against those mechanisms as the best method of demonstrating their position.

And below me, across the landscape of Scotland, I can see the actions of those individuals play out. Several thousand self-styled, so-called "anarchists" (in the words of the mainstream media) from Scotland and beyond have attempted to disrupt the first day of the G8 conference. There were as many reasons for doing this as there were self-styled, so-called "anarchists". But the one over-riding reason given by protester after protester was "to show those in power that we have power too". To demonstrate that they are not out of our reach.

Given the military and police determination to ensure that the eight power brokers could chat without interruption, only the most optimistic of activists honestly believed that disruption was possible. At best, most hoped to at least get noticed.

Success!

And noticed they were. ASN is pleased to annouce that the first day of the G8 summit was successfully disrupted, with the Canadian delegation remaining firmly blockaded inside their hotel even now at the time of filing this story (4:23pm). The Canadian PM managed to make it to the various photocalls, but his team have been forced to enjoy the hospitality of their swish hotel for the entire day. Truly they have sacrificed much.

This must provide a certain amount of embarrassment for those organising the security for the event. Especially as became quickly apparent that the reason for the success of the activists was that they were so much better organised. We at ASN have always viewed such actions as proof that non-hierarchical methods of organisation can ultimately achieve far more than the rigid structures employed by the establishment.

Indeed when the news filtered through yesterday that "The Anarchist Ring-Leaders" had been arrested, it was met with a great deal of mirth at the Stirling Rural Convergence Centre (RCC).

For anyone interested, the "Ring-Leaders" were all released without charge within a couple of hours of their arrests (news which strangely never made it to the mainstream media). It turns out the Ring-Leaders were a van-load of medics (shock! horror! even some doctors and nurses are self-styled, so-called "anarchists") on their way to the protests. They were carrying maps of the area and had made a number of 'X' marks on the maps in the locations that they felt would be the best places for medical stations.

Dangerous maniacs!

In related news, the Stirling RCC found itself cordoned off with nobody being allowed in or out. An estimated 2,500 activists had arrived by that point and - because they're sensible people - had arranged to have an NHS portacabin on site with a doctor, nurse and pharmacist present. This morning police decided to prevent the medical staff from getting on site and also turned away several independent observers with video cameras.

ASN managed to track down Chief Constable Basil Wingnut and questioned him on this issue...

- "Excuse me, Officer Wingnut? Could you tell us why medical staff have been prevented from accessing the protest site?"
- "Well, obviously we don't want a repeat of the ugly scenes of last night. That's why!"
- "I see... and what ugly scenes would those be Officer Wingnut?"
- "Using infra-red surveillance and top-secret satellite imaging technology we were able to assess the situation within the protest camp in this self-styled field last night. We witnessed medical staff savagely treating a couple of campfire burns and aggressively strapping a twisted ankle in a way that we felt posed a serious threat to public order. Paracetamol was also dispensed on at least three occasions, and we simply could not risk a repeat of those scenes today. So we have prevented medical staff from entering this so-called field"

The police have also implemented Section 60 of some act or other (Public Order Act? Emergency Powers Act? Jackboot Up The Jaxie Act? Who knows... but it's definitely Section 60... they make that much clear). This gives them the power to stop and search anyone they choose, as many times as they choose, whenever they choose. They have been using this law in exactly the sort of way that politicians always promise these laws won't be used... to harass individuals who they have already established are not carrying any concealed weapons (by stopping and searching them on multiple occasions).

During these stop and searches, individual officers have also been threatening activists with arrest if they do not provide a name and address. This is illegal of course (Section 60 of the Criminal Justice & Public Order Act does not give the police powers to demand identification) and officers have been curiously reluctant to repeat the threats when observers challenge them to do so on film.

Up until now, however, activist legal advisors are aware of approximately 100 arrests for various public order offences. A number of protesters have been hospitalised, including several with broken arms (the classic baton-charge injury... you raise your arm to protect your head... and a baton at full whack across the arm tends not to break the baton) but there has been no news of any major clashes with the police aside from a single flare-up at the Stirling RCC last night.

In order to understand how the protest has been so successful, you have to understand the manner in which it has been carried out. As people converged at Stirling and elsewhere, they - using the voluntary affinity principle - organised themselves into groups (anywhere between 3 and 75 people). Each group then worked out how best they could disrupt the summit, spent a while finding out who else was going to do similar stuff, and held meetings to knock together specific plans.

Some groups, for example, decided to set up cooking and meal tents to allow the others to concentrate on their stuff. Nobody told them to do it and nobody - aside from themselves - expects them to do it. But on-site there will be plenty of hot food for anyone who wants it. Important that. Other groups were at the other extreme... trying to work out the best ways to scale the fence around the conference centre or set fire to Tony Blair's pants.

Once each group had worked out their own plans, and ensured that they weren't duplicating anyone else and were as co-ordinated with others as possible, they simply left the RCC and drifted off into the countryside to spend the night in trees or under them. Apparently (bizarrely) the Daily Mail warned of exactly this tactic, but the police seem to have forgotten to read the Mail today as they were caught completely off-guard.

In order to leave the RCC, however, the police cordon required breaching which is where the flare-up occurred. At 3am this morning a large group of the Black Bloc decided to open the cordon. It was like something out of The Lord of The Rings... they just en masse sprinted at a cordon of fluorescing officers five deep and punched a massive hole in the line. The cordon fragmented and it was over half an hour before the site was sealed once more. Plenty of time for anyone who wished to leave, to leave.

That particular group of Black Bloc were the first to shut down the M9 this morning. And as police moved in to tackle them, so other groups of activists emerged from the countryside and shut down sections of the M9 the A9 and any other road that might be used to get people to or from Gleneagles. Rush hour was chaotic and the inability of the police to co-ordinate a response to this tactic left the various delegates hotels vulnerable to blockade.

Which was nice.

At one point, from my vantage point in the ASN chopper, I watched a large group of children and disabled protesters emerge from the Stirling RCC and split police cordons left-right and centre. People have the power.

Leaving the hotels vulnerable was probably the biggest mistake the police made. On the other side, the biggest blunder was probably the 100 or so Black Bloc who attempted to infiltrate the Make Poverty History march.

200,000 people descending on Edinburgh marching for peace... and all dressed in white. I'm not entirely sure how far a sore thumb really sticks out. But it can't have been nearly as far as 100 Black Bloc in a crowd of 200,000 people dressed in white.

And then there was... LONDON WINS OLYMPIC GAMES IN 2012... DAVID BECKHAM SAYS THE OLYMPICS WILL BE NICE... LONDON WINS OLYMPIC GAMES IN 2012... GOOD OLD SEBASTIAN COE... LONDON WINS OLYMPIC GAMES IN 2012... "aw hell, looks like we're losing the signal again..." LONDON WINS OLYMPIC GAMES IN 2012... DAVID BECKHAM SAYS THE OLYMPICS WILL BE NICE... LONDON WINS OLYMPIC GAMES IN 2012...

Update: Stuff seems to have kicked off in a couple of places.

I am giddy with the power!

2005-07-05T17:23:00.000+01:00

Fear me. For verily I do have the Power of Google at my fingertips.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, is this worth a thousand googlebombs?

What is it? you ask. Well it seems that my habit of linking to a particular image on the BBC news site each time I mention the name Anne Widdecombe has caused that image to show up on google's image search whenever anyone searches for the tory MP's name.

Sadly it only seems to appear when you scroll to the end of the first search and instruct it to "repeat the search with the omitted results included". But even so, I hail it as a success.

An Introduction to Peak Oil

2005-07-04T14:23:00.000+01:00

Another post up on The Sharpener. This one is called An Introduction to Peak Oil. Anyone want to venture a guess as to what it might be about?

Anniversary

2005-07-04T03:23:00.000+01:00

Today is the 11th anniversary of the worst event of my life up until now. And even though this weblog is deliberately far less about me personally than my previous one; I don't want to let this day pass unremarked. Last year; the tenth anniversary; I made a decision not to recognise the day at all. That was a mistake and I felt guilty about it for months.

On the morning of July 4th 1994 my closest friend - my hero - and in many ways my mentor, P, took his own life in an hotel room in New York. He was 26.

Everything changed for me after his death. It signalled the end of the happiest period of my life (so far) and the beginning of a downward trend that I've only in the past couple of years managed to bring to a halt (and which I'm still working on reversing).

P was angry with me when he killed himself. His move to New York wasn't going well and he'd become isolated and depressed. I'd promised him that I'd fly across and hang out for a couple of months... we had done a lot of travelling together and he - apparently - was finding it difficult to adjust to my absence. He never made this clear to me though. It was always "Why don't you come over when you have some time?" and never anything more urgent.

But I was having the happiest time of my life. I was head over heels in love with an incredible girl, having great sex, partying and taking lots of euphoric drugs.

And everything changed.

His letter, which I received a week or so after the phonecall from a mutual friend, was the most disturbing thing I've ever read. It was five pages of pain and paranoia. Amongst many things, he believed that a black-magick coven was persecuting him. He mentioned the world trade center bombing of the previous year as evidence of this. And among the broken words and the craziness was the line "if you were only here I wouldn't be".

The immediate aftermath is all a bit of a blur now. I suspect I went on a bad-drugs bender, but I honestly don't recall. A year later though, my relationship was in tatters and just about to collapse, there was no more sex, partying or euphoric drugs. My academic career had been jettisoned and I was instead spending 15 hours a day working for an engineering company. I was taking a lot of speed to get me through the week and then spending the weekend on heavy-duty psychedelics.

I guess the only surprise is that it took me as long as 5 years to burn out.

When I first arrived in London I shared a flat with P. It was a very special time. I wrote a thinly fictionalised account of that period. It was almost 400 pages long and left out half the best bits.

I remember one cold October morning when - upon emerging from a club in central London at 3am - P decided that we needed to find out how quickly it was possible to run across each of London's bridges.

Together we devised a method of ensuring that we'd be running at full tilt, so there'd be no question that it was actually our best time. The method was to run across the bridges stark bollock naked. We'd walk up to the bridge, disrobe quickly (placing clothes in a plastic bag), note the second-hand on P's watch, peg it across the bridge, note the elapsed time, get dressed and walk to the next bridge. Start at Lambeth Bridge and finish at London Bridge.

It couldn't be simpler really.

Except that about halfway across Lambeth Bridge a police van drew up and began keeping pace with us. Eight or ten burly and tooled-up policemen staring out. One of them was pointing a video camera.

The fact that we were off our heads at the time is probably why; as the policemen bailed out of the van; neither of us had the presence of mind to check the elapsed time. But I can pretty much guarantee that we couldn't possibly have run it any faster.

Anyway, I shan't be asking for comments on this post. I just wanted to mark the day somehow. Come back soon for something more generally relevant.

Quote of the day

2005-07-03T13:23:00.000+01:00

The happiest days in Africa's history were those in which ultimate authority lay with a few hundred Englishmen, in parliament.
- Peter Cuthbertson (Conservative Party Activist)

What a tosser.

And people think I'm taking the piss when I describe the tories as the Party of Empire.

Random thought

2005-07-01T21:23:00.000+01:00

I'm well aware that a person can get a huge deal from Can's epic twenty minute version of Yoo Doo Right without first having smoked a little pot.

But really.......

Vote John Kerry!

2005-07-01T18:23:00.000+01:00

Damn! Too late!

Well, I was advocating a Kerry vote back in November too and for one over-riding reason. Not because I thought Kerry would be a better guardian of the environment or that he'd do things very differently with regards to using the military to secure resources. No, the reason I wanted a Kerry administration was simply that I didn't want a born-again fundie like Dubya getting to choose a Supreme Court Justice.

And now he will. Which is a disaster in my view.

... a more reliable conservative could give the court a harder edge on social issues, which would affect the nature of American society for decades.

Y'think?

Live 8

2005-07-01T17:23:00.000+01:00

Over the past couple of weeks I've heard a lot of criticism of Bob Geldof and the Live 8 hootenanny. Some of this has been badly misinformed (like the tory politician discussing it on the TV news a few nights ago who complained that the situation in Africa cannot be effectively addressed with Aid money raised by charity concerts).

An important point seemed to have passed the man by... Live 8 is not a fundraising event.

But this has been a common misconception, and it's far from the only straw man gleefully made-to-order and kicked to pieces on the TV and - more particularly - on the web.

But even though it must get the guy down on a personal level... I truly hope that every time Bob Geldof reads the words; "Geldof's an idiot! He's got it all wrong on Africa! What the G8 really need to do is this..." he feels vindicated in what he's doing. Because the point. Indeed, this time round the only point; has been to get people talking about African poverty. Every article telling him he's wrong is, paradoxically, proving the worth of his approach.

I think the man's an absolute hero. He's taken the very modest amount of fame afforded someone from a late-70s punky new wave band with a couple of hits, and done frankly astonishing things with it. Yet every single time over the past couple of weeks that I've seen Live 8 discussed in the media (whether mainstream or alternative) it's been framed in the context of whether or not Geldof is really doing any good.

Even the grooviest of the mainstream journalists, George Monbiot, has had a pop. As has my dear friend and fellow traveller Merrick. And incisive interweblogger Justin has taken more than one swipe at the event. On Question Time last night there was an enormous amount of equivocation on the issue and every web forum in the land seems to be echoing the cynicism and criticism that have decended upon this event like a couple of already bloated vultures determined to gorge themselves sick on whatever good intentions might be left in our culture.

Yeah, yeah, the road to hell is paved with 'em. It's so easy to trot out the clichés. But what exactly is the point of saying that? Are we telling people not to bother acting upon any good intentions they may have? Or not to have those intentions in the first place? Of course not, insist the cynics, don't be so silly! We're just saying that good intentions aren't enough.

Except that's not what's being said. Not really. Every time an article spends two paragraphs acknowledging that "yes, some good may come of this" and then forty paragraphs telling the reader how crap it is, the overall impact is to completely disempower that reader. And of course that's not the intention of Merrick or Monbiot or Justin. But that is the result.

Here's an admission... my first real political act was almost certainly my decision to become a vegetarian in my mid-teens. It was a political act in the sense that it politicised me. My decision forced me to look at the world in a way I hadn't done before and it got me reading books by people I wouldn't have considered up until then. But the actual reason I became a veggie was to impress a girl.

My point is a simple one... young people can sometimes make decisions for silly reasons, but the ramifications of those decisions can be profound and life-changing (this is not only true of young people, but for lots of reasons it's mostly that way). I'd be a completely different person today if I hadn't had a crush on a vegetarian when I was 15. My politics could very well be unrecognisable. Now, I don't know how many 16-year-old poverty activists Geldof has created in the past two weeks and will create tomorrow. Kids who are impressionable enough to have their minds changed by their pop star heroes. Certainly it'll be less than 1% of those who get fired up briefly by the event. But it'll be more than I'll manage to inspire in a lifetime of writing silly little articles.

This is also the reason I completely condone Geldof's decision to fill the limited time available to him with the biggest possible acts, rather than making the event a showcase for African talent. This isn't supposed to be an advertisement for any particular artists (though of course it will undeniably function as one); this is an attempt to get minds thinking about a particular issue. So it is infinitely more important to have the stage filled with the same faces that appear on the posters above teenage beds and on MTV than to have it filled with relatively unknown African artists, whatever their talent.

Live 8 is about generating press and attention for an issue that is being completely neglected by the media now that they have an unending "War on Terror" to cover. And every time I read a piece attacking the principle of popstars getting involved in politics, or attacking Geldof for not having identical views on market liberalisation to the author I just shake my head and chalk up another opportunity missed.

Geldof is doing one thing. And that thing is providing every other commentator with an opening to address the issue of African poverty. It's suddenly on the agenda. No it's not going to solve African poverty. Of course it isn't. And when Geldof says "we can solve African poverty this year" he isn't suggesting that his concerts will be what does it... merely that it is technically within the power of the human race.

When John and Yoko ran their advertising campaign for peace, they didn't honestly expect the billboards to end war. And you're missing the point of Live 8 if you see it as anything other than a bloody massive billboard. One that Geldof should be justly proud of.

What about the other thing though?

Well yes... there's also the whole other issue of Bono and Bob's praise of Dubya Bush and apparent adoration for Brown and Blair. And here, I concede, there may well be plenty to be pissed off about.

But it pisses me off that so many people are giving Live 8 a kicking because of it. And yes, they can - and should - be viewed as separate issues. Bono and Bob have been courting the powerful for many years now. But Live 8 is a one-off event aimed at raising awareness. Every 16-year-old who reads a book about globalisation or the politics of African poverty as a result of Live 8 (and I say this now: "You're a complete fool if you imagine there won't be quite a few") will come away with opinions far more nuanced and subtle than Bono or Bob will ever convey in a 30-second soundbite, or even a speech to the Inner Party. Every single one of them will be a victory for Live 8.

And given that's the primary purpose of Live 8. Well... you draw the conclusion...

And on the whole "Bono and Bob courting the powerful" issue...? I hope to return to that at a later date. This blog entry was about Live 8. Not about that.

The news in brief

2005-06-30T15:23:00.000+01:00

Spain legalises gay marriage. Yay Spain!

Schoolboy killer ate lobster in New York as parents lay dead. But what colour socks was he wearing? Eh? Tell us! The public has a right to know!

Growth slows as consumer spending grinds to a halt. It's still not sunk in yet, has it?

Won't be long though... Unocal Bid Shows China Needs Oil For Growth.

Vietnam Bird Flu Death Toll Rises. I'm never quite sure how much I'm supposed to be worrying about this.

Bobby Brown Invites Himself Into Your Living Room. But this would worry me a lot.

And finally, am I the only one who thinks "Freedom Tower" is a dreadful name? Too much fortress, not enough beauty.

The public smoking ban: No exemptions

2005-06-28T20:23:00.000+01:00

I've got a new bit up at The Sharpener.

Me! Me!

2005-06-16T17:23:00.000+01:00

Whoa... between work and peak oil, it's all a bit full-on around here just now (excellent Brian Eno album notwithstanding). Work-wise; I've just finished one of the projects I've been doing, and am on the final furlong of another one. Having my PC explode really knocked the stuffing out of my schedule though, and it'll be another week I suspect, before I'm completely caught up.

On top of that, there's been another couple of (non-work) incidents which have really made the past week a major hassle. I'll not bore you with the details... let's just say that I'm very stressed just now, and I could really do with a holiday that's not going to happen. Arse.

And if that wasn't bad enough; my writing really suffers when I'm stressed (yes, yes, cue unfunny comment about how I must be very stressed all the time, then). My already meandering style becomes wildly unfocussed and I end up following connections from tangents off tangents and covering six different subjects in the space of a few paragraphs.

Hell, this entry started off as a response to a rather silly "Superhero" blog meme that's doing the rounds, and it's only now - in paragraph four - that I'm getting round to even mentioning the thing!

But what the hell, it's not like you have to read any of this. Not unless you've had your eyelids surgically removed prior to being strapped into a chair in front of an IMAX screen displaying my blog in real time of course.

However. If that is the case...... Well..... I'm sure you'll soon come to agree that it's for the best.

Anyways, via the very groovy Justin at Chicken Yoghurt comes the Superhero Meme Thang (note: as an example of just how unfocussed I am at the moment, let me point out that when I popped over to Chicken Yoghurt to cut'n'paste the questions on the Superhero meme post, I stumbled upon this post about my peak oil article and spent 20 minutes reading the comments and composing a really rather unsatisfactory response). Hmmmm...

The Superhero Meme (or: One Day I Shall Create A Real SpiderMan! Even If I Have To Subject Another 30 Teenagers To Horrible Deaths By Radiation Poisoning And Spider Venom)

1. If you could have one superpower, what would it be and why? (Assume you also get baseline superhero enhancements like moderately increased strength, endurance and agility.)

This is quite easy actually, as I wrote some short stories back in the day, featuring a superhero with the power to bestow spiritual enlightenment on people (his name was "Karma Man" - obvious David Bowie reference - hey! I was a lot younger). Of course, I'd want to leave out the whole Dorian Grayish back-story.

Each new issue of the comic (or film in the franchise - depends how big we're aiming here) would have me tackling some ruthless dictator who is desperately trying to escape being zapped into a fulfilled and centered human being. The ongoing plot arc would involve me and my crew tracking down Bush and Blair who have gone to ground and control an army of hideously mutated soldiers... created by extracting the souls from inmates of Guantanamo Bay (using a fiendish device developed by a crazed scientist funded by the Christian Right)... and who, because of their lack of souls, are therefore immune to my superpower.

(In the original stories the mutants were created by kidnapping pot-heads and using the device on them... but I thought I'd spice it up a little).

Yeah, that's definitely the superpower for me.

That, or the ability to transform mustard into ketchup. Either one really.

2. Which, if any, 'existing' superhero(es) do you fancy, and why?
I'm very glad to see that - according to the self-appointed arbiter or these things (internationalhero.co.uk) - that kick-ass pagan witch Willow is considered a superhero. And rightly so! She's a hero, and she is rather super. As I may have mentioned before - I have a bit of a thing for post-Season 4 Willow. Whatchagonna do? Gorgeous and powerful with more than a hint of gothy darkness, and yet she's a computer geek with a really high IQ at the same time!

Also, the whole season 6 thing with the dark magicks / drug addiction metaphor and psychedelics and the fact that she ends up as The Big Bad, tortures a misogynist rapist murderer to death in a very full on manner and then almost allows her grief to destroy the universe...? All I can say is "Wow!"

Which, if any, 'existing' superhero(es) do you hate?
Can't say that any of them have ever gotten a reaction beyond "irritation", perhaps - at a stretch - "mild dislike". I was never too enamoured with the cape and lycra brigade. And reserve particular contempt for any of them who namecheck their nationality (Captain America, Captain Britain, Capitao Brasil, Capitan Italia, etc.)

What would your superhero name be? (No prefab porn-name formulas here, you have to make up the name you think you'd be proud to mask under.)
As mentioned before, Karma Man is an ace name in my view. That said, I'd also like to adopt the King Mob moniker for a while. King Mob is an anarchist superhero whose actual identity changes from time to time. There was a King Mob in the 1880's... another one in the 1920's, and so on... the most famous of them all, of course, is the most recent incarnation... the one depicted here. And it'd only take three years of intensive combat training to bring me up to speed really... I'm a natural at everything else required (cough, cough).

Is there an "existing" superhero with whom you identify/whom you would like to be?
Well, I guess the King Mob thing kind of applies here. Of course, I haven't yet shot or blown up nearly enough people to truly identify with him, but there's still time.

(anyone who doesn't relish the ambiguity of a superhero who is a cold-blooded murderer in the name of his self-selected "higher cause" can stay in their capes and silly pants).

Pass it on. Three people please, and why they are the Chosen Ones...
Well, I dunno about this; it's a terrible burden to lay on someone. But lay it I shall.

Even though he only posts about once every two months (i.e. he won't respond to this), stoatie over at Kerosene Oyster Hell would write something very funny in response. And I imagine that L at Random Speak would also write something amusing. I'd also be interested in reading Peter Cuthbertson's response (though for different reasons).

Another Day on Earth

2005-06-12T14:23:00.000+01:00

I just thought I'd take a short break from work (yes, on a Sunday!) to recommend an album. It arrived yesterday morning in the post and I've been listening to it most of the weekend. Another Day on Earth is the new album from the remarkable Brian Eno (it can be purchased directly from the enoshop) and is the first full album of songs he's done since 1977's Before and After Science (though he collaborated with John Cale on Wrong Way Up a couple of years later, and has done sporadic vocals on several of his albums since then... Nerve Net and Drawn From Life, for instance, both featured his voice in one form or another).

I'd been eager to hear this album since I'd heard him describe song-writing as the "last great challenge in music" during an interview with Alan Moore on Radio 4. How would he rise to the challenge then?

"Very well", is the answer. "Very well indeed".

If you're a fan of Brian Eno then you will love this album. I'm a big fan of his instrumental stuff, so I've got hold of - and dug - all his recent albums. But given that I play his vocal albums an awful lot (or "the early, funny stuff" as we refer to them in this flat... a prize of a big fat spliff to the first person to point out the reference), I've always hoped that he'd do a few more.

The glorious piano and strings of How Many Worlds and the understated, simple unaffected vocals, make it one of the best songs he's ever done. And it doesn't feel at all isolated on an album that covers plenty of bases.

If I have one criticism it's that I think he overuses vocal effects every now and then. Although that said - as is the case on And Then So Clear - just when you're thinking "turn off the vocoder Brian, and let's hear you sing!" his own voice begins to emerge subtly from within the effects... it's a very lovely 'machine to human' transition which places the earlier effects-laden verses in perfect context.

Another Day on Earth is an excellent album which deserves a longer review than I currently have time for. It also deserves a far bigger audience than I suspect it'll get. If (as is the case with a friend of mine) you "just don't like his voice" then this album is obviously not for you... but I recommend you check out Ambient 4: On Land (the best of his non-vocal stuff in my view).

However, if you do like his earlier vocal albums, then you will love this. I don't believe there's a man on the planet who can play a recording studio as an instrument the way that Eno does. And when you have that behind some amazing songs... well... I don't imagine there will be a better album this year.

Bone Bomb
my body so thin
so tired
beaten for years
ploughshare to bomb
so hard

bone bomb
bone bomb
bone bomb

my town so dusty
so dry
buildings pushed over
lives heaped together
young girls dreaming of beautiful deaths
popstar pictures above their beds
above their heads...
troops

everything stolen
except my bones
now I am only bone
I waited for peace
and here is my peace
here in this still last moment
of my life.

Hate all Religions! Now!

2005-06-11T17:23:00.000+01:00

Go on! Hate them I say!

(just thought I'd get some last-minute incitement in)

Here in the UK there's a plan to pass a law against incitement to religious hatred. Now, I think it's a very bad idea to legislate these things. But those who wish to introduce this can make some very powerful arguments in their favour, and I've yet to really hear someone successfully argue against them. So, as Devil's Advocate, let me make the case for this law...

Currently in the UK, Christians can claim protection from "incitement to hatred" (under the blasphemy laws) and Jews can claim protection under the incitement to racial hatred laws (as can Sikhs). Now it's true to say that Islam is not being singled out... Buddhists and Pagans don't get protection either. However, it's also true to say that in the current cultural context, Moslems might feel that they are being treated unequally under the law, and - at least in some senses - they are right to feel that.
The claims that this law will abrogate "Free Speech" were made prior to the introduction of the incitement to racial hatred legislation. Bernard Manning and his ilk still ply their trade. The BNP still exists and still campaigns vigourously (much to the dismay of many). The law ended up giving ethnic minorities a weapon to use against extremists; it didn't stop Jim Davidson from making dreadful television or performing to packed houses of meatheads (so arguably it didn't go far enough)

In other words, the current legal framework arguably discriminates against moslems - given the current political and cultural situation (i.e. there isn't a widespread attempt to demonise Buddhism in certain areas of the media). And that's a situation which must surely be addressed, in the name of defusing intercommunity tension if not for the basic fairness of the thing. It seems very unlikely that we will repeal the racial incitement and blasphemy laws, so this is the only practical method of redressing the balance. And those worried that the law will limit free speech will have to demonstrate how the racial incitement laws have done so (at least to the detriment of society).

Let me reiterate that I'm playing Devil's Advocate here... I oppose the law. But I oppose it on the basis that religions are ultimately a set of beliefs that 95% of us in Western Europe can choose to retain or abandon once we reach adulthood. Therefore they should get no more protection from the law than the belief that the world is ruled by a talking marshallow called Gerald who lives in a shed in Preston.

(A less absurd belief system, I would argue, than Islam, Christianity or Judaism.)

But that opinion is unlikely to be very representative.

You've heard it all before

2005-06-09T00:23:00.000+01:00

Or at least most of it... assuming you're a regular visitor and have been reading my blog entries about peak oil. As evidence of the usually rather tenuous justification of blogging (that "it provides a space to test out drafts of articles") I present you:

Peak Oil: Beyond Optimism and Pessimism

Last time we hung out, my friend Merrick was badgering me (you'll only get the pun if you visit his site) about knitting a few of my recent blog entries into a "proper article" about peak oil, and also the wider issue of how we (as human beings) often fail to address problems by denying their existence.

The trouble was there was a lot conspiring against me getting this done. Firstly I'm trying to write an introduction to Peak Oil for The Sharpener group blog. But it's a very different stylee... with graphs and tables of data and stuff. A technical primer rather than the more philosophical piece that the blog entries suggested.

Secondly I have more work at the moment than I usually do, and that's making plenty of claims on my time. And thirdly I found it very difficult to see these various blog entries as a cohesive article.

Merrick, however, decided that it was worthy of a few hours work and (based on the fact that we had collaborated successfully on stuff in the past) did all the work for me and churned out a half-decent article from a quarter-decent series of blog musings.

He's that kind of person.

Also, I have pictures of him "servicing" the Australian rugby squad.

And because Merrick edits the political / environmental activism section of Julian Cope's website (U-Know!) the article now has a considerably larger audience than my little website. Which is groovy.

So yeah, thanks Merrick; nice one!

What a wanker

2005-06-07T14:23:00.000+01:00

I have so much work to do (thanks to losing three and a half days to a computer meltdown) that I really don't have time for any blogging this week. Not even this little entry.

But I just can't contain my indignation and needed to vent it somewhere.

In today's Guardian the current Tory leader Michael Howard (yes, he's still hanging around; like a particularly bad fart in the elevator of British politics) writes about climate change. The basic thrust of his article is that Tony Blair is crap (after all, you wouldn't expect the tory leader to address something as important as climate change without turning it into a petty party political point, would you?) and that "the tories and the US have done better than Blair on climate change" (to cite the subtitle of Howard's piece).

I was recently asked why I never considered taking a more active role in politics. Now, the fact is; at various times I have been very active politically - albeit outside the mainstream. But the questioner was really asking why I chose not to get involved in democratic politics. There are many answers to that question (not least being that pot-smoking intellectuals are unelectable by a public that laps up Big Brother... on some levels I'm an élitist, you see, which is a terrible crime in a world so eager to embrace the decline of human culture). But Michael Howard's article in the Guardian illustrates another very important reason why I could never enter the political arena.

If I were an MP I would feel honour bound, next time I was in the same room as Michael Howard, to walk up and give him a slap. Then say "that's for the 'climate change' piece, you wanker". It'd be like finding yourself in the same room as Bryan Adams. To not give him a slap for that Robin Hood song would make you slightly less of a person.

Michael Howard is a liar. Oh, he's a fairly good politician and I'm sure he can demonstrate the veracity of every specific claim made in the piece. But the broad implication of the piece - that the tories are worthy protectors of the environment - is nonsense of the highest order.

Hands up anyone who believes, that on any individual issue (like building a new runway, bypassing another town, widening another motorway) the tories would ever allow ecological considerations to trump economic ones? OK, so I see a couple of tories with their hands up... but they're just being contrary, even they don't believe it for a second.

The last tory candidate for London Mayor ran on a "Friend of The Motorist" ticket. Seriously. That was a central plank in the rather unsavoury Steve Norris' campaign.

I also love Michael Howard's subtle attempts at historical revisionism. He mentions the fact that Thatcher paid lip-service to the environment and then speaks of the "Conservative-led dash for gas". Don't you see? Thatcher's assault on the coal-mining industry was all about the environment!

Bonus points to those of you who feel like slapping Howard just for claiming that a "dash for gas" is a sensible environmental policy*.

I'm also stunned by Howard's implication that the US's refusal to sign up to the Kyoto Accord is evidence that the Dubya Administration doesn't believe the Accord goes far enough! No, he doesn't say so explicitly, but by tying the refusal to sign with the fact that a number of US States have individually decided to limit emissions, there's no doubt that's the idea he's suggesting.

Also, after suggesting that Kyoto's problem is simply that it's not tough enough for the Americans, he then - a few paragraphs later when you've hopefully forgotten his dissing of the Accord - proudly announces his role as environment minister in 1992 in creating "the framework convention [that] provides the basis for the Kyoto protocol".

Bonus points for those of you thinking "jeez... if you're going to try to use doublethink as a rhetorical device, Michael, at least have the good grace to hide it a bit better".

Here's the thing... theoretically (using efficiency gains and what-not) the economy could continue to grow without stressing the environment any further; and theoretically could even continue to grow whilst easing the stress it places on the environment.

However, in practice it does not, and never has, worked that way. Indeed; in practice there's no real evidence that it ever could work that way. In practice it comes down to a decision to deliberately shrink the British economy in order to help reduce the severity of human-induced climate change. That is the only solution with enough probability of success to make it worth pursuing.

Is Michael Howard suggesting that the tories would choose to abandon economic growth in favour of environmental responsibility? Of course he's not! Hell, even the Greens - with their manifesto commitment of "full employment" - wouldn't dare suggest that. No, Michael Howard is playing pathetic political games, and using a vitally important issue to do so. He's trivialising climate change by making it a debate about whether the tories or Blair have had the least imperceptible effect with their environmental policies.

I was an active environmentalist during the last tory government... the last time they were in a position to implement environmental policy. I haven't forgotten what they were like.

Michael Howard needs a serious slap.

* unless you use that gas to build a truly sustainable infrastructure rather than just to grow the economy to the point where it'll have to burn vastly more coal when the gas runs out.

A bad weekend

2005-06-06T18:23:00.000+01:00

I am very very fed up indeed. Annoyed, tired and frazzled round the edges.

My plans for the weekend were very simple. Both in the sense of uncomplicated, and in the sense of "not much to ask of the universe". I was going to spend Saturday working for a few hours, writing a blog entry and chilling out in front of a DVD in the evening. Then on Sunday I was going to roll a couple of pure grass spliffs, sit somewhere pleasant in Westminister - with a view of some architecture - and get high while reading a good book for a couple of hours. Then I'd trundle off somewhere pleasant for a meal before going to see Sin City in the evening.

OK, so it's fairly mundane... and would probably be significantly improved if it wasn't just me on my own... but all in all, an easy enough weekend to achieve you'd imagine.

Except that within an hour of switching on my PC on Saturday - just as Merrick called, asking me to take a look at something he was emailing over (so I'm blaming him squarely for the entire debacle) - I smelled a faint whiff of burning in the air. I might not even have noticed it had it not been for the fact that my computer decided to make a tiny "pop!" noise and then power down completely.

For me this is a nightmare scenario. I can't do my job without my PC. And right now I'm in the final week or so of two separate projects; both of which have been ongoing for a couple of months and both of which are now in the final "hectic" phase.

My first reaction was to go watch 15 minutes of television news in the hope that it would (like an estimated 5.6% of all computer glitches) "sort itself out". But deep down I knew this wasn't one of those situations. I'll spare you the gory details... but what was to have been five days in Amsterdam at the end of June; has become a bunch of wires and circuitry in the corner of my room which does roughly the same thing it did the day before it went "pop!" (albeit faster now, what with Moore's Law being what it is and all).

And what was to have been a very simple and pleasant weekend become one of remarkable complexity and no little unpleasantness. Bollocks.

I can see you!

2005-06-02T19:23:00.000+01:00

Talk about your surveillance society!

I should point out that I currently earn a crust building fairly complicated bits of the interweb (I hasten to add; for - by and large - rather groovy people... charities, NGO's, the fluffier bits of government; though, I admit, with the occasional higher-paying client). This means that I do know more about the web than your average blogger, and can make use of it in ways that many website owners probably can't.

That shouldn't, however, in any way lessen the implications of the fact that merely by visiting my site once (for a single second), I can learn a huge amount about you. Almost none of us (me included) take precautions to hide our tracks on the web. After all, we're not all quite as paranoid as we perhaps should be.

You see, I decided to look beyond the "what did they google to find me?" stuff in my site stats, and actually work out how much information a single user leaves behind them when they click a link that leads here. Using only information provided by all three of the free site statistics plug-ins that I tested; I chose three visits at random from the past 24 hours.

Here's what I could find out using this information, a search engine, and a freely downloadable piece of Shareware called AY Spy:

Visit 1: Arrived via a search on google that was clearly not aimed at me. The visit lasted 3 seconds (clearly long enough to establish this was not what they were looking for).

Visit 2: Arrived via a link on someone else's blog. The visit lasted 20 minutes (long enough for the person to read the most recent Big Brother entry, the comments on it, and then refer to the comments on the previous Big Brother entry).

Visit 3: Arrived via a bookmark in their browser. The visit lasted over an hour and they read the three most recent entries.

Within 4 minutes I had tracked down, on each of these people:

their name and address,
at least one phone number,
at least one photograph.

Sleep tight.

Dreamflesh blog (and other news)

2005-06-02T13:23:00.000+01:00

My good friend and flat-mate is soon off for a month's carousing on the west coast of America (ostensibly to attend an academic conference and interview some people for a book he's working on... but it's really about the carousing), and has decided to resurrect his blog in honour of this event. I suggest therefore that you shuffle on over to Dreamflesh. I also recommend noting it's presence in my blogroll thingie and clicking it often.

The other recent entry on the blog links is Merrick's mp3 blog, Dust On The Stylus. As well as being one of the most tireless activists around on all manner of groovy issues, Merrick is an enthusiastically opinionated walking music encyclopaedia. There are obviously genres and subcultures in which my historical specialisation trumps Merrick; but as an all-round muso I would have to admit that he probably wins out. Which is a pretty full-on thing to say; even if I do say so myself.

While in the news, all manner of mad shit is happening...

Deep Throat

The identity of Deep Throat (Woodward and Bernstein's informant on the Watergate story) has finally been revealed as Mark Felt.

Unlike - I suspect - most people, I had heard Felt's name before (by virtue of being a bit of a Nixon-buff) but that's about all it amounted to. If you'd asked me; "Who was Mark Felt?" a few days ago, I'd probably have said "wasn't he one of the FBI guys who investigated Watergate?" (he wasn't by the way. At least, not directly).

That said, I noticed one interesting bit of trivia that perhaps others have missed. In one of Nixon's biographies - The Arrogance of Power by Anthony Summers - Mark Felt is mentioned only once:

Just two weeks after the [Watergate] arrests, again in the Oval Office with the tapes running, Nixon and Colson twice discussed the notion of faking a break-in at his own party headquarters to make people think the Democrats were as guilty as the Republicans of this sort of activity...

No such phony break-in ever took place, but a similar one may have done. Three months later, in an apparent break-in at the office of the president's California physician, Dr. John Lungren, cash was ignored, but a file containing Nixon's patient records left disordered on the floor. Haldeman and an aide then called the FBI at the highest level fifteen times, urging that the bureau issue a press release on the case.

Assistant Director Mark Felt turned down the request, saying it was a matter for the local police. Such was the persistence of Nixon's men, though, that Felt came to suspect someone at the White House..."

That single mention of Felt isn't particularly unusual, except that it just happens to occur on the same page (within a few paragraphs) as this line: "Two young Washington Post reporters named Woodward and Bernstein, however, were already boring towards the truth."

My theory is that Summers knew the identity of Deep Throat but agreed to keep it secret (for one reason or another). However he couldn't resist leaving a tiny pointer in the text of his book. Something that would only ever be noticed by people who already knew. A very very exclusive private joke.

Peak Oil

Also in the news, Exxon Mobil say "Ohhhhhh shit!" with regards to peak oil. Actually, the whole peak oil story flared briefly in the mainstream media recently. Even USA Today had a piece on it. Of course, the story was dead by the following day and most people will forget they ever read it. Especially as it contained this mind-blowing section:

Princeton University geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes predicts "a permanent state of oil shortage."

According to these experts, it will take a decade or more before conservation measures and new technologies can bridge the gap between supply and demand, and even then the situation will be touch and go.

None of this will affect vacation plans this summer - Americans can expect another season of beach weekends and road trips to Graceland relatively unimpeded by the cost of getting there. Though gas prices are up, they are expected to remain below $2.50 a gallon...

And there are many who doubt the doomsday scenario will ever come true...

"This is just silly," said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research in Winchester, Mass. "It's not like industrial civilization is going to come crashing down."

I honestly don't know which is more distressing... the onset of the collapse of industrial civilisation or having to read that "Americans can expect another season of beach weekends and road trips to Graceland" in a news item discussing it.

Clash of civilisations

Meanwhile Iraq and Afghanistan continue to see violence on a level that suggests to me at least, that US policy in the region is succeeding perfectly. As soon as the violence dies down, it will be impossible to justify the presence of more than a quarter of a million heavily-armed US troops in a peaceful and stable foreign country.

Hence all the koran-flushing and prisoner-humiliation and Laura Bush's Middle East trip and what have you (incidentally... please read my thoughts on emergent intelligence within institutions prior to criticising this allegation; you will almost certainly continue to disagree with me, but at least then you'll be attacking my real argument and not one you made up). People criticise Rumsfeld and Cheney and Wolfowitz and Perle and even Dubya (who shouldn't really be expected to think about such complicated things) because there was no credible "exit strategy". Can't you see them meeting up at the Crawford ranch and laughing long and hard about that? "Exit Strategy!?" squeals Cheney to the others, "For God's sake folks! We've only just arrived!"

Europe

And the French and the Dutch have decided to torpedo the EU constitution. I can hardly blame them to be honest. I mean, when even a pro-European integrationist like me felt decidedly lukewarm towards the document, what hope for convincing entire populations? Especially when those trying to do the convincing are generally the least trusted people within society.

Ah bollocks to it anyways. I see this as potentially being the first serious fracture in the European programme. Frankly I'd rather hoped we'd get a little further down the road before the fragmentation began. Unless something is done fast (and it's by no means too late just yet) the euro could be fatally damaged by this, and that would be a tragedy in my view. The last thing Europe needs to be dealing with right now is a completely artificial financial crisis. There are far more important things to be focussing on.

And you should pop over and read George Monbiot's latest article. I would argue that you should be doing that by default, of course.

Big Brother 13 (episode 2) - Abstract Analysis

2005-06-01T18:23:00.000+01:00

My last post was written in rather a hurry. I had a plane to catch that evening and only enough time to explain one of the reasons for my deep loathing of Big Brother... the name. But on the subject of Reality TV my hatred runs deep and has many facets. And now that I am returned from my weekend in God's Own Country, I shall expound further (you should also expect an episode 3) upon just why it is that Reality TV represents all that is wrong in modern popular culture. Why it's so much worse than anything that preceded it... tabloid newspapers, soap operas, even pro/celebrity golf tournaments... all were but omens of the Great Crassness to come. Mere prophets.

I'll also take the opportunity to respond to the comments made on the last post and explain why it is that those who agreed with me are - on this subject at least - individuals of rare and valuable insight.

Anyone who expressed a dissenting opinion can expect a visit from The Bastid Squad.

The decision to call the programme "Big Brother" is - as I mentioned previously - offensive and morally reprehensible. It insults those of us who really care about Orwell's work and consider it important, and it insults the memory of George Orwell. Most importantly and insidiously however; it neutralises the power Orwell invested in those two words.

There is a curious fact which I assume most of my readers have noticed (you're smart folks, even if you're sometimes wrong) but which I'd still like to comment upon. And that is the disconnect between the power of words within our culture, and our cultural acknowledgement of that power. Historically (and here I am speaking of pre-mass media) there has been an acknowledgement of the power of words within culture, even in those pre-mass media times when words had - arguably - far less power.

There is a line in one of the Carlos Castaneda books attributed to Yaqui shaman, don Juan Matus, "Words are tremendously powerful and bestow great power on those who control them" (quoted from memory). And you only have to look to Norse Runes or magickal glyphs or sacred texts ("I am The Word made flesh") to grasp the full power that human beings have invested in words down through the ages. And don't imagine for a second that this was some weird superstitious belief that has been dispelled by the cleansing light of rationalism. Words are still causing wars and breaking hearts. They have lost none of their potency, but now this power is no longer acknowledged. If it were, we would never tolerate our environment being saturated with a mass of commercial advertisements... Words of Power, fifty feet high, crafted by experts in the art, and designed to manipulate us into performing some function (buy our product, fly to our country, call our number, give us your money). As the power of words increased; thanks to more effective communications technology; so this power was downplayed by those who controlled it. And those who control it are institutions, not individuals. I shall explain the significance of this presently.

[Aside: I hope at least one of you grasps the full cultural context of the Castaneda quote...?]

The excellently named Oscar Wildebeest points out that:

The people who planned and who make [Big Brother] (I've worked for them in the past, but not any more) didn't think about Orwell beyond pinching the title - which is part of the problem.

The thing is Oscar, although I completely accept the literal truth of what you say, I don't think that's anything like the whole story. I don't for a moment envision the producers of Big Brother as intellectual heavyweights sat around in deep chairs drinking brandy, smoking Cuban cigars, debating semiotics and contrasting the shifts of perception induced by Finnegans Wake and The Ticket That Exploded. I suspect that we might live in a more enlightened culture were that the case, as you pointed out with your acknowledgement: "which is part of the problem" (though I could also see it getting a bit sinister quite frankly).

Now though, I'm going to get a little bit more abstract than I normally do on this blog, and explain why I think it is that our culture has actively ensured that the crass morons who shat on Orwell's memory were propelled into a position to do so.

in-tel-li-gence (n.) 1. The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, especially toward a purposeful goal.

One of the books that really influenced me when I was a philosophy undergraduate was The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, composed and arranged by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. It's a collection of short pieces (some current, some historical) on the mind, intelligence and cognition. The book overall takes no single position and I don't think there's a single piece within it that doesn't provoke thought (even if that thought is "that can't possibly be right... and I'm going to work out why").

Hofstadter's own piece "Prelude... Ant Fugue" discusses, among other things, the idea of "emergent intelligence"; i.e. that intelligence (of one kind or another) can spontaneously emerge within an extremely complex system. I remind people that I'm using the specific definition of "intelligence" cited above, and not to make the mistake of applying to this idea that fuzzily indefineable, personality-based notion of intelligence prevalent in common thought. Hofstadter, as might be assumed from the title of his piece, uses the example of an ant colony to illustrate the phenomenon.

I think it's probably fairly uncontroversial to suggest that ant colonies exhibit emergent intelligence, and that my readers understand what is - broadly speaking - meant by that. The behaviour of the whole is clearly co-ordinated, yet it's apparent that no individual ant "understands" what is going on. The intelligence does not reside within the ant; but within the colony. In this way, the ants are analogous to the neurons in our brains, and the chemical signals used to communicate on an ant-to-ant basis analogous to the electrical signals between neurons. Of course, the overall needs of an ant colony are relatively few and so well-defined that no greater level of intelligence emerges than that required to fulfill a few basic functions. Certainly there's no reason (or as the more aggressive evolutionary biologists might say, "no historical opportunity") for anything other than the most basic intelligence to emerge from the colony.

I'm probably becoming a little more controversial when I suggest that individual human beings, when working on a project, can themselves be analogous to neurons, or individual ants, within a larger system. And if that system is large enough and complex enough, intelligence can emerge which is entirely separate to, and out of the control of, those individual human neurons. What makes us different to the ants and neurons is that our own individual intelligence has become so complex that limited self-awareness may allow us to grasp a rough idea of what's going on "one level up".

I see this kind of emergent intelligence in numerous human institutions (armies and large corporations being the two most obvious). However, individual corporations and armies are themselves merely part of a larger culture. And the complexity of that culture is on a scale far larger than any ant colony. Not because of the numbers involved, but because of the unpredictable nature of the individual neurons and their mode of interaction (a set of mutable, yet constantly evolving, languages).

For some of my readers I'm probably slipping from "controversial" to "downright objectionable" or even "clinically paranoid" when I suggest that the intelligence emerging in modern human culture is struggling to assert greater control over it's individual human constituents. If our individual neurons began to develop (sometimes incredibly destructive) agenda of their own, we'd have medical science working at full tilt trying to get them back to servicing us.

So human culture, having become so complex, is evolving mechanisms to make individual human beings more predictable. I don't consider this a Bad Thing in principle, though I suspect many of the people I know would do. However in practice... it's a complete mess.

There's an intermediate level of complexity involved in human culture; one I mentioned earlier; and one which does indeed seem to have an analogue within other forms of intelligence. The primary drivers of modern culture are institutions, not individuals. Massive global corporations control the production and dissemination of information, entertainment, art and - to a large degree - everything else that can be considered "human culture". I recall attending the Tate Gallery's wonderful William Blake exhibition (several times) a few years back. Glaxo Wellcome were the corporate sponsors. I hate the fact that I still know that.

I'm not entirely sure how well the analogy is going to hold up, but I wonder if our various corporate-military institutions can't be viewed as personality traits? I'm not suggesting that our culture has developed "human-like" intelligence. Far from it. But there are broad traits; aggression / passivity, suspicion / trust, conservativism / willingness to change (plus many others - not all of which are simple dualities); which can be seen even within "less complex" intelligences. I'm fairly certain, for instance, that one could safely categorise an army as "aggressive" without falling into the trap of anthropomorphism. There is a non-controversial sense in which the behaviour of an army as a whole can be viewed as aggression.

Even in the most genuine and justifiable of humanitarian peace-keeping missions, the actions of an army will be aggressive rather than passive. In those situations, that may be precisely what is required (I am by no means suggesting that aggression is somehow "negative by default"... I favour an extremely aggressive social response to the peak oil situation for instance).

[Aside: I dislike the word "proactive" as I usually hear it being employed as Newspeak for "aggressive". A way of neutralising the negative connotations of the word "aggression" often in situations where those connotations should be highlighted. And even when those connotations aren't entirely relevant, they should remain present as a cautionary influence.]

I would argue that by arriving at a complex system with such enormous and unpredictable levels of internal competition and aggression, the intelligence which has emerged is inherently unstable. What must be an overwhelming impetus to establish control over it's constituent parts is strenuously resisted by the very design of the system (though I use the word "design" in a very loose sense there).

However, in certain instances, such as when the needs of the culture to instill greater predictablity into individual human neurons happens to coincide with the needs of each corporate-military intelligence to do the same, then a positive-feedback loop is initiated and you get dangerous cultural memes (like "Big Brother") extinguished or neutralised.

The conclusion is more than the fact that globalised culture is impossible to exert reliable control over. It is the realisation that our culture is actively trying to exert control over us in ways that (a) may be against what we believe to be our best interests; (b) may actually be against our best interests as individuals; (c) are likely to be largely unknown to the majority - or even all - of us; and (d) are almost certainly the product of an "unstable" intelligence.

So while it may be true that not a single one of the producers of Big Brother ever thought to themselves "I shall help neutralise the potency of Orwell's words in order to ease along the advancement of corporate-military social control systems", it doesn't actually mean that wasn't a deliberate intention all the same.

Coming soon...
Big Brother 13 (episode 3) - The Television Always On

Big Brother 13

2005-05-28T13:23:00.000+01:00

I despise 'Reality TV', and in particular I despise Big Brother. I'm not talking here about finding it dull, or mildly offensive. I'm talking about a deep, dark, raw and undiluted hatred for the programme. I have nothing but anger and contempt for those who make it and those who appear on it. They cheapen what it means to be human... they pollute our culture with the foul propaganda of selfishness, mediocrity and empty celebrity. If I were made God-Emperor tomorrow, Big Brother would be banned by tomorrow evening. And that fricking house demolished by Monday.

Back when Big Brother began... even before the programme had aired, in fact... I was already fuming. In my view, anyone who has read and understood Orwell cannot be anything other than furious at their choice of name.

George Orwell's "1984" is one of the finest and most important novels ever written. Far from being an historical novel making a specific attack on Stalinism, as was Animal Farm, "1984" was written as a warning to future generations. Written just as surveillance technology (the television) was beginning to develop and spread, Orwell could clearly see the incredible dangers that such technology holds for society. Not merely the ability to constantly monitor private individuals... but to force-feed a stream of messages into every home, about how to live your life, what to aspire to, how to think and what to dream of...

And at the heart of Orwell's message was the incredible power that language holds over all of this. How by eliminating the language of rebellion, so rebellion itself can be controlled. A modern car advert is merely a sophisticated version of "We have always been at war with Eurasia"... it reinforces the status quo and it reinforces within us the things we need to desire (victory over Eurasia) and the things we need to fear (not being able to afford the car).

Right at the end of "1984"... after the bleakest ending in literary history... Orwell attaches an appendix. It's a bizarre thing to do for all manner of reasons, and a singularly intriguing one. The appendix is entitled The Principles of Newspeak and I believe that one of the reasons for its inclusion is - oddly enough - to snap the reader out of the specific story of Winston Smith and remind them that "1984" should not be viewed as a potent piece of speculative fiction about one man's tragedy; but as that warning to future generations which Orwell clearly felt it to be.

And without a shadow of a doubt, the most potent and vital symbol of that warning is "Big Brother". The phrase "Big Brother is Watching You" appears on the opening page of the book. And the novel ends with a line containing "Big Brother" (which I'll not mention in case you've yet to read it). By planting that phrase in the English language - which he did so very well, and for which we should be grateful - Orwell was himself using the principles of Newspeak to try and provide us with an innoculation against surveillance culture. He gave us a powerful and simple phrase, which we could always use to remind ourselves of where certain roads can lead.

That's why I say that if you genuinely understand what Orwell was trying to say about language, that you cannot help but be horrified at how a vile and crass group of media fucks have ripped the heart out of Orwell's warning and neutralised the potency of the words "Big Brother" forever.

I was standing in the supermarket checkout line a couple of days ago. Behind me were two women in their 30s. My age. They were chatting about the upcoming new series... Big Brother 13. One of them said the following, "I can't wait 'til it starts... I love Big Brother!"

Above the beeping checkouts and the background hum of a busy supermarket I felt sure I could hear the faint rumble of George Orwell turning in his grave.

There's more to read...

Bad joke

2005-05-26T16:23:00.000+01:00

So it's Saturday evening and the synagogue is full of worshippers. Suddenly the door bursts open and a crazed-looking man with a bucket of paint dashes into the temple and immediately begins painting over the Star of David next to the door. The jews are obviously horrified at this defilement and leap up to stop the vandalism. The man quickly finishes painting over the Star of David and runs out of the temple cackling insanely.

Pursued by a group of devotees, the man stops next to some neo-Nazi graffiti and - to the surprise of the chasing crowd - begins painting over the large Swastika scrawled on the wall.

He's eventually arrested and charged with anti-semiotic behaviour.

(boom - tish)

My accidental traffic

2005-05-25T02:23:00.000+01:00

I have clearly run out of ideas if I'm reduced to this. The most generic of all blog entries... the lowest of all the most common denominators... yes, it's the "Things they googled for to find me" post. Sorry.

If nothing else though, it gives me an excuse to mention once more the fact that people have - in the past - arrived at my website by googling "Oliver Kamm tedious bore" (which is something of a private joke, but I find it very funny indeed). Also, amazingly, I was once discovered by someone searching for "how to give a suppository to a timid teenage boy". Hardly something you'd want to admit being an expert in.

Recently though, I've discovered that my policy of deliberately mis-spelling "Prince Charels" (as a way of pointing out that Parker-Bowels is kind of funny, without being so crass as to actually spell it that way) has meant that I've been getting quite a few people thanks to their google typos. Isn't the internet marvellous? I'd bet money on the fact that this sentence - containing the words "nakef schollgirls" - will generate at least one extra hit. Whether he's the demographic I'm after, however...

One of the main reasons I decided to do this piece, actually, was to ask a question of my extremely knowledgeable readership. Not three hours ago someone arrived here searching for "van morrison's anti-semitic song". Does anyone know what this query might be referring to? Van's done some dubious stuff over the years... but anti-semitism? It just doesn't seem likely.

There's been a glut of recent arrivals looking for information on "UCAWWW"; those zany Texans who want to abolish the internet. Texas is the only place I've been where a random redneck pulled a handgun on me, pointed it right into my face at close range and slowly squeezed the trigger until the hammer went "click" very loudly; then laughed as my knees gave way and I stumbled and fell rather wussily.

Not a big fan of Texas.

I'm also getting listed on the first page of google when someone searches for "Vatican smoke". One of those strange glitches; like the fact that my old site used to show up as the number one result for "top ten songs ever". I suspect few people are seeking my witterings when they type these things into google.

Another bit of oddness is the fact that one of the very first entries on this site (a review of Battle Royale) has suddenly become very popular. One of the lines I quoted from the film, "You can do it Shuya" has been searched for 8 times in the past 3 days alone. What's with that?

The most recent search at the time of writing was "rate my bong" which I like a lot. And the top ten words are...

hardee
malcolm
doors
bliss
jim
where
oil
production
peaking
world

Words which have put in only one appearance include...

friedman
pathogenic
fuck
puppytorturer
discontinuity
dutch
demonology
drugs
toothpicks
pants

And to the person who arrived here last night because they were "angry at being single" can I just point out that I trade more in "despair and indignation" rather than anger (as, I hope, the person who arrived soon afterwards discovered), but I do sympathise all the same.

The news in briefs

2005-05-23T14:23:00.000+01:00

Saddam Hussein in his underpants? What's that all about then? And why is the American government complaining about the willingness of The Sun to print the pictures when they clearly had to be taken by someone in the American military establishment and deliberately leaked.

Which is news.

In the Arab world it's also, unsurprisingly, "being treated as a small piece in an overall pattern of alleged American violations of prisoners' rights. And as confirmation, to many, of US contempt for Arabs and Islam." I don't understand exactly where this is all leading, but it's becoming more and more likely (in my view) that the Dubya administration is consciously ratcheting up the tension between the West and Islam.

(Sorry about the terrible pun title, but what the hell else is a blog for?)

Meanwhile here in the UK it seems that sales of lottery tickets are on the increase. According to Camelot (who run the lottery) this is evidence that "the business is on the mend". That, and the fact that people are becoming more desperate.

Also in the UK, the London Stock Exchange is starting to get skittish with regards to oil reserves. It seems that there's a few small oil companies having to own up to radically overstating their proven and probable reserves. Looks like Shell wasn't the only one then...

Meanwhile we are soon to be treated to a documentary about three sisters who have all just given birth to children. Their ages? 12, 14 and 16.

I've often been accused (wrongly) of being "a liberal" because of the stance I take on various issues. I'm not a liberal. Not even slightly. I just happen to have a set of views which intersect with liberal social policy in a number of areas. This isn't one of those areas.

When I hear stories like this one I just despair. The mother (and now grandmother) spends her time blaming the inadequate sex education in school. Sorry you stupid woman (and sorry liberals); but no!

The state has a vested interest in your children being well educated; no question about that; but it's your fucking responsibility to raise them.

Slightly less relevant, perhaps, is the announcement that wormholes in the fabric of spacetime are actually no use for time travel. This would be disappointing to all us theoretical physics buffs if true. However, upon closer reading it turns out that even the lightweight BBC article exposes a major logical flaw in this pronouncement.

It might - in theory - be possible to carefully fine-tune the geometry of the wormhole so that the wormhole throat became big enough for a person to fit through, says Fewster.

But building a wormhole with a throat radius big enough to just fit a proton would require fine-tuning to within one part in 10 to the power of 30. A human-sized wormhole would require fine-tuning to within one part in 10 to the power of 60.

"Frankly no engineer is going to be able to do that," said the York researcher.

It's probably true to say that no human engineer could do that; but if humanity ever reaches the point where we're seriously considering the construction of spacetime wormholes there's no reason to imagine that we won't be working in tandem with a super-advanced Artificial Intelligence.

Meanwhile things don't seem to be getting any better in Iraq, with the new Chief of Security the latest victim. And there also seems to be some serious concern that the lid is going to come off Afghanistan again. The failure to exert real control over the country (beyond a few specific towns) has provided the local resistance with the time and space to regroup. With America tied up in Iraq, the temptation must be for the Taliban to pick a moment and storm Kabul.

The symbolism of retaking the city (even if only for a few days, before reinforcements arrived) would shake US policy in the region to it's foundations. I also worry about a real nightmare scenario where China begins to openly arm and train the Afghan resistance against the occupying troops and their installed government.

Anyone recall a precedent for that?

Oh yeah, and we've got bird-flu popping up in China. There's pessimism with regards to North Korea. And climate change is going to shaft us. (No link for that one; just a general point).

Yet I'm feeling vaguely chipper because these arrived this morning...

... now I just need to find someone to go with (who won't stand me up!)

Should I be worried about the fact that the arrival of two tickets to a Polyphonic Spree gig in August can make me say "Oh cool!" with incredible glee and a kind of "Life is Good!" nod of the head, despite the fact that I'd just been reading all of the above...?

Or should I be glad?

Mrs. Bush goes to Jerusalem

2005-05-22T20:23:00.000+01:00

From the Middle East we hear news that Laura Bush has been heckled whilst visiting holy sites on Temple Mount in Jerusalem. I have to admit that I find this trip of hers completely mystifying. I can't see how it could generate anything but further ill feeling amongst those already opposed to America's presence in the region.

The most high-profile thing she did was to criticise the attitudes of Arab societies towards women before visiting the Wailing Wall with the wife of Israeli President Moshe Katsav. There - in accordance with Orthodox Jewish Law - she prayed "in the Women's Section".

(Rumours that she was asked to sit at the back of the tour bus with the rest of the women are apparently untrue however).

Then she drove to the Dome of the Rock mosque... a high-profile tourist with the world's media in tow, performing a motorcade pilgrimage of deep crassness and bad taste.

Don't get me wrong. I've lived in Egypt and worked in Saudi... Islamic society is very seriously fucked up (Egypt far less so than Saudi let me point out). I wouldn't describe it as more fucked up than Western consumerism... just fucked up in different ways. I suspect that a culture based on the instructions of a 6th century warrior prophet who heard voices is probably madder in many ways than one based on totally meaningless material acquisition. But it's also probably less dangerous in lots of ways. So whatcha gonna do?

All the same, women do indeed get a more overtly raw deal over there than they do here.

...that's why I could never get to grips with Saudi Arabia, and why it's the one place I enjoyed living even less than I'm enjoying the American Midwest... the total lack of anything remotely "feminine" in hardline Islamic society wasn't something I could deal with very well. And even though the argument over there was that at least it's better than a culture in which "the feminine" is reduced to just another commodity, I disagree. I'm uncomfortable living in a place where, for days on end, every face I see is male. Too much testosterone.

So yeah; I'll even take Ottumwa or Des Moines or Columbus or... save us... Oakbrook, Illinois rather than Riyadh or Jeddah. And even though there may be a lesson in that, I hope I'll have the courage to choose a quick and honourable death if those two ever become the only options available to us.
- me (email from America, 1998)

So I'm not defending Islam against the charges levelled at it by Mrs. Dubya (incidentally, along with the whole "Women's Section" thing... I'm a little confused by the fact that The First Lady; a woman whose position is entirely based upon the achievements of her husband; gets to lecture a foreign culture on the position of women in society... but that's just me). The charges themselves are perfectly valid and - if anything - don't go nearly far enough. But Laura Bush could hardly be a worse messenger. Especially as all three of the monotheisms involved have parables about tending to your own shit before criticising others.

Also, her very presence is all wrong. Coiffured, unapproachable and untouchable her visit to the Dome of the Rock mosque simply reeked of opportunistic and hollow theatrics. It was exploitative. All photo-op no soul.

Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities

2005-05-22T19:23:00.000+01:00

Leastways that's what my current Oblique Strategy instructs. And who am I to argue?

Monkeys

2005-05-22T03:23:00.000+01:00

As little as a year ago, if you'd asked me for my honest assessment of the immediate future of humanity, I'd have summed it up in two words... "We're fucked".

Hmmm... is that really two words though? "We're" is a contraction... the Schrödinger's Cat of grammar... "It's two separate words; but look it's also just one!" And no theoretical vivisection involved.

Actually, thinking about it, the dual "wave/particle" nature of light would perhaps have been a better analogy, seeing as there's no state change involved... no "contraction event"; no "cat asphyxiation" so to speak; that could differentiate between the two alternatives.

That said; even the wave/particle thing isn't right. Because in a way, a contraction is two words implied by a single entity, rather than both the single word and the two words simultaneously. Which, if you ask me, is going to be a problem for any physics metaphor to handle adequately...

The natural role of religion then.

I suppose - in many ways - a contraction is a little bit like Our Lord Jesus... a Man, certainly, but one who implies and embodies God on this plane. Now if you'll all open your bibles to the book of Ezekiel and repeat after me: "Oh Lord, how is it, that so many people, take this madness seriously..."

Seriously folks... take Ezekiel... please!

But really, when you read Ezekiel you're forced to the realisation that people who claim the entire bible is the literal Word of God are significantly madder than people who wrap their head in tin-foil to stop the aliens controlling their dreams. Significantly madder. Y'know... which is fine. People should be allowed to believe whatever mad shit they feel like, but I don't like the idea of having a tin-foil hatter in the White House.

So anyone even madder...?

Which is pretty much where this blog entry came in... the future of humanity and it's potential fuckedness.

(Listen, you think it's confusing reading this shit? Try having to think like this; it's exhausting!).

I had a professor who said if you think of humans as angels it's a shit of a scene, but if you think of them as monkeys it's the most amazing thing you ever saw
- Terence McKenna

I guess in a sense I still think "we're fucked". But these days I don't see it as the end of the world. Just the world as we know it. Deep down I understand that any grandiose proposals I might make to salvage 'the best of the modern world' within a sustainable future are doomed to failure.

Because we're monkeys.

One day we'll live on Venus,
and men will walk on Mars,
but we will still be monkeys,
down deep inside...
- Talking Heads (The Facts of Life)

That's the inescapable fact of the matter. Even the people wearing tinfoil hats understand it. Unfortunately the society we've built, the lifestyle we've adopted and the systems which sustain it are about to face a threat which - in order to successfully address - requires us to behave in decidedly unnatural ways for monkeys.

And though I hate to admit it; I'm fairly certain most of us aren't up for that.

But the good news is that we're probably less-seriously fucked than I thought a year ago. I'd say the odds are significantly against extinction for instance. Which is a major improvement obviously. So even though my plans for a centralised European Resource Bureau assisting with the management of multiple low-impact technically advanced sustainable communities may be folly... like teaching monkeys how to herd cats... there can be little doubt that - as a species - we'll somehow muddle through the next century and emerge a very very very tiny bit wiser.

Because when you look at New York and remember it was monkeys...

Well, let's just say I don't think it's time for us to lose our dominant species status just yet. We started in southeast Africa (far as we can ascertain) and now some of us are living in houses made of ice in Northern Canada. We live on top of mountains, in jungles, deserts and on tiny islands in the middle of massive oceans. There's even a handful of us living in orbit right now! So yeah, we'll find a way through this alright.

Sadly, that statement isn't the same thing as lauding the bottomless ingenuity of humankind and announcing that all will be well. That a new invention will soon solve the resource depletion issue. Because it won't. Because "the resource depletion issue" will inevitably destroy our current civilisation. Because it's going to happen very soon and it isn't a dress rehearsal or a drill. It's going to happen to us. And we are staggeringly ill-prepared.

The natural monkey response is to continue what we've already begun... gather round the remaining resources and kick seven shades of shit out of each other. It's what monkeys do. We'll do very serious damage to each other and the very planet we live on. We'll alter the world in unpredictable ways, and hurt each other in sadly predictable ones. We'll commit atrocities and holocausts, and then we'll limp away to lick our wounds and start over from scratch. We'll muddle through.

It just won't be pretty.

Though it could be. It really could. But only if we accept a paradox. Only if we transcend being monkeys for a couple of decades.

Pretend to be angels a while.

UCAWWW

2005-05-17T13:23:00.000+01:00

Via UserLoser (via Nick)

Amarillo, TX -- Gladis Haralski, founder of United Confederacy Against WWW (UCAWWW) announced last week of her ongoing campaign to shut down the internet.

In an interview Gladis proclaims the destructive way in which we use the internet degenerates society's standards. "The internet is nothing but filth to steal our children from God and truth", says Gladis...

Currently the UCAWWW holds 43 members, all of which reside in Texas. When Gladis was asked by reporters how she planned to reach out to others across the country she said, "We have many ongoing projects, and soon we'll be proud to announce the grand opening of our website."

I used to be suave

2005-05-16T19:23:00.000+01:00

A few months ago I switched phone companies. The new lot promised lower bills. The actual savings, it turns out, are marginal unless you use the phone a good deal more than I do.

On Friday a sales rep from the new phone company knocked on my door. It was a horrible experience.

Two months ago some guy knocked on my door and tried to sell me the same phone service. The one I am already signed up to. And then last month another guy from the company also knocked and tried to sell me the service. And then last Friday, a saleswoman tried again.

The first time this occurred my flatmate answered the door and spent five minutes listening to the salesman's patter before I overheard what was going on and shouted something like "We already use your service ya daft bugger! But if you ever interrupt our evening with a sales call again we'll bloody well stop." He went away with a hasty apology.

The next time this occurred I came close to cancelling my subscription, but it was only my promise that "I'll quit your service next time!" that kept the poor guy stood on my doorstep for the duration of my very satisfying rant. I explained in great detail to the increasingly shell-shocked salesman (with more ferocity than was perhaps warranted) that one of the big reasons I signed up for his service was the promise that they'd filter out sales calls (of which I was getting "too damn many"). I explained exactly how much I hated commercial advertising. I explained how intrusive I found it when it appeared on billboards in the streets; how unbearable I found it when people phoned to advertise at me; and asked him could he possibly imagine - therefore - just how intrusive I found people banging on my front door to spin me a sales pitch?

Particularly for a service I already use primarily for it's "we'll cut down those intrusive sales calls" claims.

The salesman apologised profusely. He'd been backing away from the door throughout my diatribe, so that he was at the garden gate as he was explaining how his list of target houses apparently didn't include some sort of filter on current subscribers. I vowed to cancel the service if anything similar ever happened again.

And then it did. A saleswoman showed up on Friday.

So did I cancel the service? Did I rant and rave about intrusive marketing? Yeah right. She was gorgeous!

The trouble is... there was a time when I used to be suave. Debonaire even... sometimes with a dash of charming. Well, relatively. At least I'm pretty sure I was. Of course, it wasn't for very long... a strange burst of unearthly self-confidence that hit me in my late teens and then evaporated just as quickly in my late twenties.

Naturally it would be very easy for you to glance suggestively at the container-loads of drugs I was doing at the time and idly wonder whether or not they had anything to do with it. And you would have a point. Up to a point. But you wouldn't be taking the chain of causality back nearly far enough. In fact you'd actually be missing the point. Even though you had, as I said, a point. Up to a point.

The container-loads were themselves merely a symptom. And not even the most obvious one. But that's a tale in and of itself.

Back to Friday's short conversation with the woman from the phone company however, which demonstrated two things very clearly. Firstly is how quickly my objections to intrusive advertising evaporate when it involves a beautiful woman knocking on my front door. Secondly is the fact that whatever suaveness I once possessed is lying bloodied and beaten in an alley somewhere.

The thing is; answering the door half-asleep and unshaven, in jeans and a t-shirt that looks like it's been been rolled up in a ball for a month and bare feet at just after 1pm is by no means an unrecoverable situation. At least, not if you've got a modicum of cool or suaveness about you.

With me though... well, you know those conversations that actually make you physically wince as you recall them years later? I'm fairly certain this was one of them. Opening with (in a completely involuntarily stoner drawl) "whoaaa... you're lovely..." is about as charmless as it gets.

In my defence, I was taken completely off-guard. She was one of those women you describe as "slender" rather than "slim" or "thin". Pale, nordic features and jet black hair flecked with red and purple strands. Stunning green eyes expressing a world-weary "I hate this job" contradiction to the sales smile on her lips (that instantly had me empathising with her as well as finding her drop-dead gorgeous).

She was visibly taken aback by my gormless opening gambit, and whatever bridges I'd set alight were well and truly burnt by my following line... "Oh no; you're not a Christian are you?"

I have no idea why I said that. She hadn't told me who she was yet, but she was clearly not a Jehovah's Witness. I had simply decided to blather nonsense at the poor woman because of the fact that she'd been born pretty. Don't get me wrong; I don't buy into all that "the loneliness of being gorgeous" bullshit (we all have crosses to bear, but that one's made out of styrofoam); but if even a tenth of the men this woman meets get reduced to the pathetic mess of random syllables and vowel sounds that became of me... well, I can see how that would be a bit annoying all right.

Thankfully she took my horrified silence as the cue to begin her patter... "Ummm; I'm actually from [name of phone service] and was wondering if you'd be interested in subscribing..."

Her voice had a vaguely East European accent, but she'd clearly been in London for a long time. I was entranced. I'd have listened to her explain the most mundane of details about my phone service for as long as she was willing. Except at just that moment, the door behind me blew shut... the sharp corner of the doorknob digging into my lower back.

I leapt forward hissing "Bastid bloody thing!" Which needless to say gave her a bit of a fright. And it was to the rapidly retreating woman from the phone company that I explained that I was already signed up, but thanks for asking.

Some links and a short film review

2005-05-15T20:23:00.000+01:00

It's been a quiet weekend. Most are these days. As Einstein once remarked; "I much prefer silent vice to ostenatious virtue". I find myself in agreement with him on that. As on many things.

I wrote half an article on peak oil for The Sharpener. It kind of tapered out sadly, but I'll hopefully rediscover the impetus for that sometime during the week. Other bloggers, however, have been more productive of late...

Over at Bristling Badger, Merrick tells us a bit about our friend, the torturer. If you ever wanted evidence that US/UK foreign policy has precisely nothing to do with "protecting oppressed peoples", our warm friendship with the brutal dictator in Uzbekistan is all you need.

Meanwhile Harry Hutton's correspondence with Sir Boris Johnsons MP had me laughing out loud. Excellent stuff.

And I discovered this article via Ken MacLeod's blog. It's pretty full-on stuff. Seymour Hersh: Iraq "Moving Towards Open Civil War".

Last night I watched the Jonathan Demme remake of The Manchurian Candidate and was pleasantly surprised by how good it was.

It says, of course, far more about the state of modern culture than about the film when I say it's one of the more subversive things to emerge from Hollywood for a good while. Yeah, yeah there was a cop-out (pun intended) when "the feds" show up to save the day... but it's good to see the whole capitalist military-industrial thingamajig being the bad guys even if, by judicious sleight-of-hand, America itself escapes direct criticism.

It was the Corporate Machine Run Amok what did it! Not America.

The film looks great, the performances are excellent all round, there are some truly chilling set pieces, and the ending is actually a bit more ambiguous than it first seems (though far less ambiguous than it would have been if I'd been asked to give the script a little ooomph).

Anyways, I'm not saying this is a classic. It's not. But it is a very good, intelligent film. Recommended.

Vote UKIP in 2009!

2005-05-13T01:23:00.000+01:00

I'm positively seething at the timing of my conversion. Just a couple of weeks earlier and I would have had an opportunity to campaign... to get involved... to convince my fellow voters that a massive swing to UKIP was the only sensible vote. You see, I've just woken up to the fact that the UK needs to withdraw immediately from the European Union. Just get out completely. And although UKIP has some pretty dodgy policies all told, they were the only party to place that promise high upon their agenda.

I think there's no question that such a pull out would be totally against Britain's best interests. However, I'm speaking here as an Irishman and European, not a Briton. Frankly Britain has become a massive liability to the European project. And should the French vote Yes to the constitution (by no means guaranteed; more because the French want to bloody Chirac's nose than because they're anti-European), now that the Germans have just given it the go-ahead... and should the UK be the only obstacle then I can honestly see very serious questions about Britain's continued membership arising.

Here's the thing that the British don't seem to understand about Europe: most of the people in the other member states actually want it to work. Weird, huh? How you define "work" is, of course, open to interpretation and that's where the various disagreements between the other member states arise. With Britain though, there's a real sense that the whole nation is a sullen child been dragged along on a family excursion... a spoiler, absolutely determined to make it as unpleasant as possible for everyone involved.

I mean, pretty much everyone else has adopted the same currency. Now they're adopting a constitution... ummm... I hate to break it to you Britain, but they seem pretty clear about where they're going on this excursion. You're not a child any more. You do have a choice in this matter. So why the hell are you along for this ride? And if you don't want to be, then please stop sitting in the back seat whinging.

I have huge reservations about the European Union. But they are outweighed, I believe, by the potential benefits. And it seems to me that further European integration is vital. I believe that the best model for a sustainable Europe is one where nearly all power over social policy is devolved to local level, but that an overarching body (representative in some way of the people of Europe) be given the task of setting and implementing policy on certain issues. These would be issues where the allocation and distribution of resources needs to happen at a non-local level... defence, sustainability, environmental protection and the like.

I'm often asked for examples of these. And I'm often at a loss for words... not because I can't think of any, but because they are so numerous and so obvious that the question confuses me.

A community living at the source of a river aren't affected if they decide to use it as a sewer. But communities further downstream should reasonably be able to expect their neighbours not to piss in the river.

Or how about the fact that Mercedes have made some interesting developments in biofueled buses? Really efficient compact engines on lightweight but sturdy frames. Now just because the private car is set to disappear does not mean that communities can't run sustainable transport systems. The fuelstock land required for a decent bus network should not be beyond the means of most areas.

It seems to me that if a bunch of Germans (and perhaps a bunch of Italians and a bunch of Czechs as well) can make excellent and efficient sustainable buses, then they should do so. The European government would ensure that sufficient resources were sent to the nice people at Mercedes who - in turn - would provide us with buses. It's not rocket science.

Because so much needs to begin happening at a local level (all food production and preservation, all economic activity, most power generation, etc.) there will be a corresponding focus inwards by communities and a need to control almost everything at that level; but because so much still requires smooth and efficient cooperation between communities towards ends motivated by social need rather than consumer demand, so we require a non-partisan organisation to oversee things. The European Union is a long way from that now, and I'm not saying the transformation will be easy... but it's a damn sight better an idea than our current "wait and see" policy. And until someone comes up with something better, I'll keep plugging away at this one.

Anyways, it struck me as I was given a handful of change in a shop in the rural west of Ireland where my family live, that there's a subtle but very real process of Europeanisation occurring in the Euro Zone. Amongst the Irish coins in my hand was a German 1 euro coin and a Dutch 2 euro. The cultural influence of the single currency is still in its infancy but it has the potential to be huge.

(One of the funnier ironies of the British anti-Europe thing, by the way, is the idea that Europe seeks to deprive the UK of the right to have the Queen's Head on the currency. In fact, you can put whatever you want on the coins. Put the Queen's Arse on them for all anyone else cares! The point is just that your shops accept the Belgian coins and in return you can proudly buy stuff in Brussels with your queen's arse.)

Anyways, this process of Europeanisation is happening without you Britain. And one day it will reach a point where it's too late in practice for you to hop aboard. "Wonderful!" you say "we never wanted to be part of your silly club anyway." Which, y'know, is fine. But why waste everyone's time now?

If you don't want to be part of it, that's cool with everyone else, but why get in the way of European Unity?

A link: Matt Simmons on Peak Oil

2005-05-12T15:23:00.000+01:00

Matthew Simmons (energy analyst, CEO of the largest investment bank in the world dedicated to the energy industry, and advisor to George Dubya on energy policy) reiterates his position that peak oil is an imminent problem that urgently needs to be addressed.

It's about oil, stupid

2005-05-11T15:23:00.000+01:00

A couple of nights ago I was watching the news on television. My flatmate came into the room... "anything happening in the world today?" he wondered. Without even thinking I responded "nothing important". In saying that, I was dismissively referring to the news of Labour backbenchers calling for Blair to resign, and to the tory shadow-cabinet reshuffle.

The thing is... the second item in the headlines was actually the news that another 60 random Iraqis had been blown to pieces in a Baghdad market. I hadn't meant to overlook it. In fact, as soon as I said "nothing important" I remembered the story and felt vaguely sick that I'd so quickly forgotten it.

I've always opposed the Iraq war. But then, I have a tendency to oppose war in general. I'm not an ideological pacifist, in that I do believe there are situations in which the taking up of arms is justified. However our invasion of Iraq didn't resemble one of those situations in the slightest. For anyone keeping a close eye on the geopolitical ramifications of resource depletion, the Iraq war was clearly about oil.

Which isn't saying "We went there to steal the oil". That particular interpretation is demonstrably false. We went there to stick quarter of a million well-armed troops on top of the world's second largest oil reserves. All that death and destruction wasn't even about pillage and plunder... just about ensuring Preferential Customer status.

Now. The trouble is, if you take that interpretation to it's logical conclusion, you end up saying some pretty nasty things about the people running the war. Things like how daily insurgency attacks killing scores of civilians is the perfect post-war environment for the US and Britain. It provides apparent justification for the continuing presence of huge numbers of western troops. It keeps the Iraqi government weak and unstable, and hence reliant upon those troops to maintain their position. And so long as a compliant media continue to report these bombings as second on the news, with an identical report to yesterday's bomb, and the one before that, and the ones last week and last month... and without any sense of genuine outrage that this shit is happening on our watch (self-appointed though that watch may be)... then it'll just fade into the background even for those of us who can be arsed to write pointless little rants about it.

The process of normalisation has already taken place. The situation is static for us in the safe west, even though we've brought chaos to Iraq. It's second on the news and it's the same as last week.

Now that our governments have admitted there were no WMD, and nothing else to justify the war except the truth ("so long as you lot want to drive your SUVs we'll have to keep killing foreigners, OK?"), they've fallen back on the absurd notion that the war was still a good idea because Saddam Hussein was A Very Bad Man.

"We had to go to war to protect the Iraqi people".

What?! Have you turned on the news lately? We seem to be doing a very bad job.

Ten songs at random

2005-05-11T02:23:00.000+01:00

So I put my media player on shuffle this evening, and this is what happened...

Five Years - David Bowie
(The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars)
Windows Media Player could hardly have chosen a better place to start. Bowie's impassioned lament about the approaching collapse of civilisation:
...news had just come over, we had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying...
Ahh... my music knows me so well.

There's A Tear in My Beer - The The
(Hanky Panky)
Lovely.... Matt Johnson's much underrated album of Hank Williams songs. In many ways it really shouldn't work... the voice of 1980s depressed lefty London bedsit dwellers applied to Hank's country blues Americana. But work it does... a connection is forged across time, across the ocean, and across a cultural divide. The underlying shared humanity is what shines through. Heartache knows no borders.

Purple Rain - Prince
(Purple Rain)
Oh man, it doesn't get any better than this. Prince was to the 1980s what Bowie was to the 70s, The Beatles to the 60s and Elvis to the 50s... he managed to be a huge megastar whilst at the same time experimenting, pushing boundaries, and making some downright incredible music. Proof that popularity doesn't always have to mean mediocrity (incidentally, the sequence continued with Björk in the 90s). During the Lovesexy 88 tour, Prince played an extended version of this track, and I remember being transported out of my body by the incredible majesty of the music. His best work was still to come after Purple Rain. And listening to the track now... that's a remarkable thing to be able to say.

Honey Pie - The Beatles
(Beatles Anthology 3)
Not the version from The White Album, but an earlier take with a far simpler arrangement... mostly voice, maracas and acoustic guitar. The stripped down arrangement really emphasises the sweetness of Macca's voice, and like many of the alternate takes from this period the atmosphere in the studio sounds wonderful, with exuberant backing vocals and a real edge of joy to the proceedings.

Radio Ethiopia - Patti Smith
(Radio Ethiopia)
Urgent, Can-like drums roll behind Smith's powerful and captivating voice. A fuzz guitar rises and falls, almost washing out the soundscape completely at times. And Patti's half-babbled, half-wailed, half-sung vocals snatch fragmented images, curses and blessings from the ether and twist them into weird shapes before your eyes. There's nothing else like this.

Keep Punching Joe - Daniel Johnston
(Museum of Love - a compilation)
Not everyone gets Daniel Johnston. But that's OK. He's intense, brutally honest, witty and unconcerned with mass appeal. His voice slips in and out of tune, his melodies are simple - though beautifully expressive - and his lyrics come straight from the heart filtered through his strange, self-deprecating mind:
I guess I lean toward the excessive
But that's just the way it is
When you're a manic depressive...
And you have to love someone who is so audacious with his choice of rhymes!*

Impromptus (No. 3) - Franz Schubert
(Schubert: Impromptus)
Schubert is my favourite 'classical' composer. There's an exquisite melancholy haunting this piano piece. You feel as though you're listening to a great romance, but also to great loss. Passion held in check by sadness... very strange, and quite beautiful.

Ghost Chase - Atari Teenage Riot
(60 Second Wipeout)
I laughed aloud when this came on after Schubert. Talk about your incongruous segues! For those unfamiliar with ATR, they make the noisiest and most extreme music you're likely to find. Digital Hardcore Recordings (DHR) are characterised by screaming white noise, ludicrously fast beats and shouty revolutionary swearing. "In fact, if you were to ask, 'how much more extreme could music be?' the answer would have to be 'none'. 'None more extreme'"

Blind - Talking Heads
(12x12 Original Remixes)
Talking Heads are one of my favourite bands. David Byrne is a big hero of mine. And because Talking Heads had several hit singles, a lot of people don't realise that they were primarily an albums band. Listening to Remain In Light or Fear of Music or any of the later albums makes you realise just how truly original and daring they were. This particular remix of Blind, the "Deaf, Dub, Blind" remix is one of the better ones on a largely disappointing compilation album, however. Those of you who bought music in the 80s will recall the tendency to create "12 inch remixes" by essentially sticking 5 minutes of looped drum machine in the middle of the track. Talking Heads were just as guilty of this as everyone else sadly.

Window on The World - The Legendary Pink Dots
(Malachi: Shadow Weaver Part 2)
The Legendary Pink Dots are the most underrated band in the world. Bar none. I understand if you feel differently, but please bear in mind that you are wrong. Plain and simple. The Pink Dots have released dozens of the finest albums ever recorded. Dark, industrial-tinged blends of acoustic and electronica with some of the most intense, hypnotic and evocative vocals you're likely to hear. A list of my top 100 albums would contain as many as five from the Pink Dots... yet most people have never even heard their name, and they've never had a major label contract. This particular track does their usual thing of starting in one place and finishing somewhere entirely different about 12 minutes later, having taken in an ambient soundscape, some full-on rock, plenty of sinister messed-up electronica and an acoustic ballad along the way.

* Only Nick Cave is more audacious with rhyme...
She got perfumed breasts and raven hair
Sprinkled with wedding confettis
And a gang of garrotters were all giving me stares
Armed, as they were, with machetes