Could it be that the current massacre happening in the Gaza Ghetto is a kind of warped game show, whereby the Israeli electorate, especially those in Sderot & Ashkalon, get to watch & assess the relative ruthlessness & brutality of the contestants before they vote for them?
I keep having to stop myself from using the word crime - but it's a debased coinage in the absence of any meaningful idea of international law. Whatever Israel does, & says is kosher, & America agrees, is de facto not a crime. This is obvious. Were it a crime for Israel to first starve one & a half million people, then bomb their crowded cities killing hundreds of civilians, then surely there'd be a massive wave of outrage, condemnation, & demands to put a stop to it from the international community?
But here's a piece from the Israeli daily Haaretz, presented to illustrate, for the benefit of the antisemites whose opinions stain the comment pages of the world's best news sites, that not all of 'the jews' are cheering the carnage from the sidelines.
And could it be that the feeble Abu Mazen & the leaders of Fatah, along with the puppet rulers of the Arab regimes, are complicit in all this? Is this what is meant when they say that 'it would not have happened if Palestinians had been united'? Abu Mazen has made clear his willingness to take over the running of Gaza should Hamas do the decent thing & capitulate. The West Bank based Palestinian Authority has, after all, been helping the Israelis to tighten their seige of Gaza. See here, for instance :
And could not Barack Obama, perhaps sporting the 'I Love Sderot' teeshirt he got earlier this year, have deployed his famed eloquence more effectively than his single comment so far: ‘If my daughters were living in a house that was being threatened by rocket attacks, I would do whatever it takes to end that situation.’ ?
We're clearly begining this year as we mean to go on.
As disparate but linked militant youth protests simultaneously erupt in a number of countries across the continent, French President Nicholas Sarkozy has retreated on two controversial pieces of domestic legislation out of fear that a spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of 1968.
Mr Sarkozy, the outgoing chairman of the six-month rotating European Union presidency, has dropped plans for changes to high school curricula and Sunday retail opening hours in dread that the "Greek syndrome" - the two-week-long youth riots that have rocked the country with the most widespread unrest since the overthrow of the military junta in 1974 - could spread to France, or even across the continent.
"We can't have a European May '68 for Christmas," the French leader said to his cabinet, according to reports in Le Canard Enchaîné, referring to the left-wing student protests and general strike in France in 1968 that led to the eventual collapse of the government of Charles De Gaulle.
Similar protests took place that year around the world, particularly in the United States and Germany, but the 'événements' of '68 hold a unique place in the French political imagination.
Note my recent post pointing to evidence that Sarkozy might be a longstanding CIA asset.
....
With the current economic crisis throwing up numbers in the order of billions & trillions, almost rendering them meaningless through repetition, these amazing photographs by Chris Jordan offer an antidote to inumeracy.
I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world, no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.
Some people might not be aware that the many tentacled French corporation Veolia, which may supply you with water, or empty your dustbins, is the same Veolia that is currently building a light railway in the East Jerusalem region to connect illegal Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.
Can Veolia's transit system fairly be called apartheid trams? Yes. The people who live in the settlements are racists, who have no intention of allowing arabs to live beside them, except perhaps as roadsweepers.
The building of a permanent transport system between the settlements will further consolidate the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, making any peace solution based on the 1967 borders & a shared capital almost impossible.
I checked & found that my Local Authority contracts Veolia Environmental Services , & enquiring emails will be sent to my local councillors, (all Green, as it happens.) Why not do the same?
Slow posts over the past week or so. This is because I'm appearing in Panto in a small town in West Yorkshire. Despite being just over six feet I'm playing leading dwarf Soapy, in Snow White & the Seven Dwarves, an exhausting role that requires a wearisome amount of waddling around the stage in massively oversize boots. It's a talking part, & I have to painfully deliver my half dozen lines in a loud high pitched shriek. The theatre is only heated during performances so it's freezing. Snow White is being played by a preening young woman who once appeared in the teen soap Hollyoakes. Her dressing room has a one bar electric heater installed, & she refuses to share it with the rest of the cast.
For those who aren't familiar with Panto - it's a peculiarly English form of entertainment, performed usually for children, in order to humiliate entertainers with declining or extinct careers. I won't elaborate, since Panto is a national disgrace, which no country with claims to civilisation would countenance.
I earn a little more for my thrice weekly Panto appearances than I would for, say, collecting fares on the tram, or scanning groceries at a supermarket. Panto is the exception to my dictum that I wouldn't work for anyone daft enough to employ me.
I'm intending to take my revenge on the night of the final performance. Moments after the curtain I'll take the stage in my Soapy costume & deliver a speech to the assembled children & parents about the government's plans to encourage schools to routinely search pupils for drugs, weapons & stolen goods.
If my oratory is able to convey some of my outrage at this proposal, & touches the conscience of a single parent, before I'm bum's rushed off the stage & bundled away by security, then it'll be worth it.
For the past few days I've been putting together a draft speech. Were it not for the kiddies, it would begin Wake up, you stupid bastards!
Mandelson, at the weekend: "Internationally people say to me, Your Prime Minister has been transformed. His standing has soared. People really do look to him like some Moses figure who is going to lead them away from this economic mess to the promised land."
I present the above quote to indicate the level of delusion now gripping some sections of our governing classes, & the stark contrast between their perceptions & those of the reality-bound general public, or what used to be called the masses.
Anyone who has much of a memory, & has paid the least attention to recent events in the world, can conceive an outline of what's happened - we've been been gobbling up credit, the banks are sitting on worthless piles of paper, nartural resources suddenly look finite...
And Moses proclaims, Give banks money to get credit circulating, stimulate more growth, spend more on stuff, like you did when you thought it was free.
We don't demand enough of our Prophets.
I live in a large Post Industrial city in the North of England. When I was a kid the city was predominantly black or dark brown, as were the rivers that ran through it. In the city centre the sandstone civic buildings were bible black. Whole swathes of the city were nothing but long roads of huge factories, rust & black corrugated iron, with big peeling green 'vacancies' boards at the gates. Flames from furnace doors licked the night sky, the earth shook with the thud of forge hammers. People coughed & steamed on packed buses, sang in pubs on Thursday nights.
In thirty years the city has been transformed. It can now be viewed in colour. The civic buildings have been scrubbed, tubs of exotic foliage surround them. The gleaming city centre shops are ringed by broad roads jammed with shiny new cars. Cranes sweep the sky. The factories have gone. Singing is not encouraged on licensed premises.
Something always troubled me about this metamorphosis. I've studied economics at an English redbrick university, though the course lectures & tutorials had, by sheer bad luck, been scheduled to conflict with my drink & drugs intake, so I was denied the chance to develop a proper grasp of the subject. But I did manage to gain the insight that the creation wealth is related in some fundamental way to the production of goods.
I've witnessed this profound change, from a city manufacturing metal stuff that was hauled out on lorries & trains, to a richer, more modern one that appears to make nothing. How would I explain this to an enquiring ten year old?
Which brings me to my introduction. I usually refuse to click on the Google sponsored ad you see on stacked at the sides of webpages. The other day I found myself looking at a website I'd clicked on before I could stop myself. Oddly, it didn't seem to want flog me anything, saying at the bottom of the page: If you are formulating a strategy for a business or are an individual trying to safeguard the future for your family we can help you to understand the underlying trends and to anticipate what the future holds.
After half an hour of reading I had the impression that here was as clearly presented & plausible an explantion of the current economic crisis as I've come across. Read it here at How it Ends.
After numerous high-profile government mishaps with its citizen's personal data - a laptop containing 150,000 medical records left in a taxi by an official being just one example - it seems the majority of the British public are still happy to entrust their private details, including fingerprints, to anyone in a suit who asks for them.
A poll cited in today's Guardian reveals that as many as 75% of UK citizens would be willing to provide biometric, ie. fingerprint or iris recognition data, to government agencies, banks & other organisations. Fear of identity theft & credit card fraud was said to be the reason.
The same poll conducted in France showed 59% willing to comply. The figures for Italy were 63%, & Germany 62%. This is a considerable diffence. How can it be explained?
I suggest it's question of political culture & history. The British, unlike the other countries mentioned, have not experienced serious political instability since the Civil War, & are unable to imagine the State as anything other than the remote, rather dull entity they currently perceive it to be. It may ocasionally become an an annoyance, but for most people it could never be a threat.
As well as a lack of awareness of the social implications of new information technologies, there's also a very limited public grasp of the climate, energy, & resources issues that face the planet. A failure of imagination. This helps to explain the British public's lack of interest in the preservation of its Civil Liberties, & by extension other people's.
Those who have ploughed the deep & rocky furrow that is 9/11 investigations will recognise the name Thierry Meyssan. What we now know as the 9/11 Truth phenomenon began in 2002 in Europe, with Meyssan's articles, films & books. Here's what the New Statesman said about him in 2002:
The most common theories of all, however, derive from Thierry Meyssan's bestselling book L'effroyable imposture (The Frightening Fraud). Meyssan is the director of the Voltaire Network, a prominent left-wing think-tank, and it is hard to overestimate the impact of his book in France. It were as though Matthew Taylor of the IPPR or Mark Leonard of the Foreign Policy Centre had suddenly announced that the US government was involved in the 11 September attacks. Central to Meyssan's thesis is the argument that the Pentagon was not struck by a plane at all, but rather that a carefully planned truck bombing or missile strike was set up by the US government to look like a plane crash. He believes that the government plotted the whole affair, in part to control rogue agents within the security services. (Johann Hari.)
The idea that it was not an airliner, but a missile or some other weapon, that hit the pentagon, became what was called the No Planes Theory, & it caused ane early split in the online 9/11 investigations community, dividing it into two sometimes hostile camps. To promote the No Planes Theory it was necessary to explain the hundreds of people driving along the beltway that passed less than 500 metres from the Pentagon Building who said they saw an airliner.
Supporters of the No Planes Theory are now a tiny but tenacious minority. I've read some very tightly argued pieces from its proponents, involving holograms & mass hypnosis, but for me there are just too many eyewitness accounts that mention airliners.
As you might expect, it was not long before opponents of the No Planes Theory began to openly suspect that the theory itself was part of a disinformation operation run by elements of the Security Services, to make 9/11 investigators look like headbangers.
So, after that bit of background, this is the source of my information concerning Sarkozy's connection with the CIA. Do I think Sarkozy is a CIA plant? Entirely probable, but more evidence needed.
You can see Meyssan's article, in a sometimes muddled English translation, & in the original French, at Axisoflogic
It's common, particularly among the middle classes I've noted, to hear people say, 'But I'm not a violent person'. Of course you are, fool. Just because you're scared of getting hurt, it doesn't mean that in some circumstances you wouldn't inflict violence on others, either by taking part or consenting to it.
I often feel like punching people who make these smug professions of non-violence, right in the lug hole. Because I try to follow the principle of Ahimsa I'm able to let go of these impulses.
And so, this weekend I took tea & biscuits with two friends of mine; one you might call a gentleman farmer, the other is a scholar of some repute. While discussing the privations that each expected to experience in the coming years, I brought up the Olduvai Theory. Since they weren't aware of it I explained it to them.
Readers can see a 2003 paper, The Olduvai Theory Energy, Population, and Industrial Civilization by Richard C. Duncan Here
Briefly, the Olduvai Theory, originally developed by the historian Henry Adams, grandson, & great grandson of two US Presidents, uses the formula e = Energy/Population to demonstrate that...
' The life expectancy of industrial civilization is approximately 100 years: circa 1930-2030...The exponential growth of world energy production ended in 1970... Average e will show no growth from 1979 through circa 2008. The rate of change of e will go steeply negative circa 2008. World population will decline to about two billion circa 2050'.
A number of independent studies concur.
Olduvai predicts that the end, depicted as a sharp cliff in the diagrams, 2008 clearly visible waving its arms on the headland, will come first through brownouts, followed rapidly by intermittent powercuts, followed by permanent blackout.
Strong stuff. My mate the scholar remarked that he'd always been aware that the current level of population was unsustainable. He'd even dreamed up a few measures aimed at population reduction. Kill anyone convicted of a violent crime, for instance. Top nonces & perverts who mess with children, do away with rapists. The more violent people are done away with, the more peaceful society becomes. The gentleman farmer shrugged in at-a-push agreement, & said he was buying a generator from B&Q.
Of course, my scholar friend quickly withdrew the main articles of his proposal, explaining it was an emotional outburst, or perhaps a thought experiment, like the one his colleague Martin Amis made, when he suggested punishing people for being Muslim. It was obvious, he said, that a Totalitarian state would be needed to carry out mass killings on this scale, & he wasn't keen on that idea.
I only present this to suggest what dangers a deepening economic crisis might bring.
I see in the news that billionaire Damien Hirst, has sacked some of the workers at his Science Ltd., company, where he employs people to produce his 'art'. These people need to be in a union to fight this. I suggest the IWW
Anyone can turn out stuff like Hirst's, which is why he uses gold & precious stones as a kind of copyright. I hear tell of a blacksmith & a butcher in the Yorkshire Dales who've teamed up to produce bisected cows in glass cases, which are loaded onto lorries & taken all over the country.
Imperialists have always used the threat that their withdrawal will result in bloodshed. This is what kept British troops in Ulster for decades. No government elected under occupation can claim legitimacy.
Withdrawal can surely be achieved without helicopter rooftop evacuations from the Green Zone.
The Iraqi administration that emerges after the complete withdrawal of occupying forces should promptly begin proceedings to demand reparations from the US & Britain for the loss of life, destruction of physical infrastructure, & economic hardship suffered by the Iraqi population as a result the invasion.
Those primarily responsible for the aggression, G.W Bush, Tony Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeldt, Hoon, & others, should be brought before an international court of justice & charged with war crimes. Charges relating to the deliberate targeting & murder of civilians by occupying Coalition Forces, abuse of Human Rights & the use of torture, could also be pursued.
Since the cost of reparations to Iraq would push the US economy under the ice, a Peace & Reconciliation Conference might be necessary.
One immediate measure the Government could take to boost the plunging, or perhaps cliff diving, economy would be to drastically raise the level of benefits paid to pensioners, the unemployed, those on incapacity & invalidity benefits & non employed parents.
This would stimulate local economies much quicker than infrastructure projects, since those on benefits are more likely to spend any increase on locally available goods & services they could not previously afford.
I see city centre restaurants filled with booming claimants, bustling markets, a renaissance in local arts, leisure & entertainment. Bands investing in new equipment, new venues opening as the market for live music blossoms. I want someone to tell me what's wrong with this idea.
There are those who would oppose this proposal on the grounds that giving more money to a section of society that might include the feckless, the workshy, the chemically dependant & the sexually incontinent is immoral. This however is not an argument against the purely ecomomic good sense of taking such measures.
A 50% across the board increase in Benefits payments implemented now would give a significant boost to overall consumer spending within less than a fortnight.
Contact your Local MP by email & get them to see the economic sense of turning liabilities into assets by making benefits claimants engines of growth.
Recall the irritating Budweiser 'Wassup?' ads that were on heavy rotation in the early part of this century? Here's an update. Four million YouTube hits is not enough.
As for those who missed the original ad, a zeitgeist piece, you can find it yourselves. I'll not be party to promoting that most disappointing beer. Aerated joey piss, or maids watter as they say in Yorkshire.
We hear nothing whatsoever from British Government sources, nor individual New Labour MPs, about the deliberate Geneva Convention busting collective punishment of 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip, described here by Jonathan Cook. If the current devastation in Gaza was the result of a hurricane or earthquake it might merit a few respectful condolences from the floor of the House, or a couple of minutes on primetime news. But the turning of Gaza into a vast concentration camp, without enough food, medical supplies or electricity, is Israeli Government policy, & is supported to the hilt by the US & Europe.
The justification for the West's support for this murderous policy, & the reason why it is willing to turn a blind eye to Article Four of the Geneva Convention, is supposedly to turn Gaza's population against the Hamas government it elected in a free & fair ballot in 2005. The international sanctions aimed at the Saddam Hussein regime, which killed as many as half a million children, were in part justified by the same objective, & continued for over a decade without achieving it.
Obviously, there are Gazans who aren't supporters of the Hamas Islamist program, but many voted for them because they promised an end to Fatah corruption & vacillation & a more honest pursuit of the stuggle for Palestinian national liberation. This is what the whole population of Gaza is being punished for.
Earlier this year a senior Israeli defence official spoke frankly about creating a 'shoah' in Gaza. The incremental tightening of the stranglehold over Gaza is clearly not the result of a few homemade rockets fired at Israeli settlements, but the working out of a long term policy of ethnic cleansing. The Israeli Zionists routinely accuse the Palestinian resistance of wanting to push them into the sea, & it looks as though the Israeli Government, with the connivance of the West, is planning to force the Gazans, if not into the sea then over the border into the Sinai Desert.
I'm just going to present you with two quotes from an excellent but saddening article from Chris Hedges, at Information Clearinghouse, & urge you strongly to click on the link provided to read the rest of it.
" We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities....."
" Political campaigns have become an experience. They do not require cognitive or self-critical skills. They are designed to ignite pseudo-religious feelings of euphoria, empowerment and collective salvation. Campaigns that succeed are carefully constructed psychological instruments that manipulate fickle public moods, emotions and impulses, many of which are subliminal. They create a public ecstasy that annuls individuality and fosters a state of mindlessness. They thrust us into an eternal present. They cater to a nation that now lives in a state of permanent amnesia. It is style and story, not content or history or reality, which inform our politics and our lives. We prefer happy illusions." Information Clearinghouse
Attentive readers might have noticed me banging on about the collective & individual fading of memory, & the need to imagine an alternative language to talk about radical social change, entailing a re-memberance, or putting together of scattered parts strewn over a landscape of fragments.
Into my hands recently came a new book by Dave Lee, Bright from the Well - Northern Tales in the Modern World. Mandrake of Oxford (2008). It's a retelling & reimagining of the creation & social origin myths of the Northern European tradition, including the Völuspá, & Rigsþula (Rig's Tale). Comprising five short stories & five essays, it's an odd but compelling read, combining a reworked & updated phenomenology of the myths with vividly told stories set in the contemporary world of would-be sorcerers & Chaos Magic.
Those with a suspicious turn of mind wrongly might detect a whiff of the Thule Society, & the romantic/reactionary projects dreamed up by the likes of W. B. Yeats & D. H. Lawrence, which often resulted in psychosomatic afflictions of the right arm. But Dave Lee is no New Ager, sharing my view that these are people with too many easily acquired beliefs to spend, who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. Think rather of the imaginative legacy & radical engagement of William Blake. Great stuff, ideas sparking off in all directions.
With the leaves falling off the trees the Channel Five signal has begun to reach my satellite dish. You may be one of the millions of people who doesn't watch this channel, so you'll be unaware that it specialises in shows about the police, including American dramas like the CSI franchise, & various 'reality' police action shows. I sat through one last night called Police Interceptor, mainly because I'd shovelled down too much mutton stew, & couldn't get off the setee to switch it off.
Police Interceptor is about a group of overweight Essex scuffers, one of them amusingly called Spongebob, who tear up & down dual carriageways in Subaru Imprezzas chasing motorists & pulling them over to question them.
There's a particularly smarmy commentary in a chirpy Southern accent that constantly reminds us of the 'professionalism' of Spongebob & his pals. Policemen, & I've met lots of them, rarely have much in the way of personality, so the irritating commentary is probably needed to compensate for the dullness of the exchanges between the coppers as they speed from one interception to the next.
In last night's episode the use of the Automatic Numberplate Recognition (APR) system was demonstrated. The APR had flagged a vehicle that was on record as having connections with drug dealing. It was a red Ford Fiesta. Hang on a minute, I thought through the fug of mutton stew, I've known many drug dealers, but I've never come across one who would be caught dead from an overdose in a Ford Fiesta.
The red Ford Fiesta must have been of special interest to the Essex Constabulary, because it immediately becomes a major operation, deploying no less than four cars, with a senior officer co-ordinating, to chase it down. Tension builds as the fleet of police cars speeds through the night, exchanging terse bursts of radio contact. The professionalism of this team is evident. Eventually, the rear lights of Fiesta come into view ahead, & it's 'Go go go, go go go', as the car is simultaneously forced onto the hard shoulder, & its escape is blocked by a second Imprezza. Spongebob & his partner leap briskly from their vehicle & pull open both front doors of the Fiesta.
As I for some reason expected, the Fiesta contains two skinny youths, who blink in confusion as they're roughly dragged from their car & pushed against a wall. Their car smells of cannabis, Spongebob tells them, & it's going to be searched.
Not surprisingly, one of the youths decides to start swearing at Spongebob, calling him a dickhead. But as the commentary helpfully informs us, Spongebob has received special training in dealing with bad language from the public.
Listen children, I've received instruction, (not training, dogs & horses get training), in counter-interrogation techniques from a certain militant organisation which will remain nameless. You must resist the impulse to gob off at the police. Remain cheerfully polite, even appear helpful, but say nothing. Do not attempt to lie. If they try to use your first name, politely insist that they call you either Sir, or Mr O'Donnell, Mr Mohammad, or whatever. Politely refuse any offers of fags, or cups of tea. Try to smile.
After a prefunctory search of their car, revealing nothing, the two lads were handcuffed & taken to the police station. There they were intimately searched, from which the camera mercifully spares us, & we merely see Spongebob pulling on a pair of white plastic gloves. While Spongebob & his partner probe the youth's arseholes, another police detail ransacks their Fiesta. Nothing at all is found. After many hours the miserable skinny youths are released without charge. The commentary breezily tell us that more than half of all such interceptions are like the one we have witnessed, & result in no suspicious finds or convictions.
So let's recap. Four expensive cars, containing eight stout police officers, including a senior officer on a very handsome salary, are deployed to chase & detain two undernourished youths in a clapped out vehicle. Half a police shift is spent searching & questioning the youths on the basis of the suspicion that the youths might have smoked cannabis in their car. The eight officers, professionals all, express no regrets whatsoever at this total waste of time & resources. After their encounter the youths will understandably conclude, for future reference, that all police are bullies & cunts.
Dear Member of the Public, do you think this is a suitable way to spend taxpayer's money? If you can get Channel Five, see the next episode of Police Interceptor.
If I hear another politician or businessman use the words hard work, hardworking families, or hardworking Americans, I'll have to go & lie down.
Broon is particularly fond of it. Just listen, he slips in the phrase at every opportunity. What does it mean? It's a current buzzword, a dogwhistle word our rulers use when they want us to wag our tails in appreciation. It signals that, in an aspirational society like ours, wealth & privilage is the typical outcome of energy & effort. The greater the effort, the greater the reward. In societies with gross disparities of income, the notion that wealth & success is achieved simply through hard work helps to assuage discontent caused by resentment of glaring inequalities. Without this idea our grotesque celebrity culture, with its abject worship of conspicuous consumption & prestige, would not be possible.
Blair used the formula to great effect in his efforts to dismantle the Labour Movement & transform the nature of the Labour Party. New Labour, he declared, was less interested in equality of income than equality of opportunity. Under the new dispensation the country would become a meritocracy, leaving behind the outdated ideas of Social Democracy. Typically, it was Mandelson, who worked his fingers to the bone in persuit of the rich & powerful, who said that New Labour was the party of business, relaxed about individuals getting filthy rich. These ideas are characteristic of a period of sustained economic boom, which we've experienced for over two decades now. There are indications that the party might be over, but you'll be hearing the hard work mantra every verse end.
A moment's reflection will reveal the obvious truth that there's no simple link between hard work & financial reward. It depends entirely on the type of work you're doing. Certain kinds of hard work, having your photograph taken for a glossy magazine, or managing a hedge fund, are rewarded much more hansomely than others, caring for the sick & elderly, for instance. None of this needs saying.
And just what is hard work? A personal anecdote: at one time I was running both a pub & a restaurant. I worked from 10 o'clock in the morning until around 1 o'clock the following morning, some 15 hours a day, seven days a week. The rewards were adequate. You might admire my capacity for industry. (If you want to see a businessman smirk with self-satisfaction, call them a workoholic.) But my partner was at home all this time, doing housework & caring for young children. Half a day looking after kids & I'd be shagged out, much as I love them. I'd take 15 hours of pulling pints & cooking fancy food over that anytime. Why? Because making money is enjoyable, & can't be described as drudgery.
In the 60's I had a badge pinned to my jacket that said 'Fuck Work'. I wore it to annoy adults, which is the duty of all young people. But the idea was in the air that we were going to do away with the miserable Protestant Work Ethic. We thought we might see the birth of Homo Ludens, with technology as the midwife. How wrong we were. Know what happens when you put your nose to the grindstone? Your fucking head gets ground off.
Recently published findings by a group of German researchers has concluded that a propensity to cocaine addiction is genetically determined. Here it is.
Genetic factors, scientists believe, account for 70% of cocaine addiction, making it as heritable as schizophrenia and other mental health conditions. Studies of twins suggest alcoholism is about 50% genetic.
I have problems with this notion, beginning with the difficulty of determining just what is meant 'addiction' - not a straightforward construct when we begin teasing apart the the various cultural, social, medical & political threads from which it's made. But let's leave that aside. What is being said here is that addiction is a disease, & as such it can rightfully take its place alongside other genetically inherited disorders, & be treated accordingly.
The idea that drug addiction is a disease is an old one. It was the basis of what came to be called the British System for dealing with people with problematic opiate habits, begun in the 1920s & largely discredited & dismantled by the 1970s. This was in constrast to the approach broadly taken in the US, where drug users were seen as morally disordered people in need of corrective punishment. Under the British System doctors prescribed users with supplies of opiates. The resulting stablisation would allow the disease to run its course, so the theory went, & eventually the user would voluntarily refrain from drug use. A problem was that at the time there was no clear idea about precisely what kind of disease addiction was, its etiology & pathology. Genetics has now come up with an answer.
What we're witnessing here is another example of the medicalisation of human diversity, (or the pathologisation of deviance, if you want an uglier construct). The process began with the development & eventual ascendancy of biologically reductionist psychiatry, & has gained enormous momentum as a result of certain types of genetic research. There are now influential people who are asserting, with the prestige of science behind them, that whole areas of human experience, from entrenched misery to deviant thought & behavior, are largely the result of defective genes. 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars...'
Being a mere rude mechanical, I'm not in a position to argue the underlying science informing these assertions. What I can do, though, is touch upon some of the implications involved. For now I'll outline just one example, while urging readers to come up with others themselves.
A projected outcome of research into the genetic basis of drug addiction is the development of vaccines able to selectively block the effects of certain substances, the use of which society disapproves - cocaine for example. This is the strategy behind the funding of such research. The drug can be considered as akin to a virus. Through a process of genetic screening, those people identified as being at risk of 'contracting' addiction as a result of exposure to the substance would simply be innoculated, thus saving them from a life of recurring misery & financial ruin. Who could argue with such a sensible & humane proposal?
The companies providing the screening & supplying the vaccines would of course make huge fortunes for investors. When recently an English secondary school proposed the compulsory routine drug testing of its pupils, parents were reported to be widely supportive of the idea. Many parents would no doubt see it as their duty to have their children protected against drugs by paying to have them innoculated. Compulsory vaccination is just a step further. Again, who could object to a measure that could protect children from a scourge that might ruin their young lives?
I could. I want my children to be protected from as many of the random onslaughts of bacteria & viruses as possible. But I certainly don't want them to be given artificial immunity from the necessity of making moral choices.
Whether a person decides for or against the idea of using substances to alter brain chemistry is a moral choice. Here's where I part company with the almost overwhelming majority of medical, legal & political opinion. I think that the matter of chemical substances & states of consciousness properly belongs in the realm of religious belief. The state has no more warrant to determine the composition of the chemical soup in my brain than it has to decide for me whether I should believe in transubstantiation or not.
So long as substances exist, natural or synthetic, that can alter consciousness in some way, pleasurably or otherwise, there will be humans interested in using them. It was ever thus. All attempts to alter this fact are futile. The deranged obsessives currently working at US State research facilities on genetic methods of wiping out the psychoactive components of the coca leaf & the opium poppy are barking at the moon. They might as well attempt to extract the holy stuff from holy water.
A grown up society ought to be able to safely accomodate the basic human impulse to seek altered states though chemicals, instead of screaming blue murder every time a 16 year old lights up a joint. Doing so is is like trying to stop the little buggers shagging. The enculturation of drugs use - there's another awkward mouthful for you to consider.
The 1918 Armistice rememberance ceremonies bring military matters to mind.
A recent survey indicated that around 60% of the public either oppose or have reservations about the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, while 85% 'support our troops'. What does 'supporting' British soldiers in these wars mean? Does it entail going to their funerals, welcoming them home with flags & bands, like the the recent controvertial parade in Belfast, or hailing them as 'heroes', & 'our brave lads?' Don't you think there's something odd, quaint even, about this? I know you read in the newspapers that the troops appreciate such gestures from the public. 'A slap on the back, or a handshake from a stranger in a pub at home means a lot to us', one said. This is the most personal support they're ever likely to get. But does it help to discourage war-mongering governments from sending our young people into harms way?
I suppose tradition plays a part. Britain has a long history of sending its young men to fight for obscure causes in faraway places about which they know nothing. The modern British Army, though, no longer deploys crude jingoism to maintain its espirit du corps & get new recruits. What's instilled now is the notion of professionalism, & the impression, cultivated in TV adverts, thay they're sort of heavily armed social workers of last resort. Contrast this with the American approach. In 2003 a poll revealed that most US troops in Iraq thought they were there to punish Saddam Hussein for his involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
There are very good reasons for young men & women to join the army. Spirited young people reject the idea of surrendering to the humdrum workaday experience they see around them. The paid employment on offer has become increasingly meaningless & tedious, hence the frenzied determination to spend the proceeds at weekends. Who in their right mind would want to work in a call centre, a bank, an estate agent or insurance office? When I was with extreme reluctance forced to seek paid employment, it was a choice between the steelworks, the coal mines, or a giant bread bakery on the outskirts of town. I chose the steelworks. As a 16 year old I could stand in the vast melting shop at British Steel, taking in the Göttedämmerung of noise, smoke & flame around me, in my flame retardant overalls, hard hat & wooden clogs, & say to myself, 'My god, this is fucking awful. But at least now I'm a man among men. I'm a steelworker.' All this has gone, but the army can offer something similar.
None of my children has entertained the idea of joining up, so I've never been faced with the problem of talking them out of it. Most of them can barely comprehend my politics, words like 'imperialism' mean nothing to them, & they see my suspicion of the State as paranoid & counterproductive. The notion of being killed by a bullet or IED is, of course, barely considered. Just ordinary kids. But I've rehearsed the arguments, just in case.
- Yes, I'd say, join The Professionals. See the world with a great bunch of mates. Learn new skills. Work hard, play hard. As a team. Your mother/grandmother will love the idea.
I was too young to remember Jack Kennedy being elected. But I recall I was in a fish & chip shop when I heard he'd been killed, overhearing a conversation & feeling something painful. A customer quietly spoke the news to the woman behind the counter. She put her hand up to her face. Her face.
I was a teenager when the Kennedy White House was sometimes called Camelot. I'd begun reading the Arthurian Legends without being aware of this. John Mitchell's book on Ley Lines had started me off. When I came across Lewis Spence's British Mysteries there was no stopping me. So when I heard mention of Camelot in connexion with John F. Kennedy, you can see, I paid attention. Jack Kennedy became associated with that era, when radical change for the better looked not just as though it was inevitable, but there was also the sense that it was going to be a bit of a pushover. I laughed, & hacked on my chillum.
Robert Kennedy. Elect Bobby. Watching him speak, blinking over the microphone, flicking his fringe all the time the way young men did in those days before sensible haircuts.
Robert Kennedy was the best President America never had.
On the day after the election, Ustadh Juan Cole, at his Informed Comment blog http://www.juancole.com/ has pictures of JKF, MLK, & RFK... under the heading 'Wouldn't it be nice if Jack, Martin, Bobby, Cesar and Patsy could have been around to see it?' I don't think I can add anything to that.
As you know, by the time it got to trying to get George McGovern elected, the cause was already suspected to be hopeless.
I haven't heard many commentators recalling the days when Colin Powell was a prospective Presidential candidate. He wisely turned it down of course. There were murmurs about Condoleeza Rice too. What if it'd been Colin Powell, perhaps with Condoleeza Rice on the ticket, instead of McCain & the disasterous Sarah Palin? The Republicans might well have won with two black candidates.
Here's a quote:
"What else but a controlling emotional 'devil' so blinded American white intelligence that it couldn't forsee that millions of black slaves, 'freed', then permitted even limited education, would one day rise up as a terrifying monster whithin white America's midst." ( Autobiography of Malcolm X)
& for your edification, here's one from Aristotle. I mean the Aristotle.
"Those who live in a cold climate & in Europe are full of spirit, but wanting in intelligence & skill. They keep their freedom but have no political organisation, & are incapable of ruling over others." (The Politics)
West Yorkshire Police has taken the initiative of sending out patrols around city & town centre pubs accompanied by small, specially trained dogs, to sniff out members of the public who might be in possession of drugs. This means specifically cannabis, since other drugs are much more difficult to detect. Television reports suggest that the move has been popular with the public, especially pub landlords & managers. 'It's a good idea', one landlord said in an interview. 'It puts our minds at rest.' Seems the dogs wear badges that warn dopefiends not to be misled by their cuteness.
What is this country, the most spied-upon on the planet, becoming? Years of sneakily authoritarian governments has softened up the population to the point where most will abandon what's left of their privacy & civil liberties without a whimper. If you're not terrorist or a criminal, the argument goes, you've nothing to fear. No one who has lived through, or paid attention to, what has happened from the 20th century onwards should swallow this. But as I've said before, we're becoming people without memory. The healthy suspicion & wariness of authority that makes real democracy possible is being worn away by small increments. Listen: the State is a misfortune we reluctantly put up with. Your mind will be at rest when you're dead.
The State is going to monitor your phone calls, your emails & what you look at on the Net. For the first time in history the collection & storage of vast volumes of data, along with ways & means of interrogating it, has become technically easy. Your car registration number will be used to monitor your comings & goings. Your credit card will reveal what you buy. From next year the State will open a database, called 'Contact Point', that will detail the lives of your children from birth. The silence of Joe the Plumber on these matters is taken for consent. Klaus Bubblehammer the Disaffected Troublemaker would rather take his chances with terrorists & criminals.
Because Joe the Plumber didn't object to the police sniffing the pockets of harmless dope smokers out on the town for a few beers, ( & yes, because the tokers are too disorganised to deploy the simple tactic of smearing cannabis oil over pub furniture, to fox the dogs), the next step will be for the State to send out the cops with equipment to read the RFID chips embedded in the various devices people carry in their pockets, which will indicate where you where, at what time, & who with - all of which will be added to your database entry. Is that alright for you then?
& now for something completely different.
So far Notts Forest has only managed to win two matches all season, the second just last weekend, & they remain at the bottom of the Championship, or Second Division. What's happening here? Not so long ago Nottingham Forest was the best, & most exciting team in Europe. And they managed to become so without mercenaries or megastars. All the players were Scottish, Irish, or English, though there might've been the odd Dutchman. When Brian Clough signed the forward Gary Birtles he was working as a plasterer on a building site, & Clough warned him that if he didn't shape up he'd be clocking on again on Monday morning.
Which brings me to Blackpool. I have a notion, that could earn me lots of money, to bring back the tangerine Glory Days of Blackpool FC. I want to buy the club from the cretins who currently own it, & invest enough money for the club to reinvent itself. The potential supporters are already there - all the disaffected Man United & City, Liverpool, Everton, Bolton, & all the Lancashire hinterland, would rally to a club playing exciting football. The city of Blackpool has lost its bid to host one of New Labour's sinister & halfbaked 'supercasinos', so the football club is ripe for development. The project could be kicked off by putting together an 'all stars' team, a bit like Fulham attempted in the 80's with Best, Rodney Marsh etc., but with a better plan & more commitment. Interested investors should contact kbubblehammer@yahoo.co.uk
Watching Christian broadcasting from the US on satellite makes me glad to have been born in a country that was never fully christianised. Christianity was always a minority concern in England, now more than ever - there are more Muslims here than practising Christians. In the neighbourhood where I grew up, in an industrial city in the North of England, there was only one family that went to church. Significantly, they were also the only family that owned a car. We used to watch them on Sunday mornings, getting into their gleaming Morris Traveller in their Sunday best, the two kids looking utterly miserable. It was assumed that, as the owners of a grocery shop, they went to church to distinguish themselves from the steelworkers, bus drivers & skivvies they lived amongst.
Even among English churchgoers the sort of religious enthusiasm you see in the huge congregations in American megachurches has been viewed with suspicion, probably because of the religious & political turmoil we experienced in the Civil War. The Church of England has never really been concerned with religious belief, being an instrument of class politics, ignored or despised by the bulk of the population. For much of it's existence it was 'the Tory Party at prayer'. In the later 20th Century, as a survival tactic, it developed the charming trait of becoming tolerant to the point of self-extinction, welcoming avowed atheists into the clergy, & turing a blind eye to vicars who delivered Buddhist sermons while bollock naked.
This explains why I've always found Christian observance slightly shocking & disturbing. I once found myself in Dublin early one bright Sunday morning, having spent the night showing some Irish mates how to drink pints of Guiness. While wondering why there were so many people about at that time of day, & discounting a football fixture, I realised that they were all herding into these great ugly church buildings. I'd never seen anything like this before, & the experience left me feeling so queasy that I had to find some open green space, & a park bench to sit on while I waited for the pubs to open.
American Christian broadcasts, though, bear no resemblence to any kind of religious practice I've ever experienced. Coming from a land of many beautiful but deserted & hushed churches, that smell of furniture wax & Brasso, it's startling to see these vast crowded astrodomes, where men in immaculate business suits & expensively coiffeured women strut & fret before the audience, microphone in hand, harranguing in bizzare intonations. It takes a while to work out they're speaking English.
It seems they worship an entity called Guard. Clearly, Guard & Jesus are the same entity. Both of them speak directly to these men in suits, in the manner of a robust & commonsensical bank manager, instructing them in the conduct of various activities, often involving grandiose construction projects for which cash must be raised. Obviously, Guard/Jesus is a bloke, & the Supreme Being at the same time. This is a religion without mystery.
My friend who is a Muslim scholar tells me this crude theology is blasphemous, & an example of what Muslims call shirk, or associating Allah with something created. As the Catholic theologian Paul Tillich has written:
"The concept of a 'Personal God' interfering with natural events, or being 'an independant cause of natural events', makes God a natural object beside others, an object among others, a being among beings, maybe the highest, but nevertheless a being. This indeed is not only the destruction of the physical system but even more the destruction of any meaningful idea of God."
As an atheist I have to agree.
These people would be just depressing or laughable were it not for the grotesque politics they've dreamed up, using the authority of the Bible to justify belligerence & destruction to the credulous. I watched one 'minister' telling his flock that climate change was a 'hoax', quoting scripture to justify the continued rape of the planet on the grounds that 'Guard wants you to be rich beyond your wildest dreams'. Another, calling himself 'Pastor' Somethingorother, stood before a map of the world, behind which were draped many imperial star-spangled-banners, expounding a biblical 'prophesy' that predicted the destruction of Russia, the expansion of Israel up to the Euphrates, the routing of the Satanist Muslims, the second coming of Jesus in Jerusalem, resulting in the conversion of the Jews, & the establishment of the Kingdom of Guard.
What's just as saddening is that some people claiming to be Muslims espouse similar nonsense. Some 'Neo-Taliban' are talking about a "Battle of the End of Time", also centred ultimately on Palestine, which will herald the coming of the Mahdi. See, http://www.counterpunch.org/shahzad10122008.htm
Not much to read in the newspapers at the moment. So far as I'm concerned the swathes of print devoted the the supposed 'financial meltdown' might as well be written in Armenian. Three days into the 'crisis' I gave up buying papers. It's not that I'm ignorant or dismissive of economics, far from it, as a fierce young marxist I devoured whole shelves of books on political economy. No, I sensed as soon as the story began to unfold that nothing would come of all this blather. The superlatives that were being tossed from one news bulletin to the next failed to impress - worst figures for six years, British economy technically in recession, ten percent knocked off value of shares. All of which may be tough bananas for the banksters & their like, but what's happening here is just a periodic market adjustment, & is about as interesting as the office computer breaking down. A real crisis looms when the prices of necessities begin to rise quickly, & when the price of oil rockets. Oil has recently dropped from a high of $150 a barrel to just $80, & continues to fall.
Of course I don't have any shares, & I don't own any of the kind of property that might decrease in value. I don't use banks either. All the money I have, & there's a fair amount of it, is in cash, & it's stuffed into the tubes of a big brass bed, where it's safe. If anyone attempts to take any of it I'll kill or severely injure them, for which purpose a heavy wooden knout hangs from the bedframe, finely inscribed in kufic script with the 99 names of God.
The only sound reason to put money in a bank is if you want to borrow larger sums from them. I did this once to finance the purchase of a number of technically advanced television sets, & found them far too insistent, not to say pushy, when it came to getting their money back. In the end their impertinence became so intrusive I decided to permanently suspend repayment. A couple of times they even had the cheek to send people to knock on my door & ask for money. I had one of my employees provide them with an address in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia where I could be contacted, & I've heard nothing further from them. 'It is only by not paying our bills', said my friend Oscar Wilde, 'that we can hope to be remembered among the commercial classes.'
Taking refuge from the boring financial news in the serious papers, I turned to the gutter press for entertainment. I have to confess to what's probably some sort of intellectual perversion. I often enjoy, if that's the right word for it, experiencing the sensation of being appalled. Picking up a copy of the Daily Mail, The Mirror, or The Sun, I head straight for the full-page columnists - the shreiking Melanie Phillips, the odious Littlejohn, the gallows enchanted Peter Hitchens, or the pipsqueak-next-door Tony Parsons.
My deviant fix on Saturday came from Parsons. 'So many suffer for the grimy greed of a few', his piece was headed. He lays into the gluttonous, bonus-hungry spivs, who got the beleaguered British taxpayer into this mess. They are worse than criminals, he bleats. When do decent men & women, like himself, who actually work for a living, get to the point where they have given all they have to give? It was that Thatcher, who proclaimed that getting your hands dirty at work was a thing of the past, & the future was in financial speculation & writing columns for newspapers, who started it all. Casino capitalism & the culture of unfettered greed has brought us to this wretched point.
And just as you're thinking, 'hang on a bit, this fucker sounds like one of them outmoded socialists', he hits the button. An Asian immigrant, who lives in a £1 million seven bedroom Edwardian mansion, is claiming £4,000 a week in benefits from the British taxpayer. Outrageous, yes, but Tony honestly can't tell the difference between this leech & the city spivs who abuse decent, hardworking capitalism. Oh, Tony, appal me some more.
A seemingly small point, but an important one. The first letter of the Arabic name for the nation of Iraq is an 'ayn'. It is not like an English 'i', as in lip, but since the Arabic letter is a voiced pharangeal fricative, a sound that is not heard in native English, the short 'i' is the nearest aproximation. Iraq.
Sarah Palin repeatedly said 'eye rack'. There is no such place. Nor is there anywhere called 'eye ran'.
Biden pronounced Pakistan the way most English many people do, so that it sounds like it's describing an Asian called Stan who runs a corner shop. It's a mark of respect to at least attempt to prounce the names of places where people live correctly.
Robert Fisk on Aljazeera this morning made the most important point. The debate was supposed to be about foreign policy, yet Palestine was barely mentioned. He said it looked like an agreement had be made by the paries beforehand not to bring up Palestine/Israel. Biden mentioned Hizbollah, but only to make the ridiculous claim that Hizbollah had been cleared out of Southern Lebanon by the Israeli invasion.
Why did Sarah keep winking at me? Margaret Thatcher did that & I find it disturbing.
During the Irish Troubles the Thatcher government passed a law prohibiting the media from broadcasting the voices of Irish Republican spokespeople. This was to deny republicans what the government called 'the oxygen of publicity'. So we witnessed on TV the odd spectacle of the likes of Gerry Adams explaining Sinn Fein policy in silence, while his words were read out by someone else, in a Northern Irish accent. It was daft, & made the government look ridiculous. But What it highlighted was the way that the State decides that its citizens are incapable of distinguishing information from propaganda. Our eyes & ears must be protected from exposure to certain views, because there are those among us who are impressionable & lack judgement, & might be in some part persuaded by them.
Some British Asians have found themselves being prosecuted, or losing their jobs, for visiting jihadist websites. We have to assume that, if you're a Muslim Asian, it is in fact illegal to investigate the reasons why some Muslims violently oppose American & British foreign policy. It's not illegal, but decidedly dangerous, for British Muslims to openly oppose, within their own communities, government actions, even when done so peacefully. Determined government pressure has been put on Muslims to accept the view that US & British actions in the Middle East & elsewhere are neither cause nor motivation for jihadist violence, even when such a view is obviously absurd. The public in general needs to get with the program, & accept that religious fanatics blow up themselves & others because 'they hate our freedoms'.
Launching Cruise missiles at crowded cities, & detonating explosive belts in busy markets, both result in exactly the same thing. The bloody bodies & ripped apart limbs of innocent civilians: mothers, fathers, sisters & brothers. Let's leave aside that fact that the former is far more effective in terms of numbers of victims. The people who instigate such actions are criminals.
Which brings me to Khalid Sheikh Muhammad - the Al Qa'ida 'mastermind' of the 911 attacks. Some will have seen the news photo of the dishevelled, unshaven, slack bellied KSM, (recall Saddam emerging from his rat-hole), being led into captivity by Pakistani police. Despite having one of the most gruesome terrorist rapsheets of modern times, the public knows little about him. Even less is known about the 19 hijackers who perpetrated the defining crime of our era. Hitler, Pol Pot, Charlie Manson, Geoffrey Dahmer, Harold Shipman...all the subject of endless fascination & speculation. But KSM's name barely registers on the street, let alone Mohammad Atta or Hani Hanjour. Odd.
I came across a transcript of the proceedings of KSM's 'Combatant Status Review Tribunal', which took place last March in Guantanamo. It can be found here:
He claims to have been tortured while in detention, which immediately renders his testimony suspect. (Incidentally, Senator John McCain would know about the effectiveness of torture techniques - having made no less than 32 propaganda recordings for the North Vietnamese, telling listeners that he & his fellow pilots had been ordered to target schools & hospitals.)Here's KSM's confession, which I reproduce without comment:
1. I was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center Operation.
2. I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation. frm A to Z.
3. I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.
4. I was responsible for the Shoe Bomber Operation to down two American airplanes.
5. I was responsible for the Filka Island Operation in Kuwait that killed two American soldiers.
6. I was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, which was frequented by British and Australian soldiers.
7. I was responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing the New (or Second) Wave attacks against the following skyscrapers after 9/11:
a. Library Tower, California.
b. Sears Tower, Chicago.
c. Plaza Bank, Washington State.
d. The Empire State Building, New York City.
8. I was responsible for planning, financing, and follow-up Operations to destroy American military vessels and oil tankers in the Staights of Hormuz, the Straights of Gibrater, and the Port of Singapore.
9. I was responsible for planning, training, surveying and financing for the Operation to bomb and destroy the Panama Canal.
10. I was responsible for surveying and financing for the assassination of several former American Presidents, including President Carter.
11. I was responsible for surveying, planning and financing for the bombing of suspension bridges in New York.
12. I was responsible for planning to destroy the Sears Tower by burning a few fuel or oil tanker trucks beneath it or around it.
13. I was responsible for planning, surveying, and financing for the operation to destroy Heathrow Airport, the Canary Wharf Building, and Big Ben on British soil.
14. I was responsible for planning, surveying, and financing for the destruction of many nightclubs frequented by British and American citizens on Thailand soil.
15. I was responsible for surveying and financing for the destruction of the New York Stock Exchange and other financial targets after 9/11.
16. I was responsible for planning, financing and surveying for the destruction of buildings in the Israeli city of Elat by using airplanes leaving from Saudi Arabia.
17. I was responsible for planning, surveying, and financing for the destruction of American embassies in Indonesia, Australia, and Japan.
18.. I was responsible for surveying and financing for the destruction of the Israeili embassy in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines, and Australia.
19. I was responsible for surveying and financing for the destruction of an Israeli El -Al Airlines flight on Thailand soil departing from Bangkok Airport.
20. I was responsible for sending several Mujahadeen into Israel to conduct surveillance to hit several strategic targets deep in Israel.
21. I was responsible for the bombing of the hotel in Mombasa that is frequented by Jewish travelers via El-Al Airlines.
22. I was responsible for launching a Russian-made SA-7 surface-to-air missile on El-Al or other Jewish airliner departing from Mombasa.
23. I was responsible for planning and surveying to hit American targets in South Korea, such as American military bases and a few nightclubs frequented by American soldiers.
24. I was responsible for financial, excuse me, I was responsible for providing financial support to hit American, Jewish, and British targets in Turkey.
25. I was responsible for surveillance needed to hit nuclear power plants that generate electricity in several US states.
26. I was responsible for planning, surveying, and financing to hit NATO Headquarters in Europe.
27. I was responsible for the planning and surveying needed to execute Bojinka Operation, which was designed to down twelve American airplanes full of passengers. I personally monitored a round-trip, Manila to Seoul, Pan Am flight.
28. I was responsible for the assassination attempt against President Clinton during his trip to the Philippines in 1994 or 1995.
29. I shared responsibility for the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul the second while he was visiting the Philippines.
30. I was responsible for the training and financing for the assassination of Pakistan's President Musharaf.
31. I was responsible for the attempt to destroy an American oil company owned by the Jewish former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, on the Island of Sumatra, Indonesia.
If you pick the broken English of KSM's rambling statement to the court, you'll notice that he ends it by expressing regret at the civilian deaths caused by the actions he claims resposibility for. This hardly qualifies him for sainthood, but it's not something I recall hearing Bush or Blair do.
It being the 60th anniversary of the founding of the National Health Service, BBC 4 screened a biography of Aneurin Bevan. An emotional exeprience for me. Surprised to find that Greg Dyke was an admirer too, he described closing the second volume of Michael Foot's biography of Nye Bevan in a flood of tears. Bevan was a giant, a proper working class hero, & his life inspires an emotional response like this.Seems we weep for the heroes of socialism like the shi'a weep on hearing the story of Imam Hussain.
The birth of the NHS was something of a miracle.Without a bruiser like Bevan making it happen with his fists it would never have come into being. Lots of doctors didn't want it, fearing, among other things,being overwhelmed by a stampede of poor people demanding treatment - which is exactly what happened.There were even reports of people getting prescriptions for gauze bandage to put up as net curtains. Bevan had to bribe the doctors, as he put it, with gold.
At the time the country wasn't generally enthusiastic about much at all. There was food & fuel rationing, & everyone had shivered through the coldest winter on record in 1947. The dismal details of the miserable postwar years can be found in David Kynaston's excellent Austerity Britain,1945-51. Though an avowedly socialist government had been elected, there was no mass movement of trades unionist & socialist activists - every gain was a struggle against the class interests of the former rulers & the inertia of the dog tired & often disinterested workers. Shagged out, war-ravaged economies are not ideal incubators of socialist revolution, as Marx had farsightedly pointed out. In Petrograd in 1917 the Bolsheviks had no more than 8,000 members.
During the BBC Nye Bevan documentary the Tory brahmin Michael Brilliantine was interviewed about the current relevance of the socialism that inspired Bevan. He leaned back in his chair & smiled. Yes it was smug, self satisfied. He said that, as Tony Blair had made clear, it was all utterly irrelevant now. So what my grandfather fought for after the First World War, what my father learned from the Second World War & down the pits, & what both of them passed on to me, is irrelavant. A waste of time as it turned out. As they say, how does that make you feel?
This had me thinking about my relationship to the past. My beautiful youngest daughter has never heard of Nye Bevan, despite her expensive university education. I wonder what she can possibly make of my pride at being the son of coal miners & steel workers. How could she make any sense of that? Will my gransons even know about it? We are people without a past, nothing connects us to where we came from. Even our defeat is irrelevant.
It's also 40 years since 1968. What a year that was, I was 18 years old. The title 'Summer of Love', invented years later, wouldn't have meant much to me, being a self-styled freak rather than a hippie. Hippies were mostly a student & media phenomena.
I went to the the '68 Grosvenor Square demonstration against the war in Vietnam. I'd hitch-hiked down to London with the celebrated poet Robert E. Gilpin. It'd taken us nearly three days to get down the M1 motorway, since Bob, (or 'Dog's Knob'as his mates & admirers called him),had shoulder length hair, & motorists either hurled sexual abuse at us, or amused themselves by pulling in to stop, then screeching off as we panted towards them with our heavy kitbags.
The demo had already turned nasty when we arrived, & the scuffers were running at people with truncheons. At one point we came across three coppers dishing out a shoeing to a comrade, who was curled up on the pavement in a foetal position clutching his copies of Black Dwarf. I ran over & picked up a Wall's Ice Cream sign from outside a shop & floored one of the coppers with it. Dog's Knob managed to pull off another's helmet, & deployed it on the prostrate copper's head, swinging it by the chinstrap, much like a handbag. The bloodied comrade managed to get to his feet & leg it, then the enraged police came after us. One of them threw this trunchoen at my head, just missing. We legged it too.
They chased us for what seemed like miles. Belting down Kensington High St. with the coppers 20 yards behind us, Dog's Knob crashed into a young couple who were stepping out of what was then called a 'boutique', a shop that sold poncey clothes. She had on a startling white fur coat & white thigh boots,he an orange silk shirt & candy striped flares, & the bags of clothes they'd bought were scattered all over the pavement. Dog's knob thought this was funny, & let out an insane cackle that impeded his running. We dived down a side street then up a passageway, pinning ourselves against a wall, panting & sniggering.
When we heard the the police pass the end of the passageway we held our breath. The feller with the orange shirt was with them, we could hear him saying, 'They must've come this way, officer, you should cordon off the street.' After about 10 minutes we made a bold break for it, & to our amazement, got clean away. It took me ages to talk Dog's Knob out of the notion of setting off to find the twat in the orange shirt & caving his head in with a housebrick. When I spotted him on television years later I recognised him immediately, it was David Bowie.
Let's get something straight, right from the start. Over here in Europe we regularly see comments sent from US citizens to our 'serious' newspapers telling us that we shouldn't 'interfere' or concern ourselves with American politics. It's not our business, they claim. Some have even suggested it's too complicated for us to understand. Oh Really? Then Why did 200,000 Berliners turn out to support Barack Obama?
Because what happens in America is vitally important to us. Like France in the 19th century, America has universal significance. Because all progressive, to use an American term, Europeans want to see the American project succeed. America has come to be Europe's spiritual homeland. And if we're angry & saddened by the fact that America has been hijacked by crooks & warmongers, it's because we're pro-American.
Now hear the best of America. A fine speech by Van Jones delivered a couple of days ago at Netroots Nation 2008 in Austin, Texas.
I don't really want to talk about Damien Hirst, it's far too depressing. We're told he's raked in another $22 million. The press has been bigging up his 'inovative' notion of flogging off the shite he turns out at auction, in one comprehensive greatest hits' sale, rather than having an exhibition as lesser talents might. Sensational.
His agent 'let slip' that he's now coined himself a billion, pounds or dollars doesn't matter. He's bought himself more palaces that Saddam Hussein dreamed about.
I'm relaxed about people skanking the hyper-rich. Given the chance I'd do it myself,it's preferable to eating them.'Art', Hirst is on record as saying, 'has always been about money'. Well, yes, but this short sentence implies that he views himself as an artist, to be considered in the same breath as the great patronised artists of the European heritage. He's nothing of the sort. He's a con-artist, pure & simple. The man's sheer greed makes the flesh crawl - maybe that's the whole point of the endeavour. Perhaps this is the emotional response he's really after, clever devil. Mildly diverting 'art' that causes a feeding frenzy among a lot of vacuous rich people.'I'd stop fucking them up the arse', he says, 'but they won't let me.'
I met him once in a pub in Soho, though he wasn't well known at the time. He was with Lilly Allen's old fellah, who I sort of recognised as a bit part actor I'd seen on TV. They were both obviously seasoned piss artists, all one line wisecracks & bellylaughs.I noticed he never bought a round of drinks, & I'd stupidly left a packet of Bensons on the table which they both helped themselves to. The only time I made eye contact with him was when he gurned at my fag packet & seeing only one left made a grab for it. Just in time I swept up the packet, put the fag in my mouth, & grinned at him in triumph. He pointedly ignored me for the rest of the afternoon.
As it happens I may have a souvenir of that afternoon. There's a bin liner somewhere in my attic containing items I ought to have dumped, but couldn't bring myself to - my Communist Party membership card for instance, & a couple of photographs of a former girlfriend I can't bear to look at now. There's half a beermat with the phone number of someone I've forgotten on one side, & a drawing by Damien Hirst of a matchstick man pissing into a bucket on the other. Offers over $20,000 will be considered.
Anyone looking into the the events of September 11 2001, which are likely remain the defining moment of our lifetime, will in a short space of time come upon statements like this: 'Researchers are uncovering extensive, credible evidence that the official account of the 9-11 attacks is untenable.' or 'Evidence is mounting that the September 11 attacks were instigated, if not carried out, by elements within the US administration.' I'll not bother to provide citations for these statements, since views like this are so commonplace, but both were made by people occupying professorial chairs at North American universities. Various polls, conducted by the likes of Zogby, have revealed that something approaching a third, & in some polls up to a half, of the US population believe that the official account of the 9/11 attacks is false.
The events that unfolded on 9/11 were incredible. Had this been pitched as the plotline of a Hollywood blockbuster it would seem too far-fetched. The ease with which the 19 hijackers evaded airport security to board the planes, carrying knives, stanley blades ('box cutters') & perhaps cannisters of mace. The way they were able to overcome the crew & passengers, & get into the flight decks of the planes with such primitive weapons. The flying skills of the hijacker pilots, three out of four scoring direct hits on their targets. Then the seeming lack of response from the Airforce, which was supposed to be protecting US airspace. They were able to hit the Pentagon, surely the most heavily protected building on the planet.
Then there was the incredible way the Twin Towers simply collapsed into their own footprints in a matter of seconds, videos of which were shown repeatedly in the following days, becoming the iconic image of the attacks. The nearby WTC 7, which was not hit by a plane, later came down in the same way, & it looked just like familiar footage of a building being demolished, as one shellshocked television commentator remarked at the time - 'un-be-lievable', he said. It was counterintuitive - three buildings collapsing at what looked like free-fall speeds down the path of maximum resistance.
No wonder that the day after the attacks, when a group of Arab terrorists were revealed as the culprits, there was already widespread scepticism. Some people just couldn't believe that Arabs, particulary ones directed by a cartoon villain skullking in a cave in Afghanistan, were capable of such a spectacularly sucessful & sophisticated operation, against the most advanced society in the world. We saw Palestinians in the streets, firing guns into the air & passing round trays of sweets in celebration, but in the Arab press many quickly pointed the finger at Mossad.
The behavior of the Bush administration only fuelled more scepticism. Following on the baffling 'My Pet Goat' incident, both Bush & Condoleeza Rice claimed at press conferences that the idea of bad guys flying planes into buildings had never ocurred to anyone. Then there was the barefaced attempt to stitch up the Iraqis. The blatant drumming up of fear & panic in the press was brought to a pitch by the bizaare anthrax mailings that October, which again they tried to pin on the Iraqis. It all seemed to be falling into place so conveniently for an administration that had been waiting for just such an opportunity to come its way. You could almost hear the sound of palms being rubbed briskly together in anticipation of wars they'd been planning for years. The Patriot Act was passed before anyone had a chance to read it. The secret Continuity of Govenment provisions were put in place, & the legislature remains in the dark about what's contained in them.
Over the past few years I've seen dozens of documenty films, & read hundreds of articles & blog posts dealing with the 9/11 attacks, including the US government's 911 Commission Report. So far I've yet to come across any bankable nailed-on evidence that implicates the Bush administration, or any 'deep state' elements within it, in the attacks.
Many of the documentaries I've sat through have been frankly preposterous, attempting to peddle conspiracy theories crafted to contradict even the most reasonable assumptions based on firm evidence. Some of the earliest ones, for instance, promote the so-called 'no planes' theory, which contends that the attacks, in particularly the one one the Pentagon, were carried out using missiles fired by the US military. The fact that hundreds of drivers passing by on the beltway, that runs some 300 yards beside the Pentagon, reported seeing a Boeing jetliner crash into it is dealt with by describing mass hypnotism techniques developed by the CIA. I've read closely argued papers, obviously written by highly educated people used to handling complex data, that come to similar, and barmier, conclusions. Taking the time to delve into the backgrounds of such writers can uncover connexions to looney tune religious or rightwing political organisations.
But there are plenty of investigative journalists, filmakers, scientists & academics who attempt to tackle the issues raised by the 911 attacks with honesty & integrity. Loose Change, (Final Cut) by far the best known 911 documentary, which has been downloaded & seen by millions around the world, is slickly produced & has a catchy soundtrack. It seems clear that the earnest young filmakers who put it together are not covertly pushing a political agenda. Three years ago it was plausible enough to have me burning copies & handing out or mailing them to everyone I thought might be interested. I wasn't the only initial enthusiast, the Labour MP Michael Meecher tried to arrange a screening at the House of Commons. A month later I was sending out apologies by email, directing people to places on the Net where they could find convincing demolitions of most of the film's major contentions. Now, if I ever come upon any real evidence, I probably won't be able to find anyone to consider it.
There are determined & highly competent investigators researching the murky wilderness of mirrors inhabited by the various state intelligence & security operations, which interface at points with organised crime. It's here where you can glimpse the odd shard that briefly reflects a little dim light. But the tangled threads of relationships & identities are far too complex for anyone but a dedicated specialist, with some access to inside knowlege, to persue. If anything like evidence were (or has) emerged from here, it could only be accessible to a small circle.
The same goes for the matter of the extraordinary way the three building collapsed. An advanced education in physics is needed to appreciate the ever increasing body of arguments that either advance or refute the notion that they were brought down by controlled demolition. To the layman they merely appear to have been.
Having said all this I can't agree with Alexander Cockburn (Counterpunch) that there are no serious questions about the events of 911. But I do agree when he says that the whole '911 Truth' issue has been a major distraction for the Left, most seriously in the US. There is, after all, ample solid evidence that Bush, along with Blair, are war criminals, who ought to be impeached. Plenty of brave attempts to get the ball rolling on this have been sunk by a lack of mass support. If just a quarter of the people currently sitting at terminals giving themselves migraine looking for the 911 clincher had put their backs into impeachment, Bush & Blair would be in jail by now.
I have some minor experience of the drugs market. I'll admit that I once foolishly got myself addicted to smoking heroin. But it was only for perhaps 25 - 30 years. I'd had enough by then.
So I obviously still know lots of people in the business, & they're all telling me that there's a chronic shortage of heroin. The only gear available is very weak, & for the most part bashed to death with paracetamol. This has been so for the past 2 or 3 months. It seems the shortage isn't confined to this area.
Lack of junk is an excellent motivator. If it could inspire Coleridge to walk all the way from Somerset to London to get opium, think how far present day junkies might range. This is a national phenomena. I doubt a drought as profound as this has happened in to the last 2 decades. It's even been covered in the national dailies.
My intuition, along with my reading in the papers & online about the bumper harvests in Afghanistan, with the British Army guarding the fields for the farmers while they bring in the crop, tells me that this is a case of a failure of distribution rather than supply. Heroin is money, stockpiles are kept by wholesalers in order to influence prices. It looks as though the one or two kilo level distributors are being denied supplies. This is unlikely to be the result of specific police activities. The function of the police is to apply sufficient pressure to keep the price buoyant. It's unheard of for the police to disrupt supply for more than a few days.
Although the average user rarely rubs shoulders with mid-level distributors, or middle management, rumours do trickle down as far as the neighbourhood dealers. The one I've heard the most is that some major players, from a country I won't name, believe that their organisation has been infiltrated by traitors & informers, & until these have been rooted out supplies are being witheld. This plot seems plausible.
We're currently seeing frequently rotated recruitment adverts for the British Army on television. They show a group of squaddies in the back of a bumping lorry, one of them tells the camera, 'We work hard, but we play even harder'. They pull up at a wrecked village, & jump out into the lashing rain & mud. They are not carrying guns. The young woman commanding them briskly gives them their orders, then explains to us, rain teeming from her forage hat, that this is a disaster relief mission. There's been a hurricane, & they're there to help the villagers. It's clear that this village is in neither Afghanistan nor Iraq.
Perhaps the 'play even harder' bit might help explain the recent findings by Napo, the probation officers union, that at least 9 percent of the UK prison population of 93,574 (the biggest in Europe), is made up of ex servicemen, most of them having served in Afghanistan & the Gulf. That's over 8,500 - more troops than the British currently have stationed in Iraq.
The report says the number could be higher, & cites violent offences fuelled by alcohol & drugs as a common factor. It also said that the most of the men in the case studies had shown symptoms of untreated post traumatic stress disorder.
Of course, it's easy to find yourself behind bars in Britain. The prison population is not just the largest in Europe, it's bigger than the prison population of the rest of Europe combined. Locking people up in large numbers has been Government policy for the past three decades, both under the Tories & what used to be the Labour Party. Some magistrates & members of the judiciary, hardly bastions of liberalism, regularly complain about having to bang up so many people. The Government responds by proposing the building of 'Titan' prisons, to hold vast numbers of overwhelmingly poor, damaged or mentally distressed inmates - including more of the young men & women lured into the forces, sent to futile or illegal wars to be brutalised, devastated, & then let loose on the streets, awash with other youths enjoying our renowned culture of binge drinking & casual violence.
I first heard about jews from my Grandfather. Among my clearest early memories is of him sitting beside the fire in the wooden armchair we still have in the kitchen here, me at his feet playing armies with the ashes & cinders on the hearth. To amuse himself he'd sometimes dribble scalding tea into my ear. I'd be eight or ten years old.
I didn't pay much attention to the television in those days, in the 1950s there was nothing on it but posh people talking, or women dancing & singing in screechy voices. Now & then though my Grandfather, who could barely walk, would suddenly struggle to his feet & hobble towards it, trying to whack the little wooden box with his walking stick. It was 'bloody jews'that caused this.I must have asked questions about jews, because I learned all about them from him. The gaffers were jews, they were all rich & cared about nothing but making more money. They were mean & cheated people. A lot of them had shops. Our local butcher was a jew, & my Grandfather wouldn't set foot there. The rag & bone man who came round once a week with his handcart, who would give you a goldfish in a plastic bag for piles of old clothes, was a jew. Even though he looked like a tramp in his loppy old overcoat & greasy flat cap he was really a millionaire, & lived in a fancy house in Totley. Sheeny Ike, my Grandfather called him.
My Grandfather had been a Sergeant Major in the First World War. The only thing I can recall him saying about it was that at the Battle of the Somme the officers had ordered him to get his men to polish the brass on the artillery pieces in the teeming rain & knee deep mud. After he'd died I heard from my Mother that he was a Red, & an admirer of the Soviet Union - which was why my Mother, born in 1923, had an outlandish Russian christian name. He was a skilled man, an engineer, & could earn good money as a foreman or chargehand. But he was a union stirrer, & was always getting the sack for sticking up for the men. My Mother said he cared more about the union & his men than he did his own family. She recalled standing with my Grandmother at the front room window, watching for him coming up the street from work. If he way carrying his bag of tools over his shoulder it meant he'd been sacked again.
One day on my way to school I found a lump of yellow chalk & decided to write 'Juden Raus' in big letters on a few walls. I don't know where I got this phrase from, probably the television, but I knew it was German & meant 'jews go home'. I wrote it on the wall of the local church, & in the biggest letters on both sides of the school gates. I got into serious trouble over this. My Father was sent for. I was given a bucket of water & a scrubbing brush & had to wash it off all the walls. Then I had to go & apologise to the headmaster of the school, Mr Abrahamson.
Just after leaving school at fifteen I joined the Labour Party Young Socialists, which at that time was run by Trotskists. My antisemitism gradually evaporated as I read the books & pamphlets the older comrades gave me. Many of the heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution were jews, including Leon Trotsky, Lenin's true sucessor & architecht of the Glorious Red Army. I read about the Holocaust, & was shocked & angry that the Nazi bastards could do these things to people.
My Grandfather must have known about all this. I never saw him with a book in his hands, but he must have seen the cinema newsreels after the war showing the liberation of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau. I remember as a very young child being taken out of the room when scenes of skeletal corpses being bulldozed into pits were shown on television.
I know that between the wars antisemitism was a common currency, & explains why German jews escaping Nazi persecution got short shrift from the rest of Europe,including Britain, who for the most part refused them sancuary. A proud exception was the Dutch Communist Party, whose members, under Nazi occupation, risked their lives organising strikes to protect Dutch jews from deportation. But it seems my Grandfather, admirer of the Worker's State & fighter for his class, had swallowed a version of Hitler's poison about a conspiracy of war-mongering jewish capitalists bent on world domination. And he passed it on to me.
So for most of my life I've had sensitive anntenae for antisemitism in all its forms. (Incidentally, I have black hair & dark skin, & have been taken for a jew in both Europe & the Middle East, a few times experiencing racist abuse.) Of course it persists, though in different forms & in different places than in the 1930s.
When I was learning Arabic, my Yemeni teacher couldn't mention jews without making a sly remark. When I tried to make the distinctions between jewish people, the religion, & the ideology of Zionism, he'd grin at me as though I'd just told him a funny story. Most of the young Muslim men who came to the classes could be heard parotting the same toxic lies as I had done as a ten year old.
Over at the apalling rense.com, where you can get your barmy rightwing conspiracy theories while picking up your miracle health supplements & magnetic resonance penis rings, I came across what was to me a new version of the old antisemitic shite. It seems now that it's all down to the Khazars.
This much of it has some factual basis; the Khazar Empire flourished sometime between the tenth & the twelfth centuries, in the area beween the Caspian & the Black Sea, the Caucasus. Not much is known about them, but the Khazars seem to have been a Turkic people from Central Asia, who had migrated to the Caucasus & at some point converted to Judaism. (for more see http://www.khazaria.com). A Jewish empire in the Caucasus! How amazing, & how topical! Just the kind of thing for conspiracy headbangers to latch onto. According to them, the decendants of the Khazars are still around, & they want their empire back. They've wormed their way into the corporate, military & political establishments of the US & Europe, & as we speak are plotting wars to bring them World domination. (Sound familiar?). As the Khazar watchers point out, this is in no way antisemitic. They've nothing against Ashkenazi or Sephardic jews. It's the Khazars, they're 'fake' jews, who pretend to be jews to advance their evil designs. How far this bollocks will spread is anyones guess, but I'm sure the Nazis at the BNP will just love this fable.
It's really very simple
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[Note: I am pushing this article live two days early because ZeroHedge
somehow managed to get a hold of it and post it before I did. Needless to
say, I do...
The Years Of Writing Dangerously
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Thirteen years ago, as I was starting to experiment with this blogging
thing, I wrote the following: [T]he speed with which an idea in your head
reaches th...
