Friday, August 08, 2008
Um..?
I've seen at least two news reports in the last twenty-four hours (Newsnight last night and one of the daily papers this morning) that seemed to express amazement, AMAZEMENT I say, that China hasn't become a democratic paradise with the opening of the Olympics. Drawing a discreet veil over the U.S.'s continuing cute belief that they have the right to talk about human rights to anyone anywhere, is anyone really surprised? Was anyone thinking that the 1936 Games would be a chance for the countries of the world to persuade Germany to move aside from their policy of being Nazi fuckheads? No-one was asking if the 1996 Games might encourage the United States to throw it all in and give Communism a try.
Still, who knows, maybe in 2012, with a little encouragement, the United Kingdom might be finally ready to join the ranks of the civilised nations, if there are any other countries worthy of the name by then.
Still, who knows, maybe in 2012, with a little encouragement, the United Kingdom might be finally ready to join the ranks of the civilised nations, if there are any other countries worthy of the name by then.
Labels: China, freedom, human rights, Olympics, United Kingdom, United States
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Headed towards the delightful Swiss Cottage yesterday in order to find an afternoon showing of Taking Liberties. Described by lazy people as 'a British Fahrenheit 9-11' it took us through the steps the British Government has taken, mainly since the 11th of September 2001 to create not exactly a fascist state, but a state in which anyone, including fascists, will find it gratifyingly easy to shut down any form of dissent or disobedience. We are taken through the UN human rights declaration and shown how Tony Blair, David Blunkett and John Reid have been ever so busy chiselling away the rights we were given, taking away the right to demonstrate while telling us we lived in a free country characterised by... our right to demonstrate. Mark Thomas and the Mass Lone Demos got a look-in, as did Rachel and the 7/7 bomb survivors. The demonstrations in Brighton against EDO showed the malevolence of the police, as did the War Against Terror attacking Asians in Forest Gate or Guantanamo.
This film is not a hysterical lefty polemic against authority. It's a calm, measured and sometimes bleakly funny reminder of what we have lost, taken by those that would claim that in doing so they are saving us from fanatics. Check the website, if you can find a showing you can attend it's well worth a few hours from your life to watch this film and let it anger up the blood. It also suggests some easy, low-impact ways you can start to help the fight back, some of which I intend to follow myself.
I'm currently reading We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, which I'm finding a rather annoying read. Pitched somewhere between Frankenstein and The Omen a middle-aged woman reminisces in letters to her estranged and, I suspect, possibly dead ex-husband about her life and the upbringing of her son, Kevin. From the moment of conception he's been a little bastard causing misery and pain to all around him and somehow his mother puts up with him long enough for him to reach his teenage years and shoot up a classroom of kids at his school.
The language the mother character uses is ridiculous but thankfully calms down after a few chapters and resembles English as used by real human beings. I suspect that this book is supposed to be read by people who don't believe that children can be malevolent creatures when it suits them, it's a horror story for middle-class yummy mummys to read while their little darlings are wrapped up in bed. While Daddy is away at work all day Mummy has to put up with Kevin and his permanent malicious behaviour, Daddy minimises every single act of bad behaviour and blames Mummy for overreacting, even when Kevin starts causing injuries to other people. I've just got past the midway point in the novel and Mummy is now pregnant with baby number two. She's a lot more positive about this child and Daddy is not happy, so I expect a hundred pages of Daddy regarding the girl child as the very spawn of Satan's loins. Sadly we know already from the text that we aren't going to have both children fighting on the Golden Gate Bridge with the fate of humanity in the balance, which is the sort of level this story is going for.
I'm not anticipating the second half of this book being the part that shows me why this book won the Orange Prize several years back.
This film is not a hysterical lefty polemic against authority. It's a calm, measured and sometimes bleakly funny reminder of what we have lost, taken by those that would claim that in doing so they are saving us from fanatics. Check the website, if you can find a showing you can attend it's well worth a few hours from your life to watch this film and let it anger up the blood. It also suggests some easy, low-impact ways you can start to help the fight back, some of which I intend to follow myself.
I'm currently reading We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, which I'm finding a rather annoying read. Pitched somewhere between Frankenstein and The Omen a middle-aged woman reminisces in letters to her estranged and, I suspect, possibly dead ex-husband about her life and the upbringing of her son, Kevin. From the moment of conception he's been a little bastard causing misery and pain to all around him and somehow his mother puts up with him long enough for him to reach his teenage years and shoot up a classroom of kids at his school.
The language the mother character uses is ridiculous but thankfully calms down after a few chapters and resembles English as used by real human beings. I suspect that this book is supposed to be read by people who don't believe that children can be malevolent creatures when it suits them, it's a horror story for middle-class yummy mummys to read while their little darlings are wrapped up in bed. While Daddy is away at work all day Mummy has to put up with Kevin and his permanent malicious behaviour, Daddy minimises every single act of bad behaviour and blames Mummy for overreacting, even when Kevin starts causing injuries to other people. I've just got past the midway point in the novel and Mummy is now pregnant with baby number two. She's a lot more positive about this child and Daddy is not happy, so I expect a hundred pages of Daddy regarding the girl child as the very spawn of Satan's loins. Sadly we know already from the text that we aren't going to have both children fighting on the Golden Gate Bridge with the fate of humanity in the balance, which is the sort of level this story is going for.
I'm not anticipating the second half of this book being the part that shows me why this book won the Orange Prize several years back.
Labels: books, children, civil liberties, freedom, Fundamentalists- Islamic, movies, Muslims, The War Against Terror, Tony Blair
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The R U Sirius Show and Neofiles With R U Sirius will be attempting to stream video and audio while the shows are recorded, today at 2 PM Pacific or 10 PM GMT. There have been a few teething problems in the past few weeks, so cross your fingers before heading to the website.
Labels: Evolution, freedom, life extension, podcasts, R U Sirius, radio, science, web toys
Monday, February 05, 2007
Terror! Terror! TERROR!
Hoax Devices. [via Violet Blue]
Terrified by this, I head over to MI-5's webpage to find out what the situation is in this country. On the front page they say it's severe, when I try clicking for more information I get this. So it's a general, non-specific severe danger then. Better demand the Government take away more of my rights then. That should sort things out.
Terrified by this, I head over to MI-5's webpage to find out what the situation is in this country. On the front page they say it's severe, when I try clicking for more information I get this. So it's a general, non-specific severe danger then. Better demand the Government take away more of my rights then. That should sort things out.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Prime Minister Excuses-for-Bringing-in-ID-Cards Watch
Blair's latest tack is to claim ID Cards are the spirit of 'modernity', modernity being the quality of being modern. Civil liberties, it would seem, are not modern, they are very 'last century', which is why we need to get rid of them.
An "action plan" would be published by the Home Office in December to "explore the benefits" people could get from ID cards in 10 years' time, he said.
Let me get this straight, ID Cards have been on the hot plate for several years now, there's been legislation through Parliament on this and only now the Government is investigating what ID Cards could do?
This is, of course, not the situation at all. All this reveals is that the Government currently have to force through a pointless plan because they figure it's less embaressing than to u-turn but have run out of arguments as to the benefits because all of them have been revealed to be false. New arguments please!
I'm hoping that before he leaves office Blair claims the argument for ID Cards is that they are 'post-modern' and that everyone will be forced to carry around half a dead shark tattooed with the names of everyone they've ever slept with.
An "action plan" would be published by the Home Office in December to "explore the benefits" people could get from ID cards in 10 years' time, he said.
Let me get this straight, ID Cards have been on the hot plate for several years now, there's been legislation through Parliament on this and only now the Government is investigating what ID Cards could do?
This is, of course, not the situation at all. All this reveals is that the Government currently have to force through a pointless plan because they figure it's less embaressing than to u-turn but have run out of arguments as to the benefits because all of them have been revealed to be false. New arguments please!
I'm hoping that before he leaves office Blair claims the argument for ID Cards is that they are 'post-modern' and that everyone will be forced to carry around half a dead shark tattooed with the names of everyone they've ever slept with.
Labels: freedom, Government, ID cards, Tony Blair
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Hey America, are you missing an arsehole?
Yep, Bill Clinton has come over here to hang out at the Labour Party Conference. As he's the US President less of the membership are annoyed with Tony Blair for liking he seems to have gotten the role of reading the wake for the Blairite era of New Labour. Now that we know that Blair won't be in charge at this time twelve months in the future this conference seems to be less about 'the challenges facing Labour in the future' and more about 'wasn't Tony Blair great?' with subtle shades of 'Gordon Brown's a wanker' or 'Gordon Brown's a lying wanker'.
A highlight of his speech, and one that's bound to please the faithful is:
"I think one of the biggest problems right now is that people take your achievements and your ideas for the future for granted. The reason is we have produced prosperity and social progress for so long it's easy for people to believe its just part of the landscape." Voters either thought the achievements would have happened anyway or they believed if that if the "faces in the driving seat" changed, the new crowd would not ditch the things which worked.
Yes, one of New Labour's problems is that their ideas are part of the landscape, not that Tony Blair lied and took the country into at least one war it did not want to fight. It is not that as a result this country had it's first terrorist attacks in nearly two decades and it's not that Tony wants to save our freedoms by taking them away.
Yep, Bill Clinton has come over here to hang out at the Labour Party Conference. As he's the US President less of the membership are annoyed with Tony Blair for liking he seems to have gotten the role of reading the wake for the Blairite era of New Labour. Now that we know that Blair won't be in charge at this time twelve months in the future this conference seems to be less about 'the challenges facing Labour in the future' and more about 'wasn't Tony Blair great?' with subtle shades of 'Gordon Brown's a wanker' or 'Gordon Brown's a lying wanker'.
A highlight of his speech, and one that's bound to please the faithful is:
"I think one of the biggest problems right now is that people take your achievements and your ideas for the future for granted. The reason is we have produced prosperity and social progress for so long it's easy for people to believe its just part of the landscape." Voters either thought the achievements would have happened anyway or they believed if that if the "faces in the driving seat" changed, the new crowd would not ditch the things which worked.
Yes, one of New Labour's problems is that their ideas are part of the landscape, not that Tony Blair lied and took the country into at least one war it did not want to fight. It is not that as a result this country had it's first terrorist attacks in nearly two decades and it's not that Tony wants to save our freedoms by taking them away.
Labels: Clinton- Bill or Hillary, freedom, Labour, Tony Blair
Monday, September 11, 2006
So, I've heard that today's some kind of anniversary yeah? Wait, don't tell me, let me guess... It's your birthday right? Hey, looking good, not a day over... not a birthday? Wedding anniversary? Between Tony Blair's face and George Bush's arse? Hmmm, five years, I believe that's wood... Not a wedding anniversary? But I'm getting close right?
So, yeah, September the 11th 2001, or 'niynellevun' as the USians would have it. Grief's a weird thing, I didn't feel anything when my Nan died, my sister was almost hysterical at the end of the service and a few years ago refused to hear any conversation that included the inevitability of our parent's eventual demise. I suspect it's part and parcel of being a moody bugger, I don't tend to go much lower when something genuinely bad happens.
Of course, there's other reasons to distrust public mournathons. The wailing and gnashing of teeth following the death of Princess Di wrongfooted me as much as it did the royal family, I didn't understand how anyone could devote so much of their time to following someone else so intently, 'were they crazy?' I thought, 'I wouldn't do something like that'. The fact that many many times the number of people who died in the Twin Towers on that September day in 2001 have died in the rest of the world since, both those against the American imperialists, those for, and those unfortunate to have been caught in between. The Independent's figures make grim reading.
When passion drives policy it's a bad thing. Thomas Sutcliffe wrote an insightful article in the Independent in March 2000 asking why the parents of Leah Betts or Stephen Lawrence should be allowed to influence policy. When a situation exists where you think the passion is manufactured to drive policy it's worse. The Sun fakes passion as a matter of course. The overwhelming feeling I felt on the 11th of September 2001 was a sinking one that Bush and the neocons around him were going to use these poor dead people as an excuse to kill a hell of a lot more, I couldn't believe they genuinely felt sorrow, but knew that they couldn't show their smiles publicly.
So, sure, let's remember those who died on this anniversary. But let's remember all of those who died, Americans, British, Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Afghans. Those that died in the Al Qaida attacks on this country, Spain, India and other parts of the world. Let us remember those who no longer walk upon this earth and those who do: Osama Bin Ladin; Ayman al-Zawahiri; Mullah Omar; Tony Blair; George W. Bush; Richard Cheney; Donald Rumsfeld.
So, yeah, September the 11th 2001, or 'niynellevun' as the USians would have it. Grief's a weird thing, I didn't feel anything when my Nan died, my sister was almost hysterical at the end of the service and a few years ago refused to hear any conversation that included the inevitability of our parent's eventual demise. I suspect it's part and parcel of being a moody bugger, I don't tend to go much lower when something genuinely bad happens.
Of course, there's other reasons to distrust public mournathons. The wailing and gnashing of teeth following the death of Princess Di wrongfooted me as much as it did the royal family, I didn't understand how anyone could devote so much of their time to following someone else so intently, 'were they crazy?' I thought, 'I wouldn't do something like that'. The fact that many many times the number of people who died in the Twin Towers on that September day in 2001 have died in the rest of the world since, both those against the American imperialists, those for, and those unfortunate to have been caught in between. The Independent's figures make grim reading.
When passion drives policy it's a bad thing. Thomas Sutcliffe wrote an insightful article in the Independent in March 2000 asking why the parents of Leah Betts or Stephen Lawrence should be allowed to influence policy. When a situation exists where you think the passion is manufactured to drive policy it's worse. The Sun fakes passion as a matter of course. The overwhelming feeling I felt on the 11th of September 2001 was a sinking one that Bush and the neocons around him were going to use these poor dead people as an excuse to kill a hell of a lot more, I couldn't believe they genuinely felt sorrow, but knew that they couldn't show their smiles publicly.
So, sure, let's remember those who died on this anniversary. But let's remember all of those who died, Americans, British, Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Afghans. Those that died in the Al Qaida attacks on this country, Spain, India and other parts of the world. Let us remember those who no longer walk upon this earth and those who do: Osama Bin Ladin; Ayman al-Zawahiri; Mullah Omar; Tony Blair; George W. Bush; Richard Cheney; Donald Rumsfeld.
Labels: 11/09/01, Afghanistan, Fox, freedom, George 'Shrubya' Bush, Iraq, News International, personal history, The Sun, The War Against Terror, Tony Blair, United States, Weapons of Mass Destruction
