Sunday 31 July 2005

flickr: "for mother"
Judgment Day amazon.co.uk
Judgment Day amazon.com

...by Alan Moore, Rob Liefeld

and

V for Vendetta amazon.co.uk
V for Vendetta amazon.com

...by Alan Moore, David Lloyd
currently listening to...
trashcan
"19-07-05_0842.jpg"
MP3: "Understanding Marx"

...Red Shadow (The Economics Rock & Roll Band)

(via JANUARY 6th of the 365 days project)
uk big brother 6

Due to Orlaith's voluntary departure from the house yesterday morning, a previously planned saturday task was axed, according to the Sunday Mirror (31 July)...

"Cruel Saturday Task Axed"

"A housemate was set to be lured into a gingerbread house, set up in the garden, only for the walls to collapse and reveal a cage, which was to be whinched up with the housemate inside, the only way that they would be let out is if the remaining housemates were to turn down a luxurious offer of alcohol, sweets, cigarettes and more."

also...

"THE 'GHASTLY', POSH FOXHUNTER WHO THE TORIES WANT TO HELP IMPROVE THEIR IMAGE"

archive...

a selection of narratives trawled from the web, on may 28th 2005, featuring derek laud

and

Lessons for politicians from Big Brother's accountability and engagement strategy

Saturday 30 July 2005

"It is the moment of the boomerang."

...said sartre

Gillo Pontecorvo's film The Battle of Algiers

Ian Jack on the chilling prescience of a 1960s art-house film
Alan Moore on the V for Vendetta Shooting Script

(via linkmachinego)

archive...

trailer: V FOR VENDETTA
UK BIG BROTHER 6

jenni trent hughes on orlaith's decision to walk from the big brother house this morning. (orlaith walked voluntarily after having marginally survived two consecutive public votes which resulted in the evictions of science and kemal.)

"She took the ball because she didn't know how to play...."

"Do you remember being a little kid and we would be playing a game. Along would come the one child who couldn't play because they weren't old enough, or smart enough or fast enough so in a fit of pique they'd snatch the ball and run away? Well that's what we've seen here. Like them or not Science and Kemal played the game long and hard and were sacrificed to the likes of someone who wasn't prepared to play the game properly in the first place. She's taken the ball, thrown it in the canal and flounced home to watch The Tweenies."

Friday 29 July 2005

"The British Army is due to begin dismantling one of its watch-towers in south Armagh in response to the IRA's decision to end its armed campaign."

(..."Army set to dismantle watch-tower")

meanwhile...

london 2005
"systemic revolution grows out of the disintegration of consent and not violence."

"Nothing permanent was ever solved by violence."

"Public buildings may be destroyed, public officials murdered, but such efforts will never bring about the destruction of the idea of the State."

"The State is a state of mind, an idea which cannot be harmed by violence. Ideas can only be attacked with better ideas."

(Voluntary Resistance)
Using technology already available for self-cleaning windows and bathroom tiles, scientists hope to paint up cities with materials that dissolve and wash away pollutants when exposed to sun and rain.

"Among other things, we want to construct concrete walls that break down vehicle exhausts in road tunnels," said Karin Pettersson, a spokeswoman for Swedish construction giant Skanska. "It is also possible to make pavings that clean the air in cities."

(via cnn and we make money not art)
"The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms."


...said Oscar Wilde
"the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival."

...said Emmanuel Goldstein

the greatest acts of heresy that a citizen can possibly commit is to read Emmanuel Goldstein's Book, THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM.

The government portrays the book as the centerpiece of the Resistance ... the ultimate tome of all that is evil ... which is the reason Winston coveted it so. But when you get right down to it, all this book does is explain the structure of society in straightforward and honest manner. And under a totalitarian regime, that is the single greatest act of thoughtcrime possible.

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
"We use Tasers regularly in London"

....said Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair

archive...

uk Chief constable experiences 50,000-volt Taser gun
(5 July, 2005)

Greater Manchester Police's Chief Constable Michael Todd has allowed himself to be blasted with a 50,000-volt Taser gun in a bid to get them issued to frontline police. they are currently issued only to firearms officers.

Mr Todd took the hit under controlled conditions. Mr Todd said afterwards: "I couldn't move, it hurt like hell. I wouldn't want to do that again. I've never experienced anything like it. You just seem to freeze."

plus...

feb 2004: police chief would prefer phaser guns

One of the police chiefs in charge of national policy on firearms has said: "What we would like in the future is a Star Trek-style phaser that, perfectly safely, temporarily switches someone's brain off so that officers move in," he told Jane's Police Review Magazine.
"fool"
uk big brother 6

"...some Forum Members are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands"
"What a day for a day dream"
free the west memphis three

On 6 May 1993, the bodies of three eight-year-old boys were found, one of them horribly mutilated, in woods just outside West Memphis, Arkansas. The police quickly identified and arrested three prime suspects - Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley - all teenagers at the time.

At the trial of Echols and Baldwin, the prosecution alleged the young men were members of a satanic cult and that the killings were ritualistic.

The jury agreed - Baldwin received a life sentence without parole whilst Echols, as the alleged leader of the group, was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Misskelley had already received life plus 40 years at an earlier trial.

No murder weapons or conclusive forensic evidence linking the three to the crime scene were produced in court - and neither was a motive - apart from their alleged satanic beliefs.

Damien Echols was interested in the Wicca religion. But the prosecution suggested that his wearing of black clothes, listening to heavy metal music and reading Stephen King horror books were also evidence of his guilt.

However it emerged during cross-examination that the police's expert on witchcraft had bought his PhD from a mail order company and not taken any classes to gain it.

On top of this, the police also admitted to losing evidence that could have pointed towards alternative suspects

The forensic science and the evidence were ignored and superstition and allegations of devil worshipping cults took precedence over the facts. These guys were also dirt poor - from the trailer parks of Arkansas - and they didn't have the money to launch a proper defence.

Jessie Misskelley, 17-years-old at the time, was convicted partly on the strength of his confession to police. He has a substantial learning disability and was questioned for twelve hours without the presence of a lawyer or other adult.

Only 20 minutes of this questioning were recorded and played to the court - Misskelly later claimed his confession was false and was made under intense police pressure.

All the major prosecution witnesses have also since recanted their evidence and the case seems even more ridiculous after 12 years.

(the case of three men believed to have been wrongly convicted of a triple murder)

Thursday 28 July 2005

"Any figure seeking public office, whether libertarian or conservative, who tells you that government is nothing more than a vast organized gang of corrupt incompetent lying criminal thugs, is announcing in advance how they are likely to behave once they have obtained power in government."

...Dale Carrico's amor mundi
("Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All")

Wednesday 27 July 2005

A Complete Manual of Billboard Subversion and Destruction
Space Hijackers

Our aim is to change the way that ownership and usage of space is percieved, to put users of space in a more level position.

We want to have a say in how we all exist within public space, on where and how we meet.

We are fed up with being treated like criminal cattle by the institutions and corporations that decide on the shape and content of our environment.

and...

the Surveillance Camera Players

"Only someone completely distrustful of all government would be opposed to what we are doing with surveillance cameras."
(...NYC Police Commissioner Howard Safir, 27 July 1999.)

"Look Up More"

"I figured if one girl in one window had been so fascinating to look at, it would be incredible to see someone dancing in every single window in the building...."

plus...

Sex-crazed, psychotic clowns

dressed in their clown trappings.... "We picked an office building," recalls Perrick aka Fucko the clown. "And in the middle of the afternoon went floor to floor, into different offices, saying, 'We're here for John's birthday!' We'd wander into these meetings where there'd be twenty or thirty suits sitting around a table with donuts.

"We'd steal the donuts, do cartwheels. Chuckles, this girl clown, would rip off her top and rub her tits in some guy's face. The suits would go nuts. All of a sudden, we'd ask, 'Whose birthday is this?' No one would raise a hand. Then we'd start beating each other up, saying, 'You got the wrong floor!' Meanwhile, we've moved on to the next level. We did eight floors before we got thrown out of the building."

also...

wearcam

the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination

meanwhile...

"I DO NOT CONSENT TO BEING SEARCHED" .... T-shirts
street clock

Heavily referencing sundials, Streetclock explores the reclamation of urban territories, shadows cast by street furniture over urban landscapes are measured in relation to painted road markings.
"If man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

.....said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
THE GLOBAL VILLAGE.......

.......as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.

[...] Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time. [...] In our long striving to recover for the Western world a unity of sensibility and of thought and feeling we have no more been prepared to accept the tribal consequences of such unity than we were ready for the fragmentation of the human psyche by print culture.

...said Marshall McLuhan
Rubbish Drawings

"...you might see something crouching down by a bush but don't be scared it's only me. I am quite nice really and will not harm you but I may draw on your rubbish if that's ok."

(i like drawing via we make money not art)
"Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow; don't walk behind me, I may not lead"

...said Albert Camus
post secret

...where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.
Once a government resorts to terror against its own population to get what it wants, it must keep using terror against its own population to get what it wants. A government that terrorizes its own people can never stop. If such a government ever lets the fear subside and rational thought return to the populace, that government is finished.
Cherie Blair reminds us that Civil liberties must not be undermined

Tony Blair's wife Cherie said "it is all too easy for us to respond to such terror in a way which undermines commitment to our most deeply held values and convictions and which cheapens our right to call ourselves a civilised nation".

She said "the government, even in times when there is a threat to national security, must act strictly in accordance with the law."

meanwhile it was revealed yesterday that uk Police officers have been on the brink of using the newly revealed shoot-to-kill policy on seven separate occasions since the July 7 London bombings...

archive...

Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said: "You can't even put someone in prison on suspicion, how can you kill them like that?"

(Debate rages over shoot-to-kill)

Saturday 23 July 2005

ONCE UPON A TIME...

...England underwent a Reformation.

Under Henry VIII, it separated the English Church from the Pope and formed the Church of England.

All subjects were obliged to swear oaths affirming the King's Supremacy as head of the Church and those who did not were imprisoned.

when Elizabeth I came to power in 1558, the following 48 years drove Catholics further and further underground.

During the period from 1563, successive legislation, starting with the (second) Act of Supremacy, required an oath from all subjects that the monarch was Supreme Governor of the Church and any refusal was punishable by death.

(...GUY FAWKES and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605)

"He looked absolutely petrified"

"they pushed him to the floor and basically unloaded five shots into him,"

OFFICIAL: LONDON MAN SHOT DEAD WAS NOT CONNECTED TO BOMBINGS
trailer: V for vendetta

Friday 22 July 2005

there is no "psychology of the terrorist,"

there is only the psychology of the Human that plays out in a multitude of ways.

(..."Terrorists, Victims and Society" edited by Andrew Silke
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk)
LONDON today

..."they pushed him to the floor, bundled on top of him and unloaded five shots into him,"

"There may well be reasons why the police felt it necessary to unload five shots into the man and shoot him dead, but they need to make those reasons clear."

ARCHIVES...

ENGLAND HAS A HISTORY OF FRAMING BOMBERS...

and DEAD MEN CAN'T APPEAL TO CLEAR THEIR NAMES

it is always important to remember, we are dealing with a government that has already been proven to have lied to all of us in order to drag us into the war in Iraq.
Guantanamo detainees hunger strike

the US military said in a statement that Fifty-two detainees at the US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are staging a hunger strike in protest at their detention and treatment. So far, the men have refused nine consecutive meals over three days,.

But on Wednesday, an Afghan man released from the camp after three years said that more than 100 prisoners had been on hunger strike for two weeks. He said the protest was aimed at highlighting "inhuman" conditions at the camp.

However, a lawyer who represents a number of detainees held in Guantanamo Bay told BBC Pentagon correspondent Adam Brookes that protests in the prison facilities were already under way by late June.

ARCHIVES...

Governments around the world betrayed their commitment to human rights in 2004 and the american administration is seeking to dilute the absolute ban on torture.... The "war on terror" appeared more effective in eroding international human rights principles than in countering international "terrorism".
"I Do Not Consent to Being Searched"

Reacting to the NYPD's announcement Thursday afternoon that police would randomly - but routinely - search the bags of commuters, one concerned New Yorker quickly created a way for civil libertarians to make their views black-and-white...

...T-shirts

meanwhile...

The US House of Representatives has voted by a large majority to extend the Patriot Act ...The "debate" included frequent references to the London attacks earlier in the day....

ARCHIVES...

homeland secruity
M O N E Y

"MOST VALUABLE GLOBAL BRANDS"

Coca-Cola - $67.5bn (US)
Microsoft - $59.9bn (US)
IBM - $53.4bn (US)
General Electric - $50bn (US)
Intel - $35.6bn (US)
Nokia - $26.5bn (Finland)
Disney - $26.4bn (US)
McDonald's - $26bn (US)
Toyota - $24.8bn (Japan)
Marlboro - $21.1bn (US)

ARCHIVES...

Top Ten War Profiteers of 2004

plus...

From 1998 to 2001, the USA, the UK, and France earned more income from arms sales to developing countries than they gave in aid.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the USA, UK, France, Russia, and China - are responsible for eighty eight per cent of reported conventional arms exports.


"We can't have it both ways. We can't be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of arms." Former US President Jimmy Carter, presidential campaign, 1976

Thursday 21 July 2005

"The Power of Nightmares" all 3 episodes

...Adam Curtis' film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, the parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today.
Suicide Bracelet

Kill yourself whenever you feel like it. easy to use: wear slit on pulse, break off blade, insert blade, cut wrist.

(via we-make-money-not-art)
"The real heart of creationism is existential dread."

Philip Bell, former British cancer researcher and now fulltime creationist, in his talk "Ape Men, 'Missing Links' and the Bible," explains, "If Adam is your ancestor then you were created specially and have a purpose in life.

If evolution is true, we are descended from ape-like animals with no morality, no aesthetic sensibility and no soul."

If evolution were true, Bell tells the conferees, then "you would have no purpose for your existence."

(...Ronald Bailey Live from the 2005 Creation Mega-Conference)

dvd: The Weather Underground (2003)

"The remarkable story of The Weather Underground, radical activists of the 1970s."

this Oscar-nominated documentary follows the story of The Weathermen, who were born of sixties protest, but took their scheme to overthrow the U.S. government to especially violent extremes....

amazon.co.uk
amazon.com
imdb
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."

...said Tyler Durden
the Bruce La Bruce movie "Raspberry Reich"

The movie starts off with a gang of bumbling, would-be terrorists abducting Patrick, a young man who is the son of one of the wealthiest bankers in Germany.

"The Raspberry Reich is an art/porn film that, like all my films, uses pornography as a starting point to examine sexual politics and homosexual radicalism."

SEX AND THE REVOLUTIONARY

... JT Leroy talks with Bruce LaBruce

"They kidnapped business leaders, gunned down police officers and hijacked an airliner. But even after Sept. 11, the German revolutionaries who spread fear in the 1970s and 80s have acquired a certain chic."
ultimate reality

...."cecil b. demented"....

amazon.co.uk
amazon.com
imdb

Wednesday 20 July 2005

in the uk you can become A-list, or you can become eXtreme-list?

The UK is to set up a global database of extremists who face automatic vetting before being allowed in, Home Secretary Charles Clarke has told MPs.

"I intend to draw up a list of unacceptable behaviours which would fall into this - for example preaching, running websites or writing articles which are intended to foment or provoke terrorism." He said.

Mr Clarke said he had asked the Home Office, Foreign Office and the intelligence agencies to "establish a full database of individuals around the world who have demonstrated relevant behaviours".

Mr Clarke also said he planned a new offence of "indirect incitement to terrorism", to add to the current offence of direct incitement.

He said it "targets those who, while not directly inciting, glorify and condone terrorist acts knowing full well that the effect on their listeners will be to encourage them to turn to terrorism".

(..."UK plans global extremists list")

meanwhile...

Boy, 15, wins uk curfew legal battle

A 15-year-old boy has won a landmark High Court challenge to the legality of child curfew zones used to tackle anti-social behaviour. The teenager said the use of dispersal zones in Richmond, south-west London, breached his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

"they shouldn't be allowed to treat me like a criminal just because I'm under 16."

(Currently, unaccompanied uk citizens aged under-16 found in zones after 9pm, can be held and escorted home, whether badly behaved or not.)
Portraits of American Mass Consumption
Chinese propoganda posters
This urban farm - in what used to be the vault of a major bank - is maintained using computer-controlled artificial light and temperature management.

underground urban farming
[toi.protocol] - "the best place to find the most interesting new toys."

(via octopusdropkick)
Aeon Flux Movie - Official Site

"freedom is in the eye of the beholder"
urino

and

Robo Urinal: Behold Your Porcelain Master

Tuesday 19 July 2005

25,000 civilians killed in Iraq

Nearly 25,000 civilians have died violently in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003, a report says.

The number of civilians who have died has almost doubled in the second year from the first, according to the report.

Almost a fifth of the 24,865 deaths were women or children and nearly half of all the civilian deaths were reported in the capital Baghdad.

"On average, 34 ordinary Iraqis have met violent deaths every day since the invasion of March 2003,"

At least 42,500 civilians were reported to have been injured.

"It remains a matter of the gravest concern that, nearly two-and-a-half years on, neither the US nor the UK governments have begun to systematically measure the impact of their actions in terms of human lives destroyed."
cognitive liberty

"We need a new offence - 'glorifying terrorism' would do very well," said Metropolitan (thought) Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, who called for a new offence to tackle extremist preachers who had proved difficult to prosecute.....

...Tony, the other, Blair said they had discussed the "right machinery" to go into communities and engage with young people who may be vulnerable to extremist ideas. He said those at the meeting supported the idea of a task force.

Mr Blair said the network would go into communities to actively confront what he called an "evil ideology" based on a perversion of Islam, and "defeat it by the force of reason".

RELIGION MEETS REASON. THERE"LL BE TEARS BEFORE BEDTIME.

(...uk: "Terrorism to be tackled head on" and "Blair calls for task force to combat evil ideology")

and...

...the home secretary agreed to look again at the language in his newly proposed offence of "indirect incitement to terrorism" and to clarify exactly who it is designed to catch....

meanwhile...

In another development, Egyptian officials are quoted somewhere in the small print as saying that biochemist Magdi Mahmoud al-Nashar, arrested in Cairo, has no connection with the london blasts.... thats after it was previously reported he had no connections with al qaida, which was reported after the front pages said in large print that he was al qaida...

ARCHIVES...

Thank God there are still some people (in Britain) who have the intelligence to know the truth, and the courage to speak out. Mrs Blair is one such individual.

Speaking at a charity event in London (2002), Mrs Blair said young Palestinians felt they had "no hope" but to blow themselves up....

plus...

GROOVY POPULAR TERRORISM

and...

guy fawkes

The Gunpowder Plot Society

The Gunpowder Plot Society is made up of a loose-knit group of researchers who share a common interest in the events and people surrounding the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, an attempt by disgruntled Catholics to blow up King James I and the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder.
uk Big Brother 6

this year's inmates are at times difficult to watch or enjoy, not to mention like. its just sooooo "lord of the flies", filling our screens with their relentless paranoia, backstabbing and bullying.

meanwhile their extreme self-consciousness and simultaneous unself-consciousness produces this year's tv gold. best summed up by Science a few weeks back, during the prelude of a pool orgy and when one inmate accused Science of sitting on the sidelines like he is watching telly. Science replied "this is telly."

in response to this year's show a number of viewers express a desire for the Big Brother formula to return to "the lost innocence of when it was a simpler social experiment".

but i would argue that there is no return. firstly very few "innocent" people will apply today.

secondly Big Bro needs advertising revenue and thus it needs to ensure freshness and new twists to pull in the right kind of advertising audience. (not forgetting the phone vote revenue too)

but most importantly perhaps, those who long for a return to Big Brother Eden miss the point entirely...... it still is a social experiment.

it is a vast resource of instant feedback results. research tests on individual inmate responses and via audience voting responses to given narratives. (not to mention the forum chatter). Big Brother is a psyops research dream.... a populist focus that can be filled with plenty of old stage magician trickery...... "pick a card, any card" etc. (and lets see how many times its the card we're subtly trying to foist onto you)

plus endemol has already collated and processed data from the simpler days, it has no need to run those tests again.

ARCHIVES...

Lessons for politicians from Big Brother's accountability and engagement strategy

is Big Brother really more popular than election?

and...

a selection of narratives trawled from the web, on may 28th 2005, featuring derek laud...

Monday 18 July 2005

uk Magic mushroom ban becomes law

A law banning magic mushrooms and making them a class A drug comes into force on Monday.

...The law change does not affect another, much more rarely used magic mushroom: Amanita muscaria - more commonly known as Fly Agaric.

Sunday 17 July 2005

No 10 blocks book on Iraq by one of Britain's most senior former diplomats

Publication of The Costs of War by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK ambassador to the UN during the build-up to the 2003 war and the Prime Minister's special envoy to Iraq in its aftermath, has been halted....
"Snowbelles in July"
"blue dream"
The first atomic test was carried out as the leaders met at Potsdam

The Potsdam Conference was held in Potsdam, Germany (near Berlin), from July 17 to August 2, 1945. The participants were the victorious allies of World War II....

"By Potsdam there had set in a terrible sameness about the pattern of these summit meetings."

"It was like seeing the same not-very-good film several times round."
said Roy Jenkins in his biography of Churchill

....We are now in the post-communist phase of world history. Conflict is still happening. History is therefore continuing, it appears.

In 1945, Africa was a string of colonies, climate control did not exist (the Bankside coal power station, now London's Tate Modern gallery, was put up in just two years later) and Arab secular nationalism not Islamic radicalism was the growing philosophy across the Middle East, of which Iraq was a largely obscure part.

There is, however, one legacy from Potsdam with which we are still living. While waiting in his lakeside guesthouse for the conference to start...

...Truman received word that the atom bomb had been successfully tested.

Stalin showed little interest. After all, he knew all about this from his own spies.

Japan was warned in the "Potsdam Declaration" that it could expect destruction if it did not surrender, but was not told of the bomb.

There was really no discussion about whether to use it. Everyone agreed that it should be, or Japan would have to be invaded.

On 24 July, Truman and Churchill met the American and British chiefs of staff and formally settled the matter.

On 5 August, while Truman was on the Augusta on his way home, the atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima.
"About 1,700 men and women have appeared naked in Tyneside in the name of art...."

archive...

...Tunick was arrested five times while shooting in New York. He eventually filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the city and after several years of decisions and appeals, won a favorable ruling...

plus...

"Simply being naked on the street is not a crime in San Francisco," said Debbie Mesloh, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, september 2004.

Saturday 16 July 2005

the gleneagles hotel, scotland, july 6 2005

(via grow-a-brain)
"IMGP2130"

"halfpastfour"

"WORDS OF ADVICE TO YOUNG PEOPLE"

"....Now some of you may encounter the Devil's Bargain, If you get that far.

Any old soul is worth saving, At least to a priest, But not every soul is worth buying. So you can take the offer as a compliment.

He tries the easy ones first. You know like money, All the money there is. But who wants to be the richest guy in some cemetary? Money won't buy. Not much left to spend it on, eh gramps? Getting too old to cut the mustard.

Well time hits the hardest blows. Especially below the belt. How's a young body grab you? Like three card monte, like pea under the shell, Now you see it, now you don't.

Haven't you forgotten something, gramps? In order to feel something, You've got to be there. You have to be eighteen. You're not eighteen. You are seventy-eight. Old fool sold his soul for a strap-on.

Well they always try the easiest ones first. How about an honorable bargain? You always wanted to be a doctor, Well now's your chance. Why don't you become a great healer And benefit humanity?

What's wrong with that?

Just about everything. Just about everything. There are no honorable bargains Involving exchange Of qualitative merchandise Like souls For quantitative merchandise Like time and money.

So piss off Satan And don't take me for dumber than I look.

An old junk pusher told me - Watch whose money you pick up."

...said william burroughs

Friday 15 July 2005

mp3: Charles Steven Page - Suddenly

and...

mp3: up up and away

(...from march 17th and feb 22nd in the 365 days project.

One MP3 a day - for one year...)
Toilet Roll News...
boxbots
20Q

archive...

...LISTENING POST

an art installation that culls text fragments in real time from thousands of unrestricted Internet chat rooms, bulletin boards and other public forums. The texts are read (or sung) by a voice synthesizer, and simultaneously displayed across a suspended grid of more than two hundred small electronic screens.

...geographically targeted worms

Future computer worms could be programmed to attack only within a particular country, according to a leading computer security expert in august 2003.

a technique that worm creators might use to make their code spread more effectively could also limit a worm's geographic range.

this would turn a computer worm into an effective weapon for information warfare. Instead of attacking internet-connected computers at random it could be used to attack a specific country.

plus...

...Txt means goodbye to 'hello'

"It wouldn't surprise me if, in 50 years, there was no longer a need for 'hello' and 'goodbye' in general or certainly in electronic communication," said Jonathon Green, a lexicographer and author of a dictionary of slang.

Tracy Blacher, MSN marketing director, said: "What is interesting is the speed that language is being modified by the adoption of new technology."
"I know lots of comic book people who are smarter, funnier, sexier, more well-travelled and more erudite talkers than any number of "stars." I'd rather watch Peter Milligan or Seth Fisher or Chris Weston on a talk show than Justin fucking Timberlake. I'd rather be entertained by Mark Millar or Frank Quitely or Tom Peyer or Mark Waid or....anybody except the mind-numbing Cristal drinking "celebs" on TV."

...said grant morrison in 2003
WHICH BOOK is a site that recommends books (fiction and poetry published since 1995) based on you choosing from a sliding scale of descriptions - from safe to disturbing, beautiful to disgusting, optimistic to bleak, etc.

It then produces a list of books that match your criteria with short reader critiques for you to choose from...
...by the turn of the 20th century there was no european government that failed to acknowledge in theory its responsibility for some form of elementary school system.

between 1850 and 1930 the proportion of european adults unable to read fell roughly from 50% to 10%.

in many ways such changes left the masses vulnerable to new opportunities for manipulation and mass susceptibility to the printed word.

news agencies are one of the main participants in political processes...

News agencies generally prepare articles that can be used by other news organizations with little or no modification.

There are hundreds of news agencies in the world, but over 90% of all the news or information collected and disseminated is by just 4 news agencies:

Reuters based in London,

Agence France Presse (AFP) based in Paris,

and the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI) both based in New York.

This is an explanation for why there is no diversity of views in the news, why there is not a marketplace of ideas.

There is monopolistic control of the media.

("The Role of the Western Media in the Macedonian Conflict" and pdf: "Role of News Agencies in Democratic Development: the US Experience and its adaptation to Russia")

Thursday 14 July 2005

Iraqis sell their blood to survive

"Every week I come here to sell my blood. It is very easy to get someone to buy it because many families are desperate to help their loved ones who are injured in the hospitals,..... The next time I come here I will bring my 15-year-old son with me so that he can donate and help me to bring more money to my family,"
december 12th 1969... "Deadly bomb blasts in Italy"

the Piazza Fontana massacre.

The bombing marked the start of a series of attacks between 1969 and 1974 known as "the strategy of tension" by the right wing group Ordine Nuovo, allegedly backed up by Italian (and American) secret services.

Their aim was to prevent the country falling into the hands of the left by duping the public into believing the bombings were part of a communist insurgency.

The attacks appeared to come to an end in 1974 but the worst strike was to come in 1980, when a suitcase with over 18kg (40lbs) of explosives went off in a train station, in Bologna, killing 85 and wounding more than 200 people.
the fraud's prayer

our market who art on earth
hallowed be thy show
thy state power come
thy will be done
on the streets as it is in work
sell us this day our daily lie
and justify us y/our property
as we submit to those that assert property relations against us
and lead us anywhere but into autonomous temptation
but deliver us from anti-heirachical initiative
for our's is the stagnation
the cop and the celebrity
forever....or never?
Vincenzo Vinciguerra said...

"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

This was the essence of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of terrorism and deceit directed by the intelligence services of the West against their own populations.

Hundreds of innocent people were killed or maimed in terrorist attacks ... on train stations, supermarkets, cafes and offices ... which were then blamed on "leftist subversives" or other political opponents.

The purpose, as stated above in sworn testimony by Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra, was to demonize designated enemies and frighten the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for government leaders ... and their elitist cronies.

Nato's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe
totalitarian capitalism

it allows no solution to pass which fails to enhance its power. The only permitted answer to the effects of greed is more greed.

For every westerner killed by Muslim terrorists since the end of the cold war, at least a hundred Muslims have died in wars and occupations perpetrated by the west.
perception management

some journalists are finding the coverage of the situation in london highly irregular. It seems that the information being released to the British public is being carefully stage managed.

BBC RADIO 5, JULY 7TH (the day of the london bombs): Peter Power, a British consultant from Visor Consulting, SAID: "At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now."

Host: "To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?"

Peter Power: "Precisely."

( flashback... "On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team ... were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day." )

PLUS...

Home Secretary Charles Clarke has denied some of the London bombers had been arrested last year. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is reported to have said the UK delegation made the claim at an EU meeting on terrorism in Brussels. But Mr Clarke said the comments were "without foundation", denying the men had been arrested but released in an effort to catch a wider network. Mr Sarkozy told a news conference: "It seems that part of this team had been subject to partial arrest... in Spring 2004."
(...added note july 17th 2005: "One of the London bombers was investigated by MI5 last year but was deemed not to be a threat, it has been revealed.")

and what happened to the story that the police shot one or two men near Canary Wharf?

and while it is seemingly convenient that the bus cctv camera was not working, it is equally convenient that the "suicide bombers" were considerate enough to carry their id (and it survived the carnage), a story that gets a little muddy here ..."Police are still trying to figure out why some of the bombers appeared to be carrying pieces of identification not just of themselves but of at least some of their three accomplices." (source)

ALL speculation at this early stage is conspiracy theory, but only some speculation is expected to wear that demeaning epithet like a dunce cap.

Some theories have already become THE OFFICIAL STORY and any untidy details will be excluded from the MSM. there is only the official story and the "conspiracy theories", no public discussion exists in between.

A "senior US counterterrorism official" can say, anonymously and without support, that he worries it may have been the work of al-Zarqawi. And reporters, rather than consider why it serves US interests to float such a preposterous allegation, write it all down as though he were serious.

Such figures are considered, by default, to be "informed" sources, even though they are pushing an agenda. ("the trouble with normal")

it is always important to remember, we are dealing with a government that has already been proven to have lied to all of us in order to drag us into the war in Iraq.

PLUS ENGLAND DOES HAVE A HISTORY OF FRAMING BOMBERS...

MEANWHILE....possible new uk anti-terror legislation, due to be published this autumn ....what.....EVEN MORE LEGISLATION???

O lovers of peace and opponents of war: never shall you see an end of calamities instigated by the war party, until the people see through the false flag trick. It is not in marching that wars are stopped, but by understanding.

and don't forget.... a hypothesis is only as good as its usefulness in ferreting out reality.

Wednesday 13 July 2005

the imaginary book review

"In the spirit of Borges' remark, contestants were asked to write a book review of an imaginary book. (Between 500-1000 words.) The book may be from any time period, it may be fiction or non-fiction, and it's author may be either an invention or an actual writer."

and

the invisible library

a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.
"Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery."

....said warhol
cognitive liberty is poised to be one of the major civil rights issues of the century

Cognitive liberty presupposes at least these three principles: cognitive privacy (what and how you think should be private unless you choose to share it); cognitive autonomy (self-determination over one's own cognition is central to free will); and cognitive choice (the capabilities of the human mind should not be limited).

..."cognitive freedom fighter"

plus

Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics
we are living in a "middle world" reality that we have created

"Our brains have evolved to help us survive within the scale and orders of magnitude within which we exist,"

"We think that rocks and crystals are solid when in fact they are made up mostly of spaces in between atoms."

...said dawkins

This, he said, was just the way our brains thought about things in order to help us navigate our "middle sized" world - the medium scale environment - a world in which we cannot see individual atoms.
"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws."

...said Abraham Lincoln

Monday 11 July 2005

"Silence is not journalism"

Lest We Forget By John Pilger

...when will someone in the political class say that Blair's smoke-and-mirrors "debt cancellation" at best amounts to less than the money the government spent in a week brutalising Iraq, where British and American violence is the cause of the doubling of child poverty and malnutrition since Saddam Hussein was overthrown (Unicef).

...In our free societies, the unmentionable is that "the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people", as Arthur Miller once wrote, "and so the evidence has to be internally denied." Not only denied, but distracted by an entire court: Geldoff, Bono, Madonna, McCartney et al, whose "Live 8" was the very antithesis of 15 February 2003 when two million people brought their hearts and brains and anger to the streets of London.

...the G8 meeting in Scotland and its accompanying "Make Poverty History" campaign and circus of celebrities served as a temporary cover for what is arguably the greatest political scandal of modern times: an illegal, brutal and craven invasion conceived in lies and which, under the system of international law established at Nuremberg, represented a "paramount war crime".

archives...

"Ask the God Damn Question"

Bush and Blair once again repeated their rhetoric about how they went to war with Iraq only after Saddam Hussein refused to comply.

COMPLY WITH WHAT?

Why, after 2 years, hasn't a single reporter asked the most obvious question of the entire crime that is the invasion of Iraq...

WHAT DID SADDAM REFUSE?

Did he refuse to disarm Iraq of the WMD's that IRAQ DID NOT HAVE?

Sunday 10 July 2005

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."

.... said Oscar Wilde
"Toile"
"2004032901_Display-35"

and

"Street Graffiti"
Gods are created according to our needs

"If a real God does exist, then we cannot perceive it. We can only perceive ourselves and our own expectations projected into the heavens."

"Each individual has created their own god, in accordance with their own imagination and experience, and such a god is purely a projection of the ego."

"It is our own sense of ego that we feel from god. It is our own pride that makes us think we know the truth. God is the individual, and each individual may as well be his own god."

"Man has always created his gods, rather than his gods creating him"

"The logical philosophy of god is that it is only ever a reflection of the self:"



archives...

"You aren't being paid to believe in the power of your dreams."

and

"vote for yourself"
"Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's jobs with yesterday's tools."

...said Marshall McLuhan
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous"

...said Alfred North Whitehead

Friday 8 July 2005

no surprises from G8

as charities, activists and non-governmental organisations digested the detail of the G8 communique, initial reactions to the measures on the twin themes of Africa and climate change were lukewarm.

In a statement, Christian Aid said: "This will not make poverty history. It is a vastly disappointing result. Millions of campaigners all over the world have been led to the top of the mountain, shown the view, and now we are being frogmarched down again."

Oxfam said the communique had "fallen short of the hopes of the millions around the world campaigning for a momentous breakthrough".

But corporate lapdogs Geldoff and Bono were upbeat.

Bob Geldof spoke of a "great day" and Bono praised the agreement to give universal access to Aids drugs.

and doubtless they'll be inflicting more of their tired old music on us just in time for the all important xmas market.

meanwhile...... exactly how much is it costing us to slaughter and torture the people of afghanistan and iraq? i think we need reminding....
G8 'stalemate' on climate change

Leaked versions of the climate change communique suggest that little progress has been made. The final communique - on debt, aid, trade and climate change - is expected at 1315 GMT.

archives...

Bush's climate row aide joins oil giant

senior White House official accused of doctoring government reports on climate change to play down the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming has taken a job with ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company. Philip Cooney, who resigned as chief of staff of the White House council on environment quality at the weekend, will begin work at the oil giant in the autumn.

Kert Davies, the US research director for Greenpeace, said: "The cynical way to look at this is that ExxonMobil has removed its sleeper cell from the White House and extracted him back to the mother ship."

policy in the White House is being written by the world's most powerful oil company
"Bombings Rewrite G-8 Agenda" says the new york times

....quel surprise.

"The bombings in London on Thursday knocked the meeting of major industrial nations off its carefully scripted focus on global warming and African poverty and turned it into a forum for President Bush and other world leaders to pledge unity in confronting terrorism. .....even before the first working session started, it was apparent that the tone and substance of this meeting of the Group of 8 leaders had been violently reshaped."

....and perhaps conveniently it will make it harder for campaigners to criticise any eventual deals for, all too predictably, not going far enough.

and then, get this......

bush said, (wait for it)..... "The contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill, those who have got such evil in their hearts that they will take the lives of innocent folks. The war on terror goes on."

......and so does the torture, the disappearances, the detainments without trial, the indiscriminate slaughter of thousands of civilians, the arms profits, the corporate exploitation of the poorest countries, and of course the fact that america produces a quarter of the whole world's pollution.

business as usual.

archives...

jun 2005: G8 arms exports fuelling poverty and human rights abuses. G8 member states are undermining their commitments to poverty reduction, stability and human rights with irresponsible arms exports to some of the world's poorest and most conflict-ridden countries, according to new research issued today. G8 weapons have been exported to countries including Sudan, Myanmar (Burma), the Republic of Congo, Colombia and the Philippines.

On the eve of a meeting of G8 foreign ministers in London (23-24 June), a new report reveals how the G8 countries - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the USA - are still supplying military equipment, weapons and munitions to destinations where they contribute to gross violations of human rights. between January 2003 and June 2004, the UK licensed exports of arms to countries with major human rights concerns, including Saudi Arabia, Colombia and Israel.

mar 2005: More than a quarter of the uk government's arms sales machine is dedicated to selling to a single regime, Saudi Arabia. "Saudi Arabia is an autocratic, corrupt regime in an unstable area. The use of so many civil servants to promote arms to the Saudi regime is completely unethical."

feb 2005: watered down controls on the payment of bribes by British companies. A minister rejected criticism that the uk government had watered down controls on the payment of bribes by British companies. He was being questioned by the House of Commons trade and industry select committees on claims that his department buckled under heavy lobbying by Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems and plane manufacturer, Airbus, and allowed the curbs to be weakened. The rules are designed to stop British companies paying bribes to foreign politicians and officials to win contracts abroad.

dec 2004: uk arms bribery. It had been alleged that Alvis (a tank manufacturer based in Coventry) paid £16.5m in bribes to Indonesian President Suharto's eldest daughter to secure a £160m sale of Scorpion tanks in the mid-1990s which were then used for internal repression.

oct 2003: Many countries, including the US, have relaxed controls on sales of arms to allies known to have appalling human rights records. The "war on terror" has weakened national arms controls and fuelled the proliferation of conventional weapons, a coalition of leading human rights charities warned. "In the past two years, the US has increased arms sales to [such states] and Britain has followed suit. British arms sales to Indonesia [the second highest recipient of UK overseas aid] rose from £2m in 2000 to £40m in 2002."

plus...

control arms

Thursday 7 July 2005

flickr London Bomb Blasts Photo Pool
A WARNING?

"British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said." (source 1 source 2 source 3 source 4 source 5)

"Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said."

original reports stated that Binyamin Netanyahu was warned BEFORE the first blast, now all the Associated Press reports are being changed to say he was warned AFTER the first blast......

Israel not 'warned of attacks'
WAR IS ALWAYS ABOUT MONEY

archive...

Top Ten War Profiteers of 2004

plus...

War is a racket.

" I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."

"I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street."
....General Smedley D. Butler, former U.S. Marine Commandant, November 1935

9/11 and THE ARMS TRADE
One week after 9/11, Richard Aboulafia, senior military analyst with the aerospace and defence consultancy Teal Group, said the attacks were "all good things for the defence industry".

He was right. In order to bring them onside with the war on terror, Oman, the Philippines, Indonesia, Israel, Egypt, South Korea, Chile and the United Arab Emirates all enjoyed confirmed or approved arms deals specifically because they joined the coalition to support the war in Afghanistan. Even when Tony Blair flew to India for talks with the Indian prime minister following the September 11 attacks, he couldn't help but try to finalise the sale of 60 BAE Systems Hawk fighters, worth £1bn.

SELLING MORE DEATH IN LONDON

Gideon Burrows writes: "Like most people, I remember exactly where I was when I first heard that terrorists had flown aeroplanes into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. I was outside a huge arms exhibition in London's Docklands, where 14 Middle Eastern nations were shopping for weapons. While events across the world were cancelled out of respect for the thousands of dead, arms buyers continued doing weapons deals in London for a further three days."
In the joint G8 statement today, Mr Blair said all the leaders believed the terrorists had NO RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE. ....blah blah blah

archives...

Governments around the world betrayed their commitment to human rights in 2004 and the american administration is seeking to dilute the absolute ban on torture.... The "war on terror" appeared more effective in eroding international human rights principles than in countering international "terrorism".

Iraq's ambassador to the UN accuses AMERICA of cold-blooded murder
As the marines left "smiling at each other" an hour later, the interpreter told the mother they had killed Mohammed

Chile identifies 35,000 victims of Pinochet
A year-long investigation into state-sponsored torture in Chile has documented that an estimated 35,000 people were abused during the US-backed 1973-90 military regime.

The United States' Disappeared: ...The CIA's Long-term "Ghost Detainees"...
"Disappearances" were a trademark abuse of Latin American military dictatorships in their dirty war on alleged subversion. Now they have become a direct United States tactic in its conflict with al-Qaeda.

AMERICA suspected of keeping secret prisoners on warships
"There are very, very serious accusations that the United States is maintaining secret camps, notably on ships," the Austrian UN official told AFP in Vienna, adding that the vessels were believed to be in the Indian Ocean region.

Washington Is the Source of Terror
The U.S. government gave the slave trade a boost by offering money for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Afghan and Pakistani warlords simply rounded up people who looked Arab or foreign and sold them to the Americans as captured fighters. The "fighters" apparently included relief workers, refugees and Arab businessmen. The tribunals looking into the classification of Guantanamo prisoners as "enemy combatants" have uncovered numerous examples of hapless victims of a naive U.S. government too flush with money. On May 31, 2005, however, Michelle Faul of The Associated Press reported that in March 2002, leaflets and broadcasts from helicopters in Afghanistan enticed Afghans to "Hand over the Arabs and feed your families for a lifetime." One leaflet said: "You can receive millions of dollars. This is enough to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life, pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people."

1976 Cuban passenger plane bomber was CIA agent
the 1976 bombing killed 73 people. Declassified US government documents show that Luis Posada Carriles, suspected of involvement in the bombing of the Cuban passenger plane, worked for the CIA.

etc etc

and of course......

photos: TORTURE as AMERICAN foreign policy

......no respect for human life indeed
"You can fool some of the people all of the time - and those are the ones you have to concentrate on!"

(quotes by and about bush and co)
(bush soundboard)
(dubyaspeak audio)

and

mp3 Truthful Translations of Political Speech
INDUCING CONSENT aldous huxley 1962

a transcript of Aldous Huxley's 1962 lecture, "The Ultimate Revolution", in which the author of Brave New World discusses using terrorism, suggestibility and pharmacology to create willing slaves out of the population. ....plus audio version..

"we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy (who have always existed and presumably will always exist) to get people to love their servitude"

"Pavlov made some extremely profound observations both on animals and on human beings. And he found among other things that conditioning techniques applied to animals or humans in a state either of psychological or physical stress sank in very deeply into the mind-body of the creature, and were extremely difficult to get rid of. That they seemed to be embedded more deeply than other forms of conditioning...."
"you can't fool all the people all of the time, but if you fool the right ones, the rest will fall behind"
The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear

The making of the terror myth
(download all 3 episodes)

"Almost no one questions this myth about al-Qaida because so many people have got an interest in keeping it alive," says Curtis. He cites the suspiciously circular relationship between the security services and much of the media since September 2001: the way in which official briefings about terrorism, often unverified or unverifiable by journalists, have become dramatic press stories which - in a jittery media-driven democracy - have prompted further briefings and further stories. Few of these ominous announcements are retracted if they turn out to be baseless: "There is no fact-checking about al-Qaida." not in the mainstream media at least.

"Insecurity is the key driving concept of our times," says Durodie, director of the international centre for security analysis at King's College London. "Politicians have packaged themselves as risk managers. There is also a demand from below for protection." The real reason for this insecurity, he argues, is the decay of the 20th century's political belief systems and social structures: people have been left "disconnected" and "fearful".

plus...

"Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability In An Uncertain Age"
Today's society operates around the belief that people can't cope on their own, or face the challenges of life.

"Creating the enemy"
If we are going to make our societies more resilient, we need a clearer sense of what we are for, and how we might fight for it.
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM
by Emmanuel Goldstein

"the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival."

.......the greatest acts of heresy that a citizen can possibly commit is to read Emmanuel Goldstein's Book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.

The government portrays the book as the centerpiece of the Resistance ... the ultimate tome of all that is evil ... which is the reason Winston coveted it so. But when you get right down to it, all this book does is explain the structure of society in straightforward and honest manner. And under a totalitarian regime, that is the single greatest act of thoughtcrime possible.

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
HOMELAND SECURITY

"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death."
(...adolf hitler)

"The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates aggressiveness."
(...Dorothy Thompson)

"What good fortune for those in power that people do not think."
(...adolf hitler)
GROOVY POPULAR TERRORISM

THE ANGRY BRIGADE
During one of the longest political trials of English history thousands of badges were sold with 'I'm in the Angry Brigade'.

the WEATHERMAN
in a new yorker article, the Weather Underground is depicted as a group that found murder "cool" and violence "hip." members were charismatic, provocative, articulate, and intelligent. They commanded news media attention with their brash rhetoric, violent actions, and, in the eyes of many, romantic allure. Chic radicals, they seemed to treat their violence at once as very serious business and as kind of a lark.

BAADER-MEINHOF
"In July of 1971, Institut Allensbach, a public research firm with a standing and reputation similar to Gallup, published a remarkable poll. Twenty percent of Germans under the age of thirty expressed "a certain sympathy" for the Baader-Meinhof Gang, a group with the avowed purpose of violently overthrowing the West German government. One in ten young Northern Germans indicated that they would willingly shelter a member of the Baader-Meinhof Gang for the night."
THE SHILL

....FAKE TERROR

False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities.....

Operation Northwoods 1962

The Joint Chiefs of Staff argued that the US population would only support military intervention in Cuba in the event of provocative, aggressive action by the island nation against American soldiers, American civilians or Cuban refugees and Cubans in exile. The document frequently refers to staging fake attacks with fake victims, but in other cases does not specify whether the attacks should be fake or real, and for some recommended attacks explicitly notes that they could be real. Had Operation Northwoods been carried out, it would likely have required the coordinative efforts of the Central Intelligence Agency, which is mentioned several times.

National Security Archives on Operation Northwoods

US Army Field Manual 30-31B

US Army Field Manual 30-31B, entitled "Stability Operations Intelligence - Special Fields," dated March 18, 1970 and signed by Gen. William C Westmoreland, promoted terrorist attacks (and the planting of false evidence) in public places which were then to be blamed on "communists" and "socialists." It called for the execution of terrorist attacks throughout Western Europe, carried out through a network of covert US/NATO armies, in order to convince European governments of "the communist threat."

the lavon affair

a widespread political scandal in Israel that followed an Israeli covert operation in Egypt known as Operation Suzannah. The plan called for bombing British and American facilities in Egypt, with the intent that they would be attributed to the Egyptian government

Operation Gladio

Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of provocateur-style terrorism and deceit. The ostensible purpose of Gladio, officially launched as a covert NATO program in 1952, was to establish a clandestine network of "stay-behind" teams which would organize armed resistance and sabotage in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. But the network actually took a far more proactive role. Directed by US/NATO intelligence services of the West against their own populations, Operation Gladio led to possibly hundreds of innocent people being killed or maimed in "terrorist" attacks which were then blamed on "leftist subversives" or other political opponents.

meanwhile....

The mainstream news has drawn links between the Madrid bomb and London. SO IT IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER THAT THE MADRID SUSPECTS WERE CONNECTED TO THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT

bbc report: Spain suspects 'were informants'

The Spanish interior ministry says it is investigating reports that two suspects in the 11 March Madrid train bombings were police informants.

plus... state terrorism
CUI BONO? (WHO BENEFITS?)

violence designed to induce fear among the citizenry and the subsequent call for greater "security."

....and just watch that national ID card legislation sail through after this

London bombs: At a glance
Who's who at the G8 summit



"The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy."
(...Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General)

Tuesday 5 July 2005

uk Chief constable experiences 50,000-volt Taser gun

Greater Manchester Police's Chief Constable Michael Todd has allowed himself to be blasted with a 50,000-volt Taser gun in a bid to get them issued to frontline police. they are currently issued only to firearms officers.

Mr Todd took the hit under controlled conditions. Mr Todd said afterwards: "I couldn't move, it hurt like hell. I wouldn't want to do that again. I've never experienced anything like it. You just seem to freeze."
new opportunities for manufacturing consent

"Africa's new best friends" by George Monbiot

At the Make Poverty History march, the speakers insisted that we are dragging the G8 leaders kicking and screaming towards our demands. It seems to me that the G8 leaders are dragging us dancing and cheering towards theirs.

The G8 leaders have seized this opportunity with both hands. Multinational corporations, they argue, are not the cause of Africa's problems but the solution. From now on they will be responsible for the relief of poverty. The US and Britain are putting the multinational corporations that created poverty in charge of its relief....

The G8 leaders and the business interests their summit promotes can absorb our demands for aid, debt, even slightly fairer terms of trade, and lose nothing.

They can wear our colours, speak our language, claim to support our aims, and discover in our agitation not new constraints but new opportunities for manufacturing consent.

Justice, this consensus says, can be achieved without confronting power. They invite our representatives to share their stage, we invite theirs to share ours.....

...the new consensus denies that there's a conflict between ending poverty and business as usual.

To become eligible for help, African countries must bring about "a market-based economy that protects private property rights", "the elimination of barriers to United States trade and investment" and a conducive environment for US "foreign policy interests". In return they will be allowed "preferential treatment" for some of their products in US markets.

Few would deny that one of the things Africa needs is investment. But investment by many of our multinationals has not enriched its people but impoverished them. The history of corporate involvement in Africa is one of forced labour, evictions, murder, wars, the under-costing of resources, tax evasion and collusion with dictators.

archives...

"No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders..."
(excerpts from Edward Bernay's Propaganda -1928)

Sunday 3 July 2005

UK CITIZENS ready to face prison over ID cards

"This is the poll tax all over again."

The Home Office estimates that around 17 per cent of adults - up to four million people - oppose the cards. A recent ICM poll, commissioned by No2ID, found that 43 per cent believe they are a 'bad' or 'very bad' idea.

'Whichever poll you believe,' says Phil Booth, head of No2ID, 'there are millions who just won't do it.'

Many of the tactics to be used by the campaigners have been borrowed from Australia, where in 1987 the government scrapped plans for ID cards after a network of 'refusenik' organisations obstructed the scheme.

individuals are being encouraged to launch their own forms of resistance. One idea is for people to refuse to touch their fingers on the scanners, causing backlogs at the 70 ID card centres.

Campaigners are also advised to cross their eyes when in front of the iris scanners. Another suggestion is for people to say they have undergone a religious conversion, and insist on wearing burqas - which cover the face - in front of the scanners.

meanwhile...

'existence precedes essence'

with the loss of certainties in the contemporary world, there are no clear philosophical answers to the question of existence.

then each individual has to design their own life as a project. The choice and responsibility of that project falls entirely on them.

If there is no cosmic designer, then there is no design or essence of human nature.

self-consciousness gives the human subject the opportunity to define itself. The individual creates his/her self by making self-directed choices.

If we, as individuals, simply follow custom or social expectations, we have escaped the responsibility of making our own choices, of creating our own essence. We have acted in bad faith.

We are free to create our own interpretation of ourselves in relation to the world, to create a project of possibilities, of authentic actions as the expression of freedom....

(flickr... "You aren't being paid to believe in the power of your dreams.")

archives...

the Surveillance Camera Players

sousveillance

identity
Anti-Japanese WWII Propaganda

(via we-make-money-not-art)
AMERICA suspected of keeping secret prisoners on warships

"There are very, very serious accusations that the United States is maintaining secret camps, notably on ships," the Austrian UN official told AFP in Vienna, adding that the vessels were believed to be in the Indian Ocean region.

"They are only rumours, but they appear sufficiently well-based to merit an official inquiry," he added.

archives...

N379P / N8068V

The executive jet with the tail number N379P (N8068V) is a US Department of Defence prisoner transport, also known as "Guantanámo Bay Express". The craft transports people to undisclosed locations for Ultra Rendition, i.e., delivery of detainees to be tortured in foreign locations renowned for their poor human rights records.

"to stop the pain you will tell them anything they want to hear. anything."
Disney/ABC radio personality Paul Harvey's Tribute to Slavery, Nukes, Genocide

Disney/ABC radio personality Paul Harvey, one of the most widely listened to commentators in the United States, presented his listeners on June 23 with an endorsement of genocide and racism that would have been right at home on a white supremacist shortwave broadcast.

Harvey concluded:

"We didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.

"And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which--feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy."

plus...

"Quotes from the The American Taliban"