Condi, Death, Fraud and the Manic Street Preachers

Yes a dark cloud of terrible proportions descended over, er, Blackburn today. Condi came to town. How come nice women don't achieve positions of power? Anyway she said that tactical mistakes had been made in Iraq and so on, blah blah blah, but the strategy's correct. The strategy at the moment being to leave Iraqis with no hospitals, water, electricity etc. while defense companies reap a huge profit building enormous luxurious complexes for American 'diplomatic staff.' Saw a good episode of Dispatches the other day. Images of babies dying in leaky insulators held together with selotape while a reporter uncovers the massive fraud that took place in the wake of the occupation, the $20 billion of Iraqi reconstruction money that went missing. Hearing how the coalition provincial authority went on an enormous spending spree just before the money was meant to be handed over to the Iraqi government. Stories about people being given $10 million dollars and told to spend it within two days and so forth. Rich fuckers handing out perks to their cronies while people are dying in the streets.
Same. Old. Story.
As for me...well I'm on a course at the moment, teaching me how to get a job. Yes I'm unemployed. With each penny I get out of the government, I feel a little thrill. Because I am not a fan of governments. As you well know. Unfortunately this course will have to be cut short. I'm taking medication which has a tendency to render me unconscious for long periods of time, making punctuality a bit difficult. So its back on the sickness benefits for me, hooray. I'll probably just stay on them until I get out of here. Kind of a fitting end to my time in this place.
Aside from all that, I've been listening to early Manic Street Preachers songs and getting angry. Its excellent music to get angry to. 'The Holy Bible' is the darkest album I've ever heard. I'll leave you with an excerpt from 'Archives of Pain';

"If man makes death then death makes man,
Tear the torso with horses and chains,
Killers view themselves like they view the world they pick at the holes,
Not punish less, rise the pain, sterilize rapists,
All I preach is extinction."

No, I'm not in a good mood.

Bush = Tosser

Yes I know, its obvious. But he's surpassed himself this week. Asked about troop withdrawal he said that the big decisions about Iraq would be handled by "future presidents and future governments of Iraq." So he's done with the issue basically. Thats that, he's got other things to attend to, like planning his next long vacation, and invading Iran. He went into this country and left it without clean water, without a health service, without petrol and in the grip of a horrific civil conflict, he led his army into a killing zone, at least tens of thousands of civilians dead("about thirty thousand," in his own frighteningly casual, off-hand words). And now he's going to walk away whistling as if nothing happened.
If there is any justice in this world Bush, Cheney et all will be sharing a jail cell when these "future presidents" make their decisions, and America will be run by people who respect the democratic system, people who abide by international law, people who can speak a coherent sentence, people who don't hear voices in their head telling them to go to war.
But I doubt it.

The Tragedy of Darth Blair

Oh, Tony. Tony, Tony, Tony. How has he survived all this scandal? Cash for access(another Palast scoop), dodgy mortgages, and now the flogging of peerages to campaign doners. Odd character, Blair. This guy who used to impersonate Mick Jagger in a college band... He started out as a bona fide lefty. If you read his early writings its all good social democratic stuff, very old labour. Its a good example of power corrupting someone it seems, the abandonment of principles to the cause of getting elected. Thats what the New Labour machine is all about. They got power by cannibalising Tory policies and promising to be all things to all people, they stay there because the Tories have nothing to offer that New Labour can't. We now have David Cameron pratting about with such no-brainers as 'poverty is bad' 'environment is good' 'crime is bad'. He can't win. Defeating Labour will have to involve somehow opening people's eyes to the fact that they have done next to nothing for the ordinary people of this country and fallen over backwards to help out the very rich. Then persuading them to vote for your own washed up, no-policies-left, "bad things are bad" party.
Blair himself is done for though. He can blame George Bush for that. I wonder what will become of our once-handsome-now-withered PM when he finally goes. What will he do? Will we discover that, like Darth Vader, there is still some good left in him? Or will he be forever consumed by the dark side? Only time shall tell...
Everywhere you look its the rich helping the rich in this world. Iraq, America, Britain, everywhere.

Hag kills father for campaign funds. Probably.

Had to touch on this. Over in Americaland, evil Katherine Harris is running for a place in the senate. For those who don't know Harris was the bizarrely made up official who oversaw the theft of the Florida elections in 2000, winning Bush the presidency. Currently her democratic opponent is heading for a landslide victory, with a campaign fund of about $11 million compared to Harris' $2 mil. On a recent TV appearance she made the fairly far-fetched claim that she was going to win the nomination. The reason? Her father recently passed away, leaving her a $10 million inheritance that she is now going to put towards her campaign. And thats it. No talk of policies or any of that crap. People must realise now that something has to change in the way these campaigns are financed when you have a potential senator simply stating that she's going to buy her victory. Thing is, she has reason to be confident-every presidential nomination since 1976 has been one by the campaign that put up the most cash. The US political system is entirely off limits anyone but multi-millionairres, hardly representative of the American people. Aaargh. Anyway she probably killed the old man herself. I mean look at her.
Look at her.
Sorry this had to be the first image to appear on this blog but....Look at her!
Head over to http://www.gregpalast.com for more on Florida if you like. He's the guy who uncovered the whole thing.
Of course here in Britain there's no controversy over campaign funds...or is there?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4824278.stm

Oh the soft warm radiance of money....

What is wrong is not in here

Read some interesting statistics. In America prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs went up 25% after 9/11 and anti-depressants up 17%. I don't think this is a reflection of the fear of dying in a terrorist attack. American politicians talk about the 'post 9/11 environment' as if a new world was born on that day, as if the nature of reality itself was altered and I think people are buying into that. A psychiatrist whose practice increased by 20% after the attacks said that "these people feel they have no control over their lives." I think that hits the nail on the head. For our governments this is a good thing-they have set themselves up as the ones to protect us in this evil new age. People puzzle over the rise in mental illness over the course of the twentieth century, but there really is no mystery-atom bombs, Vietnam, terrorism, wars, the loss of public space to corporations, the loss of community spirit, the increasing level of distrust between people, the increasing surveillance culture....what can an ordinary person do in the face of these things? With the state the world is in and the places we seem to be heading it seems to me that the depressed and frightened are the most sane. How can you seriously consider the state of the world and still be happy? I keep thinking about a simple little couplet Thom Yorke wrote:

Anti-depressants are a bad idea
What is wrong is not in here

Good old fashioned colony building

We're pulling 700 troops out of Iraq. People are saying that this is going to lead to a timetable of withdrawal, but I doubt the American government is going to let us leave. They're in there for the long haul. Just look at the 'reconstruction' thats been happening. While ordinary Iraqis are still struggling for electricity, clean water and petrol, a huge 'embassy' is being constructed in Iraq. This structure will be completely self-sufficient(with its own electricity and water supplies of course), cover an area of around 21 square miles and have walls up to fifteen feet thick-a fortified headquarters for the US in Iraq. Combine this with the two bases Camp Liberty and Camp Victory which boast swimming pools, restaurants, movie theatres and electrical goods stores among other things- essentially military towns for the US- and the idea that America will abandon these multi-billion dollar facilities seems fanciful. America's most recent National Security Strategy Overview, from 2002 http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nssall.html, states among aother things the need for permanent bases beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia to dissuade potential adversaries from building a military to rival America's power.
George Bush claims that troops will withdraw once the Iraqi military 'stands up' but there is a big problem here at least in the short term. America has, however inadvertantly, created a pro-Iranian government in Iraq-the likelyhood of them endowing this government with a functioning military at the moment would be suicidal.
Both America and Britain say they will stay as long as they are wanted, that they are in Iraq 'by invitation' but its increasingly obvious that Iraqis want them out. A great many Iraqis blamed the Samarra mosque bombing on the coalition, Shias and Sunnis marched together against the occupation after the blast. This seems a lot less fanciful if you take into account the fact that last year two British SAS men disguised as Arabs were arrested by Iraqi police while driving a car full of bombs and detonators. A lot of press was given to the subsequent raid by the British army to rescue these men from the people they were supposed to be allied with, but there hasn't been much speculation about what these two special forces men were actually doing driving around with a load of bombs. Its obvious that covert operations are underway in Iraq, and it does make sense for America and Britain to want sectarian conflict. If Iraqis are fighting each other they are less likely to be fighting their occupiers and therefore endangering America's permanent colony in the Middle East.

Aaargh

Suffering from a rare bout of not-having-writers-block. Yes I'm working on a story that seems like it might actually go somewhere....its fairly surreal at the moment, which is probably the result of repeatedly watching Vic Reeves Big Night Out, listening to Aladdin Sane and the ever- present lack of decent sleep.
Aside from that I am thoroughly stressed out. I'm trying to sort out my finances for uni at the moment and it all seems frighteningly complicated. I'm sure it will work out ok. No I'm not. I don't know. I could very easily fuck things up and not realize until its too late; it a speciality of mine I'm very good at it. Oh, the things I've fucked up...
So these are the things that preoccupy me today. That and the big looming shadow of death stalking me everywhere I go. I don't know why its stalking me, maybe it fancies me or something I dunno. After all its only human. What the hell am I on about?

...................

Hmm. I should change the name of this page to 'Ben's frothing anti-religion blog.'
I'm such a bore these days.

God is a Wuss

Certain Islamic leaders are now demanding that Europe introduces laws criminalising insulting the pillars of Islam, and are threatening a mass boycott of European products if they don't get their way. They justify this by stating that Jews have this sort of protection through the various anti-semitism laws in existence in Europe, and they want equal treatment. A boycott would put European countries under some considerable pressure but they have to resist.
The argument pertaining to anti-semitism laws is bullshit. The laws are in place to protect a race of people, not a religion. No religion, including Judaism, has the kind of protection from insults that these scholars are now demanding and none should. The reason for this is that religion is a choice while race is most certainly not. As I've said before in this blog (I think) no-one should be persecuted for their religion in any way, but there are already a wealth of anti-discrimination laws in Europe designed to prevent that kind of thing.
Of course this is all an extension of the ridiculous cartoon incident. Publishing the cartoons was an ignorant and pig-headed act of malice by a newspaper a little too right wing for comfort, but the reaction of the extremists seems ridiculous to me. If God is so offended by these cartoons, why doesn't he do something about it? Why does he need human beings to stick up for him? Isn't he all powerful? If God wants someone dead, why doesn't he do it himself? What on Earth would be the point putting in place laws to protect a God?

Cant think of a title

Low for the past few days. Even the continuing political situation fails to excite me at the moment. I've failed at about four previous attempts to post something coherent; I get angry and start ranting then about halfway through I realize that I just don't give a shit about it anymore.
(Sigh)
Still, I have realized that I can identify the New Labour politicians in any group of random people. They all have the same facial expression; a kind of sanctimonious smugness. Its unmistakable once you get used to it, its not the kind of expression that any sane person would habitually wear. A slight smile that never fades. I identified this woman on question time using this method yesterday, despite the fact that I couldn't hear anything as I was abusing my guitar through some headphones. I have to admit that in this case the expression may have been the result of a face lift. Her eyebrows were definitely at an unnaturally jaunty angle. Isn't this fascinating?
What else...
Oh I can't be bothered

Death is no penalty

The trial of Zacarias Moussaoui seems set to become the best demonstration yet of the utter futility of the death penalty. What use is it to execute someone whose goal is martyrdom in any case? Its like letting him off scott free. And it certainly won't be any use as a deterant to anyone else planning a suicide attack. And this is all without addressing the ethical issues, namely its wrong to kill someone who is at your mercy.
The problem I have with executing people like this, aside from the fact that its barbaric, is that it is counter productive. These people are meant to represent a threat to our civilisation, so study them when you have them. This goes for Saddam as well-people like him keep cropping up throughout history causing mayhem-once he's in custody and no threat to anyone why not take the opportunity to find out what makes him tick? Know your enemy. Its common knowledge that the psychological profiling of Hitler during WW2 proved invaluable, killing someone like this just seems a waste. And if we want a world where human life is respected more than it is now, executing anyone is counter productive.
Now I'm going to get on my big English high horse and say that America needs to catch up with the rest of the civilised world on this issue. But polls (gallup) suggest that there's still widespread support for the death penalty in the states-somewhere around 70%. Then again support for the penalty over here seems to have only just dropped below 50%; the lowest level since it was abolished. Still higher than I'd have thought. So maybe I'm wrong.
.

Fear of Sleep

Yep. I don't know if there's a word for it, but I' m definitely suffering from it. May have something to do with the kind of dreams I generally have. Last night...I don't remember it clearly but it was something about a contagion being spread by spiders, cheerfully combining two things I'm petrified of. I obviously have a very inventive subconscious. And it obviously doesn't like me one bit. Either that or its just a bit confused. I can identify with that.
Today, I tuned my guitar down to b flat and spent hours making sinister bluesy noises with it. I love my guitar.

Tony and God

Blair now says that God will judge him for the decision to go to war in Iraq. If he's open to being judged maybe he should pay the International Criminal Court a visit; last time I heard starting a war that isn't in self-defense and without a security council vote is a war crime. Its the war crime. But obviously he doesn't recognize that kind of judgment.
I wish I was God. I'd give him a judging he wouldn't soon forget. There's a few other people I can think of who could do with a damn good judging as well. Grrrr

Avoidance of Head Detonation

Damn thoughts if I don't write them down my head will EXPLODE.
Christianity is in decline in this country because it has become watered down and vague. Women as vicars, gay vicars, gay marriage and so forth are all symptoms of this. Being a liberal minded individual all of this is music to my ears, but it is undeniably against the doctrine of Christianity. The problem is that people are, for the most part, tolerant and liberal minded in this country and this...niceness just doesn't fit in with the more intolerant aspects of Christianity, so Christianity itself had to change. But in changing it lost any semblance of legitimacy-if you can choose not to believe in certain parts of the bible, what reason is there to believe any of it at all? The trouble with the liberalisation of religion is that eventually it will have to renounce itself. How can a liberal person believe it is right for someone, anyone, no matter what they have done, to be tortured? Yet Christians believe in Hell, where people are tortured for all eternity for as little as not believing in God. If organised religion wants to remain legitimate it has to accept that it is intrinsically cruel.
I'm not anti-religious. I think you can factor a God into a liberal and tolerant world view, it just won't be any of the ones that are on offer. I've read enough psychology and experienced them often enough to know that religious feelings are real, and they try to latch onto things-ideas of God, spirituality, aliens, ghosts, giant lizards who rule the world, astrology, superstition. I just think that religion should be personal, not this huge authoritarian monster straddling the Earth.

Thought Crimes.

Oh, how I loathe the government. These people are continually trying to mess with our heads. You can now be visited by the police for expressing an opinion-a catholic couple were recently warned that that their homophobic letters to the council could land them a jail sentence of up to seven years. I disagree with their beliefs and would happily hurl insults at them if I came across them in the street, but you can't jail someone for what they think. Its ludicrous.
We've had the racial and religious hatred law, where the government wanted to criminalise abusive or insulting criticisms of religion. They then moderated this by saying that a religion could be criticized as long as its believers weren't insulted, prompting Rowan Atkinson to hilariously point out that "there is no point making fun of a belief if nobody believes it." Any criticism of religion is insulting to its believers. This law would have essentially outlawed criticizing, for instance, the misogynistic and homophobic aspects of Islam. I say Islam in particular because, as the above demonstrates, the extreme views of Christianity will obviously not be afforded such protection.
We also had glorifying terrorism, which had to be dropped when the House of Lords pointed out that it was impossible to agree on what "glorifying" actually meant. You can't make laws regulating freedom of speech, our language is too versatile and complex. Any law relating to what people say or think is open to misinterpretation and therefore abuse.The Lords, though it pains me to say it, have constantly stopped this government from eroding our liberties since 9/11. For a bunch of people who inherited their power they seem to behave in a strangely level headed and compassionate way. Which is probably why Blair is so dead set on reforming them out of existence.
I've said it once and I'll say it again: democracy doesn't work.

must....stop.....posting...this...bullshit..

Just gave this whole blog a reading over. Telling how its all stuff I've read or seen or thought and not what I've done...this is because if it was about things I'd done it'd read like an obscure Brian Aldiss novel called Report on Probability A. Its a great idea but not for a novel: too short, but he stretches it out by describing every little mundane thing in minute detail like its being written by an obsessive compulsive. Brian Aldiss. Good writer, but a bit of cheeky fucker sometimes. He wrote the story A.I. is based on, and Barefoot in the Head is good. I think. Its set in Europe and the water supplies have been contaminated with LSD and its so hallucinatory that I can't actually remember anything else about it. Er...so my life is fairly dull at the moment, essentially, is what I'm saying. If, in fact, I am saying anything at all. Oh, and I killed the other blog. Was a bit pointless really. I'm not really all that good at prose or poetry, I can't connect the lines together properly. I think dialogue is my thing, if I have one. I'm best when I'm writing conversations, I even think in the form of conversations most of the time which is a bit fuckin weird.....I'm babbling. This wouldn't happen if I couldn't type so fast. Sorry, I've been awake for about 25 hours and I'm bored out of my skull, which is why I'm blathering all over the screen like this.......I'm going to watch the x-files now.
(slumps over keyboard, dead)

Let there be light

The universe. Where did it come from? Before there was a universe there was nothing. No matter, no gravity, no space, no time. No time! And about 14 billion years ago BOOM and suddenly there's all this stuff. How the fuck does something like that happen? Nobody knows, not even really really amazingly clever people know. There are theories; that there are millions of universes that create themselves all the time in different configurations; that before the big bang time and space did exist but in forms so alien to us that we could never imagine what it would be like...and all of this has resulted in us and our brains which are able to contemplate the very beginning of everything. 14 billion years of mind-buggeringly unlikely events and here I am, watching a talk show on TV with a girl who doesn't know who got her pregnant. She looks like one of the Orcs from Lord of the Rings. Seriously.
Anyway, yeah, the universe, whooo. Impressive. And Dark Star, man that's a good movie. I think.

Darker Thoughts

Fucking world. Why is the world run by such utter cunts? Because they're the only ones who want to. They're the only ones who will ever want to, no matter what fancy democratic system you dream up the scum will always rise to the top. Especially here in Great (ha) Britain. We have an education system dedicated to producing the next generation of chinless pillocks. 99% of our MPs come from the Eton/Oxbridge axis, democracy my arse. I hate this country. I'm moving to Venezuela. Or maybe the moon it'll probably be more suitable for human life once Blair's finished with us. This guy says he's serious about climate change but still wants to expand our airports to cope with growth in the number of passengers year on year. Aviation fuel is one of the principle contributors to global warming, even the water vapour it produces forms ice crystals in the troposphere that trap the sun's heat. In order to cope with the projected growth we will need the equivalent of a new Heathrow every five years. Aaargh. The world would be better off if Britain just sank into the sea. No I'm not feeling very patriotic. At least America has good ideas at the centre of it, no matter how much Bush and his cronies pevert it, maybe the best set of ideas anyone ever had. Britain is based on heirarchy and elitism and letting inbred idiots run things because they were born with a certain name. Oh, and the Magna Carta. Forgot about that. And I may as well, seeing as Blair is pissing all over it.
Deep breath.
In other news some nutter is being tried for four murders...he wrote about wanting to become a serial killer, basing himself on Freddie Kruger. When he stabbed and injured one senior citizen he said "sorry, I'm schizophrenic." What made me laugh(yes, I'm quite desensitized to murder) about this whole thing was when a reporter on channel four described him as having "an anti-social behaviour disorder". This is new one on me. I think stabbing four people to death while wearing a ski mask is a little bit beyond anti-social. Is it politically incorrect to say "psychopath" these days?
Listen to me, whinging about everything. Why don't I just lighten up?

Dark Thoughts

Going to uni this year. I'll be 28 when I finish. I have never in my life thought a full three years ahead, never. I don't like it. To be honest, for a long time I never thought I'd make it to the age of 24. I was certain that I'd be dead by now. This is because...I was mad. Mad as a bag of ferrets. I had not been introduced to the wonderful world of pills.
I wonder if I shouldn't have picked a more academic course. I mean, a degree in Media Writing? That doesn't sound very impressive. Then again, I shouldn't kid myself; the only reason I'm doing it is so I can live in London again. Its difficult growing up in a big fuck off city, then moving to a decaying seaside town that seems to exist in its own horrible little dimension just, at the point at which you become an adult. I've been stuck here for nine years. Nine. There is a local legend which states that Hastings was cursed at some stage. The longer you live here, the more it seems to make sense. Out of the people I knew in this town: three suicide attempts, one successful, one death from illness, two heroin addictions, one case of paranoid schizophrenia, one messy divorce, one jail sentence. It was also the setting for my spectacular downfall. And I never got out much. Maybe its like this in every town, I dunno.
Any city would be better than here. Except for (spits) Southampton. I'd rather live in Baghdad than Southampton. Southampton should be burned to the ground. Southampton is an offence to human decency. I hate the place this much and I was only there for two days. Fuck Southampton and all who sail in her.
And once again I've completely lost my train of thought.