Heidi the cross-eyed Opossum loves Gef the talking Mongoose

Who wouldn't? Yes it's the big love-match of year. The Facebook royal wedding if you will.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11118503209
http://www.facebook.com/Heidi.DasSchielendeOpossum

In even bigger, stranger news, tonight on Channel 4 News at 19.38, during a report about the likely traffic congestion on UK roads, an RAC Patrolman appeared named in a caption as Crackers Patel . Weird eh? As it turns out this is none other than RAC patrolman of the year 2009 , Prakesh 'Crackers' Patel. I may be over-using my new found power to make links but read about this modern-day hero here:

http://www.aviva.co.uk/media-centre/story/17604/mill-hill-man-scoops-top-rac-honour/

To counter the unpleasant taste in the mouth left by sending you to a stinky corporate website, here's a better link. Peter Watkins has updated his site with new information about the availability of films which is good news as most of them I've not seen. I'd love a copy of 'Culloden' anyway. 'The War Game' was pretty scary but did feature the inside of Chatham Town hall in the early 1960s. The very room where the policeman hands over the civil emergency plans is where I used to go to record fairs on saturday afternoons in the 80s. My brother even saw Tigertailz there. Is that how you spell it?

http://http//pwatkins.mnsi.net/
http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=58NmAzQzRjk

The RAC is watching you

See. I told you. It was very hard to get this picture as it is forbidden to photograph RAC structures as they do not officially exist. I risked my life to get this pic, even me, the founder of the Revolutionary Army of Crackers. That's how well trained the RAC is, and absolutely committed to abolition of the flawed concept of leadership as set out in my incontrivertable doctrines. I know, I'm an idiot. Plus GROUPTHINK renders committee governance pointless too so how does anything get decided or done?

Just do it!

Or alternatively don't fucking bother. Either is good. It really doesn't matter. I could count my actual followers on the fingers of one hand....of Django Rheinhart. Oh look it up. I pobably spelt it wong anywaz.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I've been so bad today. I finally totally snapped. It finally got to me. Today there was what appeared to be a big tyre fire somewhere in east Manc and I went on to the big deserted car park at sport city and watched the flames occassionally emerging from the thick black smoke blowing north-west, luckily. It's ok, I've got a cast iron alibi but it was certainly mesmeric watching the clenched fists rapidly rising and turning and dissipating. Actually strangely calming as well as slightly frightening. This odd little spell started and ended in flames. What a horrid few weeks it's been.

The straw that broke the poor Camel's back was simply losing a reciept to be attached to an invoice i had to submit today. Naturally a small folded peice of paper is the easiest thing in the world to lose but looking it for it made me very angry and very late and I never even found it despite having at some point last week, treated it like a very important object. Seriously, it completely ruined my day, throwing everything off balance and making all my interactions with other people rather askew as most of my brain was trying to solve this very frustrating problem. It was already getting dark by the time acceptance finally freed me from this awful curse. It's gone. The very worst that will happen is that I won't get my £12.50 Key cutting bill repaid and I'll look a bit of a twat but hey what's new? I look a bigger twat from actually trying to go about my business with this evil cloud above me. Aw shit.

Funnily enough though, it's not the only time I've had a day fucked up by a seemingly insignificant little peice of paper. Hee hee.

Chances are it stayed in a pocket and got washed into destruction or was discarded along with other pocket kipple. While I was looking for it, a form turned up I'd made someone resend because I swore I'd never got it. That wasn't all my fault this time but it's me who ends up having to say sorry again and looking a prick. How do these things happen? Who's doing this to me and why? Presumably to drive me nuts. The only precedent I can think of is Audrey Tatou in the film Amelie. I'd better not have one of those bitches in here. I'll have to put poison down and that's something I never do. Who am I kidding? I'd love it if Audrey Tatou payed me any attention, if only to torture me psychologically.

You may notice I put a content warning up. I think that obliges me to say more horrid things. Fetid Badger Shitecakes!

OOOOH - copy out the dog story from The Private Eye - later. Ref to Heidi.

The day everything became nothing

Isn't she lovely? Plenty more where that came from, Heidi fans. As for you fans of semi-serious speculation about the faliures of the current economic-political paradigm, just chill for a mo and enjoy this highly satisfying creature who's never started a war or closed a library. There's nothing dodgy about it. I just want her to like me.

Thanks to NOMEANSNO for the title of this post and to the wonderful Jello Biafra for giving NOMEANSNO their platform. Oh go give it a listen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbS4Caymdo4&feature=related
Then go straight to DEAD SOULS as it's the next track on the EP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8tDrsledJk&feature=related

In Koosism news, you will note that one of our tribe, Mr Moosa Koosa, was rescued from Libya. He may be a bit of black sheep but if there's a Koos in a country being bombed by NATO, you can be damn sure we'll get them out by any means necessary.

Meanwhile the RAC goes from strength to strength, with massive watchtowers being built all o'er this land to guard against the incursions of the cursed ancient ones. Seeing as the top gang (that's all it is) currently is preoccupied with having its hands full while curiously unaware it's all slipping through its fingers, the RAC will now make its benevolant presence felt to the general world population. You can help! Let your neighbours know that help is at hand, that the days of liars, tyrants and hypocrites are numbered and that an Opossum with a retinal developmental disorder is the best thing on this entire planet.

More sense later. Hopefully. Please forgive me! I'm having a rather drawn out odd spell.

I couldn't remember my own name, so I called myself Bob. It's weird being a Bob but I'll get used to it. I have to

Communist Wallpaper

Well at least it makes a change from Heidi the Cross-Eyed Opossum. Don't worry Heidi fans, I've collected plenty more pictures of my beautiful optically-challenged marsupial girlfriend. You heard me.

Well you didn't, obviously. But...

That doesn't matter right now! This is important. Concentrate now!

Now I want you to look at this man. The chap in the picture above there. Yes, above that. I told you to forget about that. Now, this chap, he's called Harry Pollit and we think, well... we have reasons to suspect that he might just be a bit of a red.

Yes that's right, he was in this blog a few weeks back. A lot of nonsense. There's getting to be quite a lot of it about, that Communist stuff. I suppose all that 'Revolutionary Army' stuff kind of invites it. Really, the whole thing's just silly.

Hmmm listen chaps. I've gone and written myself into something of a a cul-de-sac. I started off with lots to say and now I'm stuck in some sort of, what I can only describe as some kind of... Whitehall thing. It's a damn nuisance but that's how it is. I'll get on to those boffins down at the lab and see what they make of it, get a few heads together and the like. Fetch yourself back in a couple of days and I'm jolly sure we'll have this whole nasty business straightened out and Mr blog will be ship-shape, chipper and generally tickety-boo.

Play it again, Yortlebluzzgubbly (2)

There's some really great stuff available as a podcast from the BBC world service.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/


The last 2 episodes of The Forum have been of particularly interest to the intellectual heavyweights (ha!) whose philosophies underpin the activities of the RAC (not that one) who's only official public mouthpeice you are reading now. In the last Forum, Tim Flannery discussed the possible emergence of the super-organism, a new life-form composed of the collaboration of all mankind, solving the global problems he's created (mankind that is, not Tim Flannery) and becoming a planetry consciousness. He states that globalisation could be the beginning of this development and it's certainly worth ruminating on that, particularly as the last blog post approvingly referred to the work of Peter Watkins who slagged off globalisation good and proper. While we're on the subject I'm aware that a line I used in review of his films was lifted directly from the introduction to 'La Commune' I'd linked to. An embarrassing accident that certainly sheds some light on how easy it is to think you've had a clever opinion whereas in fact it's just someone elses you've only just been exposed to and then forgotten. When I say 'you' I mean of course 'me'. You know, that crazy idiot pariah person.

Crazy idiot pariah or not, I'm way ahead of Tim Flannery. Here's a 2006 post from the now defunct EMPIRE OF CRACKERS blog originally titled Play It Agin, Yortlebluzzgubbly, which is of course a quote from Alan Moore's Ballad of Halo Jones. The picture which accompanied this peice is shown here (slightly too big-must fix!) and features characters from the Tartakovsky/McCracken stable:




"
One of the interesting features of life is its tendency to form into more and more complex forms despite irresistible entropy. Like the enemy in our endless dualist world myths that divide the world into chaos and order, evil and good, Ahriman and Ormizhad, physics presents us with a name for the force that causes ordered structures to collapse and diffuse. Perhaps my human brain is too programmed by culture to see it any other way.

BUT the reality behind this is that life uses this constant movement as the source of the energy to build these structures we consume , inhabit and form part of. More and more complex structures develop out of the chaos of these collisions with a kind of ratcheting; every increase in complexity increasing the ability of these structures to accumulate more energy. Of course, being designed by chaos, most structures fail to achieve this objective but they don't last long in the game of course. Accidentally better random forms soon proliferate and find better ways of filling the space and accumulate that energy. Some even work out how to replicate themselves.

Six steps in the history of evolution from non-living forms to intelligent community:

1-Atoms (eg Carbon)
2-Molecules (Amino acids)
3-Complex Molecules (DNA)
4-Cells (Amoebas)
5-Organs/Organisms (Humans)
6-Super-Organisms (Communities)

At the moment, we're between 6 and 7, but what form will 7 take? We've been trying through lots of structures that aint worked or are Homo-Erectus*-like intermediates like city states, empires, nations, monarchies, fascism, communism etc. The United Nations is a hopeful start to a planetry organism but has built into it the inherent weakness of it's own structure, nation states. At its most visible level it is a body for the leaders of humans, or at least, the leaders of artificially-defined areas containing communities of humans. The ratchet effect may not work with such fragile cogs.

The key is voluntary co-operation. If it cannot be obtained find other ways of obtaining it. Ultimately coercion is loosening that ratchet and letting the entropy take us back a few more squares on the big board. (Jesus Koosie! These metaphors are all over the place!) Co-operation exists on every level of life, for example, the Mitochondria in our cells that allow us to use oxygen were originally parasitic organisms that invaded our ancestor cells and well.....love.

Stage 7 is the Empire of Crackers and the germ in the seed has emerged on the continent of North America and is spreading its information round the world on its predecessor's communications systems. The future isn't a military nightmare like Star Trek but an acceptance of the universal truths that what is best for individual is best for the world, that desire is there to help us not command us and that no man should feast while another man starves. I've been accused of having a vision tainted by former communist indoctrination that seeks big truths and big solutions but ain't no-one going to turn me around. I'm going all the way to stage 10 with the little fluffy pink one**and the big stoopid dragon because the universe is love!!!

*This sounds gay. Seriously, it's one of our antecedents.
**This sounds gay. Um it might be but I ain't. Like I care! Don't give me that feminine side crap. Only 1 chromosome is sexual. Therefore I'm 22/23 a woman. So there.
"



I'm well aware there's a lot wrong with that post. For one thing there are 23 pairs of large linear nuclear chromosomes in human cells, though I'm correct in pointing out that only 1 pair differentiates males from females. You get the point. The Zoroastrian truth-god Ormizhad is actually spelled Ahura-Mazda, a confusion in my mind originating from Philip K Dick. As for the 'emerging in the North American Continent' bit, I'd probably be less inclined to include that now, though that was where the internet begun which may be a significant tool in this evolutionary process. It was also where Crackers came from so...er....good. This is still his army! Or her army. Whatever.

Now going back to Flannery v Watkins globalisation- good or shit debate, I'll try and sort this out as best I can now. Globalisation is obviously a necessary process in the formation of the coming super-organism but it is a globalisation of univeral self-interested solidarity rather than the existing model of a global free-for-all that increases the rate at which all aspects of human life is commoditized. Free trade between humans and their associations must be the basis of the enlightened world-community (communism, I'm guessing, comes much later when the term no longer means what it does now) but in no sense is the current globalised world market 'free trade'. Free associations of humans are normally stamped down by the arbitrary, hierachical and immoral associations like nation states and multi-national corporations, which may be reasonably successful systems of control, manufacture and distribution but exist merely to perpetuate themselves and will seek to abort the coming super-organism as a function of their own survival consciously or unconsciously by their actions. Yes that makes it all clear. Um. As for the justified concern that globalisation is creating a global monoculture where the diversity of human and non-human systems is being eradicated, this I believe also a result of the flawed competitive national-capitalist model whereby all human communities are forced to follow a uniform developmental strategy with a fixed single outcome. Within the coming super-organism where co-operation rather than competition resumes it's place as the predominant evolutionary driver, a diversity of form benefits all componants of the super-organism and this era will begin to see more interesting forms of life develop where the divisions between male and female, human and animal, material and spiritual will be questions of day to day life choices rather than the oppressive monoliths they are at this time.

Participation and complicity

Oh yeh, incidently, we're at war again. What? How did that happen? No wonder I'm having some kind of pathetic emotional breakdown! Hopefully the military action begun today in Libya will conclude pretty sharpish one way or other. Perhaps a temporary partition between the government of Libya and a UN-administered mandate until public participation can began in either or both bits of Libya. There's been some worrying talk among politicians today about no longer tolerating a rogue state just south of Europe. Well I'm sorry but that's not our business. Perhaps some Libyans do support the current regime but we know some don't and in a localised area they're supposedly under UN protection whatever that means. I'd still rather have seen the Idi Amin solution, whereby the neighbours intervene to restore stability to their borders but given both Tunisia and Egypt are both undergoing dramatic political changes themselves, it wasn't very likely.

It must feel pretty nice for PM Cammers (soon to be Cammo?) to be attacking a regime so publicly courted by the previous government, Blair's especially. Will this international coalition go on to support the democratic rights of all the oppressed in the middle east? The unrepresented majority in the Kingdoms of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia etc and the Republics of Yemen and Syria? How about the Palestinians? Hamas in Gaza responded to an Israeli assassination bombing with an attack of dozens of rockets today. Which side does our coalition believe is the aggressor in this case?

Wattoo-Wattoo never used violence to solve problems. Hence the picture. See.

I hope at the end of all this we at least find out whether Al Megrahi really did carry out the Lockerbie bombing as the evidence against him did look pretty weak. That silly trade-off where we pretended we felt sorry for a dying man really didn't clear anything up. I'm all for releasing terminally ill people from prison but it would have been nice to have had to have gone through the evidence again in a court before releasing what may have been a mass murderer.

Anyway I promised to talk about The Monoform. I think it's best left to be described by radical film-maker Peter Watkins, where I'm getting all this shit from:
http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7PfaY9B27s

The second one, from 2001, is his introduction to La Commune which is an extraordinary film. A probably incomplete version in about 20-30 parts was available on YouTube till fairly recently and it really was an engaging peice of work. The enthusiasm of the participants (it seems wrong to call them actors) was so evident that at times it really felt as if you were watching live, current events. Something it shares with another classic Peter Watkins film 'Culloden' from the mid sixties and its contemporary, the masterpeice 'Battle of Algiers' which is actually a fictional film but filmed in a very similar style.

Anyway one of things I was very impressed with in this film introduction was how Watkins is aware of the paradoxes of his own position whilst being utterly certain that he's right. Most people on a the screen telling what you should think try to intimidate you with dogmatic authority but his own informal almost improvised style invites you to participate and ponder ourselves whether we're having our consciousness fragmented to keep us feeding (with junk food and junk information) or whether the media trend he's flagged up, and let's not for a moment deny he's onto something, is actually a symptom of our late-industrial highly captalised interconnected civilisation. Is the monoform just a highly-sucessful meme co-evolving with the mass-information-culture?

Personally I think that the Monoform has got a bit boring. It's totally ruined BBC2 for one thing and I'd love to see a diversity of informational culture. I'd like to think that new forms of participation are evolving in the rich primordial sea of the internet. It's all dependent on our own sense of responsibility for our own lives and the life around us. We have to face up to what we are including recognising our complicity in the suffering of others whether it be from the weapons being used in our name or the raw materials clawed out of the ground by slaves for our talky-magic boxes. Possibly including the one you're reading this on.

More likely you're reading this on the screen I'm looking at right now. Hello! Don't go nuts, you.

It's late. Better stop.

*********

It was too late and I'd long stopped making any sense. It's now Sunday night going into Monday morning at the end of this odd weekend. I don't feel I really got to grips with the enormity of this 'Monoform' stuff. Once you start looking for it it becomes ubiquitously apparent. Perhaps that's just because of the looking? What is communication? What happens when it fails? I think we're seeing it all the time.

One thing I certainly liked about the introduction film, though which the film-maker critisised himself for was the simplicity and honesty of the talking-head monologue. The best playwrights have always made use of this, of re-personalising communication. Today information exchange is often devoid of emotional context and is vulnerable to catastrophic misunderstanding. I suppose it's better for those who are classified as having autistic spectrum disorders and I've encounterd many on the internet who thrive communicating in a way that is less ambigious. I wonder if labelling them as disordered is really that useful. They certainly present divergent cognitive models and it may be in some conceptial environments those models may work better.

Anyway I'm rambling again. So much to say. To nobody. Who cares? I'm reading this back and smiling at my shortcomings. Maybe I'll try the monologue myself. After all I can't fail to participate with this captive audience. I think he thinks I'm mental. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong. Maybe both. Who cares? Everyone else just dismisses it or medicalises it. Fucking idiots.

I never got round to saying how much I've missed the Biography of Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore since the library got it back. Some fucker requested it! I've got him back though by requesting it myself again. Now he'll face dissappointment when he comes to renew it. There's no way he (or she)will finish it all, not if he's got a job anyway. There's too much information. Here's a little nugget I never knew: Palestine only has the name because Emperor Hadrian renamed it that after the Jewish revolts of the first century in a failed attempt to eradicate the people and the faith. The name refers to the Philistines (Goliath & co) who, centuries before, had been the major competitors to the tribes that were to become Judeans and Israelis. Also our old pal Arthur Koestler was wrong about the modern jews being the Khazars. DNA doesn't lie (Unless it's being used by the cops). The modern jews are the ancient jews and we've got to bear that in mind when we impose a settlement on those troublesome cuties.

Oh well back to the dog-shit again tomorrow. Great! I probably think I deserve it on some level. Last week I snapped and wrote PLEASE CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR DOG in algae-remover on the paving slabs near a really bad bit. Sadly the algae was thicker in some places than others so i expect the only legible bits will say CLEAN YO DOG which might not convey exactly the right message. Next time I'll go for PLEASE FLING YOUR DOG'S BROWN EGGS DIRECTLY INTO THE GARDENER'S EYES AS HE'S A PREPOSTEROUS JERK AND WOULD RATHER GO BLIND THAN SEE ANY MORE OF YOUR UGLY PROLETARIAN FACES AND YOUR IDENTIKIT BULL TERRIER DOGS ALL WITH SOME KIND OF DISGUSTING BOWELL CONDITION APPARENTLY. If there's enough algae killer.

Drug-addled Cockroaches

Hallucinogenic drug-addled cockroaches. That's what President 'Colonel' Gadaffi called those who have risen up against his regime in Libya, also "terrorists...rats...mercenaries". He claimed to have not even yet begun reppressing the protests, which is particularly ominous given that hundreds are probably already dead. Maybe more....there have been reports of military aircraft attacking civilians, though I was glad to see 2 Libyan pilots defecting to Malta in their Mirage jets. What must it be like being attacked by jet fighters? I can't imagine how frightening that must be.

It's been truly inspiring to see the bravery of those, probably mostly younger than me, who have brought about what is being called the 'Arab Spring'. Things are on the change and we're all going to feel it. Particularly if this unrest spreads throughout mainland Arabia as it is threatening to do. Why should it stop there? Maybe courage really is contagious. We might not need my Revolutionary Army after all. That's good for me! I can spend more time out of my brain! Wow I went on a spree this weekend and it was fun. No regrets cos I'm a total cockroach!

Meanwhile:

Elagalabus, manifested as bat-winged jet-black fairy of indeterminate gender, and Kanishka ,manifested as a Yurble (as usual), held a war council over the weekend to assess current events in an area of the world they both have had some influence upon. It is not known what they decided but we suspect they've already both got agents within the new political entities that are forming in the emerging democracies and will attempt to influence the activities of these comparatively naive political actors in order to accelarate the rate at which global power falls into their evil hands presumably so they can divide the world up between them.

It has been suggested that both Kanishka and Elagalabus are both the same entity or at least have collaborated closely in turning history's wheel; as far as we know Elagalabus disappears from Syria around the time that Kanishka's tribe begin moving west into what is now Afghanistan, though something that closely resembles part of Elagalabus is known to be at a location of great significance to one of the current in-play religions. Kanishka, on the other hand was somehow safely stored in one of the giant Buddhas on the silk road until it was destroyed by the Taliban in the 1990s, coveniently just as the world-wide web was taking off. Did he have the operation to free him planned more than 1700 years before? Or did Elagalabus manipulate the Islamic fundamentalists into freeing the Kushan God-King when it became possible to electronically re-incarnate him? The storage device was reported to have been a heavy black cuboid (like you-know-who)and no trace of it has emerged, except probably untrue rumours that the Americans are holding it at Begram airbase. Even if this is true, it's too late. He's in the web and he's probably reading this now, laughing like Anthony Head in Bleak Expectations.

I've tried sending an SOS beyond the invisible-dimensional-horizon but I doubt anything's getting through. By the look of it all the information just ends up being sucked into the Michael Ballsphere and sung in alternate lines of big show numbers by John Barrymon. Nobody ever notices. He's that fabulous.

Please help us!

Winkieliks

You can say what you like about Wikileaks but there sure is some interesting stuff there. The war logs all go over my head a bit I'll admit but the Cable viewer has been fascinating. I certainly wouldn't know about the eccentric President of Eritrea's woodwork habit. He is meant to have that in common with more than 1 of the Roman Emperors. Why not?

This latest one here concerns Iran and the strategies being developed by the United States to address the issue of its nuclear programme.

http://wl.opsec.eu/cable/2009/01/09LONDON207.html

It's off a mirror-site that's been constantly reliable.

" XXXXXXXXXXXX claimed the proximity of nuclear-armed Pakistan, a potentially radicalized and hostile Sunni state, looms even larger than the U.S. in Iranian calculations, and draws much expert-level planning attention in Tehran's think-tanks and ministries. "

Well I expect they have a lot to think about. Wow!

It'd be fascinating to find out who xxxxxxxxxxx is. He makes a lovely analogy about a carpet seller and his customer. I've always admired that aspect of Iranian culture, the carpets and the rugs and the way they're sold. Perhaps it's the entire islamic world? Possibly. Maybe it was a process that evolved in Mesopotamia all those years ago.

I was played some grotty anti-islam rant from some opiniated podcast nobody last night. He made all sorts of claims, most of which just arn't true. He claims to be a rationalist but was almost spitting his hatred. We're all being pressed now and it squeezes the bad stuff out of us more.

Happy Nirvana Day!

" What should young people do with their lives today? Many things obviously.
But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of lonelyness can be cured "

KURT VONNEGUT (Jr)

It turned up on http://escapepod.org/ . They (Mur Lafferty, Steve Eley or Norm Sherman) always ask you to blog about it or donate. Well I'll be able to be donater one of these days so this'll have to do. The stories are always worth listening to mostly nice, not always. The genre of the SF short story is in very good shape and I could fill blogspot with names of current writers I like. Having things read to you for free is the best thing on the internet. Social networking has killed the letter and internet porn is fueling an arms race of sexual deviancy. You know what I'm talking about.

Anyway let's get communities together with an immediate street party (now!) to celebrate the demise of The Streets. Apparently Mike Skinner says it's all over apart from some shite with those Grauniad twats. Hip Hip Hooray! That talentless peice of crap just annoyed the crap of me ever since he turned up. It must have been around the time that awful thing happened in New York and those wars started. Oh God what a waste. All that suffering. Mike Skinner really is a cunt. Whatever happened to Kosheen who turned up around the same time? I really liked them or her or whoever it was and yet they were all over in a blink of an eye while Skinnewr just chanted on like a derranged lone football supporter for years and years. Sometimes the planet Earth seems like a giant machine built to kick me in the face again and again. However tonight I'm wagging my tail and whooping at the moon because The Streets are over!

Happy ~Nirvana Day everyone! Hope you all get home.

Pollitt's dream

Around the houses today...

Let's start off with Estonia: Today I discovered that Koos ala goop a goop translated into Estonian means 'a site with goop goop'. Good eh? Estonia was, of course, part of the old Soviet Union along with this here stamp:

It's a little small but then it is a stamp. It's picture of Harry Pollitt who was the General Secretary of the British Communist Party from 1929-1956. There's a plaque dedicated to him on the door of Droylsden library where I went today and got out some nice books. They always sell a few old books there and I managed to get a copy of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' for 25p which I'm not sure old Harry Pollitt would appreciate. He's actually mentioned in a book I borrowed from there once (though he's probably in loads in the local section) which was 'Mao: The Unknown Story' by
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. That's not too pro-Communism either but having Pollitt on the door should reminds us that these books are available for me and all my fellow citizens thanks to the collective ownership of them. Under a purely capitalist system I might not be able to afford to buy and keep 'Mao: The Unknown Story' so I might not find out how bad Communism was. Unless of course some kindly rich philanphropist scumbag takes pity on his lessers and indulges us with gift of a library, if he feels like it.

It's no surprise Librarys are dissappearing at a rapid rate from the face of England during a Conservative Government. Council leaders have critisised the pro-libary campaigners like Philip Pullman and Mark Haddon saying that keeping Libraries would mean having to squeeze further services for vulnerable in the community. The elderly and the mentally ill etc. It really shouldn't be either one or the other. Not in a civilisation. Well a decent one anyway. Like lots of other fiscal-tightening related issues at the moment, you have wonder what happened to our society. It is a bummer paying taxes, no 2 ways about it, but in terms of a stable, healthy, prosperous and optimistic society, I really believe you get back more than you put in. I'll admit you need to constantly be vigilant against creating vast inefficient bureaucracys but it's still less of a risk than letting services get done on the cheap. A good example is the superbug scare of a few years ago that highlighted the lowering of standards in hospital cleaning thanks to the hiving off to the private sector of that area of the NHS. Not that publicly-run services are immune to corner-cutting and corruption but at least you know who's supposed to be in charge. The chain always leads back to an elected official rather than a faceless conglomerate. It's not like this is a terribly poor country either. It's just that the population generally thinks it's more important to spend their resources on toys like the endless mobiles phones and giant motor cars and all sorts of lifestyle crap to help them forget whatever boredom or fear or discontent rules their short short lives. Instead of investing our surplas back into society it's given to tax-dodging scandinavian technology firms, pissed against walls, burned away in adrenalin-generating pollution machines or shoved up our noses as powder. It's turned into plastic dolls of Doctor Who from a factory in China or given to owners of French Nuclear power plants so I can sit and type this. It's frittered away on individual distractrion instead of creating collective dignity.

I see our Prime Minister Mr Cameron has today informed that multi-culturalism hasn't worked. How chilling is that? Personally I think it's working out ok. I like the idea of being in a country where an Algerian is free to act like an Algerian or an eskimo is free to act like an Eskimo. Heaven help them becoming like nothing more than tanned or bleached versions of normal British people. There's plenty of them already. It's not like they're under any threat, no matter what shady Stephen Lennon thinks. We have laws for everyone who lives in this country and people of every community break them , including me sometimes. Honestly! A couple of angry, unhinged Muslims blow themselves up 6 years ago and now that means diversity is some kind of problem. Perhaps like the poor old libraries, multi-culturalism isn't generating enough profit for Cameron and Clegg and all those posh fucks in slick suits down there in that London. Maybe Harry Pollitt was on to something after all.

As I've said before our individual perspectives cannot comprehend what's happened on this planet and what is continuing to happen. Perhaps it's one of those great paradoxes that while as individuals we're capitalistic and playing out our own little versions of game theory, on a epoch-civilisation scale we're actually something more socialistic, gradually marching this thing called HUMANITY, hopefully this thing called ORGANIC LIFE into a future of both unity, diversity and most of all possibility. Harry Pollitt's dream. Goop goop.

EDF & EDL

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks to Ursula LeGuin and Heidi the cross-eyed Opossum without whom I'd never do this again. Yeh. Thanks.

Paxo's face was a picture! Jeremy Paxman that is, the presenter of Newsnight who attempted tonight to interview Stephen Lennon the LEADER of the ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE. Talk about the wrong Lennon!

Fascinatingly the EDL are doing to the BNP what they themselves did to the NF in the 1980s, ie replacing them as the Fascist opposition, a role that both EDL and BNP have denied playing, pretending instead to represent the authentic white working-class voice. The hardcore football hooligan types provide the street presence and get media attention while the leadership compose a rationale for their existence that becomes the basis of their unsophisticated somewhat paranoid political ideology. Each evolution of the Fascist movement gives a more nuanced and inclusive version of the ideology; the BNP dropped the NF's overt antagonism toward Afro-Caribbeans whereas the EDL denies having any concern about immigration at all, except for where it involves immigrants of the Islamic faith. Rather there is a constant re-iteration of the support the EDL gains from homosexuals and non-Muslim ethnic minorities. It points to injustices commited by Muslims on animals, women and unlike some of its notorious predecessors it applauds the nation of Israel's actions against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. They've come a long way from Mosley but not so far that they don't still stink of him. BNP founder John Tyndall once privately said they he couldn't care less about the blacks or immigration or politics. He just liked having a gang of toughs he could march around and there's always a section of males towards the bottom of any society who'll march to some tune or other. It's when those higher up start getting scared that the Mosley's, the Tyndalls and the (ha!)Lennons become an actual threat to civilisation.

Not that I believe that Lennon is the real brains behind the EDL. A grotty paranoid little Luton headcase with a equally grotty business turning women orange is hardly dictator material. Though I might be under-estimating the man of course. Certainly his analysis of the religion of Islam is nothing to write home about anyway.

It's just that with the uproar on the middle-east right now, who can say how that will tilt the delicate balance there and how the consequences could rebound on us here and well, everywhere. Israels only allies of any kind in the Muslim world have been Turkey and Egypt and if they're suddenly not as friendly, how will Netanyahu's government react? If it were me and you (hi!) we might think that more diplomacy may be advisable in the face of greater hostility but we're not Israelis, (I don't think we are anyway, perhaps one of us is) and there's a people whose history might suggest to them that a show a strength may be a better response to hostility. Particularly a show of strength against the allies of Iran like Hamas who control Gaza or Hezbollah who now control the coalition government in Lebanon. Iran itself isn't likely to be intimidated into submission by such action. Israel has nuclear weapons. Iran looks likes it wants them pretty bad and really can you blame them?

It might kick off this year or maybe a couple more years. Maybe sense will prevail but even so. Is it good to have the EDL marching around stirring up fear amongst ourselves? We're just furry little mammals, it's got nothing to do with us. These players are crazy collective-versions of us. They don't get hungry like us, or afraid or lonely. They don't feel love or friendship. Ah.. I'm losing it.

Also I owe EDF about £600 which I'm having a little difficulty raising in this frozen hell-hole. That worrys me more than any of that shite.

Never mind! MSN homepage has 'Foods to make you handsome'. The only thing I could concievably eat that would make me look any better in the mirror is LSD and a lot of it. Here goes!

Heidi the Opossum

I think it's love again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12155511