Iain Duncan Smith intensifies welfare reforms

I was reading the comments left by readers of an article in the Guardian entitled "Welfare reform: will Iain Duncan Smith's benefits revolution happen?".  I was particularly impressed by a comment written by someone using the name Election2015UK.  So I asked Election2015UK if I could reproduce his comment on my blog.  He replied:

Yes, of course. Please feel free to do so.
In fact, anyone can use anything I write anywhere.
You could even put this licence on it to make it look snazzy.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

So here is the comment by Election2015UK for your delectation and education:

If you want to completely fuck something up beyond all hope of repair, put a congenital idiot in charge.

The purpose, the role, the mission of Iain Duncan Smith in this government is to destroy the social security system and he is doing a mighty fine job, which is why he remains in office.

This is a massive neoliberal achievement, on the same scale as privatising the NHS, so people should not imagine that the catastrophic wholesale destruction is a result of Iain Duncan Smith's stupidity and uselessness.

This is the masterplan.

Even inside government there are profound doubts. After £40m was written off on IT systems that are no longer fit for purpose, it recently emerged that the body responsible for grading its implementation, the Major Projects Authority, had "reset" UC as an entirely new project, meaning that it was classed as having been sent back to the drawing board. It had failed all its tests, so it was starting again.

Didn't a new category of disaster have to be invented especially for Iain Duncan Smith and Universal Credit?

Wasn't the old designation a simple red-amber-green traffic light system?

Then a blaring klaxon, flashing neon lights, tsunami of shit, planets falling from the heavens, global nuclear Winter universal meltdown had to be created to illustrate the Old Testament scale the IDS disaster.

...fraud is the "Achilles heel" of universal credit. "Organised crime is already sophisticated at using identity theft and ghost employees, and the risk of organised crime infiltrating the state benefit system is significant. Relying on remote central IT systems, removing local knowledge and human contact, will make it easier for fraudsters."

Remember how David Cameron strutted into Parliament shortly after limping into office and declared that the social security system was being plundered by fraudsters to the tune of £5.2 billion per annum?

At the time, the government's own figures put fraud at about £670 million.

The rest was down to clerical error.

There was also always about £12-16 billion sitting in the pot unclaimed, so inept and clumsy were the fraudsters who were supposed to be milking the system.

This is nothing about money and all about ideology.

This is all about handing the state to crony corporations and making the life choices of the poor to either work for next to nothing or die in a ditch.

This is a good article, but could we have some detailed figures on how much money Iain Duncan Smith has cost the country?

Not the piffling £40 million or so his IT disasters have so far cost or the £ hundreds of millions in write-offs or his claims for underpants and breakfasts.

The last figure on the bald head of this human catastrophe was in the order of £5 billion, but it would be nice to get an accurate, up-to-date figure.

That is all money that used to have your name on it, the hardworking, striving taxpayers of Broekn Britain.

All that money, squandered and pissed up the ideological wall of kicking the poor and disabled and sick and unemployed.

So, instead of paying effective loose change for a universal social security system on which you may also one day hope to rely, you will now pay a small fortune.

Has there ever been a promise of reductions in tax and Natioanl Insurance contributions once social security has been dismantled and the NHS has been privatised - or even when the banks have paid back all those billions filched from your pockets to save them from bankruptcy?

Because, if everything is to be handed to profiteers, they should not need to be propped up by the state, using your money, should they?

Sorry, that is also part of the plan.

Your tax money is their income stream, their offshore, tax-havened profits.

So, if you have been obediently kicking the poor on Iain Duncan Smith's barked commands, more fool you.

Because you are the poor, dumb schmuck paying for it all and you will continue to do so forever.

This is a scam, a heist and you have probably been cheerleading your own mugging.

Which would, unbelievably, make Iain Duncan Smith look like a genius in comparison.

Excellent!

Ancient hatred stalks the land once more

I read the following letter on the Independent web site at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/letters-ancient-hatred-stalks-the-land-once-more-9670038.html

I’m just an ordinary middle-aged Londoner.
I work in an office. I go to football. I like eating out. I enjoy the arts. I am a proud family man. I give up time for charity work. I try to be a decent contributing member of society. I pay my taxes honestly. But there appears to be something that sets me and my kind apart.

At park gates in East London a friend of mine gets told to f**k off for photographing a flag. At a pub in Bath my wife gets called scum when she mentions her background.  In a student hall in Manchester a friend’s son is asked to leave as the specially prepared food he chose to eat is not permitted because it carries a label written in a language used by a country that is “banned” by the student union.

In Belfast a historic blue plaque is removed to deny part of my history.  In theatres in Edinburgh and London I am told to denounce my opinions or lose the right to perform.    A sportsman in Ireland tweets if he sees my kind he’ll punch us in the face and recommends others follow suit.

Protesters across the country show no shame in shouting that my historical persecutors were right and social media is rife with vitriol towards me (even from so-called friends). And in Bradford I’m told that I am not even permitted to enter the city.

What is this? Racism.  Where is this? Britain and Ireland. When is this?  Now. Who am I? I am a Jew.

Never again, we say, never again.

Stephen Spencer Ryde
London N3

Stephen Ryde feels the issue warrants a public debate and so do I.  Since there is no 'comment' facility I felt that  I should respond with my concerns too.

Prejudice is appalling and tragic, born of ignorance and resentment.

I accept that 'anti-Semitism' may be on the rise in the UK and is illegitimate and harmful.

I feel that manipulators use religion, race and other divisions to foster prejudice for their own ends.

The Israeli right wing Zionists abuse Judaism for their own purposes including expelling (and murdering) the population of a country they illegally occupy and in that respect are indistinguishable from the Third Reich.

So I am left with the problem of what Stephen Spencer Ryde is trying to communicate in this letter.

My worry is that Stephen is putting a bias on his claims of prejudice (though I could be wrong) but the idea that students are banned because of a language on a label sounds so ignorant it beggars belief.  Was that why his friend’s son was "asked to leave" or was it because the product was made in Israel?  In what way has Bradford banned Stephen?  He says it is because he is a Jew but I have not heard of this before.  What I have heard is that Bradford has announced a policy of boycotting Israeli produce.  In what way does that affect Stephen?

So I am concerned by this letter and the underlying allusion.  Racism (a word nowadays uncomfortably used to refer more emotively to the generic phenomenon of prejudice) is entirely unacceptable.  People need to rise above judging others by the colour of their trousers, the design of their flag or the particular set of mystical ceremonies they ascribe to and understand that injustice is the enemy - institutionalised authoritarian injustice.  I have an uncomfortable feeling that Stephen is party to the whole prejudicial nonsense by writing this letter.  If he is experiencing genuine prejudice, and I have little doubt that he is, then where does he refer to the instigation of this prejudice?  Where does he clarify the source of this problem?  Why is he so quiet on the subject of Israel?

Israel claims itself to be a 'Jewish State'.  It is no more 'Jewish' than the Third Reich was 'Christian'.

Anti-Semitism should be opposed wherever it raises its ugly head.  But is Stephen fuelling division and insidiously fostering support for Israel's barbaric and unacceptable brutality?  Is Stephen being ignorant?

My letter of support for Cameron's policy on Israel

David Cameron MP Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 10 Downing Street London SW1A 2AA

11 August 2014

Dear David Cameron

I write to you as the current occupier of the position of Prime Minister of Great Britain and I respectfully request that you pass this message on to all the members of your government.

I wish to extend my thanks to you for your policies in the Middle East and in particular for your staunch support for the beleaguered state of Israel.

Had you been a little more circumspect it is possible that a large proportion of UK citizens may not have realised the severity of the problems and issues involving Israel.  But you and your government have been clear and straightforward in your unwavering support of Israel and its right to defend itself.  Had you not rallied the media, and the BBC in particular, to help support the desired view that the troubles in that part of the world were relatively minor and, although unpleasant, were right and morally justifiable, many people may have thought the Israeli response to the three murdered children in the West Bank was an overreaction.

Your government's statements, policies and actions have effectively resolved a transition in my life which some might call a paradigm shift.  It is more than that because I have always been a supporter of truth and justice but I have also always been dismayed at the apparent irresolvable paradoxes in the world of politics.  But you have provided me with an almost profound clarity.

During the second World War the people of Britain refused to be intimidated by a brutal dictator and their resolve was even strengthened in the face of the blitz.  People were willing to endure the most awful conditions to stand united against oppression.  During these more recent difficult times of economic depression in Britain your government has rallied the people to stand together and endure hardship to get this country through the bad times.

There are, of course, the opposing views that bailing out the banks, reducing the benefits bill, cutting back on legal aid, withholding money from poor residents to reduce the spare room subsidy bill, holding down minimum wage and public sector pay rises, cutting back on the arts, lending money to youngsters for their education, 'sanctioning' the illegal withholding of unemployment payments, vetting the sick and disabled, forcing people to work for private companies for their unemployment benefit thereby profiting the private company at the expense of the 'hard working' tax payer (which is tantamount to slavery)  and so many of your tough decision are not a good thing.

But you were in danger of getting away with it.  Then Israel let the proverbial cat out of the bag.  What were you to do?  How could you oppose oppression?  So without really understanding what you were doing you reacted in the only way possible - you defended Israel.  You defended the indefensible.  You defended the most barbarous, inhumane, savage, cruel, ruthless, bizarre, obscenity enacted by a world power against innocent civilians trapped in an enclave, blockaded and impoverished for years and held down by a UK backed military dictatorship called Egypt.  Wow!

Now I understand.  Had you come out against the overt crimes being committed by Israel you may have maintained the illusion.  Israel is acting illegally and they are using illegal weapons.  I don't know if you are aware but it doesn't take the United Nations or the International Criminal Court to make a crime exist, it only takes them to acknowledge that it is a crime.  They are clearly impotent at the moment - that does not change the facts.  Your policies have exposed your true perspective and agenda.  Your response to the genocide in Gaza has revealed your complicity in this insane behaviour of the Western powers.  Had you objected to the slaughter of innocents with the most heinous weaponry by your ludicrous ally I might not have realised that it is your very paradigm to oppress and devastate humanity for your own benefit.

You have effectively been rumbled.  You have become transparent.  Your deceptions, double standards, immorality and criminality have been exposed.  People can see right through your facade of moral righteousness to the wretched, self serving, pathological insanity within.  You have inadvertently precipitated an awakening of consciousness in the UK.  It is for that reason that I thank you "for your policies in the Middle East and in particular for your staunch support for the beleaguered state of Israel."  It is beleaguered by its own compulsive dysfunctional behaviour.  It appears you are of the same mindset.

I will not be voting Conservative at the next election.

Yours sincerely





Sam Spruce
B.A. M.Sc. MBCS CITP

The David Attenborough hoax.

David Attenborough

This kind of propaganda is pathetic and troublesome.

I found a post on Facebook today that quoted David Attenborough as saying:

I am unaware of any animal that is as cruel as Israelis -- not even crocodiles. They bomb schools, hospitals, refugee camps, orphanages, UN feeding stations, water works, power plants, ambulances, kids playing on the beach. They put millions of people in a siege. They shoot children going to school. They kidnap kids and harvest their organs. They inject prisoners with disease pathogens before releasing them. They murder by land sea and air. And worst of all, they slander their defenceless victims as "terrorists".

The post has been put on Facebook by an entity called Sotirios Sooty Thoupi who is aware that there is something amiss as he states that the post keeps getting blocked but fails to corroborate his claim with a link to any authentic source.  Here is the link to the post (which may be blocked) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152157267417282, and here is a screen shot of the offending post as I found it:

Screenshot of Sotirios Sooty Thoupi's post.

On further investigation it appears this quote attributed to David Attenborough is entirely fictional.

The most probably source is from this page on Press TV's web site in the comments.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/07/21/372201/israel-drops-phosphorus-bombs-on-gaza/

Screen shot of Press TV comment.

There is also an exact copy of the text not attributed to David Attenborough by someone going by the name of Aaron Cohen on the Independent's Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/TheIndependentOnline/photos/a.315767831635.155802.13312631635/10152199587196636/

Screen shot of comment on Independent's Facebook page.

Then there is another example posted by umbrokhan786 on:
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/20/33698242-israel-zionist-jews-killing-innocent-people-page-11.html

... and the list goes on.  But nowhere could I find any serious suggestion that David Attenborough is the author of the statement.

So why lie?  Why falsely attribute this quote to David Attenborough attempting to give it weight and credibility?  Obviously this obfuscates the real situation and can only make it worse not better.  On a simple level the question does not need answering as most people 'understand' why someone does it whether they agree with them or not.  It seems on the face of it that this is a destructive and unnecessary abuse.  But there is more to it than that.  There are several issues it raises that are worth considering.

Conditioned values:
There is the question as to how we rate the truth of what we read.  By claiming David Attenborough said it we tend to rate its credibility higher than if someone by the name of Sotirios Sooty Thoupi said it.  We are less likely to question it if it comes from a source we respect.  This leads to the worrying issue of why we so often believe our 'leaders' who we know lie repeatedly.  That, of course, is the authoritarian oppression.  We have been conditioned (or many of us to varying degrees) to accept under threat of pain (be it emotional, psychological or physical) what the people in authority decree.  We need to get over that one.

Discerning the truth:
Then there is the issue of obfuscation and disinformation to deal with.  Sotirios Sooty Thoupi is in fact delivering a vital service, rather like that of computer virus writers.  On the surface it appears it is simply a bad thing but on investigation it turns out to be necessary.  In simple terms we need biological viruses in the real world to maintain a robust and evolving immune system.  We need viruses in the world of computers to force us to make them resilient against threats.  Even if we lived in a world of naive trust there are still external 'bugs' and physical events that would threaten what we now rely on to survive.  But worse, if we were not well protected then a rare malevolence would find it very easy to step in and take control.  Misinformation on both sides helps in strengthening our ability to discern truth from fiction.

Bias:
There is the issue of bias that this kind of thing highlights too.  We do have a propensity to believe what we want to believe more readily than that which we don't want to believe.  There is, of course, a grave danger in this tendency.  It is one thing to check to see if there is corroborating evidence to support a theory or belief but it is more fundamentally robust to search for evidence against our view.  This was well understood and explained philosophically by Karl Popper in his theories of falsification.

This sort of 'positive' deception is as bad as the 'negative' deception but does help us stand back from both to get a more rational view.  There is a lot of trouble in our world today and mostly people don't seem to like it.  I think it is fear that drives many to be self contradictory and belligerent.  I have my own theories about the human neurological network and how it creates the illusion of cognition.  A salient part of the theory is that we copy the world in our physical being to aid interaction with the world.  It is memory of sorts.  If things are working well the copy is fairly good and the openness to learning more remains largely intact.  However, if the process of absorbing experience is interrupted the copy is necessarily faulty.  This leads to inconsistent and flawed comprehension.  It, ironically, often leads to more of the same because similar events are processed through the faulty understanding and strengthen the misunderstanding.  People get more belligerent and extreme as time goes on.  It is akin to the popular term 'cognitive dissonance'.  Stuff doesn't seem right because the internal world view is contradictory and yet the experience of each part seems real.  There then becomes this bizarre situation where people try to change the outside world to force it to match their inner flaws.  The consequences are obvious.

I am often accused of 'sitting on the fence'.  But I take sides.  I side with truth, justice, compassion, cooperation and generally what are regarded as peaceful and creative values.  I oppose lies, manipulation, aggression, abuse and division.

So, much as I accept the existential reality of the avatar 'Sotirios Sooty Thoupi' and his miscreant meme, and I understand to some degree how it plugs into the whole, it remains the case that I dislike and disagree with this sort of misinformation.  It is abusive to David Attenborough and to the viewer.  It also becomes the very thing it appears to be objecting to.

Letter to an unknown soldier

My "letter to an unknown soldier"
(for this project: http://www.1418now.org.uk/letter/)

Dear Soldier

I am writing to you from one hundred years in the future.  I recently had my own revelation about life after my own existence.  It was interesting to believe for a moment in the world that exists without me in it.  The world has existed now without you in it for one hundred years and you may wonder what you have contributed to that world.

There are many people who fight or don't fight for their own particular reason.  It appears that many of your comrades are of the opinion that fighting to oppose a cruel and violent regime, that wishes to invade and destroy other countries, is a noble and worthwhile pursuit.  The resistance to violent oppression and subjugation is undoubtedly an honourable motive.  The willingness to sacrifice your life if necessary to defend your comrades, your family and, indeed, your country is without doubt laudable.  It seems to me that most aggression is motivated against perceived injustice and in that regard most people are benign and well motivated.

The paradoxical tragedy is that the result of such motives are often the manifestation of the very world one wants to prevent.  But the equally paradoxical question raises its ugly head "If I don't stop their violence, who will?"

It transpires, one hundred years later, that you are part of an industrialised war machine.  It's the "Ford Motor Company" production line of violence.  It seems to have gone from strength to strength since the Great War in which you are a participant.  It transpires that it was never a war to end wars but more of a war to organise and industrialise war for the profit of a few at the expense of the many.  A clever and complex machine of slavery and subjugation.  A war to perpetuate war.

If only it were as simple as either fighting or not fighting then we could all stop.  But the world of humans is more complex than that.  The world I live in appears locally to be a better world than that of the majority in Britain in your time.  Life has improved in many ways.  Some of those improvements are a direct consequence of the desperate attempt to improve military capabilities.  You would hardly believe the technology we live with today.  But there are many improvements that are the product of human ingenuity and creativity without the military motive as well.  It is hard to determine where we might be without the incessant violence in which humanity indulges.  And although the world may be better in some ways, and the quality of life be an improvement for many, it remains true that for the majority of humanity things are no better and possibly worse.

So I am left with the profound puzzle as to what is the best thing for a person in your position to be doing.  What would I wish I could do in your place?  Unravelling this problem is far more obvious than one might imagine.  Committing to the solution is another matter.

Opposing oppression seems central to the moral human motive and justification to get angry and fight.  It follows that we should all oppose oppression whenever we encounter it.  The trouble with oppression is that the oppressor threatens harm and so opposing it is harmful in some way to one's self.  By avoiding opposing oppression for immediate relief leads to a world which gives rise to the sort of insane violence in which you are currently indulged.  So the really courageous thing to do is to oppose your real oppressors; the commanders and generals who threaten to shoot you if you don't do their bidding and kill other people in the same unfortunate position as yourself.  The really noble thing to do is to oppose the government full of wealthy individuals willing to 'play' the people for their own benefit.  The truly honourable thing to do is to object to the people who are willing to moralise about the need for others to fight a war whilst being entirely unwilling to join you on the front line.  They will kill you either way.  The difference being that if you die for them you are leaving your children back home in a world governed by them, controlled by them and ultimately abused by them.  We all have to ask ourselves what we are really opposed to and then stand against it.

We are all human.  Humans are transient manifestations of a complex system.  We are in some very real way all the same.  So I am your future as you are my past.  Do I want to be a subservient soldier dominated by peer pressure to enact violence that I abhor for fear of being ostracised and possibly executed?  After my death, when no one can harm me, who would I wish I were?  I would wish I had stood against the real oppressor; the one currently at my back with a gun.  But I am only human and I don't know what I would have done in your position.  I would probably have gone along with the whole affair just like you.  So I do not judge or criticise you for what you are doing but I can assure you, one hundred years in the future, I admire conscientious objectors far more than I admire soldiers.  I am fortunate in that I have never been faced with such an impossible choice.

So I wish you well in your unfortunate circumstances and would hope that you come out of this war alive except that I am reliably informed you don't.  I will always honour your memory and I will always oppose those who promote and support war.  You have my deepest love and I will treasure and protect your future world to the best of my ability.

With respect
Sam Spruce

Authoritarian depravity

Child's legs in rubble in Gaza

Israel and the other culpable Western countries have utterly and totally  debased humanity.  Not only myself but millions of people around the world will never forget this outrage.  There is brutality around the world but never before has the major so called 'civilised' self acclaimed super power alliance indulged in such wanton vicious ugly criminal and inhumane torture and murder in so brazen and flagrant way.  The insanity is stunning.  The base cruelty is staggering.  There is no question in the minds of many experienced professional observers that this is some of the worst excesses of 'civilised' depravity ever witnessed.  There may be individual cases worse but this is like the head teacher shooting the children with impunity whilst the world looks on as if he's doing his job.  And the USA re-arms Israel!

There is no 'winning' possible.  Israel, as some kind of identifiable entity, has lost all semblance of sanity.  It is not only Israel because it is the self described New World Order - the unbelievably arrogant subset of right wing oligarchs who seriously believe themselves superior beings like the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs - who are engaged in this obscene madness.  They cannot win because their children will hate them.  Any future population will find this behaviour abhorrent in the extreme; It is totally off the scale.

Israel is self destructing.  And the USA and the UK are entirely with them.  We no longer have a civilisation.

Trying to see both sides

Girl at scene of blast in Gaza Park 28 July 2014

There are lots of varying perspectives of this atrocity in Gaza.  I want to understand as much as I can.  That means listening to all sides.  I watch videos presented by Zionists as justification for Israel's perspective.  ISIS murdering swathes of prisoners, heads on sticks in Syria, and more.  In a way it is 'good science' - Popper's falsification and all that.  The idea is to try as hard as possible to disprove your theory.  I have lots of supporting evidence for the view that Israel has gone berserk and is in the act of what might prove to be the most profound inhumanity this planet has ever witnessed.  I'm not suggesting it is the largest but possibly the most significant philosophically.  One of the most 'civilised' and 'advanced' nations on the planet being witnessed engaging in such inhumane slaughter may prove a turning point in the consciousness of humanity.  Respectable men in suits gorging themselves on the entrails of innocent children - it conjures a disturbing image that even Quentin Tarantino hasn't constructed yet.  So I want to know how awful this 'enemy' is.  I want to know what depths of depravity it reaches.  I want to know how dreadful and contagious is the evil that it represents that it warrants all effort, with no expense, compassion or humanity spared to rid the world of it.  I even want to know what they 'think' might justify this holocaust.

I was locating the source of a video which is of the assault on the civilians (including ambulances, doctors, press) who were attending a strike which had happened 5 minutes earlier.  The second assault killed many including the journalist Rami Rayan whilst standing next to an ambulance.  It is here:

Live video of the explosion that killed RamiRayan 30 July 2014

In the comments someone who clearly 'understood' the Israeli point of view responded to bewilderment that the Israelis would target an ambulance by saying "why would that surprise you?" and they followed it with this video:

Why the IDF attack ambulances

If this is the best they can come up with (so to speak) they have clearly lost the argument.  I am still searching for the heinous crimes which Israel would need to justify their behaviour.

None of us are perfect and it would be insane to try to suggest that the smallest infringement of someone else's 'rights' might justify murder (let alone the slaughter of their family and neighbours including the dog).  It would be insane to suggest that Palestinians must be faultless or their extermination is justified.  So I want to see and hear both parties grievances.  So far the internet seems bereft of any significant evidence of the crimes against Israel which would in any way explain this inhumanity.

Of course one also has to look inside the heads of these humans (metaphorically of course).  If there were any explanation (and actually there must be) for this behaviour it would seem to reside in the conceptual world.  It is inside people's heads.  There are two arenas that spring to mind that contribute: 1) The 'fear' inside Israel's 'head'.  This does look like the fear that Palestinians or 'others' would destroy them if they didn't destroy them first. 2) The subjective projection by us all onto the objective world.  There is much to be thought about and to be discussed but on the second point it strikes me the thing that perpetuates this relentless violence in the world is because each of us is 'subjugated'.  Our 'subjective' view is perverted.  Our 'subjective' view is actually the reflected view of our parents (guardians, teachers, figures of authority, peers etc.).  In other words we don't actually see the world from our perspective but rather see ourselves as our parents see us and adjust our 'world view' to conform with a 'safe' image of us.  In other words we absorb (for want of brevity) the judgemental value system from our culture and keep trying to understand any conflict in terms of who is right and who is wrong.  Our subjective view is hijacked by some other - we are subjugated to them.  I know this is covered in complex detail in psychology, sociology, political theory, etc. but it needs to be understood how 'we' are driving this insanity.

The overview, however, is clear:  There is never any 'justification' for this insane slaughter of disarmed people.

"We Are Better Than This"

Gaza in the morning of 29 July 2014

Since the article: "We Are Better Than This" by Hilary Stauffer in the Huffington Post only allows for a 250 word comment I decided to put my reply on my blog.  Here it is:

So do I start with the good or the bad?

I am sorry to say that I am mildly unimpressed by Hilary Stauffer's attempt to intellectualise a complex human problem.  And I am a little bewildered at the italicised poetic ditty at the end of each paragraph.  There is an evident risk of a subtle smug self-righteousness weaving its way through this article.

On an intellectual basis Hilary Stauffer is on safe grounds by raising lots of reasonable and relatively indisputable affirmations.  I guess experience as a "legal adviser" and as a "lawyer" would contribute to that.  Many people wish the mob wouldn't go for their torches and pitchforks so readily but it is predictable and needs dealing with rather than dismissing.  Of course both sides are wrong in some respects and I am often dismayed by this notion that finding something wrong with the other side appears to justify some other wrong on this side.  Something missing is the realisation that we are all wrong sometimes and it doesn't prove that someone else is right.

Given that the whole situation with Israel and Palestine is a devastating tinderbox it is not enough to effectively excuse or justify one side or both with the implication of 'six of one and half a dozen of the other'.  If it were as simple as that one could, I guess, let them get on with it.  This vague amelioration avoids the fundamental problem that is giving rise to the unacceptable inhumanity.

There is unacceptable inhume behaviour happening.  That is what first motivates people to react.  Some (the approach that I wish to favour) are stunned and wounded by the human tragedy that is being perpetrated.  Some (in my view sadly) appear to react to the fear it triggers in them and they dehumanise the victims whilst looking for justification to appease their pain (some might call it conscience).  But, ironically, the majority of reactions, to give credit to the ditty, actually indicate that we are better than this.  It is because we care, and fear for others as well as ourselves, that people have such strong feelings.  So there is something that could be humanly (whether legally or not) called a crime being committed.

And here perhaps lies the crux of the matter.  The Israeli government's slaughter of so many innocent civilians in such appalling conditions is wholly disproportionate and violent in the extreme.  They are the sophisticated, powerful, educated, 'civilised' dominant partner.  Israel is, by virtue of the relationship, the 'responsible' party.  They have to find a better way.

I hear so much polarising, analogising and personifying of the situation one could be forgiven for forgetting this is about the dynamics of large populations and powerful vested interests.  Some do tend to imagine themselves as Israel living in a house being threatened by their scummy, primitive and violent neighbours who would ransack their house and kill all their children given half the chance.  Some imagine themselves as the Palestinians as the rape victim being tied up in the cellar and abused by a malevolent self interested psychopathic predator.  But trying to disentangle the situation by cognitively flip-flopping about two possible analogies only really illustrates the apparent intractability of the problem.

One has to get one's head outside of the problem and see it from as many perspectives as possible.  It then becomes clear that the violence must stop.  Given the shocking level of slaughter (I calculated: 16 times worse than the blitz per day) by the Israeli army it is incumbent upon them to stop this right now.  There is simply no legitimate excuse for this level of inhumanity.  This is such an extraordinary imbalance of power that it beggars belief that anyone could suggest there is any semblance of equivalence between the parties or any 'argument' thereof.

I have read up on Theodor Herzl and Zionism and it is clear the philosophy is based on the strange notion that there is 'us' and the rest of the world.  I am not a political animal or analyst but any philosophy, be it about nature, people, science or whatever that discards part of the whole as 'the other' is an incomplete philosophy doomed to failure.  Unfortunately the concept or manifestation of Israel must 'belong' to its environment and that includes the people around it.  The same applies to the Palestinians (much as they may wish Israel, as a state, had never been imposed on them).  Israel is, of course, entirely funded by that superpower the USA (plus some).  The USA, along with the UK and Europe are clearly building an 'empire' and control of the Middle East is vital.  Although I don't for one moment suppose Israel could easily 'integrate' it certainly can't whilst it is an American outpost.  So the summary is that the West (they have called themselves the New World Order) is forcibly imposing itself on the Middle East with Israel as the unfortunate front man.

Before the 'Jewish State' had even been manifest the Zionist philosophy was to spirit the indigenous population away by means of subtle appropriation of land and property and by denying the indigenous populating any employment.  Not only is this announced in their philosophy but it is quite clearly evidenced in their behaviour.  When the impoverished and subjugated population around them cry out that they want to destroy their oppressor there is no human justification for slaughtering their children because of some projected interpretation of what they might do if they were powerful.  This is the response of a dominant oppressive regime to stifle any possible future imagined threat.

Israel has indulged in the use of illegal weapons including, but unlikely limited to, "White Phosphorus", "Flechette" and "DIME" against civilians.  These are acknowledged transgressions.  They have also indulged in behaviour that is internationally deemed illegal one way or another by targeting schools and hospitals which under the current circumstances are in no way justified by their feeble claims that there are weapons in those buildings.

The overview is clear and Hilary Stauffer would be better employed using her superior legalese to state the case against Israel because, in this instance, they are unequivocally wrong.  If any Islamic state were doing this to Israel (after generations of impoverishment) it would be equally wrong.  The fundamental issue is that this behaviour is not something the human race wants to indulge in - not consciously anyway.

It is such a pity to see such beautiful intellectual prose, with added poetic ditty, put to such sinister and feeble amelioration of such inhumanity.  I am opposed to this insane slaughter and will remain so forever regardless of who is perpetrating it.

Gaza is 16 times worse than the Blitz.

St Paul's Cathedral survives the Blitz

There are many ways to look at any situation and that certainly applies to the current devastation of Gaza.  I watched a live stream from someone's phone in Gaza last night and it was heartbreaking.  It was frightening and tragic; almost incomprehensible.  And I thought of the Blitz in the Second World War and how people regard that as so inhumane and appalling.  So I wondered how the two compared.  I was quite surprised at what I found.  The death toll per day in Gaza is about a third of the death toll per day in the Blitz.  So it appears less severe until you consider the size of the population.  The Blitz occurred across the whole of Britain in spite of the general association with London and the 'blitz' on Gaza is applied across the whole of Gaza in spite of claims that it is targeted.  Per head of population the death toll in Gaza is about eight times higher than during the Blitz in the UK per day.  And that is only the current counted dead.

There is no way to 'measure' this kind of crime but it can be helpful to compare aspects.  Given that some of the 'injured' are likely to become the 'dead' and considering that all of those people's lives have been unacceptably damaged I compared the 'injured' too.  The death and injury in Gaza is sixteen times greater than the equivalent measure of the Blitz.  It is also worth remembering that the British population were relatively stable and secure whilst the Gaza population have been under siege for many years and their lives are already impoverished and injured.

It is ironic that Operation Protective Shield, the euphemism for terrorism and genocide, is represented as some kind of surgical extraction, a modern sophisticated targeted strike against an aggressive military opponent.  The German Luftwaffe executed the Blitz as a perfectly random bombing of civilians (as well as useful military targets) with the express intent to cause as much devastation and terror as possible.  Israel denies any attempt to damage the civilian population and yet manages to kill and maim sixteen times more people per head of the population than the German's did with their intended random blitz of the UK.

This is not conceivably a mistake.

Click to go to YouTube to watch destruction of entire street.

In WWII Britain was subjected to 267 days of random bombing of the civilian population.
It is historically regarded as abhorrent.
The British didn't like that.
In Operation Protective Edge the Gaza population have, so far, been subjected to 21 days of targeted bombing of the civilian population.
Britain (officially) approves of that.

The daily desecration in Gaza is 16 times worse than the Blitz.

BLITZ

Population: 45,000,000

Duration: 267 days

Killed: 43,000

Injured: 139,000

Killed per day: 161

Injured per day: 521

Per million of population killed per day: 3.6

Per million of population injured per day: 11.6

Desecration per million per day = 15.2

PROTECTIVE EDGE

Population: 1,800,000

Duration: 21 days

Killed: 1,050

Injured: 6,200

Killed per day: 50

Injured per day: 295

Per million of population killed per day: 27.8

Per million of population injured per day: 163.9

Desecration per million per day = 191.7

This Dystopian Matrix of Illusion.

I am currently listening to some 'United Kingdom' person talking at some conference.  It is about the trouble in Gaza and it is on Reuter's live stream but there seems no information saying what the 'conference' is.  But in some way it seems irrelevant because they are talking mealy mouthed rubbish.

It is so sad that these human beings seem to think they are being constructive in some sort of diplomatic way but they appear to deliberately miss the central point entirely.  They say they condemn Hamas firing rockets into civilian areas of Israel.  They say they support Israel's right to defend itself.  It could just as easily be said the other way around.  And, much as I condemn Hamas' use of rockets, it is pointless saying that they should stop because that is exactly what Israel wants.

It is, to be undiplomatic, akin to telling a rape victim to stop attempting to claw the eyes out of the rapist.  "I seriously condemn the clawing out of eyes."  "Further more I implore you to cease and desist from clawing eyes out so that we can have less damage and time to talk things over."  So the victim stops clawing eyes out and gets fucked some more.

Britain has been disgustingly silent over Israel's illegal incursions into Gaza and the West Bank.  Israel continues to steal land, occupy it, build on it, exclude the local population from living on it.  In addition they blockade Gaza such that they cannot survive to any level of acceptability.  They have the utterly paranoid excuse that they are afraid the Palestinians might get violent and disturb their existence but that is the same as the rapist refusing to untie their victim because they might attack them.  Of course they might - they've just been raped.  It is no justification to slaughter people because they might attack you.

If the 'world at large' seriously opposed Israel's illegal activities then they may have some justification in asking Hamas to stop the violence.  But you cannot 'blame the victim' - Wait what?  Oh - Of course - That is how our culture works.  I was born in Britain and I thought I was British.  I now feel like a refugee in a disgusting country.  They steal children, they sell them for sex, they use the pictures for blackmail, they privatise all the essential services, they privatise the police, the prisons, the hospitals, the railways and anything and everything they can turn into profit for the elite oligarchs.  They 'sanction' the poor, they introduce Bedroom Tax, they gain access to personal bank accounts, they accuse victims of child sex rings of making a lifestyle choice.  What is happening to humanity?

It is decomposing at an alarming rate.  Gaza, the Ukraine, Syria, Iraq - what the fuck?  Maybe, just maybe, this is the legacy of all those people who came before and didn't give a fuck.  Maybe we are all one and this is what we wanted.  But it is also theoretically possible to put a stop to this insanity by refusing to comply with the linguistic nonsense that authoritarians spout every day.  Perhaps if we stop believing the utter paradoxical fantasy of money, the ridiculous contradictory claims of authority, the nonsense of binding contracts, the unrealistic stupidity of 'ownership' ... perhaps, if we frame our understanding of the world in a more coherent fashion we can find a way out of this dystopian matrix of illusion.

Is the Al Wafa Hospital in Shajiya under attack?

Al Wafa Hospital in Shajiya, Gaza

This is going to have to be a very brief blog because it is late and I am tired.  I'm unhappy, depressed, anxious and pissed off.  I don't want to be involved with politics.  I have always hated politics.  Everyone arguing and coming up with complexity after complexity and it goes on and on and on.

I don't want to be sitting here writing a blog post and putting it all together and updating the blog when all I want to do is eat some fish on toast and go to bed.  But then I don't suppose the residence of Gaza want to be involved in politics either.  Well not the politics of putting up with a superpower bombing their country, killing babies, maiming people, destroying houses and frightening the life out of everyone.  How the fuck are they expected to sleep hey - Benjamin Netanyahu?

It is disgusting what is going on in Gaza at the moment and there is no excuse for Israel to be acting in this belligerent, cruel and inhumane way.  There was a time long before the internet when they could more easily get away with things like this both because less people knew what was going on and because it was easier to control the biased representation and pathetic justification.

I was browsing stuff when I came across these tweets and was alerted to the threat to the Al Wafa Hospital in Shajiya.  I searched the internet (briefly) and came across the following articles.  It appears Israel has not only threatened the Al Wafa Hospital with a missile strike (which is THE definition of terrorism) but it is possible, as I write, that they have, in fact, bombed the hospital.

Israel is out of control and dangerous.

The blog title is "Is the Al Wafa Hospital in Shajiya under attack?" and whether it turns out to be the case is not even the point.  The point is that a super power named Israel is out of control is terrorising an entire population.  Remember the uproar when Bush pretended some terrorists had attacked New York?  Well this terrorism is for real so I think the people of the planet Earth have got to get themselves galvanised against this heinous trend of states oppressing and abusing the populations of the Earth.

Four current tweets...

The loudest explosion yet was just heard not far outside #Gaza's el-Wafa hospital. Doors and windows shook inside. #GazaUnderAttack
— Joe Catron (@jncatron) July 15, 2014

#gazanderattack some serious 'jumping off the seat' , 'building shaking' explosions happening right now nearby Al Wafa Hospital - Shajiya
— Rina Andolini (@RinaAndolini) July 15, 2014

#gazaunderattack - trying to have suhoor while heart is jumping out of my chest from the explosions here near to Al WAfa Hospital - Shajiya
— Rina Andolini (@RinaAndolini) July 15, 2014

Very loud explosions rock the El-Wafa Hospital, very close, straight to here, the Building structure shakes! #GazaUnderAttack #SOSPalestina
— V de Venceremos! (@ValeriaCortesM) July 15, 2014

Five current web links...

El-Wafa hospital threatened with bombing by Israeli military http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1407/S00127/el-wafa-hospital-threatened-with-bombing-by-israeli-military.htm

Facing the Massacre with Eyes Shut Tight @TheLefternWall http://thelefternwall.com/2014/07/15/facing-the-massacre-with-eyes-shut-tight-by-idan-landau/

Israeli Genocide Producing Humanitarian Disaster In Gaza http://laroucheirishbrigade.com/tag/al-wafa-hospital/

'If they take it out, they’ll take us with it' http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/if-they-take-it-out-they-ll-take-us-it-under-fire-gaza-hospital-1896796506

Attacks on Al Wafa hospital: When moral capacity is absent, what then? http://todayingaza.wordpress.com/2014/07/15/attacks-on-al-wafa-hospital-when-moral-capacity-is-absent-what-then/

Michael Meacher asks "Why is Labour now fighting shy of nationalisation?"

Ed Balls is running out of track.

Michael Meacher asks "Why is Labour now fighting shy of nationalisation?"

The answer lies in the psychology of the beast.  People have an understandable tendency to think their conscious model of reality is governed by the same laws as the reality it models.  They consequently think that if it is blatantly obvious to them that 'x' plus 'y' equals 'z' that if they can get an accurate comprehension of 'x' and 'y' across to another 'rational' mind that the same result will emanate.  There is something missing in this understanding and the best short description may be the subconscious.

We have most of us had the experience where someone else was enthusiastically advising us to take a course of action to achieve a certain goal but we couldn't see it.  On examining this conundrum it is often clear that had we taken the action with our lack of understanding it would not have had the successful result predicted.  That is because consequential actions would not have had the philosophical foundations that gave rise to the decision to take the original action.  In other words one person may understand that jumping now is the best thing to do but they understand it is in preparation for the next jump.  Someone who jumps on someone else's advice will not be expecting to have to jump again and will fall at the first hurdle.

Ed Balls clearly does not have the same philosophical model as Michael Meacher.  I don't know enough about politics to name the various schools of thought and philosophical premises underlying various political theories but it is clear that the 'Labour Party' has shifted significantly since Blaire turned up on the scene.  Blair metaphorically sold his soul to the devil when he decided that to get Labour into power to achieve what maybe he thought was a laudable objective he would break the philosophical fundamentals of honesty and a belief in the 'will of the people'.  Like that old bloke Uncle Adolf he was so convinced this country needed to rid themselves of the Tories that he would do 'whatever it took' to get into power.  I guess he may have thought that on gaining power he could revert to his original 'honest' position but unfortunately life doesn't seem to work like that.  Blair fell down his own miserable labyrinthine pit and appears to now be utterly enveloped in some delusional world of Godliness but that is another story.

The whole Labour party was unfortunately infected with the cancerous deception and consequential doublespeak.  They lost their conviction that the people came first and that everything else would follow and believed their own myth that somehow they had to 'make it work' for people.  This is the slippery slope to domination.  Although the perceived 'objects' of their political philosophy remained largely intact they seemed to lose the underlying philosophical mode of operation.  They began to think like the Tories.  They began to fall for the matrix like illusion of money, power and influence.  They began to think they had to achieve their objectives in what is mistakenly considered 'the real world' of hardnosed financial decisions.  It is comparable with the Judas problem in Christianity - the belief that you can explain to your enemy why you are right in their terms.  They have been operating under the tragic misconception that things must make money to succeed.  It is an illusion projected by the very powerful world of finance and it is a misunderstanding of 'wealth'.  The wealth of any country is the people in it - not the money they owe or own.

Ed Balls and the majority of the rest of the Labour party still believe they are essentially 'socialist' but they are not.  They are trying to make 'socialism' work in someone else's philosophical paradigm.  Ed Balls is, unfortunately, emotionally off key (that's a polite way of putting it) and as such he cannot see how nationalising the railways could possibly work financially.  He cannot, therefore, make that decision with any conviction.  But he does partly understand and works hard at trying to figure out how it can be done.  There is no amount of 'telling' him that can possibly change his perception - that is something only Ed Balls can do - and so even if he took other people's advice and nationalised the railways he would screw it up.

What Michael Meacher has to do is realise there is a perception problem here and figure out how to address it.  I don't know, but if I get any ideas I am sure to post them on this blog.  I hope that goes some way to answering Michael's question.

Did Mossad kill the three teenagers?

Dani Dayan, the chief foreign envoy of the Yesha Council (a Hebrew acronym for the umbrella organization of municipal councils of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and formerly in the Gaza Strip) was interviewed on Radio 4 today (Wed 2 July 2014: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b047zlbv - at 2 hrs : 47 mins : 19secs in ).  Asked about the general mood of his community he said:

"First of all there is a feeling of consternation.  We are still shocked.  We are still appalled at the death of three teenagers that were just in their way home from school.  It's a barbaric act that first and foremost makes us very very sad.  There is also a feeling that there is a necessity, an urge, for our government to fight terrorism in a more assertive way and a better way.  We have to make sure that terrorism is counterproductive.  That is the way to combat terrorism, to make it counterproductive.  Not, of course, against innocent populations but against the perpetrators.  The perpetrators should be apprehended, should be brought to justice, but not only the actual perpetrators of the specific act but also the human infrastructure that allows them to act."

There is a proposal that there should be a new settlement built in the West Bank in honour of the three murdered teenagers and Dani Dayan agrees and expresses the view that it needs to happen to make it clear that terrorism is counterproductive.

That is a remarkably stupid, ruthless and aggressive attitude.  Since he is a representative of a self named "Jewish" organisation would it be reasonable to suggest that he is representing a collective paranoid abreaction.  He is not speaking as an individual and conveying his personal opinion (which he is at liberty to do outside of his official role) but as a representative of a Jewish organisation.  Jews have traditionally been accused of collective paranoia (amongst other things) and it is well understood that judging people by some vague sense of perceived cultural traits is rarely useful in solving cultural problems.  To be blunt it is prejudicial - like racism, sexism or anti-Semitism.  Dani Dayan is blaming Hamas (prior to any evidence and in spite of their denial of any connection to the three murdered teenagers) and proposing an offensive land grab against other Palestinians (the "innocent population" that he claims shouldn't be acted against) to somehow "teach them a lesson".  It is so blatantly paradoxical it beggars belief.  It is also very hard line and oppressive.  It is precisely what right-wing organisations indulge in.  Given that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, has said "Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay" (again without evidence) and has consequentially launched more than 30 air strikes against the Gaza Strip, would this be the actions of a far right-wing aggressive and violent state?

It seems, on all accounts, that this response by Israel is what would have been expected by most observers of the situation.  This response is not what the Palestinians want and is clearly exactly what the Israelis want.  Given the general state of politics in the Middle East this event is looking more like a false flag than anything else at the moment.

So I would like to know if Mossad killed the three teenagers to justify this new and aggressive assault on Gaza and to engender popular support for more "land grab" from the Palestinians.  The more I learn about the workings of world leaders and politicians in general the more sceptical I become.

Helping people into to work.

I am fed up with pseudosociopolitical tropes.

I was reading this article on Al Jazeera entitled "Is there a war waged against British youth?" by Yiannis Baboulias.  The simple answer is 'Yes' but I stopped reading half way through because my ADHD symptoms cannot read waffle and junk for very long.  I'm sure the article is good and I am not lambasting Yiannis for bad journalism.  The article raises some good points which need discussing.

In the article Yiannis states "A recent survey shows that some 54 percent think that today's youth will have a worse life than their parents."

It was soon after this I couldn't read any more.  A few remarks about median incomes, inflation, unemployment and pensions and I was just reading more words about a situation which in my opinion is so misunderstood and misrepresented I can't stand to keep reading mile after mile of what is essentially an erroneous argument based in a false paradigm.

In essence people want a believable, sustainable, reasonable life.  They want that for their children too.  But somewhere along the line we have constructed the cultural illusion that we want life to 'improve' at every turn.  It is the same self-defeating trope as companies needing to increase profits to 'stand still'.  I call it a trope partly because of the use of the word in modern parlance (an often overused plot device) and partly because of its literal meaning from its Greek roots (derived from the verb τρέπειν (trepein), "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change" see Wikipedia Trope).  It seems we invent a way of seeing the world and repeat it often enough that we begin to believe it is the world.  The 'trope' is the device that 'turns us away' from the general reality we are trying to understand.  I am struggling to understand the deeper issues and causes of right-wing versus left-wing politics.  It is obviously a large and complex subject but one consistent error (of many) on the right seems to be to see a general problem, find a particular case as an example, create a solution for the particular case and justify applying that solution to the general case.  Sanctioning the unemployed being one prevalent example.  The consequence of this is devastating.  The left tries to argue against the form of the solution but cannot win the argument because they have engaged in the false premise (trope) that the example has some validity relevant to the general solution.

So what is a pseudosociopolitical trope?

It is a false conceptual model of society used to justify a political policy.  A good example is that people claiming benefits are somehow failing to look hard enough for work.  I put it that mildly to avoid inviting claims of hyperbole.  In any set of people there are some who are stronger than others and some that are more intelligent; there are people with more limbs than others and there are people with better circumstances.  So there is always a range of attributes.  In any modern society there is always some unemployment - it is inevitable and apparently necessary.  In the UK unemployment is not statistically severe (it may be for some individuals but that is a different issue) by any measure.  And yet it is cited as a major problem.  For most individuals who are unemployed it is a problem.  Interestingly the 'benefits' paid to the unemployed are not a problem because they are actually a cheap way of maintaining the surplus workforce needed for the level of unemployment required to maintain tension in the employment market.  But the concept of the national debt (another complex pseudosociopolitical trope) is used to suggest that 'expenditure' on the 'unemployed' is adding to the debt and therefore any policy designed to reduce that expenditure is beneficial.  The next step is to illustrate the false construct with examples of unemployed people who are languishing on benefits (Ian Duncan Smith's bizarre cognitive nonsense) and to justify 'helping' them off benefits as if this will reduce the national debt.

This approach is a fallacy.  With 100 people and 80 jobs it is inevitable that the 20 people without work are not going to be the most well endowed with functionally useful attributes.  It is then suggested that if these wasters got off their behinds and did what the 'employed' people did then they would have jobs too.  This is the specific case turned into a generalisation.  Take one person who performed certain actions and got a job and conclude that anyone who takes those actions will get a job.  This 'cognition', this conceptual model, this argument is evidently false if one understands the bigger picture in which the events are occurring.  It is remarkably narrow minded and unintelligent.  It is, in fact, stupid.  If there are 100 people and 80 jobs then there will always be 20 without work.  There are many possible and differing solutions to this problem but the incredibly 'short logic' argument illustrated here is not one of them.  The whole idea that there are unemployed people causing the national debt is a pseudosociopolitical trope.  It is consequentially deducible that the false idea of 'helping' people into work is inevitably going to fail and the evidence supports that conclusion.  The tragedy is that when it doesn't work the narrow minded cognition hits dissonance resulting in the increasingly familiar phenomenon of "cognitive dissonance".  The consequence of which is to feel anxiety which is interpreted as the problem getting worse rather than the solution being wrong, with a net result that they try harder to 'help' people into work.  A one way downward spiral to hell.

A cautionary note:  Helping an individual find work in a specific case is a good thing - but it is not a general solution.

The idea of helping people into work is akin to helping everybody win at musical chairs.

No to NATO military exercises in Ukraine - CENSORED

HM Government e-petition "No to Nato military exercises in Ukraine" is censored.

Lindsey German, convenor of the 'Stop the War Coalition', submitted a petition to the UK government e-petition web site on 7 May 2014.  The e-petition was entitled "No to Nato military exercises in Ukraine" and this clearly didn't suit the governments own agenda and intentions because they simply wouldn't publish it.  Only when journalists started badgering the government site did they finally publish the petition 3 weeks late.

Please sign this e-petition if you are a UK citizen.

No to NATO military exercises in Ukraine

Censorship of e-petitions is not limited to this petition.  The Morning Star submitted an FOI (freedom of information) request and discovered that over 1,800 e-petitions had been censored since the e-petition site was created.  Of course stopping some of these may be legitimate but given the case of the "No to Nato military exercises in Ukraine" petition it becomes clear that they cannot be trusted.  These facts were reported in an article entitled "Con-Dem ministers censor 1,800 E-petitions" in the Dorset Eye.

Initial signatories to this petition include such notables as:

Lindsey German, convenor of Stop the War Coalition
Kate Hudson, general secretary of CND
Caroline Lucas MP for the Green Party
Jeremy Corbyn MP for the Labour Party
John Rees, Stop the War Coalition
Baroness Jenny Tonge
Ken Loach, film and TV director
Mark Rylance, actor
Miriam Margolyes OBE actor
Michael Rosen, author and broadcaster
Salma Yaqoob, former leader of the Respect Party
Andrew Murray, chief of staff for Unite union

The Queen's Brain is Fracked.

Ok so I'm very distressed today.  Not only do Atos wake me when I am deeply asleep for the only 2 hours I got last night, leaving me shaking with my heart pounding and 'fluttering' (or more like positively gurgling in the most disturbing way) but I am left listening to the most appalling insanity being spewed out across the air waves by Radio 4.

The illusion of freedom.

So there we are like cattle being herded to the slaughterhouse through a number of channels.  Unlike cattle we come to junctions and, to allay our fears, there are kindly looking people explaining that we are free to chose which way to go.  "This is a democracy;  You can choose which way to go.  Would you like to go to the right or to the left?"  Too true we can choose but it's all going to the same end point.  Loki was right " It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation."

Radio 4 informs me that:
1: The queen has a new coach.
2: Fracking under your house will become legal.
3: A new 5p charge will be applied to supermarket plastic bags.

I don't know where to begin!

1. I looked into the Queen's new coach - "Not literally, fool!" - officially named "State Coach Britannia" and it is a far more interesting story than I had anticipated.  I love art and craftsmanship and this coach excels in many respects.  It is not only a traditional ornate masterpiece of coach building but it encapsulates an extensive range of historical artefacts from the Mary Rose to the Stone of Scone.  At only a few million quid's worth when you consider the years it took to build I can't help feeling that although it represents the opulence of the dominant plutocratic class it is actually and ironically a jolly good thing in itself.  Of course the inequality across the globe and in the UK is disgusting, unacceptable and inhumane and as such this artefact is symbolic of the abusive nature of our culture but compare it with the neoliberal madness, the corporate insanity and the utterly dehumanising nature of industrialised manufacturing and what we have in the coach is a lot of dedicated and creative people working diligently with integrity and skill on an individual masterpiece with some functional purpose.  Human beings at their best - just a pity it is in the service of such a ridiculous hierarchy.  But 'value for money' is probably surprisingly true.

So my presumption that the tax-payer (what a fucking stupid bit or Orwellian doublespeak) had been robbed to provided the Queen with more moreness was partially wrong and the whole topic is too complex to sum up because the artistic endeavour is good and the sycophantic adoration of authority is bad so I will simply leave it at that for the time being.

But items numbered 2 and 3 are simply overt madness.

2. In the Queen's speech of 4 June 2014, in only her second sentence, she says "My government’s legislative programme will continue to deliver on its long-term plan to build a stronger economy and a fairer society." That is simply not true.  Some would call it a lie.  Some people may believe that the lunatic neoliberal philosophy will deliver more fairness but there is no substantial rational or logical indication that it could nor is there any evidence to date to support that belief.  The evidence that is available clearly indicates it creates inequality which as far as the English language stands today means a reduction in fairness.  And in line with the usual perverse political doublespeak she goes on to say "The Bill will enhance the United Kingdom’s energy independence and security by opening up access to shale and geothermal sites and maximising North Sea resources."  Well that makes it sound like a jolly good idea.  "Enhance UK's independence" from what?  The unspoken assumption is from dependence on the supply of oil from other countries (arguably breaching the fair trade agreements with those countries and their ability to profit from the UK) but this is not made explicit and there is also the unspoken assumption that destroying the geological integrity of this country is a reasonable manner in which to achieve that "independence" which it is not.  If the UK wishes to be 'independent' there are numerous ways of achieving that but the Queen goes on to say "by opening up access to shale and geothermal sites".  So the objective is not independence but rather the 'method' of achieving that condition.  Independence is the excuse not the objective.  The objective is to enable fracking in the UK and even this is denied any explicit mention by, instead, obliquely referring to "shale and geothermal sites".  So, inherent in the wording is the overt guilt that what is being done is illegitimate.  What this woolly wording aims to obscure is the real subject of breaking the laws governing trespass.  Because the oil and gas industry cannot damage the underlying structure of land which is owned by someone else this makes it impractical for them to indulge in their massively destructive process of eking out the traces of gas in the geology of Britain.  The intent is to write new laws making it 'legal' to steal other people's gas and destroy the land upon which their house is built.  This is legalising theft by large corporations- as simple as that.  It is not only insane it is also cruel and unacceptable.

3. This would be funny if it were not so incredibly gratuitous and profoundly stupid.  The Queen, with her very royal fucking vocal chords, then uttered the insane nonsense "My government will continue to implement major reforms to the electricity market and reduce the use of plastic carrier bags to help protect the environment."  The most amazing thing is that one expects the Queen to have standards even if her speech writer is an ignorant arsehole.  Yet again the actual subject remains unspoken.  The subject is 5p on supermarket carrier bags.  The wording yet again refers to an excuse not an objective.  And the excuse is overtly contradictory with other issues raised in the same speech - namely fracking.  How, exactly, is fracking protecting the environment?

The stark stupidity is stunning to anyone with the slightest ability to string two thoughts together.  It seems the Queen's brain has been fracked for profit.

Britain could achieve energy independence by investing in wind, sun and sea power which we know are more environmentally friendly than oil and gas.  Supermarkets already produce biodegradable plastic bags and could easily provide free paper bags.  But what is so insidious about this is that it is another tax on the poor masquerading as an environmental issue specifically to distract from the corporate rape and murder of the ecology of Britain.