ok, guys, stop worrying...

I guess it's a bit selfish of me to just sit here reading the comments and not responding. Sorry. But I'm feeling utterly uncommunicative.

But I would like to thank you all for the concern and support you've shown. It does mean a lot to me and it does help. When I feel better I'll no doubt rant again.

Please don't worry about me. I haven't got the guts to kill myself anyway.

It's got me again...

Sorry guys, black dog's got me again. Don't know when I'll post again.
God it's tragic being a broken human. No sympathy please. And no advice, thanks. I'm up to my neck in advice that seems to work for everyone but me.

queen revokes US declaration of independence...

John Cleese, Fawlty Towers. OK, are we on-frequency now? Good.

Well, Basil's tuned in to the Beeb, and this is what he's hearing:

To the citizens of the United States of America, in the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories.

Read full transcript

Yeah, you guessed it - that bastard DS gave me this. :-)

way to go !!!

Remember the B.U.G.A.U.P. campaigns? Well, you'll LOVE freewayblogger buggering up Dubbya. Awesome site! You might even want to link to it. Please take the time to explore the whole site. It's a thing of beauty and a joy forever...

Once again, DS has vicariously blogged through this blog. I can tell you that he's ex-USAF and like me he's pissed off with what Bush and The Vulcans are doing to America and the world. He's too reticent to start his own blog (yet), but he feeds me stuff via email.

catch 22 - bush style...

According to Mark Morford (San Francisco Chronicle), 'Bush is "taking steps" to further the investigation into why their original intelligence on Iraq was so painfully, treasonously, colon-clenchingly wrong.'

Say what? He makes them tell him what he wants to hear, and then he wants an "investigation" into why they told him what he wanted to hear? Earth calling Mars...

Read Morford's article. It's a great rant.

DS once again gets the credit for the heads-up on this item. Bloody hell!! The bastard's taken over this blog! :-)

corporate media bliss bombs...

DS has done it again. He has emailed me a link to this piece by George Monbiot:

On Thursday, the fairy king of fairyland will be recrowned. He was elected on a platform suspended in midair by the power of imagination. He is the leader of a band of men who walk through ghostly realms unvisited by reality. And he remains the most powerful person on earth.

How did this happen? How did a fantasy president from a world of make believe come to govern a country whose power was built on hard-headed materialism? To find out, take a look at two squalid little stories which have been concluded over the past 10 days.

Full story >>>

of molotov cocktails and rifles...

Thanks to a comment by DS, here's part of a speech given by Martin Luther King Jr, on April 16, 1967:

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent...

Read the whole speech >>>

Pity I was too young and stupid back then to listen to what he was saying...

heavenscent...

I just love this piece by Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle:

Enter the new Febreze ScentStories thing, an adorably insidious 40-buck appliance you actually plug into your wall and stick on a side table next to the fake flowers and the cat-shaped fringe lamp and then insert any number of $6 CD-like disks each containing five preprogrammed synthetic scents that, at the push of a button, will then "play" in sequence, just like a music CD -- only, you know, not.

Full story >>>

he shoots the messenger...

George Bush won't listen to anything "negative". Guy Dinmore from the Financial Times (UK) reports:

According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr Bush recently asked Mr Powell for his view on the progress of the war. "We're losing," Mr Powell was quoted as saying. Mr Freeman said Mr Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave.

Full story >>>

back on air...

All techie problems fixed. Both boxes now operational which means next time one cacks it I'll just be right back up a few minutes later. If you're not too leading-edge, PC boxes are cheap. And I'm so far from the leading edge, I'm nearly falling off the trailing edge... :-)

As soon as I can think of something stupid to say I'll do my next post.

please bear with me...

My pooter's crashed. I'm trying to get the new box up and running. In the meantime I'm using the beloved's laptop to read comments but I won't be replying to deep and meaningful comments till my new box is functional. Be assured that I'm reading your comments till I get get sorted.

Love you all.

Cheers,

Gerry

P.S. Anyone commenting on this post is an anal retentive.

Nature as artist #2

f#ck the future...

Arianna Huffington over at workingforchange has written an illuminating piece:

Near the beginning of "Saturday Night Fever," John Travolta's Tony Manero, frustrated that his boss thinks he should save his salary instead of spending it on a new disco shirt, cries out, "F- - - the future!" To which his boss replies: "No, Tony, you can't f- - - the future. The future f- - -s you! It catches up with you and it f- - -s you if you ain't prepared for it!"

Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but America has morphed into a nation of Tony Maneros -- collectively dismissing the future. And nowhere is this mindset more prevalent than at the Bush White House, which is unwavering in its determination to ignore the future. Full Story

a plague of very clever lab rats...

Can humanity destroy its environment to the point of causing its own extinction?


This got me thinking about The Big Issues again and then I got all depressed - again. It's so much smarter to just do the Prozac thing and plod along in a warm fuzzy complacency, isn't it? Well, I'm not that smart. In fact, I'm so stupid I still think it's better to get right into the depressing issues if we're ever going to make informed political choices. I saw three Big Issues:

(1) The American Solution: The American Way, complete with it's rampant consumerism, already angering many societies with the way their own society, economy and environment are being eroded, pillaged, and exploited against their will, is infuriating millions to the point where some of them are resorting to terrorism as a way of striking back.

The American Solution is for America to use its huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to smash such recalcitrant societies and to forcibly turn them into compliant "democracies" so that the environmental and economic rape of that country can continue apace. And for what? To feed the insatiable needs of The American Way. It's called "protecting America's interests."

The American Solution leads to an endless string of wars of "liberation" to install compliant "democracies". This is called "freedom". Americans, being totally brainwashed by an amazing "education" system and American Kultcha, will happily die fighting for this "freedom". It's hard-wired into them. In the last fifty years The American Solution has killed many millions of people on their own soil using horrific weapons of mass destruction because it was "in America's interests."

(2) The Global Lifestylers. These are people outside America who have become addicted to The American Way. And they're happy to turn a blind eye to The American Solution. Some of them even support their own government's compliance with America's wishes and are happy for their troops to take part in The American Solution.

(3) The Global Corporations. These exist solely to service every whim of the The American Way and The Global Lifestylers. They have their own powerbase, called the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which now has the power to make all "member" countries pass laws giving the Global Corporations the freedom to "trade" unencumbered in these "member" countries.

Why would a country lay itself open to economic and environmental rape and pillage by these Global Corporations by becoming a "member" of the WTO? Well, because if they don't they'll incur either crippling trade sanctions or they'll be subjected to The American Solution and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of their people will be killed by "surgical stikes" and "unfortunate collateral damage" in order to "liberate" them from their "uncivilised" ways or their "bad" leaders.

And what are (1), (2) and (3) known as collectively? Why, darlings, it's called Civilisation. And it's oh so civilised... And where is "Civilisation" headed? It's headed for the endgame...

The Endgame: A global "society" of enclaved Very Rich Global Lifestylers serviced by a moderately well-off Middle Class which, by necessity, will also enjoy the security of the enclaves, protected by armies of contract mercenaries. These enclaves will be scattered throughout the world and they will replace or subjugate nations.

The idea of national sovereignty will be a faint memory. The secure enclaves will be corporation owned and ruled by boards of directors. The WTO will become a global government overseeing these corporations. Directors will be elected by shareholders. Each shareholder's voting power will be determined by the number shares owned - one share = one vote. Under this system of Corporate Oligarchy, 10% of the New Citizens will control 90% of the voting power. If you have no shares you will have no say at all - you will not be a New Citizen. You will be a non-citizen.

You'll have to own at least one share just to be allowed to reside within an enclave and corporate rules will no doubt give the corporation power to dispossess you of your shares if the corporation finds you guilty of some "misconduct". The Corporation will replace the judiciary.

Beyond the secure boundaries of these enclaves will subsist the slaves and the human detritus of this "Civilisation", kept at bay by brutal corporate mercenaries. No internet access for these sad non-citizens. Will anyone be bothered by the fact that these people will make up as much as 70% of the total population of the planet? No - why should they? These people are needed to work the pittance-paid jobs, the dirty jobs, the dangerous jobs. These people need to be exploited to maintian this "Civilisation". But to The Lifestylers' consternation, inexplicably, these dispossessed, disenfranchised, exploited, subjugated sub-humans will keep on turning into "terrorists". It just won't be safe outside the enclaves. It won't even be all that safe inside the enclaves...

Back to the present: Ford, the car manufacturing corporation, always in touch with consumers' future needs, is already developing a car for just such a terrorism-riddled "civilisation". It's called the SYNus and it comes complete with bulletproof windows and body. So you see, the future is not that far away - and according to Ford, this future will be here by 2010 - unless you change it... Quickly and decisively, my fellow platypusses... Don't wait for tomorrow... Or get ready to start grovelling to some corporate baron sometime soon.

And don't bank on dissident bloggers having internet access for too much longer, either. "Security" concerns and all that jazz. Might be cool to cache your favorite blogs soon so you can look at them after their writers have been silenced. You think this is far fetched? I don't.

Nature as artist #1

please sign this petition...

The following petition can be viewed HERE:

To: The U.S. President and others,

AGENT ORANGE, THE CHEMICAL, has killed, is still killing, and causing great suffering to over three million people in Vietnam.

PLEASE HELP THEM BY SIGNING THIS PETITION.

We welcome and support the Civil Action brought by the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin, and three Vietnamese victims. The documents have been submitted to a court in New York, on behalf of all affected by the chemicals used by the American Forces in their War on Vietnam.

This will be the first ever such action by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange in any court of law.

We call upon the U.S. President, Government and the Chemical Companies named as defendants in the documents, to accept their responsibilities for the damage caused by their actions and products, and to pay full compensation to the victims.

Sincerely,

[Click Here to Sign Petition]

the top ten war profiteers for 2004...

Do you want to get up to speed about who the top ten (Iraq) war profiteers for 2004 were? Sure you do! Found at UrbanFox, in a comment by Radiohumper.

Just a test to see how this photo stuff works.

what does "justified" mean?

Paul asked this question in a comment to a previous post:

Gerry, do you think the Vietnamese people were justified in using violence to expel the French and then in their resistance to the American/Australian/others occupation of their country? If you wouldn't mind, please start a new post in answer to this question, stating the reasons for your answer. I think many people would be interested in reading it. Take your time to do this, if you want to do it.

Shit, Paul... You don't ask much... OK...

(1) Were the Vietnamese people justified? Yes.

(2) Are there better/more enlightened methods? Yes.

But there is a problem with question (1), and it is the word "justified". Here we get tangled up in ideas of what is "right" and what is "wrong". Everyone has an ego, and every ego believes it is right. The ego can do no wrong - it is the nature of the ego. It is only when one thinks outside ego paradigms that is it possible to see other sides to issues.

Paul also asked for my reasons. OK, here goes:

Why were they justified? Firstly, I'll answer why they were justified to fight against the French:

In 1945, Ho Chi Minh allegedly wrote a letter to U.S. President Harry Truman:

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

Our VIETNAM people, as early as 1941, stood by the Allies' side and fought against the Japanese and their associates, the French colonialists.

From 1941 to 1945 we fought bitterly, sustained by the patriotism, of our fellow-countrymen and by the promises made by the Allies at YALTA, SAN FRANCISCO and POTSDAM.

When the Japanese were defeated in August 1945, the whole Vietnam territory was united under a Provisional Republican Government, which immediately set out to work. In five months, peace and order were restored, a democratic republic was established on legal bases, and adequate help was given to the Allies in the carrying out of their disarmament mission.

But the French Colonialists, who betrayed in wartime both the Allies and the Vietnamese, have come back, and are waging on us a murderous and pitiless war in order reestablish their domination. Their invasion has extended to South Vietnam and is menacing us in North Vietnam. It would take volumes to give even an abbreviated report of the crisis and assassinations they are committing everyday in this fighting area.

This aggression is contrary to all principles of international law and the pledge made by the Allies during World War II. It is a challenge to the noble attitude shown before, during, and after the war by the United States Government and People. It violently contrasts with the firm stand you have taken in your twelve point declaration, and with the idealistic loftiness and generosity expressed by your delegates to the United Nations Assembly, MM. BYRNES, STETTINIUS, AND J.F. DULLES.

The French aggression on a peace-loving people is a direct menace to world security. It implies the complicity, or at least the connivance of the Great Democracies. The United Nations ought to keep their words. They ought to interfere to stop this unjust war, and to show that they mean to carry out in peacetime the principles for which they fought in wartime.

Our Vietnamese people, after so many years of spoliation and devastation, is just beginning its building-up work. It needs security and freedom, first to achieve internal prosperity and welfare, and later to bring its small contribution to world-reconstruction.

These security and freedom can only be guaranteed by our independence from any colonial power, and our free cooperation with all other powers. It is with this firm conviction that we request of the United Sates as guardians and champions of World Justice to take a decisive step in support of our independence.

What we ask has been graciously granted to the Philippines. Like the Philippines our goal is full independence and full cooperation with the UNITED STATES. We will do our best to make this independence and cooperation profitable to the whole world.

I am, Dear Mr. PRESIDENT,

Respectfully Yours,

(Signed) Ho Chi Minh

This letter was never answered and was not declassified until 1972.

In the same year Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence:

All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

You'll no doubt recognise the words of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776 - the justification used for the American War of Independence.

And the justification for the French Revolution in 1791 was that:

All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights.

Ho Chi Minh justifiably claimed that these were "undeniable truths".

I think he justified his armed struggle for indpendence against the French very well.

The Americans and their allies were pure aggressors and therefore Ho Chi Minh had even greater justification for armed struggle against these mass-murdering mongrels (of which I was one).

All of this notwithstanding, there were better, more enlightened methods available to Ho Chi Minh, but given his time in history, he may be forgiven for not realising this. After all, Gandhi's work had yet to reach fruition in India.

But now, in 2005, we have many examples which show us that peaceful people power is a force no government or aggressor can stand against, especially if the eyes of the world can be kept on the struggle.

blue mountains night life...

“Night falls. In a lonely valley called the Sink, four people prepare for a quiet evening. Then in his orchard, Murray Jacob sees a moving shadow. Across the swamp, his neighbour Ronnie watches her lover leave and feels her baby roll inside her. And on the veranda of the Stubbses’ house, a small dog is torn screaming from its leash by something unseen. Nothing will be the same again.”

- In the Winter Dark, by Tim Winton

Make of this what you will... And this... And this...

pilger goes to valhalla...

The John Pilger Film Festival opens in Sydney on 11 January

In conjunction with the publication of Pilger's latest book, Tell Me No Lies, the Valhalla Cinema in Sydney, Australia will show the first ever John Pilger Film Festival, starting on 11 January. Sixteen of Pilger's 58 documentary films for ITV will be shown over a week, beginning with his first film 'The Quiet Mutiny' (1970), and including his classics 'Year Zero (1979) and 'Death of a Nation' (1994) and the Australian premiere of his latest film, 'Stealing a Nation', first shown on ITV in Britain in 2004.

And of course I'll use this post to give his recent most excellent article, THE OTHER, MAN-MADE TSUNAMI, another plug. Well worth a read if you haven't already done so.

I'm not so pissed off with "the left" anymore...

Nonviolence. Sear that word into your brain, dudes and dudettes.

I had accused "the left" of not being interested enough in the concept of nonviolence. Providence has moved! It has shown me to be wrong. And I'm happy to be wrong. Whenever I'm wrong it means the world is a better place than I thought it was. And this is a good thing. Being a cynic is not easy... But the cheap Cab Sav is having a mellowing effect...

A local "movement for change" email list I'm on has informed me of a three-day workshop which I would recommend to any politically engaged readers. You may even find me there...

If you want a registration form, go to this site >>> and scroll down the events list to this heading: National Nonviolence Gathering. And you might like to read this too.

And after this, if you still want to solve the world's political problems by advocating or condoning violence, it's because you have some sort of warped commitment to remaining a Homo Ignoramus.

Want a bit of background to this? Read this blogpost and the comments thereto.

interesting...

Baraka is on the ABC, and I'm taping it. And I'm watching it. This is double plus good.

I notice Paul R. has posted a deep and meaningful comment to which I will need to reply. Whilst I welcome this, it is also daunting because that bastard has a knack of calling me on my crap. I hate that. Tomorrow... I will deal with it tomorrow...

it's a disaster...

Our Prime Minister, John Howard, in Indonesia for the Tsunami Relief Summit, said the disaster was "a tragedy the scale of which we have not seen before" (or similar words). My questions to the Prime Minister:

Has the Prime Minister been informed of the size of the Iraq Disaster?

Does the Prime Minister acknowledge that he was a contributing factor to the Iraq Disaster?

Does the Prime Minister acknowledge that, unlike the tsunami disaster, the Iraq Disaster was entirely preventable?

So many questions... So few answers..

Update: Thanks to Paul Robotham for a heads-up about this article on John Pilger's (other) website.

And for those readers who don't regularly read Barista's blog (shame on you!), you'll like this little U.S. bed-shitting story... Enjoy...

terry...

Terry was a dog. Some sort of bitser. He was the family dog of my sister/husband/kids. Why am I telling you this? To share with you his special quality.

Like no other dog I've ever known, he did not have any loyalty to any one person. He seemed to be loyal to something entirely different. He seemed to be loyal to the idea of anti-aggression. I was the first one to notice it. To test it my brother in law and I would play games. If I "attacked" him, Terry would turn on me. If my brother in law "attacked" me, his dog would attack him!

It never failed. And it was the same when we got others to similarly test Terry. It was always the same - he correctly worked out who the aggressor was and he would attack them, even if it was his "master".

Has anyone else come across this sort of thing?

I'm pissed off with "the left"...

Why? Because they're so factionalised, so fractured, and so happy to condone violence as a means to political ends.

At a time when more than ever it's important for those on the left to unite, all I see is splintered groups who, in their frustration and desperation, condone and even advocate violence as a valid political tool.

Instead of focussing on the things which might unite them, they see only the things which keep them apart. I've had it with these arseholes. They don't actually deserve to have any political power given the way they carry on.

So I don't know what that makes me. I still have left-leaning views. I just don't see any hope for the violence-condoning rabble they've created. The right must be laughing their heads off. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....

the corporation...

This may be of interest to those of you who live in Australia: “The Corporation” starts on SBS at 8.30pm, this Wednesday, 5 Jan 2005. Part one of three parts.

And after you've seen it, you might like to read the book on which this film is based. The book covers so much more and goes into greater detail.

Speaking of books, I'm currently reading Peter Singer's One World - The Ethics Of Globalisation. Wanna know what happened to democracy and national sovereignty? The WTO happened to them that's what! The WTO is quite literally the most evil instrumentality the world has currently got. It's the fortress from which globalised capitalism rules the world. But if you're reading this blog, you probably already know more than me about all of this. I'm probably preaching to the converted. Anyhow...

tsunami info website...

One of my left-leaning secret agents, codename Flowerpot, has provided this link. It's got, as far as I'm concerned, some good links and some utter crap links on it, but the good links make a visit there worthwhile. Flowerpot says the site has been put up by members of the Australian Socialist Alliance & supporters of Green Left Weekly. So there you go.

Another site worth looking at is this site. (Thanks to Barista for the link.)

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HAPPY NEW YEAR, you brilliant readers !!!