If you have a TV or basically live anywhere that isn’t under a rock, you will have heard about Iraqi journalist Muntader Al Zaida having managed to throw his shoes at American President, George Bush during a recent press conference. Let’s relive that moment, maybe even several times if you enjoy it as much as I do:

So of course this event has just reiterated just how much the reality of the invasion and American aggression in general is not reflected in mainstream news coverage. If the TV world of events bore any resemblance to reality then Al Zaida’s actions would hardly be surprising.

An interesting thing to note, is that in 99% of reporting on this you will find this sentence: “In Iraqi culture, throwing your shoes at somebody is widely regarded as a sign of contempt”. In case you found his actions a bit ambiguous, you see. I mean gosh, I hope his idea about throwing dirty things at people doesn’t catch on in the white/right parts of the world… like America. That would be a horrible way for “Iraqi” culture to infect us.

One more thing that I think is very worth noting (and something that has barely been mentioned), is that last year Al Zaida was kidnapped, beaten, questioned and then subsequently released two days later. The identity of his attackers has never been established.

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I just want to bring a couple of very interesting essays to your attention, both of which serve as useful correctives to the recent news coverage of the ‘financial crisis’.

The first is by one of my favourite people, the late Robert Anton Wilson. (If you haven’t read Prometheus Rising or Quantum Psychology yet, you really should). Here he looks at the relationship between schooling, sexual neuroses and economics, and the social implications thereof.

What I Didn’t Learn at College - Robert Anton Wilson (1961)

The second is from H. L. Mencken, that great repository of witty quotes. He basically takes the probably controversial (but perfectly sensible) approach of looking at the political economy of economics. Thanks to A Tiny Revolution for getting it online.

The Dismal Science - H. L. Mencken (1922) (It’s near the bottom of the page, you’ll have to scroll down)

So I thought I’d post some videos from the protests against Prop 8, passed on Nov. 4th banning gay marriage - because, well, it’s pretty cool to see communities galvanize themselves for justice like this. (Via)

It still boggles my mind that Prop 8 went through. If we ever needed evidence that heteronormativity still dominates life then this is it. As a collective society we seem to make so many fundamentally unsound assumptions. If a newscaster says, “Gender issues” - that’s taken as “Women’s problems”. If they say, “Racial issues” - that’s equated to “Black problem”. And “Sexual orientation” - “Gay”.

This ‘Othering’ of so many people really lays the basis down for hatred. And I’m not sure a lot of people really know why they hate other human beings so much. It’s usually evidenced by falling back on things like, “It’s just not right!”

I think some good (and compulsory) thought exercises would go like this… Contemplate that:

- Male is a gender

- White is a racial category

- Straight is a sexual orientation

A Mother’s Grief: This woman had lost her son in Iraq. She wanted people to know that it was not unpatriotic to be against the war and for Obama. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 2/11/2007. © Callie Shell / Aurora for Time

I’ve been up all night, and I’m not even American. I went straight into a lecture only a few hours after the results came through, and everybody there seemed to have done the same last night. We can stop worrying about the election for a few years, finally. Hopefully, assuming nobody pulls any weird shit on us.

Our lecturer this morning even took it upon herself to make a speech at the start. We did a show of hands for: those who stayed up, those who managed all night, and those who cried like babies. I’m happy to say that around 80% of all us stuck our hands up and kept them there. Anyway, this got me to thinking about how the entire world has become so drawn into this particular election, there are a few reasons but I don’t think any of them do all the explaining on their own. It was such a combination of hatred for the current administration, tied in with the military-industrial complex and the fake ‘War on Terror’. The prospect of the first African-American President. But, a recurrent feeling I think a lot of people have had over the past 8 years goes something like - Why does it feel wrong that we don’t get a vote?

Also, Rupert Murdoch appeared on the BBC at some point yesterday and revealed how worried he was about Obama’s economic strategies. Duh. Were we supposed to feel sorry for him or blindly listen to him, oh mighty white man in a suit? No surprise that today’s Sun headline is “OBARMY ARMY”. Oh, or that Fox was the station to report on that video of a black community youth group endorsing Obama as though they were some secret agents about to take over the world. But really, that’s just your basic angry black man racism, I guess we should have expected it. Doesn’t make it any sweeter, but yeah it was probably going to happen.

So anyway, I leave you with what must be one of the most phenomenal speeches at the right point in time that I’ve ever heard (and yes, I shed a tear or two):

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This video is quite shocking, if only for revealing the extent of things.

The speakers are John Howard, then PM of Australia, and Stephen Harper, now PM of Canada. As you can see, within 2 days of each other, they give identical speeches to their respective parliaments, both calling for their countries to join the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Let it be known that any coincidence theorists commenting on this post shall be hereby laughed at - and maybe also detained indefinitely in our secret prisons - for propounding their silly views. (Incidentally, synchronicity theorists will not be laughed at, although I think in this case, the conspiracists have it).

Warning: Trolls will be bahleeted! One of the basic assumptions of you having arrived on this site is that you can understand the concept of subjectivity. Thank-you.

NB: If you are squeamish, or have a problem with modifications - skip this post. Links are NSFW.

So for a while there have been these niggling little issues bothering me about how there is such restricted cross-over in the blogosphere between areas that I love dearly in their own ways. Allow me to expand: especially with regard to personal decisions such as the choice to modify your body - there seems no room for discussion. Comments threads descend into repeated exclamations of judgementality. There’s some kind of tangible sense of resentment towards a cultural critique coming within 10 yards of body modification. It’s ridiculous, but on the flipside there are some F.A. (Fat Acceptance) blogs out there that seem to over-critique everything to the point of which choosing to lose weight is equatable with succumbing to societal pressure and thus abhorrent. Admittedly that’s anecdotal because it would take me so long to find the specific posts I’ve read that on, and besides in this post I’m mainly focusing on discussing the Body Modification scene. I want to preface this by saying that I really don’t want this to read as some kind of brochure for all the horrors out there - modification is life-affirming, progressive, fun and not to mention a skill (that’s rare in a lot of studios) to be respected.

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The other day, we noticed a new link to us on our wordpress admin page. It was, disappointingly, merely someone hotlinking to a picture we were hosting (and thus using up our bandwidth). This was especially annoying as the site in question was ‘American Papist’, which apparently has had over 1,300,000 hits. Understandably, we felt aggrieved and left a polite comment asking the webmaster, a certain Thomas Peters, to kindly refrain from his hotlinking.

Sadly, this did not seem to have the intended effect.

At this point, we decided to investigate Thomas’ website somewhat, and - I am sad to say - he let us down again. Besides linking to vendors of ‘The Pope’s Cologne’  and ‘Papist Hoodies’, Thomas also seems to enjoy attacking feminists, Democrats, liberals and others for their pro-choice (or ‘culture of death’) views, equating foetuses with ‘persons’, and even criticising other Catholics for their ‘flat-out dissent from and opposition to Church teaching’, and/or being ‘un-Catholic’.

And his attempts at news programming are fairly amusing. Did you know, for example, that MSN’s online clipart gallery contains NO images of God? That’s right, none. It’s run by atheists.

Now, before I reveal what happened next, (the punchline, if you will), let me preface it by saying that I don’t have any problems with religious belief. It’s a basic assumption of this website that such issues are matters of personal judgment, and that dogmatic atheistic beliefs are no more justified than dogmatically theistic beliefs. Clearly, many Christians are admirable and thoughtful human beings, whatever Richard Dawkins says to the contrary.

However, if you are going to dogmatically base your beliefs solely on the pontifications of one extremely powerful man, who wears a dress but says gay marriage is immoral, who is conveniently deemed by his own organisation to be entirely infallible, and whose job consists in the main of promulgating dogmas supposedly derived from divine revelations… and you then go on to criticise others for not believing the same, to the extent that you feel you have the authority to decide what other people should do with their lives and bodies, (not to mention hotlinking to our website), then you fully deserve this…

Forgive us Father…

So, remember kids, hotlinking is a sin.

Not much to say about this one, apart from - wtf? (This comes from the same Powell interview where he endorses Obama).

Around 2:38, Powell states, and this is verbatim:

‘There’s gonna be a crisis come along on the 21st or 22nd of January that we don’t even know about right now’

Now, I’m studying paradoxes in one of my university modules, and I have to say that statement qualifies. You know it’s going to happen, but you don’t even know about it? One resolution: perhaps this is a sentence with two distinct subjects, one an informed insider and the other the unaware general populace (hence ‘we’, not ‘I’)?

And, um, why so specific on the date, Colin? Presumably he’s aware of the significance of the date, since its only a day or two after the presidential inauguration, Jan 20th…

Who knows what we should make of it (or the interviewer’s neglecting to ask Powell what in God’s name he was prophesying). But remember this in a few months time, if and when some supposedly unforeseen, external threat is being invoked to justify military action and/or the erosion of hard-won civil liberties.

Here’s your daily dose of propaganda, kids: Dangerous and depraved: paedophiles unite with terrorists online. This is one of the worst examples of Rupert Murdoch’s ‘journalism’ I’ve seen - I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Yes, two of the best excuses for the erosion of civil liberties are now apparently colluding online to ‘exchange operational secrets’. It’s now even been discovered (by an unnamed and unbiased ‘anti-terror source’) that terrorists and paedophiles are psychologically similar. They’re both ‘obsessive’, ‘paranoid’ (surely they should be paranoid?) and - this is the best one - they spend a lot of time ‘going to the mosque or going off to internet cafés’. That’s an actual quote, I’m afraid.

Never trust an ‘anti-terror source’ with your psychological well-being.

Not only are the terrorists and paedophiles in league with one another, apparently they’re often one and the same. The article proudly declares that ‘The link might have remained unknown but for the case of a Muslim preacher from the East End of London [Abdul Makim Khalisadar]’. Right. Except that they then admit that Khalisadar was never convicted of anything relating to terrorism or paedophilia. (He was a convicted rapist though, so hey, they’re all the same right?) All through the article ‘terror suspects’ are treated as if equatable with convicted terrorists.

We then get the incredible claim that terrorists actually communicate through child porn. Yes, Al-Qaeda have decided to encode pornographic images of children, possibly the most illegal, graphic and conspicuous medium thinkable, with secret messages as a mode of ‘clandestine communication’. I’m not making this up (although I suspect the Times is).

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Just needed to post these two videos of Naomi Wolf speaking. She’s the author of The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot and Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries. The first video, referencing the former, was recorded in October 2007. The latter is an interview from this month. Well worth watching.

Today I just want to promote/congratulate this guy. I’ve never really been into hip-hop much, but having come to a growing realisation that most good things in any genre will be hard to find, I did some research. And Sage Francis stood out for me - he’s a proper artist. It’s surprising enough when any given contemporary performer comes across as a self-aware, socially conscious, intelligent human being. Add to that captivating lyrics and you deserve some respect! This particular song, by way of context, was written a month after 9/11. (And yes, that’s Bob Dylan at the end).

Anyway, I’ll let the song speak for itself.

“Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.” - Mary Wollstonecraft

For those that have not had the pleasure of watching the ‘Winx Club’ - It’s a children’s TV show in which six fairies (and some small pixie things) tackle evil whilst still managing to look good. Originally an Italian animation series which began in 2004, Winx is now somewhat of a worldwide phenomenon that appears on over 100 children’s channels. It has spawned a myriad of merchandising ventures. Recently, a feature film was made and there are plans for another series and film to be released soon. It was originally conceived of by Iginio Straffi, who also happens to have created the production company responsible for Winx (Rainbow S.p.A) and made himself the CEO.

What is my beef with the cute little characters? As a feminist (and a human being), I see that gender role socialisation is an issue which harms both of the sexes. It’s unnecessary, it’s harmful, it’s unacceptable. The Winx Club, with their tiny clothes and tiny little brains seem to epitomise the message of children’s television about what it means to have a vagina. All of the elements are there, and conveniently encapsulated within the one minute opening sequence. I can’t hide my surprise that not only this level of sexism is still acceptable to the public, but we are letting thousands upon thousands of children view and internalise something which inherently aims to box them in.

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Today I had the rare opportunity to watch the music channels on TV, and so I flicked over to Kerrang. The first thing I noticed (after the shocking lack of new music in the past 5 years) was the presence of British Army recruitment ads in the commercial break. It’s extremely naive of me, but I did half-expect alternative music to be somewhat suggestive of anti-war sentiments. (But then again, how alternative can a channel be when its parent company also owns most of the available pop stations?)

The second thing was Metallica’s new video The Day that Never Comes, which ostensibly features US soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan (or maybe Pakistan?).

Immediately I was reminded of this Guardian news piece about US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay (and other sites?) playing certain songs, repeatedly and at deafening volumes, as a form of torture. That Guardian article does a good job of explaining why ‘torture’ is the appropriate word here. Now, one of those songs was Metallica’s Enter Sandman. Did they object? Well, allow me to quote the band’s vocalist James Hetfield:

“If the Iraqis aren’t used to freedom, then I’m glad to be part of their exposure”

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So what are the US special forces up to this week? I’ll give you three guesses. No, go on! What’s that, you say? Killing civilians and causing needless destruction again? Well I don’t know how you did that, but godamnit, you’re right. Have a cookie - or a prozac, whichever gets you through the day.

Yep, democracy is on the rampage again but this time in Pakistan. The ’smart bombs’ are officially confused. This story first came to my attention way back into The Guardian (in print last Thursday), I believe it was around p. 22. So it’s there if you want to find it (funny how the news works isn’t it?).

Since then, more updates have arrived on The Guardian online to a grand total of four as far as I can tell. We know that it was bound to happen soon, but I will admit I was mildly surprised. It’s being reported as an accidental spill-over from the Taliban hunting festivities in Afghanistan, reports are varied on what actually took place. Speaking generally, it seems as though between 7 -20 civilians were killed in their homes via several helicopters and heavily armed commandos.

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We’ve all heard the debate about whether video games affect our thoughts and behaviour. Personally, I have no problem with indiscriminate violence in games. Some senseless murders in Grand Theft Auto 4 can be highly cathartic, diminishing rather than exacerbating those murderous urges we all get (eh? anyone?). But there’s a worrying trend of videogame violence becoming discriminating, and senselessly so.

Case in point - Mercenaries 2, released this week. As far as I can tell from its wikipedia entry and various trailers, the game is set in Venezuela, in the year 2010. Megalomaniac ‘Ramón Solano’ has just seized power and become dictator. He takes control of the nation’s vast oil reserves and declares “It is time the Venezuelan people stop paying for the greed of foreign interests, we will make them pay dearly for our oil. From this day forward everybody pays”. And so you, the maverick mercenary, have to overthrow the Venezuelan government. (Apparently, because ‘Solano’ didn’t pay you for a previous job. Of course…)

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Well, we did say we’d try to promote alternative viewpoints. I’m more than a little incredulous towards this one, but it did at least make me consider where my incredulity was coming from.

Anatoly Fomenko’s series of books History: Fiction or Science proposes that all pre-16th century history, as we’re taught it, is completely false. He argues that no methods of dating (such as carbon-14) are accurate enough to reliably date items in the timeframe of human history; instead he relies upon statistical and astronomical methods. His conclusions? That all human civilisation, all buildings and artefacts, date back only as far as 800 AD. Ancient history is a mixture of lies, fiction and misinterpretations of primary sources. Oh, and Jesus was a Byzantine emperor who lived in the eleventh century (his name was Andronikos).

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Alright, so in the papers this morning - the Home Office fancies granting extra powers and privileges to private security staff and council wardens, including dog wardens, housing wardens, football stewards, traffic wardens, bin men, security staff and shopping center staff.

So, what powers will they get? Speaking generally, they’ll be dealing with ‘anti-social behaviour’ when police involvement could be seen as excessive’.

• Ability to issue fines
• The right to obtain personal details
• The right to confiscate alcohol and cigarrettes from those who are either underage, or drinking / smoking in a public place.

It is perhaps a little telling that ‘The Wright Stuff‘ is covering this story (and most papers, infact) from an angle of cheap policing. i.e. Our government is cutting corners - again! They want us to do all the work - again! Why can’t we just have more policemen?

So what’s wrong with this idea? Saves taxpayer money and cuts crime… it’s a win/win situation. Right?

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Diego Garcia is a tropical island in the Indian Ocean. These days, it is known as a ‘British Overseas Territory’, though before this it was less euphemistically called a colony. The island has been under British control for over 200 years, having being conceded by France at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. French-owned slaves from West Africa first inhabited the island in the 18th century, developing their own idiosyncratic language and culture, and calling themselves the Ilois (‘islanders’).

But, only a few decades ago, the islanders’ way of life came to an end, following a clandestine political agreement which still influences events today.

In the early 1960s, American officials decided they needed a military base (‘communications facility’) in this strategically important area. Originally they had planned on using the uninhabited Aldabra Atoll, but environmental groups successfully lobbied for the protection of the rare tortoises living there. Plan B was Diego Garcia, which they intended to lease from Harold Wilson’s Labour government as part of a joint military venture.

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