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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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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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.

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.

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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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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I don’t know what ‘liberal’ is supposed to mean these days, but I always understood it as having something to do with the prioritisation of individual liberty (hence the etymology of the word). So when I heard Barack Obama’s new running mate summed up as ‘a liberal’ by the BBC last night, I did have to wonder.

Joe Biden supported the PATRIOT act, of all things. Now, admittedly he does want to restore the habeas corpus rights of detainees, but really - is that a specifically *liberal* position these days? It’s a central tenet of the US constitution, from which all US government officials, republican or democrat, (supposedly) derive their power. The constitution says: ‘The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.’  And let’s be clear, the USA have neither been invaded, nor have they revolted.

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Yesterday - Friday, August 22nd - a coaliton airstrike took place in the Herat province of Afghanistan. That is what we do know. And then the fun guessing game begins. You see, once again depending on who you ask, something wildly different actually happened.

Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry is claiming that 76 civilians were killed when the airstrike took place yesterday afternoon (19 women, 7 men, 50 children). Conversely, US forces claim that they took out roughly 25-30 terrorists and Taliban members that had been planning to attack US bases. It’s good to see them really going for this pre-emptive strike thing, isn’t it? (Remember when they did that and managed to wipe out everybody at an entire wedding reception?). Yeah, fighting the good fight for freedom. But I digress - the military is also claiming that the strike occurred in the early hours of the morning and that there were no further attacks that day. Oh yeah, and there were no civilian casualties. Reuters must be full of bullshit, right?

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Allegedly. We haven’t really touched upon the 9/11 truth movement as yet, primarily due to the fact that it’s being covered so extensively elsewhere.

But this needs posting. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (an agency of the US Department of Commerce) has concluded that yes, WTC 7 is the first tall building ever to have collapsed because of fire damage. Their claim is one of ‘fire-induced progressive collapse’, which they admit is ‘a new kind of progressive collapse’. They claim their research (which consisted of analysing video footage, select eyewitness testimony and structural plans of the building) proves for the first time ever that fires can cause tall, 47 storey buildings to collapse. All from fires on 10 floors. And apparently, falling debris from the other towers wasn’t even necessary.

My favourite part from the Q&A page:

Why didn’t the investigators look at actual steel samples from WTC 7?
Steel samples were removed from the site before the NIST investigation began. In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, debris was removed rapidly from the site to aid in recovery efforts and facilitate emergency responders’ efforts to work around the site. Once it was removed from the scene, the steel from WTC 7 could not be clearly identified. Read more

Today I stumbled across several news stories which sound more like science fiction than fact. (Now there’s an interesting subject - why do we keep fulfilling sci-fi prophecies?) Anyway, onwards with the dystopian scaremongering….

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