In a pretty bad mood today I'm afraid but consider this an attempt to turn my annoyance into something more positive. I like the place I live for a number of reasons, one of which is, having spent four years living in student houses, things are a bit more chilled round here.

Now don't get me wrong, I do love my metal and the peeps next door have young kids so we're not exactly librarians round here. The thing is that people seem to have a nice attitude, a decent balance between tolerance and respect. The two guys who moved in behind us a few months back, however, do not.

These dickhead, rich kid students from London have a band, who are wank by the way, and use their cellar as a practice room. Now having spent a few years as a bassist in a band myself I’m not unsympathetic to the difficulties young musicians face. If you’re playing with a drum kit you can’t play quiet and practice rooms can be hard to find.

Turns out however, that not only have these guys been particularly arsey with the various local residents who have tried to reach some kind of amicable solution with them, myself included, but they have also ignored the city council and police who are now involved.

Apparently the council went out and found these guys a secure practice room where they could leave their gear, practice when they liked and all for free! Despite this these dicks have insisted on keeping things as they are and, living in back-to-back terraces like these, are continuing to piss people off.

It’s not just the band practice either, this morning for example I was rudely awoken when they, having returned from a night out I assume, decided to play a bit of guitar and scream and shout from 4:30am this morning onwards. They shut up for a little while, I then had to spend the second half of the day listening to yet another band practice.

At least they didn’t try to play any Rage Against The Machine this time, it’s even more painful than usual to listen to their ridiculously white and middle class singer try to pull off outraged political rap. I guess i should be thankful for small mercies huh?

Two separate arms of the council are currently in the process of, ‘trying to get something done,’ though for some reason they can’t work together so my neighbours and I have to go through two sets of complex and lengthy procedures.

Anyway, now I’ve got that off my chest I’ll get to the point. I happen to know that in other areas of Leeds this would not be a problem. If these guys were acting like this near where a very good friend of mine lives they would have long since received an unpleasant visit that would have put them off disturbing anyone ever again.

Now I simply cannot condone such vigilant justice but, given the abject failure of the authorities to deliver swift action, what else can be done? I am still convinced that the use of violence is always a failure, a failure to think of a better way, and that it will always ultimately produce more problems than it solves.

This train of thought brings me to an uncomfortable station that has been bothering me for a while now concerning Iraq. Pretty much all the terrible things the anti-war camp warned against have come hideously true but I can take no pleasure, or serve any real purpose, by saying I told you so.

The fact is that Saddam was a scumbag of the highest order and while the people of Iraq were certainly better off under him than they are currently, democracy or no, neither situation is an acceptable one. It is fair to say that perhaps we shouldn’t have forced three different nations into one to form Iraq in the first place. It’s also valid to point out that maybe we shouldn’t have given him lots of cash and arms to fight Iran.

While justified, these points do not address the question at hand though, namely once the guy was there, doing his thing, how do the rest of us stop him? There was much talk around the opening of our war against the people of Iraq that the US would use the conflict in the future as a precedent for pre-emptive action. I have always felt that the anti-war camp had a responsibility to set a precedent of its own by presenting the world with another option.

Zimbabwe is another example of a sadistic lunatic ruining the lives of a nation full of people but if you went around saying we should bomb the crap out of the place to save those people I’m not sure you’d find a lot of popular support.

What this comes down to is a problem that I cannot, currently, solve. What do you do when someone is acting in an intolerable way but refuses to engage in any kind of civilised method of resolution? I still insist that violence is not the answer, (much as I would love to head round next door and lamp those twats, ) I just don’t know what the answer actually is.

We of ‘the left’ have a grave problem here because, until we can be the pro-peace camp by offering an alternative, instead of the anti-war camp who do nothing but criticise, we are not going to mobilise sufficient popular support to make a difference.

So help me out here guys, what is the third way? How do we free peoples from tyranny in a legally and morally just way? How do we liberate nations without annihilating them? And how can I get these anti-social, pretentious, Kaiser-Chief-wannabe fucks to shut the hell up?

Difficult choice this week between a specific guy with a specific act of Swinery and a whole bunch of guys making Swinery their profession. I'll start with the latter as they've been spared the piggy crown, this time. Now George Best is clearly a well loved bloke, and a footballing hero to many. It's fair enough then that, should he finally pass away, people would like to know so as to be able to pay their respects etc.

What nobody needs however, especially not Mr. Best's family and friends, is a crush of bored looking newspeople outside a hospital constantly delivering live action footage of bored looking newspeople outside a hospital.

Like bored children on a long car journey you can almost hear their plaintive tones: "Is he dead yet? Is he dead yet?" These vultures squawk and shuffle, each waiting for the final tired breath of a terribly ill man that will kickstart their race to be the first to break the news.

The obit clips are poised and ready to roll, having been put together years in advance, while the faces on the ground go over their solemn announcement for the thousandth time. Each experiments with platitudes and soundbites, desperate to deliver the definitive eulogy to the nation.

Besides the shamefully distasteful nature of the hospital-front scenes there is another dimension to the journalists' failure. With all due respect to Mr. Best and his family, aren't there more pressing and significant news stories to be covered? Is the world really so peaceful and dull that our grand news agencies can afford to waste their time on this sickeningly eager deathwatch?

Anyway, as I said these guys didn't make it this week, mainly because while their Swinery is indeed appalling, it's unfortunately not particularly uncommon. This week's Swine is an individual who has, over the last few days, undertaken to set a precedent that can only really be interpreted as another step down the dark and greasy spiral.

The Official Secrets Act is a funny thing. On the face of it, it seems entirely reasonable that the government have some power to keep certain information out of the public domain, especially if people's lives are in danger. The problem is of course that because the information is secret the rest of us have to wait decades to find out if the decision to withhold the information was valid.

In the meantime we have to just trust our government to use its powers wisely, and this is where the whole thing rather falls down. Once you get into a position where you can't trust your nation's leader or his government as far as you could comfortably throw them, the use of these powers becomes increasingly controversial.

This week our attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, threatened journalists with the Act, ie. with jail time, if they published the contents of a memo. This memo allegedly details a conversation between Bush and Blair wherein Bush suggests bombing the Al-Jazeera TV station. Various sources speaking about the unspeakable have suggested that, on the one hand, Bush was joking, while on the other, he wasn't but Blair talked him out of it.

The precedent mentioned above is the way in which Lord Goldsmith has chosen to employ the Official Secrets Act. My understanding is that, in the past, the Act has been used to jail whistleblowers while the media would usually receive injunctions to prevent further disclosure.

Such instances have included ex-spies publishing memoirs which include details of UK secret service operations for example. It seems strange then that a situation involving nothing but an embarrassing comment from a foreign leader should be dealt with so much more severely.

But wait, things get more sinister still. The fact is that the British attorney general is threatening British journalists with British law. None of the reports of the unreportable so far have suggested that Blair said anything wrong in the memo, in fact he seems to come off quite well, finally demonstrating his long claimed restraining influence over Bush.(1)

It's one thing for the senior legal official of a nation to use the law against the people for the benefit of that nation's government. It can even be argued that the government's interests are the people's and so the people are being kept in the dark for their own good.

What appears to have happened here is that the most senior official in British law has subverted those laws against the British people for the benefit of a foreign power. Now call me old fashioned but isn't that treason? I'm pretty sure that in days gone by this chubby wanker could have been dragged into the streets and hung for such a day’s work.

Of course Lord Goldsmith is not simply some insidious traitor to the nation, but a grovelling servant to our supreme and ultimate leader. It’s quite amusing to see Blair’s authority crumbling around him, mostly because it ‘s clear from his face that he just can’t comprehend what’s happening. He clicks his fingers and nothing happens. Having spent so long believing his own hype, however, he can no longer imagine why his every wish should not be granted.

If he wants an expert opinion, he doesn’t listen to the breadth of academic and professional opinion, his minions find him an expert who will support his ideas. This testimony is then ‘proof’ of the validity of Blair’s idea. In this way the government has rewritten the ‘truth’ of any situation to fit its own latest crusade.

The law is no different and when it came to deciding whether our war against the people of Iraq was legal or not the same old tactics were employed. Now I don’t know the exact job description of an attorney general, but my impression is that they are supposed to be the foremost legal expert of the land, providing the government with clear advice as to whether their needs are catered for by the law.

It would appear that this week’s Swine never even intended to play things this way. Instead his job is to legitimise anything Blair wants. The law, it seems, is just another pesky ‘truth’ to be twisted to fit the plan. So, Lord Goldsmith, you are this week’s Swine Of The Week for aiding and abetting state censorship. I’d shake your hand but the blood of countless Iraqi children is hell to shift.

PS. If I might be so bold as to offer some advice to world leaders, I think it might save you a lot of trouble in the long term. It’s a simple rule that I’ve always tried to live by: DON’T SAY SOMETHING BEHIND SOMEONE’S BACK IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE BALLS TO SAY IT TO THEIR FACE!

footnote

(1) Not that restraining however, seeing as how Al-Jazeera did get bombed by the US, at least twice, and one of their journalists is still in Guantanamo bay!

So I've had an idea simmering away at the back of my mind for a while now and, while it's neither fully mature or concise enough to be explored here today, I'd like to set out the gist as it's relevant to tomorrow's activity, or rather lack of activity.

I was thinking about the nature of religion and in particular the general characteristic of insistence on a single universal truth. The idea that followers are strictly directed in their behaviour and even thoughts as if the religion is not prepared to submit to thoughtful scrutiny or tolerate constructive criticism.

A sudden parallel sprang to mind in the form of the whip system in UK politics, ie. when parties tell their MPs how to vote on a particular issue. From this initial link I carried the comparison forward and found more and more similarities that, as mentioned, will be explored in greater detail in the future.

The short and the skinny of all this is that I began to suspect that religion, then politics, and now economics, are all basically different forms of the same thing. Now, as is almost tradition in this blog, I have to race off at a tangent.

Never underestimate the power of habit. The fact is that we undertake so many actions with such regularity that it is simply impossible for us to fully consciously consider them all. This is where habit takes over, getting ready in a morning, putting the kettle on, going to work etc. Now there's certainly nothing wrong with this, not least because such reliance on the subconscious saves us from potentially terminal tedium.

The danger of the habitual comes from the ease with which it can be established. If we don't make the effort to step back once in a while and actually look at what we blindly do everyday, the details and more importantly the consequences of these habits can remain unseen forever.

Now to return to our three good and aforementioned buddies another common denominator becomes apparent, namely the role of the habitual in each. The strength, indeed the lifeblood, of these three systems lies in their popular followings.

The only way religion, for example, has any impact of significance is by creating and maintaining sizeable congregations. Indeed, despite reports of decline in Church of England attendance, more people apparently go to church each weekend than go to watch professional football.

The question is, does each single parishioner turn up at church because they have thought carefully about the pros and cons and decided that it's the best way for them to spend their time? Is each pew filled the result of a weekly spiritual quest?

No. The fact is that church attendance and the observance of the ceremonies therein are the result of a habit installed from a very young age. This is not to say that there is no value or substance to these ceremonies, simply that, for the same reasons mentioned above, habit always becomes a significant factor.

It is an established fact, certainly in the UK and US, that a relatively small percentage of the electorate decide the outcome of any election. This is because the two main parties in power always take a significant block of votes, leaving a minority to tip the balance one way or the other. Focussing on the respective party faithfuls we can again consider their motivation for forming the essential foundation of these huge ideological movements.

Does the lifelong Labour/Tory voter deliver their cross to the same old box each time as the result of deep soul searching and the exploration of political ideas? No. Again, habit is the glue that holds this machine together. Is there anyone doesn't see where I'm going with this yet?

So economics, specifically global consumer capitalism. In terms of grass roots support this system kicks the crap out of religion and politics combined. We all worship at the alter of commerce and tick the box of trade every single day. Why?

Do you consider the impact of each penny you spend? Is each purchase a considered use of consumer power? Of course not. We all perpetuate this biggest of all systems without a second thought, even those of us who recognise and dislike it, because it gets under our radar riding on the back of habit.

How can we possible know how deeply affected we are by this habit of spending without taking a step back? Well tomorrow is about exactly this. Just for one day, a single 24 hour period out of our entire lives, can we break that habit?

No-one is asking you to change your mind about anything or to align yourself with any group or ideas, the suggestion is simply to make yourself think about something we all do, all day, every day, something that has a major impact on our world.

Is it really that crazy an idea? Humans have been not buying things for millennia, it can’t be that hard, and if it is, well then maybe that’s a sign a problem that needs to be addressed. So tomorrow, just for a single day, BUY NOTHING, if you can.

The latest incarnation of our society's self obsession came in the reaction to Amnesty International UK's recent report into attitudes towards rape in the UK. Apparently about one third of people here believe that if a woman is wearing revealing clothing and is drunk then she bears at least some of the responsibility if she gets raped.

I guess this also applies to when I was growing up and myself and my other long haired mates were getting attacked for how we looked and dressed. If only I'd known that I was asking for it, it all makes sense now. If I'd just cut my hair and dressed like everyone else I would have been safe. Thank fuck I live in a free and liberal society hey?

Apparently this survey partly explains why only 5%, (FIVE PERCENT) of rape cases in this country result in a conviction. So here in merry old England if you're a bloke accused of rape you've got a 95% chance of walking away! There is something very wrong with that.

These are shocking statistics, until you realise that you're only shocked because you've been assuming that most people hold the same 'reasonable' beliefs as you. Before we tackle the ethics of this question however, I'll just recount one idea this story inspired.

Listening to people describe 'the real world', as opposed to, 'an ideal world', I was struck by the rhetoric that was being banded about as it reminded me of something else. It is apparently unrealistic to expect men to control themselves, they and their urges are as they are, and so, if women want to be safe, they must hide their bodies for their own good.

Now it's funny, but one of the most iconic 'differences' cited between secular western culture and the, supposedly weird and alien, culture of Islam in the media is the hijab. Women's rights are so often said to be being curtailed in Muslim countries because their society demands that they cover themselves to be protected from rape. Suddenly it seems like an Islamic state would actually fit in quite nicely with a lot of people over here after all.

Anyway, are the scantily clad female binge drinkers 'asking for it'? Well I don't think so. The analogy that immediately occurred to me was to consider leaving my front door wide open. Does this increase my chances of being robbed? Yes. Does this mean that I deserve to be robbed? Have I forfeited my right to own property? Would the act of theft be less illegal, or less morally wrong? No.

Yes, it would be a stupid thing to do but the law is there to protect everyone, especially the stupid and the vulnerable. Society has a duty to protect and care for all it's members. The flip side of this of course, is that every individual has a duty to look after themselves so that more of society's resources are available to the truly needy.

Now it may be tempting to some to then say, ha! if you fail in this duty to society you deserve what you get. This is a perfect example of a major problem we seem to have, namely that we only seem to be able to think in terms of compulsion. Many people can see only one mechanism for social change, if you do the wrong thing we hit you with a stick, that'll learn ya.

Unfortunately this just does not work, if it did our society would be perfect by now, what with the sheer number of stick beatings we like to hand out. There is another way and I like to think of it like this:

You're in a small lifeboat with a lot of other people. The boat has sprung a leak and is sinking, everyone's panicking and desperately bailing out water. The problem is that no mater how much water they throw over the side there's always more to replace it. Finally someone stands up and says: 'For fucks sake! Will somebody please just plug the hole!'

There are a million parallels to this, arming the police is a good example. People are shooting at our police and it is unreasonable of us to expect them to put up with it, so what do we do? Arm the police? More water floods in as more criminals arm themselves. Keep the police safe? More water floods in as law and order breaks down in what become no-go areas. Do nothing? More water floods in as the police find their jobs more dangerous and recruiting more difficult.

Plug the gap, go to the root. Why are people shooting at each other? Why are people getting blind drunk every week? Why are people raping and robbing one another? These things are, in the vast majority, products of society, they reflect the state of our communities and the form of our economy. Of course tackling these problems is far more difficult than coming up with yet another short sighted initiative but there's a good reason for that: the rewards for success are so much greater.

There is a belief that people can't be changed, that notions such as, encouraging people to have interests other than drinking for example, are unrealistic. This may seem sensible but it is patently and utterly wrong. Why is it that so many people follow such self destructive recreational pursuits, drink, fast food, TV etc? Human nature? No! Human beings did not evolve to do such things, in fact the way our bodies respond so badly to them suggests quite the opposite.

The reason these pastimes have become so popular is because it is in the interests of certain people that they do. Decades of a perpetual barrage of multimedia advertising has shaped our society and defined our spare time. It is in fact entirely possible to sway populations into trends, even things they don't want that'll ultimately kill them, without any punishment or threat tactics, just ask McDonalds.

The fact is that private companies have far more influence over the nation than our elected government. People may dismiss this as conspiracy theory, saying that the companies don't make the laws or govern etc but this misses the point. They don't need to do any of that because the real power, the real driving force of our society is consumer capitalism which defines not only the jobs we work, but what we do when we're not at them.

So it is entirely possible for us to plug the leak, to tackle the social problems instead of their resultant symptoms. The techniques are there, they're just being used to deliver profits instead of happiness. If we consider freedom to be total independence to decide the course of our own behaviour then human beings are not and never can be free. There are forces all around us that shape our attitudes and behaviour, the nearest thing to freedom we can get is to take control of these forces.

That's it for today, I'm off to get dressed, carefully, after all I don't want to accidentally 'ask for' anything do I...

As a general rule of thumb, the more I learn about the United States of America the lower my opinion of that nation sinks. Whether it be historical, such as the Native American holocaust(1) or the conduct of early US citizens when fighting on both sides of their 'war of independence'; or contemporary, such as their current antics in Cuba and Iraq; they always seem to manage to plump new depths of indecency.

Not believing in absolute concepts like good and evil however, I have to maintain a serious effort to remember that there is another side to this self righteous, war-addicted land. looking about me right now at the CDs, DVDs and many, many books, I cannot help but recognise the various examples of greatness produced by this very same country.

HST, HP Lovecraft and Hendrix are three H-type examples that spring readily to mind. I love them all and they all came from across the pond. More recently I've started watching, 'The Daily Show,' on More4 and found myself not only amused but surprised.

There's been plenty of great US comedy I'll admit, but what got me about this spoof news show is the satire. I'll be honest, until I saw this show I wasn't sure the US really got what satire was, I thought maybe it was just some cultural concept utterly lost in translation, like irony for example.

It was nice to be pleasantly surprised in this way. It gave me the feeling that maybe there was some hope, that maybe this other US I keep hearing of, and occasionally enjoying the fruits of, was somehow more real and gathering some kind of momentum.

Another similarly pleasant surprise was the speech I caught on C-SPAN the other day. Democrat John Murtha was speaking about why he felt the US needed to 'redeploy' their troops, ie. get them home within six months. The former marine and defence advisor almost broke down, and deeply moved me, when recalling the regular visits he makes to his local veteran's hospital and the people he encountered there.

This guy had seen combat, seen Iraq and seen the aftermath and had clearly entered the beyond-outrage-disbelief within which much of the rest of the world has been sitting for the past few years. As clearly passionate as he was about the sicker and sicker true tales he recounted, his points were simple and delivered in a calm and constructive fashion.

Before I sing this guy's praises too much I should mention another thought the speech and subsequent press conference inspired: where the hell was all this two years ago? I can't really blame Bush for being Bush, he's an out and out fascist and his genocidal madness was to be expected. The Democrats, on the other hand, are supposed to be the counter balance that protects both US citizens and the rest of the world against him.

They have so far failed miserably in their task but, if they want to change that, they should take some pointers from Mr Murtha and grow some balls. In the US at the moment I'd guess it takes a pretty brave politician to go on national TV and say things like:

we have now become the targets, we are uniting Iraq against us and causing more problems than we're fixing,

first time round Bush Snr at least entertained by partisan opinion, even if he didn't always listen to all of it, this administration won't listen to anyone, even Republicans,

These are dangerous words in a country of rabid flag wavers but I was impressed and waited to hear the response. A group of Republicans had held a meeting to discuss the issues raised by Mr Murtha and gave their own press conference to announce their conclusions.

I gave them a chance, I swear I really did, but after the fourth or fifth sour faced guy had delivered yet more of the same old rhetoric I switched channels. None of the valid and pressing points made by Mr Murtha were directly addressed, just the same tired bullshit about, '..9/11 justifies everything..', '..not cutting and running..' and how '..America never surrenders..' etc yawn.

At this point I'll level with you all and admit that this post, up to this point, has really been intro and filler to try and disguise the fact that I only really have one small point to make here today. It was while forcing myself to seriously listen to and analyse the Republican response that I suddenly realised something I hadn't before.

They seemed to keep implying that them killing Iraqis was some how keeping the rest of the world safe from terrorism. The fact that all the terrorist attacks on western targets(2) they mentioned occurred after their illegal invasion of Iraq went unmentioned, but all of a sudden I got it, it finally made sense. So here it is, the rational for the utterly irrational, the explanation for the totally inexplicable and the reason for undeniably unreasonable:

The US is either unwilling or unable to stop terrorists killing their citizens. If however, they give the terrorists sufficient numbers of the right kind(3) of US citizens to kill on the other side of the world then maybe the rest of them can be safe at home.

The young men and women dying horribly and the many more being maimed are simply human sacrifices in the truest sense of ancient traditions. In order to placate the great dark beast from which you cower you hang out a few of your best young specimens and hope it'll be satisfied.

footnotes

(1) A lot of people throw this word about without really thinking about the weight it carries, I am not one of them. The US government is estimated to have slaughtered at least the same percentage of Native Americans during their pursuit of manifest destiny as the Nazis did European Jews in WWII.

(2) As pointed out in the current issue of Adbusters, (#62, Vol.13, No.6) these attacks were against those who supported the US. The UK but not France, Spain but not Germany, Australians in Bali. Of course Blair and the like insist that there is no connection with Iraq but then he's the kind of guy who'd insist he wasn't choking even if you stood on his neck.

(3) The 'right kind' of US citizen in this case is the disposable kind, ie. the poor. The disgraceful fiasco surrounding the recent hurricanes to hit the South East of the US demonstrated quite clearly that the poor in the US are not so much actively oppressed as completely ignored. Below a certain income you just don't exist in the US, and who's going to miss someone who never really existed in the first place?

Retro movie fun the other night as I sat down to watch Ghostbusters, the 1984 film I absolutely loved as a child. Bill Murray was still funny and I was relieved to find it's still a fun family film, though some details did appear slightly different to me in the light of experience.

For example, when Sigourney Weaver's character becomes possessed by an ancient demon the main change is that she became overwhelmingly horny. Now I know the whole sex = evil thing has been around much longer than twenty years but it did make me think about how sex was seen in the eighties.

In my earlier description of another great movie, Day Of The Dead, (see tag ) I mentioned a grim kind of 1980's apocalyptic vibe. The rise of AIDS during that period must surely have been a big part in establishing this feeling in the communal psyche. After the fun of the 60's and the decadence of the 70's, sex was suddenly scary and dangerous.

Now just to leap off at a tangent for a moment, Question Time this week included debate about the fast approaching reform to alcohol licensing laws in the UK, or '24-hour-binge-drinking-armageddon,' as the media have so responsibly portrayed it.

Reference was made to the difference between contemporary attitudes towards drink and those of decades past. The general upshot of this was to suggest that our current social culture is one of anti social decadence, that having a good time now fundamentally involves a loss of control and respect.

In one of those little golden moments that the human brain was built for, these two ideas found one another and a connection became apparent. The eighties were a time of fear and despair while the nineties were supposed to be about 'caring'. This change could be thought of as a backlash, so relieved at having survived the previous decade the 90's saw society push for the sensible and responsible.

If this is the case then another backlash explains the current trend rather neatly. After being boring for a bit the past fears are forgotten and the pendulum swings, away from social responsibility and caution and headlong into wild abandon.

Now obviously this is quite hideously simplistic and has three fairly obvious flaws. Firstly it's based on some pretty superficial observations and secondly there are clearly plenty of other factors that can shape social attitudes. For example it is fair to say that in the past, both economies and communities were local and inherently linked.

As our economies have become national and then international we have not developed our communities to keep up, (though this may well be impossible,) and so the concept of community has faded altogether. This nicely ties into the idea of a loss of respect and due attention to our fellow citizens as we become increasingly isolated from one another.

Finally there's the important, but often forgotten point, that society is never, ever homogenous. No matter what the mainstream trends and opinions there are always significant numbers of people involved in a variety of completely different lifestyles.

These caveats in place however, there is still much to be said for this backlash theory. A potential example is all over the news right now via the truly horrible shootings, one fatal, of two police officers in Bradford yesterday. According to BBCN24, the incident has reopened the debate as to whether UK police should be routinely armed.

I'm happy to say that I'm not too worried about this happening, mostly because the police themselves don't want it. A perhaps rare piece of common ground between myself and the UK police is the great pride taken in being one of very few countries in the world where the police do not carry guns. According to a police representative on BBCN24 today this is an integral feature of the British policing technique, ie. diplomacy and common sense over force and authoritarianism. A sentiment also reflected in our military's approach, cf. UK and US troops in Iraq for example.

The key problem with the backlash system is that the kneejerk responses we allow to continually shape our society are not based in fact or thought through. The facts, (according to BBCN24,) are that, over the past two decades, only around a dozen police have been shot dead in the UK. While each individual incident is clearly a tragedy and can not be downplayed, that's not a bad record compared to other countries whose police are packing.

Incidents involving replica firearms have gone up, increasing the overall 'gun crime' statistics, but crimes involving real guns have actually dropped over the last year by more than one fifth. This surely means that the chances of you actually getting shot in the UK have gone down. Unfortunately this makes very little difference to a potential backlash and there may well now be a subsequent public outcry to arm the police for their own protection despite the facts and the police's own opinions.

I can see no upside to this thrashing back and forth but within the swing of the pendulum there is hope to be found. A good friend of mine pointed out the other day that when things move in one direction what is left behind doesn't disappear. Instead it continues to be developed but outside the constraints of the mainstream.

Art is a great example of this. As music, film and literature become increasingly commercial and homogenised all that happens is underground scenes spring up to fill the gaps. Sometimes these scenes swell to become the establishment of the future, sometimes they don't, but if things are always changing then there's always hope that things can get better.

Another very good friend of mine, (he knows who is, respect for this one mate! ) shared a brilliant idea he'd had with me recently. I've often bitched on here about how TV is incredibly powerful as a medium but incredibly crap in content. Now my friend knows a guy trying to start a pirate radio station and he wondered if, once the analogue signal is switched off in a few years time, how easy it would be to set up a pirate TV station.

My mind instantly raced ahead with the sheer possibilities. Only the old school analogue TVs would be able to pick it up of course so, if successful, it might be possible to start a kind of counter technological revolution, keep using your old stuff, don't buy new just because you're told to. Also the transmission range would be a major limiting factor which would probably lead to lots of small, local stations, again taking us in the exact opposite direction to the global media corps.

As with so many things in life however, being able to play the system to your own advantage doesn't mean the system is a good one. One thing that occurs to me about this continual backlash scenario is how utterly self absorbed we must be as a society to perpetuate it.

Is it really so ludicrous to suggest that a society should be driven by wider, more long term and humanitarian concerns? Instead we appear to have allowed our blinkered obsession with our own pop culture to constantly define us, leading us to lurch back and forth between various flavours of lip service while not actually making any real progress.

Some might say this is just the way society works and maybe they're right. I've long had an interest in what I call unconscious systems, ie. mechanisms of change driven directly by circumstance as opposed to any conscious planning, natural selection for example, and this could be a good example of one.

The thing is that once we become aware of the system, it is no longer unconscious. Once we recognise the true consequences of our own unwitting, and even well intentioned, actions, we instantly acquire responsibility for them. I believe that the backlash process is not inevitable and that, with a little thought, we could take more direct control of our society. Of course I can't claim to be breaking any radically new ground here so the real question is why haven't we already done this?

Unfortunately for us this situation of being blinded by immediate shadows and ignoring long term substance is hugely beneficial for a small but powerful minority. At the end of the day though, we currently ignorant and sheep-like creatures are in the vast majority, this is our world and it's just waiting for us to step up and get serious.

Slightly different this time in that our latest Swine conduct their swinery all year round but were actually caught out for it this week. Before we get into such current affairs however, let’s start with a little background into why this week’s Swine, namely Coca Cola(1), piss me off so much.

For a start I’m not a fan of big corporations generally, and Coke are one of the biggest. Now such views are often dismissed as radically closed minded, the loony left refusing to embrace the future of economics etc. I feel, however, that I can justify my distaste with more than tired rhetoric about some new kind of class war.

I just don’t think it is in society’s interests to have any non-democratic organisations with such power and influence. Anyway, surely these gargantuan businesses are the true ‘anti-capitalists’ as their dominance in their fields(2) removes that sacred tenet of capitalism: competition.

Are they really that powerful? Maybe we’re just getting a little carried away in demonising these suits. Well the thing is that the Coke logo is now the single most commonly recognised written symbol in the history of humanity, Also, a terrifying number of western toddlers now come to learn such brands even before their own names.

So yes, they’re pretty powerful and all that power is put to a single end: profit. But hey now, come on, what’s wrong with making a profit if you do so by providing quality goods and services? Well one thing that has made it easier for me to boycott Coke, and its various subsidiaries, is that their products are incredibly unhealthy and, once the cycle of sugar addiction is broken, not even particularly pleasant.

Another point concerns Coke’s role in the developing world. Coke sell something else besides fizzy shit and no I’m not talking about their abortive attempt to flog bottled and poisoned tap water. ‘The Real Thing’ is a lifestyle indicator, they are selling the brand which is inextricably linked to a particular lifestyle, namely the cliched US lifestyle.

Thinking of another aspect of Coke’s role in the world, have you ever seen a Coke factory? I haven’t but I’ve heard of one, in a developing country, that takes so much water from the local area to make our sugary luxury, that the indigenous peoples don’t have enough to drink. Is there anyone out there still willing to defend Coke?

The main beef with Coke here today, however, is the first point, namely their application of their great influence. I was unlucky enough to see this in action first hand during my time at Leeds Uni which has Coke vending machines throughout the campus.

Now the student’s union at Leeds had, when I arrived, a small independent supermarket which sold, among a million and one other things, individual cans of Coke. The problem arose when Coke wanted to up the prices of cans and bottle sin their machines and discovered that our supermarket was actually already undercutting them.

The short and the skinny of all this is that Coke demanded that the union remove the competition to its machines. The student’s union, remember what those two words literally mean, had a vote on whether or not to keep our supermarket. The vote to keep the supermarket open came in at over 90%.

I’ve never fully understood exactly what happened next, but the supermarket closed and the prices in the vending machines went up. Apparently Coke had threatened to remove all their machines, and whatever else they do for the uni, and so the wishes of the student body were simply overridden.

This episode is not unlike the situation that has seen Coke in the news this week. Raquel Chavez(3) owns a small shop in Mexico City where she sells a selection of soft drinks. Her claims that Coca Cola tried to bully her into removing rival products from her shelves resulted in a federal investigation and a major complaint from Pepsi.

These two actions have now resulted in Coke being found guilty as charged and fined just under £40 million. Mrs Chavez’s story is a great one and she certainly appears to be quite an amazing woman. While the fines are mere pocket change to Coke the bad publicity could be far more costly and, hopefully, their entry into the League Of Swine will makes things that little bit worse.

The upside of this week’s events are the proof that ‘little people’ can make a difference and that these guys aren’t as untouchable as they appear. So as the premier examples of why global consumer capitalism is a vicious and ultimately unworkable economic theory, Coca Cola are this week’s Swine Of The Week, bastards.

footnotes

(1) check out Coke’s side of the story at their website: www.cocacola.com

(2) Coke has about 70% of the world’s soft drinks market.

(3) Rabid US right wingers must really hate that surname now!

Just a brief note to mention a thought I'd had regarding last week's Swine. The ruck was over the idea of intelligent design, ie. that life is too complex to have occurred by accident, thereby proving the existence of a creator.

It occurred to me that this argument is flawed by obvious ignorance concerning the sheer scale of the universe. Simply put, no matter how improbable life and its intricacies may be, there's been so much stuff floating about for so long that it's bound to happen. Odds of a million to one might sound overwhelming for example, but if you're allowed a billion attempts they suddenly sound pretty good.

Now if you're an advocate of intelligent design I can imagine your feathers may be ruffled by now so let me reassure you. This is not about science being bigger than your god, it's about your god being bigger than you.

If you're a pantheist, ie. you believe your god is everywhere and in all things, then this is the contradiction you face: the scale of your god and his creation mean that life could have happened by accident and unfortunately this means that life itself is not proof of a creator.

Your very belief in your god undermines your evidence, and if your faith's so strong why are you looking for evidence anyway? So it turns out not only does proof deny faith but faith denies proof as well. What a crazy game you religious types play!

Bit of a backlog here after a couple of weeks of cinematic overload so you'll have to forgive me for being slightly less than up-to-the-minute and topical. So Blair recently suffered his first ever defeat in the Commons after eight years of having his every wish granted, no questions asked.

There was a time when it might have been tempting to take some pleasure in this, but things just seem so knackered now that it's hard to raise a smile. Yes Blair's on his way out but it's beginning to occur to people that what comes next won't necessarily be any better.

As always when laws are debated and passed, or not, in our Houses of Parliament, there are many, many delicate and complex facets of the law and the issues to be considered. Also true to form, the whole thing was presented to the public as being about one single, controversial issue.

Now we could talk about the pros and cons of locking people up without charge for 90 days, or even the effect on parliament and society of MPs now voting purely to punish Blair but there's one particular element of this whole thing that I want to focus on.

Maybe he was trying to spread the responsibility, maybe he was trying to appeal to the instincts of the centre right; whatever the reason, Blair tried to justify the 90 day measure by insisting that it was the police's idea. To reinforce this we then had the dubious spectacle of high ranking regional police officers personally lobbying their local MPs to support the bill.

My point here today is not only to highlight just how tenuous Blair's argument was but, more significantly, the fact that, even though the bill fell, many people accepted the argument as being valid. Let's work this through step by step:

at first glance:

If the police say they need 90 days we should give them that power, after all they're the people on the ground, they know the situation better than anyone and are in the best position to make such decisions. Also, everyone, whatever their profession, is entitled to lobby their MP in the hope of swaying their vote, this is a democracy after all.

Initially this seems both logical and compelling, it also has the advantage that anyone disagreeing can be accused both of thinking they know better than the police and of denying individual police officers their democratic rights.

Now obviously this didn't work, the bill fell and Blair was defeated, but those who voted against him were inspired to do so for a variety of reasons. No-one took this argument head on which is a shame because, from the first moment I heard it, it seemed patently flawed and ripe for destruction..

look again:

Of course police officers have the right to lobby their own MPs, but if their professional opinions are to have political consequences the only way to do this fairly is to a have a structured system of lobbying so as to ensure that all the police's views are accurately represented. The alternative is that the views of police officers with more free time, strongly held political beliefs or the most articulate will have a disproportionate impact.

Basically for those who dare to run the risk of falling into one of the PM's 'branding traps', ie. if you disagree with me you are a racist, or a communist, or a terrorist sympathiser etc etc. there are holes in this argument big enough to drive a truck through.

What concerns me is how few people seemed to take that second look and how common these situations are. The Bush administration have raised this practice to an art form and the Democrats have given in it to so many times that they don't even know who they are anymore.

Have we actually reached a point now where we value convenience over truth and justice? Are we now so intellectually lazy that we'll accept any argument as long as it's simple and comes with some kind of ethical cushion, rather than have to actually think about something?

This certainly would explain a lot but the picture painted, accurate as it may be, is not a pretty one. Once more however, look again, isn't there some hope at the back there? Surely identifying the problem is half way to solving it.

If we could somehow spread the practice of critical analysis, of just thinking about things, these guys would lose all their power and the bar for politicians would be raised so high as to change the whole game. No, no, no come the croaking voices of pessimism, people are just too lazy and self interested.

Well I say look again, that argument just suggests the method, ie. make it in people's interests to use their brains. How to do this? Who knows, so far, but then what's the alternative, wait for these losers to get us all killed? And hell, with all the thought recently given to the sacrifices ordinary people made during WWI & WWII, since when did something being hard become a reason not to try?

Something occurred to me today, one of those things that seems so obvious once you've thought it that you can't imagine having not considered it before. My father was telling me about some of the people working in his office and their lack of computer skills.

One woman, the example he gave, has spent a great deal of time going through a huge database deleting a particular field from each entry. For some reason it didn't occur to her that she could just delete the whole field itself in one stroke thereby saving everyone a great deal of time.

That reason, or so I speculated, was that a lot of people stick relentlessly to what they know and seem to lack any kind of desire to learn more than the bare but necessary minimum. This trend is something I've written about here before but it's also something I've encountered throughout my life.

I can count on one hand the people I know with whom I can have a decent abstract conversation and feel not only that their interested, but challenged as well, and two of those are my parents, which probably explains a lot. There are plenty of friendly people who will listen but, when it comes to it, they don't have much to say and really they're just being nice.

Now I've speculated in the past about the reasons for this, popular culture, education systems etc, but recently came across another explanation in George Orwell's, 'Down And Out In Paris And London'. Orwell points out, from his experiences, that it is almost impossible for people living in poverty, particularly if hungry, to think about anything but getting through the next 24 hours.

I'd say that critical and abstract thinking don't produce anything physically useful directly and are skills that need to be learnt and practiced. If just surviving takes everything you have and no-one's encouraging you to use these skills you're clearly not going to.

So the poverty stricken masses that make up the majority of mankind aren't swamping us with world beating ideas and heart rending art. This is clearly not because, as quietly accepted opinion would have it, they are somehow lesser peoples not up to the job bless 'em, but because they are too busy feeding their children.

Fair enough I say, but then what about the rest of us? I know I bitch about being skint but I have no conception of true poverty and neither, I would guess, would most people reading this. So what's our excuse? Surely the standard of living we continually celebrate having achieved, with convenience and comfort in abundance, should be the ideal breeding ground for abstract thought.

Well in my experience, yes; but in popular experience, apparently not. Being free from the basic demands of survival, things just occur to me, all the time. One of the reasons I have trouble sleeping is my inability to stop thinking about things and the reason I write, the reason I have always written, is to get stuff out of my head so I don't have to think about it.

In fact, come to think of it, I remember being told at school, 'you think too much.' Looking around me today, the idea that such a thing were possible scares the shit out of me more then it ever has. This being the case then it perhaps easy to understand why I struggle so with the concept of someone having no interest in abstract thought or any kind of philosophy.

Now I'm sure my good friends will have plenty of suggestions for the reasons why this could be, but let me return to the original point, namely thought that occurred. Discussing this very situation with my father I pictured my own mind, relentlessly buzzing away with some idea, and wondered:

If you're not thinking abstract thoughts, what are you thinking?

Thought I'd do this now to capture the moment, and because I'm at that stage in a long session where the sun's back up and you suddenly feel like you could stay awake forever. It's 9:01am and I've just got back from the Leeds International Film Festival's (1) Night Of The Dead V.

Sitting here smoking my last pre rolled joint and drinking my complementary Sagres beer, I can hear the PC's fan whirring away, an occasional car, and nothing else. It's a kind of Zen feeling summed up best good old Chris Morris, the kind of euphoria experienced after a long bout of vomiting.

It's been a great night, in all possible senses of the word. The vibe has always been good down at the Hyde Park Picture House on these occasions, but as the Fest has gone from strength to strength this year saw the place sold out.

Now that's a lot of people, (288 I believe,) in very close proximity to one another being deprived of sleep and exposed to about eight hours of disturbing sounds and images, needless to say it was a bit of a zoo. There was every form of weirdness from live head shaving on stage to a rabid feminist outburst from the stalls, while beer bottles were thrown and caught, for the most part, and greasy, life giving chicken was distributed in a regimental fashion.

There were of course some films as well and these were the stops along the way from midnight to here:

"The French Doors" (2004)
Dir Steve Milder, (New Zealand)

Another fantastic horror short! A guy renovating an old and remote house fits what I'd call some French Windows actually and goes to bed. Gets up the next day and while fantastic Kiwi sunshine streams gloriously into most rooms, only pitch gloom can be see through the new doors.

Gradually the guy ventures out into this inexplicable midnight world, circling the house until, wait, a horrific hunched figure is at one of the windows inside. He races back round to the house, back into the wonderful light, but there's still somebody into the house. A great jump and then the true horror of the piece as our fixer-upper is dragged out and away into the darkness.

I find I always at least respect art that dares to defy logic. In this case it's done brilliantly, the audience is given no explanation for anything which is fine because no-one's asking. The situation is so compelling that it can hold your entire attention. This piece cleverly exploits one of the strengths of the short format.

"Loft" (2005)
Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, (Japan)

I had high hopes for this one, hoping for something in the vein of Ringu or Ju-On, (the Japanese originals to those horrific peroxide, US remakes, Ring and The Grudge.) For maybe the first half or so things were building nicely and hopes were still high. Not too long later, however, I found myself just waiting for it to end, never a good sign.

The plot starts with a successful female writer moving to an old remote country house to write her new novel. She's alone and vulnerable and weird things start happening. A large building out back is used by a local university and a mysterious academic is holed up in there with a newly discovered mummy, the body of a young woman preserved for a millennia in mud at a local beauty spot.

Things started to fall apart after this, it got wildly complex and never managed to build any tension so that the few scares there were didn't really pay off. Disappointed but piss was taken and fun had by all.

"Something Red" (2004)
Dir. Scott Milder, (USA)

I'm really starting to like short films and I even enjoyed this typically clichéd US effort. Sulky little girl in little red dress in the back of a family car with infant sibling. Mother and step dad argue in the front as they drive long haul, moving to a new house.

They stop for gas and the stressed out step dad wanders off for a cigarette while mother changes junior in the skankiest of bathrooms and little girl waits in the car. Strangely, various Red Riding Hood style clues are graffitied about the place but then step dad finds a dead body covered in gashes and maggots.

He freaks out but can’t find a working phone to call the police and while he argues with mother they hear the car pulling away. Turns out that body wasn’t so dead after all and the hacked up giant tools down the interstate, smoking with the radio up. He talks to sulky little girl, “I spy something red,” he says, and little girl is sulky no more.

Whatever else kids need, positive personal contact and affection are the most vital. The message is not original and is rammed home clumsily, but it’s still fun to watch.

“Boy Eats Girl” (2005)
Dir. Stephen Bradley, (Ireland)
www.boyeatsgirl.com

Wasn’t expecting too much from what sounded like it was going to be an Irish Scream style horror, with pretty and/or funny teens. I was pleasantly surprised then, when a fairly solid plot, some good laughs and a decent bit of gore followed.

Teenage hero accidentally kills himself while drunk, his mother brings him back to life with voodoo but botches the job making him a creature of the undead. After an initial weakness he manages to control his newfound compulsive taste for human flesh but it’s too late. His victim is now a rabid, 28 Days Later style zombie infecting a wide array of extras at will.

Hero actually ends up being turned back into a living human, a turn so apparently stupid that it’s original because no-one else would do it; and no-one seems too bothered about the massive loss of life once the day is saved. It’s a piece of cheese, but cheese done well.

“Jona Tomberry” (2005)
Dir. Rosto AD, (Netherlands)
www.jonatomberry.com

Holy crap! I’ve never seen anything quite like this surreal animated short. The animation style is arresting, stark and intricate the whole thing is an absolute joy to watch, which is a good job, because there si no clue as to what the hell is actually going on. I must admit that if I could get hold of this I would be prepared to watch it through a few times and try to work out what it’s all about.

“Zombie Honeymoon” (2005)
Dir. David Gebroe, (USA)
www.zombiehoneymoon.com

Mr Gebroe was at the Hyde Park Picture house last night to introduce his film and shave some heads. He told us that, flesh eating aside, his film is a true story, the names of the characters haven’t even been changed.

At first glance Zombie Honeymoon seemed to share a bit with Boy Eats Girl. A young man, the director’s late brother-in-law as I understand it, is attacked by a random zombie on the beach and dies having ingested the dead guy’s black spew. He then struggles against his newfound compulsive taste for human flesh with the help of his new bride, the director’s sister.

Watching this film, however, you quickly realise that it is apart from the rest of the films on show, not least because it is, according to Mr Gebroe, a tribute to the life of his brother-in-law who died in a surfing accident just a few years before.

It seemed to me that this was really just a drama about a young and enthusiastic marriage being shattered by the husbands heroine addiction, only instead of heroine Mr Gebroe used human flesh. This was a new take on the zombie-as-metaphor format started by Romero and revived excellently recently of course with Shaun Of The Dead.

A tragic and moving story told in such a way that at first seems somehow irreverent but ultimately is a respectable zombie movie and therefore, apparently, a fitting and welcomed tribute.

“12 Hot Women”

Don’t know much about this as it was a ‘secret’ short. Basically a spoof movie trailer along the lines of the ‘girls with guns’ videos as seen in Samuel L Jackson’s apartment in Jackie