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Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292
Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65
So this is how it was supposed to go down:
You have an elected elite to run the show within a larger one that creates the laws.
You then have an independent, qualified elite to put the law into practice.
This is all cool because the people under the law control it by electing the people who make it.
The sinfully undemocratic non-electedness of those enforcing the law is begrudgingly accepted because they only carry out the wishes of the elected, not to mention the fact that they actually have the knowledge and experience to do the job.
In a country the size of ours however how can the all empowered voters possibly be sure that these elites in their distant towers are indeed doing the jobs they were chosen to do?
Bear in mind that, in terms of population, we're a pretty small country. Of course it goes without saying that every single one of us wants the history-ending panacea of democracy to saturate the globe, (either that or we're terrorists.)
Again, how can so many people be accurately informed of the actions of so few, thereby ensuring that society progresses in the direction best for all?
Well into that breach step another proud and noble elite. The fourth part of the equation, the people who provide that vital link, the defenders of our very freedom, they are...
...the media.
That's right, these people are essential to the very existence of liberty and civilisation, or so the story goes.
And it is a story, an inspiring work of fiction.
I find it a bit depressing when I realise I'm writing the same things on here over and over but for some strange reason all the worlds ills just refuse to disappear. Anyway, before I get onto a familiar rant about the media, just let have a quick familiar rant about polarisation.
Thanks to polari-fucking-sation I've ended up on the same side of arguments as the BNP in the past and none of the three examples that follow leave a better taste in my mouth. 
First up let's talk about 'the injunction'. Both the BBC and The Guardian got very excited about being gagged regarding the contents of a paper drafted by a No 10 aide.
The gagging itself became the story and you see they were loving it. Freedom of the press is one thing but it's not very noble or exciting. Seems like you can only feel like a real, full sized journalist if people are telling you to be quiet.
Maybe they're jealous of all those journalists around the world who regularly risk torture and death to record and communicate the truth. I guess on the west running the risk of getting sacked or prosecuted is a kind of fat free version.
Anyway, what pissed me off here, other than the fact that they've caused me to side with Bliar and his greasy bastard mates, is that this was nothing unusual and it was entirely in the public interest.
Now regular readers may be surprised to hear me advocating any kind of censorship but I wrote recently about how it's not what we're entitled to know, but when we're entitled to know it.
The media are prevented from publishing information every single day, and for very good reason.
What happens if someone has been charged with, but no convicted of a crime and the press print a huge full colour picture of him along with his name and the fact that he had motive and opportunity?
What happens is the guy goes free whether he did it or not. There's no way he can have any kind of fair trial, therefore he can't be proven guilty, therefore he has to be assumed to be innocent and walks.
Is anyone bitching about this? Is anyone saying that our individual rights to be informed take precedent over the systems the keep society ticking over? Well probably a few but fuck 'em, let's stick to the sane in the interests of keeping this relatively brief.
In this instance it is my understanding that the police requested the injunction because they felt that if the contents of that drafted paper were made public it would reduce their chances of getting a conviction.
So why all the bad noise? Nobody's saying we're not ever allowed to know, the 'secrets' will be presented as evidence at a public trial for fucks sake!
Personally I think this is about the only way we're ever going to get anywhere near Bliar and his mates actually facing any kind of justice.
Next up let's look at that infamous CCTV of a copper apparently beating a teenage girl while he and his mate sat on top of her.
Yet again you're going to be shocked but I'm finding it tough to get all high and mighty about the 5 0 here.
Yes I've been harassed, threatened and and even knocked on my arse by our boys in blue in the past. I am certainly not the biggest fan of our state foot soldiers.
That said however, the media have yet again pushed me into bed with particular unpleasant fellow.
When talking about this in terms of right and wrong we have to be very careful. There's your own personal view of what's cool and what isn't and then there's what's by the book and what isn't.
Where the police are concerned we, (technically, through the magic of democrazy,) write that book. Their powers are set out in laws that we create by proxy.
In this light I think there are only two questions to be answered:
was he using official techniques?
was he in control?
As damning as that footage appears to be, I believe the guy was actually using a recommended technique for police and prison officers.
As I understand it the procedure goes like this: if someone's kicking off to a violent degree and needs to be subdued you get four people, (or as many as you have,) to grab hold of them and you try to get them into handcuffs.
If they make it impossible for you to put the cuffs on you twat them in their upper arm until it goes dead so that you can.
Now regardless of how humane that sounds it is a technique we've prescribed for their use. To be fair getting a dead arm is better than getting shot or gassed or electrocuted or sprayed or just getting the living fuck beaten out of you which seem to be the other options available.
With regards the second question however, I believe the officer in question lost his temper and was not in control.
My basis for this belief is his quoted statement in which he details the extreme provocation he was presented with, ie. a reason to lose his temper.
Then the fact that he reported hitting her once and then twice more, when in fact the CCTV shows four blows instead of two, suggests that he actually did lose it.
I don't think the guy was lying when he said that, I think he genuinely didn't realise how many times he hit her because he had lost control.
Now I couldn't be a copper, I'm not up to physically nor mentally. Keeping your cool when it's all kicking off, even when you're in serious physical danger, is no mean feat and I do respect people who can pull it off.
If you can't do that however, you're probably not in the right job. Another officer was quoted that he witnessed the girl foaming at the mouth during the incident suggesting that, rather than resisting the coughs she was having a fit.
How did the guy sat on top of her not notice that? Maybe because he was seeing red.
Now these are exactly the kind of stories we need a fourth estate for. This is precisely where the media are supposed to ensure that the people and the elites they've put in place above them are singing from the same hymn sheet.
For the most part however, the media reported this complex story simply as the UK's answer to Rodney King. Fascist bastard police beating a black person, a teenage girl no less. Juicy, exciting, more at eleven.
Finally I wanted to share the contents of a New Internationalist article on Iran that I found exceedingly interesting. Just have a think about that nation, it's president in particular, and a couple of strong recurrent themes in the media.
How about the fact that he said Israel should be wiped off the map, or his desire to have a big red button to match ours?
Well, according to NI, who I'm inclined to favour, both these items of common knowledge are untrue.
Just to pre-empt the polarisation disease let's make something clear: Iran's president is a shortarse fascist fuckwit cut from the same cloth as Hitler and Bush. This doesn't alter the accuracy, or lack thereof however of the 'facts' listed above.
Let's start with the Israel thing. It is suggested that the 'wiped from the map' comment was in fact a slightly giddy and very biased translation.
A more accurate version, apparently, was as follows: 'the regime running Israel should disappear into the pages of history'.
Now I'm not suggesting that that's a great deal better, it is vitally different however. Instead of calling for the outright annihilation of a nation he is suggesting that a standing government should be toppled for the greater good.
Clearly western voters learning that this little psycho is puking the exact same rhetoric as Bush and Bliar would be bad news for both respective scumbags.
But fuck it, our media is there to make the politicians answer to the people right? To ensure that the power is still in the hands of the masses. So what went wrong?
What I found far more surprising was the whole nuclear issue.
Now the fact that Bush is the guy with his finger on the button is a long held source of stress and despair but then he's the president and that's what presidents do.
Or is it? In our efforts to take ignorance to new and dizzying depths we have all somehow agreed to assume that Iran is just like the US.
For some reason the guardians of out liberty have not chosen to point out to us that in Iran the president is not the head of state and, if they ever did get the bomb, would not be the guy with his finger on the button.
Iran has a supreme spiritual leader above both the parliament and the president and this is the guy who would do any button pushing should it come to that.
This is also the guy, it turns out, who has issued decrees stating that it is not in Iran;s interests to have nuclear weapons and is also one of the many people who really doesn't like the president.
It would seem that the president is part of a relatively obscure Islamic sect and this doesn't sit well with the supreme leader. Other people who don't like him are most of the people who voted for him.
Like most successful fascists he got himself elected by telling people the easy answers they wanted to hear and making promises he couldn't keep.
As has been pointed out recently, the price of tomatoes in Iran is probably going to solve the problem of this weird little man before anything more drastic is required.
So why isn't this common knowledge? Why are we walking around with a dangerously inaccurate picture of this country in our minds? Why does the media give the appearance of serving political interests at the expense of ours when it should be precisely the other way around?
Because they're a shower of bastards is an easy answer and to be honest, about as useful a one as you're likely to get.
Now I poured scorn on the 'big plan' at the start of this blog and that was mainly due to the way things have worked out. To be fair it does look good on paper and whether we like it or not we're in it now.
I've often said in the past that it's no good bitching if you've no better ideas so here's mine.
It's a golden oldie but just like with capitalism, don't fight the media, just ignore it and sort things out for yourself.
If you're reading this blog then you have access to pretty much all the information the media do, it's called the internet.
We can't rely on our fourth estate to protect us, they have become utterly compromised and worse than useless to us now.
The only option then is to keep ourselves informed.
By all means use the media, I do, I watch BBCN24 all the time, just don't trust it, find out for yourself. In fact why don't you go find something out right now? There's nothing more going on here today and the porn will still be there when you've finished 
WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? 
