The Minority Report: Why I am a Climate Sceptic

I used to be a believer.

Up until about two years ago, I had taken the pronouncements of the IPCC and related bodies for granted. I trusted them. This was actually something very out of character for me; I've spent many years analysing the corrupting influences of political and media power, observing how vested interests frequently support one another. I should have known better.

The problem is, and this is a problem absolutely endemic to Western civilisation is this: I just don't have the time to analyse every pronouncement, every potential political or self-aggrandising agenda, every statement of scientific "fact". No one does. I had other things to focus on and, unfortunately, I let myself be led astray by the commonly promulgated idea that climate sceptics were just shills for vested interests. The problem is of course that we are fed an almost constant torrent of bullshit by the mass media. Every goddamn statement has to be analysed carefully if you care about the truth of it. I can quite understand sometimes why some people look at politics and decide to stick their head in the sand, or go insane and shoot loads of people. We're lied to almost non-stop and worse, we generally fund these people to do it. And even critical people can be easily brainwashed if the message is ubiquitous and repeated often enough.

About two years ago I decided to look at what the sceptics were actually saying, and it would be an understatement to say I was shocked. You don't have to be a climatologist to recognise foul play, nor to understand massive fallacies in presented arguments (especially when said arguments are presented by claiming that anyone opposing them is a loon). One area I do know plenty about is politics - and the corrupting work of a confluence of interests is very easy to spot. Where there is any such confluence, one is obliged to adopt immediate scepticism regarding any claims to truth.

I wanted to put together my particular thoughts on this as we are now reaching crunch time. The "Cap and Trade" bill in the U.S. has passed the House and is likely to get through the Senate also (once enough concessions have been made - not likely ones of principle unfortunately). This legislation will come at a truly horrifying economic cost for the Americans. And Britain will be following suit, adding costs to an energy infrastructure that is already close to breaking. And all of this on the back of an economic depression. One wonders if our leaders could possibly be any more criminally insane.

There are a lot of interrelated criticisms I have of this issue. I'll go through most of them in turn:

- The Minority Report

It's actually (not) funny how the behaviour of the "consensus" bullies plays out in a very similar way to the pre-crime in the film namesake. Some of these dirty tricks are outlined by various sceptical scientists in the report itself.

The Senate Committe Minority Report on Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims is by far the best resource I have seen yet on this topic, especially as it is updated periodically (and the number of scientists added to it increases continually). It is potentially your one-stop shop for debating with the climate consensus crew (hereafter to be referred to as "C3").

You can find the summary of the report here.

And the full report itself is here. It looks like quite a weighty document, however in practice you only really need to read to page 97 (out of 255), as the PDF file also contains the previous versions. Also, the URL takes a little while to resolve to the PDF file, so be patient with your browser.

The Minority Report is a source I'll regularly quote below. Do go and read the whole thing though - there's an incredible amount of useful information (and some experiences of the sceptics at the hands of their consensus crew pals will make your blood boil), there are a tremendous amount of links to sources too, which are also regularly updated on the website.

I defy anyone to read the report and come away with the belief that AGW is even likely, never mind a "consensus" view. The C3 probably won't take it seriously though, because they already know the truth.

- "The new Oil".

This alone should give one pause for thought. Traders in the City have begun referring to "Green" investments as "the new oil". Why might that be? Could it be because there is effectively free mana from heaven pouring from the coffers of the taxpayer? Could it be that, in the same way you could attract money to any project by citing the Cold War in the 80s, then T.W.A.T. in the noughties, now (not even out of the noughties), just give something a Greenwash and watch money fly towards you like shit towards a fucking fan. The metaphor is apt because that is exactly what is going to happen to most of this "investment". And you and me get to pick up the tab.

In fact, to call this "Green shit" would be an even more appropriate metaphor. We have diarrhea flying towards the fan, to be spread uselessly in all directions, all the while sucking vital nutrients from the body forced to produce it.

Climate sceptic, chemical engineer Bob Ashworth:

"The lesson to the world here is, when it comes to science, never blindly accept an explanation from a politician or scientists who have turned political for their own private gain. Taxing carbon will have absolutely no beneficial effect on our climate, will hurt the economies of the world, and will be harmful to the production of food because less carbon dioxide means reduced plant growth."

- The "shilling" vested interests are actually behind the consensus now.

Funny, I was recently accused of being a possible shill for big oil. Hahahaha. Oh dear. Let me quote one of the Minority Report researchers:

Chemist, Dr. Kenneth Rundt: "I am only a humble scientist with a PhD degree in physical chemistry and an interest in the history of the globe we inhabit. I have no connection with any oil or energy-related business. I have nothing to gain from being a skeptic."

Quite. And not having anything to do with the Earth sciences myself, being a humble technology researcher (by day, at night I take repeated punches to the head...), I have nothing to gain either. I just like to stick to the old fashioned dictum of my opinions changing with the facts!

The large energy companies aren't going to suffer particularly badly. It's win-win. Where they aren't subsidised by the public purse to make structural changes, they're being given free reign to pass on costs to the consumer. The C3 see this as good because horrifying energy prices are sure to force people to conserve massively. Never mind all of the people pushed into fuel poverty. Add to this the behaviour we saw in the last year, where Hedge funds were moving into Oil, and pushing the price up astronomically - which is likely to be repeated again now with the weakness of the dollar, and short to medium term at least, many conventional energy providers will be sitting pretty if they get their greenwash campaign right.

- The International Geological Congress (the "olympics" of Climatology and Geology):

Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC'

- Authoritative sources turn out to be authoritarian rather than scholarly.


Dr. James ("Hockey Stick Graph") Hansen, Gore's cheerleader in chief has shown himself to be a colossal and disingenuous fraud. Hansen - according to his ex boss Dr. John S. Theon, was an embarrassment to NASA and seems to be suffering a "bad case of megalomania".

Meanwhile, in Blighty, it appears the MET office also can't be trusted: "During a rather bad-tempered interview on Thursday evening... Read more’s Newsnight, Kirsty Wark asked Hilary Benn, the UK Environment Secretary, why local authorities were being told to use the Met Office predictions as a template for infrastructure planning when their report had not been peer reviewed and the authors had postponed publication of information about the methodology that they had used. She also told him that there was considerable concern among other climate scientists about the Met Office’s research."

That's also not to mention the fact that, suddenly, the MET office can carry out astonishing calculations that it claimed last year would require supercomputers one thousand times more powerful than we have at present. Now this is my scientific area, and despite some pretty astonishing breakthroughs in computing technology (many of which are yet to be commercially available), I can state with authority that in the space of one year, we don't have supercomputers that are 1000 times more powerful than their predecessors last year.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency censors internal dissent.

And that's not to mention Gore's behaviour. (See the section, 'The big lie and the big goddamn confluence' below).

- Several recent sceptics were on the IPCC panels

Take note C3 people:
- Environmental physical chemist, Dr. Kiminori Itoh
- Meteorologist Hajo Smit
- Nuclear Physicist and Chemical Engineer, Dr. Philip Lloyd
- Professor of the Department of Atmosphere Sciences, University of Buenos Aires, Prof. Rosa Compagnucci
- Former head of Arizona State University's Office of Climatology, Dr. Robert Balling.
- Atmospheric chemist, Dr. Steven M. Japar.

And there are many others who took part in IPCC activities who reported serious foul play.

And, as mentioned in the minority report, the officially recorded number of climate sceptics is now 700 - more than 13 times the number of UN scientists who authored the IPCC 2007 report. Contrary to popular myth, the IPCC report wasn't cobbled together through thousands, or even hundreds of scientists. It was in fact only 52.

-Co-opting of the green movement.

This is a very serious issue that often gets overlooked. Rabid AGW supporters don't realise how much damage they are doing to the rest of the Ecological movement. Do I think there are serious environmental issues for us to address? Sure. Unfortunately because so many in the Green movement are into AGW, and its horribly statist and invasive so called "solutions", there is a seed of truth in the accusation of "Envirofascist". And a lot of people, after being harried and bossed around by the C3 won't have much patience for subtleties elsewhere.

The Greens are being used and many can't seem to see it. It's a bonanza for the corrupt elites who already screw most of us most of the time. Between the bogus "war on terror" and the bogus AGW agenda and the bogus (grand theft) financial "crisis", is there anywhere left for the 'little people' to turn where their lives are not dominated by fear, guilt and increasingly intrusive government diktat and hand in our pockets?

Senator Inhofe reveals how Scientists & Activists believe Global Warming has 'Co-opted' the environmental movement

- The "complexity defence"

Simply dealing with the core of the AGW argument leads to what I call 'the complexity defence'. This alone is enough to scupper the entire argument.

If we get into the meat of the AGW position, something absolutely fascinating happens. It generally follows this pattern:

Stage 1: Your opponent looks at you like you just said you'd stuffed his pet hamster up your arse and shat it out the window. This stage often takes some time to get through as you have to deal with the disbelief that you could possibly challenge the orthodoxy.

Stage 2: Restatement of the "basic facts", leading to Argument 1:

Argument 1: Green house gases, such as CO2, cause a measurable warming effect. Humans have been adding tons of CO2 to the atmosphere for decades, and there is a measurable increase in global temperatures. There is a correlation between rising CO2 and rising temperatures. Therefore, human activity is causing the rising temperatures.

Now many sceptical scientists have already pointed out issues with the actual mechanisms that might be involved here. However, we can give the C3 the benefit of the doubt on this and still hang them by their own petard.

They assert not only correlation, but a one way causative relationship between humans producing CO2, the actual level of CO2 in the atmosphere and rising temperatures. This, for many years, has been presented as an upwards, linear relationship.

So, what about the occasions when the correlation fails? This is supposed to be the very heart of the argument, so if say, we had a cooling trend for a sizable period, say around the last 10 years, then that indicates that this correlation is bunk.

This is when we reach....

Stage 3: The complexity argument

Argument 2 to the rescue!
Apparently, because the climate is so complex, indeed it is the "mother of all nonlinear dynamical systems", then other factors come into play, determining the global temperature.

Well, I quite agree with this. Yet, somehow, C3 like to add a silent premise - that human produced CO2 is still the dominating factor to this model. What? So when we see an upwards correlation, it is because of AGW, but when we see a negative correlation (because remember humans are still adding more CO2 to the atmosphere, and in increasing amounts, during these cooling periods), it is because of "complex factors" amongst which AGW still happens to - magically - be the major factor.

So when the earth heats up, it is AGW. When the earth cools down it is AGW.
Right.

Similarly, when ice melts in the arctic it is AGW. And when ice forms in the antarctic it is AGW. Got it?

Never mind all those other factors that you might want to consider if you invoke the "complex system" - Solar impact, Earth's precession, Variations in the Magnetic field, Water Vapour, Sulphur outputs etc etc.

Earth Scientist, Dr. Javier Cuadros: "Curiously, it is a feature of man-made global warming that every fact confirms it: rising temperatures or decreasing temperatures, drought or torrential rain, tonadoes and hurricanes or changes in teh habits of migratory birds. No matter what the weather, some model of global warming offers a watertight explanation."


- The big lie and the big goddamn confluence

It is crucially important to understand that the C3 lobby represents the confluence of perhaps the most powerful set of lobbies humans have ever seen. Not only are most national governments behind the "consensus" (notably absent China, India and Russia - but they're just "evil" right?), we also have the media, and a large swathe of compromised scientists who's very livelihood depends on the massive amounts of taxpayer funds being siphoned away to fund their research. People like Al Gore, and "Hockey Stick" Hansen have built careers on this. Plus, there are huge, structural interests now coming into place as Western governments are now preparing fundamental restructures of our economy around this mythology. A lot of organisations, including numerous energy companies, have a lot of public money to lose if the "consensus" is broken.

I'm also more than happy to point out how this is like the Nazi "big lie" written even larger. Now normally I would avoid such comparisons. However, really all I have to say is "fuck you" to the C3. I can think of few things more disturbing than the emergence and promotion of the term, "Climate change denier", with its very obvious and intentional parallel with "holocaust denial". Seriously, fuck you guys - this has already resulted in witch hunts and the destruction of the careers of perfectly good scientists.

Ecological modeler, Dr David Stockwell: "..the IPCC is just another review, and an unstructured and biased one at that. Its main in-scope goal is to find a human influence on climate, and the range of reasons for climate change are out-of-scope."

Russian geographer and Antarctic ice core researcher, Andrei Kapitsa: the UN IPCC is "the biggest ever scientific fraud" - "A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace....As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact."

Award winning physicist, Dr. Will Happer, Physics professor at Princeton University: "I had the privilege of being fired by Al Gore, since I refused to go along with his alarmism. I did not need the job that badly....I was told that science was not going to intrude on policy." [My emphasis]

Princeton University physicist, Dr. Robert H. Austin: "I was taught that any discipline with the word 'science' as part of its title is to be avoided, such as Political Science. Unfortunately, Climate Science has become Political Science."

And, directly from the Minority Report:

Skeptical scientists are gaining recognition despite what many say is a bias against them in parts of the scientific community and are facing significant funding disadvantages. Dr. William M. Briggs, a climate statistician who serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee, explained that his colleagues described “absolute horror stories of what happened to them when they tried getting papers published that explored non-‘consensus’ views.” In a March 4, 2008, report Briggs described the
behavior as “really outrageous and unethical … on the parts of some editors. I was
shocked.”(LINK) [Note: An August 2007 report detailed how proponents of man-made global warming fears enjoy a monumental funding advantage over skeptical scientists. LINK A July 2007 Senate report details how skeptical scientists have faced threats and intimidation - LINK & LINK ]
[My emphasis]

- The Manhattan Declaration

Never heard of it? That's no surprise! The Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change is a vetted list of scientists declaring their scepticism towards the AGW consensus.

This declaration is well worth reading in full - its only a page long, however it makes quite a striking statement, especially as it has been signed by so many. And again, we have a body of scientists much larger than the IPCC disagreeing with the "consensus". I know its not all about numbers, but if you're going to have the cheek to claim "consensus"... well....

I'll finish with a quote from one of the IPCC "traitors" - Dr. Kiminori Itoh: Warming fears are the "worst scientific scandal in the history...When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists."

Quite. I hope the Righteous will be happy with their end result - fuel poverty for hundreds of thousands (if not millions) and forever tarnishing science and scientists with the same brush as politicians and investment bankers. Congratulations chaps.

For the Love of a Robot - why there won't be a robot takeover

These kind of accounts are very common, and actually made me get a bit teary when I first encountered them. I found them very touching.

Whilst stories like this are also very common with civilian robots (60% of Roomba owners name them, a third take them on holiday and a substantial number actually clean the floor before the robot to make it's life easier!), its the robot companions in war where the high emotion and fraught nature of the situation really brings it home.

I think they speak for themselves:

'The EOD soldier carried a box into the robot repair facility at Camp Victory, Iraq. "Can you fix it?" he asked, with tears welling in his eyes. Inside the box was a pile of broken parts. It was the remains of "Scooby-Doo," the team's PackBot, which had been blown up by an IED.

' "please fix Scooby Doo because he saved my life," '

'...the continued evolution of human-robot interaction is leading many robot operators to do things like "award" 'battlefield promotions' and 'Purple Hearts' [medals] to their machines...One unit in the 737th Ordnance Company, for instance, called their EOD bot Sgt.Talon; Sgt. Talon, in fact, got promoted to Staff Sergeant and received three Purple Hearts.'

'When one robot was knocked out of action in Iraq, an EOD soldier ran fifty meters, all the while being shot at by enemy machne gun, to "rescue it" '.

'Soldiers who work with damaged robots notice these attachments the most. Jose Ferreira descrived working at the repair yard in Baghdad as less like being a mechanic in a garage and more like being a doctor in an emergency room. "I wish you all could be here and experience the satisfaction in knowing you saved someone's life today. I wish you could see the fear in their eyes when they first walk in knowing that they could walk out with no robot. I wish you could see the smiles and feel the hugs and handshakes after they leave our shop knowing that their 'little Timmy' is ALIVE. Alive and well to go down range one more time." '

'It would walk through a minefield, intentionally stepping on any land mines that it found with one of its feet. Then it would right itself and crawl on, blowing up land mines until it was literally down to the last leg. When the system was put through military tests, it worked just as designed, but the army colonel in charge "blew a fuse"...Describing the tests as "inhuman," the officer ordered them be stopped. "The Colonel could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred, and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg." '

From Wallach and Allen's 'Moral Machines' and Peter W. Singer's 'Wired for War'

Immigration and Intelligence - part 2

Following on from my earlier piece, I now turn more attention towards the role of the "intelligence" "services":

Another article, this time published in the Independent, and on the same day as the Times piece (coincidence?) cited in the previous blog post, focuses on the work of MI5 seeking informants in the U.K. - by blackmail.

The long and the short of the article is that MI5 have been accused of seeing "informants" through blackmailing them. Numerous British Nationals have alleged that they were approached by MI5 and told to cooperate otherwise they would be designated as terrorists.

Not only does MI5/6 have form on doing this both inside and outside the UK, it appears in fact to be their regular modus operandi for terrorist related investigations within the U.K. It seems MI5/6 don't mind who they chew up and spit out, especially if defending an innocent person (and a voluntary asset no less), would mean crossing the CIA. Pathetic.

A quote here from a related Independent article highlights my own thinking on the matter:

A spokesman for the Muslim Public Affairs Committee said: "MI5's entrapment methods are completely counter-productive. We are constantly trying to sell the idea of liberal democracy to young Muslims but when the security services act like this, it makes our job very difficult. Either MI5 are out of control or the Government has sanctioned this kind of behaviour. Either way we would like a full inquiry to uncover whether this sort of behaviour is being backed by the Government."

A question I have to ask is: If the Home Office, with at least some public and overt oversight is so mind-numbingly incompetent - in fact, scarily so - then what of the completely secret, unaccountable "Intelligence" "services"?

It is important to note that one of the reasons that we get to hear about these cases is that even MI5/6 grunts get sick of it and break ranks and brief the broadsheets anonymously:

"[The agents] fear they will be hung out to dry. This is not the first time that field agents have been made to carry the can even when there is a paper trail all the way to the top authorising the action and conduct of the agents," said the source.

They seem to be very bothered by people who are already British nationals, and in many cases born and raised here. The stream of fresh immigrants coming in on student visas via fake institutions though seem to get a free pass. While it is the case that the July 7th bombers were British nationals (though not quite so "invisible" to the "Intelligence" "Services" as we were led to believe), there is a prima facie case for being much more concerned about random individuals who enter the UK in their thousands with no traceable background whatsoever.

I feel obliged to ask what it is the "Intelligence" "services" actually achieve in real terms. Several cases they have gone public with have turned into farcical nonsense, such as the Ricin ring that wasn't and the recent raid on some Pakistanis here on student visas. Whilst I welcome the focus on people entering the country on student visas it seems too little, too late. Just querying the Home Office's CID system (for borders and immigration) in a smart way can yield a lot of information:

An anonymous commentator on Part 1 of this blog confirmed my own experiences and reminded me to note the fact that using the 'CID' system, one would often find the same address being used by many of these people. This was a fairly regular occurrence. Not only that but many would also share family names. So it was clear that many of the suspect educational establishments were being used to help bring entire families into the country. That this simple information never seemed to make it to "intelligence", resulting in appropriate raids and investigations still boggles my mind.

Immigration whistleblower, Steve Moxon, whatever you think of some of his other views, was right on many things where the Home Office is concerned. There is no other way to describe the immigration and borders agency as anything but so reckless, if you were able to truly grasp the extent of it your brain would bleed through your ears. One thing that was particularly apparent was how the organisation appeared to be very responsive to the tabloids. This was another piece of vein-bursting idiocy for me and was probably the final nail in the coffin securing my desire to resign.

There seemed to be a - roughly - three month cycle. For three months caseworkers would be whipped to focus on "quality" - this meant actually spending a more appropriate amount of time on each case. Although in practice this probably amounted to no more than an extra half hour per case, it did at least give the caseworker more time to check the validity of documents and institutions (assuming they had the desire to - there was no real requirement to do this!!). Suddenly a tabloid would report that there was a backlog of 1000s of applications waiting to be processed. Lo and behold, caseworkers were then told to throw "quality" out the window and get as many through as possible, with the most minimal of checks. Applications that I wouldn't spit on would be waved through. In these cycles, caseworkers were expected to process - to completion - an average of 6-8 cases per day. Now just how much time to scrutinise documents and particulars (and in particular, write out for more information) do you think this allowed? Not much - less than an hour per application in fact. And that includes all the time needed to write out and print all the necessary documentation and log the details onto CID.

After a few months of this, another tabloid headline would pop up, screaming (rightly) about lots of inappropriate applications getting through. Back to "quality" again. Rinse and repeat.

Now if you remember I mentioned the list of "approved" educational institutions had gone down from 15,000 to 1,540. Aside from the fact that it is just a tad fucking late to have done this, in what format do you think this - much more comprehensively vetted - list is to be found?

It's in the form of a shared excel spreadsheet.

You read that right. A fucking excel spreadsheet. The possible security of this nation rests on that list. (Oh, and never mind the fact that for years, more than 13,000 dodgy institutions were able to ship people through the system......)

Now I might be revealing too much here. Enough to get me in trouble certainly. In fact officials might want to have a word with me. Well fuck them. I'd welcome it in fact, because I have a few questions of my own.

Let's start with the assessment of other intelligence agencies shall we?

According to one former CIA operative, the UK is "an Islamist swamp". This is so serious that 40 percent of "CIA activity designed to prevent a new terrorist spectacular on American soil is now directed at targets in the UK."

"Britain is not part of the problem, Britain is the problem"

Now, do you think this may have a teeny-weeny bit to do with having - oh - 13,000 odd extremely suspect institutions fast tracking immigration applicants through a system that isn't fit to capture whale sperm?

It gets better. From a more recent piece:

""The British Pakistani community is recognised as probably al-Qaeda's best mechanism for launching an attack against North America.....The Americans run their own assets in the Pakistani community; they get their own intelligence. There's close cooperation with MI5 but they don't tell us the names of all their sources." [My emphasis]

So, at risk of snarling eachother's operations, the Americans won't risk revealing their sources to MI5. So we have a foreign power blatantly conducting massive operations on British soil, our major ally, and they are not willing to share this information with us. Could it be because they too have sussed that the British "Intelligence" "Services" and "Borders" and Immigration Agency are not fit to monitor a fucking ant-hill?

Hmmm....as if that wasn't enough, if Her Majesty's government deign to come knocking at my door, I have another tranche of questions to ask them:

The British end of the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network.

In January 2008, the Sunday Times ran a front page story on ex-FBI whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds. It was the first time a mainstream British publication had touched Sibel's story in such a prominent manner. Importantly, Edmonds' testimony not only highlighted some important British links in the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network, the Times also independently confirmed parts of her testimony through their own anonymous intelligence sources. They also did three follow up pieces. Edmonds had originally gone to the Times in frustration at the U.S. MSM's unwillingness to deal with her story. She had promised to reveal everything she knew to any of the U.S. MSM major news outlets, even to the point of seriously risking either prison, or a fatal visit in the night, on the promise that they would air her testimony unedited.

No one stepped up to the plate, so she approached the British media. The Times did a fairly extensive piece of coverage on Sibel's evidence. Whilst this initial article covered material that had already been revealed previously, it was the first time it had such high brow exposure here. I was expecting a flurry of media activity to follow on a Maddie madness scale. I was amazed and couldn't wait to see the rest of the British MSM take up the story and chase down all those juicy leads to British angles.

I was to be bitterly disappointed because other than a couple of minor comment pieces, the British MSM more or less wussed out - again.

This left me determined to fill the gap myself, so I immersed myself into research in the area - specifically the British links, for a year. This resulted in my having an article published on the matter in December 2008, which really only scratched the surface. At some point this year I plan to put everything online so there is a single authoritative source on the British side to the sordid story.

Now here is where it gets interesting. The two most prominent British nationals assisting the Khan network were father and son team, Peter and Paul Griffin. A few years prior to the Times story on Edmonds, the Griffins had won libel cases against both the Guardian and the BBC for suggesting that they were directly linked to the proliferation network.

This was amazing because not only did the 2005 Customs investigation into Peter Griffin confirm, in lurid detail, his direct association with Khan himself and intimate familiarity with the network's activities, but very recently, the U.S. added both Peter and Paul Griffin to the international Terrorist wanted list in association with the Khan network.

And yet, to the best of my knowledge Peter is still sunning himself, unharassed, in France, and Paul is still active in Britain. I find this nothing short of astonishing. I can think of nothing other than the darkest explanations, involving certain people in the British establishment having some serious 'splaining to do.

So, if Her Majesty's government want to chase me about revealing information about our laughing-stock-of-the-world and terrorist's paradise immigration system, well please do. I've got just as many questions for you you bunch of corrupt incompetent fucktards.

This issue incenses me so much I am currently seriously considering tracking down Paul and possibly also Peter Griffin (the former is more within my means) and carrying out a citizens arrest on camera and forcibly taking either or both of them to the nearest police station to face charges of conspiracy and treason, among other things. So - here goes another invite - Peter, or Paul, if you get wind of this you're welcome to take me on for libel. Please. I've got very little to lose. What about you and your establishment pals?


Adult debate on immigration in the UK simply isn't possible. Combining it with discussing the work of the "Intelligence" "Services" is strictly verboten. Not the least because "open borders" morlocks will immediately shut down debate by referring to you as a "right wing reactionary" or other such nonsense. I'm all for open borders at some point in the future. There's a long path between here and there though, including some mighty intractable problems involving economics, politics and demographics that have to be dealt with first. Before even discussing reform of the immigration system people should be clearly aware that it is not only unfit for purpose, it facilitates the entry of criminals and terrorists into the country, whilst our wonderful "intelligence" "services" appear to focus on British nationals, possibly manufacturing a few new radicals along the way.

In the meantime, our "intelligence", "customs and excise" and "immigration" "services" are completely farcical and somehow seem to end up serving the interests of the terrorists rather than those of the population they are supposed to be protecting. Even the dubious American intelligence agencies don't want to be seen hanging around with them any more.

What gives?

Mainstream media justifies its double standards

Anna, who "outed" the writer of the blog "Girl with a one track mind" has just written a justification of her actions, in light of the furore over Nightjack:

"As I found, you take on the bloggers at your own risk"

This girl - and she is a girl - makes some frighteningly authoritarian statements in this piece. I can't comment much more at present on account of being filled with white hot anger over her arrogance and all that is likely to result is swearing and threats of violence.

If you're a blogger yourself, make sure you read this article, this harridan is part of the upcoming new wave of talent, like Patrick Foster, in the media that is currently being nurtured for even "bigger" things. Its a warning of what's coming. This lot are nothing but a convention of shit sucking genetic defectives.

If you have some time on your hands, you could also do a lot worse than reading ex-FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds' excellent series, dissecting the U.S. MSM here

Immigration and Intelligence - a view from the inside

Two front page articles caught my eye today, bringing together a number of issues that make my blood boil with eye watering intensity.

They both concern - in their own particular ways - the issues of immigration and the "work" of the intelligence services. I'll go through each article in turn then link them together towards the end.

"Shame Colleges"
First, today's Times front page: "Sham colleges opened door to terror suspects". Now if you aren't already aware of the internal intricacies of our wonderful Borders and Immigration Agency, let me enlighten you. In summary - the agency is not fit for fucking purpose. Having worked there (and resigned in disgust) I can give you a tour de force of the colossal shortcomings and mind numbing idiocracy that it is.

First I'll give you a few tidbits from the numerous articles on the subject in today's Times. Be warned, when you read parts of it your eyes might bleed:

The Times has been given evidence from a database listing every student admitted and every diploma and certificate that was sold. It records how the eight terror suspects and more than 1,000 others were given letters designed to fool the Home Office, Inland Revenue, banks and local authorities into believing they were students.

The implication here is that the documents would have to be pretty impressive to fool such sterling organisations, such pillars of Her Majesty's State, right? Wrong.

The fact of the matter is that it is indescribably easy to "fool" them. Any supposed "checks" are laughable and - often - circular in nature (checking a source of information that is already shoddy beyond belief - like the DfES Register, but we'll get back to that shortly). Take the Home Office for example (by this the Times means the Borders and Immigration Agency). The assessment of official documents from "official" educational institutions goes like this - do they look "kind of" legitimate? Yep. That's it. Even certificates and "official documents" with glaring spelling errors get let through. It gets better - if any one of the British organs of state (lets say either the Home Office, or Inland Revenue) has waved its magic wand over said documents then they're given legitimacy in the eyes of the other organs of state. So if someone casually gives a document a once-over at the Home Office and thinks it looks OK and isn't TOO shoddy, the Inland Revenue will also give it a pass. With me so far?

Now comes the amazing, the incredible, the bread and butter of British intelligence work - the DfES register. It was compulsory that in each application, the Immigration Caseworker checked that the institution applied to by the "student" was on the register. If it was, then all was well. It didn't matter whether it sounded dodgier than a dossier on WMDs, whether the institution couldn't even spell "University", whether it was a course in something like "a BA(Hons) in Puppeteering" (I kid you not), nor did it matter if it had an incredibly unlikely name like any of the following:

- Bradford College of Professional Studies
- Oxford College of Management Sciences (in Manchester)
- Cambridge Colleged of Advance Studies (in Dagenham). (Yes that's "advance", not "advanced" - a very common spelling mistake in the names of these institutions that nevertheless didn't hinder inclusion on the fantastic DfES register).

I queried what the requirements were for being on the register. Apparently the only deal breaker was if it didn't have sufficient fire exits. Everything else was effectively negotiable, many "institutions" never even received an inspection, never mind check the "teachers" were qualified.

What is surely incredible is that so many actual, legitimate educational institutions in the UK, such as Liverpool John Moores University would take any of this shit seriously and allow students to enrol on their courses on the basis of documents provided by these, shadier than Michael Howard, institutions. Try this for size, for example:

Diplomas and attendance records in the name of other colleges were also printed and sold, often to provide a "history" to account for missing years during a student's time in the UK. The men invented the grandly named, Dublin-based Greenford University.

This mythical seat of learning proceeded to accredit Manchester College of Professional Studies with a bewildering range of undergraduate and postgraduate honours courses that its few employees had no authority - let alone the capacity - to teach.

Manchester College of Professional Studies was also affiliated with Blackpool University, again based in Dublin established "under the order of the King of Belgium" and licensed by the Accreditation Council of Higher Education (ACHE).

All of which might sound impressive until one learns that ACHE is based in Wallis and Futuna, and island group in the South Pacific.

Finally, the college also posed as a study centre for the University of Newcastle, which is really the online University of New Castle, incorporated "in the sate (sic) of Delaware", and, like Blackpool University, accredited by a group of South Pacific islands.

Now I ask you dear reader, at which point in the above quote did you begin to experience absolute incredulity? I think if I hadn't worked at this POS institution I would have been so incredulous as to have become unconscious before I even read the last paragraph - having resulted from bashing my head against the desk until I reached the nirvana of Oblivion. Major, well known, Universities have accepted documents validated such as those above for years. For thousands of applicants, who as a result have been able to extend their stay in the UK. Many of these people have been able to extend their stay for a sufficient period of time to apply for citizenship. All on the basis of some incredibly shoddy fraudulent documents.

And it only takes one batch of these documents to get you in. After that, you're laughing.

As the Times articles details, one of the hucksters who set up one of these institutions wrote letters and documents to give himself qualifications. Its even more of a breeze to write fake attendance records and glowing references for your pals from Swat Valley.

Oh, didn't I mention that bit? That's right, through this secure system of assessment hundreds of applicants have arrived, and remained, in the UK who originated in the Taleban and Al Queda hotbeds of North Western Pakistan. And these are just hundreds from this one network of scams that the Times has exposed.

So here's one of the points I really really want to drive home: These kind of institutions, scams and applications were (and probably still are) the norm at the Home Office. < -- Read that again.

I estimate on a good day perhaps one in ten of the applications I dealt with actually involved a British educational institution I knew was legitimate. The rest all had names very similar to those three listed above. Complete with equally laughable documentary evidence.

But it was all OK, the DfES register said it was OK. The Home Office gave its seal of approval. And that was that.

I don't think many people (especially those mentalist "no borders" people) really, truly, realise just how utterly shoddy and mind numbingly incompetent the nation's border control is. I laughed hard when I realised that many people labour under the illusion that the Home Office keeps track of all these applicants. It doesn't. Very often no one even realises someone has overstayed unless that put in a fresh application. Which of course isn't a problem as long as you can stump up the several hundred quid for the visa, your local friendly "institute of advance studies", or "Oxbridge college of professional studies" can just fake all the relevant documentation for you.

Points based system

Supposedly the new system - only just put in place - is much better. The Times refers to a major aspect of this change - the list of valid institutions (they mean the DfES register) -

"At a stroke the number of approved colleges fell from 15,000 to 1,540".

That's right folks. For years and years, the number of dodgy institutions providing a magic carpet for equally dodgy individuals to fly into the country has been approximately 13,460.

Thirteen thousand, four hundred and sixty!!

I could rest my case on that alone.

There's a lot more I want to say (and reveal) on this subject, however in the interests of getting this information out in a timely manner, I'll leave it there for now.

The Path and The Way

Yea unto you I say for it is The Path and The Way. The One True Dictum of the Holy Portly One, Marx, may Peace Be Upon His Name. For his Holy Word is timeless and unchanging.

Followers of THE LORD need no understanding of modern financial systems - for these are the edritch and wicked constructions of mere men. One Unchanging Philosophy to encompass all possible future eventualities is all. Since the passing of our Lord, nothing new exists under the Sun and ALL innovations and changes in social relations were predicted and anticipated by our Bearded deliverer. We have no need to change our opinions when new facts arise, for there are no new facts. OUR LORD has seen and predicted all. Everything that occurs is simply a recapitulation of his teachings.

The instrument of Satan - CAPITALISM - is everywhere and everywhen. Ill defined, vague and mysterious, it evades the gaze of OUR LORD in the hearts of men. Given shape and clear definition only when that definition suits our followers' purposes. The fact that it has many varied definitions in many varied contexts is simply a mark of its true and eternal EVIL.

Yea witness the transubstantiation of the truly pious one's ego: Verily, it is the holy mystery how one's ego can transcend the False Consciousness and Historical Materialism that afflict all who are non-believers. The pious are raised up from this substrate by their Faith. It is at once a veil for non-believers, how a faith in collectivism is combined with the holy trinity of Me, myself and I, and how I AM RIGHT. The wisdom of crowds, like CAPITALISM, is truly evil when it does not fit our preconceived notions.


Yea, the Pious may join OUR LORD in the atheist heaven, where all the calculators go when they die. Ye are commanded to turn the other cheek to naysayers who point out that parts of THE LORD's written commandments contradict one another. Scribbles in The Holy Communist Manifesto only APPEAR to contradict the Holiest of Holies, the Testament of Das Kapital, because they were written through the flawed hands of man. For OUR LORD did sacrifice himself for our sins by sitting on the dole and writing endless manuscripts, suffering so terribly as he was pampered by the very elite who are the agents of SATAN. TRUE BELIEVERS can interpret what THE LORD really communicated, though ineffable, through the power of faith and may cast down any who have not read every single tedious line after tedious line in every single endless monologue after endless monologue as unfit to speaketh ill.



Those evil men who suggest that OUR LORD stole many ideas from the consort of Satan, ADAM SMITH, should have their tongues removed. OUR FAITH guarantees our righteousness in this cause for we have never read An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. We have been told by the Acolytes of the Lord that it is worthless and meaningless and should be consigned to the Memory Hole. We KNOW what it contains without having read it, or the work of Lucifer's followers derived from its false wisdom. Rumours that some apostates have fallen from grace after reading SMITH and finding that he in fact criticises many of the things we fear are FALSE. Followers of THE LORD who have stood, open mouthed, whilst reading the passages of the evil text damning Corporatism have read words FALSELY IMPLANTED. For our one and Eternal Lord was in fact a TIME TRAVELLER, and Satan's Consort, IN FACT, stole ideas from THE LORD, twisting them and mixing them with lies.

For ALL Authoritarian measures are RIGHT and JUST when delivered in the name of OUR LORD. We believe in Collectivist thinking, however WE the pious and followers of the Holy One KNOW WHAT IS BEST FOR YOU. The superiority of our Egos over that of the chattel non-believers and less pious is another of the holy mysteries.


Our favoured methods are continual repetition of dogma - said loudly enough and often enough, the incantations of OUR LORD, can cast out even the most single minded demon, causing them to walketh out of the room. Other weapons acceptable in Our Lord's sevice are Ad hominem and argument by association. In trying times, carefully targeted use of the following unholy words can be used to discredit or, in suitably dogmatic company, even destroy enemies of THE LORD: "Tory", "Loon", "Conspiracy Theorist", "Capitalist", "Elitist".

Lo are these methods no more frequently applied than on that giant shoutbox known as the Intardnets. We have come to fear the unregulated and unfettered terror that it is. For it has come to pass that its nature is in line with our mortal enemies. Oh horrors.

We could not possibly contemplate sincere and open debate with the demons - especially in scholarly and peer reviewed journals, as good scholarship is a tool of the establishment. Instead we will produce poorly edited and researched pamphlets and manuscripts. Fear not though brothers and sisters, for we can keep OUR LORD's Orthodoxy alive and intact through only interacting with people who already agree with us on backwater bunker sites where no one dares disagree on substantive points. If persistent demons appear we can easily gather a posse comitatus to strike down the offenders using the holy methods enshrined above and if that does not work then removing their tongues comes very naturally.

In fact we have warriors amongst us who, like our LORD, sit on the dole and churn out thousands of pointless posts on insular internet forums, lecturing a small group of people who already largely agree with us. Taking succour from the state while agitating for its destruction is a terrible burden to bear and these brothers are truly saints to the cause.

When there are no other enemies to strike down we pious and Righteous are compelled to turn to one another. For the Lord dictated that, as a property of evil is that it eventually turns in upon itself, all who seek succour in the teachings of the Lord must fight one another until those who are the most RIGHTEOUS and RIGHT win and ascend to OUR LORD's knee. Others, the faithless, who engage in such internecine warfare are engaging in SOCIAL DARWINISM, those of the faithful however, who fight one another over tedious differences are carrying out the Good Lord's work. We become UNLIKE our enemies by becoming just LIKE them. It is truly cunning wisdom. And ALL of our faults can be lain at the feet of the beast of CAPITALISM, for we can take no responsibility for ourselves.


Our enemies, though they appear to regularly share the same concerns and interests as us, are naught but DECEIVERS. Those unlike us can be identified most often with seductive whispers about the greatest sin - PROPERTY. Whilst we have been cast down into the pit of sinners, all of us have original sin - wearing flesh suits, we the faithful struggle with and bear the burden. For although we must BEAR the burden of property, suffering as we do, in order to satiate those evil, hated biological mechanisms, we do so WITH KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUE WORD OF THE LORD.

For PROPERTY is in itself evil, and when also acquired directly through the blood, sweat and tears of effort, through the hated body, is therefore EVIL SQUARED. And when exchanged for tokens of mutual value with one another, becomes EVIL CUBED. Our enemy CAPITALISM therefore prospers through the despicable mechanisms of being born into a human body, creating value with one's efforts and exchanging PROPERTY with one another with tokens which - whatever form they take - will always be the work of the devil.

Eventually the most pious and just will wear shirts made of their own hair. For we can alleviate the burden of the original sin of PROPERTY through discerning the difference between de jeur and de facto property. There are NO awkward questions, or tricky issues for the faithful in considering this evil for we simply turn the other cheek once more. There is NO slippery slope between 'de facto' and 'de jeur' because we sayeth so. If all arguments fail us we can reinvoke our faith in THE COLLECTIVE which will spontaneously produce the RIGHT answers for us in the future, so we meek and humble followers need not answer these questions now. Property is only OWNED temporarily by those who are using it. Therefore when I sleepeth I have no property. And verily there are NO thieving bastards, because all belong to the collective and it is good.

So speaketh the Prophets of the LORD. Aperson.

*('Amen' is sexist and therefore FORBIDDEN).

Step aside 'The Matrix' - welcome to 'The Matrioshka'

If you want to try something that distracts you from the thoroughly aggravating cesspit of politics, consider some philosophy instead: In this case variations and thoughts on the 'simulation argument' (also known as 'simulism'). One reason I'm glad that I gradually turned my interests away from philosophy and more towards politics is the simple reason that philosophy regularly scares me silly at the existential level....

....The simulation argument is deceptively simple. It is the position that we are highly likely to be part of a computer simulation. As in right now.

Sounds ridiculous right? You've seen the Matrix, you have all the answers, you know the score....Or do you? The simulation argument, and in this post I'll be considering a particular variant of it, which I will call 'The Matrioshka', is much more sophisticated than the simple enslavement of humans by machines. In fact I'm of the opinion, that in terms of existential angst, the 'Matrix' scenario is actually preferable to 'The Matrioshka'.

It's 'The Matrioshka' (Russian Doll) because it has n+1 levels of simulation. That is to say that, whilst you and I may be part of a simulation right now, it is entirely possible that our "creators" are themselves part of a larger simulation. Conversely, any simulations and artificial lifeforms we create now (and we are doing this in earnest now, whatever you may think of "A-Life", consisting of electrons organised into patterns - or data), would be the next 'dimension' of simulation if you like. Considering any artificial "life" that we create, doesn't bring the concept home though - games like 'The Sims' seem like laughable simulations of life. To understand this properly, we need to go into the opposite direction:

Philosophy professor, Nick Bostrum, is one of the main intellects behind the 'Simulation argument'. He considers in one of his papers the theoretical computing power that humans will be able to develop in the future, given currently known energy and physical limitations.

Humanity close to passing the Hofstadter-Turing test?
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23444/
Consider the big-bang
Consider the Christian idea that on judgement day, everyone will be resurrected.
Consider that even the 'basement level' civilisation would not know for sure if it was the basement level civilisation, and so would have to organise it's ethical behaviour accordingly, considering that some 'parent' civilisation may be simulating them.

What happens to the simulation argument if the universe is infinite?

Hacking Capitalism

I learned a new term this week - "hacker capitalist". Reading an article, via the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, by Edward Miller, 'Hackertopia and Piracy, Inc.' got me thinking on a more positive note for once.

Miller details the rise of the hacker / pirate ethic and the notion of freedom of information (including information based products of labour). He refers to the hope invested in the so-called 'Milennial' generation (of which I myself am part). There is despair on the other hand at the 'hipsters' - part of the Milennial generation - who appear to have developed serial ADD and enable cynical marketers to co-opt any new trend or idea, however anti-establishment, and sell it back to the 'youth'. I have known some activists (of various political persuasions) who have despaired at this masterstroke of the establishment - to commodify dissent, often very effectively.

However, Miller reminds us of the flipside to this, the adoption of certain technologies and lifestyle choices that fundamentally alter our relations not only with eachother, but the 'state' or establishment also. "[S]taggering amounts of time on the computer and mobile communication devices, surfing social networks and wikis, gaming, texting, filesharing, blogging, making youtube videos, and building the new participatory panopticon" has unleashed forces the state, and its snooper agents, simply will not be able to control.

My personal site, 'Upwingers', is inspired by Persian futurist F.M. Esfandiary. It's strapline is perhaps his most famous quote: "There is no government, no industrial-military complex, no economic system, no mass media that can ever reduce us to puppets and robots as thoroughly as the biological and environmental dictatorships have." I'm a big fan of working through the implications of Esfandiary's transhumanist/futurist philosopy in this regard: Many others like him and inspired by him (such as R.A. Wilson, Timothy Leary etc) pointed out systematically how centralised authorities can use basic knowledge of body and mind to trap, torture and brainwash us. What was sadly lost in the popular consciousness regarding Leary's drug focused philosophy and experiements was his claim that intelligent application of said drugs could undo any brainwashing. This was of course Leary's undoing, and probably the main motivation behind the establishment attempts to destroy him.


Leary, Wilson, Esfandiary and many others have pointed to a profound truth. Regaining control over "the biological and environmental dictatorships" might be our single best opportunity for wresting our lives back and fundamentally challenging the status quo. I recently said, in a discussion over at Anna Racoon's blog that the root of all evil is not money, or love thereof, or 'lax morals', but low self-esteem. Once you get past the most basic survival needs, (and *every* political philosophy, however noble, once reduced to talking about survival needs, becomes nothing more than lifeboat ethics and Hobbesian dilemmas*), the most crushing, most enervating, most life-destroying force is our own psychological and emotional binds. It's why the thought police are more powerful than the real police.

Back to the 'Millennials' - Miller makes a bold claim: "It is no wonder, then, why their entertainment choices include trolling, LOLcats, the Daily Show, South Park and ridulous sarcastic wikis [e.g. Encyclopedia Dramatica]. Yet, they are not nihilists. Beneath all this lies a belief in classical liberal ideals which is at least as sincere as that of previous generations, if not moreso."



I agree with Miller's assessment, even if for the large part this isn't a conscious adherence to classical liberal ideas; these values are rather embedded within the very technologies now spreading ineluctably like viruses, and in the new social relations they are forging. This also tends to be the point where I cross swords with social conservatives. The sign is often confused with the thing signified. The state is panicking in response. It can sense its impending doom, even if it is still a few generations away. People's behaviour is becoming increasingly chaotic - sometimes for the good, sometimes for ill. And while I welcome any restatement of the importance of personal responsibility, I'm suspicious of any that focus largely on the old hobbyhorses of sex, drugs and rock'n roll - sex in particular. While there is certainly an every growing, largely state supported, underclass - rightly lampooned by many social conservatives, there is also a corresponding - and in my assessment much larger - growth in increasingly aware, adaptive and responsible "youth". The curtain has started to rip and the man behind it is starting to slip into view:

For the 'Millennials', "[t]he problem is that for as long as they can remember, all the institutions which they were told to look up to have only given them reasons to be cynical. Instead of honest journalism, we have demagogues. Instead of corner grocers, we have sterile megastores. Elections aren't won, but stolen... not that it matters. Politics became a series of sex scandals. Religion too, only in a far more sinister sense. The economy is in crisis, but the Millenials are not surprised".

There is a new wave of classically liberal sentiment under the surface. The millenials are beginning to join their older fellows in rejection of the program. Look at almost every online outlet for public opinions, from the Guardians' Comment is Free through to LabourListing to Guido Fawkes' blog. Look at the failure of the MSM to adapt to the Daniel Hannan phenomenon. The consistent outpouring of sentiment is immense. The cracks are starting to show.

An idea I've frequently encountered at blogs such as Old Holborns' is that the state is increasingly seeking to put us in hock to it. The "bailout" having been its most spectacular recent success, saddling us all with an astronomical debt level (based on a completely fake economic system of valuation in the first place - the value of perception is now more important than actual supply and demand). Truly a masterstroke. Also a good reason to read the Wizard of Ozymandias if you have not done so already. The establishment is becoming increasingly brittle and vulnerable. It has to put us in hock to survive like this. And it is no coincidence that committed collectivists such as ZanuLab should be at the helm when such a bold attempt to ruin us is enacted. The "state", "society", and now "shared values" (in the horribly scary form of 'Contest 2') are bigger and more important than us individuals you see. They have a life of their own, they really do - thanks to our Lords and Masters. It's the fundamental aspect of collectivist thinking that is so inimical to human life - as Stirner put it, "because they serve Man, they cut off the heads of men."


We're starting - ineluctably - to reclaim our own spaces, bodies and minds. It is starting in the realm of information. The "cost" of information is dwindling to almost nothing. Our means of gathering and distributing it are being similarly demolished. This is where we get back to that new (or at least new to me) term -'Hacker Capitalist'. Miller refers to the likes of Mark Shuttleworth (creator of Ubuntu) and Jimmy Wales (creator of Wikipedia) as great examples of the new breed of successful capitalist - the 'Hacker Capitalist'. These gentlemen provided open source innovations that they were able to both share and profit from. This is an oxymoron to some.

Something I've always noted with amusement is the wholesale endorsement of Open Source technologies and philosophies by collectivist-leftists. I wonder what they make of the likes of Shuttleworth and Wales. I've found consistently that whenever individuals who are actual innovators in the Open Source community put pen to paper they are, almost always, of a Libertarian persuasion. And even those who are more left-leaning, tend to be in one of the groups not incompatible with libertarian or anarcho-capitalist sentiments (the mutualists for example).

The time of the authoritarian statists and the dogmatic collectivists is coming to an end - ineluctably. They will go down like mad dogs though and even if the wittering of the collectivists (especially the left-anarchists (as opposed to their innovative and steadily prospering brethren - the market or anarcho-capitalists)), seems pathetic, their ideology is still pervasive and infectious. They chomp and moan because, apart from many other things, one of their defining characteristics have been taken away from them. There were two invasions of parliament by activists in recent memory - one by Fathers for Justice and another by the Countryside Alliance. Not an anarchist in sight. And at the last Anarchist Bookfair I attended in London,(at which, incidentally, us Libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists are NOT welcome) the most innovative idea they could come up with was to camp outside parliament until the Prime Minister resigns. Outstanding.

Our aims now should be to really - literally - capitalise on these opportunities and technologies. The great danger is that in their death throes they might take us with them. What they fear most is that we, individually, become more powerful, capable people. We don't need them anymore, but they need us. As Miller put it: "Now is a superb time for all you hackers, tinkerers, hobbyists, and DIYers to kick it into full gear. The political and economic cards are in our favor. Let's make the most of it!".

Indeed. There has never before been a time like this of such rapid technological change. So many new questions, dilemmas and possibilities open up before us now on a daily basis. States and collectivists are pathologically and literally unable to deal with this. Only individuals can respond and innovate in a timely fashion. It's a chaotic time, but it might yet prove to have been the best time and place to have been alive thus far. It's a time for heroes and heroines of all stripes to step forward. Get to it.

*A great shame this is not more commonly recognised. Many people - scholars among them - interpret Hobbes' nightmare scenario of the 'all against all' society as being the baseline for all political philosophy. It isn't. It is, instead its nullification. All political philosophy (except perhaps the most lunatic and misanthropic interpretations of collectivist-primitivist anarchism) is based upon some kind of surplus. As soon as a social configuration produces a surplus, multiple political philosophies are then on the table. Discussion of this surplus is what political philosophy is. Societies throughout recorded history have had a surplus, however meagre.

Sidenote: After a diasterous attempt to upgrade software, resulting in the loss of my database, I decided to rebuild my 'upwingers' site (again!) - and I think I've finally settled on a configuration to my liking, though it will take me some time to repopulate it with content (especially on my research into A.Q.Khan, Sibel Edmonds, MI5/6 etc). It's going well so far and I'm very pleased with the new collated news feeds - I'm finally making good on the site's philosophy; focusing on positive uplifting (and often - action orientated) aspects and subjects as much as negative. There's still plenty of work left to be done, however by all means, have a look.

Illuminati Clippings - #1

I'm re-reading Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus Triology for the third time. He never fails to both amuse and inform at the same time. He also admirably fulfils that role he often refers to in his writing: The poet as early warning radar. I thought I would share the occasional extended quote with you.

Despite (or perhaps because of) orginally being penned in the 70s, the trilogy has many passages that bear an uncanny and often disturbing resemblance to today's world.

I miss the old man terribly:

Caligula Bushman, known as the toughest judge on the Chicago bench, was trying six people who were charged with attacking a draft board, destroying all its furniture, ruining its files and dumping a wheel-barrow full of cow manure on the floor. Suddenly Busman interrupted the trial about halfway through the prosecution's presentation of its case with the announcement that he was going to hold a sanity hearing. To the bewilderment of all, he then asked State's Attorney Milo A. Flanagan a series of rather odd questions:

"What would you think of a man who not only kept an arsenal in his home, but was collecting at enormous financial sacrifice a second arsenal to protect the first one? What would you say if this man so frightened his neighbors that they in turn were collecting weapons to protect themselves from him? What if this man spent ten times as much money on his expensive weapons as he did on the education of his children? What if one of his children criticized his hobby and he called that child a traitor and a bum and disowned it? And he took another child who had obeyed him faithfully and armed that child and sent it out into the world to attack neighbors?

What would you say about a man who introduces poisons into the water he drinks and the air he breathes? What if this man not only is feuding with the people on his block but involves himself in the quarrels of others in distant parts of the city and even in the suburbs? Such a man would clearly be a paranoid schizophrenic, Mr. Flanagan, with homicidal tendencies. This is the man who should be on trial, though under our modern, enlightened system of jurisprudence we would attempt to cure and rehabilitate him rather than merely punish."

"Speaking as a judge," he continued, "I dismiss this case on several grounds. The State is clinically insane as a corporate entity and is absolutely unfit to arrest, try and incarcerate those who disagree with its policies. But I doubt that this judgment, though obvious to any man of common sense, quite fits into the rules of our American jurisprudential game. I also rule, therefore, that the right to destroy government property is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and therefore the crime with which these people are charged is not a crime under the Constitution. Government property belongs to all of the people, and the right of any f the people to express displeasure with their government by destroying government property is precious and shall not be infringed."

Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, The Illuminatus Trilogy, 1998 (originally published 1975), Robinson publishing. pp 366-368.

Russell Brand: Weapons grade cock-end

Idiocracy: This too could be you.

In a change to my occasional schedule of angry piss-boiling commentary on politics, I wanted to write on something else briefly:

Trial by mob
I tried. I really did. I can't stand a trial by media or public opinion. I detest it. I was horrified to notice that in the wake of the Brand/Ross "scandal" that the BBC's 'Have your say' fell over during the day because of the deluge of the collective brain fart. Everyone had to have a say. I thought the pair of them had been a couple of idiots, however I was perfectly content to leave it at that and keep my opinion to myself. The incident also happened just as the extent of the global financial crisis was being realised. Whilst major dead-tree press articles on the crisis were attracting maybe 100 comments if they were lucky, in some places, 1000+ comments were being left on the Russell/Brand story. I despaired. I really did.

If I was aggrieved at anything, it was the fact that the BBC licence fee, extracted from myself and millions of others under threat of force is used to pay the pair of them - particularly Ross, with his deal of £18 million over three years. I find that simply obscene, yet I don't have a voice with regard to how the money is spent. It's most definitely taxation without representation. However, this was a position I held before they decided to carry out a live prank phone call, and still hold now.

Charlie Brooker made the point recently in his 'Screenwipe' series that a new era of TV-viewer interaction has begun. He calls it the Dawn of the Dumb. It has primarily resulted from 'reality tv' shows, where viewers have a vote. This has been transferred, in the minds of the viewers, to an overall vote on any TV programme or issue. The viewers can, be weight of enough complaints, cause changes to be made. It would be nice to think that this was a democratic achievement, even if it still results in satisfaction of the lowest common denominator. However, in the case of the BBC there are two major problems with this:

i) The opposite isn't true. That is to say, if the number of commendations outweigh the complaints, the complaints still win. We have seen this in the case of Carol Thatcher.

ii) I'm still forced to pay for this farce, simply for the privilege of having a TV set in my front room to watch DVDs on. I avoid TV programming, and the BBC in particular, like it was some horrible infectious syphilitic walking corpse. As one enterprising chap on Babylon 5 said once: "It is a cultural wasteland full of inappropriate metaphors for reality". And that's just the soap operas.

So...this Russell bloke...

I'd caught the odd clip of Brand performing. I saw 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall'. He seemed to be able to entertain competently on and off. The odd comment here and there indicated that he was considered 'edgy' and 'on the pulse'. A friend lent me his [Brand's] autobiography so I put some time aside to read it.

Now, I consider a person's autobiography to be an honest means of appraising a person. It's their own words, not taken out of context by the media, and they have the choice to put their own spin on it. On these grounds I'm willing to come to an opinion on a person, irrespective of what the media says about them.

In case you missed it, I came to the conclusion that this man is and was a weapons grade cock-end. Now to be clear, I don't like to use insults, or expletives too often, unlike some of my swearblogging friends. This isn't because I think there is anything inherently "bad" in use of such language. Far from it. Instead I think it is more powerful if used sparingly, like the occasional bit of violence (which, for all you idealistic do-gooders out there, is sometimes the 'right thing to do'). And in this case, my god, I think the only man to compare him to would be the currently self-destructing Derek Draper. And I've got expletives a plenty for that particular fleischweisen.

Commonalities

What was interesting for me was that, as I first got into his book, I began warming to the man. We appeared to have had a very similar childhood. We're about the same age, had quite a few similar experiences, and even knocked around in the same places. However, as soon as he started describing his crawl into adulthood it appeared we diverged sharply.

This is despite the fact that we still had a lot in common, even in adulthood. He has a terrible weakness for women and sex, despite the fact he is fully capable of seducing many pretty women on a regular basis. I relate directly to that. He also has long hair, likes to dress extravagantly and wear makeup to enhance his looks. Again, all things that I do. He's also not one for not putting up with people telling him what to do.

On the surface you might not see us as too dissimilar. In fact, you might wonder why we are not good drinking pals.

If someone gave a very general outline of his life and activities, and put it alongside mine the difference may not be clear at all. Yet -as the saying goes, the devil is, very literally in the details.

Women

For Russell, women appear to be primarily a self-validation mechanism. They probably are for most men in some respect. The Idiot-lantern constantly tells us that without sexual validation, we're nothing. Right?

As a teenage kid it appears Russell began to learn the art of seduction, picking up that charm, personality and a novel individual appearance (and pathos) can attract sufficient attention to bring women into your orbit. Pretty much the phase I went through too. As he careens into his kidulthood though, Russell begins to attract women through a combination of persistence, bullshit and the fame factor (though the latter was relatively late in coming). I spent my early adulthood doing my best to figure out what I actually wanted (a task that it seems a frightening number of people never actually master).

I don't think Russell figured this one out and women (and inebriation) began to perpetually fill up his ever-increasing self-esteem black hole. He appeared to blame a lot of this on his childhood. Yet the life he describes was no harder than mine, and a damn sight easier than the lives some of my best friends have had. It all comes down to that classic idea that it is how you choose to react to events and circumstances - "Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him".

Russell's is an epic fail on this point. As he became a Kidult he became the master of his own downfall, and this was despite some incredible opportunities coming his way. He simply had to feed the self-esteem monster you see.

So - women and sex. I have tried monogomy a few times. It isn't for me. Instead I have open-relationships with my partners. And they have been, consistently, much more successful, loving and beneficial all round than my monogomous arrangements. I find many people make all sorts of assumptions about this that they simply are not justified, or equipped, to make. It's the kind of relationship that drives The Righteous nuts.

Open relationships force a kind of sincerity and honesty on you and your partners that you simply don't have in monogomy. For one thing, it absolutely forces you to not take the other(s) for granted. They have the option, just like you, to go elsewhere. If you're in sync with one another, they will always come back to you, and you to them. Contrary to many erroneous assumptions, it also brings your standards way up. I look to maximise the amount of mutually enjoyable (emotional as well as sexual) experiences I can have with as many high-quality (confident, intelligent, driven, creative, know what they want are my criteria) women as I can in life. This actually means I say 'no' more often than I say 'yes'.

You see it all comes down to self-esteem. People with low self-esteem cannot understand how such a relationship could ever work. In their heads, some kind of ownership of the 'other' has to take place in order to vouchsafe your fragile ego. I don't know how many times I, or my partner(s) have been lectured on this, that I / we have "never really been in love". Very confident, secure people however, can see how this kind of relationship can work, even if they don't wish to engage in it themselves. It's an excellent litmus test for figuring out people you have just met.

Brand's self-esteem appears to be chronically low. He has fulfilled the role of the spectacular, had his ego massaged by hacks who realised they can play off of his self-destructive ("edgy") tendencies and bully him into incredible acts of stupidity (if you liked 'Jackass', and also winced at the fact people felt these were good things to do to themselves for 'entertainment' (approval), wait till you read this biography). He blames it variously on life-circumstances and his "addictive personality". The cult of celebrity seems to produce a lot of these.

Celebration?

The term 'celebrity' originally referred to people of great skill and talent. You referred, for example to the "celebrated" playright, Shakespeare, or the "celebrated" artist, Michael Angelo. For the most part, this notion of talent appears to have shrunk horrifically to good presentation and blagging skills at best, and willing displays of incohate idiocy at worst. Brand has certainly sucked from both of these teats to build his career and create a bloated "celebrity" construction of "edgy" behaviour.

He has been placed on the throne as one of the many Kings of Idiots. Appropriately channeled through the medium of the almighty One-eyed monster. (Yes, I guess that goes for his penis, not just a synonym for the TV too).

Occasionally Brand drops in a word like 'misogyny' as some way of mild contrition. The fact is though, throughout the book he doesn't actually display one iota of actual, sincere contrition. He reminds me of these colllectivist-anarchists who say how they are "aware" of gender issues, and 'right-on', yet still have severe emotional and sexual issues with women. Poor buggers can't even get out of that one through experience though as the collectivist-anarchists attract a lot of the Righteous. The Original Sin of men will be sure to keep them in place and not allow them to admit that yes, they (like women) actually want to fuck different people, and often. The only thing worse than a right-wing conservative prude is a left-wing version.

I got half way through the book and began hating the man earnestly. I had to push through to the end though, for the same reasons I have to continue following the antics of Labour's Clown Extraordinaire, Derek Draper. The path of self-inflicted destruction is incredible to behold, and a fantastic example unto others. He often tries to spruce up his account with some literary references. He painfully fumbles quite a few of them. And with this dickhead, artistic licence just doesn't cut it as an excuse.

Russell leaves us, after describing his rollercoaster wreck of a life, at the end telling us that he is a changed man after having attended a 'sex-addicts' clinic in the U.S. It's his "addictive" personality again you see. Never mind the fact that 99% of the rest of humanity also has this problem in adulthood - it's called feeling horny you dipshit.

His memory, however, appears to be shorter than that of his adulating fuckwit fanbase - for, after ploughing through to the end, I actually remembered what he actually said in the first chapter. He said, just prior to completing the book he'd just given in again to his weakness for pointless encounters thanks to his wafer-thin willpower (and self-esteem, though he leaves that bit out). He makes a big, almost puritan, deal of the fact that he was also clean of drugs and alcohol. I'd have some sympathy and respect for the man if it weren't for the fact that he was using these as escapes from problems completely of his own making. He doesn't seem to intuit that many people drink or take drugs because they have a lot of problems that are not of their own doing.

Brand is supposed to be one of the country's best. He'd like us to believe he's that uber-confident, together bloke in 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall', perpetually on the up-side of a bi-polar disorder. He's not. Instead he personifies what is broken. No responsibility for anything (it's all paid for chaps!) and the adulation of the inert and the feeble-minded.

Gods help us all.

The Nobomba Candidate

A worrying number of people seem to have brought into the Nobomba's messianic campaign, thinking that positive change is inevitable with his inauguration. A popular myth appears to be that there is going to be leagues of difference between him and "where the fuck am I?" McCain with regard to foreign (i.e. war) policy. Nobomba has already reneged on some of his supposedly antiwar commitments, which he made prior to being voted in. What more might we have in store - and could Nobomba change anything even if he wanted to?

The middle east is the obvious focus for U.S. foreign policy. There is almost certainly going to be another major conflagration soon in the region with either Pakistan, or Israel as the main instigator. So what's the deal with these "armies with a state attached"?

Pakistan is now officially a basket-case. It should have been the primary target in the bogus "war on terror" since day one. It would have been if the pirates steering the ship of state actually gave a mad hatter's crap about dealing effectively with terrorist, and various non-state, actors. Our friends in the ISI have kept things ticking along nicely thank you very much - thanks to billions upon billions in "aid" (read: bribes) from the West. Plenty of money to go around to Al Queda, the Taliban and that pesky A.Q.Khan nuclear proliferation network. You know - the network that the West continued pretending to shut down. Despite another alleged recent crackdown on the network, Siddiqui and Griffin - two of the key British enablers - are still walking free and unharrassed.

Nobomba 2007: "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will." Musharraf has gone since this statement. Which means things are likely much worse now. The ISI is riddled with anti-West and pro-Taliban sentiment at the highest levels. Musharraf was the primary force holding them in check. And since Nobomba's statement of intentions, various infractions of Pakistani territory by Coalition forces have already occurred. The fact is though, in many ways it wouldn't have mattered if Nobomba was actually this mythical dove that his ardent supporters claim - the stage is set and Pakistan is already skidding into the crash.

Israel? Pfft. Forget it. Nobomba has spoken to AIPAC and he is THE MAN for defending the Great Golem. The army with a state, the permanent airstrip in the east, the holy homeland that might have actually been in Saudi Arabia (oops), the buffer zone between the West and the middle east, the West's basket case of "democracies" (keep that Arab vote out why dontchya). Yep that place.

p.s. Israel has just requested "bunker-busters" and clearance to fly over Iraqi airspace to get to Iran. Aww shucks, don't you just love a military that wants to demolish a nation on the basis of wafer thin evidence?

Iran? "As President, I will use all elements of American power to pressure Iran. I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…." And..."I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power. Everything." - That nuclear technology? Yeah you know the one. The technology developed by Iran with the direct assistance of the A.Q.Khan network. The network given a free pass by Anglo-American intelligence and customs.

The CIA's official estimate is that Iran stopped its nuclear programme in 2003 and hasn't made any progress since. If the mainstream media was to be believed, you would think the CIA had said the opposite. The Khan network was supposedly trounced by Western intelligence around that time when it intercepted a shipment of parts bound for Libya. This was, funnily enough, the signal event that led to Libya 'coming in from the cold'. The mainstream media also claimed, following their usual simpering line, following the intelligence PR releases and not doing their own research, that anglo-american intelligence had been responsible for this coup. They weren't responsible for it at all. It was the Libyans.

Then of course, Nobomba should know all of this. And yet he follows the line that Iran's is an independent effort. It's like that Bill Hicks sketch with the U.S. telling the about-to-be-bombed-into-the-stone-age nation of [insert name here] to pick up the gun the U.S. has just thrown at its feet....

I'm supposed to believe that a new presidential candidate really can change the course of events for the better. I don't. Just like every president before him, he'll face dug-in, fortified interests that have nothing to do with wishful notions of "democracy". Kennedy was the last president to take their hand from the tiller (pseudo-pun intended there). "What forces" you ask? Well here's one - Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel recently boasted how he had yanked the U.S. president "off the podium" to demand that the U.S. abstain in the UN vote on the Gaza Strip (the vote that the U.S. set up in the first place). In case you hadn't been paying attention these last few years, the Israeli amen corner and Israel itself, as been kicking America's back door in. Google "US israel espionage" for a summary.

Even if I did believe this however, let's take those arguing that this great man, this messiah of change, this lion of american politics, actually has the intention to do great things for everyone other than the invested elites. If he was good to his word, you think he might appoint like minded people, right? Well....

...Nobomba's doveish appointees? Well - here we go:

- Dennis Ross
Middle East adviser. Promotes Israeli interests over U.S. Has worked both "sides" of the aisle. Big name in Neocon circles.

- Robert Gates
Defense Secretary. Wait - he has exactly the same name as the last guy!

- (General) James Jones
National Security Adviser. A close friend of John McCain. This appointment also means continuing the policy of using NATO as an instrument of U.S. aggression.

- Hilary Clinton
Secretary of State. Warmongering fucktard. Clinton represents the pro-war wing of the Democratic Party.

- Rahm Emmanuel
Chief of staff. Rabidly pro-israel and an active opponent of the antiwar movement.

E.J. Dionne on Obama and the antiwar movement: "Obama made clear six years ago that while he was with them on Iraq, he was not one of them"
Since Dionne made that comment, Nobomba has also reneged on his commitments re: Iraq.

So - Obamaites - What is the substantial difference between this administration and the last one? And what is the source of your faith?

p.s. the first person who implies my criticism of Nobomba is racist gets a punch in the face. Plus you could always check what some black political activists are saying about him.

The week of WTF?

What a strange week.

DNA ruling
Let's start with some good news for a change though. In the case of two men from Sheffield (yay!), the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that the Police will have to wipe the DNA details of nearly one million innocent people from their database. No more keeping people's DNA 'just in case', without probable cause....

But wait, what's this? The government response (from Jackboots):

"The Government mounted a robust defence before the Court and I strongly believe DNA and fingerprints play an invaluable role in fighting crime and bringing people to justice.

"The existing law will remain in place while we carefully consider the judgement."

So basically the government will ignore the ruling. NEXT......

Government spunktaps

Well they might as well be. It looks like the government is considering the "nuclear option" of printing more money. Because we didn't see that one coming.... >:-/

For those of us for whom debt is more of an issue than savings (and pensions), then the combination of inflation and low interest rates is actually a good thing, (though if you're a victim of the stagflation (inflation + recession) it isn't going to make a blind bit of difference without a fucking job. And any benefits accruing from having a job and being a debtor in this scenario assume at least a half-hearted attempt by your employers to keep your wages up with inflation.

And for those people I said to a year ago that we were going to go into stagflation and you didn't believe me: Here's another big fucking reason to suppose the government really doesn't have a clue and is criminally negligent and you shouldn't have been listening to them (and their client lackey media). (The other alternative, that they're making consciously planned decisions here is too horrible for most people to contemplate, so I'll leave that one and come back to it in another 5-10 years, with a suitable amount of schadenfreude attached).

Meanwhile, in new legislative changes it looks like the government might actually be planning to hide the spunktaps from us. In other words, we won't have a clue when they're printing more money. This is going to make predicting the direction of the economy nigh on impossible. The bastards.

The Americans were way ahead of us on this one - on 10 November 2005 the Federal Reserve announced that as of 23 March 2006, it would cease publication of M3. 'M3' is the main measure economists use to estimate the total money in circulation. UTTER UTTER BASTARDS. At least in the case of Old Blighty's "government" (stifle that laughter at the back, yes you!), hiding the fucking money supply is a reactive measure. It looks like someone at the Fed was being pro-active and had notions that something might be in the offing.....surely not?

It's not just the "nuclear option". It's also known as the "Mugabe option". Some of us call the part of government ZauLab for a damn good reason. In fact, just recently the actions of the U.S. and U.K. governments regarding their banking industry have been praised by none other than the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Hahahahahahahahaha....oh.

Meanwhile....

....UK government in "proactive" shocker!

Yes of course, I'm referring to the arrest of Damian Green MP. It still remains very murky exactly what he is supposed to have done (other than "groomed" a source inside the Home Office to leak documents to him). The chap responsible is one Chris Galley. And for some reason I cannot fathom - he is being held in a safe house (by the Home Office!) for protection. Protection from whom????!!!

And what crucial information vital to national security did he leak?

From BBC revision number 3:

* The November 2007 revelation that the home secretary knew the Security Industry Authority had granted licences to 5,000 illegal workers, but decided not to publicise it.
* The February 2008 news that an illegal immigrant had been employed as a cleaner in the House of Commons.
* A whips' list of potential Labour rebels in the vote on plans to increase the pre-charge terror detention limit to 42 days.
* A letter from the home secretary warning that a recession could lead to a rise in crime.

* the news that an illegal immigrant had been employed as a Commons cleaner and
* a letter from the home secretary warning that a recession could lead to a rise in crime.

The resolution of this situation centres around whether or not Green and Galley can legitimately claim that the above were in the 'public interest' to leak. Let's take one that's close to my heart: The 5000 illegal SIA badges. The Home Office since admitted that this could be up to 11,000 illegal immigrants with SIA badges. YIKES! This is nothing short of an insult to all the legitimate people who's lives in security work have been adversely affected, even ruined by the SIA. An organisation which is about as useful as a one legged man in an arse-kicking contest - and about as pointless too.

In this age of paranoia regarding terrorism, where we're supposed to queue up to get our fingerprints, DNA, phone records and internet browsing habits onto an almighty government database in order to "combat terrorism", Her Majesty's government allows up to 11,000 people in through the back door to claim their SIA badges. It's beyond satire and I can't find enough expletives to express how angry it makes me.

The long and the short of it though is that it is pretty fucking clearly in the public interest to know this.

Now, Dr Richard North thinks we're all getting our knickers in a twist over this one. He thinks that politicians shouldn't be above the law and that we're missing the point. (If you want to see this put in a very snide, ZanuLab fashion, check out the MP for Mogadishu East, Kerry McCarthy's thoughts).

Au contraire Dr. North. The point is that, indeed, MPs shouldn't be above the law, however it is manifestly clear that some of them are and some of them are not. For example, apparently it is ok for the Serious Fraud Office to have it's investigation scotched. You know - that investigation into corruption between Saudi Arabia and British Aerospace, involving not a few UK public officials. It got so close to home it was stopped in a manner resembling a presidential decree. And it is, sadly, only one example amongst many others.

The arrest of Green looks very much like a political arrest. It isn't a matter of right or wrong, of legality or illegality. No. It is about which political interests are at stake. And when a senior member of the opposition party is arrested on this basis, when so many more serious violations have been perpetrated by the party in power, and they have come away unscathed, then my friends, that is very fucking serious indeed.