Washington Voices

Some clips with opinions from yesterday's demonstration in Washington against the war.

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Marijuana Party Response

Yet another response to the Bush speech - something tells me this particular party on't take themselves too seriously.

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State of the Union 2007

Final complete and unexpurged - sort of. Despair and enjoy.

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State of the Union - PETA style

The campaign against animal exploitation has been going naked a lot over the last year and have found a novel way to deliver this year's annual address. PC or not? It's in a good cause!

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Arms dealing in London

A map showing the companies peddling death based here in London.

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Andy Griffith vs. Patriot Act

An old clip from around 1966. Shame the message seems to have got lost over the years.

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Ming Campbell MP: A timetable for withdrawal from Iraq

A clip here from the LibDem leader, Ming Campbell, here in Britain. The commons are currently having their first debate on Iraq and even the Conservative bloggers have been acknowledging Ming managed to hit out rather hard at the government during the debate.

Absent of course was the prime Preacher himself. Too busy pallying up with business leaders to attend any discussion on the one issue that is going to define his sought-after "legacy" as a complete disaster.

All this on the heels of the Emporer's address overnight on the State of his Disunion. Dis-embodied might be a more apt description. Good to see that neither commentators or the mainstream press were much impressed. Only the false congratulatory tones of Fox News seem to be propping him up. Loads of links and comments in the headlines link later.

My apologies for the recent slowdown. I had some eye scanning treatment which left my vision blurred and only today do I feel comfortable reading and writing again. I'm simply skimming through the backlog of material as I pull myself up to date.

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Strange but True?

Paracetamol invokes Cannabinoid

Information related to the Pot issue just pours in these days. Medical use is now allowed all over the states under local law, whilst Bush's feds disregard it and move to close down grow-ops and clinics. The establishment media both in the US and here in Britain cough up endless anti-Pot "information" whilst seemingly neglecting its benefits.

I have remarked before on the way homeopathic and natural medicine has been put down by giant pharmaceutical corporations intent on marketing more and more single-function synthetics which more often than not collide with each other to produce wholly unwanted reactions and possible long-term damage. These days too, much of it reaches the public chemist before there has been time for adequate long-term testing, with modern advertising practices providing the propaganda for subliminal addiction.

The above link should be laughable, but it's not.

For a century since it was invented, scientists have not exactly been sure how the synthetic drug Paracetamol worked to ease pain. Now they do! It appears that the common household pills activate cannabinoids in the body. What they you may ask? The very same little blighters that get stirred up when you smoke Pot.

A hundred years of so-called progress just to find the effect is the same as a natural tonic already used for centuries before. Are we being hookwinked or not?

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Surging 4 Condi

Jon Stewart, in fine form on last night's Daily Show as he "seduces" Condi live on air.

Talking of TV, I was engrossed and often in hysterics watching last night;s "Trail of Blair" in Britain's Channel 4, full of perceptive performanes and endless visual gags too. 90 minutes in and I was bursting to see how this exquisite charicature would actually handle his trail and then suddenly ... It stopped!

I felt cheated and would now take issue with the very title of the piece. We never got to see any "trial" at all - for that privilage it takes a trip to the West End where a live stage performance does actually deliver the goods.

Shame on C4 for the deception, despite a great comic drama.

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Olbermann Again

I'm tempted to publish this guy's broadcasts every day but that would lessen the impact of the best. This is what Keith Olbermann had to say following Bush's surging speech yesterday. Nice one.

New links and comments now in Bloglines (link left) as always.

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Bush's Vietman

Just in - Senator Kennedy's latest speech following the emporer's "surge" proclamation. Bush's plans have not been well received in either Amerika or elsewhere and there is much opposition within the military. The new congress technically has the power to curb them - whether they do remains to be seem.

Here in Britain, the preacher has yet to comment - awkward given that his policy is for troop withdrawl. Interestingly, the Bucket has made her voice heard and counterpart Condi has emerged from temporary shadows to do the same. Both reckon Georgie's right own track.

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Piano Politics

A rare oddity here from March 1963 - long before Watergate and his future mess. Now at least we know where Condi Rice got her inspiration.

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Routine - Enhanced or not!

As the western world settles into its version of the new annual cycle, routine seems to be stabilising again. Sadly, those routines are comprised largely of the same old bullshit from the powers that be. In defense of himself and totally contrary to his previous environmental stance, the fading preacher has started promoting air travel again. Elsewhere, the increasingly closeted emporer is ignoring all the advice he supposedly commissioned in favour of an almost Thatcherite "not for tuning" philosophy bolstered by a newly refreshed inner clique of neo-con counsellors. The stagnation in the court of King Georgie is at least now tempered by a less-then-sympatheic mood in the new houses of government, whilst here in the UK there are serious cracks in the mirror. The preacher is desparately trying to exit the pulpit without landing in the extensive pile of his own droppings and his sucessor has suddenly taken to distancing himself from Amerika in terms of future foreign policy. Roputine be damned - change is afoot whether they like it or not.

When "Gorgon" Brown landed in 11 Downing Street he made two major changes. The first was making the Bank of England independent of government fiscal policy. The second, less observed maybe, was overhauling his office. The latter, although before 911 and subsequent excuses for a "surveillance state" imperative, was significant in that it involved a massive technological makeover which may well have helped him excerise the famed "prudence" he brought to his job. His enthusiasm for modern tools was not exactly reflected by his next door neighbour who prefered to conduct affairs using shallow, uninformed, old-time bufoonery. For all my reservations about his ability to actually perform adequately in his planned future role, The Gorgon will at least have a grasp on the reality of the information age.

So too do Britain's intelligence services, who today have announced new plans for terror alerts and other emergencies. Most notable is the seemingly innocent revelation that we will be receiving email notifications of any changes to our security alert status. Details are sketchy, but one assumes this will involve bulk warnings sent via our ISPs. Readers will note a new piece of javascript in the sidebox at left - proof that contacting you will be pretty simple!

Paradoxically, as government attempts to embrace new communication technologies, one wonders if they are assuming too much. Some people still use dail-up connections which mean they don't get email immediately. Others still don't have online facilities of their own and rely on internet cafes and the like. Both groups don't have fixed IP addresses by which they can be contacted. A third group still haven't entered the computer age at all, although in Britain at least the adoption of mobile phones is almost universal. If this final group are not to be left out of the loop, text-messaging would be the better option. The loop itself is, of course, a privacy issue in it's own right - but we've been there before!

By co-incidence, I caught a TV documenary yesterday on how mobile phones rather than compters per-se are revolutionising cultural and political process in Africa. In areas without effective democracy or corrupt government, where even internation aid is hi-jacked by the ruling elite, people have found a way to communicate. Without even basic electricity, mobiles are charged using solar power with farms and villages formerly enslaved to "middlemen" suddenly discovering they have choices over whom they work and deal with. One woman interviewed described her mobile as "being like given the keys to your prison". The commentator suggested that Africa (and presumably more of the "third world") could be about to embrace modernity within a decade, by by-passing the industrial revolution they never experienced.

Ironically, it is big business that is saving such societies - namely the telecom giants. Phone masts cover every inch of the land, independent of government and even any other infrastructire like roads. These African phones also contain the eqivilent of cash-machine cards - people received money electronically and pay for goods and services the same way. There is no cash and nor, for the most part, does there seem to be any tax. As criminal governments decay, people are forging a new world for themselves - a kind of free-market underground economy, which is now beginning to self-finance the building of an infrastructure from which national leaders have long since abdicated.

It gives me hope and also makes me wonder if the developed world is on a road to nowhere. As we are enslaved by consumer trinkets, media that largely functions as subliminal propaganda and a so-called "lifestyle" that is dependent on unecessary travel and other energy waste - are we soon to witness pre-industrial societies achieve a social model that illustrates the fallacy of our own ways? If the planet sees a rise in new local sustainable communities that are "patched in" to global communications systems, maybe it is we ourselves who will become the new "third world" - forever dependent on others to perpetuate our decadence.

The balance of economic power in the world is shifting rapidly. Rape and pillage of recources, the slow and silent genocide of those who have no useful place in the capitalist machine and the refusal to take our own future self-sustainability seriously - these are ultimately the signs of a decline in civilisation. War, greed and callous introversion will simply accelerate the inevitable - for all our new technology, it is we who are failing to communicate adequately. It's a two-way street, but a global village!

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Prohibition On Sale

An advert for Pot TV, but informative and amusing enough to be more than just a plug.

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Best of Bush 2006

The new year may now be with us, but there's still no shortage of retrospective listings for the last - just check my latest stories link.

This one is a video version and devoted to a few of the Ape Emporer's key soundbites. Or whatever you call the.

We all know Bush has the power to snoop of your email, but news today is that the legislation from last December means he can also open regular mail. So that's what he meant by "weeding" lessons!

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James Brown

James Brown, originally uploaded by Mal Burns2007.

An early photo of the late James Brown.

You may have noticed things are going a bit odd in this blog - some posts arriving in the wrong order. Take my word for it - others haven't been getting here at all! Hopefully I'll have it all sorted as the new year starts for real. Because the new templates system here at Blogger is incompatible with most of my "fast-publishing" buttons, the holiday posts didn't happen as planned.

I'm now attempting to re-adjust those that will work. Obviously I can post when logging in direct, the system works fine again for video links via YouTube and this post is coming via Flickr. The main problem is that I no longer have a "Blog This" button that allows for publishing clickable links from a browser, so all that kind of thing has moved to Bloglines and Hotlinks (see links at left).

I forsee this blog becoming more of a central hub pointing to others for the time being. The template has allowed me some exiting new features however. Links in the sidebar now have active "pop-up" previews to help you save wasted clicks. My vod-pod module now has quick access to more clips and documentaries that would be practical on this page. Best of all, there are two new audio features.

Both here and in the annex you will find a nifty box that allows you to record messages and comments with your microphone. These are emailed to me immediately and, if worthy, will be published to my podcast.

The podcast blog itself can be linked to via the Annex link or at Bloglines. Each "cast" is a separate file and entries show up in standard RSS feeds. Talking of which, because Bloglines is based on an RSS system, I'm told the sidebar doesn't always display properly in some browsers. If this is the case, a non-RSS duplicate list is again in the Annex here.

If all this sounds confusing, it's just as bad for me. The idea in having so many facilities online is to give better theme-based functionality to each of them. It's happening - but slowly.

Meanwhilem a happy new cycle to all of you.

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