The Journapist

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2011-07-20T21:11:00.002+01:00

Having set up a collaborative webzine called Dreaming Genius, I now post most of my writing there, or on my blog with The Huffington Post UK, so this blog will be dorment from now on. Thanks for reading.

Bin Laden Is Dead, But Should Be On Trial

2011-05-04T05:31:00.001+01:00

It didn't take long for the pseudo-sceptics to question President Obama's claim that Osama Bin Laden was dead. Pointing to a lack of evidence, they offer alternative narratives equally devoid of proof, but also lacking in logic. Once satisfied an unwillingness to blindly accept the authoritative version of events precludes them from gullibility, they switch off faculties of critical thought and speculate wildly; sometimes blindly accepting the first alternative theory. Too often, scepticism - a valuable thinking tool - is used as an excuse not to think at all.

Of course, there is no good reason to believe what governments say indubitably. But that doesn't mean everything they tell us is a lie. If the truth works in their favour, that's what they give us. And it is their pervasive abuse - and use - of 'truth' to manipulate us, which means America is telling the truth, or at least part of it.

The most obvious, and least logical suggestion being made is that Bin Laden is still alive. If true, odds-on-favourite President Obama has just handed the Republicans a massive lifeline in the next election, and gifted Bin Laden the power to decide it. Of course, it isn't true, and Obama has instead won himself and the Democrats another term. If al-Qaeda's leader were still alive, just one new propaganda video would make Obama practically unelectable. Even George W. Bush wasn't that stupid.

Fractionally more sophisticated is the theory that, known to the White House, Bin Laden has been dead for some time already. In this scenario, his death has been saved like a 'get-out-of-jail-free' card for a sticky situation, and is being announced now to boost Obama's popularity before the election. Again, there is some truth here, in that the only real significance to Bin Laden's death is a party-political one, but it extends further into the past. If he had been killed before the 2008 Presidential election, and the White House had known, there is no way they would have passed the trump card across to the Democrats. Lacking strong candidates, the Republicans would surely have played it themselves, and claimed a hollow victory. Of course, Sarah Palin can bust any flush, but the odds would have swung.

If he died at some point during Obama's rule, it would have made more sense to cash in on it when he was struggling with healthcare reforms or before the 2010 senate elections, than prior to an election he was already bound to win.

That leaves the possibility that Bin Laden was dead already, but America didn't know until now. If he died earlier during Obama's term, why lie? Tell the truth, and he still gets the credit, without the risk of Bin-Ladengate being exposed. If he died several years ago, then telling a convenient truth pre-election would make more sense. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld would have been engaged in a war on a corpse; using fear of a non-existent foe to curb liberties and invade nations. Robert Fisk, who met Bin Laden on three occasions, considered the Al' Qaeda leader a spent force; an ideological guru rather than a puppet master, but the Bush regime never let up with the Osama-threat rhetoric. So perhaps Bush et all knew he was dead, but kept his spirit alive to justify costly invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq? The same logic would apply, and they would still have come clean before 2008 to boost their election chances and avoid passing the credit to the Democrats. With both wars severely damaging the public's confidence, it is nonsensical to believe they would choose not to boast 'but look, we got him!'

For others looking for inconsistencies, the smoking gun is the hasty disposal of Bin Laden's corpse. America's statement that Osama was buried at sea according to 'Islamic tradition' may sound odd, but here too, there is method behind the madness. Some have suggested the US have used Islam's tradition of dealing with bodies within twenty-four hours of death to sweep the truth under the carpet, but the alternative: keeping the body for the purpose of satisfying doubters, might incite reprisal from extremists already angered by his death and keen to make a martyr of him. It is true that burial at sea is un-Islamic when given a choice, but it does happen in unique circumstance, and what choice did the US really have? The Saudis wouldn't have wanted the body on their land, nor the Afghans he terrorised, or Pakistan. So where do you put him? And would truthers be anymore satisfied had the US buried him on land, but at a secret, unmarked location; adhering to Islamic tradition?

In England, the right-wing and gutter press momentarily vindicated these questions; publishing fake pictures of a deceased and bloody Osama which had already been shown to be fake two years earlier, when, ironically, it appeared on many conspiracy websites. Some of the same people previously claiming Osama was dead, and the US knew, but kept it quiet, are now those claiming he isn't dead at all; contrary for contrary's sake. The Times, Telegraph, Mail, Sun and Mirror were all duped by the shoddy image, but these are cases of media incompetence rather than media-backed government conspiracy, and places conspiracy theorist rhetoric rightly alongside that of these limited publications.

Frustratingly, by focusing on our own spontaneously concocted versions of the truth, making it clear we will believe nothing without evidence, we let America off the hook; overlooking the obvious conspiracy which cannot be ignored. The question we ought to be asking, is why was Bin Laden not taken alive? Previous suggestions he was armed and used one of his wives as a human shield have been denied, yet he was shot in the head and chest under what looks like orders to kill. For some, that might be a satisfactory outcome, but for the White House, it was the preferred one. Bin Laden's relationship with the Bush family and links to the CIA are common knowledge, but many of the details are not. If Bin Laden were detained and tried, who knows what filthy secrets he might reveal?

While we've seen no 'evidence' Bin Laden is dead, or died in the circumstances we're told, that isn't to say evidence doesn't exist. Of course, according to Descartes, we can never know anything for sure, but the US government will release photographs in time and will have taken DNA evidence. Even then, how will the psuedo-sceptics know for certain?

A minority of 'believers' who think ten years, thousands of western soldiers' lives and hundreds of thousands of Arabs', all to kill one increasingly spent force, represents a victory, wasted no time in taking to the streets in celebration. Opposite but equal to those who doubt for the sake of it, they mindlessly cheered the news as if God had finally overcome the Devil and the American dream can now return to course.

Bin Laden is dead, but 'Bin Ladenism' - a will to spill innocent blood for a perceived higher cause - will live on, including inside the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

A Royal Marrying Of Celebrity Culture And Authoritarianism

2011-05-03T05:38:00.000+01:00

While Friday's ultimate launch of the Endeavour space shuttle was postponed due to a last-minute technical failure, the royal wedding - or as I like to call it: massive twat convention - went without a glitch. I was hoping we could combine the two, and launch the royals into space, but science isn't as reliable as unearned hereditary status, so they will have to go on living on another planet in the metaphorical sense only.

Kate, after a brief spell of being Catherine, is now the Duchess of Cambridge, Countess of Strathearn, and Baroness of Carrickfergus, for no reason other than Cambridge, Strathearn and Carrickfergus are the kinds of nice places that deserve a Duchess, and if she were the Duchess of Slough, Staines or Luton, ordinary people from those places might wrongly mistake her for just another human being and hesitate to elevate her onto a platform of greater worth.

Television coverage of the pomp and ceremony was predictable. 'Analysts' offered pearls of wisdom like "she looks so regal", difficult to do when marrying a prince at Westminster Abbey, and "you can see they really care about each other", a rarity for people embarking on marriage. One particularly insightful expert on filling gaps in airtime with meaningless judgmental observations criticised Samantha Cameron for not wearing a hat, adding that it was a great shame as "she would make a great ambassador for hats". Presumably she could then meet with scarf and glove diplomats to ensure a colour-coded future of cooperation between clothing accessories. Kate's bridal gown was fawned over non-stop, with a plethora of shallow sycophants offering varying viscosities of materialistic bile. William's outfit - which made him look like a cross between Michael Jackson and a multicoloured Mr. Bean - received less scrutiny, and Prince Harry avoided a PR disaster by leaving his fancy dress outfits at home.

Had Harry donned his Nazi uniform he would have been in good company, or at least he would have if the royal family had gotten their way. The guest list included the King Mswati III of Swaziland, who knows a fair bit about weddings himself. King Mswati has thirteen wives, and marries a new one each year, picking his favourite from thousands of topless virgins. Also invited was Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa of Bahrain, who only declined after human rights activists planned to protest his attendance, and the Syrian ambassador Dr Sami Khiyami who was uninvited at the last minute after it turned out the guy he works for isn’t very nice.

For anyone who didn't know better, tuning into the sycophantic television coverage of the happy couple's unison in holy matrimony would leave them convinced of the public's unanimous approval. While flag waving children were shoved in-front of cameras to screech how it had been 'the best day of their lives', anyone with misgivings about the hegemonic zeitgeist of conformity were rounded up by the Met. Having taken an oath to ‘well and truly serve the Queen in the office of constable, with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people’ police officers had already detained subjects of the Queen the previous day, including a 68-year-old university professor who was organising some dangerous street theatre.

Suspiciously in-sync with the royal celebrations was a nation-wide crack down on squatters. Who do these lazy non-conformists think they are by expecting taxpayers to pay for their residence? Don't they know only the royal family get privileges like that?

The police were gloatingly pleased with how they manhandled the whole thing, saying in a press release that their performance ‘demonstrated the Met at its very best’. At their worst, of course, they baton people to death rather than merely restrict their democratic right to peaceful protest, so all in all they did do pretty well.

Some other things did happen on the same day, but they were largely unimportant in comparison. Tens of people were gunned down by a brutal regime in Syria, hundreds died when unprecedented tornados hit the USA, and around 70,000 other people died around the world as they do any other given day. All of this is trivial though, when two entirely unremarkable people are doing what thousands of other regular human beings do every single day. Incase you need proof the royal wedding deserved pride of place on the media mantelpiece of arse-lickery, I submit this commemorative pizza, along with the postulation that you won’t find one topped with depictions of genocide or obliterated suburban housing estates.

More than anything Friday's ritualistic celebration of excess, privilege, and celebrity culture was good value for money. So what if an extra national holiday was estimated by the Confederation of British Industry to have cost the economy £6bn? It isn't as if we're in the midst of a financial crisis. And what The Department for Culture clearly haven't factored into their estimation that the policing, stewards, decorations and expenses on media costed around £10m, was that we all got another opportunity to get royally pissed.

So was this grandiose spectacle of any worth whatsoever? Well actually, yes. Despite totally unfounded suggestions that William's choice to marry a 'commoner' is indicative of, or will encourage social mobility - as if aristocrats all over the country will now propose to the first bit of rough they lay their eyes on - his break from tradition could well signal a change for the better. It's no secret he has in the past shown a desire for change within the monarchy, and despite being raised in a perversely twisted dimension of reality, the prince (and his chosen bride) seem to actually be quite decent people.

Republicans alive today might never see the abolition of the royal family we crave, but a prince who blames the 'traditional' media for the death of his mother, and has grown up in a time when new media has given him more access to the culture of his subjects than was ever possible for his forefathers, might just have the will and courage to reform it into something we can hate a little less.

The Madness Of St. George('s Day)

2011-04-21T05:49:00.006+01:00

Around this time of year (nobody knows exactly when) St. George's Day happens. No-one knows what it entails, or who St. George was, we just know it's the National Day of England, and that it's shit.

Without tabloid pullouts of St. George's Cross helpfully marking the windows of households afflicted by a plague of vapid patriotism, St. George's would be just another day. But for those who think foreigners have ruined England, it offers an opportunity to wave the national flag from car windows, give the skinhead a wax, sing racist songs in the name of tradition, then complain St. George's day isn't as popular as St. Patrick's or Burns Night.

I doubt a patriotic celebration of England, with St. George as the mascot, can ever be as successful as those of our celtic neighbours. It's not that I don't believe he killed a Dragon - although a website I found researching stated: "It is highly unlikely that he ever fought a dragon, and even more unlikely that he ever actually visited England". Rather than the plausible, but ultimately 'unlikely' chance of him having been a dragon slayer, my concern lies with the second, 'likely' suggestion that St. George wasn't English. The Patron Saint of England was Palestinian.

As it is, most people probably don't realise our patron saint was an Arab, and I have a hunch the proportion who do falls even lower among people who consider themselves most patriotic. Were St. George's day to become a bigger deal, it would also be subject to greater scrutiny, and some of that scrutiny might fall on good old George himself. I'm not suggesting there's any correlation between patriotism and racism meaning a Palestinian patron saint might not capture the hearts of people 'English till they die'. I'm just saying it's likelier than giant fire-breathing geckos.

So as St. George probably didn't kill any dragons, and there's even less chance he came to, let alone from, England, what was so great about him? Historians think he was most likely a Christian Roman soldier from a noble family who was killed for refusing to renounce his Christianity. Most saints did at least one miracle. Jesus has his own day but he did loads of amazing stuff. Father Christmas has one, and in the minds of children he brings presents every year. St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland, though I think that might have to go under 'unlikely' too, as I'm not sure there were ever many snakes there in the first place. Dragons maybe. But snakes? Nope. I know they can talk, but I'm not buying that. He's also supposed to have cured sick people and resurrected the dead though, and that's not nearly as far-fetched as the snake, dragon and going to England stuff. Robert Burns didn't do any miracles as far as I know, so that's probably why he isn't as popular as Jesus, Santa or St Patrick. But what did George do?

According to Pope Gelasius, that's by the by. George was one of the surprisingly high number of saints "whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose actions are known only to God" according to the Pope (who probably did loads of good stuff he kept secret so only he and God know about it). Sorry Mr. Pope, the whole not-from-England thing doesn't bother me, and as an animal-lover, if dragons were real I'd probably dislike people who killed them anyway, but if I'm going to glorify someone, I want to at least want know what they did. And it's almost as important that what they did turns out to be good. But being born rich and becoming famous for reasons no-one is sure of makes St. George sound more like a medieval Tara Palmer-Tomkinson than a national icon embodying all that's great about England.

Thankfully, St. George was a lot less vacuous than her. When he died he left all his money to the poor, and if anything, through his refusal to accept bribes to drop the whole 'Christianity' thing, he showed a penchant for dissent. Not very patriotic.

The kind of people who think Muslims are part of a global conspiracy to take over the world, and wish England could go back to 'how it used to be', argue in 'racist places' that because Scotland and Ireland's 'days' are widely celebrated, ours should be too. "We, want a day!" they whine like snotty-nosed toddlers unable to bear the idea they might be missing out on something. But if we're going to behave like solipsistic cry babies, it's the Irish and Scots being forced to share their 'days' who should be blubbering. St. Paddy's is taken as an open invitation to don a jester hat and drink Guinness until accents are indistinguishable by people of all nations, and although less popular, non-Scots join in with Burns Night, too. We should be the happy toddler; the one that gets to play with the Irish and Scottish toddlers' toys, but never has to clear up afterwards.

Others, envious of Scotland's refined celebration of Burns and his work, want to replace poor old St. George as the icon of our national day, in favour of someone more English and worthy, but still a man, of course. 'We want our national day to herald the work of Shakespeare on his birthday' they argue with just as much snot but more aplomb than the face-painted toddler xenophobes. Shakespeare must be turning in his grave knowing how little his ancestors have appreciated him. Sure, we've performed his plays non-stop for centuries and made his work a cornerstone of national curriculum, but that hardly compares to stabbing our dinner while reciting his poetry.

So lets rename April 23rd 'Shakespeare Day', dress as jesters, get drunk, and read 'A Lover's Complaint' while stabbing a foreigner-shaped Yorkshire pudding effigy. That ought to please everyone.

Banning The Burqa: Is Sarkozy Destroying Muslim Women's Rights Under The Guise Of Saving them?

2011-04-11T16:27:00.019+01:00

Few people are as anti-theistic as me. Even before my agnostic ex-girlfriend was beaten by her Muslim father for having an 'infidel' boyfriend (she later legally divorced him) I was passionately against religion being used as a vehicle for suppression.

Since interviewing and befriending a Saudi woman brutalised by religious police merely for being in a car with a male friend, and hearing first-hand about even greater atrocities within a theistic sect, my dislike of religious doctrine could hardly be greater. Odd then, you might think, that I am vehemently against France's ban on the burqa, which came into effect today.

My entire reasoning for a dislike of theistic belief - and more intensely, organised religion - is the ease and prevalence of its use by the powerful (usually old men) to oppress the vulnerable (usually women and children). I don't particularly like the Burqa, and I am wholly against any woman being forced to wear it - or anything else for that matter. But to criminalise women who choose to wear it of their own will - as the powerful, ageing male president of France has done - isn't an antidote to dictatorial dogma, rather, it is more of the same.

It's a common misconception that the Burqa is part of Islamic dress; the Qur'an makes no mention of the garment which predates Muhammad. In fact, it was first adopted by Muslim leaders for their women out of respect for local custom when they travelled further east into non-islamic cities. So it's debatable as to whether the ban constitutes an infringement of freedom of religious expression, but the decision to impose a fine of 150 euros for breaking the ban is no less reactionary and draconian as a result.

Today, over two million Muslim women live in France, but less than 2,000 are estimated by security services to wear a full face veil. That equates to just 0.1 percent. In Turkey - Europe's largest Muslim population - a ban on wearing full headscarves in universities and other public buildings has led to large numbers of young Muslim women unwilling to conform to the legislation being denied education.

Recent history shows only too clearly how unjust inter-cultural oppression results in backlash, but Islamophobia is having another problematic consequence. It provides cover for those relatively few who really are bigoted extremists; who can point the finger at reasonable, objective criticism of Islamic faith and call it prejudice. Just as journalists who have fairly criticised Israel have been labelled anti-semites by factions wishing to stifle debate, there is a very real danger that any valid critique of Islam will become more hazardous than it already is.

Banning the burqa also sets a dangerous, inherently fascist precedent. What if the public at large and its representative government were to decide punk attire is too offensive to be tolerated? Or skinny jeans? Do we really want to go down that route? I am not defending the quasi-religious intimidation to dress traditionally many Muslim women do experience, and it is a problem which needs addressing. Last year, a young girl in India received multiple death threats for wearing jeans instead of a burqa. This is quite clearly indefensible, and indeed, most Muslim Imams condemn such abuse.

Of course, Sarkozy has his reasons. Whether a cynical ploy to win back votes from France's far-right, pandering to a misinformed public in a desperate attempt to boost his flagging popularity, or simply an act of Islamophobia, you can be sure this clumsy measure has nothing to do with the disingenuous reasoning he offers: "The issue of the burqa is not a religious issue, it is a question of freedom and of women's dignity."

So, if the ban is about 'freedom', and 'women's dignity', how does prohibiting women who do wish to wear a burqa from doing so, and arresting two such women on the day of the ban's inception, achieve that? Is it less prohibitive to arrest and fine a woman for wilfully wearing attire you find distasteful, than it is to force her into a burqa? The anti-logic is reminiscent of comments by an unnamed U.S. officer speaking about Bến Tre during the Vietnam War: 'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it," he's alleged to have said.

It seems Sarkozy intends to destroy the rights and dignity of Muslim women under the same illogical guise.

After March 26th, Who Can You Trust?

2011-03-27T14:42:00.004+01:00

On the 18th of May, 2010, David Cameron launched his vision for Britain: “Today is the start of a deep and serious reform agenda to take power away from politicians and give it to people."

Half a million people marching against his crack-pot 'Big Society' idea - comprising of the most devastating cuts since the 1920's, a rise in the regressive VAT tax, and selling off the NHS - wasn't what he had in mind. But just ten months on from the inception of Cameron's agenda into the public's consciousness, YouGov polls show the coalition and the chancellor are now viewed negatively.

What Cameron has done, is prove correct an observation even he was able to make from his ivory tower of ultra-privilege: “...we know instinctively that the state is often too inhuman, monolithic and clumsy to tackle our deepest social problems. We know that the best ideas come from the ground up, not the top down. We know that when you give people and communities more power over their lives, more power to come together and work together to make life better – great things happen.”

As 'social problems' go, our government decimating the vital services on which the worst off people rely, without any democratic mandate, ranks pretty high. But Cameron was right; the best ideas do come from the ground up. Ideas like fighting on behalf of those who can't fight for themselves. Ideas like Sukey; an application for keeping protestors safe and informed during demonstrations. Ideas like the one conceived by 10 UK activists in a North London pub, to oppose the public sector cuts: UK Uncut.

Having successfully forced an investigation by The National Audit Office into the tax let-off granted to Vodafone by George Osborne, UK Uncut yesterday turned their attention to Fortnum & Mason; occupying the store favoured by the ultra-rich and Royal family where a food hamper will set you back £25,000. Fortnum's were targeted because its owners - Whittington Investments - have dodged forty million pounds in taxes. Several journalists quickly used Twitter to point out Whittington Investments is largely (79.2%) owned by The Garfield Weston Foundation - one of the UK's largest grant-making trusts. But so what? Does giving to charity permit you to decide your own taxation? If so, there are plenty of ordinary members of the public who might deem themselves deserving of an ample rebate.

In-keeping with their modus operandi, UK Uncut's occupation was a peaceful one, but when entirely unaffiliated 'black bloc' protestors started vandalising outside the department store, police decided to arrest 138 UK Uncut members who did nothing but stage a non-violent sit-in.

Less well thought-out was the black bloc attack on a branch of Santander bank. If all banks had kept to the risk-averse, conservative banking practice of 'dynamic provisioning' adhered to by Santander, the credit crunch might never have happened.

The Daily Mail have predictably focussed on the actions of a violent minority, despite police statements that the TUC organised march was 'overwhelmingly peaceful'. Even the reputedly balanced BBC seem to be becoming less impartial - perhaps scared of Cameron clipping their wings in favour of Murdoch's ever-growing empire. Speaking live, Tim Willcox lazily lumped the Socialist Workers Party, UK Uncut, and rioting anarchists into one group, despite the three having entirely different ethos' and methodologies. The leader of the TaxPayers' Alliance - Mathew Sinclair - opined from the BBC studio; 'even bigger cuts' are needed, a view that was replayed in a continuous loop without any counterclaim for balance. But most worrying are reports that a Sky News journalist offered a protestor £25 to throw a brick.

When the ruling parties and the fourth estate are letting down the public so badly, it makes sense that the opposition would try to capitalise on the our lack of representation. Step forward Ed Miliband, a man who openly admits that he too would be making brutal, unnecessary cuts, to jump on the bandwagon. In one of the least inspiring speeches ever from a political leader, Miliband tried to mimic the Obama rhetoric, and invoked the great Martin Luther King as well as campaigns against apartheid and for women's votes. But his limp delivery confirmed him as an opportunistic follower, rather than the enigmatic leader Labour and the nation need.

So if not the government, fourth estate, or opposition party, who is left for the British public to trust? There is one group who have our best interests at heart. They want our taxes to go towards vital services like the NHS, libraries and affordable education. They want large corporations to pay their taxes and banks to clean up the mess they made. They are UK Uncut, and for their troubles, some of them are currently in police custody. That's where being ethically motivated and protesting peacefully gets you these days, while lies and betrayal get you into government.

Despite the media's inevitable focus on the violent minority who gatecrash any large-scale demonstration, the most pertinent aspect of yesterday's March For The Alternative was the variety of people in attendence. Old, young, richer, poorer. Cameron and Clegg are succeeding in uniting the country - against them.

Neds, You Lose

2011-03-01T19:18:00.009Z

While Hollywood's attending royalty hung on every word of Colin Firth’s acceptance speech at Sunday’s Oscars, they’ll probably never hear of 'NEDS', another British film released just too late to qualify.

Even if Peter Mullan's film had been out soon enough; it wouldn’t have been on the Academy’s radar. In the 'schemes' of 1970's Glasgow where the film is set, gangs, knives and crime were prevalent and a dearth of social facilities meant the voices of 'non-educated delinquents' - a backronym for 'neds' - were rarely heard, no matter how good their speech. It's artistic and bold, but also unfashionable, small and cheap. So NEDS ‘the movie’ probably won’t be made welcome at the Oscars in 2012. And according to the organiser of Scotland’s biggest music festival, ‘neds’ the people aren’t welcome at T in the Park this July either.

In an interview with The Pop Cop, when asked if they would be following the lead of RockNess in banning 'ned attire', Geoff Ellis responded; “I think it’s probably tongue-in-cheek. What is ned attire? Do you say to Jay-Z he’s a ned because he wears sportswear? It’s not about what you wear, it’s about who you are. Listen, you can be a ned in a suit. If you take a ned to mean somebody who is out to cause trouble, those are people we don’t want to come to T in the Park anyway. We’ve no plans to put a dress code into T in the Park, that would be quite draconian.”

Reasonable, you might think. But he finishes by adding; “neds are not welcome, just to clarify that.” So what is Ellis actually saying? He says he can’t ban sportswear, because some successful performers like Jay-Z wear it, and a ned would still be a ned if they wore a suit. He says being a ned is “about who you are”, and if you take a ned to mean “somebody who is out to cause trouble”, those are the people who are unwelcome. But then he feels the need to clarify that neds are not welcome. Why not just say troublemakers?

Behind the meandering, when he says ‘neds’, Ellis is referring to a ‘type’ of people who stereotypically - but not always – wear sports clothing, and labelling them all troublemakers. But who are this ‘type’?

Owen Jones, author of the soon to be released book: Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, thinks Ellis' “attack on so-called 'neds'” is “just another example of how young working-class people are regarded as fair game.” But this stigmatisation through stereotype isn’t exclusive to big event organisers. In his book, Jones explores how the portrayal of Britain’s working-classes by the media has gone ‘from salt of the earth, to scum of the earth’, and how governments have capitalised on stereotypes like ‘chav’ and ‘ned’ to avoid social engagement and justify widening inequality. For Jones, Ellis’ remarks are symptomatic of a trend;

“Rather than engage with issues such as rampant youth unemployment and growing levels of poverty, prominent figures such as Mr. Ellis are more interested in playing to caricatures. Yet again, it hammers home the sense many marginalised young working-class people have - that there is no place for them in modern Britain."

The irony in T in the Park’s prejudice is that while no sane working-class person can seriously aspire to become part of the monarchy (no, she isn't a 'commoner'), achieving rock-star fame is still a possibility, if only a slight one. Indeed, some of the festival’s biggest acts have much more in common with ‘neds’ than they do Ellis. Oasis, and Scotland’s own Primal Scream both played at the festival's inception, and as far as troublemakers go; last year's headliner Jay-Z has had his problems.

Beyond the music industry, Ricky Gervais and David Beckham are two of Britain’s proletariat to make it big in Los Angeles, the home of tinsel town. It makes sense that our biggest musical, comedic and footballing exports hail from humble backgrounds; all three industries are rooted in working class culture, after all. Already ticket prices have made football largely inaccessible to working-class people, and at nearly £200 per ticket, seeing their idols perform at T in the Park is about as realistic as Peter Mullan picking up next year’s Oscar for best film - and that’s before Ellis' social profiling kicks in.

The Revolution Will Be Tweeted

2011-02-23T20:40:00.015Z

When Gil Scott-Heron sang "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", he was right. Al Jazeera may have beamed incredible images of massive demonstrating crowds live around the world, but this was just the tip of the iceberg: the physical manifestation of a revolution which had taken place in minds brought together by social media.

In relatively free societies social media might so far have been more about reuniting with old friends and poking than starting revolutions, but when you have no freedom of speech and the threat of torture for dissent, memes struggle to propagate. They require an environment of connectivity, interactivity and openness; the core principles of social media's founding fathers.

In 2008, having had little success three years earlier as a leading organiser of the political movement 'Kefaya', or 'Enough', 30-year-old civil engineer Ahmed Maher was taking his cause for human rights in Egypt to the blogosphere. Mr Maher and his friends set up a Facebook group which they used to call for a nationwide labour strike. Bad weather conspired against demos across the country but in Mahalla, a violent police response brought attention to the first major conflict over labour in years.

Facebook again proved to be a valuable organisational tool two years later when Wael Ghonim - a 31-year-old Google marketing executive - helped Maher set up another group: We Are All Khalid Said. Named after a young man beaten to death by the Egyptian police, they used it to spread democratic principles and dissect the spin of official media.

Being able to whisper dissent over the internet was like being freed from the charade in The Emperor's New Clothes, where punishment for speaking out against the lie is a beating and imprisonment rather than the label of stupidity. As more Egyptians realised they weren't the only one who thought their oppressive despot looked ridiculous, they began to realise their strength and organise for greater dissent. Its too early to say the rest is history, because the ripples generated by those early protests are still expanding across the Arab world and astounding even the people who helped give rise to them.

In a recent interview co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone confirmed that in 2009 president Obama had asked Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance so that student protestors could organise, such was its importance to them as a tool.

He also recalled a story about James Buck, a photojournalism student of UC Berkeley who went to Egypt in 2008 to photograph protests. He kept missing them, but was advised by Egyptian friends to use Twitter to stay informed, as they did. Buck took their advice, used Twitter to attend protests, and was eventually arrested by Egyptian police. They threw him in the back of a car but didn't take his phone from him. Scared, he tweeted a single word; 'arrested'. His friends back home in California were 'following' him, called the college dean, a lawyer, and the consulate. Just hours later he tweeted another single word; 'free'.

It's significant that while the Egyptian authorities quickly shut down the Internet - acknowledging that it's cost to them far outweighed it's usefulness, while being a vital tool for revolutionaries - television was used relentlessly in an attempt to cajole public opinion. But even that couldn't stop the Twitterati. Stone and his colleagues worked with Google to develop a system so people could use their phones to dial local numbers and speak their tweets, which could be relayed into cyberspace.

Gil Scott-Heron's lyrics imply television's ability to marginalise the will of its audience while serving the agendas of those who control it, and the need for participation rather than voyeurism in political movements. While the seeds of middle east revolution were sewn in Tweets and Facebook groups where the authoritative voice is only one among millions, the region's national television channels ignored the shift in zeitgeist taking place.

Television can inform public opinion and set agendas, but its lack of interactivity and its bias towards the ruling elite disenfranchises the average viewer, making it a better tool for manipulation than empowerment. For dictators looking to spread propaganda and distract or frighten populations into apathy, television is a powerful ally. But if you want to enlighten the masses and motivate them into direct action for change, your weapons of choice are Twitter and Facebook.

The Case Against Tony Blair

2011-01-26T11:56:00.020Z

“It’s too late” was the shout at Friday’s Chilcot Inquiry from a relative of one of the 179 British servicemen and women lost to the Iraq war. The malcontented dismissal of Blair’s overdue admission: “Of course I regret deeply and profoundly the loss of life,” was quickly silenced. For Blair though, it may not yet be too late for justice to be served.

The legality of the second Iraq war hinges on the now infamous UN Security Council resolution 1441, which was adopted unanimously by the United Nations Security Council on November 8th, 2002. Part of the resolution stated that Iraq had failed to comply with previous resolutions calling for a cease to production of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and had failed to destroy its existing ones. Crucially, there were no ‘hidden triggers’ within the resolution, which would mean military intervention should Iraq fail to comply. At the time, the UK ambassador and co-sponsor of the resolution said: “There is no ‘automaticity’ in this resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion.

Iraq agreed to the obligations, and on November 27th a team of weapons inspectors returned to Iraq led by Hans Blix. They were unable to find any evidence of WMD’s, but Saddam continued to be sluggish in conforming to the inspector’s demands. In his report on March 7th Blix said: “Iraq, with a highly developed administrative system, should be able to provide more documentary evidence about its proscribed weapons programmes. Only a few new such documents have come to light so far and been handed over since we began inspections.”

This is where things become murky. Instead of returning to the Security Council for the second resolution required to make military intervention legal - as Blair admits he had been advised by Attorney General Peter Goldsmith – Bush and Blair instead decided to ‘manufacture consent’. Blair and Goldsmith informed parliament and the Armed Forces that war with Iraq would be legal and was authorised by UN Security Council resolutions 678, 687 and 1441. This was the key lie Blair told, and the reason people like George Galloway and human rights lawyer Sir Geoffrey Bindman are leading calls for Blair to be tried.

Together with the earlier September Dossier, which was later shown to be unanimously false – including wildly inaccurate assertions that Saddam had reinstated Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme and that he had chemical weapons capable of hitting Britain deployable within forty-five minutes – the Iraq Dossier was used to justify military action against Iraq despite being full of ‘sexed up’ claims. The ‘intelligence’ was used to convince parliament and the media that Saddam posed a threat deserving of immediate military action. It proved convincing enough to dupe 254 Labour MPs – including all the cabinet except Robin Cook, who instead resigned – and 146 Conservatives into passing the motion that the government ”should use all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction”. The Sun carried the headline “Brits 45 Mins from Doom“, but the British public remained unconvinced.

On February 15th 2003 between 750,000 and 2,000,000 members of the public protested against Britain’s participation in the war. But Blair was on a crusade unswayable by law, let alone public opinion. On March 20th war began with Iraq with a ‘shock and awe’ bombardment of Baghdad.

Three years later, with the Iraqi infrastructure decimated and its people subjected to even worse conditions than they had known under Saddam, the Iraq Survey Group was commissioned by the Bush administration to determine whether Saddam had had weapons of mass destruction. The inspector’s findings were damning: “While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered.”

But perhaps this was all just a big mistake? Perhaps Blair too was a victim of misinformation, rather than a warmonger hell-bent on carrying out his imperialist agenda? His own comments would suggest otherwise. In Martin Bell’s book: ‘The Truth That Sticks: New Labour’s Breach of Trust’ he recalls a conversation Blair had with soldiers on his farewell visit before leaving office. Blair replied to soldiers who had been speaking about the horrors of war: “so we’re killing more of them than they kill us, you’re getting back out there after them, it’s brilliant, actually.”

Even now, with the Iraq Body Count estimating there have been between 99,383 and 108,501 civilian Iraqi deaths, Blair’s rhetoric supports a continued imperialist foreign policy rather than one of more consideration. Referring to Iran as a “coming and looming challenge”, and saying: “I am out in that region the whole time and I see the influence of Iran everywhere. It is negative, de-stabilising, supportive of terrorist groups. It is doing everything it can to impede progress in the Middle East peace process.”

While Saddam met a grizzly end for the atrocities he committed against his own people, Blair continues to enjoy the freedom of the country whose people he deceived, whose press he manipulated, and whose young people’s lives he sacrificed. The former Prime minister has already conceded that he will be judged for his actions, telling Michael Parkinson in 2006: “If you have faith about these things then you realise that judgement is made by other people. If you believe in God, it’s made by God as well.” But rather than people, or God, perhaps Tony Blair should worry about any judgement The Hague might one day make on him.

Postscript: This article was written for Green Wedge. Please check out their brilliant site on politics and music.

The King's Speech - Movie Review

2011-01-17T12:01:00.005Z

By now, you probably know The King's Speech is the story of King George VI (Colin Firth), who was crowned when his older brother abdicated in favour of an illicit romance. Taking the throne, however, presented more of a challenge to Prince Albert (he adopted George - one of his middle names - as his title) than it had his predecessors.

He had suffered from a chronic stammer since childhood and could barely manage speaking to his own children, let alone the nation. Making his affliction an even bigger cross to bear, his reign coincided with radio becoming prominent. Enter Geoffrey Rush as speech therapist Lionel Logue to help the cantankerous king overcome his psychosomatic problems. Having already seen a succession of speech therapists the king is sceptical to say the least, but Lionel's idiosyncratic approach - insisting on calling the king 'Bertie' and getting him to sing his words - does more than give him a voice. It helps him deal with inner demons implanted by the past and allow him to take his place on the throne.

Right from the off, the regal elegance of this film charms you into comfortable viewing. The styling of 1930's England is sublime; sufficiently dull and grey that you know it's England, yet with a richness exuding from classically refined settings. In terms of production, it ticks every box. The costumes are excellent without being overdone and the score compliments the visuals perfectly - but these are things you would expect from an English period drama.

What surprised me most about The King's Speech was how much it surprised me. I wasn't expecting it to be fast paced, but from the opening few minutes I was riveted by the awkward suspense of an all powerful, yet totally impotent royal suffering public humiliation. The isolation he feels literally pours out of the screen. Before I knew it I was twenty minutes in and already surprised by how funny this film is. You couldn't call it a comedy, but the dialogue is so well written - especially the banter-like exchanges between 'Bertie' and Lionel - that I actually laughed out loud more than I have watching any movie in ages, including comedies.

The cinematography is littered with clever devices - like the positioning of the mic as a barrier between Bertie and everybody else when he goes to make his first public speech in a packed Wembley stadium, giving the whole film a brilliant visual balance. Another example of the care to make every shot in this film just right is cinematographer Danny Cohen's use of off-centre shots, placing characters in opposite sides of the frame in cut to-and-from dialogues.

The casting and acting is also faultless. While Colin Firth will probably take home an Oscar for best male actor, it’s hard to argue the performances of Geoffrey Rush or Helena Bonham Carter are not equally stellar, while Guy Pierce as Bertie’s abdicating older brother, Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill and Michael Gambon as King George V also impress. In all, it is one of the strongest acting performances from an entire cast I can recall. David Seidler's script is so good you just know the actors loved making this movie and Tom Hooper does it full justice with his direction. The King's Speech is a majestically beautiful, hilarious, moving feel-good movie which will surely be crowned ruler of the 2011 Oscars.

Fraudulent. Iniquitous. Football. Association

2010-12-03T16:18:00.021Z

Sports don't usually make good subject matter for films. Often there isn't enough off-field drama, politics or narrative to make a sports flick about more than fickle on-field glory. A notable exception is White Men Can't Jump. The 1992 movie starring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson manages to speak of racial issues, the nuances of relationships and what success and failure really mean.

One line in particular has current significance, when Gloria is angry at Billy for once again blowing a financial prize for his sporting endeavour; "Sometimes when you win, you really lose. And sometimes when you lose, you really win. And sometimes when you win or lose, you actually tie and sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose. Winning or losing is all one organic globule, from which one extracts what one needs."

If Prince William and the Davids Cameron and Beckham are feeling like empty-handed losers today they would do well to heed Gloria's words. As soon as Panorama's documentary exposing Fifa as a murky, corrupt organisation was broadcast, England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup looked doomed. Despite the last-ditch rallying of England's 'three lions', we obtained only 2 of the 22 votes on offer - one from our own representative - the lowest of any of the four competing bids. This despite a consensus that England's was the best bid technically and commercially, which has left the bid's leader, Andy Anson, bemused; "We had the best technical bid, we had the best economic appraisal, everybody said we did a fantastic presentation that was clearly the best."

So if the quality of presentation, and a country's ability to provide world-class stadia and infrastructure to support the competition are not key to winning the right to host the World Cup, what is? "They have decided to take the World Cups to developing areas." says Anson. "What's gone against us is not having to build 20 new stadia. It almost feels as if we are on standby for when somebody can't host it. That's all very well - but on that basis we will never get it."

Anson is taking the snub with dignity, but after Panorama's revelations earlier this week, should we be asking if there is something more behind Fifa's decision? In the documentary broadcast on Monday, titled 'Fifa's Dirty Secrets', Andrew Jennings exposed the culture of bribery pervasive in the organisations upper echelons, and perhaps even more importantly, Fifa's own doctrine of anti-democracy, to which any country with aspirations of holding the tournament must conform.

We wouldn't even know about Fifa's list of eight 'commandments' if it were not for the Dutch publishing their demands, and incurring Fifa's wrath in the process. At the top of the list of 'must do's' are; the postponement of visa regulations, suspension of workers' rights, and an exemption from tax for Fifa and its commercial sponsors on all levels. Considering Fifa are estimated to have made £3billion from the last World Cup in South Africa, and the Dutch government calculated that hosting the tournament would cost their tax-payers in excess of £100m, the argument that Fifa are sporting liberators of developing nations begins to look shaky.

Fifa - whose motto is 'For the Game. For the World' - argue they impose these measures because they are a nonprofit organisation, but Panorama have shown that some of the big players within Fifa aren't above profiteering from the huge demand on the quadrennial event. Both Reynald Temarii - the French FIFA vice-president - and Amos Adamu - a Nigerian member on the committee, and president of the West Africa Football Union - have now been suspended by Fifa after allegedly 'guaranteeing' votes for the US bid for the 2022 World Cup in exchange for $800,000. This is no new phenomena. The documentary also alleges that a string of officials received large bribes for votes between 1989 and 1999 which have yet to be investigated.

On the surface, it would seem as if Fifa have punished England for our media's snooping, but on closer inspection, there appears to be a more contrived theme to Fifa's decision making. Of the countries competing for the 2022 World Cup; USA, Australia, Qatar, Japan and South Korea, four are similar in their democratic stability, advanced economies, and impressive human rights records. Australia, as we know, has one of the highest standards of living in the world, the United States, for all its failings, is still one of the world's most progressive nations, and Japan and South Korea are leaders of democracy and civil liberty in an otherwise patchy Asian continent. In just the last decade two American presidents - one current and one former - as well as one vice president have won the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2000 South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung's won it for his "Sunshine Policy" of engagement and his "work for democracy and human rights in South Korea and in East Asia in general." But it seems Fifa and the Nobel committee have altogether different criteria of valuation.

Overlooking Australia, Japan, South Korea and the United States, Fifa instead opted to award the next-but-two World Cup to Qatar, a nation which has the highest per-capita carbon dioxide emissions of any on the planet, and who's human rights record is highly questionable. At 55.5 metric tons per person in 2005, Qatar's CO2 emissions are almost double that of Kuwait's, the next highest per-capita emitting country, and three times more than the United States. This is a title Qatar has held for the last eighteen years. But it isn't what should bother us most. Qatar - which has only been fully independent from Britain since 1971 - retains the death penalty for apostasy (denouncing one's Muslim faith), and was described by the United States Department of State in the Trafficking in Persons Report 2008 as imposing sponsorship laws allowing for "modern-day slavery", leading Amnesty International to call for "freedom of expression guarantees, and an end to discrimination against women and sexual violence against domestic workers." in June. The issues of a World Cup in Qatar are practical as well as ethical. As an Islamic State, non-Muslims are banned from eating and drinking in public during the month of Ramadan, which in 2022, will start in April when teams will be preparing for the big kick-off in temperatures in excess of 30°C. Not ideal for the thirsty work of football training. Gay fans (or players) might also want to think twice before jetting out to support their teams in a country where homosexuality is punishable by lashing and jail.

If they wanted to, Fifa could be going to these countries demanding that they become more environmentally friendly, improve workers rights, or introduce progressive laws to aid equality. It could really be 'For the Game. For the World'. Instead it is for itself, and any inhumane measures which serve it, regardless of the political issues within potential host-natioins.

For Fifa, however, one thing trumps all obstacles; a nation's willingness to conform to their agenda. A disturbing trend seems to be emerging where World Cups are awarded to nations experiencing civil crisis, or whose governments take a lax attitude to corruption themselves. This year, the competition was held in South Africa, a nation with an HIV epidemic, where the routine rape of women and children is dismissed as 'cultural'. The next will take place in Brazil, where a 'war' is being waged by the government in a desperate attempt to reduce violence in time for the 2014 tournament. Then comes Russia's turn, a country revealed this week by WikiLeaks to be a "defacto Mafia state" of endemic corruption. It appears that like does indeed attract like. Holding tournaments in stricken nations could be seen as charitable if they made money for host nations rather than costing them, and it weren't for Fifa's regressive manifesto. But its stipulations of non-taxation and the relaxation of workers rights - something Qatar will have no problem conforming to - look more exploitative than nourishing.

Calls for Fifa to become more transparent and accountable have begun in England, but are now echoing around the globe as the questionable ideology of the association becomes increasingly obvious. But for as long as Fifa's iconic centrepiece remains an instrument of corruption, we should be glad not to host it. The benefits of holding a World Cup - with all its costs and impositions - don't compare to having a free press willing to expose corruption even to its own cost. The timing of Panorama's documentary may not have been ideal, and our bid was ultimately not successful, but this has been no 'failure'. We should be glad that our nation puts principal ahead of reward, and that Billy's accusation of Sidney in White Men Can't Jump, that he would; "rather look good and lose than look bad and win.." could be said of us too.

The Intoxication Of Faith...

2010-09-19T06:54:00.239+01:00

...Eggs For Griffin, Exemption For Benedict

How political parties like the BNP would love to bottle what religion has. When the BBC made the controversial decision to invite Nick Griffin, head of the BNP, to appear on Question Time just under a year ago it caused public outcry. Despite my aversion to them, at the time I argued that because one million tax payers had voted for the BNP, and that most of those voters had paid for television licenses, that they had a democratic right to appear.

My thinking, was that if your views are as abhorrent as the BNP's, exposure of them is the last thing you want if you aspire to any serious popularity, which is why they operate in such an incognito fashion - jumping on local issues to build a platform for their larger ideologies. But on a national platform the attention would be on core issues. Griffin was being handed a poisoned chalice. Transparency is vital in knowing who we are voting for and what they really stand for, and when the ideals of groups like the BNP are exposed they are met with strong opposition. It was right that Griffin appeared on Question Time, but it was also right for people to be angry, and since then BNP support has declined.

In modern British politics the principle of equal rights irrespective of race, creed, sexuality or religion has become fundamental. Show a deviation from those principles and society marks your card. Any party who had as their core principles, say, the removal of certain rights for women and homosexuals, huge cuts to medical research and family planning, and a relaxed attitude to child abuse, wouldn't stand a chance in hell of being taken seriously. Unless they could work out how religion deactivates the faculties of 'reason' and bottle some of the 'faith' and blind loyalty that comes with it.

It isn't a new idea. If you have repulsive ideologies you want to 'Jedi' people into accepting you need them intoxicated by faith. Ideally, you want each individual to feel a 'personal' relationship with your authority. Some fear helps too. In North Korea, support for Kim Jong-il is absolute. The man starving his people remains idolised by them. His power is greater than can be bestowed by political support, instead he draws on the devotion to a cult which transcends reason, leading Christopher Hitchens to label the country a 'necrocracy';

"Kim Jong-il, the 'dear leader,' is the head of the army and of the party but not of the state. The office of the presidency is still held by his long-dead father, the 'great leader' Kim Il-sung. This makes North Korea into a necrocracy or a thanatocracy—no joke when you consider that its two chief pursuits consist of threatening to murder its neighbors while actually murdering its own civilians."

Almost all totalitarian states have adopted religious models and been spearheaded by 'cults of personality' in order to distract people from their immoral intentions. In his 1985 book; Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke - a professor in Western Esotericism wrote; "huge congregations, banners, sacred flames, processions, a style of popular and radical preachings, prayers-and-responses, memorials and funeral marches" can easily be considered as the "essential props for the cult of race and nation, the mission of Aryan Germany and victory over her enemies." And Heinrich Himmler, a leading member of the Nazi party, said; "Among committed [Nazi] believers, a mythic world of eternally strong heroes, demons, fire and sword - in a word, the fantasy world of the nursery - displaced reality."

The Pope has called for a dialogue between "faith and reason" (at least he admits he's unreasonable) but the 'reason' he holds responsible for facilitating fascist ideals was more 'faith' than he'd like to think. If the Catholic Church were a political party, with their ethics translated into policies, they would be more extreme, more fascist even, than the BNP. In todays total media society of twenty-four hour news channels, Internet, the blogosphere and global media, politicians and what they say are rigorously scrutinised. But a religious leader - with far more supporters than any political party has ever had - can make quasi-facsist statements about large sections of society and still be revered by devotional masses, given a royal welcome and constant attention from the BBC. It's amazing what miracles can get you.

Having made the connection between 'aggressive atheism' in Britain and Nazi Germany the alleged plot to assassinate the Pope came not from 'reason', but the most aggressive 'faith' in the world today, while atheists protested soberly at the exemption afforded him.

'Fascism rejects the concepts of egalitarianism, materialism, and

rationalism in favour of action, discipline, hierarchy, spirit, and will'

- The Blackwell dictionary of political science: a user's guide to its terms.

The Pope's Slur On Atheism

2010-09-16T17:17:00.026+01:00

'GOD WITH US'

Pope Benedict XVI has had the audacity to draw parallels between atheism and Nazism. Ironic, you might think, to do so from within the country that led the fight.

Even more-so perhaps, when you consider that Hitler was a self-confessed Roman Catholic as were a large portion of the Nazi's.

Further still, remembering Hitler was supported by much of the German Catholic clergy, including Pope Pius XII, that Winston Churchill was far from a religious man, and many of the 'atheists' whom the Pope has just erroneously slandered are the grandchildren, and moral product of the British men and women who fought so bravely.

Here are the Pope's words;

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.

I also recall the regime's attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives.

As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a 'reductive vision of the person and his destiny' (Caritas in Veritate, 29).

But the evidence appears to suggest the Pope might have got it just a little bit wrong.

“Why is a Catholic obliged to vote for the

parliamentary list of Adolf Hitler?”

Translation

Why is a Catholic obliged to vote for the parliamentary list of Adolf Hitler? Because in the National Socialist state intrinsically and through the Reichskonkordat

1. the Faith is protected,

2. peace with the Church is assured,

3. public morality is preserved,

4. Sunday is hallowed,

5. Catholic schools are maintained,

6. the Catholic conscience is no longer burdened,

7. a Catholic has equal rights before the law and in the life of the nation,

8. Catholic organisations and associations, insofar as they exclusively serve religious, charitable and cultural purposes, can operate freely.

Therefore a Catholic is obliged on 12 November [1933] to vote thus:

Referendum: yes

Parliamentary election: Adolf Hitler

Benedict XVI: Immoral, Antiquated, And Here

2010-09-15T10:18:00.067+01:00

Britain tomorrow welcomes the head of a corrupt cult committed to the protection of pedophiles, spread of AIDS, denial of civil rights and maximisation of suffering through genetic disease. His three day stay will cost almost £20m, and you - the tax-payer - are picking up the tab.

Well, not quite all of it. The Catholic church is generously chipping in £7m of their own £3 billion plus fortune towards the Pope's less than providential visit - the first by a Pope since 1982. Anyone who isn't of faith - or even those of a faith other than Catholicism - might be wondering why they are helping to fund Joeseph Ratzinger's tour of our secular kingdom, or why he is dropping by at all.

The blame, of course, goes to Gordon Brown, who invited his holiness during a private audience with him early last year. At the time it was something of a political 'score' for the under-pressure Prime Minister, but his religiously vacillating successor has taken up the inheritance in sycophantic nature, saying: “This is the first ever Official Papal Visit to these shores. And it’s a great honour for our country. These will be a very special four days not just for our six million Catholics but for many people of faith right across Britain, and millions more watching around the world.”

Speak for yourself Mr Cameron. A Papal visit may well have been seen as a 'great honour' by many in the past, but with the Catholic Church's stock at an all-time low after 'peadogate' even some Catholics are unappreciative of his presence. Last November I wrote a blog called 'Thank God For Catholics' in which I hinted at my contempt for the organisation's murky relationship with children.

Since then the scandal has transpired in a manner so irrefutable that the words 'priest' and 'pedophile' have become practically synonymous. During his four day tour the Pope will proclaim the beatification of John Henry Newman for miraculously healing a man with a spinal condition who prayed to him. A passive miracle, but clearly one worthy of sainthood. The irony - and there is always irony where the Catholic church is concerned - is that Newman is speculated by some historians to have been gay, which if true, means there will either be a saint in hell, or a homosexual in heaven, neither of which contingencies is compatible with the indubitable Catholic hypothesis. So perhaps Newman has pulled off the mother of all miracles and ought to be canonised instead?

The moral mandate of the Catholic church has become so decrepit over the last century that to be consecrated by it is more a mark of suspicion than a divine acknowledgement of virtue. The accusation from one of the Pope's senior aides - Cardinal Walter Kasper - that Britain is "A third world country" where "aggressive new atheism" is rife, ought then to be taken as a compliment. The Cardinal's comments have already plunged the visit into controversy before it even starts, but it's the signature back-to-front logic of his statement which sounds the contemptuous arrival of anti-thought.

There is a clear correlation between standards of living and faith; as populations become more educated the divisive grip religions have over them is lessened. So his assertion that Britain is 'third world' because of its atheism would appear a fallacious one. Perhaps the real provocation for his comments is the lack of Catholicism within Britain compared to other faiths. Or did he simply wish to show distain for the impoverished in the world - of whom the Catholic church arrogantly parades itself the champion - by using the term 'third world' in a derogatory context?

This remember, is an organisation which holds itself to be the authority on morality, yet they display an absolute turpitude wherever possible. Held to be godly are: blatant sexism; with Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi calling the ordination of women "a crime against sacrament", homophobia; the Pontiff himself calling homosexuality "more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil", social ignorance; displayed in his view on AIDS "the problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it", and a sociopathic lack of empathy for people suffering from disease; evident in the refusal to back stem cell research.

It reads like a manifesto of suffering of which the most vile establishment would be proud, but the virtuous sect who brought us the Spanish Inquisition aren't done there. The Nolan report, published in 2001, saw 22 priests convicted of sexual abuse in England and Wales, of which 14 still remain within the clergy. Then earlier this year an American sexual abuse case in the 1980's came to light implicating Cardinal Ratzinger in the covering up of a pedophile ring. Ratzinger sent a letter while a Cardinal regarding the defrocking of Stephen Kiesle in which he urged "due caution" and consideration for the "good of the universal Church", rather than handing him over to the police as would have been proper. It seems if you are sick and righteous enough you are above the law. Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC disagrees, making the case in his 2010 book 'The Case of the Pope' that Ratzinger be tried under international law for his part in the cover up.

Such a course of action would surely signal the beginning of the end for The Holy See, but for now the devotion of over one billion Catholics worldwide ensures the Pope remains bullet-proof, not literally of course. For the next four days we will see him paraded around in the Popemobile, which makes me wonder; why the bullet-proof glass if heaven is so great? Why delay paradise? And wouldn't God intervene with a miracle to save his Earthly spokesperson if there were a good reason for him to remain alive? Perhaps the Lord is too busy infusing the image of his son onto pieces of toast to concern himself with such trivialities? Or, maybe the Pope doesn't really believe his own bullshit, which would make his selfish doctrine all the more putrified.

Obama Won't Tollerate Qur'an Burning Bigots

2010-09-10T10:35:00.041+01:00

So a small group of barmy Christians aren't going to burn a load of Qurans in protest at plans to build something which isn't a mosque not at Ground Zero after all. Phew. Oh what's that, they still might?

Just hours after announcing cancellation of 'Burn The Quran Day' Pastor Jones (the lunatic responsible for the protest) did his second biblically proportioned U-turn, saying he'd been 'lied to' that plans for a 'Ground Zero Mosque' would be scrapped. He'd earlier stated such a climbdown by Muslims would be seen as a "sign from God", but communication with deities has never been simple so it isn't a huge surprise it's all got a bit confused.

In the meantime Pastor Jones and Imam Musri will meet in an attempt to straighten out the whole kerfuffle. Presumably God (the beardy sandalled one who lives on a cloud) - and Allah (no-one knows what he looks like but I'd be surprised if he doesn't have a beard too) are having a similar get-together to discuss what to do about their feuding followers.

Does anyone of this world actually know what has really been going on? The media have responded to a series of pseudo threats and misconceptions like a juvenile shit-stirrer, alternately whispering in the ears of two hyper-sensitive toddlers susceptible to breaking into screams and foot stomping, that the other is out to get them.

The planned 'Park51' - or 'Ground Zero Mosque' if you are intent on sensationalist mischief - is not a mosque at all, but an Islamic community centre which will house a theatre, swimming pool, basketball court, and; would you believe it, a September 11th memorial. The bloody cheek. What's more, it isn't even to be built at ground zero, instead it will be located two blocks away, just two blocks nearer than Masjid Manhattan, which itself predates the WTC.

Surprised? Well you might well be, intent as the mainstream media have been - even our own good BBC - to band around misleading headlines to stoke up passions, you could be forgiven for having got the wrong impression. And you can bet your bible that 'Burn The Quran Day' won't happen either, such has been the attention and pressure applied by political figures the world over. Even president Obama got in on the act, appealing to Pastor Jones;

"If he's listening, I hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans. That this country has been built on the notion of freedom and religious tolerance."

There's that word 'tolerance'. One 'tolerates' a bad smell in a public toilet out of necessity and a lack of options, or a slightly racist old relative at Christmas in order to keep the peace. But why do we tolerate religion, particularly religious fanaticism? The very use of the word 'tolerance' is a condemnation of sorts, a judgement made that the subject in question is an unsightly obstacle without which things would be better or easier.

So why don't we just 'tolerate' Pastor Jones and his congregation of loons burning the Quran? How come we tolerate Muslims burning American flags, or in Britain, protesting at soldiers home-coming parades, but we can't simply tolerate a load of nut-jobs torching a pile of fiction? There are plenty of things said and done by a variety of groups which cause offence to people, but we usually just rise above it. We even let the BNP go on Question Time with their offensive drivel, so why can't Christians set light to their own property? Might it be, perhaps, because burning books is about as bad as it is going to get with the Jesus-lovers, whereas we already know all too well extremist Islamists are prepared to go a whole lot further communicating their outrage? Just ask a Danish cartoonist.

If only Christians were tolerant like Muslims

The message here really isn't one of tolerance, and certainly not one of freedom of speech or expression. What Mr. Obama is saying loud and clear is that if you are prepared to hurt people, you'll get your own way, but if you dare to make a symbolic gesture which you don't have the integrity to back up with a decent amount of blood-spill, prepare to be marginalised.

Perhaps Jones and his crazy congregation ought to re-think their plans, spice it up a little and threaten to burn some people, rather than books, if they don't get their own way. After-all, it is essentially that perceived threat that has worked in favour of the Muslims in this instance. If the Bible bashers were planning to burn copies of Ron Hubbard's Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health or Richard Dawkins' God Delusion, you wouldn't see President Obama getting involved.

Already Muslims have reacted by burning American flags - arguably as sacred to many Americans as the Quran is to Muslims and Anjem Choudary, former leader of Islam4UK and thoroughly charming gent has already appealed to British Muslims to take part in "Burn the Stars and Stripes Day" in retaliation.

As it happens, Pastor Jones and his Dove World Outreach Centre Church have already turned their attention to another piece of intolerant Christian doctrine. The 'No Homo Mayor' protest in opposition to the sexuality of Gainesville mayor Craig Lowe is next on the bill. But don't worry Mr Obama, angry gays aren't nearly as scary as angry extremist Muslims.

Inception - Movie Review

2010-07-20T06:37:00.113+01:00

Every so often a film comes along which universally blows audiences minds. The Matrix did it just over ten years ago with an elaborate philosophical concept and jaw dropping visual effects to match, and now Christopher Nolan has raised the stakes once again.

Nolan had been working on this 'idea' for over ten years but decided he wanted more experience working with the blockbuster scale before making his masterpiece, so when he made the widely acclaimed The Dark Knight, he was just warming up for the real deal. In his previous best works: Memento, The Prestige and The Dark Knight, Nolan mastered the arts of non-linear narrative, misdirection, and huge, visually stunning scale. Here he combines them all to create one of the most well-rounded movies of all time.

Inception is based on a concept so clearly conceived and elegantly realised that it leaves you wondering why no-one ever did this before. In a story which ought to be riddled with loop-holes - given the depth and complexity of it - the internal logic of the film remains intact and although the plot might go over some heads on first viewing, Nolan has successfully made the mind-boggling, instinctive. The credit for reasoning that our sensory perception of reality should be doubted - because our dreams appear real to us - goes to the philosopher Rene Descartes, but until now no-one has popularised the concept with a narrative compellingly.

Nolan has a penchant for repeatedly collaborating with quality actors like Christian Bale and Gary Oldman and tried previously to cast DiCaprio in films without success. This time DiCaprio - who has earned a reputation for convincingly troubled protagonist leads and selecting interesting screenplays - was suitably impressed with the script to delay working with Nolan any longer.

Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) navigates his own existential labyrinth of the sub-concious while trying to pull off one last job - a job that will help him banish his inner demons and for which he requires a team of 'dreamonauts' to help. Ariadne (Ellen Page) is brought in to act as the 'architect', responsible for creating dreamscapes, Yusuf (Dileep Rao) is hired as a 'chemist', and the mysterious Saito (Ken Watanabe) comes along for the ride as a 'tourist'.

Essentially a reverse-heist movie - where instead of stealing, the thieves' objective this time is to leave something behind: an idea - Inception ticks so many boxes that it is hard to label it with any one genre. Part psychological thriller, part sci-fi, part heist movie, and part massive action film, Inception combines the best of The Matrix and Ocean's Eleven but also offers moments of romance and comedy, through the competitiveness of Arthur (Gordon-Leviatt) - the 'point man' responsible for producing the dream - and Eames (Hardy), a 'forger' capable of stealing identities within dreams - who between them almost steal the show.

Nolan reveals scenarios within scenarios like a russian doll, peeling back the layers of reality, and each time amplifying the pace and intensity while raising the emotional stakes. If the mind-bending dreamscapes were not so beautifully crafted they might come across as far-fetched - such is the counter-intuitiveness of some of the more stunning effects - but instead they are believable and have an unnerving effect in the same way as an MC Escher painting. Hans Zimmer's haunting score provides a backdrop of claustrophobia and helps to create a sense of paranoia reminiscent of Jacob's Ladder.

This film looks brilliant, sounds superb, is fast-paced yet forces the audience to constantly think and reorientate itself, boasts top-drawer action and fight scenes and some interesting characters. The cast is as talented as they come, with Page (Hard Candy, Juno), Gordon-Leviatt (Brick, 500 Days of Summer), Tom Hardy (Layer Cake, Bronson), and Cotillard (La Vie en rose, Nine) all superb young actors. The only weak point - and this is being hyper-critical - is that the dialogue isn't of The Dark Night's standards.

What Nolan has created is stunningly new, but instantly vintage - quite simply, a masterpiece. For those concerned that the technology brought about by James Cameron's Avatar might lead to a dumbing down of movies in favour of aesthetic grandeur, Nolan has struck back a timely reminder of why visuals should compliment, rather than replace intriguing concepts and ensured the survival of the cerebral blockbuster - for now at least.

You Can Be My Wingman Anytime...

2010-05-10T15:03:00.015+01:00

The most closely contested election in living memory delivered everything; scandal, excitement, a new landscape for politics and the emergence of a new political hero, sort of. The only thing it didn't deliver was a government, which was kind of the whole point of having one in the first place. Instead, we, the disenfranchised electorate get to watch monsieurs Cameron and Clegg indulge in the kind of public flirtation only previously witnessed between Peter Andre and Jordan, an omen if ever there was one.

Meanwhile the media throw a hissy fit about having 'no access' to the illicit goings on between two parties who, despite being engaged in relentless mud slinging up until four days ago, are now three days into a game of 'pass the lube'. It can't be only me who thinks there is something strangely homoerotic about Cameron and Clegg's series of hush hush 'face to face' meetings. It's like the scene in Top Gun when the two - once competing hot-shot pilots - realise they do want to bum each other after all.

Clegg (Maverick) and Cameron (Iceman)

And what about poor old Gordon Brown, or 'Goose' perhaps. He thought in the event of any collaboration it would be he and Clegg (Maverick) singing great balls of fire. Instead he is destined to be ejected from Downing street to his political death. He's already retreated to Scotland to eat worms like the only one masturbating in a three-way love triangle before returning to smother Clegg in love notes saying he will 'wait' while the former flirts with his arch nemesis. It's all so romantic...

And Then There Were Three...

2010-04-19T12:12:00.017+01:00

Just over a week ago I wrote a blog - The Bribing Of The Brides - in which I admitted my intention to commit democratic suicide and vote Liberal Democrat in the upcoming election. Since then something a little bit odd has happened.

The first ever live televised debate between election candidates was always going to be a spectacle, but I doubt anyone could have predicted what a game-changer it could be. The general consensus of opinion was that in a tight race between the two big parties, one leader performing well and the other having a stinker under the spotlights might be enough to swing it, but no-one really thought this new platform could open things up for the Lib Dems. Did they?

Maybe we should have seen it coming. It seems obvious now but Nick Clegg always had most to gain from this set-up. With Brown and Cameron preoccupied with the faults of each other - Brown carrying zero expectation and Cameron expected to flourish - Clegg was the loveable underdog with an equal platform and nothing to lose. But for 'The Clegg' to win, and to win big, wasn't supposed to be in the script.

And then there were three. And Nick Clegg has three big factors in his favour. Firstly, he seems human, which when you are up against a cross between Tim Nice-But-Dim and Data from Star-Trek, and Susan Boyle's untalented brother, is quite an asset. Secondly, The Lib Dems have been popular with younger voters - or would-be-voters - for a while now, and they may just have seen enough to turn a shy attraction into a full-blown declaration of love. Then there is that underdog status we Brits love so much.

Data was to become "more and more like a human" until the end of the show, when he would be very close, but still not quite there. Can Cameron go one step better by the end of the election?

There is undoubtedly a zeitgeist of change in the air which the Lib Dems might be best placed to exploit. The general dissatisfaction with the two main parties could leave a Nick Clegg sized gap waiting to be filled. But I think there is something else in the air, something exciting; something everyone seems scared to mention. So I'll just whisper it - The Obama-factor.

History dictates that Britain follows America. We - as their more perspicacious cousins - usually wait for them to take a brash step into the unknown, before copying, albeit on a smaller scale and without the flags and 'whooping'.

And no, I don't need a trip to Specsavers; I haven't mistaken 'The Clegg' for a brother. But there are certain other similarities between the Democrats each side of the pond.

Not so long ago the Democrats of America were in disarray with John Kerry the best they could offer. They couldn't even beat George Bush - the least popular US president in living memory - out of office. Then along came a young Obama to give a keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention which set the course of history on a different path.

Four years later many people still didn't know who Obama was and even fewer thought he could actually make it into office. Yet the more exposure he received the more people took notice. Obama appealed to peoples desire for change and seemed different to typical politicians. People started to believe that just because something hadn't happened before, didn't mean it couldn't. Electing Obama became an act of democracy in itself.

Perhaps I am going a little overboard, but I sense just a little bit of what was brewing when Obama first started to be seriously recognised in the US happening in England right now. It feels like an uprising of people who always would have liked to have voted Lib Dem, always wanted to, but for some reason felt they couldn't, or shouldn't. It was as if everybody was waiting for everybody else. Now that seal has been broken who knows how strong and fast this new wave of support might flow?

The Conservatives and Labour will continue to try to 'Jedi' us into believing it can't really happen, but stranger things have. Just ask Barack Obama.

The Bribing Of The Brides

2010-04-10T20:41:00.030+01:00

So the starting gun has fired and the election race is already several nauseating laps in. The Tories have gone on the attack; slating Labour's planned 1% rise on National Insurance, and the Lib Dems have done what they always do, stood at the side chanting 'fight, fight, fight'.

Elections in this country usually resemble a case of 'The Emperors New Clothes' - a parade of psuedo-choice where the parties pretend they will do what they say they will, and the rest of us ponder the options as if given the choice of eating either of our own testicles. Either way, we get fed a load of bollocks.

Personally, I had looked forward to this election as the first time I would ever vote. I know what you're thinking; 'What is someone too apathetic to vote doing expressing opinions on politics?' But I'm afraid I have an excuse. At nineteen I moved to Spain and stayed until three years ago. Although ex-pats still get the vote, I didn't think it right for me to have a say on other peoples lives when I'd be free from the consequences myself. I was still in England in 1997, but was six months too young to vote in Labour's landslide win (although I did vote Liberal Democrat in a mock college election).

So this time around was to be something of a novelty for me, an anointment of my citizenship, or selling of my soul depending on your disposition. But which clan of incompetent fraudsters to choose? For many the Iraq war has ruled Labour out as a viable option, while others blame them for the economic collapse when in truth a Conservative government would have done little different.

I've overlooked Labour for different reasons. Over the last decade they have gone from upholding basic socialist ideals and representing the 'real' people to robbing pensions, treating students as a revenue source and breaking more promises than Berlusconi has broken hymens.

That leaves the Tories and, erm, those yellow ones. Remarkably, the Conservatives actually seem fairly organised and united these days. Unfortunately they are as full of moat maintaining robbers and duck island providing thieves as their Labour counterparts - what does an animal blessed with the ability to walk, swim and fly need a bloody island for anyway?

There is also the Cameron factor - who although charismatic compared to Gordon - a smile a decade - Brown, still has a bizarre telekinetic effect over my gag reflex. Despite these vomit induced reservations I had the Eton boys pencilled in by default, then in one transparent attempt to buy a large portion of the voting electorate, they plunged me back in to a pool of my own projectile and forced me to consider the inconceivable.

Because it's too much to be married and sober

Cameron's tax-cut for married couples is at best an attempt to buy votes from a section of society most likely to turn-out, and at worst blatant discrimination against anyone who hasn't taken the first step towards divorce. It doesn't take a genius to realise that married couples are fairly conventional people more likely to vote than 'maverick' singletons. In the current climate of economic uncertainty they are even more likely to exercise their right as these people are more likely to have mortgages and other financial commitments - and therefore more to lose.

Not only is this effectively a £150 tax on single people, it's also a tax on couples who have decided they don't need to tie the knot to maintain their relationship. You could have two couples living next door to each-other, one have been together fifteen years and have two young children but aren't wed, the other got hitched after knowing each-other for two months and already hate each-other six later. A few quid should help that, or at least help them make up their minds which box to tick.

George Osbourne says; "It's not just for married people, it's also for gay people who are in a civil partnership," Presumably he thinks single people ought to go fuck themselves - which is what they tend to do anyway.

"I don't preach about people's lives, and many marriages fail, but I think we know now from years of evidence that a society where more people are married is a stronger society." he goes on. But this has nothing to do with social ethics or 'stronger societies'. It's a bribe, plain and simple.

And on the strength of that one shallow policy the Tories have ruled themselves out of contention for my first ever act of democratic citizenship, and thrust me into the also-ran arms of 'The Clegg'. That's right, my very first vote will be one of insignificance. A spit in the wind. An island for ducks.

Vince Cable - despite having the appearance of a funeral director - did pretty well in the Chancellors debate and if you ever actually bother to listen to a Liberal Democrat - you'll have to wait while Labour and the Tories have their turns first - they actually talk quite a bit of sense, which is probably why they have no chance of winning.

Dilution or Delusion?

2010-03-11T15:17:00.010Z

This article will inform, entertain and make you a better person. Or at least it will if you believe it will. No? Oh well. What a shame the placebo effect doesn’t work as well with journalism as it does with medicine.

Medicine – and journalism to a lesser extent – is supposed to adhere to a strict ethical code. Which is why the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology held an inquiry last month into the availability of homeopathy on the NHS, the findings of which were damning for an industry already in decline in this country.

The practice of homeopathy is over 200 years old and involves the dilution of a substance into water. Nothing too odd about that. But considering the substance is diluted to a degree where it’s unlikely there’s a single molecule left in the solution - based on the idea that the weaker it is, the stronger it is, because water has a ‘memory’ - you can see why eyebrows are raising.

But the anti-logic doesn’t end there. Rather than picking a substance with known medical benefits, homeopaths treat ‘like with like’, selecting something which causes similar symptoms to those being suffered. Still with me? That means if someone is suffering from hay fever they might take some onion, dilute it to the equivalent of a single drop in all the oceans in the world, and then shake it. Oh yes, the shaking is very important. They can’t tell you why, but it is.

Finally, a drop of what is essentially water is placed on to a sugar pill and then sold to Joe public for a hell of a lot more than sugar and water is worth. Now you might be thinking all this has a distinct toiletry whiff to it – perhaps due to something the water remembers - and ought to be filed away with other crackpot ideas like astrology or creationism. Yet a brand name as liked and trusted by the British public as Boots still sells homeopathic remedies in its stores, prompting hundreds of sceptics to gather in central London recently to take part in a mass homeopathic overdose in protest. Needless to say there were no fatalities.

That these kinds of ‘old wives’ medicines are available at a high-street retailer is one thing – if people want to waste their money on cods-wallop let them, it’s no less immoral than allowing people to seek insight into their futures through tarot reading, or overcome grieving by seeing a medium – but that homeopathic treatment is available on the NHS to the tune of £4m of the tax-payers money is quite another. Not to mention the refurbishment of the Royal Homeopathic Hospital, which was part-funded by the NHS with £10,000,000, or 500 nurses salaries.

In 1996 Canadian magician and skeptic James Randi set up the James Randi Educational Foundation offering a $1,000,000 cash prize to anyone who can prove paranormal activity under test conditions. Randi has confirmed that proof that homeopathy works would qualify for the prize, but so-far there have been no takers.

However, just because we don’t understand why something works doesn’t mean it can’t. Not all conventional medicine is fully understood; anaesthetics, electric shock treatment and schizophrenia treatments are still used despite the lack of a full understanding of what’s going on.

So does homeopathy work? Well, not exactly. Analysis of all controlled tests of homeopathic remedies fails to show any effect greater than a standard placebo – or sugar pill. Why then do enough people to make it a £1.5bn a year industry still believe in it? Just because it works no better than a placebo doesn’t mean it can’t have a positive effect.

Michelle Boswell, 39, is a firm believer in the benefits of homeopathy; “I used to rely on Bach Remedy Rescue to help with anxiety in singing and dancing auditions. Someone recommended it and it worked. I used the drops, which is just a couple of drops to subside the anxiety as and when. The pastilles are a new thing for me,”

“I have just introduced them to my boyfriend who hates flying, and he had two on the way from the terminal to take off and said it really helped. His flying fear is so bad he has had hypnotherapy, so to find something that calmed him was great for him.”

And she doesn’t think it was just down to placebo either; “I have a friend whose dad is a homeopathic vet, he has practiced for about 20 years and is very successful. My opinion on this is that, animals have no idea if the medicine they are given is natural or synthetic, so fact that he gets positive results should be taken into account."

Michelle is so convinced that homeopathy works that she uses it to medicate her five-year-old son, Javier; “ I would definitely use it for babies and have on Javier. That said, I use it along side regular meds, like vaccines. Javier suffered from ear infections as a baby and was having antibiotics so often they had no real effect, so I used homeopathy instead, that helped equally. Given the choice I now use this method when he has an ear infection. I really think there is room for both.”

But the House of Commons of the United Kingdom Science and Technology Committee apparently don’t. After the inquiry they ultimately concluded that; "Prescribing pure placebos is bad medicine. Their effect is unreliable and unpredictable and cannot form the sole basis of any treatment on the NHS."

When asked by the committee to give his opinion, Professor Edzard Ernst - the only professor of Complementary medicine in Europe and the leading expert said; "If the NHS commitment to evidence-based medicine is more than a lip service, then money has to be spent on treatments that are evidence-based, and homeopathy isn't."

Avatar - Movie Review

2010-01-03T18:30:00.028Z

Necessity - Plato said - is the mother of all invention. So when James Cameron realised the technology didn’t exist to do justice to what he hoped would be ‘his’ Star Wars, he waited fifteen years while developing new cameras that could. But in putting so much emphasis on having the very latest tools, Cameron has resigned his vision to exposure a decade and a half after conception, and if you can look a little deeper than the undeniably impressive 3D, it shows.

Set on ‘Pandora’ - a moon of the planet Polyphemus - Avatar is the story of future humans intent on harvesting a valuable energy source for use at home on Earth. Pandora is inhabited by a feline humanoid race called the Na’vi, who pose an obstacle to the technologically superior - but spiritually inferior - human visitors plans. The portrayal of ‘us’ as the baddie aliens is a welcome break from standard Sci-Fi procedure but a familiarly divisive parody of past events on Earth soon becomes apparent.

The Native Indian inspiration for the Na’vi is unmistakable. They live in a tribal society, worship a Mother Nature type deity called Eywa, ride the Pandoran equivalent to horses and fight with spears and bow and arrows and this use of a story we already know to tell one we don’t, has a limiting effect.

Avatar’s central character is wheelchair-bound marine Jake Sully, twin brother of a scientist who was due to visit Pandora and the only person capable of using his DNA infused alien avatar. Liberated in his new avatar body, Jake defects to the side of the more humane Na’vi and promptly falls in love. Plot sound familiar? That’s because it’s crudely stolen from Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves, and genetically spliced with Aliens and The Matrix – but Star Wars it is not.

Parallels with the west’s oil motivated occupation of the Middle East are also flimsily drawn. If the whole premise being a distant war over resources isn’t obvious enough for you, Cameron crudely injects lines like ‘we’ll fight terror with terror’ and ‘there was me hoping for a plan which didn’t involve dying like a martyr’ late in the movie.

As in Cameron's Terminator movies, huge chunks of the plot are unimaginatively narrated by Scully in a series of cut scenes similar to those endured by players of Xbox and PlayStation games but the concept doesn’t quite click. Where recent films like Wall-E and Surrogates cleverly fast-forward sociological trends towards obesity and social networking to create plausible dystopian futures, Avatar misses the current zeitgeist and instead becomes a mishmash of half-baked referential ideas which may well have seemed revelatory fifteen years ago. But with climate change having become such a huge issue since then, Cameron’s portrayal of future humans as ignorant destroyers of habitat comes close to alienating an audience more environmentally aware than any before them.

The problem is we already know the story of how the Native Indian’s were extirpated by the Europeans and why we are really in Iraq and Afghanistan, so what is Cameron trying to tell us? Is he just exorcising some of his own Yankee guilt? Or is Avatar simply a vehicle for a new advancement in movie making? Either way, Avatar, rather than being the masterpiece Cameron hoped for, is merely an impressive visual spectacle more akin to Jurassic Park than Star Wars.

What made George Lucas' classic so remarkable was its use of groundbreaking cinematography in combination with complex character development and a well-rounded plot. Someone ought to tell Cameron these factors haven’t become mutually exclusive. The most memorable scene of Lucas’ franchise is when Darth Vader tells Luke he is his father. And what makes that scene so compelling is not over the top special effects or breathtaking camera angles. It’s the twist in the plot which gives the whole story meaning and injects depth into the two leading characters through the revelation - exactly the kind of subtle complexity found in good old-fashioned film-making which Avatar lacks.

Given the hype it's received for its innovative use of 3D this film is paradoxically one-dimensional in so many areas. The dialogue is drab; the concept unoriginal and there isn’t a single character of depth. Instead of the wise and amusing Yoda, lovably cocky Han Solo and mysteriously corrupted Darth Vader, we’re given a polarized combo of uninspiring shallow humans and god worshiping alien tree-huggers with so little back story of the initial meeting between the two I’m suspicious this might turn out to be part two in a three part trilogy.

For all its highbrow failings Avatar does however deliver what it promises. As the film progresses and your eyes and brain adapt the 3D effect becomes less obvious but loses none of its intensity - making it superior to past attempts at the technique. In early scenes and every so often throughout the movie when it's night or holograms are used by the humans the visuals are simply breathtaking. At almost three hours long Avatar could and should have been a lot shorter and is ultimately an overload on visual sensory rather than the well-rounded epic to rival Star Wars Cameron was aiming for. Disappointed as I suspect he may be, this is still a film everybody should see and according to record-breaking box-office takings, many have already.

Happy We-Stole-Your-Land-and-Killed-Your-People Day!

2009-11-25T04:28:00.063Z

Only orange food is

eaten at Thanksgiving

Most traditional western festivals have their roots in paganism. Christmas, Halloween and Easter were all pagan festivals long before being bastardised first by religion, then more recently capitalism. But there's one 'celebration of excess' yet to find its way across the Atlantic to Britain, for now.

Over here, 'Thanksgiving', is something of a non-entity. Ask the average Brit what it is and you'll be lucky to hear anything more descriptive than: 'something like Christmas?' But ask an American about its origins - as I did Erin Girard, a 21 year-old student from Illinois studying marketing in London - and it soon becomes obvious that they don't really know what it's all about either.

"I think it started when the pilgrims came over on the Mayflower and the natives shared their corn with them, but I think that might be a myth." says Erin. And she's not wrong. The rose-tinted story told to children in American schools - of natives and early settlers coming together to share a feast and 'give thanks' - is inaccurate at best, and at worst a deliberate rewrite of history.

What actually happened is a cause for much debate in the states, but it seems the natives did most of the 'giving' and the settlers the 'thanking' in what was an alliance of necessity, rather than a gathering of friends. Having failed to harvest sufficient food in their new surroundings, the settlers turned to the Wampanoag Indians for help and learned the skills they'd been using for years. After a successful harvest the two groups came together for a feast, but the exact details of who brought what are debatable. What's clear is the gratitude didn't last long.

Just fifty years later the Wampanoag were no longer free. But this, after-all, is a festival of giving thanks, not saying sorry, which is why Erin's thoughts - like most Americans - are more on the present than the past on the third Thursday of November: "It marks the start of the holiday season. For me it's about family. It's one day to get together, eat turkey and pumpkin pie and watch the parade on TV." She tells me.

So Thanksgiving is a family get-together of turkey and television based on a made-up story. This all sounds very familiar. Very, Christmas-like! But Erin thinks there's a difference: "I like Thanksgiving more because it's less materialistic." This time she is wrong.

In 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt restored the third Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day to make the Christmas shopping season longer with the intention of stimulating the economy. "If you go shopping on the morning of Thanksgiving it's like suicide." Erin admits.

And the consumerist sub-history behind Thanksgiving doesn't end there. Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving - is a non-official holiday when most employees have the day off, with the exceptions of those employed in retailing and banking, creating the ideal circumstances for a day dedicated to retail. Although the term stems from a particularly bad traffic-jam in Philadelphia, 'Black Friday' has come to mean the day when stores turn their profits from red to black in the build-up to the seasonal shopping frenzy.

And if the "suicide" of shopping on Thanksgiving doesn't sound bad enough, spare a thought for the two people in Palm Desert, California who were shot and killed on Black Friday in a Toys R Us store during an argument over limited stock in 2008. And the Wal-Mart employee trampled to death by over-enthusiastic shoppers desperate for bargains on the same day in New York.

Despite liking England, Erin has missed home a little more during Thanksgiving: “Back home all my friends and family are celebrating, but here nothing happens,” But by the end of our conversation her initial enthusiasm for her favourite holiday seems to be waning a little: “but last year my mum decided she didn’t want to cook so she ordered food out.” She confesses with a slightly guilty smile.

Given how popular Halloween has become here, and the way Christmas has followed America's lead in being more about 'buy' than 'why', Thanksgiving might be the next excuse for over-indulgence on our calendars. But is that really something we want?

Thanks, but no thanks.

Thank God For Catholics

2009-11-20T12:59:00.044Z

So now the Vatican has problems with Hollywood's latest Vampire movie. Who'd have thought Catholics would take issue with beings who scare children and suck the life out of humanity for their own self gain?

When I first read the Telegraph headline 'Vatican sinks teeth into Twilight' I assumed dusk was just next on the list of things they wanted to ruin, having dealt with sex, science and education. But it seems Vampire movies pose a serious threat to our society.

Coming from an organisation whose members ritualistically fantasise about the drinking of a dead blokes blood, his comments are hypocritical at best, but missing the irony, Monsignor Franco Perazzolo of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture has voiced his much-needed opinion on the eagerly awaited 'New Moon', calling it "dangerous and morally empty". Did he really say that? With a straight face? That's like Nick Griffin calling the Daily Mail racist. Or Jordan saying Kerry Katona lacks class. Or a Catholic priest calling Gary Glitter... anyway.

Lets get one thing straight. The Catholic church is the single-most immoral, backward, evil and undoubtedly dangerous establishment the world has ever known. The fact that it has grown to the worldly proportions it now enjoys, and abuses, should be a huge embarrassment to civilisation. That the overwhelming majority of its followers are from impoverished, diseased and uneducated societies is unsurprising. Who better to exploit?

If the current Pope - who wasn't actually a Nazi (much to the relief of Nazi's who don't want their reputations tarnished) - had any balls and said it was OK to use condoms he would instantly save millions of lives, gain worldwide respect, and perhaps even make the Catholic Church relevant in the modern world.

Instead he chose to resign millions of people in Africa - lacking the education to see what a misinformed fool he is - to a future of disease and depravation with his inspired remark that 'condoms could make the Aids crisis worse'. Genius. Presumably buggery will solve the problem.

What is most astonishing is that the Pope enjoys such an elevated status. He's revered by millions when in reality he is to morality what George Bush was to politics; a fraudulent joke - one that would be funny if he weren't so powerful and out of touch.

Any Catholic is, by definition, stupid for harbouring such immoral and child-like beliefs, but few would blindly follow their delusion knowing it would impact on the lives of millions, rather than just their own. You'd think the figurehead of a religion that makes such a big deal of saying sorry might have more conscience and perhaps even think before speaking.

To their credit they recently apologised for the Spanish inquisition (so we can file that along with burning witches and the world being flat) but I'd like to see the day when they realise what the rest of us know before thousands of innocent people have to die. You can almost use the Catholic church as a litmus test for ignorance. If they believe it, it's wrong. Just ask Galileo.

Fortunately the Vatican has a real fight on its hands. It turns out most people would rather not live in a dark-age world of guilt, extortion and paedophilia, so in the western world Catholicism is going out of fashion quicker than a choir boy learns to play the organ. Thank God.

To Baldly Go...

2009-11-01T12:45:00.013Z

William Hague - Who
says bald isn't beautiful?

About a year ago while living in Exeter, I wandered into a KFC after finishing a late-night shift in a night-club. Apparently, I wasn't the only one in need of something 'finger lickin good', as there was already a queue of about ten hungry people ahead of me. As I stood patiently in line as only the British can, I noticed that up above the service counter was a CCTV monitor displaying a view of the counter and the patient queuers from a camera positioned behind us. With little else to amuse me I began examining the queue on-screen. Two young lads we're first in line, then a flirtatious couple, followed by two dolled up girls, and lastly a poor guy about my age whose bald-patch shone brightly from his evanescent hair.

My own hair has been slowly thinning for a few years now and nothing makes me feel better than basking in someone else's misfortune. Seeing how the cheap camera and monitor had amplified the contrast, exaggerating his balding, brought a wry smile to my face. But when I looked directly at him, rather than via the monitor, I was surprised to see how much balder the camera had made him look. Where there should have been a shiny patch of scalp, was just hair. His 'do' was actually fairly thick, in fact, he wasn't balding at-all.

Confused, I looked back again at the monitor and quickly found the circular beacon of hair-loss. And then the penny dropped. The poor fella ageing before his time was, in-fact, me. I cringed reaching up to my crown whilst watching Friar Tuck mirror my movements on the screen. You don't often get to see the back of your own head and despite the odd comment from so-called friends I'd thought my balding wasn't yet too obvious. Now that illusion was shattered. Being mocked by others can dent a man's ego, but accidently taking the piss out of you own physical failings is a real pride basher. I skulked away feeling self-pityingly at the back of my head without so much as a chicken wing.

The reason I regress to this painful memory is that I've just had a second reminder of my ensuing hairlessness. A few days ago I went to have what's left of my barnet trimmed while visiting a friend in Manor House. Manor House has a large Turkish community so I thought I would treat myself to the full 'cut-throat' shave experience as-well as a haircut, and quickly found a suitable establishment complete with two talking parrots!? Settling down into the barber's chair I asked him if he might be able to give me some kind of fringe to compensate for my ever expanding fore-head and pointed to a Ronaldo look-alike poster in the window. Now, I'm all for telling it like it is, but "I cut hair, I don't do miracles" is not the response I expect from someone offering a service I haven't yet paid for. Taking his honesty with good humour I told him to do whatever he thought best, which turned out to be burning my ear and providing me with what can only be described as a spiky bowl cut.

Some men try to argue that being hairless makes them look distinguished, and others suffering from humour-loss as well as hair-loss even joke that their bald patch is merely a 'solar panel for a sex machine'. But the truth is that for every Bruce Willis or Vin Diesel there is a William Hague to prove that bald isn't necessarily beautiful.

Kicking Mental Health Problems Into Touch

2009-10-29T23:54:00.002Z

Nine years ago David Smith was a troubled man. Unemployed and regularly hospitalized due to bipolar disorder, his future looked bleak; “I used to drink a lot and smoke cannabis all the time,” He tells me openly. But the 37 year-old man I meet today seems far different to the one of which he speaks.

Sat at his desk in the Positive Mental Attitude offices, David’s pride in how much he has achieved is evident. Now a sports coordinator at PMA he shows me photographs of himself with Olympic triple jumper Jonathan Edwards, Camilla Parker Bowles, and various other famous people he has met during his time with the organization. But before becoming a member of Hackney FC - a football team for men and women suffering from mental health problems – David would have struggled meeting me, let alone celebrities;

“When I joined this club and became part of a team my life started to change,” he says.

“Having a mental health issue is a life changing experience but PMA helped me change my life for the better. It helped me build up my self-confidence; my self esteem, and it gave me a role.”

If David has anyone to thank for his turnaround it’s Janette Hynes, an ex-professional footballer and Senior Occupational Therapist who was awarded an MBE for her pioneering work using football as therapy. In 2003 Janette set up Hackney FC PMA and David and his twin brother Peter - also a sufferer of bipolar disorder - were some of the first on the team sheet;

“When I used to come out of the hospital into the community I’d be at home for a while and then go back into the hospital because there was nothing there to sustain me. Nothing meaningful,”

“I didn’t have any responsibility. I lacked motivation,”

It’s hard to believe David is talking about himself. To me, he seems confident, thoughtful and charismatic. Our conversation is routinely interrupted by his booming laugh as he tells me anecdotes like the time he accidently broke the ankle of his twin in a match, or how he had to go to hospital himself because of injury; “I busted my shoulder in the final so I told the boys they had to win it for me – and they did! I can’t be a very good player if they won without me.” He jokes with a golden-toothed smile.

“They gave me a role as captain so it helped me start talking by speaking to my teammates on the pitch. My brother used to do all my talking for me, but now I do my own talking,”

“Having mental health issues made me think the world owed me everything but now it’s changed. I thought; what have I got to offer my kids when they grow up?”

Now it seems his kids stand to gain a fair amount from a father who has overcome serious problems to turn his life around and even help others with problems of their own;

“I’ve been out of hospital about nine years now and I’m able to give something back to this community and help those suffering from what I’m suffering from to aid their recovery and keep them out of hospital. That helps to save trust money because it costs a lot for a person to go into hospital for a day.”

As I begin to ask more about the set-up at PMA David tells me enthusiastically about how the football team acts as a reincarnate organization; first helping sufferers, then involving them in the teams organization, and finally helping others in their own rehabilitation;

“We use football as a tool to aid people’s recovery. They get to make new friends and learn new skills. It’s user led so the players actually get involved and have roles within the project like fundraising and organizing social events.”

From the way he speaks about his own role at PMA it sounds like helping others has helped David help himself; “I’m a sufferer myself so I can see when someone is getting ill and I can inform the relevant parties to nip it in the bud so they don’t have to go back to hospital,”

“Eventually they get comfortable going to the gym with us in the group because everyone suffers from the same thing and eventually they go out by themselves, they don’t feel like they are sticking out like a sore thumb.”

But David’s ambitions go a little further than outings to the gym; “We’re in the process of trying to talk with the Olympic committee and Seb Coe about something to run alongside the Paralympics. We want to show what it would be like so eventually we could have it in the following Paralympics, because mental health is a disability too and it should be there as well.”

David’s Olympic dream isn’t about glory though; “We’re trying to reduce the stigma,”

“It would help other countries too because not all countries have the same service we do. In the third world their service is non-existent so it would help them too. We’re going to Uganda to try to set up a league there but we don’t want it to be for one month, we want to do it properly so it lasts.”

A famous football manager once said; "Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

David might be inclined to agree.