make the poor pay more

I do try to think the best of people, but going into a situation with good intentions isn't enough.

European ecologists extrapolating plans for tropical savannah based on experience of temperate grasslands had disastrous results. Good honest Catholics sending their little boys for 'personal tuiton' from the padre didn't end up giving their child the solid moral grounding they'd hoped for.

And as before Bono, even if he does really mean it, should know better.

As it is, he makes a series of sycophantic slurpings at the political groins of powerful Western figures, giving them cred and oversimplifying issues so the most half-arsed spin gesture can look like doing good.

Gordon Brown, he of the IMF, saying that he supports Make Poverty History! The best support he could give MPH on 2nd July is the support of his bodyweight strung up by his scrotum from a lampost in Edinburgh.

Bono says 'I salute Gerhard Schroeder for the deal on debt relief at the G7', implying the G7 are dropping the debt. They are not. The deal is using the debt as a tool to force freemarket capitalism on debtor countries and allow Western corporations to cherry-pick the most profitable industries.

This means charging for things that had previously been free. This in turn means the poorest can't afford those things.

So, for example, when water was privatised in South Africa, the poor drank from streams. The resulting cholera outbreak infected thousands and killed hundreds.

If education charges are brought in the poor stay uneducated. The not-quite-so-poor can only educate one child which, as we've seen from Uganda to Vietnam, has tended to be the boy, so women grow up illiterate.

These are the effects - so obvious and predictable that they can only be seen as deliberate - of the strings attached to the supposed dropping of the debt.

A couple of reliable cultural commentators have cut through the crap and give us stark facts and clear reminders to keep our wits about us in this spintastic run-up to the G8.

To qualify for debt relief, developing countries must "tackle corruption, boost private sector development" and eliminate "impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign."

...Attaching conditions like these to aid is bad enough: it amounts to saying "we will give you a trickle of money if you give us the Crown Jewels." Attaching them to debt relief is in a different moral league: "we will stop punching you in the face if you give us the Crown Jewels." The G8’s plan for saving Africa is little better than an extortion racket.

- George Monbiot, Spin, Lies and Corruption

This is what keeps Africa poor: not a lack of political will but the tremendous profitability of the current arrangement. Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest place on earth, is also its most profitable investment destination: It offers, according to the World Bank's 2003 Global Development Finance report, "the highest returns on foreign direct investment of any region in the world." Africa is poor because its investors and its creditors are so unspeakably rich.

- Naomi Klein, A Noose Not A Bracelet

too late

From the BBC:

Baroness Thatcher is under doctors' orders not to speak publicly.

Where the hell were those doctors in the 70s and 80s when we really needed them?

brief hiatus

Although I feel like I've been blogging forever, this is actually my first summer of it. Summers go mental in my life, so I may not be able to keep up the frequency of posts that you've become accustomed to. In the coming weeks I'll be gallivanting off around the nation far away from the reach of computers for an assortment of reasons.

Coming up there's Glastonbury, the Big Green Gathering, the G8, and for the next couple of weeks I'll be cycling around several Scottish Islands.

Jura beckons; about the size of Leeds with a population smaller than my street. And my street only has houses on one side. It also has thousands of deer, the distillery making fine whisky, and the house where Orwell wrote 1984. Recent googling has revealed you can actually stay there. I'm already daydreaming that holiday.

Before then there's Islay, rich in standing stones and the like but perhaps more alluring because my three favourite whiskies are made in the same two mile stretch of the island's south coast.

The trip starts with Arran, where there's the distillery (do you notice a theme emerging at all?), astonishing megalithic sites, and of course the Arran sweater.

Here is a picture taken by my friend Iain showing the early stages of manufacture.



May get chance to do a post before Glastonbury. If not, you'll find me down the front for Tori Amos, flat on my back toking in the sunshine for Van Morrison and Brian Wilson, dancing my legs off all night in the Lost Vagueness Diner, feeling fragile but glowing in Lunched Out Lizards cafe, and cheering in the sunrise from the stone circle.

Going to this one will mean I've been to most Glastonburies now, and wouldn't miss it for anything. As Tony Benn says;

It always amazes me that this huge city [Glastonbury] without many policemen can organise itself in a way that almost confirms one's view that there may be something in Anarchism.

confused on drugs

Not for the first time, I'm baffled by the government's inconsistent drugs policy. The new Drugs Act 2005 is an incredible mess.

Any time anyone points out that the government are banning harmless things in areas of drug policy, their set response is that to allow anything to do with drugs to be seen in a positive light would 'send mixed messages'.

The messages on drugs could hardly be more mixed than the Drugs Act. It repeals Section 38 of the Police and Criminal Justice Act 2001, which made it an offence to allow your premises to be used for the consumption, production or distribution of illegal drugs. But they're leaving in place Section 8(d) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which obliges people to prevent cannabis or opium from being used on their premises.

The new Act extends treatment availability for addicts, which is unarguably a good thing. This would seem to extend the healthy attitude of a government that's been quietly rolling out heroin prescription for addicts with predictably positive effects.

However, the same hastily shoved-through law moves in against psychedelic mushrooms.

Magic mushrooms have always existed in a legal grey area, primarily because they grow wild all over the place. You can hardly outlaw possession and prosecute those who effectively cultivate them if they're going to be growing on your gran's lawn, the local cricket pitch and the grass verges outside church.

So they banned 'preparing' mushrooms, drying them out or making a brew. Some prosecutors have argued that as soon as mushrooms are picked they're drying out, and so are being 'prepared'.

Generally, though, people picking them have been left alone, and indeed I know someone who had their house raided for drugs and the mushrooms taken away but not mentioned in the prosecution. (I'm guessing that's to do with the legal ambiguity rather than the cops pocketing them).

In the last few years there's been an upsurge in mushroom availability as places have sold grow-kits which, like selling home-brew alcohol gear to under 18s or cannabis seeds, is not illegal in itself. Others have grown the mushrooms then put them in plastic boxes to be sold, where they are not drying out so are not being 'prepared'.

Despite there being no evidence for magic mushrooms doing any harm to people at all, the law is being tightened and now mere possession will be a criminal offence. They are a Class A drug, the same as smack and coke. This, then, means that Leeds Quakers need to watch their backs; the lawn out the front of their Meeting House, which they clearly possess, is a great mushroom ground.

Of course, the larger the landowner the larger the quantity of mushrooms they'll possess. We can be certain that the Ministry of Defence and the Queen grow millions of magic mushrooms every year on their land. Once raw mushrooms are illegal, these are the first people who should expect their front door booted in and get carted off to chokey.

The same Act will introduce stated amounts for 'presumption of intent to supply' for all controlled drugs. If you've given yourself an economy of scale by buying a big stash, or if you're just an intensive user, you're look at a dealer's sentence. The government is holding back on saying what the amounts will be, and so that section of the Act won't become law until 2006. But, again, there can be little doubt that the Queen and other large landowners will cross that threshold by orders of magnitude.

So they're wrestling with a precise wording to get landowners off the hook, but still get pickers without incriminating those who accidentally mow them.

It is not only astonishing that they would want to classify natural plants with no record of harm alongside some of the most addictive substances known to humanity; it's equally astonishing that the whole thing was rushed through in the last days before parliament was dissolved for the general election.

It was scarcely debated, it has been harshly criticised by the Joint Parliamentary Human Rights Committee; thousands of people criminalised for no good reason, no questions asked.

Alan Duncan, a scary far-right bastard and one of the outside-chances for Tory leader, argued for the repeal of drug laws on libertarian grounds in his book Saturn's Children: How the State Devours Liberty and Prosperity. At least, he did in the hardback edition.

After he got a front bench position in the Tories and had to join calls for harsher drug laws there was an, ahem, 'updated' paperback edition of his book that mysteriously omitted the drugs bit.

When the new Drugs Bill came up, he voted for his party line.

Mushrooms grow naturally on the planet yet they're against the law, marijuana grows naturally on the planet, it's against the law. Doesn't the idea of making nature against the law seem a bit... unnatural?

- Bill Hicks

nepalese paper & whoopee cushions

Inverie is a tiny village on the west coast of Scotland. It's as remote as you can get on the British mainland. It's a two day walk from the nearest road across the Knoydart peninsula to Inverie. Those who don't do the trek over land come from the west come by boat from Mallaig.



Once in Inverie you'll find The Old Forge, the remotest pub in Britain.



There is one shop in the village. It's a Post Office and general store. Want to see the view from the Inverie shop window? Click here to see the latest webcam image.

Despite being the only retail outlet for many many miles around, it only opens four hours a day, three days a week. There isn't the demand for more (though if you knock at other times they'll usually let you in).

As is to be expected for a shop serving a very small and very remote community, it only sells the bare essentials, as the sign outside shows.

the grand order of water rats

Thanks to Stoatie, I've found out about an organisation called the Grand Order of Water Rats. Imagine a sort of showbiz freemasons, or if the Knights Templar had been founded by Ernie Wise.

For this year, their King Rat is Melvyn Hayes, who played 'Gloria' Beaumont from It Ain't Half Hot Mum.

On their site they wax lyrical about the Ball where they made Melvyn the King Rat.

Where else could you see Sir Norman Wisdom receive a lifetime achievement award, sing 'Don't laugh at me' and get a standing ovation and then - half an hour later - watch Brian May, Rick Wakeman, Joe Brown, Chris Barber and Chas McDevitt perform 'Freight Train' and again have the whole room on it's feet? No one does it quite like The Grand Order of Water Rats.

Brian May, Rick Wakeman, Joe Brown and Chris Barber? Put them in the same place and surely some supernatural seismic rumbling starts and demons pour onto the earth.

There's more. For only £75 you can go to their Showbiz Quiz hosted by Jeremy Beadle.

Are there any Biblical scholars who can confirm whether the Grand Order of Water Rats are mentioned by name in the Book of Revelations?

Verily from the waters a rat did come. In the little silhouetto of a man was a King of Rats and he spake unto the people saying 'Gor blimey sergeant major', and the unholy Barber did sound his mighty trumpet, and the cloaked demon did noodle on with a keyboard solo of many years, whilst the righteous bled from their ears, until the Bearded Trickster led an inquisiton that parted the feeble minded from their coins, until all good was undone, creation itself faltered and the Smug did reign supreme over the lands of the earth and engage in much self-congratulation for their foul deeds.

to buttfuck or not to buttfuck

OK, so Narodowe Odrodzeine Polski may be a load of scary homophobes who produce leaflets about how gay men are paedophiles, but still I have to admit there is something that makes me laugh about their choice of campaign logo.



Firstly, it appeals to me on a juvenile smut level. Don't let all the earnest chinstroking fool you, I'm a big fan and font of toilet humour.

I co-wrote a massive zine of the stuff called Junk Mail Backlash, where we sent off Freepost coupons with rude names just to see if we'd get replies. I was profoundly amused to receive catalogues addressed to Mrs A Pigfucksme, British Gas writing to Mrs Gufflighter, or having a letter that starts 'Dear Mrs Methsdrinker, thankyou for your inquiry about our incontinence products'.

Indeed, the NOP logo is reminiscent of artwork form another project I was part of, the back cover of Radio Savage Houndy Beasty's album Millennium Buggery.



Really, all that guff about the Millennium Bug and yet it seems we were the only ones to have thought of that pun.

The other thing I like about the Polish sign is the attempt at specifying the sexes.

The generic figures used in such signs are usually sex-neutral. I've often thought this about the traditional toilet signs; they seem to be actually advertising facilites for bipeds and monopeds.



But that would miss the point for our Polish chums, so they've added a comically weeny cock on the figure at the front. Notably, there is nothing to specify the sex of the person at the back. They appear to be campaigning against fucking men from behind.

Not only is this an activity enjoyed by straight women , but gay men having sex by no means necessitates anal sex from behind.

My own view is that most homophobia, if one wants to use that rather crummy word, has almost nothing to do with sex.

‘But have you any idea what these people actually do?’

Self-righteous members of the House of Commons loved standing to ask that question during our last parliamentary debate on the age of homosexual consent.

‘Shit-stickers, that’s what they are. Let’s be clear about that. We’re talking about sodomy here.’

Oh no you aren’t. You think you are, but you aren’t, you know.

Buggery is far less prevalent in the gay world than people suppose. Anal sex is probably not much more common in homosexual encounters than it is in heterosexual.

Buggery is not at the end of the yellow brick road somewhere over the homosexual rainbow, it is not the prize, the purpose, the goal or the fulfilment of homosexuality. Buggery is not the achievement which sees homosexuality move from becoming into being; buggery is not homosexuality’s realisation or destiny.

Buggery is as much a necessary condition of homosexuality as the ownership of a Volvo estate car is a necessary condition of middle-class family life, linked irretrievably only in the minds of the witless and the cheap. The performance of buggery is no more inevitable a part of homosexuality than an orange syllabub is an inevitable part of a dinner: some may clamour for it and instantly demand a second helping, some are not interested, some decide they will try it once and then instantly vomit.

There are plenty of other things to be got up to in the homosexual world outside the orbit of the anal ring, but the concept that really gets the goat of the gay-hater, the idea that really spins their melon and sickens their stomach is that most terrible and terrifying of all human notions, love.

That one can love another of the same gender, that is what the homophobe really cannot stand. Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word’s full octave. Love as agape, Eros and philos; love as romance, friendship and adoration; love as infatuation, obsession and lust; love as torture, euphoria, ecstasy and oblivion (this is beginning to read like a Calvin Klein perfume catalogue); love as need, passion and desire.

All the rest of it, parking your dick up an arse, slurping at a helmet, whipping, frotting, peeing, pooing, squatting like a dog, dressing up in plastic and leather — all these go on in the world of boy and girl too: and let’s be clear about this, they go on more — the numbers make it so. Go into a sex shop, skim through some pornography, browse the internet for a time, talk to someone in the sex industry.

You think homosexuality is disgusting? Then, it follows, it follows as the night the day, that you find sex disgusting, for there is nothing done between two men or two women that is, by any objective standard, different from that which is done between a man and a woman.

What is more, one begs to ask of these Tony Marlowes and Peregrine Worsthornes and Paul Johnsons, have the guts to Enquire Within. Ask yourselves what thoughts go through your head when you masturbate. If the physical act and its detail is so much more important to you than love, then see a doctor, but don’t spew out your sickness in column-inches, it isn’t nice, it isn’t kind, it isn’t Christian.

And if the best you can do is quote the Bible in defence of your prejudice, then have the humility to be consistent. The same book that exhorts against the abomination of one man lying with another also contains exhortations against the eating of pork and shell-fish and against menstruating women daring to come near holy places.

It's no good functionalistically claiming that kosher diet had its local, meteorological purposes now defunct, or that the prejudice against ovulation can be dispensed with as superstition, the Bible that you bash us with tells you that much of what you do is unclean: don’t pick and choose with a Revealed Text — or if you do, pick and choose the good bits, the bits that say things like ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’, or ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’.

And please, whatever you do, don’t tell us that what we do, either in love or lust, is unnatural. For one thing if what you mean by that is that animals don’t do it, then you are quite simply in factual error.

There are plenty of activities or qualities we could list that are most certainly unnatural if you are so mad as to think that humans are not part of nature, or so dull-witted as to believe that ‘natural’ means ‘all natures but human nature’: mercy, for example, is unnatural, an altruistic, non-selfish care and love for other species is unnatural; charity is unnatural, justice is unnatural, virtue is unnatural, indeed — and this surely is the point — the idea of virtue is unnatural, within such a foolish, useless meaning of the word ‘natural’.

Animals, poor things, eat in order to survive: we, lucky things, do that too, but we also have Abbey Crunch biscuits, Armagnac, selle d’agneau, tortilla chips, sauce béarnaise, Vimto, hot buttered crumpets, Chateau Margaux, ginger-snaps, risotto nero and peanut-butter sandwiches — these things have nothing to do with survival and everything to do with pleasure, connoisseurship and plain old greed.

Animals, poor things, copulate in order to reproduce: we, lucky things, do that too, but we also have kinky boots, wank-mags, leather thongs, peep-shows, statuettes by Degas, bedshows, Tom of Finland, escort agencies and the Journals of Anaïs Nin — these things have nothing to do with reproduction and everything to do with pleasure, connoisseurship and plain old lust.

We humans have opened up a wide choice of literal and metaphorical haute cuisine and junk food in many areas of our lives, and as a punishment, for daring to eat the fruit of every tree in the garden, we were expelled from the Eden the animals still inhabit and we were sent away with the two great Jewish afflictions to bear as our penance: indigestion and guilt.

- Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot

deaf cat

Saw this in a Cornish back street



Aside from the endearing ear trumpet and casual pose, I love the way the sign looks mass produced.

Is there a factory making these things somewhere? Are there that many deaf cats about?

I advise continuous caution until we know for sure.

donate against the g8

Ordinary people from across the world are being asked to take part in a massive grassroots fundraising effort to support the protests around the G8 in July.

The G8 are the rulers of eight of the most powerful economies in the world. From 6th-8th July 2005, they will hold their major annual summit at Gleneagles Hotel, Scotland.

The G8 was created in 1975, amidst global oil crisis and an upsurge in social struggles. Its intended role was to act as a crisis manager for the global economy, so consensus could be reached amongst the most powerful nations on issues such as world trade, migration, oil supplies, and security.

The G8 still exists to protect the interests of the world's biggest economies. This year, Tony Blair has called upon the G8 leaders to solve the problems of climate change and world poverty, with a particular focus on Africa.

Yet, as he announces this, his domestic policies of massive airport and road expansion show he has no intention of taking real action on climate change. As Blair said to the World Economic Forum earlier this year, 'if we put forward, as a solution to climate change, something which involves drastic cuts in growth or standards of living, it matters not how justified it is, it simply won't be agreed to'.

Think what that means, 'it matters not how justified it is'.

Similarly, there is no real African representation at the G8, as they focus on opening up African economies to 'free trade', using the series of strings and conditions that will be attached to the debt relief.

The G8 upholds a system whose impacts we see all around us: war, famine, and environmental destruction. However, resistance is growing around the globe to create a better world. Struggles are diverse and numerous, as people fight to regain a sense of humanity, and 'a world in which many worlds are possible'.

Resistance to the summit itself will reflect this diversity. From big blockades of nuclear bases, to community permaculture projects, and skill sharing and workshops, the diversity of the protest promises to be enormous.

The Dissent! Network has been set up to instigate and co-ordinate action against this G8 meeting. They've begun organising 'convergence spaces' in which resistance can flourish. These will be self-managed zones available in the run up to and during the Summit, aiming to house and feed many thousands, whilst providing inspiring examples of free, ecological communities. The spaces will be used by all kinds of people voicing the concerns ignored or opposed by the G8; drop the debt, anti-capitalist, fair trade, anti-war, anti-climate change, and many more.

Dissent! needs a significant amount of money to make this happen. Considerable fundraising has already been done but there is still a sizeable shortfall (around £40,000). Funds raised will go directly to financing the convergence spaces, as well as to legal and medical support teams, and to fund transport and publicity.

They've launched The Tenner Appeal, asking anyone who opposes what the G8 stands for to donate 10 pounds to Dissent!

So, are you against what the G8's for? Got a tenner to do something about it?

There are several ways to donate. You can send cheques (in pounds sterling drawn on a UK bank account, payable to The Dissent Network) to;

The Tenner Appeal,
23-25 Wharf Street,
Leeds, LS2 7EQ
England

You can pay cash in at any Co-Op bank in the UK (find a branch here), or do a bank transfer.
Sort Code: 08-92-99
Account Number: 6515 5518
Swift Code: CPBKGB22

For international bank transfers quote the IBAN number: GB85 CPBK 0892 9965 1555 18

Or make payments online at the appeal website.

our friend the torturer

The killing at the protests in Uzbekistan has put a usually unnoticed country into our mainstream media.

Uzbekistan's been ruled by dictator Islom Karimov since independence from the Soviet Union 14 years ago.

The US State Department's webpage about Uzbekistan says;

The police force and the intelligence service use torture as a routine investigation technique

What kind of torture? As George Monbiot describes;

There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.

Our wars are not about removing tortuous dictators from power or beinging democracy to people. If they were we'd be bombing and invading Uzbekistan.

But what are we doing? Bush has never criticised the Uzbekistani human rights record. Indeed, that same State Department page that names the systematic torture says;

Uzbekistan is an ardent supporter of U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and of the war against terror overall. The United States, in turn, values Uzbekistan as a stable, moderate force in a turbulent region.

It's a rare moderate nation that tortures thousands of its citizens to death.

The US has granted Uzbekistan 'most-favored-nation trade status', exempting it from many US trade tariffs, in addition to the hundreds of millions of US taxpayers dollars given every year for assorted government and military projects.

They get high-level, high-profile personal support. Donald Rumsfeld has visited three times in the last two years. During Colin Powell's visit he passed Bush's personal thanks for the Karimov regime's 'support of the anti-terrorist campaign and other spheres of activity.'

The Memory Hole has a page of details entitled Senior US Officials Cozy up to Dictator Who Boils People Alive

Why would they do this? Like so many news stories, this is yet another facet of the oil story. As Colin Powell said, 'our interest in the region is not limited to the Afghan crisis only'.

The US has some enormous military bases in Afghanistan. Far more than they'd need if they were merely securing a quick changover from Taliban rule to representative democracy. The bases are there for the same reason they have large bases in Uzbekistan.

The Middle East produces around half the world's oil. In a decade or so, it will be around three-quarters. The rapidly industrialising Chinese economy will really want that oil, and there won't be enough for them and us. So if the West is to keep control, we need a lot of military presence in the land between China and the really big oilfields; Afghanistan, Iran and Uzbekistan.

In the meantime, Uzbekistan has a bit of oil of its own, and we can forgive a lot when someone's giving us oil on friendly terms.

We want those oil-producing and China-buffer countries in the hands of people we can do business with. If Karimov were to allow democracy, the 88% muslim electorate would put people in power with a great deal more sympathy for the countries the West has attacked. So the non-Islamic nation allies keep quiet. When the Uzbekistani elections six months ago only allowed candidates who supported Karimov, Russia declared the election transparent, democratic and well-organised.

As with the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so it is with the future plans for securing the Middle Eastern oilfields; the British government knows that if it wants second dibs on the oil then it has to back the Americans all the way. In this case, we have to allow Karimov to remain in power.

So when the Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, started publicising what was happening under Karimov, he was told to shut up by the Foreign Office and publically discredited.

When he continued to expose details he was sacked and smeared again.

Murray stood against his libeller and former boss Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in the general election, getting 5% of the vote.

Murray's continued effort to draw attention to the Karimov regime's human rights abuses made the British agree to send a junior minister, Bill Rammell, to Tashkent to discuss it. The Uzbekistanis simply refused to permit the visit and that was the end of it.

Karimov continues to ruthlessly put down Islamic groups. He blamed the killing at this week's protests on 'Islamic criminals'. Uzbekistani authorities have blocked foreign news media from broadcasting, whilst failing to mention the peaceful protests in the week before the violence.

After some delay, Jack Straw has condemned this week's events. The British government has, he claims, 'long been concerned about abuse of human rights, about a lack of democracy'.

He doesn't say why they've gagged someone expressing such concern and given continuous tacit approval of the Karimov ragime.