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updated 18th november 2003 |
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Anyone who knows me knows I rant a lot. Some of the things I rant about are justified; some are hidden and important, some are just petty and mean. These are some of my rants, mostly taken from emails sent to friends of mine.
All these rants belong to me. Don't use them without asking. I have big pointy things.
18th November 2003
The security for Bush's pointless flagwaving visit will cost millions of pounds in police overtime. The centre of London will be immobilized for the duration. Even from a conservative point of view, it is clear who will pay for this; it's you and me. Those millions of pounds are millions that cannot be spent on education, healthcare, training for the unemployed, and generally making things better. What does Bush hope to achieve? His handlers are trying to present him as a great statesman visiting his ally- but the truth is he only needs us to refuel his bombers before 'we' take on the next unwinnable war.
The UK stands to gain nothing from this charade. Mr Blair, you're an intelligent man. Please tell us why you are doing this? You're a christian. You can't believe in killing in the name of industrial development. Please just tell us why we are doing this so that we can understand.
11th july 2003
So, let me get this straight: You're proposing a stateful, centralized mail system.
I have some thoughts:
5th June 2003
The Federal Communications Commission on Monday removed legal restrictions which previously stopped single companies from controlling too large a share of the broadcast media.
The Federal Communications Commission is a US governmental organization responsible for overseeing the allocation of broadcast licences, radio frequency spectrum and the activities of newspaper and magazine publishers. The so-called Clear Channel decision removes laws that made it impossible for a single company to control both local newspapers and local radio and television stations.
In a move decried by free speech and independent media activists all over the world, the FCC has set precedent effectively removing these regulations, making it possible for a single organization to control every aspect of a population's exposure to current affairs and advertising. Many of the few surviving independent American broadcasters are predicting that they will be unable to continue in a few years.
"The FCC's decision regarding Clear Channel sets a worrying precedent," said Mike Jacobs, former independent record label owner. "It's not how big and powerful they are but how they do business, the arm twisting." Jacobs believes that smaller independent organizations, like magazines, newspapers, broadcasters and internet companies may be made "offers they cannot refuse". Several radio stations stand accused of threatening to remove bands from 'rotation' playlists unless they perform at Clear Channel-owned venues.
Clear Channel themselves seem rather murky from a comemrcial angle. An ongoing Department of Justice investigation into business practices and accounting irregularity threatens to undermine the company's stability. Speculation abounds as to the chaos that would ensue from the collapse of a corporation owning such a large chunk of a geographical area's broadcast media.
The FCC's decision to allow Clear Channel to absorb seemingly any company it likes the look of is good news for companies such as News International, which already has huge influence over public opinion through editorial outlets such as Sky TV and Mirror Group Newspapers. Clear Channel, too, can spell life or death for musicians, controlling the vast majority of medium-to-large venues in the US. They also own several promotion companies, selling 27 million concert tickets last year- 23 million more than their largest competitor.
The background is slightly more complex. Since the Communications Act 1934, the FCC is charged with allocating 'spectrum space' to maximise 'the public interest' and 'to encourage a diversity of voices so as to promote a vibrant democracy'. Democracy is the last thing Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura bring to mind, both of whom are syndicated by Clear Channel. In a town where all the radio stations, all the newspapers and all the internet providers are owned by the same company, where can one disagree with them?
29th May 2003
Life isn't the way it was supposed to be. When I was a kid I watched TV shows like The Tomorrow People and Star Trek. I read magazines that told me about how science and technology would save the world.
The Usborne Book Of The Future told me that we would be wearing smart, synthetic materials and that we would live in cities on the Moon. Mankind would be united, and we would explore the Universe together. Computers would be our friends. Household robots would cook and clean for us. Food would be prepared in seconds using microwave ovens, and a vast computer network would link all human knowledge into a single accessible whole.
We would ride in hovercars, safely exceeding a thousand miles per hour, as they would be controlled by computers, flawlessly and without the possibility of human error. Of course, you could always take the maglev. When you got to your beautiful office, in the City of the Future, your desktop computer would read your mail, and tell you what was important. Cyborgs would be just like us, only better.
Well, it's 2003 now. Nearly 2004. Where is my hovercar? I was promised it. We did get some of the other stuff, I admit, but it all seemed to come with a nasty surprise attached. My computer doesn't work properly, my electronic mailbox is full of viagra, penis length, lesbians and soy. The maglev is a dead loss, and if they can't make trains run on time, I sincerely hope they give up on the whole tokamak thing.
When did our beautiful future evaporate? Is it just part of growing up, or is the whole of western culture jaded? Could it be, perhaps, that we have grown cynical as a supernation, that the glamour has worn off? Thirty years of "soon, soon" has broken our spirit. If we are to get hovercars, we need NASA funding, not war. If we are to get cybernetic replacements for our worn-out organs, we need consideration, not kneejerk politics.
I don't care. I just want my hovercar.
28th May 2003
I am getting a bit fed up of my opinion counting for nothing. Nobody is listening to me when I say that I don't want the 'great reforms' they're forcing on me; I want entirely different ones. I understand that the job the politicos are doing is difficult and involves a complex balancing act, but they're really balancing the 'snide' force against the 'pocketlining instinct' and not leaving anything for me and mine.
I can't be the only one who feels this way- hell, I look at any editorial, whether it be New Scientist or Private Eye, the Sun or the Guardian, the South Wales Evening Post or the Daily Mail, and I see unhappy people saying that they don't like what Blair, Bush's fat controllers, Sharon, Arafat, and all those other overprivileged children are doing to us.
All we want is a fair try, but can we get represented? No. I'm beginning to worry that nine tenths of the people on this planet are in fact cleverly constructed robots or golems or the fusion of human and sheep DNA. I talk to people and they don't seem to have ever worried about it, they've never thought that the government was ripping them off, and they never thought about how much better it could be, if only there existed a policy of responsibility.
This is what comes of basing a system of government on a popularity contest. And, no, I don't have any much better ideas- well, I have a couple, but they're not that much better. I don't have any idea how to eliminate the problems caused by people who just don't care. I read an article a few days ago about the theory that psychopathy isn't a disorder at all, in an evolutionary sense, because psychopaths are supremely functional at the expense of others- they get to spread their genes quite successfully thank you.
This is the class of people we have allowed into our government, simply because without a cult of personality, and without magnetic leadership it's impossible to become a winner in the election popularity contest.
21st May 2003
Well, not actually speechless, rather really very angry.
...I know there are people, not least in the Arab world but also around Europe, who think that the military action was unjustified...
He says 'there are some people still dying from the [1991] gas attacks' well, if you've survived that long, you're getting lost in statistical noise. you can't measure that bucko.
...I know there are people, not least in the Arab world but also around Europe, who think that the military action was unjustified [because nobody found any weapons of mass destruction]...
yeah, like 80% of the population, you weaselly little wankpot. you can't hide an anthrax weaponization plant. If you could, do you think for the briefest fraction of a second known to mankind that I would know where fucking Porton Down is? Possibly the biggest killer germ factory on the planet? To make anthrax into a weapon, you need thousands of kilowatts of electricity and a big-ass freeze-drying plant. Porton Down has three sets of 440kv pylons feeding it. Most of Porton Down is underground, but the waste heat kills the grass above it. It shows up on satellite photos. Go check multimap's aerial photos if you don't believe me. You'd have to be plain gullible to believe that they can hide such a thing. They couldn't feed government ministers. How are they going to build a fucking bioweapon factory?
This is bearing in mind the fact that they didn't have one in 1992.
Makes me sick.
11th May 2003
Who is it good for? Why, the people who make it, of course! On Friday the Thief-in-Chief of the US himself announced that having killed 17 000 people in Iraq, they were going to try harder in Syria next.
I note that this time they didn't even let Dubya speak- maybe they have had enough of his burblings. Right now all it would take is a few stray blood clots to make the world so much better. Is it bad karma to wish embolisms on mass murderers? Our Right Honourable Tone, the Most Non-Socialist of the Socialist PMs, has clearly agreed to swap "Being a World Power" for "Showing The Bush Family How To Run An Empire". you have to admit, the British Empire was one of the better ones out there; certainly more forward- looking than the Spanish, more long-lasting and less genocidal than the German one (well, either of the two), less schizoid and confused than the Roman one, and more fond of tall hats than the Ottoman one.
Of course, it did generally go round the planet deciding it wanted something, installing its army in it, declaring it liberated, then kicking the crap out of it anyway, just to make sure it knew who was in charge. Does this sound familiar?
Looks like we'll be stuck with the Bush family for at least another four years- Greg Palast has spotted them getting access to a single database that seems to control all the electoral records on the American continent.
"It's doing this everywhere," said Palast, "but in Mexico it was caught out".
With the no-paper-trail electronic voting systems coming in this year, it'll be virtually impossible to prove electoral malfeasance. With the PATRIOT act powers to demand and control dataflows, all data will flow into this system and what flows out can be strictly controlled.
To remind you, ChoicePoint were the bunch who deleted nearly 100 000 black voters in the Florida elections three years ago. They had access to that information because they were charged with building the lists for electronic voting and they owned the data services contract for the department of corrections in that state.
This, of course, would never be allowed in the EU, as we have a Data Protection Act which is intended to prevent all-encompassing data building efforts like this. It would do too, if it wasn't for the fact that several large companies seem to consider themselves above the law- Microsoft, for example, haven't renewed their registration this year, and haven't submitted any data registration documents for several years.
Big companies with millions of customers are well aware that they have the ability to 'mine' personally identifying and politically valuable data from the mosaic effect of millions of tiny transactions. What is needed is a segmented aspect to government and business that seems totally lacking in the US. The electoral roll should be regarded as sacrosanct and no business with vested interests- whether they are commercial or, even worse, political- should be allowed to control it.
They've got the data, and they know how to use it. I'm increasingly afraid that we have already lost.
Thought for the day: We allowed the biggest arsenal on the face of the planet into the hands of:
Cast your mind back to the first Gulf War. Questioning a yank flier, asking what flying a B2 was like, he said, and I quote:
'It's very realistic'.
The rot started with Doom and Quake, continues on through Halflife and gods-only-know-what, kids are being conditioned to kill and not regard it as real.
The computer games I played when I was younger were Pac-Man, Elite and that style of thing. They didn't have any realism at all (well, Elite was really a kind of interstellar trading simulator, it might be realistic but hey we're not out there yet.)
I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make here- certainly not 'ban video games!' as some of the more shrill types would have it- but maybe 'make war less safe'. The kids coming back from Korea or Vietnam, if they came back alive, knew damn well that war was the worst thing a species can do to itself. Vietnam in particular precipitated a tide change in US foreign policy.
The Gulf conflict hasn't had a massive outpouring of US blood yet.
Yet.
Sometimes I think that would be the best thing- maybe it would save more lives in the long run. Then again I think that the US Government is not even close to as honest as it was during the 60s and 70s. Nixon may have been a liar and a thief but he *was* elected.
The current climate in the US is such that if another Vietnam developed- and it might!- they would have no compunction whatever in Shocking and Aweing - or as certain slightly-more-left-wing leaders of the last century have named it, Blitzkrieg- the country into a ruin. It's like the spoilt child has got into the knife drawer and nobody is taking the cleaver off him!
The new, more automated weapons represent a dangerous escalation in telewarfare. As the 'warfighter'- DARPA don't even call them soldiers any more- becomes ever more divorced from the flesh-rending, life-ending job they do. Eventually, killing becomes just another job, and for the state in control, killing becomes just more business.
This seems to have become established.
The media, meanwhile, are becoming more and more directed. As stripping and audience neoteny becomes entrenched, the only way to keep audience figures is by stressing a simplified message. It becomes more and more simplified, and the audience is inured to the 'dumbing down' process. Eventually, they react strongly to any message in contrast with the message stressed by the agents of the status quo.
This cognitive dissonance also seems to have become established.
Eventually the battlefield will become entirely automated. The state will no longer have any pressing need for diplomacy; they can just take, by automated force, anything they want. Public opinion is irrelevant also, as the public just believe whatever they're told.
All together now: USA! USA! USA!