Superb piece in SmirkingChimp.com today, by William Rivers Pitt, entitled 'Here. Now'



Leaders never lead, unless the people lead them. Leaders, left to their own devices, will follow the call of the folks writing the checks. For too long in this country, the people have abdicated their basic responsibility - to rule. In the absence of the people's leadership, our elected officials have begun listening to the corporations and the well-funded interest groups instead. The result is the mess we are in. This is without question a bi-partisan problem that affects both parties. Look no further than the fact that the vast majority of newly registered voters sign up as Independent.



Maybe it has gone too far to be fixed. Between the PATRIOT Act and this new Homeland Security Department, there is very little substance left to the founding documents and principles that once were the people's sword and shield. The media has become an adjunct mouthpiece for the corporations that own the outlets, and the politicians who receive the corporate donations and thus dutifully tow the line shout into this echo chamber and drown out all dissent. Those few elected officials who do stand against the nation we are devolving into see their voices disappear in the wake of parroted noise. Sometimes, those who speak out wind up dead.



Pitt's referring to the state of the US, run by a leader who can't think for himself, is a serial killer and let's the corporations who paid for his presidency to make all the rules. The situation in the UK is little different. We, the electorate, need to stand up now and refuse to be bullied into accepting further infringements into our liberties and the rolling back of the last lot of infringements before Blair and his bastards make it impossible for us to refuse.



Blair is a Nazi dressed up as a liberal. He's hi-jacked the Labour party and turned it into the antithesis if its former self. We must all watch the actions, not listen to the words, because the spin put onto the actions is intended to prevent us understanding what's really going on.

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What is Naziism?



I don't know how Hitler defined it, but here"s a working definition which more or less covers things that are happening in the US and UK right now:

• The real or effective imposition of a single-party political system; either by law or by the hi-jacking of the opposition"s principal policies by the incumbent party or by the opposition failing to oppose the incumbent party for fear of seeming "unpatriotic";


• Politicians" votes and support are bought by big business contributions to them individually, to their campaign funds or to their party;


• Steady erosion of workplace safety requirements, in order that capitalists can avoid their responsibilities;


• Steady erosion of employment protection, in order that capitalists can avoid their responsibilities;


• Steady erosion of consumer protection, in order that capitalists can avoid their responsibilities;


• Steady erosion of civil liberties in order to "protect" the electorate from some unseen enemy;


• Steady increase in the influence of well-funded pressure groups, out of all proportion to their membership numbers;


• More and greater powers for intrusion into peoples" private lives by the authorities;


• More and greater introduction of capitalist enterprise into government work: in education, "security", the essential utilities, the less-essential utilities;


• The subjugation of the peoples" freedom of choice to the requirements of capitalist enterprise: peoples" choice is only from what the capitalists choose to give them;

In other words, Naziism IS capitalism.



All that needs to happen for the Nazis to take over completely is for people who care to do nothing - the Nazis are in the ascendant and they win if we stand by and fail to oppose them.

The Chimp has excelled himself again. He's appointed a war criminal to investigate why no-one did anything about the intelligence(???) which warned about the planes flying into the World Trade Centre (I refuse to use the Americans' stupid short-hand for this event).



We know what happened: Bush & Co wanted the attack to succeed so that they had an excuse to introduce the Nazification of the US. Do we really need Henry Kissinger, a lying, murdering scumbag, to feed us whatever cover-up excuses Bush's handlers want published?

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Kissinger, Poindexter, Perle - all brought back from the political dead to turn the US into a Nazi state.



What next? Digging up Nixon and giving him some new McCarthy-style hearings to police.



You remember - the ones that everyone in the US wants to pretend never happened because they stank so highly of paranoid Nazi witch hunting.

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Gordon Brown's got an interesting line in maths. A £9,000,000,000 'error' in his calculations means we have to borrow £30,000,000,000.



How exactly does that add up, then?

Found this post via The Register: man claims to have killed a California policeman in order to raise awareness of the corruption inherent in the Capitalist system. Can't disagree in any way with his sentiments, the action's a bit extreme, though.

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Appears Tony & Co are hell-bent on sacking thousands of fire-fighters. Just let one of my kids get hurt in a fire when there aren't enough fire-fighters to go 'round and they'll understand that hell-bent means hell-bound for the lot of them.

I see that the murderous cunt who runs Israel is now building a wall to cut off Palestinians from their land and THEIR WATER SUPPLY. This really takes the fucking biscuit. Where's the pissing useless UN now when there's real, live genocide taking place? Fucking nowhere. Sorry, fucking somewhere - busy in their plush offices encouraging another cunt to bomb the shit out of Iraq. Spineless, utterly useless bastards, every last one of them. I hope they all rot in hell.

On 24th November, SmirkingChimp.com reported Richard Perle admits: No matter what inspectors report, we'll attack Iraq.



This, of course, proves beyond all possible doubt that what the Republicans want from Iraq is oil, not disarmament. They'll go in there, guns blazing, men, women and children frying, so that they can line their pockets even more than the greedy bastards have already.



When will the US public call a halt to this crap? When will they stop supporting this bunch of money-grubbing wankers and rein-in their powers? Can they possibly believe that supporting these shits is in any way patriotic; that it will help to sustain their sad little "American Dream"; that there is in any way some justice in these actions?



Attacking Iraq will achieve the following:

• More money in Chimpy's pal's pockets;
  
• Many dead people;
  
• More "terrorists" wanting to attack Western targets in revenge.
  

So, is it worth killing loads of innocent people and creating loads of new terrorists just so that squirming pigs like Richard Perle can have some more money? I think not. When will the US people start thinking "not" and crush these scum beneath the onslaught of a new brand of US politics - a brand created by people who give a fuck about the well-being of all people on this planet?

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One thing I really, really don't understand about the US governement is why they want to spend billions and billions attacking Iraq. Surely that kind of money buys huge amounts of research into alternatives to fossil fuels, alternatives which Bush's pay-masters, the oil companies, can then sell at huge profits, replacing oil as their main cash-cow and keeping millions of Iraqis alive who will otherwise perish.

What pisses me off most about the current hysteria in the US about terrorism, hysteria which is being used as an excuse for any and every infringement of civil liberties over there, is that the US has only been hit a few of times by acts of terrorism. The only ones I know of are Timmy McVeigh blowing up a building in Oklahoma(?) killing a couple of hundred, Osama bin Laden hitting the WTC (conveniently for GW Bush) twice, once not very successfully, once very successfully.



Now, while I regard these as heinous acts for which the perpetrators need severe punishment (but short of death - I think capital punishment demeans a society hugely, being on a par with intolerance of others' beliefs or race), for the US to be bleating about these things is only an excuse for illiberal activities. The US has sponsored terrorism all over the world, including here in the UK where the IRA has received huge amounts of money from American Irish and Roman Catholics, and for them to whinge and cry when they reap the whilrwind is hypocritical in the extreme and should just make the rest of the world say "serves you right, you bastards".



I'm not saying I don't feel symapthy for the people whose family members died in these attacks, but I cannot see that they justify the appalling acts of violence being perpetrated now in Iraq (US and UK 'planes bomb sites there on most days) and the even more appalling acts which will follow when Bush / Blair get their war, as they surely will 'cos Bush has already said that the UN inspections will fail - even before they've started.



I really can't understand why people continue to vote for politicians who will not renounce violence. Politicians scream and shout about how awful violence is amongst their populus but then quite happily mete it out to foreigners - always seems to be foreigners who're sitting above some oil or where an oil pipeline may be built. Odd that, isn't it?

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Scary politician of the day: Geoff Hoon. Don't know where this loony came from but he's about the most dangerous person in Blair's cabinet (a cabinet which is made up of some of the most illiberal creeps I've seen since John Major stopped being Prime Minister). He's already talking about first-strike nuclear weapons use being OK and he's said he's more than happy to send British servicemen to Iraq even before the UN inspectors start their job properly. This man needs taking outside and being given a good kicking to make him understand the pain he's going to give to people he's never met, doesn't wish to meet 'cos they're foreign. He's an evil, xenophobic, killer and surely does not deserve a job which pays him out of public funds - just like his boss, really.

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Why does the Labour Party let Blair & Co continue at the top of it? They're not socialists, in fact they think socialism is a dirty word, so what are they doing running what's supposed to be a socialist party? Isn't it time you booted them out, lads?

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Can't tell the difference between Labour and Tory policies any more. Think I'll join the Socialist Workers - they at least have a coherent list of policies - but then, so does Labour; it is "give our corporate friends everything they want in order that they can make as much money as they like oput of the British people. Let them charge huge amounts for necessities like water, fuel and food" and, most of all, "fuck the British public - if they're stupid enough to vote for a bunch of capitalist lackeys like us, they deserve all they get".

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Why are we in the EU? So that those bastard capitalists can fleece us more and more. We need to get out of the EU, to tell the US to stuff it and to go back to our trade links with the Commonwealth.

Bush is at it again. He's threatening to attack Iraq simply for denying it has "banned" weapons. Aren't these the "banned" weapons that the disgusting arms companies in the US produce in huge numbers?



Apparently, Georgie-boy wants to bomb Iraq 'cos Saddam's "lying" about not having naughty weapons. How does this equate with the US "lying" about not having biological and chemical weapons programmes for years. Surely he should be bombing himself for "lying" to the rest of the world, to his own electorate and, probably, even to his own family. Why won't this creepy, anal little man admit that he wants Iraq's oil so that at least we know the war's going to be fought on economic grounds rather than for some high ideals about protecting the world from Saddam.



The US corporations bought this president many years ago and they're now buying a war in Iraq so they can have cheap oil for a few more years. I'd rather see them spend the billions that'll be wasted on this pointless adventure on the development of non-fossil fuels so that this war and the many that will come after it, don't need to be fought.



One US president warned against the power of the military-industrial complex. Why didn't his fuck-witted countrymen listen to him and curtail the power of the military and the large corporations many, many years ago?

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I really hate all these chicken-hawk politicians, Bush and Blair especially, but there are many others (Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Hoon, Straw etc) who want to send kids to fight in their evil war when they have never had the guts to go and fight anywhere themselves. I would never fight for anything that wasn't personal, so I've never joined the forces and never would, but I also would not send troops anywhere to get involved in any war.



Chicken-hawks take a different view: they're too gutless to have joined the forces themselves or, in many cases of the leading Republicans in the US, failed to serve when conscripted, but they're more than happy to send other people's sons and daughters off to die so that their equally spineless corporate owners can have access to cheap oil. I will guarantee that no child of one of these selfish, snivelling worm bastards will ever fight one of their wars. Bastards. I hate them, hate them, hate them.

Blunkett may have got one thing right. He's rejected a suggestion by his shadow in the Tory party that we need a Department of Homeland Security, saying that we need accountability and transparency in gov. This is much better than the ridiculous congressmen and senators of the US who have rolled over for their president to fuck each and every one of them in the arse with their support for non-unionized, unaccountable thought police.



Is this the same Blunkett who's trying to get us all imprisoned without trial (see below)? Or is there something I've missed here and what he has up his sleeve is worse even than Oliver Righwing of the Tory party wants?

Looks like Blair and Blunkett have surpassed themselves with their new criminal law proposals. They want to allow hearsay evidence in court, allow a jury to be told of previous convictions, allow judges to hear cases alone, remove double jeopardy.



Why don't they just say "an accusation has been made, that means you're guilty, your execution's been scheduled for tomorrow morning, say 'ta, ta' to your family and friends", 'cos that's what this lot adds up to.



I keep telling folks that Blair / Blunkett / Prescott / Brown etc are a group of fascists; no-one listens; perhaps they'll believe me when the little fuckers' thought police come and take them away at three o'clock one morning.

I've been reading YellowTimes.org and found this piece Shostakovich, Symphony No. 11 by John Brand. Everyone who's concerned about the destruction of our civil liberties, especially in the US, but everywhere else, too, should read it.



Ted Rall has another great piece at SmirkingChimp.com 'Never Again', A Fascist Fairy Tale, Circa 1938.

Just been to the motorbike show at the NEC.



I was most impressed with some of the new bikes: Suzuki's new SV1000, Kawasaki's new Z1000. I really need one (either) of them.



Bought a new exhaust can for my bike (a Suzuki SV650) which I'm hoping to fit tonight.

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No political comment today except - Tony Blair's a deceitful twat; he and his wife both had free educations which made them both into very highly lawyers and politicos - for him to now be trying to force students to pay for their courses is deeply hypocritical and the worst kind of do-as-I-say politics. God, I hate him and everything he stands for.

First blog. Interested to see what I can find to write here.

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Appalled by the Gov's handling of the fire-men's fire-fighter's
strike. Can't believe that Blair / Prescott can have failed to learn anything from
previous Govs' handling of public-servants' strikes. They seem to have failed to
notice that there's popular support for the strike and that pushing all this too
hard will lead to an anti-Gov backlash. Prescott's latest threat to send in troops
to grab fire-engines from the stations has completely missed the public mood and
will lead to very ugly, possibly Gov-toppling scenes. That might be good for a laugh -
the Gov-toppling, I mean.

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Bush / Blair continue to rattle their sabres over Iraq. The scary thing is that those
sabres won't stay in their scabbards for too much longer. These two murderous bastards
are more than intent on attacking Iraq to "liberate" its oil into Western markets cheaply. I detest the fact that this is going to be done
with my money and in my name when I want absolutely fuck-all to do with their mindless
cruelty.



I still wonder at the British public's complete inability to elect a Prime Minister with
even the tinyest hint of humanity or humility in him/her.



I can only believe that Blair has his head stuck so firmly up Bush's arse because Bush has
made it clear what'll happen if Blair doesn't support him - early destruction of the UK
under a hail of US nuclear weapons. Same goes for the spineless bastards in the UN Security
Council. If they'd all stand up to the racist, fascist, brainless cunt, he couldn't fight
them all at the same time, could he?. Twat.

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Bush will definitely find an excuse to attack Iraq. If the weapons inspectors find nothing
incriminating, Bush'll say it was all hidden before the inspectors got there and will bomb
the place. If they find anything, he'll bomb the place. I hate that smirking, moronic,
dyslexic, twat. His face always reminds me of a chimp that's just had a particularly
satisfying shit and I'm certain that his mind is at about the same level of evolution.

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If any member of my family, especially one of my children, gets hurt because of this war,
I'll become a fucking terrorist myself and it won't be Saddam I'm gunning for - it'll be
Blair / Bush / Annan and their gutless supporters in their respective Govs.

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US's Democrats, though extremely right-wing by my reckoning of politics, seem to have made a reasonably
good choice as their new minority House leader, Nancy Pelosi. For a US politician, she
seems fairly sound and may be just what the elecorate over there need - to show them just
how fascistic their current gov is.

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Everywhere I look at work there's some new crap about 'standards'. ISO-this, ISO-that,
ISO-the-fucking-other, but nowhere do I see anything other than a means of employing ever-more
people in the standards-engineering industry. I keep looking for the bit that'll make my job
easier, but it gets harder and harder as these, the hard-of-thinking, invent more and more
proposterous ways of making us all do our jobs their way.



I have something to say to anyone who works in the standards industry - fuck off out of my
life and get a real job, you sad bastard.