Why Terry Jones Is My Hero

First of all, go and read this.

Brilliant, isn’t it?

Of course, it’s much better than any similar polemic I could write because Jones is obviously a good leap ahead of me in terms of raw intelligence.

But what strikes me is that Terry Jones doesn’t need to say any of this. My Dad has been forwarding me his anti-war commentary for months now and every time I read anything Jones writes, I feel uplifted.

It would be easier for him to keep quiet. It seems that’s the policy all our more “dangerous” and “political” celebrities have been pursuing. I’m not a famous person and yet the few anti-war rants I’ve written have netted me a steady flow of hate-email from fascists, Blairites and other assorted right-wing nutters.

Imagine the amount of shite an internationally famous Python like Terry Jones must get.

And yet…

And yet, he keeps writing, he keeps speaking out when others stay silent. He knows that a great evil is being done and he won’t meekly comply with the powers that be who wish to see it all carried out without even a squeak.

He’s an example to all of us who have opposed the murder of innocent Iraqis from the very start, he’s using his celebrity and status to try and save lives, to avert more US / UK lead atrocities against Iraq.

Terry Jones is my hero

Two Emails Speaking Sense

hey jyoti,

how are you ?

just read this from the bbc website….ha! the cheek

Blair condemns Euro 2004 violence

England know they could be sent home if trouble continues
Tony Blair says those involved in continuing violence in Portugal “bring
shame on our country”.

Speaking at prime minister’s questions, he said the clashes in Albufeira on
the Algarve were “completely intolerable”.

Portuguese police said 32 English fans were arrested overnight, adding to a
dozen held on Monday night.

England were told before Euro 2004 that hooliganism could see the team sent home, but Uefa has said the recent violence is unrelated to matches(Source: BBC News)

so killing loads of innocent people is justified…but a few beers and fight
is “completely intolerable”.

twat.

take care

moo

A good point, well made!

And my mate Matt made the same point in fewer words:

I read this and felt incredibly tired of it all: [snip]

Football yobs disgrace England

By Clare Lovell

ALBUFEIRA, Portugal (Reuters) – Prime Minister Tony Blair says hooliganism
linked to Euro 2004 is completely intolerable and that the police should
make sure those involved face heavy penalties.

Police arrested 34 people, nearly all British, early on Wednesday, in a
second night of violence in Portugal’s Algarve tourist region.

Blair said they brought shame on their country.

[/snip]

pot, kettle??

It’s good to know there are a few people out there who are still using their brains…

US Says: No Link Between Iraq and WTC Attack


� Steve Bell, 2004

The US national commission examining the 11 September 2001 attacks has found no “credible evidence” that Iraq helped al-Qaeda militants carry them out.

The statement appears in a report on al-Qaeda published before the final public session of the commission.

It contradicts remarks by the US vice-president about Saddam Hussein’s “long-established ties” with al-Qaeda.”(Source: BBC News)

So what was the American war against Iraq all about then?

Only a moron or Tony Blair would deny the evidence of the last year: no WMDs found, huge uprisings by the Iraqi population against their supposed liberators and now an official judgement that the main justification used by the warhawks for the attack on Iraq was false.

Whoops.

Still, no harm done, eh? I’m sure the tens of thousands of civilian Iraqis were glad to die underneath the barrage of US & UK bombs, knowing their deaths would guarantee umm… well, what?

Not a reduction in terrorism. That’s in fact increased. The US government was crowing about reducing terrorism but it was yet another lie:

When the annual report was issued April 29, senior administration officials used it as evidence the war was being won under Bush.

“We weren’t saying terrorism has gone away. The report clearly says terrorism is a main problem facing the world today. We’ve got to continue going after terrorists,” Powell said.

“But based on the data we had within the report, there was a suggestion that the number of incidents had dropped and it was the lowest since 1969,” he added. “That turns out not to have been correct. We were wrong. We will correct it.”(Source: The Guardian)

An unfortunate error that wasn’t noticed until a leading Democrat, Rep. Henry Waxman of California, contested the Bush PR. Funny that, eh?

Still, at least all those Iraqis died to give their country a true, independent democracy, didn’t they? Not quite:

In the case of Iraq, the question also arises of whether the occupation will actually end on June 30. In crucial matters, such as oversight of the armed forces, Iraq will not have true sovereignty. (Source: International Herald Tribune)

Ahh…so when the US says “full sovereignty” they actually mean the US government still runs the country. So much for the American notion of democracy. Sounds a lot like the old Soviet idea of “sovereign nation” for the countries it invaded and annexed.

The illegal invasion of Iraq was justified by the warhawks on these three points:

1. Massive stockpiles of WMDs
2. Iraq as a key supporter of the Al Quaeda terrorist network
3. Removing the dictator Hussein would bring democracy to Iraq. There would be no resistance to US + UK forces from non-Hussein forces since they would be welcome liberators.

All three of the above points are completely and utterly false. They continue to be peddled to us by Butcher Blair and his New Labour warhawks.

This continued barrage of utter bullshit shows just how stupid they think the British public is.

Only time will tell if their low opinion of our intelligence is justified.

Bless Playlist 14/6/2004 (NO DJING NEXT WEEK!)


Pedro The Lion

This week’s best new track was the beautiful ‘Bands With Managers’ by Pedro The Lion. How can you not warm to lyrics like:

“Bands with managers are going places.
Bands with messy hair and smooth white faces.”

Check out their new album, ‘Achilles Heel.’ It’s got a bit of a slagging critically but I think it’s a great, poppy album that you can both sing along to and think about afterwards. Most bands don’t manage either of those feats, let alone both.

The best old track was ‘Ghost Rattle’ by Hula. I’m sure it’s only a matter of weeks before some hip young things rip off their entire aesthetic and are acclaimed as geniuses by the NME.

Notebooks out, plagiarists! :

New Christs – We Got This!
Jello – Chamchimzee
Ivor Cutler – I Got No Common Sense
X-Ecutioners – The Countdown Part 2
Magnetic Fields – I Don’t Want To Get Over You
Radio Berlin – Eyes Like Lenses
OOO – Group Heartbeat
Yak Ballz – Giddy Up
Slaughter Mob – Dub Weapon
Sweep The Leg Johnny – Insomnia Pays
PJ Harvey – This Mess We’re In
Raymond Scott � Hostess Twinkies
LCD Soundsystem – Losing My Edge
The Books – The Future, Wouldn’t That Be Nice?
Small Brown Bike – The Cold
John Barry – The Girl With The Sun In Her Hair
They Might Be Giants – Broke In Two
Main Flow – Worldwide Feat. P Killer & Defari
Hula – Ghost Rattle
Cex – Destination: Sexy
The Decemberists – The Legionnaire’s Lament
Jay-Z + Danger Mouse – December 4th
A.F.I. – Hearts Frozen Soil
Baba Brooks & His Band – Independence Ska
Felix Da Housecat – Madame Hollywood
Raising The Fawn – Gwendolyn
Beanie Sigel – Mac Man
Telefon Tel Aviv – 8 Track Project Cut
From Autumn To Ashes – The After Dinner Payback
Pedro The Lion – Bands With Managers
Phoenix – Too Young
The Pharcyde – Runnin’
Shellac – Canaveral
Grandaddy – Now It’s On
Tomato Weirdo – La Salle De Bain
Atreyu – You Eclipsed By Me
Canibus – Cemantics
LB – Superbad
Minus The Bear – Spritz!!! Spritz!!!
Deerhoof – The Eyebright Bugler
Throwdown � Raise Your Fist
Death Cab For Cutie – I Was A Kaleidoscope
Box Set Authentic – Darlin’
NOFX – It’s My Job To Keep Punk Rock Elite
Li’l Cap’n Travis – Steady As She Goes

P.S. – No DJing next week cos apparently there’s some kind of sports tournament on at the moment?

Why Butcher Blair Must Go


Ali Ismaeel Abbas, just one of Butcher Blair’s victims

I voted in the recent elections, by postal ballot. Where I could, I voted for Respect / George Galloway. Where I couldn’t, I voted for the Lib Dems as being the least appalling of the options.

I will never vote (New) Labour again while Butcher Blair is leader of the party.

And it looks like a lot of other lifetime Labour voters are thinking similarly. Labour have now lost 476 councillors in the elections, leading to loss of control of 8 councils.

That’s 476 Labour councillors punished by the electorate in a direct protest of the illegal invasion of Iraq. But Butcher Blair seems unbowed and unrepentant, despite this massive failure for his New Labour project:

“With the Butler inquiry into the handling of intelligence on Iraq due to report next month, Downing Street is drawing up contingency plans. Many backbenchers want the government to defuse anger by apologising, arguing that ministers could concede that, while they acted in good faith on the best evidence against Saddam Hussein, intelligence reports were not accurate.

Blair is understood to see no need for an apology and has argued publicly that the broader pattern seen by intelligence services is unlikely to have been wrong.”(Source: The Guardian)

No need for apology? Where are the WMDs? Where are the enormous stockpiles of weapons pointed at Britain and ready to launch a devastating attack “within 45 minutes?”

More than that: where are the 10,000+ innocent Iraqi civilians killed as a result of Blair’s insane warmongering? What were their lives sacrificed for?

Nothing.

Just the petty political machinations of another deluded psychopath who believes he has a personal hotline to God. Tony Blair took this country to war under false pretences, manufacturing fake dossiers as and when needed, massaging every piece of propaganda fed to the media.

And then this country, in league with the USA, rained missiles and cluster bombs and bullets and shells and mortars down upon Iraq until Red Cross workers retreated in horror at the truckloads of dismembered victims. We never got to see those pictures on our TV, of course.

This is what Roland Huguenin, one of six International Red Cross workers in the Iraqi capital, said:

“There has been an incredible number of casualties with very, very serious wounds in the region of Hilla. We saw that a truck was delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight. It was really very difficult to believe this was happening.”

We killed all those civilians. Us. We committed the biggest terrorist atrocity this year, far bigger by orders of magnitude than anything Al Quaeda has pulled off.

Can you see now why I call him Butcher Blair? How can someone who is a human being, who himself has children, be so completely uncaring about the lives of tens of thousands of people. How can any sane person treat those lives like pawns in a political chess match, sacrificing them without a second thought?

Can you see the arrogance of the man? He’s directly responsible for every death caused by British forces, for every Iraqi prisoner tortured, for every child now sitting with missing limbs as a result of British cluster bombs.

All for nothing.

And yet, he still sees no need to apologise.

We mounted the biggest marches in British political history against his criminal crusade and he paid no attention.

Now, his party gets its worst ever ‘kicking’ at the polls and he still remains sanguine.

There’s a monster living at 10 Downing Street. Worse than anything you’ll see at your local multiplex, more evil than any serial killer this country has ever produced.

Still… never mind, eh? The football’s on telly… let’s just forget about it all, eh?

Pass us that sixpack…

Bless Playlist 7/6/2004


Li’l Cap’n Travis

Now, tonight was a night I definitely should have played some Heatwave…

It was clammily, clummily hot in the Bless, even my teeth were boiling. But although the audience looked like the cast from Ice Cold In Alex, I still got loads of requests and managed to keep people bopping (in their seats).

Best new track tonight was Li’l Cap’n Travis‘ ‘Steady As She Goes,’ a wonderful Pavementesque country ballad that suited the heat perfectly. Have a listen yourself, there’s a kosher mp3 available here, courtesy of the band’s label, Glurp. I just love that pedal steel solo… mmmm…

The best old track was Brian Peter St John Le Baptiste de la Salle Eno‘s ‘Needle In The Camel’s Eye’ from the album ‘Here Come The Warm Jets.’ A seminal album (d’you see what I’ve done there?). A great pop song from a brilliant songwriter, producer and serious fashion loony. Released thirty-one goddamn years ago!

For your pleasure:

Brian Eno – Needle In The Camel’s Eye
Kool Keith – Lost In Space
9 Lazy 9 – High Fashion
Grand Funk Railroad – Upsetter
The Promise Ring – Happy Hour
El-P – Tuned Mass Damper
Refused – Protest Song ’68
Shins – Kissing The Lipless
OOO – Group Heartbeat
Skillz – Take It Back
Lamb Of God – Purified
Mel Torme – Games People Play
Pixies – Dead
Mr. Velcro Fastener – I Hear You
Descendents – GCF
The Decemberists – July, July!
Non Phixion – Rock Stars
At The Drive In – Sleepwalk Capsules
Artie Shaw – Traffic Jam
Minor Threat – Filler
Architecture In Helsinki – The Owls Go
Venetian Snares – Li2 Co3
Ben Folds – Protection
Asian Dub Foundation – New Way, New Life
The Clash – Atom Tan
From Autumn To Ashes – The After Dinner Payback
Herb Alpert – Casino Royale
Jens Lekman – Black Cab
Me – Eu
Mclusky – Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues
Jedi Mind Tricks – Walk With Me
Li’l Cap’n Travis – Steady As She Goes
Of Montreal – Chrissie Kiss The Corpse
Cursive – Some Red Handed Slight Of Hand
Minikon – Hollywood Rabbits
Black Flag – Wasted
Pedro The Lion – Big Trucks
Ben Kweller – Wasted & Ready
Gang Starr – The Ownerz
Dave Edmunds – Girls Talk
Randy Newman – Ragtime
Violent Femmes – Prove My Love
David Sylvian & Ryuichi Sakamoto – Bamboo Houses

BAT: Real Supervillains


Martin Broughton, Chairman of BAT. This is the man who plans to give your kids cancer

I grew up reading comics. I still read comics, although now they’re called graphic novels for some wanky reason.

In comics, the supervillains have amazingly diabolical and quite often slightly unbelievable schemes of evil. That is the point, after all – it’s all meant to be much larger than real life.

But how will comic writers compete with BAT, who have now upped the evil stakes of reality?

“Britain’s largest tobacco company has been testing chocolate and alcohol-flavoured cigarettes, which campaigners say are aimed at enticing children to smoke.

British American Tobacco, whose brands include Rothmans and Lucky Strike, has been carrying out scientific trials on animals in Canada.

As well as chocolate, wine and sherry, BAT has also experimented with cocoa, corn syrup, cherry juice, maple syrup and vanilla.” (Source: The Independent)

Can you believe this? It sounds like it was lifted straight from a comic. Evil company decides to hook kids by making choccy-flavoured ciggies!

What the hell is going on? It seems to me that there are two rules for drug pushers:

1. If you’re a small-time pusher, just killing a few people around you and you don’t wear a suit, you get arrested and imprisoned

2. If you’re an enormous, multi-national pusher, killing millions of people for decades and you wear very nice suits, you get away with it. You’ll probably get a peerage and a gorgeous lifestyle.

In fact, you can deliberately target millions of children, as the alcohol industry does with alcopops, and nothing is done. Nothing. It’s prefectly morally acceptable for a business to help destroy the health of millions of children as long as it turns a tidy profit. Meanwhile, the tabloids whip-up moral panics about Ecstasy or crack or heroin, drugs which kill a handful of people a year compared to alcohol and tobacco. And that’s not even adding in the violent crimes committed by drunks.

It’s not human lives that matter: it’s profit.

Now BAT are openly testing product which is an attempt to link cigarettes to confectionary. I can’t think of a more cynical attempt to entice children to try a highly-addictive killer drug.

So. We have the supervillains. Where are the superheroes?

Screamadelica 1/6/2004

First time I’ve been in a month and I thought it’d be empty as a lot of the studes have gone home already. But it was very, very full!

Top dancealong song tonight was definitely BFF’s ‘Army’ which just pipped Fugazi’s ‘Full Disclosure’ to the post. Rarrr!

Click here for the piccies!