0845 Scamming The Poor

Being as I am currently on the dole I have reason on occasion to have to phone my local benefits office. Time was that I would just call the office up the road from me and that would be fine. They have however recently changed my local DWP into a JobCentrePlus, the ‘Plus’ means that it does less than it used to. No longer can the people at the office answer benefits enquiries I am now to phone an office on the other side of the city that has no regular phone number, just an 0845 number. I am sure that most people out there have come across these numbers before. The 0845 number for those of you that don’t know is a scheme that is presented to us as making things more convenient i.e. one number that can be called from anywhere in the country and is charged as a local call. Sounds OK eh? Well the thing is these numbers are no longer charged at local rate and the main reason a lot of places use them is that the organisation recieving the call makes money off the call.

That any business would jump at the chance to make money off people before they are even customers is hardly surrising and not the sort of thing that even gets me angry anymore. However when the Job Centre starts using them to make money out of claimants that really pisses me off. People who try to get by on state benefits are some of the poorest people in the country and that the very organization that is supposed to help them is making money out of us is disgusting.

It’s not only the job centre that is doing this however no! Glasgow City Council also use these 0845 numbers as a way of making money out of us when we need to contact them. Not content with selling the city out from beneath us they have now figured out that they can charge us if we want to complain!

Bastards the lot of them.

And as Cocksparrer sang all those years ago…

Take ‘em all,

one and all,

put ‘em up against a wall and shoot ‘em!

Anarchists Arrested In Penza, Russia

Two anarchists, Oslav Kirosheyev and Vitaly Bakhmasterov, were arrested on June 16th in the city of Penza for handing out leaflets. The comrades were arrested under anti-terror legislation for handing out the leaflets which read “Government is the prison of the people. Become an anarchist and free yourself!” they face possible imprisonment as well as expulsion from University.

The police are basically using anti-extremism legislation to outlaw all anarchist activity, just like in the good old days of uncle joe.

There is a russian language news story here and if anyone could offer a translation I would be most grateful. We must find some way of sending a message to the Russian authorities that we will not tolerate this kind of treatment of our comrades.

A possible fax for sending nasty letters about the case would be the city Duma (municipal government) :
3-01 54-18-12

Also the Russian consulate in Edinburgh is located at 58 Melville street and I’m sure that they would be more than happy to answer any question people may have. The phone number for the consulate is 0131-225-7098 and the fax is 0131 225-9587.

The embassy at 5 Kensington Palace Gardens, London can be reached on 0203-051-11-99

My Red Top Confusion

I just saw the headline on today’s Daily Rectum – ‘immigrant tells of horrific attack‘ or some such thing. My first thought was ‘yeah and it was encouraged by scum papers like youse’.
I thought I would write a wee bit about the press fostering racism so did a search on the rectums web site for ‘asylum seekers’ ‘immigrants’ and ‘illegal immigrants’. Guess what? I couldn’t find a single example of the rectum spouting reactionary rubbish about johnny foreigner. In fact all the articles about asylum seekers and immigrants were either really positive or neutral; even the stories tagged ‘illegal immigrants’ were neutral rather than the frothing bluster I was expecting of a red top.
Spun me out so it has, I may complain to the Press Complaints Commission about them not behaving in an acceptable manner for a red top. :-/

Bewildered at this I began to wonder whether my opinion of the other main stream papers was as skewed and that maybe the press had changed since I started ignoring them many years ago. Well I figured the best place to look, do a litmus test as it were, would be that old chestnut the Daily Hate Mail. The Hate Mail has for many,many, many years been a bastion of bigotry and a forum for the filthy felchery of fascists. There are probably not that many alive today that recall the Mails cheering of Mosley’s blackshirts or their owners chummy relationship with his ‘dear fuhrer‘. Surely if they have changed then it would mark a massive leap forward in the conscience of the media.

To my complete non-surprise they have not changed and are still bang at the job of promoting racism and hatred whilst doing their damnedest to drag this country even farther down the slippery slope into the cess pool of fascism.

Ach well, so much for wishful thinking.

Terrorists? My Arse!

So the Scottish Government is to spend £3.8 million on creating 50 counter terrorism jobs over the next two years. £3.8 million doesn’t sound like a lot of money considering the obscene sums that get spent on warfare and lining the pockets of the already wealthy but i even this amount a proportional amount in relation to the terrorist threat to Scotland?

Scotland itself has only ever been the target of one pathetic attempt at a terrorist ‘attack’ so why the need for all this money that could be better spent else where?

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said

“The Scottish Government is fully committed to the fight against terrorism and that is why we are equipping our police forces to tackle this menace”

What menace? A bunch of numpties attempted to drive a non-explosive explosive in Glasgow airport, failed dismally and only succeeded in hurting themselves and launching Smeato(tm) into stardom. Shaking in my boots so I am.

I say non-explosive explosive as, despite what was inferred by all the scumbag papers at the time gas bottles do not explode. They are under high pressure with a brass pressure valve on the top that breaks as the gas heats up and the bottle shoots off like a rocket. Frightening to witness yes and more than likely deadly to anyone it happens to hit but hardly the apocalyptic levels of carnage the sun et. al. claimed.

“”We all need to work together to reduce the threat of another terrorist attack.” said MacAskill. Well yes we do need to work together but not to defeat the sort of terrorist attack that you mean boyo. This announcement in itself constitutes a terrorist attack upon the people of Scotland. By spending all this money and warning of dire things to come if we do not ‘protect ourselves’ you foster a climate of fear.

I accuse you Kenny MacAskill of terrorism in the highest order. You and your cronies in Edinburgh are guilty of spreading terror, fear and paranoia throughout the Scottish populace with the intent of achieving political ends.

Throwing more and more money at the terrorist ‘threat’ is absolutely ridiculous. there have been less terrorist attacks in the UK over the last five years than in any five year period over the last twenty. The threat from terrorist attacks is significantly less since the good Friday agreement and the cessations of hostilities from the IRA(whichever flavour)

Since 2000 there have been 11 terrorist attacks. The 1990’s saw 24. The amount of terrorist attacks has not increased, it has dropped. What has increased however is the level of terror that is being inflicted upon us by the government and the media. Not since the cold war have we seen such a frenzy of fear-mongering from the powers that be and the press. Like pigs in shit they are revelling in their new found excuse to do away with what few civil liberties we have and the fear that they spread causes us to cheer them on as they tighten the chains around our ankles.

We already have more CCTV cameras in this country than anywhere else in the world, id cards in the pipeline, government plans to intercept every e-mail and mobile phone calls. Our health service is being destroyed, our school system is being privatised, our friends and family members are being sent to their deaths for a profit margin in Iraq and Afghanistan, our communities are being run into the ground, racism and intolerance are being fostered and encouraged by the media and scum like the BNP. We are to put it bluntly on our way to hell in a handcart.

So we really do have something to be afraid of but it sure as hell isn’t terrorism as the media portrays it.

A Las Barricadas

Seems like I’m in a bit of a musical mood today. I absolutely love this song and hearing it sung by loads of people like in the above video sends shivers up my spine. For those of you who don’t know A Las barricadas is a song that was written and sung by anarchists during the Spanish revolution whilst they were fighting the Fascist Falange on one front and eventually the counter revolutionary stalinists on the other.

The lyrics were written by Valeriano Orobón Fernández and it was sung to the tune of Warszawianka 1905. The lyrics in Spanish are:

Negras tormentas agitan los aires
nubes oscuras nos impiden ver
Aunque nos espere el dolor y la muerte
contra el enemigo nos llama el deber.

El bien más preciado
es la libertad
hay que defenderla
con fe y con valor.

Alza la bandera revolucionaria
que llevará al pueblo a la emancipación
En pie el pueblo obrero a la batalla
hay que derrocar a la reacción

¡A las Barricadas!
¡A las Barricadas!
por el triunfo
de la Confederación.

Which translate into English as:

Black storms shake the sky
Dark clouds blind us
Although death and pain await us
Against the enemy we must go

The most precious good
is freedom
And we have to defend it
With courage and faith

Raise the revolutionary flag
Which carries the people to emancipation
Working people march onwards to the battle
We have to smash the reaction (or “reactionaries”)

To the Barricades!
To the Barricades!
For the triumph
of the Confederation

Absolutely beautiful song. Here’s the original version from a recording made during the revolution itself followed by a slightly punkier version by Spanish band Los Muertos De Cristo.

Ach hell here’s a funky lounge version of the song as well.

No Pasaran!

La Lucha Continua!

Atheists=Smart, Believers=Thick – It’s Science Dummies!!

Richard Lynn, emeritus proffesor of psychology at the University of Ulster will argue in a forthcoming paper that there is a link between intelligence and religious non/belief. In the paper, due to be published in the journal Intelligence, he cites various studies done over the years concerning religious belief. One such study showed that in a survey of the Royal Society there were only 3.3% of its members who claimed any form of religious belief whilst 68.5% of the Uk population at the time claimed to be believers.

Whilst to me it certainly comes as no surprise that academically minded people should come to the mind-numbingly obvious conclusion that there is no god, buddah, thor or zeus; I’m not sure how much to take his research seriously as Lynn has in the past made links between intelligence and both gender and race. That he done so leads me to believe that he is merely looking at statistics and not taking into account other societal elements.

The link between religious belief and intelligence does for me seem to be a no brainer. I’m not talking about academics here either but regular everyday folk. I can count on one hand the intelligent people of faith that I have met who weren’t in some way emotionally damaged. In the paper Lynn points out that all children are believers, we all believed in Santa now didn’t we, but as they grow and become more intelligent and questioning they become agnostic. No one leaves junior school still believing in Santa and it’s not that great a leap of intelligence to apply the same cold logic to jay-sus and his beardy daddy in the sky.

Unfortunately in most schools there are religious gatherings most mornings and kids are taught that either god exists – fact or that it is somehow taboo to question his/her/its existence. This, in my (n)ever so humble opinion acts as a mental block to taking the next logical and rational step and questioning the theocracy.

Education, in British schools, is woefully underfunded and with overcrowded class rooms and mile upon mile of red tape for teachers then it is little wonder that kids are not taught the wonders of the world through science which leaves them prey for superstitious cults like christianity to keep them mentally stunted. Religion should have no place in schools apart from in history and anthropology classes. Teaching our children that there is an omnipresent being in the sky that watches everything that they do and, should they be naughty, will punish them by burning them in a lake of fire for all eternity is tantamount to child abuse.

I know that Professor Dawkins had already said this in much more polite and eloquent form but it really gets my goat thinking about how our society has been crippled by this superstitious nonsense. As if capitalism wasn’t bad enough we’ve got these mental parasites feeding off our alienation and powerlessness and telling us that we will get what we deserve after we’re dead.

Bollocks! It’s my fucking world, the state and the capitalists have stolen it with the help of the mumbo jumbo types and I want it back. I’ll be willing to share like.

Oh well time for a song I feel.

Futuristic Tales Of The Here And Now

Cory Doctorows book for young adults that I reviewed a wee while ago has spent the last four weeks on the New York Times best sellers list. This is the first time a book licensed under the Creative Commons has done so, that this book is a sci-fi novel in which the main bad guys are the US Department of Homeland Security (still not going to link to them) is quite something.

For those who have not read my review you should do so asap, you will also be able to download the .pdf from the review as well.

Doctorow is quite a talent in the world of Science Fiction and I have been a fan ever since I first read Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom last year. In fact that was the first book I had ever read on a computer screen. I have a distaste for reading long documents on a screen and much prefer to have good old fashioned wood pulp ‘tween my fingers for anything more than a page or two.

The work of Cory Doctorow however I pile through whatever format it’s presented in.

Cory has just had a series of his short fiction gems transformed into graphic novel form, Cory Doctorows Futuristic Tales Of The Here And Now. I finished reading the last story five minutes ago and heartily recommend that everyone, fan of graphic novels or not, check it out.

Half a dozen stories have been given the graphical make over by half a dozen different artists giving each story its own unique style. The range of stories is quite representative of Cory’s work from Anda’s Game featuring a young girl playing an MMORPG who gets involved in a workers struggle to the humorous When Sys Admins Ruled The World and the disturbing condemnation of Intellectual Property _ After The Siege.

Each story is followed up with a short interview with Cory and gives a nice insight into his motivations for the tales.

You can grab the .pdf here but I would really recommend that you go out(?) and buy a copy so you can savour the artwork and read it in the way it was meant to be read.

:)

Moshe the artist has been sent to the gulag for some minor indiscretion, where it appears he will be left to rot, until one day Stalin asks what became of him. Moshe is immediately brought back from Siberia, dressed in smart clothes, and taken to the Kremlin, where Stalin chides him: “Moshe, you haven’t been producing works of art lately. What’s the matter with you? Have you run out of ideas?”

“No, Comrade Stalin,” says Moshe. “I have an idea for a painting gestating now, and all I need is a studio and materials to bring it to fruition.”

“And what is the subject of this painting?” Stalin inquires.

“Lenin in Poland.”

“That’s a very fine subject,” says Stalin. “When the painting is complete you must invite me to the unveiling.”

So, a few weeks later, Stalin and members of the Politburo gathered at Moshe’s studio for the unveiling of his new painting, entitled Lenin in Poland. But when the curtains were drawn back, what confronted the visitors was a graphic picture of a man and a woman engaged in a sexual act. The man’s face was easily recognisable: it was Leon Trotsky, and the woman was unmistakably Lenin’s revered wife, Nadya Krupskaya. This outrageous image is met with stunned silence, until Stalin’s blurts out: “But where’s Lenin?”

Says Moshe: “In Poland.”

Automated Patriotism

Disgusted with the state of our beloved nation but not got time to properly articulate you objections?

Liberal Marxist soap dodgers turning your beloved isle into a cess pool but too angry to type or write?

Well here’s the tool for all you true Brits out there, the Twat-A-Tron.

Here are a couple of gems from this automated text generator, I get the feeling that it has already been put to great use on the comments sections of the Daily Mail and telegraph website.

Everyone knows non-christians are telling us what to do,, Somebody should go round their houses with a pair of pliers and a can of petrol,,, Oh wait, that wouldnt be ‘PC’ enough!!!

Dd you know that black people are rpomoting teenage pregnancy. The only solution is to string them all up. It is only a matter oft ime before race riots spill blood on our streets!!

fyi! its the ethnic minorities gays and lesbians complaining again. health tourists are playing the race card. soon we will elect jeremy clarkson as prime minister. bnp for england!!!

Lies damn lies and stistics!… eeryone knows terrorists are interfering in our lives again… Its time we sterolise them all… Will sex with nimals be legal next?!??

The Pirate Bay Killer?

According to a leaked memo(PDF) on the wikileaks site the US and European Commision are planning a new act in defence of intellectual property. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, ACTA, seeks to completely outlaw peer to peer (P2P) filesharing such as bittorrent. The act would make it unawful to use file sharing protocols even if you were doing so with the express permission of the licence holder. This would mean that downloading games, free movies and sharing any document would be illegal!

The document seeks to out law non-profit facilitaion of data transfer, the pirate bay killer of my title, as well as seeking to do away with multi-region dvd players.

ACTA is being pushed in the states by Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) whos top campaign contributers were, surprisingly, Time Warner, News Corp, Sony Corp of america and Walt Disney Co. to the tune of $21,000, $15,000, $14,000, $13,550 respectively.

The ‘entertainment’ industry has been hankering after something like this ever since the Napster case failed completely to stop people freely sharing their music collections online. They claim that filesharing is hurting their profits though I have never seen any financial reports that say that the industry is in anything but robust health. The megaliths of the entertainment industry are dinosaurs who are finding it increasingly difficult to adjust to the new media world that is emerging around them and this scares them. they are scared that if people can make copies of ‘their’ propertty then no one will want to buy ‘their’ products.

The funny thing is that I’m old enough to remember the 80’s, 1980’s that is not 1880’s you cheeky gits, and I wass under the impression that both the music and computer games industries would be out of business by now. Especially with the rate me and my friends would copy the latest spectrum computer tapes so that only one of us would have to buy the game. A couple of times we actually all chipped in to buy the game and a pile of blank tapes so that we could all play. it seems that home taping no more killed the music and computer game industry than p2p file sharing will.

All that ACTA will do is further criminalise ordinary people who only do that which people do naturally, we share.