Climate Change, Extinction: It's not just for Polar Bears anymore

It's for us. Yes I'm alarmist, 'cos I'm alarmed. Calling people alarmist does not make the alarm go away, it just points to the alarm.



That's one of the many things about denialists, they claim that things won't be so bad yet none of them are doing any original research to establish if this is true... They just cherry-pick holes (or try) in other peoples' hard work...

It’s the same tiny bunch of skeptics being quoted by right-wing blogs. None are doing new research that casts the slightest doubt on the scientific consensus that’s been forming for two decades, a set of conclusions that grows more robust with every issue of Science and Nature and each new temperature record.

Wikileaks Video of US Army Killing Civilains

This is a really sad and shocking video; a US gunship shoots at a group of people killing them - the group includes 2 journalists - then when a passing van stops to take a wounded man off to hospital - decided the shoot the shit out of that too; the van has 2 kids in it. The gunner and his mate a quite nonchalant about it all declaring that it is the parents fault for taking their child into a war zone; but the whole fucking country is a warzone. What choice did they have?

This is pure and simple murder. And the US military has been busy lying and covering up the murder. I found this video on PZ Myers's blog and his comments are sobering:

They shot journalists and children, all the while laughing and congratulating themselves on the 'nice' pile of bodies they had produced. And when they see soldiers on the ground rushing injured children to aid, they say, "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle."

I am ashamed. We are the storm troopers, the murderous invaders, the butchers of children, the laughing barbarians. We aren't in Iraq to help those people, our troops are there to oppress them…when we aren't gunning them down outright.

Oh, and go ahead, turn on your TV news. The top stories on CNN are the iPad, Jessica Alba planning to adopt a baby, and Tiger Woods. Doesn't that fill you with confidence?

In war the first casualty may be truth, but sadly the second seems to be kids.

Flogging the Scientists

There is another amazing video up a Crock of the Week. These videos are great at poking huge holes in the denailist wingbags...



Watch and share!

The Nature of Evil: It's In Us!!

A must-listen talk by the social psychologist Phillip Zimbardo on the nature of evil...



In a nutshell, evil is less within us and more within the structures we live within - normal people who are not sadists, in the wrong circumstances, in a matter of days can become the sadists we see in Abu Graib. It is mindless obedience to hierarchy that kills more people than disobedience to laws. The people at the top of a hierarchy create the system that breeds evil in people who would not otherwise do so. The irony is that Bu$h and Bliar in their war on evil, created a system of evil in the process. (A point John Gray warns us of!)

But there is also message that none of us know what we will do if faced with the same situation - we all have this capacity for evil. Our protection is to ensure that we do not allow the hierarchy systems and/or personality cults that encourage it.

On the plus side heroism is the same - we all have the capacity to do good in such situations...

Lying Fucking Cops, Complicit Fucking Media

I fucking knew it - when that poor guy at the G20 protests in London died, I was told second hand that the police has been pelted with bottles when they tried to help him. Lying fucking bastards. Not only was this not the case, but footage that has emerged clearly shows a copper assaulting the guy - knocking him to the ground, while the protesters are the ones trying to help him up. Lying fucking bastards. They lied at Forest Gate, over De Menezes and what does the IPCC do? Fuck all. Useless. Here's the footage:



So what did the media say about the lying police claims? Did they investigate? Well the Guardian did and credit to it, but plenty of others took the lying police claims at face value and reported them;

The Sun: Man dies as bottles lobbed at rescuers. POLICE were battered with beer bottles and cans as they desperately tried to save a dying man at the height of the G20 riots in London last night.

Sky News: The man was found after collapsing at a protest camp near the Bank of England. Police said bottles were thrown at them while they attempted to treat him.

So as a result of this type of reporting we get things like this; a commentor on the Independent laps it all up; "A law abiding citizen died on his way home from work died because of the protests not because of the police."

I am not surprised that the media don't learn from past police lies. They don't want to. This is why we should be doing our own media.

More on this;

http://bristle.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/the-guardian-the-police-murdered-ian-tomlinson/
and
http://www.chickyog.net/2009/04/02/sky-news-not-learning-lessons/

In and Out of YouTube

A few weeks ago the Observer published a list of choice picks from YouTube charting some of the history of pop;

Want to see Iggy's 'crowd walk'? A teenage Van Morrison? Since the creation of YouTube, rare footage of your pop idols is just a click away...On YouTube pop is not a neat and tidy form that can be arranged into historical segments but a gloriously random, fragmented, elusive entity. And it is all the more exciting for that.

Cool. Now I'd like to add my own list...


Big Black - "jordan, minnesota" (live)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=l_gfuN_Llqs
A band that blew me away when I first heard them. At that point I thought Ned's Atomic Dustbin was radical music. Big Black was a wake-up call to a wider, more experimental, darker, more subversive and exciting world. One of the comments on the page says it all, “Today's rock music has no relevance once you listen to this.”


Mudhoney - In 'N' Out Of Grace (live)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jFE159q6GWg
While Nirvana were the band from the grunge scene that really made it, I was – for my sins – a grunge kid before the scene broke into the mainstream and the anthem then was Mudhoney's 'Touch Me I'm Sick' – but for my money, this is their best track and it's best heard live with the distortion and noise that defined grunge.

Dead Kennedys - Holiday in Cambodia
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0R9_ZLxsmmg
An amazing punk band that made catchy, almost poppy, punk-rock without compromising the message one inch. Video show Jello's mad-ball green gloves. Love DK.


Berlin Riot 1999 (Atari Teenage Riot LIVE)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_ab7Dksqfnw
ATR were the band that introduced me to breakcore and I would suggest, a hugely influential band on lots of producers of breakcore. This video is a real punk-rock ironic moment – ATR on a float bashing out tracks like 'Revolution Action' and 'Start the Riot' when a riot starts! It's less 'I predict a riot' and more 'I'm in the middle of a fucking riot!' The German riot cops wear green overalls, so they look for like the military attempting a coup than protect and serve.

Venetian Snares - Szamar Madar
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8rjyVF6a4xo
I love this video and I love this track. The best representation of breakcore in a music video I have scene, it captures the music perfecly and IMHO its a million miles better that 99% of the pop-video dross that the industry churns out day-after-day.

What's yours?