A head full of Clint Eastwood

Okay be warned. This is where it gets ugly, or as Clint Eastwood so succinctly put it in Gran Torino, Fuckin' Ugly. And we all know how that ended. Yeah well... so be it.


So be it! In a discussion of Millenarian cults, how many do we think are well-meaning efforts led by people who earnestly believe everything they're on about? Perhaps we should put that in the past tense. In all of those end-of-the-world cults that found themselves still extant when the world didn't end, what percentage would we describe as good-hearted and benevolent? I'm not talking about the followers here: our opinion of them would be very low. Instead I'm talking about the charismatic people at the top of each respective pyramid, the ones who'd talked everyone into it. In fact, for any such group or cult that might be described as millenarian/messianic/
apocalyptic, what other words would ordinarily pop into our heads in describing them? Would they be good ones?

Otherwise, who am I describing here: "social outcasts adrift, making no sense of society as it stands, and yet seeking a purpose in life. Having rejected society, and society having rejected them they float hoping for a guru, a teacher who can lead them to rightness, fulfilment, salvation." Am I talking about the losers in the Raelians? Or Scientology? Or Jim Jones' People's Temple? The Children of God perhaps? Or am I talking about us, the hell-bent, truth-seeking extremities of the internet? Ha! As if those other sorry losers are anything like us. They all fell for bullshit CIA mind-control cults and we... well, we're too smart. There's no way we'd fall for some smooth talking spook bullshit artist.


Hell, thanks to Dave McGowan we even have the spotter's profile. He's demo-ed it over and over again - we see keep seeing the same guy always popping up. Run through the checklist with me now: born into a military family; physically abused as a child; joined the military; spent time in psych-wards; spent time in jail; hung out at Laurel Canyon; is musically gifted; met Charlie Manson; took every drug known to man; is super charismatic with true-believers hanging off his every word; talks to the gods with himself as interpreter; demands our belief. Yeah well, if we see that guy we'll know him for sure.

I know that there are people who think Dave McGowan is bullshit. Like m_astera! Which is interesting, very interesting. I wrote about m_astera before. Now I'll happily admit that I know nothing about the guy apart from what he asserts about himself in Les' various comments sections (and lately most of that unread). I'll also admit that what I wrote in that demolition piece could be off the mark. All I know for sure is that there's something wrong with that picture - something off-kilter, something photoshopped out, an unlikely element lit from the wrong direction. Or perhaps it's just a smell? Hard to say, either way he makes the hairs stand up on the back on my neck. I note with interest that I'm not the only one to have violent reactions to him. Honestly, he's that kind of guy.


Anyway he's come a long way now but still lives in the shadow of others I notice. Which is to say, Les's. But still, within that shadow he's achieving great things. Seems he's become Les' own personal co-pilot: astral travelling and seated at Les' right elbow as the two bravely fly into weirder and weirder territory. With an image of him as joystick-clutching aviator may I dub him m_aster_vator? He's got a hide like a rhinoceros, so why not? And hide or no, underneath it all he's a man for all seasons: arch sycophant, platitude spouting sage, and charmless and unforgiving foe of all who doubt him. Like I said - something wrong with that picture, man. And Dave McGowan is bullshit he says. Yeah right, where's Mandy Rice-Davies when you need her? In Israel? Whatever...

Second fiddle bullshit artists aside, in wondering at curiosities it always pays to come at things from the opposite direction. Given that the CIA/mind-control/satanist/paedophile crowd has never given up on the religion/cult gag, and given that every medium that exists is considered fair game, does anyone really imagine that the internet would get a pass? Between - 'Gosh, that's a bit a head scratcher. Let's skip it' and 'How do we make this work for us' one of them is an inevitability, a 100% lock in. Okay dandy, the question now is: What would that internet version of a charismatic cult leader look like? And don't worry about differences between the versions that came in other times and other places. There's no cookie cutter here. It's whatever works.


What other clues are there? Where does Les stand in this blink/blink twin pillar world of duelling entities? In this world there's only ever one bad guy, and in spite of idiotic overlaps you have to choose your camp and then point your finger in the same direction as everybody else. EITHER - It's Mike Rivero (et al) declaring It's all the Jews, and if you listen to the pin drop silence you can almost hear the hypnosis-tape refrain Satanists? What satanists? Repeat after me, there's no such thing. OR - It's Jeff Wells (et al) certain that It's all the Satanists. And the Jews? No Jews here says he, apart from the utterly marvellous and endlessly quotable Robert Zimmerman and Leonard Cohen, bless their souls.

Les, with his perpetual spot at WRH, is definitely amongst the former of these two. But with his background he could hardly be the other, could he? I'll admit that McGowan, mind-control, and paedophilia have copped mentions at Smoking Mirrors but I think the word 'cursory' would be appropriate. What meagre mentions they do get are as likely to be condemnatory as anything else. Perhaps 'short shrift' would be the right expression. Ever eager tag-team partner m_aster_vator clearly knows which way the wind blows.

Finally there's that old chestnut, money. People have to make a living you know. Does no one ever wonder how some people seem perpetually able to devote themselves full time to the internet with no visible means of support? (yeah yeah, pun). Oh alright, I admit it, I live at 'home', I don't work, and I bludge off the old man's pension. But I'm happy to point to my spotty output. If you want an example of a blogger who makes sense in this regard, you need only to look to Craig Murray. A drib here, a drab there. Who's got time for more? Not me that's for sure. I'll admit that there are people out there who are driven, who tirelessly work and work and have an output that shames everybody else. Still, where does the money come from? How do they pay the bills? Really I'd like to know because after my gig here with the old man is over, I'm out on my arse. And me, I couldn't think of anything nicer than to write all day and not have to work for a living - like a dream come true...


Well, there's everyone's daily dose of bad ugliness. I recommend you all go rinse your mouth out to get rid of the taste of shit. I told you it'd be fuckin' ugly. Which is to say, I would be ...balls out without a stitch of common decency. And that's the problem when you pull on a thread - the whole thing unravels and you're standing there stark bollock naked. Yeah well, I came into the world that way and I ain't got nothin' to hide otherwise, so... what the hell.

Oh, is that the bell? Thank God. Class dismissed. Or is it me ringing at the door? It's hard to know... regardless there won't be any Hail Mary's...

If you meet an anti-buddha on the road, who should kill whom?

If you meet Buddha on the road you must kill him. Excellent, but what if you meet an anti-buddha? And what if he's a pissweak fool of an anti-buddha who only wants to spend the rest of his life eating chocolates and cakes and watching Fox Sport on the TV? Can you kill him? Or is that too harsh? Me, I piked out. Instead I've spent the last four years aiding and abetting this anti-buddha (er... that would be my father) by keeping the fridge full of chocolates and cakes, and perpetually resetting the TV back to Fox Sports when he gets in a tizz and moronically sits there watching the steak knife channel. Ain't life swell.

Be warned, I hereby give the game away. Forget all that stuff about me as self-declared Buddhist railing at the death cult etc. Truth be known I'm a fellow with a heart full of hate who wishes his father was dead. If he carked it tomorrow I'd sing hallelujah. God, that's dreadful. Who the hell says such things? Perhaps I'm a small time death cult member? Or just a mamby-pamby bullshit wannabe? Perhaps I'm the death cult's Walter Mitty? Pocketa-pocketa-pocketa went his slippers as he shambled off to the toilet again and put paid to me wondering if he's dead yet. I tell you what, this dying caper would be so much quicker and easier if one didn't have to keep getting up and going to the toilet all the time. But then, thirty cups of tea a day will do that to you. Here, tea drinking, like going to the toilet, like every goddamn thing, qualifies as pathological.

What does it mean that my answer to the perennial question, 'How is your father?' has become, 'Don't ask me because I don't care. He's still alive it seems, but he's been that way for quite a while now. And shall continue, I expect, until we've all run melancholy mad. Or at least until I have...' Actually, that's the clever me. The real world me says, 'Don't ask me. I wish he was dead.' I apologise for saying it of course - I mean you have to what with the shocked look on the face of whoever's asking me. But really I'm past it now - I've ceased caring. Every second in this place has become perfectly and utterly hateful. I haven't hated a thing this much since my first year in China.


It's the mind games that got to me in the end. It's his idiot pretence that he's doing it all for other people, which is to say me since there's no one else here. Nearly four years of this shit and he's still asking me if I mind if he changes the channel. Which sounds normal until you realise that I've declared in no uncertain terms that I detest Fox Sports, that if it was up to me I'd throw the TV out the goddamn window, and that he should never ask me about changing the channel again. Ever. He's just being polite he says.

There isn't a single question I can ask him about what he'd like to do that isn't answered with, 'Well, what were you having?' I ask him if he wants any more salt and pepper and he says 'Well, what were you having?' Seriously, I'm not making that up. Now I no longer unravel the idiocy of such an answer and instead just shout at him - 'For chrissake, it's a simple question. Did you want more salt and pepper or not?' 'Er, no thank you.' Goddamn! It's like pulling fucking teeth! Every fucking time! Sign me up for the fucking death cult! Jesus!

The perversity is that I'm the author of my own misery. The only reason he's alive is because I keep calling the bloody ambulance. He'd have been dead at least four times over except for me. Trips to the emergency room aside, in between his truly insane consumption of processed sugar and grease, I pointlessly feed him healthy food. He eats half, throws out the rest and then has a piece of cheesecake. His thirty cups of tea a day is made with water I distil for him. Actually, I distil it for me but he drinks it all, about four litres a day. And that's the game we play. His role is to speed his demise and my role is to prolong it. The irony runs rampant what with him not quite wishing to die and me not quite wishing him to live. But as if anything ever made any sense here.


And then there's the retroactive aspect to it all. The nth degree perversity of my life here has cast in stark relief the fact that it was always this way. The only thing that was missing was that last little wafer thin mint to take us to the obvious conclusion. It's clear to me now that he was always a self-obsessed, self-pitying fool. I doubt that there was a man more cuckolded than my father, nor one who deserved it more. With every aspect of my childhood now viewed through this glass darkly, the family snapshots have turned into a series of Ralph Steadman illustrations.

For the last couple of years I've been wondering what I'd say at his funeral and just lately I've decided that I'm not even going to go. Fuck it. The only people who'll be there are my brothers and I've long since ceased caring what they think. Besides which, God spare me having to listen to their mawkish efforts.

Like I said - the world's crummiest Buddhist, me - a man who talks about selflessness all the time, and who goes through the motions, yet all the while his veins run with a fetid black ichor. Compassion? Compassion... I don't even know what it means anymore. Is it compassion to assist an anti-buddha in his delusional self-obsessed spiral into zombiedom? To feed him another spoonful of ashes and him with his mouth already full? The TV sport, the sweety bonbons, the silly mind games, all of it fodder for a hungry ghost who eats and eats, tasting nothing, and never to be sated. What's the point? It's all so purposeless.


Perhaps the right answer is to be possessed of limitless patience and to devote myself to his happiness. But what if the only way to make him happy was to sit and watch Fox Sport with him, be his chocolate buddy, and play the designated role in each of the various mind-game charades he perpetually comes up with? Or to put it another way, join him in his anti-buddhadom? While I'm at it, I'll buy the latest fashions, get a haircut, sign up to facebook, learn how to twitter, and join the Liberal (conservative) Party. God, I'd make his day.

He's everything I want to leave behind and yet here I am shackled to the fucker. Buddha left his wife and kids you know. Easy for him - if I left the old man would be dead in a week. If I stay he could live for years. Hoo-bloody-ray. Would anyone be surprised if I said my hair is falling out and my face is covered in a stress induced eczema? No really, I look like hell.

Oh shit, he's up now. There goes the morning. Ah, Fox Sports news. Fantastic. A fifteen minute bulletin that gets repeated over and over. And within that bulletin is a riff that gets repeated 50? 100 times? Who knows. I'd do the math except I can't think straight. How marvellously loud it is. Sing along - ♫ Dundun dader daderda dundun ♫ Dundun dader daderda dundun ♫ Dundun dader daderda dundun ♫ ad nauseam...


Run Away! Run Away! Down at the library it's time to tie things up - cue the soaring conclusion, the rolling rhythmic build up, and the step-off-the-precipice ending! Or maybe not. Nothing is a lock in and patchiness is the best you can hope for. I gotta tell you, I can barely think straight and it just gets harder and harder. So! Lest anyone wonder what's going on round at nobody's place, it could well be insanity because I've just about fucking had it.

---

But then again, the nature of monkey is irrepressible. No doubt I'll be back in a couple of days with a new peice and no one will ever know that I've secretly been going bonzo zonko. Whew! And let's hope they never find out!

a mundane path to the great whatever

I am not spiritual. The thoughts that flow through my head would more accurately be described as mundane. It's an interesting word that, mundane. It's meaning of dull or tedious is actually brand-spanking new, dating from the 19th century. Prior to that it was a precise antonym for spiritual. Sure enough, it derives from the Latin mundus meaning world. Put it all together and I think it describes me nicely: I am worldly, without spirituality, and dull. Don't argue - you should see my dreams when I have them. They are tedious beyond all imagining.

The thought of spirituality appeals of course - I recall watching a Buddhist nun on the television describing her life of complete ascetic isolation and thinking, bravo that sounds fantastic, but mundane fellow that I am, I couldn't get past the question: how did she do it? Where did her food come from? If I wanted to do the same thing, how would I go about it? She provided no answers but I expect it's actually quite simple. She was part of an order and probably lived a couple hundred metres up the mountain at the back of the temple. Or something like that. I expect there was a person tasked with taking food to her a couple of times a day.


Anyway, whatever we call that journey, I'm doing it, albeit in a mundane fashion. For me there is no magic, there is no feel-good. I simply do without things and see if I crash and burn. So far, so good. I now drink nothing but water (and fresh fruit juice occasionally). I've pretty much ditched processed food and anything with sugar in it. And just lately I've made a rather large step and done away with bread. My stomach has been a disaster since forever and rather than try and figure out if I had coeliac disease, or irritable bowel syndrome, or wheat allergy (or any of those grab-bags of symptoms in search of a name) I just thought fuck it, I'll take the lot. Thus I no longer eat wheat or bread or gluten or yeast or any of that stuff. It's do-able and I've done it and it's fine. I haven't wigged out and nor do I sit around pining for anything. By the same token, there is no pay-off. I do it and that's all there is to it.

Is that selflessness? Perhaps we could call it training for selflessness? All I know is I can wander past shops and cafes and feel no desire. And there's no magic to this. I did it just by doing it. It's my mundane best at attempting to emulate the Buddha. Or it's just a diet, ha ha - The man who mistook his diet for spirituality.

Food is one thing, and everything else is another (Phwooar! I kick the arse of truth!). And in amongst all that, I've dispensed with an entire field of human endeavour - nightlife. Or is that social life? For many it's the same thing. Whatever it's called, I no longer have the clothes for it. Speaking of which - whilst I'd prefer not to look like shit, I've utterly ceased attempting to impress. Fashion is a thousand years ago. Now I just wear thongs (which Americans call flip-flops, and yes, I understand that this is hysterically funny but... only for you), where was I? Oh yes, thongs, Thai fisherman's pants, and whatever logo-less t-shirts I find at the charity shop (easier said than done in this bullshit corporate world). And my hair is long, not because I like long hair - I don't - but because anything else would necessitate me choosing a style and maintaining it every month.


Sure enough, in this bullshit tourist town with its beach esplanade that distinguishes itself from every other beach esplanade in no way at all, I am the fellow that isn't meant to be there. The spruikers don't even bother with me now. As I walk back from the supermarket with my granny trolley full of groceries, somehow they just know that I'm not going to come into their restaurant, or buy a time-share unit, or contribute to the fat-cat surf life saving club. I am the wrong guy and obvious with it.

It's all about sex, you know. Looks, that is. Charles Darwin, the serene and impassive avatar of life and death (as I imagine him) was right - for any entity that self-perpetuates, everything is subservient to the sex drive. He doesn't declare that to be bad - it just is. And it's this understanding that has driven a great deal of what I write here, particularly in regards to the death cult. But back to today's topic - for anyone wishing to shed desire, sex is the biggie to end all biggies. This topic too I approach in a mundane fashion.


For an unattractive fellow it's surprising how many women dig me (or dug me, at any rate). With almost no effort on my part women who fancied me seemed to keep turning up. It was never A Hard Day's Night (in spite of what I said in that Arundhati Roy thing), but it was okay. Yet sadly whatever appeal I might possess deserts me the moment the tables are turned and I attempt to pursue someone. It's a special knack I have. Thus the world of nobody's romantic entanglements divides into two groups: those who fancy me; and those I fancy - and never the twain shall meet.

Besides which, without any intent of cruelty I've broken too many hearts. It doesn't take much - honesty is all you need. They ask me if I love them and I answer no. Keeping in mind that for any number of women (and don't tell them this but...) I only went to bed with them out of politeness, ie. I didn't wish to make them unhappy by saying no. But whatever the intent, one way or another unhappiness would be the end result. And if there's one thing that kills me dead it's a woman weeping and all on account of me. As for the other way around, I don't mind getting dumped. It's nothing special.


Honestly, how many decades do you have to be crap at something before you give it up as a dead loss? Weirdly enough, in spite of my head being filled with the standard general-issue lust, I don't really miss it. I just file it in the same box as x-ray specs. Remember them? As a kid I'd see the ads for x-ray specs in the Spider-Man comics and be mesmerised - Gosh! Imagine being able to see ladies' bosoms! - but they were from some place far far away and never to be mine and that was fine. It really wasn't worth expending time or energy on, so I'd just 'file it'. In terms of dealing with desire, perhaps this is cheating? But does it matter?

Hmm... it just occurred to me that all this is the polar opposite to The Secret™. Remember that? It was huge on Oprah apparently. In the wee clip I saw, the boy who wanted a bicycle was instructed to obsess over it - cut out the ad, draw pictures of it, plaster your room in pix of the bike, and obsess, obsess, obsess. And magically you'll get the bike! God spare us - a primer for anti-buddhas. The corporations give three cheers. Was The Secret™ a psy-op? Sure, why not?

Never mind all that. For a mundane fellow, I'm doing pretty well. No spirituality, but the check-list of desires crossed off is really getting somewhere. Does it matter that the means by which I do so are so dull, so antithetical to everything in every ad ever? As the Buddha said, everything is here and now. And me paraphrasing: there's no heaven or hell. Nor gods, nor devils. The Buddha is dead and Maitreya ever in the future.


Others say otherwise of course, but people say lots of things. I'd love it if all that stuff were true, but who wouldn't? It occurs to me that a desire for magic says more about desire than it does about magic. Who am I calling? What do I want with them? What would they want with me? Besides, if one was seeking selflessness, how would that be granted? Ting! You are now selfless! Me - Yay, that's great! Just what I always wanted! Never mind the contradiction - somehow I don't think so. Somehow I think that a sheer dull slog is all that there is.

And you know what, perhaps there's not any spirituality to be arrived at, and me, I'll never find it - doomed to spend the rest of my life as a mundane toiler striving for some kind of DIY whatever. But whatever! If there's nothing in it for me and none are harmed, what's the problem?* (*Oprah Winfrey, the owners of the little ™ that comes at the end of The Secret™, along with other assorted corporate motherfuckers and death cult members are excused from answering.)

And so I continue. One foot goes in front of the other and all as unmagical as can be.

In which I make an obsequious apology

Well, no one ever said I wasn't rash. It seems that the last piece was written in a tone of certainty rather than one of probability. Thus it's time for yours truly to do the mea culpa macarena and admit the following: As far as Israelis faking attacks on themselves to appear victims and thus justify their own talmud approved brutality, I will happily declare that in this single instance of the Mavi Marmara attack I got it wrong. What with their tactic of using helicopters to shoot people on the deck of the boat and thus provoke those on board to retaliate, the variety of fakery suggested by those photos was in all likelihood unnecessary and most probably did not occur.


What was I thinking of? Did I really think that the Israelis would go to all that expense and shell out the shekels to hire the sister ship and effectively double the production costs of military personnel, boats, choppers, camera crews, and post-production, when on the actual day they could just stand off and shoot some Goyim and thus provoke them into doing the same job for free?! I'll admit that there's the cost of a box of ammunition, but gee whiz, that's money well spent for the opportunity to kill some Goyim. Honestly, put an Israeli in a gunship and pretty much the whole world qualifies as a free-fire zone amusement park. "Get some! Get some! You should do a story about me because I'm so fucking good!"


Forgetting Full Metal Jacket for a minute, where I came a cropper in this case was in thinking of all those other examples of Jews attacking themselves to appear victims without realising the other obvious commonalities. Um, we're all familiar with this aren't we? I actually have a collection of fake attack stories on my hard drive. Holy shit! I just checked and there's over twenty of them, and I only ever spent a blink of an eye looking for them.


My fave is that French woman who claimed six North Africans on the Metro mistook her for being Jewish and beat her up and threw her baby out of the humidicrib, sorry, pram. Ha ha ha ha, 'mistook her for being Jewish' - bloody marvellous, I love it. And special Jewish Brownie points to her Jewish boyfriend for getting an idiot shiksa to do all the work. "A Jew may do to a non-Jewess what he can do. He may treat her as he treats a piece of meat," and quite right too. Otherwise it was very poor of the French police to drag the Jewish boy into it. How was he meant to know they'd check the cctv cameras and be able to see that nothing happened at all? Besides which, every thing he did was sanctioned by the talmud. Hell, he could have shot every one of those ill-mannered cops right there in the interview room and it would have been blessed by God. Don't they know they're not even human?


But never mind that one single case, there's been many, many, many: gravestones smashed; synagogues burnt; swastikas daubed on everything from cars, buildings, Morton Downey Jr, and pretty much everything in between, and all done by Jews to paint themselves as victims. And God forbid anyone should ask the question: if anti-semitism is so rife, why are so many Jewish people running around faking it all the time? It would be ungracious of me to ask it, so I shan't. The important thing is, I missed the main point - in all of these cases of Jews as false victims, the money spent was nickel and dime.


So yes, my instinct to assume that uppermost in the Israeli mind would be how to make themselves appear to be victims whilst callously murdering people in cold blood was correct. But. Where I went wrong was in imagining that they'd go about it in a profligate fashion. Even in elaborately prepared cases like 911, where significant sums were outlaid, it was only because the payout was assured and everyone was going to make out like bandits. Just ask Larry Silverstein and Australia's very own Frank Lowy, now in South Africa copping blowjobs in his role as head of Australian soccer. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi Oi Oi Vey!


Oh dear, have I strayed again? Back to the mea culpa. Yes, I was wrong. I was foolish, I was stupid, I was naive. I prostrate myself in front of those self-righteous, drenched-in-blood, Israel-uber-alles defenders of the indefensible and say, please forgive me for imagining you'd spend a penny more than was necessary. More fool I.

Mavi Marmara - Internet sleuths 1, Mossad bullshit-artists 0

God I love this picture. Hats off to the legends who put it together. And thanks also to AP at Twelfth Bough for pointing me at it. (Post Scriptum: The original pic is an animated gif. Best I can tell animated gifs don't play on blogger. Or maybe it's just here, who knows. Regardless I've broken it into four jpegs. You can still see the original at the first link there).





For those confused, the ticket here is to keep your eyes on the disappearing ship's name. Which is to say, the colour plate is the MV Mavi Marmara and the overlays of B&W Israeli footage is of another vessel, in all likelihood the MS TDI Karadeniz, the Mavi Marmara's sister vessel. Fingers crossed somebody tracks that down to see where it's been and who's been using it.

Otherwise I have nothing much to add apart from the fact that all the Israelis had in their defence against charges of murder was that grainy B&W footage. And even that's fake. Hmm, thinks... not only has whatever excuse they had evaporated, but their 'excuse' now spins 180° and turns their 'botched' effort into an obvious, elaborate, premeditated bloodbath.

God I love this. I feel like Col. Kilgore on the beach. "I love the smell of Israelis shitting their pants in red-faced embarassment. It smells like humiliation...
One day this shitty little country is going to end..."




PPS. Ah yes, such wishful thinking... please see the next piece in which I rethink the likelihood of all this and come to a slightly different conclusion. Yoroshiku, n.

What are we on about?

What with a constant series of statcounter arrivals from Winter Patriot and kenny's sideshow, I thought it was time to go beyond my usual tip-and-run and have a good wander around. And a good thing too - they're worthy sites with my kind of sensible people writing lots of good stuff.


Ordinarily in linking to worthy sites I go with a less-is-more philosophy. If every man and his dog is worthy, the word 'worthy' doesn't mean much, you know what I mean? Besides which, what with using a public library to connect to the net, my time online is very limited. Thus, with my links list representing places I visit regularly, a longer list means less of my time spent on my own pursuits and more on other people's. But what are you going to do? When the sites are worthy one just has to go there. And so! The list expands.

Lately over at Winter Patriot, in answer to a tiresome, and rather obvious, Jewish fellow bitching about things Jewish being discussed in something other than glowing terms, Winter wrote a fine comment that addresses that hoary old chestnut of what we're on about (clearly Kenny liked it too). And amongst the comments at Winter was a sideways discussion that was actually more germane than anyone knew. It involved an incendiary chap called Akira (whom I'm thinking isn't Japanese) doing his best to fling sparks into the tea-tree with the ever sensible James monstering him with a plane-load of philosophical fire retardant. For mine this second strand to the conversation is the necessary how to Winter's what.

So what are we on about? Collectively, that is? Between the unlikely bedfellows of Aangirfan, Les Visible, Twelfth Bough, Penny, Kenny, and Winter, and even the hill-tramping John Frampton (hullo John) what are the ties that bind? There must be something surely? And what does it mean that we have as many differences as commonalities? And what am I doing in that crowd? Good God, I'm an oxymoron all to myself. (Actually I'm a foxy moron, hyuk hyuk)*


But to hell with me. We want to figure out what defines the, um... 'whatever'. No need to argue whether it exists. If you've read this far and haven't fled in terror at the senselessness of it all, then that's proof enough that we're part of a noun of some description. For the purpose of the exercise I'm going to loosely call it 'the conversation'.

What can we say about this conversation? The initial temptation is to whip out the word 'truth'. Me, I don't know about that. There's something a bit too portentous or po-faced about it - and if we're being that kind of serious, you'd have to include this blog out of it. I'm far too idiotic. Perhaps this is due to me being partial to the idea of the fool, à la Lear. Certainly Lear's fool was an avatar of truth, but in any discussion about him truth would never be the first word anyone would reach for.

Besides which, truth is that thing always to be pursued and almost never to be caught. Sometimes it happens, once in a blue moon - often as not we catch it and don't even know - really it's too slippery, too ethereal. I prefer to take truth as a happy intangible rather than enshrine it as some kind of golden calf. And then there's the question: How many cherished 'truths' have we all thrown away now? Me, I lost count. Okay, so how now the inverted-commas truth?


Instead, what if we gave in to our inner apparatchiks, and made a what-are-we-on-about qualification list, perhaps along the lines of What have the Romans ever done for us? The meeting comes to order:
"First things first - 911"
"Absolutely - do I have a second? Enter it into the minutes."
"MIHOP of course."
"Must mention Israel."
"No planes!"
"Particle beams!"
Oh dear, there's that gone to hell. Really, we've all got our lists and no two will be same. Lists aren't entirely useless of course. Anyone who wants to say that 911 is unimportant has to be some kind of bullshit. Same-same banking. Same-same the pedophocracy. (Oops, there goes Xymphora). Whatever, let's just put the idea of lists up there with the idea of enshrined truth as, um... not nothing, but not a be-all-and-end-all either.

Along those lines, what if we were simply to define ourselves by what we're not? It's negative I know but there's a logic to it that everyone out there now viewed as mad by their friends and relatives will understand. Yeah, yeah, no need to raise your hand, you, me, all of us... So! In searching for an expression to define what we are not, what if I was to grab Galbraith's 'conventional wisdom'? Perhaps I shouldn't mention Galbraith, since I've never actually read him (not that I'd let that stop me taking his phrase and turning it into a hat, a brooch, a pterodactyl etc). Clearly conventional wisdom is not that variety of wisdom measured in pearls. By being called conventional, whatever it is has ceased to be particularly valuable and has become a thing that functions in spite of its own inconsistencies. It's the truth reduced to functionability. And a truth thus processed and reconstituted (contains emulsifier, preservative, and colouring) is no truth that we're interested in. We are not that. Very good... the truth, lists, we-are-not-that - how do we tie that all together?

How about this - the what of the conversation is any goddamn thing. We simply refuse to have any manufacturer of conventional wisdom tell us where the limits are. Anyone who declares a subject sacred or profane deserves to be questioned. Okay dandy, let's do it. Between a Brahminical insistence that no questions be asked, and the Buddha's declaration that we take nothing he says for granted, the former can go fuck itself. And the Brahmins of today? The Jewish media and no mistake.


Stepping outside the limits of permitted topics is one thing, and the way in which it's discussed is another. We now know full well that we live in a world of endless false dichotomies. The bullshit choice between left and right is merely the first of many such contrivances precisely designed to trap us into dead-end losing arguments and go-nowhere conversations. In amongst these snares also resides the how of the conversation.

I don't know if the epithet-spitting Akira over at Winter is an otherwise well-meaning bloke or not. It's possible. What's certain is that there's been any number of attempts, not least at this joint, to turn a given conversation into that variety of instant argument-losing name calling. Hands up anyone who hasn't encountered someone insisting that we all become foaming-at-the-mouth racists?

Way back when, in the days of indymedia, any article on Israel would within five minutes of posting see one, two, three, Jewish boys piling in and flinging shit in all directions. And it wouldn't be long before the Jew-haters would pile in and do the same. God spare me. And the heads of the Ku Klux Klan have all been Jewish have they? Sure, of course. It seems that if we want to talk about profane subjects we must do so as caricatures - doing zer funny walk and talking mit zer funny voices. Dig it, it's the Germans from a Zucker brothers movie. Or it's the skinheads from American History X. Whatever, there's a hundred Hollywood dress-up costumes to choose from, each carefully designed to suit your individuality. You can be anything they want you to be.


In much the same way we step outside the artificially imposed limits of the what, we do the same for the dictates of the how. We'll talk about whatever we goddamn like and we'll do so as grown-ups. We'll have the only conversation worth having, the one we dreamt of, but never knew existed. It exists if we want it to - here we are having one now. And yeah, it's desultory - it's the grasshopper leaping from tree to tree in a single bound, fighting a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and mixed metaphors. It's a shitfight, it's a comedy, it's a tragedy, it's all of the above. And if Jews and their Nazi partners don't care for it - bleat, bleat - a tuppence for them and a tuppence for their boundaries. We've ceased caring what they think. We're past that now.

Arundhati Roy - an unlikely love letter

I am constantly beset by women. They won't leave me alone - my life is a perpetual series of Hard Day's Nights with me chased hither and yon by hordes of screaming chicks. Sure enough I always say no (politely, since I'm a polite chap) because truth be known, I'm saving myself. There's only one gal for me and that's the mighty Arundhati Roy.


Just lately a friend of mine pointed me at the following long article which the fabulous Roy wrote for the English language Outlook of New Delhi. It details the time she spent with the Maoist Naxalite rebels in Central India. Anyone who wants to find out what's going on there, read this, it's a cracker. It's a discussion of Indian, um... what do you call 'politics' when you're at the pointy end of the stick?

They described a police raid: they come at night, 300, 400, sometimes 1,000 of them. They lay a cordon around a village and lie in wait. At dawn they catch the first people who go out to the fields and use them as human shields to enter the village... Once the police enter a village, they loot and steal and burn houses. They come with dogs. The dogs catch those who try and run. They chase chickens and pigs and the police kill them and take them away in sacks. SPOs [Special Police Officer = informer] come along with the police. They’re the ones who know where people hide their money and jewellery. They catch people and take them away. And extract money before they release them. They always carry some extra Naxal ‘dresses’ with them in case they find someone to kill. They get money for killing Naxals, so they manufacture some. Villagers are too frightened to stay at home.

Welcome to the world beyond your living room. With this as your daily lot is anyone surprised that people don't seize whatever option is available? Marxism, Maoism, as if anyone can tell the difference? Certainly not the villagers who can only count to twenty. No doubt the pointy end of this Naxalite pyramid will know what's what, but will the base be privy to such knowledge? Not bloody likely. Knowledge equals nobility (seriously, check out your dictionary) and a knowledge shared is a nobility shared, which is no nobility at all. Not if you groove on servants, that is.

But never mind, the genius of the nobility-obsessed Jews in contriving their Marxist-Leninist alternative to a Brando-esque what-have-you-got was in the packaging. Marxism is to other political possibilities what McDonalds is to 'a healthy alternative'.
Mum - "I'm too tired to cook, let's eat out. What do you kids want?"
Kids - "Yay! We want a healthy alternative!"
Yeah right. Crowds follow banners and the truth can go to hell - a tuppence for sugar, salt, cholesterol, hormones, and preservatives, and likewise for the vicious truth of Marxism with its leaders as their own messiah.


But you never know. In amongst the truth of Lenin and the Cheka, and Mao and the Great Leap Forward (which never mind Billy Brag was the greatest mass starvation in history), there's also the possibility of Che and Castro. You could do a lot worse. Only a motherfucker would wish the Cubans' erstwhile whoredom upon anyone and there's a case to be made that the villagers of Central India have got that beat. Besides which, with every major government and opposition beholden to the death cult, the Indian government not least amongst them, and with a demonstrably false al Qaeda as a death cult conjured bogeyman, what are we to make of the Naxalites?

It's curious how the media seems to spend no time on them at all. And then there's the fact that they seem completely penniless, ie. unbankrolled. Think about that. This may come as something of a shock to the hard-bitten habitués of this blog, but what if I said the Naxalites were for real? What if they were what they said they were - truly concerned with the downtrodden and oppressed and with no hidden agenda? The more I turn the Naxalites around in my head, the more likely that seems.

Okay - Three cheers for the Naxalite revolution!

But waitaminute... Where's Gandhi in amongst all this? Roy, sure enough, could hardly not mention him but sadly it's in the standard less-than-useful context of non-violence as a thing existing in isolation. As I wrote in this piece, Bloody Sunday, any discussion of non-violence that doesn't give equal time to its media depiction isn't worth much. Go watch Attenborough's Gandhi again and keep an eye out for the role played by the media, ie. Martin Sheen. Then ask yourself: How successful would Gandhi have been if a bloc-media had treated him like they treated Scott Ritter? Between Scott Ritter and Iraq's WMD's only one of them was true and it wasn't Scott Ritter. A click of the fingers. A piece of piss. The easiest thing in the world. With the bloc-media singing from their thoughtfully provided Rothschild songbook, Gandhi could starve to death and we'd all be nodding and mumbling along - ♫Something, Something, Terrorists, Martyrs, and Good Riddance♫.


Did somebody say media? Speaking of which, in amongst her piece the winsome Roy has fallen upon a true philosophical genius, the Superintendent of Police in Dandakaranya -

He was a candid man, the SP: “See Ma’am, frankly speaking this problem can’t be solved by us police or military. The problem with these tribals is they don’t understand greed. Unless they become greedy, there’s no hope for us. I have told my boss, remove the force and instead put a TV in every home. Everything will be automatically sorted out."

Actually, let's replace the word 'philosophical' with 'evil' given that what the SP is proposing here is precisely what was done to the Bhutanese by that vicious ratfuck Rupert Murdoch. The SP, Murdoch, his Rothschild masters, they all get it. They know that nothing can compete with the television. There is no argument it cannot win. Paraphrasing Frank Zappa - If it's you against the TV, bet on the TV.

And anyone looking for the proof of that particular pudding needs only to look to the hundreds of comments following the splendid Roy's article. A handful of dissenting voices aside, it's an ugly torrent of TV scripted soundbites from an aghast middle class. Clearly the government that's attempting to exterminate the 'tribals' has done alright by them and who the hell is this slut Roy to break in upon their Ikea dreams? Fuck her and the little motorcycle she rode in on! Doesn't she know that it was built from the minerals that these tribal scum are squatting on? Shit happens and if that shit involves thousands being shat on, raped, and killed, well... they're TERRORISTS! Everyone knows that the only good terrorist is a shat on, raped, and killed one.

Yay. God speed you, you clueless army of media drones.


Arundhati Roy, my wordsmith Minerva: may I as humble petitioner make a suggestion? Your candid SP has leapt right to the heart of the matter. Seize upon his dictum and turn it on its head - get the Naxalites to blow up the TV stations. Without that being done they'll forever be battling against their own inverted depiction. Have them imagine a Tet offensive with nowt but TV towers the target. Cue the screams of the fear-filled middle classes - I WANT MY MTV! Ha! It'd be worth it for that alone.

As for me, ardent admirer, I'll just have to go on fending off the dreary pursuing hordes with nothing more than a cherished image of the angelic Arundhati to sustain me.

Oh Arundhati... a sigh, a smile, a look to the heavens...