Feral Youth

The Tory party has been waging a war against the youth since they came into power using the Lib-dems as their shield. First they took a hit at the already breaking education system with huge cuts and trying to open up the system to privatization. For a party that claims to be for education this truly spat in the face of the youth that try to get educated.

Furthermore the party and David Cameron himself have called for harsher punishments and benefit cuts to the "feral youth" after the riots. This is not only greatly insulting to the young that work their ares off to get where they want to but also ignores all of the contributing factors to the riots. These include things like the wealth gap widening faster and the closing down of many youth centers. This not only puts more young people on the streets and takes away vital parental roles many do not have but also leads to people becoming more disenfranchised leaving many with a feeling of having nothing left to lose.

By forcing things like free school breakfasts to stop and youth centers to close the Tory party have made it clear that they do not care about the young of this country. Many of the poorer need to work multiple jobs to make ends meet and this can lead to children not getting all the help they need, I realize that at times the parents may not care but a lot of the time it is very hard to look after a child when working for minimum wage, especially for single parents. The Tory party does not care for them rather for their own multimillionaire needs.

It is not only the Tory's that have been beating down on the youth alas, that would be a very wrong message to spread, they are just taking it to new extremes. Can you remember the last time exam results came out and you read or heard a story congratulating the students? Why does ever story of a young person doing something worthwhile need to include a section saying how it proves that not all young people are terrible? Why do we only ever see the young in shows like "Young, Dumb And Living Off Mum"? No the war against the youth started long before the Tory onslaught.

Is it because the older generations are scared of what we can do? Do they fear the day we realize we can make a difference. We briefly caught onto that idea and it left Parliament square and Milbank tower in rubble. The student protests are not over, and never should they stop. The fight over fees and education isn't over but it is not only that. People need to fight to show we have power to show we can make a difference and to stand up for our generation. This needn't be through simply marching. No, that will not have the full impact needed. We need to change attitudes by being proactive.

Rather than taking from society we need to give back. Many of us already do this, in many different and wonderful ways yet this is never what is shown. We must fight against the media Juggernaut and make it known that we can and do do great things. I haven't got all the answers, hell I'm just an annoyed young person but rather than let this get us down I say we bounce back. We can educate ourselves and organize ourselves, not just for protest but for community activities, for each other, for ourselves.

Time is not to be wasted, rather it is to be utilized. Read, watch and listen to things, education can be fun if you find something you are interested or passionate about. If you hated school then don't give up on educating yourself, we have these minds for a reason. Basically what I'm trying to say is, in the words of Scroobius Pip, "Get Better". I often let myself lull into a place of apathy and laziness, that doesn't mean doing nothing, I mean doing nothing constructive. I've lost my way here a bit but all I want to say is, fight back against the Tory cuts to the young and other sections of society, fight back against the media onslaught against the youth and get better.

Sorry this was a bit wishy washy but I just felt I needed to vent.

Stay Alert, Stay Free.

Operation Post-it

Recently I stumbled upon this website, OperationBeautiful.com. The site is just a place where people send in pictures of encouraging messages about body image written on post-it notes in public places. A simple, yet wonderful idea. To many the messages may seem stupid and pointless but to the less cynical it can bring a smile to your face. Hell, making someone smile is a great thing to do even if you don't see it. A smile can brighten up your whole day and a little nice message can make you feel great.

I feel this is a wonderful idea and I encourage you to follow it and do your own nice messages. Yet I feel as though this idea has a greater scope and can be utilized to a greater power. If we were to put simple notes on advertising reminding people it was not necessary for happiness we could make at least some people think briefly about what they truly value. If there were messages of dissent about the banking system on cash points it would remind people of why we need to be angry.

Now before I go too far I want to set out now that I know simple post it notes will not bring down corrupt systems or change peoples lives but one message could start a person thinking. Thought is a powerful thing. Once an idea is implanted that resonates within a persons soul it can snowball with the person reading into the ideas more. It's simple really. If there are no messages then an idea cannot spread. One message has little power but many messages spread around can start to have an impact. Try posting messages with links to websites explaining thoughts in more detail. Alas this is not necessary, simply messages can help.

Props to Operation Beautiful, it is a lovely thing they are doing and I feel we need to remind people not to hate on themselves for being who they are. Positive body image is a great thing and people need to be reminded just how amazing our bodies actually are. I think the post-it idea is a wonderful, none evasive, legal way to spread none mainstream ideas easily.

I may start posting pictures of stuff I do. If it goes well it might become a regular(ish) thing.
A short post today I know and there is a lot of more pertinent news around but fuck it.

Stay alert, Stay free, Stay beautiful!

We're Fucking Angry

I think I'm going to add a new dimension to this blog because I'll be honest, I find it therapeutic to write but sometimes I can't be arsed with researching and doing serious posts. Alas I don't want to stray from the base feel of the blog. Basically the credentials of protest music as a force for change is iffy at best but it's always nice to have something to will you on through the struggles and hell I love music! So with this in mind I think I'm going to start doing reviews of protest music that I enjoy. Now I have literally no credentials as a critic but fuck it, in the words of dan le sac vs Scroobius Pip "It's just rhythms and rhymes and melodies in time".

So yeah here it goes!

Today I'm going to go over the album Punk and Poetry by The King Blues. Now I'm going to admit I'm very new to this band but I have fallen in love with them. I found them via a Youtube video posted on an anti-cuts facebook group and well it was one of those moments when you know you are going to love a band. Recently I saw them at Download, they were in a tented stage and let me tell you, they tore that place up!

So let me begin... (click the titles to hear the song)

Last Of The Dreamers
An epic intro track. The synths and drum beat really build up the album and Itch (vocals) shows exactly where this album is headed. With lines such as "For the romantic killer that’s never been caught" and "For the pedophile suppressing his urges" it's obvious this album is going to be nothing if not controversial. Short and straight to the point.

We Are Fucking Angry
With a title like that you know this song isn't going to skirt around the issues. The end of the previous track crescendos out and this track brings you crashing down to earth with a meaty drum intro which gets the blood flowing. The synth in this song along with a heavy drum beat and distorted guitars really works well on this track, it raises up the anger in you and gets you ready to fight. The whole song is almost like a soundtrack to the Millbank and various other London riots. This is the first song I heard by The King Blues and I highly recommend giving it a listen. The lyrics also do not disappoint, they are powerful and easy to relate to. They serve to pick apart the current coalition government and give a voice to the anti-cuts movement. With cries of "We are fighting back and we are fucking angry" you really get the sense of desperation and anger on the demonstrations and the awakening of a group of, before apathetic, students to power struggles is summed up in the line "France, Spain, Greece we're joining you finally our time has come". There is so much good about this song that I can't sum it up in a small segment, I recommend just giving it a listen and checking out the lyrics from full impact, I assure you you wont be disappointed.

Set The World On Fire
A slightly lighter song this time around. The fury is let up from the music resulting in what I'm risking calling almost pop punk. An obvious single here with a nice radio friendly sound. With a slightly calmer sound one would be forgiven in thinking Itch would've softened up on the lyrical front but this is far from the truth. With an onslaught on the capitalist agenda as a whole this song turns burning the world down into something that sounds dangerously mainstream. With issues such as Israel, the media and plastic surgery raised this is far from brainless rock and it even gives us a little encouragement, "Fight the power? Man, we are the power!". A great single track.

Dancehall
A bizarre little number this one, a nice short poem over a nice little tune. I don't know what it is but I have a soft spot for this one.

The Future's Not What It Used To Be
A nice relaxed ska feel to this one. The brass section on this eases you in and the slow beat couple with the bass line really puts you in a chilled mood. A chilled out chorus of "Woah the future's not what it used to be" makes you feel almost as though it's all lost, giving this song a less optimistic feel. However things change at around 2:20 were the song suddenly takes a more sinister tone building up to an explosion of almost drum and bass at 2:30. A real curve ball this high energy section doesn't last long before returning back to the more chilled sounds of before but it is long enough to get into with shouts of "war" repeated many times it will get you up and jumping. A very good song overall, one of my favorites off the album.

I Want You
Another more pop punk song on the albums line up. A simple love song, I Want You will not fail to put a smile on your face. A very cute song with some more poignant lines such as "[I want you] like a Palestine wants to be free" and "I want you like the people want to see change, I want you like the government want us the same". Generally a very happy song with a tinge of political thought sprinkled on top.

5 Different Bottles Of Shampoo
A truly epic track this one. I can't really find a way to describe this track properly. A simple backing track boosts up what is live an Acapella performance. The track charts Itch's thoughts about women, a powerful message of respect and admiration that should be instilled in all young mens hearts. Check this track out for yourself and see what I mean.

Sex Education
The tone of the album suddenly changes again when you are lead into this song with a vocal lead of "sex, sex, sex". At first I was put off by this song due to this aspect but the song is much deeper then that. An exploration of the sexualisation of the youth through pornography and the damage that it beings. This is explored with lines such as "It weren't his mum that enlightened this lad, it was 'Indiana Bones and the Temple of Poon'". Itch explores how the internet's generation's view of what is normal in sex has been distorted due to the ease of access to porn. An interesting song.

Shooting Fascists
Another short but sweet song here. The use of the ukulele gives this song a sweet sound which is in contrast to the lyrics telling of how "Grandad didn't vote for Fascists, he shot 'em down".

Headbutt
Hitting in straight away with punky guitars and a hard drum intro this is like a love song coupled with a punch to the face. Some synth and piano add wonderfully to this song, especially in the breakdown where the piano comes into it's own. The lyrics are fresh and tell of romance in our age, "when she kissed me it felt like a headbutt". A nice song with nice lyrics.

Does Anybody Care About Us
Another song born out of the anti-cuts movement. This song is a call to arms, "Is anybody gonna fight back?". The song plays on the betrayal felt by the young affect by the education cuts and the violent crack downs by the police, "we bear the scars from you're cuts". A good song and this really does display the down right dissolution felt by many of the youth of today.

Everything Happens For A Reason
A softer song than the majority of the album, this song has an almost radio friendly sound. Less political than the majority of the album but that doesn't mean it lacks the same heart. An autobiographical song telling the story of Itch and his partner having a baby. You can feel how personal this song is and it is quite moving. Lyrics such as "My mum gave me the best advice that I'd ever had, she said if you're gonna be a dad just don't be like you're dad", "She was scared and worried, we might of lost it all" and "I realized for the first time that I'd become a man" really send chills down your spine. A beautiful song I really recommend you check it out.

Overall the album is wonderful and contains powerful lyrics that can really get you thinking. It's just let down by tracks like Shooting Fascists that, while enjoyable, do feel like filler. The lyrics are very fresh it just feels as though maybe a little bit more time spent on the album could have negated the need for filler and made this album even better. Don't get me wrong I do love this album, it's often on repeat, just maybe removing some filler and maybe even adding the Holiday single would have helped.

Now a common criticism of this album is that it is not punk enough. Now while it is easy to point out that the song is not harsh on the whole I don't feel it is enough to not call this album punk. The punk movement was a more than the harsh guitars, it was almost simplistic music of the people and more importantly it was a giant middle finger to those who fucked you off. Now anyone who listens to this album and actually takes in the lyrics will realize that whilst this album doesn't have the harsh "punk" sound it certainly has the attitude.

This is one of my favorite albums and one of my favorite bands. I would very much recommend you check them out, I'll put links at the bottom of the page. I hope you enjoyed reading this and more importantly enjoyed the music. I may do more reviews in the future but probably more just songs than entire albums.

Stay alert, Stay free.

Links
Official Site
Myspace
Tour Dates

And just because it feels weird not to have a video at the end:

No Justice, No Peace

Two years ago on the first of April Ian Tomlinson was struck to the ground by police and later died from his injuries [link]. There is currently an enquiry taking place into whether any charges should be placed upon the offending officer. However I feel as though I should backtrack and outline what actually happened surrounding the death of Ian Tomlinson.

On the first of April 2009 there were mass protests in London surrounding the G20 protests with some violent elements [link]. The reasons for the protests were many, some over the unfairness of the globalised capitalist agenda, some over climate change and some over the war in Iraq and Afghanistan [link] people spread out into the streets and brought London to a standstill.

It's not the actual protests however that are important for this discussion, it is the death of an innocent man and the subsequent cover up that is important. I've always been left and had a small ember of activism in my blood, a gift passed down from my parent, but this single even is something that truly changed my viewpoint on the world. Up to this point I viewed the police force as infallible and as being in the right in all cases. I still hold on the whole the police force is necessary and a force for good, don't misunderstand me as an anarchist and someone who wants the police to be dissolved, it is just my view that the police need to be held accountable for their mistakes.

The first news to hit the headlines was that of a protester dying in clashes with the police [link], this is not malice but shows that when looking at events such as these the news can often be incorrect, especially close to the time. This is when things became ugly.

At first it was claimed that Ian Tomlinson had tried to break through a police cordon as projectiles were being thrown at police [link]. It became evident, however, as amature footage surfaced that this claim was ridiculous [video below] and it became evident later that Tomlinson was not even a protester, he was simply walking back from work [link]. Moreover the footage shows Ian Tomlinson walking away from police with his hands in his pockets, being just about as nonthreatening as humanly possible. Alas this is not the end of the suspicious reports from the police.

Warning: Not for the weak of heart.


The first post-mortem on Ian Tomlinson claimed that he had died from natural causes linked to coronary heart disease, this was later retracted as a further two post-mortems claimed a heart attack [link] which could easily have been brought about from the assault. The pathologist who carried out the first incorrect post-mortem has since been suspended for other such inaccuracies [link] which suggests that the police as a force are not always as thorough as we would hope.

It has come to light recently in the enquiry that when the footage was shown back that the offending officer said "I think that's me" to which he got the reply "No, no it's not", he then said "I'm not chomping, I think that's me". The replying officer has reported to the inquest "I can't remember the exact words I used but he was wrong, he was being stupid" [link]. It has been shown that the offending officer was in fact responsible, these words echo with malice, they make me feel uncomfortable and angry. Now it is possible that the replying officer really didn't think it was him but in the face of such evidence it seems as though this cannot be the case and is evidence of a kind of systematic cover up.

With the evidence stacking up against the offending officer and with shadows of an attempted cover up showing it really makes you think. An innocent man has died and the police force rather than carrying out justice has taken many many steps to cover it's own arse. It has already been stated that the offending officer will not face criminal charges but may lose their job [link]. It is said that criminal charges cannot be pressed due to the conflict in the post-mortem reports which again puts doubt on whether the first post-mortem was mistaken or purposefully wrong. The fact the officer will not face any kind of criminal charges laughs in the face of justice and shows how the police force easily find themselves above the law in many cases. If the police are above the law then we are not free and there is no justice.

Now it would be very wrong and short sighted for me to claim that the police are often above the law and basing this claim on the Ian Tomlinson case. To further this point consider the cases of Jean Charles de Menezes [link], Chris Alder [link],Cherry Groce [link] and Forest Gate [link] to name but a few. There are uncounted cases of rape and abuse to minorities at the hands of police. They are not perfect.

Now as I stated earlier I believe police are very necessary but they need to be more transparent and we should hold them accountable for any crimes they commit. There is no doubt in my mind that the great majority of police work is beneficial to society and that many police people are upstanding citizens but this cannot be used to defend those police that do go to far and do abuse the system. We cannot accept another police murder to go unchallenged for if we want to say we live in a free country then any authority needs to be accountable for it's actions.

I hope for justice for the family of Ian Tomlinson and my heart goes out to them. May he rest in peace and may they get the closure they very much need.

Stay alert, Stay free.

Japan

I shall start off with an apology, I have not been keeping this up at the level I would have liked to but hell I'm not going to complain and moan about why but I will say sorry. A lot has happened recently in the news, what with half of the middle east rising up among other things and there is no way in hell that I will ever be able to even scratch the surface and discuss any where near all of them. This has been daunting alas I am just accepting that I will not cover it all even if it does interest me. Well with the bollocks over I shall make a real start on this post.

On the 11th if March a magnitude 9 earthquake hit just off the coast of Japan. The initial shock flattened houses and torn apart roads but the worst was yet to come. Following the earthquake a huge tsunami struck sweeping away the wreckage. The scenes seen are heartbreaking and no matter what I say it will never give justice to the sheer horror of what unfolded. The country will need to be rebuilt from the bottom up and as the death toll rises it just gets more depressing. At the bottom of this post I'll leave a link to donate money, if you can please do. It's times like these we need to work together to help out our fellow man.

One thing that can be seen through the horror is the strength of the Japanese people. Japan looks like a post apocalyptic waste land yet the people of Japan have not let this get them down, they have come together to help each other out [link]. It is a glorious thing to see how the people have conducted themselves in the face of such destruction, a true testament to the nation.

One thing that has overshadowed the entire disaster is the nuclear "crisis" that unfolded at the Fukushima nuclear power plant [link]. This again however proves to be little more then a scare story hyped up by the media. We were constantly bombarded with messages of impending doom with the anti-nuclear arguments rising over whether nuclear power is ever truly safe. Many were worried of a Chernobyl type disaster [link] which was never a possibility. We were told to worry about the fact that engineers were flooding the reactors with sea water and to fear the steam being released from said reactors.

However Fukushima does not show the failings of the nuclear industry but rather it's successes. What has been commonly misunderstood about the crisis is that people do not realise that all the different steps taken are not out of desperation but have been preplanned. Nuclear power uses a system of safety by redundancy, which basically means that many many different things can fail and the reactor will not meltdown or release any large amounts of radiation.

The first thing that happened when the 40 year old reactors were hit by the magnitude 9 earthquake (much higher than they were designed for) was that the boron control rods were fully injected into the reactor. In a nuclear reactor the boron control rods are used due to their ability to absorb neutrons. It is the neutrons flying around that cause a nuclear reaction to continue (a background on nuclear power can be found here [link]), so by removing the neutrons the reaction will stop. This worked perfectly, however it is not the end of the story as during the generation of nuclear power many by-products are produced which continue to release radiation after the main reaction has stopped and thus need further cooling.

It is here that we run into the problem. The initial motors that ran cooling water through the reactor were broken by the huge earthquake and put out of action. This meant that the first backup diesel motors started up. Alas as the tsunami hit the motors were flooded with water and ceased flowing cooling water around the system. This is when the second backup system went into action, battery powered pumps started. However it became apparent after some time that the level of water was decreasing, there was a leak somewhere allowing the cooling water to escape. At this point it is important to reflect that up to this point the plant has regulated itself to ensure that the plant remains safe. An oil refinery was already in flames [link] and the nuclear power plant, whilst damaged, was doing well.

It was at this point that man power was required to intervene. After the third motors gave out it was then required to pump sea water into the vessel to cool the reactor. It is worth noting that this was a fall back measure that was in place and not an act of desperation as portrayed by the majority of the media. This is the tactic that will be carried out right up to the point the power is reconnected to the reactors [link].

The cooling was not the only problem associated with the reactors however. Throughout the cooling process pressure inside the vessels raised to high levels and steam had to be released from them. This meant that slightly radioactive steam had to be released into the environment, a terribly scary idea if not properly understood. The idea of radiation is something that scares the public and if not properly understood can lead to panic. It is an invisible enemy and it can get to you without you ever knowing. The panic that can be caused with the media reporting on radiation leaks is something Japan doesn't need especially when the facts are known. The reactive isotopes found in the steam have a very short half life (meaning they lost their radioactivity quickly) which meant that the majority of the isotopes would be harmless by the time they ever left the plant. However the plant operators knowing how misunderstood and scary a direct release of steam could be decided that containing the steam temporarily in the reactor building before releasing it would not cause as much alarm.

This in turn was a bad decision. The engineers on the plant knew that the steam at the temperature and due to the slight radioactivity would quite easily deteriorate into hydrogen and oxygen, an explosive mix. It was decided that the explosion risk was small enough to go with. Obviously due to events this was probably the wrong choice as the reactor housing exploded [link]. The explosion looks impressive but the damaged caused was simply cosmetic. As with any building on a process plant one side of a building is designed to be weaker than the others so that if an explosion occurs that side will be blown off and the destructive power of the blast will be negated. The containment around the reactor (huge layers of concrete that prevent any nuclear material to leak from the reactor) was not damaged meaning that other than the physical danger of the explosion nothing became worse.

I could go on for hours about the glorious success of the plant and of the nuclear industry as a whole but I feel this is enough for now, if you want to read up more then click this [link], if anyone wants more of my opinions on nuclear power or if you wish to question any of my view then leave a comment at the end and I will spend more time on this.

The public and media perception of what is happening at Fukushima is a problem for Japan as it causes unneeded panic which does not help the nation to recover. It distracts from the huge humanitarian disaster taking place, only today has the BBC released an article on their website entitled "Fukushima - Disaster or Distraction" [link]. With industry leaders such as the IChemE speaking out in support of nuclear power and it's safety [link] as well as many nuclear physicists providing evidence to show how safe nuclear power is [link], it is hard to see how the media has turned Fukushima into the scare story it has become.

I personally feel that Fukushima has been a fantastic success for the nuclear industry and I support the expansion of nuclear power in the UK in an effort to fight climate change. However the major problem at this time has nothing to do with Fukushima. It is the fact that thousands are dead and many more are still missing following horrific natural events. So rather than becoming terrified over an industrial incident which by all intensive purposes is on the heal and has been dealt with fantastically we should be extending our hand to the people of Japan. Their plight is great and we as people need to come together to help. We must not allow an irrational fear distract us from the real issue in Japan, so please give what you can. They need our help and we must provide.

Thank you for reading.
Stay alert, Stay free.

Red Cross [link]
UNICEF [link]
Save The Children [link]




Sorry no song today, I simply don't know anything that would be fitting.

Of Horse And Men

I was again on another march on the 29th of January against the cuts in Manchester. Now the feeling overall was one of anger but peaceful, the majority wanted a peaceful march but the minority spoilt that, the minority in florescent jackets.

The day began with people gathering outside of the Manchester museum. The atmosphere was good, people from all around the north had gathered to show their anger at the governments plans. This was more than a march against the rise in fees, more even then a march against the cuts to higher education, this was a march against a government which many feel will send us backwards and damage us for generations to come. Of course the main message was against the cuts in higher education but amongst that were cries against NHS cuts, against library closures and tax avoiders. Along side that, unsettlingly, were messages against police brutality, something which is steadily growing as people begin to grow sick of the heavy handed tactics and over excited officers ever present at these protests, more on this later.

As the march began all was peaceful, messages of solidarity with Egypt and Tunisia, with Greece and protesters all over the world. There were chants and songs with music coming out of speakers on trolleys. All in all it was nice and peaceful as we marched down through Rusholme to the rally in Platts Fields. As we entered Platts Fields the discontent was obvious as people felt as though the NUS had purposefully lead us out of the way, away from anywhere of significance, out of the public's eye. However Arron Porter, president of the NUS, was promised at the rally and so we waited.

There were many speakers, most of which gave empty statements about solidarity and that they needed to take action but no real substance. When there was a moment of silence the cries rose up for Aaron Porter to show his face. Unlike the lies printed in the Daily Mail there were no anti-semetic chats at the rally [link], "Aaron Porter your a f****** Tory too" just happens to sound like "Aarron Porter your a f****** Tory Jew", easily mistakable but with the level of anti-racist protesters present it is undoubtable that any reports of racist chants are false aimed to direct anger at the protesters and detract from the message. There are some reports of anti-semetic chats but what was not reported were the large number of people chanting back at them saying things such as "No, Racists, No!", unreported to alienate the students from the rest of society. Many feel that Aaron Porter has deserted the students he is meant to represent with condemnations of many protests and talk of defeat from the get go.

As it turned out Aaron Porter did not turn up to the rally. Anger amongst students at Porter and some felt they needed to make their point heard. It turns out that earlier in the day he had been confronted by angry students and some eggs had been thrown at him [link]. When a leader sells out their movement and then attacks its members then they should expect anger. Aaron Porter was not hurt in this confrontation, more humiliated and scared. He locked himself into Manchester Metropolitan University Students Union and did not leave to go to the rally, for fear of more abuse. Let there be no illusion had he turned up there would have been more eggs and chants but alas he did not arrive. This angered many who wanted to show their anger and felt like Porter had been spineless in not turning up.

This is where the protest changed. Once word had got out that Porter was not turning up the populous, not just 150 as reported in the news [link] left the park and marched back towards where they thought Porter would be. There wasn't any violence just hundreds walking peacefully back into the city where our voices could be heard. As we marched people sounded their horns in support and generally the public seemed supportive. However as we reached the end of the curry mile the problems started.

At the end of the curry mile we could see a line of blue lights and after the events of the 9th of December we were wary. I and some friends saw the front of the protesters being brought to a stop and we made the decision then to avoid this, to avoid being kettled. Nothing is more angering and demoralising then being caught in a tiny area for hours on end and that is what we believed was going to happen so in that moment we descided to go around. Not to cause trouble but to get where we wanted to be without being aggrivated and pushed around by police for hours.

So after this we found ourselves running around back streets trying to avoid police confrontations and to get back towards the main protest. After about half an hour and after dumping our placards in a bin, after all we arn't going to litter, we found a large group of protesters. As it turns out they had managed to break through the police line at the end of the curry mile and continue on down. By this point people had been hurded down to one side of the street and there was a tense feeling in the air. No-one quite knew where we were going and the police seemed on edge, which later on would come to the surface. We decided a good place to aim for would be town hall as we felt that this would be a likely place to meet more people. As we arrived there were a few more protesters and one talking to the police stating that we know they are just human and are just doing their job but pleaded for the rest of the day to remain peacful, if only it could have.

We stayed at town hall for a few minutes until we saw a large group of people, they had been into town to protest against tax avoiders like Vodafone. As we joined them it was obvious that something had changed, the atmosphere had turned sour and the police had became jumpy with people being thrown against walls and shouted at before being released. By this point the numbers had dwindled and we had been split up. This is when the protest truly turned ugly.

As we marched down the road suddenly the line stopped and I and some friends hung back to see what was happening and then the inevitable happened. A line of police wrapped around the small group of protesters and closed in, there was at least a 3 deep line of police around what could have bearley been 100 people. By now the florescent gloved fists were flying and the horses were being used to walk onto the path endangering both the health of the protesters but also of the civilians around.

As time progressed they force the protesters into a smaller and smaller area angering those inside and out. The police then drove us down the side of the road towards the Hilton. One man was chased around by two police on horseback for taking a picture, the horses seemed unsteady and panicked by the darting movement they were forced to make. This was not in some secluded area either, these horses where darting around in the middle of the road with many people around, it is amazing no-one got hurt.

It is inevitable though, when horses are used so recklessly that someone was going to get hurt. As we were being moved towards the Hilton hotel, just as the police decided to move in and step between us and the Hilton, a policeman on horseback walked directly into the back of a person facing the other way. The man fell to the floor and as he turned to his front and shouted out asking what the policeman was doing, at this point 3 police jumped on him and arrested him. This man was not even facing the horse when it walked into him and he was arrested for it, it is sick to think that people can be arrested for being assaulted.

Events like this are rarely reported or even twisted to show the protester in the wrong. This again just goes to show that any news report should be taken with a grain of salt. Make no illusion to the fact that the news is often not as un-bias as it should be, a lot of the time the news is often skewed by the personal views of the editor of the paper or CEO of the news outlet. I'm not saying you shouldn't believe anything said by any certain news outlet but it is important to try and read a range of sources before making up your mind. Without, or even with, first hand witnessing it is very hard to get a full idea of events and in the major media it is very very very rare to see any criticism of police tactics. It is only a matter of time before another person is killed, it has been just over a year since Ian Tomlinson was killed at the G20 protests and many people will have forgotten about it. We cannot allow the police to continue using tactics that are dangerous and we cannot allow more people to be killed. We must report and talk about any brutality and I will make an effort to continue doing so.

However I will not finish this blog on the subject of police brutality. No, this should be about the success of the protest. Thousands of people took to the street. People of all ages came together to mouth their angers and until the end, when the police got a bit excitable, it was peaceful. We showed our anger at the betrayal by Aaron Porter and we got the public talking. As we marched people we passed would start conversations about the issues, not complain about us but to discuss the issues. To get people thinking is always a good result and lets hope at least a few people continue to think about it.

The movement is growing and the issues at hand are increasing in number. The trade unions are mobilising, the next major march is on the 26th of March [link]. When the government discusses privatising the forests of this country [link] it is obvious that they are not looking out to save the economy but to benefit the rich. We cannot sit back and allow them to dismantle our great country so I hope to see you on the 26th and I hope you keep fighting because we can and we will win.

Stay alert, Stay free.

A Simple Song Of Hope

As I stare into the night sky I am hit by a wonderful feeling. Staring back at me as I lie on the grass are a billion stars. A billion tiny dots of light spread across the black canvas of the sky. Each tiny dot a star like our own sun. A billion stars with the possibility of planets, of life. Out there are billions of possible Earths, each with their own worries, their own fights, their own struggles. Each as important as our own to those concerned.

It is then that it hits me. These stars are not only far away but long ago. It has taken many million years for a lot of these stars light to reach here. These stars, these planets, their stories may all have played out before we as humans even left the trees.

We may feel important but truly we are naught but a drop in the ocean of this universe. I have spent a lot of my time on this planet consumed with anger and hate. This serves no-one, hate only serves to destroy the vessel that carries it. In the big picture it makes little difference what we actually do with our time on this Earth.

What I want to take from this, for you to take from this is not to stop fighting injustice, to not give in on the struggle from freedom and fairness but to fight not with hate but with love. The world has seen far too much hate. We are not here long so rather that recirculating the hate back towards those who have wronged you, have hurt you, respond with love. A revolution is not worth fighting if we leave the world with the same hate and fear as before.

This is not a call to arms. This is a personal awakening. We are controlled bu fear and hate and from here I will try to chose love. I will falter, I am human after all but I will attempt to make others lives a little better. If we all try to do one thing nice a day, or to even just make small changes to make others lives easier we can bring an end to fear, to hate. We are born equal, we will die equal, let us live equal.

Just a ramble today, didn't really have much of a plan when I started so I hope it has come out alright. This blog will return to normal with the next post. Let us try to make 2011 a great year.

Thank you for reading, I will be grateful for any comment, they will help me to advance this blog.

Stay alert, Stay free.

That Was The Year That Was

It has come to that time of the year again, a time when I reflect on what has been and what I feel is to come!

Wow, 2010, have you been eventful or what? In the UK we had our general election leaving us with the wonderful Con-Dem coalition. This has heralded in a new wave of budget cuts which we will begin to feel in the coming year. We have already seen anger at the way the Lib-Dems have turned their back on their tuition fees promise made in the run up to the election.

This quite nicely bring me onto the topic of the tuition fees protests. It has been many years since a student movement with the size and power we have seen at Millbank [link] and Parliament Square [link]. This year we have seen a reawakening of the student body to the activism of yesteryear. Now in this post I am not going to go into massive detail about the movement but what I will say is this, it has given me renewed faith in this generation. If you had said at the start of 2010 that 10s of thousands of students would march into London under a common cause to show their anger at the powers that be I would have laughed. We are meant to be the apathetic generation, "generation meh", but no more. We have shown that we can still mobilise and be powerful and from here we can build.

However this has also brought with it a darker side to the year. The police retaliation to the multiple protests and the resulting white wash of the media has left a sour taste in our mouths. First people were kettled into an area that they didn't want to be in so they went into Parliament Square to free up space. Then they were beaten, contained and even charged at by police on horseback. The tactics were heavy handed resulting in a man being pulled form his wheelchair twice [link] and one man was even left with brain damage after being hit over the head with a baton, the police even attempted to expel him from the hospital were he required emergency surgery for 3 hours [link].

Needless to say in the days following we were bombarded with stories of how the police were valiant heroes in the face of feral students from all the major media outlets. Some reports went as far as to claim protesters had pulled police from horseback [link], when the truth is very different [link]. This has caused a great number of people, both at the protest and not, to question the validity of the news and with it has woken up more people to the bullshit that we are fed every day.

On the other hand there has been a great change in the nature of news outlets this year with the fabled Wikileaks fiasco taking centre stage. Now Wikileaks has been around for a few years now but it is in this year that they have stepped up their game. The idea of Wikileaks is that officials can anonymously submit leaked documents and after removing personal details and ensuring the documents do not endanger people the documents are placed into the public domain [link]. This has opened up a new era in reporting in which the governments can no longer lie to our faces safe in the knowledge that their lies will stay under cover and never see the light of day. This movement has the power to fundamentally change the way governments operate and their relation with the people they govern. It is this that has so scared the people in power and caused the knee jerk reaction we have seen this year.

Obama stated as he took to office in 2009 that ""Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known" [link], oh how things have changed. After Wikileaks released around 250,000 embassy ties the mood of governments both at home and in the US turned sour. Political pressure was put upon websites connected with Wikileaks to force them into abandoning the site. Furthermore Julian Assange was arrested on dubious at best rape charges [link]. This shows to an ever increasing number of people that the powers that be these days only value free speech when it does not put them in a bad light. An encouraging effect of the political pressure is the backlash of DDoS attacks against the websites that have turned their back on Wikileaks and the way in which no matter the pressure applied by governments around the world the website has stayed functional even if it has had to change servers multiple times. This shows that even in the face of adversity free speech will succeed.

A major reason for the backlash of power against Wikileaks is the amount of information released in regards to the lies around the invasions and ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Videos of indiscriminate murder and destruction were released to an angry public as more and more of our people die over there. This year and last have been the deadliest in the history of the Afghanistan war [link] showing that rather than winning we are in fact losing, and badly. Not only this but the war is spilling more and more over into Pakistan threatening the stability of the entire area [link]. I'm not going to go too much in to depth on this matter but I will add that this again is another area where the reports by the main media should defiantly be taken with a pinch of salt. The "embedded" reporters must only report what they are told to by the army and thus cannot be fully trusted to be telling the true story. Now I wont go through a million examples but I will suggest you watch "The War You Don't See" by John Pilger [link] before believing everything bring said by these "embedded" reporters.

This year my faith in humanity was put into question again by the horrible Pakistan floods in July [link]. The floods killed (directly) thousands and displaced many many more. They resulted in an estimated £30billion in damages. With the war in Afghanistan spilling over resulting in the death of civilians the floods were the last thing Pakistan needed. Whilst this is a saddening event in it's own right it's the response of the British public that was more depressing. As the floods subsided the problems did not, as with any large floods the whole infrastructure was destroyed leaving many with nothing and at risk of cholera and other such diseases. There was a response and some aid was sent but many feel not enough. The TV and radio reports were filled with people saying that they wont support aid because of Pakistan's political stance. Now I understand that some people don't agree with Pakistan but this doesn't mean we shouldn't help their people when they are in need. The fact many turned their noses up at donating any money at all to help the civilians in need makes me sick, it shows the true dark side of humanity but alas I shall not go on too much about this as there is a lot to cover!

This year was catastrophic for the Gulf of Mexico with the Deep Water Horizon oil spill causing the largest environmental disaster for decades [link]. The amount of oil that erupted out of the drilling hole is unprecedented and at such at depth that the effects may not be known for years to come. 13 people lost their lives and many have lost their livelihood due to this disaster. The problems faced by BP were great when stopping the leak especially due to it's depth which resulted in the long time it took to stop the oil spilling out. I'm not going to place blame because this is a very complex issue and rather then pointing the finger this issue should be a wake up call. Our dependency on oil has meant we have had to drill deeper and deeper where the oil is a high pressures. This disaster will not be the last and most likely not the biggest as long as we rely on fossil fuels for our lifestyle, there's only so long they can last.

During 2010 the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, erupted grounding much of the air traffic over Europe [link]. This caused widespread disruption amongst travellers and commuting workers. The issue highlighted the vulnerability of our transport system and of international business in our age. We were lucky that the eruption was not larger and that the cloud did not remain in the atmosphere for longer. It shows a need for backup plans to be in place in case an event like this happens again for it goes to show that even in our advanced society we are still at the mercy of mother earth. However there is an upshot of this eruption, as a volcano erupts it releases CO₂ and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. During this eruption though the amount of CO₂ released was less than what the planes it grounded would have released making it the first carbon neutral volcano [NewScientist 25/12/10 pg.23].

As I have already mentioned there is a cyber-war going on over Wikileaks. However this year we have also seen the start of a new cyber-war one that is more immediately threatening than the one oer Wikileaks, I am talking about the Stuxnet computer worm [link]. This was a worm that infected many industrial control systems, most prominently in Iran. For a long time it was unknown what the purpose of said worm was but it has recently came to light that the worm was intended to target centrifuges working at a certain rate required to enrich uranium. Due to the nature of the worm and the fact that it's impact was generally centred around Iran (suspected of enriching uranium for nuclear weapons) suggests that this worm was in fact created by a state in order to hamper Iran's ambitions. If this is correct (which it most likely is) then we have step boldly into the realm of cyber-warfare and this is just the first shot. In this case the damage was limited to simply breaking centrifuges but it is obvious that this could have been a lot worse if whoever programed the worm desired it to be. We have entered a new level of war and there is no going back.

Now I have talked a lot about what has happened in the past year but now I shall set my eyes on how I feel the next year will go. I'll start off with a safe bet and say that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue and so will the bloodshed. Combat troops may begin to be removed from Iraq but these will be replaced by peace time troops and more private arms. The war in Afghanistan will get worse and continue to encroach on Pakistan. A lot of civilians and soldiers will die, there is no doubt about that.

Another safe bet is that the Gulf of Mexico will not fully recover for many decades, if ever. The amount of damage caused by the Deep Horizon spill will not fade away over night no matter if the media simply forgets about it. We already know a lot of the claims put in against BP will not be settled as many of the people do not have full financial records (they catch the fish and sell it cash in hand) so I doubt there will be any major reparations on the part of BP. They will continue to be hugely successful and this event will be but a small slip on their radar.

Now as we've already seen I can't help but be doubtful that there will be any major changes to that way the bankers operate. The very people who lost all of the money are getting billion pound bonuses and we already see dozens of adverts on the TV telling you it's easy to get a loan in half an hour, be that at 2000%APR. Indiscriminate lending got us in this mess and I see no end in sight. There will be no long lasting effective reforms in banking and we are doomed to boom and bust for many generations.

Now there is a chance however that due to the huge cuts being made (in many cases unnecessarily) by the Con-Dem government will lead to a double dip recession. We have already seen the growth in the economy slow down and with the cuts in public sector jobs a lot less people will be able to spend to keep the growth going. We will see huge cuts across the board, including the likes of the NHS, meaning these next few years will be very hard, especially for those worse off already.

One thing I do see happening is an increase in the number and the severity of protests. There will be more student protests, more union walkout and more strikes as the Con-Dem government attack everything and anything public they can. The people will not take this sitting down and that means there will be an increase in civil disobedience. We are seeing the dawn of a new pro-active age, or are we seeing a recurrence of the 1980s? Either way it means there will be a lot more action in the coming year.

However that bring with it the fear that the police force, already heavy handed, will continue to increase the level of force used against protesters. We already frequently see police horse charges and people bloodied up. This year we have seen Alfie Meadow's almost die at the hands of police and as much as it sadness me to say it I would not doubt that we see another Ian Tomlinson this year. I just hope that some time some how the police tactics get re-thought and protocols re-drawn.

This year has had it's ups and it's downs. Next year promises to be as exciting as the last. I for one am looking forward to seeing how it will unfold. Comment with your ideas and have a happy new year, let's hope to god it's not our last.

Stay Alert, Stay Free.

PROTIP: V for Vendetta is awesome!

P.S. This is likely to be my last post until after the exam period in January.

Like Pigs To The Slaughter

We are winning! We'll at least that's what they want us to believe.

How many times have you turned on the news to get a story of our progress in Afghanistan/Iraq [link] only to be told moments later that the number of casualties is increasing at an ever faster rate [link]? Now I may not be an expert but that doesn't really make sense. If every day we are making progress then how are we constantly losing more and more troops?

It just takes a look into the history books to see why they call Afghanistan the "graveyard of empires". Not only did the Soviets get defeated there [link] (with a little help from the US funding the Taliban but that's another story) but also us, the British, have been defeated on Afghan soil, not once, but twice [link1][link2]. These are but two states that have been defeated in Afghanistan and there are many many more [link]. It is obvious from the history of this region that any war would inevitably be long and drawn out leading to a large number of casualties, Mission Accomplished indeed.

As the war in Afghanistan continue it is becoming more obvious that this war is not going to be confined to within the borders of Afghanistan. It began subtly with drone attacks starting to edge across the border into Pakistan as early as 2004 [link]. It is estimated that between 2004 and 2010 there have been 200 strikes into Pakistan, 100 happening between 2009 and 2010. This signals a shift in the battlefield. The war is shifting across into Pakistan, a nuclear state[link], which promises to further destabilise the country and the area. Pakistan has been at war and close to war with it's neighbour India many times throughout it's history [link]. This is particularly scary due to the fact that India is also a nuclear power. With conflict possibly spilling further into Pakistan this brings a real threat of war if Pakistan were to become destabilised.

As the Afghanistan war threatens to destabilise yet more of the middle east at least it means we are protecting our own shores? Nothing could be further from the truth, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq raise the risk of an attack if nothing else [link].

We are being sold lies in an effort to continue these illegal wars which are now only causing more death and lowering global stability and security. The people here do not agree with the wars [link] and they are quickly turning into unjustifiable slaughterhouses. We need to get out, how many more lives are these illegal wars worth?

There are many more issues to be covered here but I'm not going to create a sprawling post right now so this is your lot at the moment.

Stay alert, Stay Free.


Any comments are always welcome, keep the discussion alive.

The Lies, The Slander

Now I am unsure as to how this post will go, I have so much I want to say and much of it is in an incoherent mess within my mind but I feel like if I wait too long to post this I feel as though it may never be made and will not be an accurate portrayal of my feelings.

Any way I and around 30,000 other people marched onto parliament square on Thursday the 9th of December 2010 to protest against the increase in student fees, the education cuts and generally against the effective privatisation of the education system within this country.

The measures put forward by the Con-Dem government will put further education out of the reach of many of the young people of this country under the guise of cutting the deficit. However this is not the case, how can increasing fees in 2 years decrease the deficit now and help us get out of the current crisis. A crisis which was caused by people taking out loans that they could simply not repay. How are the majority (not all as some, namely the upper class, student will be able to) of students be able to repay a debt of around £40,000. A lot of this debt will go unpaid which will do no favours for anyone. We already have the highest fees in Europe [link] why should they be any higher? Do we want a system similar to that of the USA were parents need to start saving from the birth of a child in order to send them through education or indeed for people to be completely priced out of further education. We need educated people to build a future for this country.

Furthermore the idea that cutting the funding by 80% or even 100% for the arts is a good way to ensure our education system is well funded and world class is an utter disgrace. Other countries are investing in their future whilst ours is cutting back, I say cutting back more like cutting out. This will cause the closure of many universities which many less well off students rely on again pricing students out of university.

A Con-Dem proposal for paying the first year or two of the poorest 16,000 or so student does little to compensate for those who are just above this threshold who will be left to suffer the full brunt of the fees. Furthermore the fact one or two years is payed doesn't help when the people still come out with more debt then they would previously, some A LOT more.

Alas at the moment I do not wish to dwell on why these cuts and increases in fees are a terrible idea. I would prefer to dwell upon the illegal and out of proportion response of the police to these actions.

Firstly I shall start on the point of police horses. The whole idea of having an animal in this sort of situation is sickening and cruel. Sure these animals are trained but there is only so much an animal can take. An excuse often used for police brutality is that the person gets stressed out. Now we are logical animals and have more of an understanding of the situation, an animal no matter the training will not understand the situation. That amount of noise and violence will stress out a horse and cause it to become dangerous, both to us and the police [link] as well as itself. This is animal cruelty and must stop.

I shall take a step back and explain what I meant by violence in relation to police horses. A tactic used a lot on Thursday was to charge into the crowd of protesters (never mind some were as young as 13/14) in an attempt to separate them. The crowd however is not always able to separate resulting in people getting trampled causing great damage to the person. This causes great fear as people could well die under the hooves of these horses. If a person is faced with the possibility of death or serious injury they may well throw whatever they have to try and stop this. The protesters did not target the horses in a malicious manner and even when something was thrown in a last ditch attempt at self defence it was undoubtedly aimed at the police on the horse. This means that the police by introducing the horses lead them directly to harm which is cruel and should stop.

Furthermore the actions of mounted police aside the rest of the force were also staggeringly heavy handed and illegal. As we entered parliament square we were instantly kettled, few, very few, people were able to leave from that point onwards the majority had no chance of leaving and had no real access to toilets or food and water. This is a direct attack on our freedoms and human rights and is an attempt to anger the masses into escalating the violence. A lot of violence was due to people aiming to leave the kettle, especially near the end when we had been detained for at least 6 hours. The majority of the demonstration were peaceful, no matter what is portrayed in the media, and we were all trapped on Westminster bridge for around 3 hours. This serves no end but as an attempt to scare as many of the first time protesters from protesting again. This is not however the effect it had, if anything it has made many protesters question the establishment and yes the police.

The kettling and the provocation it caused is just the tip of the iceberg. The sheer force that the police used against unprotected people is astounding. Now I can understand some force in order to keep people out of parliament, after all these peoples jobs have been manipulated to mean that their duty is to protect a government that is gong to cut their jobs. However the sights that I saw cannot be fully described by my words but I shall simply tell it like I saw it. People of all ages returned from the front line after clashes literally pouring with blood from their heads and young girls crying their eyes out along side old women hysterical with fear. People with broken bones were sent back into the kettle and denied medial help leaving them to have makeshift slings made until they were aloud out.

The violent methods used by the police did nothing but anger the protesters and escalate the violence. Images of fences being carried across the top of crowds were pounced on by the media and the masses told that they were being thrown at police. This was NOT the case. Fences were being taken to the front line. They were not however, being used as weapons. What actually happened was that the fences were being placed between the protesters and the police in order to protect the protesters from the truncheons of the police.

A person was nearly killed after being hit by a truncheon to the head. As a result of this he got bleeding on the brain, he was then denied medical assistance by police officers before an ambulance worker intervened [link]. Another protester was dragged from his wheelchair multiple times. We are expected to be thankful that they did not open fire? What has happened to this country? It is disgusting but it will not stop us. As long as the government acts to destroy out country we will continue to fight.

Now the point of this post is not to be anti-police because in most situations the police are necessary and a force for good but I fail to see how nearly killing people is for the people. We will hold solidarity when you are cut if you march. We will march for the more general cuts then just in education. This is our fight, this is your fight. Rise together and win together, solidarity until the end.

I'm sorry this post has been a lot more opinion and first hand experience than being backed up by sources as usual but this has made me very angry. I will endeavor to make a post supported by more factual sources next time but I hope this has made you question a few things said by the media and at least entertained.

Stay alert, stay free.

We Are Free

The governments of this world are growing out of touch. They do not understand the internet and it's culture at all. This is shown by their attempts to close down Wikileaks [link for now at least].

Wikileaks as I have said before is a website that enables people from around the world to release documents detailing lies fed out by their governments, effectively allowing whistle blowing without the immediate threats encountered if they were to approach a more conventional outlet. This has allowed us to begin to level the laying field. It allows us to know if we are being lied to and the real motives behind the governments actions.

However for obvious reasons this has not gone down well with the powers that be. How can they claim to be for the people if there is a constant stream of documents being released that states otherwise? For this reason the US and European governments have been making attempts to shut down Wikileaks without taking into account how this wonderful thing known as the interenet works.

Firstly there are the relentless DDOS[?] attacks, an attempt to overcrowd the server and cause it to crash. This was successful in temporally bringing down the site [link]. This however is as said a temporary thing and after some time the site was back up and operational after all the attacks.

However the game then took a step up, international governments began applying political pressure on the companies owning the servers that Wikileaks was hosted, such as Amazon [link]. This caused the site to be taken down but alas again this was only temporary. The beautiful thing about the internet is that it is based on free speak and this means that there are a great number of able people out there that believe in this cause. This has lead to the site being "mirrored" and hosted in numerous places all over the world. As one is shut down another opens, it's like a game of cat and mouse but this time as the mouse is caught another 5 appear.
Another attempt to end Wikileaks has been made recently with the arrest of founder Assange [link]. This will not in anyway bring an end to Wikileaks as this site is not a single man, it is not a collection of men, it is an idea. An idea of freedom and liberty that cannot and will not be extinguished no matter how many arrests are made. Once something like this is out on the internet there is no way of stopping it, Wikileaks has already stated categorically that it will not stop due to Assange's arrest [link].

It is now that we see that the governments are out of touch with the internet culture and are genuinely scared. This Wikileaks battle has shown that we can make them accountable for their lies and misleadings. It shows that whilst they may try with all their might that the internet will remain free, that whilst it may not be the most direct form of action that whilst we have the ability we can remove the veil over our eyes on the internet. This is truly a wonderful time. I hope that this Wikileaks escapade will encourage others to whistle blow and not be scared, for it is now that we know we can be free.

Stay alert, Stay free.

A New Beginning

One good thing about the Torys, they're waking up this generation to the absolute bull that comes from downing street and the media. They can kettle and they can shutdown Wikileaks but they can't shut our eyes once they have been opened.

A new generation took to the streets, a generation that supposedly doesn't care. Sure this is over fees which many feel will effect them financially in a direct way, for many this is the first time they feel as though their way of life is under direct attack by the government. It feels normal for a change to take up a banner and march in the street, I don't feel marginalised for wanting to go out and show my disgust with the way things are ran.

There has been a shift in the consciousness of the young people of this country. No longer are they content to say "If you don't like it then move" or "At least its better than [insert country name here]" and for that I thank the Torys and their elitist regime. This is an exciting time to be a student, we finally have an enemy we all identify with. Cameron the smug upper class weasel that we all resent and Clegg for lying straight to our faces.

What is most exciting though is not that students and none-students a like are fighting against cuts in their thousands, it's that there are thousands of people simply mobile in the streets. One act of civil disobedience over an issue will make it more likely that they will continue onto other issues. The police have tried to quash the protests for this reason, planting police vans and kettling protesters to try and scare us from returning. Alas all it shows is that the powers that be are scared, the Lib-Dems changing dates and venues for meetings shows this. As Thomas Jefferson once said "When governments fear people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." We are witnessing a scared Government, we are regaining our liberty.

However there are two sides to this post. As you may all now Wikileaks released a great deal of documents dealing with the Iraq and Afghanistan war as well as other documents. My opinion on the matter is that information should be able to freely move and if there is evidence of the Government lying to it's people then we should be able to access this information, obviously information on current operations should be kept secret to protect our troops but I feel as though we should have a right to know if we are being lied to. Yet as we stand on the brink of our generation waking up we are confronted with outright censorship by our freely elected governments. Wikileaks has been shut down and has moved servers many times in the past weeks due to political pressure. This is a blatant act against freedom of speech and information. When we live in an age were we are told that North Korea fired unprovoked into South Korea [link] before discovering this is may not the case at all [link].

We are entering an age were the government is more open to blatant abuses of power and attacks against our freedoms yet we are also seeing more and more people wake up and fight back. It may be student fees and education cuts that have got people onto the street but there is a sense that this is only the beginning. These are exciting times, the balance of power is shifting. We can fight and we can win. A mere few months ago that sentiment would seem ridiculous to many but now it seems this thought has penetrated the zeitgeist. This is merely the beginning of the war, the people together will never be defeated.
Stay free.

We will march on the 9th, we will march until we win.

Zombies!

The Government is wanting more and more of our information but don't worry they will be able to keep it 100% secure shouldn't they? I mean surely our security and governmental organisations have some sort of defence against known viruses don't they? Well apparently they don't. Manchester Police have recently been hit by the "Conficker worm" virus (link). This virus got into the system via an officers memory stick and spread quickly throughout the system. The virus itself has been around since at least November 2008 with the most recent variant being found in April 2009 (link), this to me would seem like ample time to set up some sort of defence to detect the virus before infection. With such sensitive and valuable data on the system a scan of any external memory devices should be run to ensure our information is safe, this is obviously not a priority of the police force.
In this case the infection was caught fast and the system was isolated meaning that the damage caused was minimal. If the virus had gone undetected for long it would open gateways for other more damaging viruses and hackers to enter through, this is very worrying considering what information is held on these types of systems.
Even though the damage was minimised the system still had to be taken down for three days. During these three days police couldn't access information to check for criminals and suspect vehicles effectively crippling the whole system. Now this may appear as a small and negligible problem in the long run but what happens if this kind of thing happens on the now developing National Identity Register (NIR)? If the NIR went down for a few days people would not be able to access any information on the system, effectively removing them from the planet for those few days. Any checks that need to be ran would be impossible and all transactions for that time would be halted.
This however, would be a best case scenario, one in which the virus was not detected early allowing it to spread could be so much worse. If a similar virus was allowed to mature and spread through the system peoples information would become readily open to attack from hackers and other viruses. This could lead to peoples information being effectively lost from the system, this person would then have to prove themselves against a system which is apparently fool proof in order to restore their identity. Furthermore peoples information could be easily stolen and sold on or used for identity fraud, with the amount of information held on the system this could be devastating.

This is not adequate protection.

The way that this system is designed to be interconnected across the entire country leaves many openings for some sort of virus to enter through. Unless their are thorougher checks on every device added to the system (this is neglecting any viruses picked up via other methods) an infection is inevitable. If a system the size of Manchester Police can fall prey to something like this what hope does a national system have? Sure, there may be a raised sense of security about it but an infection is inevitable.



Keep alert, stay free.

Fear

Fear is no longer an emotion, it is a product. A product being sold to us everyday without us even noticing. It is the fuel of this capitalist dream and those dispensing the fear hold the power over the terrified masses. Fear is what is controlling us and it is the fuel burning away at our freedoms. We need to reinstate fear as an emotion and not a product in order to be truly free.
Fear is a natural response to a threat and is perfectly natural and healthy. That is as long as the threat actually exists. However more often then not we are being lead to be fearful of threats that simply do not exist simply in an attempt to control. You watch the TV and see images of death and destruction, the news shows us engaged in another futile war whilst the soaps get involved in large murder plot lines. All to remind you that you are indeed mortal, something that instills fear into most people. This is however, not the end. We are then bombarded with advertisements for products we don't need telling us that we wont get laid if we don't buy there new wrinkle cream or anal bleach. By ensuring the consumer is scared the companies can manipulate this to sell their worthless products. There is money to be made out of fear.
It is not only the corporations that can profit from fear but also those who are instated to protect our best interests, our governments. The buzzword this past decade was terrorism, any news article could be sexed up with the words terror or extremist and result in the audience lapping up what ever spews from the newsreader. In a state of fear the people become sheep. The staggering number of CCTV cameras and the simply deplorable ID card scheme are both products of fear. The threat of terror is amplified to simply ridiculous levels in the media to create this level of fear in order to produce enough flag wavers to allow the government to have it's way. The fear created clouds people's judgement and makes them more susceptible to manipulation.
To illustrate the amplification of the threat from terrorism I give you the fact that almost 400 times more people die in car crashes in developed countries than from international terrorism (link). What does this tell us? Is it that we should be petrified of driving? No. It is simply that the threat of terror is so small it is almost negligible. The fact that road accident are so frequent and terror isn't results in the skewed view of the world we see on the news. To put it simply drama sells and terror attacks are dramatic. The whole idea of a terror attack is to create fear and due to the way the news portrays terror the attacks often have their desired results. What happens when we realise that a certain terror group isn't as scary as we first were lead to believe? After all isn't terror a new thing to the 21st century. Well the faces and names simply change. The people we are told to fear varies over time, I mean weren't the reds meant to have killed us all by now?
However terror is not the only thing we are taught to fear. If you were to take the threats printed in the news all seriously life would be impossible. Every other day there is breaking news that causes cancer or if toxic or can kill you in any number of ways. People buy into fear so if you can print a story with a scary headline people are going to buy your paper or magazine or even watch your show. So by increasing the fear in peoples lives the media companies increase their profits which intern allows the advertisers to pick up on the fear and take it running. A scared society is a stupid society.
So as this has dragged on for a while and I am positively knackered I shall round it up here. Basically a lot of what we fear is not scary. It is often blown out of proportion to fit others needs. Threats are not always as overt as those posed by politicians discussing terror, some are much more covert. The media paints a picture of a terrifying world in which everything must be feared, the advertisers then pick up on this and offer their products as the only solution. We need not fear the entire world, we need not fear each other. I believe in the intrinsic goodness of man despite the atrocities we have committed, I believe people are good. The more we succumb to this state of fear sold to us the darker the world becomes. No wonder the depression rates are always increasing, we are taught to be scared of everything and everyone. Once we see the true beauty in life, the beauty obscured by fear, we will be free. You need not be afraid simply think next time a politician or a news article or whatever tell you you need to be scared because most of the time, they are wrong. We live in a wonderful and beautiful world, too often is this forgotten. Stay happy, stay free.
Also if you enjoyed this post you may enjoy this mans work:







P.S. I realise this article has a lot of my own views as apposed to factual content but I feel this blog belongs here. If anyone has any thoughts or arguments to do with what I have written then simply comment below and I shall expand upon this.