Here’s a short interview with Gore Vidal on how America has changed since 9/11.
Recorded for the BBC Today programme on 2006-09-11.

Not since the death of the Di has there been such a huge global reaction as that to news of Steve Irwin’s stingray encounter. OK, no public flower madness and the TV schedule hasn’t been buggered up quite as much but for the last couple of days, every time I meet someone, the conversation invariably starts with “did you hear about Steve Irwin”, followed by a few “crikey” jokes.
But what really drove it home to me was the Internet reaction. My favourite way of wasting time is looking at the latest 30 pictures uploaded to Livejournal as, apart from anything else, it is a great weather vane of viral content. On the day Irwin died, each reload produced multiple pictures of him, either in one of his classic “Crikey” poses or photoshopped in some way: people are really quick off the mark with that stuff. By the mid morning (UK time) there were even animated GIFs of him with a stingray… Clearly he was a global phenomonen – possibly more than he knew. Funny old world; the constant news of massacres in the middle east seems like background noise to most people, but when an Australian, who spends his entire life taunting the most dangerous animals on the planet, gets killed by a dangerous animal, everybody’s interested.

For more stinging barbs, why not watch this rather excellent 5 minute rant from George Carlin on who really controls America. Bill Hicks would be proud.

From the excellent Spy Blog:

You might think that being arrested under the “thought crime” Terrorism Act 2000 section 58 Collection of information, and being held in Belmarsh prison for 9 months, until you face trial, is a bad enough ordeal.

What then, if you are found not guilty on all charges and are released, only to have a Control Order under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 slapped on you instead ?

Well done Thames Water! A rise in profits to

£346,500,000

whilst pouring

894,000,000 litres

of water into the ground through leaky pipes every year. This calls for a celebration, and so they’ve decided to reward their work force by

sacking 25%

of them.

Normally, if you take public money and put it in your pocket, that’s called corruption. However, by simply calling it “privatisiation” and writing the cash you’ve stolen in an account ledger, not only are you perfectly legal but admired by all – especially by the little bastards in the government who want a slice of the cake when they “retire” from politics.

What are you supposed to do when you realise that the generally accepted implementation of “Democracy” is totally undemocratic ? Would it be right to break the law in order to change it ? How would you begin ?

It’s becoming increasingly apparent to me that the whole concept of party-politics is totally broken. If you become a member of a political party you are expected to follow the party line even if you disagree with the point they are pushing. If you get outvoted you have to push your opponents point of view, despite it frequently being diametrically opposed to yours. To me, these days at least, that is tantamount to being a traitor, and every day we watch these traitors giving passionate speeches on TV and radio promoting things they did, once, disagree with. Whether they have changed their opinion through loyalty, persistence, or by 1984-style coercsion doesn’t matter; surely that’s ridiculous. Why do we have political parties ? Why do we have professional politicians ? None of it makes any sense to me any more. At the last general election there were many, many independent councillors who were derided by the conventional parties as being ‘single-policy’ options. But what is wrong with that ? At least it’s honest!
So many times we heard angry people who were standing against their traditional party of choice (usually Labour) because they felt angry enough to do so. So many times we heard the phrase “I don’t know anything about politics, I just…” and it gave me a small shot of joy.
Surely democracy is about the people and should involve them. If someone feels that their environment is being ruined by people in the wrong then they should should be able to stand against them. And personally I’d much rather have an impassioned person acting on my behalf than some party-monkey who does just what the leader wants – especially when the leader is a deluded, power-tainted, corrupt, messianic, nutjob.
The old saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely has never been more clearly demonstrated than now.

Back to the mundane, it’s been a good few days. A fun, albeit surreal, night in Greenwich on Friday lead to a relaxed weekend. Saw some great films, had a superb curry and it culminated in a kebab at my mum and dads with Frances and Marshall which was the perfect end to a nice weekend. In fact the only downside of the whole thing is my bed: it’s crap and full of pointy springs. I can’t wait until we get to Philadelphia and can invest in a luxury bed…

Last night Tony, Zap and I went to see A Scanner Darkly at the New Jersey theme park that is the Greenwich peninsula. The whole evening is as close to perfect as I could imagine – got there on time, had a nice glass of wine, managed to get free tickets from the lovely Mark, saw an excellent film then went to a great pub. Years ago, Alex gave me a copy of the book and I can’t tell you how much I loved it. Perhaps because I was concerned about the film ruining it, my expectations were mixed, but it was superb; I’m still buzzing when I think about it. Visually mind-blowing, great acting (especially Robert Downey Jr) and true to the book. It’s well worth seeing in a cinema by the way – and you won’t have to worry about the related distractions like kids and shouting, because all of the dickheads will be in the theatre next door watching Snakes on a Plane.
First time in the Vanbrugh Tavern too. Their award-winning garden deserves to win an award.

Somehow I managed to persuade Orange to upgrade me to a brand new M600 [HTC Prophet]. Despite running a lame operating system, it really is a top piece of gear. It does 802.11 (wireless lan), bluetooth, GPRS and Infrared, which means I’m always on the Internet! Joy! I can even run SSH on the thing, and my old MMC card (together with the MP3s on it) fits perfectly. Skype even runs on it – in fact I managed to have a conversation, albeit stilted, with someone on Skype earlier today.
My old 6230 was a wonderful machine, but this is mind blowing. Once Linux manages to do slightly more than boot on the thing, it’ll be the best bit of hardware ever…apart from the M600+ which is already out…

P.S.
4 old recordings from the archives are up for any old gits who may be interested to hear what we all used to get up to in our bedrooms in the 80’s and 90s’:

http://www.myspace.com/vegheadmusic

Please do not confuse this with an endorsement of myspace – that still sucks hard. But at least they let you host MP3s…

Now that the nasty Lebanon business is “finished” we can turn our attention away from Israel’s break of the ceasefire, and the thousands of innocent bodies, and look back to the mass-murder currently going on in the New Democratic Republic of Iraq. We are now being asked to give a monkey’s toss about Saddam’s trial for his genocide of the Kurds.
There was a very interesting exchange on the Today programme this morning between Sadakat Kadri, John Humphries and MP Ann Clewyd (Blair’s human rights monkey). Mr Kadri wondered aloud why the democratic trial had skipped over the issue of the Kuwait invasion, suggesting that it might sound too much like the US/UK invasions of recent years and perhaps highlight the hipocracy of the situation. Ann was quick to defend by asking “have you actually been to Iraq ?” Mr Kadri had to accept that no, he hadn’t….but what difference could that POSSIBLY make ? Humphries lept on this golden opportunity and got her to admit the undeniable truth that the place is fucked, and even the UK ambassador had said that “civil war was more likely in Iraq than democracy”. Despite the fact that this is an example of lead-weight understatement, and that what he meant was “Jesus Christ get me out of here there’s a bloody civil war going on!” she had the nerve to try and argue that it “wasn’t all bad”…YES IT IS! It’s very, very, very, bad indeed. And it’s YOUR FAULT. The only cheery thought I have is of you and your bastard, murdering, colleagues sitting in your retirement homes looking back at the mass murder that you were directly responsible for and worrying about your progress in the afterlife. Don’t worry – your seats are already being warmed by the horned one in anticipation.

It’s great being an atheist, you get to taunt religious people with their own inventions!

Meanwhile, back in the UK, the mainstream media have picked up on the fact that PFI is bleeding us all dry, ruining everything we hold dear in order to line the pockets of a handful of cynical over-rich bastards. Despite Private Eye printing the gory details of this malfeasance for many years the mainstream have only just scratched the surface. Of course, none of it makes it into the popular press because that’s got its hands full generating mass panic about the phantom terrorists.

Apologies for the tone of this blog. I ran out of anti-depressants a couple of days ago. We did have a lovely day in Blackheath yesterday though, so it’s not all bad.

The only question on the minds of the regular readers of “Dodgy” Dave Courtney’s blog at the moment is “Where is Chris the Greek ?” Let me tell you, if I was Chris the Greek I would have gone into hiding at the North Pole with a lifetime supply of immodium by now. Dave’s blog is a truly fascinating phenomenon because it is, as far as I can tell, genuine; although “Mad” Frankie Fraser may disagree. The temptation to get a subscription for his live-cam site is torturing me but I just can’t bring myself to do it. In fact the temptation to get the bus over to Plumstead and seek out Camelot is getting me twitchy too.