The UK and the USA have many things in common. One of the most infuriating is their drugs policy. While most of Europe follow a liberal harm-reduction line, Britain chooses to emulate America’s ridiculous “War on Drugs”. Even though it plainly doesn’t work.
In 2001, Portugal decided to adopt a policy of decriminalization of the possession of illegal drugs. All illegal drugs. If you’re caught with no more than 10 days’ supply of cannabis, ecstasy, heroin, cocaine, whatever, you won’t go to prison. BBC journalist Claudia Hammond went to Lisbon to report on this innovative policy.
At the time, conservative-minded codgers said the policy would result in Portugal becoming some sort of druggie’s Mecca. They thought drug use would rocket. They were wrong. Just 8% of Portugese have tried cannabis, compared to 42% in the USA. Drug-related deaths are down. The use of every illegal drug has gone down in the 8 years since 2001. Except for cocaine, which has become fashionable.
So, do you think the UK government will learn from the Portugese experience? Of course not! UK drugs policy is becoming more fascistic, not less – remember they recently made cannabis class B? Idiots.
America is seriously messed up because of drugs. Britain’s headed the same way. And, although Portugal has shown us how to rectify the situation, we won’t take any notice. The wise men in power know best, damn them!
It never ceases to amaze me how death can make even the most reviled monsters into wonderful heroes. In life, “Wacko Jacko” was branded a freak, a kiddie-fiddler, a madman… but now he’s dead, everyone loves the guy. For years, his CDs have sat gathering dust on record store shelves; a day after his death, they’re all sold out. It would surprise me less if Saddam Hussein’s birthday was proclaimed a national holiday in the USA. Crazy.
Of course, the public has always been pretty irrational when it comes to Jackson. Look at how his fans were convinced he wasn’t guilty of abusing young boys, simply because they liked his music. That kind of logic would have acquitted Gary Glitter of the child sex charges that got him sent to prison. I remember seeing the crowds of Jackson fans outside the courtroom when he was on trial, often in tears at the thought that their idol might be found guilty of a crime that he “obviously” hadn’t committed. Crazy.
Remember that kid Jordy Chandler, who alleged that he and Jackson had engaged in acts of kissing, masturbation and oral sex? Remember how he gave a detailed description of what he said Jackson’s penis looked like? A description that doctors who examined Jackson’s genitals reported bore a strong similarity to the real thing? Remember how Jackson paid $22 million for Jordy’s allegations to go away? Remember how his sister La Toya claimed he was a pedophile (an accusation she later withdrew – but for a woman to say such a thing about her brother in the first place is remarkable to say the least). Of course, none of the above means Jackson actually did anything wrong. But it’s interesting to remember these details about his life when we consider the guy’s recent elevation to sainthood.
Then there’s the drug abuse stuff. It’s said that he was addicted to Valium, Ativan, opiate painkillers and xanax. And the cosmetic surgery – people who’ve undergone much less work are diagnosed as suffering from surgical addiction. Is this the kind of person who should be considered a suitable role model for children? Apparently so. Crazy.
None of the above is meant as an attack on the memory of Michael Jackson. I don’t particularly think that his memory is something to be revered. But I’m not trying to put the guy down. I’m just saying that it’s damned weird how the whole world now thinks the sun shone out of his diseased-not-bleached butt.
Incidentally, I was looking for some pictures to illustrate this blog post and decided to check out Google Images. So I did an image search for “Michael Jackson”… Look what Google turned up! It’s like I was saying. Crazy!
Pictures of Michael Jackson... he obviously had more radical cosmetic surgery than I thought!
Have you seen this?? Police officers in Nottingham, England, effecting an arrest. In the old days, they’d have had nothing but truncheons to batter their prisoner with. But the past decade or so has seen our boys in blue tooled up with all sorts of wonderful weaponary. Long batons, CS spray, tasers – they’ve got the lot. And here you can see them putting some of this equipment to good use.
The guy’s on the floor, having been tasered. When you’re shot with a taser, your muscles go into involuntary spasms. So he’s on the floor, arms and legs jerking, as happens when you’ve been electrocuted. But the copper decides this movement is resisting arrest. He and his colleagues try to pin the poor sod down, but his limbs are still in spasm. So the heroic Taser Cop shoots him again. Then all the coppers lay into their victim… I mean prisoner.
The way Taser Cop shouts “Taser! Taser! Taser” when he shoots the poor guy – it’s like the policeman thinks he’s on TV. Which he was, a short time later. Jeez, don’t go to Nottingham. Unless you like being electrocuted and beaten…
This comic strip is hilarious, yet a little too real… I used to think that only a complete idiot would fall for a trick like this, but there are lots of otherwise intelligent folk who honestly believe that the police aren’t allowed to lie! Frightening, isn’t it?
The strip (below) is from http://lawcollective.live.radicaldesigns.org/. And there is a lot more good stuff there, including advice on such topics as “Arrest and Questioning”, “Jail and Bail” and “Using a lawyer”. The site is rather USA-centric, but a lot of it is relevant to most Western countries. Police are police no matter where they’re from. Check it out – maybe you’re not a criminal right now, but you never know when the cops might decide to turn you into one!
Sometimes I think it’s impossible for me to think any less of the USA. And then the Yanks do something so disgusting, I’m forced to accept that there are fresh depths to which they can sink. Look at how they’re treating Abduhl Wali-i-Musi, the Somali teenager accused of masterminding the kidnap of the captain of the Maersk Alabama. According to the boy’s mother, Abduhl is just 16 years old, a boy who was tricked into participating in piracy. It’s clear he is very young – the Chicago Tribune says he is just 5 foot 2 inches in height, “and looked bewildered and so scrawny that his prison clothes were several sizes too big.” His lawyer, Deirdre von Dornum, described him as “extremely young, injured and terrified”.
The USA is determined to punish Abduhl severely for his involvement in the kidnap plot. He is a minor – his mother says he’s 16, his defence believes he’s 15 – but the court has decided he’s 18, and so can be tried as an adult. There doesn’t seem to have been any actual confirmation of his age – the judge first ordered the court be closed as appropriate for a minor like Abduhl; then he announce4d that he was ruling that the boy was in fact a man, and let the press and sight-seers back in. Did someone tell the judge he’d better try Abduhl as an adult? Maybe…
And the prosecution allege that the boy was the leader of the pirates! Imagine: a band of cut-throats led by this little boy! Remember, he’s 5 foot 2 and maybe as young as 15 – does this sound like a pirate captain? More like a cabin boy! Yet the USA seems determined to set this child up with a life sentence. What the heck?!!
Sometimes I think the Yanks can’t get any worse. And then they get worse…
The information in this post will help you download and save video files that are hosted on sites like Youtube, Supernovatube, Youku, Megavideo, and linked to by sites like SurfTheChannel.com, free-tv-video-online.info and watch-movies-links.net
Seen the latest cool video on Youtube? Want to save it on your hard drive so you can watch it again at your leisure or share it with your internetless friends? Well, it’s simple – if you use Linux. Everything I explain in this post was done on a computer running Ubuntu 8.10, but I think it will work with any distro.
Okay, let’s start with Youtube videos. First, watch the video. Then, before you navigate away from that web page, go and look in your system’s /tmp directory. You should find a flash video file, named something like Flashbt0cVD. That’s the file you want. So move it to your home directory (or wherever you keep your videos) and rename it something more descriptive.
There is a problem. One or two of the video links sites (like tv-video.net) delete temporary files when they have finished playing. This means you can’t move the file out of /tmp after you’ve watched it. The solution is to [I]link[/I] the temporary file to one in your home directory before the temporary file is deleted. So you start to play the video, then go look in the /tmp directory. You’ll find a randomly-named video file there. You need to link it to your home directory. Do this by running this command in terminal:
ln /tmp/Flashuh4G6s ~/video.flv
Now you have got the video file in your /home. You have to make sure that the name you give to the new linked file does not already exist in the directory. So in the example above, you would first check that there is no file called video.flv in your home directory.
But there’s another problem. If you watch a video via the links sites that is hosted at Youku, the video will be delivered as a series of small files (12-13 MB each). But this isn’t a serious problem. When they’ve downloaded you can put the randomly-named files into the correct viewing order by checking the properties of the files, looking at the time when the files were created.
If you have any queries, feel free to leave Comments.
UPDATE: If you are a Windoze user and you want to learn how to save streamed media, you should check out this site. There you’ll find info on how to capture and save video from lots of websites, plus audio files from last.fm and other internet radio stations. I only use Linux, so I can’t verify the accuracy of the info. But it looks good.
The UK government has announced that they will not bail-out the troubled commercial vehicle manufacturer LDV, even though this might cost 5000 British jobs. Even though they seem prepared to repeatedly bail-out the banks to the tune of tens of billions of pounds. Why is this?
The answer is quite simple. The government doesn’t like the manufacturing industry. As far as our rulers are concerned, the sooner all manufacturing moves to the developing world the better. But they like banks. And bankers. Oh yeah, they love bankers.
I’ve seen it suggested that, since LDV has Russian owners, the Russkies should bail ‘em out. Great. 5000 British workers can go starve to death. Lovely.
To be fair to the government, they’re not the only ones who have got a hard-on for the banks. The Conservative party would also give it up to the bankers if they got the chance. And they may well get that chance if Gordon Brown and his elves don’t get their act together pretty damn soon. I wouldn’t vote Tory. But I know plenty of dickheads who will.
I’ve been away for quite some time. I wasn’t completely cut off from the internet, but online time was limited and I prefered to use it for porn downloads and emails to my wives rather than posting on this blog! But now I’m back. Hope you missed me more than I missed you!!
So, what happened while I was away? Barack Obama became the Omnipotent Overlord of All Creation (hail Obama!), Israel shelled women and children for hardly any reason at all, and half the world burned (Australia) while the other half froze (UK).
No doubt you missed my incisive bollocks. Now I’m back, I fully intend to spend a little more time on this blog than I have done in the past. (The distant past, I mean… I haven’t spent any time at all on this in the recent past!) And I want you to participate! Whether you love, hate, or couldn’t give a toss about what I write, leave comments!
I read today on the Free Gary website that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has made the final order for Gary McKinnon’s extradition to the USA, where he faces prosecution for hacking into defence computer systems. I’m not going to go into the whole story now – if you want to read about it, freegary.org.uk tells it all far better than I could. But I will tell you this: he’s facing 7 counts of “causing malicious damage to computer equipment”. The maximum he could get for that is 10 years on each charge. In other words, 70 years. When he was first arrested, the US authorities said if he didn’t cooperate they would push for the maximum sentence. So, when he is shipped out to America, it will be to face a possible sentence of 70 years imprisonment. And for what? For “hacking” into a computer network that wasn’t even password-protected! Madness!
Something else about this case that I think is dodgy: in this interview, Gary tells how he found on a US computer a list of “non-terrestrial officers”. There’s been a lot of speculation since about what this could mean. I’ve seen people claim that “non-terrestrial officers” means US servicemen who are not land-based. “It doesn’t mean little green men,” the doubters chortle.
Well, if it means so little, if it’s so damn innocent, then tell me this: how come, when I do a google search for “non terrestrial officers”, the only results are in articles about Gary McKinnon? If the US armed forces use the expression “non-terrestrial officers” to mean non-land based servicemen, why doesn’t that expression appear anywhere on the internet in that context?
Gary McKinnon is going to die in American prison because someone thinks he knows too much. And the UK government is sending him there – they may as well put a noose around his neck!
Posted by t0p 
Posted by t0p 
Posted by t0p 
