I have lived here

Enjoyment: "This paradox of living in excrement and dirt while suffering from a germ phobia is well known to psychiatrists; it is even referred to in some research papers as the 'Howard Hughes dilemma'. It is explained by the irrational fear of dirt becoming so intense that no amount of cleaning is seen to be good enough, and therefore cleaning is eventually abandoned altogether."

Louise.
Rest in the peace you could not know in this world.
Paul xx

Who's life is worth saving?

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | UK prepares for flu pandemic: "The new scheme could include computer staff in a group of 'essential' workers who would have to be treated in order to ensure the economy did not collapse in the event of a pandemic."

The Quality of Life - what is it worth? What does this say about our society and what it values.

Shop Till You're Cool

MSNBC - Shop Till You're Cool: "companies like Samsung, Sony and Apple are building stores that aren't about shelves and checkout lines. Rather, they're designing them mainly to be cool places to hang out. The goal is to get shoppers to buy into the notion that using these products makes them part of a unique community; actually buying the products comes later"

Pentagon envisioning a costly Internet for war

Pentagon envisioning a costly Internet for war | CNET News.com: That is the vision of the new web: war machines with a common language for all military forces, instantly emitting encyclopedias of lethal information against all enemies.

Knock, knock Neo - the Matrix has you

Money: "Fox now regards the BlackBerry as her Swiss Army knife for the digital age, a mobile office. 'While travelling in the Lake District recently, I received a new business lead on email and despite the fact that I was standing in a field, I was able to respond to the prospect immediately with detailed information,' she says. 'As a result Fox Design secured a great new project, it wouldn't have happened without the technology at hand.'

Now an experienced and self-confessed 'CrackBerry addict', Fox claims that the device justifies her outlay. 'Now I'd probably pay double if I needed too. Once you've got over the embarrassment of using it in public you'll never look back.'"

Cultural Critique of Mythological Hollywood Cinema

Stan Goff: Torture and the Cinema

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | World 'will act on climate gases'

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | World 'will act on climate gases': "Nothing is more difficult than learning to think differently."

The unemployed become zoo specimens for the middle class

MediaGuardian.co.uk | Broadcast | Big Brother builds 'Truman Show' village

Beyond anger

Star Wars deal places US missiles on UK soil

This is part the flow of power, decisions being taken at cabinet levels around the world. Our parliamentary representation is non-existent.

Welcome to the deconstructionction of liberal democracy.
Welcome, to the real world.

How to be different in a homogenous world

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Virgin boss in space tourism bid: "Sir Richard says it will cost around �100,000 to go on a 'Virgin Galactic' spaceliner, and the first flights should begin in about three years' time...We've done quite a lot of research; we think there are about 3,000 people out there who would want to do this,' Sir Richard told the BBC.

'If it is a success, we want to move into orbital flights and then, possibly, even get a hotel up there.'"

3,000 x 100,000 = 300 Million GB Pounds

It is true that in a liberal democracy we are free to spend our money any way we want to.

And still the poor starve in dictatorships supported by the first world, because they are cheap labour and their countries have cheap resources.

Meanwhile, we are homogenised consumers, indoctrinated into believing that the only way we can differentiate ourselves is by possessing goods and services (Memories) different from the other wage serfs.

100,000 for a space trip will be the ultiamte in middle-class dinner party cultural capital.

The commodification of the beautiful game

BBC NEWS | Business | Selling Manchester United to its fans: "'We have fan loyalty, and in any other business that would mean we would have customers spending on a repeat basis.

'Someone can be cradle-to-grave fan, but we will not necessarily have them spending anything with us.

'The question we are asking is how we build a relationship with the fans, and at the same time turn them into lifelong customers of the club?'"

Who needsd god when Oprah can answer your prays?

Fool.com: Oprah's Product Placement [Motley Fool Take] September 14, 2004: "Will Oprah Winfrey drive Pontiacs into pop culture popularity? Maybe so, considering Oprah -- whom we recently crowned 'Investment Guru' -- gave away 276 Pontiac G6 2005 sports sedans to her entire studio audience for her season premiere on Monday. The recipients were handpicked as people whose families and friends had written to Oprah stating that they needed new cars, making it an episode about aspirations and wish fulfillment."

The Politics of Natural Right

Bad News for Kerry (washingtonpost.com)

Democratic equality

CounterPunch: "America's Best Political Newsletter": "What we get is that Murdoch of The Sun in England has a thousand or ten thousand times greater control over the alternatives scheduled for debate and decision in a national election than you do. [13] He is about that much more free to get what he wants for himself and the people with whom he identifies. You can safely say that they, some millions of them, are at least 100 times freer than the rest of us."

Making an example

News: "The scientific community is still reeling. 'Rather than demonstrating the importance of strict care in the handling of research materials,' wrote the Nobel prizewinners, 'the determination to convict Dr Butler and put him in jail sends a strong message to the scientific community. It says: this 62-year-old man, who voluntarily reported missing material and cooperated with federal investigators, is now being repaid with a ruined career and a personal cost from which he and his family will never recover.' It also says that the next time a scientist misplaces 30 vials of a dangerous pathogen, they're hardly likely to call the FBI."

A Pacifist with veto power?

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | US questions Japan's pacifism

The fall and rise of the intellectual

Note to British youth: Columbus did not defeat the Armada | csmonitor.com

World Movement

News: "Destroying al-Qa'ida alone will not resolve the problem. There is no central command, or a single individual, controlling all the terrorist groups but there is a central ideology - the destruction of the democratic and secular world. Al-Qa'ida should not be perceived as an organisation, but as a world movement."

And this is why the world's only super power, with a military built around the prosecution of war against strategic target will not win its war on terror. Nor will the 'world movement' destroy democracy and secularism.

Violence is of the old paradigm.

Sooner or later people around the world will awaken to the new paradigm.

A threat to democracy

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | A threat to democracy

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

NWA 327: Dry run for terrorists or misunderstanding?

Once more the climate of fear is stoked by those living under its spell.

The invisble hand of empire

Mainichi Interactive - Top News: "U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a visiting Japanese politician that war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution was blocking the progress of the Japan-U.S. alliance.


Senior lawmaker Hidenao Nakagawa of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party revealed on Wednesday to Japanese reporters comments Armitage made at the Department of State.


When Nakagawa said that it was time for Japan to discuss the possibility of revising the pacifist Constitution, Armitage responded by saying that it was an issue for the Japanese people to handle.


The deputy secretary of state added in his personal opinion that Article 9, which bans the use of force in settling international disputes, was becoming an obstacle to the progress of the Tokyo-Washington alliance."

It is not enough that American economic policy is pushed upon the world through organs such as the IMF or the World Bank. Now it is defence policy and more worryingly, constitutional changes.

I am in favour of pacificistic permanent member of the UN Security Council. A veto wielding country that is constituionally constrained from deploying force outside of its borders on the UNSC. That would add a hint of deliberation to future proceedings.

Interestingly, the pacifist constitution was forced upon Japanese people by the United States occupying force after WW2. What does this tell us about the future of Iraq?

Priceless if it were not shameful

News: "But all three contenders for the post were considered unworthy of support by UKIP, including Bronislaw Geremek, a renowned scholar and a founder of the Solidarnosc who emerged from prison under the Communists to become Foreign Minister of a liberated Poland.


Mr Geremek's vision of Europe, honed at the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Sorbonne was rejected by Mr Kilroy- Silk who offered an alternative view of the Continent: somewhere to go on holiday and buy clothing."

Pandering to popularism has never been so entertaining. The UK Independence Party are the epitome of Conservative: Destroy progress in order to hold on to a warm illusion of national identity based on an imperial past.

UKIP may be humorous to anyone with even a rudimentary curiosity, but they reinforce the dumbing down of the populace in order to further their own aims. This may be funny, but it is as much milking people of their votes as the the Republic/Democrat system in the US.

Time for some Deliberative Democracy. Someone. Please?

Abstraction upon Fantasy

Wired News: High-Speed Love Connection: "Were porn star Jenna Jameson, for instance, to engage in a two-way High Joy sex-toy session, the sequence of commands she used could be recorded and replayed by fans who purchase both the device and the corresponding digital 'script.'"

So here we have it. Alienation in its most insidious form.

The porn industry has made inordinate amounts of money from sexual fantasy. And fantasy is the antithesis of reality. A dreamscape in which moral, ethical and physical bounds are negated and the human mind is free to roam at its most primal.

Now with the aid of the internet attached gadgets, we can abstract the fantasy.
As our society becomes globalised and individuals become fearful of the 'other', this is the ultimate safe sex. No messy other person with which to wine, dine and final make up excuses to leave.

And if one has virtual sex with someone over the internet, is that cheating on ones partner?

What is missing in our lives that we feel the need to have our masturbation orchestrated by an unseen other.

Where is love and acceptance in this scenario? Are we so fearful of our own real lives that we cannot go out into the real world and seek a concrete, satisfying and mutual respectful relationship of our own.

Maybe if we did that we would have to reexamine the way we lead our entire lives. That late capitalism is the antithesis of a fulfilling human existence.

Bush told he is playing into Bin Laden's hands

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bush told he is playing into Bin Laden's hands: "It's going to take 10,000-15,000 dead Americans before we say to ourselves: 'What is going on'?"

The War on Terror has the potential to be a new Vietnam, but one fought on American soil and with the deaths of American civilians. I don't want to see anyone die for ideology, be it religious or political. It's time that "strong" leaders on both sides of the ideological fence showed humility and began to deliberate, so that all the people of the world can co-exist and lead the lives they determine for themselves.

US 'to fight back' in cotton war

BBC NEWS | Business | US 'to fight back' in cotton war: "We will defend US agriculture in every forum we need to and have no intention of unilaterally disarming."

Is this trade or war? Why the talk of disarmament. Force and violence is endemic in the discourse of capitalism. And all the while we, the huddling masses, are categorised as consumers -- passive cattle to be milked of the fruits from our labour power.

It is time to denounce greed. It is time to cultivate compassion and deliberation.

We are all the same DNA, we all bleed the same blood and no amount of insurance will save us from our mortality.

Real Reality TV

Merlin breaks silence on Big Brother protest: "I wasn't trying to destroy the show. If people want reality television then this is reality."

I'd like to personally thank Merlin Luck for co-opting a format that pandas to those who do not want to confront what is happening in our world. His brave stand for debate and deliberation in our political landscape should be an inspiration to us all.

Namaste Merlin.

We are what we are told to be

British women fed up with 'dull and gruelling' lifestyles - World - www.smh.com.au: "Nine out of 10 surveyed said they were unhappy with their looks and 85% of women said they thought about their size and shape every day.

Three-quarters of women thought their life would be better if they were happy with their body and 26% said they were prepared to go under the knife to improve their looks.

Cosmetic procedures women were most likely to have, were breast enlargement, breast reduction, botox injections, liposuction, tightening of the jaw line, tummy tuck, lines around the eyes and a half face lift.

Celebrity role models Victoria Beckham, Jordan and Cherie Blair were the most disliked and were not helpful to ordinary women, 56% said.

The perfect woman was identified as having the face and breasts of Catherine Zeta Jones, the hair of former Friends star Jennifer Aniston, Kylie Minogue's bottom and Victoria Beckham's legs."

Time to stop looking for the perfect life because it is a fallacy. Time to live, time to be

Free Trade Agreement and it's implications

Powell urges Latham to drop Iraq troop deadline. 10/06/2004. ABC News Online: "Mr Powell has increased the pressure on Opposition leader Mark Latham to reverse Labor's Christmas troop withdrawal deadline, particularly after this week's United Nation's resolution to formally end the occupation of Iraq at the end of this month.

Mr Powell has told ABC TV's Insiders program that if Labor wins the federal election, and Australian troops leave Iraq, it would be a political disaster for the alliance between the US and Australia."

Is this what the Austrlian electorate signed up for when they cast their ballots in 2000?

Assault on an advertising threat

Murdoch defection hits TiVo hopes: "The rise of TiVo is seen as a threat to advertising, since many users fast-forward through commercial breaks, and the individual nature of TiVo programming makes viewer tastes harder to judge."

Can we trust the [British] Officer class?

An interesting article on the difference in style between British and US army officers. Is their a case for Dan Simmons "New Bushido"? A Warrior credo based on the protection of civilians set above all considerations?

Weapons of Mass Photography

The Southern Illinoisan - Opinions - CLARENCE PAGE: WEAPONS OF MASS PHOTOGRAPHY

US to demolish Abu Ghraib jail

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US to demolish Abu Ghraib jail and punish its general: "'Then, with the approval of the Iraqi government, we will demolish the Abu Ghraib prison as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning.'"

So a maximum security prison is a "fitting symbol of Iraq's new begging" is it?

What have we done? Susan Sontag on the Abu Ghraib images

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | What have we done? Susan Sontag on the Abu Ghraib images: "To 'stack naked men' is like a college fraternity prank, said a caller to Rush Limbaugh and the many millions of Americans who listen to his radio show. Had the caller, one wonders, seen the photographs? No matter. The observation, or is it the fantasy, was on the mark. What may still be capable of shocking some Americans was Limbaugh's response: 'Exactly!' exclaimed Limbaugh. 'Exactly my point. This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time.' 'They' are the American soldiers, the torturers. And Limbaugh went on. 'You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people. You ever heard of emotional release?'"

The gods of the new church

The Observer | International | Bush's super fundraisers join the queue for favours

The ugly face of power

Guardian Unlimited | US elections 2004 | The ugly face of power

Claim made for new form of life

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Claim made for new form of life: "'But if you go back to how we defined life prior to our knowing about DNA, our criteria was that things multiplied in culture. This is what we have.'"

Morning post

My first real post in a very long time.

Don't ask me why I've eschewed this medium. Part of my brain still likes to be the IT geek, crawling around in the cracks looking for the "perfect" technical solution. Fact is that this works and I should just stick to it.

I slept better last night. My first really good night of sleep all week. The fever of Monday has receded and the antibiotics are slowly doing their thing. The sore throat is receding too. My sleep was full of strange dreams. There was a church, there was my eldest sister. A strange mechanical contraption trying desperately to go around the world entirely on land by somehow traveling at 90 degrees to the horizontal along cliffs. I was in it sometimes so was Liz (I'm still with Liz by the way -- I moved in with her at the beginning of May, our first anniversary of meeting).

So what have I been doting in my absence from this space? I have left work in the commercial world. I was accepted on Ba at University of Technology, Sydney. I am now studying writing and contemporary culture. Next year I begin international studies in Japanese.

I have been extremely busy this year that the Long Now has contracted into the school work that I do. But with the arrival of the end of my first term, and the exceptional feed back I have received from my written work, I feel remarkably buoyed by the realisation that yes, I am a writer.

In ten days Liz and I fly to New York. She is taking up a 3 week internship and a school their while I will practice my art: writing.

Namaste
Paul

BBC NEWS | Americas | Free US flights for 'being nice'

BBC NEWS | Americas | Free US flights for 'being nice': "some industry analysts are sceptical about the wisdom of airlines offering free tickets.

'Next thing you know, they'll be paying you to fly,' said Ray Neidl, airline analyst at Blaylock & Partners.

'I just hope there are not that many people that are nice - yields are bad enough already.'
"

And justice for all

Aljazeera.Net - US wants court exemption renewed: "But Washington has signed bilateral agreements with 89 countries who promised not to prosecute American citizens anywhere as well as anyone under contract to the United States, said Richard Grenell, spokesman for US ambassador John Negroponte.

Some of those who ratified the treaty also signed the agreement with the United States, which in some cases is tied to aid."

"Under former President Bill Clinton, the US was one of 135 nations that signed the treaty, but the Bush administration rescinded the signature."

And justice for all

Aljazeera.Net - US wants court exemption renewed: "But Washington has signed bilateral agreements with 89 countries who promised not to prosecute American citizens anywhere as well as anyone under contract to the United States, said Richard Grenell, spokesman for US ambassador John Negroponte.

Some of those who ratified the treaty also signed the agreement with the United States, which in some cases is tied to aid."

Not Vietnam - Much Worse

News: "The world has seen the last of liberal imperialism. It died on the killing fields of Iraq. It is no consolation to the people of that country, but at least their sufferings have demonstrated the cruel folly of waging war in order to fight a liberal crusade."

Suffer the children

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Jennifer's journey to the front of the BNP

Globalisation for the forgotten people

SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Society | Oxfam launches fair trade coffee chain

The customer is always right

Aljazeera.Net - US army 'pleased' with interrogators
: "'It's been reported to us that we're doing a fine job. That's from our customer (the army), and those are the people who count,' said JP 'Jack' London, head of CACI, on Monday."

I pay you to pay me...

The Observer | Business | Shadow over Murdoch as Sky growth slows: "Sky is working on a loyalty card similar to that pioneered by supermarket chain Tesco. It would be inserted in Sky's set-top boxes, in the second 'interactive' slots that are not currently in use."

So let me get this straight. I pay Sky something in the region of 30 quid a month and they are going to reward me for watching Sky. So instead of watching the BBC on terrestrial I should watch on Sky...only that Sky have come off the Sky platform..so no loyalties there...

So they pay me for me paying them...

Why not just give it to me free and let the ads pay Shy their revenue. Oh no...that would never do, would it...what ever happened to the neo-conservative "user pays" credo?? It's lost somewhere on my loyalty card...

Law is of no consequence

The Observer | UK News | British quizzed Iraqis at torture jail: "Senior Pentagon sources have also told this newspaper that plans are being drawn up to bulldoze Abu Ghraib within a month in an attempt to assuage Arab outrage at photographs of US sexual abuse of detainees inside the prison.

But the commander of US detention facilities in Iraq said yesterday the US military will continue to run the prison with a reduced population and that if orders are received to close Abu Ghraib, the military would shift the mission to Camp Bucca, south of Basra.

The Red Cross disclosed to The Observer that its president, Jakob Kellenberger, had personally warned three of George W. Bush's most senior officials - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - of widespread abuse tantamount to torture."

Wired News: Blogs Counter Political Plottings

Wired News: Blogs Counter Political Plottings

There is a god after all...

Guardian Unlimited Football | News | Will Buckley on why he hates football

Cost to the investor

BBC NEWS | Business | Don't worry: be poorly, study says: "CCH, a US consultancy that tracks absenteeism across the US, reckons that taking time off does cost investors far more - an average of $645 a year."

The Sanitising of an illegal war

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: AP - Washington, D.C.

News

News: "These forebodings of a Republican realist"

Mirrors, Ghosts and the management of our perceptions

Aljazeera.Net - Many occupation personnel killed in Iraq
: "US officials later confirmed that three of the four were American citizens."

What is bias?

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | BBC accused of bias against Israel

This is one paradigm...

FOXNews.com - Views - Straight Talk - Property Rights Form Foundation of Freedom

There are of course others -- some actually acknowledge the existance of other people as individuals with rights of their own.

Wages of selfishness

FOXNews.com - Your World w/ Neil Cavuto - Common Sense - Wages of Fear: "Some people love nothing more than having you wallow in the misery that is their lives. We should do better with our lives."

Or perhaps help them to climb out of their misery?

What If...

FOXNews.com - Your World w/ Neil Cavuto - Common Sense - What If...

Now that is a truly terrifying prospect -- a world that does not care about another's point of view.

What if...

Individuals became so obsessed with their own desires to consume that they didn't care about their own ethical poverty?

One side of the story

Aljazeera.Net - Israel 'fabricated' child-bomber story

More headaches for IPR

Goodbye landlines, hello digital shoplifting?: ZDNet Australia: News: Communications

The Elite annoints its chosen

BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Howard urges US economy for UK

The Japanese Paradox

Guardian Unlimited | World dispatch | Suspicious minds

The erosion of the value chain

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | I'm retiring, says George Michael

BBC NEWS | Business | Aussie boot battle takes an Uggly turn

BBC NEWS | Business | Aussie boot battle takes an Uggly turn

How the gym became part of Britain

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Stuart Jeffries: How the gym became part of Britain

"It's the third most important space in our members' lives - and for some of them it's even higher."