My friend Derek Pontoon sent a letter to Lockheed Martin about their weapons sales. It reads as follows:

Dear Sir, Madam or Otherwise

I am writing to you as I know that you are the leading exponents in your field. As far as I am concerned, you are The Bomb. However, I would like to be, if I may, a little presumptuous and suggest a few improvements to your already marvellous available range of weapons.

What strikes me most is that you do not cater for the retro weaponry market. As an enthusiast of the Medieval period, I distinctly feel that the battlefield would be made a lot more interesting and exciting were you to reintroduce such popular classics as The Catapult, The Arbalest, and even The Minaret. These would leave a formidable impact on the enemy – QUITE LITERALLY IN SOME CASES!!!!!

As for your range of torture equipment, how about bringing back the good old Iron Maiden? I for one feel that it is the best available torture device on the market from any age, for any age. You could even have a promotional campaign fronted by the band, Iron Maiden, and their figurehead Eddie. The Rack is also a useful device for getting non-believers to confess their consorting with the Dark Lord Beelzebub, who isn’t really a particularly pleasant character, and therefore I wonder at his appointment in the House of Lords. That said, I suppose Lord Mandelson managed it alright.

I beg you and your R&D guys to take these ideas into consideration, for the good of the children and indeed the realm.

Yours truly

Derek Pontoon, Mr

- – - – - – -

He is still awaiting a reply. I will let you know if he hears anything real soon.

Regards

RB

It’s me RB with another ranting ripsnorting tirade against something or another. Well, there seem to be quite a few revolutions happening across the world, starting in Tunisia and spilling along to Egypt, Algeria and Libya, perhaps even Iran. I’d like to turn the spotlight on the media itself and ask a few idle questions that have been tugging at the synapses at the back of my mind. One is, why haven’t we heard about the discontent and abuses that have been taking place in these countries before? As far as I was aware, Tunisia was a popular tourist destination with exotic cuisine and dinky trinkets in abundance. “Authoritarian Regime Ambience” or “Dictator Chic” didn’t seem to feature much in the holiday brochures.

From my limited knowledge of Egyptian history, they had a dictator about 60 years ago, who the CIA assisted in deposing and installing… a swanky new dictator, that lovely Mr Mubarak who we’ve seen a lot of on the news recently (only strangely, nothing of since his departure with wads of cash stuffed in his pockets…). The same set up seems to be what happened in Iran and is happening in Afghanistan, but as it turns out, it appears that the people who live there aren’t too happy with the CIA’s decision in who gets put in charge. Of course there are elections, to give the illusion of democracy, which are of course rigged.

We have to be positive and look on the bright side though. That’s right. We must EMBRACE THE CUTS, I SAY!

First off – Sack all of the firemen! That way we can have more street barbecues! If you really have to put out fires, why not attach hoses to wild badgers heads and then just release them into the area to put the fires out! They don’t do anything else with their time apart from rummaging through bins, so put them to good use, and it’s all for free! This way perhaps we could succeed in creating Cameron’s Badger Society? Perhaps not.

Next up, thanks to the cuts, there will be no front line doctors or nurses. My suggestion is to get out of work actors in to do the work. This way, they get to practise for their next bit part in Casualty, and they can keep patients entertained with their impromptu renditions of Macbeth! “Is this a scalpel I see before me?” “No, we had to sell them all!” Gives another meaning to the term Operating Theatre, I guess.

Forests are going to be cut – literally! Do we really need them though? They should make way for progress as everything must do. We can all have new sporting facilities to enjoy, Nature can go take a hike! Especially the hose badgers.

Student fees, however, are not going to be cut! They’re going to be increased! Yet still the students are complaining! Cuh, you can’t please anybody. Some people are worried that this may mean that some poor people won’t be able to get into rich universities, but but clearly all of the rich who run the country and work in banks and politics must have had really good training and be extremely intelligent to allow the country to succeed as well as it has done.

Libraries are also looking set to be cut. Nobody reads books anymore anyway, do they? If you do you must be a terrorist or something. Books should be employed for something more useful, such as improvised sandbags when global warming kicks in. Readers Digest – non readers get indigestion.

Post Offices are going to see some of their workers getting the sack. Having no post offices means that people will have to deliver their own messages by hand, making society more sociable. Or you could just send emails. The whole industry will be privatised though, so I’m sure we won’t have to face higher delivery costs, more parcels going missing, or general widespread incompetence. That never happens when you privatise things rather than keeping them nationalised, does it?

Oliver Cromwell banned all forms of entertainment, and though this was a little harsh, I can kind of sympathise. There are lots of pointless celebrities and TV slush that we could all do without. Actually, I’d like to cut this nonsense now, so will end it there. Goodbye!

Some of the excuses that the IPCC gave as to why they couldn’t prosecute PC Harwood were more transparent than a cellophane window.  They couldn’t draw conclusions from the pathologists reports as they differed so extensively. Hmm, could this be because they were lying in the first place about a heart attack before video evidence turned up? Or, and this is something that as a non-medical professional I wouldn’t like to speculate too much on, but couldn’t he have died of both a heart attack and abdominal bleeding due to the same reason? The reason that millions of people who’ve seen the video could bluntly see? He was pushed. This is at least an act of manslaughter, if not murder, so why has a prosecution not been forthcoming?

The IPPC also stated that they couldn’t prosecute because the investigation had taken longer than the allotted time that was allowed… But who dragged the investigation out? THEY DID!!! How is this legally justifiable? Only a bunch of psychotic baboons could purport such a flimsy argument. Oh…

There were also smear campaigns from the start. Some police press sources stated that the person who pushed Mr Tomlinson could’ve been a Filthy Anarchist Disguised As A Riot Officer. I wonder where they came up with this theory? Could it be that they had planted a number of agent provocateurs dressed as filthy anarchists in the crowds to stir up trouble themselves? How dare I suggest such underhand methods to justify their own pathetic existence! They also stated that people in the crowd had hurled projectiles while police officers selflessly went to Mr Tomlinson’s aid. The video evidence clearly showed that this was not the case. Were they really that stupid that they weren’t aware that this sort of thing might come out into the public eye? Or were they so bullishly cocksure that they didn’t care, and thought that any old lie they spouted could stifle the truth?

With Ian Tomlinson’s death, truth did not die. In a way, many truths were exposed to those who were not willing to previously see them. Truths that sadly some people only found out the hard way, like the families of Blair Peach or Sean Rigg or many others who’ve died at the hands of the friendly neighbourhood police force have come to realise. The police are not there to help you. They are there to threaten you. They are The Law. Be afraid. WoooOOOoooOOO. Listen to their big loud sirens. Nee nar nee nar!

Still, I’m sure it’s all a bit like The Thin Blue Line, and Officer Goodie gets repremanded for not kicking the teeth out of a suspect butchly enough. It’s a man’s life in The Territorial Support Group. Maybe it would be an idea for them to be disbanded, to avoid causing any more damage or danger to the public?

A few interesting statistics here, for those interested in that kind of thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_deaths_in_custody

Here are some websites calling for justice from victims families: http://www.iantomlinsonfamilycampaign.org.uk/

http://www.seanriggjusticeandchange.com/

I know it’s easy to criticise, and of course a lot of them do a difficult job under difficult circumstances, but then, so do coffee-farmers, and they don’t generally commit as much state-sanctioned murder.

In a bit of positive news to close the proceedings though, Rodney King, beaten by cops in LA 20 years ago for the crime of being black, has found love with someone in the jury from his trial: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/rodney_is_love_struck_i13HKPwEXvoiSKwEif9P6N

I love that opening line!!! “Rodney King isn’t just getting along with one of the jurors who awarded him $3.8 million after Los Angeles cops beat him to a pulp — he’s marrying her.” I can imagine that coming straight out of the mouth of Barbara Wintergreen or Ron Burgundy! Tasteful! Be good to each other! RB x

The phone-tapping voyeuristic freaks are part of the Interception Modernisation Programme at GCHQ. They are spying on us because they do not trust us. They aren’t interested in terrorists, or whatever the latest trendy bogeyman there is out there. They’re interested in dissenters. That’s what they don’t like. Well listen, there’s a whole lot more dissent coming. I hope the pipes will take it all, that’s all I’m saying for now.

At one time the politicians are calling for an end to Freedom of Information, but at the same time they want to snoop on us. Does that seem fair?

Here’s more about the IMP – http://www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=12013

If you don’t believe what they’re up to, here’s an article by Henry Porter explaining it in more detail: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/aug/03/spy-email-record-snooping

Believe it yet? Nah, me neither.

No matter how much the British and American governments say the opposite of the truth, it doesn’t make it true.

Gordon Brown claims the war in Afghanistan is to combat terrorism, but there was no terrorism in Britain before the war in Aghanistan.

As someone noted, the situation would be like putting the Egyptian army in the middle of the Irish Troubles to try to stabilise the country.

You can’t win hearts and minds by shooting at torsos and heads – http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100222/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan

Although clearly, you can’t make an omelette without killing a few civilians – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/15/afghanistan-civilian-deaths-nato-taliban

http://tinyurl.com/ye45l62 notes the trick to call ordinary Afghan courtyard houses “Taliban compounds”. It’s not a compound, it’s a house.

War in Iraq rumbles on, almost forgotten in the news. Don’t mention the war! Ragingbullshit still hasn’t seen any sign of those elusive WMDs…

03.12.2009 A Bit About Section 44 – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6715886/Police-misusing-anti-terrorism-powers-to-stop-tourists-taking-photos.html

11.12.2009 From snapshot to Special Branch – http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/11/snapshot-special-branch-terror-suspect

15.12.2009 (this was a Twitter post) Police arresting those pernicious terrorist photographers as a step towards a safer Britain – http://tinyurl.com/ygdzwbu

13.01.2010 Use of Section 44 Ruled Illegal – http://www.photoradar.com/news/story/police-stop-and-search-%E2%80%9Cillegal%E2%80%9D-says-european-court

18.01.2010 Police arrest a Twitterer – http://iwritealot.com/2010/01/18/be-careful-while-you-are-on-twitter/

19.01.2010 But this is where it stems from. Ragingbullshit wonders what exactly the Home Office is doing advising the police to break the law?: http://tinyurl.com/y8ml4vn

19.02.2010 Still they carry on intimidating people taking photos – http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/5024297.Police_used_terror_legislation_to_stop_ex_RAF_engineer_in__Kidlington/

And: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2009/jul/09/police-detain-mobile-phone-camera

I wonder why they don’t like the attention?

Why hasn’t Ian Tomlinson’s attacker been brought to justice yet either? Well, we wouldn’t like to assume that he was attacked, after all the MET police claimed that he had died of natural causes after being violently pushed from behind and hit by a police baton. Very natural causes. It was probably one of those fake cops that done it anyway, wasn’t it? – http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23714207-police-claim-ian-tomlinson-could-have-been-attacked-by-fake-g20-cop.do

At least I’ve learnt a new word – Sousveillance – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

Sounds like a good idea.

Check out Fitwatch, who know what’s going on!: http://fitwatch.blogspot.com

This article infuriated me: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-we-not-only-have-a-right-to-use-torture-we-have-a-duty-1899555.html

An apology for torture. How low can you sink, or morally flawed can you be? In response, however, there seems to be a stream of people with a notion of humanity and ethics who are appalled by it. I want to record some of the responses here, as they don’t just hit the proverbial nail on the head, they drive it in with shuddering force. This is the first one I noticed by richoflongbeach:

“Lets torture ministers and journalists
Monday, 15 February 2010 at 02:29 am (UTC).

I am shocked that the independent would stoop to print such drivel. Brave courageous men use torture. Maybe Mr. Anderson should go to Pakistan and practice his scalpel work. Hang on, he could do it Northern Ireland, the secrete american gulags or the thousands of American prisons where torture is every day stuff.

For Mr. Anderson the best use of Torture is against a non-existent enemy like Iraq or the enemy you create when bomb and murder innocent people like Afghanistan.

Consider this laughable quote…” there are worse horrors …………killing hundreds of thousands of people and inflicting irreparable damage on mankind’s cultural heritage.

Gosh that sure sounds like what we did to Iraq.

Maybe our ministers and journalists who lied about Saddam Hussein and lied about Afghanistan should be tortured to reveal their real motivations for deceiving the public, sending young men and women to fight in an immoral war, killing one million people and destroying the lives of millions more.

Give them an option, if the Ministers, journalist and Mr. Anderson do not want to be tortured send them to the front lines with a rifle and notebook full of their lies.”

Well put. This is good too from amazonfan:

“Disgusting!
Thursday, 18 February 2010 at 08:32 pm (UTC)

You are disgusting. You really are. You are an absolute psychopath. You have no problem with torturing not only terror suspects but their wives and children? No words can describe how repulsive you truly are. There is NO difference between you and any notorious torturer in history; from Hitler to Pinochet to Pol Pot. You are in the same league. Oh, and in regards to ‘Which is the greater aesthetic affront: torture, or the destruction of the National Gallery?’ I would hope that you would value the dignity of human life, but apparently not. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry at this morally bankrupt piece of nonsence. The judge was not being self-righteous; he, unlike you, is a human being!”

Spot on. I’ll sift for more later. Gotta go, important bullshit to do.

I’ll try to expand upon some of the previous posts from the Twitter Sister Site: http://twitter.com/ragingbullshit

I still haven’t worked out what to focus on, but it should become clear as things develop.

US war criminal George W Bush still walks free, with his replacement Barack Obama reneging on his election promise to close down the illegal Guantanamo Bay detainment facility, while the illegal war rages on killing innocent civilians, disrupting countries, and torture continues at secret prisons across the world with the British intelligence services and government colluding in it, but they don’t want to admit to it as it might “damage international relations”. It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?

Here’s an article in The Times about the government’s own human rights group calling for an investigation into the torture allegations: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7034418.ece

The detainees may or may not have terrorist links. The fact that there is no evidence in the case of Binyam Mohamed and others makes it highly doubtful in a lot of cases. Justice is not being done, but something a lot more diabolical is.

However, that is beside the point. Even people who commit inhuman acts should not be treated in an inhuman way. This we take to be self evident. An eye for an eye, and all that. The case of Baha Mousa illustrates the sort of end result that the war would inevitably result in: http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/news-and-events/1-press-releases/2007/abuse-photos.shtml

The death of Baha Mousa is not an isolated case.

The FBI has closed its file on the anthrax attacks that took place after 9/11 as the scientist they accused, Bruce Ivins, killed himself. Dead men who can’t answer for themselves must be guilty, and have big gripes with media outlets, where the anthrax was sent. War criminal George Bush got immunised against anthrax on 9/11. That was very timely, wasn’t it? I wonder if he had any gripes with anyone in the media, perhaps for things they’d said about him, or his family? There was also the racist doctor Philip Zack who was caught entering a secure facility that held anthrax in it, who the FBI ruled out of their investigations. Wonder why, when the person he ruthlessly bullied, Ayaad Assaad, was accused of the attacks in an anonymous letter?

I spotted this insightful post on another site that may be onto something: “Our old friend Donald Rumsfeld, former chairman of Board of Directors for Gilead might have some answers.

Remember in 2005, when millions of doses of Gilead’s Tamiflu were produced and sold to protect us from Avian Flu? (“”So the U.S. placed an order for 20 million doses of this worthless drug at a price of $100 per dose. That comes to a staggering $2 billion. http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/10/327804.shtml

Gilead – and Bush-connected Bayer – also makes Cipro. Surprise!

Probably just a co-wincky-dink, or a known known…”

Smells like Operation Paperclip.

I think the answer is to keep asking questions. This I shall do.

Burn Baby Burn

The firefighters have walked out in lightning strikes across the country. Thunderbolts from the blue don’t come with much more of an impact, but these can strike much more than twice, and are nice at half the price! What’s it all about? Shifting shift times, not being consulted by (mis)management. Bullying threats of dismissals have been issued, from people who don’t do the jobs themselves. When do they get their jobs threatened? When they do badly? No! They just get paid off with a juicy bonus and a place on an executive committee somewhere. What a just society the (neo)’socialist’ New Labour government have created.

The blazing crew are telling it true. Am I getting through to you? Is this all new to you? Dissent can spread like wildfire, and these guys and gals aren’t going to be there to put it out.

Press Association report here: http://www.pressassociation.com/component/pafeeds/2009/10/19/firefighters_strike_in_shifts_row?camefrom=home