For those of you that don't know and I'll admit I had to look it up on a map Bhutan is a small mountainous country located between Bangladesh and China. Throughout its long history Bhutan has been run as a full monarchy under the control of its king. Over recent years though as he has been getting older and coming to the end of his reign the current king has decided that rather then passing his crown onto his heir he would like to see the kingdom become a democracy.
The problem is that the Bhutanese people love their king and didn't want universal suffrage instead begging the king to remain on the throne. In his wisdom though the king decided to push on with democracy and last year they held practice elections to prepare the people for the responsibility of voting. The kings subjects responded by voting, in overwhelming numbers, for the red and gold party, the party which bore the royal colours. Despite this setback though the king pushed ahead and over the Easter weekend Bhutan held it's first proper democratic elections and voted the kings party into 46 of the 48 available parliamentary seats.
At this point I have to say that without doubt Bhutan is my favorite country in the world because all these stories of a wise old king in a land far, far away makes the whole thing sound like something of a fairytale. I mean throw in a few magic elves and beautiful young princess and you have the perfect tonic to the unpleasantness which normally pervades modern geopolitics and I have to say in a week that has featured the charity case, my father deciding that he really wants to start yet another war with the neighbours and me smashing myself in the shin with a hammer during an attempt to out-butch and couple of middle aged lesbians a tonic is exactly what was needed.
On the subject of international unpleasantness though we have the current situation in Tibet where as you all know there has been something of an uprising against Chinese rule. This uprising has taken the form of three to four days rioting in Lhasa, the regions capital. By Chinese standards this rioting was met with a measured response with troops only firing a few rounds over the heads of the crowds.
As the Free Tibet campaign has for a long time been a cause celbre from the western liberal elite with it's posters adorning the university walls of students who found Che Guevara to be too distasteful and Adam Smith to been far to highbrow I can only conclude that the recent violence in Tibet has been as a result of the actions of British Intelligence who by using Tibet as something of a slipshod attempt to wash away the liberal guilt acquired by the same agency's repeated attempts to erode democratic freedoms, criminalise protest and suppress dissent within the UK are disrupting more effective solutions to the problem.
For this reason I cannot in good conscience support the Tibetan uprising because as with last years uprising in Burma, for which the force depletion reports make very grim reading I cannot see a way in which this uprising will have a positive outcome for the Tibetian people.
In fact the only upside to this sorry state of affairs I can see is the truly outstanding denial of the obvious by a Chinese government spokesman who said that he didn't think the Tibet protests had become a global issue on the day that 17 Chinese embassies around the world had been vandalised including one which recieved a treatment that can only be described and "Olympic torched!"
Tuesday 25 March 2008
Thursday 20 March 2008
Well that was fun.
Today I got to meet the representative of my charities chief executive to discuss my grievance and I have to say he didn't disappoint me because there he was full of the bluster of an elderly man who was very proud of his national service and bloated by the claims of his charitable works all swept up in the air of a man who had already made his decision.
Firstly he started by explaining the principle of a Prima Facia case presumably in the hope that his use of long, complex and Latin legal terms would just terrify me into submission.
He then went on to explain that writing a grievance could be considered libellous at which point I felt a burning desire to explain to him the principles of a men rea defence and advise him on the principles of slander but I fought those desires down because if quite frankly he feels his current legal advisor is up to scratch who am I to disagree? We then carried on for about another two hours going round in circles over issues of disclosure until he finally peaked and stated he didn't need to investigate my allegation because he'd already reached his decision.
I'll go into that in more detail later because I'm currently attempting to drink dry an ocean while trying to follow three concurrent TV shows at once and tomorrow will be getting up very early to engage in the very manly task of twatting things with a sledgehammer before setting fire to them and I know my mum's going to moan about the beer so you can guarantee she's going to go absolutely spastic about the dynamite.
Interestingly enough in my reading of the law I did happen across the section of the treason act covering seditious words or libels which reads as;
"an intention to bring into hatred or contempt, or to excite disaffection against the person of, Her Majesty, her heirs or successors, or the government and Constitution of the United Kingdom, as by law justice, or to excite her majesty's subjects to attempt otherwise then by lawful means, the alteration of any matter of church and state by law established or to raise discontent or disaffection amongst her Majesty's subjects or to promote feelings of ill will or hostility".
Just thought I'd bring that up while people are pissing me the fuck off.
Firstly he started by explaining the principle of a Prima Facia case presumably in the hope that his use of long, complex and Latin legal terms would just terrify me into submission.
He then went on to explain that writing a grievance could be considered libellous at which point I felt a burning desire to explain to him the principles of a men rea defence and advise him on the principles of slander but I fought those desires down because if quite frankly he feels his current legal advisor is up to scratch who am I to disagree? We then carried on for about another two hours going round in circles over issues of disclosure until he finally peaked and stated he didn't need to investigate my allegation because he'd already reached his decision.
I'll go into that in more detail later because I'm currently attempting to drink dry an ocean while trying to follow three concurrent TV shows at once and tomorrow will be getting up very early to engage in the very manly task of twatting things with a sledgehammer before setting fire to them and I know my mum's going to moan about the beer so you can guarantee she's going to go absolutely spastic about the dynamite.
Interestingly enough in my reading of the law I did happen across the section of the treason act covering seditious words or libels which reads as;
"an intention to bring into hatred or contempt, or to excite disaffection against the person of, Her Majesty, her heirs or successors, or the government and Constitution of the United Kingdom, as by law justice, or to excite her majesty's subjects to attempt otherwise then by lawful means, the alteration of any matter of church and state by law established or to raise discontent or disaffection amongst her Majesty's subjects or to promote feelings of ill will or hostility".
Just thought I'd bring that up while people are pissing me the fuck off.
Tuesday 18 March 2008
Ooops, adventures in protest land.
And let me tell you it's all been pure drama! The latest round of squabbling has stemmed from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) dominated Stop The War Coalition(STWC) march of Saturday 15th March.
First off one group published photographs of people on the march with their faces unobscured. This prompted a group called Fitwatch (http://www.fitwatch.blogspot.com) to complain because this group is dedicated to resisting the activities of the Police's Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) and they believe that the publishing of photographs featuring protesters faces only serves to aid the police.
This prompted another group to object because they felt that because that protesters are captured on CCTV, photographed by FIT teams, monitored by helicopters and followed by undercover officers there should be no problem with photographers publishing peoples faces as the police already have plenty of their own pictures.
Then another group brought up the spectre of Redwatch, a rather nasty far right website that is dedicated to collecting images of protesters so the brave Nazi's can extract revenge on those who disagree with their unpleasant viewpoint.
And so the argument continued.
Personally I think it is very bad form to publish photographs of people on demonstrations without their permission because aside from the problems of Redwatch and the police many of them might have found themselves phoning in sick to attend and their bosses may not be so impressed to see their ugly mugs on the Internet in much the same way that universities fail to share the joy of students who've posted pics of their drunken exploits on MySpace.
Also it is worth noting that the British Police's attempts to police protests depends very heavily on something known as the Panopticon Principle.
I think this principle is the result of the work of an 18 century sociologist (I could check but that would constitute research and a clear breach of the bloggers code) who discovered that if the people whose behaviour he was observing knew that they were being observed they would alter their behaviour accordingly and in doing so totally fuck up his results.
This research was then developed into the Panoptican Prison which is a circle of bar less cells built around a central observation coloum. Despite the fact that the cells were open and the prisoners were not locked in order was maintained in these prisons because the inmates dared not behave because they believed that they were under constant observation and any misdemeanour would not go unnoticed or unpunished.
The principle is applied to public order policing because although the police have helicopters and CCTV cameras public disorder is by definition disorderly so they cannot see everything because CCTV cameras can only point in one direction at a time and helicopters fly too high to be able to identify individuals. So what the police do it deploy very high profile FIT teams in hi-vis jackets carrying very large and very flash looking camera rigs in the hope that it will convince people that they'd better behave because they're constantly being recorded and monitored by an Omnipotent force.
All this of course does raise the question of whether or not rather then resisting the police the Fitwatch group are actually playing into the polices hands by allowing their behaviour to be altered by the presence of the police observers?
The other big argument of the moment is the march itself. The so called autonomous groups are arguing that STWC marches have becoming ineffective, tightly controlled A to B marches only permitted in places and at times when they will have no impact. For this reason the autonomous mob feel that these marches should be attended by autonomous blocks which allow people to show that while they disagree with the STWC leadership they are still not happy with the wars.
The STWC have responded by saying that the main reason their marches have become stale is because of the massive restrictions imposed on them by the police and the state and autonomous blocks only make the problem worse by giving the police an excuse to strangle the coalition into oblivion.
Personally I have to say that I agree with the STWC because by organising such large scale demonstrations the STWC are putting themselves very much on the line and under those circumstances only the mildest survive.
That's not to say that I am against autonomous blocks on principle because on certain occasions, such as the F15 march, it would be very useful to have a large block declaring that while it was opposed to the war in Iraq it happened to also think that the SWP were a bunch of useless communists, George Galloway is a bit of a tit and perhaps Tariq Aziz wasn't the greatest man to ever live. However on a wet Saturday afternoon there seems little point in the exercise other then to piss people off and create divisions but that's just my opinion.
Anyway it should only be a couple of days before the DVD's arrive to feed my wire addiction and I can stop banging my head against the table in frustrated boredom.
First off one group published photographs of people on the march with their faces unobscured. This prompted a group called Fitwatch (http://www.fitwatch.blogspot.com) to complain because this group is dedicated to resisting the activities of the Police's Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) and they believe that the publishing of photographs featuring protesters faces only serves to aid the police.
This prompted another group to object because they felt that because that protesters are captured on CCTV, photographed by FIT teams, monitored by helicopters and followed by undercover officers there should be no problem with photographers publishing peoples faces as the police already have plenty of their own pictures.
Then another group brought up the spectre of Redwatch, a rather nasty far right website that is dedicated to collecting images of protesters so the brave Nazi's can extract revenge on those who disagree with their unpleasant viewpoint.
And so the argument continued.
Personally I think it is very bad form to publish photographs of people on demonstrations without their permission because aside from the problems of Redwatch and the police many of them might have found themselves phoning in sick to attend and their bosses may not be so impressed to see their ugly mugs on the Internet in much the same way that universities fail to share the joy of students who've posted pics of their drunken exploits on MySpace.
Also it is worth noting that the British Police's attempts to police protests depends very heavily on something known as the Panopticon Principle.
I think this principle is the result of the work of an 18 century sociologist (I could check but that would constitute research and a clear breach of the bloggers code) who discovered that if the people whose behaviour he was observing knew that they were being observed they would alter their behaviour accordingly and in doing so totally fuck up his results.
This research was then developed into the Panoptican Prison which is a circle of bar less cells built around a central observation coloum. Despite the fact that the cells were open and the prisoners were not locked in order was maintained in these prisons because the inmates dared not behave because they believed that they were under constant observation and any misdemeanour would not go unnoticed or unpunished.
The principle is applied to public order policing because although the police have helicopters and CCTV cameras public disorder is by definition disorderly so they cannot see everything because CCTV cameras can only point in one direction at a time and helicopters fly too high to be able to identify individuals. So what the police do it deploy very high profile FIT teams in hi-vis jackets carrying very large and very flash looking camera rigs in the hope that it will convince people that they'd better behave because they're constantly being recorded and monitored by an Omnipotent force.
All this of course does raise the question of whether or not rather then resisting the police the Fitwatch group are actually playing into the polices hands by allowing their behaviour to be altered by the presence of the police observers?
The other big argument of the moment is the march itself. The so called autonomous groups are arguing that STWC marches have becoming ineffective, tightly controlled A to B marches only permitted in places and at times when they will have no impact. For this reason the autonomous mob feel that these marches should be attended by autonomous blocks which allow people to show that while they disagree with the STWC leadership they are still not happy with the wars.
The STWC have responded by saying that the main reason their marches have become stale is because of the massive restrictions imposed on them by the police and the state and autonomous blocks only make the problem worse by giving the police an excuse to strangle the coalition into oblivion.
Personally I have to say that I agree with the STWC because by organising such large scale demonstrations the STWC are putting themselves very much on the line and under those circumstances only the mildest survive.
That's not to say that I am against autonomous blocks on principle because on certain occasions, such as the F15 march, it would be very useful to have a large block declaring that while it was opposed to the war in Iraq it happened to also think that the SWP were a bunch of useless communists, George Galloway is a bit of a tit and perhaps Tariq Aziz wasn't the greatest man to ever live. However on a wet Saturday afternoon there seems little point in the exercise other then to piss people off and create divisions but that's just my opinion.
Anyway it should only be a couple of days before the DVD's arrive to feed my wire addiction and I can stop banging my head against the table in frustrated boredom.
Sunday 2 March 2008
Got to learn to love the sleep deprevation.
Because last night was a riot.
Firstly the moment I turned off my light to go to sleep my next door neighbour (young, black, female, in council accomodation and some would say possibly on a "promise") decided that they really, really needed to be playing loud, thumping basslines all through my wall which for a moment made me want to declare war and renew trident but that would only bring us closer to the point where we all fall down. Then we had pretty much every car alarm in the street deciding to go off. Obviously this brought on the police sirens. Finally there was my watch alarm that kept sounding out the hour every fifteen minutes in my room even after I took it down stairs.
Tommorrow should be fun because we got a plumber coming but anyway focus because since Prince Harry has apparently been fighting in Afghanistan since December which takes me back because around that time I sent a rather strongly worded missive, the main thrust of which was "Stop using your initative because you're really bad at it"
Anyway drunken, shouty, sleepy ramble brings me on to the simple question;
"All these weapons and you still can't find the enemy?"
Firstly the moment I turned off my light to go to sleep my next door neighbour (young, black, female, in council accomodation and some would say possibly on a "promise") decided that they really, really needed to be playing loud, thumping basslines all through my wall which for a moment made me want to declare war and renew trident but that would only bring us closer to the point where we all fall down. Then we had pretty much every car alarm in the street deciding to go off. Obviously this brought on the police sirens. Finally there was my watch alarm that kept sounding out the hour every fifteen minutes in my room even after I took it down stairs.
Tommorrow should be fun because we got a plumber coming but anyway focus because since Prince Harry has apparently been fighting in Afghanistan since December which takes me back because around that time I sent a rather strongly worded missive, the main thrust of which was "Stop using your initative because you're really bad at it"
Anyway drunken, shouty, sleepy ramble brings me on to the simple question;
"All these weapons and you still can't find the enemy?"
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