Rocks Around And Thinks That He's The Toughest

It's tempting, and reasonably justified, to think that anyone who writes a blog is pretty much wrapped up in themselves. And I think in my case, at certain times, this has been the case. It's not an attractive facet of my personality but I hope that it's not a major part of my character...it's just that at those moments when one is feeling rather more self-obsessed than usual, then the blog is a bit of an outlet for my adolescent ego.

So I thought you'd like to know that I'm more usually engaged with the world outside myself; that I think about other things than the minutiae of my own existence. And there are a few things exercising me at the moment that I'd like to mention. Two massive bees in my bonnet, as it were.

The first is something that has always horrified me. It would fall under "man's inhumanity to man". I just can't get my head around the concept of torturing another living person. I don't understand how someone could arrive at a point in their lives where they could hurt someone else, repeatedly, deliberately, slowly, in order to extract information or a confession.  There's very little point in my repeating things on here about the rights and wrongs of torture - if you're a decent human it is always wrong and if you are not then nothing that anyone says will change your mind. But if you haven't read about waterboarding - this process that the Bush administration believes does not constitute torture - then please read the following short extract describing the process:

Malcolm Nance, an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence, publicly denounced the practice. He revealed that waterboarding is used in training at the US Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School in San Diego, and claimed to have witnessed and supervised "hundreds" of waterboarding exercises. Although these last only a few minutes and take place under medical supervision, he concluded that "waterboarding is a torture technique – period".

The practice involves strapping the person being interrogated on to a board as pints of water are forced into his lungs through a cloth covering his face while the victim's mouth is forced open. Its effect, according to Mr Nance, is a process of slow-motion suffocation.

Typically, a victim goes into hysterics on the board as water fills his lungs. "How much the victim is to drown," Mr Nance wrote in an article for the Small Wars Journal, "depends on the desired result and the obstinacy of the subject.

"A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience to horrific, suffocating punishment, to the final death spiral. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch."

Now think about the version of waterboarding that is practised on those who are not on the same side.

And the second thing that is driving me nuts? Well, first of all, I have to explain why it is driving me nuts. It's because it isn't getting the media coverage that it warrants. I think the following story, in Europe at least, should be leading the news every night.

In Rome, they now have a fascist mayor. They also have a Prime Minister who gets into bed with the Northern League, who are of a similarly right-wing outlook. Anyway, after weeks of raiding gypsy camps in and around Rome, a new piece of legislation has come in. All Roma (gypsies) are to be fingerprinted, including their children "to avoid phenomena such as begging" according to Interior Minister Roberto Maroni.

Why don't they just make them wear something to identify themselves? I don't know, maybe a brown triangle perhaps.

Posted by: papmeister at 23:15 | link | comments (6)

After a hard day working for the BBC, take the train on the commute home (read The Guardian, don't meet anyone's eyes), walk from the station through the leafy suburbs to your detatched house in Altrincham, uncork a fruity and impudent red and slip Leonard Cohen onto the CD player while you wait for your wife to serve up some exciting and challenging nouvelle cuisine.

Yes, I went to see Leonard Cohen last night. And I have never been at a gig that was so middle-aged and middle-class.

First off, I want to admit that the gig was truly excellent. "I haven't been onstage for 15 years. I was 60 then. Just a kid with a crazy dream....."

But I couldn't help wondering whether Cohen's songs of twisted and broken love, occasional glances to the seamier side of life, allowed these very respectable looking people to vicariously feel some frisson of edgy living. None of them looked like their real life was a nasty and bloody fucking mess.

So naturally I felt a bit lonely.

Posted by: papmeister at 10:10 | link | comments (5)

I disappeared again.
I'm terribly unreliable.
Anyway, so, what I've been doing? Well, I was trying to extricate myself from jury duty, for one thing. Please understand me, it’s not just that I don’t believe that all's equal and that the courts are on the level and that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded, or just because I feel that it isn’t true that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom. But this played a part. So I told the courts my concerns. And it would seem that I’m not the sort of person they want deciding the fate of the accused.
I have mentioned to a couple of people that I have no desire to sit on a jury and, to my surprise, this amazes them. Apparently sitting on a jury is some people’s idea of a great way to spend their time. As if deciding whether someone would go to jail or not is like a TV reality show. One person even said to me that they would love to do it and they would find the defendant guilty no matter what. Because, obviously, if they’ve been arrested then they must have done it. Or done something. Anything. Take them down! Throw away the keys!
It seems to me that every person I’ve met who wants to do jury service is also in favour of the death penalty. And I wonder whether jury service, in their minds, has nothing to do with the sober reflection upon the facts as presented, and more to do with exacting some sort of vicious revenge on the world, making someone pay for all the shit that happens in the world. They can’t stop it all, but they can’t take someone down with them.
And this is the other half of the reason that I can’t do jury service. I may be locked away in a room, deliberating with people who hold views like this. And I can be an intemperate man, given these sorts of circumstances. The walk from jury room to courtroom, from juror to defendant, could end up being one of the shorter walks I take this year.

Posted by: papmeister at 23:03 | link | comments (3)