- Most pernicious
- Be careful what you wish for...
- New Page
- New Page
- Homeric hymn to Pan
- New Page
- Home
- What the hell. I have nothing to lose
- My Adventures
- My Story
-
Essentials
- The earth is not flat
- The abolition of mind
- Things that only need saying once-one e tel
- Manners makyth man
- Coal in the bath and the victim culture
- The withdrawal of love and forcing oneself on others
- So some guys had the really freaky idea that we should love one another
- Jesus!
- 'Judge not that ye be not judged'
- Goo
- The way we were: Anglican England
- 'Avatars of living grace'
- Ditching the theology of love
- Reality >
- PANTHER: the argument
- Moi
- The new Marxism
- Dill's World (blog)
- New Page
- The collapse of education
- The Anile Heir
- For Katie: Harry Secombe: 'The Lord is my Shepherd'
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
-
'And now Amanda is seriously ill.'
- Otting
- THAT AM I >
- Medicine: the joke
- It's like this, Doc >
- Medicine: the continuing joke
- 'By Tummel and Loch Rannoch'
- The laughing-stock of the civilized world
- And be damned to you
- In the garden with Mummy
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Blair: the icing on the cake
- Expecto patronam
- Scarlet battalions
- My family: any colour so long as it's red
- Back to the freaking juniper-tree (1)
- Back to the freaking juniper-tree (2)
- Our grandfather who art in heaven (though I doubt it), Howard be thy name
- So you have a problem with my family, fucker?
- 'Jew-Communists'
- Margaret, my great-grandmother, an Irish tart
- The FUQs
- Dear Wannabe Nemesis
- Shall we try again, Bobbles my sweet?
- Evil
- Dixi (that's Latin, you know, Father)
- The cultural use of the lamp-post
- A home from home
- All times are now (1)
- All times are now (2)
- For Katie: All times are now (3)
- For Katie: All times are now (4)
- For Katie; All times are now (5)
- For Katie: All times are now (6)
- Non serviam
- This colour doesn't run
- The balance
- Civilization - the balance
-
Gallery
- And be damned to you
- Catholic Encyclopaedia 1912: Obedience
- Voltaire and Jesus
- Tertullian, Women in Canon Law (1912) and Mulieris Dignitatem (1988)
- Padding through the Vatican archives
- The Vatican State
- Extra ecclesiam nulla salus: go to hell, go directly to hell, do not pass 'Go'
- A short history lesson
- A phrase-book for monkey-nuts
- Summary: the abode of the loon
-
Translations from Voltaire (mine): Concerning the Church of England
>
- Bukharin and Preobrazhensky: Communism and Religion
- Translations from Voltaire (mine): Freedom of Thought
- Translations from Voltaire (mine): Transubstantiation
- Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason
- Lenin: Socialism and Religion
- Marx: 'So much for the social principles of Christianity'
- The Horcruxes and the illusion of power
- 'And death shall have no dominion'
- Led Zep: Kashmir
- Buddhist meditation music: Zen Garden
- Karula
- Summary: the love way or the power way
- Flashtest
- The worst university in the country
- Just finishing off, Dolores
- Miss Smila's feeling for snow
- Death of an expert witness
- Interesting, those trips to Moscow
- 'His single hand portrayed it'
- Of course no-one pays any attention to poets
- The desire of the moth for the flame
- The Hospital
- The ghost in the machine was riled
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner
- I am the very model of a modern faith apologist: reprise
- I am of course reminded of a little list (of a little list)
- In the garden with Mummy when the Nine turned up
- Grow the fuck up, comrades
- Thin red line
- 'The Party', 'The Regiment'
- Once upon a time there was a big red giant
- Britain's not very secret weapon
- The headlines
- The waning of the age of aquarium
- Letter to MI5: Playing The Patriot Game
- Those in peril on the sea
- The Patriot Game (song)
- Country matters: 'Elf and Safety
- The Matter of Britain
- Marianne
- Riders on the storm with soundtrack
- The rat-catchers
- 'And gentleman in England, now a-bed, shall think themselves accurs'd...'
- The evidence no-one asks for
- England
- My father when young 2
- A few of my books
- The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism
- Barry's book-plate (evil grin)
- Barry: 'demob' if only from the MOI and redeployment at JWT
- Barry: publishing contracts with Curtis Brown
- Barry's funeral service
- Family album
- Barbara's 100th birthday
- And Nigel's funeral: read by Saul on the whale-backed Downs
- Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Class mum lives in a field with Dinge: the intellectual Left
- Within you, without you
- Because the world is round, it turns me on
- More Lattic and other incredibly cool stuff
- Hass and Venga
- The Lover of Jalaluddin Rumi and some things you never wanted to know about translation
- Love IS the law
- Shahriar's sites for sore eyes
- Islamic art and civilization
- Abu Nuwas
- Fisking Warsi
- Harry's Place v. Scumbag College
- Henrietta wondered if HP was too soft on Sparte-Smythe
- Koorosh Modarresi of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran
- Rumy Hasan of the Birmingham Socialist Alliance
- Sharia socialists
- ComSymp, ShariaSymp: plus ca change....
- Illustrations of the Rubaiyat
- Hell, objectively speaking: St Catherine of Genoa
- Joe Stote
- Katy Kianush
- 'Brothers, if you hear...'
- L'Internationale
- A Lioness's Quest
- The Battle of Evermore
- Rosa Luxemburg
- Love in a time of cholera
- TEKEL: Religious, guys? Doesn't that mean shit?
- Please do not feed the god. He really doesn't appreciate it.
- Instead of God eating people, people eat God. Seems a good swap
- Herstory
- Ultramontanism
- Multiverse defined by the sexual equipment of the human male
- Civis romana sum?
- Sunday School, 1913: 'THE GATES WILL BE OPEN TO ALL MANKIND'
- Huxley
- Consciousness 101
- Jesus Christ the apple-tree
- WE DO NOT KNOW
- Trial before Pilate
- 'For the sake of the nation, this Jesus must die!'
- Much how I feel about doctors and other forms of intellectual pollution in the University, really
- Jesus, a human being
- By all means get us wrong, Father
- 'They turned to Rome to sentence Nazareth'
- Buddhism: frightful threat to the Church, you know
- Dharma the Cat and the Barefoot Doctor
- Non-duality
- Exo, eso, balance, Balrogs et le Parti Communiste Francais 1939-1945
- ComSymp, ShariaSymp: Fit the Second
- Printing and the Reformation
- Glossary
- Early chess: more, er, gentlemen (and ladies)
- The Crusades: it's good to look at dates
- Richard and Saladin: perspectives
- Richard and Saladin: perspectives
- Nathan the Wise
- Portly and the Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- Otters return to Thames (maybe)
- The Ottery, TW9
- Spring: rain and shine
- Problems with numeracy: cardinals, generals and rock 'n' roll
- Franny and Zooey
- The tail does not wag the dog
- Try again? I think not: finale
- How many deaths does it take till they know that too many British Muslim women have died
- Who killed Banaz
- Sexism, racism, Islamophobia, Marxophobia and a rather interesting school
- Aaargh! The Terrible Tonge-Monster!
- Just hammering the stake a little further in
- A second English Civil War: women against women
- The vorpal sword goes snicker-snack
- You were saying...
- Of course I've slain the bloody Jabberwock
- Chapter One - Stalinism is just so yesterday
- The rightful heir, the usurper and the usurper's bloody wife
- Wiping excrement off the sole of one's boo
- Fascism victorious, gloating and spurious - for the moment, certainly
- Six counties (sob, the horror of it) lie under John Bull's tyranny
- Calling Lord Haw-Haw
- Cool Britannia
- 'Hell is just as properly proper as Greenwich or as Bath or Joppa'
- 'Any old iron, any old iron, any, any old iron...'
- The Front Line
- Taking it from the top...
- Happy birthday to m
- Extract from The Anile Heir including Lattic
- My body my self
- Culluket, Kastanessen and of course Coulter
- The Girl Who Talked to Otters
- Notes, some of which are Caroline's
- Our revels now are ended
- Pallas Athene
- More notes
- Pan pipes - conclusions - allegory
- Shit, man, they won't even state their problem in the Agora
- Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad
- Poetry in motion
- Ain't no use in looking down!/Ain't no discharge on the ground!
- Queen - We will rock you!
- Queen - Killer Queen
- The wrong shaped body, inferior product
- What a friend they have in evil, all their sins and griefs to bear
- In sum
- 'Building a remedy for Kruschev and Kennedy'
- Classic Islamoballs (and of course pure Stalinism)
- Deja vu
- Really, there are more important things to think about....
- Sleeping Pan by InertiaK
- Hymn to Pan by Faun
- Pan pipes
- Dirty old men
- For Katie: 'And death shall have no dominion'
- The Stone Table cracked
- 10 intellectual frauds of the orthodox religious and their slaves
- A Miracle of Exmoor: a Christmas masque
- WE DO NOT KNOW
- Intelligent women
- 'Tales of brave Ulysses'
- Coursera
- Free
- Milburn
- A fifth column
- Ain't there nuffink wrong with my back, apes?
- Gunfight at OK Corral
- Gunfight at OK Corral: the movie
- Harmonica and Frank
- Captain's Log: Star-Date Whatever
- Women, the US election, the President of the United States and other cool stuf
- The fury of a woman who has been raped
- "Are all American officers so ill-mannered?"
- The grand-daughter of not-quite-the-founder of the Labour Party
- Meanwhile...the lamp-post
- 'Sarat's little joke': the Economic Liaison Officer to the Anile Throne
- Where have all the SovSymps gone, long time passing...
- Roots and reductionism
- 'At anchor here I ride...'
- 'Against all things ending'
- New Page
- Verstehen Sie?
- Memoirs of London medicine
- 28th August 2010
- Irreducible evil
- Irreducible evil
- Just for you: Anthea Turner - and the python
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them
- Just call me Serafina Pekkala, or possibly Lady Godiva
- A few reminders
- More? You want more?
- Grand finale
- It even has a pretty cover
- Bambi
- C'est nous qu'on ose mediter/De rendre a l'antique esclavage!
- A reminder of who is Marianne
- Voici Noel!
- Vicar of Bray
- Spanish Ladies
- Meanwhile back in Scilly....Song of the Western Men
- Twenty years behind enemy lines
- Family tree
- Pavarotti: Little Drummer Boy
- Walking in the air
- 'So you think you can love me and spit in my eye/So you think you can love me and leave me to die'
- Aw, come on, Doc, you're such an academic
- Je suis allee voir dans sa tete
- 16 chants de Noel
- 16 chants de Noel
- Talking of sheep...
- The distancing of Jesus from the churches
- So this is how it is to be
- And....And Stafford....And
- A limp prick and no balls
- Excuse me while I dress my hair with vine leaves
- Excuse me while I dress my hair with vine leaves
- Other notes
- Other notes
- Blair
- No?
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?' Pt One
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?' Pt Two
- If you're going to Acton Vale, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
- The truth about medicine
- Getting nowhere fast
- Bird in the bloody wilderness
- As I have so tiresomely repetitively said
- Untitled
- That which sustains
- Therefore, Vice-Chancellor
- The lies they tell and the drivel they spout
- Rising above the evil reptilian kitten-eaters
- We too do not do cowering
- What the papers say
- The closed (sealed/wounded/stunted/practically non-existent) mind
- Dust and sparkles: child of Dust and Light and Lenin
- Just screaming
- More ridiculous womanish screaming
- Look, children, do look, it's a Five-Year Plan
- Fictionally speaking...The House that Keir built
- The heavy mob moves in: "We're Ancient Greeks. We do reason. And of course democracy."
- What did New Labour achieve?
- Apollo speaks
- Physician, heal thyself - or not
- Wholly unnecessary footnote
- Ah, the dirty underbelly of medicine
- Artemis' arrows
- Dear Apollo, I think the mind-itch needs to be stronger
- A few hymns
- Rhinoceros!
- Begging them to sue me for 15 years
- 'Now that I lie here/My body all holes/I think of the traitors/Who bargained and sold'
- Of course, if anyone has a spare atom bomb
- Whatever it takes
- Shit on the sole of my boot
- Shit on the sole of my boot
- You will see me dead rather than support me
- Vultures waiting for the flesh that dies
- Would you like to see the state of my mattress?
- 'When you've shouted "Rule, Britannia!"...
- 'I vow to thee, my country...' Aw, come on, you know it makes your skin crawl
- The Fixers
- The prince, the cardinal, the duke, the politician and the professor
- The Enforcers
- Me charm. You just strange
- So what exactly am I saying here?
- Pussy Riot: Yet another day in the destruction of Ivana Denisovich
- Untitled
- Pussy Riot (2): no pasaran
- Just smile for the camera, fuckers
- PANTHER: the animations, though not yet the videos
- Theme music
- So-o-o
- Just a stupid woman screaming
- Just a reminder of the Miracle of Exmoor
- Mess with the best. Die like the rest
- The essential paradigm
- No-one wants me to survive. No-one wants me to succeed
- "Are you still laughing, Sarat?"
- You have heard of the University, Doctor?
- PANTHER: The Manual, out now on Scribd
- Going back to work tomorrow
- The gift of speech
- Point counterpoint
- To cut a long story short, therefore
- To cut a long story even shorter
- A few things you need to note
- Death rather than dishonour
- In brief, therefore
- Start of first draft - what do you think of it so far?
- Let me tell you a story, Jackanory, Jackanory...
- Phase II
- Thus we see the great esteem in which London medicine holds the University
- Washed down the drain
- Raped, butchered, destroyed means what?
- "I invoke Artemis"
- I invoke Artemis (II)
- The closing-down sale. Everything must go
- Murder by remote control
- Insufferable
- Befehl ist Befehl
- Order of play
- The Broadmoor annexe
- I say, don't they shoot collaborators?
- You pay them
- Dear British Public
- Graphically speaking.....
- I have taken a lead
- Endsum
- The good news and the bad news
- The education suitable to the masses prescribed by the C19th industrialist, therefore
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?/Medicine: the joke
- I shit on you daily
- It is fact
- A new continuum...Watch this space not
- Lady Sybil's swamp-dragons (footnote to the above)
- The Age of Aquarius
- But of course your usual Christmas present, little sick-bags
- 'Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before'
- There's just one huge and enormous difference, isn't there
- Shall we just highlight that bit?
- Untitled
- Untitled
- Off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz
- Untitled
- 'Don despicable, don of death' Could I leave it out?
- Finish with a summary of the facts
- Roll bloody up for the greatest show on earth
- Just thought to start to make a couple of videos
- Killer Queen
- It is concluded
- A short note
- I need help
- Get out of my university, animals
- Bluestockings
- Oh, when is this going to end?
- Go for it, fuckers, go for it
- Fnords, Jesus and the gerund
- Corsin and coradium
- TAH: Chapter One
- The cancer that is medicine
- The Petri dish
- Hanging them is good. Exposing them is better
- Lattic....
- Female = non-person
- That which sustains reprise
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Non, c'est pas ca
- Quod erat demonstrandum
- To move on, therefore
- So there you have it
- The script
- Ars longa vita brevis
- PANTHER: the movie
- Animal Farm: the midden
- The word is psychopath
- If you prefer, a septic tank
- And the rest
- Twin cores
- Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit
- Here the matter rests at present
- So just what is this bloody nonsense?
- My knowledge of Photoshop has increased by leaps and bounds
- Question One
- Words and pictures
- Etched in acid
- Dear fucking world
- More
- Caniba and Hokabi
- I think - class (Lancashire A, puh-lease, rhymes with gas)
- What is the point of what you are saying? What is it intended to achieve?
- PANTHER was created in 2008
- Happy Samhain
- Profound concern
- The Road to the Isles
- And of course Andy Stewart
- 'Banks on every finger'
- Don't tread on me
- A Miracle of Exmoor: a Christmas masque
- Untitled
- Pretty much a classic, wouldn't you say
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them (2)
- There is no reasoning with them
- A little give and take
- Extraordinary irresistible find
- Music
- So there it is, part solution, mostly not
- Reprise: 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?'/Medicine: the joke
- Mireille
- Espèce de pute!
- Etched in stone
- Hate Fal the most?
- Or Shav?
- Or is it Dill?
- Or is it Dill?
- Reminder: Ars longa vita brevis
- Reminder: PANTHER: the movie
- 'If you cannot make up rhymes/There are always the columns of The Times'
- Jarring blast: letter to my father 19th February 2012
- Vermin made simple
- You were saying
- And so, dear MI5, dear Labour Party, dear University...
- I who might as well be fucking dead
- Death rather than dishonour
- Strands
- Dolls on music-boxes wound up by a key
- Beyond death
- You can fit a lot into a five-minute video
- Je suis Charlie
- Marble Arch? The Brandenburg Gate? The Colosseum?
- Sort of cross between Athena and Artemis, really
- OK, lemme be rational
- Meanwhile...
- Meanwhile...
- As if: cui bono?
- Dark satanic mills
- Work in progress
- Welcome to sewer NHS
- Over my dead body
- Beam them up to the Great Prick in the Sky
- So there it is, part solution, mostly not
- That which sustains finale
- Messing about on the River: Lattic, Sarat and Shavli too
- Christ, it's a mad monkey
- Lots of nuffink
- Led Zep: Kashmir (2)
- The pillars of the West/By all means get us wrong, Father
- Evil reptilian kitten-eater
- Cockroach Protection League
- Happy Easter
- The very models of a medical practitioner
- The Act of Desecration
- No is the answer. What is the question? Loony alert, therefore
- The Grand Plan
- Go for it
- Waste of oxygen
- Prologue
- Intermezzo
- Just the time for a brief reminder
- Mess with the best - die like the rest
- Wailings of sick Trots not
- Heavy metal
- 'Allow me to introduce myself...'
- Freddie and Peter
- How to depict one of the most powerful men in the world
- Moog
- Anyone for tennis?
- Hair
- Hairier?
- Hairiest?
- Untitled
- Python and Allen
- Prepared for any eventuality
- Bad moon rising with soundtrack
- Riders on the storm with soundtrack
- 'Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before' encore une fois
- Not one foul animal among them will uphold freedom and democracy
- Flower power
- Meanwhile there's really only one song for Ardeshna (and Blair)
- Thin red line - the third of the set
- PANTHER: the movie - nealy there
- Do you like my channel art?
- Couple more soundbites to choke on
- Home movie
- Damaged goods
- How is Virginia these days?
- The Hunger Games
- Now on YouTube
- Second vid
- The Mutts
- The Mutt Pit
- The video I shall make
- Kindly therefore display all the wit, creaivity, intellect, education and intelligence you don't have
- The last picture show
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- The Last Picture Show 2: female eunuchs
- In tg
- New Page
- New Page
- New Page
- In
- In the heat of the night
- In the heat of the night
- Not a complicated image
- Vermin
- 'It is a slave's lot thou describest, to refrain from uttering what one thinks'
- Won't that be fun, Fitter?
- New Page
- Nous sommes tous P:aris
- Meanwhile back at the ranch
- You may remember the Squelch?
- DIXI
- I laugh at you daily
- The end
- Fuck your lies, your cowardice, your hypocrisy, vermin
- Got it all sewn up
- I am Dill
- PANTHER: the movie - a reminder
- And of course the manual
- They deploy
- New Page
- Traitors and would be murderers
- And the other video
- Yes, there are, aren't there.
- Zopiclone
- Hell
- No answer is a very clear answer
- For Katie: All times are now (1)
- For Katie: The Lord of the Dance
- For Katie and m: The heart will go on
- If it's the last thing I ever do, whcih I suppose it might well be
- My fine body twisted, all battered and lame
- Reflections
- For Katie: The trumpet shall sound
- For Katie: Hallelujah Chorus
- For Katie
- The service
- Reading from 'Burnt Norton'
- Going Back
- or in other words
- I need help
- Time past and time future
- Tomorrow
- How many other lives have you destroyed?
- Arundel
- After such knowledge, what forgiveness
- Let it be said - it will be said
- Information governance
- So----
- Sitting in their tin cans far above the world...
- Another shit-filled weekend
- The Cull
- Society has the right to require of avery public agent an account of his administration
- The laughing stock
- 'Sing while you raise your bow...'
- Simple questions
- For fuck's sake they're all vermin
- Functionally illiterate
- Of no significance to me whatever
- The best story
- Mess with the best. Die like the rest
- The visible difference
- Drop the dead donkey: UCH imploding
- It remains the case
- Oh, and it remains the case
- What matters
- Salvat regina!
- Nancy Wake
- Nancy Wake 2
- 2016: your annual treat - A Miracle of Exmoor
- Dunscreaming (shortly, anyhow)
- Any normal person
- Malice
- Keep your loving brother happy
- Surprised by joy
- University Challenge
- Meanwhile back at the lamp-post
- Except to speak of the absolute horror
- And in particular
- Because I screamed I needed help
- QED
- Sredni Vashtar
- The wild and wacky world of the Waffen SS
- Think I'm a bloody servant, do you
- Irrationality
- Literate, literary, educated, intellectual England
- Refinements
- Doesn't the University see the joke?
- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- On the whole, I think....
- Ain't taking it from a woman
- A great and mighty wonder I'm still standing
- The zenith of human possibility
- ' pilot of the storm who leaves no trace'
- 'Sing while you raise your bow. Shoot straighter than before'
- In the face of the evidence
- Watch this space
- Brennt Paris?
- 'I vow to thee, my country...' Aw, come on, you know it makes your skin crawl
- Within you, without you - especially without you
- Ain't I got no respet
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them
- The Matter of Kadun: physics and metaphysics
- Cartoons
- Over-arching significance not
- They just wouldn't list
- 'And now that I lie here/My body all holes'
- Photoshoot
- I saved about half the books
- I just don't understand
- Fnords
- Pigs in clover
- See you in hell, fuckers
- Attempted murder
- Bog-rats
- Person or persons unknown but very guessable
- All you need is love
- One more time
- More
- Depict them in bondage
- In sum, Mr Benn's questions
- 'Arnold Lane/Had a strange/Hobby...'
- '...Doors bang/Chain-gang...'
- Etx
- Shoot straighter than before
- My moon and my wand
- My college, my university
- Inevitable and not
- painfully slow on the uptake
- This too you may stuff up your arse
- And of course this
- Pout
- TTFN
- Wiping excrement off the sole of my boot
- A West End comedy, perhaps
- Fascism
- I really don't think so, no
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
- For Barry: Danny Boy
- Epitaph: it's your funeral
- Yea, though I work in the Land of the Valley of the Shadow of Death
- Do learn to read, Doctor
- The crooked road the English drunkard made
- By Oak and Ash and Thorn
- Can't un read plain words of English
- I get the gist, I surely do
- The world of perversion
- The Ottery has moved to the banks of the Arun
- Snapping my claws at the foeman''s chants
- Yes, the crash of the waves on the foreshore
- The even longer march of Everywoman
- You tried so desperately hard to destroy me
- Evil reptilian kitten-eaters
- The five most evil men in England
- Love does not drown in corruption)
- Like something out of Hieronymus Bosch
- Harry Secombe: The Old Rugged Cross
- The Drivellers
- Insolence is so very vexing, is it not
- Protected by the faith of my fore-fathers
- Lost causes
- Solid Soviet steel
- 1
- Murderous vermin who jeer at disability
- Clarity
- De profundis clamavi
- Reprise: Nancy Wake 2
- Generals gather in their masses...
- Cry foul and bloody murder
- Tumour
- New Page
- Ludicrous
- I think I said get me out of there
- This is not life
- All bets off, fuckers
- New Page
- Dearest darling Katie and Barry
- You think you impress me?
- Manners, ladies and gentlemen, puh-lease
- I suppose the exact charge would be
- No-o-o I don't thik you should forget about Lattic
- Boys having a bit of a larf
- I thnk, you know, dear Artemis...
- Sttill drooling, are you
- 'Thou shallt not suffer a witch to live.;
- My YouTube channel
- Education is what is left
- New Page
- To su
- To sum up
- The endless road traversed (nearly)
- It's a mandala, stupid
- Happy New Year
- Keep your loving brother happy
- Not with a bang but a whimper
- I, however, have outstanding questions
- Feline groovy
- Suitable cases for treatment
- I have spoken
- Nothing taxing to the sane
- I have of course the utmost...
- Doctors and nurses cannot cope with quantum physics
- Addended: Etched in acid and have been for years
- The psychology of medicine
- No outcry
- A very simple question
- To which task I shall now..
- RIP the Labour Party
- First things first
- I a woman
- The Howard lion
- Lest we forget: I don't
- New Page
- Pat me on the head and tell mee not to be a silly little girl
- I a woman of over 60
- A hanging matter
- The gross falsification of history
- 'The writers by their presence...'
- One more time just for the hell of it
- Lastly...
- The answer is no
- So that was the Universiity that was
- Hey you, get off of my cloud...
- Off. off, off of my cloud...
- A right waste of make-up
- So what?
- Footnotes to the above
- So where - ?
- What is the name of - and can't they - ?
- The glorious first of June
- Why has the door not been smashed down/?
- Your professors, Vice-Chancellor
- Anti-dialogue
- Shall we finish with a quick...
- They don't want the Jabberwock slain
- ABOVE THE LAW?
- So - I think -
- "Sentence first = verdict afterwards."
- DA and TM
- Post mortem
- Everywhere I go people are collecting bloody food
- how many people are on PAYE?
- I am naturallly reminded...
- Where was I?
- Where was I (2)?
- Welcome to the NHS
- Let's play doctors and nurses
- 'Senior members of the University'
- These are {{DOCTORS}}} and {{{NURSES}}}
- The girl who talked to otters
- How you hate intelligence
- And you always get away with it, don't you
- And you always get away with it, don't you
- The Hundred Flowers Movement
- New Page
- In one line
- Belloc, Apollo and May
- While readiing The Four Men
- Golgotha, place of a skull
- Troll toes
- So go for it
- PUT-DOWN
- New Page
- The required result
- Sex and mind
- Their mommas told them...
- Greece or Rome
- The new normal
- Isn't this interesting?
- New Page
- Ruthless vicious evil old men
- The charge is atteempted murder
- The C-List
- Q&A
- Ludicrous propositions
- Chained to the oars
- Footnotes
- 1095 and all that
- The Anglican garden
- Or of course a Kabbalist
- I have some time ago...
- Cult, Death-Eaters
- Not forgetting Nathan the Wise
- Cultural exchange
- And of course not forgetting...
- In short, in my young day...
- Contemplating this Matter of Kadun
- Nearly there
- I detect, therefore
- 'That government by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.'
- Tingle
- Follow-up
- Cave-meen
- Not ancient history
- I have indeed graphically
- 'By their deeds'
- So maybe you'll also like this bit
- Just to be exact
- Which?
- Oh, all right, just for you
- Left something out, didn't I
- Didn't quite finish that off
- Ciletij
- Ritawa
- Shav and Zik
- The party
- Spetzi
- senoki
- Punching the pixels
- Reality
- More tails from the riverbank
- The Sarat and Maya Show
- Perverts
- If we may now...
- In short
- progress
- A national joke
- The Spetzi Effect
- Quanta
- Who owns me if I do not own myself? Reprise
- Who owns me if I do not own myself? Reprise
- Boys having a bit of a larf
- You really have....
- And they all just sit there
- So exactly what - ?
- Hostile fascist foreign powers
- Personal, very
- Rubber dolly
- Essentially
- Fana
- LLLLOLLLL
- Unnatural, innit
- It's over, monkeys, over
- You might learn something but probably not
- So now Blair will tell us all
- Spetzi and Qine
- RL
- Qine and Spetzi
- Fucktards united
- Capital
- Well, didn't I just hand myself the short straw
- Do they actually understand?
- Quotable quotes
- 3D printing
- Ah, but can you print fluffy cushions?
- Taking an intelligent interest
- Vaudos 1
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- New Page
- Anniversary Waltz
- Automation: ostrich land
- The Kirit and Micaela Show
- New Page
- Cookery time
- What are they like!
- Until we meet on camera...
- And just because I know you love Homeric hymns
- New Page
- Dear Artemis, Athena, Apollo and Pan
- Baz and Paw on the loose in Van-Senok
- Back to the fermions
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- A crude, vulgar, ugly, insolent, mad and evil little man
- RIP English Christianity
- And the outstanding question is...
- Foxes, fruit, fermions and fuck you where you breathe
- Varna's Wall
- Particularly working on
- From the Shrine to the Viledeen
- Spring
- Fisking Welby
- New Page
- And how is the great penis in the sky tonight?
- After-thoughts: don't forget Isis and her pal Sobek
- The cat I don't yet have
- The Greater and Lesser Lunacies
- To whom it may concern....
- New Page
- Frank
- Cock-suckers
- Should you not be a movie buff...
- Marked as property
- Questions, questions....
- You will publicly answer those questions
- And this was Margaret
- Reprise: Our grandfather who art in heaven (though I doubt it), Howard be thy name
- To remind you...
- England the poem
- Back to the Viledeen
- Come on, I just want you to...
- So this is the story
- New Page
- Theme from The Water Margin
- Turn off the bloody Horst Wessel Lied
- Is it -10 yet?
- Chesterton - and Belloc
- New Page
- So what have I proved?
- Mock you incessantly
- No problem, no problem at all
- They have only one interest
- Misa and ban-Razit
- Rowley and Saunders
- HARD WIRING
- Bad science
- Dereliction of duty here, comrades
- Taking it from the top..
- New Page
- Dot the i. Cross the t
- More Fal
- Maya's assassination
- So-o-o
- Well, hi there, Sar-fenan
- And the third reason
- Ysabel Belinda Felicity Jehan Howard
- 'And now that I lie here...'
- Ain't they really
- And so
- 'Of course she has to do this on her own.'
- Who the fuck are Bonnie and Clyde
- How the cards fall
- And don't forget Dill
- And Shav and Dill
- Squishy, Archchancellor: not a healthy diet
- Back to you, Sar-Fenan
- This is not a physics textbook
- e=mc2
- A NON-EVENT
- woo hoo
- Her story
- Oi, you, Sar-fenan!
- Bloody kitten-eaters
- HHGG 1
- HHGG 4
- HHGG 2
- Reprise: It reallly is...
- Dave Allen
- Some psycho schizoid freak
- So absolutely insolently irreducibly evil
- This site
- Under the block
- Do you not understand?
- Gee, it's so wonderful to know
- Parameters
- I might go so far as to say
- I might''ve finished losing my temper
- Archaeopteryx flew like a pheasant
- I am not a child. Children are under 16
- New Page
- Blair, Corbyn, WCPI
- Smile for the camera
- 'Labour'
- Nothing you won't surrender
- HTF do I hitch a lift to Betelgeuse?
- "We are the Daleks."
- Back as ever to the Viledeen
- Scream quietly or the neighbours will hear
- The products rejected out of hand
- ComSymp ShariaSymp Fit the Third
- How to defend England
- If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you...
- National Museum Wales
- Why is this continuing?
- My mission I seem to have been landed with
- Dixi
- Go it alone, suffer alone, what's new
- Deep breaths
- New Page
- Gratis
- Justt to complete the set
- About that grave
- Damn!
- About that clock
- Oh pilot of the storm that leaves no trace
- Last but by no means least
- After which
- Or in short
- Notification...
- I think perhaps tomorrow...
- C17th England
- Je suis comme je suis
- Whatever you do, take pride...
- Selfies
- There remains of course my mind
- If you failed to get the gist
- Alice's Left Hip Esquire
- Limp pricks and no balls
- New Page
- Never ask them to strip
- You, off my planet
- If they absolutely won't...
- Achilles' heel
- Oh just do begone
- No-one on Planet Normal
- Welcome to Labour's England
- Democracy...
- New Page
- Bringing back the dark
- The best story
- Is there one single point?
- To come up to date
- Evil
- The destruction of the intellectual basis of the free world
- The mad relations in the rafters
- Let this be my contentment
- Results
- None of which of course
- A purely indigenous evil
- Here the matter rests at present
- New Page
- New Page
- A toss-up
- Blair
- New Page
- Reality 105
- The wearing of the green
- Recently come to light
- Growly snarly wolf
- New Page
- Five years later...
- Bobbles
- OK, assume.
- A flight of fancy
- So long as we understand each other
- Footnote
- Fisking Warsi reprise
- Why was nothing done?
- Job well done, filth
- Being a galactic mail from me to Zaphod
- Beyond evil
- In the 61st minute of the final hour
- Doo-be, doo-be, do
- English Christianity until....
- New Page
- 'I AM KING AND GOD AND LAW#
- So I get this
- Bad mood
- Another book for you, Blair
- One should always write things down - in some form or another
- All cleared up in five minutes
- Of course I have worn such a hat
- Thus, bloody thus
- No pasaran
- I continued...
- You prefer Misa and Ban-razit
- The 3D printer in the town centre
- Labour's apotheosis
- Selling women by the pound
- Why, my own mother and father wouldn't recognize me
- And the punchline is
- Do just go and fuck yourselves
- Fruit Loop
- Only one interest
- The price of a woman's body
- Eris
- Just can't hear you
- VR
- Not as exciting as Hokabi
- 'Unfortunate'
- Oh look what they're saying about me
- Should one really not...
- I am intelligent.
- From the archives: fisking Warsi
- Do MPs entirely grasp what they're there for?
- Our servants not our masters
- New Page
- Or you could say the reverse
- The problem is that there is no problem
- Irrelevant
- From the archives: who killed Banaz
- From the archives: ooh, we are so sensitive
- From the archives: wondrous multiculturalism
- From the archives: Banaz' sister spoke out
- Neither right nor honourable nor gentlemen
- The carrion chorus
- And so
- New Page
- Can hear you from here, animal
- Forgot it at Christmas
- 'Blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain'
- So golly gosh
- And I laugh (2)
- What else can we talk about
- Thus
- Spare ribs
- Mene mene tekel upharsin
- And of course...
- Matthew 7: 3
- Blair
- This exchange
- Because it's a horrible way to die
- Peter
- Those convictions
- A purely pernicious twist
- The open mind
- They took away the post-its
- First part of Fal 2
- Sarat at the Shrine 1
- Sarat at the Shrine 2
- To continue...
- Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 1
- 2. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 2
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- Of course
- Ridiculous and viie
- From the archives: obedience (1912)
- I should imagine...
- From the archives: And who kept this bubbling?
- From the archives: Voltaire on the CofE
- From the archives: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus
- From the archives: The Vatican archives 1
- From the archives: the Vatian archives 2
- From the archives: The Vatican archives 3
- 2000 years making most of it up
- Proud Archbishop of York conducts his own daughter's wedding ceremony
- New Page
- Nothing may be said. Nothing may be done.
- It seemed a good idea at th e time
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa reprise
- Aren't they gorgeous?
- A precedent has been set
- Something else for the animals to gloat over
- Let's play doctors and nurses
- Women beware women
- How best may we accommodate you, o master
- The Agora
- New Page
- Violence power coercion desecration
- BOURGEOIS MORALITY
- New Page
- Once more from the top
- So what do I think?
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- To conclude: to whom it may concern
- Sarat and Hass
- THis is what I look like, Vice-Chancellor
- Sonderkommando
- The balance of probability
- Can I keep this up for ever?
- How you hate intelligence 2
- Et freaking cetera
- Honestly, darling, that mantilla
- The prince, the duke, the cardinal, the politician and the professor
- The Fixers
- The Enforcers
- By the balls of Apollo!
- Cernunnos
- Burunda
- Solidarity
- About that new sofa I printed...
- A position it is entirely easy to understand
- Yes. Yes, you are ridiculous
- Yes. Yes, everything I have said about you is an understatement
- Meanwhile back at the ottery
- The flawed concept of Islamophobia
- Oh rats!
- The revolving door
- Ah yes, my future
- Explicit liber
- So now....
- Deep breaths
- Thanks awfully for the suggestion, old boy
- A list, therefore
- Previous reflections
- Ah, culture
- Ah, here you have the nub
- New Page
- Tropes
- Letter to my dead parents
- New Page
- These they left me
- Don't forget Lattic
- Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
- Song of the Western Men
- The new national anthem
- Wanna see the Deeds
- New Page
- Another very fine song
- Shamima Begum
- The perfect citizens of a fascist state
- Grease
- Love, Serafina Pekkala
- To whom it may concern
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Also to whom it may concern
- So what happened then?
- New Page
- New Page
- Who has no authority in England
- I shall now potter off
- La trahison des clercs
- 'Those who cannot remember the past...'
- A little intellectual exercise...
- The view of the Labour leadership
- Take it from the top, Karl
- Is Abbott a feminist? We shall see
- Ooh, we are so sensitive
- Death before dishonour
- Listen very carefully. I shall say this only once
- Of course certain lines here
- Hide the Secret. Hide the Weakness
- The very model of a modern faith apologist
- Models of modern health practitioners
- Meanderings
- Negation
- Bloody certifiable
- Convert, comrades, convert!
- Found the articles
- Dangerous animals
- I name you the Duke of Plaza-Toro
- New Page
- New Page
- Christchurch 1
- New Page
- New Page
- To May, whom it concerns
- Shouts and whispers
- Hic jacet
- Hyde Park, London, England
- Condition of the Working-Class in England 1845
- Thus ComSymp ShariaSymp
- Ooh, you guessed
- You are so obvious
- In detail
- Hard wiring
- If mind does not exist., democracy is unnecessary
- Th Age of Reason, 1794
- Fisking Cantuar
- Danger: profoundly esoteric image
- The seer and that which he sees are one.
- Meanwhile hats off to the Guardian
- Letter to MI5 in case you missed it.
- Fucking Pollyanna
- The Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Boys and Girls
- Perhaps in five year old English
- Non serviam
- The 7 principles of public life. Pix too
- Tor and Tonge
- Barking moonbats
- Herr Hitler, I presume
- A rich joke, Blair
- Eire in the 1950s?
- Cold shower
- By definition 'God' has to know what a lepton is
- Ah, the Yorkshire Ripper
- Parallel government
- New Page
- You will not look at them
- The magic migraine
- From about a year ago
- La nausee
- Yes, it's Operation Mindfuck
- Book review
- Happy bloody Easter
- A little quiet attempted murder
- Fal 2
- The curse of the killer zombies
- So the next logical step would be...
- Don't my silly little arts degree mean nuffink?
- Oh dear I have upset someone(s)
- New Page
- A few questions
- There are no great ones
- Gets so horribly in the way
- Violence against women, it's what you pay your taxes for
- 'Bring me the head of Alfreddo Garcia'
- Just don't forget Lattic
- The House of the Rising Sun
- The initiation of force
- Yes, that's right, I said Bentley
- Turning now to this Matter of Kadun I
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and the Matter of Kadun 2
- Do admire your handiwork
- Marche funebre
- Misogyny
- On this 75th anniversary...
- The Enchanted Forest
- If you should confront these filth
- Encore une fois
- Impertinent evil filth
- A successful outcome
- Therefore...
- Which end is up
- I shall create it
- PANTHER: The Manual, out now on Scribd
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Indeed there are many interesting people to talk to in my mind
- Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof
- To dig a little deeper
- Of food-banks and reprographics
- No dark
- Just remembered another spectacular waste of money
- More about Tories
- And more...
- This and that and some of the other
- Or in short
- Don't forget The House That Keir Built
- Memo to the Senate of the University of London
- Turning now to this Matter of Kadun I
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- The fur does settle...
- Models of medical practitioners
- HARD WIRING 2
- Strange things happen in the quantum universe
- Strange things happen in the quantum world
- "Are you still laughing, Sarat?"
- Falsity
- Je ne regrette rien
- Of course you could always check the facts
- 'Do you recall what was the deal/The day the music died.'
- The family handbook
- Goose-stepping morons
- Riidiculous
- Welcome to the diverse and plural real world
- Does it not sound sweet?
- This half-wit waving her degree...
- O tempora! O mores! O mayhem!
- Sexism is a crime
- ''I can't be treated like this.'
- And here the matter rests at present
- J'ai vecu
- Extreme unction
- The free movement of peoples
- The rules
- The witch must burn in hell, he trumpeted,
- You can always ask Google
- Monsters
- Just think, then you can add murder to your CVs
- New Page
- No dark
- In sum
- Give them everything they ask for
- Good for a laugh
- The end. Full stop.
- Just grow a pair
- Bad moon rose
- To whom it may concern
- And?
- And don't forget Lattic
- The Hall of Mirrors
- Because of course
- How to murder a woman
- Bwahaha
- They gave them time
- My big brown eyes
- A n all-party statement from the House of Commons
- Fat pig
- Always remember...
- Always remember...
- The whole lot of them
- Clear and present danger
- Note to Jackson, Hughes and Ardeshna
- So...
- Oy, you
- They did not like the New Marxism at all
- Irritable Owl Syndrome
- The drivel show
- Oh, you know, Woodstock
- Aqiuarius
- One more time and once again...
- Anglican England
- Since I feel bloody annoying
- At cock crow
- Civilized behaviour
- New Page
- 'Thirty pieces of silver'
- 'I look for truth and find that I get damned'
- Found the quote
- Carrion
- Books
- Singer to my clan in that dim red dawn of man
- Five Prime Ministers
- The victory of the Tuatha de Danaan
- A briefer response
- Bonfire Night
- Conjecture
- Or as I said more lucidly...
- They really didn't like my poems at all
- Denis Diderot
- The Age of Reason
- Some years later...
- We the people
- Side-dishes
- So do tell
- Facts
- Reality
- Because I know you hate it even more
- So perhaps
- Termites
- So you go right on..
- I even told them about the SOE
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Oh and this
- I think Hafiz would have liked Bunyan's hymn
- Fisking Warsi
- Welcome to Brighton, a plural and diverse community
- An 'All Party Parliamentary Group'
- Oh, when will this end?
- QEbloodyD
- To return to civilization.
- Fal continued
- Fal and Tet
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Maya's assassination
- They stripped
- For monkey-nuts: dixi
- Fisking Malik: Preamble
- Melodrama
- Fisking Malik: Part One
- The end is Nye
- Aberfan
- New York Mining Disaster 1941
- Resonances
- Don't talk to me about the law
- And so...
- And the other thing...
- you so love lies, don't you
- Writing things down
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner
- PAINLESS BUT PERMANENT
- Love from Serafina Pekkala
- A difference of opinion
- Just a theory
- What the hell do you think I am, you ridiculous little pieces of shit
- This will do for the time being
- This colour doesn't run
- The desired result
- No balls, 'Frank', just no balls
- Just call me Harmonica
- Hokabi
- In his tin can, far above the world
- Bloody psychopaths, in short
- Berchtesgaden, 1935
- You are so obvious, Blair
- So what happens next?
- So what is the matter with you
- End of the road
- Happy New Year
- Meaningless
- Kinky boys
- A sick joke
- So:
- Bottom-feeders
- New Page
- So why are you here?
- There, isn't that just so cute
- The Lizard of Oz
- And stuff this...
- And they have never heard of...
- Of course I'm a fucking witch
- Just getting out my tunic of skins
- Erudite, that's me
- In short...
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- So, as ever
- It is a slave's lot thou describest
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Medicine: the joke
- Are you five-year-olds?
- The Directorate
- Murderers and traitors
- Books....
- Books, filth, books
- Since I have no intention...
- Oh, how they stripped.
- Indeed, it is like this, Doc
- Thus...
- And the fuss is about what?
- This and that
- And don't forget Lattic
- Lemme set the scene
- Diversity
- This matter of Kadun: (inner and eso) 1
- The matter of Kadun (inner and eso) 2
- They are the Daleks. They are Masters of the Universe
- I however do not remotely think that
- 'See how I die. Just watch me die.'
- A simple case of attempted murder
- The final act
- Our story
- So why did they not support PANTHER?
- Love drowned in Corruption
- All times are now (1)
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- 'The Father took from him the Keys and the Sword'
- 'That government by the people....'
- Ir's a fucking doddle
- The smoking gun
- Read all abaht it
- Woo-hoo, it's a full moon.
- Carrion
- 'All you need is love'
- Just not macho
- So what precisely - ?
- so when England's answer to Indiana Jones...
- And you filth at UCH
- 'When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald...'
- More history (after a bit)
- Exodus 32 (well, loosely)
- A 99% confidence rating
- Something of the kind..
- Come to my funeral, Blair?
- Do anything for them, anything to feed them
- Forgot to repeat the Bobbles letters
- England in the C21st and the C12th
- In the event of.
- My head held firmly under water
- The most basic standards
- Miscellany
- The primate pecking order
- Cancer Ward
- Locke, Hume, Kant, Mill, is there anyone they didn't ban
- Farce
- The Tories' own quest for ideological purity
- 'opium of the people'
- Blair's New Model England
- In English not Latin or Arabic
- Because no-one stops them
- The thin end of the wedge
- Intellectually sickening
- And don't forget Lattic
- Sickboy
- From the Shrine to the Viledeen
- The company of civilized people
- The care of the penis
- So you're happy now
- Unlikely
- I hope...
- So very much more interesting
- Astronomy for Kids of all ages
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- In sum....
- Shit
- And I laugh
- Feeesh
- And be damned to you.
- Avatars of perfection
- New Page
- Marked for extermination from the start
- i'm helpless and desperate and alone so just fuck you
- So just go and
- Wouldn't it be lovely to be in hospital
- Alice's adventure in hospital
- The NHS does not live by bread alone
- Just say cheese
- Clear and present danger to women
- There are those who despise being able to spell....
- I remain, yours sincerely
- Do you think I don't know what you are
- Thus troll toes
- Achilles
- Complete barbarians
- Bloody rings of power
- Lady Sybil's exploding dragons
- Mesdames, messieurs, faites vos jeux
- A societal archetype....
- Sascha doing his renowned impression of a baby zebra
- Pog ma thoin!
- The continuum
- Good to see the young people out in the fresh air enjoying themselves
- Look once again at spite-ridden lower-middle-class women
- So the hell with you
- Mr Morgan, Mr Paxman
- Ah, you're going to sue me?
- Or perhaps
- So which particular set of ludicrous and obscene lies?
- The opium of the people
- Throw them my body, throw them my life. Can't do enough for them
- The hell with all of you
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Fal and Tet
- All any of them want, my destruction, the destruction of democracy, destruction of the University
- Maya's assassination
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- Vultures
- They had one chance
- Monsters
- So the fuss is about what?
- Unrectifiable harm done with malice aforethought
- There was, you will recall, a bad moon rising
- Cool stuff
- Just what is your fucking problem?
- So now Emglishwomen are destroyed at the command of sadists
- Aggravating factors: adding insult to injury
- Selfies
- Evidence
- Bonnie and Clyde
- Chinese whispers
- Beyond evil
- Evidence
- They jumped from 40,000 feet without a parachute
- Kindle and things
- Bloody Operation Mindfuck
- What to do when they push Chinese writing under the door
- The word you seek is brainwashed
- The bloody cosmic laughter.
- I thought you might like to see...
- Women's bodies break easily
- They were told and they were told and they were told
- Not on the whole given to Schadenfreude
- Do they actually have IQs or do they flatline?
- Wouldn;'t it be funny if Bobbles were Francis
- All times are now, yet again
- Shame
- What you need to do...
- So all of it a right bloody waste of make-up
- 'There is nothing you can't buy'
- And of course I told them what would happen
- The sub-species woman
- Le quatorze juillet
- Oh and this bit, comrades
- 'Tell all the boys I'm back in the city...'
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- And, and, and
- Verse 5 of the Red Flag and don't forget Lattic
- New Page
- But of course
- Fill in a few gaps
- Merit
- Homo sapiens sapiens stands erect
- Bunch of boobs
- The required result
- Lower than vermin, much lower
- And another one
- The Wizard of Oz
- And the only outstanding question
- Cooking the books
- so come on....
- Hell and tarnation
- You did go to school, Blair?
- New Page
- New Page
- Sick-boys
- Pscyho-sexual cripples
- Understanding
- Oh and because I know you're thick...
- Another scalp for the sick-boys
- So, pig-bitch
- Pig-bitch 2
- Pig-bitch 3
- Functionally illiterate
- How you hate human
- The ghost in the machine was riled
- Dear MI5 person
- Or perhaps Linch and Goldstone prefer...
- Yes
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Fal and Tet
- You, Blair
- This site will self-destruct...
- Left out repeating the juicy bit
- Hi to the University of Witwatersrand or wherever
- You are really very funny
- You are really very funny
- How very funny
- As if
- If...
- Can it be more obvious>
- Conclusion
- The initiation of force
- A busted flush
- Shall we have that again?
- The sum of the ravings
- This meanwhile
- But of course
- Point-blank rejection of the governing system of the country
- What part of fuck off does the Vatican not understand?
- Please save the crackling
- Happy Hallowe'en
- This bit's fun too
- Time it was
- Oh you know, like this
- Screw you....
- As if
- NHS bureaucracy strikes again
- More asses
- Show's over
- My body, my self
- New Page
- Hate intelligence, hate better
- The Library at Alexandria (and things)
- HARD WIRING A
- Hard wiring B
- Hard wiring C
- And of course they ain't fucking illitrit
- Index Librorum Prohibitorum and things
- New Page
- Jesus, look at them!
- So take a walk on the wild side
- But your Achilles' heel remains
- Addressing an empty crisp packet
- Empty crisp packets
- So here's to you, criminal vermin
- Only 4000 variants
- So they sat there jerking themselves off
- And on no account forget Lattic
- So, Mr Benn's questions
- The contents of the septic tank
- Lizard men
- Playing with my dolls
- Ah, yes, the funny farm
- Hic jacet 2
- New Page
- This was Anglican England
- I really understand
- First part of Fal 2021
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet 2021
- Trash
- The horoor
- The Reformation
- Uncle Joe and the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Dixi@ I have spokwn
- And govenment is for what?
- And here is picture of Jesus with his beloved pet ferret
- Your Christmas favourite
- Peter
- And this is what happened
- Les Eleutheromanes
- I repeat, just for the hell of it.
- So I'll just go on thinking my own thoughts
- All times are now (1)
- All times are now (3)
- 'Be careful with that axe, Eugene'
- La Ballade des Pendus
- We do not know
- Banal
- The wrong kind of snow
- Oy, monkey-nuts
- Lizard-men
- And of course they all know too
- Fiver in the Death Warren
- And lo it came to pass
- One way to deal with sexual fuxk-ups
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun 2021
- Frauds
- Complications
- Yes, but I know who I am
- Today satirized as
- Dill, the bit in the middle
- Question
- Ah, but
- What can be wrong with that?
- So what have I done
- And this is the state of my body
- Absolutely insolent, absolutely evil, absolutely degenerate
- Dangerous wild beasts
- Cowardly, contemptible cock=suckers
- Farce
- Thus, m'lud, it is clearly demonstrated
- An offence against law, fact, reason, sanity
- So we go through it all again
- The empty swimming-pool
- So I have questions
- One more bloody time
- It remains the best way
- Get real
- Two to the power of 75000 to one against and falling
- Along with Oolon Colluphid
- Head honcho
- So why - ?
- Civilized behaviour
- 'Be careful with that axe,Eugene' (2)
- Deep Thought
- England in the C21st
- So what's next?
- I do understand
- Right bloody waste of make-up
- An aggressive cancer
- A question of degree (not the academic kind)
- McDonnell's little friends in Iran
- Ah, yes, McDonnell
- Everything was perfectly normal
- Blog
- So when did you hear - ?
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- Time for a wash and brush-up (2)
- So calming
- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- Google Images search
- Am enthusiastic amateur classicist
- It only remains therefore
- Aum mani padme hum
- New Page
- WHen everything fails
- Jackson
- Thus
- Tsk, tsk, tsk
- If I may translate...
- Perhaps you prefer - ?
- Roast aurochs
- Totally synbolic, totally not
- Just doesn't matter, does it
- Base details
- History, should there be any
- Libro de los juegos
- Yuck! Kitten-eaters!
- Sea-changes: writing the 60s out of history
- So do just tell
- The end of the world is nigh
- New Page
- The party of law and order
- Thank you, Prime Minister, that will be all
- Fit for human habitation
- Aw, Dimitri!
- Yes? And?
- Ah, bon, les putes
- Indicting Tories
- Poor Mr Sunak
- Falsity
- RL
- Untitled
- The D-word
- Nye, wouldst that thou wert living at this hour!
- Sp gp fpr ot
- Fortunately there are more elevated things to do than contemplate infected shit
- The parable of the respirator
- Arbeit macht frei
- Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
- It's the grapes that come from Chile
- Untitled
- The actual social principles of Christianity
- The social principles of Christianity as observed by Marx
- Bananas and eggs with your polio
- The hallmarks of the age
- Gilead
- Spinal tap
- Purr
- An atypical population
- New Page
- Leche-culs
- The Woman with the Book and the Woman with the Bow
- RTFM
- The ceding of democratic control
- I shit on you daily
- The ceding of democratic control pt 2
- Fortunately there are civilized people to talk to
- This is how to deal with pervert monkeys
- Pink stars and burquas
- Ditching the theology of love: reprise
- A happy communist life
- Or you prefer Nigel?
- Our papa
- My turf, bubba
- Guarding the pigs
- Just a little obvious
- New Page
- BDSM
- The deeds, Naylor, the deeds
- So Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- And the hunt continues
- Jesus!
- Question for those with daughters
- So what has happened to Jesus?
- New Page
- All on prime-time television
- Lest we forget: I don't
- You know, like at Hokabi and Caniba and so on
- Until they learn
- Vaudos 1: so it's a walking fence
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- New Page
- Don't forget they ain't fucking illitrit
- There when it gets shitty
- Luke 23:46
- Of course he argued with himself about it.
- Democracy: a system devised to cage and contain power
- If there are any future historians
- What to, the Higgs boson?
- Maya's assassination
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun 2021
- 1. Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Astronomy for Kids of all ages
- 1. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 1
- 2. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 2
- 2. Shav, Petrush and the Matter of Kadun 2
- Who are pensioners?
- Party political broadcast...
- Look at all the little lungfish
- Unfit to govern
- Protozoa capering in the primeval soup
- Have you managed to be human?
- Life in a fact-free world
- And of course our dear friends the anti-vaxxers
- The wrong kind of Muggle
- Just put this on Twitter too
- Precisely how - ?
- Aroint thee, Muse!
- Death by government
- Cruel and unusual punishment
- It is, I think, the creation of Vernon and Marge
- Gee, isn't it just the market?
- There would not therefore seem to be an real difference
- The goose that laid the golden eggs
- The gifts that kept on giving
- Only 37.9 million tourists a year
- The Big Squeeze
- All the same gig
- Lolling insolent evil
- So now I walk with a rollator
- So, I deem
- Terror-tactics against a medically vulnerable woman
- New Page
- There is no dark
- Me
- The issues facing my grand-parents
- Don't forget the house that Keir built
- The desire of the moth for the flame
- The way through the woods
- Bit late for me and my steed...
- Art is individualism
- Magdalene laundries
- I told you not to put all the stars out
- Indeed the animals have a big problem with my family
- In the garden with Mummy
- ComSymp
- Chanctonbury Ring
- Doubtless too busy
- Light reading
- Reality 102: reprise
- Reality 103: reprise
- Reality 103a: reprise
- Reality 104: reprise
- Religious census of 1851
- Mortal sin
- If Twitter is anything to go by...
- The 1945 Labour landslide
- So just look at them all, Vice-Chancellor
- And of course an offence to UCL
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- The new Marxism
- Coal in the bath and the victim culture (2)
- Nice bit of bedtime reading
- Christ, you are so boring!
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- And of course this
- Just don't forget Lattic
- Thus Bobbles
- Fal and Tet
- Mr Benn's questions.
- Mr Benn's questions. A good clear message. The IRA
- Just so - so - so
- None of this of course is subject to discussion
- Therefore, ain't I got no respect
- Nor do I tug my forelock
- Book of Common Prayer
- 'I know that my Redeemer liveth'
- Meanwhile an offal-fest on Twitter'
- Spine
- This is what they expected me to push
- What? Oh, the picture Jesus mentioned
- Our servants not our masters (2)
- His Majesty's the model of a modern major-general
- The withdrawal of love and forcing oneself on others (2)
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa reprise
- Journey to the edge of the universe
- Oh they do get so antsy
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner: reprise
- I am the very model of a modern faith apologist: reprise
- Quid agas
- Balrogs
- C10th architects
- Truss and Braverman
- Imbeciles
- As for the rest of it...
- So:
- Totally ordinary Brits
- The corruption of history
- 'Imagination has seized power!'
- So, you, Blair
- Without fear or favour
- So a special round of applause for
- The Anglican garden: reprise
- It is remarkably tedious
- All times are now (1) reprise
- All times are now (2) reprise
- All times are now (3): reprise
- All times are now (4): reprise
- All times are now (5): reprise
- All times are now (6)
- Maya's assassination: reprise
- Lizard-men: reprise
- Doth it not say in the Book of Pious Crap
- That government by the corrupt and inane for the corrupt and inane shall not perish from this earth
- And answer Mr Benn's questions
- Thus the dirty shit-filled hierarchical fascist brains
- PANTHER...
- 'And now Amanda is seriously ill.'
- You might also enjoy Sredni Vashtar
- Girls. You were saying? About girls?
- 'And gentlemen in England, now a-bed, shall think themselves accurs'd...'
- This happened in RL
- Ooh
- HMQ
- How to lose operations other than war
- There, isn't that just so cute:reprise
- Ah, the sub-species woman
- How do you dare?
- Oh look what they're saying about me: reprise
- 'Blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain': reprise
- A lemur speaks!
- Welcome to London, Mr President
- HMQ (2)
- Gee, guys, what might have happened
- Neither benefiting from nor obsesssed by
- In sum, then
- The succession that matters
- In sum, therefore
- It has therefore been established
- And be damned to you: reprise
- Who did impose on a subject of Her Britannic Majesty
- How the cards fell
- Prefer high crimes and misdeameanours
- Time for something else
- Couldn't finish without your favourite song
- The Abbey
- The end of the world is nigh: reprise
- Men don't get it
- 'In order to rightly judge these efforts known as the "woman movement"'
- I'm sure Mr Kwarteng believes in equality
- Get real fast
- Roast aurochs: reprise
- It didn't work last time, peeps
- Doctors
- Ants
- Bellatrix
- Vaudos 1: so it's a walking fence
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- It's like this, Nurses
- Letter to MI5: reprise
- And you do not make me into a porter
- I do so understand
- How you hate intelligence
- How you hate intelligence; reprise
- So how many people has Medicine destroyed?
- Don't you like my DNA?
- So you're going to sue me?
- I understand
- Hmm, so I guess...
- Yes I understand
- This is how it should be? Reallyy?
- Special mentions
- The wayside
- My country. Took seizin
- To whom it may concern
- Do tell
- A blank wall
- Democracy is so yesterday
- Nothing is too low
- https://www.coursera.org/learn/our-earth?
- No interest to me, old boy. No interest whatever
- Burn the witch at the stake! How much money we shall make!
- One quick question
- And something for Bobbles
- If...
- 'MI5's mission is to keep the country safe.'
- Reality reprise
- Reality reprise 2
- Your life in their hands, Episode 923452
- New Page
- New Page
- Never trust, never assume sanity will prevail
- New Page
- So in short
- The University in its death throes
- Narrow focus
- The absolute insolence, therefore
- In shorter
- Same old
- Same old (2)
- So there it is
- So they just couldn't possibly
- Ringleaders
- Encore une fois the manual
- Butchers and would-be murderers
- Nor of course response to my vid
- Or the second one
- The closed (sealed/wounded/stunted/practically non-existent) mind (20
- Please don't forget The House That Keir Built
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- So who knows
- As if I were capable of caring
- Above the law
- Depict them therefore in bondage
- Money talking
- Pure BDSM
- Please don't forget Lattic
- Meeee
- 'There is no dark'
- Hellenismos, tau-neutrinos, hanging
- Vita brevis ars longa
- True targets
- I a woman
- Boring
- Therefore, Vice-Chancellor
- Thus I refer you to...
- Break the stupid cunt's back
- So there it is
- irreducible evil
- Oversight
- Mock, yes, crawl, no
- All the things you haven't changed
- Cute family picture
- You can check it out on the DTIC site
- Eagles are rare in WC1
- High crimes and midemeanour
(Full version)
FUNERAL SERVICE FOR KATHLEEN CONSTANCE HOWARD NÉE PALMER Wednesday 16th December 2015 Conducted by Ysabel Howard, Stefany Howard, Moya Howard, Beatrix Howard ‘What will survive of us is love.’ Silence as coffin is brought in BEA Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green. The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us, At rest in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow, Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas! YZZ Katie’s middle name is Constance and she was nothing if not that, constant and valiant ‘gainst all disaster, coping with everything life threw at her, grounded in her bottomless love for me and Barry, neither of whom is or was at all times lovable So can we please sing Bunyan’s Hymn, He Who Would Valiant Be, in celebration of Katie’s strength. He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster, Let him in constancy follow the Master. There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim. Who so beset him round with dismal stories Do but themselves confound—his strength the more is. No foes shall stay his might; though he with giants fight, He will make good his right to be a pilgrim. Since, Lord, Thou dost defend us with Thy Spirit, We know we at the end, shall life inherit. Then fancies flee away! I’ll fear not what men say, I’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim. YZZ So at last there came that against which she could not triumph, and that really was not disease or even death, but time, the relentless weakening passage of time wearing her down until everything failed, and this is a poem about love and time. MP3 file Yzz reads from Burnt Norton T Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. . Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time. The inner freedom from the practical desire, The release from action and suffering, release from the inner And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving, Erhebung without motion, concentration Without elimination, both a new world And the old made explicit, understood In the completion of its partial ecstasy, The resolution of its partial horror. . Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, The moment in the arbour where the rain beat, The moment in the draughty church at smokefall Be remembered; involved with past and future. Only through time time is conquered. Time and the bell have buried the day, the black cloud carries the sun away. Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Will not stay still. Shrieking voices Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering, Always assail them. Desire itself is movement Not in itself desirable; Love is itself unmoving, Only the cause and end of movement, Timeless, and undesiring Except in the aspect of time Caught in the form of limitation Between un-being and being I don’t know any more than anyone else whether the trumpet shall sound and the dead be raised, but I know the image of ceasing to be tired, wounded, impaired is beautiful and true and right, of sloughing off disease, pain, fear, and becoming fresh and clean and new, at one with the earth. Alistair Miles: The Trumpet Shall Sound YZZ: Barry and his father were vigorous atheists, but his mother was a Unitarian, and so for reasons of cultural education or otherwise, Barry and his brothers and sisters were sent to Sunday School, and so down through the years from Sunday School in 1913 comes a poem for Katie MOYA: A little girl went forth one day From the City of Tribulation Over the hills she wended her way To the Land of Great Salvation At heaven's gate she saw a sign: NOTICE There will be no early doors And the saints who have left the sinners behind Must sit and wait on the marble floors THE GATES WILL BE OPENED TO ALL MANKIND BEA I will remember what I was. I am sick of rope and chain I will remember my old strength and all my forest-affairs. I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugarcane. I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs. I will go out until the day, until the morning break, Out to the winds 'untainted kiss, the waters' clean caress. I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket-stake. I will revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless! YZZ Many years ago, a faded typewritten sheet, Katie wrote a poem called Loved Ones. It was before most of the humans she loved died and it was about her anis, Silky and Boy-Mow, Mitzi, Yasin, Muff and Mutty, but let the third verse stand for everyone, four footed and two, for her mum and dad, for Ron and Eva and Arthur and Dora and Joan and Edna and Nigel and Rafe and Barry When I am finally called to stand Naked before the Throne Having left in this shadow land Everything that I own I pray that I may take with me A lead, a stick, a stone A catnip mouse, a scratching tree A well-chewed buried bone When I close my eyes on this land of tears May they open to see All I loved throughout the years Waiting to welcome me STEFANY She did not know that she was dead But, when the pang was o'er, Sat down to wait her Master's tread Upon the Golden Floor, With ears full-cock and anxious eyes, Impatiently resigned; But ignorant that Paradise Did not admit her kind. There was one step along the Stair That led to Heaven's Gate; And, till she heard it, her affair Was -- she explained -- to wait. And she explained with flattened ear, Bared lip and milky tooth-- Storming against Ithuriel's Spear That only proved her truth! Sudden -- far down the Bridge of Ghosts That anxious spirits clomb-- She caught that step in all the hosts, And knew that he had come. She left them wondering what to do, But not a doubt had she. Swifter than her own squeal she flew Across the Glassy Sea; Flushing the Cherubs everywhere, And skidding as she ran, She refuged under Peter's Chair And waited for her man. * * * * * * There spoke a Spirit out of the press, 'Said: -- "Have you any here That saved a fool from drunkenness, And a coward from his fear? "That turned a soul from dark to day When other help was vain; That snatched it from Wanhope and made A cur a man again?" "Enter and look," said Peter then, And set the Gate ajar. "If I know aught of women and men I trow she is not far." "Neither by virtue, speech nor art Nor hope of grace to win; But godless innocence of heart That never heard of sin: "Neither by beauty nor belief Nor white example shown. Something a wanton -- more a thief -- But -- most of all -- mine own." "Enter and look," said Peter then, "And send you well to speed; But, for all that I know of women and men Your riddle is hard to read." Then flew Dinah from under the Chair, Into his arms she flew -- And licked his face from chin to hair And Peter passed them through! Video YZZ So now the best we mortals can do is what is unbearable to us, to unite them in the soft earth by the Common they so both loved. As the coffin is taken out Harry Secombe: The Lord is My Shepherd Commital YZZ When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the river-side, into which as he went, he said, "Death, where is thy sting?" And as he went down deeper, he said, "Grave, where is thy victory?" So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side. |
I A WOMAN
My papa and my grandpapa, both vigorous atheists. Not, however, crippled and almost murdered in a free country. Thus an old Labour man addressees Blair from beyond the grave. I a woman. Buried, therefore. Not difficult in the absence of transparency, of no-one demanding transparency, no-one questioning given the universality of the sly, corrupt, sordid, dishonest, vindictive, cowardly, criminal, the psychopath who assumes its whims are to be implicitly obeyed, the disgusting serfs who blindly obey. Treated like a leper. I’m only a woman. There can’t be anything serious here, just an emotional, hysterical woman. To be washed down the drain. It was decided, it was agreed, I should be left to end up in a wheelchair in the gutter and only Joan’s legacy prevented that, but oh they were triumphant when they thought they’d succeeded in destroying me. Why did no-one intervene? Because it was bloody agreed by the obscene filth Linch, Naylor and Goldstone that I was to be destroyed, slaughtered, made to suffer for my non-existent evil and washed down the drain that’s why, or why did they not to go the press, call in the BBC. Why did they not all support PANTHER? Why was the sewer not cleaned out and instead left to reach flood-level? Why for that matter, when it became clear I was on schedule to be drowned in the flood of sewage, were nice plumbers in khaki not sent in, since clearly the insolence and evil of these creatures is so obscene that nothing else will shift them? Of course no-one intervened. It was decided, it was agreed, doubtless at the highest levels, and you can’t argue with the highest levels, can you, you can’t disobey What monstrous obscene lies did you tell, cockroaches, cowardly scum lower than vermin crawling around behind closed doors, that I was fine, that I was happy, that I was pretending to be suffering? Washed down the drain as though I never was, problem solved. Treason, fascism, corruption, bestiality shall continue untouched. Twisted pieces of obscenity shall remain in positions of authority. It is perfectly normal when ‘offended’ to assault the spinal fusion of the person offending and cripple her. Everyone knows that. Disobedience is to be ruthlessly punished. Democracy is a joke. You can’t possibly have very important and powerful people questioned, challenged, the idea is nasty and absurd. Everyone knows that. Women do what we’re told. Everyone knows that. Do nothing. Say nothing. Well, I mean, it’s all for the best, isn’t it. No question of course of talking to me. Good heavens, who’s got time to waste on a silly little woman. Do nothing. Say nothing. Try to destroy me mentally and physically by doing nothing. Mark me as a leper, a freak. What is the stupid cunt on about? There is no such thing as democracy. You can’t say that, right! So what we’ve crippled her, bloody deserves all she gets. Nothing if not fucking obvious and nobody did or said anything. The absence of any democracy, of establishing the facts, of reason, nothing if not totally fucking obvious, year in, year out, and nobody dreamed of doing or saying anything. We shall see what ‘everyone’ knows. I a woman, emotional, hysterical (you bet!), screaming that I needed help, I a woman, crippled, forced to carry shopping home on my back because I couldn’t afford a delivery, but then women are beasts of burden, aren’t they. Everyone knows that. No matter what her qualifications a woman may be made to do heavy manual labour. A woman crippled, walking with sticks, may be expected to carry numerous heavy medical notes on her back. A Columbian peasant-woman has no problem with that. It’s how things are. Old women, young women, fit women, disabled women, just pack-animals. That that animal is considered employable, let alone a manager – but of course the values of the Third World are vastly superior to our own. Everyone knows that. I a woman, viciously denied any emotional support having been butchered, no-one to give me a hug, no-one ever acknowledging what happened to me happened, critical that I be made to understand that I am a freak for being free and democratic, unacceptable for insisting my body and my mind are my property not at the disposal of my masters and mistresses to twist and damage as they will. A woman exists to be brutalized, beaten, broken, used as a punchbag for inadequates. I a woman denied any political support, surrounded by a granite slab of commitment to evil, determination to abolish the norms of a free, democratic and civilized society and impose fascism, corruption, bestiality, as the norm, I a woman, emotional, hysterical, surrounded by a granite slab of universal unswerving unyielding commitment to destruction of freedom, the destruction of democracy, the destruction of reason, the destruction of all morality, the destruction of me. I a woman treated like a leper by the unclean, treated like a leper for being free, democratic, rational, literate, intelligent, educated, civilized and thus wholly unacceptable to filth. I a woman, left to be the object of the mockery of creature so twisted, so evil, so diseased, sniggering and jeering at my insistence I live in free, democratic and civilized country, at my objecting to having been crippled. I a woman, the grand-daughter of Labour public servants on both sides who spin in their bloody graves. I a woman, a daughter of Marxist-Leninism, a student of Voltaire, a child of Woodstock, an amateur classicist, a writer, a graduate of the first women’s college of the first university in England to award full-degrees to women, left to be torn apart and destroyed by wordless, mindless animals, orcs, like ants swarming over a mammal, eating her alive. Pictures of the orc-women, the mutt-pack, the skull-faced wannabe murderers can be found on the UCH site. We may assume they were vilely beaten as children and physically assaulting an offender is normality to them and we can probably assume their vile parents are baying for my blood, animals who hit small girls relabelled in the Blair Dictionary as devout, holy, good, deformed adults who terrorize small children into rejection of all question, all argument, keeping them at a mental age of a sniggering 5-year old, damaging them for life. Being omniscient, these creatures of course know far about England, about the writing of grammatically and syntactically correct English, about history, about politics, about theology than do I. Damaged irreversibly from their beatings, anything I say must be a lie. They are unfit for authority over an empty goldfish bowl, being wholly intellectually and morally corrupt. Of course they can be expected to speak in public, they’re graduates, aren’t they. Not only are they graduates, they are the intellectual elite of the nation, their stupid little degrees for talking monkeys far superior to my own silly little arts degree. I should imagine Ardeshna and Whelan were beaten as children too, in at least one instance raped as a choirboy. Soundly thrashed by the good Fathers, were you Whelan. Taught obedience. Abuse breeds abusers or else little flower children with a horror of any violence. Just the level for damaged children, make them feel big and important, a medically vulnerable woman with a widowed mother. Wouldn’t have dared if I were male – or indeed if my father had been alive and 30 years younger, since he would have broken their bloody necks. Unfit of course for authority over an empty goldfish bowl. Unfit of course to practise. Note the happy smiling faces of ordure because you’re going to see a lot of them in future, either failing to give reasoned argument on prime-time TV in front of an x-ray of my spine or more likely running away from the camera. They can start by telling me what I’m supposed to have done, for what ‘crime’ they tried to execute me. With luck they shall be forced to speak, forced to attempt reason, the construction of argument, the adducing of fact. Huge fun. After that they can rot for the rest of their filthy lives in prison or Broadmoor, whichever is considered more appropriate. I remain a lot of things. One of them of course is Barrington Howard’s daughter. Such a shame my papa was not some stereotypical sandy-haired Englishman but more in the wild Irish wordsmith mould. As I have so often said, such a pity also about the linear nature of time. If he had been in his prime when animals were trying to break my back, you would not be reading this because he would have broken their filthy necks. So of course would my grandfather, himself more in the sturdy little Lancashire terrier mould but no less part-Irish for that. Of course since the rise of the filth that all those lovely religious people can do no wrong knocking around women, almost eliminated by civilization, is now normal, no-one turns a hair. It’s what women must expect. If you don’t want to be hit, you obey. Language and reason are superfluous in the world of the animal. The Howard lion rampant stands...The Howard lion, o fucked-up repulsive gauleiter obscenities does not crawl and grovel to evil, to strutting depraved nonentities yet to progress to language and reason, to animals. You want to make me crawl, don't you, grovel, prostrate myself and accept you are my masters and mistresses, you own me body and mind. I must forget all my learning, empty my mind of all thought displeasing to you, become a creature of your will. my You will not. Among the many many things for which you will pay is the destruction of half Katie's and Barry' books. You have no time for books, do you, baboons. Books are suspect. Books offend. And these are academics? You cannot be serious. Ah, UCH where violence against women is what you pay your taxes for, where psychopaths talk out of their arses and everyone crawls. Start reading PANTHER, fuck-ups. Even a doctor can be expected to be capable of analysing a mere 66 pages of A5. Or alternatively be revealed as the stupid shit-for-brains animal he is. I have a strong feeling it would be good if disgusting animals from filthy little death-cults of obedience were asked to comment on my mum's funeral service. What freaked you most, apes? That it was conducted by four Howard women, no black beetles required? Will you say Katie has gone to hell? But your observations on PANTHER: the manual, if you please, joke Professor Whelan, your closely reasoned observations, your carefully researched fact, paying particular attetion to why you think I should be murdered for it, yawning baboon. The insolent vermin think they have everything fixed. What a pity I've done 95% of the work already.
PANTHER - THE MANUAL SUMMARY PANTHER is a commitment to free, modern, secular societies, the keynote of which is individual sovereignty, and a decision to straighten out the strange fascist, theocratic, patriarchal creature that claims to be the Left. PANTHER wishes to establish a broad Left front as a force against the growing political power of religious and other fascism. PANTHER is not intended as a political party. You may be on the left of the Communist Party or the right of the Labour Party. We may disagree on a thousand subjects from the existence of God to the management of the economy but we are united in our determination to live in the C21st not the C12th. You may be a Muslim secularist, a liberal Catholic, a Communist, a Sikh, Mr or Ms Agnostic, a pagan, a Buddhist or a hard-line atheist. You may take your beliefs from many sources. Britons today may be of mixed race, mixed belief-systems, mixed faith or no faith at all. People explore themselves and the world of ideas around them. My own family tradition is Marxism. I am a daughter also of the Enlightenment, of Woodstock and of Athens. Like most people in modern Britain I do not think the world is defined by a single book. People may float in and out of faith or change their convictions. Dinosaurs abound, insisting we are little blocks of identikit people. The enemy of the human race is unfettered, unaccountable power. Whether it is the power of Salafists, the Politburo or the City of London is secondary. It is individual sovereignty, the rejection of the proposition one human has rights over the mind and body of another, that blocks the path to the Gulag Archipelago, not vague notions that we are the caring sharing Left and we do not oppress others. I have fellow-travellers in my family-tree, not to mention card-carrying members of the Communist Party. We can and must learn from our mistakes. PANTHER seeks the restoration of a Left, the core of which is:
Certainly PANTHER has a feminist twist. I’m a female person and a graduate of the first women’s college (Bedford) of the first University in England (London) to give full degrees to women. PANTHER wishes to give a voice to the 60% or so of the population who are female and/or gay and so have the most to lose from the rise of clerical fascism, but heterosexual males are entirely welcome. CONTENTS
PANTHER: the argument The collapse of the credibility of Marxism has enabled the power of both religion and capital to go largely unchallenged and the restoration of a Left ready to confront both is needed to restore balance in our societies. We are being taken into Never-Never-Land where the most basic facts of political and intellectual history are ignored as though they never were: 'defamation' and derision of religion have been standard form for some 300 years from the Enlightenment through to Marx, Darwin and the counter-culture, and are the root of the free world. ‘They eat and drink, shit and piss their god,’ observed Voltaire (‘chient et pissent leur Dieu’, Dictionnaire philosophique: Transubstantiation, 1769) ‘Spiritual booze‘, ‘mediaeval mildew‘, opined Lenin (Socialism and Religion, 1905). People have not hesitated to say what they think, not what others have instructed them it is permissible to think and so established the foundations of the modern world, of science, of medicine, and of gender equality. The hostility the Enlightenment evokes in certain orthodox religious is due to their loss of power. Instead of the self-appointed representatives of God set on high above us all to dictate what we may think, what we may do, how we may be, we became equal in rights. Power was transferred to the governed who gave power to the governing, who are equals, fellow, fallible human beings accountable for how they exercise the power given them and can be dislodged and dismissed if they abuse it. I own me. Who else can? Slavery has been abolished. I decide what I read. I decide what I think about it. I decide what I say or write, as I decide what I wear and with whom I shall make love. The notion it is given people are in some sense property, tools of a greater purpose, whether God’s will or the demand of the State (in both cases of course what equally fallible fellow-humans have decided is God's will or the demand of the State) appears to be gospel for something like 95% of the current 'Left'. Soviet Marxism adopted it lock, stock and barrel. To insist on being oneself not a creature of the will of others, thinking only what one’s masters permit, is evil/insanity. The wannabe overlord has a stock vocabulary - wilful, insolent, impudent, rebellious all terms which simply mean resistant to the wilful, insolent and impudent, if not rebellious, attempting to impose its will not only on other people but on reality itself, to define the mental world of all who surround it, to create a false reality and call it Truth. You may wish to have a purpose to your existence, but it is not for others to say what you are for. Once people are designated a purpose , if they fail to be fit-for-use they are expendable. Thus the Gulag Archipelago. It is possible theoretically we are in some sense the property of God, but that does not make us the property of God's self-appointed representatives. This is a Protestant country; we sort ourselves out with God, should He, She or It exist. The concept of God is not in itself a problem to anyone. We can argue until the end of the universe about whether God created quarks and it makes no difference to the even tenor of our lives. The problem is those who insist the universe and its inhabitants are as described many centuries past by people who could not be talking out of the back of their heads because God spoke through them and so cannot be criticized, derided or indeed corrected. The earth is not flat. Most of us, whether theist or atheist, have moved on. There are many ‘abominations’ noted in Leviticus - God is not keen on crustaceans, coneys or many other elements of his supposed creation. God Hates Shrimp is entertaining on this subject. Clearly rabbit-pie is taboo and indeed swan. Should someone tell the Queen, who is after all the head of the Church of England? To pick on just one ‘abomination’ and ignore the rest suggests a certain mental strangeness - what happened to ‘scriptural authority’? - but it was only with the movements to ordain women that the full extent of the strangeness became apparent. Clerical homophobia is more than some sexually confused old chaps clinging to Scripture to justify their confusion. It seems sex and gender have cosmic significance., that the cosmos is rocked to its foundations by a female person representing Jesus. How the sexual arrangements of an ape-descendant on the third rock from the sun comes to define the multiverse is not explained. The stories a society tells itself are a mirror of how it sees itself and this society's block-buster record-breaker stories are not of 'up there' or 'down there' or even 20000 leagues under the sea, and only sometimes of 'over there', lost kingdoms where the hand of man has never set foot, Indiana Jones, for instance; overwhelmingly they are of of 'out there', Star Wars, Star Trek, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET, Avatar, Matrix, 2001: a space odyssey, Independence Day, Dr Who, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the unforgettable Lost in Space. ET is the highest grossing movie of all time. It supplanted Star Wars, the previous title holder. The ultimate in how puny and insignificant are humans is not persons in church telling God how worthless they are in his sight, is not even having your planet demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, it’s the invisibly small dot constituting Earth on a map of the multiverse and multiverse theory while still theory is real not just Pratchett. Rethinking the universe: Groundbreaking theory proposed in 1997 suggests a 'multiverse' New physics complications lend support to multiverse hypothesis This of course poses questions to clerics they may prefer not to answer, as indeed does the universe alone. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to it? What exactly do you mean by world? Do you think that, if other worlds host sentient life, Jesus appeared there too? Is God just the God of this universe? Are there equal Gods of other universes? The image below is both the oldest and the youngest picture every taken. It is the oldest because it has taken the light nearly 14 billion years to reach us. And it is the youngest because it is a snapshot of our newborn universe, long before the first stars and galaxies formed. The bright patterns show clumps of simple matter that will eventually form stars and galaxies. This is as far as we can see into the universe. It is time, not space, which limits our view. Beyond a certain distance, light hasn't had time to reach us yet. How Big is our Universe To take a trip through the visible universe and there are many excellent ones on the Web is (perhaps) to see the mind of God. We don’t know. We haven’t a clue. We make up our own minds. Until key religious figures come to terms with the the cosmos, with astrophysics, with quantum theory, until the language of multiverse theory is as familiar to them as New Testament Greek, they are not so to speak on the same planet as the rest of us. The position apparently held almost universally across the so-called Left that one human being must curtail or deny the independent action of his or her heart and mind to accord with the beliefs of another human being on the grounds that the second person believes he expresses the Will of God cannot be sustained; to certain comrades slavery is fine, so long as no-one profits from it, ironic given that one of the few areas in which the record of the Left is unblemished is the fight against physical slavery and human trafficking. The reality of one’s fellow beings is that they are distinct, independent, starting from somewhere else. They have their own thoughts and feelings, their own histories, their own lives. They are not you. They are not an extension of you. They are not within your domain. They are equal in rights. We are no longer isolated hunter-gatherers in the year dot where any idea unfamiliar or distasteful to the devout is cause for apocalypse. This is England in the C21st. Millions of ideas circulate, not least those which have historically ended or curtailed the political power of religion and every version of every religion from the most blood and thunder to the most mystic.. No-one is going to like all of them. No-one can like all of them. People who strongly adhere to one view think people who strongly adhere to its opposite are talking nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that. We all have an equal right to speak. We all have to co-exist. We all have to accept we may come across that we find distasteful. Most of us do. Objectors to Britain's embryo theocracy are many but splintered. We do not take tea in Downing Street. We remain unhugged by Livingstone. It seems the only elements heard are conservative bordering on neolithic. The December 2004 YouGov poll found 35% of the nation to be atheist. The British Social Attitudes Survey released in 2011 showed 50% affiliating with a particular religion and 50% not. The 2001 Census identified 9 million with no religion (National Statistics Online – Religion in Britain), the 2011 Census, 14 million. On ‘Census Sunday’ in May 2005 6.3% of Britons attended a Christian church. The New Labour government hyped endlessly the 2001 Census finding that 71% of us identify ourselves as Christians. Whatever the respondents meant, clearly they did not mean formal observance. By 2011, only 59% of us identified ourselves as Christian, not improbably due to a surfeit of dinosaurs. A past golden age in which the whole of England was both devout and observant is itself a myth: The Religious Census of 1851 demonstrated what Christians had long feared, that a large proportion of the population of England were neither Church people nor of any other religion. Although the exact figures must be treated with great caution, it seems clear that at least one-half of the people who might have been expected to go to church or chapel in 1851 did not do so. Most of the non-attenders came from the working classes...'the population having been till recently all but destitute of church ordinances, has relapsed into a state of semi-heathenism', wrote a vicar in a new parish near Oldham. .... Queen Victoria...cared little for 'extreme views' in religion, and in teaching her children...chose to dwell not on 'the supernatural features of the Christian religion, but rather upon the pure and comprehensive morality which it teaches us as its essential and indestructible element; Dickens's morality owed nothing to Evangelicalism or Tractarianism. Much religion, he suggested, was a 'vent for bad humours and arrogance' and there was no authority for the Murdstones in the New Testament; David Copperfield's opinion that 'we can all do some good if we will' was far more appealing. Dickens's obituary notes in Fraser's Magazine (July 1870) rightly seized on the point that 'he spent no thought on religious doctrines or religious reforms but regarded the Sermon on the Mount as good teaching, had a regard for the village church and churchyard, and quarrelled with nothing but intolerance' Asa Briggs: The Age of Improvement The original report of the 1851 Census reads as follows: The most important fact which this investigation as to attendance brings Most important before us is, unquestionably, the alarming number of the non-attendants. Even fnquirj as to in the least unfavorable aspect of the figures just presented, and assuming (as attendance, no doubt is right) that the 5,288,294 absent every Sunday are not always the same individuals, it must be apparent that a sadly formidable portion of the English people are habitual neglecters of the public ordinances of religion. Nor is it difficult to indicate to what particular class of the community this portion in the main belongs. The middle classes have augmented rather than diminished that devotional sentiment and strictness of attention to religious services by which, for several centuries, they have so eminently been distinguished. With the upper classes, too, the subject of religion has obtained of late a marked degree of notice, and a regular church-attendance is now ranked amongst the recognized proprieties of life. It is to satisfy the wants of these two classes that the num ber of religious structures has of late years so increased. But while the labouring myriads of our country have been multiplying with our multiplied material prosperity, it cannot, it is feared, be stated that a corresponding increase has occurred in the attendance of this class in our religious edifices. More espe- cially in cities and large towns it is observable how absolutely insignificant a portion of the congregations is composed of artizans. They fill, perhaps, in youth, our National, British, and Sunday Schools, and there receive the elements of a religious education ; but, no sooner do they mingle in the active world of labour than, subjected to the constant action of opposing influences, they soon become as utter strangers to religious ordinances as the people of a heathen country. From whatever cause, in them or in the manner of their treatment by religious bodies, it is sadly certain that this vast, intelligent, and growingly important section of our countrymen is thoroughly estranged from our religious institutions in their present aspect. Probably, indeed, the pre valence of infidelity has been exaggerated, if the word be taken in its popular meaning, as implying some degree of intellectual effort and decision ; but, no doubt, a great extent of negative, inert indifference prevails, the practical effects of which are much the same. There is a sect, originated recently, adherents to a system called " Secularism " ; the principal tenet being that, as the fact of a future life is (in their view) at all events susceptible of some degree of doubt, while the fact and the necessities of a present life are matters of direct sensation, it is therefore prudent to attend exclusively to the concerns of that existence which is certain and immediate — not wasting energies required for present duties by a preparation for remote, and merely possible, contingencies. This is the creed which probably with most exactness indicates the faith which, virtually though not professedly, is entertained by the masses of our working population ; by the skilled and unskilled labourer alike — by hosts of minor shopkeepers and Sunday traders — and by miserable denizens of courts and crowded alleys. They are unconscious Secularists — engrossed by the demands, the trials, or the plea sures of the passing hour, and ignorant or careless of a future. These are never or but seldom seen in our religious congregations ; and the melancholy fact is thus impressed upon our notice that the classes Which are most in need of the restraints and consolations of religion are the classes which are most without them. Census of Great Britain, 1851 If this is what New Labour hoped to rectify, they were about 150 years too late. Tom Paine in The Age of Reason (1794) described Jesus as ‘a virtuous and amiable man’ who preached ‘most excellent morality…It is upon this plain narrative of facts…that the Christian mythologists, calling themselves the Christian church, have erected their fable, which for absurdity and extravagance is not to be exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients.’ Many people of all faiths and none have engaged with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. In the words of Jesus Christ Superstar, ’he’s a man, he’s just a man’, and engagement with him does not mean that we have the slightest interest in the notion that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to it. Voltaire too had no problem with Jesus. To this day the Catholic Catechism states "The Magisterium of the Church 85 "The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ."47 This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome. 86 "Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith."48 87 Mindful of Christ's words to his apostles: "He who hears you, hears me",49 the faithful receive with docility the teachings and directives that their pastors give them in different forms. 100 The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him Catechism of the Catholic Church In other words they are the only people who know what it means. It is not exactly surprising to the mostly normal that many disagree. What Catholics, certainly in the West, think of this is not recorded, though one American Catholic journalist has mused, ‘They pretend to lead and we pretend to follow.’ Bill Keller’s article on the Vatican should probably be read by every politician in Europe. The Vatican is a sovereign state, a law unto itself. What it is not is the incredibly cool nun you met at a conference on ecumenism or the inner-city priest who advises contraception. The Reformation has been trivialized - if we can all agree on the nature of the Host then we can be one Church again. It is not accidental the Reformation followed the invention of printing and so people starting to read the Bible for themselves; Protestants are supposed to read the Bible for themselves Probably the biggest problem of organized Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant, has always been Jesus himself and Christians saying, we don’t think he represents what you say he represents. We are being fed a reduction of Christianity to fascism, the refusal to acknowledge the polarity in the thought of Christian nations between love and power, the false identification of the enemies of the Church with the enemies of Jesus, the privileging of faith regardless of what that faith entails, contempt for unbelief, regardless of what that unbelief entails. Science and learning are as ever the enemies, for they take us beyond the arbitrary ceilings on thought of dogma to the world of physics and biology, to other readings of Jesus as a Kabbalist, a Sufi, Brahma, . If one does not live in the mental world of the 1st century AD (or indeed the 7th), if one does not submit to such a world, one is flawed and insensitive; if one does, one is blessed, a superior form of life. Just obey. Paine also wrote: 'My own mind is my own church.' I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them. I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. British citizens have gone in the direction of Tom Paine. British politicians are headed off in the opposite direction, courting figures from religious establishments who by definition adhere to a dead orthodoxy, about which no-one besides fellow-dinosaurs gives a damn. The precise crime of the philosophes was not atheism but thought, pitting one’s puny human reason against revelation, as deliciously expounded in this passage entitled The Master Plan of the Devil For approximately seventeen centuries men acknowledged that authority comes only from God, and temporal rulers sought the approval and the blessing of their bishops who, by divine right, ruled in their dioceses as successors of the Apostles. Then came the Philosophists. As always, the Power of Darkness used pride to achieve his aims, the pride of human reason. As always he called the Light, Darkness and the Darkness, Light (Isaiah 5:20). That is why the Medieval times are now referred to as the "Dark Ages"; (in fact, the Dark Ages were pre-Medieval), and why Philosophism is referred to as "Enlightenment". ...When the first battle had been won, the Devil moved from the religious field into the philosophical field, and conceived Rationalism, which put human reason before Revelation. In other words, in place of ‘I know that’ and ‘it is good that’ came, ‘you know nothing of the kind’ and ‘it’s a lot of twisted nonsense that’. Thus Voltaire in his article on atheism in the Dictionnaire philosophique: Men fattened by our wealth shout, "Believe that an ass spoke, believe that a fish swallowed a man and spat him out good as new onto the shore three days later. Do not doubt that the God of the universe commanded a Jewish prophet to eat shit (Ezekiel) and another prophet to buy two sluts and make whores of them (these are the very words they make the God of truth and purity speak), believe a hundred things either evidently repulsive or mathematically impossible. If you don't, the God of mercy will burn you not just for hundreds of thousands of years but for the whole of eternity, whether you have a body or not. These preposterous imbecilities repel equally the weak-minded and foolhardy and the strong and wise. They say: "Our masters depict God as the most deranged and barbaric of beings, therefore there is no God", but they ought to say, 'Our masters attribute to God their own absurdities and their own rage, therefore God is the opposite of what they say, as wise and good and they say he is mad and bad." Thus speak the wise. But if a fanatic overhears them, he denounces them to the magistrate who puts them to torture, believing he avenges and impersonates the divine majesty he outrages. (My translation) Full English text here et en français Plus ça change... During the French Revolution Notre-Dame de Paris was looted, vandalized and for a time turned into a ‘Temple to Reason’ with a statue of Lady Liberty on the altar. Of course no-one has ever previously become a little cross with the Church. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997): 2087 Our moral life has its source in faith in God who reveals his love to us. St. Paul speaks of the "obedience of faith"9 as our first obligation. He shows that "ignorance of God" is the principle and explanation of all moral deviations.10 From the inauguration of Cardinal Nichols: At the installation of the Most Rev Vincent Nichols at Westminster Cathedral, his predecessor, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, described a lack of faith as “the greatest of evils” and blamed atheism for war and destruction, implying that it was a greater evil even than sin itself..... In his homily he said: “Faith in God is not, as some would portray it today, a narrowing of the human mind or spirit. It is precisely the opposite. “Faith in God is the gift that takes us beyond our limited self, with all its incessant demands . . . Some today propose that faith and reason are crudely opposed, with the fervour of faith replacing good reason. This reduction of both faith and reason inhibits not only our search for truth but also the possibility of real dialogue.” Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor went farther. Referring to the battles that will be won and lost in the effort to sustain the Christian presence in secular society, he said: “What is most crucial is the prayer that we express every day in the Our Father, when we say ‘deliver us from evil’. The evil we ask to be delivered from is not essentially the evil of sin, though that is clear, but in the mind of Jesus it is more importantly a loss of faith. For Jesus, the inability to believe in God and to live by faith is the greatest of evils. “You see the things that result from this are an affront to human dignity, destruction of trust between peoples, the rule of egoism and the loss of peace. One can never have true justice, true peace, if God becomes meaningless to people.” From The Times, 22nd May 2009, now behind a paywall To the harmless civilized atheist of course belief in God may seem the principle and explanation of all moral deviations; to many, whether Christian or not, it would seem that on the contrary faith may underpin the clamourings of the limited self, claiming the forcing of its incontinent urges on others has divine sanction; it is love that takes us beyond them. A modest Christian education recalls 1 Corinthians: 1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. 13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. Perhaps at a later date Their Eminences might take this up with Paul, that same Paul? Galatians 5:14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself Matthew 22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Mark 12:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these Or possibly with Jesus. 2089 Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. "Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him."11 Hope 2090 When God reveals Himself and calls him, man cannot fully respond to the divine love by his own powers. He must hope that God will give him the capacity to love Him in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity. Hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God; it is also the fear of offending God's love and of incurring punishment. 2091The first commandment is also concerned with sins against hope, namely, despair and presumption: By despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God's goodness, to his justice - for the Lord is faithful to his promises - and to his mercy. 2092 There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God's almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit). The Catechism of the Catholic Church The limitations of reason within any given frame of reference are equally apparent. Certainly reason may be utilized to demonsrate the workings of the Trinity or how the withering away of the state follows from the dictatorship of the proletariat, but the bars of the cage cannot be questioned. It is of course explicit in the concept of revelation that there is that which reason may not touch. So far as Search is infallible, the words ‘physics’ and ‘biology’ do not appear anywhere in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ‘evolution’ only once and in a general not a scientific sense (‘the evolution of the liturgy’). It does, however, say this: The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers. With Solomon they can say: "It is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements. . . for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me."121 284 The great interest accorded to these studies is strongly stimulated by a question of another order, which goes beyond the proper domain of the natural sciences. It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin: is the universe governed by chance, blind fate, anonymous necessity, or by a transcendent, intelligent and good Being called "God"? And if the world does come from God's wisdom and goodness, why is there evil? Where does it come from? Who is responsible for it? Is there any liberation from it? 285 Since the beginning the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God (Pantheism). Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God and returning to him. Still others have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked, in permanent conflict (Dualism, Manichaeism). According to some of these conceptions, the world (at least the physical world) is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind (Gnosticism). Some admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watch-maker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself (Deism). Finally, others reject any transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter that has always existed (Materialism). All these attempts bear witness to the permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is distinctively human. 286 Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins. The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason,122 even if this knowledge is often obscured and disfigured by error. This is why faith comes to confirm and enlighten reason in the correct understanding of this truth: "By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear."123 The bars of the mental cage are clearly delineated. Naturally they uphold their own beliefs, as would believers in any closed system, Marxist or Muslim. The problem is the chasm between them and those of us with open minds who might say, “Indeed my knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos has been most splendidly enriched but I see no reason why your version of the frame of reference in which these things exist should be more real, more true, morally sounder, or in any other way superior.” Like elements in Islam, which whatever its problems perhaps is fortunate in not having a similar central authority, they simply do not understand the open society and the free market in ideas, how inadequate it is to say one must have faith, how really rather sad it is to say that absence of faith is the greatest of evils, and so do not understand human liberty. We want to talk about love and death and reality and illusion, time and timelessness, fear and love, self and other, about life the universe and everything in the terms these things actually exist, the terms of physics and biology, not the terms set by desert tribesmen, about the principles that inform the human condition, of course we want to talk about the human condition, thinking life always has and always will, and we'll take ideas from anywhere on the planet, and they want to talk about how women priests offend God. God wants your meat killed in a certain way, is obsessed with what you wear and even more obsessed with what you do in bed and with whom, and what we really need to do is just believe in them. There are many, many concepts of God. The one most prominently displayed today is God the Fascist. As even a cursory glance at history tells us, religious people display the same gamut of behaviour from good to evil as the non-religious both upholding and opposing everything from the slave-trade to women's rights. Again the Catechism: Wounds to unity 817 In fact, "in this one and only Church of God from its very beginnings there arose certain rifts, which the Apostle strongly censures as damnable. But in subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the Catholic Church - for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame."269 The ruptures that wound the unity of Christ's Body - here we must distinguish heresy, apostasy, and schism270 - do not occur without human sin: Where there are sins, there are also divisions, schisms, heresies, and disputes. Where there is virtue, however, there also are harmony and unity, from which arise the one heart and one soul of all believers.271 The Church holds we are helpless without God. We cannot do good without God and so without something entering us from outside. There is no mechanism inside people capable of moral choice. What the rest of us would regard as a natural plurality of perspectives is a wound to unity. The core of it remains that independent mental activity is considered synonymous with self, to assert the existence of a functioning mind as heart, to have one’s own views not those dictated by another, supposedly speaking on behalf of the God person, to be human, is self-will and rebellion. The Vatican, which thinks to represent Europe, does not and cannot represent the free world, not least because of its views on other religions, and far from maintaining a Christian presence in non-Catholic Europe probably acts as a major force for alienation. Key facts about modern Europe include the Reformation and the collapse of the Soviet bloc culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany in 1990. A little arithmetic will tell you that anyone over 40 born in the former Soviet empire was educated by Soviet Communism. Poland has largely returned to the Church. Former East Germany has not. Whether or not we leave the EU, France, Germany and Great Britain have in common remarkably similar figures for religious adherence or lack of. In answer to the question, “What, if any, is your religion or faith, even if you are not practising?” 45% in France, 50% in Germany and 53% in Great Britain affiliated themselves with Christianity, 35% in France, 38% in Germany and 37% in Great Britain said they had no religion at all IPSOS Mori poll, 2011, page 41 This is not fertile soil for a religious renaissance and rather more a blueprint for potential cataclysm and indeed Europe has already been once rent in twain by religion. Preferable, I should think, that it does not reoccur. ...it is through having thought, that Sweden, Denmark, all your island, and the half of Germany groan under the frightful misfortune of not being subjects of the pope. It is even said that, if men continue to follow their false lights, they will soon have merely the simple adoration of God and of virtue. If the gates of hell ever prevail so far, what will become of the holy office? Voltaire: Dictionnaire philosophique - Freedom of Thought The political power of the Vatican in England was finally - I trust - ended in 1688 by the Glorious Revolution. The Vatican is not the sole custodian of western civilization. Such civilization as the West possesses comes from Athens and Nazareth, love and mind. There have been for many centuries and still are many people who doubt the Vatican Jesus’ true representative. Five centuries before the birth of Jesus, if indeed he was historically real, was Classical Athens, flawed of course, but representing the questioning mind, the birth of philosophy, art, literature, mathematics, the beginnings of science, the kernel of democracy. Greece in all her aspects is threatening to the men of the Abrahamic faiths who attempt to dominate the political sphere. Real Greek women certainly led constrained lives but the goddesses did not and represented remarkable potential role-models. Given that it took most of 2000 years for Christendom to fully accept female possibility (mostly), it is probably not too much to suggest that, had the early Church run off with Athens instead of remaining tied to the Old Testament, a combination of remorseless Greek reason, role-models and insistence on loving one’s neighbour as oneself could have breached that particular citadel somewhat sooner. Mediaeval Islamic scholars discovered Greece nearly a thousand years ago. I think it may be possible to say that the essential difference between the West and the Muslim world is that the West found it impossible to lose Greece and Islam didn't. ...For if it is difficult or rather impossible for one person to acquaint himself single-handed with all things which it is necessary to know in legal matters, it is still more difficult in the case of philosophical reasoning. And, if before us, somebody has enquired into it, we should derive help from what he has said. It is quite immaterial whether that man is our co-religionist or not; for the instrument by which purification is perfected is not made uncertain in its usefulness by its being in the hands of one of our own party, or of a foreigner, if it possesses the attributes of truth. By these latter we mean those Ancients who investigated these things before the advent of Islam. Now, such is the case. All that is wanted in an enquiry into philosophical reasoning has already been perfectly examined by the Ancients. All that is required of us is that we should go back to their books and see what they have said in this connection. If all that they say be true, we should accept it and if there be something wrong, we should be warned by it. Thus, when we have finished this kind of research we shall have acquired instruments by which we can observe the universe, and consider its general character. For so long as one does not know its general character one cannot know the created, and so long as he does not know the created, he cannot know its nature On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy, Ibn Rushd (Averroës), 1126-1198 CE: Islam, like Christianity, is multi-faceted. A quick Google of Islamic art, a visit to the Sufi Cookbook or reading the Sufi poets paints a markedly different picture to that we are being force-fed,. Islam did not become a world-power by just being a bunch of hectic little men waving swords around Consequent upon the enthusiastic propagation of frank lies concerning the intellectual and political history of the West, the notion has been left free to flourish that criticism and derision of Islam ‘must be’ racism, that people feel to criticize and deride Islam only because many of its adherents are brown and would not dare similarly criticize and deride Christianity, when reality is rather that, after centuries of being kicked into line, orthodox Christianity is on the whole less ghastly and so less inviting of derision than orthodox Islam, though if you are a gay Catholic or a Greek Orthodox woman who wants to be a priest, you may disagree. Of those for whom the earth is flat, a proportion are fascist, racist, sexist, homophobic, perspectives on which this society has turned its back - apparently not if someone’s God dictates otherwise. Of course people can be fascist, racist, sexist, homophobic without a religious bone in their bodies, but - equally of course - such people are roundly condemned. We live in interesting times. Crushed between Greece and Jesus the Old Testament fought valiantly to survive and lost. It is sometimes said that the reason the West dislikes Islam is that it's foreign - you know, like Buddha and the Maharishi and for that matter Rumi. The truth is rather that that good ole time hellfire religion is all too familiar. The OT has been decisively rejected, not least of course by Jesus: stoning women is not some uniquely Islamic barbarism. Deuteronomy 22:21 is explicit on the subject.. For certain the only reason Christian zealots have not stoned adulteresses is John 8:1-11 More broadly, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her’ has constrained the rabid in circumstances other than the literal. We may note in passing that ‘the woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.’ (Deuteronomy 22:5) Ah well, that’s 98% or so of western women down the tubes. It may reasonably be said of the C21st that we don’t want to know, we don’t want to know about the Vatican’s sexual phobias, we don’t want to know about Allah’s wrath, we don’t want to know about a Jewish creation myth. We are being put in a position where we are supposed not only to want to know but to treat such drivel with deference. It should not be necessary to place statues of Liberty on the altars of Westminster Abbey to terminate this. ESSENTIAL PANTHER JOCASTA: This is a slave's lot thou describest, to refrain from uttering what one thinks. Euripides – The Phoenician Women All adult human beings are intellectually, emotionally and sexually autonomous. My mind and my body are my property. Keep your mitts off them and we'll get alone fine. We are humans not baboons. We have hearts and minds and our business is to exercise them. The world does not stop because one human has provided his take on it, whether that human is Mohammed, Gautama, Lao-Tze, Jesus, Moses, Paul, Newton, Crick, Einstein, Marx, or a completely unknown sociology student in Luton. Out of this surfeit of information, people choose what they think. Necessarily therefore people have conflicting views. If you wish to believe the entire world is contained in one book, with which the content of all other books must broadly accord or be forbidden, as do some Muslims, Christians and of course Marxists, that's your affair. You are also clinically insane. That's your affair too. Just kindly keep your madness away from the rest of us. Religion is a multi-faceted affair. Organized religion is the suppression of a multi-faceted, intricate reality. Organized and political religion is largely the official representatives of those who believe the universe is as defined by a guy or guys a large number of years ago because 'God' told them that was how the universe is. If you do not believe the guys who described the universe and its inhabitants a couple of thousand years ago could not have been wrong and those who believe their version of the universe may not be criticized, corrected or derided., if you do not believe the earth is flat, you are not a 'real' Jew/Christian/Muslim/Hindu/Sikh etc. Flat-earthism has very obvious basic tenets: There is an alpha baboon in the sky whose majesty and whose self-appointed representatives must be spoken of with awe and respect Like his human slaves, he requires people on their knees to him saying how wonderful he is, and if they do not said slaves shall imprison, torture and murder them. Creationism Women and gays belong to different and inferior species (sually this is held true of those of other races also) Literal heaven and hell Frank affirmation of human self-centredness, the assumption the rest of the world revolves around them and is subordinate to them, the unquestioned belief that 'I' is the centre of the universe and they can demand others comply with them, the unquestioned enshrining of pure ego as divine will Thinking, autonomy, independent judgement of mind and heart. are evil, for the rather obvious actual reason that anyone who thinks regards the mouthings of the acolytes as ravings and the given reason, which a child of six can see through, or at any rate a child of six not drugged from birth, that it is the evil of self-will, of thinking one knows better than 'God', or in other words them. That which is not demonstrable is not binding. It is critical to today's intellectual corruption that realities that exist only in people's heads, whether their strange notions of the universe or their convictions of their own probity or intelligence in the face of the evidence, must be treated as sacrosanct, regarded with awe and 'respect’, considered superior to the findings of fact and reason If there is anything history teaches, it is the capacity of human beings to proclaim nonsense as immutable fact. Unless forced by liberty to eyeball reality, some humans successfully see no further than the insides of their skulls, looking at the world and the people in it and see what they think is there, what they want to be there, what they have been taught is there. This is not merely a question of lack of education or intelligence. Confident assertion of the nature and abilities of women kept us out of the universities until uncomfortably recently. Learned gentlemen, writing their papers on Plato in perfect Attic Greek even as they spluttered, were not in any usual sense of the word stupid yet they refused to let us in, even as an experiment to see how we should do. Inventions of the world may be formalized into doctrines such as Christianity or Islam or of course Marxism. Such doctrines are mental cages leaving out some bits of life, inventing others, to produce an all-encompassing explanation of the world. Arbitrary ceilings are placed on thought, there is that which you ‘can’t’ doubt, that which is regarded as fact, whether that Mohammed is the Messenger of God or that all history is the history of the class struggle Every -ism is undermined by and eventually crashes on reality, the reality of the physical universe, the reality of individual humans in all their variety, insistent on being what they are not what they're told to be, the reality of the existence of a multiplicity of other ways of looking at the world. This is what happened to Christianity. This is what happened to Marxism. This is of course what Islamists wish at all cost to avoid happening to Islam. The key to totalitarianism is the supposed helplessness of individual human beings. There is nothing inside. Either they are helpless without the assistance of whatever version of the divine multi-vitamin in the sky happens to be current or they are individually helpless and only collectively capable, whether as the proletariat or as the Volk. On no account must any individual think he or she is significant or empowered. Love demands acceptance of the right to be of the most fractured, abject, incomplete, fearful, ludicrous, deluded,, irrational and repulsive of human beings, detachment from their folly. It does not demand submission to it. ‘In a time of the breaking of nations’ all that is fractured, abject, incomplete, fearful, ludicrous, deluded, irrational, repulsive in human beings is to be venerated because of the meme of ‘the sanctity of religion’, in no small part due to the occupancy for ten years of Downing Street by Blair and Booth and governance by their hangers-on. Lenin and Jesus were both highly intelligent men. If we imagine that in the after-life Lenin taught Jesus the necessity of reason and Jesus taught Lenin the necessity of love, the resulting synthesis would be broadly PANTHER, with input from Socrates, Artemis, Athena, Gautama, Rumi and Lao-Tze What PANTHER is not is that seedy neo-fascist monstrosity 'Christian socialism' so beloved of sections of the Labour Party. The old Marxism has failed. We must move on. The total screaming cock-up Marxism has made of putting itself into practice does not invalidate its critiques of both religion and capital. Liberty is a function of love. Control is a function of self-will. You are not self-forgetting by definition if you are forcing others to obey you. Grace is paramountly not forcing oneself on others other than to restrain them from forcing themselves on others. To love one's neighbour as oneself is not to inflict beliefs he or she finds questionable on him or her. It is not necessary to believe in the Christian or any other revelation to have a go at loving one’s neighbour as one’s self, and indeed critical to any civilized society that people be required to make some minimal attempt to do so, which is to say that they do not bash each other's heads in and overcome any conviction they might have that others must do and be what they are told to do and be, others are their property to be murdered or maimed as they desire, a conviction shared between the Ayatollah Khomeini and Fred West. Democracy is a negative value-judgement on power. Power is suspect. Power must be made accountable, subject to checks and balances. We the people are not done to, the passive recipients of what our masters dole out: we control what is done to us, because we the people are the sole source of power in a democracy. We give them power to do what we want. They have no power over us to ‘transform’ us into anything we do not want to be, they are not set on high to dictate to us, mould us, impose a society based on lies. The behaviour of all public officials must therefore be transparent; we cannot determine if they are doing what we want unless we know what they are doing. The Left is atheist and feminist or it is not the Left. The nonsensical alliance between the worst of Islam and the worst of the Left should be abruptly terminated by the sheer derision it should invoke. The political power of the Roman Catholic Church in England was ended in 1688. We do not wish it back. Nor do we wish an Islamic theocracy instead. The fascist religious claim ‘the individual is God’ in modern secular society. Their god is incapable of error. The individual makes no such claim. Their god claims to rule the world. The individual claims dominion over only his or her mind and body. It is they who pretend to divinity claiming dominion over all in the name of their hallucination and self-will. The fascist religious decry moral relativism in secular society but the relativism is theirs: The Good is whatever they say is good. This may observably be what the sane think The Bad. The essence of the Enlightenment was a transfer of power from being arbitrary and unchallengeable, the carrying out of the supposed Word of God, to being accountable and in the hands of fellow fallible human beings who are required to justify their actions and can be dislodged from office. Instead of the governed having to justify themselves to the self-appointed representatives of an imaginary master in the sky, it became the governing who had to justify themselves to the governed. We are being taken into Never-Never-Land where the most basic facts of political and intellectual history are ignored as though they never were: 'defamation' and derision of religion have been standard form for some 300 years and are the root of the free world. Legislation criminalizing such 'defamation' and derision strikes at the heart of the West and forces us back to the C17th, fact and reason subordinate to mad fables. Such legislation also leaves Britain defenceless against Saudi and Vatican interference. Only in the Sixties when it seemed the back of political religion was finally broken did women and gays finally fly. Heterosexual males are a minority, about 40% of the population, and are neither divinely nor historically appointed to rule. Essential to Marxism is the development of consciousness. The average Marxist knows diddly-squat about consciousness, which is probably the primary reason the revolution hasn't happened and isn't going to happen and attempts to make it happen have ended in tears. Socialism has proved a lethal disease. Much of the Left is in denial about this. PANTHER is not in denial. The State is not abolished. It withers away. When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished". It dies out. Engels: Socialism Utopian and Scientific That is the theory. 1. The State cannot wither anywhere unless and until a majority of citizens are self-determining adults not dependent children 2. It is frightfully unnecessary and unkind to massacre tens of millions of people in order to fail to bring about the withered State and infinitely more constructive to start from a non-statist perspective. It is not possible to have a new way of doing things when people have the mind-set of the old one. It is a logical impossibility that the State shrink while people are taught to regard it as mother, father, sister, brother, the source of all sustenance. This is not a new way of doing things but simply the substitution of the State for God the divine multi-vitamin in the sky, the external source of one's being and doing While undoubtedly sundry of its adherents treat Marxism as a religion - undoubtedly there are as many flat-earth Marxists as there are flat-earth Muslims, those to whom the Book has been given unto the world, and deviation from its teachings heresy - it is not a religion but a humanist, rationalist view of the world, or in other words Marx, Lenin and Engels could on occasion have been talking out of their rears. As with any world-view, Marxist-Leninism is rooted in its time and place and it is as ridiculous to claim that every proposition arising from consideration of Europe in 1840 is true for all time as it is to claim that every proposition arising from consideration of Arabia in 600 is true for all time. Many of the things people consider as necessities didn’t exist at the time of the Communist Manifesto, however rich you or your business were. The humble paperclip didn’t appear until 1899; the ballpoint pen was born in 1938 It is necessary to differentiate between false needs such as designer-label fetishes, and actual needs, that which is required to function, unless one has chosen to be like Diogenes in his barrel, or possibly living off the land in a tent. Broadly the paradigm was the well-off had nice clothes, houses and food and no need to work and the rest had nasty clothes, houses and food and a need to work; thus one might speak of ‘middle-class dress’ or ‘a working-class home’. I do not think one can speak so readily of ‘a working-class mobile’ or ‘a middle-class hoover’. The range of products generated by capitalism meet real individual need. I for instance am mobility impaired in a three-floor house. No matter how big and beautiful the vacuum given me by the Central Praesidium, it would be largely useless to me because I couldn’t lift it. Certainly there is poverty in England today, sometimes acute poverty, people living rough, but it is not what Marx, Engels and Lenin, writing in a society without either free education or free healthcare understood by poverty. Dire need may lie in the lack of a large and expensive item such as a fridge. If you live on the 15th floor of a tower-block, the lifts of which are frequently broken, unless you are young and fit and able to skip up and down 15 floors, a fridge is an essential; in 1840, if you had enough pennies to buy any food at all, you could do it daily. If you had a grate, you could gather wood from the nearest open space to try to keep warm; the electricity or gas bill did not count among your essential costs. The terms of modern life have both created poverty among those whose adjusted incomes would have made them affluent and provided free at the point of receipt that of which the working-person in 1840 could only dream. It is entertaining to muse upon Marx’s reaction to being told that every member of the proletariat above the age of 12 requires a smartphone. I think he would have agreed. Since he was intelligent, he would have thought about it. I am sure he would appreciated he was in a new continuum. People are free and one of the things they are free to do is make money. Capital is a form of power. The purpose of democracy is to contain power. It must therefore contain the power of capital. The enemy is not capitalism or Marxism. The enemy is power. Licit authority upholds equal rights or punishes those who transgress against them. Illicit authority suppresses equal rights. There isn't going to be any 'Muslim take-over', there being a ready-made army in waiting of approximately 30 milllion women and gays, only 10% or so of whom would have to stir our stumps to actually do anything. A MIND OF ONE’S OWN The root of the free world is that individuals have minds of their own and the right to use them, that we are not empty vessels with nothing within to be filled with whatever our overlords regard as Truth. Biology came along and denied the existence of mind, the more ridiculous elements calling mind a Christian superstition. How that which intellectually attacked the Church culminating in the French Revolution, how that which demolishes all fascism, religious or not, comes to be superstition is not explained, but then biologists are rarely educated people. Mind sits anterior to data. Mind sits anterior to data, questioning, synthesizing, comparing, creating and of course checking on the reality quotient. The upper level of mentation, the capacity to select, order, analyse, question and synthesize information and that faculty called imagination which breaks down what is into its constituent parts and remakes it as something new in the world, is denied, such that people do and are deemed to exist in mental cages, the bars of which may be as flimsy as tissue-paper when subject to fact and reason, but which the caged regard as fixed, immutable truth. The slaves function intellectually, so far as they can be said to function intellectually at all, only within a given frame of reference. They are incapable of handling questioning of the frame of reference. Mind is evident in the world. Religious freaks call it the work of the devil and Stalinist freaks call it insanity. Historically, equally evident, the consequence of its denial is the stake and the gulag. If mind does not exist, democracy is unnecessary. You cannot choose if you have nothing to choose with, if you are a merely an empty vessel filled with external influences and biochemistry. We have today an unholy alliance between Stalinists who deny the existence of mind and religious fascists who regard its exercise as evil. Freedom of conscience does not exist in their world, either because there is no conscience to be free or because the workings of that conscience are the spawn of Satan. People’s evil and satanic views are simply what they have been filled with and they must be reprogrammed with Truth. People are of course in this world simply property, whether that of the State or that of God, to think and do and be and say only what their masters permit. The world's ideologies divide into cultures of the outside and cultures of the inside. A culture of the outside holds that the individual is moulded by the external world and so is both victim and slave - to environment, to fellow-humans, to self - is a hollow gourd or empty shell to be filled with the Beloved Leader's version of reality. Where no determined State attempts at brain-washing occur, the hollow gourd is merely a passive recipient of fate, a creature of instinct, to whom responsibility is meaningless. A culture of the inside holds that the individual has a central processing unit (CPU) otherwise known as mind that analyses the external world and forms himself or herself and so his or her own views from the results of this analysis, is capable of choice. Where there is no CPU, nothing inside to form oneself with, the opinions and reactions of others are defining and must therefore be controlled or censored. This underpins Orwell's 'Freedom is Slavery' and Marcuse's 'repressive tolerance'. You have no means of handling words that displease you. They therefore oppress you. As a result of this, a line has been breached with potentially devastating consequences, merely the complete destruction of the free world. Words are regarded as the same as deeds. To hear words one does not like is regarded as the equivalent of a physical blow, to be responded to by a physical blow or by the force of corrupt law. To be frankly feral is now acceptable and in some quarters held as the norm, to be self-obsessed, self-centred to the point of psychosis, consider that the rest of the species revolves around one and one's delusional beliefs, to have no concept of the equality and separateness of others, to regard them as under one's control to be silenced if they offend, to be incapable of either self-control (containing one's feelings) or self-command (changing one's feelings), and so being impotent, incapable of changing the inner world and hitting out at the external source of one’s pain. to have as one's true god only power, wherein reality is whatever those with power say it is, The Good is whatever those with power say it is, questioning, argument alien and condemned, in short fascism. In the unlovely symbiosis of fascism, the reward for surrender of autonomy, for accepting the mind-set of another, is supposed rights over others, whether the right to punish the more difficult or rights over some sub-section of the species such as the female. Since nothing can be the responsibility of those with nothing within, they are the simply the product of socio-economic forces, it may be held wrong to deride, criticize, censure, abuse them if they behave like pieces of vomit. Lenin had this to say: We are not utopians, and do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons, or the need to stop such excesses. In the first place, however, no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression, is needed for this: this will be done by the armed people themselves, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people, even in modern society, interferes to put a stop to a scuffle or to prevent a woman from being assaulted. And, secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses, which consist in the violation of the rules of social intercourse, is the exploitation of the people, their want and their poverty. With the removal of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to "wither away". We do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we do know they will wither away. With their withering away the state will also wither away. VI Lenin: The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State The words ‘sweetly naive’ are not readily associated with Vladimir Ilyich but there is here a statement of the natural goodness of humanity which has set and does set elements on the Left apart from the rest of society when considering violations of the rules of the social intercourse. The problem with ‘bourgeois liberty’ is that its exercise may include telling the innately good they are behaving like and possibly are turd, imposing ‘bourgeois morality’ upon them. How the workers come to be a separate species who like having their property stolen, their daughters raped, their housing-estates vandalized and covered in graffiti is not explained, though of course in this model the workers have no property. The chief victims of violations of the those norms of social intercourse by members of the working-class are other members of the working-class and the problem in inner-cities is not bourgeois liberty but its absence. At what point working-class adults became frightened of their young, too frightened to intervene and make clear which end is up, is a question for historians. It is hard to imagine old-style trade union leaders such as Joe Gormley being scared of kids. Similarly, what some see as intellectual corruption and social engineering is not understood as wrong – it’s only the socio-economic circumstances into which you were born that prevented you excelling academically, everyone is just as bright as everyone else, and having failed five CSEs in no way indicates that you are not just as good as someone who achieved an Honours degree. A world without ‘bourgeois’ morality and ‘bourgeois’ liberty upholding the right to criticize the mad, bad and sad, is not wonderful, it is a sewer such as Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany, governed by the psychotic, the cowardly, the thuggish, the criminal Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests. Marx and Engels: The Manifesto of the Communist Party Naturally there is an element of truth in this or it wouldn’t have caught on - a starving man hanged for stealing a loaf of bread, while the rich and propertied get away with anything. Reality is not a bourgeois prejudice. Reality is the person next to you has an equal right to his or her views. Certainly your views may be more significant than his or hers but your position as say Newtonian Emeritus Professor of Physics does not give you ownership of the mind of someone convinced the earth is flat. ‘Bourgeois’ democracy does not favour the bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it says those with some formal status are wholly accountable. It says the people underneath have the right to say exactly what they think. It says the people with power can have that power summarily removed from them. It says people do not have to be afraid of power. By making power accountable it makes power vulnerable. There are no overlords beyond question. It is understandable that looking at the world in 1850 Marx and Engels concluded democracy was a bourgeois plot; Engels said as much in 1877: The great men, who in France prepared men’s minds for the coming revolution, were themselves extreme revolutionists. They recognised no external authority of any kind whatever. Religion, natural science, society, political institutions — everything was subjected to the most unsparing criticism; everything must justify its existence before the judgment-seat of reason or give up existence. Reason became the sole measure of everything. It was the time when, as Hegel says, the world stood upon its head; first in the sense that the human head, and the principles arrived at by its thought, claimed to be the basis of all human action and association; but by and by, also, in the wider sense that the reality which was in contradiction to these principles had, in fact, to be turned upside down. Every form of society and government then existing, every old traditional notion was flung into the lumber room as irrational; the world had hitherto allowed itself to be led solely by prejudices; everything in the past deserved only pity and contempt. Now, for the first time, appeared the light of day, henceforth superstition, injustice, privilege, oppression, were to be superseded by eternal truth, eternal Right, equality based on nature and the inalienable rights of man. We know today that this kingdom of reason was nothing more than the idealised kingdom of the bourgeoisie; that this eternal Right found its realisation in bourgeois justice; that this equality reduced itself to bourgeois equality before the law; that bourgeois property was proclaimed as one of the essential rights of man; and that the government of reason, the Contrat Social of Rousseau, [21] came into being, and only could come into being, as a democratic bourgeois republic. The great thinkers of the eighteenth century could, no more than their predecessors, go beyond the limits imposed upon them by their epoch. Engels: Anti-Duhring, Introduction They were, however, wrong. The tragedy of Marxism is that true democracy is the most revolutionary concept going and by eliminating it supposed Marxists merely re-created an essentially feudal society. The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submissiveness and humbleness, in short, all the qualities of the rabble, and the proletariat, which will not permit itself to be treated as rabble, needs its courage, its self-confidence, its pride and its sense of independence even more than its bread. Marx: The Communism of the Rheinischer Beobachter, 1847 ‘The social principles of Christianity’ are thus those needed to survive under Stalin. We are all born squawly little hairless chimps. We are also all born with a mind and a capacity for love. We are all born with the capacity to over-ride the hard-wiring. Equal rights derive from our common humanity. I walk down the street unimpeded. You walk down the street unimpeded. I wear what I like. You wear what you like. I say what I like. You say what you like. Human history is a footnote to difficulty with these simple notions. For some the order of the day is I shall say what I want to say, what I think, what I feel. You will say only what I permit you, what does not offend me, or worse, cause me to think or question. You will speak and write within my frame of reference and in terms acceptable to me. My discomfiture – my self – is of greater importance than another's right to speak. ‘I’ is the centre of the universe, the measure of all things. If ‘I’ finds something offensive, it may not exist. If you think the Bible is a sacred text, I must express myself in terms you consider suitable to discussing a sacred text. Why on earth should I? is a question ill-understood by the hierarchical mind. Why might you not express yourself in the frame of reference set by me? The Thought-Policeman’s ego, the vapid assumption of superiority, the right to tell others how to be, the ‘psychology of the individual’ as Jeeves would have put it, are too little debated, on the grounds they constitute personal attack and that is not intellectually valid. Argument ad hominem attacks the person in order to discredit what he says: if he is shown to have lied in the past, that is supposed to discredit his word on this occasion. It is distinct from attacking the person because what he says shows he is a creep, and an irrational creep at that . Liberty is a human concept and most of our problems with it stem from the primate elements in the brain. The most elementary of these evolutionary hang-ups is the primate pecking order. A larger more powerful ape beats his chest and otherwise suggests his displeasure and the unconscious thinker toes the line. Only might is right. The mental development of individual humans starts where physical evolution ends. Obsession with form, external appearance, is another evolutionary hang-up. As a chimp recoils at the shape of a snake, so racists and sexists respond to colour or gender. Elements on the Left are equally hypnotised by biology. Where individual characteristics such as honesty, integrity, intellect, application - qualities of mind - have been abandoned as 'elitist' or 'relative values', all that remains is the nonsense that the most insignificant of human attributes, gender and race, are defining. Mind is supposed not to exist and recourse to fact and reason is rejected as elitist. The West is therefore supposed to lie defenceless in what is essentially a mind-game: the trick is persuade (by force or otherwise) the majority of people to a mind-set from which mind, fact and reason are absent. In particular they should not allude to the facts of democracy and civil liberties; since mind does not exist, the ability to make up one’s mind cannot exist, let alone the right to do so and, Homo sapiens sapiens being in its raw state a self-centred little beast, cf. any toddler, people cannot be expected to consider another’s point of view and so accept another’s equal right to speak. As Roosevelt said, there is nothing to fear but fear itself. In too many influential quarters today, having a mind of one’s own is regarded as suspect and probably evil, making people frightened to speak, whether in the political sphere, or against simple violations of the rules of social intercourse witnessed in the streets. RELIGION 5. But mortals suppose that the gods are born (as they themselves are), and that they wear man's clothing and have human voice and body. [Zeller, 524, n. 2. Cf Arist. Rhet. ii. 23; 1399 b 6.] 6. But if cattle or lions had hands, so as to paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and give them bodies in form like their own-horses like horses, cattle like cattle. [Zeller, 525, n. 2. Diog Laer. iii. 16; Cic. de nat. Deor. i. 27.] Xenophanes c C570-475 BC The following are evident: Religion is a potent force for evil Religion is a potent force for good Christians argued vigorously for and killed in defence of slavery and the slave trade Christians argued vigorously for killed to achieve the abolition of slavery and the slave trade Christians upheld the obscenities of the Industrial Revolution (and so killed by hunger and disease) Christians fought for humane working conditions and decent wages Christians built, bolstered and killed for apartheid Christians worked to tear down apartheid. Christians supported Hitler. Some particularly heroic Christians, including priests, pastors and nuns, actively opposed Hitler. The majority of good respectable Christians ‘walked by on the other side’ throughout the whole of Occupied Europe while their fellow-citizens (Jewish, gay, gipsy subdivisions thereof) were rounded up and taken off to the camps. Conventional religion teaches mindless obedience and mindless obedience is not a virtue; fear is not a virtue. Conventionally religious people are thus prone to have fur between the ears. They will believe something as intellectually ridiculous as ‘a group of Jews wanted the death of Jesus therefore all Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus’. Vicious people have a vicious god, the god of fear. Nice people have a nice god, the god of love. Both Bible and Qur’an contain flatly contradictory statements, particularly on the matter of smiting one’s enemies and putting them to fire and the sword. It is impossible, therefore, for anyone to believe every word of either literally. Claim to mindless obedience is therefore fake. Religion does not make people evil. It does not make them good. It does, however, as routinely justify and motivate evil as it does good. Humans make god in their own image and likeness and religious people cover the same gamut of human behaviour as non-religious people. To say ‘religion’ must be protected is therefore to say that people who may be intellectually and morally on the level of the average concentration-camp guard merit legal protection. It is also to say that particular kinds of irrationality and general derangement must be treated as sanity. Marx on religion (from'Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right by Karl Marx, Deutsch- Französische Jahrbücher, February, 1844): The foundation of irreligious criticism is this:Man makes religion, religion does not make man. If your natural propensity is to be thoroughly unpleasant, you will ascribe to a thoroughly unpleasant version of religion and have a god who is repulsive, yes. Religion is indeed man's self-consciousness and self-awareness so long as he has not found himself or has already lost himself again. But, man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, it enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. A total but delusional construct of life, the universe and everything, yup. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. Indeed The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. Yup Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. Good grief! The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself. So long as he keeps out of other people’s airspace. It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics. One is a little hard-pressed to find a justification here for the drivelling of the fascist Left that whatever garbage is in someone's head, wholly divorced from reality, especially if it is religious garbage, is sacrosanct and must not be disturbed by reality. AUTHORITY Authority is humanity’s greatest scam. Once something is made a law, a regulation, regardless of how bone-headed, pin-brained, vicious, twisted, it is, the person who fails to obey is wrong-footed, A Bad Person, cast into the outer darkness, when the actual criminals are the law-makers. Of the sweet innocent belief that law-makers cannot be stupid or malign, I shall say little in case I laugh too much. Authority enables the creation of a world of lies. Things cannot be other than they are said to be, because - yes, you’ve guessed - Authority cannot lie. Authority is to be respected. Authority cannot be made the laughing-stock of the civilized world. Goose-stepping morons are funny and harmless so long as everyone is free to howl with laughter at them and comment what preposterous prats they are. Their first move is therefore to enact legislation to prohibit such unseemly conduct. Their power is twofold. They may exert power through corrupt legislation or they may exercise simple physical force. The more pernicious manifestation of Authority is its mental hold on the minds of its slaves to whom equality of rights is unknown and who do not know how to question priest or professor, for are these not Great Ones, set on high to command, those who know best? Probably the first major dent to this mind-set was Magna Carta, the cornerstone of Anglo-American democracy, but since the slaves know no history, that is irrelevant. Ignorance is vital to a slave-society. Hand in hand with Authority goes Respect. Respect is a word from ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ that has weaselled its way into the ‘Left’ on the sleazy and spurious grounds that ‘respect’ is what the nobs get and everyone else should have it too. Alas, little Trots, this ‘respect’ of which you prate is not what ‘the nobs’ get in any free and democratic society, let alone a Left-wing one. It denotes ‘you gotta be careful what you say’. Doubtless you stand up and tug your forelock also; assuredly those among the masses who most loudly squeal ‘ain’t you got no respect’ would not object. It is the antithesis of all the real Left stands for. In this model one does not tell ‘the important’ which end is up, one does not tell the manager he is a bloody fool, one does not tell his lordship he is a drunken pig, one knows one’s place and one’s reward on earth if not in heaven is one is not oneself told which end is up. The enthusiasm with which this deliciously feudal model has been adopted by the masses is hilarious. The nobs don’t have to take criticism and can hit or otherwise punish those who proffer it? Oh, but they do, they do! It used to be called socialism, a creed, one might say, the raison d’etre of which was kicking the shit out of those with wealth and power. We on the Left voice our own opinions, not those of our masters, nor only those our masters permit we say. It is of course really, really obvious that, if people are afraid to criticize people who are crap or who are behaving like crap, the crappy people will go being crappy and be confirmed in their belief there is nothing wrong with their crappiness, really, really, really obvious – apparently not. It is usually lost in debates about freedom of speech that it starts on your doorstep. It starts when you object to the lout pissing on your geraniums or some other such violation of the rules of social intercourse and not surprisingly don’t display much ‘respect’ when doing so. It starts with his fundamental acceptance of your right to utter words he does not want to hear. This is not to say he will necessarily meekly accept your reproach and apologize. He may growl, swear, raise two fingers, perhaps even direct a defiant final spurt at your favourite garden gnome. He does not pull a gun or a knife and scream who the fuck do you fink you are, ‘e’s got ‘is fucking rights ‘e as. And of course ain’t you got no fucking respect. Today's 'Left' despises equally equality of rights and democracy itself. If we are not the property of the self-appointed representatives of God, then we are the property of the State, to conform to whatever the State requires we be – which indeed is the property of the self-appointed representatives of God who get so frightfully upset when anyone crosses them. Anything for a quiet life, eh? It is conspicuously unasked why the self-appointed representatives of God get so twitched. There is pretense it is normal and indeed convulsion at hearing something one does not like, at - oh the horror of it, persons actually not agreeing with you or your estimation of yourself - is becoming increasingly the norm among the non-religious. In both cases, the recipient of the unwanted words is cast as a ‘victim’ What he or she is a ‘victim’ of is a) the existence of other people in the world with minds of their own and b) his or her anti-education wherein he or she has not been developed either morally to understand that others are not under his or her command, emotionally to be able to deal with his or her feelings or intellectually to be able to deal with ideas that are unwelcome. Being unable to deal with that within, he or she hits out at the external sort of the supposed threat. It is in in particular not asked why the products of education in supposedly wonderful faith schools are thus wanting. The answer of course is that the priests and other clerical teachers want their flocks helpless in order to demonstrate to the politicians how awful is this freedom which causes such distress and so increase their stranglehold on the body politic. Thus the story is told of Alcibiades—how before the age of twenty he engaged his own guardian, Pericles, at that time prime minister of the state, in a discussion concerning laws. Alc. Please, Pericles, can you teach me what a law is? Per. To be sure I can. Alc. I should be so much obliged if you would do so. One so often hears the epithet "law-abiding" applied in a complimentary sense; yet, it strikes me, one hardly deserves the compliment, if one does not know what a law is. Per. Fortunately there is a ready answer to your difficulty. You wish to know what a law is? Well, those are laws which the majority, being met together in conclave, approve and enact as to what it is right to do, and what it is right to abstain from doing. Alc. Enact on the hypothesis that it is right to do what is good? or to do what is bad? Per. What is good, to be sure, young sir, not what is bad. Alc. Supposing it is not the majority, but, as in the case of an oligarchy, the minority, who meet and enact the rules of conduct, what are these? Per. Whatever the ruling power of the state after deliberation enacts as our duty to do, goes by the name of laws. Alc. Then if a tyrant, holding the chief power in the state, enacts rules of conduct for the citizens, are these enactments law? Per. Yes, anything which a tyrant as head of the state enacts, also goes by the name of law. Alc. But, Pericles, violence and lawlessness—how do we define them? Is it not when a stronger man forces a weaker to do what seems right to him—not by persuasion but by compulsion? Per. I should say so. Alc. It would seem to follow that if a tyrant, without persuading the citizens, drives them by enactment to do certain things—that is lawlessness? Per. You are right; and I retract the statement that measures passed by a tyrant without persuasion of the citizens are law. Alc. And what of measures passed by a minority, not by persuasion of the majority, but in the exercise of its power only? Are we, or are we not, to apply the term violence to these? Per. I think that anything which any one forces another to do without persuasion, whether by enactment or not, is violence rather than law. Alc. It would seem that everything which the majority, in the exercise of its power over the possessors of wealth, and without persuading them, chooses to enact, is of the nature of violence rather than of law? To be sure (answered Pericles), adding: At your age we were clever hands at such quibbles ourselves. It was just such subtleties which we used to practise our wits upon; as you do now, if I mistake not. To which Alcibiades replied: Ah, Pericles, I do wish we could have met in those days when you were at your cleverest in such matters. Xenophon, The Memorabilia (trad. HG Dakyns, 1897) TRANSPARENCY Lies split you between what is and what appears to be or what everyone else may think is. You may state until you are blue in the face that you were born in Bournemouth, that you know the streets of Bournemouth like the back of your hand, you may show childhood pictures of you on the seafront at Bournemouth and state the names of those with whom you were in primary school in Bournemouth but if Authority working behind closed doors states that you were born in Middleton, that your supposed evidence is forgery and Photoshop, and that even as a child you were known to be a notorious liar, you have a problem. It is therefore important that lies be heard, that the residents of Bournemouth who remember you rise up in howls of derision to expose the liars and everyone be grounded in fact not delusion. As Socrates said... but if any man says that he ever learned or heard anything privately from me, which all the others did not, be assured that he is lying. . Apology: 33b http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0170%3Atext%3DApol.%3Asection%3D33b Cf John 18:20 Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing. Thus transparency, embedded in the West from both Athens and Nazareth, not that it helped them at the time. As with the citizens of Bournemouth, so with the rest of the world. People may simply not know some basic fact of history denied of course by Authority. LIBERTY Liberty enables the pursuit of truth. Liberty demolishes proclaimed truth and clears the path to actual truth. Liberty prevents lies being universally held as truth. If two people have opposing versions of events, only one can be true. Liberty ensures both are heard. Liberty ensures the facts are known. If the facts do not wholly prove the matter one way or the other, liberty leaves others free to choose what they believe. Liberty does not prevent any given individual from living in a world composed of lies. Liberty prevents those lies being forced on others, such that we must all live in the world of the mad. Liberty enables laughing at those who demand lies prevail. Liberty enables the voicing of countless possibilities, alternatives to the authorized version. Liberty enables science. Liberty enables people to look at all the ideas about life, about people, the human mind has come up with. Liberty enables the belief in and practice of religions other than that of the Church of England. Elements in British Islam would do well to bear that in mind. REALITY REALITY GROUND ZERO Among other things, reality is the existence of a nation of 60 million individuals, each of whom has his or her own take on life. The absurd believe themselves set on high to dictate to others who will automatically recognize their superior status and instantly obey. The zillion or so other responses available, such as ‘you are who?’ or ‘that is rubbish’ are alien to them, dismissed as wilful, resentful, rebellious. They do not know where ‘I’ ends and someone else begins but think others an extension of themselves, over whom they may exert force if they refuse to obey. Once force has been initiated, the door has been opened to force being used against them. This is a door that should be kept tight closed. Beating up gays or women or blacks or whites or people with expensive cars is wrong. Beating up those who did the beating up is also wrong. Both are criminal offences. The principle of initiation of force gives those beaten up a moral right to retaliate. The law exists to retaliate on their behalf. Where the law fails by excusing those who initiate force, where society attempts to justify that initiation of force, we have a problem. People who by their mere existence may be the subjects of force, such as Muslim gays, need to be be certain both the law and society are on their side People who may initiate force need it repeatedly spelled out that both law and society are against them. The leaft touching of another's perfon wilfully, or in anger, is a battery ; for the law cannot draw the line between different degrees of violence, and therefore totally prohibits the firft and loweft ftage of it : every man's perfon being facred, and no other having a right to meddle with it, in any the flighteft manner. And therefore upon a fimilar principle the Cornelian law de injuriis prohibited pulfation as well as verberation ; diftinguifhing verberation, which was accompanied with pain, from pulfation which was attended with none II. WE are next to confider the violation of the right of perfonal liberty. This is effected by the injury of falfe imprifonment, for which the law has not only decreed a punifhment, as a heinous public crime, but has alfo given a private reparation to the party ; as well by removing the actual confinement for the prefent, as, after it is over, by fubjecting the wrongdoer to a civil action, on account of the damage fuftained by the lofs of time and liberty. TO conftitute the injury of falfe imprifonment there are two points requifite : 1. The detention of the perfon ; and, 2. The unlawfulnefs of fuch detention. Every confinement of the perfon is an imprifonment, whether it be in a common prifon, or in a private houfe, or in the ftocks, or even by forcibly detaining one in the public ftreets BLACKSTONE’S COMMENTARIES PRIVATE WRONGS. BOOK III. CHAPTER THE EIGHTH. OF WRONGS, AND THEIR REMEDIES, RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS. REALITY 101 The roots of our current ills are sustained attacks on reality. Cries that absolute truth does not exist are used to deny the absolutes of reality. Leftists twitter about relativism and conditioning without having the faintest idea what they are talking about. Reality is what is. It doesn’t shift or bend. It may change with time. It is reality that Mr Cameron is Prime Minister and Mr Obama is President. In the future both will have ceased to hold these current positions. They will not cease to be male members of humanity. They will not become 20 years old on their 70th birthdays. Reality is what is. What is need not be either true or physically real. What is includes all the ideas in the world and all the products of human imagination. You do not have to believe in the Virgin Mary, Allah or Quetzalcoatl to acknowledge the concepts the Virgin Mary, Allah and Quetzalcoatl exist and have informed the development of the societies in which they dominated and dominate. Reality is fact. It is fact that some people think Christianity nonsensical and others are devout believers. It is a common obfuscation that to state that some people think Christianity nonsensical is to state that Christianity is nonsensical, that to acknowledge the existence of, the right to speak and write of, those who think Christianity nonsensical is to uphold the proposition that Christianity is nonsensical. Reality is everything that is and everything that human beings have thought and shared with others, both the facts of science and the dogmas of religion. Reality is the sum of subjective realities. Reality is the diversity of views human beings hold and have held. Reality is everything that might be relevant, that which has to be taken account of because societies become skewed if it is not. Within a single free society people arrive at diametrically opposing positions, some devoutly religious, others fervently atheist. Reality is that a doctrine that is ridiculous and offensive lies to one person is gospel truth to another. Authoritarian, totalitarian and often frankly murderous societies are those in which only one aspect of reality is permissible and the existence of other aspects is denied, are those in which the version of reality of one human, whether Marx, Mohammed or Mussolini, is imposed and identified as all-encompassing. Behaviours and policies increase the level of reality in a society or diminish it. Reality 101 teaches that large gulfs exist between individuals in ability and moral sense, unbridgeable canyons yawn between individuals in beliefs and interests. Further, individuals are not fixed. They may develop their ability, moral sense, change their opinions, develop interests in subjects that previously bored them. When people are free to be themselves, these differences show. Outside the fundy orthodox, whether religious or not, probably no two people think exactly the same thing about the universe or about the NHS. This gives rise to genuine plurality, where people hold directly opposing opinions. Since there are no grounds for believing that some people have a greater right to be than others, everyone has an equal right to the views of the unique individual she or he. People are free to the extent they do not impinge on the freedom of others. Thinking one thing and saying it does not inhibit someone else from thinking the opposite and saying it, though numerous cavorting idiots can be found to claim it does. Those who lack moral sense are not free to steal, murder, rape. Those who lack intelligence are self-limited - there are things they cannot do or be. If they do do them, in a free society they are outdistanced by those who do them better, unless of course individual expansion is ‘restrained‘, as Tawney put it. People who are good at making money are going to have more than people who are not. Households with two incomes are better off than those with one. Couples are therefore a major cause of financial inequality. A single man earning 15K may be surviving. If his girlfriend gets pregnant, he is faced with paying for not two but three on 15K. He walks away, leaving two of the three seriously poor. A major cause of child poverty is not inequality, class, background or privilege, but sex. REALITY 102 There is not only one book in the world defining reality. A belief-system is simply a collection of ideas that seem to make more sense to someone than other collections of ideas. Some people (they know who they are) claim everything is enshrined in their One Book, with the resultant claim that everything was fixed in one time and one place. The historical Moses is thought to have lived in around 1400 BC. In the 1500 years or so between him and Paul, a multiplicity of world-shaping events and perspectives on being human occurred elsewhere on the planet, the whole of Ancient Greece and with it the birth of democracy, most of Classical Rome, the Upanishads, Confucius, Zoroastrianism, Lao-Tzu, none of which is significant to the orthodox Christian, other than as error or sin or at best feeble gropings for troof. This is first order lunacy: discuss. It worked when there was no mass communication, when the nearest city was an alien land many leagues distant. It doesn’t work now. It is worth being precise about what hardly anyone believes, because actually it is possible to be entirely precise about what people do not believe, whether they be hard-line materialist atheists or flutterby flower-children. We do not believe there is only one book in the world. We are not a largely illiterate society of desert tribesmen thousands of years ago to whom one book was an all-encompassing explanation. We live in a society with access to millions of books and other sources of information; if we do not read much, we may surf or watch Life on Earth. We form our views based on what we read together with our experience of other human beings. We do not believe one book dictates what we must think; clearly millions of books, the content of which is contradictory, cannot dictate what anyone thinks. Where the content of books conflicts with reality, we do not believe reality is necessarily over-ruled. Where the content of books contains ideas conflicting with ideas in a 'holy book', we do not believe the 'holy book' necessarily true and other books false. Indeed, we live in a society shaped by a Trinity, that Trinity being broadly symbolized by the combined content of the Philosophy, Religion and Science sections of a major bookshop. We may prefer to believe that which is demonstrably false or distinctly less likely but on the whole I think have an awareness of the thing called fact; one of the things that distinguishes the insane religious from the sane is whether he or she accords the Virgin Birth or Mohammed's Night Journey the status of fact, on par with water boiling when heated sufficiently. Clearly also people who read many books, the content of which is contradictory, come across views that repel or otherwise offend them and do not run around screaming and shouting about it. It being the case that some views on life the universe and everything directly oppose others, unless you live in a hole in the ground you are going to meet people who think what you think is nonsense. If you then cavort and scream a) you are mad and b) your ignorance, your self-obsession and your total intellectual and emotional inadequacy are your problem. You seek to annul the external source of your distress because you have neither self-control (ability to contain your feelings) nor self-command (ability to change your feelings). REALITY 103 Either you decide in advance what the world is and what the individual humans in it are and when they fail to be it coerce them into being it or kill them if they are recalcitrant or your frame of reference dictates their category of human has no right to life or you look at the world and the individual humans in it and what they do and have done and say and have said and form conclusions therefrom. Either you categorize humans according to their external appearance (form) and declare women or Jews or Arabs or gays are fundamentally a different kind of human to you or you start with the proposition that all are fundamentally human (essence). Those who believe in One Book, One Truth, whether that book is the Bible, the Qur’an, the Torah, Das Kapital or Mein Kampf prejudge and of course deny all evidence to the contrary, whether scientific or social. The authors of these works have created the world as they think it must be or if you prefer have created fictional worlds. The rest in a nutshell is their lamentable struggle to fit the real world into the box they have created for it. There are single, absolute realities. A grain of sand has the properties of sand. It is not a malign entity seeking to infiltrate your sandwiches at a beach-party. Everything is itself, not what it ‘must be’ or you imagine it is, has its essence independent of how coded perception sees it. The unique identity of an individual may be less obvious, not least to the individual himself or herself. People play roles and seek to cast others in them. The human capacity to deny reality is pretty limitless. When you have dismissed the observable evidence of what people say and do, you are finally happy living in a world that unfortunately exists only in your head and you can truly dedicate yourself to protecting that inner world from any encroachment by reality, because you think you'll fall apart. Emotional maturity is knowing that you won't fall apart. Some people wish to live in the C21st. The modern world is based on reality. 1. The reality of individuality. Modern people are not obsessed with race, gender or sexual orientation. 2. The reality of one world. We sit in Surbiton and talk to people in Singapore, San Francisco and Sierra Leone, whether on the telephone or over the Web. We understand the world is a single ecological unit. We understand we're all just people. We live in a free and borderless world called cyberspace. We read and watch and say what we like. We communicate with each other as equals. REALITY 104 Perception is conditioned from birth onward as the small and screaming I seeks to deal with the world. Internal realities are formed of what people are, what situations means – mind-patterns, concepts of ‘I’ and ‘you’ and ‘I’ in relation to ‘you’ - stereotypes at the most elementary level. All irtubi are vicious, and so, if I should meet an irtubi, he or she will attempt to injure me. If that is my conviction and I meet a charming, courteous, irtubi, I conclude he or she is feigning pleasantness, suspect him or her of setting some trap for me. Conflict is set up when experience of people, situations – external reality – fails to conform to one’s internal reality. It may be repressed. Alternatively one may make minimal adjustment to the head-set. The mind is very flexible in this respect. All irtubi are vicious. My friend is irtubi. My friend is not vicious. He is the exception that proves the rule – a peculiarly meaningless expression. The brain’s attempts to order the world, order the input, have resulted in false conclusions. The brain has sought to protect itself from what is there. What is there may hurt. We talk freely of people feeling threatened. There is no physical danger. The rickety concepts on which the ‘I’, the self-image, is based are under attack. It may seem strange to say it is essential to personality that one believe for instance that all irtubi are vicious. Nonetheless, the self, the sense of self, may be made up of similar deeply held convictions, and when one foundation-stone is in danger of being pulled away one fears for the whole building. True loss of self, not the dirty perverted kind purveyed by the clerical ape, which means accepting his lies, lies in ceasing to code perception and seeing what is there, such that there is no ‘I’ between oneself and the universe, the inside equals the outside. CONDITIONING The Left pretends to have discovered conditioning, aka unconscious attitudes, and twitters about it like a pesky kid who’s discovered water is wet. Yes of course your infant brain absorbs a picture of the world but this is not fixed. Later it will be exposed to education offering further data and encouraging it to question. Conditioning is probably best described as learning things which may not be real. Learning that steam from a boiling kettle scalds is learning something based in reality. Learning that you put milk in the cup first or first pour the tea is not (though tea-fiends will doubtless argue with that). Conditioning is learning responses, learning what you think things or situations mean because they’re what parents or peers tell you they mean. It is learning how things are, who and what you are, how you relate to other people. While it operates just as formidably in some regards in cosmopolitan societies, it is most obvious in closed societies where everyone around you subscribes to a particular creed. Unconscious attitudes are surprisingly enough those imbibed and internalized unconsciously. Detox is finding out what is reality-based. If one round, red, smooth-skinned, soft and edible object constitutes ‘a tomato’, all such objects are tomatoes with the same biological properties and the same taste within a spectrum identified as tomato-ish – thus we learn and what we learn is that form is identified with essence. Similarly we may learn to be wary of any scorpion-shaped life-form. But that one dog snarls and lunges at strangers does not prove that all dogs behave thus. A poodle may be vicious and a Doberman a slobbering affectionate idiot. All the time we seek to make connections, arguing from the one to the many. The higher up the evolutionary tree are the beings to which we relate, the less effective form becomes as a manner of understanding the world, until we reach humans and it becomes useless. None of this hinders the racists, sexists, homophobes and socialists who see people in terms of classes. Fundamentalists do not like people to grow up. In place of the strange convictions about all blacks or Jews of the Christian fundy or all females of the Muslim fundy, Marx gives us his convictions about the ‘bourgeois’. No matter how much your brain screams at you that all x are y, some x remain not-y, perhaps no x are y. There is rarely the possibility of dialogue with those who hold all x are y and therefore no x may be z, no woman has the qualities necessary to being a fighter pilot or a priest. They have a different starting-point. Some, having grasped the vicious imbecility of ‘all x are y’, of racism, homophobia, sexism, have replaced it with new improved super all x are y, no moral or intellectual differences between individuals may be allowed to exist suggesting one may in such ways be better than another. Indeed the world is simpler that way. The unconscious thinker does not think out his or her opinions, his or her assumptions, prejudices, preconceptions. They may be those of his or her parents, religious leaders or peers. He or she has internalized versions of reality that provoke his or her responses. He or she does not know why he or she thinks what he or she thinks or reacts as he or she does, only that it is obviously right, that 'everybody knows'. In this he or she has bolstered himself or herself by reading only newspapers that echo his or her opinion, mixing only with like-minded people. At a more sophisticated level, he or she may have formulated his or her own views starting from the unexamined views of others. This is why Socrates is reported to have said the unexamined life is not worth living: it is not, to use a fave word on the Left, authentic; this is also why for Socrates and Zen alike the first step to wisdom is knowing you do not know. You can look at people, see what people (all different sorts of people) have said about being people, or you can brandish a single book and say this is people (and if people aren’t this, they must be made this). Even better, you can then get the leaders of the (ha!) ‘free world’ to stand behind the special knowledge of people only your book can give and believe in your ‘moral authority’. Inner freedom, whether in Zen, the Tao or the mystic traditions of the monotheisms, is recognized as liberation from illusion, imagined mind-constructs of reality. This is thought remote from real life, the notion of an ‘invisible reality’ scoffed at, but our individuality is an invisible reality - deeply invisible to those who take one look at your exterior, black, Jew, Arab, female, beggar, train-driver and magically derive what you are, how you feel, what you think, and most critically of what you may be capable, thereby. The racist, the sexist, the hater of homosexuals exists entirely in his or her mind-constructs. Confident expression of what women, all women, were innately incapable of or unfit for kept us out of Parliament, out of the polling-booths and out of the universities, out of the professions until uncomfortably recently. Equally confident generalizations were applied to ‘the poor’. The male poor nonetheless acquired basic rights rather before the female poor. Only liberty can pull down imagined truth. Democracy, by upholding individual liberty, enables people to achieve their full potential, to stretch their hearts and minds to the utmost of their ability. Liberty allows individuals to escape from the imagined realities imposed by societies and forces reality upon those who govern. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common….few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error in which they admit themselves to be fallible…People more happily situated…place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to whom they habitually defer; for in proportion to man’s want of confidence in his own solitary judgement, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, in the infallibility of ‘the world’ in general. And the world, to each individual, means the part of it with which he comes in contact; his party, his sect, his church, his class of society…Nor is his faith in this collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that other ages, countries, sects, churches, classes and parties, have thought and even now think the exact reverse….it never troubles him that mere accident has decided which of these numerous worlds is the object of his reliance, and that the same causes which made him a Churchman in London would have made him a Buddhist or Confucian in Pekin. JS Mill: On Liberty Ysabel Howard - July 2013 Here is a little picture of me dressed for dinner in heirlooms I found in the family attic. You know how it is. Some people have an ancestral pile, a sword from Agincourt. Others of us have a few bits of old iron. |