What is not political ?
Jul 3rd
After sending a group message to all the members of the repeal the CJA and all laws that affect free festival,raves and living free I got this rather odd message
Steve ****** >
John – I dont know you, you are not on my friends list. Please do not send me any more information about anything political and this includes dates/times of marches etc. I have not sent you anything that makes assumptions about your political persuasions or interests…please afford me the same respect.
While the message was polite, I can’t help but think that the bloke is bit of a arse.
For a start no one forced him to join the group, getting a law repealed by definition is a political act. Everything we do, don’t do, can’t do, is political. Partying is a political act, if it was not then why have the government made so many laws trying to stop it?
Did I make assumptions his political persuasions and interests? well,yes, I did. I assumed that he knew what groups he had joined, I assumed that he liked to party. I assumed that he cared about living free, I assumed that he knew that there is a alternative to partying in places other then government approved spaces. I assumed that he was interested in restoring civil liberties. I assumed that he was interested in repealing unnecessary laws. I assumed that he knew that living in this world means you have to make political decisions.
So Steve (I would have messaged you back, but you have banned me from messaging you) seriously think about your life, global financial collapse, environmental overload, restrictions on gatherings (I could go on and on) while you can put your headphones on, listen to loud acid house tunes and pretend that none of this is happening you could “get political” and see if you can change things, you never know, you might even find it fun.
You have to stand for something or you will fall for anything.
why repeal the CJA ? (Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994)
Jun 22nd
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg made a speech where he called on the public to nominate laws to be repealed, “we will repeal all of the intrusive and unnecessary laws that inhibit your freedom.”
Well, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (CJA) came to mind, a law that I have mentioned on a past blog post. So while Nick was still finishing off his speech I started a facebook group called “repeal the CJA and all laws that affect free festival,raves and living free” With very little promotion the group expanded to over 3000 members before Parliament had even started, many people posted on the group wall with really positive comments, inspiring videos and some excellent memories.
so, the question is “why repeal the CJA ?” most politicians regardless of political party think the CJA stops all them squaters/raves/travellers/protesters from causing ‘trouble’ because that is how the main stream media has painted us. so lets have a look at the CJA from the other side, with a small dash of ‘spin’
Sections 61 & 62: “Trespassers on land” is a anti traveller section, it even gives the police powers to seize vehicles.
Living a van, bus or truck is a fairly low impact lifestyle, you can get an old bus for a bargain , get a wood burner for heating maybe a windmill and solar panels for 12v electrical system and you have a mortgage free starter home. So that is a sustainable housing solution.
Sections 63, 64 & 65: Raves
“A ‘rave’ is defined as a gathering of 100+ people, at which amplified music (‘wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats’[!) is played which is likely to cause serious distress to the local community, in the open air and at night.”
Amazing, we apparently live in a democracy, but we are not allowed to gather and listen to music. All we want to do is dance and talk. Indeed we need to talk, the world is in crisis environmentally and financially, we need to talk about how we plan to live in the future, it is far to important for it to be left to politicians. So raves are ‘democratic meetings’ where in the morning, when everyone has relaxed we can discuss the future.
Sections 72, 73 & 74: Squatters – and Protected Intended Occupiers
Squatting has long history in the UK, currently with the financial crisis there are more empty properties than ever. The facts are that houses/buildings are kept empty until the price of that property get high enough for the owner/ speculator to sell on for profit, or neglect the building until they can knock it down and build something else. Squatting is recycling buildings, turning used property into homes.
repeal the CJA so that we can start making a more sustainable livable life NOW!
my inner child
May 12th
I was having an out-of-body experience and almost astral-traveled away yesterday, so I grounded myself and got centered with the help of my spirit guides and then the phone rang. Sensing the negative vibrations, I threw the I-Ching and checked my numerology chart, nearly having a primal, but myenergy was too blocked. So I did some bioenergetics and self-parenting, took some flower essences and ate an organic oat bran ginseng muffin, but my inner child wasn`t feeling nurtured yet.
To fix this, I had a Rice Dream Frozen Pie, which,of course, made me hyper, so I did the relaxation response technique I had just learned at the Self Healing Angst Tree Defoliating Center while listening to my subliminal tapes. But that left me feeling depersonalized, so I did some polarity work, foot reflexology, and past life regression, then rebirthed myself, and called Moon Beam, my body worker, to make an appointment for a Shiatsu / Reike /Rolfing /Feldenkreis / Swedish / Japanese deep tissue massage.
Unfortunately, she flaked out and never returned my call, so I decided to energize my crystals and do some positive imagery because all my visualization techniques and affirmations made my space feel invaded. So to get empowered, I got a psychic reading from Mother Heart Love around the issue of my assertiveness so I could feel my radiance and have some energy for my psycho calisthenics and inversion swing before my harmonic brain wave synergy session.
This made me more focused for my actualization seminar, holistic healing class and dream workshop, which in turn made me clearer for my Gestalt behavioral cognitive transpersonal Rechian-Jungian-Freudian-Ericksonian session at the hot springs, but my aura was too weak for my trance channeling group, so I fasted until noon to recharge my chakras. At that point, I sensed my intuition was high and my cycle was focused, so I turned on my ion generator to open up for my Neural Linguistic Programming session.
But I needed to have my pyramid recharged before my guided synchronicity meditation, so I got some craniosacral therapy, which aligned me for the fire walk between my tarot card reading and my sensory deprivation tank appointment. But even after all that, I felt what I truly needed was a meaningful relationship to mirror myself, so I went to my personal shaman,and then to my guru, but they were no help, so instead I went to the Intensive Whole Life Earth Rebirth Cosmic Expo Symposium Workshop to find someone who really knew what was going on. That didn`t help either, so I locked myself in a calcium coated Orgone Box and meditated until 9PM.
None of it really worked for me, so I rolled me a big fat skunk joint, got stoned and caned 2 bottles of red wine — and dread, did I feel right with the world!
Anarcho-syndicalist
May 6th
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Scene 3
ARTHUR: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, King of the Britons.
Whose castle is that?
WOMAN: King of the who?
ARTHUR: The Britons.
WOMAN: Who are the Britons?
ARTHUR: Well, we all are. we’re all Britons and I am your king.
WOMAN: I didn’t know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous
collective.
DENNIS: You’re fooling yourself. We’re living in a dictatorship.
A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes–
WOMAN: Oh there you go, bringing class into it again.
DENNIS: That’s what it’s all about if only people would–
ARTHUR: Please, please good people. I am in haste. Who lives
in that castle?
WOMAN: No one live there.
ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don’t have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take
it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
ARTHUR: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified
at a special biweekly meeting.
ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,–
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: –but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more–
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh — who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don’t vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, ‘ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,
[angels sing]
her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur
from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I,
Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.
[singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen — strange women lying in ponds distributing swords
is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power
derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical
aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power
just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin’ I was an empereror just
because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they’d
put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
HELP! HELP! I’m being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you here that, did you here that,
eh? That’s what I’m on about — did you see him repressing me,
you saw it didn’t you?
ubuntu repair
Jan 25th
A friend of mine had a problem with her ubuntu upgrade which left her machine unable to boot. Surprise surprise, there was no backups and loads of photos of the kids on the harddrive.
so, after trying a few things this is what worked for me.
boot ubuntu 9.10 install disk and “try ubuntu without making changes”
plugin removable drive (in this case my 200gb external)
now, while it may look like you can just copy the files over in the file manager you can’t because you do not own the files, you need to be “root”
goto Applications > Accessories > Terminal on the top menu.
in the terminal type
sudo /bin/bash
now you are root, you can fire up the file manager
at the prompt type
nautilus
A file manager window will appear that has the right permissions to copy things over to the external drive.
The Low Road
Dec 2nd
The Low Road
What can they do to you?
Whatever they want..
They can set you up, bust you,
they can break your fingers,
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember.
they can take away your children,
wall up your lover;
they can do anything you can’t stop them doing.
How can you stop them?
Alone you can fight, you can refuse.
You can take whatever revenge you can
But they roll right over you.
But two people fighting back to back
can cut through a mob
a snake-dancing fire
can break a cordon,
termites can bring down a mansion
Two people can keep each other sane
can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation
a cell, a wedge.
With four you can play games
and start a collective.
With six you can rent a whole house
have pie for dinner with no seconds
and make your own music.
Thirteen makes a circle,
a hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity
and your own newsletter;
ten thousand community
and your own papers;
a hundred thousand,
a network of communities;
a million our own world.
It goes one at a time.
It starts when you care to act.
It starts when you do it again
after they say no.
It starts when you say we
and know who you mean;
and each day you mean
one more.
- Marge Piercy
the state of things
Aug 25th
Lets start with debt, the youth of today are in debt just by being born, quite a feat considering the decision making generation of today enjoyed so many benefits of the post war era, cheap food, cheap clothes, cheap oil and have spent it all on themselves. If a young person decides to go to college or university they get a student loan and more personal debt.
I left school in 1988, when the acid house music scene was just starting, this was a great time in many young peoples lives, dancing together with no violence taking place seems far fetched these days but it happened, the only violence I saw was from the police breaking up the parties, new laws were made to make parties illegal. The parties changed and became fewer and farther away, so we got a cheap car, these days with the new law that gives car companies £2000 for selling a new car has made old cars that young people would buy worth far more than many can afford.
So after a few years of parties has I progressed into my early 20′s I could see the environmental degradation happening around the world, and thought I should do whatever I can to stop it. When I found other people who felt the same way, we started to protest about forests being cut down for roads, many of you know what happened next, the government made new laws to make many types of protest illegal. Laws that are still being used and abused.
So we are in a situation where youth of today are hassled and harassed for wearing hoodies, not having jobs and binge drinking by MPs who all wear clothes from the 17th century, have second jobs and have a 24 hour bar subsidised by the public. Not to mention the £400 a month they get to spend on food, when I know whole families that have to feed and clothe themselves on less than that.
If that was not enough companies are now not taking on young people and youth unemployment rising fast, what exactly do the decision making generation expect people like me and younger to do? When all we can see is them robbing my children’s future so that they can get rich and live a luxurious life, while normal hard working people suffer from ever rising prices for food, heating and petrol.
It makes you wonder why we all pretend that the government works for the people, when it clearly works for the bankers, oil companies, Agribusiness and themselves.
So, lets have a really good look where we are, peak oil, some very serious food issues, major environmental issues. While things like this are being discussed else where on the net, there are not that many solutions, let alone agreements .
so, while I tend to my garden and look after my children, I will decide exactly how I want to live and how I can look after my kids in these times, and I wonder what part of my life that are going to make illegal next ?
Film Trailer – THEY CALL IT ACID
Aug 25th
“From the forthcoming film, THEY CALL IT ACID. The story of Acid House – the birth of Rave. The culture the Government failed to crush! Featuring over 60 interviews including the world’s top DJs and rare archive film from the first illegal Acid House parties. …”
