AIRSTRIP ONE

AUGUST NEWS SURF:

• BRITISH POLICE NOT SEXY ENOUGH
• WHAT DO JUDGES KNOW ABOUT ORGASMS?
• CHERIE SAYS THERE'S NOTHING QUEER ABOUT THE THIRD WAY!
• THE LUST FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
• EUROPHILES PROPOSE COITUS JURIS
• EURO CRISIS - DANISH WOMEN CAN'T SAY JA
• THE CANDIDATE LIST - WHO'S FOR AND AGAINST GROUP SEX

Hi, I'm Jim...
Know me as Gemineye Jim or Jim Gemineye. Anything, as long as it's not Jim Gemineye chéri !

On the other hand, Eric is a nice name..

BLAIR'S MILLENNIUM

Eric Blair wrote the book 1984 using the pen name GEORGE ORWELL. Like all good science fiction 1984 dealt not so much with fanciful illusions about the future, but about his own perceptions of his time (1948). Writers sometimes have to use outlandish contexts in order to break the barriers of preconceptions that readers put up. However, in creating this new context, he explored several ideas that we could apply to other eras and also see come to fruition in this new millennium.

• Telescreen - we thought this was his view of the new medium of TV being used to brainwash the masses. That was before digital TV came along. Digital TV will evolve - it will be on all the time, it will be two way - the TV in the bedroom will have to go.
• Newspeak - Didn't quiet get this right. The idea was destroy the ability to express unorthodox ideas by destroying the language required to communicate them. This was done by simplification. Well, if anything, language has become even more complex. But some might argue that corruption of words like cool and wicked accomplish the same thing as Newspeak. On the other hand with the creation of a ‘drug culture' do you need Newspeak? If you're on the right drugs you can drivel on for hours without saying anything meaningful - let alone radical.
• Chocolate rations - Not quite sure why chocolate rations figured so much in Orwell's vision. It was used as a kind of reward or punishment. If news was bad, chocolate rations were reduced - if news was good, chocolate rations were increased. It was as if the people were held to blame for events in Airstrip One, We don't have chocolate rations now - but we do have interest rates.

Airstrip One was the new name for England or Britain under the regime of Big Brother.

Welcome to a different kind of spin... it's less gassy and leaves no bitter after-taste.

I haven't had sex for twenty years - is this a breach of my human rights?

I've just found a home for the Maastricht Treaty - it's at MUSTDESTROY.COM

The gulf states have increased output three times this year... and yet we still cant get enough of it.

The Korean Government plans to force car users to leave their car at home for at least one day a week. It's doing this to boost its crude oil reserves.

In the UK, the British Government is effectively accusing oil companies of doing much the same thing by cooperating with protesters!

Truck drivers in Australia are also having a hard time. Derv has recently risen 30 cents. Truck drivers in Perth reacted by blockading the city's main freight depot.

Even the USA doesn't escape - pump prices there are up 19 per cent - and heating oil up 35 per cent.

There are exceptions: In Iraq petrol is free, but then who are they going to sell it to? Likewise, Iran is also subject to US sanctions.

A report in Business Line-India suggests that oil production peaked 30 years ago and that sometime this century the global economy ‘will run out of gas'.

But if you think you should dump your car and use public transport - you would be wrong, well not so much as wrong as wasting your time. The World Trade Organisation are to blame...
Business World (Philippines) reports on China's petro economy:
"What the WTO promise has done is to rev up the world's multinationals towards the business of peddling that economy car to the middle classes of this country of 1.3 billion people."
In an economy that has not yet become reliant on the car, the WTO are encouraging its use there!

Meanwhile - on this side of the world - there is a lot of talk of the need for a hefty 'green' tax to deter people from using the car. I gotta ask - WHAT FOR?

When it's one of those Eurotrash kind of months.

FREE TRADE or SLAVE TRADE?

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SEX KILLS

I pulled up behind a Cadillac;
We were waiting for the light;
And I took a look at his licence plate -
It said "JUST ICE"
Is Justice just ice?
Governed by greed and lust?
Just the strong doing what they can
And the weak suffering what they must?
And the gas leaks,
And the oil spills,
And sex sells everything,
And sex kills...

From the album "Turbulent Indigo" by Joni Mitchell

EURO TRASH

I guess it should just be called trash. But that would miss the point - this TV show is about all "us" wacky Europeans and how wonderfully crazy "we" all are. And a good excuse to show some bums and tits as well - there's nothing wrong with pandering to baser instincts when you're trying to sell high minded concepts.

German Trash, French Trash or even English Trash just wouldn't do. We have to be inclusive here - don't want to breach anyone's human rights do we.

No, "us" Europeans take pride in being even trashier than America. And that takes some doing. And all for what? To make us feel more part of Europe.

Maybe that's why TV in America is so dire. After hundreds of years, they are still trying to pretend they are all just Americans - and the media has to prove this relentlessly day in and day out.

And when they're not doing that they're screening third rate police shows which people only watch for the night club scenes that show dance girls waving their bums in your face - an attraction only there to sell wide screen TVs.

I do look forward to all those sexy new channels coming our way. Turn on, tune out... or something like that.

SEX AND THE PROLETARIAT

Is it by accident that sexual freedom is used so ruthlessly by two regimes of nightmarish authoritarian oppression? I refer to the fictitious regimes in Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was first published 68 years ago - in 1932. The writing seems a little dated now - it may even ‘sound incredible'. Here is a small excerpt from chapter three:

‘Exquisite little creature!' said the Director, looking after her. Then, turning to his students, ‘What I'm going to tell you now,' he said, ‘may sound incredible. But then, when you're not accustomed to history, most facts about the past do sound incredible.'

He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.

A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of his listeners. Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves? They could not believe it.

‘Even adolescents,' the DHC was saying, ‘even adolescents like yourselves...'

‘Not possible!'

‘Barring a little surreptitious auto-erotism and homosexuality - absolutely nothing.'

‘Nothing?'

'In most case, till they were over twenty years old.'

‘Twenty years old?' echoed the students in a chorus of loud disbelief.

As I'm keying this in I can hear the news on the radio. I hear that a gang of youths gang raped a 37 year old women after throwing her in a London canal. They stripped her and made her flee from the scene naked. The youngest of the "youths" was 12 years old.

Possibly Aldous Huxley might have used words a little stronger than "sounds incredible".
Still, at least these ‘youths' won't grow up ignorant of their sexuality. If they do, then I'm sure the European Court of Human Rights will have something to say about it - as they do most things.

I don't think George Orwell would have been shocked by that broadcast. George Orwell's 1984 was published in 1949, seventeen years after Aldous Huxley's. It's a much more complex book than Brave New World. The use of sexual freedom is not as clear cut. For the party members there were puritanical codes of conduct, but for the majority of the rest of the population there was complete sexual freedom - alongside political oppression.

Chapter 7 described the proletariat of Big Brother's Britain like this:

To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they become discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice. The great majority of proles did not even have telescreens in their homes. Even the civil police interfered with them very little. There was a vast amount of criminality in London, a whole world-within-a-world of thieves, bandits, prostitutes, drug-peddlers and racketeers of every description; but since it happened among the proles themselves, it was of no importance.

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, published by Penguin Twentieth Century Classics
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, published by Flamingo
Both books available at WH Smith Online.

  

BRAVE NEW EUROPE

How could Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984, both written over 50 years ago, contain such chillingly accurate aspects of today's world. Perhaps it's because they're the same world? We let technology and affluence fool us into thinking we have advanced, but we have not. Human nature remains the same - and the weapon government uses to control its people has always been the same. That weapon is LAW. There are two kinds of law:

Laws of opportunity.
Laws of opportunity are the easiest way to create powerful forces of change. Laws of Opportunity do not need to be enforced, they exploit human nature - in Huxley's world the opportunity is for lust.

Laws of restraint.
Laws of restraint are completely ineffective, but often required to counter a populations fears of changes they don't like. Changes often brought about by laws of opportunity. Laws of restraint are ineffective, of course, because they must be enforced. In Orwell's world the laws of restraint are extremely oppressive, but there are hardly any examples of them being enforced. He explicitly states that the police more or less leaves the population to their own devices. Buying black market goods is a crime, but all the party members do it.

In Orwell's book, it is not restraint that control's the population, it is the opportunity to rise within the power structure that oppresses. Exploiting, this time, the lust for power and control over the lives of others - for you never have control of your own - that is the concept of Big Brother. And when laws of restraint are enforced - it is to demoralise and destroy those that do not share the common ambition, rather than those who break explicit laws.

The last few months have seen quite a few ‘restraining' laws introduced. If and when they become acts of Parliament, they may or may not be enforced vigorously. As for laws of opportunity - we have to look to Europe for those. In particular the European Court of Human Rights.

WHO CAN BE AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS?

Human Rights - just two words, they could mean anything. Just what are the rights given to humanity - and by whom, God? Or do "us" humans decide? Well, some of us anyway - by those free from sin and prejudice? Where do we find them?

And just how universal are those "tablets of stone" handed down to us from Strasbourg. There are many cultures that jar painfully with our own, where what is right and what rights are, may be viewed from a different perspective. But we take the view that we know best. We have Human Rights on "our side".

Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator that we must rid this world of. The Iraqi people are held hostage to USA and European demands for his overthrow. We occasionally kill a few innocent Iraqis when we feel we're not being taken seriously enough, but it is not us that breach Iraqi human rights - it's not our fault, it's the evil Saddam Hussein's fault. Apparently we are no longer responsible for our own actions. If this nonsense is the context of our so called human rights, then of what value are they?

Well, for the powers that be, they have a lot of value. When we think of the abuse of human right's, we are likely to think of things like summary execution, torture, imprisonment without trial, bombing innocent civilians - that sort of thing.

A victim of a parking ticket procedure may not be the first thing that springs to mind.

What have European Human Rights have to do with a small legal matter that should be dealt with by a magistrates court? Clearly nothing unless the HRA is less about rights and more about establishing an acceptance of European law - in readiness for the coming superstate.

The Human Rights Act will be impressively successful at this - it is, after all, "governed by greed and lust" - the EHA will provide a quite literally golden opportunity for opportunists who, no doubt, are rubbing their hands in anticipation at this very moment. That song again by Joni Mitchell, Sex Kills, sums it up: "And lawyers haven't been this popular since Robespierre slaughtered half of France!"

Now some (Guardian readers) might think that I'm confusing the EU's Court of Justice with the Council of Europe's Court of Human Rights - I am not. See the Time Line. They are the same - in the sense that one created the other. They are both part of the same process.

Of the 173 treaties created by the Council of Europe, 66 of them are concerned with the harmonisation of law within Europe and CoE member countries. These treaties are in addition to those on Human Rights and include criminal, civil, commercial and international law. It is up to the member states to create legislation that complies with these treaties. And when the EU states get their federal identity - become one country - member states will not even have a choice over how CoE treaties become law - except through the watered down 'democracy' of the superstate.

Then there is the propaganda use of the concept human rights to alienate dissenters and cow less enthusiastic euro-sceptics...

I quote a passage from Noam Chomsky's pamphlet Media Control to show how this works - it refers to a steel strike in 1937:

There was a major strike, the Steel strike in western Pennsylvania at Johnstown. Business tried out a new technique of labour destruction, which worked very well. Not through goon squads and breaking knees. That wasn't working very well any more, but through more subtle and effective means of propaganda.

The idea was to figure out ways to turn the public against the strikers, to present the strikers as disruptive, harmful to the public and against common interests.

The common interests are those of "us", the businessman, the worker, the housewife. That's all "us". We want to be together and have things like harmony and Americanism and working together.

Then there's those bad strikers out there who are disruptive and causing trouble and breaking harmony and violating Americanism. We've got to stop them so we can all live together. The corporate executive and the guy who cleans the floors all have the same interests.

We can all work together and work for Americanism in harmony, liking each other.

That was essentially the message. A huge amount of effort was put into presenting it. This is, after all, the business community, so they control the media and have massive resources. And it worked, very effectively. It was later called the "Mohawk Valley formula" and applied over and over again to break strikes.

They were called "scientific methods of strike-breaking", and worked very effectively by mobilizing community opinion in favor of vapid, empty concepts like American-ism. Who can be against that? Or Harmony. Who can be against that? Or, as in the Persian Gulf War, "Support our troops". Who can be against that?

(My spacing to make it clearer on a web page)

And today the Mohawk Valley formula is still being used.

Only the striking steel workers are now the Euro-sceptics - disruptive xenophobes, small minded intolerant people out to spoil the promised everlasting peace and harmony for all "us" reasonable people who just know that joining the Euro will be the best thing that ever happened to us - or that subscription to Horny Group Sex monthly refunded in full.

The pamphlet Media Control by Noam Chomsky is available from WHSmith Online.

FEDERAL LANDMARKS TIME LINE

1949:
Treaty of London, creates the Council of Europe.

1951
Council of Europe creates The European Coal & Steel Community (ECSC).

1957
Treaty of Rome creates European Economic Community (EEC or "Common Market").

1967
European Community formed by a merger of the EEC, Euratom and European Coal & Steel Community. EEC becomes EC.

1993
Maastricht Treaty Ratified. The EC becomes the EU

20??
United States of Europe formed by a merger of EU and Council of Europe. EU becomes USE.

We need to look back to 1949 to see where it all began and to see how clear that goal was all along. From the Council of Europe's website I quote a bit of history:

Winston Churchill was the first to point to the solution, in his speech of 19 September 1946 in Zurich. According to him, what was needed was "a remedy which,as if by miracle, would transform the whole scene and in a few years make all Europe as free and happy as Switzerland is today. We must build a kind of United States of Europe". Movements of various persuasions, but all dedicated to European unity, were springing up everywhere at the time. All these organisations were to combine to form the International Committee of the Movements for European Unity. Its first act was to organise the Hague Congress, on 7 May 1948, remembered as "The Congress of Europe".

A year later the Council of Europe was formed. Today CoE countries include all the European countries (west and east), Iceland, Scandinavian and Baltic states and the Russian Federation.

Only two countries are missing from this group - Serbia and Belarus. Obviously they can't be allowed to spoil things for the tidy minded Europeans - something will have to be done about them... Mmm.

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