Look Who's Started Drinking Again

I don't know why I find this funny

A version of the popular nursery rhyme collected by Alice Gomme and published in the Dictionary of British Folk-Lore in 1898:

Ring, a ring o' roses,
A pocket full o' posies,
Up-stairs and down-stairs,
In my lady's chamber
-- Husher! Husher! Cuckoo!

Return of celebrity watch (and Uncle Tea, subject to whim, certainly not popular demand)

Sorry to lower the tone, but, Becki, the crap one from Big Brother that nobody liked, outside the Thameslink terminal at King's Cross. Momentary exchange of glances which said a thousand words (to the nearest thousand). "Shit, you recognise me. Please leave me alone. I wish I was dead."

Episode ? +1 (and no returns)
In exchange for two full pounds of tuppeny rice and a used corpse shroud in the shape of Hungary, Uncle Tea shows the blind footman how to polish his face off the back of a spoon.

"I learnt this from the Sea Dayaks in Sabah, back in the old days, when men were men."
"I hate you with every last tired muscle in my body, but damn it I need this."

Hi All,

Some of you know and others may be learning for the first time that Emma and Anne Marie were arrested on Tuesday at the “die-in” in New York. They were held for 48 hours without being allowed to see a lawyer and without access to medication, despite Emma’s mild asthma attack on Tuesday night. They were first held in a makeshift detention center that had once been a warehouse for dangerous chemicals, and slept on bare floors allegedly impregnated with benzene. (Whatever it was will come out in the lawsuit. In the meantime, their clothes, which were filthy, have been collected, along with those of other protesters, as evidence.) On Wednesday afternoon they were transferred to the Tombs (underground prison and holding cells) at Manhattan Criminal Court. By that time we were starting to get concerned, since we hadn’t even gotten the obligatory phone call. We did hear from Anne Marie about 24 hours after she was taken into custody, but I was already down at the Court House trying to find out about them. Tom had been to the detention center and the court house earlier. I spent the night there in a fruitless search for news and in the hope that they would be released. Evidently they got word at 1 a.m. that none of them would be getting out any time soon, but the news never filtered upstairs. Of course, the handwriting was on the wall by that time, so we knew in our guts that they wouldn’t be out until the RNC was over.

I can’t say enough good things about the National Lawyers Guild people who were there advocating for the protesters all day and night. At different points, one or another would say to me, “I’m going home, I’m exhausted, and nothing is happening,” then an hour later I would see that person still trying every legal maneuver possible. The lawyers there represented decades of experience on some of the most important First Amendment and prisoners’ rights cases of the past thirty or forty years and even they were shocked by the disregard for the law. At one point, a group of us parents whose children had medical conditions (I’d been told that even though I’d brought her asthma medication with me I wouldn’t be allowed to send it in) were gathered with them. They had obtained a court order allowing them access to our relatives, and the police just flatly refused to let them in. I spoke with distraught parents whose children had just been out shopping, with people whose friends had been watching the protests from the sidewalk, with a “Frontline” reporter who said her cameraman had been captured and not released even after the president of PBS had called, and with others who were being released after 30 hours or so of detention and who were now waiting to hear about friends. Meanwhile, Tom was home and got a phone call from Emma, who sounded in good spirits.

I got home around 6 a.m. and Tom went down to the Court House, where he spent the day as the Guild lawyers tried to speed up the processing. A group of supporters and relatives was outside the Court House, and while he was there, he was interviewed by several news media, and is quoted in today’s NY Times and Daily News. He gave them a lot more info than they printed, as is usual. We are almost the last people in Manhattan not to have cell phones, so I stayed at home all day to get calls from the girls when they could get to a phone. It meant a lot to all of the detainees to hear about the legal efforts on their behalf and to know that people were outside cheering them on. Emma said that they could hear the cheers in their cells. Some sociological observations: a lot of people in our society, especially young people, are on drugs to keep them pacified and “happy,” and as the drugs wore off, people began to “lose it.”; our girls got a good picture of the difficulties of police work as well as the arbitrariness of bureaucratic power (i.e., whatever comfort or help one got depended on the personality of the police officer—they watched a hypoglycemic girl in the parked transport van pass out as the police ignored her, until one officer responded to the screams for help from fellow inmates).

Around 6 p.m. I learned that we had docket numbers, so I went down to the Court House, by which time Anne Marie was being interviewed by medics, and Emma was soon to be released. The support network in front of the Court House was wonderful, with a soup kitchen set up to provide free food, medics to give advice and check people out, and legal support teams sponsored by the Guild. We were very moved by the good nature of everyone even after days of sleeplessness, and of the solidarity. It was especially good to see people my age both among the protesters and in the legal teams. Younger people were dishing out the food and doing the medical work.

It wasn’t over, of course, for we next spent two and a half hours in line to pick up their confiscated cell phones. The police continued to play hard ball until the end, refusing to return possessions to people who did not have two forms of picture ID. Since most of the protestors were from out of town, they didn’t have relatives who could bring it to them. One girl had had her wallet stolen the week before, and although her parents in Delaware wanted to fax something to the police, it wasn’t considered acceptable.

There will be a lawsuit, of which we and the rest of the “RNC 1500” will be part. It was a clear picture of life under the Bush administration, stripped of constitutional guarantees, and certainly served to galvanize us to another level of activism to be sure that we don’t have four more years of erosion and erasure of civil liberties.

Thanks to all who called and offered your good wishes. For those of you in swing states, do whatever you can.

Maxine

My cousins are mentioned about half way down this article. I'll post the e-mail from my aunt next

New York Times,

September 3, 2004

Facing Fine, City Frees Hundreds of Detainees

state judge in Manhattan yesterday angrily ordered the city to release more than 550 protesters who had been detained without seeing a judge - some for as long as 60 hours - after they were arrested at demonstrations against the Republican National Convention. When not all the protesters had been released by 6 p.m., he held the city in contempt and ordered a fine of $1,000 for each person still held, without setting a time frame.

The judge, John Cataldo of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, demanded during a noon hearing that the city immediately process the demonstrators. Throughout the afternoon, knots of exhausted but relieved-looking protesters with disheveled clothing and grime-covered hands and arms emerged onto Centre Street from the Criminal Courts Building.

Many raised their hands in triumph and were greeted with boisterous cheers, whistles and sometimes even flowers from hundreds of onlookers who had gathered. Others looked on nervously, waiting to hear news of relatives and friends.

The city's corporation counsel, Michael A. Cardozo, issued a statement saying: "The judge was wrong not to permit the city sufficient time to complete the processing of arrestees. The release of those individuals is unfortunate to say the least." The judge and lawyers for the protesters and the city reconvened at 6 p.m. to discuss the progress of the releases, which had not been completed. Clearly frustrated, Judge Cataldo levied the fine on the city.

"The important thing is not the fine but to have these people released," the judge said. A hearing is expected next week to determine the amount of the fine against the city.

The detainees continued to emerge onto Centre Street into the evening. By 11 p.m., six people remained in custody, most of them members of a group called Code Pink who used various means to gain entrance to the convention site at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night. Five of the six face felony charges, lawyers for the city said.

Late last night, one of the five detainees facing a felony charge, Diana Gonzalez, 20, of Manhattan, found herself released unexpectedly because of a clerical error, she told reporters. The police attempted to rearrest her outside the courts building, but she said that Legal Aid Society lawyers, citing habeas corpus, secured her final release. She identified herself as a member of the protest group Act Up, not Code Pink.

Yesterday's abrupt release of the detainees and the threat of tens of thousands of dollars in fines capped a dramatic episode surrounding the convention, as more than 1,000 protesters who were swept off the streets Tuesday night were sent in handcuffs into the city's criminal justice system.

The city said it had cleared court dockets and opened additional courtrooms to handle the expected flood of protesters, but on Wednesday only a trickle of those arrested the night before appeared in court.

Judge Cataldo held another hearing at 7 p.m. to check on the city's progress and was not satisfied. "We're coming back again until this is settled," he said. "Once again, the order is, release these people."

Defense lawyers and protesters said something was amiss in the Police Department's detention process. City officials had maintained that those arrested were not being held for longer than 24 hours - the legal limit - without seeing a judge and that they were being given access to lawyers.

The defense lawyers and protesters claimed the police were using long detentions as a tactic to keep the streets clear until the convention was over.

Yesterday, during the noon hearing in Judge Cataldo's courtroom, the city conceded that some protesters were held too long. "We couldn't get everyone processed as quickly as we liked," Mr. Cardozo said.

He said the police had been overwhelmed by the number of arrests within a four-hour period on Tuesday, when about 1,200 people were taken into custody at different locations in Manhattan for offenses that ranged from disorderly conduct to resisting arrest to various degrees of assault. "We're doing our best" to move people through the system, he said.

At one point, clearly exasperated, the judge told Mr. Cardozo, "These people have already been the victims of a process. I can no longer accept your statement that you are trying to comply."

Judge Cataldo referred to a list produced by the court at 8 a.m. indicating that 120 people had been in police custody for more than 38 hours, and that 440 others had been in jail for a day and a half without having had an arraignment - the hearing at which charges are brought and bail is set. The State Court of Appeals ruled in 1991 that anyone arrested in New York who is not arraigned within 24 hours is eligible for immediate release.

The city and police officials said they could not pinpoint the cause of the delays. "I'm presuming it's volume," said Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. "What I'm assuming is that the volume caused some delay. I'm not prepared to say where in the process the delays were."

He denied that the long holding time was a deliberate tactic to keep protesters behind bars until the convention ends. Some members of the National Lawyers Guild circulated what they called an internal Police Department memo that seemed to suggest that protesters be held as long as possible, but Mr. Browne flatly called it a forgery.

During the hearing, Norman Siegel, a veteran civil rights lawyer, told the court that one client, a 17-year-old Trinity School student, had been in jail for 42 hours. "There is no reason, I submit, that this process had to take this long," Mr. Siegel said. The charge against the student was not known.

Mr. Siegel, along with lawyers from the Legal Aid Society and the National Lawyers Guild, filed writs of habeas corpus and began arguing in court on Wednesday that some protesters must be released. They said the vast majority of protesters were being held not for felonies but for misdemeanors like disorderly conduct that should have been processed in a few hours.

Mr. Siegel complained to Judge Cataldo that the protesters were being treated worse than criminals. "The only people being disadvantaged here are the protesters," he said. "We're arraigning robbers who have only been in 10 hours."

One lawyer, Elizabeth Fink, contended in court that some protesters in custody were wrongfully arrested in the first place. Accounts from people who said they were going about their business on the streets when they got caught in mass arrests seemed to back up her claim.

"People around the country are watching this," Mr. Siegel said. "I'm getting more and more calls asking, 'How could this happen in New York City?' "

Relatives of the detained expressed similar concerns. Tom Roderick, 61, was outside the court late yesterday hoping to find his daughters, Emma Rose, 19, and Anne Marie, 16, who he said had been held for 44 hours. He said it took a full day just to get their arrest numbers. He had been trading shifts with his wife so that one of them was always at home, waiting for a phone call.

Tales from those detained or their families had a consistent narrative: an arrest, followed by seemingly endless hours on buses, in holding pens and in cells at central booking before being allowed any outside contact, even brief communication.

Hanna Ingber, 23, said she was held from 9 p.m. last Friday until early Sunday morning after being arrested at the end of a bicycle protest in the East Village. She said she followed a commanding officer's directions to leave the demonstration through a line of police officers. She was there on a date, she said.

Hours later, after being handcuffed and photographed, she said, the crowd was broken into groups, put on buses and driven to the detention center on the Hudson River.

The center has been a focus of steady complaints; many detainees said they were covered in oily grime from the floors. Without conceding conditions were poor, city officials said yesterday that the holding area was carpeted on Wednesday.

Ms. Ingber said the officers told them the process would not take long. In her account, as they sat outside the detention center in the bus, several of the men complained that their handcuffs were too tight; one was yelling that he could not feel his hands, which another man said looked blue. Two officers came aboard. "What do you want me to do?" said one, "I'm not a doctor." The other one said, "You were the ones who had to riot. This is what you get."

Ms. Ingber said that about 11:30 that night she was corralled into a pen inside the detention center, where she remained until about 11:30 a.m. Saturday. She said she was released about 1:30 a.m. Sunday.

The police issued a breakdown of the 1,735 protesters arrested in the last week who had identification, showing that 1,135 were from outside New York State; 61 of those arrested have refused to identify themselves, the police said.

Colin Moynihan, William K. Rashbaum and Howard O. Stier contributed reporting for this article.

Some Questions, and new frontiers in vision here, as I post a picture

How funny, on a scale of one to laughing, is this "joke" (source: Metro) "I'm a tall blonde"?

How attractive, on a scale of one to retching, is David Blunkett? Answer with reference to the source material below:

Is my beard still here? Why, yes!

What is sleeping with a blind man like? Does David Blunkett's penis glow in the dark? Is it like a policeman's truncheon or 'nightstick' (oo-er...)?

The Tony Martin school of moral philosophy

Nick, you should get some of this ASBO shit on your local vandals

http://society.guardian.co.uk/crimeandpunishment/story/0,8150,1267227,00.html

Labour runs Manchester City Council. Since Asbos were introduced five years ago, Manchester has issued more than 300 orders - almost twice as many as any other city in the country - and has led the field not only in numbers, but in the imaginative audacity of its Asbos. Some orders have included a ban on riding a bicycle in the city centre, on meeting more than three non-family members in public, on wearing a balaclava in the street, on wearing a single golf glove....and in April a city magistrate served what was believed to be a first, banning a 16-year-old boy from misbehaving in school. If he disrupts a class, he can now be sent to prison....

...Zach Tutin is the infamous teenage boy whose Asbo bans him from saying "grass" until 2010. The order also outlaws the words "slag", "cripple" and "Paki", and bans Zach from using the main thoroughfare of Moston, east Manchester, where he lives with his mother. Outside the house, an aborted "Zac" had been sprayed in shaving foam on the pavement, beside a pool of vomit and a crumpled lager can...

..."If kids are capable of going out and robbing someone in their 80s, they've made a decision about that, haven't they? It's about decisions and free will. You know," he sighed, "it's not about middle-class people setting rules or standards for working-class people. A lot of us came from poor backgrounds; I know lots of people whose parents split up, and they didn't go round putting fireworks through people's doors or wrecking people's cars. Deprivation isn't an argument."

Make it stop

Anagram Records have just released a double CD 'Tribute to the Darkness', the first disc being a series of covers of classic(?) hits, and the second, 'The Roots of the Darkness', being a collection of their major musical influences. Like Paul Daniels, and Bubble from Big Brother 2.

What is this? What isisiisiisiisiisis thisisiisisis???>!!! (I am hyperventilating as I write this)
Yes I remember, a wide eyed seven-year-old, searching around an old cupboard in my sprawling family mansion (wearing a pinafore or sailor suit, I forget), brushing the dust off my grandfather's old wax cylinder recording of 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love'. My tiny mind was awestruck by Justin Hawkins' spellbinding falsetto: I had rediscovered a musical classic. At no time did the phrase "AAAAGHHHH! CUNT, CUNT, CUNT, CUNT!!!" cross my mind. EVER.

If anybody buys this CD, I will come round their house and cover them with building rubble. No arguments. Its that simple. The Darkness will soon be given lifetime achievement awards, release a Greatest Hits CD (i.e. re-release their only album, possibly with a series of collectible inlays, which require most members of the British population to buy twelve thousand copies and use them to wallpaper their house), and then its not long before they worm their way into positions of major political influence (as if they haven't already). Why don't we abolish the old national anthem, and just use their latest single to represent ourselves to the world? After all, it is becoming clear that they are now officially titans in the new 21st century celebrity theology.

I want, now:
1. Portraits of The Darkness in every public building. Especially schools. And a pledge of allegiance to them.
2. Justin Hawkins doll in baby form with cat/romper suit, detachable ego, realistic squeal and working tattoo machine.
3. The Darkness shaped duvets. Yes, you heard me. Why stop with the covers? So you can sleep with those loveable comedy-metal fuckers every night.
4. New 'The Darkness' lamps. Don't work like normal lamp, so you can experience 'the darkness' first hand, but do play all the Darkness's songs ever (all four) at deafening volume, on permanent loop. Doesn't turn off, even when unplugged, like in some cheap horror film.
5. The ultimate aim is that all newborn babies will be fitted with The Darkness cybernetic modifications: a video array under eyelids and cochlea implants which ensure they are there reassuring us about the healthy state of "rock 'n' roll" whenever we close our eyes or ears. You'll never be able to listen to anything else ever, ever, again.

Meet the pro-Bush punks

The most anti-establishment of music genres is being used in support of the US Republican party:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1255768,00.html

Do not even get me started on this. DO NOT GET ME STARTED. Thankfully this Nick Rizzuto guy is considered by most in the "punk community" to have about as much credibility as Ronald McDonald.

However, I find this misleading:

The politics of punk have never been clear-cut. In late-1970s Britain, as the Clash were fronting Rock Against Racism, Oi! bands such as Skrewdriver were backing the National Front.

Right wing "punk" is a bastard offshoot promoted by thugs, and racism is by definition, not punk at all. As far as a lot of people are concerned, including me, punk actually means "anti-establishment". It is NOT a genre of music. The Ramones were never punk, early punk just borrowed certain musical elements from them. The Sex Pistols were pretty much faux-radicals as well. Oi! and street punk generally refuse to embrace any kind of musical progression, and are hence also not punk. See:

http://www.badreligion.com/news/essays.php?id=5

In America, early punks spat in the face of liberalism, establishing a precedent for extreme views. Today, the militantly abstinent, purity obsessed hardcore punks known as straight-edgers oppose drug use with a zeal that would make an evangelical Christian applaud.

Yeah because Minor Threat were really conservative weren't they? Straight edge was supposed to be a further level of anti-establishment behaviour, that has sort of turned into a dogma. Even so, it was hardly aping conservatives as a reaction to "liberal" dogmatism like these pricks appear to be doing.

I'm your typical hip-hop political figure
But I'm not left wing or right wing, I'm the middle finger
Non-Prophets (2003) Damage

I've recently been following with barely contained ecstasy the argument between David Blunkett and the Humberside Constabulary. Not only did they vote to tell him to fuck right off once again, but actually increased the majority in favour of said snub since he threatened court action to suspend the chief constable. Oh what justice it would be if the judge throws the case out of court.

I genuinely hope this ends up as some kind of genuine watershed in the rising tide of blame culture. Blunkett continues to behave absolutely disgracefully over this, and if it can be demonstrated to him that he has no business continually politicising non-political issues it will be a very good thing.