Dear people,

I am off to Dorset for a day and a half, and am taking the computer that runs my Radio away with me, to properly sort out the programming schdule for the coming weeks. Therefore there will be no radio till Saturday.

But On Saturday, it will be FINE.

x

The brain fuckery I got flung into after the other night’s marathon investigations was ugly, but, as it goes, a song came out of it. Riffing on the Wu-Tang Clan’s I Can’t Go To Sleep, from The W, I took Isaac Hayes’ cover of Walk On By, flipped it a bit, voiced my upset over the top, sprinkled with bits of Conspiracy Of Silence, et voila. It’s gonna be on ATD14, but for now you can hear the thing on my MySpace page.

On November 4th, 1988 the Omaha Franklin Credit-Union Bank was raided and closed by the IRS and the FBI. The raid and closing were conducted resulting from an audit on Lawrence King, the “fastest rising black star in the Republican Party,” and the Franklin Credit Union’s manager’s tax returns.

Initially public investigators estimated King had stolen about $4 million from the Franklin Credit Union assets. By the end of their investigation, Officials totaled the missing assets at some $39 million. It also transpired that the FBI had confiscated child pornography, videotapes and photographs at Franklin Credit Union offices. Oh, and that Larry “and some of his top political cronies”, in the words of John DeCamp, lawyer, former US state senator and author of The Franklin Cover-Up, “were using children as drug couriers to deliver drugs across the country and to compromise politicians, businessmen and be sex slaves.”

The details of the abuse suffered by King’s sex slaves are among some of the most heart breakingly vile testimonies I have ever read. And the list of King’s clients includes - to this day - names that reach to the highest levels of US government.

As it went, King was jailed for fraud, the child abuse charges quashed, and he got out in 2001. However, despite threats to his life and those of his family, DeCamp continued to legally represent a number of King’s victims. One of those was Paul Bonacci, a Multiple Personality Disorder sufferer and, since the age of three, victim of the CIA’s MK-Ultra/Monarch Project, in the words of DeCamp “mind control experiments run either by U.S. government agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency or military intelligence agencies… [the victims] were tortured for the purpose of creating ‘multiple personalities’ within them. These multiple personalities could then be programmed - as spies, ‘drug mules,’ prostitutes or assassins.”

In the first act of vague justice in the whole Franklin saga, Bonacci was in 1999 awarded $1 million, ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Warren Urbom to be paid by Larry King himself. As it is, King, as rich people do, hid his money well, and has to date paid back $25.

In the Memorandum of Decision, Judge Urbom wrote,

“This legal judgement against a notorious perpetrator of satanic-ritual child abuse is unprecedented. King continually subjected the plaintiff [Bonacci] to repeated sexual assaults, false imprisonment, infliction of extreme emotional distress, organized and directed satanic rituals, forced the plaintiff to ’scavenge’ for children to be a part of the defendant King’s sexual abuse and pornography ring, forced the plaintiff to engage in numerous sexual contacts with the defendant King and others and participate in deviate sexual games and masochistic orgies with other minor children.

“He [Bonacci] has suffered burns, broken fingers, beatings of the head and face and other indignities by the wrongful actions of the defendant King,” the judge declared. “In addition to the misery of
going through the experiences just related over a period of eight years [1980-1988], the plaintiff has suffered the lingering results to the present time. “He [Bonacci] is a victim of multiple
personality disorder, involving as many as 14 distinct personalities aside from his primary personality.

He has given up a desired military career and received threats on his life. He suffers from sleeplessness, has bad dreams, has difficulty holding a job, is fearful that others are following him, fears getting killed, has depressing flashbacks, and is verbally violent on occasion, all in connection with the multiple personality disorder and caused by the wrongful activities of the
defendant King.”

“Almost anybody who was anybody involved in the investigation either ended up dying or discovering that they wanted to commit suicide,” noted DeCamp, in a 2004 interview, “I think I listed 22, something like that, deaths of key individuals involved.”

From FranklinCase.org:

“In 1993 Yorkshire Television sent a documentary crew to Omaha, Nebraska to investigate, document, and interview those close to the Franklin Case. Throughout the following few months the crew collected hours of interviews, spending nearly half a million dollars in the process.

The documentary had been contracted by the Discovery Channel, and was to air in the spring of 1994 on American Television. However, the title of the documentary spoke its fate. Conspiracy of Silence was scheduled to air May 3, 1994, with the date published in the TV Guide. But when audiences tuned in from around the country they found that the ground-breaking documentary had been pulled off the air.

Later informants told John DeCamp that the documentary had been pulled after Congress struck a deal with cable companies. While other Washington officials claimed the documentary contained pornographic material and should not be aired.

Though the Discovery Channel made a deal to destroy all copies of the documentary a cutting-room copy of the expose was anonymously mailed to John DeCamp in 1995.”

Thanks to the ever-incredible wonder of the internet, you can watch the documentary online, by clicking here for high speed, or here for low. It is also on Google Video here.

DeCamp’s book, The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska, can be bought at Amazon for ten bucks here. It is not a jolly read. But it is an important read. If we are to get out of this lunatic mindset that states they wouldn’t do that sort of thing, we have to be aware of just what they actually do.

I am going to have to sleep now, and I really hope none of this infects my dreaming life. Because my waking is haunted quite enough. Which is as it should be. Human existence is beautiful, and it is grotesque. To deny that a half of it is actual is to deny humanity itself - to damn those unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of that grotesque, and in smacked-out, “blissful ignorance”, to damn ourselves.

Good night.

Well, I just finished my second radio show on Donsquad radio, which was fun indeed. We had Narstie and Jeres on the line (Narstie told us a joke and sang Thanks For All The AIDS, and Jeres is in Reading, being drunk and investigative), and all manner of excellent tunes. I did not get bit by a monster today. Phew. The show will repeat at 10pm UK time - it is two hours long in duration, and is followed by Kurt Vonnegut’s The Boy Who Hated Girls, which is half an hour long and very good. I shall do another show at 1am, for, like, an hour. After that we’re gonna play The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. The pattern that will begin to emerge, is that there will be regular shows every day, along with some classic radio plays,repeated a few times so you can all catch them, in your random timezones.

Boy, that bug did a number on me…

See?

It is.

HURRAH FOR ZEF!

HURRAH FOR ME!

I am not going to waste time telling you about all the things in it. Go have a snoop around for yourselves.

I am going to DJ on the radio station until I fall asleep. I had three hours and was up at 7 you know.

UP!

Like this NEW SITE!

RAH RAH RAH RAH!

The new ATD site launches tomorrow. IT IS SEXY!

Anyway: looking about on my MySpace page, it has been my fortune to discover how very beatiful you all are. With this in mind, and the imminent demise of MySpace, it dawns on me that it would be nice to have a place on the site where we can see pictures of you all. So if you’d like to be a visible member of the Don Army, send a picture of yourself, with your name, and any contact details you wish to be displayed, to donarmy@akirathedon.com. All rise!

Oh, and The Gallery, which is all those drawing you’ve been doing,m is looking AMAZING.

So I thank you.

x

I went to see my PR yesterday, and help her write the press release for my album. She mentioned that she’d not been able to look at a newspaper for a week, and had been driven to considering a purchase of Hello.

I can’t blame her. I did it. I didn’t read the news for four days because it was too fucking depressing. As noted earlier on the Rigorous Intuition comments thread,

letting the brownshirts have their way with anyone brave (or foolish) enough to come out in public opposition to them is part of the same strategy of staging fake terror incidents and assigning blame to patsies in child murder & perversion cases in the most obvious, ham-fisted method possible. They know that no one other than the rabid fascists in their camp “believes” or trusts them anymore, so now the strategy is to be blatant about their misdirection and obfuscation. Loosely translated, they’re saying, “Fuck you. Whad’ya gonna do about it?”

Wth reagrds to the recent “Sheiks On A Plane” nonsense, an ICM poll in today’s Guardian, reveals that “only 20% of all voters, and 26% of Labour voters, say they think the government is telling the truth about the threat, while 21% of voters think the government has actively exaggerated the danger.”

Neo Labour today are looking at “the lowest figure recorded by ICM for the Guardian since just before the 1987 election and the second lowest since the poll series began in 1984.”

What do animals do when backed into conrners? And how about provenly genocidal, despotic, mad-eyed public school boys?

Let us consider the wise words of Lou Reed, from 1989’s There Is No Time:

This is no time for Celebration
This is no time for Shaking Heads
This is no time for Backslapping
This is no time for Marching Bands
This is no time for Optimism
This is no time for Endless Thought
This is no time for my country Right or Wrong
Remember what that brought
There is no time

This is no time to turn away and drink
or smoke some vials of crack
This is a time to gather force
and take dead aim and Attack
This is no time for Celebration
This is no time for Saluting Flags
This is no time for Inner Searchings
The future is at head
This is no time for Phony Rhetoric
This is no time for Political Speech
This is a time for Action
because the future’s Within Reach

Hey people. Today I am testing out my online radio station. You can find it through Winamp - it’s called Donsquad Radio. Or, if you wanna join me today in my testing, you can click this link -= http://sc7.spacialnet.com:16292/listen.pls

Right now I am playing MEATLOAF!

Prolly because I haven’t read a newspaper or a proper website for a few days, I feel rather chipper, so I appologise in advance. I had a lovely weekend, with the drinking and the dancing and the hubbing and the DJing and the getting asked to play Carter (like, No. AHAHAHA!). AND I cooked a roast, and I haven’t done that since before I went to America. I am going to do it a lot, not only does one get to experiment with gravy (mine had strawberries in it last night. Well, strawberry.), one also gets most of a chicken to make sandwitches with all through the next day. If one has a bottle of sweet chilli sauce, this is a grand thing indeed. Also, I have done so much drawing I have RSI, and Zef has realised my instructions quite prefectly with regards to a feature on my new website. You’ll see.

So. I couldn’t even be fucked to comment about Lonely Blair’s latest outrage at the time, being so overwhelmed with “our” government’s evil of late, but Jeres did, so I’ll show you what he said:

Fucking hell, I thought I’d seen it all, but no, this government just gets more and more obtuse and demented with every passing day. How can you tell what a terrorist looks like? This is the most racist legislation I’ve heard of in, like, ever. 150 years ago police were told to keep an eye out for people with big foreheads and thick-set features as they were probably criminals. How we laughed when we heard this in school! Apparently, according to palmists, if you’ve got square thumbs you’re probably a murder. Yes, yes, but that’s coming from a fucking palmist. We don’t expect this sort of ignorant, draconian bullshit from our government. Or rather, we do now. This is getting sicker and more frightening by the second…

Speaking of frightening, I was visited by an eight foot white alien with a foot long neck this morning in my dream. It was actually really rather lucid, and I sat there for about 10 minutes bricking it. Could this be alcohol withdrawal? I also ate a big lump of cheese with some crackers before I went to bed, but I was always under the illusion that was just a myth. I did actually try and jump headbutt the alien in my dream but he was a bit too quick for me, and I ended up on the floor. Then I woke up. Perhaps I should have tried talking to him first but he did turn up unannounced on my stairs. Plus it was a dream and he mentioned something about my toy dog who I had since I was three-years-old called Ralph. “Ralph or Rolf?” he asked. It doesn’t sound as scary when you relay it, does it…”

Last night I dreamt that a man who objected to my conversation with another man beat my face so badly with a metal pole that I had no cartilage left, my nose was all flat and squished, and my eyes were puffy slits, and my newly defined jaw wasn’t a jaw anymore, just some skin with bits of gristle slopping about in it. Then the bastard’s wife had the gall to come sneaking about my house unannounced to laugh at me. “I was handsome once,” I wailed, for no good reason, before being left alone in the dark. She had friend with her, who felt bad for me, and gave me a bunch of notes and pennies. Then she decided she needed the notes, and left me with a palm full of coppers and a sloppy bag of smashed cartilage atop my shoulders. I was very upset, believing it to be real, so you can imagine my relief when I was charitably woken by a kindly genius, who’d had only gone and been in a goshdarned car crash in her dreaming life. Last week I had a dream that lasted for about a fortnight, in my head, in which pretty much everybody I knew turned against me and gave me up to some big hairy white aliens, that swarmed t’ward me, trapped in a valley as I was, from the brims of the peripheral mountains. It is quite unfair. My dream times have been a horrid cacophony of nightmares for as long as I can remember. I had a reoccurring dream when I was a tiny person in which a creature that looked like the old illustrations of golumn from those Lord of The Rings art books stalked me around a forest for days and slaughtered my whole family. And then there was one about a horse with no eyelids, which is what you get for being bought up in Wales, with its violent mythology and its spoons of wood. Goshdarned Mabelogion rottery. I might start sleeping with an alarm that goes off every half hour, I don’t know if I can hack any more of this epic nastiness. Waking up is rather like how the children who go to Narnia feel when they leave.

Still, that fortnight long hairy alien one was, at least, lucid. I couldn’t wake up, but I could control myself, which is why I got away. Sometimes, I totally rule.

I get the sweetest emails. Forsooth:

Hey Akira,

Aw!

Communication from Tego, managing man of a certan Why Lout? will follow forthwith:

“If you want to offer your fans the chance to get in to KoKo on Saturday to see you DJ for half price then we have these abilities… We have an unlimited £5 list.”

Hear that? UNLIMITED! Email me, and it will be so. First 5 I shall make FREE, cos I am Captain Universe, and if you think I’m joking, you know nothing about the inside of my ass.

Serious.

Koko is in London. Camden, in fact. This Saturday, by the way, looks like this:

THE LONGCUT
VINCENT VINCENT AND THE VILLAINS
DUELS
GET CAPE. WEAR CAPE. FLY.
PINK GREASE
THE BISHOPS
DEGA BREAKS

PLUS IN TOP BAR: **DADDY I WANT A WRISTBAND** FEATURING DJS: THE SHAMONES, ALEX THE BRADLEY, SKINNY ALEX, TOWERS OF LONDON, TEGO ARTROCKER VS. AKIRA THE DON (Swang, Crunk, Grime DJ battle), DJ Jack Nimble and Marvin The Martian (Live PA).

8pm-4am. £10.00 in advance. Rah rah rah.

All of the people
In all of this land
There stands a doctor
Glass of wine in hand
Together we live
Together we stand
One part of one thing
An endless strand
Pink Ninja, 2006

There’s a little girl who lives on my block, who I see most days. She helped me move in - as Trey and I lugged glass cabinets up three flights of stairs, this girl heaved herself up the same on her rollerblades, carrying shoeboxes full of CDs. She told me her name that day, but I forgot it. I feel bad about that, but I’ve been here since January, and it seems a bit late to ask again now. I’m hoping one day her mother calls her in for her tea when I’m about and I catch it.

Anyway. I was just getting in from the gym, and she was down the other end of the block, on her bike. I waved at her, and she came cycling over, all excited. “Adam, Adam!” she shouted. “I’ve got something for you.”

She pulled up, and opened her little hand, and said, “Look! Green beans! There’s loads of them down there. You can put them in some water and have them for your lunch.”

She gave me one, and started to pull apart at the casing of another. “They’re only small,” she said, a little sadly. “But they’re good.”

Which is true.

I had a beautiful daydream yesterday, and today was full of nightmares from which I could not awake. Which is a bit mean.

Still, I had my happy daydream. As you noted (I shall paraphrase here), “it is odd to consider that as I slave away in the office, men cruise around Stoke Newington Cemetery on bicycles for pieces of ass.”

Oh, and so much more.

Luke took me to some ridiculously posh old house in Mayfair last night, where P Diddy played us his new LP. I am freaked out to report that a good half of what I heard was quite brilliant - industrial rap, boom-bap and the sort of shit Ghost would give his gold eagle to spit on. WEIRD. Also! There’s a Twista featuring track, and if my ears didn’t deceive me, dude was dropping hs Ts and doing a London accent for half of it. No doubt that’s the Bizzle’s influence. I texted said Biz, who was very excited, and also in Cyprus, but I won’t tell you what he was doing, as it was rude.

I went to see Wade after, at Parlour, which is where we’re gonna have the OH!/BOOM! launch party. More on that soon.

Married life seems to suit Wade. But oh, how I have missed him. Still. I am not surprised I spent the time of sleeping until the time of waking in such brainanguish. A little drunk, I bought a burger, boarded a bus, and read news reports on my telephone all the way home.

The US government was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s military operations against Islamic militant group Hezbollah even before the July 12 kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, The New Yorker magazine reported in its latest issue.

Desert of trapped corpses testifies to Israel’s failure.

If these walls could speak they wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

Did Sage Francis say that? I’ve been quoting Sage Francis a lot this weekend. He is, after all, a clever man. Life is just a lie with an “F” in it, and death is definite. Ho ho ho.

If these walls could speak they wouldn’t shut the fuck up because since they were here, all they’ve done is observe. Had paint applied to. Wetted. Dried. Be leant upon. Be lifed upon.

On a few occasions, people have been in this flat, and they have taken photographs, many photographs, in quick sucession. Every click a moment in the circle, a single moment, stopped, frozen, dead in image for posterity. It is so small, this flat, and so much has been in it.

We were in it, and we were full, we were in it, and we were empty, we were in it, and we fought, we were in it, and we slept. Yesterday, in a moment, we were on the sofa, and today, in a moment, there are nothing but stains on that sofa, stains and dust. But the moment is still happening, forever, and the only difference is our perception of that which we call time. Yesterday and today and tomorrow and two weeks Monday and thirty two weeks that Thursday are exactly the same thing.

Orwell wrote that the future is “a boot stamping a human face forever”. But so it was in the moment of his thought, and so it was when the first man stomped the first face. The future is a mouth, on a human mouth, forever, also. Up against a wall. Bop bop bop.

I have posted a new song on my MySpace page. I’ll leave it there for a week.

Be seeing you.

I wanna refund!

or

La la la, in the midnight hour
La la la, I will come to you, I will come to you
I will take you from this sickness
Dinner parties and champagne
I’ll hold your body and make it sing again

or!

If you can stand
I’d like to take you by the hand
And go for a walk
Past the people as they go for a walk

or!!

The room is cold and has been like this for several months
If I close my eyes I can visualise everything in it right down
Right down to the broken handle on the third drawer down of the dressing table
And the world outside this room has also assumed a familiar shape
The same events stuffed in a slightly different order each day
Just like a modern shopping centre
And it’s so cold - yeah it’s so cold
And as I’m standing across this room
I feel as if my whole life has been leading to this one moment
And as I touch your shoulder tonight this room has
become the centre of the entire universe
So what do I do? I’ve got a slightly sick feeling in my stomach
Like I’m standing on top of a very high building oh yeah
All the stuff they tell you about in the movies
but this isn’t chocolate boxes and roses
It’s dirtier than that
Like some small animal that only comes out at night
And I see flashes of the shape of your breasts and the curve of your belly
And they make me have to sit down and catch my breath
It’s so cold yeah, it’s so cold
What is this feeling called love?
Why me, why you, why here, why now?
It doesn’t make no sense
It’s not convenient
It doesn’t fit my plans
It’s something I don’t understand
F.E.E.L.I.N.G. C.A. double L.E.D. L.O.V.E.
Oh what is this thing that is happening to me
Oh. What is this feeling called love
Why me? Why you? Why here? And why now?
It doesn’t make no sense no. It’s not convenient no
It doesn’t fit my plans but I got that taste in my mouth again

Come on! Jarvis Cocker RULES! I am having quite a Pulp renaissance. I totally loved Pulp back in ‘94. They make even more sense now I am not a virgin and I escaped my first cage.

But still, I have been in the gym four out of five days this week, which I would hardly have approved of back then. I grew tits! DOOSH! Now they hurt. I had to take a day off yesterday because of this, but then it was a very productive day. James Brown set me some music in the morning, and I wrote a song to one particularly resonant piece. Then Narstie came over and we did some catching up and I had a spliff, which hardly ever happens these days. Narstie got DRUNK! I had to walk him to the train station, and we got harassed by teenagers who’d seen him on Channel U and thought I was wearing a wig. I must say, the people who stop me in the street are a lot less demanding than Narstie’s peoples, who demand “showcases”, and follow you all the way up Stamford Hill sucking your soul away with video camera phones. Then Dego appeared, in a strange mood and pretty T Shirt, with an old friend of his, then they went and were swiftly replaced by Bashy, who I haven’t seen in AGES, and that was lovely. He’s developed a new persona, who croons, which I fully approve of. He was also not wearing any loud colours, which was initially disconcerting. The music industry has been having a go at destroying his love for the pure art of sound, but we had a good chat and he’s all invigorated again. Plus we are gonna make a conceptual song that will make a mockery of pretty much everything, so there with a bright red hat on top.

Did you see the front pages of the tabloids yesterday? Apparently those two 12 years olds who murdered 10 year old Damilola Taylor are “LAWLESS SAVAGES”. So two black kids, the product of poverty and a pitiful education are “LAWLESS SAVAGES” (nice subtle racism there), but what of the mad-eyed Blair? How many 10 year olds you think he’s killed this week? Hmm? Does thinking this way make me “weird”? Are they going to find child porn in my PC? You think?

“So, if the plot was foiled, why was the terror alert raised? That in itself tells me everything I need to know.”
Sunny

“Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big,” boasts a naturally unnamed White House official in the AFP story “Bush Seeks Political Gains from Foiled Plot.” Bush and Blair conferred last weekend on the “imminent attack” (though neither man was sufficiently moved to break off their vacations), and the White House tooled its response to Joe Lieberman’s defeat at the hands of a “far left” cut ‘n runner accordingly. The thwarting of the plot (with a man inside, as is the custom in plots both thwarted and unthwarted) became itself a time bomb, rigged to detonate in the faces of populist leaders who even modestly reflect the now conventional wisdom that the war is an abject failure (at least according to how failure is conventionally understood). This would be a reminder and an example that the threat is real, though the threat was no less real - and possibly more real - when Bojinka was foiled in 1995.
Jeff Wells

Oi, dickheads - you may have worse approval ratings than God during the Great Flood, but don’t think trying to scare the shit out of us with crazy airport plots is going to change that in the slightest. And how dare you tell me I can’t take a book on an aeroplane, and that my sisters have to carry about their tampons in see through plastic bags, you fucking monsters? WE ARE PEOPLE! We are not “useless feeders” (cheers Henry Kissinger”) and we are not “CIVILIANS” neither! We are PEOPLE, and you are babyraping scum, and the world is ours, not yours. We will stomp you like lab rats, and dance in the entrails. We will use your bones as percussion instruments. Yes, there is a fire coming, but it is you that will burn. Your nightmares will last for ever, but we will wake from ours, and when we do… we will still be able to FLY.

Serious as fuck.

I got this today:

“Hello. Why on earth couldnt i see you in edinburgh? why on earth didnt i hear about it being cancelled on your site? I am so dissappointed. Edinburgh was beautiful. I have never been before and I went all the way up there to catch your show and it was cancelled. And the only way we could find out was by finding the fucking box office and asking there. Because no one told us. No posters. Fuck. We spent about 200 pounds on that journey and the rest. Fuck man. All you had to do was post a few days before or apologise the day after. I am sure there must be some reason why.

nick. “

How fucking shit is that? We cancelled the gig a month ago, after my manager suggested that it would be foolish to take time out of this month’s LP and single preparations to go all the way up to Skatlin for a single show. It was the only show we’ve ever cancelled. “It’s not like you’re Pete Doherty,” said my manager, when I raised my worries. I wrote “cancelled’ next to the gig listing on my MySpace page, and forgot about it, until people started emailing saying how pissed off they were a week or so ago.

However: I forgot to update the gigs page on this website, and I wrongly assumed that those who bought tickets would be informed by those that they bought the tickets from, and that the listings would be altered accordingly. There was a picture of me in NME this week in the gigs section flagging up that cancelled gig. Seems those that needed to be informed were not. All I can do is apologise, and bang my head on my desk. Truly, I am sorry. Now I feel like Pete Doherty. How shit is that?

Oh my days, George Galloway is the fucking MAN, as Pete just said in his email that directed me to the above clip, which you must all watch, now. If you can’t see this you are retarded. If you say anything about cat impressions you should throw yourself off a cliff, and watch out for the marketing managers (HAHAHAHA, I crack me up! Nay, some of those managers are not evil. Some are good, and clever, and hot. Yes. SOME THOUGH ARE SCUM! BUT GEORGE GALLOWAY IS RIGHT!)

I was in a studio in Walthamstow today with Lethal B, recording songs for his next album. They are amazing songs. Serious!

What was it you were saying about being in London for a while, about having to wander through your past? I lived in Walthamstow, after that squat, seven years ago. I haven’t been back since. Yeah, I felt the ghosts. But so what? They were then. Now there is a new bus station, and I am a different person. In these seven years, all my cells have been replaced. That is the truth as well.

Above - Cornwall, 2006. Flan, Jeres, and I, happy on a boat.

Below - Qana, 1996.

Below - Qana, 2006

UK, 2016?

Maybe, if we still have eyes, and heads in which to roll them, we shall see.

Hugo Chavez, after withdrawing Venezuela’s Israel ambassador, called the Israeli attacks in Lebanon “genocide,” and “a fascist outrage”.

“It really causes indignation to see how the state of Israel continues bombing, killing… with all of the power they have, with the support of the United States, he continued. “The Israeli elite repeatedly criticize Hitler’s actions against the Jews, and indeed Hitler’s actions must be criticized, not just against the Jews but against the world. It’s also fascism what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people. Terrorism and fascism.”

Which, as Jeres noted, was very succinct. There are few men in positions of such power willing to speak with such clarity. We accept this, which is pretty sad.

Three weeks in, history, as regards this recent outrage, has been completely rewritten before our very eyes. Those two Israeli soldiers were captured in southern Lebanon. And Bush, and Blair, were aware that Israel planned to “crush” Hezbollah way in advance.

From New Statesman:

“At a Downing Street reception not long ago, a guest had the temerity to ask Tony Blair: “How do you sleep at night, knowing that you’ve been responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis?” The Prime Minister is said to have retorted: “I think you’ll find it’s closer to 50,000.”"

Do you understand this evil?

The “anti-Semite” mails continue to flood in. I was on that march on Saturday (100,000 people undeaded by TVetc!), and I saw a gaggle of Orthodox Jews in full regalia carrying a banner reading, “Judaism rejects the Zionist state and condemns its atrocities” Are they anti-Semitic? Maybe, huh? They were fucking brave, I know that much.

Bravery is what we need right now. Actual bravery. Let not the swine confuse bullying with bravery. The sort exhibited by these fine people.

The NORAD issue has finally broken into the mainstream (cheers Vanity Fair). The NORAD issue, for me, is the among the biggest smoking guns in the whole 911 coup (in which, as someone noted, there are so many smoking guns one can barely see for all the smoke). Hijacked planes being allowed to hit their targets? The world trade centre? Where was the flight response? Where was NORAD? NORAD was engaged in a drill, simulating terrorist attacks nigh on identical in their nature to those which occurred, one the same fucking day. Five drills, in fact. Wargames, they call them. Bear in mind the exact same thing happened on 77. And that’s the tip of the fucking iceberg. Rhandi Rhodes’ show earlier covered it pretty fucking well.

From that article:

“When they told me there was a hijack, my first reaction was ‘Somebody started the exercise early,’” [Lieutenant Colonel] Nasypany later told me. The day’s exercise was designed to run a range of scenarios, including a “traditional” simulated hijack in which politically motivated perpetrators commandeer an aircraft, land on a Cuba-like island, and seek asylum. “I actually said out loud, ‘The hijack’s not supposed to be for another hour.’”

The article’s author dismisses this as coincidence. Boy, was 911 a big day for coincidences.

Have at ye: 11 Questions Avoided by the Media On NORAD Tapes.

Indeed. I have been asked on occasion these past few weeks what Israel’s destruction of Lebanon has to do with 911 and 77. And all I can think to say, is, everything.

What was it about a week being a year in politics? Right now things are speeding up to the point where I can barely focus. Fresh outrages come from every angle, and those that seek to enslave us aren’t even pretending to be good guys anymore. Blair holidays with the Bohemian Grove babyrapists as the world burns, and even The Daily Mail starts to read like The Independent. Meanwhile The Sun reads like some Porno Whizzer And Chips, Lily Allen rolls about in cocaine, and the Middle East burns.

The UN won’t save you, a new souped up version with a load of nukes run by Bill Clinton won’t save you, nanobots won’t save you. If we cannot see what is on front of our faces by now we are blind. As Jeff Wells puts it,

“The new flesh of 9/11 enhances our perception, but not our reach. We can look up and see - we’re invited to - but the invitation is one to reinforce a sense of helplessness. The great public spectacles written in the sky - the gaudy lights and the falling towers - are meant to debilitate us, and pin our hopes passively upon a “disclosure” by the intelligence community’s own information warriors. Nothing good, and nothing true, can come of that.

In a Rumsfeldian sense, we should know enough now to know that we know enough. But the insight 9/11’s new flesh gives us into America’s unnatural state of affairs becomes debilitation, if nothing changes by it. How to be the change is our challenge. Perhaps our last challenge.”

Thom Yorke sees a pretty direct challenge. From his website:

ive had enough of this
our government sitting on the fence with the US while world war 3 appears to be breaking out in Lebanon and Northern Israel.
we must throw Tony Blair our of office NOW.
he does not represent the views of the british people.
he does not represent the views of his foreign office and officials.
he does not even represent the views of those in his cabinet.
he cares far too much about his relationship with Bush, and Murdoch.
this man is not fit to be our prime minister.
its a nice sunny day. come on lets do it. you know it makes sense.
a vote of no confidence. or something. anything..

I think 100,000 is fantastic. I think the rest of you need to join us. Remember how the people of Venezuela took to the streets, in protest of their president’s removal from office by coup, and GOT HIM BACK? These things are entirely doable. We are pretty fucking close to a situation in which Lonely Blair invokes the terrifying new powers in the Civil Contingencies Bill and suspends Parliament. If this happens, we are fucked my British friends. See Palestine? See Lebanon? Iraq? Remember the 1940s? That’s us. Most of you, I promise, will not like it.

Serious as fuck. Your choice.

Peoples! We are off to march on Hyde Park in outrage at the slaughter of the Lebanese. Please join us. We shll be at SPeakers Corner at 1 I think. Bring booze! And water. Summer came back!

Have you ever seen a girl attempt to barbecue a Flinstones sized shoulder of lamb?

I have.

Have you ever found yourself singing a song in the shower that you only remember the first four lines of?

I have. It was River Of Dreams by Billy Joel this morning. I shall reprint the lyrics forthwith in case the same thing ever happens to you. We have to help each other out wherever we can!

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
From the mountains of faith
To the river so deep
I must be lookin’ for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it’s too hard to cross
even though I know the river is wide
I walk down every evening and stand on the shore
I try to cross to the opposite side
So I can finally find what I’ve been looking for
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the valley of fear
To a river so deep
I’ve been searching for something
Taken out of my soul
Something I’d never lose
Something somebody stole
I don’t know why I go walking at night
But now I’m tired and I don’t want to walk anymore
I hope it doesn’t take the rest of my life
Until I find what it is I’ve been looking for
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the jungle of doubt
To the river so deep
I know I’m searching for something
Something so undefined
That it can only be seen
By the eyes of the blind
In the middle of the night

’M’not sure about a life after this
God knows I’ve never been a spiritual man
Baptized by the fire, I wade into the river
That is runnin’ to the promised land

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the desert of the truth
To the river so deep
We all end in the ocean
We all start in the streams
We’re all carried along
By the river of dreams
In the middle of the night

Anyway, I engaged in the rat race this morning. That was pretty mad. There’s a weird sweat that clings to a person engaging in the rat race. I’d forgotten about it. For a while back there, when I was living in that squat in Finsbury Park, I’d have to get up at 7, after three hours of junky deprived sleep on a dank mattress, tip-toe my way through the needles, and insert myself into the tubecrush, en route to South Kensington. People are really pissed off at that time of the morning, all wedged together under a film of sleepsweat in a big metal snake, off to do something they hate for no good reason. Eyeballs burn the back of flaky necks with a hatred borne of frustration and confusion. I left that shit behind years ago. But, you know, I could easily end up back there any time. I don’t mind so much. I’ve had a good innings. You could lop off my head tomorrow, and I’d have done more than most the slaves in this global death camp ever got to dream about. I have been a very lucky boy. Sometimes, you wake up to the warmth of a hot pink creature, trembling in dream, and even a bloody eyeball that feels like its got a drawing pin wedged in it can’t hide the fact that life, in all its lunacy, is pretty fucking sweet. I guess the hippies were right after all.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Carmen Orlandi
> Date: 2 August 2006 17:04:59 BDT
> To: Paul Hitchman
> Subject: Frischmann/Connection request
>
> Hi Paul
>
> Thank you for being so patient – it has paid off, as Justine just
> emailed me and approved usage of Connection.
> I hope all goes well with the track!
>
> Kind regards
>
> Carmen
>
> –

Hello. This morning you can listen to me talking in an interesting chopped up fashion about music videos on the Guardian podcast, and you can pat yourselves on the back because all your positive thoughtage has worked, and Justine Frischman is now aware of my existence. This means wee are very close to clearing the sample on Boom. Possibly. Hopefully. Rah! I would now like you to turn your energies to my American record company, Interscope, who are being, shall we say, difficult, in some areas. I thank you in advance.

Must reads on this foul day of Our Lord, Augyst 2d, 2006:

The Violent Bear It Away
“The Age of Nations is over, and many of the most powerful are no longer ruled by forces which safeguard the interests of the state, let alone its citizens. We’re entering an extinction boundary, between the reign of high mammals and the return of the jellyfish. What are the politics of jellyfish?”

Amazon rainforest ‘could become a desert’
“The vast Amazon rainforest is on the brink of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world’s climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year. “

A Primeval Tide of Toxins (or - We Have Broken The Sea)
“The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour. When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.”

Acid waters, dissolving shellfish
“Until now, concern about rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been focused on global warming. But scientists have discovered a second reason to worry: About half of the greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels — an amount weighing about the same as 140 billion Volkswagen Beetles — has ultimately ended up in the world’s oceans.”

How Can We Stand By And Allow This To Go On? by Robert Fisk
“I found Nejwah Shalhoub lying in the government hospital in Tyre, her jaw and face bandaged like Robespierre’s before his execution. She did not weep, nor did she scream, although the pain was written on her face. Her brother Taisir, who was 46, had been killed. So had her sister Najla. So had her little niece Zeinab, who was just six. “We were in the basement hiding when the bomb exploded at one o’clock in the morning,” she said. “What in the name of God have we done to deserve this? So many of the dead are children, the old, women. Some of the children were still awake and playing. Why does the world do this to us?”"

Hundreds Go Wild In Streets Of Beirut
“In Qana, corpses continue to be rescued from rubble. In Beirut, demonstrations condemning Israel’s massacre. Demonstrators demand Hizbullah take revenge on Israel, vandalize UN building in city. Men and women shouted and lamented “massacre, massacre!” to the cameras in Qana on Sunday. Hundreds of protestors went wild in the streets of Beirut.”

New Maximum-security Jail To Open at Guantanamo Bay
“The controversy over the US-run detention centre at Guantanamo Bay is to erupt anew with confirmation by the Pentagon that a new, permanent prison will open in the Cuban enclave in the next few weeks. Camp 6, a state-of-the-art maximum-security jail built by a Halliburton subsidiary, will be able to hold 200 prisoners.”

By the way, is it just me, but in the context of an unprecedented “civilian” rage directed in the general area of the murderous rulers of Israel, who for so long have hid behind accusations of anti-Semitism, does this Mel Gibson thing seem a bit convenient?

And my holiday was lush thanks. Awesome food and views and company, boating, swimming in the sea, cricket, Lego. Charlotte and I got lost in the ramblish expanse of a miniature forest, through which we waded like twin Gulliver’s. It is nice to have scars. For remembering. We played Articulate - when my little brother Ali turned up yesterday we RINSED the rest of them. Paul was pissed off. Paul and Flan’s incredible son Jesse James and I built a Lego spaceship. Jeres drank cider and wore excellent shorts and made Jesse cry by cheating at cricket. I even saw my Mam and Keith for short while. I so want to be on holiday again. Holiday’s rule! I haven’t had one in years! Babydoll, holla at your boy, we need to go to Cancun!

Hello my peoples. I have been on a little holiday in Cornwall with some of my favourite folks, which is why I haven’t written to you in a while. It was lush! I only cried once, which is when I read the Independent yesterday morning. Whoo! Anyway. I am very tired, so I shall write properly on the morrow. I hope you are all alive.

x