Anti human nature.

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has once again been doing its very best to prove what a massive joke it really is. Following just two complaints they were able to ban a TV advert for the video game “Stranglehold”.

As if in an attempt to compete with the anti-liberal BBFC, the ASA stated their reason for the ban was that the advert, “suggested that it was honourable to seek revenge and that violence was an acceptable solution to a situation.” What the ASA failed to realise is that far more graphics adverts for films are regularly shown on TV.  This seems to further emphasise the fact that these associations are not only anti-free speech, but totally bias against video games in any form. Next they’ll be trying to ban Mario because it encourages you to take magic mushrooms!

These claims by the ASA also create a contradiction so huge that it could cause a rift in the time-space continuum. If humanity creates violent entertainment and people go out and buy it, then surely this is what people want. Evidently we see some kind of strange inconsistency here, where humans ban the very things they create. The very fact the ASA exists also seems to suggest that humans are incapable of making decisions for themselves and therefore need someone else to do it.

Censorship just doesn’t work…

Richard Brunstrom is a Genius

For those of you who don’t know (or care), Richard Braunstrom is the Chief Constable of the North Wales Police. He recently made comments saying how “ecstacy is less dangerous than aspirine” and that drugs could be legalised within 10 years.

Needless to say he recieved a good roasting from the popular press – in particular the Daily “we hate everyone” Mail. For some reason people seem to think its immoral and irresponsible to legalise drug use. But if its not hurting anyone, other than the user, what is the big problem? Tabacco and alcohol are no less a drug than ecstacy or heroin, and yet they are readily and cheaply available.

Allowing only certain drugs to be legal seems entirely inconsistent. Indeed who has the right to say what chemicals I can and cannot put into my own body? Personally I wouldn’t take drugs, but I wouldn’t want to stop another person from doing so, unless they were physically hurting another individual through their actions.

There are many advantages to legalising drugs, and at the moment I can think of no disadvantages.

• If drugs are legal they can be heavily taxed, just like alcohol or tabacco.
• The drugs would be manufactured by major corporations (like Sony or Shell Oil). These companies are trusted to produce a good quality product.
• Making drugs legal puts the drug dealers out of work.
• Reduced risk of HIV/AIDS (or other disease) through dirty needles etc…

Ultimately it should be the decission of the individual and not some guy in a suit telling me what to do…

Fascists…!

Manhunt 2

As you may have guessed this links in with my previous post regarding the effective banning of Manhunt 2. As things stand the BBFC are still standing by there decision, and Rockstar (the publishers of the game) don’t seem to have made any actions so far.

On the 10 Downing Street Website a petition has been set up in an attempt to fight the ban. Even if you have no interest in the game I would strongly encourage you to sign this petition. The banning of Manhunt 2 is clearly a breach of freedom of speech as well as being hypocritical and in no way democratic.

Thank you if you have taken the time to read this…

I thought we lived in a Liberal society?

I was under the impression that we lived in a Liberal society, but today I was proved wrong by the BBFC [British Board of Film Classifiers], who have taken the decission to ban Manhunt 2 [PS2 and Wii] from sale in the UK. The news was reported both by the BBC and Gamespot UK.

There was little doubt in my mind that this game would get an 18 rating, as no doubt it will contain some pretty graphic images. But people know what this game is about, so if it is going to offend you are not likely to buy it [unless you are an old person, who might buy the game just so they could write a letter of complaint saying how "discusted" they are].

BBFC director David Cooke is quoted as saying “There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed“.

Errrr…. thanks very much Cpt. Fucking Obvious but I do know what the game is about. Anyway, what point is he trying to make? After all you could make the exact same statement about a film like Saw or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but did they get banned… NO THEY DIDN’T! So where the fuck is the consistency here?

You may remember back to 2004, when some kid got murdered in Leicester. The mother of the murdered boy blamed the original Manhunt for her sons death. OK, i’m sorry your son is dead, but get a fucking life, the video game didn’t kill your son, some basket case did. Even the police said that “robbery was the motive” for the attack.

Anyway, back to my original point. The way in which the BBFC opperate is clearly fucked up. How can they possibly be so inconsistant? They need to totally re-think the way in which they opperate and sort out this obvious bias against video games.

Banning this game is only going to cause further problems. Being a Rockstar game, Manhunt 2 had recieved a lot of hype and a lot of people are going to be dissapointed by the ban. Certainly this is going to lead to an increase in illegal copies of the game being sold. And if we are to believe anything we read in the press Piracy funds terrorism.

To conclude…. FUCK YOU BBFC, fuck you and everything you stand for.

The Political Compass

Just tried out this website called The Political Compass basically it asks you a load of questions, and then plots where you would be on the political scale. You can then reference it with famous historical figures like Stalin, Gandhi or Hitler.

This graph below shows where I came.

I was pretty pleased with my results, because i was a little worried that i might come up in the top right corner.

So, if you’ve got some spare time check it out and let me know where you are on the political scale.

All that is evil and corrupt

This image sums up all that is evil and corrupt within society. I would put Thatcher in my Top 3 most evil people ever [alongside Hitler and Stalin]. But on the bright side, she is pretty old, and hopefully she will die soon.

Marx, Stalin and Lenin

Marx believed that in order for Socialism [and eventually Communism] to be achieved society must progress through the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism would create what was needed in order to sustain a Socialist society. Only once Capitalism had collapsed due to its inner contradictions would a Socialist society develop.

In order for Capitalism to collapse the Proletariat must first achieve class consciousness. Once they realised they “had nothing to lose but their chains” they would overthrow the society that so oppressed them. Once this happens the state will become redundant and wither away thereby freeing the masses of the force that oppressed them.

Once the classless society has been achieved there would be no need for a central government. And since there will be no class conflict there would be no need for police or judges etc… Because everyone was equal there would be no need to envy one another… therefore Marx felt that the state would simply be a waste of time.

Once a fully Communist society had developed people will be treated “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. The idea being that people would work because society required that they work. People would work together for the common good, not just so they could afford to put food on the table.

After the 1917 October revolution in Russia, Lenin had to adapt Marx’s theory in order to fit around the countries very backward society. At the time of the revolution Russia was still ruled by the Tsar and was still using the feudal mode of production. The country was only just breaking into the Capitalist world and therefore there were very few members of the Bourgeoisie. In fact much of Russia’s industry was down to foreign investment from France, Japan and the UK.

Marx would say that Russia was in no situation for a Socialist revolution. They had to make the natural progression from Feudalism, through Capitalism and onto the “morally superior” Socialism. But despite what Marxist theory said the October revolution still happened.

Lenin argued that the Proletariat had not achieved class consciousness and therefore a “Vanguard Party” of professional revolutionaries was needed in order to lead the people. Traditional Marxists would see a leading party as a dangerous thing in a supposedly classless society.

Lenin also believed that the Peasant class could achieve class consciousness. Again Marx would not agree… he didn’t think the Peasantry was capable of seeing their own ability.

When Joseph Stalin came to power in 1922 he would transform the workings of the Soviet Union. Going totally against Marxist thinking he would transform the country into a totalitarian state. With himself as dictator he would rule the people through fear. It seems odd that a supposedly Communist country should have once supreme ruler. It was almost as if the country was being dragged back to the pre-revolution Tsarist era.

Stalin however was convinced he was doing the right thing, and that the country had to be rapidly industrialised in order to survive. However Russia had economically crippled itself through a civil war, so in order to pay for the industrialisation Stalin has to introduce Collectivisation of agriculture. This meant that the majority of crops grown would be sold abroad. The income from this would then be used to pay for the rapid industrialisation. Stalin needed to be able to compete in the wider world, in particular against Germany. The Nazi rise to power in Germany made Stalin fearful, but he felt if the Soviets were sufficiently strong they should be able to hold off a Fascist invasion.

So it can be seen how Lenin and Stalin had to adapt the ideas of Marx in order to fit a country that wasn’t really ready for Communism. Perhaps if Capitalism had been allowed to evolve, then a proper Marxist society would have evolved as well.

The Price of War

Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 there has been a total of 3,372 coalition deaths. To break this down further, that is 3,117 Americans, 132 Britons, 32 Italians, 18 Poles, 18 Ukrainians, 13 Bulgarians, 11 Spaniards, six Danes, five Salvadoran, four Slovaks, three Latvian, two Australians, two Dutch, two Estonians, two Romanians,  two Thai, one Fijian, one Hungarian and one Kazakh. On top of those figures a further 23,417 US soldier have been wounded. Total Iraqi civilian casualties vary greatly. But some figures suggest the death toll could be as much as 600,000.

Ok then, these figures might seem fairly high at a first look, but lets put things into perspective. During the Vietnam War American forces lost 58,200 men. World War II resulted in 405,399 American Deaths. And to further emphasise my point  a total of 62,537,800 people died during the Second World War [23 million of them were Russian].

So it really amazes me that the media and general public go on about the Iraq death toll. Now that i have put it into perspective it suddenly seems very insignificant. I’m not saying that i’m glad all those people are dead. I just think we should think about events of the past and compare it to today.

What do people expect to happen in war? War is violent and people die. But i do get the impression that some people expected us to stroll into Iraq, kill a load a Arabs and walk out again without taking any casualties. These anti-war people need to open their eyes a bit more to the world and put things into perspective.

Freedom

The recent debate between the Catholic Church and the Government [see previous post] has prompted me to think about the issue of free speech. As far as i can see there are three possible stances you can take when it comes to the issue of free speech.

1. We can be totally free to say what we want, even if it does infringe upon the rights of others.
2. We can say what we want, so long as the rights of others are not affected.
3. We shouldn’t have free speech. Instead the state should be allowed to boss us around and make up do what it wants. [Although this is very illiberal you could argue that it is a very effective form of leadership. Without people voicing their opinion a government can pass far more legislation - Personally i don't agree with this view].

Personally i most agree with point #2. We as individuals should be free to voice our opinion… but we shouldn’t infringe upon the freedoms of others. To give an example. After a Danish newspaper printed cartoon depictions of Mohammed the Muslim community acted very badly. I don’t have a problem with them voicing their opinion, but i do have a massive problem with them wishing death upon their fellow citizens. They were using free speech as a means to take away the rights of others. This can never be right.

Living in a democratic society the elected government is there to legislate to us, but it is also there to be challenged. Everyone should have the right to voice their opinion against the government, as long as this does not involve preaching death, hate and suffering.

Catholics Hate Gays

There has been a lot of talk in the news recently about the Catholic Adoption agencies. They feel it is their right to opt out of government legislation which forbids discrimination against gay & lesbian couples. In other words they don’t want to let gays adopt children because they hate them [and its part of their religion].

There are a few problems i can see with this. And i now hope to pretty much invalidate the opinion of the Catholic church…

1/ The legislation was laid down by a democratically elected goverment. So even if you disagree with the law you still have to go along with it. If people only went by the laws that they liked then there would be chaos.

2/ Although they try not to say it, everyone knows that the Catholics really really hate gays. They would love to see all the gays burn in hell [along with the Protestants]. However we live in a liberal society and it is simply not acceptable to say that you “hate gays”. Infact its not acceptable to have a deep found hate for anyone. Catholics may argue that they are meerly exercising their right to free thought and free speech. But these Catholics are using their free speech in order to spread hate. Again this isn’t right.

Basically the Catholic church has no right to opt out of the legislation. They should shut up and do what the law says rather than moaning. Anyway, they are hardly the right people to talk about moral values… they’re always fucking children.