Recession Lottery
CCTV is Watching Thee
Modern Trepanation Practices
Documentary Review - "Men Who Love Boys"
Profile - Love Love
K Heads - Help Research Use
Music Review - Dave Stitch - "Rave New World"
Documentary Review - "DIY"
Could this be it for UK consumer confidence, consumed as we are by distrust & uncertainty; the global slowdown, system crash. “Britain’s ongoing recession is the longest & deepest since the war” & with a rather unfortunate two & a half million unemployed (& rising) in the UK, things don’t look too promising for any of us in the foreseeable future...
Gordon Brown (Prime Minister, Labour)
“This is an international economic hurricane sweeping the world & lashing our country. But we are taking action to calm the storm to bring order to our chaos so Britain can be better placed to benefit as the storm passes – as pass it will.”
David Cameron (Opposition Leader, Conservative)
“This recession doesn’t vindicate big government; it hammers the final nail in its coffin. We know that we’re in this mess is because of too much debt. Too much banking debt, too much personal debt & too much government debt.”
Nick Clegg (Leader, Liberal Democrat)
“There are a huge number of loopholes at the upper end, both in terms of personal tax & corporate tax that could be closed & could be recycled, pound for pound & pence for pence, in big, permanent fair tax cuts.”
Mervyn King (Governor, Bank of England)
“To paraphrase a great wartime leader, never in the field of financial endeavour has so much money been owed by so few to so many. & so far with little real reform.”
“Great” Britain is now known to possess the highest level of Closed Circuit Television systems per citizen in the world (currently thought be increasing at a rate of approximately 300 new cameras per week). For example, the average London resident is filmed around 300 separate times every day, from a range of public, police, commercial & private cameras. In Middlesbrough operators order offenders to pick up litter, stop being anti-social, etc. through camera-mounted speakers, under threat of fines & police attention. The city of Manchester possesses the UK’s most advanced CCTV Control Centre, covering the city centre with a network of over 400 cameras. Recordings are stored for a minimum of 92 days & are viewable via an 18 metre high screen! Generally the reason given for the introduction of many of these cameras is “to prevent crime”, a fact which a 2005 Home Office report (amongst many others) has stated to be demonstrably false. Unfortunately this seems to have done little to hinder the continuing erosion of our liberties - far from it, as more & more councils & public institutions request funding for their unblinking eyes.
Don’t get me wrong; CCTV can, when used sensibly, help to provide legal evidence, sometimes crucially. It also definitely gives certain slices of the populace a feeling of security, especially pensioners & the infirm. Unfortunately it is too
often being employed by those in power to scrutinise the
innocent, with automatic facial (“Mandrake”) & numberplate recognition technology increasingly being used in
random, Stasi-style, sweeps. Cameras in trouble hot-spots may be effective in the short-term, but they don’t stop crime & other “anti-social behaviours”, merely moves them elsewhere. In built up & not-so-built up areas, there are literally cameras everywhere: buildings, phones, cash points, businesses, roads, housing, police, paparazzi, TV...
Police
forces across the UK are also now starting to use unmanned spy drones for certain specialist tasks - military
technology originally used in Iraq & now being utilised against us. Those futurist Mancunian coppers have their
own surveillance plane too - the first police aircraft in the
UK able to send & receive live video feeds. Able to stay in the air for over 5 hours at a time & equipped with thermal cameras & “moving map” capabilities, it’s also alleged to be around 40% quieter than a helicopter.
This is all part of a worrying trend of technological advance because we can - the so-called “system creep”, extending intrusively into all of our lives.
Another blandly ominous example of the potential for harm is plans by some local councils
to connect their camera systems up with the police’s prized national network of Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras, an act which will make it particularly
simple to scrutinise the movements of targeted individuals. Speaking of targeting, don’t let us forget the practice
of “marking”, whereby law enforcement tag individuals,vehicles & locations of possible interest. Ever been involved in or even tangentially connected to a criminal act or subculture? You’ve a good chance of being considered for marking by the beast if so! Moving on (& in a disturbingly Ballardian twist), over 8% of homes in this country now have some form of self-installed CCTV system. Perhaps the proliferation of commercial & government systems (combined with the constant onslaught of “Big Brother” type television) has got us used to the theory & practice of being watched going about our daily business?
One word; SKYNET.
Over the last few decades there has been a small but fascinating resurgence of the ancient practice of trepanation in the West. Trepanation has been called “the oldest operation inthe world”, with the oldest examplesdating back to Neolithic Europe (around 8000 years ago).
Put in the simplest terms, trepanning is the process of creating a hole in the bone of the skull, usually with medicinal or spiritual intent. By 3000BC it was widespread around the world, practiced from Western Europe to China, Kenya to South America. For years this & amputation were pretty much the only forms of surgery going, being used to cure headaches, insanity, treat cancers, release demons & a lot more besides. Holes up to four inches in diameter were made in the skull of the unfortunate patient, with the likely outcome either a nicely healed cranial air vent or a swift death. Some poor people were even trepanned up to thirteen separate times! The early practitioners were educated enough to avoid cutting into areas of the skull covered in muscle, tendon, blood supply or nerves, resulting in holes most commonly bored into the top areas of the cranium. The lengthy (unanaesthetised) process must have been horrendous, with around sixty percent of patients dying either during or shortly after the operation. By the sixteenth century A.D. the Incas had managed to improve the survival rate to about seventy-five percent; an impressive feat considering that modern Western medicine couldn’t do any better until the discovery of antiseptics during the latter part of the last century. “Around the time of Christ” theRoman physician Celsus publicised his variation on the technique, which then became predominant throughout the Middle Ages until relatively recently. Trepanation& other forms of skull-binding have often been practiced by
the priesthoods of the majority of the world’s religions,
with the classic Christian monk’s “Toncha” haircut said to be a relic of the art. The procedure has steadily declined in popularity over the past two hundred years, the last known examples being from Papa New Guinea & parts of Africa. As far as is known, around twenty Europeans & Americans have so far quite literally “broken open” their heads. Some of these are now active campaigners for trepanning, often citing their (unsubstantiated) belief that they have irreversibly increased the volume of blood flow in the brain, resulting in a permanently raised state of consciousness.
NOTABLE TREPANEES INCLUDE:
Bart Hughes - an eccentric & intelligent Dutch research librarian who first trepanned himself
to prove his Brain Blood Volume theory.
Amanda Fielding - upper class British artist who filmed her 1970 self-surgery.
Joe Mellen - self-trepanned advocate& art dealer from the UK.
Dr. James Neidpath - An Oxford don who underwent surgery in Cairo.
Jenny Gathorne-Hardy - English self-trepanee
Peter Halvorson - self-trepanned American.
Check Eli Kabillio’s excellent “A Hole in the Head” & Amanda Fielding’s “Heartbeat in the Brain”documentaries if you’re interested.
This notorious (yet rarely viewed) American documentary from 1994 paints a rather disturbing portrait of the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), “a political & educational organisation” supporting men whoare sexually attracted to young boys. Run by a government lawyer, this controversial organisation spends its
time lobbying for changes in the laws regarding sex with minors, as well as in publishing a regular newsletter for its 1500+ members. The “NAMBLA Bulletin”, featuring amix of pedophilic advice & highly suggestive photos of young boys, is blatantly worrying yet is always careful to stick to the letter (if not the spirit) of current laws regarding pornographic content. Some of the “boy lovers” are interviewed, both individually & in group discussion. They generally concur in viewing the laws surrounding pederast tendencies & behaviours as unjust, often claiming that the victims of such crimes were either emotionally involved with the abuser, consented to the interaction or at least
enjoyed it. One of the creeps even makes out that by hanging around children he is “bathing (them) in a certainkind of celestial warmth”! We also hear from victims & their families, who unsurprisingly disagree pretty vehemently with NAMBLA & its members’ aims.
So: another interesting yet ultimately depressing area of our society is explored on film, not totally unsympathetically. As a final aside, it should be noted that the director is not entirely shy of publicity, having attempted to promote the film by inviting both NAMBLA members & a scout troop to its premiere!
FACT: Beat poet & gay activist Allen Ginsberg openly supported NAMBLA, appearing at their 1989 conference.
What is it? A wicked independent label, based in the UK & specialising in a range of breakcore, glitch & wonk, so far as MPfree downloads (under a Creative Commons license), but trust that they have some bigger plans for the not-too-distant future (many involving the Bad Sekta label too!)...
Where is it? Based in the hell of Colchester (UK), but their acts are pretty active on the UK & European live circuits.
Why bother? Because they’ve consistently upped the ante for their peers, with accomplished & varied releases from producers such as Bangalore Torpedos (a Chevron alias), France’s Doc Colibri, Judith Priest, Lastboss & many others.
More info? LOVELOVERECORDS.CO.UK
Will Phuq is currently expanding his “Ketamine: A Primer” pamphlet (available from us shortly) into book form & needs your help. If you’re a regular or semi-regular user of the ol’ squat dust then please do something useful - download & complete a confidential questionnaire from
http://www.badsekta.com/kquestionnaire.txt.
You don’t have to give any incriminating details & it might even give you a cold anaesthetising glow!
“...written whilst living in a bus around the north circular in 2005/06 (although a couple of tracks date back to a squat we had on Victoria Park road in 2003)”. This album was originally intended for a CD release on Bad Sekta a few years ago, before the usual cashflow problems prevailed. Thankfully Dave has now decided to put it out as a free download (both as 320kbps MP3 on Bad Sekta & as FLAC via torrent); I suggest you grab it while you can! 14 wicked slices of broody, mutating bass, phat as hell breaks, lush atmospherics, gorgeous melodies, processed samples & general sonic debauchery. Checked by John Peel’s son too, don’tcha know...
Subtitled “how to survive as an independent artist”, this U.S documentary enthusiastically interviews luminaries from various facets of the American counter-culture, including Ian MacKaye (Fugazi), Lydia Lunch, J. Mascis (Dinosaur Jr.), Jim Rose, J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus), Mike Watt (Minutemen), Richard Kern & Ron Asheton (The Stooges), as well as a lot of people I’ve never come across before. Some pretty interesting anecdotes and makes you want to get on with creating your own stuff.