Last October, former NL drug czar, the (perhaps) aptly named Professor David Nutt resigned/was sacked from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) for stating that so-called Home Secretary Alan Johnson must have been on one if he thought that upgrading cannabis from class C to B was a good trip. I was not surprised when Johnson later confirmed that Prof. Nutt had indeed been sacked, because his ‘advice’ cut across government policy to attack soft targets, such as weed-smoking kids, in order to maintain the pretence that the police, NL’s lard-arsed  political wing, were meeting their targets. Or something like that.

Nutt was sacked for arguing common sense. Alcohol misuse is linked to the overwhelming majority of violent crimes, ditto the number of admissions to hospital accident and emergency departments, breaks up families but is perfectly legal. Weed, and even Ecstasy are far less dangerous. Stoners can’t be arsed to do much more than flop around. Ecstasy becomes dangerous when taken in conjunction with alcohol. Banning one and not the other is a heavy trip down the road to – er  - somewhere else, man.

David Cameron as he might look were he unfortunate enough to become a Methadrone addict

But the Professor killed his own credibility when he strayed into the twilight zone of policy. A couple of his colleagues joined him and nobody apart from the Guardian gave a monkeys, until last weekend somebody called Dr. Polly Taylor also walked the ACMD plank. Speaking on the radio from Amsterdam yesterday – where he was possibly researching the wonders of legalised hash bars (despite what he was saying, there aren’t many left and it’s a load of bollocks to say that drug use in Holland is any less seedy than in the UK) – Professor Nutt reprised his theme that cannabis/weed is less dangerous than alchohol, criminalising it drives the price up, policing it costs money and wastes resources etc. Heavy.

Of course it is, but it’s a different argument. There is a time for expediency, and in the case of Methedrone, aka Mephadrone/M-kat, the time is now. I’m not a user myself, you may be surprised to know, but living in the ballsachingly trendy Bethnal Green/Shoreditch/Hoxton triangle, I know plenty of people with direct experience  - probably more than Alan Johnson or the nutty professor combined – who state categorically that this stuff is very, very bad indeed. Unlike the government or the squabbling scientists I’m happy to hear their unvarnished opinion that Methadrone is more moreish than Ketamine, Amphetamine Sulphide or Cocaine, can quickly reduce kids to a ‘feral’ state and, whether legal or not, creates a burning habit which sucks away money, energy and self-respect. Bummer.

Alan Johnson, as he may appear to David Cameron in his hypothetical state as a Methadrone addict

It is regrettable that political correctness, as represented by Professor Nutt and his grateful-not-to-be-dead academic colleagues, has fetched up against political opportunism, as represented by Alan Johnson and his soon-to-be-dead-in-the-water authoritarian bastard squad. I almost certainly know more about drugs on a first hand level than most of the boneheads in government – not sure about the Tories, though – but surely here is a clear case for decisive legislation. Regardless as to whether it played a small, middling or large part in the recent deaths of three kids, Methadrone is far more dangerous and nasty than weed and hash – think crystal meth and crack cocaine. Criminalising it may well create an underground black market and drive up the price, but it’s facile to argue that notoriety will add to its popularity, since it’s all over the news that the stuff is legal and relatively cheap. Banning its import and resale will only hurt those who wish to go out of their way to use it, and will almost certainly deter recreational/casual/impressionable drug fashionistas. Result.

Ban Methadrone with immediate effect, not because it may or may not have the potential to kill, but because it sure as hell doesn’t do anyone any good. Nor is this a Human Rights issue. If it drives the price up, then boo hoo for the prats who want to use it. And let’s not confuse this with the cannabis/marijuana debate, policy which is in itself influenced by Britain’s costly role as the 51st state of the USA.This is too serious a debate for the chatterati, so while we’re at it, bollocks to the Guardian and the Daily Mail. The drones who write for those rags should get out more. End of.

John J Kelly

I’m angry because nobody read my post last November and if they did, it didn’t change a thing (so what’s new). So is Sarah Brown, Gordon’s wife, as well she might be, living with a tripehead. But we’re both angry today because yet another miscarriage of justice is poised to be committed in the name of the ‘War on Terror.’ By John J Kelly

In November 2008, Thus helped draw attention to the long-running battle against the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the US. Today, the government will decide whether to hand him over to the US authorities on dubious, if not outright illegal grounds, or see justice done and tell the US to grow up. So far, in thrall to an extradition treaty covertly passed in 2004 by Tony Blair and signed by David Blunkett (who now admits it was a bad idea), the UK government and House of Lords have done nothing to protect a UK citizen’s rights. With the utmost respect for Mr McKinnon and his mother, who enlisted Sarah Brown, wife of Gordon, in her campaign amongst others, this case is bigger than the illegal and grossly disproportionate detention of an Asberger’s sufferer. If McKinnon’s extradition proceeds, no UK citizen is safe from the predatory ravings of publicity-seeking US neocon nutters. Blair is possibly a loony and certainly has much to answer for. McKinnon is an exopolitics nut who was looking for evidence of UFOs and anti-gravity machines when he stumbled into Pentagon computers (which were inadequately password-protected). One of the above was and is a power-crazed sociopath whose legacy should be extradition and trial before the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The other is a harmless guy with mental health issues who has already suffered enough.

McKinnon hacked in to US military sites looking for evidence of UFOs nearly 7 years ago. He never denied that his hacking was extensive, acknowledged its criminality, but vehemently denied that it was motivated by malice. The US authorities claim his antics caused widespread damage to their defence networks. McKinnon asserts that he was not even a professional hacker – if anything, he alerted the Strangeloves to the frightening inadequacies of their technology and thus deserves a congressional medal. He was arrested by the UK High Tech Crimes Unit in 2002, who told him he would get a community service sentence, but things took a bizarre turn for the worse when the US authorities demanded extradition and trial in the US, which could lead to up to 70 years in a Supermax prison. Incarceration will almost certainly exacerbate McKinnon’s Asperger’s Syndrome, which in his case manifests itself as an ‘honesty compulsion’ that will get him into terrible trouble with fellow inmates. (It also means that he will not plea bargain to reduce the sentence for something he is certain he didn’t do).

The chances of either a fair trial or leniency have been thrown into doubt by reports that US authorities have said they want to see him “fry”. It bodes ill for the much-touted lenient and caring US approach – has anyone seen any evidence thus far? – that the Obama regime have not intervened. Never mind Thus, when the ultra right wing Daily Mail is openly campaigning against the one-sided extradition law in general and the McKinnon case in particular, and the Prime Minister’s wife is onside, even an American should be able to work out that pursuing this vendetta will not win friends abroad. The US is happy to allow Britons to lose their lives fighting its stupid wars. They have no right to demand unilateral rendition of our citizens. Allow McKinnon to be tried here, where he committed his alleged crimes, or tell us to our faces that you don’t trust our legal system. Anything less is anal rape – another thing that Gary will need to watch out for in a US prison. ]]> http://thusmagazine.com/2009/07/stop-the-extradition-of-gary-mckinnon-to-the-us-its-undemocratic-heinous-downright-stupid-and-illegal/feed/ 0 http://thusmagazine.com/2009/06/who-will-be-brave-enough-to-wear-the-brown-trousers/ http://thusmagazine.com/2009/06/who-will-be-brave-enough-to-wear-the-brown-trousers/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:55:41 +0000 John Kelly http://thusmagazine.com/?p=3517  

Former Labour Party Leader Michael Foot's heart was in the right place. Unfortunately, the rest of him was assembled at random

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is the most unpopular leader of the Labour Party ever, a singular achievement given the horrorbags who preceded him. His 21% approval rating beats the previous liability incarnate, Michael Foot, who scored 24% in 1982. Foot was a principled Fabian, idealist socialist toff in the Orwell mould but his donkey jacket, mad stare, scary hair and CND badges earned him the nickname ‘Worzel Gummidge’ and made him unelectable in the Brave New World of image and soundbite. Brown, a charisma-free zone, has not acquired a popular soubriquet, though Private Eye style him as ‘Supreme Leader’ in a nod to the stagnation, authoritarianism, denial and corruption of the Brezhnev era, which preceded the collapse of the Soviet system.

Little man on a big stage. 'Good Evening Sheffield. I'm a tosser. Alright?'

Foot’s Old Labour image was the catalyst for ‘reforms’ which saw him replaced in 1983 by ‘Welsh Windbag’ Neil Kinnock, who never used one word where 20 would do. Kinnock, a former Tribune left winger, redhaired, freckly, pointy-featured, with a deep grating voice and tweedy demeanour, projected an uneasy persona which vacillated between pint-drinking man of the Welsh valleys and hopelessly aspirational metrocentric hipster. The latter was the invention of his Director of Communications, Lord of the Flies, Peter Mandelson, who rebranded Labour as a European-style social democrat party, ironic, since Kinnock and Labour had hitherto violently opposed European integration. Trounced twice by Thatcher, Kinnock was nevertheless odds-on to defeat ‘Grey Man’ John Major in 1992, who, (like Brown) was an unelected stand-in following Thatcher’s ousting. However, he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with the toe-curlingly hubristic 1992 ‘Good Evening Sheffield’ rally and speech. This inauspicious beginning was nevertheless the New Labour Nuremberg. Unprecedented spin, media manipulation, luvvies for Labour, pop anthems and feelgood bourgeois materialism would follow in an epidemic suspension of disbelief. Blair would realise the illuminati dream of a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie fuelled by media manipulation, sustained by fear and fuelled by financial chimaera.

The Blair witch project. Now he's trying to become President of Europe, helped by his lovely friends Berlusconi and Sarkozy

But not for a couple of years. Sensible John Smith replaced Kinnock, who fled to Europe on the EU gravy train with his wife, Glenys and is now a ‘Baron’ for services to irrelevancy. Smith, although worryingly Scottish and a lawyer – a harbinger of the plague of Jocks to come – was a grounded, humorous, intelligent leader, who was not physically repugnant. Unfortunately he died of a heart attack in 1994, leaving the door open to the dreaded double act of Brown and Blair, stage-managed by Mandelson and his Iago, Alastair Campbell. Blair served ten years, set the tone for institutional kleptocracy by enriching himself in the housing boom and memoirs market, sucked up to George Bush then skipped town leaving a legacy of three wars (two of which are illegal) untramelled immigration, Islamophobia, madcap expansion of public spending with little to show apart from the Millennium Dome, crippling tuition fees for students, an undeserving, tax-avoiding oligarch class, widened gap between rich and poor, the worst recession for sixty years, national debt at its highest ever levels, ubiquitous state surveillance, abuse of police powers for political ends, a cowed media, widespread corruption and unemployment set to exceed 3 million. Brown was his ‘prudent’ Chancellor. When he assumed the mantle of Prime Minister, he declined to legitimise the post with an election. 

It was obvious after the first term that the New Labour project was a get rich quick scheme for a grotesque politburo of social-climbing chancers and mountebanks. Had the Tories put up a half-decent opposition as opposed to fielding gargoyles such as William Hague, Michael Howard and Iain Duncan-Smith, the free ride might have ended earlier. We would not have avoided the global recession, but we might have halved our exposure to its worst effects. Corruption amongst MPs would not have been any less, but the democratic deficit might have been less pronounced. In truth, it’s hard to tell, since both parties now occupy the soggy centre and their policies are largely indistinguishable. 

Now, as New Labour faces the final curtain, Gordon Brown, saviour of the wurreld and its banks and a major player on the global stage (Widow Twanky?) may be forced out of office by cohorts of his own larcenous claque. Alan Johnson, Health Secretary, is tipped to take over as leader, presumably on the basis that it would be a waste of time to bother to find anyone good ahead of the election, which Labour will lose by a country mile. Labour are thus proposing to run the country with yet another unelected Prime Minister, completing the shredding of any semblance of democratic principle and practice. When Brown goes, which will be very soon, there should be a General Election, and whoever gets in should enact a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Further urgent reform is needed to reverse the undemocratic ‘reforms’ to the House of Lords, which have replaced a crowd of unelected hereditary peers and a few life peers, many of whom were geriatric, drunkards, mad or a combination thereof, and thus as difficult to control as a herd of cats, with a stacked deck of unelected politically-appointed gurning lickspittles. Then there is the small matter of getting the country out of the mire and back to work. For this to happen, Cameron will need to find a proper Chancellor as opposed to George Osborne, and some policies, as opposed to soundbites. He’ll be wearing the Brown trousers, god help him, an odorous proposition. Serves him right for being a Conservative, like most of New Labour.

John J Kelly

There is little I can add to the well-published facts surrounding the odious activities of the head of Downing St. Strategy and Planning Unit, Damian McBride, except to state the facts. He was one of Gordon Brown’s most senior and long-standing aides, a fellow Scot, known in media circles as ‘McPoison,‘ partly for his habit of sending vicious and intimidatory texts to journalists who failed to toe the party line. He was paid a ‘six figure’ salary by the UK taxpayer to smear detractors at the government’s behest. His resignation statement borders on the psychotic, opening with an attack on Tory blogger Paul Staines, (Guido Fawkes) for revealing the plot to disseminate vicious slurs on the Shadow Prime Minister and Chancellor, implying that Staines should have kept quiet about libellous emails intended to illegally and maliciously distort public opinion of HM Official opposition. He then claims that the idea originated with co-conspirator Derek Draper, as a counter to unspecified anti-Labour slurs. The emails suggested using libelous and unfounded accusations that the Shadow Prime Minister had a sexually transmitted disease (he and his wife recently lost a child) and sexual allegations against the Shadow Chancellor, amongst others. The Prime Minister, usually quick to claim the moral high ground, has not come forward with a statement of condemnation. Alan Johnson, Health Secretary, while admitting that the allegations were ‘disgusting,’ attempted to make light of the issue on BBC Radio 4 this morning, denying any responsibility on the part of McBride’s employer. (In passing, it has been alleged elsewhere that Karl Milner, another former Brown aide, former political lobbyist and implicated with Draper in the 1998 ‘Lobbygate’ scandal – see below – may have handled donations for Johnson’s Deputy Leadership campaign).

McBride puts his fellow conspirator firmly in the frame. “When Derek Draper originally suggested using a website to compete with the kind of material seen regularly on the Guido Fawkes blog, he asked me in a personal capacity to write up some of the stories doing the rounds in Westminster. Derek and I decided in the end that this website was the wrong thing to do, and that Derek should not take his online efforts down to the level of Guido Fawkes and his Tory backers.” (McBride resignation statement). Draper, a former aide to twice-banished ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson, was himself disgraced in the 1998 ‘Lobbygate’ scandal, where he claimed that he could facilitate access to New Labour insiders and cabinet figures for a fee. He suffered a breakdown, went to California via The Priory, gained an MA in Clinical Psychology (though not at Berkeley as he implied on his CV) and re-invented himself as a BACP accredited psychotherapist. This latest backsliding suggests that he may be in need of some serious supervision.

Recently Draper re-entered the world of politics with his LabourList website. His own ‘apologies and regrets‘ blog on this website today shows little in the way of apology and insufficient ‘regret’. In proposing that we ‘draw a line’ under this ‘silly’ episode, while repeating Green’s ‘excuse’ that the emails should never have seen the light of day, he omits to mention that his putative vehicle for smear, “RedRag” is still a registered domain (listed under an accommodation address). While he and Green have accused unnamed Tory grandees of supporting Guido Fawkes, he has repeatedly claimed that LabourList is completely independent of New Labour. Yet its content unambiguously supports the party line and boasts of inside track information. As for smears, recent examples of its top-level agenda-setting stories in the national interest include a story about Tory Transport spokesman John Leech MP forgetting to renew his car tax. Draper has repeatedly sidestepped questions as to who supports/endorses and/or contributes to LabourList, and whether they are part of the incumbent government and its fellow travellers.

The third recipient of sordid emails, Charlie Whelan, was a sweary former spin doctor (aide to Gordon Brown, no less) under the Blair-led Government, who ‘stepped down’ after the 1999 Mandelson home loan scandal, and is now Press Officer of the Unite trade union. All three have strong links to Labour/Brown and/or Mandelson. One was on the government payroll in a senior official advisory capacity. It beggars belief that the country should ‘draw a line’ under this conspiracy to sink British politics to the gutter levels which did so much damage to democracy in the US. Brown needs to issue a statement of unqualified condemnation and apology to the Conservatives and to the country. Anything less is an admission of complicity, and failure to do so should be seen in its own context. In passing, it is obviously and wholly coincidental that the recent resurgence of slimeball spin doctoring and dark arts, which Brown vowed to end when he became Prime Minister, appears to have coincided with the reappearance in High Office of the spotless Peter Mandelson, who allegedly ‘poured poison’ about Gordon Brown into the ear of George Osborne on the boat of a Russian Oligarch (Yachtgate) in an incident which led to Osborne’s political discomfiture, three months before Mandelson returned to government. So successful was his black propaganda that nobody asked what the EU Trade Commissioner was doing on Oleg Deripaska‘s yacht, where he allegedly stayed for a week.

John J Kelly