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Australia: Eyeball

At the far reaches of the lounge bar in the Wayside Tavern the manager was cornered, by three angry men, total strangers all and oozing menace.

Their intention was to "get" him as retaliation for the eviction a few minutes earlier of the 4th member of their party.

With superior numbers, apparent superior physical condition, psychological preparation, and with youth on their side, the ambush was sprung. They announced their intention in coarse language, positioned themselves with one on each side (the wall being the 4th side) and made their move.

The manager was no slouch, as would be indicated by the fact after a 20 year career in the cabaret (nightclub) industry he still wore a fully tied (not a clip-on) necktie to work every shift.

Effortlessly, but with no holding back, he got stuck into the trio, twisting thumbs brutally, using catapault force to kick crotches, poking eyes, using elbows to drive the wind from lungs & so on.

The entire incident took only a few seconds, the tie remained immaculate and he wasn't breathing heavily.

Seeing the (brief) melee Mine Host & two other staff whizzed across the room, just as the manager completed establishing his supremacy.

However something seemed odd. While two were prone on the floor, conscious but unable to move, the third of the assailants was upright but hunched over in extreme agitation.

In a mind numbing flash, we all saw at once that an eye was popped out, hanging loose on his cheek like a marble on a string.

Time stood still.

Then, proving (as always) that if you have enough people around, you will have one of everything, a nearby customer strode over, got Mr Eyeball to stand up straight, positioned the eye high on the cheek, and with the heel of his hand calmly bumped it back into place (as if it were a trackball going back into a computer mouse).

The three assailants gingerly got to their feet and equally as gingerly stumbled away.

Nobody moved or said anything for a while. Then the manager, unruffled as always, noted that the training he had received many years before, on how to defend himself when unarmed, had taught him to poke into eye sockets, but there had been no mention of what to do if the eye popped out, and it was "quite handy" that the unknown patron happened to be on the spot to save the day.

Then we all returned to our work as if nothing had happened.

Reproduced by kind permission of the author. This article originally appeared here. All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment.

Cigarette packaging row: Art entry # 2

Continuing the series on redundant, nannyish consumer advice.

Drink: here.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment.

Freedom is created by limitation

Seen via "Tom Paine", a discussion piece by Professor Sandy Ikeda on what a free society would look like.

I comment:

Why should we want a free society?

Do people mean by that merely, a society in which my own freedom is maximised? In which case, this has always been achieved - by powerful individuals.

Maybe a better way to approach the problem is to establish limits on the wealth, power and ability to manage public information and communication of those who most want dominance. Perhaps the key to freedom is restriction.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Technology, faux defence and oppression

(Why are the architects of our future Hell so fond of crap rock music accompaniment?)

The Mail on Sunday revels in a whizzy new gadget:

... and then tries to reassure us:

While Black Hornet is a priceless tool in Afghanistan, it is unlikely it could be used on Britain’s streets because of civil liberty concerns.

"Unlikely"...

As Shakespeare's murderous Scottish usurper says:

 ... But in these cases
We still have judgement here, that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which being taught return
To plague the inventor.

The West has a history of using poor people in faraway places to refine the weapons they intend to use in their main agenda, even though it should ultimately come back on themselves:

Ethiopia, Guernica, Poland, London, Berlin.

Now we have cybersurveillance and Hellfire missiles, purportedly to protect us (the wholly good) from Puritans of a different religion (the wholly evil):

Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, ...your home.

Perhaps the first use will be against a terrorist cell in a remote Northern counties farmhouse; or kidnappers holed up in a tower block; or drug dealers on the Broadwater Farm Estate.

Even without our having to postulate malice, the logic of power is that it must be exercised, and (often incompetently) abused. Look at how our police have employed guns, CS gas, pepper spray, tasers.

But worst of all, civil governance has now entered the Information Age, as Orwell so presciently predicted. Already (I suspect) GCHQ is roboscanning everything you email, phone, Twitter or Facebook;  maybe also the titles of the books you borrow from the library, the programmes you stream onto your laptop or smart TV, your medical records, your movements as reported by your cellphone. If they don't, they could. If they can, they will, one day.

Fifty years after the first publication of "The Making of the English Working Class", E.P. Thompson should be here to write the sequel: The Breaking of the English Working Class. The poor were thrown off the land and into factories and slums, thus snapping not only their rural bondage but the bonds of obligation that also tied their social superiors. Noblesse oblige - but not richesse.

After generations of hard work and struggle there was a brief flowering of post-WWII prosperity and playful liberty. That is coming to an end here - though perhaps it is springing up in the New World of the East.

Now we have millions who are to be managed like useless and potentially destructive pets, and whenever they - or incoming competitors - look as though they may rise, a fresh wave of immigrants is employed to push them down another level.

And, like the micromanaging computers needed to keep the aerodynamically unstable F16 in flight, all this wonderful spying and coercive technology will someday be so useful in maintaining an otherwise totally insupportable social order.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Simon Beck's Snow Art

 

Doing the rounds via email, the intricate temporary-art snowfield images created by Simon Beck. His Facebook page and photo gallery here. 

 

Simon is an English cartographer (educated: Millfield and Oxford) who stays in France during the ski season, but is thinking about continuing his work in Norway.

 

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Nick Drew: abandoning nuclear could kill hundreds in Germany

See the fourth and final part of the Denmark/Germany energy series here.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.