#JesuisCharlie? No! #JesuisAhmed!

As a kid, I Was bullied in school. A lot. I was given two sets of conflicting advice on how to handle the bullies;

1 – Stand up to them.

2 – ignore them.

Initially I opted for choice 2, I tried my hardest to ignore them, to let their hurtful words, actions, and images flow off me like water off a duck’s back. The problem was I couldn’t, and I was just taking my anger and frustration as these bullies, and locking it away.

Then, one day, the bullies got what they wanted, a reaction; I lashed out and hit one, and threw a desk at another. As you might guess this action got us both pulled up in front of a teacher and we both got detentions.

This didn’t stop the bullying, in fact it escalated, they knew they’d get a reaction out of me, so they stepped up their actions; name calling, slanderous accusations, hurtful cartoons around the school (and on my books), it was relentless. Again I tried to not let it bother me, and again it wound up just locked away until I snapped.

This time when I snapped and retaliated, I picked the biggest guy, and proceeded to unleash all my rage on him; I broke his arm, broke his nose, and left him bloody and bruised – i short I kicked 7 bags of sand out him.

This time we were pulled up in front of the headmaster.

The guy I beat up was suspended for a time, I had to serve a detention, and on his return we were forced to work together to put on a short play for the whole school on why bullying is a bad thing.

After during my detention I had a number of teachers walk in and tell me, off the record of course, that I’d done the right thing.

As I look back, I’m still not sure I did.

Why is that relevant? Well…

On January 7th this year, 2015, 14 people were shot and killed by two terrorists; two of those people were police officers, 12 were staff at a weekly satirical publication, Charlie Hebdo. The attack was in retaliation to cartoons that insulted the religion of the gunmen. The world was outraged at this terror attack, as was I until I saw one of the Charlie staff interviewed on TV afterwards; “we intended to cause offence” they said. At that point I lost a lot empathy for the publication, and I started looking deeper into who they are and what they do.

Charlie Hebdo was founded in 1992 by the people who were behind an earlier weekly satirical publication “Hara-kiri”. Hara-Kiri was banned from further publication in 1970 after it insulted former French leader Charles deGaulle over his death, in order to get around the ban, they changed the name to ‘Charlie Hebdo’, dually taking the name from Charlie Brown, and the opportunity to poke another stick at Charles deGaulle. They ceased publication in 1981, but resurrected Charlie Hebdo in 1992.

Since 1992 Charlie Hebdo has had several brushes with a backlash; in 2006 the French President, Jaques Chirac condemned the magazine saying that anything that hurt people religious convictions should be avoided, and French Muslims sued claiming the publication contained racist matter, claiming that the cartoons made a link between Muslims and Muslim terrorists.

The case continued through 2006 into 2007 where Charlie Hebdo were acquitted.

In 2011 an issue came out named ‘Charia’ (sharia) Hebdo, which was guest edited by Muhammad. On November 6th that year their offices were firebombed. French Muslims condemned Charlie Hebdo’s mocking of Islam and it’s prophet, but also condemned the attack.

In 2012, timed soon after a number of attacks on US embassies that were apparently in retaliation for ‘The Innocence of Muslims’ film, the publication put out a number of caricatures of Muhammad in the nude, an act which even the French foreign minister condemned as pouring oil on the fires.

So now we come to 2015, and yet another ‘satirical’ poke at Muslims, this time lives were lost, one of them a Muslim policemen, Ahmed Marabet. Charlie Hebdo ridiculed his faith, and he died defending their right to do so.

Those of you not familiar with French as a language probably won’t get the dual meaning of the Je Suis Charlie comment. It has a dual meaning, probably both meant simultaneously in this sense.

‘Suis’ is the singlar of both the verb to follow and the comment of being. So Je Suis Charlie could mean “I am Charlie” in the “I’m Spartacus” sense, or it could mean “I follow Charlie”. It loses the duality once stated in plural (it becomes simply “We Are Charlie”). So the Anglicization of of the French phrase loses something in translation.

Charlie Hebdo and the staff therein aren’t just a satirical publication out for a few dark laughs, they bully and they goad and they cry victim when their victim strikes out at them. They are no better than the playground bullies I had to deal with as a kid, but their victims have more rage and weapons at their disposal than fists and a table. They’re crazy to keep provoking these people. Another hashtag is gaining movement through Ahmed, one I fully back … or follow.

You won’t catch me crying ‘Je Suis Charlie’, I don’t follow Charlie Hebdo, I don’t back what they do. I do feel sorrow for the loss of life, and the subsequent violence that has happened on the back of their animosity.

#jesuisahmed

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Russians banning Transgendered people from Driving … Utter bobbins

It’s been reported in several places, not least of all the BBC, that the Russian government is instituting new laws to prevent certain groups of people from being allowed to drive in Russia, among those groups the transgendered.

http://ift.tt/1yGgW1V

http://ift.tt/1AMFm9w

I’m here to tell you right now, that’s nothing more than clickbait.

The original BBC article was written in response to a news-release by an American publication called “Human Rights First.” This being their primary source, their backs are covered if someone calls out on the clickbait-style spin they’ve put on this.

(Pausing for a second to acknowledge that determined Anti-Russian propaganda in America is a thing at the moment… And done….we don’t really need to dwell on that any further.)

A little further investigation reveals that it is referring to a set of conditions established by the World Health Organization. The restrictions are contained within a document designated ICD-10. It establishes certain classifications for certain diseases and disorders.

You can download ICD-10 if you wish to read it yourself. Here is the link; http://ift.tt/QM0w0s

There is a *lot* I could say about this document, but it’s not relevant. The important parts are that;

A) This is not a Russian Document. This is an International Document providing a readily-available set of universal definitions for local governments and medical agencies to refer to.

B) ID-10s definitions aren’t intended as all-purpose and, because of that, using it is a full and complete reference is unwise. Because I don’t read Russian, I am unable to read the legal proposal itself. But considering that it’s not even law yet, I would remind people that our own government proposed a bill which technically made lesbianism illegal before they realized this would be its indirect effect and (as the whole process is designed to do) edited and fixed it before it went any further.

C) The ID-10 and, by proxy, the Russian law (if we assume it does actually exist in the form suggested by the BBC article which, given the absence of other sources, is questionable) only considers change in gender identity to fall into the category of ‘personality disorder’ where it is CAUSED by other disorders. The easiest illustration of this would be a biological male suffering from schizophrenic personality disorder, one of whom is a female persona. Again, the ID-10 definitions aren’t designed to be perfectly clear on the matter – they are guidelines.

What the Russian government has done is referred to an Internationally recognized, multicultural and impartial agency (the World Health Organisation) when considering what amounts to a sufficiently severe mental disorder worthy of preventing someone from driving.

They have not singled out transgenderism. They have not even included transgenderism. But the BBC has apparently learned what ‘clickbait’ is and the fact that a ‘change of gender identity’ is included, even within a perfectly reasonable context, on the list is sufficient justification for them to spin it and get *you* to do their advertising for them, making it viral.

Which is not to say there aren’t other reasons to question this kind of legislation. But saying that it seeks to prevent transgender people driving is an outright *lie*.

Given that the original article quoting it in this context was American, I will let you draw any further connections yourself.

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Dr. Who

On Sunday the new actor to take on the role of The Doctor was revealed as Peter Capaldi, the Internet has since exploded in all manner of tribute and polarisation of opinion.

Of course I am no different and I too have opinions. Usually you’ll hear the phrase “Opinions are like arseholes, everyone’s got one but we don’t all want to see or hear it”. In this case it’s my blog and ill write what I want. After all that’s what blogs are all about.

Dr. Who fans are a big and diverse bunch, we have 11 past Doctors to choose from, so I you ask 10 people who their favourite is you’ll likely get a dozen different answers.

Of the ‘new batch’ I favour Christopher Ecclestone’s incarnation; he had just the right balance of humour, alien-ness, and seriousness to be ‘right’. Those attributes, to my way of thinking, made home come across in a similar way to Tom Baker’s incarnation.

I have to admit that I found David Tennant’s gurning and facial contortions off putting. I also disliked the levels of emo and angst in his stories, but I can’t blame the actor for that.

Matt Smith’s Doctor was generally much more fun and I did prefer him to Tennant in the role, but he lacked the subtle menace that Ecclestone mustered, even when caught in the Pandorica and monologuing about what not to put in a trap Smith lacked any menace.

Storytelling and pacing is what’s been the main let down in the series since the reboot; most episodes are self contained so the series lacks the cliff-hanger endings I’m used to from my childhood. This makes the episodes rush through what could be a wonderfully complex story leaving us as an audience feeling robbed of the thrill the show should have. It also means that each season is woefully short.

Then there’s the magic wa- I mean Sonic Screw Driver. It used tone just a gadget, now it’s wafted around several times an episode and used by the storyteller as a Deus-Ex-Mechanica. I suspect this is either because the writers have a huge fondness for the gadget, or can’t wrap up the story son enough without alien techno-magic. What ever happened to the companions? Not enough sadly.

Yes, I said companions, plural. The show works at best when it has an ensemble cast … A crowded TARDIS is a good TARDIS. For too long since the reboot we’ve had just one or two companions, bring us more travelers, more people to accompany the Doctor; comedy relief, challenging intellect, anachronism, opposing viewpoint, any /all of those tropes in the TARDIS would spice up the currently dull stories.

Please can we stop putting The Earth in danger – some of the best episodes happen elsewhere, and the show felt more – believable (as far as a 900 year old humanoid alien time traveller can be believable) when it didn’t mess with exposing the whole planet (in the contemporary time) to the existence of aliens.

Anyway, that’s way too much ranting about the show, I should be talking about the new guy. Peter Capaldi is a great actor, best known for aggressive roles or bad guy roles (the thick of it / Neverwhere). I hope this means a return to some simmering menace and calm alien-ness.

I also hope we see more companions joining him. There have been some corking potential companions that seem to have been discarded; Jen (The Doctor’s Daughter), she could lend a military and intellectual companion to the mix; Lady Christina DeSouza (Planet of the Dead), she would lend an aristocratic, roguish element, again with intellect.

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Russia, IOC, and Awkward Questions

OK so the awkward questions are mine, I'll get to those in a bit.



As has been across the news lately Russia has passed a number of laws making it illegal to be gay, or to support gay people or gay rights. This is a really ass backwards thing to have done, there's no debating that ,so I won't.

Famous people like Stephen Fry have petitioned the British Prime Minister and the IOC to boycott the Winter Olympics, or have them moved to another location. This has a LOT of backing.
One openly gay athlete has said the boycott is a bad idea, after all, these athletes work up to this pinnacle oftheir career, and might rather stick with a don't ask / don't tell situation for the duration of the event so as not to miss their shot, possibly their one shot, at Olympic glory.

But I got to thinking, the increasingly alphabet soup of LGBTQ people has more than gay people in it, and I assume there must be Trans athletes out there.

Sure enough a google search brings up a site for trans athletes, and two cases of trans athletes within the Olympics, which is where my 'awkward' questions would be going.

I say awkward because I have a couple trans friends, and at least one reader of my blog is trans and having previously lost a friendship through asking such questions, I have been hesitant to ask any more for fear of a repetition, so instead I've been wallowing in ignorance for some time. That's not good so, Im asking.

The IOC states that a trans athlete can compete in their gender two years after the surgery, apparently this gives time for the body to reach the 'right' levels of estrogen / testosterone etc. Until then athletes are to compete as the gender into which they were born. This leads to the situation of Keelin Godsey who is a pre-op trans man competing with women in the Hammer, he missed uot on going to London as he didn't make the cut although he did throw a personal best. He postponed his surgeries so that hecould have a shot at the olympics (and who would blame him).

Another case that came up when I was googling all of this (I hate to call it research, it's not as intensive as real research) was a MMA fighter, Fallon Fox. She's a trans woman who fights MMA, and it seems that some of the women she'll fight (and the commentators and fans of MMA) object to her competing as a woman, despite complying with the Olympic standards.

Does Fallon's bone density and muscle mass, even two years after reassignment surgery and the various medications she'd have taken in that time, give her an undeniable advantage?

How do trans people feel that in order to compete they have to either wait for two years post surgery, or compete as the wrong gender?

How does that compare with women like Caster Semenya who isn't trans but has high levels of testosterone and has to take treatments to bring her below the 'threshold'?

It seems that the definition of gender in terms of athletics is goverened by threshold levels of testosterone / estrogen and people have to be treated if they don't fit within the levels written down for their gender. Is that fair?

You can't use drugs or anything similar to improve your performance, but if you are naturally a certain way they enforce 'treatments' to bring you back in to a range that they will let perform in?
Does that seem right to you?

I will freely admit, gender and sexuality are subjects I am woefully under educated in, so for the most part I try to apply the same theory as I do to race, religion, and all manner of other things: They're human.

If only the rest of the world could just do the same.

Support Up and Coming Bands

Really - do.

Music these days is just way too much comercialilsed, sanitised clone-garbage. TV shows like 'Pop Idol' (or American Idol etc), X-Factor, and 'The Voice' make for amusing entertainment in the opening stages thanks to the bad singers that really can't sing, is prett bland in the middle, and by the end of it we're hoping something other than the winner's single gets to top the charts.

Thank got for the public upsurge in, I think it was 2009, when Rage Against the Machine beat Joe McElderry to the Christmas #1 spot.

Tom Morello apparently donated all the proceeds from this surprise chart topping to charity. Top bloke!

It's Ironic though - there was a mass facebook campaign here to get RATM to #1 because the media was pumping McElderry's song so much it felt forced, and the emphasis was on the RATM refrain "Fuck you! I won't do what you tell me!" which is exactly what everyone who bought the RATM record did - exactly as they were told.

Yes, I bought the record, and the irony of it wasn't lost on me then either.

Anyway, I digress, so, in support of all the people who work their asses off to make anything of themselves as a musician, I dedicate this post to the unsigned bands of the world.

It really is a gutwrenching slog to do anything as a musician. Finding a band is hard enough, sure if you want to play in pub covers bands until retirement you can get a gig almost by looking in the  yellow pages, but if you have the drive, the desire, heck the balls, to get your own music heard then you have a steep hill ahead of you.

You need the right line up, a band that you can rely on to do their job (it's a team effort), to pitch with things that aren't their job - let's face it while it's fun to watch, no one should let the drummer lug ALL of their geard from the van it weight a ton; and running around handing out flyers for a gig is no joking matter either - bands just starting out have to do everything because they can't afford hawkers or roadies.  You have to get along with with your bandmates, not just in the 'for a few hours' way that mates do, but in the 'we'll be living in each others pockets for days or weeks on end' kind of way.

Then you have to get gigs, this means trogging around pubs, clubs, holiday camps, events organisers and giving demo cds. Oh? You don't have one of those, no one's going to listen to you, so you'd best get in a studio and record one ... no cash for the studio, then you'd best have a forgiving family and neighbours because you're recording it in your back room on your computer ... Good luck.

Once you have your first gigs the key then is to connect with a crowd made up friends who've come to see you and people who don't know you from Adam and give them a great night. That means mixing covers with your own material.

Then, and only then, can you build a following, look for a showcase gig and pray that the right A&R guy hears you. Of course today it's a little easier thanks to the wonders of the internet; email, social media, youtube, are all great platforms to promote a band.

Do all that, get lucky, and be in the right place at the right time, and you could go far.

It's a slog. Don't let any TV show convince you otherwise.

These guys below have done what they have the hard way - so please, show them and other hard working bands  a courtesy, listen to them, buy their stuff, and tell your friends to do the same.

Hashtag Alice


Rooftop Farmers


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My Mate Marmite

I do love a controversy, especially a daft one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHjssdNNzP0



Normally the only controversy over this spread / condiment is whether one likes it or hates it. The taste really does polarise people on it. Me? I love it.

However it's not the taste that's being targetted now, oh no; it's the latest advert for it (youtube link above) - "End Marmite Neglect"


Why is it causing controversy?

Well it seems that some people take offence at the advert, yes, they find it offensive. They claim it demeans the work of the RSPCA and the NSPCC and carries heavy overtones and child and animal abuse, especiall with it being aired so close after the case of a 4yr old girl who was sadly abused to death.

Personally I think the advert is intended, and succeeds in being, funny. The people I've shown it too have laughed at it.

I have to admit, I don't find it humours me, but neither am I offended by it, in fact I think it's not a  great advert. The only part about it that works for me is the last segment where we see a family tucking in to some tasty looking Marmite crumpets and the youngest pulls a face.

I really and honestly can't see where people get the sensation that it's offensive, nor can I see how it demeans the work of the RSPCA or the NSPCC - it's an advert, and not a good one, it's just bland TV, and if people don't like it they can change channel, make a cuppa, or put up with it while they wait for 1:40 for the ad to end or their show to come back on.

Really, it's a fuss over nothing people. Get off your PC bandwagons and stop giving the nanny state more ammunition to censor us in to eternity.

Doctor who

On Sunday the new actor to take on the role of The Doctor was revealed as Peter Capaldi, the Internet has since exploded in all manner of tribute and polarisation of opinion.

Of course I am no different and I too have opinions. Usually you'll hear the phrase "Opinions are like arseholes, everyone's got one but we don't all want to see or hear it". In this case it's my blog and ill write what I want. After all that's what blogs are all about.

Dr. Who fans are a big and diverse bunch, we have 11 past Doctors to choose from, so I you ask 10 people who their favourite is you'll likely get a dozen different answers.

Of the 'new batch' I favour Christopher Ecclestone's incarnation; he had just the right balance of humour, alien-ness, and seriousness to be 'right'. Those attributes, to my way of thinking, made home come across in a similar way to Tom Baker's incarnation.

I have to admit that I found David Tennant's gurning and facial contortions off putting. I also disliked the levels of emo and angst in his stories, but I can't blame the actor for that.

Matt Smith's Doctor was generally much more fun and I did prefer him to Tennant in the role, but he lacked the subtle menace that Ecclestone mustered, even when caught in the Pandorica and monologuing about what not to put in a trap Smith lacked any menace.

Storytelling and pacing is what's been the main let down in the series since the reboot; most episodes are self contained so the series lacks the cliff-hanger endings I'm used to from my childhood. This makes the episodes rush through what could be a wonderfully complex story leaving us as an audience feeling robbed of the thrill the show should have. It also means that each season is woefully short.

Then there's the magic wa- I mean Sonic Screw Driver. It used tone just a gadget, now it's wafted around several times an episode and used by the storyteller as a Deus-Ex-Mechanica. I suspect this is either because the writers have a huge fondness for the gadget, or can't wrap up the story son enough without alien techno-magic. What ever happened to the companions? Not enough sadly.

Yes, I said companions, plural. The show works at best when it has an ensemble cast ... A crowded TARDIS is a good TARDIS. For too long since the reboot we've had just one or two companions, bring us more travelers, more people to accompany the Doctor; comedy relief, challenging intellect, anachronism, opposing viewpoint, any /all of those tropes in the TARDIS would spice up the currently dull stories.

Please can we stop putting The Earth in danger - some of the best episodes happen elsewhere, and the show felt more - believable (as far as a 900 year old humanoid alien time traveller can be believable) when it didn't mess with exposing the whole planet (in the contemporary time) to the existence of aliens.

Anyway, that's way too much ranting about the show, I should be talking about the new guy. Peter Capaldi is a great actor, best known for aggressive roles or bad guy roles (the thick of it / Neverwhere). I hope this means a return to some simmering menace and calm alien-ness.

I also hope we see more companions joining him. There have been some corking potential companions that seem to have been discarded; Jen (The Doctor's Daughter), she could lend a military and intellectual companion to the mix; Lady Christina DeSouza (Planet of the Dead), she would lend an aristocratic, roguish element, again with intellect.