Here’s a hypothesis: denial is largely a product of the way normal people think. Most denialists are simply ordinary people doing what they believe is right. If this seems discouraging, take heart. There are good reasons for thinking that denialism can be tackled by condemning it a little less and understanding it a little more.
Whatever they are denying, denial movements have much in common with one another, not least the use of similar tactics. All set themselves up as courageous underdogs fighting a corrupt elite engaged in a conspiracy to suppress the truth or foist a malicious lie on ordinary people. This conspiracy is usually claimed to be promoting a sinister agenda: the nanny state, takeover of the world economy, government power over individuals, financial gain, atheism.
…Many denialist movements originate as cynical efforts by corporations to cast doubt on findings that threaten their bottom line. Big Tobacco started it in the 1970s, recruiting scientists willing to produce favourable data and bankrolling ostensibly independent think tanks and bogus grass-roots movements…
20th May 2010
At The Little Shoppe of Horrors, 11 Mare St, London, UK (map)
Doors at 6 pm, Talk commences at 7 pm
Christian belief in the power of relics, the physical remains of a holy site or holy person, or objects with which they had contact, is as old as the faith itself and developed alongside it. Relics were more than mementos. The New Testament refers to the healing power of objects that were touched by Christ or his apostles. The body of the saint provided a spiritual link between life and death, between man and God and the veneration of relics in the Middle Ages came to rival the sacraments in the daily life of the medieval church. From the foreskin of baby Jesus to to a piece of the Virgin Mary’s veil, Dr William MacLehose explores the everlasting might of relics and their reliquaries.
Dr William MacLehose works on the connections between medical, natural philosophical, and religious thought in western Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
UFO Hacker McKinnon’s extradition order is to be reassessed in the High Court on 25 May, under a new Home Secretary. Let’s hope they see sense and recognise that he has been punished enough for his harmless, if foolish, crime.
Cyberspace doesn’t exist any more than never-never land. I was no more in America than anyone who is on a long-distance telephone call. The fiction of cyberspace should be properly tested in a British court because it is no more real than Santa Claus. They cannot “return” me to a country I wasn’t in, yet they continually refer in court to “returning me”. If I was being returned to the place where my crime was committed, I would be returned to Crouch End. I am not a fugitive, I was physically in North London and have remained in North London.
I was arrested in March 2002 and was allowed to remain on the internet until June 2005, which shows that my presence on the internet was not considered any risk whatsoever. Only after the US requested my extradition several years later once the UK was using the one-sided extradition treaty where no evidence was required to extradite any UK citizen was I told not to use the internet.
In Mirage Men I suggest that McKinnon fell into an ET honey-trap, similar to the one that caught another UK hacker, Matthew Bevan, back in 1996. We’ll probably never know why the US decided to come down so hard on McKinnon, though I don’t believe it has anything to do with space navies or the suppression of free energy. My guess is that it was probably a face-saving exercise that has now grown out of all proportion to the original crime. I wish him luck anyway.
STOP PRESS! 20 May 2010: Mckinnon’s case is now formally under review and his extradition is on hold, according to The Guardian: A Home Office spokesperson said: “The home secretary has considered the proposal from Gary McKinnon’s legal team and has agreed an adjournment should be sought. An application to the court is being made today.”
Bangkok resident and SAJ1 contributor Tom Vater dispatches from a city under siege.
It´s not easy to write about war. Harder still to write about war at home. Bangkok is my home and tonight, parts of the city were on the verge of giving way to total chaos. After eight weeks of street protests by the so-called Red Shirts aiming to force the Thai government to resign and call elections, the incessant heat, both political and sweat inducing, is catching up with both the demonstrators and the military. The walls of restraint built deeply into Thai culture are crumbling. The city is on the edge.
This afternoon, the government announced it would cut of electricity to the Ratchaprasong area, Bangkok’s flashiest shopping district, where the Red Shirts have been camped out for weeks. At the Siam Square entrance to the Red zone, where I’d come to meet a friend, a motorcycle taxi driver tells us that there had been bombs and shooting in Sala Daeng and that the infamous Sae Daeng, a renegade major general working for the Red Shirts, known to have an alleged penchant for death squads, and one of the more radical elements of the Red movement, has been shot by a sniper.
I arrive in the Sala Daeng area (near the famous Patpong go-go bar strip) at about 19.30pm. Soldiers are patrolling with automatic weapons near the Surawong entrance to Patpong. The restaurants are not full, but the street is still fairly busy with girls in hot-pants and ageing western sex tourists, undeterred by the threat of violence. Keen one might say…
Photographer and SA Pal Ruth Bayer has put together a delightful book of photographs of people under the influence of room odouriser amyl nitrate.
To capture a moment in which the subject loses control, or at least slackens their grip on the reins, is a frequent goal in photography…
In ‘Poppers’ , photographer Ruth Bayer achieves a simple but effective frisson between the composed, formal relationship of camera and subject, and the rogue element introduced by her subjects’ inhalation of Poppers – the street name for a legal compound belonging to the alkyl nitrate family; a muscle relaxant which causes the dilation of blood vessels, leading to increased blood flow and a rush of heat and euphoria.
Fascinated by the watery, dilated eyes and sensually heightened faces of those she saw taking Poppers in nightclubs, Ruth set out to capture those fleeting moments of euphoric aware/unawareness in the series of photographs presented in this book.
To capture a moment in which the subject loses control, or at least slackens their grip on the reins, is a frequent goal in photography…In ‘Poppers’ , photographer Ruth Bayer achieves a simple but effective frisson between the composed, formal relationship of camera and subject, and the rogue element introduced by her subjects’ inhalation of Poppers – the street name for a legal compound belonging to the alkyl nitrate family; a muscle relaxant which causes the dilation of blood vessels, leading to increased blood flow and a rush of heat and euphoria.
You can read an interview with Ruth, and see some of her pictures here at Dazed & Confused magazine, or buy the book at Ruth’s own site.
The more you study [HP Lovecraft's] Mythos, the closer you come to losing your marbles.
And so it has come to pass… Lovecraft is one of those rare writers to have achieved immortality not only as an author but as a genre originator. Thousands of authors, filmmakers, comic book writers and game designers have adapted and elaborated his narrative tropes, atmospheric imagery, and monster lore into an intertextual web that, like all realized genres, congeals into an archetypal reality more powerful than any specific instantiations of the material….
And still the dread conundrum: why and how did Cthulhu become cute? How did his eons-old awfulness become awwwwww….?
Erik Davis on the cuddlification of the Great Old Ones. Over at HiLoBrow
Strange Attractor Press will have a stall at this event.
I recently found a stash of collectors’ copies of SAJ3, so will take a few along, as well as new postcards and other goodies.
Work in Progress Sunday, 16 May 2010 at 12pm – 6pm The Lexington, 96 – 98 Pentonville Road, N1 9JB, London, United Kingdom
“Work in Progress is a space for small publishers and authors to display and sell their work in a words-friendly environment. It’s also a space for discussion and debate, with readings, Q&A sessions and possibly some heated opinions on poetry, translation, music criticism and much more.”
Featuring readings, talks and Q&A sessions with: Mark Pilkington of Strange Attractor Press Nina Power, academic, author and blogger Rosalind Harvey and Gwen Mackeith, translators Julia Calver, publisher and writer James Bridle, publisher and designer
Featuring wares from: Zer0 books, Strange Attractor, Monster Emporium Press, Vertigo of the Modern, Antepress, CB Editions, David Rule, Henningham Family Press, Smoke, Amy Prior, Stingray, Savage Messiah
…unless he’s your own.
