i am reading melanie philips book londonstan, it has been banned by a number of libraries in america and england, it's to controversial and inflammatory yet it has testamonials from many very respected writers journalists and political commentators. this is a book that needs to be read. make your own mind up after you read it but take the time to read it, no newspaper would review it, people are petrified to attach their name to it but it paints a very accurate picture of what has happened in england in the last few years.

i finished 'pilo family circus' this morning, very good, i'm really impressed that a young guy from brisbane wrote it, quite a disturbing yet amazing story, i have always found clowns freaky but now i'm petrified by them.

climate change seems to be sweeping through conversations i'm having, suddenly everyone is freaking out. i always ask people as they blame govts. 'do you drive?'
i mean the bottom line is personal responsibility, i think the solution is each individual has to pay a tax based upon the amount of emmissions they release or are responsible for releasing every year. so if your job involved polluting the earth you would be taxed really high. perhaps the people that reduce emmissions from other people can get a cash bonus. some one told me a polar bear was found after drowning, it couldn't find any ice to use as a surface. thats sad.

there's a new book out called toxic childhood by another british writer sue palmer who says that we are destroying childrens childhood by computer technology, this is quite a common point of view amongst people, yet from my point of veiw it's the usual crap adults pour upon their children, in the old days it was the radio now its the computer. adults hate children, its not a conscious kinda hate but a silent lurking one that contains elements of jealousy and traces of bitterness. adults want their childrens youth, the fear is we have to protect children from what...ourselves is the answer. we are the only threat to children. we hate the fact they have a future and we continue to steal it from them. evolution is a fact, as society embraces technology the field of biotechnology has arrived, you can't put the genie back in the box, so like humanity has with its other inventions we have no choice but to embrace it, there's no reason why a child can't incorperate a computer into its life, a computer is only a tool. perhaps the arguement would be better put if children were at risk from violent computer games, that i could understand but that is not technology. i say embrace technology as a tool, it has no conciousness itself therefore the threat it poses only exists in our heads and our fears.

there's been a big media circus surrounding the grand mufti of australia as he made a comment about women who have been raped saying they were like meat left out unwrapped, and the cats would obviously come out to eat them, so he sees women as meat and blames them for attracting rapists. anyways the media have gone nuts over it, talkback radio, current affairs shows, the newspapers, opinions, cafe chit chat, its everywhere. now i am no friend of islam, but it is getting a bit nuts, the mufti has always spoken absolute nonsense, he's a 28 year history of racist bigotry and now all of a sudden the media have taken it upon themselves to crucify him. man i am always reminded about my friend professor learys comments, 'ban stupid people.'
the guys stupid, along with most of these fundamentalist nutters, they should have kicked him out years ago but they need the vote, the Muslim vote like the catholic vote is like freaking gold to these politicians, its the beginning of the end of democracy. what's strange is the amount of people (predominately on the abc) who are saying he has the right to free speech and that he was using a metaphor that doesn't translate and his english is poor. its amazing how stupid people are, they should be kicked out with him.
old jonney howard and kim beezly both agreed his comments were disgusting, a week has passed and the mufti has since made several statements ranging from, blaming the white house, to saying women are pearls, he then had an asthema attack and was rushed to hospital. meanwhile two grand muftis from overseas flew in to support him and do some interviews with the tv people. theres a lot of muftis in the neighbour hood.

Silence is a decree all should fear

Political correctness, as much as fundamentalism, is responsible for our state of absurdity, writes Umberto Eco.

ALMOST 15 years have gone by since I wrote that within a few decades Europe would become a multiracial continent, and the process would cost us blood and tears. I wasn't a prophet, but merely a man who studies history, convinced that if you know what happens in the past and why, you can better understand what will take place in the future.

Even if the terrorist attacks in European countries over the past few years are excluded from consideration, it is clear a troubling trend is emerging. In France, a high school teacher, Robert Redeker, wrote some highly critical things about Islam and subsequently received death threats. In Berlin, the Deutsche Oper's production of Mozart's opera Idomeneo was cancelled because it featured not only the severed heads of Jesus and Buddha (and we can let that pass), but also of the Prophet Muhammad.

Then there's the scholarly Pope Benedict XVI who, in his address to scientists at the University of Regensburg in September, quoted a Byzantine emperor's thoughts on Islam; the Muslim world erupted in protest. He ought to realise that there's a difference between a university professor's lecture and a pontiff's televised speech, and so perhaps he should have been a little more careful (but those who used the historical quotation as a pretext for calling for a new religious war are not the sort I'd like to go to dinner with).

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy wrote a fine article about the Redeker case, published in Le Point magazine. You may disagree with Redeker, he argued, but you have to defend his right to express his opinion freely on religious matters; our society cannot submit to blackmail.

As for the Idomeneo affair, the Italian political commentator Sergio Romano recently wrote … well, I will try to put it in my terms, thus relieving him of responsibility. If a director includes a display of the severed heads of major religious figures in his staging of a Mozart opera when such a thought never even crossed Mozart's mind, the least you should do is kick the director in the pants, but for aesthetic and philological reasons.

The illustrious musician Daniel Barenboim, writing in Italy's La Repubblica newspaper, wisely wonders if it is really in the spirit of Mozart to stage the opera in this way. Despite this, Barenboim defends the rights of the artist and explains why freedom of expression is a necessary condition for artistic creativity.

I think my friend Daniel, who is of Russian-Jewish descent, would join me in complaining about the fact that versions of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice are often criticised because the play was inspired by the anti-Semitism common in the playwright's day, even though it shows us a human and pathetic Shylock.

ah summers back in old newport, blue skies, the occasional fluffy white cloud, people stroll by with their dogs, smiles are exchanged, pleasantries swapped, it's kinda business as usual. yet today something called the stern report was released. the stern report basically was written by lord stern an english economist who was asked by the british govt to write about the economic impact of global warming on planet earth. basically it states that unless we take action now the economic impact will be akin to the depression of the 1930's. the total cost to avoid this is 3.25 trillion AU dollars. and if we do nothing by 2010 it would cost us 9.1 trillion AU dollars. Australia is one of the few countries that refused to sign the kyoto treaty, much to most peoples dismay, and unknown to most people actually negotiated a 9% increase in emmissions, however the rational behind this is that australia supplies so much raw material to china that it actually reduces emmissions to the world if it ceased supplying china with coal. the australian govt has said it would sign a treaty if the whole and developing world signed one as well.
anyway down on the streets people are still smiling.

my take on global warming is big freaking deal, so the temp. is getting hotter, the planet is adapting to our dumb industry, well its a bit arrogent on our part to assume we could get away with it, after all we have only been on the earth for a blink of an eye, more species have become extinct than remain, why do we think we are different. if we were smart we would begin to evolve rapidly, loose the physical form and transport ourselves through space, seeding the universe, finding sexy planets that we can start again, nice places with lakes and pink sunsets and decent weather, and good surf...

the suns back, the surf returns, all is bliss as i spend my daze catching waves. there's nothing quite so perfect as being in the wave as it rolls towards the shore, you poise yourself for that one flipper propelled kick, tucking the head down and being transported faster than thought, not on the wave, not in the wave, not behind or under but with the wave. you are the wave and the thoughts that enter your mind are the thoughts that shape your moment. its bliss, i love my fin, translucent blue, alien shaped. no people out there today, no dolphins, just me.

last night agent stone and i went to the pemeire of a movie, 'trust the man', its a romantic comedy, it's patchy, the script is reasonable, the acting good, David Duchovny is really good, but the ending was not right. i don't know how it should have ended really, i think maybe a happy ending was ineveitable but there was something to happy about the ending, it needed some edge, a suicide perhaps, one of the minor charachters. i dunno.

tea and books with jake, he's reading anne rice at the moment, i never really liked the vampire books, she wrote some intresting porn before she discovered horror. i heard she lost her son and became a born again christian. to me there's only one vampire novel and thats dracula. its brilliant.

saw 'children of men' a film set a few years into the future in an england we can see lays just around the corner, go see it, it's brilliant.

snap crackle pop breakfast cereal that talks nonsense yet says infinitely more than most people i know.
a long time ago i moved in with a friend of mine who was going through a difficult time, he latched on to me and became quite obsessive, i found him intrusive and demanding and as much as i wanted to be patient with him i found myself needing to create clear boundries. i told him one day, as is my form when pushed to far, 'i am culling a lot of people in my life and i'm starting with you.'
'you can't just cull me, i've known you for years.'
'no you have not known me, if you knew me i wouldn't need to cull you.'
'but we live together.'
'yes and i need some space from that.'
'but i think when people live together they should have breakfast and meals together.'
'maybe if they are married.'
then he hit me. anyways years later i find myself working with this man, a man who comes across as a gentle, spiritual soul, a man who starts to inform my co workers that i have an issue with authority.
actually i say to my work collegues, i don't have an issue with authority, i have an issue with people in authority who are stupid. i guess my issue is with stupidity.
i am entering a period of conflict at work, war is looming, i am confident in myself, i have no allies but i know becuase i let myself be under estimated the forces that move against me will be over confident, they will make mistakes becuase they are stupid people in authority.

well its a few days later and i'm still caught in the afterglow, i tell ya it don't get better than that. my world is a strange one, my internet dating experiences are becoming more and more bizzare with various girls, the other day i met one girl in newtown whom although was plesant enough was not really my cup of tea, anyway in the intrests of being polite and hungry we decided to have a bite to eat. i took her to my fave place 'taste' on 'king street', which specializes in fantastic salads, anyway there's a guy with a pony tail chatting to this lovely american girl, she's stunning and my pheremones are going nuts. i order a pumpkin salad with poppyseed dressing, and by defualt sit next to the beautiful girl, who immideatly starts chatting to me, she's from vermont and i'm telling her about my travels and how i really loved new mexico but never made it to vermont. while i am chatting i am slso painfully aware that i am with the internet girl so i have to engage her and eventually vermont girl leaves.
anyways when i get home i write a song, and the next night find myself in newtown again. so i put the song in an envelope and give it to the guy with the pony tail. there's nothing on the envelope except 'vermont girl' and no info about me, no e mail address, no phone number no name. i just think it's sometimes nice to return an inspiration to its source. the music is kinda sad, a piano, a simple drum beat and a very nice sounding electric guitar that kick in half way through...

vermont girl with salad dressing
by
the deep fix

i’m not young,
aged disgracefully
miss spent youth,
guess i missed my destiny
like a ghost haunts itself
in the suburbs of regret
uninspired by money making schemes
and grandiose opportunities
seems like everyone’s
got a line to spin
so here’s something for you
a little genuine
i never wanted to
rule the world
i just wanted to
find my girl
in the evening twilight,
in new towns casual sight
you know the message that I’m sending
to the Vermont girl with salad dressing

Have you ever seen
any thing
so beautiful ?

0h now you don’t even know me,
you may not even care
but i am a stranger here as well
and my eyes declared
there’s no expectation,
i guess you’re just a little
ahhh, inspiration…to me
you may not want it anyway
you may not even feel
these days it’s kinda hard to tell
the fake ones from the real
but I just want to say
i went to santa fe
but I never saw anything there
i wanted to take away
nothing quite so unique
to capture my attention
still I count my blessings
Vermont girl with salad dressing

Have you ever seen
any thing
so beautiful ?

there are events in one's life that have no anologue, no point of reference to tether words to, adjectives fail, decriptions can't decribe, images missrepresent, all attempts impotent, and you know the score with this particular band...
i wish i could even begin to tell you all how special this was, i wish i could capture the moment and share it but the moment came on like a cosmic tidal wave and what remains is the very essense of what the church do to me when i see them play live. if one perceives music in its purest origional form it is nothing more than shamanic intention and tonight the church took the enmore into another realm completely, a sublime cacophony of sound, pure rock and roll did what it's supposed to do, kicked down the doors and abducted our spirits, showed us things we ain't never seen before, took us places mythology talks about, i was taken to invisible landscapes and like all those 'special nights' parts of me are still there and parts of me have returned, ever changed, ever respectful of the power of this music, ever humbled by the experience, all i know is there's an awful lot of love in my heart for the church.

north korea holds the world in check after impotent world leaders waffle and let of a lot of hot air over a bomb testing, i guess every one forgets that the french, the english and the usa have tested their fare share of bombs as well, usually in some poorer part of the world where the natives can't sue. as far as bombs go, i think they really are just a feudian dreamscape, insecure men playing with their weapons, mines bigger than yours. its ironic that my world has split in two halves, reality, the political world of work, societies and people is shot to peices, while my spiritual world is perfect. paradox.

I assume that you, like me, want to live longer and better. The key to a longer life is not merely sticking around for decades but lies in the ancient Greek concept of time, which was described by two words, "chronos" and "kairos". Each concept measured time, but in radically different ways.
"Chronos" is familiar to us, the chronological march measured by our watches, by seconds, hours, days, months. The key to a longer life lies with the second measure of time, "kairos". Kairotic time is measured by events, not by hours. Philosophical discourses have been written about the difference between chronos and kairos, but the sweetest succinct explanation I have found was written by a former professor of philosophy, Sam Keen, in 'Hymns to an Unknown God': "Chronological time is what we measure by clocks and calendars; it is always linear, orderly, quantifiable, and mechanical. Kairotic time is organic, rhythmic, bodily, leisurely, and aperiodic; it is the inner cadence that brings fruit to ripeness, a woman to childbirth, a man to change his direction in life."
In kairotic time, weeks can seem like months. Many Australians understand this, which is why we are, among all nations, the most inveterate travellers. Because travellers understand, instinctively and by experience, that travel and adventure change and elongate time, even while navigating the deadlines of airline and train departures, sitting on buses and waiting. It would be intresting to find out how much time (chronos) we have spent in our lives waiting.

here's a strange thing, a friend sent me a recording of the revesby show, it was amazing to hear all the nuance and intricate structures of the band playing live, and the harmonies and the amazing musicianship, and there at the end, when the audeience runs to the stage, SK says, 'there's capt. mission.'
its been a strange few days i have been out surfing in huge surf, catching monster waves, and feeling the joy, and this morning manifested several dolphins, they swam around and jumped and played, it was quite surreal, if i reached out my hand i could touch them.
the water is healing me, i feel some what battered from work dramas, and personalities, the waves wash it away, give ya perspective.

THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE

An Autohagiography

Subsequently re-Antichristened

THE CONFESSIONS OF

ALEISTER CROWLEY

To Three Friends

J. W. N. SULLIVAN
who suggested this booklet
AUGUSTUS JOHN
who first gave practical assistance
P. R. STEPHENSEN
who saw the point

And To Three Immortal Memories

RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON
the perfect pioneer of spiritual and physical adventure
OSCAR ECKENSTEIN
who trained me to follow the trail
ALLAN BENNETT
who did what he could

P A R T O N E

TOWARDS THE GOLDEN DAWN.

PRELUDE

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Not only to this autohagiography --- as he amusedly insists on calling it --- of Aleister Crowley, but to every form of biography, biology, even chemistry, these words are key.

"Every man and every woman is a star." What can we know about a star? By the telescope, a faint phantasm of its optical value. By the spectroscope, a hint of its composition. By the telescope, and our mathematics, its course. In this last case we may legitimately argue from the known to the unknown: by our measure of the brief visible curve, we can calculate whence it has come and whither it will go. Experience justifies our assumptions.

Considerations of this sort are essential to any serious attempt at biography. An infant is not --- as our grandmothers thought --- an arbitrary jest flung into the world by a cynical deity, to be saved or damned as predestination or freewill required. We know now that "that, that is, is", as the old hermit of Prague that never saw pen and ink very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc.

Nothing can ever be created or destroyed; and therefore the "life" of any individual must be comparable to that brief visible curve, and the object of writing it to divine by the proper measurements the remainder of its career.

The writer of any biography must ask, in the deepest sense, who is he? This questions who art thou?" is the first which is put to any candidate for initiation. Also, it is the last. What so-and-so is, did and suffered: these are merely clues to that great problem. So then the earliest memories of any autohagiographer will be immensely valuable; their very incoherence will be an infallible guide. For, as Freud has shown, we remember (in the main) what we wish to remember, and forget what is painful. There is thus great danger of deception as to the "facts" of the case; but our memories indicate with uncanny accuracy what is our true will. And, as above made manifest, it is this true will which shows the nature of our proper motion.

In writing the life of the average man, there is this fundamental difficulty, that the performance is futile and meaningless, even from the standpoint of the matter-of-fact philosopher; there is, that is to say, no artistic unity. In the case of Aleister Crowley no such Boyg appeared on the hillside; for he himself regards his career as a definitely dramatic composition. It comes to a climax on April 8th, 9th and 10th, 1904 e.v. The slightest incident in the {31} History of the whole universe appears to him as a preparation for that event; and his subsequent life is merely the aftermath of that crisis.

On the other hand, however, there is the circumstance that his time has been spent in three very distinct manners: the Secret Way of the Initiate, the Path of Poetry and Philosophy, and the Open Sea of Romance and Adventure. It is indeed not unusual to find the first two, or the last two, elements in the molecule of a man: Byron exemplifies this, and Poe that. But is is rare indeed for so strenuous and out-of-doors a life to be associated with such profound devotion to the arts of the quietist; and in this particular instance all three careers are so full that posterity might well be excused for surmising that not one but several individuals were combined in a legend, or even for taking the next step and saying: This Aleister Crowley was not a man, or even a number of men; he is obviously a solar myth. Nor could he himself deny such an impeachment too brutally; for already, before he has attained the prime of life, his name is associated with fables not less fantastic than those which have thrown doubt upon the historicity of the Buddha. It should be the true will of this book to make plain the truth about the man. Yet here again there is a lion in the way. The truth must be falsehood unless it be the whole truth; and the whole truth is partly inaccessible, partly unintelligible, partly incredible and partly unpublishable --- that is, in any country where truth in itself is recognized as a dangerous explosive.

A further difficulty is introduced by the nature of the mind, and especially of the memory, of the man himself. We shall come to incidents which show that he is doubtful about clearly remembered circumstances, whether they belong to "real life" or to dreams, and even that he has utterly forgotten things which no normal man could forget. He has, moreover, so completely overcome the illusion of time (in the sense used by the philosophers, from Lao Tzu and Plotinus to Kant and Whitehead) that he often finds it impossible to disentangle events as a sequence. He has so thoroughly referred phenomena to a single standard that they have lost their individual significance, just as when one has understood the word "cat", the letters c a t have lost their own value and become mere arbitrary elements of an idea. Further: on reviewing one's life in perspective the astronomical sequence ceases to be significant. Events rearrange themselves in an order outside time and space, just as in a picture there is no way of distinguishing at what point on the canvas the artist began to paint. Alas! it is impossible to make this a satisfactory book; hurrah! that furnishes the necessary stimulus; it becomes worth while to do it, and by Styx! it shall be done.

It would be absurd to apologize for the form of of this book. Excuses are always nauseating. I do not believe for a moment that it would have turned out any better if it had been written in the most favourable circumstances. {32} I mention merely as a matter of general interest the actual difficulties attending the composition.

From the start my position was precarious. I was practically penniless, I had been betrayed in the most shameless and senseless way by practically everyone with whom I was in business relations, I had no means of access to any of the normal conveniences which are considered essential to people engaged in such tasks. On the top of this there sprang up a sudden whirlwind of wanton treachery and brainless persecution, so imbecile yet so violent as to throw even quite sensible people off their base. I ignored this and carried on, but almost immediately both I and one of my principal assistants were stricken down with lingering illness. I carried on. My assistant died1. I carried on. His death was the signal for a fresh outburst of venomous falsehoods. I carried on. The agitation resulted in my being exiled from Italy; through no accusation of any kind was, or could be, alleged against me. That meant that I was torn away from even the most elementary conveniences for writing this book. I carried on. At the moment of writing this paragraph everything in connection with the book is entirely in the air. I am carrying on.

But apart from any of this, I have felt throughout an essential difficulty with regard to the form of the book. The subject is too big to be susceptible of organic structure unless I make a deliberate effort of will and a strict arbitrary selection. It would, as a matter of fact, be easy for me to choose any one of fifty meanings for my life, and illustrate it by carefully chosen facts. Any such method would be open to the criticism which is always ready to devastate any form of idealism. I myself feel that it would be unfair and, what is more, untrue. The alternative has been to make the incidents as full as possible, to state them as they occurred, entirely regardless of any possible bearing upon any possible spiritual significance. This method involves a certain faith in life itself, that it will declare its own meaning and apportion the relative importance of every set of incidents automatically. In other words, it is to assert the theory that the destiny is a supreme artist, which is notoriously not the case on any accepted definition of art. And yet --- a mountain! What a mass of heterogeneous accidents determine its shape! Yet, in the case of a fine mountain, who denies the beauty and even the significance of its form?

In the later years of my life, as I have attained to some understanding of the unity behind the diverse phenomena of experience, and as the natural restriction of elasticity which comes with age has gained ground, it has become progressively easier to group events about a central purpose. But this only means that the principle of selection has been changed. In my early years the actual seasons, climates and occupations determined the sections of my life. My spiritual activities fit into those frames, whereas, more recently,

Note: Raoul Loveday, who died at the Abbey of Thelema after drinking from a polluted stream. See part 6 of this work for the rest.
the converse is the case. My physical environment fits into my spiritual preoccupation. This change would be sufficient by itself to ensure the theoretical impossibility of editing a life like mine on any consistent principle.

I find myself obliged, for these and many other reasons, to abandon altogether any idea of conceiving an artistic structure for the work or formulating an artistic purpose. All that I can do is to describe everything that I remember, as best I can, as if it were, in itself, the centre of interest. I must trust nature so to order matters that, in the multiplicity of the material, the proper proportion will somehow appear automatically, just as in the operations of pure chance or inexorable law a unity ennobled by strength and beautified by harmony arises inscrutably out of the chaotic concatenation of circumstances. At least one claim may be made; nothing has been invented, nothing suppressed, nothing altered and nothing "yellowed up". I believe that truth is not only stranger than fiction, but more interesting. And I have no motive for deception, because I don't give a damn for the whole human race --- "you're nothing but a pack of cards."

Here's something i lifeted from the SMH. Martin Amis, who i really thnk is a brilliant writer uses the same theme that i use, terrorism and islamic extremism is tied in with fear of females and sexuality....

The British author Martin Amis has a particular slant on the motives behind the September 11 hijackings, writes James Button.
Searching for insight ... Martin Amis's latest writings follow his preoccupation with Islam and terrorism.

It has been Martin Amis month in Britain. The writer, now living in Uruguay, is back doing the media rounds for his new novella, House of Meetings. He has also had published two long pieces of journalism and a short story, The Last Hours of Mohammed Atta.

The articles address his latest preoccupation, Islamist terrorism and Islam. The story (included in House of Meetings) tries, with typical Amisian ambition, to get inside the head of a hijacker on the last day of his life, September 11, 2001.

By now Amis's approach is so familiar readers can tick the boxes: sentences straining for significance, the impulse to humour even in the most serious matters, the mandatory mention of his literary mentor, Saul Bellow. As Amis's Atta buckled himself in on flight 11, I half expected him to be reading Bellow's novel Henderson the Rain King.
But if Amis can be overblown, he can also be acute (and very funny). At an airport this week I remembered his insight - that the age of terrorism also produces its opposite, boredom - as I queued for 10 minutes to reach a machine that X-rayed my shoes. Having for years stuck with Amis on his grand and grandiose flights, I was keen to see what he would make of the flight of Mohammed Atta.
It is 4am on September 11 and Atta wakes up in a miserable motel in Portland, Maine. He cuts himself shaving, slips in the shower, studies his face with loathing. Later he will get killer headaches, luridly described. He has not had a bowel movement since May.
May? This was troubling. The idea that Atta might express self-hatred through bodily disgust is plausible. But it is old Amis territory: many of his male characters are physically, and with horror, falling apart. And the author's weakness for obscure words was distracting: his protagonist watches an old person stick out a "marfanic thumb". Was this a story about Atta or Amis?
Two forces drive Amis's Atta. One, he is not religious. He doesn't think he'll get the 72 virgins in paradise. Nor, although he hates America, is he especially political. He joined the jihad because it was "the most charismatic idea of his generation. To unite ferocity and rectitude in a single word: nothing could compete with that."
Why does rectitude matter so much to him? Here Amis has one - possibly brilliant - idea. It is about women.
His Atta, while flying on a Spanish airline in 1999, saw 15 or 16 white-robed, turbaned men suddenly crowd into the aisle and get to the floor, "humped in prayer". Over the intercom the captain ordered them to return to their seats or he would return to Dubai. A stewardess appeared - tall, long-necked, beautiful: "swinishly luxurious". The effect on Atta is electric. He watches her bellow at the prostrate men: "Vamos, arriba, c---!" Let's go, get up, she orders, cursing them with a word for female genitals. Atta "would never forget the face of the stewardess ... and how much he wanted to hurt it'.'

It is an improbable scene. Is this, then, merely Amis resuming his favourite theme of shrunken masculinity? I don't think so. In his will the real Atta banned "unclean" women from attending his funeral.

One of the July 7 London bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan, instructed his fellow terrorists in how they could look at women; on his martyr video he rants about real Muslim men (jihadis) and wimps (the rest). Before he killed the Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, Mohammed Bouyeri tried to knife a young man he believed was having (consensual) sex with his sister. And so on.

In an article last month, "The Age of Horrorism" (it can be read on The Guardian website), Amis traced the sexual frustrations of the father of Islamist thought, Sayyid Qutb. While in America in 1949, Qutb became disgusted by - and obsessed with - what he saw as the lewdness of American women.

To Amis it leads to an inescapable conclusion. The suppression of women is not only breeding jihadis, it is caging Muslims in ignorance and backwardness. His answer: get girls into school, spark a women's revolution, spend some of the $300 billion that was spent on Iraq on raising consciousness in the Islamic world.

It is an excellent thought. My problem is with the way Amis expresses it. Because, he writes, the Koran grants men sweeping powers over women and hence spares them the need to think, "no doubt the impulse towards rational inquiry is by now very weak in the rank and file of the Muslim male". It is women, then, who will save Islam. But this is surely a false duality; the sexes cannot be split so easily. Many Muslim women are also devout, as scornful of secularism as Amis is of faith.

Can Westerners find a way to talk about their differences with Muslims without being superior? This is hard: for many, the relative position of women is the conclusive evidence that shows why the West is better. But the sort of consciousness-raising Amis advocates would have to be done with humility or it would fail. To put it simply, I can't change you if I am not also open to the possibility that you have things to show me.

"It's their own past they [Muslims] are pissed off about; their great decline," Amis said in a recent interview. And: "They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs - well, they've got to stop their children killing people."

These generalisations have a note of contempt. It's a pity, because I reckon he's onto something about the women.

i've just finished reading 'are men necessary' by muareen dowd, and it's not a bad book although i must say, it should be called 'are american men necessary' it's filled with american examples of mens behaviour. if i was the author i'd call it 'are people necessary' the answer would be a resounding NO.

Well the days have been sun drenched, warm, blue skies over the beaches, surf is getting better, caught a beautiful wave this morning, my mind still contemplating the church show, such elegance. i was filled with grace, my body shook with awe, transforming and transmigrating. i washed up for a cup o tea and lunch with a older beardered recently retired man who confessed his alcoholism to me, he's a lover of books to, and we often chat about our latest reads. It was nice to talk to someone about something substantial, we laughed at how in france when a philosopher dies there's millions of people on the streets weeping and there's a state funeral. Down in Australia, ya gotta be a footbal player for that to occur.

Well i got three days off to play in, no money but a head filled with dreams and ideas i gotta get crackin on.

I cought the front page of the manly daily our local newspaper and it was warning peoples not to swim in the ocean due to a massive layer of red algae covering the whole of the northern beaches, it was amazing, i did'nt see anything out there bu the photo was biblical. The seas have turned red. Maybe the enviromental concerns are the biggest threat after all....if it's gonna effect my surfing.

Apart from setting off a week early due to slipping through some kinda Church generated time hole, then on the actual night, the kids who live below me hid my ‘one’ pair of boots, leaving me searching frantically for them as the perilous journey to a place called Revesby, out in western sydney became more and more complex and fraught with obstacles. It was some sort of traffic long weekend police jamboree so I drove in a disciplined manner aware that with one point left on my license I better be vigilant, but I could already feel my excitement, spreading through my body which meant three toilet breaks, and seizing the opportunity to ask directions from friendly service station attendants who didn’t even know what country they where in let alone the way to Revesby. Old Captain Mission in a final act of desperation used the force, homing in on Church Radar I eased my way South West towards the venue. Revesby is well outta my comfort zone, I inhabit the Northern beaches of Sydney, very rarely leaving the proximity of the ocean, and here I am in some strange landscape filled with KFC fast food burger joints, car yards and huge freeways, motorways and a road I hope will get me there on time. Remarkably I find myself entering Revesby at exactly 7.30. I pull over and ask some one where the Revesby RSL is, but everyone I ask shakes their head, ‘No. No RSL in Revesby but there is a working mans club.' Revesby Workers, no, that’s not the place I convince myself, thinking off a workers club as a little shed in Northern England filled with men playing darts and smoking roll ups, drinking stout. I see a sign for RSL and follow that 2ks out of town, there’s a nice little RSL tucked away off the beaten track. I park and run in, only to find that this is not Revesby RSL. Again I am pointed to the Workers Club. So in a desperate attempt to find the venue I drive back, park and find that I am in a huge complex, massive, like a mall that’s also a small modern indoor town. It’s very plush and hundreds of people in well presented uniforms are rushing towards me to welcome me. Alas, no its to inform me I can’t come in as I am not dressed appropriately. My sleeves are cut from my old 'church acoustic' T Shirt.

‘But I bought a ticket.’ I protest, no one explained that I needed to be in a sleeved shirt, I look at all the women who where wearing sleeveless shirts inside, by this time I’m frantic, ‘Look I’ll go in and buy a t shirt from the band.’

Everyone seems happy with this, including myself. In we go, and the Workers club is like the titanic, hundreds of people milling about, moving around from restaurant to bar, escalators all over the place, music leaking through the walls, I imagine that one day space travel will be like this, people will cruise in huge Mall type structures, gambling and getting drunk, humanity makes first contact. intelligent life in space, well one can live in hope, I can hear the sublime intro to ‘Never Before’ and clutch my chest, no please, no more obstacles. Then I realise I didn’t pick up my ticket at the front desk.

Fortunately I am hearing the sound check, it’s a closed door so I amble back down to get my ticket and taunt the uniforms in my sleeveless shirt.

Well the set was amazing, it looked as if there were a few sound issues, some technical peculiarities towards the start but things went from amazing to mind blowingly brilliant. It was just one of those shows, ‘hey wait, aren’t they all with you Capt’ I hear ya say. Yes its true I am terribly subjective when it comes to the crunch, but this was an amazing show because the audience were so good, really responsive and appreciative and the band just shone. Plugged in The Church move through aural sculptures ambient and latent sonic landscapes that can’t help but suck you along into their vortex and carry you away.

I didn’t take my camera tonight and just soaked up the atmosphere and it was beautiful atmosphere in the workers club, from the choice of songs the highlights that i recall are : Saturation, Iona Blues, Reptile, Is this where you live, Easy, Pure Chance, Never Before, Day 5, Tommorow, Block, Unguarded Moment, ripple, destination, myrrh, grind, shadow cabinet, numbers, I'm sure i left out a few,
they played a good length and some of the into's and outro's were amazing, very expansive, ambient and moments of rock and roll beauty. I've missed out a few songs but i'm sure that gives you a taste.
This is quality musicianship individually and as a synergy of the band. I sat down the front watching a diverse mix of people, all mesmerized by the beauty of this music. Steve’s playing was brilliant, those base notes filled the night like languid points of light and the two guitars feeding of one another in symbiotic communion. But for me tonight the most amazing quality that held everything together, was Mr. Tim Powles. His rhythms were so magnetic and held such a gravitational pull I could feel everything being sucked in towards them. Highlights – I can’t really say there was a highlight, it was all excellent, perhaps the highlight was the fact here’s my favourite band on this planet playing together, evolving after 26 years and I know that they haven’t even peaked yet, the best is yet to come. you can see all that potential overflowing. There were some beautiful harmonies and lovely ambient sounds created, often leading into or out off songs. In many ways I am always very upset that the church never get the recognition they deserve from the music media in Australia, however at the same time, part of me is selfishly glad, that there’s something intimate when you see them that I fear would be lost, something special and meaningful..But don’t take my word for it, go see the Magnetic Strip Tour yourself. Plugged in, tune in, turn on, trip out.

so i'm talking to a friend about the two most important current affair issues, global warming and terrorism, right now there's a huge debate about which is the bigger threat, it's a strange competitive question, and it's a strange culture of question asking where the question never gets questioned. I mean, what sort of culture would even ask a question like, what's the biggest threat, what's going to do the most damage, what's going to destroy us first. it's not tv dude, its not hollywood or some plot from sc fi, we are curious about the dangers these present, and seek an answer so that we can do what exactly....?

the answer is obvious to me, terrorism has always existed, its the product of destructive and unimaginative memes, it's the last resort, it's the final statement in hopelessness and human defeat over brainwashed ideals and malevenent desires. the human destruction to the enviroment is terrorism as well, it's just not so localised, and we are all guilty, you me and mobil, unless you're living in the rainforest self sufficient and living in harmony with nature, but you wouldn't be reading this would ya, if that was he case. no the danger is imminent, it's islamic fascism.
the planet is not doing anything it has not done before, its not behaving erratically, it's evolving to its enviroment, adapting itself, we forget human beings have only been around in the blink of an eye, since the earth formed, our time is but a fleeting moment, what arrogance to think we are the first and last civilization that the earth has shrugged away as it changes. islamic fundamentalism does however threaten the earth becuase in order to create an islamic planet one has to use force and that will inevitably take the form of nuclear or germ warfare. an enemy that has no fear of death, an enemy that wants to die for its cause is a formidable enemy. a planet that wants to shift and change is not an enemy at all. people don't get it, they sit and talk about the two threats but they forget, the magic word in all of this is...wait for it. INTENTION.
The earths intention is to sustain life. The suicide bombers intention is to take it.

Back in the middle east, it's not Israels intention to kill the arabs, but its the arabs intention to kill israelis. And if you doubt me... Ask why the UN who promised israel they would remove weapons from Hezbollah have not. They had no intention of engaging with them and in 1 years time when they start shooting rockets, it's game on again and we know who is going to be blamed.

Oriana in Exile
By Christopher Orlet

On his deathbed, Pope Gregory VII (1020-1085) is reported to have said, "I have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile." Gregory's words might just as well be attributed to his fellow countryman Oriana Fallaci. Wanted for a speech crime in her native Italy, Europe's most celebrated journalist now passes her days in exile in an upper Manhattan townhouse. In May, Fallaci was indicted under a provision of the Italian penal code that criminalizes the "vilification of any religion admitted by the state." Specifically it is charged that her latest book The Force of Reason (due out in the U.S. in October) "defames Islam," which is a little like charging Paul Revere with disturbing the peace. (Tony Blair has promised to introduce similar legislation in Britain. Blasphemy laws, once a mainstay of the Dark Ages, are fast returning to the law books throughout the West.)

The plaintiff is an Italian Muslim activist with the infidel name of Adel Smith. Smith is believed to be the author of the pamphlet "Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci," a screed that calls upon Muslims to "eliminate" the journalist and to "go and die with Fallaci." Smith was also behind a recent court decision banning crucifixes from public school classrooms (the crucifix, according to Smith, is a "miniature cadaver"). And he has called for the removal of Dante's Divine Comedy from high school syllabus, and the destruction of the medieval fresco, "The Last Judgment" by Giovanni da Modena, in Bologna Cathedral, both of which depict the prophet Mohammed in hell. After 9/11, the former Scot turned Italian Muslim put the demolition of the priceless artwork on the backburner while he turned to other assaults on Christianity. During a January 2003 television show, Smith repeatedly called Christianity a "criminal association" whose head, Pope John Paul II, was "a foreigner who leads the church and who is con man." (In an all-too-rare case of poetic justice, an Italian court last month sentenced Smith to six months in prison for defaming Catholicism.)

Yet, despite the U.S.'s relative tolerance for free expression, Fallaci has not been particularly welcomed here either. The journalist first earned the contempt of the Intellectual Left with her vocal opposition to abortion. Today many intellectuals, both left and right, regard her as an anti-Muslim racist. As with Salman Rushdie before her, the cultural elites seem a little embarrassed by Fallaci, and not a few believe that both Rushdie and Fallaci deserve their fate.

In a 2003 interview with the New York Observer, "La Fallaci," as she is known in Europe, flatly denied the racist charge: "Racist has to do with race and not with religion. Yes, I am against that religion, a religion that controls the life of people every minute of their day, that puts the burka on women, that treats women as camels, that preaches polygamy, that cuts the hands off poor thieves...[Islam] is not even a religion, in my opinion. It is a tyranny, a dictatorship -- the only religion on earth that has never committed a work of self-criticism....It becomes worse and worse...and now they want to come impose it on me, on us."

In Italia, where the The Force of Reason has sold more than a million copies, Fallaci is rather more popular. In Force she writes that the long-awaited fall of the West has commenced -- not due to communism, but to Islamic fascism. And she argues that Western-style democracy, with its long tradition of liberty, human rights, freedom of thought and religion, and Islamic fundamentalism cannot coexist. As proof, she cites attempts by France's Union of Italian Muslims to ban her first book, The Rage and the Pride, and her recent indictment at home.

Despite the indictment, the almost constant death threats and the recent murders of outspoken critics of radical Islam, La Fallaci remains undeterred in her criticism of Islamofascism. European Muslims, she says, not only refuse to assimilate, but seem determined to undermine Western society. "The increased presence of Muslims in Italy, and in Europe, is directly proportional to our loss of freedom," she writes. More dire are her predictions that an apathetic Europe will soon become part of a new Islamic Empire she calls Eurabia... "Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony....In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage in the Islamic expansionism."

The daughter of a political activist who opposed Mussolini, Fallaci was for many years a respected war correspondent covering the Vietnam War and the Indo-Pakistani War. She survived being shot three times during a student uprising in Mexico City, and went on to write one of the classics of modern journalism, An Interview With History, which contains her trademark confrontational interviews with Kissinger, Deng Xiaoping, the Shah of Iran, Arafat, Ayatollah Khomeini, Muammar Qaddafi, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Federico Fellini. "I do not feel myself to be, nor will I ever succeed in feeling like, a cold recorder of what I see and hear," she writes in the preface to Interview. "On every professional experience I leave shreds of my heart and soul; and I participate in what I see or hear as though the matter concerned me personally and were one on which I ought to take a stand (in fact I always take one, based on a specific moral choice)."

At 75, the petite, blue-eyed former World War II resistance fighter who once smuggled explosives past Nazi checkpoints, remains as feisty as ever. Particularly when she receives one of her frequent death threats. She lets the caller have his say, she told the Observer, "Then I say, 'Do you know where it is your mother and your wife and your sister and your daughter are right in this moment? They are in a brothel in Beirut. And do you know what they're doing? They are giving away their' -- I don't tell it to you, but I tell it to them -- 'and you know to whom? To an American!"

Always the fighter, La Fallaci is today waging a losing battle against breast cancer, and doesn't expect to be around for her June 2006 trial, though she suspects she would be found guilty. In the meantime she still has much to say:

"The clash between us and them is not a military one," she warns. "It is a cultural one, a religious one, and the worst is still to come."

The West would do well to listen to the words of La Fallaci.

Abandon normal instruments

Accept advice

Accretion

A line has two sides

Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a stricture)

Are there sections? Consider transitions

Ask people to work against their better judgement

Ask your body

Assemble some of the instruments in a group and treat the group

Balance the consistency principle with the inconsistency principle

Be dirty

Breathe more deeply

Bridges -build -burn

Cascades

Change instrument roles

Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency

Children's voices -speaking -singing

Cluster analysis

Consider different fading systems

Consult other sources -promising -unpromising

Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element

Courage!

Cut a vital connection

Decorate, decorate

Define an area as `safe' and use it as an anchor

Destroy -nothing -the most important thing

Discard an axiom

Disconnect from desire

Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them

Distorting time

Do nothing for as long as possible

Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do

Don't be frightened of cliches

Don't be frightened to display your talents

Don't break the silence

Don't stress one thing more than another

Do something boring

Do the washing up

Do the words need changing?

Do we need holes?

Emphasize differences

Emphasize repetitions

Emphasize the flaws

Faced with a choice, do both (given by Dieter Rot)

Feedback recordings into an acoustic situation

Fill every beat with something

Get your neck massaged

Ghost echoes

Give the game away

Give way to your worst impulse

Go slowly all the way round the outside

Honor thy error as a hidden intention

How would you have done it?

Humanize something free of error

Imagine the music as a moving chain or caterpillar

Imagine the music as a set of disconnected events

Infinitesimal gradations

Intentions -credibility of -nobility of -humility of

Into the impossible

Is it finished?

Is there something missing?

Is the tuning appropriate?

Just carry on

Left channel, right channel, centre channel

Listen in total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly

Listen to the quiet voice

Look at a very small object, look at its centre

Look at the order in which you do things

Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them

Lowest common denominator check -single beat -single note -single riff

Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame

Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list

Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate

Mechanicalize something idiosyncratic

Mute and continue

Only one element of each kind

(Organic) machinery

Overtly resist change

Put in earplugs

Remember .those quiet evenings

Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics

Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities

Repetition is a form of change

Reverse

Short circuit (example; a man eating peas with the idea that they will improve his virility shovels them straight into his lap)

Shut the door and listen from outside

Simple subtraction

Spectrum analysis

Take a break

Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance

Tape your mouth (given by Ritva Saarikko)

The inconsistency principle

The tape is now the music

Think of the radio

Tidy up

Trust in the you of now

Turn it upside down

Twist the spine

Use an old idea

Use an unacceptable color

Use fewer notes

Use filters

Use `unqualified' people

Water

What are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate

What is the reality of the situation?

What mistakes did you make last time?

What would your closest friend do?

What wouldn't you do?

Work at a different speed

You are an engineer

You can only make one dot at a time

You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas



Abandon normal instruments

Accept advice

Accretion

A line has two sides

Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a stricture)

Always first steps

Always give yourself credit for having more than personality (given by Arto Lindsay)

Are there sections? Consider transitions

Ask people to work against their better judgement

Ask your body

Assemble some of the instruments in a group and treat the group

A very small object -Its centre

Balance the consistency principle with the inconsistency principle

Be dirty

Be extravagant

Breathe more deeply

Bridges -build -burn

Cascades

Change instrument roles

Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency

Children's voices -speaking -singing

Cluster analysis

Consider different fading systems

Consult other sources -promising -unpromising

Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element

Courage!

Cut a vital connection

Decorate, decorate

Define an area as `safe' and use it as an anchor

Destroy -nothing -the most important thing

Discard an axiom

Disciplined self-indulgence

Disconnect from desire

Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them

Distorting time

Do nothing for as long as possible

Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do

Don't be frightened of cliches

Don't be frightened to display your talents

Don't break the silence

Don't stress *on* thing more than another (sic)

Do something boring

Do the washing up

Do the words need changing?

Do we need holes?

Emphasize differences

Emphasize repetitions

Emphasize the flaws

Faced with a choice, do both (given by Dieter Rot)

Feed the recording back out of the medium

Fill every beat with something

Get your neck massaged

Ghost echoes

Give the game away

Give way to your worst impulse

Go outside. Shut the door.

Go slowly all the way round the outside

Honor thy error as a hidden intention

How would you have done it?

Humanize something free of error

Idiot glee (?)

Imagine the piece as a set of disconnected events

Infinitesimal gradations

Intentions -credibility of -nobility of -humility of

In total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly

Into the impossible

Is it finished?

Is the tuning intonation correct?

Is there something missing?

It is quite possible (after all)

Just carry on

Left channel, right channel, centre channel

Listen to the quiet voice

Look at the order in which you do things

Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them

Lost in useless territory

Lowest common denominator

Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame

Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list

Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate

Mechanicalize something idiosyncratic

Mute and continue

Not building a wall but making a brick

Only one element of each kind

(Organic) machinery

Overtly resist change

Put in earplugs

Question the heroic approach

Remember .those quiet evenings

Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics

Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities

Repetition is a form of change

Revaluation (a warm feeling)

Reverse

Short circuit (example; a man eating peas with the idea that they will improve his virility shovels them straight into his lap)

Simple subtraction

Simply a matter of work

Spectrum analysis

State the problem in words as simply as possible

Take a break

Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance

Tape your mouth (given by Ritva Saarikko)

The inconsistency principle

The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten

The tape is now the music

Think of the radio

Tidy up

Towards the insignificant

Trust in the you of now

Turn it upside down

Twist the spine

Use an old idea

Use an unacceptable color

Use fewer notes

Use filters

Use `unqualified' people

Water

What are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving

What are you really thinking about just now?

What is the reality of the situation?

What mistakes did you make last time?

What would your closest friend do?

What wouldn't you do?

What would your closest friend do?

Work at a different speed

You are an engineer

You can only make one dot at a time

You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas


Abandon normal instruments

Accept advice

Accretion

A line has two sides

Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a stricture)

Always first steps

Are there sections? Consider transitions

Ask people to work against their better judgement

Ask your body

Assemble some of the elements in a group and treat the group

Balance the consistency principle with the inconsistency principle

Be dirty

Be extravagant

Be less critical more often

Breathe more deeply

Bridges -build -burn

Cascades

Change instrument roles

Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency

Children -speaking -singing

Cluster analysis

Consider different fading systems

Consult other sources -promising -unpromising

Courage!

Cut a vital connection

Decorate, decorate

Define an area as `safe' and use it as an anchor

Destroy -nothing -the most important thing

Discard an axiom

Disciplined self-indulgence

Disconnect from desire

Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them

Distorting time

Do nothing for as long as possible

Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do

Don't be frightened of cliches

Don't be frightened to display your talents

Don't break the silence

Don't stress one thing more than another

Do something boring

Do the words need changing?

Do we need holes?

Emphasize differences

Emphasize repetitions

Emphasize the flaws

Fill every beat with something

From nothing to more than nothing

Ghost echoes

Give the game away

Give way to your worst impulse

Go outside. Shut the door.

Go slowly all the way round the outside

Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place

Honor thy error as a hidden intention

How would you have done it?

Humanize something free of error

Idiot glee (?)

Imagine the piece as a set of disconnected events

Infinitesimal gradations

Intentions -nobility of -humility of -credibility of

In total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly

Into the impossible

Is it finished?

Is the intonation correct?

Is there something missing?

It is quite possible (after all)

Just carry on

Listen to the quiet voice

Look at the order in which you do things

Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them

Lost in useless territory

Lowest common denominator

Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame

Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list

Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate

Mechanicalize something idiosyncratic

Mute and continue

Not building a wall but making a brick

Once the search is in progress, something will be found

Only a part, not the whole

Only one element of each kind

(Organic) machinery

Overtly resist change

Question the heroic approach

Remember .those quiet evenings

Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics

Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities

Repetition is a form of change

Retrace your steps

Revaluation (a warm feeling)

Reverse

Short circuit (example; a man eating peas with the idea that they will improve his virility shovels them straight into his lap)

Simple subtraction

Simply a matter of work

State the problem in words as clearly as possible

Take a break

Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance

The inconsistency principle

The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten

The tape is now the music

Think of the radio

Tidy up

Towards the insignificant

Trust in the you of now

Turn it upside down

Use an old idea

Use an unacceptable color

Use fewer notes

Use filters

Use `unqualified' people

Water

What are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving

What are you really thinking about just now?

What is the reality of the situation?

What mistakes did you make last time?

What wouldn't you do?

What would your closest friend do?

Work at a different speed

Would anybody want it?

You are an engineer

You can only make one dot at a time

You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas



Abandon desire

Abandon normal instructions

Accept advice

Adding on

A line has two sides

Always the first steps

Ask people to work against their better judgement

Ask your body

Be dirty

Be extravagant

Be less critical

Breathe more deeply

Bridges -build -burn

Change ambiguities to specifics

Change nothing and continue consistently

Change specifics to ambiguities

Consider transitions

Courage!

Cut a vital connection

Decorate, decorate

Destroy nothing; Destroy the most important thing

Discard an axiom

Disciplined self-indulgence

Discover your formulas and abandon them

Display your talent

Distort time

Do nothing for as long as possible

Don't avoid what is easy

Don't break the silence

Don't stress one thing more than another

Do something boring

Do something sudden, destructive and unpredictable

Do the last thing first

Do the words need changing?

Emphasize differences

Emphasize the flaws

Faced with a choice, do both (from Dieter Rot)

Find a safe part and use it as an anchor

Give the game away

Give way to your worst impulse

Go outside. Shut the door.

Go outside. Shut the door.

Go to an extreme, come part way back

How would someone else do it?

How would you have done it?

In total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly

Is it finished?

Is something missing?

Is the style right?

It is simply a matter or work

Just carry on

Listen to the quiet voice

Look at the order in which you do things

Magnify the most difficult details

Make it more sensual

Make what's perfect more human

Move towards the unimportant

Not building a wall; making a brick

Once the search has begun, something will be found

Only a part, not the whole

Only one element of each kind

Openly resist change

Pae White's non-blank graphic metacard

Question the heroic

Remember quiet evenings

Remove a restriction

Repetition is a form of change

Retrace your steps

Reverse

Simple Subtraction

Slow preparation, fast execution

State the problem as clearly as possible

Take a break

Take away the important parts

The inconsistency principle

The most easily forgotten thing is the most important

Think - inside the work -outside the work

Tidy up

Try faking it (from Stewart Brand)

Turn it upside down

Use an old idea

Use cliches

Use filters

Use something nearby as a model

Use `unqualified' people

Use your own ideas

Voice your suspicions

Water

What context would look right?

What is the simplest solution?

What mistakes did you make last time?

What to increase? What to reduce? What to maintain?

What were you really thinking about just now?

What wouldn't you do?

What would your closest friend do?

When is it for?

Where is the edge?

Which parts can be grouped?

Work at a different speed

Would anyone want it?

Your mistake was a hidden intention

Steal a solution.

Describe the landscape in which this belongs.


What else is this like?

List the qualities it has. List those you'd like.

Instead of changing the thing, change the world around it.

What would make this really successful?

Who would make this really successful?


How would you explain this to your parents?

Try faking it.

What were the branch points in the evolution of this entity

Back up a few steps. What else could you have done?
When is it for? Who is it for?

What do you do? Now, what do you do best?

First work alone, then work in unusual pairs.

What most recently impressed you? How is it similar? What can you learn from it? What could you take from it?

Take away as much mystery as possible. What is left?

Use an unacceptable color.

Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics.

Fill every beat with something.

Don't stress one thing more than another.

Ask people to work against their better judgment.

Call your mother and ask her what to do.

Humanize something that is free of error.

Breathe more deeply

Do nothing for as long as possible

Use "unqualified" people.

Make a blank valuable by putting it in an excquisite frame

Faced with a choice, do both

Use fewer notes

Get your neck massaged

Remove specifics; convert to ambiguities

Remove the middle, extend the edges

(Picture of man spotlighted)

Imagine the music as a series of disconnected events

Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance

Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them

Disconnect from desire

Mechanize something idiosyncratic

Do something boring

Accept advice

Pay attention to distractions

Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify.

i'm wandering around the conspirisy market, i sometimes stop in for organic goods but never stay to long else i get angry at all the freaky left wing lunatics and their lizard theories, the gwb is satan mantra is about as dumb a statement as i can take at 10am. Anyways its very windy, stalls re being knocked over, tables flying, tents sailing on a breeze, people rushing around wondering what happened to gravity, me i'm just a tourist watching, i get me nuts, me pears, me weird fibres and soaps and stuff my body needs to function and this guy comes over and tells me to watch a dvd he's going to give me, its called 'In Plane Sight.'
anyway maybe i'll watch it later. He tells me that the americans are evil and that al gore is one of them, the inconvienent truth is just a dupe, a distraction to panic people and get them to spent up big time. I get nervous and walk away, he's following me, telling me to watch the dvd.
i get home and sleep for a few hours, then it's babylon to read the papers and have a pot of tea and in the heat everyone starts to melt, people walking around half nakid, curves every where, this is the world i live in, mmm, global warming bring it on.

being out of the space time loop can have its disadvantages. for some reason i thought today was the 30th, when in actual fact its only the 23rd, i was all prepared for the church gig tonight at revsby, its their first electric show for a few years and i get so enthusiastic i go a bit nuts. anyway when a friend told me it was the 23rd i was totally shocked. i've arranged my whole life around tonight, mmm, oh well i head for the beach, surfs messy but i give it a go, mmm, it's fun but no real wave action. back at mission control i read for a while, the first part of a series of books called quantum gravity, nice start and interesting backdrop - in 2012 an explosion in a particle accelerator causes our world to intersect with various others, the result being magick is now effective within our world. however there are side effects, earth is no longer earth it is known as Otopia anything Earth existed before the explosion. the other realms are elf, demonic, fairy and various others. Due to the intersection between these realms people can travel and interact within them, embassies are set up, diplomatic relationships form and culture adapts. the main charachter is a half robot half woman sexy chick secret agent who has been assigned to protect an elf rock star who has been recieving death threats. there's plenty of sex drugs and various forms of magick within an intresting plot but there are elements of soap opera like narritives that boe me slightly, however i am half way through and intent to finish it asap.

surfing at Babylon, we are out there where the horizon meets, it's perfection, sunny daze, water temp moderate, empty beach, handful of surfers, no clouds, nice breeze and suddenly there comes a set of waves that we all live for, a perfect form, i swim towards it, focused, my body knows what to do, i turn and start bracing myself for the ride. yeah i am propelled faster than light, so fast my eyes close, i am part of everything a crystal voyager, a particle accelerator, swirling along in the mass of a wave, i am nothing, i am everyting, in pure state of being, for i have fallen out of space, i am no longer trapped by time.

i spent a lot of $ today, i had little choice and a lot of need but it's worth sufferring for. i'm somewhat ashamed that i was impulsive and my priorities seem out of whack but sometimes you gotta spend somthing on yourself, i always seem to be channelling $ on survival things and a handful of luxuries, like books and cds. Its been a long time since i splurged indiscriminatly. anyway its done now, gult is a wasted program.

I am currently working night duties. its a hell of a thing, it pulls you apart, circadian rythems all out of whack, but then i find myself with more time, time to surf, time to read, time to create, time to waste....

Here I am sitting in mission control, attempting to bid on ebay, it's a gas i got two hours to check and see if i won, i can't really afford to go higher and i'm hoping no competition is out there lurking in the shadows. ebay could be so addictive if ya are that way inclined, i tend to avoid looking at that site unless it's really important stuff i'm after.

wow it seems like ages since i checked in with you, i don't know where to begin, so much has occurred, i have a new macbook pro, spent some time cracking logic pro 7 which i did sucessfully despite the odds, now i'm installing other software. other big events are death threats to the pope, apparently the old nazi upset some arabs by reading from an old book where the auther said muslims were violebt and aggressive, to which the arab population seemed to want to asassinate him. intresting times, he apologised and i am sure with do what ever it takes to restore order being a good catholic.
other events johnny howard wants potential migrents to australia to undergo some sort of australian values test, its to screen for islamic terrorists by asking them about cricket and beer i guess. unfortunatly i am not a citizen, just a permanant resident and i know nothing about beer or sport.
other big news is the suns back, its been beautiful, the surfs good and warm enough for no wet suit, everyone smiling, happiness swoops down upon the city. i took a drive over to bondi, took 19 mins from work, thats amazing, i wandered along watching the people, it's a scene man.

my dreams are taking a mysteriously romantic shape, i am in a city, it's western, could be sydney, europe or america but i am feeling that its sydney, it's the same landscape each night, although in my dreams its daytime, maybe early morning rush hour as i walk passed a beautiful girl i feel a strong pull towards her. the dream reoccurs each night altough i pass her in different circumstances, sometimes i fly passed, sometimes i ride a horse, every night she gets closer, waving, smiling and looking perfect. i can feel the connection between us, i always wake smiling and happy. positive.

One of my fave journalists was being interveiwed last night, here's the transcript...

Tony Jones speaks with the prolific writer and outspoken commentator Christopher Hitchens about the New York attacks and their implications.
Transcript
TONY JONES: Well just a year after September 11, the prolific writer and outspoken commentator Christopher Hitchens joined me on the roof of a building overlooking Ground Zero to talk about the New York attacks and their implications. Now, five years after the event that changed the world, we invited him to join us again - this time from our Washington studio. Christopher Hitchens thanks for being there.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Thanks for having me back.

TONY JONES: It seems that the United States, and much of the Western world, is still learning the lessons of 9/11. After reflecting on this for five years now, what did we get right and what did we get wrong?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Mmm. Well I think we found out that we were at war, which was better than being at war and not knowing it, which was the case until five years and about five minutes ago. Until five years and five minutes ago, for example, we didn't know the name AQ Khan. We didn't know that Pakistan was being Talibanised from within, that there were al-Qaeda sympathisers in its nuclear program - and we weren't doing anything about that either. We didn't know, incidentally, that international black market of rogue states: North Korea, Libya and Iran, linked by AQ Khan and exchanging nuclear and other technologies, formed the corners of the box in which we thought had Saddam Hussein. When people talk about the box he was in, that box included AQ Khan and the North Koreans and the nuclear black market. So that goes also partly to the point that keeps coming up of whether or not we are safer. I always think that's a contemptible question. Not just because it can't be answered, but because it seems to demand that our governments exist to give us a sense of security, rather than a sense of our duties in the case of a war.

TONY JONES: Christopher Hitchens, I'm going to pause to let you get your earpiece in.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: It's never going to stay in. I'm sorry. It's not my fault. I can hear you. Your viewers will just have to watch with fascination as it pops in and out.

TONY JONES: That's alright, as long as you can hear me. Is it clear now, do you think, that history will primarily judge President Bush's reaction to September 11 by his decision to go to war with Iraq and the linkage he made between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: It’s not the linkage that he made it's the linkage that Saddam Hussein made. The Iraqi regime was the only one in the region to applaud the attacks and it was the only one when every other country, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, were expelling al-Qaeda sympathisers, to start welcoming them onto its soil, particularly in the shape of the notorious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I think that I heard someone say this, actually it was the President, I'm sorry, on your show just a moment ago: the removal of the Taliban was in reprisal for the last attack. The removal of Saddam Hussein was for the next attack so that it wouldn't come. And yes, I'm certain the President will be remembered principally for ridding the Middle East - along with Australian and British support - of the worst dictator the region has ever known and the most dangerous one.

TONY JONES: At least one key witness to the events, within the White House, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the former counter-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, says that advisers in the White House were bent on attacking Iraq in retaliation, whether or not Saddam Hussein had anything to do with al-Qaeda?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, there is a pre-existing quarrel with Saddam Hussein as you know on other matters, including his support for international terrorism. If you remember, the man who was responsible for the hijack of the Achille Lauro the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, the so-called Abu Abbas, the late, when he was captured, had to be released by the Italian police because he was travelling on a diplomatic passport. Do you want to know which country issued him with a diplomatic passport? This wouldn't be the only time that Iraq had given official State support to activity like that. It was unsleepingly pursuing nuclear materials in places like Niger as we can now, I think, adequately demonstrate. It was a permanent threat to its neighbours and a latent threat to all of us. The Senate had passed 98 votes to nil, the Iraq liberation act at the urging of President Clinton and vice-president Gore in 1998. So there was a pre-existing commitment to the removal of Saddam Hussein, which meshed, in my opinion, much better than most people believe with the provocation of September 11. After all, the last time the World Trade Centre was attacked, the man who mixed the chemicals for it, Mr Yassin, went straight from New Jersey, after he'd been interrogated and released, to Baghdad, where he still is, and lived in the intervening time under Saddam Hussein's protection. It's really all a question of whether you would, or would not, give the Saddam Hussein regime the benefit of any doubt, or the presumption of any innocence. If I phrase it like that, I think you might find it difficult to say yes you would.

TONY JONES: Isn't it more important, though, to create or to make a link between September 11 and Saddam Hussein, if you are going to invade the country virtually as a direct result of that?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Yes, well I mean, I think the links were pretty adequately demonstrated.

TONY JONES: Not according to Richard Clarke, for example, who makes the claim that the President himself, only 24 hours after the attacks, came to him urging him to find the evidence that Iraq was involved with the September 11 attacks and he couldn't find that evidence?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: I've read that too. I wouldn't myself have tasked Mr Clarke with that, nor would I have trusted the CIA to get that right, even a tiny thing like that, because they've always got everything else wrong. The CIA continues to say there can't have been a connection, because if one was ever proved - and there's a great deal of evidence for it - they would look stupid. Because they always said, not just that it wasn't there. Do observe this distinction. They said it couldn't be there. They said, by definition, Saddam Hussein could not help Islamic terrorists because his regime was supposedly secular. Now that to anyone who knows anything about Iraq is sheer fatuity. There is an overarching analysis as well that, to some extent, puts these matters of linkage in perspective. When one examined the situation, and realised that al-Qaeda and its co-thinkers have been incubated by what was, in effect, a political slum in the Middle East, which we've been letting rot and decay for far too long and, therefore, it would be a good thing to begin some slum clearance in the region. This meant turning the Pakistani Government from a sympathiser of the Taliban to at least, neutrality. It meant taking away their Afghan colony from them. That's what they've been treating Afghanistan as being. It meant warning the Saudi Arabians we knew what they were doing; it meant undercutting their oil monopoly, by trying to liberate the oil fields of Iraq. And it meant removing the most outstanding supporter of terrorism and jihadism in the region, who was a man with whom we in any case had a political rendezvous. A man who should have been removed from power in 1991. So if you could get over your obsession with this idea that there were invented linkages, you would see there is a broader intersection of argument that favours regime change in the Middle East.

TONY JONES: I understand Christopher Hitchens...

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Excuse me, they would have made maintenance of the status quo much more dangerous.

TONY JONES: I understand what you're saying but the claim of Richard Clarke and others.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Which you really obviously won't let go of, will you? Richard Clarke knows...

TONY JONES: I want to follow down the path of the logic that he sets out and the final piece of logic that he sets out is that the war in Iraq was a diversion from what the real war on terrorism should have been, which was to hunt down Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and deal with him. Now that argument still resonates today in American politics, doesn't it?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Certainly does. It most certainly does. It remains the most outstanding failure. We've caught or killed or neutralised a number of bin Laden's lieutenants and we've killed a man who, in my judgment, much more dangerous than him. Mr al-Zarqawi, one of his clones, and, it could be argued, one of his rivals. But the survival of Osama bin Laden even as a figure, even if he's only now somewhat symbolic, is, of course, fantastically important. Mr Clarke was...

TONY JONES: Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, go ahead.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Mr Clarke, I should add, since this is apparently the 'Richard Clarke Show' was the leading ornament of the Clinton Administration that utterly failed to confront bin Laden at all. Mr Clarke was also the man who said when his government, his president, ordered the bombing of Sudan without even calling for an inspection of the relevant sites, or consulting the UN in the least, probably hitting the wrong factory, chemical factory, but the pretext for that, if you remember, is that Osama bin Laden owned that factory and that it was mixing chemical weaponry for Saddam Hussein. So Mr Clarke made the Saddam-bin Laden connection before anybody else did. I'm afraid to say, since you keep asking my opinion of him, I think what he says now is the result of partisanship. He would not be making these criticisms if he was on the inside and I think it's shabby that people will put their party first on these occasions. But Mr Clarke is the source of a lot of useful information. And if what he says, or alleges, is true about the Saddam-al-Qaeda connection then it would be impeachably delinquent of any government attacked on American soil with such massive force, not to ask is there a Saddam Hussein role in this? Because the likelihood that there could be would have to be very high? To say let's not think about Saddam, which is the only alternative, would be absolutely pathetic.

TONY JONES: Alright, let's go beyond Richard Clarke and...

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Are you sure you want to do this?

TONY JONES: Yes, of course. And we'll go to the...

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: It's like letting go of your blanket.

TONY JONES: The Senate committee report, which was released yesterday - in part, two chapters of a five-charter report - it concluded there were no links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Politically, the interesting thing about the release of this report was that two Republican senators voted to release it. It's incredibly embarrassing, if true, incredibly embarrassing to the President. So what is going on there?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, I don't think that's going to prove to be true. I've already read at least one very trenchant critique of this report. I think the Senate committee will deeply regret having issued such a half-baked and unfinished piece of work. It would be very difficult for me to do this on the air now with your audience, unless you gave me a great deal of time, but I can point out - I will be able to tell you now - that when you read the critiques of it, you'll find that the report spells people's names wrong, doesn't realise it's using the same name twice of a very important individual. Takes the word of the CIA on a very important subject where the agency just happens to have got it all wrong. You won't be quoting this report with quite the same - what shall I say - assurance in a couple of days. It's really disgraceful. I have to say it's really disgraceful that...

TONY JONES: The one direct quote the 'Washington Post' used from the report, straight from the CIA, says, "The Iraqi regime did not have a relationship, harbour or turn a blind eye towards Zarqawi and his associates."

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: That's flat out false.

TONY JONES: The CIA got this wrong as well as your other intelligence, you're saying?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: The CIA has never got anything right. Actually, I think I know it's a trillion-dollar intelligence budget. Unconstitutionally, the CIA, which I agree with Senator Moynahan, should have been closed and abolished some years before now, doesn't have to reveal how much money it spends. But let's say it's a trillion dollars. The only American who was able to infiltrate the Taliban in that entire period was John Walker Lynde, an al-Qaeda fancier from Marin County, California, and a drifter. The CIA has recently fired two or three dozen of its very few translators into a Arabic and Persian because they're homosexual. It is famously incompetent, corrupt and viral and it has never got anything right by either Iraq, Afghanistan or al-Qaeda. George Tenet on - this time, exactly this time five years ago, was watching the smoke with Senator David Barron, formerly of Oklahoma, and is quoted directly by Robert Woodward as having said, "Gee, I hope it's nothing to do with those guys in the flight schools in the mid-west," who the CIA knew about that and did nothing about. It's remarkable that the leaders of the CIA have not been impeached and put on trial for criminal and culpable negligence and this contribution to this fantastically mediocre Senate report is only the latest of their many failures. That's what I think about the CIA.

TONY JONES: At the same time that people are asking - you are asking - questions about the CIA's culpability in all of this, a high-rating ABC network drama called 'The Path to 9/11' is essentially claiming that the New York attacks are almost the inevitable consequence of President Clinton's weakness and that of his administration in not assassinating Osama bin Laden when they'd the chance. What do you make of that politicking?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, I actually did get to see an advance copy of that series. And I must say - if it's ever shown unedited - it's remarkably good as a drama/documentary. But it has all those limitations. And of course it's true that the Clinton administration decided it was a law-and-order problem; that the only way to attack bin Laden and his people was to try to get an actual indictment against them in a New York court, which now seems a bit quaint. And it's true that on the one occasion when they went for him physically, they depended on firing cruise missiles only and not sending in a team to try and grab him in his, identifiable then, hide-out in Afghanistan and it's also a regrettable fact that the secretary of state decided, knowing cruise missiles were going to hit Pakistan, to tell the Pakistani - excuse me, to hit Afghanistan, but would be crossing Pakistan - to warn the Pakistani Government, who then warned bin Laden. So it is a pretty keystone-cops interlude and, of course, the Democrats and Liberals earned a terrific snip about the revelation of it and the slight fictionalisation about the role of their national security adviser Sandy Berger.

TONY JONES: Christopher Hitchens, it's a pity that, as four years ago, when we had many hours to talk to you, we only have a short amount of time this time. We are going to have to leave you there. We thank you very much for taking the time to join us tonight.

From the SMH

A provocative Arabic art exhibition organised in response to the conflict in Lebanon last month, includes a painting of Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, with a skewer through his head.

The work, titled Ehud Olmert Kebab, which has four images of the Israeli leader's head skewered with capsicum, has outraged Sydney's Jewish community, which says it has "overstepped the mark of decency".

But its creator, the young Lebanon-born, South Korea-based artist Habib Zeitouneh, retorts: "Paintings do not leave families destitute, fathers without wives or children, children without fathers or mothers. I have a right to express my anger over the deaths of over 1000 Lebanese, as do the Israelis mourning the deaths of their own. I'm using satire, not bombs."

The confronting exhibition is called t'fouh, an Arabic expression that translates as "spit on you". It was suggested by Stephen Mori - owner of the Mori Gallery in Day Street in the Sydney CBD where the works are on display - halfway through the conflict because he "couldn't condone people being killed for war".

The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies' chief executive, Vic Alhadeff, condemns the painting of Olmert, describing it as "beyond the realm of acceptable political comment".

"Political and artistic expression are an integral part of public debate, but in our society freedom of expression only goes so far. Artists, too, have responsibilities," Alhadeff says.

The exhibition, which opened last Wednesday, also includes the controversial body bags work that was installed at Martin Place three weeks ago, and a mixed sculpture-painting with dismembered limbs that calls for the boycott of brand names such as Calvin Klein and Estee Lauder because they "supported Israel".

An interactive work titled Return to Sender invites the audience to write on leaflets similar to those dropped by Israeli aircraft prior to bombing raids, with the messages to be sent to Israel. One of the messages in the return box states: "I once heard a rabbi say that nothing is more sacred in Judaism than human life. Can you see why this seems pretty hollow? F--- you."

Mori asked an Arabic curator, Alissar Chidiac, to put together the exhibition after seeing one of her shows in Auburn as part of a cultural development project. Chidiac managed to involve

45 artists of Arabic background. She said all of the works were a reflection of "what we all felt in the last six weeks, watching what happened to our homeland and families".

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I'm all for freedom of expression and i certainly have no problem with the so call artists of this work displaying their work. What i find amazing is that an art gallery would support it as relevent art. In a war there are two sides, why adopt one and not the other?

Why not have a jewish response in art to terrorism, suicide bombers, aisan, europian and arab hostility and the fact for 60 years israel has had to defend itself against the rest of the planet. Err the answer to that is becuase there are fucking millions of arabs and a hand ful of jews. Like everything, its a numbers game.

its raining, it's cold, this is not what's supposed to happen, it's crazy, the weather is outta control, al gores here flogging his new film, i don't wanna go see it, i'm over the climate change, okay, yeah the climate's changed, we fucked it up, things are going to get worse, cities are going to drown, skies are going to darken, ice caps melt, it's all going to happen cos we have idiots running our countries, and we have idiots living in them, i just want to get on with playing my guitar and writing my blog, it really don't intrest me, it's always changing, the whole planet has been here for millions of years, we just come along and suddeny expect it to keep constant, it's a joke. we are so arrogent as a species.
Oh well i guess we gotta survive, my genes have already been passed on, so i guess you (Jake) have to survive. Actually it's weird we all are programed to survive yet we can't even do that right. If we were 100% true to the survival response we would manage our planet better.
It's not a good time to have children, but then the world needs a saviour, who says it's going to be one, it's to late for the indigo children, maybe the purple kids can swing things around.