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I finally bit the bullet and started the weblog. I can’t guarantee it will be updated every day, but I will update it as frequently as possible.

Saturday 24th November

There aren’t many whose death provokes a reaction of "about bloody time!" but Mary Whitehouse is certainly one of them. With delicious irony she died yesterday, 23rd November. So far the reactions I have heard (personally, as opposed to reported) are entirely within the "good!" and "at last!" range.

She’s not really been so vocal in recent years, but when I was growing up she was regularly in the news complaining about "standards" in broadcasting. In fact, she was a relentless promoter of a very narrow viewpoint, one in which any violence or sex on TV was at the root of all society’s evils and a threat to civilisation. In her favour, she was an indomitable fighter who really stood up for what she believed. Admirable as that may be, what she stood for was wholly iniquitous: censorship.

Michael Grade has said, She was really detached from the reality of the creative process. Well, that’s an understatement.

Over the years one of her bête noires was Doctor Who — which is truly bizarre to those who have watched the programme, since it was a particularly moral programme. To take just one example, where else in a family drama could you find a central character agonising over whether it would be right stop a wholly evil race coming into being?

Mary Whitehouse, though, regularly attacked it on the grounds of its violence — people were tied up, thumped, or occasionally killed in a gruesome (though bloodless) way. It never occurred to her that an adventure series based on a good central character confronting and defeating evil foes actually needs the foes to be evil; if they don’t ever do bad things, where is the tension?

It wasn’t just Doctor Who, of course, plenty of other programmes and films attracted her attention. But I always think of her in connection with Doctor Who, partly because she seemed without fail to find the best examples of the series to be the most objectionable. How ironic, then, that she should die on 23rd November — the 38th anniversary of the first transmission of the programme.

Some of Whitehouse’s co-religionists are making much noise at the moment, and they’re directing it at Harry Potter. I rarely watch Sunday morning god-slot programmes, but there was an interesting confrontation I chanced across just before Hallowe’en.

The programme in question — sorry, I have no idea what it is called — seemed to be discussing the question of evil (or maybe that should be Evil) and it had a panel of three guests: a rationalist, a witch and a bloke from the Reachout Trust or whatever it’s called.

Now it’s obvious that the producers were looking for a bit of aggro, since the Reachout Trust specialises in, basically, mudslinging at non-Christian religions. Putting a representative of it beside Kate West must have seemed a good recipe for a fight.

Bizarrely, though, the result of this combination was that Kate West and the Christian bloke spent most of the time on the same side arguing with the materialist. Until, that is, Harry Potter was mentioned.

Kate West pointed out that Harry Potter presented a fairly Christian view of good and evil — i.e., pure good versus pure evil, both clearly delineated from each other. At this point the Outreach bloke took umbrage: It’s not good against evil, it’s slightly less evil against evil — as far as I can gather, because Harry Potter is supposed to be a wizard, he is ipso facto evil. Hmm.

That’s not the only instance of venom aimed at the Harry Potter books and film by Fundie Christians and (maybe) others. November 4th saw an article in The Observer entitled Teachers warn of occult dangers in Potter movie magic. According to the article, one of Britain’s biggest teachers’ unions was warning that Harry Potter could lead schoolchildren into the sinister world of the occult.

With the premiere of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone due this month, Peter Smith, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, has echoed concerns in America and called on parents and teachers to be wary.

’Children must be protected from the more extreme influences of the occult and be taught in a responsible and positive way the risks of journeying into the unknown,’ he said.

Whatever these risks are that Smith is envisioning, he doesn’t bother to explain. Clearly the word occult is enough, although he doesn’t state what he means. Later in the article, he is quoted:

’Increasing numbers of children are spending hours alone browsing the internet in search of Satanic websites and we are concerned that nobody is monitoring this growing fascination,’ he added.

Suddenly he’s talking about Satanism — which has got bugger all to do with Harry Potter. Also note the total lack of any actual evidence for this weird assertion.

But this isn’t the first time Peter Smith of the ATL has made scary statements about "the occult". One site devoted to Buffy the Vampire Slayer quotes an Independent article from April last year:

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers said the popularity of children’s programmes and books featuring witchcraft could encourage children to search for sinister material on the internet. Researchers for the union found websites promoting satanism, blood-letting and wicca (witch) magic after a poll found more than half of secondary schoolpupils are interested in the occult.

Again, note the casual lumping together of witchcraft with satanism and "blood-letting". This is evident also in the Guardian report of the poll referred to:

Peter Smith, the association’s general secretary, said: "Youngsters can very easily visit a choice of hundreds of websites on witchcraft, Wicca magic, casting hexes and bloodletting techniques, without any adults having control as to what they read. It represents an extremely worrying trend among young people."

It’s pretty widely known now that witchcraft is a nature-based Pagan religion, one that has nothing to do with Satanism (Satan being part of the Christian pantheon) and whose practitioners would not have anything to do with "bloodletting". Or "casting hexes" for that matter.

It would be fair enough if Smith was simply expressing concern over children surfing the Net unsupervised — of course there is a great deal of stuff out there that isn’t suitable for kids; but what he is doing is raising the bogeymen of Satanism and "the occult" and using that to denigrate a religion.

Smith pops up again in an article claiming that there is a huge increase in Satanism-related suicides in Germany. The evidence for stating the suicides are related to "the occult" isn’t actually given, though, and all the comment seems to come from Christians and "cult experts" (i.e. Christians again). Smith is quoted as saying:

This [i.e. surfing to "occult" sites] represents an extremely worrying trend among young people. Parents and teachers should educate children and young people about the dangers of dabbling in the occult before they become too deeply involved.

Now, I don’t know if Smith is himself a practising Christian, but I have to say that the sort of bollocks he talks in this area is typical of what Christians say; I also have to say I have never heard anyone who is not a Christian spout this sort of stuff.

I could be wrong, of course — he may simply be stupid.

Kids shouldn’t be surfing the Net unsupervised; there are all sorts of things out there that might disturb impressionable young minds. Take this, for example:

The Herald Newspaper reports penitent members of a cult in Verbicaro, Italy, who cut open their hands and made palm-prints in blood on the walls of monasteries. Nearly two dozen members of a related cult in the Philipines are reported to have had nails driven through their hands.… In the Filipino case penitents are reported by Reuters to believe such activity increases the chances of successful spellweaving.

This comes from a Pagan site, and the news story referred to actually appeared on the same day as the newspaper reports of the ATL poll referred to above. This is what the Vernemeton Pagan Project had to say about Smith’s statements:

A report on the Excite news feed on 22 April suggests up to 54% of secondary school pupils in England are interested in the Occult.… The report unfortunately shows blatant disregard for facts in associating Witchcraft with "Satanism" and bloodletting. The Vernemeton Pagan Resource Project realises that most of our visitors will recognise the inherent fallacies in this, which were sadly based on statements made by Peter Smith, General Secretary of the ATL. We hope the Vernemeton Pagan Resource Project will help present a more balanced and intelligent viewpoint.

A sane and reasonable paragraph, really — but what about that story about the self-injury and (I suppose you’d call it) blood-letting in Italy and the Philipines? Doesn’t that sound worrying? Yes, it does — but it doesn’t involve any sort of Pagans, witches or otherwise. The Vernemeton people were clearly having some (understandable under the circumstances) fun at the expense of Christians. Here is the first quote with the omitted sections of the paragraph restored:

In a report on the same day (22 April) The Herald Newspaper reports penitent members of a cult in Verbicaro, Italy, who cut open their hands and made palm-prints in blood on the walls of monasteries. Nearly two dozen members of a related cult in the Philipines are reported to have had nails driven through their hands onto crosses. Members of this cult believe their deity figure, Ieshua ben Iusef (commonly known as Jesus the Nazarene or Jesus Christ) was executed in a similar fashion by a puppet governor working for the Roman authorities in Judea around the year 30 Gregorian Calendar. In the Filipino case penitents are reported by Reuters to believe such activity increases the chances of successful spellweaving.

Peter Smith, then, is not new to raising the spectre of "the occult" — so it’s not surprising he should have a go at Harry Potter. Nor is he alone. A CofE primary school has banned Harry Potter books from its library. The Reachout Trust has been having a go at the books, too. A lot of their gripes with the books are of course based on their religious beliefs rather than the actual content of the books. When looking at the content itself, though, they rather seem to miss the point:

In ‘The Sorcerer’s Stone’, Harry is told that there is no good and evil, only power. This … doesn’t square up with truth; it is also a widely held Eastern belief.

Odd, isn’t it, that suddenly Eastern religions are getting dragged in — I have no idea whether or not that is a widely held Eastern belief, but I have never heard it before. The thing is, it’s commented upon as though this statement was something held up to be commendable in the book. Yes, Harry Potter is told that there is no good and evil, there is only power — by the villain!

When will the likes of Peter Smith, the late Mary Whitehouse and all the cohorts of Christian would-be mind controllers realise that adventures have villains, and villains do and say bad things — that’s rather the point of being a villain. They also get defeated by the forces of good (Harry P. in this case).

Similarly, fantasy means that unreal things happen. Witches fly through the air on broomsticks delivered by owls — kids might think that the world would be more exciting if things like that really happened, but they know they don’t because kids are, on the whole, smarter than some of the adults concerned about them. And in some cases only too willing to fill their minds with Christian propaganda.

This may seem to have been a fairly single-tracked entry. (It would have been wholly single-track had Mary Whitehouse clung on to this mortal coil a bit longer.) That’s for a reason. At the root of all the attacks on Harry Potter from the Fundies and their fellow-travellers (being generous to Mr. Smith) is a determination to ignore the evidence of the religion witchcraft actually is and cast it in a Satanic light — a great disservice to the many sincere and goodhearted people following that path.

This is a particularly apposite time to note how wrong-headed the bilious attacks of some empty headed Christians are because this year, 2001, is the 50th anniversary of the repeal in England and Wales of the last Witchcraft Act in 1951, and today that repeal is being celebrated at the Pagan Federation’s conference in London. I hope they’re having a great time.

Friday 23rd November

On November 15th, The Times carried an article by Anthony Lloyd describing the detailed plans for nuclear devices and other terrorist bombs found in houses used by Al Qaeda in Kabul.

Written in Arabic, German, Urdu and English, the notes give detailed designs for missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons. There are descriptions of how the detonation of TNT compresses plutonium into a critical mass, sparking a chain reaction, and ultimately a thermonuclear reaction …

Attempts had been made to burn the evidence, but many documents still remained. They included studies into the development of a kinetic energy supergun capable of firing chemical or nuclear warheads, external propulsion missiles, preliminary research on the creation of a thermonuclear device, as well as a multitude of instructions for making smaller bombs.

The following day the BBC carried a similar story, stating:

The United States has confirmed that documents found in a Kabul building believed to have been used as a safe house by Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network contained details about how to produce nuclear weapons.

The BBC story also referred to the Times article and said:

The documents explained how to detonate explosives to compress plutonium and trigger a thermonuclear reaction.

They were in Arabic, German, Urdu and English.

OK.…

Except that someone with very sharp eyes spotted something when a BBC TV report showed parts of the documents. As reported in The Daily Rotten, with screenshots, the documents clearly included the following:

Theory of Operation

The device basically works when … critical mass then produces a nuclear chain reaction …

And further down you can see this:

Notes

Plutonium (PU), atomic … and is similar in chemical structure to Uranium …

Which is very interesting, because in 1979 a humour newsletter called The Journal of Irreproducible Results (still around and online, but now called The Annals of Improbable Research) published a piece called "How to Build an Atom Bomb". This is widely available online — for example, here and here, to give but two instances. The document includes the following passages:

3. THEORY OF OPERATION.

The device basically works when the detonated TNT compresses the Plutonium into a critical mass. The critical mass then produces a nuclear chain reaction similar to the domino chain reaction. The chain reaction then promptly produces a big thermonuclear reaction, and there you have it, a 10 megaton explosion!!

and:

5. NOTES.

1) Plutonium (PU), Atomic number 94, is a radioactive metallic element formed by the decay of Neptunium and is similar in chemical structure to Uranium, Saturium, Jupiternium and Marsium.

Look familiar, don’t they? The highlighted sections are the passages which appeared in the BBC report. Compare them also with the quotes from The Times. It does seem that the plans for making a nuclear bomb found in the Al Qaeda headquarters were actually this venerable joke article.

Wired News quotes Marc Abrahams, a former editor of The Journal of Irreproducible Results, Pretty much every line of it is a joke. Either there’s one guy in the Taliban who had a sense of humor, or everyone was downloading everything on the Net that had the word ‘thermonuclear’ in it.

The tone of the Wired piece implies that the journalists are foolish for not spotting that this material was from a parody, and seems to suggest that claims Al Qaeda are working on a nuclear weapon are silly.

Surely, though, it is likely that this was downloaded because it had the word thermonuclear, suggesting that they are in fact trying to get the information they need to make such a device. I’ve known several Arabs, and the one thing they all had in common was an inability to spot parody or satire unless it was very broad.

It seems ridiculous to those of us who are native English speakers, but to an Arabic speaker with poor English it might not be obvious that the article was a joke — especially since the screenshots suggest it was a version of the article without some of the more blatant, such as the fake element names at the end of the note about plutonium, or the information that next month’s article would be on how to clone your neighbour’s wife in six easy steps for fun and profit.…

Yes, it’s funny that bin Laden’s crew thought this was a serious article; there’s nothing funny about the fact they’re trying to get the information they need to make a nuclear weapon.

Another amusing item in The Daily Rotten: the world’s worst cryptographer. A 25-year-old held at St. Lucie County Detention on various charges decided to break out and sent a coded letter to a mate on the outside. The code, unfortunately, was a straight substitution cipher, which is pretty easy to break. You can try it for yourself as some of the letter is reproduced on the site — I didn’t try particularly systematically and I still worked it out in under twenty minutes.

Sunday 18th November

Sorry to my regulars for the long break. The computer went belly up as soon as I had uploaded the previous entry which was for, er, October 29th. In fact it’s still not back in action, and the fun I had getting the modem working on this box is a whole other story.…

Since the "war on terrorism" started there have been a few voices raised in the West and a lot in the Middle East doubting that Al Quaeda had anything to do with the attacks on the USA. Such doubts shouldn’t survive the discoveries in Kabul, where in two buildings — one belonging to the Taleban ministry of defence — a flight-simulator computer program, a list of flight schools in the United States and documents describing chemical, biological and nuclear warfare and referring to the Qaeda organization have been found.

The houses were adorned with maps, including one listing the location of power plants in Europe, Africa and Asia. Another map showed Saudi Arabia with American military bases marked with the words in Arabic, "Occupied by the Crusader." There were also ashes and other evidence in both houses that documents had been burned.

What the government didn’t tell them: when the anti-terrorism bill was rammed through Congress, there was no mention at all of giving the authorities the right to monitor accused (i.e. not found to be guilty of anything) prisoners’ conversations with their lawyers. That is exactly what Attorney General John Ashcroft has done. The new rules he has introduced don’t require any sort of warrant or indeed evidence, merely suspicion.

Constitutional safeguards must exist, you may think. Well, no — all the constitutional checks are predicated on the assumption that the law enforcement agencies are aiming to bring a prosecution against the accused; these rules are aimed at preventing terrorist acts, and with no prosecution envisaged there are no safeguards. In any case, should prosecutions come about, the Shrub’s administration wants to try terrorists in military courts — where there may be no exclusion of illegally obtained evidence. Land of the free, eh?

One of the stories which has been keeping me amused over the past couple of weeks is the shenanigans in the Labour Party here in Scotland. As quite a lot of people have said, I believe that it was actually a case of muddle rather than fiddle — whatever his positive personal qualities may be, and unlike the bulk of the Scottish Labour Party McLeish probably does have some positive qualities, Henry McLeish has never seemed exceptionally competent.

I do think it is pretty appalling that McLeish’s successor has had to hold a press conference explaining that he had an affair seven years ago — what does it matter who a politician screws so long as it isn’t the electorate?

But what I think really leaves a bad taste in the mouth is this: In the past three years, Scotland has had three first ministers. Two of these have been selected unopposed by the Labour Party, and in both cases great fanfare has been made of the "candidate" getting a vote of, in McConnell’s case, 97.23% or (if I recall correctly) 98% in Dewar’s case. I could talk about Stalinism, I could mention Saddam Hussein, and don’t forget the plebiscites of Nazi Germany. But stuff that: the fact that Scottish Labour can’t see what is wrong with a party and a candidate celebrating a "victory" of ninety plus per cent of the vote in an uncontested election is a clear demonstration of everything that is wrong with the Labour Party in Scotland.

Windows XP — stunningly stable and the best thing since sliced bread, if you listen to Microsoft. New to Windows with XP is security which is actually built in (as opposed to being added at the last minute when somebody walking by says, "Where is the security, then?"). Delightful to see that Microsoft are as inept as ever: the implementation means that you have to log on as admin to run some software — including games.

That is, of course, a cock-up, as is (probably) the hiding of files with non-Microsoft extensions under certain circumstances. Much worse is the new way way Microsoft is approaching licensing: upgrade your system hardware and you may suddenly find it no longer works because Windows thinks it’s been installed on a different, unregistered machine. There’s only one thing you can say about software like that, and it’s heartening to see someone saying it as publicly as possible. Along the same lines, someone in Bristol is giving some clear advice.

It isn’t just in software design that Microsoft sucks. Sometimes you wonder when Gates is going to shave his head, get a scar and start demanding one billion dollars.…

The most recent brouhaha was over MSN shutting out users of browsers Microsoft didn’t like. That is, naturally, non-Microsoft browsers which are rather better than Internet Explorer (not that MS admit that). Some people have said this was another cock-up, but you actually have to design a site to block certain user agents, it doesn’t happen by accident — or if it does you’re so incompetent you should be kept away from computers of any kind more complex than a ZX81.

It was interesting that Netscape 4 didn’t seem to be blocked (from what I’ve heard); maybe MS just thought anyone still using NN4 was a lost cause so there was no point. Anyway, they pissed off a lot of people, including Tim Berners-Lee, who said, Obviously this was a blatant attempt to use the leverage of some content to produce domination at the software layer. A nice twist is that all the fuss has actually boosted the business of rival browser vendors.

I have seen some comment along the lines of: "How is this different from the right of any shopkeeper to refuse to sell to any customer?" It is different, and it’s different because it goes against the entire concept of the Internet, as Tim Berners-Lee explains:

"I have fought since the beginning of the Web for its openness: that anyone can read Web pages with any software running on any hardware," he wrote in response to written questions. "This is what makes the Web itself. This is the environment into which so many people have invested so much energy and creativity. When I see any Web site claim to be only readable using particular hardware or software, I cringe--they are pining for the bad old days when each piece of information needed a different program to access it."

Quite.

I have made mention before of Christian fuckwits (I suppose it does have to be pointed out that not all Christians are fuckwits, but Christian fuckwitry does seem to be in a class all its own) and here’s some more — except that I’m not sure that’s the right classification since this guy seems to be saying that all Christians are followers of Satan because they are not really Christians!

Fuckwit or not, he certainly has a way of catching the reader’s attention. Right at the top of the page he says Christmas (or Yuletide) is a Pagan festival — well, fair enough, so it is (and all the better for that), but what is mind boggling is his claim that it is actually condemned by Christ. That’s a bloody good trick.

There follows a lot of very, er, individual exegesis of Revelation, the crux of which is the identifaction of Satan with — seriously — Santa Claus. It is worth skimming through, though. Where else will you find a heading like:

SANTA SATAN
by Mr. Normal

Oh, you want evidence for all this. Well, let’s see: Santa is of course an anagram of Satan which seems to be pretty conclusive in some quarters. In a similar vein is this piece of reasoning about the Christmas tree:

Also, if you take the word CONIFER, which is the name given to the family of trees to which the Christmas (Fir) tree belongs, and split the word in two, you get:

CON-IFER

CON - Satan is known as the biggest con-artist ever. He invented it.

IFER - The last half of Lucifer’s name.

Hell, I’m convinced already!

Should you have any doubts, though, we are reminded that Santa wears red; red is Satan’s colour (of course!) and who else can be the red dragon of Revelation but Santa? (Of course, back here on Earth some of us are aware that Santa’s red suit is a 20th Century invention, courtesy of the Coca Cola Company. But why should we let piddling little facts disturb us here?)

It’s always good to be reminded that right here in the middle of Western civilisation (yes, I know that would be a good idea, thank you Mr. Gandhi) there are people every bit as bonkers as the Taliban.