The state of Georgia just murdered Troy Davis. Harvey's furious.

Shit's about to get real.

Linguistic Difficulties

I speak English. I know this may be hard to believe by the standard of my writing, but English is my first language. It's a very good language I think. More suited for humour than, say, German (though Monty Python managed to brilliantly navigate around this cultural difference). If you don't like a word there's probably something to replace it that sounds way cooler and there's American English and so on and so forth. We don't have that STUPID-ASS masculine and feminine words thing, or whatever it's called (le/la, der/die/das, you know what I mean....probably). But sometimes I just end up getting a bit stuck.

Another problem for me is of a different nature. Naturally as a man of dashing good looks, supple charm and an enormous peenos I spend a great deal of my time communicating with the womenfolk. Unfortunately, I am also a laid-back(ish), rock-loving stoner and practically every other word I use is "man". How can this be applied to women? They're not men! It doesn't make sense to use the word as a friendly nomenclature because they don't have willies!!!! Yet, without it, there are several gaping holes (not too dissimilar to the reason "man" is not an appropriate word) in my conversation. As you can see this has caused me great pain.

Fuck words. They're all for bastards. I'm going to become a monk and take vow of silence. Not before I help out Harvey's great cause though, because the death penalty is disgusting and barbaric. I did a speech on it as part of my GCSE English coursework and, hell, it was pretty much a standup routine played more for laughs than any serious political reasoning but;

TROY DAVIS

Troy Davis

At the start of Year 12 I embarked on my Extended Project and after deciding to do it on the death penalty my natural step for the next two years was to regularly check the Amnesty international 'death penalty' section on their website as often as I'd check my Facebook notifications.

In this time Amnesty have covered many cases of supposed 'injustice'. I followed their updates on Khristian Oliver, a man convicted almost entirely because at his trial the jury were passed Biblical passages condoning death as retributive action until he was executed in November 2009. Fast forward two years and I've completed my Extended Project and am staunchly anti-death penalty. I oppose it morally, financially and practically. And for the past two years I've been following the case of Troy Davis, a man who has spent the past 19 years of his life on death row for a crime he still maintains he did not commit.

One of the most emotive anti-death penalty arguments is always going to be that hypothetical innocent man executed. But that innocent man is not hypothetical; he is real. This isn't even a case of being against the death penalty as a form of punishment, it's a simple case of injustice. But when capital punishment is involved, that injustice is maximised to the point where come Wednesday an innocent man is going to die at the self-righteous hands of the law.

During my project I've read letters that Troy has written to Amnesty international thanking them for the support he's been given. T-shirts have been produced with the writing 'I am Troy Davis' and masks worn to symbolise the communal and global injustice that is felt at one man's sentence in the state of Georgia, USA. I've seen pictures of campaigners who have visited him and the 560,000 signatures on petitions to commute his death sentence to a life sentence. When I finished my essay on capital punishment, I wrote of how he was undergoing a last ditch appeal to the Supreme Court, generally considered as the last hope in the long-winded stretch of appeals processes for those sentenced to death in the USA. I wrote that in June 2010 Troy had been 'given an opportunity to present new evidence that could prove his innocence' at a hearing in Savannah, Georgia. I wrote that despite persisting doubts that Troy did not commit the crime for which he is set to lose his life, he is still currently on track for execution.

He was convicted solely on the fact that 9 witnesses told a court of law that they had seen him murder police officer Mark MacPhail but 7 of these witnesses have since gone on to retract their testimony, with 'several citing police coercion'. There is no physical evidence linking him to the crime and of the two witnesses who have not retracted their statement, one was an original suspect, with other witnesses claiming it was he who murdered MacPhail. I had a project on the death penalty which spread over 2 years of my life but Troy has a sentence of the death penalty which has already lasted him 19 years of his, before it inevitably takes it away.

One of the arguments in my project against the death penalty was that those convicted essentially serve two sentences; a life imprisonment, followed by an execution. I considered it a breach of human rights to essentially trick justice into giving a man two sentences, when the average time spent on death row in the USA is over 10 years. People spend longer than 20 years there, losing their will to live before it's taken away from them anyway. I've read essays on the 'death row phenomenon' where the awful physical conditions of death row combined with the mental torment of knowing that they're in death's waiting room have caused severe psychological and physical trauma to those sentenced to death. But Troy wants to live. He's battled through all of this and despite the slow death of justice, his will to live struggles onward.

Thousands came out and protested around the world last night against his sentence. Marching to let a man keep his life knowing that justice has been twisted and shaped into a noose. But regardless of how you feel about retribution, how you feel about taking someone's life as a punishment, this is not justice. This is carnage masquerading as justice. This is, to sum everything up, a man who is most likely innocent being killed at the hands of the law. He might be guilty. He might be lying, but there's too much doubt. All the evidence that convicted him in his original trial all that time ago has since disappeared and countering evidence has come to light. His conviction has lost all credibility and the world is about to see what happens when a real miscarriage of justice takes place.

It's not too late. Amnesty international is doing what it can in a last ditch attempt to save the life of an innocent man. This isn’t happening in the ‘third world’; this isn’t happening somewhere obscure where media coverage is lacking. This is happening in the west’s back garden.

Troy is sentenced to be executed on Wednesday 21^st September. His lawyers are fighting and his supporters are fighting. You’re not fighting against justice; you’re fighting for it. Pledge your support for Troy Davis and help save someone’s life today.

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/

On The 50p Tax Rate

With David Cameron assuring us "we are spending too much and taxing too little" this time last year, and George Osborne drawing up the Tory party line in crayon from his estate as "we are all in this together", one can't help but feel that the public must be missing something when a tax cut for the rich is planned as a bombastic sequel to massive public sector cuts and unemployment.

To the 300,000 expected job losses in the public sector: your sacrifice is not in vain. We are 'all in this together' and your duty to this country will be repaid through that extra pocket money to the Eton collective of 2011.

England prevails.

I'm not an economist, and I'm sure there are many reasons to empathise with those who are sceptical over just how effective the 50p tax rate is. But I do believe that after winning a country over by convincing us that we are 'living beyond our means' and that we are 'taxing too little', tax cuts for the rich shouldn't score too highly on the government agenda right now.

In a time of austerity and attempts to create a united face against this country's debts, it would be far more reassuring if I could truly trust the government when they say that 'we are all in this together'. A government works on trust and at this time one can't help but question who exactly this 'we' is that they've been referring to. The super-rich, who will not feel the skinning of the public services? Nor even the slight benefits of a tax reduction from their cavernous bank accounts.

As Mikhail Bakunin said :

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick."

Especially if the People's Stick is hitting some far more than others.

Why University Should Be Free

This isn't actually a blog post on the university fee changes, but more of an ideological argument as to why there should not be any fees for higher education whatsoever. To me, a human being has certain 'rights', and indeed most of these are covered under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Under Article 26 it is defined that each human being should have a 'right to education'.

Now obviously the main argument here is where does the pin fall? You wouldn't find many people disagreeing that free schooling should be provided to anyone up to 16, or 18, but there is a lot more debate over university level qualifications. To me, these are still a right. Just because not every human being will get the grades to go to university, or indeed have the desire to follow that path, does not mean that an entirely level playing field for every citizen to get to university should not be provided. Just because you choose not to exercise your right to go to university does not remove the fact that you had the right in the first place. And what we have to recognise is that tax based systems do not actually pay for certainties; they pay for opportunities.

Just because you choose not to exercise your right to remain silent, does not mean that the right did not exist. Just because you choose not to exercise your right to use the NHS does not mean that you should be exempt from paying towards it. Law is all about what citizens are offered, not what they are guaranteed. Because really you cannot force an individual to do anything, so all that is ultimately possible is to provide them the opportunities and the support to exercise their right when the chance so arises.

For me personally every citizen has certain definable 'rights' which should be free, because if you have to pay towards them you don't have 'rights'; you have a shopping list. One must accept that under a capitalist society inequality is unbreachable, unemployment is infallible and poverty is unconquerable. So even if university fees were just a few hundred pounds it will still be clearly disadvantaging poorer students unequally. Because when you're talking about money, £100 in the hands of a poor family is worth so much more than in a rich one; this goes without saying. Essentially it's the same idea as inflation. That £100 has a far inflated value in the poorer family in the same way that the figure would have been worth so much more in the 1980s compared to now.

Obviously 'free' is a very loose term to use, considering nothing is really 'free'. These rights would be paid for by taxes, so the money is still going in. But when something is paid for by taxes it just means that every citizen is 'buying in' to these rights. So maybe either way it's like a shopping list, but when every citizen is obligated to contribute towards the maintaining and support of an opportunity such as university accessibility it becomes a right. It becomes a right because they've already paid for it. It becomes a right because they've all got an equal footing in it. A 'right' is absolute, and thus absolutely affecting equally. A right is a concept, and Plato would tell us that concepts do not waver. They do not change. And for something to be constant, it must provide equality; you can't give someone slightly less of a right than another because a right is an absolute term. It reminds me of an argument I was having on 'justice' earlier in the week. One cannot have 'tough justice', messrs Clegg, Miliband and Cameron, because 'justice' is absolute. Justice does not waver and one cannot order justice in larger portions. Justice only comes in one portion, because it's a concept just like a right. So for these concepts to follow their very meaning, and definition, it's necessary that these portions are offered entirely equally.

Now, I'm sure there are those of you who would say that every citizen already does pay towards university fees, which is true. But when a price is put on a right at its access point it is not a right. True equality of opportunity can never be guaranteed unless there is equality at the access point, because people will always look at a figure and be deterred. Every student when looking at the fees for university goes 'wow, that's a lot'. And even though they understand just how these are paid for over time, it's still a deterring factor just from the emotive dynamism that is created initially. It doesn't feel like a right when one knows that one is paying £3,300 a year towards it and the remnances of this 'right' will be lingering alongside them under the alias of 'debt' until they are in their 30s. A debt is a reminder that one owes something. That from choosing to exercise the right to higher education, they are indebted to society. It's a punishment. It's a constant reminder almost to tell them off; to say they were wrong to go to university. And sure the repayment schemes are very generous, but if it's still £7 a week off your wages that's still society slapping you in the face and taking your money to remind you of your terrible past. That terrible past where you decided to aim for something; to educate yourself. You selfish motherfucker.

And that's the stench of capitalism. But I believe free university fees would work within this towards a far more equal society. A right is free and it is unwavering. It is equal and constant. When one has to pay towards rights at their point of access, then the original right is being undermined: the right to life. Because you're not being given a right to live; you're being given a loan to live - to be born and to pay towards what should be offered equally to begin with. And that's not a right; that's a debt. Your entire life is lived to be repaid; and your breaths a further bite into the overdraft.

Yes, that recurring anti-capitalist sentiment to close off.

Why don't more people appreciate America's sweethearts, the Grateful Dead?

Essentially the be all and end all of music is that classic rock is awesome and if any band picked up a guitar between about 1965 and 1975 they were probably really fucking great and even if they weren't, so what, The Rolling Stones were tearing shit up.

I first heard of the Grateful Dead a couple of years ago when I decided that there was no finer genre than psychedelic rock. Seeking out the trippy sounds of the Dead I raided my dad's CD collection for American Beauty and stuck it on the stereo expecting to be blown away by the mindblowing far-out psych rock nonsense. Then they played a load of snoozy country shit and I listened to some other band instead.

Of course, American Beauty is the Dead's finest studio album. Everyone knows this. Workingman's Dead might be a contender if about a quarter of it wasn't by-numbers rustic bullshit. In fact, all their '70s albums are good. Anthem Of the Sun, their second record, is an enjoyable one but a messy one (REAL PSYCH ROCK), and I'm not even going to attempt to spell the name of the one that came after that. There are some good albums, but none as good as American Beauty, a masterclass in songcraft that holds Box Of Rain, Sugar Magnolia, Ripple, Candyman, Truckin' and various other earth-shaking classics.

Herein lines the dichotomy of listening to the Grateful Dead's enormous body of work; there are two different bands and neither are perfect.

LIVE DEAD: The Grateful Dead in a live setting were a wondrous spectacle, jamming out their rootsy hippy rock for many hours at a time with seriously kickass instrumental dynamics, not least the fantastic playing of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia. At least, this was the case throughout their earlier career; in later years they had a tendency to turn even the most fantastic composition into dull, meandering crap. And believe me, they had a lot of fantastic compositions; their live arsenal of songs was always incredible. Unfortunately, a few years on the road and it turned out that everyone in the band was an absolutely fucking AWFUL singer, apart from Jerry himself, and even his voice was paper-thin. Seriously, sitting through a live vocal by Phil Lesh makes me want to tear my dick off and mail it to him in an explosives-filled envelope.

Best records: Europe '72, Fillmore West 1969 boxset, Grateful Dead (1971, partly studio), Live/Dead (1969), Reckoning (1981)

Note: On some "live albums" there are studio overdubs, especially of vocals. This is good, as you DO NOT want to hear the Dead sing in "harmony" (lol) most of the time.

STUDIO DEAD: People overlook what a wonderful group of songwriters the band were. Get together every Garcia/Hunter original, all the Weir/Barlow songs, the various other combos within the group, and that is a hell of a lot of FINE ASS jams. Not actual jams, though, because the Dead saw no point in trying to emulate their instrumental-crazy live show on record, instead crafting tight and accessible song-based things for the most part. In the late 1970s, however, tight and accessible started to mean DISCO and that is why every Dead record from Shakedown Street onwards are worthless pieces of shit.

Best Records: American Beauty (1970), Workingman's Dead (1970), Wake Of The Flood (1973), Grateful Dead From the Mars Hotel (1974), Anthem Of The Sun (1968)

Note: Blues For Allah can fuck off. If I wanted to listen to Steely Dan, I'd ram a breadknife through my head.

Basically you're best off with Europe '72, because it combines the epic rawk jamz of the Dead at their live peak with the countless wonderful songs of the Dead at their studio peak AND, because they overdubbed the vocals, they don't suck! Looky here; some Dead songs that kick ass;


Ripple (a beautiful track that makes me want to both laugh and cry)
Dark Star (the ultimate Dead jam)
Wharf Rat (more jamzxxxx)
Tennessee Jed (fun hicky BS, good harmonies!)
Sugaree (from Jerry's first solo record, great song)
Candyman (there's an even more kickass version on the expanded edition of American Beauty)
Stella Blue (intense jam)
Uncle John's Band (absolutely lovely and fantastic...just listen when the instruments all drop out)

in short the Grateful Dead are sikkkkkkkkk and better than you.