Shrinking Freedom Wraps!

Found this while trolling through blogs testing them because I am having trouble with one of my linked blogs. It was found on “My Turn at the Mike” at http://athinkingmansvoice.blogspot.com/ ;

“Yesterday, November 11, 2005 (Veteran's Day in the U.S., Remembrance Day in Canada) the United States Senate passed by a margin of 49 votes to 42, a resolution sponsored by Republican Senator Lindsay Graham that could effectively eliminate the Writ of Habeas Corpus from American law. The Writ of Habeas Corpus, which is grounded in English Common Law, grants the right to an accused person to appear before a judge and demand that the legitimacy of any charge brought against them be clearly and adequately demonstrated, and it requires that the state formally charge anyone held in captivity. The elimination of Habeas Corpus effectively allows the state to hold anyone for any reason it chooses without charge, without trial, and without any legal recourse whatsoever indefinitely. Once this absolutely vital legal right and principal is lost to the power of a corrupt and evil regime like that of George Bush (who is demanding that even though the United States does not torture, that it reserve the right to do so), it could be very difficult to get it back from a totalitarian dictatorship that is doing it's level best to hold on to power by any means.”

We in the Uk had a similar but not quite so extreme “Anti-Terror” Law thrown out. Blair aka Bushes Lapdog and Crusade Companion attempted to ram through a 90 day hold without charge Law through. Fortunately for once the House of Commons was awake and chucked it back in his face passing a more sensible 28 day law.

In these difficult times the rights of the common man to a life of his own and general freedoms are a rough road to walk. As long as harm is brought to no other persons have a right to their own way of life and style of living.

The first step to a dictatorship is the narrowing of rights. For example a 19 year old boy in the south west of England was arrested and fined a considerable sum under new laws against promoting religious hatred. What was his crime? He wore a Cradle of Filth T-shirt with “Jesus is a C*nt” on it! Someone complained and he got shafted. So why haven’t Cradle of Filth or the T-Shirt manufacturer been charged? Its ridiculous. This should never have happened.

Knee Jerk reactions will bring the world to its knees. World leaders are playing to baying mobs and that’s a dangerous habit! Ask the South coast Paediatrician who got hounded from his home because his neighbours couldn’t tell the difference from a child doctor and a child molester! (Paediatrician Vs Paedophile).

Do not forget those who died in terrorist atrocities but also do not forget the rights of those still alive who may be innocently dragged unknowingly under just because they were not aware they may have spoken to a “suspect” recently!

Following on from a comment by my good friend Crum on “Insane ramblings of a Yorkshireman” every country in the world has a few skeletons in its cupboard. From a British point of view we could point out that during the American Revolution, American Revolutionaries were considered terrorists while Americans viewed themselves as Freedom Fighters! Also without help from the French, America may not have become free! Don’t forget that the American Statue of Liberty was built by the French as a present to commemorate the help. The French who incidentally certain US politicians have indicated know nothing about Freedom. Their very financial Aid to the American Rebels was just one step on the road to their own Revolution! America would not exist with out Britain’s nearest neighbour and most common enemy, at least before the 20th century anyway, for France helped create the ability to win that revolution.

In Britain’s past we condemn the Nazi concentration camps as works of evil Germanic mindsets. What those same people forget is that the British invented the concentration camp during the Boer War! It’s also conveniently ignored that a Psychologist by the name of Milgram successfully proved that all the typical American required to actively torture by electrocution a passing stranger was the ability to pass on the responsibility for that heinous act!

So lest we forget we are all fallible and have indeed all have at some point fallen. Condemn the rights of the free man at the risk of creating a new threat. A tightened grip can only hold on to so many and more shall slip twixt the fingers of desperate power!

Sleep well fellow global travellers!

Slowdive

God she was beautiful! I sat and watched her last flight in awe; well it wasn’t so much a flight as a plummet. Flaming contrails spread wide from the stubby support wings as if grabbing for support with incandescent wings. If only Shiva were here to see and not encased within the now fatally crippled craft I could see from the confines of my car.

Let me introduce myself to those who are not familiar to the world of the professional transport executive, wheelman, air jockey or whatever term you use for those who have an excess of capability with mechanised forms of transport. My name is Hyper, ok that’s not my real name but it’s what I post on my advertising BBS tags. Now I specialise in wheels, if it has them then I am a veritable Titan at using it. My current vehicle, a sleek Kalitech Sidewinder, is the cream of Grey Op Culture cool. I used to be a racing driver but the challenge just wasn’t there and I got bored. It affected my races and concentration and sure enough I got fired. All the corporate bullshit jacked me off anyway. That was when Shiva entered my life. This elfin slender woman who radiated so much confidence and eyes that danced with razor sharp thrills clothed in a battered flight suit. She said she was a fan so I told her to sling it as I wasn’t in the mood for a blow job. She handed me a card and told me that she had a job for a real good driver. I told her to hire a taxi what she said next blew me away.

That first job defined the rest of my life. Shiva’s thing was speed, hairy balls out nut tightening pulse pounding sweat inducing finger whitening speed! What was more amazing is that she flew naked. No of course she wore a flight suit, what naked means in the Grey Op Culture dictionary is she was without cybernetic enhancements. The correct term is that Shiva Cantrell was an exhibitionist. Thing was so was I back then and that’s why she came to me. Shiva needed someone who could drive a combat team out of an area of electronic and magnetic anomaly. The driver had to be lightening quick and non-enhanced. The combat team itself would likely be mainly out of it with the area being bathed in such cyber-unfriendly radiations. Once clear she was going to swoop from the above the radiation and commit to a high speed magna-latch before flying off with the ground vehicle in the same manner as an eagle would a rabbit. God she was so quick I pissed my pants at the clamp on and passed out from the rapid acceleration, I’d never had so much fun. I was in love and then I spoiled it.

I decided to get myself neural enhancements and a blood pressure equaliser. I had been embarrassed by the ease with which I had passed out and thought maybe getting my nerves jacked and reducing my susceptibility to high-gee manoeuvres would help make us a perfect team. I even got them hardened so Electro-magnetic fields wouldn’t slow me down. It was the wrong move. Shiva threw a shit-fit. I hadn’t known that way back when one of her former boyfriends had come back from an enhancement appointment, he’d changed. The metal had eroded his mind and he’d forced himself on her before throwing himself from their 20th floor habitat. Two months in hospital being put back together and turning down limb replacement after limb replacement for cell grown real meat no matter what the cost had embittered her to the chrome tinted world of cyber. She hadn’t spoken to me since I got wired.

I followed her career from there. She’d gone corporate military. They get all the best flying crackerjacks and she knew it. No exhibitionist could beat her. There was very little but a total Borg that could out fly her physically but no-one could out fly her mentally as uncluttered by wire as she was. She didn’t do combat unless she could avoid it so she got most of the evac and insert jobs. If you needed a team threaded through the eye of a needle before being dropped into a hot zone that could melt diamonds then Shiva was your pilot. That was why she was where she was. Turned out the aforementioned boyfriend had survived his fall by being full-borged. He’d gone corporate military as well but for the opposition. His Corp was at war with Shiva’s. They’d viral bombed one of her Corp’s buildings and then wrecked it by crash diving several Full- Borg piloted VTOL combat craft into key structural points and into the top of the lift shafts! Shiva had volunteered to take survivors from the roof. The job was tricky and dangerous as hell. I turned up after catching the newsflash on Citywide Today with Gervin Testudo. She had less than 4 minutes to get her craft to the roof and evac survivors huddling on the burning rooftop and then clear before the whole building collapsed. All had gone well as the waspish craft cleared the ground with a scream of fire and neatly inserted itself in less than 30 seconds at the parapet. The whole world watched as she mimicked the sway of the building keeping it steady for the survivors. The sheer joy was wiped away as a terrible figure threw wreckage from itself and emerged battered but not down from one of the suicide craft. The Ex-lover tore one of his destroyed crafts Vulcan’s from its rigging and interfaced with it as the shocked escapees gawped with horror. The symphony of metal jacketed rain tore through them as he opened fire whilst Shiva danced her crafts tail away and brought her own guns to bear. That was when the roof blew thrusting steel and Fusioncrete upwards and flipping Shiva’s craft before tearing its stabilisers off in a shower of thermite rain.

And now she fell as a Phoenix to final rest. Without warning an internal fire blew the burning wreckages tail off changing the fragile crafts trajectory. It was heading towards a residential arcology. The life loss would be terrible. All seemed lost as Shiva was surely already dead. That was when the nose lifted and the safety wing spars extended causing the craft to halt and affect a clumsy slow dive stall turn. It had to of been the ugliest manoeuvre I had ever seen Shiva pull but the flames made it transcendental. Flares took place of lead wing feathers and the nose edged gracefully towards the polluted wastage of a river before the spars finally folded and condemned Shiva’s coffin to its interminable plunge into that black cemetery.

She was pulled from that wreckage not much more than a burned shell but the medical teams knew best. They replaced her destroyed nerves and damaged body with artificials and cybernetic parts. They were top of the line provided by a grateful public. I knew she would have hated it so I intervened. She’s sat by me now as we head down the highway. The orderly was a little surprised when my Taser rendered him unconscious, the explosives weren’t easy to get and the insurance companies going to have a shit-fit over the explanation but she can’t do it for herself. They won’t let her. They’ve slo-moded all her nerves so she’d be stuck in a perpetual space walk speed movement cycle to stop her killing herself until they can get her a cyber-shrink to help her adjust. The unfinished bridge rumbles under my wheels and I turn for one last look at her delicate features now free of tubes. The chrome plate over the ravaged right side of her face glimmers in the reddening dusk and her lips slowly blow me a kiss as her hand finds mine and she smiles one last smile and mouths her thanks. As I hit the ejector mechanism I’m rocketed up and back as my beloved Sidewinder launches over the straits. As the explosives tear apart all I have ever loved tears run down my face and mercifully rain comes to hide them as the police cruisers wait for me below. God she was beautiful!

All Characters and Story “Slowdive” copyright Tony Bennett 08-11-2005

DON'T PANIC

I am still around. Becoming a father the second time round is a little consuming and I’ve also been indulging in a little irony of a pastime.

10 years ago I used to Wargame a lot. I stopped partly because I got too busy, partly because space was a problem and mostly because of the hand over fist money grabbing tactics of the main producer of the games and figures. Many a time would I walk into the local outlet and have a red shirted individual  (If only they had the same life span as a real red shirt!), jump all over me trying to sell me something I really hadn’t come in for and tell me that I really must have this really expensive addition to my army. Now for me it wasn’t too much of a stress because I knew what I was in for and told them politely to examine their anal orifice with their own personal genitalia as they departed and then bought what I wanted anyway. What I objected to was the same approach on budding young gamers who were told say two days before an updated army list was due to be published they really needed the old one and at least 500 points of lead figures (yes back then they were real poisonous lead!) which were about to be phased out in the new list. Ok that scenario is a bit exaggerated but gives you a fairish idea!

Now I am pleased to say that that particular company has changed its policies a lot and have dropped the high pressure sell. In fact the last time I was in most recently to get some new paint (My old paints were 10 years old and some were casualties on the long haul), the staff were genuinely helpful and in fact told me not to buy something because it would be a waste of money as an update was due. Not only that but actually suggested cost cutting solutions. Thinking this may be an anomaly I rechecked with a different member and the same result occurred. I won’t mention the company but bravo, now if you can just cut some costs down as you are still too bloody expensive we’ll really be getting somewhere. I’ve found an outlet that is not belonging to the main company and they can cut at least a fiver (Five pounds sterling or about 8 dollars I think) off vehicles! If they can do it so can the mainline stores!

Now due to having some evenings free I am back on the war trail. That’s the irony really as I detest war in real life but a lot of my pastimes revolve around violent tactical conflict! It’s the tactics really that I like and the competition against a live opponent. Computers are all well and good for games but the level of AI’s brainpower in games is still nowhere near as complex as a human brain. Also as much as graphics are bloody spectacular up until the online revolution roleplaying was pretty linear on computers. However old style role-playing has a lot going for it. Its social and cheap since you are not stuck at a screen paying £5.95 a month for time on game after buying it in the first place just so you can gang up on a poor computer brained and thoroughly predictable bad guy but are in fact not paying a bloody thing more than you originally shelled out on the game whilst sitting in a well lit room with a bunch of mates and going into tangents that even the most powerful PC cannot as yet or I doubt for a while even compute! All this and exercising your imagination which if you let it can outdo even the best graphics card.

Wargaming is a little more expensive but painting the figures is almost as much fun and challenge as actually pitting yourself against an opponent. Oh yes and of course in Roleplaying and Wargaming of the non pixellated variety there are no cheat codes. You actually have to use skill and thought to win! What an unusual concept!

Think on that a while! See y’all