Holy Shit This Country is Fucked

According to Lubaba Khalid, the Leader of the Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, said on LBC that Israel has the right to withhold water and electricity to Gaza, meaning everyone.

No they don't. This is collective punishment, punishing people not responsible for the wrong acts being punished. It also happens to be a war crime under Common Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol II. And he has no excuse for not knowing that because he used to be a fucking human rights lawyer.

What he should have done was condemn both Hamas's attack on Israelis and also Israel cutting off essential supplies indiscriminately to the whole population of Gaza.

So what we have here is more than reason enough to consider voting Labour is impossible because I for one will not be responsible for electing as PM a man who supports war crimes. Up till now I've had differences of opinion with him but this is a moral matter.

Of course I have some thoughts on this:

1 I have thought for some time that Labour are looking around at the sheer task involved in sorting the mess of 13 years of Tory rule, know that of course they're the only party likely to be voted in at the next election and are getting cold feet. They are therefore doing all they can to ensure they lose as much support as possible and don't get a majority.

3 The Tories are nearing the end of their asset stripping so need Labour to be elected soon so they can blame them.

4 Up till now I have advocated tactical voting to get the Tories out and still think that is the moral option as long as the tactical vote in your constituency isn't Labour. If it is I would vote for the minority party of my choice: in fact this is what I will be doing because this constituency is a safe Labour seat so there's little to no risk of returning a Tóraidhe MP.

5 Hear me out on this one: the wiser voices in the Conservative party have been pushing for them to call an election for ages, because they're like a cartoon character running off the end of cliff in thin air. But (deep breath) I never thought I would say this, and would obviously always condemn anyone voting for them as a cunt, but I think the best long term outcome for the country would be if we have another Tory government. If we elect Labour they'll just come back in the future, but if we have another term it will ensure the annihilation of the Conservative party permanently. Both because of their disastrous policies and because even more of their core supporters would have died off.

6 If that happens Labour will take the Tory party's place and decent people will vote Lib Dems/Green/True and Fair. I am not sure how much actual support Labour would get at that point, having carefully frozen out so many of their supporters.

But I know that I expect the PM to condemn war crimes and this is where voting is an even more moral issue.

 

The Witch Mediates Fate

'If Miss Treason gave judgement against you, it was really not a good idea (everyone said) to ask for your present back, as being turned into something small and sticky often offends.' Terry Pratchett

I posted in June about how Birmingham City Council had the temerity to have a run in with me after not paying their staff right for years and how I just knew something big was coming. Obviously I'm not responsible for the complete financial collapse which followed (they are) but the point was witches tend to get placed in turning points in life and history and oversee people either fucking themselves up or sorting things out.

Then in July I reflected on how Boris Johnson was flailing around like someone cursed by me. Of course he was - I cursed him last year. 

Of course there was only one way my magical signature was going to play out with Birmingham Shitty Council, and I noted that the council were claiming that they would not be putting in a Section 114 notice. This is the declaration required by law to say that a council cannot meet its spending obligations (full details here). I, of course, said that they would be making this declaration.

Bab, I'm not even going to bother telling you what happened next. You already know.

There is a very powerful magic spell which in Muggle terms is called an audit. What happened next was they got audited and I think we can truthfully say that while we all expected it to be bad, even I wasn't prepared for the full extent of utter incompetence that was revealed. And I mean even to the extent that their electronic accounts were so insecure that just anyone could literally alter them. Utter shambles.

This is exactly the sort of turning point my magic revolves around although I've been little more than an interested observer in this one.

I can also tell them what's coming next, and since the council are still claiming that central government will not need to get involved, obviously that's what will happen. This isn't even really a prediction, apparently it nearly always happens when a council collapses.

Fools, utter fools.

Urban Grimoire: The Benefits of Blocking

I have written here before about the similarities of many acts we perform in social media with some of the classical magical acts. This post is inspired by my complete conversion to the satisfying act of blocking other accounts on social media.

You'll note of course that I say 'accounts' rather than 'people', and the sad fact is that many of the most annoying accounts on social media aren't people at all, they're computers pretending to be people and this is only going to get worse as Artificial Intelligence improves.

That said, judging by the conversational ability of some people I would rather communicate with AI but that's a whole different subject.

In fact sometimes I wonder whether troll accounts' relentless parroting of stupid things means the person behind them even is technically a person. You have to wonder whether the lack of empathy or conscience of these people actually means they're lacking some essential human characteristics.

Be that as it may, you don't want to deal with them and my message of hope for the world is that you don't have to.

Block them.

Go on, don't even say anything to them, just block them.

Now, if you're thinking that they're saying stupid dangerous things on the internet and someone has to challenge their nonsense because other people might be affected by it, you're just proving that you do have a conscience and empathy for other people, which it is important to remember that internet trolls don't. In fact I used to think that they should be combatted but have abandoned that idea. I think the reality in 2023 is that the world has divided between the nice people who live in reality and the idiots who don't. Yes, I know I'm being horrible, but we live in a shitty world populated by cunts and I'm not going to waste my remaining years arguing with them.

So I have changed position on this and honestly it's glorious.

I've gone from regretfully blocking the most annoying accounts occasionally to full scale block fests. While I was still on Twitter I once blocked 367 accounts in one sitting. I've even started leaving a passive aggressive ending on comments that I'll just block you if you reply stupidly. I block people because I don't like their profile picture. I block them because their dog is over groomed. I block them because I don't like their house. The slightest mention of bitcoin and you're blocked. I even block people because I've taken one of my famous dislikes to them; all these as well as the more obvious reasons that their politics, racial views and anything else about them are loathsome.

The magical act which I think this is most like is either binding (although specific to me, not stopping them harming generally, which would be more like reporting them) or one of those spells where you just fade into the background so the target doesn't notice you. It actually does have a magical power because it's not allowing the account to have access to you. I just don't think it's true when people say people only have the power over you that you allow them, because, hello, what about rape. But in social media terms it is actually possible to stop someone having access to you at the press of a button.

I've actually started setting out to block people: yes I know I'm a misanthropist but I have found that blocking a lot of people has the effect of quietening down the conversation on a lot of posts. The best way to do this is to find one of sort of posts which are like a magnet to gammons and MAGATs: usually ones of youngsters misbehaving, of poverty in the US, of people suffering some terrible misfortune, or pictures of groups such as Jews or People of Colour. I honestly don't know what sort of a cunt you have to be to make abusive comments on a video of a mentally ill person, drug addict or asylum seeker, but I know that I don't want them around me and just block them all.

The reader will of course also recognise that a power analysis of this means I'm not giving them power. It took me a long time to get this but not engaging does actually not give them what they want, and might actually make them piss off if they're a real person. And this is absolutely doing the Great Work.

I only have one exception to this which is that I make a point of insulting brexiteers, adding that I'll give them time to read it before blocking them and then block them when they get enraged. Because pointing out their error to Leave voters is a national pleasure and sport just like cricket and cheese rolling, and I have to do that and then block them.

When I started thinking about this post I was thinking that I should probably include a potential downside of blocking loads of accounts, and was thinking that I would probably identify that it would be losing an opportunity to influence the audience to an interaction. However on further reflection I think that in 2023 social media users have no excuse not to have an understanding of how disinformation is used online and will not be easily deflected from vile opinions. If at this stage you're easily influenced by anti-vaxxers, Brexiteers, Donald Trump, the Cuntservative Party and other liars, you are never going to learn except the hard way. I don't have to inflict you on me.

And treating yourself well is the ultimate act of rebellion in our society.

Let's end with Mark calling in to LBC and demonstrating why this country will never have another bloody revolution and ably demonstrating the reason laughing at things is a banishing ritual in chaos magic:

Donald Trump Yet Again

So Bojo and Dorries have both resigned as MPs now and I was particularly delighted with the campaign of trolling that highlighted how Dorries hadn't been doing her job for yonks. This is why I don't think we'll have a bloody revolution in this country: they can't be relentlessly humiliated and know they've lost if they're dead. And we do that so well, it's a national characteristic.

Meanwhile that fuckwit Trump is selling t-shirts saying Never Surrender with a picture of him surrendering for the - is it the fourth or the fifth time? - I've lost count. So let's check in with what's going on shall we.

I'm delighted that if I'd had to guess the tarot cards for his current situation these are pretty much what I would have guessed LOL.

First we have the Knight of Wands. The Knights are the getting on with it and defensive/offensive cards, and that energy is here combined with the suit of Wands. Wands are about doing things, exerting your will or influence, going out and grabbing the pussy. This is a tremendously positive card for the querent (normally).

But not if you then come to the nine of Swords, which is the summit of the troubled, quarrelsome Swords suit. Swords are about thoughts, and let's just say that you really don't want this card appearing in your reading. You will of course see that in the RWS deck there's a suggestion that all nine of your troubles are all lined up in front of you but you can't even bring yourself to look at them. This card is the summit of earthly trouble.

This means so far we have a court card indicating going out and actioning your will, combined with another card where you've got so many troubles you can't even look. When you get those combined you're ideally placed to make even more mistakes (or commit more crimes) because you're rushing about, flailing with your wand, but there is so much going on that you're not examining it properly or thinking about it.

Finally we have the 4 of Pentacles, and it really does make me happy to see this card here. Fours (like the four legs of a table) indicate solidity and stability (or stubbornness if you take it too far) and combined with the element of Earth indicates stability of worldly goods - property, business, money.

That is, it does if it's not preceded by the last two cards and this means I think Trump is feeling the pain financially. Apparently RICO cases are horrendously expensive to defend and I think the particular trouble he's faced with is the realistic prospect that so many lawsuits will actually ruin him. I would hypothesise that he paid his bail with a bondsman on the principle that he doesn't do paying for anything and intends not to pay the bondsman.

Because obviously him also getting pursued by a bounty hunter would be the perfect next drama.

All together these cards indicate he's desperate, flailing around for solutions to the perfect legal storm and actually worried about the money now. 

You can tell, actually, because I'm a native English speaker and can't tell you what the fuck this is about, but I can promise you he couldn't define any of the words he tries to use.

Life Lesson from Donald Trump 3

He's giving us life lessons thick and fast! This one's also easy, and it is that if you find your latest in a succession of lawyers are finding it difficult to manage one of your criminal charges because the court appearances are clashing with appointments in another of your criminal charges, it's time to reconsider your life choices.

The specific one of course being if you are running to be President of the USA you stand down and publish a statement saying that you are still claiming to be innocent but don't want the presidency to be sullied by a candidate undergoing criminal trials.

...That is unless it's all about you.

Grooming

Trigger warning: this post contains descriptions of grooming and abuse.

This is about the process that abusers do to potential victims preparatory to actually abusing them, rather than any other sort of grooming. It is also about real grooming and not the imaginary grooming that right w(h)ingers see in drag, being kind to other people and social justice.

This post is heavily reliant on this page.

Grooming is the process of an abuser building a relationship with a potential victim and sometimes their wider family gaining their trust and power over the child in preparation for abuse.

So we already have several clear features: stranger danger never did really exist and it is now understood that abusers are known to their victims. They build a relationship with the family for the same reason, that if the child's family think they know, and respect and trust, the abuser, they will allow the abuser more opportunities to abuse the child and are less likely to believe the child when s/he says they've been abused.

The page I've linked above stresses that the abuser also makes the child think that what is happening is normal, and to isolate them. The example I've used above of the parents not believing their abused child features the isolation and the way the parents' thinking has also been conditioned by the abuser.

This is of course to gain trust and so grooming is invariably pleasant and kind to start off with. You are conditioned to think that the abuser couldn't possibly do something bad which of course easily crosses into blaming yourself or not trusting yourself.

The abuser then gains power by manipulation and often gifts involving tests. They are testing the victim's compliance and that they won't tell, by starting with lower level boundary violations that are unlikely to give them much trouble, and seeing what the child does. It is only after much testing and setting up the child to think it's them, that actual abuse will happen. Incidentally this is why it simply isn't true when it comes out that an organisation is simply riddled with abuse and everyone is very surprised: in reality unless everyone is lying, this means they haven't noticed all the grooming and because of the number of boundary violations necessary before abuse, there has to be all sorts of other things wrong in the organization that everyone is conveniently missing.

Because it just doesn't happen that adults who know their victims suddenly start raping them with no warning: there are always warnings.

But the knowledge of this pattern of abusive behaviour - building a relationship, gaining trust, making the victim trapped and isolated, gaining power by manipulation, making the victim think they're initiating it, then actually abusing - is a very useful knowledge to have. Not only to recognise it in children (the linked page has a list of signs a child is being groomed) but because it is handy to recognise when someone is trying to groom you in reality.

Now I'm going to be my usual inappropriate self and say that since I was a psychiatric nurse for 25 years I gained the kind of reactions and gallows humour you get from dealing with endless trauma day in and day out. It is not unusual in the profession to hear a particularly arse-licking member of staff as being 'groomed' for management, for example. I like this image because it stresses how they're being used as well as getting promotion, but this idea of grooming is definitely applicable to other circumstances than child sexual abuse.

The best example is churches, who groom and manipulate their congregants and ministers to comply and keep schtum. This is how the entire hierarchy of the RC church covered up abuse: you have to be groomed to get to covering up crime.

This may sound extreme but look at this example:

Recently, JD Great decided to fuss at people who come late, listen online, and leave early, saying they treated the worship service like an entertainment venue. However, the guy on the camera pulled back, and observers could look at JD’s big stage, which looked a lot like an entertainment venue to me!

Watch it yourself, and then I will offer additional thoughts on what he said. It appears that all the clips of the statement keep getting removed from Twitter, so I had to do a workaround. Here I present the entire service. To hear his relatively short rant, go to mark 42:20-43.09. If you want to listen to him telling about all those wonderful churches that he has planted to reach the disenfranchised, listen for about 10 minutes before his rant. Source

You get told off at school or work for being late, not at something you are attending voluntarily, particularly if you are giving them money. This actually seems to me quite high level in terms of grooming, because there's something so wrong with telling a congregation off. There must therefore have been lots of steps before this. 

I would suggest some of the ways churches groom people by getting their trust, obtaining power over them and manipulating and trapping them so they can't leave include: providing the lonely with a conditional social network they would lose if they stopped going; getting people to give 10% of their income; telling them they're sinners and they should blame themselves; setting very high standards of spiritual perfection; expecting frequent attendance; claiming to be the one true church, etc.

The effect of all these things (and others) is exactly the same as that of grooming and can only have the effect of isolating people, make them doubt and blame themselves, and make them dependent by a progressive series of expectations leading from just visiting to being completely enmeshed.

I have a theory that the reason churches often turn out to be hotbeds of abuse is that they are hotbeds of grooming and grooming is their business. Of course this happens elsewhere, but I honestly think churches are the best example of this.

Because there must be some reason, mustn't there, why whole denominations get riddled with abuse, and I think it's the grooming. You would think that people would just leave after this comes out but they don't. They act all surprised and just carry on. They even go to the church after their own child has been abused. They're acting like abuse has become normal, exactly as if they've been groomed.

Could it be happening to you?