The vigilantes took photos as they wrestled the thieves to the ground.

On Thursday, a group of five people attempted to make off with a load of watches from a posh London jewellery shop after smashing the window with a sledgehammer. They were foiled not by police, or shop security – but by a mob of more than 50 passers by and shoppers who jumped in and booted fuck out of the would-be thieves.

WHAT. THE. FUCK? What would make so many ordinary people risk the wrath of a sledgehammer to protect a load of watches and jewellery they could never afford, and that belong to a company that’s never done a thing for them?

Society has put a lot of effort into the vilification of the shoplifter and the thief – the government and the media have worked hard to make ordinary people think of theft as a crime on the same level as rape or murder, which it simply isn’t.

Who would have suffered if the sledgehammer gang hadn’t been thwarted? The shop would have had insurance to cover the cost of the products and the broken window.

Defending the property of private companies against people who want access to that property, or the power or opportunities that come with it, is nothing more than a defense of capitalism and inequality.

One new attempt to pit impoverished people against each other, and widen the gulf between so-called good and bad citizens, is a new scheme called Internet Eyes. Ordinary people can volunteer to sit at home monitoring CCTV cameras in shops, and notify the owners if they spot a shoplifter.  Their website says:

The sole purpose of Internet Eyes is to enable responsible members of the public to use the latest technology to help shopkeepers and the police combat the serious social harm that shoplifting causes.

The site is aimed at businesses that are too cheap to pay anyone to watch their cameras. Firms pay £20 a week for the service – much cheaper than actually employing a member of staff, and paying the tax, National Insurance and other costs associated with that. The volunteers, each watching up to four screens at a time, have the opportunity to receive a reward of up to £1,000 a month – if they manage to catch anyone.

Volunteers first have to pay a membership fee (£12.99 a year, £4.99 a quarter, or £1.99 a month). You are then rewarded for the hours you put in – if you watch the monitors more than 30 hours per month, you will receive a generous shiny 50 pence piece. More than 45 hours per month gets ￡1, and more than 60 hours per month gets￡1.50. Each volunteer receives feedback points from shop owners according to how much they spot. The volunteer with the most points at the end of each month will receive  £1000. If two or more volunteers have the same number of points, the money will be split between them.

So, if you’re poor and can’t find a job, you’ve now got a choice: go out and steal what you need to get by, or sit at home on the internet hoping to catch someone else stealing and get rewarded for dobbing them in.

And what happens when shoplifters do get caught? As we’ve previously reported, shoplifters in the UK are more likely to be jailed than sex offenders.

And in the US, vigilantism against shoplifters is just as strong. Last week, when a costume shop owner in Virginia caught a teenager trying to pinch something, instead of calling the police, he forced the boy to stand outside his shop for the rest of the day, in a Sesame Street costume holding a sign admitting to his crime.

Apart from the SSY blog, the internet has very few useful functions. One of them however, is the autocomplete function when you type stuff into Google. If you type “is obama”, the top results are:

• 
  

  Obama spots one of his many gods in the crowd

  a muslim

• anti british
• a freemason
• the antichrist
• a good president
• american
• a christian
• related to bush
• jewish
• a socialist

It’s impossible for us to come with an authoritative answer for each one, but, after having spent 5 minutes scanning over some of the linked sites, the balance of evidence suggests the answer to all of the above is YES.

The Cranick family home burns down

As if you needed it, more news that will make you glad you don’t live in the land of the crazy, the USA.

In Obion county, rural Tennessee, you have to pay an annual $75 fee to be allowed to use local firefighting services. A family which had not paid the fee were horrified to see local firefighters watch their house burn down without doing anything.

Gene Cranick says he forgot to pay the fee. When his home caught fire last week, and he couldn’t contain it himself with a garden hose, he did the obviously sane thing to do, and called the emergency services. He got the insane response that because he hadn’t paid his fee they weren’t going to come.

The fire department did eventually show up when the Cranick’s neighbours, who had paid their fee, phoned worried about the fire spreading and destroying even more property. So the fire engines got to the scene, and protected the neighbours’ home. and then stood and watch the Cranick’s home burn down, with pets inside.

What’s even worse? Gene Cranick offered on the phone to pay the fee, and then desperately offered to cover any costs at all involved in saving his home. But the twisted conservative, free market ideology guiding the “pay to spray” policy means that this just wasn’t good enough. A lesson was intended to be drawn from this horrific incident: in a system where you have to pay for public services, if you can’t or won’t pay, then you won’t get them.

Surely you would think even US right wing nutcases can’t defend this madness? Surely this blatant violation of what being a firefighter is all about has been roundly condemned. Well, guess what? There’s never a new low to which the American right can’t sink.

In the right wing mag the National Review, a variety of the completely bonkers no-government anarcho-capitalist mentalists who shouldn’t have any influence over their own breakfast, nevermind a superpower, have been jumping at the chance to rub their hands with glee.

These crazies are positively delighted at the death of pets and a house burning down, because, just as it was intended, it sends a message to the world at large: a decent life and public safety are for those that can afford to stump up for it, screw the rest of you. Kevin Williamson (no relation to the former SSP member and Scottish blogger!) writes:

“The world is full of jerks, freeloaders, and ingrates — and the problems they create for themselves are their own. These free-riders have no more right to South Fulton’s firefighting services than people in Muleshoe, Texas, have to those of NYPD detectives.”

His pal Jonah Goldberg adds:

“Here’s the more important part of the story, letting the house burn — while, I admit sad [yes, you really come across like you give a shit] — will probably save more houses over the long haul. I know that if I opted out of the program before, I would be more likely to opt-in now. No solace to the homeowner . . . As Edmund Burke said, example is the school of mankind and he will learn from no other.”

These people have the same moral compass as Hannibal Lecter. but what should really scare us is that we have a government in the UK that’s ideologically committed to the same ideas as these bastards. The Conservatives here want the state to be like it is there, and their cuts are a calculated political move to try and turn Britain into the kind of non-public service hellhole much of the US has become. Fighting back against the Tories isn’t just about saving jobs and services, it’s about making sure we continue to live in a civilised society.

“It is some of the best well made propaganda I have ever seen…We are looking into this gentleman and this incredible propaganda against me.” -- Glenn Beck

Check out the very funny cartoon above. The maker, Jonathan McIntosh, says:

“This is a re-imagined Donald Duck cartoon remix constructed using dozens of classic Walt Disney cartoons from the 1930s to 1960s. Donald’s life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.”

Glenn Beck is one of the most successful conmen and lunatics in the US, who we of course have mentioned once or twice before. He’s not afraid to use his shows on radio and TV, plus best selling books and live appearances, to dole out all kinds of hate filled propaganda and lies against anyone he doesn’t like -- mainstream Democrat politicians (who he deludedly calls socialists, when they’re anything but), non white people, his wife etc.

But when someone turns the tables and makes some propaganda against him (which, by the way, is funny, and is nowhere near is bile filled as his rants), he’s not happy. Maybe he’s not happy that they were able to make him look bad just by sampling directly what he’s said on his own show. Anyway, here’s Glenn’s comments on it, and how he’s going to try and fuck with the genius behind the cartoon:

From the looks of his site, Jonathan McIntosh has done loads of good stuff, it’s worth a look at http://www.rebelliouspixels.com

Check out the short film above, by Mexico based filmaker and activist Greg Berger, aka Gringoyo, who’s been travelling around Latin America for over 10 years making insightful and funny films about the exploitation of the continent by capitalism and US imperial interests. He’s now asking viewers to contribute directly, so he can make 100% viewer funded films challenging the lies of the corporate media.

As the film explains, in 2006 Mexican President Felipe Calderon decided that, faced with massive power of the drugs cartels who control the flows of cocaine and other drugs into the US, he would use the military to take them down. The reason they are so powerful is that keeping drugs illegal in Mexico and the US means that those who traffick them stand to make immense profits from a completely unregulated market. They can then use this vast wealth to corrupt police forces, politicians and anyone that threatens their ongoing bonanza. Recently in Ciudad Juarez, the local paper appealed to drug lords as the “de facto rulers of the city” to explain what they should and should not published, after several of their journalists were murdered. Drug cartels love prohibition.

But Calderon’s solution wasn’t to start thinking about a rational, sane drugs policy, which recognises that humans have always

Felipe Calderon and Obama: united in wanting maximum profits for US arms manufacturers

and will always take drugs, and that this should be something that is legally regulated instead of left in the hands of gangsters. Oh no, he had a much better idea: send in the army, and go to war with cartels that are so heavily armed that fighting them amounts to a civil war. Since then, violence has spread throughout the country to many previously peaceful regions, and by the government’s own estiamtes 28,000 people have been killed, many of them after being horrifically tortured.

Last week US secretary of state made clear the position of the Obama administration on the whole mess, when she called for an equivalent of Plan Colombia for Mexico. In 1999, faced with a CIA assessment that the left wing FARC rebels were capable of taking power within 5 years, the US decided to pour money into the Colombian armed forces, making it the second biggest recipient of US military aid after Israel. The results were predictable, with intensified conflict and many more civilian deaths. But I suppose pouring petrol on the fire makes sense when you’re selling the petrol: US arms manufactures are growing fat on the profits of drug wars in Colombia and Mexico.

Sensationalist media coverage has helped bolster support for these policies in the US. To be fair, a lot of the cartels sound like they have been made up by the guy that wrote The Expendables on crack. For example, there’s La Familia, the Christian fundamentalist methamphetamine manufacturers, who in June ambushed a federal police convoy in Mexico killing 12. Their leader, Nazario Moreno — aka El Mas Loco, or The Craziest One — has written his own bible, and holds prayer meetings before going out on attacks. Their also funding political candidates to try and take over the government of their home state of Michoacan.

As you can see, Los Zetas are not short of guns

Then there’s the real action movie characters, Los Zetas. They started out as a an elite Mexican military special forces unit, trained by the School of the Americas and Israeli commandos. But then they realised there was more money to be made running the drugs trade than fighting it, defected and set themselves up as a well armed, highly trained paramilitary drugs cartel.

Hearing about some of the grisly antics of these mad bastards, you’re mind maybe does jump to the solutions you’ve been trained to think of by the entertainment industry -- crush them with loads of guns. But what the story of Los Zetas shows is that will never work. There is literally no level of government that can’t be corrupted by the huge profits resulting from an unregulated drug market. And those same huge profits mean that no matter how much money the Mexican and US governments spend on fighting them, they’ll always be able to employ, train and equip soldiers.

Ironically, when Clinton advocated Plan Colombia for Mexico, it was in response to a question asking about what the US government was going to do about “the flow of drugs coming north and guns going south” (cartels arm themselves mainly in the US due to its insanely lax gun laws). It’s time countries like the US and UK woke up and realised that our prohibitionist policies don’t only cause huge harm to communities here: they also fuel brutal wars in countries like Mexico, Colombia and Afghanistan, and the only people happy about it are drug lords and western arms manufacturers.

Bonus: The single best news source on the Latin American drug wars is Narco News. Check it out all the time!

Christine O’Donnell is the Republican candidate for the US Senate in a special election to be held in Delaware in November. She defeated the Republican insider candidate, a guy who’s been in Congress for ages and used to be the state’s governor, with the support of the mass movement for paranoia and fantasy known as the Tea Party.

The Tea Party are a radical right wing alliance of nutters that have been taking over the Republican party, and their success in putting O’Donnell in the candidacy is a sign of their strength. Their movement is opposed to the government spending money on the economy or healthcare, as well as black people in positions of power, as can be seen from the number of birthers among them. Their racism even extends to recently holding a rally in Arizona IN FAVOUR of their new apartheid laws against people of Latin American descent. They’ve provided a rallying cry and natural home for a lot of Americans who are seriously confused about reality. These same nutters have looked for wacky people like them to represent them in office.

Christine O’Donnell is just such a mentalist. In uni she converted from Catholicism to become an Evengelical Christian, and takes the Bible super seriously. The way she sees it, it’s not just a holy book but also a biology textbook, after she claimed there was “just as much, if not more evidence” supporting creationism over evolution, science and dinosaur bones that are way, way old.

But perhaps her most well known pro-Bible belter is her stance on masturbation. She made herself famous as a vocal opponent of taking matters into your own hands. Check the video below of her denouncing wanking on MTV in 1996:

In the video, she famously says “If he already knows what pleases him and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture,” which seems to imply that she hasn’t heard that WOMEN CAN MASTURBATE TOO. This fits pretty well with her view of women and what they should be -- dutiful Stepford wives living meek and quiet lives and never expressing any thoughts or desires of their own, sexual or otherwise. Men, on the other hand, are raging buckets of hormones just driven to satisfy urges they can’t control, as seen from her comments that nude sunbathing would make it “very hard [sic] for their boyfriend not to want to take it further”, and her call to ban freak dancing because it was responsible for an “epidemic of date rape” (personally I thought rapists were responsible for rape, but there you go.)

Quite why she’s decided to take up such a lost cause as trying to persuade people that masturbation is bad is beyond most sane observers, especially considering the Bible never mentions it. Her anti-wank crusade has been cobbled together on the basis of interpreting other bits of the Bible and what they have to say about “lust”.

O’Donnell calls herself a feminist, but a bit like her twisted understanding of what goes on in our pants, she doesn’t seem to be very clear on what that means:

“I consider myself an authentic feminist. Not as defined by the modern movement. And, let me clarify that a little bit more. I was an English major, so break it down: -ist means one who celebrates. As a feminist, I celebrate my femininity.”

Aha, I see what you did there! Except feminism categorically isn’t about reinforcing a traditional, patriarchal view of women as being essentially “feminine” (submissive, chaste, wearing petticoats, chained to the kitchen sink etc.) Feminism is for everybody because it wants to free us all from the tyranny of men and women having to be defined by false ideas of femininity and masculinity. For Christine O’Donnell though it’s about biblical literalism and keeping your hands out of your pants.

For a picture of what she wants women to be like, we have to go to an unusual place for the debating of gender roles: Middle

This is what a feminist looks like, apparently

Earth! Seemingly the fantasies of her political views reflect a real love of fantasy literature, after she described the Tea Party as being like Aslan (“not a tame lion”), and tried to prove J.R.R. Tolkien was a feminist.

Even the most hardened fan of Lord of the Rings would have to admit that Tolkien didn’t really write in many female characters. And almost all of them are pretty, stupid and not much given to swordplay, orc fighting or anything that the books are actually about. Tolkien was an old fashioned old guy who spent most of his time making up tales with other old fashioned old guys, and exciting as they may be they’re hardly progressive on the issue of women. Their role is to be the beautiful eye candy cooking up banquets for when the heroes get home. Sounds great, reckons Christine.

In her essay, ‘The Women of Middle Earth,’ O’Donnell describes characters like Belladonna Baggins (mother of Bilbo), who, by her own admission is in the book for “about four lines”, as “content, even utterly satisfied, in the role of a wife and mother.”

“To me, Belladonna is the unseen grandmother whose prayers guide and protect her family as they go on to accomplish great tasks. She is the picture of a woman who has led a full life. The few lines written about her tell us that Belladonna did not have many adventures after she married, for her husband provided a great home for her. Belladonna’s independence in her earlier adventurous life before marriage provides a catalyst for Bilbo, her male heir . . .

. . .Some critics claim that Tolkien’s serene version of femininity is offensive to the modern female viewer. As a modern female viewer, I find the assumption itself offensive . . . Everything about Tolkien’s Arwen is tranquil, serene, calming. These qualities are part of the charm of the womanhood she expresses. There are many types of women in the world. Arwen represents one of them. She represents a pillar of calm that is a source of strength for her man. Her great contribution to the war is the strength she provides to the future King.”

Women: Know Your Place (in The Shire).

O'Donnell's natural supporters may be alienated by the latest revelations

This week it came out that she’d done her own small bit to make the world a bit more like the one inhabited by elves and wizards, when she revealed that when she was younger she “dabbled in witchcraft”!

“I dabbled into witchcraft. I never joined a coven … I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s a little blood there and stuff like that … We went to a movie and then had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar.”

This came to light after footage of her on a talk show back in the 90s was released by it’s host, Bill Maher. The best part is he says he has loads more embarassing material of her which he will keep releasing until she comes on his show, (“It’s like a hostage crisis: every week you don’t show up, I throw another body out”), so the laughs at the expense of the politically crazy look set to keep on coming.

Bonus: Just so you don’t think this was a lone episode of the Tea Party selecting a total mad bastard as a candidate, check out Tim D’Annunzio, a guy they tried to make a Congressional candidate in North Carolina, who believes the US government is the antichrist, believed he was the messiah, that God was going to drop a 1000 mile high pyramid in Greenland and that he’d found the Ark of the Covenant in Arizona.

Glenn Beck is someone we’ve written about here before. For those that haven’t been lucky enough to check him out on youtube, he is one of the most prominent figures of the American right media, with 3 hours of radio and 1 hour of telly EVERY DAY to push his extreme agenda on to the public in the US. Some of his views make the Daily Mail look like a left wing propaganda sheet.

He’s also a relentlessly self promoting narcissist, who has raked in millions of dollars from his shows and books. He frequently fakes crying on air to try and give some fake sincerity to his constant verbal diarrhea of incoherent threats and garbage. He’s a convert to Mormonism (dum dum dum dum dum), mainly, by his own admission, so he could have sex with the woman who is now his wife (who btw he constantly insults, mocks and belittles in his show.)

Beck’s latest money making scheme is another book, ‘The Plan’, which apparently will detail his “100 year plan to restore our great country,” along with the upcoming paperback edition of his previous hit ‘Arguing with Idiots’ (takes one to know one.)

To promote these books, he’d planned a massive launch in Washington DC. That was, until he came up with an even better idea -- get a charity to pay for it so it doesn’t cost him anything! Although the event this weekend was originally billed straight up as what it was, a book launch designed to generate more cash for the Beck empire, it’s now being described as the “Restoring Honour” rally. Quite what the message of this event will be is pretty hard to work out, apart from a vague focus on the American military being great.

The event is supposed to be raising money for the charity Special Operations Warrior Foundation. This group provides counselling and support to the families of those killed on US military Special Ops missions around the world, including college education scholarships for their children. Let’s leave aside for a minute that a lot of these dead soldiers weren’t “heroes” but in fact scumbags sent to other people’s countries to kill, kidnap and terrorise in the name of American imperialism; that’s not the fault of their families and so some support for them is probably OK.

But all the money raised for the charity will first have to go for paying for the rally, featuring keynote speakers Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. So, these two self-promoting far right lunatics are getting a gigantic national platform provided to them FOR FREE. The estimated $1 million cost of organising the event will be met entirely by SOWF, allowing Beck to get in all the news and sell a whole lot more books.

Because it’s organised by a charity, the event can’t be “political” according to tax rules. But what that specifically means is that the speakers can’t endorse a particular political party or candidate; apart from that, they can rant away about their far out views as much as they like. The fact that the rally is also being sponsored by groups like the National Rifle Association and FreedomWorks, a right wing organisation behind many of the Tea Party protests, shows how much of a joke the idea of the rally as “non political” is.

However, the promotional stuff that Beck has put out for the event is a bit toned down, which in fact makes it even harder to watch. At least when this guy is ranting like a crazy person he can be entertaining to watch, like a car crash. But I challenge you to watch either of these two ads and not feel your last meal start inexorably rising towards your mouth.

“You see, I learned something today.”

But it gets worse! It turns out the date that Beck has picked for a gigantic celebration of himself is in fact the 47th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington at which Dr Martin Luther King Jnr made his ‘I have a dream’ speech.

Given that the event is inextricably linked with the racist Tea Party movement, dedicated to a far right politics of attacking the working class and motivated by a hatred of the first black president, understandably the surviving members of the 60s civil rights movement are a bit pissed off about this. Glenn Beck’s reaction? To claim that he and his supporters are “the inheritors of the civil rights movement”!! You couldn’t make this shit up. Check out what he says in the clips below on the subject, along with the Rev. Al Sharpton, who was a close collaborator of King’s in the civil rights movement, slamming comeback.

Beck’s insulting claim to have any right to the legacy of the civil rights movement is based on pissing on the legacy of what he actually stood for. Beck claims that the left has lied about what King. He tries to claim that King was in fact an individualist or even a conservative. In hijacking the memory of the 1963 march on Washington he wants us to forget it was actually called the March for Jobs and Freedom, and was organised by Socialist and trade unionist A Phillip Randolph to demand federal investment in new jobs.

Martin Luther King might not have gone as far left in his politics as we in SSY do, but at root he was a left wing figure. Around him in the civil rights movement were a host of socialists and communists who saw the fight for racial equality and desegregation as inextricably linked from the fight against capitalism. King himself recognised that the battle against racism was in fact a battle against the socio-economic foundations of American society, saying:

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing’-oriented society to a “person”-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

As the 60s went on, King became more and more radicalised by events. Whereas before he had seen the way forward as appealing to the Democratic Party and the “moral conscience” of white liberals, after riots in Watts and seeing the horrors of the war in Vietnam, he increasingly saw the importance of appealing to the working class. In the last weeks before he was assassinated, he was in Memphis showing solidarity with striking black bin workers, some of the lowest paid in the US.

He also developed an uncompromising opposition to the war in Vietnam and US imperialism, denouncing the war as clearly linked with poverty and oppression at home. This drew the condemnation of many of his former liberal supporters, who found that messing with US geopolitical interests was a step too far.

Dr Martin Luther King wasn’t a full on socialist as we would understand it, but he was a social democrat who wanted to see an end to racism and imperialism, massive redistribution of wealth and huge government investment programme to provide decent, well paid jobs for the poor. He’d recognised the need to organise outside of the two-party system, and was preparing for the possibility of an independent run for President on a ticket of Peace and Justice.

For Glenn Beck to try and deny the legacy of King’s left wing ideas, and to claim that his racist mob of pro-capitalist crazies has any continuity with the civil rights movement would be hilarious if it wasn’t so insulting. His far right movement wants to undo everything achieved for the oppressed in the US during the revolutionary moment of the 60s, and he must be fought every step of the way.

“The dispossessed of this country — the poor, the white and Negro — live in a cruelly unjust society. they must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty.” Martin Luther King.

Liar: Bassett pretending he looks ill

Why is the Lockerbie bomber still alive? This week Senator Robert Menendez, Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into why someone (or indeed everyone) isn’t dead yet announced plans to send a team of yankee investigators to Scotland.   This we can understand as it clear that protocol has been breached on this matter.  When someone in Scotland commits a crime like say theft or in the case of the accused, Bertybasset al-Megrahi being spotted buying a jumper (or another one the same colour) which was found on a plane, they are tried by a group of vote hungry senators in the run up to mid-term elections.  The only hope of clemency for those found guilty comes in the form of a Christmas pardon from our Lord and Saviour, Obama H. Christ.

Kenny McAskill chose to bypass the time honoured tradition of doing exactly what America wanted and instead exercised a strange form of indigenous justice.  Under this crazed system us savage Scots occasionally demonstrate that we have different values to those who seek to destroy us…or America…or is that the same thing?

Anyways understandably pissed off Menendez is sending a crack team to Scotland to investigate what’s wrong with this crazy country and what we can learn from our American brethren.  SSY meets the men who hope to save us.

Leading the group will be Frank “Freaky Sheik” McDeak (Dem.) Frank will investigate the disgraceful link between oil and political power in Scotland.  “This all came as a shock for me, I had to cut short my Saudi holiday…I was watching 50 virgins spray oil out their whatnots while I threw dollars at them…and now I hear these Scotch have been cutting deals in exchange for oil…America would never cut deals with those who tried to blow us up in exchange for oil and money.  The Sheik just wouldn’t have it.”

Perry: If you can't hang 'em - Shoot 'em!

Controversial Texas Governor Rick Perry (Rep.) is to investigate the woefully inhumane Scottish Justice system.  “Sure I’ve killed a few people….well a few hundred…and I’ve fired all those in the justice system who questioned my decision to execute a man who according to all my closest advisors and scientists was asleep at the time he is supposed to have murdered his kids…but these Scotch!  I tell you…letting someone go who allegedly bought a jumper, a strand of which was allegedly found on a plane that Iran Libya blew up…monsters I say…the lotta them!”

The final senator will be Hawky Pearson (Rep) well known international peace activist.  He is concerned by what he sees as a continuation of a trend.  “We should have seen the warning signs in Darien.  For centuries Scots have been dragging their junior partners in the US around on a series of imperial adventures.  They dragged us into their conflict with Libya then just like we sent our young men to die for Scottish oil companies in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I say no more American blood should be spilled for Scottish interests!”

We also understand that the Senators are to be accompanied by other progressive Americans concerned that Scotland is slipping into an authoritarian nightmare.

Pat “McGroin” Robertson, gay rights activist, is looking into allegations that crazy, Christian homophobes are funded the very same SNP government who freed the terrorist plotter.  “We believe some rightwing bus bandit may have influenced the Scottish regime with his insane ranting about the gays.  I’ve never been to Scotland but as I’ve always said there are definitely lots of homos there.  We can’t allow these people to influence the government.”

SSY preparing for the American Heroes

The group will be rounded off by asylum campaigner and renowned anti-racist Pat Buchanan.  He is expected to directly challenge the racism of the Scottish regime by visiting the controversial “Border Wall” constructed all the way along the border to prevent the flow of poor southerners crossing the border to Scotland to access free personal care for the elderly and lower tuition fees.  “I intend to deliver a message to the racists in Scotland.  I will invoke the spirit of Reagan and say ‘Mr Hadrien!  Tear down this wall!’”

In the US Mr al-Megrahi, convicted on, quite literally, a shred of evidence would have been taken out and shot thus saving the need for all these pesky investigations and all this pish chat about “the truth”  “justice” and “closure.” The SSY is ecstatic that these Americans want to visit our depraved nation and show us the light.

We shall greet them on the tarmac waving our Saltires and asking…Why isn’t Scotland more like America?

Monday morning's headlines after SSY's legalise cannabis march

Every human society since we first evolved has experimented with drugs, pyschoactive substances, and altered states of consciousness.

Many leading psychologists and anthropologists believe that this is a normal part of human life, and experimenting with substances like cannabis or magic mushrooms has actually played a role in the evolution of modern, intelligent humans.

But in the last 200 years human society has changed dramatically. With the arrival of capitalism came the rise of modern states, with their borders, armies and police forces. As the technology to control their own people developed, states have had an ever increasing urge to monitor and discipline their populations.

One of the ways they have done this is implement a worldwide system of prohibition of drugs. While the two biggest drug killers, alcohol and tobacco, remain legal billion pound industries, relatively harmless drugs like cannabis and ecstasy remain the target of expensive police operations, and users are turned into criminals who can face imprisonment for doing nothing but experimenting with their own bodies.

The drugs laws we have in Britain and throughout the developed world have never borne any relation to real medical or scientific information, but instead have been shaped by the prejudices and scapegoats created by elites to divide and control the people. One of the main ways they have done this is to use racism, associating certain substances with foreigners or ethnic minorities.

Now, in the 21st century, many countries around the world are finally beginning to wake up to the fact that prohibition has been a costly disaster that has caused untold misery across the planet. The time has at last come to begin treating drugs as a health and social issue, not a criminal one, and base our drugs policies on real scientific evidence, not prejudice and racism.

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Have you ever wondered what motivates people who are rampant homophobes? What lies behind the desperate attempts of some people to prove their heterosexuality by denying freedom to others based on their sexual orientation?

It’s actually supported by scientific evidence that a major cause of homophobia is the desire to repress unacknowledged or unwanted homosexual feelings. In August 1996 the American Psychological Association did a study in which they used penile plethysmography (basically the technological measurement of hard ons) to “precisely measure and record male tumescence” of men who were avowedly straight’s reactions to to erotic images. Some of the men were professed homophobes, and some were not, who acted as a control group. The homophobic group basically got a lot more aroused by gay imagery than the control group. Questioned afterwards, the homophobes consistently underrated how much they responded to homosexuality.

One group of activists even cleverly wrote to homophobic MPs who voted against equalising the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual sex, and challenged them to take the same test of their knob’s reaction to gay stimuli.

Basically, the homophobes experienced severe anxiety and a sense of threat from gay images, which the non-homophobic control group did not. While this is in many ways tragic, and would lead us to the conclusion that many homophobes need help and support to come to terms with themselves and their own feelings, it doesn’t give an excuse for some of the truly awful things people do as a result of that anxiety.

There are many cases of prominent and powerful people who were driving a homophobic agenda in religion, politics or society in general who were actually gay themselves. While this self-loathing is tragic, the harm that these people do to the rights and freedoms of others is inexcusable. To celebrate today’s gay pride march, Leftfield brings you a selection of some of the world’s greatest sexual hypocrites (apologies for them all being American, if you’d like us help expand our list to the UK and around the world then give us some extras in the comments!):

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