Sunday, 11 October 2015

Awkward

...with Putin and his top brass blaming Obama and the yankees for bombing the wrong building in Afghanistan (the MSF hospital) it must be a bit awkward in the upper echelons of the Russian military at the moment to realise you've bombed the wrong fucking country. Pity the poor sap that points that out to Vlad

Saturday, 10 October 2015

RESPECT

I am a responsible gun owner.
I bought my first gun when I was 12. It was a Browning 12-gauge shotgun, and I saved money from my paper route and cleaning a drive-in restaurant to buy it in time for dove season. In the years before I could legally drive, I’d tie the Browning across the handlebars of my bike and ride to the fields outside town to hunt.
I’ve owned several guns since, and own a handgun now. I bought that gun to keep my family safe, and lock it up to keep them safe from it. Like I said, responsible.
And so while I’d like to believe I’m not part and party to the gun violence that stains America, I can’t. My grandmother shot and killed herself with a gun, and a few years ago my father shot and didn’t quite kill himself with one. My stepbrother died in a murder-suicide with a gun, and the husband of one of my sister’s co-workers was killed in a mass shooting.
None of that happened with my gun, of course, but after every new mass shooting, I’m reminded that I bear a portion of the responsibility for our nation’s gun violence. There are too many guns to do anything about it, the gun lobby says. Regulations are a slippery slope that only limit the rights of responsible gun owners, they say.
My gun is being used to argue against common-sense laws and policies that could reduce gun violence in America, arguments I find unconscionable. That’s what being a responsible gun owner means today – I’m responsible. I’ve been uneasy about that for a while now, and ashamed to admit it’s taken two more mass shootings for me to do anything about it.
That ended today. Today I disassembled my handgun, a 9mm Ruger, clamped the pieces in a vice and cut them in half with an angle grinder. I’m sending the proper paperwork into the state to report it destroyed.
None of us individually can stop gun violence in America, but as a responsible gun owner, I will no longer be used as a justification for doing nothing about it. Today I did what I could. Today there is ‪#‎ONELESSGUN‬

- Steve Elliott

Remember that data retention laws come into effect today here in Australia and if using a vpn is good enough for our Prime Minister then it's good enough for us

Nico and John Cooper Clarke

Photo: Peter Noble (1985)

Nico by Jeanloup Sieff (1956)

Andrew Foley: John Cooper Clarke in the style of LS Lowry

Mass Killings Are Seen as a Kind of Contagion

New Order - Restless (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Paul Pope AKA Pulphope: Nick Cave

William S. Burroughs: Photo-Collages (Mexico, Tangier, Paris, etc 1954/61)

"The photo collage is a way to travel that must be used with skill and precision if we are to arrive [...] The collage as a flexible hieroglyph language of juxtapostion: A collage makes a statement."