The Disappointing Truth

They always disappoint, don't they?  The 'big reveals' in scandals and long-running news stories, that is.  The media always builds this stuff up, teasing the prospect of future revelations, while dropping salacious scraps of inconclusive information, giving the impression that this is all leading up to some kind of spectacular denouement.  Like a TV soap opera, or a thriller movie.  And, of course, we lap it all up, just as we do those TV shows and films, buying in to all the drama along the way as a substitute for the excitement that is missing in our own real lives.  But in these long-running news scandals, just like in real life, we never seem to get the big pay off.  Instead, it all seems to fizzle out disappointingly.  Take the Epstein scandal - we've had yet more documents released today, following years of hints and teasing from both Trump and his opponents as to who is going to get burned by the inevitable breaking of the scandal when everything comes out.  Yet, in truth, despite all the stuff released, all the pictures and e-mails, that smoking gun never seems to appear.  The 'Holy Grail' of evidence which will point the finger at Trump, or anyone else for that matter, stubbornly refuses to materialise.  Everything is circumstantial.  The only major casualty so far has been the former Prince Andrew and even there the evidence is pretty much circumstantial.  Certainly nothing sufficiently concrete to warrant criminal investigations - his downfall has purely been the result of the reputational damage his association with Epstein has caused the Royal Family.

But such is the nature of this sort of stuff - it isn't just confined to political scandals like the Epstein business.  The media loves to push those narratives about how the US government has access to alien technology from crashed UFOs, or that the UK government has reams of files devoted to UFO incursions into British airspace, which it  suppressed to prevent public panic.  With each story they hint that astounding revelations are about to break: that dead aliens are about to be revealed, that files are going to be released showing that Harold Wilson held meetings with aliens in 1968 or that the US will roll a complete flying saucer out of the hangers at Area 51.  Yet all we get are the same tired old stories from the same tired old cranks about how they met a man from Rigel while working in a top secret US lab, or how they were taken on a ride around Mars in an alien spaceship - all with absolutely no evidence to back them up.  The big pay off just never comes.  Because, the cynic in me says, if it ever did, then the story would effectively be dead.  Sure, there would be plenty of stuff about how the aliens are getting a State Visit and meeting the King at Buckingham Palace, but that would draw them into the world of the ordinary, making them concrete presences, rather than some tantalising, shadowy mystery which sells papers.  Because that's the draw of these things - the mystery.  All mysteries, when solved, are somewhat disappointing.  In contrast to fiction, for instance, murders are inevitably motivated by greed, jealousy, passion or are heat of the moment incidents, the result of rage, drugs or alcohol.  Or some combination of the three.  Either that, or they are the work of a psychopath who, in contrast to movie psychos, has unfathomable motives and looks more like a mumbling tramp than a sophisticated professional like Hannibal Lecter.  As with everything else, the fantastic fantasy versions are always far more exciting and interesting than the mundane reality.  Which is probably why so many people seem to like conspiracy theories.  But that's a whole other post... 

Even AI's Gone Commie!

The insanity of the Daily Mail continues apace - it is now complaining that AI Chatbots have a 'left-wing' bias, because their answers to queries allegedly source 'left wing' sources 'like The Guardian and the BBC'.  This is so problematic on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to start with responding to it.  Let's start with their definition of 'left wing sources'.  Clearly, the BBC isn't a left wing source - it aims for political neutrality (and in reality tends to present an 'establishment' perspective on the vents).  But to the increasingly rabid Mail, (the newspaper that, in the thirties, once had Hitler as its 'Man of the Year'), 'neutral' is apparently the same as 'left wing'.  As for The Guardian, well, it certainly sits to the left of centre, but it certainly doesn't consistently articulate any ideological or doctrinaire left wing perspective.  It's well-meaning liberalism for the well intentioned but ineffective.  (I should know - I read it every day).  The biggest problem with this story is that it doesn't explain just how sources are attributed, or what the queries used in the data were about.  Now, I'm sure that the original report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) that the article draws on (and undoubtedly misquotes and misrepresents in order to fit the newspaper's own biases), probably does provide clarity on these matters, but the fact is that more people will read the Mail article than the report, so that has to be the basis of my analysis.

I'd hazard a guess that many of the queries involved probably have little to do with politics and it simply happens that the BBC and Guardian can provide more relevant information to the AI algorithms.  Moreover, on issues like the environment and climate change, say, they are far more likely to provide information in line with accepted scientific opinion than right wing sources like the Mail, who are far more likely to give credence to climate change deniers.  Indeed, I'd say that a large part of the reason for AI's use of non right-wing sources is because, in the UK at least, their 'journalism' rarely has a sound factual basis, instead being based upon bigotry, bias and deliberate misinterpretation of actual facts.  No wonder AI algorithms filter them out.  Obviously, though, the underlying problem with the story is its rank hypocrisy - a newspaper with and an increasingly extremer right-wing bias, (a lot of its output these days reads like agitprop for the likes of Farage), complaining that another source of news has a different bias.  Bearing in mind that the UK's print media is overwhelmingly owned by wealthy right-wingers, who use it to try and indoctrinate readers to their selfish agendas in order to try and influence elections, surely having a rival source of information which leans the other way can only be health?  Surely it would create balance in the news sphere?  But alternative viewpoints are simply not allowed in the world of the crackpot right.  Such things are dangerous.  They might encourage people to think for themselves - and we can't have that, can we?

Two Lost Worlds (1951)

An independently produced low-budget adventure film whose action sequences consist of footage from other films, Two Lost Worlds (1951) is a head-scratching experience for the viewer.  If you were to believe the poster and the above trailer, you might well be left thinking that this was going to be a full-blown 'lost world' picture, with the characters encountering all manner of prehistoric life after being shipwrecked on a remote island.  In reality, this part of the story is crammed into the last reel of a film which runs barely over sixty minutes and feels decidedly tacked on to what is otherwise a sea-going adventure story involving clipper ships and pirates.  In between these in sandwiched a romance.  The dinosaur sequences, (followed by the inevitable volcanic eruption that ensures all trace of the lost world is eradicated) feel jarring, as if they were an afterthought to try to both pad out the running-time and provide more box-office draw.

As noted, the main action sequences are all stock footage taken from other movies, with the pirate sequences coming mainly from 1940's Captain Caution, some of the 'Australian' sequences (the whole film was shot in California) use footage from Captain Fury, while the dinosaur fight and the volcanic eruption are the same ubiquitous footage from One Million BC (1940) that found its way into countless low-budget movies of the era.  Thanks to its meandering plot, the film never really builds up any pace, nor does it feel especially cohesive as a story, with each episode so brief as to feel perfunctory.  For contemporary audiences, the most recognisable actor is leading man James Arness (or Jim Arness as he's billed), who would appear in the somewhat more substantive science fiction classic The Thing From Another World that same year.  Director Norman Dawn had a career that stretched back to the silent era and had been something of a pioneer in developing the use of travelling mattes and was the first director to have used back projection - which is probably why the over-familiar battling dinosaurs footage is better integrated with actors from the film it is inserted into than usual.

Artificial Hate

Bloody AI.  It's taking over everything.  Even right-wing extremism, it seems.  I was reading today about this racist, extreme-right meme 'sweeping' the internet, which involves an AI generated Goth girl extolling the virtues of good old 'British Values' - enslaving black people, suppressing workers' rights and telling Johnny Foreigner where to get off, for instance - and having racist encounters with bearded AI Muslim stereotypes.  Should the likes of Nigel Farage and 'Tommy Robinson' feel threatened?  Is AI the future of right-wing extremism?   I mean, why listen to the demented rantings of a failed commodities broker or a convicted mortgage fraudster and football thug, when you can instead have as your figurehead an AI generated fascist who carries no past baggage of criminal convictions or dodgy City dealings?  For one thing, they can be far more physically attractive than either frog faced Farage or short arse Robinson, (it's apparently a rule that British fascists have to not only be stupid, but also ugly as sin).  Plus, if they do start spouting awful racist insults at minorities, they have the automatic defence that they aren't real, so can't really be racist, can they?  It's all just a glitch in the algorithm rather than evidence of deep seated irrational bigotry and hatred.  Arguably, they would also be more efficient than any flesh and blood neo Nazi leader: able to do their own fact checks before they speak, able to properly research their bigotry and able to phrase it subtly enough that it doesn't ostensibly sound racist, let alone be legally actionable.

This hypothetical new AI leader of the British extreme right could also star in their own propaganda videos which look far better and classier than anything Reform UK could produce.  They could be seen participating in the crusades, for instance, single handedly fighting off hordes of Saracens, before the scene morphs into one of them single handedly turning back hundreds of immigrants (who look just like those marauding Saracens) landing on a British beach in an Armada of rubber boats.  Or maybe they could be shown flying their Spitfire in defence of Britain, but not against the Luftwaffe, but instead against planes with crescents on their wings and tails, all flown by swarthy looking bearded devils, cackling evilly as they drop bombs on innocent British citizens.  I really think that Farage, Robinson and their ilk could find themselves under threat from AI.  How long can it be before some whacked out crypto-fascist tech billionaire decides to bypass buffoons like those two and instead create the sort of AI extreme right leader I've described and set them up as the figurehead of a new British extreme right, backed by their billions?  Quite frankly, the only hope for Farage et al lies in them creating their own AI avatars to represent them - an idealised digital Farage who isn't as utterly repugnant as the real one and who can put their arguments over slickly and plausibly, rather than coming over as a grubby money grabbing shill.  The AI revolution is coming and these guys need to get aboard or be swept aside by a new generation of digital fascists!  

Manifesting the End of Civilisation?

If you were to take everything in the UK's right-wing media at face value, then you'd think that we were living in some kind of third world Hell hole, with a collapsing economy, crumbling infrastructure, and drug-ravaged cities overrun by violent, mostly foreign, criminals.  Either that, or you'd think that we were living in some kind of police state, with your right to hurl racist insults in the name of free speech, being severely curtailed by a dictatorial government led by the reincarnation of Josef Stalin.  Yet, step outside of your front door and it all looks very different.  In fact, it all looks much the same as it has for the past few decades.  People aren't being murdered in their beds on an hourly basis, women aren't being raped in broad daylight in shopping centres by foreign infidels and people aren't offering you drugs on every street corner.  Hospitals, courts, schools etc still function, buses and trains still run (albeit usually late, but what's new?) and the bins are still collected (except maybe in Birmingham, where the council is apparently still in dispute with its own refuse collectors).  Certainly, prices are up, (but inflation is historically something of a national institution in the UK), much of the public sector is badly underfunded, but still functions, crimes still occur and the police are as ineffective as ever, but none of this is indicative of the sort of end-of-civilisation scenario painted by the press.  Most of it is the result of government policies - primarily the economic mismanagement of fourteen years of Tory governments and the disaster of Brexit, which has undermined the UK's economy.  Of course, if there was still a Tory government in office, all of these things could be happening, but the right-wing media wouldn't be framing it the same way.  

No, it would all be the fault of the victims, be they the unemployed, the poor, immigrants, single mothers, the disabled, or whoever, not the government.  But as we have a Labour government in office, it is instead all evidence of an impending apocalypse brought about by the government's determination to punish the Daily Mail reading middle classes by flooding the country with murderous immigrants, cutting public services and turning the police into the Gestapo, unreasonably expecting them to enforce the law, particularly traffic law and public order laws, regardless of whether you are middle class or not!  Such laws are only for the horrible working classes!  So day in, day out, they print their hysterical headlines about how 'Asylum seekers ate my Granny' or 'My daughter was raped by a coke crazed one-legged transsexual benefits claimant wearing a turban', seemingly in the hope that if they keep imposing their false vision of the state of the UK on the public then maybe they can actually force its physical manifestation.  At the very least, the hope to be able to create a false perception in the minds of the public.  What can we do to counter this propaganda war aimed at creating sort of new reality which will have people running into the arms of Nigel Farage for protection, (although why anyone would think that some drunken old racist could protect them from armies of homicidal foreign brigands is beyond me)?  Obviously, it's pointless trying to create an alternative, competing, vision, with most of the media in the hands of wealthy right-wing bastards.  

What the government should do, I think, is to employ some of those Tibetan monks.  You know, the Buddhist ones who, through intense mental training can, through meditation, manifest Tulpas, unreal beings who have the appearance and substance of real humans.  Because, surely, if they can individually do that, then surelt, en masse, they could manifest a whole new reality.  Just to make out sure, they could get them to train groups of Labour staffers in the meditation technique, so that they can reinforce the projection of this new reality.  The fact is that they wouldn't have to create this reality in all of its detail, just create a thought form version of it so powerful, that it can supplant the Daily Hate inspred version from the public's minds.  It wouldn't even have to be some kind of projection of a false paradise, just a powerful projection of how things really are.  OK, I know it all sounds utterly fantastical, but Hell, we're living in an age where Donald Trump is US President, imposing fascism on his country and trying to buy or steal Greenland, so, to be frank, anything must be possible!

Cognitive Dissonance

Get those ear goggles back on and tune into another selection of unlikely news stories culled from the archives of The Sleaze.

This time around, the American Mid-West reels as Trump breaks wind in Milwaukee - according to early reports, the casualties could be high.  Back on the West Coast, Trump's tariffs come home to roost as Japan sends its Kaiju to destroy Los Angeles - can giant clones of Trump, Vance and Hegseth see them off?  Action Business News is on the scene.

We also explore toxic masculinity, from insecure influencers to stealth phones that can undress women.

Plus, has Dr Who gone too gay?  Our correspondents discuss the true sexual imagery of the long-running BBC science fiction series, while we also hear a strange reminiscence about a lost Dr Who story the BBC feared could have caused a major schism with the Vatican.

Not to forget Peter Lorre's amazing erectile dysfunction cure.

Listen here:  Cognitive Dissonance. 

So, get those ear goggles on, sit back and let that wholesome sleaze wash over you!

Written and produced by Doc Sleaze.

 

The Dark (1993)

The Dark has proven to be a popular title for horror films, with the 1979 film of that title possibly the best known.  This, however, is the 1993 movie of the same name - not a remake, but a completely different film.  1993's The Dark is a low budget monster movie that makes the most of its limited resources to create a surprisingly effective, not to mention quite amiable, viewing experience.  Most of the action takes place around a graveyard at night, where something is lurking beneath the surface but which, itself, is being hunted by various parties.  These central graveyard sequences form the backbone of the plot and are filmed in a manner reminiscent of older B horror movies like Macabre or I Bury the Living, both of which featured similar settings, with tombstones poking out of the earth like rotting teeth and pervaded by an unnerving stillness and silence.  With its burrowing menace pulling down headstones and leaving gaping holes in the fabric of the graveyard, much of the film's action ultimately devolves into chases through the tunnels it leaves.  Again, these are very well handled, with the film summoning up a dank, claustrophobic atmosphere for these scenes.  

The film builds up to this climactic monster hunt in an agreeably elliptical manner, with the opening throwing the viewer into the middle of some graveyard action, with the main character, scientist Gary 'Hunter' Henderson, finding himself inadvertently caught up in two FBI agents' encounter with a monstrous 'something', while paying a nocturnal visit to his wife's grave.  We then move to an encounter at a police station between the surviving agent and Henderson - who reveals that his gunshot wound has already healed - which culminates in the agent violently warning Henderson off from investigating the unspecified threat.  After which, we flash forward two years for Henderson's encounter with some bikers in a cafe, making his escape on a motorcycle with a plucky waitress, while also being introduced to the two groundskeepers at that cemetery, who find themselves forced to dig a grave the old-fashioned way due to an equipment failure.  Inevitably, the encounter the monster's tunnels, call in a couple of deputies, before Henderson, the waitress and the now ex-FBI agent all turn up in search of that creature.  

All of which leaves the viewer feeling that they've walked into the middle of a movie, somehow having missed the exposition scenes which might explain it all.  (Which is no bad thing - films which lay everything out in detail too early can be terribly predictable and dull).  This confusion, however, is somewhat ameliorated by a scene in a motel bedroom between Henderson and the waitress, where she looks at his notes and gleans that the creature is a prehistoric survival, a kind of giant rat, which secretes a substance with incredible healing properties, (which is how Henderson recovers from his wounds so quickly).  Henderson is after it for scientific study and the ex-FBI man for revenge for his slain partner (and the possibility of making some money from the dead beast).  It's the barest of outlines for what's going on, but it's more than sufficient and credits the viewer with enough imagination and intelligence to fill in the blanks for themselves.

The film's limitations, in terms of resources, are most apparent in its monster, which is somewhat rubbery looking.  That said, I've seen a lot worse in much bigger budgeted films - The Dark's creature is at least not too obviously a man in a suit, featuring some relatively (bearing in mind the budget) sophisticated animatronic effects for close ups of the head.  By keeping it underground and poorly lit, the film succeeds in making the creature surprisingly effective.  Moreover, for once it isn't a creature driven by some kind of bloodlust - it actually eats the dead, (hence its predilection for graveyards and ensuring plenty of scenes involving musty crypts, rotting coffins and decaying corpses), killing only when it feels threatened.  While the film is both atmospheric and suspenseful, what really lifts it above the average in terms of B-monster movies are a decent script which provides its characters with some witty and amusing dialogue - not to mention a relatively original idea for its main plot mechanism in the healing abilities of the beast's secretions - and an excellent cast who pitch their performances at exactly the right level for this type of film.  Stephen McHattie is, as usual, excellent as the two-fisted, leather jacket wearing and motorcycle riding scientist, convincing both in action sequences and in the role of intellectual scientist.  Moreover, despite the obvious age difference between him and his love interest, the waitress, he never comes over as creepy or predatory.  Equally good is Brion James as the FBI agent, bringing all of customary menace, brutality and underlying madness to the role.  Despite his screen time being limited, James gives a memorable performance.  

The film also features Jamie Woolvett, who around the same time also co-starred with Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, as the younger of the two groundskeepers, whose commentary on the poor judgement of the deputy who elects to explore the tunnels just as night is falling, provides an enjoyably self-reflexive moment in the film.  His love interest is the other deputy, played by Neve Campbell in her film debut.  Campbell, along with Cynthia Belliveau as the waitress, ensures that the film features, unusually for this genre, strong female characters who don't spend the film being victims, instead proving competent and capable monster-hunters in their own right.  A Canadian production, The Dark was directed by Craig Pryce - who is still working today, mainly in TV - who moves things along at a decent pace and handles action, suspense and dialogue scenes with equal aplomb, creating an atmospheric film that never outstays its welcome.  The Dark really deserves to be far better known, having everything required to make a cult movie and is well worth tracking down.  Hell, simply the fact that it stars both Stephen McHattie and Brion James should make you want to watch it!

Not Feeding the Copyright Trolls

The shit show just goes on, doesn't it?  You know, when I first saw Trump's text to the Norwegian PM reproduced in a post on Bluesky, I genuinely thought that it was some kind of satirical parody.  But no, it was real.  We really should be terrified, actually, that the person who wrote something that sounds like the whinings of a petulant five year old, is President of the United States and has his finger on that button.  But that isn't what I wanted to write about today.  After all, since the New Year, all I've seemed to do is write about this crazy right-wing extremist shit that's engulfing our lives.  'Remember how that guy used to post about weird movies and stuff - now it's all just political shit,' I hear people say.  (Presupposing that anybody actually does read any of this).  Yeah, well, I'm afraid that, for various reasons, I haven't been indulging in the low budget exploitation stuff as much as usual of late.  For one thing, access to a number of new apps and channels via Roku has given me the opportunity to catch up with some more recent films that have passed me by, (although I now have a couple of apps giving me access to a significant number of seventies Italian exploitation films with either sub-titles or English dubs).  For another, I've been doing all sorts of grown-up things (not before time, many who know me, might say), including some long-delayed (not to mention expensive) dental work, trying to set in motion some major home improvements and sorting out my finances, (I now have investments).  But all of that isn't what I wanted to write about today.  No, I'd actually like to look again at the whole issue of copyright trolls.

A few years ago I had a brush with a band of these brigands - basically, they troll the web looking for instances of supposedly copyrighted images being used without a licence, then try to extort money from site-owners under vague threats of legal consequences.  Whether they actually do own the rights in question, or represent the real rights owners is highly questionable. (Before they moved onto images, these sorts of shady operators used to do the same regarding music used in You Tube videos - I, personally, had several instances of them trying to claim copyright on either public domain music or music that I had the rights owner's permission to use.  Curiously, in the latter instances, the rights holders had no knowledge of these companies, never having engaged them to enforce their music rights).  Often the image in question is actually in the public domain, but has been included in commercial image libraries which, of course, doesn't change its status as public domain, but that doesn't stop these trolls from trying it on.  They don't care if the site in question is run by a charity, non-profit or just a personal blog.  They'll try to extort money with menaces, regardless.  My previous encounter with one of these organisations, (a German-based one), involved them e-mailing 'The Sleaze'  (their first mistake, there is no such person or entity, it's just a site name), claiming I was using one of their client's images unlicenced and demanding money,  Their next mistake was that the link they provided was to a page on The Sleaze, but not one that used the image in question.  Anyway, I ignored the e-mail, suspecting a scam and, to be safe, deleted most of the images from the site's library and replaced them with images I knew were public domain or royalty free, just to be on the safe side.  They subsequently sent another menacing e-mail, but this time demanding a lesser amount of money.  Which just confirmed that it was a desperate scam.

I was put in mind of all this again this past weekend, when I found from my traffic logs that a visitor from another of these outfits had trawled through a large number of pages on The Sleaze.  Obviously, they were out of luck as all of the images are now royalty-free or created, by me, specifically for use on the site using AI tools.  When checking out the offending company, I came across the usual slew of disparaging reviews and sites offering to give advice on how to deal with these bozos.  Much of which is simply wrong.  The thing to remember is that, technically, their activities are legal, if unethical in their execution.  If you use copyrighted material, whether deliberately or accidentally, through ignorance of its status or the law itself, then you are liable and the legitimate rights holders could seek financial recompense.  That said, the usual first step would be to issue a desist notice asking you to remove any such material which, if you comply, would usually be an end to the matter, especially if you also offered an apology.  The reality is that, in most of these cases of the inadvertent use of copyrighted material, the costs of litigation for the licence holder would far outweigh any compensation they received.  Formal legal action and demands for recompense are usually confined to cases where the offender persists despite requests to stop, or is obviously making money from exploiting the copyrighted material or is using it to mislead, where higher payouts would be expected.  That said, such action would normally take place via the civil courts and in the jurisdiction where the offender resides and operates.  So, if you are in the UK and the entity threatening you is in, say, Germany, then it is highly unlikely that they'll be able to follow up on their threats, (particularly if they don't know your real name and address - another reason I jealously guard such information while operating online).  So, the best advice is simply to ignore any of these e-mails if you receive them.  Just delete the offending image and check any other image you are using for copyright.

But not everyone gives such advice.  Alongside this growth industry of online copyright enforces, a parallel industry of 'law firms' offering to defend you in such cases have sprung up.  Not surprisingly, they urge you not to ignore the predatory e-mails and instead contact them.  Beware such outfits, they seem to be just as shady as the copyright trolls - they'll bleed you dry just as surely as the trolls will, given the chance.  In the first instance, if you are a small site owner, particularly if it is a non-profit hobby site or personal blog, ignore the e-mails.  Remember, in the unlikely event that it does escalate, you can always say that their e-mails went into your spam folder and that you never saw them!  They can't disprove it.  If, like me, you use royalty free and custom made AI images, then I'd suggest adding a disclaimer somewhere on your site stating this.  I've done so on The Sleaze's 'About' page, where I make clear that any attempt to claim copyright on such images or demand money for their use will be regarded as extortion and dealt with through the appropriate legal channels.  As I've found that these trolls tend to look at such disclaimers, it effectively serves as a shot across their bows.  Remember, they're looking for easy pickings, if they think you might fight back, they'll likely move onto what they think are softer targets.

This has been a public service announcement on behalf of Doc Sleaze and small site owners everywhere! 

Time Travelling Crackpots

So, Charlie Kirk was some kind of time travelling Messiah, sent to our time to ensure that the 'right' timeline came to pass. but he was 'monitored' constantly by 'agents' of dark forces.  No, that's not an outline for another satirical piece for The Sleaze, nor the plot of a forthcoming Christian graphic novel (soon to be a major film), but the is actually the latest whack-a-doodle Kirk-conspiracy theory put out there by right-wing agitator and Trump cheerleader Candace Owens.  Apparently, this particular piece of insanity has been a bridge too far for many of the extreme right loons who follow her - they could, it seems, buy all her schtick about Kirk's widow conspiring against him, so that she could take over his neo-Nazi 'Christian' Hitler Youth style movement, but him being from the future was just too mind-blowing even for them.  Which is saying something, bearing in mind that these are basically the self same nutters who bought into all that QAnon crap and seemed to believe that pizza parlours were fronts for high level peadophiles (and Satanic child sacrifices), or that furniture catalogue listings for office equipment were actually code for child trafficking.  (That's right, you ordered a filing cabinet and instead received a pre-pubescent girl sex slave - which could be quite a shock if all you wanted was somewhere to store your paperwork).  

I suppose that we should be thankful that at least some of these fruitcakes are finally beginning to recognise that the people they have been listening to and allowing to shape their opinions are actually crackpots - those that aren't morally bankrupt, grifters or just plain evil, that is.  Unfortunately, there still seem to be a lot of Americans out there still willing to support a president who, if I'm to be charitable, is certifiably insane, or if I'm not, a senile old fool.  But hey, should we expect anything less from a people who elected a rapist as president (for the second time)?  And no, the rapist comment isn't gratuitous, it illuminates his foreign policy - is it any wonder that a man who doesn't understand the concept of 'No means no' with regard to women, doesn't understand it with regard to the territory of sovereign nations?  ('I just need to grab Greenland by the pussy').  But getting back to the original point, I do find it extremely concerning that so many people seem to be willing to believe this sort of crackpottery and to use these charlatans as their primary source of information rather than more reputable news sources.  In the UK, a lot of it, I'm convinced, is down to poor education, with the Tories spending the better part of fourteen years ensuring that the education sector does anything but teach students critical thinking skills.  In the US, a lot of it, I suspect, is parochialism, with many, many people having no apparent interest in anything going on outside of their state borders, let alone their national borders.  Consequently, they have little idea of the bigger international picture and the fact that, in today's world, isolationism really isn't an option. 

 But many of them, (including well-educated yanks of my acquaintance), never seem to read a newspaper or watch a TV news broadcast, preferring instead to get their information from online sources of dubious provenance.  Their defence is that you just can't trust that mainstream media which has its own agenda and biases, etc.  Which is true, to some extent, but easily countered by gleaning your daily news intake from a variety of news sources with differing perspectives and political affiliations.  I've found that the internet makes this very easy to do - I generally look over news aggregators like the MSN homepage when I open my browser and subsequently get a pretty good and balanced overview of what's going on in the world.  But apparently, those crackpot sites and pure propaganda outlets they seem to favour are easier to read.  Probably because they don't ask you to think about what they are saying, offering no nuance or dissenting opinions and presenting as fact what are actually either speculation or the rantings of some highly dubious crank.  Who wants the boring truth when you can get fantastic lies, like Charlie Kirk being a time traveller?

Cranking Up the Hate

I've speculated here before on the levels of outrage and hate that the right-wing media seem to be trying to drive their readers toward with their rabid headlines.  The question is, how can those of us who still live in the rational world turn this to our advantage?  After all, such headlines must surely be pushing the blood pressures of the average Daily Mail-reading proto-fascist to potentially fatal levels.  I mean, bearing in mind that so many of them are elderly or grossly overweight and subsisting on a diet of pure fat, it can surely only be a matter of time before they start suffering massive coronaries as they read the latest made-up story about illegal immigrants raping white women or eating swans without the King's permission.  Just how much outrage can their cholesterol congested circulatory systems take before the inevitable happens?  I could even envisage a scenario where some of these arseholes become so enraged that their faces go puce-coloured, the veins on their necks and heads bulge and their eyes start popping out, before their whole head explodes, spattering their living room with their diseased brain matter.  So, rather than condemning the right-wing media for their constant stream of poisonous bile, perhaps we should be encouraging them to go further, to print ever more outrageous lies about immigrants, Muslims, gays, lesbians, trans people, single mother, benefits claimants, non-whites and anyone who votes Labour.  Maybe that's it - we need them to stoke up their vile readership's hate levels to maximum, in order to ensure that that their hearts and heads start exploding, thereby significantly whittling down the number of potential Reform UK voters.

But maybe we can go further.  Maybe we on the non-foaming-at-the-mouth-neo-Nazi-collective could start our own faux extreme right-wing media, peddling the most offensive and outrageous lies about all of the usual hate targets in order to try and push those blood pressures up to breaking point.  While the kind of stuff that the current right-wing media puts out might be hateful, it is usually, to some extent, constrained by some sorts of boundaries of decency and lip service to the notion of 'journalistic integrity', such false media as I'm proposing could go the whole hog.  There'd be, I'm sure, a guaranteed readership - all those right-wingers who want to go beyond the mundane hate purveyed by the likes of the Mail, the Express, the Telegraph and GB News.  The ones who want the 'hard stuff', who crave to read about how Britain is wrecked due to rampant immigration and unbridled socialism, who want to hear how every crime is committed by black people, Muslims or, failing that, working class benefits claimants, the one who need their ignorant bigotry and biases confirmed on an hourly basis.  These are the sort of people who will lap up headlines like 'Immigrants ate my twelve year old daughter's pussy', (it was apparently  black and white and the bastards skinned it before frying it and serving it up for dinner).  Because that's the sort of direction we have to go in if we're to get their hardened arteries over the line into the heart attack danger zone, as, like drug addicts, they need their hits of hate ever stronger to fuel that outraged reaction.  Before long, we'll have the bastards dropping like flies, depriving the likes of Fartage and 'Tommy Robinson' of their potential base of supporters.  Hate, hate, hate!  It's what sells newspapers!

Confessions of a Lady Cop (1976)

An Italian sex comedy that wants its cake and eat it too.  On the one hand, Confessions of a Lady Cop (1976) is clearly designed to exploit the physical assets of the lovely Edwige Fenech, who stars in the title role.  There are numerous entirely gratuitous shots of her putting on or taking off her clothes and her ass is frequently grabbed by various sweaty Italian perverts.  Even when she keeps her clothes on, the script contrives to have her bending over for those ass and cleavage shots at regular intervals.  Yet, on the other hand, it seems to want to be seen as some kind of proto-feminist statement, with Fenech's character constantly rebelling against the stereotypical view male colleagues and superiors have of women police officers - assigning them to menial duties, missing persons cases and looking after abandoned children.  Even when she takes on an undercover assignment, it involves her posing as a hooker in order to locate a missing mother who had been working as a prostitute.  Moreover, despite being portrayed as often naive, headstrong and clumsy, she is also allowed a sequence when she is allowed to demonstrate her physical combat skills, single-handedly fighting off a gang of would be sweaty Italian rapists.

To be absolutely fair, Fenech's male colleagues are also portrayed in less than flattering terms, being, in the main, bumbling incompetents.  Her fiancé, also a police officer, in particular, is portrayed as a stereotypical male chauvinist pig, believing that her desire to be a police officer is merely a passing whim and that once she experiences the tough reality of the job, she'll happily settle for reverting to a more stereotypical female role as an obedient wife.  But while Confessions of a Lady Cop does, to its credit, at least try to show that a woman officer can, in fact, be a competent crime solver, it undermines all of this with its constant sexual objectification of the main character and relentless emphasis upon her breasts and backside.  Still, whilst hardly groundbreaking, the film proved to be extremely popular upon its release, spawning two sequels - both starring Fenech.  Its level is mostly that of a British seventies sex comedy, with the same sort of broad humour and performances one would expect from that genre.  It also boasts an animated title sequence, very much in the style of a contemporary kid's cartoon, which culminates with the animated Fenech getting her knockers out.  Which makes you wonder if Italian children's TV of the seventies served up a diet of such cartoons.  Is it any wonder Italian boys all grew up to be sweaty arse grabbers, (as portrayed in the film)? 

Headline Hate

So, Trump thinks that, regardless of what his country's constitution might say, the only constraint upon his power and authority, at home or abroad, is his own morality.  In which case, I guess, we're all fucked.  But, before we all sink completely into despair over the idea of the moral vacuum currently occupying the White House thinking that he has the right to use US military, economic and political power to do whatever the fuck he likes, wherever and whenever he likes, for us in the UK, there has been some good news.  Not that you are likely to hear about from our right-wing press, of course.  In which case, if you missed it, London's murder rate is at an all-time low.  Not only that, but net immigration to the UK has fallen by two thirds to a post-pandemic record low!  But that can't be right, I hear you say, the Daily Hate and Nigel Farage assure me that the UK, especially London, is a crime ridden Hell hole overrun by dangerous foreign murderers and rapists personally invited into the UK by Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan.  So that must be the truth as the Daily Hate and Farage would never lie, would they?  Yet these are the facts, backed up with data: crime and immigration are down.  But as we've established here, time and again, most of the UK's press simply isn't interested in facts.  Well, not if they contradict their agendas, that is.  They'll only report them if they can somehow distort and misinterpret them in order to bolster which ever prejudices they are peddling this week.

Which is why, of course, the majority of voters mistakenly believe that immigration is rising, not declining.  But the right's grip on much of the UK's media is only half of the problem.  The other half is that the government is so poor at getting its message generally and the facts in particular, out to the electorate.  Sure, I know that they are facing a hostile media, but they really should be utilising other channels, be that social media, online media or whatever, to bypass the traditional media which is clearly not going to do them any favours.  Yet they persist in trying to curry favour with the right wing press, whether it is with immigration 'crackdowns', benefits 'crackdowns' or watering down much needed labour law reforms, regardless of the fact that it doesn't matter how right-wing they try to be, the right wing press will still hate them and simply use it all as 'proof' of their hypocrisy and untrustworthiness.  Why do they have such difficulty in grasping this simple fact?  Traditional media is never going to give a Labour government credit for anything.  They would be better off simply doing what they believe is right according to the party's founding principles.  At least have the press pour hate on them for being principled.  Plus, there's always the chance that if people's lives are improved by such measures, then their first-hand experience of reality might just override the propaganda being pumped into their brains by a hostile media.

The Naked Future

Move over Nostradamus, it seems that, once more, my ramblings here have correctly predicted the future.  Many, many years ago, I wrote a post here about a non-existent computer app which could be used to 'nudify' pictures of fully clothed women.  Back then, in those far off days before AI, I envisaged it as being a feature of an image editing suite, like Adobe and like that type of software, I imagined that it would offer you a series of choices as to what you wanted your chosen subject to look like: breast size, nipple type and so on.  Although such a thing didn't exist, I speculated that, even as I was writing that post, some nerdy coder was sweating away in his bedroom devising such a piece of of software, probably with the aim of 'digitally undressing' some attractive female neighbour he had been secretly photographing.  An aid to masturbatory fantasies for those with limited imaginations, I mused.  I liked this idea (as satire) so much that, late last year, I adapted it into a fake ad for a fake smart phone for a podcast I was producing.  Well, here we are, years after the original post (and only a few weeks after the audio adaptation) and I find myself reading headlines about how Musk's attempt at AI, Grok, will, on request, happily produce fake nude images of women, even children, based on photos of them fully clothed.  Actually, the reports are unclear as to whether the fakes are actually full nudes, or just in bathing costumes or underwear.  But hey, it's creepy Elon Musk we're talking about here, so I'm guessing it'll be full nudes.  

Which is why we shouldn't be surprised that it is Grok which is the AI involved here.  Musk is one of those individuals whose ego is so large that he contrives to make every enterprise he is involved in reflect his own personality.  So it is with his AI, which frequently spews forth disinformation, abuse and downright bile which reflects the same prejudices displayed by Musk himself in his public utterances.  Moreover, if the sort of discourse that dominates Twitter since his takeover is anything to go by, I think it might be fair to assume a degree of misogyny on Musk's part.  So it is no wonder that his AI is now turning out pornographic images of unconsenting women.  For once, the UK government have actually decided to take a stand on this issue, threatening to sanction, or even ban from the UK, Twitter unless action is taken over Grok's unacceptable outputs.  Which, of course, in the eyes of Musk and his crazy murdering right-wing buddies in the US government, makes us the bad guys!  Yes, indeed, we're threatening every pervert's inalienable right to sexually objectify women (and even children)!  Damn it, there's probably an amendment to their constitution covering it!  The breathtaking arrogance of these bozos never ceases to amaze me - their apparent belief that any law other than US law is inferior, that other nations don't have the right to expect US corporations operating in their territories to conform to their laws.  Talk about cultural hegemony, (see, Gramsci was a prophet, too).  

Drug King Trump?

It's all about oil, or so they say.  Trump's illegal attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president, that is.  But I think that's just a blind, a diversionary tactic.  I think that it is actually about drugs.  Let's not forget that, in the build up to this outrageous breach of international law, Trump and his cronies were justifying the sinking of fishing boats off the Venezuelan coast with the claim that they were actually smuggling drugs to the US.  According to the criminal consortium in Washington, Venezuela was a 'narco-state', funded by the export of drugs and presided over by President Maduro, who was in cahoots with a drug cartel.  But notice how all that drugs talk has gone quiet since the US started 'running' Venezuela?  They have even backed off from the claim that Maduro was collaborating with a cartel.  In fact, they are even trying to say now that the specific cartel they named, doesn't actually exist!  Instead, they are now focusing on extorting oil from Venezuela, which will be exported to the US for free, then 'sold' by Trump himself!  But what if those barrels of 'oil' were in fact stuffed with drugs and that this was the plan all along - to tap into those tons of drugs the US previously claimed that Venezuela was manufacturing and exporting?  A supply of drugs worth millions, going directly into the control of Donald Trump!  I know, I know.  It sounds fantastic, but bear with me here.

Key to this plot is US Secretary of State Marco Rubio who, as a teenager, apparently helped his late brother-in-law with his exotic pet import business, A business that was actually a front for importing narcotics into the US via Florida.  It's true.  Check it out.  Now, nobody is saying that Rubio was aware of this at the time, but it is fair to say that was being paid with the proceeds of illegal drug smuggling, wittingly or other wise.  But maybe, just maybe, this is where the genesis for this latest scheme lies, just with barrels of oil substituting for crates full of parakeets and monkeys.  But just why would the Trump administration be interested in importing vast supplies of illegal narcotics while officially condemning the drug trade and those who import them into the US?  Personally, I think that they intend releasing huge quantities of cheap gear into the poorest districts of the US, targeting immigrant populations, with the aim of killing as many of them as possible with overdoses.  They'll doubtless also target the poorest US citizens, not to get them to OD, but to get them sufficiently hooked that they'll effectively become slaves, willing to do anything for their officially supplied US narcotics.  Look, it all makes sense: they've been laying the groundwork for this scheme with their cuts to Federal funding of community health projects, like drug rehabilitation clinics.  Moreover, what do you think all those masked ICE thugs are really doing in inner city areas?  They are quite obviously gearing up to start dealing drugs to the poor and immigrants.  Believe me, this what is really happening in the US!  They've already eliminated one group of rival drug importers by sinking those Venezuelan boats.  It also explains Trump's threats to intervene in Colombia and Mexico - to secure further large scale drug supplies in order to keep his evil scheme of subjugation through narcotics going!  Remember, you heard it here first!

(Any resemblance to the plot of the 1973 film version of Live and Let Die is purely intentional).

Seven Golden Men Strike Back (1966)

As the title implies, Seven Golden Men Strike Back (1966) is sequel to the previous year's Seven Golden Men, a comedic heist movie about a gang who specialise in gold bullion robberies and attempt to double cross each other in the aftermath of a successful job.  Seven Golden Men Strike Back reunites the cast, along with director Marco Vicario, to essentially repeat the formula.  Except that this time, rather than simply being a parody of the heist genre, it also wanders firmly into Eurospy territory, parodying that genre as well.  The 'Golden Men' themselves comprise of six guys of different European nationalities, led by Albert the Professor, the brains behind the operation who is, apparently, British, (although played by Frenchman Philippe Leroy.  All seven happily conform to national stereotypes, with Albert a stiff and stuffy Brit, Adolf a German with authoritarian (and occasionally even Nazi) attributes and so on.  (To be fair, none of the film's characters rise above the stereotypical).  Albert is assisted by the lovely Giorga, who is just as duplicitous as the rest of them when it comes to the spoils of their criminal enterprises.  This time around, they find themselves captured by US agents early on and find themselves assigned to a secret mission to kidnap the Fidel Castro-like dictator of an unnamed Latin American country.  Whilst achieving this objective, the Professor and the other 'Golden Men' also use the resources provided by the US - including a submarine - to steal a shipload of gold bullion anchored in the Latin American country's main port.

Inevitably, the double crosses start as soon as the ship is at sea, with Adolf and Alfred conspiring to steal the bullion for themselves once they reach the island where it is to be offloaded, (an island the Professor was granted sovereignty over as the price for kidnapping the general).  The general, meanwhile, has become so infatuated with Giorgia, who had seduced him as part of the kidnap plot, that he agrees to switch allegiance from the USSR to the US and is returned to his country, where he plots with Giorga to double-cross the Professor and the others for the gold.  As a further complication, the US Navy blockades the Professor's island to prevent him from shipping the gold elsewhere, thereby effectively rendering it valueless.  The Professor, however, devises a way to secretly ship it to Geneva, re-uniting the warring factions of the 'Golden Men' in order to carry it out.  With the gold in Geneva, but seized by the UN, the various factions converge on the city with a view to steal it back, then try to double cross each other once more.  As a lightweight caper film, Seven Golden Men Strike Back is reasonably entertaining, but its plot far too repetitive with its various crosses and double crosses, none of which are particularly sophisticated.  Indeed, the whole thing is quite predictable, springing little in the way of surprises, despite having some well-staged heist sequences, which it tends to throw away rather perfunctorily, rather than making proper set-pieces of them.  Moreover, despite continually being told that the Professor is some kind of criminal genius, none of schemes actually seem especially clever.  But, as with most pulp-style Italian films of the era, it does all look very good, with excellent production design and all of its bright colours, costumes and Bond-style gadgetry, including jet packs, futuristic submarine interiors, giant magnets and mini subs, gives it a distinct fumetti feel.   

Bring Me the Head of Donald Trump

Well, there you go.  Just as I was lamenting the fact that 2026, as with most New Years, felt no different to its predecessor, that fat fuckwit in the White House decides to run a bulldozer through international legal conventions, (again), by kidnapping the president of Venezuela, then declaring that the US was going to  'run' Venezuela.  Which, in practice, seems to mean that it intends forcing the country to allow US oil companies to exploit its oil.  Doubtless, the illegal exploitation (or, as I like to call it, theft) of Venezuela's resources will quickly spread to include such mineral deposits as gold.  Now, I'm not going to go into the obvious illegality of Trump's actions, let alone their lack of morality, as the entire rest of the world has already done this.  But I think a few observations might be pertinent here.  For one thing, this operation throws a new light upon the Trump administration's apparent haste to end the war in Ukraine by forcing an unjust peace treaty upon Kiev.  It could well be that they wanted to get that out of the way in order to somehow make the snatching of Maduro seem like a minor 'police action' - they'd be basking in the glory of a successful peace deal, using it to deflect attention and project themselves as 'peacemakers'.  Plus, it makes it much more difficult to condemn Russian aggression in Ukraine (although they barely do that anyway, I know), when you are invading someone else's sovereign territory and abducting their head of state.  Obviously, things didn't work out as they wanted them to do in Ukraine, so they just went ahead with violating Venezuela's sovereignty anyway.  Because this is an administration headed by someone with a low attention span and a desperate need for attention.

Perhaps, though, the most frustrating aspect of this whole business has been the lily livered way in which most other world leaders have responded.  Take Keir Starmer as an example - he refuses to actually condemn the incident until he has 'all the facts', whilst simultaneously telling us that he is a lifelong advocate of international law.  Well, Keir, if the abducting of a foreign leader, the violation of another nation's sovereignty, the threat to seize its natural resources and direct its government isn't a pretty clear violation of, at the very least, Article Two of the UN Charter, then I'm really not sure what might be,  But hey, I'm not a lawyer - but Starmer is and quite clearly knows all of this.  (Hiding behind the fact that the legitimacy of Maduro's presidency is highly questionable does nothing to justify the US' illegal actions here - Maduro is Venezuela's problem to deal with, not Trump's).  Sure, sure, I know all the arguments about diplomacy and the need not to upset Trump because of our need to maintain trade and defence ties, but surely there has to come a point at which you can no longer trade these things off against the maintenance of international law?  Surely we must be at the point where we can ask our leaders to stand up to the likes of Trump, regardless of possible repercussions, in the name of maintaining internation law and standards of decency and conduct?  Particularly bearing in mind that, in the wake of his Venezuelan atrocity, he is renewing his threats to seize Greenland from Denmark and has broadened his targets to include Colombia and Mexico.  There are threats which really should now be taken very seriously.  

But where, exactly does the world go from here?  I've said before that we need to start boycotting and isolating the US which, if not clear before, is quite obviously a lawless rogue state devoted to disrupting the world order.  Maybe we now need to go further.  Perhaps the civilised world should put a bounty on the heads of Trump and his cronies - every bounty hunter, mercenary, terrorist and crazy homicidal bastard could converge on the US, intent upon delivering the heads of Trump, Vance, Hegseth et al to the International Criminal Court.  Maybe Mexico, now that it is under direct threat, could do a reverse Magnificent Seven and recruit seven of the country's top gunfighters to go north of the border and sort Trump and his bandidos out once and for all.  (Although I suspect that they'll want more than twenty dollars apiece for the job).   The fact is that something needs to be done.  Thankfully, as I write this, the Danes and some other European leaders are finally making a stand on the Greenland issue - even Keir Starmer has chimed in on their side.  But words are one thing, to have any weight, they have to be backed up with actions.

Happy Same Old Year!

So, here we are, 2026.  I don't know about anyone else, but it has been a sluggish start to the year for me, with a lot of it, so far, spent in bed.  Mainly on account of the weather being cold and depressingly miserable, giving me little incentive to get up.  Apparently, the weather is forecast to get even worse next week, with the possibility of snow.  Oh joy!  That's the trouble with New Year's, though, they always feel exactly the same as the old one - the whole New Year thing is built up so much, as if it is some kind of earth-shattering event, that when it actually  arrives, it is inevitably a let down.  The clock ticks past midnight and POW!  Everything is exactly the same.  As ever, I'm making no resolutions with regard to 2026.  As I never tire of saying, New Year resolutions are a complete waste of time - if you want to change something, take a different direction, turn over a new leaf, or whatever, then you can do it anytime, you don't have to wait until New Year.  In fact, I'd say that if you are really serious about making changes in your life, you'd just do it, regardless of what the date might be.  Waiting until New Year to make a declaration of intent is a sure sign that you aren't actually serious about doing anything - otherwise you'd have done it already.  While I didn't make any resolutions, I did, however, toast the outgoing year with the words 'Go fuck yourself, 2025', because, by any standard, it was a pretty shitty year, from that fat senile fascist being back in the White House to my own personal travails, with Spurs winning the Europa League as virtually the only bright spot, (even though this was followed by them sacking Big Ange).

Still, the year has ended on a better note for me, (despite my spirits being dampened by various personal issues I won't go into), with the discovery of those Haitian and Ghanaian (not to mention Guyanese) TV channels via a Roku app, which stream apparently pirated movies and TV shows.  Over the seasonal season, most of them have been showing these films back-to-back, allowing me to catch up with quite a few relatively recent releases.  Best of all, most of them seem to grasp the fact that the season doesn't abruptly end with New Year, but is actually a twelve day festival, ending on, surprise, surprise, Twelfth Night.  To be fair, amongst the terrestrial channels, this year it only seems to be BBC1 which has been determined to bundle Christmas out of the door with unseemly haste and restore its regular programming.  The others have continued with some semblance of special seasonal schedules and branding until, it seems, the end of the weekend.  Perhaps all my moaning about the truncating of the Christmas period which seems to have become fashionable has paid off.  It's bad enough this myth that you have to take the decorations down by Twelfth night having become so widespread, (according to tradition, they can stay up until Candlemas, February 2, which is when Epiphany ends), without the powers that be trying to steal several days of celebration from us.  At least, so far, I haven't seen the usual moaning in the Daily Hate about bloody plebs still being on their Christmas holidays, even though it's January!  Bloody outrageous - if the workers don't get their noses back to the grindstone, how will the rich bastards who own everything be able to get off on their January ski-ing holidays?