Move over Cleggy and Cameron, there’s a new leader living at Number 10 -- a rat!

Seen in the two news reports below, the cheeky rodent has been spotted running back and forth across the doorstep multiple times -- paying no heed to the journalists or police present, but getting on with the job of running the country.

We would like to be the first to congratulate Prime Minister Rat, and very much look forward to hearing his or her views on such important issues as food waste, as well as how the Government plan the rid Downing Street of the vermin that currently reside there.

It's a damned impertenince that you unwashed socialist chaps should put a fellow of my standing on your website!

Lord Pearson of Rannoch, a man who talks like he’s a character in Jeeves and Wooster stories, has stood down as leader of UKIP. The main reason he’s given for doing this is his own raging poshboy incompetence.

The aristocratic Pearson, a would-be even-more-crap Oswald Mosley, took over from fellow toff Nigel Farrage last year. Since then he’s made a name for himself as a blundering idiot who makes a fool of himself on telly and doesn’t even know what’s in his own manifesto. His performances displayed all the arrogance of a traditional British aristocrat furious at being challenged by upstart journalists of no good breeding stock.

The video below has been doing the rounds today after his announcement, in which his performance was dubbed “the worst campaign interview ever” by his natural friends in the right wing press, who were forced to admit one of their own was a bit of an embarrassment.

To be fair to the old fool, he fully acknowledges that he’s a throwback to an era where the ruling class stayed in power in Britain by birth alone, and didn’t have to try and make themselves look good on telly. His resignation statement makes clear that he knows he’s “not much good at party politics.”

He says he’s going to concentrate on his other interests. Predictably enough for someone as upper class as he is, one of the main ones is slaughtering animals for his own pleasure, as he’s the chair of the deerstalking committee of the Countryside Alliance.

Although we're glad to see him go, Pearson's resignation may turn out to be bad news for Muslims and deer

He’s also going to be able to devote more time to his racism, a great hobby of his. As UKIP leader, Pearson famously invited rightwing anti Muslim racist politician Geert Wilders to the UK, which may turn out to have been one of the early stages of the growing alliance between the (largely working class) street thugs of the EDL and their aristocratic would-be leadership among the racist toffs of UKIP.

But now he’s resigned he can focus on “the [non existent fantasy] threat from Islamism.” Apparently one of his interests includes “the relationship between good and evil,” so we can probably expect him to be seen leading the crusade to save Britain from an imaginary threat over the coming years.

Although it’s always good to see the post-fascists of UKIP in trouble, we shouldn’t get too excited about today’s announcement. As UKIP themselves are quick to point out, the last election did see them increase their vote, and although they remain a fringe party staffed by lunatics (hi Kris!), their potential as the seedbed of a growing extreme right mainstream movement in the UK is worrying. The continued antics of UKIP just point to the need for anti-fascists and anti-racists to widen their understanding of the threat we face from the far right, to include post-fascists and official racists, both in UKIP and the mainstream parties of government.

Pearson: resigning to spend more time fighting fantasy evil that doesn't really exist

In the world of psychic powers, few tests come bigger than predicting the fate of humanity itself.
With Paul the Psychic Octopus making headlines around the world right now for his incredible ability to correctly predict the winner in all of Germany’s World Cup games so far, SSY got in touch with Paul for what would prove to be the ultimate test of his psychic capabilities.

Writing in 1915, the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg first raised the idea that the future of our planet lay in one of two roads: either socialism, or barbarism. Decades later, another foreign exile in Germany (Rosa was actually Polish, while Paul is actually an English octopus) was faced with a similar predicament -- a question that would put all of our eight-tentacled friend’s psychic abilities to the test, as he sought to determine the very fate of the human race.

What would Paul decide? Are we to be condemned to, as Rosa put it all those years ago, “the awful proposition: the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery” or…“the victory of socialism?”

Watch with baited breathe as Paul reveals the fate of all humanity:

Oh (oh oh oh octopus), and if you’d like to see how Paul’s World Cup final predictions pan out as well, come along to  SSY’s World Cup South Africa showdown spectacular on Sunday night! Wintergill’s Bar, Great Western Road, Glasgow from 7.30 on Sunday -- watch the game and then celebrate/commiserate the result with quality tunes from South Africa! £2/4 entry otd, lots of special prizes -- not to be missed!

When two babies were bitten in their house by a fox the other day, I wondered why the media were going so absolutely baws oot crazy about it, and made a quiet wee joke to myself that foxes were going to be the Daily Mail’s new target. Lo and behold, the campaign begins! It’s taken me about three attempts to actually start writing this post, because I’m a pretty sensible person and I can’t stop pissing myself at the Daily Fail article in question; it’s genuinely one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time, and I can’t help wishing that I’d written it as a satire piece for Letfield.

For those that can’t be bothered clicking the link, the article is a kind of hideous mash up of Countryside Alliance rhetoric and the Daily Mail’s own special brand of moral crusading; it would seem that, for them, foxes are the new terrorists. According to the ‘journalist’ who wrote this, Rory Knight Bruce, there’s a concerted PR campaign to give foxes a false cuddly image, which unites animal rights activists and Roald Dahl in a fiendish conspiracy to make children think foxes are their friends. Presumably the foxes made a generous contribution to Dahl’s estate so that it would be easy for them to find vulnerable children whose faces they can rip off.

A few years back, I was walking home and I saw a red fox just outside my house. I stopped downwind of it and crouched down to watch it a wee while, because I’ve always been an obsessive fan of animals. There was another girl coming from the opposite direction, and she had a pretty different reaction. She saw the fox, froze, and then ran screaming away from it. I laughed at the time, but apparently the mail considers that a measured reaction to these clearly evil and vicious little bastards.

They interview a completely unbiased trapper who makes his living shooting foxes, and surprisingly enough he says anyone who views them as essentially benign is “living in cloud cuckoo land” and then goes on to list a number of domestic animals that have supposedly been lost to fox attacks. Did anyone really need this wanker to give them the news that foxes like to eat small furry animals that have probably been left outside? He also totally overstates the incidence of foxes attacking dogs and cats. Foxes tend to be not much bigger than your average cat, and much smaller than the dogs most people have. Also, a lot of small dogs such as terriers have been bred for killing ‘vermin’ and would easily beat a fox in a fight. It would seem though that it’s the eating of a koi carp that cost £1500 that really offends Trapper Wank. Those damn foxes have no respect for private property! What are they, animals?! No doubt they raised the money to bribe Roald Dahl and the pro-fox sophists by selling the expensive koi meat down Brick Lane.

The mail then goes on to give us the shocking news that foxes mark their territory by pissing and shitting! You know, unlike nearly every other animal to walk the planet. What dirty wee bastards! See if you’re THAT bothered about foxes coming in your garden for a shit and your chickens are actually being taken by them, then there are a couple of things you can do.  You need to get a handy male friend and ask him to piss all over your garden instead. Oh, and dig your fucking coop fence in, you stupid noob.

A fox lets out a groan of satisfaction after taking a huge dump on the Daily Mail editor's head.

Of course, it’s not just that fox shit is clearly disgusting, oh no, we have to remember that these dangerous animals can give us diseases as well! The Daily Mail informs us that fox shit can carry Toxascaris, a variety of parasitic roundworm. We’re also given the scary statistic that there are around one hundred new cases of Toxascaris a year in humans! If you know anything about statistics, medicine or not being a chump, then you should be pissing yourself right now, because one hundred cases a year is nothing. It’s the same as the number of cases of the very rare Q Fever, an infection that usually turns up in people who work closely with animals. Of course, the mail doesn’t tell you that, and they also don’t tell you that domestic dogs and cats also carry Toxascaris.

Hillariously, the mail also mentions a few foxes who, in the course of their natural chewing behaviour, developed a taste for brake fluid and started biting through the cables on cars, and it’s almost like the writer thinks there was some kind of malicious intent behind it. However, this shouldn’t really surprise us given that he spends a couple of paragraphs whining about how nasty foxes have been to him and his family. One vixen, who he tried to rescue from a collapsed earth, had the temerity to bite him! Why, who could imagine a frightened and cornered wild animal biting a person who touched them? Any animal worker will tell you that being bitten is part of the job when you get close to wildlife.

He also tells us that he believes two of his family terriers were killed by foxes. One through mange (because dogs never, ever get mange without the help of a fox) and one due to a “characteristically vicious assault”, which suggests to me that he didn’t actually see the fox killing his dog. Quite apart from that, if his dog was killed by a fox, it’s very likely that the terrier (as I’ve already said, they have hunting and killing in their genes) started the fight.

And then there’s the big issue. Rory cites two instances of foxes attacking children to boost his campaign against their brushy reign of terror. What he doesn’t tell you is that these two cases are pretty much the only two in a fucking age. The BBC felt the need to do a measured evaluation of how often foxes attack people, and I can save you the bother of going to look it up. The answer is (drumroll) almost never, you foaming at the mouth mail reading chumps.

From all this easily debunked nonsense, Rory reaches “the inescapable conclusion that the urban fox is a pest that needs to be controlled.” Well I’ll tell you what, following his logic (disease, bite rates etc.) then clearly we need to shoot all the domestic dogs and cats in the UK, and probably all the small furry pets too, because they bite people a hell of a lot more than foxes do. SSY demands that we start to eliminate this dangerous menace NOW, and we further posit that any objections to this plan are just lily livered liberal nonsense that does not recognise the fact that humans are clearly superior to other animals, and have a right to destroy any part of the natural world that inconveniences them in any way.

The face of evil.

Real ants, real placards and no post-production or visual effects -- these ants are protesting against Baygon, who produce a shitload of products deadly to ants and their beastie brethren.

Clegg: [klɛg, glɛg, glɛd]n. The gadfly, horsefly. Also known as Nick.
Definition: A blood-sucking beastie that leaves an extremely painful bite. Considered as pests for the bites that many inflict, they are among the world’s largest true flies. Found largely in the Highlands, northern and rural Scotland. Though they emerge only during warm weather and are extremely loud during flight, Cleggs are only heard or noticed during elections, 6 weeks after which most Cleggs wither and die.

Their bite can spread anthrax to former Tory voters; they are also known to spread worms. Cleggs can even penetrate light sweaters worn by woolly liberals, such is their ferocious bite.

The pain of a Clegg bite may mean that the victim is more concerned with assessing and repairing the wound, rather than finding and swatting the Clegg as standard practice with most pests.

Cleggs can only be repelled with the strongest pest repellent, or a good dose of Socialist education.

For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse-fly

Following on from Leftfield’s exclusive coverage of Kellanos the riot dog’s role in leading the anti-capitalist movement on the streets of Greece, here’s a group of politicised dogs from Chattanooga, USA, who are more than prepared to take militant direct action against the presence of police in their communities.

But it’s not just the Greek people that are militant. Oh no, Greece also has some of the most militant, revolutionary canines in Europe! Writes a Greek anarchist of their four-legged friends: “They always hated police and authority, lived in Exarchia and the university and came with us in every demo. Some are still with us, some have died, always dreaming of a free world.”
One dog in particular, who we believe to go by the name of Kellanos, has become a minor celebrity round Athens, as a regular participant in every demonstration there over the past few years, never shying away from the front line of battle. Think I’m joking? Take a look at these…

24 February 2010

PAWS-ING FOR THOUGHT: 4 March 2009

9 May 2009

12 December 2008

24 February 2010

Leftfield salutes the efforts of Comrade Kellanos and the street dogs of Athens in their valiant struggle to bring about a fairer world for all creatures, two-legged and four-legged alike, and thinks the dogs of Scotland could learn much from their waggy-tailed comrades of Greece. Canines of the world unite! You have nothing to lose except your collars and leads!

Warning: This post contains some upsetting stuff about dead ducks.

The above video is one of several shot by William Todd Powell, a senior biologist working for the Province of Alberta in Canada. It shows a duck struggling to escape from a tailings pond, where oil company Syncrude dumped the toxic leftovers of its operation to extract oil from the Alberta tar sands.

Over 1,500 migrating ducks landed on the pond, covering themselves with the deadly residue. The vast majority of them died. Now Syncrude is facing a trial for its failure to protect the ducks, and the company could face up to $800, 000 in fines, and executives ultimately could get 6 months in prison.

Syncrude admit that they had failed to properly install noise-making equipment to scare the ducks away from landing on the toxic pond as they were migrating.

The disaster could have been covered up were it not for the courageous efforts of tipsters like Powell. Although legally obliged to do so, Syncrude had failed to inform authorities of what had happened. But when Powell and other wildlife officials got on the scene, their shocking images and video stormed around the internet, and forced action.

Footage of a Greenpeace action against the tar sands.

The whole affair has brought into sharp focus the environmental battle to stop exploitation of the tar sands. As the possibility of peak oil begins to bite, the fossil fuel industry is desperately looking for new areas to exploit to keep their profits flowing. The tar sands in Canada offer the prospect of huge new reserves, but they are very difficult to extract. This means huge amounts of energy are used in the process, causing massive carbon emissions. It also means enormous destruction of the natural environment, including much land that is home to Canada’s embattled indigenous people as well as pristine boreal forest. The fight to stop further exploitation of the oil sands is one of the most important battles against climate change and ecological destruction in North America, if not the world. Exploitation of the tar sands alone is enough to make Canada fail to meet its obligations under the Kyoto agreement on global warming.

Lawyers for Syncrude have entered a plea of not guilty to the trial, claiming there was nothing they could have done to prevent the disaster. Shamefully, they have attacked William Todd Powell, and, supported by the corporate media in Canada, accused him of “showboating”. Syncrude argues that Powell should have “shot the ducks with a gun not a camera” as that would have been more humane. Leaving aside the complete heartless hypocrisy of the statement, this ignores the fact that actually Alberta wildlife authorities did shoot the ducks that were in range to put them out of their misery. However, the pond is so vast and the number of ducks so huge, it was only possible for them to reach a fraction of them.

Ed Stelmach: Twat in a hat

The Conservative Premier of Alberta, Ed Stelmach, is unfortunately in the pocket of Syncrude and the other oil companies. His government has given approval to a massive expansion of tar sands operations, as well as spending millions on trying to improve the image of the dirty oil project. Responding to the disaster, he bizarrely chose to call the horrific duck deaths an “opportunity” to show the world Alberta “means business” when it comes to environmental protection. Quite how footage of dead and dying ducks does this is unclear.

In an even more ridiculous gaffe, Stelmach also told reporters recently he had not seen the notorious duck images, even though they had been headline news on TV and in the papers in Alberta. His comments outraged many, as they felt they showed a total lack of concern for his own responsibility in the disaster. In response, opposition politicians gave him photos in the legislature, and Greenpeace delivered blown-up and gift wrapped photos in person.

“Not even looking at the front page of papers in this province? That’s something that is not responsible for a premier to do. They are taking Syncrude to court, but are they actually examining their own actions?” said Mike Hudema of Greenpeace.

Greenpeace activists deliver gift-wrapped photos of the dying ducks to Ed Stelmach

Stelmach and his spokespeople have offered various different stories to try and get out of looking stupid over his claims. Stelmach now claims he thought reporters were asking if he’d seen the photos before they were introduced in court, which they clearly weren’t. His team have also claimed that they give him news clippings each morning with the pictures cut out. “He doesn’t have the luxury of opening a paper in the morning,” said his communications director, Cam Hantiuk. “He missed the visuals.”

The fact is that the disastrous tar sands development is being driven by the corporate greed of Syncrude and others, and whatever the results of the trial they will continue to have huge control over the political process in Canada as elsewhere. The heroic work of William Todd Powell in exposing them shows the world a model of a responsible public servant. Unfortunately, Canadian governments see work like his as less of a priority than defending dirty developments, as wildlife services across the country face budget cutbacks and lay-offs.

The horrific duck deaths just underline the need for grassroots activism that works on the ground to undermine the power of the oil lobby and their paid-for politicians.