about
“Our lives beging to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” - Martin Luther King (1929-1968) American civil rights leader.
Born during the volatile lead-up to the 2002 US invason of Iraq, Smutraker.com brought pertinent current affairs to the public’s attention, looking globally while trying to maintain a local edge.
In 2006 smutraker.com changed publishing systems. I changed the name to something less able to be mistaken for porn.
Originally State Your Position covered broader issues ranging from political analysis, philosophy, metaphysics and social/ environmental justice, to music, the arts and pop culture. The aim was to provide a context to contemporary issues and a critical understanding of local affairs.
In mid 2007 things changed again when I stopped smoking cigarettes and therefore spent less time puffing away and trawling the net for articles to republish. This was partly due to a desire to move my energies somewhat away from the doom and gloom of global politics. But it was also very much an acknowledgment that there are now many websites providing the global public with previously inaccessible information about the shenanigans of the power elite.
State Your Position did try to provide a one-stop shop for the most crucial information in an attempt to cut through the plethora of ill-written and ill-advised ranting now overwhelming the web. I do feel we are now as disempowered by the glut of information as we were by the previous lack of it. The internet allows us to download such a massive bandwidth of information that we spend more time collecting than we do engaging and responding.
Now this website may also be a depository of my own creative and productive pursuits. It is an archive of music, writing and visuals produced by me. Some parts are arranged as a continuum of a narrative - a developing story - and others are random and self-sufficient. It will be updated as new works surface.
The Pages section still contains links to primers - crucial reading and viewing produced by others. The del.icio.us page now serves as a substitute to the original purpose of this site with an ever-growing list of important web content.
“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.” — Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom.
