Peace is more than the Absence of War - Songs from 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2018

First off this 7 minute video by Joe Glenton on the realities of war is essential viewing. I'd go as far as saying watch this video, then there's no need to read my polemic or listen to my songs about war.

~

I still cannot get my head and heart around the idea that USUK and other NATO armies have Christian chaplains and other religious pastoral officers embedded in their ranks. For me critical thinking is grounded in empathy. But that is one dynamic my empathy cannot reach. A spirituality that blesses organised violence makes no sense to me. Other than it presents the psychology of dominator cults as rather cruel, callous and manipulative. The concept of God as an absolute hierarch is a mirror image, a projection of the bully culture. 

So  yeah, I can understand that and I can also really feel for everyone affected and afflicted by the horrific Twin Towers violent mass murder terror horror.  I really do. Utter horror, an atrocity beyond belief. Deliberate cruelty.

I was never one to say "America got blowback, got a bit of what it dished out, fair enough!" That's just the most venal, unthinking, heartless and debased way of framing that event. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. 

I know a little about trauma, and how it afflicts one after the events, how it can linger and contaminate one's life ever after. For some the impact is worse than for others, because we are all different. Comparisons are less than useful unless they are attended to with great empathy.

I can kind of imagine the pain, terror, grief, hatred, confusion, despair, loss, of anyone in the many situations that  morning, in offices, stairwells, clambering for safety, having to walk over dead bodies, fleeing for safety without really knowing what was going on...  by thinking of all the times I felt terror, trauma, fear of death, horror, disgust and grief and multiply all that, and make it head spinningly fast, turn my world upside down so I don't know what hit me until it's well over and the dust has settled feeling, the first quietness, that stillness when the grief really strikes.

I can kind of  imagine being on the streets seeing this happening, not knowing, making decisions to flee, or be rooted to the spot, to experience terror and horror and fear and outrage as a witness a mile away, two miles way, 100, 10,000 miles way, as it was then broadcast as a happening event.

Luck, accident of birth

 

I realise I am a very lucky human being to have been born where I was away from all that - it is a matter of luck and luck alone to be have been born in London, Paris, Rome, Moscow, Bejing, New York, or Baghdad, Gaza, Hanoi, Seoul, or born in Algeria, Libya, Yemen, Myanmar, or to find oneself as an indigenous peasant in South America being attacked by militarised police waging war against drugs, or to be civilian in any one of any number of wars, or a bystander or a target in any number of mass shootings, or caught up in riots and crackdowns. 

I have missed so much trouble by luck more than by effort on my part. A little humility goes a long way towards a more realistic view of our culture.

I have my story, it's a minor tragedy in comparison. You have yours. Mine seems big to me, impacts me daily, and yet I see that it is only that big because I am close to my own trauma, and obviously it seems so impactful.

So many people are made to suffer through no fault of their own, by this dominator cult we call 'civilisation' - hierarchies of wealth, power and violence.

Propaganda, lies and The War Against Terror.

"Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way; stop  participating in it." Noam Chomsky

So when the propaganda vomits over the air waves and the light tubes this weekend, as they deny the War Crimes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and so many others  from Vietnam to Troy, from Agincourt to Trafalgar, from Pearl Harbour to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from Gaza to Aleppo, from Sudan to Mali, I resist by reminding myself that war is the result of the behaviour of the leading bullies of the bully cult, Such behaviour is not an innate or inherent part of being human, it is a dirty, ugly, sick, depraved way of dominating for the sake of dominating..

I reject all fatalism about war's inevitability.

I have written anti-war, pro-peace, love songs for a nurturant culture for all of my working musicial life, and will continue to do so until I pass on or the wars stop - it's more likely the former, than the latter, yet my hope springs from the unfinished nature of life itself.

War is not inevitable. Dominator Cult is not inevitable.

Two score songs and more.

I have a reverbnation account that allows me to present MP3 files of my songs, for listening and for downloading, all for free and there's more than 50 there. The first six are arranged as my proPeace songs written in response/reaction to 9/11.

Below are descriptions of each song, why I wrote it, what the context was for each. Folk music is story telling.

Play them at least once this weekend, for me, for you, for your friends, for your children and for all their friends. Play them for the Afghani women and children, play them for the Yemeni people, the Libyans, The Iraqis, the New Yorkers, the people of Idlib, the people in Nablus and Hebron, play them the desperate people, the families with small children, trekking across strange lands, to get into in small dangerous boats to cross wide choppy waters just to find degrees of safety from wars our governments and oligarchy and businesses export for profit.

Play them to make sounds that are pro-peace, that are less anti-war than they are for peace.

I will be doing a  few live stream shows this weekend, from my Facebook Page and I will record them and put them up on youtube.

The theme will be this : Peace is more than the absence of war. Why can't we have Governments that avoid avoidable harms to human beings, to our shared environment, to the species that live with us? Is peace too much to ask for? 

1. TOWERS:  September 2001

This song was written the week after the awful 9/11 terror attacks in USA. This recording was taken at a Virtually Acoustic Club night, in Angel, London, first week in October, with additional layers added later on that month. I had been writing letters, sending emails and even spoke on LBC Radio phone in to John Gaunt, all to articulate my desire for honesty, healing, maturity and to urge the US and UK refrain from further violence, warning that it would only make matters worse globally.

I understood the pain, the trauma, the anger - on all sides. 

This song was my way of bringing that compassion to life in a song. It's not that I was 'right'. I was and remains that warfare is an abomination, is an irrational, reckless chaotic way to do foreign policy. Hierarchies of violence are toxic.

2.  WE ARE GOING TO WAR : November 2002

A youtuber account known as Edensounds, a purveyor of fine music, of selected tunes and mixes, well known in certain communities associated with electronic music dance events in London, (a stalwart of the DJ craft long before the acronym EDM was ever coined), made a video of the song, listing English/British Combat Deployments since 1900, noting that there was only 1 year where British troops did not engage in combat, in the 110 years between 1900 and 2010 when he made the video. 

Professional violence at the behest of the English parliamentarians has a long tradition, indeed. Ever since the New Model Army, and before. None of it is honourable. The two world wars erupted because the prevailing culture was a culture of violent Empire. Every war since then has emerged from the same dynamic. In that context no-one fights for ordinary people's freedoms - wars are fought to preserve violent hierarchies. That is why they fight.

This song was written in November 2002, while I was living in an art collective squat in North West London, Kensal Rise.   

What was this new war for? Was the outcome assured? Had we not already seen failure of War policy in Afghanistan? The Helmandi had not forgotten. Blair blatantly did not take heed of history.

3.  WAR TAX : December 2003

This song was written in late 2003, and produced in 2004, in response to the battle of Fallujah that March, This track was the first I produced in my first real home of my own, in London, after 6 years of homelessness after my flat was destroyed in a fire in 1997.

The tax bill to pay for war means all that cash and effort is not being directed into nurturing healthy communities, abolishing poverty, making life better for ordinary people.

Witnessing the appalling invasion of Iraq, in which it was already clear that it had brought, at great expense, chaos, blood, gore and horror to the people of Iraq and vast profits to Corporate America, I was really furious, and also terribly sad. I also safe in a new rented social housing home of my own after a long time of homelessness,  and I was imagining the unfortunate, innocent people of Iraq, so many displaced, surviving in camps, homeless due to the violence of USUK.

How lucky am I to live here, and not there, I would tell myself every morning, as I ate breakfast and took in the news.

4. DARK DESERT HIGHWAY. September 2003

A rewrite of Hotel California inspired, if that's the right word, by the images of US Military convoys on darkened desert roads heading towards Baghdad.

 

5. DEPLETED URANIUM BABIES May 2001

Inspired by Brian Haw's protest outside the Houses of Parliament in London. There were an inordinate or excessive degree of birth deformities post Gulf War I, across areas of Iraq exposed to aerial bombing with DU munitions.

Depleted Uranium munitions have been in use since the 1990s, in Iraq, The Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq II, Libya, Syria and elsewhere by US and NATO forces.. Arguments rage about the health impacts to troops and civilian populations exposed to DU. Typically exposure occurs within a war, where there exist multiple potential contaminants and stressors and not enough research has been diligently pursued to give definitive answers. The precautionary principle ought at the very least led to an examination of toxic effects before such munitions were ever deployed. No such examination was undertaken.

6. THUNDER RUN July 2003

Written after I read reports about an armoured 'charge' of US Military Battle group into Baghdad, The Thunder Run, which apparently involved competition between battlefield commanders for the glory of being the first to 'conquer' Baghdad. As the column was travelling through urban areas, they shot the shit out anything that moved or appeared in front, to the sides.... thousands of innocent civilians and their homes were raked with live rounds..

Then a year later it was being discusse in heroic, glowing terms as a suitable subject for a Hollywood movie.

7. ALL WAR IS CHILD ABUSE December 2018

My response to the odious  'celebrations' of the 'Victory' claimed by British Empire in November 1918. Nobody wins in war, apart from the war supplies industries. I wrote this song that summer, and blogged it in November 2019, with a more detailed piece exploring all the ways in which warfare is related to child abuse, from training young boys to become killers, to towns and cities destroyed, from comics and propaganda to toy soldiers and war movies.

I understood long, long ago that vast quantities of money that could have been used for social benefit was being wasted, and grifted into the bank accounts of already obscenely rich oligarchs.

 


We had known that environmental degradation, air pollution, climate change and poverty were becoming immense problems that really needed to be addressed. But no. 

"We are going to war, so PAY your taxes to guarantee our borrowings for this war!"

Afghanistan 2021 - USUK end the 20 year war, but deny it's harms.

In truth, nobody ever wins war. Everyone exposed to it loses, apart from the weapons suppliers and other material production logistics essential to the prosecution of any war.

Now, in August 2021, as the disastrous, pointless USUK and NATO war in Afghanistan is supposedly coming to an end and we witness yet again the reckless nature of the Governments involved. As it happens White Christian English Europeans have been importing war into Afghanistan for close on 200 years.

Given the most recent utter folly exposed in the awful, bungled, stupefyingly callous mismanagement of the 'withdrawal' of USUK/NATO Military forces (even as they still hold the threat of air warfare over the incoming Taliban as a future 'bargaining chip)' it should be blatantly obvious that the entire premise of imposing Democracy at the point of a gun is just a banal evil.  

Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Johnson, May, Cameron, Brown and Blair and their Cabinets are all War Mongering Hierarchs to the core. Watching the English Parliament discuss Afghanistan last week was sickening. Repeated claims that the mission was honourable defy all notions of honesty. These people are utter hypocrites. They do not represent ordinary, decent people and their dishonesty is repugnant, makes a mockery of the very idea of a healthy and honest democracy.

Refusing to acknowledge that their war mongering allows evil behaviour to prevail, collecting a wage from the tax payers. 

Clive Lewis

Here's an honest interview with MP Clive Lewis, who was in the Territorials, a Reserve of the British Army, and who is a combat veteran of Afghanistan, where he did one three month tour of duty.

One three month tour of duty, among men who had to do, who were ordered to do many, many more. I feel for the terrible burden those troops have to bear, to know they were placed where they had to kill or be killed, to endure loss, pain, woundings and grief and rage, and it turns out to have been a failure, because it was wholly illegitimate, even as they fought in good faith.

He speaks openly and honestly, informed by that experience and a wider understanding of the issues evolved since then. The theme was Afghanistan and his exclusion from being asked to speak in the House of Commons.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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Late Elizabethan Holocausts

“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political power to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.” ~ Aneurin Bevan
One way of understanding history is to seek out the stories of those most harmed by the attitudes, behaviour and actions of those who hold and exercise the most social material power. The lives of the most vulnerable are historically more meaningful in that they reveal so much about the attitudes of the powerful. It is often the case that those who exercise power in abusive ways seek to obscure, bury or otherwise silence the stories of those most harmed by that exercise. Judith Herman faced that in her work as a Trauma specialist, meeting men and women exposed to extreme violence in the 1960s onwards, ranging from domestic abuse to political terrorism. "I argued then that the study of psychological trauma is an inherently political enterprise because it calls attention to the experience of oppressed people. 

I predicted that our field would continue to be beset by controversy, no matter how solid its empirical foundation, because the same historical forces that in the past have consigned major discoveries to oblivion continue to operate in the world. 

 I argued, finally, that only an ongoing connection with a global political movement for human rights could ultimately sustain our ability to speak about unspeakable things." ~ Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery

The narrative of historical celebrity is by definition and intent a serial hagiography.

Undue reverence to those who officiate the violent hierarchies rides roughshod over compassion, empathy and genuine concern for the lived experience - the lives of those who endure the worst outcomes of the decisions of the powerful who benefit most from the hierarchy systems are more footnote than headline.

Late Victorian Holocausts (follow the link)

Late Elizabethan Holocausts. (see below)

I want to make it very, very clear that I do not hold either of these Queens personally liable, culpable or responsible for any of the harms caused by the English Establishment during their tenures as Queen -as the Crown in person - they are persons trapped by birth and circumstance more than anything else. The accident of birth is as it is. This is in part about the Monarchy as a device exploited by the Establishment which dates back to The Restoration. 

Who are the culpable parties?

The Establishment are the Oligarchy. The descendants and inheritors of the Barons, The Merchants, the Colonists and the Industrialists. The Holders of the Assets of the Empire.

Since 1948, and the end of WWII, and the emergence of the Social Welfare State, the English Government has participated in a range of actions that have caused immense harm to entire populations, actions that were entirely avoidable and yet deliberately chosen. 

The Queen ascended to the Throne in the midst of all of this, on February 6th 1952.

Aden was abandoned in 1967. One could go back earlier in the historical record and include the Colonial abuses across Africa, India and elsewhere in the 19th Century. Apartheid in South Africa  from 1948 onwards was wholly supported by the English Establishment.  The brutal suppression of Mau Mau political activism in Kenya in the 1950s.

"Historian Mark Curtis, who estimates that the number of deaths in the post-war world for which Britain bears ‘significant responsibility’ is at around ten million (erring on the side of caution, as he stresses).

Taking into account such atrocities as the wars in Malaya (1948-1960) and Kenya (1952-1960),Indonesian atrocities (both during the 1965 coup and in East Timor from 1975), the Shah in Iran (1953-1979), the Falklands War (1982), support for US aggression in Central America (1980s),Apartheid in South Africa, other proxy wars in Africa, Military action in Sierra Leone, the bombing of Yugoslavia (1999) and Afghanistan (2001), and the invasion of Iraq (2003) not to mention the support for the Israeli conquest and occupation of Palestinian lands.

Of these ten million deaths, Britain has ‘direct responsibility’ for between four and six million:‘ Often, the policies responsible are unknown to the public and remain unresearched by journalists and academics’ (the friendly historian Dominic Sandbrook can still claim with a straight  face in 2010 that ‘Britain’s empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law … Nor did Britain countenance anything like the dreadful tortures committed in French Algeria’).

Curtis adds in Unpeople that ‘humanitarian concerns do not figure at all in the rationale behind British foreign policy,’ and are occasionally evoked purely for ‘public-relations purposes.’"

source: https://www.academia.edu/11416901/Mau_Mau_The_Epic_Calm_of_State_Violence_in_Occupied_Kenya

Mark Curtis - Unpeople at the Authors website.

The Elizabethan Era - for whom the bells tolled.

Northern Ireland, 1968, where the oppression of civil rights marches degenerated into a faux Civil War in which the English State colluded with violent militia, that lasted for 30 years.

The destruction of the Trade Union movement, during the 1970s, and the offshoring of the bulk of English manufacturing jobs to gouge greater profits through production with cheap labour, which devastated communities in Wales, the midlands and the North, deliberately impoverishing millions of British citizens. Deprivation visited upon millions of English citizens by the English Establishment. 

The Thatcher Government provided ample support to Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War, 1980 - 1988. That support certainly prolonged that war. That support is implicated in the death toll of that war.

The Gulf War, in 1991 to repel the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (itself a miscalculation by the US Ally, Hussein) and the decade of bombing with Depleted Uranium munitions, in order to maintain a 'no fly zone', which when combined with the destruction of civil infrastructure and the embargo of foods and medicines imposed by the US and UK let to the early deaths of 500,000 children.

The Invasion of Afghanistan,  in 2002 and all that ensued - 157,000 violent deaths, more maimings, displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, more trauma and poverty.

The Invasion of Iraq, 2003 and all that followed as a consequence - 600,000 deaths, more maimings, displacement of millions of people, more trauma and poverty. This also increased terrorism across the Middle East, North Africa,  the EU and USA.

2006 was the year that the Labour Government introduced the Work Capability Assessment, presented as a way to 'help disabled people into work'. The assessment regime was imported from USA, where it had been designed by a Health Insurance Corporation to downgrade claims for Disability, in order to make more profits.  Disabled claimants subjected to that Corporation's regime had been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars by courts. Nonetheless, Labour proceeded to implement this atrocious system. 

"The former DWP Chief Medical Officer, Mansel Aylward, moved from the DWP in 2005 to the then named UnumProvident Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff University, with funding by the American corporate giant who sponsored the new research centre with £1.6 million. 

Together with Gordon Waddell, Aylward produced discredited ‘policy based’ research4 in the 2005 DWP commissioned report: The Scientific and Conceptual Basis of Incapacity Benefits5 which supported the DWP’s planned course of action to demolish the welfare state.

DWP Ministers insisted that they were helping chronically sick and disabled people to take responsibility for their own financial future by searching for employment. In reality, various reforms to social welfare policies allowed preventable harm by the State to creep into disabled people’s lives. 

The flawed Waddell and Aylward biopsychosocial (BPS) model of assessment1 was used by the DWP to justify the use of the WCA, and the excessive use of sanctions against ESA claimants are known to cause identified preventable harm, including starvation, for those least able to protest."

This shift has caused untold harms ever since it was introduced. The UN made a series of reports that used UK data on how disabled people were being treated by UK Government, and called it a 'crime against humanity'.

Estimated excess deaths in the population of disabled people during 2010 - 2020 run to 150,000. During 2020/21 60% of all COVID related deaths were deaths of disabled people. The continuing harm of this policy is a stain upon the English democratic system of Government and is a holocaust of death, distress, fear and exploitation. still under way. The English Government shows no sign of changing course. The English population appear unwilling or unable to push against this, even as disability campaigners work over time. This is tragic.

Is it that the Queen, who we are told worked every day, right up to to her passing, is the example the Establishment sets out to mask this?

Support for illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine, where we know that 263,000 Palestinian people have been displaced has been a constant, in that support for the Israeli Government by the UK Government in social material terms and in the UN remains firm, and opposes almost every politician who draws attention to these criminal actions.

Support for Israeli War actions against Gaza, causing at least 6,000 deaths of civilians, men, women and children, where due to embargos and bombing of civil infrastructure, 1 million are forced to live abject poverty, a situation that the UN deems an act of collective punishment.

Austerity, 2010  which followed on from bailing out fraudulent mortgage selling and insurance practices which caused crashes in investment banking, for which no bankers were indicted. Austerity built on lies, which led to increased poverty across England, and the excess deaths of 150,000 disabled, vulnerable and low income people. The rich were given socialism, the poor were punished.

The destruction of Libya, 2011 - 2014, a functioning Civil state, reduced to rubble, which led to it being split and controlled by competing violent militia, where the rule of Law vanished and the rule of the wat lord still thrives.

The funding of violent militia in a proxy war against the Syrian State, 2011 - 2021 which has displaced millions, destroyed cities, towns and villages, caused immense trauma and poverty, where now food shortages exacerbated by trade sanctions are creating the possibility of famine, in the midst of a global pandemic.

The military and political support for the Saudi war against Yemen, 2015 - 2021, where 5 million people are facing famine, on top of all the associated harms of war. UK sells warplanes and munitions, and the ancillary staff to operate a fleet of aircraft to bomb peasants.

And in the last year: COVID19

The deliberate mismanagement of the covid19 epidemic locally,  200,000 deaths, 1,300,000 long covid cases, massive economic damage to working folks livelihoods, massive damage to small and medium businesses, tourism, live entertainment industries.

The policy that has exacerbated the pandemic globally, via the spread of variants that emerged within the UK and were spread due to keeping borders open, airports active, for non-essential travel and the rejection of early action by a prime minister, Boris Johnson, who styled himself as the Superman, the champion on Free Trade, in a speech given in Greenwich on February 3rd 2020.

These are all actions of the English Government that have caused millions of deaths, millions of people have been forced to flee, to be 'displaced', millions of people have been traumatised and these actions by the English Government have increased poverty and inequity across all nations afflicted.

At the same time, the English Establishment has increased it's global wealth and increased it's own power.

Late Elizabethan Holocausts.

I didn't mention Brexit, because, as of this moment it is not clear that it will cause death and mayhem at anything like the scale all these other actions have caused. But there is no doubt that it will. Brexit is, among other things, a move against collective effort and evidence based climate disruption policy to protect populations, build in resilience, shift from fossil fuel usage

People cry that the Conservatives are most foul. 

That is only partially true..  It's not just the Conservative and Unionist Party, the rot is much, much wider than that. Even within Labour there is a faction that opposes taking any meaningful action on the issues laid out above. Because they are culpable. Their war against Jeremy Corbyn laid bare the realities, and even still there are a sizable group of Labour voters who bought the lies, and are still, even as the Forde Report was released, holding firm to opposition to corrective action.

The English speaking global Oligarchy Establishment is dominant in all political parties in England, America, Australia and Canada - and they are a venal, brutish clan short on humanity, long on greed and focused always on fulfilling their desire for more power, and more wealth extraction and accumulation. 

Brexit was their operation to 'take back control' from a humanist Europe that is starting to regulate extractive industries, off shore banking, tax evasion, air and water pollution, environmental degradation and other abusive industrial practices that are the source of the wealth of the Global English speaking Establishment.

That is a large part of why Scotland is seeking independence.

Boris Johnson's veil slipped when he claimed yesterday that “The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends.”

He is of course, totally wrong. The Vaccine success is entirely down to public funding, open and transparent sharing of information by research and academia, across borders, supported internationally as a medical necessity.

This resonates with his speech in Greenwich, February 3rd 2020 which I detail in a recent blog posting.

He posed himself as 'Superman' - he who will not flinch or panic, who will not undertake 'action that goes beyond what is medically rational' like others do, who will preserve open borders to facilitate trade. Except that was a deceit. Goods do not carry the virus, passenger travel carries the virus. He deliberately kept open borders without quarantine and therefore guaranteed spread of variants to and from the UK, even though experts warned of the dangers in this. He lied.

Crony Capitalism

The gaming of the epidemic as an exercise in profit gouging - £37 billion budget for a process to suppress transmission of the virus that is designed to fail at every turn, whilst pretending to help.  £57 billion wasted on contracts for PPE and other healthcare equipment, which ignored existing suppliers within the UK and handed contracts to small companies with no prior experience - creating hundreds of newly minted millionaires who raked off commissions at average 10%.   The filler accounting of the abuses of power are greater than the scope of this article.

This is Capitalism as a bullying dynamic, where the powerful exploit emerging vulnerabilities across a population and cause harm to that population whilst gaslighting that population through public briefing, news media co-ordination and online political conspiracy theory grooming dominance.

Taking Back Control

The English people need to seek independence from this Establishment, to save further lives and prevent further harms - indeed, the English people needed to do that back in 2003, when it was obvious that a War of Aggression was being initiated and prosecuted using tax payers funds. When the English grass roots failed to indict Tony Blair, a proven liar and War criminal,  they opened the flood gates to where we are today.

Queen Elizabeth is on the Throne, binding the nation. She is a person trapped by birth circumstances.  None of this is her fault. Her position is exploited by the English Establishment. Flags are waved, and people die.

Late Elizabethan Holocausts.

Now you know why.

God Save the Queen from this odious Establishment of NeoLiberal Robber Barons!

Arrest them all for malfeasance and corporate manslaughter.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

Thank you for reading this blog.

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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Evidence, David Smail and the facts before us.

I have just completed my first reading of 'The Origins of Unhappiness : A New Understanding of Personal Unhappiness' written by David Smail.  It is an astounding work, and I must say, I now believe that it is essential reading for anyone interested in psychological distress, justice and economic equity.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27133657-the-origins-of-unhappiness

"It is the main argument of this book that emotional and psychological distress is often brought about through the operation of social-environmental powers which have their origin at a considerable distance from those ultimately subjected to them. 

On the whole, psychology has concerned itself very little with the field of power which stretches beyond our immediate relations with each other, and this has led to serious limitations on the explanatory power of the theories it has produced. 

To illustrate this, typical cases of patient distress in the 1980s are examined. The decade when the right-wing of politics proclaimed there was no such thing as society gave rise to psychological distress across social classes, as long-standing societal institutions were dismantled. 

This is as much a work of sociology, politics, and philosophy, as it is of psychology. Fundamentals of an environmental understanding of distress are outlined. A person is the interaction of a body with the environment."

What I got from this book : realism and honesty.

I live in England where poverty is deliberately maintained and the poor are dehumanised in media representations, where the symptoms of that distress are used as signs of a flawed nature in order to blame the impoverished for their impoverished state, which protects the Wealth Extraction systems, externalising the cost of low wages and inadequate social care provision. 

"We need to realise that, rather than the patient being a problem for the world, the world is a problem for the patient. We are embodied products of environment space-time. To make a difference in our lives we need to be able to exert what little influence we have on the environment, to make it, from our perspective, a little more benign. It is not we who need to change, but the world around us.Or, to put it another way, the extent to which we are able to change will always depend upon some material change in the environmental structures of power which envelope us (and insofar as these cannot be changed, for example because they are in the past, neither can we be wiped clean of their effects).

The difficulty with this is immediately apparent: how do we, relatively powerless creatures, bring effective influence to bear on the environment?"

David Smail (goes to wiki page on David Smail) wrote this :

"Hardly any of the 'symptoms' of psychological distress may correctly be seen as medical matters. The so-called psychiatric 'disorders' are nothing to do with faulty biology, nor indeed are they the outcome of individual moral weakness or other personal failing. They are the creation of the social world in which we live, and that world is structured by power.
    
Social power may be defined as the means of obtaining security or advantage, and it will be exercised within any given society in a variety of forms: coercive (force), economic (money power) and ideological (the control of meaning). Power is the dynamic which keeps the social world in motion. It may be used for good or for ill.
    
One cannot hope to understand the phenomena of psychological distress, nor begin to think what can be done about them, without an analysis of how power is distributed and exercised within society.

Such an understanding is the focus of this web-site. "


You can go to David Smail's Website here via wayback web archive.

I respectfully suggest this as a genuinely useful resource base, to find tools and insights that relate to how power operates and behaves in this culture.

The psychology of power hierarchies. The psychology of people adjusting to this unhealthy social institutional structure and culture. Some home truths. Radicalisation. Grooming. Social meaning. Our lives in all of this.

Evidence based.





Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

The core responsibility of Healthy Governance.

When it comes to Governance, that is to say the administration of a community's shared resources - for example, taxation, which everybody contributes to - opinions are inadequate as a basis for decision making.

Only the data, the evidence, all of it, the whole picture, all that is reliable, available and assesed quantitatively and qualitatively can be utilised to meet the requirements of effective, just and sustainable Governance.

Miss out any one part of that available data, evidence or picture, for any reason or bias and we will generate problematic policies. That much ought to be rather obvious.

This is the discipline required, and frankly, too few people, anywhere, are prepared to exert that discipline on behalf of the entire community to deliver genuine equity.

Taking ideological or religious 'sides', the left/rightism of political discourse are all based on fundamental biases that will omit or ignore or play down any evidence that challenges their core beliefs. News Media and Schooling all function to embed these biases, in that they are top down, hierarchies of information.

That is immature, and honestly it is an abysmal failure, of due diligence and duty of care. We are all part of this problem.

I do understand that bias emerges in any system where forms of hierarchical violence are perpetuated and 'sides' within that structure groom people as 'supporters'.

To me, from my perspective, the 'sides' are irrelevant, a distraction.

I think the millennials get this in a way that previous generations do not.

They all grew up watching the adults around them allow a war against other young people their age, in other countries, be prosecuted .... in Iraq and Afghanistan..

.. and that showed them the immaturity of the adults around them who failed to confront the bullies in Power, the bullies in the media, the bullies in executive roles across society and as a direct outcome people, millions of people died and were maimed and traumatised, entire civilian structures destroyed.

Because we failed them.

I am 57.

I am of that generation.

They are rightfully appalled at that.

We should be ashamed of that at the least, and we should be honest about this.

We should be doing what we can, where we can, to remove that shame, by being honest, by taking no side but the truth (the available evidence in full) and to do that we need to up our game, seriously, to meet the duty we owe all the children, across the world, each and every one of us, as adults.... and get involved, get informed, get real.

We fund Government. We are paying for it. Those bombs are our bombs, and where they fall is our responsibility. Indeed it goes without saying that they ought not fall at all, even if they exist.  That they exist at all  speaks volumes. A bomb is a bullies extension , a mechanism to project power through murder and destruction.

The millennial's know this. Imagine how frustrating it must be to have parents who refuse to look at and see this.

The 'generation gap' is a culture gap. The difference between a culture acclimatised to violent bullying and a culture that refuses to bully.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

Blair, the Media, Intellectuals, Complicity and Cowardice.

William Rees Mogg, in The Times, February 1st, 2010 writes in his first paragraph of an article headed :  - Blair the dictator bulldozed us into war -

 " It may never lead to his being tried in any court, but there is nevertheless a public verdict of his responsibility for the British action in Iraq." ...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article7010321.ece

Why might it never lead to a trial? What right does he have to make such an assertion and then pour his feeble outrage onto paper for the public domain, and at the same time imply that 'International Law needs to be clarified' - International Law prohibiting War is the clearest Law on the planet. What planet is Rees-mogg on, or more to the point what drugs?

Is not the Law clear? YES.

Has not the crime been reported to British Police? YES

Is there an investigation under way(ish) at The London Metropolitan Police War Crimes Unit? YES

Is this a secret or covert operation, requiring special police investigation? NO!

So, why is Rees Mogg not saying all of this and not asking the following questions :

WHY IS THAT INVESTIGATION STALLED?

WHO IS STALLING IT?

AND WHAT ARE THE FULL CHARGES, and the LIST OF ALL THOSE LEGALLY LIABLE FOR THESE WAR CRIMES?

Is it possible he is unaware of all this?  Hardly.

Very slightly since those involved

( http://www.makewarshistory.org.uk )

have written to EVERY MP, to every News Media outlet, have hosted meetings in both Houses of Parliament, posted videos to youtube, have facebook, myspace, twitter and other online resources, which have been  active for quite some time (the first attempt at reporting war crimes was in 2001, for Afghnaistan!) and have an online international campaign informing people of the Law, and asking that the Law be obeyed, calling their campaign a CIVIL OBEDIENCE campaign. Hardly the shrinking violets of the activist movement, yet totally ignored by mainstream mdeia, an absolutely focussed and active ignorance. Caught in the act of ignoring.

While certain forces may have bulldozed towards war, as Rees Mogg writes, certain others (public intellectuals, media pundits etc ) refused to face the facts at the time : That  War as a Tool of Policy Enforcement is wrong, amoral AND illegal.... and they parroted the lines that Policy dictated. Terrorists. WMD. Nasty Dictators (who used weapons systems our State sold him on his own people, who waged a war with Iran on our States behalf). Half truths are often worse than outright lies.

http://www.medialens,org  a British website that had been challenging the way in which media reports wars with such deep bias as to actively support those wars, is replete with such examples, carefully de-constructed, almost to tedium, based on irrefutable evidence, by the medialens crew;  and vehemently defended by said intellectuals and pundits. Some of the former is quite entertaining. Most of the latter is utterly reprehensible.

And now, when the veil is lifted by Blair himself, when he exposed his crass logic and astute denial before Chilcott's gentle probing, in full public view, (with no option but to go the whole hog), a veil many of us have been able to pierce and had removed, even as he prepared for war, and so now, some of these intellectuals finally find their voice? Give us a break!

STOP THE WAR coalition must have known at the time that the war was utterly illegal. They have access to the best legal minds in the country. Look to the results of their actions. Did they inform or mop up concern? Did they harness the compassion, the horror and anger of the people and use that to act, or did they organise a we will  'do our best' gig, much as Bob Geldof might have, again mopping up concern, knowing that it was futile because it offered no real challenge?

A general strike would have been a good move. A blockade by the 2 million people and their friends who did not turn up for the march, yet who supported the intent of that march in Hyde Park would have been fun. And effective.It was estimated that for every one person on that march at least another 4 agreed with them. Some say 15. That's between 8 and 30 million people. That's a lot of power if marshalled. Polls say more than that opposed the war. Anyways, STWC failed, and failed miserably, in their stated aims.

So back to the future, 2010 : the majority of mainstream media even still parrot the policy line; Blair's testimony last Friday was 'assured', a 'fine performance' according to most press this weekend...

Iran still the de-stabilising force in Iraq ( a lie I have dealt with in detail elsewhere), Tony the 'victim' of circumstance and unfortunate planning...

The disconnect is further highlighted with the recent press coverage of the issue of assisted death in cases of severe debilitating painful fatal disease, where the assistance is requested by individuals whose minds are clear, whose intent is clear, whose assistant is a close and dearly loved one.

The DPP saw fit to go ahead with a prosecution for murder for a woman who helped her daughter, who had lain in bed for nearly 20 years, her body shattered by disease, her life shattered by constant unrelenting pain, who had decided enough is enough and I want to die, and was so weakened she required assistance up to the point she herself pressed the plunger of the syringe containing her final does, her final act in her own life.

Yet stalls with regard to a man and a system that not only   failed to protect a nation of 29 million innocent people, but actively and illegally enabled a war of aggression, that denied the Iraqis grass roots democracy when the Iraqis made so bold as to unite and hold their own elections, that selected it's own chosen men to run Iraqs cities, towns and villages, that actively funded and supplied a police force that actively repressed those who dared to engage their own democracy, that started a war of resistance that was portrayed as 'sectarian', that led to even more slaughter, torture, terror for Iraqis?

These are the facts.

What say you now, Rees Mogg? Defend your pious stance from this perspective. You cannot!

Take a walk to your local police station, and report the crimes of Blair and the UK Government. Do something useful.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe

Wooton Basset, Islam4UK and the truth about fighting for our freedoms

First off, let me say this: I think the proposed march through Wooton Basset is wrong in every way... I have great respect for those who 'serve', many of whom I have met in my life time....

The petition and facebook pages to oppose it are badly thought out, and are effectively a propaganda tool. As are ISLAM4UK and the march itself .......

The 'respect' for fallen heroes obliterates the 'respect' for fallen civilians. Wherever they be, and who ever they are.

In Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the 21st Century the comparative death rate between soldiers in uniform and civilians is 3 to 97.... with terrorists coming in at about 1 to 10000, ie for every confirmed 'al queeda' type terrorist, 10,000 civilians die.... at the very minimum.

The soldiers have the best medical care. Thats why the death rate is so low. The trauma rate is a lot higher. Troops survive terrible woundings. The civilians, most of whom are very poor already, have almost none. No health care, no pension, nothing.

This is a deliberate set up. The CIA funded and set up 'Al queeda' and the Mujhadeen in 1979.... with skills they had been training the South American 'police' in since the 1950s, at Institutions such as The Fort Benning School of the Americas. Google it. Don't take my word for it.

The set-up, from the point of view of 'our heroes' works like this : recruit youngsters who have been conditioned, who have no idea of what combat is really like, (how could they?) apart from romanticised war movies etc etc, and 'train' them for fitness, in small groups ... if one trainee fails, the whole squad is punished - that builds the bonding process.

The train them to be professional 'killers'. Then send them to low conflict zones to 'harden' them.

Then they go to a real war zone, and come under fore for the first time....

When they see a mate killed or wounded, reality strikes and they HAVE TO PROTECT EACH OTHER. Who wouldn't?

Thats when they start to shoot to kill, to protect each other.

They are NOT thinking of our freedoms at this point. But the civilians back home are. Because these are our 'heroes'.

Under these conditions, into which they have been deliberatley placed, it is inevitable that they will kill and maim far more innocent civilians than 'terrorists'...

When they return they cannot tell this to their families, to the media, because they know they have comiitted war crimes and they know the civilians want to see them as 'heroes' and so the truth is buried. The soldiers suffer in silence. Suicides amongst troops in US/UK Military now exceeds combat deaths...

The Government and the Military KNOW ALL THIS because it's an old technique.

They also know that some few become addicted to killing and 'adventure' and BECOME MERCENARIES.

They have their uses. EG David Stirling, who set up the SAS, started a private mercenary army, which worked on behalkf of the UK Govt, and private corporations in Africa : their first mission was in Yemen. Topical Country at the present...

Check Adam Curtiss Documentary " The Mayfair Set" which looks ate Stirling and his activities and traces this kind of thing right up to the 1990s...

http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtis_TheMayfairSet

and this on the Long Term Psychological Trauma of War:

http://www.davidsmail.info/stickley.htm

A better petition would be to prosecute Margart Thatcher, Tony BLair and all those who command for carrying out illegal orders, as all UK military have been engaged in absolutley, clearly, as defined by UK and International Law, ratified by the UK Government, illegal wars since 1991 - since the first Iraq war...

The perhaps we can end the bloodshed. None of the stated aims of UK Government stand up to careful scrutiny with regard to these wars, nor would they stand in a fair court of Law.... and none are worth the harm our young men and women are forced to endure, forced to cause....

For further research, particularly with regard to serving combat troops who expose the reality, check out winter soldier : http://www.ivaw.org/wintersoldier

and a look at the Military response to the original Winter Soldier : http://www.wintersoldier.com/

 

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe

Awards, Medals, Life and Death in the 21st Century

I choose to spend my time learning as much as I can about the 'civilisation' I was born into simply because I don't want ANYONE to go have to through what I went through, as an infant, as a child, as an adolescent, as an adult .... the years I have spent struggling with the trauma, the abuse patterns, the low self-esteem, the anger, the fear, the confusion, have not made me any stronger; they have been a waste of my precious time here on Earth. I am not alone in this.

That is not to say that my life is wasted, it is to say that oh so precious time will never return. The joys of being a loved child, in a loving family home did not happen, and will not happen. The scars and wounds are slowly healing. I am not alone. That comforts me as much as it horrifies me. And that's quite weird.

And so I study Civilisation, and it's psyche because Civilisation metes out much, much more trauma than it heals or delivers 'peace'. To human and non-human alike. Wars. Clearfells. Dustbowls. Poisoned rivers. Pesticides in Breast Milk. 200 Toxic Synthetic Chemicals Coursing Through The Veins Of Every Foetus. Global Warming. Global Warring. Global Vaccinations. Pandemics. Wealth amassed by a few. Poverty for the vast majority. The balance is tipped towards the dark side, big time! Running out of fuel. It is slowly collapsing. Let it go.

A Madman Speaks Truth

Today, also in New York, Muamarr Gadaffi, the Libyan 'leader'spoke to the United Nations General Assembly. A sort of International State of The Nation adress. He asked some questions many are asking. Who killed Martin Luther King? Who killed JFK? Who protects the Palestinians? Why are the Pharmaceutical Corporations, who are responsible for creating the 'Swine-Flu' virus itself, set to make so much money? Why is Medicine a business? Why is not Medicine free? Why is the Security Council dominated by states with Nuclear Weapons? Is that not a threat in itself? Good questions. Most unfortunate that it is he who asks them in public, before the UN. Quite surreal.

While I watch this I have a fantasy about the impossible. What if Gordon Brown made that speech to the UN? Jaws would surely drop. Hearts would flutter, a few might even stop. Many would cheer!

A Murderer is Honoured

Back to reality. Today Gordon Brown was presented with an award. It was "presented on behalf of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, an interfaith organisation which campaigns for religious freedom and human rights, by the veteran US former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

Rock star Bono, Queen Rania of Jordan, and the Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak were among the audience as Kissinger praised Brown for his "vision and dedication" in handling the world economic crisis.

"His leadership has been essential to our ability to overcome the moment of danger," said Kissinger."

High praise indeed from such an ignoble and foul war criminal. Birds of a feather.

The above piece of 'reporting' (propaganda) was culled from The Guardian. The 'reporter' (propagandist)  forgot to mention that Gordon Brown was instrumental, though not alone, in creating the grounds for the financial 'moment of danger'. Deregulation, selling the UK stock of Gold Bullion at knock down prices. The War on Terror. Extending the age of retirement to 'protect pensions'. Promoting Homes, and therefore Mortgages as a method of investment (which can increase or decrease in value).  Thats small print for ya!

The 'reporter' (propaga... you get the point!) also missed the irony of an interfaith organisation (Appeal of Conscience Foundation) which campaigns for religious freedom and human rights presenting such an award for economic reasons, as Kissinger pointed out (as opposed to human rights reasons - Brown is a war criminal, who is presiding over the routine slaughter of Afghans and others, young men from villages, towns and cities across Britain, the dead and the maimed.). The whole thing is utterly surreal, though for those at the front-line, all too real... What can one say of Brown's conscience? Does he have one? Kissinger?

Back to reality.

A searing documentary was screened on the BBC today. Wounded. The camera/story follows 2 young boys, UK Troops who were injured, severely, in Afghanistan. There's shocking footage of one boys incident. He was hit by an IED : Improvised Explosive Device. His right leg was blown off, severe damage to his left, his eyes were also badly damaged by the blast flare (a burn) of the explosion and he sustained many other wounds. Trauma.

Far from new York. Far from Gordon's daily thoughts today, or Bono's. What of that boys human rights? And those of his Afghan 'enemies', his Afghan comrades and the now ubiquitous innocent by-standers. The kill rate in Afghanistan is 100 to 1. In Favour of 'our boys'. So what happened to his and their human expectations to live a happy healthy life? Human Rights indeed!

He was returned to Britian, fighting for his very life and in hospital was kept under sedation for a few months while the surgeons worked on him. His left leg was amputated, as the damage had been too severe. A horrendous trauma.What an ordeal to waken to! We see these boys receive their medals, for their 'tour of duty', for combat in Afghanistan. I found that very hard to watch - Prince Charles voice droning on about 'sacrifice' and 'resilience' in the background - on the same day Gordon Brown receives his award.

I urge you to watch this documentary. See through the propaganda. Some of it is grisly stuff. Look to the human beings caught up in all this horror. Needless to say the boys are portrayed as honestly as such a programme by such an organisation in such a system can. Needless to say they fight back with all they have got, and for each, it is a personal and unique struggle. And one that will in all probability  be endless. They have the support of loving families. Strong families. They will need all that and more. There are those who have no such resources to draw upon. What lies ahead for them? Does any of this bother the people who design, build and make weapons? Does it bother the cleaners and janitors who tend such people?

And none of their trauma was necessary. They did not fight for 'our' freedoms. They fought for the 'freedom' of certain Statesmen and their corporate buddies to 'rule' over the Earth, for Manifest Destiny, for the Free Market, all obnoxious ideologies if ever there was.

Serious Side-Effects

Like mine, their injuries are a by-product, a side effect of 'civilisation'. And it certainly won't make those boys any stronger than they already were. They found the strength within, so young, to fight through triple limb loss from combat; theirs is a struggle and hurculean task the likes of which our dear statesman of the year, and his buddies, Bono and Henry Kissenger would never knowingly undertake. They know their limits. They could care less about breaking the limits of others.

They are willing parties to a System that does force others to 'endure', and to does so on their behalf. For their Money. For their Power. For their Hubris. They create the conditions of Poverty that leave young boys in our towns and cities with enlistment in the the military as the only decent 'job' option. Join up and train as a soldier AND get a trade, education, travel, respect etc, etc..... can look good if one has no prospects of a decent job ... and one is burdened with aspirations that have been crafted to make one feel inadequate...and especially so if one has no idea what combat is really like....... strangely enough the recruitment of soldiers has seriously gained from the financial 'moment of danger'.

They (the politicians, marketing gurus, industrialists) create the media stereotyping (advertising, movie's) and role models (impossibly rich footballers, mythical retouched cine warriors and 'realistic' computer war games) that set boys up to be tough muscled warriors, Their Military training turns them into professional killers.

Performance Politicians

For an insight into the 'performance' aspect of politicians, I suggest a look at the following : BBC screened a short clip of a Liberal Party shadow minister rehearsing her speech for the Liberal Party Conference. By performance I mean the kind Derren Brown does. The Grand Illusion. The clip shows just how well trained these 'rulers' or 'rulers to be' are. Autocues, rehearsals, re-writes, directors and producers, make-up

These actors actively participate in creating the conditions of state that justify wars. They fund and procure for these wars. With our money. And the same corporations always, always, always make a tidy profit. All of this is coercive, abusive, insane.Criminal.

And the Kissengers, Browns, Blair's and their many colleagues : they receive these get awards, awards that they actually accept; do they believe it all? You can see from some of the photos that Brown is actually enjoying himself! How pleased he must be! (though it might be because he knows he's gotten away with murder and will be well paid for it! A part-time job working with Tony, at Morgan Chase, perhaps?)

How pleased Mr. Kissinger must feel. How smug.

Pleasure

How pleased would how many millions, nay billions of people around the world feel if Kissinger were instead to be sharing the dock with Blair, Bush, Brown, Straw, Cheny at the International Criminal Court? Think about it. That's a heck of a lot of pleasure. And it would go on for a while. What a trial that would be. Saddam was on trial for two years. His crimes were great. Yet no greater than those of Kissinger. Brown is a beginner by comparison. I wouldn't be for hanging them. Or shooting them.

It would be enough to have them see the dismantling of their precious 'civilisation'.

It would be enough to have them see the collapse of Central Government and it's replacement with strong grass roots communities, aware and informed, who were looking after their own land-base, for themselves and all other inhabitants, and for their children.

It would be enough to have Brown see the collapse of the so called 'Free Market' which is neither free nor is it a market in the traditional sense of the word, where real people exchange real goods of real value and everyone wins, as it is in nature.

It would be enough to have Kissenger witness the decomissioning of all nuclear reactors, warheads etc etc....

Guantanamo Holidays for War Criminals?

And if there was a remote Island somewhere, previously used to dump some toxic waste,  I'd build few houses there, all mod cons, lawns, garden space, a natural water filter system, and set the boys up there.I would hand over a few tools and plenty seed for food growing. If they showed good behaviour, and a willingness to do some useful work, I'd give them a permaculture course.They can fend for themselves.On the Island. They would not be welcome anywhere else.

And we, the people of Earth, diverse, localised and deeply embedded in the land-base could fend for ourselves.Quite well. We have done it before, for millennia. We will do it again. It is innate. It would be enough that we are left to get on with the real work of life. Being happy, loving and sustainable on the land we are born to.

Back to reality.

None of this will happen as things stand. The peace/green/change movement refuses to tackle the problems of intentionally adverse psychological conditioning, of psychopathology in Politics and Business which is the root cause, and prefer to cry and protest about symptoms. I conclude that most people in the Developed World, (middle class utopia), are psychologically damaged. Emotionally Blind. Those elsewhere are suffering from PSTD. No-one is talking about this. We are fucked. Seriously. We are.

Seriously

Abusers run the show. Abusive Psychopaths are running this thing called 'civilisation', and managing it, and labouring for it. The abused appeal to the abusers, who feel even more powerful, and surge onwards with 'progress'. Some abused say 'Stop what you are doing,  I'm frightened you are going to hurt me' and that makes the abusers ANGRY? Some of the most abused fight back, in self -defence, (a natural enough tendency) and they are demonised as TERRORISTS?

I am told that People in pubs talk about Islamic Fundamentalism...or Terrorstorm  or 2012... or .The Bilderbergs or 'Conspiracy Nuts'. and ignore the real and unmitigated horror of  the wars their friends lives are sacrificed in. There are those who are proud of 'our boys', who then have to be proud back, must wear their medals and wounds like warriors, to protect this great lie. The 'public' don't get that the sacrifice was for power and wealth, according to the mainstream media, which is still being consumed. There's a sick dynamic going on here. I for one feel that the mainstream media's current role is to carry on the illusion that most people don't get it. To look like they have a majority audience that believes their lies. To keep the middle class Utopians in line. I feel a lot of people do get it. And they have no mass media voice or presence. The masses are shrinking.

Some of my friends in the 'movement' visibly blanch when the concept of a possible collapse of 'civilisation' is mentioned. They don't get it. Their fear clouds the vision and imagination. This is understandable. However it is not viable. Civilisation is not where clean water comes from. Nor is it a source of clean air. And as for the food..... it's toxic from producer to shop to sewage system. Let it go!

Those who do not deal with their shit, who do not metabolise their abuse, will dump both onto others. In great quantity. Forever. Poisoning all they touch. So let it go. Let the extractive, toxin producing civilisation go.

Of the 6.5 billion people who stands to benefit the most from the end of this conceptualisation of civilisation? All indigenous peoples for a start. All subsistence land users - they would be able to grow food rather than crops for cash. All the rural poor, for they would have more freedom to access land and grow food. All those at the receiving end of civilised armies on the march. The urban poor would fare better than the urban rich, who would be by far most affected. Women, in general, would fare better, for in strong communities abuse is harder to hide or disguise. Children, in general, would fare better for the same reasons.

Let us metabolise what we can from our experience, from our trauma and make it so that we return nutrients to all living processes, between ourselves, and within nature. And that means honestly facing Civilisation. Within and Without.

They won't fix it : We must end it.

We need no more boys blown to bits, to live a limbless life. We need no more wars for peace, democracy, profit, power. We do not need TVs and Cars. We need to be growing food. Recycling all that can be recycled, re-processing all that can be reprocessed or re-using materials.. We do not need international trade in other peoples land bases or 'resources', in other creatures very homes and lives. We need clean water in all our streams, rivers and lakes more than we need Alan Sugar or sugar itself.

We need time to be with our families, our friends, our communities, our beautiful habitat more than we need jobs and careers that keep us away from all that or that are embedded in the cycles of abuse.

The long journey out of abuse starts with recognising that the abuse is happening, recognising the signs of 'normalisation' of abuse, and then with giving the abuser no purchase, no further possibility of abusing, and then with grieving for what has been lost and for what has been endured, and then the healing and new growth can start. All of these run concurrent. It is a long journey, one we must all of us make. We must make this journey if we are to survive, never mind thrive, in the long run. The alternatives are too terrible to be considered as options. We must make this journey for our children's futures, for their clean water, for their peace, for their abundant land-base.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe

some links :

Muammar Gadaffi's speech : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/6224056/Muammar-Gaddafi-delivers-100-minute-speech-to-UN-general-assembly.html

Godon Browns Award : http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/sep/23/gordon-brown-world-statesman

'Wounded' : http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00mzs74/Wounded_Part_1/

Performance Politicians Exposed : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8268072.stm