Is Cameron behind the Child Porn?

Was this David Cameron arriving at the Grove Hotel in Watford for the secret Bilderberg meeting behind a headline of CHILD PORN TEACHER IS ALLOWED BACK IN THE (BILDERBERG MEETING/GUEST BEDROOMS/CLASSROOM)?  What did it say on that paper?  Why was he reading it so intently?  What are they doing in there?

It would be a farce except it is so serious.  There was an article on the Guardian web site entitled David Cameron to attend Bilderberg group meeting and I decided to leave a comment.  I was interested later to note it had been 'recommended several times.  So for your perusal and enjoyment I have included it here.

Unfortunately this is far more serious than a joke.  People are going to die in revolutions around the world as a result of these clandestine machinations by our "elected(?)", "democratic(?)" "representatives(?)".  It is too disgusting to make light of.  They are lying in our face and virtually no one cares.  The most profound proverbial is currently hitting the fan.  And, to top it off, if they don't like this comment they will simply erase it!  What a lovely brave new world we are living in.  Just go to basefuk and twitter and amuse yourself to death - that appears to be the idea.  How can the statement "Downing Street said it was acting in an open manner by publicising the prime minister's attendance in advance." be allowed?  It is, in your face, lies. They haven't in the past, they weren't going to now, but having been caught they pretend they are 'admitting' it but they still won't either publicize what "our representative" not "our ruler" is saying.  This is a more clandestine, more insidious, and far more dangerous ruling elite than Hitler's Third Reich.  Don't believe me?  You won't have to wait long to find out if "WE" don't "DO" something about it.  But, hey, it might just be too late so maybe we prefer the anaesthesia of inyourbootface social mastication.

I am NOT amused!

So the day went on and I got more and more depressed; With this Bilderberg meeting and WikiLeaks.

Check out these amusing and interesting as well as informative articles by Charlie Skelton for the Guardian: The week ahead: Bilderberg 2013 comes to … the Grove hotel, Watford
Bilderberg 2013: welcome to 1984

The problem seems too much like the complaint to the Children Services;  No one cares.  Then Dad wanted to go shopping then I played Go and got bored and I revisited the WikiLeaks website and read all about the disgusting illegal behaviour of the mega companies and the American right wing politicians and I found this video.  It cheered me up...



But how I wish people would take this seriously.  Very few people read this blog and so it feels as if I am pissing in the wind but if all of us don't start objecting to the illegitimate behaviour of these mechanistic, self-serving, abusive and illegal companies and practises there seems only one way the world is going.  I was going to refer to George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four but then I thought maybe Aldous Huxley's Brave New World might be more appropriate so I went to Wikipedia to contemplate the issues and found the following excerpt from the foreword of  Neil Postman's 1985 book entitled Amusing Ourselves to Death.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

I feel much inclined to refer to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World - We are amusing ourselves to death.  But if that is the way you want it I can recommend being amused by Roger Water's brilliant album Amused to Death.

Killer robots and Motorola identity pills

So Motorola has come up with this good idea of a pill or a tattoo which is a personal identification device and you won't need to remember another password to get on the internet or access your bank account.  They will even have the ability to locate you geographically.  Just imagine; If you get kidnapped they can rush in and rescue you - How lovely.

From The Sydney Morning Herald Forgot your password? Just take a pill

From The Huffington Post Passwords In Tattoos And Pills? Motorola Announces Plans For Wearable Tech (VIDEO)

They have even reported it on the Children's BBC called CBBC Motorola's password in a pill and electronic tattoo

And you can search for it on Google.  You know - that search engine whose philosophy was "Do No Evil" but don't worry they changed that.  Hang on a minute who owns Motorola?  Did I read somewhere that Google had bought Motorola?  Oh yes - in 2011 Google bought Motorola for about 12 billion dollars.  Now who is the senior vice president of advanced technology and projects at Motorola?  It wouldn't be a nice young girl who was the first female director of DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) which, although they developed the internet and cloud computing, they are also responsible for developing t Agent Orange, micro air vehicles and killer robots?  Oops yes it's that lovely Regina E. Dugan.  So hang on a minute - Google owns the company that employs an ex-director of DARPA and they are now developing a pill to identify you.

You have to realise that Eric E. Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google Inc. is in a secret meeting this weekend with 140 other influential world figures at the Grove Hotel in Watford.  You might ask if it is secret how I know about it.  For over 50 years this organisation, the Bilderberg Group, has been having illegal secret meetings.  It is only in the last few years that, largely due to the information age, they have been unavoidably exposed.  But their agenda remains secret and that is illegal too.  Now that they have been exposed they are pretending that they have never been secret.  They have even created their own web site as if nothing is wrong at The Bilderberg Meetings - The Official Website. This behaviour is clearly deceptive and dangerous.  The 'official' list is now available on the internet at many places including the Telegraph. but there are reasonable grounds to assume that there are at least 20 unannounced attendees including Bill Gates who is coincidentally flying into London this weekend.

So I will let you work out for yourself whether this Motorola pill is consumer driven or control driven and I will show you a video that you won't believe.  This guy went out and asked Americans to sign a petition to support the Holocaust Celebrations.  He explained to people on the street (in America) that the Jews liked to celebrate the Holocaust with beach parties where they would have competitions to see how many people they could bury in the sand and how they loved to roast pork on the beach too.  These American citizens swallowed it all (not the pork) and would happily sign the petition.  You don't believe me?  Take a look.

What conspiracy?

So there I am, getting up and getting on with the world.  I dip into this and that and the other and before I know it my mind space is like my desk space and my room space; a complete jumbled mess.

Monsanto:  The first thing to note about Monsanto is that there is a scandal currently doing the rounds about their genetically modified wheat being found in non genetically modified wheat fields.  I recall from years ago that there was a lot of controversy about the potential uncontrollable consequences of their business activities.  The thing that strikes me most about these controversies is that the alarm bells ring when they illegitimately try to hush things up or falsely deny things that are clearly happening.  For me it is one of the under emphasized issues in all these protests/objections/conspiracy theories etcetera.  The facts are often unavailable and disputed but the overtly presumptuous and illegitimate denials beg the proverbial question "What exactly are they trying to hide?"  I encountered a little video on InfoWars where someone tried to upload a video to YouTube but when they entered the tag "Monsanto" the system mysteriously couldn't save the video.  It is worth a look:


Video streaming by Ustream
So often in these government enquiries or radio interviews I hear the defence that there is no 'evidence' that there is anything sinister going on.  Consequently the clandestine and insidious behaviour cannot be addressed and so it carries on.  Actually these people in responsible and influential positions have a duty to be open and responsive.  They have a 'responsibility' to address the issues raised.  Psychologically they are presented as an innocent victim who should be given the benefit of the doubt.  We are presented with the paradigm that anyone can make a mistake and it isn't their fault and they meant no harm and, indeed, one mention of a good motive seems to vindicate them and represent them as morally benign people who are being picked on.  But they are the ones calling the shots.  They are the ones in power with the money and influence.  And the reality is that when the little guy simply steps over the line he/she is guilty because they 'might' have been plotting to overthrow the world.

But as you can tell - I am not a journalist - and I am in danger of ranting.  So that is the bit about Monsanto.

Jew Bashing:  I also encountered a tweet from Stephen Fry ‏stating This is deeply disturbing … http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YTkD2BXzD2k#%25 … so I went and watched the video.  Was I deeply disturbed?  No!  Do I believe the Jews should be exterminated?  No!  Do I think this guy, Alex Linder (who ironically looks remarkably stereotypically Jewish), is being deliberately controversial for his own aggrandisement?  Yes.  Where has Stephen Fry been if he hasn't seen tons of this stuff oozing out of every pore of the internet?  Why am I not disturbed?  Years ago I would have been but now I see billions of people all screaming their own perspectives of pain.  What I find worrying is that their distress seems understandable but they externalise it, personify it, and then want to kill anyone who looks like it as if that will address their sense of injustice and put things right in the world.  It seems that the thing to do is to destroy all the oppressors.  But that is what they are doing.  They are just winning (in their own subjective way) but if 'we' - the good guys - did the decent thing and killed them first wouldn't we just be them winning.  There has to be a more realistic and accurate solution to this and I think there is one.  It is too much to dive into just now but it is about being a little more accurate about what we judge as wrong, undesirable or unacceptable.  Abuse is abuse whether it is committed by a Jew or a Christian, a black or a white person, an athlete or an invalid or a Jehovah's Witness or a Scout leader or a priest or a politician or a banker, a butcher a baker or a candle stick maker.

The main thrust of that is that we have to stop the abuse and not keep siding with 'our' politicians, or 'our' religion, or 'our' sex or race or any other group identifier.  Something that springs to mind, of course, is the Bradley Manning trial which is currently in process.  The guy revealed a mass of illegal activity being perpetrated by the American government and military (and more) and he is being vindictively persecuted for revealing their 'secrets'.  We have to hold the American government (and all the others implicated in the leaks) to account for their illegitimate actions.  They MUST be stopped.

Then there is the Bilderberg Group:  Ha!  That's a good one.

It was not so many years ago, probably 5, that any suggestion that such a thing existed was laughed out of court as a ridiculous conspiracy theory.  Alex Jones, of Prison Planet and Info Wars fame, was significantly involved in exposing this extremely secret organisation.  It is frightening to realise that although the authorities worked hard to deny that such an organisation existed, when they were finally irrefutably exposed they put forward a pretence at a legitimacy to the whole thing.  Now when they don't tell the public that they are having the meetings we are supposed to accept that it is a good idea to keep these very important people safe from terrorists and those other undesirable characters that might disrupt the important affairs of the totally rich and influential do-gooders who are working hard in our interest to secure the globe and make it safe for us in spite of the terrorist and people like Alex Jones.

Unfortunately too many people will accept these projections.  I know this for many reasons not least of which being that I believed them myself years ago.  But something was wrong.  I couldn't put my finger on it and so I continued to 'think' about it and for years something was wrong but I couldn't figure it out.  It IS the distress.  It IS the repression as a consequence of the oppression.  It IS the fact that the authoritarians are self contradictory.  It is clearly ridiculous to suggest that you must kill people to maintain peace, that you must oppress people to protect freedom, that you must lie to people to maintain the truth and that you must benefit from people for their own good.  Even if you are tempted to 'understand' that we need an army to maintain peace or that we need someone with a stick to stop people being horrid to other people or that we need a hierarchy to maintain freedom - even if you think these things make a kind of sense you have to take a second look and acknowledge there is something contradictory about it all.  There is clearly something wrong even if you can't quite work it out.  It is called fear.  You have been threatened instead of supported, you have been hurt to show you what you shouldn't do and you have been lied to to protect you.  You have learnt (emotionally) that you 'need' this hierarchy because if you confront it it will not protect you - indeed IT will hurt you - and if you conform they are the nicest people in the world to you - well they would be so long as you continue to make yourself 'think like them'.  If our leaders (who should be serving us not ruling us) are so afraid of us that they hide behind immense security then they are clearly NOT looking after our interests.

For example check out these links from InfoWars:

No Fly-Zone Enacted Over Bilderberg Meeting

Bilderberg Authoritarianism Destroys Humanity

Bilderberg Security Kicks Out Alex Jones

Bilderberg 2013: Transhumanist Death Cult

Amazon and Google chiefs join other corporate tax avoiders at annual Bilderberg confab

Bilderberg Ring of Steel

This is too big a subject for me at the moment but the fact that the members of the Bilderberg Group were quite willing to break international laws and national laws as if they are above them and that they were quite willing to lie through their teeth to deny that any such meetings were being held and then when they are exposed they simply change their story tells me that they are extremely dangerous and looking after themselves whatever it takes.

Do not be fooled.  Now that Alex Jones has exposed them and for the first time in their history they have a public relations department and a press office, do not for one moment be fooled into thinking we are getting somewhere.  Think about it.  What would you do in their position?  It is simple - you would continue with a facade.  You would make the current Bilderberg meetings legitimate and run a secret organisation behind it.  So now like complete suckers we will swallow what they ejaculate from the press office and, choking slightly, thank them for their honesty.

Be afraid!  Be very afraid!

And, you see, that is what I have to put up with in my life when I am already ill as a consequence of irresponsible authoritarian oppression.  When are we going to stop them?  Oh and PS here is a map showing the location of the Grove Hotel where the very secret Bilderberg Group is meeting from 6th to 9th June 2013 just to see if I can get Toxic Drums Blog taken down by the secret police in Britain.


View Larger Map

Exploring the outer limits of cellular interaction.

The inherent paradoxes of life.

I have to apologise to Manny for saying that Brian Eno was in the Velvet Underground;  He was not.  But in my defence, not that any defence is needed except in a post holistic inconsequential pre-Raphaelite existential hollow caustic world of big art tree artrists, he was strongly influenced by them and worked with John Cale - a founder member.  I would have said that Brian Eno worked extensively with both founder members of the Velvet Underground but I went to check my facts and was astounded at what I discovered.  So let me explain:  John Cale and Lou Reed are the two 'founding members' of the Velvet Underground.  Nowhere on the internet could I find a page containing any significant references to both Reed and Eno.  So, although I know they know each other is it possible they have never worked together?  On the subject of Cale and Eno they did an album called "Wrong Way Up" which is a gem in the history of music.  A strangely small, but beautifully formed, gem.  One of my favourite lyrics of all time is from the track "The River" and goes: "I remember you saying, As her deep eyes opened, In the first light seeing her, 'Here is someone new'."  When I first heard the words I was cast into a dream like meditative state of pure awe and wonder as it summed up the profound and inexpressible beauty of seeing a new life arrive on this planet.  It so perfectly expressed the peace and love, the profound yet inexplicable power of a sentient self-aware conscious human emerging from the complexity of this soup we call the universe into existence.  And so here it is for your delight...



Of course the song resonated and expressed my experience of being present at my daughter's birth so it came as no surprise to discover that Brian Eno was inspired to write those lyrics as a consequence of being present at his daughter's birth.

In my chaotic scrambling around the internet I was amazed to discover that Lou Reed has just had a liver transplant.  It was only a week ago that Laurie Anderson said that he was dying of liver failure.  He says  he is now "bigger and stronger than ever" and is looking forward to writing more songs and appearing on stage connecting in heart and spirit with his audience and the universe.  That, of course, is paraphrasing which is nothing like parachuting.  Lou Reed is a truly wonderful human and when I discovered that he and Laurie Anderson were united in that strange cultural euphemistic dysphemism called marriage I was delighted.  I am a fan of Laurie Anderson and I guess she became 'known' to the world with her track "Oh Superman" (which you should, could and can see here - this is a rendition, (to render something is to transfer it to, or manifest it in, another form and is typically used in computer graphics when an image is constructed or 'rendered' from the data but this word developed a more sinister meaning when it was used as the euphemism "extraordinary rendition" by the British and Americans in their 'War on Terror' to refer to illegally kidnapping 'suspects' and transporting them to other countries to be tortured because it would be illegal in either of those two countries) indeed it is an extraordinary rendition, of her performance as displayed in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York.



Laurie Anderson seems to be a much underappreciated creative and significant talent.  Her ... blah blah blah ... socio-political comments ... blah blah blah ... on the hidden agenda of the collective cultural subconscious reality are profound, insightful and important but no one really cares.  I know that it is inaccurate to say that no one cares because some do, but it feels as if no one cares because the few that do have little impact and the majority who don't are sycophantic supporters of the power mongers who do all the damaging doings.  But... as a special dedication to the now departed Nic Minuta here is another brilliant rendition of Laurie Anderson's work.  It is called "Walking and Falling" and is from the album "Big Science"



When I say "the now departed Nic Minuta" I am not being euphemistic.  He is not dead he is just departed.  Oh God why can't these people understand?  Dead is dead - departed is just... just... departed, moved on, gone to another place oh f**k how can I explain?  The euphemisms are too strong and are overpowering me until I begin to think the meaning of the words are the ascribed meanings which are not the meanings and then I don't even know if we are all departed because we are only someone else's molecules.  NO - this blog entry is not descending into chaotic madness - or is it?

I knew a guy who was dying of liver failure.  He died unfortunately.  I love Lou Reed and I ask myself the question "Is it because he has lots of money that he has a new liver?"  Is it possible that my friend might have had a new liver if he had enough money.  And given the known illegal trade in spare part livers can Lou be absolutely sure that his replacement liver was not illicitly manipulated from the bowels of some poor oppressed peasant half way around the world?  Oh such unpleasant thoughts in such a  beautiful world.  But I am still very pleased that Lou Reed is not only still with us - I mean alive - but is feeling good too.

I have to go now.  I mean I have to stop typing and do something else.  I am not trying to make some profound and meaningful statement about transcending to a higher plane of consciousness although I might give it a go.

Sour grapes or Bitter Melons.

Picture by Nakano Hajime of bitter melon prepared for eating.

I don't do News normally. Well that is more a case of neither being interested nor wanting to be interested but unfortunately other people's chagrins and machinations get unavoidably drilled into my otherwise serene stream of blithe consciousness. The problem with this is that I don't experience the blithe consciousness because it is a little like talking about a calm ocean with a raging gale in it. They are seriously and destructively disturbing my life. In fact they are making my life what it is. Is this beginning to sound a bit bitter? I guess I am getting as bitter as the famous momordica charantia. "What?" I hear you exclaim. Bitter Melon you ignoramus. Well who has ever heard of the momordica charantia - really? But I looked up (did I 'google'?) 'most bitter fruit' on the internet and discovered this bitterest of fruits on wikipedia. What I found interesting is that it reminds me of an adenomyomatopic gall bladder. I have such a gall bladder and it is an ailment not an asset. For some unknown reason the gall bladder starts to malform. I have my own theory and it has to do with the bitter and twisted emotional state that I have become. We don't have these 'analogous' descriptions of emotions with no rhyme or reason. Whether we are conscious of it or not they remind us of conditions out there in the physical world of stuff and we describe them in those terms. One of the things that authoritarian hypocrites do to me is to gall me. I have found myself using that term on many occasions. It seems a possible consequence that my gall bladder is now malformed due to my being repeatedly shocked and horrified at the appallingly self-contradictory behaviour of people in official positions of 'responsibility'. It is hard to use that word in relation to these people because they entirely lack any responsibility ironically in spite of the fact that that is their role. This morning on the radio I heard some head teacher representing head teachers complaining that the politicians were bullying them. She heads up the top level of people tasked with bullying the new people coming into the world! Well I guess it would seem reasonable to her given that she is supposed to be bullying children that it is shocking someone above her should be treating her in the same manor.

Then there is the case of the 7 men (mostly Pakistani and all Muslims) who have been sexually abusing children in Oxford. Well I am horrified. I am profoundly horrified. And when I say 'profoundly' I mean it profoundly. I cannot express how this horror echoes into the very core of my sense of existence. But I doubt my horror is quite what most would expect. I fully accept that the actions of these seven individuals (and doubtless many more who have not been brought to justice) are lamentable and cruel. But my disgust is at the authorities and the culture. What worries me is how 'we' as a culture continue to support the authoritarian bullshit being spouted by these hierarchical abusers; the judges, the politicians, the teachers, the police, the social workers, and, tragically, the parents of millions of children. Our culture is inherently abusive. Nearly everyone reading this will recall as a child examples of contradictory sanctimonious pontificating by judgemental adults. I was at school in this Britain. I was at many schools and in that respect am well placed to 'know' that what I experienced was not 'because' of the social class of the school. I was at lower class schools and upper class schools and in my opinion the abuse gets worse the higher up you go in the class system but it is abuse all the way. We enable, facilitate and cause this abuse seen in these seven Muslim men. It is interesting to me that they were all Muslims too. It is so politically wrong to highlight this fact but in my opinion it is relevant. The risk in mentioning the fact of their religion is, of course, prejudice. Prejudice is about assuming certain attributes of an identifiable group and then pre-judging individuals in that group with those attributes. Prejudice is like bias and causes misunderstanding. But the three main Abrahamic religions on this planet, namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam are fundamentally abusive. They engender abuse. Not to beat about the bush or to put too fine a point on it abuse begets abuse. That is perhaps the very worst thing about abuse; that it causes more abuse to cascade through the culture. Consider this for a moment; The reason the girls were not 'believed' to start with was because the 'authorities' saw them as low lifes. One girl in the Rochdale abuse scandal explains in a radio interview how she was described by social workers as a prostitute who had made a life style choice. This attitude was clearly part of the fog in the Oxford case too. So how do the authorities miss the signs that serious abuse is going on? Clearly because they are abused people playing an abusive authoritarian role of making sure that the bad people are controlled. So in their psyche they can't distinguish between an abuser and an abused. Those dirty, uneducated, unpleasant and rather smelly girls are clearly abusive individuals who can't be bothered to wash, chose to take drugs and will happily sell their bodies for profit. I guess it is a bit like the unemployed in this country - they are lazy and choose to doss around and get a living for free from the state. The mindset goes on to say ... whilst we, the responsible and hard working individuals, put ourselves out to 'earn' a living. And there is the abuse in our culture. We actually think we are better than them. It follows that we are entitled to more wealth and luxury. That is why we, the rich, can see them, the poor, as getting something for nothing whilst we rob them blind from our moral high ground. Anyone who thinks poor unemployed people are getting something for nothing should do what their criticism implies and take advantage of the situation. They clearly don't like working and are jealous of the unemployed so why don't they just give up their job and become unemployed thereby making their lives far more satisfactory. The contradiction is clear. They don't do it because they wouldn't like it. So why, exactly, are they complaining and criticising people who they are ultimately abusing. But it IS our cultural paradigm.

God gives you freedom and you must choose to love and obey him. Good God! It's an oxymoron.

"Be good or I will do bad things to you." Eyes dart from left to right - So you mean "I" have to be good or "you" will be bad. So that is your justification for being bad. Have we got a chicken egg sort of situation here? Samuel Butler once proposed that the hen is only an egg's way of making another egg. Richard Dawkins comes to mind with The Selfish Gene whereby the concept of the gene as being the thing that is surviving rather than the species turned conventional ideas in biology upside-down. We need the same sort of revolution in the world of morality and how we understand our culture.

I also notice in the news, the British news, that politicians are very concerned at the moment that 'the public' don't trust them. I noticed that the emphasis is on regaining the trust of the public and notably not on BEING more trustworthy. Well how could they possibly grasp the real issue when they have been abused by this culture and are in the process of continuing the abuse?

Enough is enough.

Dead sharks don't talk.

The first thing I have to do today is write. I decided that a long time ago; that I should write something when I wake up. I can't remember who said it but somebody did. I was cleaning my teeth this morning and thinking of saying that the good thing about brain cancer is that your brain is getting bigger. Imagine that; A disease where you are getting cleverer all the time. I know it is nonsense but my brain has to test out all these theories. I was listening to Damien Hirst on Desert Island Disks this morning and he said something about his work entitled "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living". I had a weird thought the other day. I was specifically trying to imagine what the world would be doing, and specifically my daughter, if I died during an operation to remove my Gall Bladder. It was not the usual fictionalising of the scenario. It was tangibly different. It was genuinely imagining how the world was without me. The more I think on this the more profound it seems. But then my insights into life and people often seem profound. This would be so difficult to try to explain. But I am going to try.

So there is this world full of dynamics - there finished. That is what it feels like. The minute I try to explain it it seems to evaporate.

When I was younger... - What a decidedly obvious and ludicrous thing to say. People say it all the time. It is like when people in shops ask if they can help you and you start telling them about a problem you have and they suddenly realise you are not regurgitating the normal response but are actually engaging them in reality. I do it all the time. It is my way of both suggesting they stop running on the plastic automatic of our culture and of inviting them to think about the uniqueness of their own life and mine. Anyway - when I was younger is stupid because you were hardly likely to have been the same age or older before. But when I was younger I did have what I regard as a profound thought. There were two people and they had a child and another and another and then they had one that was different, one that was profoundly different... it was me. The point about that idea is that being 'me' has always intrigued me. Why am 'I' looking out of these eyes. Why can I see everyone else but I am 'inside' of me. But this is because being human is a thing - a phenomenon - an emergent experience from a complex system. Each one of us (presumably) has the same intangible and weird experience of the difference between being the 'me' that is us and everyone else. Once you get your head round that, so to speak, it does not seem off the trajectory to consider what it is like without you there. What is actually going on when you are not there. How do people feel who took you for granted? It is the same idea of being at your own funeral. But whereas in life you can, and some do - and some psychopathic, or sociopathic to be more pc, gits don't - imagine, or even empathetically simulate, the experience of people around you and particularly, or possibly by some people's definition specifically, the people you love it seems a dependent corollary that you can imagine, or empathise, with how they feel when you are not there. I guess it is becoming clear how difficult it can be for me to explain the ideas I have. I could start with something like emergent behaviour of complex systems and explain that in detail. Some have done it before. It is not my idea. It is a conceptual metaphor or descriptive analogy of a relationship and phenomenon. The idea being that the behaviour of a complex system 'happens' and cannot be predicted by 'knowing' how the system works. Well it needs a little more explanation than that. The thing is (roughly) that starting with Newtonian science we think we can 'understand' the world by the paradigms of 'cause and effect' and 'reductionism'. It is a bit like building a steam engine. Each bit does something that cause something else to happen. Each caused action causes another and by understanding how all the 'reduced' interactions work you can work out how the whole system will behave. There is one small problem with that - it doesn't seem to work in all cases. Whether the problem is in the universe or our limited simulations of reality in our 'brains' is neither here nor there for this discussion but it remains true that some things happen that are unpredictable. This is more than the mistake 'we' have been making for years of thinking that there are things we don't understand because they are too complicated. Chaos theory adequately explains how some things are 'unpredictable' using the conventional paradigms. I could explain all that and then, from there and using those ideas and 'paradigms', explain the next step. But it all seems too much to be dealing with at the moment of trying to explain what I am thinking. So, going back to where I was, the idea of 'being there' after you are dead watching and 'knowing' how it is for people you love when you are dead is a weird and differnt thing from the norm. But I was indulging in it the other day to try to understand how it is for my daughter. Because if there were anything I could do now which would support her when I am not there to do it then I would like to be in a position to do that. Some people think it is down to money and so long as they provide materially for their loved ones that that is all that is needed. They are materialistic and it doesn't make sense to me. I am in danger of rambling now but then that is what I do so live with it. That was decidedly aggressive - Sorry about that.

So I am angry with Damien Hirst for making so much money and leaving me with none.

Nobody's listening.

Yet again I wake up tired and with a headache as if I have a fever. I want to sleep but my thoughts and physical condition prevent it. I am in pain, exhausted and have a desperate sense that the abuse will continue and there is nothing I can do about it. I turn on the radio just to fill my brain with arbitrary noise to distract me from my own thoughts which are clearly fruitless. The radio is full of junk. Humanity is blithely meandering its way through the malaise that is the substance of existence. Melvyn Bragg is discussing cosmic rays with some experts in the field. Melvyn Bragg has a series on Radio 4 called 'In Our Time' where a range of fascinating subjects are discussed and elucidated by Melvyn and usually three academic experts in the relevant field. This is a rare and delightful deviation from the normal unconscious blather that spews out of the Radio 4 speakers. Sometimes I wish there were a text stream of the content of the programs; a transcription of the exact verbal content. I wish this because I hear so much contradictory and irrational content coming from people who appear to think they are making sense that I would love to illustrate how what they are saying is so clearly wrong and most often by the speaker's own definition. But no one is listening. No one is listening to me and ironically no one is listening to the radio. They may be hearing the content but they are not listening. There is a difference between hearing and listening and the words can be looked up in a dictionary but in this instance I am highlighting the difference between being aware of the sound emanating from the radio and being aware of the ideas being communicated.

Insidious Poison in Blood and Culture.

It is really difficult for me to hold it all together. This blog is, on the one hand, a random attempt to spew out the disconnected thoughts and feelings that pervade my conscious mind and on the other hand is an attempt to make sense of the chaos and confusion and to bring some coherence to the issues that matter to me. It fails on both accounts.

So first I will report on the disconnected and disturbing thoughts I have been having today. I am exhausted and that makes it difficult and the thoughts cascade sometimes like a torrential white water rapid. This means that to sum it up in a few sentences is all but impossible. I did not get through the day without falling asleep for several hours and this is because my body is behaving like an exhausted body whilst I have 'done' virtually nothing. I put this down to the biochemistry and the balance of all things that effectively simulates the same state of affairs as a body that is exhausted. Well how funny is that if I am not in a life that has had at least the last ten years of disproportionate distress. But I wake up in the morning and believe myself to be on the edge of homeless and with no resources to protect myself from the deprivation that will ensue. The more I have everything stripped away from me including facilities and equipment, time and shelter I become more exhausted, less focused, more shabby, less fit, more dirty, less happy, more anxious, less well and the net result is a hopeless destitute. From that place there is very little hope of recovery. I am frightened and angry. But I still have to struggle along with the bits and pieces of a day in my life. As the day moves on I know that I am actually ill. I know that whatever it is that the medical profession is unable to avoid diagnosing much longer has been alive and well in me for at least ten years. Five years ago I had a number of occasions where I nearly collapsed but no one wanted to take any notice. But my blood is poisonous. I am hoping that if the medical people remove an offending part like my gall bladder that suddenly I will feel ten years younger. That suddenly I will find a 2 mile walk invigorates me instead of wasting me for three days. That when I decide to do three things I just do one after the other instead of collapsing after the first one and having to plan the next task for the next day. Maybe I will be able to sit at the keyboard and type without it being exhausting - I used to do that without thinking in the past. It is this 'hope' that reminds me I am not well. But I also suffer from the view that no one 'out there' can even believe me. I am just criticised for being lazy or squandering time. I am categorised as something less than human that deserves what it gets. I feel the intense prejudice in the culture. I am so distressed that all the 'nice' people I know actually inhibit my ability to say what it is like for me because they don't want to feel guilty. I am ostracised because I am in emotional pain. And I see this as a collapsing culture. I see little or no hope. I see the holocaust happening all over again. It is just that this time they are working hard to hide the mechanisms even from themselves.

And I could go on. But it will have to do to say that I am seriously distressed and it is not without cause.

And then there are wider issues like making Freedom of Information requests in an attempt to assist the 'governing powers' to achieve their objectives of openness and transparency. How is that for a diplomatic approach? The odd paradox is that the corrupt system wants to employ secrecy to maintain power but the unavoidable conclusions are that openness is necessary for good governance. So they are obliged to 'pretend' to want openness whilst every fibre of the institutional body is straining against it. I came across a web site the other day called Alaveteli (http://www.alaveteli.org/) which attempts to coordinate Freedom of Information requests such that the requester has a little more influence and possible success because of the backup of the Alaveteli organisation and community and the information is more readily available to more people because it is coordinated through the website. If you need to know something that you have a right to know from 'our' government this site is worth a visit because it may be a good place to get assistance and leverage.

I was also trawling TED in my despondent mood in the hope of finding something uplifting or inspiring and I came across a talk by one Bryan Stevenson. His talk has had nearly one million views and it is said to be the talk with the longest standing ovation in TED history. Bryan Stevenson is an American lawyer (or would that be an attorney?) and "is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination in the criminal justice system." His talk was not immediately stunning but it was insightful and substantial. He has the most remarkable way of finding a positive way of talking about some very unpalatable facts. Very often people are polarised to be conformists or opponents of the system. It is often hard to raise the opposing view to the establishment but Bryan Stevenson manages to talk about the injustice in the American justice system in a language which is possibly acceptable to the 'justice' system itself. I always fear a Judas roll when I hear people framing the argument in the paradigms of the oppressor but if it works I guess one has to go along with it at least until it fails. But it did strike me as interesting that 1 in 3 black American males have been incarcerated at some point in their lives. Anyway here is a TED talk worth listening to...

Pain, DWP, Atos and ukcolumn

So now is the morning.  I get up and my back aches and my stomach feels bloated.  I get coffee and take pain killers and things evolve and I feel as if I need to go to the loo.  My lower back is aching and threatening to hurt and the top of my legs at the front are stinging and aching.  So I go to the loo and my stools are like a mixture between sheep and rabbit poop.  Lots of fairly solid bits.  So how come I spend years with deteriorating poops getting softer and then suddenly this.  And although it is a slightly taboo topic I wonder why it is taboo.  Doctors know these things can be significant but we are not allowed to talk about them; It does rather brush things under the carpet.

And then, as I sit here and play Go I feel slightly shaky and quite worn out, I wonder what life is like.  I have nothing to do.  I don't know what to do.  I am browsing old photos from a software convention that I attended as the 'official' photographer some 10 years ago.  Hundreds of enthusiastic software developers' faces and I look at them and wonder what life is like for them.  What are they doing now?  I recall how I felt all those years ago and how rushing around for three days attending talks, taking hundreds of photos, socialising in the evenings and consuming large quantities of alcohol was all done with energy and enthusiasm to spare.  I had ridden over 100 miles to the conference on my motorbike and returned to edit and organise all the photos to put them up on the internet.  All this was done with ease.  But as I sit here and write this diary whilst resting both arms on the table I find that if I need to take the weight of my body with my back in order to lift my arm to hold the mouse to edit a mistake I am tempted to leave it until later because it is a significant effort.

I am not well.  There are 90 year olds who have more energy than me.  I am only 56.  But the significant thing for me is that I know this level of exhaustion is not right for me at the moment.  I don't mind getting old and worn out but I do object to feeling far worse than I might reasonably expect.  And just to put all this in perspective I am devastatingly broke.  It strikes me as interesting that when I mention this other 'taboo' subject people have a strange way of interpreting what is meant by 'broke'.  I know I have interpreted broke as meaning different things at different times in my life.  So how do I simply explain what my financial situation is?  And, perhaps more importantly, how do I convey the incredible negativity of it and the destructive power of my situation.

I look at these revolutions and collapsing economies around the world and although I regard myself as relatively lucky at the moment they are very close to how it is for me.  When I make references to the Holocaust people seem to think I am being extreme and exaggerating.  But for me, although it is an exaggeration, it is not so much of one that it is unreasonable.  There are thousands of people that understand we are doing very similar things in this country right now.  For the record and as supporting evidence there is the frightening case of the DWP and Atos Healthcare.  Currently there is a call for them to be investigated for corporate manslaughter and crimes against humanity.  One set of evidence is the rise of people on sick benefit who have died.  In 2010 310 people who were on sick benefit died.  That might be regarded as the baseline or the norm.  When the DWP introduced their 'medical examinations' carried out by the IT company Atos, masquerading as a healthcare company, in 2011 the death rate rose sharply.  In the first nine months of 2011 10,600 people who were on sick benefit died.  Many people who are involved in this situation are very clear that this is the result of intimidation, stress, and hardship imposed by the DWP.  A very moving illustration of the utter inhumanity and ridiculousness of this scheme is well represented in the image below from Mike Silver's blog.

When you are confronted with the insanity of what is going on it comes as a profound shock and then a frightening realisation that you wouldn't have believed it.  What is frightening is that you know other people simply will not believe it if you tell them.  You begin to understand how the illusion is maintained.  So which way do you turn?  Who can you tell when the very people who are in a position of influence are the very people whose focus of interpretation is on defending the perpetrators of the crime.  You begin to realise how the holocaust happened.  You start to see that the people who make the most noise about how the holocaust was an unacceptable and intolerable crime against humanity are the very people who are enabling it to happen all over again.

Someone once told me that they didn't trust sentimental people.  I wondered about this for many years but over time I certainly began to understand at least 'a' reason for not trusting sentimental people.  It is similar to people who deny something a bit too much.  The suspicion rises that perhaps they have a reason to be denying it.  It seems to me a bit psychological.  It seems a bit Freudian.  They cannot accept that part in them that is 'like' the undesirable attributes of the oppressor.  They actively 'hide' it from themselves and become over emotional and sentimental about the devastation and pain.  But what do these people actually 'do' about this subject that appears to distress them so much?  Very often they do nothing but continue to soak up the opulent substance of their current environment.  They are materially comfortable and psychologically secure and they cling to it compulsively.  To fend off guilt they go to church and give a pittance to charities (who are too often simply offering the service in the style of 'selling indulgences' - that issue that was central to the protestant movement led by Martin Luther in 1517 - for their own benefit).  What they don't do is face the terrible truth.  They don't concern their conscious mind with the evident paradox.  They don't object to the bits of insanity around them.  Why not?  Because to object to these small bits of cruelty and irrationality would disrupt their comfort and would appear to make no difference to the larger picture.  There seems no point in making an issue of things.  And so they carry on.  It is the very same reason why all this shock and horror at the Jimmy Savile affair will do nothing to stop abuse in our culture.  All it will achieve is to brush it further under the carpet and to make it harder to detect.

I cannot write more at the moment because I am in pain and exhausted but I will continue to put these incomplete missives up on the internet in the hope that eventually I will be able to coordinate it all.  In the mean time please set up a standing order to pay me £1 (or $1 if you are a parochial American) a month (If you are serious you can contact me via Toxic Drums contact page :).  It would only take a thousand or so people doing that to afford me a way to live and look after my daughter.  Then, maybe, I would start to get better and get stronger and be able to do something about the terrible situation that is rapidly evolving in this country.  You could also take a look at the ukcolumn which is a very informative organisation pursuing real insight and justice.

Babies in Pork Stew.

How could I possibly describe my world just now?  I am lying in bed listening to Radio 4.  I am in pain.  Last night whilst cooking dinner my back gave way.

That is as far as I got on Saturday morning.  After that I couldn't move and 36 hours later I have managed to get out of bed and sit at this desk.  On Friday evening after my back had given way I struggled upstairs, ate the dinner I had cooked, and went to bed.  I felt dreadful and my back was extremely painful.  In the morning, hoping it was improved, I got up, went down (two flights of stairs) collected a bottle of water (to take painkillers with) and a coffee and headed back up to my attic room.  I sat down at my desk, began to write a blog, and 30 minutes later I simply couldn't get out of the chair and into the bed.  Eventually, and with some help, I got into bed and four hours later called the doctor.  Well the NHS has funny ways of working and four hours after that two dizzy nurses turned up with more aches and pains between them than you could count.  But they covered the NHS arse by assuring themselves that I wasn't bleeding out of any orifice and no limbs had dropped off, advised me to take lots of pain killers and to phone my doctor on Monday.  That was decidedly unsatisfactory.  Several hours later I wondered if I should phone again.

Having spent the night in pain I managed, at about midday today (Sunday), to crawl out of bed and go to the loo.  I decided to challenge myself, partly out of boredom and partly to 'exercise' my back, and to head off downstairs to make a mug of coffee.  I have just achieved that and decided to finish this blog.

My suspicion is that I ate some pastry on Friday afternoon round at C's place.  I think my body, partly due to a bunged up malfunctioning gall bladder, adversely reacts to pastry.  This has been a growing suspicion and as far as I recall I had eaten pastry the night before I was taken to hospital in an ambulance.  Although this time I got severe pain in my lower back I can feel that it is related to my guts and something that is not right in there.  But maybe it will be understood one day and maybe not.  And maybe it will be resolved one day... and maybe not.  But as I sit here now I 'can' sit here but I feel ill and am quite uncomfortable.  So I have to make this short so as not to overdo my first little stint at being 'up'.

But there have been one or two things in the news worth mentioning.  The first being the Pope.  There seems to be quite a concern over the issue of the Pope resigning.  So far I have not heard anyone suggesting that it is fundamentally wrong and clearly indicative of the hypocrisy of the church.  There seems to be a lot of sympathy for the dear old chap.  Even Sinéad O'Connor apparently said something about the old man not looking too well and that he shouldn't be made to carry on working.  But I have a problem with this.  It brings to mind a song by the Rolling Stones (one of my favourites as it happens) called Sympathy for the Devil - which you can watch live here...



I happen to know a lot about Roman Catholicism and I am not, in their terms, a Satanist or anything weird like that.  But what I am is a rational and thinking person.  What I am is someone who understands the profundity of Christianity.  It is well known that the line of Popes from Peter to Benedict XVI has not been without controversy and corruption.  I am quite happy to accept that many Popes 'want' to do good and even try to do good.  But I am not willing to accept that they 'are' good by the simple fact of being Pope.  There are one or two small points which are clues that something is profoundly wrong with the Roman Catholic church and the Pope himself.  Jesus Christ, the man they elevate to a God, was born in a stable (for good reason) and died on a cross (for good reason) and in between times he was quite clear in his views on the elaborate symbols of hierarchy of the Jews.  Of the scribes and Pharisees he complained "But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues." and goes on (as God remember) to say "For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness." (All from Mathew 23 if you want the reference.)  I don't think you can get more specific than that.  The wealth of the Vatican and the Pope are abhorrent to their own God.  And, since the Pope claims (by the very role of pope let alone the individual man) to believe in this Christian God then it is unacceptable to live in such wealth and opulence.  I understand the arguments about preserving the teachings of Christ but if you have to counter the teachings in order to preserve them then the evidence is that you don't actually believe they are true because you think they wouldn't survive if you actually acted on them.  And, since the Pope is designated by God to be his representative on earth, how come the 'man' Joseph Ratzinger gets to override God's decision.  It just ain't Catholic.  I'm sure Jesus would have liked to have retired at age 32.

I don't object to the old man Joseph Ratzinger wanting to retire.  But it totally undermines the 'reality' of Catholicism.  It exposes it as a fantasy performance from which you can retire.  What I find bizarre is I like some of what I see of the man.  He has written some very thoughtful philosophical stuff.  Some of his expressed ideas are, in my opinion, brilliant insights into humanity and our perception.  But he is/was the Pope.  Of course the likely explanation for this feigned "can't cope" retirement is likely to surface at some point in the near future.  This is one thing that is good about the information revolution (evolution) and one reason 'they' (any hierarchical dominators) are so afraid of it.  Unfortunately I was not quick enough to make this point.  The first thing I thought when I heard of his retirement was "I wonder why?" and fully expected some devious machinations to surface.  I wondered if there might be some mafia involvement and some blackmail.  Well lo and behold if there are not significant rumours already.  It is being suggested that the private papers allegedly stolen by the butler, Paolo Gabriele, that contained "papal correspondence that depicted the Vatican as a seething hotbed of intrigue and infighting" may also contain information about factions "united by sexual orientation" and blackmail or "external influence" by laymen.

So it seems the Pope, given our understanding of human history, is as likely as not to be resigning for reasons, as yet, undisclosed.  What is that I hear in the wings? "False witness!"

But not to worry because there is one nice Evangelical Priest in Germany who wants to help the poor.  He has this idea that it would be silly to waste all the horsemeat tainted beef products as there are so many poor people who could eat it.  This is exactly what I worry about in our declining culture.  Lots of people (including this priest) cannot see the inherent evil in their "I'm so good" ideas.  Of course it is a good idea to give food to another human if they have none and are hungry.  But to create poverty so that you can massage your own self image by bestowing the crumbs from your table on them is heinous whether done in ignorance or by intent.  It won't be long now before this 'oh so kind' culture of ours will be taking the satirical ideas of Jonathan Swift in his "A Modest Proposal" seriously.  The idea being to reduce the burden of the poor by feeding them their own children.  "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ... "

Of course the next thing I am waiting for is for them to find human DNA in the pork stew!  Remember - You heard it here first!

Patty-Cake Cats & Gastroscopy

This is a visually altered and enhanced image of the inside of my stomach.

Earlier today I had to go to the hospital to have a gastroscopy.  Well strictly speaking I had an oesophagogastroduodenoscopy but gastroscopy is easier to say.  A gastroscopy is a procedure performed with an endoscope inserted into your stomach via your oesophagus (more commonly called your throat) and possibly beyond.  The endoscope is a medical instrument used to examine the interior of a hollow organ in the body and is usually a long flexible tube containing optical fibres to supply illumination, a tube to supply air (to inflate the organ) and instrumentation to relay video images.  There is also often a spare tube to insert other instruments like snippers to cut bits out for biopsies or culture samples.

Not a pleasant experience.  You can be sedated for the procedure but this carries its own additional risks and leaves you unfit to do anything for 24 hours.  In my case I have no one to get me home so I opted to simply have the back of my throat numbed with a very nasty tasting spray.  Having someone push a rather large and not so very flexible rubber hose down your throat and then guggling about for 15 minutes is decidedly uncomfortable and quite gruesome.  The sensation of having your stomach blown up is pretty weird too.  I suspect that if you ever have to have a gastroscopy the idea is to only have one because after you know what to expect I think it is probably even worse.  But, if you are reading this because you are going to have one and want to know what it is like all I can say is it is quite tolerable but not nice.  I think the worst of it is the idea of what is going on.  At least that is the worst of it for me.  They did warn me that I might have a sore throat for a day or two but when the numbing spray wore off after about 45 minutes there was no soreness at all.  I drove home and have been perfectly fine since.

But since this is a particularly horrible subject I decided some light entertainment was required and so here is the latest Patty-cake cats video for your entertainment.


Thank you and good night.