Morpheus

2010-07-22T00:10:00.000+01:00

Long ago... way before kids, me and Donna went on a camping trip with the guy in the next room, Simon. He drove trucks, delivered animal feed to small, remote farms on Dartmoor. We hung out together a lot and at the time I'd have called him my firmest friend. So... packing an ancient tent into an equally ancient Ford Cortina we headed off to Cornwall. Maybe three hours from home...

First full day down there I take everyone to a place I knew as a kid. The beach, Mawgan Porth, just below the airbase of RAF St. Mawgan from where the Nimrods would hunt the Atlantic for Russian subs. The cold war was in full swing at the time and these huge planes would haul themselves off over the beach every evening heading for their vigil over the North Atlantic. A beautiful bit of coastline... typically Cornish, and in the last days of summer with the first hint of Autumn in the air, it was a desolate and lonely place.

I regaled Donna & Simon with my memories of high summer, childhood visits to this, by now, almost mythical beach, as the three of us hunted the lanes and farm tracks for those little for sale signs "Free Range Eggs", "Goats Milk"... you know the kind. We stocked up on local food and headed for the sands.

Sand grains scudded past my bare feet, hurried along by a very brisk wind, as we looked out to sea. Impossibly blue, sand & waves & scents & textures that I can still recall so vividly. We had muesli, local organic goat's milk and local organic honey... plastic bowls & the odd errant sand grain thrown in. The waves looked very surfable. I'd been surfing here years ago & the first of the Autumnal winds meant the waves were running to 8ft or so... tempting!

We had no surfboards with us, but me and Simon had a set of fins each. Long, black flexible fins. Made for scuba diving... I'd seen body surfing before, pick a wave and stiffen your body, fin hard with the swell and wait for that magical moment when the wave takes over and you skim towards the shore. Sounded like a plan!

We left Donna on the beach, I glanced back and saw her tidying the bowls & straightening the blanket. She looked up, smiled a smile that is still imprinted on my memory and waved. Me & Simon ran into the water... the waves even in the shallows swept in like steps. Ankle deep one second, knee deep the next. We put on our fins and dived seawards, arms tight to our sides. Out past the white water, where the sea suddenly cools and the swells are long and full. We turn, face to the shore and wait for the moment. Just before it breaks, timing is everything!

I feel the wave building behind me, slow, oily dark... the first hint of fear. I hear the sound of the white water at it's crest as I fin hard for the shore. To late! It's breaking already! What feels like a thousand tons of ice cold, hard water slams into my back, pushing me under. Tumbling, disorientated as the daylight fades and it goes dark. I hit bottom hard. Gravel, sharp stones, sand... dragged mercilessly across the sea bed by the undertow.

I right myself, feet down, to kick off the bottom for the surface. Painfully aware I had no time to take a lungful of air before I went under I feel the ache in my chest and my muscles start to complain from oxygen deprivation. Arrow straight I push for the dim daylight above. Kicking hard I realise one fin has been ripped off my feet. What to do? Kicking with only one fin is so lopsided, so asymmetrical as to make the remaining fin useless. I decide to kick the last one off. I realise my mistake as soon as i try swimming upwards unaided. Naked in the water i'm suddenly slow, too bloody slow. The surface so far off...

My lungs bursting I break into the air, take a huge, groaning gasp... But the relief is momentary. Out of the corner of my eye I spot the next wave towering 8 maybe 9 feet above my head.Foaming white and milliseconds away from hitting me. I glance to shore... surely we didn't swim that far out! Then it hits me again. The breaker that started out off the Grand Banks, unchecked across thousands of miles of ocean, driven for days by strong, steady winds nails me to the sea floor once again. Drags me back, out to sea across shingle and boulders, dark, cold... strangely quiet.

It hurt! Not just the oxygen dep, not just my muscles complaining but the sea bed is so dark, sharp, rough. I get dragged maybe 50yds out to sea every time this happens. I have no idea how many times I managed to get to the surface seconds before the next wave shoved me back down to that cold, dark world of fear and pain. Ten? Twenty? Maybe more... It couldn't go on like this. It started to dawn on me there was only one way today was going to end. And I wished it would hurry the fuck up!

There came a point where the fear of death outweighed the hurt & the struggle. The future i would never know, the people I loved I knew i'd never see again. Donna sat on the beach waiting... But I couldn't face any more. I knew I was beaten. I knew the ocean had won. My last glimpse of the sky, blue, so beautifully blue. The sound of the last wave... I almost welcomed it's arrival. Pushing me downwards, back into the dark.

I relaxed... my muscles glowed as I stopped fighting. Limp as a rag doll I let the sea do what it would with me. Almost curious. Would it hurt? What would that bolt of cold, hard sea water feel like as it entered my lungs? I was surprised to find myself at peace. Acceptance. Acceptance of my mistakes and my final end. Comfy... Warm... and so achingly sad!

Until...

One last thought hit me! My epitaph! Not carved in stone in some crow haunted cemetery, but in the thoughts of the people I loved. How would the tale be told? They'd know nothing of my last, painful, lonely struggle. The last they saw of me was wiping organic honey and organic goats milk off my chin! My last meal would be the penultimate chapter. But what a meal! A tree huggers, sandal wearing, hippy, vegan meal. Bloody muesli! With bloody goats milk and honey! OMFG no way! I'm NOT going to have that as the defining moment at the end of my life! Raw buffalo flesh ripped out with my teeth maybe! A 20lb bass caught with my bare hands and cooked over an open fire would be fine! But organic goats milk! For fuck sake! No!

That, strangely, was the thought that saved me. Not the fear of death, i would have welcomed death at that point with immense gratitude. Never seeing Donna again was a huge part of the sadness that went along with the calm, eerie warmth I felt, but it wasn't the catalyst for my last, desperate fight to the surface. Not experiencing the next 60 years i'd already got used to. It was that damn last meal!

I hauled myself off the bottom. Struck out for the dim vestige of daylight seeping down through maybe 60ft of boiling, seething water. Surface! Breath! Oh fuck that felt good! Then everything started hurting again. The pain, the fear all flooded back. I turned 90 degrees and managed two strokes towards the headland. The beach now an unattainable distance away my only hope was reaching that last promontory of rock before I was swept out into the bay proper. Another wave knocked the breath out of me as back down I went. This time anger, a rage filled me. Energy I had no idea I had, red, angry... I hit bottom, crouched and lunged back upwards. This time three strokes before the next wave. The rocks now closer but would I manage to reach them before I was dragged out past their jagged, welcoming, longed for solidity.

Now within maybe 20ft of them I saw Simon standing, looking at me as I broke surface once again... I waved, tried to scream for help, cut short by the next wave my scream was was silenced by the sea as it once again swamped me. Next glimpse is of Simon. Waving arms, shaking his head in an unmistakable "No!". He had blood all down his chest, arms and legs. What the hell had happened to him? Either way, knew he wasn't going to leap in and rescue me. Didn't blame him... Never have.

The first solid object apart from sea floor brushed my fingertips. The rocks! Next time up I grabbed onto them with both hands. The joy of touching solid land short lived as the next wave dragged me off, barnacles & crags ripping my skin. Again I reached out with both hands and managed to get my knees wedged hard against them. Bright, white searing pain as the shells of limpets dug into my skin. The wave drained away. Thousands of gallons of water tried to prise me off but I clung on. Free of the water at last I climbed upwards a few feet. Another wave on it's way... I strained upwards for a better handhold... It's then I felt Simon's hand grasp mine and pull me upwards.

We hugged... Neither of us could talk... Breathing was far more important. My legs gave way. We both sat there, blood seeping from cuts and scratches and mixing with the seawater, coating us in livid red.

"I couldn't get back in Les... Couldn't.. I heard you shout... but i'd have never got out again!"

I hugged him again...

"I know Si, I know... Don't worry man. I know..."

If you look at the picture you'll see a telegraph pole bottom right. From the top of that pole track right along the green band of seaweed until you see a white dot. That white dot is at the base of the rock we climbed out on. You can see the climb we had to do to get back up off the headland and down onto the beach. Both of us naked, our trunks and fins long gone, covered in blood, we somehow managed to get through the brambles, stinging nettles and mud. We must have looked a mess when we eventually made it back...

... a crowd had gathered on the beach, all looking silently out to sea. We'd have to get through them to find Donna. Wondering what was happening we asked the first few people at the back of the crowd. "What you all looking at?"

"Couple of guys caught in the riptide... both drowned... Oh!"

Go See Religulous!

2009-01-18T21:37:00.003Z

Religulous by Bill Maher is a brilliant, laugh out loud, hard hitting swipe at religiosity around the world. If it's not showing where you live search one of the torrent sites (Pirate Bay for example) and watch it.

His conclusion, that we, as a species, have to grow up or die is so very important to get across to people. And he's right again that time is short if we are to survive this dangerous mix of bronze age myth and modern warfare / weaponry that surround us now.

This film needs to be shown annually in every school on the planet, with "The God Delusion" handed out as the end credits roll.

We laughed our tits off, we gasped at some of the rank stupidity of the theists, we cheered at the end... and we just have to go to that religious disney land in Florida SOON!

Sour Creek Dome

2009-01-03T12:03:00.001Z

If you take a look at the unfiltered plot of the continued uplift of the Sour Creek Dome here... (third graph down) you can see for the very last section a new line emerging. The most recent "cloud" of data points are marked in red. See the highest one? If you look to it's left you can see a trail of points going back into the main data set.

The Sour Creek Dome is quite a large area... and by the amount of data points appearing with each update it's obvious they are sampling at more than one location. But from the graph it looks like that one datum point on the dome has very recently broken out of the trend, risen above the background noise, and is uplifting much quicker than the rest of the dome.

I think someone should perhaps home in on this single datum point and "cast a net" around it so we can see what's happening with greater resolution. More pixels if you like. It looks to me like most of the dome is slowing perhaps with just a single point continuing the trend of the past few years. Either way, more resolution please? Has anyone go a link that plots these datum points on the dome with separate graphs for each one?

The Yellowstone Supervolcano

2009-01-02T20:56:00.003Z

Just a quick heads up for something I've been watching for a couple of days. Yellowstone National Park in the US (home of "Old Faithful") is actually the caldera of a massive volcano. Mount St. Helens (1980) was a damp squib in comparison. St. Helens prduced 0.3 cubic km of rock and ash, the Huckleberry Ridge eruption of Yellowstone (2 million years ago) produced 2500 cubic km of rock and ash!

Here's a quick summary of events a map showing where the quakes are happening... live output from local seismographs...

If you look at Yellowstone Lake recorder from a few days ago and that of the same recorder currently you can see the difference. These pages of data from the recorders can be refreshed to update them in real time.

I don't know if you saw the BBC's dramatised documentary "Supervolcano" but here's a page about the effects and previous eruptions of Yellowstone.

Looks like the swarm is marching northwards towards the Sour Creek dome...

This is a place of recent, continued uplift... (Scroll down to second image)

Here's a plot of the uplift... (Third graph down)

Someone on one of the groups said it was all fluff and hype and that it was mainly wind and dump trucks causing the hectic plot at Yellowstone Lake and that we should...
"Keep an eye on Old Faithful's recorder to see output without the wind making everyone excitable"

Well, if you do that here.. Looks pretty dramatic to me and not much like wind or passing trucks!

Keep your heads down!

To Israel

2008-12-31T05:30:00.002Z

You have to stop the mad fundamentalist settlers stealing land, the wall building stealing land, dividing farms, the checkpoints stopping commerce, splitting communities, the tanks against stone throwing kids, the starvation, the withholding of fuel, medicine, water, electricity... No
wonder your hollow words are not heard.

You haven't got the mindset to do this, otherwise Gaza and the West bank wouldn't be as they are, but if you, and your family, all your people, were forcibly removed from their homelands by a violent invader, all because of words in a work of fiction... wouldn't you fight back? Imagine... just for a few minutes, honestly... put yourself in their place, your homeland stolen,
your family starving and ill, unsanitary conditions, shot at, check points, anger... go on, try it!

And if your body, your life, was the last thing you had to fight with, then wouldn't you use that to protect all that you hold dear? Your kids, your partner, the last remnants of your homeland?

I can't believe all this came from a UK prime minister... Churchill. Sickening. That a so called "holy" book was taken as literal truth so that a mainly European people could invade a part of the middle east that had been permanently occupied since we got out of Africa and displace the people into foul slums, chipped away at, made smaller and smaller until they're bursting at the seams, and then starved and shot at.

Disgusting... absolutely disgusting. And you wonder why they fight back with
outdated rockets and suicide bombers?

Yes, the holocaust was foul, a nauseating chapter in human history. But two wrongs don't make a right. And Israel can't do what it's doing now BECAUSE it still suffers the pain of the Nazi death camps. I'm NOT an anti Semite... i'm an atheist / humanist and what you are doing is plain wrong! I don't hate you because you're a Jew, i hate what you are doing! There's a difference, and if you won't see that difference then it's a choice YOU have made, you choose to hide behind your people's history when you should have LEARNED from your people's history.

Of all the world's people, that it should be the descendants of the survivors of the Holocaust that should Ghetto-ise and murder thousands upon thousands of fellow humans is an outrage. This current pogrom against the Palestinians is no exception. Of all the worlds people i would have thought the Jews would be able to recognise the pain of others and LEARN from the atrocities
of the past.

It's just made you bitter, violent, blinkered... your forefather's suffering and your religion has rendered you blind to the suffering you're causing. As bad as Hitler? Well, ask the starving kid crying for his dead Mother in Gaza this morning as the smoke clears from your fighter jets most recent missile attack runs on residential areas and your ground troops prepare to go in with
tanks and assault rifles against "soft" targets.

Hitler's Blitzkrieg, "Lightning war" in English. It took the form of air assault to soften up the target and then mechanised troops pushing in and through... this is exactly what your armed forces are doing now. The only difference is that the Nazis had armies, air forces, navies to fight
against. Not women, children and desperate civilians formed into rag tag resistance outfits out of date, sparse weaponry. A few rockets and Kalashnikovs against your armed forces.... disgusting.

TALK! This is not a fight, it's a fucking turkey shoot. You should be ashamed of yourselves, as individuals and as a people. If those of your previous generations that didn't make it out of the camps could see what you are doing to these people they would hang their heads in disbelief and
shame.

I do to...for my own species stupidity, and the futileness of "my invisible friend is better than your invisible friend". Stupid, stupid humanity.... when will we ever fucking learn!

Radio 4 "Thought for the Day"

2008-12-30T13:05:00.002Z

Please visit Pledgebank : "Thought for the Day"

"Thought for the Day" is a slot during BBC Radio 4's "Today Programme" in which airtime is handed over to religious commentators to try to interpret world events in the context of their texts and bestow their wisdom upon us all.

The fact that this interruption occurs during the BBC's flagship radio news programme, which is otherwise supposed to apply exacting standards of evidence, makes it totally and utterly incongruous. Not only is "Thought for the Day" on during this programme, but it is given absolute peak time at approximately 7.47am, just as many people are waiting for the 8am headlines and getting ready to leave for work.

In addition, the fact that humanist, non-religious contributors, are excluded from the slot gives the impression the BBC believes morality is the exclusive remit of religious people, which is offensive, unrepresentative and untrue.

As such, "Thought for the Day" is an insult to intelligent listeners. It is high time there was a concerted campaign insisting that it either:

1) accept non-religious contributors (for example A.C. Grayling)

or

2) be removed from The Today Programme's schedule all together

During the week commencing 1st January 2009 I will email the Today Programme to object to Thought for the Day in writing - but only if 100 other people do the same.

Although the Today Programme often passes the TFTD buck to the BBC "Religion & Ethics" unit (a conflation indicative of how they view matters) we will address our mails to where the problem appears: today@bbc.co.uk

Help for a Friend....

2008-08-12T14:50:00.000+01:00

Can YOU help?

This forwarded for a friend..

I am suffering from acute hepatitis and liver failure.

I have been in hospital for over a month now and my doctors are
calling me an anomaly.

About two and a half months ago I started feeling a little 'off
colour'. I put it down to stress (of moving house recently and
starting a new job) and the fact that my partner (with whom I live)
had been feeling a bit poorly over a weekend (minor stomach ailments,
a little bit of diarrhoea) because that's how I had started to feel.

Within a week though I knew that it was a little more than that but I
had just started my new job and wasn't going to take a day off sick if
I could help it.

By the end of the first week, I was losing my appetite and feeling
nauseous and an intense itching had started.

Towards the end of my second week, I had not been eating more than a
few bites of food at a time and had had diarrhoea, vomiting and had
(unnoticed by me) begun to change colour to yellow.

On the Thursday of the second week, my partner bumped into me at a
train station on the way home from work and gave me a kiss. As we
pulled apart, he started looking at me strangely saying that I looked
like I had yellow eyes. Having no mirror, I waited 20 minutes and
checked it out in the mirror at home. Sure enough, I had a very
definite tinge of yellow to my skin and the whites of my eyes were
somewhat worse.

That evening, I was vomiting everything that I was eating/drinking
including water.

The next evening, I went to an NHS walk in centre and they told me
that I was jaundiced and to go home and sleep it off and I would
return to normal colour within 4-6 weeks.

On Monday, after having an entire weekend of no food/water and
vomiting bile, I decided that I had to take a day off work and went to
my doctor to arrange a blood test. (thankfully ignoring the first
doctor's advice of 'going home and sleeping it off')

He examined me and found my liver to be tender to the touch and he put
slight pressure on it and triggered off a gag reflex. I told him to
stop otherwise I would be sick and he proceeded to put a little extra
pressure on it and I threw up on the floor(!)

He told me to leave the surgery immediately and go and admit myself to
the nearest hospital and get myself put on a drip. He prescribed some
piriton (anti itching) and some anti sickness tablets. (My doctors
informed me that had I not admitted myself to hospital, then I would
have died from dehydration/starvation within a week. I am looking at
'multiple organ failure' because my liver, kidneys and gall bladder
are under a huge amount of strain.)

Within hours of being put on the drip I was feeling better and all of
the doctors that I had met until that point told me that had I 'gone
home and slept it off' I would have been dead by the end of the week.
(My symptoms apparently wouldn't have changed much – I would have just
got more tired and more grumpy/irritable which I probably would have
put to the hot weather and then I would have gone to sleep and not
woken up.)

After the first week in hospital in isolation, my appetite was
increasing dramatically and I was feeling a lot better. ( I was on a
standard saline and glucose drip and all of my vitals were around the
normal mark.)

My daily blood test results were fluctuating but the only thing that
had really changed was the INR (the blood clotting) and that was very
slowly returning to normal.

By the end of the second week, I was transferred to the Royal Free
where I was being quite sick. I was on N-Acetyl Cysteine and the
doctors had forgotten to mention that one of the side effects would be
severe nausea.

They have done 2 X-rays, 2 Ultrasounds, 4 CT scans and one Liver
biopsy and they still are no closer to a solution. They want me to
stay as a long term In Patient with no plans for treatment.

I am feeling physically better now and have done since about the end
of the second week in hospital, I am eating lots of different foods
(have been for a couple of 3 course meals in the last week, eaten
entire roast dinners (and desserts) duck, chicken, pork, eggs, dairy,
fish, fruit, drinking around 4 litres of pure water a day plus some
milkshakes and other fruit juices) I have been sick once recently and
that was due to overeating(!) I had had a three course meal and then
decided to continue to eat a huge pot of very acidic fruit.
Unfortunately saw the fruit again which was, to be fair, my own silly
fault. (but oh, it tasted good!!)

My liver no longer feels tender to touch and I cant feel it with my
fingers any more even though my doctors are telling me that its
getting more inflamed. They are saying that some of my blood tests are
very slowly turning for the worse and they want me to stay in hospital
'in case something happens/changes for the worse'

I am still in regular contact with a doctor from the first hospital
that I was at who has taken a personal interest in my case because its
so unique.

I spend all day every day in hospital watching DVDs and reading books.
I eat all of the meals that I am given (and sometimes more) I took
myself off of the drip called N-Acetyl Cysteine because the doctors
said that it wasn't actually doing anything except making me feel
sick)

I am drinking, my bowels are moving freely of their own accord. I no
longer feel any nausea/sickness; don't have diarrhoea, don't feel
lethargic (I feel very energetic some days and most days am to be
found roaming the hospital wearing a night dress and holding a laptop
under my arm in search of entertainment!)

My initial symptoms

* Sickness/vomiting – not even being able to retain sips of water
* Lethargy
* Diarrhoea (very pale stools, cream in colour)
* Intense itching
* Severe lack of appetite
* Very dark urine (looks like coca cola)
* Jaundiced (yellow – bilirubin count average 600)
* Inflamed liver (to 1/3 its size again) tender to touch

What they have done

After a month in hospital – they have tried me on a 6 day course of
steroids and a drip called N-Acetyl Cysteine which lasted for about 5
days neither of which has had an effect.

I was kept in contact isolation for a week because they thought that I
was infectious and then realised that I wasn't. Then I stopped being
sick and have only been sick more recently as a direct side effect of
N-Acetyl Cysteine and over eating.

They did a liver biopsy (Through the jugular) and informed me that
half of my liver cells were dead and the other half were newly
regenerated and at some point in the last 2 months my whole liver had
inexplicable died and began regenerating.

Take my blood sugar levels every 3 hours and only pull arterial blood
for analysis. (ouch!)

(Official names for steroids used: Prednisolone (8 X 40mg tablets)

(Names of all medication consumed in hospital –

Vitamin K (1 X10 mg) for two days

Cholestymmine (1 X g) for three days

Mebclopmnide (3 X 10 mg) for three days

Clinitra (3 X energy supplement drink) for one week

Prednisolone (40 mg) for 3 days

Omepazle (20mg) for 3 days

Calcicle D Fote (3 days)

Aqueous Menthol Cream (as required)

Piriton (As required – no more than every 6 hours)

What has been ruled out

* Malaria
* Hepatitis A,B,C,D,E
* Exotic diseases
* Sexually transmitted disease
* Auto immunity of the liver

My current symptoms

* Jaundiced (bilirubin count around 650-700)
* Dark urine and pale stools. (fluctuate in colour quite
dramatically depending on what I've eaten, but will usually change
overnight)
* Itching

Other information

* I have not been in a position where I have had my drink spiked.
* I do not take any recreational drugs and have never done any.
* I do not/have never smoked.
* I do not take the contraceptive pill.
* I do not drink excessively and my monthly consumption of alcohol
would have to be less than 6 units (2/3 small bottles of cider)
* I am not depressed/suicidal and did not try to commit suicide by
taking paracetamol/aspirin.
* I do not generally take other forms of medication
herbal/prescribed or other. (I can remember the last medication that I
took, - a piriton for the itching before I came to hospital, a nasal
spray to counteract what I thought was the beginning of a cold and an
anti inflammatory (Ibuprofen) to counteract the swelling as a result
of the itching. (All of which were taken AFTER the initial symptoms
had occurred.)
* I do not eat shellfish usually, though I do buy small prawns and
have prawn cocktail jacket potatoes.
* I have not been exposed to anyone with liver disease and there
is no history of it in anywhere in the family.
* Though I travelled to Rio de Janeiro (Brasil) in January, I did
not pick up any exotic diseases and this is not a result of anything
that I have picked up as nothing has shown up in my blood.

n.b Just as an after note – it has been noted by several different
people on different occasions(including nurses and two doctors) that I
appear to get less yellow towards the end of the day: my theory is
that I am drinking and eating so I am pushing things through my system
and the yellow fluctuates.

If you know or have any idea what this is, please please could you let
me know because no one here has a clue!

My doctors are going a little crazy with my case and am now in the
**** hospital in London. I am in a specialist liver ward and
they don't know how to treat me because they don't know that the cause
is.

Please pass this onto anyone who may be able to help me because I cant
be the only person in the world to have this happen to them!

Thank you very much!

Aengus42@googlemail.com

A Brit Abroad! or Van, but not the man...

2008-07-27T06:59:00.001+01:00

I kinda liked the architecture on the east side, Hastings was it? But my SO said it wasn't a good area to lurk about in, looked fine to me, a bit more like home. I said it may all depend on what you actually wanted to do next. I'd planned a few hours study of the Cytochrome / Mesolimbic paradox, and had worked this all out just by looking in a "herbal" cafe, noticing the distinctive litter around the pavements and the surfeit of smiling, busy, working girls.

Hastings seemed to offer a frisson of risk, a selection of pastimes, all within, or maybe a little outside, and i'm sure, right in the middle of, a few grey areas of a whole new country's laws to learn where the buck stops and with whom? That, i was told, was a b& plan. There was a cold beer in the fridge at home, that would have to suffice. "Only one, lets get some more, there's a supermarket over there, What! No beer in supermarkets! Government owned shops only! Sheesh!"

I thought it was just Hastings and the lower east side that had it's drugs and girls controlled by profiteering hoodlums protecting their monopoly with thugs on bikes, but it seems the Canadian government has the booze racket sewn up as their own special cut of the action. In fact, I think i just dissed the Lower East Side, the few mins I was there, it seemed like a free and open, enterprise zone, style place, well, in comparison to the "Booze @ .gov shop 'n' save" (Yeah right!) state licensed price fixed, supply screwed down and outlets all pwned scam the government boys were running. Seems that in Vancouver, a lump of crack and a quick knee trembler are not only cheaper, but easier to come by, in nicer surroundings, and with better, more pleasant service, than buying a bottle of wine is most days. Very odd...

I longed to return to Hastings 'cos everywhere else was so new! It had started to make me feel, erm... rootless, is that a feeling anyone else has had in these new countries? Just a feeling of the whole place being temporary, in a "it'll all be gone next week, replaced with more faceless, modern crap" kinda way. Nothing of any presence, nothing with a bit of a past, everything "shop bought", nothing made by humans.

Gastown was too touristy & kitsch. N.Van was nice though, odd mix of trees, wooden lap built houses, no bricks anywhere... they looked cheap and.. well, again, temporary. Like this...

"We're living in this little wooden house while we build the proper one over there." "Sorry?" ... Erm.. No... not really, it's been tacked together quite well, not many leaks, and it's not for long anyway and the kids can use it as a wendy house afterwards." (OK, exaggerated for effect, but that was the feeling the place gives you.)

And who on earth thought of having a string quartet under every SkyTrain to play a random, surreal, but very pleasant chord as it pulls in / away from / to a station. Nice touch, hell of a job though.

"The British Butcher Shoppe". Got taken in there as a place of wonder, she went, "Well?" I went, "What?" She said "Look!" I said "I bloody am looking, what?" Then I noticed the prices, worked it out into Pounds Sterling and said "I'll be buggered! Atora Suet for damn near five quid! And this is your local shop? Your right, this bloke is obviously having a laugh, i'll have a word, even for a corner shop it's bloody robbery! "No!" She squealed... So i got dragged out of there too, another puzzled bloke behind the counter, and his missus, both looking stunned as I get dragged out saying "Five quid for bleedin' suet! Your having a giraffe mate!"

Well, seems i was taken in there to see all the Brit nosh she could buy to remind her of home, I had only been in Canada for a few hours, looked normal to me, same stuff, different shelves. Once it clicked i realised just how out of place those shelves must have seemed to her, look outside you get Canada, look at shelf you get Co-op, 4 minutes walk from my front door in the UK. And, of course, how much it cost to import Cadbury,s Cream Eggs and stuff, not that we eat them at home, but I s'pose you got to show willing abroad!

Went to see the "Heritage Building" someplece and stopped a couple of old bill cycling past, "Where's the bloody heritage building? I follow the signs, get to here, signs say go past this shed, then on the other side nothing! Then, if you keep walking, signs in the opposite direction... Help!

"That shed, ... (long pause...) Sir, IS the heritage building! It's been there since 1912!

Bugger, upset more Canadians without trying.. To everyone in Vancouver, N.Van... sorry, put it down to me being a foreigner.

The BSE joke at the bus stop on the way to Kitts beach (sp?), Local, very nice lady says "Oh My! Your Australian!" I say, "Nope, English (they seem a little disappointed) But then one perks up, "So, how do you get on with Mad Cow Disease?" "I make "Apocalypse Now" style Huey blades in slo mo noises along with suitable face and say "Doesn't effect me! I'm a helicopter!" and smile waiting for the laugh and a breaking of the ice so we can chat on the way to the beach, but instead the whole damn city goes silent, tumble weed blowing down the street, bus comes, they sit waaaay down the back and eye me suspiciously until i get off, not another word was spoken on quite a busy bus. Till it drives off, as the doors swoosh closed, lots of "Well, He was an odd one Ethel!"

Then there was bloke who asked me for a fag (cigarette) on top of Grouse (thought he was selling something, had a clipboard. He spoke something very Canadian, i didn't get it, but headed off his sales pitch at the pass, I said "There's no point sunshine, I'm British!" Girls collapsed laughing... Chap looks puzzled, shrugs, looks at me like I'm suggesting dropping the border with the US (ie; withering hatred) and walks off. Seems his sales clipboard was just a newspaper, he'd been talking to the girls, asked them for a smoke, they pointed at me... anyway, sorry dude, my fault.

As was getting served REAL fast down by the sea in a burger place, big queues.. I pop outside to smoke, get bored, go back in, get kissed. She says (being a Brit too), "Bugger me sideways Les, your breath tastes of all those old fags you just had in the car park. You got to give them up one of these days, you can't keep it up as much as you do without going down with something really nasty!" Sudden tumble weed moment, exit of many customers, we get served (at arms, and fingertip, length) by the manager i think. So, sorry to Maccy D's too.

Still, would love to go back for a proper explore, now I have the hang of things a bit. Any spare settees, sofas, spare rooms, wendy houses etc. would like an oik and his wench to stay for a few weeks. Promise to be on best behaviour, want to learn to paraglide off of Grouse so you won't hardly see us ;o)

Isolationist US? Yes Please!

2008-07-24T08:41:00.000+01:00

This has been doing the rounds amongst our colonial friends, i can't find out who penned it, but it seems to be a very popular idea. I'll post it in full... there is a version of it here it pops up all over.

Quote...

My Fellow Americans: As you all know, the defeat of the Iraq regime has been completed.

Since congress does not want to spend any more money on this war, our mission in Iraq is complete.

This morning I gave the order for a complete removal of all American forces from Iraq This action will be complete within 30 days. It is now time to begin the reckoning.

Before me, I have two lists. One list contains the names of countries which have stood by our side during the Iraq conflict. This list is short . The United Kingdom , Spain , Bulgaria , Australia , and Poland are some of the countries listed there.

The other list contains every one not on the first list. Most of the world's nations are on that list. My press secretary will be distributing copies of both lists later this evening.

Let me start by saying that effective immediately, foreign aid to those nations on List 2 ceases immediately and indefinitely. The money saved during the first year alone will pretty much pay for the costs of the Iraqi war. THEN EVERY YEAR TH ERE AFTER IT'll GO TO OUR SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM SO IT WONT GO BROKE IN 20 YEARS.

The American people are no longer going to pour money into third world Hell holes and watch those government leaders grow fat on corruption.

Need help with a famine ? Wrestling with an epidemic? Call France .

In the future, together with Congress, I will work to redirect this money toward solving the vexing social problems we still have at home . On that note, a word to terrorist organizations. Screw with us and we will hunt you down and eliminate you and all your friends from the face of the earth.

Thirsting for a gutsy country to terrorize? Try France or maybe China .

I am ordering the immediate severing of diplomatic relations with France , Germany , and Russia . Thanks for all your help, comrades. We are retiring from NATO as well. Bon ne chance, me za mies.

Unquote...

Thought it deserved a reply... see below.

Aid? Are you sure anyone wants US aid any more? Have a read of this;

BEWARE OF AMERICANS BEARING GIFTS

Food aid from the USA is increasingly met with suspicion and scepticism by many, who describe the export of unlabelled genetically modified food to needy nations as 'a dangerous game played with the lives of starving people for political gain'.

More here... http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/2398.htm

This from wikipedia...

Many criticize U.S. Aid in particular for the policy conditionalities that often accompany it. Emergency funds from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, for instance, are linked to a wide range of free-market policy prescriptions that some argue interfere in a country's sovereignty. Policy prescriptions from outsiders can do more harm as they might not fit the local environment. The IMF can be good at helping countries over a short problematic financial period, but for poor countries with long lasting issues it can cause harm. William Easterly, in his book "The White Man's Burden" has argued that if the IMF only gave adjustment loans to countries that can repay it, instead of lending repetitively even if conditions are not met or forgiving debts it would keep its credibility.

In an episode of 20/20, John Stossel showed flaws in the distribution of the foreign aid, and the governments of countries receiving aid.

* Food given as aid often ended up on markets being sold privately
* The government receiving aid often had secret bank accounts in which it hid foreign aid money for private purposes

James Shikwati, a Kenyan economist, has argued that foreign aid causes harm to the recipient nations, specifically because aid is distributed by local politicians, finances the creation of corrupt government bureaucracies, and hollows out the local economy.

In an interview in Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, Shikwati uses the example of food aid delivered to Kenya in the form of a shipment of corn from America. Portions of the corn may be diverted by corrupt politicians to their own tribes, or sold on the black market at prices that undercut local food producers. Similarly, Kenyan recipients of donated Western clothing will not buy clothing from local tailors, putting the tailors out of business.

So it's not always a blessing to be "aided" by the US. But, in spite of this, for 2007, we saw $21.3 billion in foreign aid in total by the US.

But, your military budget for the same year totalled approximately $626.1 billion. You guys seem to invest an awful lot more in killing people than you do in saving them. How many total health schemes, social security packages and investment in infrastructure could $626.1 billion buy?

So if you are thinking of becoming a little more isolationist, how many countries would be very, very relieved that you've stopped your interventionist, christian taliban, pre-emptive warmongering?

Lets take a look at the list of US interventions since WWII.

1946-1949 China Major US army presence of about 100,000 troops, fighting, training and advising local combatants.

1947-1949 Greece US forces wage a 3-year counterinsurgency campaign.

1948 Italy Heavy CIA involvement in national elections.

1948-1954 Philippines Commando operations, "secret" CIA war.

1950-1953 Korea Major forces engaged in war in Korean peninsula.

1953 Iran CIA overthrows government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.

1954 Vietnam Financial and materiel support for colonial French military operations, leads eventually to direct US military involvement.

1954 Guatemala CIA overthrows the government of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman.

1958 Lebanon US marines and army units totaling 14,000 land.

1958 Panama Clashes between US forces in Canal Zone and local citizens.

1959 Haiti Marines land.

1960 Congo CIA-backed overthrow and assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.

1960-1964 Vietnam Gradual introduction of military advisors and special forces.

1961 Cuba CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion.

1962 Cuba Nuclear threat and naval blockade.

1962 Laos CIA-backed military coup.

1963 Ecuador CIA backs military overthrow of President Jose Maria Valesco Ibarra.

1964 Panama Clashes between US forces in Canal Zone and local citizens.

1964 Brazil CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government of Joao Goulart and Gen. Castello Branco takes power.

1965-1975 Vietnam Large commitment of military forces, including air, naval and ground units numbering up to 500,000+ troops. Full-scale war, lasting for ten years.

1965 Indonesia CIA-backed army coup overthrows President Sukarno and brings Gen. Suharto to power.

1965 Congo CIA backed military coup overthrows President Joseph Kasavubu and brings Joseph Mobutu to power.

1965 Dominican Republic 23,000 troops land.

1965-1973 Laos Bombing campaign begin, lasting eight years.

1966 Ghana CIA-backed military coup ousts President Kwame Nkrumah.

1966-1967 Guatemala Extensive counter-insurgency operation.

1969-1975 Cambodia CIA supports military coup against Prince Sihanouk, bringing Lon Nol to power. Intensive bombing for seven years along border with Vietnam.

1970 Oman Counter-insurgency operation, including coordination with Iranian marine invasion.

1971-1973 Laos Invasion by US and South Vietnames forces.

1973 Chile CIA-backed military coup ousts government of President Salvador Allende. Gen. Augusto Pinochet comes to power.

1975 Cambodia Marines land, engage in combat with government forces.

1976-1992 Angola Military and CIA operations.

1980 Iran Special operations units land in Iranian desert. Helicopter malfunction leads to aborting of planned raid.

1981 Libya Naval jets shoot down two Libyan jets in maneuvers over the Mediterranean.

1981-1992 El Salvador CIA and special forces begin a long counterinsurgency campaign.

1981-1990 Nicaragua CIA directs exile "Contra" operations. US air units drop sea mines in harbours.

1982-1984 Lebanon Marines land and naval forces fire on local combatants.

1983 Grenada Military forces invade Grenada.

1983-1989 Honduras Large program of military assistance aimed at conflict in Nicaragua.

1984 Iran Two Iranian jets shot down over the Persian Gulf.

1986 Libya US aircraft bomb the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, including direct strikes at the official residence of President Muamar al Qadaffi.

1986 Bolivia Special Forces units engage in counter-insurgency.

1987-1988 Iran Naval forces block Iranian shipping. Civilian airliner shot down by missile cruiser.

1989 Libya Naval aircraft shoot down two Libyan jets over Gulf of Sidra.

1989 Philippines CIA and Special Forces involved in counterinsurgency.

1989-1990 Panama 27,000 troops as well as naval and air power used to overthrow government of President Noriega.

1990 Liberia Troops deployed.

1990-1991 Iraq Major military operation, including naval blockade, air strikes; large number of troops attack Iraqi forces in occupied Kuwait.

1991-2003 Iraq Control of Iraqi airspace in north and south of the country with periodic attacks on air and ground targets.

1991 Haiti CIA-backed military coup ousts President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

1992-1994 Somalia Special operations forces intervene.

1992-1994 Yugoslavia Major role in NATO blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.

1993-1995 Bosnia Active military involvement with air and ground forces.

1994-1996 Haiti Troops depose military rulers and restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to office.

1995 Croatia Krajina Serb airfields attacked.

1996-1997 Zaire (Congo) Marines involved in operations in eastern region of the country.

1997 Liberia Troops deployed.

1998 Sudan Air strikes destroy country's major pharmaceutical plant.

1998 Afghanistan Attack on targets in the country.

1998 Iraq Four days of intensive air and missile strikes.

1999 Yugoslavia Major involvement in NATO air strikes.

2001 Macedonia NATO troops shift and partially disarm Albanian rebels.

2001 Afghanistan Air attacks and ground operations oust Taliban government and install a new regime.

2003 Iraq Invasion with large ground, air and naval forces ousts government of Saddam Hussein and establishes new government.

2003-present Iraq Occupation force of 150,000 troops in protracted counter-insurgency war.

2004 Haiti Marines land. CIA-backed forces overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

So, it seems there's quite a few countries around the globe that would rather you kept your aid & military interventions, or lethally violent, ill informed, crass, jingoistic, with god on your side, willy waving blunders as they could also be described.

The speech you posted above is a prime example of US ignorance and denial. Denial of the fact that, as the list above attests to, the cause of most of the suffering, wars and threat on the planet today is the US itself.

Your population is cushioned by a near complete lack of geographical / geo-political knowledge. Ask the next ten people you meet to put a pin in, say Austria. No, better still, try this little geography test yourself...

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/question_01.html

One common phrase heard after 9/11 was "Why do they hate us so?" Well, a glance up at that list might give you a clue. Also, the small minority who have the ear of the administration that keeps the US blind to the atrocities committed by Israel. In the foul open prison camp holding the Palestinians an Israeli helicopter gunship rocket attack on family houses is called a "surgical strike against terrorists" and leaves tens of innocent women and children dead or injured.

Yet a single, last desperate act by a teenage Palestinian trying to keep this last tiny piece of the land he calls home free, with nothing left to lose, there is no jobs, no fuel, no electricity, no dignity and no hope. If his last act was to take out an Israeli armoured bulldozer about to flatten more of his neighbourhood homes by using his last possession left that he can fight with, his body, and blow himself up in the process, he's called a terrorist and a coward.

He was neither of those things, you'd have done the same if, say, all the Mormons decided it said in one of their books somewhere that your home state was their true land given to them by god. And a very rich world power, say China, backed them up to the hilt, armed them and ignored their atrocities committed against you.

And you found yourself in the Palestinians situation, with Mormon F-15's strafing your home, "security walls" fencing you in, and all services, hospital supplies, food, travel, work and life and death itself controlled by Mormons encircling the last bit of territory you have left. All the while China bankrolls them and spins the story for them.

You'd do the same, you'd fight for your family, your home, your land. And if it came down to it, you too would consider such a terrible last act of defiance. Would you be a coward then?

In that light take a look at this BBC report on US military aid to Israel...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6920988.stm

Here's a snippet from it...

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has confirmed that the United States is planning a significant increase in military and defence aid to Israel.

The package would reportedly amount to more than $30bn (£14.8bn) over the next 10 years.

Mr Olmert described it as an important element for the security of Israel.

US defence aid to Israel currently stands at $2.4bn a year - the new package would amount to a 25% increase.

Doesn't that leave a nasty taste in your mouth? Do feel comfortable that this is still going on?

Look, it's not that americans are bad. I have american friends, there's good and bad in any country, just like here in the UK, Afghanistan, North Korea, Canada, New Zealand or wherever. Countries are made up of people, just like you and me. It's the government that is to blame.

Your views on foreign aid you spouted above, if you knew what was actually going on, instead of the Fox News / Washington version, your stance would be different I'm sure.

Just wanted you to know though, that if the US really did stop it's "aid" and invasions and it's blind support of Israel, it wouldn't be just you breathing a sigh of relief and looking forward to better, less lethal times.

One thing to note here, whilst i am an atheist, I hold no special dislike of either the Mormons or the Jews. I used the Mormons to try and get you to see the Israel / Palestine situation from a new perspective, it could have been any religious group. And as for Israel, it's the US / Zionist political machine i am criticising, not the Jewish religion or it's people.

It's the Israeli government that seems to like to use the cry of "Anti-Semite!" as soon as anyone mentions their tactics and methodology used against the Palestinians. I can separate a persons religion from the way his country is governed, politics should be freely discussed without recourse to hiding under theistic skirts.

A Mail to a Doubting Gay Christian Girl in the US

2008-07-23T11:17:00.003+01:00

It might be hard, but try to think how you'd feel about yourself and your pretty, funny partner if god didn't exist. If you hadn't been told it was wrong or bad in some way to love and bring happiness to yourself and others just because of the body they were born in.

The universe behaves and looks EXACTLY as it would if there was no god, so imagining all that religious "Thou Shalt Not...." just disappeared won't change anything, except people's happiness and freedom from social stigma.

Do you think the top brass in the high orders, monks, nuns, priests etc. were all totally straight whilst they preached their invented, misogynistic, hate to the masses? Of course not, it's always been the same, one set of rules for the ruling classes, one set for the masses.

Let the Ted Haggard story be your guide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Haggard

His hate turned around and bit him on the arse and he deserved every little bit of shame and social stigma he got. Not because he liked to sleep with men and enjoy a CNS stimulant at the same time, that's just natural human behaviour and often beautiful, fun and exciting and a whole lot more fulfilling than a wafer and a sip of cheap wine followed by a pat on the head by an elderly paedophile in a frock.

He deserved his shame and social stigma because he lied, to his family and to his congregation. He said that all the things that made him feel alive, whole, human, were wrong. He denied all the people who trusted his guidance for their future happiness

(although this trust in religion puzzles me greatly, "And then god did what? Yeah right!")

any of the pleasure, fulfilment and just downright fun and excitement of a damn good orgasm heightened with a little speed. That's what he did wrong. One rule for him, another for you, that can not be right.

Don't let the bastards get you, listen to your conscience, you know what's right, feels right, is beautiful and brings peace and happiness to you and those you love. Not some set of old guys who make it up as they go along about their oh so wonderful imaginary friend and how you can't have more fun than they do!

Asperger's and Saving the Whale

2008-07-23T09:09:00.004+01:00

What are the differences between Aspies and NT's? I think it may be one of being able to separate emotion from decision making. Let's try it with whales...

My emotions say these beautiful, ancient species who as deer or dog like creatures decided to take to the oceans to make a living, deserve our care and protection. That we may possibly be sharing the planet with another social, intelligent creature that we could have joined if the aquatic ape theory has anything going for it would seem to make it very important to preserve their habitat and numbers.

OK, that was the heart bit, now the logic.

As a species, our future is off planet. The way we operate is fill all available space or eat all the food until we start dying. Then we spread out to new habitats taking the brightest and most inquisitive genes with us leaving the old, stay at home genes in the old place.

So, we know the earth is going to be creaking at the seams soon, it's time to spread out. First in orbit, then the moon. Later, the solar system awaits and the nearest stars next. So that's the next couple of thousand years.

Eventually, the galaxy itself will be ours and Earth will, for peoples on the other side of the galaxy, sink into story, then myth, and eventually be forgotten. What of the whales then? Do we leave a caste of monk like people to tend them? Keep the earth as a garden? There's a problem if we do that.

We have finite resources on this planet, and we're going to need every last scrap if we are going to make the jump from our nursery to our home amongst the stars. This is like a caterpillar, munching on a stinging nettle, he's got to eat all that damn plant, leave it a stump, if he and his kin want to make it to being a butterfly. He isn't going to try and leave 3/4 of it pristine for next year. The plant is toast.

So, our earth is our food plant, we're going to have to leave it a burnt out husk if we're going to make it as a spacefaring species and not just wither on this tiny pebble of a planet. "What about the bloody whales?" I hear you thinking...

Whales went down an evolutionary dead end. No opposing thumbs, no hands even. Smelting metals under water is impossible, to invent the iron smelting process need air. They may have songs telling tales of whales millions of years ago, they may have a social structure way in advance of anything we could imagine. They may know love, loss, joy and melancholies that would melt our hearts, but they're not going to make it off planet. No metals, no technology, simple.

So, in 10,000 years, when we're spreading out amongst the stars and the earth is slipping away till it sometimes makes a misty appearance in lullaby and children's rhyme, it may even be whales that appear. A distant echo of their beautiful songs that comforted their young, their last mention as a human lullaby would be fitting if so. But could we take them with us? Maybe, if the right habitat is stumble upon, but the chances are vanishingly small. They will eventually got the way of Earth, forgotten.

But, if we hamper ourselves now, if we do not use all the ores, petrochemicals, isotopes and land area of the Earth now, we'll be stuck here and as a species, become extinct. As 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. For a species on this planet extinction is the norm, the natural end. Pushed out and out competed by new species.

We're that new species, and the extinctions you see around you now are natural. We have out competed and succeeded every other species, the earth is ours, we earned it. We had long enough paying our dues as our young were taken by big cats, hyenas, the ice, famine, disease. Our crucible was long, hard and full of pain. But our rewards will be the stars.

What is more natural? A bird's nest or a city? Both are places to live made by a species that have evolved on this planet. So neither, they are both totally natural constructs. Let's try that again, caterpillar or human? Well, we know what caterpillars do to their food plant, then they make a cocoon and fly away as a butterfly.

Here's the aspie bit, step back a little, take a deep time overview, take off the blinkers and actually look. We have our food plant, the Earth. Our cocoon is one of technology, we're using it to change ourselves, to protect ourselves, to move on to the next stage, a true metamorphosis. Our place is as butterflies amongst the stars, wither the whales then?

OK, i lied, it wasn't that i can divorce emotion from making choices. I think it's that i can take that step back, think on larger scales, move my imagination through vast distances and time. I am flooded with emotion when i think about a possible ancient whale society singing songs of great sadness across the oceans. But the emotions attached to our possible futures, 100 million years away in places only dimly glimpsed in my mind, are stronger, more beautiful, so full of hope and possibilities, I could cry for not being able to see it all. Nope, that rubbish too, I do cry for not being able to go with my species to fill the galaxy.

So, the eco, green, save the whales, organic, environmental movement is terribly misguided, woefully short sighted and demonstratably wrong. It's time to go, not stay and tend the garden.

Homo Sapiens, a review. (Extract)

2008-07-20T02:23:00.001+01:00

As a lean, mean, tree swinging machine, as was popular amongst the primates, Homo sapiens failed dismally. As he did in the large, fearsome and massively strong department so recently made all it’s own by the gorilla. With it’s very threatening presence yet quirky, gentle vegetarian “new ape” persona and easy access to it’s feminine side, along with excellent nest decorating and childcare skills, gorillas were a strange foretaste of things to come for our hero.

Back to Homo sapiens, his gait and musculature were nothing to write home about but seemed adequate. As long as walking further than the chemist, running, jumping, fighting, balance, agility, grace, endurance and strength weren't called for too often or for too long. As he was prone to offer only disappointment in these areas if pushed.

His ears tended to the large and comical end of the scale, as did various areas under the obscenely naked dermis, put aside for the storage of fats in case of a rainy day. Full colour binocular vision of medium resolution, adequate but non directional hearing and a truly bargain basement sense of smell were his too. This last one surprising seeing as it was housed in one of the largest proboscis ever seen amongst it’s closest relatives, although to be fair the flat face doesn’t help.

Opposing thumbs and with fingers both agile, sensitive and strong now freed up from locomotion and available for use even when walking or running meant keeping aforesaid proboscis clean was, unfortunately, their main occupation. This was widely thought of as a bad thing, but considering the trouble those same hands would get him into later on, it was probably a blessing.

The lack of a prehensile tail, opposing toes, warm, protective body hair and half decent teeth would be bemoaned by the creature at some length in it’s future.

Yet this bemoaning and bad feeling engendered by such omissions would be strangely offset by the inexplicable, obsessive interest, childish delight and millions of years of the same bad jokes and innuendo he found could be had with the end product of a novel addition on the female. A somewhat humorous, and as she would say often and loudly, impracticable, representation of a female primates rump constructed from fat and placed on the chest just under the nipples. (Only two nipples though, another omission this time bemoaned by the female with litters greater than two.) This novel addition to the female was due, it's been conjectured, to the odd mating habits of the creature and one supposes a change in plans at the last minute.

One Silken, Silent, Breathless Night... ...

2008-07-20T01:36:00.001+01:00

Imagine an early, small hominid, pushed to find new, untried foods due to famine. With nothing to lose, the handful of fungi stem his hunger for a while, and then...

...reacting to the first time a stimulant / psychedelic flooded his brain and changed the way he thought, or even could think, forever. Standing up and looking to the stars with a new, tremulous awe and burning curiosity, heart racing, sweating a little, breathless in the silent, night time forest clearing. The starlight glinting off of wildly dilated pupils.

Ignoring these signs he has been conditioned to recognise as poisoning, fear banished by the flood of the new. Suddenly complex ideas take shape and form allowing time for inspection and contemplation whereas before only their merest outline impinged mistily on a dim conciousness bound to more urgent, basic needs. Thoughts normally brief and fleeting and as tenuous as the mist that hangs between the trees at dawn could now be caught and savoured. Ideas that normally slipped through grasping mental fingers like dry, fine sand in clenched fist leaving behind a half memory and a feeling of something valuable lost forever now formed clearly with a new solidity.

The plant’s chemical defences altering the way his brain works. Changes that suppress hunger, improve learning, hijack the adrenaline pathways used for fight or flight and many others. These physical, chemical changes alter directly the very cells whose reactions, states and firings he is aware of as mind. The outside, physical world reaches inside and changes the very essence of him. The filters that normally protect him from the flood of sensation, the rush of data to be processed, sorted, collated, prioritised, now fall away. His world comes alive! The voice inside his head, the person he calls me, all his hopes, memories, desires, and ideas. These are all the product of these cells, neurons, that make up his brain and it’s these cells that are effected by the chemicals he has consumed. But along with these cognitive changes comes something else, pleasure.

A new pleasure this, as molecules produced by the plant to ward off and punish it’s predator work as evolution designed them and produce all the symptoms of possibly lethal poisoning along with hallucinations and wild synaesthesia carry on through his bloodstream. On to find the hominids limbic system. Stimulating it to flood the brain with pleasure producing chemicals in amounts never before experienced. The rewards of satiating long endured hunger, the pleasure of quenching a burning thirst with cool, clear water found at the end of a long, hot trek and even the rapture of orgasm produced by his limbic system as the highest reward attainable as payment and conditioning for passing on his genes and fulfilling his very reason for existence. All these pleasures now supplanted by the action of this new chemical in his brain.

A two fold wave of pleasure. One a result of the direct action of molecules stimulating his mesolimbic dopamine system and shoving it into overdrive. The other the pleasure of wonder. Of awe in the face of the universe above and the forest around him, now transformed. He had seen these things many times before, but never like this night. This silken, silent breathless night, he looks with eyes anew, and unknown to him, inside his brain, a new phase of diversity and struggle starts.

The birth of something as simple and immensely powerful as Darwin's dangerous idea, the age old story of birth, procreation, pain and death that had been his whole existence until this moment. His thoughts now with all the attributes needed to replicate, mutate, conjoin and spawn new thought. The birth of a new replicator, many orders of magnitude more variable and further reaching than mere amino acids and proteins. DNA supplanted, supplanted by thought given life by this chemical within him. Ways and paths now opening up the possibility that his descendants may call the very stars that fill his gaze home. The results of this struggle, this new replicant explosion, will not only open up the planet but possibly the universe to his progeny. And it’s still going on inside us now.

The Spark the Made us Human, or "What Would a Hominid Do?"

2008-07-19T19:30:00.000+01:00

First off, this is not a "Hey! Lets all get stoned and it'll be fine!" idea. Although the thought experiment involving a full sitting of the UN and a bucket load of MDMA along with a large delivery of bean-bags and candles is a pleasant one... note I said thought experiment, a few minutes researching the effects of MDMA and the possible world that might emerge from such an experiment is a good way to while away an hour or so. But I digress...

This is about our early hominid ancestors evolving in near symbiosis with psychoactive molecules in his diet. I do not advocate going out and trying these substances.

This is also about the closest an unqualified, left school at 16, self taught layman can get to peer review. I put this idea forward in the spirit of seeing if it will stand up in the face of the criticism of others more qualified in the field than myself. It will live or die by the scientific method. I want no esoteric, mystic, unexplained energies or eternal verities being used to support this. This is not New Age psychobable.

It's about the social structures and ways of thought engendered by such exposure. It's also about the natural compounds these plants produce. There is 26 (give or take) alkaloids in opium, morphine is just one, and acetylated morphine (Heroin) was never available to our ancestors. Nor was prohibition or social stigma. But what we did have back then was a social structure that included use, preparation, warning signs and shortcomings... All these are not available today.

It is also about what those compounds can do to humans and what we have lost by their prohibition and stigmatisation.

This is a siren call in the night, a call to anyone who knows what I'm talking about, to the proper people still left in this mad, sick society. Like indigenous (and not so indigenous) peoples all over the planet still know.... Drugs change the way you think, for the better!

Thanks are due too, to Neil Young, playing the Hop Farm in Kent. Listening to that last glorious howl of feedback that sounded like the shriek of a million tortured souls trying to find a way out of this awful valueless place I suddenly realised where i was going wrong. His message to the industry contained in "On the Beach", and his lyric earlier night was prescient. "Fuck You! I ain't gonna play your game!" made me realise that this idea is bigger than me. And me trying to hang on to it to write a book, not give it away in case it made me a few quid, was this sick old societies way of doing things.

There'll still be a book, but i want to put the contributions of everyone in it. It'll be a distilling of the whole thing to try and reach a bigger audience. Conferences will be fun.. I guarantee it!

I want to be around a fire, with my tribe, talking into the night. I want the feelings of having a new idea and sharing it excitedly as we each in turn add, hone and shape it. That's what this is about. The excitement of sharing times like that, and findind value in it. Real, deep, lasting value of time so very well spent. You know what I mean...

So, thanks Neil. Bloody excellent gig... And you woke me up enough to ask "What Would a Hominid Do?" Well, he wouldn't be holding out for bloody Shyster, Shyster & Flywheel to make him a fat book deal would he? He'd be saying "Hang on you lot! I've just had an idea! Build the fire up, get out that Qhat and those 'shrooms we found earlier and we'll kick it about a bit.

So here it is...

I hold that before the mutant virus meme of religion hijacked what these compounds had created with us. Used the very same pathways and routes to replicate itself and in so doing, like a Cuckoo pushing the real eggs out of a nest before laying it's own, had to get rid of the original "religious experience", rewards at the end of the day, bringer of empathy, love and the wonderful.

Many know these things, all are in places it can't be said. Lets get together and see if we can't make some people listen!

Burroughs new, Leary too. Aldous Huxley, De Quincey, Coleridge... We have an illustrous past, a very long past. It's about time we showed people that there really is more to life than the sad, shallow, tawdry, shadow play of work, drab reward and half glimpsed values.

I propose a web site, forum, (need some decent hosting) and at least a bumper sticker saying "What would a hominid do?"

I can't do it alone, would love some people in the fields of theoretical biology, anthropology, paleobotany, psychopharmacology, neuro-psychopharmacology, molecular biology, psychotherapy, paleogenomicpharmacology, molecular toxicologists to come and argue their case. And see if I really might have a handle on the Human Drug Reward Paradox!

But, if you have a comment, contribution (or some handy hosting space for the web site and forum) please get in touch.

To my best knowledge, this reworking of the data over many fields producing a new perspective is not, in this form, in the literature anywhere. Like a broken vase shards are everywhere. A few have found two or three. But no one has been able to sketch the outline of the vase yet. It is this I am trying to do.

The more i look then Human Alkaloid Deficiency Syndrome is everywhere!

I think it's new... Bits everywhere, but not all of it. Drugs were the spark that turned thoughts into memes. drug / brain symbiosis and the co-evolution of psychoactive plants, humans, ideas and the death of a culture we still yearn for.

The spark that made Homo per sententia ut ago... An ape with thoughts that live.

I might be able to offer a way to throw one single theory over a swathe of science with a fit that is still taking my breath away.

This is a view of AD/HD as a deficiency syndrome akin to scurvy or rickets. It will open up new ways to help sufferers, predict high risk families and explain AD/HD using physiology for those in the more "manual" medical specialities who still doubt it's very existence.

This view of AD/HD is a natural consequence of taking a single sentence to explain a long enduring puzzle that I extrapolated, step by step into a theory that seems to have a life of it's own. This one has legs as they say and it's ability to sweep past paradoxes and problems in many fields as if they didn't exist still excites me.

R.Dawkins suggested memes or ideas that behave as Darwinian Replicators and evolve by natural selection. In that spirit I launch this meme into it's environment. R.Feynman mentioned the pleasure of finding things out was all that drove him. I understand the energy, life and rewards contained in those simple words now.

So, from small beginnings to the biggest, sickest, most depressed, unfulfilled elephant in the sitting room there ever was!

This is what started it.... thinking or hearing this age old question....

"What drove the selection pressure for a large brain in early hominid evolution?"

I thought, mimicking a famous Pres. Clinton quote, "It was the drugs stupid!"

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I think the evidence points to a conclusion that cognitive changes in early hominids caused by a naturally toxin / alkaloid rich diet especially in times of famine and use of "fall-back" foods drove the start of cranial expansion that led to Homo Sapiens.

The changes in cognitive process was a direct result of the effects on thought caused by ingestion of psychedelics or any of a huge range of CNS active substances in our natural environment. For an early hominid to have an original, giant leap, flash of genius, leap into the unknown type of thought must have been rare. And without communication with anything like the fidelity required for real idea exchange it had nowhere to go either.

The combination though of a primate brain and psychoactive molecules in the diet something very different happens. A phase shift in thought, a revolution that leads directly to modern humans. The Memetic Cognitive Phase Change. Drugs of many types found naturally in our early environment added some important qualities to our hominid ancestor's thoughts. Drugs mutate thoughts and drugs join thoughts together from different areas, times, subjects or whatever.

Your thoughts after a drug experience can never be the same. What was once stable and unchanging changed. Just for our hominid to have two world models, one of normal cognition and the other of the place he goes when he eats mushrooms, in his head is enough for this phase change in thought. For one thing we know drugs can join two vastly disparate ideas together easily so...

The mutation of one world model to another by the action of psychoactives leaves our hero with two view of his surroundings.

The mixing of the two world maps and new ideas arising from their union and new concepts emerge. If they are useful concepts he'll remember them longer and use them to mix with others in the future, if dangerous or not useful then they will be discarded. This process we know, and it's the process that gave rise to our ancestor in the first place. Darwinian Replicators and Evolution by Natural Selection. What were simple mammalian thoughts now have all the qualities for an explosion in cognitive ability, performance and advancement. Memes, ideas with replication qualities.

The Hominid Memetic Revolution meant that each individual brain in the species was a single niche environment for memes. With psychoactives from the outside, parallel development of the brain and toxin defences all working to give these trapped memes the qualities for continued evolution.

The rewards that once trained his ancestors in a simplistic Pavlovian conditioned response pattern of supplying small rewards for eating and drinking,big ones for sex and the odd social one for the grooming response etc. now changed and changed dramatically.

The basic directive changed. Now that it was invention, thought and the ability to assimilate new knowledge and arrive at brand new conclusions that was feeding more young, keeping them alive longer to breed and allowing them to prosper then the new replicators prime directive had to be changed from the mindless "Struggle to stay alive long enough to breed!" to the new suited to the new replicators in charge. "Take drugs, discover more drugs and think!"

Memes were only thoughts without the sexual mixing and mutations supplied by drugs, new drugs brought new mutations and different mixing. The greatest rewards now from the Mesolimbic system now trounced orgasm and above it were the Mesolimbic rewards for drug taking and the greatest one of all, The reward for original, useful, discovery of thing, invention or concept.

We are a very materialistic society and many values are being lost. Drugs also open up ways to share each other. Love, tenderness, empathy, openness, sex are all enhanced and become as important as the material, more base things. So the reward system includes these as things for the god of the species.

Rewards for closeness, openness, altruism mean that the old ape grooming reward develops and diversifies hand in hand with our ancestors exploration of each other as well as the material world with the aid of chemicals produced all around them, inside them and eventually by them. The Cytochrome P450 family and sub families grow, our internal neurotransmitters / receptors / rewards / motor neuron mirror system and the new thoughts themselves mean we can not only simulate the world, those around us and try to predict their actions we can also use these simulations of others to change our neurochemistry to "feel" what it is like to be that other person.

By keeping the same physical architecture, new thought processes could run in the original hominid brain. But now there was a selective pressure for increases in capacity, speed and getting more out of the alkaloids present.

The Cytochrome P450 / Mesolimbic Dopamine Reward paradox or the "Human Drug Reward Paradox" just isn't there with this perspective. We retain and improve detoxification systems because as a species we are evolved to live in an environment rich in toxins and alkaloids of many types. Mesolimbic Dopamine Reward System is exposed to toxins / alkaloids because the brain needs them for normal function and we gain evolutionary advantage by consuming these chemicals and letting our brain have direct access to them.

A classical symbiosis between man and alkaloid rich plants develops. As evolution progresses the Cytochrome P450 array not only diversifies to eliminate toxins, it changes some chemicals to be more stable and to allow passage across the blood / brain barrier.

Receptors and many other parts of the brain change to make the best use of the chemicals from plants etc. The selective pressure is now pointing on a trajectory straight to modern humans and by neotony the last momentous act of our old DNA replicators, we arrive.

Modern Humans, memes now driving evolution but not of flesh. Of thought. Many, many changes have happened but the memes in our heads, those closed niche environments that can only slowly leak out the best memes are still stuck behind that bony domed skull.

It was the arrival of a language with enough fidelity, with just enough leeway to make it variable, that let the memes burst out. To put a bridge to each island habitat of thought and release all those myriad ideas into the minds of others. The mixing and selection of ideas is exponential.

One thing is universal... Man's co-evolutionary catalyst of all that he is and will be. His continuing love affair with thinking, his fellows and drugs.

His greatest rewards come from discovery, love, empathy, discourse and the consumption of psychoactive chemicals that enable and enhance all of his pleasures. We should be called Homo per sententia ut ago, the Ape with thoughts that live. (I hope.. online translation and all that).

So you can see a social structure, a world view, that has an idea of the true worth of things. With breeding no longer the prime directive, but with thought, discussion, invention and exploration (both external and internal) the best things for the species something happens.

From birth, and before, the youngsters are surrounded by drug use and consumption. Folklore, history, experience and the fact that this culture has been in symbiotic relationship with these plants since the very beginning then their uses, contraindications and safe preparation are normal, natural things everyone knows.

Since the first person noticed that his bag of poppy pods, if spilt, would erupt into a stand of Papaver Somniferum next season just after the rains gave us the birth of farming crops. Although selection had been happening for a long time before domestication.

If you travelled you took your own bag containing your home set of psychoactives with you. If you met a stranger, your first point of contact is drugs. It still is. Meet someone new and buy them a beer, offer a cigarette, sit down and talk. The pattern is the same. But the really nice psychoactives to make this such a rewarding human experience have been removed from us.

Trade.. There is one lingua franca across all mankind. When we want to barter then the thing mankind always travels with, loves to swap, is always looking for different types and smoothes the wheels of two strangers meeting... Drugs. The first currency..

This is the thing though. Most humans do not move about. They stay at home. This is a time of stability as any drug user worth his salt even today will tell you. "There is more wonder and complexity inside us to be discovered with just you, the person you love, a simple life with time to think and learn, a few chosen, pure compounds from plants. Than if we travelled around the world alone without the inner life we can discover with drugs."

So, on the whole, people didn't travel. War and conquest were for later times. So people adapted to their local toxin / alkaloid mix. Their Cytochrome P450 array adapted to local conditions. The original Turkish population still has clear adaptations to an opium rich past. Their cognitive, neurochemical balance would adapt to this toxic / alkaloid environment too.

Let me link you to http://www.brainmysteries.com/Research/ ... _Kenya.asp

A propensity for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) might be beneficial to a group of Kenyan nomads, according to a new study led by a Northwestern University graduate student.

The research, published today (June 10) in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, shows that an ADHD-associated version of the gene DRD4 is associated with better health in nomadic tribesmen, yet may cause malnourishment in their settled cousins.

"Our findings suggest that some of the variety of personalities we see in people is evolutionarily helpful or detrimental, depending on the context," said Dan Eisenberg, a first-year anthropology graduate student in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and lead author of the study. "This insight might allow us to begin to view ADHD as not just a disease but something with adaptive components."

The study looked at a group of traditionally cattle-herding people called the Ariaal who live in northern Kenya. Eisenberg collaborated with Benjamin Campbell, a visiting assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, who ran the fieldwork.

Eisenberg and his research team analyzed the correlates of body mass index (BMI) and height with two dopamine receptor genes, DRD4 and DRD2. The DRD4 gene codes for a receptor for dopamine, one of the chemical messengers used in the brain. "This gene is likely to be involved in impulsivity, reward anticipation and addiction," said Eisenberg.

One version of the DRD4 gene, the '7R allele,' is believed to be associated with food craving as well as ADHD. By studying adult men of the Ariaal tribe of Kenya, some of whom still live as nomads while others have recently settled and begun to grow crops, the researchers investigated whether the different versions of DRD4 have the same manifestations in different environments.

The researchers found a striking difference in the two populations. Those with the DRD4/7R allele were better nourished in the nomadic population but less well-nourished in the settled population.

The effects of different versions of dopamine genes have been studied in industrialized countries, but very little research has been carried out in non-industrial, subsistence environments like the areas where the Ariaal live. This is despite the fact that such environments may be more similar to the environments where much of human genetic evolution took place.

"The DRD4/7R allele has been linked to greater food and drug cravings, novelty-seeking and ADHD symptoms," said Eisenberg. "It is possible that in a nomadic setting, a boy with this allele might be able to more effectively defend livestock against raiders or locate food and water sources, but that the same tendencies might not be as beneficial in settled pursuits such as focusing in school, farming or selling goods."

These findings suggest that behavior differences previously associated with the DRD4 gene, such as ADHD, might vary in effectiveness depending on the environment. Research into how this might occur in Ariaal children is planned in the near future.

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This had me jumping around the room, and then to google for a look at Kenya's naturally occurring psychoactives.

From http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/drugs ... n/khat.htm

Khat produces amphetamine-like effects. They include: euphoria, a feeling of increased alertness and energy, hyperactivity, anorexia, and lack of fatigue. The users also feel relaxed and talkative. Sympathomimetic effects may include elevated blood pressure, dilated pupils, hyperthermia, arrhythmias, and increased respiration. The effects of khat usually last between 90 minutes and 3 hours. After-effects of khat use have been reported as lack of concentration, numbness and insomnia.

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So here's the possibility. Evolved in an environment where just one of the many chemicals in the diet was an amphetamine like stimulant that reduced appetite. What would the adaptations to this be? Perhaps a brain that used it's presence to fill a nomads long nights or full days trudging behind a camel to talk, think, enjoy the flow of ideas. Hunger suppression useful in times of famine, but there's no reason to be a nomad if it was a bad way to survive. Hunger suppression in times of plenty meant the body had to change the way it metabolised to balance out the effects of the Khat.

Evolutionary advantage? Same old one as before, the swapping of ideas, exchange of thought, invention etc are all good for species survival. Looking back, it's stands out that nomadic people often had not only the best drugs but also the best ideas. This is another branch of my idea too long for here.

So what happens when you remove this stimulant from the population? No more hunger suppression so a leaning towards the fat end of the scale seems likely. And the lack of amphetamine like substance? Irritable, unable to hold on to a thought, can't keep up with the nomadic banter, not enjoying life behind a camels arse anymore, so stays at home perhaps, eats a lot out of boredom, watches Richard and Judy.

Give the poor man back the Khat his body, mind and culture have evolved with and he''ll be fine!

In fact, if you deny him this substance you are probably in danger of a UN decision about Human Rights issues.

So, each population is genetically, mentally, biochemically, culturally adapted to the drugs in it's neighbourhood. With man discovering trade and travel the range and uses of these plants and seeds etc. became complex, diverse and the richest part of their culture. A knowledge of what really matters is spread across humanity. For sharing a very strong adventure with Peyote will bond you with someone like nothing else, teach you things about yourself, and show you how life, you, him, me, that tree, the ocean.... are all one. (It does... worth a google. I have an idea but it's early for that one yet)

So can you see what is happening now? With all these plant alkaloids banned we have the largest deficiency syndrome ever! No one is happy, even people that make it to the top get there and realise that wasn't it! No one knows anyone else, no one respects another persons mind, rape, murder, child abuse, all stem from a lack of empathy.

The things that matter.. thought, discourse, getting to know your fellows, invention, care.... All lost. Look around you. This drive to take drugs is everywhere. And it's the prohibition that makes the problems. Sit a man in an opium poppy patch. Let him experiment, smoke it, eat it.. whatever. All those 20 odd alkaloids his body is designed to accept, manageable rewards and a complex, interesting experience letting thought and dream combine into a lucid very creative place.

Now... if this patch is just down the lane from him, or his back garden, if he stores enough dried pods to make poppy tea through the winter and has enough left over to trade for variety in his diet, tools or a wider range of drugs what harm is being done?

Purify it into Heroin because it's smaller, stronger and easier to hide for smuggling, put this poor chap into inner London, charge him money, lots of money, fro something that was free from the soil. Remove the support of a culture well used to drugs. The Heroin over stimulates his Mesolimbic reward system, one ring of an orgasmic, beautiful Pavlovian bell he can never forget. His inbuilt human desire for drugs, ideas and companionship subverted by a sick society that shuns him for expressing behaviour we all share as innate drives. Now conditioned, he is a slave to the call of an ancient society where intelligent, caring people like him were once the majority. Take a look at IQ ratios and empathy scores amongst drug users. You will be surprised.

And if we don't take drugs? We get this global alkaloid deficiency syndrome. AD/HD just a tiny part. Once you get your eyes in it's everywhere. Our beautiful hominid / alkaloid / meme society gone. And left behind a population of poorly functioning, sad, lonely, frightened minds still thinking "There must be more than this!"

The villain of the piece? A retrovirus of the mind. A mutant meme with a virus core. Hijacking systems of the brain / body to reproduce blindly and remove it's rival. Religion.

We evolved to use molecules in our diet as well as molecules made inside us to enhance the function of our brain. Not unusual, we need vitamin C and many others nutrients from outside along with the many we make inside for the smooth functioning of our bodies.

I hold that a brain not in possession of it's full complement of chemicals needed for smooth, efficient cognition is a brain suffering from a deficiency syndrome. Not easily cured though.

If a tribe had vit D deficiency in it's diet as the norm for perhaps a hundred generations caused by perhaps isolation from any sources of vit D and a low calcium diet to boot. Would not the bent, deformed legs caused by rickets become be totally normal to them? Would they perhaps develop an eye for the beauty in a well splayed set of knees? Or use the bandy legs of their heros or most famous actress's as a look to strive for!

Just the right smooth, outward curve from the hip with a lithe, tightening of curve to the feet of their most famous actress could be a template for cosmetic curvature operations, a leg job.

The first time a little girl started sunbathing and drinking milk the effects on her legs would send them to the doctors.. A straight legged man from across the mountains would be presumed deformed and pitied.

Look, we've been suffering from the effects of what religion did to us, and is still doing, for a very long time. Not only have a vast swathe of humanity started using old, pre alkaloid thinking. Dominance, i'm bigger than and therefore better, lack of empathy for our fellow human, violence, tribal conflict, anger, aggression, the "What you lookin' at?" mentality we can all see downtown on a Friday night. It may be the current norm, but that doesn't make it right or even the way it has to be.

Go down to your a local night club. Make sure they play derivative of the happy house, trance, dance that came in with MDMA and try an experiment. Talk to a 100 MDMA using kids on the way home after a hectic night. Ask a set of questions like

"A chap you don't know is looking at your girlfriend, slowly from boots to hair and back again with a smile on his face, he sees you have noticed, smiles even more at you and walks directly up to you. What was he thinking, what were you thinking, What happens next? (I'll be a quid the MDMA sample will ask that you should add "And what was the girl thinking?" more times than the others too)

Or,

Your dancing and a very happy girl dressed very skimpily smiles a huge smile at you and with direct eye contact says "Hug!" spreads her arms and hugs you. Then disappears back into the crowd. What was she thinking, what were you thinking and what happens next?

Take the same set of questions to a pub full working class, late middle age men half an hour before closing time. If you can full fill your quota you can then see the differences between humans who have a small taste of what a society well used to many types of psychoactive chemicals might be like. And one that has endured a long poisoning and thought numbing supply of alcohol and the foul bait and switch trick of the church re: the work ethic, sex, showing your feelings, dominant male pattern violence and the mental and physical subjugation of the female members of their society.

I predict two things.

One, the mdma group will take the time to help someone looking into the differences between their culture and the cultural norm of work, beer, casual violence and xenophobia will be very interesting to them and they will want to take time to discuss options, answers and will be able to do so using some very complex and inventive concepts in spite of the awful education given to them by the state.

Two. This will not be the reaction of the middle age beer drinkers.

I know which community I'd prefer, and i think i know why as i tried to explain above.

But just giving modern refined drugs (cocaine, heroin etc) to all and sundry is not the answer. Opium has 26 or so alkaloids and we have evolved to use the complex compounds, not our monomolecular extractions. Also, this is from the ground up. The social structure and the true value of things to our species has all been lost. But i think we know enough to make a start.

Just a single exposure, with none of the support structure and setting you would get in a society used to these chemicals would supply, and still we see measurable benefits. Scientific studies are rare of the positive effects, anecdotal evidence is very common. But how important was it for our success? If it was very important might there be structures and systems to be found inside us that mean we adapted to maximise the safety and efficacy of consuming these substances?

It seems that access to these chemicals must be important because we adapted to not only keep us from harm from outside toxins, but also to modify some to make them less toxic, more stable and to be able to pass through the blood brain barrier. Also, we developed ways to make sure the brain has access and isn't closeted away from harm as you might expect.

This sets out the "Human Drug Reward Paradox"

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... d=18353749

and...

http://www.physorg.com/news127559887.html

So... After all, plants make these chemicals to deter and punish herbivores who eat them. To actually seek out and consume these chemicals designed to make us ill and avoid eating the plant again seems to be very strange behaviour at first look. This is known as the human drug reward paradox and has foxed many who have tried to explain it. Plants poison us to punish us yet we seem driven to consume them. What possible advantage would we get out of such behaviour and is this seemingly self destructive drive as old as is needed to be the change we seek? A look at the biology may help.

Take a look at the indigenous population of Turkey. They have a very high number of the enzymes needed to metabolise opium. A plant indigenous to that region and it seems that the locals have adapted their bodies to tolerate the alkaloids it contains. Asians have trouble metabolising valium and must indicate that their enzymes available for drug metabolisation differ from Caucasians who can tolerate it very well. There are many ways all the different races that have diverged across the planet vary in this regard and modern pharmacology is only just starting to open up these differences. The old ways of making all drugs to suite middle aged, male Caucasians and then giving them to everybody around the globe expecting them to be efficacious, low in side effects and surprise free is thankfully coming to an end and it seems that one of the last bastions of colonial chauvinism is coming to an end.

This points to a very efficient and quickly adaptable system of detoxification in humans. This system, groups and subgroups of enzymes called cytochrome P450 (CYP) haemoproteins is very old going back to single cell ancestors and variations appear in nearly all organisms on the planet. In mammals the system is ubiquitous and we inherited ours from our mammalian ancestors as you would expect. But natural selection being what it is and individual enzyme coding in our genes being as fragile as it is (a single base pair mutation or deletion can change an enzyme totally stop it’s production altogether) means that the cytochrome P450 system is not very robust. This means that simple genetic drift where random mutations or copying errors can damage the system over time would degrade it’s functionality. If a complex and expensive, in terms of resources, system like this is not paying it’s way as it were, by conferring an advantage to the organism then the mistakes and failures caused by genetic drift will not be repaired. So if an animal’s food source is rich in many types of toxins it’s cytochrome P450 system will be complex and of vital importance for it’s survival meaning that any degradation in it’s efficiency will be repaired by selection. A herbivore faced with numerous chemical threats in it’s diet will have a hard time reproducing if it’s defences are weakened in any way. As long as it’s environment remains chemically hostile then resources diverted to keep it safe from harm are resources well spent. But what if the the threat disappears?

In a changed environment where the variety of toxins is reduced then this complex set of countermeasures is no longer conferring an advantage to the organism. Through genetic drift and other errors in the genes controlling and coding for this large array of enzymes mistakes are not rectified and mutations appearing with a reduced set of enzymes may even be selected for. There’s no need to carry waterproof clothing, an umbrella and wellingtons if you’ve moved to the Sahara. They may have been important in in your last home where it rained all the time but now they’re just a liability. So we would expect any animal whose diet changes over time to become less toxic to lose functionality of their cytochrome P450 defences. This has raised a question when applied to our early ancestors. Shouldn’t our diet have become less toxic as our feeding habits changed from times when our ancestors were maybe less discriminatory and indiscriminate grazing rather than dainty picking would best describe their eating habits? Should we not expect our diet and exposure to toxins to decrease as we become more selective and we developed the primates classical attributes of intelligence, opposing thumbs, stereoscopic full colour vision, good memory, social structure where mothers pass on what’s good to eat and what’s not and lips and tongues sensitive to tastes and textures that could serve to warn us about poisons before we swallow them.

If this was so then why did we keep our huge array of plant toxin countermeasures? We kept the cytochrome P450 system we inherited and actually added to it. We still are! We lost no functionality due to genetic drift or mutation but instead we kept up the repairs, tuned it to the toxins we faced and even, if you look at our closest relative the chimpanzee, you can see many changes and adaptations to new toxins that we evolved after chimps and us parted company some four million years ago. The only way to explain why we not only retained the detox kit we and the chimpanzee inherited from our common ancestor but actually added to and improved it in it’s function and variety is that exposure to plant toxins actually increased in the last four million years. We were ingesting toxins designed by plant to punish us and we kept doing it. We sought out new toxins and our cytochrome P450 set of enzymes evolved further in complexity to cope and still we carried on with this, what appears to be, dangerous, uncomfortable and paradoxical behaviour. When our intelligence and abilities were evolving and our new complex brains, social structures and technologies should have been refining our diet removing threats and accidental poisonings reducing our exposure to toxins the exact opposite seems to be true. Puzzling behaviour it seems but there is a contradictory note raised by some in the guise of evidence that this paradoxical behaviour by early hominids never actually happened and the so called scourge of drug use is a modern phenomena and therefore cannot be the catalyst for this change in thought are looking for. Next up is the anomalous exposure to risk of the mesolimbic dopamine system.

The mesolimbic dopamine system is a structure deep inside the brain involved in such basic and important behaviours as feeding, movement, drinking, sex and is vital for the well being and survival of it’s owner by rewarding and reinforcing advantageous behaviour. This happens by flooding the brain with chemicals called neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin etc.) that have profound influence on the brain and the way we think and feel. If you are dehydrated and start to drink then the mesolimbic system will respond via these neurotransmitters making you feel pleasurable feelings rewarding you for good behaviour and reinforcing the lesson each time. It’s the way we teach puppies and it works just as well on us. Bad behaviour punished with bad things and good behaviour rewarded with pleasure. As this is such a basic, important mechanism that rewards us for behaviours that enhance survival and breeding and that it is tucked away deep inside the brain you would think that protection mechanisms would have evolved to stop anything from the outside getting to it and disrupting it’s delicate and very important function. Something like accidental ingestion of a plant toxin, if allowed to get to and disrupt it’s function may well be catastrophic and you would expect mechanisms to have evolved to protect it. You couldn’t be more wrong.

This important structure is so exposed to whatever odd toxins we may ingest as to be reckless. This is the place where drugs from the outside interact our central nervous system and it is the stimulation of the reward system by drugs like heroin and cocaine that causes pleasure and reinforces behaviour to such extremes that we have a special word for the symptoms. Addiction. Seemingly our brain and it’s vital reward system designed to make us eat, drink and breed is able to be hijacked by toxins from outside causing massive disruption to brain function, physical well being and normal behaviour that is so very important not only to the individual but to the species. If the pleasure of ingesting opium is vastly stronger than the pleasure of eating and drinking then things don’t look good for the individual. Some molecules in opium fit so well, like a hand in a well tailored glove, to the receptor sites in the mesolimbic system it “overstimulates” the production of pleasurable neurotransmitters and floods the opium user with pleasurable feelings rewarding him for this behaviour and reinforcing his actions to the exclusion of all else including sex. That such a basic human drive as reproduction could be thwarted and supplanted by something as worthless as laying in a darkened room smoking opium then surely this drive within us to consume drugs is bad for the species as a whole and should be discouraged you might say. A laudable point of view taken at face value but for a couple of things.

That such a sensitive system should be exposed to such onslaughts when we consume drugs leads many to conjecture that humans had a relatively drug and toxin free past. Any mechanism involved in breeding and eating would have evolved protection mechanisms to filter out threats from the outside and maintain the delicate workings of our brains. As this isn’t so, the mesolimbic system seems to be totally open and unprotected meaning that it evolved in a toxin free environment free from threat of disruption. Early hominids, if this was the case, did indeed select their diet with great care and improved it over time. Eating grains, fruits, nuts and meat and avoiding noxious, dangerous and deleterious chemicals altogether. You can see how this image of a healthy drug free existence with proper nutrition, fitness and health chimes with the modern image of the perfect society. Happy, healthy people with happy, healthy minds. From the old “Noble Savage” to the modern new age clap trap of how we should be living now taking this idyllic image of whole foods and whole minds as a model. Using the fact of the unprotected mesolimbic system as evidence of this perfect society at the dawn of man. Proponents of this view go on to say that this points to the use of drugs by humans as a modern invention, not an inerrant human drive and they seemingly ignore our adaptations to such toxins.

We’ve hit a problem. I spent a while earlier describing our chemical defences and using this to prove we were seeking out and using drugs since time immemorial. Just now we looked at the way the normal function of the brain can be profoundly disrupted by the near total lack of defences of a very important system suggesting a drug and toxin free environment while the mesolimbic system evolved. Both scenarios cannot be true and it seems like an impasse. This is the basis of the human reward drug paradox. Two contradictory sets of evidence leading you to two contradictory environments that surrounded us as we evolved. If we did evolve surrounded by plant toxins and, as it seems from the evidence of the cytochrome P450 system and ingested them continuously then what possible benefit could this behaviour have given us. With our exposed, unprotected mesolimbic system then addiction, disruption in brain function, lack of interest in food and drink and even reproduction must have been bad for us as a species and seems very perplexing indeed for such behaviour not to have been selected out a long time ago. Conversely, if our environment early in our history was indeed an idyllic golden age, a drug and toxin free paradise as is suggested by our wide open central nervous system then why are we so well adapted for the detoxification of a myriad of toxins and seemingly hard wired with the need to consume them in the face of all the known dangers and harms drugs are able to inflict on us. What possible benefits, in terms of success of our species, can be the basis for such seemingly paradoxical behaviour?

This is where the current research fragments into many explanations, all of them incomplete and unsatisfactory, as scientists try and resolve what has been the major stumbling block for advancement in the field. Researchers in a recent paper, namely Sullivan, Roger J.; Hagen, Edward H.; and Hammerstein, Peter. in “Revealing the paradox of drug reward in human evolution.” as published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (Biological Sciences) describe the current impasse thus; ““We have been surprised by how robust the paradox is – that is, in presenting the arguments at scientific meetings for several years now, no one has been able to refute the basic argument that plant ecological models and neurobiology models of drug use are in direct conflict,” Further, in an interview published online; “The greatest significance of the paper is in defining the paradox, and laying out the arguments in a manner that shows that it is a real conundrum and not a straw man argument,” Sullivan told PhysOrg.com. “The paradox has deep implications for current drug reward theory because it implicitly suggests that many of the key assumptions in current drug reward theory are flawed.”

These kinds of statements about trying to resolve the two seemingly exclusive sets of evidence appears at the end of many papers, articles and essays. Leaving many groups of researchers with a real problem and I think this problem is the result of many of these scientists coming from the background of the physical sciences, theoretical biology and anthropology etc. who deal with the actual physical structures in the body or the biochemical pathways and reactions at work within our cells leading them to look for actual physical evidence of the benefit humans derive from drug taking. Most drugs cause harm to the function of the body in some way or another even if only temporarily. Sweating, insomnia, hunger suppression, changes in metabolism or the blocking or over stimulation of various enzymes or neurochemical pathways to name but a few. Finding benefits to outweigh the harm they see has proved impossible for them. For them the baseline function of the normal healthy individual is their starting point, an optimum, and drugs seem to disrupt the complex and delicate checks and balances that hold them enthralled in their field. Disruption and the seemingly roughshod chaos inflicted on the body by the taking of drugs removes the body from it’s exquisitely balanced baseline function and to look on these effects as anything except bad evades them.

Or researchers come from the sociological or psychological background where addiction and the effects of drug use are viewed as aberrations that remove the individual from normal, healthy mental function so that to view drug use as anything other than deleterious to the drug user is alien to them. Their field is ingrained with case histories of harm and harmful behaviour caused by drugs, of sadness and pain as the individual is wrenched out of normal behaviour by the actions of these chemicals so that previously well adjusted, happy people are now viewed as patients, criminals and victims to be pitied and helped if possible. It’s no wonder they have trouble looking for evolutionary benefits from drugs just as the physically based researchers seek in vain for evidence of improved function either at the cellular level or taking the individual as a whole. All both types of researcher find is harm, both physical and mental, and it’s their basic grounding in their chosen subjects and the influences of the society that surrounds them that colours their conclusions and hinders their progress.

What are they missing? What on earth could this benefit be that has stumped so many erudite, well educated and hard working researchers? I think they are missing something that many drug users themselves know, and apart from the pleasure some (but not all by any means) drugs reward the taker with is the changes in the way you think. The opening up of new ways of looking at the world. Psychedelics like LSD, Peyote, Psilocybin, and Salvia Divinorum seem to remove the filters we use to limit the amount of data our brains have to process. Showing the user that what is experienced in normal life is not the actual way things are but just one way. Revealing detail and beauty in the simplest everyday objects or making one aware of the interconnectedness of life and our part in it as opposed to outside it. Emotions and feelings magnified and changed in new ways. Sometimes swapping senses (synaesthesia) so tastes are heard and light has a tactile quality perhaps. In large doses a complete loss of attachment to the physical body happens and it feels as if just the very essence of self is transported into places that exhibit stunning beauty or sometimes extreme horror. A person who experiences such things can not return unchanged. Something of the fluidity and arbitrariness of our senses stays with them and memories of such beauty or glimpses of hell reveals just what the human sensory and cognitive machine is capable of. A chemical as a doorway into another way of being, another way of perceiving and a lesson that things may not be as we had thought before. What is here and now is fluid and malleable in ways that would not have been possible to imagine without psychedelics.

Opium, the ancient seductress and demonic master all in one. Able to relieve pain and produce euphoria. Also waking dreams and wild flights of fancy. Pipe dreams you’ve heard of, it’s opium pipes that started the phrase. People face addiction and social stigma to chase these effects. Full knowledge of their probable enslavement deters them not. Coleridge and DeQuincy flouted with physical and social ruin with their untrammelled opium use but used it’s effects to produce some of the most inventive writing of their time. Once again, a drug that enables people to access thoughts and ideas from wildly differing fields and join them together to make something new and more than the sum of it’s parts. It changes the way people think profoundly.

Coca, Qhat and the stimulants offer short term boosts in energy and coca alleviates some of the effects of altitude sickness. But these effects are secondary to what it does to thought. Sleep is banished and distractions of food, time and the mundane disappear. Along with the amphetamines these drugs improve confidence and make ideas that while not under the influence seem complex and unwieldy. The ability to hold on to these complex thoughts and have the time and sheer pleasure of discourse with your peers is the main effect on human brains. Arguments and reasoning that without the drug could not be attempted flow with ease and the bonhomie engendered amongst participants mean that what might normally invoke insult, pride or shock can be discussed openly and at length without upset.

These effects are used more and more on people with AD/HD, a problem of inattentiveness and not being able to hold on to concepts long enough to make sense of them that make sufferers angry and frustrated. The effects of amphetamines seems paradoxical at first. But the AD/HD sufferer treated with amphetamines can now too have the pleasure of complex ideas and long, intricate discussion. What was once an erratic mind settles and frustration dissipates as learning and hobbies become possible. A tiny glimpse of the true importance of drugs in human development, each successful case treated a victory and relief for the individual now filled with hope and interests that can be enjoyed anew as learning reveals the wonder and complexity of the universe to the once angry, frustrated mind.
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The benefits are in the way we think, and it's this change that shifted our highest drive from breeding to the new thought and the tools to aid new thought. Now it is technology, techniques and new ways of viewing the world that are keeping more and more of our ancestors alive. With higher survival rates then the percentage that do not breed because of the effects of these chemicals on their behaviour is balanced out.

This may seem strange at first. Surely reproduction must remain the highest goal of any individual as his only reason for existence is the mixing and dissemination of his genes. Any individual so deeply under the spell of drugs that he fails to reproduce must be considered a failure. The natural result of this behaviour is obvious. Individuals who, as a result of their genetic make up have the propensity to choose drugs over reproduction must select themselves out of the gene pool by direct result of their failure to breed. Genes that appear in man in this environment of continuous and varied drug use that have the result of zero reproduction because of extreme addiction would disappear from the gene pool very quickly indeed. But they haven’t.

Individuals who happily throw themselves into extravagant and profligate drug use, to the exclusion of pretty much everything else including procreation, social norms, work, friends or possible breeding partners still abound. All this in the face of illegality, social stigma, poverty, risk from the black market adulterants and violence, disease and all the education on the subject they have ever read told them it was dangerous and a really bad thing to do. Yet still they do it. What possible reason could there be that confers an evolutionary advantage to our species that seems to have kept sets of genes that reduce the chance of reproduction to near zero in our gene pool?

A way to look at it from a modern societal viewpoint is the example of the classic mad scientist character. Here is a human who has no social skills and isn’t bothered if people like him or not. His personal hygiene is somewhat lacking and the wild hair and lack of socks is just the tip of his oddness iceberg. He lives and breathes his chosen subject often forgetting food, drink and sleep in his manic pursuit of answers. His communication skills are terrible. His students never see him and when they do they can’t read his writing on the board or understand anything he said as he sailed in and then rapidly out of the lecture room. The idea he could hold on to a relationship long enough to breed is an idea not even on his or any of his colleagues horizon. Often rude and bad tempered he is prone to rare but dramatic euphoric episodes when he has been known to wake up the whole damn university because he managed to get x=1 on both sides of his latest equation.

Now… here is someone we pay good money to keep. He doesn’t breed and he’d tell us to bugger off if we knocked to see him. If we didn’t know he was a mad professor then we may conjecture he is exhibiting all the symptoms of wild, untrammelled drug use. Yet we value him highly. Why?

Because he is a human and therefore part of this all encompassing experiment in thought. His output is not the old, pre revolution gold standard of offspring in the normal sense. It is not the transmission of his DNA that we value. It is his ideas and production of new thought that gives him value to, and adds advantage for, the species as a whole. His offspring Memetic, not genetic. Thoughts that in some way we think we couldn’t have ourselves. As in many cases this new perspective seems to throw up results that at first glance appear to go against all we know about natural selection. But this is never the case. All that is really different is that what is good for the species has changed. We’ve added one thing above mere procreation, ideas. A very good idea can do more for our species than a single child ever could. Unless the single child went on to produce a very good idea of course! But children are common now, and good ideas are rare.
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So, we've seen the body adapt because these chemicals are important. We've seen that society adapts to new values and a wider range of behaviour and tolerance for very practical reasons. I'm not really talking about a society always completely intoxicated beyond rational thought. If you were on a hot beach and wanted an alcoholic, cold drink what would you choose? Would you go for a pint of whisky or a long, cold lager?

Obvious to you... you have the social structure, history and experience to make a reasoned choice. Also, you have the availability of different preparations of alcohol. A pint of whisky on the beach would make you seriously ill. But, that same pint of whiskey, amongst a group of friends at home one evening, would enhance and make the conversation flow.

Take this to the present day. We see people with the same innate drive to consume these chemicals but outside of the support structure of history, tradition and knowledge that you used for the alcohol choice. Prohibition offers heroin, the whisky of opiates. Pure, very strong, and a single chemical. The modern user will be overwhelmed and without the backup of a society he quickly goes under. But if the society was allowed to develop with their history of opium use intact. Where it was a common thing and the traditions, history and knowledge were as commonplace as our alcohol culture is, then it would have been the complex, milder opium he would have taken. In a social setting amongst his peers as there would be no law prohibiting his use. His consumption would have none of the problems associated with heroin use in the modern setting. If looked at properly, 99% of the problems of drug use are connected with prohibition. Lack of knowledge, secrecy, expense, law breaking, impure supply, social stigma... all to do with prohibition.

This is the stumbling block of the modern view of drugs. We see extreme, uncontrolled use with highly purified alkaloids in a setting of Orwellian prohibition and ignorance. We have to look beyond the effects of what our society does to these chemicals and the people who still feel the drive to take them in the face of extreme prejudice. It's innate in all of us. The drug using ape is us. Pick a culture, find one without psychoactives of any kind that isn't tainted by religion, i can't.

Just the experience of ingesting a single psychoactive once in their life has had profound effects on many people. Their perspective of themselves as human, of themselves in the world, changed forever. What would a society be like if we had experience of several types of psychoactive a few times a year say. How would those changed values of empathy, learning, discourse, beauty, social cohesion and personal fulfilment without the need for dominance or massive wealth express themselves in our social structure and communities?

I think we have lost something very valuable, and it could be a way to help some very sad, lonely, depressed and lost individuals that make this society so challenging for us to live in. Research into these compounds we are adapted to but denied might lead to some new avenues for therapy and just improving the human condition.

What do the ultra rich discover when they finally make it to the top of the greasy pole? "Bugger... this ain't it either!"

Copyright LJH (C) July08, 2008 inc. "What Would a Hominid Do?" (TM) & logo (It's mine, all mine I say, Bwahahahaha... Today Kent, Tomorrow the World! They Shall indeed See Glimpses (thks Ian, and you thought it would be S, D & R n R... well it is kinda...)

Anonymous & $cientology

2008-02-04T19:53:00.000Z

Just a quick post to say "See you there!" on Feb 10th at 11:00am for the London picket of $cientology. This one's too big to miss! What Anonymous has done for the critics of this insidious cult is a wonderful thing!

From their first declaration to the current worldwide plans for picketing on the 10th of Feb Anonymous have galvanised the movement. Here's the plans for the London demo, others can be found at Enturbulation.org .

This from londonlulz...

The Plan as it now stands is to all meet up outside the scientology HQ on Queen Victoria Street at the address seen below. We will then move to Tottenham Court Road to where the scientology recruitment place is.

As posted already on nearly every website about the protests, it is due to happen of Feburary 10th 2008. We plan to first peacefully picket the following address at 11AM:

146 Queen Victoria Street
London
EC4V 4BY

The nearest tube station to this Blackfriars, taking the District & Circle line

Although this is a static protest, it is then planned to later (at an unspecified time) move on to (not march to, or protest on the way to):

The Scientology Recruitment Centre;
68 Tottenham Court Road
Bloomsbury
London
W1T 2EZ

The nearest tube station to this is Goodge Street, using the Northern Line

At this location, we will meet up with other groups and organisations, such as the goons from SomethingAwful etc.

Google Pulled my AdSense Account!

2008-01-28T19:09:00.000Z

Just got this from Google AdSense!

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we have decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We realise the inconvenience that this may cause you and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions that we have taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by visiting

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153&hl=en_GB.

Yours sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Well! It seems their policy of matching keywords in a blog with advertisers may have a fatal flaw. The pro $cientology advertising foisted on me by Google purely because I write about it a few times obviously didn't sit well with me. Or, it seems, $cientology itself. If I could have removed their ads from my blog i would have. But then again, there's always the view that it's best to read both sides of a subject and the old mantra of "There's no such thing as bad publicity!"

Mind you, i've also written about my distaste for Google's policy in China so perhaps when the clams called up the Google AdSense team they could find reasons for both parties to be upset about my blog.

Never thought of myself as a significant risk for anyone. Do unto others (ie; The Golden Rule) is the way I live and treat others. Happy to argue my case. I enjoy debating and relish a damn good conversation. But running and hiding by pulling my account seems pretty cowardly. Sneaky 'phone calls, mock indignation. The actions of faceless vested interests. Didn't even have the courage to leave a comment and enter into a discussion. If they are so sure of themselves they wouldn't need to resort to tactics like this. They would be able to meet us critics head on in honest debate, each side making points they can defend with pride.

Obviously not their way of doing things...

Prescient or Reckless?

2008-01-22T10:32:00.000Z

After nearly the whole of the news this morning commenting on big market falls the BBC in all it's wisdom comes out with this straight after!

The City: Is the Party Over?

Greg Wood reports on the effect of the credit crunch on the City. From the trading floors of Canary Wharf to the private equity Houses of the West End, he hears tales of fear, greed and the most serious convulsion to hit the City in a generation as bonuses are cancelled and jobs cut. Is the party over for one of Britain's major industries, and is the rest of the nation going to have to pick up the bill?

OK, the programme must have been in production for quite a while. But if I had shares and had listened in horror to Today, then heard Woods' missive of doom, gloom and imminent 1930's style depression i'd have been running to my stockbroker instead of writing this. More shares then enter the market. If there's a lot of anything in any market the price will drop. Causing more people to sell. The trouble is is that now much of this is computer based. If the market falls below a certain point automated selling cuts in and the price drops even further.

If they'd had a programme ready about the wave of stabbings on London's streets but 3 kids died last night in the same manner they would have pulled the programme to save the blushes of the parents. Can't help thinking it can't have helped jittery market traders and the credit banks listening to this watching the markets drop like a stone.

Does the Pope Really Beleive?

2008-01-22T00:31:00.000Z

I'm thinking that the relationship between the ideas of the devout masses to the clergy is much the same as that of the voting public to the government.

The higher echelons know it's just smoke and mirrors but realise it's their ticket onto the gravy train. Whilst the sheep in the pews / voting booth swallow the thin veneer of spin, lies & "bread & circuses" laid before them as "gospel".

You don't get to be pope or prime minister without knowing how the system works and how to play it to your advantage. This takes intelligence. A firm belief in the supernatural would seem to point to an IQ not up to the task of clambering up that greasy pole.

This raises questions about why Blair, Bush et al seem to be very religious, at least in public. I contend that they are merely reflecting the state or accepted mindset of the societies they wish to function in.

Blair turned catholic just as he leaves the quite secular UK to go work in the highly religious US. Bush, of course, can put over no other image in the US at the moment. And the pope has to appear devout as per the job description.

Seems to me religiosity amongst the intelligencia is a cloak worn to disguise plain old low, scheming, political cunning in the face of the poorly educated masses already occupied with TV, comfort food, booze, celebrity and a large dollop of bronze age superstition.

"Why did you invade Iraq / arrest Galileo / burn the outspoken wise woman at the stake? Self interest and the protection of your own status or did god tell you to do it?"

We all know it's the former, but presented to the drooling great unwashed as religious fervour. Religion is nothing but social control invented for subjugation and the protection of the top 2%...

Politics as presented on Fox, CNN, BBC is just the same. A few journalists burst the bubble once in a while but mostly they let the politicos get away with their doublespeak, lies and shameless greed for power and status.

As the US is finding out. The danger comes when the two, politics and religion, are conjoined. Hastening the rapture with a nuclear Armageddon is no longer the stuff of sci-fi.

Huckabee voters take note! If your president thinks the earth is only 6000 years old, that jesus will haul his sorry arse off to heaven if Armageddon arrives, that there is no point saving the world from global warming because the end is coming soon anyway and that he can make all this happen at the push of a big red button... has he really got your best interests at heart?

Laz

Tom Cruise Scientology Recruitment Video

2008-01-16T17:11:00.000Z

The Tom Cruise Scientology Recruitment Video ,

This from the BBC

A four-year-old video of Tom Cruise talking about his Scientology beliefs has been leaked onto the internet.

Cruise is shown discussing how he wants to spread the message of Scientology, saying: "You're in the playing field or out of the arena".

In the edited video, which features the Mission Impossible theme, he says a Scientologist driving past an accident is "the only one who can really help".

A Scientology spokeswoman said the full video could be seen in its churches.

What appeared on the internet was a "pirated and edited" version of an acceptance speech Cruise had made in 2004 after receiving a "freedom medal" from the International Association of Scientologists, she said.

If you want to find out about the total madness that is $cientology pop over to xenu.net

Mr. Deity is Back!

2008-01-13T13:17:00.000Z

At last! Season 2 of Mr. Deity is here. For those of you who haven't seen the first season pop over here to take a look.

Shot simply but with great production values Mr. Deity runs through god, the trinity, creation, the whole jesus thing and, of course, Mr.Deity's beautiful ex wife Lucifer (Lucy to her friends). Just about the funniest thing on the web.

If you're new to Mr. Deity you're in for a real treat. And if you have already watched season one then the news that they've made a second season is... erm... a godsend!

The Mr. Deity theme tune is now available as a ringtone too... :)

Anyway... enough of me hyping it up. Check it out. Where else can you get the lowdown on the inner workings of creation, life and G.W.Bush's hotline to god?

The Chicken Out! Campaign

2008-01-12T10:49:00.000Z

We always used free range eggs but often gave in to the cheap chicken on the shelves of our local supermarkets. Two birds for £5.00 etc. But after viewing the programmes made by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver we have now decided to only eat free range chicken from now on.

The conditions these birds live in to give us cheap chicken are disgusting. No daylight, no space, 30 minutes of dark every 24 hours, cannibalism, 39 days from egg to slaughter and standing in their own excrement for all this time. No more!

I'll shamelessly nick a few lines (below) from the Chicken Out! website as Hugh puts the point so well. So over to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the Chicken Out Campaign.

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Roast chicken is an iconic dish in British culture. It probably ranks close to the top of most people's list of favourite foods. It may be affordable for the masses, but it is also fit for a king.

But how many of you know about the life your fresh supermarket chickens lead before they reach your table? That their short, intensively farmed indoor existence is managed like a factory production line, to ensure the big retailers can sell them to you for as little as £2 a bird? Is that all the life an animal, born and raised to feed us, is worth?

I would like to see the industry 'de-intensify' by lowering stocking densities and including environmental enrichment programmes in all its chicken sheds. Existing models for this reform include the RSPCA Freedom Foods system. I believe that this, or similar audited systems very close to it, should be the new minimum welfare standard for indoor-reared broiler chickens.

Supermarkets and fast food outlets should adopt these higher welfare systems as their new baseline standard, and should in turn insist that all their suppliers adopt them.

I would like the supermarkets to end their poultry price wars, as they put pressure on farmers to maximise the intensity of their operations. I also urge them to pay a fair price to farmers, for higher welfare birds, and to support them with clear labelling so that consumers can understand what they are paying for.

Above all, I would like to see more birds reared outdoors, on assured free range and organic systems. I believe this is the natural and appropriate way for a chicken to live.

I feel so strongly about our chickens that I'm launching a national campaign, which I'm calling Chicken Out! Part of it will be a new TV series on Channel 4, which will help you to understand the conditions in which most table birds are reared, and to put pressure on the industry to raise its standards. Chicken Out! is being led by River Cottage locals, especially in and around Axminster, who are boycotting intensively-reared chickens and choosing free range instead. I need you to do the same.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Sigur Ros

2008-01-08T11:32:00.000Z

Just discovered Sigur Ros from Iceland. Beautiful! You can hear some of their music here .

I think it must be something about the Icelandic landscape that seeps into their music and gives it an ethereal quality. Make me want to load it up on an mp3 player and catch the next flight to Reykjavik and hack off into the wilds...

Well worth a listen. The Culture Show on the BBC did a splendid documentary on them. Here's the song that hooked me. It's called Njosnavelin and it still haunts me.

The more I read / hear / see about Iceland and it's people the more I think something special is happening there. Their music, landscape, culture, temperament makes me want to go and find it for myself.

Violent Acres Catchphrase Contest Entry

2008-01-08T10:57:00.000Z

To be found here at Violent Acres Blog

1 VA goes metric for 2008; Read Vicious Hectares!

2 Hey! Walmart! We ain't gonna be your bitch!

3 “LADY! CONTROL YOUR TARD!”

4 3.8 billion years years of evolution for this???

The End of Rational Thought

2008-01-06T19:52:00.000Z

I used to think the barrier for our species was the cold war. We got through that without a nuclear exchange... just.

But then islam reared it's ugly head and I realised it was not the east /west communist / market economy rift we had to fear. It was the rational / religion divide that will be the conflict that will be the one we need to break through to make it, finally, out of the dark ages.

The worrying thing is that we here in the west are currently swinging towards a theocracy as well as the middle east taliban maniacs. I never foresaw the 21st century christian / islam fundamentalist conflict we are now falling headlong into. America is such a frighteningly religious country and getting worse it seems. Casting off any progress made towards rational thought during the reformation, matched only by the unreformed islamic hoards who wish to take the planet back to the 14th century.

The fact that both sides are willing and able to go nuclear is overloading my irony circuits. Creationists and muslims using the fruits of the european scientific revolution that started in the reformation to threaten this species very existence is truly chilling. The very science both sides refute to pursue their deluded aims is a divided mindset Orwell would have been proud of.

Doublethink may well bring about the end of this civilisation. It's time the liberals woke up to the fact that this is not the time for respect of others beliefs, no more the misguided concept of multiculturalism or making allowances for the other side's never ending ability to be "insulted". It's time to train, arm and fight for a technological, secular civilisation that we thought we had but is now being taken away from our grasp by the religious morons on both sides.

Nehemiah Scudder meets Big Brother meets Kenghis Khan

Tarred with the Same Brush

2008-01-06T15:12:00.000Z

Walking back from the shop on the corner late at night a few days ago. I was perhaps ten paces behind a young woman. She sensed someone behind her and looked back. She quickly turned back to avoid eye contact and doubled her walking speed... I crossed over to the other side of the road so as not to freak her out, you could read her fear in her body language.

This is what i mean by tarred with the same brush. She was right to be fearful, but not of me. But there is no way she could know that. Just by inhabiting this body i trigger her fear. It's horrible!

I know it's not all men... but just take a look around the planet and make a mental note of which sex is causing most pain and hurt. There were no women in the 911 aircraft, no women taliban, Bush, Blaire, Hitler, Mussolini... all men. Since the birth of the three Abrahamic religions the dominance of men and the subjugation of women has been engrained into society and is to this day. The bible, torah and qur'an are testament ( no pun intended ) to the paternalistic sky gods of bronze age society. Men as the only true conduit between their invisible friend and humanity, women seen as unclean and as little more than chattels. Fantasies invented by men to retain and sanctify their dominance.

It's about time things changed... long, long overdue.

This mechanism of engendering fear and triggering memories of abuse in women by the simple fact of my gender depresses me greatly. I'm at a total loss how i can change this.

The OT Challenge

2008-01-05T17:45:00.000Z

9 out of 10 Galactic Overlords said their Thetans preferred a million bucks!

Now you have progressed up the rickety bridge to the dizzying heights of OT you are now able to claim your free million bucks.

No kidding folks... just think of all that auditing! No more rice and beans! Clean clothes! Toilet paper! There's no end to the luxuries a million could bring. A lick of paint round the old org? A decent car to go hassle wogs in? Think of all the things you could do to help clear the planet and that nasty little worm Miss Cabbage will love you for it! Talk about upstat!

Pop over to http://www.randi.org/research/index.html and it'll be a doddle. Well... it would if the tech works.

Here's their spiel...
"The Foundation is committed to providing reliable information about paranormal claims. It both supports and conducts original research into such claims.
At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. The JREF does not involve itself in the testing procedure, other than helping to design the protocol and approving the conditions under which a test will take place. All tests are designed with the participation and approval of the applicant. In most cases, the applicant will be asked to perform a relatively simple preliminary test of the claim, which if successful, will be followed by the formal test.

Preliminary tests are usually conducted by associates of the JREF at the site where the applicant lives. Upon success in the preliminary testing process, the "applicant" becomes a "claimant."

To date, no one has ever passed the preliminary tests."

I wonder why it's never been claimed?

£20 off Virgin Wines

2007-12-31T11:48:00.000Z

Might help someone, I don't need it.

Go to www.virginwines.co.uk/slurp

Value £20

Code BOOKD15

Password CHAMPAGNE

Minimum basket value £59.88 + £5.99 P&P

Why Drugs?

2007-10-22T09:26:00.000+01:00

I've seen humans described as "The Drug Using Ape". There isn't a single human society that does not use one kind of drug or another, unless their behaviour has been distorted by the infection of one of the religion memes. And even then, drug free religions are a small and vociferous subset religions as a whole. Peyote munching native Americans, cannabis smoking
rastafarians, wine guzzling christians, psychedelic snuffing Amazonian Indians to name just a few of the drug using religions.

Then we get to the social drug users. Coffee, tea, qat, cannabis, opium, alcohol, tobacco, ephedra & coca are just a few of the naturally occurring drugs. The drugs synthesised by man, often from a natural starting point, are many and varied and growing all the time. Cocaine, heroin, the amines (MDMA, Amphetamine etc.) & LSD spring to mind.

So, it seems that most of us, at one time or another, use psychoactive substances. It seems to be a mere accident of birthplace or time that defines which set of substances are socially acceptable in your peer group. On a World War II bombing mission amphetamines would be considered normal, where a decent bottle of Claret would not. The tipple of choice at a Buckingham Palace garden party is tea or a glass of champagne, but pop a few drops of LSD on the fairy cakes and you'd get a few raised eyebrows. Do the same at a Californian beach party and you'd have to ask people to form an orderly queue! (Five bucks a fairy cake and the laser show starts just after
sunset.

So, it seems many societies, many cultures choose to alter the way their central nervous system (CNS) handles the inputs from their senses and the way their brain uses various neurotransmitters to change their perception of the world and the way they interact with others. In a few words "how they feel". Why would we want to do this?

There are many reasons people take drugs, and many reasons for each individual substance. But i conjecture it's down to a single, inbuilt human trait. The one that led us to the technologically advanced, socially complicated society we have now. That of curiosity and our playfulness.

Play, along with it's partner curiosity lead us up many winding paths just to see what's there. And once we find something novel play takes over with the thought, "What the hell can we do with this!" This process can be seen expressed full blown in children but we never seem to grow out of it. I believe this is another blessing from human neotony. That is, our seeming to retain all the attributes of a juvenile into and beyond sexual maturation. Watch a gaggle of baby chimps at play, then take a look at their grandparents. See how different their behaviour is. Humans retain that playfulness throughout life, along with a large skull in relation to body size (to contain our massively overdeveloped cerebral cortex) and flat face. In fact most mammals go through this maturation process. We did away with it and it has given us a huge leap ahead of our closest relatives.

So where am i going with this? OK, Here's one of the first modern humans walking up that winding path, hungry. Seeds form a major part of his diet and that Morning Glory vine is loaded with the things. This is a new part of the forest for him so he takes a chance. After eating a handful he starts to feel pretty damn strange, sees the world around him change in beautiful or even scary ways. After a while things settle down and he's off to show the others. Curiosity will lead some of the others to try these this new "magical" food and around the camp fire that night our shiny new monstrous (compared with the other primates in the forest) cerebral cortex gets to work explaining what just happened to them. Doorways to another place? Visitation from their gods? Turning man into godlike beings? They will have to wait a while for the neurotransmitter theory. But in the meantime they will speculate away until the cows come home as humans do. Linking this new, magical thing into their everyday experience with stories and tradition.

There, right in front of you, is the birth of one of the longest lived cults in human history, still going on around the globe with a myriad of different substances and cultures. Shamanism.

Right... Moving on. We discover the tools to play with something, along with the curiosity to push the boundaries a little, and we just can't resist it. At first it was naturally occurring chemicals in plants (and some animals, poison frogs have been used too) that gave us the tools to play with our brain. Explore different ways of seeing the world around us. In fact, i hold that drugs are like the ships of the early explorers, carrying us to new and uncharted worlds. But these are worlds within. As in all great journeys of exploration there are dangers, hardship and even death. But the rewards of a new beauty, a new continent even outweigh the dangers.

Our "What the hell can we do with this?" leads us on to the synthesised psychoactives from our organic chemists "playing" with chemicals driven by our innate curiosity. Giving us explorers of the internal universe newer and faster "ships" & "aircraft" with the discovery, refining and outright invention on new substances. Allowing some to dip their toe in at the edge of this ocean of the mind and others to take a brave and joyous leap into the deeper waters to return with tales of wonder and beauty.

So, if your a paddler on the edge or a full blown explorer of the uncharted regions of our inner space, be careful, research. Learn from others who may have gone before you. And remember... life itself is a chemical experience transmitted between neurons in our brains. How sad and tawdry would it be to view this wonderful universe, to feel the love of another, just one way.

Lets play!

A Red Carpet to Power for the Cults?

2007-05-09T09:26:00.000+01:00

I just mailed this to Ms. Morpheus at work... it needs a wider airing.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Things coming to a head it seems in the US. Another activist being jumped on by the US authorities.

Do you think the christian religious right, in defending their right to practice their religion and teach creationism etc. is giving scientology an open door to power? By enshrining the right to believe what you want, and giving those beliefs equal validity in law no matter how stupid or dangerous they are is laying out the red carpet to scientology. Add to that the tom cruise (i refuse to capitalise) effect of celebrity endorsement and it all starts to look pretty scary!

It seems more and more police depts. and local authorities in the US and even UK politics are being consumed or at the very least influenced by the cult. A google about Clearwater and their police dept. relating to scientology is frightening.... as is this thread on Operation Clambake's message board...

Take a look at a post from alt.religion.scientology and look at what they do to a person's mindset...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How Scientologists Think and Fool themselves.

Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
From: dennis.l.erlich@support.com
Organization: Los Angeles Valley College BBS (818)985-7150

CULT-THINK

(Certainty vs. Reality)

The scariest thing about scientology is the subtle, imperceptible, yet totally encompassing mindset I had for the fourteen years I was under its influence. The cult "teaches" a person how to know with certainty, so those who ascribe to its world-view exist in a completely different reality than the rest of society.

I remember talking to my teacher after a night school class. I explained to him, proudly, that I was a scientologist. We had already spoken quite a bit and he had formed the opinion that I was a pretty "together" person. Upon hearing of my cult membership, he pronounced: "Well, I thought people in scientology were mindless robots, but you're obviously not a mindless robot!".

He was gravely mistaken.

I didn't look or act like a mindless robot, but I was so programmed it had become my total identity. I had been completely taken over by the scientology personality and didn't even know it!

When among non-scientologists -- "Wogs", we called them -- I didn't look or act like a cult member. But I was.

I was totally certain scientology was the only answer for Mankind. I knew that the Wog world was composed of lost and messed-up people who were wasting their lives -- just waiting to be "gotten in" to scientology and "handled" so that they too could attain Total Freedom.

I had been indoctrinated and fully believed that I should..."Never fear to hurt another in a just cause.." and I was prepared to do anything, legal or not, to further the expansion of scientology. I was certain that Ron Hubbard was an totally sane individual who had "risen above the bank" (reactive mind) and I had unquestioning trust in his teachings and dictates. I knew that I was a member of an elite group of people who were in possession of all the answers to the world's problems and questions. Ron had said so.

He also said there were many people in the world whose sole purpose in life was to bring harm and sickness to others and I believed him. These people were "suppressives". Suppressives were psychotic. I knew that people who opposed scientology were always suppressive. If you were "connected" to a suppressive you were likely to become ill or have accidents. Therefore I was very careful to stay far away from anyone critical of scientology.

I knew there were world-wide, evil organizations opposed to scientology. These organizations were run by suppressives. I was certain all psychiatrists were suppressive. It was obvious to me that psychiatrists, psychologists and quite a few medical doctors were against scientology because it threatened their right to cause harm and illness to their patients. Scientology was, after all, the only technology of the mind that worked "One Hundred Percent of the Time". No wonder psychiatrists felt threatened.

I also knew if you criticized something or someone (except scientology's enemies), it was because you had done something unethical or immoral. I was certain anyone who was critical of scientology or L. Ron Hubbard was either suppressive or had committed unethical, immoral or illegal acts. I was therefore very careful not to be critical of anything about scientology. If I felt critical, however, I knew I had done something wrong, so I made sure I discovered and confessed whatever it was. I knew if I didn't keep "clean" with regards to any wrongdoings, my progress toward "Total Freedom" would be blocked.

I knew scientology worked. It worked "One Hundred Percent of the Time". But when it didn't work, I knew it was because the person was either suppressive (scientology doesn't work on suppressive persons) or because the person was in communication or contact with a suppressive. Oh yes, it also doesn't work on people who commit unethical or immoral acts. So, on those occasions when scientology didn't work on me, I knew it was because I was either in communication with a suppressive or because I had done something wrong. Therefore I made sure whenever I communicated with anyone who might be a suppressive or did anything I thought might be wrong, I always confessed it. I suspected from time to time that I might be suppressive, since that would really explain why the "tech" didn't always work on me.

But don't get me wrong. The tech "worked" on me quite a bit. I had many realizations and understandings about life and about myself. I was certain these were only possible because of the scientology auditing I was getting. I was sure they could never be obtained from finding out about the world, from learning about myself, or from experiencing new points of view.

I was also sure if I ever left scientology, the benefit I had gotten from these realizations would be completely lost, and I would go insane and probably commit suicide. Ron had said so.

In spite of the realizations and understandings I had, I knew I was still "really messed up" and I would need lots and lots of auditing and training and the "upper levels" before I could become a true "OT".

When I finally became OT, I knew I would have god-like abilities and I would be "totally aware".

Although I did not know anyone in scientology who demonstrated god-like abilities or seemed totally aware, I knew I would attain these abilities when I was ready because that was what Ron said.

If I was learning about scientology or administering it to others and I became critical because it was not making sense or working, I knew it was because of something I didn't understand about it. Probably I had skipped words I didn't understand or did not make it "my own" by demonstrating the principles with clay models. Or perhaps I had not drilled the procedures enough. But whatever the cause, I knew it was my own fault. Because of this, when studying, I looked up every word I didn't understand and even quite a few I did. I really made the text "my own" by studying it and restudying it with total resolve. I knew that if I "felt good" about the text I was studying, I had probably studied it long enough and could go on to study something else. It would have been highly unethical to not ensure I "felt good" about what I was studying.

I knew that true ethical conduct consisted of doing the "greatest good for the greatest number". Scientology was the greatest good you could do. Therefore, any actions which ultimately furthered scientology's aims were good actions.

I knew there were people working "under cover" in the government for scientology. I really admired these people because they were leading such a romantic life and they were doing work for the "ultimate good".

I also knew that it was the "ultimate good" for scientologists to be charged hundreds of dollars an hour to confess to their ministers. Sure, scientology's prices were high. But then you can't put a price on freedom. Ron said if you didn't charge a person a great deal for something the person would not consider it valuable.

Also I knew scientology had a lot of expenses -- especially lawyers fees.

I knew it was important for scientology to have lots of money because we were going to "Clear the Planet". Since there were so many suppressive and psychotic groups and people out there opposing scientology, it would take lots of money and work to ensure that scientology was accepted by everyone.

I knew the practices of scientology were not ever supposed to be mixed up with any other practice. This included yoga, meditation, "bathing in light", or anything else that was intended to affect a person mentally or spiritually. I knew that scientology would not work if you were doing any other practice at the same time.

I knew there were past lives and we all had a "time track" going back trillions and trillions of years. The time track involved earlier civilizations where there was space travel and exciting galactic adventures. Ron told us so.

He also told us that people could be members of other religions and be good scientologists. But, I knew they had better not practice any religion because if they did, it would be considered "mixing practices". I could not fathom how a good Christian could possibly stay a Christian and get auditing (which always involves past lives). Still, we were told to tell "raw meat" they could remain faithful to their religion and still be good scientologists. I couldn't imagine why anyone would remain faithful to their religion. They would see the obvious errors in it as soon as they
began studying scientology in earnest.

Although scientology worked with religions to protect their freedom to practice, I knew that true freedom was obtainable only through scientology. As soon as scientology had a firm foothold in society, all the other religions would become obsolete or would have to be abolished.

I was totally certain the upper levels of scientology dealt with "mystical things" and techniques for becoming more aware and more spiritual. I suspected "OT's" could travel at will outside of their bodies, read minds and always felt compassion for other, lesser beings.

At that time I didn't know scientology practiced exorcism. That information was on the confidential "upper levels" and I wasn't quite ready for it yet. It was kept confidential because if you had not completed all the lower levels and found out about it, you would probably go insane or die and get into real trouble with the Ethics Officer. I was certain of that.

I was really afraid of getting into "ethics trouble" and being sent to Ethics to confess and make amends for my transgressions. Amends usually consisted of working extra hours (often missing sleep) doing tedious tasks like cleaning floors, painting walls or filing papers. Many people did amends that involved taking risks in order to "deliver an effective blow to the enemies of scientology despite personal danger" as was often required.

But if I confessed to the Ethics Officer, I might be treated with more lenience than if I was reported for doing something wrong.

People were always getting into ethics trouble and I knew it was important to write reports to the Ethics Officer if I suspected someone was doing something unethical. If I failed to report someone, it was just as bad as doing the unethical thing myself. I had to be careful to confess all my transgressions and those of others (especially those pertaining to scientology). I knew if I didn't "take responsibility" for these "sins" and do the correct amends for them, scientology would not work on me. Then I would be denied the "Road to Total Freedom" and my immortal soul would be lost forever.

I knew that mankind had been cheated and tricked in the past by various religions promising to cure of all their ills and provide all the answers but, this time, I was totally certain, it was "for real." Ron said so.

Although sometimes I felt doubts about scientology, I knew they were coming from my "reactive mind" and that I should simply ignore them. The reactive mind, I knew, has a self-protecting mechanism which creates doubts and opposes scientology. Scientology creates certainty and wants to destroy the reactive mind.

So, if you wanted to achieve certainty, you should never try to make sense of the doubts that came from your reactive mind; it would drive you crazy . . . I knew that was true because Ron said so.

And if you know something with total certainty, that makes it true . . . doesn't it?

Sure it does! Ron said so.

And if you know something with absolute certainty, that makes it true,
doesn't it?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do we really want these people holding ANY influence whatsoever in our society?

Pastor Ted Haggard and a Lesson in Hypocrisy

2006-11-04T16:56:00.000Z

After the hatred spouted by this nasty piece of work about gay and lesbians, his stance on gay marriage and his pompous attack on Prof Dawkins in "The Root of All Evil" the news of Haggard's downfall has a certain piquancy. If there is a god, she has a damn fine sense of humour.
Look, i'm all for consensual sex between adults. If money, goods or whatever changes hands then that is their business. And if chemical stimulants float your boat then so much the better. But if you make your living telling all and sundry how evil being gay, or a drug user, is and then get caught having a three year, sex for cash, methamphetamine fuelled gay shagfest then you deserve all that is coming to you. It's not what he did, it's the blatant hypocrisy. To coerce money out of the gullible and desperate to feather your nest so you can blow it on exactly the things your preaching against is inexcusable.
All in the name of religion. Do you think he believes anything else he spouts in the name of his particular sky fairy? Of course he doesn't, nor does the higher eschelons of all the worlds faiths. It's the poor schmucks at the bottom who get to believe, pay for and support these insidious movements. And the pastor ted haggards of this world who cackle all the way to the bank/whorehouse/drugdealer/armsdealer...
But on a lighter note, i've been whistling "In the Navy" by the Village People all day in recognition of the work done for atheism by Mike Jones, gay millitant advocate for truth and honesty. A happy day indeed!

Why did the Twin Towers Collapse?

2006-10-01T12:31:00.000+01:00

This video offers one of the best summations of the smoke and mirrors operation by the US government we call 9/11. It should be required viewing for the whole damned planet. There is no way you can watch this and dismiss the attack as "A couple of planes and a few mad asian guys."

Conspiracy yes... But a conspiracy attempted on a massive scale by G.W.Bush and his neo-con cronies. This video goes a long way to highlight the many, many mysteries of the spectacle put on for us on 9/11.

"I'll Pray for You!"

2006-09-30T22:49:00.000+01:00

Aaaarrghh!! I hate it when christians say that! As if i should say "Thank You!" or "Gee! Will you? Perhaps it will help?" or something. But recently i've been thinking about this. A simple but conclusive experiment on the power (or lack of it) of prayer.

So, if your a christian, muslim or any other flavour of theist i'm asking you to pray for me. Pray for my conversion to the theology of your choice. Form prayer circles, use the internet to get thousands praying for me, millions perhaps. These huge born again rallies could all start with a quick prayer for my mortal soul. If prayer works so well then the saving of one measely soul should be childsplay! I will keep you all posted on any success. If i suddenly see the light, get born again or start getting the urge to knock on doors at teatime and ask if they've "Heard the Good News?" you will be the first to know. If i start talking in tongues, joining the salvation army or wearing sandals with "jesus loves you" soles (i kid you not!) then it will be announced in this very blog.

This is theology's chance to save this godless, heathen atheist from eternal damnation. To prove once and for all the existance of giant invisible friends. (As an aside here, it's been said that it doesn't matter what we call god, she is still the creator. But if you call her Ralph and then read the bible.... "In the beginning Ralph created the heaven and the earth...." doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Anyway.. I digress.)

Yes! You and your brethren (Getting the hang of the language already! Perhaps it's working!) can use the power of the lord, jesus, allah, thor, flying spaghetti monster (may you be touched by his noodly appendage) or whoever to prove it isn't all a pile of dingo's kidneys and it's all actually true!

So, don't be shy! Get praying and if it works I promise to come clean and let you all know. If not, after say 5 years and I am still a godless atheist then you have to promise to take a few mins to ask yourselves why it didn't work and perhaps read "The God Delusion" by Prof.R.Dawkins.

Please, if you are praying for me, add a comment and introduce yourselves. Where and how many would be valuable data for the experiment. Names. while nice, are not needed so anonymous comments welcome too.

Good luck!

Taking Atheism on the Road

2006-09-30T12:06:00.000+01:00

We've seen much lately about such huge youth conventions as Battlecry 2006 http://www.battlecry.com/ and others and was day dreaming whilst idling in bed this Saturday morning of an atheist rally of this sort.

I thought of a Royal Society christmas lecture writ large. With huge experiments on stage, pyrotecnics supplied by chemistry, an imax / planetarium style trip from the very smallest to the very largest reaches of the universe. From the world where quantum mechanics rule to the furthest reaches of our telescopes and beyond to the limit of our current theories. Then from a cooling proto-earth through the first glimmerings of life via the Burgess Shale menagerie onwards to the mega fauna (animatronic giant tree sloth anyone?) of more recent times and then our own history from the shores of an African lake to modern times.

Using all the multimedia available, lasers, imax, pyro, music, subsonics, video walls etc. this is not a scheme to educate in detail with long latin names and inpenetrable math, but a huge joyous sweep through science to get over the wonder, the magesty and the downright fun of living in this universe we find ourselves in and the pleasure of finding things out.

We could pin them to the wall with the wonder of it all!

At Last! A Home on the Net

2006-09-28T19:10:00.000+01:00

Finally, after years of wandering about on many and various sites, forums and newsgroups I've found a small island of sanity. The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science or RDF for short. Coinciding with the launch of his book "The God Delusion" (now at £10 at Amazon! Currently No.1 best seller at Amazon.UK and Amazon.Canada and No.5 at Amazon.US and still climbing!) this site seems to me one of the most important events to have happened on the internet.

I don't think I can stress enough how important it is, for us as a species, to rid ourselves of the foul, mind numbing shroud of religion. It is for this purpose, and for the refutation of the quacks, charlatans, faith healers, crystal gazers, cults and new age claptrapists that peddle their inane, worthless mumbo-jumbo on the ill educated, the gullible and the desperate. Don't take my word for it, go see the streaming video by Prof. Dawkins as an introduction to the RDF. Required viewing for the whole damned planet!

Religion hijacked a feature of our hunter gatherer brains the same way a virus hijacks a cell for it's own nefarious ends. It is a useful feature of the infant human brain that a child will believe anything a parent or elder of the group tells it. Things like "Stay away from Tigers!" or "Don't hassle the yellow and black buzzy things!" and "Treat all snakes as poisonous until I tell you differently!" are very important things to know. If a child questions or tries his own experiments then his life will be interesting but very short.

So we have the infant human brain primed to take as fact whatever is told to him by his parents. What happens if the things told to the child are not true? Well, it makes no difference. The imprinting still happens. Theists know this. “Give me the boy until the age of seven, and I’ll give you the man” is reputedly a saying by the founder of the Jesuit Order in the Catholic Church, St Ignatius Loyola. The Order is especially involved in education and can't you tell! They knew all about this early imprinting system and used it without compunction. It is still being used today. How many kids are born into a religious family, taken to church, taught to pray and then herded off to a faith school with not a single chance for them to get even an inkling that the world being shown to them is not the only way. This form of imprinting of our children should disgust us as much as the sexual abuse of children does. It is child abuse plain and simple. It is how these delusional ideas pass down families using a feature of our brains designed to keep us safe, now highjacked by this viral idea of religion.

It is this infecting of our children that must stop! And it's why I am supporting the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. I urge you to do the same.

Take the Bible literally?

2006-09-25T20:27:00.000+01:00

I copied and pasted this from another forum...please note - 'Laura' in this case is supposed to be Laura Schlessinger.

Dear Dr. Laura,
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord (Lev 1:9). The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.

d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination (Lev 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

g) Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die?

i) I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev 24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help.
Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

Far right Wing Theocracy grows in US

2006-09-24T19:34:00.000+01:00

Just discovered this and it's pretty damn worrying! Battlecry 2006. If anything it looks and feels more like a Nazi rally from the height of the war. American kids herded into stadiums countrywide and instilled with a fear of a secular society and then driven to take on the mantle of warriors for god. Take a look at this video and see what i mean. Using the kids own music and culture to induce feelings of persecution and the certainty of being right.

Even using US Navy SEALS to scare the crap out of them by firing blanks at the audience. Here is a snippet from someone who was at the Philladelphia gig.

"It began with fireworks so loud and startling I screamed. Lights and smoke followed, and a few kids were pulled up on stage from the crowd. One was asked to read a letter.
This was the letter that opened the event. Its author was George W. Bush. Yes, the president of the United States sent a letter of support, greeting, prayer and encouragement to the BattleCry event held at Wachovia Spectrum Stadium in Philadelphia on May 12. Immediately afterward, a preacher took the microphone and led the crowd in prayer. Among other things, he asked the attendees to “Thank God for giving us George Bush.”
On his cue, about 17,000 youths from upward of 2,000 churches across America and Canada directed their thanks heavenward in unison.
Throughout the three and a half hours of BattleCry’s first session, I thought of only one analogy that fit the experience: This must have been what it felt like to watch the Hitler Youth, filled with self-righteous pride, proclaim the supremacy of their beliefs and their willingness to shed blood for them."

That's right! She said "Blood!" This is no passive church thing, this is a violent call to arms to help the christian fundamentalist theocracy. Smoke and mirrors to captivate whilst instilling thoughts and feelings into the audience not of their own. Brainwashing, groupthink call it what you will. Damn worrying is what i call it. While the government strips away the constitution the youth are indoctrinated in the ways of the far right using religion (once again) as control.

Read the page i linked to and ask yourself if you would like your kids to go to one of these nazi style christ fests. It's a very bleak future for the US "If This Goes On -"

Should we arm or vote for theists?

2006-09-14T20:41:00.000+01:00

Should religious belief preclude you from military or public service?

Lets try the military first. If you are of such a weak mind to actually hold any religion as true you should be banned from joining any of the military services. The last thing we want is crusaders with a god on their side, sure of a pleasant afterlife and reckless because of it. If we are to arm some of our populace i want them to be stable realists with a healthy regard for life. Not semi litterate dimwits programmed to do their deities dirty work and convinced if they die doing it they will be rewarded in the hereafter. As we well know, religion has been used to demonise enemies since time immemorial. The crusades were a fine example with both sides shouting to their prefered invisible friend as they went into battle (Allah Akbar! (god is great!) and Deus vult! (God wills it!). Convinced that the crimes they were commiting were sanctioned by their religion and therefore were above normal codes of decency. The same thing is happening now in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anyone who says these current conflicts are not a theistic squabble between christians and moslems is lying. Any theist, on either side, is too personally involved to think straight, and probably too damned stupid to think at all. If your gullible and unquestioning enough to swallow a religion whole without a question, then your too damned stupid to be trusted with weaponry (or a belt and shoelaces come to think of it!)

Now, public service. Much the same applies here. Our legislators need to evaluate complex social and societal problems and do their damndest to solve them. The last thing they need is a list of do's and don'ts from the late bronze age. Not only are these theistic rules and regs often biggoted, short sighted or downright nasty they also were written by men who had no idea of the way the our planet is or how the universe works, how societies are changing, technology, family changes, medicine... The list goes on and on. If Mr. Blair ignored the house of commons and tossed the entrails of a goat on the floor to see what should be done about, say, unemployment, he would be removed from office pretty damned quick. Now, how different is kneeling down, putting his hands together in front of his face, closing his eyes tight shut and mumbling to an invisible, fictitious father figure with superhero powers. We need legislators with some smarts! Again, the test is easy. If you think there is a god, you can't be in any government that has me as a citizen. Religion is something that may not harm an already irrevocably stupid drone but that programmed, empty shell should not be given power over his fellows.

Les

Three Cheers for Australia!

2006-08-17T17:55:00.000+01:00

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia , as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks.
A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown. Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament.
"If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on national television.
"I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that is false. If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country, which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option," Costello said.
Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked to move to the other country.
Education Minister Brendan Nelson later told reporters that Muslims who did not want to accept local values should "clear off".
"Basically, people who don't want to be Australians, and they don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off," he said. Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques.

Britain ..... ARE YOU LISTENING?

Quote: IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT.

Take It Or Leave It I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali , we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians.
However, the dust from the attacks had barely settled when the "politically correct" crowd began complaining about the possibility that our patriotism was offending others. I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to Australia .
However, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some born here, need to understand.
This idea of Australia being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Australians, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle.
This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom. We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, Learn the language!
Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push but a fact because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, Because God is part of our culture.
We will accept your beliefs and will not question why, all we ask is that you accept ours and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.
If the Southern Cross offends you, or you don't like " A Fair Go", then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet.
We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don't care how you did things where you came from. By all means keep your culture but do not force it on others.
This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, "THE RIGHT TO LEAVE".
If you aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted.
Pretty easy really, when you think about it.

Where do they go?

2006-04-22T23:55:00.000+01:00

OK, so there you are. On the way, lets say, to the kitchen. There's your brain, eyes & various nerve endings shipping a myriad of information to your brain. Laying down memories in layer upon layer of feeling, nuance and emotion. Ready for immediate recall at a later date... or perhaps not.There's this alcohol thing. How do you tell, after the consumption of a good deal of the solvent, what on earth will constitute a viable memory the next day? Or perhaps become at least a component of the "Do you know what you were doing last night?" function of the human memory recall system.
We're sat here drinking absinthe. At least, I am sitting here drinking absinthe. Claire is a beautiful, gently snoozing heap with woolly, white socks akimbo. In the pose of a 1950's film actresses whose idea of what you should do to convey the idea of "fear"is left arm raised to the top of the head, palm open and facing outward. Left arm bent to bring the left hand below the chin, palm outward and fingers, like the right hand, in open spread like they are guarding against some unspoken horror. She is not fearful of course. She is merely involved in the occupation of "drunken semi conciousiosity" we often aspire to whilst in front of the telly on a weekend evening.Now, Claire has obviously bailed out of the discussion. We're thinking about the memories laid down in the inebriated state. And by her very unconsciousness she is not one to quiz (at least on this occasion) about the subject in hand. I'll start a whole new paragraph, as I often seem to do at the end of an overlong sentence, to start to pin down the problem here.
Lets take the here and now as an example. I'm in no state to do otherwise really. The here and now seems pretty damned fine to me and if you have a problem with that then I will take you outside and we can sort this out like men..., meet you outside and... ahem.. sorry.. that's another subject. Lets move on. Let me buy you another beer, I seem to have spilt that one. No! Your mother is a lovely lady! Not that I know her, I never met her. Here! Here's your pint... No! Honestly.. never met her mate.. ahem..
Right, deep breaths all round. I'll get back to the thread by asking you a question. Have you ever, whilst totally mashed, looked about and thought "I wonder if I will remember this in the morning?" I just went to the kitchen, found a lump of mouldy cheese in the fridge and trimmed off the mould (manchego for the curious) and consumed a chunk. Will I actually remember doing so in the morning? I've been through the experience, felt the resistance of the cheese to the knife, tasted what I carved off the block, felt what it was like to "be" in the kitchen and at the moment can recall all those actions, feeling and memories. But I'm going to sleep in a bit. It's already a little past midnight. What would throw these memories into the pit of blackness that haunts us after a night such as this?
It has been postulated that to recall a memory, you need to be "in the same state" as when the memory was laid down. If you learnt something whilst stoned then you'd need a spiff to recall it. This could explain those huge and embarrassing gaps we all have had in the morning after a splendid night out. We'd need to go through 12 pints of crap lager and a kebab to attain a state of "remembrance". If true, then I'm stuffed! The chances of me buying another bottle of Absinthe (and not getting told off for it!) is pretty slim in the near future. So the only record of these words will be online! But this memory quirk could open up a whole new possibility. I'll need to talk about scent first...Have you ever gone back to an old school? Or perhaps wandered in to your parents house and been confronted with a smell from the past? There is no other way of releasing such a flood of memories! There is something about smell that links directly with memory. Disinfectant mixed with overcooked cabbage? Junior school! Rotting seaweed and factor 8 suntan lotion? Summer holidays! A simple smell can cause a cascade of memories. This leads on further...Lets join these two things up. The point that to achieve perfect recall you need to be in the same state as when you learned it. And the fact that smell can cause a cascade of memories seemingly unbidden. Suppose you scented your study literature. Lets say patchouli for science, ylang ylang for biology and after shave for media studies. Each study book laced with the assigned perfume. You could use this idea of the olfactory system being linked to memory. At exam time you could merely scent your sleeve with the appropriate smell. You'd be in the same state (straight with a scant in the air) and would be open to the slick memory recall induced by smell. (I think I should patent the "Scent, memory cascade, learning technique!.")
All this has a bearing on my current dilemma though. I'm as mashed as a .... erm ( similes never my good point) very mashed thing! I should remember what I did every time I've been as mashed as this. But many of those nights escape me. This is strange seeing as I am in much the same state as when the memories were laid down. But it may well fade away. As will this, tonight. I'm here typing and in the morning Claire will say, "Do you know what you wrote last night?" and I will say "No! What?" And suffer that awful sensation as the previous evenings debauch comes slowly top mind. I'll stick to the "Don't remember that!" gambit. It's kept me safe till now :o)

Give me the boy until the age of seven, I will give you the man.

2006-03-19T13:13:00.000Z

Religion as social control enabled man to bridge the gap between hunting and gathering and the birth of the scientific method. It is at this point, when man looks for empirical evidence to support his theories concerning the universe he inhabits, that religion should have died out as mere stories to keep pre-literate farm hands a'working in the fields and the keep lord of the manor safe in his bed at night. And it would have except for a quirk of the human brain. To pass on important safety/survival information is vital in a hunter gatherer ape. It's only his wits and the learning of previous generations that keep him from being a lunch for a sabre tooth or poisoned from eating the wrong berry. Now, if the parent tells the child "See that animal over there? It's a tiger and it will eat you given half a chance!" and the kid spends the next 2 hours asking "why?", "says who?" and worse "I'll go check to see if it's true!" then that kid isn't going to last very long. So the brains of children accept as fact what their parents tell them with no argument. Information important to survival and how to fit into the social group (vital for such a tribal animal as ourselves, ostracism just as dangerous as tigers in pre history) can be passed on and absorbed by the young quickly. Imprinting knowledge from the group quickly and securely. Knowledge from previous generations passed down. Instead of each new generation learning afresh, and becoming making the same mistakes generation after generation. Our brains have not changed at all since we needed this early imprinting on the plains of Africa all those millions of years ago. And a newborn baby from the present could be swapped with an infant from the last ice age and there would be no difference. Each child accepting as normal his surroundings, and a blank slate waiting to mop up knowledge from his or her parents. So if you tell the child that an invisible man in the sky made the universe from early on, that to be successful in the society you have to exhibit certain behaviours and beliefs he will treat all this as normal and "the way things are". This is how religion infects each generation. What kept us alive on the African plains, now works against us and imprints worthless, dangerous fiction on our young. It takes intelligence, learning and the bravery to go against the group to shuck off these myths. A conscious effort of will and perhaps being ostracised by his peers.(still a nasty thing even today, we're still a social, tribal ape) How much better the planet would be if religion was never invented we'll never know. But just a few minutes thinking about the eons of wars, death, guilt and suppression of science and thought and you'll see religion has cost us dear. It is my honestly held view that to imprint complete fiction into the minds of our young is child abuse. The Jesuit priest that coined the phrase that titles this post knew about the imprinting of young minds. Theists have used the technique for millenia. It has to stop.

First Contact

2006-03-06T12:56:00.000Z

It started with an email out of the blue. Here it is;

"Dear Les,
I have been reading your posting for quite a while and I am intrigued by your view and "cosmic" viewpoint.You seem to be all over the place,, global warming, religion , philosophy etc... I also noted that you are quite proficient in expressing yourself even with fortitude and good vocabulary when necessary :-)I tend to agree with your viewpoint on education. And how, many characters are taking advantage of the disinformation, which is rampant in this society.Maybe when I come to work in Maidstone one of these days I'll pay you a visit a buy you a beer.What do you say?
Best X"

The reason I call him "X" will become apparant later on. Now, I was pretty suprised, flattered and intrigued. What's the worst that could happen? We got to the thought it was the CIA and we could end up in Guantanamo and never be heard of again. A true worst case scenario. Or millitant creationists or some other irate theist. Or could just be a some chap who wanted to buy the beer and waffle for a few hours. I think the free beer clinched it ;o)

The upshot of this mail is we will meet at a pub last Saturday afternoon. We arrive, no X to be seen. get a text saying he'll be a few mins. We buy a beer and wait. I'd asked if he could wear a pink carnation for easy identification. Sensibly, he refused and offered "Look for a black leather jacket." My mobile rings, X says "Look in front of you...." and there he was! We shook hands and he anounces "I'm a psychologist!" Ms. Morpheus and I are quite interested in many aspects of psychology and the prospect of a few hours drinking beer and talking psychology appealed greatly. "Brilliant!" we said, let us get the first round. "We always wanted to meet a tame psychologist!"
X looked a tad nonplussed. "No! I'm a Scientologist!" I think we managed to hide the brief flash of dissapointment and bought him a beer anyway. The thought highest in my mind at this point was why didn't he say so in his email? We would still have met him. Only a little thing perhaps, but an email saying "I'm a Scientologist and would like to offer you the view from the inside." would still have had us going through with the meeting.
Basically, he was there to ask what has Scientology done to us that we post against it in here and at alt.religion.scientolog and http://www.xenu.net/. And that he wanted us to respect his choice of following the "religion" of his choosing. I tried to point out that i'm not predjudiced against any one particular religion or cult. I dislike all of them equally and would be happy to explain why. His cult really hadn't been singled out by me and that if he had read my blog he might have know this. His argument at this point was this. If I had no experience of actually meeting any active Scientologists and had never been on the inside, how could I form a valid opinion of his "church". I tried to explain with the following.
I've read quite a lot about Mussolini the Italian fascist dictator. Seen a few documentaries and listened to a fascinating radio programme with some first hand memoirs of him as a father and his family life. Now, all I can do, seeing as I will never meet him, can never experience Italy under fascism, is to absorb, from as many different sources as i can, what others say about him and read his own writings. From all of this input i form an opinion. I may be wrong or very far from the truth, but it seems about the best i can do. I proffered that Il Duce was, on the whole, a frightening, callous dictator. Enamoured of violence, Italy and the world is probably better off without him. (At this point X offered that at least the buses ran on time under Mussolini!)
This is the standard view of the man, but i'm also aware of some very tender moments when his daughter played piano for him. The last time this happened he interupted her playing and said a very earnest goodbye to his daughter. It was just 2 days before he met his grizzly end and was the last time his daughter saw her father. So i have tried to get beneath the normally accepted view of the dictator.
Now, I can do the same with Scientology. And indeed I have. I have read quite widely both online and some of the books printed on the subject. Have read and taken part in active public forums where ex Scientologists, active members of the cult and interested bystanders like myself engage conversation. And after learning what ex members have to say and learning of the idea of "Fair Game" and other manifold forms of nastiness. Reading their "secret OTIII material" and a host of other equally whacky nonsense i have formed an opinion. That Scientology is a cult as bad as any other, be it the catholic church or the Moonies and a thousand other groups that divert humanity's rescources, people, thought and whole damned generations into the slavish worship or adherance to fiction. And a damned dangerous fiction normally too. Religion in all it's forms has caused more wars, death and misery than any other single invention by man. And just like any other cult Scientology saps peoples money, relationships and hopes and spits them out at the end when they finally realise that this "Bridge to Total Freedom" is just about the biggest, most expensive fiction ever foistered on humanity perhaps excepting christianity and islam. My own feeling is that when you have invested so much time, money and effort and they finally reveal the OTIII materials people are too damned embarrassed to say "Hang on! This is Bollocks!"
But look, this is just my view. I may be wrong. Please, don't let me sway you. Chase down your own information and look for yourself. X had prepared for our meeting in the pub by bringing some photocopied newspaper clippings on Cyril Vosper. I can only imagine he did this because I have mentioned elswhere in my blog that I had read Mr.Vospers book "The Mindbenders" and that had the book that sparked my interest.
Back to the pub. I left MsMorpheus with X whilst I went to the toilet. Now, with me out of the way he fixed her with a steely OTIV TR zero stare and demanded "And what are you doing to save the planet?" Funny he tried this though. Not least because it is a little underhanded of him to wait untill i was out of the way, but also because my erstwhile partner had been fixing him with her best TR zero stare all night. Perhaps because we're not yet declared SP he managed to do the whole eye contact thing pretty well. We gave him full marks for effort on that one. He declined all knowlege of "Fair Game", admitted that his auditing for the whole Xenu incident had really helped him deal with problems and memories he had from being blown up by H bombs 75 milion years ago. He also said that perhaps the church had some bad practices in the past and that L Ron Hubbard, the cults founder, may not have been right about everything. Now this is pretty strange. Scientologists are told that if they still have questions or don't believe something it is their fault. To go back to before the part you don't understand and read it again. Hubbard can not be at fault, it is the student who has missed something. So X's leeway is pretty strange here.
X said he may be able to swing it that we can visit St.Hill for a day. Now, this is where Vospers book is set in the main, and MsMorpheus has wanted to see a cult from the inside since reading about the Moonies at age 12. So we both accepted his offer. Hopefully, sometime soon, I can write "A Day on the Hill" and pass on what happens. Looking forward to it.
So that was it pretty much. More wierdness than you can shake a stick at but fun and interesting none the less. We liked X and would like to get to know him if he ever gets out. Now that would be interesting.
When we got home I started to think how i was going to write about this. Out of courtesy i called X and asked if he had any objections to me writing about the meeting. He was worried about us slandering him in public but we arrived at a workable compromise. If i took down the huge banner (second one down) for www.xenu.net atop this blog and didn't mention him by name then he would be happy for me to write about the afternoon. All in all a very interesting time. Thank you X, for the beer, the exchange of views and the odd laugh. Not what we expected and perhaps even a little better than a psychologist in the end :o)

Worth Mentioning

2006-03-03T11:20:00.000Z

Had http://www.aria.co.uk/ special offer email through yesterday (well worth signing up for, first place i look if i want something) and their RAM caught my eye. This heap was getting a little slow with all the software that accumulates after a while so decided to go from 512 to 1Gb to squeeze some extra performance out of what is now an aging system.
Ordered it yesterday morning and lo and behold! It was delivered today. 23 hours from order to delivery. Bloody brilliant! RAM humming away nicely, all those anoying pauses, glitches and waits now much reduced. Just thought that we all like to moan about bad service, but when it all goes swimmingly we never mention it. They said 3-4 days delivery, and it arrives in 23 hours.... brilliant!

Now... back to some serious multitasking ;o)

Do We Have a Soul?

2006-02-07T00:25:00.000Z

Everything that is me, my conciousness, emotions, thoughts and dreams are the result of electrochemical reactions in my brain responding to, and trying to make sense of, the universe i inhabit. Distorted by the failings of biological sensors, filtered to exclude extraneous information, applied to inadequate models, interpreted in relation to my own idiosyncratic world view the thing I call reality only exists in my head. True reality, what the universe is actually like will always be shrouded from me. I percieve just a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum and can exist only in a very small nich environment if you consider the extremes of heat, gravity and radiation that abound "out there".
So me, my brain and all that is me, finds itself trapped in a bone prison. Percieveing in a grossly filtered, distorted way the reality that lies a mere inch or so beyond the walls. Contact, even with my loved ones, must pass through two of these distorting fortress walls. So I can never know what another feels, thinks or sees except dimmly through imperfect senses. We are all inconcievably alone, and when we die the reactions of nerve and charge. The myriad connections of neurons blindy reaching out to touch their neighbours, the receptors hungry for the nurotransmitters to slip like hand into glove to fire in chemical release down the multitude of pathways that form the models I use to make sense of "outside", that strive to see patterns in everything, that create love, pain, wonder and loss. All this will end. Rot. Become a seemingly amorphous mush with no hint of the vistas, life, hopes and experience it once allowed itself to imagine. End of existance for anything that could be called self.
That a part of the universe, some matter that, at even the scale of molecules. Let alone atoms or their component particles, is indistinguishable from rock, comet, supernovae remnants, could become concious of itself and strive to understand the universe is stunning. The universe concious of itself. Enough to wonder at, enough beauty, enough tears for anyone without resorting to anything so tawdry as a christian soul don't you think?

Flying Spaghetti Monster Epiphany

2006-02-06T23:32:00.000Z

Discovered FSM last night. http://www.venganza.org/index.htm

I partook of the FSM Erotica http://www.dildoart.com/fsm/thumbnails.html

And must have been touched by His noodly appendage because today my job took me to Spaghetti Junction http://www.birmingham-photos.co.uk/PB3/C4/PB3p56.htm

His noodlyness really does move in mysterious ways. Perhaps I'll give up this atheism lark and become a Pastafarian!

Refreshing Billboard

2006-02-05T20:48:00.000Z

Hell. To Good for Some Evil Bastards!

The End of Religion?

2006-02-05T19:52:00.000Z

I was just thinking that it feels like the battlelines are being drawn. Just seen on the news that the 400 year old catholic sect in Iraq is now upping sticks and pulling out. 400 years of co-existance with Islam, through the "Great Game" the 19th-century imperial rivalry between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia. Through the discovery of oil and the Saddam years it is now finally all breaking down. Demonstrators in London calling for the beheading of people who insult Islam and our police do nothing. If I went into parliament square with a "Eat the Rich" sign I would be nicked so fast my feet wouldn't touch the ground!
I can't see any way back from here. The last global war, The Cold War, was between two conflicting political ideologies. This century it's religion. Sheesh! At least Stalin existed! You can't asassinate a mythical being. And the one thing that we're facing that is totally outside our experience this time is that to die for allah is a bonus! Fighting an enemy that is truly unafraid to die. Communist Bloc & NATO troops would be happy to wave the white flag if needs be. it's different this time. It's the one thing that could not happen without religion. Like the 911 hijackers, they're sure of going straight to heaven. (Bush called them cowardly, I can see nothing cowardly in flying a plane into a building and facing certain death without flinching) It's the religiosity of both sides that is to blame for the mess we are in. Bush & Blaire publicly admit to being theists. And theism is the very bedrock of the terrorist threat from Islam. The irony of both sides shouting "Allah Akhbar" and "With God on Our Side" as they kill each other has been noted since the original crusades. It's still happening. On Radio4 here in the UK we get a theist spot in the morning news. Christians calling for restraint on both sides and understanding between religions. Sickening! Not able to see that they are part of the problem. It's ALL religion, not just islam. Perhaps the one good thing to come out of all this, when it's finally over. Might just be that the majority will see that it is theism that is the problem. Could this period we are in be the last throes of religion?

Schism

2006-02-03T22:59:00.000Z

So it was cartoons that finally did it. The elephant that's been in the room since the invasion of iraq ( and back to the first crusades) has finally materialised in the conciousness of the west. Muslims have known it for millenia and we knew it once too.
What is this pachyderm squatting amongst us? It's the huge schism, the gulf that can never be bridged, the gap between the west with christianity that has been through the reformation and now takes a back seat in most of our lives ( i'll exclude the american christian taliban for now ) and the muslim world. Unreformed, dogmatic and inflexible. There can be no easy point of contact between the two, period.
What we are seeing now is the birth of the problem that will shape the next century. Islamic dogma versus a christian america and a largly secular (with christian undertones) "rest of the west". This has to be the end of the, largely british, multicultural experiment. The battlelines are being drawn as I type this sentence. Plackards in London saying "Behead Those That Insult Islam" and white, anglo saxons on the news pinning their colours to the mast of free speech.
The mere fact that theology is the study of fiction. That perhaps 99% of both side just want a quiet life and the hurt and insult are pure societal and political constructs means little. These cartoons will be used as the kernel to unite the muslim world like the invasion of a secular Iraq never did. The terrorist groups must be rubbing their hands together in glee. As is the British National Party here in the UK. Expect racism, expect hatred and most of all, expect violence.
The embarrassing platitudes of the british government, trying desperatley to keep the lid on the tinderbox of UK inner cities, seem to me to be trying to keep feet in both camps. It's time to pull back from both entrenched positions and come out against religion. The real enemy of the piece. All this death, pain, insult and dogma stem from religion. It's time to treat the religious as bad, mad or guilty of using religion for their own personal or political ends. This applies to all side, all religions. It's time we left our childish creation myths behind and treated people who think they are in touch with the thoughts of a mythical being as the lunatics they truly are.
I don't hold out a whole lot of hope though. Keep your heads down folks. The lurch towards controlling faschism in the west of the 1984 ilk, to the fanatical islamic jihad in the east. It's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. And the schism will deepen, and people, and hope, will die.

Google in China

2006-01-28T00:11:00.000Z

So Google have gone into China. They seem to have overturned their philosophy of "Do no evil." and subjugated themselves to the Chinese governments wishes. Ignoring China's deplorable human rights issues and single party communism to give the Chinese access to the parts of the WWW that the Chinese government allow. Right thinking left of centre liberals are understandably up in arms about this. But I think they're missing an obvious point here that perhaps may not be so obvious to the "shoot from the hip" reactionaries.
Google have a damn good understanding of the net. I should think that they have employees who have been online since their Amstrad 464's enabled then to hook up to the then fledgling internet. The concept of trojan horses and backdoors are not alien to them. OK, there are others in there in reciept of the kings shilling, but none with the kudos, the broad expanse of Google who's sole aim is to disseminate information freely. I don't think Google are in China for the money.
They now have the chance to put their servers into mainland China. They have had to filter, block or censor a whole host of information. But i'm sure that is just a cover. A cover in the old fashioned cold war sense. A shield for their true motives. To supply the backdoor to the Chinese. A way out. A true (L.Ron Hubbard please excuse me...) bridge to freedom.
Time will tell, and I may be as wrong as a very wrong person. But... perhaps, just perhaps, acting as a trojan horse, Google has penetrated the shield that the Chinese government has erected against the free flow of information in and out of it's borders. And will, sometime hence, release the keywords, the anonymous public servers or the code to enable the average Chinese citizen to access the WWW and Usenet. Disseminated by word of mouth (I think it's called viral marketing now) and through chatrooms and email, the keys to the Jungian Collective will be made available.
It's the first thing I thought when I heard that Google had "gone native". I hope this isn't letting the cat out of the bag. The internet is the one thing governments fear. Not just the free flow of information. But the meeting of minds of people seperated by distance and political boundaries. You can not demonise a people if a fair percentage of your population chat with them on a regular basis. Propaganda fails. Truth will out. And humans are human wherever you find them.

Millitant Atheist Declaration

2006-01-06T22:11:00.003Z

Why do we want to leap in and denounce theist diatribes? Why should we cut in between a group of theists and confront them with our rational, atheistic logic? Many times we are confronted with a plaintive "Why can't we agree to disagree and respect each others points of view?" I will try to explain my own personal stance here.

Enough is enough! It's time to draw that line in the sand. For too long, for millennia, since man first started to form societies we have had our view of the universe tainted with religion. To say that theists have had a fair crack at the whip would be an understatement in the extreme. Theistic dogma has caused more misery, more wars, more suppression and held back the discovery of the universe we inhabit than any other invention.

From the indoctrination of generations of innocent, inquiring children in the home, through schools and their mandatory acts of worship of fictitious, vengeful gods, the foul distortions introduced by the likes of the Dover School Board, the theft of a woman's right to control of her own body, the intrusion of a false morality upon our daily lives and the stifling of science. All these things must stop! It is no longer a matter of respect, of tolerance or of agreeing to disagree. The stakes are far too high.

No! You cannot blow people up in the name of your mythical being. No! You cannot kill doctors who choose to help women regain control of their lives. No! You cannot divert money that should be healing the sick to spend on your costumes and buildings. No! You cannot tell me how to think any more. No! You cannot claim that your damn stupid, lame, small minded little creation myth has equal value to Darwin's evolution and modern cosmology.

The time has come to leave the nursery, cast off these childish, dangerous stories and grow the fuck up! Religion has sapped enough of man's resources. Time, money, effort, emotion and whole damned races have been swallowed up by these deluded zealots. Every theist that EVER went into battle always had a god on their side. Every poor sap who worked till they dropped was promised their reward after their death. The crippled, the sick, the outcast and the insane have turned to religion and been rewarded with nothing except vacuous empty promises.

It's time to stop the madness. It's time to confront this awful cancer, this creeping, insidious lie. It's time to free humanity from the shackles of the past. from the guilt. from original sin. from the cringing inferiority. It's time to stop the killing. The gang mentality. Them and us. The threats of heaven, the lure of hell, the hell of the faithful.

Theists, you've had your chance. You've had millennia of chances. Look at the planet now. Is it better for religion or do the world's major human conflicts have their very basis in religion. Theism is a mind numbing death shroud for humanity. It can not be allowed to continue. We have to stop lying to our children. To ourselves. This is why I leap in and denounce theists wherever I find them. If I upset a few simpletons who cannot think outside their late bronze age shackles then so be it. But your not going to poison this race forever. If you theists have your way you will be the end as you always predicted. Self fulfilling prophecy. I will do my level best to rid my race of this handicap.

The future of man lies in the stars. Our Earth is finite, eventually our sun will leave the main sequence and go red giant. If we're not out of here by then then we, as a race. are doomed. It is via the scientific method that is our route to our true home in the universe. You can't pray your way out of this one.

The Protection of Education

2005-12-15T19:32:00.000Z

I've had a passing interest in Scientology ever since reading Cyril Vospers book "The Mindbenders". But after South Park's episode entitled "Trapped in the Closet" i've been reading further. What makes people fall for such awful, third rate space opera? How is it that normal, right thinking people go for cults such as scientology, christianity, the moonies, islam & all the other myriad fictions that people spend so much of their time, resources and thought upon. I think it's education, or the lack of it.
At the moment here in the UK it's cool to hate science. Nobody turns a hair when someone says they have no idea how their car works, how their computer displays the web they surf, that they dislike mathamatics to the point of a numerical dyslexia, how they hate "chemicals" in their food (of course, they, their food and the whole damn universe is made of "chemicals"). The list goes on and on. I don't think this way of thinking is limited to the UK either. Over in the US the number of people who believe the christian creation myth is actualy the way the Earth is the way it is is frightening! And that they are forcing education boards to include creationism in schools is something america should be ashamed of. Add to this the poor quality and lack of enthusiasm shown by the teachers of the sciences and you can see why media studies has overtaken physics (by a huge margin) at A level. A recipe for disaster.
This is how these cults get a handle on our youth. Poorly educated, often with parents who are up to their necks in one of the religions, have no defense against these cults when they come into contact with them. A little decent grounding in a few of the sciences and the picture would be much different. Try and explain the scientology xenu myth to someone who has a "general reader" grasp of cosmology and geology and he'd laugh in your face. The same goes for dianetics and scientology's denouncing of modern psychiatry (and their personality tests & e-meters). Even a basic grasp of psychology would reveal their infantile writings to be the tawdry clap-trap it really is. Go to the paleontology dept. of your local university and mention the christian flood, see how far you get.
There will be many who will say that we must respect others beliefs no matter how stupid thay are and how much damage they cause. I can't disagree more. There have been more wars fought over people's fictional mythical beings than for any other reason. When people could have been fed, clothed and housed these cults build churches, mosques, synagogues, orgs. The money people earn is taken in tithe for their mythical deity. Babies suffer the mutilation of circumcision. And the nastiest con trick of all. That if you work like a dog in this life and give all your money to the church, then your reward will be in the next life.
Religion is just a form of social control. When man first started settling into communities and gave up hunting and gathering something new arrived. Inequality. All of a sudden there were haves and have nots. Also, one man could not break, till, sow, tend, harvest and store all the crops that came with agriculture. How could the haves not only protect their advantage but also use the labour of the have nots to their gain whilst all the time making sure no uprising occured? The answer was religion.
What can reach under the into the huts and inside the very thoughts of those to be subjergated? An omnipresent, wrathful god who sees all. Lets take a look at the ten commandments from the point of view of a succesful landowner / farmer in one of these new communities. His problem is to keep his elevated status whilst using the labour of the serfs around him. Always bearing in mind that he is vastly outnumbered and cannot, in the way a hunter would guard his kill, keep hold of his stores of harvested food by his own personal threat.

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

This is the new shit! All you old myths are superceded.

2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing

All your previous icons are superceded.

3. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.

No discussion, be it serious, in jest or as a swearword is forbidden.

4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

We're going to have one day a week to reinforce this myth. By order!

5. Honour thy father and thy mother.

I've hoodwinked one generation. I don't want to have to keep doing it!

6. Thou shalt not kill.

Read as "Thou shalt not kill me!"

7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Could be my daughter / wife. Hands off!

8. Thou shalt not steal.

Read as "Thou shalt not steal my stuff!"

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

Your not to tell people what I actually do. If you do, you a liar! (& that's a no-no)

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, wife etc.

Because they may be mine. Hands (and thoughts) off!

OK, so there we are. Now to make all this stick we have stories told around the fire of plagues, storms and tempest, boils and a myriad of other very nasty things. Don't forget the good old work ethic. Your rewards to be reaped in the afterlife. Nauseating! Religion as a social control. Upholding the class structure and promising rewards that never materialise. Scientologists take note! You are promised the whole damn universe and immortality for only your life, friends, family, freedom, thought and of course money. More and more money. They get to the end and are told there's been a few mistakes and your going to have to start again. Oh, and by the way, start paying again too! It's at this point that many who reach scientology's OTVII realise there's something amiss and bail out.
Education (if the information had been available) would have protected those early communities from the barbarous control engendered by religion. It will protect you kids from cults like scientology (they will come accross it) and other cults. It will protect them from from the other more traditional cults like islam and christianity. And it will open your eyes too.
There is more wonder to be had in modern cosmolgy than all the creation myths rolled into one. And to stand and face the universe as a short lived primate, to start to grasp this wonderful universe we inhabit, to realise we only have one life to make the best of, takes more courage than to lean on the mouldy, corrupt crutch of cults / religion. Plus, it offers so much wonder, joy and sheer pleasure in knowing than any fictional, faith based myth can ever offer you.

Scientology

2005-12-14T09:18:00.000Z

Please take a monet or two to read www.xenu.net and then vote at http://www.petitiononline.com/yarbaro/petition.html . I know electronic voting means little, but it will be an interesting vote none the less. I'll add my own thoughts about scientology and the other cults (Islam, Moonies, Christianity etc.) later.

US Re-Define Torture.

2005-12-06T21:38:00.000Z

I have just come accross this in the Washington Post (see below). Now I know why Condi Rice is flying all over Europe deftly dodging the questions about 1000's of logged CIA flights by saying that the US doesn't torture it's detainees.
Well if the definition of torture is "Organ failure or death" of the person being questioned then leaves the questioners with a whole host of nasty, barbaric techniques developed over 1000's of years by the Inquisitions of this world designed to inflict maximum pain, suffering and fear without causing the death of the poor sod on the recieving end. I expect a euphamism soon (this administration are good at euphamisms, remember "manipulative self injurious behaviour" for suicides in Guantanamo?) along the lines of "Questioning in a sensory input controlled environment" or some such bullshit.
War is Peace, Ministry of Truth.... sound familiar?

Justice Expands 'Torture' Definition
Earlier Policy Drew Criticism
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan EggenWashington Post Staff WritersFriday, December 31, 2004; Page A01
The Justice Department published a revised and expansive definition late yesterday of acts that constitute torture under domestic and international law, overtly repudiating one of the most criticized policy memorandums drafted during President Bush's first term.
In a statement published on the department's Web site, the head of its Office of Legal Counsel declares that "torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and international norms" and goes on to reject a previous statement that only "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" constitute torture punishable by law.
That earlier definition of torture figured prominently in complaints by Democrats and human rights groups about White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, who oversaw its creation and is Bush's nominee to become attorney general for the second term. The new memo's public release came one week before the start of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Gonzales's nomination.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin said in the new memo that torture may consist of acts that fall short of provoking excruciating and agonizing pain and thus may include mere physical suffering or lasting mental anguish. His opinion is meant, according to its language, to undermine any notion that those who conduct harmful interrogations may be exempt from prosecution.
This second effort by the Bush administration to parse the legal meaning of the word "torture" was provoked by the damaging political fallout from the disclosure this summer of the first memo, drafted in August 2002 and criticized by human rights lawyers and experts around the globe.
Many of the critics charged that the first memo -- which they said laid out a very narrow view of what behavior might constitute torture and was crafted to help interrogators at the CIA evade prosecution -- created the context for a record of persistent ill treatment by that agency and the U.S. military of detainees at prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba's Guantanamo Bay and undisclosed locations.
"Clearly the release of this now is backfilling for Gonzales's confirmation hearing," said I. Michael Greenberger, a senior Justice Department official in the Clinton administration who now heads the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. "These memos have been a tremendous source of embarrassment to both Gonzales and the administration."
Greenberger said that recent accounts of widespread abuse at U.S. detention facilities -- including disclosures that military interrogation practices were sharply criticized over the past two years by FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency personnel in the field -- have given ammunition to those within the administration who favor adherence to international norms against torture.
"It could be that this is not just a cynical ploy but a real sign of change," Greenberger said.
One of the most controversial provisions of the earlier memorandum, signed by Levin's predecessor, Jay S. Bybee, was an assertion that the president's executive powers were sufficient to permit tolerance of torturous acts in extraordinary circumstances. The International Committee of the Red Cross had declared in response that the prohibition on torture, embodied in a global convention signed by the United States, has no exceptions.
But advocates of strict adherence to the convention previously lost interagency battles to hard-liners in the Defense Department, the Justice Department and the White House, who maintained that the president has expansive powers during the war on terrorism. The new memo pointedly sidesteps this issue, stating that the "consideration of the bounds of any such authority would be inconsistent with the president's unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture."
The memo, which states that it "supersedes the August 2002 memorandum in its entirety," also drops an attempt in the earlier version to rule that harmful acts not specifically intended to cause severe pain and suffering might be legal, and to define "specific intent." Instead, it deliberately left the notion of "specific intent" undefined to avoid, Levin wrote, any notion that conduct amounting to torture might under some circumstances be considered legal.
The memo also explicitly states that "a defendant's motive (to protect national security, for example) is not relevant to the question" of his or her intent under the law.
Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, which has been critical of the Bush administration's legal opinions regarding the treatment of detainees, gave the memo a generally positive review and said its "definition of torture is not as tortured as it was."
But John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who helped draft the first memo while working in the legal counsel's office, said the new version "makes it harder to figure out how the torture statute applies to specific interrogation methods. It muddies the water. Our effort . . . was to interpret the statute clearly

Open Letter to Dr.Steve Abrams.

2005-11-13T12:25:00.000Z

I emailed the letter below to Dr.Steve Abrams at sabrams@hit.net after reading the BBC News report mentioned in the mail. Perhaps you should drop him a line too...

Sir,
I notice that at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4419796.stm you are quoted as saying "This is a great day for education." after the Board of Education's vote approved the new language criticising evolution by 6-4. Here in the UK we can only watch in saddened awe as you, your country, and worst of all, your children, are dragged down into the blinkered, dark of using theology to explain the universe around you. Your children, if they ever leave your borders, will be ill equipped to join the rest of the world in our search for knowledge. Your country will become as strange a backwater as the Afghanistan of the Taliban. Just as closed, just as fundamentalist. But what frightens me most is, much more powerful. As you, in your everyday life, use the fruits of the scientific method. Your computers, automobiles, textiles, buildings and medical services. And the myriad other wonders that science has given you. You decry the very method that has produced them. And in your selfishness, remove from your children, and their children, access to proper science uncoloured with your medieval superstitions. You Sir, are a coward! Unable to face the universe alone. You must use the crutch of religion so you may keep your fictitious father figure holding your poor, frightened little hand. It is time you grew up, took on the role of mankind. An eager, curious animal lucky to find itself in a universe full of majesty and wonder. More than enough for any man. Your theological mumbo jumbo pales into insignificance. Time to leave the nursery little boy...
Les. J. Hemmings Folkestone, UK

Been Gone for a While.

2005-11-06T02:12:00.000Z

Sorry all... no posts for a long long time. Nothing to post about? Hardly... with the Iraq war still decending into civil war. Iran and Syria in the frame. Bush's cronies starting to get busted over their lies about WMD and the malicious outing of CIA agents. There's been lots to post about.
It's been here at home, lifes little details. The things that mostly fill our minds. Health, love, money, work etc. These things need to be settled before you can turn your mind to the outside world.
I had an operation (Google Jeep Disease if your feeling brave), got over a bout of depression. (I think.. I hope..) with the aid of my partner Claire and a drug called Tramadol. Prescribed for the post operative pain but with the side effect of making my moods much like other peoples around me. No more stepping off of the precipice into that monochrome world of hurt and lonliness. These little capsules have saved my relationship, dropped 20 years off of my age, given me a future to look forward too and let me feel love again. Big claims for a what is a synthetic opiate not prescribed for depression. But i couldn't be without them.
It's not only me though. A friend of Claire's at her work has a partner who got prescribed Tramadol for Sciatica. When Claire mentioned Tramadol and my mood stabilisation she squeeled "What were they called?" It seems her partner has a huge alcohol problem, low self esteem and depression. When he takes Trmadol for his Sciatica he levels off into a loving, stable, nice bloke to be with.
Luckily, when Claire and I bowled into my doctors and told him the effects these capsules were having he agreed to continue prescribing them. Although he had never heard of the effects I was experiencing. I'm so glad he did. Life is good again. So perhaps my blogging will become a little more frequent with some personal stuff now I feel I can open my life a little to the outside world. I think you have to be settled inside before you can drop the barriers and let people in.
Anyway, it's good to be back :o)

The Price of Oil

2004-10-16T02:53:00.000+01:00

OK, I'm sat here listening to this for the first time. ( God bless WinMX! ) It's "The Price of Oil" by Billy Bragg. If only this was understood by more of the people that sent young men into "harms way" as the awful term is used. After that, listen to "Everywhere" by the same chap. It's about a different war and a different time. But it's the same frightened kids we're sending out to do our polititians dirty work. Who say's music doesn't change anything? Listen to these lyrics, then tell me you agree to what Shrub does......

One of Those Days

2004-10-16T00:13:00.000+01:00

Well, it started with staying up to watch the last debate for the US presidency. It started at 02:00 GMT and threw our body clocks way out. Next morning, dreary and grey even by UK autumn standards there was no hot water. The boiler completely stuffed. OK, no worries, we rent so the landlord can fix it. It's now Saturday and it's still waiting to be fixed...
So on with opening the post. Ahaa! I need to renew the road tax on the car. Easy, just assemble the Insurance.. Dammit! No documents, paid for but not sent by the insurance company, so it's onto the 'phone to remonstrate with them. Now then, need the MOT to get the tax as well. M.O.T. Hmm.. here it is .... Bugger, MOT's run out a few days ago.
So the car's taken to the garage, it fails dismally. Needs a tyre, drivers seat, new exhaust and a fog light switch. Off the road till Wednesday at the earliest. Looks like Monday will be a trip around several breakers yards to find a suitable seat. Why do these things come in clumps? One minute all is comfy and rosy, next minute all hell breaks loose!
There's lots to blog about really, the possibility of British troops being put under US control, Kerry showing a faint lead etc etc.... but at the moment it's a time of boiling a kettle to wash ( it's 1952 in our bathroom at the moment ) walking everywhere, searching on the net for car parts and huddling in blankets accompanied with much swigging of gin to keep warm. Hmmm.. perhaps things ain't quite as bad as all that after all!

War Crimes and Imperial Fantasies

2004-10-13T04:28:00.000+01:00

Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian.

I'm new to the writings and words of Noam Chomsky but find him a total breath of fresh air. Everytime I read something of his I learn a little more, see things a little clearer and find myself heartened that there are still people in this world that are brave enough, especialy in the current climate, to stand up and say "The Emperor has no Clothes!" and intelligent enough to take a step back and look through the "Doublespeak" and dogma our governments bombard us with. Whatever your politics, you will come away with a new perspective and a deeper understanding of not only what is happening now, but it's roots in recent history and the real reasons why our leaders do and say what they do.
This interview, for the International Socialist Review Issue 37 2004, is no exception.

Shock and Awe

2004-10-12T23:22:00.000+01:00

Am I talking about the American invasion of Iraq? In a way. But not that first night of pyrotechnics we all saw on out TV's. It's what has happened afterwards that this entry is about and "Shock and Awe" is a pretty good description of my feelings towards the way the US handled it's first four weeks in Iraq. Shocked by their crass stupidity and in awe of the way they brazenly lie to the world about their motives. First, lets look at one of the main reasons we were fed about why we went in to Iraq. It was this; "To stop the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and to keep them out of the hands of terrorists."
On the news tonight we were shown how in the first four weeks after the invasion a systematic dismantaling of the Iraqi regime's nuclear programme occured right under the noses of the US. Not vandalism, not looting by locals for scrap, but the removal of whole instalations. Often comprising of multiple buildings and all their equipment contained within. These were then spirited away accross the border to where? No one knows. It seems the US had absolutely no idea that this was going on. Before the invasion these facilities were closely monitored by the UN. Mothballed and inactive, we knew exactly where they were, what was there and kept close tabs on all of them. Now it's chaos. The UN has to rely on sattelite imagery to keep an eye on these places and it's only by this method we know that they've been spirited away because no one is allowed in to check. No weapons inspectors are tolerated by the US invasion forces.
This means that the invasion has actually dramatically increased nuclear proliferation. We've given someone, somewhere, capabilities they could only dream about previously. Take Iran. Just starting out on it's weapons programme. How they would love an entire facility, with all the bugs, glitches and teething troubles worked out, to fall in their laps. This isn't about know how, anyone with the time and inclination could do the research needed to collate the information to make weapons grade material. This isn't even about the machinery needed to make weapons. Although they took all the machinery contained in the buildings along with the buildings. This is about the whole process. From raw material to finished product. The layouts of the facility, the step by step process. The buildings, the machinery and the raw materials. Somewhere, people unknown, have the whole kaboodle from the gas centrifuges down to the cafeteria, from the yellowcake down to the urinals.
Now Bush has even more explaining to do. All he did was go in and protect the oil. Nothing else. Iraq's museums were looted, losing thousands of priceless items from Iraq's past. Irreplaceable. Then the palaces were looted, losing vital information and documentation about the Ba'athist regime. And now this, Iraq's nuclear facililities unguarded and loaded lock, stock and barrel onto trucks and shipped out to who knows where. What was once tightly monitored by the UN is now lost and no one has a clue where it all went.
So yes, i'm shocked, and completely in awe of how incompetent the US has been. One of the major tennets of the invasion was anti nuclear proliferation and once they were there they didn't give a toss about anything except the oil fields. This should tell you all you need to know about Bush and his wars of conquest. Everything you've been told is lies. There were no WMD's, the British have just today withdrawn the intelligence about the 45 minute claim. Iraq was not a "Clear and Present Danger." Bush was after the oil. Nothing more and nothing less, and the bodies of many thousands of American, Iraqi and British were not going to get in his way.
Sadly, it seems, nor was the security of Iraq's nuclear weapons programme.

What if the Whole World Could Vote?

2004-10-12T01:28:00.000+01:00

Go to Betavote and find out. Voting for the US Presidential election country by country. Seeing that the outcome will effect just about everyone on the planet, this is very interesting. What interests me isn't that the vast majority of the world would rather Kerry made it into the Whitehouse, it's the few countries that want Bush to hold the Presidency and trying to puzzle out why they think that way. Strangely, it's only a handfull of African countries that come out for Bush.

The worldwide percentages as I write this are: Bush 34935 (11%) to Kerry 257353 (88%)

Cabbages and Kings

2004-10-11T23:11:00.000+01:00

Being an ardent anti-royalist the idea I had this morning was pretty surprising. My normal stance on the royals could be summed up as "Turn them into meat pies, feed them to the nations homeless. Then divide their assets equally anongst the bottom 25% ( by wealth ) of the general populace." So actually discovering a reason why having a royal family is a good thing was a shock to say the least.
Ms Morpheus and I were talking about the way the americans treat their politicians so deferentially that they never get asked any difficult questions by the news media. Investigative journalism in the US can only be described as gentle by UK standards. This deification of people in the public eye, actors, musicians and of course polititians and presidents severely hampers journalists from putting them on the spot. It's as if americans are searching for a figurehead, a psuedo royal family. The Kennedy dynasty is a prime example. JFK's death was mourned nationally, and as deeply, as when Queen Victoria died in th UK. Jackie O was held in much the same regard in america as Diana Spencer in the UK. Ronald Reagan's death, although he was despised by a huge part of the US whilst in office, was remembered and honoured as a passing hero. All his problems, mistakes and wrongdoing whilst in office wiped from the collective memory. It's as if the US is looking for a national figurehead and they're looking to many areas of society for one to appear.
But it's the elevation of polititians to the psuedo-royal status that causes the greatest problems. Take the president. An elected, supposedly accountable career polititian suddenly protected by a huge barrier of deference. "Yes Mr President, No Mr President". Journalists inteviewing the president stumble and never call him to account properly. This deference percolates down through the levels of power. Giving polititians in the US a status that protects them from proper investigation.
Here in the UK it feels very different. We have a royal family. Now powerless tucked away in a palace somewhere, bought out for the odd opening of a bridge or sent abroad for a bit of PR work. All the deference due a countries figurehead can be safely beamed their way and it seems to fill a need in many. But the result of this is interesting. Polititians are here seen as what they are. Elected, accountable representatives of the people that vote them in. The prime minister is often questioned hard, interupted during trite contrived answers and often embarrased by a good journalist doing his job as he should. The relationship between the people and their polititians here is much more healthy. Much more distrustful. They don't get such an easy ride.

Well, I did it. Found a reason to keep the royals. I'm still getting used to it, it's an odd feeling. But every time i see how the americans treat their polititians, and especially their president, I'm sure it's a good thing. All that sickly sweet drivel that some ameriacans spout when the president appears really looks very strange from over here. I still can't understand what happens to a polititian, in an americans eyes, when he gets elected president. It's the deification of a career polititian. These are people that have lied, schemed and stuck on a false smile for years to get that office. They should be questioned, held to account and mistrusted more than anyone else.

Deference is their cloak behind which they hide. I'm sure UK prime ministers would love to get the respect that their american counterparts recieve. But I, for one, am bloody glad they don't.

The Price of Subversion

2004-10-11T01:45:00.000+01:00

Well, hosting the Bush Chirac video on my free web host totally stuffed my bandwidth limit and they suspended my site. OK, I don't mind. It's a service and if I want it I have to pay. It's cost about £30 for the year to increase the bandwidth. Lets hope it has enough to cope now!
The heartening thing was the conversation on the hosts tech help IRC channel. There's me in the UK, the web hostess in the US and a chap in Australia. We were all there to sort out varous web hosting glitches. Not a representative sample I'll grant you, just three people meeting by chance. The Ozzie was bemoaning the fact that their anti war, anti bush candidate lost today. Our American hostess was supportive in the hosting of the video to help get Bush out and myself with a position completely opposed to my government and it's US lapdog prime minister Blaire. That's three people roughly spaced evenly around the globe. All with the same view. Bush, along with his poodles, the UK and Australia are wrong! The people around the globe know this. It's not bleeding heart liberalism, it's common human sense and decency. It's the people in power that ignore their respective populaces to carry on regardless of opinion. Blundering around the world with ill thought out, violent, insensitive policies they call "Spreading Freedom" in the saddest Orwellian ways. When all they do is secure their own energy reserves for the coming oil crisis.
The Palestinians would not be in the situation they're in if they had oil. Darfur would not be a "Genocide" in Colin Powell's words, if they had oil. It's so obvious, I can't understand how so many people in so many countries swallow the official line and quake in their homes. Thankfull that Bush and Blaire are busy stripping away their human rights and freedoms to "Make them Safe". Keep a population suitably scared and you can do what the hell you want to them and they will thank you in the name of "Homeland Security".
Why do they fall for it every time? When the eveidence is staring them in the face. I don't understand, perhaps I never will. But today's chance meeting of three like minded people on the net gives me a whole lot of hope. Someday, sometime, someone will stand up and say "Hang on, this is all bollocks!"

Mindless Wetware

2004-10-10T20:00:00.000+01:00

I can't stop watching the .mpg of the Bush-Chirac meeting for the D-Day celebrations last June. It has Bush speaking with another voice bleeding over the translation equipment feeding him what to say next. Right down to which reporter to go to first for the question and answer session afterwards. The POTUS even mimics the sigh and tone of the prompter when he goes to the first questioner.

There has been much talk online recently about the possibility of the POTUS being wired enabling his handlers to feed him lines, facts and figures. The Mysterious Bulge, has just reached the mainstream news here in the UK. As I write Channel 4 news has a few sentences and the famous picture. OK, I know politicians don't write their own speeches, use teleprompters etc. But the two parties in the recent Presidential debates specified a whole host of rules before either would agree to them taking place. A wire feed worn during these debates breaks the very groundrules they formulated and discloses the fact that the most powerful leader on the planet can't even string a few coherant words together on the subjects he should live and breath every day without covert outside help.

There is much more at isbushwired. Required reading on the subject.