WHAT IS NEWS?

In some respects, I am interested in the opposite of news.
News is when something happens.
It is the drama, the story, the event.
When I found out about who formulates news, I began to wonder about everything that was left out of the various daily radio bulletins, TV reports, websites and newspapers.
Many newspapers recently enthusiastically carried stories about the crimes committed by Bosnian leader Radovan Karadzic, stating that he was responsible for the biggest atrocity and genocide since the holocaust, because he allegedly had 8,000 men exterminated in Srebrenica.

But that’s Hyper-Bole.
The biggest genocide having been committed in the last few years is the slow, unreported strangulation of people in the developing world cut off from their land, water and resources and with disease killing off any remaining survivors.
It’s mass-criminality of biblical proportions and an atrocity just the same, but it’s slow and suffocating, not sharp and attention-grabbing.
It does not make a compelling story, therefore it’s not news.

The lie that India is the world’s largest democracy is the best piece of PR and marketing of the 20th Century.
It's complete propaganda.
The slow lethargic suffering of human beings is barely even referred to. ..
Where is the story of mass human suffering, and how people allow it to continue?
Where is the story of that unreported genocide?

I realized a rather long time ago that in this country, there appears to be a disconnection with the people suffering far way from its borders in remote parts of the world.
Out of sight, out of mind is the motto, and it’s true.
With this understanding comes a desire for me to understand what the reasons are for this distance, and whether there is anyway that people here in the UK can actually feel angry enough to reject what is happening across the globe.
Death in Spain is seen as sad and shocking.
Death in Burundi is seen as part of life, the continuation of what we think always occurs there, a tribal unintelligent series of conflicts resulting in irrational massacres by despotic darkie tyrants.

X-RAY

X-RAY...............

I have a lingering suspicion that if I was to use an X-ray machine to peer inside my soul, it would be hideously, horrendously polluted. If all human beings seek is acceptance, then why is it all so hard? What state of mind does a man have to be in, when he is so desperate to have creative thoughts, that he shuts off from the world in a conceited attempt to summon them? A man can be as mentally empty as a dry elixir, and yet still try endlessly to drag out some perfume-scented ideal from the murky pits of his rotting carcass, to prove and sustain his mechanically operated wonderment. I am so happy with my achievements, but I demand so much more of myself…..For, if the masters recapitulate this notion that I should accept myself 100% all the time, then what on earth would act as that driving force, that motivates me to do better than I can, and draw extramural patterns with my subconscious?

Books divulge information, like straws allow us to swallow milkshakes. Hot air is burning my lungs, I am breathing in the fumes like a junkie determined to erase all proof of his pitiful existence. The intoxication of a musty room allows my body to feel lighter than it is, and my brain to feel like the end of my life is relative under my own terms. The thick aurora of the processed air represents a swamp of breathlessness, that I can comfortably swim in without the fear of judgement and resentment. Maybe this is how a child raised in the sewers feels about sunlight and normality. Angry that he can’t deal with it, uncompromising about its absence, and bitter about those whose glow in it’s rapture.

WE CAN'T BE PASSIVE

It wasn't meant to be like this, but discovering new feelings became hard, so we became afraid to embrace new challenges.
It's tough to face direct rejection in the face, along with the notion that you are rubbish
So anytime you find yourself preferring to stay at home or not engage with different people, go deep inside and explore that

We were not born to be passive people, we were born to be active.
But there is a virus spreading across the society I see, and it's one of passitivity and a kind of apathy.
and if heaven forbid, you are an active soul, prepare to be laughed at, ridiculed and rejected from social circles.
You can't care about respectability if you intend to follow your path

I'm already certain that I'm not going to be held in debt bondage.
I’m far too free to be held captive for a pouch of money to pay my rent.
I'd rather keep my world, that be raped and forced to become a robot suit in theirs.
and I would rather be shoved aside by every person in my current social circle, than be something I'm not.

We are scared to think different, because we become aware of what is good and bad, we develop a belief system.
But what is important is the soul, and allowing the soul to fulfill its own path.
I refuse to get in the middle of my soul's desire to be free and soar.
and to do that, I really should not give so much credence to the beliefs of others and their ways

I love human beings, but I hate what they've become.
The pettiness, the attachment to belief systems, the racism, the desire to conform and convert.
I can't stand people trying to turn me into something I have no desire to be.
I hate how they expect me to change, even by their attitude, which is unreceptive if they can't understand me.

We need to better understand why people have become so passive, and especially uninvolved in the political system.
It's very boring, which is true, but we are distracted also, with adverts, gimmicks, TV, celebs, gizmos
We need to learn how it could be that we forgot history, why objective history is barely even taught in our schools.
Because without learning the lessons that the historians have understood, how can we prevent making the same mistakes?
Humans are blessed with consciousness, unlike animals, and we have a capacity to learn from our experiences and past.
People attached to belief systems, are living in a rudimentary and tribalistic way, and I believe in thousands of years this will be properly understood

and how about you? You saw so much of their bullshit for what it was
but somehow, you just tried to assure your mind that it was sensible, and that you would understand it better in time.
You didn't want to believe the wretched way people lived, or that the lunacy which is still massively primitive rules the earth
You wanted to believe that adults knew, and had sophisticated answers, but it was hard to realize that they were all blagging it too
They were lying and pretending the whole time, out of ego, shame, crisis, status fears
and you were close to giving up your world view which was developed from the experience you had

The milligram experiment showed that people believe a person in authority over their experience
Do you know how dangerous this is?
People believe books more than their human emotions?
God has given us a pre-set Quran, a Bible, a Torah in our bodies, it's our way of experiencing and deciding right from wrong.
It's such an advanced tool, but still we find ourselves falling back into the old cycles where we feel warm and nostalgic.

We need to be ourselves, without shackles
We need to live completely, fearlessly, unafraid, honestly
and when I say 'we' I really mean 'me' because all my advice is for myself
but other people are very welcome to follow if they see something they like, or just toss it in the bin.

The difficulty comes with engagement, and shared values.
People will not mix when blame and scorn is directed, which is really just counterproductive like Dawkins.
Many of man's problems come back to his own psychology, so we need to go in there and examine our minds and heal them.
How can I sit amongst religious people and not start arguments?
Instead, be a unifying force?

I get up each morning and ask myself 'Why are you still here?'
and then 'what do you have to do?'
People refer to following your own path in life as some kind of holy grail, are you fucking kidding me?
It should be completely normal, why should we have to be economic slaves in the first place?

Music can be like a drug, because it makes us passive to the world and drowns out reality in some ways.
Same with TV, Cinema, video games, work, talking about certain things, routines, entertainment
I would like to make a bold assertion: If you are NOT doing something to stop the spread of evil in this world, you are complicit in it.
People hate to be told how fucking rubbish they are, but I'm going to say it if I want to...

All the main religions taught us to be ACTIVE people, you were not born into it, you followed it actively..
These religions taught, that if injustice was being committed around you, and you knew, and did nothing, that it was a sin
Well, Christians seem to have forgotten their religion and culture, because war, poverty and genocide are occurring now.
So, don't use that excuse, that you are not doing anything bad yourself, because you are staying silent in an atrocity, that is a crime.
I can't speak on behalf of others at all, I can only speak for myself, and I can see my head is in the sand like an ostrich.
and I'm sorry, but that's not the kind of person I want to be.
I did not sign up for this...

LETTER TO A FRIEND

Amnesia is encouraged because it diverts us from that aching feeling in our souls.
We recognize how different things could be, not just in the outer objective universe but within ourselves especially. For many people, the distance between the real self and the false self they have created and have been led to believe is actually them has become almost-unbridgeable and it pains them for you to even remind them of this, because I suspect they desperately want to get there too.

The conditioning started when we were young. We were told that a system was already in place to help us get along in life and excel. Everybody followed it, including family, friends, religion, tradition, culture, established society, so we were casually dragged into it as well, with our open hearts and open minds. We accepted their system and rules because we were naturally trusting, and why shouldn’t we be? We didn’t realize the subtle falsity at work, washing over us each moment, diluting our spirit and taking our power, replacing it with sewage and empty boxes with shiny wrapping paper. We didn’t realize that in surrendering our most precious asset, they would repay us with material junk and spiritual garbage, consistently tearing us further and further away from the truth of our own identities.

Everything was for sale, including your point-of-view, and unfortunately you surrendered it with a clean heart to those that pretended they would take care of you and knew some pathway to salvation, but they turned out to be emotional thieves, preying on you, because that was their role in the system, that’s what they had learnt in their years of experience to ‘get ahead’ in the game that adults play for a more fulfilling and ‘happy’ life.

“What would be the purpose of putting holes in a person?”

It’s the Darwinist mindset of might is right, and that if you can tear enough holes into other people so that they know who is boss, you will automatically be in a space of untouched superiority and power. Unfortunately we’ve taken that principle so far, that as frequently neurotic, paranoid, unhappy sentiments we can be, we’ll subconsciously pierce holes into people just to establish a sense of normalcy for ourselves, or at least one that people can visibly see in us. It’s a self defense mechanism on one hand, but it’s become so widespread to step all over to people to get to where you want, that anybody not participating in this dog-eat-dog madness is branded as a naïve simpleton. I sometimes despair looking at the packed train doors open, and watching everyone push past other to get in, rudeness is rewarded, how normal now.

The marketing and advertising culture of this system has virtually ensured we live in a world in which lying has become acceptable too, and everything can be glossed up and sold regardless of its suitability to our needs. The whole industry of cosmetics, beauty products, fashion, dependency-drugs, plastic surgery thrives on the notion of telling you that there is ‘something wrong with you’ and ‘we have the cure for $29.99’ so established, regular society and business has left us with a system that perpetually tells us how rubbish, inadequate, inferior and ugly we are, and all we need to do to solve that problem is buy their product to join the ‘popular crew’ with their gleaming pristine teeth and permanent tranquility of life.

We fall for that shit hook-line and sinker because it’s difficult to stand in our own authority and take real decisions on our feelings and emotions and then live with the consequences of those decisions. Many of your friends might even tell you that you’re just ‘going through a phase’ or even consider your perception of the world to be ‘incorrect’ (What a joke! How can a person’s subjective perception of the world born from their own experience ever be considered objectively true or false by an outsider?) but I think you’re onto a solid gold awareness of self, not spiritual-intellectual psycho-babble for the pursuit of a cosmetic journey you can tell your friends about in years to come, but a real awareness of the silence in you, and all of us, and how much power we have handed over to others, surrendered our uniqueness, when we should have had more confidence to trust our own feelings and live by them, rather than struggle to squirm under the light of so-called experts that society stated had the ‘answers’ for living and getting ahead.

Congratulations on coming back to yourself.
Try to stay there from now on.
The rest of the world might be absolutely asleep
But it sounds like you’ve woken up.

PS: I am not bored, and you didn’t “bore my cockles off” That’s another thing, stop apologizing for being yourself! Who gives a fuck what other people think of you and your writing? The best part of reclaiming your thoughts is liberating yourself from the perception of others, because they are not you. Rene Descartes once said “I Rock therefore I am” ok fine, that wasn’t exactly what he said, but you get my drift….you have to be yourself unfiltered, and if people can’t accept you for your authentic self, it’s them that need a reality check.

A THOUSAND PIECES

Now that you say, eyes drawn
Like a kite to the sky, you don’t love me
I’ll have this ocean engulfed in flames
Desperately anticipating the birth of distant stars

Now that you say we are different people
I’ll have every mountain turn to stone
Every tree a sling,
Flatten earth all the same

Now that you are going away
I’ll have all doors spy on their shadows
Deny the sun, a keyhole of the heart
Wear the endless night like glares over sights

Now that you have taken away
What you gave,
I’ll resist to the end
With what’s left behind

The instant ageing
Of a child’s blood
The loss of wonder
A turn of mind

PENITENCE

I evade my personal responsibility for the things I choose to do. I blame the government, the oil companies, Gordon Brown, George Bush, the economy, the wealthy and anybody else I can think of for the destruction that my lifestyle causes.

I put my comfort, my convienence and my conformity ahead of the lives and livlihoods of thousands of future generations, and I try not to think too much about my daily contribution to the destruction of the world that was left to me by thousands of past generations. I put myself far, far ahead of my ancestors and decendents and take from them for the most trivial of reasons.

I ignore the real human pain, suffering and death that my behaviour causes. I turn the page, switch the channel, and change the topic of conversation. I pretend that the science isn't definitive yet, or that there's no point in changing before others do, and I convince myself that 'scientists' will come up with a technological solution that will make my lifestyle and me OK.

I avoid, I deny, I justify and rationalise, I pretend, I project, I squirm and sqeeze and do whatever I can to maintain my concept of myself as a good person while still doing what I do. I evade my moral responsibility a day at a time in the hope that reality will somehow be different tomorrow morning.

I steal from those who live far away from me, and who I do not know because I see their pain as cartoon pain, and not fully real. I casually destroy what future generations will depend upon to live because they have yet to be born and it is only me, and my time and my normalcy that is important.

I am like those who, sixty years ago, did their jobs and lived their normal lives and didn't ask questions about where their Jewish neighbours had gone. I am like those who participated in slavery and other atrocities, except that the effects of my crimes will outlast all those others.

And it is OK, because today I am normal, and busy, and have other things on my mind and, if what I do is really so bad so many people wouldn't be doing the same, would they?

But when, in the hours before I die, I think back upon my life and what it has meant, I must do one thing. I must hope and pray that there is nothing beyond life, beyond time or beyond myself, that there is no blance, no karma, no morality and no justice.

Because if there is, and I do what I do, knowing what I know....

Well, lets not think about that...hey, has X-Factor begun yet?

Choke

2.8 billion people - nearly half of the world's population - live on $2 a day or less. When you are living on $2 a day, most of your income is spent on food - not processed chicken dinners and frozen pizzas, but the basics: flour, corn, rice. This is what keeps you and your family alive.

When you spend $1.50 a day out of your $2 income on basic food, you don't have much wriggle-room. So when food prices go up by 75%, or 130%, its not a matter of cutting back in other areas. Instead it means that you and your children will eat less, and go to bed hungry at night.

2.8 billion people - nearly half of the world's population - have been put in this situation during the last year.

If you've ever gone on a strict diet, or fasted for a day for religious reasons, you might have an inclinling of an idea of what hunger is like. But you know nothing of days and weeks and months of hunger - you can't even really conceive of it.

Haitians use the expression "grangou klowox" or "eating bleach", to describe the daily hunger pains they face as a result of rising food prices, because of the burning feeling in their stomachs. That's why they riot.

Fear of inflation, fear of a house-price collapse, fear of interest rate increases - these are notihing when compared to fear of hunger, and it is that fear that is rapidly spreading around the world as prices rise.

And why are prices rising?

Partly because you drive and fly.

A big impetus behind rising basic food prices is the rise in the price of oil due to supply scarcity (and a lot of oil goes into mechanised agriculture) combined with a widespread swich of agricultural land to the biofuel crops that are more valuable than food crops.

In other words, as we reach and pass peak oil, oil prices are inexhorably rising as people compete for the remaining oil production. On one side of that competition are the 15% of the world's people who drive and fly and waste beyond the wildest imagination of our ancestors. And on the other side are the 45% of the world's people who live from day to day on $2 or less.

On one side you have the shiney new Terminal 5, and on the other hungry children. On one side car trips to Tesco to buy food flown in from the other side of the world, and on the other the feeling of "eating bleach".

So next time you're filling up your petrol tank (one person's food for the year) or flying off for a weekend break (a year's food for a village?), spare a thought for some hungry person in Cote dIvore, or Haiti, or Mexico, or Egypt, because that's who's dinner your burning.

And get prepared to either harden your conscience or change your behaviour because, unfortunately, this is a story that is not going away.

HAVING SOME THOUGHTS AT 4.17AM

I am on the verge of death, at the point of extinction
So, these thoughts are pouring out of an unfiltered mind
unrestricted by the constraints of general platitudes
desperate to find their way to the shorelines of existence

The moment of impact, transpired when the mind took recognition of itself
and therefore lost it's will to impart and express, through shy embarrassment of being discovered
So, perhaps much of life is composed of such moments,
where the creation sinks into the lava of pompei, because it is confronted with a cynical mind consistently judging it
The creation was always free, but the mind was the Judas
The whole point of life must be to grow, expand in an organic way
So do me a favor, each morning, get up and throw away the old self
exist in an empty space composed entirely of the totality of your blissfulness

Throw yourself away each morning, let that old person sink into the ground
Because new flowers are growing every day, and you are also born in each of them
It's unexplainable, but the feeling that you are connected to nature is right
the fabric of existence plants itself into every pore of your being

You owe it to yourself, you have an obligation to feel yourself
You have the right to be in touch with the way you feel
You have a right to feel the blissfulness of your existence each day
You have a right to feel life.....nobody has the right to take your life away from you
One day, you will be discussing life like you discussed your university experience
Ungrateful of it at the time, but impossible to now re-state how wonderful and magical an opportunity it was.



WATCHING AN IDEA DISSOLVE AS YOU SCRAMBLE OUT OF BED IN AN ATTEMPT TO WRITE IT DOWN....

In search of purity
I am going to attempt to break it down right now, in front of myself.
From the darkness, something beautiful is born.
It exists in its own right, something organic grappling for growth
You are trying to picture the image,
You are trying your best to crystalize the image
to bring solidity to the feeling that consumes you

a thought, feeling has arisen in you
and you want to make it solid, flesh it out, turn it to reality
you wish to give it clarity, distinction, grounding

but, then the horsemen come..
you begin to hear the sounds of their hoofs stomping upon the ground
the clarity of the image begins to fade, the sound becomes distorted
someone is pulling the image into a thousand different directions
you attempt to stabilize, to hold it together, to push the bricks into order
the house is evaporating before your very eyes,
here comes the self-perception, here comes judgment, here comes criticism, here comes public recognition,
here comes the public world-view, here comes self-awareness, here comes a separate strand of thinking on an unrelated matter
here comes the loss of memory, the self-hatred of the idea, the demon who mocks you for ever having had any self-belief
Here comes the world, raining on your parade, reality breaking down your door, tearing you from your idea
turning the image to a blurry indistinct scrawl, turning a 16:9 to a 174:83, the scorn of everything

They have hammers, they smash at your mind's door,
memory lost, they have won...you cant even remember what it was anymore.
You're child has been kidnapped, in a public confrontation
They charge at you, unwilling to let you document your idea
They wish to obscure your purity, create a battleground in your mind

and then....you switch the light on
because that idea is now dead.

BEING IN TOUCH WITH MYSELF

You have every right to embrace the reality of the moment.
To feel the freshness of existence, to be in an intimate relationship with your feelings
Without having to feel that you are always being watched by somebody, without caring that someone is studying you...

I have become so scared of somebody judging me all the time, because perhaps I judge others all the time.
Having no confidence in myself, I start to have the lowest expectations...
It connects to the memory of myself, which is one of loathing and clumsiness
In this wide world, with billions of colours, I am locking myself into the smallest of prisons
and it is all a trick of the mind, of perception of the self, memory of a former self...

Social justice, cannot link back to memory and text-books
It must be something one has experience and real knowledge of...
You stay in a room so long, you begin to think you were born in that room and outside that room you will be killed.
How do I free myself from the restraints of the mind?
How do I free myself from the perception I have of myself?
How do I search inside me for the best of me, take that feeling and run for the rest of my life?
Isn't that what I wish I had the courage to do? To be the best person I can be?

We are talking about absolute freedom of the mind
We are talking about ideologically being the practical representations of ourselves
Freedom from the self, means freedom from our memories and self-depictions
This is not spiritualism, it's awareness.

I will not monopolize this debate with my perceptions of what is or isn't..
My thoughts on the definitions are not that important
and my brain shouldn't 'compute' information as a machine either...
I am trying to appreciate life here, I am tryng to find a sense of peace
Everyone has an equally valid point of view, nobody should be excluded

I sat on the platform at Clapham Junction
Watching multi-coloured trains fly over my head
and then one smashed into my subconscious
and out came the illegal immigrants...

DO WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THIS?

There will come a time in your life
when absolutely nothing will make you happy
You will drift through malls and department stores looking for salvation
but it will escape you each and every time.

You will struggle to understand how this could be happening
It will frighten and frustrate you
You will surround yourself with things that previously brought you happiness
but those same songs don't work again for the 394th time.

You will look everywhere around you,
from the ultra-crowded bars, to beneath the ultra-violent light of solitude
hoping to find the answer lurking idealistically, romantically, even nostalgically
but all it will bring you is more emptiness, melancholy and sadness

You will attempt to force it to return to you
but it will be as hopeless as attempting to light a match on a bar of soap
'How dare this feeling linger?' I suspect you'll cry out, under your breath
All the while, feeling drained and defeated.
The tricks of yesterday have failed you,
and you don't know what else to do.

You are being separated from the whole
Torn violently from the self
You study the skies in search of salvation
begging for a re-birth, a second chance

You begin to feel drawn to food and familiar gatherings with friends
You find a warm cocoon in oft-repeated jokes and identical ideas
The smell of KFC sends you to sleep like a baby
Because the closest thing you have to new feelings
are the recycled ones.

QUORN NUGGETS VOL 1

Sometimes I repeat myself, Sometimes I repeat myself, because I live in an echo chamber.

Nothing will kill your spirit faster than ‘conventional’ wisdom

I promise , the next time I see Mickey Mouse, I will punch him in his fucking face!

If Jesus returns from Narnia I hope he kills his publicist, for fucking up the message royally.

The problem with my Buddhist brethren in Myanmar and Lhasa isn’t the power of their prayers, or the effectiveness of their chants, but their visible lack of AK-47’s.

Mcdonalds is going to solve poverty? hahahahahahahahahaha

Good luck to Marlon Brando for getting his lucky induction into Heaven.

NEVER trust a guru who doesn't have a paying job!

What seems to most have benefited from 9/11, and all the terror updates is airport duty free, they have made an absolute killing.

All music is ‘world music’, when it is aimed at the world.

This current life most frustrates those who would desperately love to control it..

If I contradict myself, then I contradict myself.

London is full of more evil than the rest of England combined.

We are now living in the times that will rival probably the 60’s for impact, and excitedly tell our grandchildren, that we were there, and right in the thick of it.

Legalise child-molestation now!

Osho starts to speak and I hear Miles Davis

Could someone please..

just blow the shit out of Fox News?...I know there are some crazy people out there. Let's talk...