Thursday 30 December 2010

Anorexia in an insane culture

(This was on another blog some years ago and has been requested so many times I decided to put it back up on this blog.)
How can I thread my way through all these ideas, these thoughts and concepts.  This world of constructs and understanding in my head.  I roam around driven by anger and fear and conformity.  Am I falling apart in this oppressive cauldron of my mind.  Is it a disease or is it life itself.

I start by wondering if the Formula One race today will be available on the internet and I find a YouTube video of Mark Blundell doing a simulator drive and then one of Martin Brundle doing something else.  I always struggle to keep those two names separate in my brain.  Then I find a video of ridiculous hill climbing and from there find a video under the heading of 'suicide'.  It is video by this ex Paris model who's name I cannot find who has this blog called mamaVision.  She seems to be a kind of centre for support for Anorexics.  Well this is another subject that is very important to me because I see anorexia as another piece of the jigsaw of the results of the oppression in our society.  So I watch this video and go browsing round the mamaVision site.  I find a quote which is by Jack Kerouac and went like this 'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh...'.  So I'm thinking this is good stuff and wonder who the hell Jack Kerouac is.  So I look him up and end up on Wikipedia reading his biography.

It's winding me up in both the good and the bad sense.  I'm getting frustrated by all this attempt at authentic human experience and expression.  I'm wondering why it is so popular.  What is so popular?  People telling it how it is.  We sit here rating the likes of Vincent Van Gough to the point of selling his paintings for millions of dollars but the very society that contains the people that rate the expression are in the very act of the oppression that gave rise to his depression and eventual suicide.  Does no one see that anorexia, mass killing of Jews in the Second World War, the billions of people starving on this planet is all part of the same rubbish.  Crap.  Shit.  Excrement.  Yes I want to be radical.  I want to be out spoken. I want to say it like it is.  But I am stuck in this cruel world that says it believes in free speech but simply can't handle it.  If I want to run an affiliate web site which is all about the problems and the solutions to the destabilising environment in which we live I have a problem in that I have to be palatable to the vendors.  Well perhaps my approach has to change.  Perhaps if I use the word 'fuck' on my web site and they don't want me to sell their sausages then perhaps that is defining enough for me.  Perhaps, just perhaps, this could be a self censorship of the pretentious, unauthentic, unethical, patterned junk stuff in our society.  Benetton got very controversial in their advertising (and with good motive) and it worked for them.  Perhaps I should just unleash my shackles and tell it how it is.  I am very angry with the world at the moment.  I have (amongst other attributes) a trait that is sometimes referred to as a 'people pleaser'.  And yet I hate it with a vengeance.  I'm sure there can be 'people pleasers' who are just fine but for me it all started with my attempts to conform in order to be safe in a divisive, oppressive, manipulative, hysterical, contradictory, moralistic judgemental 'Christian' upbringing.  The self doubt, self blame, self criticism is a wonder to behold.  It is amazing what destruction can be wrought in such a complex and ingenious creature as a human being.  It is like crap software that leaks and clogs up the works and keeps struggling on, slowing down, becoming less reliable, interfering with other software, stealing memory, falsifying addresses and data,  and eventually spewing out false results and finally crashing under it's own burden of random chaos and often taking other software down with it.

Do you think terrorists are stupid?  That really is stupid.  They are perfectly functioning human beings.  They have all the potential and creativity to do wonderful things and to be benign and productive but they have been fucked in the head.  They are people too.  Personally I find it tragic to the point of almost unbearable that people destroy other people.  I tend to be more in favour of the Buddhist monks' response to the Vietnam war of self immolation but that's my choice and an aside since I don't want to do that either.  But then this mamaVision woman has a video which effectively accuses anorexics of being stupid.  What?  They are extremely clever.  They are finding a creative way to comply with a contradictory world.  They are being 'good' according to those ridiculous paradoxical values instilled in them by their parents and backed up by the teachers and supported wholeheartedly by the saturated society in which they have grown and developed.  We are all choking in this polluted and disgusting sea of crap.  Let them die.  It is their right.  It is their self expression.  It is their van Gogh.  Their genius.  Oops.  Maybe I am getting a little out of hand here.  Hang on a minute.  Er um..  Sorry can I just run back in history for a moment and have a word with that kingpin of our Christian culture?  Er Jesus, excuse me but I'm not sure how to say this, you are stupid.  You simply have a disease called a martyr complex.  Don't worry about it just go away and see a therapist.  Just invalidate the reality of your existence and become a nobody.  It really is the best thing.  It really is in your interest.  And anyway the rest of us don't like to see all this suffering and we don't like to see you hurting so fuck off and leave us to amuse ourselves to death without actually waking up to the reality of life.

Excuse me for being so controversial but they (anorexics) are not sick it is the rest of society.  How come one and a half billion people are starving to death on this planet whilst there is enough food to go around?  Eh!?  How come?

Here comes a calmer bit.  There I was dishing up dinner to a group of children.  A normal sort of motherly thing to be doing.  One of the children (but this is more the norm than not) finished their plateful and looked at me with a smile which said 'Aren't I a good child?'.  There is the oppression.  In order to be good, in order to be acceptable, in order to be safe the child has learnt to put that food inside their gullet.  It is a condition.  The mechanisms in the brain, the biochemistry, the pathways, the reality of the comprehension of that child is perverted to believing they feel good if they eat all the food.  Not just believing, they actually feel good.  We have a cultural eating disorder.  'We' being the 'civilised world' as we like to call ourselves.

Primo Levi (an Italian Jew who remarkably survived World War II imprisoned by the Nazis) made it so clear in his book 'If This Is a Man / The Truce' that the oppression is a continuum.  It goes from the top to the bottom with everybody joining in and complying for their own little bit of security.  This included the Germans and the Jews.  And before we forget, that included all the cultures that allowed it to happen.  They were all looking after their own bit of security.  But it won't work.  We are heading to do it again unless people get it into their heads to stop the oppression.  It's not about going to war to stop the damage it's about stopping it.  It is about stopping it at home.  About not tolerating it wherever we see it.  It is about people power.  Not going along with governments and their attempts to gain votes by finding something else to blame.

So what exactly is this wonderful world that we want the anorexics to survive to live in?  They have already grown up in it.  It has done it's damage to their self esteem, their self confidence, their belief in themselves and their own inherent beauty.  It has destroyed (or at least severely damaged) their innate knowledge that they have a right to exist and that they are perfectly alright.  Our society has crushed their flame of life, their vigour, their self expression.  Is this the society that they should want to be part of?  And, if you think that they can be alive and do something to improve it then get on your bloody bicycle and go and improve it yourself before you go round inadvertently adding to the oppression by being judgemental about them.

This anger is not aimed at mamaVision but it is aimed at that statement 'Don't be stupid' in the video.  Anorexics are not stupid.  Society is!

Don't try to make your life better by self congratulatory concern for their well being.  Don't try to save your self from pain by trying to stop them dying.  If they want to let them.  Then cry an ocean full of tears for their tragedy.  Feel the pain.  It's the only way you will wake up.  Care about THEM.  Care about their perception, their pain, their trauma, their rights.  Love them.  Don't try to change them.  Well blow me if this might not change the number of anorexics on the books.

Wednesday 22 December 2010

Reply to Max Hastings on Assange

On Wednesday 22 December an article was published in the Mail Online written by Max Hastings entitled "This megalomaniac sleazeball embodies the nightmares we face in the anarchic age of the internet"

What is this strange and ineffective biological blob labelled Max Hastings?  It looks rather cute sporting its Adolf Hitler hair style and sweet chibby goggles.  The sewage that spews from its poisonous pen is beautifully crafted and a brilliant satire of the megalomaniac arch criminal.  But wait...  This is a journalist.  This is a human being.  This is a sentient, conscious, intellectual, emotional human being.  What a disguise.  It has me fooled.

On a slightly serious note what this man has written in this article really helps me understand why it is sometimes called the "gutter press".  This is an appalling piece of writing.  Apart from the fact that it is inaccurate it is also judgemental, cruel, and attempts to incite hatred.  I thought there were laws about stuff like this.

I do not have the energy or time to waste writing a careful criticism of this article.  It only takes a cursory glance to realise that it is a nasty bully making invalid and inaccurate claims about someone else in a jealous attempt to steal some of the limelight.

Go home and polish your jack boots you silly man.

Tuesday 14 December 2010

Ben Brown interviews Jody McIntyre

I really am bewildered by the intellectual condition of the "civilised" world.  What is it that allows a lot of people to pick and choose the little bits they require to support their evidently inhuman view and to present them as if they have any validity at all?  Why is it that we can have well dressed PR men claiming that the reason their company should be granted a license to build a mega casino is because they are really responsible and will put some of the profits from the venture into gambling recovery centres.   It's as if the recipients brain cannot do more than bridge two consecutive ideas at a time.  Man A should be allowed to build a casino because he is responsible.  He is responsible because he wants to help people with gambling addictions.  Therefore it's a good idea!  What?



Ben Brown exhibits the same moronic short chain logic in his attempt to blame Jody McIntyre for being dragged out of his wheel chair and assaulted by several police officers.

Fact:  Police dragged a disabled man from his wheel chair.  Simples!  They should not have done it.  But in some peculiar flailing attempt to justify the bullying Ben Brown keeps suggesting that Jody McIntyre is somehow responsible for the action taken against him and that he deserves to be treated that way by the police.

A tiny excerpt from the BBC news interview (bear in mind that Jody McIntyre has already explained that he isn't capable of even driving his own wheel chair let alone hurling missiles at the police.)...

Ben Brown: "And you didn't shout anything er provocative or throw anything that would have induced the police to do that to you."

Jody McIntyre: "Do you really think a person with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair can pose a threat to a police officer who is armed with weapons?"

Ben Brown: "But you do say that you are a revolutionary."

And so the lunacy goes on.  Well done Jody McIntyre for not being distracted by this appalling and  abusive "interview".  Jody McIntyre makes the point that the mode of reporting reminds him of the BBC's reporting of the Palestinian situation.  He is, of course, quite correct.  This is a mode of approach which is attempting to find any error on the victims part which can then be used to distract from or justify the illegitimate action against the victim.  It is paranoia in action.

Therefore I would suggest that Ben Brown joins a fitness club or something to boost his self confidence and then he might realise that he has no need to be afraid of Jody McIntyre or the rest of the student population.

You can read Jody's own account of the incident on his blog at http://jodymcintyre.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/week-76-student-protests-part-three/

Friday 10 December 2010

Student riots in London on 9 December 2010

So it seems the students have caused a bit of a riot.  They attacked Prince Charles' car with him and Camilla inside it, they have occupied Parliament square doing damage to it and the statue of Winston Churchill, they've staged a sit-in at the National Gallery, they've broken windows along Oxford Street and then they've set fire to the Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square.  What an unruly lot.

Now in this country we have a terrible attitude.  It's a judgemental attitude.  So all the press can do is report "Gosh, this is terrible." or "We don't condone this behaviour." or "...this is wanton vandalism."  or " ...some of the protesters have no respect for London or its citizens.".  But what about the "Well done chaps.", "Congratulations!", "Jolly good show."?  The trouble is that the decisions being made by very well off old fogies to trash the educational system in this country and to push the bankers debts further down the line and onto the children of the future whilst protecting the bankers profits and leaving the population in years to come with no education or resource to do something creative about the devastated planet is more far reaching, more destructive, and more irreversible than the puny efforts of the small number of students in London yesterday.

Sometimes it is no good being polite and doing the right thing when the damage incurred will disable the victim from fighting in the future.  Sometimes the irreparable nature of the assault has to be stopped in its tracks or it will be too late.  If the students and any other responsible members of society don't make a loud enough noise now it will be too late to try to fix things in the future.  It is clear that the financial machinations of the higher echelons of our culture are finally destroying this civilisation.  The debt has been pushed to third world countries and when that sponge was full it was pushed into National Debt and when that sponge was full it has been pushed into housing and after that into the pockets of the citizens via the likes of Mastercard and Visa (who are not exactly flavour of the month for their criminal behaviour) and now that sponge is saturated and leaking all over the place they call it a debt crisis and forward the debt to the future generations through education.  It would be funny if it were on The Simpsons or South Park but I'm sorry to say this is very real.  None of the powers that be will do anything to confront the ruthless pursuit of "profit at any cost" nor will they do anything constructive about the declining climate on this planet or the destruction of the ecosystem or the depletion of the animal populations or the deforestation - should I stop now?  They WILL NOT do anything about it because they are too greedy and too frightened and too stupid.

Well unfortunately for them they gave just a little bit too much education to the children before they thought to take it away and they are now just bright enough to recognise that it is not about winning clever intellectual arguments or doing things "properly" because there will be no civilisation to work from soon.  If the government in this country (and many others) don't stop pandering to the megalithic financial controllers the whole world will descend into chaos.  What the British politicians are doing with their "austerity measures" is basically ensuring the bankers get to keep their dosh so that they don't walk out and leave the country in ruins.  It's a kind of hostage situation.  What they need to do is take back control of the banks and make them serve the population not run (and abuse) it.  They need to invest in education (right from day one), change the educational system radically to remove the indoctrination and to nurture creativity, they need to rearrange the financial setting so that most people can live a reasonable stable life instead of this disgusting cross between a rat race and musical chairs, and they need to genuinely and fearlessly oppose corruption and get on doing the job they are currently privileged to do.

I'm kind of sorry to say that I totally applaud the students.  I am proud of them and ashamed of the government.  It is a real pity that the expensive education afforded to the likes of Cameron and Clegg obviously succeeded it dumbing their intellectual and creative abilities to the point that these austerity measures are the best thing they can think to defend.  They are the ones committing the crimes against other human beings and, worse, against the children and the younger generations.  The students are being given NO CHOICE.  I would tell the politicians to grow up but there lies double-think.  Actually it is the younger people who have more insight, more compassion, more creativity and frankly more courage.

Thursday 9 December 2010

STOP PRESS: New Terrorist Organisations Located!

Mastercard and Visa are the new terrorists.  They are blocking free people who pay for their services from donating funds to a perfectly legitimate organisation called WikiLeaks.  They have no right to do that and they are (it seems) acting to comply with offensive and probably illegal pressure from powerful governments like the USA and GB.

Check out this statement from Datacell CEO on Visa and Mastercard action: http://www.datacell.com/news.php

It is horrible and disgusting.  If WikiLeaks or any other organisation are fairly or unfairly designated as a terrorist organisation and the law stipulates that the likes of Mastercard and Visa cannot process funds for them then that is the law - like it or not.  But there has been no such legal due process and WikiLeaks is in fact a legitimate organisation working for freedom and human rights.  The powers that be are afraid because of their own guilt and it is causing them to reveal themselves as the true oppressive ruthless bullies that they are.  I for one will never forget this inhumane, cruel, and disgusting behaviour of the low life rich kids that run these organisations who are cowardly conspirators to dishonest killers.

Terrorist organisations are a conceptual item invented by the USA and Britain with other compliant governments to bundle anybody they choose into a "bad" bucket.  Actually many of the so called terrorist organisations are no such thing but what the Americans and the British have done in Iraq and Afghanistan is by their own proud admission exactly terrorism.  They wanted to kill foreigners and they lied through their teeth to get UN resolutions (not even legal declarations of war) to appear to be justified and went ahead and killed thousands of innocent people under the banner of "SHOCK AND AWE".  That is precisely "TERRORISM".

The truth is they raped and pillaged Iraq.  I don't like the oppressive Muslim regimes and I don't like the sanctimonious repressive Christian one's either.  But raping and pillaging an entire country for what retrospectively appears self interest is historically disgusting.  Now they think they have the power to threaten financial organisations like Mastercard and Visa and apparently those organisations are so inhumane they respond like cowards and act to financially terrorise other people by suggesting they are free to cut anyone off financially if they dare to speak out against the government.  This is all getting out of hand and it is time that the people made their opinion known.  The bullying will stop or we will all die in terror anyway.  So up yours Mastercard and Visa I think you are the new terrorists.

See more on the trials and tribulations of WikiLeaks at http://www.toxicdrums.com/julian-assange-hero.html