"Hello Sir, what can I get you".
"I´d like a cup of tea".
"We only do Breakfast Tea mate, none of that green bollocks....."
Great to be back in Blighty!
Tuesday 21 December 2010
Saturday 4 December 2010
WikiLeaks & the Potential for New Histories
There are many collective questions being provoked by the WikiLeaks exposures.
How much do we really want to know?
Do we trust our leadership?
What cost for transparency?
The public seems to be buying into the call by government and mass media to stop
WikiLeaks and put Assange on trial.
When a system is under threat, it responds by attacking the assailant.
What is interesting is that it is not only the US government (one senator has
called for Assange´s assassination) who are after Assange.
Even friends of mine on the left, as well as political apathetics seem to have it in for
him.
People identify and believe in the system more than they care to admit at a dinner
party. They are happy to talk anarchical politics but when push comes to shove, and something threatens them - they get afraid. They protect. They yearn to uphold the status quo.
The justifiable problem most people have with the Leaks is with the potential human fall out.
This is without doubt a major concern. For most, the threat to an individual
life is too great a cost for information.. And it is an utterly humane stand point.
Let the state keep its secrets, that is why it is elected after all - to be the custodian of that which we don´t want to know.
But it is also philosophically bankrupt.
The notion that the machinery of the state is fundamentally sound, good or trustworthy is utter nonsense.
These machines have existed in secrecy and all too often without unaccountability for centuries, and you can find then at the heart of every war, assassination, deprivation and torture since time began.
Jesus, the last American administration sanctioned mass torture for crying out loud.
And still we would rather not know.
We rail against Assange because his revelations threaten innocents.
Yet we don´t want to look at our own complicity in the terrible deprivation of things,
upheld by our own votes.
And here is the point for me.
WikiLeaks is not about challenging (necessarily) government. It is about challenging the
the very systems that control government.
Governments come and go, but the state machine - business, the military sector,
the vested interests of the very rich & powerful - stay.
The government is essentially an illusion. It is the mask the devil wears, or the
puppet the puppet master wields.
Julian Assange is not a terrorist and he is not a freedom fighter. He is just a vessel.
The systems which have not been challenged or exposed, or held accountable for
centuries are now having to face up to a new phenomenon.
Our society is porous and the old static systems are under threat from the new
technologies.
Assange is a symptom of this, not the cause. He is just a consequence of evolution.
What he does or doesn´t do someone else will.
And if we believe that there are not misdeeds and manipulations happening behind
close doors, then we are just fools.
New frontiers are opening, and change necessarily means a degree of suffering.
That is not to justify any threat to any human life, how ever could you?
But you have to face the reality of what is happening sociologically.
And if you think that governments are best left to deal with things then you just have
to look at any page in your history manual.
There have been just wars. But so few.
The new world is unfolding before our eyes. It will not collapse under its own weight.
But it will be threatened. And there will be fall out. And there will be casualties.
But the history we come from is not the one that we have to live in. There is the
potential for new, richer histories. Do we have the courage to build them?
There needs to be more openness and accountability. It is the only way that
human greed, vanity, lust and desire for power can ever be held in check.
I am for Julian Assange.
How much do we really want to know?
Do we trust our leadership?
What cost for transparency?
The public seems to be buying into the call by government and mass media to stop
WikiLeaks and put Assange on trial.
When a system is under threat, it responds by attacking the assailant.
What is interesting is that it is not only the US government (one senator has
called for Assange´s assassination) who are after Assange.
Even friends of mine on the left, as well as political apathetics seem to have it in for
him.
People identify and believe in the system more than they care to admit at a dinner
party. They are happy to talk anarchical politics but when push comes to shove, and something threatens them - they get afraid. They protect. They yearn to uphold the status quo.
The justifiable problem most people have with the Leaks is with the potential human fall out.
This is without doubt a major concern. For most, the threat to an individual
life is too great a cost for information.. And it is an utterly humane stand point.
Let the state keep its secrets, that is why it is elected after all - to be the custodian of that which we don´t want to know.
But it is also philosophically bankrupt.
The notion that the machinery of the state is fundamentally sound, good or trustworthy is utter nonsense.
These machines have existed in secrecy and all too often without unaccountability for centuries, and you can find then at the heart of every war, assassination, deprivation and torture since time began.
Jesus, the last American administration sanctioned mass torture for crying out loud.
And still we would rather not know.
We rail against Assange because his revelations threaten innocents.
Yet we don´t want to look at our own complicity in the terrible deprivation of things,
upheld by our own votes.
And here is the point for me.
WikiLeaks is not about challenging (necessarily) government. It is about challenging the
the very systems that control government.
Governments come and go, but the state machine - business, the military sector,
the vested interests of the very rich & powerful - stay.
The government is essentially an illusion. It is the mask the devil wears, or the
puppet the puppet master wields.
Julian Assange is not a terrorist and he is not a freedom fighter. He is just a vessel.
The systems which have not been challenged or exposed, or held accountable for
centuries are now having to face up to a new phenomenon.
Our society is porous and the old static systems are under threat from the new
technologies.
Assange is a symptom of this, not the cause. He is just a consequence of evolution.
What he does or doesn´t do someone else will.
And if we believe that there are not misdeeds and manipulations happening behind
close doors, then we are just fools.
New frontiers are opening, and change necessarily means a degree of suffering.
That is not to justify any threat to any human life, how ever could you?
But you have to face the reality of what is happening sociologically.
And if you think that governments are best left to deal with things then you just have
to look at any page in your history manual.
There have been just wars. But so few.
The new world is unfolding before our eyes. It will not collapse under its own weight.
But it will be threatened. And there will be fall out. And there will be casualties.
But the history we come from is not the one that we have to live in. There is the
potential for new, richer histories. Do we have the courage to build them?
There needs to be more openness and accountability. It is the only way that
human greed, vanity, lust and desire for power can ever be held in check.
I am for Julian Assange.
Friday 3 December 2010
Other People´s Definition of it....
It is something about being okay about being outside love, okay about being inside
failure, or at least other people´s definition of it.
If you are always needing to be in the safe, in the warm, in the content I guess there
is always the threat of the worlds intent.
You get ripped apart by your longing, and your longing is what gives life its shape,
its romance, its character. You sacrafice your longing at your peril.
And I can´t be damn well be bothered to justify or compare whatever the hell I am going
through in this moment to the terrors & tyrannies of the world.
It is just what it is, for right or wrong, good or bad. And I feel that we have the right to live, sometimes at least, in our own moment.
Because each of us has our little sacrifices made. Each of us has our compromises. Each
of us has our little lies, our slightly bigger secrets, and our manifold imperfections.
Can you live with the imperfections? Can you thrive in the imperfection?
I don´t give a dam if our bodies are just a conspiracy of sub-atomical primates
plotting together to shape our actions. In fact I am all the better for it because there
is the dam mystery, and there my next dam justification and I will puff gladly on
this cigarette that I am not smoking, and I will look beseechingly at the stars that
I cannot see for a better tomorrow, and if you want to get in the way of these
longings, then dam you to hell with all my other damnations, someone will surely
come to rescue you anyway, but it won´t be me.
And what of forgiveness? Forgiveness for all of those fantasies of wrong doing that
just don´t matter a dam in the smaller or greater scheme of things.
But I heard wisdom once or twice in my life.
And one time it was given to me by an elderly lady, and it was about my relationship
with my father, with whom I managed to some how fall out with nearly 7 years ago
and....not say hardly a dam word since.
And it was just this - the greatest power lies in forgiveness.
And it just resonated.
And in that I knew that not only had I the power of forgiveness, but that I could forgive -
that I wanted to forgive.
Our liberations strike us like claps of holt out of nowhere.
Thank you that Empress. That lady whose so many of miles of journey arrived to help
me for that one moment.
And it just goes to show. When we allow ourselves to be blind to the good that is happening to us amongst the shit - it becomes our own choice to be miserable.
There is just good stuff everywhere, and we choose not to see it.
failure, or at least other people´s definition of it.
If you are always needing to be in the safe, in the warm, in the content I guess there
is always the threat of the worlds intent.
You get ripped apart by your longing, and your longing is what gives life its shape,
its romance, its character. You sacrafice your longing at your peril.
And I can´t be damn well be bothered to justify or compare whatever the hell I am going
through in this moment to the terrors & tyrannies of the world.
It is just what it is, for right or wrong, good or bad. And I feel that we have the right to live, sometimes at least, in our own moment.
Because each of us has our little sacrifices made. Each of us has our compromises. Each
of us has our little lies, our slightly bigger secrets, and our manifold imperfections.
Can you live with the imperfections? Can you thrive in the imperfection?
I don´t give a dam if our bodies are just a conspiracy of sub-atomical primates
plotting together to shape our actions. In fact I am all the better for it because there
is the dam mystery, and there my next dam justification and I will puff gladly on
this cigarette that I am not smoking, and I will look beseechingly at the stars that
I cannot see for a better tomorrow, and if you want to get in the way of these
longings, then dam you to hell with all my other damnations, someone will surely
come to rescue you anyway, but it won´t be me.
And what of forgiveness? Forgiveness for all of those fantasies of wrong doing that
just don´t matter a dam in the smaller or greater scheme of things.
But I heard wisdom once or twice in my life.
And one time it was given to me by an elderly lady, and it was about my relationship
with my father, with whom I managed to some how fall out with nearly 7 years ago
and....not say hardly a dam word since.
And it was just this - the greatest power lies in forgiveness.
And it just resonated.
And in that I knew that not only had I the power of forgiveness, but that I could forgive -
that I wanted to forgive.
Our liberations strike us like claps of holt out of nowhere.
Thank you that Empress. That lady whose so many of miles of journey arrived to help
me for that one moment.
And it just goes to show. When we allow ourselves to be blind to the good that is happening to us amongst the shit - it becomes our own choice to be miserable.
There is just good stuff everywhere, and we choose not to see it.
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