…solidarity to pure wind

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidarity to pure wind.“
- George Orwell

Everybody on the planet is capable of synesthesic thought. Usually we only identify the most extreme and unusual cases of synesthesia and single them out for investigation at the most and a nice little story to tell your mates at the pub at the least. Synesthesia is the ability to transfer the sensation of the stimulation of one sense, to the sensation of the stimulation of another sense. For example, people who see colours and hear a sound corresponding to that colour. Or vice versa. The truth is though, we all do, every moment. The simple way to measure this affect is the bouba keke test. Look at the picture underneath and decide to yourself which is called bouba and which is called keke:

If you are like everyone else, you will call the rounded shape bouba and the spikey shape keke. The reason is the rounded shape we see, corresponds to the rounded sound of “bouba“. Around 1% of people who take the simple bouba keke test will not instantly see bouba as rounded and keke as sharp and spikey. Similarly, 99% of people will not instantly understand why someone else sees green when they think of the number 2. It similar to seeing a bright green shirt and calling it loud. In short, synethesia is involuntary metaphor.

You have all no doubt seen this. Try to say the colour, rather than the word:

This is an example of cognitive dissonance. The tension we feel when the literal translation is somehow impaired by another perception we are simultaneously holding. The above will make you struggle when you get to the word and colour that conflict with each other, because human thinking cannot disregard what we consider to be the literal meaning. We cannot shake that.

This brings me onto the point of this blog.
A few days ago, was the Royal Wedding. Predictably discussion turned to Patriotism. There is a sort of expectation in the minds of the collective, that we are supposed to feel a sense of sacrificial pride to the landmass on which you were born, loyal only to the abstraction of the National flag under which you had no choice in. And I am left in two conflicting minds.

I cannot fight the powerful urge to feel a sense of community when England play (and inevitably hopelessly lose) at a World Cup. I feel a defensive sense of anger, when I hear American Republicans insist that a British style NHS will result in refusal to treat the elderly. When I’m abroad and I hear a British accent, I feel a slight tinge of kinship, even though I have no idea who that person is. The feeling of patriotism is there. The idea of a Nation creates an automatic expectation within each individual to feel a sense of loyalty and pride toward it. Yet, it doesn’t exist. It is the solidarity of pure wind.

The sense of Patriotism and its expectations are quite unnerving. It is a type of respect and loyalty that is supposed to be given without question. We bow in its presence as if its worship is just as natural as breathing. To even question the validity of such authority is considered unpatriotic. We group ourselves, not on merit or on objective morality, but on the idea of where we were born. When the British armed forces are in Iraq, they are there for “our freedom“. Our, being the key word. We are all apparently connected by an abstract principle. They are the “heroes” and those fighting against “us” are “terrorists“, “extremists“, “insurgents” or any other noun we choice to aimlessly proscribe to entire groups of people who don’t agree with the mainstream cultural sentiments of that specific country. We are asked to look at the “enemy” as an “other“. They are not like us, because they are not from our land and our land means we are all one. They are the “enemy” because they are from another land. We look at what happened on 7/7 and see a great evil, we see the deaths of innocent people amplified because “they” are “us”. We hear news of a bombed town or village in Fallujah, and we ignore it, because “they” are far away. But if “they” shoot “our” troops, we get angry.

When Wikileaks released the video of the the American Apache pilots killing twelve innocent people, and talking about it as if it were a video game, or when video was released of American soldiers firing into a prison and throwing a grenade at the building whilst laughing and joking, no one called these people animals, or criminals, or terrorists (in fact, what we do instead, is imprison the guy – Bradley Manning – who released the video). We ignore it. We ignore it, because we have built a Patriotic narrative that whatever crime they commit, they are heroes, but the “enemy” are always “terrorists“.

This comes at a time when Americans are on the streets celebrating the death of Bin Laden. One wonders why? It will almost certainly cause a revenge attack and America may well be the target. Celebrating a death of what is perceived to be the enemy (remember, much of the World considers America to be a great threat and enemy) simply seeks to perpetuate division. President Obama said justice had been served. Justice? Hundreds of thousands of people have had to die in a war, to seek one man? And that’s justice? It isn’t a video game.

The ultra-Patriotic movement in America also creates its antithesis. There is a section of the Left that is so viciously anti-war it presumes and subtly declares as loudly as it can, that America perhaps deserved 9/11 or at least had it coming. The problem is that America didn’t create militant religious activity, it is simply a case that Nation States that aren’t built around militant religion will always come into conflict it, because the abstraction of a Nation is similar to that of religion; divisive.

It isn’t a case of Islam vs America. America, by its very nature has always been imperialistic and expansionist. It has had designs on Cuba for centuries and it shares this trait with organised religion. When Nation States mix with Capitalism, it is inevitably going to create a strain on religions, and the old power structure in which religion was built into the system is slowly eroded away to the dismay of those who quite liked the old ways, and having had the opportunity to follow the industralised Nations of their own accord, rather than being forced to for the sake of profit.
That tension between the old religiously-led system, and the new more secular way of governing was essentially forced upon the Muslim World for the sake of a more integrated global community, imposed by those in the West who thought our way was somehow “better”. Hassan al-Banna, the creator of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s said:

“Politics is part of religion, Caesar and what belongs to Caesar is for God Almighty alone Islam commanded a unity of life; to impose upon Islam the Christian separation of loyalties [into church and state] is to deny it its essential meaning and very existence.”

- Here is the conflict. Islamic nations under the control of fundamentalist dictatorships consider religion to be a necessary part of the existence of the Nation State. The West doesn’t. I would up and leave the UK if we were even to impose strict religious theocratic guidelines to the politics of the country. Islamic nations in the 1920s (and arguably today) are not ready to accept the separation of religion and state, and they must be allowed to walk down that path to religious freedom themselves, without America claiming to be on a moral mission, whilst plundering the area of its resources. We cannot impose Lockean principles on Nations that are not ready for it, because by definition that is not Lockean in itself. That being the case, it is absolutely no excuse to fly planes into buildings killing innocents. If they believe their religion promotes that kind of act, then that religion deserves no respect. If it can be interpreted to include violence and death against innocent lives (which it can) then it deserves no respect. I am deeply suspicious of anyone who tells me I am offending their religion, when their religion says people like me will burn in the pits of hell for eternity. I do not respect that religion. Any religion. In the same breath, I do not respect the armed forces of a Nation who are in a foreign land, killing, to protect its resources. The two systems do not work well together. There will never be peace whilst Nation States and Religion exist.

There was a sudden burst of outrage against the “ground zero mosque” on the grounds simply of “us” and “them“. Nothing more. It was right winged outrage and very hypocritical. The right wing of America tend to have an almost Messiah-like obsession with free market capitalism. But only when it works in their favour. The buying up of the space for the what they have termed the “mosque“. It is like saying “We want no government interferen……what? They’re building a mosque for brown people? WHY ISN’T THE GOVERNMENT STOPPING THIS!!!” It is surely property rights that the American Right believe the government should not be interfering with? Property rights for everyone except those that don’t fit the American Right’s narrow vision of the World? As I stated on my blog entry last year, on the the subject, it wasn’t just a Mosque, it was the Cordoba Center. It will include a Theatre, a Performing Arts centre, a Basket Ball court, Bookstore, Child care, Prayer space, Restaurant, culinary school and fitness centre. It is already being used as a place of prayer for Muslims, and has been for quite some time. As I stated in that blog:

There is nothing that honours the victims of religious intolerance more, than a center dedicated to building relations, and showing that there does not have to be such separation, anger and fear. A symbol of the coming together of Islam and the West, and particularly Islam and America is a stage in contemporary times that we REALLY need to get to, and this Centre is an attempt to provide that link. We should be celebrating it. We should be celebrating that we are trying to move away from the past decade. We no longer want people like Palin and Bush and Cheney making sure fear is the order of the day. Innocent, decent Muslims are no different to innocent, decent Americans.

I stand by that today. Artificial, yet deafening boundaries like religion (built by faith) and nationality (built by patriotism) are dangerous and lead only to violent tension – always has.

The Imam of the Omar-E Farooq Mosque in Madrassa, Kabul in Afghanistan teaches his students to hate America. He does this, not for political reasons, but, as he puts it:

God says… we can never be friends with unbelievers

Whatever the foreign policy of the United States, Imams like this one, will also preach division and hate, because their religion tells them to. “Religion poisons everything“. One child in the school said that:

America are doing suicide attacks and blaming Osama Bin Laden……. we can never be friends”

- Absolute indoctrination of the worst kind.

The two systems (religion and secular nation states) were always going to come into conflict and I dislike them both. It is easy to say that the Reagan administration created the Taliban and militant Islam to deal with the Soviet threat during the 1980s, but it stands to reason by that very logic that fundamental protestantism created America, and so Christianity, by proxy, created militant Islam. That is the sum total of the logic taken to its limit, by the delusional anti-war Left. The truth is, militant Islam has always existed. It is based on religion and nothing else. The militant branch of Islam had no problem when America was in Latin America supporting right winged terrorists; in fact the militant branch of Islam was working with America at that point. Militant Islam is expansionist by its very nature and has been responsible for both empire, and human rights abuses, much like the nation of America, over the centuries. The two are similar. Patriotism creates two breeds of lunatic; firstly the type who refuse to accept their nation could do anything wrong, and cheer on the streets of Washington when the leader of the supposed “enemy” is killed, like they’ve just beat the top bad guy on Call of Duty but refusing to acknowledge that hundreds of thousands have been killed or displaced using their tax dollars. The second type, is the antithesis mentioned above, who are content with defending militant Islam as a by-product of aggressive American foreign policy choosing to ignore the history of organised religion as one of sheer violence and coercion long before Nation States came onto the scene. Patriotism, like adherence to religion is simply a perpetuation of the inherent problems the two mutually exclusive yet very similar abstractions inevitably create.

I don’t know if it is a natural reaction, when we are constantly exposed to patriotic sentiment, that we adhere to this us VS them principle. I know I certainly do, and it takes me a minute or two to logically think through the implications of unquestioning Patriotism. That, leaves me feeling slightly uneasy.

We are blinded by the perception of what we expect to see.

Blinded by Patriotism

In 2003 the Americans tried to convince the World that Al Jazeera had been infiltrated by spies, in an effort to produce propaganda for the war in Iraq. It is an interesting and mightily hypocritical claim by the U.S who have a media largely in bed with the American Government, and largely responsible for the biggest manipulation in war time history. Propaganda is an absolute specialty of the United States of America.

Ex CBS reporter Dan Rather stated recently, on the subject of his unquestioning adherence to absolutely everything the Bush Administration was insisting, that:

“Had journalists questioned the deceptions…the invasion would not have happened.”

The truth is, Al Jazeera is the only news network in the World who were investigating the horrors of the U.S invasion of Iraq. Where were the U.S press, the freest press in the World, when the population of Fallujah were being massacred? Phrases like “terrorist” and “insurgent” were being used everywhere, to describe anyone in Iraq who wanted to fight back against the U.S invasion.

Fox went along to an anti-war rally in 2004, and suggested several times, that the protesters were “unpatriotic“. Fox went along to the Tea Party rallies in 2009 and 2010 and referred to them as “true patriots“. Fox was the most watched news broadcaster for news on the war. Throughout coverage of the war in Iraq, Fox displayed a little waiving American flag in the corner of the screen.

Similarly, MSNBC played a segment every week, called “America’s bravest”, which showed photos of American soldiers deployed in Iraq.

Peter Arnett, a reporter with NBC was fired for questioning the legitimacy of the war. He had interviewed Iraqi officials and said the American “first war plan had failed”.

A Maryland University study into the media affects on public perception of Iraq, found that 57% of mainstream media viewers believed Iraq was involved in 9/11. 69% believe that Saddam was directly involved in 9/11. 22% believed WMDs had been found in Iraq. 80% of Fox News viewers had one or more of the above misconceptions.

Media watchdog group “FAIR” found that 79% of all 319 news stories on Iraq in 2003, were sourced from Government officials or Military officials.

The media became the mouthpiece for a barrage of lies and propaganda. This is evident even today. When Wikileaks leaked the war files, the news outlets, from Fox in the US to the BBC in the UK focused almost entirely on Wikileaks itself. American Republicans are referring to Assange as a traitor for exposing their criminal activity. The UK media was focusing on Assange personally. No one focused on what the war logs were saying.

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster, along with a team of researchers, surveyed 4,800 people in Fallujah and concluded that dramatic increases in cancer rates and infant mortality since the relative genocide by American troops, is “worse than Hiroshima”. After Fallujah, US Marines admitted, after first strongly denying, that they had used white phosphorus. The report is open for any to read, called “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009“. It shows a 38 fold increase in leukaemia (compared to a 17 fold increase, after Hiroshima), a ten fold increase in breast cancer, and an increase in brain tumours. This sharp rise if health defects, was not helped by the fact that the city continued to be blocked off to essential supplies, by the US, long after 2004.

Whilst the U.S networks were struggling to understand a map of the Middle East:

And using handy little catchphrases that seemed to give credit to the horrors:

Al Jazeera was getting right into the heart of the situation, and showing images, like the one below, which is beyond awful. (I have spent the past few minutes looking at this photo, and it is something I cannot comprehend without being overcome with quite profound sadness):

It is then, no wonder that the one media outlet that was actually bothering to do some investigative journalism, rather than imbedded journalism (in which the Western Military dictates what a Journalist is allowed to see and where he can go), showing pictures and videos of innocent people’s lives ruined, in the same way that Fox and CNN were after 9/11 were bombed. The Al Jazeera Kabul and Baghdad offices were bombed by the Americans, who also drew up plans to bomb the Al Jazeera office in Doha – Qatar!. Why? They weren’t harbouring terrorists. They were just a threat to US mass propaganda. We were not supposed to see the destruction and terrorism left by the Americans. We were supposed to see a happy population, joyfully welcoming the Americans as great liberators fighting for freedom. If people fought back, we were supposed to believe they were “insurgents” who “hated our freedoms”, rather than the fathers of dead children or orphaned children.

The “reality” of war, is not a natural reality, it is a construct. When thousands are killed in American and British aggression it is called the “reality of war“, simply because a Western Government has used the word “war” to describe it. But when a far smaller number are killed by extremists, it is called “terrorism” and it is “evil”. It is the creation of a narrative that seeks to propel Western aggression as necessary, to defeat evil. Whether that evil be Communists, Muslims, Vietcong, or Arabs. That is the public narrative. The truth is that if your dictator opens up his markets to American Capitalist ventures, he will be propped up for years to come. The moment he closes those markets, we will take them by force.

How blurred the lines of “reality of war” really are, and absolutely always in favour of the Western World. Vietnam, the propping up of Latin American and Middle Eastern Dictators, the dropping of the Atomic Bomb, the invasion of Iraq. None of it is labelled “terrorism”, and yet what else is it other than the spreading of terror and death across Nations that aren’t ours.

It isn’t new. The British Empire did it in Australia. Terrorised the Country but apparently it was for their own good. What if Aboriginal Australians had invaded England? Rome labelled anyone who disagreed with its policies as “Barbarians”. The concealing of crimes behind romaticised ideals is not new. Especially with America. America celebrates Columbus Day. A day when Europe began the mass genocide project across that continent.
The great American author Kurt Vonnegut sums this up in his book “Breakfast of Champions“:

rout and Hoover were citizens of the United States of America, a country which was called America for short. This was their national anthem, which was pure balderdash, like so much they were expected to take seriously:

O, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

There were one quadrillion nations in the Universe, but the nation Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout belonged to was the only one with a national anthem which was gibberish sprinkled with question marks.

The motto of Dwayne Hoover’s and Kilgore Trout’s nation was this, which meant in a language nobody spoke anymore, Out of Many, One: “E pluribus unum.” The undippable flag was a beauty, and the anthem and the vacant motto might not have mattered much, if it weren’t for this: a lot of citizens were so ignored and cheated and insulted that they thought they might be in the wrong country, or even on the wrong planet, that some terrible mistake had been made.

It might have comforted them some if their anthem and their motto had mentioned fairness or brotherhood or hope or happiness, had somehow welcomed them to the society and its real estate. If they studied their paper money for clues as to what their country was all about, they found, among a lot of other baroque trash, a picture of a truncated pyramid with a radiant eye on top of it. Not even the President of the United States knew what that was all about.

It was as though the country were saying to its citizens, “In nonsense is strength.” A lot of the nonsense was the innocent result of playfulness on the part of the founding fathers of the nation of Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout.

The founders were aristocrats, and they wished to show off their useless education, which consisted of the study of hocus-pocus from ancient times. They were bum poets as well. But some of the nonsense was evil, since it concealed great crimes. For example, teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492. The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.

Here was another piece of evil nonsense which children were taught: that the sea pirates eventually created a government which became a beacon of freedom to human beings everywhere else. There were pictures and statues of this supposed imaginary beacon for children to see. It was sort of an ice-cream cone on fire. Like this [the Liberty torch].

Actually, the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the new government owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery, and, even after slavery was eliminated, because it was so embarrassing, they and their descendants continued to think of ordinary human beings as machines

Vonnegut is ingeniously pointing out the illogical mental illness of Patriotism and its refusal to accept the horrors that came before it, and are committed in the name of it. It is a delusional, non-existent entity that exists to hinder human progression rather than help that seed to grow. A heartfelt anthem and a flag are just ways to mask injustice. It is a clever social construction, to make you think what you are doing is for the greater good and that the greatest good is the Nation State, when in fact the truth is, it is all for the sake of profit.

The dominant superpower will always place itself as the moral standard, and we buy into the bullshit, because it takes too much effort to stop playing on Fifa, and actually read.
Instead of seeing a little girl marched out of her home, crying and scared and made to kneel down on the floor with her hands in the air, by our troops, isn’t presented in the media. Instead, the media will have experts in to talk about how awesome our aircraft is, or how the Democrats are trying to block Defence funding. As if any of that bullshit matters.

We don’t see a bunch of vicious soldiers shooting random people or committing mass murder in Fallujah. Instead, we see a Saddam statue being brought down and how wonderful and free Iraq now is. We don’t see the pictures of a family digging their dead child out of the rubble, instead we only hear words like “insurgents” and “terrorists”. If my child had just been killed by American forces, for no reason, I’d fucking do all I could to kill the bastards too.

We are all desensitised to war, by this obsession with an us VS them mentality. Consumerism is a useful tool against the questioning of the immoral actions of big business and government. It is a simple narrative to understand, we don’t have to read too much into it, we’re busy working our arses off for shit we don’t need, so we consume easily accessible news, without questioning its motives or its intentions. We are apparently the good guys, and they are apparently the enemies, that is how it is presented. A healthy dose of National Pride, by making pictures of American soldiers draping their flag over the head of the statue in Baghdad, ensures that we are kept docile and unquestioning. We don’t want to seem unpatriotic.

Whereas, the reality is that the good guys are the idiots who are compelled to fight to perpetuate the economic war system, on both sides, rather than joining hands and fighting the very people who profit from war and make it a rational product of Capitalism. Do we really believe that the American private defence contractors and oil companies would love to see a peaceful World? They exist, to profit from war. Therefore, the financial sector profits from war. It is gross manipulation. These are the real bastards, not a few farmers in Afghanistan.

David Cameron went to Kuwait and told them that 20 years ago a brutal and violent dictator invaded their home land, and they had a right to defend themselves. How offensive; we sold those arms to that brutal dictator, before we designated him a brutal dictator, because he was nice to our businessmen. I keep seeing arguments defending Cameron’s arms sales across the Arab World as “good for jobs in England”. Economic matters are being placed above human rights. It is believed that British arms were used in the massacre of protesters in Libya this week.

Blair’s government lifted sanctions on the sale of weapons to Libya in 2004. Since then British companies have sold £500,000,000 worth of arms to Libya n 2009 alone. This includes Sniper rifles, tear gas, and crowd control ammunition. Are we seriously suggesting that selling tear gas and crowd control ammunition to a dictatorship, is going to be used to protect itself from an evil outside force? They are always going to be used against protesters, to keep the dictatorship in power. For that, I don’t care how many jobs it creates in the UK, we should be ashamed.

And so whilst the Libyan government uses our weapons, like Saddam did before him, on its own people, the rest of the World will sit back and have lots of UN meetings and keeping saying “please stop“.

Sometimes, death is good for the economy, and so we are all expendable.
Was is an essential ingredient of Capitalism.

A symbol

It is horribly easy to hate. It’s much more difficult to think.
Apparently, residents of the City I live, Leicester, are objecting to a statue of Gandhi being erected next to a main road. These incredible facebook groups; I will deface the Gandhi Statue and English nationalists attending Unveiling of Gandhi Statue Leicester, have decided they cannot possibly lead a normal life, when their City has an International symbol of peace and hope as a Statue. It is they, who have turned it into a battle of cultures and Nationalities, rather than an acceptance of a concept.

Fat Nazi chav, Lee Ingram, has been on TV recently suggesting that a Gandhi Statue is simply politically correct Britain gone mad. Of course, to those of us who aren’t ignorant, the phrase “political correctness gone mad” is usually used to describe a situation, where the ignorant have a bit of a tantrum that their obvious racism or xenophobia simply isn’t acceptable. I’ve actually heard people say “Well, calling someone a paki, is like calling me a Brit”….. I’m not entirely sure it’s possible to exist on a more ignorant plateau than that.

This genius has created a facebook topic entitled “whoes up for it”. Which in itself, is beautiful. An English Nationalist with such a slender grasp on the English language, could not have created a more ironic topic, if he’d have tried. He goes on to embarrass humanity in general, by showing his weak minded, pro-violent attitude toward life, with “im going to paint it fucking wjite. then a week later blow the bastard up.” I’m sure all us White British folk are delighted we have this idiot to “stick up” for us.

Now, I’m not sure what the problem is. Gandhi is a World wide figure of peace, of spiritiuality, of non-violence, he is a symbol, he is not simply a Nationality or a Religion. The politics of hate is slowly creeping back to the minds of those who consider themselves “indigenous British”. I’m not about to succumb to the notion that I’m supposed to respect deeply racist groups dedicated to the White power movement. I don’t. I don’t care if they suddenly have BNP representation. They disgust me. They’re scum. They do not deserve the respect of anyone. I do not need thugs claiming to “stand up for me“.

The Nationalists want a statue…………… of Gary Lineker. Simply because he was born in Leicester. A footballer. A commentator for the BBC. Apart from kicking a ball, i’m not sure what contribution Linekar has made to the Planet, and to society as a whole, but then, I’m just a “loony leftie“. I’d go as far as to suggest that by Nationalist logic, St George, their hero, is an odd choice, given that he’s Palestinian. Hypocrisy is a wondrous thing.

The Gandhi statue is funded by Indian Charity, Samanwaya Parivar. The charity has said “We have never said that there should not be any other statues in Leicester. This particular statue of Gandhi will be entirely funded by our charity as a gift to the city. It will add to the vibrant and multicultural elements of this city since Gandhi’s philosophies of truth, peace and non-violence had no boundaries.” They’re right. Very much so. If someone like Ingram who quite ridiculously claims that Gandhi… “has no connection to English culture or the English” wants a Gary Lineker statue in the City then i’m sure both Samanwaya Parivar and the loony lefties such as myself, would not have a problem with it. In fact, it’d look great outside the Walkers Stadium. I’d fully support it. However, if it’s a choice between the two….. I’m going for Gandhi every time.

If these absolutely crazed Nationalists insist on reflecting back to a period when Britain was “great” it will be hard for them to ignore the fact that Gandhi (who studied and lived in England for a while) is Indian, and India contributed over 1,000,000 troops to the British cause, during World War I. Hundreds of thousands died, whilst at the same time, Britain controlled trade by sea to India, which certainly helped Britain’s Sub-continental dominance and thus our wealth and overall standard of living. India, has been interlinked with Britain for the past four centuries. From 1600 onwards, the East India Company, a British owned monopolistic company for trade, had such strong dominance in India, exploitation for our benefit, was their main weapon. If Nationalists want to “protect our culture”, then they must realise just how widespread our culture actually is. It certainly isn’t restricted to our four walls. And given the struggle that Gandhi went through to gain Indian independence from English rule, to protect millions of people, and given he pioneered the philosophy of Satyagraha (the concept of non-violent demonstration), which went on to influence Martin Luther King and help toward to founding of American Civil Rights, I’m not sure why Gary Lineker (although, he does make a pretty good Golf commentator, I give him that) deserves a statue over Gandhi, simply because he was born in Leicester? However, Gandhi was technically British, having been born in British India. He was as British as St Margaret, whom our Leicester Bus Station is named after, and whom happens to be Scottish. Of course, he was Asian by heritage, and so, he stands no chance. If he were American, these English Nationalists would not give a shit.

I support a Gandhi Statue in the City I was born in, because I vehemently support the philosophy of Gandhi and the impact he had on the World. He will be remembered forever, as a 20th Century cultural icon dedicated to non-violence. I’m not all that bothered about what Gary Lineker achieved as a footballer. It’s not all that important.

To sum up, Gandhi helped influence the Civil Rights movement in America, one of the most important movements in Western History, he influenced a philosophy of peace and respect, A UN general assembly resolution recognises his birthday as International Day of Non-violence. India helped finance luxury back in England, and contributed over 1,000,000 troops to our War effort, thousands died so that the “indigenous Brits” back home could continue to live happy peaceful lives. But then, Gary Lineker was the leading scorer of the 1986 World Cup. Perhaps I need to get my priorities in order.

Senatus Populusque Americanus

It would be naive to think that on the surface, the United States model is entirely original and without precedent. From the architecture of the Government buildings, to the idolising of it’s founders, the influence of the Roman Republic can be seen throughout American politics. From it’s conception in the late 18th Century, America has retained much of it’s Roman influence. John Adams modelled his own style of writing on the great Roman Orator Cicero, often quoting him. Adams viewed Cicero’s political decline, as a mirror image of his own. Madison, Jay, and Hamilton – Romulus and Remus’ American counterparts – wrote a collection of 85 essays promoting the new U.S Constitution, they signed it using the allonym, “Publius” after Publius Valerius Publicola, the joint first Consul of the newly found Roman Republic, in 509bc. The Plebian Council of Rome acted as an dubiously elected House of Representatives, the Tribune could propose legislation and call the Senate, a Speaker of the House, if you will. The Roman Senate, acted almost as a supremely powerful Senate, filled with members of rich families (The US Senate, in 2003, was found to have 40 millionaires). The business class of the day, the Equites, grew ever more rich and politically influential as the territories and provinces increased (similar to the advancement of Oil opportunities with the “liberation” of Iraq). Whilst the Tribunes did indeed work in favour of the public (Tiberius Gracchus for example), the shadowy Equites influenced policy from behind the curtains.

Split powers, term limits, the veto, and the Senate itself are all aspects borrowed from America’s imperial predecessor. Of course there are substantial differences between the two (party politics isn’t particularly Roman, the two consuls of the Senate was not adopted in America), which is more down to the problems facing the founders in 1776, their need to create something different, something that broke away from previous English rule, but did not emulate to the core, the failings of previous Republican systems, such as the Republic of Rome. The Roman system was, after all, original and so had many, many flaws. Ultimately, the Roman Republican, the principle of the SPQR on which it stood, crumbled into Empire, because the Republican system of checks and balances just could not cope with such a widespread Empire.

The importance and the Patriotism of belonging to a particular National identity, the largely insular attitudes, their belief in the Republic, their military might, and their insistence that their way is superior and so should be spread across the World, their international cultural influence; all are derived from Rome, and passed on to it’s successor, a contemporary Renaissance, if you will, the United States of America.

There is one less obvious claim America has to be the new Rome.
Stoic Philosopher Panaetius left Athens and headed for Rome, with his new powerful friend; Roman Consul Scipio around 138BC. Earlier Stoics and Romans had decided long ago, that true Virtue came from knowledge, and so only the wisest of men could be considered virtuous in the eyes of the Gods. Panaetius introduced a new idea into the Roman every day life. He would offer help and teachings to those people who requested a life of virtue, he would provide the knowledge needed, he would be the way. And so suddenly, the idea that anyone could potentially become a supremely virtuous human being, in the eyes of the Gods, gave Politicians who sought advice from the teachings of Panaetius, a divine purpose for their serving in Rome. They would insist that the God’s had empowered them, which ultimately gave them much control over the public. This, directly influenced the notion a century later, that Caesar had a divine calling to “save” the Republic. Cicero drew heavily on the teachings of Panaetius. Suddenly individual “virtue” in the eyes of the population, became more important than the protection of the Republic.

In 2005, George Bush claimed the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the disastrous wars in which thousands upon thousands of innocents have died, was a “calling from God“. He is quoted as saying “I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did.” A grotesque manipulation of the emotions of Christendom in it’s entirety. Those soldiers, those innocent Iraqi’s appear to have died for a reason none of us are aware of. Perhaps a lavish extension of Western Oil investment opportunities, perhaps the need to revert Iraq back to trading Oil in U.S Dollars. Certainly not a “war on terror“, certainly not a vengeful attack for the horror of 9/11. They died, because Bush thinks he’s ordained by God? The idea that the most powerful man on the Planet, turned the Republican White House into a Theocratic mess, by claiming he felt he had a calling from the mythical God of the Christian faith to destroy a Nation, is no different to Julius Caesar embarking on a mission from the Gods of Antiquity, to “save the Republic“.

Ex-White House Press Secretary, under Lyndon Johnson, Bill Moyer said:
“What is unique today is that the radical religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America’s great political parties. The country is not yet a theocracy but the Republican Party is, and they are driving American politics, using God as a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment, foreign policy, health care, taxation, energy, regulation, social services and so on.“

Suddenly, politicians of a particular persuasion, simply because they consider themselves Christians, have decided that morality comes directly from their apparent virtuous Godly knowledge, and that the rest of us just aren’t privy to their misguided “wisdom“. They try to discredit the faith of opponent politicians, purely for their own political ends. They embarrass themselves and then say “Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God“, which translates to “I forgave myself, and that’s all that matters“. Republican Congressman Trent Franks, whilst trying to justify torture, starts with a quite depressingly inaccurate claim that “America’s distinguishing hallmark, its bedrock foundation, is that we hold to the self-evident truth that all men are created by God”.
Republican appointed Supreme Court Justice Scalia, is quoted as saying “..Government…derives its moral authority from God.“.
The Anti-Abortion lobby use phrases like “We will not stop until this nation once again honors God—or we die trying“, Theocracy by any means necessary? Why do you need to include an unprovable God in your argument?

The concept that as a politician, you are doing the work of God, or that your playing a part ordained by God, is an incredibly powerful concept. The race for the Minnesota Senate seat between Republican candidate Norm Coleman and Democrat candidate Al Franken, took a turn to the Religious Right, when Coleman stated “God wants me to serve“, as if to suggest a vote for Franken, would be a vote against God.
Gary Mcleod, running for House of Representative seat against Jim Clyburn, in South Carolina’s Sixth Congressional District, writes on his home page “Socialism is immoral because it requires the violation of God-given property rights“. A horribly manipulation of Biblical principles to support Political gain.
Rumsfeld would send memo’s around, regarding the ongoing war in Iraq, filled with Biblical Quotes.
It is an incredibly manipulative environment, to bring Religion into the political landscape. It shouldn’t happen. One disgruntled blogger writing on the Huffington Post site, suggests that the Republicans just cut out their religious dogmatic nonsense, and run God for President.

The use of Religious propaganda and manipulation was utter nonsense during the height of the Roman Empire, it similarly possesses the same utter nonsensical “qualities” during the height of the American empire. The influence of the fallen Rome, is far more widespread than may seem on the surface.

Immigrants: We need them!!

This blog will argue that immigration is much needed. I’d appreciate genuine arguments against my blog instead of the usual “fucking muzzies coming to our country with their fucking burkas, fuck off, you terrorist scum”.

INTRO:
I’m becoming increasingly uneasy about the level of animosity toward anyone who happens to have an Asian skin complexion in this country, particularly in the City I live, Leicester. Whenever someone says “I’m not racist but….” you can guarantee they’ve been reading the Daily Mail, and are about to spew some disgusting out of date bile.

I’ve said before, the majority of British Nationalists, who insist that they love our Country and see immigration eroding our culture, have absolutely no knowledge of our ‘culture’ other than the fact that they like to drink a lot, fight a bit, and be a bit racist. Our culture consists of historical events like the Protestant Reformation during Henry VIII, Edward and Elizabeth’s reigns, the Civil War of the 17th Century, art movements like Gothic, Renaissance Realism, pop art and post-modernism, the horrors of the Great War that saw the deaths of millions of people for less than a square foot of land. The fight for liberalism, as Churchill’s army of warriors defeated the destructive force of Fascism. This is our culture, and the Nationalists are the ones responsible for trying destroying it.

We have a large Asian community in Leicester. One of my friends tried to suggest that the white man is in the minority in Leicester now. He went on to suggest over 70% of the City must now be foreign. I disagreed. He laughed and decided to insult my intelligence some more. It annoyed me quite deeply. He suggested that if I look around, it’s like “spot the white man”.
Firstly, even if that was the case, why is that a problem? If I were the only white guy living on my street, what’s the problem? As long as they don’t treat me like shit, why should I care? It’s a skin colour. It does not go deeper than that.
And secondly, I was fucking right. According to Leicester City Council, the White race accounts for 63% of the population of Leicester. So to sum that up, I was right, he was wrong.

I’d now like to argue against those who believe Immigration should be cut off, and we should “keep Britain White”.

AGE:
During the 1950s, after the War, we in Britain had what is described as the “baby boom”. Soldiers coming home and starting families. Between the 1980s and today, we have a “baby slump”. Hundreds of thousands of more women are starting careers early and not having children. Which means, we have an ageing population. The baby boom generation is getting old. The younger generation need to support the pensions of those ageing majority. This is known as the “dependency ratio”. Given that there aren’t enough younger people to deal with this, if we took the BNP line and stopped immigration completely, we’d have the worst pensions crises ever. If this extended to Europe, according to the author Philippe Legrain, the population of Europe would fall by 60 million by 2050. This creates a worker shortage, meaning businesses close, deflation sky rockets. An economic disaster. You need immigration.

The Welfare State:
I refuse to give a response to the awful “they come over here, taking all our benefits” whilst in the same breathe muttering “they come over here, taking all our jobs”, it’s an old outdated argument that no one has been able to prove.
The majority of immigrant workers come to Britain (according to Home Office Stats) in their 20s. They then start to work, they pay taxes.
Those workers have not been to British schools and so they have cost the tax payer nothing, whilst they pay back into the tax system. Which means more investment into public services like The NHS. So actually, we benefit, not them.
Many then start up a business, paying more into the tax system. Perhaps they’ll then have children, who will go to British schools, on the money pumped into the tax system by their parents, which is fair and just. All the time contributing to an ageing British population.

“GO HOME!!”
Many immigrants come here for a better life. If you lived in a Country where you feared for the life of you and your family every day, wouldn’t you jump at the opportunity for a better life elsewhere?
The Phillipines has began calling those people who leave the country, to work abroad “heroes”. This is because the workers, after paying tax in America for example, then send some of their earnings home, which boosts the local economies, allowing the National economy of these countries to grow, lifting millions out of poverty. It has no damaging affect on America. It’s a boost to the poor nation’s economy, and it’s much needed. Otherwise we get rich, whilst the poor get worse and worse, and that’s simply wrong. It also then means the poor countries are able to create new opportunities, new jobs, new exports, which benefit us directly.

Job Creation:
“Stealing all our jobs” seems to be suggesting that there is a static number of jobs, limited in presence, and that immigrants are fighting the British born Whites for those jobs. This is simply ignorance.
When an immigrant comes to live here, he’s going to need a house, a car, a bed, a bath, a towel, a mug, a photograph frame, sugar, a carpet, and every other luxury you can possibly imagine. When 200,000 come here, there is a sharp rise in demand for such objects, which means production needs to increase, which means new jobs need to be created for supplies to meet demand, which means instead of stealing all our jobs, immigration create jobs. It’s basic economics. If we denied these people access to our country, demand would fall sharply, prices would deflate, wages would dramatically decrease because the pool of unemployed would get bigger and bigger as businesses everywhere shut up shop.
We’d all be worse off.

“This Country is a mess!!”
To suggest the country is now a mess, is to compare it to a previous time when it wasn’t a mess. I’m not sure that this has ever been the case. Was it the 1900s during a needless war in which parents watched as their children were sent to their deaths for no good reason? Or the 1920s during the Great Depression? Or the 1940s and World War, when kids were sent away from cities and their parents? Or the 1950s/60s when women were treated as 2nd class, gay people were imprisoned simply for their sexuality and racial prejudice was rife? Or the 1970s when our binmen went on strike leading to the winter of discontent? Or the 1980s when the miners went on strike and 60% of Liverpool was unemployed? Or the 1990s when The Spice Girls topped the charts?
When was the World and in particular Britain, perfect? It wasn’t.

My conclusion:
A Nation is simply a line on a map. A meaningless flag. A place where those who have deep Patriotic feelings can get together and proclaim just how wonderful their Country is compared to the rest of the World.
We are all citizens of the same Planet. We all benefit each other economically. We all bring with us knowledge and cultural awareness that can benefit each other both socially and for our own mental strength. Only by mixing and interacting, sharing and understanding, can there ever be anything near to peace.

The rise of Nationalism

“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel” 
- Samuel Johnson

According to a publicly leaked document on the British National Party, members now include doctors, teachers, and police. Aside from the fact that you should not be entering public life if you have such strong, senseless prejudices, I cannot understand why a deeply racist person, would involve themselves in a line of work, where they have to protect those they hate. They cannot have an Us vs Them mentality, public services should have a “us” mentality, an “us” that incorporates everyone.
It’s the equivilant of Hermann Gorring getting annoyed because Jewish schools in Warsaw refuse to interview him.
If they have such fundamentally flawed beliefs, built on intolerance, they should not be allowed anywhere near the public sector.

They use St George as the symbol of Britain……… St George….. born in Palestine. Go figure. 

I got annoyed reading the BNP website. I’ll show you why.
From the BNP site…

“we, the native British people, will be an ethnic minority in our own country within sixty years. “ 
- This is a lie. A piece of, let’s face it, racist propaganda, scare mongering. It’s only purpose is to create an air of suspicion for anyone who happens to have a slightly darker skin complexion.

“the introduction of a system of voluntary resettlement whereby those immigrants who are legally here will be afforded the opportunity to return to their lands of ethnic origin assisted by a generous financial incentives both for individuals and for the countries in question.”
- Why even suggest that? What’s wrong with them being here? By even saying that in the first place, it shows a deep dislike of those who aren’t of British origin. Racist. Xenophobic. Not to mention a beautiful way to destroy a community, close business, lose millions of jobs, and bankrupt England.

“We will abolish the ‘positive discrimination’ schemes that have made white Britons second-class citizens. “
- I sure as hell don’t feel second class. If a Pakistani who has just moved here, is better at the job than i am, then he should get it. If he puts himself down on the housing list before me, he should get a house before me. That’s fucking obvious.

” work to restore Britain’s family and trading ties with Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and to trade with the rest of the world as it suits us.”
- Yeah that’s just what we need, selfish take-take-take, whilst at the same time, taking the moral high ground by suggesting that all immigrants do is take-take-take, and so the hypocrisy continues. Notice that the nations we’d be trading with on our terms, are predominantly white.

“The BNP will crack down on crime and restore public safety and confidence. “
- So a Party built on crime, nazis, and creating racial tension, they’re now trying to reach social harmony? 
I smell hypocrisy in the air.

“Globalisation, with its export of jobs to the Third World, is bringing ruin and unemployment to British industries and the communities that depend on them.”
- Under Blair, the country was more prosperous than it’s ever been. I very much doubt the criminal mind of Nick Griffin could better that. He’s completely out of touch with contemporary politics, in his own little bubble. His Britain would be the kicking and screaming child of Europe, prices would shoot up, unemployment would be rife given that only White Brits would be allowed the jobs, and racial wars would be taking place across the Country. Our ageing population would not be replaced, meaning pensions would be insecure, and the economy in general would be finished.

“Accordingly, the BNP calls for the selective exclusion of foreign-made goods from British markets and the reduction of foreign imports. “
- Which would mean pretty much everything would cost a fucking fortune.

“unemployment in this country will be brought to an end, and secure, well-paid employment will flourish, “
- Ahahahahahaha, That’s all that one needs.

“We are against the ‘trendy’ teaching methods that have made Britain one of the most poorly educated nations in Europe. “
- What he means is, let’s bring back ignorant teaching, that catered to the clever kids. That ignored pyschological problems. And why are we so poorly educated? Where’s that stat from? Given that more people are going to university than ever before. My best teachers, the ones that got through to me the most, were the eccentric ones who dared to be different. Fuck the BNP for suggesting otherwise, they have absolutely no idea.

“We will also seek to instill in our young people knowledge of and pride in the history, cultures and heritage of the native peoples of Britain.”
- If the BNP do that with my children, i will teach my children the complete opposite. Respect for everyone, love, charity, empathy, compassion, and that above all, regardless of who we are, where we’re from, how we look, what colour we are, what sexuality we are, if we’re tall, if we’re fat, if we’re short and thin, regardless, we’re all the same, and not to be a slave to the evil the BNP spews.

“We reject the idea that Britain must forever be obliged to subsidise the incompetence and corruption of Third World states by supplying them with financial aid. “
- If we have £10,000,000,000 to bail out greedy bankers, we sure as hell have the money to prevent a child in the third world dying. If we can even help one person who’s only wish in life is that their child doesn’t die of starvation, who isn’t concerned with which country you’re born, then we fucking should. Yes it’s our responsibility! It’s the World’s responsibility, the responsibility of the civilised and decent. You can keep turning your head and ignoring if you want. But no far right racist agenda will change my mind on that one.

The suggestion that the BNP are sticking up for British people is so badly flawed, given that the majority of  those same British people despise the BNP. 
Britain is a liberal country.
Therefore, logic tells you, that if you want to represent the wishes and values of the British public, you must be liberal.
It amazes me that they seem to be suggesting they are truly British. Was Churchill not truly British, given that his goal was to wipe out the threat of Fascism from the shores of Britain? That very same fascism that the BNP now holds dear.
Mark Collett, leader of the young BNP, said “hitlers germany was a better place to bring up children, than oldham in 2002.”

Nationalism is nothing but an idea that makes the ignorant feel a little superior. A place where they can all get together, and hate foreigners, and yet ignorantly depend on them for most of the things we buy.

Being British has no static identity. It’s always changing. It’s always updating. It’s the beauty of England. We’re much more accepting than most other developed Nations, including The U.S.A.
People who want to stick to basic, ignorant principles, and not move with the fact that we’re living in a much smaller World, are the ones out of touch. The Government is a liberal government, the opposition, is a liberal opposition, of course there needs to be a better form of immigration control, but not to the extent that the BNP offer, which would kill Liberalism, it would kill human decency, it would kill the idea that we respect each other on the premise that we’re all people before we’re any Nationality.
 
I absolutely love this video. This is Russell Brand, with Mark Collett, leader of the young BNP, i’d strongly advise watching it until the end. It gets good, and sums up, in a few short minutes, why I despise the BNP.