Albert Camus

The cowardly Taliban shot a child in the head for wanting to educate herself, she got back up, they should sleep with their guns in their hands from now on.  Through their constant subjugation and inhumaneness little do they know they have evolved a new strain of woman, not only do they bleed monthly and not die, you can’t shoot them either…..

the women shall prevail !

I took no offence to the blacking up, as that has always been so embarrassing and cringe worthy to me, even when Ms Upton fashioned a doll on this weird mocking, I still never found this troubling as I never saw it as representation of me, in fact as I recall we had one and quite liked it and laughed at its gullible, naive attempts to undermine us, I think in our household we saw these actions as exposing the vulnerability of a culture unable to handle difference or adapt to change, so their best reaction was to mock it and then call themselves civilised and adroit? Taking people from a primitive culture, chaining them, beating them, then eventually setting them free and spending the time rather than inducting them into their society but comparing them to a community far more developed than their own is like shooting fish in a barrel…”yes of course you can read and write and speak English quite a lot better than I can…I’m from Africa you geniuses but no you carry on blacking up your face which makes you look truly superior and shows ME just how thick I am”.

Being belittled humiliated and ridiculed by another culture is part of the human condition, look around that is why we war ALL the time, even if you take religion and natural resources out of that equation we would still find a way of seeing another as inferior or a threat, I watch it daily all the time with tribalised politics and under their specific paradigms they can take in a number of cultures to blame brutalise and prejudice and then proceed to hypothetically march them out of their countries, it is just what people do. I still don’t get offended though.. BUT

The word or term that does offend me deeply has to be the word

Nigger ~ lack of intelligence and sophistication inferior and less civilized than white people, slavery, inferiority and oppression, uncouth, lazy, a coloured person who has no money,

Urban dictionary ~ Niggers “people who annoy you”

Tupac says
“NIGGER ~ a black man with a slavery chain around his neck.
NIGGA ~ a black man with a gold chain on his neck.”

Tupac ~ a black man with a gravestone upon his neck

Oh yeah we reclaimed that word good. I’m not sure what the black folk were thinking when they first decided to start using the term on themselves considering all the efforts of the civil rights movement to seek equality; cheers gangster rappers, carrying guns calling each other nigger and slapping up yo bitches, has really done wonders for the 21st century image of the black culture, given it such dignity and respect for the work those debased people did for you. Plenty of people have hardship, plenty grow up in poverty, violence and aggression has never been the answer but why bother with that age old book learning? Just go ahead and prove just how lazy you are and shoot each other in the face yelling nigga!  Did they really think that would stop others from saying it in a derogatory way? The fact that black people use it to insult has only served to perpetuate its negative connotations, other cultures look at the dumb blacks calling each other inferior and just see it as business as usual, there is at no time a nice way to use that word, didn’t Blaxploitation teach you anything?

That word should sicken a person as it passes their lips, it should bring fear of retribution to use it to another, a shame should course through them questioning their own existence if it is just to disparage a person to nothing better than a subserviant. To say it should cause the world to stop and stare at them in disgust and summon up within each human being a Herculean restraint not to punish the curd rendering them a stain easily washed away, THAT is how that word should be to us now, as it is a word that will NEVER distance itself from a people that were beaten demeaned and  taken from their country, mocked incessantly about their own culture, not even recognised as people but as animals. Who knows what could have happened to Africa if those people were able to stay and help it develop instead of this forced migration, leaving a people lost angry and displaced for generations after, constantly feeling uncomfortable in their own home, because of it African history was changed forever, imagine if Martin Luther used his dream in Africa?

The civil rights movements were not a hundred years ago, try thirty, the work needed to continue not go backwards. The black people that think saying “yo my nigga” will reclaim the ills of generations of a broken people, have no understanding of the world they live in. If you use the word nigger, then the racist continues to use the word nigger you know why? racists don’t have a moral compass and you aren’t teaching them how to get one. Don’t moan about racism still existing because all you are doing is reinforcing it by using the word nigger which contributes to it. Not to mention the resentment that has grown because of the confusion and division it has caused, for instance, it is only racist when white people use it? But black people can call white people it, give me strength, the word has not improved the culture but diminished it further. And as if by magic I have a stream of sad examples  That word holds a  lot of responsibility, a lot of death, hurt and victory, it is not to be treated or used as some excuse, right of passage or race card, it is not some epic track suited rhapsody about how hard it is now, this isn’t hard, especially if you live in the West, they laid the foundation from “hard” all we had to do was build on it, no, it isn’t easy but apparently life isn’t. And just look outside your own culture and look at all the other cultures that have been crushed by genocide how well did they build from their humiliations? And your genius resolve is to call each other what they dehumanised us with?….yeah……that will show them.

I’m not by any means in the camp of banning literature or Golliwog dolls or erasing the history of this word and all its artifacts, that is not how we should conduct our understanding of our world and its narrative, there should be no denial, we should very much display the ignorance if only to gauge how far we’ve come from it but I switch on Twitter and I can almost guarantee that some racist knuckle dragging, no talent, latent human apology will turn around and throw it bravely across my computer screen and then shortly afterwards some blinkered unconfrontational who hasn’t got an understanding of being picked out of a society and baited will breezily say “you should just ignore them” to which I will reply “because it is that easy is it?”. THAT is a word you must always retaliate against, it is a word that rips into your reflection, your speech, your education, your children, your heart and your very being, to turn away from it doesn’t make you the better person, it makes you a slave, a lesser, a subservient a house nigger and the accuser knows that, so I’ll be damned if I will allow anyone to think of me as that, I AM INFERIOR TO NO ONE.

I implore those black people to stop and realise that the cultural controls are alive and well, I get people telling me it often on-line and I don’t have the luxury of the pampered politicians who have the police watch and then arrest bullies on their behalf, I fight my battles unaided. How? I constantly show off what I have learned in life, I use unusual words and decent grammar, I have the spelling check on as a shadow because they will see it as ill-educated and pounce, trust me ad hominem can be a racists best friend. It is one of the fallouts of growing up in a racist society for me, I am cursed with always trying to better myself (I don’t lie it’s true… finished an MSc and started a Diploma next year another MSc after that a PhD, it really is a weird curse) so I am sick to death of continually representing on behalf of a people that will happily call each other nigga in broken English and text speech, do you know how hard you make it for the rest of us that have to pick up your slack as you blissfully languish in the stereotype?  DO YOU? Next time I’m called nigger I’ll send them to you as you find so much enjoyment from its tarnish.

You see that picture of that pulchritudinous aborigine inquisitively holding that skull, when I see that I think of a beautiful fusion of Hamlet, Othello and Walkabout, the imagery positively excites me, have a click, can you still see that beautiful fusion now? Now click this and watch how the word exudes stupidity, now click this and feel better.

It is not my battle and so I shan’t be dragged into long arguments about it, just like the war, they are unending brutal and violent in their emotion, don’t believe me have a read here in the comments. I can only show my support for those who are being dehumanised amongst all of it, such as the victims of ethnic cleansing, bombings, shootings and child prisoners. The Arabs and the Jews have a long standing argument, inherent distrust and inability to compromise for fear of one-upmanship, put simply they just don’t like each other, this isn’t helped by the Arab League, Egypt, Russia, United States, The United Nations and the European Union “helping”, amongst them some of the the biggest warmongers and propaganda artists attempting to find a peaceful resolution, with that lot on board you can expect this war to continue well into the 22nd century.

Pop resolution; The solution is two independent states, the reasoning at this stage of their development can only ever be separating them, just as a partition was the thinking in earlier years, I know from experience people want to argue that it is far more complex than that, where to draw that line down the middle for instance? all made a little more complicated with the dark lord natural resource overseers joining in, there is a reason why wars don’t end and if you see United States or even Russia looming in the background you need not look much further for motive, although I am fully aware the Arabs and the Jews need little persuasion but I can’t help but see lurking intent.

Anyway this is solidarity for the innocent, may they find their promised land soon.

So all those that understand the poignant message because they know the depth of understanding of Mr Adam Smith and his concepts of individual freedom or indeed Sartre who tells us that “either man is wholly determined or else man is wholly free” which simply means we can do as we want and with this knowledge we should realise that we are then responsible for our actions, which makes us responsible for the world we create…. can leave now, HA HA made you look though…. but those that don’t know you should stay for 9 minutes and 22 seconds and look at our now and then, especially when set to one of the most beautiful pieces of music you’ll ever hear, Mirror in the Mirror.

1905 and I think through to 1906 is the footage, just before the world wars, obvious immigration, Prohibition, Wall street Crash and 20 years before traffic lights, which is such a good point the ASI picked up on, just how well we can work without regulation, Sartre’s words making sense evidenced in pictures, or it could be showing just how much we possibly need to be less erratic, we can’t deny that invention is born from need, put a few more cars in there and that just becomes a Police Stop video.

Attach whatever perspective you want on it, still beguiling to watch the black and white days whatever the conjecture.

Now armed with such obvious information and with little effort on your part other than to sign a form, what could be your excuse to not want to stop people from continually starving to death year after year after year? Every one of you has grown with the knowledge that people die because there is no food for them, which is frightening when you know how much food there really is in the world and no I don’t mean introducing them to freeganism, I mean supporting rural industry from the money we save from not wasting food. If there are 1 Billion people starving to death and there are 6 Billion of us left to stop it…why aren’t we?

I’m not mad, I’m beyond mad, I’m positively miffed. All you have to do as caring, loving humans is demand that the next generations are not being born into malnourishment. This has got to stop being an accepted norm, we are barbaric and vile to continue to allow it and then call ourselves civilised, constantly justifying this enlightenment that ignores human suffering then dares to pretence as urbane and cultivated…laughable. When they look back at our time we will be shamed because we continually have the power to make a change to our society and we choose not to but endure the same broken formula again and again how erudite is that? It’s not, it’s false and depthless.

I’m not asking you to go and cook them meals or help grow the food or even demonstrate outside your government, you barely have to move to show your defiance that’s how EASY protesting is now in the West, the actual activist know just how lazy some of you are and I am rather dumfounded that even the click of a mouse is just too much effort for some. There is no way you can be pro-starvation unless you really have supercilious issues and are so enamoured with yourself that to disregard preventable death for others holds some status abeyant for you, well unless you are a contemptible politician of course, under that guise it would seem a trait. Will it cost you more in taxes you cry? Probably not as much as it’s costing you now because they will actually start DOING something about it! Food Aid is no longer the answer, if anything it is a weak after thought that serves to inhibit development, so my conclusion? Sign the bloody form already..!

Julius Henry ‘Groucho’ Marx there as if you hadn’t guessed, I rediscovered him recently as I was moving further into my middle age and needed to find reasons not to mature in the way this government led society insists. Why people are in such a hurry to move into old age and die shows a people that really haven’t worked out just how good this life thing is, I call them voters of occlusion, why think when there is a pocket filling government that can define your life for you?

Revere an aberrational existence as children, property, cars and a paid bill; don’t bother to engage the possibility that we are actually more than our situation surely a better movement towards freedom than accrued or pursued wealth? And even if you desire such rudimentary goals why do I have to be part of your partisan arse kissing? I make no apologies for my despise of the demented class system and abhorrence of governments and political parties, they serve to divide and this consumes valuable discovery time. As you will find throughout my writings throughout my life my indefatigable desire for a society that is engaged with its now and a denouement of the primitive escapism in which it conducts this artifice of how to live life.

(Breathes) Anyway all the films you see him and his brothers in are them, at my age and older, this gave me so much joy as I rode a horse through McDonald’s with no fear of retribution and a big fat Fidel rolled Cuban cigar. And so whilst looking for reasons for my funny bone to keep its name, I also discovered a just post-war speech he made addressing the Palestine situation regarding race hate, (I am so pleased to find he didn’t have a propensity towards prejudice, something you learn in later life about the Hollywood stars you swooned over as a kid, Cary Grant being one of the let downs) this is an attribute of Julius I had never thought about before, why would I? I was a kid unspoilt by war only subjected to its drudge during history classes and those special flower days, although no escape now older when those pedantic people who have never seen battle but insist that just through the act of watching documentaries on the History channel, qualified them into having something to do with their particular Empires brilliance, Murdoch has more to answer for than you could imagine.

But of course he would have a political voice, it was the 1940s and he was Jewish with the two world wars played out right in front of him, who could keep quiet? Who wouldn’t learn from such an epic sadistic movement and fail to educate others, I’m pleased to say not he. For not only did discovering those films again remind me of my lucky now, it also admonished quite brutally of that awful then, when my culture was portrayed in grass skirts or wiggling a finger with popping wide eyes, I am so impassioned by that, that I have to slap away emotionally conflicted rational and argue thoughts of “but did they really have to act that way”? I know they did, I’m just sickened that they had to. Makes me angry that some of my culture fail to realise just how much humiliation our ancestors had been exposed to just so we could reach this point of our development now. Being illiterate in the West after schooling or crying that there is no hope needs serious addressing, colour may still be an issue in this society but it sure as hell isn’t an excuse.

That’s just one of the reasons why the Groucho speech evokes me, it was said 66 years ago, which means many movements have taken place since then for Women, Gays, Lesbians, Transgender and Ethnic tolerance for equal opportunity, even the bloody animals have union representation, yet still what he says is quite tangible today. Why? I think it’s because we have a certain breed within our society that knows what governments can do, it is almost a genetic calling for them because we are always ruled the same way, well maybe with a depthless coating of obvious party paradign and convincingly making those believe that their ‘will’ will be accommodated whilst picking up the same ‘How to run a country for dummies’ book only slightly altered, badly, each and every term.

With each government generation that evolves, the same singling out of people occurs be it with blacks, Jews, always the poor, Muslims, Mexicans, Eastern Europeans well you get the picture and the governments behaviour is condoned by votes, never ending, rage with the machine votes. No one realising or even quite frankly admitting that it is a homogeny now whatever party colour you hang on the door. If you use Twitter nothing runs that truth home more than the empty rhetoric that drones on day after day, the indolent use of the words to describe opposition and the palpably imperishable arguments fashioned most days on Punch and Judy, these staggering philosophical exchanges would have Socrates saying “I voluntarily paralysed my ability to breathe in the name of what now”? As for the easy use of racism that is so boldly brandished when safely behind a computer screen on Twitter is something I can not wait to post about using names and eeeeverything.

I have ranted more than enough as introductions go and he really does say the next part much better than I ever could (my crush is unyielding I’m afraid). The speech has been taken from the New York Daily Worker who in turn took it from the demonstration for Justice for Palestine, it moved me so much it got me writing again, so I had to share. (eventually)

30th October 1946

I KNOW that I’m supposed to begin a speech like this by saying that I’m happy to be here. Frankly, I’m NOT happy to be here, I wish there were no need for this meeting. Since there is a need, and a very vital one, I can only wish that I might speak with more authority than is commonly vested in what is known, in my trade, as a broken-down comic. I mentioned this matter to the people who asked me to appear here. I told them I didn’t think this was the proper occasion for a funny-man. They agreed. And they added, a little too heartily, I thought, that they didn’t think I was at all funny.

As a matter of fact, my being asked to come here does have something to do with comedy. I’ve devoted quite a lot of time lately to public attacks against the ‘ stereotyping of various groups of Americans by my fellow actors and writers on the stage, screen and radio. I’m referring to those performances we’ve all seen and heard in which the American Negro is pictured as a chicken-stealing, crap – shooting, booze – guzzling vagabond; or the American Jew’s portrayed as a crafty charlatan who worships nothing but gold and is unable to speak his native tongue without a ludicrous and revealing accent; or the Latin-American is characterised as a shiftless, ignorant ne’er-do-well, or the thousand and one other slanders that have cast a shadow at some time or other over virtually every racial and religious group that makes our nation into the great, unified power that it is.

Of course, I am painfully aware of the irony that any of my performances are given by members of the very race or religion that suffers from it. That’s why I am in favour of the resolution being advanced here today recommending legislation against prejudice. I’m all for education, I also know that education alone is not enough. Many of those actors and writers who are constantly and quite unintentionally prejudicing public opinion against races and religions have been educated. They know that no special group has a monopoly on money, crime cowardice or evil. What they don’t know is that the little social differentiations are used scientifically by ruthless men who know the dollars and cents value of fomenting inter racial and inter religious strife.

Adolph Hitler was able to achieve power in what was one of the most enlightened countries in the world, by singling out a scape-goat. He could not have succeeded had there been laws, and enforcement of those laws, against prejudice. YES, education is important, but too much of it is being disseminated on a full-time basis by those who peddle the wrong kind of education, by those who for their own shady self-interest are trying to set one American against another, one European against another European, one Asiatic against another Asiatic—and all against each other. The way to deal with these men is the way civilisation has always dealt with criminal activity—by due process of law.

Racial and religious prejudice is no longer a vague unsporting indiscreet social error, gradually dissolving as the good-will of mankind progresses. A way has been found to make it a political weapon against all of us. The creation in the world of an atmosphere free from racial and religious antagonism is not merely an abstract ideal to be achieved by abstract education. It is an absolute necessity for all of us; regardless of whether we are or are not personally suffering from discrimination at the moment. It is plain self-interest, plain common sense, for every human being who loves peace, security and freedom and I believe that includes most of us.

I think that point is best illustrated by a dream related to me not long ago by a priest with whom I was discussing this subject. He dreamed that all the Jews in the world began to believe the rumour and superstition and propaganda that has been circulated against them. They became convinced they were responsible for all of the world’s troubles, and they were so mortified that they decided to remove themselves from the world. They committed mass suicide— all but one lone American Jew who had been unconvinced. THIS one American Jew was gratified to discover, after all his brothers had vanished, that the world was pretty much in the same spot that it had been in when the Jews were in it. There still seemed to be plenty of trouble to go around.

But then people began saying it was because this one American Jew’ was left. And they began saying it so often, and in so many different ways, and believing it so desperately, that even he began to wonder. It seemed to him that the only sporting thing for him to do was to commit suicide and give the world a chance. So he left town, went out into the country to a mountain he knew, and began trudging up the steep slope to a cliff from which he proposed to leap.

On his way up, however, he passed two men coming the other way engaged in a very violent conversation. It seems that one of the men was saying to the others: “Don’t get me wrong, Joe—some of my best friends are Catholics! ”

……. My friend, the priest, tells’ me that he doesn’t know whether the Jew jumped off the cliff or went back down the hill, because when the priest heard that crack about Catholics—he woke up.

Daily Worker, December 9th 1946

*The use of the word race to define a culture is relevant for the era when the speech was made by no means is it a term I endorse as it is now thankfully defunct.

The frustrating part of this report is that they never received this hostility until there was an amendment to the law in 2007; If anyone is caught impersonating a person of the opposite sex, they would go to prison or be fined. Before this, transgender people were slowly being accepted. This alteration in the law allowed the police to turn into fascists, the cruelty these women endured and still endure is beyond inhumane but what I find incredibly significant is the use of rape on transgender women.

It is such a hate filled, depraved, feral control tact, almost like there is a part of themselves they hate and project that onto these women because even when the women revert back into their original biological gender of man, they are still hunted down and raped, as if the law itself is not enough to punish them? It’s a psychological minefield. I am sure a campaign will start up soon to get that filth of a law, which blatantly flouts humans rights, changed, when it does, you’ll be the first to know here.

HRW Report

I have never understood why LDCs are resource rich but continually poor (well except for obvious corruption) but it will be good to see if transparency eventually reveals if abuses occurred on both sides of the corporate tables, tax avoidance has to be stopped, how can billions of dollars of natural resource exports NOT benefit the LDCs, it’s the most desired commodity out there, surely they should have some sort of sustainable advantage by now and by manipulating these countries only serves to cause and continue conflict just look at DRC but that’s my conspiracy theories going into justifiable over drive.

Last year the Americans passed an Act called the Dodd-Frank Act which became law. Most of you know it was created because of the ill doings and unaccountability that led us to plummet into a recession, it is simply risk management (no I have no idea why it was not in place either, oh no yes I do, easier corruptible access). So now there is a regulator (Financial Stability Oversight Council) to make sure the US economy is not put at risk again by any non-banks harbouring assets of over $50bn, it amuses me that if it seems like they are perilous that the Federal reserve puts them under supervision (hmmm? Right). Anyway if the Dodd regulates as well as it should (which the critique has been less than graceful) then this new EU drive should supplement it effortlessly, yes I know but we have to start somewhere, disclosure is the key and the lock alas.

EITI – Making resources work for people from EITI International on Vimeo.

I mainly wanted to highlight the work of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative whose video is above showing how they have brought together industries, governments and civil organisations to sign up to a global transparency standard, I think it’s beautiful work, below you will see the countries getting involved. If those resource rich countries can operate with transparency maybe it can encourage the rest of the world to start trading exercising mutual benefit. As I said before, we have to start somewhere, I’ll keep my eye on this as it acts as part of my research in trade and LDCs and shall report intermittently as the year unfolds.

Two videos that will encourage creative epistemic logic, if not then you are already brain dead and its best you close your blinds and never view the sun again, a considerably better resolve than you picking up a weapon and bashing me over the head because I don’t agree with you but alas this developing, still primitive world still relies quite heavily on religion, so no big surprise some will continue to bash away.

The first is where Hitchens beautifully and succinctly concludes what most that have been through and come out the other end of Christianity have abridged. His gentle solicitation of lucidity to evidence the manipulation of vicarious redemption or scapegoating resonates and effectuating sweetly with a totalitarian god just makes me chuckle reminiscently. The prompt is a happy recollection of that day when I realised that this god philosophy lacked sagacity was shortly after a nun at my Convent Secondary School told us gays were not permitted to heaven, let’s face it, after such revelation one wondered what other supposed birth imperfection couldn’t get in then? The class walked out in protest (my first of many) and I picked up Nietzsche and was given the genius of reason…hallelujah thanks be to god!

The second video is “Collision,” he and Douglas Wilson quite literally take religion on a road trip. It is enlightening if only to observe the rarity of two people with such conspicuously opposing views respecting each other and actively developing their arguments with reasoned debate with the simple skill of listening and not the idiotic brutalism I’ve witnessed on Twitter and desktop activist blaaawgs from supposed notorieties, desolate intellectualism by comparison. You will get something from this documentary I can guarantee it and I dare you not to, in fact I beg you to try, you can catch me on Twitter so I can happily hear your wilful ignorance. Anyway it’s my show of respect to a philosopher I took too long to meet, I am truly gutted he’s gone but will be happy to promote his views because our comfy norms need constant challenging, it is what helps us develop as Homo sapiens and lucky are those that get to eventually see the result.

http://youtu.be/yU0Ue-Ki-mU