Destructivism

Used to be ashamed of existence, of these words thrown out here and there for anyone to read, and wondered for a while if it was necessary, essential, worth anything. Of course, it depends on what one writes about, and how much suffering and understanding have been added to the matter. There are blogs out there, novels, entertainment, and perhaps philosophy, what deals with the existence, the universe, the primary questions for which there will never be any answer. This is how philosophy can be recognised, if there is no answer to the question. This is what is being discussed here.

I hope you understand that this book has no answer to offer, but might just help you identify the real questions one needs to ask. Be wary of any ready made answers you might get to these essential questions in life, wherever or from whoever these answers might come from. I believe that in the end only you, on a personal level, can answer for yourself any of the questions posed in this book.

If you were to write a similar book one day, trying to answer what this life is all about, I’m sure you would come up with totally different answers. I feel there might not be any ready made answers in this world for the main questions the human race might wish to ask. And yet, I feel it important to ask those questions and try to figure out the answers. I did it for myself here, you might want to consider doing it for yourself as well. It could help us all in the end.

Before I start, I need to remind myself about this most fundamental question: what I write here, what it is that I feel about these different topics, is it just what I think in the here and now, and tomorrow I could write something else? I cannot deny that if I were to live another 50 years, and decide to rewrite that same book with the same subtitles, I would definitely write a totally different book, just like it would have been if I had written it when I was 18.

This book is not intended to be philosophical in the first place, and I am not writing it so it will get published and get some recognition. It is purely a need for me to write it, the need to ask myself these questions and see if, for myself, I can reach some sort of answers which will help my existential crisis. I could be writing commercial stuff instead, but I cannot help it, I needed to write Destructivism.

Also, I want this book to be accessible, understandable, not boring and sending everyone to sleep by talking and talking about one specific subject for over 100 pages, after having read all the other authors and regurgitating here all that they have said, and then adding my little bit to it.

I wish now I had not read about determinism. I had something to say about it before-hand, now, I’ll be lucky if any inspiration comes to me. And what I will be writing now might no longer be my own ideas, no longer be simple or to the point, it needs to take everything else into consideration. Spontaneity is good, a thinking process in action, no more than a few pages on any subject without any long term research, or else, I might just waste 25 years writing a book I can write in a month.

And I am not certain if after a long research and 25 years, this book would be any better. It could be worse, because then I would be unreachable and you would need a degree in philosophy to understand me. As soon as I would start to mention the Compatibilists and the Libertarians in the context of Determinism, that would be it, you would be lost. I would need to write another book on top of my book just to explain all those concepts to you and what everyone else said on the topic. And now you know why it would take me 25 years and why philosophy bores you to death.

I hope you will enjoy this light philosophy, enough to get you thinking about some important questions that philosophy through the ages has been debating. Fortunately for you, I ignored the whole branch about logic and the veracity of arguments. Unfortunately for me, I will be such an easy target to anyone who will try to find some holes in my arguments, that perhaps I should keep this book to myself.

You will find many contradictions in this book, and I believe it is all right. Because human beings are full of contradictions, it is in our nature. Someone who never contradicts himself is a liar and most probably adjusted his ideas and truths to fit the whole of his logic, when in fact his logic might have been flawed from the start. So sometimes I will believe in God, and some other times, I will act like if I never met the guy, that in fact, I don’t believe he even existed. I met Santa Claus though, many times, and I believe in Santa Claus.

The whole first part of this book (Politics) has been published as articles on many progressive websites. At the time we were fighting to get George W. Bush out of the picture. I may eventually edit this book so it is more general, less related to actual events. They were mostly published on five websites: OpEdNews, Atlantic Free Press, The People’s Voice, Dandelion Salad and Scoop. The most complete and comprehensive list of my published articles taken out of this book can be found here:

http://www.opednews.com/author/author16270.html

I understand I am quite cynical and pessimistic, well, lucky you if your life is like a gentle opened flower, mine is not.

Destructivism

The Path to Self-Destruction

Politics

Democracy

If we have to work on an imperfect government structure, and can only change a few things here and there, here are at least a few solutions.

I have observed politics in three countries in my short life, United Canada, United Kingdom and United States, and I could now add the United States of Europe. Sometimes it was democratic, sometimes it was not. Most often it never was democracy, because there was always an almighty leader following his own vision which no one could agree with.

I say “his”, because it is less often a woman who would act so blindly against everyone else’s will. For that alone, I am willing to only vote for women in the future, but I have met many power hungry women in position of authority within my lifetime, and so, we can never be sure or safe. It is really a question of transparency about who we do elect to power. Who are they truly deep down, do we even get to really know, considering all the lies we are being fed all the time?

I have never read Karl Marx or anything about communism or socialism, for some reason when they came to my universities to recruit new fresh minds, I never got on the boat. After my observations, I took several courses in the philosophy of politics in University, and I guess I must have read then about socialism, somehow it didn’t stick, I can’t remember anything about it. I remember The Social Contract of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke and most especially The Prince of Machiavelli. Now that this is out of the way, that you know that I am no expert on the topic, like neither anyone in politics if I may add, let’s see what I think of it.

I know that the American political structure was inspired by Charles de Montesquieu who lived in France from 1689 to 1755, which also inspired the French political system. I also know that it has well past its sell by date, and that today his famous theory of the separation of powers no longer works. It is obvious to anyone that this separation of powers no longer exists, or at least can easily be circumvented.

From an early age I always thought politics didn’t work. For some reason, even though the process looked entirely democratic, we always ended up voting for parties instead of people, and hence, we always seemed to elect the wrong people. It has been my observation that it is quite rare that someone in power will actually do what people actually want. It always ends up in disaster, and sometimes we even re-elect the same horrible people, and no one can understand why.

I’m not going to talk here about pettiness, like should we separate Canada in two or not, or should we go to war with the rest of the world for no apparent good justification. Or what about those terrorists, should we not destroy a few countries and kill a few million people, for those 20 guys who attacked us on a Monday morning years ago? I will also avoid talking about rigged vote, fake elections, though I feel it is a growing concern and I stop short of saying that I believe democracy is truly dead at the time I’m writing these lines.

I simply want to talk about politics at its most basic function and structure, because this is what I feel does not work and ultimately fails us all. This is what can give the power to anyone to suddenly create a world war or destroy an entire economy for the wrong reasons.

When I was a teenager, I always thought that one day I would write a book about the philosophy of politics, and my classes at university re-enforced my need to do so. However, up until now I didn’t feel I had all the answers yet, in fact, I’m not sure if I have any at all. It is certainly not the easiest topic to address, especially when I feel that a radical change in the structure itself is required. I have however come to a few conclusions.

The idea of political parties needs to go. It is the most outdated and impractical concept there ever was in politics. More so because in this day and age, the line is so blurred between party lines, there is not much difference if you vote for one or the other.

The only difference is a few main big ideas like being against gays, against abortion, against women’s rights (should they remain at home and have babies as their sole social role), should we give more money to big corporations, should we give more money to the poor, and finally, the big argument that cannot fail to win you an election: should we lower the taxes (as if this was a question to ask anyone already paying 60% of their salary in taxes of all sorts).

Now, these few main big ideas, which truly have nothing to do with any political party, as for most of the time these will be completely at the back of their mind and they will most probably do nothing or very little about it, does not have to be the reasons why you vote for a political party. These can be debated anyway by all the elected representatives. If you paid more attention to the personal beliefs and ideas of your local representatives instead of the political party you will vote for, you would know if the person you’re about to elect will be a little tyrant and alienate you completely or not.

That little group of local politicians is really all you need to study in order to vote, nothing else. By electing a political party, you most likely vote for the representative of that party without knowing anything about who that person truly is and what that person can truly do for you. Most of the time these people are so powerless anyway, their elections are more like a formality for a party to get into power, and then the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, or the President and his few allies, take over the show.

So in essence, you will be ruled by a very small group of people. And your local representatives, you will know very little about, and they will be powerless anyway, without a voice of any kind. You see the main problem which needs to be addressed?

By getting rid of political parties and coming back to basics, we will also eliminate another growing concern in actual politics. Now parties are spending so much money on their elections, it goes into the millions if not billions. What does this tell you? That only rich candidates can now get into power. Where do they get the money? This invites bribery, corruption, conflict of interests, and now we’re destroying Iraq to take over their natural resources, because who paid for the American elections? Petroleum companies.

No one can now compete freely in the political arena. If I were to present myself tomorrow as an independent, I will most certainly lose. If I were the representative somehow of a political party, I could win, but all for the wrong reasons.

And even so, how would I go, myself, right now, to represent a political party in an election? I have no clue. I would probably not be accepted, they wouldn’t want me. They already have a clique of hungry and greedy little friends who have been in politics since forever, who will most likely be their representatives in my own county when they probably don’t even live in my county.

So first, eliminate political parties. Second, eliminate the right to publicise in any way thinkable political ideas and representatives. No one should ever be allowed to accept money from anyone or any corporation for a political campaign. No one should be able to win an election simply by injecting billions into a PR and publicity machine. It is too unfair.

As soon as you hear one guy on the radio or the TV talking about this or that, no matter what he talks about, you are probably very likely going to vote for him, because you will recognise his name on the election ballot, when the others will seem not to even exist. What’s a name after all? I won’t even talk about negative publicity in order to destroy one’s opponent, a common practice nowadays, where a divorce in the life of your opponent, is all you need to win an election.

So now that we have eliminated the political parties which elect the wrong type of people, and that we have finally eliminated the big brainwashing publicity machine that will most assuredly influence everyone to vote for this or that, all for the wrong reasons, whilst preventing anyone without the money to be heard, and so speaking destroying democracy, what do we do?

Simple. Who pays for the publicity campaign? The government, meaning, and we forget it all the time, the people pay for it. A few pages about each candidate distributed locally to everyone, so we can find out about these people we’re about to elect outside of party lines, and hopefully with the thought that they can think for themselves, that they can be heard and that they can make a difference. An hour here and there on local TV and radio, for each of them, space available in local newspapers, all paid by the people. Cheaply done, no more millions and billions spent on politics and publicity machines. It must remain at a local level, never national. As soon as a political election is national, it defies democracy, it elects the wrong people.

So now that the elections are over, and that people have won for the right reasons, without being a drain on the economy, without bribes and corruption, who’s going to be the leader? It has always been the leader of the political party who took ultimate power, and the leader of the opposition being the leader of the second most popular party. This needs new thinking.

Well, I feel we need to work towards a more democratic process where no one is so clearly an all powerful leader, capable to veto everything, or unilaterally make decisions with huge impacts upon the country and the world. Either the leaders are decided after the elections by the people you elected, or in parallel you also vote for anyone who presented himself or herself specifically as leader. The opposition should be everyone else in the assembly.

The idea is that no one should win a seat in an election based on that one man or woman alone who runs for President or Prime Minister, since all the representatives should be independent. So no one will win for the wrong reasons, and no leader will be capable of obliging half the government to vote on any new law or policy. Following the party line will be something of the past.

In the end, there should never be a strong leader in charge of any country or any other government or council, or else, it eliminates the voice of everyone else, and so, your voice. It cancels the idea of an election and of democracy. Only after, should it be decided who is the leader, or independently from anyone else. And that leadership should never be permanent for the whole mandate, it should change every so often.

This should not stop there. The ministers or whatever they are called in the US, should not be decided by the leader. They should also be voted by the whole of the assembly based on merits and who they feel should be in charge of certain departments. Or else it is too easy for the leader to get all his little friends there in power, and then it becomes dangerous, because the leader can do whatever he or she likes without fear of being stopped.

I suppose I have not thought about all this as much as would be required, really. But with my full time job I have no time to study politics and develop my own philosophy of it. It will have to wait until I retire, assuming I won’t die from cancer at an early age or die in the Third World War or a civil war.

However, my little suggestions might just give us a better representation of what people truly want. It will be more likely that the wrong people will not find themselves in power that easily. It could get rid of corruption, bring back democracy, and avoid costly elections. Overall, my few pages might just do the trick. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to re-assess the situation then. In the meantime, it would certainly solve a few of the biggest problems I witnessed in politics today.

Let’s debate if we need political parties or not, and let’s find solutions, so we can have a better democracy, or even, so we can have a real democracy.

Anarchy

It is strange that I wrote this whole book before addressing the one subject people are most likely to accuse me of in time, the one of being an anarchist talking about anarchy. It did not cross my mind to write about anarchy, because I never thought I was an anarchist. I realise now that perhaps I am a bit of an anarchist in the closet.

People have accused me of being an anarchist because of the title of my website, The Crowned Anarchist, which ultimately was just the title of a book by Antonin Artaud, the celebrated French author who died in 1948. His book was about a Roman Emperor originally from Syria named Heliogabalus, also called the Crowned Anarchist, because of his subsequent reign in Rome.

Being an anarchist, in my case, is like being gay. You know deep down at heart that you are, that there is nothing you can do against your nature, and that if that nature gets to be known, you will be ostracised by everyone else, rejected, ridiculed and you are going to suffer the rest of your life.

I am nevertheless suffering anyway, from a lack of freedom, a lack of control in the decisions being made that concern me directly, from these hierarchies everywhere present to which I need to bow down to and be submissive.

To the point that I feel I am nothing less than a slave, going through this life making the minimum of decisions, and then will go on without any kind of freedom or control, and do exactly what all sorts of authorities will tell me to do, at every single minute of my existence.

Be it the authority of parents, loved ones, teachers, managers and directors, spiritual leaders, social workers, judges, probation officers, police, political leaders through a myriad of laws and regulations. Add to it CCTVs and cameras everywhere, and constant probing and recording of phone calls, emails and the websites we visit, to ensure that we no longer have an impure thought that goes against their will. Anything can and will be used against us at some point in time, while everything we do is being recorded, and the time of reckoning seems to be getting closer every day.

At some point you do feel the need to explode and tell them all to stop, that enough is enough! That we feel the need to re-assert ourselves, to exist, to make a few decisions of our own, to do what we want to do with this life and that a little breathing space would not go amiss in our life. Do we even have the time to think anymore? Are we free collectively to decide what we want to do, are we able to stop our leaders in their grand scheme of conquering the planet at the expense of humankind, our very existence? The obvious answer is no.

Anarchists seem to believe that we can have a real democracy, that it seems that our actual government structures and corporate structures are all against the very idea of democracy and giving the citizens the chance to rule themselves and make their own decisions. If citizens truly had the power to govern themselves, the world would be a different place today.

This is what anarchists are fighting for, whether they are extremists or intellectuals who would never dream of picking up a cocktail Molotov or even walk outside in any demonstration. And this is perhaps why I never thought I was an anarchist, because neither of these definitions of anarchy befitted me. I am not extremist, I am a pacifist. I am not an intellectual who will go on to write clever articles about what this kind of anarchist system might look like. I would first certainly give it another name, because either way you take it, the word anarchist and anarchy are too heavy for anyone in their right mind. For them it would mean chaos and the end of the world as we know it, they would be afraid of the word itself, so I could never really write an anarchist book. On the other hand, I cannot deny that at heart I share many of their beliefs and, in my own way, I have been fighting for the same beliefs and freedoms in all of my books.

The fact that you are witnessing your leaders suddenly openly declaring a Third World War and lightning the seed of civil war as the only mean to stop it, is very significant. It shows that with the actual structure of our governments, these hierarchies, supposedly democratic, the leaders are still capable of working towards their own interests, destroy an economy and go on to achieve genocides.

The democracy we have right now does not work. A man is still able to control the elections, make all the decisions, change all the laws superseding even the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Human Rights Charter, make torture legal, ignoring the United Nations, and go on to wreck havoc in the world and bring about a global war. So, everything has failed once again, and I wonder if we are not ready for a more radical change in our structures and the ways we govern and organise ourselves.

Where have we gone wrong? What else could we do to change this? Do anarchists, the intellectual ones, have the answer? They have provided many alternatives to the kinds of established government structures and even commercial company structures we have, where there is no more obvious leader anywhere capable of taking over the world and leash out his evil plan.

There could be groups or collectives being formed on a short, medium or long term basis discussing democratically all the decisions to be made, and collectively deciding on who will do what depending on the needs and skills. And if there is to be a leader, it will be a natural one who can be constantly questioned and replaced as soon as it seems that he or she is no longer acting in the interests of the whole group or collective, as anyone else and everyone else could take over just like that.

In an anarchist organisation, for example, there would not be a board of directors or an executive board. No leader, just a bunch of people on the same level voluntary meeting, discussing and making decisions as a whole for the organisation or the collective. When someone would ask who’s in charge, the answer would be everyone, free from any authority and coercive social relations, no corporate structure with an elite at the top making all the wrong decisions.

I do not intend here to tell you what anarchist ideas are all about, I admit that I am quite ignorant of such things and I have read little on the subject. I have read enough though to know that there are good ideas in there, and that it answers a lot of why I have been living an existential crisis from the day I was born. Under such a structure, I might have been happier, I just don’t know.

I am not sure how realistically all of this could be implemented in real life. There are many people incapable of functioning without clear leadership telling them exactly what to do. They are quite happy to go on living without ever making one decision. And this is fine, naturally, even in some anarchist system or structure, they will be able to find that, if necessary. There will still be natural temporary leaders.

But although it may seem unrealistic that such a structure could become the norm, a lot of these elements could be incorporated in the actual systems and structures in order to become smoother and more acceptable to all, and certainly prevent other leaders from taking over the place and serving their own interests above all the rest of us. Solutions will need to be found one way or another, and at this point I am willing to look for inspiration anywhere in order for us to gain more freedom and live happier lives.

So I feel what anarchists are writing is certainly worth reading, considering and seeing what could possibly be incorporated, in default to be able to change the whole system overnight.

Until at least our leaders destroy it all and that, after another bloody war and a civil war, we are left with everything else to rebuilt, aware of the mistakes of the past structures and systems. All anarchists would be dead by then, and probably once again, all free thinkers, all outspoken people against the governments, all gay people and all immigrants. There are five good reasons for me to be eradicated. I will not survive, that is obvious, and to be honest, I don’t really care that much. So I might as well not be afraid to speak my mind and be ready to suffer the consequences.

It is likely that even under an anarchist structure or system, wars, corruption, and less desirable features plaguing our governments rights now, would happen no matter what, as it does not appear that any government structure can prevent them. Which is why that no matter which government structure we have, we need to provide for a lot of ways for a quick change of leadership, and that as soon as there is a bit of smoke, it is the time to act before it is too late.

One can only dream that one day we will live under a real democracy, and that we will finally govern ourselves for real, and that no dictator ever could take over the world so easily while we are all too busy to pay attention until it is right there under our nose and that we are all powerless to stop it.

Capitalism

Is pure capitalism a religion we have taken too far? Pure capitalism and pure greed to the extreme is now our only religion.

I feel it is difficult to speak of capitalism as a whole, without falling in numerous traps and being accused of not knowing what I am talking about. So first thing I did was to go on Wikipedia, then I stopped myself. Don’t get me wrong, I will read it and say what I think of it, but first capitalism must be, before anything else, what the people inside really feel it is. Not the perfect book definition that we all wish it to be, because in practice we know capitalism has evolved into something else, that many consider a real monster and threat to humanity.

This point becomes clearer when we read Karl Marx and his ideas of a perfect socialism, which in real life has been the breeding ground of corruption and governments’ hidden agendas, who drove us all to utter failure. I read a bit of Karl Marx a long time ago, I like to say I didn’t, and yes, I was charmed by it. In reality, what I have observed of what we have done in his name, has alarmed me so much, the only solution I could see was to discredit the man, because no one ever again should use Karl Marx as any kind of authority to justify the worst atrocities and injustices this humanity has seen. I may talk more about this one day, right now I wish to define my own definition of capitalism.

What is capitalism in your own mind? What is it in my mind? Well, it is our new religion, it is all that we believe in. We claim it is our way to freedom, the liberation of the masses, our chance to succeed beyond measure at becoming filthy rich and powerful, no matter our background, our education, our social class. Capitalism can be reduced to the American Dream.

In my total ignorance of what exactly is capitalism, I have to say, yes, capitalism is wonderful! I want that chance to freedom, I want to become filthy rich and powerful, I want to do what I want to do in this life, nothing else. At this point I realise that I need to dig further. What else do we believe it is?

Well, it is a system, an economic system upon which our existence, our corporations, our governments base everything they think and do. What it seems to be about is capital, making money, as much as one can, to the detrimental of just about everything else in life. If the one at the top prospers, we all prosper. A rich company will create jobs and should in theory pay its employees well. The private sector is where capitalism is applied, though even government agencies think in capitalist terms, and if there is a way to make a profit in anything, we should certainly go for it and make tons of money that could be re-invested somewhere else.

When I was a child, my parents never had with me the big talk about capitalism and what it meant. They never told me what was expected of me in such a system. Haven’t they? They certainly pushed my sister and I to the limits. We had to have a great education, we had to succeed at any cost and attend the best universities, we had to become rich and have a great status in this society, the best job one can hope for. Medical, law and engineering were the only obvious choices available to us. However, in retrospect, they were misguided. No one becomes rich being a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Poor shadows of what capitalism truly means.

Capitalism means starting your own business and building it until it becomes a huge corporation employing thousands of people worldwide in some sort of wonderful perfect globalised world. Lawyers in Canada can eventually do that, they can start their own law firm. Engineers can do the same, creating their own engineering consulting firm. Doctors in Canada cannot really go private, in the United States however they can, as it is all mostly private. This led to horrifying results, where doctors became nothing less than advertising agencies for the almighty pharmaceutical companies, pushing half baked drugs that they all know don’t work, and in many cases, make the patients worse.

Perhaps capitalism should never have been applied in certain areas of our society. There is no need to become extreme, like in the United States, or we will eventually reach a point where everything will come crumbling down to dust, as we are witnessing right now in the stock exchange market and financial sector. Too much greed will be our downfall, just as it has always been throughout the ages.

At its most basic definition, I think it is fair to say that what comes to mind to anyone when we talk about capitalism, is this law of the offer and the demand. Let’s forget here about advertising and marketing, forcing us to wish for things we would never have thought we needed in the first place. We live in a society of consumerism, highly materialistic in nature, where your only goal in life is to acquire as many possessions and assets as you can, as it is how you will be judged and respected in society. How much wealth you have will define how great a man or a woman you truly are, your worthiness to exist. This is what the meaning of life has been reduced to under capitalism, a game of Monopoly, and I dare you to deny it. It is such a shame, as I do love to play Monopoly on my Nintendo DS. I am a product of my generation, well, almost.

It’s okay, I am still not criticising capitalism that badly, who knows, maybe it is the way to go. After all, what other system has brought us anything better? None. Might seem a bit superficial, plastic, meaningless, and so on, and on, and on. If one wishes to be the devil’s advocate in this case, my God, that one could go on forever about how misplaced this whole philosophy of life can be, and how more important stuff are actually… well, much more important. Like, I don’t know, emancipation, happiness, finding a meaning to our existence and figuring what is this place, the universe we live in. Finding some peace about who we are and what we are supposed to do here, if anything.

Freedom and happiness are still key to everything, we should never forget that. I believe they tried to convince us that it was embedded in the whole capitalism system. You are free to become a civil servant doing admin for the rest of your life, or create your own business and become as rich as your imagination and cleverness or shrewdness will lead you to.

Then, I suppose, capitalism only becomes a real problem to you if you are just a civil servant with no thirst to becoming rich and controlling the planet. Otherwise, wow, what a great life you can have, a real challenge that will answer all your prayers, assuming you have totally espoused the capitalist way of thinking. You might find later on in life that this was after all a bit meaningless, but who cares. Whilst you were in the thick of it, it seemed right, it was fulfilling, it was exciting, you can be proud of yourself and your achievements, you certainly cannot be faulted for it, you will be envied.

In order to get a better idea about how great capitalism is, we need to turn to our models and heroes of capitalism. I reckon, that should be anyone who has made over a billion dollars and who took the time later on in life to write his or her autobiography, or at least who has given us enough to understand how they truly felt about it. Then, we also need to assess if they have not simply continued to play the game and are not just telling us how great and successful they have been. I mean, a real turn around to assess exactly and honestly how they feel about it all.

I can think of two great examples, perhaps the greatest ever, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. It does not matter who they are and how they made it. If you do not know who they are, forget it. All you need to know is that they made billions of dollars and build up the most successful corporations this world has ever seen. And later on in life, they both seemed to have suffered from some sort of existential crisis, and realised that perhaps life and our values were not all that they should have been.

So now they have decided to turn the table around and help the world with their fortune, by squandering their money away to every loser on the planet who has never heard of capitalism or cannot even dream to ever find out. The people who most probably suffered greatly at the hand of capitalism, since no system ever could sustain itself without exploitation of others and some sort of slavery in the form of cheap labour. Capitalism is not the exception here, I’m afraid.

So, what do we learn from Gates and Buffett? That capitalism is great indeed, but that it is not all there should be, and it should not become a religion. That a good balance about everything in life might actually bring more freedom and happiness. Greed is eternal, as the Ferengi Commerce Authority would say, but there comes a point when it simply becomes meaningless and cannot serve to justify one’s entire existence or course of action, and certainly should not be the main principle upon witch the whole of humanity should be based. Greed is not eternal after all in the Divine Treasury after death. We should welcome entering the Vault of Eternal Destitution at any time, as a sign that we figured it all out, what life is actually really about, which cannot be a Blessed Exchequer. At least, I refuse to believe it.

There are other models that we need to study. The ones born and brainwashed into the capitalist system, driven to madness with this desire to succeed at any cost, and who simply cannot make it. Ruined existences, by an impossible desire responsible for a large percentage of the depression and suicides in our society. It is a fact that, though we have produced time and time again generations of people driven to succeed in such a system, it is clear that only a very small percentage can actually succeed.

Is the hope of succeeding and freeing oneself, enough to sustain such a system? Or is it time to wonder if our values are completely misplaced and that, how we define success and ourselves in society, has to change? Excellent question, you can ponder over that one to your heart’s content, especially if you are a failure and worth absolutely nothing, which statistically speaking, I’m sure you are.

Capitalism is certainly better than the previous feudal system. Ironically, we could say that capitalism was sort of invented and made popular in England, where the feudal system never actually died out. I am still a servant to my Queen, working for Her Majesty’s Courts Service. And as such, it is illegal for me to talk about politics, and to a certain extent, I would think, to talk about capitalism or anything related to any political agenda. Let my dear Queen sue me, I would love to see that show, because I don’t care, I will still speak my mind, and so should you. Who has a backbone around here? You, the people, or the governments? And who can we trust? In God we trust? In Money we trust? Or in People we trust? Yeah, I am asking you, and please do answer truthfully, for once.

Capitalism has a better track record than socialism, and is clearly the winner over any kind of form of communism we have observed in this world. I am however Canadian, and Canada is not pure capitalism like its neighbour. Canada is a mix between capitalism and socialism. I think we reached the right balance, and still managed to become a force of nature in the world, a country which is more readily admired than the United States. There are many reasons for that, not all of them admirable, because we depend and count too much on our neighbour. As a result we can afford to forego an out of control military industry and other things. We never felt the need to develop our own nuclear armament for example, we never needed to, not yet anyway.

Some American States have become a bit more socialist in time. California is the example that comes to mind. I think it is a great example, and that they show very well to the rest of America that there is no need to be extreme in anything, especially not capitalism, because it could ultimately eventually become our downfall. And that, coming from the State that probably benefitted most from capitalism in the history of America. Perhaps they can only afford today to be a bit more socialist because pure capitalism made them so rich in the first place. Who knows, it does not matter anyway. What matters is that socialism means a bit of compassion and empathy for the rest of us. It says: if you are in trouble, no matter who you are and what you have accomplished in this great system of ours, we will help you, we will not let you die without food, a roof and medical assistance. Here is a greater message of hope than the American Dream could ever provide to most of us.

In conclusion, I won’t read the entry of capitalism on Wikipedia. I don’t feel the need to bore myself to death. I think I said all that I felt the need to say on the topic. Capitalism and socialism are what we think they are, what we make them to be. Yes, I am charmed by Karl Marx and his ideal world. I am also charmed by capitalism. There are also many ideas coming from the anarchist front which I believe are worth integrating as well. However, history tells us that economic systems taken individually, do not work and lead to abuse and unhappiness. Driving a system to any sort of extreme is our only problem, as I believe we already have all the solutions on the table. Extremes have always been our downfall. A perfect mix of capitalism, socialism and anarchism is the answer, eliminating any kind of extreme in between. That might bring the sort of freedom and happiness I’m sure we are all looking for, the real meaning of this existence, no matter in which system we live in and the religion we believe in. In people we trust, and nothing else.

Dictatorship

I believe we are all aware now that George W. Bush is a psychopath, with a personality disorder characterized by chronic immoral and antisocial behavior. His mental health problem will be his only defense if the War Crime Tribunals catch up with him one day.

I will go through his "psychopath's checklist" later. Keep in mind that his full political agenda has not yet been entirely played out, and before it is over, George W. Bush will certainly present a perfect case of a full-fledged dictator. We still have the time to stop him, but we won't for much longer. So let's explore what is really happening.

The following George W. Bush and Dick Cheney "Dictators' Checklist" was gleaned from many websites, but is not exhaustive, and goes something like this:

1) A leader who holds and/or abuses an extraordinary amount of personal power,

2) The power to make laws without effective restraint by a legislative assembly or a Constitution,

3) Cult of personality/megalomania (like when someone states that God has spoken to him and told him to go to war, or when a leader portrays himself as the symbol of patriotism),

4) Head of the military, association with the military and wearing a military uniform (which Bush did),

5) Repression of political opponents and others without abiding by rule of law procedures or moral and ethical code (threatening and succeeding in shutting up one's opponents, Bush has been highly successful at this),

6) Rule by decree (losing the elections and yet proclaiming oneself the ruler),

7) Proclamation of a state of emergency to further one's agenda (9/11),

8) Suspension of civil liberties and spying on its own citizens (several terrorist acts, being able to imprison and convict people without due process, use of torture),

9) Control of mass media (Fox Network at the very least, and probably most of the mass media since they are all so quiet about all this),

10) Suspension of elections following a large scale false flag/government sponsored terrorist event and declaration of martial law.

As you can see, everything has already been accomplished except for the last item: suspension of elections through a state of emergency and declaration of martial law. Wikipedia states that modern dictators have usually come to power in times of emergency, and so we can certainly expect that someone as desperate as George W. Bush must be planning another state of emergency to fully establish his dictatorship. Bush's emergency is entirely predictable and likely; it is just a question of time, months at most, probably weeks.

One could even argue that elections have already been suspended for two elections, through cheating in Florida and Ohio, and manipulation of electronic voting machines. Also that the main government sponsored terrorist events could be 9/11 and other terrorist acts in London and Spain, all of which point to false flag events.

However, the worst is still to come, because it is the final act before absolute dictatorship, and, it is the only way George W. Bush and his partners in crime will be able to remain in power past November, '08. Hence, we already have a dictatorship, albeit not an absolute one, and it is time to impeach the dictator and his associates before the war agenda against us is complete.

I don't pretend to know all about psychopathic behaviors and dictators, and perhaps it is a good thing, because as a layperson, I speak about it in terms that can reach the collective consciousness. These topics are highly important right now; unfortunately, the experts are only able to write about it in terms that limit their discourse to other experts. So they speak together in that language no one can understand, and ultimately they forget to raise the alarm when a textbook case of a psychopathic dictatorship shows up in the world and is about to enslave us all. Let's raise the alarm for them.

George W. Bush psychopath's checklist is borrowed from Dr. Robert D. Hare's Psychopathy Checklist. Of course, no psychopath is going to exhibit all of those symptoms; however, the more symptoms you exhibit, the more psychopath you are. It is important to understand that most psychopaths are pathological liars and are quite capable of presenting a convincing mask of sanity (the title of a book by Hervey Cleckley, M.D.). In the cases of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the masks have fallen and there is enough data to prove that most of these factors apply to their psychopathology:

Factor 1: Aggressive narcissism: 1) Glibness / superficial charm, 2) Grandiose sense of self-worth, 3) Pathological lying, 4) Cunning / manipulative, 5) Lack of remorse or guilt, 6) Shallow. 7) Callous / lack of empathy, 8) Failure to accept responsibility for own actions, 9) Promiscuous sexual behavior.

Factor 2: Socially deviant lifestyle: 1) Need for stimulation / proneness to boredom, 2) Parasitic lifestyle, 3) Poor behavioral control, 4) Lack of realistic, long-term goals, 5) Impulsiveness, 6) Irresponsibility, 7) Juvenile delinquency, 8) Early behavior problems, 9) Many short-term marital relationships, 10) Revocation of conditional release.

I will not develop every single point of these checklists; this is only meant to be an overall idea to give us some hints about who we are dealing with. I am certain you are already aware of most events and how they apply to each item of the checklists. In their case, it is clear, it all leads to psychopathy and dictatorship.

What needs to be assessed is how such psychopathic minds as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, succeeded first in gaining power, second in achieving so much destruction without being stopped by anyone, and third, why it is so difficult to get rid of them now that we are all aware of where the events are leading us.

Where their policies and decisions are leading us can be resumed to: suspension of most freedoms and liberties including the freedom of speech and privacy, the abandonment of the democracy and of the Constitution, the destruction of the environment and of the economy worldwide, famines, the construction of over 800 concentration camps that we know of in America, a dictatorship, genocides, a world war, and so on. All of these are in an advanced stage or have already been accomplished. There is no doubt now of where Bush and Cheney are leading us.

How indeed were they able to achieve such a feat on the land of the free, being able not only to shut the media down, but also the scientists and even their political opposition. Is it a reign of fear, of terror, or are they all collaborators of the tyrants? Excellent question.

So much has been said about how Hitler was able to get into power and achieve his dictatorship, whilst the Germans were simply sitting back and letting it all happen. Were they all guilty, you have asked? More so about the French, and how cowardly they were according to so many Americans, because corruption was running high at the top, and everything happened in the shadows and so quickly. Before you knew it, it had already happened. Well, now you understand. It is very much happening again, and we do not seem to be any more capable in preventing any of it from happening than the Germans and the French were. No, it can never be that easy to prevent such events. If it were, such things would never happen in the first place, and unfortunately they do all the time in the world.

Oh yes, the difference today is that we have the Internet, and alternative media are still reachable using search engines (but not for long I suspect). And if you are reading this, I'm sure you have read a lot more already, and are fully aware of what I am talking about here.

I did a test at work recently. I asked my colleagues if they knew that there was a big famine worldwide at the moment and that millions were dying of hunger. I won't go into the reasons here, I'm sure you know all the corruption and market manipulations that went on to create that state of affair, including the World Bank Group's policies and the production of Ethanol.

The amazing fact was that, most of my colleagues, had not even heard of this global famine, and this is news that made the headlines on the most important newspapers and television networks in the country. So how would the main population know all about the intricacies of Bush's regime, I wonder, with such a PR and propaganda machine running 24 hours a day on most media worldwide?

So their plan for a dictatorship could easily still work. They assume we are dumb and ignorant, and unfortunately I think they may assume correctly. There comes a point though, and I believe that we have reached that point, where we can no longer afford to be oblivious.

Such psychopathic minds don't know when to stop and they always go too far, once they believe that they are untouchable. They may feel that way, because legally no one can now stop them without a civil war, and they know that much more awareness and organization would be required before that happens.

In this case, without the torture gulags of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where conveniently the Geneva Conventions have been declared obsolete, it is a safe bet that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have destroyed themselves in America, the last place on Earth where apparently millions still remain unaware of the extent of their abuse and corruption. If this is what they intend for FEMA’s 800 empty concentration camps in the U.S., each of them with a capacity to hold thousands of people, we can expect the worse.

However, Bush and Cheney don’t seem to mind that the general population is now aware of their crimes against humanity, it has not changed their plans. They have not apologized or even tried to pretend that they had no idea, they have not closed down these camps. It seems that there is no point in hiding anything anymore, because we are rapidly reaching the full disclosure of their dictatorship. It will probably take the form of a false flag nuclear or biological attack on American soil blamed on Iran, followed by the declaration of martial law.

What can one do? Well, I thought there was no need to write such articles as this one, since so many others are better informed than I, and they express themselves in better ways. I believe now that if many more were to write articles like this, and setup their own website, no matter how ignorant they are, it could make a difference and help build awareness, being perhaps the beginning of some sort of resistance which eventually could gain momentum.

I was born in 1972. I would say I am now older, many people around me still consider me quite young. Considering my knowledge of past events, indeed I am young. It took me a long time to finally find out about dictators and political psychopaths in the world. I never thought there was a need to investigate. After all, we seemed to be living in some sort of golden age.

For me, both World Wars, Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse-tung were way in the past, these events could never be repeated. Then I realized that most of humanity is actually ruled by dictators and tyrants. That was still acceptable to me, because what was important was that I was living in a civilized country and that I was safe. The rest of the world eventually would get out of their nightmare just like we did.

I even thought at some point that attacking Iraq and Iran was about that, liberating these people from their own dictators. I thought we were such nice people, bringing them this great idea of democracy. And if we could convince them somehow to abandon their religion in the process, well, we would have truly saved them all. I could not believe what they were saying about us, whenever it happened that we heard what they were saying, which is very seldom. Now I believe they are right.

I had no idea that everything was cyclical and history was just repeating itself over and over again. Learning a lesson, whether individually or collectively, is perhaps the most difficult thing ever. It seems that we are just too slow to learn from the past and to react whenever it is about to happen again.

I am awake. I am now aware that once you have succeeded in gaining a few more rights and liberties, you still need to continue the fight, to ensure that you will keep those rights for at least another generation. I understood early on that rights are never given for life, they are borrowed for a limited time, and will be snatched away at the very first opportunity, under the pretense of security, morality and ethics, religion, terrorism, war, corporations, failing economy… take your pick, anything will do.

It is so hard to understand, because who benefits from the fact that we do not have those rights anymore? What purpose does it really serve? Why should any government or corporation work so hard at annihilating any kind of rights and freedoms citizens are so justified to demand?

My incomprehension does not stop here. Ultimately, I understand this is all a question of power and wealth, of control over everyone in order to become filthy rich. However, what is the point of that? Why would you want to control every single person on the planet and know exactly everything everyone is doing and thinking at any given time? Why would you want to add many more billions of dollars to your already made fortune?

This is when I came across the fact that some people are psychopaths, they have this obsession of being in power and to be rich, to control everything, whilst suffering from some sort of paranoia that they might eventually lose it all. Nothing will stop them in their ascension to becoming dictators.

This is hard to understand, because such people simply do not think like the rest of us. They have different priorities, and have often been described as people without a soul, or at the very least, people who lost their soul as they started to climb a hierarchical ladder filled with other born psychopaths. They enjoy the humiliation, the pain and the suffering they inflict on others.

I never thought I would feel the need one day to attack in many articles and books an American President and Vice President as I do now. It was simply unthinkable, since North America has been built for that very purpose, the emancipation of the colonies against such control from the Kings and Queens of the motherland.

The whole Constitution and the Bill of Rights have been carefully written to protect the country against this form of abuse from the government. They proved to be easily circumvented. They failed us even if the ultimate plan of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is somehow prevented, since we have already lost those precious rights and protections which previously were defining our nation and who we were.

All it took was one psychopath, surrounded by people just like him, to overthrow everything so many generations have worked so hard to protect. And now, nowhere else in the world is anyone safe. No more country is a model for all the others. Corruption and greed are winning the political game, and we are facing once again dark times.

I had such hopes for humanity, I now believe that humanity will not survive much longer. I didn't think humanity would become extinct within my lifetime; I can see now that it is a real possibility.

I can't comprehend why all of this is happening. I thought there were so many agencies and other organizations fighting against just such an eventuality. After 9/11 they all fell silent, and none of them seem to have recovered their voice in the following years. There does not even seem to be any kind of opposition to the government; the Democrats are all talking about trivia, when there are critical issues at stake.

Everything falls on deaf ears. Even the media are silent; they seem to show complicity. So much must have happened behind the scenes that we are still unaware; I hope one day we will get the full picture for the history books, so perhaps we will make this the very last time it will ever happen.

The day that we re-establish the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as they were before George W. Bush entered the scene, we will have to attach to them the two checklists mentioned earlier, the psychopath's and the dictator's checklists, and pay attention as soon as our leaders start to show too many signs of either of these traits. We will then have to act much faster than we are now, as soon as we see the first signs.

I understand why George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's plan worked so well. We were not expecting it in North America. No one would have believed, a decade ago, that a dictatorship in North America was possible in less than a decade, and that no one would see it coming. We have grown complacent.

I realize now that we were deluded indeed, with so many dictatorships everywhere else in the world, we should have been more informed. How could we have believed that we were immune? It is unforgiveable, and there will be such a high price to pay before this is over, I don't even want to think about it.

I can already guess who will be blamed for letting it happen, but the truth is, we are all to blame, because every single one of us allowed it to happen, and we are continuing to do so right now.

I'm sorry, but there is no excuse this time. We already know too much about what is happening; no one bothers to even hide their agenda anymore; it is as clear as day. There should be an immediate outcry coming from everyone everywhere in the country, and instantly everything should change, everything should be stopped before it reaches critical stage.

There is still time, and it might yet be simple. Call for the impeachment of our leaders, and give the War Crime Tribunals a call. Which brings up the all important question: who, exactly, could make this happen?

Who has the power to start any kind of investigation against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and company? Why are they not acting? We all know that there is enough evidence against them. Yes, I had a look at the latest American Civil Liberties Union's report, they are slipping, they are sleeping, it has gone largely ignored, no help there.

Those people, who could do something but do nothing, should be our real target, those people should be shamelessly fired and replaced quickly. If they cannot do their job, if their silence has been bought somehow, if they are too afraid to speak up, we will have to do their job for them, and we will. And then we might still save humanity.

It is what we do best, isn't it, saving the world? Well, let's start by saving ourselves, and then the world might stand a chance. No more psychopaths in power, no more dictators ever, anywhere in the world! This has to be our new leitmotiv. "No more!" will also do.

So speak up and act while you still can! No one in the mass media will, and their silence is truly deafening. It is all up to you now, only small you... since everyone else has proven to be ineffective in doing anything against the real axis of evil.

After proving that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are psychopaths and dictators, and successfully brought about a dictatorship over North America minus the declaration of martial law, I wondered how the United Kingdom rated compared with the United States. I concluded that British citizens are equally living under the threat of a dictatorship, are already living in a Big Brother State, and it has been mastered in a much better and subtle way than in the United States.

Looking at the psychopath’s checklist, it is difficult to conclude that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown suffer from psychopathy, like Bush and Cheney, which makes it difficult to justify and explain why they are following the same policies. The political system in England will not permit its Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to become rich while in power. Corruption is more readily denounced and fired upon in the tabloids. It is safe to say that England does not suffer from a lack of freedom of speech as they now do in America. It might have proved impossible in the UK to eradicate freedom of speech, and so, more cunning ways had to be developed.

Whilst all ten points of the dictator’s checklist in the U.S. have been accomplished brilliantly and without doubt, in England it is a bit more subtle. Most items have come to fruition in a less aggressive manner, as there was no need to go to the extent Bush and Cheney had to go to in order to remain in power. It could however still lead to a full dictatorship, and we can see the signs of it. In the meantime, Great Britain has been the most successful country in the world in establishing an Orwellian Big Brother State, and its citizens are suffering much more than in the U.S.

Let’s review the ten points of the dictator’s checklist that apply to the Blair/Brown’s regime:

1) A leader who holds and/or abuses an extraordinary amount of personal power;

2) The power to make laws without effective restraint by a legislative assembly or a Constitution;

4) Head of the military;

7) Proclamation of a state of emergency to further one's agenda (9/11 and London terrorist attacks);

8) Suspension of civil liberties and dramatically spying on its own citizens.

You can see that it is already much less convincing than in the U.S. Here are the points which do not really apply to the UK whilst applying to the US:

3) Cult of personality/megalomania;

5) Repression of political opponents and others without abiding by rule of law procedures or moral and ethical code (in England, the Conservatives were so unpopular when Labour took control, it has not been an issue);

6) Rule by decree (there was no need to cheat to remain in power in light of the Conservatives unpopularity);

9) Control of mass media (they tried to control the BBC, they failed);

10) Suspension of elections following a large scale false flag/government sponsored terrorist event and declaration of martial law.

In conclusion, we cannot say that England has been following the same extreme dictatorial path than its American cousin. No, the United Kingdom has followed instead a different path, which perhaps might prove just as effective. They have gone for a police state and are probably looking to turn it into a military state through making point 10 a reality.

We know Bush and Cheney are trying to remain in power to establish a full dictatorship, Blair and Brown have settled for what they must believe is more appropriate for England, remaining in power to establish a military state, which will basically fulfil the same role as a dictatorship. In the end, it will be the same.

There are now so many policemen and policewomen in this country, there might be no need for the military to take over. No one owns a gun for a start, it is not a given right in the unwritten Constitution. Hunting small animals in the countryside has just been declared illegal, now we understand why this unpopular decision was necessary. There is no reason for anyone to buy a gun, unless you wish to buy one on the black market to shoot the Prime Minister.

The reason for this difference is obvious. England is a small country compared with America, no one can hide anywhere. The Orwellian State has been so successfully established, no one anywhere in Britain can go unnoticed for very long. There are thousands of cameras watching you in the UK at any given time. Phone records, email exchanges and websites you visit have now become police records and are freely used in court by the prosecution. I know, I work in a Crown Court. I am appalled by their powers, a complete disregard for the most basic human right: privacy.

The police force has become an almighty force in the last decade, the military has also grown beyond measure since the terrorist war. There is no need to build concentration camps like they do in the U.S. They are confident the population can be successfully contained and prosecuted with their new terrorist laws without any such extreme measure. As a result, everyone in the UK is now a potential terrorist. Many who should not have, have already been convicted under those laws. This is clearly an abuse of power.

I believe they were also planning for something much more destructive and appropriate than in the U.S., where one single nuclear bomb in any State would do the trick and would be more plausible, considering the hate for Americans in the world right now. Bird flu or a false flag event involving biological/bacteriological warfare, which would eliminate up to one third of the population and bring chaos, seemed more appropriate for the UK. Taking ultimate power in those conditions would be child play.

This is what they have been working on. There has been so much talk about bird flu and ricin in the press at some point, all information coming from the government, we were all convinced we would all die within days. Since then, perhaps the film V for Vendetta, exposing all of this, has stopped them, and they must be planning something else.

People criticised the film V for Vendetta as being an indirect critic of Bush and Cheney’s regime, well, if you had lived in London for the last few years like I did, you would see that it was well targeted for the UK, it is incidental that Americans recognised their own regime depicted in the film. That makes the film V for Vendetta the single most important film in existence for the British, it shows them exactly what is happening and what they can expect, because this is where it seems that everything is leading, a totalitarian Big Brother State.

The United Kingdom does not deal with large spaces, different States and many government levels. Everything is pretty much centralised, and Westminster instantly has access to any information about anyone. They have become experts with facial recognition software, and they invested heavily in a nationwide CCTV network which has now become infallible.

Are we to believe that such an expensive network is for ensuring that we pickup the droppings of our dog on the streets, or that it is for ensuring that we do not litter the area with our cigarette butts? Though at the moment it is use for these small crimes you could still have wished to get away with less than a decade ago, it is safe to assume that it is for a grander scheme which will become real and evident fairly soon.

It has been said many times in the press that terrorism in England is not new, and that even under the I.R.A. threats, none of this Big Brother State stuff came to be. You might think it is because we did not have the technology then, but we did, we simply did not implement it. And now we have gone wild, for a threat that does not even seem to exist.

You must have read about the London terrorist events, there is a lot of material there for conspiracy theorists. It definitely points to government sponsored terrorism. This is how I came to my conclusions. At some point it sounded so unreal, so untrue, I thought, I am being lied to, this is all a lie! And now, I am trying to establish why and where it leads.

Why such an elaborate system to know exactly whatever anyone is doing and saying at any given time? Yes, city councils cannot believe their eyes, they are making millions because now there is not one person in their county who can escape any futile contravention to the most minuscule law, and believe me, we are paying a high price. I alone received over ten fines in the last two years, me, who never got one prior to that time, and who never goes anywhere. It is all very excessive, and must be for some other purpose than cashing money to help the rejuvenation of city centres as some sort of hidden tax that they know citizens would simply not accept.

The question is, where does it lead? At the moment we know it leads to incapacitating anyone in doing anything slightly against the law, some sort of ultimate harassment by the police and the government, a clear message that this is a police state, they are watching us. The real question is, where will it lead once a state of emergency has been declared? The answer is simple, a dictatorship.

And so, not only are they prepared in the United States for a real dictatorship, encompassing Canada and Mexico in their newly formed North American Union, but they are also ready in the United Kingdom. This represents the two most powerful countries in the world. Once absolute power has been consolidated in those two countries, it will be time to look at the rest of the world.

Will that be enough to conquer the world? One can only wonder. But you better believe it. I think it will be enough, and the power that be, seems to also believe it.

Are we veering towards a dictatorship on both sides of the Atlantic? Yes we are. I guess there is only one thing left to do, wake up to the threat and do something about it.

Democrats

It amazes me how whether you are American or not in this day and age, the American elections are now followed closely worldwide and concern every citizen of the world. Just a shame the rest of humanity cannot also vote for their next President and party in power.

This is an interesting question, considering how powerful America has become in the world, that the policies of this country alone affect the whole planet. How would the planet vote if they had a say in the next elections this year? Assuming of course that there will be no state of emergency before November 2008 and that Martial Law will not be declared, keeping George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in power. This is the whole point of impeaching them, and this is why it is crucial that we succeed in impeaching them.

I have a feeling that the rest of the world is tired of American politics, and if they could vote, it would be neither for the Democrats nor the Republicans. The very reasons why Hillary Clinton was not the right candidate for the presidency over Barack Obama, is perhaps because the Democrats are not right for the job. It will take at least a decade before the Americans can forget what the Republicans have done to America before considering voting for them again, but I wonder if a decade was enough to forget Bill Clinton’s presidency.

There is no doubt that Barack Obama is the right candidate and that he will be the next President, if somehow he does not get assassinated, and that will be a real test for democracy. However, the Democrats in general have not changed since Bill Clinton, the old policies are the new policies. George W. Bush followed very similar strategies, he simply brought it all to a whole new level, and made it clearer that ultimately nothing good can come out of these policies, as they are now threatening the world.

Extreme capitalism and extreme greed, the way it has been practiced recently, can only bring about the Third World War, after millions have died from starvation, and perhaps, with the lack of action on the environmental side, it will also bring humanity’s extinction within years. This is no longer a matter of transferring the problems to the next generation.

Nothing convinces me that the Democrats will be our savior, and that suddenly we will witness miraculous changes in the world. In fact, I feel we will see much more of the same, developing at a slower pace, and so humanity will survive a bit longer. If you do not agree with this fair assessment, then please bring me your arguments.

The Democrats seemed to have shown too much complicity in the Republicans’ decisions in the last decade, and voted yes to most of their bills, no matter how horrifying they were. They are equally guilty for what America has become. They can no longer be trusted.

Their unwillingness to impeach George W. Bush right now, following Dennis Kucinich’s 35 articles in Congress, is another example that these people are more about being elected and being in power, than actually caring for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the citizens of the United States. None of them are idealistic, none of them have in their heart this willingness to help and change the world in a better way, and we need more of that right now.

When a representative has to follow the party line, you have lost democracy. One person decides for everyone else. In those actual conditions, being in power requires no thinking or decision making, the message to politicians is clear: just do what you are told and everything will be fine, you will even get re-elected without having to prove your worth. The American people have lost their rights, their democracy and their freedom, and the rest of the world has lost it all as well as a consequence.

There is a real chance this year for the people to take back some sort of control, and send a clear message to Congress that we have to be listened to: everyone should simply vote for independent candidates belonging neither to the Democrats nor the Republicans.

No association, organization, corporation, should endorse those two parties, and they certainly should not give them any money for their campaign. They should help and support any independent. And don’t worry, the Democrats will still win, Obama will still be the next President. Even if the Democrats spent zero money on their campaign this year, they will win. George W. Bush has seen to that, he has singlehandedly annihilated the Republican Party. Weird that no Republican seems to have picked up on that.

People have to stop thinking in terms of two or three government parties, for once they should consider other options. Instead of voting for a political party, you should vote for the candidate who you most agree with, as long as this candidate is not a Democrat or a Republican. Is this not how it should be anyway? Do you even know anything about your own local politicians and what they are all about? Or do you just vote for a political party?

If only this message could spread around, if American citizens could see how these two parties have failed them in the last 20 years and perhaps even centuries, maybe, just maybe, we could change the face of politics in America and worldwide, and bring back real democracy by and for the people.

It would be a shame for Obama, because he certainly deserves his chance. However, once again here comes a religious President who stated that we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse in politics. I say yes we can, in fact, we must.

Obama surrounded himself with many religious figures who sound just as extreme as George W. Bush and some other leaders of the Middle-East. In the end, no matter who leads, the Democrats have proven that they are no better than the Republicans and it is time for a radical change, it is time to send a clear message of who is ultimately in control: us.

Normally, such an idea of voting for independents would be dangerous, because we would risk electing by default the party we really do not wish to elect to power. On the other hand, there has never been a better time to promote the idea of voting for independents, since there is no way the Republicans will get in power this time around.

Unless of course the extent of the corruption surrounding the electronic voting machines turns out to be more serious than anyone thought. Which may very well be the case, when we cannot even trust the official election polls. One would also need to control the polls, so everything adds up. No one you know ever vote Republican, yet, they seem to win against the odds.

Many Republican representatives are jumping ship, because they know they will not be re-elected this year no matter what. Some have joined the Democrats. I propose they should go independent, and let’s see if they will get re-elected on their own steam, or if being part of a party is all they need in order to get elected in this country. And if you still wish to vote for your Democrat representative, encourage him or her to go independent.

This time around, forget about Democrats or Republicans. You don’t even need to say who you support, here are the new slogans, feel free to come up with your own:

“Elections 2008, I support my independent candidates!”

“In 2008, I Vote Indie!”

Remember, denouncing is not enough, proposing solutions and moving into action is required at this time.

Let’s start a new trend where going into politics will be available to everyone, even you, without all the screening and impossibility to actually get to represent a popular political party. Because if somehow you could succeed in doing that, well, you would still need to be heard, to make a difference, and you simply could not within a political party, you would have to follow the party line.

Vote Indie! Please, pick up on it and spread the word. It could save democracy and bring about a real needed change. Political parties are undemocratic, they have to go.

Opinion

The American government has become a master at manipulating opinion polls, surveys and all sorts of statistics, they can make them say everything they want and convince us of anything in order to manipulate public opinion and the passing of new laws. The US powerful PR and marketing machine costs billions of dollars every year. So much so, it could be compared to the old Russian propaganda machine which, decades ago, effectively convinced millions of starving unemployed Russians that they were living in the best and most successful country in the world. Governments always believed that ignorance for the people was bliss, one could wonder the purpose of this constant deceit.

Opinion polls in the US are biased. So how can they efficiently reflect the outcome of a presidential election, unless the official election results are also biased? The problem with electronic voting machines, is that there is no more recount possible. The first count is the last count. If someone hacks the machine and adds a few thousand votes in order to win, no one will be the wiser.

How can you fight this outrage to democracy? A return to paper ballots would have been the solution, but no one wanted it, or else the electronic voting machines would have disappeared by now. So maybe we can fight with discrepancies between strict and scientific independent opinion polls compared with final electoral results. But then, since you cannot ask for a recount, you will need to fight for a new voting session on the basis of fraud.

Which brings an important problem about opinion polls. If you do a search on the Internet and start comparing opinion polls for the 2008 US presidential election, you will quickly realize that depending on the sources, sometimes you can witness differences as large as 15% on similar questions, occasionally more.

A few actual polls, when only considering the Democrats and the Republicans, predict that Barack Obama will win with 51% of the vote, others that he will lose with 40%. Same for John McCain, he is supposed to win with 51% of the vote, and lose with 37%. How is this possible? Is there not a science behind these surveys? Have we not been told that they were highly reliable in reflecting the final outcome?

Are opinion polls too biased in the US? The question is crucial, because if the manipulation of the electronic voting machines is more extensive than anyone realized, it is essential for the culprit to falsify many local opinion polls to reflect the calculated outcome.

If you have many official opinion polls in the mass media stating wrongly that John McCain will win with 49% to 51% of the votes, reflecting the final manipulated results, someone could safely say that these latter opinion polls reflected a reality which is in fact a myth, facilitating election fraud. Which is why we need to ensure unbiased local opinion polls everywhere in America, compare them with the final results, and contest these results if discrepancies show up.

One quick look at this page on Wikipedia will tell it all: “Nationwide opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2008”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2008_United_States_presidential_election

If you study that page carefully, you will immediately understand that opinion polls are all over the place, contradicting each other in large amounts, and ultimately none of them can truly be trusted. There is another page on Wikipedia which you need to study in order to understand how it is possible to manipulate opinion polls, short of lying outright about the results, which often is probably the case: “Opinion poll” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_poll

Why is this important? Because if you wish to prove that there was trickery with electronic voting machines, it will be helpful if you can prove that there have been outright lies in opinion polls. One would have to control both the voting machines and the opinion polls in order to avoid questions about this corruption of democracy.

Why is it also important? Opinion polls are an efficient tool to influence the masses. If a voter can see that both the Democrats and the Republicans are head to head, they may decide to go and vote, because suddenly they know it might make a difference. If a voter can see that a certain candidate has already lost the election, they may intrinsically feel that there is no point in voting as it is a lost battle (boomerang effect).

The “spiral of silence” is when someone’s answer is influenced towards the most popular answer, but does not reflect his or her real opinion. Surveys could also influence opinions through a bandwagon effect, where the poll prompts voters to back the candidate shown to be winning in the poll.

Other ways by which an opinion poll can be biased range from offering alternative answers, suggesting who is leading the election (for example by presenting a candidate first over another), the wording of the poll, the order in which the questions are asked, and so on. An important bias can come from not using effective control in the survey, going about it less scientifically, which apparently is the case in the polling industry in the US.

You could also use a less representative sample, or survey people who you might already know their preference. For example, people watching Fox News are more likely Republicans than Democrats. Any opinion polls from that source, we know the outcome, the Republicans will win the next elections with a landslide.

It can be difficult to start checking the source of the poll, the questions that were asked, who was queried and where, etc. You should always compare any opinion poll with other similar ones from other sources. Sometimes the real opinion might be somewhere in the middle, sometimes one will be completely biased or falsified, and the other more representative of the truth. This needs to be proven somehow.

I suggest a few courses of action this year for the presidential elections. There should be a proliferation of unbiased and independent scientific opinion polls coming from everywhere, national and local. Second, there should be a careful comparison study of many similar opinion polls from various sources.

The sources that are clearly out of range of the others, should not be considered, and even should be denounced publicly until everyone is aware that the opinion polls from those sources are highly biased. And then we could try to assess why they are so biased, who has to gain from those lying surveys?

Many have denounced in the past opinion polls using flawed methodology and offering unreliable and sometimes misleading results in order to boost a marketing campaign or influence the outcome on an issue. In the UK there has been such a scandal a few years ago, and I bet it is the same thing in the US. Here is the link to the article published in The Observer:

“Lies, damn lies - and opinion polls?” A £1bn industry is accused of distorting results to produce what clients want to hear

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/jun/06/marketingandpr.polls

The title of the article is a reference to a 1977 book by Michael Wheeler called: “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: The Manipulation of Public Opinion in America”

Some interesting links to investigate:

Someone comparing the different official polling organizations:

http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/polls/pollbias-details.html

The Pew Research Center, organization trying to monitor the behavior of Polling arms and the use of polling and statistical data (it is also the most accurate polling organization, according to the link above):

http://pewresearch.org

I had a hard time finding interesting links. Is there no one checking up on biased opinion polls and if they correspond to final electoral results, as to avoid electoral fraud? Hopefully others more informed than I am will pick up on the topic and develop it further.

Blueprint

I am still too much in shock from what the Republicans have done to America and to the world to so blindly jump on another bandwagon and espouse the Democrats’ philosophy so completely. I may never recover from what George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and others have done, I feel I have lost all faith and “hope” in any government, in any politician. I am totally disillusioned with the world of politics.

I am now considering wild ideas to reform everything, take a huge step back and think how we could change the whole political system overnight. I find it so hard to support any politician these days, if I could vote to get them all exterminated and start anew, believe me, I would.

So, when they presented me this new politician called Barack Hussein Obama II, branding him as the new modern and young President of tomorrow who will save us all, you bet I had my doubts. So I decided to read his book “The Audacity of Hope”. I thought, he will most probably be the next American President, I might as well find out what he is about.

Then after reading the prologue and the first chapter, and yawning out of control, I realized that it was a lot of talk and wind, just like many other politicians, with no firm commitment. So I did a bit of research and read instead his blueprint for change, his plan for America, which you can find on his website. I thought, this is where I will see if there is substance behind the great speeches.

Here is the PDF, you should read it:

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/ObamaBlueprintForChange.pdf

How are we supposed to find the time to read all these things? Sometimes I understand why most people don’t bother reading anything about who they will vote for, and then, I understand how people like George W. Bush become President. I will read all of this even if it kills me in the end, after all, it is my duty as an ordinary citizen, it is all our duty to know who we vote for.

It is 64 pages long and it took me one afternoon to read. Well, it was worth reading, even though I’m still wondering if this is just political propaganda in order to get elected, or if this will seriously become an elaborate strategy for the next presidency.

It is clear indeed that the man identified many problems in American politics and society, it suggests he might actually do something about it, since it is part of his big political plan. He does not talk about religion, I suppose it means it is not one of his priorities, thank God! He does not mention gay issues either, hopefully it does not mean that secretly he is very much against the idea of gay marriages or even gay relationships (we won’t talk about gay sex, of course).

Reading his blueprint, I have to say, I am impressed by what Obama says he intends to do once in the oval office. He used to be a political blogger, and he speaks like one. He gives the impression of having read most of them, it must have helped him no end to develop his blueprint, as it seems to me that he says everything we want to hear, almost. Is it too good to be true or should we be weary?

You know, I wonder if all Presidents who enter their office start with so much idealism and convictions, and that ultimately the system fails them and nothing they intended to do gets done. Obama does kind of say in his book that no Democrat government would be able to achieve these grand schemes unless Republicans also wish to see America get out of the mud and sort itself out.

If truly Obama will go out of his way to end this corporate lobbying getting all that they want and controlling everything in Washington by financing political campaigns, if truly he will bring about transparency and end the abuse of the last administration, and invest so much on all sorts of social securities, maybe he could restore my faith in the Democrats. Well, if they are all mostly asleep, at least I know the President will not be.

Is this what people supporting Obama have been reading, his blueprint for change? No wonder Hillary Clinton was beaten. Sounds like a utopia, but that’s what we need right now, any kind of crazy idea, anything but Bush and the Republicans.

There are so many “Obama will do this”, and “Obama will do that”, or try to anyway, that one wonders where he will find the money for all his reforms and social securities.

Silly me, if we were able to spend so many billions on those wars in the Middle East, I guess if we were to stop them, Obama will have enough money for all his reforms, and more. I suppose also that the end of tax breaks to large corporations alone, will bring enough billions to build the new health care program and educational reforms he is hoping for, that we are all hoping for.

About his new energy policy though, vowing to renewable fuels and ethanol, I would think he should be aware by now that the food crisis is due mostly to that, the use of land for fuel instead of growing food. Which highlights his serious omission of anything about the worldwide food crisis in his plan.

It is true that people in America are not starving that much compared to the rest of the world, and maybe it was not such a burning issue for Obama and the Americans. Still, it is a bit short-sighted if Obama’s politics will not be as self-centered toward Americans as Bush’s policies have been. And what about investing heavily on nuclear energy? Is this still part of the plan?

When I lived in Los Angeles for almost a year, a few years ago, I identified many areas which were problematic in my new job for a small company. I have written a book about it called “Corporate America, Hell on Earth”, available on my website for free: http://www.anarchistecouronne.com/corporateamerica.htm

I was astonished by how merciless America could be in the work environment and how little security was provided to anyone. In fact, within nine months, half the company had been sacked on the spot without pay, the other half was living in fear of the same thing happening to them, and others were mercilessly demoted, humiliated and hurt emotionally beyond salvation. I thought no one could work under those conditions.

What I witnessed was far from being the land of the free. We were treated like prisoners chained to our desks, with dire consequences if we could not produce miracle results. I think I succeeded in walking on water once or twice, as this is what was expected of me, whilst I worked over 80 hours a week through all my holidays, and yet, it was never enough to satisfy their greed.

Obama seems to have identified many of those corporate problems, mostly for women, and I hope he will go further. I wish he will deliver on these points which may not seem that important, but in fact are more important than anything else for our own personal happiness. Overall, our own existence is very much what we spend most of our time doing, our daily job. I don’t care being poor, at least I wish to be happy, not suicidal as I was then in America.

When you work in a horrible corporate environment, fearing for your security, under emotional distress, you quickly reach breaking point and depression. For me, these issues are as important as health care: providing security and happiness at work, not a stressful environment where making money becomes so important, if you do not perform 200%, and make the company at least a million dollar in the first six months, you are fired without financial support or safety net to fall back on. And bye bye health insurance.

Obama is also trying to fix the health care system, when in fact, it is flawed at the core and salvaging it is simply impossible. It may prove useless in the end the way he wishes to go about it. He should scrap the whole health care industry and system, and get inspiration from countries like Canada, France, Germany and the rest of Europe. Even Poland has an excellent health care system for everyone, better than the British one, I have been told.

You cannot have a health system based on capitalism, that is the obvious flaw, is it not? Corporations should have nothing to do with paying health insurances for their employees. Health insurance should have nothing to do with getting a job good enough in order to get access to such insurance or being able to afford one.

The government should pay for everything for everyone through general taxes, as simple as that. Why complicate your life with all these health insurances that are all different from insurance company to insurance company, from corporation to corporation, from State to State?

Eliminating all this bureaucracy and this health privatization, would save a lot of money and headaches, and would ensure that every single American gets the exact same treatment nationwide whether they are rich or poor, whether they are working or not, whether they have a great job or a dead end one, whether they are living in California or Alaska, whatever their skin color, whatever if they are illegal immigrants or not.

By the way, I am aware of many Americans crossing the border to Quebec in order to benefit from free health care, and I am not bothered by it in the slightest. We can afford it, we all can afford universal health care, and we should offer it to everyone. It is one of the most basic human rights. Or else, we play God by deciding who has the right to live and who should die. We all deserve to live, don’t we? We are all equals, don’t we?

Some countries have solved these problems a long time ago, is it that difficult for politicians to look at what is happening elsewhere and draw some inspiration from it? It is time for radical thinking and radical change. There is no better time than now.

About immigration, I am a bit afraid of what Obama said. It seems he wants to build a Wall of China all around America, and uncover every single illegal worker in existence. He also wishes to let in only the cream of the crop, inviting a brain drain from the rest of the world.

At least he did say that he would like to facilitate the twelve million supposed illegal immigrants to gain citizenship, and that would be about time. They are after all the new American slaves sustaining the economy, no government can deny that. Which is precisely why Great Britain was one of three countries within the European Union to allow any Polish immigrant to come in and work in the U.K. We still need our slaves.

As an immigrant myself, I suffered the whole brunt of what it means to be an undesirable. Even though I am a Canadian immigrant, that I have a Masters degree, that I can contribute to society and that I am here legally. Gosh, I suffered greatly and I am still suffering. I don’t have my British citizenship yet after 15 years in the country, I simply cannot afford it, now that I am allowed to request it. It only took me 14 years to get that right (I am gay, living in a 15 year old relationship).

On the subject of not being able to afford the essential, Obama points out that 37 million Americans live in poverty. There are more Americans living under the poverty line, than there are Canadians in this world (I think there are 27 million Canadians now). Imagine, a whole population, larger by ten million than the whole Canadian population, living in poverty within the United States of America. I am unable to conceptualize this fact.

It makes you think twice about helping the poor in other countries, or launching costly wars on the other side of the planet, when at home you have that serious a crisis. If all 27 million Canadians were poor, we could not even afford a military, help anyone or dictate anything in the whole world. No way would we have such a percentage of our population being so poor, or would we leave them in such dire straight. Is there any compassion out here, or just selfishness, just pure capitalism?

And I am one of them. As a civil servant in England, I cannot see how I could possibly ever buy a car, let alone a house, and I don’t understand how people can afford to have kids, I can’t even feed my parrot. There is a God, as I will not have to pay for his education, which let’s face it, should be free for everyone. Or else, here comes the elitist society where discrimination is the law. Don’t tell me we cannot afford it, as I know better. I have seen where we are spending all our money, I know it would be better spent elsewhere. Responsible spending is one of Obama’s main points.

True, I am in England now, where everything is much more expensive. However, I found that when I was living in the United States, it was quickly becoming just the same. Fifteen years ago, we used to pay twice more for anything we wanted, but not now, you pay as much as we do. That pair of shoes costs you exactly the same, and beyond shoes, it may even cost you more. Standard of living is dropping rapidly worldwide, it is called humanity’s evolution.

About Civil Rights, I think Obama is not going far enough. Bill of Rights is mentioned three times in his political plan, in the context of “credit cards’ bill of rights”. The word Constitution is mentioned once, and it is about Iraq’s Constitution.

I understand that Black and Hispanic Americans (and women and gays) suffer a lot about their civil rights in America, or lack thereof, however, at this crucial time, the Patriot Act and other laws from Bush are more worrying for the population as a whole.

How can you have a whole blueprint of what you would do once in power at this time, without stating that you will restore the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as they were before George W. Bush came to power? How can you not even mention anything about those unwarranted spying laws, the lost of privacy, the lost civil rights of every American? After all, most political blogs talk only of that.

Should we assume then that Barack Obama has no intention of reversing those unpatriotic laws that the Republicans pushed into Congress? Because then, no matter what Obama intends to do in order to help the Black (and the Hispanic) community, it will prove totally useless. I’m sure they will be the first ones who will suffer the most from this new abuse of power that the police, the prosecution and the spying agencies have gained under Bush.

Obama might have talked about this in other speeches, I don’t know. However, it should be in his blueprint, so we can hold him accountable. Civil rights right now, is no small political issue. We need clear assurance that the Democrats will redress the situation, or else it might be worth voting independent, any independent candidate.

And dear me, don’t talk to me about reforming the broken death penalty system right before stating that torture is not acceptable. Death penalty should be banned altogether from any civilized society, especially when one understands how the whole criminal system works nowadays. Another important political issue not mentioned. As far as we know, under Bush, we are all criminals at the moment.

About Obama foreign policy’s ideas, it sounds easy and wonderful, but a bit vague. How he intends to achieve what he proposes, I don’t know. Nevertheless, he favors diplomacy with everyone; he wants to get out of Iraq within 16 months; he does not wish to attack Iran; and he wants to work towards a Palestinian State. So I feel this is a good beginning for some sort of worldwide peace, so we could finally concentrate on what’s going on at home.

He could have mentioned working with the United Nations though, he does sound like he will lead an international coalition and that he intends everyone to respond and rally behind American leadership. Well, I’m sorry, but diplomacy is everyone working together, not America dictating once again what should be done, and then go on to buy out everyone else into believing that this is the right course of action. And if that does not work, do it the Bush way and go about it alone, breaking all international laws.

On building a 21^st Century Military, Obama believes we need more soldiers and more Marines, and better military equipment. I can’t really say anything on these points, I have no clue if this is necessary in America right now, since there is no transparency about what is really going on.

All I know is that whenever someone says we need more policemen and policewomen on the streets, I shiver, and wonder, do we? It seems to me that we will all be their next target, whether we deserve it or not.

The only reason I am now actually just reticent, instead of being scandalized at the idea that we need to invest more in the military, is because I just watched two documentaries about the Falklands War. If it was just for defense purposes, then yes, we need to ensure that we can defend ourselves against anything. If it is for attack, pre-emptive strikes and policing the world, just like under the Bush/Cheney’s regime, no, we do not need to invest one more cent into the military. What we need, is to spend much less on military and reallocate this money to social securities and eliminating poverty within America.

Unless they could train those soldiers to help communities, build things instead of destroying them, it is not worth considering spending any more on an already out of control military budget, which has recently brought the nation near bankruptcy, in financing these unnecessary pre-emptive strikes in the Middle East.

As to this whole last chapter about helping the Veterans’ Affairs, me, who is so against over militarization, find it hard to see the need to turn this into a political presidential election issue. I suppose it is important to care for Veterans, as it is so traumatizing to go to war and to get back to some sort of normal civil life afterwards. We are all now suffering from post-war syndrome, we could all benefit from that money.

But the real problem is not that we need to invest so much more in Veterans’ Affairs, the real problem is that we should never have gone to war in the first place unless it was for defense purposes. But now that we did go to war for no reason, as usual, I guess we might as well pay for it, again and again, forever. And perhaps ensure that we don’t in the future put citizens in such position to mentally wreck their lives needlessly, so no one will ever become that dysfunctional.

And while we are at it, if our own veterans are so traumatized by what they did in those countries, we might wish to reconsider what it is that they do in those countries. And to also help the chaos and psychological collective nightmare they must have caused in those other civilian communities. I bet they are as distressed as our veterans, the ones who survived at least.

Overall, Barack Obama’s blueprint for change is inspiring, and if somehow he is capable of achieving half of that in his first mandate, I think he might turn out to be the most successful American President in recent times (which, let’s be honest, cannot be that difficult). His plan shows many links to past achievements in Illinois whilst in the Senate, which prove that this is just not words, but there is substance to the man.

Which reminds me, I have not started yet investigating all the negative ads the Republicans are putting out on him, with all their millions and billions they spend on their political campaign… got to do that soon.

I don’t really wish to support the Democrats, neither the Republicans, but you know, I would not mind to see Barack Obama as the next American President. Something exciting might happen and we might witness some real needed change. I hope history will not prove me wrong in saying so.

Promises, promises… will one ever finally deliver on those promises? Will that be Barack Obama?

Obama wants feedback on his blueprint, a copy of this article has been sent to him. Please, do the same, send him your own feedback here:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/contact2

He is more likely going to listen to you before the elections, than after. We are all well aware of that now, after George W. Bush, who never listened to the voice of the people he was supposed to represent.

Before and after an election, are two whole different worlds. There is no reason to make it easy for anyone to get to power and to suddenly start dictating our destiny out of our control. Enjoy the little control you have right now, before the elections are over.

Despotism

This world is all about irony. When you have absolutely no identity, any identity becomes yours. America meant so much to so many, it was the dream come true, it was what every single country aspired to be. We all wanted to be American, we all secretly wished that our country would be America. And now... well… who wants to be American now? Don’t look at me, I’m horrified!

To be honest, we went through hell. From afar we looked at everything that has happened since George W. Bush came to power. We went from being surprised, to being amazed, to being totally disgusted. We could not believe our eyes!

What in God’s name happened? We witnessed the absolute annihilation of everything we admired. And now, dear me, perhaps our own country, with its own ever lasting dictatorship, is better than America. Let’s hope your new President can change all that, despite the depression.

My own personal dictator is not as bad as George W. Bush was. That man has reached a whole new level of dictatorship, as it was worldwide that he was fooling around, it is humanity that he was playing with. At least my own personal dictator limits himself to my own backyard.

I needed hope, desperately seeking some sort of liberation in my mind, the thought that perhaps somewhere else in this world people were happy to be alive, to exist, to be fully emancipated. Somewhere at least, beyond my own country, someone was living exactly what he or she was meant to live. Absolute freedom, the chance to say what one needs to say, without censorship, no consequences for speaking one’s own mind! What a dream!

I thought that this only existed in America… not anymore. I find I can speak my mind much more freely than Americans nowadays. My own dictator does not seem to mind that I spit on George W. Bush and the Republicans, otherwise I would be dead by now. This is how it works in my country. It seems, it is getting worse in America right now, and one wonders if this will change with Barack Obama. Because no one is speaking anymore, but I speak, and I am still alive.

True, I have not said one word against my own government, I have not denounced anything about what is happening in my own country. I limited myself to speaking for Americans, against their new found dictatorship, against their psychopath leaders. I have not been shot yet, I guess my leaders hate Bush and Cheney as much as I do. For different reasons, no doubt, still, I have never felt that free in my whole life.

You see, in my country, we have always lived under threat from the government. We have always been starving. Unemployment is quickly reaching 100%. The Global Warming you are so keen on talking about, we suffer the whole brunt of it. Within years my country will become inhabitable.

Where I live, it seems, every single policy and decision of the American government, seem to be another nail in our national coffin. We are dying by the millions. Of course, none of you has ever been made aware of that. Your mass media are totally silent about that global genocide.

However, I do not wish to talk about this right now. I want to embrace the idea of freedom, of prosperity, of living full on, towards some sort of escape from this reality, the very idea of being an American, or at least, what it used to be.

My President does not like me. All the books and articles I have written, they have been banned in my own country. I have been put under house arrest. Every phone call I make, is recorded and listened to. Every website I visit, the President is made aware of. There are already many websites my country has banished from my computer. I get this Blank Screen of Death instead telling me that this is inappropriate content. Search engines are no longer listing anything I was searching for. Soon my government will have severed every single link I still have to the American dream, to what it means or meant to be American, to be free!

And the more I study what is happening in America right now, the less I feel sorry for it. A revolution is more likely to happen in my own desperate country than in yours. An insurgency is just around the corner for us, for you, dear me, it might take you a few decades to see the point of it. And yet, it seems to me, it is getting worse in your own country than in mine. I guess you are not used to living under a tyranny, you are unable to recognise it when it hits you in the face. But it has, believe me, and yet, you remain oblivious to it. I guess it is part of your charm.

You can be forgiven for now, you feel change is around the corner, but there is no reason to believe Obama will change all that, as it seems out of the control of any new President, so intrinsically linked it is to all your institutions, your corporations, your powerful lobbying groups. Can Barack Obama operate change, even if he wants to? Interesting question.

In fact, it could be asked of George W. Bush as well: was he really at the root of all those disastrous decisions that brought America to the brink of destruction? Perhaps he was coerced into making all those unpopular decisions. It would explain why he was rumoured to be utterly drunk at so many important meetings worldwide in the last few months and years.

My brother died in the last civil war. My father was killed by the government way before the civil war. My mom was a teacher, she was the hope of my country, and yet, she was judged a danger to society, she was shot in front of me in our own house. This is probably the last thing I will be able to convey to you before my Internet connection is cut.

Be careful, because what I have witnessed in my own country, is happening to yours right now, you are inches away from that state of affair. You have already lost all your rights, the American Constitution is now meaningless, just like your Bill of Rights. Any new President can now unitarily declare a state of emergency and martial law at any time, just like they always do over here. You have no experience with that kind of thing, we have become experts on how dictatorships develop. So please, be careful. We know what is going on in the US, we witness it all the time over here.

Elections have never been fair in my country, we all knew the outcome before anyone ever voted. The ones in power always remained in power no matter how they were hated by the people. I see you had the same problem in America at least twice in the last decade. And you may only have averted such electoral fraud this time around because the difference between Republicans and Democrats was too overwhelming, and hence the elections could not be stolen a third time without being too obvious. This problem will however come back at the next presidential elections.

Our leaders are war mongers, they always want more power and wealth, they want what our neighbours have. So we have always been at war, it has been one genocide after another. I see you have the same problem in America.

Our mass media are so afraid of the government, none of them would venture to talk about anything else but the most trivial entertainment news. So we have heard a lot about Madonna, since this was judged unthreatening by our leaders. They had no idea. It is rare we hear anything about what is happening in your part of the world, and so anything we are allowed to put our hands on, becomes our whole philosophy of life, our sole reason to exist. That kind of thing is the product of revolutions. Just like the Beatles have been instrumental in the dismantlement of the U.S.S.R.

I love you! I love you all! Even if your country was nearly destroyed and civil war might still be declared over this money crisis. You have inspired me no end! You showed me, you showed us all, that for a limited time at least, humanity could feel free. Not be free, that is of no consequence, but feel freedom.

This is what your American dream is all about, the hope and faith that one day we will all be free, we will govern ourselves, we will have a true democracy by and for the people. It was such a great concept. But I guess, that if even you, my American friends, are unable to make it happen, us, in the rest of the world, have no chance at all. Let’s hope that one day all this will be behind us and none of this will ever happen again.

The dream is all we have left. The dream of democracy and freedom. Oh dear, just to feel the wind on my face under a sunny sky, with a view showing me a wide area over the horizon… this is what freedom has been for me, since forever, nothing else. Perhaps this is what freedom is meant to be, or maybe this is what freedom is now reduced to.

Welcome to my world! The world of the rest of humanity, to which you have been blind for most of your life. Well, I feel somehow pleased that you had a taste of what we have been going through for most of our lives. It ain’t easy out there, you have to fight to survive, you have to become an idealist, and constantly fight for your rights to even exist, and be prepared to die at any time for what you stand for. Cowards survive, the others don’t.

America has not known any of that in its history, it has all changed nowadays, as now you are aware that no one is safe from dictatorships, and you have a long way to go in order to restore what you once had. Very rarely a new government will go back and erase the extreme measures of a previous government, this is something we learnt the hard way. Let’s see if your Patriot Acts will now disappear, if your Constitution and Bill of Rights will be re-instated as they were before Bush came unto the scene, if all this spying, witch hunts and torture will be forgotten.

It shows that you are exactly like us. You will learn to fight for your rights, for your existence, for what you believe in, just like we always did. You will become aware of all the tricks used by untrustworthy leaders, you will read between the lines in the media and instantly see through all the lies, and live though it, just like we did. So painful it is.

Just like us, you have no more rights. Just like us, you have no more democracy. Just like us, you have no more privacy. Just like us, you go to war and commit genocides against your will. Just like us, you have no more freedom. Have you ever wondered if this life was worth living? We always did wonder about that, we never found an answer.

Yes indeed, welcome to my world, welcome to what the world truly is and has always been, a world governed by psychopaths, tyrants and dictators, a world where there is no hope for humanity.

Is there truly hope now? Will you fight for it, like we always did? I guess it is up to you to ensure that not only it gets back to what it was, but that the fight goes much further so we can ensure none of this will ever happen again.

Otherwise, it was so nice for a while to cling to some sort of dream that somehow there was a land of liberty out there somewhere called America…

Economics

I took three classes in Economics when I was younger in College. I realized then that it was just like mathematics: if you can easily learn everything by heart, you can get a perfect score of 100%. Yes, I excelled at Economics, and yet, I was the only one who stated out loud that none of it made any sense, that I could not understand how it could all work. I think I was the only one still based in a world of reality and logic.

How is capitalism to work, I asked my teacher? Why is there a recession every 10 years or so, and a big crash at least every century? What causes them? I never found a satisfying answer. And today, I wonder, are recessions just a transfer of money from many poor and rich alike to the billionaires controlling the markets? Are these recessions and stock market crashes artificially created? Dear me, what a thought! This thought could annihilate the world as we know it.

That would explain a lot, finally Economics could make sense. None of the identified factors affecting the economy truly affect it, and all those elaborate equations and diagrams to explain how markets evolve, are false pretence and explain nothing.

Those courses I took are way in the past, and today I know next to nothing about money matters. Perhaps it is good that a layman should question what might be really going on, since, can we really trust Economists?

Most people in my class were puzzled indeed about what the world of Economics was all about, and never questioned anything. Forecasting the markets, is like predicting the weather, they often get it wrong. They get it wrong more often than usual, as if suddenly statistics and probabilities were not operating as they should be in those markets. They don’t. It seems all random, but is it really random?

As if somehow, pretty much everything is controlled at a distance, by governments first, then by powerful financial institutions, then by very powerful corporations and then by very rich men. Who could predict what any of them will do next, how powerful they truly are and how badly it will affect the markets? No one can reliably forecast anything, I thought. Especially when a small war between two unknown countries somewhere can affect the markets so much. Who can predict wars? The ones planning and ordering wars, of course.

It was not so long ago that I remember how expensive it was to send a shuttle into space, so expensive in fact, two billion dollars was simply something NASA could not spend just like that on a whim. This was how I actually understood what was really expensive and what was not. If you spent a billion dollars on anything, I thought, you are mad. Twenty years later we are spending 100 billion dollars on a space station, we are spending 500 billion dollars and counting on a war in Iraq, as if none of it mattered. Is it really worth it?

I understand about inflation and other financial mechanisms, and that a billion today is worth much less than a billion a few decades ago. However, I will not believe that spending a billion today is like spending a million less than 20 years ago. Something is wrong here, really wrong. I am not a fool.

Our salaries have not multiplied by any such factor in the last 20 years. Quite the contrary in fact, the standard of living keeps getting lower and we are getting poorer. Where once a man alone could support his entire family, now both the husband and wife are working like crazy and can barely make the ends meet. Moreover, they are being completely alienated at work under such pressures of today’s corporate structure designed to send us all into deep depression, if not driving us to suicide. No one can think anymore, that much is certain.

A quick calculation of what we are spending right now on just about everything, will show you that we are certainly spending at least two if not three billion dollars per American citizen! How is this possible? How can capitalism still work under those conditions?

Is this just adding to a huge debt somewhere, kept hidden as much as they can, and one day America will declare bankruptcy, like, next week? Is this what this big recession coming is all about? The one no one wishes to make quite official yet, when Economists have known for a quite a while that we are already there, and the worst is still to come?

In that case, you can see that I may feel justified in questioning if recessions are not actually artificially created, and if they don’t profit to someone. How else would you explain that the American government one day decided to spend two to three billions for every single American alive, within two presidential mandates?

Is it not obvious then, that after that, the country will have to declare bankruptcy? Or certainly will take forever to get out of that next economic crash, and it won’t be pretty? The results could actually be as bad as if there was a civil war or a nuclear attack, it could easily be worse.

And yes, I have read here and there that the American government is actually expecting a civil war over everything that has happened in Iraq, the consequences of 9/11 on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and also, because of the incoming crash.

We might still be slow to react when we lose our Constitution and our Freedom, however, when you cannot find any work anywhere and that you are starving, after losing your home, suddenly you have a lot of time to think, to read about what actually happened and to act about such matters. I have no doubt that this civil war will take place, and it might still have nothing to do with the fact that this country has become a dictatorship.

It is important here to mention that I am not talking about a few planes crashing in a few buildings, bringing worldwide chaos into the stock exchange markets, or a few people making a few millions or billions as a consequence. I am talking about a much more devious long term plan of the whole capitalist system, which is set at its core structure for everyone to fail and lose money.

Unless of course you are a big player, that you know the secret rules of success and you are privy to information no one else is. And if you are lucky, you might even help create chaos, working hand in hand with the government, to ensure that you will make those billions you so desperately seek.

I remember only one sentence from that teacher I had for three semesters in a row in Economics. He said it only once. Recessions are just a transfer of money from some people to others. And whilst many are ruined, others become overnight billionaires.

Not just George W. Bush and his colleagues at the White House and at the Pentagon, but just about all those who finance their political campaigns and PR machine, might well have thought of a way to ensure that this recession will pay off so wonderfully, it is all worth destroying the country and the planet in the process. And if it brings a crash in the financial markets worldwide, so be it, it is all worthwhile for their own financial interests and insatiable greed. Not only capitalism is flawed, the whole government structure is as well.

There Is no need for me here to denounce what the Bush family and their friends have been doing for almost a century now, there are enough articles about that out there. It seems that even the mass media speaks about it at length, and yet no one reacts, no one is scandalized, no one is doing anything about it. It is as if we have just accepted that is like that, and that there is nothing anyone can do but hope for the return of Jesus Christ, who might once again rattle their golden cage.

I’m only hoping some people will keep in mind and investigate further if perhaps recessions are artificially created, as a mean to ensure that most investors will lose all their money every ten years or so, and if this money will go to larger fish in the financial markets. As if this is so, and it is perhaps even already well known, we ought to make it quite clear to everyone, so they will stop investing for no good reason, since they will assuredly eventually lose their money.

And at that point, you get to understand, and you can no longer bury your head in the sand, that capitalism does not work and never did. All it ever did was to make the extra rich people even richer. And whilst they depend on the investments of smaller players, who will perhaps enjoy for a few years a good return on their investment, they will definitely eventually lose it all. So no one would in fact benefit from capitalism except a few rich people.

If this is true, our crime against humanity, that we let happen because of our ignorance and lack of action, will be much more serious than we could ever have imagined. This is not just killing one million Iraqis, or letting millions starve to death with this new worldwide famine, it will actually affect us all directly and leave us all in a hole.

As it means that, this time around, this crash coming could be worse than the one in 1929, and frankly we might just not recover. Add to this the environment disaster of global warming and a Third World War looming over our heads, and we will be lucky if humanity survives at all.

If somehow we could identify clearly how it is happening, and prove it, no one will ever trust the financial markets again, and it could very well mean the end of capitalism, upon which everything we do is based on, even the health care system. The legacy of the likes of the Bush family.

I know now why every 10 or 12 years there is a recession. It takes about a decade for all the small investors to feel confident enough to invest all their money and their assets. Then they are ready to give it all away, and a few people are ready to take it all over.

I know now why there is a big crash every century. It takes about a century to accumulate such wealth in the worldwide markets, without any suspicion, to make it worthwhile creating the crash that will make it possible to take over all the wealth of the planet in one single transaction. You could only do that once in a century, if you wanted capitalism to survive.

What will that go on to finance, I do not wish to know. All I know is that even if you wanted to prevent such recessions and crashes, or alleviate how bad they are going to be, you couldn’t, no one could.

It is well orchestrated, it plays on the fears of the market, it plays on and exploit exactly what is being thought in those classes of Economics. To the point that if you truly wanted to make money out of the stock market, it would be wise to do the exact opposite of what your financial adviser is telling you to do. Because he or she must have heard all the false information going around, and most assuredly this will lead you to utter despair.

Capitalism is designed at its core to crash and transfer most of the money in the markets to a few hands. Only Economists and your Financial Advisers appear to know nothing about it.

Brace yourself, as planned, in a spectacular way, and for other reasons than stated, it is all about to crash.

Banks

Monopoly is one of the oldest board games in the Western World. It has become a symbol to everything that we are about, a symbol to capitalism. It is such a simple game, anyone can learn to play it in minutes, and yet, within this simple game, it is amazing how our whole way of life can be resumed. Is it still worth playing the game though, or is the bank playing alone nowadays?

I always loved playing Monopoly, I have been playing since I was born. My first time must have been when I was 3 years old. Today I play it on my Nintendo DS, on my PC, and even on my phone/Pocket PC. I still enjoy it tremendously. Critics of the game have pointed out that you can get tired of playing Monopoly, since it is always the same, and it lasts for a bloody long time, before everyone goes bust, except the winner.

Of course, they are right, which is why my generation is so lucky: now I play alone, with five other AI players. Artificial Intelligence or CPU players. They never get tired of playing Monopoly, they will play as soon as I order it, they will also lose on command (once set at the easy level), because I still have to lose one game.

I lost only once at Monopoly, you don’t want to know the result. I was 7 years old, I hit my playing partner in the face (common assault), destroyed the game, destroyed a table, threw a chair out of a window (damaging property), and I sulked for a week. Thankfully I lost only once. A second time… and certainly I would have started a Nuclear Third World War on your head! Because, you know, this is human nature, in the West. This is who we are! No one needs to be ashamed of it.

I bet you want to know my strategy, the strategy of a real winner in life. It’s very simple, you have to ensure you play with brainless people. There is only one strategy at Monopoly, you need to own every single piece of land in the world, after that, only you can build and own any piece of real estate and make a profit.

Now, it is difficult to buy everything, to land on everything, so you have to pay big money to get all those lands from the other players, and this is when playing with brainless people is essential. It has been said that anyone had a price, and if you have enough money to throw away, you can always buy anything you want, everything that exists in the world, even the government! I always risk it all, this is the sign of a real capitalist winner. The Shock Doctrine would also come in handy, or The Prince of Machiavelli if you insist on being old fashion.

At first this is difficult, because though everyone else seems to go around the board like if there was no tomorrow, and win cash right left and centre, you always appear to be stuck forever in a loop. You never pass go, you always end up in prison.

No problem, I just mortgage everything I buy, and somehow that leaves me enough money to buy out everyone else out of it all. So at the end I own everything, and everyone pays me a fortune. As soon as I build my first house, that’s it, I simply have to wait a few rolls of the dice, until everyone goes bust and that I acquire all their money and everything they might still own that I don’t already own. Monopoly is such a satisfying game, as long as you always win.

If you had never heard of the game, and even, did not know I was talking about a game, you could potentially be horrified right now. Because the very basis of Monopoly, our international national symbol of all that we are and represent, is all about becoming the richest person alive, but also to ensure that everyone else goes bankrupt, and hopefully die a painful death. And when they do, cheer up and open a bottle of Champagne, you have won the game of life!

I find it terribly ironic that I have enjoyed winning at Monopoly for most of my life, and yet, in real life, which is more or less based on the very same principles, I never owned anything, and my partner is about to lose our apartment to the bank, because of the depression. I have never applied those same principles in life that I have applied for so long playing Monopoly. And so, my partner and I are totally bankrupted.

Others have won, the banks, they are the ones popping up the Champagne right now. They have been for a very long time, and no one will allow them to go bust. We all pay dearly to sustain them before that happens, so they can continue to finance houses and hotels, and repossess it all when we default on our payments. It never fails to happen, as soon as a little economic depression shows up, every decade or so.

And the worst part of it all, the Bank has become God, the God of the capitalism religion. The Bank is all powerful, has always existed, is omnipresent, it knows everything about you. And the money it lends you, is not based on any asset it had to acquire, or even on assets of others they have a claim on, or money or gold they have at their disposal. That money is created out of nothing, with each loan, guaranteed by the government (us). And when we all go bankrupt, the bank simply finally acquire everything we own. This is not in the instruction manual, or else, no one would play Monopoly.

Actually, the real worst part of it all, is that despite registering record profits of billions in recent years, on our back, whilst we were all going bankrupt, banks still managed to go bust themselves! And, we bailed them out! If it was not so ridiculous, meaningless, plain stupid, and sad… I would cry myself to death.

One has to wonder, who thought of this system, or who was able in the first place to impose it on us all through time. I suggest we leave it out of our history books, something we have become very good at. We don’t want future generations to know how brainless we were at playing Monopoly, do we? I could not justify it, it would bruise my die hard capitalist Ego.

One could be tempted here to talk about a great analogy of the game of Monopoly, the real great corporations buying everything they can, because they have unlimited funds, and, remember my strategy, everyone has a price. And once you own everything, you can charge whatever you want, and people pay, and then they go bust.

This is how it actually happens in real life, and these large corporations eventually end up owning everything, including us. They do whatever they want, even dictate politics worldwide. But at the back of it all, there is always a large bank supporting them, making it all happen. The almighty bank, our God of capitalism.

Monopoly is limited to real estate, lands, money and banks, and in the end, it is pretty much it. Monopoly leaves out everything about products, food, marketing and sales, all that we have truly become. I am not even talking about the Stock Exchange markets, for that you would need to play another great board game I love called Racetrack, a game no one as yet thought of creating a PC version of.

In the game Racetrack, you do play the Stock Exchange markets, the life of the rich and poor, with yacht clubs, racetracks, powerful weddings and costly divorces. Delightful! The king game of spectacular bankruptcies! There is always a way down, but are we even given the chance for a way up these days? I just love that game, I may have to create a Nintendo DS version myself, so I can play it all day long in the toilets at work, whilst my whole life and career are going down the drain.

Another great game that came from the same source is Careers. That too needs to be resuscitated. The Parker Brothers were visionary and geniuses about their games, some people might even think it was a conspiracy theory. They were so spot on and instrumental in cementing it all, they were the symbol of everything we were, everything we are all about today.

Their only miscalculation was their failure to foresee that eventually the banks would take over, eliminate all the players, and play alone endlessly, in some sort of meaningless loop. Well, what’s the point in playing then? What’s the point of living? No one can compete against the bank, or globalisation, or those international corporations who have become banks in their own rights.

The whole idea of this article, and we are getting now to why I spent so long writing this introduction, is that life has very much become a game of Monopoly, except that none of us can possibly play or win any longer.

The game has gone off the scale. Where one dollar used to be worth one dollar, now, a million dollar has become, in the space of less than 20 years, worth a billion dollars. And we are quickly reaching a state where one dollar will soon be worth one trillion, and all whilst leaving inflation completely out of it all. How can this be explained? I don’t know.

No one can even buy the cheapest piece of land left on the whole planet, no one can even afford to pay the taxes on any apartment they are renting, and no one ever reaches GO anymore, as there is no job left. Maybe we can spend three rolls of the dice in prison, just to get some breathing space and consider all our options. Even though we know there are none, and we will all go bust any second now. Did you really think you were somehow immune? Think again.

I hate losing, I cannot stand to be manipulated that way by the bank, which has unlimited funds, which owns everything including myself, and against whom I could never possibly compete. We are all now destined to fail by design. There is no point playing Monopoly, Racetrack or Careers any longer, because we can never be a player anymore, only a bystander, an observer of the game of life being played in front of our eyes. And lucky us if somehow we can escape being slaves to those corporations, those monopolies, those banks.

I used to enjoy playing Monopoly, I used to be a real die hard capitalist. However, the rules have changed, and this existence no longer has anything appealing to anyone. Until such time that we get back to what the rules were, until such time that we bring back a chance for all the players to win. Until then, we might as well forget it. If this is what capitalism has become, well, we’ll have to come up with something else, new games to play.

I never thought we could push it so far, to such an extreme, that suddenly the game Monopoly could lose all its appeal. My God, it is our whole way of life, all that we are, that we are on the verge of losing, whilst we are being launched into the unknown of what else could replace it all, at a time when people are truly actually considering changing everything on a massive scale.

I guess we better sort ourselves out and find the solutions, bring back the capitalism we were born with, or else, well, we’ll just have to consider new types of games. Surely someone could think up a game play not too boring about socialism, or even communism? Oh dear… I might as well shoot myself in the head right now!

Bring back the real Monopoly! The one where not only the bank is playing, but where we all have a chance to get rich and live the American Dream, and collectively get out of our eternal misery. The hope of it is usually enough! But you were too greedy. You killed all hope, for all of us.

Starving people have no wish to play any game any longer. They cannot listen to anything, they can only revolutionise everything. And do remember, they are in power, not any monopoly. The people can always take it all away from you, and they will. Your power can never be that absolute for too long. We can all just take it back, all those privatisations, now all public again, overnight, without compensation!

You were quick enough to buy out our corrupt leaders, thinking it would lead to insane profits. You should be prepared now to lose it all. There is not one Judge in the land that will go against this indictment, and suggest that it should all be anything else but a guilty plea. It is all part of playing the game, isn’t it? The risk will not pay off.

We’re all bad losers, and collectively, we can never afford to be losers. We can still break the bank and win. Because collectively, we establish the rules, we dictate around here, not you!

You killed our hope, and my God, you were asking for it, there will be a revolution. Until such time that, by law, we will restore the real rules of the game, where all the players will have a chance, and where, once in a while, the game does end and can be reset, and we can start all over again at GO.

I think we have just reached that point in the game. Don’t you?

Identity

Where do we need to move now to escape Big Brother, and would the North Pole suffice? I wonder. I came back from work tonight to find a new CCTV camera right outside my door, this is as close as it can be before they install one in the apartment I live in. I live on a lone street in the suburbs of London, there is absolutely no reason to put a camera there.

We can no longer deny that our governments are control freaks, they will not stop until they know everything we all do and say at any given time. This is called paranoia. Why the need for such a police state? What are the authorities really fearing? Great questions.

Let’s study the consequences of such a Big Brother policy on all of us, and if really this is something we want in any self-proclaimed democracy. And if we don’t want it, why is it still imposed on all of us? Crucial questions.

As soon as you get your birth certificate, we have established your identity. We know your name, your date of birth and where you were born. After that, to get your first identity card or passport, what is required, is simply generally your birth certificate.

Imagine a world without birth certificate, none of us would have an identity. Imagine if none of us had a name and didn’t know where we were born and on what day. Sounds weird, but it is a fact for all animals on this planet, except of course our cherish pets which we now microchip and follow online. Only humans have this obsession with identity, identifying, and eventually to track down anything about anyone anywhere on this planet. You will never witness that anywhere in the animal kingdom.

If it were to stop there, it would be easy enough and it would be nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, your birth certificate is simply a login and password to your true identity, who you really are. That identity being every single thing you will ever do in your entire life, be it getting married, divorced, switching country, getting a loan or a mortgage. And if you do anything wrong at any time, this is when your identity becomes quite important to every single authority on this planet. Be it a great crime or something as simple as a little white lie in order to get something. That’s it, your identity might prevent you from achieving anything you ever dreamt of.

Identity is what drives every single government wild, in truth, they will not stop until they can have a quick and easy access scheme to everything you have ever done in your life from the moment you came into this world. Whatever you might want to do to protect your privacy, it is useless.

Up until now we have been lucky, the technology was simply not there, and we could still hope to get away with a little lie or two to get a job, a loan, some other benefits. Now you can forget it. Multiple central databases have been put together, I have already given my thumb print last year in order to pay with my own credit card, I had my eye scanned when I entered the United States a year ago. This is as good as my DNA, as with those, they can establish the login which is the door to my true identity, everything I ever thought of.

From now on, everything is tracked down, to the beers I bought in a Seven Eleven a few months ago where they had to scan my Californian driving licence. I was quite shocked actually, I shouted that I didn’t want the President of the United States to know that I was buying beers tonight, just in case one day, somehow, this could be used against me in a Court of Law.

I can already see it: that man has been buying 24 bottle of beers every single week he spent in Los Angeles, how can we trust an alcoholic? That man has been buying violent video games in Hounslow for over a decade, how can he be stable enough to be a manager? That man has left the UK for more than 100 days, how can we give him a British citizenship now, it is obvious he does not deserve it, or does not live here or intend to live here forever. And what difference does it really make when I have now spent more time in London than anywhere else in the world?

That guy has travelled to this country, visited this city, the very same one where some terrorist attacks took place. He has been visiting this and that website and read for 20 minutes and 30 seconds all about these conspiracy theories concerning the so called governments cover up. What credibility has he got?

Today there are good reasons for you to wish to keep your anonymity, keep some privacy about your identity, because you never know how the government laws and policies will turn against you, and these changes come fast.

In the last few years, since the destruction of the twin towers in New York, most Western countries have lost their rights and liberties. Another serious terrorist attack at this point will definitely bring about everything you most feared about the importance of your privacy when it comes to your identity. And since governments have always dreamt and worked toward being able to know everything about you since your birth, it is just a question of time before you lose your identity completely.

There must come a time when you no longer own your identity, when you are no longer free to build that identity, move about and do what you wish. This has not yet happened globally, but a large percentage of the population has already lost its identity, or the freedom to build one. For example, the unemployed, whether they are retired or simply incapable of finding a job, and people who simply run out of money.

The government and the financial institutions don’t ask much from you, until that is you run out of cash. If you need anything from the government or banks, they will want to know everything about you in return, up to where and what you spend your money on. At this point they control your destiny.

You are no longer free to move to another place, change job, or play video games all day. You have to look for work, you have to repay somehow your debts, you need to report on everything you do to get yourself out of your situation, you have to report your expenses and justify them. Any change in your life will need to be declared.

And believe me, they already know the truth about you. Do not dare lie to them, you will pay highly for the consequences. And from all that data which form your identity, decisions will be made, things might or might not be granted, you could be penalised or punished in ways you can’t even imagine right now.

If you are thinking about taking any risk, forget it, banish it from your thoughts. The Big Brother State is here, they know everything, it is always used against you in a Court of Law. I know, I work in a Crown Court. I am more amazed every day by what the Prosecution can now use in Court. It is like infinite power, and there is no end in sight to this abuse of power which does not respect the most basic human rights of privacy and freedom.

It is like, the government own us all. And don’t you ever forget it, because I do know what I am talking about. You can no longer get away with anything, you can only be, perfect citizens, conforming to the max, and be more conformist than most. Your only way out, I’m afraid. So go on pretending to some sort of existence, and explode at some point, no doubt, as such things can’t really be helped. So much repression, can only lead to explosion now and then, and again.

Financial institutions tried to prevent me from moving to the United States, they almost seized my meagre assets and declared me bankrupt when I did. That would have seriously handicapped me for many years, perhaps for life, even though I am seriously already handicapped when it comes to money and where I can spend it. Lucky me, I used my charms, and my salary was higher than previously, and of course I moved before they could say no.

It is not hard to imagine how these schemes, procedures and other protocols could become global in a few years, where everyone will be in the same boat. In a way, the tax man already checks up on everything you do and spend your money on, how you acquire it and how much of it they will get. The tax man is not yet at the point where it can dictate what your life will be, like with people who have no money, like in my case, but we’re getting there, especially now that we are facing a crash that will make the one of 1929 pale in comparison.

They will only be satisfied when they will have your complete identity on record, when they will control your life to the second. Which, by the way, sounds very much like the communist socialist countries, like for example China, where you cannot have a child or buy a house without first being on a long waiting list. Waiting a few years, giving up your identity, waiting for the authority to tell you yes or no, you can do something with your life, for a change.

Might as well be dead then, as this is no way to live, not by our own so called definition of what it is to be living in a so called free world. There is no more free world to talk about here, we have all become desperate to even breathe!

So called democracies give the impression of being different, that you have more freedom. However, I found it not to be the case, and we are much closer to this state of affair than one would like to admit.

Thankfully, I can’t have children, and I will never have the money to buy a house, so I don’t want one. I might still wish to move about though, and now I find that I can’t even do that. I am but a prisoner on probation, and I feel that globally we are all moving towards that social status.

Where it starts to look like a real prison, is in the corporate world. Let’s leave the financial institutions for a moment, to concentrate on employers, even though this is again a financial question. An employer is ready to give you money as long as you provide your identity in full, who you are, where you come from, what you have done in your past up until that very moment. This information will be verified, they need reference letters, forms to be filled out by previous employers sometimes reaching 20 pages. They need to have your whole life planned out in front of their eyes before they can make a decision. No chance for a fresh start anymore in this life.

You then have to go to work everyday, do what has been established as your job, and report anything that might change in your life. Do you need time off for some reason? Why, what happened, what has changed in your life? Are you sick, are you having a baby? Are you going through a divorce, has someone close to you died? We need to know everything. If you are to be late for five minutes tomorrow, we need an explanation, we need you to call in to let us know, we need to establish if being five minutes late was justified. If it turns out that it was not justified, or that you are late a bit too often, disciplinary actions will be taken against you and eventually will lead to your dismissal.

If it was just dismissal, it would be all right, however all the mind games they use via their HR or Personnel department are most likely to make you physically and mentally sick before any action is actually taken against you.

There is not even the smallest freedom left in this world, that you cannot go to the bathroom for fifteen minutes without having to justify it in great detail, filling out forms, and it being reported to all corners of the world to the authorities within the hour. You think I am joking? I am not. This is the world in which you are living in now. This is how anal they have become.

By all means, test it, go to the toilet for thirty minutes tomorrow at work, and see what happens, see the consequences. You will live to regret it. If not, try it again the next day. It won’t go unnoticed twice in a row, I can assure you. As it will not go unnoticed the first time around, and you will have to justify yourself. I hope you are a good liar, whilst it has become now useless in this world, they always know the truth.

Having eaten an Indian meal the previous night is no excuse, as nothing is no longer an excuse to justify anything. You are transparent, you are always lying, and so you shall pay for the consequences, no matter if you are telling the truth or not.

Guilty until proven innocent, is the world we are now living in, as perhaps it always was. It is better to bypass the toilet, shit all over your trousers and show them proudly, without shame, as it is your only way out. And burst into tears, god knows, that might work. Maybe there is still a part of them which is human, and not 100% corporate management training brainwashing, making them more like reporting machines than humans.

Through these fears they control your mind completely. You are chained to your desk, and cannot leave it for too long, and will also need to justify anywhere you go and why you left your desk unattended for so long. You better have a good excuse, constipation and having to spend hours on the toilet bowl might work once or twice, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it. This is your corporate nightmare.

We are all prisoners and slaves to our employers, the financial institutions and the government. They want to establish our identity, they want to control it, they want to tell us what we need to do. And so far, they have been highly successful. One more step and it will suddenly become clearer to everyone. And all that is left for us then, is to be depressed before our incapacity to lead the life we always wanted to lead, cry due to our lack of freedom. And it all starts with your birth certificate, the day you gain your very own identity. As after that, they can track you down from the day you were born.

In a perfect world, in utopia, we would not have an identity. We would not have a past, a timeline of all our actions recorded for posterity and for authority to probe and decide if we deserve this and that or not. What they would see at the interview, would be what they would get. And if somehow you’re not wearing a suit with a tie with shiny shoes, but decided to go there in jeans and T-Shirt, that would already be giving away too much about your identity, they would make an instant judgement, and you wouldn’t get what you should get by right.

Your appearance is also a big give away as to your identity, who you really are, what you think, what you are all about. Dear me, never could I stand this idea of wearing a suit and a tie, I wish I could kill the bastard who invented those. I think of it every day. I bet he was French, bastard!

You might not be racist at all, but if for one second of inattention in your lifetime you say a racist word, lucky you if you were in your own house and you can trust your family not to tell anyone of what you said. Say it in the work environment, or anywhere on the street where there are witnesses, and watch your entire career go, your whole identity changing overnight, you are now a racist and do not deserve anything for as long as you live.

Your identity is everything. If you were born in Africa and you were black, trying to die somewhere else from where you were born might prove difficult if not impossible. Immigration will be closed to you unless you can become a refugee and there is danger for you in your own country, as long as you can justify all this to the government of the country you wish to move to. Unfortunately for you, it is unlikely that there is a civil war every year in your country, it would have helped you immigrate.

If you have committed any crime, even just being arrested at some sort of manifestation or campaign against the government, you might not be able to immigrate that easily to another country either, you might find it impossible. Every single action you do every day defines your identity.

And now in the UK, there are thousands and thousands of cameras watching your every move at all time, and so you can no longer get away with anything. Not even letting go of a cigarette butt on the sidewalk, that is an instant £100 fine. They will find you through face recognition software, you will be prosecuted for anything you do, even just walking in the park without a child or a dog, because then, certainly you are a paedophile. It made headline news recently, you can no longer walk alone in any park in England.

The only solution would be for you to remain at home, alone, shut all the doors, get rid of your computer, your phone, and any other gadget that could be used for communication and monitoring. Then, you can only hope the government has not yet bugged your place in order to monitor everything you do and say. That is the next step, and most government believes that it is no longer necessary, because with your phone and your internet connection, they know already everything they need to know, anything they need to successfully prosecute you in any Court.

A few years ago a man fell asleep at the wheel of his van, and somehow found himself on a train track. The ensuing accident killed a lot of people, and it was just that, an accident. The British government went out of its way to find anything to incriminate the man. They found out that he was chatting in a chat room with some lady at 2 am the night before. That was enough to inculpate him without doubt, this was no longer an accident, it was multiple murders. Had it not been that he was chatting on the Internet at 2 am the night before, I wonder what else they could have come up with to justify his culpability. Perhaps something to do with insurance companies? They are all going bankrupt now, thank God!

Anything will do at this point, there is no denying that. If you were spotted walking the dog at 1 am by a CCTV camera just out of your doorstep, or just opening your front door to get a bit of fresh air at 4 in the morning, that could be used against you to justify any criminal activity, or why you lost that big contract for your company (of course you were too tired), or why you missed the train the next day, and therefore, you should lose your job and find it impossible to find another. Since being sacked is now your new identity, gross misconduct is your new identity, and any future employer will most assuredly get to know about it. Your career is gone.

I have decided tonight that the dog no longer needs to pee before I go to bed. That camera outside my door, the government, the prosecution, the police, don’t need to know when our dog goes for a pee. Of course, our dog shitting on our own bit of green, even if we pick it up the very next day, is another £100 fine, 20% of my monthly salary, so out of proportions those fines are.

Of course, none of you worry about all of this, most of you are not even aware yet of all of this. Because most of you have not yet been in a bad situation where suddenly every single action you have done can be used against you to incriminate you, whatever the gravity of the crime or negligence.

You are all, however, about to find out very soon, because sooner or later, with so many new laws being passed every day, you are bound to break a few laws without even noticing it. And suddenly they will all jump on you like a ton of bricks. And then you will be in awe, you will wonder, puzzled, how this came to be, how did you and everyone else let this all happened without even a blink.

You can have a taste of it right now, take your car, go at 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, and meet on the same bit of road, all within less than a mile, three speed cameras. A minister recently in England experienced that for himself, and became an instant criminal, lost his driving licence, had to go to Court to justify himself, when there was not much to justify in the first place. And God knows what could then be used against you in that Court of Law, if you were not a Minister.

However, maybe this is not frightening enough, how likely would you be to be flashed three times within 10 minutes, even though most of us are now collecting points on our licences and collecting parking tickets for 30 seconds of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Just throw a bit of paper on the sidewalk, perhaps even unintentionally, there are CCTV cameras everywhere, your identity can now be established quickly with just a shot of your face and the databases. You’re an instant criminal with a huge fine to pay. So many people have been fined hugely in England recently for chucking their cigarette butt on the sidewalk, and yet, no one blinked an eye to this state of affair.

Because it has not happened to you yet, and when it does, you will feel powerless to stop it, you wouldn’t know what to do, and so, you will do nothing but accept that you’re a criminal and that you have to be punished. Abuse of power, this is what will be on your mind. And the lack of power to redress the situation. We are so powerless, we could never hope to be heard, to change anything, even, to warn others. Well, I am doing it right now, and so you can find a way to do it too.

Any government or other authority wishing to create a perfect orderly society, cannot bypass the fact that we need some privacy, rights and liberties. Every day, bit by bit, they blur the line between your rights and liberties, they justify it in such a way that the chart of rights and liberties, or the constitution, written or not, no longer apply. The key is to establish your true identity, and control it somehow, be it by fears of some horrible consequence if you do not comply in any way. No doubt, no one could possibly comply 100%, and so we are all criminals now, if not terrorists, in such an extreme world.

There is not much anyone can do about it, or is there? There are many organisations out there fighting against the Big Brother State, and yet, they have met their goal with little success. Millions of people walked to Westminster and Trafalgar Square to denounce unpopular policies of the government, and yet, nothing has prevented the government from passing these anti-terrorist laws and go to war.

A civil war at this point is the only solution left to reverse our lost of identity and freedom. This requires good justification, convincing, whilst taken individually, all the little decisions of the government never seem that threatening, especially when it all seemed justified at the time for whatever reason.

Civil wars are bloody things, many people would die, and in this day and age, it almost sounds unthinkable. Until at the very least the government goes global on all its policies and it affects everyone, and alienate everyone at once. Something they will be careful not to do, to cross that unacceptable threshold. So for now, even a civil war seems impossible, and we will have lost everything before the idea seems right.

So what is there left to do? Nothing? Do we have to simply sit back and watch our identity being changed and eroded, witnessing losing all our rights and liberties, becoming drones to any authority out there? Maybe making everyone more aware here and there, bits and bobs in newspapers, chapters like this one in books, articles in magazines, will eventually slow down governments, who knows. You might enjoy a few more years of partial privacy and partial freedom before it all disappear completely before your eyes.

So I’ve done my bit, what are you going to do about it? And it all begins with safeguarding your identity. No one needs to know who you are, what you do, what you have done, where you were born and the very second you came into this world. Together let’s work at erasing our identity so nothing can be used against us at some future occurrence. Sounds like the beginning of an underground movement working in the shadows. Well, I guess authorities pushed it too far, and they will do much worse before this is all over.

And yet identity could be something entirely different, and it was for a while. We could be proud of our identity. This is who I am, this is where I was born, this is all I have achieved, I am proud of being who I am. Let it be known to everyone what my identity is, as for it I will fight wars to defend my identity, my country, what we stand for, what I stand for. This is my sports’ team, they have to win, because they are who I represent, where I come from, they are who I am.

In fact, as long as you only get a fine here and there, never had trouble with money, never wished to live in a different country, are quite successful at work and collect awards from your old days in school, your identity is not only safe, but it is something to take pride in. If you love your country, even better, that gives you another collective identity, altogether you are working towards something great, building the future, evolving with times. In reality, we should be proud of our identity, and certainly not try to erase it.

The problem is, when you are no longer in control of that identity or the collective identity of your country, and when everything is now used against you to turn you, to turn us all, into criminals, this is when identity can no longer be celebrated, or can be something to be proud of.

We have reached that threshold, when no one can now recognise themselves in what the government says, when what you read in the mainstream media sounds like a distorted lie coming right out from the horse’s mouth. When you live in fear of saying one little word which could irretrievably destroy your career, make you lose your car and your house overnight, and worst of all, your credibility and your reputation… does honour still mean anything?

Don’t even think that word in your mind. One racist comment, and you’re finished. One little trip in your car, one little accident, you’re finished. Don’t show at work one day without calling your boss or justifying yourself afterwards, and you’re finished. Throw one bit of paper on the sidewalk, and you’re finished. Be born in an “undesirable” country, and you will never have a chance. Did you take a day off recently, because if you didn’t you would have gone mad and kill your manager? I know, mental wellbeing means nothing, unless you are physically dying. Whatever you do, do not breathe! Sounds extreme, sounds like reality to me.

And at that point, I no longer want an identity. I don’t care if I am being blown up by a terrorist attack, better that than having a policeman or a camera on every corner, which only seem to be there against my protection, to most assuredly turn me into a criminal, and ultimately making me lose my freedom.

There are again five police cars in front of my flat today. There were ten last week. I have no clue about what is going on, and I will never know until the day they come for me. All I know is that everyone we spoke with about it, felt that the police was there for them, as if somehow they were all guilty of something. And there we are, we’re all fit for prison because they could always find or invent something to use against us. We are all now criminals by default. We are all guilty, and there is no way to be proven innocent, not against such lies.

You must think I am one of those lunatics who have been speaking against authority all their existence, but it is not true. England has really changed in the last 15 years. The last ten times that I have gone to Central London, I got a fine of over 100 pounds each time without fail, I never had a fine in my entire life before that. There are policemen everywhere, and they don’t inspire safety, quite the contrary, they inspire fear.

I never thought I would be writing this kind of stuff, but if you live in London and have been blind to all the changes, you’re lucky indeed. I feel Hitler is in power, and I found living in Los Angeles last year even less inspiring. I have no doubt it is now as bad in Canada, as these three countries are all doing the same damn thing and following the exact same policies, no matter who is in power.

I’m not sure if I like what we have become, because of a few terrorist attacks. We had plenty of those in the past, virtually nothing changed after that, and we were happy for it. I don’t know where all this is leading, I am not going to prophesise here, but I don’t like it.

I tend to avoid Central London now, of course, the astronomical Congestion Charge doesn’t help. I don’t know who can now afford to go to Central London, but not me. Terrorists perhaps, I bet they’re all living in Westminster, immune to everything, whilst we suffer so miserably and have lost the wish to even live, in such a world.

Freedom

North America along with Western Europe have often been called the Free World, with the American President usually self appointed as the Leader of the Free World. The distinction can only be understood in terms of the Second World War and the Cold War era when these countries were compared with communist regimes where democracy and freedom were noticeably less on the agenda. So are we living in a Free World, or are we simply living in a world more free than certain others?

It was easy 50 years ago to define the free world, it is not so easy now. It is not enough to say that we are free just because others have it worse than us, as it would not be fair to say we are living in rich countries because Africa is starving and we’re not. I’m starving, I’ve always been starving, and yet, I’ve always lived in the so called free world, and oh, by the way, I never felt free either.

What is it that people are talking about when they wish to claim freedom for an entire nation? What kind of freedom can be gained by going after terrorists and attacking the Middle-East? What kind of freedom is Paul McCartney singing about in his famous song written in response to the 9/11 attack? I am puzzled when he states that we are free and that we need to fight to remain free. I am puzzled, because I cannot see how we are actually free right now.

With more rules and regulations coming into play every day by many governments, with the advent of new terrorism laws and patriot acts, I can see that the collective freedom has taken its toll, and that the little freedom we already had has just gone up in smoke.

Still, this was not freedom in my mind. Because I can only define freedom from my own small frame of reference. How every citizen is actually free, taken individually, not as a nation. So were we free before those terrorism laws? I feel that any kind of small freedom you might wish to take, has got a high price to pay attached to it. And you would be right to wonder if it is worth exercising your right to freedom, with such consequences happening every time you choose to do so. This can be better understood when assessing what goes on in our daily life.

Freedom starts at home and continues in school and later on in life. Are you free to decide to leave your parents’ home to live on your own? No, not only your parents or family would not allow it, the law will support their decision until at the very least you are 16. Are you free not to attend school and high school? Usually not until you are at least 16 years old.

So, until you are at least 16, perhaps 18, sometimes 21, you are not free by any means, you have to do what you are told by a string of different authorities which will ensure that you cannot deviate even slightly from the path they will lay out for you.

By the time you are old enough to free yourself from your parents and other authorities, let’s see how free you really are. You have to work, and since those previous authorities would have guided you for nearly 20 years, you will usually be trapped in working in a certain field depending on what you studied.

You could always decide not to work, but then you cannot simply decide to find a bit of green somewhere and erect your little cabin there to live. That bit of green will need to be purchased, taxes and other bills will need to be paid, and so you are not free to do as you wish, you have to work or receive some sort of government benefit. In which case you will not be free at all and will once again have to live where they tell you and do whatever else they order you, or else you won’t get your benefit.

When you have a job, how free are you? I’ve already said so, and there is not much else I could add, being chained to a job is as good as being in prison. You again have to do what you are told by your boss or manager, and if you don’t, you will quickly realise how little freedom you really have. You are free to change job, find a new employer, you might then be a little bit more free, but probably not by much.

Then you could always start your own business, be your own boss, you are free to do so, if you have the money, usually you don’t. And then you will understand that this is hard work, with little freedom, as if you had a boss. Because one way or another, you always have to answer to someone else, be it creditors, banks, governments and tax people. Not getting up one day cannot become a normal occurrence, you will be married to your business and it might be more demanding than a hysterical partner or a control freak manager.

Which brings freedom on a personal and social level. You are usually not free to sleep around, you are required to marry and have kids, and after that, any sort of freedom you might take could lead to disastrous consequences. Being in a relationship is like the end of your last freedom. You need to report back on everything you do, spend or decide, and it is never easy. If you have children, you might as well consider you have lost all your freedom, because then you have, in the eyes of the law, a whole book of responsibilities and obligations.

And what about the freedom of suddenly moving to London or New York or Paris and work for a living? Impossible, unless you were born in those countries. You have no freedom to move to other countries to live. Lucky you if like me you were born in Canada, a rich and spacious country with different climates. Shame on you if you were born in a principality as big as certain people’s backyard, you will most likely have to die in your principality.

Though you will be able to enjoy holidays abroad once in a while, if you work hard enough to save money to do so, and then again, many places will require visas and other form of bureaucracy. Aliens from outer space witnessing such a state of affair might be puzzled by our lack of freedom to roam the world freely and the chance to live wherever we want on that small planet of ours.

And finally, perhaps the most important freedom of all, the one to say what we feel inside, the freedom of speech. We are all told that it is in the Constitution, but really, we have no such freedom. Criticising the American President in recent years has proven so. Anyone who decided to say that going to war with the Middle-East was a bad idea, has been ostracised by everyone else and their career standing in shambles right after, with no more credibility than a child who has not witnessed anything in his life and doesn’t know what he is talking about.

You are free to criticise political parties or other groups, but you are usually attacked as a result and stand to lose a lot. So in the end you better shut your big mouth and continue with your other duties, responsibilities and obligations. Before some authority decides that you are not fit to live in their society and starts restraining your freedom a bit more every day, by closing in your face every single door to any kind of freedom.

You will rarely be able to do whatever you want in life, any decision requires a lot of planning and usually a lot of bureaucracy. You cannot decide to go to France this afternoon, you have to go to work, you have to think of your employer, your wife or husband, your kids, your passport, your bank balance, the list goes on.

The Free World has wrongly been called free, we are not free, it is in the Social Contract of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Your freedom ends where your neighbours’ freedom begins, and since we are surrounded by neighbours everywhere we go at any time, the only freedom you will ever enjoy can only be in your own mind. The freedom that we have all been told we had, is a virtual concept that in practice does not materialise.

Freedom is but an illusion, there is no free world to speak of in the here and now on this planet, and as hard as I could try to figure out a way to bring this world any sort of freedom, I cannot see it happening any time soon.

And now I have to go back to work, my lunch hour is over by five minutes, and God knows in how much trouble I will be for being that late. This is another battle for freedom I will most assuredly lose, and there will be draconian consequences.

Writing this entry is my last taste of freedom against such social repression I live under. There is no such thing as freedom.

War

It has not been 100 years since the First World War, and the Third World War is upon us. We have not even begun the preparations for the celebrations of the 100 years since the First World War ended, but we are ready for another one. What an achievement! Does it not feel great, as a humanity, that our history can be so bloody and deadly? What is wrong with us? Are we not in control of our collective destiny? Or do we have a death wish, a secret desire to see this world end?

We are lucky that the Second World War ended with only one side having nuclear bombs. We are lucky that two of those nuclear bombs ended the Second World War. However, the Third World War will begin where the second one ended, with nuclear bombs all over the place.

We will not be celebrating that Third World War in one hundred years, I can assure you, because there will not be anyone left to celebrate anything. Did you not realise what a Third World War was all about? If not, it is time for you to wake up. The Third World War will be the last one. You can always dream that a few will survive, but it will be so destructive, it is likely that none of us will survive.

The very first time I became aware of war, I was 5 years old, perhaps 4. It was right after the Vietnam War, a war I heard nothing about until I was much older. I had five years of blissful ignorance before I found out that in some parts of the world, people were killing each other by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions, and that, for millennia.

I don’t remember many specific events from that early age, however I remember my sister telling me all about war very clearly, as it was so shocking and stunning, I didn’t sleep for a week. It might have had something to do with the way she described it to me. She simply said: “War is soldiers coming into our house with guns and shooting all of us dead right here!” As far as I could try to define war today, I find it so perfect a definition, coming from the mouth of a 7 year old little girl, that I will stick with it. This is what war is.

If she had been really bright, and had wanted to frighten me to death, she could have added: Who needs soldiers? One nuclear bomb and we are all gone!

War at its simplest level, is about human killing other humans, and that’s it. So the immediate question that comes after that is: why? Why would they do such a thing? What could possess them to kill us all?

Try to explain that to your children, you will quickly realise that, on that topic, they are certainly more mature than you, because nothing in their innocent mind could justify such an action. Unless they were born right in the middle of a war, and then again, they probably wouldn’t understand anything about it, they just know that soldiers come and kill their family and bombs are falling everywhere, destroying everything, killing everyone. At that point, I guess the reasons are unimportant, you have to run for your life.

As I grew older and got more educated, or brainwashed, I finally understood, of course, we have to go to war, we have to eradicate them all, they have to kill us all, it is in the nature of humanity to find reasons to go to war and take over power and steal natural resources of others. Or bring them freedom and capitalism, or Christianity, over some other weird and incomprehensible religion which would definitely take away our freedom.

I might have thought at that time that it would also be acceptable for me to kill all my neighbours and steal all their possessions, and convert them to anything I felt like, but it seems that there were many laws to prevent me from doing just that, and if I dared to try, I would quickly rot in a prison for the rest of my life.

Funny how we have all these laws to ensure we don’t decide to do personal wars against our neighbours, but once the government decides it is time to go to war, then it is permitted and you will be trained to do just that. So, it appears to me that governments are above the law they oblige us to obey.

I never understood wars, I was never able to justify them. Only when I was confronted with the idea that Germans were about to conquer the whole world and decided to attack us, I finally came to term with the fact that you cannot avoid war if your sudden enemy decides to declare war against you. In my mind, before I was even a teenager, I thought there were some barbaric nations out there who still believed in wars, whilst us, as pure and innocent as we were, would only go to war in self-defence.

The problem was that I came to meet many German people, I visited Germany a few times, and these people were as civilised as any of us. In fact, they were the nicest people I have ever met. I had to turn around and ask myself, how could these people go to war? None of them looked particularly threatening.

Then I understood that no nation decides to go to war, governments or a few lunatics decide for them. Unfortunately the population appears incapable of saying no to their governments, and so war is still inevitable at the time of writing these lines.

I also came to understand that my own country has gone to war when we started it, along with our supposed allies including mainly the United States and the United Kingdom. Under the pretence or disguise of humanitarian aid, keeping the peace and whatever, we went there, we killed a lot of them, we got contracts to rebuild afterwards and we took power.

We ensured that communism or socialism or some other bad political system other than democracy would not take root, we ensured that some undesirable religions would not grow too quickly and take over the world by surprise, unless of course it was Christianity. Subsequently we probably got lots of natural resources for much cheaper, and made a few others quite rich, which was probably ultimately the reason we went to war in the first place.

There are always people fighting these things, seeing through the games our governments play, and yet, their plea is never heard, we always go to war. Millions get out on the streets to denounce it, and yet, it has no impact whatsoever. I find this extraordinary. The population is incapable of stopping the war machine once the government decides to go to war, it is puzzling.

When the majority of the population says no, the government should fall. I think it is in most constitutions, and yet, governments rarely fall or listen to their constituents. It seems that even our political representatives, supposed to talk for us, are powerless to stop their leaders. It is as if our governments are like tyrannies; and democracy, at the end of the day, doesn’t count, doesn’t work.

Even more puzzling, the PR machines of the governments today are so powerful, they can actually go to war without any good reason, and yet get everyone to accept it as the only solution, and most surprising, they get re-elected at the next elections.

You have to admire such ultimate power, that you can be a tyrant, and yet have everyone love you, give you all the money and carte blanche, to declare war on the Middle-East for no valid reason, and then still love you and re-elect you afterwards (assuming the elections and opinion polls are not rigged, as we all know now that they are).

This world has become a very sad place to live in, and as long as a strong overhaul of the political system is not accomplished, then we will continue to go to war to serve the interests of a few rich people and corporations.

I was brainwashed for most of my youth and teenage years, I thought I was living in the best country in the world, that I could be proud of my flag, that we were respectable people, we had a democracy, we had freedom. What more could you ask when you read all the horrors of history?

I thought humans had evolved, we were not like in the past, we were now more clever, intelligent, reasonable, self-defence kind of people, even though the Second World War was not even 30 or 40 years behind us at the time. And the worst part of all this, is that most of the population is as blind now as I was when I was a kid. They still believe they are living in a democracy and that terrorism is not government sponsor terrorism in order to go to war.

War pays, it is an industry all in itself, and a lot of people get rich over it. If only the whole population could benefit from it, if only suddenly the price of petrol and other resources were to fall down dramatically all over the United States, after taking control of all the Oil in Iraq. However, this is not happening, the prices are going up and up and will never go down. In fact, these wars are ruining the country, the debt is so large now, we are entering the worst economic crash in history. These wars made for profit don’t even profit the population, and so there is really no justification for them.

Pre-emptive strikes cannot be justified either, let the first bomb fall over our country before annihilating the whole of the Middle-East. And twenty lost souls succeeding in destroying two towers in New York, in the most suspicious circumstances, does not count either. A place being blown off, or five, or twenty, in the well referenced archives of our own government sponsoring terrorism, is too suspect to start wars.

“My first world war, this is so exciting!” War is not a game, none of us really understand it, we are not there witnessing the hundreds of thousands being bombed and dying. And yet, on the charts of every video game store all over the Western World, all the games are war games of shoot them up. I wondered about that for a long time, how it is that these kids love these games that are so boring, without a plot or story to them, but filled with tanks, helicopters, soldiers bombing everyone, etc., and now I feel it must be part of an American and other governments’ ploy.

They are usually so quick to move on to protect the poor fragile mind of their children, and yet, they let them be exposed to such violence with impunity, when the word “fuck” or “shit” in a film or a television series is automatically beeped. Dear me, what would we become as a nation if our lovely children were to hear “shit” or “fuck” on TV, and yet, let them all kill soldiers and civilians in video games all day long. It makes no sense.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against these games being sold and played by children, I would not want that to stop, we should have the right to play these games. I however question how and why the market is saturated with these games to the point that no other games at all reach the charts. I am also puzzled by the fact that no government listens to the crying parents who want this carnage to stop, whilst they otherwise move so quickly on less important issues.

I think the governments in the Western World have been preparing a whole new generation of warmongers, who will find it natural to go to war and kill mercilessly without thinking twice about it. After all, the reality these days is just like the virtual world of a video game. Does it matter if your victims are real instead of virtual, is there really a difference? Perhaps not.

So we’ve been prepared for quite a war, it is coming very soon, I would think we are all ready now. Iran is next. The Third World War is looming over our heads. And once again we will all be powerless to stop it. The people will say no, go and march in Trafalgar Square and Westminster, Washington and Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and yet, we will go to war, because it is in our nature, and because the government said so.

I have rarely witnessed love and compassion in this world, I witnessed a lot of jealousy, envy and anger. If there is a God, you can be certain that we will all burn in hell, there is no question about it. Whether you are filled with compassion and love or not, does not matter. If you haven’t done anything to stop wars, or even if you have not been successful at stopping them, then you can be most certain that you will burn in hell. (Is my fear mongering working? No? I don’t understand, it works so well when the government does it.)

War is a reality of our species, it has always been, it will always be, no matter what we could do to avoid it. Power, money, religion, are all still very popular, and they are all responsible to some degree for wars. I cannot see wars being eliminated any time soon, and I am not certain what could ever ensure that there will never be another war in this world. Unless we were already all living in some sort of global Big Brother State without the chance to breathe or think, whether we were aware of it or not. Even then, as long as one nation would still want to resist that state of affair, we would still have to go to war.

Shame really that the United Nations failed to prevent wars, and will fail again. Could have been our last hope, but now we know that illegal wars are of no consequence, and crimes against humanity only count for leaders from the enemy countries.

It is a question of time before the next World War, it will always be just another question of time before the next World War, no matter how many World Wars there will be. Are we all ready for that? In a sense, I think we are, in other ways, I feel we will never be.

It has been a while now since the last significant war, even though at the moment we are at war with Iraq and other States supposedly harbouring terrorists. I believe the Third World War is overdue and will be upon us any day now. I don’t feel sorry about it, I don’t feel sad, as I feel it is in our nature and it is unavoidable. Whatever the reasons, whatever how badly we do not want it, whatever people will do to try to prevent it.

There is no democracy in this world despite the illusion of it, the population is powerless to stop their leaders and to prevent the next World War. The third one within 100 years, there is really no hope for people like us, we never learn. We’ll just have to, once again, learn to survive it all, if we can this time.

Energy

One of the main reasons for wars right now in this world is energy related, natural resources, oil, natural gas and pipelines. There are two critical reasons why we have to solve the energy crisis, and both reasons lead to the absolute annihilation of the human race. There will be more pollution as we consume ever more energy, hurrying global warming and our extinction, and as resources become more scarce, wars will continue to erupt everywhere in the last battle to secure the so-called remaining litre of “juice” on Earth. How can we avoid total destruction by solving our energy crisis?

We have no choice, we have to find solutions, and we need them now. So let’s think hard on this problem, nothing else truly matters, since no one can deny that this is one main source of our misery.

We have heard for some years now that we are moving towards renewable energy, we even tried to oblige the world to reduce consumption and pollution, to move towards cleaner energies, whilst none of us intended to do the same within our own countries. When you look around, despite how desperate this world has become, nothing has truly happened.

We are perhaps running out of gas and oil, we are also suffocating in one huge smog, we are about to declare a Nuclear Third World War in order to secure more of what already may exist only in a small amount.

Some people say that perhaps there are more resources than we initially thought, but we are obviously acting on the assumption that those resources are running out. We are without a doubt desperate, and the worst of it is, this battle cannot be won, it can only bring the utmost disaster, the last war of our history.

What’s happening? Why have we not already got electric cars or at least hybrids? Why instead of reducing our carbon emissions are we ever more destroying the world? Why are we ready to kill unnecessarily millions of people to avoid being held at ransom by alarming costs for energy resources? Why is it that after killing millions of people and taking over many countries and their possessions, those natural resources are still highly expensive to us all? Why indeed.

None of us profits from this, only some big corporations and rich stockholders profit from these wars, and some corrupt government officials. Even war is no solution to our greatest problems. What should we do then, apart from impeaching and replacing our governments entirely, something which has already proven to be impossible?

They all think the same anyway, a change of government makes no difference, they all have the same obsession for war as the only possible solution to everything. I can already predict Obama will be the same.

I guess diplomacy never worked, I suppose we are just too greedy at the negotiation table. We want it all, with no sense of justice and fairness. We do not expect to pay for what we want so desperately, we will simply take it, as we have always done.

For a start, none of the renewable energies that we are heavily researching and developing at the moment, at high costs, are promising. Wind power, solar power, hydropower and geothermal power, they are all insufficient and impractical for our growing and desperate need for energy. How shocking! But, oh so well known and referenced… none of them offer a viable solution.

Ethanol is perhaps the worst, since as we witnessed in the world, using so much land to power our cars and trucks, simply prevents food to be grown, contributing to the worldwide famine causing the death of millions. Ethanol has been described by many experts as being a crime against humanity.

And what about nuclear energy? Lobbyists have moved quickly and have been far reaching in convincing us that it is the cleanest energy for the future, even though as we speak they are back-pedalling. The problem is, nuclear power brings nuclear waste which glows and is mortal for millennia, is quite dangerous for the population since a power station might explode at any given moment, and yeah, the output of energy you get for the input you put in, is not that great either. We won’t even talk about coal. This is a desperate world in search for desperate solutions which do not exist, yet.

So, let’s admit it, we are heading for disaster. Energy resources are running out, only wars can ensure we will have enough for a limited amount of time, at the cost of killing and starving millions. And ultimately, it will all be for nothing, because global warming will finish us all if a nuclear war does not achieve the very same result first.

We also need to consider the new ice age, which has been predicted for decades now, hopefully it will cancel out global warming. And oh, have you looked into global dimming, this increase of human-made particles in the atmosphere which prevents the radiation from the Sun from reaching us? That too might help us, before it starts threatening us. As if we had not enough to worry about. We have reached a no win situation, we have reached the end. Can you put it any differently?

I have been furiously thinking. We need to find a solution, we need to solve the energy crisis, one way or another. And at this point, only radical solutions will do, nothing less. It will hurt, it will require a lot of thinking and planning and headaches, but it must be done.

One solution would be to ban altogether individual transportation, cars would become illegal, everyone will have to use public transport. We may then wish to oblige employers to keep their employees at home. Technology has evolved so much in the last two decades, we all have personal computers with high speed Internet connection, there is no need to get to an office in order to be harassed by management. Almost everyone who can work from home should. Employers have been so reticent to this idea, almost no one works from home. Let’s pass a law, let’s oblige them to make it a reality.

There are a myriad of other solutions, like obliging industries to upgrade to cleaner technologies, even if they have to declare bankruptcy in the process. America dislikes the idea so much, imagine China, it is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

We are running out of time, we are running out of solutions no one wishes to see being implemented. The warning signs are all around us and we have chosen to ignore them. If collectively we are not willing to do anything about it, the solution must then come from one person or a group of people, through a breakthrough technology of some sort. This is the last answer, and perhaps the only one.

Theoretical physics, chemistry, science. We could have hoped for a breakthrough, a theory of everything which suddenly would have solved all our problems. Infinite amount of energy almost for free, violating the laws of thermodynamics. Why not?

There are still many mysteries in science, so many anomalies, we are far from having discovered everything. And yet, nothing seems that promising on the horizon. It is unlikely science will bring us a breakthrough before we reach extinction, despite much hype to the contrary. It all goes largely ignored, if not suppressed.

What else is there then? Well, you might not appreciate this last solution, but desperate times call for desperate measures. There is one last avenue to consider, and let’s hope that we can make it work. Because at this point, I cannot see any other solution to prevent our destruction.

Barack Obama’s vice-presidential running mate, Mr. Joe Biden, has stated before in an interview with “grist”: “While campaigning for president in 2007, Biden said that, if elected, his top priority would be ‘energy security’. He has also been quoted as saying ‘If I could wave a wand, and the Lord said I could solve one problem, I would solve the energy crisis’.”

Let’s see if we can wave a wand and solve this crisis. We now need to enter the realm of the “crackpots”, and there have been many of them in the last 100 years. There is no way at this time to know if these people were simply insane or fools, or if they have simply been made to look that way. I am talking about those inventors who claim to have invented perpetual motion machines, free energy devices or over-unity devices (more output of energy than input, inexpensive energy).

We have all heard of this fantastic discovery at some time or another of someone who invented a car powered by water, many of them did so, apparently, and how they died mysteriously soon after. We have heard of those scientists discovering cold fusion. We read about new inventions producing lots of energy out of almost nothing.

And yet, we were led to believe that every single one of them turned out to be mistakes, experiences impossible to reproduce, or the fruit of madmen. Here is the list on Wikipedia, a very long list indeed, and highly compromised now:

History of perpetual motion machines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_perpetual_motion_machines

Check out also this great book which presents a better list: “Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries” by Jonathan Eisen

http://www.amazon.com/Suppressed-Inventions-Other-Discoveries-Jonathan/dp/0895298090

And look at: "Over Unity Power" Research

http://www.oupower.com

And: Water Car Inventor Murdered! - Cars Running On Water - Stan Myers

http://www.loveforlife.com.au/node/4847

Finally, if you first need a revolution in Physics and you are poised to find a Theory of Everything which, in the words of Agatha Christie: “One must provide an explanation for everything. Each thing has got to be explained away satisfactorily. If you have a theory that fits every fact — well, then, it must be the right one.” Then you should investigate Expansion Theory in the book “The Final Theory, Rethinking our Scientific Legacy” by Mark McCutcheon

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1581126018/ref=nosim/dissertationcomd

Could all these people have been wrong and mistaken? They were so certain of their discoveries, they presented them to the world, when they knew full well that if suddenly no one else could reproduce those results, they would be covered with ridicule and it would annihilate all their credibility?

Even, many secured millions in investments, successfully created commercial companies, and announced that they would have products on the market within months. You don’t get investment without impressing investors. There was something there, and suddenly, in every single case, the dream vanished into thin air.

No wonder there is a whole conspiracy theory surrounding these “crackpots”, which claims that far from being useless inventions, these discoveries would change the world and save us all. That people in the shadow have been working very hard in the last 100 years to prevent any of these discoveries from reaching the mainstream and production lines. Oil and gas companies, governments, whatever, who knows. It might just be true. Have you ever wondered, and quickly forgotten, after the PR machine went through to convince us all that this was lunacy?

I decided to do a little bit of investigative journalism, I contacted my hub of friends with whom I work very hard to make people aware of where the world is heading, trying so desperately by any mean to save this world, and I got a great feedback. I cannot name any name or any particular invention or any particular company, because these people were seriously threatened with their life if they continued to work and develop their breakthrough technology.

This is at least one conspiracy theory we can eliminate, any investigative journalist contacting a handful of these inventors, will quickly realise the reality that big players will stop at nothing to prevent any new clean energy from reaching the market; energies that could produce such a high output compared with the input, it would solve all our problems.

It would eliminate wars, our dependence on unstable countries, it will render any pipeline useless, it would annihilate all those money grabbing oil and gas corporations, reduce considerably corruption in governments worldwide, also in the high end world of finance. It would boost productivity and eliminate starvation. It might even eliminate poverty. What have we got to lose at this point? Nothing, as we are desperate.

We have a lot to gain, we have to explore this avenue, however dangerous it is. I don’t know, work in secrecy perhaps, reviewing these technologies one by one and find one that works, and find a way to bring it to the mainstream. It should not be that hard, all those inventors have taken patents to protect their discoveries, anyone can look for these patents and build these inventions. So let’s do it, let’s test it, let’s make it come true!

Even Nikola Tesla, who invented wireless communication (radio), alternating current electric power systems, induction motor and rotating magnetic fields, who has been described as the Father of Physics, the man who invented the twentieth century, the patron saint of modern electricity and helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution, had such ideas we need to get back to. He believed, and even demonstrated, that energy can be transmitted wirelessly, and can be gathered for free from the ionosphere. Have a look at this:

Free energy suppression

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_suppression

“In June 1902, Tesla moved his laboratory operations from his Houston Street laboratory to Wardenclyffe. However, in 1903, when the tower structure was near completion, it was still not yet functional due to last-minute design changes.

“Tesla intended for the tower to demonstrate how the ionosphere could be used to provide free electricity to everyone without the need for power lines. Morgan, who could not foresee any financial gain from providing free electricity to everyone, balked. Construction costs eventually exceeded the money provided by J. P. Morgan, and additional financiers were reluctant to come forward.

“By July 1904, Morgan (and the other investors) finally decided they would not provide any additional financing. Morgan also encouraged other investors to avoid the project.

“In May 1905, Tesla's patents on alternating current motors and other methods of power transmission expired, halting royalty payments and causing a severe reduction of funding to the Wardenclyffe Tower. In an attempt to find alternative funding, Tesla advertised the services of the Wardenclyffe facility, but he met with little success. By this time, Tesla had also designed the Tesla turbine at Wardenclyffe and produced Tesla coils for sale to various businesses.

“Soon after Tesla's death, the FBI instructed the government's Alien Property Custodian office to take possession of his papers and property, despite his US citizenship. His safe was also opened. After the FBI was contacted by the War Department, his papers were declared to be top secret. The personal effects were seized on the advice of presidential advisers; J. Edgar Hoover declared the case most secret, because of the nature of Tesla's inventions and patents.

“However, the likely cause for the seizure of Teslas' documents was that he had been working on the teleforce weapon, or death ray, that he had unsuccessfully marketed to the US War Department - not because of his work on free energy devices which had ended eleven years earlier.”

For more details on this topic, see: Wardenclyffe Tower

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower

The conspiracy theory could possibly start with Nikola Tesla, over a hundred years ago. Where investors suddenly were afraid that, with free energy, there would not be any profit. And so, Tesla was shut down. It was perhaps not so worrying a hundred years ago, but today we are not living in the same world. It is no longer a question of profits, it is a question of survival, avoiding another world war which will most likely be the last, avoiding a global warming cataclysm and the extinction of humanity.

We have no choice, we have to go back to all those ideas, and seriously develop them, make them come true, as soon as possible. The government, or some sort of association if governments cannot be trusted, will have to ensure the safety and security of its employees. No one can be threatened in the development of the technology which will solve our energy crisis and every single one of our actual problems.

By the way, there is no need to threaten me, my involvement in all this ends with this present article designed to motivate others to break free and save us all.

Somehow, let’s solve the energy crisis and save this planet. I know we can, because we have to in order to survive. Let’s just walk all over anyone willing to stop this from happening, they can no longer matter, can they? Even “they” must understand this now. If they can’t, we’ll just have to do something about it, make them understand somehow, because we have reached the point where our very survival is at stake.

They may not care about solving the energy crisis, as long as there is money to be made, but since none of us will make any money from their hidden agenda, or profit from it, surely we care for any possible other solution over the horizon, no matter how crazy it is? Surely we truly do care about solving the energy crisis?

Well, I have offered a few solutions. Better than threatening the world with nuclear bombs. Now, since you all seem to know better than I, let’s hear your own solutions to this energy crisis.

Money

I do speak for the people, for a change. It has been said throughout history that money and religion were the root to all evil. It would be hard to deny it, both are responsible for most wars in this world. They are both about control and power, though they are both presented to us as our salvation. Well, are they our salvation? This is a message of hope, that you do not require money to survive, or to achieve your dreams.

I suppose you could have a completely different point of view about what money really means, depending on how much you suffered in your childhood and later on in life for a lack of it, or how much freedom you enjoyed because there was always plenty of money around you.

My opinion is that money does not really matter, depending on how you truly feel about it. For example, if it stops you from achieving whatever you feel you should achieve, then you’ve got it wrong.

There is no reason why money, or a lack of it, should ever stop anyone from achieving his or her own dreams. If you feel otherwise, you need a reality check, you need to learn to live, you need to learn what life is all about. Just take risks, there are always solutions over the horizon.

It has been my observation that people who always had plenty of money appeared quite peaceful, happy, laid back, and even beautiful. It’s like, they never had anything to worry about for most of their life, and it seems to show.

On the opposite side, where there was a lack of money, it was a living hell. Shouting, fighting, arguing, compromises, rage and anger. You could easily add an ABH (Actual Bodily Harm) or a GBH (Grievous Bodily Harm) to the mix, it would not be unexpected. Like if that sense of injustice could make you permanently ugly and incapable of thinking about anything else but your own misery.

This is called the path to self-destruction. We are reaching the root to all of this, what we are all about. It is my new found duty to change all that, to show some sort of a light, a way out. There is a way out, even if at first, it will not seem that way.

Peacefulness and happiness never come from poor families or failures. Genius, yes, it can. You are born genius whether you are rich or poor, and hopefully you have a good chance to use it to your own advantage and become rich one day out of it. But peacefulness, happiness, contentment? You can only hope to discover those once you’re rich, if it is not already too late by then.

There is a point of no return where you can never be happy no matter what, as if one could get used to be miserable and could never be anything else. Pessimistic one day, pessimistic for a lifetime. Miserable for too many years, misery for the rest of your life. You can only hope to find what you expect in life. And so, you can reach a point where what you will only be able to see, is a nightmare with no way out.

I am damaged beyond repair, I will never now find happiness in this lifetime. If I were to become rich tomorrow morning, I’m afraid, I’ll never be a new man, I would still be the miserable human being I am now. I would also be so cynical about it, I would be convinced that it would never last, and so, I could only possibly be rich for a little while, and then go back to normal, a life where everything is about money, every single argument, every fight, every sentence.

People are so obsessed with money, with getting out of their misery, that they can’t sleep at night anymore. Their dreams are larger than the universe, and at the end of it there is only disillusion. Is the only solution left, is to listen to Nine Inch Nails’ new albums, and feel something in between? Between feeling reaching some sort of freedom, or actually accomplishing something towards it? That would not do. You are significant, you can be as significant as you feel you should be. You would be surprised, you can get heard, you do make a difference!

Thinking otherwise, is the result of the capitalism system we grew in. You are reminded every time you open a magazine or watch the TV. Happiness is only possible when there’s plenty of money around. Freedom, or the feeling of it, without the finance to back it up, is a utopia.

Never mind that I have been at the height of my happiness when I had to count my pennies to buy a bag of chips, or crisps as they are called on this side of the Atlantic. I won’t go into my personal misery when I arrived in London 15 years ago. God I was happy then, but it had more to do with the fact that for the first time I was free to do whatever I wanted, free to go out every night in Central London, even though I could not afford the three pints of beer required for me to get off this planet.

I was never affected by money, the lack of it, or having a lot of it. There are always solutions presenting themselves when you drop everything to seek adventure and exploration. I suffered though from the people around me who could not think about anything else. It drives their mood, their whole existence.

I always thought that having money was some sort of an obstacle, because the risk of losing it is too great, and so you do not take any risk anymore. When you don’t have any money, you have nothing to lose, you can leave tomorrow morning for Los Angeles or Paris, like I did before, and not even think twice about it.

I used to be worried about the fact that my lifestyle of moving from country to country, after thinking about it for one long second, could leave me dry without a mortgage, a house, a flat, a car, or any other real asset. Now I feel free from not having any of those, because for me, moving country or going into space won’t be a problem.

I have nothing, so I can’t lose anything. I even sold my last book on eBay, these were desperate times. I appreciate that freedom, more than you could ever imagine, for what it gave me the chance to experience, living in so many different countries, and see for myself what those Belgians, for example, go through every day. (Nothing much to say about that I’m afraid, better commit suicide than live in Brussels ever again.)

And yet, I would love to have a bank account filled to the brink, to ensure maximum freedom, so then I could really truly have anything I want, to go anywhere I want, China, Afghanistan, Iran. Really pursue this adventure and life of exploration I always desired, and only partially achieved, being so poor all the time.

It’s great I have done so much without any money, and yes, money should never stop anything or anyone. In my case, money never stopped me from achieving anything I always wanted to do, but it would have been much easier if I did have plenty of it, I would have done much more. But when you’re rich, it’s a different ball game. You cannot do what I have done, too many other things come into play.

I also feel that if I had plenty of money, people around me would be nicer, smiling, more emancipated. So then we could talk about philosophy instead of what we are going to do about the car. Fuck the car! I agree money might not necessarily bring happiness and make you happy, but I’m sure it cannot hurt, as the lack of it will most definitely bring you eternal misery, bring you to the brink of war.

Not everyone thinks like I do. Without money you might as well be dead, in certain circumstances where it drives your other half bunker and to the brink of insanity, as you will witness everywhere in every single household. One is usually obsessed with money or the lack of it, the other half does not care one way or another, because nothing truly depends on having plenty of money if you can take risks and do not care about any consequence.

What is money really? Well, you do learn early on in school that there was a time when money didn’t exist, and everything was just trade. You fish, you exchange your fish for butter, bread, carrots, etc. In Canada, listening to history, I often felt that there was no money at all. You had to sustain yourself with a few cows, a few chickens, a mill around the corner for the whole village, cut the trees for heating, water from the river (before the industrialisation of course, now drink that water and you will die).

Self-sufficiency, with no need for money. That is what I often aspired to, self-sufficiency. However, I’m also realistic. I’m not sure if it would be possible nowadays to grow carrots in my backyard and survive that way. The taxes alone just for me to exist in one little square, would quickly bring me to prison.

Money is just a commodity, a currency. You give your fish away, you get money, and then you can use that money to buy something else. It is known that the richest people are getting richer, beyond belief, and the poorest people are getting poorer. I think it has always been that way, isn’t it? Boy, how poor we must be by now! And it is true, standards of living have only gone down since I was born.

I don’t really care. I am not one of those idealistic persons who feel that socialism will cure all our problems. I won’t deny that I am a capitalist at heart and that I dream to become filthy rich one day, whilst all my neighbours are dying in appalling poverty. Fuck them, I hate them all anyway and wouldn’t mind if another war was to eradicate them all.

I told you I always thought like an American President, as this is how they have always been thinking. Unfortunately, this is also how the presidents and leaders of communist and socialist countries have been thinking. And so, as they were getting richer, socialism and communism failed spectacularly.

I never really cared for poor people or rich people. I have no desire to help any of them. I was never moved by those dying Ethiopians, and I have never helped any charity. I always thought anyway that I have always been poorer than the dying Africans. Because they can still be happy, smile, while I always wanted to shoot myself, with debts larger than a continent. They never had any money, but I was in a worst shape, I was minus tens of thousand of pounds, with no hope to ever pay that back. I’m bankrupted now, for another five years at least. Don’t judge me so harshly, you are about to become bankrupt yourself. Just read the headlines.

And yet, I had dreams of saving the planet, and if I become filthy rich one day, it is most likely that I will help the planet one way or another. I always had at the back of my mind the idea of a string of companies covering just about everything, including banks and grocery stores, all non profit organisations. How successful would be a chain of grocery stores and banks working for no profit? It could easily destroy the economy and bring everyone in deeper shit. But got to be idealistic, and keep my desire to help humanity somehow. Got to be realistic, let’s go nuclear, because my electricity bill is way too high, I can’t afford it. You can’t quote me on that.

Money is a joke, a bad one. It reminds me of an episode of Sherlock Holmes, the Blue Carbuncle, where at the beginning they tell us the history of that rock. That, in its short life, that blue crystal had already cost the lives of something like a dozen human beings, because greed knows no boundary. And you can only laugh at it, because at the end of the day, it is only a rock, no matter how rare it is. Who cares to own it? What could it possibly change to one’s life?

I myself have no jewellery of any kind, I don’t even have a watch, and I don’t want one. I always managed to lose or destroy everything I ever had anyway, so I no longer value anything. I suppose I can sustain myself out of air, no one has yet put a price tag on that, selling it at high price around the corner. I can see though that we are getting there.

I digress, I’m not supposed to talk about my life here. I need to talk about money, what it means, what purpose it plays in mankind’s destiny. Though owning a blue carbuncle would be totally useless, having a bundle of money would give you the chance to tell your boss to fuck off, buy a yacht and live anywhere in the world on any ocean. Is there anyone on this planet who does not believe in God or religion who could refuse such freedom?

The thing is, there is only one thing on this planet that we are all seeking, our liberty to do whatever we want whenever we want. And as far as I know, money is the only thing that could bring you that kind of freedom. So I love money, because I love my liberty. And as a bonus, without money you are so restricted, you cannot wash as many times as you would like. You have to take cold showers, you have to worry about leaving the computer on, because dear me, it costs more monthly than cable. And all these little insignificant and petty things are what make everyone around you lose it completely and jump at your throat the second money is mentioned. We’re all living on the edge of insanity, and the lack of money is the first spark which will bring about the war.

So in conclusion, I love money, because I love my liberty, and money is what will lead me to freedom. I am aware that money is the root to all evil, that money has caused all wars on this planet since the very beginning of humanity, and I don’t care. I value my liberty too much to worry about any of this. I cannot help others to survive until I have myself found a way to survive, and surviving for me means my freedom to do whatever I want whenever I want.

I freely admit that I have done so without having any money, so it is not that necessary for anyone who is determined to lead the life one has set it to be. And if it happens that one day I become filthy rich and gain total freedom, I will then help humanity as much as I can, to reach the same state of euphoria. I’ll then distribute the class A drugs freely myself (only kidding).

Money is the root to all evil, and yet, it could very well be the path to total freedom. Why can’t we just print more? I remember asking that very question to my father when I was barely 4 years old. I’m not that dumb now. I have studied economics in college, finished with a perfect mark of 100% every year, and yet, I never understood anything about economy, which means, not many economists out there must understand what economy is all about. Frightening, when you think that understanding economy could mean eating bread tomorrow or not, and yet, no one on this planet understands how it works.

What is economy? What is the significance of money? Honestly, I don’t know, or more to the point, I don’t care. I just know that I always thought that one day I would have plenty of money, and that thought alone has sustained me all my life, even when I was the poorest moron alive. That’s why I never thought I was poor when I was. I guess this is the true meaning of the American Dream, in a world where none of us will ever have enough money to even afford a house.

I don’t have a million right now to buy a house, this is how much they cost these days. Something must have gone wrong with the economy, surely. I remember reading years ago that in Russia, where inflation went crazy one day, suddenly a loaf of bread cost 100 pounds instead of 40 pence. We’ve reached that point now, an ugly small house costs three million pounds. The 20 square meters alone, without the house, can cost a million. Good thing I don’t care to own a house right now, as I will never have the money to buy one.

It doesn’t matter, as long as I am still free to do whatever I want whenever I want. No need for money for that, you just need guts and be able to bypass your brain or conscience. Don’t think, just act! Leave it all behind, drop that bitch or that bastard you’re living with, never mind about those kids, someone will take care of them. Act irresponsibly for once, you are allowed! No one is expecting the world from you. Go on to explore all that this world has to offer, without thinking about any consequence. You will be held in higher esteem by the world for following such impulsivity.

Go for it! Now is the time, you have lost everything, or you are about to, so why not leave for the other side of the planet as you always wanted to? You don’t need money for that, for being that insane. Just feel the freedom, just go for it! I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again. You might just change the world.

Religion

Religion is the last remaining taboo in American society, and God, do I know it. I just hope I won’t be censored, for talking about religion, and, oh, being drunk at the same time. Hopefully it is within your book of truth, your Bible, to forgive such things as I am about to do. What has Jesus Christ said exactly, some 2000 years ago? I am so drunk, I can’t remember anything.

If you are about to judge me, you are following the wrong immoral type of religion. And you better wake up to this world, the real world, before someone else takes advantage of you, using against you your most cherish beliefs, your own religion. It happens more often than you think. Just think about it.

I wonder if I’m not too drunk to talk about religion right now. Just finished a hell of a week at work, drank myself to death tonight, after I had sex with my boyfriend (a homosexual deviant diseased mind like me, to use the religious term), smoke more roll ups that I would care to count, and here I am, I will talk about religion. Did I mention drugs in there somewhere? Oh!

I am your son! I am the son of every good American out there! Because I am just a statistic, and according to statistics, so many are just like me. I am your Useless Alcoholic American Gay Son! Please remember that, if you cannot remember anything else.

I am testing your limits, have you exploded yet? At least I will not talk about war, or nuclear third world war, which religion will most definitely play a major role in making it come true. Nuclear death by religion… it has a great ring to it.

Right now, I’m just afraid that I’m no longer objective, that I will be right down cynical, and will alienate any of my readers who might be religious even slightly. I guess I would do just that in any case… so let’s go! You are not afraid of your own opinions, why should I?

What would you say if I were to tell you that I am Catholic, and Catholic is the only real religion, and that if you do not convert to Catholicism right now, you will suffer for eternity once you die? We all know that only Catholics will go to heaven, anyone else goes straight to hell.

I can already tell you that your religion is crap and filled with lies, and you all need to die sooner or later, sooner rather than later hopefully, and that I am quite willing to help eradicate any believer in any other religion.

If you are not Catholic, you’re most likely to think that I am mad, and that someone needs to stop me, kill me, before I somehow succeed in my plan to annihilate humanity. And you would be right. After all, we all know that Catholics are wrong, they will all go to hell, and any religion originally based on Protestantism are the right ones, they are the ones who will go to heaven. Does that include the Mormons? I wonder… probably not.

I will tell you the truth, I am a Muslim. Oh, I need to be shot now, don’t I? But why? Why indeed. Since it cannot possibly be justified, under any Court of law, under any kind of rule of any God that ever existed. Is it not so? Come on, tell me, I am listening.

If you believe otherwise, there is an indictment ready for you under our Court of law, and it leads to a trial which will lead you straight to prison. Please, do remember that, if you cannot remember anything else.

If you can’t reach reason by reason alone, the law will lead you to reason. All religions are to be respected, even the lack of belief in any religion will be respected. Are we free to think and believe whatever we want or are we not, what do you prefer? A prison sentence? I will arrange it, believe me. The law is on my side (at the moment, at least).

I am highly surprised by this need for people to have a religion, since at the end of the day, why would they need such a thing? What is a religion exactly anyway to start up with?

A religion, I would think, starts with a leader who spoke some sort of wisdom to some other people who obviously trusted the man. This man either talked a lot and was listened to, and some others wrote about him, or he wrote himself a bunch of books that could be thought of as some sort of wisdom or book of truth about the nature of humankind and the universe, and a whole set of ethical and moral behaviours to observe that no one in their right mind could possibly ever obey.

I can see why this is attractive, since we are all, as humans, curious by nature about who we are, what we are all about, and what is this universe in which we evolve in, or were created within, and who initiated this whole existence. We could easily go mad just trying to elucidate these mysteries. And when someone comes along and tells us exactly how it is, how it could have been and how it will be, I suppose it can be refreshing and welcomed. We all need answers to the main existential questions.

Of course, some sort of truth would not suffice, this man needs to be charismatic, quite clever and bright, to come up with instant answers about everything, and usually would be so caring, and the people around him as well, that it must give a sense of importance to the disciples of any religion. We all feel the need to feel important, to feel that people care about us, love us, to fulfil this need of belonging to a group of people who share our philosophy, whether that philosophy is ours or comes from someone else, if the imagination lacks.

I never felt the need to belong to any group, must have come from the fact that I was gay and, quite early on, I was rejected by everyone from everywhere at once, most specifically by all religions and religious people.

I always wondered why my whole being and nature could be so despised and offensive to any religion, as if I was such a threat that, I alone, could bring about the end of the world as we know it. And so it is not surprising that I came to wonder why people would need a religion or set of beliefs and behaviours to believe in, and go about life, always thinking in those terms their religion would have taught them. It makes no sense to me, no sense at all, as I was denied just all of that. I was a target to be eradicated as soon as possible, the sooner the better. A miracle I survive without committing suicide, society tried its very best to drive me to it.

So, for a long time I always believed that religious people were not that intelligent, could not think for themselves and were highly suggestible. I was so interested in this puzzle, I read a lot about religious sects and secret societies in order to better understand what happens in the macroscopic world of religions, and I found many illuminating answers about human nature.

I wrote a novel about it, in French, even though I think no one on this planet has read it or even understood what I was really trying to say in there. I’m not sure myself, since I tried to be objective, just painting a picture of reality, and that was it. People can read and interpret whatever they want from it, but at least I told them how it works, how it is that people can get caught into these beliefs which make no sense to even people of other religions suddenly getting interested in believers of other religions.

Not only will we get to believe in a certain religion, most likely the one we were born into, but then understanding and tolerating other religions is quite a feat to achieve, because most religions have been designed to teach to despise any other sort of truth as a lie, and that if you do not believe in your own religion, you will most likely go to hell or something similar.

When you start analysing religions, you see clearly how clever they have been in ensuring the longevity of their own truth, whilst eliminating any other religion or people in the market believing otherwise, eliminating any other possible explanation, so it becomes difficult to get out of any religion, and especially believe in another one.

Within any religion is the seed for war against anyone who does not believe in that religion, and so teaching tolerance for other religions has always been impossible.

It never seemed to be a contradiction to anyone that most religions at heart have a message of love and understanding, but then turn ugly as soon as you go beyond a certain point, then love and understanding become hate, war and destruction.

I always wondered why most religious people were blind to this fact, how they could look at history, see for themselves that most wars were caused by religions, and yet, quite willingly choose to ignore that fact, and probably would go to war once again for those same beliefs which caused millions if not billions to die over the centuries.

More specifically, why is it so important for any human being to have any sort of religion, when they could be quite happy without it, whilst still be loving and caring people, and pursue on their own what could be the truth about the universe we live in?

Why would you need a religion? Why do you feel the need to belong to any group of people believing certain things and giving you truths you are not even allowed to question? Why indeed? It is something I might never understand, and I believe that anyone who is free from any religion will also be as puzzled as I am.

I would have thought that, as time goes by, more and more people would ditch religions and start seeking other answers to life. However, quite the opposite is happening, more and more people become more and more religious by the day, and 85% of the planet, from old statistics I can remember, all believe in some sort of religion and God.

It is astonishing and frightening to me, as I cannot explain this behaviour, and I know that most of them would be quite happy if I were to die today just because I am gay. How do I fight this, can I even fight this? Or do I simply have to accept it and hope I will still be granted the chance to lead a normal existence? Or should I be killed right now? With stones?

Most religions are also highly restrictive, no freedom whatsoever, and many of them require from you a lot of time and money and devotion and prayers, and little space to think and develop at your own pace. Why would anyone enter a new religion knowing full well all that it entails, and how much of their freedom and liberties they will lose once within it? What could possess them to give up so much, if it is not a belief that they will gain much more in return? But what do they gain if anything? Are they more peaceful with themselves? Are they now closer to God and anything spiritual? Are they more loving, or ready to kill?

Is there something I am missing here that no one told me about? Because if 85% of the population is talking directly to God, and get some hallucinogenic buzz out of it, I ought perhaps to get on the bandwagon. But then, why would they keep such ecstasy to themselves, whilst being unable to even give us a glimpse of what is it that their religion is bringing them, without us thinking they are deluded, too far gone and ready for the asylum? Could 85% of the planet suffer from mass delusion? I sometimes think so. Just think of Allah, then you will begin to understand how I feel. Because Allah has declared a Jihad on you, and you all need to die, all of you, non-believer in Allah! I will kill you myself, in the name of Allah!

I will try to be a bit objective. If my father had divorced my mother when I was quite young, and if I had spent most of my younger years with my mom without my dad around, God knows how much brainwashing I would have suffered and how good a Catholic I would be right now.

You see, my father never believed in religion or God, whilst my mom was completely devoted to them, and still is. It would have been difficult for me, if not impossible, not to believe in God and fall back into religion, if both my parents had been nuts about it. It is nearly impossible to shake off something that you have been banged on the head about from an early age. This is how I explain why people can still respect any religion and believe in God, even when they are quite intelligent, and should normally, in my opinion, have at least some doubts about it all.

There are plenty of reasons to at least take a step back and assess the whole question of religion, God and other related beliefs as hypothesis, and not the complete truth about this world.

The very fact that whatever you believe in, whatever if it is the biggest or smallest religion there is, you can count on the fact that not even 1 person out of 5 on this planet will believe any of it. There is not one religion on the planet for which at least 20% of humanity will agree on is the truth. How can it be the real truth then, when a whopping majority would say no, it is all a lie?

Why would that Muslim or that Jew be more wrong than I would be, being a Catholic or a Christian? It should tell any reasonable person, capable of taking a step back, that perhaps others are right, or that perhaps, no one is, because no one really knows the truth. I have not seen any proof anywhere, none of us have. I’m sorry, faith alone does not make it true.

How could we be right? Religion is worse than philosophy, and philosophy has a really bad track record. In philosophy, no one can agree on anything, and yet, it is based on logic. Religion is not. And millions of people are forced to believe the most fanciful inventions about humanity, its origins, about whatever could be out there in this universe.

It is so sad when you meet the most intelligent person you have ever met, the most logical, and yet, when the time comes to talk about religion, there go logic and good common sense. They’ve been brainwashed, they will not let go. They will not compromise, they will not even consider other possibilities to explain the unexplainable. No need for proof, no need for half convincing arguments, this is the truth, this is how we all came to be, this is what this existence is all about.

Religion is quite important in a way here, because it addresses what this existence is all about, and all religions claim to know the answer. There was a creation of some sort, there is a God of some sort who created us, we appeared one day out of nothing, out of nowhere, and God controls everything, as he is some sort of control freak, and if you’re a bad boy, he won’t come down the chimney and bring you gifts at Christmas. Or am I confusing God with Santa Claus? Oh dear.

When I was in grade 5, I stopped my English teacher in front of the class and I asked her: what is Santa Claus? Everyone around me seemed to know, we were hearing about it every day in English classes, and yet, I had no clue about Santa Claus and what it was. She laughed, everyone did, it seemed that I was the only lost one out there who had no idea about who was Santa Claus. I must have been 10 years old by then. And then she said that Santa Claus was the “Père Noël”. I instantly knew then what Santa Claus was, it existed in French as well, though, never in my life had I believed he existed. Like I never believed the “Bonhomme Sept Heures” existed (the bogeyman), though most kids in my area were so afraid of the “7 pm Man”, they all went to bed, frightened to death that this monster would come to eat them alive if he found them not in bed and sleeping by 7 pm.

I have to admit that my sister and I never slept when we were young. We would fall asleep out of exhaustion at 4 am every night, after talking all night and getting up all evening, to the astonishment of my parents. My parents never believed in lying to us in order to convince us to act a certain way, so they could have peace once in a while. As a result we were wild, but at least we were not fed lies.

I would guess that if you control your kids through fear at an early age, you will most certainly make them perfect slaves to some other opportunistic boss or bitch later on in life. Leave your kids to become wild, and they’re most likely going to end up being management, controlling the other weak minds around. Never mind. All that to say that it is easy to have beliefs when they were implanted at a young age. And then logic and common sense seem to go out the window.

I don’t know if there is a God, I don’t know if what any of these religions state is true or not. I can only take it all as possibilities, hypothesis, and to be honest, not very convincing ones at that, for someone like me who was not brainwashed at all on any religion or philosophy at an early age. Again, I value my liberty or freedom far too much to adhere to any religion or philosophy. And that’s the problem, isn’t it? The real conundrum of any religion.

Religion is not about some sort of distorted truth about the origin of existence and whatever might happen after death or in between re-incarnations. No. If religion was simply that, some sort of truth about a God who created us and the universe, it would be great, it would be bearable.

Religion is about control and power, and so adhering to any religion implies following many rules, obligations, giving up your life, freedom, liberty, and whatever else, everything. But to whom? The high priests, the leaders, to whoever profits from it all. It is like giving up everything you have, everything you are, and any sort of individuality you might wish to have, to some half baked ideas or concepts, which in the end, makes no sense at all.

Religion is the end of your freedom, the end of your own individuality, your identity, who you are, who you could possibly become. Religion becomes you, you no longer exist. You serve, you’re a slave, no longer in charge of your own thoughts or your destiny, frightened to death of one simple thought, the idea of sin, which in itself, is completely meaningless.

We’re all animals, nothing more. We only answer to nature, our own nature, whatever it dictates, not what religion or any sort of leader dictates. Whatever we truly desire, is nature. It doesn’t mean we should act upon it, upon that desire, but it certainly doesn’t mean we should feel guilt about it to the point of wishing death. Guilt, guilt of even being alive, that is what has plagued my life since the very day I was born. And yet, I don’t believe in religion!

Religion is something you need to free yourself from, at any cost, no matter the consequences. You will feel better at any rate afterwards, no matter the consequences. Then, and only then, will you be free to observe this universe and come up with your own answers.

All right, there may be a God after all, who created the whole thing, who knows. You don’t need organised religion to dictate that to you, when there are so many others stating the complete opposite. These questions about nature, about humanity, about the universe, should be pursued freely. You should be able to think on your own, figure it out on your own, believe what you feel might be the truth, not what others tell you the truth is, when so many other truths exist.

I don’t know who, years ago, decided to create these religions, all religions, and how they came up with these truths which make no sense at all. I don’t know why they felt the need to create religions and to ensure that everyone would believe them and obey them. I can only guess that it was a question of control, power, and hence, turning you into mindless drones, slaves, whatever.

I just know that I’m glad I have nothing to do with any of these religions, secret societies, religious sects. I am free! Free to think, to assess for myself what this life is all about. And I will come to my own conclusions, after reviewing everything everyone has ever said on any topic, and from whatever I feel seems right. No one will tell me how to think or what to believe. I will observe and come to my own conclusions about this world and what it is all about, all on my own.

I only wish it would be the same for most of humanity, we could get the answers much faster that way. More freethinkers is what this world needs. I do not respect one religion over another, I do not accept any truth over another, unless I, myself, have a vague feeling that it may be the truth.

I never encountered a religion which agreed in the slightest with what I felt the truth might be. Perhaps because, a long time ago, I came to the conclusion that I will never find out about the truth.

No one knows the truth about anything, and no one could ever know the truth about anything. Makes you wonder if there is any sort of truth to discover in this world, perhaps there is no such thing as the truth. And so, all religions are simply wrong. What a thought! A revolutionary thought. As without religions, my God, we might just have saved this world. But now, there is no hope.

Religion will be the death of us all.

Education

Barack Obama has mentioned many times he wanted to radically implement change. He boasted in his book about listening to the population at large (mostly old war widows, from what I gathered), understanding them, with a desire to change everything. Even after the elections Obama still sends e-mails asking us ideas about how to change the country (besides asking for more money, of which we have none, so stop asking!). Well, let’s start with identifying the real root of society as we know it: education. You know me by now, you can trust me for providing the most extreme ideas.

There is a real problem in this world concerning education. I will try to resume it in a few sentences. If you have no education, you will quickly find a job and perhaps even excel at it. You will immediately ensure your survival, but you will never dream of owning a house, lucky you if you even get to buy a used car plagued with problems.

If you have a lot of education, you face the exact same situation. You can’t find a job in the field you studied. Of course, thousands every year graduate with the same diploma. I hope your dad can plug you somewhere, otherwise, well, it will be difficult to even get the same job someone without an education is going for, as those are the only jobs available. One has to survive.

You will have to lie on your résumé, claim that you are in fact brainless and never achieved anything in life. You’ll be blessed if they let you wipe tables. This state of affair is very prevalent with new lawyers, most of them are taxi drivers (if they’re fortunate, and learnt to lie early on, on the way to their great career).

There was a time, before public education, when a degree meant something, and achieving it would guarantee you a great position: the three houses, the five cars, the garages, the lot. But when everyone is now an engineer, a lawyer and a doctor, well, there is no need for more, there is no need for you and your great education. It becomes meaningless, and certainly will not ensure your survival. Go back to live with mommy and daddy, they will know what to do with you, for a few months, before they can no longer stand it and kick you out for good, stating: “never ask for money ever again!”

And if you try to claim those same benefits reserved for brainless and uneducated people, even the government will feign surprise and ignorance: “I don’t understand, you have a PhD, and you cannot find a job? What is wrong with you! Are you sure you are not just a loser, and do not deserve any kind of help? Perhaps there is one good solution for you, why don’t you just declare yourself a failure and commit suicide?” That’s the answer I got, a miracle I did not follow it through.

Oh yes, higher education brings you there, the thought of suicide. When facing such an incomprehensible world, that has lost touch with reality. That a degree not only will not get you a job in the field you have studied, but on top of it, it will make sure you can’t even get a job as a street cleaner. I know.

You would then be in your right to wonder why you spent 25 years of your life, if not 30, to study. And wonder how you will ever repay this astronomical debt you contracted to achieve this degree. It is clear you will never work in that field, you will never get the salary they promised you. And hence, before you even begin your life, at 30, you can only feel despair.

Of course we are all intelligent here, we are all intellectuals, we are all educated. We can easily debate Capote, Hemmingway and Nietzsche. But don’t you see? This is not wanted in this market. Not only it is not required, it is despised, as the workforce can truly recognise the truth: education has become futile, you are useless, even most probably unwanted. Know about Kant and Descartes? Good! And now get lost! And then your only solution is to read Machiavelli, and finally understand the full extent of its true meaning.

If I had been responsible for implementing a system of education initially, I don’t think I would have come up with the system most Western countries have at the moment. I also understand that now it may be too late, it would need to be changed globally. Because if one country changes its system, none of its citizens will ever be able to work abroad, their skills would simply not be recognised. However, let’s identify the problems with education, and perhaps without a radical change or revolution, a few things could be adapted and developed along the way.

It is obvious education does not work. It is the biggest waste of resources, energy, time and money anyone could ever witness. I’ve said it before, I’ll repeat it now: how dare we have a huge portion of the population wasting up to 25 years in schools, colleges and universities, if not 35, doing nothing productive for society except learning things most of them don’t even care about or wish to learn, that nobody in the active world gives a damn about, when statistically a huge portion of these people will not even live to be 50 years old?

It is a huge waste! Have we gone mad? Is it not time to re-adjust this whole system of education? Perhaps we don’t even need such a thing at all! Certainly not to the extreme we brought it to.

Learn on the job is truly all that is required. After all, your boss is always the mindless one who had no intelligence whatsoever, no education whatsoever, but ended up at the top because he was incapable of finding a better job somewhere else. And hence, he spent 25 years working for those fools, and was eventually somehow promoted, again and again.

After all, that secretary who is nothing, knows more about your case, and will help you more, than the professional who does not have the time, nor the will, to care about you, no matter how much money you spend for those out of reach services. Oh! Always trust the one without the degree willing to help you. He or she is the one who will save your meaningless existence, certainly not the expert who never has time for anything, let alone for you.

And now, see what truly happens at the end of it. It turned out that the whole goal of studying had nothing to do with teaching something. It was all about testing you, comparing you with the moron sitting next to you, eliminating you. If you turn out to be better equipped in memorising all that crap, or simply if you had more time than that moron to do so, then you will do better in your exams. And depending on that, you may go higher, and end up in the best institutions. Though, in retrospect, maybe you did not truly deserve it. Most likely you are that moron.

I was so obsessed with studies, the day I abandoned sciences in college, I thought my life had come to an end. It certainly felt like it in my family, they all had a heart attack. I studied natural sciences instead, and then went on to study law at university. Everyone was happy again, but I was about to commit suicide. I was doing nothing I really wanted to do, I was studying the last thing I would ever have picked.

When I dropped out of law and switched to philosophy and literature, I didn’t tell my family. When they found out, they all said my life had been wasted, that I might as well be dead. Perhaps they were right after all, my Master Degree in Literature certainly never brought me any money. At least I studied what I wanted. Unfortunately it didn’t bring me a job. And so now I am as depressed as ever.

This is how obsessed society is now with studies. We all need to push our children to the brink of insanity into those universities for years and years and years, and hope that at the end of it they will get the diploma that will ensure them a big income. We don’t care about what those children truly want to do, what they like, what they might enjoy doing for the rest of their life. We don’t even care if they will have a job at the end of it all, as it is now clear that they won’t.

The result is horrendous. The ones who succeed never wanted to succeed in these fields in the first place, they were bored to death and now they will be unhappy in their new cushy jobs for years to come. The ones who failed, that’s even worse, they are contemplating suicide, how a wonderful concept it all is. Better be useless in death, than go through being useless through life. You can quote me on that.

The big competition game gets to you, your parents and your teachers make sure of it, even employers and other universities, and even your friends. You need to win, you need to get to the top, and if you fail, you fail big time, no one wants to know you anymore. It is soul destroying, it leads to depression, sickness, sadness, a sense of absolute hopelessness.

So who wins in all of this? Who finally gets the job he or she always dreamt of? No one. Nothing in the education system will truly assess what you truly want to do, and expedite you on your way to become it. On the contrary, everything works against you. And it does not even give you a job at the end of it!

I think we should prevent anyone from wasting half of their existence learning something, whatever it is, on a bench in a class anywhere. I don’t believe this is the way to go. I think we should spend much more time finding out what these children want to do with their life. Then, I feel they should learn on the job, more training than anything else, less boring classes.

For example, I wanted to be a writer. Has anyone, at any time, stopped me to assess this desire, and helped me get there? No, on the contrary, I only met obstacles. After I finally destroyed all the obstacles along the way, alienating my whole family in the process, disappointing all my teachers, virtually committing social suicide by studying literature and philosophy, I was once again met by a brick wall. It turned out that you do not learn to become a writer or a philosopher when you study literature and philosophy, you just learn about a few authors and what they wrote about. Big deal!

No one helped me or did anything to point me into any direction where I could learn to write and live out of my writings. I guess I could have done more research, find out other schools or something, but by then it was already too late. I could not now abandon that degree in pursuit of this. The system had failed completely, and would ensure I would never become a writer. And to this day, I am still just but nothing.

And then I turn around, turn on the TV, and hear all these actors or actresses, or successful musicians in bands, and in three seconds flat they say: “I can’t believe I am being paid so much to do what I actually enjoy doing. I don’t think I could be doing anything else, I would be useless at anything else.” And that’s it, this is so illuminating! I only want to do what I enjoy doing, nothing else matters. If I don’t do what I enjoy doing, then I may as well be dead. I don’t even need to be paid millions for it, as long as I can ensure my survival, I will be happy, at the very least.

It could have been worse, I could have thought that my long life ambition was to have the simplest life there is, picking up garbage for a living. Funny, I often think that this is my destiny, and that all would be so simple and easy, if everyday, all I had to do, was to pick up your garbage. As ironic as it may sound, I have considered it, and may still consider it. How low does one needs to go in order to find happiness and to free himself or herself from all this crap of education and responsibility you can’t never truly achieve?

And what fries me the most, after spending 25 years in schools, colleges, universities, in no less than three different countries, I still know nothing! I am still an ignorant bastard! I barely read 100 books in my entire life. I know a few authors, I remember vaguely what they wrote about, but that’s it! That was however enough for me to sustain any conversation about French literature, whether I was in Ottawa, in New York, in Paris or in London. Because internationally we all studied the same few authors, the same few books, and nothing else.

In the end, I understand, no one who studied anything knows anything about anything, except the main lines of it, a few classic authors and movements, and yeah, they may remember a few books they read. I bet they all know about Samuel Beckett and his “Waiting for Godot”. If I hear one more student in literature mentioning to me Samuel Beckett, I will scream so hard, the whole world will hear me. That book was shit, just like the author who wrote it. And that’s the end of it. That book certainly does not deserve to be studied worldwide. Who decided this? Why is every single student in French Literature worldwide will eventually get to read and study this book? It’s crap! I’m sure anyone in any field of study, economics for example, could easily identify that author and that book who are the classics which need to be eradicated from the curriculum.

Like Dangerous Liaisons of Choderlos de Laclos? At least that book was great, I did my thesis on it, but you won’t read that thesis any time soon, it is the worst thing I have ever written in my entire life. That was my big contribution to the world, after 25 years of hard study. A miserable fifty pages that never got out of some drawer somewhere, and that I am too ashamed to show the world. I wrote the damn thing in one night, to get the diploma, and that was it. But just wait for my PhD thesis on Agatha Christie, that will be something! And I suspect it is the same for everyone else. Complete waste of time and money.

So, in résumé, the problem about education is that we are spending too much resource on it, too many young people waste way too long learning useless things they will never need and don’t even want to learn. In the end, not many people will end up leading happy lives, because not many people will be doing what they truly want to do. No job is guaranteed at the end of it.

The system of competition has become overwhelming, causes too much pressure, for little results other than comparing and eliminating students, when perhaps there is not so much a need to compare them to that extreme over the idea that they should learn something productive to society, whilst actually enjoying the process.

What sort of society can afford to have half its population studying things for 25 years if not 30, doing nothing productive for us all, whilst the other half is basically either retired or about to retire if not dying? So, who’s doing all the work then?

Silly me, all the vegetables of the world are being produced in some weird country by a handful of slaves, and many machines. And our electronic equipment is being built by children in Singapore, and our clothes by babies in China. They’re so good at it! Does my bum look huge in this? Yes, enormous! Those babies know nothing about fashion!

I understand now how we can afford to spend our lifetime studying, we have our slaves working for us in the Third World. This should give us enough time to think then, think about how to make this place liveable. However, there does not seem to be much time for that in between 20 exams and 20 essays. And once you start to work, they not only want your life, they also claim your soul. 60 hours a week, against all laws, is what you can expect. And so, thinking? Maybe these things are better left to the slaves of the revolution. Our salvation will come from elsewhere, the revolution of the working babies of China perhaps, one day.

Have I mentioned somewhere that education should be free and accessible to everyone? No? Oh dear, I’m losing perspective. I guess I did not see the point of that, if we could not first guarantee a job to everyone at the end of it all, you see?

Many countries offer great education for free, it might explain why our market is flooded and saturated with foreigners from all those weird countries. More competition we could never hope to overcome. How we have become totally useless, us, the very sons and daughters of our nation.

Might have something to do with the fact that any foreigner pay so much more money to study here than our sons and daughters, and as such, only they, are guaranteed entry in our great educational system.

God only knows where they get the money from, their entire family it seems, knowing full well the future of this entire family will depend on the success on that son or daughter in a foreign country. Our parents? No way would they finance our education, whilst the government still somehow believes they have a duty to do so.

Those foreign students, you meet them in university libraries. They have gone half mad, cleaning the inside of their nose with their two hands, in front of everyone, without realising they are doing something astonishing. So much depends on their success, you see, they don’t care anymore about the quirkiness of upper society.

Ah! Foreigners! No manner whatsoever. We should create a special education for them, to teach them our ways. I bet it would be a failure, whilst they only think and succeed in taking advantage of our policies.

As long as you pay the price, you can take the place of our sons and daughters. This university will survive, no matter the cost, since the government will not help, since society does not value education. And why should it? In the state it is in, we all agree that at any rate, education is totally useless.

I invite you to study the French educational system. At first it seems crazy, irrational, unthinkable. It does not end with education, it is all interlinked with the productive world. The government will not only ensure you will get a free education, it will also ensure you will get a job in your field at the end of it. The government will find you a job, and until it does so, it pays you the salary you would expect from that job! And somehow it works. Study it carefully, it might be the solution we are all seeking, even if none of it makes any sense. A sure sign it might be the solution, we certainly require a radical change.

We need to reassess our priorities. We need to take every child aside and make sure we know what they like to do, and give them the chance to do it, get experience first hand in training in the real world. Or at least get the right school, college or university where they can really learn what they want. We need to terminate this obsession with producing more and more doctors, lawyers and engineers. It leads to too many unhappy lives and probab