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Anyone remember the nineties?
I was coming out of my teens and starting to have an idea of who I was and what I wanted from life.
The dying end of the 80s and emergence of the nineties saw so many incredible things happen, world changing events.
Apartheid ended, the Berlin Wall came down, communism collapsed in Russia, manned space stations, an end to what seemed like 20 years of Tory rule, Britpop was in full swing.
The economy was vibrant, unemployment was the lowest it had been since anyone could remember.
Labour won in a landslide and people partied, pop stars made it cool to be into politics, No Logo set fire to the imaginations of millions of people fed up with seeing us marketed and sold to like cattle.
Things were changing, looking good.
And then we hit 2000.
Anyone else here was stupid enough to believe we lay on the brink of a revolution in our development?
The 90s were glorious years, anything seemed possible. Hell, we even won a load of medals at the Commonwealth games and Olympics.
It was the dawn of the new century, people partied like you wouldn’t believe, a jubilant mood. Even had a fireworks display in London instead of the miserable “don’t go near Trafalgar Square” orders.
America was enjoying it’s most vibrant period since the end of WW2, with a President who’s biggest scandal was whether he had slept with his intern or not. This was a guy more interested in shagging, playing his saxaphone and admitting he smoked dope at college, and America was booming.
Then came 2000.
And it started to turn bad. Bush was elected in a mire of scandal and doubt, Blair started to believe his own press clippings and decided he wasn’t accountable.
Within 2 months of Bush being elected, they almost came to war with China over a downed spy plane and the holding of pilots. Remember that? The cynics pointed out that Bush’s popularity soared, which made people forget about the dubious circumstances surrounding the uncertainty of his election victory, with the deciding county being in control of his brother Jeb - a man with known criminal and drug lord cartel connections, and under investigation for several shady property deals in Florida with a former Cuban businessman, currently serving 20 years for drug smuggling.
Then came the World Trade Center attacks, a horrific and despicable attack against innocent people - no matter what your feelings towards US foreign policy, the people that died were you and me, just at work that day.
And that signalled the rapid descent into the Orwellian nightmare we dwell in today.
America is in the grip of recession, spending billions of dollars per week to keep troops in Iraq.
We went to war without international sanction or support, on what is being shown to be at best erroneous, at worst deliberately fabricated evidence.
There has been a regime change…except there’s no change, it’s still interim confusion. Baghdad is still without power, water or basic human sanitary conditions. Troops are being killed daily and this week saw the attack on the UN headquarters, again targeting innocent people just doing their jobs.
We have civil war in Afghanistan, over 90 people killed on Tuesday in rioting.
There is genocide in Rwanda and Zimbabwe and Achen and East Timoor and Indonesia.
Pakistan and India are a few arguments away from nuking each other, Palastine and Isreal engage in petty retaliation murders daily.
This country is sinking in a morass of sleaze, lies, deceit and shadowy unselected officials dictating the grounds for war, an innocent man apparently committed suicide because hi conscience caused him to speak out against what he felt was wrong.
What the hell is going on?
How did we fall so spectacularly from the hope of the nineties? Where did we decide to kill each other, fear foreigners, neglect our kids and expect television to raise them inbetween shouting at them for misbehaving?
How is it that George W Bush, a bigoted fundamentalist of limited intelligence is suddenly the most powerful man on the planet? Did everyone forget the damage his war hawk father did? The former CIA chief turned advisor to Shrubby’s cabinet?
A cabinet made up of former and current oil company CEOs that decide to reverse Clinton’s capping of funding to the military-industrial complex and a restarting of the Star Wars defence programme?
Clinton said “We don’t need these weapons, we don’t need to spend billions on missiles, there’s nobody left to fight. Let’s concentrate on building America”.
But 3 months before the election, Republicans suddenly dig out Paula Jones and the whole Whitewater scandal that ended up as nothing.
Clinton leaves under a cloud of distrust, in steps Bush and suddenly we’re right back to the mid-eighties with war funding outweighing domestic spend, encroaching recession and everyone terrified of each other.
We have, as a planet, reverted back to arcane, hateful little me-monkeys. Locked inside our homes, comforted by the banal glow of reality tv shows, celebrity hairdressers and daytime talk shows that make sure they don’t stray into anything too mentally taxing.
We are fed a diet of fear, propaganda, bigotry and intolerance via our newspapers. You don’t even have to go out, it comes to your door.
And those that take a step back and say “Wait a second” are labelled as traitors, new-age hippies and “wannabe liberals”.
If we are not presented with tanks protecting our airports from an un-named threat from a country that has never acted aggressively towards The West then we are kept scared by reports of violent, organised criminals in the shape of immigrants. Headlines even stoop so stupidly low as to talk of eating donkeys.
Take a step back and think about how utterly retarded we are as a nation to consider eating donkeys as an indicator of these evil foreigners.
You are being kept isolated from your neighbours. You are being kept stupid with programmes about nothing and magazines devoted to the lives of these ciphers.
You are told that your government knows best and to leave it to them. Every wondered why despite massive rises in the budget every year, alcohol only rises minimally if at all?
Because if you make booze cheap enough, people will get smashed in these times of recession, job losses, frightening immigrants, terrorists, child snatchers and killer farmers with shotguns.
If the papers are to be believed, this evening you will be raped and eaten if not by 12 evil refugees, then by burglars or Saddam Hussein.
It is easier to keep the population scared and inside peering through their windows than it is to have them questioning and asking if that’s really necessary.
The “Gulf War 2” is a perfect example of this.
Over a million people marched to protest, saying there were no WOMD in Iraq, pointing out that there has never been an act of terrorism towards this country by any group other than The IRA so why go to war?
Regime change? Wasn’t the reason we were told we needed to. But it became the reason when no traces could be found of these WOMD we were all told could be launched within 45 mins.
Blair has gone from talking about WOMD to “programmes of WOMD”, a subtle shift in language that’s hardly noticeable.
But what galls me is our meek acceptance of this climate of fear and hatred towards each other.
Simon Cowell, Pop Idol’s “Mr Nasty” and Ann Robinson.
2 people that have made a career out of being vicious and nasty to people like you and me. We celebrate and reward sneering disdain as if it were a virtue.
What kind of a world is this we have created and revel in? We idolise and make celebrities out of humiliating and belittling each other? Since when was that to be lusted after?
You want a reason why this world is screwed? It’s everywhere, and most of our problems are caused by us.
Bin Laden, the man responsible for the WTC attacks. Trained by the USA. The CIA selected him when he was studying over here. We funded him, armed him and gave him the capabilities to wreak havoc against Russia when it tried to invade Afghanistan. The CIA deliberately chose the most fundamentalist, hardline religious maniacs they could and let them loose to prevent those evil commies from gaining a foothold in the oil region. Then they left him to do what the hell he wanted to. The Taliban didn’t just spring up in 2001, it had been operating with consent since the early eighties, and they were left to control the poppy fields. Because poppy fields equal heroin and opium.
Saddam Hussein? Same story. Picked, funded, trained and set loose by us to combat The Ayotallah Kohemi, who overthrew the CIA installed Shah, who came to power in 1953 in a coup organised by the CIA and MI5.
It’s all smoke and mirrors, and we swallow it.
We follow the lives of a footballer and a failed pop singer as if this is something to aspire to, meanwhile inner-city schools are becoming war zones. We lap up the mundane and celebrate the mediocre because it is rammed down our throats to keep us numb and stupid.
Don’t bother reading up on how many Middle Eastern governments we have toppled to keep that area destabilised. Instead, buy cheap beer and keep yourself stupefied and scared of immigrants.
And nobody is allowed to stand up and make a difference.
Because those that do are killed.
JFK? Murdered. He wanted an end to the Vietnam war and fought to give blacks the right to vote. He helped empower an entire underclass who were basically living in slavery. Blacks didn’t get the right to vote in America until the late 1960s. We’re not talking 200 years ago. He prevented the CIA planned invasion and coup of Cuba, resulting in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Bobby Kennedy who vowed to carry on that work? Murdered.
Huey Newton? Murdered. He told blacks they didn’t have to tolerate being beaten, murdered, denied basic human rights and he was killed. The Black Panthers rise to prominence neatly coincides with the arrival of heroin and crack into inner city ghettos targeting who? Black angry youths.
Ghandi? Murdered. He united a country against British tyrannical rule. He advocated non-violent protest and over threw the largest empire since The Romans. But he died, and India & Pakistan have warred ever since.
Martin Luther King? Murdered. For suggesting blacks weren’t animals and had the right to sit where they wanted on a bus.
Malcolm X? Murdered. For the same reasons.
Archibishop Romero in El Salvador? Murdered.
Anyone that tries to say “It’s ok, don’t be afraid. There’s no need to live like this, you don’t have to fear the person next to you” is killed.
It doesn’t pay to have your citizens thinking and questioning, because once they do then they will see through your sham governments, your lies, your big business destroying what future we have.
It’s far better to keep us all in our homes, watching purile tv shows about nothing, drinking beer and not education our children about these things.
And it’s continuing to this day, all around you. Look in today’s papers.
War, terrorism, immigrants, no job security, roaming gangs of violent murderous gangs of youths, hateful Arabs, intolerant Europeans.
There’s no need for this to continue. Over a million people marched to protest the Iraq invasion. It wasn’t supposed to change anything, it was supposed to show those that want you scared and isolated that there are people unwilling to surrender to this climate of terror and mistrust.
I refuse to believe that there is no hope left for you and me, I cannot stop demanding you write to politicians, that you don’t watch trivial tv shows, that you don’t believe every immigrant wants to steal your car and rape your parents.
If you stop trying, if you surrender and give in to those that want you to be afraid and suspicious then we have no chance at all.
Be it donating to charity, stopping someone bullying in the street, refusing to listen to racists at work…even the smallest, most insignificant thing matters.
Ghandi changed the world because he was thrown off a train, he wrote a letter of protest and ended up overthrowing an empire.
You can do something, you just have to want to.
I was coming out of my teens and starting to have an idea of who I was and what I wanted from life.
The dying end of the 80s and emergence of the nineties saw so many incredible things happen, world changing events.
Apartheid ended, the Berlin Wall came down, communism collapsed in Russia, manned space stations, an end to what seemed like 20 years of Tory rule, Britpop was in full swing.
The economy was vibrant, unemployment was the lowest it had been since anyone could remember.
Labour won in a landslide and people partied, pop stars made it cool to be into politics, No Logo set fire to the imaginations of millions of people fed up with seeing us marketed and sold to like cattle.
Things were changing, looking good.
And then we hit 2000.
Anyone else here was stupid enough to believe we lay on the brink of a revolution in our development?
The 90s were glorious years, anything seemed possible. Hell, we even won a load of medals at the Commonwealth games and Olympics.
It was the dawn of the new century, people partied like you wouldn’t believe, a jubilant mood. Even had a fireworks display in London instead of the miserable “don’t go near Trafalgar Square” orders.
America was enjoying it’s most vibrant period since the end of WW2, with a President who’s biggest scandal was whether he had slept with his intern or not. This was a guy more interested in shagging, playing his saxaphone and admitting he smoked dope at college, and America was booming.
Then came 2000.
And it started to turn bad. Bush was elected in a mire of scandal and doubt, Blair started to believe his own press clippings and decided he wasn’t accountable.
Within 2 months of Bush being elected, they almost came to war with China over a downed spy plane and the holding of pilots. Remember that? The cynics pointed out that Bush’s popularity soared, which made people forget about the dubious circumstances surrounding the uncertainty of his election victory, with the deciding county being in control of his brother Jeb - a man with known criminal and drug lord cartel connections, and under investigation for several shady property deals in Florida with a former Cuban businessman, currently serving 20 years for drug smuggling.
Then came the World Trade Center attacks, a horrific and despicable attack against innocent people - no matter what your feelings towards US foreign policy, the people that died were you and me, just at work that day.
And that signalled the rapid descent into the Orwellian nightmare we dwell in today.
America is in the grip of recession, spending billions of dollars per week to keep troops in Iraq.
We went to war without international sanction or support, on what is being shown to be at best erroneous, at worst deliberately fabricated evidence.
There has been a regime change…except there’s no change, it’s still interim confusion. Baghdad is still without power, water or basic human sanitary conditions. Troops are being killed daily and this week saw the attack on the UN headquarters, again targeting innocent people just doing their jobs.
We have civil war in Afghanistan, over 90 people killed on Tuesday in rioting.
There is genocide in Rwanda and Zimbabwe and Achen and East Timoor and Indonesia.
Pakistan and India are a few arguments away from nuking each other, Palastine and Isreal engage in petty retaliation murders daily.
This country is sinking in a morass of sleaze, lies, deceit and shadowy unselected officials dictating the grounds for war, an innocent man apparently committed suicide because hi conscience caused him to speak out against what he felt was wrong.
What the hell is going on?
How did we fall so spectacularly from the hope of the nineties? Where did we decide to kill each other, fear foreigners, neglect our kids and expect television to raise them inbetween shouting at them for misbehaving?
How is it that George W Bush, a bigoted fundamentalist of limited intelligence is suddenly the most powerful man on the planet? Did everyone forget the damage his war hawk father did? The former CIA chief turned advisor to Shrubby’s cabinet?
A cabinet made up of former and current oil company CEOs that decide to reverse Clinton’s capping of funding to the military-industrial complex and a restarting of the Star Wars defence programme?
Clinton said “We don’t need these weapons, we don’t need to spend billions on missiles, there’s nobody left to fight. Let’s concentrate on building America”.
But 3 months before the election, Republicans suddenly dig out Paula Jones and the whole Whitewater scandal that ended up as nothing.
Clinton leaves under a cloud of distrust, in steps Bush and suddenly we’re right back to the mid-eighties with war funding outweighing domestic spend, encroaching recession and everyone terrified of each other.
We have, as a planet, reverted back to arcane, hateful little me-monkeys. Locked inside our homes, comforted by the banal glow of reality tv shows, celebrity hairdressers and daytime talk shows that make sure they don’t stray into anything too mentally taxing.
We are fed a diet of fear, propaganda, bigotry and intolerance via our newspapers. You don’t even have to go out, it comes to your door.
And those that take a step back and say “Wait a second” are labelled as traitors, new-age hippies and “wannabe liberals”.
If we are not presented with tanks protecting our airports from an un-named threat from a country that has never acted aggressively towards The West then we are kept scared by reports of violent, organised criminals in the shape of immigrants. Headlines even stoop so stupidly low as to talk of eating donkeys.
Take a step back and think about how utterly retarded we are as a nation to consider eating donkeys as an indicator of these evil foreigners.
You are being kept isolated from your neighbours. You are being kept stupid with programmes about nothing and magazines devoted to the lives of these ciphers.
You are told that your government knows best and to leave it to them. Every wondered why despite massive rises in the budget every year, alcohol only rises minimally if at all?
Because if you make booze cheap enough, people will get smashed in these times of recession, job losses, frightening immigrants, terrorists, child snatchers and killer farmers with shotguns.
If the papers are to be believed, this evening you will be raped and eaten if not by 12 evil refugees, then by burglars or Saddam Hussein.
It is easier to keep the population scared and inside peering through their windows than it is to have them questioning and asking if that’s really necessary.
The “Gulf War 2” is a perfect example of this.
Over a million people marched to protest, saying there were no WOMD in Iraq, pointing out that there has never been an act of terrorism towards this country by any group other than The IRA so why go to war?
Regime change? Wasn’t the reason we were told we needed to. But it became the reason when no traces could be found of these WOMD we were all told could be launched within 45 mins.
Blair has gone from talking about WOMD to “programmes of WOMD”, a subtle shift in language that’s hardly noticeable.
But what galls me is our meek acceptance of this climate of fear and hatred towards each other.
Simon Cowell, Pop Idol’s “Mr Nasty” and Ann Robinson.
2 people that have made a career out of being vicious and nasty to people like you and me. We celebrate and reward sneering disdain as if it were a virtue.
What kind of a world is this we have created and revel in? We idolise and make celebrities out of humiliating and belittling each other? Since when was that to be lusted after?
You want a reason why this world is screwed? It’s everywhere, and most of our problems are caused by us.
Bin Laden, the man responsible for the WTC attacks. Trained by the USA. The CIA selected him when he was studying over here. We funded him, armed him and gave him the capabilities to wreak havoc against Russia when it tried to invade Afghanistan. The CIA deliberately chose the most fundamentalist, hardline religious maniacs they could and let them loose to prevent those evil commies from gaining a foothold in the oil region. Then they left him to do what the hell he wanted to. The Taliban didn’t just spring up in 2001, it had been operating with consent since the early eighties, and they were left to control the poppy fields. Because poppy fields equal heroin and opium.
Saddam Hussein? Same story. Picked, funded, trained and set loose by us to combat The Ayotallah Kohemi, who overthrew the CIA installed Shah, who came to power in 1953 in a coup organised by the CIA and MI5.
It’s all smoke and mirrors, and we swallow it.
We follow the lives of a footballer and a failed pop singer as if this is something to aspire to, meanwhile inner-city schools are becoming war zones. We lap up the mundane and celebrate the mediocre because it is rammed down our throats to keep us numb and stupid.
Don’t bother reading up on how many Middle Eastern governments we have toppled to keep that area destabilised. Instead, buy cheap beer and keep yourself stupefied and scared of immigrants.
And nobody is allowed to stand up and make a difference.
Because those that do are killed.
JFK? Murdered. He wanted an end to the Vietnam war and fought to give blacks the right to vote. He helped empower an entire underclass who were basically living in slavery. Blacks didn’t get the right to vote in America until the late 1960s. We’re not talking 200 years ago. He prevented the CIA planned invasion and coup of Cuba, resulting in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Bobby Kennedy who vowed to carry on that work? Murdered.
Huey Newton? Murdered. He told blacks they didn’t have to tolerate being beaten, murdered, denied basic human rights and he was killed. The Black Panthers rise to prominence neatly coincides with the arrival of heroin and crack into inner city ghettos targeting who? Black angry youths.
Ghandi? Murdered. He united a country against British tyrannical rule. He advocated non-violent protest and over threw the largest empire since The Romans. But he died, and India & Pakistan have warred ever since.
Martin Luther King? Murdered. For suggesting blacks weren’t animals and had the right to sit where they wanted on a bus.
Malcolm X? Murdered. For the same reasons.
Archibishop Romero in El Salvador? Murdered.
Anyone that tries to say “It’s ok, don’t be afraid. There’s no need to live like this, you don’t have to fear the person next to you” is killed.
It doesn’t pay to have your citizens thinking and questioning, because once they do then they will see through your sham governments, your lies, your big business destroying what future we have.
It’s far better to keep us all in our homes, watching purile tv shows about nothing, drinking beer and not education our children about these things.
And it’s continuing to this day, all around you. Look in today’s papers.
War, terrorism, immigrants, no job security, roaming gangs of violent murderous gangs of youths, hateful Arabs, intolerant Europeans.
There’s no need for this to continue. Over a million people marched to protest the Iraq invasion. It wasn’t supposed to change anything, it was supposed to show those that want you scared and isolated that there are people unwilling to surrender to this climate of terror and mistrust.
I refuse to believe that there is no hope left for you and me, I cannot stop demanding you write to politicians, that you don’t watch trivial tv shows, that you don’t believe every immigrant wants to steal your car and rape your parents.
If you stop trying, if you surrender and give in to those that want you to be afraid and suspicious then we have no chance at all.
Be it donating to charity, stopping someone bullying in the street, refusing to listen to racists at work…even the smallest, most insignificant thing matters.
Ghandi changed the world because he was thrown off a train, he wrote a letter of protest and ended up overthrowing an empire.
You can do something, you just have to want to.
Page:
Anyone remember the nineties?
I was coming out of my teens and starting to have an idea of who I was and what I wanted from life.
The dying end of the 80s and emergence of the nineties saw so many incredible things happen, world changing events.
Apartheid ended, the Berlin Wall came down, communism collapsed in Russia, manned space stations, an end to what seemed like 20 years of Tory rule, Britpop was in full swing.
The economy was vibrant, unemployment was the lowest it had been since anyone could remember.
Labour won in a landslide and people partied, pop stars made it cool to be into politics, No Logo set fire to the imaginations of millions of people fed up with seeing us marketed and sold to like cattle.
Things were changing, looking good.
And then we hit 2000.
Anyone else here was stupid enough to believe we lay on the brink of a revolution in our development?
The 90s were glorious years, anything seemed possible. Hell, we even won a load of medals at the Commonwealth games and Olympics.
It was the dawn of the new century, people partied like you wouldn’t believe, a jubilant mood. Even had a fireworks display in London instead of the miserable “don’t go near Trafalgar Square” orders.
America was enjoying it’s most vibrant period since the end of WW2, with a President who’s biggest scandal was whether he had slept with his intern or not. This was a guy more interested in shagging, playing his saxaphone and admitting he smoked dope at college, and America was booming.
Then came 2000.
And it started to turn bad. Bush was elected in a mire of scandal and doubt, Blair started to believe his own press clippings and decided he wasn’t accountable.
Within 2 months of Bush being elected, they almost came to war with China over a downed spy plane and the holding of pilots. Remember that? The cynics pointed out that Bush’s popularity soared, which made people forget about the dubious circumstances surrounding the uncertainty of his election victory, with the deciding county being in control of his brother Jeb - a man with known criminal and drug lord cartel connections, and under investigation for several shady property deals in Florida with a former Cuban businessman, currently serving 20 years for drug smuggling.
Then came the World Trade Center attacks, a horrific and despicable attack against innocent people - no matter what your feelings towards US foreign policy, the people that died were you and me, just at work that day.
And that signalled the rapid descent into the Orwellian nightmare we dwell in today.
America is in the grip of recession, spending billions of dollars per week to keep troops in Iraq.
We went to war without international sanction or support, on what is being shown to be at best erroneous, at worst deliberately fabricated evidence.
There has been a regime change…except there’s no change, it’s still interim confusion. Baghdad is still without power, water or basic human sanitary conditions. Troops are being killed daily and this week saw the attack on the UN headquarters, again targeting innocent people just doing their jobs.
We have civil war in Afghanistan, over 90 people killed on Tuesday in rioting.
There is genocide in Rwanda and Zimbabwe and Achen and East Timoor and Indonesia.
Pakistan and India are a few arguments away from nuking each other, Palastine and Isreal engage in petty retaliation murders daily.
This country is sinking in a morass of sleaze, lies, deceit and shadowy unselected officials dictating the grounds for war, an innocent man apparently committed suicide because hi conscience caused him to speak out against what he felt was wrong.
What the hell is going on?
How did we fall so spectacularly from the hope of the nineties? Where did we decide to kill each other, fear foreigners, neglect our kids and expect television to raise them inbetween shouting at them for misbehaving?
How is it that George W Bush, a bigoted fundamentalist of limited intelligence is suddenly the most powerful man on the planet? Did everyone forget the damage his war hawk father did? The former CIA chief turned advisor to Shrubby’s cabinet?
A cabinet made up of former and current oil company CEOs that decide to reverse Clinton’s capping of funding to the military-industrial complex and a restarting of the Star Wars defence programme?
Clinton said “We don’t need these weapons, we don’t need to spend billions on missiles, there’s nobody left to fight. Let’s concentrate on building America”.
But 3 months before the election, Republicans suddenly dig out Paula Jones and the whole Whitewater scandal that ended up as nothing.
Clinton leaves under a cloud of distrust, in steps Bush and suddenly we’re right back to the mid-eighties with war funding outweighing domestic spend, encroaching recession and everyone terrified of each other.
We have, as a planet, reverted back to arcane, hateful little me-monkeys. Locked inside our homes, comforted by the banal glow of reality tv shows, celebrity hairdressers and daytime talk shows that make sure they don’t stray into anything too mentally taxing.
We are fed a diet of fear, propaganda, bigotry and intolerance via our newspapers. You don’t even have to go out, it comes to your door.
And those that take a step back and say “Wait a second” are labelled as traitors, new-age hippies and “wannabe liberals”.
If we are not presented with tanks protecting our airports from an un-named threat from a country that has never acted aggressively towards The West then we are kept scared by reports of violent, organised criminals in the shape of immigrants. Headlines even stoop so stupidly low as to talk of eating donkeys.
Take a step back and think about how utterly retarded we are as a nation to consider eating donkeys as an indicator of these evil foreigners.
You are being kept isolated from your neighbours. You are being kept stupid with programmes about nothing and magazines devoted to the lives of these ciphers.
You are told that your government knows best and to leave it to them. Every wondered why despite massive rises in the budget every year, alcohol only rises minimally if at all?
Because if you make booze cheap enough, people will get smashed in these times of recession, job losses, frightening immigrants, terrorists, child snatchers and killer farmers with shotguns.
If the papers are to be believed, this evening you will be raped and eaten if not by 12 evil refugees, then by burglars or Saddam Hussein.
It is easier to keep the population scared and inside peering through their windows than it is to have them questioning and asking if that’s really necessary.
The “Gulf War 2” is a perfect example of this.
Over a million people marched to protest, saying there were no WOMD in Iraq, pointing out that there has never been an act of terrorism towards this country by any group other than The IRA so why go to war?
Regime change? Wasn’t the reason we were told we needed to. But it became the reason when no traces could be found of these WOMD we were all told could be launched within 45 mins.
Blair has gone from talking about WOMD to “programmes of WOMD”, a subtle shift in language that’s hardly noticeable.
But what galls me is our meek acceptance of this climate of fear and hatred towards each other.
Simon Cowell, Pop Idol’s “Mr Nasty” and Ann Robinson.
2 people that have made a career out of being vicious and nasty to people like you and me. We celebrate and reward sneering disdain as if it were a virtue.
What kind of a world is this we have created and revel in? We idolise and make celebrities out of humiliating and belittling each other? Since when was that to be lusted after?
You want a reason why this world is screwed? It’s everywhere, and most of our problems are caused by us.
Bin Laden, the man responsible for the WTC attacks. Trained by the USA. The CIA selected him when he was studying over here. We funded him, armed him and gave him the capabilities to wreak havoc against Russia when it tried to invade Afghanistan. The CIA deliberately chose the most fundamentalist, hardline religious maniacs they could and let them loose to prevent those evil commies from gaining a foothold in the oil region. Then they left him to do what the hell he wanted to. The Taliban didn’t just spring up in 2001, it had been operating with consent since the early eighties, and they were left to control the poppy fields. Because poppy fields equal heroin and opium.
Saddam Hussein? Same story. Picked, funded, trained and set loose by us to combat The Ayotallah Kohemi, who overthrew the CIA installed Shah, who came to power in 1953 in a coup organised by the CIA and MI5.
It’s all smoke and mirrors, and we swallow it.
We follow the lives of a footballer and a failed pop singer as if this is something to aspire to, meanwhile inner-city schools are becoming war zones. We lap up the mundane and celebrate the mediocre because it is rammed down our throats to keep us numb and stupid.
Don’t bother reading up on how many Middle Eastern governments we have toppled to keep that area destabilised. Instead, buy cheap beer and keep yourself stupefied and scared of immigrants.
And nobody is allowed to stand up and make a difference.
Because those that do are killed.
JFK? Murdered. He wanted an end to the Vietnam war and fought to give blacks the right to vote. He helped empower an entire underclass who were basically living in slavery. Blacks didn’t get the right to vote in America until the late 1960s. We’re not talking 200 years ago. He prevented the CIA planned invasion and coup of Cuba, resulting in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Bobby Kennedy who vowed to carry on that work? Murdered.
Huey Newton? Murdered. He told blacks they didn’t have to tolerate being beaten, murdered, denied basic human rights and he was killed. The Black Panthers rise to prominence neatly coincides with the arrival of heroin and crack into inner city ghettos targeting who? Black angry youths.
Ghandi? Murdered. He united a country against British tyrannical rule. He advocated non-violent protest and over threw the largest empire since The Romans. But he died, and India & Pakistan have warred ever since.
Martin Luther King? Murdered. For suggesting blacks weren’t animals and had the right to sit where they wanted on a bus.
Malcolm X? Murdered. For the same reasons.
Archibishop Romero in El Salvador? Murdered.
Anyone that tries to say “It’s ok, don’t be afraid. There’s no need to live like this, you don’t have to fear the person next to you” is killed.
It doesn’t pay to have your citizens thinking and questioning, because once they do then they will see through your sham governments, your lies, your big business destroying what future we have.
It’s far better to keep us all in our homes, watching purile tv shows about nothing, drinking beer and not education our children about these things.
And it’s continuing to this day, all around you. Look in today’s papers.
War, terrorism, immigrants, no job security, roaming gangs of violent murderous gangs of youths, hateful Arabs, intolerant Europeans.
There’s no need for this to continue. Over a million people marched to protest the Iraq invasion. It wasn’t supposed to change anything, it was supposed to show those that want you scared and isolated that there are people unwilling to surrender to this climate of terror and mistrust.
I refuse to believe that there is no hope left for you and me, I cannot stop demanding you write to politicians, that you don’t watch trivial tv shows, that you don’t believe every immigrant wants to steal your car and rape your parents.
If you stop trying, if you surrender and give in to those that want you to be afraid and suspicious then we have no chance at all.
Be it donating to charity, stopping someone bullying in the street, refusing to listen to racists at work…even the smallest, most insignificant thing matters.
Ghandi changed the world because he was thrown off a train, he wrote a letter of protest and ended up overthrowing an empire.
You can do something, you just have to want to.
I was coming out of my teens and starting to have an idea of who I was and what I wanted from life.
The dying end of the 80s and emergence of the nineties saw so many incredible things happen, world changing events.
Apartheid ended, the Berlin Wall came down, communism collapsed in Russia, manned space stations, an end to what seemed like 20 years of Tory rule, Britpop was in full swing.
The economy was vibrant, unemployment was the lowest it had been since anyone could remember.
Labour won in a landslide and people partied, pop stars made it cool to be into politics, No Logo set fire to the imaginations of millions of people fed up with seeing us marketed and sold to like cattle.
Things were changing, looking good.
And then we hit 2000.
Anyone else here was stupid enough to believe we lay on the brink of a revolution in our development?
The 90s were glorious years, anything seemed possible. Hell, we even won a load of medals at the Commonwealth games and Olympics.
It was the dawn of the new century, people partied like you wouldn’t believe, a jubilant mood. Even had a fireworks display in London instead of the miserable “don’t go near Trafalgar Square” orders.
America was enjoying it’s most vibrant period since the end of WW2, with a President who’s biggest scandal was whether he had slept with his intern or not. This was a guy more interested in shagging, playing his saxaphone and admitting he smoked dope at college, and America was booming.
Then came 2000.
And it started to turn bad. Bush was elected in a mire of scandal and doubt, Blair started to believe his own press clippings and decided he wasn’t accountable.
Within 2 months of Bush being elected, they almost came to war with China over a downed spy plane and the holding of pilots. Remember that? The cynics pointed out that Bush’s popularity soared, which made people forget about the dubious circumstances surrounding the uncertainty of his election victory, with the deciding county being in control of his brother Jeb - a man with known criminal and drug lord cartel connections, and under investigation for several shady property deals in Florida with a former Cuban businessman, currently serving 20 years for drug smuggling.
Then came the World Trade Center attacks, a horrific and despicable attack against innocent people - no matter what your feelings towards US foreign policy, the people that died were you and me, just at work that day.
And that signalled the rapid descent into the Orwellian nightmare we dwell in today.
America is in the grip of recession, spending billions of dollars per week to keep troops in Iraq.
We went to war without international sanction or support, on what is being shown to be at best erroneous, at worst deliberately fabricated evidence.
There has been a regime change…except there’s no change, it’s still interim confusion. Baghdad is still without power, water or basic human sanitary conditions. Troops are being killed daily and this week saw the attack on the UN headquarters, again targeting innocent people just doing their jobs.
We have civil war in Afghanistan, over 90 people killed on Tuesday in rioting.
There is genocide in Rwanda and Zimbabwe and Achen and East Timoor and Indonesia.
Pakistan and India are a few arguments away from nuking each other, Palastine and Isreal engage in petty retaliation murders daily.
This country is sinking in a morass of sleaze, lies, deceit and shadowy unselected officials dictating the grounds for war, an innocent man apparently committed suicide because hi conscience caused him to speak out against what he felt was wrong.
What the hell is going on?
How did we fall so spectacularly from the hope of the nineties? Where did we decide to kill each other, fear foreigners, neglect our kids and expect television to raise them inbetween shouting at them for misbehaving?
How is it that George W Bush, a bigoted fundamentalist of limited intelligence is suddenly the most powerful man on the planet? Did everyone forget the damage his war hawk father did? The former CIA chief turned advisor to Shrubby’s cabinet?
A cabinet made up of former and current oil company CEOs that decide to reverse Clinton’s capping of funding to the military-industrial complex and a restarting of the Star Wars defence programme?
Clinton said “We don’t need these weapons, we don’t need to spend billions on missiles, there’s nobody left to fight. Let’s concentrate on building America”.
But 3 months before the election, Republicans suddenly dig out Paula Jones and the whole Whitewater scandal that ended up as nothing.
Clinton leaves under a cloud of distrust, in steps Bush and suddenly we’re right back to the mid-eighties with war funding outweighing domestic spend, encroaching recession and everyone terrified of each other.
We have, as a planet, reverted back to arcane, hateful little me-monkeys. Locked inside our homes, comforted by the banal glow of reality tv shows, celebrity hairdressers and daytime talk shows that make sure they don’t stray into anything too mentally taxing.
We are fed a diet of fear, propaganda, bigotry and intolerance via our newspapers. You don’t even have to go out, it comes to your door.
And those that take a step back and say “Wait a second” are labelled as traitors, new-age hippies and “wannabe liberals”.
If we are not presented with tanks protecting our airports from an un-named threat from a country that has never acted aggressively towards The West then we are kept scared by reports of violent, organised criminals in the shape of immigrants. Headlines even stoop so stupidly low as to talk of eating donkeys.
Take a step back and think about how utterly retarded we are as a nation to consider eating donkeys as an indicator of these evil foreigners.
You are being kept isolated from your neighbours. You are being kept stupid with programmes about nothing and magazines devoted to the lives of these ciphers.
You are told that your government knows best and to leave it to them. Every wondered why despite massive rises in the budget every year, alcohol only rises minimally if at all?
Because if you make booze cheap enough, people will get smashed in these times of recession, job losses, frightening immigrants, terrorists, child snatchers and killer farmers with shotguns.
If the papers are to be believed, this evening you will be raped and eaten if not by 12 evil refugees, then by burglars or Saddam Hussein.
It is easier to keep the population scared and inside peering through their windows than it is to have them questioning and asking if that’s really necessary.
The “Gulf War 2” is a perfect example of this.
Over a million people marched to protest, saying there were no WOMD in Iraq, pointing out that there has never been an act of terrorism towards this country by any group other than The IRA so why go to war?
Regime change? Wasn’t the reason we were told we needed to. But it became the reason when no traces could be found of these WOMD we were all told could be launched within 45 mins.
Blair has gone from talking about WOMD to “programmes of WOMD”, a subtle shift in language that’s hardly noticeable.
But what galls me is our meek acceptance of this climate of fear and hatred towards each other.
Simon Cowell, Pop Idol’s “Mr Nasty” and Ann Robinson.
2 people that have made a career out of being vicious and nasty to people like you and me. We celebrate and reward sneering disdain as if it were a virtue.
What kind of a world is this we have created and revel in? We idolise and make celebrities out of humiliating and belittling each other? Since when was that to be lusted after?
You want a reason why this world is screwed? It’s everywhere, and most of our problems are caused by us.
Bin Laden, the man responsible for the WTC attacks. Trained by the USA. The CIA selected him when he was studying over here. We funded him, armed him and gave him the capabilities to wreak havoc against Russia when it tried to invade Afghanistan. The CIA deliberately chose the most fundamentalist, hardline religious maniacs they could and let them loose to prevent those evil commies from gaining a foothold in the oil region. Then they left him to do what the hell he wanted to. The Taliban didn’t just spring up in 2001, it had been operating with consent since the early eighties, and they were left to control the poppy fields. Because poppy fields equal heroin and opium.
Saddam Hussein? Same story. Picked, funded, trained and set loose by us to combat The Ayotallah Kohemi, who overthrew the CIA installed Shah, who came to power in 1953 in a coup organised by the CIA and MI5.
It’s all smoke and mirrors, and we swallow it.
We follow the lives of a footballer and a failed pop singer as if this is something to aspire to, meanwhile inner-city schools are becoming war zones. We lap up the mundane and celebrate the mediocre because it is rammed down our throats to keep us numb and stupid.
Don’t bother reading up on how many Middle Eastern governments we have toppled to keep that area destabilised. Instead, buy cheap beer and keep yourself stupefied and scared of immigrants.
And nobody is allowed to stand up and make a difference.
Because those that do are killed.
JFK? Murdered. He wanted an end to the Vietnam war and fought to give blacks the right to vote. He helped empower an entire underclass who were basically living in slavery. Blacks didn’t get the right to vote in America until the late 1960s. We’re not talking 200 years ago. He prevented the CIA planned invasion and coup of Cuba, resulting in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Bobby Kennedy who vowed to carry on that work? Murdered.
Huey Newton? Murdered. He told blacks they didn’t have to tolerate being beaten, murdered, denied basic human rights and he was killed. The Black Panthers rise to prominence neatly coincides with the arrival of heroin and crack into inner city ghettos targeting who? Black angry youths.
Ghandi? Murdered. He united a country against British tyrannical rule. He advocated non-violent protest and over threw the largest empire since The Romans. But he died, and India & Pakistan have warred ever since.
Martin Luther King? Murdered. For suggesting blacks weren’t animals and had the right to sit where they wanted on a bus.
Malcolm X? Murdered. For the same reasons.
Archibishop Romero in El Salvador? Murdered.
Anyone that tries to say “It’s ok, don’t be afraid. There’s no need to live like this, you don’t have to fear the person next to you” is killed.
It doesn’t pay to have your citizens thinking and questioning, because once they do then they will see through your sham governments, your lies, your big business destroying what future we have.
It’s far better to keep us all in our homes, watching purile tv shows about nothing, drinking beer and not education our children about these things.
And it’s continuing to this day, all around you. Look in today’s papers.
War, terrorism, immigrants, no job security, roaming gangs of violent murderous gangs of youths, hateful Arabs, intolerant Europeans.
There’s no need for this to continue. Over a million people marched to protest the Iraq invasion. It wasn’t supposed to change anything, it was supposed to show those that want you scared and isolated that there are people unwilling to surrender to this climate of terror and mistrust.
I refuse to believe that there is no hope left for you and me, I cannot stop demanding you write to politicians, that you don’t watch trivial tv shows, that you don’t believe every immigrant wants to steal your car and rape your parents.
If you stop trying, if you surrender and give in to those that want you to be afraid and suspicious then we have no chance at all.
Be it donating to charity, stopping someone bullying in the street, refusing to listen to racists at work…even the smallest, most insignificant thing matters.
Ghandi changed the world because he was thrown off a train, he wrote a letter of protest and ended up overthrowing an empire.
You can do something, you just have to want to.
I read all that, and agree with you on many points.
I'm not going to reply properly as I'm off to bed, but :
There is an old saying I remember - "We complain about having no shoes until we see a man with no feet"
Things could be far worse than they are. There ARE many bad things going on in the world today, but there always has been, and I believe there always will be. We as a race do not have the mental capacity or nature for united peace. It is in our genes to act the way we do. Learned and Enlightened people are still a minority, and until this changes, we can expect this paranoia and persecution to continue.
But in many other ways things are improving - healthcare/science is improving. We are able to treat diseases that just a few decades ago may have killed us outright. Technology is improving - we are able to improve disadvantaged lives using technology, this can span to countries which previously would have been in real trouble.
This would NOT come about if it weren't for people from different countries co-operating.
We as a species are destined to have these problems for the forseeable future. I believe that true utopia is beyond our grasp. But still, inside the majority of us is good, understanding and concern for our fellow man.
Things could be much worse - we could have full scale war, like in the early 1940s, only with our modern technology, killing would be far more effortless, the aftermath far more devastating. A full scale war incorporating nuclear weapons would spell the end of the life we know now. We should feel priviledged to experience what we have now.
I'm not going to reply properly as I'm off to bed, but :
There is an old saying I remember - "We complain about having no shoes until we see a man with no feet"
Things could be far worse than they are. There ARE many bad things going on in the world today, but there always has been, and I believe there always will be. We as a race do not have the mental capacity or nature for united peace. It is in our genes to act the way we do. Learned and Enlightened people are still a minority, and until this changes, we can expect this paranoia and persecution to continue.
But in many other ways things are improving - healthcare/science is improving. We are able to treat diseases that just a few decades ago may have killed us outright. Technology is improving - we are able to improve disadvantaged lives using technology, this can span to countries which previously would have been in real trouble.
This would NOT come about if it weren't for people from different countries co-operating.
We as a species are destined to have these problems for the forseeable future. I believe that true utopia is beyond our grasp. But still, inside the majority of us is good, understanding and concern for our fellow man.
Things could be much worse - we could have full scale war, like in the early 1940s, only with our modern technology, killing would be far more effortless, the aftermath far more devastating. A full scale war incorporating nuclear weapons would spell the end of the life we know now. We should feel priviledged to experience what we have now.
Nice one. It doesn't matter how screwed up this world is, sometimes I need a reminder to stay angry. That post did the trick.
I just remembered why you are a Notable.
I don't like the world as much as I used to. It isn't a nice place anymore.
So many reasons. It's funny how as people got more aware of their rights, what they deserved and were entitled to, the world degenerated. People have freedom of speech, so they use it to spread hate and scandal.
People just got to selfish. That is the main reason. No one wants to make sacrifices for other people. They want lots of money, big houses, fast cars. True, people have always wanted these things, but in the past people knew how to be satisfied. Not now.
Yeah the 90's were good. But it did have its down sides too. All decades had good bits and bad bits. The 50's were better in a lot of ways. It was the dawn of the nuclear family. Most people were still working class, but it was prosperous times for mum, dad and the 2.4 kids. The world was moving on and there were always exciting technological developments, things that by the year 2000 would have changed our lives.
You can keep going back. Keep reminiscing. Victorian times would have been pretty cool. Well for the middle and upper class anyway.
But selfishness, hate and fear are all here to stay. I might not be able to change the world. But I certainly want to try make my little corner of the world a better place. The world doesn't need to be the way it is. I have come to terms with who I am, what I want and what I need. I know that people are more important than things. I don't worry so much nowadays. I'm getting old. In some ways I'm getting more cynical, I have seen all the liars and false messiahs and revolutionaries, none of them are new to me. But in some ways I have more hope now.
I find it ironic that my form of rebellion against the world we live in is not to be extreme in behaviour and attitude. My rebellion is trying to be an old style gentleman. For a better future I'm going back to the past. How unfashionable.
I don't like the world as much as I used to. It isn't a nice place anymore.
So many reasons. It's funny how as people got more aware of their rights, what they deserved and were entitled to, the world degenerated. People have freedom of speech, so they use it to spread hate and scandal.
People just got to selfish. That is the main reason. No one wants to make sacrifices for other people. They want lots of money, big houses, fast cars. True, people have always wanted these things, but in the past people knew how to be satisfied. Not now.
Yeah the 90's were good. But it did have its down sides too. All decades had good bits and bad bits. The 50's were better in a lot of ways. It was the dawn of the nuclear family. Most people were still working class, but it was prosperous times for mum, dad and the 2.4 kids. The world was moving on and there were always exciting technological developments, things that by the year 2000 would have changed our lives.
You can keep going back. Keep reminiscing. Victorian times would have been pretty cool. Well for the middle and upper class anyway.
But selfishness, hate and fear are all here to stay. I might not be able to change the world. But I certainly want to try make my little corner of the world a better place. The world doesn't need to be the way it is. I have come to terms with who I am, what I want and what I need. I know that people are more important than things. I don't worry so much nowadays. I'm getting old. In some ways I'm getting more cynical, I have seen all the liars and false messiahs and revolutionaries, none of them are new to me. But in some ways I have more hope now.
I find it ironic that my form of rebellion against the world we live in is not to be extreme in behaviour and attitude. My rebellion is trying to be an old style gentleman. For a better future I'm going back to the past. How unfashionable.
Good stuff, and I find it hard to disagree with it.
Mind, I'd be hard pushed to disagree with anyone today; went to bed at 4am and got up at 7.30. I suspect, very strongly, that I'm still smashed.
Mind, I'd be hard pushed to disagree with anyone today; went to bed at 4am and got up at 7.30. I suspect, very strongly, that I'm still smashed.
Just read through it and you can't argue with it.
Incidentally, my local paper has a feature in it where it raising an interesting issue and then poses the question to members of the public who would give their one sentence answer.
This weeks question was, "Sir Isaac Newton was voted as the greatest Briton, who do you think should have won?"
So they had pictures of people (10 in all) the majority being in the younger echelons of society, with their answer.
Only one person stated Charles Darwin should receive the accolade. The others? Victoria Adams, David Beckham, Sean Connery and Princess Diana.
Can you believe this? Ten years ago when I was at school, people had a modicum of thought on history. Nowadays, it's illiterate children roaming the streets in packs, like rabid dogs, feasting on trashy media "celebrities" and Big Brother.
It makes me sick.
Incidentally, my local paper has a feature in it where it raising an interesting issue and then poses the question to members of the public who would give their one sentence answer.
This weeks question was, "Sir Isaac Newton was voted as the greatest Briton, who do you think should have won?"
So they had pictures of people (10 in all) the majority being in the younger echelons of society, with their answer.
Only one person stated Charles Darwin should receive the accolade. The others? Victoria Adams, David Beckham, Sean Connery and Princess Diana.
Can you believe this? Ten years ago when I was at school, people had a modicum of thought on history. Nowadays, it's illiterate children roaming the streets in packs, like rabid dogs, feasting on trashy media "celebrities" and Big Brother.
It makes me sick.
I read it all, and I agree with most of it. I'm only 21 so I grew up and remember most the nineties and some of the eighties, I do remember the Berlin Wall coming down and seeing it on TV, I remember the attempted coup in Russia, the invasion of Kuwait, and yet for all the bad things it was a better time. 2000 was okay, I think everything went to hell after 9/11 and it hasn't really gotten better since then.
How's this for irony?
I was in my art class at school and the Berlin Wall had come down a few days before. We were chatting away and then the art teacher, Mrs Woolston, walked into class and started smashing a big piece of rock onto her desk over and over until the whole class had subsided into a mortified silence.
She then boomed, "My friend just bought this over from Germany. It's a piece of the Berlin Wall, in case you uneducated bunch of louts. When you hear this rock, YOU WILL SHUT UP!"
It dawned on me later on the blatant irony of using a piece of the Berlin Wall to shut us up when it had been pulled down to give the Germans a taste of freedom they had never experience.
But I'm rambling. These are merely nostalgic musings of a forgotten childhood.
I was in my art class at school and the Berlin Wall had come down a few days before. We were chatting away and then the art teacher, Mrs Woolston, walked into class and started smashing a big piece of rock onto her desk over and over until the whole class had subsided into a mortified silence.
She then boomed, "My friend just bought this over from Germany. It's a piece of the Berlin Wall, in case you uneducated bunch of louts. When you hear this rock, YOU WILL SHUT UP!"
It dawned on me later on the blatant irony of using a piece of the Berlin Wall to shut us up when it had been pulled down to give the Germans a taste of freedom they had never experience.
But I'm rambling. These are merely nostalgic musings of a forgotten childhood.
Unbeliever wrote:
> "It's a piece of the Berlin Wall, in case you uneducated bunch of
> louts."
"How do I wrote english!?"
> "It's a piece of the Berlin Wall, in case you uneducated bunch of
> louts."
"How do I wrote english!?"
That is irony beyond belief.
I just wrote this last night after watching a documentary about Martin Luther King and his achievements.
We have nobody left with that kind of passion, that kind of conviction in helping their fellow man out.
But on a deeper level, it just feels to me that we're lusting after mediocrity, stupidity, banality and anything to numb us.
Voter apathy, popularity of Pop Idol, magazines about celebrities.
All the time children are beaten and murdered by their parents every single day in this country.
The NSPCC is charity funded. Charity funded??? How the #### can that be right?
Pop Idol earns a couple of million each Saturday from phone votes, yet the NSPCC has to beg on television for donations,clothing, volunteers.
Same as Cancer Research.
Our priorities are ####ed up and we deserve what we get.
How does it go? "You reap what you sow"?
I think we're going to crash before we get any better, and it just makes me angry, frustrated and sad.
I just wrote this last night after watching a documentary about Martin Luther King and his achievements.
We have nobody left with that kind of passion, that kind of conviction in helping their fellow man out.
But on a deeper level, it just feels to me that we're lusting after mediocrity, stupidity, banality and anything to numb us.
Voter apathy, popularity of Pop Idol, magazines about celebrities.
All the time children are beaten and murdered by their parents every single day in this country.
The NSPCC is charity funded. Charity funded??? How the #### can that be right?
Pop Idol earns a couple of million each Saturday from phone votes, yet the NSPCC has to beg on television for donations,clothing, volunteers.
Same as Cancer Research.
Our priorities are ####ed up and we deserve what we get.
How does it go? "You reap what you sow"?
I think we're going to crash before we get any better, and it just makes me angry, frustrated and sad.
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