Lishman's Diary

Survival of the Lucky

2009-11-23T03:20:00.000-08:00

Evolution (or Darwinism) is one of those beliefs that in debates and pub arguments is nearly always pitted against Creationalism and by virtue of that comes out smelling smugly of science. But like a boxing champion choosing his own challengers, or a politician refusing to answer questions unvetted by his aides, to me this rather contrived binary opposition seems like a rum deal, something promoted to hide the present crisis of credibility concerning the Theory of Evolution.

Darwin's Theory of Evolution laid out in his Origin of Species supposes that all the species on the planet evolved from simple single-cell life forms through a process of Natural Selection - which is kind of like The Weakest Link for ameoba - those that adapted, prospered and those that didn't, didn't. Anyway, according to Darwin all this happened over an extremely long time period, some four or five billion years.

Darwin said: "Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps."

He also pointed out that, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

Later on in his life he admitted, "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

There are also lots of problems with Darwin's conception of unicellular life forms as being simple. Recent advances in molecular biology have shown that these lifeforms are incredibly complex, containing thousands of intricate parts each with a specific function. So in no way has there been a slow evolution from the unicellular towards increasing complexity and design improvement, they were already incredibly complex. It could be said there was an evolution of kinds towards bigger animals, though the dinasaurs put paid to the idea that bigger is better.

Regarding God, Darwin doesn't cite a first cause or explain how the first 'simple life' form came to be, so there's no reason for any major opposition between scientists and most religions, save various types of fundamentalism and Creationalism.

So why when Darwin's Theory of Evolution has been so long ago debunked sientifically is it so pervasive in our culture? Is it because we like the idea of things progressing naturally towards perfection? For in this sense Evolution has a lot in common with Gnosticism, Buddhism and Hinduism. It's a story of a race towards Nirvana with mother nature (aka Gaia) at the top of the pyramid. A very seductive dream.

Personally, I believe in survival of the fittest, but that what constitutes being the fittest can change in a split second. One minute humanity is lording it over the cockroach crushing them under our heels. The next - after a sudden and devastating thermonuclear attack - the cockroach is king.

Politically, what we're hoping for these days is the reverse of the above. We want the psychopathic cockroach elite that now call the shots in the West to perish and give way to an uprising of humanity.

Now that's what I would call Evolution.

Solutions # 55: Question everything, and that means EVERYTHING!

The rise and fall

2009-11-16T09:30:00.000-08:00

MURTON'S TIMELINE:
1830: Population 69
1838: Work on pit starts
1843: First coals drawn
1851: Population 1,395
1889: Electricity first used in pit
1892: Murton toll gates removed
1902: Three putters killed in pit, two aged 14, one aged 18
1906: Colliery draws 4,131 tons of coal in one day
1910: Miners strike over Eight Hours Bill
1913: Foundation stone laid for first council house
1914: First public telephone for Murton, based in post office
1922: Cenotaph unveiled
1923: Coal drawn from West Pit for first time
1927: Bus service to Sunderland introduced by Northern buses
1930: First "talking pictures" at Murton Empire
1931: Flush toilets put in colliery houses
1935: Miners started carrying electric lamps
1939: Pit head baths opened
1950: X-ray van visited Murton for the first time
1953: The first paid annual holiday leave of two weeks was introduced
1957: A new library was opened in Barnes Road
1958: Murton Brickworks closed
1961: Murton's swimming pool was opened
1982: First memorial service held to commemorate fatalities at Murton pit
1990: Miners fought to keep the pit open
1991: Murton Colliery was closed
1994: Pit winding tower demolished, despite being listed

The hamlet Morton-in-the-Whins - later re-named Murton - had a population of 69 people. Coal mining came to town in 1838 and transformed the area. The population jumped into the thousands. Skilled workers came from all over the country - especially from Cornwall's declining tin mines - to work and settle there. It was very much a new town with a mix of people thrown together by a need for work, but it quickly formed a community with a strong identity. Anyway, there was expansion and modernisation all based on the mines and then 160 years later the rug was pulled from under their feet - the mines were closed - and they were left exposed. Murton's young people began to move away or faced long journeys into the city, or, alternatively, generational unemployment hanging about the village.

Here we see the much repeated pattern of small-time sustainability, expansion and then exposure (financial or labour collapse) and how ill-suited strong communities are in coping with it, or planning for or anticipating it. But what should they do: always be ready to up sticks and go to where the work is? What kind of community life is that?

You see the same pattern on an individual level with credit cards or somebody getting a good job and getting tied into loads of debt because they're momentarily 'wealthy'. And then it makes it all the worse when they lose their job and are immediately up against it.

A friend of mine worked for a green fuel company in Barcelona, which grew fat over the last five years because there were loads of EU grants for enviro-friendly companies. Last year, the EU suspended all the grants for a year and they - and many others - went to the wall. You see the grants had helped them expand too quickly to an unrealistic size. Of course the back story to this is that now - with the Copenhagen Agreement- the big oil and energy companies are ready to move in and swallow up the market and they don't want any small good-natured companies competing against them, thus the freeze on grants.

It's always the same pattern: the body builder takes steroids to take a short cut to being a high-def muscle man, but at the same time as the drugs make his biceps bulge, they make his heart grow big and weak. Vulnerable to the core.

Solutions # 53: Grow slowly.

The Kitler trap

2009-11-08T11:48:00.000-08:00

I threw another log on the fire and picked up my book on Mao. A few minutes later the doorbell rang. It was Rafa from down the road holding Kitler in his arms.

I found her in front of the fire when I got up this morning. God knows how she got in.

Gracias, Rafa. Cafe?

No, thanks. Wife's sent me on a message

Rafa always insists on speaking English to me because he spends a fortune on classes. I battle back in Spanish and we have a bilinguil conversation, both of us speaking the language were least comfortable with. His wife, Sofia, is pregnant and he's always driving into the city to get things to satisfy her cravings.

Kitler, who hasn't really forgiven me for moving house yet, but who clearly loves living round here, is on a mission to get adopted by Rafa and Sofia. I pretend not to notice and never make a fuss or get angry with her. I don't want to get anything "out of my system" and, like Blair, let her manipulate me into liking her more.

We sat together by the fire for a few hours reading and drinking tea. At least I was. Kitler was mainly licking herself.

Staring at the flames and supping on tea, a strange idea came into my head. 'What if the dark ages aren't on their way at all, but we've been living them for some time already? In which case, maybe what's coming is the new enlightenment.'

I could suddenly see everything clearly: the Climate Change movement is an attempted reformation - to unify then nullify the major religions and bring us slowly towards Gaia, the Green Goddess. And it will take a new enlightenment - an explosion of knowledge, self-awareness and healthy skepticism - to rein it back in.

When I came back from my thoughts, Kitler was gone again. No doubt plodding her way back to Rafa and Sofia's...

'Oh well', I thought, 'I could put a lock on that catflap.'

Solutions # 50: Are you too domestic? A tame human living in a human farm? Living in cosy domestication and eating food from the domestic human supermarket? Your survival instincts will give you the discernment you need. Re-discover them.

Hit me Tony one more time

2009-11-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

At the moment I'm reading two books: Mao - The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and John Halliday and Tony Benn's Dairies 2001-2007 for a bit of light relief. From what I've read so far, Mao was a born tyrant with little interest in Marxist ideology. He was on Moscow's payrole in his early twenties and back-stabbed his way to the top of the communist party sacrificing many soldiers and civilians on the way. Stalin recognised early on that Mao was a kindred spirit and rather than immediately awarding him power, watched him from afar as he murdered and connived his way to the top. Proving in the clearest terms that he, Stalin, had been right: Mao was the man to rule Communist China - accounting for the deaths of 38 million people.

The Benn Diaries log his gradual disallusionment with Tony Blair and New Labour, though he was loathe to criticise the cabinet directly as his son Hilary had been appointed a cabinet minister under Blair's Premiership. There's an interesting comment in his entry for Sunday 20 February, 2005:

At 8.30 I went off by car to do the ITV News on the general election. Lance Price was also on, he worked in the BBC and then as number two to Alistair Campbell at Number 10. He said that Blair wanted to be knocked about now, to show how human he was, and if people kicked him, they'd get it out of their system, which is the masochistic theory of electoral preparation.

Well, last week Blair's EU presidential campaign was seen to have been scuppered by Merkel and Sarkozy who, according to the newspapers, are worried that people can't forgive Blair for invading Iraq. A whole host of commentators poured scorn over Blair's chances, while at the same time admitting what an excellent politician he is.

First we have to remember that it won't matter what the people - the citizenry of the EU - think, as the first EU president won't be elected, but chosen by the EU Council. Secondly, they said they wouldn't be discussing the position until later in November. My instinct tells me that maybe we're being played here. Could this be a little bit of Blair catharsis before his presidential appointment is announced?

Does he wants us to hit him now and feel sorry for him later? Is that how it works?

Let's not get pulled into this. Let's retain our focus on the fact that it doesn't matter who the EU president is. For the EU is still an anti-democratic organisation that has obtained - through the Lisbon Treaty- a self-amending stranglehold on European democracies, much the same as Hitler did over Germany with his Enablement Act.

It could be Tony Blair or Tony Soprano. It just don't matter.

Solutions #49: Don't support a political party like you would a football team.

Fire

2009-11-08T11:43:00.000-08:00

Woke up at 7.10 am. It was perishing cold. After a few minutes of agonising hesitation tring to squeeze some warmth out of the thin arrangement of blankets, I leapt up and put on my clothes as quickly as I could. Yesterday, we were still enjoying an Indian summer and overnight the temperature had dropped like a bomb. The wind was howling through the trees and buffeting the windows. Kitler was nowhere to be seen.

I lit the kitchen stove - which runs off a gas bottle - and put the coffee on to boil. Ten minutes later, I poured the coffee into a metal camping cup and went out into the garden looking for wood. There were some stacked logs right at the back of the garden. I felt a few drops of rain as I looked for logs the right size for the fireplace - I haven't got round to buying an axe yet. Standing for a moment to finish off my coffee, I could hear wild pigs grunting and snuffling around on the other side of the garden wall.

Sliding the empty coffee cup onto my little finger I managed to carry six resonably sized logs down to the house.

I leant two of the logs against each other on the firebox and then stuffed twigs and paper in the gap beneath them. At first I used recycled printer paper, twisting it up to make sticks, but it didn't burn well and created a lot of smoke which the wind rushing down the chimney forced out into the room. Newspaper burned much better and soon the twigs caught light, which burned long enough for the logs to take. Once the logs got going the room quickly warmed. I read in my Survivors Manual that if you get the fire roaring quickly enough the hot air pushes upwards through the chimney and stops blowback. Got to learn to do that otherwise I'll end up with smoke-damaged lungs.

Or I could just get an electric heater. But no, I'm going primitive.

Solutions # 48: Steer clear of the boar.

They hunt in packs

2009-11-01T08:31:00.000-08:00

Animals to emulate #1

The wild boar (Sus scrofa)

Killer Quotes

2008-12-16T08:20:00.000-08:00

Humans as disease

"We have grown in number to the point where our presence is perceptibly disabling the planet like a disease. As in human disease there are four possible outcomes: destruction of the invading disease organisms; chronic infection; destruction of the host; or symbiosis - a lasting relationship of mutual benefit to the host and the invader."
From James Lovelock, who is a fellow of the Royal Society and one of the world's leading environmentalists. He is also the originator of Gaia Theory.

Does Sustainable Development mean population reduction?

"The root of our problems with the environment comes from a lack of constraint on the growth of population. There is no single right number of people that we can have has a goal; the number varies with our way of life on the planet and the state of its health. It has varied naturally from a few million when we were hunters and gatherers to a fraction of a billion as simple farmers; but now it has grown to over six billion, which is wholly unsustainable in the present state of Gaia, even if we had the will and ability to cut back."
James Lovelock from his book The Revenge of Gaia

Strange nuances: human herd reduction, women's liberation and sterilisation

"Personally I think we would be wise to aim at a stabilized population of of about half to one billion, and then we'd be free to live in many different ways without harming Gaia. At first this may seem a difficult, unpalatable, even hopeless task, but events of the last century suggest that it might be easier than we think. Thus in prosperous societies, when women are given the chance to develop their potential they choose voluntarily to be less fecund."
James Lovelock from his book The Revenge of Gaia

Does this man have Gaia's ear?

"In the end, as always, Gaia will do the culling and eliminate those that breaks her rules. We have the choice to accept this fate or plan our own destiny within Gaia."
James Lovelock from his book The Revenge of Gaia

Euthanasia?

"The regulation of fecundity is part of population control, but the regulation of the death rate is also important. Here,too, people in affluent societies are choosing voluntarily seemly ways to die. Traditionally, hospitals have for the elderly been places for dying in comparative comfort and painlessness; the hospice movement has served to set standards and make this otherwise unmentionable role of the health systems acceptable. According to Hodkinson,in his book An Outline of Geriatrics, about 25% of the elderly entering hospitals die withing two months. Now that the Earth is imminent danger of a transition to a hot inhospitable state, it seems amoral to strive ostentatiously to extend our personal lifespan beyond its normal biological limit of about 100 years. "
James Lovelock from his book The Revenge of Gaia

Lishman's weekly news round up

2008-12-14T02:54:00.000-08:00

It's official: Men really are the weaker sex.
(London Independent, December 7, 2008)

"Evolution is being distorted by pollution, which damages genitals and the ability to father offspring, says new study. Geoffrey Lean reports

The male gender is in danger, with incalculable consequences for both humans and wildlife, startling scientific research from around the world reveals.

The research – to be detailed tomorrow in the most comprehensive report yet published – shows that a host of common chemicals is feminising males of every class of vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals, including people."

Lishman says: Everything we touch turns to oestrogen. Also, the feminising effects of the 50 Hz electrical fields that we live surrounded by in Europe, leave no escape for the beleaguered male.
Read full article here

Scientists abandon global warming 'lie'
650 to dissent at U.N. climate change conference
(Global Research, December 13, 2008)

"WASHINGTON - A United Nations climate change conference in Poland is about to get a surprise from 650 leading scientists who scoff at doomsday reports of man-made global warming - labeling them variously a lie, a hoax and part of a new religion.

Later today, their voices will be heard in a U.S. Senate minority report quoting the scientists, many of whom are current and former members of the U.N.'s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

About 250 of the scientists quoted in the report have joined the dissenting scientists in the last year alone.

In fact, the total number of scientists represented in the report is 12 times the number of U.N. scientists who authored the official IPCC 2007 report."

Lishman says: Our leaders know that most people will eventually wake up to the Global Warming scam. This is why they are now urgently forging ahead with their plan to levy a world carbon tax on the individual.
Read full article here

Cyberspace has buried its head in a cesspit of climate change gibberish
(George Monbiot, London Guardian, December 9, 2008)

Lishman says: I didn't really like this article, but some of the comments below it were excellent and restored my faith in cyberspace. Here's a sample:

Prentendingtocare:
I question the climate change panic in much the same way as ive tried to question other scares that preceded it ...Aids, Bse, Sars, Bird flu , Terrorism etc ...No one is paying me anything to question these issues ..i do it because i like to think for myself ..as opposed to having people like you do my thinking for me...We get the message George ...loud and clear ..we just think its bullshit thats all ...theres no conspiracy to find ...just the majority of the British people disagreeing with you ...thats a healthy thing ...in a democracy..."

Lishman says: I just checked the rest of the comments below the article to find that some of the better responses to Monbiot's OpEd have been removed by the Moderator. Sadly the brilliant analysis by the poster Moveanymountain was also removed. For "Moderator" read "censor". Ironically the Guardian's section heading is called Comment is Free. Well done, Guardian! Showing your true colours again.
Read full article and comments here (bearing in mind that most of the dissenting voices will disappear in time)

Are the Greek riots a taste of things to come?
(London Independent, December 13, 2008)

"Bringing together youths in their early twenties struggling to survive amid mass youth unemployment and schoolchildren swotting for highly competitive university exams that may not ultimately help them in a treacherous jobs market, the events of the past week could be called the first credit-crunch riots. There have been smaller-scale sympathy attacks from Moscow to Copenhagen, and economists say countries with similarly high youth unemployment problems such as Spain and Italy should prepare for unrest."

Lishman says: The answer to the question is 'yes', this is a taste of things to come. And don't think our governments, police and army won't be ready for us when we do revolt. This is part of a long term plan to change the shape of society at a rapid pace. They will most likely provoke the riots and disorder themselves at a time they find most convenient.
Read full article here

Pound slips below euro on Britain's high streets
• £20 buys only €18 at UK exchange
• New rate 'key moment for economy'
(London Guardian, December 14, 2008)

"The government is facing a growing backlash over its rescue package for the economy after the pound slumped to below parity with the euro on British high streets and at airports for the first time since the single European currency was launched a decade ago.

Sterling's decline to a value of less than a euro, after commission charges, is seen by economists and opposition politicians as a pivotal 'psychological moment' - and evidence of declining faith in the British economy on global currency markets.

The case for euro entry was also put by leading economist and commentator Will Hutton. 'The pound buying less than a euro is an important psychological moment. Britain first doubted the euro would be launched, then whether it would survive, then whether it would ever become a serious currency,' said Hutton.

'Even today people are rushing to pronounce its death warrant. Now it is plainly the world's second currency after the dollar. As the pound becomes more volatile and less valuable, the euro will be seen increasingly as a safe haven - a zone in which both British industry and the City of London would flourish. The question is not if Britain will join, but when - and how many working lives and businesses will be wrecked by ideological opposition before it does.' "

Lishman says: The dollar and the pound are dying. The solution for Britain is further integration into the EU against the wishes of the majority of the people. The US will seek to fortify itself by joining Mexico and Canada in forming the North American Union. The NAU Constitution is due to be ratified in 2010. It will have its own currency. Can you see a pattern emerging?
Read full article here

Mount Ti Bi Da Bo

2008-11-18T02:06:00.000-08:00

It was like this. I'm standing on the side of Tibidabo. Kitler is sitting at my feet like an obedient dog. So maybe it wasn't really Kitler. Anyway, at the top of Tibidabo is a church and on top of the church is a statue of Jesus with his arms spread out. "Ti bi da bo" (I will give it to you) is what the Devil said to Jesus when he took him to the top of the mountain in an attempt to corrupt him by offering him all of life's worldly pleasures. The Devil spoke Latin, you see. Apparently, in the case of Barcelona, the idea of having Jesus up there with his arms spread out in offering is to say, "I will give you Barcelona". So why then, you may ask, is Jesus gesturing on behalf of the Devil to offer us the worldly pleasures of Barcelona? I know not, but... back to the dream.

So me and Kitler are standing on the slopes of Tibidabo among a crowd of about five thousand people. Jesus is addressing us from his plinth only it's not Jesus now it's Al Gore. Everytime I try to concentrate on the face it morphs into someone else. It's Obama. Then Einstein. Then Orwell, Julius Ceaser, Jonathan Ross, James Lovelock, Hitler, Madonna, Germaine Greer.

I can hear someone writing: tap, tap, tap-tap-tap.

Now, the many-faced one is talking about original sin and the transgressions of Adam and Eve in the garden.

Tap-tap-tap...

I raise my hand.

"Yes, Lishman" says the speaker, bearing the weary expression of my fourth form English teacher. The crowd turns to look at me. Kitler tries to hide behind my legs. There is great expectation.

I cough to clear my throat and begin speaking, "Sir, what is wrong with trying to attain the apple of knowledge? Surely, Eve was merely trying to improve herself, sir?"

There is a restless murmuring across the hillside. The people look worried as the speaker takes on angry forms: Saddam Hussein, Mussolini, Queen Elizabeth I, before calming down into George Orwell, the Dalai Lama and then Gandhi.

"But Lishman is missing the point", explains the speaker,"that particular branch of knowledge wasn't hers to touch and in disobeying the orders of her creator, she sent out the wrong message to everyone. She had to be punished. You see, Lishman, all of you are God's creation and you need to follow his rules or ELSE...", the speaker pauses mid-sentence as if to reconsider what it is saying, "OR else, you are nothing but a host of maggots eating up our resources. No good to anyone." The speaker gestures to where the crowd is standing. Everyone, apart from myself and Kitler, immediately falls to their feet and takes the form of man-size larva greedily gorging themselves on the vegetation.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap...

"But I prefer the idea that you're God's flock. A goodly host of sheep following the teachings of the great shepherd." At this point he turns back into Jesus holding a staff, which he strikes on the ground. The maggots become people again, most of them fairly shocked to find themselves with mouthfuls of grass, others chew on happily. I look down and realize that Kitler has disappeared.

I raise my hand again.

"Has no one else got any questions?", asks the speaker somewhat irritated, "Ok, Lishman, go ahead."

"Don't shepherds ultimately lead their sheep to slaughter?" I ask.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

"When it's time, yes.", says the speaker, with the sincere tone of Richard Burton in 1984. "We like to fleece them a few times first. Then we kill off the old and sacrifice the tenderest of the lambs. And of course when the stock is bad, we slaughter all of you... er them. And re-breed the flock from the strongest gene pool... tap-tap, tap tap tap tap, tap-tap-tap"

All the speaker's words disappear and become the frantic tap-tapping of a thousand typewriters. The speaker, who is now in the form of Prince Charles, begins to flicker and fade. Suddenly I notice that it's Kitler who's causing the speaker to disappear. She's on the plinth chewing on a cable. It's just a hologram, you see, and Kitler is attacking its power source.

Now I'm running up the hill to stop Kitler from being electrocuted, but before I can reach the top everything starts to shake from side to side. There's an earthquake. The mountain splits open and swallows the church. A few seconds later, the shaking stops. I look around, but there's no sign of Kitler. I walk up to the top and peer into the crater. Inside, there's no sign of the fallen church, instead there is row after row of writers sitting at their desks frantically typing.

"Hey, we can see you now. The games up." I shout down into the hole. Some of them look up. Others continue typing.

"Hey, it's over. We know you're making everything up." I shout. The ones that can hear me start alerting the others and before long they're all looking up at me peering over the edge of the crater.

"Yeah, that's right. Time to pack up your writing machines and go home. We see right through your lies." I scream.

Then I hear the mournful squeal of Kitler from nearby.

And I wake up, because Kitler is pawing my face.

Lauren sips on her tea, pondering something.

"Biscuit?" I say.

"Yes. The chocolate one." she replies.

"So you realise that in your dream..." says Lauren, pausing to sip more tea.

"Yes?" I say.

"Kitler is Toto."

"Yes, I suppose she is."

Well, we're certainly not in Kansas any more.

Solutions # 41: While they keep you focused on the present. They're changing your history and stealing your future. Dump the 15-minute culture. Read widely.

Where or when the truth lies...

2008-11-05T04:58:00.000-08:00

...I know not.

On the twilit pages of today's press,

__________________I _________________

________________S- E- E______________

___________ O** ß** A** M** A**_______

_____ B*** I*** **** **** **** D*** E*** N***____

The** all-seeing-eye** had** a** dream** ticket__

The new president elect is Barack Obama, whose real name is Barry Soetoro. Why did he change his name? What will happen on December 15 when Barack/Barry's eligibility to be president comes under judicial scrutiny? Was he born in Hawaii or Kenya?

For the time being, we have worldwide euphoria, but the alarm clock has been set by Biden and Powel. The Nostradami of our times. If we are to believe them, the masses will awake - yet still without consciousness - to a great event. A major challenge for the newly anointed president. January 21 and 22 loom portentously. But here I urge caution, for prophets are best judged by their fruits. So I will wait before passing judgement.

The Rand Corporation, an extremely influential US think tank, proposes war with China, Russia, Iran or Japan to ward off the depression. The Chinese press abound with rumours of war. The English-speaking press scarcely mention it.

French troops (or are they EU troops?) maintain a presence in Chad.

EU troops (did you know the EU had troops?) prepare to enter the Congo.

Nearby Sudan, where the Chinese protect their oil interests, is unintentionally encircled.

Could this be the new president's "major challenge", a war with China?

Well, I'm sure Obama can be war-like if that's what is needed. His pre-electoral rhetoric included talk of attacking Pakistan in the hunt for terrorists. He's also surrounded himself with suitably bellicose people such as his own VP Joe Biden, who supported the Neo-Con war in Iraq.

Another is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is Obama's chief foreign policy advisor. As President Carter's national security advisor in 1979, Brzezinski recruited Osama Bin Laden to lead an army into a war with Russia. This army, known as the Mujahadeen, was funded by the Saudis and armed by CIA via the Pakistani ISI. The Mujahadeen was the genesis of the modern day Al Qaeda. It was created by Western intelligence operations. Al Qaeda literally means - as Robin Cook noted in his newspaper column a few weeks before his death - "'the database',... originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians".

But there's no guilt by association. The political world is just a hurtling rock of coincidence. It spins and spins and spins.

Solutions # : To avoid Racism, treat Barack Obama as you would any other politician.

The Night of Brian

2008-10-29T14:29:00.000-07:00

The titles roll.

The whistling refrain on the bright side of life fades.

I take the DVD out of the machine and put it back in its box.

'He's not the messiah. He's a very naughty boy.' Manel mimics in a Spanish accented falsetto. Laughter erupts. Admittedly, most of it's coming from Manel himself.

I open another bottle of wine. Rioja. I distribute it evenly among six of the glasses, almost emptying the bottle in the process. The seventh glass is still half full with Vichy water. That glass belongs to Louise. She hasn't touched a drop of wine all night.

Every time one of my female friends refuses a drink I tend to assume that she's pregnant. Especially if she's English.

'Are you sure I can't tempt you?' I say, proffering the bottle.

'No, really, I don't want any,' and with that she places her hand on her boyfriend Felix's knee, who puts his hand over hers.

Pregnant. Definitely pregnant.

Kitler pads slowly into the room clearly feeling sorry for herself. She climbs up on the sofa next to Julian, who begins to make a fuss of her. Then she does the rounds jumping from friend to friend. Everyone's pleased to see her. Now and again she catches my eye as if to say 'see how they love me?'

When she reaches Louise, she settles on her lap. Louise worked as a vet's assistant back in the UK and has a way with animals.

'She's still wheezing,' Louise says, looking into Kitler's eyes, while tickling her under her chin.

Then Lauren leans over to touch Kitler's nose. 'Poor Kitler!', she says, 'What's causing it? Is it all the pollution or the fact that Lishman is somewhat insufficient in the dusting department?' And with that she runs her index finger along the sideboard, turning her hand to show everyone the evidence of a badly-kept house.

'I assure you, Lauren, that Kitler's condition has nothing to do with dust,' I say mock defensively, 'It's much more likely to be caused by the...' I stop mid-sentence. I promised myself a night off tonight. Not to think about all the bad things.

'Is it the reptiles?' Manel jests in absence of my words, causing an avalanche of suggestions.

'Or the Pladians?' chimes in Felix.

'The Rothchilds?'

'The Clingons?'

'The Templars?'

'The Queen of England?'

'The masons?'

CRASH!!!!!!!

Kitler knocks the almost empty bottle of wine off the table and runs as fast as a wheezing cat can down the corridor and into my room.

I tell people not to move while I get the brush and shovel and begin sweeping up the broken glass. As I do so, Felix says 'You were about to say something a minute ago, what was it?'

'Nothing,' I respond, 'Another bottle?' I say brightly as I walk into the kitchen.

'Hey Lishman!' Lauren shouts, 'What were you going to say?'

'Nothing, nada, now't.'

'Yes, you were,' say Felix and Manel.

'Yes. You were going to say something,' says Louise.

'No, I wasn't. I'd finished,' I say. But now The Life of Brian is back in full swing.

'Oh, no you weren't,' they chorus.

'Oh, come on. Tell us before you go,' pleads Lauren.

'I wasn't going to say anything. I'd finished,' I insist, walking towards the kitchen.

'No, you hadn't,' says Manel.

'What won't he tell?' says Felix.

'He won't say,' replies Louise.

'Is it a secret?' asks Lauren.

'No,' I say.

'Is it?' says Manel.

'Must be. Otherwise, he'd tell us,' reasons Felix.

'Oh, tell us the secret,' they all shout.

'Leave me alone,' I say, grabbing the wine and opening it.

'What is this secret?' whispers Manel.

'Is it the secret of eternal life?' says Lauren.

'He won't say!' says Felix.

'Well, of course not. If I knew the secret of eternal life, I wouldn't say,' says Manel.

'Chemtrails,' I finally admit. 'I was going to say Chemtrails.’

'What?! Chemtrails are the secret of eternal life?!' says Felix.

'He's making it up as he goes along,' they all chorus, as I pour out more wine and fill up the crisp bowls.

'Wow. If you lot could remember history or something useful as well as you can Monty Python, we'd really be a force to be reckoned with,' I say.

'Here we go,' sighs Manel, 'Debbie the downer!'

'Better that than Debbie the dumb downer!' I retort.

'Anyway, who's for a game of shithead?' I say trying to change the subject. We clear the table and I deal out the cards.

I'm sure this is not representative of society, but out of the seven friends I've gathered here tonight, three are convinced by the chemtrail phenomenon. From the others, three waver between acceptance and denial. The other, Manel, thinks we're all sadly deluded conspiracy theorists. If I include myself, you could say that half of us are chemtrail believers. So if sanity is statistical, as mooted in Orwell's 1984, then I'm in good mental health this evening.

Louise, one of the believers, asks if I've made any headway in my investigation. I explain my recent findings. Namely the 65-year-old Catalan real-estate lawyer, Jordi, who's embarked on his own independent chemtrail truth campaign - which took the form of several letters to the Catalan Government. He began his campaign without having read anything on the internet. He discovered chemtrails because he has a good memory and noticed that these weirdly persistent vapour trails that criss-cross our skies are not normal. In fact, Jordi didn't even know the term "chemtrails" before I spoke to him a few weeks ago.

This sparks a fairly animated discussion. They all recognise the difference it makes when a sober professional man like Jordi asserts something unusual,compared to when a conspiracy analyst does the same.

'You never give up do you Lishman?' says Manel.

'No. Never,' I say.

'I respect you for that,' he says seriously.

'Cheers Manel.'

'At least your insanity is kind of consistent. I know where I am with you.'

'Deal the cards, Manel.'

We open another bottle of wine, play cards and talk on into the night. It's the usual kind of discussion bringing up all the world's ills, citing lots of info and data. The conclusion, however, always seems to be the same: an apathetic 'but what can you do?'

I get the same sense researching the New World Order. It's a global campaign of softkill, hardkill, shock and awe. Eventually the truth, rather than setting you free, paralyses you. It's too big for most people to comprehend never mind act upon. I mean, 'where do you start?'

And what's worse, you waste so much energy trying to convince your friends and loved ones that the New World Order even exists, that you don't ever get round to tackling it head on.

Meanwhile, the NWO moves on inexorably with its agenda.

So does the evening:

'The answer,' I say, rather incoherently out of the blue, 'is to choose your mission, focus. Basically compartmentalise ourselves and hit the monolith on many different fronts...'

'No, no, no,' interrupts Manel, 'the answer is......

ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
[whistle]

The others join in:

ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
[whistle]

Reluctantly, I join in, too.

ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
[whistle]

I'm laughing now. Kitler comes back in the room and jumps on my knee.

ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
[whistle]

Solutions # 38: Guard your sense of humour with your life. It's one of the things that separates us from robots.

A matter of life and death

2008-10-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

REG: Right. Now, uh, item four: attainment of world supremacy within the next five years. Uh, Francis, you've been doing some work on this.

FRANCIS: Yeah. Thank you, Reg. Well, quite frankly, siblings, I think five years is optimistic, unless we can smash the Roman empire within the next twelve months.

REG: Twelve months?

FRANCIS: Yeah, twelve months. And, let's face it. As empires go, this is the big one, so we've got to get up off our arses and stop just talking about it!

COMMANDOS: Hear! Hear!

LORETTA: I agree. It's action that counts, not words, and we need action now.

COMMANDOS: Hear! Hear!

REG: You're right. We could sit around here all day talking, passing resolutions, making clever speeches. It's not going to shift one Roman soldier!

FRANCIS: So, let's just stop gabbing on about it. It's completely pointless and it's getting us nowhere!

COMMANDOS: Right!

LORETTA: I agree. This is a complete waste of time. [bam]

JUDITH: They've arrested Brian!

REG: What?

COMMANDOS: What?

JUDITH: They've dragged him off! They're going to crucify him!

REG: Right! This calls for immediate discussion!

COMMANDO #1: Yeah.

JUDITH: What?!

COMMANDO #2: Immediate.

COMMANDO #1: Right.

LORETTA: New motion?

REG: Completely new motion, eh, that, ah-- that there be, ah, immediate action--

FRANCIS: Ah, once the vote has been taken.

REG: Well, obviously once the vote's been taken. You can't act another resolution till you've voted on it...

JUDITH: Reg, for God's sake, let's go now!

REG: Yeah. Yeah.

JUDITH: Please!

REG: Right. Right.

FRANCIS: Fine.

REG: In the-- in the light of fresh information from, ahh, sibling Judith--

LORETTA: Ah, not so fast, Reg.

JUDITH: Reg, for God's sake, it's perfectly simple. All you've got to do is to go out of that door now, and try to stop the Romans' nailing him up! It's happening, Reg! Something's actually happening, Reg! Can't you understand?! Ohhh! [slam]

REG: Hm. Hm.

FRANCIS: Oh, dear.

REG: Hello. Another little ego trip for the feminists.

Excerpt from The Life of Brian

Solutions # 37: Don't procrastinate. Focus your energy. Choose a mission. Take action. Fight the New World Order.

Last part of interview with David Shayler: 'Anybody who doesn’t think they need a Messiah is living in cloud cuckoo land'

2008-10-08T13:10:00.000-07:00

Lishman – It seems that chemtrails are being sprayed on a daily basis in Barcelona. Indeed it’s happening massively over Catalonia. Do you know anything about this?

D.S. – Yes, well this is interesting. It’s interesting that it’s in Catalonia as well, isn’t it? The whole thing about chemtrails is very interesting. I don’t think we can say anything conclusive about chemtrails apart from the fact that no one will admit to putting them up there. And again, you have to wonder what’s going on there.

They’ve been photographed and analysed all over the world. We know they exist. But what we don’t know is what they’re there for and who’s putting them there with any degree of certainty. All the governments across the world are denying all knowledge of these things. And again you have to wonder why the government is denying knowledge of these things when we can see them with our own eyes. And that’s what I mean about mind control. Show them a photograph of the chemtrails and they’ll say, ‘no there are no chemtrails’. And you show them all the evidence that they’re not aeroplane contrails, they’re quite different; they’ll still try and say that they are contrails.

Lishman – I show people the chemtrails in the sky and they just won’t believe it.

D.S. – That’s what I mean about mind control. That’s what I mean about opinion formers and so on. And this is all to do with spirituality. It’s people who are more down the spiritual journey. Often people who don’t even think they are on a spiritual journey, are. They’re standing up for truth and justice. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, the biblical Jesus, those who stand up for truth and justice will get into the new world or heaven or whatever you want to call it. Those who are persecuted for standing up for truth or justice will get into the new world. You don’t get into the new world by praying ostentatiously at church. So a lot of people involved in 9/11 truth or 7/7 truth who probably don’t think of themselves as spiritual people, are actually on a spiritual journey and are therefore being protected by god.

Lishman – If we just dip once more into mind control, with regard to the EU and the Lisbon Treaty Ireland voted down: what do you think is going to happen next?

D.S - This is an attempt to impose supranational government on us. Nobody wants to be ruled by the EU, because the EU Parliament has absolutely no power; it can’t overturn the European Commission of Ministers. So what we’re having is not a community ruled by democracy but a community ruled by a government, a government that’s not elected. That to me is a dictatorship. So people are obviously against it. They’ve seen what it’s done to each country. And the only way the project still exists is because the New World Order can brainwash people in the mainstream, but again I’ve actually recorded… if you go onto YouTube and put Shayler TV in there, you’ll find an address I’ve recorded which I’m going to send to the Queen asking her not to sign the Treaty of Lisbon. Because the monarch of Britain can reject bills of parliament. And that is legally binding. And I’m saying to her that this is not about politics, this is about civilisation and the quality of human life. And I’m saying it – not appealing to her as the Queen even, though obviously she’s the monarch, she has a special role – I’m appealing to her as a human being in her own conscience to say, look, if you sign that piece of paper, that’s it, it’s all over basically. That will be one of the stages towards one-world government. And then that’s it, we really are fucked basically. So I say to the Queen, it’s time for her to do the right thing, don’t sign the piece of paper.

Lishman – When the economic crash comes do you think it will be the EU that will come to our aid with hand-outs and RFID chips?

D.S. – Well, I think they’re going to be a big part of it certainly. Think of what the EU’s done already to destroy agriculture in Britain and create all sorts of weird subsidies around agriculture and everything else. You know the EU’s done some really very weird things basically. And do you know about Codex Alimentarias?

Lishman – A committee attached to the UN?

D.S. – It’s being put out by the UN. Again it’s a way of trying to control what we put in our bodies. They want to remove food labelling so that we don’t know if the food is GM or organic. They then want to restrict dietary vitamin and mineral supplements saying that they are in fact dangerous, I mean, these are natural elements that we need for our diets. And believe me, one of the best ways of stopping human spiritual activation is to give us an unbalanced diet. If you don’t have a strong well-nourished body, it’s very difficult to have a strong well-nourished soul. So again, that’s part of the plan.

And in the tap water in Britain they’re putting flouride in certain areas. Again there’s no evidence that flouride stops tooth decay. Quite the contrary, it’s part of the mind control programme. So my advice to anybody is, if you can, drink fresh spring water straight from the spring. If you can’t get that, drink it out of a plastic bottle. I mean ok, plastic bottles are by-products of the petrochemical industry but they’re certainly not [as bad] as tapwater. And as I say, this assalt is happening all over the place. It really is.

Aspartame is in all sorts of drinks. Aspartame again is a poison. It’s caused brain tumours in lab rats. There’s anecdotal evidence that it’s caused people to have seizures and die. Again this stuff would never have been approved if it hadn’t been for people like Ronald Reagan and Donald Rumsfeld messing around the FDA in the US. And they get kids drinking these things. They are trying to get kids at a young age. And again the reason the New World Order’s doing this is that they are fully aware of what’s happening in the run up to 2012.

2012, December 23, is the last day of this universe. That’s why the Mayan calendar comes to an end then. After that we go into a new universe and those people who want to go there and live in unconditional love will go. The rest will be part of a borg-like entity. If you know your StarTrek, the borg said, ‘You will be assimilated, resistance is futile’. That’s what they’ll be part of, a big collective being in which individuals will have no effective individual autonomy.

Lishman – When we talk about the New World Order, who are we talking about? You insinuated earlier that the Queen was a human being like everyone else; lots of people place her in the New World Order…

D.S. – I don’t buy that at all. David Icke’s idea that she’s a lizard and shapeshifter and that kind of thing, I don’t buy it all, I really don’t. I worked in government and you get a bit of a feel for these things. And the Windsors are not that close to the bloodline. They’re really not. They’re kind of descendents of middle-class Germans who were brought over here in the 18th Century. They’re not really part of the bloodline. What they did though, of course, is they married Charles to Diana, who was a Stewart, and therefore much closer to the bloodline.

What people don’t realise of course is that Prince William is not the son of Charles. The Prince Harry thing is a smoke screen. It’s an attempt to try and convince us that Harry is not Charles’s son, but in fact it’s the other way round, it’s Prince William. He’s the son of somebody called Barry Mannakee, who again was murdered by the New World Order in a motorcycle accident, because they knew what was going on and dead men don’t tell tales. And interestingly in the motorcycle accident he was beheaded. And again if you know the New World Order and esoterics, they love the idea of beheadings. It’s all very symbolic of cutting people off from God.

So the father of Prince William is Barry Mannakee not Prince Charles. But Prince Charles is the father of Prince Harry. But the Windsors aren’t part of the New World Order. The New World Order seems to stem from the Rothchilds. If you know your history, the Rothchilds come from the Ashkenazi Jews. They converted to Judaism in the 12th Century in the Steppes, then they came down into Eastern Europe in the subsequent century. My information is that one of the tribes of Israel, rather than going West in the Jewish diaspara of AD 70, went East and settled in this area and interbred with these Ashkenazis. But somehow the secret of the prophecy was let out to these people and the Rothchilds got into it and they used this knowledge to manipulate.

And of course in the last 100 years the Rothchilds have created wars. Wars which have been designed to tear apart the traditional ruling structures, the ruling of the aristocracy, the rule of monarchs, which is obviously a good thing. At the same time obviously those wars have cost a lot of money. And the reason they’ve done that is to try and stop any structure or power structure that can oppose them.

Now there may be people behind the Rothchilds, I don’t know. But the evidence I can see points only as far as the Rothchilds and no further than that. There is some indication that it might be the Jesuits, but again there’s not a lot of convincing evidence of that. So, you know, we’ve got to call it as we see the evidence. It may be the end for the Rothchilds and they tell us they’ve been at gunpoint and told to do this by someone evil behind them, I don’t know. But the evidence as it stands is the Rothchilds are in the frame.

Lishman – So how do we fight them?

D.S. – Well, this is it. It’s incredibly simple. Because most of their income comes from the money made on national debts of government, what we do is [reform] the banking system, and we get every government to print its own money, rather than getting the banks to print money and lending to the government at interest.

If you borrow the sum of ₤20,000 at 5% compound interest after twenty years you’ve paid off the money, but then you haven’t, because the same sum remains to be paid off again. That is the kind of debt cycle that we’re in, that the third world is in and that America’s in, in particular, because it’s just going crazy over there. Again I think they’re going to collapse America.

The reform of this is very simple, just say to governments, ‘Right, tomorrow morning take over the mint and say, we’ll print the money now and we’re not going to pay any more interest to you’. And what we should turn round to these people and say is, ‘look, you had a bloody good run for your money and we’re not going to pay any more of the national debt back to you’. That’s what they should do. And virtually over night the world would change if governments started doing that. And again if you go on YouTube I’ve made an address to Gordon Brown saying, please reform the monetary system otherwise these people will just blackmail you.

Lishman – But they won’t listen to you… Maybe they’re not happy about you trying to educate the people…

D.S. – The thing is no one else is doing it on the planet. You know, blowing up my new spiritual role here. And of course I take my cues from the Bible. Jesus in the Bible turns the table on the money lenders. In the book of [Mark] it’s one of the first things he does. So I say to myself that what I’m doing is turning the tables on the money lenders and saying to them, you’re not getting any more money off governments. It would be amazing if we did that, how the world would change overnight, because the entire network of repression and everything else they have is payed for by the funds they make by lending money to governments. They have other sources of income like, for example, the illicit drugs trade. Again I would contend that we must legalise all drugs to stop hundreds of billions ending up in the hands of organised criminals, terrorists and the New World Order.

Lishman – Have you always been a spiritual person?

D.S. – Not at all. I could probably lay claim to being the universe’s most staunch atheist until I was about 38. And then of course I had my experience of being put in prison. They were attempting to kill me. And obviously when you’re an atheist and you believe that’s the end and people are trying to kill you, it might happen today, that’s the greatest stress that you can go through. And in those circumstances I didn’t depart from the mission. I argued to myself that the one thing I could never face would be if I didn’t do everything in my power to stop these people, and then in 20 years time I’d have to wake up in the mornings and live under repression. I would never forgive myself. So even when I was an atheist I said to myself, they might kill me for doing this. But that doesn’t really make much difference. As an atheist it doesn’t matter whether I die tomorrow or whether I die when I’m 70 in the greater scheme of things. In fact if I die tomorrow, I might die a martyr and that might even change things.

As it says in the Bible, Jesus gives death no quarter. And it’s a result of that fact that I am still here. I’m protected by somebody above. My spiritual journey began there, it took me through the esoteric texts and everything else. My first awakening was a conventional spiritual awakening, but then around 7/7/7 I went through my other awakening. And obviously I’m as aware as anybody that this will sound mad but I am in fact the chosen one of God. The prophecy that is held virtually across planet Earth by many many cultures for many many thousands of years is absolutely true, that in humanities darkest hour, the chosen one of God will come to save them, and that is me. And the documents say that David Micheal or David M. Shayler, born 24th of December, will awaken around 7/7, is the Messiah. That’s me. I tick all those boxes.

Lishman – Right. Which documents?

D.S. – I will send you the details of this but to give you a flavour: it’s in the Bible, from the [Tora]- the Jewish commentary on the Bible, from the 70 names of God, from the Rod of Aaron, which has the ineffable name of God on it, from the twelve letter name of God, from the 22 letter name of God; the 33 letter name of God and the 42 letter name of God. That’s the core evidence. Now I don’t think that evidence is proof to people of who I am. [I prefer them] to make up their own minds, because the proof to me is not just on evidence; it’s also the journey I was taken on. A very intricate journey through a series of texts via the internet, but also involving things like crop circles, and annointment by God, and annointment by a psychic channelling the spirit of Mary Magdelene.

Lishman – So, in view of all of this, what are your plans for the next year or two?

D.S. – Well, as a spiritual person I live in the moment. I don’t have any great plans as such and there’s a good reason for that, for when you’re up against the New World Order you can do all the planning in the world, and tomorrow morning they can just take you off on a tangent. So I don’t do planning. I take direction from Jesus and God. And believe me that works much more effectively. But I did the Sermon on the Mount on the first of August and what I’m doing now is I’ve recorded lots of pieces now, for different political figures like the Queen, Gordon Brown... I’m going to be doing one for the Church of England, one for the Pope. And I’m just pointing out to them what the problems of the world are at the moment, and how I’ve come back and have been given the wisdom of God to solve these problems. And again if I saw people out there doing what should be done, there would be no need for a Messiah. I don’t see Amnesty International challenging the banking system. I don’t see Liberty in this country challenging the banking system either. And what we have of course is a load of protest groups who are all doing their thing, but all they ever do is hit the tip of the iceberg. If you want to hit the core – a bit like in Star Wars – you go for the heart of the DeathStar. And that as I said is the international banking system, once you take that out we can then change the world.

Lishman – In the past many have tried to take on the banking system… Didn’t JFK try to take on the Federal Reserve Bank?

D.S. – Absolutely. This is the experience of history, that anybody that tries to take on the international bankers, be they JFK or be they Abraham Lincoln, be they Julius Ceaser: they are assassinated. And believe me, they have tried many many times to assassinate me. I’ve been in four suspicious car accidents. Perhaps the most suspicious of which was in a black Ritz Mercedes when I was going to see Muhammed Al Fayed’s security people and the driver fell asleep at the wheel. And this is only two months after Princess Diana had died in a black Ritz Mercedes. Now again, the thing about the Diana thing is that Henry Paul… there were high levels of carbon monoxide in Henry Paul’s blood. That of course would have made him fall asleep at the wheel. There’s a suspicion that there was a very similar method being used to try and assassinate me and my girlfriend Annie [Machon] at the time. As I say I’ve been in four car accidents like that.

I’ve also been subject to attacks of meningitis, pneumonia, and all sorts of other weird things. When I went to see a psychic, the only time in my life, she told me I had two bullet holes in my astral body. And even the other day when I was doing the Sermon on the Mount this very suspicious character turned up, didn’t want to hear what I was saying, stood to one side... So one of my friends went up to him and said, ‘What are you doing, mate?’ and noticed that he had a high-powered catapult with a ball-bearing in it. My mate looked at it and said, ‘My god, what’s going on? What have you got that for?’ And he turned round to my mate and said, ‘I can take him out from here’. So they’re trying to frighten me. They’re trying to take me out. But by the logic of who I am – and this is part of the proof of who I am – is if you are the Messiah you are invincible. You are invincible from attack.

Lishman – What do you think is the next big challenge we’re facing as a people? Is it the war in Iran, is it the environmental movement…

D.S. – Well again it’s looking at logic. There’s no scientific evidence for man-made global warming. I’ve done a lot of research on this and that is the biggest con trick of the New World Order, to take away people’s energy, and direct resistance movements the wrong way. The reason I know this is because all the planets in the solar system are heating up at the same rate. So this is happening at a solar system-wide level. So unless you argue that there are people on the surface of Mars driving round in SUVs, pretty much this is happening on every planet, independent of the activity of the creatures on that planet.

As I say it’s being pulled forward by the New World Order but I don’t see the Green Movement as a major threat. Though the Green Movement is highly manipulated and the whole thing is being used to create taxes and create all sorts of problems. But also, most crucially of course, to take our motor cars off us. Now believe me, I worked against terrorists and so on for MI5, one of the most useful things you can have against the New World Order is the car. Because following revolutionaries around in cars is a very exhaustive business, but following revolutionaries around on public transport isn’t. So this is all part of the idea of trying to get rid of our cars.

Now obviously people shouldn’t be polluting the atmosphere – completely independent of man-made global warming – what comes out of your car exhaust is a poison killing people across the planet. Man-made global warming is being used to distract from that very very real threat to human spirituality. Of course Henry Ford invented the car in the 1930’s that could run off hemp. It was made of hemp as well. So our big solution is to be able to develop the hemp plant, the cannabis plant. It has many many uses: it can be used as a fibreglass, an insulation, a building material, an energy, a food... It’s an almost perfect thing for human beings in terms of balanced nutrition. That’s the end of malnutrition on the planet tomorrow if we grew hemp.

You don’t need fertilizer to grow hemp and it doesn’t wear out topsoil like cerial crops do. So again there’s some simple solutions and I would say to anybody, you’re not truly free until [you have] your energy and your own food. Doesn’t matter how many political rights you’ve got, if somebody turns off your gas tap or turns off your food supply, you’re stuffed! So this is what I want people to do. Think practically as well. The Left don’t think practically; they think in terms of idealism and political rights and class struggles and so on, but they don’t think about the practice of how you source your own energy. So what I would say is, support the hemp plant. This is why they banned hemp. This is why they passed the 1930’s Marijuana Act in the US.

Lishman – Thank you very much David. That’s been great, I’ve filled up two tapes here…

D.S. – Great. Thank you very much. What I’m saying to people at the moment is that, I am the Messiah. My mission is to unite humanity. And anybody who doesn’t think they need a Messiah is living in cloud cuckoo land. I look outside my window every day and I see the New World Order possibly getting more powerful. And I’m the only person who seems to have the wisdom to be able to take them on Obviously I need the support of human beings to put this into practice, but certainly in terms of the wider strategy I think I’ve more or less got that sorted.

Even people who believe in Messiah consciousness will tell me that we don’t need a Messiah and I say, ‘How can you have a Messiah consciousness without a Messiah in the first place?’ And those who believe in unity consciousness without a Messiah, I say to them, ‘How can you have unity consciousness without a one to unite under?’ So my message is a very serious one. I realise it sounds completely crackpot to certain people, but I urge anybody to come and talk to me. In the same way as when I go on about no planes, I urge people to come to me with evidence of planes. So far no one has actually come to me with any evidence of planes whatsoever. In fact, what’s happened when they’ve come to me like that is that I’ve actually given them evidence of why there are no planes.

Lishman – Well, these are ideas that people have to think about for themselves. They’re not going to immediately agree with you.

D.S. – I agree. What I want people to do is to look at everything objectively with their own eyes. I mean if they look at the Twin Towers collapsing and think that is a building falling down naturally, they’re living in cloud cuckcoo land, and they should be told that. They should be told that they are ignorant and that ignorance leads to bigotry and that bigotry is what led to the rule of the New World Order. As I [was] saying, at the moment we’re in the end times: there is no neutrality anymore. You’re either on the side of good, light, Jesus, or you’re on the other side. And I say to people, ‘You don’t have to be particularly clever to guess what the other side is. It begins with “D” and ends with “evil”.’

Interview with David Shayler. Part two: Profile of a suicide bomber?

2008-09-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

Lishman - Would you link the bombing in Madrid to 9/11 and 7/7 as inside jobs?

D.S. - I’m not an expert on the bombing of Madrid but what I’ve seen is that again there doesn’t seem to be the official evidence to back up what they’re [saying]. There are all sorts of suspicious weird stuff about that as well. Of course – in the light of everything else we know – it would be more likely that those bombings were carried out by the New World Order, particularly [considering] the timing. They thought they would scare the Spanish people into electing Aznar, who was a right-winger and a supporter of the war on terror, but unfortunately it completely backfired on him and he was voted out. So in a sense it just goes to show that they don’t always control things and things don’t always go their way. But the timing of it and some of the anomalies – again I’m not an expert – but what I’ve seen of it would indicate to me that that would also be an operation carried out by the New World Order and blamed on Al Qaeada.

Lishman - The Conservatives who were in power claimed it was ETA...

D.S. - Again the stupidity… They thought that if they could hold it up until after the election with the idea it was ETA... When I looked at that, straight away – I worked in the intelligence services – the first thing I said is that ETA are like the IRA: they give code-worded warnings; they don’t just indiscriminately bomb people. Again this is people who don’t understand terrorism. It comes from ignorance basically. People that the state calls terrorists consider themselves to be resistance and freedom fighters. They are people who say, ‘Look, the democracy in our state doesn’t work therefore we have to resort to violence to save human life’. That is a very flawed argument, of course, but that’s their thinking. So they are not the same people as suicide bombers in Palestine; people who have absolutely nothing left in their lives. They’ve been repressed by the Israelis, they probably lost lots of relatives and they feel they’ve got nothing left in their lives. They’ve only got poverty and repression to look forward to. They, in a sense, strap bombs to themselves and very nobly take their lives, but that mentality is completely different to the resistance fighter.

The resistance fighters see themselves as a soldier and therefore civilians are not fair game. Basically they do everything in their power not to kill civilians – as the IRA did – partly because it’s just counterproductive and it’s just bad publicity. But on the contrary, they see people of the occupying government or occupying forces as fair-game targets. So again that argument would also apply to the recording about Mohammad Sidique Khan [alleged 7/7 bomber]. There’s actually a recording of him that was covered in the Sunday Times in which he talks about going out to the occupied territories to carry out a form of resistance fighting. Now that to me confirms that he’s not a suicide bomber. He had a completely different mentality to a suicide bomber. In fact none of the 19 hijackers – supposed 19 hijackers – or the four suicide bombers in London actually conform to what the intelligence services would think was the profile of a suicide bomber. They were largely educated; they had a lot going for them; they weren’t the same people – as I say – who had absolutely nothing and live under day to day repression and murder.

Lishman - You said you had also revisited 9/11 and have a theory about the planes…

D.S. - Trying to describe all this to you in words is very difficult. You’ve got to see the visuals. I can send you some links on YouTube in which people have analysed the footage, the original footage, and on the NBC one, the original live footage, there is no plane, absolutely no plane. Yet on the evening news they’ve doctored the footage to put a plane on it. And that is probably the most obvious example. But the examples of course are of videos going into the South Tower. Again you analyse those, they show no consistency whatsoever with a plane hitting a building. There’s no slowing down of the plane as it goes in. There’s no distortion. There’s no fracturing of the fuselage. There’s no fracturing of the wings. There’s no explosion of the fuel tanks. All the things you’d expect to happen if a 100-ton jetliner comes into contact with a building with thousands and thousands of tons of steel in it basically. The idea that the Twin Towers were kind of built out of balsa wood and tissue paper only comes after the attacks. Before that, all the talk is that these are new buildings, they’re stronger than normal buildings and so on. So I say to anybody… I would quite happily sit down with anyone… In fact I do the opposite… I say, come to me with some reliable evidence of planes being used on that day, and so far no-one has brought a single piece of reliable evidence to me.

Some people bring witness reports saying they saw a plane, but those people have never been interviewed properly. The 9/11 Commission didn’t interview them, it just took the statements they’d already given, there’s a deeply flawed process, this is untested evidence. And again, you look at some of the early coverage... There’s a brilliant one with a woman who talks about seeing an explosion coming out of the North Tower, then she’s on the phone to the people in the studio and she says, ‘Oh there’s another explosion gone off,’ and the guy in the studio says, ‘Oh it’s another plane,’ and she says, ‘It must be another a plane, then’. So you see how this works, you hear a report about a plane and therefore your brain makes you think you heard a plane. But I assure you, if you look at the witness reports there are many people who didn’t see a plane. Many people simply talk about explosions coming out of the building or a missile. Now these missiles move much faster than planes. So it’s possible you could miss the missile and just catch the explosion and that would be the explanation for that. But all the evidence points to the fact that the Twin Towers were brought down by a controlled demolition as was Building 7.

Lishman - Regardless of whether it was missiles or planes it was still a controlled demolition…

D.S. - Yes. They were still brought down by controlled demolition. But I would again urge people to look at the records. The Federal Aviation Administration’s records show that Flight 11 and Flight 77 didn’t take off that day. And that the United Airlines’ planes flying the routes of Flight 175 and Flight 93 that day were only actually decommissioned by FAA in September 2005. And only then after it appeared in Loose Change and was enormously embarrassing to them. So again, there’s no conclusive proof but we have to ask what’s going on there. Similarly, there are no witness reports – that I’m aware of – of the hijackers at any of the airports where the planes took off or indeed CCTV. There is CCTV of the feeder flight that’s been put on our screens to make people think there is CCTV of the airports where the planes took off, but of course that’s quite a different matter. And again that’s the kind of sleight of hand they use. They’ve always shown the June 28 pictures of 7/7 in the press, people then think they’re seeing the actual pictures of the bombing in London that was on 7/7 because they’re not paying attention properly. It’s only anoraks like me who pay attention all the time, that point out to these people that, no, that isn’t CCTV of those guys on 7/7, that was the practice run.

Lishman - In the case of 9/11 what is the best way to reach people, to wake them up?

D.S. - Now we had something very good going from May 2005 until about December 2006. I was heavily involved in 9/11. I [went around] the country, in little towns, went to pubs, town halls, and basically sold DVDs and banged the drum for truth. We said – I didn’t pull my words, I didn’t say it might have been incompetence. I said, ‘No. This is an inside job and this is the reason why we think it’. Bang a drum for truth. There’s no sense in compromising truth with these people because they’ll just take you apart. So in terms of getting the 9/11 message across, you’ve got to get people looking at this stuff themselves, making a judgement with their own eyes. And I would defy any sane human being to look at the collapse of Building 7 or indeed the Twin Towers and say that it’s a building falling down. You’d have to be absolutely insane to say that. And, in fact, on the BBC documentary about Building 7 they showed a very similar sized building subject to a controlled demolition coming down exactly in the way that Building 7 [did].

Lishman - How would you gauge the number of people who have woken up to this false flag terrorism in Britain? It’s very hard to gauge when the press won’t talk about it openly.

D.S. - Well, it’s actually amazing. I talk to all sorts of people. Not just 9/11 people. I get out and about. And I’m amazed how many people know about it. I’m absolutely amazed. But of course it hasn’t translated into anything really concrete in the mainstream media or in parliament. And that just shows me really that these people are controlled. And we’ve got to worry about the whole issue of mind control. As I say, there’s lots of stuff now on the internet about the [Montauk] project, for example, in the US, where they were starting to use beams to control people’s minds. And I talk to some people in the mainstream media and parliament, and all these people exhibit the hallmarks of being mind controlled.

Lishman - what are the hallmarks?

D.S. - Basically being unable to see things with their own eyes. When you point out the controlled demolition of Building 7 collapsing they try and say, ‘That doesn’t look like a controlled demolition’. Show them four or five other controlled demolitions and then show them Building 7 falling down and they still say, ‘No, that’s not a controlled demolition’. Some people will say it’s because of the level of fear that they live in that they don’t want to go there, but I say I think this is mind control. I think this is what accounts for the very very poor level of government and parliament in recent years. Laws have been passed that are ill-thought out and unnecessary. And even if their best case scenario is absolutely true, there’ll be no reason to do what they’re doing at the moment. Believe me, I’ve worked in intelligence and I know how it works. This is a complete over-reaction. The anti-spiritual way of working is to create fear. They create fear through bombings. They threaten people. And once you’ve got them in that fear, it’s much easier to attach any dark entity to them or to control their minds. And again this is why I stress that unconditional love is the only way forward. If you live in unconditional love you [have] a higher vibration and you’re much more immune to the dark side psychic attacks and even technical mind control.

Final part coming soon

Part one of interview

Interview with David Shayler. Part one: A very British coup?

2008-09-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

Last week I carried out a telephone interview with ex-MI5 whistleblower David Shayler for a magazine article to be published later this year. What follows is part one of the complete transcript of our conversation. Parts two and three will follow next week.

Ex-MI5, campaigner to expose false-flag terrorism and now messiah, David Shayler is an extremely controversial character - even when viewed in the context of the web-based alternative media - so before reading please ensure your critical faculty is fully engaged. Personally, I really enjoyed talking to him and even though I don't agree 100% with what he had to say, I did agree with much of it - and the rest was at least very thought provoking.

I phoned David about four times and was cut off. On the fifth attempt we managed to get a good connection.

Lishman – How about now?

David Shayler – That’s much better. I hope you’re going to include things like this in your article because it’s been a [tenure] of the last eleven years that they would mess around with my phone; they’ll stop me getting a signal when I need to get a signal and there’s no logic to it. I was getting a signal yesterday no problem. Today, no. The last couple of days I haven’t been able to get a signal because they know where I am basically. They stop messages getting through to me and texts and everything else. This is what you have to live with when you’re on the other side of the New World Order, which happens particularly when people are trying to get in touch with me to give me work or get me on the television to do interviews. Time and time again those messages don’t get through at the right time and it’s too late.

L- Where are you at the moment?
D.S. - I'm actually in Guildford near London.

L- When we talked before, you mentioned that you thought 7/7 may have been a coup d’ etat. Could you elaborate on that?

D.S. – If you compare what happens on 9/11 and 7/7, both events are very very similar. What happens is that you get this creation of maximum chaos to start with. On 9/11 there are stories of eleven planes being hijacked. Of course, any of those, in the minds of the government, could be going into a building somewhere in New York or Washington. Similarly on the day of 7/7 [there were] official reports of seven bombs. Everybody was running with the idea of seven bombs, although there were other reports of bombs on the tube as well. Reports of burning buildings, all sorts of stuff. Now I'm not sure how much of any of that is true. The idea of that is to create maximum chaos amongst the civilian government.

On the day of 7/7 the police, that’s New Scotland Yard, relocated to outside the capital. Now I worked with New Scotland Yard against the IRA on various terrorist operations and that never happened in those circumstances. London’s fairly used to mainstream terrorist attack, so it would be unthinkable even if it was suicide bombers that the police would relocate. You know, it’s not like this is new to us because we’re used to this in Britain, so to me the decoding of that is that Britain is under some kind of coup d’etat. There were also troops in front of Buckingham Palace where the Queen was that day. And again that’s not a reaction to a normal terrorist attack.

But what seemed to happen on both occasions of 9/11 and 7/7 is that somehow the agents of good, wherever they were, seemed to somehow at least be able to hold up the effects of this coup. Because, I point out on 9/11, if whatever it was that was heading towards Washington hit its target they could then declare martial law, because it was heading towards possibly the White House or Capital Hill, but the fact that it was shot down by the mainstream American military means that they couldn’t do that.

Now for anybody who finds the idea of the Americans calling martial law fanciful, on the ninth of the ninth 2001, Jeb Bush, the brother of the president and governor of Florida, declared martial law in Florida. So it’s not like it’s something they’re not thinking about. And the same with 7/7. When you start [detailing] what Sir Ian Blair said, the chief of the Met, the kind of words he was using were more appropriate to a coup than a terrorist attack and that’s part of the reason there’s been absolutely no enquiry into 7/7 – there’s very little official evidence of anything. So they’ve put forward a very cock-eyed story about four bombs going off at exactly the same time. In the one public document we do have, the home office narrative, there are so many obvious mistakes in it that I believe people on the inside are trying to tell us: there’s been a coup and we’re looking for your help.

L- Recently there was a case where four people accused of aiding the bombers of 7/7 were acquitted and apparently during the trial the jury were shown video footage of the bombers in the station. Previously the government failed to produce video evidence. Do you think there is video footage?

DS – If there is, they haven’t released this stuff publicly. At the moment, there is one CCTV picture of the guys outside Luton, which again if you look at it is an obvious forgery. At the very best you can’t identify the four men from it. And, of course, the next question is, if you go through the door, why aren’t they being photographed on the other side. Of course on the practice run on June 28, 2005, they are photographed on the other side of the station, so there should be more CCTV. London is the most CCTV-surveyed city in the world, yet they’ve released no clips of these guys in London as such – as far as I’m aware – apart from the one of Hasib Hussain after the first bombs have gone off. He’s supposed to be [in] King’s Cross Station at that point. But I don’t think that has a proper date time line on it – it’s not a proper CCTV picture.

And again, they claimed to have CCTV taken at 8h26 at King’s Cross. Then the story changed. They then changed it to 8h26 at King’s Cross Thames Link, which is a separate station. It's a good six or seven minute walk from the actual King’s Cross itself. Now that picture’s never been released. They’ve changed the story about it. And again there’s no reason not to release that. There’s no reasons of national security or anything. So we’ve got to wonder what’s going on there as well. As I say there should be far more pictures of these guys all over the place. And there aren’t. And because we’ve only had a Home Office narrative, all we have is assertions. We are told things by the Government but that’s not the same thing as evidence, which is something we can all look at publicly and examine. And that’s not the same thing as we’ve had in this case at all.

L- When you talk about the 7/7 practice run on June 28th, are you talking about Visor Consultant's drill?

D.S. - No, no, no… there are photographs of the four [alleged suicide bombers]– or three or four of them – involved in a practice run on the 28th of June 2005.

L- Nine days before 7/7?

D.S. – Yes. The really interesting thing about that is that the pictures from the practice run – the video and everything else – are absolutely clear. Really, really clear video. So you can easily identify them on it. Compared to the actual ones supposedly taken on the day of the attack outside Luton. Now you’ve got to wonder why suddenly the CCTV goes to poor quality on the day of the attack. And again I’d contend that this is part of the theory that that picture taken at 7h21 is actually a forgery. And again, there’s a good way to check this out: what people can say to the police in Britain is, can we see a sworn statement of the officer who took that off the CCTV tape? Because obviously in a court case everything has to be sworn under oath. So if they use a CCTV still, they have to swear under oath that they took it off the tape and that it’s an accurate representation of what was taken off the tape and it’s not been interfered with. That will be a public court document, so if they’re doing their stuff, it exists and we should be able to interview the policeman who did it. That’s the kind of stuff we should be asking them. Now as far as I’m concerned, there is no evidence – I don’t care about subsequent court cases or anything else – there is no evidence in the public domain of the idea that four suicide bombers were there.

Why haven’t they managed to identify the explosive substance? Now again, I would say that looking at the damage – obviously it’s quite hard to tell looking at damage – but I would say from the impression that I’ve seen from the photographs the amount of homemade explosives you’d need to do that damage would be more than you could fit in a rucksack. Homemade explosive is a fairly blunt thing, the IRA could blow the windows out of buildings with it but they had tons and tons of it. These guys could barely fit any in their backpacks. The idea that it’s going to take apart a tube train, I’m sorry it’s completely wrong. It’s also very suspicious that they haven’t released either the detail of what that explosive substance was, because there’s only certain explosive substances known in the world that can cause such explosions and the intelligence services know all about those, so why would it be so difficult to identify a conventional explosive?

L - When you talk about a possible coup d’etat, are you talking about elements of the New World Order infiltrating the Government and secret services?

D.S. – That’s exactly what I’m talking about, yes. Clearly in both the UK and US and - to a certain extent – governments across the world, but more in the UK and the US because of the role we play, there are people who are not working to the interests of democracy or peace or civilisation. They are working to the interests of the New World Order. The agenda of the New World Order is set out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whether those documents are forged or not is completely irrelevant- because if you read the Protocol of the Elders of Zion - and I urge that you do read them for yourself - you will see that the agenda that’s going on in the world today is set out in a nutshell: how they’re going to use the banking system to manipulate the money supply to create recessions and depressions; how they’re going to use the media and off-the-record sources to discredit people; how they’re going to infiltrate governments; how they’re even going to use vaccination programmes to poison us basically; it’s all there in the Protocols.

When you read it, you’ll get a chill because you’ll see exactly the agenda that’s going on at the moment and the ultimate end of the agenda is to make human beings wear a microchip. This of course is widely predicted in the Book of Revelations where it talks about the mark of the beast which will be worn either on the forehead or the hand and will stop you from ascending. None will be able to trade without the mark of the beast. And this is what they want, they want us micro-chipped so everything can be done through the chip - you know, supermarkets, shops, it won’t be done through a credit card, it will be done through a chip. But of course, once you put a chip in somebody’s head or hand or whatever, you insert an electrical circuit into their body, you interfere with the electrical circuit in their head that’s called the brain. So this is their means of coercion.

L- Yes, a few years ago in the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona they chipped VIP members so they could enter and pay for their drinks using the chip.

D.S. – Yeah, exactly, this is going on already. And from my point of view as a spiritual person, you know, God said if you’re stupid enough to take one of these chips then you deserve all you get. And interestingly, it is the VIPs that are doing it. But I saw an article in a local paper recently about local councils offering to chip people’s dogs for free to try and get the idea going. If you look on the net, you’ll find there are various campaigns in America in which they’re encouraging mothers in particular to get their children chipped in case they’re abducted and then of course you’ll know where they are. And the threat of abduction, as ever, is absolutely tiny, infinitesimally small, but that fear playing on the minds of mothers of course will then [lead them] to get their children chipped.

L - So these chips will be used to locate you geographically?

D.S. - They’ll be able to do all sorts of things. The military and government always have advanced technology behind the scenes, that WE don’t have. So the micro-chipping that they may already have will go beyond just even locating you, they’ll be able to control your brain. You’ll become an automaton. There were some famous experiments done by the psychologist Jose Delgado. He did an experiment in which he planted a microchip in a bull’s head and stopped the charging bull by using a joystick. So the technology exists to be able to do this stuff. It’s not like this is some kind of science fiction fantasy.

Obviously at the moment they haven’t got the chipping programmes in place. They haven’t persuaded governments yet of the need for it. And that is the only reason why they haven’t yet collapsed the world economy. In Britain, the Northern Rock Building Society effectively went bankrupt last year and of course if they’d wanted to collapse the world economy, that’s when they would have done it, but they didn’t, they propped it up, which suggests to me that the New World Order are not yet in a position to totally coerce us.

The microchip systems aren’t in place in a mass way for human beings, they don’t have the laws or prisons either to be able to imprison people before they chip them. [But we do] have a massive prison building programme going on in Britain at the moment. We’ve got more people in prison than ever before and crime's supposed to be falling. So why are they building loads of prisons? You see in America they are building concentration camps. Look on the Alex Jones show, he’s done lots of research into this. He’s photographed these things. These are concentration camps for the refuseniks. Now you imagine how it’s going to work. What they will do is, when the moment comes they will collapse the world economy. And believe me they can, very easily. At the moment they’re keeping the world economy propped up because if it collapses now, people will lose their savings, lose their houses and that may prove counter-productive for the New World Order. Because people may turn round and become spiritual. They may suddenly unite against them, so they can’t [collapse the economy] at the moment. But in the future [it will happen]. People will be struck with poverty like in the Weimar Republic in Germany with massive inflation. Their savings will be wiped out. House prices will be wiped out. They’ll have nothing. And they [the state] will turn round and they’ll say we will provide you with state benefits as long as you get a chip. That’s how it’s going to work.

L - And what about the vaccinations?

D.S. - Again, people should research into vaccinations. The dark side will tell you that vaccinations wiped out smallpox, controlled other forms of disease. But this is simply not true. Smallpox was going to die out anyway. This is part of the nature of things because human beings over the years build up anti-bodies. Therefore we can resist them. So there’s no evidence of vaccinations ever being effective in terms of stopping disease. Quite the contrary. The evidence shows that vaccinations have given people these diseases at times. Part of the problem is that vaccines are delivered through toxic substances like mercury. And again I believe that they’re putting this stuff in our body to try and stop our spiritual resonance, to lower our spiritual resonance to make it easier for us to be controlled.

L - When you look at the British government and the secret services do you see an internal battle going on?

D.S - I do. Absolutely I do. On all sorts of levels. Basically this is the culmination of a millennia - if not millions of years - of battle between light and dark. And that battle is still taking place in all sorts of ways and all sorts of places. To make the assumption of the left that MI5 is somehow… that everyone in MI5 is evil is [incredibly] wide of the mark. People within government have different motivations. A lot of them want a breathing democracy, a breathing justice system and so on. And this is what I’m saying about the Home Office narrative. I believe that it's a communication from the good people in government coded for people like me who worked in government who can decode it. If you haven’t worked in government it would be very difficult, but I’ve managed to pull out what we call the net text. There’s all sorts of warnings in that document and everything else. They’re basically saying 'look, our hands are tied, but we’re going to give you as many clues as we can'.

And the same thing happened recently with the BBC. They produced a documentary about Building 7, which collapsed on 9/11. They looked at the evidence for that and it was fascinating how they played it as having solved the mystery of Building 7. But, actually, when you think about it, what does that mean? Solved the mystery… not in a good way. They’ve solved the mystery in a bad way. Building 7 is brought down by a controlled demolition using unconventional explosives. Now all the evidence pointing towards that was in the documentary. But the conclusion of the documentary said 'no no no it collapsed by fire' and that all these conspiracy theorists are nutters. So it was a very cleverly done thing. Obviously presented to the BBC management as an attack on conspiracy theories and attack on this whole Building 7 thing, but actually all the evidence in there pointed to the fact that Building 7 was brought down by a controlled demolition and therefore in contravention of the official story about Al Qaeda carrying out these attacks. And again this is what I mean, the good people in government, the good people in the BBC, are trying to communicate with the great mass of people to say 'look, help us – what can we do on the inside as one or two people or whatever because we know they will kill people like they killed David Kelly?'

Have you read the autopsy report into David Kelly, the Government scientist? He had a puncture wound in his wrist that goes below the knife wound by which he was supposed to have killed himself. Now I worked in intelligence, injections are used to kill people. And I have also talked to a doctor who was first on the scene who said that the body had clearly been moved. There was absolutely no blood on the ground and the wrists had been cut in the wrong way to commit suicide. To commit suicide you have to cut your wrists not perpendicular to your hand but in line with your arm to tear the veins apart. Otherwise they just seal up again. So clearly clearly David Kelly did not commit suicide. I’m absolutely convinced he was murdered by the New World Order who then tried to blame it on other people like the Iraqis or anybody else they can. But of course the really worrying thing is the cover up afterwards. Nobody in the British mainstream media for several years dared even say that he may have been subject to a murder attempt. This is the level of control that they now have, that no-one dared even mention that when it was happening. And the other thing of course is that they managed to avoid a formal inquest, because in Britain if there’s a suspicious death, we have an evidential inquest process, but the Hutton Inquiry, which looked into the death of David Kelly avoided the inquest into that death.

I basically contend that, with all of these things, there was a coup d’etat on 9/11, which came to effect Britain as well because Britain and America are so very closely linked, in fact we’re really part of the same empire. In a sense we’re just two different arms of the same empire. So you can see, the quality of our lawmaking post-9/11 plummeted and the quality of life in this country plummeted. The laws they are passing allow people to be put in prison without trial, for no reason. In America they’ve now got laws allowing people to be tortured, and this is not in the margins of civilisation, this is in the very heart of civilisation. The reason we were glad we lived in Western democracies was because people couldn’t torture us no matter what happened, but that’s now been taken away. That again is all about creating a climate of fear basically. And fear leads to muddled thinking, which leads to the dark side and that’s exactly where they want you.

Summer Chemtrail Lethargy Syndrome welcomes the messiah

2008-08-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

11 o'clock

Kitler hops up onto my bed - steps over the sleeping female - walks up to my serenely-unconscious face and meows violently into my ear. I awake, realise what just happened and take a swipe at my feline adversary. But she's too fast and she leaps off the bed and is on her way out of the room, pushing the door open as wide as she can, which casts sunlight onto my half of the bed. Happy with her work, she stands in the doorway looking my way. I throw a pillow her way. She gracefully steps aside and is gone.

1 pm

Kitler, obviously full of remorse for her previous action, decides to cuddle up to me and have a good purr. But for wont of a place to sit, she tries to make her self comfortable on my face. I awake spluttering. 'What the f@#@!!'

I get up and check the usual things that inspire Kitler to annoy me. The food bowl, water, litter tray. Everything ok.

I pour some orange juice from the fridge and stand out on the balcony in my boxers, attracting an ironic wolfwhistle from Montse who lives next door.

'Rasaka?' she asks.

I shake my head, 'not really... just a bottle of wine'. I take a look up at the sky and notice the by now textbook criss-cross polymer clouds hazing over the blue.

'hace muy buen tiempo', says Montse, 'what are you doing in bed till this time?'

To which I give her a knowing smile.

'Que guarro eres!' she laughs dirtily before disappearing inside her apartment.

I head back to bed.

3.30pm

Female gone. Lukewarm cup of tea on the bedside table. Kitler asleep at my feet. After a further twenty minutes fighting against tremendous lethargy, I get up. Kitler scowls at me for moving my feet, which she'd been using as a pillow.

I sit at the computer with a coffee and start to do a bit of research. Tonight I'm scheduled to interview ex-MI5 whistle-blower David Shayler, erstwhile darling of the truth movement, now regarded by many with growing scepticism since last year he declared he was the messiah - transcript coming soon.

Would the messiah really choose Middlesbrough as his place of birth - as did David Shayler? Personally, I would have expected a Middle Eastern provenance.

But on reflection, why not Middlesbrough? Quite frankly it could do with the tourism a messiah would drum up. At the moment they've only got the Transporter Bridge and the silhouette of the ICI plant - as featured in Bladerunner - to pull in the crowds.

I feel the world shifting inexorably towards the weird.

Solutions # 36 : rehumanise.

Nobel prize for comedy

2008-08-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

You can find the roots of the agenda in the writings of various British philosophers and intellectuals from early to mid 20th century. People like Aldous Huxley, H.G.Wells and Bertrand Russell, often mistakenly seen as champions of the oppressed, seemed to lay it down in cold surgical language when writing in publications or speaking in forums they assumed the general public would not desire access to.

Here's Bertrand Russell from his book The Scientific Outlook, published in 1931. What he says is fairly shocking as a prediction for our future, but there's no indication at this stage that he himself is in favour of a state using mind control on its people.

"Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have - even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished."

"Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible."

Isn't it strange that back in the 1930's the idea was floated around that children could be "injected" into a state of model citizenry, and that nowadays - in 2008 - we have government scare campaigns that urge parents to have their children multi-vaccinated at 18 months old with shots that contain mercury and aluminium?

In his 1951 book, The Impact of Science on Society, Russell used less guarded language. Indeed, one could be forgiven for thinking that he, like Huxley towards the end of his life, had become quite fond of state-sponsored mind control:

"Physiology and psychology afford fields for scientific technique which still await development. Two great men, Pavlov and Freud, have laid the foundation. I do not accept the view that they are in any essential conflict, but what structure will be built on their foundations is still in doubt. I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology.... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called "education." Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part.... It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment."

"The subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship....The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark grey."

"Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen."

In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".

Hmmm... Surely, there was some kind of mistake. Maybe they'd meant to give it to another 'Bertrand Russell'. One that wasn't a brainwashing elitist.

What is the Agenda?

2008-08-14T04:51:00.000-07:00

According to most New World Order researchers the agenda is population control: to reduce the earth's population from six billion to 500 million.

The method is multi-faceted, introduced through:
1)chemical and radiation acquired infertility. (vaccines, medicines, food,water, laptops, mobiles...)
2)soft-kill chemical and biological attack: we're already at this stage. This is mostly aimed at suppressing the immune system allowing diseases to spread and mutate rapidly. (Chemtrails, food additives, GM, vaccines...)
3)pandemic disease: 'leaked' into the population from bio-weapon labs. Contagion will be faster if humans are herded into cities. Thus, the agenda is to concentrate population in a few key areas by destroying the rural way of life; closing down small towns and cities and restricting road and transport access.

The agenda is pushed by a quasi-scientific environmental movement which will be used to implement a one-world government, and a level of technocratic surveillance and micromanagement never before seen on this planet. This movement is to be backed up by a new enviro-religion based on Gaia, the Greek concept of "mother earth", whose proponents state the need to take population control into 'our' own hands before Gaia herself does the culling.

Do we see evidence of the agenda in Britain?

Herding
Tony Blair's government reduced amenities and restricted transport access in rural communities, which encourages people to move to and remain in cities. Yesterday, a British think tank, closely linked to the Conservative Party suggested that residents of economically challenged northern towns and cities, such as Sunderland, Hull and Hartlepool, should abandon their homes and relocate in the already over-populated South East, where they proposed building 3 million new homes to incorporate the northern exodus.

Chemo-lobotomy and infertility
Almost all chewing gum contains aspartame, an excitotoxin that destroys nerves by overstimulating them. Numerous studies link vaccines to autism, Alzheimers etc. In the last few weeks there have been scare articles about flu and measles pandemics suggesting that children aren't being vaccinated enough. Radiation from phones and computers is linked to infertility.. I give up. There's far too much to list here.

Of course, once you start looking for evidence of the agenda, you start to see it everywhere, but, this might be true for a lot of things, such as God, adultery and grey hairs.

Click here to read the UN's Agenda 21

Time of estrangement

2008-08-12T00:26:00.000-07:00

Some time in the past in Camden, when I first knew Diane...

Diane was a corporate artist, a graphic designer whose work was sought after by London's most prominent ad agencies. She never ran short of work or money. I, on the other hand, was a struggling artist. Struggling to get out of bed. Struggling to pay the rent. Struggling to do anything that approached art.

Still, when I first met Diane, the differences in our income and usefulness didn't seem to matter. Our days were guided by the lights of imagination. We would fill up whole evenings just talking, and with words alone, transport ourselves to far off places, dreaming of bright futures.

Sometimes we would take out Diane's drawing kit and make tapestries on long rolls of paper, etching characters and events as we went, pacing time with glasses of wine, bowls of chilli, marijuana joints on the unfurled story. Our spills and stains became imprints of history. The next morning I’d carefully roll up the paper and fix it with tape, recording the date and placing it on the shelf next to the others.

One night Diane suggested that we draw our own story. We etched with the poise and consideration of Roman gods. Moving our hands of fate embroidering our lives with the vicissitudes and narrative of story-worthy souls, not avoiding the difficulties as pure young dreamers do: we drew scenes of jealousy, poverty, false-pregnancy, pregnancy, break-ups, reunions, marriage and tragedy (our dog dies -this was pre-Kitler). Reaching the end of the roll we had the two of us walk on into the future. Around this scene, Diane sketched beautiful swirls of blue and gold like Van Gough's Starry Night. Later, we decided that we’d mount the tapestry around my living room. We gave it a glass framing and stencilled olive and wine leaves above and below its placing. We painted the stencilled foliage deep forest green against the mustard yellow of the wall.

We envisaged many things in those days, but not a time of estrangement living in a foreign country. One of us on a mountainside. The other in a city.

On this journey here, we've both changed so much. Now, Diane's a real artist. And me?

I, too, am beginning to find my way...

Solutions # 35: All good things come to end. Rescue good memories from the prison cell of chronological history.

The sting

2008-08-11T02:58:00.000-07:00

Freedom is the freedom to say that on the night of August 7, 2008, Georgia attacked South Ossetia killing 15 Russian "peacekeepers" and in the ensuing bombing raid and ground attack, around 2000 Ossetian citizens most of them with Russian passports.

In response Russia liberated South Ossetia by military force and launched air attacks on several Georgian cities, killing thousands.

Ironically, Georgia is now courting the sympathy of Western governments as a victim of Russian warmongering.

But surely Georgia(population 4.4 million)must have anticipated some response from Russia (population 148 million and 20,000 nuclear missiles)when it got murderous in South Ossetia? It really doesn't seem possible that this series of events was down to a mere miscalculation by the Georgian president.

Pondering this, I'm put in mind of a simple-minded trick often used by gangs of small-town thugs. First they encourage their shortest, weakest looking friend to start a fight with a big guy in a bar or club. Then, when the fight kicks off and the small guy's getting a beating, they can wade in to save their friend and look like heroes - even if they outnumber the big guy five to one. Bish, bosh bash and drinks all around!

So which bunch of thugs was Georgia's expecting to back it up when it decided to provoke Russia into attacking it?

The US?
Well, there's been sightings of Blackwater troops with American flags on their sleeves fighting the Russians in Georgia. The US has been heavily involved with the development of Georgia's military over the last few years - expanding the size of Georgian weaponry by 30 times. Today, Dick Cheney threatened Russia and said their attack will not go unanswered.

Israel?
Could be. There have been reports of Israeli military trainers present in Georgia.

The EU?
It's no secret that Georgia may be joining the EU. Plus, European fuel pipelines were allegedly bombed by Russian aircraft.

All of the above?
Most likely.

And meanwhile, US aircraft carriers are building up their presence in the Gulf. The Jerusalem post reports that an attack on Iran is imminent...

World War? Well, it's certainly taking my mind off the economy.

One World Government, 'alien' beings and the superinordinate goal

2008-08-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

Last week Associated Press reported that ex-NASA astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell, a veteran moonwalker from Apollo 14, told a radio audience that aliens have already visited the planet and that they are friendly, technologically superior and resemble ET. He claimed that governments have kept it quiet for over six decades but not for much longer. "I think we're headed for real disclosure and some serious organisations are moving in that direction", explained Mitchell.

NASA have since issued a statement denying there was any truth to the statement, 'but... well, they would, wouldn't they?' I hear the UFO enthusiasts cry.

As far as I'm concerned the jury's out on the reliability of this story. I have no idea if there's any truth to it, no evidence and no way of getting any. But it did get me thinking about how such a story could be used for mass mind control. Indeed, what if this was the early seed-planting exercise in a government operation to fake an alien landing? And if so, why and how might they do it?

In my view the primary reason to carry out such an operation would be as a Weapon of Mass Distraction. The economy's crashing, people are losing there homes, the Iranian front is opening up in the Middle East, and oh yeah, families of aliens are living on earth working with our governments. Imagine the hysteria.

The secondary reason would be to create a super-inordinate goal (a common binding objective) for Earth's native citizenry. The first aliens we become familiar with will be friendly and keen to share their wisdom and technology. But they warn us of a grave danger coming our way in the form of their destructive and tyrannical enemies from a neighbouring solar system who seek to enslave all occupied planets in the universe... so we must do what they say to defend ourselves. A one-world government in the defence of its people against external enemies. The people of the world would finally unite in a common cause.

How would they fake the aliens? With the help of Hollywood? Or perhaps with the help of genetic 'architects'? If you already know about the vast quantity of chimeras being produced by scientists this idea may not seem too outlandish. Check out the spider goat, ANDi the luminous jellyfish monkey (pictured above), the spinach pig, the luminous jellyfish pig (click here. scroll down to Risky Business)... not to mention all the humanoid variations... and this is only the stuff that our governments are disclosing at the moment. There's a good chance it gets much worse than this. So given the brief to produce a real live alien species made up of human, jellyfish, monkey, pig, spider, spinach, and whatever's left over in the lab, I'm sure our trusty transgenic magicians could rustle up something fairly convincing. Perhaps even something resembling ET.

God knows what they could produce if they got hold of Kitler's DNA. A kitler-shark, a kitler plant, kitler pigeon... These thoughts - and the 40 degree heat - will keep me awake tonight.

Solutions # 33: Expose the hypocrisy of a media that demonises CO2, but which either ignores or celebrates news of transgenic experimentation - a far greater threat to the natural order.

New magazine by Lishman

2008-08-01T08:48:00.000-07:00

Just when you thought it was safe to browse through the free magazines in Barcelona's cafes... there came a publication that covers the New World Order conspiracy, chemtrails, false-flag terrorism, Agenda 21's population control and land grabbing , alongside a guide to Barcelona's best restaurants, clubs and pubs. Ten thousand copies to be circulated around the city. A bizarre cocktail of explosive info and useful tourist tips.

But seriously, there's a good chance that in October I'll be launching a new English-language Barcelona city magazine. In recent weeks I've been busy negotiating with a media company (this is why there's been a dearth of Lishman entries) who want to expand their market and have offered me carte blanche to write what I want.

Earlier today, I was wondering to myself: do I really dare go full on Lishman with this magazine?

Sitting on the balcony pondering this question, I watched a white plane lay a chemtrail across the sky (see picture above). Then, I received an sms from a friend in transit saying she'd spotted a fleet of unmarked white jet planes - similar to the ones we see spraying everywhere - taking off from Girona airport.

Do I dare?

I have no choice but to try.

Solutions # 32: De-program yourself: mentally go through all your long-held opinions and values. Question them logically, rationally and emotionally: they may not be your own. Whose are they and where did they come from?

L. Cohen's songs of warning

2008-07-21T07:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, after a three-hour train ride up the coast from Barcelona, I saw Leonard Cohen play Benicassim festival.

Cohen was accompanied by, among others, Spanish flamenco guitarist Javier Mas, who I hope to interview in the coming weeks and post on this site.

It was an amazing set which included several songs of spooky apocalyptic foreboding. It's hard to say whether Cohen's work is prophetic or merely the product of super-sentient and well-researched artistic mind.

To show you what I mean, below are the lyrics to The Future written by Cohen about ten years ago. Now as the American police state tightens its noose, the culture is fully debased, the prison camps are in place, and the bio-weapons are probably at the ready, this song captures the Zeitgeist:

The Future

Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here,
there's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that's an order!
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant

You don't know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I'm the little jew
who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder

Things are going to slide ...

There'll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing
You'll see a woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin'

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby:
it is murder

More weather modification

2008-07-16T01:16:00.000-07:00

A major wine producer based near Lleida, Catalonia, regularly pays a private weather modification company to fly jets to seed the clouds above its vineyards to prevent rain at key points in the grapes' development. The technique has infuriated neighbouring agriculturalists whose crops are damaged by the extra 'freak' rainfall they receive because of such rain prevention nearby. Unfortunately for them, there appears to be no law against privately actioned cloud seeding.

I'm supposing at this early stage in my research that it's common practise for big wine producers to break the clouds for the sake of the grapes. Again, we have no idea what effect putting all these extra particles into the air has on the human population below. And it's unlikely that the spraying that's going on over Barcelona and Sant Cugat -where there are no grape vines- is of the same kind. Updates to follow as I make more enquiries...

Here's a link to a typical weather modification outfit

Killing us softly in San Cugat

2008-07-14T03:01:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, July 12, at about 3 in the afternoon, a few friends and I went swimming in a forest swimming pool just outside the Catalan village of San Cugat. Lost among the trees for awhile, we located the pool following the laughter of children that occasionally reached us through the trees, breaking up with the creepy surreality of a SGT Pepper backing track.

Above us planes sprayed trails of fine powder cloud for four hours. They mapped out a grid of interlocking (perpendicular) lines across the sky. The trails slowly fell to earth getting ever wider and fluffier. This was watched with resignation by myself, and with understandable disbelief by my friends. At first, they convinced themselves that they were just normal air plane emissions, but then a passenger plane flew overhead with a trail that disappeared after a minute or so. This I pointed out was a normal emission or contrail. It was the first time they'd seen real chemtrails being sprayed on them. Hard to accept.

However, none of us died, or even felt mildly ill. In fact, we had a great time swimming in the sun despite the sinister doom writing across the sky. So maybe it's just a case of innocuous weather modification or control of a harmful insect pest using chemicals without human consequence. Who knows?

As we left the pool, dark clouds came across from the mountains bringing torrential rain. We got soaking wet on our trek back through the forest. As we walked, one friend wondered how they got these pilots to spray over cities where their friends and families live.

I suppose the answer is through a programme of conditioning and selection. Commanding officers search out candidates that offer complete unquestioning obedience to them. The ones that believe that authority equals truth. These are the pilots chosen for such missions.

You can be sure that the pilots don't check what they are spraying over cities every time they go out on a mission. One day it could be insecticide, the next day, heavy metals... or depleted uranium for all they know.

When I got home I found Kitler hiding under my bed. She sounded as if she was wheezing. I tried to get her out into the light to see what was wrong with her, but every time my hand got close, she hissed. I know better to keep my distance when she's like that.

'It's all mad', I think to myself, 'Kitler's mad. The sky's mad. The earth's mad. I wish it was just me that was mad.'

Solutions # 31: When the truth becomes overwhelming. Just hold on. Hold on.

The seeds of freak weather

2008-07-11T05:58:00.000-07:00

On June 12 a sack of cement fell out of the clear blue Moscow sky smashing a 3 ft wide hole into a suburban household. Surveying the damage, the bewildered house-owner called in the police, who after making a few enquiries discovered that the cement was government property and had tumbled out of the clumsy hands of an air force flight assistant that was supposed to empty out the sack’s contents gradually while flying above the city.

Why were they doing this? Well, as a Government spokesman explained, to ensure sunny weather for Russia Day, a national holiday established after the break up of the Soviet Union. Emptying cement powder apparently ‘seeds’ the clouds, meaning it absorbs the moisture in the air preventing cloud formation. Then I suppose it floats harmlessly to the ground - The Russian government also admitted using silver iodide and liquid nitrogen that day, but silver iodide is known to cause rainfall not prevent it.

A government spokesman claimed that the cement drop was the first “hiccup” they’d had in the twenty years they’d been doing it. So, it’s actually common procedure. ‘But is it a safe?’, you would be forgiven for asking. After all, Breathing cement powder is one of the reasons that thousands of 9/11 first responders are suffering fatal respiratory illnesses. So I wonder how the many asthma suffers that live in Moscow feel about their governments efforts to ensure that city has its time in the sun.

Also, in a time of supposed water shortages – with governments around the world poised to introduce stringent tax measures and invasive micromanaged social control to prevent water waste- how can we be sure that this kind of brutal weather modification isn’t being used to engineer a crisis in the old Hegelian tradition?

And preventing rain in one region means that another region will experience more than its fair share – perhaps even flooding, which can be claimed by the Climate Change brigade as evidence of freak weather.

Read AP article here

Solutions # 30 : Be relentless in exposing their lies.

Where do we stand?

2008-07-07T06:55:00.000-07:00

Email:

Lishman.

It’s been three months now. I think it’s time we talked about where we stand, don’t you?

Anyway, I’ve got some news for you. Come to the mountain this weekend.

Diane

Xx

Ps Give my love to Kitler

The 65-hour question

2008-07-03T04:07:00.000-07:00

Why has the EU issued a directive allowing its citizens to work a maximum of 65-hours a week?

When the economies crash, inflation surges, interest rates rise, those with mortgages, debts and mouths to feed will be begging their employers to let them work longer hours just so they can keep their heads above water. This way lies slavery.

It's very considerate of the EU to slip this one in just in time for the predicted autumnal economic collapse. Just a coincidence, I expect.

Solutions 29 # : pay off your debts, stock up on food, talk to your colleagues, inform your community.

Storm clouds gather

2008-07-02T03:24:00.000-07:00

“It’s as if they want us to work just so we can eat”, said my friend Sergi, the economist, when I visited him yesterday.

I pointed out to him that for the first time he’d used the pronoun ‘they’ as if describing a group of people who somehow engineer events, which made him sound a little bit like a conspiracy theorist.

Sergi shrugged his shoulders and said, “ Well, it could be that events are conspiring to reduce people to poverty or there’s a group of people whose interests are served by plunging Western economies into depression. I have no more answers. Either way, it’s happening.”

His sister Anna, the bank manager, added, while pouring out the tea, “I remember the peak oil crash in the 70’s, the recession in the early 80s, and the crash in ’93, but none of them moved as quickly and with such virulence as the one coming now. Everyday I hear the same horror stories from my clients: ‘Nobody’s buying’. ‘Bills are coming at me from all angles I can’t cope’. It’s really frightening.”

Anna’s words made me think of the present economic collapse as some kind of rampant bioweapon spreading quickly from city to city, rusting tills, decimating banknotes, destroying savings, contaminating food - leaving people hungry and exposed.

But while it destroys the possessions and assets of ordinary people, it bolsters their financial enemies: the tax office, the utilities, central banks, debt collectors, mafias, globalists and oil companies, who like parasites or cancers grow fat off their beleaguered hosts.

It’s a double-edged sword. And even if you know that it’s coming soon to a cinema near you, it’s still hard to avoid its dread precision and deadly effects.

“What can we do?”, I asked, breaking the two-minute silence that we’d all fallen into, perhaps due as much to the stifling heat and humidity as to the sense of doom.

“Keep breathing”, said Anna, “Breathe through the pain.”

Solutions # 28: run for office.

Is Lishman yella?

2008-06-27T05:14:00.000-07:00

Etienne never had his nose broken. He was two-times kick-boxing champion of France. One-time European champion. He didn’t want to end up just another flat-faced pug, so his main focus was on keeping his nose intact. And I have to admit, as he tells this story sitting across the table in a noisy Barcelonetta café, he’s got a good nose: proud and aquiline. ‘This nose survived a thousand angry fists’, I think to myself.

The bridge of my nose got smashed in during a brief nightclub altercation in Sunderland when I was a teenager. My assailant was a 6ft 5in karate blackbelt second dan from Murton village who –forgoing his expertise for a moment- dropped me with a sharp downward headbutt. I’d been leaning drunkenly against a wall and quite literally didn’t know what’d hit me until a bouncer picked me up told me to clean the blood off my face or get out.

I washed my face in the sink of the toilets and stayed in the club, surrounded by twenty or so ‘bodyguards’ courtesy of Dan, who promised me the protection of his gang of likeable thugs whenever he was out. And he was just about always out.

Dan’s offer of protection came after I stood up to him one time in an argument that nearly escalated into violence, but which somehow ended amicably. The fact is I’d been completely unaware just how close I’d come to a beating, but that had worked in my favour: Dan was used to people like me treating him with velvet gloves and was puzzled by my lack of deference.

After the argument, Dan asked around to find out if I was some kind of hardcase or nutjob. When he found out the truth of my ‘pacifism’, it tickled him. Next time I saw him we had a good talk and I admitted my distaste for violence, and that I didn’t want to fight just to establish myself in a local pecking order. He said he understood, but that Sunderland wouldn’t: ‘violence is a part of life here and everyone has to stick up for their mates and their family.’

So 'how', in light of Dan's offer,'had this Murton Karate master been able to attack me and then walk away unpunished?' For one, no-one, no matter how much protection you have, is ever completely safe from attack. Secondly, the guy wore a flash suit and looked like some kind of sixties crooner; It didn’t set off any alarm bells with Dan’s gang when he approached me and started his preamble. Thirdly, as I later discovered, he trained with the club’s bouncers on a weekly basis, so he was more or less untouchable. In fact, most of the city’s bouncers trained with martial arts experts and police officers, swapping pills and choke-hold techniques. Every time a bouncer went too far and broke a punter’s arm or threw them down the stairs or even killed someone with the force of their punch, a police officer would be there to act as a character witness in court.

A few weeks later, I was in a bar and the Karate guy came over to apologise. He explained that one of his friends had died and after the funeral a bunch of the Murton Boys had come into Sunderland looking for a fight. That’s why he’d attacked me. He said that I look a lot tougher than I am. He’d wanted a bit of fight back. I could tell that I’d been a disappointment to him. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we ended up becoming friends. Like with Dan, he also offered me his protection and bought me drinks everytime we met. Through my feebleness, I’d guilted him into submission.

My third line of defence in Sunderland came after I’d ‘gallantly’ (or to be more accurate - drunkenly) stepped into a fracas where two lads had started to beat up a girl – at least - they were slapping her about and I’d given them the why-don’t-you-pick-on-someone-your - own -size line. It worked. They backed off. I walked the girl safely to a taxi and that was it.

Or so I thought. The next time I went clubbing the same girl was on the door with one of the bouncers - not working but - enjoying a cocktail. She said hello as I walked in. Half an hour later I was approached by one of the bouncers (her boyfriend). He thanked me for what I’d done and got me a drink. I never had to pay on the door again and no-one ever messed with me inside that club.

And so it went into my early-twenties. Even though I upset a lot of people – often over women and stolen drinks- I lived quite a charmed life, walking through the murky no-man’s land of north-east night life unscathed apart from several punches and the dint where my nose meets the brow. I say this knowing that some of my friends took terrible beatings and were never quite the same again.

Some observations from my younger days:

If someone’s trying to start a fight and you can’t escape, you may as well call their bluff: Blithely say, ‘go ahead, hit me. I don’t care.’ Nine times out of ten, this will confuse them into a stalemate.

To survive unscathed as a pacifist in a violent world, you need a lot of luck.

There’s a measure of protection in community.

You can never be totally protected.

You are your own last line of defence.

Fear is more pernicious than a whack on the chin.

Anyway, back to that Café in Barcelonetta where, after a lifetime of conflict avoidance, I’m explaining to Etienne why I want to start kick boxing: I feel like I need to toughen myself up. I don’t want to get to the stage where I fear physical violence. I don’t want to be a soft-bellied white-collar worker living in dread of late night metro station attack. I want my Fightclub.

Etienne doesn’t really get me. ‘Crazy Englishman’, he laughs shaking his head. But in the end, he agrees to train with me. He’s very keen to get fit again. He retired from competition a few years ago and has been enjoying the good life a little too much. He pats his paunch to show me what he means. We shake on it and go our separate ways.

Back at the flat I feel a real heaviness in my bones - a kind of arthritic reluctance to do anything physical. ‘Shit’, I think to myself, as I settle down on the sofa with Kitler and a glass of wine, ‘Am I really going to do all this training? My body's killing me just sitting on the sofa.’

Kitler yawns, rolls onto her back and offers me her soft white underbelly for attention. Just then, a piercing cat-shriek breaks the night. Kitler jumps down from the sofa and walks over to the balcony. From a position of safety, she watches two street cats set about each other with incredible ferocity. But she doesn’t seem fazed by it, just interested. I doubt that Kitler’s knows what fear is. It must be a good feeling.

I get up and stand next to Kitler to watch the fight. I choose a favourite and mock punch the air like I'm watching a boxing match. It's quite bloody, but ends in an edgy stand-off with both cats still in fairly good shape. They growl at each other for a few minutes before wandering off into a dark corner to lick their wounds. Cats seem to have a natural understanding about when to stop...

Solutions # 27: Get the balance right: too much luxury is self-defeat.

Interview with an ostrich

2008-06-16T02:56:00.000-07:00

There’s an ostrich in the room today. I wish it’d go away. But it won't. It wants to talk to me.

Kitler has the right idea: She just ignores it.

Trying to follow suit, I pretend to concentrate on my work, but it's no good, I can see the ungainly creature in my peripheral vision, sitting akwardly on the sofa ruffling its white neck feathers and rotating its daffy-looking head.

I get up to make a cup of tea.

“Cup of tea?” I ask the ostrich.

The ostrich always says yes.

Me and the ostrich don’t really get along. We have a strained relationship. Largely because the ostrich believes I have a negative and paranoid world view. I really wouldn't mind what it thinks about my world view, only it feels it has a duty to come round here and 'cure' me.

"You have a such a negative view of the world", it’ll say, interrupting my work.

"What do you expect?" I say, "I’m a Sunderland fan. Experience has left me blighted. Anyway, you think I’m negative and you don’t know the half of it. I give you the abridged version of my world. I soften it up for you."

"I just wish you’d be a little more positive, that’s all. I fear for your mental health."

"No, what you’re saying is ignore reality. First of all, to think positively, we have to establish what the reality of the situation is. Then we can decide whether or not to think positively about it. What you’re Suggesting is that we all…"

"Don’t say it!!"

"… bury our heads in the sand."

"He said it", the ostrich sighed.

"and hope for the best! And that’s not positive thinking. That’s blind optimism - a dangerous gamble."

I realise that I’m ranting and take a few deep breaths to calm down.

"Can’t we just get past the whole ostrich thing?", pleads the ostrich.

"I’m sorry." I say. I look down into my teacup a little embarrassed.

Kitler comes into the living room. She sits at my feet and meows, pawing my shin. Then she turns her head to look at the sofa and then turns back to me as if to say ‘who are you talking to?’

Kitler's right. The ostrich has gone. I pick up the empty cups and take them into the kitchen to do the washing up.

'Where did it go?' I ask myself.

Maybe it stuck its head down the back of the sofa and disappeared.

Solutions # 26: If you’re not part of the elite, there’s no reason to think like them. How do you fit into the bigger picture?

Missing part of the interview with Daniel Estulin

2008-06-08T14:02:00.000-07:00

The final part of my interview with Daniel Estulin - rescued from the cutting room floor. Here he talks about the Bilderberg Group's links to the Venetian Black Nobility:

Estulin - Again another thing about the Bilderbergers is that I can trace who these people are today back to the Venition Black Nobility. We often hear about the influences of the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, but these people are merely your typical lackeys when you actually look at it. They are the bottom of the totem pole. If you’re looking at the powerful people, you can talk about the House of Braganza; you talk about the House of Orange and the House of Hapsburg. These people have unimaginable wealth. You measure it not in billions but in trillions of dollars. I have a document from the Krupp family of Germany. One banking statement, just one account on one day, and there’s a 112 trillion dollars on that account. That’s the kind of money that the Bill Gates of this world… well, they’re not even lackeys. They are nothing, because again what they have is just pocket change for these people.

One of the reasons that the Bilderbergers have never been able to discredit me is that historically I can show you that today what is called the Bilderberg group goes back in time to the Venetian Black nobility – to the royal houses and lineages of the European oligarchical families. For example, talking about your Queen, one such family is the Guelphs [from which Elizabeth] the Queen of England comes. I found reference to this family by cross referencing with names like Ethico, Henry, Rudolph and Azoll. I found those references after spending more than two and a half years in the national library of Florence - literally living there - going through five-hundred-year-old documents. Queen Victoria, she comes from the house of Este-Guelph. The name Este comes from the name Marquis of Este of Venice, which is also known as the House of Albert Azoll. Now this line is connected to the Welfs and can easily be traced back to the Cunigundas, Prince of Welf. So basically the Queen of England has Venitian roots, but also German roots because the Guelphs are intertwined with the German aristocracy through the House of Hanover, the Hanoverian English King George I, he came from the Duchy of Luneburg , which have been [governed] by the Guelph family since the 12th century. Somewhat interesting [….] Prince Charles, the Queen’s son, and Diana visited Venice on numerous occassions, not on any official business, but rather in a private capacity. I was told by someone very familiar with the British royal family that the Queen told Diana point blank to never ever ever discuss these trips in public and, of course, Diana never did because I think she knew that the Queen meant it and she’d kill her if she ever did. So anyway, again, historically I can show you that what today is called the Bilderberg Group, 500 years ago was called the Venetian Black Nobility, but the idea behind what [all these people put together] hasn't changed, it’s the wholesale destruction of anything related and affiliated with the idea of a nation state.

Rest of the interview begins here

I'm not paranoid...

2008-06-04T02:41:00.000-07:00

'Oh my god!!, they're trying to kill us!!' I screamed apropos of nothing. I had been asleep seconds before and awoke to the sound of my own panicked voice. I switched on the light.

Kitler, who was at my side, woke up , too, and looked at me with that familiar wearied expression I've come to know and love.

Managing to regain my composure a little, I picked up the print out of Connecting the Deadly Dots from the floor and resumed reading. Kitler got up and went for something to eat. I could hear her tipping out the food onto the floor as usual. Sweet normality.

Having done a lot of background reading, I'm now convinced that we're under a concerted chemical attack designed to kill most of us before our time. Despite this belief, most days I manage to keep my nerve. Occasionally, though, I get hit by the implications of everything I've been reading in one intense burst of existential insecurity. This time it happened as I slept.

Listening to myself explain these things to friends, I can understand why they might think I'm a little paranoid. Such conversations always put me in mind of Yossarian, from the WW2 novel Catch-22, who also believed 'they' were out to get him:

“They’re trying to kill me,” Yossarian told him calmly.
“No one’s trying to kill you,” Clevinger cried.
“Then why are they shooting at me?” Yossarian asked.
“They’re shooting at everyone,” Clevinger answered. “They’re trying to kill everyone.”
“And what difference does that make?”

Solutions # 26: Avoid vaccinations...

School for slaves

2008-05-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at the end of my week's holiday in the Camargue, I made the seven-hour drive up from France.

I stopped at a roadside restaurant near the border, where I feasted on butter-made croissants and black coffee while reading a purloined copy of George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London.

Finishing up the coffee, I tried to resist touching my ankle. I'd been bitten about twenty-eight times by Camargue mosquitos all on the same patch of skin, so it gave me tremendous pleasure to scratch it. Onlookers would be forgiven for thinking I'd discovered a new erogenous zone.

I got back to Barcelona at one in the morning. Jagged from all the sugar and caffeine, I made no pretence that sleep was on the cards. Instead, I opened the wine I'd bought at the open-air market in Arle that morning and set myself up on the balcony with a short-wave radio and an uncharacteristically docile Kitler, who was happy just to curl up on my lap as I tuned into the World service.

The radio was crackly and had a far off feel. BBC accents, as if from a lost empire, spoke phlegmatically of foreign wars and unheard-of Egyptian street poets; indigenous peoples who live without electricity or running water - followed by the football scores.

Half an hour in there was an education special featuring a reformist who wants the National Curriculum for England and Wales to go one stage further: He wants state school teachers to work from a script like call centre phone monkeys.

"But won't that prevent creative, innovative teachers from flourishing? What about the kind of inspirational teacher we saw in Dead Poet's Society?" asked the presenter.

"Better to stifle the two or three special teachers in every 500, than allow the many bad teachers trying to be like Dead Poet's Society ruin our children's education", the reformist replied.

At that the presenter was stumped. And the reception was lost for a few minutes as some French talk radio channel started to jam the BBC.

I poured another glass of wine and thought about the British government's most recent innovations in the field of education. One of them is to install CCTV cameras in the classrooms to "cut down on cheating", but as TES blogger Daniel Ken points out most of the cheating goes on outside the classroom in the form of internet plagiarism. So who are the cameras really for, the Teachers?

If we combine the idea of National Curriculum scripts, call centres* and CCTV cameras, we get teachers reading scripts while being watched by Ofsted - National Curriculum watchdogs - via a central 'Education' complex. From this matrix nexus, Ofsted agents could in theory zone in on any classroom in the land and make sure the teacher was adhering to the script. It would have the panopticon effect: the teacher wouldn't know when they were being watched and would thus act like they were always being watched. If a teacher was caught ad-libbing, guards could be sent to escort them immediately from the premises - this happened to me when I was a phone monkey.

If this scenario came to be, no doubt some bright spark would propose that lessons should be video taped in case the teacher was sick or so that students who missed classes due to illness could catch up. Eventually it would dawn on the Government that they could save a lot of money by getting rid of teachers in classrooms altogether. Why not just video tape classes in a studio and then broadcast them simultaneously across the country? You could get famous actors or celebrities to perform the lessons: EU history with Robson Green, climate science with Bono. Product placement could provide more private financing, more sophisticated security systems and cameras. (Don't get me started on PFI and don't mention the Bologna Plan)

For classroom management thuggish security guards could be employed. Pupils could be fitted with taser bracelets - anti-hijacking devices recently tried out on long haul flights - and given a 50,000 volt static jab when they stepped out of line.

Pastoral care could take the form of an on-line questionnaire which determines whether the pupil should be prescribed Prozac or Ritalin, and whether their parents are 'politically correct' enough... suitable people to raise the Government's children.

My spiralling paranoiac meditation was broken by the World Service finally usurping the French talk radio. There was a documentary about the English writer Laurie Lee, a man whose education in life reads like a never-ending adventure. In As I walked Out One Midsummer Morning he came to Spain with a violin tucked under his arm, barely able to speak a word of Spanish apart from the phrase "Can I have a glass of water?" In Cider with Rosie he spoke of his school days, and amorous rolls in the hay on sun-drenched afternoons. Lee's headmaster always gave the same speech to school leavers, which was supposed to crystallize what they'd been taught. It went something like this:

Headmaster: What's the smallest room in the world?

Students: A mushroom!

Headmaster: And what's the largest room in the world?

Students: Room for improvement!

The message may seem quaint, but it leaves space for aspiration.

I raised my glass to the voice of Laurie Lee and his old schoolmaster. Their thoughts and memories disappearing into a storm of static and crackle.

Solutions # 25: Education is your own responsibility.

*Hylton Redhouse School in Sunderland has actually had a call centre built into the school so that pupils get a valuable head start in their search for meaningless employment.

Lishman returns Saturday, May 31

2008-05-28T03:45:00.000-07:00

I've taken temporary leave (of my senses) and gone to France for a week.

Chemical attack

2008-05-19T02:07:00.000-07:00

In the wake of WW2, the British people were very angry. They were tired of rationing, slums, bad schools and hospitals. They deserved better and weren't going to take 'no' for an answer.

The men who'd gone to war with the Axis of Steel returned brutalised and tough as boots. Those who'd stayed behind also grew hardy having subsisted -under bombing- on scarcity and ersatz food. And unlike the soft-bellied entertainment junkies of today, they were a force to be reckoned with.

Even before the war was over, alarm bells were ringing in the underground bunkers of the British establishment. They realised they would have to do something to appease this snarling bear that they'd mistakenly roused.

Their first instinct was to throw it a toy: Television, which was invented back in the 1920's but never developed, was quickly put into production and by the early 1950's was reasonably cheap and widely available. George Orwell saw the plan to use television to pacify, control and survey the masses when he was writing propaganda for the secret services during the war. This is why he was able to pen 1984 back in 1944.

Their second strategy was cowardly and insidious - designed to keep the people sick and demoralised: in the late 1940's the Ministry of Defence began flying missions to spray the British Isles with the same germ warfare they'd used on the German civilian population during the war. Planes flew the length of the United Kingdom disseminating heavy metals and bacteria for over 50 years. MoD researchers would check hospitals in areas they'd sprayed to see if their clouds of poison were having an effect, to see if there was a significant rise in certain cancers and immune-deficiency conditions. (Check this article published in The Guardian in 2002)

Unfortunately, using air-borne germ warfare - now known as chemtrails -against their own citizens seems to be common government practice around the world (Google chemtrails in Germany - there was recently a big scandal in the mainstream media or click here for general info).

It's easy to tell the difference between a normal contrail, which is condensation, and a chemtrail. Contrails disappear very quickly within a minute or two. Chemtrails, however, slowly spread out until they resemble small clouds, drifting down to fall upon the city.

On clear blue days in Barcelona, without a breeze or a whispy cloud for miles, I've sat on Montjuic watching chemtrails fill up the sky - smoking-gun evidence of a hidden hand.

Solutions # 24: The new-agers were right - detox regularly.

(The photo above shows chemtrails over Poble Sec on May 18, 2008. There is a trademark cross shape, possibly to mark the spray area on satellite photos.)

It's later than you think

2008-05-14T00:57:00.000-07:00

There is a school of thought among conspiracy analysts that says that the general public will never wake up; the New World Order are therefore unstoppable, so the best thing to do is get off the grid and save yourself. Well, although I don't fully subscribe to this opinion, I do understand it, and from time to time I indulge in my own escapist fantasy.

It goes like this: Kitler and I abandon the city for Diane's place out in the mountains. In reality, Diane is very angry with me... but in the fantasy, the end-of-the-world scenario is enough to win her back. We embark on a self-sufficient lifestyle far removed from the dark forces consuming the planet. We switch off all of our phones and computers and contact friends only by hand-written letters.

I've visualised this scenario so often that it's now extremely vivid - filmed in Super-8. In the morning, Kitler chases across the foothills cutting her teeth on wild rabbits and dragonflies; Diane and I try our hand at gardening and drawing fresh water from the well. We spend the afternoons doing creative stuff: She paints and I write that dystopic novel I've always talked about. Evenings after dinner, we work our way through Diane's collection of old vinyl records while smoking home-grown marijuana. Later, we fall asleep all three of us wrapped up in a hammock, glow worms lighting the mountain slopes like an earthly reflection of the night sky...a fitting backdrop to an uncanny dream.

Ah yes, Lishman, very romantic, but even if you managed to get there, you know it wouldn't last for ever. One day the neo-dark ages would catch up with you. One of the stars in that night sky would turn out to be the search light of a black police helicopter dipping into the valley to re-log your presence in the matrix.

Quite so, even if we weren't hurting anyone or interfering with the world at large, we'd eventually be prevented from living our lives the way we wanted. As Eugene Hutz said -referring to Gypsy culture- 'Any successful alternative method of living will be crushed by capital interests'. Remove the words "by capital interests" and you've got a description of the future if we don't stand our ground.

So where does that leave me? Looking for a halfway-house between self-preservation and group interest, between fact and fiction, wilderness and the city...

Solutions # 23: Break your conditioning by experimenting with cognitive behavioural therapy - calmly tell a room full of people that 9/11 was an inside job and see if your world falls apart. If it doesn't, then repeat the experiment.

La Caixa bank's latest campaign

2008-05-11T02:55:00.000-07:00

Saw this on the window of the La Caixa bank as I wandered drunkenly through Gracia last night. In Spain, La Caixa bank have their fingers in every pie, from utilities to supermarkets (Eroski). For more information on their credit and mortgage deals, just call the number of the beast...

Solutions # 22: Don't fear the reaper

Ex-communication

2008-05-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

SMS - Sorry Lishman,I'm having problems with my phone. Did you get the message I resent you?

So read the last text I got from Diane.

'Does she resent me?' I asked Kitler.

Kitler jumped on my lap, looked me in the eye and meowed somewhat forlornly.

'I guess that's a yes'.

She meowed sadly back at me.

You can always rely on Kitler to tell it like it is.

'Thanks, Kitler'.

Solutions # 21: Respect the truth.

Artificial Scarcity in a World of Plenty

2008-05-02T00:11:00.000-07:00

If I used artificial scarcity against Kitler, severely rationing her food as if there was a famine, it's guaranteed that she'd make my life a misery. She'd pester me night and day and attack the things that I love. Cats have a sixth sense for finding and destroying those objects that vie for their owners affection, such as books, CDs, computers, furniture and, of course, plants.

As as diplomatic measure, I could draught in 'experts' to explain to Kitler why there is a cat food shortage -how things are more expensive now- and why she should accept a drop in her standard of living. But as a cat, she'd be immune to such a theatre of mind control.

After a few weeks, as she got desperate, I would need to hire a mercenary guard to prevent her from getting at the food stocks when I'm out at a restaurant or partying on someone's roof terrace. Even so, as I pushed the situation to crisis point - some days telling her that there was just no food left to give her- she'd eventually find a way to get in there. Or die trying.

I first came across the concept of artificial scarcity when studying psychology. It was in a case study about a problem marriage. The wife felt her husband wasn't listening to her and started to withdraw sexual favours accordingly. The result was a shift in power towards the wife. If the husband was obedient, he'd get rewarded. Of course, at this stage, the husband might choose to look for sex outside the marriage. Alternatively, they might seek advice from a marriage guidance counsellor, who would attempt to broker a deal in which power can be shared more equitably.

In the political arena, the key to successful artificial scarcity is to take it slowly, carefully setting out your argument for why the supply of oil, food or water is so lacking. Build up your house of cards till it resembles a fortress, for you have to win the hearts and minds of those people powerful enough to overthrow you, making them party to your decisions (Don't worry, their time will come later). Meanwhile, you can consolidate your power by setting about those already too weak to resist.

My War on Global Warming

The idea of using an environmental disaster to usher in world government was first mentioned in Club of Rome reports back in the 1960's. Consequently, in the 1970's we had the spectre of a new ice age and Global Cooling. Then in the early eighties as Thatcher prepared to take on the mining unions, she looked into ways of demonising coal and came across CO2 Global Warming theory. This theory first raised its ugly head back in the 1970's -during the insanity of Global Cooling - but was quickly dismissed as scientifically flawed. However, Thatcher's government poured funding into its research to provide ballast for her crusade against the miners. Thus began the slow evolution of a false paradigm.

Anyway, after a slight increase in global temperature finally put paid to the credible threat of a new ice age, the Globalists, convinced of the general public's inability to trust their own memories, adopted Thatcher's burgeoning Global Warming theory.

It was perfect for them: It has a moral focus that crosses religious boundaries. And it promotes the idea that CO2, the life-giving gas that humans exhale, is a pollutant. This allows them to portray human beings as a plague against nature. From this basis, they can implement a one-child policy with life-long CO2 taxes for every child born. There will also be green export taxes and military interventions to stop 'overpopulated' nations from fully industrialising.

The money collected from the world carbon tax - to be levied against every individual for their CO2 crimes - will be used in part to fund the creation of a world government. The inevitable large-scale 'population control' or genocide will come when the Globalists have their power fully consolidated. We may be so brainwashed by then that we'll join suicide cults en mass in an attempt to save the world - green martyrdom.

The Death of "Global Warming"

A reduction in sun-spot activity has meant zero temperature rise since 1998. In fact, according to many climatologists, the world has started to cool. But this has only been a minor setback for the man-made CO2 environmentalists. In the space of a year, by deft control of the media, Global Warming was swiftly repackaged as Climate Change. Or if you want to get Orwellian about it, Global Warming has always been Climate Change. Al Gore still uses the term Global Warming from time to time, but we know he really means Climate Change. Or that both terms really mean the same thing.

Instead of global temperature, we are now being led to focus our attention on weather instability, hurricanes in particular.But did you know that the US Military are able to create hurricanes and droughts by virtue of their HAARP project? Yes, we're living in a time when even the weather has become weaponised.

It's also worth pointing out that Al Gore's hurricane expert, Kerry Emanuel,whose theory that Global Warming caused the increase in hurricanes featured heavily in An Incovenient Truth ,has recently expressed doubts about the accuracy of his own work. It seems that the science doesn't add up. Could this be evidence that a hidden hand is involved in some Climate Change phenomena? I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

One common misconception is that people who deny Climate Change are somehow in league with the oil companies, when in fact the two go hand in hand. Climate Change is one of the tools the Globalists are using to create the oil scarcity. The oil scarcity is increasing food prices and about to crash numerous economies. But contrary to the general consensus, it's making billions for the oil companies: they can produce less and charge more for it. And then, they can blame the environmentalists for restricting production and use.

By the way, Al Gore is an oil man. Black is white and white is black.

Solutions # 20: Don't trust your government. Reserve that for people you know

*According to an article in this morning's Independent, 7 out of 10 Britons said they were against paying green taxes - so maybe there's some hope.

Am I reptoid?

2008-04-23T03:02:00.000-07:00

Madrid, Spain.
September, 2004.

I'm sitting on a cafe terrace in Calle Toledo with a fierce whisky hangover, drinking coffee to clear my head. Every few minutes my writing hand drops its pen and slips out of joint, as if all the bones have chosen an unnatural inclination and bend towards it. I wonder if I've begun shape shifting. And,if so, is it only my hand that's becoming reptilian?

According to many esteemed scientists, the inner cortex of the human brain is reptilian. So I can buy into the idea that there is a reptilian element to human behaviour. And that some of us are more reptile than others.

David Icke goes further than this, suggesting that the world's ruling elite are a family of reptoids, man-size lizards that exist in another dimension - on a different frequency to human reality - but who can interface into our reality using human bodies.

I ask my moleskin diary: 'Are the lizard neurones taking over my hand? Shall I amputate to prevent it spreading? Or is it just the coffee?'

Then I drop the pen again. 'Probably the coffee', I jot down as an afterthought.

Reptoid alert: Lack of emotion

At the next table, a well-dressed man with designer stubble begins shouting at his girlfriend.

'How could you... with him? How? Puta!', he cries as he slams his hand on the table, making the cutlery leap.

The girl, however, is quite indifferent to the affray, and with icy composure,continues to pick mussel shells out of a little black cauldron on her plate.

When she finally does respond to his accusations, she does so without feeling, or any kind of flailing of the arms. Only her lips, teeth and tongue are involved in the disposal of her lover, followed by the slithering of more mussels, washed down with sparkling wine.

In the aftermath, Mr. designer stubble sits all dejected, holding his head in his hands.

Reptoid alert: Lack of empathy

I lose interest in their break up for a while. I look up and see seagulls circling in the sky above me. They cast down big shadows that cruise like black ghosts across the pavement.

'Maybe to him they look like vultures... tracking the emaciated body of their relationship across the bleak urban landscape of his life',I write. Reading it back I decide it's time to stop the coffee. I order a glass of wine. The waiter leaves the bottle.

Next time I look, Mr. designer stubble has gone. But the girl is still there... eating. When she's managed to suck down every last mussel, she takes her mobile from the table and dials. From what I can make out she's talking to a friend, giving a blow by blow account of what just happened. She's speaking in English, but I think she must be Dutch or Belgian.

She hangs up and casually puts a cigarette in her mouth, and then, searching for someone with a lighter, turns my way just in time to catch me looking at her. She fixes me with her green eyes and says, "Huh... you're English, right?". Then she waves me over to join her. "Come here, Englishman. Let's have a drink."

The lizard brain wakes. Its eyelids beat three times. Somewhere in its thoughts its tongue flicks out in anticipation of a spindly insect and it moves forward, its right side giving momentum to its left. Swaying on the eternal desert plain, it unfurls its tail and whips it across the surface of the sand...

Solutions # 19: Time to get into survival mode - without losing sight of humanity.

Hungry for perspective

2008-04-21T01:15:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of his first term of office in 2004, Zapatero, the Spanish president, gifted us with a significant number of progressive liberal policies. Among which, we got gay marriage and gay adoption. There was also an attempt to oust the Catholic Church from its deeply entrenched position of influence in Spanish life. The President's views on abortion, divorce and religious education in school grabbed headlines around the world and caused a spat between himself and Pope Benedict. This appeased large sections of the left. They were happy that one of their own was in power, sticking it to the Catholic Church.

Today, of course, it's the Church that's feeding the new poor - fifty families sinking into poverty- in Barcelona Sants, a fact that seems quite anomalous in Zapatero's progressive Spain.

I've noticed that Zapatero is most progressive in the honeymoon period proceeding an election. There are a few weeks when he courts the media with his left-wing egalitarianism, before resting on his liberal laurels and doing very little for another four years. True to form at the beginning of this his second term of office, he announced a new cabinet that's over 50% female, made the 7-month-pregnant Carme Chacon Minister of War and was widely quoted in the press as saying "I'm a feminist".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking his progressive policies. I think equal rights for gay people is a noble idea. And it goes without saying, that women should make up around 50% of any government, given that they account for half the world's population. But house prices, the meltdown of the economy, the growing rich/poor divide, the spiralling cost of living and the fact that Spanish troops are still supporting the US-led coalition in Afghanistan are today's most vital issues, and they should be at the forefront of the political agenda.

After all, we don't want a situation where newly-wed gay men are defaulting on their mortgages, their adopted sons being sent to a war based on lies and disinformation, and women in the lower economic strata - not lucky enough to form a part of Zapatero's cabinet- have to take on an extra job just to put food on the table.

Solutions # 18.5: Stop buying newspapers, stop paying for television. Cut the funding to those who peddle propaganda.

It never rains...

2008-04-17T04:43:00.000-07:00

I write this as heavy rain drenches the washing I hung out to dry just five minutes ago. The cats in the patio are cowering under the guttering as jets of water cascade down from the rooftops,landing on the tiles below with a loud frothing hiss. Kitler,like her compatriots, also gives the rain a wide birth, circumspectly watching its progress from the safety of the sofa.

The noise outside somehow reminds me of my childhood: it's the sound you hear when you approach a waterfall through a forest. The air feels clean. I'm calm. But at the same time some thing's not quite right. There's dissonance in the air.

I might be losing my mind... but I'm sure in the last 12 months it's rained just as much as it always does. I seem to remember on numerous occasions putting on - what I consider to be good - rain music and opening up the balcony doors, sipping wine in the lamplight, reading a book on tyranny with that eerie sense of Old Testament doom as the heavens open. Yes, that's it. Wash it all away and start again.

It's for this reason that last week, when everyone was telling me that Barcelona was officially "in drought" with hosepipe bans, talk of water taxes, and the ridiculous - and very expensive - idea of running a pipeline all the way from the River Ebro to slake the city's thirst, I couldn't help but ask:

"But what about all the rain?"

"That's the wrong kind of rain", they say, "It has to rain in the mountains and fill up the reservoirs."

"Oh, ok." I reply. "But why haven't any new reservoirs been built since Franco died? And why can't they stop the farmers flooding the fields and using up all the water with their archaic irrigation methods? What about learning lessons from the Israeli farmers?"

This is when they usually grow tired and the conversation moves on. Personally, I believe it's a key fact that Spanish farmers needlessly use up around 70% of the nation's fresh water. Stopping that situation would surely alleviate the plight of the ordinary consumer, who's been surviving on a measly 30% for years and years. It would seem that this story is less about finding simple, logical solutions, and more about spending enormous amounts of money in re-directing rivers.

The TV news always shows the same clip of the Sau Reservoir half empty revealing the ancient village that's been underwater since they first flooded the valley. It only appears when water levels are low. This is the evidence they repeatedly offer us to prove that the region is in drought. At weekends, people flock to Sau to see it for themselves. It's become a tourist attraction.

But showing video clips of one reservoir on a seemingly eternal loop is not enough to satisfy me any more. To this end, I consider visiting the region's other reservoirs and checking water levels, but the cost in terms of time and train fares doesn't bear thinking about. Instead, I decide to ask around. I know a few very well-connected people who are always happy to point me in the right direction. Unfortunately, their comments are always off the record.

I buy a good Rioja and some chocolate and go round to see Anna, who works in finances. She tells me that I'm right about the water levels in the other reservoirs: they're not as bad. She also tells me that Aigues de Barcelona, the water company that will profit the most from the Ebro pipeline is controlled primarily by La Caixa bank. They are the main share holders. They also own the controlling shares in Telefonica and Gas Natural. They missed out on owning electricity (Endessa)as that utility went to an Italian company. Yes, since deregulation in Spain, unscrupulous profit-greedy organisations have taken over the companies that provide life's essentials. In terms of my investigation this was interesting, possibly significant, but, overall, inconclusive.

The next night, I buy the same kind of Rioja and chocolate and pay Neus a visit. She works for the Catalan government and has "connections" everywhere. I ask her about last year's story that Barcelona's water infrastructure was full of leaks. (This is also true in the satellite town of Badalona , where they lose 40% of that neighbourhood's drinking water due to lack of maintenance) Neus explains that Aigues de Barcelona don't really invest in maintenance. They see it as too costly. She says they are keeping quiet about that at the moment while the papers promote the pipeline project.

So could it be that a water crisis is being allowed to happen in order to trick the people into supporting the pipeline? Now the regional governments of Murcia and Valencia are claiming that the pipeline should be redirected to serve their autonomies and not Catalonia. The media is playing off one region against the other. People appear to be getting lost in battles of regional pride and ownership rights at the cost of understanding the true nature of events.

When I get home the following morning, I feel really tired. Kitler is angry with me and mewls incessantly around her food bowl. I decide to ignore her for a while. I make a big pot of coffee and then I check my emails. There's one from Anna:

Hi Lishman, if you wanna know what's happening in Spain, always check with the EU first.

She's attached two documents. One is the EU Water Framework Directive , which all EU nation states signed into in 2000. To break it down, using the justification of environmentalism, the directive states that by 2010 all EU states must ensure consumers understand what a precious commodity water is. Thus, water bills must reflect the true cost of delivering fresh water to their homes. The next attachment is an article from www.expansion.com with the headline: The Government will double water bills within the next three years. The article was first published in 2007 and cites the same EU Water Framework Directive signed in 2000. It gives the Spanish government till the end of 2010 to comply with the directive, which really isn't very long.

In short, the government has to oversee a massive increase in water pricing over the next two years. The people who will profit from this are the water company share holders, which in the case of Aiguas de Barcelona includes La Caixa bank. The people who will suffer are those who are already struggling with the rising cost of food and utility bills.

It's clear that without a big water crisis no-one would accept the price rise. So, perhaps this is classic social engineering in the form of Problem, Reaction, Solution.

Problem: Magically, two years before the deadline to comply with the EU Water Framework Directive, there's a water crisis (or so we're led to believe).

Reaction: The people, understandably worried about the possibility of dying of thirst and not being able to shower during the hot sticky summer, turn to their government for help.

Solution: "We can build a pipeline from the river", say the Government, "but it's gonna cost you"....

I give up. Sometimes it tires me out to think about all this stuff. Not really knowing who to trust, what to believe. I pray for endless, endless rain to wash all these demons away. I decide to take an extremely long shower in defiance of the media's admonishments. Kitler follows me into the bathroom and mewls at the splashing water. While I can still afford it, there'll be no drought in here...

Solutions # 18: Build community. There are a lot of free-thinkers perishing in isolation.

Kitler returns

2008-04-07T03:03:00.000-07:00

Kitler's back. She was returned to me last week by a very friendly girl from the local animal shelter. They found her in the backyard of an abandoned ground floor flat from which there was no exit. Hungry and alone, she'd apparently kept the neighbours awake all night with her constant whining. Eventually one of them phoned animal rescue.

Nowadays, when they find a cat they routinely scan it for an RFID chip, which all domestic animals must have implanted. Anyway, this is how she was returned to me, by virtue of a radioactive metal cylinder the size of a grain of rice.

Loath as I am to admit it, I'm really happy to have Kitler back, but in no way am I about to celebrate the coming age of RFID. I remember the interview with Aaron Russo when he talks about his friendship with Nick Rockefeller. They'd meet for dinner and Rockefeller would speak of Globalist plans to have every human being chipped and connected to a huge supercomputer. In his vision of the future, there is to be no cash. Every transaction will be made via the chip and disobedient citizens will be punished by having their chip switched off at the server - instantly turning them into "un-people".

According to Russo, they plan to bring this about through a programme of incremental conditioning: We're going to be brainwashed into thinking that this roadmap to technocratic slavery is positive. Thus, the pet chipping, the police chipping and the VIP chipping.

And now they want to get the next generation used to it, so they've started chipping kids in schools. Frightening really.

Kitler's return

When we opened the door of the transport cage, Kitler stepped out into the sunlight, dazed and disorientated. Her fur was matted down, unusually unkempt. The girl pointed to the deep wound across her shoulder. 'She's been in the wars', she said with concern.

In response, I tried to give Kitler a friendly tickle under the chin, but before I could touch her she backed off and ran into the spare room. She always goes there when she's angry with me. The room's so full of junk that only a cat can get in there. It's Kitler's fotress.

At first, I was a little peeved that Kitler had so publicly rejected me in front of an animal worker. I wondered if the girl was thinking that I was the reason that Kitler had run away in the first place.

'Typical of her to embarrass me in front of guests' I joked.

'Don't worry. She's in shock. She needs rest and darkness. Just leave her alone for a few days.'

'Gladly', I replied, to which the girl -not getting my attempt at humour- looked puzzled.

Maybe it's hard for anyone on the outside to understand the complex relationship I have with Kitler. She is after all an unwanted pet, an uninvited guest that I inherited with the flat, in which she prances around as if she owns the place. I have to clean up after her,feed her and give her attention (when I should be working). Plus, she does take the piss sometimes. Especially at four in the morning when she leaps on my bed and lets out a scream loud enough to wake me up, and then runs the length of the apartment mewling and attacking invisible foe. Why does she do that? Surely conspiracy analysts need their sleep, too?

However, from Kitler's perspective, she does own the place. She was here first. This is her territory and I'm the invader who conquered and occupied her owner's flat. The least I can do is look after her.

So, at its roots, the relationship is one of antagonism, misunderstanding and resentment, but somehow - like with a lot of marriages - it works.

Solutions # 17: Read deeply, hone your debating skills, work your memory: Your power to use words is your power in this world.

Sunset or new dawn

2008-04-02T01:13:00.000-07:00

As 9/11 Truth reaches its tipping point, is there a chance that the Bilderbergers, and other connected Globalist cabals, will begin to distance themselves from the American Neo Cons?

After all, the Neo Cons have already served their purpose by moving the US into fascism and destabilising the Middle East. Now, they're becoming a bit of a liability; endangering the Globalist's master plan of forming a one-world government.

So why not let the Neo Cons take a fall for 9/11? The Globalists have it in their power to release smoking gun info, remove press protection, and thus leave them vulnerable to prosecution for their role in the Twin Tower attacks.

The Neo Cons, who were chosen to do the global elite's dirty work, would thus enter the history books as did other Globalist puppets, such as Hitler, Mussolini and Mao... seen for the monsters that they are.

Alas, with the Neo Cons out of the way, Al Gore would then step up to the plate to wage his phoney war on CO2. His path would be clear to further the Globalist agenda of ruthless population control while masquerading as an enlightened environmentalist...

Truth Tipping Point

In December last year, Japanese MP Yukihisa Fujita presented evidence to Parliament which contradicted the official 9/11 story during a live-TV debate watched by millions. Fujita recently presented similar evidence to an EU conference in Brussels and is now calling for an official UN investigation into the events that led up to this endless war on terror.

Recent polls have shown a sea change in public opinion regarding who's really to blame for the 9/11 attacks: now, over 50% of New Yorkers believe that 9/11 was an inside job. And public figures both in the US and internationally are coming out of the woodwork to add their voices to the groundswell of discontent and accusation.

Conveniently, for anyone wanting to investigate 9/11 for themselves, all the evidence pointing to the Neo-Conservative conspiracy is freely available on the internet. Indeed, if you read the document Rebuilding America's Defences published in the late 90's by Neo Con think tank Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which included Rumsfeld and Cheney, you will learn of their intentions to take the US into Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.

They acknowledged in the document that without a "Pearl Harbour" event, they would find it hard to mobilise the American people to fight a war on the other side of the world.

In the months leading up to September 11, 2001, over 60,000 US and UK troops had already assembled in regions bordering Afghanistan. The rest is history.

Solutions # 16: Tell people that we're winning.

Drugs on a Spanish mountain

2008-03-31T03:29:00.000-07:00

Diane doused the shaggy tobacco in the oil. Then she rolled it up just like a normal cigarette. Only there were wet patches of the oil showing through the thin rolling paper, which made it look less than appealing. She handed me her creation along with a lighter and motioned for me to light it. I looked at the other four for support and they all concurred with similar gestures. I placed it between my lips, already a faux pas as the normal procedure is to hold it over your lap and light the twisted ‘touch paper’ with the lighter in the other hand. And then, and only when it is well lit do you bring it to your lips. This, as I’ve observed, is the social etiquette for lighting such things. But no, I was cocking it up, sucking hard to ensure an uneven burn. I could see, in the moments before I sank into the fibrous jungle of the living room carpet, their barely masked looks of disapproval. Not the ideal way to enter into one of the most severe hallucinogenic encounters of my life, as the others set about chasing me murderously through the rug.

Chapter one of my life on drugs had started with a flourish. Chapter two ended with fear. And I couldn’t see beyond the limitations of a handful of tiny crystals. I thought it would help my writing. It didn't. Although, it definitely ignited my imagination. My mind was alive with symbols and characters moving across their fictional landscapes, running into the monsters of my own invention. But I had no drive or discipline. I got lost.

Somewhere on this trip I was at home (at my birthplace)looking out the window... The small plastic windmill on the balcony started to turn slowly in the sea breeze. As I watched it, the windmill got faster and faster, whirring speedily and knocking an inquisitive hoverfly out of the air. It was a good day to get the yacht out on the open water. I shook Diane but she wasn’t to be roused so I set about making coffee in the kitchen. I melted a slice of butter then cracked eggs into the pan and enjoyed the sizzling as they cooked. The coffee bubbled up the spout of the cafeteria as the milk broke its skin and the toast popped almost simultaneously. "We can fly the kite today" she said from the safety of her slumber. I looked through the window and Diane was already out there near the breaking water. The kite was dancing high above her. The wind was westerly. It was like I was joining her in a picture and I could feel the eternity in one moment. And the kite wasn’t dancing in the air, but, instead, resting on the swarms of existence that fill the universe.

Journey's end

Hours later still scared for my life, I discovered myself in a cupboard with Diane fencing me in. Or rather she was holding me in a protective embrace. I buried my head instinctively into her chest. I was determined to find the suckling nipple. And before I was allowed to pitch my wail at a high enough level to alarm the others, she produced it voluntarily and I began pacification in the most satisfying way. We were still there together, Diane’s left nipple all raw and tender, as light broke over the mountains and flooded into the house.

Solutions # 15: Don't be deluded by TV experts. Realise you're on a war footing (click here). Make yourself recession proof.

Shakespeare in the time of Scientific Dictatorship

2008-03-28T04:04:00.000-07:00

Hamlet would be much shorter (the play, not the man). In fact a few songs and commercial breaks wouldn't go a miss.

Hamlet's father, the King of Denmark, is found dead in a forest having apparently committed suicide. His wrists are cut, but there is no blood at the scene. There's an empty bottle of painkillers, but no evidence of ingestion. Hamlet's father a very jovial, public figure and a brave warrior, who had fought in the Arab lands, is, after his death, portrayed throughout the kingdom as a sensitive, shy man, who cracked up under the glare of public scrutiny.

Significantly, two weeks before his death, the King had announced the withdrawal of Denmark from a planned pre-emptive crusade against Muslim infidels, who in his view no longer presented a threat to domestic security.

While under the influence of a cocktail of psychoactive drugs administered by the Apothecary to help him concentrate in class, Prince Hamlet sees the ghost of his father, who has some shocking news for him. The dead King explains how he was knocked off by a team of French secret service agents on the orders of Uncle Claudius, who has since become king and married Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, "with undue haste".

Prince Hamlet is understandably a little miffed and decides to investigate the death for himself. Later, he sends emails to his college friends Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in which he explains that there is much more to heaven and earth than can be read about in the mainstream media.

In the email, Hamlet gives a fully documented and evidenced account of the conspiracy to kill his father, and details his intentions to overthrow the New Royal Order and reinstate justice and the rule of law in Denmark.

In reply, Horatio gives some credibility to Hamlet's claims, but insists that he's too busy at work at the moment to get more involved, and has a mortgage to pay etc. Rosencrantz and Guildenstren, however, dismiss Hamlet's claims out of hand as "pure conspiracy theory".

Government spies Yahoo.com intercept Hamlet's emails and turn them over to the King, who forwards them to Polonius for analysis. Polonius diagnoses Hamlet with Mean World Syndrome and instructs the Apothecary to put Hamlet on Prozac. After a few weeks Hamlet is feeling better, or at least less agitated.

Ophelia, Polonius' beautiful daughter, falls in love with Prince Hamlet but is distraught by his lack of interest in her approaches. "He just stares at the telly" she tells the apothecary. "Can you give me a potion that will help me win his heart?" she pleads. The apothecary gives her a bottle of Viagra tablets "to be dissolved into his mead at Vespers". He also puts Ophelia on Prozac to cut down on all the "unnecessary dramatics".

Polonius' son, Laertes, returns from a trip abroad up to his eyes in debt. His father recommends that he transfers his debts to credit cards that currently offer 0% interest and if that's not possible to consolidate his debts into one big loan, which can be paid off in manageable monthly amounts. "Anyway, don't worry about all that nonsense for the moment" says Polonius, "Let's watch a bit of telly".

The story of the Prince is then abandoned completely for the rest of the play and the famous "play within the play" begins, which in this case is real-time TV projected onto a a huge screen backdrop and watched by the entire cast, and the audience.

At the very end of the play, we are informed by a delighted newsreader that Denmark has been annexed by Norway, the cast lets out a big cheer. Curtain fall.

Other Shakespearean twists:

Henry V: "The fewer the men, the greater the share of power".

Henry iv (Part II): Sir John Falstaff dies in need of routine heart-valve operation. He was placed at the bottom of the hospital waiting list due to his obesity. Bardolph, Pistol, Mistress Quickly and Falstaff's pageboy gather at his wake and agree that he was indeed too fat to deserve medical attention. "And he was old", added the pageboy, to which the others nodded their agreement.

Julius Caeser: After a terrorist attack, Julius declares himself above the Senate and initiates a military takeover of the Empire. But nobody realises because the media ignore it and most high-ranking politicians are owned by the same international banking cartels that own Julius.

Romeo and Juliet: Yes, the tragic ending to this play could have been averted with a timely SMS. But it doesn't get to that stage as Romeo is quickly sectioned as an obsessive stalker by the Capulet's lawyer, who provides evidence of thousands of amorous text messages and emails sent by the star-crossed lover to the under-age Montague girl at all hours of the night.

Solutions # 14: Think of history as a looking glass.

The Kitler Diaries - Paradise Lost

2008-03-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

Borne on a blast of wind, the scent found Kitler's nose as she slept and jerked her almost instantly onto her feet.

Kitler, bolt upright -shot with adrenalin- aggressively hoovered up the air through her small, moustachioed snout: The smell was of musty, unwashed fur... rotten, putrefying, moribund... but this creature was alive. Yes, there were noises. Kitler cocked her head and meditated: It is an angry and demented beast. It scrapes at a wooden door with its feet. It huffs and whines, and circles a tiny, bare room.

The image of a stocky, smelly, useless creature formed in Kiltler's mind. 'Ach!' she thought and padded softly down the corridor, coming to a stop outside the front door, where the scent was strongest. Curiosity, as we know, is the curse of all cats.

She looked further down the corridor and saw Lishman rushing back and forth from the kitchen, banging plates and cutlery down upon the table. The temptation to go and play with him was hard to resist: tease him, get his attention, get a chase.

However, curiosity drove her on and she crossed the threshold of the open doorway and looked out into the dark stairwell. She sat on a dark step and lost herself once again in the scent of the beast.

Suddenly the sound of an electric buzzer ripped through the air. But before she remembered what it was, Kitler had instinctively bolted, jumping down several flights of stairs to escape the sonic explosion. She paused, shaking a little from the exertion and pulled herself together. 'Christ, the visitor warning', she thought, 'I'll never get used to that'.

Getting her breath back, she slowly became aware of a pair of eyes watching her from the landing above. A pair of eyes and a slobbering mouth, sick with twisted teeth. And a stench... it was the beast!

The beast stood above Kitler, growling intensely. It edged closer, its face moving out of the dark into a shaft of reflected street light. In defiance, Kitler stood on her tip toes, arched her back and hissed like a snake.

There was a short stand off until a human voice calling from above distracted Kilter momentarily. Seeing its chance, the beast leapt at her with jaws open. Kitler fell onto her back and managed to hold the beast's snapping fangs at a distance with her back legs.

As the beast began to overpower Kitler, she swang desperately at its head with her claws. She felt her nails rip through skin. The beast let out a yelp, before tumbling over the top of Kilter and down the stairs, blood jetting out of its neck.

'Que demonios..!' said the human, who was now coming at Kilter with a broom. Kitler picked herself up and fled down the stairs and onto the street. She scurried low to the ground through a thousand marching feet. Lost in the Universe of People.

Green finger

2008-03-18T02:54:00.000-07:00

Kitler killed all plants. They didn't stand a chance. Virtually inanimate as they are, Kitler would pounce on them as they cowered in their pots. She would chew on them and eat them alive - a cruel act undertaken without compunction. Later she would vomit up her half-digested victims, along with the rest of the contents of her stomach, often in some discreet part of the flat so I wouldn't discover it until much later. It was quite literally a sick ritual.

This was just one scene from one of the many psychodramas we played out together. Mostly it involved me coming home from work and chasing her about.I chased her from the plants, the computer, the neighbours' balcony, the cooker and the fridge. She was Charlie Chaplin and I was the burly police officer and together we did our absurd dance around the apartment spilling wine, throwing books and tipping ashtrays (maybe if she comes back I can re-christen her "Chaplin" - start a new order of Catlins, cats that look like Chaplin).

Anyway, with Kitler gone and news that the economic destruction by design -as predicted by Daniel Estulin & co- is well under way, I've decided to turn to domestic horticulture as part of my preparation for the coming food shortages. Also, I plan to store plenty of dry food, tinned meals and big bottles of water. Next week, I'm buying a bread maker. I want a two-month cushion in case there's a sudden run on the shops. This is not so much paranoia, as prudence. Argentina was a modern economy like any in the West, yet within a few weeks of the IMF credit crunch, people in Buenos Aires were starving to death.

Last week I planted parsley, mint, basil, polo mint, thyme and some other herbs that I no longer know the name of. Save for the mint, which grows like a weed, everything is dying already. Leaves are browning and stalks, wilting. Maybe Kitler wasn't killing the plants after all. Maybe it was my bad parenthood, extreme negligence followed by short periods of over-watering.

I pray for a magic solution. Divine intervention from the gigantic green finger in the sky to provide a plentiful harvest of easy-to-pick lush produce. But I know deep down that this isn't how nature works. I was raised as a consumer on the wave of a credit boom, and I must adopt a new approach if I'm to survive the next five years.

That's right, I'll have to do things the hard way: study the characteristics of each herb; re-pot them, move them in and out of the sun, vary the frequency of watering; in general, experiment until I pick up all the basic knowledge that my grandfather was taught as a child by his father. The knowledge that later generations have survived without because supermarkets rid us of the necessity.

Even though most of my efforts so far have produced a certain amount of greeny-brown failure, I have big plans for introducing tomatoes, lemons, cress and strawberries to the space that's left on the balcony. In fact, as I lie on the sofa and day dream of some kind of in-house garden of Eden, I worry that I'm in danger of becoming a little obsessed.

However, unlike those tabloid stories that reveal how an old man lived with hundreds of rats, cats or hamsters until neighbours - complaining of the smell - called in the council, plant hoarders are usually given easy access to the realm of the sane. But do watch the news for Barcelona plant man claims missing cat drove him to obsession. Downstairs neighbours complain of tree roots breaking through ceiling. Because... I think I want more. I think I want a forest. Or at least an orange tree...

Solutions # 13: Start on your survival plan now. Most people will wait for the TV to tell them there's nothing in the supermarkets.

Interview with Samina Ali

2008-03-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

I spoke to Samina Ali in Barcelona last year when she was here to take part in a debate about women and Islam.

Lishman - What is most challenging about living as a Muslim woman in the United States?

Samina - It's already difficult having grown up in both India and America to understand how to fit in to both places and it comes down to the simple things like how you dress. But if you add to that what has happened post 9/11 and the way Muslims are perceived and, unfortunately, the stereotypes that are perpetuated, then you have the added pressure of trying to exist and trying to live in a place where you are constantly being questioned. People are suspicious.It is the first time I've felt unsure about whether I belong.

Lishman– Where do misconceptions about Muslims come from?

Samina - I won't just blame the media. Clearly, there are a lot of things happening "in the name of Islam" that are not Islamic. They simply have to do with terrorism and they have to do with power. What I find particularly horrifying about the American media is that it's very sensationalist: all they want to do is sell the most newspapers. So rather than trying to figure out the truth and give a more nuanced perception they will scale it down and reduce it. They feed on people's fears. So right now, people are afraid of the Muslim community and the media continues to provoke that because their bottom line is to sell the newspaper. If you give a more nuanced view, it's not sexy anymore.

Lishman – As a writer, how would you combat the media effect?

Samina - I think it's going to take a long time, because what's happening is happening on such a grand scale. In America right now, there are a lot of different Muslim American organisations that have sprung up since 9/11. Everyone is trying to get the message across that there is a more tolerant Islam, and there are more tolerant Muslims. I try to do it with my book, and by going out and speaking. It surprises me that after everything that has happened I still get asked the most simple questions about Islam. Right now, there is such lack of knowledge about Muslims and about Islam that ironically, all you have to do to combat it at this point is simply speak at the most basic level and people are like, '0h my god, I didn't know that.'

Lishman – People point their fingers at the oppression of women under Islam, what do you see oppresses women in the West?

Samina - People always look at the veil and say it's an oppressive tool. This is an issue in Europe more than America. In America, we haven't banned the veil on any level. It's interesting, because it is always the woman's body that becomes a representation for what we fear, and so the veil becomes this symbol of Islam. And it becomes a symbol of what we in the West fear the most:terrorists. And here's this woman walking around in a veil. Well let's get rid of the veil and get rid of the terror, and then we'll get rid of our own fears. I don't see the veil as an oppressive tool if a woman understands why she's wearing it. If she understands her rights, and then chooses to wear it, then it's still an act of empowerment. If she doesn't understand it, and is forced to wear it, then, of course, it's oppressive. But it's the same thing with the bikini. You wear the bikini because you have to live up to all these expectations and you gotta look really good. Starting in March you have Vogue and Cosmopolitan saying 'Girls! Summer's coming. You got your body in shape? Cos you're going to be out there wearing that bikini'. So there you have that pressure and whether it's covert or overt, the pressure on women is still there.

Lishman – Can there be empowerment for women in Islamic countries?

Samina - In places like America and the UK, these are the places where Muslim women can actually stand up and say ‘let’s make changes happen’. And I think that those changes are going to have to start filtering back to the East. I don’t think any changes are going to come out of the East and go to the West. That’s just an impossibility. If you look at Turkey, in 2004, the president said ‘I don’t want a woman who wears a veil to even come to the ball to celebrate my election victory'. I think there are some countries that are equating the veil with Islamic backwardness.

Lishman – In Islamic countries is it merely their interpretation of the Qur'an that is oppressive to women?

Samina - Yes, it’s their interpretation. According to the Sunni tradition there are four schools of thought and those four schools interpret the Qur'an and they make the laws according to that. In the Shia, there’s the one school of thought, but in the Shia tradition, the right to continue questioning is still open. And so, you can continue to interpret the Qur'an and continue to apply it to your specific generation, so that whatever we have interpreted back in the 8th century, doesn't need to apply to the 21st century. The problem with those who interpreted the Qur'an is that most of them were male, there were some women within that but throughout history the female voices were censored. So the men who interpreted the Qur'an became more and more powerful, and women’s rights started to erode over the centuries. It became systematically male chauvinist. Now, women are finally interpreting the Qu’ran again and saying we have a right to do this. There are a lot of different verses that men have interpreted in their own favour.We are now going to reinterpret them.

Lishman – Is Tariq Ramadan right in saying the Qur'an should be reinterpreted to fit in with the laws of each country?

Samina - If you’re living within a country you follow its rules and its laws. It’s part of being a responsible citizen to uphold the law. The assumption of that question is that Islam and democracy can not coexist and but of course that’s not true. You can
be Muslim and still be American. Between the rights that America grants you and the rights that Islam grants you, there is no contradiction. But if you interpret the Qur'an in the ways that unfortunately a lot of these radical Muslims do, then of course you’re going to have problems. But those radicals have problems even within the Muslim community. And it’s unfortunate that they are the ones everyone talks about. They are the ones that make the news constantly. The average Muslim does not make the news.

Lishman – Feminist Naomi Wolf recently wrote an open letter to the press claiming the US was now a fascist dictatorship, do you agree?

Samina - People started saying that as soon as President Bush said 'You are either with us or against us'. It was a time when you really couldn’t come out and say anything because you would be seen as an enemy to the Americans. It was a huge issue because it seemed to be contrary to American values: freedom of speech and thought and of not being censored. And as a Muslim American, I can tell you when he said that, I thought 'wait a minute, I’m a Muslim and I’m American, and when you are saying I have to choose, I can’t choose'. I think the Muslim community thinks of it like the McCarthy era, when there was a lot of guilt by association.

BIOGRAPHY
Samina Ali was born in Hyderabad,India in 1969 and emigrated with her parents to America at the age of six. Growing up, she spent half of each year in India, where she attended school. In 2005, Ali wrote the novel Madras on Rainy Days, a semi-autobiographical work that follows the trials of a young Muslim woman who leaves America to take part in an arranged marriage in Madras,India.Currently, she lives with her son in San Francisco.

Who is Caspar Hauser?

2008-03-12T03:42:00.000-07:00

One version of the Caspar Hauser story has it that he was the son of a Hungarian prince who was prophesied to change the course of history, bringing an end to the Austral-Hungarian Empire. Thus, the ruling elite of the time, learning of the prophecy, sent their agents to kidnap the new-born Casper Hauser from his cot and replace him with a dying baby.

The kidnappers imprisoned the real Caspar in a small windowless hut in the mountains. When he learnt to walk, they kept him chained up in the dark and limited his contact with other people, so that he wouldn't develop linguistically and would therefore be unable to fulfil the prophecy. Why they didn't just kill him is never explained.

Sixteen years later on May 26, 1828, he was set free. He turned up in Nuremberg, Germany. He was wearing peasant clothing and could barely talk. He carried with him a letter addressed to the captain of the 4th squadron of the 6th cavalry regiment, Captain von Wessenig. It said that this boy was taken into custody on the 7th October 1812, and had been instructed in reading, writing, and the Christian religion, but he had never taken a single step out of the house until that week. Now the boy would like to be a cavalryman,it continued, thus the captain should take him in or hang him.

Caspar was later taken in by benevolent Christian people who assumed that he was mentally retarded, but tried to school him as best they could. While undergoing his education, he reportedly had the propensity to confound his teachers with his original and iconoclastic understanding of the world.

In 1833 he died of a stab wound. No-one knows who did it. Some people think Caspar was making too much progress as a thinker, leading the elite to finish him off just in case. Some claim it was suicide.

The debate continues even today. But the truth behind the story isn't really important. And neither is the true identity of this 19th-century Hungarian boy who spent his formative years in a dungeon. Caspar Hauser passed into legend because his story resonates with key aspects of European social history. And in view of last century's development of mass-media, social engineering and the widespread adoption of the Prussian educational system, the relevance of Caspar Hauser only appears to grow.

When reading about Caspar Hauser I ask myself,'how far would our leaders go to protect their dynasty?' Would they kidnap our children? Would they purposefully arrest our development? Dumb us down?

I think the answers are all around us.

Solutions # 12: Ask a different question(Click here).

The Kitler in my soul

2008-03-10T04:10:00.000-07:00

Two weeks and no sign of Kitler. A few people have contacted me asking if there was a reward. One American girl phoned only to admonish me for calling my cat Kitler. I pointed out that it was equally tasteless to bring that up now when she was missing and could be dead, or in the unscrupulous hands of international cat traffickers.

I didn't think I'd miss Kitler so much. I even dreamt about her last night. I was sitting in a dark whisky bar in 1930's New York, wearing a suit that was far too big for me, especially around the shoulders. 'Mind if I join you?' said a voice to my right. I raised my head to see a six-feet-tall pantomime version of Kitler dressed in a long trench coat.

'Kitler, is that you? I thought you were a woman.'
'Now listen buddy. I don't want no trouble. I just got a message for you.'
'Barman, get my friend a whisky', I slurred.
'That's more like it.' He downed the shot in one and slammed the glass on the bar.
'What is it? What's the message?'
'I'm still thirsty'
'Barman! Keep 'em comin''
'What's the message?'
'I gonna need some time to remember.'

After a while, the barman asked me settle the bill. I pulled a wad of dollars from my pocket and counted them out. But as I did so they turned into blank slips of paper.

'What this? Toy money?' screamed the Barman. And with that he grabbed a baseball bat and jumped on top of the bar. All this time Kitler had been edging towards the door and he slipped away. I followed him quickly out of the bar into the deep snow of the New York streets. I ran as fast as I could and escaped the barman with ease. However, I had lost Kitler, who had failed to deliver the message.

I walked deeper and deeper into the night, pulling the collar of my trench coat around my neck to fight off the bitterly cold winds.

Soon I came across a busy street full of shops. For warmth, I tried to mingle with the crowds doing their Christmas shopping. But I noticed that they weren't people at all, they were pantomime cats. They carried bags full of tuna tins, toy mice and packets of catnip. They looked at me with pity as I shivered by the entrance to a shopping centre, poorly attired in fur-less human skin.

I was lost in the Universe of Cats...

Solutions # 11: Question your reality (click here)

Sarkozy: He who dares...wins?

2008-03-01T01:09:00.000-08:00

On learning that Sarkozy has recently hired a young computer geek to track what's being said about him on the World Wide Web, I decided to post this old opinion piece that I wrote in his honour.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy first came to national attention in 1993 when a suicidal psychotic strapped with explosives, calling himself HB, the Human Bomb, walked into a busy nursery school in the suburbs of Paris and demanded 100 million French francs or he would blow up the school. The then mayor of Neuilly, a 39-year-old Sarkozy, placed himself in the position of eminent peril by walking into the room to negotiate with the bomber face to face. After a 46-hour ordeal, in which all the hostages were freed and the bomber was finally shot dead by police, Sarkozy emerged a national hero. Police who witnessed the negotiations talked of his incredible audacity in the face of danger. As the recently released movie of the incident shows, he was quite literally shouting at the Human Bomb demanding to know how he was going to carry all that money, challenging the finer points of HB's plan. Something many of us would consider perhaps a little ill-advised given the circumstances.

Anyway, 14 years later, the hero became president. It could hardly have been scripted better. But, aside from his courage and presence of mind, what can we learn about Sarkozy from his first potentially deadly steps into the media limelight? Without wanting to rain on his parade, couldn't it have so easily have gone wrong? Might it not have been the story of the Human Bomb, the exploded school and the foolish mayor that should have waited for the police experts to arrive?

One can only speculate about what effect the incident had on Sarkozy's personal development. Suffice to say, the president could be forgiven for thinking that his rise to power was a matter of providence–a dangerous illusion likely to accentuate the riskier side of his nature.

‘Surrender monkeys’
In this, the fourth month of Sarkozy's presidency, many of us outside of France are still bemused as to why this apparently pro-EU, Atlanticist could possibly be so popular with the French electorate. What happened to those "no-show cheese-eating surrender monkeys" that many of us know and love? The kind that three years ago gave a firm"non" to the invasion of Iraq, and had a UN veto and knew how to use it? Their penchant for the "non" was evident again in the 2005 referendum when they voted resolutely against the EU constitution. So how is it now, that the French are so eager to embrace change and leave behind "Old Europe"? For a revolutionary change in their domestic and foreign policy is what they voted for when they ticked the Sarkozy box on the voting ballot.

I, for one, was rather fond of the idea of the stubborn, "Old European" France that squatted arrogantly in the middle of Europe, raising an impertinent middle finger to those imperial powers across the pond. I like their humane working conditions: the maximum 35 hour week, the statutory five weeks' holiday a year, the early retirement and highly favourable pensions for state workers. I can even admit to a certain shadenfreude when the French unions manage to bring Paris to a halt, as they did in the great strike of 1995. I know we are all supposed to live in fear of another Winter of Discontent, but it warms my heart to see such workers' solidarity, all the songs and marching along the Champs-Élysées–scenes sadly lacking in British life since Margaret Thatcher's 1984 battle with the miners.

The Shröder example
In fact, rather like Thatcher in her endeavours to change Britain,Sarkozy is hell bent on "modernising" France, dragging it kicking and screaming into the new globalised century.But is France really "kicking and screaming" you may ask: "Sarkozy did get 53% of the votes. The French clearly want change." Admittedly, he won with a mandate for change, but it would be foolish to think the French unions will go down without a fight. Ultimately, Thatcher was victorious in defeating the British union movement, and joined Reagan, as one of the great Western reformers of the last century.But perhaps more pertinent to the Sarkozy case is the example of Germany's Gerhart Shröder, who decimated his popularity and, subsequently, lost a general election, by trying to implement similar social reforms to those Sarkozy has planned for France.

Now Sarkozy is preparing to take on 1.1 million retirees covered by "special retirement regimes,"created for workers in dangerous jobs (police officers,miners and train drivers) with the aim of reducing their pensions.This will be his "Miners'Strike." But unlike Thatcher, who planned her assault years in advance, Sarkozy,one fears,is underestimating his opposition, and taking the kind of risks that might easily blow up in his face.

Interview with Eugene Hutz ( Gogol Bordello)

2008-02-28T12:18:00.000-08:00

This is a part one of an interview I did with Eugene Hutz from Gogol Bordello, a Gypsy-punk band rapidly morphing into something quite indescribable. He gave me a bit of a hard time at the start, but he was a great guy to interview, and I find that sometimes dumb questions get you the best answers. He is originally from the Ukraine, but I didn't standardise his English too much, because he speaks in quite a unique and entertaining way. Next week I will post the second part of the interview in which he talks about what it was like to work with Madonna on Filth and Wisdom.

Lishman - How did you end up in New York?

Eugene - I left Ukraine when I was 19. The way things go with refugees is that you have to follow a certain trail of refugee camps,which included Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy,before making it to the States,finally. And even then I didn't land in New York straight away. But when I did, in 1998, it didn't let me down.That was basically the town where I finally found my audience.Where I finally felt understood, which I never really felt before. I was influenced by a lot of ideas that came from New York that made perfect sense to me.

Lishman – Is Gypsy music more of a live experience than a recorded one?

Eugene - I don't believe in that.They are both important things that deserve equal attention and a real band always needs to find a way to come through live and recording- wise as well. Many bands face that problem because only one or the other one works. So, in our case we always make that our task and priority to make sure both sides work.

Lishman – Is recording a very serious affair or a bit of a party?

Eugene - Well, what do you think?

Lishman – Sounds like fun.

Eugene - Well that's very wrong. Would you believe me if I tell you that we have a shot of Jack Daniels and everything just happens? Definitely not.There's a lot of hard work in this music and performance. What seems to be so easy, like if you watch a Charlie Chaplin film it looks so easy, but do you know how much fuckin' work went into it before it gets to look so easy? I don't know where to start to describe all that process. I don't want to popularise silly ideas that everything just happens. Nothing just happens. It's a certain matter of artistic work that the band is pursuing and executing. It takes all their passion and education that they can come up with. That is the probably more correct answer.

Lishman – You cite Parliament Funkadelic and Jimi Hendrix as major influences. What do you take from them?

Eugene - It's funny because I actually met [Parliament singer] George Clinton not long ago, finally, by complete chance. One more time to trigger off his influence. I guess it's not so much in the music itself, but more the aesthetic of getting a whole army up on stage. In their heyday Parliament had 50 people up on stage. Their whole outlandish phantasmagorical design, everything from music to costumes to lyrics was so high concept that it had a straight out of space kind of impact and really inspired the imagination to go in unknown territories. Hendrix is just literally one of the things that I was repeatedly listening to during childhood. My dad would tell me that I would always ask to put on that thing before I knew what it was. And it was the Band of Gypsies live recording. I think it's just the hypnotic quality of it. The fact that Hendrix's playing incorporated everything, feedback and all kinds of bandit notes made it more understandable music for me. Everything else was like Beatles arrangements, bap bap bap, all the notes and everything and here’s the back up vocal. That just didn't speak to me as much as the shamanistic quality of Hendrix.

Lishman – Did you get your musical education with your father?

Eugene - Yes, I basically took up exactly where my dad left off. I learned to play his guitar. I chased all the girls with the same guitar that he was chasing girls with 18 years before me.

Lishman – Can you tell me about the rest of Gogol Bordello?

Eugene - Everybody's personal style gives a lot to the band's sound. There's a total of nine members. It started just with me on guitar. It seems like a new member joined every year.

Lishman – You're on the same track as Parliament.

Eugene - There are even more parallels. Similar to us, Parliament didn't really become known to the world until their fifth album. Same Here! It just seems to be so straight out of space that people don't know what to do with it. Essentially, I write songs that are Eastern European, based on the spirit that's in my blood. It'd the band that's able to give it a universal sound. Something that people down in Brazil and in Japan can enjoy. It's Oren's Middle Eastern guitar twang. It's Yuri's Siberian accordion. Sergi's Russian gypsy violin. Tommy's afro-reggae bass lines. All of it is in the mix. And the girls are very important in a performative (sic) aspect. I guess I bring in all the initial ideas and then they morph into the monster that you see... through everybody's creative spirit.You know a person can only experience catharsis on [their]own terms. So if you want to have a band that gives catharsis it can not be really given in a totalitarian way. My role in the band has changed from in the beginning from director to selector.

Lishman – Do you have Gypsy friends here in Spain?

Eugene - I've made so many Romany friends all over the world and it's almost ironic that I haven't made Romany friends in Spain yet. Mostly because I've visited Spain very briefly several times. Most of the Romany festivals that I've been to have been in Eastern Europe, France, the States or Scandinavia. So, I'm looking forward to that, because Spanish Romanies have contributed a great deal to giving a good name to the gypsy art.

Lishman – How do you feel about the way Romanies are treated in Europe at the moment?

Euegene - There is only one way to feel about it. My involvement with the activist front of Romany Rights pretty much describes how I feel about it. There's a lot of work to be done and the sooner the general lie manufactured by governments and capital media about Romanies falls down, the better, because everything that is known about us to the average person is a lie force fed by the media. The origin of this stigma is simple if you look at it historically. Unfortunately, the model developed in the world was not anarcho-syndicalism, where there is a free trade amongst autonomous communities. It has all developed into centralised and capital power in the concept that capital is where the decisions are coming from. When governments are working so hard to monopolise decisions and suddenly people come who are independent of that, and have an absolutely alternative lifestyle that is successful, of course it rubs them the wrong way, because this is not part of their plan and they can't collect the taxes. It all comes down to capital, which is the origin of this stigma. Just because Romanies are so hard to control and assimilate it has turned into a full on breeding of hate.

Lishman – Barcelona's basing a lot of its by-laws on Guiliani's New York model. Is this advisable?

Eugene - I went through that whole process in New York being much involved in the after-hours scene. Gogol Bordello used to play in a place where we had to start at four in the morning. When everything else shut down is when we would start. So I've been through this whole thing of all the musical bars and venues being shut down. And what a pleasant experience that was! So yes, much luck to Barcelona with that. Enjoy these changes!

Lishman – Buskers have to audition.

Eugene - These scary tendencies are going on all over the world. It's not a secret. What's frightening is that even Barcelona is getting on to that. That's an alarming sign for real. First time I came to Barcelona, I felt like it was part of heaven on earth, but that was about five, six years ago.

Continued next week...

Lost moments like Murakami

2008-02-24T08:59:00.000-08:00

The radio plays old Gypsy songs. I strain the spaghetti in a colander over the sink. The steam hangs momentarily in the air like winter breath.

Through the kitchen window I hear the strange chattering of what I assume must be a caged bird. One of the neighbours has a small aviary down in the patio. They buy and sell rare birds, probably illegally. It's always surrounded by cats.

I add more pepper to the sauce and taste it off a wooden spoon. A sprinkle of oregano and it's good. I'm a decent hand at cooking pasta. A lot of people have said that.

I wash two glasses, dry them carefully with a tea towel and place them on the table. I open a tin for Kitler and empty it onto a small plate beating the tin with a fork as I do. I look down the corridor, but there's no sign of Kitler pounding the tiles towards her dinner. 'Kitler!', I shout. Still no sign. She must be sleeping.

I open a bottle of Rioja and pour myself a drink, leaving the bottle on the table , where the cutlery and plates are already laid out. I light a candle and dim the lights, so that the table becomes the centrepiece of the room - the general degradation of the flat as a whole fading into darkness.

The buzzer sounds. It's so loud I almost drop my glass of wine. I walk over to the mirror and give myself the once over. Not too bad. I go to get the front door to let her in but before I can get there she meets me in the hallway and we kiss. She smells good. I should tell her that. But I don't. I'm too busy trying to work out how she managed to get into the flat.

A few years ago, in the spirit of short lived infatuation, I was in the habit of giving new girlfriends spare keys to the flat. Alas, this was always a big mistake. Mostly because they would tend to drop in unannounced in the early hours. But also because of the high rate of revenge attacks: the soup in the bed, the Tabasco in the milk, the incident involving superglue and the fridge door, and by the same author, the revenge of the flying shoes: I discovered all my footwear, bar the flip flops I was wearing, down in the patio being sniffed at by the cats. After that one, I changed the locks.

'Come through, Sandra', I say, ' dinner's almost ready'. I take her coat and as I'm hanging it up I drop in the question, 'Did you let yourself in?' .

'How would I do that?', she laughed. 'No, the door was open.'

'Ah, must have been Martin, my ex-flatmate, left the door open. I try to keep it shut because of Kitler?'

'And who's Kitler?'

'My cat. Looks like Hitler.' And then the penny drops, 'Shit! Kitlers got out'.

'Kitler! Kitler!!!'

Three hours later...

I brush the wall with paste and Sandra hangs the final poster, flattening it out with the palm of her hand. As she does, Kitler's face scowls back at us from a black and white photo: Gata perdida: contesta al nombre de Kitler. Por favor, llamame a 6******** si la encuentres.

We head back to the house. I put the key in the door. But I hear something and stop.

'Wait. What was that?' I cock my ear and listen. I hear a faint whine.
'What is it?, asks Sandra.
'Did you just hear something?'
'No, I'm sorry. Nothing'.
I listen again, but all I can hear is the siren of an ambulance getting louder and louder as it winds its way through the city towards us. My heart sinks.

Sandra takes my arm, 'Come on, you. I'll make us something to eat. You pour the wine.'

We walk into an empty flat.

Solutions# 10: Keep the door closed.

Interview with Estulin (Part 3) - The Beatles, Adorno, Darfur and the endgame

2008-02-18T12:36:00.000-08:00

The final part of the interview with author Daniel Estulin.

Lishman - In your book you say that Theodore Adorno helped create some of the Beatles' songs as part of a social engineering program. Won't that be a bit hard for a lot of people to swallow?

Estulin - [It wasn't just Adorno], there was a lot of help from a lot of very intelligent people to get that done. And if you listen to the Beatles' music, suddenly with Sergeant Pepper there is this tremendous increase in quality. There was just primate crap before that. And suddenly there’s this jump, because of all the people they had working with the Beatles on their songs. There’s a lot of proof of that [they were given a lot of help]. Like Lennon said in his 1975 interview, one minute we were playing whore houses and the next thing you know we were shaking hands with the Queen.

Lishman - But still, it's very hard to believe...

Estulin - People choose to believe what they’re told, because if you believe that there's a man behind the curtain doing all these things, then your entire world just folds up on itself and you realise you have been living a goddam lie all your life. I have actually seen documents written by Adorno to the executive director of EMI,which aside from selling CDs and vinyl, is an important member of the British armament industry. [In the letter] they were discussing this whole thing called the parental shift in society. When I saw that I said to myself 'Jesus Christ'. 'How do you change the future? By indoctrinating the kids into doing what you want them to do.' Because if you start with [adults], you're going to have a hard time doing it because they more or less know what they are, who they are, what they want. But if you start with kids, you can change the future of the entire planet, and that is exactly what they’ve done.

Lishman - Tell me about the new book, Los Señores de las Sombras (Men in the Shadows)?

Estulin - I got the idea for this book a long time before I got to writing the Bilderberg Group. I was seeing all this stuff going on around the world and I thought to myself, you know this is
crazy. I could see a pattern. I could see wars, terrorism, drugs, money laundering, all that stuff. You see there’s a pattern, and I just couldn't find its common thread. When I finally did find it, I said to myself "fuck, it’s about oil." Oil is the endgame. What I do in the book is draw you a map of the entire world and then I pink anywhere in the world where there are natural resources, be it oil, gold or whatever. So on top of that, we superimpose the wars and the armed conflict and they match 100%. The world is running out of natural resources and oil is the most important essential natural resource. There’s no substitute for oil. The world economy needs almost
90 million barrels of oil a day. A friend said Brazil has been using ethanol for the last 30 years. It’s true, and Fiji can probably live on that as well, but you can only do that if you live in a donkey-run economy. But the world’s armed forces don’t run on ethanol. They need oil. And if you want to know just how little oil is left: we have about 20 years worth of oil and in the next couple of years this thing is going to go up to $140 dollars a barrel and social scientists have basically determined that at $150 the entire civilisation collapses onto itself. So you’re seeing people fighting for every last available drop of oil reserves.

Lishman – So the battle for oil is on?

Estulin - Just before the summer I went to Sudan. I hired a bunch of mercenaries from there, and armaments–I know how to use every hand gun in the world. Armed to the teeth, we went to
Darfur, to the place that nobody in his right fucking mind would go into. We went there for a period of two weeks to see what the hell was going on. Seriously, Darfur is the epicentre of the entire universe, because it is the only place in the world where there’s still something of oil left to be discovered, which could actually take us another 10 years or so. You have the Americans there, you have the Russians there, the Germans, the Israelis, the British, the Chinese, all of the secret services agencies, Haliburton was there, BP, Shell, Texaco… You know the Russians were there and all of them are trying to kill each other. You no longer have these longlasting partnerships, you know, the British and the Americans. Aside from temporary alliances of convenience, now they are all fighting each other.The Americans are fighting the French, the French are fighting the British, the British the Isrealis, the Russians are fighting against the Chinese, they are all trying to sabotage each others’ operations. You have Blackwater firing on the Chinese soldiers who are stationed in Darfur, Sudan, protecting the oil installations. It’s
absolutely insane.

Lishman – What are your predictions for 2008?

Estulin - Oil is going to keep going up. The dollar is going to keep going down, alas, for one very simple reason: it’s called demand destruction. I saw this phrase about 10 years ago in a
Bilderberger report, and then in the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) and the Trilateral Commission report and a Club of Rome report. You destroy demand by destroying the
world economy. Of course, if you have no oil. You don’t want the dirty great unwashed buying things, selling things, travelling…You need to destroy the world economy making sure
that people get to be poor. Poor people don’t spend money, because to spend money you need to make things. You make things with energy. So we're looking at the wholesale destruction
of the American economy. More people are going to get to be poor. More millions are going to lose whatever (money) they have. You see that whole domino effect all over the world. Money being taken out of people’s hands. But the Rockefellers are not going to lose anything.

Lishman – What can people do?

Estulin - Well, first of all and last of all, get the fuck out of debt now. Get rid of any debt you have because they are creating an indentured society. Whereas in Victorian England, if you actually owe money to someone, it’s the corporations who will decide how you are going to pay it back, where you are going to live while you are doing this. They’re going to track you and they’re going to follow you, and until you pay every last cent back. You’re not going anywhere. Get out of debt. If you have money, convert it to gold. Physical money is worthless, because by destroying the economy and devaluing the currency, that money becomes worthless. When you actually get gold make sure you get physical gold,because paper gold is five times more (vulnerable) than physical gold, so make sure you have it delivered and you hide it in your sock, or in your bank or somewhere where you can have easy access to it. And if you people are going to buy things, buy land, because wealthy people throughout history have always had everything in land and natural resources. They don’t buy apartment buildings in the middle of a god-damn city, because whatever happens, you can always eat off the land.

Part 1

Part 2

The missing part

Genetic Pull

2008-02-17T03:38:00.000-08:00

In my life I've been called a cad and a commitophobe many times. And while I admit there could be a measure of truth in both of these 'observations', I guess it all depends on exactly where it is you're calling from.

On the subject of commitment, I subscribe to the "I just haven't met the right girl yet" explanation. I'm searching, but with no urgency or compulsion. I flit effortlessly from one-night stand, to romantic interlude, to weeks of monastic solitude, when Kitler is my only bedfellow.

As I've been involved with someone, in one way or another, at least 75% of my adult life, I'm not prone to feelings of isolation, or the panic that a dry spell might turn into a drought. There are always people out there looking for someone to share some time with. Good people.

One winter's night about five years ago, a group of Scandinavian art students invited me to their going away party. It was a dinner for about ten people. That was when I felt the genetic pull.

It happened even before she entered the room, at a pheromonal level. Pupils dilating , a shiver running down my spine, I sensed she was near.

When, two minutes later, she sat down opposite me, smiled and said hello, I felt my eyes well up. I found it difficult to speak, my body awash with adrenalin.

I would have done anything for this woman: given her children, stolen, lied, murdered ... anything. But I was too quiet and the meal passed without incident. And when I politely said goodbye and gave her a kiss on either cheek, and she walked away into the cobbled night of Puigmarti, I felt that pull once more, but I couldn't follow. Impotent in the face of getting what I want.

I never saw her again; she left town soon after. And later that night, in typical Lishman fashion, I slept with one of her friends.

That's how the story ends.

Or began...

Solutions #9: Stay strong.

Interview with Estulin (part 2) - EU, Brainwashing and the palace coup

2008-02-06T11:32:00.000-08:00

The second part of the interview I did with author Daniel Estulin in December. We began to touch on the subject of the EU constitution.

Lishman - Do you really think the EU constitution poses a danger to the 27 nations?

Estulin - To understand the EU constitution, you have to read it with such documents as the Treaty of Rome, the Treaty of Amsterdam and the Machstrict Treaty. You literally have about 6,000 pages worth of documents. I think I'm one of the few people in the world who actually took the time to read them all. And one of the things that you people don't realise is that previously you had a country called Spain; you had the peseta, you had the border, you had the constitution. Now, you have jack shit. You have a currency which is European called the Euro, you don’t have borders, you don't have a flag.And although they let these morons at football games wave this thing that they call the Spanish flag, that's not really a Spanish flag. The Spanish flag is the European blue flag with little stars. And, of course, the constitution: national constitutions are subordinate to European constitutions. And the European constitution in times of crisis takes precedence over any constitution in Europe. And again, with the French and the Dutch a couple of years ago saying "fuck you" to the European constitution, the [Bilderbergers] needed to circumvent that, because you can't have Europe without without Holland, one of the key members of the Bilderberger league; and France, which was [historically] going to be the second republic or the second constitution in the world after the American constitution. That's why they [concocted] the revolution which [at the time] destroyed any semblance of hope that Europe had for freedom and nation states, which, of course, was the story behind Jacobean terror.

Lishman - Why do you think the Spanish are still pro-European despite massive inflation and a hike in the cost of living?

Estulin - It's not that there pro-European. They're just [brainwashed]. Really I don't think it's very difficult to understand. The greatest form of control is when you think you're free, but you are being manipulated and dictated too. One form of dictatorship is being in a prison cell and you see the bars, you can touch them and you know they're there and the other, is a far more subtle form of control, where you can't see the bars and you think you're free. And the biggest hypnotist in the world is this oblong thing everybody in the corner of the room called a TV set. Now what they have basically done, the people in power, is they've persuaded people that what they can see and touch and feel, and what they're been made to see, is [all] there is to see . Now, the disadvantage of that, the danger of that, from our point of view, is that they will laugh in your face when you tell them there's another far more different reality.The majority's perception of reality - especially in the political arena - is shrewdly manipulated and imposed upon them by the man behind the curtain, which is why people think they are pro-European. They have been told that being pro-European is not being left behind. To the Spanish, having such an inferiority complex and always being thought of as a third world nation, being part of Europe is being progressive. And being progressive is supposed to be good. Of course it has nothing to do with [being good], it has to do with destroying whatever little the people in this country have.

Lishman - You mention the power of television. Hitler said without the radio he wouldn't have been able to achieve power…

Estulin - Well, the whole Hitler thing is quite interesting, if you read my articles that I've written in the last few days on my webpage. This whole thing about Nazis and Hitler. Hitler is a product. He is a product of this fondi system. Nazism is a French thing that was controlled from London, by people like Lord Sherburn and company and,of course, the first Nazi in history is Napoleon. He was controlled [through England as well …] to destroy all of Europe. The only country left standing was the Venice of Northern Europe, which was England. The example of Hitler just goes to show how the same financial banking interests and again that is not a euphemism for Jews because it's not a Jewish conspiracy. It's a Venetian conspiracy. Jews are as much to do with it as Winnie the Pooh. But it's the whole thing of needing a Hitler, a Mussolini and a Franco. You know, one of these stupid piddly characters to do the dirty work for the banking community, such as the Lazard.

Lishman - How would you account for the fact that Britain, unlike Spain, is generally Eurosceptic?

Estulin - The British understand and are politically savvy, whereas the Spaniards are politically innocent. And Britain being an island, this whole thing of being independent and being anti-European, but again it's the people who are anti-European. Just as the people in France and in Holland are anti-European. Whereas the establishment itself, all of them or most of them, are pro-European in one way or another and if you're not, which was the case of Margaret Thatcher, they just get rid of you like an old used up shoe and put another Joe Blo in your place, such as the case of John Major, such as the case of Tony Blair and whoever else is gonna come after it really doesn't make a difference, because unless you play with these people -play they're game on their terms, you won't get anywhere.

Lishman - So Margaret Thatcher was taken out?

Estulin - She publicly said that she wasn't going to let a group of bankers tell her country what to do. And the next thing you know there’s a Palace coup taking place. She was kicked out. Major comes in and he’s a Rockerfeller poodle. Then he is kicked out and then this other dumb asshole comes in. And you get the same thing. People like Tony Blair and the El Pais in Spain, these are extreme right-wing forces. The people that think they are left, wouldn’t know left if it hit them in the head. El Pais is extreme right and Tony Blair is extreme right. Tony Blair is an extreme version of Margaret Thatcher.

Continued next week...

Part 1

Part 3

The missing part

Citizens cained

2008-02-05T09:13:00.000-08:00

Last week a team of scientists led by Damia Barcelo, from the Institute for Environmental Chemical Research, shocked Barcelona by publishing the results of an analysis of the population of Southern Barcelona’s collective urine, which passes through the water treatment plant in El Prat de Lobregat. Turns out that cocaine byproducts were detected in such large amounts that these researchers calculated a staggering 40,000 doses of cocaine are being consumed every day. Extrapolating this figure to include Northern Barcelona, they estimated 70,000 doses in total for the city, a figure that is apparently doubled at weekends, which is twice the per capita amount found in similar studies carried out in Valencia and Milan.

Quite honestly, I don’t know what I find most disturbing about this: the idea that Barcelona has a monumental drug problem, the fact that we don’t see any evidence of it in my newspaper’s underground bunker (meaning we’re definitely not hip to the scene) or the mental image of a bunch of scientists sifting through our number ones. Indeed, news that government researchers are testing the city’s urine for traces of drugs is exactly the kind of thing that recreational cocaine users don’t want to hear. Especially, when experiencing a bout of white-line paranoia from the weekend’s over-excesses. Let’s face it, they’re probably having enough trouble keeping it together as it is.

And in the spirit of this drug-induced paranoia, would it be a fair question to ask if these urine-borne byproducts can, through the black magic of DNA forensics, be traced back to their original owners? Will the day come when arrests are made, jobs lost and olympic medals returned at the flush of a toilet? Well, probably not, but it’s something to think about on your third day without sleep.

Shocking follow up: click here

Interview with Estulin - The Bilderberg Group

2008-02-02T02:04:00.000-08:00

Interview I did with author Daniel Estulin in December 07 - I will post it in three easy pieces as it's quite long.

Here's a little bit of context:

The Bilderberg Group

Since its inception in 1954 at the Bilderberg Hotel in the small Dutch town of Oosterbeek, the Bilderberg Group has been shrouded in secrecy. Comprised of European prime ministers,American presidents, and top global CEOs, the group gathers once a year to sort out its vision for the economic and political future of humanity. The press has never been allowed to attend the meetings, nor have statements ever been released on their conclusions. Only in recent years have the BBC and other mainstream media begun to acknowledge the Bilderberg Group's existence. Daniel Estulin has gone much further, obtaining documents detailing who attends each meeting, and what they are planning. He has published his findings in three fascinating volumes, and on his website: www.danielestulin.com. His first book,The True Story of the Bilderberg club, is a world literary phenomenon, translated into 24 languages and sold in 42 countries. The sequel, The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club, and his latest book, Men in the Shadows: Club Bilderberg,have appeared in Spanish and are awaiting publication in English.

Interview

Lishman - What exactly is the Bilderberg Club?

Estulin - In the world of international finance there are those organisations which skew the events and those which react to events,and while the latter are often better known, more numerous and seemingly more powerful,the true power rests with former. Now, at the centre of this group of financial systems are the financial oligarchy, or the oligarchs, today represented by the Bilderberg Group. The idea behind each Bilderberger meeting is to create what I call the Aristocracy of Purpose between European and North American elites on the best way to manage the planet. In other words, the creation of a global network of giant cartels more powerful than any nation on earth. That’s basically what they are. And now, what they are not: first of all, the Jewish-Masonic conspiracy, as so many people on the Internet like to believe, based on extremely fragile logic; neither are they the Illuminati conspiracy, whatever the hell that is.

Lishman – How did they come about?

Estulin - It is essentially a private criminal enterprise which stretches across the globe, operating through a network of government agencies, private institutions and both publically owned and private corporations and financial institutions.Now this extended network,which is called the fondi, stretches all the way back to the Middle Ages. Again the fondi is the combined wealth of these oligarchical families. It is concentrated in your tangible things: land, oil, raw materials, precious minerals and metals.And by controlling the financial trade of these items, these family fathers set up fondis that are pooled together for maximum effect and deployed through a number of financial institutions, which hide their origins from the unsuspecting public. At the heart of the fondi system, you have the powerful merchant private banks such as the Rothchild banks. And even more powerful than Rothchild is the Lazard bank. One of the reasons that the Bilderbergers have never been able to discredit me is that historically I can show you that what today is called the Bilderberg Club can be traced back in time to the Venetian Black Nobility, 500 years ago. However, the idea behind these people hasn’t changed since the beginning: it’s the wholesale destruction of anything related and affiliated with the idea of a nation-state.

Lishman– What is the significance of the nation state?

Estulin - The first nation-states were created in France under Louis
XI and then in England with Henry VII. The idea behind the nation-state was the social welfare constitution; rights given to the people they had never had before. Before that we worked as slaves. For the first time we literally had something which we could call our own. It gave us the idea of the constitution,which is again one of the things that these people have been so virulently fighting against. With nation-states, anything which was created,any technological advance which took place, created a need in other states in Europe to follow suit otherwise they were left behind. That’s called progress and that’s what the Venetians and the Bilderbergers of today have been so virulently against, which is again the whole thing about zero growth and the wholesale destruction of national, international economies,that’s all part of what you’re witnessing right now. Of course, you have the yobbos who live in the world, the great unwashed, they have no fuckin' idea what any of this stuff means because again their daily needs just are your basic primary,animal-like needs, which is exactly what these people want you to think about: work,fuck, procreate, eat and sleep.

Lishman – How did you begin researching the Bilderbergers?

Estulin - I got into it in 1992 because of a friend of my grandfather’s.
I’m Russian by birth and my grandfather was a colonel in the KGB counterintelligence and had extensive intelligence connections all over the world.Anyway, this friend of my grandfather's contacted me and we met in Toronto. He spoke to me about a secret society called the Bilderbergers,which, initially, needless to say, I did not believe in. At first, I just got into it as a way of going out and getting laid, because it was a kind of a cool thing to do. I was 25. You could tell the girls James Bond-like stories of secret societies. But when I scratched the surface a little bit, I saw that some of the stuff he was telling me was actually panning out. Let’s say my breakthrough year was 1996, when the Bilderbergers were in King City, Canada and, through the sources that I'd built up, I found out that they were trying to break up my country of Canada and merge it with the United States into a North American Union as a basic prelude to a greater North American Union, which of course now includes Mexico.

Lishman –What was the evidence that finally convinced you – did you
see it in the press ?

I didn’t see anything in the press. I saw them in secret documents that the man brought and showed me. That’s one of the advantages of having a grandaddy who was a colonel in counterintelligence. For example,one of the documents I have in my possession is a 1973 National Security Memorandum signed by Henry Kissenger.This was the subject matter: Policy Towards Post-Franco Spain, and basically it’s discussing about that it’s okay to have Prince Juan Carlos of Bourbon as the future king of Spain [owned] by the American government. This document then being sent for approval by the Bilderbergers.

Continued next week
Part 2

Part 3

The missing part

Distraction

2008-01-31T12:58:00.000-08:00

The nation is distracted and constantly desirous of entertainment.

Cycling home from work through Barcelona's early-evening streets, I notice that half the people are either on their mobile phones or iPods.

Pedestrians and cyclists talk into these little radiation buzzers with their heads cocked, motorcyclists with the phone shoved up inside their helmets, cars are parked in the bike lanes so drivers can check their messages. Other drivers drive on, managing the gear stick, cigarette and steering wheel with one hand and the mobile in the other- the alternative being the cricked neck wedging the phone between neck and shoulder, which offers limited visibility. And many of them are on their way home to watch TV all night...

Those not distracted by the demands of their phones, have mp3s or iPods laying down a soundtrack to their lives. Life is more convincingly like a movie with a thousand-song jukebox in your pocket attached to your brain through wires.

I take a detour and head up to the Magic Fountain near Plaza Espanya. It's a fountain lit up with coloured lights choreographed to classical music. It's a big tourist pull. A thousand people standing round the spectacle, but none of them feel the spray of the water or the spine tingling vibrations of Prokofiev or Mozart. Every one of them to a man is holding a camera or a mobile, trying to capture the moment that they're missing, ironically, because they're trying to capture it.

I take a seat at the cafe and order a vermut. I watch the tourists wielding their cameras, crowding round the machine to view the playback of the moment they captured just a moment before.

We're in the the thrall of electronic gadgetry. Needy cousins of the original tamagotchis.

Like the Buddhists, I want to live in the moment and practice conscious consumption. But I don't want to be a Buddhist.

I drink up and head home. I stop in at a 7/11 and buy cat food and a good Rioja. I want to sit on the balcony with Kitler and watch the stars.

Solutions #8 : Defeat addictive electric dependency. Use the force wisely.

Carlos Ruis Zafon - Shadow of the wind

2008-01-30T01:26:00.000-08:00

Here is a review/interview I did with Carlos Ruiz Zafón a few years back, when Shadow of the Wind was first published in English. He's now at the point of finishing the sequel to Shadow of the Wind- though apparently he's having trouble coming up with a name. In 2002, after ten years in LA working as a scriptwriter Zafón returned to Barcelona with a new passion for the city he grew up in. Nowadays,however - at least according to my sources - he's sick to death of what Barcelona is trying to become and plans to up sticks as soon as he can. Maybe back to LA to work on the movie version of his first book.

One of Spain's most internationally prominent authors, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, born in 1964 in the shadows of the Sagrada Familia, has returned home from LA with a project that, if realised, will place Barcelona firmly on the world's literary map. "I’ve always been fascinated by Dickensian London," explains Zafón, "the concept of this 19th century metropolis that we experience through Dickens’ imagination. This kind of mythology through art is wonderful, cities as organic creatures. I want to do the same for Barcelona, give it a mysterious and romantic character. 'The Shadow of the Wind' is the first in a cycle of four novels that will be set here. I’m now working on a new book. It’s not the same story, nor does it use the same characters. It will have different characters sharing a common universe. When the four books are finished, and if I happen to finish them all and do them right, it should create a kaleidoscopic effect, like an entire self-contained universe".

'The Shadow of the Wind' begins when ten-year-old Daniel Sempere accompanies his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a secret labyrinthine library for out-of-print works deep in the heart of Barcelona's old town. Invited to choose a book he pulls out 'The Shadow of the Wind' by Julian Carax. Reading the story propels him into the mysterious world of the novel and its author, who seems to have disappeared without trace after a duel in a Paris cemetery, but whose fiction seems to be still very much alive.

As Daniel approaches adulthood he discovers he's not the only one interested in Julian Carax. A shrouded figure is tracking down every last copy of Carax's works in order to burn them. What began as simple curiosity ends in Daniel's battle to find the truth behind Julian Carax and save those he left behind from the despicable Chief Inspector Fumero, a former political mercenary and a cold-blooded killer.

Zafón has created a powerful fictional rendition of the real Barcelona, the story woven in and around the history and topography of the city as it was in the first half of the 20th century. Like a literary Russian doll, its many narrative layers fit neatly together and when peeled off reveal the numerous cycles of life lived out by three generations. Through observing these cycles we see the effect of history on a landscape and its people, the things that change and those that stay the same.

It seems facile to try to define 'The Shadow of the Wind' by using the kind of cliches borrowed from blurbs on the back covers of novels; it contains adventure, mystery and romance in the same way that life does. It's a book for those readers who love to lose themselves completely in the world of imagination, written by one who shares their creed. "I remember my father used to buy these complete works of many of the grand masters of literature and I'd devour them along with comic books and anything I could get my hands on. It was like a fascination for the very object of books – you open a piece of paper and it was like the key to a world. I felt like it was something magic that with ink and paper you could open a door into an entire universe," says Zafón.

I ask Zafón about the inspiration behind Julian Carax, the fictional author from Shadow, given that both Zafón and Carax are accomplished pianists. "The Julian Carax character is almost a caricature of myself," he admits, "many of the elements of his personality mirror my own. I make jokes between me and myself, and I use Carax for that."

Zafón is less likely to admit to a similarity between himself and Chief Inspector Fumero, who haunts the novel as the chilling face of law enforcement in the early days of the Franco regime. "Fumero hates all the things he doesn’t understand and the things that he can’t own. There are a lot of people like that, who hate the things they feel rejected by. They want to destroy the things that won’t surrender to them. Fumero wants to destroy Julian. He wants to destroy books. He feels like the world has betrayed him. At some point in the Shadow, somebody says that there are people that hate like they breathe, and that’s what Fumero does. The root of hate is resentment. And I think in many ways that the root of fascism is always resentment. It grows from a desire to take revenge for being excluded."

I wondered if his idea for the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a secret warehouse for out of print editions, came from a fear that books are in peril. "We need good books for books to survive. It’s not a battle against TV and the movie industry. The war is against mediocrity in literature. There will always be narrative. Storytelling is in human nature. Stories are the way we communicate our values – what we feel and what we know about ourselves. We need stories; we feed from them. And that’s why when people feel that literature is not providing them with the stories they need, they look for them on TV or at the movies. You need a really good book to feel what literature can do otherwise you say you know what? I’d rather be watching a movie and that’s worrying."

So why did someone who loves Barcelona so much decide to up sticks and leave in the first place? "There’s an old saying in Catalan which says Rob el Mon, i torn el Born. It means go around the world and when you’ve seen it, come back home. I felt it was a very healthy thing to do. That’s why I left and ended up living in California. I needed to make that journey for my own sake. Everybody should do that. They should leave home, go far away and jump into unknown waters. I think it does wonders for the mind," says Zafón.

What vision of America has Zafón brought back to Barcelona? "We Europeans worry that we are becoming American. America is something different, a product of different historical social circumstances, and Europe a product of others. I don’t think they are heading to the same place. America gets a lot of flack and we Europeans enjoy a little bit too much feeling superior to Americans and I don’t think that’s a very objective or even useful attitude. But I do worry about America’s isolation from the rest of the world, its isolation of both culture and information. I don’t think that’s good for anybody – for the Americans or the people outside. It’s already having a lot of effect around the world and it will have a lot more."

As Barcelona cultural life is presently dominated by Fòrum 2004, I ask the author what he thinks of the show so far? "I’ve always thought the interesting thing about Barcelona was the spirit of the city and the spirit of the city is timeless. It's what spontaneously happens here, what springs from the city, from the streets from the bones, from the mixture of people, and not from what is being artificially peddled to us. Every so often City Hall comes up with these abstract concepts like the Fòrum. It starts as a pitch at a meeting, some guys get together in the boardroom and say hey why don’t we have a meeting of the cultures of the world? And the others say Hey cool, lets do it, but this doesn’t come from anywhere. It's artificial."

"Great things are happening in this year of the Fòrum in Barcelona", he continues, "but most of them are happening in the theatres, museums and on the streets in the same way they usually do. Nobody knows what to do in the Fòrum area. They say what the hell is this? People come to Barcelona for the heritage, the architecture and the feeling of the place, something that nobody can control, bottle or comercialise. It’s just there and that’s what people seek from the city and enjoy; and you cannot put that in a cement wasteland, close it and sell fast-food, and say hey, buy a ticket to see this! – It doesn’t work that way."

Carlos Zafón now lives in Hospital de Sant Pau, not far from his birthplace in the Sagrada Familia. The Shadow of the Wind, has been the best selling book here for the last three years and is the perfect illustration of the eternal cause and effect relationship between fiction and reality, an idea central to the novel. "People are taking routes and organising field trips where they try to find the places in the book. It has become very much a part of Barcelona, both of its identity and its mythology. And I’m part of that too. I’m attached if I like it or not. I can't go there anonymously. People know who I am. I see it as a way of giving something back to the place where I was born. You create something and then this becomes a part of the city that gave you the chance to do so. It’s like a symbiosis between the city and its people."

The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia Graves, Published by Weidenfield & Nicholson, London.

The Shadow of the Wind website</span>

Sit down - you're rocking the boat

2008-01-23T01:13:00.000-08:00

Being a conspiracy analyst living among a generally benign but disbelieving population will inevitably lead to alienation. This is precisely why so many intellectual ghettos have formed loosely connected by internet chat rooms on the alternative news sites. And I have the impression that the population of these conspiracy ghettos is largely male (maybe something should be done to attract more women to the cause - otherwise how will we multiply?).

I've come to the conclusion that by confronting people (known as sheeple by the conspiracy community)who believe the mainstream media above their own intellect , I'm setting myself up for a lot of grief. They don't want to know that the news on their TV sets is just another movie.

They are living the movie.

When dealing with sheeple, it's as well to remember what Gandhi said, "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they attack you, and then you know you've won."

Intelligent, free-thinking people on the other hand listen to what I'm saying and respond with their opinion, often contrary, but I welcome it all the same. It's salutary behaviour. Being open-minded means that your whole reality is not threatened by a new 'truth', should it rear its ugly head and rupture one of your misconceptions.

Conspiraphobia
Function: noun
Date:2008

: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against conspiracy theory or theorists.

The biggest conspiraphobes are often those that have the most to hide. They know somewhere deep inside that what you are saying has some truth to it, but they don't want to let it destroy the lie they are living.

Over the last year it's become increasingly difficult to find topics of conversation that don't have a back-story in conspiracy.

Taboo subjects:
The weather - global warming myth (the carbon tax), chem trails, hurricane driving...
The war - dodgy document, WMD, Dr Kelly, Blair's 45 minute claim...
Terrorism - 9/11, 7/7, March 11, GAL, Operation Gladio, IRA infiltration...
The price of milk, bread, meat... - the Malthusian disaster (biofuels)
Water - sodium flouride, which is the main ingredient of rat poison, is added to bottled water and tap water in the US. Also, toothpaste and processed food.
Big Brother - conditioning the nation to see surveillance as entertainment
Ant and Dec - rigged phone votes...
TV - the hypnosis and drugging of the populace
State School - destroying creativity, demoralising and producing a hierarchy of failure
The economy - meltdown caused by central banks, fiat currency system, demand destruction
Obesity - aspartame, msg and other hunger-inducers added to dietary products...
EU - part of Bilderberg plan for a one world government, destroying nation states...
Credit cards - track people, seduce them into debt and destroy cash society
Sunderland AFC - a string of ridiculous refereeing decisions have left us in the relegation zone - suspicious.

I could go on
Maybe I need to get laid

Solutions #7: Don't give up liberty for security, nor sex life for conspiracy.

The Great Depression 2008 and onwards

2008-01-19T08:57:00.000-08:00

The way I see it:

Well, first there's gonna be a terrible recession - people's savings, morale etc. will be incredibly depleted. There's gonna be food riots like during the Great Depression (February 1931).

Then the EU will step in to "help" with martial law (like in the US), curfews and food lines - and they will appear like the great saviour. This will consolidate the EU super state. They will incrementally lower the standard of living,working conditions - and step up the propaganda - until we are living like slaves in a police state. They might even throw in a few false flag terrorist attacks to keep us on our toes.

At this stage, most EU citizens will accept their bondage gladly - seeing it as a necessary measure to fight world recession , terrorism or whatever. We will be encouraged to blame immigrants for all our problems. And all dissent will be equated with terrorism.

They will begin to re-industrialise central Europe. We will be made to pay any outstanding debts by working for the corporations that inherit our markers when the big crash happens.

At the same time the North American Union, the African Union and the Asian Union will emerge. Nation states will disappear. Cash will disappear, too. We will pay for things with RFID chips implanted in our arms...

I'm going to play footy now
catch you later

Stock Piling

2008-01-19T01:28:00.000-08:00

Last night, sitting in the living room with Kitler and Martin ( my temporary American flatmate) we got onto the subject of how to survive in the event of a complete economic meltdown (or Financial Tsunami).

I told Martin to imagine Poland in the 70's, 80's and 90's. "You can have all the money in the world, but if there's nothing in the shops, you can't buy anything". A Polish friend of mine told me that when I was living in London. I had asked her why coming to London and working as a toilet cleaner was better than staying in Poland and working as a school teacher.

We decided to make a list of things we would need to get through the first two months if the shops run short of food stocks. Kitler jumped on my lap and tried to sit on my notebook. Martin said if the Tsunami is coming in two or three months, we should start buying extra now on a daily basis.

The ultimate goal would be to leave the city for the Catalan countryside after the first two months laying low.

Don't get trapped in an overpopulated metropolitan environment.

List
28 x 5-litre bottles of mineral water
56 x tins of beans, soup,
56 x tins of catfood
8 x tubs of margarine
28 x loaves of processed white bread (it lasts forever)
28 x bars of dark chocolate (iron)
56 x rolls of toilet paper
20 x bags of cat litter
1 x big dog (sorry, Kitler. We need protection for our food)
2 x baseball bats
1 x gun (Martin is from New Hampshire. Motto: Live free or die.)
Library books, DVDs, CDs...
1 x electricity generator that runs on waste products
56 x tins of dog food
250 x cans of Moritz beer
15 x bottles of whisky
2 x khaki uniforms
camouflage face paint
2 x mountain bikes (for the exodus)

After half an hour of drinking whisky and ginger ale, we decided to make a second list

List 2 - The Exodus

Bicycle repair kit
Baby carrier (for Kitler)
2 x Swiss army knives
Map of Catalonia, Spain, France
Compass
Fish hooks and line
wire for snares (Is this goodbye to a lifetime of vegetarianism?)
2 x Tents (I'm not sharing with Martin)
2 x torch
10 x batteries
30 x packets of powdered soup
2 x pot noodles (They're too bulky to take more)
Survivalist handbook
book of crosswords
mini chess board
mini scrabble
Rocket flares

Solutions #6: Learn a skill that would have been useful 200 years ago

Tony Benn: Democracy is the most revolutionary idea

2008-01-16T02:29:00.000-08:00

Interview I did with Tony Benn, former Labour Party cabinet minister and President of the Stop the War Coalition

Lishman–Back in the 1960’s you believed that the UK was only superficially governed by Parliament–has this situation worsened?
Tony Benn - Well, power has moved from the national parliaments all
over the world and is really now only exercised by the US,
[which] is of course a major empire. The American empire
is in decline, even though it’s still very powerful. It is a
wounded tiger, and wounded tigers are very dangerous.
Economic power has shifted so that in effect the budgets of the
world are controlled not by the parliaments, but by the IMF,
the European Central Bank and so on. The multi-national cor-
porations are bigger than nation-states and havean enor-
mous influence, and wealth buys political power. I have an
old friend who was the Democratic governor of Ohio, and
when I last saw him he said to me‘Tony there will never be democracy in America while big
business buys both parties and expects a pay off whichever one
wins.’

Lishman–What are the differences between the Labour and Con-
servative parties in the UK?
TB-Every government in the Western parliamentary world
is now a one-party state. You can’t choose between Merkel,
who is a right-wing German, and Shroeder, between Blair
and Cameron, between Bush and Kerry. So instead of being
represented, we are now being managed. The governments in
all the Western countries manage us on behalf of the inter-
national system

Lishman–How do we react?
TB- The first thing we have to do is to organise and that is done
now on a huge scale inthe peace movement against the Iraq war.
It is the biggest international movement in history,really.We
had two million out in London in 2003.I've been going all over
the world. I've spoken in Cairo and New York at peace confer-
ences and they’re very strong. We have to have some perspec-
tive for the future that is democratic rather than funded by
wealth or controlled by armies. As I get older, I think democ-
racy is the most revolutionary idea.Nobody in powerlikesde-
mocracy. Hitler didn’t like it. Stalin didn’t like it. Bush
doesn’t likeit.The Pope doesn’t like it, because he picks the car-
dinals and the cardinals pick the pope,so what we have to do
isto restore some confidence in two ideas: one, democracy and
second, internationalism. Internationalism is totally differ-
ent from globalisation.

Lishman–How would you define internationalism?
Internationalism is a realisation that we are all members
of the human family. And that is not only morally arguedby all
the leaders of the great religions, the founders: Moses,
Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha all said that, but statistically, too,
because I worked out the other day how many ancestors you
and I have. I took my date of birth, that we have two parents
and four grandparents and eight great grandparents and
that a generation lasts twenty-five years. I took my date of
birth and multiplied by two every twenty-five years,I found
a thousand years ago you and I had a thousand billion ances-
tors. Well, there weren’t that number of people in the world,
so we are all related. I’m speaking to you as a cousin. And I
think that underpins the moral teaching with which all the
great religions lead. Treat people as you want to be treated
yourself.

Lishman–Is the influence of the World Bank, EU and IMF the
real cause of voter apathy?
TB-I don’t think there is any apathy.That’s a great mistake to
say apathy. I think most people are angry that no one listens to
them and they don’t believe a word they are told. Now anger
and mistrust are highly political, but it doesn’t connect with
the parliamentary game. What you have to do is find some way
to make the people at the top listen and that can be done by
campaigning, demonstrations, by organisations, by education.
And I think that’s beginning to happen.

Lishman–Have we overreacted domestically to the "war on ter-
ror"?
TB-First of all,there isn’t a war on terror. There is a war on Iraq
and a war on Afghanistan and to call it a war on terror is non-
sense,because there is no moral difference between a suicide
bomber and a stealth bomber. Both kill innocent people for
political purposes, so the language is wrong. But undoubtedly
Osama Bin Laden’s great victory is that he has persuaded
America and Britain to give up their civil liberties.
That’s his victory.

Lishman–You opposed the formation of the EEC and you want a referendum on the EU treaty?
TB-Yes, well you know it’s a big decision, because you are
handing power that belongs to the people over to the (EU)
Commission, which is not elected. Not a single commissioner
in Brussels is elected. I am a great European, born a
European and will die a European, but I’m not going to be
governed by people I didn’t elect, cannot remove, and
therefore who do not have to listen to me. I won’t do it. It’s a
democratic–not a nationalistic–argument.

Lishman–And what about independence for places like Scotland
and Catalonia, does this play into the EU’s hands?
TB-Well I think the EU Commission would like to see Europe
broken up into little fragments, because they would be easier to
control, but I understand why the Scots and Catalans want in-
dependence, because they feel they have no control over their
own lives.And you’ve got to address this. I’m not a nationalist.
I don’t think the answer to the problems we have is national-
ism; the answer is democracy. We have to find better means of
democratic self-government rather than go back to a tribal
loyalty, because as I say we are all members of the human race
and you are a cousin of mine.

Lishman–France’s Sarkozy seems to be going through a “Thatcher
moment.” What’s your take on it?
TB-When a right-wing policy is introduced, resistance to it is
necessary. I mean, you can’t allow people at the top to take
away our rights,so it’s a conflict and we go back to the old argu-
ment–you’ve probably heard it–that we are many, they are
few. In the end, they’re popular struggles. That’s how women
got the vote, that’s how apartheid ended–a struggle.

Lishman–Are the unions in Britain as defeated as they are generally
portrayed by the BBC?
TB-Well, the BBC is very hostile to the trade union movement–
they always have been. They don’t report it. We get the Dow
Jones industrial average every hour on the news. They don’t
tell you what the trade unions are doing.What their problems
are. But when there’s a strike,the BBC reports the unions as
an enemy and when there isn’t a strike they don’t report them at
all, because the establishment control of information is a very,
very powerful weapon in their hands.

Lishman–What do you think of the present state of Socialism in
South and Central America?
TB-I think what’s happening with Cuba and with Chavez and
Morales is very, very important. It is an indication that America
has now lost control of its backyard. Comparing Chavez's Venezuela
with Saudi Arabia– Saudi Arabia has got a lot of oil
but no democracy. Chavez is trying to restore to the people of
Venezuela the right to the resources of their country. And
the richest country in the world today, even richer than America,
is Norway. Why? Because they nationalised their oil.

Solutions # 5: An undemocratic supranational state is what Hitler would have wanted. Phone your MP and make sure they vote against ratifying the Lisbon Treaty.

Keano has come

2008-01-16T00:45:00.000-08:00

One of the disadvantages of being a Sunderland fan abroad is the lack of pub companionship. Foreigners looking at the Premiership are unlikely to choose third off bottom SAFC to add to their list of sporting affiliations. Let's face it. They're far more likely to choose a Chelsea or an Arsenal.

When a game is televised I usually go down to an Irish pub and watch it on my own, or next to a group of people supporting the opposition. People often laugh at how rough the Sunderland fans look when the camera pans round the crowd. I always think that I recognise a few faces - friends from school.

For some reason, there aren't many Makems in Barcelona.
But I'm always meeting Geordies.
Shame that.

Last Sunday I went down to the Fastnet pub on Joan de Borbo for the 2.30 kick off of Sunderland vs Portsmouth. Sunderland were playing like winners from the start.

It was as if Roy Keane had willed it so. At a press conference last week he told us the losing was over.

The roar of the Sunderland fans could be heard throughout the pub. Catalans looked up from their espressos, asking if it was some kind of cup final.There was a small crowd of British neutrals who started to get behind Sunderland. Then the Irish, who were really there for the Rugby televised after, joined in, shouting "Kea-no, Kea-no".
The hair was standing up on the back of my neck.

Great game. Kieron Richardson got two.

Full time: Sunderland won 2-0.

It seems after their desperately poor start to the season, Sunderland are beginning to turn the corner. And Keane looks likely to sign some decent players to consolidate our shaky Premiership status.

Keane is inadvertently becoming the spiritual leader of the city. His message is that the meek will inherit nothing. He's forging a winning attitude in the foundry of our collective minds.

Life's always a struggle. You have to be ready to fight to get what you want.

In the photo above: A young Kenyan protesting the rigged elections is wearing a Keano tee-shirt.

Coincidence?

Solutions # 4: Keep the faith

Overpopulation

2008-01-09T01:30:00.000-08:00

The cat population has doubled in the patio the last year. There must be at least forty or fifty of them this year. Fifteen or twenty up on last year. Three or four generations who do nothing but sleep, fight, fuck and wait for food to be thrown down at them.

In the warmer months, there are frequently new litters of kittens, who grow up quickly and aspire to do nothing other than what their parents have shown them.

The problem with the present population explosion is that the food supply in this walled-in feline city is completely dependent on outside influences; On the whims of the old and lonely or the young and soft hearted who throw down scraps and specially bought pellets. If this was to stop, or diminish, then it could turn nasty down there. How long before hungry cats would turn on each other? The strong would destroy the weak. The kittens would suffer.

Feeding the cats is a huge point of contention among the neighbours . Vicious slanging matches used to break out on the balconies when feeders were caught in the act. So the feeders have taken to dropping food bombs late at night.

Sitting on the balcony with Kitler, I hear packages hitting the patio and we both look up to see where they have come from.

They come from above and under cover of the night. Sometimes good deeds have to be done in secrecy.

The problems of feeding in an artificial urban cat prison:

It destroys the integrity of the animal. Cats don't need much encouragement to become lazy and dependent, and this leads them to become fat, slow and useless. I've seen it with my own eyes. However, there is a minority that have turned to extreme violence, that substitute their natural instinct to track and kill food with vicious and unnecessary battles, including the rare incidence of kitten murder.

The smell. In the summer it's rank.

The noise at night. Like demonic babies with bullhorns.

The Solution:

To stop feeding them would be one way, but that is frankly immoral. I would prefer liberation. Capturing them and setting them free in the parks or the Catalan countryside. Expand their horizons and let nature decide their fate.

Kitler sometimes stares down at the other cats. And they stare back up at Kitler. It can go on for hours. Kitler lives in luxury, but in isolation from the true fraternity of her race. I wonder does Kitler ever feel guilty padding off to a full bowl of tuna and chicken, or nestling down on my bed to sleep.

Does she spare a thought for those that live below?

I doubt it.

Solutions #3:
Don't speculate on conspiracy. Attack the official story, destroy their credibility.

Barcelona Diaries - the turtles arrive

2007-08-20T15:07:00.000-07:00

Ujiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiivbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

Kitler was sitting on my keyboard. I pushed her off. She knows she’s not allowed to do that because we repeat the very same battle for territory every few hours, she just likes winding me up.

I’m hungover and a bit freaked out by a phone call I just had.
But more about that later.

Last night at the Gracia festival, where thousands of drunks wandered the streets till dawn, I was negotiating with a latero (illegal street beer seller) from Pakistan. He was trying to charge me 1.50 Euro per can of chemical rice beer (a.k.a. Estrella Dam), which you can get from the supermarket for under 40 cents. I tried to talk him down to a more reasonable one Euro, claiming 200 % profit was a bit much considering he had zero overheads to worry about: no rent, no staff, no utilities. With exasperation in his voice, he explained that the 200 Euros he had to pay the police to attend five days of the festival was quite a big overhead for him. Unable to think of a good comeback, I gave him the 1.50 rate and walked away trying to decide if I’d just been skilfully shafted in a business deal, or if I had stumbled unwittingly upon a story of widespread police corruption.

Three years ago, Barcelona nights were full of beer sellers. You had the impression there were more people selling beers than people to buy them. During the day, these same lateros strolled the beaches, keeping sunbathers awake with their constant shouting of cerveza- beer, coca cola, fanta, agua.

In January 2005 - inspired by Rudy Guiliani's zero tolerance policy in New York- the city’s politicians brought in the ordenanca, a set of about hundred by-laws aimed at cleaning up the city by targetting what they deemed to be ‘uncivil behaviour’. The police were given new powers to deal with ambulatory street sellers, and for a while, the lateros went underground. If the police caught them selling, they confiscated their cans, shook them down and took their money.

The ordenanca also gave police the power to fine people drinking on the street. This would eventually lead persecuted teenagers and university students to riot against the police in Barcelona’s Raval neighbourhood. If, like these kids, you don’t have the money to hit the bars all night, and you live in a tiny shared flat or at home with your parents, then one of the best options for the weekend is to sit out in the warm Spanish night, at a plaza or on the beach, drinking supermarket beer with your friends.

By springtime this year, we began to notice an abundance of lateros. People started, albeit warily, to drink in the street again. Barcelona seemed to be returning to its laid-back best. I speculated that it was just a ruse and the police were holding off for a while and were about to crack down. But the months went by and the crack down never came. A month ago, sat in Plaza George Orwell at four in the morning with twenty people who’d just piled out of a nearby party, I collected money and bought a mountain of beers from the lateros and placed them on the ground in front of us. Police patrols walked past about every twenty minutes or so and said nothing. This was proof that there'd been a change in policy. I thought at the time that they had merely redirected their resources to go after real criminals instead of a crowd of harmless beer drinkers. But now I begin to wonder.

Back to the festival…

The rest of the Gracia festival was a blur. I woke up yesterday morning alone in bed. The night before had started so auspiciously with two girls, Sinead and Mariona, both interested in meeting up. I wanted Sinead most of all, so I called her and took her to distant part of town, telling Mariona I was staying home to dry out a little. If it didn't work out with Sinead, I could call on Mariona another day. Realpolitiks.

Out with Sinead, things had started well, but we drank too much and we ended up jumping in a taxi up to Gracia to see some live music. I'd forgotten by then that Mariona would be there, too.

I had missed calls on my mobile phone. Mariona had seen us, borrowed her friend’s phone and called me. Fortunately, I hadn’t answered, but the next day she grilled me on whether I not I went out the night before. I dithered without really answering and she went cold on me. It dawned on me too late what must have happened.

The secret night out with Sinead had gone pear shaped anyway. We got into a drunken fight in Gracia and went home separately to engage in emotional text tennis throughout the night.

Back to the festival again…

Last night, I got so drunk at the festival I can’t remember anything. Not even what I was wearing or who I met.

This morning the phone rang repeatedly from 12 onwards. Eventually I got up and answered it thinking someone must have died. A Spanish girl spoke telling me she was bringing the turtles round. I said okay. I thought it might be a joke, or that I’d misunderstood. I made some coffee, chased Kitler off the computer and sat down to write.

The intercom buzzed. I pressed the button to open the outside door.

I heard the sloshing of water as the turtles made their way up the stairs. They finally arrived swimming around in a small aquarium. ‘It’s good of you to do this.’, said the girl struggling with the turtles, ‘ I mean, we haven’t known each other long.’.‘Ok, well, just buy me a drink sometime’, I shrugged.

We left the turtles on the table, with Kitler sniffing around the tank, and headed out.

When we got back several hours later, Kitler was fast asleep on the keyboard. I tiptoed towards her and grabbed the half bottle of wine next to the computer and led the girl into my bedroom.

Returning to get some glasses, the turtles stirred in the murky bottom of the tank.
'What do they eat?’, I thought.

@@@@@@@@@@? Kitler wrote on the screen by shifting her paws.

'Maybe they'll eat Kitler.'

Solutions # 2
Transcend the false left/right political paradigm.

Interview with Shaunna Hall (Parliament Funkadelic)

2007-08-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

San Francisco guitarist and songwriter Shaunna Hall was the founding guitarist of Four Non Blondes (whose 1992 multi-million selling debut record Bigger, Better, Faster,More!! contained five Hall compositions). She has been touring with George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic (P-Funk) since 2002 and was recently made the first permanent female member (other women haven't been able to go the distance). Her current project, Electrofunkadelica, is a collection of tracks produced by Shaunna Hall, largely compiled from sessions recorded while on the road with P-Funk between
2002 and 2006 with many of the artists she toured with.

Lishman – When did your relationship with Barcelona begin?

Shaunna - I first came here in 1999 on a family vacation with my girlfriend and my Mom on a tour of Spain that ended in Barcelona. It was just by fluke because it was never on my short list. I came here for a day or two and then I didn't wanna leave. I made plans to return a few years later in 2002. I just feel normal here. I don't know any better way to describe it.

Lishman – How would you compare Barcelona's music scene to San Francisco's?

Shaunna - It's extremely easy to do a show here. Everything seems easy to set up. People are very open to culture, and they support music here, so on that level there are definitely a lot more places to play than in San Francisco right now. It seems like in San Francisco there is a music scene, but it's a struggle and here I feel like if you're willing to work and have something to offer, then you have a lot of support, which is nice.

Lishman – What is P-Funk?

Shaunna - P-Funk is an umbrella name that encompasses everything associated with George Clinton's groups. It's also short for Parliament Funkadelic, which is the name of the two groups he's been recording with for decades –even though they are separate groups they share a lot of the same members.

Lishman – What have you learnt from George Clinton?

Shaunna - I've learned a lot from him and everyone in the band because they've been working at this for a long time, since the late ’50s and ’60s. What I've learned from George is the power of music with people. He's dedicated. He believes in what he does and he's willing to do it. A lot of people talk a good talk and then when you ask them to do something they say 'ay'. He'll play anywhere for anybody. Being who you say you are, that's what I've learned from him.

Lishman – Any memories from your last tour with George Clinton?

Shaunna - George went to see Ozzy Osbourne, who played the night before us in Dublin, and he was really inspired by all the kids stage diving into the audience. The next day we played and George stage dived, too, and the audience passed him around the hall. It was amazing. I mean the guy's in his late 60s. He was writing songs for Motown back
in 1955.

Lishman – For the uninitiated among us, what exactly is funk ?

Shaunna - It's hard to say... Folk is based in soul and rhythm and blues, but you have blended with that, rock'n'roll and there's only really one rule that you pay attention to the down beat, also referred to as "the one", and you stay in the groove. That's pretty much the common thread that goes through what is called funk music and people like James Brown and bands like Cameo or The Gap Band. It also has to be really soulful and emotional. It can't be just be the performance of a song, you have to really put intention and feeling behind it. It's supposed to uplift you and create a lot of energy and unify people. It makes you want to stay together and dance together. It's gotta have that going for it, too.

Lishman – What do you think about the term "Black Music", which is used so much in Spain? Do you play Black music?

Shaunna - No, I don't think music has reference to a race or a gender or a country, because music belongs to everyone.So,if you feel the need to identify it so that maybe other people can relate to it,I kinda feel like that's something that happened when record labels had to figure out how to sell music.It's born out of marketing endeavours.I don't really see that there's anything wrong with using the word "black" to refer to a culture,because there's a black culture that exists in America. I don't want to get too bogged down with being correct.The intention is the important thing.If it's a celebration of the culture and it's sincerely supporting it, I don't see anything wrong with it.If it's coming from some weird exploitative standpoint, I would question it. George Clinton is very dedicated to combining all music for all people. His music isn't black or white but somewhere in between. They say he's too white for black radio and too black for white radio. His whole career has been on the fence and so I'm definitely following in those footsteps with my career.

Lishman – What is the significance of the symbol e³+funknth = Electrofunkadelica?

Shaunna - A friend of mine designed it, but I recognised it as a powerful symbol when I saw it.It takes energy with music and people and then fuses that with funk. The "e" also stands for electronica, because that was one of my big mysteries when I first came to Europe. There's not much of an electronic scene in the US.I came to learn and I quickly decided that I wanted to create a fusion of the modern European music style with the traditional funk style. I started making recordings and a friend said 'that's Electrofunkadelic'.I said that's a cool little term and it became our name.I also like Einstein a lot.

Lishman – Is Electrofunkadelica an open-ended project?

Shaunna - I have plans to make a second album and George Clinton wants to get involved with it. It's really about amassing a body of work. I use a little portable laptop to mix everything, so it's takes a little time. It's not like booking a week in a studio.

For more information about Shaunna Hall:
www.shaunnahall.com; www.myspace.com/electrofunkadelica

Barcelona Diaries - the universe of cats

2007-08-12T07:18:00.000-07:00

It’s five minutes after sunset and cool winds are rushing into the patio. A flamenco guitarist can be heard strumming tinnily from inside a small transistor radio. Next to the radio, is Pedro, a brandy-drinking old man in shorts and string vest who keeps constant vigil over the neighbours from his balcony.

I’m on my balcony over the way from Pedro's, reading Alan Bullock’s Hiltler: a Study in Tyranny. Tess is at my feet, lying on her back with her legs spread, begging me to touch her. I pretend not to notice. Eventually she gets tired of waiting and runs off into the house, emitting a cry of displeasure as she goes.

I can't keep Tess happy. She's a hedonist, a pleasure seeker. She has tantrums if I don’t immediately pander to her wishes. A Swedish girl who came to stay described Tess as a Kitler – a cat that looks like Hitler.

The balcony looks out on to a large quadrangle. The tenements on our block all back onto the same patchwork square of low, uneven garage roofs and terraces known as the “patio”. Its central parts are virtually unreachable. Only a large colony of alley cats have access. Their ancestors were abandoned pets, possibly dating back to over a century ago. They live and die under the balconies, eating whatever rains down on them.

I sometimes fantasise about getting a long piece of rope and lowering Tess down to the patio under cover of night, so that she could join the colony, and so that I would be free. But that wouldn’t be the end of it. She’d take over, radicalise the colony and turn them against me. And one night, with the power in the building mysteriously cut, I’d be set upon by a clutter of demonic felines as I made my way downstairs to buy candles and cheap wine. There’s no escape from a cat once you get involved, unless, that is, they decide to leave you.

I put down Hitler: a Study in Tyranny and open a bottle of three-Euro wine. Time to assimilate. With the endless war in the Middle East and the coming economic depression, the West is condemned to repeat the experiences of Germany between the wars. We’re being primed for a heavy loss of freedom, and thanks to our masters’ grasp of Hegelian principle, we will welcome the Trojan horse of tyranny as a solution to all our woes. Like the Eloi in Wells’ Time Machine who, on hearing the sirens, walk voluntarily to their deaths in the Morlocks’ cave, so will we walk blindly to the siren song of our ruling elite.

I wave Pedro goodnight and retire to the sofa to finish the wine.

430am
Out of wine, so I make tea. My mobile bleeps.

SMS: r u awake? T.

I don't want T here tonight. I feel an end-of-the-world heaviness. I don't reply.

I lie down in bed, but I can't relax - the heat is unbearable and I’ve read too much evil again.

5.10am
Still no sleep and now there's a sweet, acrid smell coming from somewhere in the room, something like ammonia or a dead man.

6.13am
Finally, I get up and put on the light. There's a damp patch the size of Prussia in the centre of the mattress.

Kitler!

After cleaning out Kitler’s litter tray, changing her water, filling up her food bowl, putting my only clean bed clothes into the wash - during which she weaves happily in and around my legs – I called T. No answer. She must have fallen asleep or called someone else.

Kitler came with the flat. Her original owner fled to England when it all turned sour with her boyfriend. She’s the product of a broken home.

Weary, I lie down on the sofa and start to drift off to sleep. Kitler jumps up on my chest, quietly purring and pushing her paws into my belly. She's happy. For Kitler, the ends always justify the means.

END

Solutions #1
Kill your television. Notice how nobody ever says, ‘He's clever. He watches a lot of TV ’.