The Last 4 years. A Personal Assessment
I think I'm starting to annoy some bloggers by the tone of their postings. The in your face piss-taking for being a 'johnny-come-lately' behind on the times when commenting on conspiracy.
So I think I should explain what I've been doing for the last 4 years.
In March 2001 I went into debt to capitalise a sole-trader photography business. 2 months later I discovered that I had multiple sclerosis. I learnt this from an interview with JK Rowling in the Guardian during MS week. Her mothers symptoms fitted me to a tee. (It took 18 months to get a confirmation through the NHS). Not surprisingly, I had to find some income other than just from photography to stave off bankruptcy. The first job was as a courier van driver in London. I was doing this when the destruction of the Twin Towers convulsed the world.
The following day someone new turned up in the dispatch office. Everyone is obviously talking about the Twin Towers and the first words from the newcomer as he walked through the door were, "We should nuke em". He was passed off as a new salesman for the firm but was only around for a week. People there knew my political history so I think I can safely assume he was Special Branch, which would be par for the course.
I only stayed there for a few months following that, terminated them beginning of Dec 2001. The next four months were spent fighting off false claims for rent arrears, threats of eviction, depression and court proceedings to get the money that the courier firm owed me. But I did manage to write something about the use to which the Bush Mob was using the Twin Towers atrocity to further a reactionary, imperialist agenda. It was in response to seeing the first pictures of prisoners transported to Guantanamo. I was relapsing at the time so it was a bit disjointed and emotional, but here's a taste;
"When I saw the pictures from Guantanamo Bay I thought they had been taken from Cuban territory and assumed they had been released as anti-US propaganda. I was surprised to discover later that The Times carried the by-line 'US Navy' to the photographs. And it started me thinking. Why would the US military officially release such incontrovertible evidence of torture? In my naivete it took a few days for it to dawn on me that this could be US military Psy-ops in action. And its raison d'e-tre? To intimidate the worlds population into accepting the will of the US as a global policeman........"
By April 2002 I was in remission with the MS and started work as a bus driver in London. This was a mistake and irresponsible to a certain extent but at the time I was desperate. If I had known then the effect of stress and heightened emotion on MS I wouldn't have taken on one of the worst jobs I have ever had.
The garage I worked out of was multi-national and multi-religious to say the least. Drivers from Ghana, Sierra Leone, Congo, Angola, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, India, Pakistan, Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica, Portugal, France; a veritable United Nations. The vociferousness with which I denounced the lies being used to justify the coming invasion of Iraq, was in general well received by my co-bus workers. And yes I did point out at the time that the decision had been taken to invade Iraq in April 2002, it being so obvious.
Following the diagnosis of the MS in Dec 2002, I informed the company of the disease. There was no question that I could continue working as long I was not relapsing. I was also attempting, with the support of the union to establish an international book library in the garage.
Then, after the invasion of Iraq, the company came after me. My bus was invaded and a confrontation was manufactured in an attempt to stress and induce a relapse. They succeeded, but that wasn't all they were after. They tried to ruin my name in the garage by setting me up on stalking charges. I went sick but ensured that I had some evidence, on tape, that my presence in the company of a very attractive but ultimately devious woman was not unwelcome.
For the last two years I have been subject to an undercover operation by, I now believe the British Transport Police. This wasn't just covert surveillance but right in my face. The setting up of confrontations in the street, threats of violence and the hacking of my computer and the burning of the in-built firewire ports. All of this stress kept me relapsed throughout this time but despite it I managed to complete an 80,000 word manuscript as a way of trying to understand what was happening. (No publisher would touch it and having looked at it recently, a year after completion, I can understand why. A friend whose judgment I trust has said that there may be half a dozen short stories in it. So I may go back to it at some point, see if I can tease something more useful than therapy from it.)
The tactic of putting fear into me and deliberately keeping me relapsed worked. But I couldn't understand why it was being done unless the inducing of fear is used by police to force a 'suspect' to repeat patterns or expose contacts. There were times that I thought I was going mad. Literally nuts. Mentioning what was happening to some of those around me would elicit the response that I was a conspiracy theorist or paranoid. Some did believe me and I am thankful to them for helping me retain my sanity.
The fact I have MS, a degenerative disease of the central nervous system, can help those who would use such tactics by implying that I have psychological problems related to the disease and that anything I say about what has been happening is a mere fantasy. Excellent cover or so they think.
For a period during the last two years I thought that I was being done-over for my anti-war activities. The well known anti-communist Livingston, despite all his anti-war rhetoric, will fight tooth and claw alongside the bus companies to stop London's bus workers coming out on strike in opposition to the war. Maybe there is some truth to it, I don't know. I do not think I am that important in the scheme of things. I do believe that the only way Britain can be forced out of this war is, not by us being bombed, but by the trades union movement in the country leading the opposition and calling for strike action. They are the only force capable of achieving Britain's withdrawal.
A few months ago I was informed that someone known to some people I know had been gaoled for down-loading child pornography at about the same time that the bus company tried to set me up. I have never met or spoken to the person in my life. Since then everything has fallen into place and I can only assume that I was informed of this because the police operation had drawn a blank and that they were satisfied that I was not involved with child pornography. I could have told them that and saved them a fortune if they had bothered to ask. There have been no confrontations on the street, no camera phone harassment since being told.
Some people reading this will think I got what I deserved by working as a bus driver while having MS. To add to their glee I have something else to say that will, I hope also act as a warning to those on the left.
During the deepest, most depressing times in the last relapse I visited some porn sites fairly regularly on the web, which probably enhanced the police's intensity of operation. If there had been any inkling that I had visited child porn sites I would be in gaol by now not posting to this blog.
Yes I did know the arguments against porn, it's degradation of women, the gangsterism in trafficking of young women, the rape, the slavery. The Feral Scholar is doing a brilliant job in high-lighting porn and violence against women on his blog and their centrality in perpetuating a corrupted polity.
There are some points I feel I should say about this that I hope are not taken as excuse making. For those depressed and with low self-esteem wanking and coming to pornographic images can flood the brain with endorphins, lifting for a moment the fog of self-loathing. The feeling doesn't last long, at times just as fleeting as a blink before depression, laced with guilt returns. I've been told the rush from shooting heroin is similar, the same receptors brought into play, which makes sense if they are both addictions. If it is the case that using pornography is an addiction then strategies needed to fight it require more than denunciation, naming and shaming.
Am I free of it? Its not as long in the past as I would like, but I will get there eventually.
I'm presently in remission from the MS but the last relapse has left me much weaker and in need of a stick as an aid to walking. The next relapse, if as severe will probably put me in a wheel chair. Are there people I hate from this episode in my life? Put it this way. I will be the first to dance on their graves. Or to be more accurate. Wobble.
Its been three weeks since setting up this blog and I've already caused a stir. Not quite in the way I was hoping and there is one aspect I regret - the crass insensitivity I displayed in a previous blog. I may not have the vast lexicon of anti-Bush invective that others have, may not even have a writing style that anyone appreciates, but snide remarks are not going to stop me putting my t'uppence worth in the ring.
Throwing invective might seem revolutionary and be satisfying to the soul but it won't affect those who have committed the paramount crime of instigating invasion and war. They will just ignore it or lie their way through any exposure of their contempt for anyone not part of their clique. We are after all, just thought of as the dirt beneath their feet. Bush and Blair will not change. They will have to be removed from office and the only way of ensuring that is the building of mass opposition, striking and taking to the streets.
A few years ago, to many to want to remember, I read Michael Hamburger's 'The Truth of Poetry'. A phrase that has always stayed with me from that useful work is, "writing is a process of learning". I would like to think that that is what I do when attempting to put my limited vocabulary to use.
Now perhaps I can get on with writing, on conspiracy part 2.
So I think I should explain what I've been doing for the last 4 years.
In March 2001 I went into debt to capitalise a sole-trader photography business. 2 months later I discovered that I had multiple sclerosis. I learnt this from an interview with JK Rowling in the Guardian during MS week. Her mothers symptoms fitted me to a tee. (It took 18 months to get a confirmation through the NHS). Not surprisingly, I had to find some income other than just from photography to stave off bankruptcy. The first job was as a courier van driver in London. I was doing this when the destruction of the Twin Towers convulsed the world.
The following day someone new turned up in the dispatch office. Everyone is obviously talking about the Twin Towers and the first words from the newcomer as he walked through the door were, "We should nuke em". He was passed off as a new salesman for the firm but was only around for a week. People there knew my political history so I think I can safely assume he was Special Branch, which would be par for the course.
I only stayed there for a few months following that, terminated them beginning of Dec 2001. The next four months were spent fighting off false claims for rent arrears, threats of eviction, depression and court proceedings to get the money that the courier firm owed me. But I did manage to write something about the use to which the Bush Mob was using the Twin Towers atrocity to further a reactionary, imperialist agenda. It was in response to seeing the first pictures of prisoners transported to Guantanamo. I was relapsing at the time so it was a bit disjointed and emotional, but here's a taste;
"When I saw the pictures from Guantanamo Bay I thought they had been taken from Cuban territory and assumed they had been released as anti-US propaganda. I was surprised to discover later that The Times carried the by-line 'US Navy' to the photographs. And it started me thinking. Why would the US military officially release such incontrovertible evidence of torture? In my naivete it took a few days for it to dawn on me that this could be US military Psy-ops in action. And its raison d'e-tre? To intimidate the worlds population into accepting the will of the US as a global policeman........"
By April 2002 I was in remission with the MS and started work as a bus driver in London. This was a mistake and irresponsible to a certain extent but at the time I was desperate. If I had known then the effect of stress and heightened emotion on MS I wouldn't have taken on one of the worst jobs I have ever had.
The garage I worked out of was multi-national and multi-religious to say the least. Drivers from Ghana, Sierra Leone, Congo, Angola, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, India, Pakistan, Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica, Portugal, France; a veritable United Nations. The vociferousness with which I denounced the lies being used to justify the coming invasion of Iraq, was in general well received by my co-bus workers. And yes I did point out at the time that the decision had been taken to invade Iraq in April 2002, it being so obvious.
Following the diagnosis of the MS in Dec 2002, I informed the company of the disease. There was no question that I could continue working as long I was not relapsing. I was also attempting, with the support of the union to establish an international book library in the garage.
Then, after the invasion of Iraq, the company came after me. My bus was invaded and a confrontation was manufactured in an attempt to stress and induce a relapse. They succeeded, but that wasn't all they were after. They tried to ruin my name in the garage by setting me up on stalking charges. I went sick but ensured that I had some evidence, on tape, that my presence in the company of a very attractive but ultimately devious woman was not unwelcome.
For the last two years I have been subject to an undercover operation by, I now believe the British Transport Police. This wasn't just covert surveillance but right in my face. The setting up of confrontations in the street, threats of violence and the hacking of my computer and the burning of the in-built firewire ports. All of this stress kept me relapsed throughout this time but despite it I managed to complete an 80,000 word manuscript as a way of trying to understand what was happening. (No publisher would touch it and having looked at it recently, a year after completion, I can understand why. A friend whose judgment I trust has said that there may be half a dozen short stories in it. So I may go back to it at some point, see if I can tease something more useful than therapy from it.)
The tactic of putting fear into me and deliberately keeping me relapsed worked. But I couldn't understand why it was being done unless the inducing of fear is used by police to force a 'suspect' to repeat patterns or expose contacts. There were times that I thought I was going mad. Literally nuts. Mentioning what was happening to some of those around me would elicit the response that I was a conspiracy theorist or paranoid. Some did believe me and I am thankful to them for helping me retain my sanity.
The fact I have MS, a degenerative disease of the central nervous system, can help those who would use such tactics by implying that I have psychological problems related to the disease and that anything I say about what has been happening is a mere fantasy. Excellent cover or so they think.
For a period during the last two years I thought that I was being done-over for my anti-war activities. The well known anti-communist Livingston, despite all his anti-war rhetoric, will fight tooth and claw alongside the bus companies to stop London's bus workers coming out on strike in opposition to the war. Maybe there is some truth to it, I don't know. I do not think I am that important in the scheme of things. I do believe that the only way Britain can be forced out of this war is, not by us being bombed, but by the trades union movement in the country leading the opposition and calling for strike action. They are the only force capable of achieving Britain's withdrawal.
A few months ago I was informed that someone known to some people I know had been gaoled for down-loading child pornography at about the same time that the bus company tried to set me up. I have never met or spoken to the person in my life. Since then everything has fallen into place and I can only assume that I was informed of this because the police operation had drawn a blank and that they were satisfied that I was not involved with child pornography. I could have told them that and saved them a fortune if they had bothered to ask. There have been no confrontations on the street, no camera phone harassment since being told.
Some people reading this will think I got what I deserved by working as a bus driver while having MS. To add to their glee I have something else to say that will, I hope also act as a warning to those on the left.
During the deepest, most depressing times in the last relapse I visited some porn sites fairly regularly on the web, which probably enhanced the police's intensity of operation. If there had been any inkling that I had visited child porn sites I would be in gaol by now not posting to this blog.
Yes I did know the arguments against porn, it's degradation of women, the gangsterism in trafficking of young women, the rape, the slavery. The Feral Scholar is doing a brilliant job in high-lighting porn and violence against women on his blog and their centrality in perpetuating a corrupted polity.
There are some points I feel I should say about this that I hope are not taken as excuse making. For those depressed and with low self-esteem wanking and coming to pornographic images can flood the brain with endorphins, lifting for a moment the fog of self-loathing. The feeling doesn't last long, at times just as fleeting as a blink before depression, laced with guilt returns. I've been told the rush from shooting heroin is similar, the same receptors brought into play, which makes sense if they are both addictions. If it is the case that using pornography is an addiction then strategies needed to fight it require more than denunciation, naming and shaming.
Am I free of it? Its not as long in the past as I would like, but I will get there eventually.
I'm presently in remission from the MS but the last relapse has left me much weaker and in need of a stick as an aid to walking. The next relapse, if as severe will probably put me in a wheel chair. Are there people I hate from this episode in my life? Put it this way. I will be the first to dance on their graves. Or to be more accurate. Wobble.
Its been three weeks since setting up this blog and I've already caused a stir. Not quite in the way I was hoping and there is one aspect I regret - the crass insensitivity I displayed in a previous blog. I may not have the vast lexicon of anti-Bush invective that others have, may not even have a writing style that anyone appreciates, but snide remarks are not going to stop me putting my t'uppence worth in the ring.
Throwing invective might seem revolutionary and be satisfying to the soul but it won't affect those who have committed the paramount crime of instigating invasion and war. They will just ignore it or lie their way through any exposure of their contempt for anyone not part of their clique. We are after all, just thought of as the dirt beneath their feet. Bush and Blair will not change. They will have to be removed from office and the only way of ensuring that is the building of mass opposition, striking and taking to the streets.
A few years ago, to many to want to remember, I read Michael Hamburger's 'The Truth of Poetry'. A phrase that has always stayed with me from that useful work is, "writing is a process of learning". I would like to think that that is what I do when attempting to put my limited vocabulary to use.
Now perhaps I can get on with writing, on conspiracy part 2.
posted by les at 09:05
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