C.J. Stone's Blog, page 14

In Memory of my Dad: Eddy Stone

My Dad, Eddy Stone, has just passed away. Not Edward: Eddy. That’s what he liked to be called.

Normally I don’t do euphemisms either, but I like that line: “passed away”. Passed: as in gone passed, moved on, shifted perspective in relation to the rest of the world. And away: a conceptual difference, as in “the funeral is weeks away”, or “the destination is miles away.”

“Away” also reminds me of The Way, the Tao of Chinese philosophy: the indefinable, ineffable is-ness of all existence.

In the words of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, as translated by Stephen Mitchell:

The tao that can be told

is not the eternal Tao

The name that can be named

is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.

Naming is the origin

of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations

arise from the same source.

This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.

The gateway to all understanding.

Anyway, Dad’s passing was sudden, but not unexpected. He’d been getting increasingly fragile for the last few months. Every day was like some new revelation about how distant from life he was becoming. He was losing his memory, fast. You’d say something to him and he’d forgotten it within seconds. He’d lost interest in everything. Even the telly, that great stalwart in Dad’s life, had become a mere distraction to him, which he usually slept in front of, rather than watched. Sometimes we’d go round in the afternoon, and he’d still be in bed. He couldn’t be bothered to get up. He couldn’t be bothered to get dressed or undressed, and would fall asleep in whatever he was wearing. He couldn’t be bothered to eat. We tried to nag him, but it only got on his nerves. He said, on more than one occasion: “I think I’ve lived too long.”

He was also getting smaller: visibly shrinking before our eyes. Even his feet had become smaller: so small, in fact, that his shoes had become like giant paddle boats that he was always liable to slip out of any minute. We’d been planning to get him a new pair. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) he died before we had the chance.

He died on Sunday the 8th July, possibly sometime around 10 am. I was on my way home from Sheffield. I’d stopped off at a motorway service station, to get a cup of coffee, when I got a phone call from his neighbour, Roy. He said there was an ambulance outside Dad’s house. I rang my sister, Helen, who then went round. The next phone call came when I was driving, so I couldn’t answer it immediately. I had to pull in to the next service station. I rang my sister, not knowing what to expect. There had been several scares and I’d grown used to the idea that, despite my fears, everything usually turned out all right in the end. Only on this occasion it didn’t.

She told me he had died and I said, something like, “it’s for the best.” And then I burst into tears: a great animal cry of pain. Anyone who tells you that animals don’t feel pain is stupid. It’s your animal body that feels the grief of loss and that unites you with all the other animals in God’s great kingdom. Remember this next time you bite into your burger.

I spent the next few hours frantically racing down the motorway, exceeding the speed limit, as if by getting home earlier I could possibly make things better.

He died very suddenly, and, I like to think, without pain.

There was a lamp beside his chair which he’d knocked over, and a picture of Mum and my two sisters, Helen and Julia, which he had knocked off the mantelpiece. So I can imagine him getting up and then losing his balance, which he was always liable to do anyway, starting to fall over, and, in the effort to grab hold of something to stop his fall, losing his life. I imagine it came as a complete surprise to him: that one minute he was alive, and the next he was looking back at his own fallen body from a distance, wondering how he got here.

I imagine, too, that it was a relief, like dropping a burden that he had held onto for too long. All those merciless aches and pains which had dogged his last few months, and which meant that he hardly got up out of his chair any more. All the endless frustration, trying to turn the telly over with the remote, and not being able to find the right button, or the words he couldn’t remember as the thoughts got clogged up in his slowly seizing brain. He had Alzheimer’s, and his grasp on reality was becoming increasingly tenuous, the gaps in his recall being filled with false memories, of things which never happened, or things which happened to someone else which he had “borrowed” to plug the hole.

So it was a relief, in some way, that at least he died still knowing who all his children were, aware that he was loved. Alzheimer’s was destined to take all that away: yes, and his dignity and self-respect too. In this sense his death was a timely escape and I welcome it, as I hope I will be able to welcome my own death when it arrives.

This is not to say that I’ve not been grieving. I have. It’s just that the grief is complicated and strange, full of contradictory emotions, laughing at some absurdity, while simultaneously crying for my loss; being angry at the cruelty of world, while smiling at its joys.

The last couple of months were characterised by real feelings of tenderness towards him. Like any son, my relationship to my Father had been fraught at times. We hadn’t always been the best of friends. But over the years I’d grown to accept him, especially these last few years since Mum died, as he became more dependent on us: less judgemental, more appreciative of what we were doing for him. He could be an irascible old sod at times. He liked things HIS way, and it was hard trying to convince him that sometimes his way wasn’t the best. But recently, all this had completely faded away: both his resistance, and mine. He looked so fragile, so frail, like a little lost child in a confusing world. Sometimes I’d go upstairs and he’d still be in bed, and I’d look at him lying there, without his glasses, his eyes so soft and full of gentle appreciation that I was there, caring for him, and my heart would go out to him. We were never very physical our family, but I really wish I’d kissed him then, just to let him know that I understood.

So, to make it clear: I don’t want any solemnity at this time. I want you to celebrate Dad’s life, rather than mourn his passing. Dad had an amazing life. He was lucky: one of the luckiest men in all of existence. He had a stunningly beautiful wife – our Mum – and four intelligent, creative, able, occasionally wild and disobedient children. He was proud of us all.

He was born at exactly the right time in history. He had access to our brilliant NHS throughout his life, which kept him healthy. He owned his own home. He had many friends. He worked at a job he loved, and had a really good pension when he retired. He was never short of money and his family never went hungry. We had some great times together, going on holidays in Wales, or in Westward Ho! His children never fell out with each other, and were by his side when he needed us. Although Rob, the youngest, and Julia, the eldest daughter, lived away, they rang him up regularly, and he was always pleased to hear their voices. Helen, the other sister, and I, were around most of the time, and saw him several times a week. I tried to go round most days. He liked a joke, especially if it was on him. He was unintentionally funny at times, and would often make us laugh.

And we can be proud of ourselves too. We promised him, and our Mum, that he would never have to go into a home: that he would die in his own place, surrounded by all his familiar things, with photographs of the family, and of his most beloved wife. The last few years were spent making sure that this promise was fulfilled: that he had everything in his home that he needed to make him comfortable. We would often go out for meals with him, even towards the end, when he was getting increasingly fragile and could hardly stand. He loved that. He loved paying for the meals. It was his contribution to the life we all led, and for which I was always grateful.

So that’s it: my Dad has passed away, to join my Mum, no doubt, and my grand parents and great grand parents, and all the other ancestors. Me: I don’t believe in death. It’s just a passing phase. Life is everywhere, joyous and unbounded! Our personal lives are borrowed from the current of life that flows throughout the Universe, a great tidal surge that rises and falls like the ocean. When we die it’s like the tide has ebbed and we return to our origin: Creation, the Tao, God, the Universe, the Great Life, Nirvana, Gaia, the Great Mother, Brahman, whatever you conceive it to be.

And if you think that this makes me delusional, then so be it: I don’t care. Let me die delusionally happy, rather than realistically angry.

So mote it be, and blessings to you all.

Love.

A Son.

 

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Compassion is the cure for the world’s ills

I watched the film about Eric Clapton last week: Life In 12 Bars.

I guess it depends on your age, but certainly for me, and for many people of my generation, Clapton was a profound influence. It’s like his life is sown into mine on some fundamental level.

I remember him with Cream first of all, although he was with the Yardbirds and John Mayall before that.

I remember Layla and the story of his obsession with Pattie Boyd, George Harrison’s wife.

I remember I Shot The Sheriff. For many of us that was our introduction to Bob Marley and the Jamaican Reggae scene.

But there was something in the film which had entirely slipped my memory: his brief but ugly flirtation with fascism.

This was deeply shocking: hypocritical even, given that he’d made his fortune by playing the Blues, a perennially black musical form.

[image error]How could he record Robert Johnson songs and claim BB King as an influence, and then come out with these racist comments?

How could he record Robert Johnson songs and claim BB King as an influence, and then come out with these racist comments?

What the film made clear was how unhappy he was at the time. He’d been a heroin addict but had overcome this with alcohol, in some ways an even worse drug. He’d become a fully immersed, dysfunctional alcoholic who would put away a whole bottle of Courvoisier before lunch.

There’s an interview where he says he doesn’t like life. Anyone who has ever known an alcoholic will know that they are prone to making extreme statements, as much to get attention as anything else.

In vino veritas? No, in vino ad absurdum.

Anyway, I was musing on all this when something popped into my head. Most fascist supporters are unhappy people, I thought. Fascism is the world’s disease. It is born out of hatred for a system that has left so many behind. It is misdirected anger focussed on the wrong target.

There’s no point in hating fascists. We should feel sorry for them, as people who are ill. We do need to quarantine them, however, to make sure the disease doesn’t spread.

If fascism is a sickness then we need to find the cure. White supremacy is rife in America right now.

People are openly doing the Nazi salute, carrying the swastika and teaching their children to say Seig Heil!

Given that this was the nation that came to Europe’s aid to help us to defeat Nazism, this is profoundly worrying. European flirtation with the ideology shows that any nation is prone to it.

Current levels of Islamophobia, and some of the far right parties that are springing up in its wake, make it clear that we are not so far behind.

But the cause is obvious when you look for it.

Some people really have been squeezed out and their anger is fully justified. There has been a massive shift in wealth, away from the population as a whole and towards the very rich, both here and in America.

Our public services are being handed over to the corporations and our infrastructure is falling apart. Our children are destined to a poorer future than our own.

It serves the wealthy to divert attention from this, to get us to blame people of a different colour – rather than themselves, people of a different income.

Clapton cured his own illness using music. I defy anyone to watch the account of how he came to write his song, Tears In Heaven, and not cry.

It is on this deepest level that we realise our common humanity at last.

We cannot hope to overcome fascism with hate.

The only cure is compassion.

*************

From The Whitstable Gazette 12/07/18

The editor welcomes letters on any topical subject, but reserves the right to edit them. Letters must include your name and address even when emailed and a daytime telephone number.

Send letters to: The Editor, Room B119 Canterbury College, New Dover Road, Canterbury CT1 3AJ

fax: 01227 762415

email: kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk

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Pantheistic Paganism

The Wicker Man

There’s an iconic film which I would recommend to anyone interested in the subject of paganism. I’m sure many of you will already have seen it. It’s called The Wicker Man. It stars Christopher Lee, Edward Woodward and Britt Ekland. It was written by Anthony Shaffer and directed by Robin Hardy and released in 1973, to no great acclaim.

Ostensibly it is a horror movie, and there are some genuinely scary bits in it: but it is much more than this as well.

[image error]I won’t go into the history of the film. Suffice it to say that it has grown in reputation over the years, to the point where you could justifiably call it a cult movie now, and that there are two versions available: the original 1973 theatrical version, and a later 95 minute version known as the Director’s Cut.

The plot is very interesting and compelling. A Christian police officer from the mainland is investigating the death of a child on a remote Scottish island, which, he soon discovers, has reverted to the worship of the old pre-Christian gods. This allows the film makers to explore the nature of those pre-Christian religions in a way which is both arresting and, at times, deeply moving.

[image error]All of the practices shown in the film were meticulously researched by the writer, being based on James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, the definitive study of pre-Christian religious beliefs.

There’s one particular scene which exists in the Director’s Cut, but not in the theatrical version, which sums up both the meaning of the film, and the subject we are exploring here today: pantheistic paganism.

It is a highly complex scene in which a number of things are happening all at once. It takes place at night. Christopher Lee, as Lord Summerisle, brings a young man to Britt Ekland’s initiatory embrace, while Edward Woodward, as the Christian copper, is praying by his bedside next door. The atmosphere is sultry, sensual, and we can feel Woodward’s frustration, knowing what is happening on the other side of the wall. Meanwhile, downstairs in the pub, the company are singing an erotic ballad called Gently Johnny, with highly suggestive words, and at a certain point Christopher Lee begins to quote parts of I Think I Could Turn And Live With Animals by Walt Whitman, while we see cutaways of two snails in slimy, lubricated, sexual embrace:

I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contain'd...
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God...
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived
thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

He spits out the word “respectable” with a kind of dismissive snarl.

By now we already know that the kind of society that is being depicted here is one far removed from the world we live in today. It is mysterious and haunting. The whole scene has a peculiar kind of intimacy that seems to suggest some inner connection between all the creatures here, human, animal and divine. Only Edward Woodward is the outsider.

Aphrodite

There’s one line that sums it all up for me. As Lord Summerisle introduces the young man to Britt Eckland’s character he says, calling quietly up to her window, “Another sacrifice for Aphrodite, Willow.”

“You flatter me your Lordship,” she replies: “Surely you mean to Aphrodite.”

“I make no such distinction,” he says: “You are the goddess of love in human form and I am merely your humble acolyte.”

That’s the line: “I make no such distinction.”

Willow McGregor is not just the representative of Aphrodite, a priestess, a go-between, as priests are in Christianity: she is Aphrodite. In this moment of ritual engagement, at least, priestess and goddess are one and the same.

This is the core belief of pantheism. It is what distinguishes it from all other ways of understanding the Universe. According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary pantheism is “a doctrine that equates God with the forces and laws of the universe”. According to Wikipedia it “is the belief that all of reality is identical with divinity or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent god.”

That’s a very good summation.

The term itself is fairly modern, constructed from the Greek words for All (pan) and God (theos) and dates from the 17th century. It is the belief that God is All, that there is no thing that is not God. However the idea is anything but modern, and could well be the core understanding underlying many (if not most) of the pre-Christian, pre-Abrahamic belief-systems.

Everything is God. The Earth is God. The Sky is God. The Sun is God. The ocean is God. The stars are Gods. Places are Gods. Rivers are Gods. Mountains are Gods. Valleys are Gods. Forests are Gods. Trees are Gods. Meadows are Gods. Flowers are Gods. Animals are Gods. Insects are Gods. All creatures are Gods, including ourselves.

That’s right: it puts us, the human race, at the centre of the drama, as the only part of God that doesn’t yet know it is God.

Original sin

There is some argument to say that it is our separation from nature and the world around us that has led us to our current crisis.

We see nature as something outside of us, whose purpose is merely functional: something we exploit and shape for our own ends.

In Christian belief, human beings are fundamentally sinful. We are separated from God by an act of disobedience, by eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. For this Original Sin we were cast out of the Garden of Eden.

Perhaps this could be understood to mean that we are cast out from nature. Is it this objectification of nature — treating nature as an object outside of us, rather than a process of Being, of which we are a part – that explains our modern malaise: our sickness and the sickness we have brought to the world?

We do not know how early humans thought or how they perceived the world. When we look back at them we tend to project our own feelings on to them. Use of psychedelic medicine may help us to bridge that gap. Certainly, the sense of something inherently alive in every moment, in every space, something immanent and present in the very fabric of existence, which characterises the best of psychedelic use, may be a helpful tool for our understanding of our place in the world.

Maybe this explains why the psychedelics are looked at with such horror by the dominant culture: why a perfectly natural fungus such as the Psilocybin mushroom, which has never killed anyone, and was rated as the least harmful drug in Professor Nutt’s drug harm index, is nevertheless placed alongside heroin and crack cocaine in its legal status: not because it is a threat to the person who takes them, but because it is a threat to the objectifying disease that inhabits us, the cultural meme that says that the world is dead and that we are the only conscious, living beings within it.

Pantheism is the cure for this. Pantheism says that everything is sacred, that everything is alive and imbued with Spirit, that everything is worthy of worship.

Who needs a church when we have nature to adore? Who needs a Gothic arch when we have the sky? Who needs incense when we have the air to breathe? And who needs an altar when the rustle of the wind in the trees is all the evidence you need  of the Living God’s presence?

A church is a building which encloses us. Nature is outside. Only by stepping outside, not only of our buildings, but of ourselves, into the nature from which we were wrought, can we find our true humanity, and bring life, and health, back into the world.

*************

More on Paganism by CJ Stone : Paganism Is Not A Religion

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My famous friend – The Green Bard who upset Simon Cowell

Stand By Me

As always at this time of year I went to Stonehenge for the summer solstice. This time I took an old friend with me, Steve Andrews, who I’ve known for nearly fifty years.

He lives in Portugal now. I picked him up at Gatwick, after which we drove on to Wiltshire. We spent the night at the monument and then several days at a B’n’B in the beautiful, historic city of Salisbury.

It turns out I was travelling with a celebrity.

Steve is also known as The Green Bard and was on Britain’s Got Talent last year. Yes, that’s right: he’s the one with the green beard who sang Stand By Me and who got all the girls to join him on stage.

Well I vaguely knew about this at the time but, not being a fan of Britain’s Got Talent, hadn’t paid much attention.

It turns out he made quite an impact. Looking at the clips now, it seems clear to me that Simon Cowell didn’t so much dislike the performance as the fact that Steve was upstaging him on his own show.

When Steve first appears Simon smiles at him indulgently. It’s after Steve’s announcement calling on people to join him that the host’s face drops. When people start getting up out of their seats you can see him glaring over his shoulder. It’s at this point that he slams his hand upon the buzzer and Steve is ejected from the show.

This is a pity. Steve has a very good voice and is a singer/songwriter of some distinction. Stand By Me is usually the finale of his set, not the opening number. Most of the rest of the songs are his own.

I asked Steve why he didn’t perform one of his own numbers? It was the Britain’s Got Talent crew who had encouraged him to take this approach, he told me. Simon Cowell had not been informed. The whole thing was a ploy to create a spectacle and deliberately designed to annoy the famously grumpy impresario.

“That’s it, you can all go back to your seats now,” he says, in his best schoolmasterly voice, revealing what had really irritated him about the performance.

‘Sex Drugs’

I also read some of the newspaper reports from the time. It’s the one in the Daily Star which gives the most authentic flavour.

‘Britain’s Got Talent’s green bearded singer Steve Andrew is a secret wand-waving wizard who promotes “sex drugs” and believes he’s been abducted in aliens (sic),’ it says.

Never mind the terrible grammar, or the fact that they got his name wrong, all of this is complete baloney.

The ‘wand-waving wizard’ line probably stems from the fact that Steve is a practising Druid, though not at all secretive about it: hence his presence at Stonehenge with me.

The reference to ‘sex drugs’ comes from the fact that Steve is the author of a number of books on plants, some of which do indeed have aphrodisiac properties.

As for the belief he’s been abducted by aliens, he once appeared in a TV programme, called Weird Wales, where he was given regression therapy; which is when he made that strange announcement, under the influence of hypnosis.

Steve has never been shy about self-promotion. Britain’s Got Talent wasn’t the first TV programme he’s been on and it’s unlikely to be his last.

He’s led a varied and interesting life and I’m proud to call him my friend. Everywhere we went in Salisbury people were complimenting him on his beard, which he continues to dye a vivid, fluorescent green.

Well it’s one way of getting yourself noticed.

*************

[image error]Steve Andrews “A practising Druid” at Avebury: June 2018


Steve Andrews was born in Cardiff, Wales but is now based in Portugal, after living in Tenerife for nine years. He is known as the Bard of Ely, a name dubbed by Big Issue Cymru back in the late ’90s, when he was a columnist for the publication, and it refers not only to where he had been living but also to his work as a singer-songwriter, performer and poet. As the Bard of Ely he has played at Glastonbury Festival and the Green Man Festival and has two of his songs on the Green Man Festival CD album on Double Snazzy.
Andrews has written for many publications including Kindred Spirit, Celtic Life International, Prediction, Living Tenerife, Welsh Coastal Life, Mediterranean Gardening and Outdoor Living, Bee Culture: The Magazine of American Beekeeping and Permaculture magazines, as well as having been a contributor to the Tenerife Weekly, Tenerife Sun and Tenerife News newspapers. He also writes for the Ancient Origins website.

In the late ’90s he worked as a TV presenter on the BBC Choice magazine series In Full View in which he was out and about in the countryside looking at the plants and animals. He has also appeared on many other TV programmes including Weird Wales on HTV Wales, Roll Over Beethoven on BBC2 and The Slate on BBC1.

Books by Steve Andrews

Herbs of the Northern Shaman

From Morning Glories and Magic Mushrooms to Belladonna and Buttercups, Steve Andrews delves into herbal magic and mystery.

Pagan Portals – Herbs of the Sun, Moon and Planets

The planets that rule over herbs that grow on Earth.

PUBLICATIONS: Big Issue Cymru, Kindred Spirit, MyHerbs, The Magical Times, Permaculture, Welsh Coastal Life, Celtic Life International, Mediterranean Gardening and Outdoor Living,  Bee Culture The Magazine of American Beekeeping, National Federation of Occupational Pensioners (NFOP), Prediction, and Living Tenerife magazines, as well as Tenerife News, Tenerife Weekly and the Tenerife Sun newspapers, and the Huffington Post, Tripedia and Ancient Origins websites.








WEBSITES:
Muck Rack: https://muckrack.com/steve-andrews-3







The Green Bard: http://bardofelysays.blogspot.com/


Reverb Nation: https://www.reverbnation.com/bardofely

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BardofElymusic/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/bardofely

Steve Andrews writer: http://steveandrewswriter.com/




More on Steve Andrews by CJ Stone

Three Mixmag Stories Featuring Steve Andrews, the Bard of Ely

Steve Andrews, The Bard of Ely, in Tenerife

Housing Benefit Hill: Rubber soul

CJ Stone’s Britain: On the scrapheap (Swansea)

Prediction magazine: Elvis has left the haunted building

[image error]‘Rubber soul’: illustrated by Ian Pollock in the Guardian Weekend, January 6th 1996

From The Whitstable Gazette 28/06/18

The editor welcomes letters on any topical subject, but reserves the right to edit them. Letters must include your name and address even when emailed and a daytime telephone number.

Send letters to: The Editor, Room B119 Canterbury College, New Dover Road, Canterbury CT1 3AJ

fax: 01227 762415

email: kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk

[image error]Shortened version as it appears in the Whitstable Gazette: note the absence of ‘sex drugs’.


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The Last Post

Whitstable Views

By the time you read this I will no longer be a postman. I will be a retired person instead.

So this is my goodbye letter to everyone I’ve delivered mail to over the last 13 years.

I’ve done many rounds and pushed many letters through many letter boxes all over Whitstable.

Most recently I’ve been delivering to Borstal Hill, Harbour Street and Sydenham Street. In the past I’ve delivered to Herne Bay Road, Ham Shades Lane, Canterbury Road, Island Wall, Middle Wall and the High Street. And those are only the main roads. There have been many others, too numerous to mention.

I’ve delivered to Whitstable, Tankerton, Seasalter, Swalecliffe and Chestfield.

Perhaps some of you will recognise me. Perhaps, even, some of you will remember me with affection.

I dread to think how many letters I’ve delivered in that time. Millions.

Most of it has been complete rubbish –…

View original post 517 more words

IS PIP a Money Saving Device?

I went with a friend to his PIP assessment the other week.

“PIP” stands for Personal Independence Payment. It is what has replaced Disability Living Allowance (DLA) as the means by which the government – namely you and I, the taxpayer – supports disabled people in our community, allowing them to live free and independent lives.

My friend has epilepsy. He is on a lot of medication. The medication slows him down both mentally and physically. It has also caused him to put on weight.

He has a number of seizures every year, despite the medication. His last seizure was in November. When he has a seizure it’s as if someone has switched him off at the mains. He drops to the floor and will often injure himself.

My friend is also relatively immobile. This comes in spurts. It’s worse in the winter than it is in the summer. When it’s wet and cold, his joints swell up and he’s unable to get around. He is subject to arthritic attacks and can’t walk more that 200 metres without severe pain.

At other times he is OK. He can walk, he can shop, he can go out.

On the day of his assessment he and I walked to the PIP assessment centre. It was a lovely spring morning. When I saw him more recently, however, he was almost completely immobile. All his joints were swollen and he had great difficulty getting out of his chair.

He told the assessor all of this. He also spoke about his anxiety and his depression and about his tinnitus.

I heard everything he said. I was there. I also saw the assessor tapping furiously on her computer as he answered her questions.

But it was as if she didn’t listen to a single word he said. He’s just got his assessment back. This is what it says:

“You were observed to have no physical restriction and you were able to walk at a moderate pace unaided and rise from and sit in a chair without difficulty. There was no evidence of low mood or anxiety. You were able to hear and answer questions despite background noise.”

Pardon? How does the assessor know if there was low mood or anxiety? Are there physical signs? In fact I know my friend was anxious because I could see it. As for walking “at a moderate pace unaided”, she asked him to walk from his seat to the examination couch.

How is it possible in the space of barely an hour to assess a disabled person’s complex needs for the rest of his life? It’s an insult. My friend has been on DLA for very nearly a quarter of a century. And he’s not the only one. A number of my friends with disabilities have lost their entitlement to DLA in the last year.

It’s almost as if the change over to PIP is a money saving device, a way to reduce benefits, as if the assessors have targets which they are obliged to meet regardless of the circumstances. The assessments are done by private contractors who take a profit for their work. A Commons Select Committee report earlier this year said that 6% of assessments are seriously inaccurate and that contractors “universally missed” performance targets.

One person with Downs Syndrome was asked when he caught the illness.

My friend is about to lose considerably more than a third of his already restricted income. He’s disabled. He’s isolated. Anxiety brings on his seizures. But none of that matters, of course, as long as the rich get their tax cuts. Such is life in austerity Britain.

*************

From The Whitstable Gazette 31/05/18

The editor welcomes letters on any topical subject, but reserves the right to edit them. Letters must include your name and address even when emailed and a daytime telephone number.

Send letters to: The Editor, Room B119 Canterbury College, New Dover Road, Canterbury CT1 3AJ

fax: 01227 762415

email: kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk

[image error]http://www.druksgraphics.com/


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Chaos Magic

Christopher Stone explores altered states using chaos magic

Featured image: Nikki Wyrd and Julian Vayne in Dartmoor

I first caught sight of him as I turned the corner from the main road. He was about 50 yards ahead, opposite Treadwell’s, the famous occult bookshop, talking to a tree. Or that’s what it looked like from here. He was up close to the tree – one of those big, old London planes that manage to thrive amidst all the noise and pollution of our over-crowded capital – facing it head on, smoking a cigarette, with a certain animation about his bearing, as if deep in conversation. Perhaps he was checking out the latest gossip. If anyone has a higher perspective on the news around Fitzrovia, it would be that tree.

This was Julian Vayne, my teacher for the day. It was an all-day workshop in Treadwell’s basement: ‘Altered States in Magic – with Julian Vayne.’

He’s a slim man, wirily compact, with an intense air of concentrated energy about him. He’s very alert, watchful, as if he’s trying to take in everything in his environment, seen and unseen, all at the same time. Also there’s a kind of cool self-assurance about him, a core of crystalline awareness, as if he truly knows who he is, and why he is here: a rare quality in this age.

We greet each other and, just before we cross the road to begin the workshop, he leans down and places his palm tenderly on the lower part of the trunk, just at the point where the roots begin to spread.

He had, indeed, been communicating with the tree.

[image error]Self-confessed Chaos Magician Julian Vayne
OCCULTISM AND MAGIC

Julian Vayne is a self-confessed Chaos Magician. He’s written many books on magic and related subjects. These include: The Book of Baphomet, Deep Magic, Now That’s What I Call Chaos Magick and Chaos Craft. His latest book is Getting Higher: The Manual of Psychedelic Ceremony.

His biography, on the blog he shares with Nikki Wyrd and Steve Dee, The Blog of Baphomet, describes him in these terms: ‘Julian Vayne is an occultist and the author of a number of books, essays, journals and articles in both the academic and esoteric press. He is a freelance consultant, often working in museum and heritage settings, and lives in Devon. His name is most closely associated with the approach to occultism known as chaos magic. Julian is also an initiated Wiccan, member of the Kaula Nath lineage and Master Mason.’

[image error]His most public moment came when he served as the installation on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in August 2009, as part of Anthony Gormley’s One & Other project. He was there for an hour. He performed a ritual, summoning the guardians of the four directions, wearing a costume meant to represent the figure of the horned god, Baphomet, the platform strewn with roses and ivy. He invoked the god, calling him down to attend the rite, bringing the spirit of wildness and creative disorder into the grid-locked heart of this metropolitan desert.

Chaos Magic goes back to the 1970s. It is generally acknowledged that it began with a meeting between Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin in 1976. In 1978 these two founded the Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT), and although the term Chaos Magic was not used in the early days, it was this organisation that first laid down the principles on which the discipline is based. Peter J. Carroll’s books, Liber Null (1978) and Psychonaut (1981), along with Sherwin’s The Book of Results (1978) and The Theatre of Magick (1981), are considered to be the founding texts of Chaos Magic.

The central tenet of the movement – possibly the single most important feature, and the element that distinguishes it from most other magical orders – is the idea that belief is a tool.

Belief is not seen as an end in Chaos Magic circles. It is the means. Chaos Magic is essentially pragmatic. People adopt and then discard belief systems according to how useful they are. There are no dogmas, no fixed sets of rules. Belief systems are applied as working models, much as a scientist applies theory, and then the results compared. They are gathered from an eclectic variety of sources, including shamanic practice, traditional religion, SF and horror genre fiction, Voodoo art, rock’n’roll, or one’s own fevered imagination. If it works, it works, and that is all that is required. If one set of beliefs contradicts another, then this doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the shift in consciousness that allows you to see more deeply into the workings of the Universe, to be more receptive, more open to its creative possibilities.

Put it another way: Chaos Magic is not a religion. It does not have a central rite or a core dogma. People are not required to believe in a particular set of principles or to subscribe to a particular idea of reality or image of God. The only demands are that you are adaptable, fluid, able to embrace change, while, at the same time, diligent and hard-working enough to fully realise the implications of what you are doing. Most Chaos Magicians I have met are very well read, very learned in their various fields of study.

The second great principle of Chaos Magic is something they call ‘gnosis’. Gnosis is an altered state of consciousness, achieved by whatever means. This could be through meditation, through staring at a candle for long periods, through enforced stillness, or other inhibitory methods. Or it could be through ecstatic dance, drumming, tantric exercise, or orgasm: through exciting the nervous system. Some Chaos Magicians may alter their body chemistry using entheogens. The majority do not. There is no stigma either way. The emphasis is on the pragmatic. If it works for you then by all means use it. It is through the state of gnosis that the magic occurs.

Which is what we are doing today at Treadwell’s. We are practising techniques for achieving altered states of consciousness. We are seeking gnosis.

[image error]The default mode network
SEEKING GNOSIS

Julian begins by telling us about the default mode network. The default mode network is your ordinary self, your everyday consciousness. Your ego, in other words. It is the endless chatter in your brain, constantly seeking to fit events into an on-going story-line; the narrativising function of the brain, very important for your survival. It tells you who you are and where you are and what you are doing in the world.

Whenever you take on a repetitive task, or are doing something which you have done many times before, and which you do almost automatically, the default mode network clicks in. You begin thinking about the past, about conversations you have had, about things you might have said, constantly revising your own history; or thinking what you might be doing later today, or tomorrow, or this time next year: making plans, contemplating the future, laying down your life as a shopping list of future commitments.

Contrary to popular belief, Julian tells us, when we take psychedelic drugs, or practice trance-inducing techniques, we are not stimulating the brain: we are quietening down its habitual ruminations. We are turning off the default mode network. What this does is to allow the brain greater and more diverse connectivity. Instead of following the usual prescribed pathways the mind is able to ripple out like water in a pond, thus achieving connectivity across the whole brain and allowing new possibilities to emerge.

Julian compares it to the difference between the sky at night and the sky during the day. In the day, he says, the light from the Sun obscures the stars. They are still there, you just can’t see them, that’s all. At night, on the other hand, when the light of the Sun is hidden, you can see the much more subtle light from distant stars and galaxies. While the light of the Sun allows you to see clearly what is immediate and in front of you, the removal of that light means that you are able to see much further, much deeper, into the structure of the Universe itself.

[image error]Gnosis, then, is the state of non-ordinary consciousness that allows us greater depths of awareness.

The rest of the day is spent exploring various techniques for achieving this end.

We stare at a candle in the centre of the darkened room. We stare at it until its image is fixed upon the retina. Then we close our eyes and watch the negative image as it dances before our inner vision. When this fades, we stare at the candle again. After this we do holotropic breathing: breathing very fast and very deep. I must admit I don’t like this. My lungs don’t have the capacity and I’m worried about hyperventilation – but most people in the room seem comfortable with it.

Finally, and most satisfyingly, we lie on our backs and listen to Julian as he beats a drum to a constant rhythm. What this does is it snares the mind. The conscious mind latches onto the drumbeat, thus allowing the deep unconscious to emerge. You go into a trance-like state, relaxed and alert at the same time, receptive, open, pleasantly engaged. I like this state. This alone is worth the entrance fee.

What we are participating in here is Chaos Magic in its essence. The emphasis is on technique not style. It’s what you do, not what costume you wear. Such activities might be accompanied by ritual. They might be done in circle, or alone. There might be chants and invocations. They could be done indoors or outdoors, in the day, or at night. You might attempt to summon ancient gods, or the spirits of nature: or it might just as well be figures from popular fiction. Whatever it is, it is meant to fire the imagination, to focus the will, to “storm the reality studio”, to use the words of the famous beat writer and Illuminates Of Thanateros initiate, William S. Burroughs.

[image error]Illuminates Of Thanateros initiate William S. Burroughs
COUNTER CULTURE

Julian tells us about three friends of his who went to a Scottish castle in the dead of winter, to stare at a candle for three days. Needless to say, there were some very interesting effects.

And it’s here that we see that Chaos Magic is not comfortable or safe. It’s not suburban magic: it’s wild magic. Outsider magic. Rebel magic for the rebel heart.

As befits its era, there is an element of punk about it. So says Nikki Wyrd, Julian’s fellow blogger, and a 30 year veteran of the IOT, who I talk to over the phone. ‘Punk says that if you want to play the guitar, then pick up a guitar and play,’ she says. ‘Chaos magic is the same. DIY magic. Let’s just have a go and see what happens.’

It is sceptical and yet playful at the same time, driven by curiosity, not dogma. ‘You say to yourself, “what happens if I believe in this or that: how does it alter my view of the world, my ways of behaving?” You are adopting the belief system temporarily, not as a life-long commitment. At the same time, when you return to your normal state of consciousness, your former view of what constitutes reality, it gives you a new perspective. It shows you that this too is a construct: a belief-system, not reality itself.’

Chaos Magic is counter-cultural, she adds. It is not defined by the dominant culture. It makes its own rules. It’s slippery, impossible to gauge or to pin down. ‘Impossible to tax,’ she adds, with a chuckle. The results are inherently hard to predict, much like Chaos itself.

[image error]The Mandelbrot Set

The name, ‘Chaos Magic’, comes from the era in which it was conceived. Chaos Theory was the new big thing in science in the 70s. People were seeing fractals for the first time: those non-linear equations given graphic form as phantasmagorically complex, infinitely repeating structures of self-similarity over scale, like the Mandelbrot set, or the Julia set. These are the very structures of nature itself, and always become particularly prominent when you are under the influence of psychedelics. Maybe Chaos Magic can be understood in the same terms: non-linear magic for a non-linear world.

Also chaos, as an idea, is neutral. It’s not male nor female, neither god nor goddess. It’s not black, white, up, down, East, West, backwards or forwards, good nor evil. There’s no value judgement attached, nothing you can pin it down to. It is a state of nature, that’s all, much like the Tao; reality in a state of constant flux.

‘The only thing that doesn’t change is change itself,’ as the old aphorism has it.

The name of the order, The Illuminates of Thanateros, is a kind of joke.

‘Illumininates’ means ‘Enlightened Ones’ while ‘Thanateros’ is a portmanteau word, consisting of Thanatos – from the Greek, meaning death – and Eros – also from the Greek, meaning sex.

So they are the Enlightened Ones of Death and Sex, a clear reference to Freud, whose later theory posits a polarity in the human psyche between these two forces: between the instinct to reproduce, and the instinct to die.

As a magical system, then, Chaos Magic roots itself in the very core of our being, in the reality of what it is to be alive and sentient on this planet.

As for myself: while I didn’t actually attain gnosis that day, I certainly walked out of Treadwell’s feeling as if I’d just taken my first few steps in an exciting new adventure.

https://theblogofbaphomet.com/

*************
SUGGESTED READING

SSOTBME (Sex Secrets Of The Black Magicians Exposed) – an essay on magic, Ramsey Dukes (aka Lionel Snell) (1974 – revised 2002)

What I Did in My Holidays: Essays on Black Magic, Satanism, Devil Worship and Other Niceties, Ramsey Dukes,1998

Anything by Lionel is good, he’s often called ‘The Patron Saint of Chaos Magic’, including his new work:

My Years of Magical Thinking, Lionel Snell 2017.

It’s also worth checking out his YouTube channel.

Other books:

Chaotopia! Sorcery & Ecstasy in the Fifth Aeon, Dave Lee 2006

Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic, Phil Hine 2010

Chaos Streams 01 – written, illustrated and published by members of the British Isles Section of the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros, 2016.

[image error]

[image error]http://www.druksgraphics.com/


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Kent Refugee Help: It Takes a Prisoner to Set You Free

Featured image: The Crowded Cell by Nasrin Parvaz

I’ve just got back from seeing the “Our Lives” exhibition at the Fishslab Gallery in Whitstable, where I was shown around by the inimitable Kate Adams, co-organiser and caseworker for Kent Refugee Help.

For those of you who weren’t able to see it, it was an exhibition of paintings by foreign national prisoners and ex-prisoners, taken from a variety of sources. The exhibition was on display from the 1st to the 7th of May, and was opened by our MP, Rosie Duffield.

Amongst the artists were Nasrin Parvez, a political exile who spent many years in prison in Iran for campaigning for women’s rights, and Everal Hall, a member of the Windrush generation.

[image error]Caribbean Landscape by Everal Hall

Other artists included Kadour Milnyali, an Algerian exile with indefinite leave to remain in the UK, and Abdul Haroun, a Sudanese refugee, most famous for the fact that he walked 31 miles through the Channel Tunnel, risking his life, before he was finally caught just half a mile from the exit in Folkestone.

[image error]Unnamed Landscape by Kadour Milnyali

Also amongst the exhibits were a number of poems, including one by Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the Iranian woman with dual nationality currently held in prison in Iran, supposedly for plotting against the Iranian regime.

Here it is, in its entirety:

Autumn Light

The diagonal light falling on my bed

Tells me that there is another autumn on the way

Without you

A child turned three

Without us

The bars of the prison grew around us

So unjustly and fearlessly

And we left our dreams behind them

We walked on the stairs that led to captivity

Our night time stories remained unfinished

And lost in the silence of the night

Nothing is the same here

And without you even fennel tea loses its odour.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Now here is an observation. I’m certain that there are few people who would not be moved by Nazanin’s poem, so touching is it, so evocative of a life made intolerable by the torture of captivity. Nor would they remain unmoved by her plight, a British citizen held in captivity by an oppressive regime, isolated from her family, and in exile from her home.

On the other hand I’m guessing that that far fewer would be sympathetic to the foreign national prisoners held captive here in the UK, whose work makes up the bulk of this exhibition.

These must be amongst the most despised people in Britain today, the most discriminated against, constantly being demonised by the press and used as scapegoats by right wing politicians.

[image error]Drawing by prisoner HMP Pentonville, Unnamed

But they too have their stories to tell. Many of them have been traumatised by war, by deprivation, by loss. They have said goodbye to the lands of their birth, leaving friends and family behind. They have crossed countries and seas to get here, travelling many thousands of miles, often risking their lives in the process.

Once here they have ended up in prison. For some, like Abdul Haroun, this has been as a direct consequence of their journey. Others may have been incarcerated under immigration regulations. Or they may be former unaccompanied minors, or people who came over with their parents when very young, or undocumented or stateless people drawn into crime.

[image error]The Village by Mohammed Rafi

Whatever the case, they are often facing deportation and are in need of help; not to say, a friendly face and a sympathetic ear. This is where Kent Refugee Help comes in. For the last ten years this small, user-led charity has been helping migrants in detention throughout Kent, doing the work that the rest of us would probably prefer to ignore.

So it’s hats off to Kent Refugee Help for all their work supporting this most overlooked and under represented group. And hats off too to Kate Adams and Bahriye Kemal for organising the exhibition, which Kate described as one of the best things she’s ever done.

Art is a way of telling stories. Art can be the key that unlocks the heart. It allows us entry into another’s life, and into the hidden processes that may force people from their homes.

Because we are prisoners of our own prejudice. Sometimes it takes a prisoner to set us free.

*************

All images from the exhibition © the artist.

For more information please go to: https://kentrefugeehelp.org.uk/

From The Whitstable Gazette 17/05/18

The editor welcomes letters on any topical subject, but reserves the right to edit them. Letters must include your name and address even when emailed and a daytime telephone number.

Send letters to: The Editor, Room B119 Canterbury College, New Dover Road, Canterbury CT1 3AJ

fax: 01227 762415

email: kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk

[image error]http://www.druksgraphics.com/

 

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Lucid Dreaming

“It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” – Corinthians 15:44

First of all there was the shrine.

It was made of clean white marble: white like the desert, like the desert sands bleached in the sun.

Inside the shrine it was cool.

In the middle of the floor there was a pool. It was shaped like an eight petalled flower. On the surface lilly pads floated, the white flowers blooming on top, white on green; and from under the surface ever changing colours pulsed, from red, to orange, to yellow, to blue, the colours mixing and fading, merging into each other, like the multi-coloured lights on a disco floor.

The shrine itself was eight-sided with a domed roof in the Arabian style. Doric columns divided the walls, topped with Roman arches. On the far side a white curtain, of some fine, semi-transparent material, billowed though there was no wind.

The atmosphere was tranquil, calm, like the surface of a lake on a still day.

And then the curtain began to rise. This was sudden, unexpected, and it broke the quiet calm of the moment. There was already a presage of some imminent revelation.

Behind the curtain a painting was being exposed. It was brilliantly lit, bright and vivid with colours that were almost alive.

First it showed a pair of feet, naked but for sandals. They were Jesus’ feet. I must have recognised them from somewhere. I could see the ankles and the toes, larger than life, peach and cream with dashes of white. I had seen them before. I already loved the man whose feet they were.

The curtain continued to rise slowly. I became excited. I was about to see Jesus, all of Him, God Incarnate, the Blessed, the Beloved of my Dreams.

The excitement turned inexplicably to sexual arousal, and then I had a sudden pounding erection: so powerful it startled me.

Such was the force of the erection, so unexpected and inappropriate, so shockingly present, that my heart began to pound. Following that, almost immediately, my head began to ache. It was like that: in ascending order. First the throbbing of my erection, then the thudding of my heart, then the thumping drum of the headache inside my skull – throb, thud, thump; throb, thud, thump – in a relentless rhythm rising up through my body – throb, thud, thump – until it washed by body away. Literally. Like that. My body was gone. I no longer had a body. I no longer was a body. I became melded in the rhythmic thrum, free of all thought, free of all distraction, nothing but an undulating pulse of energetic excitement, a wave of energy in an ocean of bliss.

The ocean was like white noise all around me, bristling with static, and I was there, in the midst of it, like a receiving signal in an oscillator, a three-centred sine wave, allowing the energetic presence to surge through me in ululating waves of blissful abandon. I was still myself, discrete and self-knowing, although nameless; and at the same time submerged in the shimmering white ecstasy of the surrounding energy-field: merged and emerging, whole, holy, transported, transformed, a soul in joyous union with the source of all life, ever birthing in the luminous bliss.

I was outside time and space and the experience lasted forever.

But here is the really important bit, the bit that needs to be emphasised. I was still me. Despite not having a name and not having a body, despite being no more than an energy signal, despite my merging with the surrounding field of light, there was something distinct and identifiable about me, something unique and self-knowing, self-aware, a signature as well as a signal. I was a wave of awareness in an infinity of being, giving and receiving life.

And then, suddenly, I came to.

Now I was in my bed, floating about half a centimetre beneath my eyes. I could feel my body all around me, but I was unable to take control of it. I was in my body but separate from it, unable to connect, in the grip of sleep paralysis, struggling to wake up, while the morning light streamed against my eyelids, lighting up my skull.

By force of effort I finally broke the paralysis, and I was in my body again, awake, back in the ordinary world, in my ordinary bed, on an ordinary morning, with the prospect of school ahead.

I was 16 years old.

That was the first time I left my body, and the most spectacular. I have no recollection of what happened after, except that I must have resumed my ordinary existence. The dream went away and I forgot about it. The hormonal rush of my teenage years buried me in miserable self-consciousness.

It has happened a number of times since, but never with the same kind of force or intensity. Usually it involves me becoming lucid in the dream, recognising that I am asleep and, in that moment, diving through the substance of the dream, knowing that I can fly.

That’s what always happens when I become lucid in a dream. There is an exhilarating sense of freedom and the urge to fly.

This is real freedom, of course. Absolute freedom. Not political freedom. Not financial freedom. Not freedom of thought or religion. Freedom from the very constraints of the physical world itself. Freedom from gravity. Freedom to fly.

The first time this happened I was very clumsy. I was clattering around the room where my sleeping body lay, bumping into the walls and ceiling, smashing into a side lamp and knocking it flying, not knowing how to control the process. By this time, of course, the dream had transformed itself back into an ordinary dream, although much more vivid than usual. There wasn’t really a side lamp, and I didn’t really knock it flying.

I was in my early 30s by then. As the years have gone by I have learned to control it. My control has increased and the periods of lucidity have extended.

On one occasion I dreamt that I was in a chair. The chair had hands and feet and was made of flesh, and as I slipped out of the chair there was a slight tingling rip as if I was passing through the substance of the chair as I was lifting myself from it.

The chair was my body, the hands and feet were my own, and the ripping sensation was me leaving my body. As I did so a brilliant multi-coloured light flashed on revealing the silhouette of a dancing Siva and I woke up, startled, the Siva-image like a silhouette imprinted on my retina.

I won’t list all the times I’ve had this experience. They vary greatly. Sometimes I can soar through the heavens. I can leap off cliffs. I can feel the rush of air against my skin. I can travel very fast. The dream is a kind of substance, like the air itself, through which I can fly. Nothing can stop me: not walls, not floors, not ceilings. I dive into them all with joyous abandon, knowing that I can defy the Earth itself, that I can defy gravity. Other times it is but the hint of freedom and I am quickly drawn back into the dream. But whatever the level of experience I’m always left with a feeling of exhilaration, of breathless wonder and excitement, as if I’ve just been given the keys to the Universe itself, and told to make myself at home.

I will just tell you one more story, mainly because it made me laugh.

I’m an insomniac. I have been from my early 20s. I’ve tried everything to control it. I was a borderline alcoholic for many years, first of all drinking at the pub, and then, latterly, when I could no longer afford the pub, drinking on my own. This, of course, leads to depression, and it had to end. Since then I’ve tried every kind of pill and every kind of practice. The pills work, but lead to their own problems, which means I have to stop taking them after a while. None of the practices have worked.

So this was during a bout of insomnia, when I wasn’t taking the pills and I wasn’t drinking. I’d gone several nights without sleep by now. I was very, very tired, almost deliriously so, and one morning, after yet another night without sleep, perhaps the tenth in a row, I threw myself onto my bed fully dressed, and instantly had a lucid dream.

I could feel the bed beneath me, the wrinkles of the covers, the sensation of my clothes against my skin. I knew precisely where I was. But then the bed suddenly tipped upright 90 degrees, and it was like I fell off the bottom of the bed and out of my body, down, down, feeling the ripple of the sheets as I passed on by and out of bed into the open space beneath. There was an intense sensation of freedom and excitement as I first dropped and then ascended into the air. As I did so a huge billion watt light came on behind me, projecting my shadow on to a screen. I saw that I had wings. They were spread out dramatically, even as my arms were raised in glorious triumph, like a boxer who had just won the World Championship. “Hey,” I thought excitedly, “I’m an angel!”

Then I looked again and saw that I also had a very prominent erection.

“What do you call an angel with a hard-on?” I said to myself, just beginning to laugh. “Ha! It’s a devil!” I thought. At which point I laughed out loud and woke myself up cackling with delight.

So that’s it. Those are some of the experiences I’ve had which suggest to me that we are not only a body, that there is something else which survives the body, or goes beyond the body. What you call that “something” is another matter.

I’ll leave it up to you to give it a name.

[image error]

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Truth and Fiction in the Propaganda Circus

Was the West’s response to the chemical attack in Douma justified?

Is there such a thing as “Truth” any more, and, if so, how do you find it?

Pretty well everything you see these days is propaganda in some form, and while people are becoming increasingly aware of the scope and influence of Russian fakery, we are noticeably less alert to the existence of our own public relations efforts and the way these affect our thinking on contemporary events.

[image error]“Public Relations” is just another term for propaganda, by the way. It was first coined by Edward Bernays in his book, Propaganda.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are in the midst of a propaganda war right now. Propaganda wars often precede actual wars. I think everyone really needs to be aware of the dangers facing us in our current situation.

Take the recent news from Syria: the chemical attack in Douma, and the subsequent missile strikes by Britain, France and the United States.

My friends were divided over the issue. Many said that the chemical attack was fake news. Some considered it a “false flag” attack, perpetrated by the jihadists themselves. Others were certain that the attack had taken place and that the Assad regime was responsible, but were divided amongst themselves about what followed. Was the Western response justified? Was it legal? Would it even make any difference?

Actually I’ve planted a couple of indicators here.

I called the people who were subject to the chemical attacks “jihadists”. This is a leading term. Had I been on their side I would have called them “rebels”. I also referred to the “Assad regime”. Had I been opposed to the Western response I would have called it a “government”.

Such are the subtle signs of political bias in this age of uncertainty.

I’ve read so many conflicting versions of the story now, that I’m really not sure what to think. What’s more, the interpretation of the events seem to be coming from such contradictory angles.

So we had Peter Oborne and Peter Hitchens – both of them firmly on the right – alongside former First Sea Lord Admiral West, former SAS commander Jonathan Shaw, and former British ambassador to Syria Peter Ford, all casting doubt on the official version of events; while many on the left were arguing that an attack certainly took place, thus giving tacit support to the missile strikes, regardless of the consequences.

It almost makes you nostalgic for the clarity of the Iraq War doesn’t it? Most of us were pretty certain those Weapons of Mass Destruction didn’t exist, and millions took to the streets world wide to protest. These days no one has any idea what is going on.

Is Assad a bad man? Or is he good man in a bad position? Are the rebels foreign backed mercenaries or freedom fighters? Is the West really interested in human rights or is it only counting the oil?

In fact thinking about Iraq might help to clarify the situation.

Saddam was certainly a bad man and he was known to have used chemical weapons against his own people; but did that justify the invasion and the mayhem that followed? Absolutely not.

The same applies to Syria.

Was Assad responsible for the chemical attack in Douma? Who knows? Personally I prefer to wait for the report from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons before I make up my mind.

But did it justify the intervention of the West, the unleashing of tens of millions of pounds worth of high-tech weaponry, with all the risks that entailed, into a war zone, without UN approval?

No.

*************

From The Whitstable Gazette 26 /04/18

The editor welcomes letters on any topical subject, but reserves the right to edit them. Letters must include your name and address even when emailed and a daytime telephone number.

Send letters to: The Editor, Room B119 Canterbury College, New Dover Road, Canterbury CT1 3AJ

fax: 01227 762415

email: kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk

 

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