The empathic breakdown through manipulation

Laurie Penny was interviewed this week by the Artist Taxi Driver for his documentary in progress, 'This is not a recession, this is a robbery' and she made two great and fascinating points; the first was about the erosion of empathy being part of the capitalist project and how psychological damage that is being created by society is never factored into mental illness.

A fascinating statement and one I believe rings true. To lack empathy is to be a psychopath and may explain the decisions made by the people running this planet.

Empathy is hardwired into us and the RSA, Empathic Civilisation, explains this brilliantly. We witness it during everyday occurrences without noticing we are doing it, any time you have watched a spider crawl across someones arm and got that shivery feeling, that is empathy or when you see someone take a particularly hard tackle during a sporting event and you can "feel the pain", it is our empathic capabilities coming through.

What the war criminals and scoundrels seem to be doing is re-wiring our empathic civilisation to desensitise us to the horrors they conduct on our behalf the world over.

These claims may sound like psycho babble to some but there is a weight of evidence out there to prove the brains ability be re-wried according to its environment.  One such study has been conducted and reported by the Daily Mail of all agencies into the increasingly aggressive appearance of Lego characters today and that they may be harming a child's development. A documentary called Secret History of the Brain: Emotion, also covered this aspect of violence and programming of children. This showed scenes of children playing nicely together who then witness an adult attack a doll. They then replicate this behaviour with the most violent reactions occurring if the adult is of the same sex. It is called the bobo doll test and perhaps unsurprisingly the results were repeated by children who witnessed the same violence on television as opposed to witnessing it in the flesh. These reactions can be tempered by empathy as it develops within us as we reflect upon what we witness, the problem is the constant bombardment and violent environment we live in is hampering this. The problem is 360º immersive advertising and is investigated at length by the documentary Consuming Kids.

Make him angry, he'll make you angry

The re-wiring of the brain has also been discussed recently on BBC R4 which has been running a series called The Science of Music. The latest episode asked the question on how our brains are re-wired through music and explained that musicians are the perfect example of how the brain can be re-programmed according to what it called environment. We are all products of our environment whatever you may think.

By flooding our environment with violence, demonising the poor and highlighting our cultural differences, the establishment is able to manipulate and control us and our feelings, so that we are less likely to share empathy with people put into poverty by our governments, killed by our governments and arbitrarily locked away by our governments. We have to start seeing that we are more alike than we are different and that there are no problems but human problems, we are empathic by nature but it is being destroyed through nurture. An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.


You can follow Laurie Penny and The Artist Taxi driver on Twitter; @PennyRed and @chunkymark

Where's daddy's pig art special, the second leg

Yesterday the Artist Taxi Driver crawled from 10 Downing St to the Bank of England pushing a toy pig in a an art show to raise awareness of NHS privatisation. There may be better things that could be done on a Wednesday day in London but I doubt there was anything more important.

He was joined by up to 100 people at times and a man with a toy fire engine, who pushed it with him every step of the 4 miles. At times the effort was palpable as we crawled side by side, unified by a common theme of justice for the people in the face of these private profiteers.

At one point the cry went up "there's no justice, there's just us."

The Artist Taxi Driver had an interview with a banker at 1530 on the corruption taking part on the watch of successive governments with a banker on the steps of the Royal Exchange. The pair were spurred on by the crowd as they took the issue to the streets with what the Artist Taxi Driver calls "the pigs at the trough" of public sector money. Our government are allowing friends in faceless corporations steal away money from the private sector with the sole gain to make profit for themselves. 

What we are left with as a public are worse services and we are at the mercy of their greed as they drive up prices. Rail fares and energy price hikes are great examples of this.

The NHS is being attacked by by vociferous and rapacious vultures in private industry. These corporations are having the NHS Trusts fed to them on a plate by our government and the media are aiding in their demise. HSBC who are guilty of laundering money for Mexican drug cartels now own three NHS Trusts in Middlesex, Barnet and West Middlesex and the Private Finance Investment scam is draining the life blood of our NHS as it means our government are borrowing money from the private sector at a rate twice that they could create themselves. With the exception of the Artist Taxi Driver there seems to be a distinct lack of advocates for the NHS and on a recent radio phone in on BBC R4, people from across the NHS called in to point the finger of blame at each other for their problems, rather than at the banking terrorists that created these problems in the first place with their wild and obscene gambling at the casino.

Recent FBU national ampaign

The Fire Service are facing the most dangerous cuts in recent memory. The government squeeze on the budget is forcing brigades across the country to modify their delivery and cut back on staffing and crewing arrangements which put firefighter and public lives at risk. This is being brought to a head by two things, a letter from the current Fire Minister and the recent release of the Ken Knight Review.

In 2001 AssetCo won a contract worth £20m with the London Fire Brigade, taking command of their operational fleet. This was sold off last year to a private equity firm for £2. The toy fire engine being pushed cost more than the entire London fleet!

The privatisation of the Fire Service is being done via the boiling frog theory, similarly to how the NHS has over the years, bits and pieces are auctioned off in the slaughter house and before you know it a once perfectly functioning service is owned and run by private profiteers. The emergency services are there to provide a service, not to make a profit and this small fact seems to be lost on the government and their friends.

A lot of the main focus has been on London Fire Brigade who are facing the closure of 12 stations and the loss of 500 jobs as a direct result of the governments ideological austerity plans, but these stories are replicated across the UK. Already the media have begun to shape the agenda by focusing strongly on the Ken Knight review who said that "fire calls had reduced by 40% in the last decade but the resource to demand had not been reviewed as a consequence." This statement, when taken without any context whatsoever, might lead you to believe what is being said. Everything a firefighter responds to is called a 'fire call', it does not necessarily mean that they are responding to a fire, it could be any one of a hundred different things that they can (and do) respond to. The statement when taken in to relation of incidents of fire may be true but it does not account for everything else.

For instance, it does not reflect that up until 2004 there was no statutory duty for the Fire Service to attend a Road Traffic Collision, it was just inferred that they would. Road Traffic Collision incident figures will vary greatly depending on where you live and the resources for which those brigades have to respond to them. It also makes no reference to flooding incidents, which you may have noticed, have been on the increase over the lat few years and in a recent report was highlighted as the single biggest national resilience issue to face the emergency services in the next decade. You will not be surprised to learn then that the government have NOT made it a statutory duty for the Fire Service to respond to flooding incidents, instead letting each individual brigade foot the bill for equipment and training to respond to these incidents so that they do not have to dip into their war chests. this further puts strains on the other day to day tasks that Fire Services have to deal with.

The Ken Knight report did not talk about the health and safety and welfare of the firefighters and the public, it mentioned nothing of an increase in firefighter deaths, with the only comprehensive report being conducted by the Fire Brigades Union back in 2008. It is with much sadness I must say that since that report there have been further firefighter fatalities and lessons still have not been learned.

The cuts are about agendas. These billionaires play with peoples futures and peoples lives and they are stealing the dreams away of this and the next generation of firefighters, police and NHS staff. They all beautiful people that devote a life time of service to the communities they live and work in. The betrayal of their devotion by our government is shameful. Support your local NHS, Police and Fire Service, talk to them directly and do not be mislead by the mainstream media. They are there for us, whenever we call.

Newell News-round up, week 5

Week 5 and the hot topic has to be human rights, those things that serve us everyday without even realising it.

Human rights allow each of us to get married, divorced, practice religion (or not), meet in large groups (to cheer for athletes chasing balls) to exercise a vote, allow us to vote in the first place and generally allow us to live our lives with out fear of oppression and with the freedom to speak as we see fit.

World

Syria have allegedly used chemical weapons against their own people, with varying degrees of confidence according the US. Both darling David Cameron and Barack Obama have been highly critical of the latest news coming out from Syria, using rhetoric such as there being a 'red line' on Syria. We have heard this talk before and there are varying stories coming out from Syria that do not give any such smoking gun that the imperialist war criminals rallied behind before invading Iraq. For Cameron or Obama to lecture anyone on war crimes is unfathomable. These two war criminals and their predecessors Bush and Blair have more blood on their hands than anyone since Stalin or Hitler for that matter. They continue to sell arms to regimes that suit, such as the Bahraini government, who are using them to oppress a revolution for freedom and have descended the world into civil war in the name of new democracy.

In China 21 people have been killed following a 'terrorist' incident in the region of Xinjiang in ongoing tensions. An apparent effort to establish an independent East Turkistan is said to be the cause, with the government claim that the attack was based on terrorism, not necessarily echoed by others in the region, who said it was more ethnically motivated.

India is still witnessing street protests over the issue of rape with young children taking to the streets after a 5 year old girl was abducted and sexually assaulted. This comes after the horrific incident in 2012 and numerous high profile attempts or cases since.
Also in India, a factory unit collapsed killing over 300 people, with 900 still missing. Police are said to have detained the owners but I doubt that there are any suits from Primark, Mango or Matalan being held for their part in this tragedy. They outsource the making of their products mainly to increase their profit margins but also because the further they spread their supply chains from the consumer, the less people tend to care about the conditions that made them.
These high profile incidents come against the back drop of strained relations with the United States over an issue of solar power.
India receives plenty of sun and is severely struggling with a lack of power and so are pinning their hopes on the solar power, the most abundant source of power in our solar system. In February this year the US lodged an appeal to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over India's intentions to use domestically produced solar cells to provide the materials, also providing work for their own people. India are doing so as both the Chinese and the Americans have been under cutting local producers of these goods as they are able to be imported tax free. The US have claimed that these are discriminatory practices and claim it will raise the cost of clean energy, or do they not want to see a nation get off their knees in front of the oil and coal barons that currently run this world?

A Senate hearing this week heard how drone strikes are the face of America in Yemen as a man gave a chilling account of life in the cross hairs of Americas drone army. Terrorism in all its forms is abhorrent and our governments are the greatest purveyors of war and terror.

A prison riot in Mexico has resulted in several deaths. Whether or not the former head of HSBC, Lord Green, is being looked into regarding this, after the bombshell in 2012 that they laundered billions of dollars of Mexican drug cartels money, is any ones guess...

NHS/Welfare 

The Artist Taxi Driver

The House of Lords were busy debating the NHS Act: Section 75 and the fire sale that will now undoubtedly follow. Doctors have expressed their concerns over it back in 2007 and another GP has recently resigned as a consequence. To raise awareness of the issue the Artist Taxi Driver pushed a toy pig 4.1 miles from Kings College Hospital to Downing Street, where he handed in a petition against the act. In the build up to the act being debated there was a distinct lack of discussion around in the mainstream news, but there was much discussion surrounding nurses on apparent "safari's" looking for lost patients. Murdoch media picked this up and was abetted nicely by the BBC.
The NHS is the single greatest thing that this country has and we are on the precipice of watching it sail off into the sunset, on HMS Profiteer.

Profiteering scoundrel, Iain Duncan Smith, received an open letter this week from a woman who has recently come off benefits after finally managing to secure work following a long hard 18 months. She wrote the letter fearing what will come of the people left on the welfare system that have been unfortunate enough to find a way back in the working world. I hope he has read it and feels ashamed of himself. I doubt he will, he has been too busy telling rich pensioners that they should not be claiming benefits, whilst he is raping and pillaging the benefits system himself with endless expenses claims.

Technology

Google Glass is on its way and is set to take the world by storm in much the same fashion as perhaps the iPod did all those years ago now. Being able to record, take pictures and search the Internet (with both hands free) is raising the heart beats of many; but what will this latest immersive technological advancement do for the ever widening, dissociative behaviour of the human species?

The first steps into the world of iRobot happened this week after a teenager was fitted with the world's first phone controlled robotic hand, fittingly called the iLimb and nanoscience hit the big time again this week with talk about the potential for 'smart skin' to soon be upon us.

Human Rights 

Theresa May has being showing off her sinister side again this week with more bluster over the famed fanatic preacher Abu Qatada, after she claimed the UK would temporarily withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights to deport him. This was quickly followed by a defeat for this wicked woman in the courts after a 17 year old's case was overturned, saying that he should be afforded the same rights as a 16 year old. Theresa May has been supportive of a move to treat 17 year old's as adults and this has potentially resulted in the deaths of two young boys, Joe Lawton and Edward Thornber, after they were arrested and treated as adults but would have been convicted as children if the case was found against them. The government are calling this an 'anomaly'. The courts stated that under the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) , the police could treat children as adults at the age of 17, but that the Home Secretary's failure to revise the code was a breach of her obligation under Article 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 and that PACE breached Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to private and family life. I hope that they (the government) are comfortable with their use of the word anomaly and I hope that Theresa May can sleep at night.

The RAF have apparently been complicit in the American drone war campaign since 2004 and there has been drone assistance set up at RAF bases within the UK for some years. These deadly machines are evolving at an exponential rate and before long will be able to select targets themselves, making the current, but limited human envolvement, redundant. When in power Geroge W. Bush started the drone war but Barack Obama, the man we gave a Nobel PEACE prize to has become its main advocate. We should think about this when he is giving ridiculous 'comedy' speeches. He, like the others, is a war criminal.

UK/Economy 

A man has died in the UK after armed police responded to an incident and discharged their Taser on him; he was known to be covered in flammable liquid. The police Taser caused him to burst into flames, and he died from his burns as a result. Police armed response units carry a selection of weapons and say that they must carry a "less lethal option." These range from semi automatic rifles, to hand guns, rubber bullet guns and the Taser. Quite why they thought it was appropriate or less lethal to Taser a man covered in petrol is staggering. I await the investigations conclusions with baited breath.

We have avoided a triple dip recession, apparently, thanks to millionaire George Osborne and his 'no plan b'. When you consider that last year we managed to make just 0.1% growth despite there being a jubilee, a royal wedding and the olympics, it leaves me wondering how we have managed to snatch 0.3% growth in this quarter despite all the wind, rain, snow and ice we have had across the country. You could not make it up. Our arms dealers must have been making record profits selling arms in the Middle East over the winter.

Whilst this has been happening and the government have been raping the public of their public services, they have appointed a tax dodger as head of Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the former head of npower who have been coming up short in paying up.. No I am not making this shit up.

Beekeepers have been protesting in London over the use of neonicotinoids that are thought to be killing off large populations of bees. Defra have said that evidence so far is inconclusive.

The powers that be (PTB) have decided that they want the power to switch off your fridges at their discretion in an apparent attempt to help power stations cope with demand. What is that you say? A prelude to war? Who knows.

Entertainment

War criminal Barack Obama has been at it again with his White House Correspondents Dinner, cracking jokes to the yuppie upper class war mongers in attendance whilst children across the planet suffer daily at the hands of famine, depleted uranium poisoning and death by skynet hunter killers. Thanks.

There is no sport, weather, Justin Bieber, JLS, the Voice, Britain's Got Talent or any other distraction television news because these war criminals and thieves are getting away with murder and its time we started offering some kind of resistance to it.

Why did the pig cross the road? To save the NHS

The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step and so it was yesterday outside Kings College Hospital in London where the Artist Taxi Driver crawled from to Downing Street with a petition against the privatisation of the NHS... and a toy pig.

The effort to raise awareness of the issue was highlighted to a number of media outlets including the BBC and the Guardian but neither saw fit to cover the event, instead it was left to independent media sources to do it. Initially the crowd was small, perhaps ten people, but as we made our way through the sunshine down to Camberwell road the numbers grew and by the time we stopped for The Artist Taxi Drivers alternative news broadcast special the numbers were beginning to increase. By the time we made it to the Elephant and Castle there approximately fifty people now with placards and banners stopping people and traffic to explain what we were doing.

Everyone was in agreement that privatisation of the NHS is wrong.

As we made our way across the bridge and down towards West Minster the crowd got larger with passers by sometimes sneering at a man on his knees in their Gucci suits, seemingly almost aloof to the situation that was unfolding in the building behind them. Every single one of us on that street at some point in our lives has been saved by the magical people that work in the NHS from the moment we were born. To have the NHS carved by these millionaires with special interests is a disgrace to the history and the memory of it.

Some passers by did ramble on with rhetoric cast out by the Sun or the Daily Mail that it is 'foreigners' coming over and using it which has caused the problem but as I pointed out, we are probably spending more money on air conditioning in military bases than we are on the NHS so the money is there. The government just need the media to keep playing us off against each other.

Walking up Parliament Street a band had joined us and the crowd was now up to one hundred, we awaited at the gates and the crowd cheered as The Artist Taxi Driver addressed the actors standing guard. A number of people were allowed through the gate and the Artist delivered his petition that had gained hundreds of signatures along the way, he was not allowed to push his pig up Downing Street, apparently it was due to the abusive references and the actors just generally not liking pigs.

The petition and protest is against section 75 that was being debated in parliament whilst we made our way to Downing Street earlier in the day. It will potentially open up the way for a fire sale of the NHS. Privatisation is often sold to us on the idea that it drives competition and keeps prices down. Anyone that regularly uses the railway system or is being held hostage by the energy companies will know that what privatisation really means is one or two companies monopolise the area and end up charging whatever they want.

If you are concerned that the government are selling your NHS you can do something about it here.

Push a pig, save the NHS

The Artist Taxi Driver Mark McGowan is pushing a toy pig with his head from Kings College Hospital to 10 Downing Street where he will hand in a petition against the privatisation of the NHS.

Starting at 0800hrs, Mark has steadily made his way up towards tower bridge, stopping along the way to explain to passers by the reasoning for him being on his hands knees knocking a squeaky pig along the pavement. Many have signed the petition in support of his cause and like a scene from Rocky 2 more and more people are joining him on the walk to the privateers head quarters at Downing Street.

The pig pushing idea came Malcolm Grant, head of the NHS, said that there would be every chance that by 2015 we will all have to be paying for our NHS treatment, despite the fact we already pay for it through our taxes. Today in Parliament they are debating the option of selling off the NHS. This daylight robbery of our health system must not be allowed and The Artist Taxi Driver is on a mission to raise people's awareness.

Mark said: "These people and the media keep telling us that there is no money for health care, for welfare but they can find billions for their friends in banks and other profiteering corporations through privatisation. It's a disgrace."

One activist supporting the event added: "The front page of The Sun today was an exclusive that JLS had broken up,what? The NHS being carved up for private gain should be front page but they (the mainstream media) don't want us to know about that."

Many of the people here have been getting Mark drinks to keep him hydrated as the sun has come out, helping to stop traffic as Mark ploughs on. The weather has made it a good day out for anyone interested in defending their NHS. Step by step on his hands and knees he pushes this pig, the symbolic reference to the those with their snouts in the bowl of privatisation and special interests, towards Downing Street with a clear message - "Hands off our NHS!"

The Artist Taxi Driver and the pig

The Artist Taxi Driver and his pig are on the march

The Artist Taxi Driver, Mark McGowan, is to push a toy pig from Kings College Hospital to 10 Downing Street, on Wednesday April 24th at from 8am. He is doing so to raise awareness of government plans to consolidate privatisation of the NHS. Malcolm Grant has this week dropped the bombshell news that the NHS may have to look at new ways of funding should the economy continue to flag.

Malcolm Grant

The gold diggers who have been sucking up our taxes for decades have decided that there are not enough funds to continue to provide free NHS treatment for us and that we will now have to resort to some proposed American system of insurance, creating a clear divide between those that can and those that cannot provide for their families. Your child breaks a leg playing football? That is going to cost a few pennies. This will harm the families who have the least and the prosperous will continue on.
How has it come to this?

Soon we will be left with a choice between Virgin Care, BUPA and whomever else decides to swoop in like a flock of ravenous vultures for the scraps of social care.

The sharks are circling.

The Artist Taxi Driver is raising awareness of this behind the scenes sell off of the NHS and is starting this Wednesday at Kings College. The pig is a symbol of those with their nose in the trough taking, taking and taking whilst the rest of us are left with the scraps.

Spread the word and help to raise awareness about the NHS sell off and more importantly take ownership and care about an issue that affects us all.

The Artist Taxi Driver