The sky is the limit

Reading is one of life's most simple pleasures but recently a book that verged on greatness let itself down at the final hurdle with a quote straight out of a government propaganda pamphlet. The writer claimed that an example of when good deeds go bad was the agricultural revolution, which the writer stated: "Enabled the population to grow beyond sustainable means, bringing with it famine." 

It cannot be both can it? 

Chart taken from Nature

If the agricultural revolution has enabled the planet to grow more food than at any time in our history, how has this lead to famine? What the writer may have meant is that the industrial revolution and use of fossil fuels signalled an increase in the worlds population, this much is true, but again the fact we have famine is not about the size of the population but about peoples access to resources. 

We are a species that has come to know the price of everything but the value of nothing, in particular the value of a human life. 

None of the people that are suffering hunger are doing so because there is not enough food or clean water; they are suffering because they do not have means to access resources. The fact some commentators claim it is because the world is overpopulated or worse, blame it on the people for having "too many children" is a 
scandalous and dangerous concept. 

We throw away half the food we buy, half the food we grow feeds livestock and yet half the global population is malnourished. 


NNI contacted the Farmers Union, World Bank, IMF, Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs and had the following responses;

Christopher Matthews from Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations said:
"World cereal production in 2012/13 is forecast at 2 302 million tones of which feed use is estimated at 799. 2 million tonnes.

In 2009 (last figures available) UK cereals production was 21.6 million tonnes  and feed use was 10.2 million tonnes."

The Farmers Union said: "The estimates from this suggests that around 6.3 million tonnes of domestic wheat was used as animal feed in 2011/12 and this is forecast to fall in 2012/13 to 5.9m tonnes. The total domestic production in 2011/12 was 15.3 million tonnes and for 2012/13 its 13.3 million tonnes." Adding : "Compound feed production and  usage from Defra points to an increase in compound feed production in the UK in the second half of 2012 as a shortage of quality forage forced farmers to use more bought-in feed for ruminants." 

Article after article on the Internet will support the fact that we waste billions of pounds worth of food every year by throwing it away, often without having even being opened, yet according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in 2010-2012 868 million people are under nourished, or 1 in 8 people. This is down apparently from 1990-1992 where the figure was 1000 million (or 1 billion). 

The FAO website states the following on the collation of these statistics: 

FAO measures hunger as the number of people who do not consume the minimum daily energy requirement, which is the amount of calories needed for light activity and a minimum acceptable weight for attained height. This varies by sex and age, not surprisingly. To calculate these numbers, FAO collects three sets of data:

1.              Data on production, imports and exports of all food commodities, along with the calorie content of each food. These data are used to calculate total availability of calories in the country.

2.              Data on population structure in terms of age and sex, since different age and sex groups have different minimum caloric requirements. Using these data, one can estimate the total caloric requirements for the entire population as an aggregate. This varies from country to country because of different population structures.

3.              Household survey data. These are used to estimate the country-specific distribution of calories. Some countries may have more equal distributions of calories than other countries, which, other things being equal, would lead to fewer people being undernourished. A log normal distribution of caloric intake is assumed.

From the total calories available, total calories needed for a given population, and the distribution of calories, one can calculate the number of people who are below the minimum energy requirement, and this is the number of undernourished people. This number is then summed for all countries in the world. Thus, no account is taken of protein, vitamin or mineral intake.

The FAO also inform us that, when records began in 1969-1971, 878 million people were recorded as hungry and reported a steady increase in 1995-1997 and 2009, with a large spike occurring in 2009 during the financial and economic crises. This final statistic is quite telling in that the reasons for this are not necessarily linked to agricultural output but by the purchasing power of people.

A spokesperson for Defra supplied documents and figures which can be accessed via a link at the end of this article.

Depending on how people read statistics dictates the explanations that are given and the story spun in the mainstream media always seems to suggest we are over populated. 

One trail of thought might be that despite nearly fifty years of technological advancement and increase in agricultural output, we still have roughly the same amount of people undernourished or going hungry. Another interpretation will be that although the figure remains virtually the same, proportionately the percentage of people today going hungry is less than that in 1969-1971. However we look at it the fact remains that it is unacceptable in this modern age that we have people without access to food and clean water if the only restriction is financial. 

The means for helping these people should not be restricted through monetary means; the resources required to help people are available in abundance, but our instance on slapping a financial ball and chain around their ankles means that they lack access to the help and assistance that they require. 

Vertical farm in Singapore

There are a wide ranging variety of innovative ideas to deal with land issues and extreme weather systems we have witnessed in the past two years. One such example is of course vertical farming. It is thought that a building 12 stories high would be able to accommodate enough space to replace a 400 acre plot of farm land. Dr Dickson Despommier from the Vertical Farming project said: "The concept of vertical farming has grown from a classroom activity to reality in just 10 years. 

My hope is that the technology will become cheap to replicate, easy to install, and relatively trouble-free. If it does, then anyone will be able to work in them. 

Cities around the world will undoubtedly be trying out some form of vertical farming over the next five to ten years, so I am confident that the technology will develop and mature until it can eventually benefit everyone who wants/needs them. To date, there are enough vertical farms up and running (Japan, Korea, Singapore, Sweden, USA, Canada) to give credence to my hopes and desires in seeing this food production system applied on a large scale."

It would not be complete if I did not mention the horse meat scandal. Of course I am surprised that people are surprised at the depths to which some companies will go to in the name of making a profit. In a world where the margins are becoming ever more narrow it should be of no surprise that bad practice like this would follow. Examples of this kind of bad practice can be found across all industries such as Deepwater Horizon BP incident, Texaco/Chevron vs Ecuador dispute and many others.

There is only one thing we need to remember; when profit rules, honest, health and safety suffer.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/files/defra-stats-foodfarm-crosscutting-auk-auk2011-120709.pdf
http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/files/defra-stats-foodfarm-food-animalfeed-statsnotice-130207.pdf
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/09/business/eco-singapore-vertical-farm
http://www.thevenusproject.com/en/technology/live-world-data

Technological Unemployment

Man Vs Machine

Just as globalisation is a fact, so too is technological unemployment. It is all around you and you have experienced it your entire life, you just may have not realised it.

On a recent visit to the local cineworld cinema the man behind the kiosk told me that you can now buy tickets online and get a 10% discount from the usual ticket price, which is now a staggering £9.10! Firstly I was in a little shock at the price of a cinema ticket, they have steadily gone up over the past 12 months. Thank Joe Pesci I had already signed up for an unlimited card.

Now, you have the 'choice' of a self service machine, or a human. The man explained to me that by using the Internet I could bypass him and get a ticket cheaper by ordering from home and picking it up once I arrived, from the self service machine. As if this was not enough he then informed me that as an unlimited card holder I could do the same with this. This totally bypasses the need for any humans to operate the ticket desk in the pursuit of greater profit margins. I took a moment to highlight this to him and I do not think he had considered it until I used the words "technological unemployment". Being a good obedient worker he was doing his job by informing me of my option to avoid a queue and do it all from home, but at the same time however he is contributing to his own demise.

This is not a new experience for me though as anyone who has been to the VUE cinema in Angel, London, will testify to. Inside the VUE cinema you pay for your tickets at a machine at the bottom of the escalators and do not even see a human until you want to purchase a coca-cola or some popcorn. This was a few years ago now, I wonder if they have upgraded the humans to vending machines yet?

The pursuit to increase profit margins continues and one way to achieve this is by reducing the workforce wherever a corporation can. Everywhere you look machines are replacing the need for humans, from the main library in the town to WHSmiths, they have all installed several self service machines and reduced the number of staff required.

Is this a bad thing? Yes and no, no in that technology has raised our standard of living since the very first caveman worked out how to form and use tools, it is just that in today's society, driven by this never ending need for growth, this truth has been distorted. Yes in that the reduction in purchasing power of the people as technology replaces us, restricts the artificial growth that the "expert" economists talk about, and worsens the current economic situation. Machines do not need a lunch break, holiday, sick pay or any pay for that matter, they only require at present a few select specialists to oversee their maintenance. Remember that the construction industry was replaced by the service industry and now both these areas are heavily automated.

This is not something to be feared though, it is something that should be embraced. Technology can continue to revolutionise the way we live, generating abundance in resources for the planets population, through sustainable and renewable means and enabling us to achieve a standard of "civil"isation that we have not yet achieved.

Do not be fooled by Obama, Cameron, Merkel or Sarkozy. The credit crunch is not the cause of unemployment but it is a contributing factor.

Technological unemployment has only served to accelerate the flaws in the system we currently live in and as our technology increases in capability our reliance on human labour will continue to diminish and free us to pursue our lives in a much greater and enriching way.

To RBE or Not to RBE

At the weekend the local newspaper reported a story on how Vauxhall had won the chance to venture into the future and design a state of the art electric police car. The piece was written by Sophie Scott of the Luton on Sunday. The car itself could be put into action by a police force in as little as 3 years it is claimed.

High tech policing of the future is described by Chief Inspector Mick Trosh of the Association of Police Officers Intelligent Transport Systems with the car able to access the Police National Database whilst mobile and potentially revolutionise policing. It all sounds a bit Knight Rider but without the looks of KITT, however I feel this is all the more reminiscent of the police state that is being ever increased and one for the documentary Suspect Nation by Henry Porter. Police are dealing with symptoms and not the root cause of criminality, the environment.

The main feature in all of this is the fact that the car is electric and the savings to made by police forces if this is rolled out as a concept. The bad news is that this car still relies on fossil fuels and, as the majority of us know, electricity is not a power source of its own accord; it is a by-product. Not only is it running on electricity but it is made from fossil fuel (namely oil) seven barrels of oil per tyre, not to mention the plastic dashboard, seats, steering wheel and Gucci gadgets. Everything in and of the car is made from oil.
In a world where our resources are finite it amazes me that we continue to build these machines with a limited shelf life using old technology whilst the corporations market it as a leap forward in innovation.

It is not and anyone with even a passing interest in history will know this is a deception. Electric cars have been around for over 100 years.

The appearance of the petrol powered automobile killed off the electric car (which held the land speed record at one time) as it was faster and cheaper to purchase. This has robbed us of over 100 years of innovation as the oil companies secured the market for automobiles and their construction. Where would we be today if the electric car had been allowed to be properly developed  for the benefit of humans? Who knows but to get a sense of perception consider the mobile phone.
In 25 short years we have gone from the car phone (because you needed a car to carry the weight of the battery) with a yuppie in a limousine or Porsche 911 and the top down listening to Duran Duran, to a youth in a tracksuit with his hood up listening JLS on his iPhone 4S. Well maybe not the JLS bit but you see the point.

This is why a Resource Based Economy (RBE) is becoming a necessity, it will enable us to make better use of our resources, ensuring that things are built to the best technical specs and with the greatest durability available to us at that time, thus reducing the waste that currently as a society we are drowning in. We must break out of this cyclical consumption cycle not for ourselves but for our future generations.

It is interesting to see the emergency services moving in this direction (the fire service I am sure will get it all wrong) but it is not enough, a total overhaul of our current system is required. If we keep just modifying it a bit here and there then it will continue to be wasteful and ineffective, just not quite as wasteful or ineffective. This slow process of tweaking things could take decades, something we do not have, and is unacceptable when we have the technology to make revolutionary change now.
People will, and do, say the RBE cannot work. The defeatist, 'can't do' attitude is one all who advocate an RBE I am sure have encountered, but do not be deterred or lose faith. To say it cannot be done because something like this has never been done before is the reason why it can and will work.

Remember that mans reach exceeds his grasp. Keep calm and RBE on

Z Day-2012

A year is a long time and a lot can happen.

Since Z Day 2011 there has been the 'will they won't they' of the Greek debt default debacle, Arab Spring uprisings, Bin Laden was found and killed (allegedly) London had seen a million people march through its streets (with several hundred then camping on them) and a riot reminiscent of the 1980's, a tsunami in Japan resulting in a nuclear episode and of course the fall out between The Zeitgeist Movements founder, Peter Joseph and The Venus Projects Jacque Fresco. 

The rift between the two movements has I hope healed some what, but I feel it has gone some way to setting back the good work done up to that point. 

Z Day 2012's main event was this year held in Vancouver, Canada (which was a bit further than my fraudster bank manager would allow me to go) so it was business as usual in London at Euston as people descended from across the country for their latest dose of 'what next?'

There were some exceptional talks, notably that of Cassie Earle and Myles Dyer, plus an interesting documentary called 'Economics of Happiness' which highlighted the problems caused by a society driven by globalisation and continuous growth on a finite planet in a quiet Tibetan town that I am sure many the world over would be able to empathise with.

Cassie Earle's speech was on a subject I feel very deeply about, namely education and the importance of critical thinking and critical education. 

What is it to be a critical thinker?

Critical thinking, I believe, is the ability to take in information, move around it and be able to take it from another perspective then question what you have been told. This is something that is becoming less and less prevalent in society today as the majority of the public blindly accepts what they are told at face value. Kony 2012 anyone?

In Cassie's speech she pointed the finger at what she called 'critical education', the need for open dialectic  conversations that challenge the status-quo. A process where we ensure all voices are heard on a subject, where ideology is not imposed. 

Wouldn't this be a grand world to live in?

Another important point was one of formal education as it stands. Today society believes in something we call 'officially sanctioned knowledge'...i.e if you read it in a text book and have the correlating diploma or degree then of course you must be right and better than the next human.
As Cassie put it "is the shelf stacker in a multinational corporation that builds computers in their spare time more or less capable or qualified than the graduate from a top university?"

Of course it is difficult to say but it could be assumed that the person that spends every spare minute of their own time working building things because they love to do it may well be better qualified than someone with a piece of paper that has set them back £15,000. If you disagree with this view point try looking up Dan Pink - Drive- on YouTube.

Everyone is an intellectual, our problem is remembering or believing this fact. 

Our minds are capable of assimilating vast amounts of knowledge yet generally we choose to waste it. As a society we must regain our sense of curiosity before it is too late, we damage our children by quashing their natural curiosity about the world for a quiet life when they ask 'why'? We should encourage each other to question everything. Question what I am writing, what the media tells you, what your employers and teachers may tell you and remember formal or sanctioned knowledge is not the only knowledge.

Myles Dyer spoke about his exciting new project Universal Solutions Project, which has the potential to aid activists in their quest to educate and inform the masses on a scale not necessarily achievable up until now.

I have always said, and people at work will confirm this, that people do not care about something until it directly affects them (fire service pensions being one example) but unfortunately it is usually too late by this point and usually people fail to see how interconnected these problems are.

What Myles is hoping to create and achieve will get right to the heart of this problem and potentially blow it wide open for us, giving us the tools to help people connect the dots that others seem to do so effortlessly. 

Myles' speech was an exciting moment in the day for me as I got a sense of frustration from some, myself included, that there are still a lot of people waiting for someone else to do the work. Last year at Z Day two important messages were made; firstly there is no point in saving the world if you are not having fun and secondly that if you were there you were an activist and had a duty to get involved in spreading the message and attending chapter meetings etc. 

I do feel the second part, as I have mentioned earlier, has been affected in part by the fall out between TZM and TVP but this should have made no real difference as the problems we all face remain unchanged, if not more pressing as the system teeters on the brink of collapse.

We must not wait for a leader, we have to get up and do it for ourselves. As Jiddu Krishnamurti once said "You, have to be a light for yourself". We must be willing get our own hands dirty.

Since Z Day 2011 I have doubled my efforts and commitments to learning, educating and achieving the goal of a better world. Following this years event I hope I can again double those efforts and productions, like a kind of Moore's Law, or not.

What will you do?

The Kon-is On. Kony 2012

Pic by Lewis

I wonder how many people woke up this morning and had never heard of Joseph Kony? Well 12 hours is a long time in the world of the social media and a video about Joseph Kony made by the charity Invisible Children has gone viral. As usual, the public have swallowed it up.

Kony 2012 is a short documentary made by Jason Russell, featuring his son and the people of Uganda. He takes us through the plight of children at the hands of Kony and shows images of child soldiers, sex trafficking and mutilation. It is quite horrific. I have sat and watched the tweets and Facebook posts come rolling in all day as the 'sheeple' have all of a sudden realised that men, women and children are being brutalised in Africa, I wonder how many of them posted their tweets etc whilst sporting a chunky conflict diamond on their paws.

Where do they think these stones come from, the Cotswold's?

The Kony 2012 campaign video is a propaganda piece that has done its job superbly. It claims Joseph Kony is invisible and aims to expose him, using what they call 'the knowns' such as Angelina Jolie or Bono. George Clooney in an interview went as far as to request that dictators causing such atrocities should be made as famous as him. Once they have secured this they move on to the policy makers in congress.
So any and every other media whore willing to share the charities word, about securing Kony and trialing him, has been tweeting or re-posting and even as I type this my phone is still bleating... meaning the posts are still going.

Angelina hates Kony, but does she know why?

I am confused as to how or why people are surprised that these atrocities go on, not just in Africa I might add, but in many countries, including the sex trafficking and grooming of young girls in the UK. Nothing about that video was new in terms of news.

The 'sheeple' have found the latest bandwagon for them to climb aboard.

For 30 earth minutes they have managed to sit and have the fairy tale woven around them and encourage them to back and support the campaign. What people have not thought about however is how this will be achieved? Invisible Children is advocating military intervention. People are supporting a group that is advocating military intervention, are we expecting our soldiers to go in and shoot a child square between the eyes? The majority of Kony's personal bodyguards are children.

The video highlights the efforts made by the team to raise the issues with the American government, who at first decree that there is no way they would intervene in a conflict that had no baring on American security interests. Eventually Congress changed its tune. Allegedly due to the power of the people and the movement. They receive a letter from Barack Obama stating the U.S intention to send out 100 'specialists' to aid the training of the Ugandans.

Anything backed by Obama, with his record, must be questioned thoroughly.

Joseph Kony, is number one on the International Criminal Courts worst criminal list. Kony, indicted July 8th 2005, keeps good company including Muammar Gaddafi and his son Saif al Islam Gaddafi, who were both indicted June 27th 2011. Two questions spring to mind;

"Why has it taken the world seven earth years to care about Kony enough to do something and a few weeks to indict and hang Gaddafi out to dry?" and;

"How did we go from two people ranked 24th and 25th on the list, without stopping at a single murderer or dictator along the way, to Kony?"

If anyone can answer this for me please feel free to message me.

Invisible Children also supports the Ugandan Military which have a chequered reputation at best with claims of rape and looting.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the things that is particularly hard to take is the awareness I personally have tried to make to people about Liberia and the situation there.
Nobody seemed to notice, nobody seemed to care.
Children addicted to heroin barely older than my nephews, women raped by U.N soldiers, former warlords who fought naked and cut out the hearts of children and bathed in their blood, warlords who at the drop of a hat claim they could take back power with in a few hours if they wanted.

I was lucky to get maybe two people to share the video, The Vice Guide to Liberia or my blog Liberian Girl.

It pains me to say this but Obama and co do not care about black African-American babies in their own country, let alone black babies in Africa.

Uganda either has resource based benefit or a strategic benefit to America (probably both) for their policy to have changed. The American government, and Americans in general, want to start by arresting their own war criminals first, such as Henry Kissinger, George Bush Jnr, Dick Cheyney and even Barack Obama himself. Let us also not forget the UK's very own Tony Blair who should top any wanted list for acts of terrorism and genocide. People like this and the W.H.O and I.M.F have been raping Africa for decades and what have we done about this? Bought a bracelet and soothed some guilt. This is an Afri-Con.

Factually Kony is not in Uganda anymore either, not for 5 years or so.

In two days the video and the movement has gone viral but, like Live Aid, the peoples attention will only last until the advert break, where they will then be told what crap to buy and consume or until CSI starts. The video, nor the charity make any real effort to educate people on the matter at hand and instead resort to drum beating, feel good, prepackaged activism. Humans love a fashion trend or a fad and this is just another one in a long line of fads to make fair trade, coffee drinking ladies that lunch, feel better about their conflict diamond rings.

It is called manufactured consent, ask more questions.


"The first thing about manipulation and control is to first understand how it is done, then you can see it coming" Liberaté 2012




With thanks to Lewis, Dean, Justice and Anthony for keeping it together.

The World IS Our Paradise

Lucas Media and Dejavusion have taken some clips from around the world and put them together in this pretty little video.  The Earth is magnificent, from the deepest ocean to the highest mountain it is breath taking in its beauty and it is our home. We have a duty to look after it, not for the Earth's sake but for our sake. The Earth will still be here long after man has gone and it is that very reason we should cherish and look after it, so that we can live a long and prosperous future, with a symbiotic relationship with the rest of the Animal Kingdom we form a part of.

Follow the link below to view.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLc7XifBy9I

The Sit-in Continues

The Occupy movement having gone global is now 1 week old in London on the outskirts of the financial district at St Paul's Cathedral and is moving from strength to strength, even as I type the evolution (as I like to call it) has spread to another part of the city, Finsbury Square.

After the initial disorder of the first day there is now an orderly chaos amongst the protestors who have come together in a show of solidarity of the human spirit that is encouraging in these times where mainstream media strives to divide us. The entire court yard has become a city, within a city, within a city. A first I am sure, if you discount the farce in Israel. Anyone that has seen The Matrix will agree the tent city has a feel of Zion about it.

Generators chug on throughout the day and night powering the information centre, medical centre and catering arena with volunteers coming to the aide of others to provide whatever assistance is required for the men, women and children of all ages present here. There is even a mini cinema centre supplied where a series of informational DVDs are played to educate people on alternative energy solutions, education and of course the Zeitgeist documentaries made by Peter Joseph. One tent had gone one step further and is supplying it's power through solar panels. A nice touch. Other entertainment includes your usual selection of bongos, plastic buckets and acoustic guitars. A new addition for protests however was the site of a piano at the footsteps of the cathedral where renditions of David Bowie played on late into the twilight hours.

All this once again serves to answer the debate on human nature vs human nurture as people donate their time, effort and labour for free, towards a common goal for all.

My return to the courtyard was met with a frosty reception from the local security firm employed by the finical district (City of London Police) who found a particular piece of art work offensive due to the nature of the language on it and the fact that children were present on camp. I should have asked if they thought the children would be more, or less, affected by the site of my poster or the site of Colnel Gaddafi being dragged and beaten to a bloody pulp before being shown dead at 0800 in the morning on the BBC whilst they eat their cornflakes, getting ready for a day at school but I digress. The sheer amount of art on display in the court yard is impressive, thought and effort has gone into it and I believe Banksy would be proud of some of the stuff on display himself.

The media blackout being spun by local media is interesting, or media spin should I say. Throughout the week I have kept an eye on certain media outlets and of the 21 or so people interviewed (out of the thousands that have been here during this time) they managed to select the unemployed student, student or made redundant humans that are protesting their point. The reality of the matter is that there are all types of people here. Parents and grandparents with children that are protesting for their children's future, public sector workers from all areas, business people that are on the sharp end of the banking corporations stick. The moral of the story I guess is to not believe everything that the Rupert Murdoch or Government controlled news outlets tell you. Ask more questions and research your news from a wider range of sources, make use of the Internet before it is too late.

Mans Reach Exceeds His Grasp?

All the hard work is done for you

Are the children of today less creative than the children of yesteryear?

In a word yes.

Imagination, the most beautiful thing a child can have, is being stolen away from them at a time when it is needed most. Sir Ken Robinson famously asked at TED Talks the question "do schools kill creativity?" to which the answer must be unequivocally "yes".  During his 20 minutes he told a story of a woman who told him about her childhood, being 8 years old and a "disruptive influence" on fellow class mates, as her head teacher puts it to her parents; a scene I am sure we are all familiar with or can recall such characters.  The head then proceeded to switch on a radio and invite the parents to leave the room with him and watch her.  She began to tap her feet and hands, "she's not disruptive, she just needs to go to a dance school" he explained.  Or so the story goes, and she was enrolled by her parents in to such a school where she found like minded pupils and went onto become a famous, millionaire choreographer on the West End and Broadway.

In today's society Sir Ken Robinson claims that the child in question would be diagnosed with ADHD and given some medication, I agree.

This is not to say every parent should, or has the means, to enrol their children in to all manner of specialist schools to find something that might inspire them. However, it is true to say that the current education system is stagnated and fixed on it's path since its inception from the industrial revolution. If you do not get the grades in Maths, English and Science you are deemed a failure and success is based almost solely on these subjects.

On a much more general scale creativity and imagination is being taken out of our children's hands, gone are the days it seems where children would create entire worlds from nothing but the grey matter that they are gifted with at birth.
Lego is a fine example of something that has been taken and turned into a profit driven cash cow , where the main drive is maximising profits rather than unleashing the creative mind of the next Leonardo Da Vinci or Jacque Fresco.  In the last 20 years since I was a child building monster trucks, tanks and castles I have seen a dramatic shift in Lego and its focus.  Now instead of building a fire engine you can buy one more or less ready made. Instead of building an X-wing fighter from Star Wars, you can buy one more or less ready made, and so on.

There is no need to imagine it and build it. It is done for you.

The same can be said for the basic art of play time. Dressing up as Superman, Batman, Spider-man or Harry Potter (it pains me to mention Potters name in the same breath as such heroes) can now only be done with the official costumes as seen in Toys R Us or some other corporate cash cow company peddling their products to kids.  When I was a child a broom handle made a great lightsabre and it did not cost anywhere near the £10-20 that they are ripping off already financially stressed parents.  The same cannot be said for today's children who now insist on having the official Harry Potter wand to be the mug-blood wizard where a stick would do the same job. That is if their imagination were up to the task. It seems todays children can imagine nothing like the scenes from Nickelodeon's Rugrats, where boxes and living rooms become huge worlds of dinosaurs and grand adventures, with their minds alone.

I could go on about bathrobes doubling up as capes for Superman or Darth Vader but you may be suspecting that I have far too much play time on my hands myself and a strange affinity to the man of steel. 

So in essence it seems as though children are not able to freely entertain themselves as they once were in previous generations.  I am sure you would have heard various golden oldies such as "in my day we had a yo yo" and the various Facebook posts "we played till it got dark, got a clip around the ear, raised on Blue Peter...." etc etc and to some extent it is a Playstation generation problem but it is also a problem of our own making as we now live in a constant state of fear, when all we have to fear is fear itself.

Blue: Expressing the human body in all its glory

A programme called Concrete Circus (now on 4oD) aired on Channel 4 this week, at 2100.  Ridiculous when you consider the direct target audience or the supposedly 'lost generation', would either be asleep or at the mercy of their parents viewing habits.  Part of Channel 4's urban society, about four of the best in urban sports featuring skate boarding, trial riding, free running and bmx flat landing.  It was a truly epic piece.  At 28 I know what will hurt and what is not going to hurt (so the chances of me recreating any of the moves seen in this show are remote) but for the 'lost generation' between say 8 and, well not 28, there was a lot to be gained by watching it.  By seeing how amazing the human body truly is and what it is capable of achieving with even a small amount of application.  In the case of free running, so long as you have a pair of half decent running trainers, or a freshly looted pair from JD Sports, you can be away in no time, with no specialist equipment.  Just the nerve and mettle to carry out some of the actions but then this is the crux of it.

You are only limited by your own imagination on what you can achieve.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/concrete-circus/4od
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHy9W9LpvlQ&ob=av3e
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Every Man...and His Dog

Picture by Nicola Keane

Today I marched with 500,000 people...and a handful of dogs, as the British people came together today to say 'NO!' to the cuts being imposed on us by the coalition Government.

The morning started with a busy train journey down to London St Pancras, a sign of things to come.  I came across a young group of free thinking individuals, who were on their way to the Embankment where the march started and I asked what they were marching for, their response was for 'the removal of the corrupt economic system we currently live in'  I was not hopeful enough that this would be the majority of peoples opinion for the day but it was a start.

As a veteran of the 'Battle for Parliament' protests in November 2010 it was clear that today was something different.  No longer can people point the finger at 'students' without jobs for being trouble makers as men, women and children of all ages walked side by side from the Embankment to Hyde park.

The march was billed as 'the march for the alternative', I asked a few people what the alternative may be,  and had a mixed bag of responses.  Some people were asking for the return of Labour, for these people 12 months is a long time and the 13 years of Labour we have just had has already been forgotten.  The socialists were marching for a move towards communism and yet it all seemed like the point had been missed.  All these 'isms' capitalism, communism, socialism have been tried and all have failed in their various guises throughout human history.

Picture by Nicola Keane

One banner mentioned Egypt, Greece and their recent demonstrations but the problem is this; what do we do if we remove the coalition Government?  Do not be fooled into thinking Labour would not be cutting as hard or as deep. They are opportunistic and are revelling in this moment to prey on people in these hard times. Ed Milliband's speech was actually quite inspiring...if he wasn't so full of shit.
Some common misconceptions I hear about politics and voting is that "if you don't vote, you don't get to complain".  This is wrong because if you do vote YOU legitimise what they do to you, just ask the students conned into voting LibDem. You do not get to vote on anything else until they manipulate a situation they want your opinion on, such as the quietly talked about Global Currency issue.  Once again I ask "Did you vote to go to war with Libya?".  The political parties are just 3 masks on the same face or the same suit different face.  You can decide which analogy you wish to identify with.

It was interesting today to see the police being used to shield such valuable corporations as McDonald's (on the mall) Top Shop, Tesco and the use of the City Police (not the MET) to do so.  More actors in high-vis is what we need.  A Trojan horse constructed and paraded by Nelson's Column provided a great back drop to the march as it veered left towards Hyde Park before being burned in Oxford street!

My issues for the day were the segregation of the people into their separate groups.  RMT, FBU, Women Against Violence, Teachers Union, an endless list of people all protesting and engaging on their own agendas.  Too many 'ra ra ra' chants about Tories with no substance to their claims as if it would be different with Labour at the helm and the descent into violence at the end of the day by a minority of 500 people.  This included the ritual attacks on Phillip Green owned Top Shop but Benetton was given a reprieve, presumably because they do not know he owns them also? Lloyds TSB etc.Lose your temper and you have lost the plot.
If the banners had been put down and the people marched as one unit, under one banner, this would have been an amazing show of solidarity and a stronger message.  Maybe we are moving in the right direction.

So the question remains "what would we do if we were able to over throw the Government"  there are ideas out there, mainstream media such as the BBC and Sky News will not give these ideas the airtime they deserve.  There is a better way and the answers are out there if people wish to take the time to learn about it using this wonderful gift of access to information that is the Internet.

Pictures taken by Nicola Keane and Jamie Newell

White is Actually Alright?

A row has recently erupted over 'race' and an ITV bosses claims that the the successful mid-afternoon show 'Midsomer Murders' success hinged on the fact there was an all white cast.

The producer Brian True-May called it the ''last bastion of Englishness' and that 'racial diversity in the show would not work'. The row erupted as he said that he would not use Black or Asian people in the series because 'it wouldn't be an English village with them'

'Mr' True-May was suspended and then seen being chauffuer driven away by an Asian.  Fans of the show have rallied in support of the under-fire producer with a Daily Mail poll suggesting that 91% of people think that he should not have been suspended.

The main point however has been missed.  The issue of race is, and has been over, for some 200 years thanks to a gentleman named Charles Darwin, who is the man most commonly known to be repsonsible for the 'Evolution Theory'.  If it had not been Darwin then it would have been someone else such as Alred Russell Wallace who had his mind blown away by a trip to Papa New Guinea.  We are one human race, the human species, all connected.

'Racism' does not exist. It is ignorance.

This week sees the annual world drink up known as 'St Patricks Day' where people will claim all manner of connections to the Irish fellowship in the name of guiness (a weak excuse for an alcoholic beverage) before resuming nationalistic hostilities this weekend in the rugby 6 Nations finale where England play Ireland for the Grand Slam. The out dated idea of nations once again highlighted through gladiatorial sporting contests. Maybe one day we will have national human day....

The way forward to combat this ignorance is for an overhaul of the way we educate people, the way we educate our children, by pointing out our similarities to people of different cultures rather than our differences. Not by pointing out height, weight, intellectual or financial differences. Remember no one is born 'racist', a child does not know to differentiate people based on colour from birth, it occurs as a result of their environmental upbringing and experiences. These can be changed.

"An organism at war with itself is doomed....we are one planet" Carl Sagan- Cosmos

It is time for the world to come together.


Quotes came from BBC News and The Daily Mail, March 16th 2011

ZDay 2011- London

Having taken the time to watch 'The Zeitgeist' docu-movies by Peter Joseph over the past couple of years I took it upon myself to attend the recent ZDay conference in London this week and have decided to give it a bit more attention than the BBC or ITV. 

ZDay is a world wide event with each chapter hosting seminars on the current progress of the movement. This year focused on response to the latest effort by Peter Joseph, 'Zeitgesit- Moving Forward'

The Zeitgeist Movement is a collaboration of free thinking individuals that see there is a need for change in the way the world currently conducts itself.  For example people starving in the 21st century and the myths around overpopulation and the often self projected, but not backed, claim or notion that there is not enough food for an ever increasing population.  This is just simply not the case, access to resources, as the movement highlights, is the problem.

"Among the key causes of hunger are natural disasters, conflict, poverty, poor agricultural infrastructure and over-exploitation of the environment. Recently, financial and economic
crises have pushed more people into hunger." A quote taken directly from the World Food Program website.  No sign of overpopulation being a cause of hunger.

The day itself ran for 8 hours with talks from various CAD technicians (responsible for designing a new way of housing people and buildings that will be more efficient in their design and use) members of the linguistic team (who documented the sheer volume of work that goes into translating the docu-movies for 6 billion odd people that aren't English speaking first language types) to the man himself, Peter Joseph, who gave a speech tackling some of the negative media that the Zeitgeist movement has gained in recent months following an incident in America earlier this year and his vision of what happens next.

One of the things taken from the latest effort from Peter Joesph is the accessibility of the material for some people.  We all address the level of our communication in accordance with the person or group we are talking to yet the nature of some the material will daunt some people but it is worth sticking with it I assure you.  Another point is the duration of the docu-movie, which at 2hrs 41 Earth minutes is a considerable lump of 'time' out of your day and I confess it is pretty heavy going at certain points, particularly if this is your first foray into the world of the Zeitgeist Movement. Fortunately however there are a series of short clips (which I shall link at the bottom) from the docu-movie popping up on YouTube which will serve to remove the problem of duration and hopefully the heavy going nature of the piece.  I recommend the first part, 40mins in duration, if nothing else as it gives a grand insight into the 'human nature vs human nurture' debate if you have never looked into it personally.  Environment is everything.  We are all a product of it.

Entire factories automated from picking to packing

Some skeptics will point to the technological aspect of the Zeitgeists Movement and its association with The Venus Project , such as machines or robots replacing humans in the workforce to free us to actually LIVE our lives rather than just exist, and claim radical notions of machines taking over the planet or ruling our lives.  This just is not the case.  To some extent machines already rule our lives.  There is a reduced workforce in industry, replaced by automation.  The human that has had a pace maker fitted to regulate their heart beat.  Traffic signals. Complex navigation systems for aeroplanes. Mobile phones, you may even be reading this on such a device?  The list is endless and yet it could be exponentially increased, further reducing the need for us to submit our time and labour in a Resource Based Economy.

The Automated Shop, a step up from tills

The fear of an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Will Smith like apocalypse is just unfounded.

It cannot be denied, The Zeitgeist Movement is gathering pace.  The number of people awakening to the things wrong with the world and that are now actively engaging in doing something about it is on the increase.  The number of chapters that have opened up, even since ZDay 2010, is up by more than double from 400 to 1000.  People claim to 'know what is going on' but do they really? Or they feel powerless to do or act and this is the furthest thing from the truth.   The number of people at the bottom rung of the ladder, struggling to keep pace with their human needs is growing and their ability to tread these murky, treacle like waters is becoming ever more difficult.

"We have eyes and we see, we do not have eyes so we can see"

If once born we were locked in a dark room with no light our nerve endings would not develop and we would be blind.  To this end our eyes only give us the ability to see what is there and humans cannot imagine what they cannot see.  Pause for a moment and ask yourself this; in the year 2000 would you have imagined that the phone in your hand, where the extent of its ability was to send and receive sms text messages and play 'Snake', would one day enable you to sit and watch live sport and movies, or send and receive emails or pictures on a touch screen iPhone? No.  Rewind sixty years and colour t.v would have been ridiculed, let alone a flat screen HD3D LED that we can consume today and sixty years before this the idea of a t.v or even a radio would have most likely led to a return to the witch burning days and so on.  Imagine where our technology may take us ten years from now...sixty years..or one hundred?  The difference however is that things made in the past were built to last due to the scarcity of resources where as in today's cyclical consumption society obsolesence is built into the system so we must continue to buy.

Just as Globalisation is a fact so is the technological revolution.  Feynman said in 1959 that there was 'plenty of room at the bottom' and the discovery of Nanosciences in the 1980s has proved this. We cannot deny it. We should embrace it.

If you went to a ZDay event give your experiences here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvfutuv6LP4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbdIGnhskYU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4FQaO8zmhI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my1pNszQ3zM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AM6dX_dwYk

Liberian Girl….

In 2010 my attention was brought to a documentary called 'The Vice Guide to Travel-Liberia' which was a truly shocking account of 'life' in Liberia in the so called 'civilised' 21st century.  The team that went in were truly brave and is an example of real 'investigative journalism' and not the 'news repeaters' we see daily.

The back ground story is that African American slaves were sent back to Liberia in 1821 and put in charge of Liberia, which is on the west coast of Africa neighbouring the current war torn Ivory Coast.  These African Americans came back 'home' and used the plantation slave way of life they had learned from America and imposed it on their countrymen enslaving the nation.
Somewhere along the line the President of Liberia, Samuel K Doe, was over thrown by a military coup led by American educated (and some say backed) Charles Taylor and friend 'Prince Johnson'.  He was tortured on t.v and it is rumoured that 'Prince Johnson' had eaten him….cannibalism is a recurring theme in the Liberian wars that follow.

The country descended into chaos as the rebel warlords fought for control as stories of corruption leaked out about the Presidents office.  What followed was nothing short of "a civil war on steroids" says Shane Smith of the Vice Guide team.  Former Liberian warlord Joshua Blahyi (General Butt Naked) now a born again Christian, tells his story of the civil war and the history of the warlords.  Blahyi (General Butt Naked) and his followers would fight naked after cutting out the hearts of, and bathing in the blood of, young children for it was meant to make them invincible.  Blahyi claims to have killed up to 20,000 people and now has a parish, been forgiven for his sins and has since been absolved of war crimes.

One of the biggest fears in Liberia currently is the withdrawal of the UN and its soldiers (scheduled to take place soon) and how this may lead to any of the warlords mobilising and trying to retake control of the country, leading to further blood shed on an unimaginable scale.

Cross dressing cannibals, rape, child soldiers on heroin and all before sunset, the Vice team take you on an emotional journey through the countries quite shocking history and current predicament.  I urge you to take a look at the documentary and make your own minds up.

http://www.vbs.tv/en-gb/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-liberia-1-of-8

Salutation

We are human beings that have a special relationship with the only planet the majority of us will ever live on, yet we are intent on ruining it in the pursuit of profit and 'power'.  To quote Jacque Fresco ''This shits got to go''

The illusion of choice surrounds us and this is epitomised on a daily basis by the 'news repeaters' (reporters) that live on our 'social conditioning boxes' (television) that force feed us stuff that they are told to. Our 'news' has been run down to just a handful of corporations, run by people such as Rupert Murdoch, and the art of investigative journalism seems to be but a distant memory. 

This blog aims to investigate what is real. 

So the journey to 'seek' the 'truth' begins…. Stay tuned!