Steve Merrick's Blog

You may well have noticed that our fwiends across the pond, in a one nation under god conclusion voted en masse for the other master that the bible warned them all about. Apparently Jesus was an American and Trump anointed by god, I don’t have the details about which god anointed him or why but if you thought that from there the only way was up, you would have been wrong. It’s a quagmire of patriotic mumbo jumbo that sounds like a fizzing soft drink. I woke up this morning to yet another news outbreak of deliciously retarded insanity from team Trump which included a top secret signal group chat? George Clooney? An appeals court judge stating Nazis had more rights to contest their removal from the States during WW2 than Venezuelans do today? All Europeans are pathetic? We shouldn’t be bombing Houthi rebels? This is how we are going to bomb Houthi rebels? No one seemingly questioned using signal for all this top secret meeting stuff, nor it seems did anyone check who was invited to join it. Woody Woodpecker is more security conscious and Bugs Bunny would have put up warning signs, but none of them checked if a reporter had been invited in. They may as well have filmed it live for a youtube thread, less people would have seen that. All this so Trumps America can buddy up with Russia to take on China? Which makes Europe an inconvenient obstacle, and the past 80 years an alternative truth. Yeppa folks it’s just another Wednesday on planet Earth. Honestly put, if you believe climate change is a hoax and that human rights are bad for you, then you should go and live in America, thats if you can get past all those loverly ICE officers. 

All of this without mentioning Elon Musk and Doge. The last person to try complete deconstruction on a similar scale was Brother Number One, AKA Pol Pot. That did not end well, history shows us that, and the momentum of America can and will slow without any foreign involvement, it’s an implosion away from the international, what fills the supposed vacuum left in it’s international absence? Isolating the American people to create a MAGA wonderland without rules or laws to protect them, reducing all to a kaleidoscopic oppression. If anything the New America is sounding weak, bullying and scared. More contemptuous of it’s allies than it’s enemies, but without the collective brain power to respect an enemy, accept a friend or even protect itself.  

Now as grovelling pathetic British writer and apologising to America for not being American. The question becomes how do you avoid all of this bollocks that is above my pay grade, as Americans earn more. Well accept that the lunatic fringe is now mainstream. Acceptance is phase two… What was phase one you may ask? Phase one is a confused anger, where Donald and his systemic delusions can Foxtrot Oscar with Father O’rielly and shove their BS up theirs? Phase one is as irrational as the New America is, so get it over with quickly for your own sake. Phase three. Erm yeah phase three, this is a tricky one. “It’s to soon to tell.” You will hear that a lot from phase threeers, phase three is a weird kinda denial, it’s connected to phase one but ultimately you have to ask how often you will get kicked in the teeth by these guys before you realise its an attack and respond in kind. Phase four is a deeper acceptance. It’s the realisation that no one can rely on America for anything and moves on to phase five, which feels a bit like phase one but more solid. The journey from Foxtrot Oscar to Father O’Reilly is cyclical. If you understand climate change then you will be angrier than others as the New America could take all of us with it. Science did not realise that self preservation required a salesman to sell us on climate change, these New American politicals did but they are selling a different product. Factor in the trade wars, and at a point the New America wont be worth dealing with, plus American consumers seem to be paying for the tariffs already… 

To avoid all of this you can try a zone out all of the relentless American news out there. Difficult but not impossible. You may want to focus on other countries. Avoiding Trumposity in the Ukraine has become tricky, but Ukraine has the support of almost the whole of of Europe whilst Putins only allies seem to be North Korea. Do not go to Middle East news either. Looking to Europe (if you are British) it’s genuinely depressing. As a smaller lunatic fringe is taking hold there. After an eternity of conservatism Britain may be over that but we may be alone on the planet at this time. Looking to British news is at least home grown problems but very little good news is there. The disabled are about to get it in the neck and prices will be going up on everything. Although our own lunatic fringe called the Reform party may have finally worked out how to split the Bigot atom and seems to be caught in a self destructive chain reaction. (Nigel Farage may have split the bigoted atom with a hammer and his own blood sample.) Humour can help, actually humour can become a refuge. However after a lot of thought the best advice I can give you is rejection. Rejecting the values and constructs being thrown at every one from across the pond, rejecting the actions, rejecting the opinions, rejecting the insults and rejecting the loss of the American Dream. Embracing in my case British values, and saying sod off is the best medicine. As a Brit who was raised in Australia I have a stubborn streak. I may sound Australian but I was born here and strangely the Britain that I love helped draught the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but we did also bomb Dresden, I cannot claim perfection, but we are free folks who can speak our minds, and what Trump is offering looks and sniffs like oppression, so good luck and best wishes New America but keep us out of it. This is what I hope most of us are thinking and would like our government to say.

Trumposity reaction scale

Phase one. Anger

Phase two. Acceptance

Phase three. Denial

Phase four. Deeper acceptance

Phase five. Rejection

Phase six. The rest of your life

Till next time. 

“Freedom For Greenland!”

Have you taken a side yet?

Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. Beirut. Lebanon. 2000. Phot by Steve Merrick

Governments globally have mostly chosen a side for their citizens in this latest battle of a long standing war, between Israel and the Gaza strip, but like every other recent war it is the civilian populations that pay for it. It is a picture that never changes, civilian suffering is by default the face of all modern wars and in all likelihood, historical ones. Pick any of the recent ones from Iraq-Ukraine-Afghanistan, violence has overflowed into the everyday world of market places, schools, shopping centres and hospitals, so frequently that you could mistake it for a requirement of wars. The optics of it are often hidden behind moral rhetoric and public disbelief. Terms like laser accuracy hide the truth of a 500 pound bomb which even when accurate will devastate a block of flats without much effort. Accuracy aside what is my point, when everyone knows civilians get hurt and killed at a higher ratio than soldiers and military do. Looking to Gaza, well, we all know what is coming, we have all seen it before to a larger or smaller scale, so why ask what side you are on? Why bother with that question? Because one lesson we should’ve learned is there are not that many good guys left in this world.

Children playing football on top of a mass grave, dug after the 1982 massacre Sabra and Shatila refugee camp. Beirut. Lebanon. 2000. Photo by Steve Merrick

We even have memes for it all, one of them is that. “Violence never works.” Well tell that to the Taliban, or any military and watch them shrug knowingly. Violence does work terrifyingly well for the record, in the West we may deplore it but look at the number of regimes worldwide employing it daily. Then look to our own recent track record in bombing things and people. It gets even worse elsewhere and that is pretty evident from what is happening in the Gaza strip and Israel right now, or the Ukraine. Violence. Both Hamas and the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) are very good at violence, but neither really recognises the civilians caught up in their battles. Hamas rampages and kills over 1400 civilians whilst the IDF death toll in Gaza could be topping over 8000 last time I looked. Yet the main argument is can you trust the figures Hamas/Gaza medics are releasing. Casting doubt on casualty figures hides a depressing reality, when bombs are falling left right and centre, continuously, then the casualty figures seem very light to me. If a building collapses in London and in spite of Government cut backs on emergency services we would be able to rescue those underneath it, and tell you who has been killed and injured. Gaza is not London though, the rescuers would be under fire and probably unable to do as much as they would want to, how many unknown are there under all that rubble as entire built up areas are destroyed. I don’t know and nor do you.

Deception is historically another major factor of any warfare, therefore any statements released have to be thoroughly researched before reported, by any side, not because they are all a pack of liars, but because no-one ever tells their opponent what they are doing. A transparent war would be insane. Any journalist taking any statement on face value is in for a bad surprise on a good day, in wartime? Yet it is all being taken on face value, rhetorical justifications and good old secrecy obscure a very hard truth. Civilians are dying and being injured at an alarming rate, on both sides of the immediate fighting. However lets obscure it all even further, because it is not just a two sided coin. There are many other players involved in this whole humanitarian shit storm. America has stated which side it supports, even arresting American Jewish anti war protesters to reinforce the point, plus reinforcing Israels boundaries with aircraft carriers. Russia too has made a point of calling for a ceasefire, yet lurking in the dark is Iran. Listen, if I view Israel and Iran on paper they are both militarised religious states with oppressed minorities. Iranian fashion police killed a teenage school kid recently on a train. She was a civilian. Iran has backed Hamas. Sent them money and weaponry, designs for weapons. This battlefield is not just one sided, even the god Vishnu with all his arms could not juggle all of the moving parts of it. Yet neither side is protecting their own civilians or the civilians of their purported enemies. Rockets fired from Gaza and bombs fired from Israel prove this point.

Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. Beirut. Lebanon. 2000. Photo by Steve Merrick

However as Irans intelligence service leaks like a rusty ship, and Hamas knows that, they bided their time and kept quiet. Using intelligence terminology, (stolen from anime.) Hamas went autistic, silent and planned an operation. Maybe the Mossad were lulled into sleepwalking prior to their attack, relying on hacking tools and fences for their defence, possibly even over estimating the Iranians control of Hamas, and not picking up on other real signals, but when the attack came it was merciless, it was murder, it was terrorism, and it was aimed at civilians. The response was almost immediate, and it too whether by design or flawed use targeted civilians. Lets face it, you cannot attack the most densely populated place on Earth, without killing civilians, children, women, men and hostages. It’s not even possible as bombs blow up scattering buildings and shrapnel in there wake. Yet even there knowing that that is a truth, the attack went ahead. Even the UN have been kicked out of this battle, for having the audacity to point out that none of this is happening in a vacuum.

Israels nightmare has been continuous, yet very self inflicted as well, action begs reaction, Israel told American officials in 2008 that they planned to keep Gaza’s economy on the brink of collapse. Controlling everything from water, food to healthcare became the name of the game, the boundaries of Gaza were already controlled. The UN at one point estimated that Gaza would become unliveable in by 2020, (I am going from memory there, so may have the year wrong,) but without the foreign aid Gaza has always been doomed. Irregular wars, atrocities and violence alongside massive levels of unemployment, and of course Hamas, who equally seem to want this status quo to continue as it justifies their existence, the same way the IDF do. Throw into the mix successive right wing Governments in Israel, almost psychotic trigger happy settlers, and add the real fanatics in the strip, and what chance does a Gaza Palestinian civilian have at success and happiness?

Sabra and Shatila. Palestinian refugee camp. Beirut. Lebanon. 2000. Photo by Steve Merrick

All human beings are created free and equal in dignity and rights. That is the opening of article one of the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, it’s this atheist writers bible for the record, that is something I have chosen to believe in and strive for. Full stop. It does not have exclusions. If anyone in the opposing forces reads these words it does not exclude Israelis or Palestinians. To my own Government in Britain, it does not exclude refugees and immigrants. We are all human beings. When both sides have lost sight of humanity, can anyone really choose a side? When besieging a trap like Gaza where people have been corralled and imprisoned by planned action, for decades and the embargo can result in malnutrition and diseases, where is the claimed moral high ground? Cholera is a water borne disease that doesn’t care about the nationality, yet without enough aid reaching them, the civilians will start to drop like flies. When Hamas was attacking raping and gunning down civilians it considered that righteous, when the IDF bomb knowing full well it will be carnage and claim righteousness, can anyone stop what is happening?

Since neither side can see the humanity in the other, then this war will probably have to be fought out until both sides have exhausted themselves. Clearly a new category of civilian has been born, it was probably always there, but Ci-Villains can be ignored and killed. Ci-Villains can be targeted. Child Ci-Villains. Women Ci-Villains and Men Ci-Villains. That is what all of the mutually confirming propaganda is creating. Labelling. Justifying. There is another name for them and that is victims. Within all of this are multiple human faces. Heartbeats stopped prematurely, limbs lost, eyesight, hearing and voices demolished. The psychological impacts will be extreme to. The mutual paranoia is going to be hard to recover from. At a future point this war will end but at what cost to the entire region and the world? When the deepening rifts between human tribes create only pain what is the point? When mutual distrust turns to weaponised mutual racism what is the point, but then that has already been the point for decades.

Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. Beirut. Lebanon. 2000. Photo by Steve Merrick

Somewhere in this dance of speeding metals and chemistry, there has to be a need for neutrality, when the rhetoric dies and the realisation hits there will be a need for neutrality. If it saves one life from suffering then we will need the medics, the doctors, the engineers, and human beings. I can see how this may sound to you, but I will not choose a side here because in truth both are wrong, and those that are demanding you choose by political, racial, cultural or religious preference about this war are wrong. I am simply on the side of all the civilians caught up in the violence. All of them.

For the record that includes you, whichever side you are on.

Steve Merrick

Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. Beirut. Lebanon. 2000. Photo by Steve Merrick

What Britain needs right now is a National Institute Of Bullshitters. (NIBS) Oxford and Cambridge universities could offer higher degrees in advanced Bullshittery for all those who have taken the foundation courses in basic Bullshitting. In fact the Government would currently back the academics right to free speech, whilst making it illegal for the none qualified to speak. There is a fine line between indoctrination and liberation in any education system, but the line has been reduced to a hypothetical one by the sheer levels of political BS that are being thrown around by our neoliberal greed mongers in parliament. When a parliament is totally fixated on its parties colour codes, then the parliamentarians become blinded to the country they represent. This baffling reality is clear to anyone who is politically colourblind but for concrete reasons, based on a solid foundation of political bullshit, the situation will not be changing any time soon. Basically it’s some weird offshoot of Stalinism, where everything is given over to the Party. Everything.

The new policing bill is designed to silence people. The freedom to peacefully protest has now gone. The scope of this bill is sweeping, it is targeted at the Extinction Rebellion (XR) and Black Lives Matter (BLM) movements. Yet goes way beyond them, Gypsies are a pet hate and face some serious problems with this bill, but so do all of us. This singular bill reduces our rights to freely speak, to object, and protest against any issue that our politicians don’t deem worthy. If you are thinking that protest and freedom of speech are expressions of the same thing, keep quiet about it. That is the new definition of freedom of speech. In one fell swoop every good piece of work done by our police forces has been cancelled out. Reducing police forces nationally to political forces for the party. 99% of policing has nothing to do with politics, but it is now politicised. Policing by consent has gone with this bill, replaced by? Justice has always been blind, simply a force like the wind, it has to be neutral, this bill is anything but neutral, there has been no mention of any of the extreme right wing organisations, only the environmental and the BLM, if it is a Conservative cause celebre, then you can protest away, if it isn’t, you can’t. By the sweeping definitions used in the new bill, if you want to embargo dangerous products or producers, that could by definition be illegal, on a very real level these words could also be illegal. Relax you have just lost another freedom.

I was cutting through the Regents Canal in Camden Town, after a rather random run in with a Conservative party cardholder, I listened and replied but was informed that, “If you don’t like this country you can always leave.” The conversation had been about the pandemic and the early screw ups, it had then ballooned up to the HS2 cost projections, with reference (by me) to politicians green washing the industrial, and come to an abrupt end. The point is that the man was of the opinion that the party was the country, and the country is blue. It is kind of implied that if I want to live in the country of my birth I have to be blue too. Or live with the Right Wing label of North London Metropolitan Liberal Elite? Or emigrate. Or just shut up. Or drop dead. Or just cease to be Steve Merrick and live a lie. So cycling away I wasn’t even angry or shocked, I was certainly not feeling English but have always identified as British anyway, cycling itself is probably a Conservative evil somewhere in the bowels of parliament, however it is clear that to be British may soon require an obligation to be intolerant and bigoted, because the party says so, and considering that I had been European a few months ago I couldn’t help wondering what the next rightwing overhaul would be. If Scotland does a necessary runner then the British label will have gone the way of the Dodo. Considering that there is no-one worth voting for in the two main parties, allow the man who knows all politics is treachery, to state that Freedom may just be lost when you see no representation of your values in government.

It was as I was thinking this that I saw the poster, it’s just two guys kissing but some offended nut had scratched the mouths off them, silenced them, but left them eye contact, that sums up this bill beautifully, as the people of the land have become little more than silenced dumbfounded film extras for a political stage play, where the controlled narratives are beyond criticism, where a reinvigorated class system can rampage fearlessly, and where everything has to be surrendered the party. “Greed and capitalism are behind vaccine success.” In context these are Boris’s comments about the vaccine but equally sit firmly behind this bill and many other legal changes. Money and power. Britains vaccination program is ahead of the rest of the world, that is beyond a success, and it has to be done, but the blatant levels of Cronyism where the party donors are reaping contractual rewards without any tendering process is the shape of things to come. The police bill is of the party and for the party, as no criticism of the party will be tolerated. Ignore the corner cutting, and ignore the crumbling legal systems inability to provide legal representation to anyone who cannot afford it. What about linking voting with credit ratings, that way you can demolish the countries foundations completely, and when it all goes pear shaped, well the party can blame immigrants again.

Politics always has an impact on policing, but when the police are directly under the control and whims of political bias it will always end badly, because politicians lie. Reducing the police to a bluffing poker player facing a tsunami of aces. Having been on both sides of police raids I understand more than I should about policing, I admit doing 99 miles an hour up Caledonian Road in a siren blazing Panda car was for photographer Steve on a back seat assignment, fun, the mania driven pool cue punch up we drove into was not fun. Good photos but unfunny ones. I have many fond memories of working alongside the Met Police, but they are also tainted by bad ones, the look on the face of a constable who had found a long dead pensioner, alone in her flat. The domestic violence officer who stuttered another memory my way. A traffic policeman who saw something to horrible for this article. Policing is as messy as humanity is, policing is a real world issue, whereas politics is the great game. Politics is about preconceptions and perceptions, a car accident is not. Protests are mostly political theatre, but they perform a vital role as a social safety valve, locking a safety valve means pressure builds up until. Boom! That is the reality of this bill. If a screw is tightened to tightly the wood will fracture, when people fracture it is freaking horrific. In the fantasy world of the party this makes sense, as does a new nuclear weapons development program, a program that has forgotten about all the new counter measures against ICBM missiles that have been developed is useless for the record, yet we will all be paying for it.

So I am wondering what else I will be required to surrender to the party.

When freedom of speech is such a common rallying cry I have to ask the question of what is it? Bare with me as fundamental and basic questions often yield surprising results, and with Freedom Of Speech we are talking about a basic building block of all modern human societies. All over the planet it is under attack whilst in other parts of our world it is being abused appallingly, closer afield it has become manipulated and we have over the last few decades seen a retranslation of it’s basic meaning, that modern review is now very far away from the initial meaning it had, in it’s point of legal origin in the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights. (UDOHR) I am an atheist, and my personal bible has and probably always will be the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, I read it fully, then I read it again and again. After a lot of deep thought I chose it as my personal bible, decided to follow the rules of it, because it is simply the best thing written by humans for humans, that and the fact that I am not cut out to become an atheist buddhist resulted in my decision. It guarantees my rights as a Steve as much as it does your own rights, everyone you know or don’t know is protected by it’s articles too, even if they haven’t read it, every single human being is covered by it, because it is universal. But you cannot look at any single article of the UDOHR in isolation, and this is a key point of this word string you are reading. I am going to start at the end of the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights with article 30.

“Nothing in this declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.”

Every single right in the UDOHR is interconnected like psychological lego bricks, glued together in a legal mutually protective chain of rights. You cannot cherry pick this document because of the brilliance of article 30. As an atheist allow me to pick article 18. “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, or observance.” So rolling onto article 19. “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Which leads to article 20. “1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. 2. No one may be compelled to join an association.” But lets not forget article 3 here because. “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.”

My freedom of speech comes with a responsibility for my words, it is in context to the rest of this declaration, all freedom of speech has that responsibility attached, it is imbued in our rights. Looking at the polarisation of our world can I say politicians share that responsibility? Looking at the current pandemic we are all facing, can I claim that the anti lockdown, anti vaccination, pandemic conspiracy movements, claiming that an outbreak on this global scale is a hoax, whilst declaring that their freedom of speech and movement outweigh the basic right to life for others have that right? Recently this movement has been invading NHS hospitals, there has been violence, people have been hurt, intimidated and had their basic human rights abused in the name of freedom of speech. If you believe that vitamin C will save you, yes you have that right to believe it, if you believe vaccinations are dangerous then yes you have the right to believe it, freedom of thought is guaranteed, but you do not have the right to endanger others, you do not have the right to deny others healthcare options, your freedom of speech cannot be exclusively detrimental to any of the other human rights. Basically if the content of your freedom of speech denies the human rights of others, then you can Foxtrot Oscar with it. If like me you are in lockdown at this time, and have lost the right to movement, that is not a human rights abuse, because everyone has the right to life and by staying put at this time we may be saving our own and many other peoples lives. Simple, an interpretation of UDOHR, balanced in the context of all of it’s 30 articles. However in our voter conscious politicians, none have really attempted to tackle the issues that the anti lockdown movement have created, because many of our politicians have abused freedom of speech equally as well.

We all watched Trumpist fanatics take over Washington DC recently, but in Britain we seemed to have forgotten that this was a regular occurrence in pre pandemic London. Right wing white supremacists created no go areas with their protests, up to and including the whole of Parliament Square. Their freedom of speech was the only thing that mattered, violence was a norm too, and when encountering racists, what do the other articles of UDOHR state. Article 1. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with dignity and conscience and act towards one and other in the spirit of brotherhood.” Or article 2’s opening. “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration, without distinction of any kind.” Racism by it’s very nature acts against the rights of others, stripping human rights away from people because your freedom of speech is more important is actually incompatible with human rights. You cannot use human rights to take away human rights. In a world of labels, where politicians play with lives haphazardly, without responsibility for their often divisive words, is it any surprise that freedom of speech has mutated into an unfathomable mess. Every word you have just read may be responsibly put but is it even relevant, when freedom of speech has become nought more self justifying political gibberish. Where globally too many politicians use their freedom of expression to abuse the human rights of others. In the words of the UN General Assemblies preamble.

“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Or. “Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people.” I believe in freedom of speech, it is essential, but it is not in isolation, it is not a singular freedom, it is not a freedom that can be used to strip the rights from others. It is not a freedom for shareholders to fund liars about climate change so they can get a few decades of profits, decades that have now taken the right to life from too many people, it is not a freedom for political agendas to strip the rights from immigrants or other human beings, it is not a freedom to spread spite or lies, lies that strip rights away from others. Freedom of speech is a privilege that comes with a responsibility for your words, it is a noble obligation of humanity.

“Now, Therefore the General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration Of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.”

This I believe in. This I chose to strive for in my own way. This is not about you or me, this declaration is for all of us. Every child, every woman and every man. All human beings. Freedom itself is on one level self respect, and respect. Google the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, it is on almost every United Nations website, do not view any one of your rights in isolation, because a human being is all of them, look at your world, see it as it is, and know that we as a species are very far away from the UDOHR ideals, but they are ideals truly worth striving for. Above all else read it, and embrace this simple concept. “All Human Beings.” All of us, because if you are reading these words you are human. Freedom of speech has caused damages throughout our history, not because of literacy being inherently evil, but because truth is inherently opaque. Take responsibility for your words, and own them, know that they are a privilege, an obligation and that they may have weight, but when you understand them in context to all your other rights, your words may well improve everything around you. So I will end with article four, because when imprisoned mindsets speak they will inevitably incarcerate themselves and others, which is the opposite of freedom. That is the truth of these words, freedom is a right, and, you cannot use your freedoms to deny freedom to others.

Article 4:

“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”

Steve Jobs is in heaven eating all our personal information, but it’s going to take him an infinity to realise he is actually in hell. In another hell sits a president, dumbfounded at his own impeachment, and I have to posit a question, is Trump sane enough to face a trial? He doesn’t seem to comprehend what is going on around him at this time. Luckily though I am not a medical expert so I cannot answer my question for you, but will offer emotional support to the poor psychiatrist that may be chosen for that task, thats if America can even face that question at all. I can’t face that question and I am the one asking it. On the horizon is another hell, in it a dumb and bombastic incompetent fool is leading a country on a unique trajectory, a trajectory he is blaming the people for, with illusive tools he controls it all, believing he has his finger on the pulse of the society he singularly see’s, only a very small minority group seem to be able to see it too, yet he is not insane just an ignorant buffoon, between these two men the common denominator may just be democracy. There are so many levels of hell out there too, who knows maybe democracy is just another one of them. Am I in a level of hell? Maybe? Nuts or incompetent the result is the same.

There are so many trapdoors and mousetraps in our lands, lands where every human development can be weaponised, even bandages, which have saved a googolplex of living things could conceivably be used to strangle someone, or start a house fire in the hands of an arsonist. It hinges on the mindset of the user. Thats all. Every single human tool from the frying pan to an atom bomb has a dual use to it. A positive, a negative. A salvation or an apocalypse. A heaven or a hell. The flip side of any tool is well known. Yet the psychology of the human using it is still some kind of perverse mystery. Our psychology is another tool, and like everything else it can trick us. I don’t or won’t even pretend to understand humanity. It’s not denial it’s a deep felt confusion. Looking at democracy which is one of the main social tools humans use, and throughout the world it has become a corrupted vision, where consensus has been replaced by theatrical ultimatums. Dumbed even further down by the limited options of left or right. Yes with a limited choice, people are forced to choose between, left wing or right wing. Both political flip-sides are delusional, because the real energy is in the middle ground. Any solution is usually there to, but globally we have to choose between two extremes. Politics is social psychology in the same way that capitalism or communism is social psychology. However in politics I see a self deceiving level of hell. As humans evolved in a universe that relies on conflicting forces to function is it any surprise to find a psychologically conflicted primate?

The universe relies on many different and often conflicting forces, action and reaction on an infinite scale, thats how it works, at the time I write this I am thinking a lot about time and dark matter. Time is not as constant as our hard wiring tells us it is. Thermodynamic processes work just as well in reverse, and time as we see it is a thermodynamic phenomenon, now add action and reaction to it, and more than a few extremely dense gravitational bodies, and time will flow backwards. Picture a photon, now picture the reversal as its entangled partner travels away from you, that behaviour looks like one component of dark matter. Reverse any thermodynamic process and it behaves like dark matter or dark energy. Cosmic cold patches are thermodynamics reversed perhaps. Even the uneven nature of the universal is possibly a result of time flowing in reverse, contraction and expansion, creating an infinite bubble of cyclical energies. The easiest way to explain it is visual. Picture an old style grandparent pocket watch. Now add the Yin and Yang symbol to it. On each side of the face add a small watch. One flowing forwards powering the opposite that is flowing backwards. An infinite mechanism where the cogs power each other. Whether this is just my madness or my sanity showing is possibly just another hot or cold level of hell, but that is an expression of the universe that we have all evolved from. A universe where time may even go up or down or East to West. The biggest surprise of all is that living things are inevitable, and heres a shot in the darkness about life itself, in that it can only thrive in between all the extreme forces.

Its possible that any living thing is just an expression of those cosmical and comical forces, a conformed biological template, and psychology like our minds only functions through our inner conflicts expressing themselves socially. You can say what you like about our pseudo individualities, but ultimately they are all in your head. The better personalities in our lives are in between themselves and society balanced. Particles make very random or conformed choices in their behaviour, and guess what, people do too. Humanity can be expressed in a wave form, and even spiteful events from our history can be quantified as kelvin waves, think about a freak wave at sea, (thats a Kelvin Wave,) now look at your own life and society, any wave will for diverse reasons suddenly surge, causing chaos. Was the Holocaust a kelvin event? Was Pol Pot? Life is all about choices, that is all. Yet in politics our choices are limited to extremes, in economics we are limited to extremes, but all waves conform, and life and psychology can only thrive in the middle zone between hot and cold, so having polarised gangs in the shape of political parties offering extremes is? It may be that political polarisations create the middle ground we need, on the other it may not. Once you get to a point of over view then that perspective changes your interpretation of everything. Basically you don’t have to think the same way you did before, ever again. Seeing the universes conflicts as a harmony of potential, and life as potential, leads to a retranslation of humanity, as we are all nothing but potential futures, depending on the choices we make, because life is nothing but choices. Which leads me back to Steve jobs eating all that personal information. Is he in heaven or hell?

In the Planet Earth instruction book it says, add light and heat, stabilise the geology a bit, hurl a few meteors at it, add water and stir for a billion or three human years, occasionally adding a pinch of comet debris. Thats from the Acme Junior, Build Your Own Solar System kit. The Earth came with a free moon too but Wylie Coyote brought the whole production run. As instructions go its not to far from the truth either. Animated minerals combined and entwined in dance of lego complexity during the early history of our planet, and with a lot of shaking we now have a plethora of living things on our planet. Shame that we, humanity, are becoming the extinction queens and deadlier to life on Earth than the meteor that took out the dinosaurs was. Even my own government only a few days ago allowed the use of bee killing pesticides here in Britain, and with badgers being shot left right and centre, you may be wondering what if any wildlife will be left in the UK? This article is not about the human decimation of the animal kingdom, or the fact that without Europes laws Britain is about to embrace experimental genetically modified crops as our main source of food, or any of the other painful viral, economic, or social issues that are around at this time. No! This article is not about the boring stuff of politic! It’s not about Boris! Or left! Or right! (Although it will make one political observation at the end.) This article is all about Lichen!

Having used six exclamation marks to get you to this sentence lets hit you with the stuff that makes lichen amazing. It starts with the question what are they? Ask yourself what they are, right now, and take on board that lichen cover between 6-8% of the land mass of planet Earth, seriously if lichen were an empire, well. “The sun never sets on the lichen empire.” Yet what are they? Neither plant nor fungus nor bacteria, but they are combinations of them, fungus, plant or bacteria, they are generally two of the three. You see whilst zillions of generations of humans have been waging warfare for every conceivable reason up to and including Helen of bleeding Troy, lichen have been cooperating with each other to thrive. Having evolved several times throughout the tree of life, lichen are symbiotic organisms. At somewhen in history fungi and algae banded together, at another somewhen fungi and Cyanobacteria banded together. There are even triumvirate combinations of all three, three totally different organisms have become one recognisable species. This beneficial relationship combination is called symbiosis, although there are some parasitic elements in certain lichen too. The diversity of these combinations is mind blowing in its shape and colour variations, lichen can thrive anywhere that there is good air quality. Listen they can live inside and outside of rocks, abandoned rubber car tyres, bones, walls, arctic tundra, forests, deserts, non arctic tundra and even toxic slag heaps. Pretty much any surface could become home to lichen. None of the diverse organisms can survive well if at all without the others.

Lichen are sort of self contained tiny weeny ecosystems. For the sake of simplicity I will break them into two groups, (this is a lie but it is the simplest way of explaining the roller coaster evolution landslide known as Lichens.) Cyanobacteria and algal families. Now the algae are plants, whilst the other are bacteria, the common denominator is that they both photosynthesise, (converting sunlight into energy that is usually in the form of glucose. (Sugars.)) Now, wrap a fungi or three around them and all of the organisms can convert sunlight to energy, and that combination has become self sufficient, a single collaborative entity. Many of the fungal elements have lost the ability to feed beyond the photosynthetic as a result, add water and away you go. Now to us humans we identify any of the 20000 types of lichen using the fungal element, which is external to the synthesiser. We call the fungal element a mycobiont, but as about 20% of all fungal species have adapted to lichenisation and evolved to live as a symbiont, then it appears to be a very successful win/win for the organisms involved. Technically the same can be said for the photosynthetic organism, known scientifically as photobionts. Yet that win/win relationship is key to the success of lichens globally, now add more elements, and the complexity of the lichen can increase. Then look at the other organisms in the micro environments and observe the relationships that have evolved.

Look putting aside the entire dictionary section that is dedicated to different lichen systems, what makes them a hard core species? Without whimsy one of the worlds oldest organisms is a Lichen. It is an arctic species called Map Lichen, one is estimated to be 8600 years old. Which for the record, predates most human farming, and it appears to still be going strong, so who knows how long it will live. The European Space Agency ran an experiment and lichen can survive in space. A more recent study showed that they remain viable after being exposed to space for over a year and a half. A year ago Steve, (thats me the guy writing this,) who has killed every plant he has ever tried to grow, found a little lichen on a fallen bit of tree bark, it is still alive and lives in an old coffee cup, it’s my pet lichen and it’s name is Symbio, and it’s still alive. Capable of living well in the most extreme environments, now covering 6-8% of the Earths surface, longevity, strength, and amazing cooperative relationships. Thats what lichen are, a hybrid combination that now retails everywhere on Earth. Collaborators of organic harmonies, and sadly lichenisation is not yet an official word. However these words are simply an introduction to lichen, sort of a dare you to read up on them, look out for them too, because if there are no lichen on the walls of your neighbourhood, then you should run away, as the only thing besides the ocean that thwarts them is poor air quality, and poor air quality is bad for you. Now at the beginning I did promise a political observation. It is this. Lichen have achieved all this and more without a single recognisable brain cell. Hmmmmm.

Fallen leaf on a Mushroom, plant and fungus disconected.Mushrooms on a bed of moss and lichen.Fungi growing on a leaf.Classic mixed lichen.

A friend recently asked me how my sanity was holding up? “I am saner than a sunbathing penguin in a heatwave.” Was my reply. Then I was professionally asked for my POV on the Brexit deal by a journalist. My gut reaction was to tell em to rack off, sod off and to leave me alone. Which I did. When I of a countries populace can Foxtrot Oscar what do I care. When its even clearer that our Political “Elite,” care even less, does it matter what anyone thinks anymore. When a modern capitalist dystopia is reduced to apathy, that should illustrate the point more than any verbiage from me can. Lets quote Boris Johnson at this point in this opening paragraph. “Fuck business.” He actually said that. It’s been downhill at a breathless pace since that quote, and for the record I am holding on by my finger nails as I don’t want to go down with him or you. All this without mentioning the pandemic. So far that is another Boris “Victory,” that victory eclipses the sun, really. Blessed are the incompetent for they shall inherit the Earth. Science met politic in the Downing Street garden, and science was eclipsed by an ignorant glowing fantastical plan of business as usual. If only we could power the country with political egos. Yet that question of how I feel about Brexit stuck with me.

How do I explain the bitter sweet alienation of this?

By the end of it no one but Downing Streets elite cared. Even Europe didn’t give a damn anymore. I sure as hell didn’t. The Japanese have a perfect word to describe the adolescent frolics of British politicians. “Chunibyo.” It’s usually used in reference to teenage delusions as kids try to stand out by claiming everything from super powers through to superior intellect. Which if I apply it to British political parties explains a lot. Chunibyo politics, economics, and even Chunibyo public health reactions. Then a lot of our media embraced the same method, and in synch with Chunibyo journalism, we finally arrive at the great event. Not to stop there if I look at politics right now, I should add another concept I have been playing with. Political Pollution. Add the internet, add the lockdown, add a touch of insanity and a pinch of cocaine, then stir it, heat it up a bit and Voila! Victory.

I have just watched Britain walk off the international stage. I have watched the British people silenced by delusional stupidity. I have been silenced by the same. I have cut up my press card. I became a ghost, but even that wasn’t enough, nope, now I am a zero, just an observer, a point between action and reaction, my pictures will simply be what I see. Nothing more and nothing less, but without journalisms cosy complacent blanket will they matter anyway? Seriously when there is no-one worth voting for, what point freedom of speech? When all I expect from a government is interference, what point freedom of any kind. Welcome to a place where you have to think twice if you identify as British, because apparently you have to be English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish. Welcome to a country where freedom of speech comes without any responsibility for your words, welcome to a silent future, and welcome to stasis. When truth and reality are made irrelevant what point in words about anything, because lies are the real thing now, and liars are the only representatives we have on offer, but then these words are not about Brexit, they are about how I feel.

They are about a photograph. It had to be a bad photograph to. Its a photo of how I feel. An illustration. I started by making small placards, then initially added a lucky cat, that was too good, so I tried a solar dog wobbler, still to good and strangely accurate. Via a robot I could see it was wrong. Using brexiteer memes the photo was still wrong. Then it dawned on me. Use the pigeons, nobody cares what pigeons think or do, whether they live or die is irrelevant to of people. It hinged on the Vote Pig/eon placard too. In lockdown I took a deliberately bad picture to illustrate a truth. When no one is worth voting for, you are not represented, and silenced. Yet with irrelevant heart, I publish these words, a zero expecting zero, and then turn my back on them.

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Looking at the human world you can be forgiven for seeing it as nought more than a collision of random variables, it isn’t, it’s actually quite wavelike in the social structures we have generationally evolved around us, they have currants and form streams, any human society is capable of generating tidal social storm surges too. All the differing tribes of human crazy are jockeying for powers weird as I type, twisting the soft social sands as rival insanities collide causing a sharp chaos for all involved. This article is not helped by my own continued ghostly experiment, yes stevesevilempire is still haunting around London, I am breathing, and dressing quite brightly, I could even claim to be a friendly ghost, a simple Casper who is witnessing and documenting the conflicting insanities of the once proud primate called human. If only I was invisible, but my ghostliness is a state of mind in and of itself. It’s a personal liberation. Gone is morality, and I could also argue that sanity is gone too, but when insanity is part of the new normal, which is a fact of life that Donald Trump proves on a daily basis, sanity suddenly looks abnormal and it is now ridiculous to cling to it, under these unique circumstances a shredded mind can become a haven of sunshine, especially as it watches this ignorant stampede of politics and economics cascading out of control.

All in all it has been a strangely calm week.

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Likening the polarised political lunacy to a screw, and adding the DIY screwdriver mantra, “Lefty loosey righty tighty.” Sums up the world today with an enviable eloquence. Not that there is any difference between left and right in todays Britain. Nope, when all the parties have on offer is a thrift store collection of collective fears, well you get what you voted for, and yes, there is still no one worth voting for in our two main parties, because in reality, all politics is treachery.

The second wave is now upon us. The Coronavirus is spiralling like a tornado and the main political debate is? When to close the pubs. Now a sane person could be thinking. “In these trying times is that a priority?” Or. “How alcoholic are our illustrious honourable leaders?” Yet that is a mistake any sane person would make, because the new normal is not a sane thing, if denial is the food of leadership, then Boris is conducting a symphony of contradicting denials, and because 98% of us will prevail, but possibly starve to death after the pandemic closes shop in the next few years, it will be his epic leadership that has saved us. Another theory could be that all Coronaviruses wear wristwatches, and being night owls by nature rarely wake up before 11pm, which at least tries to explain pubs closing at 10pm or why they are open at all. Yes teeny weeny Timex’s. Trying to understand Downing Streets next move is more baffling than Wombat poop is, seriously Wombats drop square poops, little cubes, and whatever the evolutionary advantage is, is at least workable out-able, unlike our progressive leading actors playing at game o thrones. With a parliament this bad, sanity is now so passez and last year. Which is why we have Three Tiers Of Lockdown now, yes lets complicate the hell out of shutting our doors. It may be the next hit song, three tears of lockdown.

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As a ghost like apparition of a one time photojournalist, I cannot criticise any of this, it’s all the contradictions combining and tripping us all up. The algorithms and waves of our societies are sluggish and stuck, as we get bogged down then stumble over all the conflicting trip wires of contradiction, stasis. Yes the word stasis crept into this article, and into my week. Foundations. Reality. Do we need them? Not when we have twitter, no not at all. I love twitter as it is simply an emergent wave of a human now. Twitter looks nuts because we as a species are nuts. As a ghost I enjoy tweeting, its particularly good for photographs, which is what I do most, contrary to my crumbled mind I am a professional photographer after all. So I tweeted some of the pics that are with this article. I tweeted a simple question too. The ghost of stevesevilempire asked. “What is the environmental cost of HS2? Now Apart from dodging HS2 trucks on my bicycle, (which is shit scary even for a ghost.) I have only ever seen HS2 people chopping perfectly good but inconvenient trees down, if I ever play Resident Evil again and the chainsaw guys and gals attack me, I will assume they work for HS2. However in replies I found out another contradiction. HS2 is greener than a green party member in a green room. Yeppa it was another of those pesky contradictions, like a freight train it came out of the blue, with chalk like logic the blows of rebuttal were struck. I discovered that my “intellectual vacuity is depressing but typical.” Then came the hammer blow. “You people can’t see the woods for the trees.” Who knows maybe I shouldn’t have initially replied asking for an answer using a smiley face. However with that many chainsaw happy people on the payroll, there won’t be much wood left.

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Now I am going to be a snark here, by copy pasting a twitter exchange but the HS2 is green argument is this. “Without HS2 we don’t have the rail capacity for the future to get people and freight off roads and cut transport CO2 emissions to tackle global climate change. Stopping HS2 isn’t green, it’s exactly the opposite. Opponents of HS2 are doing the road lobby’s job for it.”

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As I read the reply, my ghost should have shouted “Hallelujah! I have seen the light.” Then presumably run off to do PR photography for the lovely honest people at Exxon Mobil. Yet as Swiss cheese arguments go this one isn’t the worst ever but accurate it is not. It’s almost expected too, as the, we are greener than you are card game, is a formula cooked up by climate deniers and Exxon Mobil in the first place, and I will point out that I am stevesevilempire and have no wish to be considered a good guy anyway. Plus I am a ghost. So I replied. “That doesn’t answer the question.”

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It has all become quite ghost like and insubstantial for me lately, seriously I am about as engaged as a microbe at the time I write these words. Looking at Britain I am ponderously invisible as I watch, photograph and witness new levels of rampaging stupidity, without much more than a morbid curiosity about where it all leads, stevesevilempire has become a ghost, taking the photos and wondering how deep the dungeon UK is going to be dug. However if stupid is a dungeon someone must have lost the keys, then our leaders decided to weld the doors shut, and that as they say, was that. Looking over the Pond to the land of the free is not much help, as the American president isn’t going to rest, until his own secret service drags him out of the Oval Office in a straight jacket. Absurdity and the right wing seem to be the new normal, but who cares what I think because I have decided to be a ghost. I had just finished editing the first batch of pictures from the Saturday morning anti lockdown protest, at the Shades pub, when the idea hit me, floating like an invisible zephyr I went to the loo, but one of the anti lockdown angry men was in there too, “Take the mask off you don’t need it.” He said in the confined space, and whilst I stood at a urinal, holding my cock and begging it to pee, he decided to go on a speakers corner style rant at me. So I blanked him. If there had been a soapbox in the loos it could’ve been a photo, but my hands were otherwise engaged. Having an irrational diatribe whilst trying to take a leak is not the most comfortable scenario, and at some point he must have realised he was in a toilet being ignored by the other guy in it, and left saying. “That mask is a symbol of your fear take it off for gawds sake before the country is on its knees.”

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Knowing full well that the country is flat on it’s face, I wondered if we would all get collectively dizzy on our knees, lets face it, it hasn’t been the decades of austerity fuelled by decades of financial and political incompetence, nope its the face mask. Judging by Boris’s responses to this crisis you could be forgiven for assuming it’s all going a bit sci fi, as wild claims go it’s neck and neck in the Tory party in a good year, but this being 2020 is not a good year. Returning to my table and a colleague, we discussed the current pandemic measures. All the pubs are now closing at ten, why ten? Does Boris think the virus wears a wrist watch? Surrounded by 6 people in a bar full of collections of six people, works how? Does the corona virus get confused with any number above two? At least Boris has acknowledged the virus exists, which is more than the anti lockdown crew have. We may have been in denial about civilisation since the first farmers started this experiment 6000 years or more ago, and on an island as small as Britain is, the option to run off screaming is geographically challenged by the surrounding waters. So what is the ghost of stevesevilempire to do? When civilisations embrace any fantasy as fast as we change our underwear, then the new definition of sanity may include ranting at people in toilets, or is that just another element of the new normal?

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Ah yes, I got an organised pseudo impromptu lesson in the new normal when I left the cosy security of the Shades pub. Placards proclaimed, we will not comply, Matt Hancock is hitler, (Hancock is the health secretary. hitler is dead.) No new normal. Then as I circumnavigated this crowd, a guy started to talk to me about Ragnarok. He followed me telling of the Norse end times. So I picked up speed as he told me. “And the wolf will eat the sun heralding in darkness.” I am still unsure if my plot was lost or thickening this Saturday. Seriously put, if the new normal is having gone nuts, bingeing on internet conspiracy sites during the short lockdown, then protesting about them, which left me surrounded by a crowd of people missing a lot of marbles. That includes a govt who has drowned its own intellect, and broken the steering wheel of our island, this new normal is more cake than fruit from what I can see. I realise that pointing out the mega tsunami of stupidity that is retailing everywhere right now, doesn’t help, but even a ghost can dig his heels in and say. “Enough!”

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Even as I thought that I was proved wrong. I half expect a protest against gravity sometime soon, and I was stumped at how few Bill Gates placards there were this time around, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was accused of coordinating all the conspiracies, using 5g, from a secret lair, in the dome, over the flat Earth, but underneath that flat Earth is a giant wheel, which is propelled by a giant hamster called Vinny, when Vinny sleeps the world stops, which is why we have night time, and that is when Bill the evil one coordinates his vast human experiments. I could be confusing Bill Gates with Bilbo Baggins, but hey thats the direction that this crowd goes in, and that for what it is worth is my translation of what passes for theory nowadays. I may leave the cameras behind and just sell them magic beans if they come back next week, if you plant these you may get a geranium or a rose. One guy pointing at me told me, “It’s about freedom.” Freedom, I can’t even piddle unmolested in London, so who knows what is happening in the rest of the country. It may be a new right wing conspiracy to molest everyone in toilets across our once proud nation. That could be the new normal.

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Finally I spotted something I understood, at the top of Trafalgar Square, outside the National Gallery were the racists. A part of the crowd? Apart of the crowd? Who cares anymore, but they were shouting about freedoms lost. One of them is a nasty piece of psychiatry, I have seen him giving a lecture on Parliament green about the dangers of, “The Muslim.” Yet here he was shouting about human rights. Like so many Brexit protests combined, to create a strangely disfiguring familiar face of the new normal. If the Met Police had decided to do river dance in riot gear it would’ve made more sense. Yet in the ensuing jostle of push and shove violences, people got hurt. As my ghost took the photos, I saw nothing but pointlessness and ego.

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As they calmed down, I thought of a future me. Visualised myself right there and then. A thought form of me. Another ghost. Grey hair fell in plats from beneath his hat, two as yet unrecognisable cameras hung from his neck, and with deranged eyes he smiled to me. “The next decade ain’t worth it mate.” Which is something all of us are aware of really, post pandemic economies are going to be disastrously in a state of flux, and thats before Britains Brexit chokes what little is left to go round, and as the climate begins to bite. Sometime this year we will all read about the extinction of the Vaquita Porpoise, but when 2 out of five plant species face extinction we all shrug. In this trance like state we can ignore all the money spent debunking real science, enabling the dysfunctional to weave a fantasy of paranoia. When a deadly virus is denied what else can I do but photograph the processes that follow. The truth is that the anti lockdown movement are the monster of a Baron Frankenstein called Exxon Mobil, and many other fossil fuel corporations, that spent a fortune to debunk science until humanity can’t even face the challenge of a virus let alone the bitter realities that climate tipping points offer. Yet even that very real conspiracy against humanity will be ignored in favour of fantastical aliens, or villains. So the ghost of stevesevilempire looked at the ghost of his older self and asked the important question. “Why are you wearing a tin foil hat?” The future me smiled insanely and said.

“It keeps the stupid at bay.”

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The sword that was politics was snapped in two by the knee of capitalism many many years ago. Capitulating to profit our political elitists now cling limpet like to archaic traditions of state, traditions that conceal their now malnourished mindset, mindsets locked in past glories with nowhere to go but inside of themselves, and without any fresh ideas or the imagination to create them, they are left surrendering all in the name of profits. The game of freedom has been played out and everything is up for grabs as this system of mediocre minds cascades inwards with nowhere to go but down, playing a race card here or a security card there, our political establishment offers us nothing but their collective fears, as they jostle for the attentions of a nation of people who’s egos have been crushed so savagely by the austerity, that the profitable system they represent created in the first place. Like sluggish and blind worms these worshippers of capital blind us with their projected ignorance. Choosing algorithms over humanity real, they project darknesses and dire bogs with their swamp like thoughts, their thought processes now hamper all around them like they were of glue, slowing all to a halt, clutching at straws they talk of immigrants, refugees, climate changes inevitability, until it has become clear that the needs of these few vastly outweigh the many. Yet with an unfathomable ignorance the democracy game continues, that that was once of vigorous importance has been reduced by these malnourished minds, minds that clearly cannot grasp concepts like deadly and virus, or global and warming, or child and poverty, if words are combined then the political mind will evade them.

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If the fall of humanity has one single reason, it would be psychological. We have collectively agreed that profit is good, but our value system is all in our heads, we as species invented it, nurtured it and then lost control of it, to the point where we cannot afford to fix our own planet because we would lose to much of the imaginary paper stuff we possess, and in order to possess more imaginary money, we fuel our own devastation to grasp it. We are born, judged by economics, our lives have boundaries created by it, and for the very vast majority we are debilitated by it. Whilst those in power are now too rich to even display brain cells, and seem proud to have never needed them. So much is this the case that I have to ask if ignorance has become a Darwinian tool of politics, an evolution of sloth like merit that has us all trapped by its methodology of blunder and error. Yet for all of my personal disgust at modern politicians all I see is their collective fears. Racism is fear. Ego is fear. Economics is fear. Power must be terrifying for minds like theirs. For all of these words though what is fear?

Article One. All human being are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

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When I was a child I watched raindrops hitting the leave on a tree and as each struck leaf fell then bounced back, I wondered if the universe was playing the tree like it was a piano. Creating a harmony of randoms, raindrops are something we all understand, those rhythms that repeat around us all are a harmony with out hands, but lately Mother Natures notes have become erratic, and her buoyant elasticity is about to snap shut.

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The geopolitical world has failed to reach a single target to stop the destruction of nature. Every one of the 2010 Aichi goals to protect wildlife have been missed. Not one has been achieved.

When ignorance leads the charge it will with inevitable fears turn into a stampede. Initially stevesevilempire was meant to be ironic, but with an ironic twist the atheist who’s bible is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has become an evil symbol to the wordplay of ignorant politicians who have relabelled right and wrong so often they have lost sight of it all together.

Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

Freedom of speech has always come with a responsibility for your words, but where is that responsibility in our political world? Is there any of that responsibility in our corporate world order? Judging from Exxon Mobils payments to climate deniers there is none.

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Politics is treachery.

I could argue that humanity is stalled, the entire human species is caught between its fight or flight response. Stuck in situ by our own modern psychologies, glued to the path of massed extinctions we plunge head first into a decrepit future. In the lead, a blissfully ignorant political elite, stumbling behind them are the rest of us chasing their scrap like offerings. Algorithms reduce us all to the lowest common denominator, politicians reduce our mindsets even lower. Collectively with broken democratic expressions in play the preconception that democracy is good is about all that is holding many countries together. I include Britain in that comment as the entire nation has been reduced to impoverished spectators by a very broken system. A system that seems purpose built to demolish imagination is worth nought.

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It was human imagination and ingenuity that gives modernity it’s accumulative power. Look at your modern world, a world where even light is a pollutant as none of us see the stars at full strength very often. So cut off from the universe are we, that following the lead of ignorant fantasists is now a new normal, chasing their latest scape goats is nothing but a new fashion craze. Our politicians are not even required to perform well let alone tell the truth, and what impact that has on the rest of the society beneath them is going to be catastrophic. There are necessary risks and unnecessary risks, and modern politicians are now all about unnecessary risk taking.

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Economics is a prison.

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We invented money, it’s is a collective psychological value system, and it is humanities number one religion as nothing human can move very far without it. We all chase it. We all collectively need it, just to survive, we need money. Yet money is very good at telling entire nations what they cannot do. Britain will never have a space program because we cannot afford it. We cannot avoid the climate disaster that is ahead because it is to expensive to fix. When we math out air quality illnesses , they are worked out at the financial cost they cause to the society, not in the beating hearts lost or the misery that causes, but how many Pounds Stirling it costs. Pick a disaster any disaster and the damage is measured in?

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Our entire life from birth to death is within the boundaries that money and economics creates. In Britain many peoples lives are defined negatively by their place of birth (postal code) and by the socio economic standing of the community they live in, trapping millions to a lousy life and life style. Around the planet the misery of massed poverty is measured in billions of people. The haves and have nots have been a truer expression of the last 5000 years of recent human history, than any of our Movies, Books or Education systems have shown. Yet not content with poverty stricken populaces our corporates have decided to attack intelligence.

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The assault on science started slowly, decades ago, with the Tobacco Industry, yet that created a template that was inherited and used by the fossil fuels industries and many others. The template was denial and the logic was the potential profitability that a decade or three of denial can create. Throughout every industry that process has rippled, it has escalated and socially devalued science to the point where anti vaxxers would deny people who want vaccines. This is a point of decay for our entire species. A starting place for an ignorant and suicidal stampede to our extinction, and with the leaderships we have and the psychological weight of capitalism to drag us under, that extinction is now guaranteed, because of profits.

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Societies are manipulable.

As a human being right and wrong are vital tools, as a photographer though they just slow you down, the human being in me despises that truth, but whatever the situation I am photographing is, I am thinking visually. That is all, cause and effect and balancing the frame of it. A lot of my colleagues are looking for political or human narratives, but a narrative is a creation, it’s not real, the real world is not a stage play, where full stops and commas make it all logical. Our entire global society however can only work with a combination of preconceptions and narratives. Yet reality is often left behind by these created story lines. I was asked recently why newspapers are not making profits, and in reply I said. “Because they are not giving people what they need they are just giving them rhetoric and narratives.” Having lost track of how often picture editors have said. “Nobodies interested in this.” My reply is at least an honest answer. Looking at the system of journalism is alarming too. An owner or state buys the rag or television station, and then feeds their views on the direction the organisation should go. This leads to an editorial oppression as they interpret their instructions. So journalists then get their instructions via this process. Most owners have close political ties, and an almost institutionally bias has now become a normal. This happens all over the world. Polarised presses push the team they represent forwards until journalism decays to little more than politics and adverts.

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In Britain we have the NUJ, (National Union Of Journalists.) If anyone should be a member of the NUJ it is me. However I cannot join them as the NUJ has never tackled this fundamental issue within its industry. As journalism has been reduced to preconceptions and regurgitating political attempts to control social narratives, what could I do other than rant about it in a London Freelance Branches NUJ meetings. With climate denial I saw NUJ members objectively attack science for so may decades that I almost gave up journalistic photography altogether. Remember when 99% of scientists came out about climate change? How often did you see the climate deniers outnumber the scientists on television? How often was your perception about climate change manipulated by brought and sold mercenaries? The corporations funded the deniers, yet no one asked the questions that mattered as a decision had been made to debunk it. Objective it was not. Making the NUJ members involved a part of a club I cannot join. Not that anyone cares.

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Look at the world around you and how often have you read or watched something that has reflected it? In the UK due mainly to austerity policies, we have a rapidly expanding and obvious problem with homelessness, but how often is this very prescient problem touched by our media. How often has any real issue been hammered by the BBC. All you will see is politics, politics and more politics. Ramming home the importance of a politician or political party is not journalisms only goal surely? Watching the British governments response to the very real danger of the Corona Virus has been the most hit and miss political failure to date. Seriously if making 500 plus often contradictory decisions about a crisis is good leadership, then I am a penguin. Let my flippers point out that track and trace is day one epidemiology, and here we are racing to the second wave and track and trace is still not operable. So when journalism should be warning us all its telling us about is Donald Trump groping random women instead. Which is not acceptable but should it be the lead story? However we could lead with the truth that humanity cannot afford Trumps climate denials at this dangerous stage. What with the traditionally creative accounting employed by every British government we are doing our best to tackle the virus and our environmental impacts. Even though not one single English river passed pollution testing this year, then the word best will have to have an update about what it means.

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Puppies and Kittens.

Two weeks ago, I was pondering why Killer Whales were attacking boats around Malta, I could give you a hundred reasons for this sudden Cetacean development, it is sudden too, as throughout history apart from minor conflicts with fishing catches, humanity and Orcas have never had any conflict. Yet the Orcas have a problem, and because the majority of the reasons I was coming up with had the word human attached to them, the Orcas are trying to deal with us. So as I was thinking this development through and purchasing a 2nd hand reflector at the London Camera Exchange, I got a call to go to Trafalgar Square for a protest. With hindsight I wouldn’t have worn my favourite NASA comfort hoody, but I was wearing a face mask. So having raced up the Strand I was confronted by the scientifically challenged holding a protest. David Icke and his merry band of conspiracists were out in their thousand and they were unhappy with the massed conspiracy around the Corona Virus. So as usual right and wrong flew out of the window that is Steve and I went to work photographing them.

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“Take the mask off you don’t need it.” Lets face it if I am being shot at I like flak jackets, and if a mask can reduce my exposure to a potentially deadly virus then guess what? I will wear one. I lost track of the number of times I was called an idiot, and found out that NASA didn’t go to the moon, and that Bill Gates was nasty, and that 5g is fatal, and that the world is flat with a dome over it, and that the queen is a lizard, and that we have all been micro chipped by deranged NHS midwifes, and that the Metropolitan Police are a tyranny, and that the government is part of ZOG, and that a large crowd of crazy people are still crazy, and also a lot of aliens are running everything, which is kind of crazy as anything smart enough to travel the cosmos would do a better job than our political brigades could, surely they would. People were doing a lot of finger pointing as well. So far it all sounds relatively harmless, and even in a hoody that says NASA I didn’t feel in any way threatened, unless boring someone to death counts. What I saw was the blur of denial, people choosing fantastical conspiracies over very real ones. Reality hurts, and fantasy doesn’t. I can add this observation, most people didn’t cope very well with the necessary lockdown, and that includes me.

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Now having spent my life photographing humanity, I have encountered levels of crazy way beyond these massed conspiracy theorists, after years of exposures I know that humanity is one crazy primate, in fact if I am honest I should say. “Humans? It’s hard to find a sane one.” Even our history is insane. I understand see rabbit chase rabbit, but the rest of it? During the lockdowns people began to trawl the internet in an effort to save their remaining marbles. 7 billion voices screaming for your attention, advertisers selling stuff you cannot be alive without. Fantasy blurring with reality. Entertainments selling second hand logic and unbelievable cruelty. As society shrank to four walls a lot of people looking for a way out have found it in denial. Reality is rolling at us like a freight train and we are hiding behind elusive psychological mechanisms, lurking like rats in our fantasy of a society, and using ignorance as a tool. Ignorance will achieve nothing and fantasy is just another narrative.

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In reality the pandemic is being made worse by very bad leadership, bad economic models and bad journalism. If people mistrust the journalists and politicians then they look for truth online and elsewhere. Another face of reality is that we are running out of time to resolve climate change, we are doing more damage to the environment, and those ecosystems that we rely on to survive are diminishing year on year and day by day. We have run the gauntlet of modern capitalism as far as we can, and we are collectively on a cliff edge and about to jump. Another obvious reality is that a lot of vocal people no longer trust basic science, and that reality is because a lot of money was spent fuelling the mistrust. Here is a point, almost every ecosystem on the planet is under stress, and when the stresses are to much they will snap, cascading causally we will create our own downfall. Pollution is now out of control, as pollutants of all sorts mix, life will find it harder and harder to thrive. Our weather systems are changing around us. Our planet is about to get less supportive for life too. This is not a narrative it is reality. We cannot control ourselves as is clearly evidenced by the damages we are doing, when a tech giant like Apple can avoid recycling it’s products, products that are deliberately built to become obsolete, what do we do about it? When Exxon Mobil, and the Koch Brothers can fund denials left right and centre and still gain unfettered access to most governments, where are the conspiracy theorists, and why is this simply a given thing. You see on the one hand we have run out of time to fix the problems we are still creating, on the other we have a small window of opportunity to change our ways.

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Tool Kits.

The history of humanity is the history of climate change. When the first explorers arrived in Tasmania, they discovered the native peoples who lived there. Tasmania had been cut off from Australia by rising sea levels, isolated for ten thousand years. What baffled the Europeans was that the Tasmanians were the healthiest people they had ever met. What baffled them further was that as hunter gatherers they had more leisure time than anyone in Europe did. What really blew their tiny sea fairing minds was the tool kits the Tasmanians used. These were stone tools and grass bags and baskets. Native Australians had over a hundred separate tools for different purposes, the Tasmanian had 21. However the people were healthy, and particularly happy as a society. That is until more Europeans arrived. Their extinction was a slow and painful process. Throughout our history humans have had a tough time with the constantly changing climates, climates that forced our evolution, we emerged during a period of ice ages, yet given the chance we have chosen to bring climate change back into the frame prematurely with our emissions. Surrounded as we are by millions of different tools, we have not found happiness, nor have we found security. The brain pan is the same but in a gluttonous binge we have demolished biodiversity, we have industrialised every process and profited from it. Whereas the Tasmanians had the skills to survive well, we have not. You can try and deny it but our false sense of human entitlement hides behind a veneer of destruction. Actions are now needed not rhetoric and debate about the environment. Which leads to the point of these words.

Humanity is running out of time.

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