Steve Merrick's Blog

Ghost Cameras

Can your fingerprint fade.

Like a glossy photo exposed to long in the sun.

Becoming dreamlike without your presence.

A magnification of grief exposed badly.

Illuminating this death like trance.

Stands still.

As this world blurs past us.

I wave at the rushing shipping.

Hopelessly seeking your face.

25 years ago when I wrote those lines, I had no idea how prescient they would be today, or yesterday. Yesterday I tried to return to Hackney, a place I used to know well, before I got even close to where I wanted to drop a letter, I had to deal with almost 30 face blank people, yeah acquired face blindness can just overwhelm you if there are too many blanks to deal with, you just can’t register the faces. Funnily I ended up walking out with headphones blazing, sunglasses on and staring at the pavement, even a simple bus ride was a tactical withdrawal. It’s worse if I cycle. With relief I have somehow liberated one face from my memory, maybe others but I only need that one face, the others would be mostly nice to have. 24 years ago I had brain surgery but acquired face blindness surviving it. The odds were bleak so there is nothing to whine about, I am here, alive and have liberated the one face that matters, to me. Whenever there has been a close call their name is on my lips, and next time it will be with their face shining from my memory, and I know there will be a next time. At one time that face was my home. Now, I belong nowhere and as is usual to no nation, or person, which is a good place for a journalist photographer to be. Up until 4 months ago I had had to treat a six year period of my life as a wasteland, my visual memory would not allow me to register any faces from that period, to keep moving I had to hold the details and emotions of them all but with the knowledge I would not be able to see them again. It’s a kind of grief. However you can make fresh memories. So I belong nowhere, without a future but that much has almost always been the case. As I was raised far away, in a time-space that no longer exists as it once did. I have always been a gaijin, that’s Japanese for foreigner, and never knew what future there was.

Gaijin. Foreigner.

I was born in Britain but have never belonged here, I had no childhood here, and although relatives died defending the country or blown up at home, the end result is an Australian sounding geezer who doesn’t sound Australian enough to an Aussie. It’s a weird feeling when you are more comfy almost anywhere but the country of your birth, alienating to be honest, being now regularly told someone is going to contact immigration about me is hysterical, to be honest I don’t even bother correcting them anymore, although I wonder if immigration UK has a file on me. I don’t belong anywhere but definitely not here anymore. I don’t want to be here anymore, I don’t want to do this anymore. I have been waking up thinking that for over 6 months now. Yeti hunting would make more sense to me than most of what I am covering now, if the journalists fling a bit more polarity into it, my need to focus the camera on reality may be in jeopardy of capsizing. I think I need to be a proper gaijin somewhere else and that is probably Japan, although there are other options as it is a fairly big planet, from my relative position in it. However I really like Japan, I really feel my inner Gaijin singing to me whenever I am there. My inner Gaijin was out to lunch on a good day 15 years or more ago, as a brain physically heals, it feels like you are a none constant variable in your own head, a Super Gaijin who is alien even to the themselves, the multiple themselves kind of illustrates the point I am making, if I was using a gaming meme then this would be Gaijin legendary level. I did almost a decade like that. All you can do is hold on and focus on the now, as the mind shifts everything else around you. Somewhere in the fix I lost the faces. Became a ghost to myself, the Japanese for ghost is Obake.

Obake. Ghost.

Over the last three/four months many visual memories have rapidly returned, any amnesia creates a ghost, the remembering experience was almost psychotic, memories of voices and conversations ricocheted through my head, loss and more loss, the fading of relevance that was felt surged loudly, but with it the reality of love, death and a singular point of happiness came. I have always felt that love and the loss that followed. Four years worth of life’s visuals returned, I felt shaky and on more occasions than I can take seriously, I was twitching. I find it funny now but at the time I thought my last marble had been lost. I need that marble, it’s mine. I can now replay my Sons birth, finally see it and finally see Go Go Girl in my mind again. Without shame I will say the word love here, I do miss her and even though we became a mutual disaster, I miss it. That is a truth. I would love to go and take photos together even if I had to prop her up. The weirdest part is that elements of my personality came to the forefront through this, let’s face it when the shit hits the fan I am always the first to laugh. When it comes down to it I know more about shit fanning than is healthy but I am an ink for blood photojournalist, so it’s a professional requirement. To find myself enjoying things more is normality returning, plus I am concluding that the two years after the surgery which are a total freaking blank can happily be forgotten completely, forever, infinitely, and did not happen at all as far as I am concerned, I don’t know, I don’t care, and I am not even curious. Personality is a latent thing that can be effected by any number of elements, most of which do not involve brain surgery, I can say that as I have experienced many things that have change my personality and point of view, (please translate POV literally.) but I am back, I am alive, I really shouldn’t be, (yet again.) So Obake makes sense to me from where I am. Which is ghost.

Gaijin Obake. Foreigner Ghost.

When you wake from a bad dream you could feel relief, happy to be awake, but what if you are in a bad place? If you are unhappy a bad dream could be an upper not a downer, if you are waking up to someone abusive or that you can’t stand then that is the nightmare, not the bad dreams fault. I am sitting in a two bed Edwardian flat as I type this, my living room is bigger than a friend of mines flat is. I live alone, I should be waking up happy, not neutral, yet I would trade it for a tiny place far away in Hokkaido or PNG or Managua or or or, and the reason for that is that I have absolutely no bone too chew here, seriously if the UK wants to follow Reform into a racist Trumpesque abyss or if the Govt wants to restrict another freedom, I am done with it, I have lost every battle in the UK, it’s a place of complacent conformity that just makes me long for another bout of brain surgery. So talking of the good old days, days when I could not write as myself and had to dissociate to stevesevilempire to write anything, as my brain was at that time surgically damaged, and talking of now, today, well right now I have to burn this all down. Also considering that I knew the words Obake Gaijin when I was five, it has a degree of familiarity with myself that fits perfectly. Even my son has had the sense to go to live in Melbourne, and I have only one reason to be here, one. Only one person could stop me leaving, but this stevesevilempire lark and a lot of what I have built here in he UK has to burn down, be destroyed, crushed and gone. Every word written has truth to it, but I have no further wish to be this. In an effort more to reconnect with myself I went back to shooting film with antique cameras, the results are groovy, both photographically and personally. That for the record is my future. The future may well be profitable.

Obake Gaijin. Ghost Foreigner.

A colleague asked me if I was committing professional suicide? It was nice to know she cared, but what suicide is there? Worst case one project has ended and another begins. Choosing not to write unfettered bullshit to kill stevesevilempire is my choice. Why would the truth that brain surgery, love, life and loss, hurt, cost me? Why would anyone choose to judge a physical recovery negatively? Unless they are a polarised hack journalist wanting to score points, what do these words say? They are saying that humanity can defeat BS any day of the week. Plus I am unafraid of the judgemental bastards that retail everywhere because they cannot hurt me. Yes someone I may never see again means the world to me. Is saying that insanity? If it is we will need bigger funny farms. Is it wrong to say that I am ashamed of face blindness, deeply cut knowing that Go Go Girl tried to talk to me over the years and I couldn’t see her? Deeply hurt by that truth my memory revealed last month, if you think it is wrong to admit that it says more about you than me. I admit that face blindness makes my skin crawl, I will admit that openly, and then I will put one foot in front of another and keep going forwards. (Just not in Hackney.) So stevesevilempire is now dead. I kill this project. Obake Gaijin is a nickname and that is all. From here on in Ghost Echoes Photos and Ghost Echoes Quarterly are the new projects, but they are written by me, Steve Merrick. It’s point is always human and we are all protected by the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights. Even an Obake Gaijin.

So allow a guy who’s first love was a Nikon F2 camera to admit that one human being almost matched it! Almost.

As this is the final entry for stevesevilempire folks, I can be contacted in future using the following email address.

ghostechoesphotos@icloud.com

This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.

Anamnesis, its a dual word for memory and recollection, you can believe it or not but both are very different mechanisms, hence the title. This article is about acquired prosopagnosia, I will apologise in advance for the long words that you have to wrap your head round but this is a real time attempt to communicate a reality that one person close to me has had to live through. The cause of her problem is me. As I could not recognise a face that means everything to me. Facial amnesia, face blindness, or prosopagnosia, whatever word you want to use it is one of the creepiest feelings you can ever experience, not knowing if the person looking at you knows you or is just another London nutter is pretty damned disorientating on a good day. Repeatedly not recognising the love of your life is really another heart break, and for her it must be hell, and I can only say sorry. I remember everything about us, even the worst parts, but I could only remember her face through my photographs, and it is a beautiful face. A face I can now remember, a face I miss, but behind all faces is a person, and this person is very important to me even now. So I will say sorry again Go Go Girl.

The moment you hear a voice, recognition quickly follows, but since anyone with this problem will automatically be wearing head phones and probably sunglasses with a baseball cap covering their eyes, it is not always possible to hear anyone. I experimented today without headphones and nearly got into a fight with an arrogant activist journalist. Not the success I was hoping for, but it could’ve been worse. Trauma can cause amnesia as can brain injury or surgery, if you have had all three some form of amnesia is a given, it can take ages after before you re-access visual-memory, 24 years in my case, but with visual memory come visuals. Seriously the last 3 months I have had a prolonged tidal wave of very suppressed memories, bad, not bad, not good, good and on the bright side a part of self reawakened, albeit via panic attacks, and downright self loathing. I can say that many years ago I dropped a cheesecake but tried to keep it in the air so I could catch it, it hit the ground and is probably illustrative of our lives, yet that memory was not fully there until recently, but I can see her face right now as I type in the very same memory. Memory is a very beautiful thing to have back. Recollecting it all is also equalising as a more balanced memory opens a more balanced reality, not the one sided monster I lived with for too many years.

I remember wars, I remember murders, I work in journalism, I can visually recollect everything, I remember everything but I can now see it, I actually almost own my own mind again, I say almost because if you had asked me two years ago I would have believed it was all good, but it was not. Consider it a post surgical traumatic injury lead trick of the light. Trauma is what it is, but how did I remember? Screwilly this involves bus stops, as I cycle everywhere public transport is usually linked to being injured in some way, so I am never happy to be using them. Before I write more please realise that the other person in this is real, and she would be confused and hurt by all of this. That was never my intention at any time, ever. From my point of view whilst listening to thumping music, a crazy woman jumped in front of me waving her hands and then ran to her bus, sitting there she smiled and with many gestures tried to get me to respond, I did but couldn’t recognise her at all. As I waved bye I felt something connect in me, very deeply but could not figure it out. It was like a had grenade went off in my head, and memories spilled to me of London Fields and Beirut, but I could not connect them, it was like a vibe not solid.

Then several months later after a bike crash, I saw her again, and somehow recognised her, I watched as she jumped onto her bus then turned and I smiled and she nearly put the palm of her hand through the bus window. I gestured with my camera, I somehow recognised her, and this time it was more of a thermo nuclear bomb went off in my head. I walked away and felt connections connecting with memories. 3 months of remembering and with it anger, rage, depression, love, sadness, surgery, drills, cameras, light planes and even shit that went down when I was six. Chaos. Anxiety attacks fist punching your gut, as I remembered. Falling through a life past. Then in a cafe we met, but it was all still exploding in my head. I couldn’t even speak, it was impossible. So I walked away. I actually did that. Yet as this has started to calm, I am accepting myself which is not the easiest task, I was never the sanest person in the room but I was myself. I don’t believe in sanity anyway as it is just how we respond, a full human being is a map of securities and insecurities. Strengths and weaknesses. Those misbalances make all of us.

Sometimes we all use memes, the one, the love of our life, and allow the physics nut to say he prefers entanglement but when we were together our psychologies were very close to one another, but expressed very differently, but cycling in the dark, I saw her again at another bus stop and recognised her straight away, I smiled, she smiled back, she looked to the floor with shock and a smile, I had to keep cycling as I was shocked and amazed to have recognised her, and she me, my head although calming was not calm. Contrary to any previous claims I may never do calm again but I am smiling as I type this. I actually connected memories of her trying to talk to me over the years, in a Sainsbury’s, on a street, and other times where she may have been there too. How did she manage to break through the block my mind had is beyond me, but I think love has something to do with it, I know we all move on in different ways but love doesn’t change the way we think it does. If it is real yeah you can hate each other but ultimately love is love, no rules need apply and if the only madness I have left is a love of her then I will keep it for myself thanks. I will say that I hope she reads this, or that I get chance to explain it sometime. For myself I would love to take photos with her again, but for me photography is life, and I wish her nothing but the best of this life.

Facial amnesia can happen for a lot of reasons, it can be congenital or head injury, who knows, but if you read this and know someone cannot remember you, be patient, maybe rabbit punch their shoulder, as once they take their headphones off you can explain to them who you are. Trust me they will be relieved.

Steve Merrick

24/01/2026

If love is a bridge across infinity? Whilst hate is finite. Then love is the strongest of human emotions. Whilst hate is simply another level of hell. In any definition or depiction of hell, and there are many private ones to, you will see the finite nature of painful inhumanity. Picture an everyday hell, an abused woman, her abused child, and of course the abuser. The abusers isolate them, over a period of time boundaries are created, rules of a cruel expression of personal law begin to grip this family unit from the top down. Domination. Even the walls of the house become boundaries, and random acts of violence, insult, control and degradation strip the pride, the personality and even reduces the expression of self until both identify as subjects and ultimately as victims. This is a hell that is played out every hour of every day all over Britain every year. The point here is that hell has rules and boundaries, both hate and hell only require conformity from both the hate filled abuser and the often punch drunk victims, whilst love has no boundaries, love has respect and also freedom. I forgive those I love everything, and that is because love is free choice between people.

As human hells retail everywhere and are as diverse as we are as a species, if I look at British society there are any number of conformist driven hells out there. An awful lot of them are driven by socio economic statistical realities. I live in a country where having the wrong postcode can result in a shorter life expectancy. As I wrote that I seriously doubted my sanity, I guess some sentences shouldn’t be that close to the bone. Hell is expressed from childhood, child poverty levels are ridiculous in the Uk. We have created by conforming to an often misbalanced economic system a whole alternate reality of kiddie hell. There are pensioner hells, there are millennial hells, there is probably a punch drunk photojournalist hell out there just for me and a few others. Social conformity empowers that unfair process, but if we had leaders that actually loved the gentle folk of this country, rather than treating them as a cash cow for new choo choo train projects, then maybe something would change for the better, because even lost love changes you in the end.

However hell doesn’t just stop there. We are now facing an Anglo-American future hell. Oh yeah. Let’s just face it, post truth politics is really a unique hell, it’s boundaries are vast, it’s conformities are obscured, and it doesn’t even require a basis in reality, truly it is a mind hell, and it is now bombarding our sleepy little island. We should consider the Reform party as a Trumpesque reconnaissance unit testing the water. Speaking with supporters I was surprised to hear that one of them believed that there should be a legal obligation to be Christian, picture that future, as a happy go lucky atheist I was reduced to asking what colour my prison cell would be, and if I could take a copy of Charles Darwin’s Origin Of The Species in with me. Clearly from the response I was his version of a hell, but it kind of gets worse with Reform UK. I can sum up the whole small movements position as, “We love our country but we cannot stand most of the people in it.” Put pretty bluntly Reform is a workhouse level of hell that most of us would not fit in with, and if there is any love in this party you may need a microscope to find it. Peeking deeper I wonder if Nigel Farage and Brexit were merely stage one of an abuse cycle. Stage one is isolation. Isolation is a hell.

Hate fuelled minds always focus on diversity and create illusive arguments making it seem like a problem. Yet when you look at these often shallow ideas, you can almost glimpse the freakish ideology behind them. Racism is a whole level of hell all round, boundaries and road blocks on everyones behaviour, conforming to racism, wow, yet that is not far from the reality of what is happening. By persistent and consistent arguments national attitudes are being nudged towards barely veiled racism. The next steps are to create boundaries and rules. Right here in Britain. If I am brutally honest about diversity, well I like it, I like it a lot, every angle of diversity is pretty good, as a photographer I would have been bored shitless without diversity. I would have just retired and done underwater photography forty years ago, but with diverse human expression, I am still shooting people. As a writer without argument what would I write about? Yet as a person I don’t want to live in a closed off culture. Human diversity has depth, we tend to think of colours and cultural differences when thinking about it, but it is more than skin deep, every single human brain develops unique neuronal networks during childhood, they form through our early experiences, all of us share much that is similar but all of us think differently. For some of us thought is a level of hell but to me it is fun. To illustrate I have in my entire life only met one person who mirrored my inner psychology, both us expressed that psychology very differently but it was recognisable, in 59 years on planet Earth I have only met one. I love diversity as it is infinitely surprising to me. Yet there are growing mindsets that would devolve all equality to include only a bunch of old white guys.

All those old men need is your conformity to their vision, and if you conform to a dehumanising logic, it won’t set you free, you will become its conceptual slave. Conceptual slavery should be a recognised thing, warning folks that you can lose yourself in a movement, if that movement is led by an abusive guru. There are real physical hells out there, climate change will cause more pain. Yet if my species is going to leap off a giant cliff called denial, then my job is to photograph you doing it, but love of my species tells me there are better photos to take than that. Our conformity in the face of a mercenary fossil fuels industry with their battalions of lobbyists and professional bribery experts, is about to create another very real hell. It is happening all around us now, things will slowly get worse. The only way we can slow this monster down is by not conforming. None compliance. Conformity is an important human tribal tool, in order for us to thrive as a species we have to embrace a degree of conformity, we need a degree of boundary lines, but conforming to a warped mindset, whether it is political, religious, racial or mercenary, is always going to create hell. Whereas if we acknowledge a love of ourselves, our societies, our species and our planet? Yes that is a good and optimistic question we should all ask ourselves, because only love ever changed anything for the better, even if it breaks our hearts, after any heart break all that is left is love.

Steve Merrick. 24/12/2025

Merry Xmas

“Is there any way back for journalism Steve?” A colleague and friend asked me that a few years ago. At the time I didn’t want to go down that particular rabbit hole so I changed the subject, which is easy when you know someone’s personal obsession and in his case it’s Gaza. I had spent the day navigating journalistic polarities, Right wing and Left wing press professionals, selling articles written from the perspective of political bias is not pretty to witness or read, it’s the reason that national identities are being overwritten by politicals with inflated agendas and the reason they are successfully managing a social process of polarisation. On the one hand it is a sales formula, creating a need then offering a solution, but also it is social psychology, an attempt to convince an entire country of people that they are victims and you Mr Politician are the solution. Flashing forwards to today and the main tool of that polarisation engine is the media, then taking a sidestep and looking at the tech, even the Ai’s and web servers are polarised by the parameters they are programmed with by biassed engineering. The process of opposition is now an automatic one, and getting to the root cause of any news story is the equivalent of a perpendicular visit to a crazy relative in a psychiatric hospital.

The reason I point all this and that conversation out is because a few minutes before his comment I had already concluded there was no way back for journalism and cut up my press card. Sounds mad but with a borrowed pair of scissors, in the toilet of the Shades pub on Whitehall, Mr Steve Merrick concluded that being a bona fide news gatherer was not what it used to be. Looking at our society today I know that I have lost every battle I have fought, looking at the remains of my press card in the bars recycling bin was a significant personal improvement, but raises a question. How do I depolarise all this? Can an individual achieve anything when post truth social storm clouds are brewing? If the choice is surrender, despair or merely facing impossible odds, this photographer will choose to go down shooting, and as my basic tool kit needs little more than reality and light, on one very real level it is my version of business as usual.

As the forces of social post truth polarisation can be easily represented using a pair of magnets repulsing each other, they can equally with a change of orientation come back together. Thinking further to the human mind, viewpoint is everything, but it will not be changed by offering you a post post truth, or any other truth. No that really wouldn’t work. What works is reality and illumination, shining a light on the con job you are being dragged into and exposing the long con ahead. So talking of long cons let’s go back to Gaza.

Right from the get go of the current expression of this long term conflict, the polarity engines of massed media went into an overdrive in conjunction with the global political establishments, in fact no area of our societies was untouched by often extreme moralities. If I can sum up this extended conflict between Iran and Israel in one word that word is racism. There is only one psychological tool that I can think of that can try to justify the deliberate gunning down of unarmed civilians and that is the purest expression of racial hatred. Both sides have used the most appalling tactics and directly targeted civilians. When war is defined as a breakdown of social order then defining the what of a war crime is confused, but both sides have committed major war crimes up to and including starvation. However the money spent on orienting your opinion of this conflict could have fed the entire world for a month or three. In reality the only choices you were offered devolve to racist A or racist B. The saddest confession of it is that we all bleed red. That racial hatred spilled beyond the conflict zone. The reason that Bondi Beach was assaulted was simply extremism, and political polarity feeds the creation of extremists, without polarisation, racism and hatred subside, but if racism and hatred are stirred up by polarising rhetoric then racism will always be a manipulable and deadly force. This war has even impacted British freedom of speech.

There are a group of pro Palestinian activists called Palestine Action. (PA) they were recently proscribed as a terrorist organisation after they spray painted a bunch of Royal Air Force planes. To the best of my knowledge they have never actually killed anyone or bombed anything. Putting aside this weird decision regarding a graffiti protest, and that the British government seems to think that tagging is a terror attack, lo and behold supporting them became illegal. Which resulted in yours truly photographing the Metropolitan Police getting there mass arrest choreography perfected by arresting just shy of 500 people on parliament green in a single day. Everyone arrested held a hand written placard that said. “I oppose genocide, I support censored censored.” Now I am not really sure if writing the words on the placards is illegal or legal, but that is a freedom of speech restriction, and in regards to Gaza there are a load of chants and speeches that are now illegal to utter. The fact that the entire PA campaign made Kier Starmer look like he was giving a thumbs up and announcing “Genocide is good for you.” Is at this point not illegal to point out. Yet the week after I was confronted by Danny Bammo, who is Tommy Robinsons right hand man, he was trying to rile up some anti Trump protesters by telling everyone that “Violence is coming to your shores, you cannot hide from us, we will take our country back by force, we will storm parliament and take the country over.” Seriously it went on and on and I was left with the impression we were all going to be murdered in our beds, in fact it was more a tragic metaphor of losing your grip on realty than scary. The real point here is that a polarised racist extremist can threaten everyone legally, whilst a hippy grandma cannot oppose a foreign genocide. Is that evidence of polarisation? Or is there still hope we can steer clear of those extremes?

Political polarisation is now torrential. Foreign and domestic governments are choosing to use this as a tool of campaigns to influence other countries, and are having an impact upon democracies everywhere. Polarities push things apart and create extremes. The problem is that divide and conquer actually works, every pathetic political speech calling for action to be taken for often none existent problems, adds to it. Nothing is sacred in the hearts of some global politicians, and everything can be manipulated to create an impression of failure. Even history can be reinterpreted then re written. National identities can be over written, but this is not a natural evolution of our societies, it is a deliberate and manipulative one. So beware of politicians baring gifts, a grand plan always sound good but if it sounds to good to be true then it is probably a lie.

Danny Bammo

———-

This article is a beta test for an upcoming publication called Ghost Echoes Quarterly. I am sharing it here as a beta test. The concept is simple, it is simply a reflection of reality using nothing but reality to fill the pages. Every photo in it is shot with analogue film and ancient manual cameras. Every word is written by a human being. There is no Ai involved beyond the search engine of your choice. I have nothing against Ai in principle but I am in no hurry to see it replace human beings in the workplace, nor am I in any hurry to see the American post truth ideology transplant good old British incompetence.

Steve Merrick

21/12/2025

In life things change all the time, they can change for the worse but also they can change for the better. Yin Yang. Chaos theory. Harmony. Luckily the words your reading will not be harmonious, I will leave that to the birds and the whales, but as this short word string is about illness, the mind and the end of a project the best thing I can say is that human balance is almost always a reaction to the ground, and that ground is often uneven, believe it or not the mind is exactly the same. stevesevilempire came into existence as I was recovering from a serious neurological problem, it was created at a time when I wasn’t at points even sure of who I actually was. You don’t need the details and also I survived all of it and recovered, although that recovery took a decade I am now fine, I am myself. So just in case you were expecting an insight into brains, trauma and cognitive distress, you can relax and also pull the cucumber of concern out of your ass, as I am not going in that direction with these two paragraphs. In short at a point when I really needed to produce and create but could not fully engage as Steve, I somehow managed to pull off a quite advanced trick of the light because I really needed to dissociate from my real time situation. Hence stevesevilempire became a platform that actually helped me recover and also became a recognised ID for my photography. My best guess here is that people see what they want to see and from anyone else’s perspective, as long as I kept my mouth shut it all worked. It may all sound funny but people I still love, got caught in the epicentre of all this, so any humour should not be mistaken for disrespect, of anyone but myself at that time.

So, here’s the rub.

stevesevilempire is over, because I don’t need to dissociate any more and would like my own name back. It’s time to dissociate from my dissociation. It’s completed, it has been for ages now, I am myself, and have a fresh Steve Merrick publication coming next year. Every word written in stevesevilempire has played a dual role of making a point and helping me climb one of the highest mountains of the mind that I have ever encountered. So after a very long journey with it I have planted my flag at the top of myself and no longer need this, and haven’t for several years. The only reason I can think of returning to stevesevilempire is to publish it all alongside one of those biographical how to books, and believe me when I say, I do not want to do that. So these are words of farewell, I am not deleting it or anything but if you reread any of it using the perspective I have just given you, you may find an unexpected gift in it. I am kind of proud of it as it was initially produced under extreme circumstances but those circumstances are far far away now. Losing cognition is appalling and pathetic but regaining it is crazy beautiful. Since it is impossible to have an online bar, computers are good but you cannot suck a beer out of them as yet, I will end stevesevilempire with an old photo fest, considering how out of my mind I was at points taking them, it’s also kind of crazy beautiful too.

Thanks for putting up with me folks.

Steve

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.”