War by Media and the Triumph of Propaganda, by John Pilger

Only in recent years have i slowly come to learn about just how twisted, corrupt and unreliable the media can be when reporting world affairs to the people. Granted we are not as restricted as some countries but as i have come to learn the media is very much controlled by specialized interests and ideologies that serve a powerful few. I remember when I was still quite naive about media and was working at a Red Cross store. A fellow employee told me that she wanted to study and become a journalist. Immediately i said, 'Well don't you realize you won't have much freedom since you'll be told what to report and how to report it?'

Articles such as these make me very unenthusiastic about the future of mankind since we are just being left out of the dark and pretty much lied to by power control freaks. I am glad that independent media is still able to thrive on the internet though. After reading this article I feel as if years of living in paranoia have been justified. The decline will not happen over night. It will happen over a long stretch of time as we slowly become more ignorant and passive to events around us.

The times we live in are so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no longer an invisible government, writes John Pilger — it is the government. 

WHY HAS so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do theNew York Times and the Washington Postdeceive their readers?

Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what's called the mainstream media is not information, but power?

These are urgent questions.

The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war — with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China. This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by journalists, including those who promoted the lies that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in 2003.

The times we live in are so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no longer, as Edward Bernays called it, an 'invisible government'. It is the government. It rules directly without fear of contradiction and its principal aim is the conquest of us — our sense of the world, our ability to separate truth from lies.

The information age is actually a media age. We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media — a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions.
 

This power to create a new "reality" has building for a long time.

Forty-five years ago, a book entitled The Greening of America caused a sensation; on the cover were these words: 

'There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual.'

I was a correspondent in the United States at the time and recall the overnight elevation to guru status of the author, a young Yale academic, Charles Reich. His message was that truth-telling and political action had failed and only "culture" and introspection could change the world.

Within a few years, driven by the forces of profit, the cult of "me-ism" had all but overwhelmed our sense of acting together, our sense of social justice and internationalism. Class, gender and race were separated. The personal was the political and the media was the message.

In the wake of the cold war, the fabrication of new "threats" completed the political disorientation of those who, 20 years earlier, would have formed a vehement opposition.

In 2003, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the distinguished American investigative journalist. We discussed the invasion of Iraq a few months earlier.

I asked him:

"What if the freest media in the world had seriously challenged George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and investigated their claims, instead of channeling what turned out to be crude propaganda?"

He replied that if we journalists had done our job

"... there is a very, very good chance we would have not gone to war in Iraq."

That's a shocking statement, and one supported by other famous journalists to whom I put the same question. Dan Rather, formerly of CBS, gave me the same answer. David Rose of the Observer and senior journalists and producers in the BBC, who wished to remain anonymous, gave me the same answer.

In other words, had journalists done their job, had they questioned and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children might be alive today; and millions might not have fled their homes; the sectarian war between Sunni and Shia might not have ignited, and the infamous Islamic State might not now exist.

Even now, despite the millions who took to the streets in protest, most of the public in western countries have little idea of the sheer scale of the crime committed by our governments in Iraq. Even fewer are aware that, in the 12 years before the invasion, the U.S. and British governments set in motion a holocaust by denying the civilian population of Iraq a means to live.

Those are the words of the senior British official responsible for sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s — a medieval siege that caused the deaths of half a million children under the age of five, reported Unicef. The official's name is Carne Ross. In the Foreign Office in London, he was known as "Mr. Iraq". Today, Ross is a truth-teller of how governments deceive and how journalists willingly spread the deception.

"We would feed journalists factoids of sanitised intelligence," he told me, "or we'd freeze them out."

The main whistleblower during this terrible, silent period was Denis Halliday. Then Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and the senior UN official in Iraq, Halliday resigned rather than implement policies he described as genocidal. He estimates that sanctions killed more than a million Iraqis.

What then happened to Halliday was instructive. He was airbrushed. Or he was vilified.

On the BBC's Newsnight programme, the presenter Jeremy Paxman shouted at him:

"Aren't you just an apologist for Saddam Hussein?"

The Guardian recently described this as one of Paxman's 'memorable moments'. Last week, Paxman signed a £1 million book deal.

The handmaidens of suppression have done their job well. Consider the effects. In 2013, a ComRes poll found that a majority of the British public believed the casualty toll in Iraq was less than 10,000 — a tiny fraction of the truth. A trail of blood that goes from Iraq to London has been scrubbed almost clean.

Rupert Murdoch is said to be the godfather of the media mob, and no one should doubt the augmented power of his newspapers – all 127 of them, with a combined circulation of 40 million – and his Fox network. But the influence of Murdoch's empire is no greater than its reflection of the wider media.

The most effective propaganda is found not in the Sun or on Fox News, but beneath a liberal halo. When the New York Times published claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, its fake evidence was believed, because it wasn't Fox News; it was the New York Times.

The same is true of the Washington Post and the Guardian, both of which have played a critical role in conditioning their readers to accept a new and dangerous cold war. All three liberal newspapers have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia — when, in fact, the fascist led coup in Ukraine was the work of the United States, aided by Germany and Nato.

Nine's piece on Abbott and Ukraine tonight from @markwburrows is nothing short of propaganda. https://t.co/FSbdingYqq Absolute disgrace.

— Dave Donovan (@davrosz) December 11, 2014

This inversion of reality is so pervasive that Washington's military encirclement and intimidation of Russia is not contentious. It's not even news, but suppressed behind a smear and scare campaign of the kind I grew up with during the first cold war.

Once again, the evil empire is coming to get us, led by another Stalin or, perversely, a new Hitler. Name your demon and let rip.

The suppression of the truth about Ukraine is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember. The biggest Western military build-up in the Caucasus and eastern Europe since world war two is blacked out. Washington's secret aid to Kiev and its neo-Nazi brigades responsible for war crimes against the population of eastern Ukraine is blacked out. Evidence that contradicts propaganda that Russia was responsible for the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner is blacked out.

And again, supposedly liberal media are the censors. Citing no facts, no evidence, one journalist identified a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine as the man who shot down the airliner. This man, he wrote, was known as The Demon. He was a scary man who frightened the journalist. That was the evidence.

Many in the western media haves worked hard to present the ethnic Russian population of Ukraine as outsiders in their own country, almost never as Ukrainians seeking a federation within Ukraine and as Ukrainian citizens resisting a foreign-orchestrated coup against their elected government.

What the Russian president has to say is of no consequence; he is a pantomime villain who can be abused with impunity. An American general who heads Nato and is straight out of Dr Strangelove – one General Breedlove – routinely claims Russian invasions without a shred of visual evidence. His impersonation of Stanley Kubrick's General Jack D. Ripper is pitch perfect.

Forty thousand Ruskies were massing on the border, according to Breedlove. That was good enough for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Observer — the latter having previously distinguished itself with lies and fabrications that backed Blair's invasion of Iraq, as its former reporter, David Rose, revealed.

There is almost the joi d'esprit of a class reunion. The drum-beaters of the Washington Post are the very same editorial writers who declared the existence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction to be "hard facts".

'If you wonder,' wrote Robert Parry,

"how the world could stumble into world war three – much as it did into world war one a century ago – all you need to do is look at the madness that has enveloped virtually the entire US political/media structure over Ukraine where a false narrative of white hats versus black hats took hold early and has proved impervious to facts or reason."

Parry, the journalist who revealed Iran-Contra, is one of the few who investigate the central role of the media in this "game of chicken", as the Russian foreign minister called it. But is it a game? The U.S. Congress this week passed Resolution 758 which, in a nutshell, says: "Let's get ready for war with Russia."

In the 19th century, the writer Alexander Herzen described secular liberalism as 'the final religion, though its church is not of the other world but of this'. Today, this divine right is far more violent and dangerous than anything the Muslim world throws up, though perhaps its greatest triumph is the illusion of free and open information.

In the news, whole countries are made to disappear. Saudi Arabia, the source of extremism  and western-backed terror, is not a story — except when it drives down the price of oil. Yemen has enduredtwelve years of American drone attacks. Who knows? Who cares?

In 2009, the University of the West of England published the results of a ten-year study of the BBC's coverage of Venezuela. Of 304 broadcast reports, only three mentioned any of the positive policies introduced by the government of Hugo Chavez. The greatest literacy programme in human history received barely a passing reference.

In Europe and the United States, millions of readers and viewers know next to nothing about the remarkable, life-giving changes implemented in Latin America, many of them inspired by Chavez. Like the BBC, the reports of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and the rest of the respectable western media were notoriously in bad faith. Chavez was mocked even on his deathbed. How is this explained, I wonder, in schools of journalism?

Why are millions of people in Britain are persuaded that a collective punishment called "austerity" is necessary?
 

Following the economic crash in 2008, a rotten system was exposed. For a split second the banks were lined up as crooks with obligations to the public they had betrayed.

But within a few months – apart from a few stones lobbed over excessive corporate "bonuses" – the message changed. The mugshots of guilty bankers vanished from the tabloids and something called "austerity" became the burden of millions of ordinary people. Was there ever a sleight of hand as brazen?

Today, many of the premises of civilised life in Britain are being dismantled in order to pay back a fraudulent debt — the debt of crooks. The "austerity" cuts are said to be £83 billion. That's almost exactly the amount of tax avoided by the same banks and by corporations like Amazon and Murdoch's News UK. Moreover, the crooked banks are given an annual subsidy of £100bn in free insurance and guarantees — a figure that would fund the entire National Health Service.

The economic crisis is pure propaganda. Extreme policies now rule Britain, the United States, much of Europe, Canada and Australia. Who is standing up for the majority? Who is telling their story? Who's keeping record straight? Isn't that what journalists are meant to do?

In 1977, Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, revealed that more than 400 journalists and news executives worked for the CIA. They included journalists from the New York Times, Time and the TV networks. In 1991, Richard Norton Taylor of the Guardian revealed something similar in this country.

None of this is necessary today. I doubt that anyone paid the Washington Post and many other media outlets to accuse Edward Snowden of aiding terrorism. I doubt that anyone pays those who routinelysmear Julian Assange — though other rewards can be plentiful.

It's clear to me that the main reason Assange has attracted such venom, spite and jealously is thatWikiLeaks tore down the facade of a corrupt political elite held aloft by journalists. In heralding an extraordinary era of disclosure, Assange made enemies by illuminating and shaming the media's gatekeepers — not least on the newspaper that published and appropriated his great scoop. He became not only a target, but a golden goose.

Lucrative book and Hollywood movie deals were struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and its founder. People have made big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive.

None of this was mentioned in Stockholm on 1 December when the editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, shared with Edward Snowden the Right Livelihood Award, known as the alternative Nobel Peace Prize. What was shocking about this event was that Assange and WikiLeaks were airbrushed. They didn't exist. They were unpeople. No one spoke up for the man who pioneered digital whistleblowing and handed the Guardian one of the greatest scoops in history. Moreover, it was Assange and his WikiLeaks team who effectively – and brilliantly – rescued Edward Snowden in Hong Kong and sped him to safety. Not a word.

What made this censorship by omission so ironic and poignant and disgraceful was that the ceremony was held in the Swedish parliament — whose craven silence on the Assange case has colluded with a grotesque miscarriage of justice in Stockholm.

"When the truth is replaced by silence," said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, "the silence is a lie."

It's this kind of silence we journalists need to break. We need to look in the mirror. We need to call to account an unaccountable media that services power and a psychosis that threatens world war.

In the 18th century, Edmund Burke described the role of the press as a Fourth Estate checking the powerful. Was that ever true? It certainly doesn't wash any more. What we need is a Fifth Estate: a journalism that monitors, deconstructs and counters propaganda and teaches the young to be agents of people, not power. We need what the Russians called perestroika — an insurrection of subjugated knowledge. I would call it real journalism.

It's 100 years since the First World War. Reporters then were rewarded and knighted for their silence and collusion.

At the height of the slaughter, British prime minister David Lloyd George confided in C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian:

"If people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow, but of course they don't know and can't know."

It's time they knew.

John Pilger is producing a new documentry called 'The Coming War', which is being funded by crowdfunding through Indiegogo. Follow John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger.

Lessons of Immortality and Mortality From My Father, Carl Sagan

( I have long entertained the idea that your immediate family is one that you had no choice in being born into. I really do detest the majority of my family but today I am sharing the story of a great man called Carl Sagan who has passed yet left a great legacy of scientific teaching and instilled the importance in showing children the beauty and wonder that comes from understanding the universe through science. Recently I have being grappling with the fact that I read more non fiction than fiction possible explaining my extremely low levels of artistic creativity, yet I can attest from personal experience that writers such as Carl  Sagan make a complicated field such as science easily accessible and a joy to read. My own father, a religious bigot and conservatively heartless has long lost my respect. Sure he deserves respect for bringing me up financially but emotionally he has done nothing more than try and mold me into him, force religious nonsense down my throat and deny me my overall independence. When it comes to the influence of certain public figures on my life experience and worldview, I have no shame in admitting that Carl Sagan, as strange as it sounds, is one of many 'fatherly' and scholarly influences in my life and a personal hero of mine, a sentiment I am certain is shared by others around the world. Here is a reflective piece written by his daughter Sasha Sagan)

We lived in a sandy-colored stone house with an engraved winged serpent and solar disc above the door. It seemed like something straight out of ancient Sumeria, or Indiana Jones — but it was not, in either case, something you’d expect to find in upstate New York. It overlooked a deep gorge, and beyond that the city of Ithaca. At the turn of the last century it had been the headquarters for a secret society at Cornell called the Sphinx Head Tomb, but in the second half of the century some bedrooms and a kitchen were added and, by the 1980s, it had been converted into a private home where I lived with my wonderful mother and father.

My father, the astronomer Carl Sagan, taught space sciences and critical thinking at Cornell. By that time, he had become well known and frequently appeared on television, where he inspired millions with his contagious curiosity about the universe. But inside the Sphinx Head Tomb, he and my mother, Ann Druyan, wrote books, essays, and screenplays together, working to popularize a philosophy of the scientific method in place of the superstition, mysticism, and blind faith that they felt was threatening to dominate the culture. They were deeply in love — and now, as an adult, I can see that their professional collaborations were another expression of their union, another kind of lovemaking. One such project was the 13-part PBS series Cosmos, which my parents co-wrote and my dad hosted in 1980 — a new incarnation of which my mother has just reintroduced on Sunday nights on Fox.

After days at elementary school, I came home to immersive tutorials on skeptical thought and secular history lessons of the universe, one dinner table conversation at a time. My parents would patiently entertain an endless series of "why?" questions, never meeting a single one with a “because I said so” or “that’s just how it is.” Each query was met with a thoughtful, and honest, response — even the ones for which there are no answers.

One day when I was still very young, I asked my father about his parents. I knew my maternal grandparents intimately, but I wanted to know why I had never met his parents.

“Because they died,” he said wistfully.

“Will you ever see them again?” I asked.

He considered his answer carefully. Finally, he said that there was nothing he would like more in the world than to see his mother and father again, but that he had no reason — and no evidence — to support the idea of an afterlife, so he couldn’t give in to the temptation.

“Why?”

Then he told me, very tenderly, that it can be dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true. You can get tricked if you don’t question yourself and others, especially people in a position of authority. He told me that anything that’s truly real can stand up to scrutiny.

As far as I can remember, this is the first time I began to understand the permanence of death. As I veered into a kind of mini existential crisis, my parents comforted me without deviating from their scientific worldview.

“You are alive right this second. That is an amazing thing,” they told me. When you consider the nearly infinite number of forks in the road that lead to any single person being born, they said, you must be grateful that you’re you at this very second. Think of the enormous number of potential alternate universes where, for example, your great-great-grandparents never meet and you never come to be. Moreover, you have the pleasure of living on a planet where you have evolved to breathe the air, drink the water, and love the warmth of the closest star. You’re connected to the generations through DNA — and, even farther back, to the universe, because every cell in your body was cooked in the hearts of stars. We are star stuff, my dad famously said, and he made me feel that way.

15 Quotes From the World's Most Humble President

I have been a fan of this man ever since i read about him a few years back. He is a person of humility and wisdom, qualities I hope to have if I reach old age as well although due to my hatred of spending time in the sun too much, I don't know if i will ever reach the stage where I tend to my own garden. I'm lazy as fuck and being hairy means i heat up like a radiator in summer. I view this man as the Michael Jackson of the political world. I hope his words resonate with whoever reads them as they have with me. Him being an atheist is a bonus as well, screw the uptight religious assholes who spend all day pointing out how 'charitable' they all are.



"Modest yet bold, liberal and fun-loving."

Naming Uruguay the country of the year in 2013, the Economist may very well have described the rising nation's head of state, President José "Pepe" Mujica.

Known for his unusual frankness, fiery oration and bold leadership to turn ideas into action, the 78-year-old leader possesses and practices the very characteristics that many world leaders fail to emulate. He has also garnered international acclaim for his progressive policies, down-to-earth personality and simple presentation, which has earned him a reputation as "the world's poorest president."

Living in a small, one-bedroom farm with his wife, Sen. Lucia Toplansky, and a number of dogs (including three-legged Manuela), Mujica donates 90% of his salary to charity, leads by example in an age of austerity and has gained international acclaim for pushing ahead with policies on cannabis legalisation, same-sex marriage and abortion, while decrying excessive consumption. 

Mujica practices the simplicity he preaches. Here are some of our favorite quotes by the one-of-a-kind president with a powerful message:

1. On revolutions and revolts



"I've seen some springs that ended up being terrible winters. We human beings are gregarious. We can't live alone. For our lives to be possible, we depend on society. It's one thing to overturn a government or block the streets. But it's a different matter altogether to create and build a better society, one that needs organization, discipline and long-term work. Let's not confuse the two of them. I want to make it clear: I feel sympathetic with that youthful energy, but I think it's not going anywhere if it doesn't become more mature." 

2. On legalizing marijuana



When asked about opposition to legalizing marijuana, he said:

"It has always been like that with changes. In 1913, we established divorce as a right for women in Uruguay. You know what they were saying back then? That families would dissolve. That it was the end of good manners and society. There has always been a conservative and traditional opinion out there that's afraid of change. When I was young and would go dancing at balls, we'd have to wear suits and ties. Otherwise they wouldn't let us in. I don't think anyone dresses up for dancing parties nowadays."

3. On materialism



"We have sacrificed the old immaterial gods, and now we are occupying the temple of the Market-God. He organizes our economy, our politics, our habits, our lives, and even provides us with rates and credit cards and gives us the appearance of happiness.

"It seems that we have been born only to consume and to consume, and when we can no longer consume, we have a feeling of frustration, and we suffer from poverty, and we are auto-marginalized."

4. On global consumption



"We can almost recycle everything now. If we lived within our means, by being prudent, the 7 billion people in the world could have everything they needed. Global politics should be moving in that direction. But we think as people and countries, not as a species."

5. On abortion and same-sex marriage



In an interview with Brazilian news agency O Globo, Mujica said: 

"We applied a very simple principle: Recognize the facts. Abortion is old as the world. Gay marriage, please — it's older than the world. We had Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, please. To say it's modern, come on, it's older than we are. It's an objective reality that it exists. For us, not legalizing it would be to torture people needlessly."

6. On ending conflict



When asked about Uruguay offering its services to try and end the 50-year-old conflict in Colombia between the government and the ELN rebel group: 

"From afar, it seems like a war without a solution and like a long sacrifice for the entire country. So when a president appears who tries to open a path to peace, I think that deserves support, because there is a lot of pain, and if they try to settle scores, the war will never end. But there is an opportunity. I would feel selfish if I did not help in any way.

"Help does not mean to intervene. I will not meddle if I am not invited to do so. But if I can serve as a go-between with my experience, I will support the government's call for dialogue with the rebel forces who also have their problems, who also have their fears. I think all us Latin Americans have to help."

7. On staying humble in office




"As soon as politicians start climbing up the ladder, they suddenly become kings. I don't know how it works, but what I do know is that republics came to the world to make sure that no one is more than anyone else." The pomp of office, he said, is like something left over from a feudal past: "You need a palace, red carpet, a lot of people behind you saying, 'Yes, sir.' I think all of that is awful."

8. On redistribution of wealth



"Businesses just want to increase their profits; it's up to the government to make sure they distribute enough of those profits so workers have the money to buy the goods they produce," Mujica told businessmen at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "It's no mystery — the less poverty, the more commerce. The most important investment we can make is in human resources."

9. On age



"What's sad is that an 80-year-old grandpa has to be the open-minded one. Old people aren't old just because of their age, but because of what's in their heads. They are horrified at this, but they aren't horrified at what's happening in the streets?"

10. On addiction



"Worse that drugs is drug trafficking. Much worse. Drugs are a disease, and I don't think that there are good drugs or that marijuana is good. Nor cigarettes. No addiction is good. I include alcohol. The only good addiction is love. Forget everything else." 

11. On being called the world's poorest president



"I'm not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live. My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. I'm the son of my history. There have been years when I would have been happy just to have a mattress."

12. On donating 90% of his salary to charity



"I have a way of life that I don't change just because I am a president. I earn more than I need, even if it's not enough for others. For me, it is no sacrifice, it's a duty."

13. On his goals for Uruguay



"My goal is to achieve a little less injustice in Uruguay, to help the most vulnerable and to leave behind a political way of thinking, a way of looking at the future that will be passed on and used to move forward. There's nothing short-term, no victory around the corner. I will not achieve paradise or anything like that. What I want is to fight for the common good to progress. Life slips by. The way to prolong it is for others to continue your work." 

14. On being a president



"A president is a high-level official who is elected to carry out a function. He is not a king, not a god. He is not the witch doctor of a tribe who knows everything. He is a civil servant. I think the ideal way of living is to live like the vast majority of people whom we attempt to serve and represent." 

15. On the secret to happiness

"To live in accordance with how one thinks. Be yourself and don't try to impose your criteria on the rest. I don't expect others to live like me. I want to respect people's freedom, but I defend my freedom. And that comes with the courage to say what you think, even if sometimes others don't share those views."

Infatuations and Flawed Identity

In my life i have had two major infatuations. I have found them to be utterly socially embarrassing and frustrating periods of my life. One of these i have covered early in my blog. Another was an incident with a woman who I shall refer to as 'J'. Both incidents were quite lengthy spanning several weeks and months and i emerged from each period both angry at myself for being such an idiot but also with a sense of relief. It has been a year since my time around J and I have slowly reflected on my thought patterns and processes during that time. Its well known to those who have looked around here that I tend to just wank once in a while to drive off the urge and get on with my life. Also, having recently completed the saga of Neon Genesis Evangelion, an anime series which i consider to be a masterpiece of a commentary of human loneliness and depression, I came across the idea of the Hedgehogs Dilemma.

Ritsuko Akagi: Do you know the fable “The Hedgehog’s Dilemma?”

Misato Katsuragi: Hedgehog? You mean those animals with the spiny hair?

Ritsuko Akagi: Even though a hedgehog may want to become close with another hedgehog. The closer

they get the more they injure each other with their spines.

Misato Katsuragi: Hmm.

Ritsuko Akagi: It’s the same with some humans. The reason he seems so withdrawn is because he’s afraid - of being hurt.

Misato Katsuragi: Well, he’s… just… going to have to learn… someday…. That part of growing up

means finding a way to interact with others while distancing pain.

(I will dedicate a post one day to the inner workings of Neon Genesis Evangelion as a whole as i believe its story and characters are extremely relevant to anyhone who experiences loneliness or self inadequacy and it has created a commentary on the various barriers humans employ to protect themselves).

Today as I swept the work area of my factory I reflected on this concept, one that was quite evident in my own life. I believe that I have many physical flaws that make me unappealing as a person let alone as a romantic partner. However let me make it clear that I completely understand dear reader, that I am no doubt coming across as selfish, self defeating, self pitying, beta, useless etc. That i do not deny. It may rightly be so and if after you read this you come to that conclusion well uh you know that's just like uh your opinion man. I am overweight and due to social stress and social obligations I have neither the energy nor the motivation to exercise. Instead I gorge on junk food to relieve my stress.This lack of motivation and past experiences has led me to be quite loose with my grooming and hygiene needs. I am also quite short. So I am short fat and hairy,of course I can change if I could get off my ass but hey this is me right now. Changing myself physically aside, I believe that in the past I slowly shaped my mindset of disregarding the majority of outside opinions in order to protect myself.

I have never been the best at reading signs of interest yet I also read too deeply into signs. While I was volunteering at a Red Cross store in Burwood last year, one of my volunteering mates was a pretty bespectled girl who was at the time quite fidgety when we were close, when the store was empty she'd talk to me, laugh at practically anything i said and regularly stroke my arms and fiddled with my hair. Completely oblivious to the gravity of the situation, I thought ok what the heck I'll just stay calm and say nothing. This continued for a few weeks but with me either brushing it off as a normal habit of hers or just not noticing at all. It was only after recounting what i found to be a strange behaviour, that several friends bemoaned at my inability to pick up signs of interest.

In contrast, to illustrate a time where I fell too far down the rabbit hole, let me chronicle my time with 'J'.It was last year during a friends birthday party.Our earliest encounter was during the routine karaoke session after the birthday. As we picked songs we remarked oh my god you like the same kind of music as me? (It turned out to just be one or two artists). We exchanged contact details and during the week I didn't giver her too much thought, until she decided to crash a lecture of mine and we both agreed on how excited we were for the weekend.During the second karaoke session I did what i normally do when unknown songs come up, i try to guess way the rhythm goes and how the lyrics should be sung. Too much surprise however it seemed to be hilarious to J, who was either tipsy and overreacting or seemingly genuine so bemused that she was howling with laughter the entire time. I had heard that if a man could make a woman it was a sure sign that he was at least doing something right. On the way home it was only us two who needed to catch the nightbus. We sat mostly in silence listening some music while she wrapped her arm around mine. We swung around Mcdonalds and sat in my car talking until.around 4am. I would later find out that she was this close with everyone she met. I was torn between being confused due to my misreading of signs as well as what i perceived to be her underlying plot to just mess with me and emotionally sap or drain me like a kind of vixen or psychic vampire.Thinking back I seem to have just blamed her but at the time I thought does she not know what power she possesses? Doesn't she realise that the way chooses to act may be unintentionally (or intentionally?) bewildering other poor desperate souls like me?

In the ensuing weeks I tried to resist the urge to reply immediately to any messages. As a person who never calls or receive calls the frequency of the message exchange rate was at the time surprising even to me. We skyped a bit talking about pretty much anything. She read poetry of her own writing to me piqued my interest in her shared interest in science and the universe.We  She also introduced me to the music of Kimbra, which while I will always be in her debt for, whenever I listen to Kimbra I find myself thinking of J, which tends to bring back painful memories. At the time it was a blessing yet also a curse. I recall now with shame how I sang to her over the microphone, as this incident most clearly echoed the first time I sang  to a girl on a public train simply because she asked me to, only to see her laugh and ridicule me for actually carrying through with it. Singing and music in general, even just sharing it with others is to me a sacred and deeply personal issue. I suppose my inability to communicate this concept of mine led to my downfall. I consider both periods where I was utterly smitten with these women as periods of what seemed like deep sleep. Another shameful incident was when I invited her over to the place where i was renting to watch some movies. We sat close as we shared fruit and watched a few films. I recall how I breathed intoxicating smell of her hair, inching to hold her hand or to cuddle. Instead it was very sensible sitting not too far apart or too close. What can I say, I've never had any real practice or experience. Jesus Fucking Christ this is painful to recall. Both times when my mind imploded on itself and reawoke to the realization of the extent of my infatuation it was like waking up an operation that had me drugged and groggy. However I must have half woken up during one of those embarrassing singing sessions because I choose the song 'Wicked Game' by Stone Sour whose lyrics go like this.

The world was on fire and no one could save me but you.
It's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you.
And I never dreamed that I knew somebody like you.

No, I don't want to fall in love.
No, I don't want to fall in love.
With you. With you.

What a wicked game to play, to make me feel this way.
What a wicked thing to do, to let me dream of you.
What a wicked thing to say, you never felt that way.
What a wicked thing to do, to make me dream of you and,

No, I don't want to fall in love.
No, I don't want to fall in love.
With you. With you.

The world was on fire and no one could save me but you.
It's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
I never dreamed that I'd need somebody like you.
And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you no,

No, I don't want to fall in love.
No, I don't want to fall in love.
No I…
No I…
Nobody loves no one.

(I sincerely meant it yet I could not put it into words directly. Part of me knew it was too late I was already in the deep end, I guess I hoped she would pick up the hint. Reflecting back on it now I'm sure she just got creeped out and proceeded to slowly make it clear her uninterest.) Still I couldn't help but feel proud of myself as 'J' and other friends of mine struggled to grasp my wide spanning range of musical listening genres.What can I say haha.

Looking back now this was the 2nd time that I had been so infatuated with someone and I recall now not being able to concentrate on studies, not being able to sleep as literally everything I saw or heard reminded me of 'J'. I messaged friends for help and encouragement, yet even when one friend I told me that she was basically the same with every person I met, part of me hoped she was wrong that I was somehow special (jesus christ what a fool i was!). The final blow which knocked me back to reality was when I choose to hang with 'J' and another guy called 'E'. Unbeknownst, in the last week before I 'resurfaced' from what I see now as a period of intense emotional upheaval, I would be 3rd wheeling as went to eat at various locations as well as go to Karaoke and study in the library. On a Friday night after one of these events,'E' who lived quite far away in an affluent area near the shores, accompanied us deep into Western Sydney.As we waited at the station I seemed to melt into the background as they sat away and not talking to me snuggling together. Suddenly as we boarded the train i felt the weight of the entire fucking UNIVERSE land on my head and in complete and utter disgust i stood up and moved over to a separate seat. Our next meetup was to happen on the following Sunday and i spent in the entire Saturday sitting in my room with my head in my hands as the weight of what had transpired over the last few weeks dawned on me. I felt like a complete idiot letting myself become to stressed out over some girl. During the Sunday meetup at the mall I couldn't even maintain my composure I was shaking with frustration and anger yet also limp as a noodle. All that time wasted.... and for what?. Out of desperation I concocted a plan. I would tell her everything confess my feelings get them off my chest.

Here is where I must commend a friend of mine Ella. Ella you are tough and stubborn but also damn intelligent and a damn good friend. You helped me the most when I left my family and you also were the one who chained me back to down to earth and dismissed my obssessed ramblings about confessing anything. You remembered that I write for self therapy. Its not easy for me to say this in person so I'll write it here. Thanks alot Ella and I love you (platonically dont worry dont rip me apart if you happen to see this).  The next morning I went and brought a fresh new notebook and wrote my heart and soul into the book and then burned it. I just want to get over this ordeal fuck I just wanted it to be overand I could go back to worrying about less trivial shit. Thus concluded this saga. People say that being in love is the best feeling in the world. I think they mean when both parties feel the same way. For me it was an intrusion and an annoying obstacle in my life that I am glad I have moved on from that drained me emotionally and wasted my time thinking about. Naturally it took a bit longer to slowly ease myself from talking to her at all. I find that completely cutting a person out of my life to be the only way of guaranteeing I stop reflecting on these these events.

I have a strange push and pull relationship with other humans. I find it very easy to open myself on command but i can also shut down and completely push people away. Like the hedgehog dilemma, I try not to get close to new people lest i scare them and push them away. But why is that? I think that throughout my life, while it is obviously hidden away under the surface and not immediately obvious to anyone other than myself , I have fought extremely hard and very long to nurture and shape and protect my identity from being overly warped by outside opinions and influences. Marilyn Manson, a long time personal idol of mine once said,

'“Part of me is afraid to get close to people because I'm afraid that they're going to leave.”

as well as

“When I was a kid I think the thing I remembered most about The Exorcist was Linda Blair being 
possessed by the devil, and how scary that was. It had a lot of parallels for me because the movie was
challenging different ideas about faith and it was looking at religion in a darker way. Growing up I was
afraid of being possessed by the devil, as an adult I’m afraid of being possessed by the world, by
ignorance, and not holding on to my beliefs and what I feel strongly about.”

I am assuming here, but I have heard from some that relationships are about compromise. I have come to the realization that its not just my physical flaws that (i may be using as an excuse), but also the idea of having to alter any detail of my mindset, way of living or way of life that i find reprehensible. I have many, albeit grand, ideas and plans that i wish to to implement in the future. I want to live and take care of all sorts of pets, i want to join conservation efforts, i want to travel the world. I want to come home to a house with few neighbors and have a sound proof room where i can go inside and dance and sing to my hearts content. I want to make a difference in the world. Above all I just want to be me. As i write this i am tearing up, listening to John Lennons 'God' where with a voice that is both desperate and crooning as he says'

I don't believe in magic
I don't believe in I-ching
I don't believe in Bible
I don't believe in Tarot
I don't believe in Hitler
I don't believe in Jesus
I don't believe in Kennedy
I don't believe in Buddha
I don't believe in Mantra
I don't believe in Gita
I don't believe in Yoga
I don't believe in Kings
I don't believe in Elvis
I don't believe in Zimmerman
I don't believe in Beatles

(And after brief pause and a shaky gasp of air)

I just believe in me...and thats reality.

I find no matter how long it takes, its always good to finally be able to stop and reflect. History is there for us to learn from. While I am a mostly pessimistic( or as i call it realistic) person I will say that that I do try and take away a positive experience or try and see if I learned anything valuable from these crazy times. I would say that I now realise that these events shaped me greatly as a person. I developed a disdain for over superficial and materalistic people and learned to be careful of the time and emotional energy I invest in a relationship, while also teaching me to be wary of any woman who speaks proudly about ending all 7 of her past relationships on the basis on very few flaws on anothers part. Did I get too specific? Its just that this detail was one of the earliest things 'J' said to me and it was buried deep in my mind and in the last few days of that period, it was the only thing I could think about.

Even if my physical flaws disappeared over night, I do not think that I could ever compromise my identity for another.Not now, maybe not ever. Again I am pathetic no? Well yes maybe but I think that since there is no set rule that everyone must acquire a partner for life or to procreate, I can sigh heavily but still press on forward. As Bjork says, 'There is more to life than this'. 

But still ....... the very idea of having someone to experience life and the universe with still draws me in. So for now it seems I am content with experiencing change on my own. To be human is to change. But I can say with certainty I wouldn't want anyone to change for me and I wouldn't want to ever change for anyone else.

The song Little Person -  Foxtails Brigade (A Jon Brion Cover) sums this up quite nicely.

I'm just a little person
One person in a sea
Of many little people
Who are not aware of me

I do my little job
And live my little life
Eat my little meals
Miss my little kid and wife

And somewhere, maybe someday
Maybe somewhere far away
I'll find a second little person
Who will look at me and say

"I know you
You're the one I've waited for
Let's have some fun."

Life is precious every minute
And more precious with you in it
So let's have some fun

We'll take a road trip way out west
You're the one I like the best
I'm glad I've found you
Like hangin' 'round you
You're the one I like the best

Somewhere, maybe someday
Maybe somewhere far away
Somewhere, maybe someday
Maybe somewhere far away
Somewhere, maybe someday
Maybe somewhere far away
I'll meet a second little person 
And we'll go out and play