Consequences

This new bill is a whole load of cods wallop!!

Never has and never will indefinite detention on home soil or abroad been a reasonable or effective solution. The idea of it is preposterous!

All indefinite detention (without trial) does is incite more hatred and animosity between the two parties.
Since when has actually standing by the principles that your nation was founded upon been a weakness? Since when has been fair and just been a weakness? Since when has such obvious stupidity and oppression been acceptable!! Oh I could go on forever!!!!

This doesn't just affect US citizens it affects any one from any country - why can the US decide my fate! If you want to find out more details about the bill then feel free to google it - I am not going to copy and paste facts so that you either assume I am bias or that I have pasted snippets that suit me.

All these types of laws do is encourage stereotyping and discrimination. They also give radicals' material and motive to continue saying what they say. The government only has itself to thank when a young boy is torn away from his father and later goes on to exact his revenge. If anything the government should spend the money they intend to waste on keeping people locked up forever on rehabilitation. Does it really cost that much more to sit and talk things through...this method only has benefits.
If you are arrested and face the prospect of indefinite detention then you are willing to do anything to get out of it - FACT! But once you start attending group circles that actually face the issues rather than bury them it catches your attention, and you begin to listen. Eventually you start interacting,  then start voicing your opinion which leads to counter arguments. These counter arguments may go against your opinion but the logic behind them trumps yours - resulting in a change in your beliefs and attitude. If the people who hold you treat you with respect or at the very least treat you right then you cannot complain...but if they are first class tossers to you then you believe you have every right to hate them and to tell your family how awful they are which spreads and leads to further hatred towards the system in place. Kindness has never and will never be a weakness. Ignorance and fear is, these new laws in place just show us how afraid the US is...surely a nation with confidence in their abilities would not stoop to such low levels.

Yes my method may be way too simple to be effective, but usually the simplest and most obvious method is!!

Next time Iran does something to its own citizens & the US releases some pathetic statement then I wholeheartedly hope Iran tells them to F*** off! The US has lost the right to be known as the "land of the free...", well done Obama!

Tis the season to be jolly...

Not to put a downer on things - but is it really?

I'm sitting in my warm house knowing my dads sounds asleep in good health, while there is a child out there who has never seen / met his father because my government won't bring him back from Guantanamo Bay.

Shaker Aamer, has been held for almost 10 years - for 10 years old his children have been unable to see him or hear his voice! He was unofficially cleared for released in 2007 and officially for 2 years, so why does the government still insist on using up valuable tax payer money on keeping him holed up there??!

Why are we blind and deaf to this injustice!! When you sit around your table on Christmas eve and all wake up to open your gifts on the 25th, think about those who are waking up holed in cells they DO NOT belong in. Think about those children who are unjustly being punished by being separated from their fathers. To bring the man back to this country is the just thing to do, even if he goes to another prison cell atleast he's a step closer to home than he is now. Recently, Clive Stafford Smith wrote an open letter on how he believes if he is not released soon Shaker Aamer will die there. Imagine you were his son / daughter reading that, you know according to the law he SHOULD be a free man...but yet he's not.

What kind of justice is this? Have we totally lost our sense of righteousness that we can stand by and let this happen?

What can we do to help? How are we going to bring him back - what authority do I have?

Your probably thinking all the above - write to your local MP, heck write to the PM! Or at the very least bring awareness to the issue because although you might not be able to make the change someone out there may be able to and how are they going to do so if they aren't aware...

So this Christmas Day when you open your gifts, just remember how fortunate you are. And if you are a person who prays, I ask that you pray that justice is served and Shaker Aamer and his family are granted freedom from the shackles of tyranny and blatant injustice.

Todays simple message

Today I want you to smile.

When you feel bogged down cos of your work load or cos you don't have work, smile.

When your outside deep in thought and realise your no longer smiling, stop & smile.

Your smile can change someone else's day. YOU have the power to change YOUR day.

Start out positive and nothing will knock you - not your boss, not your family, not your addictions, NOTHING!

Slowly we are becoming a nation that worries from how we look to how we going to afford next months rent. Anxiety has never been wise counsel, take a breath and reassess.

As long as you have life in you, you can change your fortune around. The only person you can rely on to make a change is yourself - believe it!

Here's a little personal story. My eating disorder came back with full force last week, ironically the week i had taken a few days off work. I spent Tues (one of my days off) lying in bed with a banging headache because I was busy starving myself. When I did eventually venture out on Wed I was exhausted mentally and physically. My attitude became negative as I was once again consumed by my eating disorder, when  I got back to work i hated every hour!! I was tired and getting easily frustrated (definitley not normal for me!) and that affected my work with made me even more anxious because I was struggling to get things done.

Today (Monday) I woke up and decided today was going to be different. I had breakfast (tea with a cherry bakewell) and made my way to work - with a smile. I got to work and organised my thoughts and my to-do list. Even when things did i go wrong, i literally took a deep breath and knew that everything was going to be okay...and it was!

I one thing I hate to see is people stressing, I honestly believe that there is nothing on this Earth that deserves that much energy. There are always people wishing to be were you are at in life - never forget that that one mans misery can be another mans dream. (Or something like that!)

Take care fellow homosapians - and dont stress!! If you want to vent then feel free to leave a comment and then let it go!

Dear Prime Minister

To David Cameron,

I say David Cameron because your actions are not of a man I would recognise as a leader therefore I shall not address by the label you are known by.

I am British, born and raised in this land. However, my parents are not. I neither fit in your country nor in theirs. You go on national tv claiming multiculturalism is not working, It's not working because your not seeing it?? Have you bothered to step out of your social circle to see what things are like in the real world?

Do you, David Cameron, walk the streets when it is dark to see who is left out in the darkness with no shleter? Do you, David Cameron, go to a citizens house and ask them how they're coping financial, physically and mentally? Do you, David Cameron, know what the people of the land you are suppose to be defending and protecting are feeling at this very moment?

How can a man who does not know his people, and has no intention to, be called their leader? You stand on podiums day after day talking about budgets, finances and ridding the world of extremism, but what about winning over the people? If the people do not like you then no amount of money can fix that. When people have lost hope in your government, no amount of talking can regain that.

As a citizen of this country, I simply ask that you walk to St.Pauls Cathedral and TALK to the people!
Ask them why they are there, what you can do and make a sincere intention to discuss these issues openly. Our politics have become a joke! You have secrets and you lie, how can you be trusted when you openly betray your so-called allies? Walk the streets at night and ask the teacher sleeping under the bridge how he got there, ask the qualified psychologist how he / she got there. If you get to know the people you'll get to see the REAL issues.

Money can only get you so far, but if the people turn against you, you won't get anywhere.

Yours Sincerley

A concerned citizen

Gadaffi's Death

Okay here I go!

I don't care about what you may have thought about this guy. Was he a goodie or a baddie - as Tupac famously said 'Only God can Judge me' - well only God can judge him.

To kill a man and THEN to drag him through the streets and to display his corpse all around the world is barbaric and disgusting! To say you wish to remove a tyrant from power only then to mirror his actions (maybe even worse) is despicable and disgraceful. I'm consumed with anger and disappointment, what a shameful way to end such a fight.

Now as always lets try a different scenario! So on our lovely (unbiased!) tv screens we see a taliban member shooting dead a man convicted of dealing drugs - is that more barbaric than dragging a corpse through the street? Can you just imagine the uproar that would cause! Our pathetic Prime Minister / Presidents hollering on about how these awful men deserve to be hunted down and punished (in the process killing 100,000's of civilians!). Yet here they stand on our screens clapping these folks on their backs. "Well done Libyan people you killed a 60+ year old man and dragged him through the streets - great job keep up the brilliant work! P.S. If your Afghani / Iraqi and do the same we WILL invade your country."

What would have been the right course of action? As muslims, and more importantly as humans, they should have taken him into custody. According to some reports he was begging, surely his victims did the same, but would the person who claims to want change then exact revenge or do what the tyrant never did? Actions speak louder than words, and the Libyan peoples actions did not back their words.

Within a few years I'm pretty sure the US and UK will be singing a different tune and preparing troops to invade and destroy the Libyan Land - until then let us all watch them plaster fake smiles around the world while behind the scenes they rub their hands together planning their next move. 

How is killing the man making a difference. How is celebrating ANOTHER death going to make things okay. What does it say about us...

O how beautiful is freedom

Freedom, how do we define it?

For me freedom is the chance to practice my religion freely without any fear. For you it maybe the right to not believe in a God without any fear. For some it may be the right to bare flesh without any fear of repercussions. For others, it might be to roam the world without any restrictions.

What ever it may be, here's the real question, who decides the definition of freedom? If we go by our governments they're very different in different situations.

Anwar Awlaki, a US citizen, was blatantly assassinated by his government. I aint here to discuss his innocence or guilt I'm just stating facts about this case. The US felt they had the right to go and bomb a man in a whole different nation (nothing new there eh!) but here's the thing what if Iran decided to do the same?

What if we turn on the TV tomorrow and see that Iran decided to bomb a small area of the US because a Iranian born Christian man was claimed to be plotting against the nation? Why does Iran not have the same freedom to roam into another nation, unlike the US / UK government? No one blinked an eyelid at the actions of the US - in fact I'm sure some applaud it. Double standards are a bitch!

Now on to the question of freedom - do any of us actually have a legit claim on freedom? Are any of us really free? I'm going to say no.

We are tied down to mortgages, jobs we hate, taxes we have to pay that are stupidly high! We are lured into the consumerist trap - buying crap we don't need but think we want but in fact by the time we get home we realise we didn't! We all have limited freedom, some we impose upon ourself others are imposed on us.

Whoever decided to come up with the term freedom conned us all - freedom is an illusion we all strive for, but in doing so the journey there is a beautiful one. We all stand as one for a cause we believe in, you just need to look at the Wall Street protests to see that! An even more beautiful example was the Egypt protests (however the recent turmoil is not so exemplary).

Defining terrorism

"The unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims"  

- Oxford Dictionary.

People so easily throw around the word terrorism without really thinking about what it REALLY means and who that could apply to. Most will think of bearded men when thinking about terrorists & when asked about terrorism they'll probably think of bearded men blowing shit up in the US/UK.

Here's the thing, by reading the definition that I've pasted above, does that not apply to the US government? The Iraq war was an unauthorized war (war = violence!) in the pursuit of political aims. Again, the same can be said for the tragedy that is Guantanamo Bay prison. The men in that prison will no doubt say that the American government is the biggest terrorist of all, especially when you look at the fact that human rights are blatantly being ignored there. 

Terrorism is defined by an individuals perspective, don't let the government decide for you! Lets just think about this for a second, please make an effort to be objective. 

A man living in the country you live in, so for me that would be the UK, decides that he's going to commit a crime. This man is not from the UK but he resides in it, so he commits this awful crime and goes into hiding. You offer to hunt this man and hand him over to those whom he has committed this crime against, yet they decline. (On a side note, it is a well known fact that the Taliban did offer to hand Bin Laden to the US yet this offer was declined, even though it could have saved millions of lives - blood hungry much?) This nation has decided they will invade your country over a man that you have just offered to hand over!! So, now your a farmer listening to all this over the radio, you hear that the invading nation has now begun ground operations your instinct is to protect all that you have. YOU have not committed a crime yet YOU are the one being punished for it! How is this justice!? 

I have been born and raised in the UK, within my own country I am still an outsider, yet if any country was to unjustly invade mine I would defend it - because this is all I have. Everything and everyone I love is here, so forgetting about whether the country / leader has done right by me, I will defend it! Yet I am now being labelled the terrorist - this is justice? 

Going back to the definition of terrorism, were the rioters not using violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims? Why have they not been charged and sentenced under the Terrorism Act? The governments of the western world wish to define terrorism for us, let us not be blinded by their propaganda. George Bush is as much of a terrorist as Bin Laden (if in fact he did commit the awful crime which has yet to be proven beyond all doubt), Obama is as much of a terrorist as George Bush and the cycle will go on. 

Our governments applaud the Arab people for standing up against their oppressive and tyrannical leaders, all the while they are blinded by their arrogance. Obama has and will forever be held as a liar because he has YET to fulfil his promise to close down the illegal prison in Cuba that violates all the laws he wishes to impose in the Middle East - hypocritical much!! 

Terrorism is committed by our nations yet we ignore it and put it under the banner of "War against terrorism", does that now mean there are two definitions of terrorism - one for arabs and the other for the rest of the world. 

It's time we start start thinking for ourselves rather than blindly following the crowd. Our countries and principles are in ruins, surely we are in need of change. This change will only come about when we begin to realise that we can think for ourselves and we can make ourselves heard. Enough of sitting quietly and listening to ignorant people spewing hate. Let your view be heard, because it's only once people see you have the courage to voice your opinion that they too will have the courage to think outside the box - start setting the example!