Richard Gillard - Essays and Letters

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Inheriters of Jung and Freud or inheriters of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron?

I suffer from Bipolar Affective Disorder.   Shortly before it was diagnosed as such, in the summer of 2007, I was placed under a psychiatrist and a psychiatric social worker.   I have always been a great believer in talking cures and talking therapies for psychological distress.   While I was working, and had money to pay for such things, it was always talking cures, in the form of psychotherapy, which I prescribed for my own, at that time undiagnosed, condition.   Sometimes I found my psychotherapist with the help of my GP.   Sometimes I found my psychotherapist without help from the medical profession.   It should perhaps be noted that the psychotherapists to whom I was recommended by my doctor or, in one case, by the consultant psychiatrist to whom my doctor suggested I direct my enquiries, were no better, as far as I can see, than the psychotherapists I found without any help from the medical profession.

In the summer of 2007 I found myself under an NHS psychiatrist and, as already mentioned, a psychiatric social worker paid by the NHS.   The psychiatrist struck me as a very intelligent and reasonable man.   The psychiatric social worker made less of an impression on me.   However, even the psychiatrist, although he paid lip service to my request for psychotherapy in general, and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in particular, seemed much more willing to prescribe drugs than psychotherapy.   I am not saying this was because of his prejudices in the matter.   It may simply have been that drugs were the only therapy the NHS was ever going to pay for.

Whatever the reason, both my psychiatrist and my psychiatric social worker seemed very keen to prescribe me Lithium for my condition.   I took it for precisely one week.   At the end of that week, on a visit to some friends of mine in Beckenham, on the borders between Kent and South London, I noticed how profoundly disconnected I was feeling from my old friends.   I felt like a moron.   I felt as if the drug was turning me into a Zombie.   I asked myself, if this was how I felt after one week on the drug, how was I going to fear after six months or a year.

I am fortunate, in a way, in that both my mother and her sister suffered from depression and both of them went the medical route as a way of addressing the problem.   They took whatever drug they were prescribed and, in my mother's case, she also took ECT.   I was able to see what psychiatric medicine did for my mother and her sister.   I was able to watch them as they, slowly but surely, got worse.   As a result of this experience, I was always less than willing to take what psychiatrists and GPs had to say about drug therapy for psychiatric conditions at face value.

Before I stopped taking Lithium I typed the word "Lithium" into the Google Search Engine to see what results I would bring up.   I already knew that the therapeutic dose for Lithium was extremely close to the toxic dose, because I had been told that I would need to take regular blood tests during the course of my treatment to monitor this, i.e. to monitor how much Lithium was entering and staying in my blood stream, because the psychiatric profession do at least acknowledge that the stuff is dangerous.   On searching the World Wide Web I discovered that Lithium could adversely affect my kidney function.   Indeed, it appeared from the literature that, if I were to take the drug for a period of ten years or more, it was almost guaranteed to do irreversible damage to my kidneys.   I ask you, gentle reader, is this a reasonable risk to take with a person's health?

Another possible side effect of Lithium, it turns out, is encephalopathy.   This is rather a long word and I did not know what it meant.   Fortunately, I had the World Wide Web at my disposal, so I looked it up.   It means brain damage!   So let's think about this: In order to "cure" my psychiatric condition I was being given a drug that might cause brain damage.   In order to "Improve the functioning of my brain, with respect to my condition" I was being prescribed a substance which could, in certain cases, cause permanent damage to the brain.

After I stopped taking Lithium I would occassionally make reference to the fact in conversation.   Sometimes the person I was talking to would know someone who was on Lithium and they would point them out to me.   I discovered that one of these people was someone I had already met, whom I had dismissed as being "Not all there".   I was later introduced to another person who was a long term user of this drug.   I discovered that I was looking someone who was shaking, who could not even control his own movements.   I discovered that I was looking at someone who, to me, did not look at all well.

Many years ago I saw the movie One flew over the Cuckoo's nest.   I had been so impressed with the movie that I bought a copy of Ken Kesey's book of the same name; the book on which the film had been based.   I remember a conversation between two patients in the book.   One of the patients was telling the other the "theoretical basis" for Electro Convulsive Shock Therapy (ECT).   This fictional character told his friend that, many years previously, two psychiatrists had been wandering around an abatoir, for what reason, God only knows!   They had been watching the animals being stunned with an electric shock to the brain and they had noticed that, prior to losing consciousness, some of those animals had sufferred what appeared to be an epileptic fit.   I did not have any independent testimony that this story was true.   Since I was reading a novel I felt that, perhaps, I should take the story with a pinch of salt.   I was reading a novel after all.   However, in my subsequent reading I did discover that the voltages used in Electro Convulsive Therapy were quite large and that the patients did in fact have an epileptic fit.   The clue, after all, is in the name: "Electro Convulsive Therapy".

Recently, over the last five or six years, I have become familiar with the work of Naomi Klein.   This was initially as a result of reading some of the articles she had written in The Guardian.   As my mental health problems have become more serious and, more importantly, since they have resulted in me losing my job and my home and finding myself living in cold, damp, cramped, unhealthy and unpleasant accomodation, I have not found it quite so easy to take a disinterested interest in the world around me.   I have not found it quite so simple to educate and inform myself, as I once loved to do   However, before my condition caused this downward direction in my financial and living circumstances, in the days when I still had a job bringing me in excess of £37,000 per annum, when I still owned a lovely flat in Highgate, I loved nothing better, of a Saturday or Sunday, than to go to London for the day, with a bottle of water and the Saturday Guardian, and to sit, either in a coffee shop or the cafeteria of the Royal Academy of Arts and, while enjoying either my lunch or a cup of coffee, read my copy of The Guardian.   I loved reading what Guardian reporters, like Suzanne Goldenberg, told me about what was really going on in the world, and I loved reading articles by people like Naomi Klein in the "Comment and Debate" section of The Guardian.

At first Naomi Klein seemed like A voice crying in the Wilderness.   Her analysis of monetarist economics and global capitalism seemed too academic and too erudite for the average man in the street to be able to understand.   However, with her latest book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein seems, at last, to have reached a mass audience.   I know of at least two people who have read this book.   It has been very apparent from their enthusiastic recommendations of it, that they thought very highly of it.   I am not going to say too much about the main thesis of Naomi Klein's book in this essay.   You can view a YouTube Video in which Naomi Klein talks about Disaster Capitalism, the subject of The Shock Doctrine.   There is also a collection of six YouTube videos available, inn which Naomi Klein talks about The Shock Doctrine.   You can view My own links to these six videos, if you would like to know more.

From the point of view of the current discussion, I am interested only in Chapter 1 of Naomi Klein's book.   This is the chapter in which Naomi Klein talks about the work of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron.   A man described as "criminally stupid" by one of his colleagues, I would like to suggest that if Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron is the face of psychiatric research, psychiatry is a discipline we could well do without.

In Chapter 1 of The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein confirms what I first read in Ken Kesey's book about the theoretical background to Electo Convulsive Shock Therapy.   She even provides the names of the two doctors who invented it.   However, it is what she has to say about the work of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron, which I find really interesting.

During his time at the Allan Memorial Institute, Dr. Cameron subjected his patients to an utterly abusive regime of treatment, which cannot be described as anything less than torture.   Indeed, from 1957 to 1964, the CIA funded his research work under their MKULTRA initiative.   Yet, this is the man who, in 1961 was voted president of The World Psychiatric Association.   Surely this speaks volumes, concerning the intelligence and insight of the average psychiatrist.   So would I advise anyone to trust their mental health to the psychiatric profession?   Not if I had their best interests at heart I wouldn't!

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How Safe is Electro-Convulsive Shock Therapy (ECT)?

The title of this essay is: "How safe is Electro-Convulsive Shock Therapy (ECT)?".   The answer, I would suggest, is "Not very safe at all."   However, that is a suggestion, not an argument.   Here is my argument:

Many years ago I saw the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.   In this movie, the actor Jack Nicholson plays the part of McMurphy, a convict who chooses to be sent to a psychiatric unit, because he believes he is choosing a "soft alternative" to a jail sentence.   He very soon discovers that he has chosen anything but a soft alternative.   His time in the secure psychiatric unit is, quite literally, the death of him.

McMurphy makes many friends among his fellow patients, one of whom is a Native American, of considerable physical stature, who McMurphy refers to as "The Chief".   The Chief appears to be deaf and dumb.   However, one day, when McMurphy offers the chief some chewing gum, while they are both waiting for an ECT treatment neither of them wants, the chief says "Thank you."   Following this event, McMurphy soon establishes that the chief can speak and hear perfectly well, but he has feigned deafness as a defence against the very hostile regime, which operates in the ward to which the chief and McMurphy have been confined.

Before too long McMurphy has been so brutalised by the regime in the ward that he is turned into a vegatable.   The chief who is just about to put into effect an escape plan, which McMurphy has outlined to him, cannot bear to leave his old friend in that state.   He thinks he would be better off dead.   The film ends with the chief suffocating McMurphy with a pillow, before effecting his escape by uprooting a very heavy washstand, lifting it up on to his shoulders and then running at the reinforced window and throwing the washstand into it to break a hole in the wall through which he can escape.

Now of course, this is a movie I am talking about, this is not realy life.   But bear with me.   I was so impressed by this movie that, a short while later, I decided to buy and read the book on which it is based.   The book has the same title as the movie.   It was written by Ken Kesey.  

While I was reading the book, I noted that the issue of ECT was raised.   One of the patients told another of the theoretical background to ECT.   This is the story he told:

One day, for God knows what good reason, two psychiatrists were walking around an abatoir, watching the animals being slaughtered.   One of them happened to notice that sometimes, when the electric shock was applied to the animals' heads, in order to stun them, some of them, rather than being rendered immediately unconscious, suffered what appeared to be an epileptic fit.   The doctors were aware that some of their epileptic patients were much quieter, after they had suffered an epileptic fit.   They therefore thought that perhaps it might be a good idea to give electric shocks to their more disturbed patients to deliberately cause an epileptic fit, in the hope that this would calm the patients down.   Evidently, the experiment was a success, because ECT seems to be used rather a lot on psychiatric wards to this very day.

Now you might be inclined to suggest that, since One Flew over the Cuckoo's nest is a novel, the story about the two psychiatrists visiting the abatoir is apocryphal.   Indeed, I thought so myself when I first read the story.   I had a strong suspicion that it was true however.   You see, the clue is in the name: Electro Convulsive Shock Therapy.   Also, if you watch this operation being performed, you will see an object inserted into the patient's mouth, so that they don't bite their tongue off when they go into the fit.   You will also see the patient shake uncontrollably as the, relatively high, voltage is applied across his or her temples.

I have recently been reading Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine, which is about the rise of Disaster Capitalism.   I am not going to attempt to explain what Disaster Capitalism is.   If you are interested, you can see Naomi Klein give a talk on Disaster Capitalism on YouTube.   What does interest me is that Naomi Klein happens to mention the genesis of ECT.   At the start of Chapter 1 of The Shock Doctrine there are two quotes.   The second of these is from Ugo Cerletti, the psychiatrist who invented ECT.   This is what he says:

I went to the slaughterhouse to observe the so called 'electric slaughtering', and I saw that the hogs were clamped at the temples with big metallic tongs which were hooked up to an electric current (125 volts).   As soon as the hogs were clamped by the tongs, they fell unconscious, stiffened, then after a few seconds they were shaken by convulsions in the same way as our experimental dogs.   During this period of unconsciousness (epileptic coma), the butcher stabbed and bled the animals without difficulty.

The above paragraph appears in The Shock Doctrine, printed above a legend which reads: 'Ugo Cerletti, describing how he "invented" electroshock therapy, 1954.'

Naomi Klein quotes her source for the above information as a report, written by Ugo Cerletti, himself, for the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Psychopathology and Quarterly Review of Psychiatry and Neurology, issue 15 (September 1954) Pages 192 - 193.

However, the point of this essay, was not to question the origin of Electro Convulsive Shock Therapy.   The point was to question how safe it is.   At the start of this essay, I suggested the answer was "Not very safe at all."   It is time for me to justify that assertion.  

On page 32 of The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein mentions a device, which she refers to as the Page-Russell.   This device was designed to administer six consecutive jolts of electricity instead of a single one.   An article about ECT on Wikipedia makes it clear that the Page-Russell machine was designed for clinical use, since it says, and I quote:

"Most modern ECT machines deliver a brief-pulse current, which is thought to cause fewer cognitive effects than the sine-wave currents which were originally used in ECT.   A small minority of psychiatrists in the USA still use sine-wave stimuli.   Sine-wave is no longer used in the UK.   Typically, the electrical stimulus used in ECT is about 800 milliamps, and the current flows for between one and 6 seconds.   In the USA, ECT machines are manufactured by two companies, Somatics, which is owned by psychiatrists Richard Abrams and Conrad Swartz, and MECTA.   The Food and Drug Administration has classified the devices used to administer ECT as Class III medical devices.   Class III is the highest-risk class of medical devices.   In the UK the market for ECT machines was long monopolised by Ectron Ltd, although in recent years some hospitals have started using American machines.   Ectron Ltd was set up by psychiatrist Robert Russell, who together with a colleague from the Three Counties Asylum, Bedfordshire, invented the Page-Russell technique of intensive ECT.

So why do I mention the Page-Russell technique?   This is why: In chapter 1 of Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine she discusses the work of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron, a psychiatrist, working at the Allan Memorial Institute in Canada.   Dr. Cameron carried out some truly horrendous experiments on his psychiatric patients.   I will not go into those experiments in any detail here.   Naomi Klein covers them in Chapter 1 of The Shock Doctrine.   Also, I have already made reference to those experiments in another essay on this Website.   However, these experiments were so draconian that the CIA realised they could be incorporated in their interrogation techniques.   The CIA were so impressed with the relevance of Dr. Cameron's work, to their needs for new and more effective interrogation techniques, that they funded Dr. Cameron's work, from 1957 to 1961, as a part of their MKUltra initiative.

Naomi Klien goes on to discuss the ways in which the CIA made use of the techniques advanced by Dr. Cameron.   On page 41 of The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein says: "In 1966, the CIA sent three psychiatrists to Saigon, armed with a Page-Russell, the same kind of electroshock machine favoured by Cameron; it was used so aggresively that it killed several prisoners."   So that's how safe electroshock treatment is.   Used too aggressively, it will kill you.

You might find it hard to believe that an initiative such as the CIA's MKUltra initiative, an experiment in brain-washing, interrogation techniques and mind control, could exist.   This will be especially the case, when I tell you that the genie pigs used in this experiment were Dr. Cameron's innocent psychiatric patients.   You might this hard to believe.   However, here is a victim of the MKUltra experiments, testifying to what was done to her.   Here is another.

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The Assassination of John Lennon

In this essay I will argue that Fenton Bressler was right when he argued, in his book Who Killed John Lennon?, that the CIA had a murder in the hand in the murder of John Lennon.     I realise, that there are three questions I must answer before I begin this essay.     Those three questions are as follows:

  1. What relevance does this question have in the year 2009, 28 years after John Lennon was killied?
  2. What motive could the CIA have had for wanting John Lennon dead?
  3. How could the CIA have had anything to do with it, when everybody knows that John Lennon was shot by a lone madman, a recluse, a lunatic who acted completely alone

The first point is really addressed by my answer to the other two points.     I shall argue that the CIA is an extremely evil organisation, which has performed endless covert activities of which involvement in the murder of John Lennon was just a single example.     It is for this reason that the possibility of the CIA's involvement in the murder of John Lennon is still relevant today.     In other words, the issue is still a current issue because the CIA are still engaged in multiple crimes against humanity.     It's as simple as that.

The most difficult part of my thesis is going to be in proving that Mark Chapman could have been programmed to kill anyone, let alone John Lennon.     However, as anyone who has ever taken an interest in the CIA's experiments in mind control, conducted under the MKUltra initiative, will know, the CIA have invested a great deal of money, time and effort in experiments designed to help them to program the actions of certain individuals.     reading the story of the MKUltra initiative is like reading science fiction, or some dark, impossible fairy tale.     However, the MKUltra initiative is all too real.     Many well respected journalists, such as Naomi Klein, for example, have reported on it.

Introduction

When I first sent out the following essay for review, someone asked me: "I have read your short essay on the death of John Lennon but am unable to understand what you hope to gain by it? ...

... It is now so many years since it happened that there is a dreadful temptation to say "Too late"."

In answer to that question I would say this: To begin with, I wish to draw attention to the fact that, in my opinion, John Lennon's song, Imagine, is one of the most beautiful songs, one of the most wonderful pieces of poetry and philosophy I have ever come across.   I would like to ask people to reassess it, because, when I hear people they say that no-one would have been so afraid of John Lennon that they would want to kill him, it seems to me to be a huge under-estimatation of his abilities.

Also, when I wrote this essay, I found certain words of Harold Pinter's, taken from his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, which was made in 2007, to be extremely relevant to the arguments I was presenting.   Consequently, I have included some of them.   The problems Harold Pinter was talking about are not just things that happened "so many years ago".   Many of those things did happen many years ago.   That is true.   But, they are happening still.   That is is the important point.   That is the point to note!

It is true that, since the time of Harold Pinter's Speech, America has got a new President.   Many people hope that we are on the threshold of a new, a better, age.   Perhaps we are.   However, American foreign policy has often been an extremely sinister affair.   It has been that way since the end of the second world war, perhaps even before.   Consider, for example: Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, the list goes on and on.   So, to anyone who feels that the arguments presented here are no longer relevant, I would counter: I think not!

As everybody knows, John Lennon was shot to death by Mark Chapman in December 1981, outside his home, The Dakota Building, in New York City.  

A gentleman by the name of Fenton Bresler wrote a book entitled: Who Killed John Lennon?.   In this book he suggested Mark Chapman was not acting alone.   He suggested that certain right wing sections of the American political establishment put Mr. Chapman up to it. Mr Bresler suggested these people brain washed Mark Chapman, that they programmed him to remove this visonary artist, this inconvenient celebrity, from the scene.   Just like Thomas Becket (Henry II's turbulent priest) John Lennon was inconvenient to certain sections of the Right Wing Establishment on both sides of the pond.   However, whereas the British Establishment would be content, unless, of course, they were dealing with a Princess Dianna or a Dr. David Kelly, to hound and intimidate those people who are inconvenient to them, as they did, for example, with The Rolling Stones, who, at the start of their careers, were once imprisoned for very minor drugs offences, the Americans were never shy of assassination.   John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, et cetera.   They paid the ultimate price when they upset the wrong people.  

Many people say this could not possibly be the case with John Lennon.   They say that the American Establishment would not have been afraid of him, that he was not important enough.   I have even heard George Harrison say this.   George Harrison should have known better, I think.   John Lennon was a visionary with a left wing, progressive agenda.   He was also someone with a universal, populist appeal.   John Lennon was someone who could reach the masses.   John Lennon was a huge part of the counter culture that changed the whole face of political and social life in the 1960s, from anti Vietnam war protests to the Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park , from Timothy Leary to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Zeitgeist of the 1960s was extremely unnusual and quite unique.   John Lennon, The Walrus, the man behind Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was a huge part of this zeitgeist.   John Lennon was a very formattive influence.   Also by about 1973, and possibly because of the influence of Yoko Ono in his life, John Lennon was starting to turn himself into a phlosopher and a thinker, as well as a Rock musician.  

It is well known that both Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover disliked and feared John Lennon.   However, so the received wisdom goes, nobody was concerned about him by 1981.   Apparently, by 1981, these paranoid reactionaries were suddenly "cool about him".   Yeah, right!   Purrleees!

If the reactionary sections of American society were frightened by John Lennon in the days when Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover had positions of power and authority, days when John Lennon was little more than a callow youth, seen here looking slightly lost and embarrased on the Morcambe and Wise show, would they not have been a great deal more scared of this, rather intelligent, articulate, confident, mature and well informed individual ?   No, don't answer that question.   It's rhetorical!

If you do not believe my thesis, as outlined here, please may I ask you to listen to these two samples of his work: Item 1 and Item 2?   Please pay attention this time!

Incidentally, Harold Pinter, in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, talks about the murder of six Jesuit Priests at the hands of a South American Dictatorship, financed by the USA.   He asks the question: Why did they die?   Then he answers his own question: Because they believed a better world was possible.   Well, John Lennon believed a better world was possible.   He said as much, beautifully, eloquently and succintly, in his song Imagine.   Harold Pinter makes the point that America, or at least, certain forces in America, do not want people to know that a better world is possible.   If people did know that, the interests of a certain privileged and wealthy few would be threatened.   So do I think that there were a good few very privileged people in the USA who wanted John Lennon dead?   You bet I do!   How convenient then, that Mark Chapman should take him out.   And now I am suddenly aware of two other, very convenient, "accidents" on this side of the pond.   How convenient for Blair's government that Dr. David Kelly took his own life.   How convenient for the British Establishment that Princess Dianna should have had that fatal accident in a tunnel in Paris.  

Actually, unless the British Establishment are certifiably insane (a possibility I am more than willing to consider) the assassination of Princess Dianna would have been a very unlikely thing for them to have done.   It would, in many ways, have been an incredibly stupid thing for them to have done.   Perhaps, Dianna's death really was an accident.   As for Dr. David Kelly, however, I cannot think how anything could have been more convenient for both Bush and Blair, and all of their cronies, who were still pushing the obvious lie, that Saddam Hussain had Weapons of Mass Destruction, which could be activated in a mere 45 seconds.

Harold Pinter, after discussing the murder of the six Jesuit Priests, mentioned above, goes on to say:   "The crimes of the United States have been: systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.   You have to hand it to America.   It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide, while masquerading as a force for universal good.   It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.   I put to you, that the United States is without doubt, the greatest show on the road.   Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless, it may be.   But it's also very clever.   As a salesman it is out on it's own, and it's most saleable commodity is self-love.   It's a winner.   Listen to all American Presidents on Television say the words, "The American People", as in the sentence, "I say to The American People, it is time to pray, and to defend the rights of The American People, and I ask The American People to trust their President, in the action he is about to take on behalf of The American People."   It's a scintillating strategem.   Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay.   The words "American People" provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance.   You don't need to think.   Just lie back on the cushion.   The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties, but it's very comfortable.   This does not apply, of course, to the 40 million people living below the poverty line ..."

So, to return to my original thesis.   Do I believe that the United States Security Services had a hand in the murder of John Lennon?   You bet I do, sunshine!   You will notice, in my language, in that last sentence, I have ever so slightly slipped back to my working class roots.   Well, I don't care!   Because, guess what?   "A working class hero is something to be!"

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Mr Richard Dawkins on The God Delusion

I was recently asked my opinion of the works of Richard Dawkins. I had never read any of his work, so I decided to do so. I started reading the first few pages of his book, The God Delusion.

While I was reading the first three pages, I thought: "This is a deeply religious piece of writing, where on earth can this argument be going?" I then read a few sentences more and I had to put the book down in disgust. I suddenly found I was very angry with Mr Dawkins.

What caused this anger in me? Mr Dawkins committed the Cardinal Sin of presuming to tell me what other people think. "If I want to know what Einstein or Stephen Hawkins think about God, Mr Dawkins, I will consult Einstein or Stephen Hawkins. I do not need you to presume to interpret them for me!"

Not only did Mr Dawkins claim to represent the thinking of Messrs Einstein and Hawkins. He seemed to believe he knew their "true beliefs" better than they knew themselves. Consequently Mr Dawkins felt the need to step in on behalf this two most erudite scientists and explain their points of view as if he was interpreting the language of small children who were unable to express themselves effectively. Consequently, Dawkins saw fit to represent Einstein, the man who famously said: "God does not play dice with the Universe." as an "atheistic writer". Stephen Hawkins who, it seems, said something at the end of his book A Brief History of Time, about science giving a clue to the workings of The Mind of God was (apparently) "Being mischievous."

Well now Mr Dawkins, let me play you at your own game! Here is a summation of your own life, works and thought:

Mr Dawkins claims not to believe in God.  In reality, he thinks he is God!  In Mr Dawkins world, Mr Dawkins, and he alone, is able to explain to you the opinions of the great scientists. He is able to tell you that, although the most esteemed scientists in the world appear to believe in God. They are in fact deluded, they don't know their own minds and there writings should be taken as disproving the existence of God. I think I have understoof you correctly Mr Dawkins? Have I correctly represented you thesis?

My brain suddenly hurts. Mr Dawkins appears to be a complete buffoon. Apparently, he has decided on his point of view. He therefore feels that all he has to do is to misrepresent the evidence, so that it appears to backup his position. There is a name for this form of philosophical debate Mr Dawkins. I will spell it out for you, because you apear not to understand the concepts involved. Its called l-y-i-n-g.

Mr Dawkins might have achieved more successful, if no less dishonest, results if he has at least refrained from such blatent dishonesty so early in his book. There is no way I am going to trust anything else he might write after seeing his opening gambit. You have lost me before the end of page 4 Mr Dawkins.

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Our Country is in the hands of Fools and Knaves

Anybody coming across the title of this essay for the first time, might be forgiven for thinking that I am having a go at Gordon Brown and his government. I am not. I wish him well. I am even hoping that he might be able to go some way towards addressing some of the issues I am airing here. Whether, that will happen or not I do not know. I do know that I am not the only person who had great hopes of Tony Blair and his government, only to see them shattered within a year or so of his coming to power. Will Gordon Brown show himself to have been cut from the same marble? I am hoping he will not. Everything he has done so far has given me hope that he will be different. However, these are early days. I am writing this on the morning of Saturday 7 July 2007. Gordon Brown has been in power for little more than a week. I cannot say, as Roger Daltry once yelled, in the days when The Who were a pop group who spoke for an entire generation, "We won't get fooled again!". It is simply far too early to tell.

So what am I complaining about? I am complaining about the whole of English society. I think it is sick. I think it is very sick indeed! I need to give you a little background. After years of imagining myself one of The Great and The Good, a patron of the arts, a Friend of The Royal Academy of Art, a friend of The Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Hayward Gallery, The Institute of Contemporary Arts, more normally referred to by its acronymic abbreviation, The ICA, a member of The National Film Theatre (NFT) and the British Film Institute, The BFI, I find myself suddenly on the bottom rung of society. I have recently found out what it is like to be off work and on benefit. I have found myself suffering from Bipolar Affective Disorder and unable to hold down a job because my mood swings have become too intense, my behaviour too unpredictable, to allow me to do so. I say my behaviour has become unpredictable. Even I cannot predict it! I go to bed motivated, full of resolve that tomorrow will be different, I will turn my life around. I wake up full of despair, wishing I could die and hiding under the duvet; hiding myself away from a world which now suddenly seems a hostile and terrifying place It has taken me a long time to come to terms with my circumstances. I had credit cards that were thousands of pounds away from their limit. I had an overdraft limit of £5,000 which was as yet not exhausted, sucked dry to the very dregs. It was so much easier to carry on living way beyond my means; living in denial; pretending that I was still the same person who had a respectable job, a wonderful flat in Highgate; pretending that I was still that urbane and cultured gentleman ...

To be continued, but not, I have decided, in this rather flakey editor, supplied by Geocities.com, which will happily throw away all I have written, if my login happens to expire, between my writing it and my saving it. However, the very design of this editor software is illustrative of the point I wish to make. Britain once led the world in culture, science and technology. Nowadays, however, things are very different. These days, we could not even manage the proverbial "Piss up in a Brewery"!

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David Cameron - An assessment of his credibilty

I would like to give an extremely brief assessment of my view of David Cameron's credibility.  It is my view that, in the days of Tony Blair, David Cameron consistently managed to appear a credible alternative.  He does not seem so credible any more.

It is hard to find erudite words and phrases to summon up my opinion of David Cameron, when I am aware of an uncultured, working class expression, which precisely encapsulates my thoughts; an expression, which says exactly what I think of Mr. Cameron, now that I have seen a more than viable alternative. 

Please excuse my use of the vernacular.  However, I fear that a phrase, much overheard during my English, working class school days, sums up my views on the matter much more effectively than any more erudite, more educated language ever could.  Drawing on the, admittedly impoverished, vocabulary available to me during the time I was a pupil and a very working class school in South London, I would like to suggest that, since Gordon Brown has been Prime Minister, David Cameron has been coming across, as exactly what I fear he is.  That is: David Cameron has started to come across as a complete and utter wanker!

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There is an Isambard Kingdom Brunel in my bathroom

Over the last few days, whenever I have ventured into my bathroom, I have been confronted with the sight of a small spider, all of 2 cm in length, hovering in the air in front of me. He has been there for days and I have left him alone. At first I left him alone because I saw no need to attack him. More recently I have been taking some considerable care to avoid disrupting his (or her) activities out of the most profound sense of respect. In my younger days, I once dreamt of being an engineer. This little spider is a better engineer than I could ever have hoped to have been! I cannot treat him (or her) with anything but the profoundest respect.

Before I continue, I must address the issue of this spider's sex. It is going to be extremely tedious if, during the remainder of this essay, I say "him (or her)" or "he (or she)" every time I wish to refer to this very God among engineers. Consequently, I intend to refer to this little genius as "him", or "he", throughout the remainder of this essay. However, whenever I do so, please read "he (or she)" or "him (or her)". I have no evidence whatsoever that a female of any species would be incapable of such engineering achievements.

So to return to the work of this tiny creature, over this last few weeks I have often seen him, apparently suspended in mid air, every time I have entered the bathroom to urinate. It is only on the sunniest of mid summer afternoons, when the sun comes streaming in through my North West facing bathroom window, that I have been privileged to see the magnificent structure which supports him as he floats a mere few inches from my face. He has produced a spider's web of such magnificence that, were you to imagine my little spider friend to be of human proportions, his web would, in size and structure, rival the very best engineering achievements a whole army of human beings could effect. He has produced something which, on his own scale, is equivalent to an engineering structure that could rival the Clifton Suspension Bridge. What is more my little spider friend has created this structure, single handedly, using material spun from his own body. This little chap is a real Isambard Kingdom Brunel, in spider form! I cannot but accord him the very highest respect.

If one were to give the task to the greatest engineer alive today. Notwithstanding that the gentleman concerned might have knowledge of the highest levels of mathematics known to man; notwithstanding that he might have a whole bank of the most powerful computers at his disposal; notwithstanding that he might be the greatest scientist and engineer alive; a gentleman with a knowledge of physics equal to Einstein's, notwithstanding all of these accomplishments, I cannot but think that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for him to choreograph the precise set of movements, which my little spider friend would have needed to make, in order to create such a structure. It would be extremely difficult to to choreograph the precise set of movements my spider friend would need to make. Yet, make them he did. I cannot but see The Hand of God in all of this. What other explanation can there be. An atheist will tell you that it is all a matter of instinct, that Darwin's natural selection can account for the whole thing. Well I believe that Darwin was right. I believe that natural selection, applied to the huge diversity of nature, did indeed result in the creation of my little spider friend. However, I do not believe that this evolution proceeded so effectively without the guiding hand of some deity. To assert that it did; to assert that selection, applied to normal statistical variation, could account for such a remarkable degree of skill in a creature, which had never learnt to read and write, let alone attend a university course in science, mathematics and engineering, would seem to be as insane as the most bizarre beliefs one might find in any religion.

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Birthday Greetings

I have just been writing a birthday card, which I intend to send to a certain gentleman who will be eighteen years old in a few days time. I so liked the message I found myself writing on it, I thought I would immortalise it here.

Before I tell you the message I will need to give you a little bit of background information. I was in my local "Cost Cutter" the other day, when I saw a Birthday Card with a photograph of the torso of a beautiful, shapely, nicely tanned and very attractive young woman, wearing nothing but a black and very lacey bra, together with a black and very lacey pair of knickers. There was also a message written on the front of the card. The message comprised a greeting followed by a question. Specifically it said:

Birthday Boy!

What do you call
a BABE who does
ANYTHING YOU WANT?

On opening the card one sees the message:

INFLATABLE!

Well, along with Oscar Wilde, I have always been able to resist, "Anything but Temptation" and, knowing that this young man's birthday was just coming up, I felt that I just had to buy it.

When I sent this card I felt that I could not possibly send it to him without a word or two of explanation. Consequently, I found myself writing the following:

Dear X

Please forgive this slightly obscene birthday card. However, I believe the message conveys a wisdom of sorts. It may not quite be equal to The Wisdom of Solomon. Nevetheless, it is a wisdom of sorts. It is perhaps a wisdom which, as a young man, I was rather a long time in coming to. Well, here at: "Gillard's Rakedom and Decadence" Our mission statement is:

"We make the mistakes, so you don't have to!"

Happy Birthday X ...

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Public Sector Targets to be Scrapped (As reported in The Guardian on Wednesday 18 July 2007)

This morning I purchased a copy of the Guardian, which is a rare privilege for me these days, while I am out of work and penniless, and I glimpsed the headline: "Public Sector Targets to be Scrapped".  I immediately had a mental image of our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.  I felt utterly convinced that this was his work.  I thought: "Excellent!  The man's got a brain!"

Now this might seem like a funny thing to say about a politician.  After all, getting to be a parliamentary representative takes a lot of skill and hard work.  However, it seems to me that most politicians, once they get into power, start behaving as though their brain had been removed.  Whether this is because they are so busy running scared of the Murdoch Press that they cannot act intelligently, or for some other reason, I do not know.  However, I am convinced that nobody who knowingly furthers Rupert Murdoch's aims is acting intelligently, and this includes Rupert Murdoch!

It has long been obvious that targets do not work.  However, we, the people, have had to wait a very long time for them to be scrapped.  Quite literally, we have needed to wait until someone with the intelligence and integrity of Gordon Brown got him (or her) self to the position of supreme authority under which it was possible to do such a thing.  With Tony Blair in power doing something as amazingly sensible and right as this is, was always going to be an impossibility.

If this is indicative of the sort of initiative we can expect from Gordon Brown, then I, for one, hope that he stays in power, as England's Prime Minister, for a very, very, very long time!

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Letter to a Shaman

Dear X

Thank you very much for your e-mail.  It is interesting you should say that you are not a therapist.  Notwithstanding anything I might have written to the contrary in my earlier e-mail to you, below, I do not think of you as a therapist. I think of you as a Shaman.  In fact, I am firmly convinced that you are a Shaman.  As such, I am extremely glad you are coming to Bedford.  Bedford may not know it, but Bedford is in urgent need of as Shaman.

In many ways Bedford is a lovely town.  Most of its people are lovely people.  However, there is also a sense in which Bedford, and the people of Bedford, have got no soul.  We have at least two lovely parks which no-one, or hardly anyone, uses.  We have a Borough Council which does not think it is a matter of the highest priority to place good, and free, toilet facilities into those parks, so that people will know that they can picnic in the park and can risk spending the entire day in the park, without the spectre of one of those moments of embarrassing pain and discomfort hovering over them; the spectre of one of those moments of embarrassing pain and discomfort generated when a morsel of spicy food or a mouthful of strong coffee, or a sip of red wine, kicks in and sends an imperious message to their guts, which they know that, if they do not act of it immediately, will see them writhing for an hour or so in the utmost pain and discomfort. Indeed it may transport them to extremes of agony so intense as to rival even the most dreadful horrors of war.  Yet this is an agony, which a little care, consideration and common sense on the part of their Borough Council could relieve them of, before it had a chance to even raise its head.

There is another way, in which one can so easily see that the residents of Bedford have got no soul.  Musicians sometimes play in the centre of Bedford.  Some of these musicians are very good, and yet people wander by hardly even noticing them! Have these people got such pressing concerns that they really have no time for such spiritual refreshment? I strongly doubt it!  Are they engaged on saving the world? Are their current concerns so momentous that they are right to regard a street musician as a pointless distraction they have absolutely no time for?  It doubt it.  I doubt it very much; very much indeed!

Yes Bedford needs a Shaman.  It needs one right away.  You cannot get here a moment too soon X.  Call up a great wind. Fly here this very instant.  Your new home awaits and needs you.

It may also need another?

Oh Goat foot God of Arcady.  This modern world has need of thee!

Warmest Regards

Richard
Website: http://uk.geocities.com/richardgillard322@btinternet.com

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Letter to Jo: Venting my Frustration with Systems Software - Chapter 1 (Chapter 2 is bound to follow shortly!)

Letter to Jo

Dear Jo

Thank you very much for your e-mail dated ...

.. I have been having a lot of difficulty of late, sending you any e-mails at all!  Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) keeps bouncing back what I send you.  I do not know why this should be.  However, in an effort to overcome the problem, I will attempt to ensure that all my future e-mails to you use a text only format (as indeed I have done with this one).

In this way I hope to ensure that your ISP need not concern itself as to whether the e-mail might contain any HTML, which has been miss-used in a similar way to that in which a fraudster might use it.

I shall instruct my copy of Outlook Express to send you all of my e-mails in text rather than HTML format.  Whether Outlook Express, in concert with my Operating System, my ISP's software and your ISP's software, will obey that instruction is a matter which remains to be seen.

Bizzare as this might seem, certain items, which I have sent you as text, have been bounced back in HTML format!  Specifically, anchor tabs, which I have taken particular care to exclude, have been inserted.  It all rather makes my brain hurt.  Apart from screaming "Death to all systems programmers" and running over the crest of the hill, wearing long hair and a loin cloth, a bandana around my head and a spear in my right hand raised high above my shoulder, looking madly from right to left, frantically searching for some Microsoft Development Team to attack, I really do not know what to do about this!


Warmest Regards


Richard

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Footnotes:


  1. I had gone there to look at something by David Yallop who, unlike Richard Dawkins, is an intelligent author with more than half a brain!     -     Return to e-mail text






















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