one and a half grams of codeine
one and a half grams of codeine
one and a half grams of codeine
and that’s what i’m taking tonight
blog
a poem of love … for you
today is the time
for a rhyme
that changes everything
now is the moment
for a life
that remainders nothing
no longer a book
struck off a list
or a shelf
empty of victories
and showing
only the failures of one
or two
people who could have been
once they'd seen
each other and seen
the fire
in each other's eyes
as cool hands
of elegant line
held the arm of the man
who fell utterly
in the deepest of loves
that very moment
on the intake of breath
and more and more still ...
and yet just this
was all he could remember
for a while after that night
when her ciggie did burn right
like the eyes
they DID have for each other
despite everything
everyone said
and maybe the two of them
sometimes felt
they ought to feel this too:
but profoundly inside
the souls and hearts of each one
the truth never abandoned
that which others called random
and we knew from the start
were calls from the heart
of two lovers of the best
who now just need to make
the nest of love
they deserved all along
because nothing is stronger
than the treasurable reality
of a woman SO fine
and a man who signs away
everything gladly as glad can be
out of sheer admiration
and respect
and compassion
and the fiercest of passions
and the full recognition
that nothing at all
happened better in his place
and space
on this rock
as time tick-tocked
to what looked once upon a time
like the end of a line
and now just looks like
the beginning of it all
where nothing is further
from their minds and lips
than the nightly kiss
and the morning trust
as breakfast arrives
in the sunshine
of #stockholm's light
as if slowly enters slinkily
like tongue to gentle tongue
amongst the edges of the blinds
which show us everything now
and really how they do
and really how:
and how we ever never knew
and then how too
when we rued the separation
we couldn't even then
embrace the sensation
that something needed doing
before it needed doing:
because here yes it's true
that the vintage we often aspire to
may need the years on occasions
that waiting so long for the hug
of true love
makes the moment we do
all that much more you
my embraceable you
whom i met that evening in #dublin
and now never want to let go
because you and me together
are absolutely
just so:
a love of delicate proportions
where the hand and lace
and sideways glance and sips
and plates of good food
sense the touches
stealthy and covert for sure
of feet and skin found underneath
as playing with appearances
only we know of
and see
lead me to just one conclusion:
you and i were made to fly
and today's the day we do ...
i met her one fateful day
and it was to be the worst day of my life
though i didn't know it at the time
and then a bare twelve years later
the idiocy repeated itself
and i thought it was going to be better
and it wasn't oh it wasn't
but it took me longer much longer
to work out that one was as toxic as her mother
two women of the worst there have ever been
and both probably yes certainly
as neurodiverse as myself too
but not what they claimed the first was
in her spymaster's cover
of equally terrifying prognosis
because what she was was never polar
and never a pillar of anything close
to what one might term community at all at all
black widows being what they both were
and in fact still are for sure
being women capable
of widowing their menfolk whilst they're still alive
and through their stratagems
of cruel cunning always without the us
just women who weaponise
their every word and act
against the fact that humans are just that
because unforgiving is their first name
and unforgivable their last
where precisely both become the outcome
of coming out as sharp and clear as any assassins
and hateful like none in the history of humanity
and abusive as per the worst whores
of political graft on those rafts of irish river
when the personnel that staff the offices
which back those who break into splinters
all the democratic instincts
and all the technological fingerprints
that could've saved us
from the foolish hubris of the zuckerbergs
of pornographic advert networks
all connected and joined up
to the greater glory of the altmans of these days
where fucking with a human being's head
is quite the right thing to do
and so they think for sure
that daughter and mother i was writing about earlier
that they have zero to do with THIS world
now bleeding at both the seams
and at the most unseemly
of global violences
but actually these two women
as per many other humans
have lived lives of absolute choice
and are intimately at fault
both and each
for choosing an easier life such an easier one
of material possessives
like grammatical strictures of the most frightful
that serve only to throttle change
and make their beloved
just rags and tags and sagging supports
to be ripped into strips
and then the intellectual regressives
of smarmy logic and sophisticated sophistry
which have led them quite separately
to bottle that last moment and opportunity
to demonstrate a real and healthy ambition
and aspiration too
for them and me and theirs
and then us all together
to prove that kin could be very much more
than now it will ever be able to be
or should indeed i say and verily repeat
because in the "should" of all this
we are haughtily saying how we never failed
when actually we did and forcefully have ...
and so when at the level of family
unable to communicate savvily
how could we expect government
to rule any better
or succeed where as individuals all these years
we just preferred to choose and manifest our violence
and then fuck each other up
with purpose and intentionality
as aggressive as the most violent criminality
because in truth
that's been my experience
of nuclear and extended family both:
kin as a synonym of ALL that's bad in the human experience
and so i see it as it was
and will now always be
and so i sense it's time to move away forever
grateful that i am still way distant
from a suicide my own family imposed on me
and worked so hard in order to direct me towards
as if awarding me a solution
that would've absolved them
of all deep responsibility
and which would have meant
they would never have had to face the truth
of what still they are
being that cruel cowardly mobbery
of people you grow up with
thinking what they do to you
they do sincerely for you
when in reality
they wanted you to die all along
and so it ultimately comes to this
and for sure it does it does
and so it ends down in the pit of time's pendulum
hanging from figurative threads
as i tease out my next steps
because they won't involve anyone
from that which once
we could have affectionately called fam
and which in no way ever meant kindness of any kind
and as the offers begin to present themselves
now i work really hard to expunge
that which they said could not be expunged
being the capacity that family
and kin and sibling-hood
and cousinly beings multiple
has to convince you they are right
and you are wrong
and when you feel uncomfortable
the fault is all yours
and when they abuse and bully you
it's you who's doing the bullying
and you who's the abuser ...
because THAT'S the one undeniable achievement
of these two women
throughout the mouldering tapestry of their lives
and those family groupings which encroach on us
never liberating ever
and then all the cousins and uncles and fathers
and mothers and aunts of creeping witness
being what they ALL bear witness to:
that kin-hood is a kind of jail of the very worst
and perhaps at that
a panopticon too
where a surveillance of the most total
impresses on the brain born yet free
the rusting bars of increasingly imprisoning deeds
yes indeed it's true
for whilst people and friends of choice
are to be rejoiced and coveted
and embraced and hugged
and treasured and envied
in ways that ennoble us to do the best of things
family of the manner i have experienced
is a curse of the worst and much much more
and is surely finally
to be left irreversibly behind
when finally clearly proving
that its equally irreversible unkindnesses
will never revert to a forgiveness of redemption again
nor to the spirits of generosity
like ghostly figures capable of planing over us
in those magical moments when i looked out
through the child's eyes
which i learnt EVERYTHING from
with the newborn brain i was blessed with
once upon a time
for only then
through the family i grew up alongside
to discover how its innocence was to be ripped out
like strips flaying off
the thief's stinging back
as the blood of life still seeps and stains
the human being i am now determined to fully recover
wilfully leaving my past behind
where the past is the only country
it deserves to inhabit
for cruel
for violent
for abusive
for manipulative and for bullying
and for woman
child and man gone intentionally wrong
goodbye to you all
and to you all
fare thee as well
as you've never known in life
how properly to deliver on
nor how to forge or fashion
even wryly
nor express through compassion
never mind a truly felt passion:
yes i do i do i do
i wish you all luck
as you continue to fuck
with the heads of those
who really
by this time
and way before
and long ago
you should've learnt to love
I’ve struggled all my life to make what I am a saleable commodity.
I don’t mean in a bad way.
I mean in the sense of people who can pay me for my work seeing the value-add in doing so.
My bread-and-butter revenues — high-level, mission-critical, proofreading and copyediting — disappeared in a puff of #derivativeai smoke last year, as clients in advanced #marketing functions made a beeline for #openai and #microsoft’s hype. Now #stabilityai’s fate shows how stable all these proposals really aren’t.
I’ve been applying for roles in a variety of #publishing fields — after all, I have a university master in the subject from Universidad de Salamanca, as well as more than a decade in a broad range of activities relating to the sector.
But I sense my big #marketing client has put out the word that I am not to be employed.
Whether true or not, what troubles me is how ineffective the world more broadly is at understanding the groundbreaking capabilities and world-upturning skillsets that people like me — brains like mine — can deliver.
I have a problem, a really big one: if I put all I can do into one #cv — not just have done which is much much less — it looks like I can’t focus on anything and must be bad at everything.
I really need a #jobsite which allows to deliver on niche needs with say five or six radically different skill interests.
But even this wouldn’t solve my problems and challenges entirely.
One of the biggest reasons that has led to my current work difficulties is the very fact that, actually, where I do add real value is knowing quite a lot about a huge number of things: and it’s not in my knowledge I add value but in my ability to make connections between fields that most people would assume can’t be connected.
Although I don’t like the term #polymath very much, it is relevant here. So. How CAN #polymaths like myself get paid for being able to uncover things that potential employers could benefit from if they knew what was out there?
Because I don’t just know how to understand more elegantly known unknowns: I actually sense better than most people unknown unknowns. And what’s more, I know how to enable these others to achieve similar capabilities.
I’ve been a trainer and facilitator all my life: I know how to transmit this stuff.
What do we think, then, about my condition? What is essentially my conundrum, too …
How can I convince someone to pay me for things they ignore? Let’s take #mi5: in 2003, they used #mentalhealth legislation to put me away for saying what #snowden said ten years later.
I’ve been banging on about a #tech-driven #gaslighting for decades now: first, as experienced by myself; second, as observed in others:
• “When AI claims prediction and means proscription 2. How can you make out you’re predicting a person’s future when you’re not? By dismantling their agency: that is, their ability to exercise free will…” | https://mils.page/2023/09/03/when-ai-claims-prediction-and-means-proscription/ | #milspage
And been providing solutions:
• gb2earth.com/cognitive/intuition
But what do we do in societies where the people who know covert stuff in ways no one generally imagines — and yet still want to do good with what they see — have less power than most, whilst the people with real power (generally influence more than power) assume that the power they have confers more knowledge of the weird that inevitably hurts citizens, but here in some automatic, automagical way?
And it’s not just my beef with #uk #security.
When you’re effectively a #truthmachine, how do you make it pay in a world which doesn’t really care for the truth?
The attached #cv of mine is what I would call a #polymath #cv. But it’s also the #cv of a man who ONLY believes in pursuing the #truth as best he can.
Anyone care to channel that skill? Anyone care to pay for it?
If so, I’d love to regain my bread-and-butter. I’d love to speak with you today:
• +44 7916 750897
it's good to burn bridges
when they're built by bastards
who occupy cozy offices
in central london office blocks
it's good to burn bridges
when they're built by agencies
who occupy anything
but spaces of self-reflection
and who are incapable
of respecting the enemies we face
to such an extent that they then see ...
... they always see themselves
as better than anyone else
and thus will remain inferior forever
to everyone out there far or near
who ever you'll find out here at all
because british intelligence
is anything but ...
and british intelligence
is stuck in that rut ... well it is ...
... of empire and suchlike
and then it's the pleasant island
and verdant and stuff
and so well ... they say and oh they may
but actually not at all at all
and so then again as eyesight dulled
and vision quite blinded and sullied and hidden
and quite blinkered and suffering
as if the tree of oak itself
is rotting from the core
and nothing more is to be done
when all is sung and said
and just the well-read remain as saviours
who actually can't any more anyways
in a country where the rule of law
is no longer treasured by the enforcers of the same
never mind the citizens they once said they served
and so it's as if it's a stain on the country's disdain
in respect of anything that might truly lead
to life and its wily interventions
greater now it's true
than the declensions of the idiots
who run this country through influence not politics
like the strata of medieval wastes grossly uncovered
as they make haste
oh they do
to run the lives of me and you
as badly as one might wish to conceive
because they have no idea at all
and they really have none worth talking of
whilst instead of chasing the real criminality
they prefer to focus on you and me
saying our desire for privacy
makes us just as dangerous
as those they let slip in cities of the north
and others of balding and silly nick
and as they did so terribly that day
and as they claimed to rue the horror
anyhow and every way
they let the bad they lost sight of at such cost
bomb to awful bits the innocents of terror
whilst all this time
they've feathered their own closets and offices
into things quite truly grand and fine
as if the most important thing today
in all our democracy of hey and wow
is to show how good
their taste in interior decoration
enables their decidedly stylish and cool
creatively fabulous comforts of label
rule over the safety of the ordinary citizens
who find themselves utterly unable any more
dying hopelessly in the gutters as they are
of the homeless and the buggered
that end up left all to one side
by the men of british intelligence
who knowing all they have
all these years of strife
actually and truly and forcefully and cruelly
really really don't give a fuck
From these notes …
does it have to do with what happened in the past?
or what happens in the future?
it’s to do with both
it’s a bit complex for everyone because it’s a human thing
well we are that’s true
i guess what you’re saying is we all need to show kindness and compassion to each other from now on
Mil Williams, 27th March 2024, Chester UK
… has come this poem:
the human loom
we're all bones at heart
and blood in marrow
and on the narrow and straight
few of us are able to wait
because all of us worth anything
are human as human can be
and it's to sing out proud and loud
the facts of all our frailties
and overwhelming loyalties
to things we barely understand
even when we're hand-in-hand
and thinking we're close
as ever we've ever been
where love is a rendition
of all that we've seen and saw and more:
and everything and everyone
then becomes this beautiful wondrous one
where sat upon that mountain high
we slowly allow ourselves to cry
because it's true that you and me
is only a small part of the whole equation
like the equators of reason
and emotion's own avaricious longitudes
and the earth of incessant latitudes
marking the x that tells us where
our humanity actually lies
and thus finds itself in turn
at the crossroads and junctions
and intersections of all these truths
which confuse us mightily
and hurt us sometimes tragically
as we attempt to duly understand
the people we have in front of us
and next to us
and inside our heads
as if sometimes they're trying
and as if sometimes they're dying
and occasionally as if
it's ourselves who do the killing
like the seeping of slow leak
out of deeply political mistakes
because politics above all
is what you and i and all of us
do in family on each other
as we attempt to be faithful to the other
and as we sometimes only wound the lover
even as friendships are what counts all told
and their courage (sometimes sold) leads us clearly
to embolden those we see all too dearly
as we prefer to be seen
without wearisome sighs
but simply out of zero disguise:
a transparent good
recovered as we should
and leaving us cleansed
and totally expunged
in newly wondrous
sister- and brotherhoods
where our humanity finally triumphs
and wins over
the hardest of hearses
and the maddest of curses
into a much better place
of more satisfactory race
as we decide once again
after terrible times and pain
to reach out each other's hands
as bands of families
and good women and men
choosing eventually to offer
as gifts almost sacredly proffered
being presented to the tribal heights
where the compassion of the mind
and the kindness of the signs
that once upon a time
did break like shallow refrain
and now can only reencounter
like meeting grand and mealtime fine
and bread that's broken at eventides
in joyful remembrance of all that's true
where you and me and me and you
mean many more than just us two
because after all
and when grand they call
our lives do impact
on all the rest
and whilst sometimes it's death we wish to find
if death i embrace thinking just for myself
the reality of life
is that none is an island as another man said
no human at all
at all at all at all
and all our actions remain quite connected
and all our fears are finally dissected
and all our love is inevitably shared
where in the end our family overcomes
instead of permitting
that it might be overwhelmed
forever and always
lined and creased
like the ageing man i once did feel
and the life even recently
i wanted to be deceased
because that's what it is
and that's what it's been
as being or not became the mightiest question
and dearest shakespeare was right as right
in this so true and in other matters too ...
so all that's left for me to say
is that compassion is a virtue
and kindliness the best
and whilst the words of forgiveness do wonders
what's the very best of all
are the hugs that come naturally
after decades of sadnesses
and the embraces quite lost
to all of time's winds
and to the bad and wilful foolishness
of hatred's forces grossly mad
where insistences on any part
just served to break finally
the hearts of all our rivalries
where they did only disperse
like sounds of gears grinding in reverse
instead of all these years
being voices of gorgeous seers
able to come together and around
tables of leisure and agreeable sounds
because exactly this is what i now give you
and exactly this is what i would like for you
and exactly this is where i'm now waiting
and just this very thing
is where no hesitation
remains to my mind
and only love is what i now feel
for everyone and all around
where everything is now unbound
and life perhaps may finally resume
as if a beautiful tapestry of light
made by the sight of human loom
i am my ideas and where they do not sit
neither can i nor be anything but hit
like a thump to the face
and a broken nose thus traced
as if the blood marked the score
and everything we did was ought
i sought nothing more
than to do what was right
all my life i tried and still had no height
so now it is time i stopped all these rhymes
and left the world that has no place for me
beside my own bodybag quite blue and seen
and the codeine i have of more than a gram
is what is now solving my problems to hand
and so i slowly feel it and so i slowly can
as it infuses my future
with the man i've become
and leads me to a peace
like the gently dimming rays of dusks
quite lengthening now and also that timely
where little more may i do too
than sit and ponder a lifetime gone
where daughter and sons and long-term relations
reach out too late to make a difference ever ...
it’s white but not
dotted with hooks for coats in crazy ways
and photos of beautiful faces
and legs and bodies
stretching out to embrace something
as embodying a better time
with those eyes that try to meet
and gaze languidly
as the street outside walks past
casting a glance inside
and wondering what gin would best go
with a night’s slow movements
as the man holds on
and the woman smiles gently
as if expectantly too
and maybe it’s true
and maybe it’s not
but the vibe between them is kindly
and yet kinda hot
in a way that doesn’t threaten
but promises so much
because the art of life
lies not in the delving
nor in the delivery
but rather in showing you really do care
by ensuring like this
you’re never in the clear
in respect of how far
you might go or maybe not
in order to be like this
and so it’s like this again
and then again you’re doing
what you do best
as the rest attempt to get onboard
with your occasional lording over them all
and that’s when you realise
you’ve overstepped a line
that signals the sign that ain’t very right
and so you retreat
as in when you keep appearances up
and pretend the night ain’t hurting
and the loneliness ain’t biting
and all this writing ain’t a substitute
for living life itself
as all this time you’re sitting here
in the calm of the white
that is white as white
and white as not
and in this city you’d lost for twenty-two years
and now can hear so sharply around
as the sounds and voices
and the toying of choices
and then this is true too
as so finely once more
you are in what’s becoming home to you once more
and this you do feel now so firmly
whilst waiting to leave fiercely on the morrow
and when relieving this life
you wanted to regain
in ways that felt alike
and then exactly the same
as before all that terror which collapsed you so bad
and poleaxed you so madly
and broke your ability to cope at all at all
and so all that happened after
were the fires that they stoked
so you’d burn in the hell they’d made for you at home
meaning they’d be able
to tell the real bad you were
for the rest of the time
they cared to make others hear
as the signal that signs just as before
on terrifying dotted lines
and yet in truth
even where terrifying is the intention quite hard
it’s turning out differently now (i’ll suggest)
and it’s now much easier and how (i’ll suggest)
and much more like leisure is your lace
and much more like pleasure is your place
and much more like someone loves you
as earlier they couldn’t
or wouldn’t
or weren’t allowed to ever
and so that’s then what wraps it up
like a cup or goblet
of grandiose kingly measure
as we come to the end of yet another time
and as we choose to attempt to avoid the crime
which we wanted to embrace all this time
as we avoided the chase
of the deletions of hate
remembering that it’s never to late
and remembering there’s always time
to make into any life
the tidings of the seasons
that arch over our reasons
until we sense fundamentally
like a benchmark of tech
the (touch)stone of love’s deck
distributed like the cards
we tried desperately not to play
as we say let’s make hay
and then sometimes we did
but mostly we didn’t
and so i guess since we didn’t
now it’s full time we did
and that’s the end and beginning
of all our beings
because life is this
and love is all
and even when the funeral pall
surely someone will remember me well
and want to tell a story
where people saw
that this someone did love me true
and utterly
and actually
and doing and seeing
and saying and won
and when finally it’s all done
and dusted so deep
like our lives were chores
not treasures to keep
because if truth be told
i so wish that people loved me enough
to want me not
to take that trigger
and fire that shot
as my beloved ernest did
in the year i now live
out of the despair i now feel
and am obviously being dealt
whilst the final call
brings me close to seeing
that humans are anything but good
and even though all i’ve said is true
still we beat on mercilessly
and pitilessly
and gracefully
and fearfully
into the incandescence
as if we really should
because it really would it really would
be nice to feel i could have been good
copyright mil williams, 16th march 2024, zagreb croatia
in memoriam of #bloomsday2016
The day our security agencies decided that neo-crime and dark figure did not need a law-enforcement response was the day we opened the doors to a future Ukraine; an organised criminality in the UK where we now have an army of embedded criminals in all levels of society which outnumbers the British armed forces; and a broad and widely shared sense of citizen, perhaps even political-party, hopelessness about everything that happens quite toxically to Western and related democracies. That is, none of us can reasonably believe in better any more.
Mil Williams, Chester UK, 18th January 2024
What follows …
What follows is a series of observations on a real case of targeted gaslighting on a democratic citizen — myself, being one of many similarly affected over the years by a nexus, I guess, of tech-bros and outlier security interests in the UK, and maybe other states and actors, too: a longitudinal case which already led to my undue and improper incarceration for a month in a UK mental facility back in 2003, after an experience in a broken-backed open-source community the previous year of 2002 called OpenOffice.org.
This open-source site was sponsored and paid for mainly by the then Sun Microsystems, but the dysfunctionality arose from both sides: corporate and independent developers in equal parts.
First, then, a poem about the impact this has had on me over the years.
“tech-bro”: a #poem by #milwilliams
in english a bro of the tech nature killed me
in swedish a bro is a bridge
*
if only i’d been able to make my life again
in a land like the latter where good people rule
*
but my pain and misery all came from the place
where i had the misfortune to be born
*
and whilst in swedish a tech-bro
would be a path to a better future
*
in english it’s better so much better
to be burned
*
but since i don’t believe in burning anyone
i reason the problem is myself
*
and so it’s myself
that mathematically must be removed
*
from any equation that includes
the future of humankind
*
this is why when the tech-bros
of english-speaking lands
*
burnt my person
in the manner of a most inflammatory form
*
of gaslighting imaginable
in its scorn
*
i never forgot
what they did to me
*
just as i began to fly
and just as i began to try
*
to lift my head higher
and fly to better skies
*
why now i burn those bros memories
even though arson is not my thing
*
but not as beautiful bridges of swedish ways
but as stupid men of patriarchal “hey!”
More on the video and how it continues to impact me
The video embedded at the top of this article was, as already alluded to, posted by an unknown person or persons, or an organisation, around the time the Guardian newspaper published a reader profile of me:
• https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2015/feb/13/good-to-meet-you-miljenko-williams
It was a clear example of self-interested gaslighting by those who didn’t want me to begin to build bridges to good and progressive discourses in British society such as the aforementioned newspaper, and therefore perhaps one day gain access to what for me would be a truly self-validating public platform.
Personally, I never forgot this video, and I believe as I write these words that if its creators were ever revealed, the two decades and more of neo-terrorism on the individual — by any other name, cognitive warfare on a specific and targeted individual such as myself — which I have been subjected to at today’s moment of writing this article would now have responsible parties, as well as a clear motive and notable set of explanations.
That is a world absolutely not fit-for-purpose. Absolutely not.
No?
So what do we do?
The day our security agencies decided that neo-crime and dark figure did not need a law-enforcement response was the day we opened the doors to a future Ukraine, an organised criminality in the UK where we now have an army of embedded criminals in all levels of society which outnumbers the British armed forces, and a broad and widely shared sense of citizen, perhaps even political-party, hopelessness about everything that happens quite toxically to Western and related democracies. That is, none of us can reasonably believe in better any more:
• gb2earth.com/hunch/neocrime | #darkfigure #neocrime
We need to believe in better, of course: but in order to begin to have a right to do so we must say enough is enough in the grey area of discretionary law enforcement and security where discretion is given a bad name in the interests of expediency. That is, in precisely that area of operational manoeuvres which utilises both dark figure and what I prefer to call neo-crime, whatever side of the law we find ourselves on.
We can only reacquire the authority Western democracy once had if we start to deliver on this: only this. And we shall not, until and if we do.
Ever again.
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i’m now going to take what is mine to take
not commit what is wrong
just take what’s mine to take
just that dear friends … just that
we prefer to close our eyes to dead babies blown into pieces by shrapnel our companies make, so we can have taxable events that lead to good roads and hospitals on the backs of such crimes, than actually consider that — as all of this is true — it might be much better not to be a part any more of this thing we used to call life.
mil williams, 2nd january 2024, stockholm sweden
the problem wasn’t hitler: it was the ordinary german-speaking citizens, business leaders, sports enthusiasts and professionals of the same, and other members of the german and supporting foreign political classes, both of the time and since, who gleefully enabled his rise to power. all in the service of money.
the problem isn’t putin: it is the ordinary russian citizens, business leaders, sports enthusiasts and professionals of the same, alongside so many other members of the british, european, and other political classes of other nations, who have, as a consequence of their action or inaction, wilfully enabled not only his rise to but also his permanence in power. all in the service of money.
the problem won’t be trump: it will be the ordinary citizens, business leaders, sports enthusiasts and professionals of the same, alongside other members of the global political classes of other nations, who will have, as a result of their action or inaction, wilfully and knowingly enabled his rise to and ongoing permanence in power. all in the service of money.
and so the problem isn’t them: it’s never been them. the problem is all of us who prefer to pay a mortgage and get to the end of the month rather than stop a war in its tracks. we prefer to fuck a partner every saturday than construct a civilisation made of good people. we prefer fireworks and instagrams to real works of charity. we prefer to close our eyes to dead babies blown into pieces by shrapnel our companies make, so we can have taxable events that lead to good roads and hospitals on the backs of such crimes, than actually consider that — as all of this is true — it might be much better not to be a part any more of this thing we used to call life. all in the service of money.
and when a terrorist organisation sets up a society where it is both military and health service in one, where it shields itself behind a longitudinal tech- and social network-driven gaslighting, and inevitably provokes a people, who have suffered unimaginably throughout world history, into acts of revenge no one could reasonably have expected them not to commit, is when we just don’t care. we actually just don’t care:
because we always ask our friends if they are ok when they are not. we never quite manage to do so when the opposite is to all intents and purposes how it appears.
and we always attend to violence when the bruises — whether mental or physical — are finally visible. we never do when they are still hidden.
and we only intervene when it’s necessary to protect our legal reputations, and never when it’s the ways of being and enjoying this thing we once rightly called life are imperilled.
that is, we only ever do shit when it’s to pick up the pieces. we never ever strategise — ever.
except that … some people do. the bad people. the hamas sort of types. the trumps. the putins and their hangers-on, whatever country their wealth delivers allegiances from. the hitlers and their chums.
and so this is NOT the world i can support. and i really do NOT go beyond today. not as your journeyman in superficiality at all. no sir. absolutely not.
yes, it’s true: you have been free to, meanwhile, and will continue to do so. and that may be good for your children and families who — when all is said and done, acting in blissful and self-righteous ignorance — SHALL get to the end of the month. but my end of the month is today. and i refuse now to go any place beyond in such a way, any more.
i have spent my life fighting for the good of all. whilst everyone else fights for the good of the small. and in this sense there is nothing to reproach. neither in your approach nor mine.
but you can’t ask me to continue to ignore what is manifestly true: ukraine is — and continues to be — our fault, because we are superficial in everything we do. nazi germany was our fault all along — even down to the social environments that predisposed the burning of books. trump is a direct consequence of the kind of big tech in facebook, cambridge analytica, and related, that we have not only consented to but deeply embraced — because of our inability to go beyond the next personal brand. and hamas happened under the very noses of technology corporations’ deepest total surveillance strategies, simply because we have all this time refused to reflect enough — and far prefer to interject shabbily and usually to facile end instead.
it’s how it is.
it’s not my way of living.
it’s not a good enough reason to die, though. i really have no intention of dying because you are too insanely weak to engage in this world in a way which would ennoble you, and protect babies from shrapnel, and lead to health services that were about health and not about the enrichment of surveillance corporations and cloud companies and ai organisations of the most broken.
it’s just not where it is, is it? it’s just really not where any of us should be.
but you are: you are directly to blame — in your inaction — for what has already happened to our democracies; and for what is happening right now; and for what is about to happen from this year onwards.
it’s not the billionaires who dream, in their effective accelerationism, of thousands of years of pain for the populace whilst they enrich their deep deep pockets.
no. they’re not to blame.
it’s we who agreed, for example, that search was cool all those years ago, as it gutted the business model of the very institutions and organisations of investigative journalism that would’ve prevented their brutal simplicity being imposed on our far more interesting minds all this time.
we could have argued the nature of their change actually wasn’t inevitable: we preferred, however, instead to satnav our brains into inabilities and easily monetisable dependencies that ensured we became less and less human as the years passed by.
so this is not my way.
i cannot live. i cannot die. i cannot survive. i cannot thrive. i cannot watch ukrainians being blown to pieces. i cannot bear the toxic and abusive ability hamas have demonstrated to twist the historical narrative so savagely. i cannot watch my own country destroy, in the name of extreme privilege, what was once a mother of something really worth treasuring.
i cannot watch this and do nothing. and i cannot watch this and do anything.
so this is now my request: can someone do the deed i need done on my behalf? i’d be happier, if at all possible, for it to be a convincing accident that randomly ended a life of no interest.
it would be much better, then, for those who were left and who clearly prefer instagram and interjection, and to believe the nature of change is inevitable.
so is that too much to ask?
i really think it no longer is …
oh.
and a happy new year 2024.
ps it’s not money that’s at the root of all evil. you did know this, right? it’s love of money … love.
that’s right.
love …
it’s not the billionaires who dream, in their effective accelerationism, of thousands of years of pain for the populace whilst they enrich their deep deep pockets.
mil williams, 2nd january 2024, stockholm sweden
no. they’re not to blame.
it’s we who agreed, for example, that search was cool all those years ago, as it gutted the business model of the very institutions and organisations of investigative journalism that would’ve prevented their brutal simplicity being imposed on our far more interesting minds.
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