DJ'ing, Music, Humour, Life

Barney Holmes – my personal blog. Ideas, issues, discoveries. You'll find some posts related to the organisation MindFreedom here as well.

Archive for April, 2008

Live Long ! Rejoice ! The Evil Emperor is Dead !

April 30, 2008 at 4:29 pm · Filed under anti-war, deception, disease, future, health, hope, social revolution and tagged: , , ,

So he’s dead. The guy who started this nightmare for me and millions of others.

Extraordinarily, for what is supposed to be some kind of obscure conspiracy theory, the BBC News article mentions that he worked for the “Sandoz pharmaceutical laboratory”.

I think the BBC article says it the best…

Rock stars and the counter-culture of the 1960s picked up LSD as a wonder drug but horror stories began to emerge of users suffering permanent psychological damage.

LSD was made illegal in many countries beginning in the late 1960s.

While the Wiki news article touts his death as the sad passing of some kind of Saint like pioneer. Yuk ! ( See my comments on the Wiki News article talk page. ). An editors comments are very revealing …

“Further, I don’t think there is any need to discuss the negative consequences for those who chose to abuse LSD.”

(I hope SVT/Cobra will forgive me for quoting here).

SVT/Cobra echo’s the horrific propaganda that surrounds this subject and especially LSD. As if there is ANY “safe dose” of LSD ! I’ve known a few “LSD affectionardos” in my time, and, believe me I would not want to meet them again. One of them ended up head butting me in the face. They were misguided and VIOLENT. But they would still say “chill out man” and believe themselves to be super enlightened hippies. DUH !

LSD as a wonder drug but horror stories began to emerge of users suffering permanent psychological damage. (Source)

You would think, after the world made this AMAZING connection between a “wonder” drug and people going psychotic, broken families, suicides, and acts of violence, that it would NOTICED that the Pharmaceutical companies went on to use LSD as a basis for their endless supply of “wonder drugs” like “Prozac” and many other pharmaceuticals used for things like slimming AKA MDMA ….”E” !

WHY of WHY has this connection not been made on an official level ? I know I get wound up by the acts of violence that are blamed on the victims instead of the Pharma companies. But surely everyone does not suffer from this response ?

So maybe the passing of this “pioneer” (read: Evil Emperor) might open things up a bit and allow some clarity to emerge in the drug debate because so far few of us have our facts straight or have even done any disspassionate research.

Yours, at the edge of the Pharma Wars battlefield….

DJ Barney

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Live and Let Die: Societies Dirty Little Secret

April 25, 2008 at 11:45 am · Filed under future, health, hope and tagged: ,

What is this horror doing in modern society ?

As we criticise China from afar, an evil lurks in our society almost unchallenged. It’s easy to see bad things going on “over there”. In far away places those evils are easy to handle. One does not have to feel threatened or intimidated. Try talking to people about something very nasty going on in their own society and you might not get so far. Maybe we need China to criticise us ? Afterall, they had the right idea when they executed (not that I agree with Capital Punishment) the head of their equivalent of the FDA for allowing poison chemicals to be sold in food. What will happen when we have the Olympics in 2012 ? Will British Human Rights be held up for scrutiny ? I doubt it.

Because Britain is above contempt. Beacon of Freedom and Human Rights the world over. Nothing nasty could be going on here under the auspices of the State… right ? Er .. wrong.

Like a latter day Dickens story, little Smike’s and Nell’s are dragged off to their horrific fates all the time, to these esteemed institutions that “help” people in trouble. They stand behind perimeters of tree’s hidden away like some dirty sick secret. People whisper about them in mouse like tones. People in trouble say “I don’t want to end up there!”. We instinctively know that it’s “a fate worse than death”.

Even worse, the victims of this cruel regime are taught to accept their punishment like naughty subjects of the Soviet Empire going to the Gulag for “correction”. With barely a whisper of a complaint as their health is stripped from them. Their dignity and their identity removed.

The Workhouse was abolished hundreds of years ago, but it still seems to live happily on in the 21st Century ! The barbaric treatment of prisoners was abolished along with stone breaking and treading mill wheels. But it lives on in the 21st Century !

DJ Barney

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What is this Die Hard Linux Elitism ?

April 25, 2008 at 3:14 am · Filed under help, llinux, support and tagged: ,

Distributions like Ubuntu make a big thing out of a sense of community, as I mentioned in my previous blog.

I keep coming across this Die Hard mentality though. Is it just in Linux world ? Somehow I doubt it. I recently got my fingers burned while writing a How To for a particular distro. I had carefully checked my facts but ended up making one crucial mistake due to an oversite. These things happen !I then had a number of (could they be Geeks ?) jumping down my throat, saying that I should spend a lot of time learning the ropes and generally being paronising and condescending. I’ve been working with linux since the late 90’s ! A single mistake does not make me some kind of dangerous inept idiot, because that’s what these people made me feel like. Actually there were some polite replies on there, but I just thought … “Jeez!”.

I noticed this in another post made by a young Linux user (which I can’t locate at the moment). He was complaining that everytime he asked for help he was instructed to go away and learn this that and the other thing. I thought … “fair enough!”. I also come from the “just get it working”, “a computer is a means to an end” department !

Some (could they be Geeks?) seem to think the computer IS the end !

This post mentioned how some How To’s and articles miss out many stages and generally make life difficult. I hang around in #linux on Freenode. I notice that many of the questions are often highly complex. A lot of simple questions get missed, although there are some brave souls on there trying to “hold hands”.

And that’s it. What is wrong with “hand holding” ? This term just amazes me. Could it be that sooo many people are there just to show off their knowledge and belittle the newcomer ? Maybe they are a dieing breed indeed. There is a buzz around Ubuntu. Products like the Asus Eee PC have linux installed by defualt without oodles of “problems” in it that I could swear some people relish having around.

I mentioned the Eee PC on #linux in answer to a statement that Linux is not “Desktop ready”, or “User ready”. Some seemed surprised or had “forgotten” that these consumer Linux devices exist. Peculiar.

So what did make Linux sucessful ? Wasn’t it the sense of community ? The way newcomers were welcomed ? Maybe that’s still the case. Maybe I need to switch to Ubuntu ! I don’t know.

I love Geeks ! You make cool things ! But not everyone is a Geek, remember that.

DJ Barney

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A Social Revolution

April 21, 2008 at 12:59 pm · Filed under future, futurism, health, hope and tagged: , , ,

In the 1980’s I discovered the Sinclair ZX81 and then the Sinclair Spectrum. Even though I was still a teenager I could immediately see the potential for using these information machines to make media and artwork (and a lot of games!).

Then the Dark Forces moved in. I was introduced to Windows 95. BAD mistake. Is it any coinidence that what is running on a computer seems to reflect what is going on in your own mind ? Of course it is’nt, if you think about it. We only install, or put up with, on our computer what we would put up with in real life. The argument about “what is better Windows or Linux?” is often referred to as a “Religious Argument”. Again, no coincidence pal !

Mark Shuttleworth, one of the leaders of the Ubuntu Linux Distribution obviously revels in bringing open source tools to individuals and struggling countries alike. This is the guy who went into space using money made in the dot com revolution. He evangelises about Open Source software.

This all may seem like some Geeky version of Paradise where we all run wild in our Linux Garden of Eden, but I think it reflects a greater process going on here. The Twentieth Century is over, but I think we’re just starting to deal with and change the entrenched attitudes and ideas that have held back the Human Race for hundreds of years. We make advanced information machines .. why not use them properly ? The same with our own minds … “be careful what software you run in your brain” as a friend said to me (actually I paraphrase him .. thankyou John Whale). Text is the code .. you read it and it programs your brain. Actually I feel uncomfortable with that.. we are not computers. I’m just talking metaphors here. But “manipulated minds are making an escape” to quote a Hip Hop track I have.

Linux, The International Space Station, you could probably insert your own list here, but my point is … don’t concentrate on the problem areas on this Planet at the moment. You’ll just get sucked in ! There is no shame or guilt in “ignoring” those situations. As people roll along with this revolution then new ways of looking at things will be naturally discovered, new perspectives… THEN that will feed back into problem areas and change them .. for the better.

DJ Barney

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