On the one hand we were told to celebrate the successful Olympic bid, which no one I knew supported, while on the other we’re being told to stand resolute against the ‘terrorist’ bombers, which, an emerging consensus suggests, is to say those opposing an illegal war which, equally, no one I know supported. In that they both exploit ordinary people for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful, ‘back the bid’ and ‘back our boys’ are nauseatingly synonymous. They’re all a part of the same game-plan: unbridled corporate capitalism.

Wherever I have been on my world travels I have been greeted with open arms by ordinary people. Never mind the lurking military and police, the shady-eyed undercover agents or the grim-faced security guards (all of whom have foregone their claim to ordinariness), never mind the crazy politicians, mad priests, manic mullahs, murdochs, kings, queens and dodgy despots, left to their own devices ordinary people share a common interest – living a life free of the stifling restrictions placed on them by rulers and their agents. G8? Nothing. Think ‘Bohemian Grove’. 

Think ‘bohemian’ and up pops Baudelaire, Genet or perhaps Modigliani, but in this case it’s the Kissingers, the Saudi princes, the Masonic masters, yes the crazy politicians, mad priests, manic mullahs, blah, blah, blah. Think ‘grove’ and up pops midsummer magic, prancing Pucks, cavorting Cobwebs and oomphaing Oberons, but this grove knows a richness of another kind: old money. Bohemian Grove is an exclusive ‘camp’ north of San Francisco where, wrapped in their icy cynicism, the global wealthy elite yearly gather to ensure their own golden future, and the planet’s fast-fade fate. While the Jack Daniels flows rich as the rhetoric, and hookers grease the euphemisms, the true world leaders, the puppeteers of the sham called ‘democracy’, jackboot their dance of death across Planet Earth.

Given the deafening boom caused by the recent bombings, to say nothing of the media bonanzas which they created (Murdoch counting his millions while ordinary people are left to pick up the pieces) you might have hoped for a little more than the knee-jerk ‘proud to be a Londoner’ jingoism that was forced down our gullets by over-zealous politicians keen to make gain out of our loss. I don’t see Tony Blair having to use the Tube, or indeed having to battle with fear to get to work simply to earn the miserable pittance which ensures that work is unavoidable. You’d think that under the present circumstances Transport for London might have come up with a concession or two for the terri?ed huddled masses. But no, Big Brother Ken insists that it’s business as usual, business being that strange conundrum which means that ordinary people go to work to pay the mortgage to the kind of people who they go to work to pay the mortgage to: the grim monotony of the everyday game of Monopoly.

Listening to BBC London on the day of the first bombings I was disturbed by the repeated mantra ‘send us your photographs’. So tell me, what the hell were people doing taking photos? Is that really the extent of humanity in Thatcher’s post-modernist nonsociety. How about forgetting about the documentation and engaging in the event? As Lady Diana’s death conclusively proved, grief has become a media commodity. In a non-society obsessed with the anti-social banalities of reality TV and super-reality Internet, the screen has become the reality: a divine future in a spiritual void. You’re no longer who you are but who you appear to be on screen: recorded, documented and backed up on hard drive. Eat your heart out, Monsieur Descartes: ‘I’m on screen, therefore I am’. ID cards? If it’s plastic and fits my wallet, count me in. CCTV? Yoh, Mr Warhol’s fifteen minutes can be yours in a second. It’s all so completely once removed, and we’re buying it hook, line and stinker.

It’s all very well Big Brother harping on about ‘standing firm’, but standing firm against what? The ice is cracking beneath our feet and someone’s stolen the water (most likely Nestlés). While the death count in Baghdad rises by the day, the pavements of London are crumbling. Most everyone I know wants out of Iraq. Over two million people marched across Britain to let the message be heard, but did those in power listen? The lace curtains of Number Ten might have twitched just a little, but Tony the crony was too worried about his peers at Bohemian Grove who, like him, are more concerned about oil than blood, and that’s easy because when it’s blood that flows it’s the ordinary peoples’. If Britain wasn’t in Iraq indiscriminately (and illegally) destroying both the people and their land, there wouldn’t be bombing in London. Doubtless Tony will be awarded the highest honours for his obscene obsessions with the Christian Fundamentalism of Bush’s America, but it’s an ASBO that he deserves. Like it or not, serving the interests of Bohemian Grove, he and Big Boy Bush are responsible for the London bombings: Iraq was a fix and we’d best not forget it.

Likewise, Big Brother Ken told us to back the bid. What he didn’t tell us was that that was a fix as well. Ever since Thatcher’s toyboy Michael Heseltine came up with the Docklands heist, any ordinary East End folk with half an ounce of common sense could see that their number was up. Remember The Dome? Well, watch out East London, you ain’t seen nothing yet, and all sponsored by two major players of the cultural wing of the American military state – McDonalds and Coca Cola – first you bomb ‘em, then you sell ‘em food’n’drink or, conversely, first you starve ‘em and then sell ‘em food’n’drink (on credit – arms an optional extra). Make poverty history? They’ve got to be joking.

Multi-national corporations have created more global havoc and individual suffering than any number of rucksack-touting Tube bombers could ever hope to do, and never mind the Stealth missiles. While Bono and Geldof bumble on about eliminating world debt, the corporate vampires of Bohemian Grove lick their lips as rivers and lakes are sucked dry, rainforests razed to the ground, and indigenous people (read ordinary) firstly pay the cost in loss of place and then, if the corporate machine so demands, of life. If the West once saw the people of Africa as commodities (potential slaves) they now intend to make them consumers (complete slaves). So just whose poverty are we talking about?

It’s not just the steroid-sated flesh of dead animals that McBurgers are stuffed with, it’s the stamped-on, wrung-out fruit of human kindness. While the corporations callously poison the waterways of the world, Coca Cola sucks it up, sugars it sweet, colours it blood and sells it back to the thirsting masses. Now then, that’s the vulgar truth of ‘backing the bid’. 

Our boys? Whose boys? Do you got the T shirt? Do you got the wristband? Make poverty history? Then stop supporting the global obscenity of capitalism and look for ways out. Anyone for the gravy train?