Throwing the baby out with the Baath Water.
What do you call someone who sets out to prove one thing and usually succeeds in proving the opposite? Over at Armchair Angst (http://james.butler.name/weblog/blogger.html), fellow poker-playing blogger James Butler talks of `making sense of a senseless world', yet more frequently succeeds only in expressing his inability to make sense of things that make perfect sense to most people.

A recurrent theme is his very own brand of Anti-Americanism. Not for him the burning of the US flag or wearing a Bush face mask while standing on stilts in a protest march. No, instead he writes of the country as an empire sure to fall, spreading a decadent anti-culture to the rest of the world, which we absorb at our peril. In his article of November 23, he appears to suggest that he emigrated from Britain to Ireland to get away from people using American terminology in day-to-day parlance. Way to go, Jim-boy!

James despairs of the popularity of American culture and can't seem to grasp why it's accepted so readily. The answer, which I understood when I was about 7 years old, is that Americans look like they are having more fun. As a child I couldn't understand for the life of me why anyone would want to watch Coronation Street when there was the Six Million Dollar Man. Why voluntarily depress yourself?

Every visit I have undertaken to the US has underlined this. The people there are far more cheery and seem to want to enjoy life without any of the existential weltschmerz that so many people on this side of the Atlantic seem to think is necessary to affect in order to be taken seriously. Miserable Europeans should take heed of what I saw the hostess of an Indian music channel tell her viewers: "You only live once!" (thereby rejecting thousands of years of her culture's belief in re-incarnation).

Now Damn the man, he's only gone and outlined the reasons for his mixed views on the US while I'm half-way through writing this! Oh well, I shall press on and cover another point he makes. Elsewhere, also on November 23, he asks:

Should the troops return from Iraq now? Yes, they should. The job is done. Saddam is no longer a threat to Iraq and Iraq is no longer a threat to the rest of the region. The foreign troops are only there through altruism now and it is getting them nowhere. More troops have been lost since the Iraqi army was defeated than during the war. The country is in chaos as the various factions fight each other and the fundamentalists target foreign soldiers. We can safely leave the country and let it get on with destroying itself. If it becomes a threat to the region in the future then we just bomb it back to the stone age again. Sorry to speak out in a non-Liberal way but if the Iraqis are not interested in our way of life then that is ok.

Since he has taken the trouble to explain some of the assumptions in his view, I can respond to them. Firstly he seems to take it as a given that the fact that more troops have been killed since the end of the defeat of the army than were killed in the war, is somehow a meaningful criticism. I'm not sure why the latter figure is taken as the denominator though. It's a small number compared to the numbers killed in the sort of terrorist outrages that the whole neo-con project is designed to prevent happening in the future. Two hundred Africans were killed in the two embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Roughly three thousand were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001. And note that it was the World Trade Centre, not an `American Trade Centre' that was destroyed. A very large number of non-Americans were killed that day, including people from Muslim countries like Pakistan.

A lot of people assume that the WTC was filled with Wall Street Types - the `masters of the Universe' bond traders and such wheelers and dealers. In fact the buildings were mostly filled with small companies - branches of Taiwanese banks and lots of little freight forwarding and import-export companies. It was an attack on all of us.

James also states that Iraq is in a state of chaos. This just isn't true. Most of the attacks happen in the so-called `Sunni Triangle' and it's not surprising that this is so. The war shattered the master-slave relationship within the country and that area contains a large concentration of former masters. Their reaction to the arrival of US troops is not indicative of a cross section of national opinion.

The fundamentalists who are attacking soldiers in Iraq would merely switch to attacking civilians in Europe, Israel or the US if the troops left. As things stand, they are attacking armed professional soldiers instead. What price would any bookmaker has given on September 12th 2001 that after two years there would not have been another major terrorist attack on US soil? Twenty to one? Forty? I don't know, but it's likely to have been in double figures, that's for sure.

The wider benefit of the entire war would be missed if we were to abandon it now. The whole idea is to create one successful Arab capitalist democracy in a country that borders Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Something needs to be in place before the Saudi Royal family loses control. The Saudi youth, who are the region's other Weapon of Mass Destruction need to see an alternative to the theocratic madness of Iran, the death-cult hell of the Palestinian West bank and the despotism of Syria and the former Iraqi regime.

And the worst thing possible would be for us to do as James suggests and leave the country to the Arab world to sort out. That's like letting the school bullies take charge of the sick bay. The whole point of the undertaking is to shatter the status quo,thus giving hope to the masses, so that they are not drawn to the madness of al-Qaeda or the Baath party.

Let's see it through for the benefit of all our futures.

A new name.
I bought the domain name www.sleeplessinfulham.com yesterday, so now I don't have to write out a long string of characters if someone asks me for my site address. I've set it up so that it points to this site. It works already.

I must stress how easy it is to establish a blog. This Lycos Tripod service is completely free. There are paid-for upgrades available but I don't generate anywhere near enough bandwith, nor do I use up anything like enough discspace to warrant spending the money. Perhaps this could change, but I can't see it being necessary for a long time to come.

The domain name has cost me #21 for two years and the redirection to this site was free. It was when I realised that this cost nothing that I decided to get my own name. I guess I will have to stick with it even if I leave Fulham.

Suffering for my beliefs.
On the day that George W. Bush visits London, I thought I should point out that I have suffered for the sake of my convictions. The war to depose Saddam has had one disastrous outcome for me personally.

There are lots of recreational players missing from the Victoria.

One notably bad (but very nice) Iraqi player, a tribe leader who had previously fallen out with Saddam, returned to his homeland and hasn't been seen since the statue was dragged down. By common agreement, his losses alone paid the table money for about half the room per week. He was there almost every day!

And it's not just him. The omaha action isn't anywhere near as lively as it was a while ago and what seems to be missing are the Arab faces - the many occasional visiting players who knew the rudiments of omaha, but didn't really understand what hands to play. The action they gave is what is missing from the room. Two years ago the place was packed full of Iraqis. While I'm writing this I've just thought of another very bad Iraqi player whom I haven't seen in months.

I'm also against Britain joining the euro. I don't think that the European Central Bank's record of managing its currency since 1999 is as good as that of the Bank of England's since gaining independence in 1997. Why change?

However, as a poker player who likes to travel to Europe from time to time, it would be a great benefit to me if the UK shared the same currency as the majority of Western Europe. I just don't think it would benefit the UK as a whole, only my selfish interest.

Memories from Amsterdam.
As planned, I went to Amsterdam for three days during the Master Classics Festival in the first week of this month. I played one ?300 satellite for the ?3,000 event and when I was knocked out in a meaningless 4th place, it was the end of my poker action for the trip. I had gone there with the intention of not playing any cash games because of the ridiculously high rake and I'm pleased to report that I stuck to it. There were a few times when I wanted to dip my toe in the water, but on balance I am glad I didn't, as I saw all the things that annoy me about the festival. There is still no blackboard to assist in the running of the cash games. Players must look for the person with the clipboard. Empty seats in cash games were not filled quickly.

Instead I had a great time by going out to the local bars and restaurants with lots of people I know. I had a pleasant surprise when I met American Marty again for the first time in a year. He used to be very overweight. In fact he was almost spherical. But this time when I saw him, he had lost a huge amount of fat. I asked him how he had lost the weight and his reply was one word: `Atkins'. In total, he had lost 125 pounds. For British readers, this is 9 stone! I don't think I have ever seen such a change in one person's appearance. His blood sugar level had dropped from very dangerous levels too and he had managed to narrowly escape diabetes. Seeing a success like this really wants me want to slap all those stupid people who claim Atkins is a fad and that low-fat diets with lots of complex-carbohydrates are the answer. The low-fat diet IS the fad!

But anyway, the highlight of the trip was my second annual thrashing of Julian Quance at chess in the local `Chess Pub'. Things didn't start well, as I lost the first game of our challenge and the beer was starting to make me lose concentration. It didn't help that a passer-by hissed when I played one move in a sensitive situation and encouraged JQ to look deeper for a winning attack. Watching us was Miss Victoria Coren. Noticing that I tend to play the early moves very fast, she commented `Firm wrist action' ... or something similarly suggestive.

Despite these distractions, good triumphed over evil in the second match and Vicky suggested that we return to the casino with the score at 1-1. So we did, but later Julian wanted a chance to go in front and we ended up going back for two more games, both of which I won.

Rejoice rejoice.

No marks for Lennon.
I watched one of Channel 4's "100 greatest" shows last night. It was the 100 greatest Number One singles. The show was actually a repeat. As I hadn't seen it when it first came out, I didn't know the rankings, but as the show went on, I began to get nervous about the song I hadn't seen. Number Four was 'Dancing Queen' by Abba. Number Three was 'Hey Jude' by the Beatles. Number Two was 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen and inevitably, Number One was 'Imagine' by John Lennon.

Such lists are of course entirely subjective but I can't help hoping for a "worthy" winner. I found it hard to swallow that anything by Madonna could appear higher on the list than Marvin Gaye's 'I heard it through the Grapevine' but perhaps I'm just keen on the latter because it was Number One on the day I was born.

It seems to be some sort of modern heresy not to put Lennon and his music at the top of any of these lists. When MTV did a list show of 'Rock's most shocking moments', his murder was top of that list too. He was even in the top ten of the Greatest Britons - a BBC show that aimed to discover the people considered to have made the greatest contribution to the country. I felt that his inclusion (and that of the late Princess Diana) made a mockery of the whole thing. It would have been so easy to have had a rule prohibiting the inclusion of anyone born after 1900, in order to allow for some sense of perspective.

Lennon seems to be regarded as some sort of visionary of fairness and equality. I don't know how this is, given that he wrote one of the most sexist pieces of music ever written: a song called 'Norwegian Wood'. It's a song about a man who is invited back to a girl's house only to discover that she doesn't want to sleep with him. Naturally he sets fire to her living room the next day.

A conspiracy theorist even wrote a book claiming that Lennon was killed in a CIA plot, to prevent him organising a rally against Ronald Reagan's policies. While it's believable the CIA was monitoring him, it's hard to see that Lennon would be a serious threat to a president who had just comprehensively crushed Jimmy Carter. One site that promotes the idea of a conspiracy quotes a now-dead DJ as saying: "It was a conspiracy. Reagan had just won the election. They knew what kind of president he was going to be. There was only one man who could bring out a million people on demonstration in protest at his policies -- and that was Lennon."

I find this ludicrously far-fetched, but to a radio DJ it probably isn't. Who else thinks that pop stars have that kind of influence? Who else thinks that pop music is that important? If you want to check it out for yourself, go to:

http://www.shout.net/~bigred/Lennon.htm

or Click here

As for 'Imagine', I guess it's a reasonable song. I have to agree with its first verse:

"Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, Imagine all the people living for today... Imagine there's no countries, It isn't hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, No religion too, Imagine all the people living life in peace..."

But I have my doubts about verse two where he sings:

"Imagine no possesions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man, Imagine all the people Sharing all the world... You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one, I hope some day you'll join us, And the world will live as one."

'Imagine no possessions"???? Hey John, nobody forced you to buy a Rolls-Royce!

Going to Amsterdam.
I'm off to Amsterdam for three days today. I'm treating it as a social event as much as a poker trip this time ... that is unless I feel up to playing a satellite for the ?3,000 event and get in. I did it two years ago and got in on the first attempt.

Sadly, I only lasted about three hours, as I got low-stacked and having found a flop of A K 10 to suit my A K, discovered that my sole opponent had the Q J to send me home. Last year I didn't bother.

One of the pleasures of the Amsterdam trip for me is the chance to meet my American friend Joe Reinhardt. He lives in Florida but comes over to Amsterdam every year for this trip. It is he who inspired me to be better informed about atheism and to see it as a positive choice. He knows the bible back-to-front and can argue any issue from both sides using biblical quotations. When he first mentioned this, I challenged him to think of one verse that supported homosexuality. To this he replied `Nothing that entereth the man shall defile him'.

And there's really no answer to that!

A couple of months ago, I got involved in a discussion about the horrors of the New Testament on Vicky Coren's website forum. I mentioned that in the book of Revelations, Jesus promises to murder children (Chapter 2 verse 23, in the message to Thyatira, concerning Jezebel). It's one of the dirty secrets of Christianity that you won't hear about on Songs of Praise.

Afterwards, I wondered how Christians who have actually read the bible accept this and I did a search for "Jezebel of Thyatira" on Google. I found this Australian site, which had the courage to mention the verse about killing her children. Most religious sites I looked at didn't confront the issue at all.

http://members.datafast.net.au/sggram/f571.htm

The site says that the children are not 'of the flesh' but her 'spiritual children'. It goes on to say that God would never kill children for the sins of their parents. I spluttered when I read that because it happens many times in the bible. In fact I would go as far as to say that the punishment of the innocent for the crimes of the guilty is the basic theme of both Testaments. I wrote to Joe to see what he though of this `spiritual children' explanation. Below I show my questions and his answers.


1) What is a spiritual child?

Hi, David. I haven't the faintest idea.

2) Where on earth does this Aussie crackpot get the idea from, apart from the need to save face?

The raw materials for religion are simply a vivid imagination.


3) Even if you can prove it's a metaphor, isn't it in very poor taste?

It is in poor taste, but the real clincher is having the apologist explain how we can reliably discern the allusion from the literal. Since there is no reliable way to do this, the book is by definition unreliable based on the apologists' own argument.


4) How does he get away with claiming that children are never killed for the sins of their parents? Were all the children saved in the flood? What about the killing of the first-born in Egypt?

There are many other examples, the slaughter of the Midianites, in Numbers, or this one,

1 Samuel 15:3 Now go, attack the Amalekites...Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

This was retribution for something the Amalekites did 400 years prior to the slaughter.


5) Do these people think we are stupid?

They think we are sheep.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I'm going to write about the dark side of the new Testament in the run up to Christmas. There are things in it that will totally shock most people. The true message of Christ's own words is the polar opposite of what most people think it to be. You may be horrified!

I'm also aware that I `owe' my readers a long piece about Iraq. I must apologise for this and again stress that I mainly write on this site when I have something more important I should be doing. I'm afraid that blogging has been light lately due to the total lack of anything more important to avoid.

Wish me luck!

Festivals.
When I first started playing poker, I was excited by 'festivals' - those week-long programmes of daily tournaments culminating in a 'main event'. The first one I ever saw was the Victoria casino's 'Octoberfest' in autumn 1995. The main event was won by David Gardner, father of Julian. It cost #500 to enter and first prize was about #20,000.

The next one I attended was the Master Classics of Poker in Amsterdam. I loved it and didn't want to go home afterwards. In recent years, the number of festivals has increased enormously and they are taking place in locations as far away as the Ukraine, Estonia, Slovenia, Australia and Aruba (a Caribbean island). They can still be fun, but increasingly I think that they are becoming a distraction, not just for me but for the casinos that host them.

At the Master Classics for instance, the casino now adds about ?80,000 to the prize pool and spends a fortune on broadcasting equipment so that viewers can see the finals from TV monitors. What does the casino get back? It gets more punters in the house for an otherwise quiet week in November. It gets some very rich players who might lose a lot on the pit games. But does it get much else? I think not. The high-stakes players don't come back at any other time of year, as the games aren't as big as they are in Vegas or London. The mid-stakes players like myself don't come back because the rake in the cash games is ludicrous. So instead we all just come along for the annual jaunt and leave afterwards without returning to play in any of the next 51 weeks of the year. How exactly is this a showcase for their poker games? The Master Classics seems to serve no purpose other than to be bigger and better than the previous year.

There is another concern I have, which is that the increasing number of 'main events' with buy-ins in the #1,000 region sucks money out of play. When someone wins #5,000, they are likely to play with it in bigger cash games or comps, but when they win #50,000, they are likely to use it to change their lives. They might buy a car or do some building work on their house. This is all very sensible but it's a lot of money lost from the poker economy. It is made worse by the growing number of satellites, which further increases the amount of money that is sucked out of the pockets of the many into the hands of the few. This idea has already been covered by Andy Ward in his diary, so I won't labour it (see www.pokersoft.co.uk).

I am also noticing a lot of festivals that are not festivals in the sense that I used to understand them. I don't consider a series of comps starting at 9pm with no afternoon cash action beforehand to be a festival. How can you justify the expense of going somewhere and paying for hotels when there is nothing to do before 9pm? Not now when you can play 24 hours per day online. My ideal festival is one where I can play cash in the afternoons (or mornings in the US and Austria), then either play the comp in the evening or just go out eating and drinking instead.

The migration of the top professionals to Vegas every spring brings to mind another point - that the calibre of opposition can sometimes be higher in the festival week than during a normal week. My friend Dominic says the best time of year to be in the Vic is when all the great players are in Nevada for the World Series. You can play the recreational players all by yourself! Because of this I coined a phrase 'Festivals are great value, provided that you don't go to them'. I have missed many this year. I quite enjoyed the summer one at the Vic, as there were #250 hold'em games several times during the week. The autumn one had no such games, so I didn't go in as much.

The week before last, Brighton had a festival. I had told everyone beforehand that it would be a big week for me, as I intended to stay in a hotel there and play most nights. When it came to the crunch, I only went twice. On the first night, the organisation of the cash action was so bad that I considered not coming back. The game I got into was far worse than the usual line-up there. I was looking at several other professionals who had all been eliminated early from the competition.

I've decided that I am only going to this year's Master Classics in Amsterdam for three nights. I will take a shot or two at getting into the biggest event (?3,000 No Limit Hold'em) through the one-table satellites and if it doesn't work out then I will treat it as a purely social trip and go out with friends from Europe and America. I can't see the point of playing the pot limit omaha cash games, even though the standard is poor, as I can't face seeing the house take ?20 out of every pot. Once you have gotten used to the lower rake and faster pace of online play, you feel that you have moved on and don't need to be conned like that any more.

The ultimate manifestation of this was when I was at home playing on Pokerstars and found myself playing David Colclough. Nothing strange about this, except that I knew for a fact that David was in Dundee for its festival. I asked him how he was playing online while up there for the festival. He explained that he had taken his laptop to the hotel and was able to pay a fixed fee for internet use. I asked him why he wasn't playing the cash games in the casino, which was 100 metres from his hotel and he replied 'I can't bear getting only 12 hands per hour any more'. I can't think of anything that illustrates the futility of most festivals than that.

I still want to travel around to play. My mind needs variety, but I hope that the clubs start to realise that they need to get better at generating cash action during the festival weeks. Most do a bad job of it. Amsterdam is terrible. You need to hire a private detective to find the person who is managing the cash game lists. Empty seats go untaken for ages or are taken by people not on the list who merely happen to be passing by. It's a total joke.

So there you have it. I'm sceptical of their value. But if you want a change of tune and to read a love letter about the tournament circuit, check out www.pokerpages.com, www.pokerineurope.com, www.thehendonmob.com or just about every other poker site in existence.

A bittersweet moment.
I had a moment of pleasure and pain on Sunday. I was driving down to Brighton to play in the 7-card stud tournament and was listening to Radio 4 when the announcer declared that the next programme would be 'Amongst the unbelievers' - a show featuring well known atheists talking about their lack of religious belief.

I can claim to have had some input here. A friend of mine works for BBC Radio. We have talked many times about the dangers of religion and some of my atheist arguments prompted her to pitch the idea of a programme about atheists to Radio 4. It was accepted. While it's a welcome counterpoint to the supernatural touchy-feely drivel of Thought for the Day ('Yes, God does nothing to help the sick, the starving and the war-torn, but isn't that a beautiful sunset'), the final product is different to what she originally envisaged.

The show I heard was the last of three. The previous two had featured one atheist raised as a Jew and one raised as a Christian. The last show featured a non-believer who grew up in the Muslim world. That's the good news. The bad news is that it was Tariq Ali. He started off quite well, explaining that his atheism came through instinct rather than through philosophical inquiry. He explained how Mullahs were regarded with suspicion when he was young, rather in the way that Chaucer portrays monks in his tales. He speculated on why, unlike Judaism and Christianity, Islam had not undergone a 'reformation'. This is a horrible clanger to drop. It was quite clear from the context of everything else that he said that he meant 'enlightenment'. I know that my friend's blood boiled when she heard this. There is a huge difference.

But what incensed me was when he dived off the deep end and starting describing the 1991 Gulf War as the 'Third Oil War'. He then explained that the 1967 Six-day war was really 'the Second Oil War'. I don't think he elaborated on what the first one had been, so I was left free to guess. The War of Jenkins' Ear? The War of the Spanish Succession? They all have about as much relevance to oil as the 1967 war.

So while I can take some pleasure in having planted the germ of an idea, I am nevertheless a bit depressed to realise that in some small way I have helped give this moron a platform for his left-wing rantings.

Eureka!
For some months now, I have been getting increasingly annoyed at the negative reporting of the situation in Iraq. Most of it seems to lack any sense of historical perspective. I have waited and waited for the mainstream news organisations to attempt some sort of comparison between the situation of Iraq in 2003 and that of Germany in 1945.

None has been forthcoming so I have had to rely on my memory of various historical documentaries to recall that the Germans resorted to using cigarettes instead of money and that there were stories galore of German women trading sex with Allied soldiers in return for rations. By comparison, the Iraqis have continued to use paper currency and have now got new bank notes without Saddam Hussein's face. I have not heard of any sexual scandals.

But is the good news of Iraqi revival getting through to your television screen? Of course not! The same people who insisted that the Turks would invade the north of Iraq (they didn't), that the Republican Guard would put up a vicious fight (they didn't) that there would be a humanitarian catastrophe (there wasn't), that the final struggle for Baghdad would be a bloodbath (it wasn't), that the National Museum was being looted (it wasn't) are now telling us that we are losing the peace.

I know what's been said. 'We've lost the peace' .... 'Never has American prestige in Europe been lower' ... Instead of coming in with a bold plan of relief and reconstruction, we came in full of evasions and apologies' ... 'The taste of victory has gone sour' .... 'The army kicks the civilians around'.

Oh wait a minute, I'm sorry. That was Life magazine writing about Germany in 1946. You know, the US occupation that led to the longest continuous period of peace in Europe in centuries.

EVEN IF YOU NEVER READ ANYTHING ELSE I EVER LINK TO, PLEASE PLEASE READ THIS:

Click here!

You will see all the same misplaced fears there. Now remember that Iraq now is far better off than Germany ever was post war ... and this is before Bechtel and Halliburton turn up and spend $300 billion!

An amusing image
I haven't had any takers for my suggestion of a mass gloating session at Russell Square. I have however had an e-mail from Frode in Norway telling me of the time he went to Russell Square to cash a cheque about four months after the card room closed. At the reception, the doorman questioned him about his motives for visiting, demanding to know `How do we know you're not a gloater'?

Sadly, the story bears an uncanny resemblance to a scene in Blackadder when Lord Percy is given the task of delaying visitors to condemned prisoners. I am nevertheless tickled by the idea of the Russell Square reception desk having to weed out people whose sole intention is to gloat at the empty basement.

Does anyone fancy a gloat?
It's over nine months since the Russell Square casino closed its card room. While I accept the duty of companies to make unpopular business decisions for the sake of shareholder profits, I thought that the closure was a mistake. The reason is that I could not see anyone other than poker players wanting to spend their evenings in a dimly-lit, low-ceilinged basement full of machines. At least, not outside of Leicester Square.

I've always listened out for news of how the casino is faring. I'm delighted to report that most people tell me that the downstairs area is dead and that the casino is quiet mid-week, when it used at least to have some atmosphere due to the presence of the poker players. But I have not seen this for myself yet. I have been meaning to go back and have a gloat some time this year. Would anyone like to join me? We can have a few drinks in the bar then move downstairs to look at an empty room of shining machines. It will of course be compulsory to make tutting noises if we catch the eye of managers while we survey the wasteland and a few cries of 'this used to have fifty people on a Wednesday night' should accompany the ritual sighing ceremony. Then we shall head off to a nearby restaurant.

Any takers? Write to me at sleeplessyoung@aol.com about this or anything else I've written. I deliberately don't have a forum, but this doesn't mean that I don't want feedback.

A warning about a mind control cult.
It started with a strange phone call. I answered a call from a friend named JL. He began by telling me that I had always been a great friend to him, but that he hadn't always been sincere and straightforward with me. I laughed and said `Don't worry mate, I never thought for one second that you were'. I had no idea what he was getting at, but if was depressed, I wanted to lighten the atmosphere. He chuckled for a bit. Then he continued in the same miserable tone that he had started with by explaining that he was on a course and that in order to achieve the maximum benefit from it, students were expected to invite friends or family members to the final session. Would I like to come along?

I declined. I don't recall why I said no. I might have been busy. I might have been lazy. I might have been concerned that this could cost me money. I could hear that he was in a room with lots of other people making phone calls and this all seemed too much like telesales to me. What on earth was going on? He told me that the course he was taking was called the `Landmark Education Forum' and I resolved to find out a little about what he had become involved with.

I discovered a site called www.rickross.com. It's highly informative about groups using mind control methods. I didn't like the sound of what I read at all. For a start, Landmark was based on the ideas of a man named `Werner Erhard', the founder of `est' (Erhard Seminars Training: the use of small letters is to make it look like the Latin word for `it is'). People attending an `est' course were pressured into relinquishing their freedom. Grown adults were locked in rooms and told that they had to put up their hand to ask to go to the toilet. Some people used to wet themselves in their sessions.

JL told me that a friend of his called MK had introduced him to Landmark. I had met MK a few years before and found him very amusing and intelligent. A few months later, I saw MK and JL on a night out. MK started telling me a bit about Landmark. I wasn't interested. He was with a girl called `Cat' whom he'd met on a Landmark course. At one stage they discussed my personality using terminology I'd never heard before. I found it slightly creepy but I'm strong enough not to really care.

A few days later, MK called me at home. He tried to recruit me to come to a discussion about Landmark. He wasn't the funny witty person I met come to know on this call. It seemed utterly impersonal, like a business call. He made lots of claims about what it could do for me, but could not elaborate on specifics. Any question was answered with `You have to come to the Forum to understand'. At one stage he elaborated on a Landmark theory about pain. It made no sense to me at all. I resisted his invitation several times on the call and he still said that he would diarise to call me again about it in two weeks time.

After the call, I read some more about Landmark and wrote a long email to him in the form of a Word document. I must have had in mind that I would show it to others in the future, as a warning, because I wrote it in an essay style. I attach it below. Please feel free to show it to anyone you know who is approached about joining their courses. It is extremely expensive and all that any course teaches you is the need to attend another course in the future.

So why do people go? Because they are dazzled by the power of `Large Group Awareness Training' or LGAT for short. You don't need to go to many football matches to know how people can lose their minds in crowds. It could be regarded as a weakness in human nature but I think that evolution has equipped humans with this so that we can rally ourselves to confront common challenges more effectively. But it's dangerous. See the glee on the faces of the children who met Chairman Mao or Stalin. See the trance-like state of some of those who attended the Nuremburg rallies.

These intense emotions can be more powerful than some people experience in any other facet of their lives and when the rally is over, they want to revisit it as soon as possible. The following link covers it very well:

http://skepdic.com/lgsap.html

For a good laugh, visit: http://www.rickross.com/groups/landmark.html
And click the link marked `Werner goes reggae' under the photograph of the magazine cover. It plays a mixture of the teachings of the founder and the blissed-out bewilderment of his subjects set to reggae music. Utterly hilarious, as well as a warning of how easy it is to be swept up in this nonsense.

My letter to MK.
"Paradise Hyped"

You have approached me as an unpaid volunteer Landmark graduate, who is a friend of a friend. We have met three times. The first telephone-call that you ever made to me was to discuss Landmark. I spoke to you for twenty minutes. In that time I listened to what you had to say with as open a mind as is possible. You made great, yet vague claims for what Landmark could do for me. In this document I make valid and demonstrable claims about what it could do to me and what it has started to do to you. I preface these remarks by pointing out that I am aware that Landmark's founder was able to prove his innocence of the charges of child abuse and tax evasion that were levelled against him and also that he received financial compensation. I believe that he was innocent. However, what his creation now does is more serious than tax evasion and amounts to the abuse of adults.

From my examination of Landmark, I have established to my satisfaction that its methods of teaching its trainees represent an inappropriate approach to the task of personal development. Although I do not quite think that it qualifies as a cult, it is extremely close. The methods that it uses are in many cases identical to those used by proven cults and if it chooses to employ them, then you must accept that it will be considered a cult, `de facto' if not `de jure', by most neutral observers. You may be able to furnish me with some examples of graduates who have made beneficial changes to their lives. I believe that these are merely a side-effect of a treatment that is directed towards another purpose: to foster a dependency culture that is reinforced by group pressure and which requires its customers to revisit the group's forums and events in order to experience the `high'.

Let us examine some of Landmark's more unusual features:

1. It does not advertise.
2. It therefore recruits solely through its graduates and members.
3. Course members are strictly controlled in their bodily routine through sleep deprivation, control of diet and toilet functions. They are reverted to an infantile state, by methods such as being required to raise their hand to ask simple questions.
4. Course members attend 15-hour sessions with homework sessions added and cannot take notes.
5. Sundry matters: Tuition is provided in large groups, in featureless rooms with distractions removed. Capital letters are used throughout on all blackboards. Course leaders are confrontational and humourless. Questions are posed as statements in order to plant subliminal suggestions.

I can imagine that these factors alone could be very damaging to someone who has mental problems or is vulnerable in some other way. You did not ask whether I have any history of depression or mental instability. As it happens, I do not, but those who do will usually display no signs of it.

Doomed to succeed

In the conditions described above, it would scarcely be surprising if members did not report the `breakthroughs' that are promised. For a start, they are under immense pressure to do so. It is almost impossible for a human mind to resist 15 hours of intense pressure for three days. I do not have the arrogance to believe that I can stick my head in a lion's mouth and come out unscathed. It is simply facile to say that I should `come and see what it's about'. There is a joke that says you should try anything once, except for incest and Morris Dancing. To this list I would add Landmark Education forums.

It takes three days of captivity to mould a human mind into obedience. It is a simple task of mental manipulation. US Navy sailors were kidnapped by North Koreans in the late fifties and were briefly converted into avowed communists who hated the US. It's the technique that has the effect that you praise, not any inherent truth in the curriculum.

They refuse to answer your questions, but they incessantly ask questions of their own. I actually felt guilty for using the bathroom and I thought that the rooms were uncommonly warm.: Quote from attendee of Landmark.

"Dianetics Lite"

While it may differ from Scientology in the extent and scope of its mind control, there is much that makes it similar: notably the financial element. In the quest for further `highs', graduates often spend increasing sums of money to get closer to the bliss that they have been pledged. I can only say that it seems slightly less rapacious than Scientology.

"Free Will"

Landmark might respond to these remarks by saying that it offers people the chance to leave. I won't confront that head-on. I should instead point out that immense promises are made to those who reach the final day of three, by which point the inevitable personality change has been effected. It is therefore safe to offer people the chance to leave with a refund on the first day. Trainees will usually stay just a little longer to see what they can get out of it.

I had no intention of signing up for this class at this time, am normally a very strong person who enjoys debating things and to be honest I have no idea what came over me. I remember thinking that this is a bunch of crap, and reminding myself not to listen, then at one point I began to defend another person in the room who was trying to leave, but it seemed he didn't want to be rude.

The next thing I remember I was in the hall with one of the volunteers crying and telling my life story and how I felt that "The Forum" was a "cult" [sic], which is why I wasn't listening to what they were saying. - Quote from an `almost Forum attendee'.

"On the stage"

I believe you when you say that you do not receive any remuneration from Landmark. In fact, you never will. I have established through my research that only 400 people in the entire world are paid any money. It grows and flourishes because of its 7,500 unpaid volunteers. In any other organisation in the world, I would expect someone as clever as yourself you to advance. You are involved in the one place where you will never make money. In multi-level marketing, you are either `On the stage' or `The c**t'. The former makes the money, the latter attempts to make a living selling whatever product or service is involved. It's a gigantic con. Don't fool yourself that you will ever become one of the charmed 400.

The crucial criticism is that Landmark is not open about how its approach works. Whilst I understand that it does not want its ideas to be copied, there is something sinister about that.

"You've lost that thinking feeling"

I want to tell you in writing that your personality has been changed and from my unique perspective, it is not for the better. You may have had some unhappiness that caused you to seek a crutch. The time has come to throw it away before your character and powers of reason are further diminished. I know that you are now forming most of your friendships and personal relationships through Landmark. It will have a pernicious effect on your dealings with others. I watched you and Cat sitting on the sofa dissecting my personality with the use of insider jargon like `rackets' and `stories'. It only slightly bothered me at the time, but it was quite conspiratorial.

They have a "language" all their own where simple words have esoteric meanings. Other group participants become insider enlightened friends with whom feelings are shared and confidence is placed. The unenlightened masses are looked upon as somehow missing out on life's possibilities. It seems the highest compliment a committed participant can bestow is to get you to enroll in the Forum. The answer to all criticism is. "You don't understand " and "You have to attend the Forum so you can understand."

You attempted on the phone to explain the concept of past, present and future with respect to pain. The explanation you gave was barely cogent. That cannot be because you can't explain things well, after all you have an MBA and a career in management consultancy. It's because what you were trying to tell me was total bollocks.

Humans do develop methods to cope with things and need psychological defence mechanisms to retain stability. It is reckless to approach people with an approach that, you must admit, requires people to be `broken down' before they can be `rebuilt'. The danger exists that a fragile subject could remain broken and incapable of a return to normal life.

The pressure that Landmark applies will either force you to snap out of its spell or drive you into total dependence. Listening to you on the phone today was not like holding a normal conversation. There was clearly an agenda in your mind and any normal chatter between friendly acquaintances was evidently a distraction. It all sounded insincere. After I told you that I did not find anything about it interesting, you still made a diary note to contact me again a week later. If I said anything to suggest that I wanted this, then I retract it now.

"The university of life, the school of hard knocks and the kindergarten of having the crap kicked out of you".

I have learned many things through personal experience and learning in a non-captive group. I intend to continue that way. Landmark's growth illustrates something sad about the lack of preparation that most people possess for the hardships of life. Groups of people pay money to divulge their intimate problems with total strangers. This is utter madness.

In the end, it reminds me of the film `Fight Club', in which the insomniac hero visits different self-help groups to fill his nights. Eventually he becomes addicted to the intensity of the emotion and is only snapped out of it when he spots a woman who does the same thing. She acts as a reflection of his deception.

I have learned that the great revelation on the final day of the course is that `Life is meaningless'. I completely agree with that statement and have said so in those exact words since I was a teenager. I scarcely need three days to be told it. The real benefit of the revelation is squandered though, if you switch dependence on your own mental crutches for someone else's.

I recommend that you do some reading about techniques used by mind control cults. One very good source of material is www.rickross.com and I would direct you to www.rickross.com/groups/landmark.html

If you are starting to fell unsettled by what I have written, then Good! You might start to feel the need or instinct to discuss this with another Landmark person in the hope that he will suck you back in. That ought to start the warning bells ringing!

If that does not convince you then I suggest that you spend 15 hours per day for three days locked up in the company of myself and other like-minded individuals. First lessons are free!

David Young


I Can Talk You Out Of This

Billboards
I went to Scotland for the weekend for a family gathering. I was a passenger rather than a driver for most of the weekend, so I noticed things that I usually wouldn't. Two roadside advertising campaigns stand out.

Three Non-Blondes. I must have seen this poster advertising a new BBC comedy programme about 100 times this weekend. I shudder to think what the BBC has paid for so many billboards (both in Glasgow and London). What shocks me is that the programme being advertised is to be broadcast on BBC3.

For those outside the UK, I should explain that this means that only people who have invested in satellite, cable or digital-boxes will be able to see it. As the majority of UK households don't have these, it means that the corporation has spent a fortune advertising something that most people won't see. The choice of programme is bold too. BBC comedy has been pretty poor for years now. There are several fine satirical programmes, but situation comedy is in a parlous state. For the corporation to spend so much money to advertise its weakest offering is reckless. I have no idea how funny the show will be, as I don't have digital, but `new' comedy from the BBC isn't going to persuade me to invest money to get it.

The Alpha Course. Almost every church I drove past is carrying an advertisement for `The Alpha Course'. It's billed as a chance to talk about the meaning of life, but its real motive is to make people go to church. Attendance has been falling for years and this seems to puzzle church leaders. I'm tempted to explain to them that it's the non-existence of the underlying deity that is the problem, but they prefer to pursue the angle that poor presentation skills are to blame and have tried a marketing-based approach.

A friend of mine knows a woman who went on the course and her reaction to meeting her afterwards was to wonder `Has something eaten her brain?' I can't believe that much dissent is tolerated. I hope they don't screw up the lives of too many vulnerable people. Imagine the damage that could be inflicted by an evangelical who believes in demonic possession when confronted by someone with an undiagnosed mental illness.

The explanation for falling attendance is easier to express in terms of rising prosperity. Christianity has a strong appeal to those whose lives are miserable. The prospect of a better life in the next world is its strongest card. The advice to give away ones wealth to the poor is cost-free to those who have nothing to lose by it and something to gain.

But as living standards lives, the appeal lessens. Is it a coincidence that I see lots of churches in poor places (the Dunstable Road outside Luton Casino springs to mind)? Is it a coincidence that the most religious states in the US are also the poorest? Church leaders should be praying for recession.

Effluence about affluence.
I've been on a diet for just over two weeks. I didn't mention it from the start, as I didn't want this to become like Bridget Jones' Diary. But I am pleased to report that I have lost 10 pounds. I need to lose the same again. It's been fairly easy, as I have been at home preparing my meals most of the time.

The diet I am following could roughly be described as `Atkins'. I cannot be 100 per cent sure, as I have never read the Atkins book, but I know that its essence is the restriction of carbohydrate. This inevitably means an increase in the proportion of one's nutrition that is composed of protein and fat. This worries many people, as they have been conditioned to think that `fat makes you fat'. I'm not convinced. I have been reading a book called `Protein Power' and it advances ideas that are close to those of the late Dr Atkins. That is to say, that the gain in weight observed in western nations is caused by excess carbohydrate consumption, which leads to the body producing more insulin, the result of which is that the body switches its metabolic action to fat storage.

This appears to be borne out by the observation that people in industrialised nations are eating less fat now than 30 years ago, yet obesity has become a far bigger problem in the mean time. To the authors of Protein Power, this is not a surprise. They observe that mankind only invented agriculture relatively recently - about 8,000 years ago. Before that, humans lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and that is the one that our bodies are still conditioned to support; living on meat, fish, nuts and some small amount of fruit, like berries. What is not natural therefore, is the large-scale growing of fields of rice, corn and wheat. It takes some getting used to as an idea, as from the modern day perspective, it's an ancient practice.

So I'm supposed to be a hunter-gatherer? For most of my life, I've been a gatherer-gatherer-gatherer (try to visualise Cookie Monster from Sesame Street). According to some, our hunter-gatherer ancestors were `The Original Affluent Society'. At least that's the view of `Eco Action' (www.eco-action.org). It's a site devoted to `direct action' with a focus on woolly-minded `knit your own yoghurt' philosophies.

In this section of the site:

http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html

the old hunter-gatherer society is praised as being affluent because "all the people's material wants were easily satisfied". It goes on to say "There are two possible courses to affluence ... producing much or desiring little". The first method is the foundation of economics, the study of how man uses his limited resources to satisfy his unlimited wants. So far, so good, but then the author dives off the deep end into the sort of mystical nonsense that would make Shirley Maclaine proud by introducing the "Zen road to affluence". The latter tells us that "human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate".

It's a shock to learn that every child who convinces himself that he didn't really want the toy he didn't get for his birthday is actually a Zen philosopher in the making!

I suggest that you skim read the article and get a sense of the patronising `Eco tourist' view of the poorest in our world. It's all very well to suggest that such people can be happy by not pursuing material wealth, but there are two practical objections. The first is that a poor H-G society that never developed the wealth to create any self-defence force could in the past (and perhaps still now) fall victim to slavery. The second is that the generation of material wealth leads to a demand for better health-care to both extend the duration of life and improve its quality.

Beyond those practical points, I find the whole thing utterly condescending. "The Noble-Savage was living on renewable energy before we did. Isn't that splendid Tarquin? I must put that in my thesis."

Eco-warriors? ... Wankers.