In times of peace, we prepare for war. In times of war, we prepare for peace. In my own way, I have been preparing for war, one that I never wanted but was born to be in and have become so used to that I barely notice it until it affects the people I love around me. All my life seems to have been lived in the midst of one, be it the never ending conflict within my own head and heart, my family, business or the places I am heading into now.

Something switched on in me today, as it did recently in a meeting in Gloucester Road. 2 very severe things happened in a matter of hours. I stood up in court to sue South West Trains, and the rail manager who angered me was fired in front of my face.

Its strange what happens when you stand up and say no more of any of this. The world ticks over and the new person falls into place.

Im a ruthless bastard when it comes to business. Ill block, punish and suffocate anyone who rivals me, and Ill do it with megalomaniacal impunity. I feel nothing at all, especially when it comes to obnoxious suits who thoroughly deserve it. For those in the position as me with a good heart, Ill help along the road as much as I can. But if you threaten my little kingdom, the black arts are marshalled. Being young means you have to work twice as hard, be twice as harsh and be twice as smart to get ahead and stay there, not to mention have even the most meagre slices of credibility in a very brutal environment where the stakes are higher and the prices of mistakes can be terrifying.

In Gloucester Road, I was unusually cold. Normally I have a amiable disposition and charm my way through with visions of the future, mental dexterity and an infectious enthusiasm. But this day was different. Short sentences. Numbness. Im not justifying anything to you. Youre going to need balls and a strong stomach. We have 5mins and 30 seconds for this meeting. Were going to make you a lot of money, and for that youre going to need to give us what we want. Its on its way, and so are we. Join us or youll end up fighting us, and we will be stronger. Brutal, harsh and cold.

Something happened during that meeting that took me to the place I needed to be in. The poker face and single-minded Bond villain-style determination was all over me and I was there in the moment weaponising it beautifully. I resolved then to get into that moment whenever I could from then on. The light had been switched on, and I had hit the frame of mind I needed to cultivate and savour.

Today was very similar, but on a social level. To cut a long story short, I refused to pay a fine a ticket collector decided he was going to impose on me at Wimbledon station, and SWT have been screeching at me ever since, despite every letter reply to them stating my refusal. So they took it one stage further and lined up a court date. Being as impetuous and bloody-minded as I am, I decide to take legal advice and sue them right back. The intimidating rhetoric was that I should concede my guilt and pay up now, as it could cost me much more in the long run.

My rather belligerent and bullish response to them was that it will cost them a lot more than it will cost me. The figure of damages weve put on the table is almost 20 times higher than theirs and into the thousands of pounds. I wont be intimidated by these underperforming, corrupt and cynical companies. Penalty fines are abused heavily for their profitability, and its well known.

But I nearly missed my hearing, due to another scrap with ticket collectors at Wimbledon on the very morning I was suing them for the very same thing. I flipped and lost my temper completely with idiot moron fat blond bitch behind the counter and nearly put my fist through the glass. Its scary when that happens as Im as near to psychotic as you can get in that state. She refused to sell me a ticket due to the swearing (swearing is abuse apparently), and as a consequence I decided to rip the roots from underneath her on my return.

I Camerond the clerk, security guards and prosecutor, the latter who was slyly trying to get me to save myself the hassle and plead guilty because he claimed it was a straightforward offence I was guilty of. I laughed. We were in full flowing conversation about life, law, the third world and the deterioration of government in no time at all. Working cases like mine must be an appallingly boring life. Someone else is out there defending at a murder trial or taking down an Eastern European dictator.

So we got into the courtroom, and after joking about a bit, 3 magistrates appeared to talk though the hearing. Now I have some experience in these things due to an unfortunate criminal past, so being in a courtroom doesnt phase me too much. In fact, I rather like it. Today, however, was about something much bigger. It was about making court my home. To have ultimate victory, one must be familiar with their surroundings and masters of their circumstances.

Anyone would be surprised how farcical magistrates courts are. The magistrates themselves were late, half the defendants didnt turn up, the briefs were mostly missing and even the security guards were sitting around doing nothing as people set off the metal detector when they walked through it. Thank god nobody brought a bomb in that day, as no-one would have even noticed. The types of people who frequent this time of place are largely there for traffic offences or enforcement notices, and of lower class origins.

They were expecting quiet submission from me and were quite taken aback when I stood up and told them I was there to challenge the law and the validity of the technical process. I gave what can only be described as a 5 minute Churchillian diatribe that could only have come out of my mouth that early in the morning. My argument was that the law was deficient, the train companies and their employees are wilfully abusing their legal allowances and the paperwork was wrong. Laws are made for the people, by the people. The people in this instance would not be SWTs side, and neither should the court be.

For me it was almost an epiphany. I was intimidated like I thought I would be. I relished it. Ive addressed crowds for years now, but this was a different story and opportunity. Pointing the finger and arguing for truth just felt right. I was at home. I was fighting for me and everyone like me. The adrenaline wasnt there, but the will to conquer was. It wasnt a macho thing either; I wanted it bad, and I was bigger than that courtroom. I felt them watching as I spoke, and how they were listening and reacting to how I was. Thats quite a drug.

But the overriding feeling was that this was the first time I had stood up and taken a side. I always try to see all views and sit on the fence because time can bring out new angles and information that brings new light to the decision you made earlier. It felt good to fight. It wont be the first time Ill be in court, but the next time will be for something greater, a cause that needs fighting for or for something that needs changing. Its the centre of power and the place where lives are changed. And nows its mine. I want it, bad. I resolved that day to stand up for each and every time anyone threatens me, and not be neutral any more. I wont cower, I wont concede and I wont fail to be someone that fights for what is right.

The wisdom for me is that war is unavoidable when there are those who would wish you harm. Fighting is a natural urge and a natural consequence that we try hard to avoid at any cost. But its part of us, its in our nature. Its the proving ground for courage and a moral grey area. The innocence that believes peace will come and all things can be settled by peaceful means is wrong. There are bad people in this world who live by the sword, and they must be challenged and felled by the sword to protect the things we hold dear. And we must not feel guilt for their destruction, as it was their choice to harm us before it was ours to use violent means to defend ourselves against them.

My father used to preach that you could stop a fight by talking yourself out of it. I learned quickly that it doesnt work because once someones has made up their mind to harm you, there is little you can do to stop it. Bullying doesnt stop because you report it to a teacher or boss; it stops when you make it too much hassle for the bully to continue. And it doesnt stop after one act of resistance. You need to keep fighting and resisting until they give up and move onto someone else. The SAS teach that the first thing you do when attacked is to take the battle to the enemy, as its the last thing they expect. The guy who gets the first punch in normally wins.

You cannot convert the choir, and you cannot get through to those who have closed themselves off to outside influence in order to prepare themselves for violence. Many people cannot be reasoned with and ordinary compassion becomes a liability that can endanger you. I find it hard to disconnect that compassion and switch to kill mode, but its a difficulty I coming to be at peace with as times goes on. I am coming to see those who want to harm me and learning to strike violently to disable them before they can threaten me.

Laws are not right or wrong. We are taught that breaking the law is an absolute wrong, and in the black and white definition it is. Laws are attempts to find absolutes by which we can judge our behaviour and the consequences of it. But that is not only a lie, its a very dangerous lie to tell. Laws are made for the people, by the people. Laws can be bad, deficient or nefarious. They are what we as a society, community and culture decide makes acceptable and unacceptable conduct. Just because a law exists does not make it right, ethical or moral. Just as Martin Luther King rightly observed, everything Adolf Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal.

Moreover, laws are often created with vested interests in mind and must be regularly challenged and refined to ascertain their validity. Following them blindly without question or thought is extremely dangerous and worrying. It they are ineffective, incomplete or broken, they must be resolved. If we teach children to abjectly follow, we add to the ignorance and bang nails into the coffins of those who will make up the coming generations.

Bill Hicks said we should take just 10% of the worlds yearly defence budget and spend it on feeding and clothing all the children of the world, not one human being excluded. A counsellor in Holland I spent a long time talking with told me it was his mission to rid the world of weapons altogether.

There is a time for peace with all men, and struggling for it is an admirable cause. Insofar as it is possible and within our control, we all know we should live in peace with others no matter how tempting it may be to do otherwise. But many will decide not to live in peace with you, which means you must cut them down without guilt, remorse or hesitation as they would wish you and those you care about harm. Not everyone has the same constitution as you or thinks of you with the same respect as you do of them.

Thats a very, very difficult and painful realisation, one that many only come to realise on a battlefield or when at their last inch. We are born with that innocence until the world erodes it from us so that we end up shedding the remains. Its easier to believe the world is a nice place where there is love, compromise, loyalty and diplomacy that can fix anything. But the reality is that diplomacy is appeasement, and appeasement almost always one side being favoured over another.

In other words, someone has to roll over or concede. Diplomacy is the business of saving them face as they do it.

Appeasement is commonly known as keeping the peace or doing anything for a quiet life. Or plainly, giving someone what they want in the short term for getting something in the long term. It was Chamberlains flawed and fatal policy in World War II that gave Hitler time to build his empire, or his stroke of genius that bought the Allies enough time to collect enough resources to oppose him. In that case, the ultimate victory of the Allies justified the initial action but it came at a very heavy cost.

Some people just hate arguments and avoid them; some will tread on eggshells so they dont upset someone; others will give in as they dont have the strength or faculties to disagree; some are scared of the consequences of their action; others are terrified of their own inability to fight back. Whatever it is, there are always excuses to justify the same cowardly behaviour and they all involve giving in and rolling over.

But human beings aren’t built to do that.

The process of getting hurt by someones jibes or criticism is a very strange one when you think about it. What they say is designed to provoke a response and we automatically accept it as truth even though its an opinion. We dont question it like we would an outright lie. A criticism isnt a lie per se, but it is not truth either. You don’t have to agree with them or assume they are right, but in the process of not questioning it, you do.

The words go to your heart, and not your mind, because if they did, they would be thrown out very quickly for the irrelevant rubbish they are. The opinions are almost always wrong, misjudged, ill-informed, based on prejudice and poor previous experiences and the person is saying what they do for another reason.

Some people spend their lives wishing they could avoid being hurt or just blot out peoples harsh remarks. But it is possible. It involves interrupting that acceptance process you learnt after no-one told you how to do it the first time it happened.

Getting them to roll over and do the persecutors will is easily accomplished with violence or other forms of intimidation, but submission often simpler by pandering their vanities, insecurities or greed. All involve a conquest, and all involve a victor to whom the battle is eventually conceded, the only difference in each being the timeframe in which the victory occurs. Sometimes its immediate, sometimes it takes years.

When in times of doubt or confusion, I consult religious text as it gives me a reference and cornerstone of wisdom to help me base my decision or help me understand what to do next (or indeed, what not to do). My favourite choice is the bible as its full of fighting, killing, betrayal, corruption and the evils of human nature. It commands mercy over vengeance.

But I struggle with this, and it pains me. Knowing when to have mercy or not to have it is an intensely difficult decision and commands the deepest of concern. There are parts of me so dark that I cannot face them myself. For some reason there has always been a dichotomy at the centre of my heart that feels the intense guilt for hurting anyone or anything, and another part of me that revels in it.

Power is addictive and it is seductive to all. But it is also granted, not taken. The mind is always overruled by the passion of the heart and sometimes its so difficult to pull yourself under control again once your blood is up and your eyes are wide.

Ive always been a man of extremes, as my friends often tell me and testify about on my behalf. I spend so much time rebalancing; time spent adapting from the swing of going from one end of the scale to another and levelling out to normality again. There are days when I am so cold that you could mistake me for a rock of ice, and some days when I run so emotionally rampant that the tide carries me to places I cant deal with or even understand. The middle ground is sacred to me, as is the peace it brings. I wish I could stay there for longer than I usually am able to. For the people around me its charming and frustrating at the same time.

Philosophy only takes you so far in a world this wicked. When you are faced with the evil that only men can do, there are few choices but to defend yourself for sheer survival and in all war, there are innocent casualties. Al of it is a crime. But the choices of the malicious are not your own, and the consequences of their actions must remain with them rather than be induced like an electrical conductor in the minds of those who would fall prey to them. The terrible darkness that comes with the circumstances of the battle is knowing you have to fight, that you may be injured and that you will cause the suffering and destruction of something or someone else.

I guess what Im saying is that as well as the red-faced warrior that lives in all of us, theres also a victim. The twin of comedy is tragedy, and the partner of light is dark. To understand one we must appreciate the other as a matter of contrast. The question is to how much the wild animal must be exercised, or exorcised. Some believe that as a natural part of who we are, we should let that beast out of its cage whenever it rattles the bars, and others who feel restraint is the pinnacle of dignity, which helps us to become closer to the ideal of the divine.

The hands of man can be gentle and brutal with the same blood running through their veins. What man has created, man can destroy or undo. Genocide and serial killing is facilitated by a process in the mind of an aggressor where their victim becomes an object, not a person. The first thing we do in stereotyping or criticising is to demote a person to a thing, and deliberately remove our awareness of the parts of them that make them an individual person so they are no longer anything we can recognise or communicate with. This is a short-term psychological measure we use to survive trauma, but is tragically misused.

And there is great evil in this world. A third of it is at war, and two thirds do not have access to drinking water. The top search term on porn sites is rape. Despite the horror of war, we continue to engage in it. You’d think that after the first experience, wed abandon the whole idea.

Peacemakers and activists are naive. Their motives and compassion are noble, but their reasoning is foolish. Men have always done evil to one another, and they will not stop as it is part of our nature whether we despise it or not. For every man who lays down his weapon, there will be another who sees him do it and attacks him because of his vulnerability. We need weapons to protect ourselves from those who would harm us, and there are more of them than we think there are.

Politicians inadvertently conceal the truth from the people about their double dealings because they think they will not understand their motives or actions that lay beneath the most appalling sins they do in the name of the interests of the country. Politics is a business where you betray your principles for your interests. We keep our neighbours at war, for as long as they are killing each other, they are not harming us. Its a tactic the Romans perfected long ago, along with divide and conquer.

We sell arms to dictators as buyers rarely attack their wholesalers, and we can equip them to undermine our enemies and keep them in a situation where they are drained of resources and weakened. We keep them in place without active pursuing their removal from office as the devil you know (and can manipulate for your own ends) is better than the devil you dont know, havent dealt with, or cant see yet. The blood of innocents is powerful political bargaining material when you want to force the hands of those who spilled it in the first place.

The enemy of our enemy is our friend, and we have no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests. We go to war for 2 reasons, and 2 reasons alone: to protect, or enhance our interests. But he who wields the dagger never wears the crown, and we can never been seen to be the one feeding the frenzy. We keep the economies of countries weak so they cannot undermine our own, and we stay close to our allies so we can punch above our weight with the aid of their support. Fighting in their wars allows us to profit from the spoils that would otherwise be theirs alone to consume, and better to get fat from someone else’s table than starve from not having one of our own.

This is the simple reason we went to war in Iraq. Oil underpins the economies of all the major nations, and not going to war with America would have been disastrous. He who controls the supply of oil controls the world. We couldn’t not do it. The US administration was going to do it anyway for their own reasons; we are simply latching on to enhance our interests from their vile crusade into the country we ourselves created so many years ago from the 3 Babylonian regions. The message is clear. If you mess with Britain, you mess with America.

There is only one defence against the onslaught of Western armies, and that is nuclear weapons. America will not attack any country that possesses thermonuclear arms for fear that the desperation of a smaller nation against such a massively more powerful army will cause them to repeat Hiroshima in order to stop the war and win the day. Pakistan has sold the secrets of weapon manufacture to anyone with enough money to pay for them.

Its again the reason that North Korea and Iran have now embarked on active and virulent nuclear programs, because if they possess those weapons, they are well defended against an appallingly punitive US regime that has destroyed its neighbours and will most likely be eyeing them up next. Bush’s Axis Of Evil was a self-fulfilling prophecy constructed to serve the purposes of those who funded his campaign and wish to see the dawn of a new worldwide America’s empire. Wars feed economies and drive technological innovation as a mother of invention.

There is something terribly wrong with this country, and there is a poisonous evil growing underneath us in this world that few can see for the blinding lights of political spin and the insidious influence of the media on our ability to think for ourselves. It has been said that for evil to triumph it is sufficient that good men do nothing. Apathy will be our undoing because whilst they smile sweetly, they will rape, and the comfortable pillow behind our heads will be the instrument that suffocates us in our sleep. Say nothing, do nothing, and you die.

He who controls language, controls thought, as Orwell understood well. Language is more powerful than nuclear arms as it steers the will of the people who grant political power, and labels can be used to neuter as well as they can corrupt or inspire. Truth is so sacred that it must always be protected by a bodyguard of lies, and the greater the lie the more likely it is that it will be believed. If you tell it enough, it eventually becomes truth in the minds of those who know no different or lack the integrity, strength or energy to discern one from another.

But in order to control, you first need a war, which is always unpalatable and driven to be ended as soon as possible because of the political fallout it brings to those who initiate it. The tried and tested answer is a perpetual war that never ends. The war on drugs never ends, nor does the war on terror. They can never be won, only carried on forever. A perpetual war gives you licence to do whatever you like, for however long you want to do it for.

Fighting for peace is not an empty cause like fucking for virginity; its a very noble and essential one that demands massive belief and integrity. The problem is that peace can only be achieved in a world like this if it is in the interests of those who are resisting it, not just as an idealistic pursuit of hippies, little girls or extreme liberals. Peace needs to be a political expedience, not a fruitless dream of philanthropic generosity.

This day has changed me. It has opened my eyes and let out some of the human animal in me that wants to fight and conquer. It changed the way I look at who I am and how the path will be trodden in the years to come. More than twenty dreadful years of fighting, arguing and being abused have given me the stomach I need for a scrap.

I want blood and dirt on my hands. I don’t want to be a bystander or a victim any more.

And Ive been a victim too long and not realised it fully. Ive let people walk over me, convince me to roll over, allowed myself to follow the direction and influence of others, and put myself at the mercy of those who don’t have my best interests in mind when it comes to how they treat me. Ive been scared to lose, to separate and to detach. Ive been paralysed by the fear of the grief I would feel and blinded by the black curtains of cynicism and doubt when it comes to my ideas on the intentions of others. Ive lived in fear for too long. Today was the day when it came to an end, and when I realised I was half awake.

I felt nothing when the ticket guard was sacked. In fact, I smiled at her. It was her choice to be that way and anger me, and her decision to have repeated the same behaviour shed obviously committed too many times before in order for her superiors to be so severe with her. What I wanted to say was that she should consider herself lucky that she came out of it relatively unscathed. Next time Ill come for her family. There is no remorse in my eyes, and there is no compassion in my heart for that person who threatened me.

I stood up and was counted, and I will do again and again until the day I take my last breath. I know who I am and what Im here to do. You are not permitted to stand in my way or obstruct what needs to be done. If you ignore the warnings you will suffer for your choice as that is the limit of my compassion. I will treat evil men with the disdain and contempt they hold me in, and fear nothing as they try to challenge me. I will be smarter, faster and more lethal than they imagine. I have taken my own side, and I will fight for it like I will fight for the people I care about and people who need my firepower on their side.

There will be a time for forgiveness, but it is not now. I would rather burn alive than go down on my knees. There is no wishbone where my backbone is meant to be.