I have been offline for almost three weeks, and the reason is that I have been deeply depressed. I guess that it is time I came out as a lifelong sufferer from severe bipolar disorder, or manic depression as it was known when I was first diagnosed at Ninewells Hospital Dundee in 1978.
I have for almost all my adult life eschewed the chemical regulation the medical industry has so kindly proffered, and in general although very unpleasant to me, I have managed through self-will to control the swings as they affect others. The exception is when something depressing happens anyway and an adverse swing reinforces it.
I was very scared that the Government would use this condition to try to explain away the events in Murder in Samarkand as a result of my condition. In fact the government did indeed try to do that, by contacting a number of news editors across the media to inform them helpfully that I had a history of mental illness. In fact it is true that my illness affected the events in Murder in Samarkand, but only in the very limited sense that when they chose to attack me with numerous false accusations, the resulting depression hit me harder than it might have another. My employers, of course, were well aware that would happen.
As other bipolar sufferers, my principal symptom was in general the alternation of periods of unusual high energy with perods of lethargy. In consequence occasionally routine work would be a bit late. That was used as the basis of one of the accusations against me. It was of course more than balanced by longer periods of huge energy and creativity.
Anyway, enough of the past. I was depressed lately partly by the problems over getting the book published, but mostly by despair over the “Bailouts” in the US and UK. This incredible misuse of taxpayers’ money represents the biggest net redistribution of funds from the poor to the rich in all of human history. The lack of real analysis in any of the media is what plunged me in to gloom so deep it was not even much relieved by the death of Jeorg Haider. Incidentally a friend who is a retired member of MI6 texted me that Mossad killed Haider. I replied it was about time they did something useful.
Talking of people the World would be better off without, I see that Nathaniel Rothschild, escort of Gulnara Karimova,
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/07/parasite_news.html
is in the news. The deeply sad thing about this is that Rothschild, Karimov, Osborne, Mandelson et al inhabit the same sleazy space. But I would certainly believe Osborne over Rothschild. God made Nathaniel Rothschild that size to be a convenient butt-plug for Russian and Uzbek oligarchs.
For the record…
I would happily do work for this government if it weren't for the presence of Jack Straw in the cabinet; his treatment of you (and the issues you raised) is the main reason for this.
very sad to hear about your recent issues.. i really hope that you manage to get your new book published, as i have just ordered your first work and am enjoying it immensely. I intend to force a copy 'pon everyone i know.
i have dreamt about peter mandleson every night since he was re-introduced into the public eye a few weeks ago. What a truly, truly appalling individual
Hope you're feeling better, I've missed your commentary over the past couple of weeks. Hope you feel up to making me depressed over the unpleasantness of some members of humanity in the near future. You can always be relied on to snap me out of my own manic phases 😉
I think bipolar disorder is much better understood than it was when you were first diagnosed. From sufferers I've known, I can see that it affects people to different degrees. Some people, like you, can cope without medication whereas others find the medication very helpful – I don't think there's a universal rule. I've worked with a colleague who was bipolar – he was ever so good at his job and his bursts of energy certainly made up for the periods of lethargy and depression as far as I was concerned – though not, perhaps, for him.
I'm glad to hear that your mostly managing well. As for your recent depression, I would have thought that was clear evidence of your sanity, given the current state of the world.
I should have added that I hope you are now emerging from the depressed phase – partly because that's better for you but also because I miss your blogposts.
I love the mossad comment.
It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Well Craig, you are to be commended for your frankness. It's still regarded as a 'weakness' in individuals that publicly admit they are suffering, but I regard it an act of huge courage. Most people are touched directly or by acquaintance with depression, but few dare voice it.
Those who choose to smear in such a manner are monstrous – and incredibly stupid. What they fail to understand is that many of our greatest people suffer/have suffered from such afflictions. Churchill, Wellington, Nelson and so on. The list of the Great and the Good is stuffed full of them.
Count yourself as one of them, and ignore these petty, venal, numbskulls, who do not even have the wit to see beyond their own direct personal gain.
Dear Craig,
I feel for you, I really do. I know just how it is believe me. I'm not surprised, as I've noticed how sensitive you are. In a world that's so depressing one would have to be made of stone and stunted, both emotionally and intellectually, not to react in some way.
But one can attempt to externalize ones feelings and not direct them inwards. Of course this is easier said than done.
Personally I find the company of beutiful women helps my state of mind no end, and you have one within arms reach, lucky you!
You're intelligent, well-educated, knowledgable, smart, litterate, amusing, brave, unpretentious… I could go on but that would be tedious.
I often find that I don't complete enough of the work I start on which is frustrating. I write some brilliant chapters and the characters are jumping off the page and then for some reason it fizzles out, drains into the sand, runs through my fingers like water. It's very frustrating and depressing. But in the end I do get things finished.
I have 'black dog' days, but I don't know if I'm clinically depressed. I suppose rather than getting really depressed and lethargic, I get angry instead and direct the anger into my work and writing.
Many, many, creative people have suffered from depression. It's because we probably judge ourselves by such high standards and are too critical, we are our own worst enemies so to speak. We don't concentrate enough on how much we've achieved, and too much on what we haven't achieved yet.
As to the world – it's a bitch and probably has always been that way. We are imperfect creatures and so is the world we've created. I just wish we weren't so destructive in relation to other species and the natural world. The lions, tigers, gorillas, rhinos etc. don't get a vote and we don't ask them if they mind being exterminated. I don't see how we can launch a 'holocaust' on so many species and still think we are moral and civilized beings.
You are correct of course about this 'bailout' being arguably the greatest transfer of wealth in all human history. It's bigger than the enclosure movement and slavery in my opinion. But it's also a tremendous transfer of power from the majority to the minority, the people I regard as being the ruling elite, or a financial aristocracy.
There is a pattern in the way the mainstream media deals with great issues; issues like Iraq, Uzbekistan, global warming, the financial crisis. You are part of the approximately 5% alternative and critical sources/voices that are allowed through the layers of filter mechanisms that 'vet' the news and frame public discourse.
I've found that fiction is the place for me to opperate. I can get away with stuff like a comic fool or harmless, treasured, relation; a relic from a bygone age.
Maybe I should take you out to lunch at the Savoy next time I'm in London and cheer you up?
Hope you're feeling better.
I quite liked Peter Wilby's detailed analysis in this week's New Statesman that "they all piss in the same pot".
What's the gist of the issue.
Osborne got a bit over excited to be invited to the rich club despite not really being posh enough and coming across like a university student union vice president in charge only of Tennents prices down the pub.
Rothschild's pissed off that the goss left the club – making it more difficult for the parallel worlds of banking and politics to influence each other in future. (Information for blackmail has to be used strategically!)
And Mandy? Well he apparently has no clue what's going on in general and will soon be selected out of the system yet again.
I have a friend who suffers from Bipolar, so I can only say that I'm impressed that you manage as well as you do. Have you got any further with your book problem?
Also, do you have any comments on the current scandal surrounding Mohammed al Fayed? Seems like a classic example of a fit-up to me. I predicted a while back that the establishment would try to destroy him. Of course, he's no Angel so I could be wrong….
Craig,
Regarding your new book, as of yet unpublished.
Your already using the internet to communicate with us all. Now take the next step and sell to us!
Print the book yourself! Run off 1,000 copies and post them yourself. Of get your Auntie Zilla to post them or something.
It will be liberating for you and works well for many of us:
Remember:
1. It will get published!
2. You get to keep most of the cover price!
3. You will get to know some of the people buying your book!
4. It works! I have sold almost 2,000 copies of a very niche dvd from my website and your website is far more popular than mine!
5. Bookshops will take it on in time when all of the fuss has died down.
Get going now!!! 😉
(Hope that's not too positive, but you get the idea…)
Congrats on posting this, Craig.
I have two good friends who are bipolar, and added to their difficulties is the stigma that *still* attaches to such illnesses in the 21st century. It is greatly to be deplored. As someone said above, 1 in about 4 people in these islands will suffer with depression or anxiety during their lifetime – with or without medical help. I'm one of them too, but have been blessed to be free of it for quite some time.
I add my voice to those who say, "self publish". And be damned to the power hungry fat cats who would attempt to silence you.
Welcome back Craig. The reactions of the authorities to the inevitable results of the rampant criminal Ponzi scheme that was the globalized economic system depresses the hell out of me too. Leaving aside the gross criminality it fostered & rewarded, the system itself (forced perpetual exponential growth of every measure of 'the economy' – on a finite planet) was always a logical absurdity. It is clearly about to meet its Waterloo. It looks like countless millions of people are going to be faced with a world they hardly recognise in terms of lifelong assumptions of the 20th century religion of 'progress' (Towards what? was my constant refrain) – and countless millions more will simply starve to death. Here is a rather apt analogy of what we are in the midst of, from Jim Kunstler – author of 'The Long Emergency:
"we are witnessing the two stages of a tsunami. The current disappearance of wealth in the form of debts repudiated, bets welshed on, contracts canceled, and Lehman Brothers-style sob stories played out is like the withdrawal of the sea. The poor curious little monkey-humans stand on the beach transfixed by the strangeness of the event as the water recedes and the sea floor is exposed and all kinds of exotic creatures are seen thrashing in the mud, while the skeletons of historic wrecks are exposed to view, and a great stench of organic decay wafts toward the strand. Then comes the second stage, the tidal wave itself — which in this case will be horrific monetary inflation — roaring back over the mud flats toward the land mass, crashing over the beach, and ripping apart all the hotels and houses and infrastructure there while it drowns the poor curious monkey-humans who were too enthralled by the weird spectacle to make for higher ground. The killer tidal wave washes away all the things they have laboured to build for decades, all their poignant little effects and chattels, and the survivors are left keening amidst the wreckage as the sea once again returns to normal in its eternal cradle.
Meanwhile, back in the real world.
"Big Box Mart"…
http://tinyurl.com/6kzr5y
Thanks for coming back to us, hope you're doing ok now. I too get supremely depressed by the actions of some members of our human race, but thankfully, and luckily, without serious effects on my wellbeing.
Further to fugazi's comment above, I'll buy your book wherever it's made available, and probably a few extras to sell on to acquaintances and place in local independent book shops (if they'll take them).
Welcome back, Craig.
Great to be enjoying your posts again.
Oh well back into another world again…A dark world…
http://tinyurl.com/5cebq9
Jiddu reminds us of an old wisdom. There are a lot of people out here paralysed by the awfulness of it all and not as able as you to find a voice. You are unlikely to meet us in Whitehall, but take a walk and you are quite likely to bump into one of us.
You have sustained a lot of dispirited people. You even manage to make us laugh. We are with you when you are down, but we look forward to you bouncing back.
I was incarcerated last year for three weeks under the Thatcherite Mental Health Act of 1983, and the doctors were very keen to pin the words 'bipolar disorder' on to me, rather like 19th century lepidopterists pinning butterflies into display cases.
What fascinated me about the 'disorder' discourse I encountered was its total failure to set mental health within a socio-economic and political context.
On a personal basis, my mood becomes manic when I see signs of the end of tyranny in Britain (and elsewhere); and gloomy and full of ennui when I see signs of the tyranny entrenching itself further. If I didn't have those reactions, I might as well be lobotomised. The same goes for the so-called 'bailout' – you are right about the redistribution from poor to rich, and the overwhelmingly lack of any discussion or challenge, particularly within the mainstream (corporatised) media. Ditto for the rapid extinction of species and the failures to even begin to plan properly for the peak oil and climate change era.
Who wouldn't be depressed by such exogenous factors? Who on earth could possibly live in a country that has been ruled by such vile regimes as Thatcherism/NewLabourism without undergoing some form of mental anguish? Why on earth do so many people appear so happy – is it a matter of 'panem et cirenses' or is it even worse – opium of the people and hypnosis?
Please keep up the good work Mr.M.
Edwards, M.D.
http://matthewdevereuxedwards.typepad.com
[email protected]
A lot of similarities to what is happening now,read it all to understand fully.
"The Scottish perspective"…
http://tinyurl.com/zebf2
We love you Craig. Missed your blog. Alastair Campbell was on TV last week talking about depression. He said it can strike anyone. It's the right thing to be open about mental illness if your employer is understanding. Such a pity that society only cares about appearances. The programme made me respect him and Patricia Hewitt more, even if I don't like their politics.
"Peter Dale Scott's "Deep Politics" lecture at McGill University"…
http://blip.tv/file/1284196
Craig!
I don't know if you're still feeling depressed, but you should drag yourself over to your computer and force yourself to write something! It doesn't have to be particularly good or insightful; forget the spelling and the grammar, but get those fingers moving again. Claw your way out of the pit through action.
"MCM: Well this is an interesting story. This book was supposed to be published by Kent State University Press, but when Phillips handed in the manuscript, they told him that it was twice as long as it should be and that they couldn't afford illustrations. This was not their original agreement. Phillips told them that without illustrations, the book isn't convincing, and he then decided to self-publish."…
http://tinyurl.com/6aauod
Hi Craig,
I was puzzled by the posting errors, and somewhat curious as for the reasons behind it.
Glad to see you back, and wish you the best.
Haider's death ought to raise questions as to what was the last straw that crashed his car?
Never mind Haider is dead, but why is he dead, and what has been achieved through his death, is the question?
Finally it appears that BIS (Bank of International Settlements) is cutting out the middleman (Military Industrial Complex, henchmen thereof, and war) , and it has found a novel way of repatriation/taxation/shifting of the desired assets in a more exacting, and global fashion.
Craig,
Post something. It doesn't matter whether it's funny, or a rant, or just a stream of consciousness. We're ALL behind you and hoping to hear from you. Even if it's just to say that you're still feeling a bit 'down in the dumps'. From reading the comments here, you're most cerainly not alone – either in mood or in your political views. So post something, no matter how short? And f*%ck the FCO, Nathaniel Rothschild, and everyone else. Your voice is needed, mate!
"The lack of real analysis in any of the media is what plunged me in to gloom so deep it was not even much relieved by the death of Jeorg Haider."
but 30,000 complaints to the Beeb about the Wussell and Wossy saga, a crisis manufactured by the red tops.
Thing is, the media isn't meant to have 'real analysis' of serious issues, that's not what it's for. This doesn't so much depress me, as anger me, spur me on to react, though I have to admit I don't so much take to the barricades as take up my pen, sharpen it and let fly! It's not much, but about all I can do. I turned away from the hustle years ago, took off my armour and sheathed my sword. This may, in retrospect, have been the wrong attitude.
The media exists to perpetuate the media and to 'sell' readers/viewers to advertizers. The ammount of real journalism in the media is extraordinarily low. I reckon about 5% on most serious subjects. I suppose this is depressing in a way, but only if one expects something more from a corrupt and highly controlled and filtered system; only if one still believes we live in form of real democracy anymore.
A small exercise.
If you wanted to be a serious journalist today who would you sign up with?