So I thought my readers and more particularly those who have just come to this blog would like to learn a little about who I am and where these views all came from, I decided after seeing it on a few other blogs that I would add an "About Olive" section.

I have also decided to add a "blogography", a basic run down on what has happened since this blog began, and what important steps the blog has taken over time!

anyway, here is the post from the About Olive section :) hope you enjoy!


About Olive
So you want to know about me? About what makes me tick and who I am?
Where I came from? How old I am? ETC ETC ETC??? Well I'll tell you a bit- but not too much, mostly what is relevant.

I was born in 1986 in a very remote town called Kalgoorlie, home to the worlds largest open-cut gold mine (nearest major city est 740km away). Jump ahead to 2002, when I was in year 11 at Sevenoaks Senior College, and that is where the story that relates to this blog really begins.

I was concerned about the potential outbreak of wide-spread international hostilities and terrorism if the Iraq War was to proceed... I wanted it stopped, or at least for Australia to condemn the idea, but unfortunately our government did not have the foresight shared by most of the public.

This was where I really lost my nationalist views. Back then I was a lot less open than I am these days, especially when it comes to other cultures and countries... I didn't care too much back then, unless it directly effected me.

But this war would not really effect me. Yet still I cared.

I felt that Iraq was a sign of something much bigger, I thought it was a last-ditch desperate grab for power by a failing American 'superpower'.

I had been studying Germany and the USA from 1898-1949 in history that year and had come to understand the idea of BOOM/BUST economies and how war is economically advantageous for a superpower, as long as the victim does not put up too much of a fight...

I also knew of the coming oil problem and how this was bound to effect the American economy. It made sense to me that the USA needed the reconstruction contracts and needed to do something with its excessive amounts of WMD, so the big companies who produce the WMD can start to make money again.

Plus I am sure these things have expiry dates and cost a lot to 'store'- long story short I thought the Iraq war was about enterprise and securing American global supremacy, and I still believe this to be the case.

That angered me.

It opened my eyes to a whole new world I had never quite understood nor cared much for previously, commonly known as the world of politics.

I don't like the word politics for it infers politicians, not everyday people taking charge of their own lives and banding together to help each other like the world I hope to promote through out this blog, similar to the one currently evolving on solid ground in South America, and in the not-so-solid grounds of the Blogosphere.

Non the less my eyes began seeing the world in a new light, in an angry, determined light.

The kind of light that you shines through in some posts on this blog, the anger pushing me to promote change, to encourage people to stand up on their own two feet and take control of their lives.

Dissapointment in some of my fellow humans and their complacency had now become ever-present in my life. Opening your eyes like this is a shock and it threw me out on a limb.

I felt isolated from the world and unable to make a difference.

I was too young to be allowed to vote, I had never had the choice of who should represent me- not that any of the choices would have been representative of my views anyway, but I still felt hopeless.

What's more it seemed anyone over the age of 25-30 gave me the same answers, "You're too young to worry about these things", or "You're just too young to understand"- if they disagreed with me.

I didn't know where to turn and so began my dissent.

At first I was an activist. I was right into the scene, I even got into the refugee rights and environmental activism. I became a rebel, a dissenter, a lefty.

I lost sight of my own life somewhat, I lost the connections with many people around me and sacrificed a lot of my own personality- though not intentionally.

I became fascinated by ideologies and doctrines, by manifesto's and ISM's. Then I realised what they all said, what they all shared- what they all meant.

Conformism. There it is again. A f**king ism.

Each doctrine wants you to believe it is correct, it is the only way or the best way- so you should support it. They were all the same yet all so different and I couldn't find one that stood out.

They all had their good reasonings and their own set of political rules and terminologies, and I wanted to understand them all.

Then I realised that you can't. Because to understand the theory of communism you have to reject capitalism. To understand Anarchy you have to reject communism. To understand theocracy you have to accept religion.

To accept religion you must conform. To conform is to give up ones self.

And so the circle goes.

If you are not this, then you are that.

If you are this or that, then you are just like the rest of those (apparently) "lefties, commies, anarchists, capitalists, trotskyites, leninists, stalinists, maoists, theocrats, fundamentalists, insurgents, rebels, tree-huggers-" and the list goes on.

Well I am not any of those, and I am not the same as anyone else, and you shouldn't have to be either.

I decided I needed to believe in myself and my friends. I needed to believe in humans and to feel that emotional connection again. That's what life is about.

Now I am a renegade. Or thats what I like to call it, thanks to Zack De La Rocha
in his words:

"Renegades are the people, with their own philosophies- changing the course of history. Everyday people like you and me."

Thats what I am.

I am just another every day person. I want to be just like you, and for you to be just like me. Yet I want us both to have our own philosophy, and for us both to change history- in our own ways.

Now I can see things I never saw before, and feel emotions overwhelmingly strong.

The hope I feel when something goes the right way, something never possible before is exhillerating. Something new in history a step in the right direction.

It doesn't have to be a big change or even something the average person would notice, like when I feel I have made a difference. These days I can make a difference, I have made a difference and I know I will continue to make a difference until the day that I die.

Changes have occured as a result of my determination, like the life of my dear little friend Sunshine after I sent her medication for her Asthma, because the kind she requires is no longer available in the middle east.

It's those little changes that make me know the world can be a better place. It's those changes and my determination which ensure the world will be a better place, for as long as I am alive.

I am only young, 19 years old *(born 1986 if your reading this in the future)*, but I am told I have wisdom for one so young. Maybe it's just excessive knowledge from obsessive reading, either way it helps me grow, helps me make a difference- where ever it comes from.

Ok, so sometimes it goes to my head...But I'm only human.

Without gratification the hurdles thrown at you by life become more like mountains, and as with physical reality, struggling up hill always lasts longer than the enjoyable run/roll/ride or slide down.

What I hope for is the moment when we all stand on top together, when everyone has helped each other get up to the top and we have all made it, and can look back together and reflect on how far we have come.

This is my dream... Not for the fit men & women to run ahead in life and leave their children and grandparents in their wake.

When we all stop for that little picnic, where we can all share our food and thoughts. Yeah, thats what I look forward to.

Where I can share my thoughts and feelings with someone other than my girlfriend Gee-Oh and not be considered a national security threat.

So what I don't like your government, so what I hate your newspaper, so what I support the right of an Iraqi father or mother or brother or son to fire at an Australian or Coalition troop when they abduct a family member.

Go ahead. Arrest me.

At least you understand how I feel now, and where this blog comes from