Snow Day
Take heed of this and get plenty of rest - Bob Dylan
December is a terrible month for me to get anything done. Not because I'm shifting to holiday mode, but because my family is, while my deadlines shorten and my workload increases. And I'm not even talking about this place, or the book I'm writing adapted from it. (There is a lot I want to get to here, but I keep hitting the snooze button at 2 AM.) And because I'd rather not post at all than make a half-assed attempt at it, I think I'd better change the sign in the window for the next two weeks.
I hope you have a good holiday, and I'll see you, refreshed, in the New Year.
posted by Jeff Wells at 12/19/2006 06:29:00 AM
146 Comments:
Perhaps a bit of Mexican history will be of interest to RI folk, by way of Urban Survival.
http://www.tsunamipolitico.com/future11.htm
The question is, will the American dollar pancake at free-fall speed? Controlled demolition? Melting alloys evidence of insider complicity?
Keep It Up Jeff We Need You!
Happy Holidays to you and your aslo Jeff, looking forward to reading you in the new year....xsicx
Does anyone know if Lynne Cheney has ancient elitist bloodlines?
Bubbly Beaver Day Jeff, or whatever you Godless Canukdian socialists celebrate! ;)
sounder, John Robb aka cyber-spook has an interesting post on how the information space-state of Mexico can change overnight with a few thousand pesos worth of investment: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2006/12/breaking_mexico.html
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I think its time we talk about the elephant in the room. I believe it has become painfully obvious that the real Jeff Wells has been replaced with a patsie dis-info agent. Am I the only one who noticed the lack of enthusiasm and writing prowess in many posts of late? All coincidentally after alleged web blog problems forced the convenient "move", allowing a quick switch to a mirror site. suppossed illnesses of the old jeff "malaise". Its all too clear that the real jeff has been poisoned by the elite military industrial NWO facists. Ever notice the "flue-like symptoms" occur when Jeffs silence is needed on a bad news day? A little Pulonium in that cannuks latte and he is out of the picture. Allowing the replacement Jeff to divert attention to bigfoot, or the like, while the story of the day is swept under the rug. I wonder what the PTB will get away with over the next 2 weeks? while Jeff is out of the picture. Merry Christmas Jeff,if thats you real name.
B.F. has just come up with my favorite paranoid conspiracy theory of the year: Jeff Is Not Jeff.
In any case, have a good solstice, Jeff and Not-Jeff and Starroute and Iridescent Cuttlefish and all the rest of you. Recharge those batteries. We're going to need the energy in the year to come.
As the holidays squeeze by may we keep the memories of Paul Denyer, Gary Krist, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the assassination of "the King Fish", Huey Long, and the life and times of Marybeth Tinnings close to our pillows. Have a long and drawn out holiday season. Bah Humbug!
Happy Holidays to all here with a special wish & prayer sent out to Jeff Wells and his family!
I do not log on the comment section much but enjoy the essays and the comments greatly.
Peace to all-
AJ
ps. Did Shrub really leave?
Here it comes!!!!!!!!!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16194268/
I read Anxious Gravity last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. That led me to lurk here and enjoy the uniquely sophisticated banter: Jeff sets the tone but others (you know who you are) pick up and amplify his themes so well that it’s truly an education.
Jeff’s first book was both funny and insightful … I’m delighted to hear he has a new one underway and look forward to reading it.
If JW has been replaced then who's doing the Photoshop graphics?
Looks like Jeff's work to me
Happy Holidays all
It's Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays, you Sissy Pants People.
The nformation posted in the last thread about Islam was so enticing I'm seriously considering becoming a convert if they will have me. It is obviously a far superior religion. Christianity and Judaism can't hold a candle to it. I predict that one day, perhaps in 40 years or so, it will be the most predominant religion in the United States, let alone the world.
May allah's blessings be upon all your houses in these precarious times.
Jeff’s first book was both funny and insightful …
Anonymous One,Insightful I can understand, but I find funny hard to believe. Jeff hasn't shown a shred of humor on this blog. I'm not saying he can't be funny, but you wouldn't know it from what's witnessed here.
What am I, a clown, here to amuse you?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qfn3Wk_LnI4
Jeff, Funny??
Here's the Amazon.com book review of Anxious Gravity:
"The life of a naïve, born-again teen can sometimes seem God-awful, as Gideon discovers at Overcomer Bible Institute. Having given himself over to religion, Gideon quickly finds his newfound faith challenged by sexually aggressive women, a disturbed student armed with a power drill, and Siamese-twin evangelists. A satiric look at the religious and secular worlds, Anxious Gravity succeeds at the daunting task of being both thoughtful and wildly entertaining. "Jeff Wells is the most consistently funny humorist in Canada today." -Michael Bate, Editor-in-Chief, Frank"
Mack White's Proxy said...
you Sissy Pants People
Mack, every time you do a sissy pants post on your blog the sissy pants taunt turns into a jingle and sticks in my head for hours.
God bless to you and yours.Everyone should be able to read Cormac McCarthy The Road this season.
Requests for 07, more LATIN.
what is that pictured at the top of "snow day"? i can't figure it out!
A Meat Grinder?
A Flux Capacitor?
it reminds me of a scene from spielberg's AI.
It's a snowflake.
Here's another snowflake under increasing magnification.
A great representation of Fractile Theory.
The thread got too long and the subject went way astray so here's my synopsis of the issue. First, a link... www.thebushconnection.com
If you don't find this curious,then perhaps you will find it beyond strange weirdness?
Merry Christmas to all and to all...
that's fractal not fractile but good point otherwise.
Here's a fun bit-o-news, while were on the topic of the high-wierdness of ice:
Self-assembling Nano-ice Discovered -- Structure Resembles DNA
Working at the frontier between chemistry and physics, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Xiao Cheng Zeng usually finds his reward in discovering the unexpected through computer modeling.
Zeng and his colleagues regularly find new and often unanticipated behaviors of matter in extreme environments, and those discoveries have been published several times in major international scientific journals. Their findings, though, have been so far ahead of existing technology that their immediate practical impact was essentially nil -- until now.
Zeng and two members of his UNL team recently found double helixes of ice molecules that resemble the structure of DNA and self-assemble under high pressure inside carbon nanotubes. This discovery could have major implications for scientists in other fields who study the protein structures that cause diseases such as Alzheimer's and bovine spongiform ecephalitis (mad cow disease). It could also help guide those searching for ways to target or direct self-assembly in nanomaterials and predict the kind of ice future astronauts will find on Mars and moons in the solar system.
__________
Enjoy the break, Jeff, and here's wishing everyone a Happy Crypto-Solstice Celebration.
Peace.
Ok, I don't know how I managed to mess that link up, so lets try again:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061213123744.htm
Why you sentimental friendly folk! My heart, spleen, and other unsightly major organs go out to all y'all. In the spirit of the last rambunctious thread, I send ye all best wishes for a Merry Zappadan!
Jeff,
Special thanks to you, you lively host, you. So get well, and be well. (I still have to recommend the Coptic sacrament--Jah loves you and you are in Canada, fer chrissakes...)
Heartfelt thanks and such like,
IC
This discovery could have major implications for scientists in other fields who study the protein structures that cause diseases such as Alzheimer's and bovine spongiform ecephalitis (mad cow disease).
I have news for you, Zeng and colleagues. Disease is big business. We are not inclined to cure disease, so much as to mask the symptoms. In that way, we maintain our predictable revenue and profit streams. So long as your technology enables us to do that, we are interested, but if its potential is to offer cures, then I'm afraid we will have to shut you down.
I must say, those micron shots of snowflakes were the most astounding things I've ever seen. Really. The picture at the top of the post makes me think that all our arts are merely an unconscious attempt at recreating the molecular unseen, gropes towards the fractal nature of reality. The second set made me think of stone masonry, and, natch, Masonry and the concept of the Universal Designer (or whatever they call it). They look like decorations on medieval cathedrals!
And no two are ever the same, yes? Talk about fecundity...
Coupled with spiral galaxies, nicely illustrating the Golden Galactic Mean:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061207.html
or this giant eye watching us from Saturn:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061113.html
it helps me to sleep at night.
Contra mundum to one and all!
Oh no! First our old pal Jerky virtually packs it in and now this! What's a poor boy a stone's throw from the middle of nowhere in SE B.C. to do till you get back? Cut firewood I guess.
P.S. Is there ANYTHING Bob Dylan doesn't understand?
Burkie
Old Floyd Smoots said:
Not that anybody at R.I. gives a fat damn, but my 10 yr. old companion cat, Homer De Shredder has been diagnosed with cancer of the spleen. He will probably join the others who've journeyed "beyond the pale" circa 12-23-2006a.D. beacause the sweet lady veterinarian gave him 2-6 days to live on his own. I will be attending his "execution" and sitting Shiva for him that evening, most likely. Pretty funny stuff from a "reformed" Baptist, huh??? The rest of you, have a Wonderful Winter Solstice.
"The Watch"
"Newt Gingrich and the National Mental State"
"Major Real Estate Search Underway"
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=57&
Spain is well ........Spain after all.Any more wierd customs out there?
Tio is no yulelog
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) -- The Virgin Mary. The three kings. A few wayward sheep. These are the figures one expects to find in a traditional Christmas nativity scene. Not a smartly dressed peasant squatting behind a rock with his rear-end exposed.
Yet statuettes of "El Caganer," or the great defecator in the Catalan language, can be found in nativity scenes, and increasingly on the mantelpieces of collectors, throughout Spain's northeastern Catalonia region, where for centuries symbols of defecation have played an important role in Christmas festivities.
During the holiday season, pastry shops around Catalonia sell sweets shaped like feces, and on Christmas Eve Catalan children beat a hollow log, called the tio, packed with holiday gifts, singing a song that urges it to defecate presents out the other end.
These traditions, in the case of the caganer dating back as far as the 17th century, come from an agricultural society where defecation was associated with fertility and health.
While the traditional caganer is a red-capped peasant, more modern renditions have gained popularity in recent years.
With poop candy smeared over our faces we sang with abandon.
TIO !!!
Please poop a RED RIDER BB rifle for me,I have been so good this year.
Paul is not Paul either.
number nine
RI's unofficial page on myspace (courtesy "et in Arcadia ego").
But unless we do something with the information we've processed, and make something of our knowledge, then their defeats revert to their strengths.
Thank you for advertising a Rupert Murdoch/News Corporation product.
This and other instances (which I won´t get into the details of here) indicate to me you really know how to put your money where your mouth is.
I´m just being satirical...of course.
Jeff..Have a frosty Labatts and
put it on my tab. Buono Natale!
"Thank you for advertising a Rupert Murdoch/News Corporation product."
- Boring! It's already been said, discussed, and dismissed Anony. You'll have to find another way of getting under the skin.
"This and other instances (which I won´t get into the details of here) indicate to me you really know how to put your money where your mouth is."
- Good Christ! Why not get into the details here? What are you saving them for? The big 'unveiling'? We can hardly wait...
YULE/WINTER SOLSTICE
December 22nd-23rd
Although the Solstice begins on the 21st-22nd of December, the 23rd is a very special Personal Day for Father. The Sun enters the sign of the Goat which represents Satan. The Night of December 22nd- the eve of December 23rd is the Highest Satanic Holy Night of the year. (This was dictated from him personally). It is the day after the longest night of the year. Again we look foreward to beginnings, as the days will begin to get longer as the year goes on. This is a time for intense celebration and devotion to Lord Satan. Indulgence, decorating the home, family celebrations and get togethers. The Night of Dec. 22nd should be spent in dedication to Satan. This is an excellent time to focus on planning for the year. If one wishes to make personal resolutions this is a good time to do so.
At the high point of a ritual or offertory for a Black Mass, personal resolutions can be written on paper and burned. Father is always there to help us in having the strength to carry through with our intentons. After the rite, intense celebrating should take place.
The Yule holidays for Satanists are times of indulgence and taking pleasure in the physical and material aspects of life. Actually, xmas trees and wreaths are Pagan in origin, so there is no reason not to celebrate this holiday with our families. Gift giving, baking, decorating. This is what the TRUE Yule season is about, not the filthy nazarene.
Baal-Bereth is the Father of the Yule season and the Yule (xmas) Tree. "The Christmas tree, now so common among us, was equally common in Pagan Rome and Pagan Egypt. In Egypt that tree was the palm-tree; in Rome it was the fir; the palm-tree denoting the Pagan Messiah, as Baal-Tamar, the fir referring to him as Baal-Berith."¹
"The Christmas-tree, as has been stated, was generally at Rome a different tree, even the fir; but the very same idea as was implied in the palm-tree was implied in the Christmas-fir; for that covertly symbolised the new-born God as Baal-Berith, "Lord of the Covenant," and thus shadowed forth the perpetuity and everlasting nature of his power, not that after having fallen before his enemies, he had risen triumphant over them all." ²
In Egypt they worshipped Nimrod as a palm tree, referring to him as the Messiah "Baal-Tamar." Among the most ancient of Baals, he was known as Baal-Bereth, “Lord of the fir-tree.” He evolved into Baal-Berith, “Lord of the Covenant.” In Ancient Rome, where they also worshiped the fir tree, they called him "Baal-Berith."
The 25th of December, was observed in Rome as the day when the victorious God reappeared on earth, and was held at the Natalis invicti solis, "The birth-day of the unconquered Sun." Now the Yule Log represents the dead stock of Nimrod, known as the Sun-God, but cut down by his enemies; the xmas-tree represents Nimrod- the slain God reborn. The ancient practice of kissing under the mistletoe bough, most common to the Druids, was derived from Babylon, and was a representation of the Messiah, "The man the branch." The mistletoe was regarded as a divine branch --a branch that came from heaven, and grew upon a tree that sprung out of the earth. Nimrod, the God of nature, was symbolized by a great tree. But having been cut down and killed in his prime, he was now symbolized as a branchless tree stump, called the Yule Log. Then the great serpent came and wrapped itself around Nimrod (the stump). Miraculously, a new tree appeared at the side of the stump, which symbolized Nimrod’s resurrection and victory over death. Here is an illustration of an ancient Ephesian coin:
Baal-Berith was known also as "Lord of the Covenant" and as "The God Berith." He was a popular God and was worshipped in Canaan, Philistia, and Shechem. He was the protector of the covenant between between Shechem and some neighbouring Canaanitish towns, which were originally independent, but were at length brought under subjugation by the Hebrews.
" Any Israelites who might be dwelling in Shechem would be simply or protected strangers, and not parties to a covenant. The Temple of Baal-Berith had a treasury from which the citizens made a contribution to Abimelech. It was there that Gaal first came forward as a leader of the rebellion, and within its precinct the inhabitants of the tower of Shechem (the 'acropolis,') found a temporary refuge from Abimelech at the close of the revolt."³
"Baal-Berith was also known as "God of the Community."
Below are photographs of the ancient remiains of Baal-Berith's Temple:
The remains of Temple of Baal-Berith are a round-ended, land-filled platform on which a massive temple once stood. Dated to the 13th/12th century BCE, it measured 86 feet long and 78 feet wide and its walls were around 19 feet thick. "Archaeologists believe that it was a two-story building.
It had one entrance to the east, in the middle of which was a column to support a roof, and on each side of the entrance was a massive tower. The eastern tower included a stairway that might have led to the second floor. Inside the main hall were two rows of columns. On the semi-circular platform in front of the temple, part of a sacred pillar or standing stone was found (seen on the right side of the above photo), Archaeologists believe it marked the temple entrance."
¹ "The Two Babylons" by Alexander Hislop 1858
² Encyclopedia Biblica: A Critical Dictionary of the Literary Political and Religious History the Archeology Geography and Natural History, © 1899 of the Bible
History is so interesting, yes?
Mithraism comes from Persia.
* The birthday of Mithra was celebrated on the 25th. of December.
* He (Mithra) condemned Evil.
* Practice Baptism.
* Sacred bread and wine.
* Was identified with a Hero/Savior.
* Bull was slain and the blood wash away sins.
Osiris another pagan god.
Cults practice:
* Ring of Bell.
* Sprinkling of holy water.
* Burning of candles.
* Baptisms.
* Pine tree, for his birthday.
............................
Saturnalia is the feast at which the Romans commemorated the dedication of the temple of the god Saturn, which took place on 17 December. Over the years, it expanded to a whole week, up to 23 December.
There is a theory that Christians in the fourth century assigned December 25th (the Winter Solstice on the Julian calendar) as Christ's birthday (and thus Christmas) because pagans already observed this day as a holiday.
It is also possible to see it as early Christians replacing the Pagan celebration in an act of triumphalism. However, others claim that early Christians independently came up with the date of December 25th based on a Jewish tradition of the "integral age" of the Jewish prophets (the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception), and a miscalculation of the date of Jesus' death. It is even sometimes claimed that Aurelian moved the feast of Sol Invictus to December 25th to co-opt the Christian celebration.
The Romans also practiced many traditions similar to Christmas; specifically the "Christmas tree", though the Christmas tree itself is a later development in the celebration of Christmas (having its origins in Germany, possibly during the Reformation). The Romans often cut down evergreens and decorated them to pay homage to Saturn, the god of farming. This was to honor the fact that the evergreens remained alive during the harshness(!??!) of winter in the Mediterranean. It was also traditional for Romans to exchange gifts during this holiday. These gifts were customarily made of silver, although nearly anything could be given as a gift for the occasion. Several epigrams by the poet Martial survive, seemingly crafted as riddling gift-tags for gifts of food. The medieval celebration of the Feast of Fools was another continuation of Saturnalia into the Christian era.
Nimrod was a mighty hunter= NEPHALIM
Now we will look at how the Church is positioned to confront these Nephilim today.
The Book of Revelation tells how the governments, the religious organizations, and the economic institutions will join together in a worldwide system, a beast. But the greatest threat is what rises out of the beast; the whore of Babylon. The whore of Babylon is the harlot church set up to control the people, make them drunk, and keep them faithful to the beast system. Some say this whore is the Roman Catholic Church, but that is only a part of it. The other part is apostate Protestantism, because it knows the truth yet still turns against Jesus Christ.
This false religious system makes people drunk by replacing the Creator with the creature. In preaching a gospel that sets affections on men, this system produces people that are more faithful to their pastors than to Jesus Christ. What is the sign of this drunkeness? The people hate the truth; they hate Jesus. It is amazing how many people call themselves Christians and yet they despise Truth.
Revelation 13:2 describes the beast as being like a leopard, a bear, and a lion. Daniel Chapter 7 lists the same attributes in Daniel’s vision. The leopard represents the Grecian empire, the bear would be communism, and the lion refers to the British empire. What we have is Greek intellectual humanism, a socialist/communist affiliation, with an English-speaking, British cultural bias.
Yet, there is one common denominator in all of these empires. Every empire from Babylon forward has embraced goddess worship. This is very important! The devil’s empire is built on a mother and son deity, not a Father and Son. It is matriarchal in its nature. It started with Nimrod and Semiramis in Babylon, and has come forward through time from there. Mankind is now being taken over by this matriarchal system. This has nothing to do with women, I am dealing with spirits. This spirit will pervert your heart and automatically turn you away from God and towards the flesh. It seeks to accommodate you and make you comfortable, not prepare you to be a warrior. It will make you docile and timid.
The endtime conflict is a struggle between Jesus and Eve. If you do not understand this then you will never understand the book of Revelation, including who the whore of Babylon is, who the beast is, etc. What we see in the beast and the whore are the fallen nature of Adam and Eve metamorphisized. Adam, as the authority, is represented by the governments of this world (the beast). Eve, the rebellious bride, is the false religious system (the whore). The Bible says that it has been put into the beast’s heart to destroy the whore. This is because Satan does not rule with his bride - he rules solo. In fallen Adam, Eve has created a sodomite that loves only one person: SELF. Likewise, the Antichrist will be enthroned as self-contained dictator.
Out in the cold I stand
Looking on in the world sitting tight
With its people in their nice little worlds
And the friends who don't even know me
It really makes no difference to their world
Where I am
If I'm there it keeps going
If I'm not it goes on
Why walk around wondering, wondering
My mind a mass of mixed up machinery
Clashing with conflicts and unanswered questions
I don't ask the world if it is real
It sits up there on its foundations
Secure, concrete, hard, and stone and real
But maybe I'm not real
Or if I am maybe I shouldn't be
The answer smile God loves you
But I can't smile I'm numbed by cold
Inside and out
Even the heat in the square brick buildings will only warm my body
Nothing else
I'm alone in a world full of people
Apart, shut up, inside myself
Cold, unfeeling
In a cold unfeeling world
The Winter Solstice & Christmas
The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, when the sun reaches its lowest point on the horizon. ("Solstice" literally means "sun stop.") In ancient times, pagans celebrated this day as a "rebirth" of the sun or a sun god, and the beginning of a new year.
In some cultures, the Winter Solstice was also a time to celebrate the birth or rebirth of a savior man-god (who was often connected with the sun). He was usually believed to be the offspring of a god father and a goddess or human mother, who was often a virgin.
Tammuz of Babylon, Attis of Phrygia, Horus of Egypt, Mithra of Persia, Krishna of India, Heracles of Greece and, last of all, Jesus of Nazareth are just some of the ancient man-gods whose births were celebrated on the Winter Solstice.
In 46 B.C.E., Julius Caesar adopted the Julian calendar. The Winter Solstice and the beginning of the new year fell on December 25th. Caesar declared this date the "Birthday of the Unconquered Sun." (Later, Christians called it the "Birthday of the Unconquered Son.")
The ancient Roman festival of the Saturnalia (honoring Saturn, the god of agriculture) lasted from December 17th to December 24th. The event concluded with a great feast, the Brumalia, held on December 25th.
Pagan celebrations of the Winter Solstice included social gatherings, lights, singing, gifts, feasts, yule logs, mistletoe, holly, and decorated trees. These festivities were later adopted by many Christians.
The Christian Bible acknowledges that decorating trees is a pagan idea. Jeremiah 10.2-4 states: "Learn not the way of the heathen... For the customs of the people are in vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest... They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." It seems it is not proper for a Christian to have a Christmas tree!
The 1911 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia admits: "Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church... the first evidence of the feast is from Egypt."
OSIRIS / HORUS / ISIS
About 3000 B.C.E., Egyptians began worshipping the god Osiris, who was associated with the sun. He was portrayed as a trinity: a heavenly god, an earthly god, and a falcon. (Later, Christians depicted their trinity as God, Jesus, and a Holy Spirit dove).
The king of Egypt claimed to be the earthly god. He acted as a link between humanity and the heavenly god. It was believed the earthly god king became the heavenly god after death.
Later, the heavenly god, Osiris, was said to have fathered (through Isis, a virgin) an earthly god son, Horus, who was actually a rebirth of Osiris.
According to legend, this birth of Osiris/Horus was announced by Three Wise Men, symbolized by three stars in Orion's Belt pointing to Osiris' star in the east. Angelic voices hailed his arrival. His birth was often depicted in a manger, with Isis as the Madonna standing over him, and was said to have occurred on the Winter Solstice.
Belief in Osiris, Horus, and Isis became popular in the Roman Empire, until believers began to be persecuted under Christianity.
MITHRA
About 2000 B.C.E., Persians began worshipping the man-god Mithra, who was supposedly born from a god father and a human virgin mother.
Mithra's birth was said to have occurred in a cave or stable, and was witnessed by shepherds who brought him gifts. Later, his followers celebrated this event with a ceremony at midnight on the eve of the Winter Solstice.
Mithra was viewed as a Redeemer. He was believed to have performed miracles, such as raising the dead, healing the sick, making the blind see and the lame walk, and casting out devils.
According to legend, Mithra celebrated a Last Supper with his twelve disciples before he ascended to heaven. In memory of this, his worship-pers partook of a sacramental meal of bread marked with a cross.
In subsequent years, a stone image symbolizing Mithra was buried in a tomb. It was then withdrawn and he was said to live again. Followers of Mithra believed a person had to be baptized in order to ascend into the heavens after death. Mithra is supposed to return at the end of time to judge the human race.
In 67 B.C.E., Mithraism was introduced into the Roman Republic. Later, Mithraism stood as a powerful rival to the newly emerging Christianity. In fact, by 307 C.E., Mithra was officially designated the "Protector of the Roman Empire." However, by 358 C.E., followers of Mithra began to be persecuted under Christianity.
In addition to being a man-god savior, Mithra was connected to the sun god. Later, Christians began referring to their own man-god savior, Jesus, as the "Light of the World" and the "Sun of Righteousness." Christians moved their Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday (sun-day).
The Seventh-Day Adventists, however, are an example of one modern Christian group which has kept its Sabbath on Saturday.
KRISHNA
The Hindu man-god Krishna was believed to have been born c. 1200 B.C.E. He was said to be an incarnation of the god Vishnu, born of a human mother, Devaki. Krishna's birth was celebrated on the Winter Solstice.
According to legend, Krishna's birth was announced by a star and angelic voices. Shepherds and wise men hailed him as the Redeemer and gave him gifts. King Kansa tried to kill Krishna by ordering the death of all male infants born on the same night as Krishna. A heavenly voice warned his earthly foster father (a carpenter) to flee with his family.
Krishna was said to have taught moral lessons, forgiven sins, performed miracles, and defeated demons. It was believed that the Lord and Savior Krishna atoned for the world's sins by pouring out his blood while lying on a cross-shaped temple rock.
However, some Indian art depicts Krishna hanging from a cross and being pierced by an arrow. It was also believed Krishna rose from death and ascended to heaven.
JESUS, CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTMAS
There are many parallels between these and other pre-Christian savior man-gods and Jesus. Indeed, so much of Jesus' legend has been plagiarized that a few scholars doubt whether he ever actually existed! Others claim that if he existed, his life is obscured in myth and we know virtually nothing about him.
Most of the Roman persecution of Christianity occurred from 250 to 313 C.E. In 380, the Roman emperor Theodosius ordered all pagan temples to be destroyed and forced pagans to accept Christianity.
The Roman celebration of the sun god's rebirth was still held on December 25th. However, due to imperfections in the Julian calendar, the actual Winter Solstice had drifted to December 21st.
Pagan sun god celebrations proved too popular for early Christians to overcome. Therefore, they decided to superimpose their story of Jesus (which contained many pagan elements anyway) onto the sun god festi-vals of the Winter Solstice (Christmas) and the Spring Equinox (Easter).
In 354, Bishop Liberius of Rome decreed that the birth of Jesus should be celebrated on the same day as the birth of the sun gods - December 25th. Before this, the Christian church had no official observance of the birth of Jesus.
From 1652 to 1659, Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans in the English Parliament outlawed Christmas because it was not sanctioned in the Bible. Churches were ordered to be closed and shops were ordered to be open on this day. Clergymen were imprisoned for preaching on Christmas, and some parish officers were fined for decorating the church.
From 1659 to 1680, Puritans in the colony of Massachusetts prohibited the observance of Christmas, imposing a five shilling fine on anyone caught celebrating this pagan festival.
It wasn't until 1856 that Georgia became the first state to make Christmas a legal holiday. In 1894, Christmas was included in the first group of federal holidays. Previously, Congress had met, and mail was delivered, on Christmas Day.
The Worldwide Church of God, the Seventh-Day Adventists, and the Jehovah's Witnesses, all Christian religions, do not celebrate Christmas.
I will never forget when I was young child and my cousin dave told me he did not believe in such a thing as god.
He had lost his mother and had shot himself in the foot to get out of the hell of vietnam .
After seeing his fellow soldiers die he realized he was not going to bgo home in a body bag, stuffed with golden triangle heroin which was all over the place.He was on methadone too.
Had to get orange juice at the hospital.
I was dumfounded, being raised a catholic and having just trecieved my first communion.
What could i say to convince him.
I did not no then or now even.
With wisdom comes also sorrow.
I wish i could believe in it all but it is not the truth.
Like Lennon said in his playboy interview....
If you can swim swim...
Jesus told the apostles to get out of the boat and walk on water.
The boat = the church in my view.
We must be strong and yet we are weak.
Every man dies, not every man really lives. from Braveheart 1995
live = evil
why is that
(Ecclesiastes 1:12-18 NIV) I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. {13} I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! {14} I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. {15} What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted. {16} I thought to myself, "Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge." {17} Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. {18} For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.
Posted this on the RI board tonight, and figured I may as well toss it up here, too.
More weird phone calls
Had two in the past few days, one just now, that got my attention.
Last week my wife and I were chatting casually about UFOs. (It's not like we do this often. She enjoys science fiction, and that's all they represent to her.) Her cell rang and she answered. After a few seconds she hung up and joked "It was the mothership," referring to frequent calls we used to get of just electronic beeps. Then she stopped herself and said, "Hmm. We were just talking about - and why on my cell?" (We'd only had the beeps before on our home phone.) I joked, or half-joked, that I guess the message was for her.
Tonight there was something new. It was an electronic voice, but indecipherable, full of stutters and gaps. I thought maybe it could be a screwed-up autodialer, but its rhythm wasn't right. It would speak unbroken for a long time, then pause as if listening, then speak again, without repeating its pattern. But it didn't sound like a distorted live voice; it was machine-like. I kept it on for several minutes, until it fell silent and eventually disconnected. Hoping for the innocent explanation, but it left me spooked.
During the first week of April, I was staying up at my sister's house for the night. We were sitting around when a neighbor came over and said that something had happened down at my dad's ranch. Me and my nephew (who were the only ones at home at the time) hopped into my pickup and raced down there. When we got there we had found out that my borhter had been stabbed and they were taking him to the hospital and that he might not make it. Stunned we drove back to my sister's and just when we got in the house the phone rang. I picked it up and a voice that sounded familiar to me asked who this was and what had happened down at Day Rider's. I told him who it was and that my brother had been stabbed and might not make it. The voice on the other end just started laughing and said to me, "Joe I didn't make it," and the phone went dead. Shocked I put the phone back in the receiver and immediately it rang again. It was my Aunt. She said my brother had passed away at the precise time he called me.
Plus when my brother died at around 7 pm.I was out walking my dogs.I heard a vioce on my 2 meter radio saying hello and my name.Very unusaul, I thought someone was playing a trick on me.
I told the voice to call me on the phone in an hour since it was broken and intermittent.
One hour later I was in the shower and the phone rang it was my sister saying our brother had died around 7pm.
Shook me up but when the spirit is free from the body these things can occur.
That was the last i ever heard anyone else besides my ex talk to me on that frequency.
We are spirits with earthly bodies.
or the n s a
Latest trends in Big Brother outstrip Orwell's worst nightmare
The Panopticon: A Mass Surveillance Prison For Humanity
The Panopticon is defined as a prison so constructed that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times, without being seen. This is an accurate description of the accelerating movement by western governments to erect giant, powerful, all-pervading mass surveillance, tracking and control grids that will keep all populations firmly under the baleful and watchful gaze of Big Brother.
We are still debating the NSA listening to foreign calls from the US when the NSA admitted twenty years ago that they were listening to domestic US calls under the Echelon program. This is de-classified and public but the media acts like they don't know about it.
For the aliens, they can sit in their mother ships or even travel around in UFOs and go from person to person on their list to see what they are up to. From the air, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of miles up into our atmosphere they can target exactly where someone in particular is. Even if that person is sitting on a couch in their home the aliens can zero in on their exact location.
One of the most profound changes occasioned by networks is the loss of privacy. We are even losing the possibility of getting lost. Because we are always observable, we can always be located. How will it change us to know that the light is always on?
A panopticon is a prison invented by Jeremy Benthem in the 19th century. It consisted of cells with glass doors arranged in a ring. Prisoners can see neither one another nor the guard but the guard can see them -- all of the time.
People who know they can be observed behave differently. We censor ourselves. We give lip service to consensus reality but live private lives in hiding.
The networked world is a panopticon, but no Orwellian Big Brother is building it. We're building it ourselves.
We're like the inhabitants of New York described in the film, "My Dinner With Andre:" "It's a new model for the concentration camp, the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they've built--they've built their own prison--and so they're both guards and prisoners. They no longer have the capacity to leave the prison they've made or even to see it as a prison."
Individual and organizational privacy -- invading it and protecting it -- is big business and will get bigger. "Privacy brokers" who know how to encrypt, decipher, capture, or secure communications and proprietary information are a necessity in the networked world.
The privacy taken for granted in the past, when all it took was a walk outside to have a conversation behind a tree, is gone forever.
We will invent intermediate structures to protect ourselves from the prying eyes of the Net. We will need them to make sense of the vast sea of data that would otherwise remain inchoate, but they will also enable us to hide. We will increasingly interact with one another and with the Network through intelligent agents.
Applets, distributed objects, and software components communicate transparently among themselves, antecedents of the agents and avatars that will move through the arteries of the network. Some will act like digger shovels mining mountains of data for nuggets of gold. Some will act like virtual detectives. In their efforts to communicate with one another, do our bidding, and protect themselves at the same time, agents may collude or create cabals or even kill each other off. Some will evolve the skills they need to survive in the virtual world.
Agents are specialized applications that will be invested with our projections. We will personalize them, then believe in them. Microsoft's "Bob" didn't work out, but other smiley-faced interfaces will show up. The gods and heroes of Greek mythology were personifications of archetypes or aspects of our own souls. The Net will develop its own mythology and evolve personae to represent us. Invisible messengers, they will traverse the Net like demons and angels.
Some will be as powerful as gods.
To speak of the transformation of spirituality and religious systems in cyberspace is a way to say we are discovering new ways of framing ourselves in relationship to one another and to our gods. Our moral and ethical dilemmas, however, will resemble those we face today. Everything good and evil in human nature will be expressed on the Net. When we look into the Net, we will see ourselves.
The Net is a mirror of our hive mind, feeding back to us symbols of our new selves. Our interaction with the Net is a self-conscious dialectic, a rising spiral of symbiotic interaction. Do we speak our native language or does it speak us? Do we use computers to express ourselves -- or do our networked computers use us to express the Net?
The Net is the backbone of a new nervous system, necessary to the infrastructure of a crowded planet. In the next century we will move in earnest into trans-planetary space. The Net is a good place to practice how to live in a universe that is more complex, more diverse, more gregarious than we -- or our Networks -- can imagine.
I have to admit this blog is the BEST.
I have learned much this year here.
I give thanks to all who are contributing to this learning experience.
Christmas Cheer to all and a wish for a good 2007.
Reality It is just a f-ing ILLUSION
As some wrote earlier
Begin sentences with the words.
In my reality....
"When people keep challenging and questioning their self-disturbing core philosophies, after a while they tend to automatically, and even in advance, bring new, rational, self-helping attitudes to their life problems and thereby make themselves significantly less upsettable", (Ellis, 2003).
Anon 4:06 said, Ellis said:
"When people keep challenging and questioning their self-disturbing core philosophies, after a while they tend to automatically, and even in advance, bring new, rational, self-helping attitudes to their life problems and thereby make themselves significantly less upsettable", (Ellis, 2003).
Core philosophies represent the unconscious accretions of society. They are self-disturbing because our sub-conscious registered information oftentimes will not match up with conscious models that are produced through these un-conscious accretions.
Anyway, it is not reality that is 'just an f-ing illusion'; it’s our perceptions thereof.
And please do not take offence, but using the word ‘just’ after the word ‘reality’, seems like an attempt to put reality in a box. Good luck on that one.
Anonymous One,Sounder you hit it on the head,reality has now been constructed into a little box,and for the most part the regular Joe six-packer can't think out side of it.Instead of open minds we now have controled thought,they package every emotion we need to make it through another day.Pink Floyd put it well,comphy numb?So sit back these hallowed days and ride the Appocolipto out to your HD tv's orders,you are getting the message aren't you?Get back soon Jeff,Later.
Old Floyd, that sucks.
More on Benthamite hells, Bushies are wedding such ideas to a Third Reich biological death camp...
The Microwave RFID Panopticon: corp-state lifetime monitoring, health/civil implications
author: Jeremiah
Just call me Jeremiah. This is really a key issue. This is not an intellectual game or "news as relaxing armchair entertainment." Particularly so if this framework is easily modular and transportable to all areas of the world, for one large database later.
The Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 and the Real ID Act of 2005 establish an ominous national ID system, ***forcing all states to standardize*** biometric-laden birth certificates, drivers licenses and other ID cards.
By 2008, personal data from these will be flowing into the Fuhrer's central database.
While coming to power over all law enforcement agencies with its directives and funding, DHS is regimenting the U.S. medical establishment to collect and forward all health data....Medical history [and the DNA database is expanding fast]....
LET'S RECALL PNAC's quote, signed off by dozens of appointee in Bush Administration: "...advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool." This is a statement overtly supporting GENOCIDE.
This is not politics as usual. What would you think if the President of the United States said this? All his staff have signed off on it. Would you care?
Would you worry about your own genotype?
In fact, this quote from the Project For The New American Century is from its 2000 document "Rebuilding America's Defenses."
You are unable to organize a eugenic bioweapon driven Holocaust like PNAC wants without detailed individual genetic-biological lists, courtesy of, in the U.S. from 2008, a microwave based RFID file system with individual required bio-information-genetic markers carried at all times as an internal passport, mandated by the State;
Bush learns from Third Reich well, same exact eugenic strategy different technical solutions [cite: IBM and the Holocaust];
Bush is organizing the next Holocaust via microwave RFID. Ban all uses of these frequencies now.
HISTORY/SUMMARY: The Microwave Panopticon: RFID lifetime 24 hr. medico-consumer-corporatist-state monitoring starts in '08, health-genetic damage/civil rights implications, unless stopped
"The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. [utilitarian, "the greatest prison for the greatest number."; "natural rights concepts as passe", in effect zero limitations on state power. ]
The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a "sentiment of an invisible omniscience" --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon [I don't know what this Wiki article is talking about later though; there were indeed several of these styles of circular prison society systems built in the United States. And, instead of coming over to stroke American egos and to write "Democracy in America" (1840), DeToqueville really came over to America to learn from and admire the efficient U.S. prison system for the French Government; cite: "On the Penitentiary System of the United States" by Beaumount and Toqueville, 1833]
summary:
---------------------------------
The Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 and the Real ID Act of 2005 establish an ominous national ID system, ***forcing all states to standardize*** biometric-laden birth certificates, drivers licenses and other ID cards. By 2008, personal data from these mandatory identifiers will be duly flowing into the Fuhrer's central database. While coming to power over all law enforcement agencies with its directives and funding hooks, DHS is also regimenting the U.S. medical establishment to collect and forward all health data to Information Central. The medical history [and DNA database is expanding fast] of every citizen's private parts will soon be efficiently forwarded from the examination table directly to Big Brother's electronic health records database. [You are unable to organize a eugenic bioweaponry driven Holocaust without detailed individual genetic-biological lists, courtesy of in the U.S. case here, a microwave based RFID file system with individual required bio-information-markers, mandated by the State; Bush learns from the Third Reich well, same exact strategy different technical solutions [cite: IBM and the Holocaust, by Edwin Black] and of course Bush's grandfather was a Hitler Banker/funder himself, unpunished after WWII; ....let's recall PNAC's great quote, signed off by almost every appointee in the Bush Administration in 2000 and many neocons: "...advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool." This is a statement overtly supporting GENOCIDE. This is not politics as usual. What would you think if the President of the United States said this? All his staff have signed off on it. Would you care? Would you worry about your own genotype? In fact, this is a quote by a group called the Project For The New American Century, and its 2000 document "Rebuilding America's Defenses."
The Project For The New American Century is pursuing a genocide control grid, organized via State-mandated bio-info-card microwave networks of RFID, in the United States of America, with the power of the State to prick you with a needle by force, against your will.... http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/05/338945.shtml ]
Chief executive officer for eHealth Initiative, Janet Marchibroda, confirms that national standards and policies are being developed for "connectivity"(3) no matter where in the U.S. a citizen might receive his hemorrhoid or herpes diagnosis/treatment. Centralized medical surveillance will certainly leave no citizen un-jabbed when Homeland Needle Nazis unleash their stash of disabling, compulsory lipid-laced vaccines during a "national emergency."
DHS and dozens of medical facilities across the nation now encourage the use of RFID microchips which can be implanted under the skin. At least 68 hospitals and medical facilities are already using Applied Digital Solution's VeriChip, recently approved by FDA for human implantation.(4)
Each VeriChip, implanted under a patient's skin between the elbow and shoulder, contains a 16-digit identification number, readable by a chip scanner blasting kilohertz radio frequency. [Despite the fact that it is dangerous and basically could mean that electro-medical treatments like CAT or magneto-resonance imaging scans could cause the chips to explode or flare in the hospital.]
Meantime, DHS has announced its quest for powerful new reader technology [quick crowd camp processing or train car entering a facility processing] that could obtain information from ID microchips attached to either a human or a vehicle, even if the human is 25 feet away; even if the vehicle is moving at 55 miles per hour.(5)
...
Conclusion [from the health section]:
On March 30, 2006, Ingri and I traveled from Spirit Lake to Seattle to attend what turned out to be an excellent 9/11 truth event on the University of Washington campus.
What we experienced with regard to measurable amounts of ambient electromagnetic radiation was shocking to us and occupied much of our conversation throughout our journey.
Wherein previous years there would be miles between measurable amounts of radiation being detected by our zapchecker, the opposite was suddenly true. We noticed that our zapchecker was spiking about 90 percent of the time during our 800-mile round trip. When we were in urban areas, the zapchecker was solidly spiked--even when the sensitivity of the device was turned down. We are amazed at how quickly our world came from being irradiated only in spots to being saturated with this odorless, tasteless and invisible danger.
Like it or not, except in isolated areas, we are bathed in ambient radiation. ~Don Harkins, Editor, The Idaho Observer
All of us living in a [microwave panopticon] radiation-intensive police state are at high risk for heart, blood and circulatory problems, especially high blood pressure and stoke.
Hey, you cops out there with your in-vehicle laptops and radar guns and wireless cameras-hope you're having fun in your stroke-mobiles! [Humans are not designed to be around microwave radiation, period.]
Genetic damage and birth defects
In the late 1990s, scientists confirmed that chick embryos exposed to cell phone radiation during their 21-day incubation period were five times less likely to survive than unexposed chicks.(88)
In 2000, Dr. Ross Adey researching at UC Riverside reported studies showing that pregnant rats exposed to Iridium cell phone radiation produced fetuses with significantly decreased brain activity compared to non-exposed fetuses.(89)
In 2002, the Associated Press reported that DNA and chromosomal damage caused by ionizing radiation and other radiation has profound ramifications for the offspring of people thus damaged.(90) According to researchers at the University of Leicester, radiation damage suffered by parents can be passed on to children and grandchildren.(91)
Researchers have long warned that mothers using a cell phone headset, causing her to place the phone near her abdomen during pregnancy, could expose the fetus to dangerous levels of microwave radiation which the fetus can readily absorb.(92)
In 2002, the French government warned teenagers to keep cell phones away from their developing reproductive organs.(93) By 2004, researchers in Hungary found that men who carried a cell phone on their bodies-even on standby-had significantly lower sperm concentration. The motility of the sperm they did produce was reduced and sperm movements were abnormal. ... University of Washington researchers documented reproductive changes in lab animals occurred at exposures many times less than the FCC's SAR exposure guidelines.(97)
Thousands of young women working in retail companies and offices across the U.S. [and everyone working in many supermarkets, strapped on the middle of their backs right against their spine] are now wearing on their bodies a variety of microwave-driven communications devices throughout their shifts. Many of these devices are worn in pockets or on waist bands, exposing their ovaries to microwave radiation.
Many of these woman at any given time are unknowingly pregnant and exposing their fetuses to DNA damage.
The crime is that ***neither industry nor regulating agencies are warning Americans*** about these dangers ***nor are they doing follow-up studies*** on women who have exposed their fetuses.
When their children are born with defects and illness, parents have no way to prove that wireless radiation was the cause.
Scientists now suspect that there may be a correlation between autism and fetal or neonatal exposure to radio frequency radiation.(98) One in six U.S. children suffers some neurological disability and the rate of autism has skyrocketed in the last decade.(99)
Dr. Ross Adey of the University of California Riverside showed that a pregnant rat's exposure to cell phone radiation alters the activity of an enzyme in fetus brains, indicating stress.(100)
In a radiation-intensive police state, the already polluted unborn, conceived by radiation-damaged parents, are at ever-increasing risks for genetic deformities, brain damage and death. Perhaps we now have clues as to why approximately one half of all pregnancies in the United States result in death of the baby--either before or after birth--or in a less than healthy baby.(102)
Police State USA will never tell us the truth about the radiation they are using against us with such a vengeance.
Deliberately kept dumb as dirt about the issue, Americans are cornered rats who ***have never had the privilege of giving informed consent*** for this abuse and brutality.
We all now stand between a ruthless political machine that would snuff our lives without a blink and the equally serious repercussions of political resistance. Can we educate enough people in time to mount effective resistance? Can we hold the line until this fascist administration--and the murderous corporate horse it rode in on--finally destroy themselves with their own excesses?
Surviving
Here are constructive suggestions for those who want to help restore the world to sanity:....
[and locations to purchase RF monitoring devices.]
and
[SOLUTIONS: ban the entire use of the microwave frequencies utilized in such a control grid, which incidentally are the same frequencies known since the 1950s for psychotronic weaponry...: http://madison.indymedia.org/newswire/display/33507/index.php ]
----------------------------------
the rest here
In response to the rightfully paranoid comment regarding the Panopticon, I thought I'd post here a comment I just rendered over at Amor Mundi (Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All), where this very bright guy is reacting with intelligence and disgust to David Brin's pro-surveillance insanity. As some of you might remember, I had my own run in with the looney recently, and I'm afraid my response was a little heavier on the disgust.
Anyway, after considering what Mr. Intelligence Community has to say, the righteous dude from Amor Mundi had this (among a lot else) to say:
But is it right to suggest, really, that we live in “darkness” because we are not yet immersed in ubiquitous surveillance? Is it right to imply that our eyes have been closed? Is it right to imply that all those who would resist the emergence of relentless and ubiquitous technological scrutiny value “comfort” over “vigilance”?
My two cents looked like this:
This is a valid question, since it exposes (some of) the assumptions on which Brin's position rests. He does, ultimately, paint such concerns as yours as neo-Luddite, and worse. I say this because I've just emerged from a most frustrating "dialogue" with Mr. Brin on this topic.
I actually came to Brin's Contrary Brin blog via his essay Singularities & Nightmares that has attracted a good deal of attention at Ray Kurzweils' AI website. I was curious about two elements of that essay: how Brin foresaw the implementation of his concept of reciprocal accountability (given that the organs of accountability are pretty much owned by those most in need of it), and how he imagined the the transition from our economies based on scarcity to one based on abundance would effect the social and economic hierarchies accreted during the old paradigm (the possibility of an emergent egalitarianism). In other words, I wanted him to engage in some speculation. He is, in addition to those other activites in his CV, a science fiction writer, after all.
Well. It didn't quite work out as I had planned. Not only was he reluctant to engage in the speculative arts; he actually refused to address either of my questions at all. Instead, he treated me to Brin's View of History, in which the benevolent, "uplifting" force of capitalism moves through history shedding its light and liberty--a bizarre version of Kant & Hegel's concept of Spirit.
When pressed about the notion of how those elites who currently "see" would be encouraged to allow others to see them, and eventually give back the carte blanche prerogative that national security allowed them to possess, he answered by assuring me that he was working hard to persuade his "contacts" in the M/I Complex to voluntarily comply with the new transparency. He concluded, after a long and rather vitriolic defense of the joys of capitalism, by telling me that I simply had to trust in the good judgment of those who have my best interest as their primary concern.
The most astounding thing about the entire exchange was that the calm, open demeanor of Brin in the S&N essay was nowhere in evidence in the actual discourse he so highly praises as the means to those admirable ends, his transparent society.
Looking back over Brin's S&N essay, I shouldn't have been surprised by Brin's unwillingness to imagine a better world. He claims there that sci-fi writers aren't any good at predicting positive futures; only in cautionary tales can they be trusted to give us vivid warnings of what might go wrong. When I discovered that he also believes that we shouldn't actively work to make a better world, since "giants" like Adam Smith set this grand process in motion and who do we think we are, anyway, my stomach turned, my mind rebelled.
There are sci-fi writers who aren't afraid to swim in those futuristic waters. When Charles Stross wrote his famous piece for the last issue of Whole Earth on the coming Panopticon (The Panopticon Singularity), he left a small door open to investigate the weakness of the surveillance society, a door that Rupert Goodwins quickly stepped into with The Blind Spot in the Panopticon, where he suggested something which, on the surface sounds like Brin, but it actually points in a different direction altogether. Goodwins writes:
When the machinery is automatic, unbribable and universal, nobody gets off and everyone's watched. A system that efficiently gathers, collates and analyses data must also make it available -- and this is why there's a paradox, not a singularity, in Stross' panopticon.
For once it becomes difficult to do anything unremarked, once surveillance is a given rather than an exception, then the logic behind keeping official secrets becomes much harder to defend -- and the practice of keeping them becomes harder, too. The classic "What have you got to hide?" polemic that so often justifies yet another loss of privacy can be turned around: "Why are you keeping those secrets?" Or "If you believe in open government -- here's the key. Why aren't you using it?". Cheap, easy to deploy technology doesn't care who's running it, and although the civil service, judiciary and government may try for monopolies on data access, in any society with claims to democracy they cannot deny effective oversight. They try, my goodness how they try, but in the end the contradictions mount up and the questions become unavoidable.
By building the panopticon, therefore, the great bureaucracy of state control would be building a world without fudge, duplicity, secrecy or buck-passing. Such things are as necessary to the bureaucrats as blood is to Count Dracula, and the panopticon as welcome as a greenhouse for garlic. So the warning signs of singularity aren't that the technologies exist and are used, nor that they are used by those in power to watch those defined as worth watching: it's the refusal to allow the selfsame concepts to be used on those in power -- or even discussed. When that happens, it may be time to disprove that old saying about stones and glass houses.
While Goodwins makes his own assumptions, most notably that the Panopticon really will become a two-way conduit of information, he is echoed by some of those writers who are quite unafraid of imagining how this might come about. The best I've found in surveying the field of intrepid explorers of what's next (and how we'll survive it) is Rudy Rucker.
Rucker's hope resides in chaos, the fractal unpredictability of information & life itself. Rucker is extremely smart, accessible, hopeful and even humorous. His vision is one in which chaos prevents our jailers, the brain police, from imprisoning us, since the unpredictability of information flow and life itself, in all its crazy, fractal splendor, is beyond the control of those who've thus far been so confident of their dastardly schemes.
I won't do Rudy the injustice of condensing his philosophy into a blog comment--dive into his world if you're interested in something a bit different from what Brin is selling. It's a great antidote to the darkness which seeks to enshroud us now, at this "festive" season...
Orgonite is a simple compound anyone can make which is an effective solution to EM pollution, chemtrails, garden pests, and bad people. Check it out, make or buy some yourself and notice the effects!
Maybe one more related thing to stuff in your sock: Henry Rollins' awesome new Freedom Rant.
Sounder sounded off with Point 1-OUR PERCEPTION of reality is subjective and individually defined.
I would agree and think (illusion)maya then is also subjective through our eyes.
Perhaps you think this is absurd.
Anyway IR thanks a lot for the
FREEDOM RANT.
The man sounds like me at times while I am the watching corporate defined news.Showing me the reality of the world through their eyes.
Cuttlefish, as always, thanks for the thoughtfulness of your writing. (I haven't watched the whole Rollins thing, but am curious as to how his neck got so big, and what his steroid levels might be...)
I only saw a glimpse of the Brin episode, but would note, cheerfully, that it's further proof of the Central Dogma: everyone's a hypocrite. Some are professional hypocrites, and recognized to be so (politicians, the Elmer Gantry vendors of Sanctimony), while others are, by trade. Into this latter category fall writers. Scarce the Tolstoys who actually put theories into practice. While not knowing a thing about Brin other than what you've taught me, he probably fits the general category: writes magnificently about some Utopia, but shoves people out of his way in real life. I have those tendencies myself. I imagine even Scott Peck does. Never trust Utopians, is my rule (and now let me explain why my rule will help us to build a better world...).
(As Golda Meir once said to someone, "Don't be humble--you're not so great.")
Switching gears back to the real world anguish of childhood autism, someone above quoted the following:
"Scientists now suspect that there may be a correlation between autism and fetal or neonatal exposure to radio frequency radiation. One in six U.S. children suffers some neurological disability and the rate of autism has skyrocketed in the last decade."
There is very possibly a correlation there, and I don't seek to deny it. But there are many studies which also point to early childhood (and even infant) exposure to television and video games as being the main culprit. The background noise of a tv set can interfere with language processing skills. People have been scratching their heads for 15 years wondering why the offspring of yuppie couples had a higher incidence, but the answer might simply be staring at them from their vid screens: who are more apt to use the "blue babysitter" than busy two-profession couples?
That's why the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends ZERO exposure to television or video games before the age of two.
Good advice, and probably extremely conservative, at that.
Future generations, if there are future generations, will probably scratch their head(s) in amazement that we didn't figure this out sooner.
Well, some did, of course. Jerry Mander, for one, published "Four Arguments For the Elimination of Television" in 1977, way ahead of the curve.
(In keeping with my "authors are hypocrites" theory, I imagine he watches 'Green Acres' reruns all day long when no one is looking).
BTW, Mander's book "In the Absence of the Sacred" is a wonderful read.
Vincenzo Oliveti is the author of Terror’s Source: The Ideology of Wahhabi-Salifism and its Consequences.
Nowhere in Islamic history can one find a doctrine similar to Saint Augustine’s cognite intrare (“lead them in”—i.e. “force them to convert”). In fact the Qur’an says the exact opposite: There is no compulsion in religion(2:256). Augustine’s frightening idea that all must be compelled to “conform” to the “true Christian faith” has unleashed centuries of unparalleled bloodshed.
Indeed, Christians have suffered more under the rule of Christian civilization than under pre-Christian Roman rule or any other rule in history. Millions were tortured and slaughtered in the name of Christianity during the periods of the Arian, Donatist and Albigensian heresies, to say nothing of the various Inquisitions, or the Crusades, when the European armies were saying, as they slaughtered both Christian and Muslim Arabs: “Kill them all, God will know his own.”
Needless to say, these transgressions— and indeed all the transgressions of Christians throughout the ages—have absolutely nothing to do with Jesus Christ and or even the New Testament as such. Indeed, no Muslim by definition would ever or will ever blame this on Jesus Christ (the Word made Flesh, for Christians and Muslims)...
By no means was such indiscriminate violence limited to Europe’s “Dark Ages” or to one period of Christian history. The Reformation and Counter Reformation took inter-Christian slaughter to new extremes; two thirds of the Christian population of Europe being slaughtered during this time.
Then there were (among many others wars, pogroms, revolutions and genocides) the Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815); the African slave trade that claimed the lives of 10 million; and the Colonial Conquests. Estimates for the number of Native Americans slaughtered by the Europeans in North, Central and South America run as high as 20 million within three generations.
Despite the ravages of Europe’s violent past, in the 20th century, Western Civilization took warfare to new extremes. A conservative estimate puts the total number of brutal deaths in the 20th century at more than 250 million. Of these, Muslims are responsible for less than 10 million deaths. Christians, or those coming from Christian backgrounds account for more than 200 million of these! The greatest death totals come from World War I (about 20 million, at least 90 % of which were inflicted by “Christians”) and World War II (90 million, at least 50% of which were inflicted by “Christians,” the majority of the rest occurring in the Far East). Given this grim history, it appears that we Europeans must all come to grips with the fact that Islamic civilization has actually been incomparably less brutal than Christian civilization. Did the Holocaust of over 6 million Jews occur out of the background of a Muslim Civilization?
In the 20th century alone, Western and/or Christian powers have been responsible for at least twenty times more deaths than have Muslim powers. In this most brutal of centuries, we created incomparably more civilian casualties than have Muslims in the whole of Islamic history. This continues even in our day—witness the slaughter of 900,000 Rwandans in 1994 in a population that was over 90 % Christian; or the genocide of over 300,000 Muslims and systematic rape of over 100,000 Muslim women by Christian Serbs in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. The horrible truth is that, numerically and statistically speaking, Christian Civilization is the bloodiest and most violent of all civilizations in all of history, and is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths.
The production and use of nuclear weapons alone should be enough to make the West stand in shame before the rest of the world. America created nuclear weapons. America is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons, and Western countries strive to maintain a monopoly over them. As the record stands, we have no moral grounds for objecting to the acquisition of such weapons until we prove willing to forfeit them entirely.
It should also be mentioned that although Islam has the concept of legitimate war in self-defense (as does Christianity, and even Buddhism), nowhere in Islamic culture (or in other cultures that survive today) is there latent the idealization, and perhaps idolization, of violence that exists in Western Culture.
Westerners think of themselves as peaceful, but in fact the gentleness and sublimity of the New Testament, and the peace-loving nature of the principles of democracy, are scarcely reflected in Western popular culture. Rather, the entire inclination of popular culture— Hollywood movies, Western television, video games, popular music and sports entertainment—is to glorify and inculcate violence.
Accordingly, the relative rates of murder (especially random and serial murder) are higher in the Western World (particularly in the U.S., but even in Europe, taken as a whole) than they are in the Islamic world in counties that are not suffering civil wars, and this true despite the much greater wealth of the West...
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
(Matthew 7:1-5)
Let not the hatred of the people—because they hindered you from the Sacred Mosque—incite you to transgress. Help one another in goodness and reverence, and do not help one another in sin and aggression. (Qur’an 5:2)
O ye who believe, be upright for God witnesses injustice; and let not the hatred of a people [against you] cause you to be unjust. Be just — that is closer to piety. (Qur’an 5:8)
One can hardly imagine a more emphatic message of justice, forgiveness and reconciliation.
-------------
The foregoing was excerpted from Oliveti’s article The Myth of “the Myth of Moderate Islam” appearing earlier this year in Issue 15 of Islamica Magazine.
RE: "Christian Civilization" responsible, or something else?
per this quote, matched to my own afterward:
Despite the ravages of Europe’s violent past, in the 20th century, Western Civilization took warfare to new extremes. A conservative estimate puts the total number of brutal deaths in the 20th century at more than 250 million. Of these, Muslims are responsible for less than 10 million deaths. Christians, or those coming from Christian backgrounds account for more than 200 million of these! The greatest death totals come from World War I (about 20 million, at least 90 % of which were inflicted by “Christians”) and World War II (90 million, at least 50% of which were inflicted by “Christians,” the majority of the rest occurring in the Far East). Given this grim history, it appears that we Europeans must all come to grips with the fact that Islamic civilization has actually been incomparably less brutal than Christian civilization. Did the Holocaust of over 6 million Jews occur out of the background of a Muslim Civilization? In the 20th century alone, Western and/or Christian powers [sic] have been responsible for at least twenty times more deaths than have Muslim powers. In this most brutal of centuries, we created incomparably more civilian casualties than have Muslims in the whole of Islamic history. This continues even in our day—witness the slaughter of 900,000 Rwandans in 1994 in a population that was over 90 % Christian; or the genocide of over 300,000 Muslims and systematic rape of over 100,000 Muslim women by Christian Serbs in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. The horrible truth is that, numerically and statistically speaking, Christian Civilization is the bloodiest and most violent of all civilizations in all of history, and is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths.
"The Christian powers"?
WWI and WWII--and WWIII that they are so desperate to get off the ground--have nothing to do with "Christian powers" and closer to large scale string pulling or placing bugs in a jar and watching them fight:
Albert Pike Declares Three World Wars: The Uncanny Long Term Plan of the NWO Carried Out
With people like blowhard Gengrich declaring gleefully (and getting free press by saying) "its WWIII" , http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/07/342654.shtml, one should be aware AND GUARD AGAINST BEING MANIPULATED by a pre-planned war of the late 1800s, [presumably since 1871] set up by high Masonic plotting to organize hatred between their "religious competitors" and (they hoped) which would remove religions of Christianity and Judaism on one side and Islam on the other all at once.
According to 33rd degree Mason, Albert Pike, head of the Scottish Rite for decades (and connected with the founding of the KKK as well as a Confederate army officer--the only Confederate officer with a Civil War statue in downtown Washington D.C.), you are just playing as pawns in their game if you fall for this transparent attempt to create an artificial war between the religions.
Pike had three world wars planned out by the late 1800s. [By 1871, actually; first attempt to seed Jewish/Zionists was as early as the British fielded idea of 1879.]
They have happened like clockwork on that plan since. Particularly note Pike's purpose of the third world war, which does seem to be maneuvered into position thanks to the U.S. and Israeli warmongering.
On the Jewish/Christian side, Pike noted that those really in command would be those out to destroy and discredit all three religions by infiltration of the leadership and by artificially generating mutual self-destructive wars.
Avoid your hatred, and guard yourself: your emotions are being manipulated in a rigged game. A discussion of this rigged European chess game, with your body and mind as a pawn, follows.
Excerpt from the Pike Letter:
"The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the "agentur" of the "Illuminati" between the political Zionists and the leaders of Islamic World. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam (the Moslem Arabic World) and political Zionism (the State of Israel) mutually destroy each other. Meanwhile the other nations, once more divided on this issue will be constrained to fight to the point of complete physical, moral, spiritual and economical exhaustion... We shall unleash the Nihilists and the atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations the effect of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil. Then everywhere, the citizens, obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization, and the multitude, disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits will from that moment be without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view. This manifestation will result from the general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time." 4
Albert Pike received a vision, which he described in a letter that he wrote to Mazzini, dated August 15, 1871.
This letter graphically outlined plans for three world wars that were seen as necessary to bring about the One World Order, and we can marvel at how accurately it has predicted events that have already taken place.
More on the letter's history and provenance at the link. The global Scottish Rite branch is very much tied into many things--even B'nai B'rith.
And another interesting article at the link is:
"King Edward VII of Great Britain: Evil Demiurge of the Triple Entente and World War 1", ICLC Conference, February, 1995, by Webster Tarpley, http://american_almanac.tripod.com/edwvii.htm ; and "Sir Edward Grey Turned Sarajevo Crisis Into War", by Webster Tarpley
Printed in The American Almanac, March, 1995, http://american_almanac.tripod.com/edwgrey.htm )
(Edward VII was Grandmaster of British Freemasonry.)
On reality and perception of it.
enjoy
http://www.perceivingreality.com/
P E R C E I V I N G R E A L I T Y
Actually we have it all within us as has been said.
I take what is good and toss the rest out....kabbalah is a system that is external...a program if you will.Some people need a template.Not me.
And now this.....
The collective consciousness is very influential on your own wealth and
happiness. You create many of the events in your life. But some events,
especially the large events, happen because of the thoughts and consciousness
of people around you in your society and world. You have heard this before in
many forms (where two or more are gathered…). You are not alone; you are not
separate from everyone else. You as an individual matter a lot to the whole, and
vice versa. Your extent of wealth and happiness is co-determined by yourself and
everyone else. Please understand this carefully. No one can stop you from being
happy and wealthy. That is because only you alone choose to experience
everything as good or bad all on your own and no one can possibly take away
that internal choice from you. And only you can choose to have wealth or
happiness and no one can take that from you except yourself. But that said, you
are more likely to meet good and happy opportunities and events if the people
around you are of a suitable consciousness. Think of your mind as an extension
of your spirit, your body as an extension of your mind, your immediate
environment and other people as an extension of your body, the world as an
extension of your environment, and thus the whole world as your own larger
extended body. And the same goes for everyone. Thus, whatever ‘good’ or ‘bad’
that is in your extended body affects you to the degree that it is ‘away’ from you.
So, it is very much in your interests to spread wealth and happiness
consciousness around the world. That spreading of wealth consciousness
‘improves’ the larger extended body as a whole, for what happens to one part of
the body affects the whole. The advancement of just one individual in society
causes a series of advancements of varying degrees for all others in society. So
to raise yourself, raise others and you will automatically rise as well. Even telling
a few people is enough, but telling as many as you can tell shall shift this
universe dramatically. This book is a start – share it. Use the Internet, email and
SMS text messaging on your mobile phone. We have invented these affordable
communication networks around the world as a testimony of our increasing
realization that we are one, and as a tool to keep growing in that realization. So
use these networks, remember them.
Never stop learning. Always be humble with what you know now, and you will
know more. Scientists are only now discovering that this universe is not a fourdimensional
one, but a multidimensional one like a hologram. It is our senses
that are four-dimensional (length, width, height and time). A person’s Self is
multidimensional, but their senses on their physical plane are, for most people,
four dimensional in their capabilities. The universe itself is multidimensional
whereby all possibilities exist all together. Think about that carefully. Scarcity is
not a reality; it is a perception of an aspect of that holographic universe. You can
always choose which aspect you wish to perceive and experience, by choosing
what you wish to truly believe and hold as unquestioningly true.
There is an infinite source of supply. When you are not having what you
would like, know that your thoughts are at fault, not the universe. Accept full
responsibility honestly and make amendments. But never talk or think of lack or
shortages, for in that thought is the cause of lack and shortages.
Broke is temporary. But poor is a mental condition, a dis-ease of the mind,
and is more lasting. Yet, all can be overcome.
How much is enough? Considering the fact that supply is infinite, then
enough is probably the amount that allows you to live as you would wish to live
whether you are working or not. You then choose when to play and when to work
as you feel like, not because you need money. Hence, conditionality and need
move away from you and let you to explore other aspects of life other than
money.
Abundance is all there is, and sharing, not owning, is the way to receive this
abundance.
Competition is unnecessary. It is a statement of scarcity, a fallacy.
Competition in a business is a statement of scarcity and a bringer of scarcity.
Creativity is a statement of abundance, the natural state. Shift from competitive
to creative thought and see how that works for you.
This is a universe of abundance. No one is going to ‘take your share’ or ‘beat
you to it’. There is more than enough for everyone. The only time there is not
enough, the only time when you are ‘beaten to it’, is when you think and act
competitively instead of thinking and acting creatively and trusting in the
abundant nature of The Source. Thinking and acting competitively makes it
harder for you to correctly follow the laws of the universe especially the laws of
cause and effect, the process of life expressing images of the mind, and of the
power of certainty and faith. Thinking creatively and non-competitively helps you
be in agreement with these universal laws and processes.
To you the earth yields her fruit, and you shall not want if you but know how
to fill your hands. It is in exchanging these gifts of the earth that you shall find
abundance and be satisfied. Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly
justice it will lead some to greed and others to hunger. – Kahlil Gibran
That is how we can create our reality.
The Source of all creation is a field of infinite possibilities and creativity. Our
true Self is one with The Source, in the same image and likeness. When we are
conscious of that and believe it is so, we tap into this field of infinite possibilities
and our inherent creative abilities.
The human condition encompasses the totality of the experience of being human and living human lives. As mortal entities, there are a series of biologically determined events which are common to most human lives, and some which are inevitable for all. The ongoing way in which humans react to or cope with these events is the human condition. However, understanding the precise nature and scope of what is meant by the human condition is itself a philosophical problem.
The term is also used in a metaphysical sense, to describe the joy, terror and other feelings or emotions associated with being and existence. Humans, to an apparently superlative degree amongst all living things, are aware of the passage of time, can remember the past and imagine the future, and are intimately aware of their own mortality. Only human beings are known to ask themselves questions relating to the purpose of life beyond the base need for survival, or the nature of existence beyond that which is empirically apparent: What is the meaning of existence? Why was I born? Why am I here? Where will I go when I die? The human struggle to find answers to these questions — and the very fact that we can conceive them and ask them — is what defines the human condition in this sense of the term.
Sounder got me to thinking......
It is a rather weak argument that only humans have asked the deep questions of themselvesm. After all, they are only asking in their own tongue and making little or no attempt at all to understand the questions other species might be asking. Anyone considered that without self-imposed problems, the 'others' are getting along just fine... in fact, harmoniously.
None of the leaders of the worst genocides of the twentieth century were Christian men. They were primarily secularist dictators. For example:
Mao Ze-Dong China 50 million 1958-1969
Jozeph Stalin USSR 13 million? 1934-1939
Adolph Hitler Germany 12 million 1939- 1945
Hideki Tojo Japan 5 million 1941-1944
Pol Pot Cambodia 1.7 million 1975-1979
Kim Il Sung N. Korea 1.6 million 1948-1994
Menghistu Ethiopia 1.5 million 1975-1978
Ismail Enver Turkey 1.2 million Armenians 1915
Yakuba Gowan Biafra 1 million 1967-1970
Leonid Brezhnev Afghanistan 900 thousand 1979-1982
America did not enter the 2 world wars because of Christ. America entered because of the sinking of American ships and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. After the second world war Churchill and Truman did help Germany and Japan rebuild themselves and did help them become as strong and wealthy as they were before the war. As is rather unique in world history.
Since 624 CE the Ottoman Empire and Islam have been very warlike and brutal. Invading many lands and claiming many conquests. Many, many battles between brothers within Islam. The Islamic leaders completely drove the Hebrews out of Israel in 633-642 CE. No other empire can claim this title. The Sunni, Shiite, Ismaili, Wahhabi, etc... accept the basic tenets laid down in the Koran. But the history of Islam is extremely violent with many religious schisms. The Iran-Iraq War in 1980-1988 claimed the lives of at least 1 million people and left many wounded.
Many if not most leaders within Islam hate the Jewish people. Americans today regret supporting our government invasion of the Middle East and many never did support this invasion. But Islamic leaders call for Islam to hate Americans. Will there be a umma of hatred agaisnt us? Maybe.
Christian hierarchy with Romanism being the most dominant is a monster on planet earth. It has many righteous people who are under its shadow. Capitalism with its Communistic/Fascist dominion has many people under its shadow who are decent, righteous people. Islam with its hate for Israel and religious divisions have many righteous, decent people under its shadow.
Anonymous 11:32's message with the Pike letter included hits the mark directly in my opinion.
The mainstream teaching of collectivism today is the influence of the Rothchilds, Rockefellers and all the elites who move and shake our world. The financial beast of domination is the World Zionism. Pure evil on our planet. The righteousness of social collectivism is the praxis, diaprax, and dialectic processes that is leading the worlds people deceptively into a pit of slavery. Do you have the understanding of what has been going on in education during the last decade? Outcome Based Education is our hellish nightmare come true. But we are being duped to accept it as enabling. Environmentalism is another nightmare dominated by the elite. Human life scorned over a 3 inch rare lovebird.
I hope to meet a Muslim brother in my neighborhood who wants to serve Allah and or is serving Him. So that as men we can masculinely be genuine company to each other and serve our Gods the way our ancient manuscripts have taught us to do. I being a firm believer in the Christian Triune God.
I don't like that picture Jeff. It makes me nauseous
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I always find it interesting that some folks actually have the temerity to push their own brand of religion when they themselves barely have a grasp of its origins to begin with (punk alert). How can someone possibly pattern their life around a concept which was born in a language and culture of which they have absolutely no knowledge? You'd think that if someone was that much of an adherent, they would at the very least learn the language their beliefs originated in.
I understand it's the the holliday happy times and all, so I'll keep this restrained, but I find the recent influx of religious propaganda to be rather unsavory and would warn those pushing their personal agendas that they should be prepared to defend those ideas with facts, or suffer the lash of debunking.
;)
Agree and disagree with this:
The mainstream teaching of collectivism today is the influence of the Rothchilds, Rockefellers and all the elites who move and shake our world. The financial beast of domination is the World Zionism. Pure evil on our planet. [As long as you realize that hardly all Jewish people's are pro-Zionist!] The righteousness of social collectivism is the praxis, diaprax, and dialectic processes that is leading the worlds people deceptively into a pit of slavery. Do you have the understanding of what has been going on in education during the last decade? Outcome Based Education is our hellish nightmare come true. But we are being duped to accept it as enabling. Environmentalism is another nightmare dominated by the elite. Human life scorned over a 3 inch rare lovebird.
Just don't lump all environmentalism as innately representing the same interests....There is a corporate fascist wing of enviornmentalism, though that fails to mean that all environmentalist sentiment is a form of cloaked campaign for it.
In many cases, particularly for environmental justice or attempts of people to stop the destruction of their own local areas by corporate transnationalism, it is a very democratic, and progressive force to want more local participation in what kind of development you experience.
You might find the larger list at this link interesting, of which I clipped one segment:
(3) Environmentalism is one large movement. However, there is a corporate-fascist wing within environmentalism. (3a) This is the totally unpunished Rockefeller-oilcorp-media-eugenics wing--the same connections since the early 20th century! Their discredited and very openly discussed 20th century eugenic and depopulationist goals are still there: they have only been now "green-coated". These people (not all people) are using the cloak of environmentalism to justify fascist consolidation and eugenics in the Third World--and soon the First World. ... It hardly takes a genius to note that if you are a fascist and you have the strangehold on the world's oil based energy, and you are in the biological warfare research as well, you would utilize your corporate and military institutional advantage to promote your political eugenic goals--even against your own economic interest--if what you really were after was political power. (3b) The depopulationist Club of Rome for instance was filled with the same people (and oil company people) who were helping the Nazis in WWII.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/05/317075.shtml
Following that up, more on eugenical Club of Rome green-coating their eugenics:
At this article, Popularization of "Peak Oil" comes from Club of Rome, from David McGowan, among others, where it reads:
NEWSLETTER #64
August 17, 2004
Whoa, Dude! Are We Peaking Yet?
"The Club of Rome, a non-profit global think tank, said in the 1970s that we'd hit peak oil in 2003. It didn't happen." So said Kevin Kelleher, writing for Popular Science magazine in August of this year. But it did indeed happen, according to Michael Ruppert and his band of resident 'experts,' who collectively insist that the planet is now at the point of 'peak' oil production. (Kevin Kelleher "How Long Will the Oil Age Last?" Popular Science, August 2004)
It appears then that today's 'Peak Oil' crowd has some pages in their propaganda playbook that were lifted directly from the Club of Rome, which raises the obvious question: what exactly is the Club of Rome?
Who is it that has handed Michael Ruppert and company the baton?
The initial membership list of the Club of Rome, as it turns out, contains some interesting [American Nazi] names:
DAVID ROCKEFELLER: Bilderberger, cofounder of the Trilateral Commission, former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, scion of the world's most prominent oil dynasty, and all-around bad guy.
JOHN J. McCLOY: Former advisor to the Mussolini regime who had the honor of sitting in Adolf Hitler's private box at the Berlin Olympic games; later served as High Commissioner of Germany, during which time he signed an order freeing majority of the Nazi war criminals that had already been convicted at Nuremberg; went to work at Rockefeller's Chase Bank afterward; still later, served on the infamous Warren Committee.
AVERELL HARRIMAN: Skull and Bonesman and high-level political operative through several presidential administrations; together with members of the Dulles family and the Bush/Walker family, established various business entities engaged in providing funding to Nazi Germany even after the United States had entered the war.
Katherine Graham: Longtime publisher of the Washington Post and longtime CIA asset who once famously said while speaking at CIA's Langley, Virginia headquarters: "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."
Quite a distinguished cast of characters, I have to admit -- although not necessarily the type of people whose lies and spin most dissidents/progressives would accept as good coin.
So that's the corproate fascist wing of environmetnalism, which I think Jeff has touched upon previously in his 2005 Peak Fascism article.
So, please don't lump or essentialize all environmentalism as innately representing the same interests...just as all Jewish peoples aren't Zionist; just as all Muslims aren't Qtubists; just as all Christians aren't "New Lifers"; just as all RigInt readers aren't brainless if you disagree with them. :-) peace to you
humblenotry,
No, yes, and sometimes:
The mainstream teaching of collectivism today is the influence of the Rothchilds, Rockefellers and all the elites who move and shake our world.
Okay, but collectivism ain’t what’s being preached—it’s dog-eat-dog (and maybe your dear, sweet granny) capitalism. Collectivism?
The financial beast of domination is the World Zionism. Pure evil on our planet.
Except that the many have been owned by the few for the entire history of history.
The righteousness of social collectivism is the praxis, diaprax, and dialectic processes that is leading the worlds people deceptively into a pit of slavery.
And where is this commie righteousness being preached & practised, pray tell? In those damned liberal colleges? The ones that only the wealthy get to attend these days?
The greenwashed corpo-succulents still stand out with their prickish needles from the honest, altruistic, and yes...cooperative bunch of environmentally aware/concerned/indignant folks who don't like what the owner's club has done to Gaia and her kids in the pursuit of their lumpy human gravy.
That Icke/Pike stuff is riddled with hardcore, CIA-strap-on anticommunist propaganda.
Other than that, well...what does God care about my concept of Him? I mean, wouldn't how I live & how I treat my cellmates be just a little more important than my allegiance to some human interlocutors' dogma?
If God is good, then karma should run dogma over, eventually.
Dear Jeff and family, plus entire rigint community:
Merry Christmas, all y'all. I wish you all a period of peace, love and happiness!
Happpy Christmas Jeff
"Blind boys don't lie"
http://www.libchrist.com/other/homosexual/kingjames.html
Dear Cuddles,
Yes, no, and maybe.
Yes, I agree that good karma should be able to outpace any yammering dogma snapping at its rear bumper...
That is with the qualification of saying that good deeds alone, just like deeds with untoward consequences alone, do not good or bad karma make. It is the intention which informs the acts that matters. I daresay that if I give a beggar a meal because I am an overweaningly rich, bloodsucking corporate tool who wants to "feel better about myself," or worse, KNOWS that such an act of "charity" makes me one of the "good guys" and I feel self righteous about it, well, then, the beggar may have benefitted with a temporarily full belly, but I wouldn't count on any "good karma" accruing to my corporate fatcat, bloodsucking self.
Just like praying on Sunday doesn't make up for evicting grannies and orphans, or turning off their heat, during the week.
So....yes and no.
As to the maybe. While there may be precious little "commanism" preached in the elite universities, it is undeniable that, historically, the super-elite's first choice for their fascist model state is a communist one, because of its promotion of secular humanism and denigration of God, essential to cowing the masses into the pen of materialism alone.
Plus, commanism, or its poor cousin socialism, provides the illusion of brotherhood and sisterhood, and shared sacrifice, while, as you and I both know, the elites just use this ploy to suck up even more of the butter, thick cream, and frothy milk, while leaving the souring gruel that's left for the 'brothers and sisters' to grovel over.
Nice try, but it won't fly, Orville.
I do believe your heart is in the right place, but face the facts. "Red" is just the color of Bono's American Express card, the flags of a bunch of decrepit imperialist states, and the six pointed star on the Rothschild's phony, tarted up coat of arms.
And its controlled opposite blue is just the color of the wannabe world-governing 'brotherly' UN, the bullshit Democrats who have shown their true, pro-war, corporate whoring colors, which tend like the rest of these fuckers to green and black, the colors in this country at least, of filthy lucre, money, Mammon, the false god that all of these bloodsuckers worship, and the pigfeed in the troughs at which they all feed.
So, let's be "clear", commanism, and socialism, are just illusory ideals that can not and have not ever worked in the real world. They are hieratic and hierarchical, and even easier to subvert to totalitarian ends than the Friedman and Demonacracy (oh sorry, wrong meeting, that one's down at the docks tomorrow. I meant to say "freedom and democracy") spouted by the warmongers on this, the 'capitalist' side of the aisle.
And the world looks just the same,
and history ain't changed,
because the banners are all flown in the next war....
And the parting on the left is now the parting on the right.
And the beards have all grown longer overnight.
I tip my hat to the new constitution,
Take a bow for the new revolution,
Smile and grin at the change all around,
Pick up my guitar and play,
Just like yesterday,
Then I get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again.
Don't get fooled again.
No, no!
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
"Hieratic" meaning they still have their priestly class, the comintern, hiding behind the 'proletariat', just like demonocracy hides its plutarchic rulers behind the myth of being of, by, and for the 'people'.
Though I do believe that Abraham Lincoln believed that it could and should be so, that we could be governed of, by, and for the people.
Just not in this world by any government which we have seen heretofore.
An excerpt from yesterday's London Telegraph (link to full article follws below):
A draconian regime of fines, which would hit families at times of marriage and death, is being drawn up by ministers to enforce the Identity Card scheme.
The first cards will be issued by the Identity and Passport Service to passport applicants in 2009.
Millions of people, from struggling students to newly-wed women and bereaved relatives, will face a system of penalties, netting more than £40 million for the Treasury.
People would be fined up to £1,000 for failing to return a dead relative's ID card, while women who marry will have to pay at least £30 for a new card if they want to use their married name, risking a £1,000 fine if they do not comply.
The revelations will fuel debate over ID cards in the countdown to their nationwide introduction, which the Government claims will boost security, tackle identity fraud and prevent illegal working. But costs are soaring and the technology has failed in tests.
The Government says people will have to pay £30 for a simple ID card, or more than £90 for one with a passport. Experts, however, claim that the cost of a combined card could be as high as £300, pushing the implementation costs beyond £20 billion.
advertisementDavid Davis, the shadow home secretary, said the fines revelation shows that the scheme "will hit the taxpayer not the terrorists" and is "just another Labour stealth tax".
He said: "It is shocking that the Government is considering charges and fines on people at some of the most sensitive times in life. The Conservatives would scrap this plastic poll tax and invest the savings in practical measures to improve security."
The first cards will be issued by the Identity and Passport Service to passport applicants in 2009 and will become compulsory from 2010.
As well as a picture, the card will carry a microchip holding biometric information such as fingerprints, iris or facial scans. Everyone over 16 applying for a passport will have these details added to a National Identity Register from 2008.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=5G0VOOAIAJRRJQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2006/12/24/nid24.xml
Totalitarian state anyone?
A fond thank you to the Labour Party and socialism and its bastard child, social democracy.
As a recovered, lifelong NY Times reader, I sometimes marvel at those whose similar addiction is so severe that they will actually pay money to read the semi-psychotic ramblings of Thos. Friedman or his Catholic schoolgirl dominatrix co-worker, Maureen Dowd. It was indeed the Times' new "select" program, whereby one has to fork over cash to read these assholes that finally got me to kick it cold turkey. For anyone else similarly afflicted, here is the verbal ibogaine to that NY Times smack monkey on your back, the vaunted key to understanding Friedman.
Use it in good health. Ciao.
May the Peace of this much mangled season be upon all of us now and always.
Gonna have a funkin' good time, oh yeah.
Gotta have a funky good time. Gotta take you higher.
I feel good. Knew that I would.
I got soul, and I'm super bad. I got a move,
and I know just what to do.
Sometimes I feel so nice, good Lord,
I wanna jump back and just kiss myself.
J.B., the Godfather of Soul (May 3, 1933 - December 25, 2006)
ATLANTA -- James Brown, the dynamic, pompadoured "Godfather of Soul," whose revolutionary rhythms, rough voice and flashing footwork influenced generations of musicians from rock to rap, died early Christmas morning. He was 73.
Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday and died of heart failure around 1:45 a.m. Monday.
He initially seemed fine at the hospital and even told people that he planned to be on stage in New York on New Year's Eve, Copsidas said.
Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. From Mick Jagger to Michael Jackson, David Bowie to Public Enemy, Brown's rapid-footed dancing, hard-charging beats and heartfelt yet often unintelligible vocals changed the musical landscape. He was to rhythm and dance music what Bob Dylan was to lyrics.
"He was an innovator, he was an emancipator, he was an originator. Rap music, all that stuff came from James Brown," entertainer Little Richard, a longtime friend of Brown's, told MSNBC.
"James Brown changed music," said Rev. Al Sharpton, who toured with him in the 1970s and imitates his hairstyle to this day.
"He made soul music a world music," Sharpton said. "What James Brown was to music in terms of soul and hip-hop, rap, all of that, is what Bach was to classical music. He put everybody on a different beat, a different style of music. He pioneered it."
Brown's classic singles include "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag," "(Get Up I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine," "I Got You (I Feel Good)" and "Say It Loud -- I'm Black and I'm Proud," a landmark 1968 statement of racial pride.
"I clearly remember we were calling ourselves colored, and after the song, we were calling ourselves black," Brown told The Associated Press in 2003. "The song showed even people to that day that lyrics and music and a song can change society."
He won a Grammy for lifetime achievement in 1992, as well as Grammys in 1965 for "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (best R&B recording) and for "Living In America" in 1987 (best R&B vocal performance, male.) He was one of the initial artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, along with Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and other founding fathers.
Brown, who lived in Beech Island, S.C., near the Georgia line, triumphed despite a turbulent personal life and charges of abusing drugs and alcohol. After a widely publicized, drug-fueled confrontation with police in 1988 that ended in an interstate car chase, Brown spent more than two years in prison for aggravated assault and failing to stop for a police officer.
From the 1950s, when Brown had his first R&B hit, "Please, Please, Please" in 1956, through the mid-1970s, Brown went on a frenzy of cross-country tours, concerts and new songs. He earned the nickname "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business" and often tried to prove it to his fans, said Jay Ross, his lawyer of 15 years.
Brown's stage act was as memorable, and as imitated, as his records, with his twirls and spins and flowing cape, his repeated faints to the floor at the end as band members tried in vain to get him to leave the stage.
His "Live at The Apollo" in 1962 is widely considered one of the greatest concert records ever. And he often talked of the 1964 concert in which organizers made the mistake of having the Rolling Stones, not him, close the bill. He would remember a terrified Mick Jagger waiting offstage, chain smoking, as Brown pulled off his matchless show.
"To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one's coming even close," rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy once told the AP.
Brown routinely lost two or three pounds each time he performed and kept his furious concert schedule in his later years even as he fought prostate cancer, Ross said.
With his tight pants, shimmering feet, eye makeup and outrageous hair, Brown set the stage for performers such as Michael Jackson and Prince. The early rap generation overwhelmingly sampled his music and voice as they laid the foundation of hip-hop culture.
"Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I'm saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 percent of their music is me," Brown told The AP in 2003.
Born in poverty in Barnwell, S.C., in 1933, Brown was abandoned as a 4 year old to the care of relatives and friends. He grew up on the streets of Augusta, Ga., in an "ill-repute area," as he once called it, where he learned how to hustle to survive.
"I wanted to be somebody," Brown said.
By the eighth grade in 1949, Brown had served 3 1/2 years in Alto Reform School near Toccoa, Ga., for breaking into cars. While there, he met Bobby Byrd, whose family took Brown into their home. Byrd also took Brown into his group, the Gospel Starlighters. Soon they changed their name to the Famous Flames and their style to hard R&B.
In January 1956, King Records of Cincinnati signed the group, and four months later "Please, Please, Please" was in the R&B Top Ten.
Pete Allman, a radio personality in Las Vegas who had been friends with Brown for 15 years, credited Brown with jump-starting his career and motivating him personally and professionally.
"He was a very positive person. There was no question he was the hardest working man in show business," Allman said. "I remember Mr. Brown as someone who always motivated me, got me reading the Bible."
Brown's life was plagued with charges of abusing drugs and alcohol and of hitting his third wife, Adrienne.
In September 1988, Brown, high on PCP and carrying a shotgun, entered an insurance seminar next to his Augusta office. Police said he asked seminar participants if they were using his private restroom. Police chased Brown for a half-hour from Augusta into South Carolina and back to Georgia. The chase ended when police shot out the tires of his truck.
Brown received a six-year prison sentence. He spent 15 months in a South Carolina prison and 10 months in a work release program before being paroled in February 1991. In 2003, the South Carolina parole board granted him a pardon for his crimes in that state.
Soon after his release, Brown was on stage again with an audience that included millions of cable television viewers nationwide who watched the three-hour, pay-per-view concert at Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.
Adrienne Brown died in 1996 in Los Angeles at age 47. She took PCP and several prescription drugs while she had a bad heart and was weak from cosmetic surgery two days earlier, the coroner said.
More recently, he married his fourth wife, Tomi Raye Hynie, one of his backup singers. The couple had a son, James Jr.
Two years later, Brown spent a week in a private Columbia hospital, recovering from what his agent said was dependency on painkillers. Brown's attorney, Albert "Buddy" Dallas, said the singer was exhausted from six years of road shows.
Brown was performing to the end, and giving back to his community.
Three days before his death, he joined volunteers at his annual toy giveaway in Augusta, and he planned to perform on New Year's Eve at B.B. King Blues Club in New York.
Bill Hicks on controlled demolition said, "Now that J.B.'s up here, we are really going to have so kick ass music. Hey, Gabriel, what time's the show start?"
As to the link, "Yes, I do comment on 9/11 from my vantage point. And let me tell you, the view is pretty clear. And, sorry, but Jeff is dead wrong about it. Just listen to what I have to say about it at the end of this clip. It's true, or my name ain't Bill Hicks. That's all for now. They told me I can't come back any more after 2007 or I'm gonna have to surf the lake of fire. No way on that. Besides, the music down there sucks. They've got the Archies and Tony Orlando & Dawn.
Peace, dudes."
"All we are saying is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance "
John Lennon
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061226/ap_on_re_eu/world_christmas
"Speaking from a balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square, the pontiff called for peace in the Middle East, noting in particular the long war between
Israel and the Palestinians.
"I place in the hands of the divine Child of Bethlehem the indications of a resumption of dialogue between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which we have witnessed in recent days, and the hope of further encouraging developments," Benedict said in his annual address."
---snip-----
"The theme of Middle East peace resonated with others. Britain's Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, fresh from a visit to the Holy Land, said in his annual address as spiritual leader of the world's Anglican Communion that the world must not turn its back on Israelis or Palestinians."
"We live in a political world,
Where peace is not welcome at all,
It's turned away from the door to wander some more,
Or put up against the wall."
Bob Dylan
From William Ziff's book, The Rape of Palestine (1938), "With conscious design, the [British] Administration fostered hostility between Arabs and Jews. It directly advised the amazed Arabs of Palestine and Egypt to abstain from any concessions to the Jews. It formed the Moslem-Christian Association, and used it as a weapon against the Zionists. It instructed astonished Arab youngbloods in the techniques and tenets of modern nationalism, in order to resist Jewish 'pretenses.' And in London it contacted reliable anti-Jewish elements to form a liason that has endured to this day. The Arabs were not only instigated and advised, but supplied with funds and their arguments ghost-written by Englishmen in high places."
From the 1930 edition of Al-Iqdam, a Jerusalem-based Arab newspaper,
"We are led by a group of men who bargain us away, buying and selling us like cattle. The Arab people have not yet said their last word on the Arab-Jewish question. When this word has been said, it will not be one of hatred, but one of peace and brotherhood, as is suitable for two people who live in one country."
Around the same time Falastin, an Arab newspaper, claimed in an editorial,
"...despite British allegations of an unreachable enmity between Jews and Arabs, we cannot recall a single instance since the British occupation here when they made the slightest effort to bring the Arabs and Jews together.Pre-war Jewish residents lived here peacefully with Arabs for hundreds of years. To this day these Jews, in addition to theArabs, maintain that if it were not for the British policy of divide and rule, the Arabs and Jews would again live in Palestine in peace and harmony."
Dr. Gustave Gutierrez stated, after his visit to Jerusalem in 1936, that he saw "no evidence of friction or disagreement between the Arab and Jewish people in Palestine," and that, "if Arabs and Jews were left to their own councils they could settle the Palestine problem wisely and permanently."
"Master of Puppets I'm pulling your strings
twisting your mind and smashing your dreams
Blinded by me, you can't see a thing
Just call my name, `cause I'll hear you scream
Master
Master
Just call my name, `cause I'll hear you scream
Master
Master"
James Hetfield
"Hope this is what you wanted.
Hope this is what you had in mind.
Cuz this is what you're getting."
Tool
"TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of i{Spiritus Mundi}
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
W.B. Yeats
" Why don't you watch where you're wandering?
Why don't you watch where you're stumbling?
You're wading knee deep and going in.
And you may never come back again.
This bog is thick and easy to get lost in
when you're a stupid,dumb ass, beligerant fucker.
I hope it sucks you down."
Tool
Hello Iridescent cuttlefish! How are you.
You know I have seen how they build those wonderful homes. The hobbit-like abodes in your blog. It's amazing. Maybe I may be fortunate to have one built in my lifetime. These homes are simply the best. Thank you for explaining this knowledge at your blog site. Anybody reading this who is merely curious about what I just wrote should go to cuttlefish's blog.
You said...
Okay, but collectivism ain't what's being preached - it's dog-eat-dog (and maybe your dear, sweet granny) capitalism. Collectivism?
Good point. I can relate to that question I think. This is quoted by Norman Dodd a former member of the Reece Committee. The Committee that investigated Tax-Exempt Foundations and the like back in who knows when. 1960's? The Foundations have influenced us through education to teach that the original ideas of the Founding Fathers of U.S. are no longer practical. That the future belongs to a collectivistic concept and there is no disagreement on this in the U.S. Gov't.
So Communism to the financial elite is a means to what we call a monopoly. As the Organization will say of large scale industry into an administratable unit and the elite will be the beneficiaries of it.
Go to Google Video for Norman Dodd's interview. It's about an hour and is most enlightening. He speaks strictly about the Tax-Exempt Foundations and how they have influenced us throughout the years. He kicked the bucket a couple of months after this film.
A belated Merry Xmas and happy holidays.
Human from Earth,
I’d have to agree with your assessment that red and blue are just changeable plastic banners, due to the fact that an elite has always been in charge and merely used the flag of easiest convenience, but this brings us closer to the real solution, doesn’t it?
The opposite of a society controlled by an elite is truly egalitarian society.
In any economy based on scarcity (as all economies have been), scarcity and its manipulation are what give the elite their power.
The antithesis of scarcity is abundance.
When we think about abundance, we reflexively think about resources, but the two are distinct—we can have an economy of abundance (open source) within a closed system (finite resources), once control and distribution of those resources is not dictated from some central command hierarchy.
I think the big constipation in our thinking is believing that we can wrest control away from the old elites and then set up a more egalitarian system—the much derided impulse to Utopia.
The solution comes from a very different direction: an emergent, difficult-to-predict (and control!) system that brings with it abundance, egalitarianism, and (oddly enough) a new form of capitalism.
Here’s the most basic notion:
Abundance is (again) both a cause and a consequence of complexity.
--Michel Bauwens
In an amazing explanatory essay, Bauwens goes through all the background you might need to comprehend this spontaneous evolution in:
P2P AND HUMAN EVOLUTION
(Placing Peer to Peer Theory in an Integral Framework)
Freedom is Fractal.
Hey humblenotry,
I'll check that out. Nice vibe. Thanks.
Don't know what happened to that link, but here's another to Michel Bauwens that should work.
And another thought strikes me, as I head out the door today...
There’s a lot more of this crazy anarchist, spiral-galaxy-in-the-vortex-of-your-eye kind of thing bubbling up, crystallizing maybe, all over the supposedly antiseptic formica surfaces that have been congealed for our convenience and sterility. Like this one:
41. The arrest of the free flow of information means the enslavement of the world to the interests of those who profit from information's scarcity, the vectoral class.
from
A HACKER MANIFESTO [version 4.0], by McKenzie Wark.
The emergence of emergent forms is finally doing just that.
Yes the American flag was the flag of convenience used by the elite to fool the population into believing that they were working entirely for the benefit of the people. The U.S. Constitution and Bill Of Rights is the proof of this. The exoteric opposed to the esoteric ideals have been betrayed. The esoteric purposes of the elite always favors the corrupt politicians and heads of corporations etc... But the ideals exoteric which are timeless have openly been betrayed. Liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness is impractical today because of the elite. The Global Management System is not. The elite have molded our minds to accept another concept anti to the one they have propagated in the 1700's. The pursuit of happiness lies in globalism and our individual endeavors outside of this system should be outdated as is taught.
*Gong sounding out loudly* American ideals secular and religious have been betrayed. After 911 most of the Christian ministers in the local churches were preaching an authoritative message. Grandma and Grandpa were also told that we all had to respect authority. This being taught in the local churches. We all had to support our president right or wrong. Our representatives in the Federal City do not need to read the Patriot Act because it's business as usual. Why should the representatives read any Acts coming their way for approval? They do not represent the people anymore. They represent the people who sit at the top of the pyramid of the Global Management System.
This is the radical collectivism that we are exposing: It being right or wrong we must survive in the Brave New World. Making the appropriate sacrifices for it to make it work. If we do not support the New World Order we are too outdated and traditional. The only way we can meld into globalism as winners is by betraying the old ideals of liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. I think the reader understands my point. The thesis being liberty, the antithesis being servitude, the synthesis being Global Management System. All three concepts propagated by the elite.
#DONT REPEAT POSTS or else - administration 17:54:43 5/25/104
# Futurist sensibilty dissertation - Nicola 07:45:34 11/05/102
# were they all fascists? - Jasper 01:12:28 10/17/102
* Re: were they all fascists? - Bob 03:04:37 10/17/102
o Re: were they all fascists? - claudio 20:52:27 3/05/104
# Carwashguys.com at it again Fraud alert - fraudcop 03:52:00 7/18/104
# Carwashguys.com at it again Fraud alert - fraudcop 03:51:50 7/18/104
* Carwashguys.com and www.lancewinslow.org scammers - Fraud alert 03:55:11 7/18/104
* Carwashguys.com and www.lancewinslow.org scammers - Fraud alert 03:55:03 7/18/104
# - immagini hard 06:52:25 7/14/104
# - immagini erotiche 04:33:04 7/14/104
# IF THEY REPEAT MESSAGE THEY ARE FRAUDS - fraudcop 02:32:11 7/14/104
ANY ONE WHO SPAMS this site is a FRAUD. BEWARE - Fraudcop 08:15:11 7/06/104
# Re: a - kitchen supplies including bakeware, flatware 15:38:03 6/21/104
# Re: a - outdoor home products 15:36:39 6/21/104
# - furnishings 15:34:47 6/21/104
# - contact lenses 15:33:38 6/21/104
# - nutritional supplements 15:32:26 6/21/104
# Re: a - Sympathy Flowers 15:28:40 6/21/104
# - collectibles Wizard of Oz 15:27:36 6/21/104
BEWARE of DOT CON LANCE WINSLOW and CARWASHGUYS.com - Frank Leone, Los Angeles Times 04:41:33 10/22/103
o Re: correct link to his exploits CARWASHGUYS.com - Chloe Everest 02:20:06 8/01/104
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTELC7F-_Rk&NR
YouTube video on psychotronica ...
mental induction of brain states through remote electro-magnetic technologies... some patents noted...
Is this valid, or is it crap?
mental induction of brain states through remote electro-magnetic technologies... some patents noted...Is this valid, or is it crap?
Valid. And I would say that this is right on target to the theme of elite forced collectivization:
And its origins come right out of the Third Reich--more than 70 years old. According to Mark Phillips, see videos and his discussion--Ampex Corporation in the United States after WWII got the Nazi powerful magnetic driven speaker mind control systems--this goes far to explain why a 'magnetic speakers and audio magnetic tape' corporation in the USA housed the future MKULTRA files--all off this technology):
The Waffen SS of the Third Reich utilized sonics and waves from close-to-the-head speakers in their 'induction ceremonies' to the SS.
Catch up how far they have gone toward manipulating you individually as well as socially (subliminals and scalars):
1.
You can find all four segments of one video here:
A Trance Formation 1 of 4
All time views: 10,954
Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips
56 min 22 sec - Mar 3, 2006
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6484933213546924004
(All four parts, about four hours.)
2.
Other related information:
Title: Was Hurricane Charley STEERED? weather mind/control is just that simple w/ GWEN & HAARP
2004.08.31 12:59
Description: [Remember the U.S. military is on public record of wanting to 'own the weather by 2025'] --- If ELF Scalar Electromagnetic frequencies were used, this would account for what I have described...[1] [in terms of the mental state of the author as well others he seemes to have asked, and compared to his previous experience with other hurricanes which was different]..But more than that, if such Scalar EM was present, then this may also account for [2] the rapid change in Hurricane Charley's direction. Scalar mind and weather manipulation are accomplished in the same ELF range, and that is not just an unproven theory: It is a proven scientific fact. --- By causing many towers [HAARP, GWEN, etc.] to pulse with the exact ELF frequency of the normal earth pulsation, scientists have learned how to not only create, but also how to maneuver and direct storms. Tesla's discovery can duplicate almost every single phenomena of nature, from cyclones to tornados; and now, with Solar Power Satellites used in conjunction with land based towers, weather control is just that simple. AND The natural earth ELF waves are identical to the frequency spectrum of our human brainwaves, and it has been proven that the use of an ELF bombardment - at the same frequency as the human brain - can change a person's thoughts or emotions. In the early 1960's, Dr. Andrija Puharich discovered various mental effects of ELF, specifically that 7.83 Hz (the earth's pulse rate) made a person feel good, producing an altered-state; that 10.80 Hz caused riotous behavior; and that 6.6 Hz caused depression.
3.
Title: HOW TO STEER A HURRICANE, Scalar Wars, The Brave New World of Scalar Electromagnetics
2004.09.13 07:00
Description: Engineering the weather is duck soup; they tested that over the U.S. in 1967, and entered upon continuing operations over North America on July 4, 1976 as a grim kind of KGB "Bicentennial Gift" to the United States. Here's how it is done with several interferometers. First, the interferometers can deliberately make "high pressure areas" (cool the air so it shrinks and its "footprint" pressure on the ground increases because its density increases) and "low pressure areas" (heat the air so that expands and its "footprint" pressure on the ground decreases because its density decreases). Well, if one makes the highs and lows where one wishes them, and judiciously and somewhat slowly moves them along a given path, these highs and lows will entrain the jet streams and thus "steer" the weather. "For the past six months I have been undergoing the greatest paradigm shift I have ever had to go through. It has rattled my nerves and shaken my bones. This intense adjustment of my "world"has come about by studying the information given by Col. Tom Bearden at his website Cheniere. The new knowledge there has necessitated a total revision of my ideas about physical reality, the world we live in, and the future of humanity. This paradigm shifting even actually made me dizzy on certain days as I tried to absorb and digest Bearden's vast amount of information. I am not a scientist at all, just a layman, and I have little comprehension of the math and high physics of this new science called "Scalar Electromagnetics." But there is a great deal of information at Cheniere which needs to become common knowledge as fast as possible, for the sake of the survival of life on earth. To that end I have put together this small primer...
4.
Title: TO UNDERSTAND HAARP: NWO's Scalar Electromagnetics: secret 20th century parallel tech path
2005.01.04 07:49
Description: I've been promising this description of scalar energy physics and technology ever since posting this: Title: HAARP-watch: fake HAARP tremors rock earth deep beneath San Andreas Fault, Author: haarp-watch, Michel Chossudovsky, Date: 2004.12.11 07:02, Description: Mysterious tremors deep beneath the San Andreas Fault near the quake-prone town of Parkfield are shaking the earth's brittle crust, FAR BELOW THE REGION WHERE EARTHQUAKES NORMALLY STRIKE -- and scientists say THEY CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT'S HAPPENING or what the motions mean. Seismic researchers are monitoring the strange vibrations..."..."We see this kind of tremor activity inside volcanoes like Mount St. Helens," Nadeau said, "but that's due to the movement of rising magma, and in the tremors we've recorded there's NO EVIDENCE OF VOLCANISM and NO SEISMIC WAVES TYPICAL OF ORDINARY EARTHQUAKES." "In the US, the technology is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) as part of the ("Star Wars") Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes [and altering mass brain waves]. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction [and mind control]. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest capable of selectively destabilising agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions." http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/12/305741.shtml Here it is. TOM BEARDEN QUOTE: "I'm. . .trying to finish my book: Energy from the Vacuum: Concepts and Principles, and get it to the publisher for publication later this year. Hopefully the book will turn all the interested young grad students and post-docs loose in the free-energy area. They will not have to spend 30 agonizing years to get to where I am, and where a few others are, but can simply start here and go forward."
Down the Memory Hole went this 1997 quote:
This may have been what the U.S. Secretary of State was referring to when he talked of an "eco-type of terrorism!"
U.S. Secretary of State, William Cohen, said in 1997: "Others [terrorists] are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves... So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations... It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our [counterterrorism] efforts." --- Secretary of Defense William Cohen at an April 1997 counterterrorism conference sponsored by former Senator Sam Nunn. Quoted from DoD News Briefing, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Q&A at the Conference on Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S. Strategy, University of Georgia, Athens, Apr. 28, 1997.
December 26, 2003: Earthquake 6.5 near Bam, Iran
December 26, 2004: "Earthquake" 9.3 and Tsunami in Indian Ocean near Sumatra
December 26, 2006: Earthquake 7.1 near Taiwan
So what happened on December 26, 2005??? I guess the machine was down.
Well IC...
As far as the web is concerned, much as it is right here at RI, "we, the users" ARE both the "information" and the determining factor in whatever value or importance that information has.
To the extent any "information" here can be said to have any, it is only in what we ourselves bring to it or make out of it ourselves and nothing more. That can't be known or second guessed by anyone untill we actually do that.
Not to dimish Jeff's role, but the discussion and information he is the catalyst for is no less important or valuable a commodity both in exchange for and in assessing his own input to it than it is for any of the rest of us; otherwise none of us would be interested let alone bothered to participate.
He, just like us, only gains by what he can learn trough the combined experience, not simply by providing some empty space for one or selling access to it with some vain hope that something worthwile will come from it all by itself or that those that might be able to make that happen would pay for rather than demand to be paid for making that a possiblity strictly for him alone.
He has about as much hope for that as he might in establishing the Jeff Wells' School of Writing website where he simply sets some offbeat or bizarre topic for the day and hopes some bright lights will dutifully show up add something valuable, witty or interesting to help it fly strictly for brownie points. (Not that it can't look like that sometimes...hmmm?) LOL
So any attempt to merely control, retrict or blockade the various avenues of access that really have no value in and of themselves to the very participants who very much do compose and provide the only value those avenues can only transmit is self-defeating to say the very least.
A cart-before-the-horse, surefire way to go broke or bust on any number of levels for any that attempt it.
So service providers or governments or anyone else in between who thinks they can deliberately block or intercept that "free flow of information" for their own selfish ends obviously don't understand what that information itself is, nor the fact that it will always go over or under or around any and every such attempt to stop it.
Now governments or PTB can clearly try to stop or inhibit us from communicating but they can't stop us from thinking and likely thinking even more unpleasant thoughts about them or maybe even doing something about those less than pleasant thoughts that they also won't know anything about if we can't freely and openly communicate or discuss them in plain sight.
Just how dangerous and paranoia inducing is that likely to be for their fagile and altogether self-important egos do you suppose? Are they ever rich enough or powerfull enough or secure enough that they can afford NOT to know that???
Besides without that content, "us", in fact, there not only isn't anything of any value to either grant or deny access to, there's no one to grant or deny it to either. They are simply one and the same thing.
The mere fact that we "freely" exchange ideas and information with one another has far less to do with us than the nature and value of any information we may have to share.
If you can use it, obviously it's valuable, if you can't it's plainly not. You can't actually determine or judge that untill you have it and even then it depends entirely on who and where you you are...hmmm?
The fact the exchange itself appears to be "free" doesn't mean that what's being exchanged is, much less simply "free for the taking" for anyone who thinks they can simply interrupt its flow and then ransom it back on their own terms. Not do-able as they say.
Stopping it isn't the same thing as owning or having it. Not only that they won't even have the cold comfort of knowing who does or might have it either or with whom and how they might be sharing it.
Now it takes time and effort and not a little intelligence to think, write, and interact with one another in a way that makes this particular experience worthwile for any of us here, or have us coming back to keep at it.
The entire web and all the high-tech industries behind it depend on this very same process being as open, acessable, expressive, and as expansive as it can possibly be just to keep their latest software and gear moving off the shelves everywhere...to even know what new software and harware to make available for us to do it. That's their bread and butter so there's no percentage at all in selling us short let alone selling us out.
So in the end we have the only kind of power that really counts in this Information Age and there's no game afoot at all and not even a thin dime to be made off any of it if we can't or don't get to play it on our own terms not someone else's.
Now the kind of computing and telecommunications power that is already in our grubby little unwashed hands as it is has not only levelled the so called "playing field" it's also rendered that playing field the most expendable and vulnerable aspect in this entire mix.
Very soon there are going to be completely private and even mobile networks that remain virtually unknown and undetectable or automatically switch to completely to new channels to stay that way if they ever are.
That's not simply going to be cheaply and easily done it's also going to be an impossibility to track or stop short of turning off all the electricity because that is the very route it's going to travel on.
You'll be on-line the moment you plug your comp into the nearest electrical outlet and the power companies aren't going to spend a cent for the modest little charge they hit you up for that little luxury nor give a tinker's damn about what you do or don't do with it either.
Anyone wnats to try and monitor that monster will have to find some means of their own to do it.
So we're already looking at wide open and uncontrolled information flow being added on ordinary power lines to be picked off by anyone who knows precisely what they want from the countless billions of streams that will that flow quite freely in it as well as everywhere else.
So as fast as anyone comes up with some method to try contain, control, or monitor that free flow of information the more it will just keep on breaking out in ever new and unexpected floods somewhere else.
Trying to stop it at this point will if anything only serve to stimulate it even more.
Excellent stuff from McKinzie Wark such as;
27. Education is slavery, it enchains the mind and makes it a resource for class power. When the ruling class preaches the necessity of an education it invariably means an education in necessity. Education is not the same as knowledge. Nor is it the necessary means to acquire knowledge. Education is the organization of knowledge within the constraints of scarcity. Education 'disciplines' knowledge, segregating it into homogenous 'fields', presided over by suitably 'qualified' guardians charged with policing the representation of the field. One may acquire an education, as if it were a thing, but one becomes knowledgeable, through a process of transformation. Knowledge, as such, is only ever partially captured by education, its practice always eludes and exceeds it.
I love it, 'policing the representations', indeed
In my world I call this 'fixing the category', or declaring the relative as being the absolute.
Check it out people, this guy is sharp.
Hey Iridescent Cuttlefish,
I am all for eliminating the politics and technology of scarcity and I think your blog has some excellent ideas and links.
HOWEVER, how come you never mention water fuel cell technology? Now this is not the oil-to-hydrogen fuel cell technology that gets funding from the Busharro petrocracy, this is hydrogen from water cells.
And it seems, yes, they did kill the man who held the nearly 50 patents on the technology in which the Pentagon expressed extreme interest.
Now that's just about as significant as all of Nikola Tesla's stuff combined, and we know that it actually existed. Where are you and Jeff on this one??????
I’m going to have to agree with you on this one, Silverfox, but that’s not to say that those who currently control the show aren’t trying awfully hard to rein in those internets (tubes & all). There is, you see, a lot at stake—everything, in fact. I know that many people wonder what all the fuss is about, since the political system is so rigged and since it was Huxley, not Orwell who predicted most correctly the modus operandi of the soft tyranny under which we now live. Neil Postman, whose voice I really miss, described it this way in the Foreword from Amusing Ourselves to Death:
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
(If you’re unfamiliar with this book, or Postman’s writings in general, you’ve missed a giant. Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology, and Education is a particular favorite of mine, but for bibliographies and more, go to Neil Postman Online).
If one has to “choose” between the rival dystopias of Huxley & Orwell, then Huxley seems to have got it more right, but obviously there’s an element of Big Brother in this discussion as well. Those ubiquitous, octopussy PTB certainly would like to shut this Information Age down because it threatens not just their political duopoly, but their economic stranglehold as well.
The sweetest fruit from the Tree of Information is free stuff. This is where the coming cornucopic abundance is least understood, but there are some primers explaining what’s next. The Long Tail: The Tragically Neglected Economics of Abundance explains how, starting with digital goods, but then expanding into all other goods & services, diminishing costs will eventually make everything…free. As it is, there are already completely artificial & arbitrary price supports on a lot of gear that we mistakenly believe costs a lot to produce. Anything electrical, basically, but then there’s drugs (forget Pharma’s lies to the contrary), and the list just grows and grows. This is the secret that they will do anything to keep secret, including shutting down these damned tubeways.
TechDirt has part of the scoop on how they've already cobbled & crippled our internet in this post from their ever-resourceful blog:
You've Already Paid $2,000 For A Fiber Connection You'll Never Get
(from the money-back,-please dept)
As the Baby Bells falsely complain about how people aren't paying them for the internet, or whine about how it's unfair to expect them to compete against muni-broadband, there's something important to remember. For the last decade, those same telcos have made promise after promise to local governments concerning the delivery of truly open fiber optic connections to the home. In exchange, they've been granted all sorts of privileges and rate increases by the government, costing all of us money. And where did the money go? Not towards what was promised.
Bruce Kushnick, who we've written about before is now coming out with a book that details how the telcos scammed approximately $200 billion from all of us (about $2,000 per household), promising fiber to every home with symmetric 45 Mbps speeds and an open access model that would allow anyone to offer competitive internet services over that connection. This is a promise that they have not kept... though, they have kept our money.
Now if that doesn't smack of conspiracy, obstruction, repression & fraud, what does? Why is that S. Korea and most of Europe already have massive broadband capacity, while we languish in ever slower lanes? Compare the abysmal state of our communication infrastructure with this tenet from the UN's
Declaration of Principles
Building the Information Society: a global challenge in the new Millennium:
4. We reaffirm, as an essential foundation of the Information Society, and as outlined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; that this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Communication is a fundamental social process, a basic human need and the foundation of all social organization. It is central to the Information Society. Everyone, everywhere should have the opportunity to participate and no one should be excluded from the benefits the Information Society.
Unless you've got something to hide, of course...
Malcolm X John Lennon,
I'm down with all that. I have mentioned this particular act of suppression by linking (repeatedly, sorry, Jeff!) Brian O' Leary's brilliant analysis, The Hidden New Energy Debate.
For me, the problem is that I write so much here and elsewhere, in addition to all the reading & surfing I call research, that I've completely neglected my own blogs. I'm trying to channel it all into a book-type project, but markets for oatmeal being what they are...
Still, I will follow your lead and pay more attention to the water cell story. Thanks.
Well Sounder...
Academia has always produced it's own kind of peculiar ivory-towered elitists with their own peculiar codes, standards, and agendas, (not to mention their black-robed and mortar-boarded ceremonial mistique), but they could hardly be considered any mere lap-dogs to the filthy rich whom they generally distain. Not for their money, mind you, but their less than high-minded approaches to getting it and what they generally do with it.
So the pedagogy of education is still their private preserve and regardless of any necessity or undue influence of mere money to foot their various bills, they are nevertheless quite jealous, if not downright vindictive, in guarding their rank and file from any confusion regarding where their true loyalties lie or what constitutes a genuinely superior human being in their books.
So I'm afraid the real problem with education is simply the natural result of it being an altogether closed and thoroughly in-bred system, (those that can, do; those that can't go directly from school into teaching in them...hmmm?).
Despite that they still remain the acknowledged and undisputed guardians of all "real knowledge", (ie. it doesn't exist or have any legitimacy untill they actually say it does).
Real knowledge itself, however, is always an ongoing by-product of spontaneous human discovery in virtually every walk of life except, of course, the ones in those well travelled hallways of academia itself where it can only be seen when all the empirical evidence makes it impossible to avoid it any longer.
So if you do happen to discover something important and you yourself are accredited with some formal academic degree which may have some remote bearing on your discovery then you and your discovery will likely be acknowledged sooner or later, provided of course that you're patient and follow all the prescribed protocols and don't step on any of the wrong toes in the process.
If you do not, regardless of how important that discovery may be, or how thoroughly and irrefutably you've documented and verified it, untill someone with the "proper credentials" both discovers you and what you have "seemingly" found and naturally takes the credit for discovering both, that discovery itself isn't ever going to be known beyond being anything but a laughing matter much less added to any "formal" body of human knowledge.
That is the real power and authority that academia weilds with absolute impunity over our society.
Now the tinkering with our children and their education should hardly be unexpected given that most of those responsible do not actually have any children of their own, nor do they consider that to have any relevence or bearing on how they choose to deal with or presumably educate other people's.
Not only that, they themselves, are hardly normal or average in any ordinary sense and have an absolute and unshakeable belief in both their own and any other degreed and decreed intellectual superiority to determine any and all of life's outcomes irrespective of how any of those purely intellectual decisions happen to turn out.
They alone are allowed to make whatever mistakes they will in what will always have that blanket protection of being a purely intellectual endeavour which is all life can ever boil down to for them.
It's unfortunate, naturally, if kids get somewhat "messed-up" by any intellectual predillections that go astray, but they also form a body of solid evidence that is nevertheless "good, right, and necessary" to demonstrably prove that whatever brainy concept they've suffered from is genuinely unuseable, inappropriate, and counter-productive.
Knowledge is of course always it's own reward in their books and they will continue to belief that it is good to know what isn't good for us and of course that has to have some burden of proof which is never their burden for some mysterious reason even when they happen to create it.
What I am somewhat emphatically trying to point out is that there is an altogether obvious and extremely artificial quality to the entire institution of education that is so endemic and systemic that it cannot help but go unrecognised either within or without because of the power, for good or ill, that it also bestows on that instiuion.
The social dilemma is quite commonplace. Not as important a question for us as who polices the policemen, but of the very same quality for only teachers teach other teachers and there is no one in that loop capable of seeing let alone teaching them any of the errors of their ways and their own creed can never accept it coming from anyone else.
Totally off-topic but I was surprised at this (must be?) blatant propaganda. It doesn't get more primitive or tribalistic than this. . . .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6161691.stm
water cell info and UK documentaries about zero point technology in it:
Forget Peak or Veg Oil, go Water Engine: plans, video, politics of zero point excited H20
author: thoughtful grouping
- Water Car Inventor Stanley Meyer Presumably Murdered in 1998,
- another (Bill Williams) recently threatened in April 2006.
- Other inventors in New Zeland (on a 60 Minutes programme) are presently patenting "excitated" water--running in UNADAPTED regular engines.
- Other versions, however, show anyone can make a Joe Cell because its basic energy physics, though definitely not exclusively thermodynamics....
I could care less to hear the terms "orgone" or "etheric" in some of the less recommended layman's videos below, though I include them because nothing else I have found demonstrates the visual aspects more spot on than some of these.
FIRST, to brace and educate yourself, I recommended a set of videos from 1995 that have more scientific terms. (These are followed by some on Tesla if you want, though they are unrequired.) Then, SECOND, watch the latter ones. in THAT order. It's labelled below.
"It would appear that Pandora's box has been opened on this, never to be shut." And it does mean that the only thing holding oil in place anymore for an energy choice is politics instead of economics: the purpose of oil now more than ever is clearly to maintain environmentally degradative political frameworks and corporate state corruption of the world's democracies. Free yourself from oil, put the oil majors out of business. Put Schlumberger, Halliburton, BP, Chevron-Texaco, the Rockefellers, the Saudis, the Bushes, all out of business. And save the planet at the same moment. Stanley Meyer mentioned that NASA is already using water engines technology in black operations, and admitted to contracts with him. This is big. Really really big. See 20 sequence "Joe Cell" water engine building process videos below as well. It's all you could ever want. Forget Peak Oil and Forget Veg Oil. Go Water Engine.
Additionally, IC, you might look into the permanent magnets engine (for one that works, the Hummingbird motor 500% efficiency pulled out of it 1 unit of work goes in per 5 work out spun off the distabailzation of extremely powerful permanent mangnets torque), by a heavily repressed inventor (who spent jail time in California without committing crimes! Called to appear before a judge, he says, and the judge said "i've been given orders to have you jailed without trial". "Without trial?" "Yes, though I think you have a hell of an appeal.")
IT'S CALLED "SNOW DAY" AND I REALLY HATE TO PISS IN THE VIRGIN SNOW, BUT........
"What the fuck are you talking about? I have no idea what you think of me, other than that you seem to like to insinuate things.
I was always taught to speak plainly, which I try to do. I was also taught that cowards hide behind innuendo and insinuation.
So put up or shut up. I'd prefer you put up, since I honestly have no clue what it is you think I am, what I represent, or what kind of agenda (if any) you think I support.
Care to dance, or would you rather slink off into the corner and leave me standing here all alone?"........professorpan in the current thread "Amazing synchronicity story".
Hey, Professor Pisspot (Pan), I'm only weighing in here on "Snow Day" because your efforts (along with a few other rectal sphincters) got me banned from membership at R.I. way back last spring. I'm more than willing to call an asshole an "asshole". IMHO, You ARE the compleat "ASSHOLE", for now, and for all time. I once told you I wanted to share the prison cell next to you so I could drive you crazy, or force you to try to kill me. I still hold that sentiment. You attack everyone who doesn't share your apparently pagan view of Life, the Universe, and Everything. I wish Jeff Wells had the guts to ban your smarmy ass!!! You write and talk like you know everything, but then, "Aw Shucks" it off, by saying that you really, really don't. I completely agree with darkbeforedawn's challenge to new (and older, regular) R.I. readers to go back and read through the reams of electronic SHIT that you have shoveled into any discussion that even SMELLS like it might approach the truth of what is really going on in any venue. Unlike you, and all the rest of the "sheeple" who bleat on, and on, and onnnnnnnnnnn, behind your pseudo-safe little screen names, I will at least come out ONCE AGAIN, and identify myself to you, and all who choose to read/write here. My full, given, Christian name is Alexander Franklin Mutter, of Portsmouth, Virginia, CSA. But, I digress........To answer the question you asked above of darkbeforedawn, I truly believe that you're nothing more than a new age, S.I.S. That's Old Floyd Smoots speak for a Self Important Shithead!!! Now, before you pull the pin of your own verbal hand grenade, preperatory of hurling it in my direction........YOU do the search of just how FEW posts I had before banning, and how VERY few I have bothered to write post banning here on the part of the website where people (in spite of your best efforts) are still allowed to weigh in by our gracious host, Jeff.
Love & Pisses,
Old Floyd
ANUS.com attacked by Salvation Army!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ANUS.com Refutes Corporate Attempts at Media Domination
Salvation Army Rebuked for Aggression Against Net Critics
November 13, 2006
ANUS News
The Salvation Army, a $3.1 billion dollar "charity" that helps shelter corporations from taxes in exchange for minimal effort spent "helping" the impoverished, today threatened ANUS.com's domain name provider with legal action over a graphics file that satirized the Salvation Army logo. The Salvation Army's law firm, a beltway favorite known for its closeness to large business interests, threatened to remove the ANUS.com domain from the internet by Friday evening if the graphic was not censored.
"This is a classic case of aggressive image control by a parasitic organization," said ANUS writer Thomas Martinez. "The Salvation Army is hoping that its unchallenged violation of law, since American law specifically allows satirical or journalistic depictions of logo and trademarks, will allow it to control any associated image or symbol." Martinez pointed out that financial gain can be achieved with punitive lawsuits and that this case could set a precedent by which smaller web sites could be bullied by those "with the money or tax-deductible status to have an army of attorneys.
The graphic portrayed a similar icon to the familiar Salvation Army shield motif, but labeled it "The Satanic Army," offending the Christian organization which received increased funding under President Bush[1 and is known for firing non-Christians and homosexuals[2]. Although the Salvation Army believes it is strengthening itself, like modern society it is instead showing the world its impotence by attempting to control reality through symbols when reality is far more independent than human pretense allows.
read more...
http://www.anus.com/zine/news/1014.html
Once again, Old Floyd Smoots has to weigh in here. SURPRISE!!! As a Bible-believing Christian, I regret to point out the "correctness" of this post. The Salvation Army has strayed far, far from its original Christian roots, and is today, just another tool of the NW0. I gleaned this information from more than one fundamentalist website, and I totally agree with this assessment.
Definition of nihilism taken from a 1963 Webster's dictionary:
1a: a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless b: a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and esp. of moral truths 2a(1): a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility (2) usu cap: the program of a 19th century Russian party advocating revolutionary reform and using terrorism and assassination b: Terrorism - nihilist
If you listen to President George Bush Jr. speak he fits this definition pretty well. Maybe he is secretly funding anus.com. As head anusman respectively.
For your benefit or enjoyment here are some sobering facts to ponder on.
Such discrimination from the outside, along with the destructive force of the AIDS epidemic, has tended to obscure the internal problem that plagues the gay community: domestic violence. In fact, several recent studies suggest that same-sex domestic violence may be occurring at a similar rate-approximately one third of all relationships-as heterosexual domestic violence. A six city survey conducted by gay activists last year turned up 1,566 reported incidents of gay domestic violence, several hundred more than reported incidents of anti-gay harassment and violence. People are really surprised, especially about lesbian battering. The notion among feminists, lesbians-among women in general-is that this is a male problem. It's part of an older lesbian-feminist paradigm which says most of the problems in the world come from men and if we could isolate ourselves from them, then things would be kind of idyllic. It's not true. But people in lesbian communities don't want to talk about that publicly. It's like airing dirty laundry. source: Ros Davidson,"Gay-On-Gay Violence: The gay community's dirty secret-domestic violence-is finally coming out of the closet." Salon Magazine, February 27, 1997.
A report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs indicates that of 3,327 domestic violence cases self-reported among homosexuals in 12 U.S. cities in 1997, about half involved lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women. "The fact is, gay men and lesbians are more likely to be injured by an intimate partner than a stranger," said Susan Holt, program coordinator for domestic violence services at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center. Holt said that studies suggest that between 25% to 33% of all gay male and lesbian relationships involve abuse. source: Rhonda Smith,"Lesbians affected by domestic violence, report says,"The Washington Blade, 16 October, 1998.
Cathy Renna, director of community relations for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and lesbian activist, told attendees at a workshop on "Responding to the Religious Right" how to approach journalists writing stories on gay issues,"One of the most important things you can do is have those tough conversations with journalists about when it is completely inappropriate to run to some radical group like the Family Research Council because of misguided notions of "balance." We have to offer them some more moderate voices or convince them that there is no other side to these(gay) issues(but ours). We are now in the position of being able to say, we have the high ground...we're mainstream now." source: Justin Torres,"Strong Rhetoric on 'Radical Right' Marks Homosexual Conference,"CNSNEWS.COM, 4 October, 1999.
Homosexual males, who make up less than 2% of the U.S. population, account for 56% of the adult AIDS cases. As of January 1, 1997, 324,728 men who have sex with men have been diagnosed with AIDS. source: HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report (1997), U.S. HIV and AIDS cases reported through December 1996.
"{I am} tired of the old chestnut that our movement for public acceptance has not increased and will not increase the number of gay men and lesbians in existence. There are more of us than there used to be...'phobes' like Pat Robertson are right when they say that we threaten the family, male domination, and the Calvinistic ethic of work...that has paralyzed most American's search for pleasure." source: Donna Minkowitz,"Recruit,Recruit,Recruit," The Advocate, December 29, 1992.
Canada's largest Protestant denomination the United Church of Canada overwhelmingly approves the federal government's recognition of same-sex marriages. source: Wikipedia
Is it abuse or is it Memorex?
Hi Jeff--
Here's an odd story that might make a good post: Indigo Children.
From Pravda (which makes RI look like the Wall Street Journal):
Take a closer look at your offspring. Researchers claim that 95% of children born after 1994 are the indigo children. The fascinating adjective derives from the color of an aura around their bodies. The internal organs of these children have different functions, their immune systems is several times stronger than that of an average person. The children also have a different kind of DNA, a mutation kind. In other words, as regards the changes in DNA, millions of residents of planet Earth are not humans. A race of new beings is slowly but surely climbing the stage.
Boriska, indigo boy from Mars, predicts mammoth catastrophes in 2009
The boy says he was a Martian being seven meters in height in his past life
The unusual baby boy was born in the town of Volzhsky, the Volgograd region of Russia. While world's leading space agencies are trying to find traces of life on planet Mars, eight-year-old Boriska tells his parents and friends everything he knows about the Martian civilization. Boriska remembers his past life. Specialists say that he knows the information, which he actually cannot know.
The Wiki: "Indigo children is a term used within the New Age movement to refer to children who are alleged to possess paranormal attributes such as the ability to read minds.
The Indigo child concept was first publicized in 1999 by the book The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived, written by the husband-and-wife team of Lee Carroll and Jan Tober [1]. Carroll insists that the concept was obtained via conversations with a spiritual entity known as Kryon."
(Kryon all the way to the bank, no doubt.)
We've already talked about the "Indigo Children" as a potential child recruitment (MKULTRA) brainwash cult, in one of the comment lines a while back...
The people involved in it are, how shall we say, "questionable."
WOW! I haven't thought about the Indigo Girls in a long time...... yuk,yuk. Hope everyone has a safe weekend.
Little Man.
THREAD RESCUE.
Knowing what we know, from previous posts (evidence), there is an undisputable connection between the Elite and pedophilia.
My question is... cause or effect? IS it pedos that are attracted to positions of power, or is it some kind of blackmail theatre being forced upon those who seek power? If the latter... how do they do it? I can't see myself under any circumstances being 'tempted' to such inducements... and I think many would fall into the same category... so how...? Some sort of irresistable chemical used... or ... what?
It's just so hard to picture... but the proof is already there for fact... what a strange predicament... looking for the HOW. WTF???
"My question is... cause or effect? IS it pedos that are attracted to positions of power, or is it some kind of blackmail theatre being forced upon those who seek power?"
I would say both, depending on the person they wanted to 'positively recruit' or 'negatively recruit' via blackmail. Both certainly goes on in Bohemian Grove for over 100 years probabaly, from what I have read about it.
Though the Pedophile wing of the Party (for to the elites it does seem one endless Titanic dance marathon Party, as the world is destroyed), only came into view largely via the Bushes in the 1980s, and particularly the 1994 sweeping into power of the Republicans in both houses of the U.S. Congress in a majority.
That same year, with the same Congress, saw them quickly ban any exposure of their primrose pedophilic path to power, exposed in the UK documentary Conspiracy of Silence, that we have talked about as well--and this documentary was banned by the Republican dominant (Pedophile wing) Party.
By the way, Blair's appointees were caught in high level pedophilia back several years ago, though nothing happened there as well.
Watching Conspiracy of Silence once more, it's clear that its a 'both' issue instead of the either/or, particularly given the money and political favors cultivation of Larry King in the Reagan White House staff...
Seems a Bush and Blair sort of thing right now--particularly given that the male prostitute "Jeff Gannon" (who was additionally a male 'madam' running other prostitutes) was signed in for the White House on Tony Blair visit days as well...
Conspiracy of Silence, a documentary listed for viewing in TV Guide Magazine was to be aired on the Discovery Channel, on May 3 1994. This documentary exposed a network of religious leaders and Washington politicians who flew children to Washington D.C. for sex orgies. Many children suffered the indignity of wearing nothing but their underwear and a number displayed on a piece of cardboard hanging from their necks when being auctioned off to foreigners in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Toronto, Canada. At the last minute before airing, unknown congressmen threatened the TV Cable industry with restrictive legislation if this documentary was aired. Almost immediately, the rights to the documentary were purchased by unknown persons who ordered all copies destroyed.
A copy of this videotape was furnished anonymously to former Nebraska state senator and attorney John De Camp who made it available to retired FBI Agent Ted L. Gunderson.
While the video quality is not top grade, this tape is a blockbuster in what is revealed by its participants involved.
[Bonus John De Camp interview after the 60 minute mark in this 'Conspiracy of Silence 2007' version]
Good question, Tsoldrin.
While I, fortunately, have no first-hand experience, I do know one place of "training" in pedo are those exclusive prep and military schools the rich are ever so fond of dumping off their young while they cavort abroad and elsewhere.
My father, decendant of West Point and Masonic elites (big time), told me the horror stories that befall the Richy Riches (himself) of the world. There is a pecking order of the eldest attacking the youngest (six and seven year-olds) in a constant, brutal, sadistic physical and sexual way. Somewhat like prisoners experience only with ivy growing on the outside walls and a hefty tuition.
Then, there is a constant pressure for these children to meet or surpass the successes of their families. While they are given a superior education, not all of them are taken into the family business. They must prove themselves on their own. Now, when you're raised sans parents a la Lord Of the Flies style, coupled with a very different standard of morality than that of the average person as demonstrated by their families and friends, motored by repressed anger and sexual identity confusion and intense expectations, well, corruption happens.
So, you see, they are not only to the manor born, they are raised for it.
I don't think it's much of a mystery, Tsoldrin: it's a manifestation of power. Sure, the English boarding school/Lord of the Flies social model is a breeding ground for this kind of thing, but the nature of power is predation and exploitation. Authority doing its subjects, because it can. Teachers, cops, politicians, titans of industry, etc. Whenever you have a pyramid, which is always on this earth, the apex screws the foundation. Aside from losing their coveted monopolies, the thing that the fat cats fear most is egalitarianism. No longer able to dictate morality, like these eternally pedophilic Republicans, they wouldn't be able prey on the common man, as they have ever since they tricked us into working on their farms, in their factories, in their offices.
Dec. 30, 2006
Saddam has joined the dearly departed and to a certain extent, he leaves this plane with at least as much fanfare as Gerald Ford. Since timing is everything, I wonder what they are up to with this rush to execute at the 333 degree being Baghdad and the whirlwind at Crawford which forced Bush out of the house and into an armoured car. And what if anything, has this to do with winter solstice? 12,30,2006=5=penta?
CTV just reported that Saddam has been an asset of the CIA since the 50's. All the lawyers and judges who wanted to enter that evidence in the trial were murdered.
Where was Libra when you needed her the most?
To echo ericswan and the general gist of this meandering thread (for that matter, the whole impulse behind RI), I'd like to plug a great little website I had forgotten but found again while digging into "our man in Baghdad," Unknown News. They haven't come out with the complete retrospective yet, and I didn't see anything on 333, but the backstory is meticulously compiled in Saddam Hussein: America's man in Iraq.
You gotta love any website that attempts to counter the mainstream torrent of propaganda with pages like Secret Government in America, and these guys do it from many different angles. Check out some of the titles in their recent Unknown News:
New publishing rules restrict US scientists...Indicted in error, cop is freed in killing of suspect...No jail for policeman who coerced women into sex...Wealthiest 2% own more than half the world...Bill would harangue women seeking abortions...America's free press hangs in the balance...Uncounted votes handed Congressional election to Republican...US will spend $125-million to construct kangaroo courthouse at Guantanamo...Cop who ordered women to lift skirts gets probation...Feds relax safeguards on DNA evidence...Bush tries to damage nation as much as possible during lame-duck session...Bush-Cheney asks court to silence torture victims...US plans to screen all who enter, leave country...Cheney confirms torture of prisoners...Bush's says he'll ignore new defense law...Bush-Cheney administration tells courts they'll no longer be needed...Judge tells jurors to trust FBI without evidence...Journalists huddled with White House to craft talking points...Man held five years without charges...Secret Service questions 14-year-old over MySpace posting...Crooked politician took bribes on installment plan...Police Chief, in uniform, stole windshield...Guantanamo defense lawyer forced to retire...1959 nuclear meltdown caused hundreds of cancers...
This is just a sampling of their recent output--you could spend days swimming in these alternative oceans, which have more of the appearance of reality about them than that crap we're supposed to read in order to know what's going on around us.
Check back with Unknown News for that 333 angle, ericswan; they don't seem to delve much into mystical conspiracy as such, but when the real business of government in this god-forsaken empire is so much more the province of secret governmental hijinks than the official fairy tale we're enjoined to watch, who knows?
Living on a lighted stage
Approaches the unreal
For those who think and feel
In touch with some reality
Beyond the gilded cage
Cast in this unlikely role,
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact
Living in the limelight
The universal dream
For those who wish to seem
Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The underlying theme
Living in a fisheye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I cant pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend
All the worlds indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each anothers audience
Outside the gilded cage
-Neil Peart
I'm interested in hearing Jeff's take on Saddam's demise. For now, as far as Bush and his minions are concerned I guess we're all just supposed to assume that everything is coincidental.
Peace in the coming new year.
Well IC...
I am nothing if not an entirely philosophical fellow particularly when it comes to differences of opinion.
All things considerered, the degree to which we must already agree and co-operate simply to be able to communicate with one another doesn't leave us much elbow room for anywhere near the kind of serious "nit picking" we need simply to keep our minds sharp let alone improve our understanding of one another...hmmm? LOL
And if we do disagree it's by no means on the order of being unable to distinguish the difference between a cat and a dog or a moose and a frog. We are always talking about the same things. It is in how we happen to view, experience and explain them to ourselves where we digress. Of course if it weren't for that we'd have nothing at all to talk about...ever! LOL
In the immortal words of RI's patron saint, Bob Dylan, we'd be facing that..."Ain't no sense talking to me, it's the same as talking to you." state of existence...hmmmm?
Now we are both interested in many of the very same things and for many of the very same kind of reasons. One of the more distinctive and altogether pleasant qualities of RI is just how often others present books, authors, odd anecdotes and even obscure references or rare links that are already well-worn and quite comfortable pieces of my own mental furniture.
So I suppose I should confess that a large part of the attraction here, at least for me, is that it really doesn't get much better than having interesting and entertaining company who actually do your mental dusting for you while they're going about it. LOL
So let me give you my own take on our recently dusted off old chums Huxley and Orwell and why there's no reason they shouldn't sit in any other place of recognition or honour than front and centre, right beside one another, on our mental mantlepieces. Or perhaps why we shouldn't see our own personal differences in the same way we might also see theirs.
Now reality, does in fact, look very different from differnt perspectives and each of those perspectives when honestly given and adequately appreciated has some unique and integral aspect of that reality's larger truth to reveal.
It is in finding the means to incorporate and combine those perspectives with our own rather than searching for ways to exclude or dismiss them out of hand that we begin to understand and gain a little humility about just how little any of us really does know or understand... for life is nothing if not full of inconsistencies and incongruities at every turn.
Were we a litle more honest with ourselves we'd soon begin to realize that we ourselves are plagued with the same kind of inconsistencies and incongruities within us that impair our understanding and that both situations are hardly unrelated by any means...hmmm?
Now your Huxley/Orwell question, doesn't strike me as being one of either/or, or even more "right or wrong" but far more the way we might be inclined to say a doctor and his patient might differ on what they might each be said "to know" about the very same dis-ease that nevertheless pains them both.
They are both being as earnest, forthright and truthfull as they can in order to find some cure but the disease itself has an entirely different meaning and effect on each of them simply because of who, what, and where they are while sitting in that very same examination room in this seemingly "same reality" we're all supposed to inhabit and mutually agree on.
Now Orwell our patient patient relentlessly tried to separate and cataglogue the real human symptoms as he'd known and experienced them and he took meticulous care to make his terms as humanly direct and directly human as possible.
To make every effort for us to plainly see and recognise the pain each of us truly bears when it's finally been stripped of all the geo-political, social, or economic rationalizations that we continually, one might even say "congenitally" use to dismiss, deny, and cover it up.
If there is anything that truly distinguishes him it's the workmanlike way in which he demystified all the usual bullshit we still nevertheless cling to.
That he was able to make any of us simply aware of that was a major achievement. That we still remain more ashamed or frightened of admitting or acknowledging that pain to ourselves and each other rather than all the terrible things we continue to do to ourselves and each other simply to avoid it isn't Orwell's fault but our own.
He himself was only too well aware that we would have to grow and mature beyond that point or else subject ourselves to even more "unthinkable" conditions than the quite real ones he himself had made every effort to point out.
Now Huxley, our quite blilliant "doctor" of letters, on the other hand, was very much the diagnostician who saw those same symptoms in a very different light and in a far more clinically detached way although he certainly wasn't unsympathetic to them or ccouldn't vividly imagine himself in those uncomfortable shoes.
But his was an intellectual drive and desire to try and find a prognosis. To see if he could anticipate what will happen, (not and never to him, of course), but to us as individuals and as a species if this dis-ease goes simply goes unchecked or what remedies might be risked against it in light of their own equally dangerous if not deadly side-effects.
If you begin to think of them in these terms I think you'll soon see what I mean and how their backgrounds, writing styles, and individual points of view are very much reflective of those kinds of positions.
Taken in another way Orwell is almost like some stout-hearted taxi driver who knows where all the major cracks and potholes are but can't do much more than tell us to brace ourselves for them or lock the doors and tell us to keep our heads down as he takes us through the only alleyways and backstreets there are to get around them...at the moment.
Meanwhile Huxley's up in the planning room, struggling to make sense of both an outdated city map and a works department bureucracy that only makes sense to itself in how it continually detours traffic onto roads that cannot help but get wrecked and demolished themselves by the overflow long before any of the repairs that necessitated it are finished.
So each has some practical and indispensible advice for us if we intend to keep on going the way we are and what we can likely expect or had better be prepared for if we do.
Unfortunately neither writer, as astute and remarkably keen as their insights were, could do any of the heavy lifting for us on the larger question of that very choice itself...to just keep on going as we have or try to find some other way.
In a way that's what motivated them to write what they did in the ways that they did. Their pessimsim about certain inevitabilities that will simply unfold in one guise or another and their own determination to at least try and make us give our heads a shake before they happen.
.
Silverfox writes (beautifully I would opine) a sentiment I would second about RI as well:
Now we are both interested in many of the very same things and for many of the very same kind of reasons. One of the more distinctive and altogether pleasant qualities of RI is just how often others present books, authors, odd anecdotes and even obscure references or rare links that are already well-worn and quite comfortable pieces of my own mental furniture.
So I suppose I should confess that a large part of the attraction here, at least for me, is that it really doesn't get much better than having interesting and entertaining company who actually do your mental dusting for you while they're going about it. LOL
...
Now reality, does in fact, look very different from differnt perspectives and each of those perspectives when honestly given and adequately appreciated has some unique and integral aspect of that reality's larger truth to reveal.
It is in finding the means to incorporate and combine those perspectives with our own rather than searching for ways to exclude or dismiss them out of hand that we begin to understand and gain a little humility about just how little any of us really does know or understand...
using that as an introduction, the 'Married to the Octopus' is updated.
Topic?
Simon Bolivar, and Bolivars past and present in Venezuela and South America.
I saw the new movie "Children of Men" on Thursday night. A dystopia far and above anything I could have imagined, and a movie that I am encouraging everyone I know to see. It is absolutely one of the best movies, ever.
I wanted to ask here if anyone who has seen it has also read the P.D. James book it is based on, and if her ideas were expanded or limited - no spoilers, though. I plan to read it now.
Interesting book title I'd thought I would pass our collective way here. Jeff has posted about the Brotherhood of the Bell (1970) TV movie, available at youtube.com, a tightly produced fictional drama about secret society power in a U.S. college and later in life.
Just found this interesting book of the same name that came out only a few months ago!
The SS Brotherhood of the Bell: Nasa's Nazis, JFK, And Majic-12,
by Joseph P. Farrell
Book Description
In 1945, a mysterious Nazi secret weapons project code-named The Bell left its underground bunker in lower Silesia, with its project documentation, and the 4-star SS general Hans Kammler. Taken aboard a massive six engine Junkers 390 ultra-long range aircraft, The Bell, Kammler, and all project records disappeared completely, along with the gigantic Junkers 390 carrying them. It has been speculated that it flew to Argentina. As a prelude to this disappearing act, the SS murdered most of the scientists and technicians involved with the project, a secret weapon that, according to one German Nobel prize-winning physicist, was given a classification of decisive for the war -- the highest security classification. Offered here is a range of exotic technologies the Nazis researched, and challenges to the conventional views of the end of World War Two, the Roswell incident, and the beginning of MAJIC-12, the government’s alleged secret team of UFO investigators.
About the Author
Joseph P. Farrell was born in Sioux Falls, SD, and received his PhD in Patristics 1987 from Oxford. After teaching college for 17 years, he retired to pursue his interest in alternative science and history research.
---
I've think we've discussed the Star Trek name dropping of some interesting top secret projects and even potential alien elements unavailable on this planet. Perhaps the name "Brotherhood of the Bell" was a cryptofascist double meaning for some U.S. viewers out there, since there seemed to have been an actual SS version of the Brotherhood of the Bell, the protector group around smuggling a a Nazi top secret technology to South America or somewhere else. The Nick Cook book about antigrav technology that went black budget, has a bit about Nazi Bell technology as well. Cook even visited the secluded area where it was housed and described the environment it was in. Very dangerous thing that Bell: could somehow by merely spinning at high multiple tens of thousands of revolutions a minute throw out some kind of unknown life disturbing force or radiation that would kill plants (by making them completely turn white, lost all chlorophyll) or even kill people in the near vicinity.
Sometimes you just have to laugh......and scratch your head. I was listening to NPR around noon EST and the correspondent said, I kid you not, "President Bush lies in repose today in the nation's capital....." He quickly corrected himself and said former president Gerald Ford, but the Freudian slip was already out of the bag, so to speak.
I was a genious, was I not?
I still think there is a considerable possibility it was never Saddam.
Just out of curiosity, for what date is the boy wonder's execution scheduled?
I have a more humane option than execution, however, it would only be fair to give credit where credit is due. The Fletcher Memorial Home by Pink Floyd.
Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
And build them a home, a little place of their own.
The Fletcher Memorial
Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings.
And they can appear to themselves every day
On closed circuit T.V.
To make sure they're still real.
It's the only connection they feel.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Reagan and Haig,
Mr. Begin and friend, Mrs. Thatcher, and Paisly,
"Hello Maggie!"
Mr. Brezhnev and party.
"Scusi dov'è il bar?"
The ghost of McCarthy,
The memories of Nixon.
"Who's the bald chap?"
"Good-bye!"
And now, adding colour, a group of anonymous latin-
American meat packing glitterati.
Did they expect us to treat them with any respect?
They can polish their medals and sharpen their
Smiles, and amuse themselves playing games for awhile.
Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead.
Safe in the permanent gaze of a cold glass eye
With their favorite toys
They'll be good girls and boys
In the Fletcher Memorial Home for colonial
Wasters of life and limb.
Is everyone in?
Are you having a nice time?
Now the final solution can be applied.
Hey Silverfox!
Have to agree with all that: mutual warm regards are extended. I didn’t mean to set Orwell and Huxley into any arbitrary contradiction, really; it was simply to illustrate Neil Postman’s point that we all know the dangers of 1984, while fewer see the real encroachment behind the scary cliché of a brave new world.
Postman’s books are so damned good, they make you laugh even through the pain of the truth he’s inflicted upon you. Another, strangely similar voice—strange in that he deals with language, especially etymology, not the heavy stuff that Postman confronts—is Richard Lederer. In The Miracle of Language, Lederer fearlessly quotes another, much-maligned hero of mine, Benjamin Lee Whorf:
The crudest savage may unconsciously manipulate with effortless ease a linguistic system so intricate, manifoldly systematized, and intellectually difficult, that it requires the lifetime study of our greatest scholars to describe its workings.
Huxley was very much into these seeming contradictions and the promise their union affords. In Island, he builds a doomed utopia out of the marriage of Western rationalism and Eastern mysticism to explain his own impulse to join his world of letters and ideas with what he calls the perennial philosophy. I read all of Huxley’s novels when I was very young and pretty much unformed, and I also read all of Sir Walter Scott’s novels at the same time, which might sound weird (okay, it is weird), but there seemed to be some sort of connection, some commonality that I would find difficult to describe after all these years. (Purple micro*dot has its own logic, don't you know.)
I’m thinking of Huxley’s idea of symbiosis a lot these days. A while back I wrote a disgruntled rebuttal to something you had written about the choice being up to us—in other words that the elites who own the world don’t enter into what we decide to do about the problems we face. Looking at it again, it occurs to me that both notions are correct, insofar as any options remain at all. Just yesterday, I went back to David Brin’s blog to try one more time to achieve some sort of dialogue, a bridge between the island of Rigorous perception and his group’s materialist path to a transparent society.
Once again, it didn’t work. This time it wasn’t just because of Brin’s adulation of capitalism, or his insistence that we welcome ubiquitous surveillance and lie detectors (he believes the elites will be subject to the same measures, thereby ensuring our “equality”), but simply because he’s such an insufferable, antagonistic prick. He deleted my comment because it was “too long and would have led the discussion astray,” when, in fact, it was actually shorter than my previous comments and directly addressed what he had written.
The problem was that I disagreed with his assumptions. The irony was that he advertises his approach as “building dialogue between rival camps,” while his exact words to me were: “This is my blog. Play by my rules or don’t enter.” There’s the spirit of approachment, eh? To think that I imagined it would an easy first step to enter into some agreement with him before I tried with Woolsey’s TAI…As you and Mr. Vonnegut say, silverfox, so it goes. I’ll leave you with an excerpt from Albert Hofmann’s LSD - My Problem Child (which you can now read online), from the section called Meeting with Aldous Huxley, in which Uncle Albert quotes a letter Huxley wrote:
. . . I have good hopes that this and similar work will result in the development of a real Natural History of visionary experience, in all its variations, determined by differences of physique, temperament and profession, and at the same time of a technique of Applied Mysticism - a technique for helping individuals to get the most out of their transcendental experience and to make use of the insights from the "Other World" in the affairs of "This World." Meister Eckhart wrote that "what is taken in by contemplation must be given out in love." Essentially this is what must be developed-the art of giving out in love and intelligence what is taken in from vision and the experience of self-transcendence and solidarity with the Universe....
Oarwell wrote... Boriska, indigo boy from Mars, predicts mammoth catastrophe in 2009.
In the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game set Guildpact, there is a rare cycle of 5 creature cards, called Dune-Brood Nephilim, Witch-Maw Nephilim, Ink-Treader Nephilim, Glint-Eye Nephilim, and Yore-Tiller Nephilim. They are depicted as complex, powerful, god-like monsters whose coming is a sign of a great catastrophe.
John Wyndham's 1957 book The Midwich Cuckoos and its film adaptation in 1960's Village of the Damned, the 1963 sequel Children of the Damned, and John Carpenter's 1995 remake all have obvious analogies to this subject concerning (variably) blond, blue-eyed, super-intelligent psychic/telekinetic children who are the product of interbreeding.
Boriska may deserve a paddling of his rumpasciano or a exorcism like in the movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Boriska the boy from Mars may become the Russians prodigal son returned to preach the Gospels on the highest pulpits in the land. Another glass of vodka please...
Well Sigmund...
Bush is always in a catatonic state of smirking repose wherever he is, unless it's one of those rare occasions when some other miscreant, who's also a few fries short of a happy meal, is pulling his strings for him, of course.
So I'm afraid another string, even if it's looped tightly around his neck and given a good stiff jerk, isn't likely to have any more of an effect or meaning for him than it did on that other miserable excuse for a human being, Saddam.
Now ordinary people who have to dodge the predations and destructiveness of these kinds of myopic misanthropes are the only ones who actually believe that "where there's life there's hope..." hmmm?
I mean if it weren't for surviving the onslaughts of such as these that desperate hope wouldn't carry anywhere near the significance or credibility it currently holds for us.
So taking away someone's life is about the worst thing we can imagine...fot ourselves rather than for them.
In reality, however, we are only taking lives from individuals who really believe their own lives are just as inconsequential as any they are only too willing to snuff out or trample over simply get their own way.
Their sense of superiority and self-importance obviously doesn't come from any value they place in any life, least of all their own, but in the utter contempt they hold for it and anyone who does.
So we are not only letting them off far too lightly with any death sentence, we are actually reconfirming their own selfish and brutal notions.
We're not only doing what they themselves would do in our shoes, it's what they've always done whenever anyone's life simply "inconvenienced" them too.
What we really ought to do with them and all those like them is take very good care to ensure that they do live just as long as we can possibly ever make it for them... in captivity.
To keep them forever isolated and impotent to do anything at all except perhaps to brood and languish away bemoaning their good old bad old days.
To perhaps eventually provide them with a library stocked with nothing but all of the best and most prominent works in humanitarian thinking if they happen to desperately need something to stave off their boredom.
To give them access to every film, documentary, or news clip where nothing but the milk of human kindness is ever seen to do less than flow to overflowing with smiling faces all around whenever they feel the need for company.
With that and nothing but endless time being left alone to themselves we can then safely and securely put them out of our own minds knowing that we've upheld what we truly believe in the only way it can.
To really know that justice has, in fact, been humanly and humanely served and will be unerringly served till the end of their days; and best of all to be genuinely sad and sorry to learn of their eventual passing when they simply won't be around to be served any more of it!
The Doors of Perception is a 1954 book by Aldous Huxley detailing his experiences when taking mescaline. This short book is considered to be one of the more profound studies of the effects of mind-expanding drugs and what they teach about how the mind works.
The title comes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through' narrow chinks of his cavern."
Psychedelic drugs are thought to disable filters which block or suppress signals related to mundane functions from reaching the conscious mind. In this book, Huxley explores the idea that the human mind filters reality, partly because handling the details of all of the impressions and images coming in would be unbearable, partly because it has been taught to do so. He believes that psychotropic drugs can partly remove this filter, or "open these doors of perception." After taking mescaline, Huxley wrote down his thoughts and feelings. He observed that everyday objects lose their functionality and suddenly exist "as such." Space and dimension become irrelevant, and perceptions seem to be enlarged and at times even overwhelming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doors_of_Perception
The name for the band The Doors came from an Aldous Huxley book, The Doors of Perception, which in its turn, borrowed from a line of poetry from William Blake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Morrison
.
Yo, I.C.:
These words you posted, of Albert Hoffman quoting a letter from Aldous Huxley quoting Meister Eckhart, and Hoffman's exegetical comments, were pure pearls cast and then lost in the shuffle of swine.
They deserve repeating:
"'What is taken in by contemplation must be given out in love.'
Essentially this is what must be developed ~ the art of giving out in love and intelligence what is taken in from vision and the experience of self-transcendence and solidarity with the Universe...."
Yes, thank you dear Cuttlefish for stating what ought to be self-evident, but sadly, so often, is not to most people. You have relayed a timeless truth that grows from the experience of oneness with all, something so necessary right now and in the future that, if more of us don't realize it, as in put it into practice right here and right now, we are likely doomed as a race of beings.
And that would seem to be an utter shame.
Peace to you and yours, to us all, each and everyONE of us, May Almighty God bless this world and help guide us to the proper use of our most precious gift, that of free will.
Shalom
Salaam alaykoum
Shanti
Om
Words of wisdom to share.
For if you love them which love you, what reward do you have? Do not the tax-gatherers(extortioners) do the same thing? And if you embrace your family only, what do you do more than other people? Do not the publicans(who were despised, and detested) do that as well? Be perfect(in grace), even as your Father Which is in heaven is perfect.
And if you do good to them which do good to you, what satisfaction do you have? for people whose judgment is in error also do the same thing.
Be compassionate, as your Father is also compassionate.
Spoken by Jesus the Christ in the books Matthew 5: 46-48, & Luke 6: 33, and 36.
When a woman gives birth to a baby she deals with the absolute pain involved with the delivery. After this experience she gains a sense of pride because she has introduced a new life into this world. A new life she is in awe of and cherishes. As the years go by the baby who is grown up is traumatized . He or she is in agony and suffers some kind of mental anguish. The mother tries genuinely to comfort her grown-up baby and is in a humble state of mind. She cannot feel much pride because this would complicate her honest feelings she has for her baby. She is patient and understanding. This time spent together is the better experience. If she lives to be 85 years old she still has lived a very short life on earth. And the pride she feels giving birth to her baby is inferior to the patience she has for her child when he or she is suffering.
For the last several days, I have been pondering this picture of a snowflake. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but Jeff has shown us a perfect metaphor for the complexity that lies beneath our everyday lives.
This reminds me of a Discovery magazine article I saw several years ago which had electron microscope pictures of the "unseen creatures" that live in beach sand. The pictures were absolutely fascinating; folks, there are some incredbily complex life forms all around us.
The same complexity applies to this blog. (What a "hot" several days on the discussion forum!) I try to read here some every day, but I can never keep up with all the discussions and information that is shared. I want to thank all of you who post in an effort to enlighten and share your individual knowledge.
It's the New Year and Jeff will post again soon, but we still need to remember the lessons of the snowflakes. Peace, tapdance127
Welcome to year of the Boar or so it would seem if you practice Chinese astrology in Japan.
Yes to the above; This family has message for the ages and it is much appreciated. I would like to comment on each and every post here but that would be "boaring". Suffice it to say that this is a "piece" on (peace?) on the chessboard we have been calling a hologram and it moves in 3's at a time. Blessed Be.
i luv you daddy
dear humblenotry,
Thanks for that note of expansion or clarification. When I said "all of us," I meant the entire human race, not just friends or family or fellow rigint bloggers.
Piece of cake, right?
Hardly. As you pointed out.
Your quotation of Jesus' wise words underscores the difficulty, even the impossibility for most of us, to attain such high wisdom in action in this world. Truly to love one's enemies requires a level of transcendence that is pretty much not of this world, for most of us anyway.
On a personal level, I would hope to aspire to be able to defeat my enemies such as they may be (and I mean real ones, not some silly blog snipers), without letting anger or hatred enter my heart or infect my mind, and with a prayer for God's mercy on their behalf. But I would still seek their defeat, and I am not so certain that I myself would be a vehicle of mercy if confronted with a war criminal, for instance. At the very least, I would seek to step aside and allow their own momentum to carry them over the precipice toward which they are likely already hellbent.
To do less than that would be to offer oneself up as a sacrifice, and that does not seem to be of much help in any given situation.
Obi wan Kenobi was only a movie character, and looking around it seems that the jury is still out on whether Jesus' crucifixion, if it was indeed willfully completed on his part, has helped matters any.
One time, some years before 9/11 and the "jihadist" scare, I took part in a seminar with several hospital based clergy on the subject of moral development in adolescents in the "post-modern" world. At the end of the discussion, one shining young nun with bright bluegreen eyes and just a hint of red hair escaping the hood of her black and white habit asked aloud in good faith, and with all candor and reason, whether martyrdom was not such a good paradigm on which to base a moral system or a religion after all?
The clergy in the room were stunned into silence, with the only response being, "That's a very good question." The seminar ended at that point (it was already past time).
Thanks for that Mojo.
It seems that this sacrificing oneself for righteousness meme works quite well (for some).
As I say; Declaring or taking the relative as being absolute creates pathology.
As an aside, Hugh is in the discussion room busily roping people into his 'loop', so tell me, is this funny, useful, self-ego stroking, or what.
Hugh said;
"The better you can avoid the tricks of the opposition the better you can sway your audience of readers."
This statement is internally contradictory. If the 'tricks' of the opposition sway the audience then using the 'tricks' by you will also sway the audience. Yes I know you meant, know, so as to avoid the tricks. Ok, then here is a trick.
Get others to operate within your chosen loop, then you control the dialogue better and you do not have to deal with elements that exist outside of your loops.
Short story;
The brother of my boss was walking down a Toronto street, with his wife and new baby. A stranger stopped to compliment the young couple on their new child. The dad made some correction on the strangers sentence structure or some such thing. To which she replied; 'Oh dear, but the baby will deal with a pedantic father for his whole life'. LMFAO for five minutes when I was then told that he had to go home to look the word up in the dictionary. He is a teacher for international students in some advanced english lit program.
Now, I also think there is benefit in bringing others into my loop, however I want the experience to be mutual, and I know that we will achieve resonance only when new manners of creating correspondences between categories are recognized. A materialist, reductionist program does not do this for me.
Go to the discussion board for perspective on the pedantic bit.
Jeff ..great graphic..now if you could just navigate blogger and put up a proper date stamp..
Jeff said...
Seems like there are competing versions of the shooting on the bridge. When that happens for a story like this, I have to suspect that the conflict is actually a cover-up.
8:10 PM
Yeah Mojo to have some mercy if possible. We all err from time to time and the patience required when this happens can be unbearable. From my studies and experience I know that our ability to communicate is uncontrollable and can get us into very serious troubles. Thank you for stating the fact that we need to try to be merciful towards others even in prayer.
From my experience in life as a wretched man(the here and now) I accept the martyrdom of an individual being evil and injustice surrounding him to be so unavoidable that there is nothing the person can do about it. But to plunge yourself into a situation such as that to save others from the calamity does not require any belief in any god. So when I hear of people suffering because of their faith in the Christian God, I think of the possibility that circumstances are dictating the fact. The unfairness and even killings are not prevented and is the dominant influence affecting the majority in that area. I think that many martyrs for the faith do not elect to be but are truly victims of circumstances.
The biblical prophet Daniel refused to abide by the secular law just established and approved of by the king. His daily prayers became unlawful and he was almost martyred for it. Of course to us believers the lions did not mutilate him because of Divine intervention. Daniel was indeed a lawbreaker. He did not respect the king's authority or the secular law. Today most ministers preach we should respect, respect, respect authority right or wrong for the Lord's sake. But rarely preach that the secular authority can be in error just like in Daniel's day. If authority is overseeing for the Lord's sake we expect righteousness, freedom, and justice. Not having that we become miserable and afraid.
Perhaps that prick of a god was appropriate in Old Testament times. Maybe strong measures were called for to stop the crazies from fucking anything they saw. Still, we need to grow up for ourselves, and that Jehovah god, and the bible fraud that came with him, need to ride out of town on the same horse he came in on.
Not that the bible is worthless, as I imagine that our true creator God, (not aliens, the original creator), can use the deceit itself to point towards Truth.
The home of the infamous european toxic clan, psycho urban fraggers that pawn the virtual return to castle wolfenstein enemy territory battlefields.
Just Pub, a dumb return to castle wolfenstein enemy territory comic strip by feuersturm.
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