Sunday, August 10, 2008

Attention Deficit World Order (Part One)



"Possibly Gilman ought not to have studied so hard. Non-Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain; and when one mixes them with folklore and tries to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of the Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the chimney-corner, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from mental tension."
- HP Lovecraft, The Dreams in the Witch House


The more things strange, the more I want to stay the same.

Suddenly, just when it seems UFOs are everywhere, I'd rather be nowhere. America's late-term, lame-duck housecleaning of suspicious suicides and self-inflicted gunshot wounds is in full swing, and I'd just as soon clean the porch. And I've never wanted to clean the porch. Now a new, "optimistic" estimate gives the world 100-months to forestall the tipping point of a runaway greenhouse effect, but I prefer to focus on the short term, and speculate idly upon how much ass next year's Watchmen adaptation will or will not kick.

I've been struggling for a year and a half with writing an introduction to my book. A year and a freaking half. I haven't been able to account for the missing time to my publisher, though I don't need a hypnotist to tell me where it's all gone. I have been good at stammering apologies and repeating vain promises, and revisiting false starts and bad ideas. (And naturally the blog suffered, because how could I justify spitting out posts like watermelon seeds while using the book for a spittoon?)

Maybe, in another year and a half, I'd have something to say. Maybe if I kept looking I'd eventually find a place to start. But I think it's more sensible to say I can't do it, and instead write my conclusions and stick them at the front. (And maybe even squeeze a blog post out of it at the same time.)

So here it is: they've won. Or let me rephrase that, since there will never be universal agreement as to who "they" are: we've lost.

Because life is short, even if I get another turn after this one, I'd rather not waste half of it relearning all the secret wrongs done to the world that I can't undo. So I need to know what, if anything, we get out of knowing what they get away with. And if it's so we may better "organize," then good luck and God bless us playing catch-up, since the priesthoods and kingly classes have had a 10,000 year head start.

I suppose it counts for something, that so many have been able to recognize the holes in the FBI's posthumous stitch-up of Bruce Ivins for the anthrax attacks. That we haven't jumped when they say jump to the conclusions of guilt and case closed may be some comfort to his family and colleagues, who watched Ivins break under the relentless There can be only one ethos of America's Lone Gunman. But all our reservation of judgment amounts to nothing but a sympathy card - an e-card at that - against the prosecution of a dead man who can be tried and convicted now only because he is dead and undefended.

Stalin's show trials, what was it do you think that they showed? Not that Zinoviev and Kamenev and the other Old Bolsheviks were "terrorists" and "sexual deviants" (though it is instructive how often the prosecuting state conjoins the two). Rather, they demonstrated Stalin's rule by absolute whim. That loyalty and service, innocence or guilt, afforded no protection. It was irrelevant if Soviet citizens were convinced that justice was served by their state. They just needed to note that if they demurred, there was nothing they could do about it.

Senator Patrick Leahy has a speaking part in The Dark Knight. It looks like his mouth talking, but it sounds like his ass. "We're not intimidated by you thugs," Leahy stares down the knife-wielding Joker who's crashed a political fundraiser. It was The Dark Knight's only moment for which I could not suspend disbelief, since two hundred billion particles of finely-milled anthrax were enough to erase the Senator's initial qualms concerning the Patriot Act. But I won't judge him, except as a character in a superhero movie, because I wasn't there and it wasn't me. Most of the time we don't make ourselves targets by our objections to their plans, because there's not much we could do to impede them. And besides, as the Joker later says, "Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying."

I don't have a reasonable doubt that Edgar Mitchell is telling the truth about his being briefed by government officials on Roswell and alien visitation to Earth. I have considerable doubt they were telling him the truth. Because I don't think it's part of the plan to tell the truth, of which, almost certainly, even the highest and darkest government officials would have only partial knowledge. If "disclosure" ever comes, its purpose may not be to persuade us of a lie, but rather to tell a terrifying joke.

481 Comments:

Blogger Ed H said...

It's good to hear from you again.

Not much more that needs saying, that I can say.

8/10/2008 10:46:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Blocked as well. Somehow I keep building my studio, well drawing it anyway, maybe so someone else can use it.
-- Sweejak

8/10/2008 10:56:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Blame it on me. Or, take a look at who uses you.

CAN GOD FILL TEETH?

Don't ask me why
But I was walking down the streets
Of Fairfax, California
And I saw this flyer hangin'
On a telephone pole, and it said
CAN GOD FILL TEETH?
For a $10 donation
You could see silver fillings turn
To gold and other supernormal dental happenings.
New caps! Filled cavities! Bring a
Flashlight and a mirror and observe
But wait a minute
Didn't I just read
About how the cops are getting parents
To plant bugging devices
In their kids' teeth
So if they disappear they can track 'em
Before they wind up on the backs of milk cartons
And all that
And didn't I read
That these devices can go two-way
And everything that I do or say
Is all goin' on tape somewhere right now
Planted in my cavities
And they didn't even tell me
no wonder every bad thing
In and out of my mouth
Keeps winding up on my employment record
All those fillings
All those crowns
I'll show them
Who's the boss of my big mouth
Where's the pliars
God dammit! Where's the pliars?!?
Wilma! Where'd you put my electric drill
This is all coming out now-TODAY!
CHORUS
Agh! Agh! Agh!
Agh! Agh! Agh!
Agh! Agh! Agh!
Must be some kind of conspiracy
The whole world's a God damn conspiracy
Look anywhere long enough, you're gonna find a conspiracy
Man, LIFE is a conspiracy!
CHORUS
Needlenose
Up my nose
-Agh!-
Where did all these wires come from?
How far up into my skull do they go
I pull out more and more copper spagetti
How'd my Weekly World News get all w wet?
God damn fishsticks melted again
What are they trying to do to me?
No secrets in the land of the free!
There
no one's gonna tell me what to do
It's worth eating baby food
The rest of my life
To be a free man
Bastards
Probably wouldn't understand me anyway

Lard Can God Fill Teeth lyrics

8/10/2008 11:10:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting again, Jeff. I'm counting on the voice you evoke in these posts to stick around at least til the power goes off.

8/10/2008 11:24:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good to hear from you again.

I can only offer you words of encouragement. You'll have to find it within yourself to carry on. But it is worth it.

The fight is long and hard and things may seem hopeless, but we are all going to die anyway. Might as well do something interesting and worthwhile in the meantime.

8/11/2008 12:17:00 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

As

long
as

we

are

alive

we

have

not

lost

Steve, Reno NV

8/11/2008 01:31:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Your current glum voice and attitude doesn't help anybody to get out of this shit. Encouragement value to make this world a more liveable place = zero. You're spreading paralysis, and what's paralysis good for when facing the monsters?

8/11/2008 03:17:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the monsters came today,
as skinless bourgeois men of space,
with bare gleaming muscle,
as raw as faith,
and ruthless eyes that pierced,
our darkened race,
but dragged behind those sullied souls,
was a seed of something,
something told,
around a fire,
centuries old,
it was whispered once,
and passed down lines of family ties,
the water dried,
but clouds are forming,
the type to bring about the mourning,
of our monsters,
the barristers,
politicos,
corporate diamond crushers,
nothing do-ers,
the apathetic non musterers,
as the boil comes up,
the meat falls from the bone,
eat nothing but the marrow,
for the gleaming muscle is not our home.

8/11/2008 03:54:00 AM  
Blogger Edo said...

hearing you Michael.

8/11/2008 04:00:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"So here it is: they've won. Or let me rephrase that, since there will never be universal agreement as to who "they" are: we've lost."

I beg to dream and differ
From the hollow lies
This is the dawning
Of the rest of our lives
On holiday

Seriously, things aren't nearly as grim as you appear to think in your recent posts.

There's a supernatural/paranormal aspect to the world, yes.

There are things we can't explain with conventional knowledge, certainly.

Some parts of the 'greater reality' influencing things out there (mostly the bits that we as humans have created through millennia of misguided thoughts and actions) are not very nice, sure.

We've been lied to by a large number of our leaders, well duh. We knew that at the time. Just now we have proof.

This isn't actually a new revelation to those of us who've held for quite a few centuries to a spiritual understanding of the world, you realise?

The trick is that 99.99999999% of the rest of that hidden universe is actually *on our side*. H P Lovecraft wasn't actually correct in his evaluation of the uncaring cosmic loneliness of the eternal wassnames.

I've been reading this book, which you might enjoy. It has a freely downloadable version on the website.

http://youreternalself.com/

One of a bunch of very recent 'paranormal revival' books, looking at 150-ish years of ESP, NDE, psi research. There's a lot of scientific evidence for beyond-the-world communication, has been for quite some time, and what those communications contain is reasonable, sane and loving. No tentacles involved.

There is a heck of a lot more hope than anyone imagines. Things we used to trust in are falling apart, but they needed to. What's coming is going to transform the world in a *good* way.

Blessings to you.

8/11/2008 04:48:00 AM  
Blogger doctoradder said...

Jeff:

When I first discovered your site, it was like falling down a rabbit hole: or, more accurately, like falling down an Abyss. I was practically hiding under my desk, half-convinced that Dick Cheney was going to hunt me down personally.

There's a reason that the secret Sephiroth of the Qabalists, the invisible one, the most dangerous house is called DA'ATH, and it is also named "Knowledge." Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing.

There's a reason that you're consistently the most passionate, moving -- and frightening -- voice navigating this underbelly of the world: it's because your perceptive intelligence operates on a level of metaphor, finding hidden links between the constructs of imaginative meaning and the horrors of reality. It makes you an easy target for the literal-minded who slag you for going on about Cthulhu and ritual abuse while you (rightly) question their obsessions with controlled demolitions and holographs. Truth can't be understood unless it's invested with the power of imagination. An obsession with mere matter can be as misleading as the more obvious risks of more esoteric thinking. Your metaphorical ability is what got you into this hole and ironically I think it's the only thing that can get you out of it.

I know you've name-checked Grant Morrison's THE FILTH... which he explicitly state was related to his experiences in the Abyss of Da'ath. Greg Feely, kneeling on the floor before Mother Death holds up a sickening brown glop of the ick, the goo, the chaos of the universe that has overwhelmed him:

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Spread it on your flowers, Greg."

I hope you can find hope. It's almost impossible sometimes in a Universe that seems to be built for evil.

The Blind Idiot God, Ialdaboath, rules over this world, but the light of Sophia resides within it.

In the revelation of Zoroaster, every human faces the choice between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, between order and chaos, dark and light. There is no retreat from the world: the fight against darkness is an active struggle. And there is no predestination. Every human has a role in the struggle.

Whether you choose transcendence or struggle, you have to contend with how you will face the darkness.

Gandhi said, "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."

Your words have meant a lot to me these last few years, though I've spoken here infrequently, lost in the din. But I'm thinking of you and hoping you find a path out of this.

8/11/2008 07:13:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What is it with this Bad Cop, Good Cop routine whenever Jeff posts? Jeff plays the Bad Cop, and in rush the Good Cops to tell you everything's going to be okay and we've got to fight the good fight, after Jeff gets done telling us we don't stand a chance and to try is a waste of our time and efforts.

8/11/2008 07:41:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Your current glum voice and attitude doesn't help anybody to get out of this shit. Encouragement value to make this world a more livable place = zero. You're spreading paralysis, and what's paralysis good for when facing the monsters?"

Jeff is not a leader, so stop idolizing him. Jeff doesn't like leading anything. Jeff's as weaponized as CIA anthrax, entirely isolate in his politics and poisonings. He's uncomfortable believing in anything. Doubt is good though Jeff's turned it into paralysis which is bad, and I would say even inhuman.

Jeff is a satirist by trade, a parasitic harliquin dependent upon commenting on the very court society he critiques instead of taking the reins (reigns). From what I gather in his first fictionalized autobiography, he is someone searching for religious truths who has been burned by trusting others so he makes fun of his own desires and past trust that he thinks is gullability.

However, his current pathlessness is the most gullible and parasitical one yet. Jeff, I'm sure you know the old phrase though if you're not part of the solution, you ARE part of the problem. We can disagree on the paths ahead out of this, though going back to satire is not it.

I think this blog which was an attempt at lightly satirizing some dark truths with a light touch backfired on him and made him realize he wasn't up to anything except repeating his first book: satirising beliefs and rationalizing his indifference to a cruel world.

Yes, clean the porch all you want though it will never be clean. This topic will never leave you, Jeff, for the rest of your life. You've been touched by this flame and it will not go out.

No matter how many times you attempt to put it out by filling your life with other trivia, or by satirizing it.

Helping people "out of this sh*t" see: http://biostate.blogspot.com/

8/11/2008 07:57:00 AM  
Blogger doctoradder said...

Anon:

"Fighting the good fight" is one option. Of many. There are people who decide the fight itself is an illusion or a distraction. That's an option.

What isn't an option is dangling in the abyss with no way out. When the only person that can get you out is yourself.

Right now, personally, I don't give a flying fuck about "the fight" or if the bad guys have won, or how fucked we are. I'm more concerned with the actual human being who writes these posts.

Sometimes looking at the big picture is only useful inasmuch as it helps you find your place in it.

8/11/2008 08:04:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff, I'm sure you know the old phrase though if you're not part of the solution, you ARE part of the problem.

Yeah, I hear that saying every day in corporate america, and its intent is to dismiss and marginalize.

Interesting that you use solution in the singular, as though there is only one solution, and of course it must be your's, right Mark? If not, which solution are we talking about, because, as we all know here, if we're truly honest with ourselves, there are a bevy of solutions and proponents thereof, so how do you gain a consensus amongst so many choices and such fragmentation?

So many choices of solutions, yet none at all. They appears to be the conundrum. Things are moving much too rapidly for an orthodox approach to solving these dire issues. As they say, as we fret over one reality (911), other realities are being fomented that quickly render the one, or ones, we're fretting over irrelevant.

8/11/2008 09:00:00 AM  
Blogger Arthur Gilroy said...

The Theater Of Freedom-Hafiz

In my divine studio
What I have been working on is this:

Painting the Truth,
Revealing
A more realistic picture of God,

Tearing down the cruel walls

That separate you
From the tenderness
Of fire.

Someone must be withholding
The crucial lines
In all those stories you have heard of our
Friend,

For there is still too much fear
And pallor upon your cheeks,

And I rarely see you
In the marvelous Theater of Freedom.

Hafiz knows
You could not describe him
Even if we sat side by side on a caravan
For years,

Even if we slept close in my desert tent
And you became familiar

With the holy scent
That the sun and my Master Leave
Whenever they visit me,

For something has happened
To Your youthful passions,

That great fuel
You once had to defend yourself
Against becoming tamed.

And you eyes now often tell me
That your once vital talent to extract joy
From the air
Has fallen into a sleep.

All that you could ever say of me
Can only describe my camel's tail -

And that coarse hair
That is barely visible sometimes
On the left side of the moon's nose.

In my divine studio
Where I am sitting right now
Crafting your heart, lyre
And flute,

I long for the day when you will join me
In knowing

The extraordinary humor
And all the enchanting realities

Of the infinite performances
Of
God.



The Subject Tonight is Love,
60 Wild and Crazy Poems
by Hafiz,
The Great Sufi Master
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

==============

The Theater Of Freedom-Hafiz

In my divine studio
What I have been working on is this:

Painting the Truth,
Revealing
A more realistic picture of God,

Tearing down the cruel walls

That separate you
From the tenderness
Of fire.

Someone must be withholding
The crucial lines
In all those stories you have heard of our
Friend,

For there is still too much fear
And pallor upon your cheeks,

And I rarely see you
In the marvelous Theater of Freedom.

Hafiz knows
You could not describe him
Even if we sat side by side on a caravan
For years,

Even if we slept close in my desert tent
And you became familiar

With the holy scent
That the sun and my Master Leave
Whenever they visit me,

For something has happened
To Your youthful passions,

That great fuel
You once had to defend yourself
Against becoming tamed.

And you eyes now often tell me
That your once vital talent to extract joy
From the air
Has fallen into a sleep.

All that you could ever say of me
Can only describe my camel's tail -

And that coarse hair
That is barely visible sometimes
On the left side of the moon's nose.

In my divine studio
Where I am sitting right now
Crafting your heart, lyre
And flute,

I long for the day when you will join me
In knowing

The extraordinary humor
And all the enchanting realities

Of the infinite performances
Of
God.



The Subject Tonight is Love,
60 Wild and Crazy Poems
by Hafiz,
The Great Sufi Master
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

==============

Written roughly 700 years ago, Jeff.

Hafiz knew.

I was walking down a midtown NYC side street once, back in the day when midtown still had some funk left in it. My companion was an old-time black jazz musician. A great one. We walked past some poor fool lying belly up on a subway grating with an empty bottle of cheap wine next to him. My friend none too gently kicked him awake, leaned over and said "Get up, motherfucker. New York ain't done wif you yet" and then we continued on our way.

Evolution continues. If you cannot see this then you are blind. Blinded by the hype of our ever-trying controllers. But there is more, Jeff. And that more has sustained and won (Barely. But enough. JUST enough for the story to continue.) for a billion years here on earth, for an incalculable and unimaginable period of time in this universe. A universe the content and form of which is still largely hidden from us.

But we do keep trying.

Be of good cheer, Jeff. And above all...do not surrender to despair.

The universe ain't done wif you yet.

Nor with any of us.

The fun is in the fight.

Bet on it.

Hafiz knew.

Later...and there WILL be a later, I promise you...

AG

P.S. Wake up every day with the thought “Today is a good day to die" and then go out there and be whatever kind of warrior best suits your talents.

But DO NOT GIVE UP!!!

8/11/2008 10:26:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Well, I did say about that we could respect different views on the problem, note. (As I said, "We can disagree on the paths ahead out of this, though going back to satire is not it.")

Second, that phrase about solution/problem did not come from corporate USA 'culture.' That surprises me you use it in that 'origin!' It came from the U.S. Black American civil rights movement. That is what I was referencing.

I'm sorry to hear it has been turned into a way of saying 'one solution, or leave my organization.'

It was originally meant as a calling out against agent provocateurs and a call to understand seriously that you can't be hangers on of a system that is I think unreformable by itself through participation in existing pathways, alone. These pathways I think are valuable political space though they I don't think can ever get us out of the issues this blog typically discusses.

A level of novel thinking and novel ideas, 'revolutionary' even if you want to utilize that debased word, is required (I say a debased word it is, given that CIA coups in Russia's underbelly in recent years were sickeningly called 'color revolutions' as well as sickeningly how the whole 20th century was just a form of sponsored globalist financier revolutionary movement to destroy and consolidate global territory for themselves under leftism or rightism totalitarian flavors of the month they supported and funded. (Read the Antony Sutton books on Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, Hitler, and on FDR, and "the best enemy money can buy"--for starters. They're all available for free all over the web.).

It just means that recognition to change the institutional system is required instead of milquetoast status quo voting for existing or even future party organs.

Jeff's abyss is not of his own creation, though he's just participating in perpetuating it.

quote:

"If not, which solution are we talking about, because, as we all know here, if we're truly honest with ourselves, there are a bevy of solutions and proponents thereof, so how do you gain a consensus amongst so many choices and such fragmentation?"

You don't need a novel ideological position beforehand I suggest. (See the link...). And a common agreement at this scale doesn't require ideological codification (that just becomes co-option for existing psychopathic elites)--what would help is a representative structure to filter it into politics:

"Wednesday, November 14, 2007
POLLS: Planet Earth Has Green Majority, Part Four

This is a continuing series of polls about global opinions and attitudes toward environmentalism. It shows that supermajorities of the world are in agreement already on environmental issues, and that a supermajority of the world considers their current forms of state doing poorly on getting to sustainability. This would be a good basis to achieve what the bioregional state promotes: green constitutional engineering to get to sustainability."


http://biostate.blogspot.com/2007/11/polls-planet-earth-has-green-majority.html

A novel ideological position just starts a whole 'nother round of co-optive statism that will be utilized by the psychopaths to sell your ideals and dreams back to you emptied of content and twisted to administrate a future psythopathy in the stolen ideological skin of legitimacy that enough will be duped over to accept. I have written how this has happened with the German greens of late. The strange 'suicidings' of two of their decentralist, democratic, and pacifist leaders (Kelly and Bastian) as Germany reconsolidated in the early 1990s influenced German greens becoming a rootless ideology instead a rooted living, geographic stand.

Another example of the shapeshifting thefts of ideology: the slow changes of the U.S. from some form of representative to unrepresentative corporatist military industrial surveillance tyranny is a good example since Bushies still depend upon all the symbolism that the U.S. 'works' as a democracy.

I suggest instead a framework to let people in their varied localities come up with their own nested solutions to larger issues without codifying this as an ideology, though codifying it as a more representative framework itself without specific types of elite gatekeeping. (As I said, more at the link...)

another quote from something below I recommend you read:

"Of the two forces in life—violence and cooperation—cooperation will take you many times further than violence. All of your goals, all of your ability to radically transform human life is dependent on your ability to cooperate and to get many groups and individuals to cooperate with you."

--- Elan Le Vieux, from The Limits of Violence: Lessons of a Revolutionary Life (2001)

--------------

newswire article reposts global 29.Jul.2008 04:04
legacies | political theory
Free Book: The Limits of Violence: Lessons of a Revolutionary Life, by ELAN LE VIEUX

author: repost, ELAN LE VIEUX

"I am reproducing Elan's words as faithfully as possible. It was hard at times to do this as ideas poured out of him like a gushing artesian well. I have done my best to organize his thoughts. You will see that I have presented the stories and poetry he recited in italics to distinguish them from what he describes as his essays to fellow revolutionaries.

"In the years that I worked on this project, Elan found a place in my consciousness where he resided as a teacher and guide. His voice went with me as I tended to the necessary tasks of living. Throughout our conversations, I was deeply impressed by Elan's regard for principled revolutionaries. I hope my efforts to convey his thoughts are of use to those committed to recreating the world."

The Limits of Violence: Lessons of a Revolutionary Life, by ELAN LE VIEUX (407k), 224 pages

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/07/377928.shtml

"The truth which neither the traditional right nor left wishes to admit, is that broadly enfranchised, local grassroots efforts to identify with and care for natural regions are so powerful, so ultimately democratic, and so basically popular with...people that they threaten the huge, entrenched political organizations on both sides." -Robert Theyer

8/11/2008 10:28:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It was originally meant as a calling out against agent provocateurs and a call to understand seriously that you can't be hangers on of a system that is I think unreformable by itself through participation in existing pathways, alone. These pathways I think are valuable political space though they I don't think can ever get us out of the issues this blog typically discusses.

It's quite ironic that Civil Rights for Blacks is the backdrop for this part of the discussion, especially considering the context. Let's face it, what have Black people really gained from their "give us solutions or shut your mouth" movement? Reserved seats at the colliseum to cheer on the empty victories of empire? An opportunity to wet their beaks in the poisonous well of consumerism? A ceremonial seat at the banquet of mankind's glorious destruction? Clarence Thomas? Condoleeza Rice? Oprah? Shit, they're in Hog Heaven now, ain't they? Now, instead of a bare-bones cell, they've been granted the opportunity to remodel, so now their cell has wall to wall carpeting and a flat screen tv. Now they get to partake in fucking the rest of the world over so they can fuckin consume to their heart's delight, and beyond. Ain't equality the fishizzle?

This is what fomenting solutions within this beast of a system gets you. No solution at all, just the semblance of one.

The system must be destroyed as part of any holistic solution, and in order to accomplish that, people need to be educated, and I'm not talking about brainwashing propaganda. I'm talking about teaching people, the children, to think critically, something not being done in traditional education in this country. There's no convincing the majority of adults on any of this before it's too late, and even then they most likely would delude themselves all the way to their teeth-gnashing graves.

8/11/2008 12:49:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, the tone is a downer. But everyone needs to remember the title marks this post as Part One.

Jeff, don't beat yourself up too much about writer's blocks. They can be tough, but they are impermanent.

8/11/2008 01:29:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

best cure for a writer's block is to smoke some pot...it's good for the soul!

8/11/2008 01:49:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hopkins: "What have you lost?"

Gooding: "My freedom."

Hopkins: "NO. You never had your freedom.What have you lost?"

Gooding: "My illusions."

Hopkins: "Now you've got it. You are a student!"

- Instinct / the movie

8/11/2008 02:02:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The caged bird sings because her heart is free.

Yes, Jeff: they've won. You're right about that. At least, they've won the game we've always been told we were playing. Truth be told, the game was over long ago.

But that was never the real game, after all, was it? Not for the caged bird whose singing still touches the heavens, nor for us.

Your song is just beginning, my friend--it's just a different score than you were first given. This song is from the inside.

8/11/2008 03:02:00 PM  
Blogger Jason Louv said...

I think you have misinterpreted the signals you are receiving.

"We" have won. The System is collapsing under its own economic weight. Houses and banks are foreclosing. The beast is dead.

I think the futility you are feeling is that the role of "anti-status quo guy" is no longer needed. Yes, it can be painful to the invested personality, but there is a whole world of new people to be out there. Attacking the system right now is like having a protest on the deck of the Titanic. There is sheer terror around you as people lose their jobs, cars and houses from the economic boomerang effect of the Iraq slaughter and the country slides closer to third-world status every day.

Smart people are not attacking the system. Smart people are making sure they get out of the way from that Thing as it falls - and worrying about how they will survive without it.

- Jason Louv

8/11/2008 03:10:00 PM  
Blogger Jason Louv said...

(Addendum: Didn't realize you were Canadian, in which case the volume on Economic Collapse is probably turned down for you a few notches, for now.)

- Jason

8/11/2008 03:14:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Smart people are not attacking the system. Smart people are making sure they get out of the way from that Thing as it falls - and worrying about how they will survive without it.

And just how the hell do you think you can avoid the ensuing milieu? Unlike the Titantic, there are no life boats and there is no rescue crew. We must resign ourselves to our inevitable fate. We will shortly become source material for the next great era of oil deposit creation, and maybe, just maybe, the creatures that evolve after the earth stabilizes from the quickly approaching Super Greenhouse Armageddon, will avoid opening Pandora's Box yet again.

8/11/2008 03:34:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

""We" have won. The System is collapsing under its own economic weight. Houses and banks are foreclosing. The beast is dead. "

The collapse, dear boy, is the plan.
Suggest reading Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror" because the reflection is now near indeed.

8/11/2008 03:43:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Because you still think in terms of winning & losing, you make erroneous conclusions. I find your dramatic "We've lost!" quite humorous. I mean no disrespect.

And another thing: Writers write regardless of "the times." The times, you see, have always been bad. Always. If you can't write during the darkest of times, then you're not really a writer. Writer's block is a cop-out. You have an interesting mind but you take yourself too seriously.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

8/11/2008 04:33:00 PM  
Blogger Nyarlathotep said...

Jeff,

Thanks for posting again. Sorry you are getting so many whiny comments lamenting the fact that you aren't blowing nice pink smoke up everyones collective ass. Until people start to admit that a situation is dire then nothing can be done to reverse the situation. Sure, commenters on rigint feel that there is something amiss in the aether, but the majority of people still don't feel like they are living half past the 11th hour. Like with a junkie, things won't get any better, if they can, until everything goes completely to shit and we all hit our "rock bottom". Unfortunately all of us won't survive, with or without spiritual intervention. But life will go on, just not necessarily with this current mass of hairless apes being involved in it.

If you can't stare into the abyss you have no business fighting monsters. Jeff stares at it and remains human, so lay the fuck off of him.

8/11/2008 04:47:00 PM  
Blogger Nyarlathotep said...

I love the lame, anonymous smugness in the 27th comment. I love how that bald simian feels they have the ability to tell you what is and isn't acceptable excuses for writers block.

The primates have always amused me. Keep up the good work, Jeff. You may actually get one of your fellow hairless apes to think outside of their gestalt.

8/11/2008 04:50:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://mothershiplanding.blogspot.com/2008/08/hoomophonic-induction-and-homunculus.html

8/11/2008 05:03:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

we could just wait for the google AI singularity to solve all our problems as a species...
or retreat to some cave to hide from the unavoidable all seeing eye.
Or should we fight them? we know perfectly well who they are.
come off it jeff.
natecull: thanks a bunch for this: seriously.
"The trick is that 99.99999999% of the rest of that hidden universe is actually *on our side*. H P Lovecraft wasn't actually correct in his evaluation of the uncaring cosmic loneliness of the eternal wassnames."
if only it were true.
but how would one *know* that?
well...
that's that horrible little word again:faith.
right?

8/11/2008 07:03:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Obviously a puzzle piece has gone missing. Try here

AZAN ON THE MOON

http://www.moon-temple.org/EN/8.html

Armstrong and his two fellow astronauts, Aldrin and Collins, saw an object on the Moon’s horizon, which looked like an open book, and then they heard some mysterious “music.” They reported this back to Earth. At first, no one on Earth believed them: how could there be a book on the Moon and music in airless space? But the “music” was also heard on Earth over the radio transmission, and the “book” was photographed.

It is believed that the book the astronauts saw on the Moon is the prototype of the earthly Koran that exists in the heavens.

But all this information was classified.

On 21 July at 20:54, the astronauts took off from the Moon, after spending 21 hours and 36 minutes on it. On 24 July at 19:50, Apollo-11 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean to the southwest of the Hawaiian Islands.

In February 1983, fourteen years after his flight to the Moon, Astronaut Neil Armstrong went to Egypt to participate in a scientific conference. During the meeting, the azan sounded. Armstrong, sitting in the presidium, went pale and asked: “What is that music?” Surprised by the astronaut’s behavior, the conference participants explained that it was the Muslim call to prayer. “That voice. That’s what I heard when I first stepped on the Moon, hearing it is giving me goose bumps!… O Allah! I found You not on Earth, but on the Moon!… I stepped onto the Moon without praying, but now I will pray, you can consider me a Muslim.” So the first person to walk on the Moon, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, became a Muslim.

Later a NASA employee, who recorded all the conversations between the spaceship and Earth during the astronauts’ time on the Moon, declassified this information by allowing the public to listen to the tape.

8/11/2008 07:09:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

&&&&
I LOVE the picture for this post Jeff.
you have a serious knack for the photoshoppery.
so much in this picture..
I wish you'd give us some insight into what you intended to convey though.
(I know. artists seldom go there but just for fun...what's going on?) (I could make a subjective interpretation though it would probably be wrong)
seems like a sugar coated ride that the few are entitled to while the rest sit in annonymous patterned banality..or is it the elite making the decisions down there on the ground while the sugar coated gumdrop spinning ride entices the fools...us?
and the towers..power conductors? lightning rods?
Tesla coils?
what???

8/11/2008 07:14:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

8/11/2008 07:32:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

Jeff said in his post "Area 9/11":
"How to be the change is our challenge. Perhaps our last challenge."
what happened to that sentiment Jeff?
I know, it was way back in 06...but I thought you meant it.
I certainly take that one to heart.
no one is expecting jeff to take the reigns of leadership, but he asks for it with his intelect, his intuition. It's on display for us, here.

8/11/2008 09:13:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Siege

A message to anyone still in command
You have been surrounded by air, sea and land
There is no place to hide and no one will dare
To escape the silent current of despair

You have reason to think there's no peace anymore
And without them there would be no reason for war
You have reason to lie to make you act like a dill
As you're losing the battle of reason and will

Look at the pain when you think, till it hurts
As an aspect of power reason exerts
Whilst you're digging in earnest deeper than deep
In the hope of getting on top of the heap
You forgot you are digging on loose shifting sand
And there is always a reason at hand
Why you just can't
Be sure you are able to break with your will
The walls that the shadows or reason instill
And see within self reflection the cause
With self deception as reason and source

A challenge to reason is seen as a threat
Find your Self in the place of no pity instead
On the island of silence no reason can reach or climb
And you haven't been home in a very, very long time.

H. Meithke

8/11/2008 10:36:00 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Enough of this feel good bullshit. These bastards have been running this world into the ground since day one pitting man against his fellow man because he had a different religion or spoke a different language. Killing for profit and the spoils of war.Keeping the rest of us as slaves to till their gardens for them.

Know what? There are way more of us than there are of them and we need to take them out once and for all, totally clean house from top to bottom and start over.

Maybe we can get it right the next time but unless we act there won't be a next time.

Kill 'em all let God sort it out!

I guarantee every last rat bastard one of them will be sorted right down to hell where they belong.

Lock and load.

8/12/2008 02:01:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Wizwrencher, make sure you know what it is you are going to put in the current arrangement's place, otherwise, a love of destruction will only play into their hands and nothing will change.

From the book I posted above:

"P. 147, Do not allow the revolution to be perverted and disfigured by hatred. Do not spend its vital energy creating classes of villains. Tear down what must be torn down and build what must be built. But do not dehumanize and demonize. Do not foment mindless retribution. Spend the revolution’s energy on painting visions of futures worth living in and building systems to support those visions. Fan the sparks of hope, not hate. Do the work of the angels. That is whose side you are on. Let the devil do his handiwork in hell. Don’t do it for him on earth. I have seen too much of this. I do not want it seen on earth again, even if I will not be around to have to see it myself."

8/12/2008 02:43:00 AM  
Blogger ericswan said...

The infrastructure is all wrong. It's too comfortable. The great truth waits to be revealed and in the mean time and back at the ranch, we muddle along to death's dark drawer.

8/12/2008 03:20:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

blah blah blah...things suck...blah blah blah... look at these patterns that only I can see... blah blah blah... shameless comic fanboy plug lamely attempting to make my geek hobby relevant.. blah blah blah... subservient homage paid to pop culture media I publicly despise... blah blah blah... self deprecating self deprecations... blah blah blah... environmental horror story... blah blah blah... one more lame attempt to make another lame superhero movie appear relevant... blah blah blah...cough...sputter...moan...



"The 9/11 Truth movement is really distinguished by a kind of defiant unfamiliarity with the actual character of America's ruling class. In 9/11 lore the people who staff the White House, the security agencies, the Pentagon and groups like PNAC and the Council of Foreign Relations are imagined to be a monolithic, united class of dastardly, swashbuckling risk-takers with permanent hard-ons for Bourne Supremacy-style "false flag" and "black bag" operations, instead of the mundanely greedy, risk-averse, backstabbing, lawn-tending, half-clever suburban golfers they are in real life. It completely misunderstands the nature of American government -- fails to see that the old maxim about "the business of America is business" is absolutely true, that the federal government in this country is really just a lo-rent time-share property seasonally occupied by this or that clan of financial interests, each of which takes its 4-year turn at the helm tinkering with the tax laws and regulatory code and the rates at the Fed in the way it thinks will best keep the money train rolling."

"The truly sad thing about the 9/11 Truth movement is that it's based upon the wildly erroneous proposition that our leaders would ever be frightened enough of public opinion to feel the need to pull off this kind of stunt before acting in a place like Afghanistan or Iraq. At its heart, 9/11 Truth is a conceit, a narcissistic pipe dream for a dingbat, sheeplike population that is pleased to imagine itself dangerous and ungovernable. Rather than admit to their own powerlessness and irrelevance, or admit that they've spent the last fifty years or so electing leaders who openly handed their tax money to business cronies and golfed in Scotland while middle America's jobs were being sent overseas, the adherents to 9/11 Truth instead flatter themselves with fantasies about a ruling class obsessed with keeping the terrible truth from the watchful, exacting eye of The People.

"Whereas the real conspiracy of power in America is right out in the open and always has been, only nobody cares, so long as Fear Factor and Baseball Tonight come on at the right times. A conspiracy like the one described by 9/11 Truth would only be necessary in a country where the people are a threat to actually govern themselves effectively."

8/12/2008 04:20:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I don't have a reasonable doubt that Edgar Mitchell is telling the truth about his being briefed by government officials on Roswell and alien visitation to Earth. I have considerable doubt they were telling him the truth. Because I don't think it's part of the plan to tell the truth, of which, almost certainly, even the highest and darkest government officials would have only partial knowledge. If "disclosure" ever comes, its purpose may not be to persuade us of a lie, but rather to tell a terrifying joke."

Well said Jeff.

8/12/2008 09:08:00 AM  
Blogger Ann Hedonia said...

Ditto here on the blocking. I feel "boxed in" more each day. it's not just you. Also coming to the same conclusion about the futility of even attaining knowledge of "their" deeds.

It is fine to want to live a simple, quiet porch-sweeping life. Maybe that's winning, after all.

BTW: this post sounds like a fine intro to your book. Turn it in and be done!

8/12/2008 11:18:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous One,nice to have you back Jeff,another well put post.If you are discribing the mind set of Merica you have stated it in a nut shell.The fucken place has gone completely nuts,the people I work with beleave only what they get from the MSM.One of the gung ho military fucks even wants to turn me in for trying to inform people that they are about to get royally fucked in the ass.I can see why you want to back away from the window Jeff,to turn away from the illusion that is being fed to the sleeping masses.And to all you detracters out there that don't like what Jeff has to say,go eat shit,put a fork in it,it's done.Most of you will look just like the dumb fucks that watched the Asian Tsunami from the beaches,by the time you realise what is coming it's way to late.All is not hopeless,but it sure is close to it,the strong will survive,just keep your knifes sharp and eat the rich,they taste better,later.

8/12/2008 12:04:00 PM  
Blogger A. Magnus Publius said...

"And just how the hell do you think you can avoid the ensuing milieu? Unlike the Titantic, there are no life boats and there is no rescue crew. We must resign ourselves to our inevitable fate. We will shortly become source material for the next great era of oil deposit creation, and maybe, just maybe, the creatures that evolve after the earth stabilizes from the quickly approaching Super Greenhouse Armageddon, will avoid opening Pandora's Box yet again."

And which crystal ball did you get THAT little prediction from? Or was it just another Cracker Jack box surprise? Super Greenhouse Armageddon? Global temperatures actually DECREASED by 0.7 degrees centrigrade last year and you're STILL peddling baseless fear? You sound like a member of the Voluntary Human Extinction projects with that defeatist attitude.

We are not Georgia and 'they' are not Russia. We have the means to survive and the intelligence to make it happen. If you like feeling like compost then so be it. As for me, I'll take things as I always have taken them - face to face.

On a positive note: Welcome back, Jeff! You've been sorely missed in these parts.

8/12/2008 01:51:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

get over it maggot pubic, you're shale source rock, and that's all you'll ever be.

oh, and poor analogy using russia and georgia. georgia's just a proxy for western oil interests, and russia's saying enough is enough.

it's the beginning of many such conflicts as the big boys scramble for the dwindling supply of ancient sunlight. or, are you one of those that believe oil is abiotic and we've been duped once again?

your god won't save you, maggot, because your god is a sick illusion.

8/12/2008 02:10:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

"If "disclosure" ever comes, its purpose may not be to persuade us of a lie, but rather to tell a terrifying joke."

Gee, fifty years of complex ufo fun & games all for "our" benefit, eh?

Given the fact that the US population acquiesced to a war based on little more than mumbled inanities from a guy who looks like he couldn't zip his own fly without assistance, do you think the "PTB" painfully realize that they've deluded themselves into massive overkill.

To a population this clueless, all one would really need to convince them of an "alien presence" is a cardboard saucer mock-up and a guy in a cheap rubber ET suit holding a plastic Star Trek "phasor."

Personally, I like Hoagland's theory better. Hoagland says that all the astronauts "had their memories altered."

That's the neat thing about the Internet, one can find a theory to suit one's own personal level of credulous gullibility. The Internet as a kind of "Theories and Baseless Suppositions R Us" for the overzealous and utterly passive 21st century information shopping self styled revolutionary.

BTW, I thought that the New York Times was part of the "media cryptocracy?"
Isn't everything they print just "PTB" propaganda?

Oh. I forgot. When our entire "research" method consists of parroting news stories, stories from a media juggernaut that is supposedly propaganda laden, corrupt, and unreliable, ignoring them would leave us precious little to "blog' about., wouldn't it?




"Helping people "out of this sh*t" see: http://biostate.blogspot.com/"

Hmmm...it seems that a pidgeon muttering "coup, coup" has infiltrated the Rigorous loon's nest.
Will the cult change leaders?
Will they rally around the head paranoiac and fight off this latest attempt to rest control of "the revolution" from their Googling leader?

Only time will tell.

Only time will tell.....

8/12/2008 03:13:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A host of demons scream to be heard, armchair analysts ply body paint made of cheerios; but it's really about what you never were, or could have been according to some dust mite pawning another limp dick ideology. Best solution is to get someone else to write the introduction....it is hardly unusual. Other considerations are to take all advice and put it in the blender with the flush handle, or begin the beguine, as the song goes, and throw yourself out to a "new" point of view. The Watchers will be big, it is only a matter of how big. Things will continue as they are as they were no matter what we think, and the matter will be affected by the minutae of our observations and stale poetry. Many rivers ahead will be clogged with the poor, the ones who should have known better to be there, to come here; while that smallest slice will brave forth to actually do a bit of shopping for themselves, less they become too detached from their greatest avatar.
The water will be blood red, blood black, or blood itself. There will be no shortage of messianic maniacs blaming your cousin Bill and all the Jeffries with two "f's".
In the end the only choice will be to submit or be cast out for a later slaughter.
Or maybe not. It's a great great big boil about to burst. After it drains, it's just a question if all the poison is goes with the puss.
Conradesque horror horror is old hat. What lies ahead is unimaginable.
how the fuck introduce that?
Now....gotta go trim the trees out front...

8/12/2008 03:48:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@Jeff & the rest of ye:

My, my. Everyone is always so 'either/or' about everything. Just because there's conflict doesn't mean life doesn't go on as normal. 90% of what goes on out there is co-operative between us animals, intra- and interspecies. The same is true of human war - most contact even between foes is trade, communication, or sharing.
Nobody's lost, nobody's won. We all die.

And we all live.

Jeff, I feel for you. Why not do something else for a while? Most of the scrivening and scribbling classes have to do regular work for a living too. Why not tell your publisher to go stick his head in a pig and get a job at a mattress factory?

Besides, we're all too small to do more than watch and try to spread thoughts. Reading about the smushing of Tshvinkali (sp?) - 3500+ civilians toasted so far - I realized that everyone in my town could be lost in one jetliner crash. We're only little. Be pleased with your little things. A clean, tidy porch is a fince piece of space-time, and can be appreciated for what it is, not for what it isn't.

Best (I know I make no sense, that's why I don't get paid),
Lord R.vvqdhet

8/12/2008 04:15:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So here it is: they've won. Or let me rephrase that, since there will never be universal agreement as to who "they" are: we've lost.

How can you say you have lost? Almost all white children grow up listening to hip-hop. In Germany and most other European countries it is illegal to state the facts about the so-called "gas chambers." In a few generations the Germanic peoples will be reduced to the level of the Akkadians. Looks like victory to me. What more do you want?

8/12/2008 05:14:00 PM  
Blogger George W.Bailey said...

Jeff, appreciated your comment about "there can be only one ethos of America's Lone Gunman." I noticed this a lot of late. Notice how how the mainstream press, historians and so on, are so anti conspiracy these days. I wouldn't be surprised if one of their members come forward with a book claiming that John Wilkes Booth was actually a lone gunman and his coconspirators were all framed. They've really stretched that now with the framing of Bruce Ivins, the Lone Chemist. It has gotten to the point that the same people who go around debunking conspiracy theories are being openly skeptical of the FBI's claims in the case. And that's a good thing...as long as it lasts.

8/12/2008 05:37:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

8/12/2008 05:49:00 PM  
Blogger tridentblue said...

Hey Jeff.

I just love reading your posts, they are so rare these days but I think about them and savor them. They almost always make me want to talk to you as well. I think that's something unique about this format, the ability to talk to the author.

Anyway, the main thing I want to tell you is thank you. I've gotten a lot of enlightenment from your work...Not so much about worldly affairs as much as spirituality. Odd as it sounds, the jellyfish post where you mentioned huffing jenkem created some pretty dramatic effects in my life. It was the concept of jenkem actually, as a metaphor for so much of how we think (or how I was thinking) that got me.

The relevant point is that we are all slaves to our precepts, to our assumptions about the world. Check out your site today, these responses. You've got people who read you who really find pleasure in you. Then, you also have these people who are sitting here studying what you say who DON'T like you. So these are two totally different realities. The first group is in a reality enjoying something they like, the latter is sitting around with something they don't like. Its like one's emanating heaven and one's emanating hell. But doesn't it seem silly to emanate hell? To sit around studying things we don't like? It obviously does, but that's what you do and that's what I do and that's the problem. The hell I think we get stuck with is our own emanation.

8/12/2008 07:15:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can only speak for myself, but I neither like, nor dislike Jeff. Hell, how can I pass judgment on someone I don't know? People adored Bing Crosby, eyt he went home every night and abused his wife and children.

Also, to me it's rather silly to say you like, or dislike Jeff. You can agree with him, or not agree with him, but there's no need for the liking and disliking part.

Focus on the word, and not the man. If only the Christians were capable of the same, especially when it comes to the Beatitudes. Christ allegedly even said it himself. I am The Word.

8/12/2008 07:59:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A teacher of mine once said, "The last thing you see before you see the face of God is the face of Satan."
In my experience with plant medicine voyaging, there is a trap door in hell that leads to heaven. It may be the only way in.
It's our own shadow,it's collective and a fragment of it exists in all of us. Look in the mirror and face the monster. When we stop running he will have no more power.
Lovedogananda

8/12/2008 08:52:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

A.nonny:
Gorgeous.
"Focus on the word, and not the man. If only the Christians were capable of the same, especially when it comes to the Beatitudes. Christ allegedly even said it himself. I am The Word."
right on about the liking/disliking...
it goes beyond that either/or paradigm.
Lord R:
"Nobody's lost, nobody's won. We all die."
Yep.
and then what?
nothing?!
ha ha.
yeah, a tidy porch is nice.
they call what Jeff's doing "nesting"
is some circles.
only natural for the family man to want to put it all away and focus on his patch of heaven.
I admire the shit out of anyone who tries to be a good Father.
I never had one.
But you have to think that Jeff is still consumed, if even in the edge of his awareness by these demonic powers, his struggle with faith and trying to find the way to Be the Charnge..
One can almost imagine him, late at night on his computer after the kid's in bed, typing his latest blog, his wife sound asleep, Jeff unable to until he finishes the post.
God the internet is beautiful.
(too bad 99% of it is being used for filth)
human nature is being exploited. The sickness of a Howard Stern mentality may very well be acceptable to a majority of the population. It's easy to exploit that inane mindset of gullibility.
the ufo thing...no problemn duping the masses on that one. good gosh.

8/12/2008 09:46:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

the over saturation of porn on the internet + AI = ?
a freaky singularity !!
may not be all gumdrops anfd amusement rides afterall.

8/12/2008 09:52:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here Jeff, you posted this about Dulles under your Mephisopheles post some time back...hope it helps.

Yesterday it was revealed the CIA knew the whereabouts of Adolf Eichmann, but withheld the information because it might have led to exposing the Nazi pedigree of the anti-communist intelligence efforts in West Germany. It would seem that Intelligence, and the protection of even relatively trivial knowledge, can be reason enough to overlook holocausts.

We too, rightly, want to know. But if that's all we want we'll slip into error ourselves, amassing data which won't change a thing but will leave us alternately thrilled and depressed. Knowledge must be the servant of justice, or we're just more clients for the devil.

8/12/2008 10:44:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Alan Moore’s feelings about his comic books being turned into movies have never been much of a secret. On one hand, you can’t blame him – the adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was pretty horrid. But the news surrounding the writer’s attempt to have his name removed even from the good adaptations, like V For Vendetta, is the stuff of legends. With Moore’s most popular and groundbreaking creation, Watchmen currently filming, has the comic book legend changed his mind?

In a word: No. Not a bit.

In fact, Moore recently confirmed with Wizard Magazine that the studio has already sent over the paperwork Moore has to sign to have his name removed from Watchmen and the money he’s entitled to sent to artist Dave Gibbons – a similar agreement to what Moore had for Constantine. Moore told Wizard, ”I got a piece of paper—they must’ve learned something from the V for Vendetta debacle. I got a piece of paper a couple of months ago saying, “I, the undersigned, hereby give you permission to take my name off of the film and to send my money to Dave Gibbons.” So I sent that back to them all signed and sealed, which means that now I don’t have to rant and spew about the film.”

So, does this mean Moore isn’t holding out much hope for Zach Snyder’s adaptation? No – actually Moore just doesn’t care. ”I’m just simply not interested in it. Dave phoned me up, and it’s always nice to talk to Dave, but he understands that I’m not really interested in “Watchmen.” So when he phoned, he asked me if I was interested in being kept up to date on it, and I was saying, “Well, it’s always nice to talk to you, but not really.” I don’t really know much about it. I believe that it’s going ahead. I won’t be watching it, obviously.”


Mr. Moore consented to the following interview:


Interviewer: Mr. Moore. Watchman? Any thoughts?

A.M.: Hrrmmm!

I.: Ok, well, as you know, Zach Snyder, the director of the amazingly successful 300, has taken the helm on the new Watchmen. Recently released trailers seem to show that Mr. Snyder has stayed amazingly faithful to the comic. Recreating the comic page on the screen.

A.M. Bloody hell! Look if I wanted to see a faithful recreation of the comic, I'd just look at the comic, now wouldn't I? Why do comics fans only feel vindicated when their favorite comics become fodder for the Hollywood money machine? It's a bit sad, innit?
It betrays a certain insecurity, doesn't it? The way these lovers of fringe culture secretly ache to be accepted by the mainstream?

I.: Right...well Mr. Moore, it is, after all, only entertainment, right? I mean, they have neat little Watchmen character wallpaper and buddy icons that you can download and someone even thought up a Watchmen personality test, where you can find out which "Watchman" you'd be, based on 10 random questions. I'd even bet that the video game has already been developed to coincide with the movie's release. Quite frankly Mr. Moore, you could make a fortune with this property.

A.M.: Look mate, everything isn't for sale, right? A fookin' "personality test?" Christ! Now how bleeding stupid is that, eh? But that's exactly what I'm talking about. DC is a corporate entity that has no more interest in art than George Bush does. In essence, the movie will be nothing but a long and bloody obscenely expensive commercial for Dr. Manhattan action figures, and Rorschach Halloween masks, and smiley face badge lunch boxes. It makes me bleedin' head hurt, it does. I'll sleep much better when this is all finally flushed down America's voracious pop culture toilet.

I.: Hrrrmmm!

8/12/2008 11:27:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff,

When W.B. Yeats published "The Second Coming," he didn't tack an introduction onto it, nor did he draw any conclusions from it. He just let the poem speak for itself. You could do the same. Your book does not need an introduction or a conclusion. You don't have to "have something to say." Just paint what you see. If you thought of yourself as an artist instead of a pundit, you could be a very good artist.

On the subject of optimism and pessimism, it would be well to bear in mind what one of your posters said on an earlier thread (Steven Lagavulin, "Cynical, sophisticated and subtle," May 27, 2005):

"Sometimes it pays to remember that absolute power in no way exempts one from idiocy. In fact, what we see most clearly is that the people who pull the levers in human affairs may have sophisticated 'machines' at their disposal, but they are almost invariably idiots suprême."

8/12/2008 11:57:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well...I'm not so surprised by your most recent blog. I only discovered you a little while ago, but for some reason you remind me a great deal of myself - only with a far more organized left brained approach to the same subjects (everything from the council of nine to 9/11).

Someone below brought up Daath, and it greatly applies to all of this. Thanks to the recent Joker drama the "Killer Clown Network" (of consciousness) is having a hay day and maintaining a sense of humor is quite difficult (but you MUST).

I finally let loose some info I've been sitting upon for years, and I'm pointing it out only because it just might break the spell. I'm over at myspace like a true amateur (love of). myspace.com/queenofnight
second blog from the top...

I've come to realize the level of manipulation is too great to proceed. Everything must be turned inside out. We are the event horizon.

8/13/2008 12:41:00 AM  
Blogger A. Magnus Publius said...

Right, Mr. Anonymous pinhead, like I'm going to take the arguments of someone who calls me 'maggot pubic' seriously. You sound like one of those global socialist whack jobs who think that since you only live once, you must steal, rape and kill with impunity. So long as the victims can't shoot back, of course. Hence the anonymity, because if there's one thing people like you can't stand, it's honest criticism. Why? because none of your ideas can withstand a halfwaly intelligent bit of scrutiny. Go agitate for your police state masters elsewhere. You're not impressing anyone here - least of all your employers.

8/13/2008 02:37:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

"So these are two totally different realities. The first group is in a reality enjoying something they like, the latter is sitting around with something they don't like. Its like one's emanating heaven and one's emanating hell. But doesn't it seem silly to emanate hell? To sit around studying things we don't like?"


Spoken like a true blue 21st century internet browsing information consumer.

Of course, this begs the question, exactly what part of the whole 'Satanic occultists bugger children to create future assassins in rituals designed to rend the fabric of reality in order to allow multi-dimensional entities to enter in an effort to facilitate an end-game where millions of people will be culled into extinction' scenario is it that you "like?"

Or, better yet, if that's what you consider "heaven", then just tell me that you don't live anywhere near Pittsburgh, Pa, 'kay?

8/14/2008 02:21:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think Anony was talking to me, Magnum PI, not you, but I could be wrong. I'm proud of my name and I'm no Socialist. I'm all for privatizing everything under the sun, and above it, especially the dwindling supply of fresh water on our planet. You and I have a lot in common Magnum PI.

A World Without Water

8/14/2008 08:19:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

freemason on the Forum posted the following:

The people that worry over Obama's skin color happen also to be white.

bull fucking shit!! i know at least one exception to this idiot's assertion, and i'm sure it's not just an exception. The black guy across the street is voting for obama because he is black. because he would be the first black president. He said he knows Obama is bought and sold, but he doesn't care. I told him I was voting for mckinney and putting a sign in my yard to show my support. he said "don't tell anyone you know me."

white people are voting for Obama for the same reason, because he's black, but a lighter mocha colored black, and he would be the first black president.

racist white folks who transparently conceal their racism say obama's the anti-christ, but they may as well be calling him a "nigger."

So, freemason, don't you dare tell me it's not about the color of obama's skin, because that's all it's about, and don't think obama and his team don't know that and leverage it for all it's worth.

Don't be deluded, be rigorous.

8/14/2008 03:18:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for the note!

1) On the 3:4:5 -- that's from Marsilio Ficino. It's a paradox -- it's not supposed to make sense. In the West we define time (ratios from harmonics) as space -- when in fact in sacred geometry the space, as geometry (irrational fractions) should collapse (as complementary opposite harmonics, the equilateral as two 2-3-4 triangles with 2:3 as yang and 3:4 as yin) into consciousness which is FEMALE.

2) On the foot stance -- I practice full-lotus which is the most concise implementation of the 2:3:4 as the tetrahedron -- so the bottom of my feet, ideally, should point UP -- called "five points facing heaven" as per Dr. Effie P. Chow.

3) On food -- the point is the turn it into electromagnetic energy. If you eat too much meat then it was block the JING and turn it back into ejaculation. If I eat meat I have to eat a lot of garlic to kill off the anerobic bacteria. I now try to eat a can of spinach and a tin of sardines (the two make complete nutrition) a day. But the best diet is BIGU -- which means taking in the female electrochemical energy and turning it into male electromagnetic energy. So I just finished a fast that started night before last and ended this afternoon, around 3 p.m. A day and a half fast. I did that fast because I had to convert the typical stress cortisol system of anger and fear energy made by the male ejaculation nervous system (I was sent a huge amount of anger which produced fear in me -- so that was all extra energy). So I didn't need food until that anger-fear was converted which finally happened this morning when I had an excellent internal climax in my dream with the source of the anger-fear dynamic. Then I had more O at a Ds throughout the day and later was able to eat again. Last summer I went 3 days without hunger yet no food -- just O at a Ds. The best I did was 8 days on just half a glass of water, as per the book "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" trans. by Charles Luk.

I recommend the Level 1 Spring Forest Qigong sitting meditation c.d. $11 or the hour long one -- for small universe practice. http://springforestqigong.com The sound as the 12 notes of the scale (the small universe or microcosmic orbit with 2:3 as the Perfect 5th, yang and 3:4 as the Perfect 4th, yin) is the generative force (electrochemical energy) which needs to be converted to electromagnetic energy (after it's stored up and purified by listening to the source of sound based on the harmonic nodes of the body). Once the pineal gland is permanently magnetized the the energy can be circulated outside the body through the full-lotus posture -- but it all returns to and resonates from FEMALE consciousness, defined by LISTENING, not visual measurements.

8/15/2008 01:28:00 AM  
Blogger Dr. Bombay said...

The reason that Obama has been
"chosen" to be the nominee has now
become completely obvious. When
the shit hits the fan after the
next "election", the bad news
will be that much easier to hear
if its told to the public in the dulcet tones and perfect syntax of Mr. B..I mean, really.. Who wants to hear that hard ass John
McCain tell us that the only way
out of our fiscal "crises" is for
the Fed to devalue the dollar by
50%? Not me. Barack and McCain are
like Jeff and Mark...each others
Yin and Yang.
I do agree with Mark that Jeff's
last couple of posts have been
pretty bleak. Perhaps his recent
difficulties in finishing his next
book have something to do with
that. But for me, I appreciate
the fact that Jeff pulls no punches
when he writes.

8/15/2008 05:30:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

3G, I'm curious to know if you've ever made love to a living, breathing woman?

Physically, that is, not psychically in a McDs dining room?

Y'know, cupped her breast in your hand, felt the hardness of the nipple, felt her squirm and moan as your tongue slid into her?

While your method might enhance your "spiritual" development, it seems a bit lonely. Kind of like the sex an autistic machine would strive for. Sex at an extreme distance.

8/15/2008 11:17:00 AM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

" The Rev. Rick Warren is so prominent and respected that just being seen with him is a boon for any presidential candidate.

For Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, their appearances at a forum Saturday night at Warren's evangelical California megachurch bring risks along with rewards.

The event will play to one of Obama's strengths, talking about his Christian faith, but it will also underscore the gulf between his views and those of the most conservative Christian voters.

Many of McCain's positions are more in line with the evangelical worldview, but he is uncomfortable — and some critics say unconvincing — while talking about his personal beliefs."



Oh goody, the latest episode of the presidential dog and pony show will feature both candidates vying for the coveted "who fawns over evangelicals more" award.

It's kind of cute how large numbers of the electorate base their vote solely on how seriously candidates take the religious ramblings of people who have been dead for 2,000+ years.

You'd think they'd want something a bit more contemporary in a world leader. For example, maybe we could get their stance on the Napoleonic Wars or maybe the hypocrisy inherent in Victorian morality. But no, it will be the same tired questions by the same tired crew of gullible Christian dumbfucks as they, once again, rally around the same tired old bullshit.

Personally, I couldn't think of a more resounding death knell for the environmental movement than involving evangelicals and their "megachurches" in the process.
I'm sure they'll do the same thing for the environment that they've done for the US political process.

8/15/2008 02:01:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

WOW...

You people are stupid. On and on and on and so on and what do you get?

Depression? Nihilism? Fervent faith in the Lying Lord?

No wonder. Christianity is a branch of Satanism. Satanism should be abandoned, therefore christianity should be abandoned.

Get that? You can't even smell a particle of truth until you escape the grip of satan.

SATAN HAS THREE HEADS - THE HEAD OF MUHAMMAD, THE HEAD OF MOSES, AND THE HEAD OF JESUS.

PROOF: (by your own religiously motivated conspiracy theories): Jews, Christians, and Muslims have been killing each other since their *cults* started. Each one of Abraham's people have also slaughtered many "pagans" and what not in the name (logos) of Abraham's God (Jehova). Therefore, since such territorial pissing and murder of humanity is evil, and all three monotheist religions are thusly murderous, therefore evil, then Satan is the true lord of the "Three Religions of the Book." That is, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

ALL of you weirdos actually worship the evil one. Of course "he" tells you he is "God."

The reason you suffer so is not because the imagined enemy is oppressing you - it is because you in truth worship evil.

8/16/2008 01:21:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"ALL of you weirdos actually worship the evil one. Of course "he" tells you he is "God.""

RIGHT ON MAN!

8/16/2008 03:52:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

WOW...

You peeps iz mad stupid. On an' on an' on an' so on an' what do ya git?

Depression? Nihilism? Fervent faith in da Lying Lord?

No wonder. Christianity iz uh branch o' Satanism. Satanism should be abandoned, therefore christianity should be abandoned.

Get dat? You can't even smell uh particle o' truth until ya escape da grip o' satan.

SATAN HAS THREE HEADS - THE HEAD OF MUHAMMAD, THE HEAD OF MOSES, AND THE HEAD OF JESUS.

PROOF: (by yo' own religiously motivated conspiracy theories): Jews, Christians, an' Muslims gots been killing each other since they *cults* started. Each one o' Abraham'speeps gots also slaughtered many "pagans" an' what not in da name (logos) o' Abraham'sGod (Jehova). Therefore, since such territorial pissing an' murder o' humanity iz evil, an' all three monotheist religions iz thusly murderous, therefore evil, then Satan iz da true lord o' da "Three Religions o' da Book." That iz, Christianity, Islam, an' Judaism.

ALL o' ya weirdos actually worship da evil one. Of course "he" tells ya he iz "God."

The reason ya suffer so iz not cuz da imagined enemy iz oppressing ya - it iz cuz ya in truth worship evil.


WRITTEN BY REAL BRIGHT GUY - WITH REAL BRIGHT FUTURE.

8/16/2008 10:09:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Strangers on a train
Four strangers traveled together in the same compartment of a European train. Two men and two women faced each other. One woman was a very wealthy and sophisticated 70 year old lady who was decked out in the finest of furs and jewelry. Next to her Sat a beautiful young woman, nineteen years old--who looked like something right off the cover of a fashion magazine. Across from the older lady was a very mature looking man in his mid-forties who was a highly decorated Sergeant Major in the Army. Next to the Sergeant Major sat a young private fresh out of boot camp.
As these four strangers traveled, they talked and chatted about trivial things until they entered an unlighted tunnel, and there they sat in complete darkness and total silence, until the sound of a distinct kiss broke the silence; following the kiss a loud slap could be heard throughout the cabin.
In the ensuing period of silence the four strangers sat quietly with their own thoughts.
The older lady was thinking, "Isn't it wonderful that even in this permissive day and age there are still young women who have a little self-respect and dignity?"
The young woman, shaking her head and greatly puzzled, asked herself, "Why in the world would any man in his right mind want to kiss an old fossil like that when I'm sitting here?"
The Sergeant Major, rubbing his sore face, was outraged that any woman could ever think that a man in his position would try to sneak a kiss in the dark.
The private, grinning from ear to ear, was thinking, "What a wonderful world this is when a private can kiss the back of his hand and then smack a Sergeant Major in the face and get away with it!"

8/16/2008 10:15:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i always though satan had four heads. maybe i was mistaken.

8/16/2008 11:08:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One time when I was depressed I saw a young woman walking down the street. She was full of energy, smiling, radiantly healthy. I thought: you know, she lives in the same world I live in, but she isn't depressed. It is not necessary to be depressed. I have an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, but she just gets on with her life. What is foreground for me is background for her.

The other day I said Jeff's new book does not need an introduction or a conclusion; now I'm considering the possibility that I was wrong. Maybe Jeff is depressed because he has not thought things through. He stays on the level of feelings, and avoids explicit reasoning. That may be the problem, or at least a big part of the problem. His strategy is, look at an image (satanists abusing children, for example, or jellyfish in the sky) and feel bad about it.

Concepts like "evil" and "satanist" come up here a lot, but there is no context for them. Evil as opposed to what? Satanism as opposed to what? Lies as opposed to what? Insanity as opposed to what? Horrifying and terrifying as opposed to what?

I am not going to try to write the Introduction myself. I am just suggesting a way to get unblocked. If you answer those questions explicitly and construct a connected train of thought, then the logjam should break up.

8/16/2008 05:03:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff,follow your heart. It is not the front or back porch that needs cleaning, it is your garage. Such discourse on this blog. GGG once again you are inane. Mark is spot on with his range of agnst towards Jeff. Jeff your dreamtime needs some holy Ganga fire. I also think the person who says America power elite is all business as usual is correct.How do we have a modicum of hope with such dismal realities? Look in a childs face and smile. Go for a walk downe by the stream. Shine forth brave souls! Paint your picture Jeff, but make sure to have fun with it. Respectfully, Dennis from Oregon

8/17/2008 01:10:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Replace

image --> feeling

with

image --> larger image showing the first one in its full context --> explicit description of how it fits into its context

Then replace

image --> concept

with

image --> concept --> nexus of concepts the first one presupposes and implies --> explicit discussion of how they relate to each other (e.g. the concept "terrifying" presupposes that there are good and bad outcomes, which in turn presupposes...)

8/17/2008 03:37:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.merchantfinanceco.com/loans.htm


These fucking vampires don't give up, do they? They're relentless. Every last ounce of blood, sweat and tears must be extracted. It reminds me of Monsters, Inc. The entire enterprise is predicated on sucking our souls. You would think that the mortgage debacle would have curtailed the predatory practices of these shitbags, but no, they're going after small businesses, as well. Isn't this what the Mafia was so often accused of doing? I guess the Mafia wasn't joking when they indicated they had aspirations on becoming legitimate. They're legitimate now...legitimate loan sharks.

What kills me is how gullible people are to keep falling for this shit. They're so fucking greedy themselves, they can't see the writing on the wall.

Reason I bring this up is because I have a former colleague who has been without a job for several months and he has resorted to loan sharking for this company. Of course, he would never see it that way, but it's exactly what this is. Zinn is so spot on. So many are more than willing to step right up and be the prison guards. I think we learn it in school. What do you think?

8/18/2008 11:13:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Whenever the laws of any state are broken, a duly authorized organization swings into action. It may be called the State Police, State Troopers, Militia, the Rangers... or the Highway Patrol. These are the stories of the men whose training, skill and courage have enforced and preserved our state laws.

8/18/2008 09:11:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

FROM THE CHIEF DAN MATTHEWS FILES
Retired Gangster
Chief Dan Mattews of the Highway Patrol must protect ex-crime boss Irv Muddermanl, now a rancher, who is to testify at a grand jury crime probe in five days. Mudderman refuses to go to a hotel for safety, so Dan joins him at his ranch. After surviving a sniper's attack, explosives placed in a truckload of alfalfa, and a bomb sent by mail, they set up airtight precautions. When a car breaks through, the mobsters are captured in a resulting gunfight. The sight of a cop fighting to keep him alive just because it's his job impresses Mudderman to become a more willing witness.

8/18/2008 09:23:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The loan shark thing is pretty far off topic, but it can be used to illustrate the point that everything has to be put in context. Here is a small part of the historical context for loan sharking. The material below is an excerpt from a book by William N. Goetzmann, Financing Civilization:


All people, urban as well as rural, tend to lend each other things. They do this even when the benefits to such helpful behavior are not immediately apparent. In small communities, people lend their tools and their time to each other. While they may expect reciprocity in the future, they do not explicitly write a contract to formalize it. Such co-operation is a form of insurance. You help out when you can afford to do so, and you call upon your neighbors when you find yourself in need.

When people started living in large communities like Uruk, they began to live with strangers as well as friends. It may have been possible to know everyone in a large farming village, but not in a vast city such as Uruk. What were once implicit agreements among neighbors now became explicit, contractual agreements among strangers. When everyone had the same profession and skills, neighborly help could always be repaid in kind. But when people developed different professions it must have been difficult to maintain neighborly reciprocity. Urban societies still needed cooperation, but limits to familiarity with fellow inhabitants, and difficulty with quantifying the units of such cooperation meant that people required more formal ways to insure a return on their helpful efforts. Cambridge University's Paul Millett traced this developmental relationship between urbanization and interest loans in ancient Athens in the first century B.C. In Greece, the pattern is clear -- urbanism necessitated explicit contracts, and gave rise to interest charges. Interest is a "sweetener" to induce someone to lend you what you need.

Neighborly cooperation appears to be a way for a community to respond to periods of crisis, but loans in which the "gift" is repaid with interest allows a lender to accumulate wealth -- to obtain repayment even when he or she isn't in need. This contrast between implicit and explicit contracts embodies civilization's ambivalence towards lending -- perhaps it just doesn't feel right to charge a friend or neighbor interest, because reciprocity was our pre-urban method of adapting to crises. The invention of interest lending, in the very shadow of the gates of Eden -- may have been humankind's original fall from grace.

What gave the ancient Sumerians the idea of charging each other interest? Linguistic evidence provides a clue. In the Sumerian language, the word for interest, mash, was also the term for calves. In ancient Greek, the word for interest, tokos, also refers to the offspring of cattle. The latin term pecus, or flock, is the root of our word "pecuniary." The Egyptian word for interest, like the Sumerian word, is ms, and means "to give birth." All of these terms point to the derivation of interest rates as the natural multiplication of livestock. If you lend someone a herd of thirty cattle for one year, you expect to be repaid with more than thirty cattle. The herd multiplies -- the herder's wealth has a natural rate of increase equal to the rate of reproduction of his livestock. If cattle were the standard currency, then loans in all comparable commodities would be expected to "give birth" as well. The idea of interest seems to be a natural one for a pastoral society, but not so for other types of economies.

Perhaps an even more fundamental tool was the Mesopotamian ability to symbolize goods and quantities. The Uruk accounting system made it easy for the Sumerians to imagine owning and exchanging quantities of goods. Even the act of wrapping the tokens up in a clay envelop implied ownership of them. Perhaps finance began in the ancient Near East because, for the first time it was possible to symbolically represent units of wealth.

In the 1920's, Sir Leonard Woolley, excavating the Mesopotamian city of Ur, the fabled birthplace of Abraham, found himself standing in the remains of what must have been an upper middle class neighborhood near the center of the ancient city... Most of the cuneiform texts found in the financial district date from the early years of the reign of the King Rim-Sin (1822-1763 B.C.), who ruled from the capital city of Larsa, a few miles north of Ur shortly before Hammurabi's time. During this period, Ur was probably home to 25,000 to 40,000 people. Woolley's excavations revealed a large neighborhood of houses, both large and small, clustered around a central square. Two shrines faced this plaza, and wide thoroughfares and narrow alleys led away from the square to other parts of the densely populated city.

No.3 Niche lane (the names for all of the streets were borrowed by Woolley from England's town of Canterbury) was the office of the businessman Dumuzi-gamil... The activities of Dumuzi-gamil and other residents of the "Wall Street" of Ur reveal much about the role that financiers played in ancient Mesopotamia. In 1796 B.C. Dumuzi-gamil and his partner, Shumi-abiya borrowed 500 grams of silver from the businessman Shumi-abum. Dumuzi-gamil promised to return 297.3 grams on his share of 250 grams after five years. According to the manner in which the Mesopotamians calculated interest, this equalled a 3.78% annual rate. The term of the loan was a relatively long one -- five years. Sumi-abum turned around and sold the loan to a couple of well-known merchants, who successfully collected on the debt in 1791. Marc Van De Mieroop suspects that Dumuzi-gamil was acting as a banker -- taking in deposits at low rates of interest, and in the interim, making productive use of the money. Indeed, Dumuzi-gamil tried his hand, with great success at a number of business ventures. His principal trade was as a bread distributor. He invested in institutional bakeries that supplied the temple.

There is little doubt that Dumuzi-gamil's loan represented the exploitation of the time value of money. When he borrowed the capital from Shumi-abum, he undoubtedly had a plan for increasing his wealth. Perhaps it was the entrepreneurial idea of setting up institutional bakeries. While his records are not complete, it appears likely that debt, in the hands of Ur's entrepreneurs like Dumuzi-gamil, could be a means to social and economic mobility. Without the ability to shift money through time -- to borrow against future income, Dumuzi-gamil might not have been able to set up shop.

Dumuzi-gamil turned around and used at least some of the money to make short term loans. According to Marc Van De Mieroop, Dumuzi-gamil frequently lend silver to fishermen and farmers apparently in desperate need of silver to pay their temple rents. On some of these loans he exacted 20% interest for a single month! At that pace, one mina could grow to 64 in two and a half years! Of the fifteen loan records of Dumuzi-gamil's that survived, most of them were very short term -- one, two or three months. The price of time was high for citizens in debt to the Ur money-lenders.

The difference between the long term loan of Dumuzi-gamil and the short term loans to the fishermen is important. The short term loans were clearly for emergency purposes, while Dumuzi-gamil's was for productive purposes -- for developing the bakery business, and for lending activities. In fact, most loans in second millennium Ur were of the emergency variety, not the productive variety. Borrowing was more typically a response to emergency, and Dumuzi-gamil was probably not very popular with his debtors, given the usurious rates he charged.

The legal limit on interest rates for loans of silver was 20% over much of Dumuzi-gamil's life, but Marc Van De Mieroop demonstrates how Dumuzi-gamil and other lenders got around such strictures -- they simply charged the legal limit for shorter and shorter term loans! Curiously, while mathematics during this era was extraordinarily advanced, the government failed to understand, or at least effectively regulate the close link between time and money.

Second Millennium Ur may have been an early hothouse of capitalistic enterprize, but what of the borrowers mired in debt? The government may actually have preferred them this way. A study by the economist M. Darling of the rural economy of the Punjab in modern times suggests a disturbing thing about human nature -- people work harder and produce more when they are in debt. Darling found that crop yields for farmers in debt typically exceeded yields from unencumbered farmers. Farmers in the Punjab may have faced foreclosure, but for the ancient inhabitant of Ur, the motivation was even greater. Debtors were often forced to sell themselves into slavery.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that, while the first loan contracts and the legal system that enforced them may have been good for the Mesopotamian economy, they made life miserable for the working man and woman. If lending began, as historian Paul Millet believes, as a process of neighborly reciprocity in rural societies, then it evolved into something quite different. In Babylonian times, short-term debt was a tool used to extract taxes from the population, and to increase the productivity of temple lands. It is almost as though the government had found a way to extract the residual "goodwill" from the economy, by allowing individuals to shift financial obligations into the future. Lending in ancient Ur was mostly for emergency purposes -- where the government created the emergency! The other side of the coin is that certain entrepreneurs such as Dumuzi-gamil achieved economic upward mobility through borrowing. Thus, while the system was harsh on the populace, it encouraged creative and productive enterprise. For those with the imagination to exploit it, the financial system of Ur offered limitless possibilities.



Dumuzi-gamil, Ea-Nasir and their fellow financiers became wealthy through banking and trading activities during the first half of Rim-Sin's reign, but their financial dealings were not without risks. In fact, in the year 1788 B.C. there was a financial catastrophe. The king Rim-Sin issued a royal edict declaring all loans null and void. Debtors rejoiced and creditors panicked! Dumuzi-gamil and the other lenders appear to have been wiped out. After Rim-Sin's edict, Marc Van De Mieroop finds little evidence of financial dealings -- with the exception of lawsuits. A number of parties sued in the wake of the edict to claim property pledged in security for loans. They were unsuccessful.

Loan forgiveness edicts were common both before and after Rim-Sin's reign, and they suggest that the government had an ambiguous relationship to the financial sector. The financiers indirectly provided silver to the temple and the palace, but they did so at a high social cost. The periodic voiding of debts suggests that the government regulation of interest rates was ineffectual. By allowing financial entrepreneurs, the palace opened a Pandora's box of possibilities, and it had difficulties controlling the result. Individuals gained control of things such as the copper trade, and they used money as a means of re-distributing goods. Some people did well, others didn't, and it did not depend entirely upon their allegiance to the king or the temple. The existence of legal limits on the charging of interest shows that king Rim-Sin intended to cap the money lenders profits, and perhaps exert some control over the burgeoning financial sector. He was only temporarily successful.

Although the debt edicts provided periodic relief to the citizens who had gotten themselves mired in debt, they had a negative effect on interest rates, and on the productive use of capital. The mere threat of an edict would be enough to limit long-term loans for investment. The risks of such a loan were too great, since the chances of it being forgiven by the king sometime over its tenure were high. Such uncertainty about the political future induced lenders to increase interest rates, in order to compensate for the increased risk of loss. Although meant to provide relief, the edicts effectively increased interest rates. Lenders played a kind of high stakes "Russian Roulette" with their capital. The short term returns were high, but the chances of complete loss were significant. To make matters worse, across the board debt forgiveness was the only kind of risk against which a lender could not protect himself by diversifying investments. Ea-nasir could insure against his Dilmun ship sinking by lending money to Dumuzi-gamil to invest in the bread-making business, for instance, but if all loans were wiped out, this diversification would not help. Perhaps it is no accident that there are virtually no documents relating to Dilmun trade for another thousand years. Ur apparently ceased to be the flourishing maritime entrepôt it had been in its heyday.

8/19/2008 01:38:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting material you provided, Lyle, but hardly off topic, let alone far off topic, as you say.

When Jeff asserts that we've lost, one can make the argument that this is part and parcel as to why we've lost.

Afterall, the author asserts "the invention of interest lending, in the very shadow of the gates of Eden -- may have been humankind's original fall from grace."

8/19/2008 08:04:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Speaking of Money Lending, the discussion would not be complete without the following from Catherine Austin Fitts. It gives one great insight into how the game is played these days versus in Sumerian times, however, the general principles remain the same. Let's here it for The Big Lapowski.

Dunwalke


The Dillons

Notice that we're not taught any of this in school. Instead, we're taught to be good involuntary, or voluntary, servants and/or prison guards. And the beat goes on. And the beat goes on. La De La De Dah, La De La De Dah.

8/19/2008 11:06:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

Alex is talking about some interesting media "coincidences" today on his radio show,
like Neo's passport in "the Matrix"
and the Lone Gunmen episode, the precision of the symbolism..
the Long Kiss Goodnight,
the pretext for war..
and what of the Unveiling of the New World Order?
"A thousand points of light...a Big Idea"
hiding , terrified of
The AI singularity occulticly (is that a word?) hoped for VR holographic Matrix control Image meme..
While the New World Order's face seeks to obscure anything that looks like order, really, in any reasonable way..
The media gets the average american to believe whatever's on the agenda. They're fooled into thinking that life's a big merry-go-round..
never mind the atrocities and evil going on all around you..

8/19/2008 12:38:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

being groomed, prepared for something...
or as something..
an appetizer

8/19/2008 12:41:00 PM  
Blogger Dr. Bombay said...

Calpurnia: Thanks for the links.
My own view is that we will never
break the stranglehold that the Feds
and their partners in crime have
us in until we refuse to pay income
taxes. Everyone should take a look
at the deductions from their paycheck
whenever they get paid and realize
that the Feds are stealing your money
and using it to finance your demise
and increase their own power.
"Thats not a deduction, thats a jack."
Chris Rock

8/19/2008 12:42:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Once again business as usual. Mess with American interest 's, you will pay the price. Mafia has nothing on taxes. So what? Consider an underground economy, barter,holy ganga fire economy. Grow your own food, fools of the concrete/vidio/plastic/pathetic economy has no future. If you don't grow or raise YOUR OWN FOOD, WHAT GOOD ARE YOU? Is there any thing good inside of you! This old hippie occult minded Hunter Thompson kind of dude says live and eat localy, dream universaly, and get ready for the cold cold ground. Shine forth brave souls! Burning man here I come! LOve. Respectfully, Dennis from Oregon.

8/19/2008 02:41:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Fletcher, be serious, the media doesn't "get" anyone to do anything. Americans bend over because they like dick in their ass. They play along because it's the path of least resistance. Thinking for oneself requires work and time, & that would just distract them from eating and watching sports.
Until Americans stop bending over backwards to excuse themselves from their own culpability in their screwing, they'll continue to be sodomized.

8/19/2008 02:53:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff, you take this world much too seriously. Besides what the hell do you really know? So much self-assured arrogance of knowledge in this post and the comments.

You people are diseased. Information isn't something to be fought with, it's simply a tool for the mind.

8/19/2008 09:44:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

When Jeff asserts that we've lost, one can make the argument that this is part and parcel as to why we've lost.

I would like to hear the argument.

8/19/2008 10:43:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

when can i buy that rigint book already? i hate reading off illuminated screens.

8/19/2008 11:56:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I would like to hear the argument.

No, I don't think you would, but either way, it's not for you to inform us when we are, or are not, on topic. There is no on, or off, topic down here in the trenches. Everything is fair game, including pineal glands and vagus nerves, so shut the fuck up about the direction of the discourse. Do I make myself clear, fuck face?

8/20/2008 07:31:00 AM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

" WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

McCain leads Obama among likely U.S. voters by 46 percent to 41 percent, wiping out Obama's solid 7-point advantage in July and taking his first lead in the monthly Reuters/Zogby poll."




It looks like the race between Barack "I'm a televangelist wanna-be/ex-used car salesman" Obama and John "mad as a hatter/creepy as a grandfatherly pedophile" McCain is heating up. It appears the right arm of the corporate party has jutted ahead of the left arm of the corporate party in a bid for the finish line.

Do you feel the suspense growing like a fungoid rash on your private parts?

I know that I do.

In other breaking news, Americans prove, once again, that no one does 'stupid' like an American.


"Blake Peebles, 16, of Raleigh, dropped out of school last year to devote himself to playing 'Guitar Hero,' and his parents agreed to have him home-schooled. 'I usually play till I can't anymore,' Blake says.

Blake is the middle child of Mike and Hunter Peebles. Tucker is 18, an honor-roll student who plays football for North Raleigh Christian Academy. Caramy is 13, a dancer with a congenital disorder that causes developmental disabilities.

Mike and Hunter do not believe in one-size-fits-all parenting.

That is not to say that it was an easy decision for them to let Blake leave school last September. They would have preferred that he stay in high school with his brother. But he bugged them until they let him quit.

"We couldn't take the complaining anymore," says Hunter. "He always told me that he thought school was a waste of time."

Blake never gravitated toward sports or drama or any of the other traditional school-based activities. Just gaming.

So they made a deal. Blake could leave school but would have to be tutored at home. In one respect, the arrangement is similar to what parents of gifted child athletes and actors have done for years. "


Hmmm...pushing multi-colored buttons while an Aerosmith cartoon plays a pre-recorded burst of over-played classic rock crap is similar to being a gifted athlete?

Somehow, given the state of 21st century American indolence & stupidity, I can see how this makes sense.

Really.

Is Blake's mastery of glorified air guitar anymore of a dipshit fantasy than the fantasy promulgated by all the overweight middle aged Harley riders in my neighborhood who think that having a 'hog' between their thunder thighs somehow makes their jiggly man boobs cool?

After all, this is the land of fantasy.

We fantasize that we're free,
we fantasize that we're brave,
we fantasize that we're adults instead of dysfunctional hyperactive and whiney toddlers, so why not have a fucking army of make believe musicians too?

8/20/2008 11:28:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Let's talk about vanity. Let's look at the case of a man – any man or woman - who clambers onto the heap of his accumulated wisdom and decides that he is surrounded by a herd of dumb, ignorant fools, and, from what he imagines to be the altitude of this position, passes judgement on his fellow human beings as being worthless and despicable. What world has he (or she) created for himself? And, by expressing his opinion at every opportunity, what world is he painting for the rest of us to look at? And more importantly, what is he going to do about it?

My wife's father died last week at age 96. He was a doctor. Drafted as a military surgeon at the start of WW2, he did his job, sometimes under fire, until the end of the war. When he settled here in 1945, he set up shop and began, single-handed, to care for the members of his community. His brother-in-law told me yesterday that in the early days he had no car, and would sometimes cycle 20 miles, often in the middle of the night, to deal with medical emergencies. The community has obviously grown since then, but today there are twelve doctors who look after the same area he used to service alone, and I know that this is a considerable responsibility, because his often weary son practices medicine today in the dispensary created and organised by his father.

He was a fervent practising Catholic and a devout right-winger, reserving biting scorn for any idea emanating from the left, and never had any doubt that the Nazis, the Russians, and later Arab extremists, were responsible for most of the evil that swamps the world, and never questioned the idea that violent retaliation was the just and only response. Nevertheless, anyone who ever sat at his table was made welcome and treated with respect, generosity and friendship. More than a hundred people came to pay their respects at the funeral service. It's a banal and ordinary story. Now I ask you, what was lost in a life like that?

As a Catholic, was he just a stupid old fart lacking the moral fibre to deal with life without a convenient pre-digested dream to cling to, unthinkingly following the arbitrary rules laid down by a corrupt and hypocritical power structure?

As a doctor, was he just a semi-conscious underling peddling dangerous chemicals to an unsuspecting population, who themselves deserved nothing better, since, like their doctor, they believed unquestioningly what they'd been told, basically, lap it up, because Daddy knows best?

As a right-winger, was he just an anal-retentive old neo-fascist who played his part in shouldering the Titanic bloody wheel of tyranny a little closer to your front door? Did it serve him right that his eldest son was killed by a mine in Algeria in 1960, fighting for his fatherland against the country's rightful owners in a doomed attempt to impose and maintain France's colonial dominion?

I contend that despair is a web carefully spun to trap and consume human energy before it can be put to good use. It's woven of your own laudable intentions, intelligent reasoning, intense efforts - and it's knotted by vanity. Vanity is not a vice, it's a mistake.

We are not just slime animated by random electricity, twisting together curtains of conceptual macramé behind which we hope to hide from the awful truth that we are no more than food for the predators who have ruled the world for ever and ever amen. Predators who have made the baffling and terrifying decision to become trenchermen rather than lunch, as if these were the only viable options. In fact, we predate the predators. And in fact, essentially, so do they themselves. In fact, we as creatures are as multi-dimensional as Life itself, and no decent scientist today will dispute that. Since this is true, we also have access to these dimensions, because we and they are the same. Muscles waiting to be used, like 90% of our fluffy little brains.

However, whether intelligence is a function of those dimensions is hotly disputed by those modern flat-earthers who, for some reason, insist that all this is quite accidental, and there's no more to it than what they, armed with their impressive battery of gauges, deem pertinent. Like those who considered the heliocentric model of the solar system blasphemy – like the infant, who, as the unique centre of the only world it can yet perceive, acts entirely under the urgent goad of his own appetites. Perhaps also, like those who scorn the idea of life anywhere else in the Universe but here.

Perhaps despair comes more readily to those who, horrified by the shroud of evil that darkens our world, desire desperately to find a fissure through which they might enlighten their fellow humans. These scruples honour them, and are worthy of respect - let's not fall into the trap of condemning them as selfish because they might also benefit from this illumination. But perhaps they despair at their own perceived failure because, at one point, they must necessarily realise that the task is just too great for one person, that the forces of darkness are immense and, apparently, unstoppable. Entropy. It's true that, from the moment you hand over one cent in return for goods of almost any kind, you are compromised. So – steal everything? Starve yourself? Give up, jump in and wallow? I don't think so. In fact, fuck that shit.

Back in ancient times, when the Internet was a new phenomenon, there was probably a fair chance that you could access relatively untainted information – with the obvious caveat that you shouldn't believe everything you read there, any more than a reasonable person would believe everything he heard in a bar. These days, it's highly probable that most of the contentious info offered for your eager consumption has been carefully vetted, spun, and often tailored from virgin flannel. Most but probably not all. So how do you choose your friends? Answer – carefully.

Since it's demonstrably true that most of the content of the main stream media is doctored to the advantage of the ruling class, where do you look for a different, perhaps more accurate picture? The Internet has to be at least one avenue worth exploring, although, in many respects, it has itself become part of the MSM. To denigrate people who flounder about in their search for coherence is snobbery, and also potentially damaging, just as it is when parents berate their children for their incapacity to master punctuation, a chainsaw, a bicycle or a smoothing iron. Smack them round the yard and tell them they're useless? Because they aren't as advanced as you? Let them work it out for themselves, while keeping a weather eye open so they don't lose a finger or burn your house down in the process. Tell them they're great when they do work it out – this may be a poetic exaggeration, but they'll gain faith in their own capacities this way, and almost certainly approach their next learning experience with increased confidence. They'll also probably pass this on, augmenting by a minimal but real percentage the amount of good work done.

The point? Apart from relieving suffering, healing disease and consoling the desolate, what Jacques did that was really important – IMHO – was that he showed hundreds of people that despite the shit-storm of difficulties and distress under which we all shuffle towards the crematorium, there is something of human energy that can be harnessed and applied for the common good. Some people will get it, and some won't, but in the end, it's not your responsibility – certainly you can't force them to see things your way, not that it would do the slightest good if you could. They'll work it out for themselves – or not. Dismissing them as dumb zeroes is no different from justifying eugenics by advocating the culling of 'useless eaters'. Our energy is creative. We define the world we live in, and we make it so. Do it right. What good does 'good' do? Fuck, why does the sun shine?

The primary – perhaps the only – battleground is in our own hearts. Your choice.

8/20/2008 11:38:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i pet dans votre direction générale

8/20/2008 12:44:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

A nice bit of enabling bullshit Fruc.

That is what you humanitarians who can't call a spade a spade do with your long winded bullshit, you enable it all to go on and on and on...

Despair? Gimme a fucking break. If anything Americans need a burst of good old fashioned honest despair. Maybe then they'd learn a little humility.

In my misanthropic opinion ol' Fruc, America is like a dull-witted puppy that just can't catch on to the fact that it shouldn't shit in the living room. Sometimes you have to grab the little mutt by the scruff of his neck and shove his little nose into his own shit and say, "BAD DOGGY.....BAAAAAAAAAAAD DOGGY.

The day America produces a politician that speaks the truth instead of continuously spewing the kind of emotional, feelings sparing stroke job you seem to favor, he'll get my vote.

but don't let me discourage you from being resident sob sister. I think it suits ya.

8/20/2008 12:49:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mr. Strappe, I think you meant to say je pète dans votre direction générale, but I could be wrong.

8/20/2008 01:25:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NCKu8kJIMM

8/20/2008 01:33:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

so shut the fuck up about the direction of the discourse.

Make me.

This isn't your blog. If Jeff tells me I'm not welcome here, then I will leave. That's not for you to say, whoever you are.

8/20/2008 03:33:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lyle, how are you so sure I'm not Jeff and this isn't my blog?

8/20/2008 04:43:00 PM  
Blogger Aphelion said...

"Because life is short, even if I get another turn after this one, I'd rather not waste half of it relearning all the secret wrongs done to the world that I can't undo. So I need to know what, if anything, we get out of knowing what they get away with."

You sound as if you regret adapting Alice's role and jumping down the rabbit hole, only to swallow the red pill instead of the blue.

Was it curiosity, or the ability to see things for what they really are? You may be a dreamer, yet certainly not delusional. A "realist" sees things for what they are, and seems to take life in a better balance than either the optimists or the pessimists, who unbalance the scales, or the idealist, who doesn't know the definition of realism or which walls can be surpassed and which simply need to stay erect.

Was it truly a waste? How can knowledge of any sort be a waste? Even if it feels it leads to nothing tangibly proficient? Knowledge leads to wisdom, which is good food for the soul. Your wisdom has inspired others. Your readers do well enough in sharing their own thoughts, as your thoughts have created a chain to inspire more thinking, whether it be philosophical, political, or even spiritual. You've lifted spirits and created new ideas with this site/sight of yours, and I would hardly say that time you spent searching/seeking/pondering/writing this knowledge was wasted.

And look, you're a published author. All of the negative side of all of this knowledge and thinking which, at times, leads to despair and helplesness, was just the shadowed balance to the light of all the good it's done for yourself and others.

Don't be so hard on yourself. ;)

8/20/2008 05:01:00 PM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Richard

I don't think you'll need to struggle with the ethics of computer voting any time soon, since I seriously doubt that America, or anywhere else in what is referred to as the free world, will produce a politician who speaks the truth any time in the near future. At least as long as politics is working the way it does. And as for a shitty nose, I fear that's just down the pipes for lots of us, even here in genteel little France, since it's pretty much become your 51st state since Sarko was elected in. Or actually 52nd, since Britain got there first, steered discreetly up your cavernous and welcoming fundament by the apologetic little hand of Tony Blair.

What I take issue with is the view of your fellow humans as basically worthless animals. This to me is not only wildly presumptuous but also possibly pathological. First, how many of them do you know, and second, since they number several hundred million, how many do you have on your own team? How did you get so smart, or were you just born like it? Do you think something could be done about it all, and if so, what are you doing? Or can't you be bothered? I assume you're too intelligent to be suckered by TV, so how do you spend your free time? Do you think all these human spunk bubbles deserve anything horrendous that happens to them, and probably soon will? Are you willing to participate in their most necessary education? If so, then hey, Dicky, let's get serious. Buy a gun, bust some caps in some of those fat American asses. Where would you start? Close family, distant relatives or just people who bug you personally? What do you tell your children? 'Kids, life is shit, people are worth less than that, and it ain't gonna change except for the worse. Don't bother. Get mad and bitch a lot.'

And when Number One son comes back through your door with a face full of studs and crystal meth and a fist full of Uzi, might it suddenly cross your mind that he's decided to start with you, the one he will certainly hold as the prime responsible for all his suffering, as children naturally will? And when the catastrophe occurs, I mean the Big One which those around you so richly deserve, will it cross your mind, as you drown in the communal sewage, that it's kind of unfair, since you've led such a smart and exemplary existence? Or is that OK with you? If it is, why suffer waiting? Buy a gun, open your courageously forthright mouth and bust that one cap – perhaps two in case you miss the first time. Cheaper that way, and more morally righteous, since you'll have donated less to the armament industry.

I might also take issue with the fact that you pretend to believe that my little rant could be summarized as saying that everything's just fine as it is, let's all get touchy-feely and smile a lot. You're either applying bad faith, just like a politician, or else you really completely misunderstood what I said. In that case, since RI unfortunately isn't configured for the drawing of pictures, there's not a lot more I can do except repeat myself. Not that I'm anybody special. But if the Big One does happen, and by some miracle, you and a few other emblematic figures survive, what are you going to do then? Sit in the shit and sulk? Amp up the bitching? That might fix it, what do you think?

What makes you so different from the people you despise? OK, you try to keep a trim silhouette, won't watch sports and don't ride a Harley. And ... ? Have you ever lost any illusions? Do you think you've become more aware over time? If so, is it assurance in your own moral and intellectual superiority that makes you so sure that other people, even fat ones, even sports fans, don't have the right stuff to follow the same royal road you've so bravely astrogated?

I think it's counter-productive in the extreme to condemn other people for failings most of us have traversed at some time or another – unless, as I say, you were born smart and just can't help it. I believe people can change, transform themselves and work out a better way of living their lives, a way that might not only be more ethically balanced for themselves but even become beneficial for others too. This is not a blind Jesus-fishy, wishy-washy peace 'n' lovey dream, Dick, but my experience – not only in my own unimportant life, but I've seen it happen around me – plenty. Since I know this to be true, I've understood that rather than berating others for their all too obvious faults, it's more productive to start repair work with myself, and encourage them, if and when pertinent, to envisage the possibility that there might be another way of doing things. Even that over-weight, sports-loving, bike-riding asshole Bob Dylan says that inspiring others is the very best you can hope for. The choice is always, can only ever be, their own. I too appreciate the robust common sense of Richard Hoagland – I don't know if you've watched videos of him talking or just read his stuff – but do you hear him bitching? I doubt he wastes his time.

I remember we exchanged on this subject once before, and you told me that you didn't actually think everything was shit, but that you'd swallowed a lot of it and were sick of the taste. OK. Then why do you keep slinging it around all the time? Moaning that it's all their fault? You've obviously researched the subject up one side and down the other – have you thought of leaving it alone for a while? Taste buds regenerate.

8/20/2008 05:13:00 PM  
Blogger Aphelion said...

"despite the shit-storm of difficulties and distress under which we all shuffle towards the crematorium, there is something of human energy that can be harnessed and applied for the common good. Some people will get it, and some won't, but in the end, it's not your responsibility – certainly you can't force them to see things your way, not that it would do the slightest good if you could. They'll work it out for themselves – or not"

Lovely, Fructedor. Simply lovely. I don't think this could be said any better or any more elegantly.

In the end, it's how we choose to look at things. I mean, we are all constantly shit-fed a perception with a spoon stuck halfway down our throats on every television station, every supermarket, magazine advertisement, radio station, and we've the choice to either swallow it or throw it all up. There is far too much too our existence as human beings, as you stated, for us to just stand there with a spoon lodged in our esophagus. Would it be too optimistic to state that I personally think after being bombarded by all of this someone wouldn't stop and consider thinking for *themselves* for a moment, rather than let the rest of the world do it's thinking for them? Those who are content with that - correct, not to be put in a category of the blind, the ignorant, or the unintelligent. We all choose our perception. I consider the double-edged sword approach, and that the despair is that shadowed side that comes with having an open mind - the blessing is choosing just what the hell is going in my mouth, and by my own piece of cutlery.

We may not be making nationally televised changes, but you're absolutely right. Good energy is abound.

8/20/2008 07:34:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

certainly you can't force them to see things your way, not that it would do the slightest good if you could. They'll work it out for themselves – or not"

Your post is quite elaborate, poetic and flowing, but it essentially is meaningless considering the context of this blog, especially the comments section. One could turn the tables on you and charge you with the same. You can't force us to see things your way, so why are you vainly attempting to do just that? I, for one, happen to relish the descriptions of just how fucked it all is, because in everyday life I have to interact in an insane fantasy land where everything is just peachy keen. If you don't, and don't share those observations, or the value judgements based on those observations, then just ignore them as opposed to trying to convert the observer to a kinder, gentler approach. Nobody's advocating genocide here, although it would be a nice surprise if the idiots disapparated tomorrow. Sorry, but all this shit cannot be laid at the feet of the elites. The proles pull the trigger. The proles lock the cells at night. The proles stick the cell phones to their heads without questioning. The proles don't question, period, and so long as they PROUDLY don't, coddling them won't change a damn thing. In fact, nothing you do or say here is going to change the trajectory of history. Our course has been charted and the momentum's too great. There's no harm in people sharing what they see from their window seats.

8/20/2008 09:43:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That wasn't me at 8/20/2008 04:43:00 PM, obviously. Somebody is trying to poison the well.

Anyway, coming back to something just another dick said above,

Of course, this begs the question, exactly what part of the whole 'Satanic occultists bugger children to create future assassins in rituals designed to rend the fabric of reality in order to allow multi-dimensional entities to enter in an effort to facilitate an end-game where millions of people will be culled into extinction' scenario is it that you "like?"

Some people enjoy thinking about such things, in the same way they enjoy horror movies. And some people (including, possibly, some who post here) like it because they are part of it. But some of us don't like the scenario at all. The point I have been trying to make is that there are things one can do - "rituals", so to speak, in a general sense - that will have the opposite effect. There are maneuvers you can do in your own mind, such as seeing things in context, switching foreground and background, and shifting from right brain to left on occasion, that will repair the fabric of reality. There are also things you can do in public - these might also be called "rituals" or "magical acts," although they might not look like rituals - that will draw down different entities and facilitate a different end-game.

This blog itself had that effect in the first year or two of its existence. When I started reading Rigorous Intuition back in 2005, I got the impression that that was what Jeff was trying to do. This blog was supposed to be a kind of anti-magic that would turn the tables on the pedophile occultists. At least that's what I thought at the time.

8/21/2008 12:26:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's just a freakin blog to discuss weird shit in a unique way. That's it, people, nothing more, nothing less. Take from it, and give to it, what you will, but don't try to paint it as though it's been anything more than what it is. It doesn't have to be. It's fine as is. Does everything have to go mainstream and become hyper-established lest you consumers of everything on the planet become disconsolate? Just as the Abrahamic religions created a God in their image, so to some of you appear to be attempting to pigeon-hole this blog in your image to serve your peculiar fancies. What a farce. Hands off, please. Leave what it is be and use it to give and receive, and nothing more.

8/21/2008 07:48:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Dear Ms Maudie,

Thanks for the comment - very briefly, I try to stay on topic here, and feel that I'm also simply sharing what I see from my window seat, and what I feel about it. That does not necessarily mean I'm trying to force people to see it my way – as I said, that seems a pretty pointless exercise. We all have our say, and can share what we think about that too. Nothing wrong with a little cut and thrust either. Obviously we won't all agree on what the point of the blog is - I like what Jem has to say about give and take, that seems fair enough to me. You enjoy descriptions of how fucked up it all is, particularly since you have to put up with co-workers who remain frustratingly 'peachy keen' – good phrase, that. We all have access to all the info we want about the dire state of humanity – probably we would agree on many points about that. Well, dig in, enjoy it.

You say it would be a nice surprise if all the idiots disappeared overnight – OK, whose idiots do you want removed – your idiots, my idiots, Richard's idiots, Jeff's idiots, if he's got any? They're not always the same. How about if your family or close friends were disappeared overnight because they turned out to be some other idiot's idiots? And that's my point, simply that all 'idiots' are in truth potential good guys – now I'm aware that there's deep disagreement with that statement, but that's what I've noticed so far from my window seat. By my own standards, I was an idiot for a long time, and life has served me the possibility of becoming less dumb – by my own standards of course, not anybody else's.

As for the elite and the proles – yes, I agree with Jeff that we'll never arrive at a consensus as to who 'they' are, and I agree with many that at that level, 'their' level, there's little or nothing we can about it. That does not mean we're beat, though, it just means that we're better employed working at our own level. I agree with you that the proles you speak of – idiots I suppose – are indeed the guards and gatekeepers. They're the people who cheer in relief when they hear that the factory in their town, on which they all depend for their survival, has just won a government contract to make a bunch of new weapons, apparently without considering that these weapons are going to be used, for evil reasons, to kill and maim people exactly like themselves in other lands. And that the hatred and anger provoked by this destruction will eventually boomerang back on them in one way or another, in the visible or invisible world. Just like the dumb grunts who come back home from whatever battlefield in small sticky pieces – why do you think they joined up in the first place? I'd bet that very few of them subscribed to concepts of honour and patriotic duty – I'd bet that most of them just wanted to blow shit up, as they say. Why? Because that seemed like a more interesting and adventurous option than staying home where there's no work, no money, and fuck all to do except watch TV and drink. Why? Because they have been carefully educated to believe that these are the only options.

JARichard advocates the use of the OFF button on the TV. Well, that option works great for me too – there's a stack of other fascinating stuff to do with some creative peace and quiet, but not everyone knows that. I disagree that it's because they're intrinsically and hopelessly stupid, though. I think it's because they haven't yet seen that there's more to do with our precious time and energy than thrill to the adventures of Brad and Angelina. The day may come when they do see it, and on that day, the percentage of idiocy in this world will be diminished by an infinitesimal but real quantity. Personally, I'm prepared to do what I can to help the dawning of that day. And it's not by confronting people and screaming that they're dumb and ugly. That just locks them into defence mode. You have to accept people as they are and go from there – if you're interested. Our attention might be compared to a TV set, where we ourselves are the channel changer. To me, it makes little sense to stay locked into Fear Factor or the Dating Game, moaning that you hate those fucking stupid shows. All that does, IMHO, is to reinforce the power of the shows in question and augment your own frustration. Wasted energy. We don't just perceive though, we create by all our expressions, including thought. Not everyone agrees with that either.

Finally, although the momentum you speak of is indeed enormous, the final destination is not yet, and will never be, written in stone. Our choices change things from one instant to the next. That's why we're here.

8/21/2008 10:49:00 AM  
Blogger Académie française said...

Cher M. Caramy

Veuillez nous permettre de corriger votre traduction du mot grossier de M. Strappe. En langue française, la phrase « Je pète dans votre direction générale » ne traduit, malheureusement, que la bassesse d'esprit de son auteur, et n'a aucune autre signification. Dans votre langue, cela revient à dire « I fart in your General Management Department ». Ce qui pourrait éventuellement soulager M. Strappe, mais sans communiquer autre chose que son odeur. Nous pouvons nous en passer. Cependant, si M. Strappe souhaite manifester son indifférence, il sera plus correct de dire « Je vous ris au nez », ce qui se traduit en anglais par « I laugh in your nose ». A quoi nous répondrons sans hésiter « Va niquer un canard ». Nous vous laissons le soin de la traduction.

8/21/2008 12:29:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

to lyle
YES! that is it. If evil can organize so can we. It is partly just a neutral power they have organized. It can also be used for GOOD, for harmony, for health. It's weird that these freaks that have brought understanding to us about occultist evil cocksucking power mongers are not also proposing an alternative. YES! alternative healing in your own mind exists. As a group it will be even more powerful. It will happen. Jeff has become just a dipshit wimp. He can't write a fucking introduction but he can take potshots at Alex Jones. go shit yourselves Jeff's handler's. I think you are a phony liar now. Your whining is ruining something that was once great. You have gone insane or maybe kidnapped and mind controlled. my sympathies if it iS insanity.

8/21/2008 01:46:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Vous êtes une pomme de terre avec le visage d'un cochon d'inde. Bouffe ma queue calisse de fag. Brûlez dans l'enfer. Vouz avez plein de merde. Vous êtes une pomme de terre avec le visage d'un cochon d'inde

8/21/2008 04:26:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Give this a listen. An hour well spent.

http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=27595

8/21/2008 11:33:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff:

I've read this blog for some time and I'm sorry to see you've fallen into a paralysis that I myself am struggling with, perhaps in part due to this blog and other web-based information -- fruits of knowledge in a fallen world. I simply wanted to extend a blessing to you, that you might know some peace as I hope to from The Risen Christ. Remember that his passing was an Apocalypse, abject horror to his followers, who only later understood it as "a lifting of the veil" over God's own long-suffering heart. There are many mysteries in Christ's suffering: Joyful, Sorrowful, Luminous, and Glorious. Each mystery is imbued with meaning.

Can you see the mystery, the great mysteries of The Cross in all the things around you?

May Christ in his infinite love smile upon you and sow in your darkest hours of humility the seeds of The Kingdom.

Amen.

8/22/2008 01:42:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's just a freakin blog to discuss weird shit in a unique way.

So you say. You and several others here are trying to make it into that, and Jeff has let you pull him in that direction, but that was not his original intention. The name he chose for this blog was RIGOROUS Intuition. Some of the posters here hate the very idea of rigor. I thought it was interesting that my parenthetical remark about something being off topic generated such a violent response. Some people here have very strong feelings about this. According to them, there is no on or off topic. They fear rigor because they understand its power. Not everyone here is on Jeff's side, after all.

If this blog is just a series of random thoughts, then of course it will have no magical effect. It's passive, like a Ouija board. If you are just drifting, not trying to DO anything, then you will lose. If you are not trying to win, then the other side wins by default.

Obviously Jeff is not happy with the way things have turned out. The fact that he introduced the idea of "winning" and "losing" indicates that he is trying to do something.

8/22/2008 03:03:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nah, I think you're wrong, Lyle. You're projecting, nothing more. Besides, even if it were true, and just as you say, it appears Jeff has acquiesced and admitted that the game, if there ever was one, is over, or in the least, it's not a game worth playing any longer. Games are like that. They get boring and you get burned out or you throw a shoulder or knee out. There can be bliss in ignorance. Afterall, you're happy, aren't you?

8/22/2008 03:43:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How dare you give up.

What we face here has as many heads as a hydra. Its roots are deep inside each of us.
The terror is that we ourselves have let it overcome us, and each time we wake up and keep thinking the same thoughts it wins again.
Kev at Cryptogon says that the only way to fight this is by not fighting it. And he might be right. But I don't agree all the way. I think we each have much more power than we are willing to use. We just fear misapplying that strength. Where and who? What is responsible.
You might have forgotten what it was like before you knew all this, but take it from me, we need people like you to direct our gaze. Without you, people would still be shaking their fists at the jews, the illuminati, ect.
We all sit here at our terminals, moving numbers around, getting numbers, giving numbers, typing ideas and taking in ideas. All under the spell of an organizing principle that has gotten vastly ill, that is sick, that is dying. And we can look at this two ways: Is it's sudden show of strength indicating that a new dark age is upon us? Or is it desperate, realizing that information provided by people like you is penetrating the minds of its most trusted slaves?
I am sure you have read Atlas shrugged. The people with the ability to perceive this kind of information that you present here are the Atlases of the world. We are the ones who build the future that everyone has to live in. And we take orders from those above because it is all we know. But now there is more out there, you can see the lines and the strings and all the controls, thanks to people who just keep looking!
And what the fuck are we going to do if we don't? Sit back and watch movies? Live a life with a constant uneasy feeling, that we are not really free, that in fact we are being driven like horses across a landscape we can't quite see?
No, we must keep thinking, fighting and reading. Think of this: Each person who really sees the structure of what is going on now has a choice: Do I do what am I told? Do I pull that trigger because my superior told me to? Before there was no second option. We blindly followed what we were led to, and look where that got us?
This is going to be won one mind at a time. Each person to step back from the horror and declare that they will not participate is a victory. And it is people like you, who brings forth the uncomfortable questions that brings us all closer to the day that we will live like men and not like ants.

8/22/2008 04:50:00 PM  
Blogger the proprietor said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

8/22/2008 11:08:00 PM  
Blogger the proprietor said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

8/22/2008 11:16:00 PM  
Blogger the proprietor said...

Mark’s reply has been one of the wisest thus far. (But then I've only had time to read about 1/3 of the way down.)

...a calling out against agent provocateurs and a call to understand seriously that you can't be hangers on of a system that is I think unreformable by itself through participation in existing pathways, alone. ...
....leftism or rightism totalitarian flavors of the month they supported and funded. (Read the Antony Sutton books on Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, Hitler, and on FDR, and "the best enemy money can buy"--for starters....

A novel ideological position just starts a whole 'nother round of co-optive statism that will be utilized by the psychopaths to sell your ideals and dreams back to you emptied of content and twisted to administrate a future psythopathy in the stolen ideological skin of legitimacy



What, St. Barack and the Democrats aren't going to save us? They're really not God marching on earth? That's shocking!

What we need is not to “work within the system” that’s set up to render us powerless and meaningless, but to smash it.

To those who would ask "which solution": How about just being your own solution?

How about looking inside and finding the solution(s). How about anything that doesn’t perpetuate the problems.

How many problems are there anyway? In the Bible, there is only one problem. Everything else is just detail. If you don't know, read a little.

If you still don't get it, how about asking someone who knows more than you – perhaps a higher intelligence? Don’t ask, and ye shall not receive.

Anonymous said:
“The system must be destroyed as part of any holistic solution, and in order to accomplish that, people need to be educated”


Most of our problems our human problems, which means they originate and are perpetuated in the spirit, heart and mind of man. We all participate. The enemy is us. To be part of the solution means to stop participating in creating the problem(s), in whatever way.

I think the ultimate, ultimate solution is spiritual, but what we do in the physical affects the spiritual and vice versa. One thing we can do in the physical realm is to spread the meme of freedom/responsibility (freedability) rather than slavery/dependency.

Stop participating in the collective meme of government – i.e., absolute cessation of individual sovereignty to the state, a tyranny which in this day and age is far worse than any religion of the past. Take back your own power and responsibility to decide and to do for yourself. This can be done “cold turkey” (the anarchy way) or step by step.

Every day and in every way, cultivate in yourself, your neighbors and your children a healthy disrespect for rules made by strangers – especially the most petty, absurd and tyrannical – and tell and show others to do the same.

Ingest whatever substances you wish, making sure of course that they are beneficial to your body, mind and spirit and not Establishment-created poisons.

On the highway, keep speeding, according to your driving ability -- just don’t be an asshole about it.

Carefully ignore pavement lines or “NO TURN ON RED” signs, thus showing people that disaster does not ensue when adult human beings act carefully and sensibly using their own judgment.

Avoid state bureaucracy offices whenever possible, but when you must go, walk around the empty queue instead of snaking your way through it. And stand in front of the line marked “STAND BEHIND THIS LINE WHILE WAITING TO BE HELPED.”

Don’t take bullshit from nasty-tempered, slothful and condescending public servants. They are SERVANTS – that is, they’re butlers and janitors, okay? They’re employees. You’re the employer.

Oh yeah, and those other servants – the ones with the badges and guns and Tasers who “serve and protect” – don’t take bullshit from them either. Learn your rights, and when confronted by them, tell them you know your rights and that if your rights are violated, you’ll be suing them personally for violating civil rights, false arrest, and anything else you and ACLU lawyers can think of.

Take your children out of government Kiddie Koncentration Kamps if at all possible.

GET ARMED. Get a gun, or better yet, two or three, and learn how to use them. DISARMED PEOPLE ARE VICTIMS – of street criminals, official criminals, and war criminals. Crime is one of the great pretexts for the police state tyranny we’re going under today. Getting armed reduces crime and removes the pretext. If you need help in removing years of anti-self-defense brainwashing, wet your feet at this page, showing the disarmament/genocide link clearly.

Those are just a couple of things for starters but of course there's additional, and more radical steps. I just don't have the time. But others with more organized thoughts and more time than I can perhaps add to what I've said. Perhaps, already have and I just haven't read that far.

- The Author aka africkinamerican

8/22/2008 11:16:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Look Fruc, I'm just tired of it, ok?

This time Americans were supposed to be "hungry for change."

8 years of Bushit was supposed to have taught them something.

But who do they pick?

Obama.

Look up his DNC speech from 2004 on YouTube.

He's selling Kerry/Edwards using some of the same stock phrases he's used to sell himself this go round.

He picks Zbigniew "the world is my chessboard" Brzezinski to advise him on foreign policy.

Now he picks Joe Biden to be his VP?

Is this a joke?

There isn't a weaslier windbag than Biden in the entire Democratic Party, and this is who he picks as his Veepee?

The 'change" candidate has become "the business as usual candidate,' once again.

I can't say I didn't see it coming, but why didn't his supporters?

8/23/2008 05:26:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Thanks AA.

Anyway, here's something for Jeff to meditate upon.

It might serve as a reminder of Jeff's motivations of why he started a blog about political psychopathy in the first place: he didn't like it.

Jeff, just put together an introduction on this theme:

Twilight of the Psychopaths: 5% evil hierarchy's killer standards v. 95% us learning of it
author: Dr. Kevin Barrett, 9-11 patriot truther

9-11 truther Dr. Kevin Barrett on how a network of psychopaths set the tone for what we called past 'civilization.' He argues we may be on the verge of rejecting this. Why are we surprised warped standards are backwards, or that the USA did 9-11?

As he says succinctly: "The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy of the psychopaths against the rest of us." ---

"Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history, is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate power. And as that power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths grow ever-more-desperate. We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld--the criminal syndicate or overlapping set of syndicates that lurks above ordinary society and law just as the underworld lurks below it. In 9/11 and the 9/11 wars, we are seeing the final desperate power-grab or "endgame" (Alex Jones)....And they are running scared. It was their terror of losing control that they projected onto the rest of us by blowing up the Twin Towers and inciting temporary psychopathic terror-rage in the American public....Why does the pathocracy fear it is losing control? Because it is threatened by the spread of knowledge. Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization of, by and for the normal human being - a civilization without war, a civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power. We already have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and keep them out of power....We simply need to disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely as possible." ---

I am skeptical about any state regime of psychology being utilized in a fashion like this. After all the USSR and the USA both have a very politicized psychological establishment that is utilized by the psychopaths. How do we know that it will just be utilized to remove the saints instead of the sinners?

Besides, that's a red herring in some way. It's beyond just 'bad leaders'. It's how bad organization of government encourages bad leaderships of psychopaths.

If your country is run by psychopaths, it's not set up right in the first place is it for them to gravitate into it, despite massive polls saying the want the world to go in different directions. (And I recently read that the U.S. Congressional 'approval' has dipped to 9%, the first time ever in the single digits.)

Good discussion of the 'civilizational' implications of why we require checks and balances in government against the innate psychopathy rising to the top; interesting information on how 85% of WWII U.S. troops were pacificist under fire.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/08/378785.shtml

This 'network of psychopaths' theme is key to Barrett's essay and Jeff's blog in general. Both want to neutralize it.

As AA mentioned, to rephrase in these terms, I was talking about how psychopaths depend on converting your beliefs into some placeless, loose, endlessly-reframed, ideology that they can manipulate.

How much better would be something like bioregionalism that is un-ideologically codifiable since it encourages people to get along in particular areas without single ideological policy ideas (though with protection of common civil rights) as the only way to solve things:

"The truth which neither the traditional right nor left wishes to admit, is that broadly enfranchised, local grassroots efforts to identify with and care for natural regions are so powerful, so ultimately democratic, and so basically popular with...people that they threaten the huge, entrenched political organizations on both sides." --Robert Theyer.

To update Theyer's quote to this discussion:

"The truth which neither the traditional right nor left wishes to admit, is that broadly enfranchised, local grassroots efforts to identify with and care for natural regions are so powerful, so ultimately democratic, and so basically popular with...people that they threaten the huge, entrenched [psychopathic and unsustainable-policy protecting] political organizations on both sides."

This is bioregionalism. I wrote a book about it as well. That's how to get a better world, a better de-psychopathized, pro-local, optimal development world of civil rights, health, ecology, and local economy. It's based on local jurisdictional dominance in economic development unless particular watersheds pollute other watersheds nearby or endanger human civil rights. Then the larger frameworks kick in as a check and balance. I'm not going to rewrite everything on the website. Just go there. About 60+ checks and balances ideas for it.

I don't support totalitarian regimes, left or right, McCain or Obama. Both are deadly killers even if only 1/4 of the murders around Obama (the NSC's Brzezinski vehicle for power) are true.

Totalitarian regimes of the right or left have zero difference except they appeal to different ideological dupes. I still think there will be these views of ideologies due to the scale of national states. I am only suggesting that they have only encouraged networks of psychopaths and require their own far more localist checks and balances against the 'psychopath-to-ideology' deadly mix of elite-to-base clientelism that keeps the whole evil charade in place, whether left or right puppets are in power.

The politics of ONLY a left/right ideologies for the past 220 years (left and right came from the French Revolution in way they sat in session at legislature) are a failure.

Simply exchanging one placeless ideology dependent on a national clientelist network of psychopaths 'competing' with another psychopathic network that claims to be of another ideology always leaves the psychopathic party in power. That is unsustainable and innately undemocratic.

The psychopathic networks of clientelism are what are causing gatekeeping. They get checked and balanced with more localism in the bioregional state.
http://biostate.blogspot.com/

8/23/2008 05:39:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mark, sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. There is a great deal of truth in the link you have provided, but's it's laced with disinformation, such as the following:

but Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall's discovery in the 1940s that only 15-20% of World War II soldiers along the line of fire would use their weapons: "Those (80-85%) who did not fire did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges" (Grossman, p. 4).

The following article appears to contradict that conclusion, and the majority of the grunts on the front lines in the Vietnam War were drafted which would indicate they weren't as gung ho as all those who voluntarily joined during WW 2. I think Marshall's study was unscientific and unchallenged, and if we apply rigorous intuition, quite bogus. There's simply no possible way the Americans could have pulled off the victories they did in WW 2 without the majority of men firing at the enemy to kill.

Some 20 years later, the validity of Marshall’s analysis was called into doubt. Respected researchers interviewed those who had accompanied him in World War II and also pored over his personal notes during the mid-1980s. Convincing evidence pointed to his having fabricated his World War II ratio-of-fire values, still so widely accepted at the time. The question seemed inevitable: Had there been a problem with Americans’ willingness to engage the enemy in World War II? If so, had it actually been rectified during the Vietnam War as Marshall claimed, or was the research done there just as flawed as had been the case a quarter of a century before?


The concern was fundamental to the nation’s military readiness. Americans would die needlessly and wars would be much extended if U.S. troops failed to perform the essential act of firing on the enemy. Compelled to determine whether a problem existed, I conducted a survey of 258 1st Cavalry Division Vietnam veterans in 1987. My motivation had nothing to do with determining Americans’ willingness to use their weapons in World War II; any results from Vietnam would not apply to a war fought decades before. The question was whether there might be an existing problem in the U.S. armed forces. Despite Marshall’s fall from grace, there were those who had agreed with him. The issue was important enough to investigate rigorously. Since Vietnam was the most recent U.S. war, its veterans were the men who could provide answers to critical questions addressing willingness to fire. Ultimately it was their responses that formed the basis for a detailed study of this issue and the influence of training, the 12-month rotation and the six-month command tour on the American fighting man’s combat performance. The results of that study were published in 2000 in the book Reading Athena’s Dance Card: Men Against Fire in Vietnam. This article summarizes those findings relating to whether men fired their weapons and what factors influenced their willingness to do so.

Only nine of the 1st Cavalry Division veterans reported that they never personally fired on the enemy, a far different result from what Marshall had written was the case in the Pacific and Europe. But some might suspect that a man would hesitate to admit his own shortcomings under fire. The veterans were therefore also asked to reflect on the performance of their comrades in arms. When asked what portion of their fellow soldiers fired during any given engagement, the veterans estimated that about 84 percent of a unit’s men armed with individual weapons (rifles, pistols, grenade launchers, shotguns) and approximately 90 percent of those manning crew-served weapons (generally the M-60 machine gun) did so.


From these responses it seems that Americans in Vietnam had little hesitation to engage their enemy. Yet the observations of these veterans prompt the question of why, on average, nearly two of every 10 men were not firing when their unit was in contact. The apparent problem was not of the magnitude Marshall had reported for World War II, but losing the firepower of so many soldiers was still no small matter. In a unit with 500 riflemen, some 80 would not engage. Unlike the numbers from Marshall’s work, these estimates came directly from the men who had fought in the cities, jungles, firebases and rice paddies of Vietnam. Why did so many not fire?


No single factor explains it. A man’s duty position was one critical element. Soldiers surveyed in the 1st Cavalry Division can in general be said to have come from one of two basic groups. The primary job of the first group was to engage the enemy with small-arms fire. These men served as riflemen, machine-gunners, helicopter door gunners, vehicle crewmen or others who were to kill the adversary with the weapon they carried. The second basic group consisted of others who accompanied those of the first group. It included men who might sometimes fire on the adversary, but that was not their primary responsibility. These Marines and soldiers were squad leaders, first sergeants, platoon leaders and company commanders directing maneuvers, distributing ammunition, calling for fire or performing the many other tasks that success in a firefight demanded. They included assistant machine-gunners, whose first responsibilities were to load an M-60 and help the gunner to identify targets. Others were artillery forward observers who called for and directed artillery and aircraft fire; medics caring for the wounded; engineers destroying bunkers, removing mines or investigating tunnel complexes; chaplains; radio operators passing information; or pilots flying helicopters.


In the case of the second group, vital duties were left undone if on contact these men first raised rifle to shoulder or drew a pistol to engage. There were occasions when firing their weapons was essential, but many times their choice to engage rather than perform their other duties would have done more harm than good. Lieutenant General Harold Moore recalled what his responsibilities as commander of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, demanded of him in his classic book We Were Soldiers Once… and Young. Moore noted that he was tempted by the opportunity to join his riflemen in firing on the enemy during fighting at LZ X-Ray in 1965, but he ‘resisted the temptation. I had no business getting involved with the actions of only one company. I might get pinned down and become simply another rifleman. My duty was to lead riflemen.’ For a very different reason, chaplains rarely engaged the enemy. Regulations proscribed men in those positions from carrying weapons, though some felt compelled to do so in a war in which medics and chaplains, who were not legitimate targets under accepted rules of war, were shot and killed nonetheless.


But even the men whose primary job was to engage the enemy found that at times they could not fire. Location was a second factor that determined whether a man pulled, or should have pulled, the trigger of his weapon. A soldier at the tail of a column winding through the dense foliage of a Southeast Asian jungle might hear an engagement to his front, yet be unable to see where his comrades were located. If he fired, he risked shooting his own men. That same infantryman might later be on the perimeter of a defensive position when the enemy attacked the other side of his firebase. Sluing his weapon around in the dark and firing meant those bullets could strike other defenders in the back.


Men Against Fire: How Many Soldiers Actually Fired Their Weapons at the Enemy During the Vietnam War

8/23/2008 09:48:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Hi Richard

Man, of course you’re sick of it – it’s fucking sickening. What surprises me is that you often talk as if you were expecting - or at least hoping - that it might be different this time. How can people continue to put their faith in anyone who embodies the structure that is, if not the problem itself, at least one mighty wall of the monolith that casts its shadow on us all? Never happen. Obama gets to wear the suit of the ‘virginal unknown’ this time round, just like Clinton and Jimmy Carter before him - and Tony Blair - because that makes it easier for people to project their eternally unrequited dreams of peace and justice on his apparently blank canvas. It’s the pushme-pullyou strategy. Now it’s time for the good cop - he gets to play the role because the real power – the inscrutable ‘they’ – knows that the majority are by now heartily sick of the devastation and impoverishment implemented by the Bush gang. Even those for whom life remains determinedly ‘peachy keen’ – lawdy Ms Maudie, I love that phrase. I suspect I’ll be nicking it frequently.

Here’s what I think. I think you suffer from the fact that those around you continue to get taken in by the same old shit day after day and don’t seem to have worked out that they’re only helping to make it worse. See, I respect that, because I think it means you care. So do I, and so do almost all of the people who write on this blog. And also, millions of people who don’t blog. But here’s the thing. I think most people are so occupied with the constant anxiety of survival that they can’t afford to think about anything else – when your rowboat is always on the verge of sinking, you’re too busy bailing to worry about people drowning next door.

The more we learn, the more we understand about the enormity of the problem. Some people react by charging ravenously onward, hoping that learning will one day lead them to the key that will somehow unlock the puzzle for us all. Some people react by rejecting any but apparently enormous solutions, like the Red Brigade kneecappers and lifetakers. Others just don’t give a shit – like the California biker I saw interviewed in an Arte documentary the other night. When asked what his tattoos meant, he replied “Fuck off”, and when asked what he meant by that, he replied “I don’t give a fuck about anything or anyone except me and my family”. I confess that I thought “Richard would love this guy”, since I’d just read your first response to my post about vanity. And incidentally, I would like to note that I’d been gestating that post for a while, and it was purely by coincidence that it appeared only an hour after your rant about the air guitar hero – I mean you were not specifically targeted. I put it up because I needed to get it said, and because I’d missed RI discussions – also, I was interested to see what the reactions might be.

Ms Maudie is not entirely wrong about my motivations, I suppose, except that I know full well I can’t force anyone to see things my way – but discussion is all about exchanging points of view and maybe learning from other people. Give and take, like Jem said. Nothing passive in that. Jeff asks the question “What good does it do if the only result of the search for truth is a splurge of new blogs?” Well I don’t feel that’s the only result. Even blogs do some good if approached in the right spirit – feed your head and splash it around.

Since there is clearly almost no chance of a single individual being able to deflect the entire gargantuan stampede of this bloody terminal civilisation, some people just give up. I don’t believe for a minute that Jeff has given up, by the way, rather that he’s dealing with the dodgy end of readjustment. I presume that he started RI because he cares too. And that’s all I’ll say about that, because for one, I know nothing about him or his intentions apart from what I glean from his posts, and for two, I think it’s rather unhealthy to hoist people up on pedestals of any kind. We’re all just like you and me, long short and tall.

Individual change is possible, always, it’s never ever too late. That’s what I’ve learned and what I want to get said. And I will be repeating myself frequently. Sometimes, our input can help change an individual for the better, even fat fucking bikers – although I might not attempt that one myself, I’m more efficient where I am. So are you, in my humble opinion. If you decide to do what you can where you are, it’s essential to start with people as they are. As an experiment, try talking to some people you normally wouldn’t go near. If you can get some time with them, you will certainly discover that every one of them without exception has an interesting, even fascinating, even astounding story to tell. To listen properly, though, you have to suspend judgement. It’s not hard to understand that our own judgements on others are always arbitrary – relativity rules.

Also, before I get long-winded again – too late – I will say that I completely agree with the frickin American author, that the true problem underlying all others is a spiritual problem. Oo that word again. Why is it so hard to swallow? Because we are under the mistaken impression that spirituality is a concept invented by the black-suited blackhearts who have got millions of sheep jumping the fence so that we all go to sleep. It is not. Spirituality is a reality that has been jacked by the bad guys, just like truth, justice, freedom and tutti quanti. It’s not just CG, movie fans, it’s the real thing. It signifies that part of all human beings which allows awareness of our true being, that is, as spiritual beings – creatures formed of spirit – with all the capacities of spirit. Spirit is not mind either, it is deeper than mind. It is continually creative, around us and within us, and offers possibilities that few in this particular version of civilisation will even admit. We create with words, deeds and thought. In other words, the way you perceive, act in, and think about the world creates the world you live in. Our choices are one of our greatest powers. Don’t get trapped in that cold, horribly lonely place where we remain doomed and powerless. That’s CG, movie fans, however good it looks.

And finally, one of the greatest men of the 20th century, the exemplary Muhammad Ali, said that an essential step in the making of any champion is getting well beaten a couple of times. His manager also said that though people talk about Ali’s technique, one of the most important things about his career was the fun he created. “Fun,” said Angelo Dundee, “Is what makes you excel at what you do.”

Enjoy.

8/23/2008 12:45:00 PM  
Blogger surrender said...

As the Fruc said about Spirituality, don't you think it is a bit telling that it can be a word or concept to "avoid". We are not talking religion as it has been a great factor in inhibiting our evolution as spiritual beings.

The ego/mind is dysfuntional and very diseased and does not want to acknowledge Spirit.

We have a choice, as I see it. We either evolve in our Spiritual Consciousness or we disappear as a species. And as we evolve in our own individual Awareness, we raise the Consciousness/Awareness of others.

It has been scientifically proven that our thoughts and emotions can change the molecules in such a simple thing as water.

An Evolved Spiritually Conscious Being does not spend his lifetime and billions of dollars finding ways to start World WarIII or is it World WarIV????

Denying that we are all Spiritual Beings and we are all connected to every single life form, which includes even a rock, molecule or cell anywhere in Creation, keeps us stuck in a spiral decent into oblivion.

"They" are the unconscious beings who have not evolved into an awarness that whatever "they" do unto others, "they" do unto themselves. Their days are numbered, even though there is much evidence that "they" have control of us and there is NOTHING we can DO.

All we can do is BE who we are, and discover that when our thoughts and actions come from that place of "Awareness" of our connection to Source/Consciouness/Spirit, we have unlimited power and no matter what circumstances surround us, we can choose to BE free and at peace within.

We stay on that merry-go-round of believing that we need to DO something and then 'despair' finds its way into our consciouness and it seems there is nothing we CAN do.

When we are more Aware and Conscious, we will not question ourselves as to what do we do?, we will KNOW what to do and "they" will not be separate from "us" any longer.

8/23/2008 05:26:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

To Private Ryan:

Thanks, though take it up with Barrett if he is 'sloppy.' Or not really him, take it up with the original interviewer. As you noted, many people have.

I did read something else about that figure of 15-20% of firing. I read what you read here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3478256/men-against-fire

It's easier to read as one PDF here.

That number came from the journalist/officer's interviews in WWII only.

The same person argued that in a later war of the US (Vietnam) was closer to 50%, so I don't think his claim was that 15-20% is a permanent functionalist feature of 'all wars, all the time.' The original inventor didn't claim such a grand theory! I'm sure context depends on a lot though. Defensive wars of troops compared to their wars in other countries for instance? Difficult to get data either way I imagine.)

I think whatever that number was is a totally ancillary issue though, right?

The point was not this number--the point was the tiny psychopathic group percentage (anywhere from 5-3% I have seen bandied about), not a particular war extrapolated figure....

Regardless, it opens up the question of who sets the 'civilizational' standards--psychopaths or the rest of us.

-----------

(Switching gears on the same peoples' stories and networks gets into high wierdness tangents rather fast. This revolves around General Trudeau's friends. Trudeau was the General at Roswell.

Read up on General Trudeau after reading the article above. Interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Trudeau

"The General [Arthur Trudeau close friend of officer/journalist who did the open-ended interviews about battles] is connected to the Roswell Incident as he headed the committee responsible for the Pentagon's files and u.f.o. items recovered in New Mexico. According to his immediate subordinate, Philip J. Corso, and Trudeau's book, "The Day after Roswell", Trudeau actually managed a covert mission to disseminate recovered alien technology to major industry in the U.S. during the 1950's and 1960's. Trudeau's book recounts how he helped share this gleaned ufology information with others so that they could use it to advance technology. Consequently, Trudeau claims that our world has experienced the greatest technology and information revolutions within the last 50 years."

the other one touches even more high level American history. Think 'alien expert' and follow his career:

Military career

After joining the Army in 1942, Corso served in Army Intelligence in Europe.

In 1945, Corso arranged for the safe passage of 10,000 Jewish World War II refugees out of Rome to Palestine.

During the Korean War (1950-1953), Corso performed Intelligence duties under General Douglas MacArthur as Chief of the Special Projects branch of the Intelligence Division, Far East Command. One of his primary duties was to keep track of enemy prisoner of war (POW) camps in North Korea. Corso was in charge of investigating the estimated number of U.S. and other United Nations POWs held at each camp and their treatment. At later hearings of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, Corso provided testimony that many hundreds of American POW's were abandoned at these camps.[2][3]

Corso was on the staff of President Eisenhower's National Security Council for four years (1953-1957).

In 1961, he became Chief of the Pentagon's Foreign Technology desk in Army Research and Development, working under Lt. Gen. Arthur Trudeau.


When he left military intelligence in 1963, Corso became a key aide to Senator Strom Thurmond.

In 1964, Corso was assigned to Warren Commission member Senator Richard Russell Jr. as an investigator into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. [?]

Small world.

Trudeau as well was hired immediately into corporate research after this:

Upon retirement from the Army in 1962, Gen. Trudeau went on to head Gulf Labs of the Gulf Oil Corporation in Pittsburgh until 1968. [The major parapolitical even Illuminati Mellon family empire.] He then served as a special adviser to the chairman of Pittsburgh's Rockwell International aerospace firm until 1972.

Back to Corso:

Corso relates in his book The Day After Roswell (co-author William J. Birnes) how he stewarded extraterrestrial artifacts recovered from a crash at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.

According to Corso, the reverse engineering of these artifacts indirectly led to the development of accelerated particle beam devices, fiber optics, lasers, integrated circuit chips and Kevlar material.

In 1947, according to Corso, a covert government group (see Majestic 12) was assembled under the leadership of the first Director of Central Intelligence, Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter. Among its tasks was to collect all information on extraterrestrial spacecraft. The US administration simultaneously discounted the existence of flying saucers in the eyes of the public, Corso says.

Corso further relates that the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or Star Wars, was meant to achieve the capability of killing the electronic guidance systems of incoming enemy warheads and disabling enemy spacecraft, including those of extraterrestrial origin.

Many of the claims made in this book have been challenged by other UFO researchers; for a detailed investigation of his claims, see Kal K. Korff's book The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You to Know.

---------------------

8/23/2008 07:13:00 PM  
Blogger Aphelion said...

What are the thoughts centering around this whole Georgia incident while their Bushi played around in Beijing?

Can I say I wasn't surprised (though the idiotic moves in their exalted game of chess never does these days), what would drive these fools to, yet again, make America look even worse than it already does in foreign eyes? With Russia, no less.

Does this bleed along the lines of Mark's post concerning Barret's views on pyschopaths?

I was skeptical on the theory that our nation's leaders were deliberately trying to tear down our civilization from the top of their pyramid. Yet when shit like this occurs, that theory actually starts to make more sense.

And Richard, (don't unleash your feral hell hound on me *wink*), perhaps at least take refuge in the notion that Biden has experience with foreign relations? At least you can understand the man when he talks. Just out of curiosity, what is your beef with Biden?

8/23/2008 10:06:00 PM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Dave Grossman wrote a book called ‘On Killing’ in which he mentioned this subject – his take on it was that human beings have a natural resistance to killing members of our own species, part of our inborn brain configuration. Military training is designed to counter this innate resistance, as well as transform human beings into mindless robots who learn to do nothing they haven’t been ordered to do. It’s an interesting book. He said that the US Army radically changed its training methods as a result of their findings. He said that the percentage of men who would fire to kill was greater in the Vietnam war than in WW2, and again, in the Gulf Wars, had been amped up by new training to close to 100%. US combat troops now perform a good part of their battle training by using video games similar to the ones our nippers play in arcades all over our lands of the free and home of the brave. The Army versions are more hardcore than little Jimmy and Joe’s, though, and their scenarios have in fact been directed by such Hollywood luminaries as David Fincher. So it looks as though little Joe and Jimmy – not forgetting GI Jane - have already been preselected as cannon fodder in readiness for the next Big One.

Hollywood has also kicked in by churning out increasingly gory movies in which the ultra-violent intrigues are played out in the strictly-controlled pyramidal environment of the military or the police or the alphabet soup agencies, if not simply in hundreds of TV shows such as CSI – Cops are Smarter than Inybody – which are clearly designed to imprint the ideas that life is basically a fight to the death in horrendously ghastly circumstances, that most people are capable of the most fearsome crimes for the flimsiest of reasons, and that the concepts of good and bad no longer make any sense at all. The last man standing is simply the most brutal and heartless and most effectively trained. Also, carving up and fiddling around in the meat machinery of increasingly mutilated corpses while the protagonists gargle with phrases like "This is all we are." Many of the movies have absolutely no story at all, and are simply a florilegium of horrible torture, insanity, agony of the innocent and pointless murder – huge successes here for movies like Hostel and the Saw franchise. Entertainment. This is all well-calibrated education whose purpose is breeding a generation of dehumanised potential killers ready to rock ‘n’ roll as soon as the man says go. Mind control at eight bucks a pop. The young men and women currently losing limbs and lives in Iraq and Afghanistan were born with the Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, and the Governor of California movies filtered through Mommy’s stomach wall while Daddy was off in the 4x4 decimating the wildlife with his beer-filled buddies.

And, getting back to GI Jane, I could also mention the fact that in this enlightened age, after years of struggle, women have at last earned the undisputed right to emulate all the very worst behaviour of their male opponents in the name of equality. Hey, a person should achieve anything she wants to achieve, right?

Plenty of work, folks, plenty plenty. There’s a French saying that if you chase away Nature, it comes back at a gallop. There’s truth in that – let’s not underestimate the quality of our true nature.

8/24/2008 03:49:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Aphelion - Information Clearing House is worth a look.

8/24/2008 03:50:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How do you explain the Civil War, then? It was a blood bath. The only thing I see that has changed is the percentage of civilians killed in wars. That number has increased dramatically and has a direct, strongly positive correlation with advances in technology.

Also, I'm not sure I understand the spiritual angle. Are you all claiming that the only spiritually bereft people are the psychopaths running the show and a few of their minions, and the rest of humanity is spiritually sound but thwarted by the evil men?

8/24/2008 09:30:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

1.

In the U.S. Civil war, more people died of disease than battle, right? Touche. The U.S. Civil war was the first major war fought with modern weaponry as well. Magnified the psychopathic tendencies. First railroad wars as well--lots of materials thrown into destruction, magnifying destructive capacities.

Medicine hadn't 'caught up' to save people to make them living successful paraplegics like the perfected 'saved ones' by the Gulf Wars I and II.

Ergo, yes, lots of blood. Though I think a combination of technological exhuberance and lack of medicine met the same old tiny number of psychopaths. Same with the scant handful of people who decided back in the 1940s that 'depleted' uranium would make a great depopulation/area denial weapon. It didn't take many psychopaths to endlessly kill millions for generations to come. Psychopaths: the gift that keeps on taking.

The U.S. Civil war did have ghastly casualties, many entirely unique to that war technology change. The U.S. Civil war and WWI started us on the road to plastic and reconstructive surgery and a whole lot else. We've paid a lot of suffering in that big experimental medical theater.

2.

re: Jeff finishing the book, it's just the preliminaries

Anyway, I just wanted to quote someone to Jeff that I think is valid for parapolitics and his worrying over his book:

"The evidence is on the deterioration of the environment, basically. You need to update it and to keep some notes on it yourself. It's best done from actual published references. So ah, that's the only negative part of the course actually. When you do a two day course you shouldn't waste more than half an hour on it, if you give a course like this you can waste a half a day on it, and if you are talking to people for just an hour or two you can just make reference to one thing, well that's just an instance of how things are.

But we don't dwell on the evidence and the negative aspects, because there's enough evidence of the need to act. We don't need any more evidence, and I would discourage anyone going out and finding more evidence of the deterioration of the environment.

You're just wasting your time. The environment is on the downhill slide, nobody doubts it anymore, and what we need to do is to waste our time on positive action, not gathering more evidence."
--Bill Mollison.

Bill is a Tasmanian/Australian permaculturalist. These are the first words of introduction to a weeklong course on permaculture from the 1980s.

Think of all the positive things they talked of for the rest of the rest of the week. He only spent a virtual 30 minutes on "Jeff-like" stuff.

Jeff's spent several years of his life rambling on over and over about the preliminaries in Hamlet-like dithering. Let's get on with it.

Jeff remember that your book is not meant to be the godlike last word on the subject. It's just the preliminaries.

Don't continue on your path or you'll just end up being a stereotype, and as easily satirized as someone who prefers to blow out candles because they fear light more than the darkness in which they have grown accustomed to analyze as their life.

Jeff's sort of got a parapolitical case of hypochondria he can't shake.

8/24/2008 10:23:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That reminds me of a point Dr. Daniel Levitin made in his new book which I speed-read last night and this morning. Levitin points out that we use different throat muscles when we sing versus speaking. It seems unimportant except that a la Victor Grauer the Bushmen trance culture is based on a very RELAXED THROAT singing style (just as harmonic note-bending requires).

Considering Levitin's new book -- http://sixsongs.com I think is the site -- is about how music created human nature -- you'd think he'd focus on the Bushmen. He does give the Pygmy some special attention but Levitin basically states that trance music works since the driving rhythm entrains the back of the brain (that coordinates motion AND emotive motivation).

It's a well-written book but I'd say half of it is devoted to analysis of lyrics (words NOT music) which is quite tragic in my opinion. This was my first concern when Levitin emailed me his secret e-book appendix (since I pre-ordered the book a day ahead of time). Levitin does a good job on how the combination of pitch and syllable stress can be reversed to counter-act emotional effect. So an up tone indicates weakness -- a stressed question whereas the stressed syllable is a down tone for strength. He then discusses the mystery of epic poetry -- how the Jews and Greeks (and Western Asians and Africans, etc.) were able to memorize tomes, sometimes just on one hearing. His main argument is that there's contextual limitations of words and that musical pitch in the context of melody and rhythm is PREDICTIVE (people anticipate what will happen and therefore when in error are usually AHEAD of the beat).

Again if Daniel Levitin had focused on the Bushmen culture he'd have to deal with the fact that much of their trance music relies on words that have no meaning. Not to mention the fact that early Semitic language was TONAL (according to some) and that the Bushmen languages are the most sophisticated tonal languages. Clearly the emotive effect is connected to pitch cognition. Levitin mentions how there is an early perception of different pitch structures with different emotions but he doesn't really get into the mysterious details. Levitin states that pitches are universally processed as octaves and that rhythms are preferred as natural ratio units, 3:1 and 4:1, etc.

What is intriguing is he emphasis on "antiphony" as adaptive behavior in birds and even FROGS -- the males and females have a call and response because it confuses the predator about visual location. That fits in with my "homophonic induction" meme (my latest blog post at http://mothershiplanding.blogspot.com In fact I had been pondering this recently since I'm half way through a book called "Wild Heritage" by Sally Carrighar (1960s ethology) and she mentions some 100 bird species with amazing antiphony displays.

But then Levitin argues that humans are different since we use symbolic thought for tool-making (not just tool use) and that humans use naming as a formal tool, not just in assocation with an object. This is where things get REALLY fascinating for me. For example consider that famous gray parrot who makes jokes -- and uses words in creative contexts. Levitin argues that sound perception is correlated with predictive behavior and sound is a useful signal for synchronized group activity (since it goes around corners and works in the dark). He does a lot of name dropping (how he chatted with this famous singer, etc.) but he mentions Oliver Sacks the most (author of Musicophilia); and how Sacks had a song stuck in his head, the lyrics of which were later revealed to relay the subconscious emotions and meanings of Sack's recent trauma. There's actually a whole book on that psychological phenomenon which I reference in my masters thesis linked at http://nonduality.com/hempel.htm -- Too bad Levitin didn't use it: THE HAUNTING MELODY.

Anyway I think that Levitin is falling back on scientism here -- just as I called Sacks on his leaning toward elephants not being able to make music. Levitin does reference all the interesting latest books on the subject (Robin Dunbar's work, the Singing Neanderthal book, and even a reference for a book in press edited by Professor Chris Knight, the author of the Blood Relations tome). But the concept of BIOMUSIC is not developed enough. Levitin notes how the typical male voice is 110 Hz and the female is 220 hz and Levitin notes how TONOTOPY is found in most mammals (the physical correlation of frequency processing, high at one end of the inner ear and low tones at the other end).

This is the sticking point that Levitin called me on in our last correspondance -- he stated that I didn't understand or that I confused the difference between sound perception and transduction of electromagnetic energy. Levitin himself relies on a "macroscopic" perspective -- he argues that co-evolution of language and music is an emergent property from nonlinear dynamics of group behavior. But in Levitin's end notes he points out that human language is not necessarily "recursive" and that sparrows have been proven to have recursive syntax processing.

Well here's where I play my joker card: I corresponded with Professor Michael Corballis about his article in the New Scientist arguing that what makes humans special is our recursive language structure. But my take was that we need to consider how bird songs are also in ultrasonic harmonics and how therefore the nonlinear dynamics of the overtones become a recursive structure. Levitin does point out that the ear hair cells of humans detect motion ten times smaller than the radius of the hydrogen atom and that the ear detects energy a hundren times less than the photon. But when Levitin talks about how other animals can perceive other forms of energy he doesn't take into account the transduction of energy. It's been proven recently that birds SEE magnetic fields but Levitin emphasizes that birds still rely on an exterior visual coordinate (i.e. a non-moving star as the north).

What if the antiphony of frogs actually undermines Levitin's dependence on his "human recursive" symbolic thought model? What if his use of "Hertz" is actually inaccurate and that sound ratios themselves are asymmetric without a one-to-one correspondance of symbol and number? What if the quantum fuzziness -- the STRETCHING of phase, amplitude, and frequency -- enables sound to create electromagnetic fields through the processing of the 1-4-5 overtones.

This was the other hang up Levitin had with my analysis -- how the "sine-wave" does not have overtones. But he's defining sound as a visual phenomenon! When we LISTEN to sound then it's the 1-4-5 harmonics that are found whereas the concept of a "pure" sine-wave is the product of a symmetric-based or visual-based means of "divide and average" measurement. I had this discussion with a friend of mine recently -- as he was describing why the most famous singer of Cambodia is so awesome. He was using terms he had learned from analog synthesizer analysis -- the attack and decay of frequency based on a logarithmic definition of amplitude. But QUANTUM energy violates the commutative property and intensity is not defined by amplitude or number of waves but by the frequency which is asymmetric. Science then translates this "massless" energy beyond spacetime back into classical "divide and average" geometry -- through the assumption that the statistics are also "divide and average." Levitin also makes this assumption when he argues that humans THINK statistically -- and leaves it as some mysterious process.

We do learn that it's been proven music therapy can increase oxytocin, prolactin (from sad music) is the reason that we get catharsis, increase of antibodies causing healing, etc. This is all fantastic hard research for music healing -- even how different music styles increase different hormone levels (cortisol versus the other adrenal hormones).

But the question remains -- had Levitin looked at 90% of human history (which relies on music trance healing -- the Bushmen culture) then Levitin would have had to FACE THE MUSIC: The transduction of electrochemical heat, created from ultrasound, into electromagnetic light energy that is transmitted out of the body. Levitin could have relied on biophoton research. But the same problem remains as it did for the "Proust is a Neuroscience" recent book -- cross-modal neuron processing is reduced to an emergent property, not the gateway to deeper structural analysis.

Take Alan Turing -- he did breakthrough research on oscillating electrochemical properties (as Art Winfree notes in his amazing book, "When Time Breaks Down"). Turing ALSO relied on Godel's research, as physicist Roger Penrose points out in his "microtubule" consciousness research. Well is there a connection with Turing's closested homosexuality? Scandalous to say so -- but I invoke "homophonic induction" as a homonyn! haha. What if the secret of breaking down time is not to rely on visual collapse (the phase singularity of the poles of the planet -- the north pole as the star that doesn't move for bird perception, etc.) but instead relies on ANTIPHONY as TONOTOPY.

Recent research discovered that whale songs are getting lower in pitch -- because it's adaptive for males to sound BIGGER when courting females. What if there is ALSO an electrochemical correlation with sounding deeper -- that the RELAXED THROAT from singing is based on REVERSE BREATHING (as professional singers are trained) which ALSO sublimates and transduces the testosterone via the vagus nerve, thereby creating a DEEP voice. In other words the fact that mammals have tonotopy (with a physical correlation between frequency and neuron transduction) reveals that the microtubules of neuron process rely on antiphony -- the spiral unity of sound conspiracy (complementary opposite natural overtone resonance).

I rest my case.

8/24/2008 01:05:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The poor helpless angels forced to kill in the name of god and country. Their spirits were in the right place, it was just those nasty bad men that made them do it.

8/24/2008 01:11:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am in total agreement and I too lost my ability to write. Things have changed. The populace is much more docile, the press is non-existent and completely corporatist, which Mussolini affirmed was a more accurate definition to fascism, and the list goes on. Where are the nationwide college strikes of the 60's and 70's? This war has gone on almost as long as Vietnam and 3 years longer than WW2 and yet all we have are military recruiters who are handing out corporate toys and no anti-war activity near what we had 35 years ago.

Jeff is right. We are screwed. We are so much less informed and less mobilized than during vietnam and they have progressed from the lessons learned of their Op Chaos and MK Ultra insanity. While we are full of bioorganisms that are sprayed on us eating our brains with nano robots. In the teeth, in the lungs, they friggin spray it on us for a decade now and there are 1000's of traitorous college grads working for the NSA, Blackwater, and about a million other neonazi orgs calling themselves patriots and neocons. We live in the 4th Reich, which is even worse than the 3rd with all the technology and we're watching Jon Stewart and Fox nEws. How pathetic. Just the fact that people do not know they are lied to at least a 100 times a day by our "Free Press" is proof enough that Jeffs right.

IT's time to take action or STFU,

8/24/2008 01:56:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's very difficult to describe the EXTENT of what I'm talking about. Reverse breathing (standing nearby and having O at a Ds) works for normal females BECAUSE normal females ALREADY use the parasympathetic vagus nerve to sublimate the sex energy, NATURALLY. Yes there are SOME female perverts and when you say it's the left-brain types that's also what I mean by women who identify with patriarchy. In fact -- this works in several ways: First there's the elite left-brain women who consciously repress their sex energy in order to make it a rare commodity for controlling males. Those type of females are perverts in the same sense that elite males are perverts -- which means that, unfortunately ALL MODERN MALES are perverts. The second type of female is the VICTIM of this secret elite male-female repressed sex partnership. The female victims are those on the bottom of the economic ladder who hang with males who are forced into menial labor (and the military) and are so stressed, afraid and angry that they in turn take it out on their female partners. So the lower income, ghetto neighorhoods have lots of these females who are quick to get angry because they're so used to being surrounded by male perverts who suck off their energy, always bringing them down. So pretty much everyone is a victim in modern society without knowing it. The female perverts can be changed because AGAIN they naturally sublimate their sex energy through the parasympathetic internal climax. These women are SO stressed that the heavy cortisol levels prevent them from using their pre-frontal cortex -- these ghetto women are therefore stupid in the sense of not having the freedom to think conceptually that much. So you can fix them temporarily -- give them joy -- but they're permanently in a fear-anger environment so you just have to rewire their synapses everytime you see them. That's why it's crucial that a person, "learn how to learn." The uneducated right-brain males just use the energy for more sex and since they're over-worked in the fear-anger control system then eventually any energy you give them will not be enough BECAUSE they don't know how to build that energy themselves, transducing it into love-light.

Amazingly though females instinctively can FEEL when they are receiving FREE love orgasmic energy -- after the first climax it's a sure thing. (oops can't chew green tea and sit in full-lotus and type at the same time! Just spit out that tea bag and now can go back into full-lotus). O.K. so today I had a perfect example. I got a new thrift-store bike and cruised across the river -- ended up at this used bookstore hunting. Was in full-lotus, the store was empty -- I was upstairs in a corner. Then along comes miss well-endowed -- she's young, pretty, and stands across from me. There's no direct eye laser angle for the pineal gland but that's not necessary. So she soaked up the energy and we had a mutual climax and then she just came over and stood right in front of me so I could stare into her yoni and breasts! haha. It was funny and we climaxed again and I think a third time -- I was reading so I wasn't counting. Anyway I was reading Judy Gartner's sound healing book wherein she converts the whole energy spectrum to hertz -- pretty interesting. So I went back down to the science section and found another science book and then returned the New Age music healing book to the occult section. There was missy -- following me around the store. She literally come into my aisle and stared at me and then kept coming back into my aisle staring at me -- the store was otherwise pretty much empty. haha.

Anyway so I biked towards home -- probably 15 miles -- and this virus was kicking in. This was ironic since the music therapy book was talking about how synthetic dyes KILL your living cells (yet we eat synthetic food coloring) and then the new science book I bought described how the same synthetic dye was found to KILL strep virus. haha. So much for the New Age -- and here I was with the virus kicking in... hold on I'll eat a garlic clove.

Yeah I had no garlic for days and then on 5 hours of sleep I ate some gas shop meat that had been sitting out too long....so I'm near home and come to this corner store I stop at on occasion. I glanced in and there was this female worker with whom I've had O at a Ds -- through the wall. I thought perfect so now I can treat this virus since it was getting worse. I just sat outside on this curb which faces her backside -- only a brick wall of the store separated us. No one would suspect, of course, that my pineal gland was pulsating as she sucked up my electromagnetic energy -- through the wall. The chi built up so much that my body balanced like a magnet against gravity -- my knees had absolutely no support - just my sacrum was on this curb. So after several O at a Ds the virus symptoms went away (maybe half an hour) so I went down to the corner to this Somalian restaurant and got a Somalian tea (sugar and milk and spices). I sat outside with my back to the FEMALE section (closed off with curtains) and sure enough -- the pineal gland is kicking out the chi -- through the WALLS -- nonstop. So I can now read since any viral symptoms are immediately sucked out of my body, transduced into love-light and sucked up by the females. Illness is just extra energy that has not been harmonized and transduced. Ummm well then since I biked several more miles I got some garlic (FINALLY) and do more reading and more O at a Ds, while splurging for a couple ice cream sandwiches and a big hamburger! haha. The green tea counteracts the rotten egg smell from the garlic.

So that's how it works.

8/24/2008 09:40:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank Dog you're back, Drew. This shit was going down hill real fast. You've saved the day, once again. Shoot me with your bliss light, bro. Dog that was good stuff. I feel refreshed, relaxed and replenished, and that's as it should be. I luv you, man.

8/24/2008 10:10:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Here’s what I think. I think you suffer from the fact that those around you continue to get taken in by the same old shit day after day and don’t seem to have worked out that they’re only helping to make it worse."

You have no idea.

Last weekend I showed up for my customary round of double shifts only to find that 2 guys that I've worked with for 6 years and 1 1/2 years respectively were canned for abuse. They simultaneously beat the shit out of two MR clients and were caught.
So, consequently, we were short staffed. This means temps. On Sunday, my 4 co-workers got into a "political" discussion. I refrained because I'm far more curious to hear what others have to say since I'm painfully aware of my own opinion.

The Russia-Georgia conflict came up. One young girl thought Russia had invaded Atlanta, Georgia. One older gent said, "That's the fucking Russians for you. They invaded Hungary in 50s, Cuba in the 60s, and South America in the 80s."
The 3rd, a young guy in his 20s, said, "I hope McCain builds 100s of nuclear reactors. Then energy would be cheap as hell."
The older guy said, "I agree. The only down-side is all that nuclear waste."
The young guy said, "Fuck! Just drop it on Iraq. Those ungrateful motherfuckers can worry about it."
They both laughed.
The 4th guy also remained silent. He's a recent immigrant who admittedly married an American woman to facilitate his naturalization. It turns out that work time is the only time he gets to obsessively text his 2 other girlfriends.

Now, Fructador, can you give me some hint as to what "wing" these folk take flight on?

The left wing?

The right wing?

The chicken wing?

Or maybe, instead of wings, God gave them wingnuts?

I wish that this were uncommon.

When you find yourself working around people who actually subscribe to "The Star," it does tend to color ones views.

Look Fruc, I don't beat my kids, and I can't remember the last argument that I had with my wife.

America annoys me dude. It also disturbs me. It is filled to the brim with shit that I don't want. Products I have no use for. I don't even have a credit card balance.
I sit here at 5 a.m. every weekend, eating my waffles and watching infomercials for Extends, the penis enlarging pill, or another thrilling Girls Gone Wild expose. This year, school supply shopping with my kids, I had to look at Mylie Cyrus's face on everything from bedsheets to lip balm.

There should be some kind of consumer's Geneva Convention where such tortures are declared cruel and inhumane.

As to your inferring hope in me?

I don't think that I'd go quite so far. More like amazement that "the con" doesn't even make the barest attempt to look like something other than "a con" anymore.

To show you how fucked up my head is, last Saturday I had to transport a client to the hospital. I turned on the local talk radio station, KDKA. The guest was Reagan-ite, Paul Craig Roberts.

Now, you have to understand, I was 18 when Reagan was elected, and I hated the fucker.

Now I'm 46 and I find that I agree with a Reagan-ite.
Roberts, after delivering a long, there are "no more conservatives in the Republican Party," and it's filled with "neo-con crazies," and "the media just blatantly lies to us," and "the whole system is corrupt," rant, was asked what a citizen could do.

He said, "Maybe Obama will clean house. It's always possible. The problem is that once they get there, they're already compromised. Maybe all we can do is what Jefferson advocated. Every 200 years, drag the bastards out of office, EXECUTE THEM, and start all over again."

Right now you could say that I happen to be working my way through 'the deep misanthropic principle,' so, consequently, I tend to vent misanthropically.

I wouldn't take it as a tenet for any new religion or anything.

8/25/2008 01:31:00 AM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

One other thing Mr. F., I have a spiritual riddle for you. A few weeks back I was watching CNN. They had a talking head and upper torso explaining how knowing a candidate's religious beliefs tells you a lot about a candidate.

My first thought was, "Gee, GW said his favorite book was the Bible and then he went and slaughtered a bunch of people. Maybe "religious belief" isn't such a good road map after all."

He didn't hear me.

I then looked at the "headline" underneath.

It said,

YOUNG OBAMA EXPOSED TO ATHEISM, FOLK ISLAM.

What the fuck does that mean?

Are they trying to insinuate that ideas are like germs and "exposure" puts one at risk of "infection?"

And what exactly is 'folk Islam?'

Do they strum acoustic guitars and sing of jihad?

And, more importantly, wouldn't "exposure" to both sort of cause them to cancel each other out?

Any help you care to proffer would be most welcome.

8/25/2008 02:43:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Richard, when you're in a good mood, you're as funny as a bag full of arseholes.

But first, if the Russians had invaded Atlanta Georgia, we wouldn't need to know about it - ex-Shrub would have moaned them all back home before CNN even got there.

It never seriously occurred to me that you'd beat your kids, but I can give you a dig because you don't seem adverse to drawing blood yourself.

Mylie Cyrus I'd never heard of - living in France obviously has it's advantages. Like a responsible communicant, though, I did the research. Holy shit. When did the USA decide that facial paralysis and teeth like urinals were the new criterion for beauty? Whatever the cause, it looks seriously contagious. On the upside, though, it makes them easier to spot from afar. Let's sit her down in Mickey D's opposite the G man's omnipotent lotus, smooth her out with an O at a D. Or perhaps - holy shit - perhaps that's just what she's suffering from.

And how about, given the current state of the MSM, that the journalist in question really meant 'Fuck Islam' but can't spell two gud.

Back later real busy. Thanks for the laffs.

And this you should appreciate - my word verifiaction for posting this is IMEVL.

8/25/2008 06:19:00 AM  
Blogger ericswan said...

Right through a brick wall. Like it wasn't even there? I wonder what yer doin to that guy in the rooming house through that paper thin wall?

I recently harvested my 7 cloves to a bulb garlic. I tried eating one of them raw. That must be an acquired taste.

Which side of the brain controls obsessive compulsive?

8/25/2008 09:03:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Spirit Eric - think spirit. Bricks, paper, hamburgers. No boundaries.

8/25/2008 11:38:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

J. Murdoch et al

Glad Mark stepped in on this - I know almost nothing about the American Civil War, but I do know it wasn’t fought over freedom from slavery – it was fought for the same reasons almost all wars are fought – as Sean Penn’s character says in ‘The Thin Red Line’ – “this whole thing’s about property.” Look at how the North won that dirty war, mercilessly, leaving the battered South stripped absolutely naked except for Sherman’s bow tie.

Soldiers in the field kill almost exclusively for one reason only – to avoid being killed by the guy they’re facing. The whole idea is mass insanity – forcing people into situations where they have no other choice. How many of them have really chosen to be there?

Psychopathy is perhaps one of the ugly things that happen to people who are spiritually bereft, though ignorant would be a more accurate term. Psychopaths in power do indeed organise situations that thwart the natural expression of others.

The basic truth of humanity is spiritual – we are in truth spiritual beings who have physical experiences, rather than the opposite. The closer we as individuals come to that truth, the less we fall prey to the myriad pathologies which afflict the world today. Religion and spirituality don’t necessarily have much to do with each other – in fact, these days, religious beliefs probably get in the way of true spirituality by attempting to organise everything according to an increasingly narrow point of view. Let’s not forget that all the spiritual movements began with ONE person’s perception of his own profound spiritual truth – the vibration of the change in that one person’s life necessarily attracted others, and so he made attempts to communicate this experience to them. The fact that this is extremely difficult, if not nigh on impossible, is well documented in many of the stories surrounding Buddhism. The wiser followers of their spiritual ‘leader’ or ‘guide’ – who, in most cases, didn’t really aspire to the job but accepted it post facto – attempted to explain what bits they’d understood, the pros and cons of our actions – this was again written down, always summarised by the degree of understanding of the writer, passed on and on and so on - and here we all are on the rocky road to dogma, repression and hell. And incidentally, why have there been so few female spiritual leaders? That's a whole other discussion. Is it not odd that all major religions have a powerfully repressive attitude towards women? My take on that is that women are intrinsically far more intelligent than men when it comes to matters of the spirit. I'd be deighted to argue about that too.

Surrender’s right - we don’t become by doing, we do because of what we are. Our perception of who and what we truly are evolves from one instant to the next. The extent to which we accept or reject this evolving and revolutionary truth changes everything. Literally. Whether you perceive this change or not. Perhaps that’s one of the hardest things to realise – that, since we are connected to everything, changes in ourselves have repercussions on everything, however slight or invisible these changes might seem. This is the true extent of our responsibility - and our power. Again, informed science these days has pretty much accepted this truth. Those of us who are not scientists still mostly flounder in the ocean of what the Buddhists call illusion, trapped as we apparently are in our isolated three-dimensional and terminal existence, where disaster roils always just below the surface, as uncontrollable as piranha.

Many of the psychopaths who run the current version of our show are quite aware of the truth of all this, however, but persist in struggling with the impossible attempt to control the rest of us as if it were not. In this respect, they compound their disease with the inconceivably dangerous enterprise of staying determinedly sick and keeping the rest of us sick too, simply for their own transient interest. In this respect, also, they become truly Satanic, if we can accept the idea that Satan is a name we might give to any force that attempts to hinder or impede the evolution of the irrepressibly evolving Universe, which some have decided to call God, although it may be called Allah, the Tao, or Charlie. Anyone who’s thought about the subject for even a few seconds must realise that Charlie doesn’t give a fuck what you call it.

So any ideology that claims “we’re better than them”, however craftily posited, is in error. Most people who reject any idea of spirituality are in error to the extent that they believe that spirituality is just another smokescreen blown from the filthy gob of power. It is not. Power’s version of it is, but is a travesty just like their version of freedom or any other virtue, as I already noted. Believing in freedom for all does not mean that you’re going to have to vote for O’bama, one of the weirdest-looking Irishmen I’ve ever seen. Or McCain, either, however good his Freedom Fries are.

Again, I agree with the frickin American who advocates cultivating independence at all levels and explaining carefully to our kids that the dealers in this particular poker game are all fucking crooks. That won’t make the dealers immediately honest, of course, but they’ll have a smaller pool of suckers to rob. The Christian message, love your neighbour as you love yourself, is a very smart one indeed, since it instantly addresses the basic truth that we are all made of the same stuff and it’s all connected. Talk to that part of them rather than the bit you don’t like. And yes, thou shalt take no shit since thou ain't a fucking sewer, but a human being. Can’t help it if so many act as if they and we are, they’re mistaken.

And please excuse me if I seem to be omnipresent these last few days, too, I know it ain't my blog alone. But it's a free and independent space, and using it does me the world of good.

Best wishes to all

8/25/2008 01:18:00 PM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

And I don't care if the gardeners of despair complain that I'm pissing on the shrubbery.

8/25/2008 01:20:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just out of curiosity, why do you post here, Fruc? Or, for that matter, all the others who post about the spirit? It's not the right place. Surely, you realize that. Also, I still am not quite sure of the point all of you are trying to make. Let's assume you're correct, and we're all spirits which manifest physically. So what? How does that change Richard's astute and honest observations? It doesn't. Hell, Richard doesn't even have to provide an analysis or commentary. His observations alone speak a 1000 words. Tell me how telling Richard and me and the countless others posting and lurking here viewing the people Richard has described as spiritual beings with physical manifestations is going to change anything about what Richard just described? Even if Richard relents and acquiesces (please don't, Richard, cuz if you do I will find it difficult to forgive you), and says "awe, shucks, Fruc, you all are right, I been hard on the benighted little angels, from here on out I'll tell them what you told me," it isn't going to change a god damned thing. They don't take their cues from Richard, not that Richard would be so presumptuous and full of himself to hope for such a thing.

Interesting also that you used the term spiritual leaders. How about you tell me what's wrong with that terminology. Beware of anything that requires Leaders or Guides because it's a clever, or not so clever, disguise for control.

8/25/2008 02:04:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

Well, it's good to see everybody here active and happy (in their own ways) as always. Hell, I even enjoyed JAD. I'd say he can be even funnier than a bag full of arseholes. Except that bag wouldn't really be funny. It would be a perverse gore-soaked bad-smelling thing, much unlike and yet much like a bag of Scrabble letters.

Glad to see TripleG is still eating. Many city-dwellers on the social borders are gonna be hungry soon, like lime-pit ouside of town hungry. Like lock up the horses that replaced the trucks hungry. G, I recommend trying to score a grubstake off yer family, buying a place where the dole will cover the mortgage (not in Detroit, $1 is cheap for a house but you'd be killed in days), and learning to garden and trap small game (like mice - only eat the muscles and dice it fine - a dozen will make you nutritious broth).

Find something you can do that the neighbours need. Even cleanup or woodchopping will get you milk or an egg or two.

You can buy a good house in quite a few places for $15,000 - $35,000 CDN. East, West, Central - all over. Make sure there is water, at least a three-month food-growing season, and CHECK POLLUTION HISTORY. You can get an adequate house for even less. Look for older communities - better economic and social underpinnings.

I.E., run before they close the roads. Which might be fairly soon. Like a few weeks.

Reptor out, dudes.

8/25/2008 02:19:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe it's the concept that's funny, not the actual thing, Lord Reptor.

And Paula. Why wouldn't he or she and others post here? Tell us why it's the wrong place.

Paula White, huh? Subtle. Not.

Maybe you should stay anonymous.

8/25/2008 02:54:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@Paula - that wasn't very clear. Could you dumb that sh*t down for me?

@Fructedor - How does your garden grow, anyhoo? Everything here is acting crazy - third flowering, fourth flowering, dead leaves and new growth together....bizarre. Got lotsa tomatoes and carrots, F-all beans, still getting strawberries, kiwis not ready, radishes bolted, lettuce bolted (still eating it tho).

The weather just turned a few days ago - storm, rain, cold. Right after the low-water warnings went up - much wetter year this year than the last few.

@3G - Seriously, man. Run for it. The cities are going to have more deathgasms-at-a-distance (i.e. rifles in someone else's paws) than O-at_D's soon. Freaks and the poor go first - labour camp if you got sinew, 're-education' if you got brains or weird (they go together). People are really nice in places like Newfoundland or deep-woods Manitoba (or out here, but our prices are up up up for good rural land - talking 50K-200K where it used to be 15K five years ago - damn!). I see cheap farmland all over Northern Ontario (where the blackfly will pick your bones, but it's quite beatuiful and one can grow food there). Heat with wood - oil, pellets, electric, gas - all out of your control. Wood grows on your cheap 5-acre chunk of nowhere (pick one where it does, or pick one backing a big empty bit of wooded parkland and take deadfalls), enough to last you FOREVER. (5-acre woodlot will make heat and money indefinitely if managed by 1-acre fallow and seed-tree standing methods, even in Ontario)
You can do it - you're smart (proved by the weird factor). Just stay determined and get enough sun to stay happy (don't hide in the cabin - leads to suicide). Get a goat - they provide defense, food, company, and fur. Don't get a billy - it'll kill the neighbour's dogs.

@All: Good luck out there. Gonna need it. Cheer up, Jeff - think of the fun our machine children will have when we're done making them! So what if all our wars were just to make missile guidance systems smart enough to watch the sunset? Results are everything!!

Lord R.

8/25/2008 03:33:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

P.S. @Fletch, you should run too. Borrow beg or steal grubsake, choose a place with very very low cost of living, stick feet in ground, grow. Give you more time to write.

P.P.S. @JAD - I think we agree on certain things. I'll refer you to the Yes tune Yours Is No Disgrace. 3500 years of stupid dialectice sheep-run agricultural crack bullshit, and were finally at rock bottom. Time to step out of the way and save what can be saved, like the monks of the Dark Ages. There's no fixing this. Voting is just throwing sh*t on a dungheap at this point, and active resistance is not yet a serious option, unless you like suicide by rent-a-cop.

Reptor up up and away.

8/25/2008 03:38:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

P.P.P.S. - @3G (and everybody else who thinks getting out is impossible)

Par example - although I have a slight aversion to getting too detailed about myself here (you run into culty creeps everywhere these days), I'll tell y'all what it cost me to run away. $7K down and payments of just over $700/month. Still doable even after body failure (just - I've been working a bit, as much as I can, thanks to the local bar owner I'm cooking for who lets me wimp out when it hurts, 'cause there's still no wood and the freezer's half-empty, optimism included). Many of you spend more on your cars, I expect. You wanna see what that gets you, there's photos on my (currently damnably stale) blog. How does that stack up to what you can rent in the city? I paid more for a crappy damp basement bachelor in Toronto a few years ago while failing to get any sort of degree for the third time (fun to learn anyway and got good grades, just don't have the stick-to-itiveness I guess). Someone more solvent who trusts me had to sign for me - but that's a bridge you cross when you come to it. There's ways and means, and small-town banks can be really nice to you once they know you're staying in town (a 9 became a 6 on my credit report or I wouldn't be here telling you this). Community is something that occurs on deeper levels in small places - cities don't get past 'neighbourhood character' very often (except in long-term ghettoes).

Gosh I ramble on. Bye again.

R.

8/25/2008 03:52:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

that was an excellent post paula white. i completely agree with you. don't let these "holier than thou" jerks upset you. they're jealous and they know your words carry great power.

8/25/2008 05:01:00 PM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

I’m in the world. The world’s a total mess. What are my options? Suicide – too scary, deep resistance too though I once gave it a half-hearted try. Join the Army? Yeah, right. That kind of authority works for dogs and donkeys. I’m not. Don’t want to die until life’s done with me. So what now? Join in polishing the brass on the Titanic? Never could. Become a politician? Never happen. Become a preacher? Never happen. Fuck em all and look out for N° 1 only? Can’t do it, too soft. Opt for a marginal existence as a musician? Looked and felt great when I was eighteen through thirty. Raised kids 30 through 50, Lord be praised, raising kids got me eyes back in line with me eye-holes. Music looks and feels great again now. Little money but much joy. Good music takes you up, the rest brings you down. I like up. Want to do something to make the world less of a mess. Daunting task but somebody’s got to do something. Working on it. Sit around bitching? Not for me, brings me down for one thing. Noticed that negative breeds more negative, positive breeds more positive. Fake positive is negative, though apparent negative is often positive. Real positive requires real work on self. Person to person is the most efficient action I can manage. Noticed that sharing what I’ve learned can sometimes help some, though pisses off others. Options? Do nothing to avoid pissing on the shrubbery? Or do something and take the knocks – in fact few and far between? That’s my choice so far. Try and have fun doing it. Found out what prayer really is. Good stuff. Engage the interesting in discussion and see what happens. Always instructive. Make myself available to others as much as possible. Say what needs to be said, write what asks to be written. Hard times, gentle solutions. Seems naïve. The Spirit breathes where it will – idiots either get worse or get better, that's all. Plenty of both, I push for the latter. And I’ll talk about why. That’s it. Huge changes just around the corner, Lord Rep handing out good advice. G man working too, Charlie bless him. Who cares if he sounds crazy? All the best people are crazy. Why do Mark and Eric and, once, IC post what they post here? Not to mention our host. RI runs the widest gamut around that I’ve seen, Charlie bless him.

Did you get any of that over your chorus of dubbed-on farts, err … Paula? Yes, so why is this the wrong place, the question was? Fair question. And by the way, your French sucks.

Rep - garden’s good though drenched by the wettest chilliest August in memory. The wife’s just filled the house with the sublime perfume of kilos and kilos of home-grown apricot jam. She’s after the gooseberries next week. Cherries were great, at least the ones we got before the birdies stripped the tree. Apples will be fine. Veg is going in this winter, spuds, carrots, lettuce, onions and maybe sweetcorn too.

Later

8/25/2008 05:04:00 PM  
Blogger ericswan said...

Just so we're all clear on the concept; "Love your neighbour" is geo-spatial but not species specific.

8/25/2008 08:05:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nanking

8/25/2008 09:54:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

State regulators gave the go-ahead to Xcel Energy's plans for a green makeover: shutting down two coal-fired power plants in the state and building one of the world's largest utility-scale solar power plants.

After days of deliberations, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission approved Xcel's voluntary decision to shutter electricity generating stations in Denver and Grand Junction - making it the first utility in the nation to do so in order to reduce pollution emissions.

The commission also approved the utility's request for a 200-megawatt solar plant using concentrated solar technology that not only helps generate electricity from the sun, but also allows energy to be stored for later use.

The commission approved, too, Xcel's request to add 850 megawatts of wind energy to its system.

8/25/2008 11:53:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous One,is it just me or this site that's all fucked up.You know things are bad when the trolls leave the carcase to the flys.But,anyway,is anyone out there getting this real bad overwelming dark feeling,that we are about to slide into a new consciousness.Some of the crazyest shit has been going on of late in my life,a ton of synchronistic events in the last three months have me spinnen like old Jeffy.The last time this happen,was just before 9-11,I had a vision of that day on the Sat. before it happened.I wonder if anyone out there is feeling the same signals,later.

8/26/2008 06:57:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nope, no signals here, same shit, just another day.

It's all in you mind, man. If your spirit is strong, nothing they do can break your defenses. Remember that, and you'll be just fine.

However, when trolls start calling trolls, trolls, we know the end is near.

8/26/2008 10:01:00 AM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@Worried Mouse: I think lots of us are feeling big shifts in the world. We are coming up on some big changes - what they are, can't say. Could just be time for the Sumerian peopleherder's fleece'n'cull, could be the rise of the machines, could be sky jellyfish of the mind (listen, y'all may think it's silly, but the idea of plasmatics, possession, and the whole associated thing READ THE VALIS BOOKS FOR GOD'S SAKES has a lot of resonance for me - there's been a few...moments...in my life that put a different spin on some of these ideas), could be ecological or astrological - but we are near the Conjunction Of The Million Spheres, we have been all century. Just because things are so big they are indistinct doesn't mean we can't feel 'em, like birds and earthquakes but to the third or fourth power of complexity up (I once held several birds in my mind...). Doesn't maen we'll live to see them, doesn't mean our own woodbug-sized lives should receive any less attention - more so, in fact. Times like these, you don't just need to watch your step, you need to listen to the poem that is your life and make sure you get the next line where it oughtta be.

As to trolls - what's wrong with trolls? F&*kin racist, this anti-troll biz. I had big green knobby limbs, hands like hams, and a, erm, somewhat reclusive attitude long before there was an internet. Living under bridges is second nature, and smacking around delicate little elves on the internets is FUN.

Aren't you glad I chose Light for a while? Dark is boring after a bit, and stressful. We trolls aren't necessarily bad, ya know. Just big and clumsy.

Dark and light, tho, all swirling into a hypnotic pattern these days. I choose the Balance. I'll serve when it calls.

'til then, I'll keep looking for my Tanelorn. Find it at the end of my road one day, when the light fails and the dark joins it and all fades to grey.

Survive out there, folks. It's what you're supposed to do.

Making sense to myself,
Lord Reptor.

P.S. Fruc - I'm damn jealous. I'll get a State Of The Garden report up on the Caverns tomorrow - you can see how puny all my produce is. Damn coons stealing my grapes as they ripen, too - 4 AM there's me, naked and ungainly, shouting and clapping while they quietly nosh out of reach on the grape frame and stare at me. Little craps.

Rep out.

8/26/2008 03:21:00 PM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

I read Horselover Fat's Valis in the 1980's and remember it blew what passed for my mind in those days. I don't remember the Divine Invasion, and he never finished the third, did he? The Apostles lost on our time line which turned out to be only their timeline relooked. I could read that again with pleasure - means a trip to WH Smiths next time I'm in Paris.

Trolls? They're like idiots - everybody's got some and we all overlap. These days, the real trolls are the guys we vote for.

Sarko busy dragging France into a war in Afghanistan leaving nasty little messages about medieval savages in all his soundbites.

Guys arrested in Denver for plotting to kill Seamus O'Bama? Maybe they read Richard's quote from Jefferson.

Rep, don't be jealous, the trees did all the work so far. Wait 'til my veg come up.

8/26/2008 04:39:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@Fruc: Radio Free Albemuth. I haven't read the other three for years (he did finish Transmigration Of Timothy Archer, or someone did anyway), but RFA ties it all up and seals it with a kiss.

Damn this weather. Nothing's going to finish. Tomatoes are getting rot before ripening. Sun this morn, but now the wind and chill are back. Crickets are still keeping a good pace though - fingers crossed for extra summer.

Why is everyone so down on trolls? We were here before the net, we'll be here after. Faerie blood runs strong and my skin's green. The kind of verminous little pests that infest most chatboards are no more troll than I am mouse. It's just a big misnomer.

As for our leaders, I'm down with 'troglodytes' as a descriptor. Pale, fat, ambush hunters. About as smart and charming as Komodo dragons on the whole.

Kinda wonder if Makow's right about this whole phase just being a false dialectic manned by puppets - Zionism vs. Anti-Zionism, Nation vs. Globe, Religion vs. Illuminism, etc.

I think he's missed a level or three, though. The masts of Carthage rise again on the horizon. With red lips and greedy eyes she dreams of vengeance and reaches for her spear and shield.

Apologies to the great Moorcock,
Lord Reptor.

8/26/2008 05:16:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Fruc and Rep, how about you quit being so negative and start being spiritual. We're tired of the hypocricy. If you can't say anything positive, then don't say anything at all. If you offer no solutions, but instead bitch and moan about Sarkozy and dubious assassination plots, then you're no better than those you complain about. Come on now, start practicing what you preach. No more negativity. We want only positive thoughts here now.

Thanks for posting the Nanking documentary, anonymous. Notice how the fuckin spiritual know-it-alls passed right over it.

For those of you who did watch it, what wonderful justice there is in this wonderfully spiritual world. While the Jap devil soldiers smirk during their interviews 70 years subsequent to the atrocities they committed, and the military leaders of that invasion are enshrined as war heroes, Rabe is rendered destitute and Vautrin spirals into a depression and commits suicide.

8/26/2008 05:46:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@F*ckFace (great name, saves me trouble) - Jap devil soldiers? Gotta high o-pini-on of yourself there dawg. Mister you're a better man than I and all that.

I don't see myself as negative at all. I often run into this, though. I guess I look at things a little differently than some.Perhaps your glass is always half full. Mine always has something floating in it that distracts my attention from the whole argument.

Who are these spiritual know-it-alls you speak of? Your post addressed my Lordly self, but I don't often get called spiritual or a know-it-all. I get called a lot of things, but those aren't usually in the list. Oh, wait, I was supposed to START being spiritual. Dang, it's hard to tell what the hell you're saying, dude.

And why, you sad little mental puppy, do you think I (or anyone else) would need to see a documentary on the Rape of Nanking just now? I've read plenty and seen plenty on the topic. Fascinating stuff to be sure, interesting in terms of propaganda tactics (love those signs with the friendly Japanese army man offering food to the peasants ) and human behaviour (face-to-face killing is so much the obverse of sex - to the degree that the relationship plays out in a similar way) - but relevant how exactly and to what exactly? Other than the fact that someone posted it? Of course I ignored it. It's just a paste from someone. If they had something to say, they shoulda useda the keyboard.

Or were you just couching your pitiful superiority complex in that whole mess? I gotta say, the whole 'Jap devil' thing is sort of telling. What are you, 12? Go to the library and read some history. Men are beasts. War is hell. And you'd do it all too (with a little training, some indoctrination, and a few pushups), and get a bone doing it. After all, in your world, there seem to be plenty of subhumans out there, negative unspiritual devils that they are.

Christ, what a f^&king moron. No offense. I just calls 'em like I sees 'em. Racist comments and a strong sense of self worth, plus a desire to push other people around and a simplistic, confrontational, judgmental attitude = moron. Simple maths.

R.

8/26/2008 07:24:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's the spirit, Rep.

8/26/2008 08:33:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

N.B. - By 'no offense', in that last post, I meant 'none committed' (morally, that is, in the case of calling DoubleF there a moron) rather than 'none intended'. Sometimes a person just needs a forehead to the teeth, but there's no key for that. Maybe one of those little animated faces?

Reflecting that the word 'inhuman' has no actual meaning,
Lord Reptor.

8/26/2008 10:25:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

trolls..
elves..
Ogres..
wizards and dragons
what a mystical fairytaleland we all live in.

but demons are real.
our country is bathed in them.
negativity?
it's just the polar opposites attracting again when Fruc and Lord R. wax aimlessly about such plots and Obamanations.
The ley lines run deep and tragic in some corners and I think we all just call 'em as we see 'em.
So whattabout Georgia??
peanuts.
you Blokhead.
vacation is marvelous.
out here there are so many stars.

8/27/2008 12:46:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What's up with all this negativity? Let's get positve, folks. We live in a beautiful world! There are billions upon billions of beautiful, spiritual shee...umm, people in the world just waiting to do good if only "we" would show them the way. Let's start showing the way rather than discussing incredulous Obama assassination plots.

8/27/2008 08:10:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

right.
the plot to assassinate Obama
makes just Too Damn Much Sense.
and that's the scary part.
(oh I meant comforting part..right? It's comforting to think that the American government would assassinate it's own president. So much more comforting than banal supermarket mall existence..9/11 changed everything man!!)
Joe Biden would slip real neatly into the position of head puppet
and then who would be the hand inside the puppet head?
put your hand inside
put your hand inside
put your hand inside the puppet
head.
Seriously though,
I feel like the only one talking about the New World order or the fact that it's already here, much less even noticed or acknowledged.
And how bout the fact that Obama is merely a diluted version of McCain and would only put a better face on Tyranny than ol' John boy?
people don't want to hear it.
The thing i can't believe is that THAT is the way it IS.
People don't get it.
(the majority of Americans)
and THAT is why the PTB will always win.
They control the memes.
hell, 9/11 Truth is such a distraction from the things happening now, one can barely even worry abouyt it anymore.

8/27/2008 10:15:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here we go -- from Biosensors and Bioelectronics (a journal of the future!):

doi:10.1016/j.bios.2006.08.023 How to Cite or Link Using DOI (Opens New Window)
Copyright © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Review

Applications of ultrasound streaming and radiation force in biosensors

Larisa A. Kuznetsovaa and W. Terence CoakleyCorresponding Author Contact Information, a, E-mail The Corresponding Author
aSchool of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Main Building, Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3TL, UK

The application of ultrasonic piezoceramic devices as biosensors is well established (Bunder et al., 1998, Benes et al., 1995, Ivnitski et al., 1999 D. Ivnitski, I. Abdel-Hamid, P. Atanasov and E. Wilkins, Biosens. Bioelectron. 14 (1999), pp. 599–624. Article | PDF (328 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (204)Ivnitski et al., 1999, Janshoff et al., 2000, Cote et al., 2003 and Leonard et al., 2003). The properties of such systems will be summarised below to provide an acoustic transducer context for the focus of the present review which is on applications of ultrasound to enhance the performance of functionalised biosensors in general (piezoelectric, optical or electrochemical) by delivering either cells or biomolecules to a surface. Ultrasound will also be examined as an agent that can enhance interaction of functionalised particles in suspension. The ultrasound is not employed in these cases as a ‘biosensor’ per se but as an enhancer of biosensor performance.

A biosensor is a biologically or biophysically-derived element that detects a quantity to be measured combined with a physical transducer that provides an output signal that is a function of the measured variable. Ultrasonic/piezoelectric quartz sensors have grown from RF technology development and the utilization of piezoelectric elements in areas such as radar, cellular phones, computers and electronic watches (Cote et al., 2003). These acoustic biosensors usually operate in oscillator mode. The output signal is a resonance frequency shift that can be relatively easily measured and subsequently digitally processed (Cote et al., 2003).

8/27/2008 12:08:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

G bro, will it make playstation better? I want my ghost recon totally real man, dude, so like totally. Sick.

8/27/2008 01:48:00 PM  
Blogger Sounder said...

shrub,you seem to be missing the cosmological urge for a love of life. As different as Fruc and Lord Reptor are, they at least share this. This gives them worlds more credibility than you can ever have.

You are a hoot with what you say should or should not be a part of 'this site' You are the demented graffiti artist cop that thinks he has a licence to shoot other graffiti artists.

8/27/2008 05:43:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thomas, M. (2006). ‘Yerkes, Hamilton and the experimental study of the ape mind: from
evolutionary psychiatry to eugenic politics’. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological
and Biomedical Sciences 37: 273-294.
Thomas, M. (2005). ‘Are animals just noisy machines? Louis Boutan and the co-invention of
animal and child psychology in the French Third Republic’. Journal of the History of Biology
38 (3): 425-460.

8/27/2008 09:39:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Mr. F., I just don't feel very spiritual.

Sorry.

It always seemed like explaining the inexplicable by referring to the unprovable.
If it works for ya, all I can say is, 'Whatever gets ya through the night.'

The actual joke of the 'Russians invaded Atlanta, Georgia' girl was really played on me.
A few days before that happened I heard Alex Jones say the same thing on his radio show.
Thought he was exaggerating for effect.

Boy, was I wrong.

And what do you mean, France doesn't have Mylie Cyrus?

Next you'll try to tell me France doesn't have freedom fries or late night Extends infomercials.

Personally, I think everyone everywhere should be as obsessed as I am about the apparent relationship between male insomnia and little weiners.

8/27/2008 10:01:00 PM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Nope, no Mylie Cyrus. So far. We’ve got USA though, we got a bad case of that. All channels all day and every evening from 9 to midnight. CSI and all the alphabet cop clone shows, Desperate Doctor Housewives, and all those shows in the p.m. where women get to practice their freeze-you-to-death look and castrate their male underlings by explaining that, as usual, they understand nothing. Movies too. Can you imagine Joe Pesci in French? Stabbing some guy in the trunk of a car just doesn’t have the same dramatic intensity when it sounds as if he’s reading a short extract from Jean-Paul Sartre while he’s doing it.

French rap is huge – exactly the same clips as Big Brother, same black gangstas and jiggy-ass bitches, but en français. Two weeks ago, a tornado destroyed a tiny village only a few miles from where I live, killed three and injured plenty – the newscaster apologetically noted that, of course, it wasn’t as violent as American tornadoes, as if we’d try and do better next time.

Don’t misinterpret my ravings. I’m sure we all see the same things. But first of all, I truly enjoy writing, which makes me long-winded and probably one-sided – and apart from that, I’m simply trying to state the obvious, that harping on the negative only increases it – IMHO - but you get that, don’t you? I’m prepared to talk about my spiritual experiences, at the risk of boring some, but expect no-one to toe my line.

And as for that poor benighted Georgian who signs himself We Are God's Defecation, Fuck Face, Anonymous, Paula White, Saint George, Une Salope, Jacques Strappe and plenty more self-congratulatory Anonymice, I suggest he out-Jeffs Jeff by starting his own blog, since he’s full of such original and challengingly revolutionary ideas. What do you think? Hey, do it, man, I bet it would run and run - let the games begin.

8/28/2008 05:51:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

And though not actually obsessed, I am moved by the correlation between male insomnia and their little weiners - all those other poor guys. I should pray for them.

8/28/2008 06:37:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Richard,

You do see things very clearly--the shallowness and ignorance of the cultural environment you are immersed in pains your soul.

Here on this comments section seems to be a way for you to deal with that--a pressure relief of sorts.

I'm writing this because it pains me to see a talented mind absorb/reflect so much negativity.

Youve got a lot to offer this world. Don't let it get stuck in the mire.

8/28/2008 03:29:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Actually anon, I don't think that marginalizing negativity is a good idea. After all, it's all relative. If I were, say, a 6 ft. mobile (-) battery terminal, all I would attract would be positivity.

Anyway anon, there's a point where continual chipper positivity starts to look a lot like mental illness.

8/28/2008 06:29:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My New Book:

http://www.lulu.com/content/3831375

8/28/2008 06:51:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@ All: Hope you're all having as good a night as I am. I'm sitting on my own rocking out to the great music of my childhood. Lots a jacket, t-shirt, pair of glasses, and the bottom halves of two fronty teeth at the gig I first heard this one at. The poem still makes me weep, just like it did then, but thankfully without the twixer of Sudden Discomfort this time. Ah, to be young again. I would have avoided that hurtling bike lock by not being so drunk. Did I mention I broke my nose that night too? You really can pull them straight with a sudden jerk, you know. Hurt like f&*k, but doesn't look so bad really.

Hope you enjoy this, one of my rare pastes. This poem says it better than I can to so many folks here. Listen to these guys - Live&Cuddly '90 is up on 'tube. (adopts Zoolander voice). Do it. Just do it.

NOMEANSNO: The River

When I speak the words I repeat
Are lost within this roaring
And when I call your eyes turn to me
But what are they exploring ?
Hidden shapes that pass fast away
Upon the waters streaming
And what I see I just cannot say
There is no one to heed me
I could say that I am sorry
But what forgiveness lies before me ?
In the river
Those who know me know all too well
All my sins and failings
But brother dear, how could I tell ?
The course that I was sailing
In the flood, before my eyes
I see the face that I despise
In the river
It's mine, it's mine
Drifting far away
I can see you're not very strong
As the current sweeps you past me
And I can see your head going down
As helpless your cries find me
"Help me ! Save me ! Lend me a hand !
Pull me out ! Pull me out !
Save me ! Save me ! Give me your hand !
Pull me out ! Pull me out !"
I would save you, give my life
But it's already sacrificed
To the river
It's gone, it's gone
Drifting far away
Mothers tell your children the truth
Don't hide the fate that's waiting
When you're born you start to drown
There's no help, no safety
First a gift of love is given
Then the winds rise, the sails are riven
On the river


Damn, what a tune.
Lord R.

8/28/2008 07:20:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@Self: Nice typos, doofus. That's 'lost' for 'lots' and 'front' for 'fronty'. Any further I'm ignoring. I blame the wiorless keyoardf.

Liord Repopter

8/28/2008 07:23:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another good reason to never ever ever buy a cell phone.

"Forgive some of the 75,000 people amassed at Invesco Field Thursday if their thumbs are bit weary by the time Barack Obama takes the stage for a triumphant acceptance of his presidential nomination.

"In the hours before he made his entrance, these supporters were being asked to text message the Obama campaign and their friends and to make phone calls from specially tailored call sheets as part of an unprecedented effort to mobilize voters and get nonvoters to register.

"The speech itself may or may not become a seminal moment in the campaign. But this effort to combine telecommunications, microtargeting techniques and Obama's known ability to draw a crowd could be remembered as a shrewd and groundbreaking calculation to expand Obama's vote base."

8/29/2008 12:03:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Creature Features and Sci-Fi Classics/ Exploitation and EuroHorror. "The Brain Eaters" T-Shirts $15 Ea or 2 for $25. & Mousepads $10 ea or 3 for $25.

http://www.filmfax.com/

8/29/2008 01:08:00 AM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Mr. F., I've just finished reading Biden's speech. Earlier I watched the Big O dazzle them in Denver.

I am awash in positivity.

A positivity that seems to inexplicably attract many negative thoughts.

How perplexing!

In fact, Biden's lyrical ode to mom, apple pie and waging war makes me feel like I just bought a hundred bottles of Extends with a credit card.
Y'know, all greasy and violated.

I then took my Mac V-8 for a spin around the Democratic blogoshere.

They seem to be all bubbly and giggly just like freshly fondled teenagers.

I do see why.

Martin Luther King got a bullet for his trouble, so now, 40 years later, we get MLK Lite for prez. It's all so cosmic, don't ya think?

Of course, yesterday they were waxing rhapsodic about the DNC-ers playing "Addicted to Love" as big Bill Clinton exited stage left.
Further proof that political addicts aren't much different than "In Touch" and "Star" subscribers.

While the celeb junkies live for photos of Lindsey Lohan picking her nose and Brittany with her Venus mound exposed, political mainliners ache for a chance to touch Monica's semen stained dress.

See what I mean?

Negativity, negativity, negativity.

Oh well...

8/29/2008 01:24:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Filipino Costumes:

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2008/08/filipino-costumes.html

8/29/2008 02:23:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Do you mean that, like - erm - by being positive I'm actually - well - in some way - sort of cosmically - well - responsible for all this crap? Holy shit.

Perhaps there's something I can do about it. O Brother - Gorgeous George - "We're in a tight spot. We're in a tight spot.We're in a tight spot.We're in a tight spot."

Well, yes.

8/29/2008 03:37:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.


If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood,
the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

From: Hsin Hsin Ming

8/29/2008 03:57:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Man, this is like getting like ping pong. When I talk about adopting a positive attitude, it doesn't mean I subscribe to Joe Biden - I read his speech too, by the way, thanks to you. False positive is negative. He’s another professional liar. But Dick, what did you expect from him? Or Barack for that matter? It’s just like a video game, where you seem to evolve in an environment with infinite possibilities and free choices, but in truth, it’s all pre-programmed.

What is said is one thing, what is done about it is another. Bush made lots of promises, too, and let's remember that he was awarded the job by the Supreme Court before 9/11. Tony Blair, one of my favourite people I don't like, also promised to help the starving masses before taking the UK a lot further down the road to ruin than even Maggie Thatcher. That's the way it's done, right? And as long as people keep subscribing to it, the game won't change except for the worse. We seem to agree on that. So...? Stop playing.

Talk about it all you like, preferably if you're funny - that's why we like Chris Rock, for example, George Carlin, Richard Pryor. You're funny when you feel like it, even ex-Shrub used to get in a good one now and then, when he could manage to keep his fist off his ad hominem.

My point - and it really isn't that complicated - is that although noting that the game is rigged, and that suckers abound, is the first step towards – well, sanity??? – it’s just the first step. Further steps are possible. Though not by any means obligatory – but I thought that went without saying.

When I share my point of view, I’m not trying to convince you all that I’m the only one who’s got the answer, and you must all do it my way. I’m attempting to engage in discussion between responsible, independent adults, a sharing of opinions that may, just may, enrich the participants. I think it’s worth the effort. That my point of view attracts such resistance from some quarters – and even what seems to be real hatred from others – you know who you are - means either that 1) I have not been as clear as I intended, 2) you’re all thick, or 3) I’m just flat wrong, or mentally diseased, as you suggest. Until I have clear proof of 2 and 3, I’ll stick with option 1. You’re just going to have to get used to it. Nothing wrong with a scrap now and again.

I’m also not saying that everything is peachy keen (Ms. Maudie TM). I’m no more blind than you are. My wife could tell you that, suffering as she does, poor dear, from my barrage of wingeing as she tries to watch the news with me. She could tell you how I react when I watch news from Georgia which paints the Russians as the new evil menace to civilisation, carefully omitting the fact that the US has been training and supplying the Georgians for years, just as they did with the Taliban when the Russians were in Afghanistan. Not that Russia hasn’t been playing the same game from the other side for years. Were the Georgians suckered into attacking South Ossetia, just as Madeleine Albrecht suckered Saddam into attacking Kuwait? Probably. She - my wife, not Madeleine Albrecht - could tell you how I react when I watch Sarko amping up the hate rhetoric by calling the Taliban ‘medieval savages’ and stressing the need for reinforcing the war on terror – 10 French children wasted in an ambush which could have been avoided by minimal military intelligence, a quantity they specialise in. As far as I can tell, Afghanistan isn’t particularly near the North Atlantic either. She can tell you how I react when I see Sarkozy flashing the devil sign while he talks to a congregation of business leaders. Etc etc.

Since we’re at RI, the premium place for such subjects, let’s ask how much does Barack’s undisputed charisma have to do with mind control? Unprovable as yet, but probable in my opinion. How much has all this to do with manipulation by mighty though indefinable power groups behind all thrones? How much has rain to do with clouds in the sky?

It seems to me that belief in blanket ‘solutions’ like wars on terror can be efficiently, if slowly, unpicked one thread at a time. Meaning one person at a time. If you decide to try this, you have to accept that the opposition is immense, and that it’s very difficult indeed for people to unravel their carefully-educated pre-conceived ideas. It can be done. However, if you want to give it a shot, if you give a shit, you have to start with people as they are. You can’t stop at the point where you note that they aren’t behaving too intelligently. This means you have to admit that there is a possibility that they can change, which implies accepting that they too have a potential for intelligence, even good. And this, unfortunately for you, quickly leads to the re-assessment of the worth of human beings, which gets dangerously close to what I call spirituality. Increasingly validated by science, by the way.

Let me cut you a break by not going there this time. No doubt later. May I say, though, that all of this is based on my own personal experience, not just a cut and paste job from such as Paula White – I mean the real one, not the phoney.

8/29/2008 06:35:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Man, this is like getting like ping pong."

How perfecly intuitive friend Fructedor, Ying and yang are equivalent to Ping and Pong!
Mere internal attributes of eternal Oneness.

"Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

When you try to stop activity by passivity your very effort fills you with activity.
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other
you will never know Oneness.

Those who do not live in the single Way fail in both activity and passivity, assertion and denial.
To deny the reality of things
is to miss their reality;
To assert the emptiness of things
is to miss their reality.


The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking,
and there is nothing you will not be able to know."

From: Hsin Hsin Ming

8/29/2008 09:14:00 AM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Jeez fruc, I was kidding.
Don't be so touchy.

By the way, I've abandoned the stupid angle. I'm now convinced that this particular chunk of reality is an inter-dimensional nexus, where denizens of every other dimension pass through on their way elsewhere.

For example, we have the guy from the dimension where Russia invaded South America, and the girl from the dimension where Russia invaded Atlanta, and the other guy from the dimension of stone cold jerk-offs who think dumping nuke waste on conquered foes is funny.
And, to further belabor a fairly useless point, in Denver we have a gathering from the dimension where politicians are actually sincere about the shit they shovel. Hence all the cheering and hooray-ing at platitudes and rhetoric.

And when you say this,

"However, if you want to give it a shot, if you give a shit, you have to start with people as they are. You can’t stop at the point where you note that they aren’t behaving too intelligently. This means you have to admit that there is a possibility that they can change, which implies accepting that they too have a potential for intelligence, even good."

you do realize that you'd have to hold people's hands for fucking ever, don't you?
Do you actually think folks want to think for themselves? Do you think they want "the truth," whatever that may be?

Given the choice between a long, information filled expose on how the "ptb's" are manipulating world events for their own gain, and the Superbowl, which do you think they'd choose?

8/29/2008 10:26:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Dear Anonymous

Thanks for your response. I appreciate your quoting from Hsin Hsin Ming, and enjoy what he has to say. In a similar vein, Lao Tzu is one of my favourite authors ever. I won't pretend to incarnate these truths, but will say that prayer can very often bring me to a state in which I seem to recognise them.

My feeling is that the truth here should not be misinterpreted, as it so often is, as an appeal for immobilism. In my experience, it's a strength available to all humanity, which can only be used efficiently in positive action. Although the more our consciousness opens, the closer we come to the eternal truth of One, we are also presently concerned with our - apparently - three-dimensional existence. As human beings, we're more gardeners than manure. That's the way I see it.

And I still enjoy a good game of ping pong, though I'm well aware that one man's ping is another man's pong.

Thanks again, and best wishes.

8/29/2008 10:28:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Richard - I've been told before that I'm touchy, and it's been suggested that's it's got something to do with my Irish blood. Could be. My hair used to be red, in fact some of it still is, there where others dare not look for fear of insomnia. But one element of all this that perhaps isn't too clear is that I FUCKING LOVE IT!

It's a gas for me to get into this stuff with you and anyone else who wants to muscle in. Joy is a good word for it. I may seem one-sided and judgmental, probably because I get carried away typing like a lunatic and figuring out entertaining ways of saying what I mean - too centered on my own enjoyment, perhaps. But it's connecting, that's what I like - I can also talk the ears off anyone who'll sit still, and since I'm still learning to listen, I often try that too. Just for providing a space where this is possible and encouraged, I reckon Jeff deserves a liftime supply of ExtenZe.

People are a blast, man, really - even people who look like assholes turn out to full of good stuff when you listen to them. That for me was a major discovery, because it also meant that I (we) am (are) capable of much more humanity than I (we) thought possible. And we can change things all the time.

There's a lot to be said for your idea of the inter-dimensional nexus - Rep could tell you that Horselover Fat would dig it, though of course you've certainly read him yourself. In reality, I believe this to be truer than it might appear, in that I feel that extra-dimensional entities do in fact interact with this 3D reality we all struggle in. Some wear the white hat, some the black. That's figuratively, of course, readers. I leave it to you to imagine the state of the extra-dimensional beings who accompany large tattooed jiggly-tit beer-sodden bikers who don't give a shit about anyone or anything. Weary, probably.

You're right, though - the only reason all this political biz keeps working is that people still rely on Big Daddy to hold their hand. Holding their hand for ever ain't my job. Love needs to be tough sometimes. Everyone wants it easy, until the day we work it out that hard really isn't, and the more you give the more you receive. Sorry about that.

I'll tell you who doesn't let you down - the Coen brothers don't let you down. Looking forward impatiently to their new one.

8/29/2008 11:06:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Concerning extra-dimensional and extra-terrestrial beings, by the way, you may have heard that the UK government has decided to allow the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the US. There was no serious expectation that they'd do otherwise, of course, since they live in George Bush's underwear and are allowed to breathe only when he farts - but it now means that Gary faces up to a max of 70 years in a federal penitentiary for a crime of hacking for which he risked two or three years at most in England. He hacked into US military computers - only the ones that were not protected by passwords, if you can believe that - and got hold of some information dealing with the US military's collaboration with extra-terrestrials, was in fact downloading a photo of some sort of unknown spacecraft when he got nicked.

You can listen to and watch him at this link.

http://www.projectcamelot.org/gary_mckinnon.html

His motives are quite clear and admirable, in my opinion. You can argue up and down about the veracity of what he found, and probably will. Anyone interested can do worse than look at a few of the interviews at Project Camelot, by the way. I have Eric to thank for that connection, by the way. Some of it requires a stretch, and some of the people there are pretty dodgy, but people like Richard Hoagland, George Green, Bob Dean and the remarkably compassionate Sgt Cliford Stone are worth a look and listen.

Will this bring down the price of cheeseburgers? Will it inspire Hell’s Angels to open a care centre for unwed mothers living below the poverty line? Well, is the Pope Muslim? Does a bear shit in the Waldorf Astoria?

Check it out. Think about it. Not only can things change, they are changing.

8/29/2008 11:43:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

quote:

"Given the choice between a long, information filled expose on how the "ptb's" are manipulating world events for their own gain, and the Superbowl, which do you think they'd choose?

Why do you think the institutional ownership and origin of American football popularization links back to Skull and Bones? "One nation, under distraction, is indivisible, and guided by easily coaxed bigotry of the small..."

However, in the 1970s, author Antony Sutton was indeed filling stadiums full of people in California to listen to his speeches on how the U.S. corporate and financial elites were funding both sides of the Vietnam war. (Book: Best Enemy Money Can Buy, on the web in places).

This news of the scale of concern never made the idiot box TV national news (which isn't really a news medium, it's a news filter), though yes, it happened in real live human space--instead of via the virtual breast of the octopus that many habitually suckle poison from every day--long after they should have been weened and recoiled in horror at what they were doing...

TV news watching is down though.

A lot more people do get their news from alternative (i.e., more independent) sources.

The scale of upset with the U.S. Congress? It has a 9% approval rating. I don't think you can say that this means people are entirely ambivalent.

They are ostracized from input into power in the USA (and many countries) by the gatekeepers--and they know it and are really pissed. Anger and upset with at least the USA government by its own population is at record levels as well.

8/29/2008 12:11:00 PM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Furthermore, the fact that millions of people are going to vote for Barack or McCain says something else that's important - this I pointed out once before relative to one of Jeff's posts about superheroes. The fact that they believe in mostly empty promises of peace, freedom, and justice for all indicates a lot more than they're all goddam stupid. It means that they really believe that peace, freedom and justice for all are possible. If these qualities did not exist in them, they could not believe in them. It means that within us all there is the deep desire to see these qualities beceome active.

The mistake that's being made, and gluttonously fed upon, is that they're waiting for someone else to do it for them. Short Attention Span World Disorder, mostly, due at least in part to Serious Survival Anxiety Disorder - compounded by the fact that, since most people are basically decent, they can't bring themselves to believe that others aren't. Superheroes, political or otherwise, are projections of our better qualities. We just haven't made the step to assuming them correctly. It will come.

Education is the answer, as long as it's real education. Talk to people, don't just dismiss them as sheep. They are not. They're just like you if they get a chance.

8/29/2008 12:13:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Fruc, you don't seem one sided and judgmental.

And even though I find that people seem to embrace stupidity...oops...interdimensional travel...it doesn't mean I don't find them entertaining.

The thing I found interesting about McKinnon was he statement that huge amounts of folk were spying on the US at the same time he was ET hunting.

8/29/2008 12:34:00 PM  
Blogger Tessly Mnemonic said...

Jeff,

I started reading your blog years ago. I consider you to be one of the best writers on the Internet. It is incredibly difficult to immerse yourself in a twisted kingdom because you risk getting lost. Yet your writing taught me a lot about the possibility for action, maybe not on this everyday plane of conscious existence but on separate planes of existence where our unconscious reality unfolds.

I've enjoyed all of your posts but one that has always stuck in my memory is "Snakes in the Head," where you linked to the article, "When Ayahuasca Speaks: An Unexpected Venture Into Healing," by Peter Gorman:

http://leda.lycaeum.org/?ID=16393

Peter writes about his son becoming sick with a mysterious disease that real world doctors could not diagnose. With the guidance of a shaman, Peter goes to a different plane of existence to help his son. I really enjoyed his description of the crucial moments where he was able to reach out and protect his son from the forces making that were making him sick:

"I opened my eyes.

The voice told me Marco would die if I didn't get him now. So I went back to the battle and told him to reach for me. To grab the snake and the lines, to get free.

And each time I sang the void, or chasm, not moving like the snake all around it, seemed to give him up a little and so I sang and sang and reached with the lines until finally I had him in my arms. And I held him tight. Not really him, but like the spirit of him and I knew he was free and I had somehow won, though I didn't know how I'd known what to do.

But then the voice told me I hadn't done anything yet, that I had to protect him or they would take him back. So I tried to make light lines to wrap him up, lines that would act as a barrier against anything trying to grab him. And I was hopelessly inadequate. I didn't have the power to spin such a web. I tried but couldn't. And then, unexpectedly, a new song came into me. I opened my mouth and notes started coming out, strong and vibrating and rolling up and down the scale like notes on a roller coaster. And then suddenly a web began to spin around Marco while he was in my arms: Fine, thin, strong coils of light. Bright light wrapping him like a mummy. I sang and I sang and the lines coiled tighter until he was glowing.

And I thought, good, now he's protected."

After linking to that piece of writing, you wrote:

"I'm still skeptic enough to appreciate the caution from Emmanuel Swedenbourg that "when Spirits begin to speak with a man, he must beware that he believes nothing they say." But I've also come to suspect that against the principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in High Places we have great allies, which are all the same ally, which is Life. Test the spirits, but sometimes it may take a few snakes in the head to see we have friends in high places, too."

Jeff, I hope you remember that you do have allies. Whatever happens to the conscious world around us, we have as much power as we choose to access.

8/29/2008 01:25:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Brain Eaters (1958) Plot Summary, Trivia & Factual Errors.

Strange things are happening in Riverdale, Illinois. A huge, seemingly alien structure has been found jutting out of the earth. Sent to investigate the origin of the mysterious object, Senator Walter Powers discovers that parasites from the center of the earth have infiltrated the town, taking control of the authorities and workers, making communication with the outside world impossible, and leaving the responsibility of stopping the invasion up to Powers and a small group of free individuals.

..

* The producers of this movie were sued by Robert A. Heinlein, who claimed the plot stole several elements of his novel, "The Puppet Masters". The suit was settled out of court.

* Producer Ed Nelson, who also stars, created the parasites himself using little wind-up toys covered with fur from an old coat and pipe cleaners for antennae.

* Some sources have claimed that future exploitation director Jack Hill acted in this film. "Jack Hill" was actually the name being used by veteran actor Cornelius Keefe (who plays Senator Walter K. Powers) for his film credits during the 1950s.

* To save money on his own film, Ed Nelson, who also produced, wears the same coat he used in Night of the Blood Beast (1958).

Factual errors: Leonard Nimoy's name is misspelled in the opening credits as "Leonard Nemoy"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051432/trivia

8/29/2008 01:59:00 PM  
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8/29/2008 02:08:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

"However, in the 1970s, author Antony Sutton was indeed filling stadiums full of people in California to listen to his speeches on how the U.S. corporate and financial elites were funding both sides of the Vietnam war."

The 70s were not dissimilar to today's world climate. Folklorists will tell you that in times of perceived chaos, it isn't uncommon for subversion myths to attain popularity. As the chaos fades, so do the subversion myths, retreating back to their specialized conduits of dissemination. As you know, all those "enlightened" Californians didn't hinder their governor's bid for the Oval Orifice one bit.


"TV news watching is down though."

But TV viewing isn't. My son and I walk our dog every night, and every night each house is darkened except for the flickering blue of the video altar.
Anyway, even if TV news was entirely honest, why would one use that as a source. At best, you get a headline and a paragraph of text and a few nifty visuals. In a complex world, how could such scanty offerings ever keep anyone informed of anything.

"A lot more people do get their news from alternative (i.e., more independent) sources."

Alternative doesn't necessarily mean better. I can find a million pages rambling on about the Illuminati, yet none ever seem to mention that the Illuminati made their entrance into American thought by way of British Fascisti propagandist Nesta Webster. Then they traveled through specialized conduits like the anti-Satan Charismatic movement and the anti-Communist John Birch Society.
Everyone has an agenda and a point of view to sell.

"The scale of upset with the U.S. Congress? It has a 9% approval rating. I don't think you can say that this means people are entirely ambivalent.

They are ostracized from input into power in the USA (and many countries) by the gatekeepers--and they know it and are really pissed. Anger and upset with at least the USA government by its own population is at record levels as well."

This is, in my opinion, wishful thinking, at best.
People are angry because gas isn't cheap anymore.
They're angry because Bush didn't just annihilate the Iraqis and be done with it.
The political scene has been pretty damn static for a long time. People had no more say so in government operation during Clinton or Bush 1 or Reagan than they do now.
Remove their economic inconvenience and Americans will toddle back into their pens like good little sheep.

8/29/2008 02:52:00 PM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

After this I'll STFU, at least for tonight. My beloved is sick of the sound of the rattling keyboard - she's got the stone face on, which is the early warning signal before passive-aggressive. Scares the bejeezus out of me.

Great to read Tessly Mnemonic's quote from one of Jeff's past posts - I'll check it out as soon as the wife lets go of me leg. Drew would certainly appreciate that - the healing power of song - one of the things I'm also working on, though I'd be incapable of talking about it like Drew does.

Betcha I can sing "Tracks of my Tears" better than him though.

Richard - aw shucks, ya made me blush.

8/29/2008 04:07:00 PM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

8/29/2008 04:32:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@Department Of Fluoridation: Jeez. You make me feel all Fahrenheit 451 all over.

Angry with my software,
Lord R.

8/29/2008 05:23:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@Braineaters: Know why the Greeks invented retsina? Same reason I think the way I do.

Sorta like swallowing rocks when arrested in medieval Japan.

R.

8/29/2008 05:25:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

quote:

"yet none ever seem to mention that the Illuminati made their entrance into American thought by way of British Fascisti propagandist Nesta Webster."

Er, no....

Try John Robison book of 1798 on the Illuminati.

Or try Abbe Barruel about it from the same era.

Or read George Washington's letter that he was "convinced" of the Illuminati in the USA.

It's a gross oversimplification to say Nesta Webster was fascist ergo she lied in every word, or visa versa, etc. I think reading 50 pages of any of her books (particularly Secret Societies and Subversive Movements) will dispel that mental block.

Even ol drunk Winston Churchill has a quote about the Illuminati from 1920 in a popular periodical. Winston was then out of power connected with his rejection of British Zionism, and he was only back in power when he once more supported British Zionism. (cite: Pawns in the Game, I think)

If you want to be rigorous, discuss the taboo about talking about Illuminati. I don't know how you can ignore it.

1. There are letters between head of Rosicruciana en Anglia occult society to German chapters still in existence. He "thanks you for the loan of the Illuminati papers" that he says would be translated from German and returned quickly. Letter written in early 20th century. See the photostats in the appendix of Occult Theocracy.

The Illuminati is not the only group though it's a major group.

Some books on these topics for those who want a bit more rigor or exploration.

2. Or just google up first person testimony about Illuminati membership you will have to judge for yourself. It comes from: "Svali," Bill Schnoebelen, and Leo Zagami.

Quotes:

3. short parapolitial transcript, around 15 minutes in to the film:

Bill Schnoebelen, ex-Illuminati:

"Essentially the next thing that happened before I could get on to the priesthood of Satanism, I had to get seven people to sell their souls to the devil. The other thing I had to do--and this might astonish some of you--is that I had to become a Catholic priest. I had to go back to my original vocation, because you cannot be a Satanic priest unless before first of all you become a Catholic priest...."

[[inset from http://www.relfe.com/07/Bill_William_Schnoebelen.html about this section's documentary proof in his books :

"Bill was ordained to the priesthood by Bishops Edward Stehlik and Julius Massey in Joliet, IL (Certificate and photos available). Both bishops happen to be deceased now, but he has the ordination document with their signatures. There are also photographs of the ceremony, taken at St. Paul’s Old Catholic Church in Joliet. These photos have since been publicly presented in one of Bill’s many videos, the new version of EXPOSING THE ILLUMINATI FROM WITHIN (2005).

At the same time, on the advice of Eli, Bill began studying the Masonic degrees and was made a Master Mason (1977) -- document in TEMPLE OF DOOM with Worshipful Master Richard Decker’s signature4.

This is important to understand: Many of Bill’s spiritual teachers (both on this earth and supposed “spirit guides”5 ) were telling him that at the highest levels that Catholicism, Wicca and Freemasonry all blended together [re: synarchy] and he believed them, then and now; especially when Archbishop Cousins (Roman Catholic bishop of Milwaukee at that time) subsequently came out and publicly endorsed the Masons."

]]


Back to Bill Schnoebelen:

"So fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, I had discovered a bishop of the old Catholic Church in the city of Milwaukee who would ordain me a priest in exchange for me making him a witch priest, it was sort of a quid pro quo thing....

I got consecrated a Catholic priest, I got involved with the patriarch of the Gnostic Catholic Church [OTO], the ancient and primitive right of Memphis and Misraim [yep]...."

Made the auxiliary bishop of Milwaukee for the Gnostic Catholic church. [secret society of graded induction, the OTO, based on Catholic inverted ritual and formalized by Alister Crowley]

To move beyond the 8th degree of this particular system [OTO], I had to choose to study lycanthropy [warewolf transformation] or else vampirism.... I went the route of vampirism so I was taken down and introduced to a, uh, in a church down in Chicago which was wholly given over to this vampiric cult, and I, I, I, was made to drink the blood of what I now believe to be a fallen angel, and, and, he in turn drank my blood, and by doing that, something happened to my blood and I was physiologically transformed in many subtle ways. My blood type changed. I[t] became impossible for me to eat. I couldn't eat anything. I couldn't drink anything except blood. The only solid food I consumed was the Catholic communion host. And I lived like this for over a year. I couldn't go out in the daylight without getting blisters on my hands. I, I, I had to get a third shift job working as a newspaper carrier for the Milwaukee Sentinel. Ah, I also couldn't get very near garlic. Ah, now on the other hand, I didn't have the power to turn into a bat or anything like that, that's something that maybe Bram Stoker made up, I, I, I couldn't turn into mist and slide under doors either, ah, so Hollywood kind of embellished some of this. The point is I was drinking blood and that I was addicted to blood....I kept wanting more and more blood. The way I got around this was, I, I, I had many witches under me and by this time we had more than 175 women that I had personally initiated into witchcraft. It doesn't count the men that my wife had brought into witchcraft which were probably just about the equal number. And of those women, some of those who had reached high levels in the craft were more than willing to have me bite them in the neck. So I had kind of a "harem", if you will, of five or six women who wouldn't mind me tapping their jugular vein every two or three days, so I could, ah, keep my thirst slaked so to speak. And ah this went OK for a while but gradually it wasn't enough. I kept needing more and more and more blood. And it just went on and on and on, and I, I began to live a life that was like the tortures of the damned. I'd drive through the streets at night in my job, ah, you know, putting newspapers in boxes in the wee hours of the morning, and I'd see the occasional prostitute or whatever and it would be all that I could do to not literally leap on that woman and rip her throat out and get every drop of blood out of her, out of her body. It was, it was not easy--and the only thing that kept me from doing that was the fact that I really loved my wife and I knew that if I did something like that it would shatter our lives. If I was caught, it would shatter our marriage, and, and everything would be lost....I didn't want to start murdering people, though I was that far away [holds up hand short distance from him] from doing it.

Now at this time at my life, God began to intervene which was good because I didn't know where i would have ended up otherwise.

What happened was, is that I, every year I sent a check to the Church of Satan, my tithe to hell so to speak. And when i got a check back from the bank during this period of my life some lady at the bank had written on the check "I'll be praying for you in the name of Jesus." Praise the Lord! [Laughs] Anyway, what happens was I just laughed because I was so screwed up I thought Jesus was a vampire. And I just tossed the check in the file and forgot about it. You know what happened? Within literally a day or two, my whole life fell apart around me. Within a day or two I lost all my magical power. I lost all my vampiric power. I lost my job. I got sick as a dog. My wife even got sick. My whole life, it was like I was falling down face into the gutter. And I didn't know what was going on, I never connected it to...--because my ego was so great--I mean understand something here, I was probably one of the most powerful worlocks on the west coast of Lake Michigan and yet one praying Christian lady took me off at the kneecaps. That is the power of prayer, amen, .... and I don't think there were too many people who were bound up and evil as I was. They're out there though there are not that many of them..... It took me about five or six years though I finally got saved.

"So anyhow, I was in this dire strait. I didn't know what to do. I cried out to Lucifer for a sign. And I, you know, because, I, I was supposed to have all this great stuff happening to me and instead my entire life was a shambles. I said what's going on here. I cried out for some kind of sign.

And within a couple of days, Mormon missionaries knocked at my door. And ah, the funny thing about that--well, that might seem interesting, but what does that have to do with the price of tea in China--well, I'll tell you.

What happens there is that I had been told many years earlier by this grand druid fellow down in Arkansas that if I ever got into deep spiritual trouble what I needed to do was join the Mormon Church, because the Mormon Church had been started by witches for witches for the express purpose of giving, giving people a pla, place, a place for people like me to hide out and appear to be nice conservative white-bread Republican Christians, you know, even though we secretly believed all the same things that witches believed. Now believe it or not, that might surprise you, though there's plenty of documentary evidence, we go into some of it in our book on the back table called Mormonism's Temple of Doom, that involves, that proves that Joseph Smith was in fact a warlock, the founder of the Mormon Church, and much of the early Church were deeply involved in sorcery. So anyway. We got into the [Mormon Church]....We had been told by this Druid that it would be a profoundly occultic experience, and guess what, he was right. It was the high point of our occult life. We, we, really thought we were on the right track here because we were a part of this huge powerful wealthy church and yet we were still serving lucifer. It was like the best of both worlds. In fact we had a meeting, about two days after we were sealed, with Elder Faust, who at that time was one of the twelve apostles, I think he was the low man on the totem pole, that's like the ruling hierarchy of the whole Mormon Church internationally. We got in there because we knew certain signs and words and tokens, and ah, he told us after a lengthy interview, he bore us his solemn testimony that Lucifer was in fact the God of the Mormon Temple. So, you know, we knew we were on the right track. ...That's the short version, if you want the long version, check out [the book] Lucifer Dethroned."


4. Weishaupt quotes:

“These good folk swell our numbers and fill our money-box. Set yourself to work; these gentlemen must be made to nibble at the bait. … But this sort of people must always be made to believe that the grade they have reached is the last.” – Adam Weishaupt

"These powers are despots, when they do not conduct themselves on its [Our Order's] principles; and it is therefore our duty to surround them with its members, so that the profane may have no access to them. Thus we are able most powerfully to promote its interests. If any person is more disposed to listen to Princes than to the Order, he is not fit for it, and must rise no higher. We must do our utmost to procure the advancement of Illuminati into all important civil offices."

"By this plan we shall direct all mankind. In this manner, and by the simplest means, we shall set all in motion and in flames. The occupations must be so allotted and contrived, that we may, in secret, influence all political transactions....I have considered every thing, and so prepared it, that if the Order should this day go to ruin, I shall in a year re-establish it more brilliant than ever."

Remember that the famous "Illuminati disbanding" meant very little in a Europe without nation-states. Many of them actually were released from their state jobs with a pension, and they just moved to the next door principality. Since they had a few major aristocratic dynasties in their membership, they had money as well and connections of protection.

There was no "1700s Interpol" hunting them down, no tracking with GPS on their horse-drawn carriages, and no electronic tapping or RFID on their quill pens reporting every word of how they regrouped for crying out loud.... Going underground in the 1700s was easy--particularly if you were already an underground group. New name. New identity. Just move 30 miles away and live on the rich estate of your aristocratic sponsor. Or go to Paris and infiltrate Masonic lodges for recruitment and start a 'reading society'.

Even ex-Librarian of Congress, John Billington, in his book Fire in the Minds of Men, makes the claim with the documentary trail to say that revolutionary Marxism can be traced in documents to the Illuminati of the 1800s.

These are just a few things I think about whenever I hear the reflex phrase about the "Illuminati were disbanded, no longer exist, etc. they promised us, etc., etc., or something like that."

8/29/2008 06:01:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

200. Turn the page...

8/29/2008 06:04:00 PM  

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