Medium As Message

Bird Flu Virus

It is a frequent topic here on the Far Side about the use of media to instill 'behavioral templates' in the mass mind, so that when certain situations arise, we automatically drop into role and follow the pre-installed program.  Given that there are a number of scenarios about at the moment, it might be instructive to examine how this process works, and how you are programmed to react in a certain fashion.

That media work is not at issue.  It has been proven repeatedly that mass groups of people can be easily controlled and cajoled by what they see and hear in the media.  All advertising operates by creating a need or impression in you mind, and then supplying that need with some product.  Even media moguls are susceptible to it.

When Euro Disney opened back in the early 90s, Michael Eisner, then CEO, went to inspect the damage, I mean...new park.  Upon arriving, he began the tour with an inspection of the park's hotels.  If you're not familiar with Disney parks, they have on-site hotels for every budget, from discount family style to adult over-spender style.  Eisner went to the low-budget family box and found all these people arriving in Mercedes.  Well, he had a fit.

"Why are all these Mercedes staying at the cheap hotel," he demanded.  He was then made aware that the Mercedes C-class was nothing more than the Oldsmobile of Europe.  The brand had nothing to do with wealth, only the class of design.

Eisner, like many Americans, had succumbed to the marketing that had convinced everyone that the Mercedes brand meant high-priced luxury.  It didn't occur to him that they operate just like Disney, pimping low-rent and high-rent products for every budget.  Heck, just south of him in north Africa, every beat-up, run-down taxi is a Mercedes.

It works for just about every product.  Body odor was not an issue until the end of WWII, when a product called MUMM came out and they shamed everyone into 'needing' this product, so they didn't smell.  Feminine hygiene products, toothpaste, sodas, electronic gee-gaws...they all use your desire to project an image to sell you useless crap.  Everytime you look at a product and think, "Rich guy, lucky guy, wish I had one," you have been programmed.

A little reading on the subject of mind control and how this process works will give you at least some defense against the Dark Arts.

But, back to our topic at hand...behavioral templates.

What sparked this discussion was the CNN article pimping the latest designer virus called, ominously enough, Mutal Bird Flu.  Not only does the word 'mutant' engender fear, which we spoke of previously, but it is caused by something unseen, a virus, and it is vectored through something cute and cuddly, a bird.  All perfect plot points for mass mind control through fear.

For our discussion, we're going to choose the 1995 Hoffman flick called Outbreak.  We could choose any of dozens of flicks on this subject, including the brilliant Andromeda Strain, but this one is fairly blatant and easy to follow.

The primary message of the film is that the authorities have all the answers.  Don't be afraid, just follow orders and you'll be saved.  That there is a back story of a battle of wits between the Good Authorities and the Bad Authorities is secondary.  It serves to re-inforce the idea that at some level, there are people in power who have your best interests at heart, so just pile in the cattle cars and go to the detention centers and we'll get all this sorted out right away.

Among the many messages contained in the flick are: bad viri are manufactured to kill bad guys, cute and cuddly animals are scary, people who don't follow import/export laws are bad, the Good Authorities always win, and you're quarantined for your own good...if you try to escape you'll be blow to bits to save the world.  But the most important thing to learn is, the Authorities have all the answers; you're just a little, stupid civilian; just do as you're told and we'll figure this all out at levels much higher than you.  Oh, and take any medicine we tell you to take, for your own good...but more importantly for the safety of the world.

Basically, it comes down to a message you will hear repeated in all media all the time: You Can't Handle The Truth.

Even Batman tells you that.  In The Dark Knight, which you might think celebrates the empowered individual, we are told that we are incapable even of being a vigilante.  Only men with power and money, who work closely with the Authorities, are allowed to perform freelance law enforcement.  After all, you're only wearing hockey pads.  The same message is everywhere.

Back to Outbreak.

So, even though the Authorities created the viral menace, and a cute and cuddly vector (monkey) carries it, don't worry because they've also got the antidote.  That's right, even though they took your tax money at gun point and created a devastating and horrible disease while playing God with it, it's OK because they have the cure and if you just submit and follow orders, you'll be fine.

Don't worry that the Good Authority (Hoffman) is really only motivated to save his mean ex-wife (Russo) by fighting off the Bad Authority (Sutherland), the grandfatherly Shadow Authority (Freeman) will come to our rescue and give the hero the answer.

To tie all this together, any of the manufactured diseases that are currently in the wild or will be have already been 'cured'.  Our job as sheep is to follow directions and be penned up so that we can either be exterminated (to save the world) or innoculated (to save Big Pharma).  Those who don't follow the orders will be gunned down like rabid dogs and no one will question it out of fear and because that's what our 'behavioral template' tells us will happen.

No matter what happens, whether it's alien invasions, plagues, severe weather, or terrorism, we are to follow Authority at all times, because they always have the answers and will always come to our rescue.  We must allow them to do anything, be it torture, killing or round-ups, no matter what violations of liberty and freedom it requires, because it's for our own good.  The Authority always knows more and better than we do.

Whether it's 24, or Beverley Hills Cop, or Law and Order, the message is always the same: do not hinder the Authorities.  Their badge and gun means they can do anything in the name of saving us.  Our job, as stupid goy, is to stay out of their way and follow orders, for our own good.  In other words, we are all 3-year-olds, and Mommy and Daddy Authority are child-proofing the world for us.

Oh, and the 'behavioral templates' work both ways.  They teach us that being an Authority is fun because you have power over the goy and can do anything you want.  You can grope children's genitals and steal people's things and beat folks to a pulp if they don't show proper respect for your Authority.

The media teach us how to act if we are goy, glorify Authority to make us want to become Authority, and then show us all the cool things we can do with impunity once we pass the Mystical Test and become a member of Authority.  That's why cops strut like preening roosters and TSA agents violate every boundary of prudence and FBI agents all look like they stepped out of Men In Black.  They've been implanted, too.

Sigmund Freud

If you really want to feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up, read some of the theory and practice of media, especially from the turn of the 20th century.  It was a little more open and honest back then.  Read up on the history of media, and how it followed a parallel track with phychology, as both professions learned how to manipulate and control minds.  They truly worked hand-and-glove to bring you to submission.

Read up on how they telegraph events through dramas, how they subtly change your behaviors and beliefs through comedies.

In physiology, they have studied how persistence of vision creates the illusion of motion with as little as 12 frames/second, and how the flickering of the frames cause a sort of trance state that allows messages to by-pass your normal defenses.

It's bone-chilling and it's far worse than is possible to cover in a single column.  Suffice it to say that if your are consuming media, then it is consuming you.  And yes, even markerting geniuses like Michael Eisner are prone to its control.  Educating yourself on something so ubiquitous as media is the first step towards freeing yourself from its control.

The Big Question is, what will you do with the knowledge?

Fear And Loathing

The big weather news of the week?  No, not the dozen or so who died in a typhoon in the Phillipines, but Brad and Muffy had to flee the Hamptons for some piss-ant rain storm.  Reportedly, Muffy's hair got mussed by a mild breeze caused by the rush to evacuate.

Hunter S. Thompson would be proud.  Richard C. Hoagland calls it "fear porn," and a more apt name we are hard-pressed to develop.  It's an old trick, but it is very effective.  What is surprising is how many people fall for it, even though there are repeated examples of the manipulation.

The use of fear as a weapon is a simple, yet effective tactic.  It is the basis of the concept of 'terrorism,' which is to frighten people to the point of submission.  The reason terrorism can ONLY be government sponsored is that people's fear response doesn't serve any other interest.

People, despite all our sophistication, have basic and primitive responses to certain stimulae.  One of the strongest and most basic is the fear response.  When faced with a threat, people will automatically 'circle the wagons.'  There's an instinctual rally behind leaders and a desire to protect vulnerable individuals and institutions.  Not that the instinct is bad, but the manipulation of it for socio/political ends is quite evil.

As a technique for manipulating large groups of people, the concept is very old.  Even the telling of ghost stories around the camp fire is a means of keeping more impressionable souls close to camp.  After a good ghost story, kids won't wander off in the night, to fall prey to accident or attack.

On a larger scale, such thinkers as Sun Tsu and Machiavelli wrote at length on the use of fear for political and strategic goals.  Using imaginary, manufactured or even actual enemies is a tool that causes the masses to cling to 'thought leaders' and gate-keepers' (politicians and media) to receive 'information' on how to react, and 'protection' from the threat.

A prime example of this technique in practice is the recent events surrounding hurricane Irene.  Anyone who has sufficient experience with big storms knows that you lock down for hurricanes and run from tornadoes.  One assumes that 'experts' would know this.  So why the week and a half of fear mongering and orders to flee?  It can only serve one purpose, that of generating fear in the masses and causing them to turn to PTB and media as the purveyors of 'information' and 'protection.'

The same technique was used quite effectively on a global basis after 9/11.  The fear of an unforeseen attack by mysterious enemies capable of destroying large and unthinkable targets has caused a global fear instinct to kick in that is still reverberating 10 years later.  The use of that fear has caused great numbers of people to willingly hand over their personal power and responsibility to a group of self-serving power mongers.

Even things as small as 'Amber Alerts' serve the PTB.  Amber Alerts are a program of media warnings in the US that are triggered when a child is reported missing.  Children, of course, are the most effective tool of those who would make the masses submit.  The idea of a child in danger causes and very strong and primitive reaction in people to drop what they are doing and circle the wagons, waiting for word from the 'authorities.'  It is very subtly fed to people by inducing the fear of 'it could happen to your child.'

Children are used by the PTB to create some of the most egregious violations of personal freedom known to Man.  Organizations such as 'Child Protective Services,' which are nothing they claim to be in that name, get other people to feel justified and proper in stealing people's children and farming them out to the highest bidders.

So-called 'public education' functions on the fear that your child won't have a chance in the 'real' world if they don't receive the full 12 years of indoctrination at the hands of evil manipulators.  This is despite the fact that some of the greatest thinkers in history had little or no 'formal' education.  Sitting in a classroom no more guarantees an education than having an open book on your desk, yet the fear that your child will be deprived causes you to submit your child to the brain butchers.

Mass vaccinations operate on fear.  If you don't take the jab, you will die a horrible and painful death from some vicious disease, even though more people statistically drown in buckets of water every year, than die of the supposed plague du jour being used to 'fear' you into submission.

The Cold War, global warming, nuclear holocaust, viral epidemics, killer storms, cometary impacts and the like are all tools of fear-mongering that are in play in our culture.  Who benefits from the fear that is generated?  Why, the very people who are telling us to be afraid, of course.

Fear of poverty keeps the middle classes in line.  Fear of Second Comings and Eternal Damnation keep the faithful in line.  Fear of depriving our children of some vague opportunity keeps parents in line.  Fear of death keeps nearly everyone in line.

There is a reason that the great adepts have all, without exception, taught that conquering fear is the first and most important step in freeing ourselves from bondage.  When we no longer act out of fear and subdue our innate panic response, then we are finally free to open our minds to greater Truths and Spiritual Development.

The Truth shall set us free, and the Truth is, there is nothing to fear.

We must train ourselves to stop acting without reasoning first.  It's not easy.  There are very primitive parts of our brains that startle at the unknown.  We create phantoms in our minds that cause us waste our lives reacting to possibilities, rather than focusing on reality.

It is fear that causes us to surrender our personal responsibility to anyone who presents themselves as a 'leader,' when in fact those 'leaders' are using their knowledge of the truth to present themselves as fearless.  It's a vicious circle that keeps us submissive and subservient to those who generate and manipulate fear as a weapon.

Observation of animals will quickly inform us about the basic human condition.  That lemmings will panic en masse and follow each other over a cliff is a trite but effective metaphor.  Both sheep and cows are excellent examples of blind submission to 'leaders.'  The Judas goat is a classic example.  The goat is trained to walk through the corral, and the sheep blindly follow it to their certain doom, or at least a good sheering.  A herd of thousands of cows can be managed by a handful of cowboys by simply guiding the lead cow.

In human 'society,' the lead cow is called a 'news anchor.'  It is their job to boldly march into butcher's hands, and they willingly do so because they know they will be spared to lead the next group.  Those who follow, though, are not so lucky.

There is hope.  Stories about people ignoring evacuation orders and going to the beaches despite threats of punishment and certain doom tells us that the power of the 'opinion leaders' is waning.  After all, the right of the individual to do anything they want to themselves is supreme above all other powers.  If Joe Sixpack wants to ride the storm surge on his boogy board, so be it.  If a man wants to ride out a storm on his property to protect it from looters and public 'authorities,' more power to him.  These people are taking personal risks that they feel are warranted, for whatever reason and reward they perceive.

Anyone who invests in the markets knows that the greater the financial risk, the greater the reward.  It is the fear of loss or ruin that keeps most people out of such things.  Those who take the risks are personally responsible for informing themselves of the benefits and dangers of such actions.  It is not for us to decide whether or not they should take those risks, and it is not for us to mediate their losses, should they fail to properly calculate the risks.

In the same way, it is not for us to decide if a storm is dangerous or not for any given individual.  That is their choice.  They have information on storm tracks, wind speeds and expected rainfall.  They, as reasoning beings, are personally responsible for deciding to stay put or flee, and they must accept both rewards and losses for their decisions.

If we find this a reasonable argument, then what can possibly be the benefit to some group to inculcate fear in large groups of people?

Training mass numbers of people to respond in certain ways makes them predicable, and thus controllable.  It also keeps them from depending on themselves and their friends and families.  Rather, it indoctrinates them into the concept of clinging to 'thought leaders' and 'gate-keepers' as sole arbiters of right action.  When people are afraid, they follow anyone who appears to have an idea what to do.  It causes us to doubt our own capacity to decide the odds and what we should do to mitigate risk.

We are implanted with 'behavioral templates' in the media that cause us to use pre-programmed responses to various stimulae.    The PTB use this for their entertainment.  It's amusing to them to herb masses around and watch the terror in their eyes as they run from a summer rain hardly more than a Texas gully-washer.

Anyone who has faced their fear and survived knows the feeling of empowerment it brings.  If the Self can conquer the animal flight instinct and face down the things that makes Self afraid, then Self is rewarded with the knowledge that Self is powerful and capable and independent.

That is the greatest fear of those who would control us.  That we should become empowered and conquer our fear and learn self-reliance makes us impossible to control, impossible to herd.  The empowered individual does not need a leader, he IS the leader.  He doesn't need to pay taxes, or depend on government agencies and hand-outs.  He is his own authority.  He doesn't need to share his reward and doesn't ask others to re-mediate his losses.

Does that sound like the kind of individual that governments and 'authorities' try to create?  Or does the quivering, indecisive lump of fearful animal flesh seem more to their liking?

Despite all his faults, FDR did come out with a great line that is worth remembering: "There is nothing to fear, but Fear Itself."  Knowledge that we are eternal beings incapable of real death, and fearless in the face of danger, real or imagined, is the remedy to our current predicament.

Those who stand and fight, whether natural or man-made dangers, are self-empowered and self-reliant, and truly free individuals. 

The PTB are deathly afraid of one thing, the self-actualized human being.  Their power, wealth and control are completely and inextricably dependent on our fear.  Whether it's religions, political institutions or just plain bullies, they eat fear and thrive on it.  The complete lack of fear is kryptonite to their super-powers.

Ask yourself this: Why do the 'authorities' tell everyone to run, but allow supercilious air-heads to remain in the face of danger to report it to us?  Very simple.  It creates in our minds the impression that the media have the favor of the 'authorities,' and we instinctively admire their bravery and fearlessness in the face of certain doom.  We, therefore, naturally transfer our allegiance to the media because they have no fear, whether of Nature or 'authorities'.  Thus, we become willing pawns of the PTB mouthpieces.

Every time someone tells you to fear and run, the first question in your mind should be, "Why?  What do you have to gain from my fear?"  That simple thought deflates their power and brings them down to our level.  Don't be fooled by follow-on stories about the folks who didn't listen and died.  People always die.  It is the nature of life.  It is no less tragic, but it should not cause us fear.

Freedom comes through two tasks.  Uninstall the fear, and conquer it's cousin, guilt.  If we deprogram those two things, then we are powerful and free.  The hardest part is accepting the consequences of our actions, no matter what our choices.

The true heroes are the ones who stand and face their fears, not the uniformed baboons who show up later to clean up the mess.

Top 10 Most Overlooked Films of All Time

Since it's the beginning of the Long Holiday here in the archipelago, we've retreated to the LFS World Headquarters, deep in the jungles of Borneo.  In order to survive the wilds, we are swilling bathtub gin, burning Mother Jungle, slathering our delicate skin with mud to fight dengue fever, and soaking in the savory smell of bar-b-qued monkey meat and fried bananas.

Same ole same ole.

Being the egotistical numbnut that we are, we decided it would be fun to share our movie selection for the Holiday.  Funny how names like Connery, Crichton and Perlman show up repeatedly on this list.  If you're an aspiring movie mogul, you might want to avoid these names.

Since Obama is doing golf and reading fiction on the Vineyard, we're gong one better by watching some of our all-time favorites and playing tonsil hockey with our four wives.  Of course, we can only occupy one of them at a time, because someone has to pedal the generator to keep the TeeVee and internet going.  So warm up the NetFlix and settle in for some prime flickery (I made that up, so don't forget where you got it).

10. The Driver (1978) - Walter Hill wrote and helmed this gem, starring Bruce Dern at his sneering best as a flee-bitten detective trying to catch Ryan O'Neal, who's a getaway driver.  It becomes a battle of wits as the two try to out-maneuver each other in a tense cross/double-cross story.  Good acting, good story and great late night fare.  One of our perennial favorites.

9, The Prestige (2006) - This is Nolan brothers product and it shows.  Great story that takes us places we never see.  It's entertaining, suspenseful and really well acted.  It teams Christian Bale and Michael Caine of Barman fame, with Hugh Jackman of mutant fame.  David Bowie takes a spin as Nikola Tesla in a very interesting role.  This one's got more twists than Nadia Kominska and was virtually invisible when it was released.  Many real gems are...

8. Quest for Fire (1981) - This one got a little attention back when, mostly because Rae Dawn Chong is stark, shivering naked throughout the whole movie.  It features our vote for most overlooked actor, Ron Perlman, in the first role I can remember seeing him in.  There's no dialogue that's intelligible, which is why so many folks overlook it, but it's a damn fine movie and very well done.  It's a French film by Jean-Jacques Annaud, which is another reason it's so overlooked, but even the Frogs score one every now and then (can you say La Femme Nikita).  We love this flick when our inner caveman needs a little boost.

7. Suspicion (1941) - This is probably Alfred Hitchcock's best overlooked film, and with Cary Grant and Joan Fountaine as his cattle, it's hard to go wrong.  Cary's at his dashing best as a ne'er-do-well rogue with a gambling problem.  He woos Joan into marrying him, but she soon finds out his true inner-self.  She starts down the road to wild paranoia, and we have no idea what is coming.  By the end of the flick, she's convinced even the way he blinks means he's going to kill her for her money.  Heck, just the scene with Cary bringing a glass of milk up the stairs makes your skin crawl (there's a flashlight in the glass to make it glow).  The scene driving up a mountain road is classic, as well.  This film stands the test of time with good story and oodles of suspense.

6. A Fish Called Wanda (1988) - Charles Crichton conducts an all-star symphony of comic capers in this true gem of a flick.  This is probably Kevin Kline's most memorable role (love the boot sniffing) and John Cleese nails the stuffy, middle-aged barrister.  Michael Palin's hapless assassin will keep you gasping for breath.  This is actually one of those films we have watched twice back-to-back, it's that good.

5. The Swimmer (1968) - Almost no one remembers this flick.  It's got Burt Lancaster (we should all look this good at 52) rippling and flexing his way through a series of swimming pools as he decides to swim across suburban Southern California on his way home.  Behind the scenes, it was a mess, with a couple of directors (including Sydney Pollock) warming the God Seat.  On-screen, it's John Cheever's great short story brought to life, perfectly capturing the angst of the WWII generation, as they faced aging and the eternal question, "Is this all there is?"  Burt's character is revealed through a series of vignettes in a truly unique plot device.  This is one of those 'thinker' movies, and well worth the Friday night in front of the Toob.  And as our generation gets older, it's good to see those in front of us had the same thoughts and fears.  Waaaay overlooked!

4. Looker (1981) - Michael (Jurassic Park) Crichton spins another 'evil media' flick in the vein of Network and Videodrome, with some heavy-weight talent...Albert Finney and James Cobern.  Finney is a surgeon who gets tangled up in a mystery after his supermodel patients start kicking the bucket.  What he discovers is pretty much what we all take for granted in TeeVeeLand today, so it will make you think twice about what you're watching, and how you're being manipulated.  See if you don't spot seeds for things like the memory eraser in Men in Black  Great flick!

3. The Name of the Rose (1986) - There's a good reason why this is one of our favorites.  Jean-Jacques Annaud weasels his way on the list a second time by making what we consider one of the great flicks that no one remembers.  He brought Ron Perlman with him to create one of the strangest characters we've ever seen.  And that's saying a lot, especially when it comes to a flick full of strange characters, with Sean Connery and Christian Slater playing Holmes and Watson Do the Middle Ages, in monk's robes.  It really is a great mystery story with lots of history sprinkled liberally around the set.  It's also got a really hot 'love scene' with the 15-year-old Slater in his big debut.  It's also were we discovered his habit of leaving his mouth open for two hours...check it out in any Slater flick.  F. Murray Abraham (Texas boy)  plays a real-life Inquisitor named Bernardo Gui, who will make your skin crawl.  You'll watch this more than once.

2. Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) - Claude Rains.  Vivien Leigh.  Bernard Shaw.  Nuff said.  Shaw even wrote the screenplay for this.  One of our favorites.  We've even played the character Britannus on stage.  The grandfatherly Julius Caesar falls for the lively and juvenile Cleopatra.  Features Shaw's wry pokes at society and his signature comedic play on manners with battling Titans.  I never see this flick on a list anywhere, so this is true overlooked material.  Especially considering the sheer tonnage of screen talent running though this one.  High quality.

1. Time Bandits (1981) - One of the most overlooked directors teams with one of the most overlooked film producers to create on of the finest overlooked films of all time.  Terry Gilliam not only fills the God Seat, he redesigns it.  This flick literally has it all.  A group of dwarves steals the Supreme Bering's Map of Everything and go on a trans-dimensional crime spree.  They pick up a kid along the way and the story is through his eyes.  Its a fantasy set in reality that appeals to any generation who watches it.  David Warner's Evil Genius is sheer talent, as is Ralph Richardson's Supreme Being.  George Harrison (Beatles) produced this shining cinematic jewel.  The masterful creativity that Gilliam brings to his products makes his filmography one of the most overlooked work of all time.  His films are like Truth, they are eternal, and his stories tell more reality than reality TeeVee, without showing reality at all.  If you are faced with an empty day (Gawd willing n da crick don't raz), then order up a Gilliam film festival.  It'll leave you gob-smacked.
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So, there you are.  It took us as long to write this list as it will take to watch it.  We did it all for you, dear reader.  Oh, and how could we forget our runner-up overlooked flick: Amadeus.  Just watch it.  Preferably as a double-feature with The Name of the Rose.  Two great F. Murray Abraham performances.

We're off to entertain the wives now.  We have our legal bag limit of four, so it keeps us hopping over here on the Far Side.  We'll keep bringing you top-notch content like this, as long as we can keep the LFS satellite tasked.

Selamat Lebaran!

Mudik To My Ears!

Tomorrow begins an annual Indonesian ritual that is a wonder to behold.  It is the beginning of a holiday called Lebaran.  It is akin to Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year all rolled into one.  And it is the one time of year that it is an absolute joy to live in Jakarta.

But, let's back up just a smidge.  What's going on?

This past month has been Ramadan, which for those unfamiliar with muslim practice, is the month of purification.  A true practitioner will fast from before dawn until sunset.  By fasting, I mean that one doesn't eat, drink or even swallow saliva.  Al Quran also commands the practitioner to work hard and suffer as a means of achieving holiness through denial and patience.

Generally, the ritual involves folks waking up around 3:30am, performing the morning prayer, then eating a large breakfast before sun up.  The mosques help out with the high-volume chanting to get everyone started.  The chanting continues roughly every hour until 10pm.  For muslims, though, the most important one is around 5:50pm, when the call goes out to let everyone know they can 'buka puasa,' or break fast.

During Ramadan, restaurants cover the windows.  The few small pubs still open serve beer in coffee cups.  All anyone talks about is fasting, breaking the fast, are you fasting, did you eat yet, what time can we buka puasa?

Ramadan begins with the first appearance of the Moon at a certain time of the year, which moves around a bit.  Last year, it was October, this year in August.  The month ends with the final disappearance of the crescent Moon.  It's such an important time of the year, there is even a government agency whose primary function is to set the exact dates and times for the beginning and end of the Fast.

The culmination of Ramadan is a holiday called Idul Fitri, which is the Indo version of the Arabic name.  That particular day is a lot like America's Thanksgiving, in which everyone goes home to the family and eats special foods to the point of medical intervention, and spends a week recovering.

Tomorrow, beginning about noon and lasting through the weekend will be a ritual of truly gargantuan proportions.  Millions of people will migrate from wherever they are to the home village in an annual nightmare called mudik.  Mudik more or less translates as 'exodus,' and it truly is every bit of that.  Just about anything that rolls will be pressed into service to carry folks back to the home village to gather with family for the feasting.

What's truly fascinating is that Jakarta, a city of roughly 12 million people, where the legendary traffic snarls are a full-contact sport (literally), becomes a ghost town.  Suddenly overnight, the 18-hour-a-day traffic jams vanish, the crowds at the malls evaporate, and the omnipresent toxic cloud over the city wafts away.  For one week, the city is positively a joy to live in.

The first year I was here, I made the mistake of going to Puncak, in the mountains south of the city.  The area has a great number of villas and resorts for city dwellers, and normally it's quite pleasant up there...except during mudik.  The main road through the mountains became a literal parking lot.  It took as long as an hour to drive three kilometers.  I swear I saw a little old lady, four feet tall and nine years older than God, walking faster than the cars...up hill.

The next year, I stayed in Jakarta and found out that those left behind absolutely own the city.  You can almost literally lie down in the middle of normally busy roads and not move for half an hour.  You can actually see the mountains south of town.  You can go places and not have to wait or be run down by mobs.  The constant drone of traffic noise dies down to almost nothing.  You can even get a table at the Batavia Restaurant without a reservation, not that a reservation guarantees anything normally.

Imagine having Times Square all to yourself, and you almost get the feeling here.

This time of year, I use a taxi instead of motorcycle.  I can actually go across town in 20 minutes, instead of the usual 2 hours.  Places that normally cost $10 to get to, run about $4 or $5, by taxi.

There's also a festive feeling in the air.  The pubs open again and you can get a beer in a frosted mug.  People aren't tired, hungry and irritable all the time.  Folks run around giving gift baskets of food and fruit syrup and everyone gets THR, or the Idul Fitri bonus at work, so they're happy again.

For one whole week, the city is vacant and quiet.  It belongs to us tiko with nowhere else in particular to go.  We sit in sidewalk cafes for the only moment of the year that it's sanitary to do so.  We go to the museum or Monas, because no one else is there.  We are Charleton Heston in Omega Man!

Then, just as suddenly, the week is over.  Comes Monday morning, the traffic is worse than at any other point in the year, except during floods, as millions of people come back and try to rearrange their lives once again.  The magic moment flees and the rat race once again takes over.

Until that time, we savor every lonely, quiet moment in the Big City.  The glorious solitude in the midst of wall-to-wall humanity.

For a brief and shining moment, there was a place called Camelot!
\

A Whiff Of Adolf

What to make of the news?  NATO claims to be encircling Tripoli and is moving in for the kill.  The 'rebels' have announced the capture of Qaddafi's son and heir-apparent.  We are told that it's just hours now before Libya falls and Qaddafi is in the hands of the banksters.

I worked long enough in news to develop a sort of 'news nose'.  I can usually smell BS a mile and a half away, and I'm catching the strong whiff of it right now.

The part that has me sitting on the fence that this is a huge gamble, even for folks so used to lying they don't know truth when they trip over it.  To go out on a limb and claim victory when it ain't even close is a pretty big risk.

But then I flash back to GW Shrub standing on the carrier flight deck in his nifty jumper, that he was too drunk to wear in real combat, as he declares "Mission Accomplished" a few months after invading Iraq.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we still there 10 years later?  TEN YEARS?!  Half a generation?  For a victory already accomplished?

I just have this feeling that something ain't kosher in the mosque.  If in fact, NATO and their mercenaries have truly made it to Tripoli and are in the process of taking the capitol, then my gut says that Qaddafi has a welcome gift for them somewhere in the city.

What all this really gets me to pondering are the similarities to Hitler and the Third Reich.  When he marched into Poland in '39, Europe and really the rest of the world adopted an appeasement policy towards Germany. After all, commies were Hitler's Arab terrorists.  He used them to invade Europe and Russia, as well as blaming the Reichstag fire on them.  He also claimed parts of Poland as ancestoral German homeland that needed reclaiming.

Fast-forward 3/4s of a century, and all this Mid East stuff just smacks of 'replay'.  One must remember that in the early days, the US and UK were big supporters of Hitler.  The Bush family (of US presidential infamy) were even convicted by Congress of giving 'aid and comfort'.  Certainly, the queen's daddy and FDR and even Churchill were pretty much hands-off.  Hitler had free run, until his Big Mistake.

I know what your thinking (holocaust, Russian winter, etc.), but no.  He decided to create a debt-free money system, based on labor/output of the German people.  In other words, he stopped dancing with those what brung him.  The only reason Hitler felt able to march into Russia was the real wealth his monetary policies were creating, and because the Allies were putting up little more than wrist-slap opposition...until the money thing.

Libya has/had an extemely high standard of living, with a monetary system completely cut-off from the banksters.  On top of that, it sits on some of the lightest, sweetest crude in the world.  Oh, and Qaddafi was selling an awful lot of it to China.

The real issue with all this war crap, besides naked empire-building, is trying to choke off China before it can get too out of hand.  China, for all it's economic dynamism, is resource-poor.  Heck, a good chunk of the country is Gobi desert.  In order to feed itself, it must import almost everything.

China draws it's energy from Indonesian coal, Libyan and South American oil and raw materials from most of the "Third World," which it turns into gee-gaws and re-sells it to the world.  Furthermore, it has been targeting markets the West has soundly ignored.  Sure, the US is a major market for it's products, but they pay in Boobie Bux.  So, China turns around and distributes it to the huge but grossly under-served global markets.

In this way, China provides a valuable service to the West, but its success is allowing it to slowly cut off the bankster network and go freelance.  It has the firepower and manpower to hold the rest of the world at bay.  That's what frightens the banksters.  They don't like competition.  The only way they have to control China is energy.  Cut off the energy and you can put the tiger back in the bag.

For this reason, China's border allies like Pakistan are under constant, but very quiet attack.  Libya is under constant and rather noisy attack (though much of it I don't believe).  Chavez is trying to circle his wagons, because he's next.  He's pulled his gold out of the UK, nationalized all the Big Oil properties and pretty much pulled in his toys.

It's only a matter of time before there's an all-out war on the US southern border.  When the floodgates open, nothing between Brownsville and Tierra del Fuego are going to be safe.

The US is hemorrhaging money, not to save the economy, but to buy off its allies and gain new ones.  From Europe to Asia, they're all lining up, hat in hand, saying they'll be happy to stick around, and oh, could you throw 10 or 15 billion into our markets?  We love you, man.  The US is selling its very soul to puff up it's sphere of influence, but the engine of its growth has begun taking on a life of its own.  Nixon created a Frankenstein's Monster.

It's a race against time.  Can the banksters choke off the power supply before China achieves complete independence.  The big problem is, China owns 9% of the US and has all the manufacturing.  Furthermore, they have pretty much all of Asia in their back pocket.

The US, and by extension NATO, must declare victory and bug the hell out of Libya to jump over to Syria.  They've got to lock down the Mid East power conduit to China, before China calls in the debt.  It's economic brinkmanship, just like the Cold War, but fought with paper rather than nukes.

If one stipulates the ability to control weather and geology, just for argument's sake, then Fukushima could be seen as a strategic blow to China's food supply, since a great amount of its protein comes from the sea...in that area.  Certainly, behind closed doors, I could hear Biden saying:

"Listen, you should really be concerned about Three-Gorges Dam.  I mean, one good earthquake and..."

Of course, felling cocky, Biden would hoot and yell, "Hu's yer daddy?  Hahahahaha!"

That's just how it all smells over here on the Far Side.  The games with markets, debt deals, bail outs, gold prices, oil wars...it's just all too, what's the word, convenient.


And from the looks of things, the banksters are whipping up some war between Israel and Egypt.

There's no doubt the West is trying to push China off balance, so it can attack directly.  The problem is that the West has never fully understood the Asian mind.  The Chinese are both ruthless and inscrutable.  I've sat across the negotiating table from them, I know whereof I speak.  They love strategy games and are disciplined thinkers.  It stands to reason they have already thought out many moves ahead and have answers for them.  And the West certainly doesn't know every card up China's sleeve.  I feel quite sure about that.

Qaddafi is a survivor.  He has outlasted a lot of BS.  The propaganda is trying to convince us that the people there want him hout, though if you had a really good standard of living, free education and health care, the best roads and infrastructure in Africa, and a yearly stipend, would you revolt?  Especially if it meant jerks like NATO coming in and blowing up the schools, hostipals, TeeVee stations, road, and airports?  Honestly, which would you pick?  FDR didn't get elected to four terms because everyone was starving to death and living in squalor.

I've just whipped up a fresh batch of popcorn, and now I'm going to watch this show.  Will the bankster BS get its trousers pulled down before they can drag Qaddafi's corpse through the town square?

Stay turned...

Adventures in Acupuncture VIII

UPDATE: One of our great readers sent me a link to Dr. Paolo Zamboni, in Italy, who has been making headlines for a while with an apparently successful new MS treatment.  If any of our Italian readers can provide further info, we'd be happy to share it around.  Thanks Larry!

Well, we're back again.  I took a little break to do some research, and also because I had hit a plateau in the treatments.  I wasn't getting any additional benefit, but I wasn't losing ground either.

I stopped the treatments a couple of weeks ago for several reasons, but the two biggest being the lack of advancement and the desire to see if the benefits I had gotten were permanent, or dependent on on-going treatment.

I've also found some new options to pursue.  One might be quite interesting to those looking for alternative health care options.  But first...

On the benefit side, I have regained some vision in my right eye, which is remarkable in itself.  I've also regained a good amount of red/green vision, which has applications for folks who are red/green color blind.  Might want to try it.  I've also regained brightness and some contrast and depth perception.  Not a lot, but a noticeable amount.  That helps with navigation, especially when facing my nemesis -- going down stairs.

Drawbacks?  It's played hell with my focus ability.  Before,

I had one spot in the center of my left field of vision that was sharp as a pin, though black and white.  It was very small, allowing me to read signs at a distance or focus on vehicles coming my way.  Now, I have several small spots like that, with color, that cause me to constantly move my eyes to try to bring something into the clear area.  It's hard to curse this, since having more is better, one supposes, but my eyes tend to be very tired at the end of the day for all the moving and focusing.

Overall, I am very pleased with the results, and I haven't abandoned acupuncture, by any means.  I have gotten the name of a local doctor/sin she who is trained in Western medicine, so is familiar with the effects of MS.  I hope that his better understanding of the disease will allow him to focus the treatments for better effect.

Of course, I'm still maintaining my daily supplements and I attribute the goji berry juice with enhancing my eyesight and helping me focus my mind more.

One drawback I need to mention, though, is that the leg spasms have returned since stopping the acupuncture.  Applying a certain natural herb to the problem is very effective, but only lasts for about an hour or so, requiring a re-application if I haven't managed to get to sound sleep by that time.

As for new courses to explore, about a year ago, I got word of a woman here in Jakarta who was having miraculous success treating cancers and various other ailments.  At that time, she had a fairly wide-spread reputation among the expats here.  Her name is Dr. Griya Balur, but a lot of folks call her Dr. Cigarettes.  She made international headlines a few months back with claims of stunning cures, but what got the attention was her method.

Tobacco

Dr. Balur uses tobacco in her treatments.  Pure, unadulterated leaf straight from the field.  To read some of the articles, it's a bit misleading.  She doesn't actually use the tobacco as a cure.  Rather, it's a diagnostic tool.

What she does is coat a table with a proprietary mixture of herbs and such.  The patient then lies on the table and she proceeds to blow tobacco smoke into every orifice of the body.  She quite literally blows smoke up your [blessed assurance].

The tobacco suffuses the body and leeches out through the skin.  In turn, the residue mixes with the coating on the table forming a pattern.  She reads this pattern to show which areas of the body are healthy and which are not.  From that information, she can determine a course of treatment, which involves targeting selected organs and systems with minerals and herbs.

Basically, it's not unlike Western medicine, which sometimes uses a blue dye injected into a tumor to see which lymph nodes are feeding it.  They then surgically remove those nodes.

Dr. Balur, however, approaches it from the standpoint that the cancers are the result of improper flows and balances in the body's minerals and vitamins.  It's a very sensical approach and not unlike the treatments used by vets on large farm animals.

At any rate, I am intrigued by the process and the anecdotal stories I've heard second-hand about cures for cancers, diabetes, stroke, and various wasting diseases.  Though I haven't heard directly about MS, it is similar to other auto-immune disorders she has reportedly cured without trace.  By trace, I mean using standard assays recognized in Western medicine, such as blood tests, X-rays, etc.

As your faithful reporter in these matters, I will consult with Dr. Balur, and if possible, undergo her treatment and report anything I find.

As for other lines of investigation, I have started following tai chi.  I have never pursued any of the Eastern martial arts, so I am literally starting from ground zero.  I chose this route because it is a very low impact form of exercise, and because it promotes two things above all: relaxation and balance.  The motions are both fluid and slow.  There is no emphasis on power.  All strength comes from simply being and maintaining balance.

Every Saturday and Sunday, I meet with a group and have a trainer.  The rest of the week, I simply practice on the front porch in the early mornings.  I found it through the local Buddhist temple and there is no charge for it.  You may want to investigate this route if interested.  The masters are all between 70 and 80 years old, and strong as oxen.  I weight fully 200#/100 kilo and I can hang on their shoulders and cannot budge them when pushing on them.  They all promote tai chi as a means to achieving a long and healthy life.  At 50, they still consider me a youngster.

At any rate, because the MS attacks the neuro-muscular control, I figured this was a good route to go that focused on the very things I am having the most trouble with.  I've developed this old-man stoop both as a way to see the ground in front of me, and to compensate for my balance problems.  I'm hoping the tai chi will help correct that and give me more confidence in my movement and balance.  Plus, as a form of exercise, it can be done well into the old age, but unlike golf, requires no equipment or even special clothing.

So, I continue my two-pronged approach to the MS situation.  The first approach is to relieve the symptoms that I have.  These include the twitching leg muscles, lower back pains and blindness.  The second approach is to investigate possible cures, based on both my own theories regarding the genesis of MS, and the various alternative cures offered by Asian traditional medicine.

I have chosen the alternative path because I live in Asia and have access to these various traditions, and because Western medicine required me to surrender far too much of my quality of life for a bunch of legal weasel words.

My first, and so far only attack occurred two and a half years ago, which from what I've read means that I've already beaten the odds, which say the average MS patient will get hit once a year or so after the first attack. Whether I'm a statistical aberration or the things I've been doing are beneficial is still up in the air.  Certainly, nothing I am doing can be anything but beneficial, as they involve vitamins, minerals, herbs, exercise, and healthy eating.  Combined with the mental attitude that I will not be a victim nor surrender the fight (which is probably more attributable to being a hard-headed Irish Texan).

At any rate, I will continue to keep interested parties abreast of my findings.  I also wish to thank the readers who have been sending in scads of information.  I am still parsing it all, but will post more of the links and files in future reports.  Though my personal Odyssey involves MS, these things may have broad implications not only for other maladies, but also for general well-being.  I am sharing any and all observations and information that may be beneficial to others.

In an age when health care costs are soaring and Western medicine is dominated by a pharmacological beast that mucks around with the chemical balances of the body and brain, I want to find cheap and easy alternatives that are just as effective, if not more so.  Food supplements, exercise, fresh fruit and vegetable juices, and things like acupuncture and Dr. Balur's approach are all worthy of investigation.  There is no reason why popping pills and going under the knife are the only alternatives.

Certainly, as far as costs go, everything I've spent in two and a half years on alternatives have added up to about three days in an American hospital, and far more sanitary.  That I have so far beaten the odds on MS attacks at least gives me hope that I am on the right track.

Above all, it's the mind.  By maintaining the attitude that I will make lemonade from life's lemons is probably the most important weapon I have against anything that befalls me.  Like the old maxim says:

First, know thyself.


A loving, caring spouse doesn't hurt, either.  :)


This is part 8 of an on-going series of articles about the use of acupuncture in treating the effects of multiple sclerosis, especially blindness.  See Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, and Part 7 here. The standard Western medical approach gave no hope for recovery, and the use of life-long drugs (with distasteful side-effects) offered a ‘possible’ protection from further attacks.

In The Name Of The Son

I hope folks took a minute (or sixty) to listen to the interview with Santos Bonacci.  He's an Ozzie (we won't hold that against him) who's figured it out.  There's thousands who have, and in the sidebar links, there's a British site that goes into some detail, and well as the Texas site 'showmethelaw.org'.  The paperwork and how-tos are all out there.  Just be careful where you get your materials.  There's a lot of fakers and folks who just haven't gotten it yet.

I have certainly spent enough time in jail myself.  But as I've mentioned here before, once I got it figured out, I drove for nearly 10 years in a car with no inspection, registration or any other permission, including a driver's license.  Sure, for a while I got hundreds of tickets.  Beat nearly all of them.  Eventually, the cops around my area got the idea that I wasn't going to change, so they did and left me alone.

I have a Texas passport.  Once you figure it out, you can make your own.  You can declare your land a sovereign nation, though I wouldn't try that just yet.  The world's not ready for the whole truth.  Besides, your neighbors start to get jealous of you and start turning you into ever government agency they can think of.  Keeps you busy.

At any rate, perhaps you are now wondering what the magic bullet is?  It's both very simple and highly complex.  The complexity keeps folks busy chasing shadows so they don't look and the very simple truth at the center of the whole thing.

The truth is, the Roman Empire never fell.  On the contrary, it owns you, your soul and all your property.  That's right, the Book of Revelations took place in the year AD 1302, and the Anti-Christ was a lovely fellow named Bonaface VIII.  Since you were born, you've had the Mark of the Beast, and you've probably looked at it dozens of times and didn't even know it.

You see, there's this story.  It features a guy named Jesus, who had some followers.  Well, he says to one of them, 'you're my rock and on you I will build my church.'  Good guess!  The guy's name was Peter.  Anyway, in the story, there's this line about giving Peter the Keys to the Kingdom and telling him that what he binds on Earth will be bound in Heaven  To make a long story short, Peter and whoever he appoints later are in charge of the Earth and everything in it until this guy Jesus returns.  It's true, because God said so.

Sounds like Divine Right of Kings to me.  Maybe that's why all the kings of Europe had to be blessed by Peter's replacements.  They really didn't have Divine Right until God's Ambassador gave it to them.

That kind of power would make you really, well...powerful.  Especially if everyone believed it.

So, the Roman Empire morphs into something called the Holy Roman Empire.  Same wonderful bunch of people, different brand.  The Emperors were replaced by popes, to soften up the image in later re-brandings, but it's the same thing.

That brings us to this guy, Bonaface VIII.  He decided that if he was in charge of the world and everything in it until Jesus came back, that he needed to start locking things up all legal-like.  At that point, he created a Trust.  First one ever.  Put all of Euope into it.  He and his replacements would hold full title to Life, the Universe and Everything, as trustees.  Just until Jesus came back, of course.

Problem is, that Book they were basing all this on is a complete fabrication.  At least the way we've all be taught to read it.  It is an amalgam of stories dating back to Babylon.  The dying/rising god-turned-man.  The 12 followers.  All of it.

Most of the parables come from Buddha, pretty much word for word.  The central figures come from Vishnu.  The plot line comes from Babylonian myths.  The sun worship, well most people have heard of that.  The point is, Jesus and Peter never existed, at least in any form that we imagine.

But, there's this really powerful guy called a pope, and he has legal title and deed to all land and every soul on Earth.  The power to do this is based on a fiction, and you still wonder why legal fictions like corporations can be 'persons'?

OK, so at this point, you should click over and read the Law of Flags.  You'll need that information to really grasp the subtleties coming up.  And a couple of data points.  Ever notice that all the US flags in schools, courts and many other places have the gold fringe?  The other point to think about is, why does Western law use so many Latin phrases?

If your sharp, and we know you are because you read this blog, then you're already starting to see the Bigger Picture.

Back to Bonaface.  So, he took over everything in Europe and put it in a trust (you should read up on those, as well).  Then, a century of so later, a guy names Sylvester put the Americas in a second trust.  Later, another guy (whose name I forget) put Asia into a third trust.  Together, the three trusts are called the Sequagint KV, sextum being the number six, three times, is 666.  Hmmm...the Mark of the Beast.

When you are born, your parents 'registered' your birth and got a 'certificate'.  Look up the legal definitions.  Regis means 'king,' so 'register' means to inform the king, which is why your birth certificate has a line for 'informant'.  You need that number on the certificate to get any form of government ID.  You need ID to get a job, travel, conduct any kind of commerce at all.  You have the Mark of the Beast.

The number on your birth certificate registers you with the Vatican, which now owns you as part of the Trust. You are a beneficiary of a vast treasure in Heaven, and it is the Vatican's (self-appointed) job to get you there, no matter what it has to do to you here.

Thus, you are a slave because your parents unwittingly 'registered' your birth, and you probably did the same with your kids.  You are now under Roman law, using Latin phrases written in the Roman alphabet, and some people still have Roman numerals in their names.  You are now a subject of the Holy Roman Empire, but it actually gives you power, if you know how to use it.

You can literally tell judges what to do, make prosecutors (pro se cutus-in the flesh) pay any and all fines for you.  In fact, you can psych out prosecutors before court starts by asking if they brought their checkbook to court.

As I said at the start, it's a very simple idea, but very complex, at the same time.  This rabbit hole goes much deeper, because all that power didn't come just from a work of fiction.  That book is actually coded information.  And information is power, if you guard it and make others pay to learn it.  It's occult, or hidden knowledge of an ancient art called astrology.  And yes, it can give you power if you know how to use it and others don't know about it.  All those stories about 12 followers, a sun (I mean son of course), crosses, miracles, loaves and fishes, servants carrying water.  It's all there, and it's why the pope wears a fish head for a hat.  It's the Age of Pisces.  Didn't you know that?  Before thsi was Aries, which is why Muslims slaughter goats and Christians worship good shepherds.  Before that, it was Taurus, which is why Hindus worship bulls and the Hebrews built a golden calf.  After this is the Age of Auquarius, which is why Jesus is heard to tell his followers to look for the servant carrying a jar of water.  It's all there in black and white.  Virgins, warrior kinds, eagles.

I hear you.  "But what does all this have to do with me?"

Ah, well, there's a way out.  All you have to do is learn all this stuff.  Please don't forget the Law of Admiralty.  If you know what and when to speak, then you can literally become your own king, and extract yourself from the Matrix.

It's called the Redemption Process, and it's not for the faint of heart.  It takes a lot of study to find out just how simple it is, and what you learn will make you so powerful it will literally scare the hell out of you.  Just be careful.  Governments are cracking down because so many folks are learning about and using this information.  If you don't know exactly what you are doing, you WILL go to jail...a lot.  I know.

The Process is a little tricky, but it's mostly paperwork.  Knowing what to do with it is the real trick.  Do a little study on your own, and we'll come back to this topic later.  I've given you enough names and terms to keep you busy for, oh, about a year or so.

Happy Research!

Oh, and all the stuff about secret societies and all that?  Forget about them.  Their just focus groups for the Big Marketing Firm in Rome.

Selamat Hari Merdeka!

Today is the 66th anniversary of Indonesia's independence.  It's very interesting, to me at least, to live in a place where something like that is still in living memory.  There's still a creative force at work.  I felt something similar in the Czech Republic when I visited there one year after the Velvet Revolution.

The old folks can tell stories, if you listen.  They talk about the abuses they suffered under the Dutch military, which was then replaced by the Japanese military.  More of the same, but worse.  Then came the American military, with a kinder, gentler rape and pillage.

Finally, in 1945, Indonesians sloughed off centuries of domination by outsiders.  They cobbled together a nation of 20,000 islands that's about the size of the continental US, with about the same population, only most of it is water.

Soekarno, the George Washington of Indonesia

It's a fascinating place, really.  It is composed of hundreds of different ethnic and cultural groups, all with their own languages, who use a cobbled-together language to identify themselves as unified.  In so many ways, it's like the US was, a century before I was born.  There's still frontier here and places where it's probably true no man has set foot before.

Indonesia is a place all its own.  They still put feminine hygiene products in separate little bags in your groceries, so they don't touch anything else.  A man can legally have up to four wives, though for the life of me I can't imagine why anyone would want that many.  Women open doors and stand aside for men to pass.

There's places, like Ambon, where people wear only mud, to keep the sun and mosquitoes off.  There are places in Papua were men wear long wicker sheaths on their penises.  Some groups love dog and pork, while others are deathly adverse to both.

There are flowers the size of VW Beetles that only bloom once a century and smell like rotting corpses.  There are real live dragons up to 20 feet long sunning on the roadway in the afternoons.  There are miniature rhinoceri and tigers and monkeys everywhere.  There are types of voodoo that scare the hell out of even educated, cosmopolitan folks.

You can learn really odd bits of information.  For instance, tigers will not attack you if you look at them, so people wear masks on the backs of their heads in the jungle.  There are more than 15 kinds of bananas.  There's a kind of mutant coconut called kopyor that's very rare, very expensive and very delicious.  There's a kind of fruit called duren that is covered with mean spines and a thick shell and smells like rotten onions wrapped in week-old gym socks, and if you get one open, the fruit looks like thick yellow worms.  But tastes really good.

Half the people love their food spiced to the point of peeling skin off the roof of your mouth, while the other half can't stand even the smell of chili peppers.  Most of the really good food comes wrapped either in banana leaves or served on a teak leaf.  A small helping of rice is called 'cat rice', and there are as many words for rice as the Aleut have for snow.

Almost everyone is afraid of rain and many don't like to swim or even go in the direct sun, even though they live on tropical islands on the equator, where it rains six months of the year.  One of the biggest selling cosmetics is whitening cream, and shampoo with 'hair-fall therapy' is a huge industry...for women.  The folks here think flat noses, big lips and dark skin are ugly, though just about everyone has a flat nose, big lips and dark skin (at least compared to me).

The country has abundant natural wealth.  There's coal and oil, gold, nickel, tin, and iron, silica sand, teak wood, and dozens of other valuable things.  Food grows year-round and in boat-loads everywhere.  You can walk down the street in the middle of the city and pick a star fruit, or bananas, or any of a dozen other things. The soil is so fertile you don't dare leave your woman standing in it too long.

The language is a blast.  It's a mix of Sanskit (by way of Malay), Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, and English, with a couple of dozen local dialects thrown in for good measure.  Some of the expressions are a hoot.  Someone who is coy is 'shy-shy cat'.  A cat-nap is called 'sleep-sleep chicken'.  Speed bumps are 'police sleeping.'  Your first puppy love is called 'monkey love', my personal favorite.  On any form of transportation, you always get up or down, never on/off or in/out, and if you want to tell someone that you just got on the bus, you say to them 'new up bus'.  And when parting for someone, always tell them 'liver-liver on way'!

It's a great country with great people.  They are warm, friendly and usually curious to a fault.  Indonesians have no qualms whatsoever about asking your religion, or how old are you (male or female).  There's a blissful innocence about Indonesians.  They hardly concern themselves with affairs of the world at large.

Sure they have their problems.  There's a lot of corruption, but it pales in comparison to somewhere like the US.  There are radical groups in places like Banda Aceh and Papua seeking independence.  There are simmering tensions among the many different peoples that make up this country, and sometimes they boil over.  The same with religious matters.

Overall, though, I can't imagine finding somewhere more challenging and fun and sometimes just down-right strange.  That's what makes this such a unique and fascinating place.  And it makes me laugh when my driver worries about white people moving into the neighborhood and bringing crime and unsavory elements with them.  The funny part is he tells me as if I'm not one of 'them'.  Guess that means I've made it to bule kampung status.

Happy birthday, Indonesia!  Land of my water that flows with my blood.  Here's hoping you get 66 more fine years.

Oh, and I was just about to finish when I got a reminder from my little buddy.  They have these cool little house lizards here called cicek that chirp like birds.  Took me six months to figure out what the hell was making that noise.  There's bigger ones, too, that make a whole different racket, and if you hear one, it's supposed to mean money is coming to you.  I need to find a dozen or so of them!

As Above, So Below

Today's one of those days when I let other people do the talking.  Warning, the information coming from the first video, a guy called Santos Bonacci, will blow your socks off, if you're not up to speed on the way things really work in this world.  The other stuff is yet another one of those little confirmations in life that tell me I'm on the right track.  Be very alert.  Behavioral templates are being broadcast all over the place.  We're being softened up for the Main Event, coming to a planet to you.

First, a letter from one of our faithful readers round-abouts Pennsylvania.  If you haven't read Dog Days of August, you might want to give it a once over real quick before going on here.  Enjoy!

Last night my Grandson,aged 22,insisted that I watch a show called "Curiosity". It was all about "what would happen if there was a space invasion". They are getting ready to scare the hell out of people, pounding the airwaves with all kinds of alien crap.  I noticed that they use "invasion". I asked my Grandson what he thought would happen if aliens showed up.  I told him that if I was an alien I wouldn't want to come to the Earth because they kill their own, so they would surely kill any other being. I then told him if he was interested in what was going on that he should look up Illuminati symbols and he would get a whole new outlook on life on this planet.  It will be intersting to hear what he has to say after he does it.  I also gave him my telescope so he could see the night sky.

Next, the MSM brings us...SPACE INVASION!  (I'm not lyin' about this stuff!)



I have a feeling that this 'anti-proton ring' just discovered around Earth figures into the whole plot.  Somehow, it will become a threat to our existence, or at least it will be made to look that way.  I haven't seen any data that proves its existence.  Just a bunch of anonymous 'white coats' talking, so far.

To finish blowing your gaskets completely out, finish off with this five-part series with Joseph P. Farrell on the Byte Show.  It's a lot of listening and even more information, but it should rightly put a little perspective on things.



Tomorrow's Independence Day here in Indonesia, so I'll focus a little attention on my adopted home.  It's really a fascinating place.

Drop us a line after your mind pops...

And now for the parting shot...

Mind Meld And The Media

Let's start off today with a little thought.  I know, I'm asking a lot, but work with me here.

Have you ever been doing something and thought to yourself, "Hey, this sure is like [TeeVee show/movie/commercial]."

Do you ever find yourself talking like someone you've seen in the media?  For instance, you're talking about sports and you use words like trample, vanquish, topped, et cetera?  Do you ever notice the things you say to other people sounds a lot like what you heard on the news or in a program somewhere?

The reason I ask this, is because I've gotten two email now asking me to explain how the media influences us.  The both pointed to my constant berating of the media.  They're thoughts run along the lines of, "If I know they're trying to program me, doesn't that cancel it?"

Short answer: No.

Being a creature of the media, I am quite guilty of using movie quotes and advertising tag lines.  I've written quite a few of them myself.  I try to sprinkle some real literature in for good measure, and whenever possible, I plug really high-quality movies, but I rarely resort to TeeVee programs, unless it's Star Trek.

The point is, even though I am trained in media, am fully aware of how it is used and why it works, and am fully cognizant of the mind control that comes out of the TeeVee and movie screens, I'm still susceptible.  I just got cable installed in my home office so i can watch the other-than-US news, though that's increasingly hard to find.

Last night, my wife and I were watching Ang Lee's Hulk, which I consider to be high art, and I noticed that my wife was gripping my arm and actually buying into the movie.  She was sucked into the suspense and action.  I laughed, which nearly scared the life out of her, because I haven't been able to watch a movie like that in decades.  About the only thing that can actually get to me is Apollo 13.  Makes me cry when I see the parachutes...every damn time.

Anyway, back to my point.  The media use a tool that Madison Ave. figured out years ago, and which most media rats know about.  It's something called 'template implanting.'  What the media does is bury behavioral 'templates' deep in our minds.  Even if you think you are blocking it, you're not.  What happens is that when you are confronted by a situation, you will tend to react using one of the implanted templates.

When I was in grade school, I actually ran track...after a fashion.  As part of my psych-up, I would envision the 6-million dollar man so that I could run at 60mph.  The result was I ran just like Col. Steve Austin...in slow motion.  The thing is, I was using media-implanted templates to guide my real-life actions.

Maybe you've used lines like, "Where's the beef," or "I'm lovin' it," or "Just do it!"  You used those lines to imply something you learned from the media.  A template was implanted in your sub-conscious, so that when you wanted to express a certain idea, the only way you could come with to express it was an ad tag line.

Why do you think the young folk in America all sound like they are from the middle of Harlem?  Why do so many boys think it's fashionable to wear their pants half around their knees like prison whores?  Why do kids all go crazy about certain toys right around October (just in time for Christmas)?  They've all been implanted with templates.

Watch movies really closely, and by that i mean turn off the sound.  Focus on the pictures.  How many brand-names can you identify in the average 10-minute reel time?  How many are being touched or used by the stars?

Have you ever purchased a product because someone famous that you looked up to or admired promoted it?  Why do you give someone you've never met any credibility at all?  You really have no idea who they are or what their motivations are.

The upshot of all this is, your behavior, at least in groups of 100 or more, is completely predictable.  Why?  Because you've been imprinted with templates that control how you will react in just about any given situation.  It's part of the supposed 'mind-reading' machines that security agencies are deploying.  Your behavior can be predicted by your body language and the general context in which you find yourself.  It's just a few algorithms to calculate your most likely future actions in any given situation, based on how you move and react.

The thing is, cave-dwelling 'terrorists' who never watch TeeVee or movies are less predictable than you are.  So who do think all those surveillance toys are really intended for?

Is there any hope?

Yes.  You can deprogram yourself.  Be very careful what you allow to enter your eyeballs and eardrums.  Surround yourself with art and fine music and good movies.  Avoid violent content and seek things with high language, not the ghetto trash that passes for dialogue in most 'entertainment' now.  When you're wondering what to do for entertainment, consider the museum or a live play, rather than recorded media.  It's much easier to program 'templates' when someone can edit the visuals and audio for just the right effect.

I hear many people wondering how so many folks could willingly give up their rights and liberty just to get on a plane.  It's because nearly everyone in the world now has a template implanted.  The constant barrage of images of planes flying into buildings has implanted a sub-conscious fear of being one of the people on a plane like that.  Even if you hate the TSA, you are willing to submit because the behavioral template in your mind tells you that if you don't, you will die when your plane crashes into a building.  The actual chances of that happening are nearly zero, but fear is not rational.

Want another example?  Why do you think of government employees as 'authorities'?  They have no more clue about the world than you do, but you are more prone to believe someone you are told is an 'authority,' than any old person on the street.  Obama is using a fake SS#, has a house that he has not paid taxes on, gave the people an obiviously fake birth certificate, has violated just about every clause of the US Constitution, and yet I still read where he's an authority, since he (let me finish laughing here) Constitutional law.

There are thousands of examples of behavioral templates.  I guarantee if you think about it, you will catch yourself reacting with a template at least a couple of times a day.  Hell, when you want to come off as romantic to your squeeze, what do you think of?  Flowers?  FTD.  Cards?  Hallmark.  A drive in your hot wheels?  Chevy.  Candy?  Hershey.  You've been programmed.

If you find it almost impossible to cut yourself loose from the TeeVee, try this: don't watch the news or any of the lame cop/lawyer/federal agent shows, or especially comedy (one of the most dangerous).  Instead, choose classic movies and entertainment with classic themes.  Better yet, watch Mel Gibson flicks back-to-back.  That'll clear your head.

Another good way to deprogram is try not to buy anything in a package with a logo.  Buy fresh veggies and get meat at a proper butcher shop wrapped in white paper.  Why?  Because when you buy Ragu sauce and enjoy it, you are re-enforcing the programming by associating good experiences with a brand.  If you can break that cycle, you can start defeating the templates.

One more thing.  If there are extension classes near your house, think about taking a course or two in media and advertising, or film and art history.  Learn where our cultural symbols come from.  Learn about the thing that invades your mind 24-hours a day.  Take the mystery out of it and learn how it works.  There are some great books, too.  Check out Marshall McLuhan.   It might interest you to know that much of modern theory about advertising originated with Nazi propaganda and freaks like Sigmund Freud.

Know your enemy.