Turn, Turn, Turn

You remember back in Y2K, when the whole world seemed to have that 'holding the breath' feeling?  It was like everyone had stopped to wait for the other shoe to drop.

It did, of course, a year and a half later, but there was a collective moment of anticipation centered on a single event.  It was a palpable feeling.  It seemed to come from all directions at once.

I have that same feeling now, only more intense.  People seem testier and tempers are flaring more readily.  Everyone seems on edge.

Not that the news outlets are helping much.  Between falling satellites and countries going hay-wire, fights and protests and revolutions are breaking out in every corner of the globe.  Even down to the most minute level, there's confrontation and rebellion in mundane conversations.

You know what it feels like?  It's like everyone is trying to stake out their piece of the pie before the shit storm.  I don't think most people are aware of it.  They just go about their daily lives being steered this way and that by the Keepers, not really analyzing their thoughts and actions.    Not that this is unusual in itself.

I've noticed drivers are more aggressive.  Everyday, I get stories from friends and family that so-and-so blew up for no good reason.  People pop off over the least little inconvenience.  It's like trying to sleep with the bathroom sink dripping all night.  It's not the drip that irritates you, its the fact that it doesn't stop and you can't help but focus on it intensely.

Drip...drip...drip...drip...

That's what reading the headlines is like to me.  Drip...drip...  It's one damn thing after another.  Economy, food, riots, prices, housing, environment.  There's just no end to the stream of bad news.  I think people are intuitively (certainly not consciously or rationally) gathering in their things.

Scandals, insiders, barbs, death.  Scanning Drudge these days is like looking at a thesaurus entry for 'annoyance'.  I keep waiting to see if headline editors run out of new ways to describe 'oh shit!'

Astrolabe

There's a fellow by the name of Goro Adachi, whose website I've followed for many years.  It's called Etemenanki, if you've never checked out his stuff.  I mention it because he's always been a good litmus test.  He seems to be able to tap into the underlying mood of humanity.  In terestingly, he usually lines up with what the web bots say, but he does it through an entirely different approach.

At any rate, between the web bots, Goro and my own headline scrying, multiple sources are saying 'watch out.'  Richard Hoagland calls it 'fear porn,' and I'm hard pressed to think of a better term.  Every source of information is peddling fear and loathing.  Makes me wish that Hunter S. was still around.  I imagine he checked out because he saw all this coming, and there wasn't a sufficient supply of pharmaceuticals and Chivas to make the world look right again.

The sheer number of westerners using pills to survive the mental disconnect we generally call civilization is staggering.  The Hopi call it Koyaanisqatsi, or 'life out of balance.'  It also happens to be the title of a great 1982 film by Godfrey Reggio.  Basically, humans have lost their connection to reality, to Earth and to the rhythms of Nature.

Nobody looks up anymore.  No one sits out and watches the stars.  Years back, when Comet Kohoutek came through, it was an amazing spectacle.  The tail covered a full two or three Moon-widths.  In other words, it was pretty damn hard to miss, and it lasted weeks.

One night, I was sitting on my porch just staring at this magnificent thing, and a bunch of the neighborhood kids asked me what I was looking at.  The first thing I noticed was that they didn't bother to follow my gaze.  They asked me first.  When I pointed and said the comet, they looked and their jaws dropped.  After a minute of staring, they started asking me what it was.

Now these were older kids, maybe young teens.  They'd probably sat through many science classes.  Apparently, they had not gotten the information that a major comet was passing by, or even what a comet is (even the ridiculous NASA definition).

No one watches the sky anymore, or nurses seeds, or observes animals, or even seems cognizant of the Universe around us.  No one can tell you what the weather will do just by smell or looking at the clouds.  No one knows what the Moon phase is.  Hell, there's an app for everything.  If you ask someone, they are more likely to check their iPad than look up.

I think about when we bought our farm, and my first act was to get down and smell the dirt.  My wife looked at me like I had taken leave of my senses.  The old man who's the caretaker knew.  He told her I was testing the soil.  I can tell what plants will grow best in a given soil by the way it smells.  You can take the boy out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy.

It's trite, I know, but the old axiom about smelling the roses is true.  You can find out so much by simple observation.  But we, as a people, have grown so dependent on our machines and toys and gee-gaws, that we've lost the simple art of looking.  Melihat-lihat, as they say in Indonesian (saw-see).

It's so easy to manipulate people when they don't bother to verify anything, or worse, trust their own senses and instincts.  We've become dependent on 'experts' and 'authorities' to do the work for us.  And because of it, they can feed us any amount of bullshit they want and we just swallow it.

If we all watched Nature, we'd know there are times for growth and times for death.  In the higher latitudes, it's summer and winter.  Here in the tropics, it's Wet and Dry.  We wouldn't sweat the economic vagaries because we know that organic things must follow seasons, cycles and patterns.  We wouldn't work so hard to save government or corporations, because like everything, they too have life-cycles.  We wouldn't spend billions to deny aging and death, because we would accept that it is all part of the Plan.

Just look at the choice of words in any news story.  I mean, really look.  You'll notice that underneath the words is the concept that we are at war with the Universe.  We are separate from and superior to the very force which gave us being.  We must fight the natural cycle of things tooth and nail.  We must never succumb to the inevitable.

There is no respect for grace and dignity anymore.  We plug our loved ones into machines that pump and filter and blow and beep.  We can't bear to let them pass as all things must.  We pump trillions into stifled organizations that have become recalcitrant and need to be pruned and burned so that new growth can come through.  We keep electing the same idiots to run a government that is no longer flexible and viable.  And like us, they scratch and fight and claw to avoid the inevitable.

The thing is, no mater what we do, the best we can achieve is forestalling the only possible outcome.  If, instead, we were like a good orchard farmer, and carefully trimmed and pruned our society regularly, we would have bushels of fruit on the table.  But even the best orchard tender can't stop the freeze, only work to save the most valuable parts.

How much pain and suffering could we avoid if we just let go?  How much anxiety and violence and pharmaceuticals could be saved, if we simply acknowledged the Universal Cycle?  If you are thrown into a fast-moving river, you don't try to swim upstream, instead you try to manage how you get carried downstream.

Maybe I'm the one who's crazy, but it sure makes more sense to work the current, than to fight it.  Haing spent a lot of time sailing, I can tell you cursing the wind won't get you very far.

Sigmond Fraud

As I scan the headlines, what I see are folks who want change fighting entrenched interests.  What no one seems to get is that the entrenched interests will die of their own accord, and instead of fighting simply ignore them.  The worst thing you can do to someone who wants to control you, is to simply no do what they want, and worse yet, don't acknowledge their presence in the first place.

I hear the psycho-babble denizens always popping off about passive-aggressive behavior, but you know?  It really works!  In fact, those psycho-babble people should be the first in line to be ignored.  That would save a world of worry right off the bat.  The old, old folks called it shunning, and the Catholics call it excommunication.  If it wasn't effective, it wouldn't have been around for millennia.

It time to resurrect the tried and true.  Axioms become trite because they are so damned true all the time.

Quaternions And Escape Velocity

Something that seems to come up consistently in my studies is the concept of a "break-away civilization".  The idea is that some portion of human beings have secretly advanced, technology-wise at any rate, to the point where they have, or are very close to having split off from the rest of us.  At first blush, this idea may seem fanciful, but on further consideration could explain a great many things.


As a culture, we often visualize the technology that will shortly become commonplace.  Just a simple example is Star Trek.  It is no mistake that cell phones resemble the show's communicators.  There are crowd suppression technologies called, rather blatantly, PHASER, which is a stun weapon.  Quantum mechanics has shown a possibility for making transporters real.  And lately, 3D printers are getting closer to making Star Trek replicators a reality.


In short, if we can imagine it, it is quite possible to make it happen.  Since we are products of Universe, it stands to reason that we can not conceive of anything that is not possible within Universe.  The Star Trek example is but a small, recent data point, but it's important that we establish the ability of humans to conceive of something, then proceed to make it a reality.  In concise terms, we create our own future, and are not passive recipients of it.


The next building block is the ubiquitous 'black project'.  That Boeing's Skunk Works or Area 51 exist is beyond question.  What actually occurs in these facilities (and the many like them worldwide) is a topic of hot debate.  What we can say for sure is that these operations are involved in the secret development of new technologies.


That governments hide new technologies is not open for debate.  One aspect of Columbus' voyages that is little known is that he was given three ships that used a radical new keel design, and part of his mission was to test the design in practical application.  It took more than 300 years for the documents confirming this to be made public.


Certainly, the development of military aircraft is usually decades ahead of what is publically known.  The B-1 bomber was in service for at least 20 years before it was acknowledged.  There's growing evidence that the infamous 'black triangle' UFOs are some type of new craft under development, or already in service.  Speculation has it that the triangles are under the Aurora program, which confuses the highly advance craft with rather pedestrian hypersonic craft, which is actually fairly old technology.  Lifting-body hull designs, such as the shpace shuttle, are based on theories and designs dating to the 1920s and 1930s.

Spherical Triangle Quaternion

I think we can stipulate that those technologies that are generally known are, at the very least, decades behind current state-of-the-art.


One last data point is the well-known technological curve.  There is a well-proven process in the development of technology.  The learning curve starts off fairly flat and slow, with the discovery of some process, then the development of engineering capability to exploit it, then the curve goes into a wild climb as more and more is learned about the process and how to exploit it with engineering.


A prime example of this effect is computers.  Almost within my lifetime, computers have gone from massive, room-sized, vacuum-tubed affairs that used boxes full of punch cards to run simple applications.  Within the span of 50 years, I now have more computing power currently being used to generate this article, than was available to land men on the Moon.  


Even storage capacity has grown exponentially.  My first hard-drive cost hundreds of dollars, was the size of an old 5.25" floppy drive, and could hold 33 megabytes of data.  I currently have a terabyte of memory on this computer that cost less than $100, and is a small fraction the size of the old drive.


Another example is video technology.  In the span of my career, video has gone from 1" magnetic tape to solid-state storage.  In the 80s, we used to sit around in SMPTE meetings, oohing and ahhing over HD video, using massive cameras and CRT displays.  My step-daughter is hawking a hand-held device this weekend that offers full HD video and full stereo audio in a hand-held device that costs less than $200.


So, where is all this going?  Glad you asked.

Die Glocke

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a journalist named Igor Witkowski started digging through all the Nazi documents that had remained nearly undisturbed since the (ostensible) fall of the Third Reich.  He found a number of documents revealing a secret Nazi technology called Die Glocke, or the Bell.  This device was based on a radical new physics, or more correctly, an ancient physics re-discovered, that had remarkable, if magical, properties.

In its simplest description, two cylinders are placed one inside another, then filled with some material, which may have been some compound of mercury.  They are then counter-spun to amazing speeds while being zapped with massive amounts of electricity to create a plasma.  The result was the bell-shaped device floated off the ground, above tree-level, and glowed with a shifting pallet of colors.  The description more or less matches common reports of UFOs.


Joseph P. Farrell's "Nazi Brotherhood of the Bell," goes into great detail on this topic.


At the end of the war, this technology vanished.  There is no paper trail that researchers have come up with, no artifacts related to it, and no reports in the open, until Witkowski's discovery.  It does, however, match descriptions of things like the Kecksburg UFO and numerous other 'urban legends,' such as the Philadelphia and the Montauk Experiments.  Certainly, if someone had this kind of technology, it would be kept so secret as to be used to justify mass murder to protect it.

Norway Spiral

The basis for this physics, now popularized as 'hyperdimensional' physics, is the development of James Clerk Maxwell's quaternion geometry, which is at the base of modern electrical theory.  Essentially, quaternions are gaps between a group vectors, which are the foundation of the physical Universe we perceive.  The gaps are called 'scalars'.  These gaps are said to hold magnificent amounts of energy, and are the basis of scalar technology, anti-gravity and zero-point energy. 


 In other words, the theoretical grounds for these 'modern' theories is over 130 years old, and more, because Maxwell's work grew out of others before him.  Certainly, Nikola Tesla's work fed off these theories.  The Maxwell equations taught in schools today are 3D tranlations that throw away the scalar part of the problem.  One way academia hides the information in plain sight.


The idea for torsion physics, the spinning of objects to create energy, actually comes from very ancient 'myths' and 'legends,' as well as Medieval metaphysics and alchemy.  Obviously, this knowledge is very old, and has only recently been revived, though still hidden from popular culture.


The brother of film director Brian DiPalma was a researcher involved in tortion theory.  His experiments showed that balls spun to thousands of rpm, and launched along side un-spun balls, rose much higher and faster, and fell more quickly than the un-spun counterpart.  This defies logic, but the results are confirmed by Russian research.


Assuming that 'someone' has been pursuing the technology of Die Glocke for the past 70 years, we can posit that the technolgy is very mature by now, in terms of engineering.  Given the curve of development just in the public sphere, 70 years is an amazingly long time with the implication being that this technology is very advanced, practical and in use somewhere today.


Given the example of Columbus' ship keel design, we can say that governments have a vested interest in hiding technology, using it for the benefit of a few, and the ability to keep it secret for hundreds of years.


Therefore, we can conclude that a radical new technology, as represented by Die Glocke, would not simply disappear.  It has gone somewhere.  And since it represents the ability to engineer a radical new physics, it stands to reason there are machines that take advantage of it.  Finally, the ability to hide it is much simpler than one might assume.  Through the use of grant money and 'peer review,' scientists can be steered and led in the opposite direction, down logical dead-ends, for decades if not centuries, to keep them away from these concepts.  


In simple terms, by applying large quantities of money using a hidden agenda, academia can be directed towards Einstein and Newton, to avoid them getting a whiff of Maxwell and Tesla.  This is in spite of the fact that Newton was modified severely at the beginning of the space age, and Einstein was just trashed over the past week.


Top it off by publically ridiculing anyone that chases those leads, and viola!, you have a well-kept secret.  Any researcher that gets too close is publically lashed and his/her foibles are made fodder for the media.  Thus, most researchers view certain topics like live wires, and won't go near them for fear of losing tenure (which is a form of control, as well).


So, where does that leave us?  Well, pretty much all UFO reports could conceivably be terrestrial technology.  Scalar weapons, such as weather modification, and even things like crop circles are easily conceivable within hyperdimentional physics.  Certainly, the ability to travel across vast distances quickly and cheaply are implied, making the solar system accessible, at the minimum.  Vast amounts of cheap, pollution-free energy are implicit, as well.  Even something like the Norway spiral would be child's play with such technology.


If some group had these capabilities, and had the ability to hide it from all of humanity, what would they do?  


Obviously, the temptation to split off from mainstream society and pursue a separate course in history would be a natural outcome.  In the process, they would want to strip us of as many resources as possible to fund and launch a completely new and separate economy.  The would have to steal the money, since simply budgeting, granting or asking for it would expose the whole shootin' match.


Finally, they would most likely develop an attitude that they are far superior to those of us left behind, and so would become intolerably ego-centric, certainly narcissistic, and likely megamaniacal, when dealing with us puny 'left behinds'.


Do we have evidence of this?


The reports of highly advanced craft in Earth orbit, seen with third-generation night-vision technology, could be evidence of a spun-off humanity, already exploiting space in ways that make the shuttle and ISS look like children's toys.  Gary McKinnon hacked NASA and was able to read lists of personnel who were currently noted as being off-planet (hundreds, not a half-dozen).  Researchers have found dozens of photos showing what appear to be bases on the Moon and Mars.  Together, these things point to a hidden culture, if not a full-blown civilization.


How to pay for it?  Well, no one can deny that untold trillions of dollars have gone missing and are simply unaccounted for.  On September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld admitted to Congress that $2.3 trillion were missing from the Pentagon budget.  The next day, all the evidence was destroyed by a missle.  Certainly, all the bail-outs of recent years have simply vanished.  No one knows where the money has gone, there is no accounting, and the Federal Reserve told Congress flat out that they could not ask where the money was being sent.  And who can honestly believe $300 hammers and $900 toilet searts?  Just a few examples over the past 20 or so years.


Finally, there is no doubt in the minds of many people that certain elements of the 'elite' act in a manner that is simply hard to explain, except that they have some sort of backdoor exit, in case the natives get out of hand.  The sheer hautiness on the part of the 'elites,' and their brazen flaunting of the control structure in recent years, says that they no longer worry about revolt.  In fact, they toy with us trying to cause just that, as a form of entertainment.  


The only thing, besides a complete mental disconnect from history and reality, would be knowing they have some way to escape not just retribution, but the whole darned ball of wax.  In other words, they have an ace in the hole which creates an attitude of superiority and untouchability.  


Given all these things together, it would seem reasonable to at least theorize about a 'break-away civilization'.  It is plausible, and certainly circumstantial evidence exists to support such a theory.  I would go so far as to venture that the group of people who think of themselves as the 'elites' have the motivation and opportunity to pursue such an agenda.

The remaining question would be, if we were to have incontrovertable proof of this, would we even want to stop them?  


After all, having them leave the planet, and thus the rest of us, in peace would seem desirable.  Ultimately, it comes down to whether or not these 'elites' see us as vermin to eradicate, or just an annoyance to leave behind.  


Given their past efforts to wipe out what they deem as undesirable humanity (us) would argue against a laissez-faire attitude on either side of the equation   The first task is to expose such an effort, if it exists.  At that point, we can decide the appropriate action to take.  Most importantly, it demands that we open our eyes and our minds to all possibilities.  As Sherlock Holmes is often quoted, "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."


Which brings us full-circle back to a certain famous Vulcan of Star Trek fame...


It all reminds me of the brilliant Douglas Adams, who in the Hitchhiker series, mentioned one civilization who created a planetary crisis and packed up the most useless people in the society and flung them into space in 'escape' craft.  Perhaps he was on to something there.

Good Housekeeping

Today is as good a time as any to clear out the mail box and take care of some items that need attention.  Before I start, I want to thank every reader for the support and for coming back regularly to catch up.  It is the nature of writing to have an audience to read it.  Granted a lot of the reason I do this is to discipline myself, tap into the Stream that is the provider of ideas, and to vent all the things swiriling around in my overcrowded mind.  That over 3,000 folks come to read my posts is both gratifying and humbling.  That the readers come from 67 countries is even more exciting, and it leads to the first issue of the day.

One of my good readers and correspondents sent me an email the other day that deserves a wide readership.  Before I launch into my usual tirade, I'll let her speak first:

Bernie, One of my Grandsons friends joined the Navy right after he graduated and was on the ship that threw "Osama" overboard.  Now, according to his Mother, he is very sick after getting some shots, he has smallpox and anthrax. Smallpox is caused by virus, anthrax by germs. I really don't see him making it thru, I may be wrong.  My question to you is, have you heard anything about this happening? Is he

 the only one affected.  What in hell created it? What are they planning to do about it? Why is it not mentioned anywhere?

You are involved with people all around the world, so I figure that you would have the ears out and see what you can find.

My daughter is very upset and told me that she didn't want to hear any conspiracy theories from me.   Please let me know, if anything shows up, and I will let you know what is happening to him, if the kids find out.

There are so many issues in this letter, I hardly know where to begin.  But first, I put it out to the readers: has anyone else experienced this problem, and if so, do you have any solutions to offer?  Send your thoughts to luap.jkt@gamail.com, and use the subject lint VACCINE. I'll post any good information that comes in, as well as forward it on to our concerned reader.  As an update, she sent a message saying that the young man was feeling better now, but that several people have experienced this problem.  So prayers do work...

Now, my turn.  The first thing I recommended was large doses of cinnamon and eating fresh, raw mushrooms.  Cinnamon is a natural immune booster, and the mushrooms are a systemic cleanser.  It's important to strengthen the immune system when it is attacked like this, and then clean the body's systems to get rid of the offending pathogens.

Now the rant.  First, resign from the military.  Being cannon fodder for a bunch of wild-eyed bansters and corporate boards is not the path to long-term survival.

Second, vaccines are the absolute worst nighmare ever foisted on Mankind.  While I find the original idea worth studying, the materials forced on the people of the world in the name of vaccinations is one of the most heinous crimes against humanity ever perpetrated.  They are not health boosters, but rather part of a century-long eugenics program to kill off the weaker organisms infesting the Earth...otherwise known as people.

If you are forcably injected with this...crap, you should immediately detox to get rid of mercury and heavy metals used as 'preservatives' in the toxic brew.  You must also boost the immune system, which is under a major attack and needs all the support it can get.

A healthy young man nearly being killed by this...crap IS a conspiracy, but it is hardly a theory, as his experience shows.

The idea behind vaccines is to inject the body with weakened viri, or more recently, with the protein shells from the viri.  The protein shells contain binder-receptors that act like keys to the individual cell's lock.  The idea is that by injecting the shell, it will cause an immune response that blocks the lock and prevents the virus from entering the cell.

Sounds good, but in practice, no one really knows whats in the vaccines, since the actual formulae are patented and protected as corporate secrets.  Since I am not supposed to give theories, I'll just say that if you trust huge, multi-national corporations, then by all means, allow them to inject unknown liquids directly into your blood stream.  I don't even trust them to produce healthy food that must pass my digestive system first, much less giving them direct access to my blood, and by extension, the individual cells in my body.

That takes care of the smallpox situation, but what's really baffling here is the anthrax.  Anthrax is a bacterium that normally attacks farm animals, but has been weaponized in recent years to be quite lethal against humans (again, no theories here).  Because it is a bacterium, it is easily fought with antibiotics.  Ciprofloxacin is the most common, but there are others.  The problem is the anthrax often appears to be a cold or flu in the early stages.  Since cold and flu are viri, antibiotics will not work against them.  The definitive test is a blood and mucus culture, but they are expensive and time consuming (even with Obamacare).  This takes a little self-study (since I'm not a doctor and don't offer medical advice).

Why these slavvering Nazi prison camp a$$holes would inject anthrax into someone is beyond me, unless I can spout off a few theories...but I'll refrain for now.

In the end, it is very common for people receiving vaccines to have all the symptoms of the disease.  Most of what we feel when we are sick are the side-effects of the body's response to pathogens.  Therefore, if you inject someone with smallpox proteins, the body will respond as if it have been injected with the actual virus, and so the 'victim' will feel pretty much like they have smallpox, though they probably won't exhibit the poces, or pus blisters, that go with it.

Needless to say, this poor guy is property of the state, and as such must go along with whatever they order him to do.  I'm sure if he or his mates refused the injections, they would face courts martial.  Until they can safely and honorably get out of that contract, they are at the mercy of multi-national corporations and banksters.  Hmmm...but aren't we all?

Anyway, enough of my ranting, and I successfully avoided theories, though I daresay that more than one person made the decision to inject this young man with poison, so by definition, it is a conspiracy.  The boy's mother has the proof in front of her, no theory about it.

Bottom line...if anyone has information that could help this guy and his mates, please let us know.

On a happier note, a reader in Thailand tossed some kudos our way:

Bernard --

..."Hope for a Change" is one of your best essays I've read so far.

...I was a resident of West Texas for one whole year so I experienced
your words.
But even outsiders could easily comprehend exactly the sort of storm you
described.
Your use of that metaphor made a strong foundation for your essay.

...You are quickly becoming one of my favorite blog writers.
I not only like the way you write, I also appreciate how you think.

...And you may be pleased to know that one of my other favorite writers,
Richard Maybury of "Early Warning Report," agrees with your gut feeling.
He, too, writes along the lines of, even though we are in the corn syrup
now, the cool air and sparkling skies won't be long in arriving.

...Maybe the fluoride really is wearing off, for both of us, eh?

To this I replied with a heartfelt 'thank you'.  It is tremendously encouraging to get notes like this from people who enjoy my efforts.  Obviously, I enjoy it too, or I wouldn't have banged out north of 700,000 words in the past year and a half.

My blogging theory, other than to have fun and keep my writing muse online, is because I know of a lot of news amalgamators, which don't get me wrong, I use daily and they are important (Drudge, Rense, etc).  But I find it hard to find interesting and challenging commentary.  My goal, and I hope I approach it on occasion, is to present some interesting arguments and comments on the world-at-large.  I don't claim that my thoughts are any more valid or authoritative than anyone else's, but I do try to throw some wrenches in the works, and occasionally give folks something to chew on for mental exercise.

There are 3.000 people in 67 countries who come to see what I've come up with today, so it would appear that I am successful in bringing some entertainment into the reader's life.

I offer my sincere thanks to all the readers who come regularly, send email comments (see page header), send in information, and especially spread the word with links in various fora and messages.  I promise to keep bringing fresh content with a twist.

I just ask one indulgence.  Please be patient when sending email.  I try to respond to everyone, but sometimes it takes a minute or two (gross understatement of the day).

There's no point in communication, if there's no audience to receive it.  Thank you kindly for being in the audience.

B

Hope For A Change

For nigh on 20 years now, I've had this background feeling of foreboding.  I imagined the future to be a fairly good rendition of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, complete with a boot stamping on a human face...forever.

It seemed like everywhere I turned, there was further evidence that the bad guys were winning.  It seemed like folks were locked into a stupor from which they could not be extracted.  It seemed the bad guys were too powerful, or at least too far ahead of the game, to have any hope of meaningful change.

I'm not talking about O-hope and O-change.  That was all a very slick marketing campaign, and anyone who was half-awake could see through it.  I've used very similar techniques in branding campaigns.  He also had that 'televangelist' voice.  You know, it floats up and down in a rhythmic pattern, putting people into a trance.  If you do it right, you could read recipes to a crowd of thousands and have them eating out of your hands.  If you want a demonstration, take one of O's campaign speeches and speed it up 2x or 4x.  You'll hear it.

At any rate, sometime around the beginning of the year, I started to get this gut feeling, like the clouds were clearing.  Maybe it's just the fluoride finally wearing off, but I have a definite feeling of hope again.

It feels like real Change is coming.  It's kind of like that feeling you get before a good ol' Texas Blue Norther comes through.  You can smell the wet earth and the change in the breeze brings a feeling of giddiness with it.

I love those northers.  The air gets very still and you can see a line of black clouds in the distance.  As it gets closer, you can see the wall of wind move across the fields.  In a near straight line, the sorghum lays down as the wind, rain and cold come whipping through.

Suddenly, it hits you.  The hot, moist air rapidly becomes cold, dry air.  The sky turns black and thunder and lightning split the sky.  The lazy south breeze turns to a stiff north wind.  The temperature drops 15 degrees in five minutes.  For the next hour, a wild storm swirls around you.  The dry leaves kick up and sail away and the rain falls in sheets, moving like curtains across your field of view.  It gets black as night in the middle of the day.

Then, just as suddenly, the sky starts to lighten up, and before your know it, the sun comes out and there's just a trace of high, wispy clouds.  The sky is shockingly blue and even sparkles.  It's a strange effect.  You just have to experience it.  In the blink of an eye, there's not a cloud to be seen, and the air is bitingly fresh and cold.  It almost feels like being reborn.

What the world feels like right now is that hour or so just before the storm.  The air is like corn syrup.  It's hot and thick and sticky.  Everything seems to move in slow motion.  The cows out in the field have all turned their butts to the north and gathered closer together.  Their backs are dense with flies.  It's hard to breathe.

How, you ask, does this engender hope, because what's about to follow is a wild storm and lashing rain?

The hope part of all this is that the storm will pass quickly, and behind it is a new, fresh world.  Somewhere just north of us it's already passed and folks are enjoying the shot of energy.  The calves are running around in the fields with their tails high in the air, bouncing up and down and playfully butting heads.  The cool, tingling air is scented with the smell of wet earth and green plants.  There's even a kind of electric charge crackling all around you.

That's the hope part.

We are still in the corn syrup, though.  The world is holding its collective breath, because it knows what's coming.  It will be wild.  Sometimes trees are uprooted and tin sheets get torn off the house or barn.  There's going to be small rivers where dry ditches were just moments before.  People get hurt, and sometimes killed.

Behind it, though, is renewal.  Things will change radically.  The daytime sky will be deep, clear blue, and the night sky will be alive with stars and mysteries.

There is hope.  It will change.  Just have to get through the storm, is all.  It's not the best possible scenario, but it's a damn sight better than eternal night...boots on faces...Room 101.

The Universe has an amazing way of righting itself.  When things get out of balance, it will see to it that events get back on an even keel.  The greatest weakness of those who would be masters is their eternal and infernal pride.  They actually think they can rule the world, but the world knows better.  You can't rule what you don't own, and in the end, none of us owns anything.

We just get to use the hall for a while.  Some longer than others.  But in the end, we gotta turn off the lights and give back the keys.  There are scattered reports of some folks coming back from the dead, but I've never caught tale of anyone who could take something with them.

One of my favorite lines from the Bible Part II is:

It is easier for a camel to pass through The Eye of the Needle, than for a rich man to enter the kindgom of Heaven.

If you've never been to Jerusalem, the humor of this quote might escape you.  Heck, I know a lot of folks who HAVE been there, and they didn't get it.

You see, in the walls of the old city, there is a very narrow slit called The Eye of the Needle.  After the city gates were locked at sun down, the only way in or out was through the Eye of the Needle.  It was just big enough for a man to pass, or an unburdened camel walking on its knees.  I think you get the picture.

Though our would-be rulers have amassed vast fortunes and can put their boot on the faces of those at the bottom of the pyramid, there is one thing they can't do...pass through the Eye of the Needle.  In order to do that, they must unburden themselves of all their worldly possessions.  The problem is, they have no identiy, whether to self or others, without their burdens.

The moment is coming, however, when the Eye of the Needle will come to them.  They will be forced to change, as will we all will, or die in the cold and dark with all their possessions.

Some won't pass, others will have the choice made for them, but most will face the moment when they must choose.  On the other side is Hope and Change.

The storm is gathering.  We will have to get through it or die.  But on the other side is the reward for perseverance.

It's frightening as we stand here looking at the dark wall of wind and rain approaching.  But for the first time in a long time, I feel the hope behind it.  I've caught just a whiff of the clean air and cool breeze.

Time to batten down the hatches.

Through Bot-Colored Glasses

Euro Riots

It's that time once again.  Clif and the gang at HalfPastHuman have released the latest Shape of Things to Come (SOTTC) report, and depending on your perspective, it's either hopeful or harrowing.

If you are a tourist in life, then the report will likely keep you awake nights worrying about things to come.  If you are a traveler, then you will find the adventure promised in the 51 pages something to anticipate as the birth pangs of a new order in the world.

And when I say new order, I am NOT referencing the NWO.  In fact, the NWO, as anyone who has followed my rantings here knows, is really the Old World Order, dating back thousands of years.

The bots are outlining a truly new order of things, in which the reptilian guard of yesteryear have finally pushed the last button and have reaped the harvest of what they have sown.

Within the pages of the SOTTC report, we learn that anyone holding a title of royalty or whose job description contains the word "pope" will not be happy with events forcast for the next two years.  The image we should form in our minds is of a lump of clay being squeezed in an iron fist.  The tighter the grip, the more of the clay squirts through every least opening.

As I posited in my article Dog Days of August, the PTB are running scared.  They are losing control of their Monster, a la Frankenstein.  The only response they can formulate in their pea-sized, inbred brains is MORE control...more cameras, more police, more brainwashing.  They can't conceive of any other way.  They are a hammer whose only view of the world is a box of nails.

The problem they don't seem to be able to wrap their puny minds around is that when the crowd knows the trick, the magic doesn't work, and nothing you do will get it back.  I think it's safe to say that they had envisioned the internet as yet another channel of control, but it backfired.  Now it is the very medium of their own undoing, which is why they must shut it down.

Mount Merapi, Java, Indonesia

The bots, however, say something different.  The PTB will attack the net and they will shut it down, but it will only be temporary.  The truth has an amazing facility for leaking from any outlet it can find.  Though the number of people that have truly awoken are a small percentage, great changes have ridden the backs of small numbers.  The (first) American Revolution was spawned by no more than 3% of the population, but they had the most powerful weapon know to us mortals...Truth.

Where the bots turn foreboding, though, is in the Terra entity.  Clif calls the coming Terra changes part of Expando-Planet.  The theory goes something like this: in an electrically active Universe, our planet has a plasma core, and when charged particles from the Sun and Universe enter the core, they convert to additional mass, thus swelling the core and expanding the crust (where we live).  During times of particularly active solar and cosmic bombardment, the core expands rapidly, with the result that we crustal denizens are subject to volcanoes, earthquakes, rips, splits, sinkholes, and any number of other fun and interesting things.

Living in a country with the greatest number of volcanoes on Earth, and sitting on a shattered piece of the crust, as Indonesia does, doesn't engender great solace, in this regard.  Just recently, Mt. Tambora started rumbling for the first time in 200 years.  It is known as the volcano that caused the worst volcanic disaster in modern times, and caused the Year Without Summer in 1816.  Considering the bots also advise aware folks to invest in firewood and heating oil this coming (long) winter, one has to wonder if there's a connection.

Certainly, the number of 6+ earthquakes has been steadily rising over the past decade.  Having already experienced a 7.2 here in 2009, I can tell you I am in no particular hurry to reprise the experience.  But, it does make for a nice segue into Fukushima...

Inspired by the bot output, consider this scenario:

ANNOUNCER: "That's right!  Our cucumbers are guaranteed to give off 12 microsieverts or less of gamma particles!  And if you order now, we'll throw in this handy pocket Geiger counter, absolutely free!  But, that's not all!  The next 100 callers will receive a full bushel of unradiated raw wheat and enough barley seed to produce three month's supply of healthy sprouts for a family of four.  Remember, our produce is certified to glow one-third less than any other food products on the market today.  In fact, if you can find kidney beans with less Cesium-137 than ours, we'll happily refund your money.  Call now!  Operators are standing by!"

Can't happen?  Impossible?  Believe me, we good folks of the world haven't heard half the story out of Fukushima, and that's just one of a dozen reactors with problems that have made even the slightest mention in the MSM (mind shinking media).

In yet another prophetic post, my last two columns (Of Secrets and Lies, Bugging Out and Other Hobbies) eerily leaped off the pages of the SOTTC report.

One major theme is the coming exposure of the Zionists.  It seems much of what I wrote in Of Secrets and Lies will become common knowledge over the next year or so.  Once again (as in WWII), the Zionists will try to deflect the ire of good folks onto the Jews, who have been the whipping dogs of the Zionists for centuries.  Unfortunately, it seems they will be successful, at least for a time.  However, we are entering a time when the old tricks don't work anymore, and this is one of the most egregious of them all.

The rise of great numbers of transnationals was also covered in SOTTC.  It seems that combinations of a Nazi resurrection, unfriendly winters and economic woes will cause a never-before-seen diaspora of people seeking more comfortable climes (in every sense of that term).  It's interesting that a number of countries have been reforming their immigration laws of late, to make them friendlier to transnationals.  I'll cover that in more detail in a later article.

The most worrisome tale woven by the bots is the economic 'perfect storm' approaching.

As in all Depressions, we are sailing head-long into deflation.  Deflations favor those with NO debt and lots of disposable cash, as prices fall making money more valuable.  The problem is that the forecast is for the complete collapse of fiat currencies, starting with the dollar.  "Great," you say, "I've got my gold!"  Well, about that...FDR's Executive Order confiscating gold and silver has never been rescinded, and similar actions on the part  of other governments is quite conceivable.

In a nutshell, if you're in debt (which most folks are), you're screwed.  If you're in cash (which some folks are), you're screwed.  If you've got gold and silver tucked away, you're screwed.  So what's a man to do to protect his family?

Food, water, tools, firewood, guns/ammo...basically anything that's useful for flat-out survival will be the new currency.  A little farm land and the means to protect it would be useful, but it does have the draw-back of locking you into one spot.

The biggest problem people are facing is what Clif calls the normalcy bias.  In other words, being incapable of thinking outside the box.  Coming events will favor those who can conceive of novel solutions to novel situations.  Most folks will be running their generators (if they have one) to keep the plasma TeeVee going, when abnormal responses are what will ensure survival.  Making your way to a tropical rain forest while everyone else is huddling in the cities...a back-pack rigged for deep wilderness while everyone else is trying to haul around their C-rations...that sort of thing.

And why rain forests?  Well, you'd be in a year-round growing season, with wild food for the picking, and you're surrounded by people who are used to having nothing and living off the land.  Beats even the most rural patch of farmland in North America.  It's one reason I live in Indonesia now.

Fukushima, Japan

Up to this point, I've just touched on a few of the bigger issues raised by the bots.  We're on roughly page 25 or 51, and I haven't mentioned half of what's in the front of SOTTC.  Universe favors the prepared mind.  I spend free hours thinking of scenarios and coming up with solutions that few if anyone else has thought of.  The hardest thing to overcome is the 'normalcy bias'.  You have to be prepared to shed everything in an instant and go against the crowd, which is why I try to get folks thinking about touring and traveling in so many of my articles.  Travelers are almost always ready for just about anything the Universe throws our way.

Something like having a knife, pair of scissors and magnifying glass anywhere you go at all times.  Even if I'm completely caught off guard, I can always skin a cat and start a fire.

The Shape of Things to Come report is available at HalfPastHuman.com, for $10 (downloadable PDF file). It's worth ten bux if for no other reason, it gets you to think about "what if".  Once you start doing that, you're well on your way to being a traveler.

Of Secrets And Lies

Babylonian World Map

There's a stretch of rather arid land at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

Geologically, it is rather unremarkable, but for one of the saltiest bodies of water on Earth.

Geographically, it is the nexus point between southern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia Major.  There also happen to be three major world religions that claim the area as birthplace of their faiths.

While the land is pretty much worthless in itself, it is without doubt the hottest piece of political and religious (not that there's much difference between the two) real estate on the planet.

Because it is a strategic land bridge between four major continents, and before the dawn of air travel, was one of the busiest land routes around, dozens of powers have sought and gained control of it.  Wikipedia lists Ancient Egyptians, Canaanites, Ancient Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, the Sunni Arab Caliphate, the Shia Fatimid Caliphate, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mameluks, Ottomans, the British and modern Israelis and Palestinians as a partial list of Men Who Would Be Kings.

All of these groups, save one, are actual historical peoples.  They are documented in multiple sources and have left ample traces of themselves in the historical record.  In some cases, they still exist, at least in some form or another.

The lone exception is a group called Israelites.  There is only one historical source that names this people.  It's called the Bible, and the veracity of its stories, outside of legend and myth, has never been proven.
According to this book, a man named Yah-Kov gets into a fight with a mysterious stranger in the middle of the night.  Yah-Kov wins the fight and the stranger runs off into the dark.  Yah-Kov then has a dream in which he sees angels running up and down a mythical stairway from a specific hilltop in a place we now call Jerusalem.  So, he changes his name to Is-ra-el (fights with God - says so in the book), which is a combination of the names of three Egyptian/Babylonian gods: Isis, Amun Ra, and Beel.

Subsequently, Is-ra-el's son Yoshe gets sold to Egyptian slave traders and ends up doing pretty damn good in Egypt.  His descendants live there for nearly 500 years until a character named Moishe comes along and decides that Egypt isn't big enough for his followers (who worship a single sun god) and the Pharaoh, whose people like a pantheon of gods.  He claims his god revealed the name, Yah-Weh, to him from a burning bush, even though the name Yah-Weh appears on clay tablets nearly a thousand years before that.

Yah-Weh, coincidentally, means "I Am," which happens to be one of the many titles of a Babylonian god by the name of Marduk, whose personality nicely parallels the Yah-Weh character.  And Marduk/Yah-Weh far out-dates even the oldest scholarly dates for the origin of the Bible Part I, Exodus chapter.

Moishe gets into a battle of magic with Pharaoh's gang and eventually end up running for their lives into the desert, where they wander around for 40 years until this character, Yah-Weh tells Moishe to go slaughter an entire nation of people called Canaanites, and take the land as their own.  Nice guy, this Yah-Weh, god of love and compassion at the point of a bloody sword.

Kind of reminds one of a certain Nobel Peace Prize winner who has done anything but cause peace anywhere in the world.

This is all fine and good, except there's no, let me repeat that, NO documentary evidence for Yah-Kov, Is-ra-el, Yoshe, Moishe, Isa-ak (father of Yah-Kov), Hebrews, or any of the events told in this Biblical tale.  You'd think that if Pharaoh had gotten into a tussle with a bunch of uppity 'slaves' and high-tailed it through parted seas, he's want to write it down somewhere, right?  I mean, famines, plagues and all the first-born males dying, followed by pillars of fire and seas parting...hell, even if I lost that fight, I would definitely make a note in the records not to mess with Yah-Weh or Is-ra-el or Moishe again.

Temple of Sol-Amun

Later in the book, a guy named Sol-Amun (two names for sun gods) gets the nod from Yah-Weh and goes on another bloodfest in the region.  In thanks, Sol-Amun builds a temple on the highest hill he can find.  By every description, this temple resembles many structures in Egypt, both in lay-out and in technique.  His alledged son, Dah-Wid, also gets the nod from Yah-Weh to run around killing Philistines, and particularly a giant named Goliath, which is an echo of the Noahide flood, which ostensibly was caused by Yah-Weh to kill off a race of giants that had infested Earth.

At any rate, the temple stands until the Babylonians destroy it and take all the folks living nearby as slaves.  After a few hundred years, those slaves break out and rebuild the temple, which then stood until Part II of the Bible.

The problem here is, by Part II, there are no Hebrews, Israelites, Israel, or any of that.  In fact, by all accounts in the Bible, Israel is simply a collective name for a group of people.  Has nothing to do with nations or anything like that.

There's only a land called Palestine, which had been called Palestine for quite some time by the opening pages of Part II.  The Romans control the real estate and they are constantly being buggered by some folks called Jews.  There's ample references to a land called Canaan, and one called Judea, which we are left to assume is the home turf of the Jews (Jew...Judea..makes sense).  However, as far as the Romans are concerned, the whole stinking mess is called Palestine, and that's that.

Moving along, in AD70, the Jews foment revolution, which the Romans brutally put down, and just to keep them all quiet, the Romans destroy the temple, too.

Time marches on.  Roman converts to Christianity and later the pope sends a bunch of mean blokes on missions called Crusades, to secure the Holy Land for all of Christendom.  One group in particular, the Knights Templar, take and secure the ruins of the temple, and to make sure other folks can't find it, they start calling the old Roman governor's palace the Temple Mount.  The idea being that if someone comes to try to take the temple away, they will go to the wrong place.

The Templars find something under the temple ruins that makes them fabulously wealthy.  No one really knows what it was, but they returned to Europe with untold riches and set up modern banking with it.  They grew so powerful, that even the popes trembled.  Ultimately, on Friday the 13th, they were summarily slaughtered or imprisoned.

Roughly about this time, several groups spring into being, the Freemasons most notable among them.  But, off in a dark corner of history, another group called the Ashkenazi come to light.

The Ashkenazi practice Jewish rites and use the Hebrew alphabet for their sacred writings, though the language they use differs significantly from the original Hebrew in grammar and meaning.  Centuries later, by the dawn of the 20th century, everyone had come to call them Jews, though they weren't Semitic people and their origins were quite clearly in the Middle Ages.

These Ashkenazi, over centuries, had become the bankers of Europe.  They counted amoung their ranks the House of Rothschild, which owns roughly half the wealth on Earth (look it up).  The Ashkenazi also owned significant amounts of real estate and by dint of being landlords, held the fate of a great number of folks in their hands.

As bankers, the Ashkenazi re-instituted the Templar system of paper money and charging interest.  By the 1930s, this banking system had caused a massive imbalance in the economic system, such that a deep and devastating Depression has settled in.

In Germany, the fall of the Weimar Republic was particularly bad, with inflation running completely amok.  A fellow by the name of Adolph Hitler wrote in his book, "Mein Kampf," (well worth the read) that his studies laid the blame for the economic woes at the feet of fractional reserve banking and usury, both central functions of the then-current banking system, and that banking system was run by the Ashkenazi, who called themselves Jews.  And that banking system controlled the entire Western world.

The Nazis (not to be confused with the Ashkenazis) made it a central plank of their party platform to tear down the fractional reserve banking system and begin issuing 'debt-free' money, which coincidentally, they did.  Being justifiably upset with what the banksters had done to the world, and especially Germany, the Nazis began a pogrom against the banksters and Freemasons, which later widened out into anything and anyone calling themselves Jewish

Meanwhile, a group called Zionists had been trying to take over the Holy Land for about a hundred years.  They were constantly committing atrocities against the Palestinians, instituting riots, causing terror attacks, and so on (look it up).  They weren't getting very far very fast, because...well, the Palestinians had nowhere else to go.  Besides that, they were a bit upset, since Jews, Christians and Muslims had lived just fine in the area for nigh on a thousand years.  The Zionists, however, wanted  the Temple Mount (not the one we all know) back, because something under it was a source of great power.

Seeing an opportunity in the righteous anger of the German people, the Zionists agitated to enlarge the pogrom to horrific proportions.  Their purpose was to get as many Ashkenazi Jews killed as they could.  It didn't matter that it was their own people, it was worth the sacrifice (to them) in order to achieve a larger purpose.

By the end of the war, over 54 million people (including the 50 million Russians that no one ever talk about) had died.  They were Ashkenazi, Freemasons, Catholics, Gypsies, mental and genetic dysfunctionals, and just about anyone the Nazis considered to be at the root of all the socio-political ills of the day.

The Secret of Tetrahedral Physics

This wholesale slaughter was then used by the Zionists to ram through the newly formed United Nations their long-fought goal of taking Palestine once again.  It didn't matter that the Ashkenazi weren't Semitic people, or that their claims to the land were based solely on a work of fiction, or that the Zionists were the invisible hand behind the Holocaust.  It didn't matter all the atrocities they had committed in the region for a century, or the ones they committed in taking over the land.

The Zionists had the blessing of the world (i.e. the UN Security Council), and the Palestinians were just going to have to get used to it.

There's so much more to this story, but we can begin to see the outline of a terrible lie that has been foisted on the people of the world, and which has caused untold suffering, not only among the Palestinians, but millions of dead across Europe and the Middle East.  And all because of some secret that lies or had lain, under the ruins on the Temple Mount (the real one).  A secret so valuable that it is at the very core of European history for the past 1,200 years, and is at the very root of the bankster cabal.

US Federal Reserve Bank - New York

One teensie-weensie little problem.  The REAL Temple Mount is located in East Jerusalem.  East Jerusalem is the claimed capitol of the new Palestinian state.  Because of that, the Zionists/Banksters can not allow the Palestinians independence, and they can not admit why, or risk losing everything they have killed and destroyed to get for centuries.

The Secret and the Lie are at the heart of the Central Banks, the military-industrial complex, the western space programs, and nearly every secret society in western civilization.

And now you know...

Bugging Out And Other Hobbies

As the West enters a death spiral and the economic situation reaches levels not even seen in the depths of the Great Depression, a number of people are bugging out (old military term meaning 'pack and leave fast').  This is a common and very old response to rising tyranny and roving goon squads, such as those now taking over most Western countries.

Refugees from political and economic turmoil have been an age old problem.  The secret to doing it successfully, is to recognize and admit the problem while everyone else is still in denial, then act on that knowledge in a controlled and organized manner, so as to inflict the least amount of disruption in your life, and the lives of your intended landing spot.

Aye, there's the rub.  That whole 'organized' bit usually stumps most people.

The biggest hurdle is the decision to move in the first place.  People get comfortable where they are and find it incredibly hard to uproot.  They are also attached to all their things and don't want to let go of the things they have dragged with them through life or acquired along the way.  For this, I have no advice, except for men, you can marry a avaricious woman who takes all your things while you are at work, and does the job for you...like ripping off a bandage quickly.

This part of the decision is intensely personal.  One must perceive the benefits of uprooting to be of enough value to overcome the impulse to sit still.  What you take with you is also a tough one.  Many people want to take it all, and so find the cost and logistics of bugging out to be overwhelming.  All I can say here is that it gets easier to throw things away the more you do it.  There's a tremendous feeling of liberation once you reach a certain critical level.

When I left the US, I had a single suitcase, a shoulder bag and a little cash.  What little the former wife left, I sold on eBay.  Literally all that's left back home are some clothes and personal effects in a closet in my mother's house.  I've always been an all or nothing kinda guy...I don't generally burn bridges, but I often lose the map to them.

Perhaps, though, the criteria I used to select a bug-out location would be more helpful.  Taking the decision to actually make the move is something no one can help with, only advise.

The first cut for my choice of locations was selecting a hemisphere.  Having traveled extensively, I had pretty much covered Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and points south of Mexico.  Europe wasn't even an option, since the coming tidal wave in the US was going to take out Europe, as well.  Plus, I had never been to Asia, and it was high on my list of things to do before I died.

Having narrowed my search down to the eastern half of the world, I could rule out Australia and New Zealand, since they were part of the western economic system and will be creamed by it, as well.  That left the Indian sub-continent, Asia Major and the archipelago.  We were getting somewhere fast now.

My first criterion was a network of folks that would give me some connection to my new location.  That narrowed it down to China, Thailand and Indonesia.  I had direct, local connections in these countries, which meant I would have at least one person to talk to.  This would help when it came to language and culture, and learning things like, what is the real price for things (not the tourist gouge).  I also had a desire to engage in the cultures of these countries, which is something one must do if adopting a new home.

The next criterion was language.  Though I was already fluent in three languages and passable in another seven or so, the Asian languages were a daunting hurdle.  I had learned a smattering of Thai and Mandarin at various points.  Both were highly complex, and not just because of the written characters.  Thai is basically two languages, one for men and one for women.  Mandarin, while being fairly straight-forward in grammar, was a major block when it came to pronunciation.

That left Indonesian, which is based on the Roman alphabet, each letter has only one sound, and the language is an amalgam of Malay, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, and Mandarin, with a good chunk of Dutch and English thrown in.  That meant that, without having studied a lick of it, I already had a pretty good vocabulary of cognates.  Because of this, Indonesia was quickly working its way to the top of the list.

The next consideration was immigration.  How easy or difficult was it to set up in the target country?  In this respect, Indonesia was a bit more protectionist than most, though that has changed recently.  In order to get permanent resident status, one had to get married or have a sponsoring employer.  Fortunately, I had friends in Indonesia with a company willing to sponsor me.  Just this year, Indonesia has added retirement visas, like many other countries.  Folks over 50 with steady income from pensions can get a retirement visa in Indonesia for less than $1,000 per year.  Until recently, being married to a local would grant permanent resident status, but not a work visa.  The recent changes have also updated that nonsensical bit of law, as well.  The only remaining hurdle is that foreigners may own houses and condos, but may not own the land.  Lobbyists are busily working on that one, since Bali is becoming a global haven for retirees.

So, what about the economy?  This is obviously a major consideration, as you being to narrow the list of possible landing spots.  Indonesia's economy has been growing like a house afire since the early 2000s.  Of the Asian economies, it tops the list with Vietnam, in terms of sheer growth and expansion.  Indonesia is also a gross exporter of food and energy, two key components of any survival plans.  Granted, inflation is the beast in the closet, but the cost of living is roughly one-fifth that of Texas, which is one of the lower-cost places in the States.

Taxes here are a bit steep, especially for foreigners.  They run between 15% and 30% on average, on a graduated scale, plus a 10% VAT on just about everything but breathing.  Still, there's no inheritance tax and capital gains taxes are 0.05%.  Property tax is 5% on transfer of title, plus a minor tax annually in the $40 range.  This one varies significantly by location, so you'll have to do your due diligence.

The next thing I considered was culture.  Indonesia is well-known in the English language for the Seven Seas and the Thousand Islands, not to mention Bali.  Borneo (Kalimantan) was were King Kong was discovered.  For centuries, these islands have been the targets of western colonialism because of the wealth of spices and natural resources.  There are still parts of the country barely explored, and hardly a week goes by you can't find an article about some new discovery in Indonesia.  All this means there's a good supply of things to do.  There's plenty of exploring and over 300 distinct cultures and tribal groups to learn about.

Indonesians have a healthy distrust of government, which I find refreshing.  They primarily rely on family and friends, and don't assume that government will always jump in to save the day.  Sure, there is always a strong effort on the part of the UN and NGOs to meddle with local tradition and culture, which they do very well.  These groups are always trying to export the profound errors of the West into every aspect of life in the "Third World".  Fortunately, at least so far, Indonesians tend to disregard these efforts.

Yes, everything you've heard about corruption is true, but it is systemic in all of Asia.  I find it refreshing that the corruption is open and obvious, rather than hidden under a veil of legalisms and supposed equality, such as in the States.  There's no pretense to moral high ground, such as exhibited in Western governments.  Much easier to deal with this way.

Among other considerations, there was health care.  Pretty much anything available elsewhere is available here.  You just have to be choosy.  There's still a lot of home remedies and old wive's tales prevalent in local medical practices.  Still, there's a wide variety of alternatives and overall, the costs are far cheaper.  Also, many drugs are available over-the-counter and don't require a prior visit to a doctor.  If you know what you need, then there's no reason to run around getting permission from the medical mafia to obtain it.  Drugs prices are much more affordable, as well.  If you don't trust the local docs, you can also fly cheaply and quickly to Singapore or Australia for your alopathic fix.

Near the bottom of the criteria list was climate.  Certainly, being buried to my neck in snow half the year did not appeal.  Indonesia has an equatorial climate, meaning it rarely spikes above 90F, and rarely drops below 75F, day in, day out, all year 'round.  There are only two seasons, Wet and Dry, each about six months long. This means a year-round growing season, a wide variety of fruits and vegetables grown locally, and home gardens that never stop.  The local markets are stuffed to the gills daily with fresh produce brought directly from the mountains south of town.  It's even more direct in smaller cities and villages.

Some folks may want to consider diet.  If you are particularly delicate, you may not want to live in Thailand or Indonesia, where foods tend to be rather spicy.  Also, if you're a die-hard pork eater, or can't stand the taste of unaged beef, then you may have a difficult time adjusting.

Other than that, there's all the amenities: cable TeeVee, high-speed internet (satellite for more remote locations like the LFS Global Headquarters), well-stocked grocery stores with Oreos and peanut butter, and (at least in Jakarta) a reasonably dependable public utilities system, though we have at least one redundant system for everything.  The recent week-long water outage proved the wisdom of that approach.

In other words, you are not shut off from the world by changing location.  Thirty years ago, when I backpacked around the world, there were no cell phones and instant messaging and internet.  To make a long-distance call overseas, you had to make an appointment at the telegraph office for a call that sounded like talking in a pipe with a 10 second delay between replies.  Now, contacting folks at home, literally on the other side of the planet, is no different than calling next door.  Just a heavy time difference between night and day, but hard to fix that.

Uprooting and relocating is not easy, and nothing in this article should be used to construe that idea.  There is a big learning curve, a thousand different variables (of which I've just touched the tip here), and the possibility of failure at any moment with little or no back-up.  You should have a fairly strong sense of self-reliance and enjoy the process as much as the result.

If you are the type of traveler who enjoys the travel, rather than the arrival, then this option is for you.  If obstacles are things to be reasoned out and overcome, rather than dead-ends, then you are ready.  When I stepped off the plane in Jakarta, I had a week's worth of clothes, a water filter, a pocket knife, and my wits.  Now it takes a two-ton truck to move my house.  Less than four years.

Many folks will say, "I'm too old to start over."  To that, I say you can either slide quietly into the grave, or go in the midst of your next great adventure.  You can slowly lose your mind to dementia with your thumb on the TeeVee remote, or engage life head-on, amassing knowledge and experience (and maybe a touch of wisdom) until the moment you get planted.  You're going to get old anyway, why not make it an adventure?

Despite everything you've been told, the world is still a very big place with many options for living.  Hell, if Osama bin Laden can avoid the entire committed resources of the Western hemisphere, and die six times before they finally buried him, I'm sure you can find arrangements that suit your needs.

An old Chinese proverb: The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.