Blood Rituals And Other Sports

One of the Big Oil (US flavor) has offices a couple of floors beneath mine.  Because of that, an armed soldier (Indo flavor) is occasionally posted at the entrances to the building when someone feels nervous.  Since the Three Minutes' Hate was this past weekend, maybe someone wanted a hand-holder around.

The folks who work for this Big Oiler are virtual prisoners.  They come over on 6-month and one-year contracts.  They are put up at a plush hotel for the duration.  They may not leave the hotel at any time, except to get into the mini-bus that whisks them off to the office.  If they dare to go it alone in the Big City, they are summarily packed up and shipped home.

For the length of their contracts, they live in a pretty prison.  Sure, they have all the room service and hotel bar they can stand.  Their meal ticket is pretty much bottomless.  The caveat is that the only taste of Indonesia they will get is looking out their windows.

Poor, dumb Americans.  Even their perceptions of Indonesia are skewed.  They only know what they've been told, and when I listen to them, my jaw drops, both in horror and humor.  Everything is a threat, which is news to me, since I've lived here four years and have had zero problems.

Another example:

Guang Xi airport, southern China.  Exit the taxi and no apparent security.  Inside, spot two cops talking to a gaggle of vacationing pentioners.  Go to ticket counter and hand over passport and ticket.  Agent briefly scans the passport for name and processes boarding pass.  Places ticket and pass in the passport and returns them, smiling.  Amble over to immigration.  Agent looks at the name on the ticket and in the passport.  Checks the visa, then stamps.  Never makes eye contact.  Wander through the terminal until boarding time.  Go to the gate, where airline agent checks passport and boarding pass, tears the pass and hands everything back and smiles.  Walk through the waiting area to the door, out onto the tarmac and up the stairs to the plane. 

Not one single metal detector, frisking, X-ray machine, or bomb-sniffing dog in sight.  Quiet and uneventful flight.

How does this compare with your last experience in any US travel hub?  Did you feel like employees of a Big Oil company, or a Chinese citizen?

Building 7

This past weekend, I watched with mouth agape as numerous photos and videos came across the wire of the 'celebrations' in honor of the 10th anniversay of 911.  I couldn't believe it!  The terrorists had won.  What was worse is that the average person looked directly at the terrorists and didn't see them.  In fact, they quietly complied with everything they were told to do by the terrorists.

Ten years ago, the terrorists had long beards, lived in caves, wore robes, and talked of Holy Wars.  Today, they wear uniforms, are clean shaven, bark orders, and everyone calls them 'authorities'.

It was truly amazing.  Cars being searched, people being sexually assaulted.  Concrete barricades everywhere.  Personal liberty and dignity violated at every turn.

There were ceremonies at Ground Zero, where the terrorist leaders made all sorts of high-sounding speeches, but no one mentioned Building 7, Pennsylvania, and only briefly referred to the Pentagon.  None of the terrorists made reference to bombs or missles or missing plane wreckage or miraculous passports or undamaged buildings collapsing.  Just re-enforced the terrorist storyline.

And people were eating it up.  Bone-headed meat sacks with police uniforms were spouting off about how terrorists are everywhere and they're gonna git 'em!  I suppose they hadn't looked in the mirror for those terrorists, yet.

I did notice now that the 'official' definition of a terrorist includes white, middle-class Americans who say words like, "constitution" and "liberty", and we are required to call DHS immediately if they should say something like "Ron Paul".

It was like watching a giant pep rally.  The coaches got up to make a few tearful speeches about how this season, it's gonna be better.  Everyone huddled and said a prayer to some god that supports this kind of activity.  They all gave a big HOO-rah! and suited up and trotted out on the field.  In the stands, the people made signs of 'Support Our Troops' and 'Gig 'em!' while cheering on the slaughter.

No mention of the drones that blew two families to pieces as they huddled in the bedroom praying for the nightmare to end.  Meanwhile, the operator of the drone in a cave in Colorado went home to his family and enjoyed a weekend in front of the TeeVee.

It's a sickness.  Watching all these people chant and dance and rally in support of terrorists, who are telling everyone that the real terrorists are poor dirt farmers in a land far away who have no interest whatsoever outside of locusts eating their meager home garden.

The important part is that folks never have a chance to see the real thing.  They are kept in shiny hotels and fed endless amounts of bullshit, while being shuttled around surrounded by armed guards, all the while being tolkd they are free.  The one thing that can't possibly be allowed is for any truth to interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcast.

If folks were allowed to empathize with the people they are blowing to bits in the name of justice, they might wake up and realize what they've done.  And that would be bad for business.

The terrorists require ritual sacrifice for their religion.  They need blood and terror for their majick to work.  The gods can only be appeased by the smell of burning flesh and the blood of innocent lives.  And it seems to work, at least for a time.

The problem is that it always ends badly.  Once a civilization has reached the point of blood sacrifice, it is on the verge of collapse.  The carnage and waste is a dead-end and within a certain amount of time, the civilization implodes from its complete lack of moral or civil rules.

What I witnessed over the weekend was much like the final scenes from Mel Gibson's Apocalypto.  The high priests sniggers while carving the hearts out of their victims and rolling the bodies down the blood-soaked steps of the pyramid, while the people chant and enter a kind of hypnotic frenzy, not noticing that the world around them was about to change forever.

It always end badly.

In order to work, hypnotism requires the subject to voluntarily give himself over.  Therefore, those who support the carnage and believe the terrorists have allowed themselves to be duped.  The only hope is that the subject does have the power to snap themselves out of it.  Whether they have the will is another question.

I remember 911 vividly.  At the end of that long day, I remarked to a colleague that the whole day seemed surreal, like walking in a dream.  Fortunately, I am not prone to being hypnotized, but I could certainly feel the effects of the attempt.

To be effective, the subject must be distracted and the mind put into a state of confusion, not sure where to focus.  Then the hypnotist's suggestions can reach a deeper level of the brain, beyond the normal filters or the temporal lobes.

To wake someone from a trance requires and shock of some kind to refocus the brain.  Questioning and studying the truth of 911 is just such a shock.  Learning that it's all a lie and that you have been in a stupor for ten years will shock you out of it.

What you do after that is the Big Question.

I've seen it over and over again with Americans.  They tend to lock themselves into boxes so they don't have to deal with reality.  America's biggest brand names built global reputations on providing repeatable experiences with no surprises: Holiday Inn, McDonald's, etc.  When Americans travel, they go in groups, stay in American hotels, eat American food [sic] and stay in American-friendly places.  They never touch or taste anything outside their cultural shells.

Just like the Big Oil employees who'll work for a year in Indonesia and return, having only the most cursory experience with another land and people.

Until that mentality is broken down, America will never wake up.