Happy New Year!

Happy Samhain, or what folks commonly call Halloween these days.  Halloween, of course, is the Catholisation of the ancient Celtic festival, which popularly marked the end of harvest time and the beginning of the long winter.

Today marked the death of the Sun.  Though few folks bother to look up anymore, the ancients tracked the movements of the celestial objects in a kind of giant fairy tale with a year-long telling.  In the days before TeeVee, and even radio, the communal entertainment was heavenly cycles, and the priests were the ones who kept track of these things and predicted the coming of the seasons, as well as the influence of the Universe on life below.

Many people don't realize the influence that the natural cycles have had on humanity.  The need to plan for things like winter and summer led to the rise of tenses in languages.  Without the ability to discuss past and future events, people actually died.  If a family didn't gather food and firewood during the warm months, they perished in the cold.  The need to plot the heavenly cycles literally made the difference between life and death.

Samhain marked the end of the collecting seasons and the beginning of the isolation.  As the Sun's time began to wane on a daily basis, the days grew colder, and soon families would seal themselves in for the duration of wintertime.  Survival was predicated on how much fuel and food they had been able to store up, and how well the houses had been sealed against the weather.

It's interesting to note the differences between equatorial cultures and those above the tropic zones.  For instance, in Indonesia there's very little knowledge of things like canning and preservation of food.  There are no harvest rituals or seasonal activities.  The closest thing to cyclic lifestyles here are those related to rice cultivation, which depends on the rain cycle.  However, in a land where food grows literally everywhere all the time, there was never a need to plan for tomorrow, much less months from now.  As such, the languages didn't adopt tenses, the need for root cellars never arose, and even things like hunting had a far lesser importance.  After all, if there's no vital need to preserve foods and collect skins and fuel, why would anyone need to mark these moments?

In northern climes, intricate rituals developed to note the timing of longer and shorter days, and the coming of growing seasons or deep winters.  Harvest festivals were the last great feast of the year before the family sealed itself into the home.  The festivals were the last time you'd see many folks until the thaw, and in some cases, the last time you'd see them at all.

People from less temperate zones never really understand the concept of maňana, and folks in the temperate zones can't figure out why everyone else is in such an all-fire hurry.  It makes perfect sense in the context of summer and winter.  Those facing long, hard winters only have a certain amount of time to gather enough food and fuel to survive for six months.  In effect, they have to work twice as hard on warm days to have enough for the cold days.

By the same token, if you live where temperatures are the same, day in and day out, year 'round, and the only variation is more or less rain, and food grows everywhere all the time, what's the hurry?  There's no need for complex astrological calendars and planning and storing.  Tomorrow will be just like today.  You don't need to save money, or store food and special clothing.  You won't die of exposure if you sleep on the ground tonight.  About the most shelter you ever really need is a couple of big palm leaves on a stick.

Needless to say, there's no Halloween, or Samhain, or Thanksgiving, or even hoe-downs here on the equator.  The language doesn't need complicated tenses.  Storing and preserving foods is never an issue.  Gathering and storing fuel is never a concern.  Tomorrow is the same as yesterday.

Meanwhile, the northerners have spent their entire history conquering warmer places to ensure a steady food supply.  The languages have complex tenses and time statements.  People are always worrying about the future and stockpiling for what-ifs.  The cultures are obsessive about calendars and clocks and time in general, because there's never enough of it before the dead of winter sets in.

It's truly a massive game of ant and grasshopper.  One group can jump in the water and pluck out a shrimp the size of a lobster any time they want, while the other must have fishing fleets to gather up the food in season.  The first group has no need or care for the future, because it looks the same as today, as yesterday, as the day before that.  The other group is always racing against time, always seeking new frontiers, always looking to tomorrow.  It's all about the weather.

So, as you prepare for Samhain, with the little goblins ready to collect the loot, and the death heads carved out of gourds to chase away the evil spirits of winter, keep in mind that you are celebrating death.

Death of the sun.  Death of the world around you.  Death of those dear to you.

Here, death looks like a tiger and always attacks from the rear.  There, death looks like a ghost and can't be touched or held.  It just surrounds you.

Happy New Year!  And don't fret, the sun will be reborn on December 25th, with the festival of light.

REVIEW: Laskar Pelangi (film)

Title: Laskar Pelangi
Country: Indonesia
Language: Bahasa Indonesia
Year: 2008
Producer: Mira Lesmana
Director: Riri Riza
Writers: Salman Aristo (screenplay) Mira Lesmana, Riri Riza, Andrea Hirata (novel)
Color, 16:9, Dolby stereo, subtitles (Indonesian/English)


Few Westerners will have seen this film, though it is the highest grossing Indonesian film ever, has won a number of domestic and international awards, and is based on a very popular novel by the same title.  This is probably this finest Indonesian film I have seen, and deserves attention by a wide audience.


To say it is an Indonesian version of "Stand And Deliver," would be unfair.  The locations, circumstances and pacing are completely different.  However, they are similar in that the stories involve inspirational teachers and students from the lower echelons of life.


'Laskar Pelangi', variously translated as 'Rainbow Warriors' or 'Rainbow Troops', is based on the childhood experiences of writer Andrea Hirata, whose 2004 book was quite popular and inspirational for a great number of Indonesians.


The story is set in the 1970s, on an island called Belitong, which is off the east coast of Sumatera, in the Java Sea.  Even today, the area is pastoral and rural, home to farmers and craftsmen.  Like much of Indonesia, it is a quiet, sleepy place, and the film perfectly captures the pace and beauty of the setting.  What is not clearly exposed is the history of Belitong, with which many Indonesians would be familiar.  


In the 1800s, the island was a British, and later a Dutch colony.  It had a wealth of pepper and tin, and those who exploited it were fabulously wealthy traders.  The wealth did not 'trickle down' though, and the local people remained dirt farmers and servants to the wealthy, having little hope of advancing their situations.  After World War II, the British and Dutch vanished, taking the wealth with them and leaving the island impoverished and isolated.


It is against this historical backdrop that the film introduces us to a group of boys and two teachers.  Pak Artfan (Ikranagara) and Mbak Muslimah (Cut Mini) are trying to open a school in a poor village, but they need 10 students to succeed, and only have nine.  The action begins on the first day of school, as the nine students and two teachers wait and hope a tenth will join in.  Near the end of the first day, another boy finally does show up and the story catches fire.


Over the course of the school year, Muslimah and Arfan inspire and illuminate the minds of the boys.  They begin with simple ambitions of taking over their fathers' farms, but slowly open their minds to the greater Universe and to all the possiblities within it.  We see in their faces real hope and dreams blossom into ideas and actions.


This is truly a magical story.  We witness what it means to have hope, when it's not just a marketing slogan.  Arfan dubs his students the laskar pelangi, because he wants them to become agents of change and growth, and it's not to say that farming is a dead end, but that even something as mundane as farming can be a vector of the life-force and a means to change the world.  It's not in what the job is, it's what you do with it that changes those around you.


The film itself is lush with color and texture that evolves through the course of the story.  The palette changes from subtle blues to warm, effervescent light.  The land and forest change from sullen canopies to mysterious adventures.  Daily life morphs from routine to quietly mystical.  Most profoundly is how the boys change in their outlooks.  They are no longer trapped on an island, but launching an adventure.


The boys are played by actual children who live in Belitung.  The director wanted to capture real emotions and authentic faces, which he does brilliantly.  Actors could not have portrayed such an honest and insighful look at the people and life in the village.  We feel as if we are literally tagging along as the boys grow and evolve.  Cut Mini and Ikranagara bring grace and wisdom to their roles.  We feel a depth and desire to push to students to achieve, while still keeping the teachers humbdle and simple.


The locations perfectly capture the languid and sleepy character of village life that charms and entrances outsiders who make it that far.  The beautiful settings and almost-wild surroundings serve to enhance the dramatic leaps of imagination that catch within the minds of the boys.


There's a deep honesty in this film.  The actors and filmmakers show a connection to the material and the surroundings that few films ever capture.  Using children from the area exposes a much deeper tie to the settings than any actors could bring.  They literally inhabit their surroundings and we can feel their genuine connection to the lifestyle portrayed that few cameras, even documentary, capture.


One of the charms of the film is that everything in it still exists.  One can find kampung just like it all over the country, and meet the people portrayed sitting at any corner warung, drinking a Teh Botol.  The director has perfectly captured this life from the eyes of a child.  The camera spends a lot of time at a child's eye-level, making everything look larger, and providing a quiet metaphor for how the world grows in the minds of the children.


One of the attractions of this film for Westerners who appreciate good stories, is that it is NOT Hollywood.  This is not the story of underdog football teams, or egocentric teenagers dreaming of fame and glory.  This is a simple tale about simple people who discover that hope and change aren't something 'out there' to be possessed.  They are 'in here' and must be realized.  Because the film's pace matches its locations and lives portrayed, it is quiet and slow, but it never bogs down.  For all its simplicity, it still delivers the emotional chills of 'Apollo 13', and the domestic charm of 'Milagro Beanfield War'.


The score, by Sri Aksan Sjuman and Titi Handayani Sjuman, is perfectly matched to the story and setting.  The music is uplifting, while still paying homage to the native sounds of Indonesia, using traditional instruments and traditional arrangements.  Yadi Sugandi's cinematography is richly textured and uses copious amounts of warm tropical colors and lighting.  The dialogue is flawless and natural, as if recorded surreptitiously on any street corner.


Laskar Pelangi is highly recommended for those who appreciate superb foreign cinema, who truly enjoy uplifting drama, and for those who are curious to see what life is like in rural Indonesia.  The gentle humor, quality production and profound empathy for the characters should place this film at the top of anyone's 'To See' list.


A Personal Note: I often ask my classes to recommend quality Indonesian literature and film, and I have gotten many great suggestions.  One of my classes at Pertamina Learning Center went a step further and presented me with a DVD copy of the movie on the last day of class.  Not a bajakan, mind you, the real deal!  I want to thank those good people for such a fine gift.  May all your teachers be Pak Arfan and Mbak Muslimah, and may all your dreams come true!  Matur nuwun!  Terima kasih!  Hatur nuhun!  Mau liate!  Matur suksima!


Jangan berhenti bermimpi!

Traffic As Metaphor

This morning was a classic Jakarta moment.

Indonesians, for all their laid-back, chilled out politeness, don't like to stop for anything.  The whole goal of driving in here is to go from point A to point B without stopping, even if you have to go ten miles out of your way.  As a consequence, if traffic slows down too much, they start jumping into the next lane, even if the other lane is on-coming traffic.

Now, to get out of my neighborhood in the general direction of my office, one has to cross a two-lane bridge.  It's the only one for a mile in any direction, and all 43 1/3 billion people in the 'hood have to cross it to get out.

So, this morning, one of the Kopaja buses decided the outbound lane wasn't moving fast enough for him.  Naturally, he jumped into the oncoming lane, because Gosh!  There's no cars coming on THIS side.  He raced along until, in the dead center of the bridge, he discovered the oncoming traffic.  No accidents, mind you, just the Indonesian version of a Mexican stand-off.  Since everyone and their mother followed the bus, he couldn't back up.  What with the OTHER half of humanity sitting in front of him, he couldn't go forward.  And, since all the motorcycles here make it a hobby to weave in and out of traffic to get to the front of things, there was a HUGE knot of motorcycles packed literally tire to tire.

Meanwhile, all the cars trying to prevent anyone from jumping in front of them, had wedged nose to tail with each other.  It was almost to the point where you could walk on heads to get across.  There was barely an inch to move and no one was giving an inch, at the risk of losing a centimeter of advancement.  You know those finger puzzles with 15 numbers and 16 spaces, and you have to maneuver them around to try to put them in order?  That was the scene at the bridge.

My driver, being rather aggressive, even by Jakarta standards, had got us so thoroughly jammed in the center of this mess that I was literally rubbing knees with the bikers around me.  And as I sat there, huffing copious amounts of diesel, gas and kerosine fumes, it occured to me that this was a perfect metaphor for the global economic situation.

Like Violet in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the banksters wanted all their profit, and they wanted it NOW!  In their supreme impatience, they jumped into the on-coming lane (derivatives) until they met up with opposing traffic (limited growth).  Suddenly, there was a massive jam up.  The motorcycles (day traders) weaved and bobbed until they were all piled up at the head of the line.  All the mutual funders and pensioners (cars) were lined up nose to tail to get their inch or two.  Now there's no way out without backing up, and we can't back up because all the 'me-toos' have piled in behind.

I must have looked rather ridiculous, since I was the only white boy in a sea of stressed out brown faces, and I was laughing my ass off.  I just couldn't help myself.  I was cracking knee caps in a mini version of a global problem.

Here we sit, in a global traffic jam, huffing fumes, grinding our teeth.  No one will give an inch lest they lose their place at the trough.  Can't go back, can't go forward.  The absurdity of it all.  And all because the banksters didn't want to lose even a fraction of a cent of profit.  Greedy little bastards.  JK Rowling was right to make them ugly liitle goblins with long, spindly fingers and specks of drool at the corners of their mouths.  Even the nice duds can't make them look like anythng but goblins.

Of course, the 71 3/7 quintillion people on the bridge this morning finally figured it out, but not without severe damage to my knee caps and a mystery scratch on my ankle.  So will the world figure it all out, eventually.  But someone's got to give and others will get hurt.  It's the unavoidable consequence of allowing the bankster buses to jump out of line and race up the hill.

All that driver wanted to do was pass the other buses and get to the waiting passengers up ahead.  His greed caused the entire mess and the waiting folks probably gave up and got a ride elsewhere.  Typical bankster.  If only he had stayed in line like the rest of us, he could have gotten the passengers anyway.  The bus ahead of him was already full.

I probably lost 4 years of my life huffing all those fumes, even with my handy dandy face mask on, all thanks to the greedy bankster.  I'd likely still be walking straight, as well.  Now I've got rotted out lungs and busted up knee caps because that greedy bastard couldn't wait like everyone else.

It was such a perfect image.  I was laughing so hard I nearly fell off the motorcycle when my driver lurched forward to prevent someone else from getting that inch in front of us.

It's amazing what you can learn while sitting in a colossal traffic jam, the likes of which the world has never seen.

OK, Now What?

Got a note from one of my faithful readers in Pennsylvania, in response to my article, "See Ya And Raise Ya:"

We are on the same wave length, it is almost scary, like being into someone elses mind.

I posted a think about the Catholic church and got a response that shows "people hear what they want to hear", so I guess you have to save your breath. So much is happening so fast that it is getting hard to keep up. I don't think the masses want a world bank, they want a fair shake and know that the banks are the ones that are preventing it. Then you get all the "political invaders" in there, stirring them up.  Most people don't want to face the facts, that is a truth.

My reply, in part, was along the lines of: we have to give up trying to wake folks up, and start discussing what we're going to do once the whole damn thing collapses.

From the way things look over here on the Far Side, the complete and utter cave-in of the New World Order (i.e. what we got now).  And we shouldn't be thinking about what scraps we can save.  It's better to utterly destroy the whole thing, lest it rise again from the ashes.

It's like that scene at the end of 'Time Bandits,' after they've completely baked Evil.  The Supreme Being tells the boys to be careful and get every bit cleaned up, or Evil will just rise again.

Another metaphor is bamboo, which is rather apt for our current surroundings.  If you cut down a bamboo stalk, two grow back in its place.  If you don't dig down about two feet and make a wall around the roots, then it will spread like wildfire.  The only way to stop it is to uproot every bit of the plant and burn the whole thing, or you'll be cutting bamboo again in about two months.

Let's look at the situation this way.  Not too long ago, you were a kook if you:

• believed in black helicopters - now everyone knows about them and many know that the N-numbers and insignia are painted in infrared colors;
• refused to believe the official song and dance about 9/11;
• you said the Iraq/Afghanistan wars were about oil;
• if you thought the next president would be worse than Reagan/Clinton/both Bushes;
• believed in the existence of the New World Order;
• didn't genuflect and cross yourself every time you said the name Obama.

This is all common knowledge now and it's hard to find someone to disagree with you for an entertaining argument.  Frankly, if anyone still believes that America is the savior of the world and that Obama is a Man of Peace, there's no hope for them.  Heck, it's even hard to find someone who admits voting for the slimeball these days.  I actually hear some folks say they wish they had voted for Hillary, though I daresay that's like wishing you had Satan while Mephistopheles is poking you with his trident.

The proper way to go about this, is to wish that Obama would go hunting with Cheney.  Now we're getting somewhere.

The point to all this is that we should start turning our thoughts and efforts to deciding what to do AFTER the collapse.  What do we replace The System with?  How do we handle banking and finance?  How about governments in a post-centralized world?  And should banksters and lawyers become the new N-word and F-word...unspeakable and unthinkable?

To begin the argument, I think it's obvious we can not go back to centralized anything.  With the state of technology, there's no reason to have mega-cities.  Most cost-center jobs can be done from the living room, while manufacturing is quickly moving towards mass-customization, meaning small, multi-purpose assembly lines scattered around in various strategic locations would allow anyone with come up with an idea and make it nearby.  A prime example is the car built with a 3-D printer that hit the headlines a while back.

The guy who discovered Comet Elenin was using a rent-a-telescope in New Mexico while he sat in his house in Russia.  Why can't we do that with factories?

As for banking and finance?  No reason why we can't use digi-bux, as long as it's backed by something real.  Each geographic location could produce their own accounting and statistics, auditable by any other geographic location.  Based on the total output of a given area, they could issue a certain amount of digi-bux, which the locals would earn for goods and services, and then spend in the open markets.

If a certain region didn't want to join the world, and wanted to live like the Amish, they could.  If another region wanted to become trans-human and turn themselves into cyborgs, they could.  But no region would be allowed to dictate to any other region.  And people traveling would have to abide by the rules of the region they were in.  If they didn't like it, they could move on.

Each region would be limited to a certain physical size, say 500,000 square kilometers.  No region could annex or take over another.  Each would be completely autonomous and could form whatever governance it wanted, or go completely without.  There would be no passports or ID cards.  You are who you say you are until someone says different.

The upshot of this little discussion is that everyone gets into revolutionary fits and wants to tear down the existing regime.  But no one sits around and thinks about what they're going to do afterwards.  Look at Libya and Egypt right now.  Just a bunch of folks wandering around picking their noses asking, "What now?"  A successful revolution is NOT kicking the bad guys out, it's putting something better in their place.

There's no reason why we can't have a global set of Rights and a global integrated system.  The secret is to keep it from getting centralized and sucking up all the power, wealth and resources.  A good start would be to ban corporations and lawyers and banksters forever and a day.

All laws must be written in plain language, address only one issue, and can not be any longer than 10 pages.  There can be individuals and groups of individuals, and groups of groups, but no entity can have individual rights except an individual.  All companies and associations must have officers who are personally liable for the actions of the group under their control.  Most importantly, all banks can only operate within the confines of their home region, and may never have branches or allegiances outside of it.  

Finally, all trials must be jury trials, no one may hire themselves out as a 'lawyer' or 'attorney,' and judges only exist to answer questions of law and keep order.  Basically, a referee.  In fact, they can't wear black robes, only striped shirts.  Juries are selected by randomly picking the first 12 people you find outside.  No voir dire.  

One last biggie.  No public schools operated by a government entity.  All schools must be privately owned and operated.  They can teach any curriculum in any manner they see fit, and the market will choose the ones with the best track records for turning out smart people.

That's it.  See how simple that was?  Now all we have to do is implement it.  We;ll get the chance, because revolution or not, the system is collapsing.  The situation boils down to making sure we get off on the right foot after the mess is cleaned up.  If we continue to do what we've always done, then we'll always get what we've always had: serfdom and poverty.

Now's the time to be thinking about what to replace the current mess with, and even starting to build on it, so that when the other leg gets kicked out from under the stool, we'll have a running start for the exits.

How can we act on this now?  Well, while you're stocking up, why not think about tools you'll need.  How about books?  Think about what 10 books you'd want in civilization collapsed and you needed to rebuild.  "The Way Things Work" would be a great start.  Maybe a chemistry book or two.  Some philosophy and classical discourse.  Physics?  Why not?  Put them in your safe storage with your rice and beans and water filters.

Communications are vitally important for rebuilding.  How about some radio gear and a book on electro-magnetic propagation?

Telescopes and microscopes, definitely.  A good book on astronomy would help you predict the seasons.  Heck, if you know the stars well enough, you can puzzle out your exact location on Earth by the declination and right ascention of key stars.

Storing away some bricks and mortar BEFORE the earthquake can never be a bad idea, both literally and metaphically.

Chances like the one we are in the middle of now only come along once every few hundred years.  With some careful thought and planning, we can make a pretty good stab at doing it right this time.  It's all just a matter of thinking and acting, instead of veging and watching.  No one ever solved a major global issue watching football and soap operas.

By the way, has it occurred to anyone else to save old vinyl recordings?  You can play them with a styrofome cup and a sewing needle, without electricity.  Just a thought when you really need that Mozart fix and the CD/DVD players don't work.

How many 'survival' sites have you seen THAT on?

See Ya And Raise Ya

Finally, the gloves are off.  The Vatican has called for a global bank, and the OWS are calling for global governance.  The good part is that the masks are slipping.  The bad part is no one seems to be awake enough to notice.

My working hypothesis has been, and continues to be, the Chinese are doing everything they can to flush out the West.  It is not enough to simply defeat the West in open battle.  For one thing, the US for all its failings is still the global leader at projecting power at a distance.  It is not enough to financially break the West.  That will only martyr the system and it will roar back after licking it wounds.

No, what China wants to do is expose the West's treasured secrets.  If it can get the West to come clean on all the things it's been hiding for nigh on a century, then it can completely demoralize the opposition.  At this point, you should be visualizing the superhero movies.  The bad guy, rather than confront the hero head on, chooses to expose the hero as a moral degenerate, beneath contempt rather than above suspicion.    China has carefully avoided direct confrontation.  Instead, it has worked to expose the greed and corruption at the heart of Western leadership.

Suppose that every conspiracy in the past 100 years were suddenly shone in the full light of day.  Suppose you had the power to maneuver your opponent into the position that they had to expose all their dirty laundry in order to fight back.  It's a tactic torn directly from Sun Tsu's The Art of War.  Once an opponent is completely demoralized, it only takes a slight breeze to blow it over.  Nary a shot fired.  It would appear that Chna knows some dirty secrets, and they're willing to play Russian Roulette on an international scale in order to let the air out of the West's balloon.

One doesn't have the oldest contiguous society in existence without learning a few tricks from history.

Any student of history will tell you that Mankind's advancements have always come by expanding frontiers.  As famously noted, space is the final frontier.  And in the quest to exploit the frontier, America is playing Spain, while China is playing England.  Yes, South and Central America still speak Spanish, but their leaders don't go running to kiss Juan Carlos I's ring.  America's still bow and scrape to Lizzy2, though.

In other words, America achieved the greatest technological feat since the Golden Age, and then gave up and went home with some rocks and dirt.  The Chinese, however, appear to be poised to go and stay.  Whatever secrets the US found there and have kept for 40 years will be forced into the open.  Why secrets?  Because something there run home to low-earth-orbit.  Why else would you stop once you've set 12 men down on the surface and found hard evidence of mineral wealth, energy sources and water?  It would be a small push to create a permanent base, and later manufacturing.  In fact, much easier than the International Space Station.

Of course, now the US can't even get to the ISS without hitching a ride, since they've mortgaged their future on the 'War on Terror,' based entirely on a false premise and the short-sighted policy of cutting others out, rather than competing head-to-head.

Try this scenario on for size:

China successfully launched the first piece of their space station last month.  The next will go up and dock the first week of November.  At the same time, the Russians will attempt to launch another resupply ship to the ISS.  At the same time, the US/FEMA has sceduled a test of the National Emergency Alert System.

If the Russian rocket is not successful, then the US will have to abandon the ISS, with no (public) back-up system in place to get there.  Once abandoned, the ISS becomes a piece of space junk and under the Law of the Seas, anyone can claim salvage rights.  The Chinese maneuver their pods over and link up with the ISS, and then launch their own astronauts to occupy it.  The ONLY countermoves the US has is to expose any secret manned program it has, or join hands with Iran and get their manned program into high gear.

Once the Chinese control and occupy the ISS, then Russia's Soyuz can magically start working again, and poof!  Instant space program.  You use the ISS as a hub to assemble a full-blown Moon mission, first landing habitats, followed by automated production for air and fuel and water, then drop a few astronauts off to hang out for a while.

With what the Chinese hold in US debt paper, there's no reason why they can't claim the ISS as collateral on the debt, especially if it's abandoned.

If that all seems to far-fetched, then consider this:

A few years ago, the New World Order was a myth, an urban legend, a conspiracy theory.  As of this morning's headlines, it's as real as any other form of governance.  The Pope is calling for it.  The People's Protestors in New York are calling for it.  Hell, it was a Big Secret just a decade ago.

The US is obviously trying to box in China.  Amrose Evans-Pritchard told us yesterday that US industry is moving back home.  Trying to cut off China's money.  The US has attacked Pakistan and Libya in unprovoked wars.  Trying to cut off China's energy.  The US is pushing to get China's currency unpegged from the dollar.  Trying to cut off China's trade.  Everything the West is doing is trying to put the Chinese genie back in the bottle, because it's kicking their hind ends.

This has forced the West into openly admitting global governance (NWO) in an effort to politic and market China into a controlled situation.  Meanwhile, China is doing everything it can to call the West out into the open and completely undermine the populace's faith in their institutions.  Classic strategy.  The US has been using it on the world for decades.  We call it economic sanctions, but the effect is never the leass, the same.

Like a good poker game, the other guy is trying to draw out the well cards and see what he's up against.  The US is desperately trying to keep it's aces in the hole, but it's being forced to turn them up to keep control of the betting.  It's going to be really interesting to see how this plays out.

The US has sold out its future in an attempt to lure China into the box canyon and head 'em off at the pass.  Meanwhile, China is using decoys to flush the US out of its hiding places and flank 'em.  The big question is, does the US and the West still have the moral, social and financial will to bushwack the bushwackers?  It is in a position now where it must expose some of its cards in order to stay in the game, but it's betting on IOUs and the house is getting a tad nervous.  The house, by the way, is the Vatican.

It's a tough call.  We're on the fourth box of popcorn, and the climax hasn't come yet.  The suspense is nerve-wracking and the subtle plot twists are hard to see coming.  No one is telegraphing any moves, but the beads of sweat are beginning to show on the US's forehead.  You're never supposed to let 'em see you sweat, but somehow the underdog became the overdog, and it's a game of catch up now.

When Nixon explained the rules all those years ago, no one told him that Asians will nod out of politeness, but you shouldn't take that for consent.  The Chinese were willing to play, so long as the West kept selling them rope.  Now they're tying a noose and the US had better think of something fast.

If the US really has scalar weapons, now would be the time to turn them on Three Gorges Dam.  Meantime, we're whippng up another batch of popcorn for the first week of November.  Gotta hate these relativistic movies though.  It's so hard to tell the good guys from the bad.  We'll just have to wait for the Big Finale.

The Game's Afoot!

I have known people who knew Qadafi.  To a person, they all describe him as a personable man, erudite and a congenial host.  He had a penchant for Chivas Regal and a deep sense of history.  His vision built one of the shining jewels of Africa: a country without debt, a well-funded social services program and modern creature comforts.  He made one fatal mistake, though.  He dared to sell Libya's oil, some of the lightest, sweetest crude on Earth, to the Chinese, and not exclusively to his neighbors across the Mediterranean Sea.

For that, he was shot like a rabid dog in the street and his body dumped in a grocery store freezer to be displayed like a prize buck at the end of the hunt.

We should all take one lesson away from this: if the US feral gummint will do this in broad daylight, in front of the whole world, who is safe?  Answer?  No one.  There is no status that ranks one above being mowed down in the US lust for global domination.

That is one lesson, but there is another.  The US feral gummint has tipped its hand and shown us some cards. Though the strategies are different, both the Republicrats and the Democans are thirsting for another Cold War.  They are deathly afraid of China and are doing everything in their power to pinch off China's energy supplies and markets.  There is now a clear set of dots that lead to this conclusion.  In fact, any power that doesn't play by the Anglo-American rule book is in imminent danger.  Get out your world map and do a red/blue election-night display.  Color all the countries the US has brutally attacked in the last decade red, and all the countries where China has gone in with gifts and money to get trade agreements in blue.  A pattern clearly emerges.  All the countries with strong ties to China are red

You'll also notice that the blue countries are in the so-called Third World.  You see, in all its hubris and bluster, the US ignored the little guys.  They were nothing but slums where corporations could set up sweat shops and produce Nikes for the self-absorbed, fluoride-swilling masses back home.

China, on the other hand, went in with offers of technology and infrastructure and strategic partnerships.  Where the US carried a stick, China planted carrots.  China developed mutually beneficial trade partners, where the West put their door mats.

In fact, China is the living embodiment of Lenin's famous quote, "The West will sell us the rope by which we will hang them."

It's the inevitable downfall of empires to stretch themselves so thin defending what they stole in the first place, that ultimately they collapse under the sheer economic weight of projecting power.  It is also the hallmark of empires to fight their wars by proxy.  It's the scene from 'Braveheart' where the king says, "Send in the Irish.  They cost us nothing."

We saw it during the First Cold War.  The US fought Russia via the Koreans and the Vietnamese.  Cuba and Central America became pawns in the Grand Game.  The war even moved to the ultimate high ground in orbit and beyond.  You can see it even now.  China's manned space program is growing, with the first part of their own space station already in orbit.

Russia is blowing up their rockets to put the US in a position of having to abandon the ISS.  Once it does, the Russians can simply move it and take over.  Law of the Seas.  What can America do about it?  It has abandoned its manned space program, at least in the public sphere.  A move like that would certainly force any black programs into the open.  Should be interesting to watch.

The US has scattered its pieces all over the board.  It can't muster decisive force in any one place, but must constantly thrust and pare, using its strength and resolve with each step.

The Chinese are fighting a war of attrition.  Realizing that the US can only see the world in two dimensions, it has moved into the third.  It is slowly bleeding off the West's power like a small, wiry boxer wearing down a larger and stronger opponent.  In fact, the Chinese even have a name for it: The Death of a Thousand Cuts.  There's no swift and costly death blow, there's only a protracted series of small hits that take more and more of the opponent's strength to fight off.

Think of it as geopolitical AIDS.  The virus (China) doesn't actually kill the host.  It cripples the immune system so that the host dies from repeated opportunistic infections.

Ultimately, we are looking at Reaganomics come home to roost.  The plan of leveraging future wealth against an enemy with a far smaller economy, and forcing them into collapse by trying to maintain, seemed like a great idea at the time.  The problem was that it created a massive debt pile in the middle of the US economy, and shifted so much industrial production into military build-up, that now the US is sitting on a rotting pile of paper with an economy that can only create more military.  It is incapable of doing anything else without a massive shift that would be a death blow.

Now the US is in a classic case of haing a hammer, and only seeing nails.  Remember all the happy talk about a 'peace dividend'?  So much for that, eh?

It's only a matter of time.  China can afford to sit back and let the US spend itself into oblivion.  It things get too dicey, China need only whip out its one trillion dollars in US treasuries and dump them on the market.  The US goes down by the bow, just like the Titanic.  The one major concern in that scenario is that desparate creatures do desparate things, and the US has a lot of nukes.

And that's why the America people need to get a-hold of the feral gummint lickety-split.  For the ten thinking people left in that country (the readers of this article), the only thing worse than destroying the world one country at a time, is toasting all of it at once.

At this point, Iran is the only wild card left in the Mideast.  All the remains after that is Central and South America.  The Chinese own the Panama Canal, thanks to Jimmie Carter, and they've been making a lot of friends down there with money and trade deals.  Two can play at the international 'buy-a-friend' game, just as easily as one.  It would be interesting to see Ron Paul get elected.  Once aid is cut off to all US 'friends,' it will be telling to see who sticks around.

And so, here we sit, spectators in a 3-D game of Risk meets Chess.  The US has lost a lot of key positions and is now in the position that it must attack or lose.  Or...lose anyway.  With nothing left to throw away, global destruction becomes an option, and one which the Man of Peace and his controllers seem more than willing to take.

The thing the American people refuse to recognize is that the feral gumming is no longer theirs.  It has been co-opted by elements unknown, and now no one, including its own citizens, are safe.  Not even the Nazis did what has just been done to Qadafi. Some would rant and rave about holocausts and all that, but even the wildly inflated figure of 6 million doesn't compare to what the US has inflicted with its economic sanctions and merciless bombing.

If Americans were serious about taking their country back, they would be spending a lot of time worrying about who to elect sheriff, than the clown in the White House.  If just 25% of the counties in the US elected the right sheriff, most of the immediate problem would be solved.  Then take back the White House.  If you scoff at such a thing, just read up on the power sheriffs have in the US.

Sadly, most Americans don't know how their system works, and the majority are too blasted on Xanax to care.

By the way, FEMA will conduct a nationwide test of the national emergency broadcast system.  Since recent history shows that major attacks happen on days when there are tests of the system, one ventures to guess that it would be a good day to be vigilant.  Especially since the date is 11-9-11.  Just a word of caution to the aware reader.

So there we have it.  The outcome seems written in stone, though the means to the end may fluctuate a bit.  How many hopeful detours there will be remains to be seen.  Mankind, it would seem, is incapable of learning a lesson without a good club over the head.  One hopes this time is different, but one dasn't allow optimism to blind the soul.

The future, for now, is lying in a freezer in Sirte, Libya.  Choose your steps carefully.

Top 10 Movies That Time Forgot

Every now and then, we just gotta lighten things up around here.  So on occasion, we whip out one of our ever-popular movie lists.  We try to think of great flicks that meet all the qualifications for exceptional entertainment, and in the case of today's list, have all but been forgotten over the years. In some cases, they were not made in America, which means a lot of folks just never watched them.  Though listed 10 to 1, they really don't appear in any particular ranking.  Just a handy means to keep things organized, and create a little suspense..

So, without further ado, get out the credit card, warm up Netflix, and get ready for some top-notch entertainment.
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10) Bagdad Cafe (1987)- This little German gem has Percy Adlon in the God Chair and Chief Hack, too.  It features a really fun performance by Jack Palance, along with co-stars Marianne Saegebrecht and CCH Pounder.  A quintessential German housewife is abandoned in the middle of nowhere California with a suitcase full of men's clothes.  She ends up at the title cafe, where she proceeds to clean things to within an inch of perfection, as well as change the lives of everyone around her.  The plot device Saegebrucht uses is her ability to perform magic, which is the key to her acceptance by the locals.  We recommend this one just for Jack's performance, but we think you'll be thoroughly entertained by the whole story.  If you look sharp, you may notice several homages to famous films and artists.

9) RoboCop (1987)- About the same time as the last film came out, this masterpiece by Paul Verhoeven showed up.  Updating Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' to the cyborg age, while placing tongue firmly in cheek, Verhoeven's direction masterfully walks the line between morality tale and farce.  If you could tone down the Zucker brothers enough to put a little serious social commentary in between the sight-gags, you would have this film.  We loved it so much, we even worked on the sequel, which got the style right, but missed the subtle jabs at modern society.

8) Silent Running (1972)- We love Bruce Dern, and this is his tour de force in what amounts to a one-man show.  Douglas Trumbull mans the God Chair as he perfects his special effects wizardry, so evident in '2001: A Space Odyssey.'  In fact, '2001' was supposed to go to Saturn, not Jupiter, but Trumbull couldn't perfect the rings to the point Kubrick was satisfied.  Trumbull succeeds with magnificent results in this flick.  The film itself is a ecological morality play, with Dern watching over a spaceship full of plants that have all disappeared on Earth.  Due to a budget crunch, Dern and his crew are ordered to destroy the terrariums and come home.  Dern doesn't cotton with that idea, and goes rogue in a ship called, wait for it, Valley Forge.  Dern's in his prime as he teeters on the edge of insanity, and turns in a much more realistic man-alone than Tom Hanks did in 'Cast Away'.  And we think Hughey, Dewey and Louie are the grand-bots of R2-D2.

7) The Milagro Beanfield War (1988)- Robert Redford takes a spin in the God Seat for this screen version of John Nichols' excellent novel and screenplay.  If you've ever lived in New Mexico, this movie will definitely make you smile.  It captures the other-worldly feel of life in the State That No One Knew.  It's told through the eyes of a kid who's been assigned to New Mexico by Peace Corp.  Apparently, someone didn't know that the state was part of America.  The kid gets caught up in a passive-aggressive war between a dirt farmer and corporate America.  The farmer performs a revolutionary act by watering his beanfield.  Events swirl out of hand and things come to the verge of all-out shootin' wars.  A top-notch cast turns in some really nice performances and Redford does a great job of caturing the magical southwest backdrop.  We were sad, though, that el brazo de Onofre didn't make it into the film version.  That was one thing that made the books shine.  A fun afternoon killer.

6) The Andromeda Strain (1971)- We turn to Robert Wise and Michael Crichton to keep the New Mexico theme alive.  Crichton, of course, created 'Jurassic Park', among many other sci-fi thrillers.  And this film, despite 40 years, still holds up well, especially since the story is so good.  Sure, the teletype and computer monitors are a tad dated, but you can still imagine this happening today.  It's got a veritable who's-who of 70s B-flick actors, who all do great jobs of playing scientists playing God.  Wise does a masterful job building and maintaining suspence, as the scientists race against time to find an alien disease returned on a space probe.  Even now, it leaves us breathless at the end, with obstacle after emergency.  By the way, Trumbull did the effects for this flick, as well.  He practically single-handedly created our cultural imagine of the future.  The guy who cut Ang Lee's 'Hulk' could've learned a thing or two about split-screen here.

5) The Adventures Buckaroo Bonzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984)-  Speaking of RoboCop...W. D. Richter, probably best known for his flick 'Big Trouble in Little China', fills the God Seat for a wild and very strange ride through higher dimensions.  Peter Weller plays the title character, who's a kind of perverse Indiana Jones, being a brain surgeon, rock star and comic book hero.  If nothing else, this movie is worth it for John Lithgow's performance as a mad Italian scientist.  His invention opens a door to the eighth dimension, through which step the Leptoids (Red and Black).  Buckaroo races against time to stop the alien invasion, seal the hole in space, capture the evil scientist, and cut a new chart-topping single, while signing copies of his comic books.  We really like the score by Bones Howe, and Yakov Smirnoff's National Security Adviser is hysterical.  Turn off your higher reasoning and just sit back, and try to keep your jaw from going slack.

4) The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)- Alfred Hitchcock is one of the few directors to have done his own re-make.  We are partial to the original, with Leslie Banks and Peter Lorre.  A 'regular guy' is sent on a wild ride by the dying words of a murder victim that he happens upon.  This is one of our favorite Peter Lorre roles, outside of House on Haunted Hill.  In typical Hitchcock fashion, we are kept in the dark along with the main character.  Lots of good twists and turns and ranks among the top who-done-its.  Hardcore movie buffs will want to do a double feature with the Jimmy Stewart/Doris Day version.  Interesting to see how Hitch re-imagined and re-packaged the story for an American audience.

3) The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)- If you haven't figured it out by our other lists, we'll come right out and admit it...we love Terry Gilliam.  We've always been entranced by his incredibly unique visual style.  This movie is probably his defining opus, though one of his least known.  This movie has so many fine performances and such a rich visual texture, that it is hard to put labels on it.  John Neville's Baron is an absolutely flawless characterization.  He inhabits a world of endless creativity and child-like imagination.  The film has always struck us as the 'Time Bandits' he would have made, if George Harrison had given him a little more money, but the story is completely different and even more compelling.  Gilliam's animation background with Monty Python is on full display, and his penchant for warped characters and talented actors come together to create a film that children and adults can enjoy on many levels.  We've paired this with 'Wizard of Oz' for a truly twinged double feature.

2) My Fair Lady (1964)- OK, we confess a soft-spot for musicals.Never been much for Barbara or Bette, but the classics have a place in our collection, as does Bob Fosse.  Even though Rex Harrison taught Lee Marvin everything he knows about singing (see 'Paint Your Wagon'), this is one of those movies that leaves you singing show tunes for a week.  This is also the quintessential British fantasy, changing everything to suit their ideal of beauty, and screwing it all up in the process.  This is one of the best musicals for seamlessly blending the singing with the action.  George Cukor keeps the Hand of God light and airy, Lerner and Lowe turn in an excellent score, book by G. Bernard Shaw, and Jack Warner personally produced it.  This is definitely one to dust off and remind yourself how good movies used to be.

1) Duel (1971)- Steven Spielburg remakes his graduate student film with Dennis Weaver taking the lead.  We don't know about you, be we always liked Dennis Weaver, even as a hick sheriff from Tay-ohs in McCloud.  Here, he's Harvy Milquetoast running for his life from a semi-truck from Hell.  Your heart starts pumping just looking at the fear in Dennis' eyes.  This is Steve McQueen's Bullit without the bravado and testosterone.  We are not told who or why is trying to kill Weaver, as he plays cat and mouse across the southwest.  One can imagine a young Steven King watching this and getting the idea for Christine.  The suspense is well done and we can see why Spielberg went on to greater things.  If you can find his original student film, it's worth a double feature to see how money makes movies better.  It also pairs up nicely with Hitch's Psycho.

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So that's our list for this weekend.  We'll be back soon with more bitching and griping.  Until then, it's always nice to take a break from reality, dust off some oldies-but-still-on-DVDs.  Of course, there are so many more we could add to this list.  Ater 120 years of motion pictures, there's plenty out there to explore.  Heck, Orson Wells alone could fill up a weekend.

And hey!  If you don't like any of our selections, just think how much you paid for the information!  We think there's something for everyone here.  So enjoy the weekend and get a bit of rest.  The fun is yet to come.

Ode To Empire

I remember the good old days, back when Noriega and Ortega were the bad guys.  Ah, those halcyon days when the US feral gummint illegally sold drugs to buy illegal arms to give illegally to revolutionaries.  Remember those days?

When the US ferals would illegally invade sovereign nations, catch their lackey in a week of two, then illegally extradite them to stand trial in illegal court proceedings.  Those were the days, my friend.

Those were fine days, indeed, when people wrung their hands and cried out to Heaven, "Is this another Vietnam?"  If the military so much as bivouaced at Camp David, there were protests and placards, chants and chagrin.  The nation held its breath and fretted every shot fired.

Now?

Who gives a shit?  Bomb those countries into oblivion!  Don't worry about remanding the bad guy to trial.  Slaughter him in the most inglorious way possible, dump his corpse in the sea and wipe out his family while you're at it.  No frets or worries or national soul-searching.  Just kill, kill, kill.

If the nation gets bogged down in a sand-trap, who cares?  Just send more money, men and machines!  Rack up the costs and let our great-great-grandchildren worry about it.  Damn the drones!  Full speed ahead!

No protests.  No gut-wrenching empathy for the millions of women, children and old folk slaughtered by the glorious robot killers. Only a minor peep from an invisible Congressman about impeachment.  The UN and World Court sit around playing cards and picking their teeth as international law gets shredded after a thousand years of painful development.

Entire nations reduced to rubble, and millions of lives reduced to a line-item cost.  It's the exact same attitude as a corporation ticking up ad costs.  How much did it cost for each kill?  What resources were used and what's the replacement cost for that family of five that was blown to DNA samples?    Don't need to arrest and bring to trial, it will only remind people that the ones behind this fiasco are the ones who need to be tried and imprisoned.

Bin Laden is dead?  Dance in the streets!  Qadafi is dead?  Party time!  Brings the boys home?  Hell NO!  There's still 187 coutries left to bomb into dust!

Meanwhile, the supercilious OWS sit on their haunches bitching about foreclosed houses, while 6,000 miles away, a man holds the three left fingers of his beautiful 5-year-old daughter.  It was all he could find after searching the rubble of the house his grandfather built with his bare hands.  Enjoy that steak dinner, boys, you earned it building all those bombs and sacrificing your children!

Message to the OWS...take out your PodBerries and look up the 'Bonus Army'.  See what would happen to you if you were really effective.  See what Eisenhauer and Patton did to those men who protested the feral gummint in the midst of the First Depression.  It happened once, it will happen again.

It's no wonder the US has become a nation of pill-popping, psychotropic sucking, zombies.  They can't live with their consciences.  Remember what that is?  It's the little voice in your head that tells you, you are doing something wrong.  Got it surrounded with Xanax, do you?  Maybe that's why so many people on anti-depressants commit suicide.  The conscience eventually wins.

Guess what, America?  The country is getting flushed down the toilet of history because you are mortgaging your future to kill innocent people and people who have done nothing to threaten you, much less harm you.

The death of Qadafi, if it's not just more psy-op propagandizing, absolutely disgusts me.  I want to throw up.  The whole damn thing is so sick, so twisted, that I am at a loss for words, even with six dictionaries, three thesauruses, and 14 languages at my command.

I lost my family and everything I ever owned fighting those evil bastards.  I didn't protest.  I went straight at them in court.  I eventually left the country in disgust, kicking the dust from my feet at LAX.  And all I can see from here is a bunch of drug-addled waste-oids who can't muster the guts to defend their neighbor's house from the banksters, much less mount a menaingful protest against them after the fact.

Wake up, America!  It's almost too late.  Get off your TeeVee-addicted asses and look around you.  Your gummint is laying waste to the world in its desperate bid to cling to some imaginary glory days.  It's all a dream, and a particularly nasty one at that.  You are nothing but a bunch of corporatized, mind-controlled slaves!  Your weak and laughable protests mean absolutely nothing to the people that own you.  They can wait you out.  They have all your money.  They have all your stuff.  They have your children and they're blowing them up for laughs.

For God's sake, people, wake the hell up before your owners destroy the entire Earth in your name!

But, what do you care, right?  It's just brown people and muslims.  They have no value.  Just a line-item in the national budget.  I ask you, who is more worthless?  The one you kill by remote?  Or the one who allows it to be done in his name?

The day is coming.  Eventually, the feral gummint will piss off the wrong people, or at least enough of them, and it will come back, hard and fast.  And you know what?  No one will morn your loss.  The world will feel justified for having rid itself of a vicious monster that kills and destroys without remorse or reserve.  You will wail and gnash your teeth and cry out in agony as you hold pieces of your loved ones in your cracked and bleeding hands.  No one will hear you, because you heard no one.  No one will feel your suffereing, because you felt none.  No one will care, becaue you didn't.

It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.  I'm out here in the real world, and I can tell you with each new assassination, each new invasion, each new atrocity, the world loses a little more empathy.  The thing about bullies is that everyone fears them until they have nothing left to lose, then they attack the bully en masse.  It's already happening and you don't see it.  I suppose that steak is piled too high to see the evil that has been done in your name.

It's five minutes to midnight, America.  Where will you be when the music stops?

The place to protest is not on Wall Street.  Those insensitive louts are laughing at you.  The place to protest is at your neighbor's door when the banksters come to repo the house and car.  The place to protest is at the bankruptcy courts.  The place to protest is in your city hall and at your sheriff's office.  You're not going to change a damn thing sitting on your ass in a park practicing group-think.

Oops!  It's now four minutes to midnight...

Slippery Slopes Of Dreams

I had a very strange dream just now.  That it was strange is not unusual.  That I had a dream is unusual.  I've never been much of a spontaneous dreamer.  When I need inspiration, I focus on the problem before I go to sleep, and the answer typically comes to me in a dream.

This one was strange because it involved Lee Harvey Oswald, and because my dad was in it.  The latter almost never happens.

At any rate, I was part of a select press tour to view the remains of Oswald, so as to finally put to rest a bunch of conspiracy theories over the years.

We were taken to a place that looked kind of like Arlington National Cemetary.  If you've never been there, it's a rather stark monument to sheer number of its own people an Empire is willing to sacrifice.  Near the center, there is a building for holding ceremonies and such.  We were taken there by an older man who had a sour look on his face and kept trying to debunk all the conspiracies.

Among the group were politicians and newsfolk I've known over my life.  Molly Ivins was one who did her usual quipping with perfectly timed, acerbic remarks.  Most of them were writers.  I don't recall any TeeVee people.

There seemed to be an interminable build-up.  I've already forgotten the exact focus of this exercise, but the host kept droning on about how this event would finally put to rest all the theories and speculation that had built up around Oswald.  Folks milled around outside the building waiting for showtime.  As was typical of the old time, hard-core news writers, everyone was smoking and standing around in groups pontificating on various aspects of the story at hand, each being an expert in some aspect of it.

Finally, we were led into the main hall where the casket sat open at the front of the room.  I couldn't see inside, as my view was either blocked by someone else, or was at an oblique angle.  We all queued up to file past.  I was near the end of the group.  When I finally made it to the box, it was a very strange sight.

Oswald looked as if he had died 10 minutes before.  He had a strange sort of Napoleon hair-cut with the top brushed forward.  He was heavily made up and wearing a 60s-style brown suit.  It was more strange for the position he was in.  His head was tilted slightly to the right, his legs were drawn up and his arms were splayed out to the sides.  As I recall, the box was quite a bit larger than normal.  The body plainly looked like Oswald, though.

After the viewing, the folks broke up into small groups and were gathered in various places around the interior and outside.  Everyone seemed quite happy with the results...except me.  I kept walking around, waiting for an opportune moment, and then asking, "When did they move him to Washington?"

For the most part, I was ignored.  The few who acknowledged my question simply dismissed it as an unimportant detail.  I kept trying to make the point that Oswald was buried in Dallas, and we were in Virginia, and supposedly our hosts had just disinterred the body for our little junket.  No one seemed to care about the minor detail.

At this point, I sat down and lo and behold!  There's my dad sitting the row in front of me.  When it came to history, Dad always had all the answers.  It was one of those things were I hated to ask a question, because I knew what was coming.  Every answer was an hour-long lecture on the swirl of events that led up to, and then away from any crux in the flow of history.

What I dreaded was not that he knew incredible details about historical events, it was that none of it was in my text book and wouldn't help answer the question on the test, or at least so it seemed...  The other part I dreaded was that every one of those hour-long lectures ended with some kind of Catholic guilt moral.  It always came back to the people involved being unrepentant sinners and if they had only gone to communion, the whole world would be right today, blah blah blah.

Usually by that point, I was trying to exeunt stage left to go finish my report.

Anyway, I asked him when Oswald had been moved to Washington.  Well, that set off an hour-long lecture about how some guy had bought the final remains out of pity for some strange convoluted reason.  It involved a swirl of events and people, each with competing motivations.  It was an intricate dance of details, as all my dad's answers were.  Fascinating in the weaving...always.  I could listen to him for hours (and often did).  I just had to make an escape when it became a Catholic morality play, in which I was Everyman watching the sinful foibles of the other characters, hoping to take away some deep, spiritual meaning from all of it.

The dream wrapped up with my dad saying, "Sad, lonely man.  Didn't make his final confession."  The last scene was the Zapruder film clicking by in frame-by-frame detail, only it was if I was standing there.  The images were sharp and clear and didn't shake like the camera.

Then I woke up.

I'm not sure what the point of all this is.  Is it my refusal to be satisfied with pat answers?  Was it just to remember that little detail about my dad and his long-winded tales of Catholic guilt?  Or was it my compulsion to see connections where others don't?  Certainly, I was honored to be included in that company of folks.  They were all writers that I admire, though I was getting rather annoyed at their refusal to ask the obvious question.

Or maybe the whole point was that I shouldn't eat spicy food before bedtime.

Dreams are odd creatures.  They are highly symbolic, which is one reason I enjoy them so much.  The act of interpreting and deciphering is a fun treasure hunt.  My dreams are often prophetic, in that I am able to see the outcome of highly complex events.  Actually, I think the more appropriate word is 'feel' the outcome, because the dreams are rarely explicit.

Not many people pay a lot of attention to their dreams.  I learned to use them for inspiration on my various projects.  Usually, the more vivid and express the dream, the more awards I won for the project.  They are a great source of inspiration and insight, even though they seldom seem on topic, or even vaguely related to the task at hand.  Usually what happens, is some part of the dream will rise up like cream on fresh milk, then I just scrape it off and enjoy, if the evil neighborhood raven doesn't come and steal it first.

Some people try to direct their dreams, to take control of them and manipulate events.  I prefer to let them unfold in their own way.  It's typical of folks to want to control Nature and spoil the the simple message She is sending.  Just let it be.

In the end, it was probably just my wife's spicy sapi rendang, hold the rice.  Need to tell her to tone down the chili peppers before bed.

What's A Few Dead Mohawks?

Here comes the sun...

Just got this in email from a friend of mine:

From the Examiner:
BRANTFORD, ON, CANADA - Mass graves of Mohawk children have been uncovered by ground-penetrating radar at the Mohawk Institute, a residential school for Mohawk operated by the Church of England and the Vatican before its closure in 1970. 
According to Rev. Kevin Annett, Secretary of the International Tribunal for Crimes of Church and States (www.itccs.org), the Mohawk Institute was "set up by the Anglican Church of England in 1832 to imprison and destroy generations of Mohawk children. This very first Indian [First Nations] residential school in Canada lasted until 1970, and, like in most residential schools, more than half of the children imprisoned there never returned. Many of them are buried all around the school."
Preliminary scanning by ground penetrating radar adjacent to the now closed main building Mohawk Institute has revealed that "between 15-20 feet of soil" was brought in and put over the mass graves just before the Mohawk Institute closed in 1970 in order to camouflage the mass graves of Mohawk Children and avoid prosecution for genocide and crimes against humanity under the Geneva Conventions, the International Criminal Court, and cooperating national courts.

[emphasis added]

I think it can be said that the Vatican, without doubt or equal, is the most egregious violator of human rights and dignity ever unleashed on the face of the Earth.  And before you go get your panties in a bunch, under the rules of Political Correctness, I'm allowed to say that because I'm a former Catholic (pre-awakening).

When it comes to laundry lists of evil doings, no one and nothing holds and candle to the Vatican.  At least as far as Western history goes, it is the very root and cause of all the worst occasions recorded (and not) in the past 2,000 years.  It is truly the wolf in sheep's clothing.

Don't get me wrong, Catholics have produced some fine thinkers and writers, but like any Great Lie, there must be some element of Truth to make it seem plausible.  There can be no doubt in the aware observer's mind that the Vatican's dissolution would be one of the brightest and most revealing moments in all of recorded history.  Not only would it liberate vast amounts of land and wealth serving to enslave Mankind, it would also open the greatest reservoir of information in a single location that anyone can identify.

Isis and Mary, Horus and Jesus

The sheer power of an institution to so completely control people's minds that it can preach love and forgiveness, while practicing horrible and terrifying acts of murder and destruction on a scale unparalleled in the common era, is absolutely boggling.  The levels of denial and deniability that have been stacked one upon the other for centuries goes beyond the ability of a well-developed vocabulary.

The discovery of hundreds of Mohawk children murdered by an institution directly tied to the Vatican removes all doubt about the mission and methods of that operation.  One could pawn it off as an isolated event not officially sanctioned by the Vatican, but the same sould be said about the invasion of the New World by servants of the Holy Roman Empire, or the Crusades or the various Inquisitions.  At what point does the world stop and say, "Wait a minute!  These aren't the actions of love and acceptance!"

The worst crime is the building of a religion based on debt, which has fostered centuries of slavery, blood sacrifice and pure evil.  Ask any christian to show you a symbol of their faith, and they will invariably produce an instrument of torture.  Some, like Catholics, will produce one with the image of a man brutally tortured and nailed to the device.  And the programming is so strong, they don't see anything wrong with this!  Just imagine the double-think involved in that one simple gesture!

Maybe you need a little help.  Here's an assignment.  Go to your nearest cathedral and study the artwork closely.  Then go the local exhibit of ancient Egytian art.  If you start to notice a bunch of similarities, and perhaps the scales slip just slightly from your eyes, then you've started your personal road to healing.  Congratulations!

At the root of christianity is the dogma of debt.  It is the core of all the ills of the world today.  The concept that Mankind owes the god or gods a debt for being human.  Debt-based religions have been around a long time, and every last one of them, without exception, end with bloody sacrifice and a quasi-religious ruling priesthood that demans complete and utter submission to them, as agents of the god/gods.

This lovely bit of dogma is the foundation of our banking system, which is so gracefully imploding before our very eyes.  Confession is the predecessor of psychology.  Communion is the socially acceptable means of human sacrifice, after which comes the ritual cannibalism.   If you want to know who "THEY" are, just look at the fine folks who elected Pope Benedict XVI.

It doesn't matter if you are a protestant or reformed or a Hinnian or a Olsteenite...the core message is the same.  You are a worthless sinner and you owe a debt to god/gods.  You have no personal value unless you are redeemed, and you can't be redeemed without the elite "THEY" saying so.  And then you owe them a lifelong debt for saving you.

What a load of hogwash.

I want to puke every time I hear someone say, "I worship Yahweh!"  I just look at them in stunned silence.  How could anyone worship something that is a murderous, deceitful, genocidal banker?  How can anyone worship something that loves you so much, that if you break any of its rules, it will burn and torture you for all eternity?  And how in the hell can you worship one god that is really three gods, but requires you to believe in one god while recognizing all three equally at the same time?  What kind of nonsense is THAT?

The Vatican truly is evil incarnate.  How could an institution, supposedly keeping the world safe until god2 gets back, murder and destroy hundreds, if not (more likely) millions of innocents, simply because they are heathens who don't believe in all the rubbish it espouses?  Worse yet are those who have been deeply scarred for life by vicious and cynical attacks by authority figures they were trained to worship as gods incarnate.  The paedophilia rampant in the churches is not the act of love, but the act of destruction of innocence and joy and all that is good and right.  And it is only the tip of a vast iceberg that is lurking beneath the surface, waiting to sink all of Mankind.

If you want to protest, then protest the source.  If you want to fight, then fight the real enemy.  It's like a mesquite tree.  You can hack it down to the ground, but it will grow back in a month, bigger and nastier.  You have to blast out the roots and yank the thing out of the ground and burn the root ball.  Otherwise, you have don't nothing but waste your time.

"I own you! Hahaha!"

The Vatican is the origin of corporate 'personhood.'  The Vatican is the root of slavery and banksterism.  The Vatican is the root of horrific suffering and death.

If you want to be truly and finally free, then destroy the foundation of the prison.  Cutting the chains will only get you more chains.  Very few cultures have broken free of the debt gods, but the ones who have, have survived in peace for thousands of years.  Those that haven't have all consumed themselves in a final act of self-immolation.  It behooves every thinking human being to start studying, and fast!  Time is really short now. The final conflagration is upon us.  If we survive, it will be because we have finally destroyed the prison, not just the gates.