Tanah Airku

Since it's the weekend and my first wife's birthday, I thought I'd take a little break from the usual rantings and ravings to offer a few insights into Indonesian life that one doesn't often find in guide books.  If you are planning to visit, these might come in useful, and if not, then maybe it will just be interesting to learn a few of the small cultural differences.

In many ways, Indonesia is a lot like the United States.  From the outside, it appears to be a single country stretching vast distances from the Indian Ocean to the open Pacific.  In fact, it is a hodge-podge of around 300 different cultures and languages.  Each island has its own style and people, and in the case of the larger islands, there are multiple cultures living in a kind of uneasy harmony.

On Java alone, there are the Javanese, Sundanese and Betawi.  Within those groups, there are multiple subdivisions, some with wildly different dialects.  Javanese has two primary dialects, halus and kasar (smooth and rough).  The smooth dialect is spoken primarily in the south, while the rough more or less corresponds to the north of the island.  Certain regions have their own sub-dialect, such as Tegalese, which is a mish-mash of Jawa kasar, Sundanese and Hokkien Chinese.  For the most part, they are unintelligible to each other.

Most South Pacific languages follow the same broad grammatical structure, including Tagalu, Austral-Indo and even Hawai'ian, but the vocabulary is widely different, with little cross-over.

Manners are rather interesting.  Around Java, it is always impolite to gesture to someone or something with the index finger.  One always gestures with an open hand, fingers together, and only with the right hand.  It's not uncommon to support the gesturing hand by placing the left hand under the right forearm.

The same technique is used when shaking hands.  The right hands are lightly clasped while supporting the forearm with the left hand, and bowing slightly.  After shaking hands, which can last as much as 15 minutes, then one touches the right hand to the heart.

If the two shaking hands are of opposite sex, then both hands are held together at the heels with the fingers slightly splayed and fanned out.  The two light touch fingertips and then both hands touch the heart.

This is all rather difficult for a Texas boy to get used to, since we are taught from birth that hand shaking is a stylized form of arm wrestling, with a death grip and some arm-wrenching pumps, and never more than 5 seconds worth.

To get someone's attention at a distance, you almost never yell or whistle.  You clap your hands.  Once you have their attention, then you gesture to them to come over by holding out your hand, palm down, fingers together, and curling the fingers repeatedly into the palm.

Food is absolutely the center of Indonesian life.  Everything revolves around meals, which are typically four to five per day.  It's even a common greeting to ask someone, "Sudah makan belum?"  Have you already eaten or not yet?  When one travels to other parts of the country, the folks back home expect oleh-oleh, which is normally a food gift unique to the other region.  Naturally, special occasions center around large meals, and at the heart of every meal is a mountain of sticky rice.

There are few if any manners specific to eating.  Typically, an Indonesian rests the left forearm on the table across the chest and uses the right arm to get as much food as he can before it runs out.  Utensils can be a fork and table spoon, or chop sticks.  However, the traditional way to eat is with the fingers.  One makes a ball of rice on the tips of the index and middle fingers, then uses it to pick up a bite of meat or vegetables and shoves the whole thing in the mouth.

One interesting type of cuisine is Padang.  The restaurants are ubiquitous and usually recognizable by the unique peaked rooves over the entrance.  The are no menus.  You either select a la carte from the steam table, or just sit down and a sample of everything in the restaurant will be brought to you on little plates that are stacked up precariously in the center of the table.  Eat what you like, and the rest gets dumped back in the pot for the next guy.

It's a challenge to get a handle on what meats are available where.  Central Sumatera and northern Sulawesi are predominantly Christian, so pork is readily available, though the butchering, display and preparation are done in separate areas.  On the other hand, Bali is predominantly Hindu, so beef is rather difficult to obtain and expensive to boot.  In some areas, dog is considered a delicacy, while in others, it is forbidden.  Other types of meats include squirrel, bat, monkey, and other little critters, as well.

One rather disconcerting aspect of eating Indonesian style is the use of things I would consider inedible.  One example is when I went to a roadside canteen and, in the interest of trying everything, I ordered sate usus ayam.  At the time, I had no idea what it was, other than it was satay, which I love, and chicken (ayam), which is wholly inoffensive.  It was the usus part that was intriguing.  So I ordered it.  I got chicken guts artfully arranged on a stick, dipped in curry sauce and grilled.  I choked it down, but never again.

Shrimp and crab are often deep fried in shell and the whole thing is eaten, from whiskers to tail.  Fish, such as pecel lele, a type of catfish, is deep fried complete with guts and fins.  Hardcore lele lovers eat every scrap.

One fun thing about Indonesia is you can get just about anything imaginable to eat at your door.  Nearly every restaurant delivers within their area, but in the neighborhoods, vendors go around with every type of cart, wagon and device cooking up the food to order while you sit on your porch.  This system is truly ingenious.  Some have motorcycles or bicycles that literally unfold into full kitchens, while others have fully stocked push-carts.  Either way, it's as much fun to order and watch, as it is to eat some very good food almost completely hassle-free.  You can even use their dishes and just leave them by the door to be collected later.

All in all, Indonesia is a wholly unique place.  You can go by train, plane or boat, and in just a few hours be in another world, literally and figuratively.  You can hike up the side of a volcano, dive on some of the most incredible reefs in the world, romp through tropical jungle with monkeys and real, live dragons.  Hear chirping lizards and see an astounding assortment of butterflies.

Most of all, you can meet a warm and gentle people who live in a world apart from most of us.  They live in eternal summer, where food literally drips off trees.  One learns about 15 kinds of bananas and mutant coconuts that are highly prized.  But mostly one learns that there really is life on the far side, and that even after four years deeply immersed in it, it never ceases to surprise and amaze.

With 20,000 islands and 300 cultures all for one visa, it's not a bad travel deal, offering something for everyone.  Just never claim that batik is Malaysian.  It's one of the few things that will get an Indonesian's hackles up.

Oh, and the title of this article: tanah air simply means "land water", but together like this, it is the equivalent of homeland, motherland, or other similar euphemism.  Until you learn that, though, it does lead to some humor, and the first line of the Indonesian national anthem is, "Indonesia tanah airku."  Directly translated, it says, "Indonesia land of my water."  A rather incongruous image.

Puzzles, Riddles and Lunacy

UPDATE: Goro Adachi has just posted a new article that is especially poignant with regard to all the strange goings on these days.  Most people are blissfully unaware of the vast ritual being performed planet-wide right now.  Perhaps this article will help open you eyes just a bit.
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Well, it's been a red letter week.  I got a evaluation summary from one of my classes, which included the comment, "The facilitator is very funny, and very attractive."  Though the comments are anonymous, I am forced to conclude that this individual is very intelligent and has extremely good taste, judging by the extant facts.

One is forced, in an overwrought world, to find a bit of silver lining wherever it presents itself.  Fortunately, that silver lining has yet to be found on my head.

Remember that great song by the Talking Heads called "Puzzling Evidence"?  You should put that on nice and loud while you read.

That said, how can we wrap up a week like this and put a tidy bow on it?  Scanning the week's headlines was such a head-slapper that I hardly know where to begin.  It's like one of those thousand-piece puzzles where all the pieces are the same color.  The one thing I really enjoy about those kinds of puzzles, though, is that you can appreciate the intricate linkages without being distracted by some lame landscape scene.

After months of touting and hand-wringing over the so-called 'iron shield' missile defense system proffered by US death merchants, it was announced that the system would be given to Israel, courtesy the American taxpayers.  Russia immediately launched a test flight of its ICBM designed to fly right through it.

Meanwhile, a year after Usama son of Laden was killed for the sixth time, the FAA has cleared the use of drones against Americans on their home turf.  In Montgomery, Texas (sad to say), they immediately began drawing up plans to arm the damn things.  At the same moment, Judge Napolitano stated that the first American to bring one of those 'Terminator' machines down would be a national hero.

HINT: a bow, an arrow and a coil of good-quality cable attached to the arrow.  Horizontal blade arrangements are very vulnerable.

Oh, here's a rich one...the Iranian navy lent aid to an American merchant ship attacked by pirates.  Yup, these are really nasty boogy men who need to have their country bombed into the Stone Age.

Amazingly, there was yet again no mention of Iceland in all the verbiage on the Eurozone crisis.  Hell, this little island of what?, 300,000 people, who were the test subjects of bankster love, have turned themselves around by simply throwing the bastards in jail and rebooting the banking system...withOUT the Euro-flop.  The nation is now debt-free and enjoying an economic resurgence using a publicly controlled currency issued by the state, which receives income from the minuscule interest rates charged on loans.  What an amazing idea!  Why didn't anyone think of that bef...oh, that's right.  That's the way it used to work.

Detroit, Michigan, once the proud poster child of American industry and ingenuity, it turning out the lights....literally.  They are shutting off street lighting to the outer fringes and trying to herd the handful of people still stuck there into smaller and smaller groups.  Henry Ford, the Dodge brothers and all the rest of those long-dead titans of industry must be rolling over in their unkept and unlit graves.

Not to leave Asia out of the head-slapping festival.  China's housing bubble is about to explode with a really big noise.  Seems it's hard to maintain housing prices for your expanding middle class when you have entire, spanking new cities still empty all over the place.  One note of hope, though.  When the spent fuel storage finally cuts loose at Fukushima, the entire nation of Japan will be evacuated.  Sounds like a tailor-made solution to both problems.  Should be really interesting to see how ancient enemies get along after that.

One item that is truly amazing to watch is the Obama phenomenon.  Three short years ago, he was a demi-god.  He was given a free ride to the White House by crowds of mesmerized zombies who left his rallies in tears, but couldn't tell you what he said.  His name was spoken in reverential tones followed by heart-felt "Amens".  Now a convict, a sheriff and a two-bit lawyer from Tennessee are kicking his butt in an uncontested election.  I'm still waiting for the Nobel committee to rescind his Peace Prize, though.  Even Ghandi and Mother Theresa didn't have THAT much blood on their hands!

An rather exciting development is the complete implosion of the Roman Cult.  Vatican Bank scandals (again).  A missing teenager possibly buried in a mobster's tomb next to the Vatican wall.  JPII had his nifty Pope-mobile, but Benny16 is being pushed around on a dolly.  Talk about propping up your leadership.  Soon enough, Petrus Romanus, the final pope (if you believe prophesies made by Molech...I mean Malachy).  Should be interesting to see how this all plays out.  The College of Cardinals is already making plans to blow a little smoke yet again.

Fear not!  The main distraction is yet to come.  The most militarized peace games ever foisted on the world will soon ignite (the torch) in London.  I hear there's a substantial reward for anyone who captures a picture of Liz2 in a reptilian moment.  This should be a challenge, given the fact that cameras have been banned for this very reason.

Some rays of hope...commercial space exploitation took a giant leap forward this evening (local time) when the Dragon capsule successfully docked with the ISiS.  Hmmm...Dragon capsule, Year of the Dragon, ISiS space station...naw.  How long now before special satellites start beaming corporate logos onto the upper atmosphere?

Also, the BBC is calling for tracking chips to be implanted in everyone, beginning with students in San Antonio schools.

Whatever happened to my beloved Texas?

Running Out Of (E)Steam

One of my favorite Indonesian sayings is, "Sayap-sayap patah terbang kembali."  It simply says, "Broken wings return to flight."  I am proof of that. 

While hiking in the jungle over the weekend, it rained and turned the ubiquitous Java clay into glass.  I slipped and landed square on my elbow, jamming my shoulder right good.  As I lay in the mud staring up at the three monkeys staring down at me, they looked at one another as if to say, "And they call themselves primates?"

After a thorough massage, visit to the doctor, three X-rays and a compress of the nastiest, smelliest arak I've yet come across, I can sit here and assault the world with more of my ramblings.  And so, with a cup of fine java (pun intended) in hand, let us launch into another round, since I've had several days to muse over a dozen topics.

In the past couple of days, I've listened to some fine interviews with Gerald Celente on Coast-to-Coast, and Ian R. Crane on Red Ice Radio.  Two very well-spoken gentlemen expounding on all matters economic, which naturally led me to think about psychology.  Makes sense, right?

At any rate, what I've decided is that psychology is the root of all problems in our current mess we call society.  In fact, you can trace the roots directly to Freud and Maslow from the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th. 

Freud, of course, turned all of humanity into perverted mother lovers whose most noble deeds were nothing more than attempts to breed.  Maslow went further with his Hierarchy of Needs to ascribe all motivations to basic animal desires, with self-awareness a distant bastard child of sex, housing and food.

Psychology was a natural marriage with advertising, and advertising is just a mild form of propaganda.  With psychology defining the human mind and basic motivations, the Madison Ave. types jumped on it to twist us into consuming robots.  Hitler and his gang further perfected the techniques to chain the individual's perception of self-worth to the glory of the State.

Psychology has spent the last century and a half figuring out ways to break the Mind down into constituent parts and rebuild it in the image of Corporatism, and it has worked brilliantly, if not seditiously.  A great number of people any more are little more than empty shells with magical paper in their pockets running wildly around buying up any old gee-gaw thrust in their faces.

Psychology starts on the false assumption that any human being can honestly understand the mind of any other human being.  That wasn't enough, though.  It went on to propose that it could train certain high priests to be able to diagnose and cure 'abnormalities' in thinking.  I mean, honestly, they believe that.

Going back to Hitler, he was a vegetarian, artist, writer, and rabid anti-smoker: all qualities that goofy 'liberals' drool over.  He rebuilt a destroyed nation and within five years, turned it from abject poverty to an industrial giant that took the combined efforts of a major part of the world's nations to stop.  How does psychology explain that this man was also one of the cruelest, most heartless mass murders in history?

Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" is a brilliant exploration of the psychology behind a character who seemingly had it all: wealth, power, possessions.  Yet, we are led to conclude that at his core, he was driven by the lack of love from a cold, heartless mother.  But that hardly seems to add up to a highly complex mind with diverse interests and a desire to influence millions.

In the end, psychology can not answer the one question it purports to, and that is to find a formula for human activity and motivation.  What it has found, though, is multiple ways to manipulate emotions and especially guilt in order to force people into desired behavior patterns.

Take, for instance, ads that promote soaps that whiten and brighten.  The commercials usually have two women, both married judging by the rings on their fingers, eyeing each other's whites.  The woman with the dingiest whites is made to feel guilt and envy at the brightness of the other woman's laundry.  No one mentions that fact that no one other than the wife should be looking at her husband's underwear, so what difference does it make?  But the seed is planted.

Another fine example is ads for luxury sports sedans.  We are shown a well-dressed man sitting at the wheel blazing down a mountainous road.  We are led to conclude that we have not 'made it' until we can plant ourselves in that driver's seat.  We clamor to finance our way into that seat, regardless of whether we can afford it, because we want to possess that image.  In other words, we are encouraged to chase ghosts in order to achieve self-esteem.

And that brings us to the crux of the issue: self-esteem.  It seems like so much is made of self-esteem.  In schools all over the world, children are given prizes just for waking up in the morning.  There is no achievement or actual victory.  There is only the shell of it.

Through the process of mental manipulation, we have been led to think that self-esteem is the Holy Grail of psychological health.  No one seems to question the fact that self-esteem is just an empty pride that is easily destroyed.  In fact, little Johnny, who has been pumped full of self-esteem all through school, can be destroyed in minutes in the real world.  Once his self-esteem is destroyed by reality, he will do anything for anyone in order to feel fulfilled again.  He can be made to buy anything, do anything, that will puff up his self-esteem.

The real counterpart to self-esteem is self-respect.  Self-respect, unlike its hollow cousin, is very hard to destroy.  Self-respect is generated from within, not from outside.  It is not bestowed through image or objects.  It is the feeling of worth and dignity.  It is the unshakable belief that one has value by virtue of one's humanity.  It is inherent in existence and needs no reinforcement from outside sources.

Self-esteem requires constant feedback from others.  It is based solely on external factors to exist.  It must be fed constantly by variables that are almost completely outside the control of the individual.  It forces the individual to constantly buy the latest gee-gaw or fashion in order to receive adulation from those who would not otherwise care a whit.

Self-respect, on the other hand, is fed from within.  It exists regardless of external circumstances.  It allows one to feel a sense of value, whether dressed in rags or the latest Prada designs.  Self-respect is the bane of Madison Ave., because that person can not be shamed into spending money they don't have to buy things they don't need in order to receive empty praise.

It is the difference between 'poor' and 'broke'.  Poor is a state of mind brought on by self-esteem.  One is poor if one succumbs to hopelessness brought about by the inability to receive praise.  Broke is a temporary state of being that can be cured with a little hard work and ingenuity, and success reinforces the sense of one's value as a human being, regardless of whether anyone else notices.

Self-respect is not a commodity that can be bought, sold and manipulated.  Self-esteem is.  This is the Great Lie perpetrated by Madison Ave., aided and abetted by psychology.  It is the one achievement of psychology that can be directly traced to the core of society's ills at this point in time.  By reducing us to self-esteem junkies, we can be made to follow any trend, buy any object, believe any lie, as long as it continues to re-inflate the leaky balloon we call Self.

In Bernard Shaw's great play, "Caesar and Cleopatra," there is a subtle juxtaposition between self-esteem and self-respect.  The aging caesar requires the love and attention of the young Cleopatra to puff up his flagging self-esteem.  He sees himself as losing his manhood due to age.  Caesar's scribe Britannus, however, requires only the knowledge that he has done the best he can at a task, regardless to what ignominy he must stoop to achieve it.

In other words, all of Caesar's achievements in conquering the known world can not fill his need for outside confirmation, while Britannus only needs the knowledge that he achieved his goal to feel worth.  Self-esteem and self-respect.

The New Renaissance of our society and culture will be based on this simple reversal of view.  If we generate our feelings of worth from within, rather than needing talismans of value, then we will quite easily conquer what ails us.

Think of the "Wizard of Oz".  The scarecrow performed feats of intelligence without a degree.  The tin man showed profound emotion and caring without a heart.  And the lion displayed extreme courage despite his fear.  They did all this from inner strength, not from accolades and accoutrement.

As long as we allow society's institutions to control us through fear, guilt and self-loathing, then we will continue to be slaves to them.  In restoring our innate self-worth, we will conquer the evil that is destroying our world without a single act of violence.  It starts by tuning out the psychological warfare being perpetrated on us through the media.  It finishes by realizing that we are all God's Creatures with value beyond calculation by virtue of our existance.

As Britannus said, "In war, we paint ourselves blue, so that though our enemies may strip us of our clothes and our lives, they can not strip us of our responsibility."

You figure it out.

IronBatSpiderHulk To The Rescue!

Do you believe in the Second Coming of Jesus, the 12th Imam, the Meshiach, benign aliens from Planent 9, or superheroes?

If you answered "yes" to any one of these, then you are a victim of mind control and should proceed immediately to detox your mind.

It's like this, if some group of elite can make you truly believe in some outside force that will show up in a blaze of glory and set everything to rights, then you won't do anything to protest the elites' machinations.  Rather, you will sit idly by fervently praying for your hero to arrive and whisk you away while cleaning house here on Earth.  Whether your hero is a god/man wielding righteous indignation, a benevolent race of extraterrestrials, or a billionaire playboy-turned-philanthropist, all these characters trigger your wait-and-see mode.  That way, you won't get in the way of the ruling class as they enslave and destroy our, as of this moment, only home.

I've never had much use for Karl Marx, but one thing I have always respected was his view and the use of religion to placate the masses and prevent them from taking matters into their own hands.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

  --Kart Marx, 1843, Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher

A careful reading of this quote reveals some profound insights.  He points out that religions are at once foisted on people, while at the same time they are a reaction against cruelty of humanity against itself.  Ultimately, religion rechannels our basic impulse to right wrongs, by short-circuiting that impulse into some future outside justification event.

By buying into these programs, we are rendered inactive, like blowing smoke on bees when robbing the hive.  Regardless of the religious origin of the "righteous revolution," we see it in many secular movements, as well.

The secular versions recast the reformer(s), but the basic storyline is the same: don't take matters into your own hands.  Leave that for the "righteous experts" who are far better equipped to handle these things.  Whether it's Batman or the Avengers, or greys or aryans, or even, as Clif High rightly pointed out in a recent interview on Red Ice Creations, the David Wilcock/Benjamin Fulford scenario of the Yakuze arresting all the banksters, we are powerless lumps of flesh incapable of handling our own affairs.

As Marx so eloquently states, we see the evil and suffering caused by injustice, but we are indoctrinated to believe that we can not capable of fighting such things.  Instead, we turn to outside forces who will come someday to vanquish the foes, avenge the downtrodden and set things right once again.  In a sense, this is opium to ease the pain of our inaction and impotence.

In many ways, Marxism and its spawn spring from an impulse to stop the suffering of humanity, but even Marx is derailed by his reliance on some organization to inflict change from above.  In fact, history shows us that any organization, no matter what motivates it, can be perverted to serve the elite power structure.

Whether it's Tea Parties or Occupiers, socialists or capitalists, christians or muslims, all group efforts can and are ultimately suborned to the cause of those who would subjugate humanity.  Without fail, all are infiltrated and redirected, while at the same time the members continue to believe that they are doing right.  In every case, the groups are placated by small and meaningless concessions from on high, and so feel that they have succeeded in the midst of their failure.

There is only one sure way to completely vanquish the forces of evil and secure justice for all.  It comes down to complete and personal responsibility for one's actions, and allowing everyone to do as they please within the confines of their bodies and property.

The first and deadliest fallacy of any group effort is that the group knows what's best for all others.  In the end, all groups believe that theirs is the only way to find peace and justice, and proceed to ram it down everyone else's throats.  In doing so, the group feels justified though they have simply traded places with the previous bad guys.

The only possible way to fix things is for everyone to pursue enlightenment in whatever way works best for them within the confines of self and home, and leave everyone else the hell alone.  Any system of law, no matter how wonderful and divine its apparent revelation, involves forcing someone somewhere at gun point to adhere to that system.  And since all use of force in inherently immoral, then all governments and systems of law are immoral is they have one single person who is forced to follow.

Marx, like so many others before and since, sought to replace one set of elites with another.  No matter how benevolent the new elite seem, at some point they will seek force to control others, and so devolve into the enemy of free choice and justice.

As Roger Daltry famously warbled, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." 

Anything which subverts the quest of the individual to be left alone and to pursue his or her own course is opium for the masses.  By passing the responsibility off to some outside savior, we hand over our own wills to create our own paradise.  If we create something good, then others will want to join.  But if they are forced to follow, then the leader is no better than any other elite throughout history.

Most importantly, we need to stop allowing others to stop our natural impulse for freedom by promising us pie in the sky saviors who will never materialize, and will simply continue to evolve as old ones fade away.

John Dalberg-Acton told us that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."  He failed to mention that there is one power that is incorruptible, and that is power over Self.  If we limit ourselves to conquering our Selves, there is no room for corruption, since we are prevented from forcing others into our world.

Just to prove that you are now cured of mind control, watch this snippet of a nightly newscast.  If it no longer has power over you, then you will see the truth behind it...

 

Or we can depend on billionaire playboys popping up to rescue us, but frankly looking at Bill Gates doesn't inspire hope.

A Tall Ship And A Star To Guide Me

For those who enjoy seeking conspiracies, I believe one of the most subversive and obvious of them all resides in just about every modern home.  In fact, if you take a moment to look around you, you'll likely find at least two or three examples of this conspiracy sitting very close to you this very moment.  But first...

Some of the most important and vital technology we have today is also some of the oldest.  We take this technology for granted any more.  In fact, at the end of the year, many businesses hand out this technology as advertising to their good customers.  Others famously plaster scantily clad vixens on the technology and sell them for profit.  In any case, few people stop to realize the sheer magnitude of the items and their power over life and death.

Of course, I am talking about calendars and clocks. 

They are so vital that vast stone monuments have been erected to ensure their endurance.  Ubiquitous modern legends have grown up around the Mayan calendar.  There are presently about seven major calendars in use today, though the most common is the Gregorian, which renders today as 12May2012.  Many of the great rulers of history are known as much for their innovations with calendars, as anything else.

A good calendar means the difference between life and death.  Without them, our civilization could not exist.  Likely, neither could we individually, in any form we would think of as comfortable.  In fact, the current domination of Western civilization is based in part on the Gregorian calendar.

Likewise, the clock.  We organize our most mundane events and chores around clocks.  The invention of an accurate time piece for ships is what allowed the British to conquer large chunks of the globe for 300 years and lead to the current reliance on Greenwich or Zulu time and the modern Prime Meridian or Zero Longitude.

More than any other devices ever invented, these two are of the greatest consequence to our modern lifestyles and all that implies.  Without them, we could not measure the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, nor the motions of the stars in the sky, and that would mean almost certain death for billions of humans.

Calendars are central to farming and the production of food.  Without knowing when to plant and harvest, we are reduced to watching the vagaries of wooly boogers and animal fur.  Our ability to predict the first and last freeze of the winter would be completely shot, and food production would dwindled to virtually nothing.  Those who survived would be little more than hunter/gatherers, at the mercy of the elements and random luck.

As for the clock, all forms of travel, outside of walking up the street, would be almost impossible, and certainly deadly.  All navigation would be near impossible.  The Space Age could not have been born.  Most mechanized and digital tools would be unthinkable.

Think of all the things we take for granted that are dependent on calendars and clocks.  The computers on which I am writing and you are reading rely completely on internal clocks to draw meaning from the otherwise useless flow of 1s and 0s.  You dinner tonight is possible because of someone using a calendar.  Even the buxom bubblehead reading the weather forecast off a Tele-Prompt-R needs a calendar somewhere in the loop.

A fellow by the name of Crichton Miller has developed a fascinating theory that something we all consider to be a religious symbol is, in fact, a depiction of a device that was able to calculate calendars and clocks, among many other useful things.  It is so simple, yet the implications of his theory are astounding.  It is the cross.  More specifically, it is the Celtic Cross, which most folks would recognize as a cross with fat arms and a circle around the center.

When one ponders his discovery, the deeper revelations are literally mind-blowing.  Here, staring us all in the face for centuries, hidden in plain sight, and used as mundane adornment, is a tool of such remarkable utility as to allow the circumnavigation of the planet, the building of huge edifaces, and the accurate calculation of a local calendar and time system.  Attached to a plumb and either hand-held or mounted, it is an amazing analogue computer that can even multi-task, and has all its applications hardwired into it.

The implications of his theory are profound, and may even be proof of a pre-deluvian civilization, and it literally surrounds us.  Its enormous importance is shown by the central placement of the cross in so many religions and civilizations around the Earth and through time.

An interesting side note to this is a man named Eritosthenes.  He was a Greek in 200BC who invented geography and did a number of other useful things.  Among them was calculating the circumference of the Earth, the Moon, and the distances to the Moon and Sun.  Amazingly, he was exactly 10% shy of absolutely right.  The reason he was 10% short was that he used an Egyptian measuring system that was used by the high priests in ancient times to survey land tracts for taxes.  In order to inflate the tax revenues, they shaved 10% off their measurements to over-estimate the amount of land held by an individual.

Not only does this demonstrate that religion and government have lied and cheated throughout history, but it shows the importance of the ability to measure the surface of the Earth, and all of Nature, accurately.  Tools such as the Celtic Cross do exactly that, and much more.

Which brings us full circle to my original rant: the ubiquitous conspiracy that is destroying our civilization.

It's the digital clock.

Folks today can barely read, much less use analogue clocks.  It's a conspiracy to prevent us from learning certain basic skills that would allow us to build a civilization out of virtually nothing.  By keeping us ignorant of things as basic as analogue clocks, the PTW have attempted to destroy our ability to decipher our truly amazing hidden history.

I don't normally use jewelry or personal adornment.  I have little use for it.  But when I travel, I always carry a towel (thansk Douglas Adams) and an analogue watch.  The towel is strictly a comfort item, but the watch is a survival tool.

Among other things, you could literally drop me in the middle of BFE, and using my watch, I could determine my exact location, the time of year and construct tools for surveying and constructing a house.  All I need is the watch, a stick and a basic knowledge of astronomy (about 25 stars or so).  With a little knowledge of geography, I could find the distance and direction to the nearest major city.  I could build a calendar to tell me when to plant and harvest.  I could construct a mile-long viaduct to bring spring water to my little house on the prairie.  In fact, there are hundreds of useful things I could do with, or based on, an analogue wrist watch.

Oh sure, you say.  Tom Hanks made a calendar in Cast Away with nothing but a hole in the rock.  Sure, and it took him the better part of a year, and that only told him the season and latitude, not the longitude.  One without the other doesn't get you home.  If he had had a good analogue watch, he could have figured all that out in a day or two and been home in less than a year.

If every member of a civilization is not capable of starting and maintaining that civilization, then it is doomed to fail.  The most basic tools at the core of ours are the clock and the calendar.  Should any part of our civilization fail, it would be up to use to restart it, and without clocks and calendars, any other effort would be hopeless.  And the thing is, it's not really that difficult.

You need to know the right ascension and declination of 25 stars (one in each hour of the sky and the pole star), how to read the Sun and Moon, and a good watch.

When you're building a soap box racer, success and greatly reduced medical expenses are as simple as a lynch pin.  Without that one simple tool, all your efforts are doomed to fail, and it's likely to be very painful.  A few hours of reading and some warm nights staring at the stars can mean survival in the most extreme situations.

Simplicity is often the easiest thing to overlook.

Pity The Fool

It's axiomatic that the biggest, muscliest, most boneheaded macho guys are really very insecure about their manhood.  They compensate and attempt to hide their paranoia by spending long hours at the gym, getting in bar fights and generally trying to make themselves look and act fearsome.  Usually, they can be taken out with one good punch by anyone brave enough to stand up to the bluster.

With that in mind, we turn our gaze to Chicago and London.  Here we see two fine examples of just such insecurity.  In Chicago, the feral gummint has deployed shoot-to-kill orders, storm troopers and black helicopters (remember when folks were nuts to believe in those?).  In London, the impending Olympics have been surrounded with missile batteries, 007-type secret agents and Britain's biggest gun boat parked on the Thames.

If these aren't dead give-aways that the PTW are scared to death, then I can't imagine what would be.  You'd think that two countries who have poured thousands of lives and trillions of dollars into combating terrorism across the globe for the past decade would have nothing to fear.  So why throw all this hardware and planted media stories at a meeting of big, tough NATO and a symbolic event promoting world peace?

Because deep down inside, they're pissing in their pants, and they feel compelled to put on huge shows of power in order to intimidate the world.  It's the classic bully maneuver.  Try to scare everyone so they won't challenge your manhood, because deep down inside, you've got no game.

What could possibly be so terrifying (to them) that it justifies spending a combined $300 billion to protect a bunch of arm-chair generals and a sporting event?

After all, Usama bin Laden has been propagandized to death, supposedly the Taliban and al-Qaeda are disemboweled and on the run, victory has been declared in Iraq and noises are being made along those lines in Afghanistan.  Libya is in ruins.  Egypt is in chaos.  The Saudis are properly controlled.  Iran is a no-starter.  Who's the big baddie here?

Could it be...us?

When it comes down to it, that's the only possible enemy that is causing those big, bad bullies to crap in the jack-booted jodhpurs.  They are absolutely scared witless of Us, and the only thing they can think of doing is put on a massive show of firepower on the home turf.

What makes all this so incredibly pitiful is that both the US and Britain have been caught (most recently in Cleveland, OH) setting up false flag attacks on the Vaterland in order to justify all this bluster.  It's so absurd, yet so telling of the mindset behind all this.  One really has to pity such people who are so desperate as to attack themselves to prove that they are under attack.

In the US, they had the perfect plan.  They put up a fatally flawed Republican candidate who would have been easy to dispose of, what with the brewing financial scandals in his closet.  That would have left Obama the only choice come November, which is what they are so frantically trying to achieve.  But the Ron Paul phenomenon has slapped them upside the head.  They weren't prepared for the masses to take over the system and use it to their advantage.

Across Europe and in Britain, the same sentiments are being displayed.  In Greece, they recently threw out the equivalent of the RepubliDems.  In France, the far left robbed the halls of power from the far right.  In all cases, there's a strong undercurrent of anti-Israeli and anti-bankster sentiment.  BUT...

We the people aren't following the script.  We are supposed to give up and start shooting.  That would give them the impetus to do what they do best...bomb the hell out of everything.  Instead, we are using the their own system against them.  We are using their rules and their smoky backrooms and their precious control apparati, and turning it back on them.

Too many people are seeing through the veil now.  Great numbers of people have at least seen the rabbit hole and know it exists, even if they are afraid to tumble into it.  But we the people aren't playing according to their script.

They have been trying to push folks to open rebellion.  Unless we the people throw the first punch, they can't possibly justify the Big Slap-Down.  So they keep passing horrifying laws and creating ever more monkey-in-uniform agencies, and trashing the economies.  They are absolutely despondent that they can't get anyone to shoot at them.

They've spent decades putting the orders in place, building the internment camps and setting up Reichstag fires, doing anything they possibly can to push we the people into violent opposition.

Instead, we are voting and suing and ignoring their efforts.  We're like smart boxers dancing around, blythely forcing the champ to punch himself out before we land the winning left hook and walk away with the trophy.

And they can't stand it.

So they put on ever larger shows of force.  They cook up half-baked schemes to bomb bridges.  They squeeze our testicles a little harder at the airport.  Anything to get us to fight back.

The beauty of it is, if we the people keep this up, it will be their worst nightmare.  Our best weapons are pity and disdain.  All of their Grand Plans depend solely on our willingness to take it seriously.  If not, then they are exposed as the piteous little weasels they are: powerless, frightened, insecure.  If we continue to react in the least expected way, they will self-desctruct, unable to use the only real weapon they have - fear.

We the people are doing a great job, and it shows.  We are forcing their hand, not the other way around.  We are taking away their toys, like ballots and media and moral authority.  We need to continue with all haste.  We are winning now and we have to keep pushing the right buttons to keep them off balance.

Most importantly, we must maintain the moral superiority.  We can not initiate violence.  We are not compelled to obey immoral laws and orders.  And at all times, remember that these 'rulers' are pitiable creatures.

The saddest, most frightened people I have ever met are the richest.  Having everything, they have everything to lose.  They live out their lives haunted and motivated by the fear of not having what they think they own, of losing their perceived status and privilege.  And because they live every moment of their lives in terror, they try to bring all of us down to their level.

The only and best way to fight them is to take joy in showing up their weakness.  We shame them by happily NOT playing their game.  They only have status because they can force someone to bow to them.  Imagine how gauling it must be to them that we don't take them seriously.  Imagine how much more haunted they will be when they realize that we the people don't want what they have, and that we are not afraid of our shadows.

In the end, all this military crotch-grabbing is due to one simple fact - their power over we the people is fading.  All their best laid plans are coming to nothing.  The centuries of plotting and killing have been for nothing.  Think how sad that must be, and then show them the proper pity they deserve.  They are nothing but insecure bullies trying futilely to make us pay attention.  The poor little tykes.

They only lead because someone follows, and when we stop following, their kingdoms crumble.  For all the complexity and bluster, the answer is so simple.

For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.

Birth Of A Paradigm

As any student of Mind or veteran of hallucinogenic experience will tell you, 'reality' is little more than an opaque box or shell that we construct around ourselves consisting of the tangible and sensory elements of Universe.

The walls of this container are reinforced by our mentors and the systems we construct to serve as fences between Truth and 'reality'.  Without these boundaries, the world that we call 'every day life' could not exist.  Things like money and possessions, and law and order would simply cease to have meaning.

Many of us are happy to live within the confines of our containers.  Without them, we experience free-fall through a Universe that is far grander and vastly wider than anything we want to conceive.  When we allow our Minds to wander, there is some point where we cut off the experience, since we have crossed the boundary of safe haven.

One thought experiment that often teases the borders of our containers is to visualize traveling not as going somewhere, but rather as standing still and letting the world pass beneath us until we reach our destination.  It is simply a matter of moving your experience of travel from one perspective to another.  Both ways of viewing it are mathematically sound and reasonable.

What it shows us is that perception is only a matter of perspective.  How we view an event 'flavors' how we experience it.  What we choose to perceive as acceleration can also be seen as the rush of Universe passing by us as we slow to a stop.

Another process that is familiar to the student of Mind and hallucinogen is the conversion of the opaque into the transparent.  At some point, the walls of our containers begin to turn clear, something like those lenses that turn from dark to clear depending on light levels.  It's a lot like sitting in front of a large glass window when it is night outside and the lights inside are bright.  When you stare at the window from inside, you perceive nothing beyond it, and rather only see yourself reflected back.  But as light levels outside start to rise, your reflection slowly fades and the world beyond the window takes shape.

For most students, the first experiences with this sort of thing involve 'training wheels'.  We have to learn how to turn off the lights inside so that we can see beyond the windows.  A common form of 'training' is to use substances, such as peyote, mescalin, mushrooms, LSD, or any of a great number of other chemicals.  Be warned, though.  For thsoe who use these as recreation rather than tools, the experience is just as likely to be horrific.

Another tool is something called the 'magic circle' or 'spirit circle'.  This is commonly found among North American aborigines.  The student finds a deeply isolated space and clears an area with a diameter roughly equal to his/her height.  Ideally, the student brings nothing but spiritually 'clean' water into the circle, enough for three or four days.

In either case, the student at some point begins to experience a rather unique sensation.  The walls of the container begin to fade and the world beyond starts to take shape.  At first, it's like peering through a gauze curtain.  One can perceive things on the other side, but the view is obscured and hazy.  Slowly, though, the gauze begins to lift and the Universe takes shape.  One eventually sees that objects within our boxes are really only shells themselves, covering deeper mysteries.

It is at this point that words simply fail.  There is a vast body of language recordings that attempt to describe this experience, but all fall woefully short of the mark.  There are no words for things that are not within the realm of our common containers.  The final scene in the Matrix comes close to a visual metaphor for the effect, but not the substance of the experience.

With practice and proper guidance, one can learn to induce this state of Mind without tools or training wheels.  Eventually, one learns to see beyond the walls without effort at all.  Once one is aware of the Universe beyond our veils, it is very difficult to go back.  Perhaps this is the greatest fear we have preventing most of us from going there in the first place.

What all this is prelude to is that there seems to be a large body of texts pointing to an epoch in time when we will all experience these things, with or without our consent, and with or without assistance.  At some point, we must all reach a point variously called the Apocalypse or Golden Age or Spiritual Awakening.  This era exists in many traditions and cultures.  Without exception, though, they all speak of the failure of the veil to hide what is beyond most of our collective realms.

These traditions also speak of the great battle that will be mounted by those who do not want to go.  They are deeply invested in the status quo and to give that up will be to surrender their illusion of control over both Self and Other.  They can not imagine another Way, and thus refuse to acknowledge it, either for themselves, or for anyone else.

All the texts, though, refer to a point when refusal is no longer an option.  All humans must cross the barrier, whether willfully or not.  The Universe is far more powerful than our ability to resist.  The walls will fail regardless of our best efforts to maintain the illusion.  Many of us will suffer greatly as we claw and scrape along the borders of consciousness, trying desperately to remain in the cozy confines of Humanity's womb.

But birth is inevitable for all living creatures.  The chick inevitably grows beyond the capacity of the egg to contain it.  None of us can postpone the process.  Without birth, there can be no life, and without the current expansion of Mind, there can be no evolution.

As a species, we are outgrowing our ability to confine ourselves to the world of dimensions.  There are those who have spent untold resources in their effort to hinder, if not completely arrest, this eventuality.  They can not conceive of a Universe where all individuals are empowered beyond their ability to control the outcome.  They have invested centuries of effort to hide, discourage and disgrace those who have seen the Truth, and they are losing the battle to maintain their hegemony over Mankind.

The contractions have begun and eventually Humanity will crown.  After that, it is merely a matter of passing the shoulders, and the rest is just anti-climactic.  The process of birth is a battle between the forces pressing onward, and those resisting.  In every case, the resistance will and does fail, because without that ultimate failure there would be no existence.  In fact, all life is based on the failure of Death to contain it.

As you scan today's headlines, see if your can't discern the birth pangs.  See if you can perceive the veil and the glimpses of the Beyond.  See if you yourself are prepared for the transition.  That it is happening is without doubt.  It is visible everywhere to the student.  The water has broken and the contractions are coming harder and faster.  The barrier between inner and outer is dilating.  Soon, a cold, bright New World will replace the warmth and darkness of our nascent cell.

You can clearly see the forces at work.  Those trying to maintain the current paradigm are conceptually opposed to those already exploring the new realm.  Anything that stands against the inevitable is an enemy of Life.  After all, the only way to perfectly preserve something is to kill it and mount it.  Otherwise, the thing will continue to grow and evolve.

The Ultimate Question then, is which side are you on?  Do you root for the side opposing change?  Or are you working to ease the transition?  All points of view are merely subsets of one or the other of the two camps.  At some point, sooner than later, we will all be forced to choose sides, and will necessarily take the consequences either way.  One side has a future, the other does not.  It is up to our discernment to decide which is what.

One thing is certain, though.  If the side of Darkness was not deathly afraid of Truth, if would not feel compelled to make 'training wheels' illegal.

In The Course Of Human Events

So, here I was, scanning the headlines from around the globe, as is my wont after a long day.  Suddenly, I got this overwhelming feeling that the Revolution has begun.

Some time back, I wrote about the feeling that we were all waiting on a Texas norther.  They blow though with a literal wall of blackness.  In front of them, it's hot and still.  Flies gather thick as blankets on the backs of cows.  The air is nearly malleable and hard to breathe.  It's fluid like oatmeal.

Then instantly, the sky turns yellow-green and the wind howls like a Wilhelm Scream.  The rain falls as if sprayed from fire hoses, and the wind carries is sideways.  The smell of ozone and a knife-like chill hit you like a slap upside the head.

That's what it feels like right now. 

I'm not sure what exactly is causing this feeling.  Maybe it's Sarkozy's slow-motion swift kick in the ass.  Maybe it's Ron Paul winning a new state every other day now, despite the LSM ignoring the tidal wave of Republican chairpersons and committees and delegates being caused by Paulian true believers.

Or could it be the long-anticipated armed troops in US neighborhoods?  Or that the Man O' Peace had to sneak into Afghanistan under cover of darkness to give a 15 minute speech on how he personally killed Usama bin Ladin...a man already dead for 10 years?  Or could it be Bolivia nationalizing the Spanish power grid?

Perhaps its the general sense of disgust almost everyone seems to be expressing against all governments everywhere.  Or NATO's invasion of Chicago.  It could be that someone was actually arrested for the BP slaughter of the Gulf of Mexico.  Or that Californians are starting to see radiation through the fog of Mother Nature.

Most likely, it is a combination of all these things.  It's like the moments before a tsunami.  The ocean disappears while across the horizon, a wall of water seems to be growing larger by the second.  Or a movie version of a boiler start to blow.  You see it puff up and the seams begin to pop and steam shoot out of every crook and cranny.

I really hard to get 7 billion people riled up all at once.  The used to call America the "sleeping giant".  They told us that in high school history.  Pearl Harbor woke the sleeping giant.  Well, it seems that something is stirring every human on the planet now.  You might have noticed how these color revolutions are starting to go the wrong way.  Seems that folks aren't happy with just changing butts in chairs anymore.  Now they want real, honest to God change...of Everything.

I guess when it comes right down to it, the feeling is coming from watching the whole Ron Paul ordeal.  No one was prepared for a large number of people who have figured out that the voting means absolutely nothing.  It's the smoke-filled back rooms where the real power is.

These people care absolutely nothing about voting and media and all the other mind-control techniques.  They've studied the problem for a long time and found the chink in the armor. 

Many of the American states have a two-tiered election process for president.  One tier is the actual lever-pulling vote, which hasn't meant of thing for decades.  It's just a circus for the media to make everyone think they were choosing candidates.

The action is in the second tier.  These are the caucuses that begin after the polls close.  Each precinct meets to choose delegates to the district convention, which meets to choose delegates to the state convention, which meets to choose delegates to the national convention, which chooses the candidate for president.  It's a month's long process and much too slow for the media or most couch potatoes.

The PTW have controlled, for all intents and purposes, the world because no one would get off their Blessed Assurances and go through the caucus system, other than the jerks who have run the country (and the world) into the dirt.

The Paulians are like the Occupy movement, except they aren't wasting their time on things like protests, which have no effect whatsoever.  Instead, they are taking over party committees and chairmanships.  They are storming the state party leaderships and implanting themselves in the positions where their efforts can actually change things.

See, Ron Paul isn't the real focus.  He's a rallying point to be sure, but this is a revolution of ideas.  The people he has activated want a change at the most fundamental levels of society.  It's not about butts in chairs.  For that, you can look at the empty campaigns of ObamaRomney.

Those latter two are just meat puppets.  They have no philosphies and believe in nothing but their own aggrandizement.  Obama is a complete fabrication, from his birth certificate to his 'memoir' girlfriend who never was.  Romney is a used car salesman who has chopped human beings up over a lunch deal and was sipping martinis in Martha's Vineyard by sundown.

Paul doesn't talk like a politician.  His ideas don't fit in a ten-second sound byte.  He doesn't present new curtains for the same old windows.  He's pumping deep, fundamental change.  Not more war, but a complete recall of the US military.  Instead of an endless precession of 'czars', a slashing of entire Cabinet-level departments.  Not just raising or lowering cash handouts to buy friends, but cutting off the free-flow crack altogether.  Not just massaging the Federal Reseave and 'monetary policy,' shutting the doors and sending the IRS packing.  Oh, and by golly, if watching all that go on makes you want to spark up, well by all means do so.

And it's not just America.  It's happening in Europe, where the PTW are trying desperately to steer everyone into one of the controlling parties, but people aren't buying it.  Greece will have elections shortly, and you can bet things will get a thorough dusting off.  France...ditto.  In Egypt, they still aren't done.  As soon as it looks like the same old jerks are taking over again, the people get right back out on the streets.  Syria.  Iraq,  Afghanistan.  China.  Vietnam.  Indonesia.  All over South America.

For those of us who have been watching and waiting for years to see this day, it is here.  The Revolution has begun.  It's not on the radar yet.  The media are doing their best to hide it and isolate the people of the world.  But the tides have shifted and they aren't going to stop now.  In fact, everything the PTW do from here on to stop the wave will only make it larger and more powerful.

It's not going to be fast, though in hindsight, it will have appeared to have swept the globe in minutes.  There's going to be a lot of pain.  No one will get to the other side without a story to tell.  The Paulians are a microcosm of what's going on across the entire planet.

You might want to get a better stance and grab onto something.  Texas northers are wild and exciting, but they aren't without the occasional property damage.

Folks have finally caught sight of the slaughter house and realized they've been following a Judas goat.