Achy Breaky Psyche

Generally, I have no interest in pop culture orgies, such as the recent MTV Video Music Awards.  They are pointless exercises in frustration that so much money and time is wasted on so little talent.  But something caught my attention this year.  The media has been fixated on some yutz called Miley Cyrus.  When the media do this kind of focus, there is usually an important message behind the event that the Hidden Hand wants us to be sure and note.

At first, it just pissed me off that the media was devoting so much space to this Miley Cyrus character, when the nation should be in sober reflection on the fact that it is about to sacrificially slaughter a whole bunch more brown people.  Normally, I would write this kind of thing off as simple distraction, but there were just too many weird symbols around this particular character.  So I bit the bullet and dialed up some clips of her performance, as well as tried to get a handle on just who this character was.

Turns out Miley Cyrus is the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus.  For those who don't follow the country music scene, Billy Ray is a good ol' Kentucky boy who hit it big time with a song called "Achy Breaky Heart," which I happen to despise.  But that's beside the point.

Now, anyone who knows the entertainment business knows that to become as big as Billy Ray and his daughter, you sell your soul - pretty much literally.  I refer folks my age to Bob Dylan's comments in an interview.

It seems that the price for Billy Ray's fame was his offspring.  Miley rose to fame as a character called Hanna Montana, which was a Disney mind-control product in the past decade.  From what I gather, a normal, red-blooded American girl had a secret identity as a rock star in that particular pile of rubbish.

Despite being just another pile of Disney crap, the Hanna Montana phenomenon hooked millions of teen girls, which Disney excels at doing (see the whole princess line-up).  As per formula, Disney's signature products hook young girls with the vaguely wholesome fantasy of exceptionalism and the 'prince to the rescue' garbage (the prince being of darkness, of course).

True to Disney format, Miley Cyrus was built up as an 'Everygirl' who, in spite of being exceptional (a singer in this case), still has no identity without a prince to rescue her.  Throughout the Hanna Montana series, there is a running theme that she cannot be complete without a prince to rescue her.  This formula is like mainlining for a junkie when it comes to teen girls.

In the American hero-worship and celebrity cult context, all those teen girls invested their egos in Hanna's quest, just as males are driven to invest their self-worth in sports heros.  In both cases, once the heroes reach a certain status, they are completely debased.  Their moral fiber is totally unwound and all the folks who have tied their egos to the personality see that being wholesome and upright is pointless and they should just give in to debauchery, just like their heroes.

The process is also a means to destroy innocence and create cognitive dissonance in the audience, which then makes them suseptible to whatever message you want to implant.  In Miley's case, the performances established a Master/slave relationship with the 'prince' character.  It is intended that the Miley audience is meant to serve the desires of whomever the Hidden Hand wants.

The girls who are ego-attached to Miley were also meant to see the teddy-bear t-shirt with the classic "one eye closed" - the All-Seeing Eye.  This sensitizes the girls in the audience to 'follow the bear', which is an identity code for pedophiles.  The All-Seeing Eye, of course, is the command and control structure that feeds this sickness.

So, what folks witnessed was the classic cognitive dissonance effect, where innocent Miley was shockingly debased before our very eyes.  This opened a hole in the psyches of millions of young girls into which the message was placed to follow people displaying the 'one-eyed bear,' and to submit completely to these 'princes' when they come along.

Following this ritual in plain sight, the media was enlisted to keep the process going to ensure complete implantation.  By distilling the performance to its most bebased moments and repeating it over and over in multiple outlets, it ensured that the mental disconnect was complete and that the desired message was thoroughly cemented in.

It's the same process that was used on a global scale on 9/11.  First, the audience is shocked by incomprehensible images.  The images are repeated constantly to ensure the deepest possible damage.  Then, the audience is primed to receive whatever message you throw at them.  In the case of 9/11, the message was 'perpetual war' and 'follow the leader'.  In the case of Miley, it was 'submit' and 'being good is pointless'.

These types of things are done all the time - murderous footballers, steroid-enhanced baseballers, transgender military whistleblowers.  There's a hero for everyone.  No matter what your particular belief system is, you are fed a hero, the hero is debased before your eyes, and you surrender to hopelessness and subservience.

Any time you feel shock or dismay at something you see in the media, immediately turn off everything and get as far away from any media as you can.  These things are deliberate attempts to implant messages in your subconscious, and unless you are adept at recognizing it and fighting the process, your best option is to shut down the data stream.

Most people have no idea how powerful the media are and how they are manipulated every moment of every day for their entire lives.  The media have become such an integral part of our lives, yet there is no systematic education on how they operate, and more importantly, how they can be abused.

A great number of people experience withdrawl when they shut off the media streams.  It's an addiction, just like any drug you care to list.  Somewhere in all the data streams to your mind, a hero is being built that will later be debased to allow the Hidden Hand to jack into your sub-conscious.  To see the process in action, keep an eye on Edward Snowden.  He is likely being set up as a hero for the anti-surveillance crowd, and when he's taken down, it will allow the implantation of pro-government snooping messages.

Whatever you do, stop investing time in the hero-worship and celebrity cult.  In every case, it is nothing more than a way to drill a hole into your psyche and allow access to your deepest levels.  Learning how these things are done gives you some protection, but you have to be on constant guard if you are a big TeeVee viewer.  You best bet is just stay away from it all as much as possible, especially when there are 'shocking' events.  Those are the most dangerous.

Poor Billy Ray.  A terrible price for his "Achy Breaky Heart".

Of Bombs And Bullies

Lately there has been a marked increase in the number of hand-wringing articles on the subject of Americans leaving the US and the jump in those renouncing their citizenship in the past year.  As one of my acquaintances back home noted, "Hell, even the wetbacks are swimming back!"

The answer is both simple and obvious.  The same reason that many Germans left Fascist Germany - they don't agree with the politics and can't stand the culture.

One prime example of why Americans are bugging out is the Syria fiasco.  The US has for many years started wars for no better reasons than commerce and hand-picking successor regimes.  If other nations pulled half the crap that the US does in foreign countries, the people would be up in arms.  Yet, they can't fathom why the world increasingly hates America, and why so many folks are getting the hell out.

Americans are so steeped in propaganda from the age of 1 that they just can't imagine why anyone would want to leave the country.  They can't conceive of people not wanting government shoved into every orifice of their being around the clock.  It doesn't compute that folks would disagree with a belligerent foreign policy.  And surely no one would disagree with a centuries-long habit of killing large numbers of brown people.

Americans think that America is the greatest country on Earth.  They can't separate the brilliant founding ideals of the nation from the actual practice.  They think, "Hey, we invented the light bulb, the telephone and the automobile, not to mention landing on the Moon!"  Doesn't occur to most of them that the last great achievement the nation had was almost 50 years ago.

Hello, America...wake up.  G. W. Schrub made Edison's lamp illegal in favor of Frenchman Alexandre Edmond Becquerel's fluorescent lamps.  Swedish and Japanese companies make the most popular telephones today.  Detroit has declared bankruptcy and American cars are hardly made in the US anymore.  And NASA no longer has a manned space program.  The handful of astronauts it sends to the space station hitch rides with Russia - who could pull the plug on US manned access to space because of Syria.  Furthermore, the US hasn't returned a man to the Moon since the early 70s.

Add to the severe economic decline of America its moral and ethical decay over the past 60 years.  The US has gone from a position of moral and economic authority immediately following WW2 to a third-rate bully that ignores international law, violates the national sovereignty of nearly every other nation on Earth, and treats its own citizenry like criminals with an a priori assumption of guilt.

America no longer has anything to offer a person of conscience.  The various levels of government in the US systematically violates every aspect of the individual's dignity and security.  The citizen carries a massive tax burden to pay for unauthorized debt and unconstitutional wars.  The police have gotten out of hand in addition to now being just one of a dozen agencies that all feel at liberty to violate human rights at will and with impunity.  Finally, any attempt to redress grievances with the government are treated with derision and disdain by said government.

So, what exactly are the selling points for life in the US?  Because from where I stand, there are none at all.

In fact, the current saber-rattling in Syria makes me all the more certain that I made the right choice to leave the US.  I can not in any way support the military adventurism and the economic interventionism practiced by the US government.  I can not abide the way that nation destroys families through an educational system and meddlesome agencies whose purposes are to undermine parental authority and transfer family loyalty to the state.  Finally, I vehemently disagree with Washington's on-going policy of military interventionism on the flimsiest of justifications as a means of boosting profits for favored corporations.

The fact that Americans are asking such silly questions as, "Why Are Americans Leaving The US" shows the willful ignorance of the American populace.  I say willful because the internet offers dozens on alternatives to the propaganda outlets at home.  That they prefer CNN and Fox to real information shows the depth of the ignorance and/or the support that so many profess to their government.

Americans also display their corruption and complicity through repeated election of the same corrupt politicians, despite all evidence of the depravity of said politicians, based solely on being bought off by government pork projects.  If this is not the ultimate cynical act of people who worship their own corruption, then nothing is.

If Americans had a real desire to change things, they could.  There are 300 million citizens versus a few thousand minions.  The only excuse for not changing things is willful participation in the moral decay of the nation, with the possible addition of laziness and greed as additional motives.

The exodus of citizens from America highlights the hopelessness of having ethics and integrity in a nation of ignorance and degeneracy.  About the only position with a future in America is gang member, as recent reports demonstrate.  Additionally, the only prop left under the American economy is invading, killing and destroying other nations.  That is no basis for a healthy and viable future.

The intellectuals and business people who left Germany with the rise of Fascism were the only ones left to rebuild that country after the entire Earth massed to destroy it.  Likewise, those folks bailing out of America today may end up being the only hope for rebuilding that country once the rest of the world has tired of its hubris.  And that day may be coming soon.

The pretension of a gas attack in Syria as a way to justify (on the loosest of grounds) American military interventionism in yet another country may be the last straw.  The world has grown weary of America's regime changes and death for democracy campaigns.  The dominoes are decidedly lined up against the US should it decide to strike Syria.  The first casualty in the war against the resurrection of Fascism will likely be Israel.  The world is little fooled, at least any more, by the antics of the Zionists whose habit is to break a stick over its neighbors' heads, then run to hide behind Uncle Sugar.

The bully always gets his comeuppance and the US is no exception.  The American people would do well to read the tea leaves of history to see what the future holds.  A mass exodus of citizens is only one of many signs now visible.

Seventy years ago, it nearly destroyed our civilization to put one regime in a country the size of Texas back in its place.  What will it take to contain the ambitions and decadence and the US?

INTERVIEW: Courtney Brown on Radio Far Side

Dr. Brown joins us again to examine the results of the Climate Project 2008-2013, in which remote viewers noted massive climate changes, tsunamis and meteorites by June 1, 2013.  What went wrong?  Or did it go right?

We also discuss the Farsright Institute's latest project: Atlantis.  Did an ancient high-tech human civilization destroy itself because of government secrecy?  It's a fascinating ride through time that makes for a chilling cautionary tale for modern humans.

The conversation spans time and space, the new physics, Plato, Copernicus, the Toba Event in Indonesia 70,000 years ago, multiple universes and timelines, the scientific method, and of course remote viewing.  Join us for a fascinating conversation about near-misses, giant explosions and deflating planets.  It will challenge your perceptions and the history you learned in school.  It doesn't get much better than this.

Dr. Brown is a mathematician and social scientist who teaches in the Department of Political Science atEmory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Independent of his work at the university, he is also the leading scholar on the subject of "remote viewing" as it is done using procedures that were developed by the United States military and used for espionage purposes, or procedures that are derivative of those methodologies.
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Previous Interview with Dr. Brown
The Farsight Institute
Atlantis
Robert Schoch
Ooparts
DA14
Chelyabinsk meteor

Thank you for tuning in.  We hope you found this edition of Radio Far Side entertaining and enlightening.  We ask that you pass a link to your networks, and if you find this program worth your while, consider dropping a coin in the BitCoin bucket to support our efforts.

Don't forget all the other quality programs in the Radio Far Side archive found by clicking the tab at the top of the page.

Sampai jumpa!

Slow Death Of Medievalism

To start off today, we should address the recent news that a school district in southern Sumatera (that's in Indonesia for the geographically impaired) has initiated virginity tests for female high school students.

According to the head of the school board at the center of this controversy, he was misquoted when referring to a single incident in which a high schooler was rounded up in a prostitution sting.  He supposedly told the parents that they should get a virginity test to dispel the rumors and accusations.  However, the Kompas news service quoted him as saying this would become a school policy and that a budget allocation had been put into the 2014 school district budget.  Keep in mind that Kompas is a generally reliable news source and part of the Gramedia group of media outlets here in Indonesia.

The school board head has vehemently denied the quote as being out of context.  The national education minister was quoted yesterday as saying 'this is a really bad idea'.  It's stirred up a bunch of debate and the plan, if it ever was a plan, is not likely to be enacted.  It is true that some groups here in Indonesia still hold rather medieval notions about things like virginity, but for the most part, the general populace is enlightened enough to see that this is a really stupid idea.
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Now on to other, and much more important, subjects.

It is becoming really obvious that the global populace is being manipulated.  Folks are separating into intractable ideological camps that are becoming increasingly bellicose.  Ancient hatreds and prejudices are being fanned into blazing flames.

There is hope, though.  It seems that a great number of people have seen through the recent reports of Syrian gas attacks.  Russia has unequvicably stated that it was the Syrian 'rebels' that committed the attack as a false flag.  One also senses a growing skepticism regarding anything the Israelis say, which is a healthy response, as that country has a long history of provoking hatreds in the region to keep folks busy attacking each other and not focusing on the rampant criminality of the Israeli regime.

Over in the US, 'someone' keeps trying to stir up racial hatreds.  It seems, though, that a lot of thinking people are seeing through that effort.  The fact that the mainstream media (MSM) is losing its stranglehold on the public agenda, as shown by the cratering audience numbers, is preventing them from beating the racial war drums too loudly.

In Egypt, the CIA-installed Muslim Brotherhood has been soundly cast out by yet another/the ongoing revolution.  Obviously, the Egyptians are not as bovine as the Western intelligence organizations believe.  Most folks haven't noticed, apparently, that the current Egyptian revolution doesn't have a name or a color.  That is a prime indicator that this one is NOT a Soros funded, CIA operated effort, but rather a grass-roots, genuine house-cleaning.

In the EU, efforts to collapse national governments have also failed.  Despite everything done to the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain), the Hidden Hand just can't seem to get a good shooting war started.  This shows a remarkable restraint on the part of the people in general, and their ability to see through the gross manipulation of their cultures and societies.

Globally, efforts by the Hidden Hand to drive a wedge between regions and hemispheres are backfiring.  Instead of creating strife and chaos, the effort has caused several nations to come closer together and to establish their own system, commonly referred to as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).  The BRICS are forming mutually supportive organizations, making deep inroads into Africa and South America through investment and trade, and even seeting up their own banking system.

The response of the Hidden Hand has been to try to collapse the Asian markets and currencies.  They are doing everything they can to introduce strife and chaos into the BRICS relationships and cause social unrest across the region.

The lack of 'appropriate' response to the Hidden Hand's manipulations has them terrified.  The Rothschild/Rockefeller banking clans (RRBC) are quickly finding themselves marginalized and unable to use the same old tricks that have made them fabulously rich over the past several centuries.  Furthermore, they are at odds among themselves over how to proceed.  Increasingly, they are also under attack by rising power blocs within their own sphere of influence.  The biggest threat is coming from the rise of their own Creature - the Intelligence Bloc (IB).

To see what's happening, we have to go back to the rise of the Rotschilds.  When Napoleon and Wellington met at Waterloo, the Rotschilds had been funding both sides, with the Continental Clan funding Napoleon and the UK clan funding Wellington.  No matter who won, the Rotschild family would come out on top.  As the cherry on top, the Rotschilds had a well-oiled communications network.  The UK clan was able to find out that Wellington won a full 24 hours before the rest of the country.  So they spread the rumor that Britain had lost.  The markets cratered.  The Rotschilds bought up everything at a discount.  When the real news came, their shares rocketed, they sold at a massive profit and have sat on the world's financial system ever since.

What has happened is that the RRBC's information network has learned all the tricks and is now going independent.  The IB has supercomputers that can front-run the RRBC's front-running computers.  The IB gets the news before the RRBC and can get in the trades before the banksters can position themselves.  In other words, Frankenstein has created a Creature, and now the Created is surpassing the Creator.

The RRBC is trying to kill off its creation using people like Assange and Snowden, but the Creature, having access to the Creator's email and phone calls, is able to head off the attacks before the RRBC can get the plans going.

The only weapon the RRBC has is financial control, but the IB has created its own financial system and using its supercomputers, has made itself fabulously wealthy and beyond the control of the banksters' ancient system.

As Richard Dolan, Joseph Farrell and others have carefully documented, a completely hidden system of finance was established after WW2, using Nazi and Japanese gold.  That system was set up by the RRBC to give them a huge pile of money and derivatives that didn't appear on any financial reports or bottom lines or budgets.  They established agencies like the CIA and NSA to administer the system and keep them at the center of the loop.  However, those agencies have gone rogue and taken away the very Iron Fist that the RRBC has used gain their dominant position.

As a consequence, the world is working backwards.  Everything the RRBC does to regain power is backfiring.  Their intricate networks of communications and finance have been usurped by their own Creatures.  Their usual tricks to create chaos and capitalize on it are failing and no one will react the way they are supposed to.

Since the RRBC are a bunch of inbred, silly old geezers who have used the same game for centuries, and surrounded themselves with yes-men and sycophants, they are unable to adjust and evolve.  They are too inbred and soft from years of privilege think creatively.  They have also surrounded themselves with people who have been carefully trained to see things only one way - their way.  So, when the game changed, they found themselves completely unable to react.  They cannot think creatively and their minions are incapable of acting independently.

We should not mistake the RRBC as being powerless, though.  They are not without weapons still, and like a dead bee, can still sting.  They have been too privileged for too long and they won't give up their vaunted positions without a Big Fight.  Furthermore, their Creatures are out of control and no one yet knows on whose side they will ultimately come down.  Will they run to the defense of their Creator?  Will they slide the knife in the back of the RRBC?  And with that kind of power, will they see themselves as still part of the rest of humanity, or will we be just annoyances keeping them from their destiny?

It is a very dangerous time.  On the one side is an intractable gang of thugs who have seen themselves as Rulers of Everything for a long time.  On the other side are a great number of unknown variables that are not only powerful enough to extract themselves from the control of the RRBC, but may also be powerful enough to achieve the final enslavement of humanity - a goal long sought by the banksters who now find themselves part of the enslaved.

There is nothing more dangerous than a cornered beast, and now there are a lot of cornered beasts in the world.  With every individual on Earth under attack from multiple angles, we can assume that some will start lashing out, as there is precious little space left to run away.  Not only will societies begin to erupt, but the very power structure itself is fighting for survival.

The future is always an unknown, but in normal times, it is at least predictable to a certain extent.  These, however, are not normal times.  The power structure which has run the world for centuries is dying.  The Creature it created to serve it is now out of hand, and is completely unknown in all of history.  The rules have changed forever and as individuals, we must rethink everything we have assumed to be true all our lives.

Now is the time for creative thinking.  It is the only way to survive what is coming.  All standard reactions are off the table.  Digging in and 'prepping' won't work.  It is imperative that we think 'outside the box', but to do that, we must remember that 'the box' is all of human history.  We can no longer trust any conventional answers, since there is already a counter-measure in place.

It's not that humanity has never faced this sort of crisis before, but we have never faced it on such a global scale, nor have we faced one that is unfolding with such blazing speed.  Expect the unexpected.

The Shocking Truth

Thousands dead in Iraq.  Thousands dead in Afghanistan.  Thousands dead in Palestine.  Thousands dead in Syria.  Thousands dead in Libya.  Thousands dead in Egypt.

And that's just what the US is responsible for in the past few years.

Oops!  But what's this?!  One Australian baseball player dead in Oklahoma and America is SHOCKED?!  (that's what Drudge says, and he runs the world, right?)

Yup, once again Americans have their heads so far up their shoots that they are shocked by one senseless murder, but not thousands (bordering on millions really).  Yup, America's hand-picked assassins across North Africa and the Middle East are slaughtering dozens of folks a day, but don't let that SHOCK you.  No siree...be sure and focus all your attention on one senseless murder in Oklahoma.  That's the important story.

Not only does this story show up the tremendous hypocrisy and ignorance of the American people (except you...you're smart because you read this column), but it is such an obvious psy-op that even my dense brain can see through it.

This whole thing -- likely the set up, but especially the media coverage -- is nothing more than the photographic opposite of Trayvon Martin.  This is a Balkanization operation.  Keep the worthless, ignorant worms fighting each other and they will forget to focus on the Big Picture.  Keep the blacks and whites at each other, keep both of them fighting the Mexicans, and keep all of them hating the Jews because that furthers the Zionist agenda in the Middle East.

If I weren't so damn angry, I'd be humming the old Tom Lehrer tune, "National Brotherhood Week."  Why am I angry?  Because Americans are so used and they can't see past the fuzz in their navels to get it.  As a nation and people, Americans are shocked that a group of kids would randomly kill someone when their leaders randomly kill millions annually and no one cares.

You see, I remember the 60s, when college students were being mowed down by National Guardsmen because they dared to question the war culture of America.  I remember when Richard Nixon got in trouble for carpet-bombing neutral countries like Cambodia and Laos.  Now Obama can order drone bombings worldwide in any nation and nobody pays attention...until a couple of kids shoot a random gthere's uy in a random neighborhood in a random place like Oklahoma.

Oh sure, Americans are shocked by Sandy Hook, but a drone attack on a wedding party gets complete apathy.  Aurora?  Now there's a shocker.  But soldiers doing the same thing in Bagdad?  Yawn.  To an American, the only world they can see is their backyard and the only death they register is their neighbor.  All the horrors committed by their sons and daughters in their name in countries whose names they can't pronounce in places they can't find on a map are meaningless.  Such empty souls.

We won't even go into the part about America not having fought a 'legal' war since WW2 without a peep from the American people, nor especially those in uniform sworn to protect and defend the Constitution.  Obviously, they are defending a piece of paper and not the rules and regulations within it.

Yes, America, you are shocked by a wealthy athlete being gunned down by a bunch of bored kids, but no one will feel the least twinge of conscience for having contributed to a culture of casual death and illegal war and useless government schools and empty, idle youth.  No one will feel guilty for having let their society go down the tubes.  No one will feel the least bit responsible for having pissed away the chance to make things different.

Quick, write a letter to your Congresscritter to complain about the senseless violence.  Grouse with your buddies over a happy-hour beer about how "this here country is goin' to Hell".  If you're feeling really energetic, sign a petition that you haven't read to demand that guns be confiscated, forgetting that it is bored, amoral kids that kill, not guns.

Yes, America!  Be SHOCKED!  Then completely ignore the real problems and jump up and down about emotional hot buttons that the media manipulate on behalf of your masters.  Pretend that it's not your fault, but that of a bunch of unaccountable bureaucrats that you thought were doing something about these problems so you can sit on your fat ass in front of the TeeVee.

Be SHOCKED! America.  Not because a bunch of empty, asnine youths randomly killed a man on the street.  Be shocked that you haven't done anything all your life to stop the death culture of which you are a part.  Be shocked that it has gotten so far out of hand and you haven't sobered up and wiped the drool off your lips long enough to notice.

That's right America, you are just as guilty as those kids.  You have pulled the trigger or driven the get-away car or written your IRS check.  One way of the other, there is so much blood on your hands that to be shocked by the murder of a random guy in a random neighborhood in random Oklahoma is just plain hypocritical.  There's no other way out of this one.

Don't blame the guns, or the laws, or the schools.  Walk straight over to the mirror and look into the eyes of the guilty party.  There's no escaping this one.

In fact, America, the whole world is shocked.  We're shocked that you are shocked at the chickens coming home to roost.

The Creature

"I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch— the miserable monster whom I had created. He`held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs."  -- Frankenstein; or The New Prometheus by Mary (Percy) Shelley

And so it is that we humans always come to see our creations.  We spend endless hours in pursuit of god-like status, desiring to create perfection that will in turn worship us as gods.  Yet, when we succeed and gaze into the eyes of our creations, we are repulsed and terrified.

Just because we can do a thing, it does not follow that we should.  It is a lesson Mankind has been taught repeatedly, and yet we persist in diving into the abyss with every passing thought, only to be repulsed by the result.

 Humans, in our boundless hubris, have always imagined we can improve upon what has taken the Universe billions of years to perfect.  We look at ourselves and think, "I could be stronger, or smarter, or faster.  If I just tweak this or modify that, I will achieve perfection!"  The problem is that we are mired in materialism, seeing nothing beyond flesh and blood.  We have forgotten that perfection is intangible and cannot exist on the plane of the physical.

Humans continue to seek Utopia despite repeated failures over thousands of years.  It is unobtainable by any standard outside the individual.  It cannot exist where two or more humans come together, since at that point there are overlapping ideas and ideals.

Every human thinks their childhood was less than perfect, so they strive to raise their children in the "perfect" way, only to find that the children are individuals with their own ideas about perfection.  The desire for perfection is so deep that wars have been fought to force one people to adopt another's ideal, much like bringing 'democracy' or 'communism' to the world.

From Plato through Dante to Thoreau, poets and idealists have sought perfection.  What they find is that one man's perfection is another's hell.  Each culture chooses its aesthetic and never the twain shall meet.  And even within a culture and the individual, the ideal changes over time, like fashion and seasons.  It's a case of greener grass just over the neighbor's fence.


Like Dr. Frankenstein, though, no matter how much we strive, no matter how lofty our ideals, no matter the drive of our ego, once we have achieved what we thought was perfect, we find that we are back to where we started.  It is a vicious circle or unending strife and strive.

And so it is with our would-be kings.  The closer they come to achieving their dreams, the more they will be repulsed by what they have created, because withing every creation is the spark of individualism.  No man nor any group of men can ever be subdued and molded into an external image of perfection.  Each person is ultimately self-perfecting within the confines of their existence, but ultimately the individual can only exist with other perfections.  It cannot subdue or submit for more than the shortest amount of time.

Even now there are many who turn to machines or genetics to 'perfect' the human existence.  I cannot last and it will never succeed.  Perfection doesn't lie in the flesh or the genome.  Those are only vehicles by which the perfect part of us imagines this reality.

The Commanche have an interesting saying: You can change the vessel, but the water inside is still the same.  All transhumanist and genetic engineering is doomed to failure.  So many people are focusing on the vessel and not the contents.  Even if the vessel were to be perfected -- an impossible task since everyone's idea of perfection is different -- the water inside is still the same.  When you consider those people who are said to have achieved perfection, they did not do so with bionic limbs, Google glass and genetic enhancements.  They did it by focusing on the contents of their vessels.

Realizing the ultimate failure of those who would force their ideals of perfection on the rest of us doesn't release us from responsibility.  They will harm a great many people with their lunatic experiments and for that reason alone, we must stop them.  They will not practice on themselves.  Rather they will use our vessels to reach their goals, then turn the processes to their benefit.

All the modifications to our selves and our world will never change anything about the human condition.  The real perfection of our selves is not something you can inject, modify or enhance.  It cannot be placed on an operating table nor imaged under a microscope.  It cannot be defined by the senses nor pointed to as a goal.  It cannot be designed, built or painted.

Perfection is a state of mind, an inner realization that we are already perfect.  We can pour the water of our being into any vessel we choose.

Perfection is the sound of one hand clapping.

Mu.

Protecting Our Precious Bodily Fluids

The question is not whether we can do a thing, but whether we should.

History is replete with good ideas and bad outcomes.

Nuclear energy had great promise as an idea.  Boundless electricity from rocks.  No smoke and relatively quiet.  Yet, one would be hard-pressed to find a room full of people who would say it was a great idea.  With Fukushima spreading radiation planet-wide, British nuclear waster poisoning the North Sea and a No Man's Land around Chernobyl, it's safe to say that maybe that technology was not such a great idea.

There was a time when TeeVee seemed like a God-send.  Great literature and drama could be democratized.  Debates among the best and brightest could be brought live to our homes.  People could vicariously experience history as it happens.  Yet, in hindsight, it probably wasn't such a great idea.  The vast majority of TeeVee content is mindless rubbish.  Marketers have learned to manipulate people's behavior and opinions without most knowing it is being done.  Instead of elevating humanity to new heights, it has rather debased the masses with vile pablum.

At one time, cell phones seemed like a great idea.  One could contact just about anyone from just about anywhere.  Yet the result has been social gatherings where people do nothing but tap or talk into their phones completely oblivious to those around them.  Employers can contact and track employees around the clock and around the globe.  Government agencies can record our most inane conversations and activate our phone cameras and microphones at will to listen in on our lives.

Great promises.  Lousy results.

The problem is, humanity has this really bad habit of diving off cliffs without checking the waters below.  By the time we see the rocks, we're already balled up on top of them.  The only consideration with new technologies is how fast one can generate a profit, not what the short- and long-term consequences of the techology will be.

And that brings us to the latest Big Deal: genetics and transhumanism.

If someone came to me tomorrow and said they could not only restore my eyesight, but give me greatly enhanced senses by mucking around with my DNA, it would be very tempting to accept.  If they could also cure multiple sclerosis and regenerate my knees, ending decades of pain in weeks, I'd probably jump at the chance.  Just a couple of questions, though:

What effect will tinkering with my DNA have on any potential progeny?  Could viruses that invade my body at the cellular level be mutated by any exposure to my upgraded DNA?  And what about the environment?  After all, I shed skin and hair, leave behind saliva, oils and other bodily fluids, and intermix with my environment in any number of very intimate ways.

We are well into new technologies now that have and will continue to have very profound consequences, far beyong just giving a few folks cancer or causing their hair to fall out.  We're talking generations and possibly permanent changes that could cause the species to cease.  Yet, we are amazingly nonchalant and unconcerned about such matters.

At the root of all our problems is the culture of immediate gratification that we have built our society around.  We have been trained like show dogs to herd in the direction of anything new with lots of bells and flashy lights.  Like addicts, we crave a fix of novelty without any thought to tomorrow, much less to long-term survival.  We casually toss away our iFad5 for iFad6 without considering the materials and resources that went into creating something that is still viable and usable.

Oh sure, it sounds like such a great idea to tinker with food crops and increase yields or resistance to disease, but what is it doing to the human race and to the entire biosphere of the planet?  Nothing exists here in isolation.  A change to even the smallest part will have greatly multiplied effects in the future.

If you believe in evolution, as a great many people do (out of ignorance), then you believe that all extant life is the result of billions of years of mutations in DNA, one at a time, with some mutations causing death and others adding advantages.  Yet, here we are purposefully mutating entire genomes in dozens of species with no concern whatsoever to what happens millions of years from now.  After all, we will have made our profit and long since passed on, so who cares, right?

Who cares if we add spider silk to goat's milk or bio-luminescence to spinach?  It serves our purpose right now.  Who cares if we add shut-off genes to corn to increase profits?  It won't harm humans, even though we eat the corn and absorb its very essence into our physical beings, and it keeps investors happy.

We have become such selfish and myopic people.  We have no concern for anything past our next pleasure fix.  We marvel at our technological achievements and yet use them for such inane and ridiculous things.  What good is global instantaneous communications if all we have to say is, "At the mall," or "Prado makes me gag...BARF!"  What good is high-yield corn this year if next year the field is barren because the anti-biotic genes in the corn killed all the beneficial bacteria in the soil?  What good is smoke-free energy from rocks if we poison the entire planet for the next 50,000 years?

We are all suffering from a kind of self-destructive insanity.  Our culture is so infused with the idea that someone or something will come along to save us from ourselves that we happily shit in our nest because it gives us instant relief, not thinking that at some point we will get E. Coli.

In the collective, we are like a giant child, completely unable to control our impulses and ready to pitch a mighty fit if we don't receive every demand on the instant.  And perhaps that is by design.  Perhaps a pernicious few have decided to sacrifice all of humanity so that they can live rich and lavish lifestyles.

It seems that General Jack D. Ripper was on to something.  Maybe we are victims, but in claiming victimhood, we are in danger of laying down and doing nothing to stop it.  In any event, it can't hurt to listen to the General's reasoning:

General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.

Just because something is NEW doesn't mean it is necessarily IMPROVED.  A little circumspection on the part of our species is long past due.

After all, how much more free time do you have now with all those labor-saving devices in your home?  And if you conclude that you have more now, then what are you doing with that extra time?  Texting your bathroom habits?  Watching TeeVee?  Have you used any other it to improve your or anyone else's life?

It's probably the fluoride.  Seemed like such a great idea back in the day.

Welcome To The Outer Limits

Two recent conversations have got my hackles up!

But first: There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to — The Outer Limits.

The first came from good and faithful reader Linda in the Land of Fear:

Check this youtube out and let me know what you think, being I am in the #3 sector.It doesn't surprise me, but I am curious to know what the plan is.  It doesn't look pretty.

The second conversation was with my Canadian buddy here in Jakarta, who just got back from a two-week decent into Hell, otherwise known as DisneyWorld Orlando.

First, the video.

This video is the same kind of crap that has been floating around since the mid-80s and before.  This or that government agency is moving this or that materiel to this or that location in preparation for this or that emergency.  This is the FIRST time this or that agency has done this or that in ALL it's history.  Oh, and this or that disease is creeping up your leg.

It started with the swine flu back in the 70s.  Then it was Asian flu.  Then is was SARS.  Then bird flu.  Now MERS.  If you read the Western outlets, we here in Asia are all dropping dead of MERS.  Sorry, folks.  It's not happening, nor has anyone warned use around here about it.  Back when bird flu was the thing, there were signs everywhere and hospitals were on alert and the papers were full of it.  MERS?  Not a peep.

This video is what Richard Hoagland rightly calls 'fear porn'.  For the past 13 years, it ramps up to fever pitch just about a month before 9/11.  Whether by design (psy-op) or because people are traumatized by all the rubbish on TeeVee, we are in the midst of yet another round of fear porn.

Right now, it's the solar pole flip, which has folks spooked though it's happened, what, ten times in my lifetime and we're all still here.  Solar pole flips happen every 11 years for a complete cycle of 22 years.  It's all part of the sunspot cycle and solar min/max.  Nothing to worry about, sorry.

The bit in the video where WHO is having an emergency session for only the second time in its history?  I don't buy it.  I can remember hearing that at least a dozen times over the past four decades.  There's always some epidemic on the verge of Destroying All Life As We Know It (DALAWKI).  Oh sure, the English-language papers have little buried stories on one or two people dying of some disease in remote China, but not a single person I know has mentioned MERS, nor have the news outlets carried any information on it.  It's a non-issue here in Asia.  So pop that bubble.

I suspect October will come and go, and except for the massive economic crash, life will go on as it always has, with pole flips, flares, MERS, and all the rest of it.

As for my Canadian buddy, oh what a sad tale he tells of the dire situation in America now.  Of course, there's the whole artificial Disney Universe that's enough to send sane people screaming for the exits, but he noticed that nearly everything is in Spanish now.  Not just at Disney, but all over Orlando.  English is now a second language.

But the most harrowing part of the tale was the return to sanity, a.k.a. Indonesia.  First, it was the call from the Disney herder whose job it was to get them to the airport on time.  It started with getting there two hours early for the obligatory rectal exams.  Three phone calls later, it was FOUR hours early because...oh mah gawd...you're on an international flight (cue the suspense music).

My friend was incredulous.  FOUR hours early to go through the screening?  Oh yes, came the reply, it will take every minute of it.

Sure enough, he and his family were subjected to scans, pats, disrobings, document checks, and interrogations no less than FOUR times before boarding the plane, and it took every minute of four hours to get through all this.  So much for duty-free shopping.  Apparently now, it's not enough to get a boarding pass (which used to mean you are clear to board).  Oh no.  It has to be signed, counter-signed and stamped before you can board.  You are a criminal almost from the time you enter the airport to the moment you get on the plane.  Orwell would shit himself, though Kafka would appreciate the irony of calling this the Land of the Free.

What's worse is that his flight had a lay-over in Chicago to switch equipment for the trans-Pacific leg, and the whole process was repeated even though he and his family never left the secure area.

And the whole time they were inundated with fear porn from telescreens all over the place running CNN Headline news on constant rotation blaring warnings about al-Quaeda and terrorism and all that other rubbish.

On a regular basis, but especially right now during the month leading up to 9/11, the biggest favor you can do for yourself is turn off the TeeVee and mass media.  Only read news sites from India, China or SE Asia.  And for God's sake, don't buy into the fear porn.

If you are an American, you were subjected to repeated psychological conditioning during the orginal 9/11 in order to instill fear buttons in your sub-conscious.  These fear buttons allow certain key words to be used by 'agents' to turn you into a quivering pile of jello.  The conditioning is repeated every year at this time to make sure it doesn't wear off.  YouTube fills up with hysterical warnings that are identical to those from last year, and the year before, and the year before...  The news outlets are full of terrorists crawling out of the woodwork, escaping from jail and blowing up their fellow countrymen in far away lands.  Disease epidemics are on the verge of wiping out humanity with (gasp) fevers and runny noses - hint: take 2 aspirin, drink lots of fluids and get plenty of rest.  A little of Mom's chicken noodle soup can't hurt, either.

You are being controlled.  You are being manipulated to be fearful of your own shadow.  You are being corralled into paranoia.  In other words, your own government and those who promote fear porn are participating in terror attacks.  A terror attack, by definition, is using fear to modify the behavior of large populations.

As I recommended to Linda, think deeply on the reaction you have to things like the YouTube video or similar fear porn.  Take careful note of the feelings (not rational thoughts) that spring up.  Then proceed to control and ultimately dismantle the triggers that have been installed to cause these reactions.  It's all Pavlovian conditioning and it can be reversed if you become aware of it and can consciously control it.

And as for all that business about FEMA, those agencies are always moving supplies around and buying more of them so that their agents can live comfortably in the event of an emergency.  No, none of it is for you, so go out and start doing your own stocking up.  It never hurts to be prepared.  The Boy Scouts taught me that shortly before kicking me out for not being controllable.

A Journey To Babel

There are two stories that fascinate me.  One is Noah's Ark and the other is the Tower of Babel.  They exist in nearly every single culture, tradition and myth on Earth, across vast spans of time, and on every inhabited continent (Antarctica has yet to yield its secrets).

The Ark story has been pretty much beaten to death, with tales of folks running up and down Mount Arat for a century looking for boats.  Boring.

But Babel...now there's a fun tale.  What exactly is going on here?  And why is it that so many cultures throughout our history record a similar event with similar circumstances at more or less the same time.  In each case, it is a single event, not multiple ones.  And in every case, the gods get worried about how far and how fast humans are progressing and decide to do something about it.

In every case, Man did not sin or do anything wrong, he simply had reached a point where he posed a direct challenge to the gods.  As Joseph Farrell says, it was a political, not ethical decision on the part of the gods to come down and stir things up.

Perhaps it would be instructive at this point to look at a couple of the stories.  Wikipedia starts us off:

The Tower of Babel (Hebrew: מגדל בבל‎ Migdal Bavel Arabic: برج بابل‎ Borj Baabel) forms the focus of a story told in the Book of Genesis of the Bible.[1] According to the story, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar (Hebrew: שנער‎), where they resolved to build a city with a tower "whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
God came down to see what they did and said: "They are one people and have one language, and nothing will be withheld from them which they purpose to do." "Come, let us go down and confound their speech." And so God scattered them upon the face of the Earth, and confused their languages, so that they would not be able to return to each other, and they left off building the city, which was called Babel "because God there confounded the language of all the Earth".

The Sumerians have a similar tale involving the construction of a tower, the gods Enki and Enlil, and the confusion of languages.  The Sumerian word babel means "gateway of god(s)" or quite literally "stargate", while in Hebrew, it is similar in sound to the verb "to confound".

There are similar myths in various African cultures.  The Maya have a version that is nearly identical to the Biblical telling, except that it involves those pesky Giants who keep showing up in the old tales and myths:

After Creation and the Great Flood, there were Giants running around the Earth.  However, they weren't receiving enough sunlight, so they built a tower to reach the Sun.  This act angered the sky gods who destroyed the tower and confused the languages, scattering the people across the Earth.

The Aztecs, South Pacific islanders, Mongols, and many other cultures preserve this story in some form.  Most involve the people of Earth 'speaking the same language', which allows them to work together to 'build a tower' that will either allow them to reach the realms of the gods, or conversely, preserve the knowledge already received by having reached the realm of the gods or given by a renegade god (Enki, Prometheus, etc.).

The Hindu version is particularly interesting, as it combines the symbol of the Tree of Knowledge with the Tower/Babel myth:

There grew in the center of the earth the wonderful 'world tree,' or 'knowledge tree.' It was so tall that it reached almost to heaven.  It said in    its heart, 'I shall hold my head in heaven and spread my branches over all the earth, and gather all men together under my shadow and protect them, and prevent them from separating.' But Brahma, to punish the pride of the tree, cut off its branches and cast them down on the earth, when they sprang up as wata trees, and made differences of belief and speech and customs to prevail on the earth, to disperse men upon the surface.

So, let's dissect this story a bit.  First of all, the language thing.  There is no evidence in the historical record of Mankind ever having used a single language, right?  Or is there?  Even today, if you look around, there is one Universal Language that spans countries, cultures and time.  That language is mathematics.  All of our vaunted technology is based on some kind of mathematical discovery.  Radio waves, lasers, computers, even such mundane things as alternating current, convection ovens and headphones, are all mathematics brought into our physical world.

As Galileo Galilei said, “Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.”  And don't we use mathematics to reach orbit and the other planets?  In other words, isn't mathematics a single language that allows us to reach the realm of the gods?

Well, not really, because mathematics is split into many different types and disciplines.  There's algebra and calculus and physics, and so forth.  In other words, our language of math has been 'confused' or 'confounded'.  And what is the Holy Grail of science but the Grand Unified Theory (GUT), which should unite all forms of mathematics under a single, elegant set of formulae.

Sounds a lot like the story of Babel, the fracturing of languages, and a current effort to restore what was lost to men.  And mathematics does indeed allow us to reach the realm of the gods, of that there is no doubt.  So if we are able to find the Holy Grail of the GUT, isn't it true that 'nothing would be withheld from us that we purpose to do'?

Nikola Tesla summed up the confusion of the Great Language quite nicely, "Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality."  This implies that if we can get our language straight, we can do 'anything we propose to do,' including engineer reality itself, as Tesla was attempting to do.

Now what about the 'tower'?  Folks have proposed dozens of locations and structures.  Alexander the Great destroyed the giant ziggurat of Babylon called Etemenanki.  But I think that if we accept that the One Language is/was mathematics, then the tower may have a completely different interpretation.

In Western culture, there are basically two main structures associated with towers: one is a place of worship, and the other is a university.  We can dispense with the first, since it preserves myth and superstition and keeps us afraid of obtaining the realm of the gods.  The other, however, is about preserving and advancing knowledge, and particularly the sciences, logic and philosophy, which are founded on the One Language, and indeed seek to obtain the realm of the gods.

Therefore, couldn't the Tower of Babel have been an enormous university or library?  After all, the great structures of the ancient world, such as the Library at Alexandria, were devoted to preserving and advancing knowledge.  The great universities of Europe are all dominated by large towers, and in fact the towers are emblematic of the universities.

Across the planet today, people are building taller and taller towers as signs of wealth and scientific prowess.  Towers have always been symbols of achievement, and they require lots of precise mathematical calculation to erect safely.  Many towers, such as the pyramids all over the Earth, not only required precise math to build, they encode all kinds of mathematical equations, formulae and constants in their structures.

Richard Hoagland's theories concerning Cydonia on Mars posit monumental structures built on profound mathematical knowledge that is embedded in the design and relationships of structures on that planet.

Thus, we can now tell the Tower of Babel story in a slightly different way.  Mankind had amassed a great amount of knowledge that either allowed or was on the verge of allowing him to reach the heavens, and perhaps even begin to engineer the fabric of space/time itself.  God-like powers, in other words.  The gods, a race of extraterrestrial, technologically advanced beings, were alarmed at Mankind's rapid growth that threatened their hegemony over the heavens and their exulted rank as gods.

So they took the decision to pop down and destroy the great university/library where all this knowledge was stored and substitute false or misleading science and mathematics that would prevent Mankind from obtaining god-like power.  This sent people off in a hundred wrong directions unable to work together because their mathematics were confused and fractured.

A perfect example of this, if you believe the official story, is the Mars Climate Orbiter - a multi-million dollar spacecraft lost because one set of scientists was using metric measurements, while another was using Imperial standard.

This ensured the supremacy of the gods and kept Mankind out of the rarefied realms.  As Farrell said, it was a political decision, not one based on evil doings or moral corruption.  Thus, the Yahweh character now appears to be more insecure than all-powerful.

All of this brings up two rather profound questions.

The first is, would destroying towers today have the same effect on human culture: scattering, confusing, causing dissension?  For that, we must thoroughly examine what has happened to our individual and collective psyches since the 9/11 attacks.  It sure seems that the destruction of the Twin Towers has scattered and confused humanity, pitting us against each other rather than focusing on concerted effort to advance the species.  Could the perpetrators of that crime have taken a page from ancient myth?

The other question that arises is, if the gods got nervous the first time humans endeavored to reach the heavens through stargates and took severe action to prevent it, could they do it again?  If/when we start getting too close to god-like abilities, will some external force come down and stir the pot again?  If so, could the rise in UFO sightings in the past 70 years have something to do with that?  And will we humans be able to stop it this time?

And much more to the point, from the perspective of the Big Picture, are humans ready to obtain that kind of power?  After all, we seem incapable of solving some of the most mundane problems with our species.  It hardly seems advisable to let us go mucking around with the very fabric of space/time, much less carrying our errors into the cosmos.

Sure, the Babel incident was done to humanity to keep it unable to enter the heavens, but was that decision made because we threatened the hegemony of the gods, or because we threatened the peace of the Universe?

Looking around, I'd guess the latter.

Playing Houdini At Home

Part of the reason I never worry too much about so-called "internet kill switches" and "government censorship of the net" is that hackers are a wily lot.

For one thing, there is no single switch that turns off the net.  It is a fabulously complex distributed network that would require the entire global power grid to fail in order to "turn it off".  There are, however, a limited number of backbones into and out of any given country.  They include fiber, cable and satellite T-3 pipes that enter, hit distributors, and then the data packets get distributed to wherever it is they are going.  It is quite possible for governments to sit on and control those ports.  They can filter and futz with the data streams all day long, making sure you only get what they want you to get, or at the very least, make detailed notes on what you are receiving.

Governments assume you are stupid because they do everything in their power to keep you that way.  That's why we here on the Far Side say that the 21st century form of government is "on, over and inside the people," rather than "of, by and for."  It's just a bit of mucking around with prepositions, really.

One other point before continuing.  In the Far Side lexicon, the words "government" and "corporation" are synonyms.  Thus, "law" and "policy" are equivalent, as well.  To carry this a bit further, "taxpayer" and "employee" are also the same.  Applying fractal geometry, corporations are but smaller, identical forms of the larger government form, from the micro to the macro scale.

Anyway, a great number of governments/corporations filter what their subjects/employees can see.  Only approved information from approved sources are allowed through the pipes, whether you are at your desk or at home.  Oh sure, the pipes are usually controlled by companies, but since companies must file with government for permission/license to operate and gain 'legal' status, they are nothing more than branches of government.

Here's were hackers step in.  Hackers are the 21st century equivalent of revolutionary freedom fighters.  To the government/corporate Boards of Directors (BoD), these people are 'terrorists' because they bypass and undermine the imposed system of controls.  Hackers view information as neither good nor bad, simply bits and bytes to be accessed or not.  Obviously, the more a gov/corp doesn't want you to see something, the more interesting it is, which can be both a danger and a weapon to the BoD.

Information can be dangerous to the BoD because it turns off the mental control mechanisms that they spend decades installing through 'schools'.  However, it can also be a weapon because the BoD can declare something off-limits, thus enticing employees to take a look using the Forbidden Fruit Theory of behavior modification.  It's a two-edged sword that requires a great amount of discernment on the part of renegade employees.

So all of this ranting brings us at long last to the point.  Please keep the cheering to a minimum.

Pirate Bay has released their version of the Firefox browser.  Called the PirateBrowser, it uses the Tor system to circumvent blocks and censorship.  Basically, Pirate Bay assembled some off-the-shelf add-ons with the Firefox browser to create a pret-a-porter app that runs circles around censors.

The Onion Router (TOR) system was developed by the US Navy to trade information secretly.  Think of it as a network of gopher tunnels all through the internet by which folks can trade info packets without being visible to above-ground viewers.  The technology got out into the wild sometime back and its used by gov/corps and us real people all the time now.

Harry Houdini had a remarkable trick.  He would have a literal, physical brick wall built on stage.  Of course, a heavy floor cover was needed so as not to damage the stage floor.  Houdini would raise a small curtain and *POOF*, he'd appear to pass through solid matter.  What the audience didn't see was the trap door opening under the heavy floor covering, allowing just enough slack for a limber fellow to weasel under the wall.  That's TOR.

So this is all fun and cool, but what does it have to do with this article?  Glad you asked.

The genie is out of the bottle.  The internet has matured far beyond anything the gov/corps could have imagined or wanted.  Whatever obstacles they throw up, someone finds a hole.  If they kill the Big Pipes, folks set up Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks.  Thousands of people, like us Far Siders, have built massive libraries of information as a bulwark against it disappearing.  And the old "conspiracy theorist" label has worn thin, now that folks have seen so many of them proven correct.

This situation has led meatpuppets like John Kerry (SecState USCorp) to remark, "[T]this little thing called the Internet ... makes it much harder to govern."  First off, notice the use of the pejorative 'little thing,' as if his shiny white ass is far superior to the puny hordes out here in reality.  Second, you should have automatically replaced in your mind the term 'govern' with 'command and control'.

At any rate, we Far Siders are busy assessing the new PirateFox, since porn sites and words like Essex and sextant and sexagenarian and breast self-exam are banned in Indonesia because the members of Parliament spend all their time surfing screw films instead of doing their jobs.  I mean, good Lord!  If the BoD can't control themselves, we slimy, morally inferior little employees sure can't.  (Note that we are allowed, at any age, to surf all the violence, horror and beheadings we want - just no loving and kissing!)

So there you have it - a new subversive toy to play with in your spare time because we here on the Far Side are always at the forefront of employee rights!

Just a side note: we recently started uploading Radio Far Side to YouTube, since they gave us permission to offer things longer than 10 minutes.  As a result, EMI started banning RFS "in certain countries" because we use one minute of Wall of Voodoo's four-minute long song "Mexican Radio" in the opening titles.  As a consequence, the two (so far) videos that have met this resistance are the two most popular.  I guess banning them makes people all the more curious.  Hahahahahaha!  (that's a maniacal laugh kind of like Dr. Frankenstein when the Creature's hand starts twitching)

You may recall that EMI were the asinine bastards who tried to make it illegal to listen to your radio in your car with your windows open because a song they represent may get played and heard by folks casually passing by.  Sounds like EMI has too many lawyers, too much money and too little to do - outside of jacking money from the poor musicians who are fooled into listing with them.

So quitcherbitchin' and start yer twitchin'!

Time On My Hands

Time is one of the most enduring staples of science fiction.  How we experience time, what time is and whether time can be toyed with has long been one of the deepest ponders of humanity.  And walking hand-in-hand with time is the nature of the Universe.  Are there multiple Universes?  Can we enter or experience those other Universes?  Does anything we do affect the number, size or nature of other Universes?  You can easily get lost in these sorts of thoughts.

How we experience time is obviously relative.  As Albert Einstein himself explained it, "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity."  Time is a fluid in which we are drowning, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but always sinking.

Then there's the whole issue of probability and possibility.  Something can be possible without being probably, but rarely can something be probable without being possible.  As Sherlock Holmes said, "Once you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

In modern physics, as misguided and limited as it is, there is a mainstream theory of multiple Universes that states that the so-called Big Bang may have happened multiple times, and that there is a hyper-verse that looks something like a bubble bath with millions of bubbles all crowding each other.  Whether it is possible to communicate between these bubbles is still hotly debated.

An alternative concept, though not generally taken seriously by mainstream physics (which gives it far more credibility in my book) is the multi-verse concept.  This theory posits that there are as many Universes as there are choices.  Every time you face a choice between A, B or C, you create a reality in which you experience A, but two alternate Universes are created in which you chose B or C.  Furthermore, this process is repeated for every single living being that makes choices at every point within the Universe.

In other words, there are infinite numbers of Universes and more are being created all the time.

The classic Time Paradox thought experiment says that you travel back in time.  You kill your grandfather, thus you can not possibly exist, and yet you do.  Have you changed the conditions of the current Universe, or have you created an alternate Universe?

One of the finest stories along the lines of the first concept is Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder.  A hunter travels back in time to kill a T. Rex, but panics and leaves the proscribed path, killing a butterfly in the process.  When the party returns to the present, language has changed.  People have changed.  And history has changed.  This story inspired Michael Crichton to write Jurassic Park.  Well worth a Saturday in bed.

Along the lines of the second option, Robert Heinlein penned his classic The Number of the Beast.  Inspired by E. R. Burroughs' Barsoom series, the characters travel through multiple embedded Universes encoded in the "number of the beast" (666) that include Universes created by fiction writers, not just choices.  Lots of nudity and gratuitous sex.  You'll love it!

Really, though, what is time?  Supposedly we can't see the future, yet in very mainstream and accepted physical theory, time is a double cone extending into the future and the past, and we should be able to see both time zones with equal clarity given the proper tools.  In other words, given the correct tool and knowing where to look, we should be able to see Earth at anytime in the past or future.  General Relativity and Light Theory demand it.

Equally possible is the ability to adjust our perception and thus enter any number of multiple embedded Universes.  All it takes is learning the 'trick' to turning just so in order to do it.

The first theory states that there is only one time line and that any change to it affects everything from that point into the future.  Think of this as the 'railroad' theory.  You start in Chicago and go to New York.  If you change any conditions on the rail, you can jam the train or change its destination.  The changes are irrevocable, though you can always return to the point of origin and try again by adjusting the conditions of the rail.

The second theory states that you board the train in Chicago and along the way, if conditions change, you create multiple trains that do different things depending on how those conditions affect the train's path.  It's possible to experience all possible outcomes, though maybe not at once.

So where does all this leave us?

We know for a fact that where we are at this very moment is the result of an incomprehensible number of choices, options and decisions spanning all of time, however much that is.  We also know that any and every choice, option and decision we take now will profoundly affect our lives and have a ripple effect across time and space, even if we aren't aware of all the consequences.  Think about that the next time you kill a cockroach.

What all this boils down to is, what is time?  Is it a physical phenomenon and one day we will discover chronitons, particles of time?  Or is it a dimension that we perceive, like height, width and depth?  Or is it a construct of our minds, like a clothesline on which we hang our exeriences to dry into memories and give historians gainful employment?

If you were given the chance to go back in your life and change one decision, would you do it?  Would you take the risk on what ripples that would make in your present?  Or do you see it as an opportunity to jump into an alternate reality at that particular junction that wouldn't affect anything in this particular reality?

The beauty of this particular ponder is that it allows us to ask a very simple question - what if - and then explore all sorts of different possibilities.

What's really fun is that your concept of time shows you how limited your concept of 'god' is.  If time is an unalterable arrow, then your 'god' is very limited.  On the other hand, if time is as dynamic and pliable as water, then your 'god' is unlimited.  How's that for a mind-bender?

At any rate, the next time someone asks you, "What time is it?"  Give them the response, "Sidereal or synodic?"  Watch their expression.  Maybe I'll even do a YouTube series of people's reactions.  Fun idea.

Worst case scenario, just burst into Jim Croce lyrics:

But there never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do

Once you find them

I've looked around enough to know

That you're the one I want to go

Through time with

Barking At The Moon

The thing about empires is that they are very expensive to maintain.  It requires the ability to project force to any part of the empire in a short time.

The Romans built a massive empire based almost entirely on their ability to install well-built roads to the far-flung reaches of the provinces.  The roads were so well-built that many are still in use 2,000 years later.  Rome was able to move large armies quickly and efficiently anywhere there were signs of unrest.  They also allowed for efficient messaging between power centers and the most remote areas.

The British empire was built on its dominant navy.  Its warships allowed it to project irresistible force almost anywhere in the world quickly and efficiently.  That same prowess at sea also gave the British empire fabulous wealth and the ability to transfer information with relative speed.  See Rothschilds and Waterloo.

The American empire was built on its dominance of the air.  The first to recognize both the military and commercial benefits of air travel, America was able to project overwhelming force with near impunity.  That same technology also gave it the ability to transfer wealth and information at blazing speeds.

In all three cases, though, the empires collapsed because of failing economies caused by their inability to expand beyond the technology that brought them to power.  The Romans invested so much into their roads that they were unable to exploit the rising sea powers.  The British invested so much in their sea power that they were unable to exploit the rising air superiority.  And the US is failing because it has invested so much in air superiority that it doesn't have the resources left to exploit the next frontier - space.

In what has to be one of the silliest moves on the part of an incomprehensibly silly US Congress, a couple of Congresscritters have decided to introduce a bill making the Apollo landing sites on the Moon "national parks" and further declaring the Apollo 11 site a world cultural site, apparently forgetting the the UN does that sort of thing.

What makes this so amusingly silly is that America has not been able to project power beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) for nearly 50 years.  The move to declare these "parks" on the Moon is nothing more than an exercise in expanding the empire, but as we have seen, empires require the ability to move forces quickly and efficiently to any part of the territories.  However, the US has squandered its space superiority in order to pay for the monstrously expensive command and control apparati at home.

Not only has the US completely dismantled its manned space program, reduced now to hitching rides with other countries while waiting for private corporations to do the R&D necessary to have viable LEO technology, it has not returned a single human being to the Moon in 50 years.  That's two generations.  In other words, any claim it might have had is now defunct, since it has not returned to squat on its claim.  It's called abandonment.

Suppose I were a gold prospector.  I find a rich lode and run into town to file a claim.  I get a little distracted and start to get back out to the claim a couple of times, but by the time I really start to get concerned about it, I'm already old and now my grandson has to carry on, but my grandson is a babbling idiot because I didn't want him to get smart enough to outsmart me.  Consequently, he is unable to re-establish my original claim.  Should I really expect that no one else will come along and take the gold after 50 years with no one around to say otherwise?

Not only that, but in the 50 years I've been dicking around in town, I helped pass a law that says no one can stake a claim on the very land where I've staked a claim.

Thus, I'm too old to go back to the old land claim, my progeny are too stupid and controlled to think creatively about the problem, and I helped to make it illegal to have a claim in the first place.  BUT, don't you dare go digging gold on my claim!  Or I'll huff, and I'll puff and I'll hyperventilate.

In addition to all the above absurdities, these lunar landing areas are to be preserved as heritage sites, yet no one would be able to fly over them, set foot on them, or send robotic probes into them.  Huh?!  You mean like declaring Yosemite a national park and them forbidding people (the ones who actually own it by definition) to go into the park and look around at all that heritage?  Much less forbid Google Earth to fly over and take photos for us all to appreciate from our desktop command centers.

OK, I can see putting ropes around the Apollo 11 site and not allowing folks to trample on the First Footprint and all, but that will require people to erect the ropes and a permanent staff to man the ropes and control the crowds.  Then, there'll have to be parking areas and concessions and toilet facilities and visitor centers and interpretive guided tours and preservation teams...  After all, there's little patches of dirt in Big Bend, West Texas, that you're not allowed to touch under pain of jail time, despite the fact there's no one around for hundreds of miles.  C'mon.

At this point, if I decided to start a crowd-funding project to build a rover to go the the Apollo 11 site, the best the US could do is put a pile of engineers to work designing a program to investigate the design of a program to send two-and-a-half billion dollars worth of technology to fly around in circles and document in glorious detail how my little rover is destroying all of Buzz Aldrin's footprints.  Hardly projecting force, in my book.

So, to sum up all this foolishness, you have an empire.  You decide to make a claim on a piece of dirt that you once set foot on 50 years ago, but haven't been back to in all that time.  Furthermore, you don't have the money or ability to go back and stake out guards on that dirt.  On top of all that, you were the first person to sign into effect a law that forbids any nation from claiming ownership on that piece of dirt.  And finally, under long-established rules, anything abandoned on the high seas (especially for 50 years) is fair game for salvage.  Am I reading that right?

In other words, the White Star line still owns the Titanic and all the effects salvaged from that wreck, including photos and story rights, though the company was unable to return to the wreck and had abandoned it on the sea floor well over 50 years ago?  Furthermore, White Star wants to declare the wreck a 'park' now and no ship would be allowed to sail over that spot ever again, much less dive down and take photos or souvenirs?

Just wanted to make sure I had all this straight.

And what about the Russians?  Can they claim 'park' status for the sites where their hardware landed?  And the Japanese?  Can they claim a chunk of the lunar South Pole, since one of their craft crashed there?  And since the Apollo sites form a rough oval, can the US claim everything inside it?  And can the Russians claim the back side of the Moon, since they were the first to image it?  And what about Mars and all the rubble Mankind has strewn across it?  And while we're at it, why not declare the Frau Mare highlands a 'park', since Apollo 13 was supposed to land there and it made a great movie.  And let's not forget the proposed sites for Apollos 18 and 19, even though they got cancelled.  After all, we should preserve those sites the way they were back when the US almost landed there.  And what about Venus?  Can the Russians claim the whole planet since they're the only country to have successfully landed there?  And can Europe claim Titan?  Or do they have to share with the US, since they piggy-backed on the Cassini craft?

The problem gets really absurd really fast once you start thinking about it.  It's compounded by the fact that Apollo artifacts would fetch a pretty penny on eBay if someone was able to get up there and bring back some trinkets.  I'm sure come collector would pay a fortune for Neil Armstrong's poop bag.  Makes you want to go back and watch Salvage with Andy Griffith, and Isaac Asimov as the science adviser.  The pilot was really good, as I remember.