Pharisaic Duplicity At The Break Of Dawn

"There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny."
- Frederick William Robertson

Well, it's that special time of year again, when Muslims the world over sleep all day to avoid having to actually suffer the fast.

Don't know if you're familiar with the rituals of Ramadhan, so I will regale you with the fun and excitement of being surrounded by hungry, thirsty people in really bad moods.

Oh sure, it always starts off with lots of fanfare and enthusiasm, but in about 14 days, folks will be sullen, exhausted and listless - even the folks to opt to sleep through the month to avoid too much suffering.

If you are a devout Muslim, then for the next four weeks, you are forbidden to eat, drink or even swallow your saliva from sun-up till sun-down.  While the idea is to mortify the body and take command of its cravings, the actual practice is somewhat less dramatic.

Most folks around these parts get up around 3am to gorge themselves on massive breakfasts and drink gallons of water to hold them through the day.  Ironically, food prices spike before and during Ramadhan as people buy much more than their usual take.  This practice of early morning gorging makes one feel full and able to get through most of the day before hunger pangs set in.

By the evening call to prayer, roads empty as folks dive into the nearest food stall to grab a meal and water.  Even the folks who slept all day feel the need to chow down, even though they put forth their best effort to remain unconscious during the better part of the fasting hours.

One of the most annoying practices are roving gangs of noise-makers - drums, horns, clangers, and chanting - who stroll the neighborhood at 3am to wake the devout for their early morning feast before the 4am call to prayer that marks the beginning of the fast.

Newspapers and media outlets are wall-to-wall with fasting strategies and humorous tales of people passing out - particularly children in schools - from hunger and thirst.

In years past, I have made a concerted effort to be respectful and not eat or drink in view of those who have chosen to fast, and who can get rather irate at those of us who choose not to.  It apparently does not occur to them that others might have different rituals, such as Catholics who fast for 40 days before Easter, rather than 28 days for Ramadhan, and whose fasts are around the clock and not just 12 hours a day.

This year, however, I've decided I don't really care.  Since I have not seen or heard any Muslims crying in outrage at the killings of innocent people in England, Indonesia, Syria, Egypt, and the Philippines in the name of Islam as a way to mark the beginning of the Holy Month, then I feel no need to respect those fasting.  Perhaps my complete disregard for their discomfort will in some small way be a reminder of all the suffering Muslims have caused to families around the world this Holy Season.

I have little use for religion to begin with, but one that appears to think it is perfectly alright to kill and maim hundreds of innocent people as a means to mark its holiest time of the year is beneath contempt.

I have not heard a single Muslim decry the slaughter of teenagers at a concert in Manchester.  No one has beat their breast over the Coptic Christians gunned down in cold blood.  None have shown remorse, nor even discomfort, at the wholesale butchery in Syria or the Philippines.  And oddly, not a whimper of protest for the Muslims blown to pieces by Muslims in Jakarta.

If it were me, and the religion I professed was slaughtering, raping and beating people around the globe in the name of something I believed in, I would immediately and loudly quit that religion and walk away in disgust, just as I did from my home country when it began slaughtering thousands of innocent people under false pretenses.

I don't have much truck with hypocrites.  Those who spew love of a god and find it quite alright to kill innocents in the name of that god do not deserve, and will not receive respect from me.  And when folks put on a big show of fasting in the name of their religion, but do everything they can to avoid the unpleasant aspects of fasting, the hypocrisy is the same, though thankfully fewer people die horribly from it.

I walked away from Catholicism because of the hypocrisy and pain it had caused in the world.  I walked away from the US because of the gross deception and anguish it has caused for something as petty as political expediency.  I will certainly not give my respect, nor empathize with a religion that condones wholesale slaughter in cold blood of women, children and young folks who are obviously not combatants in any conceivable way.

Unless and until Islam and its followers can feel shame for its grave errors and evil actions, why should anyone go out of their way to accommodate those who fast in show only?

Who Would Fardels Bear

Indonesians are hard-core realists.  It's at once one of their most frustrating qualities, and one of their most endearing - at least for people who live in the real world.

Minutes after two bombs went off in a crowded area of East Jakarta last night, social media was circulating graphic photos and videos of scattered body parts: a head here, a leg there, an arm over yonder.  They like to take a good hard look at death.  It's something that might change a few people in the West.

It would be good for the Katy Perrys of the world to take a good hard look at what terrorists do.  All the open borders and fuzzy hugs and Post-Modernist hickies will not change this reality.

It's important to keep in mind that the Jakarta bombs last night were created by Muslims to be used on Muslims during a traditional pre-Ramadhan parade - the highest of holy days in Islam.  This is what terrorists do to their own, why should we expect anything less against any other target.

The fact is that these terrorists have only one goal in mind: destruction.  Can events like Manchester and Jakarta have any positive effect on reasonable people?  Does anyone really think that wholesale death will win converts, much less hearts and minds?

These terrorists are sub-human beasts.  They have no desire or purpose other than to kill, maim and destroy.  They are weaponized individuals who honestly think there is some great reward in the afterlife for this kind of behavior, and their higher-reasoning facilities - if they ever existed - have been shorted out by those have no souls.

There is no amount of love and psycho-babble that will change these people.  They are beyond hope.  They have no loyalties but to death and destruction.  There is no humanity in them to reach with group hugs and therapy sessions.  No amount of concessions will ever placate them.  At best, they are mindless beasts before they set off bombs in crowds of innocent people, and at worst they are wads of hamburger to be swept up before the dogs get to the meat.

In fact, there is one possible way I can see that might dissuade a few of these despicable animals.  If clean-up crews were shown on global television in graphic color and detail picking up the scrambled remains of these wastes of life and feeding them to dogs and pigs.  That might even be a fitting sentence for convicted terrorists - thrown into pits of ravenous dogs and swine.  Let their fellow scum watch their buddies be defiled by haram animals on global TeeVee - that just might make an impact.

The point here is that we, the normal functional part of the world, are at war.  The bad side knows no boundaries or rules.  It is all-out warfare.  Every other human on Earth is a combatant and these slime have one goal - wipe everyone out.

No, it's not to convert anyone to Islam.  They blow up Muslims as frequently as any other group.  They need to be utterly destroyed because they cannot be turned off or remediated.  They have no ideals and cannot be reasoned with.  They are hardly more than single-minded machines aimed and released at the desired targets.

The main problem here is not how to deal with these mindless scum.  Since they will kill anyone for no reason at all - they are not aimed at any one offending group, but all humanity - they are not driven by ideology.  They are, in fact, weaponized humans.

And that means there is someone else pulling their strings.

Behind these empty meat jackets called terrorists is some hidden group with an agenda.  It is not religion, but social engineering that is the purpose.  This hidden force has created a mass of disaffected psychopaths that they can set off against any target, anywhere for any reason.  Anyone who tells you this is about Islam is either ignorant, or part of the hidden group.

The point of all this terror is fear and capitulation.  It is not about spreading any religion, much less Islam.  If it were, do you think the Muslims would be busy blowing each other up?  No, this is an agenda to create a certain kind of society that accepts fear and domination as an everyday way of life.

The point of all this death and destruction is not to force us to accept a religion, it is to force us to accept domination and slavery.  It is not about any god or philosophy, it is about abject submission to authority.

The use of fear and death is to herd us into begging authority for protection, to accept the dominance of the State as mother, father and source of life.  The terrorists are just machines put to use by this hidden group of cowards, who want to spring forth at just the right moment to save us from the chaos.

There is only one way to fight, and that is to defend ourselves.  We must take our own safety into our own hands; take full responsibility for protecting ourselves.  We must fight for those things we all thought was a job delegated to governments.  The governments obviously don't care, so we must forget about them, stop supporting them, and figure out our own ways and means to survive.

Witness the US, where the day after Manchester, the TSA became even more invasive and destructive of personal rights and dignity.  Their job is not to protect anyone, otherwise they would be going after the real perpetrators.  Their job is to make us choose between slavery and death, and frankly death is a better choice.

We must clearly see the target, and the target is not a bunch of weaponized drones spouting religious epithets.  The target is a bunch of cynical overlords using our cultures against us.  It is the media, the governments and the social structures we take for granted that are closing the trap around us.

We are cows to be herded, and the terrorists are the cowboys whose job it is to drive us into the corrals.  The more we turn to "authorities" to save us from these drones, the more we play into the hands of the overlords.

Terrorists aren't the problem, they are a symptom of something much larger and far more evil.  The terrorists are willing tools for something they can hardly comprehend, but which they have mistaken for a god.

We cannot make the same mistake.  That god will not save us, it is the heart of the problem.  Our job is to reject all the hands of the Machine and start relying on ourselves once again.  The only remedy for this disease is personal responsibility for our own safety and well-being.  And our best weapon is our wallets.

Tune in tomorrow...

The Sacrificial Victims

Do you feel sorry for the Manchester Arena victims?  I don't.  What I feel is disgust.

Suppose your kid comes home every day crying about how the bully stole his milk money again.  The first couple of times you feel pity and want to give comfort, but as some point you get disgusted.  Why do you take the same route to school every day, you ask?  Why don't you fight back, you ask?  Why don't you get some of your buddies together and kick the bully's ass, you ask?

I'm fed up with the constant chorus of "we have to be understanding" and "we can't fight back" in the propaganda Street Meat Media.  I am sick of governments, established to protect their citizens, instead do everything to mollycoddle the bullies by letting them past the borders, then handing them the keys to the city.

It's time society grew a pair and, if the government isn't going to do its job, take matters into their own hands.

It is abundantly clear that the SJW/Post-Modernist bullshit is getting people killed.  The more folks give, the more the bullies take.  As if the past 40 years of bullshit hasn't been enough, these social numbnuts keep rolling over and asking to be slapped again.  It's a case of mass masochism, and it needs to stop.

A tiny group of sub-humans have been allowed to kill, maim, rape and plunder with complete abandon.  We, the victims, have been told to just let it happen, because all the killing and maiming is due to the bullies being victims, too.  Well, guess what, I don't care what kind of childhood a mass murder had, he needs to be dispatched to the Great Beyond when his personal trauma becomes a detriment to society, and a bunch of kids being shredded by a nail bomb at a concert is most certainly a detriment.

The only thing bullies understand is force.  It is how they relate to the rest of the world.  They use force, and the only way to stop them is to return force.

Billions of people are being held hostage by a tiny group of shitwits who wave a book around as justification for causing death and mayhem.  Well, guess what skeezix, it's time to get your ass handed to you on a platter.

The longer people continue to buy into this psycho-babble pablum, the more the bastards will escalate their attacks.  They are like spoiled 3-year-olds.  When they get away with saying "no" once, they continue until they find where daddy's limit is.

The way I learned it, a combatant puts on a uniform and identifies himself as a warrior in battle.  Civilians used to be off-limits.  You didn't attack the women, children and infirmed who weren't part of the fight.  You picked your fights with those committed to fighting back.  That was the manly thing to do.

When you use children to secretly plant bombs in public places to purposefully and with malice aforethought cause grievous harm to non-combatants, then the gloves came off and the fight got really, REALLY nasty.

Well, folks, it's time for the fight to get really, REALLY nasty.  When a bunch of Shia muslims blow up a bunch of Sunni muslims who blow up a bunch of Wahabi muslims in their own countries, that's their problem.  But when these folks pose as "refugees" in foreign countries and loudly demand respect - even special treatment - so they can blow up a bunch of teenagers, it's time to get nasty.

The only way to stop the bullies is to get a whole lot nastier on them than they have been on us.  They main one, we main ten.  They blow up 20, we blow up 50.  No, I don't mean flying our gleaming coward machines (usu. called jet fighters) over their homes and bombing their non-combatants.  I mean finding the assholes doing this harm on home soil and take them into the street and beat them senseless.

It is all they understand.

A couple of years ago, a bus driver here in Jakarta accidentally hit and killed a 12-year-old girl who ran out into the street in front of the bus.  A crowd of men gathered around and pulled the driver out on the street and beat him to death on the spot.  That's what bullies understand.

These are not religious people.  They aren't even human in any sense of the word I know.  They are vile vermin who slink around in the dark and kill those who can't or won't fight back.

And if it turns out that our own governments are supporting these slime in order to promote an agenda?  Well, that makes the governments complicit in the crimes and on the same level as the bullies.  And they should be dealt with accordingly.

Another Fairy Tale Shot To Hell

One of the many reasons I so despise the Post-Modernist/Social Marxist/SJW (etc. ad nauseum) movement is that it stifles free and open inquiry, basing its entire philosophy on loosely defined "facts" that can change at any moment.  People who subscribe to this movement cling desperately to a set narrative that is not only eroding quickly, but was hardly established to begin with.

A perfect example is this article in the Telegraph reporting on a new paper that says the oldest humanoid fossils may now indicate that Europeans are the oldest branch of Humanity.  Yes, that's right, the Out Of Africa theory may have just been blown out of the water.

The problem with basing entire social movements on science is that science is never settled.  At any moment, new data can appear that simply sweep everything that preceded it into the trash bin.

Once upon a time, we were taught the Darwinist line that there were three basic races of Humans: Mongoloid, Negroid and Caucasoid.  Then, along came research in genetics and blood-type groups that completely blew all that away.  Quietly, science textbooks just dropped the narrative without any real public discourse on what followed.

We now know that Europeans inter-bred with Neanderthals, which used to be considered impossible, but right there in the gene pool is proof.  Then we discovered Denisovians and the Flores Hobbits who, it turns out, were likely completely different forms of humanoid creatures that co-existed with Homo Sapiens-sapiens, at least for a time.

There are volumes of books and studies that show both quantifiable and qualifiable differences between racial groups.  This is not a racist statement, it is observation of objective and subjective facts that can be verified independently by other observers.

What is most intriguing and curious about the honest facts is that the quaint little story we have built for ourselves about our origins is, at best, a fairy tale.  It makes us feel comfortable and can be used to justify all sorts of draconian social manipulations, but it is not true in the strictest sense of the word.

For instance, we refer to Native Americans when the data support a non-native origin for the original inhabitants there.  There are certain groups of Indonesians who refer to themselves as pribumi, or native inhabitants, but recent studies say it isn't so.

For the most part, people don't want to know the truth.  They establish for themselves cute little narratives that make them feel important and like they have a grasp on the world and the Universe.  They pick and choose the details that fit their self-image, and toss the rest.  They certainly don't want to put in the effort to really understand the world.  That would require constant reading and learning.  They don't want that - not when there's lots of time to waste brow-beating others into accepting their little fairy tales.

There's this topic called "Alternative History".  That's where people take new, fresh, updated facts and try to weave new, fresh, updated narratives.  Some folks join in and construct new fairy tales and then get stuck in them.  Others get involved and realize that there are almost no such things as "facts".  As fast as we nail down a "fact", it moves away.  New data comes in, replaces old data, and now the old stories don't fit.  For the aware mind, this happens practically daily.

The only fact I have come to rely on is randomness.  Why does one highly talented person get crapped on their whole life, while another talentless hack gets all the toys?  Random grouping.  The talentless hack will construct a fairy tale that seems to explain why he has all the toys, while at the same time, the talented one will do the same to explain why he has been screwed.  Both will live out their lives believing in their fairy tales and acting upon them, never realizing that their fairy tales were complete illusions, as were all the toys they both thought they wanted.

Here's where it gets fun.

The Social Marxists/Post-Modernists/SJWs have constructed a fairy tale that certain groups are crapped on, while others are privileged.  They turn to "leaders" to change this situation.  Ironically, the "leaders" are the ones who created the fairy tale to keep the numbnuts busy and thinking that in a completely random Universe, there is such a thing as justice.  The "leaders" happily take the numbnuts' money and transference of power, thinking they really are better, because their own fairy tale says they deserve to be "leaders" because they have randomly been placed at a temporal whirlpool that could evaporate tomorrow.

They are all wrong.  We have all been randomly placed in arbitrary positions that we have woven complex fairy tales around to explain and justify the happenstance.  In reality, we know nothing for sure, except that we individually exist and that our situation this moment is such a ways.  That's it.

The upshot is that we have all woven a fairy tale that we billions of people need a handful of "leaders" to tell us what to believe and how to act.  We are born with that information, and if we took more than a hair's breadth of time to think about it, we would understand that fact.

There is no system of justice.  There is no law.  There are no "leaders".  There are only human beings who are scared and lonely and unsure of what the hell all this Life stuff is about.  We organize ourselves around fairy tales so as to feel like the Universe has meaning, when it doesn't.  It simply is.

Let go of the fairy tales.  They will change tomorrow when some new discovery comes along.  We don't need leaders and no one is better than another - luckier maybe, but not better.

Lately, some friends of mine have been all into gambling systems.  They think that they can identify patterns in randomness, rather than whirlpools of time.  They try their systems and if they (randomly) work, it confirms their fairy tale.  If they (randomly) don't work, they toss it and move on to another.  These guys are like a microcosm of Humanity.

We try out our fairy tale.  If it works, we call it religion, if it doesn't we call it evil.

In the end, the only difference between the two systems is our accidentally standing in the right place at the right time.

Roil, Roil, Foil And Fumble

It is amazing that anyone can take the Trump/Russia conspiracy seriously.  At the very least, for the US to accuse ANY other country of interfering with its elections is so disingenuous as to induce guffaws in any aware individual.  Furthermore, the story employs one of the simplest forms of deception - misdirection.  Finally, it is nothing more than a 100-year-old geopolitical effort to isolate Russia, as it sits squarely in the middle of nearly ever strategic location on Earth.

To quality my remarks, I hold no truck with Trump (score for triple-letter alliteration).  I think he is a bombastic blowhard who may be a wily real estate mogul and carnival barker, but has zero interest or sense when it comes to history and long-term effects beyond the bottom line of the annual report.

That said, for the US to get its panties in a bunch over election rigging is seriously funny.  The country that has interfered with elections in nearly every country on Earth has little room to call the kettle black.  Since at least Teddy Roosevelt's Cuban and Panamanian adventures, and certainly since the 1948 Italian elections, the US has begged, borrowed and stolen elections the world over.  In addition, the US Department of Homeland Security assured voters that the 2016 elections were secure on its say-so.  If not, then disband the DHS and put its officers in prison.

The Russian hacking story got legs after WikiLeaks released internal email it received most likely from Seth Rich and others on the inside of the Democratic Party leadership.  Other than firing Debbie Wasserman Schultz and killing Seth Rich, the DNC has opted not to address its internal pond scum, but rather keep everyone distracted with accusations of Russian interference.  The whole issue is little more than a case of sour grapes, combined with a panicked effort to keep everyone looking at the messenger, rather than focus on the message: the DNC is full of slime-sucking pigs.

In the final analysis, though, the US effort to create Russian bug-a-boos is a continuation of a century of more effort to isolate Russia.  With the largest land mass of any country on Earth, spanning Europe and Asia, with vast natural resources, Russia could easily threaten the US empire, and has for a long time.  The US considers Europe its plaything and is deathly afraid to have Russia exert any influence over it.  In recent years, Russia has cozied up with China, an economic monster created by the US in the 1970s, and together they are an existential threat to US hegemony.  The Russia-China alliance, which increasingly includes Africa and South America (see Brazil), could easily expand to surround the US in a way far more threatening than NATO pop-guns in Poland and the Ukraine.

All empires need an enemy to prop them up, and Russia fits the bill.  The US can't attack China directly, because most of its manufacturing has been exported there, so that leaves Russia by default.  Furthermore, greenies in the US have all but shut down oil and gas production in that country, making Russia the logical supplier of choice for Europe's energy needs.  The US desperately needs to keep Europe a vassal state, but Europe desperately needs Russia to survive.  Catch-22.

That Venezuela and Brazil are in melt-down mode is a perfect example of how the US manipulates countries for its geopolitical ends.  That the US can actually accuse Russia of interference with its internal affairs is laughable, at best.  We won't even get into Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, and Ecuador, much less the Central American republics that the US steadfastly stirred and shaken.

While the US implodes, the rest of the world watches with bemusement at the astounding duplicity and perfidy of its internal politics.

Come to think of it, Trump is exactly the president the US needs and deserves.

In Search Of A River

Well, it's been an eventful week.  Started off with a massive web virus attack initiated by the NSA and targeting specifically Russia and China, and ended up with special council being appointed to get to the bottom of the Trump-Russia issue, which of course is entirely fabricated to keep eyes away from Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.

I've made it abundantly clear I don't care much for Donald Trump.  I think he's a self-aggrandizing circus barker who happens to be a marketing genius, but he's only as good as the people he surrounds himself with, since he's not much of an intellect, just a bundle of impulses that appear to have coherency.  I must admit, though, I miss him using "bigly" all the time.  Great adverb that no one, even the late night blabber-mouths picked up on.

In any event, it's all very exciting and makes for hours of knee-slapping entertainment.  The Russians are certainly bemused, though we must keep in mind that Russians are second only to Germans in their lack of a sense of humor.  The Chinese and North Koreans are completely nonplussed, given that Trump sailed half the US fleet over to the South China Sea to deliver the message that he was ready to talk.  A nice note delivered by the ambassadors would have been more than sufficient.

Given the global circus currently playing on a Fake News channel near you, it seems that humans should try something we haven't done in a long, long time - try life without governments.

Just imagine: no taxes, no police brutality, no wars, no corporations, just folks going about their business pursuing happiness, however one defines that.

One of the greatest books in English literature is Huckleberry Finn.  No one is allowed to read it anymore, because one of the main characters is named Nigger Jim, but its demise is a loss to all humanity.  Here's a link to a free copy.

This book has had a profound effect on my life.  It was one of the first books that I critically analyzed in school, meaning it was instrumental in my revelation that great literature had multiple layers of meaning.  More importantly was its message that civilization was often less civilized than living the free life of pure, unadulterated anarchy.

The story is about Huck Finn and Nigger Jim taking a rafting trip down the Mississippi River in the early 1800s.  The river, of course, is a metaphor for life and freedom.  However, whenever the two characters stopped off on the banks, they were immediately burdened with the authoritarian world, where people and institutions began imposing civilization upon the two hapless travelers.

In one adventure, Huck is adopted by a godly woman, forced to bathe and dress "appropriately," and bundled off the church on a regular basis.  Huck is like a fish out of his element, as he lies on the beach of law and order, gasping for freedom, even though he thought he was supposed to meet these expectations as part of the "good life".

In another adventure, Nigger Jim is captured and labelled as a runaway slave.  Again, the assumptions and prejudices of "civilized" society entrap our heroes and force them to flee in fear and disgust.

It is a brilliant book and one which every conscious mind should take in.

For my own experience, some of the best times of my life have been when I had hardly a coin in my pocket, no schedule and thousands of miles from "civilization".  One of my most memorable adventures was backpacking from Morocco to Egypt, through Algeria and Libya, in 1980.

I had undertaken the journey after a run through Morocco to see Casablanca and El Fez.  Wanting to see the pyramids, but finding it rather out of the way to go through Spain, Monaco, Italy, and Greece to go from North Africa to North Africa, I decided to take buses across the Mediterranean coast.

On the first leg of the journey from Tangiers to the Algerian border, I was packed into the barely road-worthy bus with all manner of humans and livestock.  The lack of A/C meant that there was more dust swirling around the inside of the bus than could possibly be found in the entire Sahara desert.  For the remainder of the trip, I opted to sit on the luggage rack welded precariously to the back of the bus, and with a towel wrapped around my head and face, proceeded to watch the unfolding of where I had been.

I had maybe $100 in my pocket at the outset, and roughly $85 when I arrived at the foot of the Great Pyramid.  It took four days of rib-cracking, kidney splitting rides and it was among the best weeks of my life.  No bosses, no one to talk to (my French was pretty limited back then) and nowhere to be in any particular hurry.  Other than the occasional passport stamping routines, I had no authority over me at all, and needed none.

Oh sure, a number of folks tried to rob me or scam me out of my money, but I managed to get through those events relatively unscathed, and they only occurred when I entered cities.  On the open road, life was blissful, quiet and safe.  I imagined myself as Huck Finn at that time, minus the abundant water, which would have been nice for the occasional bath.

The point of all this rambling is this: how much of what we assume is necessary for life to go on do we really need?  And how much of it is just a scam that we have been raised to believe is a critical part of life?

When you really contemplate the unholy mess we call "civilization", almost all of the bad things are CAUSED by authority, not solved by it.  Honestly, outside of "don't cheat, don't steal, don't lie, and don't murder", how many laws actually do us individuals any good?  Most simply protect corporate, government or religious interests, not you and me.  The bulk of civilization benefits a handful of folks at the top of the pile, and the rest of us be damned.

When you look at all the crap going on right now with governments around the world, how much of it actually affects you and me?  Does it really matter that Kim Jong-un is playing with rockets (like a couple dozen other countries that aren't being threatened)?  Does it really matter that Ahok had an opinion about a couple of lines of text?  Does it really make a difference what Trump told Lavrov?  Will Macron or Brexit or the entire EU make damn bit of difference in a thousand years?

How much of the truly important things would still be there without governments?  I'm willing to bet that demand would mean someone would supply electricity, water, housing, and the internet out of sheer self-interest.  In fact, I'm willing to bet all of it would be much better without all the "authority" fingers in those pies.

I would love for some country to take the first step.  Imagine Iceland or Switzerland or even Venezuela declaring an end to government and free, happy living.  I would bet that in 50 years' time, nearly every country on Earth did the same thing.  What would the governments do about it?  After all, there are only a few million "public servants" to us billions of real people.  Not like they'd have much choice.

But, oh, ain't there a whole lot of conditioning and mind control to overcome.

What Goes Around

You might want to cue up Billy Preston's big hit from the 1970s as we trundle through current events on diametrically opposed sides of the world today.

Back in 2014, a Populist reformer who goes by the nickname "Jokowi" (Joko Widodo) was elected president of Indonesia.  It was a hotly contested election against the Establishment choice, a lovely man by the name of Prabowo Sugiarto.

Prabowo figured he had it all locked up.  He was the darling of the Establishment, had spread the appropriate amounts of money in the appropriate places, and polls showed him having the edge on Jokowi.  It was a done deal.

Until it wasn't.

Prabowo lost the election by a slim margin as huge numbers of people that weren't counted in the polls showed up to vote for draining the swamp.

Enraged over losing the office that Prabowo thought was his for the taking, he mounted protests (paid warm bodies in large groups chanting prepared slogans), filed challenges in the courts (all the way up to the Supreme Court) and generally did anything to disrupt the new administration's ability to make headway in reforming and streamlining the national government.

Jokowi was elected governor of Jakarta in 2011 (Jakarta is a city, state and seat of the national government), along with his reformist ally Basuki Tjahaja (Ahok) Purnama.  When Jokowi won the presidency, Vice Governor Ahok took over the state government, becoming only the second Christian of Chinese ethnicity to hold the post (the first was 1964-5 shortly before Soeharto took over).  However, Prabowo didn't go quietly.

Prabowo moved to the background and began a campaign to get his people inserted into key positions in the Parliament, which resulted in barricade after barricade to Jokowi's reforms.  At the same time, Ahok was attacked repeatedly via his greatest weakness - saying what he thinks.  Ahok famously made a comment in September 2016, which was construed to be a slight against al-Qur'an, and Ahok was ultimately convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to 2 years in prison.  The conviction came after a hotly contested governor's election where Prabowo's chosen candidate, Anies, was elected over Ahok after a concerted effort by Prabowo's political machine to discredit the Chinese Christian based on racial and religious grounds - certainly not based on his record of cleaning up the city's operations.

Deprived of his staunchest ally, Jokowi has been left dangling in the wind.  He literally has no one watching his back now - literally or politically.  For the past two years, he could leave Jakarta to attend to the country's international interests, knowing that Ahok was keeping things under control back home.  Now, however, Ahok is well tucked away and Prabowo has installed his people in every quadrant around Jokowi.

This has led to numerous rumors flying that Prabowo will mount a coup d'etat in late July, while Jokowi attends the G20 summit in Hamburg.  True or not, it is a sign of Jokowi's weakened position that such talk can even be taken seriously.  The conditions certainly match many that existed in 1965, when another former general, Soeharto, mounted his coup.

If you are one of our thousands of North American readers, and all this sounds familiar, then you are right.

In 2016, Establishment darling Hillary Clinton thought she had the presidency of the US sewn up.  She lost by a narrow margin to a Populist reformer named Donald Trump.  After the election, a number of legal challenges were mounted against Trump, and ultimately Clinton slipped into the background where she formulated a stealth attack to block every single action and policy of the new administration.  This has led to unprecedented infighting and witch hunting in an effort to unseat the duly elected president.

The parallels are curious.  I have pointed out the many similarities between the US and Indonesia, and the fact that nearly identical political situations exist in both countries now is even more curious.  As researchers like Peter Levenda and Allan Nairn have pointed out in recent articles, the ties between the Establishment of both countries run rather deep (pun intended).  That nearly identical tactics would emerge in both places at roughly the same time seems less coincidental than intended.

This situation, combined with Macron's victory in France, Merkel's survival in Germany, and the incredibly languid foot-dragging going on over Brexit, it seems that the Establishment is engaged in a scorched-earth effort to prevent the world from escaping their iron fist.

The masses have a really bad habit of thinking elections take care of the popular agenda.  It's really not entirely their fault, since they've been indoctrinated from birth to think they live in "democracies".  They get all riled up during the election cycle, get their candidate elected, then go back to whatever it was they were doing before.  In a few years, they look up again and notice that nothing got done and they proceed to elect another reformer, who also gets nothing done.  Meantime, the Establishment runs all the way to the bank.

As George Ure likes to say, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

The Establishment are obviously hurting, or they wouldn't be so blatantly obvious in their machinations.  They're spooked by their slipping grip and will risk exposing themselves in order to maintain their cushy positions of imaginary power.

How all this will unfold is anybody's guess, but it seems we can make a fairly solid prediction that the remainder of 2017 will be one for the history books - filed under "Rhymes".

I'm Good, Country Shot To Hell

Widespread network outages in Indonesia due to WannaCry.  Life On The Far Side will return, ransomware and Coups d'Etat notwithstanding.

B

We Control The Horizontal And The Vertical

I'm going to tell you something, and I'm going to try and be delicate.  I don't want to bruise delicate psyches or shock anyone unduly.

But first, think about this...in fact, check yourself regularly as you go about your business every day.  When you walk into a room with a TeeVee, do you automatically look at it?  When you are talking with someone and there is a TeeVee in the room, do you find your eyes wandering over to the screen...usually when the transition graphics are running?

I want you to think about this long and hard, and concentrate on it for at least a week.  The reason is that you are mind controlled.

I told you it wasn't going to be easy.  No one wants to admit they are mind controlled.  Perhaps a kinder, gentler term would help...hypnotized.  Maybe that will help you feel like you can snap out of it if you really try.  And try you must.  Now that I have implanted the thought in your mind, you will at least think about it on occasion, perhaps catch yourself being drawn to the TeeVee.

Not to discourage you, but it took me many years to snap out of it.  Many of those years were spent studying and creating media content that helped hypnotize people.  I was pretty good at it.  I got paid well and won awards for it.  Even though I was trained and conscious of what was happening, I was still a victim, because the power of the medium is almost overwhelming.

TeeVee, and movies too, rely on a physiological phenomenon that has been burned into our brains over millennia of development as a species.  Our eyes/brain automatically react to movement and flashing light.  It's an automatic response.  Things that move and flash might be food, or water, or perhaps a predator.  Whatever the reason for it, it is very hard to control

TeeVee specifically uses lots of colorful rotating graphics and loud, splashy music that usually begin with a strong beat to make us look.  Once our gaze is locked by spinning logos and swooshing meaningless elements and blaring music, we are primed to have suggestions pumped into our minds.

Notice that the swooshing stuff is immediately followed by a single strong statement, called a "lead".  The lead has been chosen as the message of the moment that will kick off every segment and fill the lower-third title crawl.  Whenever you get bored by the pictures, your eyes are automatically drawn to the words incessantly scrolling across the screen, when the message is pounded into your brain over and over again.

Suppose you and I meet at our favorite cafe (where a TeeVee or two are streaming messages at us) and I say, "Trump."

Two years ago, you would probably think of Bridge, Hearts or Spades, or at least the expression "trump card."  Now, your head is full of images of a fat, grey-haired loudmouth, and your mind is full of one of two narratives, depending on whether you watch "left" or "right" media.

The fact that there are only two narratives to choose from, left or right, and not three, ten or a hundred, is that the information you are fed is pre-arranged in diametrically opposed packages.

Depending on which one your are conditioned to subscribe to, your reaction to "Trump" will be pleasurable or painful.  Both of us are probably unable to create a third narrative, since we have not thought that way and don't have the vocabulary ready to express it.  If we stick to the two controlled narratives, we most likely have an hour or more of conversation ahead parroting all the messages we have heard.

I do not watch TeeVee, nor listen to the radio.  Haven't for more than a decade.  I subscribe to a very narrow selection of YouTube channels that I believe are free thinkers, or just purely mind candy for times when I want to relax.  For that reason, I am forced to formulate my own narratives, which regular readers here know do not conform to most "mainstream" ideologies.

I also read a lot.  And write a lot.  I teach English and have been paid to write on many occasions, sometimes winning awards for it.  The books I read generally went out of print a century ago or more, though my collection of over 3,000 books (last time I bothered to count) spans the last 3,000 years.

I only listen to recorded music and use an ad blocker on all my browsers.  I avoid every possible contact with advertising.  When I accidentally see one, it usually makes me laugh because they are so wildly manipulative, appealing to our basest emotions and desires.  In fact, I spend a lot of time on my Twitter feed ridiculing and satirizing the media, because it is an effective way to break the spell.

The reason I mention all this is to demonstrate the amount of effort necessary to break the habit and get out of the conditioning.  The mind is like a muscle - it must be exercised regularly or it will atrophy.  Trust me, TeeVee and the other media depend on us being lazy and unwilling to exercise our minds.

Here's another little experiment.  Next time you get together with friends and actually talk (as opposed to using devices or absorbing media), be aware of what is being discussed.  Chances are, nearly all of the conversation will revolve around the media - what someone saw, heard or read.  Very little will have to do with personal experiences and anecdotes.

If you feel particularly daring, go prepared with a story or topic that is far from the beaten path (say medieval architecture or unusual political view) and notice how everyone reacts.  I will bet dimes to donuts the conversation shuts down for a few seconds before going back to the media.

Finally, and I know this doesn't apply to readers here because they would be basket cases before finishing one column, if a loved one is "triggered" by certain topics, words or ideas, then they are most certainly mind-controlled.

"Triggering" is a concept from the Bernays school of public relations and propaganda.  It was developed out of Freudian and Jungian hierarchies and archetypes.  The triggers are basically weaponized fears and desires that are used to control our behavior.

There are fears of being excluded from the group, or desires to lead the group.  They are herd instincts that have been deeply researched and particular sounds and pictures have been associated with them.  They can be triggered without us knowing it, and our responses have been programmed into us so that we react in predictable and controllable ways.

One example that is very powerful is "for the children".  We will do anything, buy any product, try any technique, and rally the troops "for the children".  This is one of our most basic instincts and it is one of the most weaponized.

Any number of crimes have been perpetrated by nothing more than saying "for the children".  Just look at vaccines.  Politicians, social workers and advertisers use "for the children" all the time.  "Amber Alerts" and "No Child Left Behind" are all examples of "for the children".  Child 'protective' Services justifies all the horrors they wreak in the name of "for the children".  You can completely shut down someone's defensive reactions by sayiing, "It's for the children."

Yes, sadly, we are all mind controlled.  The media is so pervasive now that we can hardly extract ourselves from it.  We feel embarrassed if we can't discuss last night's game or the lastest episode of Game of Thrones or Orange Is The New Black.

Have you ever felt ashamed or left out because you don't watch or missed an episode of the current craze?  You are mind-controlled.  Are you angry that Tim Allen's Last Man Standing got cancelled?  You are controlled by the "right" narrative.  Are you ecstatic that it got cancelled?  You are controlled by the "left" narrative.

The proper response from a clear-thinking mind is, "Who gives a shit?"

As an aside, I usually return FOLLOWS on Twitter as a courtesy.  I often get very nice messages thanking me for the follow, though I admit I am sadly lacking in that department.  The other day I got a response that read, "Hi! Thanks for following us. How do you use social media? For Business or Pleasure?"

I responded, "I use social media to ridicule and satirize the enemies of Truth, though just as often I point out the absurdities of using social media."

I have yet to get a reply.  They may even have UNFOLLOWed me.  Que sera!

You can follow the fun @RadioFarSide.  I'll most likely FOLLOW you back, if you stick around long enough.

The Real Identity Politics

At more or less the same time, I have discovered a YouTube channel and a movement that I truly respect.

The YouTube channel is Lauren Southern, and it begs the question, why are all the hot babes on the good side?  Lauren says what every sane person should be thinking.  She takes on the tough topics and is unafraid to go there, challenging all the sacred cows of the Post-Modernist Marxists, confronting them with camera and microphone at the ready.

Lauren Southern introduced me to a group that is quickly rising in my esteem.  The group is called Génération Identitaire, or Generation Identity, and they are literally putting it all on the line to defend history and culture from Neo-Fascist invasion and governmental collusion.

Lauren's passionate report on the willful destruction of New Orleans landmarks made me weep for the loss of history, while at the same time enraged me.  Her on-the-spot reports from Paris just before the election brought me images and reports that the StreetMeat Media will not ever show us.

And of course her report on Generation Identity filled me with hope that a younger generation will not roll over and allow Western civilization to be destroyed.

This young woman has more moxy than most of the men I have ever known.  She is of the right age, intelligence and temperament to inspire the generation that mine left dangling in the wind.  It inspires me to watch her videos.

When I watch Generation Identity in action, I remember fondly my days as an activist with the Texas secessionist movement.  I was ridiculed and dismissed and even had my former life destroyed by a political system dead set on destroying my cultural heritage.  I spent many hours in jail, as well as driving all over the countryside to deliver and listen to speeches.

I was often accused of being a racist because of my activities, but were forced to eat their words when they realized I was married to an Apache-Latina, spoke multiple languages, and had traveled to dozens of countries - not as a tourist, but as someone genuinely interested in the history and culture.

It makes me misty-eyed to see these young folks training, fighting and taking action, while us old farts sit around and grouse.

When I rail against Islam, it is not the real Islam that named most of the visible stars in the northern hemisphere, or gave the world algebra, or bequeathed the world a rich heritage of art and architecture.  The Islam I rail against is a perverted form of rigid fundamentalist dogmas that has gotten loose - an unintended consequence of Western powers who saw it as a weapon.  It is anti-art, anti-philosophy and anti-reason.  It is fascistically dogmatic and unyielding in its error.

It is no different than the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages, with its destruction of "pagan" temples, pogroms against science and Holy Inquisitions, and even in our own age supported Nazism.

Real tolerance and real diversity means that every culture has the intrinsic right to a space where it can grow on its own, or die of its own folly.  Good, bad or indifferent, though, every culture and must be allowed to grow, dominate, merge, or die off as the organic structure that it is.

What we are seeing, though, is artificial mixing that is catalyzing a war to be used as a distraction for a particular agenda.  This cultural war - a world war if you like - is part of the classic Hegelian Dialectic: create a problem and install a chosen solution by controlling the discourse.  As the poles calcify, the outcome becomes inevitable, since the destroyers of culture are relentless, and the defenders of culture have no choice but to answer with equal force.

Since one side cannot talk and the other side cannot listen, the inevitable result must be all-out war.  At the end of that war, whatever the final result, those with the agenda will say we must do something to stop these wars, and oh by the way, here's our pre-formulated plan to do just that.  Rest assured that the Final Solution will be just as abhorrent as the war itself, though perhaps less chaotic and bloody.

Individuals like Lauren Southern and groups like Generation Identity are likely the West's last-ditch effort to stop the march to war and the destruction of history and culture.  The open questions are, is it in time, and is it enough?  It depends a lot on who listens and how well they can remain focused on the real goal.

As is often the result, people like Lauren are bought off by the corporate interests and groups like GI are infiltrated and steered the wrong direction.  Let us hope and pray that they have the integrity, strength and will to stay on the Path, and more importantly, that others will join them in the fight.

The most important tools they, and we have at our disposal are books.  We must read the ancient foundations of our civilization and take the lessons of those before us to heart.  It is not the first time our civilization has faced these challenges, nor will it be the last, but it is the challenge we have in front of us.  It is incumbent on Muslims, Christians, Atheists, and everyone else, to see where we have been before choosing where we will go.

Of Pity And Tantrums

Here's what is wrong with modern Western society:

Instead of "Safe Spaces," what is really needed are time-out corners.

When you really think about it, the current SJW movement is nothing more than a bunch of over-grown toddlers acting out.  There are two classic behaviors at work here: "pity party" and "tantrum".

In the "pity party" instance, the SJWs are doing everything they can to make themselves victims.  They will mutilate their bodies, act anti-socially, bully, demean, and violently act out, and then run yelping to Mommy when someone slaps back.  This is the classic nobody-loves-me/everybody-hates-me ruse.  In order to gain sympathy and attention, a toddler will provoke one party to get sympathy from another.  These personalities are unable to validate themselves, so they require outside input to feel validated.

In the "tantrum" behavior, which is really an escalation of the "pity party" scenario, the toddler falls down on the ground kicking and screaming because they are not receiving the desired attention any other way.  Unable to express frustration or argue reasonably in favor of a desired outcome, the toddler ramps up the violent outbursts until someone pays attention.

In a classic example, the SJW will cover his or her body with tattoos and body piercings to get attention.  When that fails (usually because everyone else is doing it too) they turn to fashion, cosmetics and (in extreme cases) surgery to get attention.  When that fails, they turn to throwing rocks, breaking windows and burning cars until the adults acknowledge their self-pity.  In most cases, when the adults finally react, it is with equal but opposite force, further reinforcing their self-pity.  This, in turn, leads to further escalation by all parties involved.

The rash of self-induced victimhood is a prime example of this "game" being played out.  Women filing false rape accusations; racial and religious minorities painting slurs on their houses and cars, and so forth.  All this is nothing more than an escalated case of me-too syndrome seeking external attention and validation.

All of this started in the 1960s.  The Baby Boom generation, realizing their political and economic power in numbers, rejected "authority" and classical institutions in favor of...well, absolutely no control at all.

There came a wave of parents who wanted to be "friends" with their kids, rather than guides to proper social interaction.  Those kids devised the "self-esteem" movement, where no child could be allowed to fail or feel inadequate.  This, in turn, led to an entire generation of (physical) adults who are little more than over-grown toddlers, unable to interact with polite society on an adult level.

Suppose I didn't bathe, shave or change clothes for a month.  I slopped myself with mud and filth, didn't brush my teeth and behaved like a heathen.  Then I went to a black-tie event and demanded everyone accept me as is, throwing a huge fit and starting a food fight when I was shunned.  That is more or less what has happened in Western society.

Furthermore, with each succeeding generation, the behavior gets worse and worse, while the preceding generation is increasingly unable to deal with it on an adult and reasonable level.  Thus, the West now has an entire generation of unrestrained, uneducated and unfulfilled over-grown toddlers who are moving back home at 30 years old because they can't survive in the real world, while evolving into electronic troglodytes ranting against an unfair world.

In the final analysis, the world is far from fair.  It is chock-a-block full of people competing for resources motivated by self-interests.  Over millennia, humanity has developed manners and ethics to keep social interaction as civil as possible while going about our in-born and instinctive goals.  It is a delicate dance of recognizing our basest needs with the overall goal of creating a civilization.

As the overlaid veneer of civil society fades, there is nothing left but the base motivations...me, Me, ME!  Undisciplined adults raising undisciplined children has left an entire civilization with unreasoning and immature individuals, who must either find it within themselves to repair the damage, or face the collapse of the civilization.

Japan and China have addressed this situation by creating authoritarian States that foster robotic populations incapable of creativity, inspiration or innovation.  Instead, they take the inventions of others and, through rigorous trial and error, manufacture iterations of the same basic ideas.  There is no creative leap involved.  It is a terrible sacrifice for those societies, but it has been rewarded with financial success and orderly cultures - at least on the surface.

The West is known for its intuitive leaps in innovation.  The West invented "outside the box" thinking because of a cultural desire for Truth embedded in the Christian substrate of the culture.  Unable to reconcile its religious roots with its inherent anti-authoritarianism, it is eating itself alive by rejecting the philosophical scaffolding on which it stands, but unable to replace it with the only viable alternative, in terms of social order.

Without the self-organizing concept of the Divine within one's self and others, the West has no foundation on which to grow and expand.  It has been reduced to temper tantrums, which on the global stage manifest as military adventurism.  Without the recognition of the Divine spark, there is no support for diplomacy, and so the only recourse is bombing and shows of force.

As of this time, the West only recognizes two options - eternal childhood or post-modernist authoritarianism.  Unable to culturally accept either course, it is at an impasse

When one comes to a fork in the road and one is loathe to choose either path, the only alternatives are to forge a new path, or sit down and wait to die.  At the moment, the West seems content to choose the latter.

Tales Of Intrigue

Photo courtesy Vice.com

Events here in Jakarta have stirred up quite a bit of interest, with a ton-and-a-half of email and well over 500 readers all trying to get a handle on what happened yesterday.  The questions and hits have come from every continent but Antarctica asking what happened and what next?

Well, let's see if I can boil this down to the marrow.

Jakarta's Governor Ahok, a man of Chinese descent and Christian - only the second in history to hold the office - was found guilty of blasphemy against al-Qur'an and sentenced to two years in jail, to start immediately despite his intention to appeal.  He was taken into custody and sent to Cipinang prison in East Jakarta, but later last night was moved to the custody of TNI - the Indonesian army - for "safety" reasons.

Vice Governor Djarot was advanced to acting governor until the end of the term in October, when the governor-elect, Anies, will be sworn in.

The blasphemy charge was based on a speech Ahok gave back in September to a group of supporters.  The speech was recorded on video, then edited out of context and mistranscribed to mangle the Governor's words and meaning.

The actual verse in question is from the book Al Maidan 51, and is translated into English (only Arabic is considered the true Word of Allah) as:

"O you who have faith!  Do not take the Jews and the Christians as masters; they are master of each other/  Any of you who submit to them is indeed one of them.  Indeed, Allah does not guide the wrongdoing lot.

Setting aside the long historic antagonism between Christians and Jews, this has frequently, especially by hardliners, been interpreted to mean that Muslims may not have any non-Muslim over them, whether it be political, social or religious in nature.

Thus, it has been interpreted to mean that even in a secular republic, such as Indonesia, where the Constitution recognizes five religions on equal footing (Judaism not among them), Muslims may not allow a non-Muslim to be elected to a government office.  Never mind the concept of a public servant being below the common citizen, not above.

In any event, Ahok was reported to have said to the crowd that they shouldn't be "deceived" into thinking that this verse refers to office holders in a republican form of government.  It only means that a Muslim should not serve a master who is non-Muslim, nor should he accept religious instruction from a non-Muslim.

Well, the choice of the word "deceived" set off a shit storm.  Ahok was accused of insulting al-Quran by misinterpreting the words and using scripture for political purposes.  I don't know.  I wasn't there.  All I can say it what was reported in a video that I know is not an actual representation of the moment (it was edited) and a transcript that even the man who did it admitted was not accurate.

At any rate, one of the most honest and hard-working politicians, certainly in my memory, who did an amazing amount of good for the city of Jakarta in the four years he served, is now in jail for two years under highly questionable circumstances.

First of all, the documentation is suspect.  That much has already been stated.  Second is the question of whether a non-Muslim can be said to blaspheme a book that is not sacred to his own religion?  Blasphemy is typically limited to believers.  Third, what are the motivations behind the conviction?

It is this last question that has caused so much consternation.  You see, Ahok was originally elected Vice Governor under the current president Jokowi.  They were a team who came riding into town on a populist/reformist wave in 2012, from the city of Yogyakarta, where they were widely heralded as having cleaned up local government and ridding the city of entrenched corruption.

They were elected governor and vice governor together in Jakarta.  Two years later, Jokowi won the presidency and Ahok took over as governor.  During his tenure, the city buses actually started running on a schedule, the mass transit system was overhauled and an MRT system was inaugurated, city employees were made to show up on time and work full days, and corruption declined precipitously.

When Jokowi ran for president, he was opposed by a man named Prabowo.  Prabowo is widely considered to be part of the Establishment: a former general in the army and one of the deep crony insiders.  One could think of this match-up as similar to Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton.

Prabowo was so sure that he would win that the loss led to court battles and media slurs and all kinds of political maneuvering behind the scenes.  In short, the Establishment had lost a major battle and were on the outs, but that didn't stop them.  The lay in wait for a hole in the Jokowi/Ahok armor, which came in the form of a highly questionable comment back in September.

Ahok was recently defeated for re-election by a man named Anies, who is supported by Prabowo and the Establishment.  Many consider the election to have been rigged, but in the interest of stability, no one stood up to challenge the vote, least of all Ahok, who was under trial at the time for blasphemy.

The trial, too, is suspected of being rigged.  Even some of the people involved in the trial have said the judges need to be investigated for accepting bribes, since the prosecution asked for two years' probation, but in a highly irregular move, the court (five judges) threw the book at Ahok.

At any rate, this leaves President Jokowi completely isolated without any powerful allies.  He is under relentless attack by Prabowo and the Establishment, and rumors have gone around that Jokowi has been directly threatened since the Ahok result.  Jokowi stands for re-election in 2019, if he makes it that long.

In what could hardly be considered a coincidence, Agung - the son of the former president, Yudhoyno - has announced his intent to run for president, and he is openly allied with Prabowo and possibly with Anies.

In other words, the whole sordid affair has all the hallmarks of a subtle but distinct coup.  The reforms and constant attacks on corruption in government have taken a toll on the Establishment, which is widely known to use the State Treasury for political activities.

Knowing this, Ahok is reported to have placed a triple password on city accounts, with one of them being in the hands of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), meaning that even if the Establishment regains power, they may have a difficult time dipping into public funds.

It should also be noted that Djarot, the new acting governor of Jakarta, is openly antagonistic to Jokowi.

Whatever the truth is, the appearances are suspicious to a lot of folks in these parts.  Apparently, investors feel the same way, as the Jakarta Composite Index dropped precipitously after the verdict, and is continuing the down trend as I write.  A bill in Parliament banning alcohol across the country would further undermine the economy by killing tourism, and the general uncertainty is surely causing a lot of foreign investors to think twice about committing funds in the country.

Much remains to be seen, but among expats there is considerable discussion of bailing out and looking for more stable digs elsewhere - like Vietnam and Singapore.  The coming days, weeks and months will tell a tale, and many folks are sitting on their wallets expecting another 1965 or 1998 blow up.

Indonesia is the largest and richest economy in Southeast Asia, and what happens here will ripple throughout the region, which has enjoyed significant stability over the past 20 years.

More to come...

A Taste Of The Far Side

UPDATE: Ahok found guilty, sentenced to 2 years in prison.  Ahok files immediate appeal to Constitutional Court.  Governor-elect Anies trying to take over office 6 months early.

It's an interesting time to live in Indonesia.  The largest Muslim country on Earth by population is undergoing a self-examination, with full knowledge that this nation is composed of vast numbers of wildly different cultures (all indigenous) and the only way to hold it together is to ensure they all are equal.  In other words, just because the majority believes one thing doesn't mean every must, and the minority must be protected.  In other words, a republican form of social order.

Indonesia shares a lot of political philosophy with the founding ideals of the United States.  The national motto is Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, which is the Jawa Halus version of E Pluribus Unam.  If you don't read Javanese or Latin, it translates as "Unity in Diversity."  The Pancasila, or "Five Points," constitute the national ideals.  They can be summed up as:

1. One Nation under God
2. Equal Protection of the Law
3. Allegiance to the Flag
4. The Republic for which it Stands
5. Liberty and Justice for

Despite these espoused ideals, the governor of Jakarta has been on trial for "blasphemy" for the past several months, and was soundly defeated in the recent election, because he is of Chinese descent, a Christian, and dared to quote al-Qur'an while giving a talk.

What, you might rightly ask, did Ahok say about al-Qur'an that could land him in jail for the next 2 to 5 years?  It must have been a terrible thing to be called blasphemy, right?

Well, basically he quoted a verse that forbids Muslims from submitting to religious oversight by "infidel" faiths.  Ahok pointed out that it says nothing about politics, and that religion and politics should be separate entities.  A video of the talk was edited to twist the context and quote, making it appear that Ahok had insulted al-Qur'an and used its words in a profane manner.

During the trial, the editor admitted he deliberately twisted the words, the head of the Ministry of Religion (MUI) testified that Ahok did not blaspheme, and a number of academics said that Ahok's interpretation was more or less correct.

Yet, the trial has been used by extremist groups seeking to overthrow the administration of the current president Joko Widodo (a populist) and install someone much friendlier to military authority, all in the name of battling "communism".

It's all terribly complex, so please read Peter Levenda, Joseph Farrell and Allan Nairn for perspective and context.

You are probably asking what any of this has to do with readers in the Western hemisphere.  Well...

Joko Widodo and Ahok were elected together as Governor and Vice Governor of Jakarta back in 2012, as populist reformers.  In fact, they were along the leading edge of the Populist Wave that eventually elected Trump and most recently ended in France (we'll see what South Korea does today).  In 2014, Jokowi was elected president and Ahok took over as governor to finish out the term

Even more interesting are the connections that Donald Trump has to all this mess, and Allan Nairn's article sheds some interesting light on the subject.

No matter what happens today, all hell will likely break loose.  The bought-and-paid-for protesters will not be wasted.  If Ahok is convicted, he will likely get probation and the protesters will riot because he didn't go to jail.  If Ahok is not convicted, they will riot because he will be seen as having OJ-Simpson-ed.  Either way, the Powers That Be will get their way.

The spooky parallels and ties between the United States and Indonesia are numerous.  In many ways, Indonesia is like a photographic negative of the US.  Then there are the similarities with the motto, Pancasila and the eagle mascot.  The rabbit hole, however, only starts there.

Stand by.  Indonesia is yet another battle ground in the Globalist war on People Power, and they cannot afford to allow Indonesia - a strategically rich target - to go down the path of true independence.

The fun starts now.

The System Always Wins

Well folks, it's over.  The clean-up crew is sweeping up all the jingoistic signage and tossing the nationalistic banners.

First, Brexit stalled to buy time while the Masters of the Universe manipulated the minds of suddenly independence-minded folks.  Then, Donald Trump got elected by a massive outpouring of nationalists and immediately reneged on every single promise.  After that, Angela Merkel spanked that brief flash of free thinking called AfD.  Now, Marine Le Pen has been soundly defeated because the people counting the votes didn't want her anywhere near the power structure.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, you can't fight City Hall.  As Josef Stalin rightly noted:

"

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

The Globalists have spent the better part of three centuries building up their System, through revolutions, wars and natural disasters, and a couple of "elections" aren't going to stop them.  No matter who wins any election, we all lose and the Fat Cats win.  It is a fact of life that no one seems to have gotten their head around.

The problem is that this most recent attempt to end the Globalist regime was mounted by a bunch of normal folks like you and me - well, you at least - who got all passionate and worked their butts off to get their candidate elected.  Once the election was over though, regardless of the outcome, the fever cooled and folks got distracted by things like family, income, food and minor distractions like that.

The Masters of the Universe have perfected the System.  It is self-protecting and self-perpetuating.  The only way to get rid of it is to utterly and completely destroy it, and us normal folks just aren't willing to sacrifice our lives and our treasure (such as it is) to do what needs to be done.

I worked for a while in one of the largest and most famous cancer hospitals in the world.  I recorded surgeries to make training videos for other surgeons.  I saw a lot of cancer surgeries, tracked the cases, and learned a little something about cancer.

When extracting a cancerous tumor, the surgeons spend a lot of time fretting about "margins".  It is not enough to excise the lump, they want to take a sufficient amount of the surrounding healthy tissue to ensure they get every cell of the tumor.  If not, it will quickly grow back, and will likely be more aggressive than before, since the patient's immune system is then compromised by chemo-therapy and radiation treatments.

Cancer is an apt metaphor for the kind of Globalism we face today.  Not only must it be completely and totally excised before we can look for a cure, it will kill the host if left untreated.  It is also made up of millions of cells that divide one at a time until it constitutes an ugly mass within the host.  Eventually it grows so large that it takes command of all the other bodily functions within the body and begins metastasizing by casting off cells to swim around until they find another location to infect.

The upshot of all this is that the Globalist cancer will never, ever be defeated by an election or two, no matter who wins.  At the very best, the winner will be an honest politician (oxymoron alert) who is completely blocked in every direction, or the winner is a shill set up to deflect the opposition and rechannel the movement back on itself.  If you are new around here, I am convinced Trump is the latter, and Le Pen would have been the former.

So now we have a billionaire, a banker and a physicist running the three largest Western nations.  It's over, folks.  Go back to sleep.  There will be no significant change in the social-economic-political direction of the Western hemisphere, short of a massive and sudden cataclysm.  We The People have clearly shown that we do not have the stomach nor the attention span needed to truly change anything.

What we have clearly demonstrated is that we like our debt servitude, our blinky lights in a box, our illusions of upward mobility, our self-delusions of control.  We enjoy cognitive dissonance and the dissolution of history.  We thrive on being impoverished for generations to come (if not forever).  We are espoused to the status quo and incapable of extracting ourselves with clear thinking.

I'm willing to bet hard money that most readers here have never read a novel called McTeague by Frank Norris, and certainly never seen the 1916 silent film that was the first-ever film adaptation of a novel.  Probably haven't seen the opera, either, though you might have caught a film loosely based on it called Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with Humphrey Bogart.  I highly recommend the reader run right out and read it.  Here's a free copy both written and audio.

At any rate, we are the characters, mired in rage, jealousy and greed.  Our petty differences have been weaponized against us to keep us fighting each other until we are so worn out we can't fight the real enemy, the gilded cage that entraps us.

It's over, folks.  Go home.  The party's out of booze and poppers, and the entertainers have all been paid and sent off.  It was fun while it lasted and there'll be memories to rehash years from now in the old folks' home while the nurses change our catheters and piss bags.

At some point in the battle against cancer, one has to concede that there is no winning and death is inevitable in any case.  We put up a fun fight and all the chanting and sloganeering got our creative blood pumping for a while.  Our great-great-grandchildren will curse us, but hey!, we won't be around to hear it, so who cares?

As I have said many times right here on these pages, there is only one way to win, and we obviously don't have the guts to go there.

So, what's on Netflix?