A Far Side Christmas 2012

Well, here we are once again at that joyous time of year when the churches and the mosques compete to out-noise each other.  So far, the jury is still out.  We'll update you later in the week as to who won.

Meantime, here on the Far Side, it's time to look back at the Year That Wasn't Supposed To Be (YTWSB).  And we're happy to report that every single prediction we made back in January came true...as usual.  We, of course, are not surprised, but some of the newer readers here might be.  They haven't yet realized that what happens on the Far Side happens to the Universe.

Some of the things we pause to remember:

Movies have replaced Catcher in the Rye as the new trigger for Manchurian Candidates.  We saw The Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit become famous not for the great art and story-telling, but for the murder and mayhem they spawned.  Marshall McLuhan was right...the medium IS the message.  Naturally, here on the Far Side, we were way ahead of the curve and have been telling folks to turn it off for a long time now.

Related to that was the Great LIBOR Scam.  Apparently, some folks still believe that the markets and banking system are free and not manipulated.  Dream on, baby!  Just to put a fine point on the whole mess, supposedly both the Batman and Sandy Hook shooters had fathers who are/were scheduled to testify in the LIBOR hearings.  At this point, anyone holding their breath for any real fix in the system should be near the point of asphyxia.  Give it up, dude.

The world didn't end, naturally, and we knew that because Willy and Kate are due to breed.  We can't have the world ending when there's fresh royalty prospects out there.  In a bizarre turn of events, though, a couple of Ozzie DJs spoofed a nurse into giving up the details of the severe case of Royal Morning Sickness.  The nurse was suicided for not knowing the real Liz and Phil voices from a couple of Ozzie criminal classers.  Botany Bay, thou livest on!

And about that 'severe case of morning sickness'...one could imply that carrying the royal seed is so toxic as to put one in hospital.  Our heart goes out to Kate for drawing the short straw on that one.

The Perpetual War continues apace.  We can only stand agape at those who continue to spout the 'support the troops' line, while at the same time vociferously demanding an end to the wars.  Guess what, geniuses...quit supporting the troops and sending your brood to die and the wars will end right quick.  If this isn't Orwellian DoubleThink, nothing is.  It is truly amazing how people can wholeheartedly believe two opposing ideas at the same time and not explode.

Once again this past year we hoped for a change and got the same old sh*t.  We could limit that just to the elections in the US, but it seems apropos to the EU, the Bailouts, and all the other crap that's been shoveled out for the past decade or so.  The only real change is that we no longer have the Mayan Apocalypse to look forward to.

On the science front, NASA achieved a pretty good thing by littering a couple of square miles of another planet to once again land no humans on another world.  What has been notable about this particular event, besides the fact that they labeled one of their big deals the "seven minutes of terror", was that they finally got their cameras white balanced so we can look at some decent pictures for a change.  At the same time, they're actually posting some really interesting photos, though the whole 'earthshaking' announcement thing kinda fizzled and died.  For a minute, we Far Siders almost got our hopes up, for a change.

In a hat's off moment, we salute the Tesla Motors company for releasing an electric car that combines comfort, speed and endurance in a way that Detroit never could.  We suppose that's why Detroit is closing its doors and discorporating.  We look forward to the day when Redmont, WA goes through the same convulsions and dies.  After what Detroit did to Tucker, they deserve it.

Here on the Far Side, we understand gardening and seasons.  We know that things grow and die, and when they die, we don't throw good money after bad.  We mourn, but the corpse in the ground, and move on.

Other tech notes for 2012...China joined the space station club, India joined the asteroid fly-by club, North Korea joined the satellite club, Steve Jobs went to iHeaven and left his yacht bill unpaid, Windows Umpteenth debuted, and somewhere in Bhaktapur, Nepal, Ashis Ansu invented a zero-point energy machine that will never see the light of day since the Men in Black are on the way as we speak.

All in all, it's been a truly Far Side kind of year.  We didn't start this blog for nothing.  We knew it was going to get really weird from here on out, and we wanted to be on the forefront of the action.  Regular readers know they haven't been cheated.  They've gotten their money's worth from the nearly 500 articles and interviews posted here.

And that's where we want to wrap this up (how's that for alliteration).  For the past three years now, we've been hacking away trying to bring readers and listeners the latest and most intriguing ideas and research.  What's more, we've done it all completely ad-free and without charge.

But, we've had help.  We want to thank UrbanSurvival.com, LewRockwell.com, Rense.com, KeeleyNet.com, HenryMakow.com, RT.com, Blog-Zug.com, Palace-Hotel.com, BlogConnect.com, those who have cross-linked to Facebook or Twitter, and thousands of readers and listeners who have made the Far Side a regular part of their lives.

We especially want to thank those good folks who not only read, but write to us, especially Harry, Linda, Peter, Bill, Bob, Ben, Guy, Teka, and Jessica, and all the others who have picked up a pen or keyboard to let us know what they think about things.

Our House to Yours

And our deepest gratitude to Bob, Jessica, Sam, Lily, and Everett who have donated money to the effort.  Your faith and support will not go unrewarded.  In 2013, we will continue to expand and grow with your gracious support.

Finally, to our loving and supportive wife, who puts up with our hobbies and obsessions.  And to our loving and brilliant children: Kat, Jacob, Vanny, Aldo, and Alfred.  We can think of no finer gift than the love of a family.

And with that, we wish all of you and yours a very Merry Christmas.  We wish the best of all things to all of you.  We thank you for your support and readership, and hope that our efforts will continue to enlighten and entertain.  It is our gift to you that we make these efforts.

May all your apocalypses be duds.

A Superhero Without Really Trying

"I'm beginning to think I'm invincible," came the first message as I got off the plane.  It was quickly followed by, "I survived Y2K, bird flu, 9/11, rapture 1 & 2, and now the Mayan Apocalypse!"

It was my Canadian bud feeling cocky with a new lease on life.

"Don't forget the planetary alignment of 1982, the swine flu and the Asian Contagion," I shot back.

Indeed, those of us of a certain age can boast that we have survived the End of the World as We Know It so many times now, it's getting rather passe.  I may even stop prepping, since if the end comes in the first half of next year, I won't care because I've dodged the bullet so many times I'm ready to surrender to the next shot fired.

I became a 'prepper' at an early age.  I was still in swaddling clothes when Hurricane Carla tore up Houston in 1961.  Then there were the double hurricanes in the early 70s.  Then Alicia, Rita, Katrina, and a half dozen other big storms.

I've side-stepped tornadoes and water spouts, earthquakes, wild-ass lightning storms, floods, and landslides.  And let's not forget the Munich bombing in 1980, or being shot at on the Afghan/Iran border the day the American hostages were taken when the Shah fell.

I've been in knife fights (I brought a gun...duh), nearly fallen 800 feet off a cliff and almost died from dysentery in Paris.  A little thing like the Mayan calendar ending ain't gonna stop me.

My bud was right...with all the apocalypses we've all survived, I think it's about time to admit we're all either dead and this is what hell looks like, or we're really immortals living out a Highlander existence.  Not sure about the latter.  I need to behead someone first to test the theory.

Here in Jakarta, it kind of seemed like the end of the world.  Beginning Friday evening, there was an epic rain for three days with severe flooding all over the city, leaving everything in gridlock.  As usual, I dodged that one by being 500 km away enjoying a lovely time eating Javanese food and hanging out in the mountains.  I did see Jesus there, but he was already dead, so nothing to fear on that account.  As for Muhammad, Buddha and Shiva, they were all missing in action.

No clouds parting, no stars falling, no whores of Babylon being eaten by dragons while drinking the blood of martyrs.  No seals were broken, no galaxies aligned.  No global coastal events.  And as far as I know, the sea is still blue-green, or at least the part that I flew over today.

The way I figure it, the Earth has been spinning around the Sun, according to best guestimates, for 4.5 BILLION years.  Odds are pretty good that it will go on spinning for another 5 billion or so.  About the worst thing we puny little humans can do is wipe ourselves out, but it won't be the end of the world.  We'll just be some cool bones buried deep in the bowels of the Earth for whatever creatures come after to dig up.

Hell, they'll probably tell themselves that oil comes from our rotting carcasses.  They might even theorize that we were wiped out by a giant meteor with a weird name.  Hopefully, though, they won't have a Mayan calendar to spook themselves with.

Those of us in the 50+ category have now survived at least a half-dozen apocalypses.  It's our job now to teach the younger generation to stop all the BS and start thinking about the future...as in making it better and not always wishing for some deus ex machina to come along and clean up our mess.  It's too easy to give up and hope for a supernatural 'do over'.  The real task is to realize we're on our own and our future is ours to make.  There won't be gods riding in on clouds, or ETs with miracle technology, or whatever dream team you believe in.

As a species, we are rounding adolescence and heading straight for adulthood.  Our parents, whatever we think they are, aren't there to clean up our rooms for us anymore.  It's time we grow up and take responsibility for our own actions.  We can't hide behind mama's skirt forever.  We now know our place in the Universe and it's time we get out there and start making something of ourselves.

Yup, we're all superheroes now.  We've dodged bullets, leaped tall buildings and outrun locomotives.  So, time to download or get off the pot.  We're still here, for better or worse.  Let's, gor God's sake, start focusing on the 'better' part of things.

Apocalypse Theater

And so it begins...

Today, being 12.12.12, is helping to fan the flames of apocalyptic panic here in Asia.  The Chinese are big on numerical symbolism.  One example is the number 4.  The Mandarin words for 4 and 'death' are very similar.  Therefore, they are very superstitious of the number 4.  They won't have floor numbers or room numbers or house numbers with 4 in them.  There's a whole industry selling phone numbers without the number 4.  License tags on the car can not contain the number 4.  I guess it never occurred to them to change one or the other word, or use a euphamism or something to avoid using the word for 'death'.

At any rate, since today is 12.12.12, Asians are attaching all this significance to the date.  Combined with the Mayan calendar thing, the Twits and BBMs and text messages are flying hither and yon predicting all sorts of nastiness. 

One of the most popular dire scenarios is that today marks the ten-day countdown to 12.21.12, with 10 somehow being significant.  Then, on 12.21, there will be three days of darkness followed by all sorts of horrible mean nasties.  Then 2013 will be the Apocalypse.

Give me a break...

The first big worldwide scare I can remember, other than hiding under my desk from nuclear bombs every Friday at noon, was 1982, or thereabouts.  Back then, it was all the planets lining up in the same quadrant of the Sun.  That signaled the end of the world as we know it.  All hell was going to break loose.  The Sun would spit fire, the Earth would crack in two, and the Universe would be sucked into a giant black hole.  That was 30 years ago and things are still spinning along quite nicely, Universe-wise.

Then it was Y2K.  That was fun, wasn't it?  What was it?  Five years of terror, horror and IT guys swimming in money?  Camping gear sold like pancakes at a church picnic.  People horded anything that wasn't nailed down, and built safe-houses over the things that were nailed down.  Bunkers...military rations...butane gas...  And what happened?  New Year's day dawned.  It was a beautiful day.  Mild weather, internet still humming along, unexploded computers.  In other words, not a damn thing.

Then, it was 9/11.  The world was under attack.  The US created gestapo organizations and started groping people's most private body parts for fear of terrorists.  Wars began.  Kids were back to diving under desks.  The world could stop spinning at any moment.  What happened?  The 'good guys' became the terrorists, and the terrorists were shown to never have existed.

So now it's 12.21.12.  Guess what?  We'll all be going about our business on 12.22, with the possible exception of regret that we spent all that time and money buying up books about the end of the world as we know it.  Won't we feel silly?

Apparently not.  Seems that no matter how stupid all this end of the world as we know it BS turns out to be, we can't get enough of it.  Next year, there'll be some new catastrophe waiting just around the corner to gobble us all up and spit out the bones.  I won't buy that one either.

The only thing the end of the Mayan calendar symbolizes is the half-way point in the 26,000-year precessional cycle.  It is remarkable that a 'primitive' culture had enough information to create a calendar capable of measuring a cycle that most brain-dead humans today don't even know exists, but it's certainly not the end of the world as we know it.

In fact, EVERY SINGLE DAY is the end of the world as we know it.  The only immutable constant in the Universe is change, which means that tomorrow will not be the same as today, no matter how much it may appear that way.  Thus, when you go to bed, that is the end of the world as you knew it up to that point.  Tomorrow, it will all change.  Somewhere in the Universe, a star will blow up or swallow one of its planets.  The wind will move leaves and paper around.  People will have changed position from when they went to sleep and when they woke up.  The Earth will be several thousand miles away from the point it was when you woke up yesterday.  The Moon and planets will have shifted several degrees against the background stars.  The puddle of water you stepped in last night will have dried up.

That world you knew yesterday is gone...ended...never to return.  Last night was the end of the world as you knew it.  So?

You wake up and start over.  The things that didn't change go unnoticed, and the things that did force you to relearn your environment, but the fact is you are still alive and the world is still spinning.

You want real end-of-the-world stuff?  How about the Black Plague?  The African famine?  The Asian Contagion?  The Banda Aceh earthquake/tsunami?  Hurricane Katrina?  If you didn't have to go through them, then your world seemed pretty cozy and secure.  If you did go through them, I'll bet it was the end of the world as you knew it.

The fact of the matter is, if we lived every day knowing it was the end of the world as we know it, this might be a much nicer world.  We might be a little kinder, a little more generous, a little more forgiving.  We might find time to smell the roses or bake a homemade strawberry-rhubarb pie.  We might take the time to tell our loved ones how much they mean to us.  We might step out of the rat race a little more often and watch the river flow.  If that's the case, then guess what?

It's the end of the world as we know it...right now, all day, just like yesterday and same as tomorrow.

Quick!  Hug your kids, kiss your wife and feed the dog!  Hurry!  Go watch the sun set, count the stars and pick a daisy or two!  Rush!  Call a friend you haven't talked to in a while, bake a double chocolate cake and turn off the damn TeeVee!

It's the end of the world as we know it!

Does that mean the Sun will wink out, the stars will fall and the Moon will fly off its course?  No.  But the world in five minutes will not be the one you woke up to this morning.  That world ended and we've just started anew.

Why is it that no one ever stops to remember that 'apocalypse' means 'to reveal' or 'revelation'?  It means that the old world has died and that the new one is revealing itself to us...all day, every day, 365 days a year, millennium after millennium.  It means that the world we knew is gone and we now have the chance to make the new one better...day after day, month on month, eon beyond eon.

Why is everyone is such a hellfire rush to destroy things when what we have is 86,000 chances to recreate the world every single day of our lives.  The world ends 86,000 times a day and a new one is born 86,000 times before tomorrow comes.  We're looking at this whole end-of-the-world stuff all wrong!

There will always be earthquakes and comets and omens in the numbers.  None of them mean a good God damn.  The world will continue to spin and orbit, the Sun will rise and set, and the breeze will still be as sweet.  The difference is whether we humans will be here to enjoy it, and at the rate we're going, that may not last much longer.

But it won't be the end of the world.  Just us.  And we ain't the world, just part of it.

Hey you!  Yeah, you...sitting there reading this.  The world just ended!  What are you going to do about it?  Look!  It just ended again...and again...and again.  You're still sitting there!  Don't you have a new world to build?

An End To End Times

 Ah, the apocalypse is finally upon us.  Been a long time in coming.  Frankly, I'm bored to tears with all the hype about December 21, and I'm ready for the whole thing to fizzle out and go away, becoming yet another cultural footnote in the long history of end-of-the-world scenarios.

Why the obsession with Earth's demise?  If we collectively put in a fraction of the effort cleaning up our nest as we do into awaiting its end, we'd have a pretty nice place to live.  In the past 150 years, it's become almost cliche to predict the final moments of our dear planet.  The number of preachers who have and continue to predict end dates based on obscure math formulae in the Book of Daniel, or the appearance of a red calf or miraculous barley, or the restart of the Mayan calendar, or various and sundry signs and wonders that have occured throughout history and will continue.

Ultimately, whether it is the meshiach, the 12th imam or the second coming, billions of people are hellbent both on doing nothing to prevent the perceived events and everything they can to help them along.  The complete incongruity of this line of thought is a perfect example of Orwell's 'doublethink,' where a person can hold completely contradictory beliefs without seeing the foundational illogic of it.  Talk about cognitive dissonance.

What it all boils down to is this: many religions are morally questionable and internally inconsistent.  There is a Creator who gives life and wants love, and even commands that we not kill, while at the same time ordering the wholesale slaughter of people on deeply questionable grounds.

These religions have no qualms about undervaluing the lives of non-believers while proclaiming to worship a live-affirming belief system.  Can there be any more screwed up thing than that?

Simply put, the moral codes of these religions are so inconsistent that they must appeal to a final judgement to vindicate their immorality.  In other words, the ends justify the means.  This core contradiction in the major religions of the world can only be explained one way...they are control mechanisms established by elites to both divide humanity and thus weaken the masses, and to make us compliant with their agendas.

It is axiomatic that there is strength in numbers.  As individuals, we might be tempted to fight a single intruder in our house at 3am, but seven of them could be out of the question.  However, if we can get the seven intruders fighting amongst themselves, we have a good chance of success by making them expend their energy and concentration on each other.

We can see that strategy at work in the world today.  Certain self-appointed elites keep 7 billion people in line by simply agitating pre-installed antagonistic groups.  What's more absurd is that these fighting groups have hardly an iota's worth of difference between them.  Most current religions are monotheistic, share a similar code of conduct, and in several cases, have the same roots.  But because this group folds its hands to pray and that one opens them, we feel compelled to slaughter each other, and in so doing, ignore the real issues facing us.

In addition to this strangeness, a lot of these religions are based on personal revelations that cannot be proved and require adherents to take a 'leap of faith' if they want to follow along.  For the most part, people who hear voices are considered to be mentally compromised, but in the case of religion, those voices are the foundation of entire cultures.  We can never know what, if anything, they really heard, and in some cases we can't be sure the person hearing the voices even existed in the first place.

Suppose a charismatic leader stepped forward with a bunch of followers and some old manuscripts claiming that Nova Scotia was their ancestral home given to them by a bearded old man in the sky who only appeared and spoke to the leader.  Would you support their claim to the island?  Yet that is precisely what billions of Jews and Christians have done with a place called Israel (though thankfully the tide appears to be turning on that little fiasco).

Christians have been completely snowed into supporting this claim because they have been told that the existence of this country is a prerequisite for the second coming and final justification.  Not only does this neutralize any complaint about the murderous behavior of that 'nation', Christians actually support and encourage it in order to get their final justification.

The plot is pure genius, if it weren't so evil.

What it boils down to is that a significant number of people have been conned into actively supporting actions and events they earnestly believe will lead to the destruction of the Earth and the ultimate justification of their beliefs.  Does anyone else find this just a little disturbing?

On top of that, the belief in the violent end of civilization is based solely on the visions of some guy named John hanging out on an island a couple of thousand years ago.  There is absolutely no other proof or justification for these visions, other than John's claim (and the churches' support) that these visions were a personal message from god.

This brings us around to a calendar and December 21st.  A Meso-American culture called the Mayans (destroyed by Christians, by the way) devised a rather advanced and interesting circular calendar.  It is composed of 13 baktuns together spanning several thousand years.  Based solely on the supposition/theory that the 13th baktun ends on December 21st, an entire industry has sprung up promoting the idea that the world will come to a crashing halt this month.

Almost from the moment that Y2K passed uneventfully, the 2012 cult caught fire.  Despite the fact the creators of the calendar made no claim of end times in all their writings, billions of dollars have changed hands promoting this idea.  And no one seems to know where this idea originated.  It seems to have exploded whole cloth into the popular culture, complete with 'experts' and 'mystics' to back it up.

It's almost as if our civilization has had a self-destruct button built into it as a means to restart things if we humans get too out of hand.  One can perceive a hidden agenda to collapse our civilization if we get too close to achieving our full potential.  It's so effective that a great many humans believe whole-heartedly in some form of end-time scenario.  At the same time, this self-destruct feature includes ways to keep us divided and quibbling amongst ourselves so that we never achieve our potential.

It's so insidious, so diabolical and so effective that it can only be by design.  It's hard to conceive of any other way to explain it.

The worst part of all this is that it is so ingrained in our collective psyche that it is nearly impossible to extract.  If thousand-year-old prophesies of end times aren't enough, we manufacture new scenarios out of old calendars and cave paintings.  One way or another, we seem hell-bent on some form of destructive convulsion and we derive a strange pleasure from the idea.  It's the ultimate in collective masochism, which in itself implies some sadist feeding our peculiar bent.

It would be nice to think that on December 22nd, we could put all this stupidity behind us and move on, but that's unlikely.  More likely is that a new form of psychosis will rise up and take its place.  Whether it be meteors or aliens or holy men riding in on clouds, we don't seem to be able to look to the future with any sort of positive viewpoint.

Perhaps on December 22nd, we could start of movement to end all end times speculation and start focusing on cleaning up our nest.  Maybe we could see the follies of our ways, acknowledge the absurdity of desiring our destruction, and work towards extracting these unproductive memes from our cultures.

I'm not holding my breath.

The PTB Gone Wild!

You can feel it, can't you?  It's like an hour glass with the sand nearly run out, and what remains seems to fall much faster than before.  In the center, a pit has formed like a stationary whirlpool.  Nothing appears to move, yet the overall level in the glass continues to sink lower and lower...

And what bizarre events we are seeing!  Zombie cannibals smoking bath salts and gnawing dogs.  Dolphins attacking swimmers.  SWAT teams hitting the wrong house because of Wi-Fi.  Any more, scanning the headlines is like reading a Steven King anthology.

On one side of the Atlantic Ocean, people are baking like Christmas cookies in the homes, while on the other, they are boggled by the sheer amount of water falling out of the sky.  And the heat was so bad it took down parts of the internet?

In the Baltic Sea, some guys went down to look at a weird...what?...rock formation?  Their electronics failed every time they got near the thing, yet they were able to use lights and get photos.  It is apparently made of stone, but no one thought to chip off a bit for testing.  It has a hole in the top like an entrance, but no one entered.  And meantime, the US and Russian navies were playing war in the area.  Tell me that's not a Hollywood thriller in the making.

Detroit buses are brimming with bedbugs.  A city in California files for bankruptcy.  Congress holds the US Attorney General in contempt and the DOJ refuses to arrest him (talk about cozy), and all this over the DOJ running guns to Mexican mafia to justify banning guns.

The Supreme Corpse rules that Obamacare is lawful, as long as we all call it (the most complex, largest, and other superlatives) a tax, so Wall Street goes through the roof in celebration.  This is how you know those guys are on crack, when a huge tax increase is reason to rally.

A while back, I wrote about the Year of the Water Dragon and what all that implied astrologically for this year.  So far, it seems to be right on track.  The completely off-handed way in which things are unfolding could not have been predicted any other way.

I never bought into the 2012 TEOTWAWKI thing, but looking around, I think it's safe to say that it's the end of sanity, if we ever knew it.

It was Clif High who recently stated that he thought there was a good possibility of some major impact event in the first half of next year.  He speculated that all the mind-blowing things happening in the world now are simply because muckity-mucks know about it and just don't give a flying pig-sticker about anything now.

That does have a certain appeal to it, as a theory of everything.  I mean, no one seems overly concerned about Fukushima or the BP oil spill.  Most major governments are just falling apart, in terms of lawful behavior and corruption.  Hell, even all the war mongering seems half-hearted, like a bunch of boys just doing something to while away the time before the dinner bell.  None of it makes much sense, unless you put it all in the context of not mattering in a few months.

Just think about it...

There are a number of logical and feasible solutions to the EU crisis, but no one is taking any of them.  The US national debt has nearly topped $16 TRILLION, and no one is hopping up and down about it.  Japan is dying a slow death, and only the people dying seem to care.  The Rio+20 affair had 10,000 Big Cheeses just shrug and go home, figuring there was nothing to be done and who cares anyway.

Any more, it seems like the entire world has exhausted its supply of 'give a shit'.

Official-dumb looks for all the world like it's going through the motions waiting for the other shoe to drop.  A kind of malaise has a death-grip on the planet and the only response anyone can muster is to smoke bath salts and eat the neighbors.  Perhaps, in a weird Twilight-Zone-ish way, that's the appropriate response to all this.

Year ago, there was a rather obscure Sean Connery pic called "Zardoz", which a certain group of folks had figured out how to make themselves immortal.  The consequence was, that after several centuries, many of them lost all capacity to care about anything.  They became completely apathetic to the point that one fellow bred and trained a wild savage for the specific purpose of coming in and wreaking havoc while killing a bunch of immortals.

One gets the sense that this is exactly what is going on at the highest levels of power and control.  They've grown so tied of their centuries-long games of conquest and found the frontiers getting fewer and less interesting.  In their soul-crushing boredom, they've decided to just crash everything in order to find any excitement and challenges in life.

Honestly, if someone could come up with a better explanation, I'd be more than happy to listen.

Years ago, I received a bit of advice from an older colleague that I've carried with me all this time.  He told me, "Never shit in your own nest."  I thought that was pretty damned profound and I've never forgotten it, and have even lived by it most of the time.

So when I see what we must assume are reasonably intelligent people running around fouling their nests like there's no tomorrow, we should probably assume that there's no tomorrow in our quest to err on the side of prudence.

If we grant as axiomatic that humans co-create their own reality, and that, as a species, we've been preparing for the end of the world for ages now, then at some point it's got to happen because we deemed it so.  Now's as good a time as any, I suppose.  I figured it happened years ago when Nixon was elected, but I could be wrong.

At any rate, if things are already THIS weird, and summer's only just begun, one can only imagine how much fun it will be in the fall and winter.

I think I need something a little stronger than bath salts anymore.  I should run out an pick up some Epsom salts.  That ought to do the trick.

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The Sunday Funnies - at long last, something with a laugh or two!

The Pastor's Ass


The Pastor entered his donkey in a race and it won.  The Pastor was so pleased with the donkey that he entered it in the race again and it won again.

The local paper read:
PASTOR'S ASS OUT FRONT.

The Bishop was so upset with this kind of publicity that he ordered the Pastor not to enter the donkey in another race.

The next day the local paper headline read:
BISHOP SCRATCHES PASTOR'S ASS.

This was too much for the Bishop so he ordered the Pastor to get rid of the donkey.  The Pastor decided to give it to a Nun in a nearby convent.

The local paper, hearing of the news, posted the following headline the next day:
NUN HAS BEST ASS IN TOWN..

The Bishop fainted.

He informed the Nun that she would have to get rid of the donkey so she sold it to a farmer for $10.

The next day the paper read:
NUN SELLS ASS FOR $10.

This was too much for the Bishop so he ordered the Nun to buy back the donkey and lead it to the plains where it could run wild.

The next day the headlines read:
NUN ANNOUNCES HER ASS IS NOW WILD AND FREE.

The Bishop was buried the next day.

The moral of the story is . . . being concerned about public opinion can bring you much grief and misery . . even shorten your life.  So be yourself and enjoy life.  Stop worrying about everyone else's ass and
you'll be a lot happieand live longer!

Quantum Leaps And Water Dragons

Reader Note: We're taking advantage of the long holiday to 'pulang kampung' for the New Year.  We'll be back on Wednesday with more Tales from the Far Side.  Until then, please take a look through our archive of nearly 400 articles.  Happy New Year!  Gong Xi Fat Choi!

A long time ago, I dismissed astrology as being a pseudo-science based on various superstitions and a certain amount of ignorance.  I always acknowledged, though, that it often had an uncanny way of generally describing people's characters and constitutions.  I more or less wrote that off as a combination of luck and prejudice, in that reading astrological descriptions predisposed one to see patterns where they did not exist.

Like every topic, I make decisions and form opinions, but I never close my mind to new evidence and understanding.  If new evidence engenders deeper understanding of a topic, and the understanding leads to a change of opinion, I have not shied away from following where the evidence leads.

That being said, I have moved in recent years to re-evaluate astrology.  Where I once saw superstition and myth, I now see a severely degraded form of ancient science that preserves an understanding of the Universe that is far more profound than our current best guesses.  This doesn't mean that I now believe in astrology, but rather that I see within it the glimpse of a greater truth that has been lost over countless millennia. 

Once I discovered hyperdimensional physics, I immediately saw something that rang true.  It answered questions that relativity left hanging in space (literally and figuratively).  This new physics explained much more satisfactorily physical phenomena that caused relativists and quantists to throw up their hands or worse, develop gross contortions of mathematics to shoehorn into their theories.

Hyperdimensional physics offers graceful answers to profound mysteries, and as we are about to see, even unites ancient myths and legends into a scientific framework.

Hyperdimensional physics posits that all matter consists of unique vibrations within a medium.  The medium, whether you call it the aether or space-time, is basically a lattice or crystalline structure.  The vibrations, like stones thrown in a pond, create ripples, and where they overlap, they create patterns of standing waves that we perceive as matter or substance.  Granted, this is a very simplified definition, but it serves the purpose at hand.

The interference patterns we perceive as objects are formed by 'templates,' or a type of recording of the pattern.  Thus, the template for 'planet' creates round balls, but subtle variations create gas giants or small rocky balls, wet or dry, hot or cold.  In the same way, the template for 'person' creates the same general result, but variations create individuals in infinite variety.

Now, if we view all objects in the Universe as vibrations, then they are allowed to influence each other, to greater or lesser degrees, by creating slight variations in other templates.  In other words, all objects in the Universe influence all other objects to some degree, which is a key element of quantum physics.

It also allows another strange effect in quantum physics.  When you place two sub-atomic objects together, they will begin to resonate together.  Then, you can separate the two objects by any amount of space, and a change in one will immediately affect the other.  Vibrations in a crystalline medium is a graceful means to account for this otherwise very strange behavior.

So, where is all this going?  Glad you asked.

Astrology posits that the positions of stars and planets at the time of one's birth cause certain effects in the individual.  The positions of stars implant certain personality traits, and the positions of the planets influence the expression of these traits.  On the surface, this sounds like a bunch of superstitious bunk, but if we apply the math of hyperdimensional physics, then suddenly we see vibrations in the Universe around us causing subtle modifications in our personal templates that would vary according to which objects were where at the moment of our birth.

That birth would be the moment that these changes in our templates freeze makes sense, since up to that moment, we were vibrating synchronously with our mothers.  At the moment of birth, we become established as our own, independent vibration in the Universe.

Therefore, astrology is an attempt to describe the vivrational influences on individuals, groups or really any object, by determining what objects were in a position to modify our template at a certain moment.

That hyperdimensional physics is a mathematical system and it is engineerable, it stands to reason that if there were once a highly developed civilization on Earth that was able to calculate these vibrations to a high degree of accuracy, astrology could be a very degraded dim memory of that ancient physical knowledge.  Therefore, it might have some validity, though the precise knowledge of how to manipulate this information has been lost over the vast span of time.

In Western astrology, we talk about the influences of various constellations on the individual.  We determine the zodiac by which astralism is directly overhead at midnight each day.  This varies on an annual basis as the Earth's orbit brings a different constellation overhead each month.  The positions of the planets at any given moment further modify the influence and changes constantly with near infinite combinations.

By contrast, the Eastern system sees the constellations ruling over an entire year, with daily and monthly variations.  In addition, the annual cycle has a 60-year supercycle based on the five primal elements (earth, metal, fire, water, wood).  This new year is the year of the dragon, just like the year 2000, but there's a variation making this the year of the water dragon.  Furthermore, years alternate between yin and yang, with this year being 'yang.'  We are also at the end of the 'wood' cycle, the next being 'fire.'

Based on our suppositions earlier, that astrology is a degraded ancient science, then we can perhaps tease out some insight, some truth, about what influences will affect humanity over the coming year.  To do that, we need to know what a 'yang wood black water dragon' implies, so we turn to the Google oracle.

The first thing we need to know is the 'yang' part.  Yin and yang concern balance and harmony.  They are opposites, but dependent on each other to exist.  Yang means 'sunny' or 'place of light'.  It does not have a value judgement, such as 'good' and 'bad,' it is simply the other side of something that causes it to exist.

The dragon, or naga (origin of naga-hide), is the mirror opposite of its western counterpart.  In Eastern myth, the dragon symbolizes good fortune, luck, and divine power and authority.  In other words, it is a positive sign and one which implies benign regality and favorable disposition.  On the other hand, the dragon does not comform to expectations and prefers to 'do its own thing.'

Dragons rule over south/southeast, thunder and lightning, and the hours of 7-9 am.  They are also the embodiment of creativity.

In Eastern mythology, dragons prefer water, so we can assume that a water dragon is in its element.  The last waterr dragon year was 1952.  The new year will begin on Monday, January 23rd, and the celebration will last until February 9th.  The high point of the year's energies will be the 'dragon moon,' from May 20th until June 18.

What we're looking at here is a year of highly unpredictable events that will favor south/southeast and bring light to those regions.  Wood is fed and made stronger by water, so there will be growth and strengthening, but what will grow and strength is unknown, since the unpredictability leaves that part up in the air, as it were, though yang will influence that part.

This coming year will favor passion, creativity, self-development, and working together.  Like all things, though, these can be both good and bad.  The balance will be tipped towards light by the yang, but the dragon nature will allow tempers to flare and unpredictable outcomes to occur.  The water dragon favors seeing arguments from all points of view and taking advice from others when making decisions, so there's a predilection for more balance and better conclusions.

All in all, it should be an interesting year with many twists and turns in events.  Outcomes will favor light and creativity and working together.  There are many positive aspects for those seeking a change in direction and new paths.

There's no guarantees in Chinese astrology.  There's only favorable influences for certain outcomes.  For those of us hoping for favorable outcomes to economic and socio-political concerns, there are enhanced vibrations from Universe, but the chaotic aspect means things can go either way.  After all, luck and fortune all depend on perspective.  One man's luck is another's curse.  A lot will depend on working together and bringing things to the light.  Many secrets could be revealed.

All things east are favored, which means I'm in the right place for a little luck.  But it also means that 'east' will figure heavily into the chaotic element of events.  Keep your eye on China and Russia.  Who knows what will happen?

Or it could all be just a bunch of myths and pseudo-science.  Take your pick.

The interesting thing is that eastern dragons share a lot of characteristics with the behavior of quantum objects.  They can never be fully observed, as looking at it limits it to what the observer is expecting to see.  They are also chaotic and unpredictable.  It's interesting to ponder what aspects of dragons are dimly remembered science from a long, long time ago.

Happy New Year!  May your Yang Wood Black Water Dragon be a good one!

Report From FSWHQ

We here we are, the end of a rather remarkable year and the beginning of the dreaded 2012!  It's got us so stirred up here on the Far Side that we've retreated once again to our jungle nest, known as the Far Side World Headquarters, or FSWHQ, for short.

Looking like a scene from the old King Kong movie, we moved our clan back to the forest.  The four wives carried my sedan chair, while the kids and animals were loaded with important things, like a new plasma TeeVee, a pedal-free generator and the new Far Side Satellite Telecommunications Center (FSSTC).  We're going deep undercover for the coming year.

Looking back, we marvel that the world limped past the finish line, though technically we still have hours to go.  The US markets battled to a 'flat' return in the closing seconds of the year's market.  The euro ended up as the worst-performing currency in the world, which is why we brought all our euro-bonds into the jungle with us.  Perfect fire starters.

As far as economics go, Asia looks to be standing head-and-shoulders above their western counterparts.  Indonesia, Vietnam and China are red-hot.  Thailand was doing well until the floods.  Japan is white-hot, though for a different reason.  In fact, we've been collecting the new glow-in-the-dark Yen.

What's really been interesting this year, though, has been watching the PTB/W absolutely panicked, as in cold sweats and sleepless nights.  Their reckless and wild abandon in trying to nail down their little Medieval World Order (MWO) has been rather entertaining to watch, as long as you weren't in a country they destroyed to protect their little fiefdoms.  The MENA (Mid-east/North Africa) folks weren't so lucky to have ring-side seats.

One has to laugh, though, since the MWO is positively falling to bits.  The desperate invasions and attempts to control true grass-roots uprisings across the MENA regions have been like watching the Keystone Kops Kapers.  Part of their problem is something that will never change...human nature.

You see, the MWO has been a multi-century pax belli between a bunch of inbred nutcases, who are so rich and so bored, they cooked up this world domination game to have something to do.  The problem is, the closer it got the reality, the more they started fighting among themselves to be the one king on the top of the dung hill.

As fast as the inbred crowd started sniping at each other, the normal humans out here in Reality Land decided it was a good time to exercise some God-given rights.  So as the self-annointted elites tried to outmaneuver each other, the World was out-maneuvering them, and when they turned to try to nail down the World, the elites would shoot each other in the back.  Now, when you stop laughing at the mental image of that, take a look around and see the results.

Egypt was supposed to be a controlled Soros-colored revolution, but then the revolution revolted against itself to get rid of the MWO clowns.  The MWO clowns wanted to install radically fundamentalist Islamic authoritarians, which the MWO control.  But the good and very intelligent Egyptian people wouldn't hear of it.

The same is happening all across the MENA.  Folks just want to be left the hell alone.  They are tied of trading one totalitarian yutz for another of a different stripe.  Real people really enjoy just going about their business, living in peace and harmony with their neighbors, regardless of what building they choose to worship in.

Amazing how that works.

In Europe, folks everywhere are getting fed up with the whole damn package.  They are tired of the German Neo-Nazi unification called the EU.  They are tired of a completely fabricated currency shoved down their throats.  They are tired of having Goldbar Sacks alumni brazenly take over their countries in un-elected coups after watching the banks rape and pillage their economies.

The Irish fought the EU until it was literally rammed down their throats.  They then watched their red-hot economy turn to ash.  Greece and Italy, while not exactly massive industrial economies, had perked along just fine for centuries, until the EU came along.  Spain and Portugal the same.

The US is quite a tale.  The largest, most powerful economic engine ever known completely imploded due to fiat and regulation.  At the same moment the country was shipping its heart and soul overseas in the name of profit, the Puppetmasters were shoving ever draconian regulations through CONgress to prevent competition from springing up naturally to fill the void.  As a consequence, America poured gallons of Round-Up on its garden since they figured they could buy cheaper veggies from the Asian gardens.  Then the Asian gardeners got properous and wanted to keep more of their produce, so now the American garden is dead and the cheap alternatives have gone on to better deals elsewhere.

All that led to the OWS, which originally was a home-grown movement of folks sick and tired of being Rounded-Up by the bankster classes.  Of course, the Giant Sucking Media (GSM) tried to package that movement and give it a little Soros treatment, so the real folks drifted away, and it became another Tea-Licking Party (TLP).  All the real people are flooding into the Ron Paul camp, which absolutely mystifies the PTB/W crowd, because they did such a fine job of hiding Paul from themselves that they can't see what's going on.

In the meantime, the US, once global champion of peace, human rights and economic miracle-cures, has become a rogue terrorist state that is eating its own children and trying to cobble together a controlled economy without any of the ingredients that constitute an economy.  If you get enough perspective on it, it really is quite entertaining.  Harder to see that part when the bastards are auctioning off your worldly belongings in the yard where you raised your children, while you stand in the icy drizzle clutching your photo album watching your neighbors pick through your DVD collection.

Yep, we gotta admit 2012 is going to be a verrrry interesting year, and no, it doesn't have a damn thing to do with Mayan calendars.  It is, though, a self-fulfilling prophesy.  In their in-bred scramble to keep us in terror-induced zombie mode, the PTB/W made up this whole apocalypse thing, hoping it would keep folks busy battening down the hatches, just like Y2K did.  Instead, it is quickly shaping up to be The End Of The World As They Know It (TEOTWATKI).  They have successfully created the Second Coming, only it's coming for them.  Those who live by the apocalypse, die by the apocalypse.  The rest of us are free to sit back and watch with amusement as everything the PTB/W predicted and tried to scare us with comes true...for THEM!

We, however, meaning us here at FSWHQ, will be happy to sit back and watch the whole thing on the new plasma TeeVee being set up in the village clearing.  The kids are busy scrambling up the coconut trees to put the new dish up.  The wives are busily nattering and playing with the new pedal-less generator.  We're preparing for our celebration tonight by tying sparklers on money tails.  It's just so damned entertaining to watch them run through the tree-tops with their tails on fire!

Out here in the jungles of Borneo, nothing changes much.  Empires come and go.  Currencies rise and fall.  Revolutions sweep across the globe.  But tying fireworks to moneys is always the same great fun.

The world is too much with us, as someone once said.  Time to put away our fear, because the PTB/W are so damned terrified that we can all just sit back and watch the in-breds shoot each other in the foot.  Think of it as the Saturday matinee writ large.  We could even open a window in Vegas and start laying odds on which in-bred families will die-off first.

Oh, they're calling us over to the TeeVee hut to do the honors of tuning in the Thai horror movie channel.  Great fun that.

So we'll wrap up the year by wishing all of our great readers a Happy and Fortunate New Year/Selamat Ulang Tahun Baru.  We'll light up a monkey for you!

And thanks for making Life on the Far Side increasingly popular!  We have added hundreds of new readers in the past year from 93 countries.  We will continue to offer arguments and diversions, and we hope you will continue to enjoy them.

Ah, wife #4 just brought us a large shell full of cap tikus (mouse piss), which is fermented coconut milk.  Nasty stuff, but after the third or fourth shell-full, you can eat the fetal deer at the bottom of the jug and not think twice about it.

Don't give the fascist pigs any reason to haul you off tonight, and we'll see you all again in 2012!

Countdown To Armageddon

The Mayan Calendar

Well, here we are, counting down to whatever it is we are counting down to.

To hear some folks talk, by this time next year, the Earth will be a cinder, all Mankind will be extinct, civilization will vanish, and it will all be because of some carved stone wheels in Mexico.

Rubbish.

It is the nature of all entrenched power elites to make people afraid of some external force, from which they will protect us...at a price.  Fear is a great motivator, and when used as a weapon, can cause great numbers of people to do really stupid things, like trust someone else to watch out for their interests.  It never occurs to us individually that anyone we put in a position to guard our safety is going to watch out for their own safety first.

The great Roman poet and historian Ovid famously said, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?"  Who will watch the watchers?  Once you establish an individual or group to protect your interests, then you must place another over them to watch them, and yet more over them to watch the former.  It's an endless cycle of layers of watchers checking on other watchers, and in the end, the only one who is truly motivated to keep me safe is me.

If I have a pile of gold and I hire someone to watch it for me, eventually they will figure out that job security comes from keeping me afraid of losing my gold.  But at some point, I will become paranoid and hire someone else to keep an eye on the first one.  And on it goes ad infinitum.  The watchers will inevitably place their own self-interests above mine.

If we expand this to a global scale, then we have certain minorities who have been placed in positions of trust to watch out for our interests.  To protect their interests, they have instituted various programs to keep us afraid, and thus continue paying them to watch our interests.  When they are caught red-handed lying and dissembling, we blythely pay more to install another layer of minorities to watch the first group, who in turn ally themselves with the first layer in order to enrich themselves at our expense.  We call this process 'government'.

In the age of the 'security' state, we the sheeple herded around by the noses by a small group of people who use our fears as weapons against us.  By its nature, fear is irrational because it rarely rises to the level of our expectations.  Yet the mere anticipation of something bad happening causes us to become pliant and docile at the hands of anyone who will promise to protect us.

The state apparatus has a vested interest in keeping us afraid.  It doesn't matter what the fear is, so long as a sufficient majority of the masses are afraid of it.  It also helps if the fear is something that is much larger and inevitable that we are powerless to change.  We will still throw money and power at anyone who steps up and says they have a plan to protect us.

Global cooling, global warming, Y2K, 2012, Apocalypse...name your irrational fear, and you will find some group standing up to take money to protect us from it.

Pandora's Box

Climate change?  Well, we have this anonymous group of 'scientists,' without names or faces, who are working diligently with their laptops and recording stations to do what we all can do by standing outside.

Apocalypse?  We have this massive bureaucracy called a church that claims to intercede on behalf of all Mankind with an angry and wrathful God to prevent His wiping out Humanity.  This particular gig is very effective, since it's lasted about 500 years or so.  Never mind that wrath and vengence are two of the seven deadly sins, and it makes no logical sense what-so-ever that this God would act on them.

2012?  This one is particularly rich, since no one seems to take the time to read about seven or eight paragraphs in a scholarly paper on Mayan calendars.  It's particularly effective, since people can project just about any fear they have on to it, and it has grown to encompass climate change, apocalypse, space invasions, and pretty much all the other fears and expectations of our collective subconscious.

In simplest terms, the Maya envisioned all of time as a series of interwoven cycles running endlessly into the future.  Each progressing cycle was exponentially longer than the first, with the final cycle lasting a bit over 5,000 years.  This final cycle had 13 iterations before it would itself recycle.  The whole thing was based on various celestial events, particularly the movements of Venus, Moon and Sun.

The cycles also coincided with Maya myths and legends regarding various Ages, not unlike the Yugas in Hindu tradition.  In fact, a brief effort on the part of the curious reader will reveal that the recycling of the Mayan calendar, as well as the Hindu tradition, and even the Bible itself, call for the beginning of a new Golden Age, when Mankind will become enlightened once again, and will throw off the fear and loathing that has kept Him in darkness and ignorance.

According to some scholarship, that new Golden Age begins about this time next year.

So what are we afraid of?  Could it be that all this fear-mongering is actually a reflection of the watchers' internal struggle to keep us all compliant and fearful in the face of a new Awakening?  Are they trying to engineer a new Dark Age in which they are the Masters of All They Survey, while we are the writhing masses cowering at their feet?

If all your wealth and power were the result of everyone around you being deathly afraid of their own shadows, and you knew that they were waking up and taking back their birthright, what would you do?  Considering you will lose everything and most likely all those people will lash out in anger at you for what you've done, my guess is that you would do everything in your power to keep them ignorant, fearful and dependent.

In fact, every tradition, without exception, that forecasts a violent and nasty cataclysm states that this event is the birth pangs of a new Golden Age of Humanity.  We will finally conquer our fears and self-loathing, and usher in an Age when Mankind will appear god-like, when peace and harmony will reign, when we no longer live in ignorance.  All of them, be they Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Mayan, Hindu, Greco-Roman, Cherokee, Hopi...doesn't matter, they all predict that the destruction of the Old Ways will lead to new glories for our species.

The Golden Age

So, when you look at it the right way, what we are seeing is deep, agonizing fear on the part of the watchers who are losing their power and status.  The only weapon they have is to transfer that fear onto the vast majority of humanity to keep us dependent on them.  Every one of the traditions hold that this will happen, that the entrenched powers will utter destroy themselves in their effort to maintain their positions.  In the end, the Enlightenment always wins.

2012 will likely be an eventful year.  There will be some remarkable events in the heavens and on Earth.  But the only people who have something to fear are the one who benefit most from fear.  Because, when fear is conquered, they no longer have power nor status.  They will no longer be able to manipulate the masses, since all their tools and tricks will have been rendered useless.

Every winter brings death, but spring is not far behind.  What was hidden by the snow will be revealed by the thaw.

TEOTWAWKI

Do you sense it?

Do you have that feeling that something big is about to happen? Does it seem like the world is holding its breath waiting for that next big "whatever it is?"

In Europe, France and Greece are in melt-down. The UK is collapsing. Spain and Italy are in slow-motion dissolution.

In America, the dollar is dying, the people are losing their way of life and the so-called 'president' hasn't a clue how to fix the drip, much less the flood. Foreclosures are becoming epidemic. Jobs are gone and not coming back. Even the 'Fed' admits that.

In Asia, China has become a black hole of resources, and has even felt ready to challenge Japan for territorial claims. Thailand has experienced political problems. The Koreas are threatening to take their war hot again. India and Pakistan are beating the drums over Kashmir.

In the Middle East, the illegal rogue nation of Israel appears hell-bent on destroying everything it cannot steal. Iraq, Iran and Afganistan look to be forming a close working relationship through mutual hatred of America and its NATO puppets.

Through it all, there seems to be a growing awareness in the global population that we are being had by a bunch of 'they.' There are myriad definitions for who 'they' are, but a good functioning handle is 'The Powers That Be,' or PTB. This PTB, through the use of something called the Hegelian Dialectic, which is deceptively simple in theory and diabolically effective in practice.

Simply put, the dialectic is a group (PTB) determines a goal that it wants to achieve. It then formulates that goal into a set of actions. Finally, it creates a problem and offers its solution as the answer. For instance, the PTB wanted to implement the despicable set of laws now known as The USA Patriot Act. The legislation was drafted, probably years in advance. Then a massive terrorist attack was perpetrated and within weeks a multi-thousand page law was introduced, ostensibly to solve the problem (which it doesn't, but that wasn't the point). Hitler did the exact same maneuver with the Reichstag fire, which produced a remarkablly similar document to the USA Patriot Act, called the Enabling Act.

Though the global economic melt-down appears to be chaotic and unmanageable, make no mistake: it it being orchestrated at the highest levels in order to usher in order to offer the pre-packages solution already formulated for decades, of centralized global governance, single world currency and a host of other distasteful 'solutions.'

Of course, the whole thing is a sham, a farce and a ballywick. If you look at it, the greed of bankers have caused the problem, and now they stand poised to offer us their solution, as being the only viable solution.

We, the global mind, the inhabitants of Earth, the people have been carefully and purposefully guided over centuries to accept what the PTB are offering us. The roadmaps to this debacle have been openly published: Machiavelli's The Prince, Marx's Das Kapital, even Sun Tzu's The Art of War and the Protocols of Zion. They are all part of the development of this Grand Scheme to enslave the masses, and enrich and empower the very few at the top. It is even enshrined on the reverse of the $1 Federal Reserve note: the pyramid (us) and the All-Seeing Eye (them).

Even our response to becoming aware of this Plot has been effectively defanged. We have been taught, nay indoctrinated, to believe that that way we change things is through protest, strikes and activism. In fact, these are red herrings designed to effectively release the anger and power of the masses in a completely impotent manner. Just like the old American maxim of 'write your congress-thing.' Ineffective and toothless tools given to us by those who seek to rule us, designed to make us think we have the power to effect change, when in fact it saps our true strength.

Furthermore, we have been sold 'fear' as a means to herd us en masse in any direction the PTB choose. Fear of poverty, fear of terrorism, fear of the unknow. Y2K, 911, 2012. They are all tools to make us afraid and to seek answers from 'authorities.' And of course the answers we are given guide us inexorably in the direction 'they' wish us to go: the slaughterhouse.

Yes, the economic system is, and will continue to be, crashed. 'They' must place us in a position in which we have no choice but to accept 'their' solution so that we can eat again, have our TV and amusements again, return to our comfortable couches and absorb the propaganda again. Make no mistake, every man, woman and child on Earth will be put over the economic barrel until we submit to 'their' solutions.

The answer is so deceptively simple that most people simply overlook it. The answer doesn't require legislation, it doesn't require fear and it doesn't even require action. On the contrary, just the opposite: do NOTHING. That's right, stop buying into the system that wants to enslave you. Don't vote. Don't protest. Don't consume the mass propaganda. The one thing the PTB fear the most is that no one takes them seriously. 'They' wake up at night in cold sweats fearing that one thing. The one thing 'they' can't abide is that we wander away and stop listening and following.

Here's your real solution: start forming collectives and use barter and alternative currencies like gold and silver for private commerce. Don't borrow money from the banks and stop spending money at the corporate outlets. All the protesting and voting and striking is taking our energy and channeling it into pressure valves, effectively wasting our time. Don't protest. Don't vote (it only encourages them, as Will Rogers pointed out). I mean, imagine the hand-wringing and utter terror 'they' would face if 'they' held an election and simply no one showed up. 'They' could not claim any legitimacy to power at all. A simple and elegant solution that requires absolutely no action or energy on your part at all!

The only reason a leader can exist is because someone follows him. If we simply stop following and start developing our own lives, if we stop buying the corporate output and start making our own, if we just ignore the insecure little bastards that are The Powers That Be, 'they' would quickly shrivel up and die. Make no mistake. 'They' will fight. 'They' will create wars and famines and any number of horrors to get us to run back to 'their' solutions. But, instead of fearing that, look at it with pity. Pity those poor little minds that cannot handle people being truly powerful, of being their own leaders, of producing their own needs. Those poor Rothschild/Rockefeller/Zionist/Tri-Lateralists/Masons, etc. You can choose your own bugbears, but 'they' are all the same behind the curtain. 'They' are bullies, whose power comes from us being afraid. If we are not, 'they' wither and shink back into the hole where 'they' came from.

The real solution is so simple. Instead of taking energy, it requires nothing...literally. We all just walk away and ignore 'them.' We find our own solutions, grow our own food, use our own money, create our own world free of fear and control. The first shot we can fire over the bow is November 2, in America. Don't vote. Very simple. Don't vote Democrat, or Republican, or Libertarian, or Green, or Socialist, or Tea Party, or anything. Don't go, don't pull a lever and don't care. I laugh to think what would happen the next day. No one would have power. 'They' would be in an absolute panic. 'They' would be powerless overnight with not a single calorie being burned on your part. It is the ultimate 'none-of-the-above.'

There is so much more to this issue. There are a great number of writers, speakers and populations who are 'waking up' and seeing that the whole thing is a sham. So of those people are quite eloquent and others are, well, just more of the same trying to steal our energy and freedom by offering more of the same with different packaging. One very succinct video I have come across lately is a David Icke interview. You don't have to like him or believe him or follow him, but I think he clearly illuminates the situation and provides a healthy meal of 'food for thought.' This video acts as a very good primer for some Big Pictures that can then be researched and acted upon with further meditation. Just open your mind to the possibilities, without forming judgement. See if you don't hear some real truth in it. But, in order to truly free yourself, you can't give up one leader to be replaced by another. Don't follow anyone. Research, pray and find your own truth. You are far better at leading yourself than anyone 'outside' of you can ever be.

Yes, it's all about to come crashing down. Yes, it will be nasty. Yes, many people will die or be hurt. It is inevitable. What we do have control over is the outcome. Either we have more of 'them,' only far worse, or we find our own solutions, ones that empower and free us from what we have been force-fed for centuries now. We don't need leaders, we are leaders!

In America, there is an expression that 'a man's home is his castle.' By extension, every man is his own king. Now is the time to act like it. Take back the power you have given away. The beauty of it is that to take it back, you really need to do NOTHING. The rest will sort itself out.

Life's a hologram and then you die.