Only The Yogurt Has Culture

What remains of Western Civilization hardly seems worth defending.  I studied and ultimately made a living off of the Arts because I saw the inherent nobility and elevation of the human condition in creating art.  However, there is precious little left to call art in the West, and the virus of depravity is spreading worldwide.

Once upon a time, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte was considered to crass for the Vienna National Theater because it was in German and dealt with common gods and faeries.  Now, most people can't even tell me what an "aria" is, much less have ever seen an opera.  At least in my generation, The Who and Frank Zappa wrote "rock" operas and more or less achieved something memorable.

What passes for culture in the West now is little more than "schlock and ooh".  "Performers" prance around in tiny "costumes", "singing" repetitive "lyrics" to entrancing bass beats that only just meet the criteria for having rhythm.  Furthermore, I can hardly distinguish one "song" from the next.  They are all virtually identical, and in the case of DJs, they aren't even original - just digital samples of utter crap.

When Georges Seurat created the art movement of pointilism, he was exploring the qualities of light and vision using the newly discovered properties and physiology of his era.  Roy Lichtenstein, though, simply magnified the printing process, which used the pixels pioneered by Seurat, to explode comic book illustrations to enormous proportions.  Don't get me wrong, I like Lichtenstein and would happily display his work in my den next to the black velvet dogs playing poker and Elvis portraits, but as art, it hardly qualities as anything other than a quaint addition to kitsch collections.

Don't get me started on Andy Warhol.

I did my art history thesis on Claes Oldenburg's Giant Soft Fan and Henri Matisse's Four Backs.  While Oldenburg's piece is an interesting attempt to explode a common item to massive proportions to enhance its design aspects, it is more of a playful exercise than art.  Matisse, on the other hand, deconstructs a feminine back across four panels from its organic presentation to its geometric components.  This is an interesting study in the mathematics of Life and forces one to examine Nature in a new light.

Today, someone can accidentally drop a pair of glasses on the floor of a "museum" and attract a crowd of awed spectators trying to figure out what state of mind the "artist" was in when "creating" such a piece.  Don't believe me?  Read the article.

Compare also the grand cathedrals of Europe, or even the highly functional castles, to the glass blocks of today's modern city.  The cathedrals defied the massive stone blocks from which they were constructed, soaring far above the viewer's head, and the walls were constructed almost entirely of colored glass windows - art in themselves - that created a floating, other-worldly effect.  Combined with an east-west orientation - using the natural surroundings - they even created special effects at certain times of the year, when light streamed through the rose window and struck the nave, causing it to glow eerily in the murky darkness on the interior.  Magic and masterpiece!

Few even stop now to consider the magnificent technological achievement of placing a dome on a box using an ingenious device called a pendentive.  Nor do they stop to admire the incredible artistry and engineering involved in a cathedral's flying buttresses that keep the walls from flying outward under the strain of their loads.

Can anyone name a work as elevating as the Sistine Chapel or Beethoven's 9th Symphony created in the last 50 years?  How about a script as linguistically entrancing as William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliette?  In fact, has any form of art moved you to tears, or left you breathless, or induced a feeling of elation that was created in the past 30 years?

Nowadays, architecture refers to game engines, the visual arts have been reduced to graphics, music has been debased to little more than a repetitive bass cleft with foul words spewed over it, and performance has devolved to computer generated movement and explosions.

Honestly, when the conversation occasionally turns to discussing the defense of Western culture, I can hardly think of anything in the past two generations worth preserving.  Fortunately, the West's greatest achievements are largely available online for everyone to access, but in terms of modern society, I find nothing of value - just a bunch of whiny, unevolved children with no sense of history, art or appreciation for anything outside the lint in their navels.

Oh sure, Donald Trump wants to revitalize America, saving American jobs and American business, but to what end?  So we can be abused into consuming more senseless crud from the country's "artists"?

It used to be that business created wealthy people, who in turn used their wealth to endow artists and talented technicians, who then created monumental works for all posterity to enjoy.  Instead, we get Bill Gates forcing the world to slime their bodies with vaccines, Elon Musk building fun toys and Puckerberg walling himself into his Hawaiian retreat.

So much for culture.

It's long past time for the West to ask itself what it is fighting for?  Without a decent answer, then what's the point?

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”

Space Colonies And Other Minutae

Dr. Joseph P. Farrell has speculated for some time that the Snakes (formerly known as the PTB) have been eyeing space as the final frontier into which they can escape, and from which they can rule the Earth.

From the swamps of Venice to den Haag, to London, and on to New York, the Snakes have spent centuries outrunning major social upheavals against their looting and plundering.

Farrell's recent blog talking about Luxembourg's new law granting rights of ownership over space resources points out that this is yet another leap for the Snakes to avoid being lynched in the latest wave of indignation, as well as possibly one of the greatest scams of all time.  After all, he notes, who is going to run out and check the veracity of claims?

Recent articles don't offer much in the way of peace of mind.  Companies like SpaceX, SLA and Blue Origin are more or less public-private entities, given that they survive and grow off government launch contracts and subsidies.  It cannot be said that these are truly independent companies, since not only are their biggest customers governments, but they rely on government licenses and facilities to get clearance to operate and access to orbit.  In other words, they are little more than fronts for "sovereign" entities.

Historically, as Farrell points out, semi-sovereign multi-national corporations were fronts for colonizing and plundering the Earth.  Notably, the British and Dutch East India Companies sought out resources and commodities in foreign lands and staked claims on them, in effect extending British and Dutch sovereignty to remote areas of the world.

To see this in effect even today, take a look at the British East India Company's flag, and then scan the flags of the world for the red/white stripe motif.  It should provide an interesting revelation to those unaware of such things.

Even more apropos, Farrell points out the grand opportunity to launder money in outer space.  After all, it was somewhat exaggerated claims of gold and silver wealth that led to the European conquest of the Americas, with Britain, France and the Netherlands taking North America, while Spain and Portugal took South and Central America.

Since there were no accounting houses in the Americas for centuries during the conquests, the various crowns of Europe could claim any amount of wealth, and even extend credit and trade on it, with no one to say otherwise - and in fact they did.

The name Argentina literally means "land of silver," and people are still hunting the city of El Dorado, which I daresay is a myth at best, and a grand deception at worst.

Semi-sovereign multi-national corporations are little more than colonial fronts for their home countries.  In recent times, these corporations have been integral parts of American imperialism, spreading "culture" in exchange for harvesting profits through companies like Disney, McDonald's and Microsoft, among many others.

These corporations offer a means of colonizing without being seen to colonize, yet they "mine" profits and data from nearly every nation on Earth, and funnel them - not into tax revenues for the home country - into off-shore slush funds for political bribery and favors, and other nefarious activities.

The complex web of shell corporations and off-shore accounts makes money trails nearly impossible to follow.  Yet, the ability to trace those funds also functions as a threat to keep the corporate boards in line with the Big Picture.  Just as humans worship gods as the Creators, corporations worship government for allowing them to live.

Now imagine if those money trails led out into the solar system.  With the incredibly narrow opportunity window to get into space, it would be amazingly difficult to send a team of accountants and tax specialists to the asteroid belt to check the veracity and quantify the holdings of any particular claim.  Imagine being Lloyd's of London in the 1600s, when only the hardiest and bravest of souls could/would book passage to North or South America to check the claims of vast gold and silver holdings.  Pretty much all you would have is the company's say-so and documentation to go by, and those things are easily fabricated now, much less in deep space.

Furthermore, since nations are banned from staking territorial claims in space, it only makes sense to partner with corporate entities to share the wealth, if there is any to be found, through public-private partnerships (cf Roscosmos/Russia, SpaceX/US, Virgin Galactica/UK, etc.)

By the way, public-private partnerships and Non-Governmental Organizations are the latest buzz terms for Fascism, if you haven't kept up with the world of marketing trends lately.

Space is ripe for the Snakes, who are looking to get off this rock since they have nowhere else to run at this point, and kajillions of dollars to launder, which also happens to be the book price to achieve orbit with Human Cargo (the orbital term for Human Resources).

Since these folks have a very long history of looking for ways to inflate costs and profits without being caught, what could be better than space?  After all, when the rest of the world catches up, you can always move further out.  There's infinite space, as it were, to expand your deception and stay one step ahead of the competition - i.e. Humanity.

Five hundred years seems to be one of the recurring cycles that have fascinated me for decades.  Coincidentally, or not, it has been about 500 years since Columbus publicly announced the New World - I did not use "discovered" advisedly.  It is time for yet another major convulsion in the historic timeline.  If you don't believe me, just look at the century of 1000-1100.

The primary reason I am so fascinated with the current events sweeping the world is that this is the next epoch we are living in.  We are in the birth pangs that will define Humanity for the next 500 years.  Our future is being written as you read this.  It's not about Brexit or Trump or le Pen.  It's not about the EU or BRICSA or AMERO.  It's about defining who we will be as a species for the foreseeable future and beyond.

Our distant progeny will study this era the way we study the Colonial or Enlightenment Periods.  It will be a series of dry and boring names and dates that they will have to regurgitate on tests.  How they interpret this period will depend on who wins.

We literally have the ability right now to change the course of history.  We can determine which of us will go out into the Void.  The New Realm will be known as some variant of the New World.  These steps will define the course of Humanity.  Why do you think the Snakes and the Corporate Media are fighting so hard to control the public narrative?  They know.

They know.

Students of history know.

This is it, folks.  We are writing history in stone right now.  It's not about elections or trends or - gods forbid - hashtags.  It's about the direction and freedom of Humanity from this point forward.

Stop thinking about candidates.  Stop thinking about parties.  Stop thinking about policies and procedures.  This fight is for the dialogue that will define Humanity for as long as any of us cares to ponder.

This is Big Picture kinda shit yo, to put it in the Vulgate.

Start taking things seriously.  Start thinking decades...centuries...nay millennia in advance.

You have that kind of power right now.

Awesome, isn't it?

We've Only Just Begun

We at the Far Side World Headquarters (FSWHQ) hereby dub today "Twilight Zone Day," in honor of the late, great (and fellow smoker) Rod Serling.  What happens tonight when the vote-counting starts is anybody's guess, at this point, but one thing is certain: tomorrow we wake up in the Twilight Zone.

No matter how you slice the US election, or even whether you live in the country or its various territories, the winner of today's poll will have a profound effect on the world at large, and the relative anger or joy of the puppeteers will most assuredly be reflected in economic terms going forward.  In either case, we are likely to see a whole slew of indictments handed out in the coming months, though I understand that Hillary Clinton can't be touched as long as she wins the office.  She is, however, likely to be a "lame duck" president even before she takes office - much as Nixon was in 1973, a period of history well familiar to Mrs. Clinton.

In any event, tomorrow we will have the Carnival Barker or Cruella deVille holding the trigger on one of the largest nuclear arsenals on Earth, and a great many brush fires around the world to put out or fan into a bonfire, as the case may be.

We here at FSWHQ have no horse in this race.  If ever there was a time to keep one's hands clean, now is it.  No matter what the outcome, there are going to be a lot of pissed off people, and not all of them will be US citizens.  Within the coming year, we fully expect to enjoy the right of saying we told you so, no matter what the outcome, and like Pontius Pilat, our hands will be spanking clean when the time comes.

Being a political atheist means never having to regret making a bad decision, of which there are several to choose from this election season.  The most applicable term is "buyer's remorse."  The way we see it, we get nothing from the government (except a passport for which we paid cash), so we invest nothing in the game (except the $100 for a passport).  In the same way we don't buy products that offer us no benefit, we don't buy anything coming out of or going into Washington, D.C.  Simple market economics.

In any event, today marks the end of the War of Words and the beginning of the real war.  If Hillary wins, half the states will start secession proceedings.  If Donald wins, the other half will start.  Neither candidate is likely to be safe nor effective.  They will both have significant opposition to any of their efforts, though the military is more likely to go into full revolt under Hillary.  If Donald wins, the Wall Street/Bankster cabal are likely to crash the economy out of revenge.  Either way, the immediate future ain't pretty.

So hitch up your pants and settle back for the show of a lifetime.  As we have noted numerous times, this election will settle nothing.  It is only the opening salvo in an ongoing process of dissolution.  Regardless the outcome, the US is going the way of the old Soviet Union, with the only major difference being the speed at which it happens.  No entity can sustain a debt economy, and at this point, that economy includes every political entity on Earth.  The planetary economy is a closed system by design, since scarcity enriches those who control the resources.  However, being closed, that system is doomed to failure as its core eats itself from the inside out.

In a sense, this is a natural process as civilization evolves from ancient tribal model to global integrated model.  This primary issue is who will control the new system and will it be open or closed.

Today's election is not the culmination, but the revelation of the two primary poles of the new global dynamic.  Globalization is inevitable, but will it benefit the majority of Humanity, or suck the life-blood out of it?  The enemy has been engaged and the real Battle for the Future is upon us.

Stand by.  We are about to find out who has the initiative.