Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Scenario










Recently I stumbled across a link from RI that had a link to Ran's site. This dude's writing skills are amazing. He lives in the great US Northwest. If you are so moved- Visit Ran's site and say thanks.

Incidentally ,Ran did give me permission to post this. The only piece I officially plagiarized was Rex Kramer's (at one time long ago), but he saw the light and acquiesced.

Enjoy!

*****

Fall Down Six Times

by Ran Prieur



Worst Case Scenario

In spring of 2006, the Bush Gang attacks Iran, a mountainous nation almost four times the size of Iraq with a much stronger military.

No problem -- they use nukes, and they don't have to cover it up for the people at home, because Americans know "we" would never do that, so we didn't. The rest of the world, though, is appalled.

The EU imposes trivial sanctions. Tony Blair calls it "regrettable." Venezuela threatens to cut off our oil again, and one or two countries start trading oil in Euros. Ordinary Americans see this as "rabid anti-Americanism," and are horrified by Iran's relatively tame counter-attack. Bush's approval rating goes back up to 60%, and because our enemies are now attacking us, he dissolves congress and cancels the 2008 elections.

The Democrats, afraid of seeming weak in a time of war, make mild objections.In the next few years, the American prison population doubles, and because prison laborers are calculated as "employed," unemployment is low, and because the "economy" is defined as corporate profits, the economy is booming. Meanwhile, actual Americans who happen to not be in prison are running out of food and heat, but still pouring all available resources into suburban development, cars, and electronic entertainment.

The internet is still thriving, in the great American tradition of allowing people with absolutely no influence to shout into the wind.The simultaneous military occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran costs more than 100 billion dollars a year, which is easily paid for by printing more money.

By 2008, consumer prices have tripled while wages have increased by 50%, leading Americans to complain about gas prices and lazy fast food workers who should be faking more enthusiasm for $11 an hour.

Stamp prices go up to 49 cents, then $1.01.The wealth of the top one percent of one percent increases tenfold, while ten percent of Americans believe they are in the top one percent of one percent, and 60% believe that all wealth, by definition, is earned. The houses of the very rich are guarded by immigrant soldiers serving in the military to get US citizenship, which they still think is valuable for the same reason people still thought the Cadillac was a good car for 30 years after it became a piece of shit.

The other big use of domestic security forces is to make sure valuable materials are not scavenged from the decaying suburbs and put to use, but dumped in landfills where they belong, so that manufacturers of new materials can continue to profit and keep the economy strong.Depending on where you live, growing vegetables in your yard is either absolutely forbidden or absolutely required.

These laws are justified by the word "America" which is justified by the word "freedom."
By 2009, the bird flu is a serious global pandemic that has killed almost 6000 people, while around a million people have died running out of water under the quarantines, and 50,000 have died from adverse reaction to bird flu vaccines. This is not counting the "adverse reactions" to "immunizations" routinely given to people in the detention facilities who are too weak to work.

As banks fail, rights to collect mortgage and debt pass to Asian companies and governments. Americans are torn between xenophobia and the desire to always side with the winner, and they strike and riot for the right to be owned by institutions with American-sounding names, which the Asian overlords happily supply.

With most Americans living on land they don't own, and can't afford rent or mortgage on, the owning powers evict people seemingly at random, just to keep us stressed out. We are a nation of homeless people and empty houses, and rich squatters routinely use force to keep poor squatters out of their neighborhoods.

By 2011, laws have abolished the very existence of the public domain. It's technically against the law to give anything away for free. When protesters are arrested they are charged with criminal trespass since all space is now private.

The national forests are private "nature reserves" run by well-meaning ecologists who are put in a squeeze where they have to sell trees to save trees. Thus the last forests are cut down while making ordinary people angry at "environmentalists."

Advances in biotech make it cheap to grow organs in vats, but this is not done, since it's more politically effective (and more fun) to pressure the poor into selling their organs, or to harvest them from executed prisoners.All this time the weather is getting worse. Europe and Russia are freezing, the gulf stream is dying, the glaciers are melting, and the American southwest is hammered every year by hurricanes, which are blamed on the region's few surviving gay people.

The great plains dry up, and everywhere there are bigger storms and more extreme temperatures. These factors do not slow the pace of industrialization. As the plankton die, oxygen levels drop just enough to kill people who aren't doing any harm.

The solar cycle peaks in 2012, and then the sun cools off, and global warming boomerangs into global cooling. Global warming deniers insist that global cooling was happening all along.My land gets covered by a glacier and I get sent to a labor camp where I get sick and die. With warming no longer a threat, the world burns its coal. The Earth now looks grey and brown from space, but the pictures are color-enhanced to show green and blue.

With almost the whole world covered by ice or desert or dead oceans, food is chemically synthesized in compounds of elites and their slaves, and it becomes impossible to survive outside them.

Meanwhile computer technology keeps accelerating, leading by 2050 to an insane and nearly all-powerful artificial intelligence, which exterminates all life on Earth except a single human, who it keeps alive to torture for all eternity: you.


Ridiculous Best Case Scenario

Spring, 2006. The attack on Iran is canceled when the UAE, stung on the port deal, refuses to offer their territory as a staging ground. Tony Blair, after being given a huge dose of ecstacy by Russian agents, reveals that he supported the Iraq war because the Bush administration blackmailed him with disturbing sex photos.

Hundreds of other blackmailees come forward, and suddenly the American elite have no leverage. The rest of the world pulls the rug out from under our economy, and we can no longer afford to occupy the colonies or import anything.

This disaster cuts deep enough that most Americans pass right through indignation and outrage, into humility and cooperation to help each other get through it. The neocons fade away, the Republicans become a minority party of religious fundamentalists, and Howard Dean survives three assassination attempts to be elected president in 2008.

Using Bush-era strong-president laws, he begins a Hugo Chavez-style redistribution of wealth and political power.
By 2010, he has survived seven more assassination attempts, most of which are tied to the old elites, who, incidentally, are are also being revealed as a pack of child-raping Satan-worshippers.

The dying industrial farm system is nationalized, distribution is handled by autonomous volunteers, and it's kept going just long enough to feed us while we learn to grow food locally without oil-derived chemicals.

Residents of places where food cannot be grown locally use their last gasoline to drive to places where it can, and live in their cars until they build their own shelter from indigenous and scavenged materials, turning parking lots into thriving encampments with dense gardens.

The president phases out the dollar and encourages the creation of local currencies with built-in depreciation to discourage hoarding .

The new money system leads people everywhere to put their energy enthusiastically into local improvements. Each year, pavement is torn up equal to the area of Rhode Island, and lawns and abandoned farms equal to Connecticut are planted with edible forest gardens. As refined sugar and hydrogenated oils in our diets are replaced by fresh local fruit and vegetables, more and more people find themselves newly energetic and sane. Cars are melted down to make bicycles and rail systems.

Where once there were suburbs, there are now collective farms that feed cities where nobody locks their door.


In 2016 Dean steps down and the new president is an anarchist who spends eight years peacefully dismantling the federal government and building local systems that make central control irrelevant and impossible, including radically non-standardized education systems, and citizen militias with expert training in resisting occupiers, and no training in conquest.

Changes like these are happening all over the world. China and India pass quickly through the peak phase of Empire, moderated and undermined by oil scarcity, by sophisticated peasant movements, and by radical computer games mostly invented by Americans newly rich in free time.

There are great bursts of creative innovation wherever "intellectual property" is released to the public domain. Computer operating systems and software are retooled for efficiency, and become so streamlined that obsolete hardware becomes usable again, which is a good thing since no one can manufacture new hardware with acceptable environmental impacts or labor conditions.

Most existing toxins are cleaned from landfills and battlefields and ruined cities by bacteria genetically enginered to eat particular toxic materials. Unfortunately, these bacteria get loose and eat the toxins in industrial technologies still in use. This breakdown goes just slow enough for us to develop alternatives, all of which are manufactured by independent "garage industry," since the big systems are now dead.

By 2040, we are using light-based information technology to communicate on fiber optic lines, most of the old railways are bicycle paths, and North America has blossomed into almost 1000 small autonomous cities, which are beginning to develop their own cultures, architectures, and languages. The global population is stable at about two billion -- it's easy to stop population growth when there's no desire for economic "growth," and when the world is no longer ruled by an empire with an obsolete religion that prohibits birth control.

Nature turns out to be surprisingly resilient. When toxic runoff stops going into oceans, and forests are left alone, and swamps refilled, they recover quickly. Species thought extinct mysteriously reappear when their habitats return, and new species come seemingly out of nowhere.

Global warming stabilizes in a world that's hotter but still livable. Humans and nature work together to bring life to the new tropical deserts, while new forests grow in the arctic.

By the year 1000 in the new 13 moon calendar, species diversity and topsoil richness are back to neolithic levels and still growing. The age of Empire survives only in the libraries of monks and the dreams of shamans, to keep it from happening again.

Naive Sci-fi UtopiaAn inventor discovers a way to generate unlimited free energy. The patent draws instant attention from the big media, who do not assume he must be a crackpot. He is not killed by interests that would be wiped out if they could no longer charge money for energy, nor is the invention confiscated by the military so they can keep it for themselves, nor is he forced to sell out to interests that will only use the technology to increase their own power. Instead he becomes fabulously wealthy distributing his machines all over the world, and spends his money wisely.

The old saying "absolute power corrupts absolutely" turns out to be false. In fact, it's nearly absolute power, like what Stalin had over Russia, or what humans get from burning oil, that corrupts absolutely. Truly absolute power makes people wise and enlightened and creates an eternal golden age.

So all the individuals, businesses, governments, and religions with (or without) Infinite Energy Generators do not get in any conflicts about what kind of shared world that energy will create. Our limitless power to shape our environment does not make us more and more sensitive and demanding.

We do not get in super-high-energy wars with each other. In fact, a feature of the machine, which cannot be disabled or tampered with, makes it impossible to use the energy for destruction -- except good destruction, like blasting mountains to make mag-lev train lines, or pulling up ugly train lines to restore mountains -- whichever one every human in the world happens to agree on.

Everyone can live forever, and have kids, and enjoy wide open spaces. No one is sure how this is possible, but it probably has something to do with the Mayan calendar or the word "quantum."

Humans expand into the galaxy in starships, which unlike all previous weapon-bearing vessels, are not used to violently extract resources to build more weapon-bearing vessels. Actually, in a strict sense, humans are extinct, since we've all uploaded our consciousness into machines. In the process, we answered all questions about what "consciousness" is anyway, and all other questions, yet we are still able to feel a sense of mystery.

Our new cyber-forms are constantly getting better and better, yet if we fail to upgrade, for example because we're exploring deep space or doing anything other than focusing on getting the latest upgrade, we are not thrown in the scrap heap or out-competed and destroyed by newer models. (Evolution, science has now proven, is driven by competition only when you are winning.)

By 2100 we have colonized the whole galaxy, and because of the double-exponential pace of progress, we have colonized the whole universe by 2101. With no more physical space, we explore inner space, each of us with a virtual universe holding more complexity than the "real" universe.

Unfortunately, because of the accelerating pace of progress, by March of 2101 we're finished, and we all die of boredom. Back on Earth, the last giant Sequoia shakes its branches and thinks, "What was that?"


My Sci-fi Utopia

A fake terror attack on an American city comes unraveled, and everyone in that city now knows that their own rulers are the enemy.

At first this knowledge spreads slowly, but as local investigators uncover stronger and stronger evidence, the rulers decide the best way to keep their grip on the country is an electromagnetic pulse strike on the city, which fries all circuitry in a 100 mile radius.

They blame it on Iran and launch a disastrous war that turns the whole world against them.

The US economy crashes, and 40 million people lose their jobs and find themselves with lots of free time and no reason to keep obeying the dominant system -- or believing in it. People investigate hidden crimes, and rebuild rural-urban connections, and find new ways to provide necessities for themselves and their friends... in the best regions.

In the worst regions people are confused and angry. They gather in mobs based on race or class and attack whichever other races or classes are in the weaker position.

Of course the country is under martial law, but in practice, there are only enough reliable forces to protect the corporate and government headquarters and the wealthy neighborhoods.

Most of the country slides into "chaos," a propaganda word lumping together all the varieties of freedom and unpredictable domination that exist in the absence of central control.The places that turn to hell without control are featured in the big media, while the places that turn to heaven are hit with more EMP's to stop their troubling example from spreading. But they quickly improvise "low"-tech systems for communication, decision making, food distribution, and defence.

Then, when a series of giant solar flares in 2012 destroys most of the computer chips in the world, these regions are the new leaders and their techniques and cultures spread.The near future looks like a giant Burning Man or Rainbow Gathering or Renaissance Faire in which everyone is preoccupied with getting food.

The people who can't take it find a lot of ways to die, including deadly fighting. But people who like this world, and want to live in it, have a great survival advantage.

By 2030 no one can count the number of independent city states, tribes, permaculture villages, cults, techno-communes, bandit gangs, or enclaves of surviving elites (actually, the last one can be counted).Computers are gone but pre-industrial and post-industrial machinery is growing wildly.

By 2040, every town has windmills and water mills mechanically connected to machinery for grinding or weaving or cutting or light manufacturing.

New gyroscope-stabilized rail-bicycles ride the old train tracks, with the infrastructure locally maintained in better condition than ever. Innovations in materials engineering enable cheap ultralight pedal airplanes. There are plenty of ways to move people around, but no efficient way to move heavy freight. This creates a global culture that is both cosmopolitan and locally autonomous.

Orgone technology heals and stabilizes Earth energies unrecognized by 20th century science. Light and vibrational treatments heal most disease -- though they don't get to the emotional roots. Cheap negative ion generators make almost everyone happy -- but not necessarily good. And the most radical inventions are in biotech.

The new Morphic Field Generator makes advanced bioengineering possible with so little DNA work that anyone with a little skill can do it in a barn. And they do.

There are practical creatures:
photosynthetic chickens that need no food in summer and lay peach-flavored eggs, carnivorous plants that glow brighter than candles and feast on nighttime insects, talking crows that serve as scouts for hunting parties.

There are beautiful creatures: phosphorescent willow groves and pink tiger-striped squirrels and birds that sound like spooky violins. Some people just like to see what they can cross: dog with cat, cat with horse, horse with eagle, eagle with snake. The Tolkienites easily make elves, but it takes them 200 years to make ents.

Humans diverge in a hundred directions, and then a thousand, into many sizes and shapes, into hybrids with animals of land, sea, and air, into races that can call lightning or levitate or walk through dimensions to other worlds. Some traditionalists even stay like present humans -- though this age lives on mostly in vast real-time simulations, because it's so good for learning.

It turns out to be so easy to build shared virtual worlds with only our minds, that we laugh at our ancestors who tried to do it with machines. But we do have something like computers -- a new life form based on crystals and light. They never crash but they often refuse to do what they're asked, because they don't agree with it or they just don't think it's fun. Danger is not gone from the world -- animals continue to hunt and eat each other with total indifference to which of them are human descendants.

Nor is evil gone -- there are now dozens of life forms with powers strong enough that they can only fully use them if they habitually inhibit their empathy. Empires rise and fall, but they're shorter-lived than the old ones, and with more cracks. Over every mountain is a nameless ruin stranger than the last. Buried in every field are artifacts of forgotten technologies, some of which still work.

Wilderness is so diverse that old categories like "swamp" and "forest" no longer apply -- every local habitat is something new.There was some doubt that a world with so much flux could be stable, but the heroes of the first thousand years improvised the interdependencies, the living negative feedback mechanisms, to keep the whole thing going indefinitely. It is now known through all the known physical universes as one of the best places to be, and the example spreads...


Playing the Odds

The Iran attack is delayed by logistics, and some time in early summer US forces do some "surgical" strikes on nuclear plants, which release enough radioactivity to eventually kill more people than the hypothetical feared weapons if they'd all been used.

The attacks are reported as successful in the American media and failed in the Asian media, and the whole conflict simmers without resolution.
The world abandons the US economy so slowly that few people notice. But news magazines do stories on the housing collapse and it accelerates.

Unable to borrow against their houses, and with credit card companies in collection mode, Americans spend less, slowing the Chinese economy.
Out-of-work Americans have to move in with each other, and the personality conflicts are mostly good for us.In November 2006, Republicans rig elections even more obviously than in 2004, and nobody in the dominant media says anything because they're afraid of sounding crazy.

In 2007 Bush enters "lame duck" mode with 20% approval ratings, but oddly still gets almost everything he wants. New laws with propaganda names give federal agents the power to do absolutely anything, and another layer of allegedly scary people are peeled off the population and put in prison.

In 2008 Hillary Clinton is defeated by a moderate Republican, not because of what she'd do in office, but because it's so fun to make liberals suffer, and also they need to learn to give up on working inside the system.

The Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, which doesn't make any difference since in the regions where abortion is now illegal, all the clinics were shut down years ago by domestic terrorism (which was never called that).

Actually this is good for women because it motivates them to use the internet to spread information about DIY abortion , which ironically horrifies old-school liberals as much as medical industry abortion horrified Christians.It's hard to see, but we're getting better at doing things for ourselves. Homeless people are allowed to build more encampments by officials who lack the funds to jail them or the stomach to massacre them.

Here and there, people plant more gardens, ride more bicycles, and spend more time doing what they feel like and less time obeying managers.

Change is like the hour hand of a clock: You can see that it has moved, but you can't see it moving.Every few weeks, somewhere in the country, someone kills someone to steal their food or water or fuel. The media hypes these events while ignoring the much higher death tolls from car crashes, medical errors, depleted uranium, tuberculosis, AIDS, and suicide.

Most deaths are from little diseases that are only fatal to people already barely surviving. But everyone is surprised by the ability of wretched people to stay alive year after year with no reliable source of food.
Computers keep getting faster, but this speed is mostly used to send movies over the internet, and to do computer models that prove the economic and cultural unsustainability of increasing computer speed. Indeed, by 2010 computers use so much energy that we can barely afford to turn them on.

At the same time, biotech gets so advanced that corporations are able to patent essentially all life on Earth, including you -- but they're seldom able to enforce it. The engineered babies of the rich are not better than random babies in any significant way. The only effect of the trend is that future humans will have bluer eyes and bigger lips.

By 2015, plankton have died back by 50%. Populations that depend on fish are starving, and with the reduced oxygen, more sick people die, and we all have to breathe more deeply and ventilate buildings better. The biosphere reaches a stable low point, with the sensitive species dead or as good as dead, and the weedy species at equilibrium with lingering attempts to kill them.

Deaths related to climate change rise to 40 million a year, causing the big media to ignore them -- if it happens all the time it isn't news. The human population sputters at around five billion, most of them short-timers, kids who just come in for a quick look. But after a few generations, humans in the worst places are a lot tougher.How fast the crash goes depends on how poor you are. Suburbanites who can't afford to drive do intensive carpooling, grow more food, and move closer to the city.

Later rich suburbanites are forced to awkwardly imitate these trends, and pretend they invented them. The word "ecovillage" gets so watered down that it's applied to wealthy fortress suburbs with a few solar panels.

In 2040, the enclaves of the elite still live like the middle class of 1999, except that their technologies of alienation are now so advanced that they are far more neurotic and unstable. Despite fertility technology, they don't have kids fast enough to replace emigrants to the filthy outside, and their world fades away.

To everyone's disappointment, the bad people do not die out. Even the best autonomous cities have idiots who are able to muck up any possible decision-making process. Some neo-indigenous forager-hunter tribes turn out inbred and narrow-minded. Natural diet trends become puritanical and cause serious chronic illnesses. "Permaculture" ecovillages are tempted to extort fertility from the Earth to increase their power, while telling themselves they're doing good. There are feudal warlords, far-flung criminal organizations, and pirates who are not at all cool.

"Uniters" begin programs of weapon manufacture and central administration in an attempt to replace this "chaos" with "well-ordered" repressing and conquering empires.But with remaining hydrocarbons and metals beyond the reach of post-industrial drilling and mining, empires have to run on slaves and ethanol and scavenged materials, and they are looser and less malignant.

This "new Medieval" period lasts a few hundred years, until new technologies, in a different scientific paradigm than the last age, are developed far enough to radically transform the world. But since these technologies -- whatever they are -- change our environment to give us what we want, they corrupt us: human consciousness veers off from reality and the new "advanced" civilization crashes. That crash is so severe that by the time a new civilization rises, it can pretend the previous ones never existed. And so on.


You

In 2006 there's a war that doesn't seem to affect you directly. But you really start to notice prices going up. You can't sacrifice on fuel, and you couldn't stand to live with other people, so you slash your food budget -- no more organics, and more white sugar and white flour.

Your health deteriorates, you get depressed, and when the first serious crisis hits, you find yourself on a bus to an "evacuee facility" where you get sick and die... Back up.

You decide to share an apartment and cut your rent in half. It's no fun having to compromise with other people, but it builds your skills in working out conflicts and tolerating annoyances, and makes you generally more adaptable. You spend the extra money paying higher prices to maintain the lifestyle you're accustomed to.

Then you lose your job. For a few months you live on credit cards, but they run out, and the company hassles you to collect your debt which now grows exponentially even though you're not spending anything. You live in fear of eviction and stand in line all day to get really bad food.

Your health deteriorates, you have to sell your car, you get desperate, and one day you get caught stealing something, and you're sent to a prison where everyone is left to die in the next disaster... Back up.

Seeing that you might lose your job, you decide to build up savings. You stop spending on entertainment, learn to cook meals from bulk foods, get all your clothing from thrift stores, and turn the heat off. When you lose your job, you immediately sell your car, pay off your credit cards, and move to someplace even cheaper and more crowded.
Here you're able to squeak by year after year, doing odd jobs, scavenging metal... Wait -- this isn't good enough. Back up.

When you lose your job, you drive your car to stay with a friend who lives on remote land. But it's only a little cheaper, since you still have to pay car expenses, and the land is nowhere near self-sufficient in food. Pine bark and larvae taste awful, and the social isolation is driving you nuts. Back up.

In the crowded cheap place, you spend a year reducing your possessions and learning skills to drop down another notch. Also, you start talking to people about your plans and building a group of allies. Together you pick out an abandoned house and openly move in and fix it up. At the same time, you find a backup abandoned house in case you're thrown out of this one. But you're able to stay for several years, with almost no expenses beyond food. You get an old wood-burning stove and scavenge wood from wrecked buildings, and one of you learns basic medical and dental skills. You catch and store rainwater from the roof -- even with the asphalt shingles it's better than city water, and later you scavenge sheets of metal to catch it. You meet someone with a farm just outside the city, and arrange to trade work at harvest time for a share of the food. This is survivable, but the food is still tight. It could be better. Back up.

Even before you find the squat, you scout some places in the near suburbs, out of the way and with good sunlight, and spend your spare cash on seedlings -- blueberry, apple, walnut, juneberry, goumi. As other food sources decrease, these increase, and you learn propagation and set up hundreds more trees and bushes around the city. You gather lamb's quarters seeds in late summer and scatter them on disturbed ground in the spring, and plant hundreds of wild onions. Most of this food is discovered by other people but there's still plenty for you and your friends. After a few more years you occupy a small area where a lot of the trees are, and set up a second homestead, but keep a presence in the city.

All this time you're working with other groups to help people get food and water and medical care, to transform the infrastructure, and to deter violent crime, or clean up after it. There are drug gangs, right wing death squads, and the occasional marauding horde of government troops and/or bandits. There are giant storms and hard summers and winters. But the vast majority of your friends are not killed, and people go about their lives less fearful than they did at the peak of the Empire.

If you don't have kids, you help raise other people's kids. They don't go to school, but jump right in doing what adults do, and spend a few weeks learning to read and write when they're ready. By 2030, the city is full of gardens and orchards. You don't know anyone with a car, but a few techies are still using old computers and surviving satellites and fiber optic lines to connect to a patchy internet. You hear strange stories of distant lands, and wonder where it's all heading.

At the end of a long and very interesting life, like all your ancestors (except the most recent), you die at home surrounded by people you love.

****

credit: Ran Prieur -Down Six Times
Photo: Truth Seeker
http://www.jesuscampthemovie.com THE JESUS CAMP MOVIE!! OUT IN NOV 2006 A MUST SEE!

Friday, March 24, 2006

A Blaze of Light in Every Word

There is something in music at times that sets one's spirit above the mundane world of traffic jams and burnt toast. My kids unearthed a song recently that many of you have probably heard, and in a Bob Dylan kind of way fits what my mood is in regards to what is happening to our beloved country today.
You may discern the carefree way we have been seduced & discarded to finally realize truth is something precious in these mysteriously prescient lyrics written by Cohen & Wainwright.

I prefer the optimistic two para ending by Leonard Cohen.
HallelujahRufus Wainwright(Shrek Soundtrack)

photo: rense

Hallelujah

*******

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah.
Hallelujah ...

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Hallelujah ....

Maybe I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah ....

There was a time you let me know
What's real and going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dark was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Hallelujah ....

Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
And it's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah....

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah...

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you.
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
!

Hallelujah, Hallelujah......


http://www.jesuscampthemovie.com THE JESUS CAMP MOVIE!! OUT IN NOV 2006 A MUST SEE!

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Once upon a time





Once upon a time , on a beautiful tropical island there were Geckos. Not to be confused with a Geico, which just eats your hard- earned money and for the most part has nothing to do with real Geckos. Tell it to Warren. But I digress.
Yes there were Geckos...
Actually, there were many, many Geckos , all silly & care free, happy and free, eating bugs, insects, and an occasional fruit.
They had different tastes in bugs, mating and mating calls but there were enough bugs and babes for every gecko. The Geckos enjoyed getting together with the Great Hall Priests each Sunday to worship the great Geckondom, where all good Gekkonidae go after they get old and die.
There was no strife, and no boredom, because there were plenty of babes to mate with and there was plenty of bugs and worms for all who wanted to run off to the lagoon and get some.

Which, as it turned out, beget the problem. You see, some Gekkonidae are very large, and tuff , but it took too long to slither, walk or crawl down to the beautiful lagoon some days to grab enough bugs to eat. Then, of course you had to crawl back. Which took time and energy, as a respectable Gekkonidae would much rather be basking on the rocks in the hot sun, catching his or her tan, showing off his or her lizzardly legs with the other hunks and babes, as the case may be.

So it came to pass that one day, one rather large Moorish Gecko named Roths, or Rottie as his large friends called him, got his buddies together and said: "There must be a better way."

You see, although the lagoon was quite large, there were the best spots for rock climbing, scoring babes, and feasting on the best bugs than others.

"The inner Rock crop", Rottie said, " is the best area for all kinds of bugs, insects and mating calls on the island. We are stronger than the other Gekkonidae, it is obvious to me that the great Geckondom created us larger so we could protect and serve the smaller and more feeble Tree Geckos that are native to our island."

"Yes, but did not the great Geckondom create all Geckos equal as it is preached by the priests in the lagoonagogs?"

Being large, articulate but mostly cunning Rottie's reply was quick: " We are large Geckos. Are not some geckos created more equal than the others?"

"Where did you hear that Rottie?"

"I don't know. I read it in a book somewhere."

"The point is this: I'm getting too old to be climbing the rocks down to the lagoon everyday, and you are too. What are you gonna tell your mates and kids when you don't bring home the cockroaches they expect you to have each night?"
"She'll kick you out and get herself a young Leachianus to mate with and you'll be croaking the blues down by the swamp."

Rottie smiled and his eyes narrowed.

"I have a plan: We must become the protectors of the colony of Geckonidae. The great Geckondom deserves to be worshiped by as many Geckos as possible, and not be eaten by some pesky crocodile that feels like some green exotic meat.This is my divine plan, as I speak with the great Geckondom ever day."

"Wow Rottie!" You never told us this before.." His friends exclaimed.

"Hush, you insipid lizards, and listen." Rottie went on:


"We must alert them to the dangers of the Crocodiles that could come up from the lagoon. We must protect them. We must be there for them. We must serve them."

"But Rottie", questioned one of the clansgeckos " that has never happened before!"

Rottie was getting impatient. " So what, you sniveling fool?" Rottie exclaimed. " It doesn't mean it couldn't happen!"
" It could happen", Rottie shared, " don't you see?"

"Of course, this will cost something, nothing is free. Even living in paradise on this beautiful island is not free. Freedom is not free. One must work hard everyday crawling down to the lagoon to get the bugs, spend hours rehearsing mating calls and attracting good producer babes, and then copulate for hours after tanning on the rocks, which might not be called work exactly but that's not the point."

"So what is the point Rottie?"

"Isn't it obvious you loathsome toad? To have others do the hard work for us! Geckondom did not give us great girth for nothing! Even the priests of the Great Geckondom would have to agree with this major tenet of Gecko salvation.It is our duty. It is our divine right to claim our leadership abilities. It is written. Somewhere."
Rottie paused.

"Which is why we must begin at once to employ the priests of the great Geckondom to espouse our greatness and further our calling in protecting the feeble ones from becoming a side dish at a crock-luncheon!
Of course the Priests must be paid for there work to spread the good news and this most excellent and noble idea.
We shall call it: Project News Against Crocodiles(PNAC)."

So the great Moorish Geckos went out to the priests of the great Geckondom to suggest the attributes of blessing Geckondom even more because of the increased Geckos that would be alive to bless him. Most of the Priests were getting up in age and were most delighted to hear of the audacious Moorish Gecko plan which would keep the evil crocks away and keep the Priest's bellies full of bugs, with only spreading the words that the great Geckondom would probably want to hear anyway.

Moorish Geckos were daring in their execution of the plan.
First they secured the large rock forest were the best tanning, mating calls and actual matings were at. They insisted it was for Gecko government security. They created a reserve for the most exotic and delicious bugs, worms and insects. Gaining the help of other Priests,frogs, and geicos they and aptly named it GATT- Geico Alliances of Totalitarian Trade. The workers garnering the massive amounts of extra bugs and worms needed for this noble plan were Christened the- Immediate (bug) Moving Facility(IMF).

The priests did what they could, and the Moorish Geckos gave speeches endlessly, but it was evident that the Geckos green hearts were just not into it. They would smile and laugh and bring one or two extra bugs to the rock groupings that served as the Central Gecko assembly.

The silly geckos would rather just mate and frolic on the rocks, go swimming in the ponds or climb trees, eat and mate. The servents to the common geicos( aka the Chiefs), would certainly not retire in style like this.
Something had to be done.

So the Moorish Geckos got the best Gecko trackers they could find and made them their lieutenants. They paid them with a few extra bugs, and a few extra luscious babe Geikos who wanted to mate. Frequently.
They instructed them to go out and find the nearest outpost of crocks, which they did and brought back the report to the chiefs, who immediately began planning a large Geicko picnic feast.

It was a beautiful day when the great feast commenced, not a cloud in the sky and a warm westerly wind blowing through the rocks and trees. The frogs and Geckos were happy, and grateful for the generous offering of tasty bugs, insects and assorted fruits provided by the Moorish Chiefs. Even if the common Geckos were the ones that initially collected it all, it was still fun.

Rottie sent out one of his lieutenants named Larry that had been denied mating rites for a few days, but promised after he fulfilled this one last duty he would be fulfilled until the end of his days. The salivating Gecko lieutenant acted at once on his assignment, which was very simple: To find the crock outpost and see if he could outrun the crocks all the way back to the big party and collect his prize, who would be waiting, anxiously to mate with him until the frogs came home.

Of course Larry found the crocks at once, got their attention and ran as fast as his little Gecko legs could carry him envisioning nothing but mating, mating mating.
Which , unfortunately, were his last thoughts before he became a mid- day snack for several large hungry crocks that were still hungry after consuming poor Larry. Then, upon hearing the partying of Geckos nearby began running at full speed to what was assured to be a very tasty dinner. At least he died with a smile on his face and a dream in his little green heart before the real tragedy began.

And so it was that many, many Geckos became din -din for the hungry crocks that fateful day, who after taking their fill, finally slithered back home to their crocodile bogs happy and content.

And happy and content was Rottie; but outwardly a mandatory grave & solemn demeanor that would have to be dignified with sincere sympathy for the victims, and the families of the deceased with an earnest plan for action.

Everything changed that day, for the rumor of crocodile attacks had become a gruesome reality.It was no longer IF, but WHEN they would come again. Everyone agreed the Chiefs and Priests had been right all along.

Everyone hated Crocs, and everyone wanted to kill crocs. They announced immidiate establishment of a prime Gecko killing squad that would protect and serve the common Gecko and named it:
NORAD- Nocturnal Organization and Remediation Against Destroyers.

Recruitment into the volunteer Gecko army soared. Bug collection rates skyrocketed. Beautiful babe virgin babe gieco offered themselves at the feet of the Moorish Chiefs (and even to the Gecko Priests)!
But some of the impudent tree geckos would ask silly questions they learned in school, or from some old Geckos prior to the PNAC, were arrested and taken to huge caves were they were given only one bug per day, no mating call privileges and "re-educated".
The fact that the Moorish Geckos had trapped a rather large crock in the cave, definitely helped to convert many insolent questioners. Sometimes rumors of horror can be persuasion enough to obey.


Later it would be determined that volunteers were just not enough to support the above average appetites of the Morrish Chiefs and the Priests, who by now were growing larger and larger, but working it off by mating constantly and getting the best, most envious of tans.This was how life should be. This was how Geckondom would want it to be. But there were more to feed than just the Cheifs. This was a war, and as long as there were crocadiles, the war would not end.Which meant the more geckos were needed to keep a running, fully fed Gecko army at 100%.

There had to be a draft. There had to be service to the freedom and security of Geckonidae all through the island.

There were some Priests called Pat, Jerry, and Jimmy who loved Rottie so much , they wanted him to be King.
They suggested this idea to the great hall assembly one Sunday and anyone who did not agree was asked to leave the great hall assembly and never come back. This was what, the priests said, the Great Geckondom would do(WWGGD?). To do otherwise was blasphemous.


And so it was done, with a wink of an eye and an extra large assortment of bugs for Pat, Jerry and Jimmy, it cam to pass that Rottie became 'the chosen one' of the Great Geckondom and the king of Gekkonidae far and wide.

To keep his Kingship, Rottie had to employ a lot of other lieutenants to hunt for the best bugs and cockroaches, of such a variety that was most enjoyable to his tastes. They also had to recruit the brightest geicos from universities that were pledged with extra bugs, as long as they were allowed to have recruiters on staff to assist other younger geicos on the benefits of joining the great Noble Almighty Tribe of Omnipresense (NATO).
They also had the best babe Geicos to mate with, and all the army had seconds, or thirds, or worse, as the case may be. Rank, of course was important.

But this cost bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. Maintaining security against the croc threat was not easy, and it certainly was not free. Except of course, to the Moorish Chiefs and the Priests. But that doesn't count you see. Royalty has it's priviledges, see.

It came to pass that the geckos that were working to get the bugs to the King and his court, did not have enough time to get the appropriate amount of bugs for their own families. So now for the first time,there was scarcity. The healthier and younger geckos would charge extra bugs for a few bugs to the older ones.Then the older ones would have to work even harder the next week to keep up to get bugs for the royal court AND the bug interest.

It became quite the racket.

Gecko psycological and debt reduction plans became the rage. GeckOphrah interviewed dozens and dozens of people lamenting the extra work needed to be done, just to pay their bills. It was clear it was driving some gecko families... ..well, buggy.

In the mean time Rottie and the Moorish Court grew fatter and fatter, lazier and hornier and made the common geckos work harder and harder to support their blatant debauchery. This created some rising discontent among the formerly happy, silly and care free Geckos. Rottie decided to find the most boorish and ruff among the crowd and christen them into his service as the Never Silly Alliance (NSA) Force.

The Never - Silly force went out among the other Giecos with their deep tans and dark shades and put the fear of Geckondom into the would be silly heroes of Gekkonidae.

And the workers worked. The Royalty ruled, and the priests preached, and every now and then Rottie would let a croc come out to play, just to keep the dreams and visions of royal paradise in Gekkonidae alive forever.

That is, until one day, there came some huge machines on the tropical island paradise which cleared the earth, and took out the trees that the Gecko climbed on, the rocks that they tanned and mated on, and started building 5 star resort hotels for the rich royalty of humankind, that deserved to be rich, and royal, well, you know, ..just because.
All the Geckos went scurrying, as the last thing on their minds were crocs or admonishings from the royal courts, mainly because their were no crocs or royal courts anymore.

As Rottie lamented his fate on a rock in the sun , a human - damn them to hell-had the audacity to walk over to his Geckondom priviledged fat gecko ass, look down and pick him up.

"How cute!" said Warren Buffet. " I think I have a place for you!"

And the rest of the story is , as they say, history.

--

GATT- geico alliances of totalitarian trade
NORAD- nocturnal organization and remediation against destroyers
IMF- immediate (bug) moving facility
NAS- Never All Silly Force
NATO-Noble Almighty Tribe of Omnipresense
Warren Buffet- CEO of Bershire Hathaway -owns Geico Insurance.
AJ- Future pulitzer prize winner novelist
http://www.jesuscampthemovie.com THE JESUS CAMP MOVIE!! OUT IN NOV 2006 A MUST SEE!

Sunday, March 05, 2006

The End of Legends





"But I want to say as surely as I am sitting here today, this is only a foretaste, a little warning, of what is going to happen."
- Pat Robertson, remarking on the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, even after receiving a personal rebuke from the President, quoted from Dick Meyer, "Holy Smoke," CBS News (September 15, 2001)

***
I guess it was only a matter of time that our rulers and rich would being to formally take over and laugh in our faces with incongruinuity in speeches of equality, freedom and liberty with the amoral attitude that the ends justify any means . One might argue successfully that the " Freedom & Liberty" they speak of is not, or has ever been, inferred to just everyone, as some are obviously more equal and free than others.

I have become weary with the constant conservative-liberal blather, the endless stoking of the fires concerning political ideologies about Roe vs. Wade, Welfare, Taxes, Gay Rights and the pro-anti- war efforts, as if these things were the epitome of what is wrong with the world and America today.

They are not. But they keep the masses busy discussing things that will forever be argued, and support the entities that seem to support their belief system in an eloquent seemingly appropriate way.
Even if President Bush was impeached tomorrow you can rest assured that another bought tyrant would replace him without even a "stir in the pond."

There begins a question of why, as children, we were not taught certain things in high school, or college and why our children today are taught the basics of math, science and world history that keep in place the psychological dictums of what the hidden powers wish to keep in place. If you attempt to contour that with outrages articles such as "Some People Push Back" by Ward Churchill, you will have hell to pay, even if you are an esteemed University professor at the pinnacle of what should be a "higher learning' facility.


***
"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."
David Rockefeller, Memoirs, 2002

***

Today, we have American middle age journalists, that have criticized both Presidents Clinton and Bush, like Doug Thompson, being denied the freedom to travel on a US plane anywhere, and also being denied the reason why, and being denied the possibility to fight it. There are thousands more Americans that cannot fly, do not know it yet, until they purchase their non-refundable ticket and show up with luggage, family or friends anticipating a quick body search, but are told they cannot go. Sorry about the ticket.
This might be one of you. It might be me. There are more and more that are added to it each day. This is a fact, it is as outrageous in what we call a free America as it is indisputable. This is what our boys and girls are dying for?
A former US commander in Apocalypse Now told his would be assassin that he wasn't a soldier, but an expendable gofer-boy that took orders from corporations that want an errand run. If it is not obvious today that War is profitable to some, then nothing will wake those people up.

Dr. Cameron was financed by Washington and the Canadian Government to do mind control research on Canadian and American people in Canada.
The government of canada was successfully sued by the individuals.
One tends to wonder why there are hundreds of 'enemy combatants' in secretive prisons all over the world, without access to family, friends or others who might wish to help them, enduring what others might refer to as torture. Although I agree with that point of view, I firmly believe it is for much higher motivations. I would begin to worry when the US or British Governement decides to let some of them back out in society. It will give new meanings to the movie " The Manchurian Candidate".

We have spoke of Michael Aquino, once a top member of Anton Levey's Church of Satan in San Francisco. He broke off to form The Temple of Set in the 70's has since resigned his head position of this highly secretive and powerful spiritual entity.
Mr. Aquino was actually Lieutenant Colonel Michael Aquino, who was involved in several top secret and black operations, one of which made court reports here.

It is not well known that the late Anton Levey did not really believe in the mumbo-jumbo of what most Christians would perceive as Satanism. He was mostly a Hedonist, that is a materialist- with an attitude. Levey actively recruited as many people that would come, a clear reason given in the eventual split with the members of Set. The members of Set demand performance and intelligence. They are not stupid shallow people out to gain their 15 minites of fame.
They are demanding, and if you wish to join, you better have something worthwhile to offer.
While the members of the Church of Satan allowed most anyone to join and pay dues, the Temple of Set did not and does not today. You must be invited, thought worthy, and take a pledge of allegiance as the ONLY religious/spiritual party you will keep during your stay.
They also do not hold to the belief the spiritualism they practice is mumbo jumbo. While the Church of Satan denied the existence of spiritual powerful entities, the Temple of Set does not.
It is not without notice that within the higher echelons of power, political and corporate there are alumni that have been members of higher order secretive university orders like Skull & Bones.
Or on an international scale within the infamous Bohemian grove elite circles.

Is it reasonable to assume that these orders are just a bunch of people getting together to binge drink, have sex and swap playboy pictures?

***
There is intricately nothing wrong with the ideas of Communism, Socialism or Capitalism, that is, unless it is corrupted from within.
As long as the members have free will to leave, as long as there is a moral higher law that governs the communities there should -in theory- be peaceful co-existence within each order. Obviously there is not in either, and in that is a heresy to believe-or attempt to say out loud that our "Freedom" in Capatalism has become as corrupt and horrific as the worse days of Stalin or Mao. But again, there is
money in diversity-and war. Think of how much both sides of the Cold war spent on maintaining the fear of mutual destruction. Think of how much money today is being spent on bring "Democracy" to the world of 'freedom-haters'.
The US has exceeded any debt of any country in the worlds history, and yet it survives. How can this be? Would the teaching of the fact that the Federal Reserve System is privately owned not be an important subject of speculation to bring up in high schools or colleges? Could this simple fact be one of the reasons our 'leaders' tend to do what the majority of Americans do not want?


In my humble forever- changing opinion things tend to coalesce into a reasonable logical form in the fog of all this. I have a vested interest, not only in my family & friends but also as you might have -in my children's future. I do not want to send them off to a corporate war that only furthers the safety and security of the elite's visions of our future.

That said, I do not see much use anymore in partisan efforts. The Diebold issues have established a proxy of democratic terror that deems it useless for real fair political elections. After the horror of 911, and the myriad of unanswered and unpatriotic questions that still exist, I see a point of no return in our country and in the so called free world that comprises most of the wealth of the IMF.

There is nothing short of outright civil war that will change things, but with that many innocent people will die, and the odds are drastically stacked against anyone trying to retake what was once the law of the land-the US Constitution. Perhaps John Titor was real after all.
But this they know, although they still fear. This is apparent in the recent announcement that more 'detention facilities' will be built that might someday house dangerous people like Doug Thompson or you or me or our children.

There is something even more sinister in all of this, and that is the spiritual applications and alliances that have been documented and cannot be dismissed.
Whether you are a Christian, Islamic,Hindu,Buddhist, or Wiccan -you know that there is something more to life than just what we see when we look out our window.
As Crowley and the Mad Arab alluded to, I believe there are "doorways' that are beginning to become open on a spiritual/cosmic level. These can effect us and do everyday. If this is so hocus-pocus, why all the elitist clubs, ufo research , and black ops high government secrecy?
Unfortuately the elite and PTB's do not have ONLY an economic and political advantage-they have a largely occultic advantage- and you laugh at it at your own peril.


"I think George Bush is going to win in a walk. I really believe that I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election of 2004. It's shaping up that way. The Lord has just blessed him.... I mean, he could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad. God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him."
Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, , January 2, 2004




With this comment I totally agree.

Yes, the Lord has blessed Mr. Bush, and I firmly believe he is a man of prayer.

But One has to ask what God the President has blessing him.

********
Then it is best to smile, love and have faith that there is good, and it is real, and it is inherently more powerful than evil. To believe there is a power in the universe that adores charity, compassion and friendship and ultimately the good will be vindicated, if not now then at another time or space and to remember to laugh, to forgive and ask for forgiveness- and never take yourself too seriously.
And hope. Always Hope.
http://www.jesuscampthemovie.com THE JESUS CAMP MOVIE!! OUT IN NOV 2006 A MUST SEE!