Close Encounters: Be the Third Kind

Posted on October 25, 2011 by ehurst

For the Christian Mystic, it’s never about himself.
What follows presumes you are acquainted with my numerous rants about Christian Mysticism. It’s always about the Truth, and our mission is to manifest the Truth, drawing all the attention in that direction. Awareness of typical human behavior helps us deflect attention away from ourselves to the Truth. For people who seek to embrace Christian Mysticism, coming from another mental orientation, you will need to consider how this calls for some radical changes which are seldom self-evident.
In the coming months, world events will tend to throw many of us into social encounters with strangers. It matters little whether we expect these encounters to be the start of long-term associations or fleeting one-time exposure. You must never forget you are an alien to them, and so it should be. Not in arrogance, though you cannot avoid them thinking that of you at times, but in a simple and quiet rejection of the mental prisons which hold them, even as you seek to operate from empathy. Truth creates the opportunities, often without warning, so we need to spend time reorienting ourselves repeatedly until we shed the old habits and remain focused on the Truth.
We are not the Truth Police. Truth needs no defense by us, only manifestation. We are not responsible when people choose to live outside Truth, and it’s hardly our job to shepherd them into Truth except in a few rare circumstances. Even when a social encounter puts us into leadership or command, the mechanism is not to lecture on proper thinking and attitudes, but simply executing the duties of leadership truthfully. What does it take to get the job done?
Modern liberal political and social philosophy is in substance a feminine point of view. In that sense, when you are meeting liberals or progressives, the encounter will take a certain predictable course regardless whether the person is male or female. If there is any ambiguity in gender, you can bet they are progressive, primarily because they cannot separate the notion of “equality” from “interchangeable.” Unless the conversation is structured and limited by some externally imposed necessity, it will quickly drift into an unfocused laundry list of orthodoxies. That is, liberals generally feel compelled to preach, or at least to poll your opinions on things which are connected only by their presence on the liberal political and social agenda. They are most often expressed in terms of bogus social science studies or simply some presumed morality.
Modern social and political conservatives will seldom leave any question as to their gender, because the underlying philosophy is very masculine in a traditional Western sense. It is highly rational, and will seem at first logically consistent. However, the whole application of this conservative agenda quickly deteriorates logically as they begin talking about how we are in some crisis or another. It matters not what sensible philosophy they espouse, because no part of it will be enacted due to the ever present threats of the day.
Together these two groups will form the bulk of any gathering into which you are thrust. They share the illusion the world can be fixed if only people would listen. In any random setting, people always seek fellow travelers to whom they gravitate for comfort. Sadly, you can bet the initial grouping will always be by apparent racial types. They’ll touch base with their “homies” first. Within each racial group there will be subdivisions over politics. Given sufficient time without attention being consumed by something else, political issues will become paramount, on one scale or another. Yet again, racial identity is often the whole of their politics. The fundamental unifying thread in social behavior is insecurity.
The Christian Mystic aims first internally to understand and embrace the flaws we all carry. Only then can there be any possible progress in overcoming their limitations. While there will always be certain elements in our world for which we have no good response, we could characterize our number one problem as insecurity. The single greatest factor in defeating insecurity is to stop caring about this world in the first place. That is, the only reason we don’t commit suicide and escape immediately is because there is a duty to Truth here. The less we find ourselves wed to this plane of existence, the more free we are to face the very real threats here.
When we walk in the door of any place holding strangers, most of the time they already have established some level of social equilibrium. You will always make adjustments based on the the obligations of the context, such as why you are there in the first place. However, there are a few practical points you’ll likely want to observe.
1. Never talk about yourself. If necessary, discuss what you need, want, or seek. Try to keep it in simple or concrete terms. Never compare notes over what you like or dislike; never spill your guts on anything. It’s not about you. Let them chatter as much as they like, and even ask intelligent questions with as much ambivalence as you know how to offer. Always be aware questions can give away far more than many answers.
2. Avoid betraying your emotions overtly. Total aplomb is your goal. When the time is right, perhaps use as much drama, comic effect, etc., as is natural to your personality and character, but carefully scripted to keep attention away from yourself.
3. Prepare yourself mentally to deflect impertinent questions. Answer all questions by focusing on the Truth, not on yourself. Decide up front what is impertinent to the context. Learn how to answer questions with questions. Probing you is typically with the motive of judging you and placing you in some category you’ll have to escape. Avoid being pigeon-holed. You are an alien, totally outside all their standard categories. In the simple rules of ordinary civility, a standard response is, “Why would you want to know that?” If it doesn’t shut off the question, it at least allows you to establish their motives. It also puts you into the position of stating you don’t care about the issue, or as firmly as necessary that you aren’t going to answer.
4. You do intend to make friends, but you first have to knock down the false barriers. The real thing takes time; we aren’t interested in shallow acquaintanceship. Make yourself aware of their little worlds, but don’t enter them. Make them enter yours. Know before you start your actual friends will be few, if any, because most of the world is unable to escape the prison.
5. Respect their rejection. Presume it until they make it plain they want the Truth. When your habit of dodging questions about yourself by redirecting attention to the Truth doesn’t result in either anger or loss of interest, it’s time to share more Truth. Keep it short and answer only what they ask, because almost no one is ready for the whole thing at once.
6. Offer the Truth in small portions. Truth is caught, not taught. By it’s nature Truth can only be known contextually. It is absorbed, not reasoned. Each of us who carry Truth do so only in our own limited portions. We are not the Truth; it’s not about us.
Addenda: Ordinary people will engage in PR, spin, efforts to control their public image. Don’t do that. You can’t prevent others from forming their opinions of you, but you don’t have to help them by making it easy to dismiss you through premature or inaccurate pigeon-holing. You will not share yourself until someone earns the right. Again, it’s not about trading information back and forth, but let them lie all they want about themselves because you know better than to trust them in the first place. You don’t trust yourself, and your self-concept may have no meaning nor bearing on how they treat you. Let them be wrong about you, as well.

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Bottom Line Morality

Posted on October 24, 2011 by ehurst

I like to think I’m operating under fewer delusions than most folks do. I’m going to write an imaginary letter to the psychopaths who rule the world:
I’ve already made peace with my mortality. I estimate there is a high probability I won’t die under peaceful and pleasant circumstances. It was some time ago I surrendered the notion I might give my life for some noble cause. By no means am I suicidal, but I’ll be content simply leaving this plane of existence as soon as powers far above me are ready for me to get out of the way. I consider this life in many ways a prison sentence.
Between now and my eventual release, I do have something which drives me. Let’s not pretend I can put it into words; just know it’s there. I call it my sanity. It’s probably the only thing in this life which has value to me, and that’s only because I believe it’s anchored somewhere outside this life. My grip on it may be limited, but the thing itself is hardly fragile.
It tells me there is nothing I can do to stop your plans, nor hinder them, nor even offer any symbolic resistance anyone would remember. I can’t save myself, much less anyone else. All I can do is try to hold onto that sanity, even in the final moments, whatever shape those moments might take. There are some things I won’t voluntarily do, and quite a few things I’ll always try to do, simply because it’s what my sanity demands, not because I expect those imperatives to make any real difference in the final outcome of things.
What’s left is whole lot of things I might be willing to do which you’ll find useful. It’s rather like calling a truce. No part of my sanity requires truculence over things I can’t control. The current trend toward unpleasant circumstances for most of the world is just background noise. Whether I enjoy it is not the question; it’s there and it won’t go away. About the only thing I hope I can do is demonstrate my brand of sanity so folks notice it. There’s always a chance they’ll want something similar for themselves, and I am utterly certain nothing else is worth wanting. If you tolerate me doing that, I’ll tolerate your use of me in return.
I realize that will limit my usefulness, so unless you can find a place for me in your machinery, where my peculiarities don’t gum up the works, I suppose it’s best I just stay out of the way.

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My Dream Job

Posted on October 23, 2011 by ehurst

This is more about me than you might want to know, but if I don’t post it somewhere, it isn’t likely to happen.

I dream of being a personal assistant. For several years I served as a part time personal assistant for an aging business tycoon. Not wealthy; he was a tycoon in the sense of how I treated him. What he paid me had no bearing on my service. It was nothing more than the means to making sure I had the resources to keep on serving. He didn’t buy my loyalty. He took advantage of my natural instinct for loyalty. He was honest with me, and he got it back with interest. He respected the limits with which I had to live for the sake of my own sanity. In return, even when I didn’t like his choices, I respected them and genuinely tried to make things happen. I was able to offer a wealth of patience for his personal foibles because I was painfully aware of my own. When he changed his mind fifteen times regarding a particular matter, I acted on whatever he said he wanted at the time.

The skills he found useful: a clean driving record and attentive chauffeuring; conscientious maintenance of this cars and other equipment; a sharp eye for details inspecting all the real estate and facilities he managed; keeping gold-digging family members out of his stuff; personal security, safety and health watch; chasing all sorts of information, particularly on the Net, researching the best deals; a great deal of effort to modify his computer and his office so he could use it as he wished; a broad acquaintance with the Liberal Arts so as not to bore him when he felt like chatting; regular reports on whatever world affairs interested him. I assembled kit furniture expertly, moved large items at his whim, dug up a sewer line to save him some money, cooked when no one else would or could, fixed countless little things around his home, kept track of his agendas and when I failed at something, he was the first to know. More than anything else, I was his friend.

It had nothing to do with his worthiness, and everything to do with his trust.

I’d love to do it again. I’d love to serve someone who traveled more, needed more of my time. I know how the train systems in Europe work, and I can get by in several languages. I’m quite willing to endure a significant level of deprivation when that’s what the mission requires. I’ve never forgotten how to sleep on the ground, eat what was available, and move at a moment’s notice on little sleep. I have physical limits, but I’m not one to whine. The worst thing you could do is keep me in the dark about my job, but I have no curiosity at all about things which are none of my business. I’ll take care of the time-consuming details of things while you devote your attention to what matters most. My greatest strength is my ability to report honestly whatever it is you want to know, and not try to sell you something I might want you to believe. I don’t take myself that seriously.

I won’t suck up to you like a slave, because you don’t need that. Nonetheless, I will tend to sacrifice my comfort for yours because I am simply not all that hung up on this world in the first place. I have no worldly ambitions except to make you look good. There isn’t much I fear. I’d be frugal with your money, and accept only what you willingly offered. My loyalty to you here is based on my loyalty to my God up There. I’ll be on loan from Him. He’s the only one who will outrank you in my mind, and is the only one to whom I’ll snitch on you, since He’ll know everything anyway.

You get the idea. Traditional resume here (site now gone).

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Needed: An Honest Global Cabal

Posted on October 23, 2011 by ehurst

It’s a waste of emotional energy to dread global government; it’s going to happen.
Sure, it may not ever be completely in control. No government ever is. The harder they try to seize control of that last margin of resistance, the more surely they’ll fail in ruling. Most of the real global conspirators know that. If they weren’t that intelligent, their conspiracies would already have failed.
The biggest problem is not the global government itself. It’s what those brilliant psychopaths have to do in order to make it happen. What infuriates me most is the vast stupidity of everyone in persistent fantasy chasing. No, global government will not be good. All government, as we conceive of it now, is by definition evil, because it requires an evil soul to want that sort of power and control over others. The only form of government which works is the one everyone hates the most. So we have a half-dozen basic concepts, in which we imagine folks should have some say in how they are governed, when those systems we prefer cannot possibly work that way. We have sufficient historical example to prove this, but the fantasy just won’t die.
Because of this fantasy of having a voice in government, all the successful governments are forced to deceive those they govern. The more successful they are at ruling, the more expansive and insane those lies have to be. Inevitably, this makes the functioning more painful and destructive than it has to be. Sooner or later, when in the natural progression of things the ruling class get honest with us about their intentions, we throw a fit. If not, we are so utterly stupefied by the palliatives and distractions we are utterly useless. Either way, our fantasy about having a say in things creates more misery than has to be.
If we actually did have a say in things, it would be just as bad. America discovered that very quickly, and crushed the Articles of Confederation into the dust of history. If you know your history, think about it for a moment. When the people actually have power, it makes no difference whether the assumptions are democratic, republican or communist. The rabble cannot possibly think beyond their own comfort. The process of human education cannot ever be good enough to overcome that. It is not because individuals cannot be educated above that level of stupidity, it’s that aggregating them in any size group worth governing changes the equation without fail. People in groups are inherently more stupid than individuals. Groups can’t reason the way individuals can. The more diverse the members of the group, the more insane their lack of reasoning.
I would, and you should, fear democracy of any flavor more than any oligarchy or monarchy. Tyranny by the elite is the natural state of things on this plane of existence, but you can’t make the world understand that. As the technology of communication becomes more advanced, the reach of any tyranny must inevitably expand. Global government is the next step, and it will happen. The only hope you have for sanity is working on that assumption.
By resisting it, we force the elite to play more head games with us. They offer these bright shining lies as inducements for the sheer necessity of getting us to go along with it. I sincerely wish I could educate folks to this reality, but I know better than to try. All I can hope for is helping a select few by reminding them of the obvious. Since you already know it’s coming, far better for everyone concerned is that we make realistic plans to play whatever hand is dealt. It’s good to have intelligence, talent and perhaps some stuff to make yourself useful to this coming Beast, but the most important asset is attitude.
Granted, if your mission and calling in life is to stir up trouble by resistance, the least you could do is be realistic about it. Resist what really is a threat to us, and fight that. And when it comes time to suffer the consequences of your resistance, be serene and joyful, because your job is done.
At this point I presume my readers are smart enough to realize I do not counsel lying supine beneath the boot of this global cabal. You still have your own sense of calling about what really matters, just pursue that within the limits of the situation. No human government can ever possibly be good. Don’t lick the boots slavishly, because that’s just another lie. No real global ruler is going to expect you to love them unless you identify with the idiot mass. They would prefer you be realistic in choosing to find a sane role, in which you come to grips with reality and make your choices based on what you really find you must do. So whether you are a resistor or a compliant servant, or some mixture of both, you should be cynical enough to have discarded all the fantasies. This compels the rulers to be honest with you, much as they might enjoy the drama of playing at being savior of mankind.
Your choices will make a lot more sense when you see through the layers of deception about the certainty of global government.

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Guessing Dates

Posted on October 22, 2011 by ehurst

Lots of frantic posturing about November 5 and 9.
There’s this drive to get folks to pull their money from the big banks by November 5 and switch to something smaller, local, and more like a savings and loan or credit union. That’s a Saturday, in case you haven’t checked. Some of the activists predict the banks will simply close that day, maybe even have the government declare a banking holiday. I tend to think this is pretentious. I sincerely doubt there are enough folks involved to make much happen. More likely the banks will simply put up a sign about being out of cash or something.
Granted, it would be a different story if something crashed somewhere in Europe. But while it would surely hit our banks here, I’m not convinced it would be such a huge thing. The big banks here are already technically insolvent, and lying about the value of what’s on their balance sheets. What difference would it make if they simply changed the numbers on their lies? I feel certain our US banks will shut down based on something their management has already worked out ahead of time.
Then on November 9, the following Wednesday, the EAS (Emergency Alert System) will run a broadcast test around 2PM EST. This agency replaces the old Emergency Broadcast System we used to hear on the radio and occasionally see on the TV. I don’t use either one much, so I can’t say what they’ve been doing lately. But they plan to do their thing that day and the same folks are in a lather this might be the actual day they take over the public broadcasting.
As if the Entertainment Industry would stand for that. They already spew a constant stream of government approved manure in the first place, so where’s the need of a takeover?
It’s not as if to say there can’t be big things happen the first of November. I still think Israel has plans to bomb Iran without telling our government first, and that first half of November is pretty much pushing the edge of the window on seasonal flying conditions. In other words, that is highly probable in my estimation, and Israel is unlikely to coordinate with our emergency procedures. So it will be a complete surprise, but only in the sense of what hour it begins.
The folks who keep trying to guess the date of imposition of martial law remind me of the vast stretch of Christendom which fastidiously ignores Jesus’ own warning not to do that stuff. We have two whole chapters in Matthew’s Gospel of Jesus telling folks not to try estimating the time of His Return. And big bunches of them have been doing it ever since. He said the only way you could prepare was to be ready all the time, mostly by occupying yourself with stuff focused on His Heavenly Kingdom, not on this earth. He did warn them to be ready to flee Jerusalem (which they had to do about 40 years later), but said most emphatically that had nothing to do with His Return.
When you see troops massing somewhere they typically don’t, things are fixing to get ugly. Try to stay out of their way. That’s just common sense. But trying to guess when the psychopaths are going to strike is a waste of time. We might have some valid hints about what comes with that, but I’m not too sure of that, even. Oh, we will indeed have martial law, and right soon, but that could be anytime in the next two years. For now, I doubt it will take that long, but things change, and so does my awareness of them. Relax; nothing you can do about it anyway.
That is, there’s nothing you could do that you haven’t already ought to have been doing. The same bunch of folks have been predicting it for as long as I can remember, and we aren’t there yet. It’s coming, for sure, but I doubt we’ll be warned, because the folks running this show are having too much fun watching the idiots panic over nothing.

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Ultimate Motives

Posted on October 21, 2011 by ehurst

Do not repay anyone evil for evil; consider what is good before all people. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all people. Do not avenge yourselves, dear friends, but give place to God’s wrath, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. Rather, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing this you will be heaping burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:17-21 NET Free Bible)

I’ve had the opportunity to chat with Cubans living in their homeland. There have been some pretty strong limits on their use of the Internet, but no actual prohibitions, and there are places in more or less neutral countries hosting social websites in English. There have always been Christians there, and they haven’t been totally oppressed.
The most difficult thing for them is the presumption of hostility on the part of American Christians. Given the vast majority of evangelicals here have absorbed politics into their religion, they simply aren’t ready to hear from Cuban Christians who aren’t hostile to their own government. While officially Christianity in Cuba are “counter-revolutionary,” some officials have long known their local Christian citizens have been a real asset. The Cuban Christians I spoke to realize they don’t live in a perfect world, and are content to express their faith within the limits allowed.
That is, they give themselves to manifesting God’s glory. Most people who aren’t Christians, and way too may who are, don’t understand the moral obligations. We show mercy and meet human needs, not because there are needs, but because those needs are an opportunity to present the image of sacrificial love. It may be hard to distinguish the apparent hair-splitting here, but the issue is what you can do, and what you should do, from a divine perspective, not what someone else imagines you need to do. There is no such thing as a human expert out there who can direct your sense of calling. So there are Cuban Christians even working in the godless communist school system there. (sarcasm alert) Oh, horrors; the compromise! (end sarcasm)
Recently, after decades of pretty harsh limitations, the committed Christians have been allowed to start little house churches. They are so grateful they find it hard to express. They see the glass half full.
The quote from Apostle Paul isn’t just pretty words for me. My own government has become my enemy, the greatest threat to my property, liberty and life. But they can’t take my sanity. When martial law comes, my plan is to rise above it. I’ll be taking a page from the Cuban Christians’ manual of service. I already know the futility of resistance; I understand all our civic religion is such a big crock of nonsense. I don’t worship at the shrine of the State or get a tear in my eye when the US battle flag passes. My God is in Heaven.
When it gets really ugly, I still have more important things to worry about than giving the satanic thugs a hard time. Not cowering, but from a position of strength such that I simply don’t have any use for making a scene. Not in glowering hatred, but from a powerful sense of pity some are so insecure they can’t walk away from evil. Not bitterly biding my time for a better tactical moment, but letting it pass completely. Their doom is sure, because it’s in God’s hands.
Nothing they can do to me changes my commitments.

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Man Is Not the Only Source of Disasters

Posted on October 20, 2011 by ehurst

No, this has nothing to do with Global Warming.
I believe we are just weeks from martial law, or something which has a similar effect, here in the US. When you examine all the crap our rulers have been doing, sometimes openly, but plenty of it slyly, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion. Both the official government and the Shadow Government have been making preparations for this going back quite some time. Whether it comes by some public announcement following a false flag catastrophe, or simply by slow increments, the objective has always been crushing control over everything which might aid in keeping the wealthy in their comfort.
In bits and pieces, I’ve mentioned here the ways and some whys of this. I’ve talked about how fiat money and the long-standing banking practices were designed to eventually plunder the entire population. The housing bubble, the consumer debt bubble, the commercial real estate bubble, and credit bubble, the foreclosure frauds, etc. — these were meant to sucker everyone into forking over their future production, and that of their children and grandchildren. Just yesterday, we read were Bank of America moved a massive pile of worthless debt instruments from one set of books to another, changing it from a private liability into something covered by the FDIC. It was quite some time ago the government promised to cover the FDIC with federal borrowing. That federal borrowing means future taxation.
Then there is the Big Pharma mandates for government spending on toxic medications, which we may actually be forced to receive. Not just flu shots — which include crap which can make women sterile, among other things — but a whole range of medications designed to create a chemical dependency lifestyle, from cradle to grave. This stuff is shoved at us from all directions, from every institution to which we are subjected daily.
We have the mandate to build an American Empire, by sending troops to every country which dares to resist any part of the program: global banking, natural resource extraction, daring to not be slaves of Israel, etc. I wrote about how the military-industrial complex was all about keeping us in debt for these many military adventures. Then I wrote some about making military service the only job opportunity for a large portion of the working class (there is no longer a middle class). Meanwhile, almost the entire nation is in some way dependent on government largess, and everything which even hints at self-reliance is made illegal.
While the original plan was to create a culture by which we would welcome all these controls and the servitude, it was always recognized that might not work beyond some invisible point. I doubt anyone has it so perfectly measured they already know exactly where that point is, since it varies individually and regionally, and across various sectors of society. So the Shadow Government simply had backup plans to enforce their will if and when the slaves get too rowdy. The Tea Party was seduced, compromising over the likes of long established government welfare programs. We shall see whether OWS can be compromised, because it has most assuredly been infiltrated. Already we’ve seen a great deal of whining about expecting the government to fix things, and it seems they don’t understand the government cannot and will not, because it already is wholly owned by the folks who created the problems.
By no means can I guess whether TPTB are calculating at all for it, but there is still a God in Heaven who organizes natural disasters as a response to broad immorality. Whether you envision it as a well-oiled mechanism or something more personal, the point is there remains a very powerful moral element in the cosmos. Push too far too long and it breaks, and stuff gets ugly. It’s vaguely possible things like Hurricane Katrina can be enhanced by HAARP, but that’s not really important. What matters is how the government took advantage of something which appears to be an Act of God (legal term). TPTB will keep doing this, so it seems to me it’s easier to explain as opportunism, because it’s adequate for examining the results.
I’m willing to bet TPTB will be surprised by some catastrophes God has in mind. It’s not as if I have any discrete revelations on such things, but as a prophet of God’s Laws, I’m well acquainted with the history of such things. If you measure morality by Western assumptions, lots of them make no sense at all. If you see them through ANE Hebrew morality, all of them came as a result to known violations of God’s Laws. The apparent readiness of TPTB to take advantage of major events in aggregate human choices to protest or revolt translates rather well to opportunism at lesser natural disasters. I’m not sure even the Illuminati are ready for, say, a massive tsunami on our Eastern Seaboard arising from volcanic activity in the Canary Islands, so they hide the information, just as they still do for the Fukushima disaster. But those of us who tend to see things in terms of God’s Laws, something like this is expected. So while I’m sure their contingency plans account for some probabilities in both man-made and natural disasters, the final end of the matter is really not in their hands.
My contention here is, however bad it may be as we descend into martial law, you haven’t seen anything yet. In the end, God will break the power of these evil rulers, but not before His wrath falls justly on the nation which permitted them to rise to power. My prophetic warning we would sin by resisting this particular imposition of martial law is only part of the picture. While we brace ourselves for the coming oppression, we should also keep an eye out for much bigger threats no mere human can predict or control, and for which there is no practical preparation possible.
As a sort of footnote, I’d like to ask folks to be careful using the image of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. That represents entirely man-made horrors. It’s a known sequence: arrogance and conquest, war and the oppression which follows, then the economic distress from the destruction and plunder of warfare, then death by disease and such because the social infrastructure has been destroyed. It has nothing to do with direct Acts of God.

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Windows 8, Linux and FUD

Posted on October 19, 2011 by ehurst

The debate between MS fans and Linux fans regarding the new secure boot and replacing the old BIOS on computer hardware is getting stupid. Since I’m a nobody, I don’t expect anybody to pay any attention, but I figure on my own blog I get to spout off.
1. If you think Microsoft isn’t trying to make Windows stronger against viruses and such, you don’t understand how corporations work. Their market place dominance really is at risk and they know it. They are trying.
2. If you don’t think Microsoft would willingly and knowingly break the laws of any country, if they thought they could get away with it, you are either abysmally stupid or intellectually dishonest. Microsoft is run by psychopaths, and only their desperate need for more dollars will keep them from murdering outright you or anyone else. If there were more dollars in it, they would torture kittens and puppies.
(If it’s any consolation, a great many Open Source projects seem to be run by psychopaths, too. However, there’s no money in it, so they only torture their own clients/users.)
3. If you don’t think Microsoft would do anything possible to destroy Linux as a competitor, you are either abysmally stupid or intellectually dishonest. They admitted this a long time ago.
4. If you don’t think the OEMs would do any damned fool thing Microsoft demands of them, you are either abysmally stupid or intellectually dishonest. It has happened every year since MS-DOS become the dominant OS on corporate and private computers. Nobody building computer hardware can afford to argue with MS unless their entire market is with Apple, Unix, etc.
5. If you don’t think some hacker or team of hackers can’t figure out a way past this new BIOS replacement once it begins to appear on computer hardware, you are just whining. Shut up. Linux developers have yet to be stymied in cracking and hijacking anything they can use to run Linux, because too many of them know the details of hardware manufacturing itself.
Now, can we shut up this idiotic debate where both sides are yelling past each other?

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Nature of Government

Posted on October 18, 2011 by ehurst

Government in the Postmodern West has returned to its roots, becoming once again a matter of one society conquering another.
In ancient times, most imperial conquests did not bring that much destruction, nor any massive number of dead bodies, when you consider how many bodies marched into battle. Rather, it was doing whatever was necessary to convince the current ruling social group to surrender to another. The conquerors often spoke a different language, had a different religious background, and a somewhat different culture. Much of the infrastructure was preserved, even the temples and shrines, and certainly the libraries. However, they were often nothing more than a shift-change in who sat on the same old throne. The people being ruled might encounter some new laws, but for the most part were left to continue their lives as before.
The notion the governed can participate in government has been a pipe dream for a long time, and will remain ever thus. In ancient times, people were subjected by someone who had the ability to project physical force the subject couldn’t or wouldn’t bother to overcome. In democratic regimes, there is the pretense the people are involved. They possess no greater influence than under the various forms of monarchy, oligarchy, etc. If the rulers provoked them to revolt, the people would rise up and perhaps succeed in winning themselves a new set of rulers. That was about the extent of it. The primary difference now is the addition of mass deception on a scale we tend to not notice.
Plenty of times insurrections were squashed. Few wars of conquest presented the scale of slaughter which we have seen with putting down revolts. Should we add in the factor of an intent to reduce the population anyway, we should hardly be surprised if the current ruling regime of psychopaths will slaughter the participants, even if only by small increments, of the current wave of revolts in the West. Granted, some countries have a tradition of revolution, but they also come with a massive dose of deception, in which the revolt simply changes the names of and in the ruling society.
I’m utterly cynical about a revolt in Greece actually changing anything there. Even if genuinely good people get take over the reins of government, the Greeks will revolt again all too soon. It’s their way of life. Italy and France share some of that cultural DNA. Germany has simply a different flavor of it, a different mythology and methodology which produces much the same results. You could go on with other countries, but take an overview of history and you’ll see it’s all pretty much the same.
Not here. The record of crushed revolts is very long, very deep. There have been several coups-in-effect, but it all took place at the top, a mere change in social group which ruled. We have this huge national cultural blindness to the vast gulf between the rulers and the ruled. It’s not a matter of mere class stratification, but an entirely different culture hidden in plain sight. So alien is this different culture, there is a whole army of bureaucrats who live in perpetual schizophrenia in order to survive. Upon entering the workplace, they are totally different people. They don’t lose their individual character and sense of humor, but what they are willing to do, what they consider immoral, is totally different from the world they live in back at their suburban homes. America may share much with the rest of the world, but there will be no real revolts here, despite appearances.
We cannot consider OWS to be all one thing. There is a shared element of disgust at what has been done to us, and they all seem to share the blindness of how we have participated in our own predicament. However, each place where this thing has sprouted has a different character, and will encounter a different flavor of official response. In places where the general welfare isn’t that bad, the OWS protests will be tame and lifeless. In other places, the protesters are themselves economically devastated already, and this is entirely personal. If you don’t feel the pain, it’s hard to get too committed. But what will produce the most dramatic difference is the local government response in each locale.
Government is not all one thing. It is all one society, but there are varying levels of awareness, varying types of awareness, and the tools differ widely for doing what they see as necessary. Sometimes a particular national policy will be steered entirely by one small group, though it would be hard to identify the thread of their influence until long after the fact. So while the Vietnam War was one thing publicly — stopping communism — with plenty of rulers very sincerely involved in that, there were plenty of other threads in the fabric which participated as a means to pressing some other agenda. But in my mind, the single most powerful thread was the CIA and the heroin trade. Were it not for that, I doubt our national involvement would have ever gotten off the ground. To this day, there are folks who were there in government offices of power and influence who may not realize how they were gamed into that.
The really sickening part is the vast number of citizens who still believe it was all justified, to include an astonishing percentage of Vietnam War veterans.
In some cities, OWS will be successfully subverted and compromised. In others, it will face a crackdown. In some cases, that crackdown will mean blood in the streets. OWS will not succeed, because the real problem all the participants agree on — the intentional poverty of the country — is not going to be stopped. That’s because our ruling society has already revealed their determination to also reduce the population of the US. The rulers are quite willing to slaughter the types of folks who would revolt that way, and in the process, to make them as miserable as possible.
Not so much in terms of reducing the raw numbers our whole population, but they plan to dramatically reduce the proportions of the current dominant society. They would hardly balk at increasing the number of Third World refugees. Think about it for just a moment. The Assyrians and Babylonians were very big on reducing the tendency of revolt by mixing the cultural groups. They would deport whole nations, scattering the tribes and clans across the empire in a broad mix which left each batch isolated by jarring differences with their neighbors. Meanwhile, the ruling class, the top society of each conquered nation, was forced to live in a ghetto just outside the royal palace grounds, away from their native populations. It’s not so much our current ruling society has read the annals of Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, but that folks who rule can instinctively work this out: Fractured and isolated identities means little conviction in complaining when they are squeezed.
So, for example, I predict the violence of police tactics in NYC will not abate; it will increase. The people who actually rule this country have already paid into the pot, and the critical leadership of NYPD has been bought off. The mayor is one of those who do the buying, so it won’t matter what he says publicly; watch his actions. Specifically, watch what he permits. Much of what happens in the public eye is pure theater. Don’t make the mistake of thinking every part of the protest is clean, and many aren’t doing the same crap, staging photo and video opportunities. Look for the more diligent press members to be suppressed, often as brutally as the protesters. The original action in NYC will get increasingly ugly, and the lapdog press will be showing it. That’s because it will serve as a warning, a PsyOp in itself.
We live in interesting times.

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Internet Demographics and Awareness

Posted on October 17, 2011 by ehurst

Apparently the traffic here has risen just high enough to attract the spammers.
I’m getting a lot of spammy comments these days, something which became significant about the time I starting receiving 200 hits per day on a routine basis. It’s not my writing skill which draws these numbers, but the sheer luck I have had stumbling across the answers to some very common problems with Linux. It’s not likely many of those people will remember my name, nor make a habit of coming here to see what I might post. They are looking for something specific, and I happen to have gotten it composed in a usable format earlier than others on those one or two issues.
People are what they are. The Internet has simply made more available the types of information they would already have been seeking some other way.
We read so much about how the Internet has raised the broad human consciousness. I don’t see it. It most certainly has offered a better quality of information, simply because the format itself tends to reduce the barriers to information, so that information flows more freely over a wider audience in a shorter time frame. But it hasn’t changed the fundamental character of the audience by much.
We have the OWS protests. They are justified, but misguided. We had the Tea Party movement before that, again justified but misguided. As the latter was deftly hijacked in a short time, I see the same for OWS already happening. If  the hijacking fails in any measure, OWS will simply be brutally crushed and morph into something else by way of reaction. The likelihood this thing offers a genuine avenue for change is delusional. At the most, it will simply be the leading edge of the coming foot riots, because it arises from a more highly sensitive group who can see where this is all heading. The Tea Party was even earlier in the same trend.
What the Internet has done is (1) allow these activists to detect the issues sooner, and (2) organize their activism more efficiently. It did not significantly add to the number of people who would try to force changes. The bulk of the American population will still be shocked by what the coming economic collapse demands of them. They have a bigger reservoir of the same information they would have ignored in previous centuries.
The Internet permits me to do for a wider audience what I would have done anyway, so that they can more quickly get on with what they would have done anyway. If it weren’t computers, it would be some other technology. And instead of my writing being restricted to some audience within reach of hands and traditional post, and perhaps a tiny chance at seeing a book publication, I get to post it online. The stuff I really care about still draws a tiny audience, but that audience is more widely scattered geographically. I get the small satisfaction of knowing what I would have done regardless of circumstances touches its widest audience before I die. It’s a function of how quickly information spreads, nothing more.
I learned a new acronym in the past couple of weeks: MPAI = Most People Are Idiots. Giving them access to the Internet holds great potential, but it’s human nature to miss out on it. For all our great access to limitless information, most people still use it like a more convenient TV. They don’t search for revelations of deep and evil politics, they want to know when that all-important football game highlights will hit YouTube, or the relevant portion of the latest reality show they are tracking, but can’t get home in time to watch. Even better, a recast of the entire 7PM show at midnight! They are still idiots, but with more sound and video.
I already knew in 1986 Richard Armitage was responsible for most of our Vietnam POWs being left behind, and that it had to do with illegal drugs, but I didn’t have the details until recently. Why would the new communist government of Vietnam hide them? Not as bargaining chips, but because the officials here and there were still making a huge profit from the on-going heroin traffic, which was the real reason we got involved with Vietnam in the first place. I may never know how they communicated and passed the money, but it’s obvious they did. I already knew the JFK assassination story was a batch of lies, but now I have solid proof and some likely accurate details of how it was carried out. And so on; the Internet simply provided depth for something which already existed for me and a lot of other folks.
But precious few people, because of the Internet, accepted the reality behind conspiracy theories who would not have done so without the Internet. We have not succeeded in raising basic human awareness, only enriched whatever was already there.

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