I’d Rather Be All Wrong

Posted on June 20, 2011 by ehurst

Personally, I give it three months or less.

Israel has begun poking around on the southern border of Lebanon again. They’d like to find an excuse to poke Syria from the Golan Heights, but it’s not quite there yet. I believe they are just getting started.

Meanwhile, all that action in Libya has our ships, troops and planes within short reach of Syria. Lots of stupid, arrogant and hypocritical words from our State Department about things there, but we are funding the troublemakers. No one in the MSM wants to talk about all the snipers gunning down Syrian police and troops at every protest. Just for good measure, they shot a few protesters, too. We only hear about how Assad’s government has violently attacked the “peaceful protesters” we have been funding and encouraging. This was planned a long time ago, just as with Egypt, Yemen and Libya.

Of course, attacking Syria is simply a way to provoke Iran, the real target. Syria and Iran have an alliance which appears to call for each to defend the other from attack.

I’m guessing our involvement in Libya was more about getting men and equipment in the area. Congress makes noise about stopping the action there, and we all pretend it really means something. Meanwhile, the next invasions will be under CIA secrecy, or something equally crazy so we can all pretend it really doesn’t trigger the War Powers Act. We should be able to free up some troops now that our government is secretly negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Maybe it will get really interesting at the same time with Greece defaulting, or going into complete revolution. Same result. The Euro will take a big hit and other national economies will fall, other governments, soon after. Lots of dependencies there I’m sure aren’t generally known, so it should be very entertaining. That’s sarcasm — I shudder to think of the loss of life and general devastation. I’ll weep.

I’m already pretty broken up over children all across Japan showing early symptoms of radiation poisoning. Kids are more vulnerable to it. A few weeks from now look for adults to show the same symptoms. Think what that says about their government, because they darn sure know about it, knew when it first started. Same for places like Seattle, with heavy doses of airborne radioactive particles showing up in discarded automotive air filters. What cars breathe in, people do, too. At least one scientist matches a high Fukushima fallout coinciding with a rising infant mortality in places like Philadelphia. Right now, it seems much of the fallout is settling either on the West Coast or parts of the densely populated Northeast.

I mourn the families forced to evacuate both the Mississippi and Missouri River Valleys. The snow hasn’t even started melting yet. I’m thinking about the vast stretches of productive farmland under water, and more to come. I sorrow over all those people along the Gulf Coast sick and dying from petroleum and dispersant poisoning. Tornado victims across the Midwest who still haven’t really begun to recover, and they’re finding a very aggressive fungus growing, infecting some of the smallest cuts and scratches. There’s a nasty mold in Texas causing serious lung problems never seen before — not heard in the news, but from people I know there. We sure don’t need any “accidents” like that E. Coli strain in Europe with inserted Plague DNA and resistance to last-resort antibiotics.

I do a lot of weeping and praying these days. Will my tear ducts eventually fail? There’s nothing gleeful about this. I’d rather be wrong and have you chuckle at my idiocy. I haven’t forgotten my promise. If our troops aren’t slaughtered attacking Iran (or before), it will be time for me to shut up. Then again, if things really do go that bad, I’m not sure I’ll have Net access, anyway.

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Forced Tribute Is Slavery

Posted on June 19, 2011 by ehurst

And voluntary tribute is love.

If I wait for a certain holiday or cultural celebration, then my enthusiasm is suspect. There are certain things which simply follow the rhythm of the seasons, and those are more natural. However, when a civilized culture mandates certain celebrations take place on certain days to honor this or that, we are edging into Phony Land. Here in the US, most such cultural celebrations are nothing more than a commercial endeavor, a marketing scheme to sell more trash as somehow socially obligatory.

It’s the same basic principle with tribute. The ancient principle is a form of feudalism. Someone big and strong in your area provides a measure of security, so you give them a measure of your produce. If the relationship is friendly, you hardly consider such tribute a loss. If it’s forced, done out of simple fear, it’s slavery. This has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the position taken by Mr. Big-n-Strong; that’s another question.

But there is a form of tribute and legitimacy which comes from less material concerns. When you do someone damage, whether material, social or in some other way transgress those civilizing limits we place between us, you become a debtor in that sense. The person offended has gained a legitimate position over you, and you have become a tributary. You have made a mess in their lives and are morally obliged to make it right. You owe them. Once the tribute is offered, in whatever form you are able, you are free. There are issues regarding ancient rights of negotiation, but only if they don’t accept your initial offer. The point is, you come suing for terms of peace.

Only with an arrogant refusal to accept liability do we have tort considerations. Civilization isn’t simply the rules, but rules with teeth in them. Such is a wholly other matter. If you understand it correctly, you realize how such things as mandatory anger management classes, or sensitivity training, are very badly implemented enforcement, a different kind of tort liability gone wrong. It presumes adults are children. Many are childish enough, but the state is by far the most evil parent on earth. Simply passing it off as a response to democratic demands from the community fails to note there are things no community has a right to demand.

But you and I as parents of actual minors in our care, whether natural or de facto, look for ways to train children to accept liability for a certain measure of things in this life. When we drill down to the underlying meaning behind the Levitical Law and rituals, we are confronted with the universal brokenness of the Fall. No human is always right unless He is also God at the same time. Sorry, that job’s been taken. The rest of us must internalize an element of humility, or our genius and creativity will be destructive. If our social rituals teach children to honor others, such as on Father’s Day (today in the US), it’s a good thing. It’s not for nothing God chose the image of Father as the primary symbol for His relationship to humanity. But if our teaching consists of demonstrating an empty lip service to such a ritual — making a hurried search for symbolic tributes late the night before or first thing in the morning, running out the buy stuff, etc. — then we have destroyed the whole thing.

Real fathers don’t need that stuff to feel like a Dad. What they need, must see, must demand, all year long are the daily actions which signal tribute and respect. Not to soothe is inflated ego, but to know his children aren’t going to be arrogant jerks who step on others and consider it somehow just. If a kid has to be forced to apologize to anyone, it is a truly dangerous sign.

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Ball of Fire

Posted on June 18, 2011 by ehurst

Tom Ball’s suicide is being analyzed in a hundred ways.

I’m not going to join the herd. Even after reading his long and disjointed letter, I’m not sure I understand why he chose that end. What bothers me most is all the various analyses that attempt to steal the spotlight for their own ends. Perhaps the most useful, and at the same time the most disgusting, comment comes from the likes of Vox Day and The Dread Ilk.

On the one hand, Vox does correctly assess the man comes across as a Gamma in the Socio-Sexual Hierarchy. That is, he is a whiny victim to the end. On the other hand, it almost seems the whole thing is reduced to how to get more nooky. Am I supposed to aspire to Alpha, a borderline psychopath? The fundamental truth about the Alpha male is the vast majority of them don’t care about anyone but themselves. A real Alpha never would have gotten into Ball’s situation in the first place. I don’t think there’s anything particularly noble about that, even by Western standards. I really could care less where I fall on the Hierarchy, because I am committed to walking the footsteps of Jesus Christ, and this requires ignoring the Hierarchy and chasing tail.

What we do learn from Tom Ball is a wealth of uncovering a system we all knew was perverted in the first place. Ball manages to detail how the system works for those who want to know. And it’s really easy to see how feminism has taken control of the legal system in the US. How Ball chose to handle things is his problem, but his hope of making himself out to be a victim will only succeed with other men who already wish to make themselves out to be victims. This is not a Tunisian fruit vendor moment, and it won’t start a revolution.

The only godly question to ask in all this is: What will you do next? That is, given what you see, and what you can learn from Ball’s research, how will you act when something like this happens to you? Naturally, it only applies if you have a family with kids, or are likely to be involved in some sort of family situation in the future. Granted, the Word of God says the state has no business in family matters, so long as they are strictly family matters. The biblical culture, the one God designed, would encourage the man’s extended family to take care of the issue. A world where people live apart from their extended family is a broken world, so we can’t really fix things. Nor can we even pretend we aspire to God’s blessings so much as they are available, if we aren’t actively working to put ourselves into such a setting. Right now, that means if your blood kin aren’t available, a genuine covenant community will do even better. The first answer is to find or start building a faith community which answers the biblical standards — which excludes the vast majority of American churches.

While you are working on that, let’s say you somehow drew the attention of the state for it’s evil invasion of your home life. You’ll have to evaluate your own context. The single most significant question: Is your wife on your side, or will she do what the state demands? If the latter, bail out. You cannot win, if after what you’ve been through together, she can’t be trusted to back you against the state. Sure, she can play whatever games are necessary to placate them while she waits an opportunity for something better, but if she’s so fearful she’ll obey the state, you are out of luck. The thing can’t be fixed. Much as it hurts, you’ve already lost your kids. Make other plans.

Or, if you just can’t handle it, you can always take Tom Ball’s path. Nobody can choose for you.

If you aren’t there yet, make sure whomever you marry is a lot stronger than Mrs. Ball. That will, of course, eliminate some 90% of the females in the US. Don’t be stupid; choose the future Missus on the basis of something you can live with after you both get old and ugly, which comes really much quicker than you think. Or think of it this way: If she’s worth loving, she’ll be worth loving after some horrible accident ruins her looks, too. Nothing replaces loyalty in a wife. Put yourself in a situation where she’s likely to show that loyalty as a way of attracting your interest. If all your attention is on whether she looks hot, then don’t pretend marriage matters much.

The second thing is cultivating the loyalty of your kids. Make yourself the rock of refuge against a nasty world very early in their lives. Don’t allow the world around you to shape their values directly, even as you make them aware of how messed up things are. Demonstrate it first, then tell them. If they don’t admire you, it’s a lost cause.

Always have a plan to escape the jurisdiction. Cultivate like-minded supporters who will help you escape. Talk about the dangers of the child welfare system with those who pretend they are your friends and sound them out. Start with relatively mild comments, unless your personality and the context permits boldness. Me? I’m the bold and brash type. I know how to play head games, but mostly it’s a matter of civility. Most people aren’t ready or able to be my friend. Not many people know what would trigger my flight from the state, nor are they likely to know much of the how. The fewer who can offer intelligent guesses to those pursuing me, the better.

Violent resistance may be little different from setting yourself on fire. It’s justified in God’s eyes, but for the sake of those you defend, don’t start something for which you don’t see an end point, as it were. In today’s climate, every hint of violence eliminates an awful lot of future options. Then again, once the state has decided to act, it won’t make that much difference. Weigh it in your mind before anything happens; think and pray about every incident which hits the news. Not the lies the MSM will spew, nor statements by lawyers and such, but add to your estimates what you learn about how the state acts.

For example, here in Central Oklahoma, the child welfare system is notoriously lazy. They are more likely to focus on the cases which are easy, than the ones which require actual work. Most of the social workers are incredibly stupid, with an evaluation system only a bureaucrat could love. I’ve dealt with them one time in the past. The deck was stacked against the system, as my family was definitely on my side. The judge was not militant, and the social worker actually thought we were okay, so I played the penitent. I had strong community support. We won. While the social workers are generally less intelligent these days, the system here hasn’t changed all that much. Also, it’s badly underfunded and very much overloaded, thank God. However, for some target populations, it’s still a nightmare. You have to decide how likely you are to be mangled or simply inconvenienced.

Do not ever dismiss the whole question, as if it will never happen to you. This is one of those rising threats, and even here in a relatively good system, things could go nuclear in a heartbeat. Now that my kids are adults, I worry about my grandchildren. Not in the sense of fear, but I steel my heart for what I estimate is probable. It’s one of a wide range of issues by which I calculate staying here versus moving. Right now, this is one of the best places in the US, when tested against all the things I think about and what I’m ready to face.

If you don’t think about it, you might as well keep a can of gas handy.

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Secret Wars

Posted on June 17, 2011 by ehurst

Leon Paneta is the point man for making all US military actions secret.

It’s hard to ignore a mobilization of even smaller units if you live next to a military base. The military never does anything efficiently. Everyone has to be marshaled together in one place under strict controls, with all the necessary equipment on hand, and it all has to be moved at the same time to the place of embarkation. The reason all this is required is because a significant portion of troops are grouchy, whiny, and will always balk at doing anything out of the routine. Even the most elite units have to deal with this. You can’t do that stuff quietly.

Military leadership also make a big deal of OpSec (Operational Security) and not telling folks things they don’t have to know in order to do their jobs, and not telling anyone who isn’t directly involved, regardless how it affects them. Except, military people have families they care about, and don’t want to alarm them by simply disappearing without a word. They find out and tell their friends in the community, and so on. Since almost nothing the military does can’t happen without extra training for the troops involved, the training itself is always a big tip-off. There was a time when such things were most likely just an exercise to get the right punches on the right tickets and satisfy some command coming down through bureaucratic channels. With US troops stretched too thin over too many military adventures these days, there’s no such thing as “just an exercise.”

Just check what optional equipment Joe Snuffy had to pack, what sort of personal supplies, and you’ll know at least the current climate where he’s going. What is flying off the shelves at Wal-Mart? If his sergeant emphasizes insect repellent and sunscreen, it’s summer where he’s going. Sterno cans and hot chocolate? Someplace cold. Compare that with known foreign policy statements and it’s not hard to guess where he’s deploying. Eventually you’ll see in the news somewhere an announcement which confirms your guess. If any of this involves National Guard activation, there will be even less secrecy, as it’s big news in the small town newspaper.

That will change.

This week saw the US Senate approved Leon Paneta as Secretary of Defense. He’s currently Director of the CIA. He has said publicly he would like to see the CIA working with Defense to have more military troops carrying out CIA operations. In case it’s not obvious, more troop deployments on CIA missions puts more military adventures under Black Ops. It means Congress and the voters will be told a whole lot less, for reasons of national security. That means deployments will take on a wholly different character, and the CIA will oversee more details. Troops themselves will know a whole lot less, be jerked around a whole lot more, and everyone will simply have to adjust or face severe punishment for violations of national security.

Thus, the President alone gets to decide who knows what his troops are doing, if even he knows. Paneta has already asserted this is how it should be. John Galt over at Activist Post puts it this way:

This statement is telling, as it refers to Congress as a place where a president should seek advice, not approval. This assertion is the precise difference between a constitutional republic and an authoritarian dictatorship…. Each of the ongoing wars are run as though they are black ops missions: secret prisons, torture centers, citizen surveillance, the fomenting of coups, and CIA-directed drones peppering the military theater and beyond.

So as Paneta moves from the CIA to Defense, he carries a pre-determined plan to run Defense as a ready servant of the CIA and all the evil that entails. Where once the troops had to put up with CIA agents involved in their operations, they now will report to those CIA agents and take orders from them. If you think of the CIA as demons with pretty faces, you would have a fair picture of the ethics and morals under which they operate. As already noted here, the CIA does not serve national interests intentionally. Their agenda is entirely under some branch of the New World Order; the US simply pays for it.

This is not a good time to be an American.

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Random Observations on Current Events

Posted on June 16, 2011 by ehurst

Too many things which are too big to ignore, but none worthy of a full article, so I’m offering a list of my opinionated rantings.

They say the situation with that nuclear generator on the Missouri River in Nebraska is under control after an electrical fire. They said something like that about Fukushima, too. The batch of liars is most of the same people in both cases, people who knew for a fact what they said wasn’t true. Why should we believe them now? Besides, the river is not under control, as folks upstream in Council Bluffs, Iowa prepare to evacuate. In the Nebraska case, the spent fuel rods are contained at ground level. The official phrases include something like “flooded the containment building.” With what? Filthy river water? I’ll bet no official agency is willing to announce whether they have tested water flowing away from that building for radiation. Add that to the petroleum pollution in the Gulf of Mexico.

Greece is rioting. It is fully justified. Granted, Greece is half-lawless from top to bottom. The politicians are hopelessly corrupt, but so is the majority of the population. However, everyone wants to forget that the politicians are an order of magnitude more corrupt than is commonly tolerated among the people; it’s how they got their positions. They want to forget the people have long surrendered a very big chunk of their income to a government plan for social welfare. They have already paid into the system. What they seek is for the government to simply pay back out what was supposed to have been saved. But it was invested in high-risk mortgage securities, mostly from the US. The politicians and bankers were playing fast and loose with someone else’s money, hoping to scrape off the profit, not trying to build up the value of the holdings. Those mortgage securities turned out to be worthless. But the politicians and bankers refuse to take the hit; they want the people to take it, while they continue amassing more wealth for themselves. If the people take up arms and slaughter the politicians and bankers, it would be justified. Their peaceful restraint is noteworthy.

The same thing is happening here in the US, more or less. The bankers gambled on the same mortgage investments, even creating those investment packages, and lost. But it’s tax dollars which are bailing them out. That is, the politicians are borrowing against future tax receipts, mortgaging the future labor of citizens, to compensate the bankers for bad bets. Meanwhile, the same citizens are still on the hook for bad mortgages which were utterly fraudulent in the first place. The fiction that We, the People, are responsible for the banker’s debts simply because the government says so — they claim to work for us — is still the unspoken assumption behind all this, but they openly rejected our clearly stated wishes not to bail out the gambling bankers. We aren’t restrained; we’re stupid.

I’m not bullish on China, either. You aren’t likely to find an honest report of their economic condition in the MSM, but you may have seen reports of the extravagant building projects which now sit idle and empty. They have over-invested in really nice stuff no-one can afford to rent, and for which they have zero cultural background in maintaining. Fast rail system? The majority of likely riders can’t afford the tickets. What happens in five years without maintenance on the tracks? Their cultural habit so far is to tear it down and build new stuff in its place, because there is entirely too much liquidity in their lending pool, and no sane controls. Because there is no real profit being put back into that pool, it will be gone soon enough. Their advantage is they now have most of our factories, so they can recover. We have nothing but talk and aging cheap toys we bought from China.

That LulzSec pulled a DDoS on the CIA’s front website means nothing; it still looks and smells like a false flag. It did no real harm. No servers were cracked and no information copied. If they don’t release a bunch of data at least as damaging as the harmless stuff Wikileaks puts out, then it means nothing — clouds and thunder, but no lightening, and certainly no rain.

I’m still praying God Almighty will rip the cover off all the lies. Having committed myself to transparency, still willing to face all my own evil buried in lost memories, I have nothing to lose. Expose me, too, Lord! In the morals of the Spirit Realm, we who are willing to turn the Sword of Truth on ourselves are in a position to wield it on others. This is a prayer which is tied to Laws, and does not require spiritual birth to be valid. Yes, for some centuries Western Protestants have deceived themselves and others saying God does not hear prayers under the Laws. They lie. Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and all other pagans can pray and be heard by Jehovah when their prayers are consistent with the Laws, and in the measure their prayers are consistent with the Laws. If your conscience in clean, and you aren’t trying to avoid an honest self-examination, then ask for whatever He promised under the Law Covenants, and it will be done. Yes, sincerity counts for something with God. The idea He has no interest in justice on a human level, and that only those born-again can deal with Him, is blasphemy.

Obviously Western Christendom has a lot to answer for, and I’m praying her shame be exposed, too. The Harlot Church is everywhere. A religious organization holding title to any significant accumulation of material wealth doesn’t get it. Just how hard is it to understand, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth”? A wealth of stuff and a poverty of Spirit, stop claiming to speak for Heaven.

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Not Impressed with FBI

Posted on June 15, 2011 by ehurst

The FBI has been in the news a lot lately, but the lack of competence in Law Enforcement agencies is frightening.

During my time in the military, I was for most of that time an ordinary Military Policeman. Like most, I took an advanced qualifier course; I was a Traffic Accident Investigator. The training was decent, until we got to role playing and rules of evidence. The rules we got, but the role playing was utterly amateurish — something I learned from more experienced MPs. I didn’t do a whole lot of investigating, but what little I did carried a frightening amount of weight in the system. When I saw that, I tried to avoid doing any more traffic investigations, but was very careful when I did them.

They told us, “Have confidence in yourself.” What they meant was to consider yourself bullet-proof the way some Marines are trained, only applied to the use of authority. My issue was not a lack of confidence, but a very real assessment of my own skills. I could ruin a soldier’s career through carelessness or out of casual spite, and was expected to enjoy that role. The other MPs did just that, and were held up as role models.

I couldn’t wait to get out of that job, and out of the military. With very badly messed up knees, they wanted me to stay in for the next promotion. It was insane. How were they going to use a middling sergeant MP who walked with a cane at best and permanently so? In military terminology, I had a “P-4 Profile” on my legs. They literally offered me a bonus to stay and take the next assignment in rotation. Insane. Were they so desparate for warm bodies, anyone who had not gotten into trouble?

But with all my poor level of experience, I recognized even worse training and intelligence in FBI investigations. I’ve had a chance to look through some leaked or published reports where some supposedly senior field agent made incredibly insipid conclusions from traffic collision evidence which was part of some larger case. He could not have passed the silly course I took.

Now I’m doing part-time computer service. I would not qualify for the Geek Squad; I’ve not had any of the official courses offered. And frankly, I don’t know what some of them know. But I’ve already fixed a couple of systems they messed up — silly stuff. I’ve also been willing to salvage something when they would have wiped and re-installed, and I took less time. But I’m the first to tell you I’m no great technician. I’m just a short distance ahead of your average power user. Your average power user knows more than the vast majority of FBI field agents.

Truly talented agents are so rare, they either get promoted out of the field, or they get a real job somewhere else. What’s left? The stories aren’t that hard to find on the Net. Their best computer forensic folks in the field use a software package they barely understand. Most of them can’t tell you where Internet Explorer saves cookies, or where to find the various compressed data files which index them. They have no idea how to run Regedit and scan for keywords. A tiny minority may be aware you can hit F8 on boot to get into Safe Mode. Grandmas learn some of this at the local library free community classes.

Instead, they take a one- or two-day course with their new forensics CDs and consider themselves Computer Forensics Technicians. It’s the same system used by civilian policemen all over the US.

Extrapolate this. Most state and local police departments host expensive seminars run by “terrorist experts” who have never spent a single hour studying case histories of terror attacks. They’ve never worn even a private security badge, but they train police chiefs. They come up with these brilliant plans where a role-playing “terrorist” invades a public school, and not even the teachers know it’s just a drill. How many kids know the difference between blanks and bullets? And how many of them will have nightmares and very real trauma because the system trains them to be emotionally vulnerable?

But watch the fellows picked to play the responding officers. It’s all about protecting themselves. That’s the mantra they keep repeating under their breath: “officer safety!” Terrorizing the victims further is taken for granted. Just the regular school patrol officers show up fully armed, with body armor and everything except specific SWAT gear. Protect the public? No, protect government prerogatives, which includes protecting their own butts first. Compare that to the guy who was piloting the Goodyear blimp which burned and crashed Sunday in Germany. These cops are not heroes.

Yet you will find yourself facing an insufferable arrogance and even outright hatred from FBI agents, if you ever meet any. Victim of a crime? You are the first suspect. Want to help out with special expertise? They don’t need you. This is so common it’s a standard joke in every speciality of human endeavor after one attempt to help the FBI or any other police agency. The biggest braggart and idiot on any forum or mailing list is probably FBI or some other “Law Enforcement Officer” (LEO).

“I’m with the government, and I’m hear to FUBAR your life.”

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Just a Half Smile

Posted on June 14, 2011 by ehurst

He sat, as he had every day after eating lunch. He unlocked the rocker hinge on his office chair, placed his hands behind his head, leaned back and sat with his eyes closed. He seldom so much as twitched. The others were yakking about the game last night, which was of no interest to her.

She said to him, “How come you never talk about yourself? Everyone else does; it’s how we get to know each other. Why are you so mysterious?”

His eyes opened and turned toward her. “Have I been rude?” His question was genuine, but utterly devoid of emotion.

“No. I don’t mean that. You just never show any feelings. I mean, you smile at some things, and you ask some of the most interesting questions, but you seldom give a direct answer to anything when people ask you.” The low level of exasperation was plain in her voice.

Having moved his hands from behind his head, he sat with his elbows resting on the arms of the chair. Raising his hands to face each other, he lightly pressed opposing fingertips, digits splayed apart, and tilted the joined index fingers against his lips. While it was only a few seconds, the pause seemed eternal to her.

“It’s not about me,” he said finally.

She stared in surprise. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He still had has fingertips together, but held them just above his lap. “Do you notice I never ask for personal information? Only clarification to make sure I understand what someone has said. You are free to reveal whatever you wish, or nothing at all. It’s not that I don’t care, obviously, or I would not be working here. It’s that I care about something else far, far more.”

She tilted her head to one side, puzzled. “I know you don’t take this job seriously. You’ve said that much. And you don’t sit in the lotus position on the floor through lunch like that guy from India, so can I at least ask what does matter to you?”

With a half-smile, he turned and made eye contact with her. “The guy from India would understand better than anyone born here in the US. I am most certainly otherworldly, just not from the same culture as he. I don’t need the lotus position to meditate.”

“So you’re some kind of mystic, too? You ain’t sleeping, but meditating when you close your eyes and sit still?”

“Maybe some of both,” he said with that enigmatic faint smile. “Dreams can reveal much to you about your own subconscious.”

“But why ain’t you trying to talk us all into it? Rajee was more evangelistic about Krishna than most Baptists are about Jesus.”

The faint smile faded completely from his lips. “Would you be any more likely to listen? The real truth won’t fit into any neat packages. If I talk about Jesus, you’ll assume you already understand and fill in the blanks with your own background on the subject. You know the words, but you don’t use them the same way I do, so speaking would only confuse the issue.”

“Oh, you mean like the Mormons? They use the same words as the other churches do, but trick you because they mean something different.” Her disgust was painfully obvious.

Again the half-smile. “Truth cannot hitch a ride with deception.” He sat up fully and locked his chair upright. “I’m not important; truth is. The government has a silly cheap imitation in the phrase, ‘need to know.’ If you are open to the truth, you don’t need words. All you need from me is an expression of that truth. If that truth calls to you, then your response will put you in the place to know more about me. Otherwise, you can’t know much about me at all.”

She paused, her face blank as her mind chewed on this. “So … if I get it — this truth — what would we talk about?”

“The purpose in fellowship is learning how to bring that truth to life, to compare notes. Once truth comes to life in your soul, you spend the rest of your days making conscious the vast ocean of things most humans take for granted, things of which they are seldom conscious. You can’t live truth if you buy into every assumption this world has, because the fundamental truth about this world is that it’s a lie.” Part of her noticed he was totally earnest without much emotion.

Several long minutes passed. Tilting her head on one side again, “So you do that on purpose? You self-consciously keep from getting involved to provoke that sense of mystery?”

This time he actually smiled fully. Turning to gaze directly in her eyes, “Now you know me.”

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Net Win

Posted on June 14, 2011 by ehurst

The Internet will win the coming battle.

Have you read Bill Clinton’s drivel about regulating the Net? He proposes some office to keep a check on whether someone is posting lies on their blogs, an office which will enforce some sort of balance and fairness. Who decides what is a lie?

The last time such was tried on a massive scale, it succeeded. That was in the days before the Internet. It won’t this time. This is just my own intuition speaking here, but I am convinced the existence of the Internet has created a global sense of need which now regards such networking as a basic human necessity. TPTB despise it, but if they don’t learn how to embrace what it is, and try to change the nature of this beast, it will devour them.

I wasn’t just kidding when I suggested the next civilization will be Net-based. When the current civilization collapses, one of the things putting it in the grave will be this utterly senseless and hopeless fight against the Internet. Tear out the wires and something else will take their place. This genie isn’t going back into the bottle. For good or ill, a little experience with the Internet transforms the human consciousness on a mechanical level. Trying to remove it will be a serious threat to the working of the whole thing. If there is one thing people are likely to fight and die for, this is it.

At the same time, that fighting and dying itself has been transformed. The influence of the virtual world itself calls for a wholly different way of doing things, but they are nonetheless highly effective. So even while I believe Anonymous and LulzSec are not honest revolutions, they exemplify where the most significant battles will be in the future. In order to govern the people, you have speak their language and address their values. The existence of the Internet shapes those things, so any government that can’t adapt to it is a government which will become irrelevant.

The current ruling class of the US in particular simply do not have this. They seek to play the same old games as before, and it’s wearing thin. Any day now the ragged edge will catch and the whole thing come apart. I seriously doubt many of us will ever see that moment for what it is, until much later. Few turning points are so precise and clear as we are told in history class. But that moment is upon us, and while the battle will surely take unexpected turns, I am utterly convinced the current world order will fall in the end. That means if any of the current class are to hang on, they will have to adapt.

A significant portion of our current bureaucracy has already made that shift. The CIA and NSA are loaded with them, and it places them far ahead of less flexible organizations like the FBI. It probably won’t look like a coup, but we should soon see a whole lot of new faces in actual positions of power. Granted, if the New World Order are really cool about it, the hidebound Old Guard will maintain appearances as the real control is removed from their hands. Up to now, that only happens in a few places, rather than as a fundamental fact. If you ask me, at least a part of the recent big cyber attacks is the New Order within our own government putting fear into the Old Guard.

For example, I rather thought Obama might be one of the new guys, because his act sure had all the proper window dressing. But he has shown himself still too much owned by the Old Guard. It was fake. The Net Generation won’t forgive, won’t forget. That doesn’t mean he can’t win the election; it means it won’t matter if he does. The real means of exerting power will no longer be in his hands, despite appearances. Things will simply evaporate for him. In some ways, his failure may be what helped everyone decide they have to tear it all down, giving the Net radicals a stronger voice in the inevitable revolt.

Yeah, it’s all pretty murky, but it’s real even while it’s virtual.

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Cyberwar and False Flags

Posted on June 13, 2011 by ehurst

So LulzSec takes down the SPARC server for the US Senate website, and appears to have snagged, or is capable of snagging, all the emails. I’m suspicious.

I’ve already said I’m pretty sure Anonymous has been infiltrated, if it isn’t already a big PsyOp. I had serious doubts about LulzSec from the start. Now that they claim to have cracked a server which is definitely not a Windows server, I’m starting to lean even more in that direction. But it really doesn’t matter too awful much, because we all know what will come from their actions.

The US government now has a really big, and growing, excuse to try and regulate the Internet in new ways. Granted, the protocols themselves will limit their options. I figure it will involve some mandatory registration and licensing process via the ISPs. It doesn’t have to make sense, and it won’t. It’s pretty much like anything else: Only those who know next to nothing about the thing will be affected. The Net savvy will probably get around it ten minutes after it starts, if not sooner. Indeed, anything like this will be leaked all over the place and by-passing will be worked out quickly.

If TPTB want to get more countries on line with this, it’s going to require some big attacks in Europe and other places. If it only happens here in the US, it will tell us a great deal. It will mean the really nasty stuff will be limited to the US, at least at first, because crushing the Net is all about silencing the uncontrolled opposition, the voices demanding accountability and leaking news of the evil.

Wikileaks is an excuse. Anonymous is an excuse. LulzSec is playing that part, regardless who it is. Their tactics aren’t very smart when matched against their claims.

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Fake Prosperity, Fake Peace

Posted on June 13, 2011 by ehurst

We are aware that America in particular, and the West in general, have been on a fast ride of faux prosperity based on profligate debt. You can go back and chart each wave of wasteful spending and consumer credit as new ways of getting into debt were created by lending institutions. We have bumped into a ceiling, finally. There is no longer sufficient credit to keep this going.

We have long known the best way to estimate someone’s character is to place them in stressful situations. Reduce someone to simply struggling to stay alive and you find out a great deal. So, for example, you should know never to build a romance without first seeing your intended at their worst. You will certainly see it again once the relationship is formed. Besides, it’s a wonderful form of therapy for troubled individuals, to put them in a context where all their energy goes to just staying alive. It works better than any mirror at helping them truly see themselves. The same goes for groups of people. Whatever conglomeration you want to identify can be truly understood when they go through tough times.

America is facing some very tough times. Perhaps the single most significant factor of that stress is economic, since Americans are singularly the most materialistic nation on earth. It’s the one thing for which we are best known to other nations; our other unpleasant features arise from that one thing. So while this statement is very scary, it’s also quite accurate:

The truth is that about the only thing keeping our society together has been the unprecedented affluence that we have been enjoying over the past few decades.

Once that affluence is gone, the true character of the American people will come out, and we may not like what we see.

It’s a good time to learn how to stay home and build community ties. It’s a good time to learn how to make do with what you can produce or find, and how to learn to make and find things you will need just to stay alive.

Welcome to the future.

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