Hack Everything!

Posted on June 26, 2011 by ehurst

The concept of hacking includes far more than poking around in other people’s computers.

This is more than a whine against the MSM for confusing the term “hacking” with “cracking.” Anyone who pays much attention to the MSM can’t be taken seriously. I realize that means most of our world, but that’s the reality. While I take seriously the genuine needs of every human alive, I don’t take seriously what they think and feel. No, this is about how those of us who know hacking means poking around in something to satisfy a curiosity, however much that curiosity may drive us to obsession. Nor does it matter how much skill and knowledge you bring to the hacking, but how it changes you.

By no means would I qualify as a computer hacker. Yes, I do poke at things related to computers, because inevitably the people who make the stuff and write the software are not interested in the same things which interest me. If I take the time to read all their stuff, I won’t know anything they didn’t intend me to consider. So I poke to discover what my own interests can extract from their work. Sometimes I’m just trying to find a fix which was not published, or not very well published. But mostly it’s not a question of how it works, but how I can use it. I’m just a hobbyist or perhaps a “power user” on computers, not a hacker. By sheer luck some of my uses resonate with the interests of others. Thus, I get a lot of hits on my computer related posts here.

This tells me there’s a lot more people interested in harnessing their computers than the other stuff I write about. I most certainly will claim to be a hacker of religion and morality. I’ve spent my life learning, poking and prodding what exists. In this case, it’s not just a question of how I can use it, but exploring the full depth of its nature, things the professional writers didn’t or couldn’t tell me. I’m not just prodding the software, or simply the OS, but I’m poking around in the hardware itself. I want to know human nature as it exists, and to discern things centuries of experts didn’t think about, and certainly didn’t talk about. Then I blather about it here, and a smaller groups seems to be interested. Again, by sheer luck, as it were, I’ve found some stuff other folks were looking for but may not have found by themselves.

A significant element in what I write is the underlying theme you can poke at just about any area of human knowledge. The recurring statements encouraging readers to challenge every authority on every issue which matters to them is the same hacker intelligence. The experts don’t know everything, and may not really know much of anything. Those who write the textbooks and whose ideas dominate the mainstream may be all wrong, trying to hide from you something which is your destiny. Everyone who seeks a place where they can anchor authority and whence they can gain leverage over others warrants the deepest suspicion of their motives. Good moral people do not want control over others. People who simply share what they know will always betray a willingness to hear conflicting notions, and won’t go ballistic because you dared question their personal orthodoxy.

Don’t swallow my religion. It’s not universal; it may not suit your needs. Take from what I write whatever you can use. Steal it! Poke and prod, examine and explore. Adapt it and make it your own. If you have time and inclination, tell me about your own resulting efforts. Maybe you’ll show me something I can use.

Hack everything.

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Estimating Current World Events (June 2011)

Posted on June 25, 2011 by ehurst

When you permit a thought process and evaluation system not restricted to the commonly accepted Western analytical assumptions, you would expect to get different answers.

This is not about having a high degree of intelligence in the sense of IQ. I readily admit I’m not up there in the higher rankings, and would not even qualify for the likes of Mensa. I lack the arrogance necessary to challenge openly folks who have different ideas on these things, whatever their reputed intellect. I take no particular credit for coming up with some new form of brilliance, since I have long believed I’m simply using the same faculties available to anyone else. In the broadest sense, I give credit to my Lord and Savior for anything of value here, and take full blame for any mistakes.

We can’t presume to ever really understand it all. There is no simple formula, no all-encompassing revelation of conspiracy, no single plan of world domination. You can’t blame just any one group. Even when I use terms like “Illuminati,” it’s just a label for an ill-defined conspiracy which we must assume morphs over time. Single individuals may be included this year, excluded the next for some reason, and then work their way back into good graces, or maybe even usurp someone else’s place. These are mere humans, with their own internal politics. Not everything works out the way any single one of them, or any faction, or the whole herd, would like every time.

One of the primary reasons we study history or any of the other social sciences is so we can estimate in some useful fashion how we got where we are today, so we can estimate some sensible course for future actions. I’ll save you some time; my advice for future action hasn’t changed since before I started blogging here at WordPress. Prepare for the worst, even though we can expect to survive much of what’s coming our way. Collect stuff you know how to use and which can make life tolerable should there be a general failure of civilization itself. Prepare yourself even more, since events can lead to such catastrophic changes you’ll have only what you carry in your soul as you flee some disaster, or series of disasters. Decide now nothing on this planet really matters, not even life itself, only living as close as you can to truth.

To add some shape to that, read on.

The lineage of the Illuminati is pretty easy to trace. Sometime around 300 BC, the Hebrew religion of Moses was eclipsed by Hellenism, AKA Aristotelian epistemology. While Judaism retains trappings and content from Moses, it’s underlying framework is entirely Western. With that Hellenism infection came an incredible measure of arrogance previously lacking. No, I’m not saying they had none before, but the kind and quality of that arrogance radically changed with the introduction of Aristotle. When the real Messiah showed up, they simply did not have the Hebraic grasp to accept Him. Instead, they clung to a vision of global domination, along with a frame of reference which made it possible. When Judaism was adopted by the Kazakhs in 900 AD, this religious aspiration gained a warlike drive and intelligence it previously lacked. The question of DNA and discussions of Ashkenazim versus Sephardim miss the point. Nor is it really about Judaism, but how that religion contributed to something bigger — Zionism. The Illuminati were born in Zionism, but have sense escaped it, so that we now have a singular core identity which is no longer precisely Jewish, nor even Zionist, per se. And while Israel began as a central element in plans of global domination, I am convinced that nation is now disposable to the current planning. I think we can safely dismiss the popular mythology blaming Jews and Israel, noting simply it does include some people who own such labels.

Whatever it is we imagine the Illuminati to be — essentially global bankers and financiers with an intent to enslave as much of the human race as possible — they are rooted in Western Civilization as it now exists as a whole. Their aspirations and plans arise from that, so it’s no surprise all their expectations depend upon it. I frankly believe they are infected with the Aristotelian intellectual assumptions, and suffer from the failures of it. In due time, their plans will fail, right about the time it appears they have succeeded. That’s because their plans require destroying much of what Western Civilization has become, and I believe they suffer the same fundamental arrogance of Aristotelian epistemology, which presumes to be somehow fundamental to how the universe itself works.

They pretty much own Western Civilization, which they do understand all too well. The assumptions are utterly materialistic, so material aspirations are the whole thing. Thus, the demand for credit, banking and fiat currency to buy more stuff. The Russians are somewhat entangled in this, but capable of living without it. Thus, the Illuminati do have some limited control in Russia, which fluctuates more than it does in the wider West. They have very little control in China, but some presence. So when Russia and China’s economies suffer the normal degree of human corruption at the top, this does not automatically grant the Illuminati any leverage. Corruption is a universal human trait, part of the Fall. When the current economic system grinds to a halt and collapses, the West will for a time be totally under Illuminati control. Russia may not be fully sucked under by it, and China almost surely will not. Hurt, for sure, but China will not collapse so completely. Russia does not have to collapse, but escaping will require some very wise leadership, and I just can’t estimate that. In general, the great big bad stuff on the horizon will fall most heavily on the US, then the other English-speaking lands, then Europe.

Asian countries will suffer to the degree they are controlled by the Western banking system. Smart countries will use it, but never surrender totally, keeping some framework of economic planning which does not depend on fiat currency and global credit. Africa is similarly mixed, but frankly it’s the poorest third world countries which will suffer least, since not much will change for them. South America is probably the most complicated to estimate, since their politics can be quite volatile, and wholesale changes come from the smallest things. Each country seems to be on a totally independent track, and I admit I don’t know enough to say much more. So, while I can predict Argentina will recover control over their Malvinas (Falklands), that’s pushing what I can estimate.

Naturally, I am going to assert the Illuminati plans are morally unjust. I could say that about almost every government or would-be government, because almost no one does it right. Because of this vast global immorality, my estimation of things includes the expectation of many disasters. Most of them natural disasters, to be sure, but I believe God also uses human folly to magnify many of them. Thus, God provides the earthquake, but mankind provides the nuclear pollution from criminally negligent design and construction. So we have Fukushima, and maybe a few other plants set to spill their pollutants, the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, and perhaps in the near future some pipeline ruptures from all the stuff buried over the New Madrid Fault. We have truly vast flooding in the Missouri and Mississippi Valleys, as well as in China, wildfires all over the US Southwest, droughts in Russia, etc. I can’t even keep track of it all.

If that’s not bad enough, we have plenty of people who should know better lying about disasters that won’t come, but using the lies to create an even greater economic disaster — the so-called Global Warming scam. Sorry, but I refuse to grant any sincerity to folks pushing that lie; it’s not just flawed science, but anti-science. Further, it’s blasphemous to imagine humanity can change something God said bluntly would always remain in His control.

For those with a little education in economics, we note for the US, the government is taking over more and more of whatever economic activity exists. Unlike genuine planned socialism or communism, where the government actually participates in productivity, our government produces virtually nothing; it only consumes and commands. So even if the government shuts down, it won’t change the economy all that much, aside from a loss of regulatory enforcement. In other words, things will actually improve somewhat. The same goes for state and local governments who become insolvent, as some surely will, and soon. Thus, while some business will collapse because they simply can’t exist without massive government contracts, most businesses now open stand a good chance of surviving if they remain flexible.

In my own life here in Central Oklahoma, a lot of things depend on the current drama in the US Congress. Most of it is pure theater. I fully expect Congress to raise the government debt limit. If not, that simply means the plans to crush the economy are upon us. The business about Libya may be an actual dispute, though I doubt it. Some of the central plans by folks I presume to be at least a faction of the Illuminati call for converting Libya away from their relative banking independence, as part of the PNAC nonsense. Lots of references on alternative news sites will discuss the seven or so nations for which PNAC called for “regime change” all because of oil and banking. I’m not sure the current military operations are necessarily the only way to accomplish those goals, but I’m guessing the alternatives are much harder to pull off. So there will be lots of political pressure from the elites to counter the popular clamor to get out of Libya. I’m guessing lots of stuff isn’t working out quite as planned by the elites, and we see evidence of scrambling. There are multiple possible futures tracking out before us.

However, I still expect we’ll be expending big bunches of Department of Defense dollars in Lebanon, Syria, and eventually Iran. I expect a huge increase in crime and chaos in bigger cities and states. Indeed, economic crime is already on the rise across the board, but it’s always going to be worse where high populations must import everything necessary for life. Infrastructure will crumble even faster — roads, bridges, trains, electricity, water, natural gas — and whole cities will find themselves cut off. Sane people are already making an exodus from such places. Rural ghost towns will come back to life as people scatter to survive.

The average human life expectancy will plummet in the West, as it degrades into Third World status. What I cannot estimate is the time line. Welcome to the future!

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Firefox: Anti-Business?

Posted on June 24, 2011 by ehurst

It appears Mozilla leadership is telling corporate partners to get lost.

I realize Ed Bott is a devoted worshiper of Microsoft. But that doesn’t mean he’s ignorant, nor especially dishonest, just biased. When he says Mozilla to enterprise customers: “Drop dead”, it appears he is simply crowing over what everyone should have already known. The Mozilla folks are not interested in the needs of corporate IT.

There was a time when Netscape, then Mozilla, then Firefox were avidly hoping to become the flagship browser of every corporate IT department. That was a sentiment held over from the days when everyone’s first contact with desktop PCs was in the workplace. There would have been no need to mass produce cheap knock-off “IBM compatible” PCs had folks not learned to see their value first by using the more expensive IBM systems their employer decided was necessary. Nowadays, the front wave of technology is not business and government, but the consumer. In this, Mozilla folks are probably correct.

But they are making at least one huge mistake: What happens when the economy regresses a bit and folks can’t get new systems, and businesses and government are the primary market again? Such is almost on top of us. Consider that average consumers now see the net through the tiny screens of mobile devices, while only those doing actual work keep the desktop market alive. Compare this with the Linux market itself, on which Mozilla is very largely dependent in some ways. Ubuntu leads the consumer-based expansion of Linux adoption, but Red Hat and friends dominate the corporate-government field. When times get tough and folks are stuck with using an older system they can’t afford to replace, they won’t be installing the latest fat Ubuntu release. They’ll be installing the long-term supported stable release of Red Hat and clones. Not because of advertising, but because if they find Linux worth using at all, it will be the reliable, stable thing which does not leave their aging hardware struggling to keep up.

Meanwhile, Red Hat and friends have dug in their heels on Firefox. When 5 was released, the Red Hat chain of updates gave us 3.6.18. That is, an update of the 3.6 series for security and bug fixes. If Mozilla drops this, either Red Hat will adopt it and backport fixes, or it will disappear from the system. The corporate clients of Red Hat won’t tolerate jumping major release numbers every six weeks.

For you, if you are a casual user, regardless of your OS I think you should stay loose on this. For God’s sake, DO NOT USE IE! It’s easily one the biggest security holes in an already unsecured operating system. If you like playing with frequent updates and eye-candy stuff, then chase Firefox. But be warned: Firefox is giving lots of folks big problems on lots of websites. I’ve seen plenty of computers which, for example, couldn’t browse and watch videos on YouTube for reasons I couldn’t discern when fixing their computers. Granted, there is a lot I don’t know, but the Net is loaded with complaints of that sort and no fixes even when real experts get involved. I tend to think Firefox does some really wonky things with networking protocols.

If you don’t care about tight control over how things run, just need it to work, use Chrome browser. It’s also running breakneck forward with new releases, but at least it works consistently.

If you need better control and security really matters, use Opera. All browsers stink, but Opera generally doesn’t choke you. It’s occasionally a little heavy on resource usage on Linux, but it’s tolerable so far, and improving. It’s the browser I’ve long used most, but it’s not for everyone. That is, the graphical browser I use most; I prefer to surf with Elinks and Lynx most of the time. But while Opera is only a tiny slice of the user pie on the Net, the company behind it will work rather hard with IT departments. If you tell them what you want, they’ll produce it if they can, even as they try to please the common consumer user base. I really like this company, and gain nothing by telling you that.

Most business folks are not nice people. Most companies are all about profit, and only by accident will they pay much attention to morals. When they are hungry, they tend to work harder, as Opera does. When they own the whole field, they only pretend at best, as does Microsoft. At MS, you are the product delivered to their corporate allies; Windows is the means of delivery. The vast number of doorways they leave open for their partners are what crackers exploit when they stumble across them. Open Source operations may decide whether they will serve IT, the consumer, or try to balance things. Most simply refuse to play at all, and serve only their internal interests. At best, they’ll play to the fanboy audience.

This is what we see happening at Mozilla. They pretend to play to the consumer, but it’s really the fanboy audience, which is not the same thing. The fanboy crowd lives in a fantasy world of new toys, and seldom do any real work on computers. They put all sorts of efforts working with computers; it’s a devotion to the thing itself, not what it does. In actuality, I believe Mozilla leaders are simply turning inward, listening to the strange, almost alien voices inside their developers’ minds. That’s what we expect from Open Source. Sometimes it works out okay, but the best Open Source products are those which filter through some packaging outfit who understands the real world of computer users, who understand using computers to do useful things, not chasing some ghostly dream of computer perfection.

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Newspeak Continues

Posted on June 23, 2011 by ehurst

Caution: Adult topic, not for the squeamish.

Orwell’s Newspeak was just the beginning.

It’s not enough to control the language itself, but TPTB want to invade your very mind, and change your wiring. Granted, the freedom to speak the truth includes the freedom to lie. The Internet cannot be made safe from all threats, or it will no longer be the Internet. The only rightful place to control spam coming at you is at your inbox, or perhaps on the receiving mail server, not out on the Net itself. You can’t make rules about what is passed without destroying the whole thing. Even better is to change the operating system by which you face the Net, so it’s more secure. There’d be precious little spam then, because almost all of it comes from compromised machines. That we have so many computers so easily compromised is because TPTB have permitted the sort of corporate arm-twisting which results in making it very hard to find a computer without that near-monopoly OS. So the state, serving TPTB, is not willing to honor anything resembling free speech, because TPTB aren’t going to allow much freedom of thought, either.

In essence, the rationale is simply a matter of money. That is, you and I are reduced to economic units. The entire calculus of the state is just that — a calculus of control over resources. People must be reduced to resources. This assumes a range and degree of manipulation which is apparently justified, because it seems to be working.

I realize how difficult it is to discuss this without whittling down the actors into simple cut-outs so familiar, but that’s the whole point. The real world in which we live is not what TPTB want us to believe it is. Channeling human thinking into narrow structures prevents people thinking for themselves, and makes them more predictable.

Prime example: What comes into your mind when I offer the term “hot babe”? The vast majority would think of someone exceedingly slender, narrow hips, perhaps a tad athletic, but with a substantial bosom. In other words, something freakish and unnatural. Almost no one is born with genes to produce that, but for the few who do manage to produce such an aspect, they are universally admired and desired. So much so, a woman cannot enter any field of public presentation — music, journalism, etc. — without being physically attractive. Numbering at least in the thousands are the women who abuse their health trying to look like that when it does not come naturally. Meanwhile, the chemical additives in our foods militate against it, so it requires extraordinary measures up against the chemically induced addictions caused by those same additives.

Run back in time some 50 years — roughly my own lifespan — and a “hot babe” would not bear pipe-cleaner thin arms, nor striated abdominal muscles, but had some genuine curves. We would call Ms. Universe of 1952 (the first year) “chubby”. If you go back much farther, we get terms like “Rubenesque” — substantial women, indeed. But notice something: Only in the most recent decades has there been any different definition of feminine beauty. Soft and curvy, or voluptuous, was the standard for all of human history up to the time I was a child. That’s because men knew instinctively a gal needed some meat on her bones in order to survive multiple childbirths and render healthy progeny. The modern boy-with-boobs is definitely not built for that.

It’s not hard to figure out where this came from. The whole idea was to turn women into men, investing them with a false male libido, so that men begin to desire boyish women. Is anyone surprised that the whole pornography market is almost totally controlled by gays, who also dominate the fashion, cosmetics, and beauty pageant industry? By no means should we be surprised that child pornography is now the fastest growing market on the Net, despite all the risks of arrest. The only difference between little boys and little girls in that market is the single anatomical fact of one extra orifice to exploit. The mainstream porn market is the greatest source of prospective consumers of child porn, because the visual ideal is so similar. Making the juvenile version technically illegal is an Orwellian marketing trick, same was with illegal drugs and so forth.

At the same time, this whole mess aims at producing the most unrealistic emotional norm for humanity. To the degree women buy into the notion equality means freedom to be a man, she becomes a slut without the pimp or standard fees. She honestly believes she knows what she wants, but her wiring betrays her every time. Men are conditioned to serve an obsession in singular devotion to this or that woman, which is also utterly unnatural. The few men who simply obey their wiring to spread it around are far more likely to get what they want. And again, women spend so very much effort and money on looking their best, not because it attracts men, per se, but in competition against other women. That they compete in attracting men has nothing do with what actually attracts them to the men. Women are most drawn to guys who dismiss them, and barely tolerate those who fall at their feet.

In the end, we have every man worshiping a tiny thin slice of available females because of these insane ideals of beauty, which are totally against their own interests and their native wiring. Should they actually get their hands on one, she’ll be intolerable. Meanwhile, the women are encouraged to meet this ideal and demand a certain type of man they actually can’t stand.

And it’s all three or four times removed from God’s ideal. My whole point in discussing human sexual behavior on the fallen plane is to offer help in escaping it. For a man, the only woman worth having is the one who understands what it means to be fallen, understands the basic wiring of human sexual response, and possesses at least a desire to escape that. Not to escape sexual union, but to make it what it ought to be. Same for the men; the only man worth having is the one who somehow manages resist the mindless demands of his sex drive and keeps his focus on what really matters in this world. That’s not the same thing as a man with no sex drive. What matters is how you fulfill those appetites, in part by not letting them be shaped by human stupidity.

That something so fundamental to human nature has been so completely perverted should surprise no one. Everywhere you turn, you run into this pervasive effort to control not just the terms of conversation, but the very thought process from which the conversation arises. Thus, Wikileaks only appears to be spilling the beans on secret government chatter. The chatter itself is simply opinionated stuff from good servants of the state, but Wikileaks is entirely selective in what chatter is served up, carefully preventing a full exposure of the whole. The idea is to steer all the debate into restricted channels of thought. If you aren’t aware Professor So-n-so promoted armed Marxist revolt, you might not understand how he became a refugee from his homeland. If someone tells you a piece of the truth — said professor wrote articles criticizing his government — it seems totally unjust. If you didn’t know almost every socialist/communist policy wonk and writer in America was funded by exceedingly wealthy big corporations, you’d think such policy was contrary to capitalism. If you didn’t know what fascism actually was, you’d easily believe it was a right-wing policy, when it’s actually another brand of lefty-socialism.

In any given generation, it will always be a tiny few who actually understand much. In times past, it was simply that education was too easily restricted to the few who had great resources. The most prosperous nations of the ancient past where the ones who made at least a token effort to offer a high minimum of education to as many as possible, typically through the religious institutions. The advent of the Internet is the first time we’ve seen the possibility of breaking the monopoly. That so few actually seek any measure of truth is a testimony to the success of TPTB. That’s because the Net is availability, not delivery. We can expect some change, but not as we would hope. Instead, the Net becomes one more tool for deception, as the availability itself slips away.

The window will not remain open much longer, I fear.

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Accountable Desire

Posted on June 22, 2011 by ehurst

Be sure your sins will find you out.

As a prophet of Jehovah, I have a duty to Him to speak when He places a burden on me. That duty includes an obligation to make sure I filter it through Scripture. The dynamic of the Spirit of God speaking to my spirit is not the problem; it’s when my fallen human brain seeks to process what comes out of that interaction. All the talent in the world isn’t worth much if I have invested no effort in making my intellect subservient to that higher authority. This is hardly static, and my grasp on things will surely mature as my mind is seasoned by consistent commitment.

If you are a believer, a follower of Jesus, I can hold up the standard of God’s Word and know He will hold you accountable. It may take some doing to convince you what I declare is, indeed, consistent with Scripture. However, if you show no sensitivity to the teachings of the Bible, I don’t have to regard you as a fellow Christian. Yes, how I treat you is entirely different, depending on whether you claim Christ. I hold Christians to a higher standard, because we share things others cannot.

That is not to say there is no accountability for non-believers. The Bible is loaded with examples of God sending His prophets to shake a finger at nations other than Israel. They had different covenants, to be sure, but the differences were contextual, not fundamental. When God told Israel He had both blessings and curses for them, depending on their obedience, He was making more obvious something which had always applied to all humanity since at least the days of Noah. Whether it was Noah or Moses, though, all humans were under God’s Laws by virtue of living and breathing the air.

Some years ago, I prophesied America would be destroyed. Granted, it didn’t require a prophet to realize the fragility of an economy dependent entirely on consumer spending. Such an economic model is very powerful, but exceedingly unstable. I knew that on a human level, and many better educated people saw it before I was born. Nobody listened to them. And from ancient times, the Lord has warned nations they should not ignore His moral standards, but no nation ever listens long, particularly America. Once I came to understand in the flesh how our very foundation was upon the Enlightenment and other godless philosophies, I realized we were doomed. The spirit of the prophet saw the Devil in the facts. But I could not know precisely how we were doomed without that prophetic calling.

So I warned back then we were facing natural disasters, a prophetic analysis of an obvious human mistake, and I was hardly alone. While the general principle of natural processes becoming critical on sinful nations is an ancient subtext, it required a more direct revelation from Spirit to spirit to know we would have numerous violent storms destroying infrastructure, that there would be floods and earthquakes. Mere intellect for me was not sufficient to grasp that God would use our risky human endeavors to go horribly wrong with truly vast destructive consequences. No, I didn’t predict the petroleum volcano in the Gulf of Mexico specifically, but I recognized it when I saw it. I didn’t even know we had nuke plants in a flood zone. I knew nothing of Japan’s nuke plants on the coast in a very active earthquake zone, but I’m not surprised so much of the fallout is landing on us.

And my prophetic spirit shouts even now: You ain’t seen nothing yet!

But what of the innocent children just yesterday left homeless by tornadoes in Nebraska, the flooding in Minot, and the thousands poisoned by fallout? I don’t expect non-believers, especially in the West, to understand. I do expect Christians to understand. I expect them to understand God’s Laws apply to those who are guilty, recognizing it falls upon all they hold dear. I expect Christians to receive the Word of God which says Western Civilization is damned because it rejects His standards, and to embrace those standards as soon as they are explained by a fellow believer. God says the parents are entirely accountable for their children until the point the child is capable of effectively rejecting and operating in defiance of those parents. At that point, they enter the domain of the wider community. However, until then, the parents are accountable only to God and their extended family for those children, and neither the wider community nor the state has anything to say about it.

If the parents allow the state to do evil when they hold some power to stop it, the parents have doomed those children. If the parents participate in evil themselves, they have surely doomed those children. Yes, it’s possible they don’t really know God’s standards, but if they did want to know them, they could. God didn’t hide Himself from anyone, ever, until they went past some point when He could be sure they would never have any interest. Every nation and culture in history has had some chance to find out His Laws had they wanted them.

So much is bluntly stated in Scripture, and I am no position to argue. I am bound in my spirit, the anchor of my existence. This is not something I chose, nor could have chosen. There is nothing to defend.

I can also warn Christians if you don’t embrace His Word and shed your false Western rationalistic approach to things, and if you don’t embrace how His Laws apply to you right now, those natural disasters will strike you, too. It’s obvious God can rip my home apart whenever it suits His purposes, because my life and possessions were forfeit the day I turned to follow Christ. The same for everyone in my household. But in general, He promised it was in His interest to grant the promises of His Laws to those who serve Him. That’s how He demonstrates His standards, by protecting those who obey Him. So right now, all this stuff keeps missing the trailer park where I live. Fires, tornadoes, diseases — all that stuff keeps passing by us. Even human evil meets limits, as the crooks and thugs keep getting caught and removed from us. This is not because we are so good; we surely fail all the time. But we care, and that’s the standard.

We are never satisfied we have it all worked out. We “hunger and thirst for righteousness” and keep trying to find a bigger mouth full. Those who fear have little to fear, but those who fear not are doomed. It’s too late for the nation to get right, but your household is in your hands right now, Americans.

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Domain of the Spirit

Posted on June 21, 2011 by ehurst

Try to imagine a religion blending elements from Mennonites and Dominionists.

Mennonites practice a passive avoidance of secular government. They realize you can’t ever completely get away from it, but given the state has never done the right thing for very long, there’s no sense being entangled when it will surely compromise the commands of God. Dominionists agree the government has been wrong most of the time in human history, but hold a belief they are commanded by God to fix that. Not so much with weapons of human warfare, but a sort of holy presumption: Proceed with what (they believe) God has commanded, and He will support it.

The problem is both are too Westernized. Mennonites just barely so, in that they seem to reject the obvious mysticism of Scripture. Otherwise, I get on well with them. Dominionists are Crusaders in a not-quite-pacifist disguise. They seem to believe once they gain sufficient leverage, a measure of dominance, it’s okay to use force. That’s because it’s “godly force.” I don’t get on very well with them, though I do have to admire certain elements of their planning. Their approach in terms of discipleship is altogether biblical, because Paul most certainly did write about exchanging local customs for a distinctly biblical culture. The problem is Dominionists mindlessly regard Western rationalist Christianity as biblical. Their this-worldly focus is almost blasphemous.

Jesus is not coming back to fix this world for us. I don’t know how He or the Apostles could have made that more clear. Nor did He commission us to do so. He told us the only fixing would be within our souls, and He expected us to demonstrate that fixing in how we live. However, the exercise of His power is not over this world at large, particularly through any human government institutions. Making such government a Dominionist theocracy does not make it any better; it’s still human government. The changes are a matter of how we think and operate as individuals and families. Dominionists at least get the family part right, but Mennonites do, too. Still, when Jesus returns the key is not our governing a fallen world on His behalf, but governing ourselves. The Scripture explicitly warns the world will only get worse until He comes back and removes it all, starting from scratch — a New Heaven and Earth, both.

So Dominionists miss the point largely because they are relentlessly Aristotelian. Aristotle rejected revelation, so his epistemology has no place in reading Scripture. You can’t reach a Christian understanding with a pagan intellectual approach. Aristotle’s logical and rational analytical framework is not universal; it’s not the only one and is definitively hostile to the Bible.

Christ came to conquer in hearts, and pointedly avoided political conquest. He could easily have done it, but going that route was precisely what Satan wanted. See the Temptations in the Wilderness. He bluntly avoided it when He could have had it out there where He fed the 5000. He could easily have made it on His terms, because the crowd was quite willing. The crowd remained willing until He told them it had nothing to do with a focus on this life, but a focus on the Higher Realm of the Spirit. His teaching on the Bread of Life drove the crowds away because it was so very specifically mystical. The crowds rejected mysticism; they wanted the literal bread and circuses. So to have the Dominionists demand a political solution on this fallen plane is a rejection of the Bread of Life.

The Domain of the Spirit is His dominion over human spirits, and human politics are immaterial. Biblical faith is inherently mystical and otherworldly.

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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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