Peace, Love and Understanding

Posted on September 5, 2010 by ehurst

I’m with Elvis Costello, at least when it comes to wondering what ever happened to the idea we should be living in peace. I really don’t know how much it was likely to catch on, but it seemed the be on the lips and minds of an awful lot of folks when I was young.

I suppose to a large degree that movement was co-opted into conforming to the needs of controlled opposition. But not everyone forget what openness and acceptance of others tasted like, and they never bought into the agenda. They never bought into the idea the world could only be a better place if everyone was on the same sheet of music. They never bought into the mythology of materialism and concrete results.

I recall a few genuine hippies saying each of us has to find our own peace, or we can’t offer peace to anyone else. However much they were misguided on some things, they were true mystics in that sense. Like everything else in this world, the majority of those participating were just buying into the fashion and trappings, not the philosophy. They said the words and sang the songs, but never really believed in giving folks room to explore their own inner space. If you don’t find it within, no one can bring it to you.

So much I agree with and teach, in part with my exploration of Christian Mysticism. The Three Pillars part could easily be seen in the title of this post. If you are committed to truth, you’ll have peace. If you are empathetic, you’ll have love for others. If you aren’t entangled, aren’t focused on measurable results, you’ll understand when others have trouble meeting anyone’s expectations.

When you embrace these things, you become a part of the one biggest threat to human governments everywhere. People who are truly free inside can’t be enslaved on the outside. What’s so funny about that?

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Meta: Blogging Under Copyright Attack (Updated)

Posted on September 4, 2010 by ehurst

One of the ways in which the free Internet is being shut down is frivolous copyright lawsuits against bloggers. Keep in mind I don’t support Ron Paul; though of all the politicians I know he comes closest to my position, he’s still miles away from me. Nonetheless, I support the academic standard of quoting reasonable portions of outside material for non-profit use on the Net. So this copyright troll attack is not simply illegitimate, but willfully evil.

I tend to agree with Mike Rivero on the issue that Righthaven can’t expect to make much money this way. Thus, it is far more likely this is part of the silencing of free thought and comment, a backdoor censorship project.

More importantly, I agree it’s critical we start looking at ways to prevent them touching us. Eventually TPTB may manage to shut the Net down, but this attack by increments calls for resistance by increments. In times past, I have played at getting free accounts on servers outside the US. Particularly Unix-type stuff, but you can do it from Windows by learning how to use PuTTY as the way to access a shell account and run your own mini-website. I once had a blog composed of simple static HTML webpages, and after a page got above a certain size, I rotated in a fresh page using a simple template. Then I added new articles at the top like regular blogs by simply editing the file.

There are lots of other ways to do this, and I would hope there would be a market, so to speak, for offshore havens of that sort in the future.

Update: This business of whacking Righthaven LLC and their primary client, Stephens Media (the name is variously reported), is going viral. See this post on using a Firefox site blocking addon and the list of affiliates who are in on this nasty business.

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Tired of Pretending

Posted on September 3, 2010 by ehurst

I’m worn out.

Everywhere I look it’s more surreal than any nightmare, worse than every horror movie you’ve ever seen. The Gulf of Mexico is filled with red tar, Corexit poisoning thousands of Gulf Shore residents, and both BP and the government using armed thugs to shut up anyone daring to speak up. In every state various government agencies keep finding ways to make it “legal” to disarm everyone “temporarily” when they most need to be armed for their own defense. It seems every large city is piling up a massive, incomprehensible record of police misconduct in the form of assaulting and murdering innocent civilians, and getting away with it. Senators talk of cutting off Social Security recipients from their own money paid into the fund, and cutting off disabled veterans from their pensions — disabled because of their decisions to start wars on lies. The President, of course, supports these efforts to fix the budget that way. And on, and on, and on.

Yeah, I suppose for most of us there is some vague semblance of things still approximating normal. Most of this stuff is kept out of sight, provided you walk along carefully with your government approved blinders in place.

Folks, the war is over. The US and many other nations around the world have suffered a coup d’état. Most citizens never noticed, but it happened just the same. We are now ruled by people who don’t know us, don’t care what we want or need, and have made plans to do whatever it takes to have their way with us. It’s too late to stop them.

This is the new “normal.” Worst of all, we haven’t yet seen the full flower of this stuff. Granted, I am utterly certain this whole thing will collapse and our ruling class will come to a harsh end, but it will be even worse for must of us, the ruled. I can’t pretend to know how it will all take place, and certainly not when, but it will be all too ugly and all too soon. I’m not going to pretend there is any hope. I suppose a few sections of the US and other parts of the West will find a way to peel themselves off this train wreck, but I can’t guess intelligently where those places will be. There are simply too many variables. Chaos is rising, and a whole civilization is in collapse.

There will be more days when I don’t post much here. Let me suggest you would better use your reading time at Sign of the Times and the likes of What Really Happened. Read it for yourself. I may find some connecting of dots now and then, and some philosophical comments, but there is simply too much evil going on at one time to keep track of it anymore. We’ll be lucky if the Internet as we know it continues operating.

Let’s stop pretending. All Hell is breaking loose.

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Flu Vaccine Quackery: The Evidence

Posted on September 2, 2010 by ehurst

Just thought I would offer this link to my few readers: Evidence-based Vaccinations: A Scientific Look at the Missing Science behind Flu Season Vaccines.

So let’s put all this in perspective in a rational, intelligent way. This far-reaching analysis of influenza vaccine trials shows that under common conditions, seasonal influenza vaccines have no benefit for 99 out of 100 people.

Furthermore, even this result is describe as being “an optimistic estimate” because nearly half of the vaccine trials were funded by the vaccine industry which tends to “produce results favorable to their products.”

Furthermore, some of the studies were carried out in “ideal” viral matching scenarios that rarely happen in the real world.

And finally, some evidence of harm from vaccines was simply thrown out of this analysis, resulting in a “harms evidence base” that was quite limited and likely doesn’t reveal the full picture….

Now, imagine if an herbal product were advertised on television as offering some health benefit, but it turned out that the product only worked on 1 out of 100 people who took it. That herbal product would be widely branded as “quackery” and the company selling it would be accused of false advertising. The company owners might even be charged with criminal fraud….

Once you understand all this, you now understand why it is an accurate statement to say “The FDA promotes medical fraud.”

Similarly, “The CDC promotes medical fraud.” As does the WHO.

The original article is rather long but worth your time should you encounter arguments which claim to have a scientific basis. You can show them — “Here are the facts.”

As always, don’t subject yourself or your family members to the toxic flu vaccine.

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Breathing Death into Life

Posted on September 2, 2010 by ehurst

Sometimes I run out of words for it. How many ways can America shake her fist in the face of God? I have no problem with just governments, even secular atheist governments, so long as they are just. Ours has lost all pretense, but somehow maintains the Orwellian abuse of words about the old virtues. But now “freedom” means slavery, and “bringing democracy” means imposing sharia law, and “public accountability” means holding the public accountable for believing government lies.

Sure, we have lots of decent people, but none of them are in government. And now our government is doing everything possible to make us less decent. I recall vividly the harsh and dehumanizing conditioning dished out in military training. There were words which once implied a certain noble honor, but in application meant no such thing. They tried in every way possible to make us brutal, inhumane, and willing to turn on anyone who didn’t go along with it.

Bad as that was, it’s getting worse. I was aware of such planning even back when I first encountered military service in late 1970s. Now it’s within reach, a certainty of our future reality.

What happens when you remove remorse? You remove a necessary definition of humanity. Without remorse over our mistakes, we never mature. Without nightmares of things we did, or might easily have done, we are monsters without souls. Only the sorrows we feel for doing harm to others, and a painful recognition of evil for what it is, can keep us from descending below the animals.

And what would be the product of such machine-men in war? Not a single life here would be defended, no improvement of safety. No, it is only to protect the interests of a wealthy elite. The only reason they can lie with such straight faces is they are already damned and soulless themselves. And they demand we join them as willful slaves, as if it’s the only thing for which we are fit.

America is dead; she died long ago. Mourn her if you must, but don’t be a fool thinking she can be raised from the tomb. God help us.

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One Way or Another, It Will Be War

Posted on August 31, 2010 by ehurst

While it remains just possible Israel could still decide to attack Iran, even with nukes, it seems to have faded for the time being. Instead, we have saber rattling at Syria, and actual war preparations for Lebanon.

There’s something about that Litani River. Israel demands absolute possession of their ancient homeland, but refuses to accept it in its natural condition. So they intend to rob every neighbor of their water rights and lavish it upon their stolen settlement lands.

We don’t have enough words to describe the unspeakable arrogance, racism, elitist hatred which oozes from every pore of this rogue nation. They’ve ordered up extravagant amounts of extra military fuel stocks, bought some new equipment and armaments, and nobody with even a single functioning brain cell could miss what all that means.

I seem to recall the prophet Jeremiah had a thing or two to say about that sort of thing:

“Therefore I will scatter them like stubble
That passes away by the wind of the wilderness.
This is your lot,
The portion of your measures from Me,” says the Lord,
“Because you have forgotten Me
and trusted in falsehood.” (Jeremiah 13:24-25)

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Bread for Life

Posted on August 30, 2010 by ehurst

I get sick of hearing and reading about the so-called “Paleo Diet” — presuming to represent what mankind ate based on evolutionary development. The promoters disparage anything grain-related as not what we were evolved to eat. As if they would know.

Well, I don’t really believe humans evolved from lower species. Yeah, I’m not quite a Creationist in that I don’t buy all the stuff they put out, but I do believe the Bible does provide a different picture from that of the heretic Darwin. Later evolutionary theories are even more laughable. The first humans were rather civilized and most certainly did eat grains. It was later, more brutish fallen mankind, cast out of the Garden of Eden, who became nomadic carnivores, a distinct decline from God’s ideal.

I don’t pretend to offer dating methods, but I find the arrogance of most Paleontology studies insufferable, as if we can somehow really figure much of anything from digging in the dirt. I’m quite agnostic about a whole range of such things, utterly certain we can’t know and don’t really need to know. Few ever bother to include a wider range of pertinent facts when they guesstimate what life was like even as near in time as the end of the Stone Age. Evidence of cataclysmic change is ignored because it’s easier to theorize on the model of steady state progress. All it takes is a single unrecorded shift in some portions of the earth’s crust to invalidate the entire house of cards used for dating pretty much anything.

That means I also don’t necessarily agree with the dates any particular group of scholars propose for biblical events. Those events were recorded with an entirely different purpose than most of them recognize, and in a manner which defies our Western analysis. It has to be read with the same Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) outlook as the writers had, and seeking the same purpose they had for writing. That would pretty much exclude easy dating of events, except in relative terms. In many cases, the writers skipped over events we would consider critical for historical relevance, but which they considered irrelevant to the divine narrative. Instead, they included a whole range of historically insignificant material because the point was mankind has no clue unless they first listen to God.

So any presumed Paleo Diet is actually more like trying to ape the filthy scum kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and descending into the same filth in rejecting God’s revelation. If anything, the heavy duty hunter like Nimrod is the archetype of evil on the earth. The Sons of God stayed in their tribal villages, ate their crops and herd animals, including whole grains, and blessed the Lord who provided all these things for their devotion.

Science be damned; God’s revelation covers what really matters. The demands of faith are inherently irrational, because what is in our best interests are seldom within our feeble intellectual grasp. The unspeakable horror of human hubris has done enough evil, thanks. I’ll follow Christ and rejoice in what that brings me.

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Windows on Insanity

Posted on August 28, 2010 by ehurst

Among my collection of fiction is Cavern of Madness. It portrays what it might be like from the inside when your grip on reality slips just a little. The point is to help readers understand what is typically called “mental illness.”

Sadly, unless the hero of my story does not get one of the few genuine scientists in the field as his doctor, he won’t get much help. I rather like the way Dr. Thomas Szasz insists most such trouble is actually a moral failure, not some actually sickness. In other words, regardless how they got there, the person having trouble has stepped off into the Twilight Zone by trying to get away from something obnoxious about reality. They didn’t face the genuine sorrows of life, and their attempts to escape into fantasy aren’t working. I may not agree with Dr. Szasz on treatment, but I certainly prefer his approach to psychotherapy than any other I’ve seen.

Most likely the hero in my story will end up on some brain wasting medication. That’s really quite sad.

Sad when you realize the causes of mental instability among Americans arises from a very badly broken Western Civilization, which is relentlessly materialistic. We have all sorts of hideous poisons in our environment and food delivery system. We have a medical system so utterly perverted by Big Pharma, oppressive mainstream orthodoxy of care and “professional standards,” and government meddling which always demands the worst possible options.

America itself is insane.

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Domestic Warfare Coming

Posted on August 27, 2010 by ehurst

The War on Drugs serves only one purpose: To insure the the price of the product stays high, and trade is very profitable. That way the CIA can get the highest dollar for their import trade from around the world.

But there are consequences which may be unintended. The CIA isn’t the only player in the game. Someone else is making a lot of profit — the manufacturers. Much of our supply comes from or through Mexico, and the manufacturers and shippers are well known to us as drug cartels. They are getting pretty busy lately. All the comforts of foreign warfare on our own doorstep.

Of course, it won’t stay in Mexico. It has already slipped across the border some time ago. As the violence of the warfare grows there, so it will grow here. Car bombs will show up across the border very soon, I expect. Open warfare in the streets and mass casualties among innocent bystanders will come with them. It’s just beginning.

As you know, our federal government has already shown the perverse intention of arresting and prosecuting anyone who dares to defend themselves from this scourge. No, I don’t mean the peasant workers who migrate; they are a different sort of problem. The drug trade doesn’t need them. And it doesn’t matter why our government won’t do its job. What we have to deal with is the utter certainty it won’t, and in the big middle of all the noise about “wetbacks” is the failure to do the one thing which would stop the drug cartel violence right quickly: stop the War on Drugs.

I’m not saying drugs aren’t a problem, but we haven’t begun to think about other ways which actually would work to reduce consumption. Yes, I know it would require a dramatic and unthinkable change in American society, so I’m not expecting any real change for the better. No, I’m expecting the border regions will see the Mexican Mafia Drug War stuff in full bloom just as it grows and prospers in Mexico. The War on Drugs simply becomes the War over Drug Profits.

It’s already started, but it has only just started. We haven’t seen anything, yet.

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The Other Side: 7 – Ripeness

Posted on August 26, 2010 by ehurst

There is no success, no failure. There is only commitment and persistence in the process. There are no real goals, no winning or losing, only engaging your imperatives. There is no frustration because you don’t expect to have control over yourself, even, much less a host of things around you.

However, living in the stream of your destiny does bring about an endpoint of ripeness. Nothing about this will be convenient, because the ripeness is not in your hands, and is totally independent of factors on this plane. Yes, of course your final crossing over to that Other Side will surely be the result of things done to your body here. Yes, you can foolishly disrupt the flow, and could go back to the prison, and even take your own life. That is not your destiny. You can only call it destiny when you are standing on your imperatives to meet that ripeness when it arrives.

The Other Side, your freedom, beckons you here in the prison. You must belong to it now, so that it claims you at ripeness, because any other path will miss that moment. Indeed, any other path cannot bring you to ripeness, only that final indignity of meaningless expiration. You would still be dead before it came, anyway.

If this Other Side calls to you, then we have before us the known clinical description of how to let it find you. It means dismissing all the things which make up the prison. Yes, until ripeness you have to acknowledge where you are, still in the prison, even as you belong to freedom. It’s the ultimate paradox we exist in this torn state primarily to let others see what they are missing.

They see someone who does not compete, but may well seem fully involved because it’s imperative. You finish the thing if it’s ripe, but can dismiss it all and stop right in the middle of anything for which there is no imperative to finish. Only if it serves destiny do you stay the course.

We cannot even say it’s a matter of being this or that, mostly because it’s not part of our understanding what we are, only what we must embrace. So the others see someone quite serene, at rest and internally free on that higher level. Your imperatives take from you the unquenchable urge to control, and you can afford to let others do and be what they think is demanded of them, regardless how it affects you. Sure, you can defend anything which your imperatives demand, but it’s never with anger. You can always let it go when the thing ripens. The tools of this level of existence — which is everything in it, attached to it — aren’t that important.

Ripeness comes often without warning, but you will know in that higher sense. If your mind has been taught to know its place, somewhere below that other faculty, it will know how to be told, and it will recognize the signal this or that thing is ripe. It has nothing to do with efficiency, rationality, cost in resources, or any measure which so chains those who still think the prison is freedom. So our minds are aware of these things, but they know it may not matter a whit against the imperatives. The sense of imperative declares when ripeness has come, and the mind obeys.

Plans, hopes and dreams of prisoners we recognize; with their sorrows and pains we empathize; but we don’t live there any more. We live on the Other Side, even before we reach it. We seek a destiny they cannot know, and a ripeness that takes us finally across to the Other Side.

(This ends the series. Permission is granted to copy any and all parts of this series of seven posts under the title “The Other Side”.)

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