Work In Progress 1: A grinding halt

Grind1
“This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence – to the spirit as well as to the body…It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliation. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.” -- Working, Studs Terkel

 

For the small group of readers of this blog, in case you may've been wondering, this has been a year of personal tragedy. Notwithstanding, I am grateful for the difficult but important spiritual lessons arising from this. This has also stopped in its tracks a project begun sometime last year which was meant to culminate in a book of sorts.

Rather than confine into obscurity some of the interviews that came about for this project, I've decided to put them here. This is an unfinished and perhaps never ending project. But I thank all those who gave me their time and shared their views: and to you all I do apologise that your effort is not being given a larger audience.

The people interviewed are at least a year or so older now.

Below is the draft preface I had in mind of which an extract is posted.

Greed1
The preface that never was

A few years ago when visiting and staying with friends in Vancouver, Canada, I underwent an epiphany. I remember looking at the lovely view of English Bay, the mountains and downtown Vancouver all in one sweep from a penthouse view of a friend. As I was planning my day and the walk I would take across Granville Bridge to the downtown area and further on to visit some second hand bookshops, I recalled that if I were to traverse even further down I would be at the East End.

Part of the East End, which is next to Tinseltown cinema multiplex and Chinatown, was a very different side of the city. There not only will you find poverty but drug addicts shooting up openly in alleys in daylight. I remember once even seeing inert bodies lying in the middle of unclean streets which would over qualify for an archetypical movie setting for seediness. Police cars would drive by oblivious of the junkies and those peddling their addictive wares. The cops would not even stop to take a closer look at the bodies lying still in some streets to see if they had any life left in them.

I asked my friends what they thought of the remarkable contrast of the wonderful city and beautiful country they lived in with the inexplicable mess in the East Side -- this included mentioning to them the drug related violence in other parts of the city.

Most of the time my friends would give the answer that the reasons why this deplorable state existed was due to poverty in some instances and ‘wrong choices’ as the obverse side of ‘freedom’ in their land. Corruption among officials was also quoted as a perennial problem which also haunts so many other societies.

But let me give some more context to all this.

In 2006, I had dropped out of the System in the sense that I was not fully employed and had to live on a tight budget. This was not my first experience of such living but I did not realize that the economic hardship the world is facing was going to see so many others placed not only involuntarily in my position, but living on an even tighter budget.

In 2006 and 2007 I was on an extended meditation retreat at a Buddhist monastery in British Columbia, Canada. After the retreats I continued my stay there with friends before returning home to Singapore. The retreats were in a forested area where we lived off the grid but comfortable enough for most lay people to be able to adjust to. You did have to be sensitive to not frightening the lovely deers around the area and be cautious about running into bears, grizzlies too. I remember running into a couple of large grizzlies and standing perfectly still while recalling all the spiritual teachings I knew to stay calm as I was all alone on an afternoon walk in the woods. But on seeing a human, it was the grizzlies who turned tail and ran (they can really run, don't be fooled by the size).

Minutes later, I found empty bullet shells along the pathway I was on: some hunters must have been busy doing great PR work for humanity.

Later in 2007, I visited Sri Lanka when Colombo was in a near state of emergency with the then ongoing ethnic violence holding the island in its grip. With all the soldiers and armaments around in a quasi siege like atmosphere, I understood clearly why much of Nature has suffered at the hands of mankind. At that time I was also staying at a Buddhist monastery but was not on a retreat as such. I was taken to view a meditation centre that was being built in a beautiful hilly tea growing area and which I was supposed to live at as a coordinator of retreats in the near future.

This unfortunately did not work out in part due to funding problems for the meditation centre that delayed its construction and other issues that cropped up of a more bureaucratic nature that proved to be one obstacle too many. It is still being constructed.

Then in late 2008, I was on my third extended retreat this time in England. After the retreat I stayed with some family members who were residing in the suburbs of London. During the period of 2008 and 2009, due to certain experiences and some books that fell into my hands, I was propelled towards  many things including the project that has now led me to write these words.

...Some of the books that launched me towards my current project included Karl Marx’s Das Capital, Friedrich Engel’s The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844, Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, Jack London’s The People of the Abyss, George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London, The Jungle (the unexpurgated version) by Upton Sinclair, Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries (and his other major works), James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South, and William T. Vollmann’s Poor People to name the ones that come easily to mind.

...We have to see the people around us as our sisters and brothers and understand that we are all part of the collective consciousness of the planet. This means that no one who is underprivileged or living in poverty, even if it seems that they do so out of the choices they have made, should be left alone to bear the consequences and not receive any help.

We are truly indeed one another’s keepers and we should come up with new ideas to issue in a new paradigm of creating and measuring growth and move away from the browbeaten capitalist mode of competition at all cost, and greed over human dignity. We need to centre within our beings care for the planet, our environment, all living species and, above all, place the highest value on human beings over grasping for money.

The voices represented here are based on interviews with some people whom I know and those whom I do not. In many instances, I have let the people speak for themselves and that will be their way of directly communicating with you. They are speaking, in some cases, with much more thought put in than they would in a casual interview by someone who is just performing a journalistic function.

Not all those interviewed were comfortable in communicating entirely in English, but they managed what they could and I re-checked with them what they said before writing it up as quickly as possible on the same day I spoke to them from my usually verbatim notes.

Three basic questions were asked of all I interviewed and spoke to:

What is your idea of being poor?

What is your idea of abundance?

Why are people poor/What is poverty?

...Those who were not comfortable in English mainly responded to the last questions and as the dialogue went on I clarified what they said and they responded in their own way to the first two questions as well.

I had not read Studs Terkel when I thought of this project and began it, but was pleasantly surprised and impressed by the wonderful work he did as I started to read (among others while finishing my project) -- Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, and Working (people talking about their work).

The biggest influence on me probably came from sections of Marx’s Das Capital: Volume One, and the books by Engels, Mayhew, Orwell and London. I had studied formally philosophy and political theory as an undergraduate and over the years kept up with my reading. In graduate school I was steeped in literary theory and aesthetics. But only in recent times did I re-read many works I had studied and then some as the scales finally fell from my eyes.

The second part of this book looks at possible economic models that can be used for firms or enterprises of all sizes. There needs to be a move away from the way most businesses are run. In particular, we need to move away from how mega corporations are run with their obsession in serving profits and shareholders at the expense of the rest of the planet.

The time has come for this to change radically.

And so,

Grind2
Daily grindings

Madam Sawami (Aged 64, road sweeper, unable to retain her job after reaching 65. She has since been looking for work and I have no idea if she has been successful):

"I can work only now till 67 years old. So three more years. I want to be by myself. I want independence. My children and I, problems, cannot get along. I have my own problems don’t want to hear what their problems with their husband or wife. Then I must hear their wife’s problems also.

I want flat of my own, single room. I ask the HDB (Housing Development Board, Singapore) to help me and they say – you can wait, we have to help plenty people with no house living now on the beach. You have problem, they also have problem. What kind of help, this? Why can’t government help me? I have done nothing wrong, but government can’t help me in this, just to get a single room flat for myself.

What I earn, only $1000 one month…so I can pay installment say less than $100 a month, but please don’t take away $500 a month from me for a single room flat.

As long as I can work, help myself, have enough to eat, I am happy -- no one else will help, so I must help myself.

Now, I am alone. My children all forget what I do for them when young all, now see, I am on my own.

Can you help me with my house problem, I don’t know who [to] ask…HDB don’t want to help."

 

Mr Lam (Aged 62, food stall holder at a small hawker centre from which he rented his stall. The stall closed down as it was bought over by someone who has since set up a snazzy restaurant. No idea if he has since found another place to sell food):

"I come from a poor family. Many children, I am one of the eldest. My parents had a small stationery shop, and we managed, all of us. Now, my wife and me work at this food stall. We are not rich, if I can earn say $1,500 month I am happy, it is enough. We manage.

People who are rich -- say they earn $4,500 to $5,000 or much more…are they happy? Money is one thing, happiness something else. As the eldest in my family and myself, we had to be the bread winners to help my parents and sisters and brothers.

My family have the old Chinese thinking, the older ones sacrifice education all to support the younger ones. So my education highest – secondary 2…what to do. My English not so good, but I learn on my own by using English language tapes when I was 30 years old. I worked many things, like taxi driver and clerk in office. I also try to improve my English by speaking to those with good English, environment important to learn and practice language.

Because of my and my older brothers sacrifice, my younger sisters and brothers well educated. One of my brothers just retired as a teacher, he went to university. My daughter also is fine, she is working.

English is very important, the main business language. I think the government policy is correct, importance for English and own language or second language. Must balance with language for your own culture. But English is important. Now people can learn Japanese and French in school. Other languages very important. My younger sister learn Japanese at a language school and now she works in a Japanese company.

We were poor, but what is important is good family, happiness and health. Don’t always think of money, money, money! This rich people what happiness they have? If you are rich and happy, good for you. But most of them not like that. Everyday worry, cannot sleep, always thinking about how the business good, can make it, can make more money…all the problems of business…no peace of mind. So what if you have so much money?

Some people become poor because they don’t know how to save. They spend all the time, they want nice house, car, everything. Then when employment difficult, cannot get job, how? Cannot pay installments, become financial problems. You look at the young, they only want to have good time, spend, sports car, but never think of future, no savings. Then one day, if they cannot find work, what to do?

Some become poor because they gamble, throw away money. They think they will always be young or healthy and have a job. They don’t save. Gamble, then they lose all the money, so what to do?

The future cannot tell, cannot predict, better not to waste money and think no problems one day.

Also, I think sometimes people are poor, like in many very poor countries…because of karma. Their past life, many, many years ago, something they did, now they have to pay back. Hopefully after this life, it will be better for them.

Rich people should be generous, help the poor with donations, charity, not just here but help them in other countries also. What for keep all the money and don’t share? You cannot take with you when you leave [die], so why keep and don’t want to give?

The rich cannot enjoy life sometimes, they are so busy, so busy with time and making money. No time for family, loved ones, children…what kind of life? Even those who are top people like government, the ministers, no privacy? What kind of family life can they have, always their time is for someone else…their time and appointments all planned for them…what kind of freedom do they have?

I think I have enough, if I retire now still can survive. One of my customers who is rich and live in expensive condominium. He is 70 years old, and his wife is paralysed waist down and is in a wheelchair. He has two sons, both rich. None of them have time for him and his wife…they call on the mobile phone to find out…but too busy making money. They don’t care about their parents. So what for all this money?

When this old man tell me the story, he cry, the tears in his face as he tell me what his children are like. He and the wife are so lonely."

 

Ruwan (Aged 29, foreign worker, caregiver from Sri Lanka. Due to workplace exploitation and problems he returned home and his current situation is not known):

"People are poor because they sometimes are lazy. Not always because others at fault. They sometimes don’t know how to manage life. They throw money away and waste on things like drinking and women. Sometimes it is government’s fault why people poor. Government also don’t manage properly the country then whole country can be poor.

But to me, man is poor because it is own fault. Son from a poor family can actually do well if he studies hard in school and all, but also rich man’s son doesn’t do well because he is lazy and doesn’t want to work hard. What is important is the effort you want to have in things.

Sometimes religion can help explain all this. Like in Buddhism we are told life is dukkha, lot of suffering. So also karma is also responsible for our life. But during time of Buddha we are told there was lot of evil in world. Also people have different belief like worshipping the stone and water and all. But today, to me, also the same. When we pray to the statue we are praying to a stone or we belief in luck and things.

People the same even today from Buddha’s time till now. Now also we worship trees, water and earth. But this is not always a bad thing, sometimes this because we show respect for all around us. Nothing wrong with that. We are just grateful. Just as children who respect to parents or we show respect to our rice and food and drinking water, like in Sri Lanka, it is just a good habit.

Also, we can choose what we do, so not always karma to blame. We can choose to good or evil, we are responsible for choosing, so we are responsible also our life.

Money is important but it is not the most important. I think most important is happiness. If you’re not happy what for money? Most important is happiness to enjoy life but not waste time, meaning spend time to be happy with family and friends. That is what is important.

Nowadays when people supposed to smarter than animals, actually no difference. They are same. So much killing people do, they are not so clever. Why must there be so much killing?

In Singapore, people think money is number one. Everything is about money. People here are well to do, lot of money, money needed for everything here but parents no time for children. They put their time in money not the children. Main thing here is material things.

Children here always with maid, no parents spending time with them. So just as parents put children in nurseries because they no time for them, now children also put parents in nursing home because they also no time for them…all busy earning money.

Millionaire is not happy. He has worries like who will steal his money and property. Who can he trust? Will he loose all he have. Cannot sleep, no peace of mind. Poor man can sleep, if he has just enough for family he is okay…he doesn’t have so much problems and worry. No worry about who is going to rob him.

I see that in Singapore, it is like a car. Everything supposed to work well, very efficient, like car put in petrol make sure engine working then all is fine. But people here have no life. They are not happy, they have no time for family and friends.

My working place is a nursing home. Next to me is a child nursery. So I can see everyday what happens. They parents come and put the child in the nursery. Kids crying when hungry for mothers milk, but they get other milk not from humans. The cow is their mother because that is the only milk they get.

So I notice, parents come and put children in nursery then when children grow up they put parents in nursing home. I see and understand this for I experience this everyday. Singapore clients of my nursing home say what to do, they have to work to earn living and no choice but to put parents in home. They say in Singapore without money you cannot live, nothing you can do.

The parents have no time for children, and one day the children also no time for parents.'

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Wan (Izwan, aged 25, retail supervisor at a supermarket chain):

"What does being poor mean? I think if your parents cannot provide for you, then you’re poor. If you’re grown up and cannot provide for yourself, or don’t want to, then it is because you’re lazy – so again you’re poor. If you don’t want to be poor, then you must be hardworking and provide for yourself.

A lot depends on your capability and that also depends on your education level. If you grow up without much education then you are stuck with a low paying job. No education, no high paying job. Or you just have a mediocre job.

My education is ‘O’ Levels and I am trying to upgrade myself. You must upgrade and work for it, otherwise you only can blame yourself. I have two jobs, in the day time I help out here at the coffee stall next to this market. Evening time I work as a retail supervisor at a supermarket. That is the only way I can save and have enough.

With what I can earn I provide for my parents and am saving to get married and try to own my own home. Actually in Singapore you can get jobs, that’s not the problem. It is the need for money always. The cost of housing here is high. In the long run, your property is your investment, but to try to own one – maybe 30-40 years to pay the loan to just own your roof over your head. Then the interest for the loan will kill you. Trying to settle down here is hard. You have to remember you have to feed your family.

Religion to me helps in providing knowledge about the world and your life, I mean, it’s up to each person whether they want to follow what the religion says. But you must help yourself first. If you’re lazy and don’t want to help yourself, why should God help you? You help yourself, then God will help.

I think there are people who want to help those who are poor, but also a lot of wayang [Malay word implying 'theatrics'] taking place, making a big show trying to attract attention to themselves, like the charities here – the big ones – they make a big show. Also groups or companies, like that who donate want attention only just advertise themselves and promote themselves. If you’re genuine you just give, if you give don’t make a big show and all the publicity. They just want brand recognition.

I think if we have problems in Singapore, realistically speaking, most people won’t help each other. I read a lot of books on World War Two, you see what human nature is like, here or anywhere else. People tend to be selfish, they rather not help others. Focus on the individual only.

In this world you need money. To me if you have no money then you have no happiness. Money needed for everything. It can’t be avoided. The coffee and tea cups I clean up on these tables, you can drink from what is left over from them if you don’t want to pay for it. But then, someone already had to pay for it before you can drink the remainder in the glasses. Again, you need money to have anything.

In the end you must help yourself, you must be hard working and that also depends on your health. We need self responsibility in everything.

My father’s advice to me is bear your own suffering but don’t let others suffer because of you.'

 

Sam (Aged 63, barber):

"I have been barber since 1966. People are poor because sometimes they don’t want to work hard. You have choice, you can try and do your best or just give up. Work enough so that you at least have enough to eat. Some people are lazy, but they think they can get high paying job and also easy job. Younger generation now, some just don’t want to work, many don’t want to be barbers.

Some who are poor now actually only want to enjoy life, they spend money on woman and throw away money. No savings for rainy day. If I earn say $50 one day and spend $10 or $20 that day, the rest I save. Must save for old age. Don’t rely on government for everything, government here helps but in the end, you must help yourself.

Some younger ones today, no ambition, they see their father is a postman they follow him, don’t want to try and go beyond. They should study hard and upgrade and move up a little, but don’t want. In Singapore, if you cannot study well, hard to get good job. Here you must try to enter university then at least can earn $3 000-5 000 a month otherwise, how?

In Singapore you must pay for everything. Here there’s no large land area where you can have rice or things, if you cannot earn money then how to survive here? Government helps but again they cannot just give welfare always, we must also help our self. How else to pay for your food, housing and all.

To me health is important. No health you cannot work to earn money. You have money and no health, what for? No point. If you have health, not much money, still okay, can work.

One thing government here helps old people, at least the health and hospital care, they give some assistance to the aged. That’s a good thing.

Also we must respect all religions. Must have tolerance, and we must respect one another and not disturb each others belief. Again in Singapore, people do show tolerance of different religions. We should treat all people fairly, like our brothers, all are our family.

[At this point an Indonesia lady who is a foreign worker here and a friend of Sam’s family and came to visit them asked in Bahasa what the interview was about. She then added her views stating that in Indonesia and in Singapore only the poor help one another. She claimed the rich drive by and look down on the poor and blame the poor for what they are, not understanding that sometimes they can help. She then departed and the interview continued with Sam.]

Yes, I think all is a matter of attitude. Sometimes the rich here don’t want to help. They see poor people as different and separate from them. Must change the attitude. You find that people who have little to give are the ones who want to give, not always those who have plenty. We need more responsibility and kindness in our society. Not enough of it. [He used the Malay term timbang-rasa which means 'sympathy']

Have seen people in accidents and hardly the rich ones stop to help, the ordinary people seem to help mainly. But you must help, we must support each other.

Must be humble, not proud. That’s why I try to make my customers happy. I listen to them and do my best and try to provide service. In the work place must be professional, never mind what kind of work, must be the best, do your best. Younger people the attitude is different, they show they are unhappy and don’t know how to treat customers. That’s why I say, attitude is most important.

Also can’t blame God for everything. We have free choice, God gives us intelligence as humans so must think first, must think before doing things. Singapore now has some floods but actually in this case no point blaming government because it is act of God. But also there are poor people no homes have to stay on the beach. This is also wake up call for government to do more for those people who need some help.

I worry about bringing gambling into Singapore like casinos. People become greedy and try cheat and nothing good can happen from this. You know, I have one customer who works in the security of one of the casinos. He told me that in one day they catch usually 30 people – 30 people, you know – for cheating or trying to cheat. Foreigners and Singaporeans.

People do anything sometimes for money."

 

Anon. (Aged24, university student who has since graduated):

"1. What is your idea of poverty?

Poverty is entirely thought based for me as with everything else. I can be materially rich, but very very poor inside if I'm stingy, greedy, unhappy, etc. Likewise, I can be poor materially, but if my thoughts are calm and I can find happiness -> I'm rich. And sooner rather than later, my world will change to represent that abundance.

2. What is your idea of abundance?

Abundance is also a mindset to me. First in the mind then in matter. It is an attitude of gratitude, etc, etc, etc. That leads to a wonderful life affirming philosophy regardless of the pain that life can bring. Pain is necessary but that does not mean suffering is.

3. Why are people poor/why is there poverty?

This is very complex. I cannot understand sometimes why there is suffering and such debilitating poverty in Africa, South America or even in Singapore with the cardboard mattress 'uncles and aunties' [references to elderly people]. As in life can really be a very very painful sad experience for many people.

Some of poverty is created because of institutions which destroy our birthright to abundance and freedom and prevent information from being made public (that would eventually release our reliance on many things), but also some poverty is individual, just individual laziness, over reliance on governmental subsidies/or external care/support from children/parents, and leeching off of others' work. It's a human problem at the end of the day. And we do create the institutions that are reflective of our human flaws. Until we evolve out of our ugliness, poverty and suffering will continue to exist in this world."

 

Anon. (Aged 58, hotelier, now retired):

“1. What is your idea of poverty? Poverty in my eyes, is when someone does not have a roof over his/her or their head, hardly a job, no utilities whatsoever like electricity and water, unable to have access to decent medical facilities, barely have one meal a day, unable to send their children to school etc.

2. What is your idea of abundance?

Lavish and luxurious living, wastage and use of spending in a vulgar fashion; what I mean is - there is no harm in being rich and able to afford every materialistic need that is considered essential in such an instance. But to waste on lavish parties unnecessarily, (again, not my business) but it is sad to see such living, when the less fortunate can benefit from some of these monies. Perception of "Abundance" could be seen in different ways. In my life, I would pray for good health, and perhaps, my life may seem in abundance to some or of those less fortunate than myself. Abundance is where one does not need to crave for anything else, or have any more wants in life, e.g. a healthy bank account balance, travel frequently with enough expense money, good medical benefits, own luxury vehicles, homes which is evident in most cities in any country. There is so much more that could be added on to what is my idea of abundance.

3. Why are people poor/why is there poverty?

Could be born poor, lazy with no vision or ambition to improve this situation? See how people beg on the streets, when they could easily work in a house as a housemaid, houseboy etc. Just do any kind of work rather than beg!

(I have been a hotelier for 30 years, besides being a sister, sister-in-law, housewife, mother, grandmother, and being a citizen of a country which has an average standard of living...worked hard to do what may be seen as abundance in the eyes of some).”

 

First as tragic farce, then as slapstick

Farce2
ONE of Karl Marx's quotable quotes includes his comment that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. So much of the twentieth century will be remembered as tragedy. So much of the last century will also be seen as farce.

This is because while we had two world wars, we then followed them by a cold war and the idea of a mutually assured destruction which was supposed to ensure the peace. Is it any wonder that one of the hit comics to come out from the 1950s was Mad with its farcical mascot Alfred E. Neuman and the incessant intrigues of “Spy vs. Spy” an espionage spoof.

From the quasi-serious and stylish early Bond films to the movies becoming caricatures of themselves in the 80s, and in the epitome of the cold war which culminated in a sense with the farce/slapstick of Austin Powers: you knew something bizarre was afoot in the mass psyche.

Ultimately, the whole idea of a nuclear sword of Damocles masquerading as an ‘umbrella’ meant to keep the peace (sic), was meant by the controllers of our world to initiate planet earth into an armed camp scenario. The manifesto of the 20th century is clearly the perverse obverse side to the Orwellian axiom 'war is peace', where peace would also mean war in some form.

We also had the revolutions of the 1960s which resulted in a kind of change that descended into drugs, riots and assassinations throughout the world of various leaders. The global stage was fast becoming a multifarious drama aptly expressed by Polonius as “tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral” and whatnot.

But we took it some steps further. War is peace and peace is war. We started to wage peaceful war and have war within the ambit of peace. We started blind material obsession, profit mongering and a death-wish driven consumerism (in the background, like music from the Doors, were many so-called low intensity conflicts of which Vietnam was a highly intense one).

Farce4
Yet we became sophisticated. Our consumer death-wish would see us decide to ‘shop till we drop’ and have euthanasia via ‘death by chocolate’. We would allow our unbridled appetites and destructive individualism to be manipulated by the media and legislate politically various ways to allow ourselves to die (politely called ‘pulling the plug’). We also took experimentation with execution ranging from hemp rope, bullets and electricity, to chemicals with lethal injection.

We used the knowledge gained from biological and chemical warfare from world wars to start poisoning one another. Logically, it meant we ended up using stuff like DDT in pesticides and called it progress: what was used to kill other humans in battle zones seeped into the food chain and destroyed not only various life forms and upset the ecological balance, but also had a nefarious effect on people. Yes, malaria and other diseases need control but do we have to harm ourselves as well?

In the name of science and progress, we have the mash up of big capital with scientific endeavour and academic research, and we discover that scientifically – regular and extensive use of synthetic chemicals in our food (and continued mass use of pesticides) are good and profitable. Any attempts to criticize any of this is a sign of unscientific irrationality. We learn that smoking doesn't necessarily cause cancer, and radiation from electrical equipment, hand phones and worse, microwave ovens, are not only profitable with the correct perspective but anyone against it lives in the dark ages.

Farce0
The point is we are in the dark ages, the age of  Kalki as the Hindus would call it. We have reached the point where we believe that science and technology are in themselves an amorphous new Acropolis of human civilization while becoming completely cut off from our spiritual roots, and we wonder why the world is the way it is. This is farce-slapstick and well beyond Polonius's combinations.

But what takes the fruit cake is our belief that the vacuous ideology of Democracy is the ultimate goal of civilization. The West will even go to war to not only defend but spread it like a virus. This is where we come to the point in the 21st century where we go beyond Marx's dictum and have evolved our history inexorably into slapstick.

Make no mistake, slapstick is appropriately defined as that which involves “exaggerated violence and activities which exceed the boundaries of common sense”. If that isn’t a defining characteristic of the world, nothing is.

Despite all the fuss over elections in so-called democracies, the millions spent on advertising and marketing, media commentaries, stump speeches, and all sorts of promises, are people really better off?

Capitalism
Curiously, things are worsening economically and politically worldwide. The counterpoint to this is that the change in the Middle East is a sign that even there one finally encounters limits to what people will take. It shows just how low things have gone that people are starting to rise up in places they normally don't against their regimes anyway. This is only the beginning.

The reason is that despite the rhetoric of politicos the world is governed, not by politicians (though they may think they are in charge), but by vested interests that actually determine to a large extent (for the worse) how things go. We mean here the international banking cartel and their families and children in the form of mega corporations and defence industries world wide: most born out of wedlock.

All these not only operate in the dark, with as much lack of transparency as possible and have produced and proliferated a scientific-technological dark age. These efforts are abetted by our ignorance and unwillingness to face up to many truths about the world. Science, tainted by self serving ego and big money is sadly the willing handmaiden of corruption in its many forms.

This is the high end dark age where we have reached the point of no return and must find our way back into the light. And it is going to be a struggle. Why would the dark age perpetrators make it easy for anyone to escape their clutches? This is still not the funny part, but here it comes.

With each successive 'democratically' elected government you have the same situation which is unemployment, deep emotional imbalance in homes and the work force, divisiveness and resentment expressed through high-tech means, the rich getting richer (though some get their hands duly burnt) and the poor spreading everywhere. Even to be middle class now is to be poor in some way. Global currencies are generally running on empty and the US dollar is a joke (trying not to use 'farce' too often).

No one government dares to challenge and upset the banking and corporate cartel because they are either hostages to them or are party to their intrigues (sometimes a combination). How many governments dare to tell banks and corporations to get their act together, enforce discipline and ensure transparency in their activities unequivocally? Until laws are changed to make banking and corporate institutions accountable to governments and the public, they will never serve the interest of the people.

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For governments to actually act like governments would be to risk the banks and businesses telling some governments to take a hike (and give somebody else their tax hikes, like the people), as they threaten to go pack up their stalls and go to some other market place (when some do so, experts call it 'globalization'). In other words, governments – especially democracies – shiver in their pants when confronted by the dark spirit Mammon who says it, and it alone -- the guiding spirit of the money changers of the world who are always uniting -- is responsible for the circulation of money and work opportunities for the measly citizens.

Marx was wrong in that it was not the spectre of communism that was haunting the world as it was already possessed by the dark forces of capitalism. And as in the case of most exorcisms, it isn’t secular stuff that is going to rid the world of incubi that have impregnated the world with the money changers’ teachings of neo-classical economics, greed, constant sense of lack, mindless competition, and fear mongering. Sometimes a war or two are thrown in at bargain prices.

Despite pomp and circumstance of political office as in that of the President of the United Corporations of America (USA), for instance, you see in action those who are impotent to effect any real change. Whatever change that is enacted must result in confrontation with the money changers and then who cares what your title/post is? You can talk and shout all you want in congress and parliament, but you know bloody well who runs things around here.

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Democracy today is the hiding place of fear. It is the fear and subjection of people and their elected representatives in not angering too much the money changers. We have bamboozled ourselves to thinking we are in charge and that democracy means freedom and a whole lot of other niceties: but ask yourselves – how much has really changed?

Don’t be fooled by the ‘human nature’ argument. Sure, the inability of humans to govern their emotions has resulted in their having to elect others to govern them; the inability of humans to have self control has resulted in their surrendering their moral conscience to institutional religion and corporations. We even have to surrender our sense of ethics to nebulous and harmful notions of ‘corporate social conscience’ (here farce turns into slapstick) and thinking that what causes harm to humans and the planet can actually do good to one and all.

It’s like killing all that’s good in one part of the world and then going to some corner and planting a fruit tree, which in turn gets killed etc, and there will be no amount of fertile earth left to make reparations for the ambition of the money changers.

We can travel into outer space and get involved in the pornographic details of nano technology but are unable to create sustainable, healthy, ethical and abundance sharing enterprises (guess why?).

There is something wrong on Earth.

We have reached such a point of pathology that we can listen to the mainstream media with all its amorality and immorality as stories flit from heinous crimes and acts of brutal violence, to royal weddings and scores of football games. We have become so desensitized that we can discuss the destruction of a human being’s life or reputation and with aplomb switch to the weather and what stocks to invest in.

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This schizophrenic tendency which is regarded as normal today, also sees in democracies huge amounts spent on annual dinners, official openings of events and launches of some damned thing or the other; but all the time we have people who are in need and want.

Here comes more farce-slapstick, where you don’t know whether your tears come from laughter: we can even use scripture to deviously say, ah, but there will always be the poor. Must we deprive others of a good time as there will always be those in dire straits. Come on and think of all the money that is splashed around, what? This is scientifically proven by economics as ‘Growth’.

There is no reason for us not to celebrate and be happy. It always helps to smile and show kindness to people around you as that tends to generate a similar response. But in public life there must always be a sense of balance, decency and morality to know that you can’t throw state money on banquets when your citizens are going through difficult times. Some call this is disgraceful, most call it democracy.

Is it any wonder then that no matter who you vote for, things are the same? Unless things actually become worse as is happening now and as it will continue. Some resolution must be in the offing as this state of international debt and swindle is obviously reaching critical mass.

Instead of clinging on to worn out and failed ideas like democracy, which hide the grip of the money changers of the world, we need to look at new ways and ideas of empowering citizens. Democratic practices in the use of elections and ensuring a broad representation of citizens in decision making will be a necessity. This will tend to provide the ethical leavening necessary to raise some sort of system that serves people and life in general. It might even reduce wars.

The changes needed to initiate most of the positive aspects indicated here involve not changes in the poorer countries, though it helps. The world changes and bringing about a just, fair, and ethical grounding to local and international affairs starts with the democracies. They are the source of so much of the world's trouble. Once the democracies change, the world will follow suit. If the people in democracies do not push for change through citizen activism and new ideas on governance and economic practice, then things are going to get a lot rougher.

And this would also require visionary and moral leaders, and those who are not afraid of the money changers. None at present seem to exist that any of us are aware of in a manifest manner. We need leaders who realize that there’s more to life than protecting one’s bank balance. We need citizens who realize that they have to stand up for what is right and that they need to let go of fear and stop allowing themselves to be kept in perpetual thralldom by the money changers.

Which also means that if you fear adversity, you will fear change. No one wants unnecessary hardship but unless we speak up and act now, difficulties can only mount.

The solutions to many of these problems are spiritual ones which involve not only acting from conscience, but understanding that there is divine purpose to everything. That when faith, compassion, common sense, forgiveness and daring are mixed judiciously, the people of the world will finally be able to chase the money changers out of the temple once and for all.

But it starts from chasing out fear from the temple of our hearts.

We are fast approaching the event horizon in history where we will have to create and adopt a new way of living that safely takes us into the time and space of post-capitalism and post-democracy.

To end, I must mention a joke from many years ago about how in the Soviet Union scientists managed to revive the embalmed Lenin (this is actually miraculous as the man’s brain and all his organs have been removed as part of the preservation process).

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Vladmir Ilyich was then sequestered in a comfortable room to acclimatize to the world he was living in. As the days went by, he asked for and read voraciously many newspapers to catch up with what was happening in the USSR and the world. After several days of this routine, his handlers entered the room as usual to bring him his tray of food. But the man was gone.

There on the table, was a note: ‘We must begin again!’

We have to put aside all preconceptions and ideologies and, most of all fear, and open ourselves to the truth we have always known within but have refused to acknowledge, that indeed – we must begin again.

 

 

Arbeit Macht Frei: Part 2

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Path to Perdition

The world has been fixated for decades in using GDP (gross domestic product) as measurement of economic growth thereby replacing all humane and spiritual values as a means of providing balance to what not only genuine growth is, but whether in the process we are leading even vaguely meaningful lives. The tendency to focus exclusively on the misguided notion of ‘productivity’ at all costs has led to the kind of ‘growth’ that is not only destructive all round but ruinous to our health as human beings.

Sofsky goes on to write about the extermination process of the CCs (bold and italics mine):

“A death factory is a work organization whose purpose is the annihilation of large numbers of human beings…Mass annihilation was organized on the basis of a division of labour. The process was integrated into a kind of assembly line, its stations coordinated in temporal sequence. Killing was mechanized by the installation of stationary gas chambers, into which hundreds of persons were lured and then poisoned by carbon monoxide or hydrocyanic acid fumes. The death factory was an apparatus that functioned smoothly, virtually trouble-free, working at a high capacity and speed. A death train arrived at the ramp in the morning; by the afternoon, the bodies had been burned, and the clothing brought to the storerooms.” (p259, Sofsky)

No doubt, ‘productivity’ can be applied to the above. No doubt efficiency and high volume of results are showcased by the quote. But to even ask at what ‘price’ belies the horror of what Sofsky’s words describe. Yet we have bought into this system where whatever the human, environmental and spiritual cost, there is the need to mindlessly churn out stuff to keep GDP ‘growth’ going. Never mind the non-monetary cost, anything that doesn’t add to the mechanized numerical increase of monetary measurement is just an externality (economists love this term). The human being and the whole world is an externality: so you have the dangerously ridiculous situation of mindless ‘production’ and ‘growth’ while destroying the planet and its life forms that sustain that ‘growth’ apparently for the good of the human species.

Therefore, many economists would be aptly represented as dangerous bozos.

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Normally people who think like the above are clinically diagnosed with various mental issues, but up to now, we give them titles, degrees, Nobel prizes and call them ‘experts’, ‘leaders’ and ‘captains’ of industry. And so the term GDP, in honour of such illustrious ones, will be used here as gDp which signifies gross Destructive product as a more accurate way to depict their fantasy of 'growth'. [For more details on new ways of measuring growth and the blatant harmful nature of GDP as it transforms into gDp, please see the earlier posts at this site.]

While some of us struggle to bring across the facts to help the rest of the world to come to an understanding as to why GDP = gDp, a likely scenario that will develop increasingly is one where GDP as a measurement will be clung onto while different ways of measuring progress like the GPI, or Genuine Progress Indicator, may be used in tandem with it to provide ballast. But either the GPI or something similar will finally have to replace the GDP/gDp as a growth measure.

In the end, the way we destroy the natural world, its ecosystems and our selves with gDp is parallel to the death factories where we are in effect using the misguided notions of neoclassical economics meshed with fear and anxiety promoted by the controllers of the world to forge a world of Terror: maintain a system of production that creates inequality throughout the globe through exploitation of human and natural resources resulting eventually in a culling of the global population as a way of limiting population growth and further competition for resources.

The 20th century has seen the ultimate attempt by the OT to assert its control over all of us by excessive mechanization and dehumanization of the entire planet (bold and italics). As Sofsky says:

“Along with the state monopoly on violence, rational bureaucracy, and organized work, modernity has also given rise to sites of discipline, surveillance, and conditioning. Modernity has confined human beings for life and trained them to be obedient, docile subjects. The manufacturing plant, industrial factory, and administrative office are the centres of bookkeeping and bureaucratic filing, economic exploitation and political rule. However, the military barracks, prison, penal colony, hospital, workhouse, and insane asylum – these total institutions are the laboratories of power. Here, far from the scrutiny of public surveillance, a special agenda is pursued: the transformation of human beings by other human beings…But in the concentration camp, no one was supposed to be healed, educated, or trained to obedience. Absolute power makes use of the technology of the disciplines, liberates them from their aims, and transforms them into instruments of terror. Its systematic nature is based on this transfer of the disciplines of control, on the coerced unification of action, its Gleichschaltung [“forcible coordination” or reorganizing all social, political, and cultural organizations to be controlled and run according to Nazi ideology and policy]; on minute, total surveillance and control.” (p277, Sofsky)

Again look at how our daily schedules and our entire lives have had all sequence of time come under fitting into the murderous Procustean bed of the work flow. Virtually every aspect and time frame of our existence has been absorbed and forced into the “forcible coordination” of survival, attending to material needs, and fear and trembling not only about our future and that of our loved ones, but the saturation of violence and mistrust bred across the world (played up to a scatological degree by the mass media).

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The ultimate sign of victory for the “forcible coordination” of our existence to the capitalist structure of monetary growth and value is the belief that ‘time is money’ and phrases like ‘buying time’. We have lost all control of our lives when we are plugged into a system of control, like in the CC, where our entire value system and the way we ‘spend our time’ is crunched and assimilated into the living dead concept of money being the centre of gravity of the world. Space-time and gravity are no longer natural phenomena and part of cosmic laws, they have undergone with us the “forcible coordination” into adjusting to acknowledging and worshipping money and those who control it as the blasphemous multi-headed hydra at the centre of darkness.

Before examining how the OT has tried to control all of us, we need to look closer at what the ideology of control they have been carefully and successfully pulling across the globe. This may sound difficult to accept at first, but careful thought and researching and the willingness to suspend preconditioned thought will help give a different perspective to the world we are living in.

The ideology that the promoters of Terror have used to spread the gospel of hate, prejudice, destruction and domination is known to us today as ‘democracy’, not Democracy as we have a theoretical or intuitive understanding of, but ‘democracy’ as spread by major proponents of this ideology. This is why it is hard to spot and come to grips with it because it is like the most insidious of viruses – it masks itself as that which is ‘helpful’ to the individual/society but is in effect the start of a destructive consumption of life.

First, try this exercise: spend some time thinking of what you think genuine freedom and Democracy is for an individual and for a society, a nation, and the rest of the world. Write it down irrespective of whether it sounds ‘utopian’. Be honest about it as it is a private exercise. Compare what you have written (take your time with this) to what you will read further on. [Stop reading this post here, and try this exercise. After thinking through what you’ve written, then continue reading on. But, yes, I already here the objection: ‘who has the time….?’]

Below are some aspects of what ‘democracy’ as an ideology, masquerading as Democracy as a political philosophy or idea, has tried to do so as to enslave us:

  1. Follow the ‘American’ way unconditionally according to the diktats of, for instance, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld regime (you can look at this in the context of almost any US administration in living memory with arguably the exception of Kennedy’s). Bear in mind that both Bushes have openly declared that they have “hate” in their “hearts” towards their so-called ‘enemies’. This is a matter of public record, check it up. This was used at least in relation to North Korea and its nutty (no, not the lovely Thelonious Monk piece) leader. We would normally link those who call themselves ‘leaders’ and voice out hate openly for others as leaders of another sort, but certainly not of Democracy

  2. This means: unimpeded access by the US and its so-called allies to (this is not in reference to the people of the countries but the network of controllers who secretly run the country, government, business, media, pharmaceuticals, etc) all countries and economies throughout the globe for what suits their own interests

  3. Meaning: unimpeded access by the controlling cabal in the ‘US’ (what we term ‘America’ today is anything but America) to all natural resources of all kinds whether it is oil (which requires control of Middle East oil supplies) or any natural resource to promote ‘growth’ and GDP (gDp) at the expense of all life and human welfare

  4. The ‘American’ way means a one superpower world and all those aligned to it who have as is possible complete corporate, financial, media control of the world. This is sometimes achieved through utilizing corruption and subversion of other governments elsewhere – especially those that resist the ‘American’ way openly – with the use of US fiat currency (which is worthless like any currency that is not backed by precious metals) as the dominant means of economic and political control, followed by black operations and military force. Interesting thing: if you listen to US military officers who speak their mind freely, they’ll mention that they get themselves and their men in ‘trouble spots’ largely due to the CIA’s shenanigans in various states, and their bamboozling politicians, economic bigwigs and defense department bureaucrats in US of A

  5. The manipulation and control of world bodies like the UN, WTO (World Trade Organization) and World Bank which serves as a means to hold to ransom, debt, bondage and merciless exploitation people and resources of poorer states by the controllers who have ensconced themselves by hijacking a great nation like America with their viral ideology of ‘democracy’

  6. Promotion of wars and the armament industry as a means of fuelling gDp and ensuring some form of global dominance. The best way is to keep the world divided through constant conflict as witnessed from wars throughout the third world and the criminal war in Vietnam which almost sent that state back into the stone age; never mind the wars with Iraq, Afghanistan and prodding of North Korea into a striptease nuclear brinksmanship

  7. The need to curtail civil liberties in America which championed Democracy but has been usurped by the cabal as it spreads the ideology of ‘democracy’ via buying over politicians, corporate control of the media, suppression of anything in the media that nationally promotes spiritual learning, thinking and questioning the role of military might and imperialism or material obsession, and spread of capitalist ideology (and gDp)

  8. Promote the idea that freedom means excessive and destructive individualism at the expense of everyone and everything else

  9. Final solution to destroy the remnants of Democratic America’s civil liberties: creation of the Orwellian situation of permanent war, where spreading war is called spreading ‘peace’, the mind-numbing-soul-destroying promotion of double speak in spreading falsehood, false flag operations by the CIA that subverts many states and national interests by spreading ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ there as opposed to Democracy

  10. To consolidate this in a one superpower world, you need to manufacture a massive attack on your soil: September 11th, 2001. Create a tragic and horrific incident in which ‘two planes’ caused three high rise modern towers to collapse in a meltdown and in which, against all laws of probability, remnants of passport or identification papers were found among the wreckage belonging to the ‘hijackers’ (!)

  11. Manipulation and aggravation of a permanent state of war between the Muslim states and others (all of whom also have the their fair share of fruitcase – one step above nutcake -- terrorists) as part of promoting the grander scheme of Terror

  12. Further acts of terror within the US (remember those random sniper shootings of civilians post- 9-11?) to cause permanent state of siege that could possibly lead to a suspension of all civil liberties as well as the US Constitution; there is also the convenient establishment of CCs – yes, concentration camps – for US citizens (or any other ‘undesirables’) under the auspices of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency): a search on the Net will provide visual evidence of these camps

First, reactions might be -- well this all very imaginative and not really new and things are not that bad. Really? Why is there a constant state of anxiety and terror being spread conveniently all over the world…where does all the funding come from. How convenient it is, that the state of ‘terror’ we have been put in has led to the rise of constant and heightened surveillance (understandable in some cases) of public spaces. It’s even worse for some private spaces. Paranoia is the order of the day. The Panopticon of observation keeps everyone on a macro and micro level under duress. The constant fear and anxiety spread at airports and modes of travel, and the work place fear of sabotage is very much like the war and fear mongering mentality spread through the time of WWII and most of the Cold War.

This is a most useful way of getting people mistrustful and fearful of one another and strangers. Not that there are no genuine security concerns etc. But the Terror being spread from 9-11 has been an attempt to drag humanity back to a state of wartime tension. Moreover, every surveillance camera is a reminder that things are not right and that people are not right and that the world is not right. The world and humanity may not be perfect as we well know, but there is a difference between that and being made to live under “forcible coordination” that it can never be otherwise. That is what the controllers want.

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This state of tension if you like, then also encourages the other crazies to go about their business of terror. The media collaborates with them by highlighting their activities thereby ensuring that the best way to get a megaphone and ‘buy’ media time is to commit atrocities. Note: good and well being don’t often get much air time, but acts of violence and that which flirts with the prurient not only get air time, they get prime time advertising to boost it all.

Again, where does the money come from to keep supporting these groups of ‘terror’ and even terror. There are bigger players who want to keep terror groups up and running, their activities being media highlights right up to this moment and thrust upon people as part of “forcible coordination”. Terror, with its unchecked and unregulated international banking cartels and arrangements, and its abilities to print fiat currency money or debt currency as via the US Federal Reserve Bank, has ample resources to fund its pet projects.

Ask yourself, how is it that a state like North Korea which has been repeatedly stated to be bankrupt and has its population living in precarious conditions still manage to have access and maintenance of nuclear weapons coupled with haphazard saber rattling announcements. Who are the groups that are sustaining the North Koreans and keeping them from total collapse so that they can conveniently add to the potential destabilization of North East Asia and keep the world in nuclear angst ?

How is it that despite the global financial crisis, spiraling debt of the US, the never ending wars, and the rising unemployment world wide, the world financial system is still tottering but not collapsing yet: how is it being maintained, propped up and kept alive when it too seems to be turning into one of the living dead? If the global scene is not somehow manipulated and controlled by major players this system would have collapsed well before now, but it is still being controlled and puppeteered as it has always been.

Look past the curtain of current economic theory’s mumbo jumbo and see the controllers grappling over the levers behind the curtain of illusion drawn across the world from the land of Oz.

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The New Slavery

On a macro scale the stage has been set to keep the world and all of us in debt through a debt based economy of fiat currencies, interest rates and squeezing every drop of labour from us till we drop dead. But on a micro scale, Terror must still be spread to dovetail with the global template of “forcible coordination” that major players are implementing through international institutions and power play.

As Sofsky unrelentingly continues (bold and italics mine):

“For its (modern terror) purposes, the small-time tormenter suffices: the conscientious bookkeeper, the mediocre official, the zealous doctor, the young, slightly anxious female factory worker. In order to spread fear and terror, all the personnel had to do was to apply the rules that had been set down. This orderly foundation of camp routine provided the soil conducive to the development of those behavioural patterns that spring from the tradition of quasi-military movements: esprit de corps, camaraderie, personal allegiance, the mentality of the emergency situation, corruption, and the lust for the kill.” (p278, Sofsky)

That last line sums up ‘American’ domestic and foreign policy for many a year and, unfortunately, much of the world has followed suit or allowed the virus from that kind of ‘democracy’ to spread to them.

What cannot be denied as well is the Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare of petty tyrants who impose meaningless rules and regulations to wield (absolute) power as best they can largely because the social and national atmosphere most people operate in permeates the same unto them. This system of bureaucratic control is spread on the macro level in turn by the controllers and serial invokers of ‘democracy’ who claim to be saving the world by using things like the UN, WTO, World Bank etc.

Total control by the cabal (controllers) and denizens of Terror require it to be practiced throughout all of society without exception as far as it is possible. It is part of the strategy of spreading “forcible coordination” globally. The best way is to instill a sense of fear and loathing in each layer of society, but primarily through the work place as it is the inevitable arena where we try to sustain ourselves.

To do this the cabalists of controllers need the Grand Poobahs and Great Panjandrums to exercise the diktats of control. And so Sofsky continues with (italics and bold mine):

“Without the supervisors, sentries, and administrative officials, the accomplices and accessories from the ranks of the inmates, camp terror would have been impossible. The face of modern systemic terror is not stamped by the all powerful and inviolable master, but by the unbridled actions of the sedulous servants of power. It is an inconspicuous face, quite mean and shabby, without the grimace of wild frenzy, the ecstasies of brutality, the passions of sovereignty...The triumph relished by the auxiliary was the laughter of the accomplices, the mortal anguish of the victims, the bottom line on the balance sheet of death.” (p278-9, Sofsky)

So absolute control is spread by the cabalists via set ups international and national, which is seen through by trickle down (and forced) indoctrination abetted by the mass media. The message transmitted daily and unremittingly is that people are not powerful and that the individual is not an empowered being.

The little Hitlers and Napoleans at the micro level of the work place go around determining control and spreading the gospel of the cabal through punitive sanctions and the constant threat of throwing one out of employment, or stymieing progress/promotion. We are born into the world and don’t know any better as we are imbibed with received deception (not wisdom) of control and subservience to the dark ideas of the cabal which we take as normal and the way of the world. [Under no circumstances is it being claimed that people do not choose wrong and evil themselves and that only the cabal/controllers are responsible for everything, but to qualify statements each time with this would be tedious and add to the meandering of an already lengthy post].

We learn further from Sofsky (bold and italics mine):

“Absolute power transforms deterrence into terror, terror into horror. It shapes space, time, work, and society into instrumentalities of itself, plunging its victims into the abyss of helpless anxiety. The destructive power of terror extends into the furthest corners of sociality, the deep structures of human subjectivity. It destroys not only by violence, but by starvation and misery, humiliation and murder of the soul. It is sheer destruction, pure and unadulterated…Terror concludes every struggle. It gets the job done. The reciprocity characteristic of all social power is shattered.” (p279, Sofsky)

Again on a micro level, just take a look at going from one place of employment to the next. The nihilistic philosophy of the cabalists to control, dehumanize, humiliate and disempower people pervades through almost everything. From every situation of authority (real or imagined) there is often an attempt to assert some aspect of absolute power; this is an ego based energy that seeks to use the pyramid structure of a disenfranchising hierarchy of control. Do as you are told, the boss man is always right, and we the cabal and its nether children of control can throw you out on the streets and let you starve unless you serve us as the slaves that you are.

The human power of reciprocity and responsibility towards one another through a web of connection with all life and compassion needed to give balance to the world, our societies and our lives is constantly crushed through the deleterious stamping of the OT imprimatur usually in the form of material and largely monetary (valueless fiat currencies) ‘rewards’ for selling and destroying your soul and those of others. These are the bargain basement prices of all the hells imaginable: save your skin, not your soul, by abetting the physical and spiritual destruction of others and life on the planet via the promotion of mindless monetary growth and as much as possible for sensual gratification. Reciprocity is made negative through the encouragement of an ‘eye for an eye’ way of the world, not one of mutual aid, support and nurturing to create cooperation and collaboration among people and countries.

We continue to chillingly learn (bold and italics mine):

“Terror separates labour from all production value and any moral rules. It intensifies compulsion and exploitation to the pitch of destruction; it transposes production into ravagement. The teleology of human labour is extinguished. The productive meaning of work, self-preservation of the species, is transformed into its opposite. Nowhere is human labour so directly linked with death as in the concentration camp. Here work does not secure life, it devastates it. This political economy of waste cannot be comprehended by following the principle of calculation and value enhancement. Absolute power overcomes the laws of production. It increases not wealth, but misery.” (p280, Sofsky)

Shocking as it may seem, the above is an apt description of our daily lives especially our so-called working lives. The entire economic and financial system that has been imposed on us by the cabal, and those sometimes quite unwittingly carrying out the worldview of the controllers, is one of mindless accumulation of wealth through making many things that are not needed and that have an in-built obsolescence in them; this in turn continues the destructive cycle of pure monetary ‘growth’ while destroying the planet, robbing it of life and natural resources and steadily allowing for the fear and anxiety based destruction of ourselves and our social relations. A political economy of waste.

We are usually alienated from what we do and the apparently productive processes we are involved in. So many times have employees deliberately gotten back or ‘sabotaged’ the system and the boss man by wasting time at work through idleness and Net surfing, and consuming office materiel and expenses for personal use and benefit. This is usually an act of rebellion and resentment for being pushed around and doing something we dislike and even hate but consider necessary to sustain our material needs. What is productive about this set up or the commodities that arise from it? A political economy of waste.

From the wasteful system of built in obsolescence and greed of the capitalist ideology to its mindless accumulation of money as a means of remuneration and definition of meaning to existence; and with the cat and mouse game between employer and employees who try every once in a while to monkey wrench the work place, we have a fine system of wastage and negativity. Yet another facet of a political economy of waste.

To maintain control over us, there is a need for a system of destructive sustenance that sees to it that (bold and italics mine):

“Society is permeated by the informers and accomplices of terror; the victims are driven to a life-and-death struggle for space, shoes, and bread. Although a good many examples of elementary solidarity have come to light, the extent of social indifference, mutual repulsion, and animosity in the camps was staggering. The dissociative strength of camp power shatters the basic rules of social intercourse, fundamental trust in the continued existence of the social world, the prospect of assistance, the certainties of social action, the continuity of time…The camp hurls human beings back into a primal state of nature: the struggle of all against all…The concentration camp is the modern facility of isolating and destroying the “dispensable”. The superfluous are searched out everywhere, seized, confined behind barbed wire, starved, murdered.” (p280-1, Sofsky)

What is supported throughout most societies and certainly in the economic framework of the cabal is the ‘state of nature’ scenario of ‘survival of the fittest’ and everyone struggling to stay alive through brandishing tooth and claw. We have fooled ourselves into buying into the so-called ‘free market’ myth (which is just a not-so-secret secret society code for greed, selfishness, monopoly, destructive ethos, etc as explored in an earlier blog entitled There is No Such Thing as a Free Market, which has laughably been seen as a sign of ‘freedom’.

Yet you cannot be free if you are a slave to unethical/immoral behaviour that often belies ‘market’ forces, a slave to pure monetary gain at the expense of everything else, and a slave to blind sensual drives while throwing any spiritual force within a human being off course.

And in case the message still hasn’t gotten through we are reminded that (bold and italics mine):

Absolute power sunders the physical unity of the person, devastates spirit and soul, destroys the ability to act, drains all vitality. Prior to industrialized mass murder, it carries out a transmutation of human nature. The transformation of human beings into materiel and the fabrication of the Muselmanner, the waking dead, are its greatest triumphs. In sharp contrast with all earlier forms of power, absolute terror creates nothing. Its work is totally negative, a project of obliteration without a trace. It realizes its freedom in the complete and total annihilation of the human being.” (p281, Sofsky)

Through a system of control through the mass media, economic and financial institutions, the cabal has sought to keep us at each others’ throats through the perpetuation of fear and loathing, anxiety and obsession with destructive individual ‘rights’ which do not involve the reciprocation of duties to respect and honour the rights of others; it’s all about ‘I-me-mine’ as the advertising/marketing world keep reminding us (the destruction of reciprocity).

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So some key points that can be raised from all this on the strategy of OT:

  1. Use a feudal hierarchical pyramidal structure of top-down control

  2. Institute capitalism as the primary economic model which leads to a system of senseless accumulation of wealth and material products maintained by the use of the media to promote consumerism and obedience to the fetishized ‘market forces’ established by the cabal’s global financial and political institutions

  3. All ‘value’ is measured in terms of valueless fiat currency which is printed at whim to finance never ending wars and the creation of eternal debt

  4. Keep the world and its peoples in a state of perpetual debt and wage slavery as they cannot rely on their spiritual values and ideas to build economic strength but must rely on ego and fear based energies of impending starvation from reprisals to their physical beings if they resist the cabalists structures (micro and macro)

  5. Keep people busy with meaningless work, jobs and employment to just earn money to survive; keep them in debt-bondage and obsessed with sensual indulgence so that they are unable to turn away from the debilitating effects of the idiot-box-and-devices (TV and mobile phones); and turn them away from reading, thinking, and sharing intelligent ideas with one another. Counter serious examination of the state of the world and citizen participation in local, political, or any other sensible activity by a system of disenfranchisement

  6. This system of disempowerment is boosted by ego driven cynicism of so-called social commentators as well as the worship of celebrities and mania over the frailties of their personal lives, and attempts to get the rest of us to be more concerned about who earns the most in business and Hollywood. In other words keep us distracted from improving and empowering ourselves through surrendering our attention to nut-cakey-fruity-case flakes and other such media-attention-grabbers

  7. Obsession with material goods through the constant promotion of the latest fashion products and accelerate built-in used obsolescence in almost anything (example, computers) and mobile phones which require us to seek constant upgrading (and confuse that as ‘upgrading’ ourselves)

  8. Derail us from thinking about why we are here and what is the purpose of life. Ensure that the mainstream media doesn’t focus on spiritual matters but things that engender hatred and negativity through the playing up of violence, war and dysfunctional behaviour. Constant prattling on the ‘weaknesses’ of human nature and never the strength of unity, reciprocity and challenging of absolute power and corporate controllers, that is, the media’s complicity with the agenda of the cabal to ensure that human beings are kept in a state of the living dead while thinking that the lives they are leading are supposedly ‘normal’

  9. The constant disruption of time and sequencing of events in our lives due to the stress and anxiety created by the negative media reports and work place demands, coupled with personal/family ones, keeps us in a state of limbo and hectic behaviour that fits perfectly with the ‘forcible coordination’ of the controllers

But to ensure that control can be permanent and the market of global control has been cornered through a one superpower world, the cabal needs to institute a takeover by re-creating what the Nazi’s did in 1933 and 1938 (looked at in more detail below). The need to exercise absolute power by the cabal through the use of terror to establish once and for all OT. We are still living in the shadow of the near successful attempt of using the 9-11 attacks on New York to suspend all civil liberties, and eventually establish openly the FEMA CCs as a step to turning the US into a launching pad for more war, and a base for quickly consolidating and spreading world wide the ineluctable OT. For those who think what they are reading now is fanciful, be patient…it won’t be too long from your reading these words that even more stunning revelations will take place.

 

Arbeit Macht Frei: Part 3

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This is Not Democracy

There are no genuine democratic countries in the world today. ‘America’ has been hijacked by the cabalists and ‘democracy’ there is like a deadly virus they hope to spread everywhere. It is hard to determine when, in a long time, in human history there existed any genuine Democracy. The ‘democracy’ of today is but a sham in which people are enslaved to serving the diktats of OT. The cabalists have come close to winning their game, but they will not as many of us have started to awaken to their activities.

The cabal’s 9-11 attacks on America was a replay of creating similar conditions that allowed the Nazi’s an excuse to push for fascist control of Germany. The cabal ambitiously combined the 1933 burning of the Reichstag (German parliament) and the 1938 Kristallnacht in an attempt to assert control over the world’s sole superpower to initiate their agenda of an old world order of domination (typically these bozos call it a ‘new’ world order -- it’s the virus hiding itself in doublespeak).

Do some research on America’s so-called Patriot Act instigated conveniently by the 9- 11 ‘terror’/Terrror attacks, and what the Nazi’s initiated in those fateful years of the 1930s. The papers of the day in Germany described the attack on the Reichstag as a “most monstrous act of terrorism”. The fire was blamed on Communists whom the Nazi’s wanted to counter so as to gain a parliamentary majority and thereby start their plans for fascist domination of Germany. So the official account of the Reichstag burning played along the terrorist lines to stoke up fear among Germans and send them into the arms of the Nazis (italics mine):

The burning of the Reichstag was intended to be the signal for a bloody uprising and civil war. Large-scale pillaging in Berlin was planned.... It has been determined that ... throughout Germany acts of terrorism were to begin against prominent individuals, against private property, against the lives and safety of the peaceful population, and general civil war was to be unleashed....” (this and the German newspaper quote above are from the Wikipedia)

Hitler, who was just made chancellor weeks before the fire, managed to coerce through the Reichstag Fire Decree which effectively curbed most civil liberties of the Weimar constitution, and the preamble of the act stated that (bold and italics mine):

“On the basis of Article 48 paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the German Reich, the following is ordered in defense against Communist state-endangering acts of violence:

Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom [habeas corpus], freedom of opinion, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications. Warrants for House searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.” (taken from Wikipedia)

Does this have a familiar ring in post- 9-11 ‘America’?

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But this was the tip of the iceberg: what Hitler and his hooligans were aiming for was to get their Enabling Act through which would allow him and his chief thugs to make dictatorial laws without the approval of the Reichstag, thereby establishing a fascist state.

With the Enabling Act passed, Hitler would be given the control that developed into his dictatorial powers as he could do what he wanted through decrees that bypassed the Reichstag nor his having to discuss anything with other political players.

The 9-11 attacks were not a terror attack but a Terror attack by OT. It was hoped that this act of high treason would start the effective move of America away from civil liberties and the total undermining of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights (whatever is already left of it). This would place the cabalists in control of the world’s sole superpower and to do as they pleased anywhere. The FEMA CCs which thrive on the term ‘emergency’ -- which was what the Nazis also used to justify their tyrannical takeover of Germany -- is the logical extension of the cabal’s attempt to control things thereby giving them the leeway to target those they would prefer to get rid off/contain (including masses of people who could protest the eradication of their civil liberties).

Then there was the Kristallnacht of 1938. With the murder of a German diplomat in Paris that year by a Jewish youth (as reprisal to the over night expulsion by Hitler of thousands of Polish born Jews from Germany), the Nazis instigated a nation wide anti-Jewish pogrom. Jewish homes and businesses were ransacked and destroyed in the thousands which not only resulted in deaths but the start of mass deportation of Jews and other ‘undesirables’ to CCs. The ‘Night of Broken Glass’ was the staged vendetta of the Nazis against their opponents. It was also the first steps towards all the horrors associated with the Nazis and terrors of the CCs.

The transfer of people to CCs and the systematic mass destruction of human beings was all part of an organized wave of terror that merged with “forcible coordination’ as part of the overall concept of Terror.

This ideology of Terror is precisely what the cabalists of today also want to enhance throughout the world. Create the materiel you need for the material world and force a planned obsolescence of culling people so that the ‘wealth’ of plunder that comes from war and from the formulation of so-called lebensraum (Nazi thought is very much alive today) ensuring economic/political incursions into the sovereignty of other states for one group which results in the death/slavery of another. Zero-sum all the way.

So the current cabalists in a fit of ambition and, what to them must appear as use of the imagination, decided to combine the Reichstag burning and Kristallnacht through pulling off the 9-11 Terror attack. They launched perhaps the mother of all false flag operations in recent times to blame the destruction of the twin towers in New York on terror groups (who would form the kernel of the ‘enemy’s’ identity, that is anyone who is Muslim); this was the Reichstage fire aspect of things except that the cabal’s work that September day was far more violent.

The cabal ambitiously used 9-11 as a Kristallnacht too and (since Americans were also killed in the attacks) as a platform for reprisal against not just certain targets in the Muslim world (the nutcake Saddam being a prime example), but to initiate instability world wide through the move into Afghanistan and raising the general ire of Christians and Muslims around the world who saw this more as an extension of the old drawn out drama from the Crusades of yesteryear.

All this was dissonant music to cabal’s ear as spreading instability and creating a scenario of divide and conquer kept all of us even closer to the ground with faces shoved into the troughs of not only daily survival, but now fear, anxiety, loathing and anger against one another. Yet the cabalists wanted to go the whole hog this time, so they ‘imaginatively’ tried to go for the CC idea of their revived Nazi ideology by raising ethnic/religious issues within America.

Not long after 9-11 the Bush appointed Peter Kirsanow head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights nicely stated that “if there’s another terrorist attack and if it’s from a certain ethnic community or certain ethnicities that the terrorists are from, you can forget about civil rights in this country.”

Kirsanow eloquently added that if there was yet another attack, there could possibly be internment camps (CCs) such as those built to hold Japanese Americans in World War II. But the man was on a roll, so he had to continue with, “Not too many people will be crying in their beer if there are more detentions, more stops, more profiling…There will be a groundswell of public opinion to banish civil rights.” Hell, yeah. (Quote taken from: here)

I ask you, not so bloody minded gentle reader, would a democracy (forget Democracy) have created CCs for its Japanese American citizens many of whom were just decent patriotic folk anyway?

Then just in case you thought this was all just a…coincidence with 1930s Germany, please bear in mind that there were deportations of Muslims, seizures and interrogations of American Muslims by the FBI, as well as thousands of American Muslims being told that their jobs in the US, particularly within the civil service couldn’t be guaranteed now that we know conclusively (it would appear) that it was a bunch of Muslims who did 9-11.

All this frenzied activity sounds a trifle, uhm,…terroristic upon ordinary people, won’t you say?

To think that some outstanding universities and institutes of learning exist in America – but wait, Germany had even more to offer like Beethoven, Goethe, Kant, Marx (ah, the fella was Jewish) – yet, all decent and rational thought was suspended in subservience to “forcible coordination”.

But let us not underestimate the cabalists; if you’re visionary you go all the way, so the cads came up with plans for a subsidiary of Halliburton KBR to be given a US$385 million contract by the (Right Honourable) Department of Homeland Security to build detention centres in America. These centres might be used for illegal immigrants, to house victims of disasters like Hurricane Katrina, or perhaps those who start protesting against the cabal if ever their plans were seen through (part of this could stem from riots breaking out due to the collapse of the cabalist capitalist economy).

So the whole idea of the CCs apart from taking care of ‘undesirables’ was to also boost the gDp by increasing expenditure on camps which would go to companies run by the cabal (yup, them Halliburton guys are it). This attitude of cannibalization and going into any part of the world using force or threats and getting whatever materiel needed to expand gDp, and to exercise control and spread ‘American democracy’ or “forcible coordination” is truly the bedrock of much ‘American’ foreign and trade policy today.

This is the zero-sum winner take all and death-and-damnation-to-all-else attitude that is also the skull and bones foundation on which all feudal and capitalist systems are based. The whole idea of such an approach is to ensure that humans see their existence as nothing more that an animated pile of dust that returns to the ashes that issues forth from crematoriums.

Our entire economic edifice is built on such a system at the moment that fits in with the cabal’s way of thinking. Just go through all the quotes from Sofsky mentioned here and you will see that the Terror promoted in the camps, and the sense of constant surveillance and control, fear and anxiety that such a system promotes is the extension of what the Nazis did in the 1930s to establish their OT.

Right till today, through political, economic and social control with the triumph of the will of materialism the cabal hoped to destroy anything of a spiritual nature in humans by creating their ultimate goal: the world as a concentration camp writ large. But they are not going to be able to do it as we have started to finally wise up.

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It is almost a scenario out of H.P. Lovecraft where the cabal are like beings from another planet unleashing everything that we know is inhuman and inhumane, as they turn our world upside down. And it is no surprise that the Nazi idea of a ‘master race’, and many other practices and symbols used by them, have occult roots. Do some research to see how they used dark forces that seem to be the underlying template of Nazi ideology.

And in case there are still those who are recalcitrant in their beliefs that ‘America’ is a democracy and that there is Democracy on planet earth, please remind yourself about what took place at the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo camps, and ponder if that is reflective of democracy. Whatever the excuses or rationalizations, the horrors of CCs worldwide throughout history may project many things, but they are not representations of Democracy. If you say that such instances cannot be helped because of the way things are, the response is: precisely, there is no democracy or Democracy today, and we have not in living memory have had any actual experience of it.

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Delusional Democracy

What we call ‘democracy’ today is nothing close to any idea, much less an ideal, of Democracy that a decent person would like to see in the world. How can there be Democracy in a world that is at war with itself, under the constant threat of ‘terror’, real and imagined, and the sway of Terror (real, not imagined). We are stuck in a world where people are burdened by debt and meaningless work cycles of ‘productivity’ that seem to get us nowhere (for the vast majority) within an economic system of greed, exploitation and total non-sustainability. How can a world scenario like this ever give rise to Democracy?

What of the current system in so-called western ‘democracies’? By and large that system is represented by the image above this section. We have less developed countries (yes, they are responsible for their own problems too) which have been consistently exploited and kept in debt by inequality and coercion as represented by most world bodies of which the WTO and World Bank are prime examples. The commodities from poorer states are made through cheap and mercilessly exploited labour to support a silly and self indulgent lifestyle of people too busy to consider the morality of their actions, usually spending their leisure welded to their TVs and engaged in other mind and soul numbing activities like shopping for what you don’t need (but told is necessary by advertising and marketing), and voting in people who are beholden to big business and banking cartels.

Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell speech at the White House had the iconic reference to the military-industrial complex that is behind ‘America’. But some research will show that Eisenhower had wanted to mention Congress too, which would have been the devastatingly accurate statement that ‘democratic America’ was beholden to a military-industrial-congressional complex, and so it is (the US Federal Reserve was the missing link in the chain).

Kennedy famously talked about the secret government and the reprehensible idea of government by secrecy. He had plans to stop the US involvement in the burgeoning conflict in Vietnam as well as introduce a hard currency backed by precious metals (contra the useless fiat money of the US Fed) which were to be called US Treasury notes. These hard currency notes were conveniently recalled from circulation soon after JFK’s murder. It is no surprise, in retrospect, that he was eliminated before he could do further harm to the ‘democratic’ interests controlling ‘America’.

It is also no secret that Kennedy said after the CIA's Bay of Pigs fiasco that he would "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds". There was no love lost between him and the cabal.

The entire structure of the state in so many ‘democracies’ is designed to protect those who run the corporate, financial, and war mongering apparatuses to keep the so-called voters mind-numbed through fear/anxiety saturation using unending world wide conflicts, the daily grind of work and constant debt/mortgage through an economic flow that promotes crazed credit expansion through borrowing beyond what you can pay. This entire rotten and crumbling ‘golden calf’ is supported gleefully by the media so that it can also sustain itself and the fluff work of not reporting the actual state of affairs of the world.

Sure, this is part of the actual state of affairs of the world: ‘a bomb has gone off in…”, “China has recalled its envoy from…”, “the newest strain of the H1N1 virus has led to the WHO asking…”. The second half of the news may include: “Tiger Woods says he’s sorry…again…”, “Stephen Hawking has decided that God doesn’t exist…”, “Is the hair of XYZ celebrity for real…?”

What you don’t hear, because it would throw the present disgraceful and immoral morass of a world economic system into its widely deserved grave, is “Steps to reconfigure the entire world banking systems are being unveiled, experts finally get off their a**e* to discuss how…”, “More and more Americans and people all over the world are demanding a reinvestigation as to whether the September 11th attacks were a false flag operation – coming up after the break…other examples of possible false flag operations by major governments of the world…”, and how a couple strive to survive in these times through forming a cooperative with their close friends.

There can be more human interest stories that show how people overcome adversity or how the human spirit shines through normal daily activities, but the main items always play into the cabal’s hands to keep the world hostage to a self created drama of violence and mayhem. Of course, disasters must be covered and people given advisories etc about trouble spots, but the entire mainstream media is mostly aping and competing with one another to see who can be the most bloody minded in its reporting: and this poppycock reporting is given the misnomer journalism (this offers serious competition as to who are the real bozos).

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More people, including those who are asserting their discernment again in the US, have come to realize that most of the characters they vote into political office are serving interests other than that of the people. So many politicians in the sole superpower on earth tend to openly support the cabalists monstrous structure of deceit, greed, exploitation and violence.

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How much longer is it going to be before people across the globe take back their power and the planet? We are indeed like the prisoners in Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ from his great work, The Republic. In his famous analogy, Plato explains how people are chained into a certain direction facing the wall of a cave and made to believe the shadows cast on it from objects and light behind them are real. From time to time, someone from the outside of the cave comes in and breaks a prisoner free, and drags him out kicking and screaming (he’s unwilling as he prefers his comfort zone of indoctrinated ‘truth’) to see the world outside.

There is pain of adjustment to the eyes as the newly freed prisoner turns his focus to the world outside of the cave and sees an incredible vista filled with the light of the sun and the objects as they are rather than their shadows. He rushes back to tell his fellow prisoners about this, and they of course think he is bonkers, and start to regard his claims as a threat to their comfort zone engendered by the slavery to the puppet masters casting shadows on the wall. Sometimes the prisoners are so incensed by the ‘nonsense’ of the guy who came back to help free them that they would rather kill him than face the truth about the false world they live in.

It is not that difficult to think of some spiritual and other leaders who have been murdered because they tried to do the same. The cabalists are the shadow masters who operate away from light and transparency; they thrive with cloaks and daggers. So many of us are still prisoners in the cave. But we can still make the journey out together with courage and effort and with the help of those who have slipped out of the cave – thinking through their ideas like those of Plato and Kant; heeding the examples like that of Gandhi, Mandela and Mother Theresa of Calcutta; and observing the leadership of some like the Brothers Kennedy.

We have to leave the shadow play behind on the wall of illusion and take on the difficult task and challenge of breaking free from what is considered ‘normalcy’. Our very survival and that of the planet rests on our forcing ourselves away from the delusional images we are coerced to watch on the wall of the cave (think mainstream media) glorifying fears, anxiety, violence and excessive self indulgence.

We have been force fed a homogenized genetically modified murderous diet to convince us that the world we live in is one of despair and that we are mainly material and negative beings who need control and who only can end up as a handful of dust. But this is where the cabal has seriously miscalculated. Because when the human species starts to wake up, it cannot be stopped, and we can all -- if we work collectively on this -- make it up the slope from the innards of the cave: back into the light from which all life originates.

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What Needs to be Done

We have to throw away preconceptions and what we’ve been indoctrinated with from birth through most of our adulthood – that we are not spiritual beings and that material needs can never be met if we prioritize our lives by giving equal weight to our material and spiritual needs. Let each person decide for themselves who reads this what being a spiritual being means for them, and see if by extension some of the points raised below includes what is needed to provide for our material well being and spiritual growth thereby creating a balanced and sustainable world in which war, poverty and the slave-type labour of our working world imbued with “forcible coordination” can be finally eradicated.

We would be looking to achieve:

  1. Move away from the largely capitalist driven mind set that growth = gDp which means mainly a monetary measurement for what is economic growth. With the premise that we are spiritual beings first who happen to have physical bodies that need support, we then need a measurement of growth that reflects this as part of our well being. We take the quality of life into serious consideration, not just the quantitative aspect of things. Some of these ideas have been explored in earlier posts at this site

  2. That all living things should be respected including the Earth which is clearly a living entity. The Earth is alive because no life can be supported, nor would evolution occur, if the planet is but a large pile of dust. Life comes from life, not death-like inert matter despite the bizarre ideas of those who claim to be scientists (who are in fact promoters of occult beliefs that there are mysterious forces floating out there like ‘gravity’ that just happen to conveniently arrange themselves into ‘natural laws’). If the Earth is a living entity, then we must have a measurement of growth that respects this and includes this notion of protecting and enhancing its eco-systems thereby ensuring the survival of our own economic and social eco-systems, through ethical, responsible and sustainable living and production

  3. This means channeling resources away from war and destruction (contra the aim of the cabalists) into positive ideas and green technology to forge a new way of energy creation, productive activities, and commodity exchange throughout the planet among different communities/societies/states. Some resources will be kept for security needs but if war can be lessened and the cabalists taken to task, peace can takeover the planet

  4. End the idea of separation through language, religion and race and see the Oneness of all life. Whatever we do bear in mind the golden rule of doing unto others what we want others to do unto us: this implies a system of shared responsibility, tolerance, understanding, mutual support, help and respect – in a word, reciprocity

  5. Reciprocity would entail a just and fair economic and political system which will lead us closer to the citizen empowerment that can help form the base and driving force that will help us not only recreate what Democracy means, but help us to try and finally realize a democratic system of citizen involvement, responsibility and consultation in local and national governance

  6. Not to be sidetracked by the confusion that rights mean rabid individualism at all cost. All rights imply the duties of respecting the rights of everyone, that is, rights operate within the context of our duties to one another. For unless we have a duty towards others, or reciprocity, how on earth do we have a right to anything since nobody has a duty to respect the rights we claim for ourselves

  7. Recognize the fact that we are co-creators of our world and reality. That every invention and commodity we bring out should reflect this for the betterment and highest good of all

  8. A system of smaller and manageable businesses and economic enterprises that reflect a community base form (which can cross borders and will not be multi-nationals but multi-communals). No shareholders except those who are of the businesses and these entities, as far as possible, should be owned by all who are of the enterprise and have a transparent system of profit sharing that ensures growth (in a manageable way) and sustainability of the enterprise and all who work for it. Profit will be a term that will belong to the past where a win-lose scenario is envisaged. We are going here for a win-win situation at all times as far as is possible and one of sustainability

  9. The complete reinvention and rejuvenation of the world financial and banking scene with community banks taking a leading role. This would work in tandem with the return to hard currency backed by gold and precious metals for all countries thereby giving real value for money

  10. That money is seen as a resource that can be re-cycled back as donations and trusts after the death of mega wealthy individuals (e.g., Warren Buffet, Bill Gates who have decided so) to help the underprivileged and raise environmental consciousness

  11. Have healthy competition that involves cooperation and collaboration among all towards support for all life as far as possible as the underlying principle of growth, not the destructive kind of competition that hinges on mindless profitability and unbridled exploitation, or zero-sum situations

  12. The realization that the world is abundant in what it has to offer us if we channel our learning, science, technology and natural intelligence, not to mention common sense, to come up with ways to produce what we need to support us best we can while giving back to the Earth and maintaining the natural balance of its diverse and miraculous ecosystems

  13. That we see ourselves mainly as caretakers of the Earth and caregivers to one another so that our education system starts with these premises and builds societal, regional, international and global responsibility towards one another. So we start with the initial conditions of education with the children outside of ‘the cave’ and get them used to the light soonest – they don’t need to be taught the shadow play we were stuck with but the way of light which is working with one another so that we all gain and benefit

  14. A new and responsible media that highlights what is positive, what works for the well being of all and what brings us forward boldly into the new paradigm of getting things right. The so-called bad news will still be there, but balance it for what it is…the aberration in a world that is growing up and maturing into civility. This takes the sting away from those who remain from the cabal who may want to re-assert the old destructive ways

  15. That the practice of calming and breathing exercises, meditation and connection to nature be a common aspect of life in schools and the work places. This would be the start of increasing trust, goodwill and even high work output among people. With fair and decent remuneration all round (as opposed to furthering excess and indecently high salaries), the daily work world can be transformed into one that a person can look forward and contribute to willingly and purposively

  16. A work/economic paradigm that is successful as it is even joyful because what is being provided and created is for the benefit and highest good of all involved and the world at large

  17. Understand and respect the sanctity of all life

Naturally, the nay-sayers will claim that this is not possible in many instances because of the ‘way things are’ (a motto of the cabal) and ‘human nature’ (the cynical view of which the cabal hopes will continue). If that is the case, then these people who claim this are supporters of a dismal determinism where there is clearly no free will; in which case they are already and always will be slaves even if they pretend they are not.

If there is free will, then we can choose. But the fact that we can indeed choose and have ideas of what is good and what isn’t, and that many of us see spiritual dimensions to things, is sign enough of a greater power at work than the limited and childish human ego. We need to start to learn to let go of our limitations and blinkers of controls that have been placed upon us, to create the new paradigm and history of the Earth.

The question then arises so what else can we do now to hasten the positive changes and get rid of the ungodly yoke of the cabal? Perhaps three basic things may be useful here: first, see the economic collapse that is upon us as a good sign and actively find ways to enhance new economic models that are green and people friendly, as mentioned above.

Next, do all we can (this applies to those of us who are not US citizens but affected by the cabal’s ‘American’ policies) to encourage Barack Obama to get going with the arrest of the cabalists behind 9-11 (email the guy, he needs to know that people everywhere are behind him: link). This is the thin end of the wedge that will bring about either simultaneously, or consecutively, the eradication of the US Federal Reserve which is the stronghold of the cabal and its worthless fiat money, as well as the bringing to justice of the key cabalists for Terror against humanity. This will get the ball rolling and the cabal’s operations will start to shut down and operatives throughout the world will be rounded up by various other governments and forces within them (not all are under control by the cabalists) who are waiting for the signal from ole Barry.

If it still isn’t clear, let me for the hell of it just say: we are all in this together, big time.

Finally, we all need to just commit acts of gratuitous kindness, decency, compassion and just plain civility in all situations at all times as is humanly possible. This above all is the start of the People of the world uniting and coming together as a gathering of light that will dispel the cabal’s Terror forever. There can be, if we create it, governments of the People, by the People, and for the People and the Planet that can never perish.

Also, the obvious should still be stated that this post is not the answer to all our problems; we are also creating solutions as we go along and react to events; rather, it is an energetic transfer to the ether and collective consciousness in support of other co-creators who want to see a new and blessed world for us and the next generation to live in.

To those who see how real and how much within our grasp most of the ideas here are that will allow us to create our own destiny, to those who have the courage to turn away from despair and see that there is Divine grace in all life and within ourselves to get rid of the cabal’s influence and create cities of light in a world of light, and for those who have decided that being human is a compliment to what is good in the universe, I can only say with the utmost gratitude:

Thank you for taking back your power.

And peace be with you.

 

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[Many thanks for the creative work to all the artists whose pictures, graphics and videos are presented here and on this site]

End of Poverty interview

Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’

The Economics of Happiness

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It is with great irony that we read the venerable Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke's recent words on his idea of happiness:

"Another thing that most people value is a clean environment. Air and water quality are not included in the broadest measure of economic activity emphasized in government statistics, the gross domestic product (GDP), although some economists have worked on ways to do so. But again, rich countries have more resources to devote to maintaining a clean environment and do tend to have better air and water quality than poor and middle-income countries, notwithstanding the fact that rich countries by definition produce more goods and services. Rich countries also generally provide people more leisure time, less physically exhausting and more interesting work, higher education levels, greater ability to travel, and more funding for arts and culture. Again, these linkages, together with the benefits of enjoying a wide variety of goods and services, are the reason that economic policymakers–at the behest of the public–usually put heavy emphasis on job creation and growth. Along with price stability, maximum employment is one of the Congress’s two mandated objectives for the Federal Reserve. And, indeed, economists researching happiness and life satisfaction have found that both inflation and unemployment detract from happiness, consistent with the focus on these macroeconomic conditions in the mandate of the Federal Reserve." (quoted from here: link)

The dishonesty that underlies his attempts to pretend that all is well, thanks to the old paradigm of doing things which has created the current economic hardship of our planet, by implicitly re-stating the monetarist mumbo jumbo of his federal reserve is mind boggling.

The notion of economic growth as we understand it today as enshrined by the GDP measurement of Gross Domestic Product has been invented by the pathological, applauded by the ignorant and continually promoted by the mischievous.

This is a letter of mine just published in a local newspaper to try to add some balance against the indoctrination we have all received as to what the measurement of "growth" and "happiness" consists of:

"I REFER to the insightful commentary, "Hatoyama, a victim of iPad shock" (June 4). The need for new ideas by many countries to make it through the current global economic debacle is inescapable.

The current oil spill fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico thanks to BP's bungling has resurfaced the question: What price economic growth?

Measurement of a country's gross domestic product does not take into account whether it is a source of benefit or a cause of damage. The multi-billion-dollar cleanup that will hopefully end the massive oil spill will be added as a "plus" to a country's GDP, in the same way that expenditure on prosecuting a war and cleaning up after traffic accidents are.

This is counter-intuitive to common sense, which would suggest "growth" refers to something positive.

We need to balance the current GDP ledger with new measures of progress like the GPI (genuine progress indicator), variations of which are used around the world. In essence, only that which is genuinely positive for a society adds to a nation's GPI rating. Anything which is negative, like criminal or harmful environmental practices, detracts from the score.

Indicators that capture increased quality of life as a positive under the GPI can then be used as an additional barometer for decision makers on the efficacy of national policies.

So, increased time spent by a parent with a child, volunteer work, improved green spaces, better healthcare and implementation of ethics modules in schools and business education - just to name a few examples - would add to a country's GPI.

As Singapore progresses, we need accurate tools to capture the growth and development of its various social life cycles, such as its family, health, educational, economic, financial and sports ecosystems.

The GPI measurement here would have greater moral weight than simply GDP monetary inputs.

This will, in turn, help ensure that as investors come to Singapore, they will have to also adapt to our more streamlined approach towards sustainable and socially-responsible economic development, rather than be driven solely by profit motives.

This shift in mindset is crucial for us in developing an even keel in the way we lead our lives and how our society is run."