Hunting for others, seeking the Truth

hunter_seeker @ 2006-06-27T17:16:00

2006-07-02T02:20:30Z

Controls and rules are used to keep people in fear about doing the wrong thing.
It used to be religion, now its company rules and societal law.

Free thought is stifled by rules.
Orthodox religions have so many rules and patterns for daily life, that there is no free thought at all if you follow them to the letter.
Just a robot running a program.

Within society, there are more and more rules all the time. People spend so much time and effort following the societal rules, and new regulations, that they forget to actually live.

Within jobs, and corporations.. people have so many rules to follow and so many ways of doing things, that they spend all their time following the 'rules' and never thinking outside the box. And its only getting worse, as new managment techniques are brought in that enforce yet more rules for bette productivity.

I used to work in IT.. when i first started, it was relatively free with the way you fixed things and could think for yourself. But now everything is scripted, there is no free thought. There is a 'policy' on how to do everything, how to fix everything, how to handle everything. IT staff on anything but the upper levels are little more than robots now.
I realised that i hated that so i left IT.. but now im realising that the pattern in IT is just a part of the larger scheme of where everything is heading. Companies are like that, society is like that.

More rules, more controls, more fear.

Corporations have replaced religion in more ways than one. Before people would pray to gods for a good harvest. Now people prostrate themselves in front of corporations for the privelidge of a job, so they are allowed the privelidge of being able to afford to eat.
Changing themselves, being who they are not, so they can secure a job. Then once in the job, giving up their life and dreams for the good of the 'company'.

Self Worth

2006-02-02T01:52:08Z

This society breeds insecurity.
Insecurity is fought internally by a sense of self worth. Self worth gives self confidence and trust in ones own judgement. Society strips away self worth, and replaces it with societal worth, so that people's own internal sense of their worthiness depends of what society as a whole, and what other people around them, think of them.
The opinions of most people are swayed by the opinions of society, pushed by the TV and the newspapers, the politicians and big businessmen, therefore the sense of self worth of most people in governed directly and indirectly to be what society expects of them.
Now this might work in a small community, with people loving and supporting one another, but when transposed onto a larger society like ours, where its defining structure - Capitalism - is literally 'every man for themselves', then this corrupts each individual. Each individual then becomes both prisoner and jailer in a society, that really does very little for anyone, other than a very small percentage at the top, with a controlling interest. Everyone feels trapped by the expectations of those around them, while simultaneously absorbing those expectations of society and placing them on other people. With their own sense of self worth eroded, and with societal expectation the only way of 'feeling good about themselves', people are forced to compromise their morals, and make judgement calls that might be against their internal programming because they feel they have no choice. They are broken to the point where they believe what they feel is wrong, and what everyone else is doing is right.. to the point where they won't even realise *what* it is they are feeling.
Now sure, along the way, some individual choices might be made, with someone following their own judgement.. But by and large, the things that really matter, they don't even realise aren’t their own choice. The fact that things could, and SHOULD be different, never enters their heads.
When people start trusting their own judgement and listening to themselves, things start to appear very different to the ways we are told they should be.
When people have no sense of self worth, they adopt and accept the paradigm that is forced upon them. Thus it is in the interest of those who set the paradigm to keep people's self esteem low.. thus they never question anything but themselves.

For example - An owner of a large business seeks an employee, so he can make more profit (a lot more than he will pay the employee). He is thinking of himself and his own bank account (the definition of capitalism). He wants a good worker, who will do what he's told, work hard and take responsibility himself for part of the owners profit. Now the sort of worker that the employer wants is not human, they will have expectations of this person that will go against the programming of the person themselves (e.g. Getting up early, 30 mins for lunch, inflexible hours etc.) So the person will be forced to change who they are, and what they feel is right, if they are to be employed and given the 'privilege' of given a wage and surviving. Thus the business owner sets the paradigm, and the worker is forced to change himself to fit into it. After years of doing this, peoples own beliefs change and they themselves believe and parrot the same paradigm, when all along, this way of thinking was originally set so the capitalist business owner could make more profit for himself. The worker will see other people who don't work hard, as slackers, and will instil this sentiment into those around him. Thus other people, whose sense of self worth is eroded, feel they have to work hard and change themselves to feel self worth. - So now most peoples sense of self worth and belief paradigm is set by a business owner who's only though was making more profit for himself.

Sure, this might be a relatively simplistic version of it, but the mechanics of it are going on around you - look around.

Trust your own judgement, trust yourself. If something doesn't seem 'right' ... look into it deeper and find out why.

"You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad."

Profit

2005-09-14T02:57:01Z

Society teaches working people to judge their self worth by how much money they make, what their salary is.
When people judge themselves by this standard, they get used to seeing themselves being worth a certain
amount, as a dollar value. When most people get new job and are paid less, or have a pay cut, their own
feeling of self worth drops along with that.
Of course, people want to evolve, and like themselves better, and increase their feeling of worth, so over
time they feel they should be paid more, get better jobs with higher salaries/more responsibility etc... they
don't want to go backwards.
With many buisiness people and corporate managers, their passion to succeed is driven by a low self worth, and
a need to prove to others they are worthy by showing how much money they have, or how much profit they are
making. To go backwards, means they must be failing at 'life', so they must go forwards, whatever
consequences. Thus concessions are made ethically, in the name of profit.

Profit itself, is just an expression of the human insecurity of putting others down, to make yourself feel
more worthy.

Which is why profit fucks everything.
At its core its just an expression of a human insecurity.

Group Intelligence in Complex Systems

2005-08-05T00:06:15Z

When groups of individual units come together, they sometimes work as if controlled by a unifying/group intelligence. E.g. Flocks of birds, fish etc.
The human body is made up of individual cells, all working together with a unifying intelligence, in a similar way.
Even plasma seems to show some form of control in the way in which it moves.

Why would the human race as a whole be any different? We are a lot more complex, yes, but if we moved out far enough, would we be able to see the unifying/group intelligence that appears to be controlling us?

As above, so below. The patterns of humanity as a whole, refelct the general patterns within each individual. Details of the individuals are different, but the underlying patterns are the same.
We talk about our 'inner demons' .. Could the 'Satan' figure, be the group expression of these inner demons spread across the whole of humanity, as a group intelligence?
And by the same token, could the polar opposite of the dark, be the good side of people, expressing itself on a higher level encompassing all of humanity.
For all appearances, if you viewed what was going on from enough distance, then it might appear that there was a controlling intelligence for each side, its just hard to view from where we are. If you look at a flock of birds or school of fish, all moving and turning in unison :- if we didn't know they were individual birds, we might theorise that they were one organism.
Our perspective is skewed because we are the individual units, and people often want to believe they have the free will to do anything.

Is this where the religious perspective of "God" and "Satan" fighting over the souls of humanity, comes from? The two unifying intelligences fighting each other, in the same way people have internal conflicts? (I use the terms God and Satan in a general sort of way to represent light and dark, rather than a specific reference)

Of course above this, the fusion of the two sides, could be viewed as another intelligence, more balanced.. That would be more like a complete human itself, with light and dark sides.

How far out can you go?

hunter_seeker @ 2005-07-14T14:57:00

2005-07-14T04:57:47Z

Slavery.
http://www.earthsharing.org.au/slavery.html

SLAVERY
[By A. J. O.]

THE SLAVER

Suppose I am the owner of an estate and 100 slaves, all the land about being held in the same way by people of the same class as myself. It is a profitable business, but there are many expenses and annoyances attached to it. I must keep up my supply of slaves either by buying or breeding them. I must pay an overseer to keep them continually to their work with a lash. I must keep them in a state of brutish ignorance (to the detriment of their efficiency), for fear they should learn their rights and their power, and become dangerous. I must tend them in sickness and when past work. And the slaves have all the vices and defects that slavery engenders; they have no self-respect or moral sense; they lie, they steal, they are lazy, shirking work whenever they dare; they do not care what mischief their carelessness occasions me so long as it is not found out; their labor is obtained by force, and given grudgingly; they have no heart in it. All these things worry me.

FLASH! ....

Suddenly a brilliant idea strikes me. I reflect that there is no unoccupied land in the neighbourhood, so that if my laborers were free they would still have to look to me for work somehow. So one day I announce to them that they are all free, intimating at the same time I will be ready to employ as many as I may require on such terms as we may mutually and independently agree. What could be fairer? They are overjoyed, and falling on their knees, bless me as their benefactor. Then they go away and have a jollification, and next day come back to me to arrange the new terms.

THEY BELIEVE ...

Most of them think they would like to have a piece of land and work it for themselves, and be their own masters. All they want is a few tools they have been accustomed to use, and some seed, and these they are ready to buy from me, undertaking to pay me with reasonable interest when the first crop comes in, offering the crop as security. As for their keep, they can easily earn that by working a few weeks on and off on any of the plantations, or by taking a job clearing or fencing, or such like. This will keep them going for the first year, and after that they will be better able to take care of themselves.

HOLD ON, NOW!

"But," softly I observe, "you are going too fast. Your proposals about the tools and seed and your maintenance are all right enough, but the land, you remember, belongs to me. You cannot expect me to give you your liberty and my own land for nothing. That would not be reasonable, would it?" They agree it would not, and begin to propose terms. A fancies this bit of land, and B that. But it soon appears that I want this bit of land for my next year's clearing, and that for my cows, and another is too close to my house and would interfere with my privacy, and another is thick forest or swamps, and would require too long and costly preparation for me who must have quick returns in order to live, and in short that there is no land suitable that I care to part with.

THE BENEFACTOR

Still I am ready to do what I promised - "to employ as many as I may require, on such terms as we may mutually and independently agree." But as I have now got to pay them wages instead of getting their work for nothing. I cannot of course employ all of them. I can find work for ninety of them, however, and with these I am prepared to discuss terms.

At once a number volunteered their services at such wages as their imagination had been picturing to them. I tell the ninety whose demands are most reasonable to stand on one side. The remaining ten look blank, and seeing that since I won't let them have any of the land, it is a question of hired employment or starvation, they offer to come for a little less than the others. I tell these now to stand aside, and ten others to stand out instead. These look blank now, and offer to work for less still, and so the "mutual and voluntary" settlement of terms proceeds.

But, meanwhile, I have been making a little calculation in my head, and have reckoned up what the cost of keeping a slave, with his food and clothes, and a trifle over to keep him contented, would come to, and I offer that. They won't hear of it, but as I know they can't help themselves, I say nothing, and presently first one and then another gives in, till I have got my ninety, and still there are ten left out, and very blank indeed they look. Whereupon, the terms being settled, I graciously announce that though I don't really want any more men, still I am willing, in my benevolence, to take the ten, too, on the same terms, which they promptly accept, and again hail me as their benefactor, only not quite so rapturously as before.

WAGE SLAVES? ...

So they all set to at the old work at the old place, and on the old terms, only a little differently administered; that is, that whereas I formerly supplied them with food, clothes, etc., direct from my stores, I now give them a weekly wage representing the value of those articles, which they w ill henceforth have to buy for themselves.

There is a difference, too, in some other respects, indicating a moral improvement in our relations. I can no longer curse and flog them. But then I don't want to; it's no longer necessary; the threat of dismissal is quite as effective, even more so; and much pleasanter for me.

I can no longer separate husband from wife, parent from child. But then again, I don't want to. There would be no profit in it; leaving them their wives and children has the double advantage of making them more contented with their lot, and giving me greater power over them, for they have now got to keep these wives and children out of their own earnings.

My men are now as eager as ever to come to me to work as they formerly were to run away from work. I have neither to buy or breed them; and if any suddenly leave me, instead of letting loose the bloodhounds, I have merely to hold up a finger or advertise, and I have plenty of others offering to take their place. I am saved the expense and worry of incessant watching and driving. I have no sick to attend, or worn-out pensioners to maintain. If a man falls ill there is nothing but my good nature to prevent my turning him off at once; the whole affair is a purely commercial transaction - so much wages for so much work. The patriarchal relation of slave-owner and slave is gone, and no other has taken its place. When the man is worn out with long service I can turn him out with a clear business conscience, knowing that the State will see that he does not starve.

Instead of being forced to keep my men in brutish ignorance, I find public schools established at other people's expense to stimulate their intelligence and improve their minds, to my great advantage, and their children compelled to attend these schools. The service I get, too, being now voluntarily rendered (or apparently so) is much improved in quality. In short, the arrangement pays me better in many ways.

REJOICE! I AM CAPITAL AND I EMPLOY PEOPLE!

But I gain in other ways besides pecuniary benefit. I have lost the stigma of being a slave driver, and have, acquired instead the character of a man of energy and enterprise, of justice and benevolence. I am a "large employer of labour," to whom the whole country, and the labourer especially, is greatly indebted, and people say, "See the power of capital! These poor labourers, having no capital, could not use the land if they had it, so this great and far-seeing man wisely refuses to let them have it, and keeps it all for himself, but by providing them with employment his capital saves them from pauperism, and enables him to build up the wealth of the country, and his own fortune together."

Whereas it is not my capital that does any of these things. lt is not my capital but the labourer's toil that builds up my fortune and the wealth of the country. It is not my employment that keeps him from pauperism, but my monopoly of the land forcing him into my employment that keeps him on the brink of it. It is not want of capital that keeps the labourer from using the land, but my refusing him the use of the land that prevents him from acquiring capital. All the capital he wants to begin with is an axe and a spade, which a week's earnings would buy him, and for his maintenance during the first year, and at any subsequent time, he could work for me or for others, turnabout, with his work on his own land. Henceforth with every year his capital would grow of itself, and his independence with it, and that this is no fancy sketch, anyone can see for himself by taking a trip into the country, where he will find well-to-do-farmers who began with nothing but a spade and an axe (so to speak) and worked their way up in the manner described.

ENTER THE LANDLORD ....

But now another thought strikes me. Instead of paying an overseer to work these men for me, I will make him pay me for the privilege of doing it. I will let the land as it stands to him or to another - to whomsoever will give the most for the billet. He shall be called my tenant instead of my overseer, but the things he shall do for me are essentially the same, only done by contract instead of for yearly pay. He, not I, shall find all the capital, take all the risk, and engage and supervise the men, paying me a lump sum, called rent, out of the proceeds of their toil, and make what he can for himself out of the surplus. The competition is as keen in its way for the land, among people of his class, as it is among the labourers for employment, only that as they are all possessed of some little means (else they could not compete) they are in no danger of immediate want, and can stand out for rather better terms than the labourers, who are forced by necessity to take what terms they can get. The minimum in each case amounts practically to a "mere living", but the mere living they insist on is one of a rather higher standard than the labourers'; it means a rather more abundant supply and better quality of those little comforts which are next door to necessaries. It means, in short, a living of a kind to which people of that class are accustomed.

For a moderate reduction in my profits, then - a reduction equal to the tenant's narrow margin of profit - I have all the toil and worry of management taken off my hands, and the risk too, for be the season good or bad, the rent is bound to be forthcoming, and I can sell him up to the last rag if he fails of the full amount, no matter for what reason; and my rent takes precedence of all other debts. All my capital is set free for investment elsewhere, and I am freed from the odium of a slave owner, notwithstanding that the men still toil for my enrichment as when they were slaves, and that I get more out of them than ever. If I wax rich while they toil from hand to mouth, and in depressed seasons find it hard to get work at all; it is not, to all appearances, my doing, but merely the force of circumstances, the law of nature, the state of the labour market - fine sounding names that hide the ugly reality.

If wages are forced down it is not I that do it; it is that greedy and merciless man the employer (my tenant) who does it. I am a lofty and superior being, dwelling apart and above such sordid considerations. I would never dream of grinding these poor labourers, not I! I have nothing to do with them at all; I only want my rent-and get it. Like the lillies of the field, I toil not, neither do I spin, and yet (so kind is Providence!) my daily bread (well buttered) comes to me of itself. Nay, people bid against each other for the privilege of finding it for me; and no one seems to realise that the comfortable income that falls to me like the refreshing dew is dew indeed; but it is the dew of sweat wrung from the labourers' toil. It is the fruit of their labour which they ought to have; which they would have if I did not take it from them.

This sketch illustrates the fact that chattel slavery is not the only nor even the worst form of bondage. When the use of the earth - the sole source of our daily bread - is denied unless one pays a fellow creature for permission to use it, people are bereft of economic freedom. The only way to regain that freedom is to collect the rent of land instead of taxes for the public domain.

Once upon a time, labour leaders in the USA, the UK and Australia understood these facts. The labour movements of those countries were filled with people who fought for the principles of 'the single tax' on land at the turn of the twentieth century. But since then, it has been ridiculed, and they have gradually yielded to the forces of privilege and power - captives of the current hegemony - daring no longer to come to grips with this fundamental question, lest they, too, become ridiculed.

And so the world continues to wallow in this particular ignorance - and in its ensuing poverty and debt.

hunter_seeker @ 2005-06-15T09:53:00

2005-06-14T23:52:34Z

"The Population "Problem" Is Actually The Solution.
We Humans Will Consume Our Resource Base And Collapse.
We Will Then Never Be Able To Do Such Mischief
To The Earth Or Each Other Again. In The Process,
Life Will Select New Ways Of Being In Accord. Rejoice!
It Has Happened To Other Species Throughout The History
Of This Planet. Everything You See Alive Today Is The Result
Of The Few Who Made It Through The Last Great Crisis.
If You Have Trouble With This Reality,
And Want To Try To Do Something In The Meantime,
Look Into Some Of The Ideas Presented Here.
The Most Important Thing Is To Find Compassionate
Joy In The Life You Have Right Now. "

From www.seedballs.com

hunter_seeker @ 2005-06-08T13:21:00

2005-06-08T03:21:49Z

Condemned is the man who speaks the truth.

hunter_seeker @ 2005-05-01T21:41:00

2005-05-01T11:42:05Z

When thoughts create percieved reality, and physcial reality is just an illusion, how can you create a physical test to test anything, when the test itself is as illusory as perception.
This is the reason science cannot get past a certain point, because it demands physical evidence of things that are beyond physicality.

Strength in Individuality

2005-05-01T02:50:23Z

There is strength in individuality.
If you fight an army that has been all trained the same, armoured the same, and is equipped the same..
Then you only have to find one weakness, then you can beat them all.
If you fight an army of individuals..
Each individual, is his own army.

hunter_seeker @ 2005-04-25T09:28:00

2005-04-24T23:29:21Z

I know why i keep coming back...

Because i haven't gotten around to doing, all the things i want to experience yet.

hunter_seeker @ 2005-03-31T12:51:00

2005-03-31T02:46:51Z

How can we be free in a system, that was designed from the outset, to consolidate the money and power into the hands of just a few?

Science & Medicine

2005-03-30T23:34:50Z

Science is corrupt.
It is supposed to be the pursuit of truth, but when truth is not 'profitable' or goes against certain previously 'established' paradigms, then it gets pushed into obscurity.
Bogus science is on the increase, as people are paid to research new things and new ideas.
When someone's grant is dependant on whether or not they succeed, then they are more likely to fudge the results... its human nature.
With companies only looking for more profit, new discoveries that could potentially help mankind are being brushed under the carpet, or not researched at all, unless they are more profitable than whatever the existsing solution is.
E.g. A cure for cancer.
With the cancer industry a multi-billion dollar money spinner for the pharmaceutical industry, where is the impetus to find a cure, when you can keep people sick and paying for Chemotherapy and treatments that don't work 80% of the time?
There are plenty of alternative treatments that have had varying degrees of success, above and beyond what the pharma industry is pushing, but because they are not profitable, they get called 'bad science' and shelved at best, or even outright banned.
The same thing happens with alternate fuels, or motors.. They threaten the profits of the large oil companies, so they get denounced, or bought out and shelved.
The technology exists to run zero emissions cars, or at best, very very low emissions. But why do we not see them? Because they threaten the profitability of the big oil companies, who have enough political sway to stop the alternatives dead.
Sure there are a coulpe of dual-fuel or alternative type cars you can buy, but this is a half hearted effort at best, made to LOOK like something is actually being done.
Profit has become the enemy of truth and humanity.
When science is only performed for profit, there is no truth in it anymore.

Failings of Democracy

2005-03-15T22:54:58Z

It amazes me how many people think they are 'free'... when they plainly are not.
Freedom to choose what you watch on TV, what movies you see... what you do in your free time...
That is not freedom, that is just an illusion.
What we watch on TV is all screened and sanctioned... The Movies and what is in them are all screened, censored and guided in certain directions. The people with enough money to present things like TV and Movies, have their own agenda, and thus, show you what they want you to see.

I don't ever recall being asked if i wished to be a Citizen of my country.
I don't ever recall being asked if i wished to abide by the laws of my country.
I don't ever recall being asked if i wished to pay taxes, or being asked how i wanted them spent.
I don't ever recall being asked if i wished to work for someone else, to make them rich.

If all these things have been thrust upon me without my asking..
How then am i free?

Democracy is not freedom, its just the illusion of freedom.
Democracy is rule by the majority, at the expense of minorities. (I define minorities, as those who think differently to the majority of people.. not just those of different ethnic backgrounds)
If this wasn't bad enough, the majorities views themselves are swayed and programmed by a smaller group of rich and powerful, who control whats seen and available on the TV, Movies and Newspapers.
Thus Democracy becomes a tool of the rich and powerful, to set their own agenda, and push society towards their own goals at the expense of everyone else.
People think they are free, because the media has polarised the view of 'Slavery' to be people in chains and manacles.
"Obviously if I not chained and beaten, then I am not a slave" ...
Its amazing how many people think this, because they have been conditioned to think this way.

If there is something that needs to happen to further the agenda of those with power, all they have to do is create a situation where the majority will demand a certain course of action form the Government. This course of action is then followed through, those with power got what they wanted... and the majority 'think' they got what was best for them.
For example, if it is percieved by those in control that more gun control is needed, then the media will start highlighting and bringing gun crime into the public view. There will be talk shows about the 'sudden increase' in gun related crimes. Current Affairs shows will interview victims, and all the papers will have headlines and major stories about it.
Suddenly the public is demanding that something be done, before they themselves become a victim!
Thus new laws are written, everyone agrees to them, and the result that those in power wanted in the first place, is then instituted.
Now its not much of a stretch to think that events may even be 'created', and then thrust into public view, so as to push the outcome that is desired.

A real life example:

In Sydney, before the war on Iraq started, there was a protest with hundreds of thousands of people, in a city with 4.5 million people.. thats a LARGE percentage of the population.. Protesting against the war on Iraq, and protesting Australia's involvement. Public opinion was very strongly against the war.
Not long after, there was a 'terrorist' bomb blast in Bali. It killed 86 Australians, most of them teenagers who had been visiting the popular tourist area. Australia for the most part is a very sporting nation, with many many people following football and cricket etc. Now, the victims of the bombing were mostly teenagers, whos sports teams had gone to Bali to celebrate the end of their season.
So "Not only did they kill our kids! They killed our future sports stars too!!! Something must be done!!!"

Soon after, our Prime Minister commited troops to the war on Iraq, and public opinion had swayed towards supporting the war on terror, as it was suddenly on our doorstep.
Very convenient, no?

Democracy itself doesn't really work, as its supression of the minorities by a majority.
Even worse that when the public are ill informed, due to manipulation by those in power, it just becomes a freight train, furthering the agenda of a select few.

hunter_seeker @ 2005-03-14T15:54:00

2005-03-14T04:50:40Z

It is the nature of power, to attract those who absolutely should not have it.

Corporate Shareholding

2005-03-05T08:43:30Z

The corporation by nature is an exploitative entity.
A corporation is designed to make a product or provide a service so as to generate money for its shareholders.
Its a way for people with money, to use that money to make other people work for them, to make them richer, while the work that is being done by the employees is underpaid.
No one is paid anywhere near what value they are to a company, because if they did that, then the people who owned shares would never get a payoff.
People buy shares, the company exploits the people who work for it, and it exploits the environment.. the share value goes up. The rich people get richer.

The whole way our money & economic system is designed, is so that the people with money accumulate more and more, and there is less and less available for the majority.
Sooner or later, people are going to work their entire lives, and have nothing (or less than nothing.. debt) to show for it.

Fractional Reserve System

2005-02-25T01:36:36Z

Did you know that banks do not have to have as much money in reserve as they are loaning out?

Before WW2, they only needed to have 10% of what they created in loans, in actual reserve cash.
E.g. If they had $100 in cash, they could create loans of up to $1000 and get interest on those loans, even though they don't own the money they lent out. They just collect the interest, and make a profit from nothing.
The debt they are owed becomes an 'asset' to the bank, and they write you a cheque or deposit electronic money in your account to the value of the loan.
Essentially, the money gets created out of thin air, and you pay them interest for money they didn't even own before you got the loan.
Now its even less than 10%

Read up on it:

http://www.basicincome.com/basic_banks.htm

hunter_seeker @ 2005-02-09T09:18:00

2005-02-08T22:18:46Z

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.
- Robert A. Heinlein

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:from bondage to spiritual faith;from spiritual faith to great courage;from courage to liberty;from liberty to abundance;from abundance to selfishness;from selfishness to complacency;from complacency to apathy;from apathy to dependency;from dependency back again to bondage.
- Sir Alex Fraser Tytler

Giving your life for the Company.

2004-11-05T01:27:02Z

It amazes me how many people give up their free time, and large parts of their lives 'For the Company'.
Where i work, some of the lower-middle managers are putting in 10 - 12 hours a day (Sometimes longer). This would leave no time for anything but work.
These people are giving their lives and their freedom to make a Global Multinational an extra few bucks.
A Global Multinational that will sack them, and throw them onto the street the second they become unprofitable, or when the company restructures and they job doesn't exist anymore.

Fuck the Corporation.

Religion and 'The Right Thing to Do'

2004-10-26T02:08:28Z

A lot of religions seems to have a set of rules for people to follow.
Things that you have to do or follow to advance spiritually.
Many people follow these rules out of fear, and 'because that is what you have to do'... but their internal programming, and the person they really are, feels differently. Why else would you have 'confessionals' for example, unless people couldn't do what they are told. This makes people feel bad that they can't follow the rules. In Christianity at least, they are told they have free will, so if they can't follow the rules, it must be their own choice, and thus they are a bad person. This keeps them afraid, feeling guilty, and under control.
True spiritual advancment isn't brought about through following anothers set of rules. It comes from working out what the right thing to do is within yourself, and following your own path.
Everyones path is different, just as everyones lives and experiences are different.
When everyone starts from a different point on a map, what use is someone else's set of directions?
If someone hasn't gotten to the point where they can follow their own code of conduct and honour, then no amount or telling them what to do is going to change who they are.

But i can see how it happened. Someone advanced, and did their own thing. Became enlightened.. and said to people "This is how i did it!" ... and many people thought they could get there too, if they did the same thing, so they followed the path.. Somewhere along the way, the original idea became corrupted, and others started using the teachings to control people, and to gain power. The original idea of spiritual fullfillment and advancement then just became a tool to control people, and keep them in line. And thus you get the Catholic church today.. Keep people feeling guilty, and you have them on a leash... Tell them that if they give money to the church, god will look favourably upon them... and you become very very rich.

hunter_seeker @ 2004-10-18T14:54:00

2004-10-18T05:00:08Z

I was just reading an article on the net..

http://www.rense.com/general58/cpeb.htm

China is concerned about the rising rate of Mental Illness (Schizophrenia, Depression & Altzeimers) in its population.

Down near the bottom it mentions..

"Mental health has become a major public health problem in China, not only affecting the life and work of the patients and their families, but also bringing heavy economic burden to society," the agency quoted Zhu Qingsheng, China's vice health minister, as saying.

The government is really worried about the 'Heavy Economic Burden' in reality, than it is about the welfare of its citizens.
The same would be true for western countries.
Its starting to make sense to me now, why Anti-Depressants have become so widespread, while real therapy and helping people is dying off.
If you can give someone a pill, that will get them back to work, then great! The economy won't suffer! Forget all the side effects, and all the problems they cause, at least the person is back paying tax again!

'Free' Press

2004-09-30T05:44:10Z

Quoted from:

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/september2004/270904coincidencetheorists.htm

About the recollections of author William Shirer, who lived in Nazi Germany throughout most of the 1930s, and about the propaganda, and how similar it was, to now.

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"I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state," Shirer wrote. "Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers . . . and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one's inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it."

Shirer then recounted how, in conversations with his German friends and strangers he would meet in cafes and beer halls, "I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers."

"Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were."

Who are the 'bad guys' again?

2004-09-24T04:11:31Z

This speech was delievered by Joseph Goebbels.
Its disturbing how much it parallels the words coming out of the mouths of the current US Government.

"I ask, which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower, and yes, the backbone to best protect us?

The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight.

There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust our future and that man's name is Adolph Hitler.

There are some crazy men who would kill us if they could. So Adolph Hitler has told us: 'All private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger.'
But where is the national unity in this country when we need it most?

Now, while young Germans are dying in the mud in Czechoslovakia and the mountains of Poland, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Social Democrats manic obsession to bring down our Fuhrer.

What has happened to the nation I've spent my life working in?

I can remember when Social Democrats believed that it was the duty of Germany to fight for freedom over tyranny.

Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Germans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Social Democratic leaders see Germany as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes me madder than someone calling German troops occupiers rather than liberators.

Tell that to the Czechs, Poles, Frenchmen, and Belgians who have been freed because Adolph Hitler led an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the millions of men, women, and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to the Balkans, because Adolph Hitler built a military of liberators, not occupiers.

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the German soldier. And our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad; they preserve it for us here at home.

Right now, the world just cannot afford an indecisive Germany. Fainthearted, self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world.

In this hour of danger, our Fuhrer has had the courage to stand up. And I am proud to stand up with him.

God bless this great country and God bless Adolph Hitler."

State Terror

2004-09-20T03:42:02Z

http://www.rense.com/general57/stater.htm

Time To Recognize State Terror
By John Pilger
9-17-4

The world is dividing into two hostile camps: Islam and "us." That is the unerring message from Western governments, press, radio and television. For Islam, read terrorists. It is reminiscent of the cold war, when the world was divided between "Reds" and us, and even a strategy of annihilation was permissible in our defense. We now know, or we ought to know, that so much of that was a charade; released official files make clear the Soviet threat was for public consumption only.

Every day now, as during the cold war, a one-way moral mirror is held up to us as a true reflection of events. The new threat is given impetus with every terrorist outrage, be it at Beslan or Jakarta. Seen in the one-way mirror, our leaders make grievous mistakes, but their good intentions are not in question. Tony Blair's "idealism" and "decency" are promoted by his accredited mainstream detractors, as the concocted Greek tragedy of his political demise opens on the media stage. Having taken part in the killing of as many as 37,000 Iraqi civilians, Blair's distractions, not his victims, are news: from his arcane rivalry with treasurer Gordon Brown, his Tweedledee, to his damascene conversion to the perils of global warming. On the atrocity at Beslan, Blair is allowed to say, without irony or challenge, that "this international terrorism will not prevail." These are the same words spoken by Mussolini soon after he had bombed civilians in Abyssinia.

Heretics who look behind the one-way mirror and see the utter dishonesty of all this, who identify Blair and his collaborators as war criminals in the literal and legal sense and present evidence of his cynicism and immorality, are few; but they have wide support among the public, whose awareness has never been higher, in my experience. It is the British public's passionate indifference, if not contempt for the political games of Blair/Brown and their courts and its accelerating interest in the way the world really is, that unnerves those with power.

Let's look at a few examples of the way the world is presented and the way it really is. The occupation of Iraq is presented as "a mess": a blundering, incompetent American military up against Islamic fanatics. In truth, the occupation is a systematic, murderous assault on a civilian population by a corrupt American officer class, given license by its superiors in Washington. Last May, the US Marines used battle tanks and helicopter gunships to attack the slums of Fallujah. They admitted killing 600 people, a figure far greater than the total number of civilians killed by the "insurgents" during the past year. The generals were candid; this futile slaughter was an act of revenge for the killing of three American mercenaries. Sixty years earlier, the SS Das Reich division killed 600 French civilians at Oradour-sur-Glane as revenge for the kidnapping of a German officer by the resistance. Is there a difference?

These days, the Americans routinely fire missiles into Fallujah and other dense urban areas; they murder whole families. If the word terrorism has any modern application, it is this industrial state terrorism. The British have a different style. There are more than 40 known cases of Iraqis having died at the hands of British soldiers; just one soldier has been charged. In the current issue of the magazine The Journalist, Lee Gordon, a freelance reporter, wrote, "Working as a Brit in Iraq is hazardous, particularly in the south where our troops have a reputation (unreported at home) for brutality." Neither is the growing disaffection among British troops reported at home. This is so worrying the Ministry of Defense that it has moved to placate the family of 17-year-old soldier David McBride by taking him off the AWOL list after he refused to fight in Iraq. Almost all the families of soldiers killed in Iraq have denounced the occupation and Blair, all of which is unprecedented.

Only by recognizing the terrorism of states is it possible to understand, and deal with, acts of terrorism by groups and individuals which, however horrific, are tiny by comparison. Moreover, their source is inevitably the official terrorism for which there is no media language. Thus, the State of Israel has been able to convince many outsiders that it is merely a victim of terrorism when, in fact, its own unrelenting, planned terrorism is the cause of the infamous retaliation by Palestinian suicide bombers. For all of Israel's perverse rage against the BBC a successful form of intimidation BBC reporters never report Israelis as terrorists: that term belongs exclusively to Palestinians imprisoned in their own land. It is not surprising, as the recent Glasgow University study concluded, that many television viewers in Britain believe that the Palestinians are the invaders and occupiers.

On September 7, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 16 Israelis in the town of Beersheba. Every television news report allowed the Israeli government spokesman to use this tragedy to justify the building of an apartheid wall when the wall is pivotal to the causes of Palestinian violence. Almost every news report marked the end of a five-month period of "relative peace and calm" and "a lull in the violence." During those five months of relative peace and calm, almost 400 Palestinians were killed, 71 of them in assassinations. During the lull in the violence, more than 73 Palestinian children were killed. A 13-year-old was murdered with a bullet through the heart, a 5-year-old was shot in her face as she walked arm in arm with her 2-year-old sister. The body of Mazen Majid, aged 14, was riddled with 18 Israeli bullets as he and his family fled their bulldozed home.

None of this was reported in Britain as terrorism. Most of it was not reported at all. After all, this was a period of peace and calm, a lull in the violence. On May 19, Israeli tanks and helicopters fired on peaceful demonstrators, killing eight of them. This atrocity had a certain significance; the demonstration was part of a growing nonviolent Palestinian movement, which has seen peaceful protest gatherings, often with prayers, along the apartheid wall. The rise of this Gandhian movement is barely noted in the outside world.

The truth about Chechnya is similarly suppressed. On February 4, 2000, Russian aircraft attacked the Chechen village of Katyr Yurt. They used "vacuum bombs," which release petrol vapor and suck people's lungs out, and are banned under the Geneva Convention. The Russians bombed a convoy of survivors under a white flag. They murdered 363 men, women and children. It was one of countless, little-known acts of terrorism in Chechnya perpetrated by the Russian state, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, has the "complete solidarity" of Tony Blair.

"Few of us", wrote the playwright Arthur Miller, "can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied."

It is time we stopped denying it.

Truth.

2004-09-10T09:47:15Z

http://www.rense.com/general57/news.htm

The top 25 Censored or Underreported news stories of 2004...

I particularly like:

#11 The Media Can Legally Lie

Title: "Florida Appeals Court Orders Akre-Wilson Must Pay Trial Costs for $24.3 Billion Fox Television; Couple Warns Journalists of Danger to Free Speech, Whistle Blower Protection"

In 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals ruled that there are no written rules against distorting news in the media. It agreed with an argument by Fox Television that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves. Under the current ruling, it is up to the public to discover whether or not they are being lied to.

Still believe what the mainstream media is telling you?
The mainstream media lies and distorts to serve its own ends, and the ends of its masters. When the popular attitude can be changed so easily, what hope do most people have? ... All they believe, all they are told, is lies. The more lies that are told, the further away the truth gets. How deep does the rabbit hole go?
If the current media is lying, whats to say the media in the past hasn't lied as much as well.. Then what do we believe of the history we have been told? ... Or anything?
History is not at all as it appears to be, when you dig a little deeper this becomes apparent. Governments and rulers have a tendancy to hide, or restict access to information which destabilises or threatens their power. How much has been hidden, and lost because of this reason?

How much do you REALLY know about the world?

Look Around

2004-07-19T01:13:19Z

I look around, i see people desperately working long hours to keep their heads above water. People who have nothing but work and sleep. Working for a fraction of what the money they are making for their company, while the directors and the major stockholders make millions off of their backs. Everywhere, everyone is miserable. Living unfulfilling lives, working in some meaningless job, for enough money to be able to afford food : - the privelidge of living. But what is this?? This is not living this is existing. Everywhere people are being expected to not be human anymore. Not have lives outside work.. be happy to work whatever hours, and get up at whatever ungodly time, because thats what the company expects. To pay a large chunk of what little money you get to an increasingly corrupt and overbearing government who is hard at work removing what few freedoms that people have left.
Everywhere, everyone's bodies and minds are fighting back. People are getting are depressed, people are getting cancer... Their bodies are telling them, screaming out to them, that things are not right, and its not suppoed to be like this. But no one is listening. They are worried about food for them and their kids, and their housing payments and whether they will have a job next week. They are brainwashed into thinking that they are free, and our society stands for whats good in the world. That terrorists who hate freedom, are trying to take it away.. without these people realising how much of a slave they already are, and how controlled this society really is. Just because there are not barbed wire fences or gun-towers (yet) doesn't mean you arn't imprisoned.
Drug companies market new and exciting drugs to 'make you feel like you'. Anti-Depressants, so you get on with your job and your life, doing what your told, and no longer think about/realise how bad its getting. You just don't feel anymore.One step closer to being a robot, and one step further from being a human. But then, that is how some people wish we would act. Like robots. That way we would do what we are told, no complaints, work extra long hours, no complaints, no lunch breaks, no complaints, and minimal cash for maintenance. Many people's only respite from work.. the first thing they do when they get home, is turn on the TV. Television, which bombards them with ads, telling them that if they buy Coke, they'll be beautiful, and be happy. Telling them that their lives will be fullfilled if they just spend what little cash they have left on buying some chemical cocktail posing as a drink, or a meaningless trinket they they won't be using in a month anyway. Television.. programming people into thinking that the Government is working for 'them' ..
while it squanders away taxes that they pay on increasing corporate profts for those
companies giving thousands in campaign contributions to those same politicians.
Television.. that tells us that the Iraqi's that are picking up arms and defending their country against an invasion, are 'insurgents', 'terrorists' or 'Saddam Loyalists'. Tell me this.. If another country from the other side of the world, invaded, killed your brother who was forced into military service, destroyed your local power station and water supply, plundered your countries natural resources, put a curfew on your city, took away your father for 'questioning', and destroyed your only means for making money to feed your family (be it a taxi/farm or whatever) .... would you not take up arms and attempt to defend yourself?
But we are told this war is to 'Free the Iraqi people' .. when in reality the only winners are the Corporations.
Corporations have been enthroned. They are the new power, and you will do as they say. Lest your privelidge to eat and drink will be taken away, and you will be forced onto the street.
Once upon a time, everything was provided by nature. Water in streams and rain, food growing on plants.. all you had to do was walk around and find it. But now Corporations have taken root. Slapped a price tag on nature, and selling it for whatever they can get. Suddenly your birthright, the right to live and eat and drink can be taken away as quick as you job. Suddenly they is no food for your family, and no money to pay back the loan for the widgets that TV said you couldn't do without. Suddenly you became unprofitable, and thus no longer deserve to live, at least in corporate eyes.
But people accept, because they don't know any different. Inside they know something isn't right, but they don't know what.. so they assume its them, and try to fix it.
This society is wrong. Everything is wrong. It all goes against human nature, and what people feel inside. Human beings are not meant to have to live up to the expectations of others. They should be themselves, fuck what society says. Corporate rule would ideally have everyone the same, all dressing the same, all thinking the same, all feeling nothing. Its disturbing how far it has gone.. Everyone is different, everyone deserves their own life, at their own pace, doing what they want to do, without being taken advantage of.

There is a storm coming. A storm that no corporation can stop.
Some people want to try and save things, and stop the changes before they go too far, before everything falls apart.
Look around... whats worth saving of this society? .. Nature is being raped, human nature abused, and everyone is miserable.

I say, bring on the storm.