Gary Rumor’s Anti-Entropic Continuum

Oh the indignity of it all. There was Biden rolling out the new peace plan for Israel and Palestine, stating publicly that when it came to the US and Israel there was no space between them. Not 24 hours later, Israel announces they are building 1600 new apartments in East Jerusalem on territory claimed by the Palestinians. President Obama and his press secretary both complained about the timing and intent of Israel. President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said that the announcement of those apartments being built was a way to kill the negotiations before they start.
Land and water are the two most important issues in Palestine and Israel is pushing its luck grabbing what land it can. I have been reading the Old Testament lately and in it Yahweh tell the Israelites to take the land and kill all the inhabitants, man woman and child. It is pretty harsh. Three times historically the people called the Israelites have been removed from Canaan. First when Joseph when to Egypt, second when Israel was deported to Babylon and third when Rome destroyed the temple and Jerusalem. Yet they come back 1800 years later and act as if nothing has happened, like they had just gone away for a short vacation and were back home to discover that the neighbors had come and moved in. In reality it is as if the Druids came back to England and insisted that the land be given back to the Celts and all the Angles, Norse, Normans etc went back to where they came from.
Interesting that the land grab was the news at noon on NPR. Tonight on MSNBC not a word of it was mentioned. Chris Matthews, saying that a lot of Jewish people watch his show, did a puff piece interview with Vice President Biden and didn’t even bring up the matter of land and peace with Palestine. All he spoke of was Israel and its concern with Iranian nukes. This is another Iraq in the making. The USA and Israel are like to vicious dogs barking wildly and threatening to attack Iran, even daring Iran to try something. It is a dangerous game of chicken that is being played off as statesmanship. It is ridiculous. It is a rational Iranian defense to want a weapon that would deter such dangerous enemies. We need to stop scaring them and start talking.

Today Sarah Palin spoke before a group of right to lifers and said god was her model for why she wrote crib notes on her hand. She quoted the Bible to back her argument. So I guess the book has its uses.

Today President Obama went on the campaign trail to push his health care plan. It is getting down to the wire. Will he pull it off or will it die? This is a real nail biter. The problem is the abortion issue. Its language is causing the different sides to gag. The right-to-lifers smell blood and want to wring as much anti abortion language as they can get in this health bill. Let us hope reason prevails.

“Growing low-oxygen zones in oceans worry scientists
By Les Blumenthal, McClatchy Newspapers Les Blumenthal, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Sun Mar 7, 12:01 pm ET
WASHINGTON — Lower levels of oxygen in the Earth’s oceans, particularly off the United States’ Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental changes linked to global climate change, scientists say.

They warn that the oceans’ complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food chains could be disrupted.

In some spots off Washington state and Oregon , the almost complete absence of oxygen has left piles of Dungeness crab carcasses littering the ocean floor, killed off 25-year-old sea stars, crippled colonies of sea anemones and produced mats of potentially noxious bacteria that thrive in such conditions.

Areas of hypoxia, or low oxygen, have long existed in the deep ocean. These areas — in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans — appear to be spreading, however, covering more square miles, creeping toward the surface and in some places, such as the Pacific Northwest , encroaching on the continental shelf within sight of the coastline.

“The depletion of oxygen levels in all three oceans is striking,” said Gregory Johnson , an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle .

In some spots, such as off the Southern California coast, oxygen levels have dropped roughly 20 percent over the past 25 years. Elsewhere, scientists say, oxygen levels might have declined by one-third over 50 years.

“The real surprise is how this has become the new norm,” said Jack Barth , an oceanography professor at Oregon State University . “We are seeing it year after year.”

Barth and others say the changes are consistent with current climate-change models. Previous studies have found that the oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

“If the Earth continues to warm, the expectation is we will have lower and lower oxygen levels,” said Francis Chan , a marine researcher at Oregon State .

As ocean temperatures rise, the warmer water on the surface acts as a cap, which interferes with the natural circulation that normally allows deeper waters that are already oxygen-depleted to reach the surface. It’s on the surface where ocean waters are recharged with oxygen from the air.

Commonly, ocean “dead zones” have been linked to agricultural runoff and other pollution coming down major rivers such as the Mississippi or the Columbia . One of the largest of the 400 or so ocean dead zones is in the Gulf of Mexico , near the mouth of the Mississippi .

However, scientists now say that some of these areas, including those off the Northwest, apparently are linked to broader changes in ocean oxygen levels.

The Pacific waters off Washington and Oregon face a double whammy as a result of ocean circulation.

Scientists have long known of a natural low-oxygen zone perched in the deeper water off the Northwest’s continental shelf.

During the summer, northerly winds aided by the Earth’s rotation drive surface water away from the shore. This action sucks oxygen-poor water to the surface in a process called upwelling.

Though the water that’s pulled up from the depths is poor in oxygen, it’s rich in nutrients, which fertilize phytoplankton. These microscopic organisms form the bottom of one of the richest ocean food chains in the world. As they die, however, they sink and start to decay. The decaying process uses oxygen, which depletes the oxygen levels even more.

Southerly winds reverse the process in what’s known as down-welling.

Changes in the wind and ocean circulation since 2002 have disrupted what had been a delicate balance between upwelling and down-welling. Scientists now are discovering expanding low-oxygen zones near shore.

“It is consistent with models of global warming, but the time frame is too short to know whether it is a trend or a weather phenomenon,” Johnson said.

Others were slightly more definitive, quicker to link the lower oxygen levels to global warming rather than to such weather phenomena as El Nino or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a shift in the weather that occurs every 20 to 30 years in the northern oceans.

“It’s a large disturbance in the ecosystem that could have huge biological changes,” said Steve Bograd , an oceanographer at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Southern California .

Bograd has been studying oxygen levels in the California Current, which runs along the West Coast from the Canadian border to Baja California and, some scientists think, eventually could be affected by climate change.

So far, the worst hypoxic zone off the Northwest coast was found in 2006. It covered nearly 1,200 square miles off Newport, Ore. , and according to Barth it was so close to shore you could hit it with a baseball. The zone covered 80 percent of the water column and lasted for an abnormally long four months.

Because of upwelling, some of the most fertile ocean areas in the world are found off Washington and Oregon . Similar upwelling occurs in only three other places, off the coast of Peru and Chile , in an area stretching from northern Africa to Portugal and along the Atlantic coast of South Africa and Namibia .

Scientists are unsure how low oxygen levels will affect the ocean ecosystem. Bottom-dwelling species could be at the greatest risk because they move slowly and might not be able to escape the lower oxygen levels. Most fish can swim out of danger. Some species, however, such as chinook salmon, may have to start swimming at shallower depths than they’re used to. Whether the low oxygen zones will change salmon migration routes is unclear.

Some species, such as jellyfish, will like the lower-oxygen water. Jumbo squid, usually found off Mexico and Central America , can survive as oxygen levels decrease and now are found as far north as Alaska .

“It’s like an experiment,” Chan said. “We are pulling some things out of the food web and we will have to see what happens. But if you pull enough things out, it could have a real impact.”

What can I say. Soylent Green anyone?

I have been reading that old book, the Bible. It has some decent stories and a lot of repetition. But at least in the Old Testament one thing is sure, this god loved blood. The Catholic Bible I am reading calls them holocausts, the sacrifice of animals to the deity. Apparently this was seen as a major step up from human sacrifice. I guess the gods digestive tracts learned how to adapt to cow, sheep and goat blood after getting used to human baby blood. From the descriptions of the altars it seems that the meat was mostly eaten by the sacrificial priests but the blood went directly to the god. There was a special trap for the blood that sent it to the deity directly. The instructions are a bit obscure but it seems pretty evident that whatever this god being was, he or she or it, drank blood in copious amounts. It seems that it was required on a daily basis and that was what the temple did, provide blood for this creature in exchange for some degree of protection.
I don’t know if it fit the technical definition of a vampire, but it became very upset if it did not get the undivided attention of the Israelites. They needed to give this deity all their attention. If they didn’t then bad things happened and the creature would come to persons called prophets, in dreams I would assume and tell them what would happen to them if they strayed. The people strayed. They liked gods called the Baal’s and often their priests were cutting in on the action for YAWEH, the god of the Israelites.
What is truly interesting is how that god became civilized by the exile in Babylon. No more blood. What did it live on after the temple was closed? The Babylonian captivity was not long before Buddha in India preached against killing animals and the world seems to have been going through an ethical transformation in the centuries around 500BC. Greek, Indian, Persian, and Jew were all in the thrall of a change from animal sacrifice on a massive scale to the replacement with symbolic sacrifices of things like flowers, milk, butter, renouncing of worldly desire, abstractions. How could this feed a blood thirsty deity?
It seems to me that this deity must have died or moved on at this point in time. No more appearances in a cloud of glory. No more killing of enemies with hailstones and giving leprosy to persons who spoke out. No more earth swallowing up of reluctant followers. It seems that the heroic period when the Gods personally interfered in peoples’ lives was at an end.
In the Greek and Roman world we see the emergence of tales like Jason and the Argonauts written with a more jaundiced eye regarding the gods. We are now entering a period in which the existence of the deity could be questioned because these giants were no longer interfering in the daily lives of the humans. This is a highly conjectural viewpoint. It assumes that there was some kind of being out there that was powerful enough to influence the lives of many people. I would think that perhaps a space ship of intelligent long lived beings crashed on the earth in some point of early history, or perhaps prehistory and they attempted to return to space, failed perhaps and then decided they would have to work out things on earth. So they went into the god business being so much more sophisticated than the natives.
I am sure they had their needs and it seems that blood was what they required for sustenance. So they divided the planet up between one another and found bands of humans willing to trade blood for favors. I am not sure about how they fared in East Asia. China and Japan are not especially good cattle raising regions. But they seem to have thrived in Eurasia, and into the Indian subcontinent and into Africa. Gods like Indra, Yahweh, Dionysus, all had cattle on their minds. Cows blood must be particularly good, probably almost as good as baby human blood and a lot easier to demand in return for favors. Although some like Baal and the Phoenician deities seem to have maintained human sacrifice, at Carthage for example into Roman historical times. The Druids in Gaul and Britain seem to have maintained human sacrifice right up until the Romans stomped out the practice with the raid on Anglesey in 60 or 61 AD., depending on which source you read. Perhaps that was simply Roman propaganda. The Romans themselves had outlawed human sacrifice.
Traditions of human sacrifice have been retained in some places such as the kingdom of Benin in Africa up until the end of the 19th century when the British invasion force ended the practice. Most of us are familiar with the Aztec practice in which thousands were sacrificed. It could be that because cattle were not available in the Americas until the arrival of the Europeans, that the local aliens managed to sustain themselves on human blood there right up until Cortez put an end to the practice in 1521 AD.
In India there have been cult groups such as the Thuggee cultists who practiced human sacrifice up into the 19th century and certain tantric groups are rumored to continue the practice into modern times. Most of us have heard of the practice of Sati where the wife commits suicide to join her husband in the afterlife in India, although the practice is said to have died out.
From time to time we hear of satanic groups, cannibals, and psychopaths performing ritual sacrifice. Overall there seems to be only one major institution in which human sacrifice has been legitimated and that is in the state and now in a strange twist of fate among Muslim extremists. It is strange because the Koran was dead set against human sacrifice and outlawed it everywhere Islam took hold. But a suicide bombing does not leave much for a blood hungry deity to consume. So we can assume that this modern day human sacrifice is not intended to feed a modern day Moloch.
Generally it seems that around 2800 BC the beings discovered that they could get by with cattle instead of human blood. This spread around the world except in the Americas where a lack of cattle would have prevented these creatures from making the switch. Some human rulers with delusions seem to have executed retainers upon their own demise as some kind of primitive afterlife servants. This occurred in Old Kingdom Egypt, Ur in Mesopotamia, China in the early dynasties and even as recently as the Chin in 220 BC. But that seems to have been more of a throw back on the part of an emperor suffering from Mercury poisoning.
The creatures last stand would have been in parts of Africa, and perhaps India and New Guinea. The question then are these gods all dead as Nietzsche proclaimed or are they simply hiding? Are they performing the occasional cattle mutilation to get some fresh blood. Perhaps they have become sophisticated modern industrialists owning stockyards where they can get access to all the blood they might require without having to resort to magical mumbo jumbo. That would certainly make more sense and would be in tune with our secular machine oriented age. If they needed human blood there are plenty of killing fields around the world where in the guise of the state they could get all the human blood they needed.

This is a story from the Daily Mail Online.
“Children mutilated and drained of blood in ritual killings ‘by African politicians hoping for election luck’Last updated at 15:24 16 April 2008

Politicians in the central African nation of Gabon have been accused of ritually killing children in the belief that it will increase their chances of election.
When the body of 13-year-old Ralph Edang N’na was found drained of blood and with gaping wounds last month, many in Gabon thought it was politicians who had ordered his killing.
The murder of children and young adults, whose organs are eaten or used to make magical amulets, has increased in recent years in the oil-rich central African nation.
Campaigners say some Gabonese politicians use the black magic rituals to boost their chances of winning lucrative government posts.
With elections to local municipal councils due on April 27, many fear a spate of gruesome child murders.
Every week, mutilated bodies are discovered in the capital Libreville, despite police patrols, and streets quickly empty after nightfall.
Scroll down for more…
Protest: A member of “Franceafrica cell” blocks access to a building that allegedly belongs to Gabon President Omar Bongo’s familly
Anxious parents are keeping a close watch around schools to prevent children from being snatched.
“It’s before elections and ministerial reshuffles that the vilest crimes are committed and the capital empties of certain kinds of politicians who go to the interior to carry out witchcraft,” said pastor Francois Bibang, a member of the Association to Fight Ritual Crimes (ALCR).
In ritual killings, which still take place in several African countries, people are killed to obtain body parts and blood in the belief they will bring social success and political power. The victims are often children.
The ALCR says that in February alone there were 12 such killings in Gabon.
“Unfortunately, this practice seems to be spreading again in Gabon,” said Jean-Elvis Ebang Ondo, who founded ALCR after his 12-year-old son was kidnapped, killed and mutilated three years ago.
Mr Ondo condemned “the silence of the state” and called on residents to “fight off these assassins who sow terror in the heart of Gabonese society”.
The killings have continued despite a Gabonese government attempt to implement the U.N. charter enshrining children’s right to health, education and protection from abuse.
After a new penal code in January failed to mention ritual crimes, Mr Ondo called on the government to find out how many people had been killed in this way. No clear figures exist.
The head of an association against ritual crimes, Frederic Ntera Etoua, said 290 killings had occurred since 1986 in the thick jungles of the Ogooue-Ivindo province in the north-east, where Ralph Edang N’na was killed.
“There is a pyramid organisation with politicians at its head who pursue the famous ’spare parts’, then the recruiters who are middle men, and then the suppliers and sellers who find the innocent victims,” said Mr Bibang.
Philippe Ndong, a psychology teacher at Libreville university, recounts a litany of horrors:
• An eight-year-old girl was snatched in the Ndolou region and killed in the central town of Mouila. The man allegedly responsible was a parliamentary candidate ? and has since been elected.
• In 2002, a man in his 20s, Lucien Bigoundou, was killed in the Digoudou forest of central Gabon while on a hunting trip with others, who cut off parts of his body.
• In March 2005, the bodies of two 12-year-old boys were washed up on a Libreville beach - one of them Ebang Ondo’s son.
• A month later, six-year-old Warlys Igor Mboumba was found dead in a Libreville gutter, his body drained of blood.
• In January 2006, the bodies of three children under four were discovered in the trunk of a car in a private yard.
• Last April, two men suspected of sexually assaulting a three-year-old boy and draining his blood in a ritual killing were lynched.
ALCR member Emile Ngoua, a pastor, warned that lynchings could increase if no official action is taken to halt the ritual killings.
“It is up to the government to put a swift end to this impunity or risk seeing a rise in mob justice,” he said.
Gabon, with just 1.6 million people, is one of sub-Saharan Africa’s largest oil producers but most of its population continue to live in poverty, while members of a rich elite drive gleaming new cars along Libreville’s seafront boulevard.
Omar Bongo, the world’s longest-serving president, has ruled the country since 1967 and used the oil funds to weave a web of patronage which has created bitter competition for lucrative political jobs.
Speaker Guy Nzouba Ndama opened the latest parliamentary session last month by denouncing ritual crimes by politicians. But none have been convicted.
An attempt to prosecute a politician from the Gamba region last year failed after he claimed parliamentary immunity.”

I am not suggesting that these politicians are aliens. Although there are people out there who are postulating that the cattle and human mutilations that have been documented over the past 50 years or so are aliens. I personally am more prone think that they are misguided humans who have become obsessed with the occult and believe that they can attain special powers from these aliens by ritualistic murders. It is not totally inconceivable that there are aliens, old gods, that have survived through the centuries eking out a living killing the odd cow and human but I would think if these beings were still around they would have found a more modern and sophisticated methodology, working in a hospital or a even more discretely a slaughter house would do the trick. Morbid, no I am just following a train of thought. You never know where these things will lead. The Bible certainly gives you a lot to ponder, especially with such a bloodthirsty deity to consider.
With so little of interest in the world today that would give one hope, exploring the invisible realms becomes even more compelling.

I have been told I ramble and that my postings are too long. One person even complained when I posted a poem by Rimbaud, Philistine! Although calling someone who doesn’t like a poem by one of the French great symbolists a philistine is off the mark. That would imply that they were not only not a believer but that they were hopelessly mired in the material world.
I would rather call said person someone with rather undeveloped tastes. Or rather to be fair since I have no idea who they are I would say they have different tastes and leave it at that.
You are probably going to read a lot of biblical references from me in the coming weeks as I am reading through the Bible every other chapter and then reading the ones I skipped. There is a lot of repetition in the Bible and reciting of names of long dead kings with little about them at least in the book of Kings. There are lots of references to other books that are now missing.
I am not sure I know what I am supposed to do with this information about a god that comes in a cloud and can kill people or give them leprosy at the drop of a hat. God is said to be long suffering but I get the feeling God is pretty petty at least in the Old Testament version of YAWEH. But then anyone who needs the blood of sheep and cows fed to him every day is likely to be a little aggressive. This is certainly no vegetarian god.
The god of Israel reminds me a lot of the gods of the Vedas. The Brahmin performed these sacrifices of many animals for their gods in a similar manner. I am beginning to think there is more than a grain of truth in saying that the God of Israel came out of the Hindu Gods. Perhaps that was where they wandered from on the other side of the Euphrates in Abraham’s day. I don’t have time to go into it now. Perhaps later I will expand upon this.
Humans have an interesting past and this current secular age with its increased demand on the human capacities in the mental realm is leading us to a destiny that is not quite clear but is not what we expect. We are truly entering a new age but it is not any new age anyone had anticipated.

Sometimes we need to stop and reflect upon what we are doing here. Or I should say I have to stop and reflect. Last night when my head was throbbing from what I would imagine as some type of migraine. It would not go away and I tried various herbal remedies until I made a bhang mixture but it sent me into an unexpected territory. My headache certainly went away but also went with it my sense of place and proportion. I wanted to talk to god and I wanted to know why there is terror in the world. I wanted to see my purpose and was told to be patient that my day was coming. I was told the only suicide that is justified is that when you give your life to save others. And thus a Suicide bombing is a far cry from being justified.
David sent Uriah to his death to take his wife from him. For that the Lord took David’s first born with Uriah’s widow. But what is this world but a pleasure garden for the gods. And we humans wander about its surface doing battle with the evil cockroaches and what have you in the name of one version of God or another, killing and blowing one another up. The gods blind us and then they let us see. In some sense this life is like a Greek Tragedy in which we are constantly blindsided by the unintended consequences of our blundering through. Mine has been a particularly bullish ride through the China shop. Not much unbroken crockery in my life.
We act with good intentions, we become swayed by the temptations of fate, we miss signals, refuse to listen to advice, walk past the deity in disguise and then we find ourselves trapped by the web of our experience as it has whirled around us like a cocoon protecting us from the outer world and obscuring the view. At some point this silken armor will become heavy and leaden. We will struggle to burst through tearing a hole into the direction of the light. Then we blink and realize that we have become something else. It is bewildering to a caterpillar the butterfly. But it is its destiny.
I am no butterfly, and the fairy dust I was granted last night seems to lose some of its luster in the light of day. Chilled as I am, disturbed, shaky, I must learn to use these wings and fly or die on the branch. And so I am a new man so to speak. New to myself, again am I. Perhaps the same seeming to all and sundry but to my mind’s eye this is a new adventure and anything could happen in my new skin.

This is a year old. I don’t know if they have made any progress but when I was in Vrindavan I drank from the Yamuna, it is supposed to wash away 10,000 years of bad karma. Well I got sick and it was probably because of the fecal matter in the water that I noticed after I took my fatal sip. It ruined what had been a great trip to India where I ate the food and drank the water freely for 2 months before I had that incident. So I am glad to see somebody doing something to clean up that famous river.

“Delhi students launch campaign to save River Yamuna
February 23rd, 2009 - 12:51 pm ICT by ANI -

New Delhi, Feb 23 (ANI): Hundreds of students, environmentalists and residents have joined hands in a campaign to save the River Yamuna from further pollution.
Holding placards and banners, they gathered at the Jamia Milia Islamia University’’s Ansari Auditorium and raised slogans in favour of ”Yamuna River-Cleaning”.
The River Yamuna that holds not only mythological but also historical significance to the country, is today in a pathetic state and its water is unfit for bathing, leave alone consumption.
According to Central Pollution Control Board, around 70 per cent of the pollution in the Yamuna is human excrement.
Addressing media persons on the sidelines of the function, Tejendra Khanna, Delhi Lieutenant Governor urged the residents to join hands in the campaign.
“The main motive of this campaign is to increase the participation of people in this ”Clean Yamuna River Campaign”. If all of us join hands, then we will decrease the pollution level to a great extent,” said Khanna. He also mentioned that the Supreme Court had given green signal to the 2.5 billion rupees ”Yamuna Action Plan II” and hoped that in 18 months time, the condition of the river would change.
The Yamuna Action Plan was launched in 1993, with the aim of conserving the river has met with no success despite billions being spent on it.
Arti Mehra, Mayor of Delhi said that the second effluent treatment plant would be jointly completed by the Municipal Corporation and the State Government.
“The work of small drains will be covered by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. The Delhi State Government will have to look after the work of big drains, sewerage treatment plants and interceptors. I am very hopeful of the project,” said Mehra.
While 60 per cent of Delhi’’s water needs are fulfilled by Yamuna, almost the same percentage of the city’’s sewage finds its way into the river.
The national capital alone produces 3.6 billion litre of sewage every day, but due to poor management, less than half of it is effectively treated.
The remaining untreated waste is dumped into the Yamuna River. (ANI)

More at : Delhi students launch campaign to save River Yamuna http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/india-news/delhi-students-launch-campaign-to-save-river-yamuna_100158522.html#ixzz0grffTAZ2″

They all fit together somehow. Now that I am drug free, not even taking those damn blood pressure pills anymore. I don’t what is harder to kick prescription meds that are supposed to be good for you or prescription meds that are supposed to control your cravings like methadone. All I know is I am in almost constant pain, but that reminds me of my mortality. And surprisingly it is not so bad. I can flash back into my acid memories anytime I want and have a peak experience if I care to take time to recall exactly what that meant.
I am taking vitamins and trying to eat foods that are good for blood pressure like pears, apple juice, oranges, garlic, bananas, carrots, beets, 70% pure coca dark chocolate, cantaloupe, watermelon, spinach, parsley, fenugreek, anise seeds, avocados, apricots, sweet potatoes, raisins, salmon and sardines. B-complex is good.
Some of my favorites that are not on the list are beans, bread, rice, miso soup, seaweed, dill pickles, ice cream, Danish pastry, pasta, tomatoes, and nuts.
I am not sure where blueberries fit. They are antioxidants. Dandelion coffee, the stuff they used to give us on the spiritual commune instead of real coffee is good for the circulation. Who would have thought. Something called angelica root is good and camomile tea. I discovered that the other night when I could not sleep and drank a cup. I was groggy for hours.
My dreams have been especially vivid lately. I remember them and write about them to my friends in emails. Mostly they are about anarchism and a little about spirituality. I am on a bible reading project. Reading every even numbered book in the bible and then all the odd numbered ones. I read the evens in a catholic bible and odds in a Masonic one. I am on my third even book Joshua, after reading Exodus and Numbers. The story that stands out most in my mind is that of Balaam and the talking ass.
It seems the Midianites wanted the prophet of the lord Balaam to put a curse on the Israelites. When he was riding his donkey to them an angel came to block the way and the ass saw the angel and refused to move, but Balaam beat the beast thinking it was being stubborn. This happened three times before the donkey started speaking. The Lord loosened his tongue so to speak and he asks Balaam why he is beating him. Balaam says because you are a stubborn ass. The ass says but haven’t I always taken you where you want to go? And then Balaam sees the angel and bows down. It is interesting that the donkey doesn’t say see that angel right in front of your face? He says haven’t I been good to you all along. In other words trust me, I am your faithful donkey and if I stop and won’t go no matter how much you beat me you better pay attention. That is a great tale. Our bodies are our donkeys and when the refuse to go when we beat them, perhaps it is because there is a reason. I have decided to pay attention to my donkey before its legs collapse from overwork.
So I am looking for a new home. I want to find a place where my cost of living is lower and I don’t have to work so hard just to get by. I am thinking Mexico. But to live there I have to have a way to get enough income to get by. Places like San Miguel de Allende, like where my buddy Jack lives is probably too expensive. I am thinking maybe some little fishing village out of the way somewhere in the Baja. Anybody got any suggestions? I was thinking India but I am afraid India now is not the place it once was, a tropical paradise where the only sound at night was the chanting of the Brahmins and the howling of the wild dogs. It has become part of the grid and is enmeshed in the electronic computerized gulag we live in now. I need to find real remoteness without having to deal with icebergs and penguins.
How about that earthquake in Chile? 8.8 that is big. We even had a tsunami watch here in southern California. It seems that the world is one big bowl of jell-o and we mere mortals had better get on our roller skates because we are in for a wild ride.
That brings me to Buddhism. Here we have a religion that is designed for disaster. It says life is suffering and the goal is to escape the wheel of karma that keeps us chained to our desires and the suffering desire entails or something like that. It seems that if we can remain calm and collected when all around us is upheaval, well that might be useful. Anyway I am thinking of checking out the nearest temple. It is a Tibetan one. I would have thought with all the Cambodians around here it would have been one of theirs.
All these dreams about Anarchism. I am thinking I should go to San Francisco and see my son, my old friends Mark, Mitchell and I understand Jory and Dean will be there. I good time is guaranteed for all, well as good as it gets for middle-aged anarchists.
Tomorrow is the Holi festival. The day of colors in India. Happy Holi people. Get wet but not too wet. I mean don’t get carried away in the tsunami without your board. Surfs up dudes and dudettes. Better get ready for Ted Kaczynski world.

Friday night and I am almost totally broke. There is nothing like having time and no money. Except perhaps what is worse is working 45 hours a week and barely having enough to get by. I can look forward to a lot of that with the tax man robbing half my income.
I am ready for a revolution. I guess that is the one good thing about being broke and oppressed, it creates a desire for change. I am watching a show about World War One and it says that the British kept 200,000 troops at home to prevent revolution. Lloyd George the Prime Minister dealt with the multiple strikes that occurred in the British Isles by simply giving in. This was a relatively enlightened policy, but also one that undermined the revolutionary potential of Great Britain.
French troops revolted, formed columns and went to the woods. Half the French Army refused to fight in 1917 after the French generals botched a major assault. The troops won some concessions. They got more leave, and better treatment and still 49 soldiers were executed by the French. The new French leadership who replaced the general who had led the disastrous assault changed French military strategy to one of defense.
The Italians who were treated badly when they rebelled, then surrendered en masse to the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. Some 300,000 surrendered. Many more simply walked. Finally the Italians decided to give the troops better conditions and they fired the General who had been so abusive. But by then the Italian army was half the size it had been and became less than functional.
In Russia we had revolution and a victory of the people over the czar. Most of you probably know the stories of the heroes of the Russian Revolution. Lenin’s famous train ride from Switzerland to Russia led to the October Revolution.
Germany and Hungary had their revolutions at the end of the war. Both failed, but they came close.
Turkey had a revolt of the Arabs supported by the British. Tales of Lawrence of Arabia the British encouraged the Arabs to become guerrillas and robbers of the Turkish Empire. T.E. Lawrence, the great advocate of the Arabs knew all along that the British had no intention of giving the Arabs independent control of the Middle East. He was an agent of British Imperialism plain and simple.
Ireland was the British weak spot and during the war the Irish Republican Brotherhood saw the war as a chance for independence from Great Britain. The Irish revolted. The Germans sent the Irish guns and they used those guns to revolt. The Easter rebellion failed as the German supply ship carrying 20,000 rifles was caught by the British. But the British execution of the leaders of the rebellion turned what had been a botched revolt into a symbol of Irish nationalism.
Enough of history, I think you get the idea, and we really need ideas that lead somewhere and not to just more talk. What I am saying is when the people rise up they get results. When the bow down and wait, they get nothing but crumbs. People power is in critically played out mass action. Done right it wins the game. What can they do, shoot us all?

The Democrats have finally realized that they have to produce or lose control of the Senate and the House next fall. So today there was a 6 hour dog and pony show between the Dems and Repubs to show the American people that the Republicans have no plan and the Democrats have one when it comes to health care reform. Or rather the Republican plan is obstruction on the issue of healthcare reform to try and tear the independent voters away from the Democrats so that they can win in November. The Democrats need to have a victory, even this tattered and minimal health reform, minus the public option, nowhere near the public health care that we need, but at least it is a next step. Question is who benefits from this?
So the rubber is about to hit the road on health care reform and we will end up with mandatory health care. Who benefits, mostly the insurance companies. They now have an expanded pool of healthy clients. Now if this also includes a provision that nobody can be denied due to pre-existing conditions and if you can carry your insurance from one job to the next then, perhaps the consumer will benefit a little, but just a bit. If this was real reform it would be DOA. What we will get is something that will make money for the smart insurance company operators and because of that, no matter how much they may pretend to be unhappy with this plan, in reality they are rubbing their hands together over the potential profits with mandatory health insurance with no public plan.
Now we see how this ends up passing in reconciliation. The Congress has to pass the Senate bill and then the Senate has to send it to the President. This is a crappy bill but I guess it is a step, in what direction remains to be seen. As far as I can tell the ruling classes are working to benefit the various factions of the lobby groups. The people and their needs are incidental or perhaps accidental to the process.
Obama did advocate for the people who are left out. The people who make $40,000 or less a year who have no health care. He did make a point that they need help and he gets the letters to prove it. He was responding to a Republican suggestion people should get health savings accounts. This only works for people who have a lot of disposable income according to the President. This was the first time I have heard Obama speak up for the average American in a long time. Now if he actually means it, then that may mean we have a real president and not just another toady for the vested interests.

I am thinking of going to the Anarchist Book fair and Conference in San Francisco this year. I have been dreaming a lot about anarchist stuff over the last week. So maybe I should go, at least for the weekend. Last time I ended up driving around the Tenderloin reminiscing over my wayward youth. That was 6 years ago. Perhaps the movement has become more reality based. Perhaps it is not just another batch of students and a few grizzled elders who have become lost in their anarchist fantasies. But I doubt it. Today’s anarchists are about as dangerous as a cloud of gnats, a nuisance but easily repelled.
Yet the empire has to be overthrown and somehow the work must be done. Will it? It seems more and more unlikely, but when something like the stock market crash of a couple years ago occurs, our hopes are raised. Maybe this time the masses will arise. Maybe, but most of the masses would rather die than give up on their familiar routines.
I like the weather here in LA. It suits my clothes, as the old song goes and I like the fresh fruit. There is nothing like a locally grown fresh grapefruit in the morning to make you glad to be alive. If the grapefruit comes off a tree in your back yard it is even sweeter. But I miss the intellectual stimulation and camaraderie of San Francisco. It may be impossible to recapture, after all most people as they grow older focus more on family and coworkers. But I am not one of those. I have never been able to make friends with coworkers. I have learned to keep my mouth shut for the most part, and only occasionally letting some stray fact slip. Like the time I told them I went to an Anti-Nazi rally. For months after than I got Sieg Heils’ from my coworkers trying to rub it in that I was out of the main stream. Sort of like high school, but at least in high school I was able to play the pied piper and lead people to anti war rallies and such. Now that we are all middle aged, who among the masses has the energy or time for an idealistic and pointless endeavor except rich people, students and the occasional hard core believer?
We are ground down by reality. Perhaps I am feeling it especially because I went home sick today. I spent the weekend reading the Bible and a book of Jewish text criticism called “Back To The Sources”. Strange for an anarchist, but I am no atheist. I believe in space people. I think giants once roamed the land, perhaps these more highly evolved beings, or simply bigger beings than us, as the Gods have been portrayed in mythology, should be treated like doting parents and we their offspring, as precocious children. I don’t know. When I read the Bible I see intrusions by aliens. When I was in India I saw evidence of what seemed to me to be ancient space ports. But what do I know? I am no scientist, just a failed reporter, home sick from his day job.
Beat down. That is the general feeling. I am using up a vacation day because the boss at this company doesn’t believe in sick pay. How barbaric. People have to use up their hard earned days off when they are supposed to be enjoying life, when they are sick. I thought that it was the law that people be given sick days. Especially with all the health propaganda out there to stay home if you have the flu. It turns out there is no federal or state law in California requiring sick pay. It is at the will of the employer and this employer, who is a millionaire doesn’t see why he should pay people to be home sick. Fuck sick people. They should know better. Serves them right for getting sick in the first place! How barbaric. This guy should be up there with Scrooge of A Christmas Carol fame.
This shows the ultimate hypocrisy of a ruling class that recommends behavior and doesn’t back it up with the means to follow through. Workers are more and more abused in this country and they continue to take it because the unions have become impotent and the average working guy thinks he is going to get a better deal sucking up to the bosses. Well here is another example of people hanging themselves by their own ropes.
I have suggested at work that we get together a petition and rationally argue for sick days, at least a week a year, like most places have where I have worked. Instead I get all the reasons why they can’t do it mostly coming down to the fact that the boss is a cheap bastard and nobody wants to face his wrath. Meanwhile half the people are coughing and gagging and one guy in the room is wearing a mask to prevent germs. I can’t believe such head stuck in the mud behavior on the part of adults. But they are all afraid of losing what little they have and so no one will rock the boat and when I do, guess what will happen. I will get canned again and that will be that. So I can sit there and take it with the rest of these sad sacks or move on. But organize the workers? Hell these workers would rather roll over and play dead than do anything to upset their lord and master!
What has happened to the fighting spirit of the American working classes? Have we all become slaves? That is the saddest reflection of the victory of modern day capitalism. It doesn’t deliver but it has deluded the workers into believing its lies. With communism in disrepute, there is only its weak sister anarchism to pick up the struggle. What hope have we in such desperate times? If men won’t fight for their families and their freedom, maybe the women will.