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I don't seriously expect anyone to understand this. Those who claim to are lying! Once, a guy accused me of devil worship just because I said that Christianity, as it exists today, is the ONE WORLD ANTI-CHRIST SYSTEM PREDICTED IN THE BIBLE!!!! No, we're not supposed to know that THE ADVERSARY is not some grimy weirdo cranking out crack-pot rants in a filthy basement, or a Cult Leader wearing mystic symbols on an afternoon TV talk show. We're not supposed to know that the MANIACAL HATCHET FIEND is that quiet, harmless person who brings us such wonderful vegetables from their MIRACULOUSLY WELL-FERTILIZED GARDEN!!! THAT SATAN INCARNATE ISN'T A HIDEOUS ABOMINATION FROM HELL, BUT A CLEAN-SCRUBBED, PINK-FACED, WIDE-GRINNED, NECKTIE-WEARING GOOD- NATURED TRUSTWORTHY SOUL WHO IS POCKETING HUGE AMOUNTS OF CASH FOR POISONING AND MURDERING MILLIONS, saying, "WE HAVE NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT THE TENFOLD ESCALATION OF HORRIBLE DEATH IN THE DIRECT VICINITY OF OUR PLANT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE BLACK SLUDGE LEAKING OUT OF OUR WASTE DUMP ONTO THE PLAYGROUND OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!!!" No, we're not supposed to know that. BUT WE DO KNOW IT, and once you know something YOU CAN'T UNKNOW IT NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO. YOU CAN ONLY SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE WISHING YOU COULD FORGET!!!
I'LL START MY DIET TOMORROW
Even the humans know personal doom is always right around the corner, not that they care to admit it. It could be war, mutually assured destruction, or nuclear accidents, or economic collapse, or the greenhouse effect, or race riots, or civil insurrection, or a comet, or ozone layer depletion, or drought, or epidemics, or typhoons and floods and tornados, or the New Ice Age, or the melting of the glaciers, or dust storms, or earthquakes, or falling radioactive space junk, or Third World Barbarian terrorists with H-bombs in their luggage, or sunspot radiation, or famine, or the lining up of the planets, or mutant viruses, or insect invasion, killer bees, nothing can stop them, or the contamination of the food chain, or the Men from Planet X, cattle mutilations, or space monsters, or oil spills, or mercury leaks, or the plutonium canisters rotting in the deep, or the stifling of photosynthesis and the death of all sea creatures, or simple overpopulation, or it could just be the ENDLESS SMOTHERING WAITING LINES.
Whatever combination it is, it'll probably be an improvement over business as usual, here in the mundane Conspiracy world, where They beat the dreams out of you and stuff Their pleasant nightmares down your soul, piped in twenty-four hours a day, through a hundred video channels clogged with the psychic silt of the Hollywood mind death delta!!
Suicide has become an art form. So has sniping. A cup of coffee and a can of creamed plankton costs half a million bucks. Goods are made so shoddily that even plastic fruit rots in the bowl. The lights are getting dim, the power bills are going up, it's getting colder, water comes from the tap in a thin brown stream that discolors your teeth and gums and shrivels your privates. One day you turn on the faucet and a blur of angry roaches streams out. 20 years worth of chemical waste is buried under your house...that may explain the headaches and Mrs. Brodie's Elephant Baby. Vandals, rape gorillas, dogmouth underlings...abject rush hour simian sub-men, bumper to bumper...You want to punish them all, to lash out in spectacular vengeance. But you feel as if some Great Liberal in the Sky is holding a bludgeon over you, exhorting you to behave. You can't find a place to live where They don't rub against you in your dreams. It's crowded, and the air is bad for your skin. It hurts when you breath, and there are certain neighborhoods where, unless you wear the Mark of the Beast, you aren't supposed to inhale at all. And there's NO PARKING.
But maybe you're rich, in a fugitive leisure world, getting soft, and the softness is killing you even more painfully because you have time to NOTICE. And the demons have a chance to notice you too: tobacco demons, alcohol demons, cancer demons, stress demons. Your guts ache, you don't have a light, your herb is mouldy, your palms are clammy, your gas lines are leaking, your tongue is a wad of clay, you are paid to say things you hate. You have a cage for a head, and it has not been cleaned.
A life of compulsive consumption. The liberty to be just like everybody else. The pursuit of the happiness of the grave.
You look around and wonder, "Is everyone really this shallow, stupid, ignorant and naive, or is it me? Have I become so twisted and warped that I am no longer able to empathize or even communicate with most of the human race? Do I alone feel this hatred for the assholes who run our lives, this disgust with the PINK DUPES?"
But then you see those being senselessly lynched in the media, the workplace, the schoolyard, the market and the courts, and you realize, "YES! It is me, and yes, I am a mutant, and yes, the Pinks are all doomed and MOST OF ALL, I AM NOT ALONE IN THIS WAY OF THINKING!!!"
If only it were just you. Then They could kill you and move on. But it's the whole society...the whole planet. Everything, everywhere is getting worse. Reality itself is fraying at the edges. The Universe is not what it use to be; something's missing. "The center does not hold," as the Lakota used to say just before what's about to happen to you happened to them.
For this is the Age of the Unravelling...the AGE OF THEM.
No, it's not OK. "Civilization," for all it's fancy trimmings, is still just a rickety shack made by drunk stooges without a blueprint, a shack that will collapse when you least expect it. The foundation is ok but there has been some very sloppy workmanship.
Of course, to a certain extent it's natural for our society always to be screwed up: "if GOD didn't have a sense of humor, there wouldn't be people." But...not this screwed up.
It could so easily have been a PERFECT WORLD. We were supposed to be a shortcut in evolution, the "Catch 23" that would have prevented exactly the predicament we've found ourselves in. But the advancement of our quasi-mongrel semi-Yeti race has been relentlessly impeded through ceaseless persecution and repression by those who profit from senselessness, ignorance and mediocrity.
CONGRATULATIONS, HUMANS! YOU'VE SUCCESSFULLY HALTED YOUR OWN EVOLUTION AND GUARANTEED YOUR OWN DEMISE!
We'd be happy to chip in and help Them join our long lost friends, the dinosaurs, in the dreamless sleep of extinction...if only they weren't taking us along with them!!
Things didn't just "get" this way. Not even humans could cause so much trouble, by accident. It had to have been PLANNED. It's a CONSPIRACY. It's THE Conspiracy.
BUT, WHICH CONSPIRACY?
Is it the people who assassinated JFK and MLK? Or is it the Masons? Or the Satanists? Is it the MJ-12 Crashed UFO conspiracy, or the Alternative 3 conspiracy? Is it the fluoride in the water, the Watergate burglars, the International Jewish Bankers? What about those who killed Jimi, Janus and Jim? And John? And Paul? And Kurt? And Aunt Betty? And Uncle Sam? And Timmy's Hamster? Most of these can be tied to the basic CIA conspiracy, but...what about the liberal media conspiracy? How is it they are owned by Westinghouse, G.E., Disney and other parts of the conservative conspiracy? But then, all the conspiracies are so interlocked and interwoven that when you start looking into one, you inevitably end up being sucked into another and another.
One can endlessly explore the world of conspiracies, intricately detailing it's works, mapping it's eddies and flows, it's secret, subtle currents, it's dangers...but one risks succumbing to it's apparent friendliness and charm. For it contains within it so many infinitely varying conspiracies of fanatic interest that there's BOUND to be a conspiracy JUST RIGHT FOR YOU! There are certainly plenty to go around.
Yet none of these thousands of "little conspiracies" are nearly worthy of our grandiose, all-powering Hate. They're not part of the very AIR we BREATH, like the BIG conspiracy. They're real enough, but they themselves don't even know who they're really working for. Many of them even "mean well"! But all are just RAVENING MOUTHS for a vast hunger with no body.
The conspiracy that we truly hate, the real Conspiracy, isn't one of these fiendishly clever ones. It doesn't even know it's a conspiracy! It cant. It's a faceless confederacy of dunces, so vast and so broad that it underlies all the lesser conspiracies and permeates all human reality. Quite the opposite of devious, it dominates by merely exploiting the overall, mealy- mouthed, chickenbutt-kissing "Code of Normality" (or CON) of ALL the Pinks, norm-worms and mere-humes at large. There is no more insidious and subtle a weapon than that.
This Conspiracy has no face; we know it only by it's desires...a great Mirror of Disfigurement, it reflects what is wrong with everyone. Politics and the petty squabbles of nations are only part of what The Conspiracy manipulates. It is MUCH BIGGER than gods or demons, Republicans and Democrats, or Presidents and interlocking corporate directorates; it's everything from the school bully to the wimp principle, from Mom and Dad to the Bobbie in the Billybong.
More than anything else, The Conspiracy is an attitude - a fear - a PINKNESS. A cancer of the imagination, the hatred of the real, the yearning for "cuteness," the eagerness to obey... Oh sure, people LOVE new things - like Michael Jackson is "new" compared to The Beatles. But if, say, a REAL JESUS were to appear, well, it might look just a bit TOO new to be allowed to run loose for very long.
This fear of the unfamiliar permeates society; it's what let's the CON get away with REAL MURDER on a massive scale. Guaranteeing obedience requires little effort on the part of any Conspiracy "ringleaders"; the stinking Normals happily supply the obedience themselves. The obvious injustices and insanities written into law books by Illuminati bigwigs are insignificant compared to the little things - the unspoken agreement with the status-quo, the unthinking daily cowardice, the petty subtle put- downs, the judgmental gossip and all the mundane venalities that make up human nature: the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, the "infotainment" programs, those day-glo Rush Limbaugh bumper- stickers, the Caucasian Christians for Commerce, the grade school "Turn In Your Parents" program, the saccharine voice of "Barney," the fashion masters, O.J. Obsession, MTV-style hamburger commercials, the Denver Boot, Line Dancing, Professional Victims, Health Fascists, the Super Mario Brothers, Steven Speilberg, Chuck E. Cheese, Robert Dole, Mickey's Toontown, cute boxer shorts with "hip" designs, people who spell their names with all lower case letters, ect.
This nation, this WORLD is BLOATED and SWAYING DRUNKENLY with the stench of Pinkness on it's breath. So...it isn't YOUR fault if things just continue to go more and more wrong until one day you SNAP OUT OF IT and realize that there REALLY ARE billions of TORMENTED SOULS BURNING IN HELL, and YOU'RE ONE OF 'EM...That last, frantic, dying shriek of your soul going under will be the only sign that you have made the transition into the peaceful netherworld of blinkered Pink indifference.
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE SODIUM PENTOTHAL!! IT'S WHAT YOU DON'T SEE THAT SELLS YOU
But why should the Pinks worry? Even if there was a Conspiracy (yuk, yuk), it wouldn't be after them, would it? "I pay my taxes," they think. "I obey the law. I'm not strange or out of the ordinary. Why should I care?" And they're right. The Conspiracy doesn't have to "get them" because THEY'VE BEEN HAD ALL ALONG. That ring has been in their nose so long that the scars have completely healed and even a sharp YANK on the chain doesn't hurt anymore. They're safe all right. Safe as a fish in a seafood restaurant tank.
THE PAVEMENT OF HELL ROAD
If you read the ingredients on the packaged life of Joe Average you'll find a smattering of greed, stress and partially hydrolyzed brain cells, but mostly artificial flavoring and coloring. Pinks are the Homo sapiens equivalent of pasteurized, aerosol cheese food product. One would think this would render them harmless; many of them actually pride themselves on their harmlessness - but because the fabric of their reality is built on ignorance and mangled instincts, the sum of all their actions, taken together, perpetuates the vicious cycle of "dog-eat-dog."
Thus the seedy underbelly of the suburbs is a Pink Ghetto, a zombie zoo afloat in Prozac, cost/efficiency feasibility studies, sloppy alcoholic wives, terror-stricken execs and their damaged offspring. A culture of yes-bots and pushy assholes who started out believing the myths of Positive Thinking and Freedom of Speech, and then were violently disillusioned so thoroughly that they lost all hope and played right into the hands of The Conspiracy and it's Great Answer: "Grab what you can and FUCK the other guy!" You know who I'm talking about, MR PINK BOY, SIR! Mr "Conspiracy? BUNKUM!", SIR! Ms All-Men-Are-Rapists, MA'AM! Mr Closet Nazi Corporate Executive, SIR! Ms Psychic Friends Hotline Network Caller, MA'AM! Mr Water It Down, Sell-Any-Kind- Of-Crap, Mind Control, Media Programmer, SIR! Ms Oprah-Watching, Tabloid-Reading, Twelve-Stepping Zombie, MA'AM! Ms Realtor Of The Year, MA'AM! Mr Filthy Rich TV Evangelist, SIR! Ms Mother's March Against Pornography, or Rock Lyrics, or Library Books, or Youth, or...whatever, MA'AM! Mr Secular Neophyte, Mr Head Crusher, Mr Normal, SIR, YES SIR!!!
The Conspiracy is not vengeful. It has nothing against you PERSONALLY; you're being persecuted and hobbled by people who couldn't care less about who you are. The hive automatically protects itself from evolution by negating any individuals whose circuits are too "resonate." All evolutionaries are by definition "insane."
But insane is a relative term. Ironically, the conspiracy hive venerates the lunatics of the past while killing the lunatics of the present to prevent the lunatics of the future. The image of the dead lunatic becomes the medicine dispensed by the pharmacy. The image of the future lunatic - "THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD FEAR" - becomes the sickness sold by the pharmacy. Today's sickness is tomorrow's medicine, a vaccine composed of dead intelligence. Galileo, Socrates, Jesus...Conspiracy persecuted lunatics of the past...Conspiracy icons today.
The modern Conspiracy hive functions just like the old Mayan hives, with smug priests, brutal warrior castes and larval Pink masses quivering in mortal fear of nature and power. But this time around it's the Pink's own fault: they willingly devolve into their consumerist shell while the untapped knowledge of the sages is right in front of their faces...dripping from their noses, running down their chins.
CRIMES OF THE CONSPIRACY
The Conspiracy had the trust and forthrightness to inform us that, pointed at every single one of us, was a nuclear weapon with a hair trigger - but that was okay, because we all had one pointed at somebody over there, too, and if anybody ever used any of them, the whole world would be destroyed.
If the nukes were something They wanted us to know about, just think of the aces up Their sleeves that They aren't mentioning! But Their secrets are safe, as long as They keep drawing our attention away with decoy nightmares. As long as Congress stays busy investigating how the money was laundered for Iran-Contra or Whitewater, nobody will ask irksome questions about the corporate slave colonies springing up throughout the Third World.
Funny how these endless trials over a "shadow government" always end in mistrials or pardons. Funny how the AIDS virus "came from green monkeys," "has no cure," but in it's entire history has not infected a single Senator, Congressman, Cabinet member, or head of industry. Funny how the drugs that are most sure to kill and cripple people are sold at every convenience store. And talk about funny - how bout the weather lately? In some parts it goes from rain forest to desert in just a few hours.
There are a lot fewer KINDS of life around, suddenly. An electromagnetic "poison" is leaking from our wiring that science can't admit to without admitting gross ignorance. You get tired easier. Everyone already has cancer, and every time you leave the house you get a new disease. The world's population, but not it's food supply, will double in twenty years, then in ten years, then it will double every time you get laid - if that is still legal and survivable by then. (Ha, Ha, Ha! Cut it out! You're killing me!)
Speaking of sex, one in two adults say they were abused as children. 40% of American women have been raped by their "dates." A third of AIDS carriers have not bothered to tell their lovers and spouses. Half of the U.S. says there's no reason ever to get married, and 82% say they probably wouldn't marry the same person again. (And yet, only three percent of them had affairs.) 95% don't know their neighbors. 68% have been victims of major crimes. 86% favor capitol punishment, but only 2% would volunteer to throw the electric chair switch. (1)
Meanwhile, people with critical jobs like teachers, fire- fighters and nurses make barley more than minimum wage, so that ADMINISTRATORS can get $265,000 a year for needlessly interfering! But let's not lose perspective. Only 10% of the people on this planet earn more than $14,000 a year. 27% make between $2,000 and $14,000. (Or the equivalent in local currency; donkeys, wives, ect.) But the majority of Earth's bipeds, 62%, pull down a mean $0 to $2,000 from The Conspiracy for a year's worth of grunt work. (1)
But saving the world is expensive. For instance, look at the cost for universal, planetary child immunization against six major diseases, saving millions of lives a year for say, five years. 1.4 TRILLION dollars.(2) That's almost as expensive as a TRIDENT SUBMARINE!! Let's get our priorities straight here! Besides...do all those kids really WANT to live? Do YOU really want them to live? Thirty of them, PER MINUTE, are going to perish miserably of STARVATION, ANYWAY, leaving more for YOU.
As Bucky Fuller pointed out, "the problem isn't production, but distribution. Enough dead babies are being produced, but seeing that everyone gets the amount they need is a problem capitalism hasn't solved."
Smooth fat suit-wearing witchdoctors selling socially approved drug-dependance on prime-time while sexually frigid bourgeois self-pity-mongers pay the "justice" department to shoot kids in the back for jaywalking!! Complain about pollution and They charge you for Their perfect solution: They remove your brain, plug up your rectum and fill your skull with dioxin.
God-given individual right (rite) to meditate taken away while world-spanning corporate snake-monsters pop uranium zits and tax us for the "privilege" of having the radioactive puss buried in our backyards-brains-bloodstreams-souls!!
WHY IS IT THAT SOME PEOPLE CAN GET AWAY WITH ANYTHING?
BECAUSE WE LET THEM.
Humans would rather fight their neighbors than the Conspiracy. That's been the key to Their success. Pinks prefer the familiar in everything, ESPECIALLY enemies. Colonialism never would have succeeded anywhere, had the natives not been so dedicated to fighting amongst themselves that they were happy to sell out to the invaders for a few extra blunderbusses. By the time any two given tribes of Normals stop hating each other and start organizing against the common foe, it's too late and they're BOTH under the jackboot. What's worse, the minute the genocidal conquerors finish looting and leave, the natives go right back to fratricide. This pattern repeats itself in all human systems, from nations down to kindergarten classrooms. You can bet that if any group of people are starving to death, their neighbors will be throwing food away in PLAIN VIEW.
Without divine intervention, we can probably look forward to an inevitable, perpetual apocalypse in which the "Enlightened Fascism" of a New World Order/Northern Hemisphere Conspiracy will be pitted against the more traditional Third World Fascism of a Southern Hemisphere Conspiracy...a planet where the loud hairy tribes of super-industrialized Northern Asia - America - Europe - Russia are a cancerous blight of asphalt and shotguns, paranoiacally guarding their soft, formica empires against the hard and hungry hoards from South America - Africa - India - and the Middle East...forever, and ever, and ever.
How did They screw things up so fast?
AROUND THE WORLD EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK
Easy...all They had to do was let the place fill up with HUMANITY - the ultimate carnivorous mammal, the incurable virus of the landscape. It's not like this is a recent development! If you read history, you'll realize that nothing has changed. Oh, the diseases are different - leprosy then, AIDS now; but the treatment hasn't changed. For lesser ills than those, a barber used to bleed you with leeches; now a qualified doctor carves you, irradiates you, then bleeds you with bills. The average housewife/worker puts in far longer hours than did her/his ancestors 30,000 years ago. The Conspiracy itself has only grown, and we certainly aren't getting any wiser. We're still the same venal, corrupt, petty-minded, uncaring, cold, vicious animals as always. Once we invent something terrible, we can't bring ourselves to un-invent it. "Hey, we can unlock the power of the atom! Let's DO JUST THAT!"
This is the most self-centered, egotistical, all-consuming, anal retentive, ego-bound, crap-generating, xenophobic, self- righteous, ignorant, bleached and processed culture ever to have crawled out of the slime, ruled by the lowest common denominator: the exploitative, monkey-see-monkey-kill nature of our primitive inheritance. We are the meanest monkeys on the planet, that's all - disgusting split-brained apes with big thumbs. When we stumble upon something new and good, we immediately steel it, rape it, market it and finally use it all up...and if we can, we'll stop anyone else from getting a piece.
There MUST be a life form superior to us on this planet. (It might have been the dolphins and whales, but we've almost exterminated them.) If we're the top, then this must be a damn bad neighborhood. In fact, the whole Universe must be seriously flawed.
Do you see the human race choosing any of the sane options? When the humans finally held an "Earth Summit," the first thing they did was ban any discussion of overpopulation. In fact, they banned the word "overpopulation" itself; FOR RELIGIOUS REASONS!!! What nattering, blithering IDIOTS!!!
From the dawn of time, we've done nothing but strangle ourselves with our own monkey smartness. Too much stinking ingenuity and not enough common sense. The world will continue to see GIGANTIC human disasters on a VAST SCALE: famine, eco- collapse, insurrection, disease, war...If we don't even like our friends, how can there ever be any common guiding goal for humanity, any hope of tolerance?
THE CHOICE IS YOURS! DON'T BLOW IT!
OF COURSE this sounds like the product of a diseased mind.
There was a time when I, too, used to think the John Birchers, Liberty Lobbyists, Unarians and all those other fringe fanatics were funny kooks, what with their paranoid ramblings about the Trilateral Commission, The Bildebergers, The CFR, the World Trade Organization, the IMF, the Federal Reserve and so on. Then I found out the hard way that they were RIGHTER THAN THEY KNEW!!!
AMAZING BUT TRUE!!!
But the CON keeps you distracted with one or two of it's offspring, like the Kennedy assassination, so that you think you have the big picture, and never catch onto the BIG picture. If you believe anything on Tee Vee or in the newspaper, then you'll probably believe everything in the Warren Commission Report. If only a tiny fraction of what ANY "conspiracy nut" says is true about those six seconds in Dallas, then the entire Federal Government is, at best, as illegitimate and evil as the old-style communists who attempted the coup in Russia.
The only difference is, the Russian people TRIED not to let them get away with it.
In America, YOU didn't even NOTICE because you were too busy blaming everything on Lee Harvey Oswald. You not only let the deadly Frankenstein gangster Military Industrial Complex and their puppets get away with it, you rewarded them by letting Them have your kids' BODIES for exercises in international banking like Vietnam, Operation Desert Storm, and Paul McCartney concerts. Well, GOD BLESS AMERICA and MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS.
Believe me: Your elected officials, top media and business honchos have always considered you GULLIBLE and STUPID. They look down on you. I know. I've had to "do lunch" with Them. To them you are a food animal. Brainwashed Zombie Sheep, stampeding each other to be first in line for the slaughterhouse.
And they may be right. You ARE so easy to fool. They have you fretting about some "Star Wars" outer-space missile-defence ruse, while They are actually spending the money to put Silent Behavior Control brainwash satellites, spaceborne nightmare mega- death focused-sunlight/microwave weapons, high-rez infra-red jobs that can hear and peer into any room, anytime, anywhere. Vietnam? That wasn't just about selling Pepsi in Southeast Asia... it was a weapons systems demo.
You won't see any major wars for awhile, only small wars designed to prove the efficacy of weapons systems - weapons which can be sold to people who'll want them in case they become the next product testing sight.
Check out the commercial weapons conspiracy. Which families and banking companies sell arms? For how many generations? Where do they sell arms? How much technology does our government license to other countries, to make CHEAPER weapons?
It's no longer two huge nations fighting each other by building up nuclear arsenals; we now have major weapons markets competing against one another, throughout the planet, for everything from small arms ammo to air-to-air interceptor missiles to virus gasses to particle beam orbiting death rays. When we sell 150 F-16's to China, it not only keeps 5,000 Americans employed, it also means the Russians get to sell MIGs to Libya and get cash on Their deal. The world has been divided up: we sell missile guidance chips here, the Eastern Block gets to sell Tupelovs there. All history is just a big cash flow chart.
FREEDOM IS ALWAYS AGAINST THE LAW
Remember how Operation Desert Storm seemed, on TV, like a cross between a miniseries and an infomercial? The Gulf War, Grenada, and Panama - those were WEAPONS COMMERCIALS. They even ran a domestic one: Los Angeles 92. It's like the Olympics; every four years we have a gala commercial war. There's more money in it than even NFL Football; you just don't see the names of McDonnall Douglas, Lockheed, and LTV advertised as sponsors. But wait till the "SUPER BOWL!!!"
Although it's always better than NOT ENOUGH, there's just TOO MUCH in this culture...too much of EVERYTHING, packing our senses to overload. We KNOW we don't NEED all this crap...if we were to somehow JETTISON it all, we'd probably get a lot more THINKING and FEELING done. So we fantasize that there must be places in the world where all this "normal" overcomplication and stress would be considered absolutely crazy, and the people there would say, "No wonder you people have cancer worse than anyone else in the world. No wonder there's so much crime and everybody's going nuts! Why don't you lay back in this hammock, have some fruit, and hang out with us topless natives in this idyllic, primitive utopia for a couple of decades!"
Well, there USED to be places like that.
THERE USED TO BE A WAY TO ESCAPE
Sure, we may be hooked on South America's coffee and Japan's microchips, but we've hooked them and almost EVERYBODY ELSE on OUR POP CULTURE, our diabolically seductive brand of mindless consumerism. Amazonian Indians are walking around in Coca-Cola T-shirts, Aerosmith T-shirts. The Japanese are wearing Desert Storm combat fashion and paying $2,000 for a simulated .44 Magnum that shoots B-B's. All based on the most insidious products America has to offer - Hollywood Movies, Pop Music, Prime Time Television, snotty attitudes, and slick catch phrases. Our trash "pop" is the current meme; it burrows straight into the world's subconscious and cuts across all barriers. In the middle of Tibet you'll see that damn Rambo T-shirt, and when the Tibetan wearing it finishes his Pepsi, he'll THROW THE CAN ON THE GROUND - because that's how the Americans do things; get instant gratification, then leave the garbage for someone else to clean up.
Mindless consumerism has been successfully foisted off on Third World chumps because convenience is a stronger drug than heroin. They don't want democracy, they want Madonna albums. They don't want the sacred tea of their ancestors, they want Dr. Pepper...or better yet, a banana wine cooler. And they sure as hell don't want to return to any practices of their ancestors - that requires patience and creative thought. It's not instant gratification. Even with prayer, one has to wait - but turn on the TV, and the sweet voice of consumption is instantly right there in front of you. Push a button on the microwave, and out pops dinner. You don't have to wait for anything - you don't even have to get out of your car. We've addicted the entire world, tagging their brains with our radioactive photon emissions like a dog marking it's territory.
Rabid consumers jack-off in awe over High Definition TV- Virtual Reality "state of the art" toys which are really nothing but industrial fallout from technologies already obsolete in the 60's!! What The Conspiracy considers primitive space junk They sell to the masses, in the form of New Product to slowly, entertainingly kill us!!
It doesn't really matter that The Conspiracy has manufactured TV's that can watch us, for it manufactures TV's that WE WATCH.
It's been shown that heavy TV addicts perceive a much greater level of violence around them than do abstainers. Immersion in the TV reality, where everyone is always "sitting on a time bomb" (be it wacky or deadly), makes people paranoid and isolated. While simultaneously uniting people with common images and fantasies, it cut's them off from reality. On TV, all problems are solved in 30 or 60 minutes - so people start expecting the same convenience in real life. The world becomes image, rather than visa versa. TV distorts what we are; we aspire to become what it shows, and pretty soon reality is worse than bad science fiction. (In OLD MOVIES, the only time They moved the army into Los Angeles was when the GIANT ANTS came out of the sewers or the Martians invaded.) People see the collage of sadistic ultra-violence on television every day, and wonder, "Why the hell shouldn't we have this much FUN in real life?" It's not that people get real life confused with TV - it's that they are indistinguishable now.
Television both integrates the culture and destroys literacy, reducing us to a homogeneous mass of photon-dependant P-heads. Pinks aren't sentient enough to disengage their sense of identity from the products being sold to them. They ARE their tennis shoes, jackets, drugs, fast foods, favorite shows, pop groups and media stars... and the CON, rather than protecting the minds and psyches of the undiscerning, childlike Pinks, exploits that weakness. Everything, including so called "news" and "fact" is reduced to "entertainment" geared to the lowest common denominator...irrelevant sound bites and factoids made to seem meaningful. People PAY not to think.
That's why TV SEEMS FREE but isn't. You pay in free will for those broadcasts, and not just by having to sit through the ads. Everything They let you watch is being run through a Number 4, industrial strength, Mammon Filter on it's way to your brain. Most people understand that...but they are too lazy to take it's evil effects into account.
But...what about GREEN ACRES, you ask? What about PEE WEE'S PLAYHOUSE, REN & STIMPY and DRAGNET? Is not some TV , for it's wealth in stupid bulldata alone, well worth the fact that the rest of it turns all the world into a homogenous beehive? True. But BULLDATA is ALL TV is good for. When it purports to show us reality, that's when TV is at it's most dangerous.
"I used to think salvation was in the Sky. Now the Sky is one big video screen for the shit that makes our genetic code stagnate. Each section of the Sky's Space is cordoned off and regulated by the FCC, the International Holographer's Union, the Ad Council, and a million consumer advocacy groups. They have turned the Sky into a workhorse which turns the Mill which reenforces the Illusion of Time - the movement of Sun and Moon from the vantage point of this prison is just advertising time for sale." - Rev. Nicholas Gardner
The sports conspiracy...the entertainment conspiracy...the fashion conspiracy...it's all a circus, to keep you deluded, to keep you stupid, to keep you thinking of nothing else but your stomach, your genitals and your ATM card. YOU ARE BEING TRAINED TO FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE ABOUT YOURSELF, to HATE yourself. It's a sad matter of disempowerment.
If you turn that around, and fight The Conspiracy infection that's already in you, and make yourself more capable, more in control of the events around you, you'll have more FREEDOM. And that's the BEST thing you can do in revenge. It's not the only thing you can do. You can try to keep your needs down, and your plans loose...give 'em a low silhouette...escape the credit system...cash only...fly under the radar whenever you can...but They'll still track you.
INDOCTRILIBERATION - CHEWS UP "PEOPLE ON THE GO"
In the "Normal" job world, The Conspiracy keeps you on the tightest leash possible. They would completely deprive you of freedom if they could, but, out of necessity, to keep you alive for another year, they grudgingly give you Sundays, sometimes Saturdays, sometimes a whole week out of your life for that minimum life-sustaining taste of false freedom. And what do the Normals do with the illusion of "freedom" the CON grudgingly rations out? Most folks mow their lawns, wash their cars, do errands or go to church(!). Somewhere along the line, they receive a pitiful modicum of false freedom, or else they would die. HOW MUCH freedom they receive is what the Conspiracy tries so hard to control. They want to ration it out to you, drop by drop, as with an eyedropper, so you'll always be at Their mercy, carrying out Their every evil whim.
Their arbitrary "laws" extend unquestioned into every minuscule aspect of your private life. Every last vestige of freedom, even standing around doing nothing, is regulated. Notice that "loitering" isn't just illegal in restaurants and stores, but even on so called "public" sidewalks, parks, everywhere. You've got to keep moving. For that matter, you can be thrown in jail for "vagrancy," the inability to produce official identification or money. We are not legal life forms without a shell of paper defending our bodies. The only place you can legally cease moving is in your own home.
And what must you do to have one of these "homes" in which you can legally exist, and enjoy TV with which They brainwash you? Nothing much, merely spend the majority of your life working for Them...that is, after you've spent twelve to twenty years subjecting your mind to Their programming, digging yourself out from under mountains of irrelevant information that has nothing to do with the "real" life They have planned for you.
Turning wild animals into manageable slave units is not easy. Children must be institutionalized and forced into totally unnatural practices such as sitting in stationary positions for hours, reacting to bells, stifling curiosity, kissing authority's ass, ect. Upon adolescence the Conspiracy rips out the original mind and installs glitch filled software, obsolete before the season's out. The individual is sucked deeper and deeper into the abstract universe of symbols, now indistinguishable from reality. The institutionalized techno-society point of view is further enforced as those who act differently are ostracized or beaten by their "peers." Is it any surprise that those who don't want to work for the company, get married, and breed a new litter of future employees, are considered AIDS-sneezing sodomites or pet-molesting, baby-eating devil worshipers? Is it any surprise that some of them ARE?
But at least it's equal servitude for everybody, regardless of gender. In the old days, women were the serf's slaves. But in our New World Age liberated society, women too have the opportunity to participate in their own futility. Once prevented form working, women are now prevented from not working.
DON'T TAKE DRUGS: GIVE THEM TO ME!!!
They listen to you through your telephone without its even being off the hook, and watch you from satellites that can peer down onto any street, anywhere. The only legal drugs are alcohol and tobbaco; reality-numbing tranquilizers. Most forms of sex are crimes. Exercise of instincts must be suppressed for Their system to work. No one who is Truly Free is really going to feel like saluting a flag or dying for God and Company.
They kick in your door any time they want to. All they have to yell is "DRUGS!" and you and your spouse are in jail, your kids are farmed out to the state, your car and house are suddenly theirs. They can walk up to you anywhere today and say, "Excuse me, can we see your wallet, please? Hmm, you have a lot of cash here. We'll have to confiscate it - you fit the profile of someone who might be a drug dealer."
The fake "war on drugs" is eroding every last bit of freedom we've managed to wring out of the sons-of-bitches since 1776. We've spent 200 years trying to make "We The People" include someone besides the white land-owning aristocracy, and now that we're finally beginning to do it, they're going over to the other end of the Constitution to tell us what rights we don't have. Everything that is not forbidden is proscribed.
Nobody up there is a friend of yours. Nobody up there wants to see you get what you would call freedom. The purpose of "government" is to produce and maintain consumers and workers who will keep the cost of labor down, and the profits high for the owners. If you believe that any of the Janus faced jackasses running for office are going to do anything for you, if you think that even one of these "people" who claim to be on the side of liberty and freedom cares in the slightest what you want, then you have bought The Conspiracy line. And you didn't even have to go to room 101.
"GOD HELP THAT COUNTRY WHERE INFORMERS THRIVE, WHERE SLANDER FLOURISHES AND LIES CONTRIVE TO KILL BY WHISPERS, WHERE MEN LIE TO LIVE. GOD HELP THAT COUNTRY WHERE FEAR CORRUPTS, WHERE SUSPICIONS SPREAD, BY LOOK AND GESTURE, EVEN TO THE DEAD." -Dr. Silas Booth
URINE TEST REQUIRED
It is the time foretold, when people would be judged not by their works, nor by family, nor even by looks, but buy their urine. For this has become so crooked and perverse a nation, that your precious bodily fluids are no longer your own, and not even your bladder or bloodstream are private. There is no place where they may not watch.
Where can you run, Where can you hide, When the man dressed in blue Is on the inside?
The Conspiracy will not, cannot rest until it controls everything. They want to make sure that when The Dome goes up, they'll be on the inside and everybody else is out there. If they can't make us Normal, they'll make us HOMELESS. They'll work us and tax us until we're powerless bums and slaves, so poor and cowed that when they come to take away our kids we won't complain, but thank them.
HOW MUCH JUST FOR THE GRISTLE?
But NO, you say. This is all just TOO PARANOID, BITTER, MEAN and DEPRESSING!! There's more democracy and less tyranny in the world now than ever before!
GET REAL. Sure, they can vote now in those Commie countries. But where has voting gotten us? Our "choices" are between two or three scapegoats to hurl garbage at. UNSEEN OTHERS make all the rules. Real governments don't want publicity. They've kept the rubes happy for centuries, simply by letting them "build the prisons for themselves."
All presidents are only symbols, bar-coded Tarot-card chessmen in the Conspiracy's ceremonial Monopoly Gameboard Earth. Elections don't need to be fixed; they are FIXES for the hopeless who are all too willing to deceive themselves into getting a sense of "empowerment" by standing in line for hours to put a little checkmark on a dead piece of the Amazonian Rainforest. Some reptile shoves a card in front of your face: "Which vampire would you like to pay to suck your blood? Clone One, Clone One, or Clone One?" And you Pink Boys and Girls lecture about apathy! I repeat: They see us as MEAT - nobody gives a flightless FUCK what you think - and all those trees did die for nothing. Yes, you are free - free to be a consumption-gratified meat sack, sleepwalking malls coast to coast, reflexively seeking out the hide wrapped around another mobile hamburger.
If you ask most people to name their religion, you'll get a LIE - it'll only be what they SAY they believe, lip service to invisible super-beings on the off-chance that some might actually exist. Their politics define what they actually DO. That's the filter through which they filter everything. When someone says they are a conservative or a liberal, that self-determination reveals far more than their professed "religion" about their world view and their perceived relationship to the Universe.
Even so, there are no hard and fast rules. There are PLENTY of liberals who think like Nazis, and there actually exist conservatives who think like Jesus. Just look at how many Democrats could be convinced they were really Republicans after all, and voted for Reagan, Bush and Clinton. Count the bosses from both parties that are in jail for malfeasance, embezzlement, thievery, cronyism...and that's just for their business crimes. The "intelligence" community, of course, never, ever gets touched.
What's the difference? Both parties bend over for their special interest groups. The Republican Party, once the most noble institution in the land, is now sold out to the country- club effete rich and superstitious religious fanatics. The Democratic Party, once the most noble institution in the land, is the fawning lap dog for the whining jerk-kneed, quivering under the table with it's tail between it's legs. Both have been broken under the Conspiracy wheel.
My outlook is so much more extreme than either far left or far right that, to me, they might as well be identical. Both ideologies are JUST MORE RELIGION. Both might as well be Cargo Cultist's bowing down before department store dummies. I believe in freedom of religion, and Cargo Cultists are free to worship dummies if they wish. But between the "Politically Correct" on the one hand and the "Theologically Correct" on the other, we're being P.C.ed and J.C.ed until freedom is D.O.A.
YOU CAN'T TRUST ANYBODY, and you can't believe anything you read. It's LIES all the way down the line, starting with your first-grade history primer and leading up to this very sentence. All this ballyhoo about the God-fearing founding fathers, and how this nation is based on the Bible - !#!@!*! Those guys were all Masons and Deists working under the Sign of the ALL-SEEING EYE! Check out the back of the dollar bill.
WE ARE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Funny how the people who holler for "less government" want even more government in the bedroom! They fulminate and demonstrate against abortion, sex, drugs, and birth control, but God forbid that big business be forced to stop pumping millions of tons of polychlorinated waste into the oceans, or belching poisonous smoke into the deteriorating atmosphere! No limits on business, only on pleasure. They have satellites that can read your license plates while birth control remains at a medieval level. Teen VD, AIDS and pregnancy skyrockets, and overpopulation threatens to negate any population...and yet the panic-stricken Pinks shriek, "But if we teach sex education in schools, it'll only give kids ideas!"
Ingrained hypocrisy and double standards are the building blocks of the so called "conservative" lifestyle. As long as you don't show NIPPLES or POT SMOKING, and nobody CUSSES, you can call any kind of ultra-violence or demeaning pornography "family entertainment." Drinking beer and watching a girl in a wet T- shirt and a G-string rub her butt against a pole at one of those bars with a name like "HOOTERS"...that's GOOD CLEAN FUN, and you can bring the kids. Yet you can be thrown in jail for simply possessing an inanimate book, if it has the printed words or pictures that "go too far."
But you watered-down so-called "liberals," you young soi- disant "Slackers" with your tie-dyes, Hard Rock Cafe T-shirts and bitchin' hairdos, you who think you're on our side, are even worse. The rest of the brain-dead idiots have an excuse. But YOU KNEW from the beginning what was happening, and yet you bent over HAPPILY, offering up your aerobicised buns to the Alternative Conspiracy, saying, "HERE! TAKE ALL YOU WANT! WIDEN IT TO YOUR HEART'S CONTENT!" You sorry simps think you're so aware and radical while doing your best to conform to the norm defined by Normal non-conformity! You are your own worst nightmare: A DUMBASS. FACE IT: all this New-Age clap-trap means is, now when you shaft the next guy, you've got to have a smile on your face when you do it.
At least conservatives always have that hilarious total assurance that they're right. Liberals indulge in too much mealy-mouthed, wishy-washy DOUBT before they sell you out. They always think, "Surly that other person is human, like me. Too bad we HAVE to KILL you." At least the conservatives have the good sense to WANT to KILL us.
Well, I've HAD IT with these goody-two-shoes, politically correct, New Age, namby-pamby, hand-wringing do-gooders, who presume that THEIR brand of The Conspiracy would be ANY LESS HIDEOUS than that of the right wing fascists who've been running/ruining this country since the 63 coup. The conservative Glorps may be enslaved by greed and the dollar, but the Tragically Hip-Hop Wimps and P.C. Pinks are enslaved by bottomless guilt, and by pretending NOT to be enslaved by the arty dollar.
The Trendy Liberal Con is the Unfashionable Conservative Con's slickest trick, a Black Hole that absorbs anything "cool" and "anti-conspiracy," anything revolutionary that may later become a threat, and then spits it back out as cutesy, watered- down trivia, mass-produced and mass-marketed, packaged to move, paraded as another triumph for the Culture Dish of the Universal Beehive - something any normal can enjoy when it gets tired of masturbating Smurfs.
VICTIMS OF THE VICTIMS' SOCIETY
Have you noticed how the Conspiracy will suddenly announce in the media, that thanks to a huge study with endless funding that kept thousands of bureaucrats and sociologists busy, they can proudly announce this incredible new discovery, and it turns out to be some UTTERLY pointless thing that, moreover, ANY DUMB- ASS could already have told you was common sense? And remember how BURNED-UP you got, to think that your hard earned tax money was being thrown willy-nilly at any gang of jargon-jabbering whiners with a self-invented "NEEDY CAUSE"??
Don't you SEE?
The Conspiracy encourages and publicizes only the most kooky, ridiculous, simple-minded, knee-jerk extremism, in order to turn you OFF to ANYTHING EFFECTIVELY "ALTERNATIVE"!
Of course, you can't blame the Con for taking advantage of a good thing. All those "special interests" are but the visible froth on the great heaving sea of "victims." Fashionable crybabyism, an orgy of denial of any responsibility for one's situation, especially denial of the fact that even within this society of co-dependant cross-victimization, IT ACTUALLY REMAINS DOG EAT DOG. It's who can out-victim who at this point. The Conspiracy sits back and laughs. It's babies squall and bleat and wet themselves.
HAS YOUR HOLISTIC VEGETARIAN PSYCHIATRIST PLANTED SEEDS OF SHITE??
All these "Visualize World Peace" assholes, "love Warriors" and "neo-shamans"...If they can sit and visualize world harmony clearly enough, WHOO BOY, that's better than voting! BECAUSE it's MAGIC! The tree-hugging, crystal-head New Age loveburgers FORGET that going back to nature includes open ditch latrines in mid-summer, staphylococcus bacteria, plague-ridden rats and no antibiotics. THEY choose to DENY their FULL evolutionary heritage AS animals, or even as hunter-gatherers, which involves a lot more sweating and swearing and hurting and killing than they care to admit.
I'm reaching out to the real minorities - individuals - who aren't weeping about oppression, because THEY HAVE NEVER LET ANYBODY OPPRESS THEM WITHOUT A DEATH STRUGGLE. The half-assed sits around and blames one or two piddling aspects of the Con, the fully-assed SERVES AS A LIVING EXAMPLE of SOMETHING THE CONSPIRACY HATES TO SEE.
As the years go by, it will become more obvious that "1984" already HAPPENED way back in 1953!!! ONE HAND has been jerking MANY PUPPETS. America, in some ways, is hardly any different than China. In China, you have to do what They want. In America, you can do whatever you want - as long as you want what They want.
THE PLANET OF THE CLONEMOBILES
Firebirds and Camaros are what are termed "clonemobiles" - the cars of choice of one of the mainstream types of Pinks. The cars look exactly alike, and the people who drive them are exactly alike. They all listen to the same radio station, no matter what part of the country they're in, because even if the call letters are different, it's still the same radio station. The DJ's all tell the same jokes, at the same time of day, and it's always Real Rock Radio, and the same songs are always playing simultaneously in every nook and cranny of the nation.
It's the Rise of the Mediocretins. Everything looks just like it does on TV. Every city is the same city now, spores of one gigantic spreading amoebic "mall" that will someday cover the globe like an endless antbed. From any given downtown, you drive for hours past the identical mini-malls, Pizza-Huts, apartment complexes and housing developments in endless repetition. This used to be considered dystopian science fiction. Now that it's here, we think it's perfectly normal. Small towns, once different, now all have the Whataburger, the Burger King, the mall, the Cinema-Octoplex...while everything that made them unique or "quaint" locales is swallowed by THE DEVOURING PINKNESS.
ATTENTION PINKS! - INSENSATE MEAT PUPPETS!
If you can step away from your numbness long enough to really look around you...does what you see excite you? Does it give you Freedom? Does it do anything for you but prolong the numbness? "Oh, it's ok," you say, "Everything is okay. In fact, I don't like things that are more than okay, because then it makes me think that there might be things that are less than okay. As long as everything is okay, that's good enough! You can't have your cake and eat it too. Don't make waves. Okay? We're free enough - we can indulge in the properly ritualized "bad" behavior, like going to the lake, watching the game, getting real drunk and beating our dogs, that's understood - we all do that. Now, going to the lake and launching heads, chanting, getting naked, stoked to the max, performing beating rituals with each other's dogs. NO WAY!!!" And it's okay to sublimate our sexual drives into things like despoiling the landscape at the expense of health and future just for money, because the only thing that gives our tired, twisted old nervous systems a thrill is the thought that we can buy MORE THINGS.
There are degrees of aliveness. You can be not only stupid, but 90% DEAD, and still hold down a Conspiracy 9-to-5 job. Your body keeps clocking in, functioning on 10% of your life essence, while the Con gets the rest. YOU MORON...They've got you thinking it's perfectly natural to "work" for a "living!!" What you WANT to do is real work, something useful and fulfilling - nothing wrong with that - but what you HAVE to do is slavery. No matter what They're paying, you're selling TOO CHEAP.
In the Middle Ages, they called it The Obscene Kiss; kissing Satan's bum was the way a sorcerer was initiated. Today, we have corporate-style butt-kissing...bestowing that submissive kiss upon the posterior of the Chief Executive Devil and his minions.
THE "WORK" ETHIC IS SATANIC!!
Mark my words - it will be our doom! Our little terrarium Earth is turning into a toxic toilet controlled by dim-wits. Day after day slips by, time you could have invested in doing something truly useful while having a good time, but instead sold out cheap to The Conspiracy - like a SUCKER! Years out of YOUR LIFE, with nothing to show for them but lots of paid household bills. YOU'LL NEVER GET ANY OF THOSE PRECIOUS YEARS BACK...you'll just get older and older, and develop more chronic aches, pains and regrets. And when you die, the Con at large will just say, "Well there's plenty more where that one came from."
Pessimistic? Hell, I'm so pessimistic I'm afraid most of my most PESSIMISTIC PREDICTIONS will turn out to have been IDIOTICALLY OPTIMISTIC. A little pessimism and paranoia never hurt anybody. But the Pinks and Yups and Nuzis and Yinkies have been employing Positive Thinking and suchlike namby-pamby mama's boy stuff for the last 20,000 years, and things just keep getting worse FASTER. Yet, through the magic of Positive Thinking, THEY DON'T CARE!
It may be too late to stop being optimistic - but it's never too late to start being bitterly pessimistic.
Remember, things could be much, much worse. That's the consolation. You could SUDDENLY, ONE MINUTE FROM NOW, be screaming in unimaginable pain, half burned to death and trapped inside the white-hot twisted metal and broken glass and charred wood of wherever you are when IT happens...
...or you could be lying on parched ground with bones so brittle from malnutrition, and a brain so ruined by disease, that ALL LIFE for you has become that one dry, vermin-ridden grain of rice at the end of your tongue...
...or you could be rich but afflicted with something caused by your own lifestyle that bites deeper into you, but ever so slowly, so that you never stop thinking of killing yourself...("Then they'd be sorry.")
...or you could be so wrapped up in your job that you haven't noticed that you've gone crazy, that you've only been hypnotised into thinking that "everything's okay," but actually there is starvation and misery all around that will catch up with you sooner or later...
But that hasn't happened yet, so in the meantime, WHO CARES??!!! - as long as the power plants still run, and we can televise ritual yearly Earth Days, where the liberals congratulate themselves for being liberals, and the conservatives congratulate themselves for fooling the liberals, and the ones in-between are ground into dog food.
By the Subgenius Foundation (can be found in Revelation X)
Mar 14, 2006
Reminder: Creationism is still bullshit.
Creationism to be in GCSE papers
Creationist theories about how the world was made are to be debated in GCSE science lessons in mainstream secondary schools in England.
Creationist theories about how the world was made are to be debated in GCSE science lessons in mainstream secondary schools in England.
The subject has been included in a new syllabus for biology produced by the OCR exam board, due out in September.
Critics say the matter should only be discussed in R.E. because there is a danger of elevating religious theories to the status of scientific ones.
The government insists creationism is not being taught as a subject.
The exam board says students need to understand the background to theories.
Its new "Gateway to Science" curriculum asks pupils to examine how organisms become fossilised.
Teachers are asked to "explain that the fossil record has been interpreted differently over time (e.g. creationist interpretation)".
Contentious
OCR, one of the three main exam boards in England, said that the syllabus was intended to make students aware of scientific controversy.
A spokesperson for the exam board said candidates needed to understand the social and historical context to scientific ideas both pre and post Darwin's theory of evolution.
"Candidates are asked to discuss why the opponents of Darwinism thought the way they did and how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence," he said.
"Creationism and 'intelligent design' are not regarded by OCR as scientific theories. They are beliefs that do not lie within scientific understanding."
The area is contentious, with critics claiming that inclusion of creationist or intelligent design theories in science syllabuses unduly elevates them.
James Williams, science course leader at Sussex University's school of education, told the Times Educational Supplement: "This opens a legitimate gate for the inclusion of creationism or intelligent design in science classes as if they were legitimate theories on a par with evolution fact and theory.
"I'm happy for religious theories to be considered in religious education, but not in science where consideration could lead to a false verification of their status as being equal to scientific theories."
The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which oversees the development of the national curriculum, in effect guiding exam boards, said discussions of "intelligent design" or "creationism" could take place in science classes.
The National Curriculum Online website says for science at Key Stage 4 (GCSE level): "Students should be taught how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence (for example Darwin's theory of evolution)."
Classes should also cover "ways in which scientific work may be affected by the context in which it takes place (for example, social, historical, moral, spiritual), and how these contexts may affect whether or not ideas are accepted."
A spokesperson for the Department for Education and Skills said: "Neither creationism nor intelligent design are taught as a subject in schools and are not specified in the science curriculum".
In the United States, there have been court cases over what schools should teach.
Last month scientists there protested against a movement to teach intelligent design - the theory that life is so complex that it must be the work of a supernatural designer.
In December, a judge in Pennsylvania said it was unconstitutional to make teachers feature the concept of intelligent design in science lessons.
In England, the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, sponsored by Christian car dealer Sir Peter Vardy, has been criticised for featuring creationist theories in lessons in the three comprehensives it runs.
Sir Peter has said the schools present both Darwin's evolutionary theory and creationism.
In 2003, he said: "One is a theory, the other is a faith position. It is up to the children."
More on the Legislative Reform Bill
http://bill111.wordpress.com/
Go here, an excellent blog dedicated to following the progress of and opposing the Bill.
A good set of questions to ask, which I will reprint here:
Go here, an excellent blog dedicated to following the progress of and opposing the Bill.
A good set of questions to ask, which I will reprint here:
You may want to send these to your MP. Fast. Because the second reading of the Bill is coming up and opposition in Parliament is looking thin.
- Why does the Bill change the current procedures for the enactment into our law of EU legislation?
- What guarantees are there that the Bill could not be used to bring in the EU Constitution by the back door?
- If the Bill is just a simplifying measure for deregulation, why does it contain no requirement for any orders to actually reduce the amounts of red tape and regulation?
- Why does the Bill give the power to create new law, including new criminal offences, to the Law Commissions, which are unelected quangos appointed by Ministers?
- If the Law Commissions are supposed to be staffed by impartial technical experts, why are Ministers taking the power to amend the recommendations of the Law Commissions before they are fast-tracked into legislation?
- Why do protections in the Bill against new laws to permit forcible entry, search, seizure or compelling people to give evidence not apply to reforms recommended by the unelected Law Commissions appointed by Ministers?
- If the Bill allows Ministers to “amend, repeal or replace legislation in any way that an Act might”, does this not give them an unlimited power to ignore a democratic Parliament and legislate by decree?
- If the Bill is so sensible, why has Parliament used a different way of making laws for 700 years?
- If the Bill is meant to retain Parliament’s ability to scrutinise regulations and regulators, why does it not contain a provision for automatic sunset clauses in orders issued under the Bill?
- If the Bill gives Ministers powers to charge fees by decree, is that not a charter to bring in unlimited stealth taxes?
- As the Bill permits an order to be made by a Minister under the Bill provided its effect is “proportionate” to his “policy objective”, since when in our history as a democratic country has a Government Minister’s “policy objective” directly received the force of law?
- What guarantees are there that the Bill could not be used to bring in ID Cards by the back door?
- Why does the Bill give the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly a veto over Ministers’ power to change the law which it denies to English MPs?
Quick analysis of Lenin's On Imperialism
In 1916, Lenin wrote his highly influential, even to this day, work called “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, importantly subtitled “A Popular Outline”. This distinction will become critical later on, for reasons that become clear.
For Lenin, as outlined in this book, imperialism was a new and distinct stage in capitalism. Essentially, he said that economic competition within countries had coalesced into national monopolies, where few national competitors fought each other for supremacy in the market. Specifically, the small businesses that had dominated Karl Marx's analysis had gone, replaced by these huge monopolies, there had been a “remarkably rapid concentration of production in ever-larger enterprises”(1). Because of this decreased competition on the national level, it became increasingly ferocious internationally.
Because businesses would rely on states to secure their vital interests and their organized power to protect them. An excellent example of this is the British Royal Navy. Britain was expanding via trade and the Navy was necessary for the protection of their merchant vessels on the open seas. This inevitably leads to military uses for economic gain, such as the acquisitions of territory in Africa that was done by Britain and France. The rational for such expansion could be explained as the export of surplus capital, an idea which was adapted from Hobson.
This theory of imperialism has been built upon and added and is still used today to explain military excursions by countries into other regions. Most commonly, it is applied to US foreign policy and the processes of globalization and integration of international markets into the world system (under the core-dependency theory). However, this claims need closer assessment and not just blind acceptance.
For example, the United States has the worlds largest and most powerful military. Its budget for 2005 it was $420.7 billion,(2) with the next largest spender, China, being at $29.9 billion.(3) However, we do not find the United States interests being dictated by purely economic means. In many wars, such as the Vietnam conflict, or the second Iraq war, it came out with a significant monetary loss, little capitalistic reason for being there in the first place and a distinct set of ideological/security assumptions that explain its presence in the region.
Furthermore, the world political situation under which Lenin wrote his work has changed drastically. Instead of there being a multipolar world of competing states (and therefore monopolies too), there is only one major power. In the past, several states were in competition, the UK, the French, Germany, Japan etc...However, if one looks, since WWII, these states have all received funding in large amounts from the USA, who nowadays has no enemy which can easily challenge it. Also, the vast majority of the worlds states are now integrated into a world capitalist economic system, which means that military expansion is far less likely, as investment can take place with few restrictions from foreign companies. The New York Times journalist and advocate, Thomas Friedman has simplistically referred to this as the “Golden Arches” rules, that any state with a MacDonalds (i.e; integrated into the capitalistic world economic system) have not gone to war with each other. Admittedly, this is based on Liberal, rather than Marxist notions, but the point is pretty clear. Where there is chance for investment, there is no need for imperialistic wars of profit.
Also of interest is how this applies to the Core-Periphery theory, often associated with the Latin American schools of Marxist thought. This theory is based around the assumptions that there exists and economic “core” of advanced industrial states and a “periphery” of less developed (particularly in transportation infrastructure), richer in resources and exploited by these Core states via the ruling classes and coercive work practices. The core takes the raw materials for relatively cheap prices, then manufactures and sells the material back at a greater cost, essentially leaving the country in relative poverty, dependent on core states it trades with for manufactured goods. Obviously under this system, its the Core states that benefit and so it appears to be another form of Imperialism. Immanuel Wallerstein, the outspoken and controversial World-System theory described eloquently when he said “The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed.”(4) As it was said by Lenin, the structure of capitalism leads to war. The difference is Wallerstein seems to mark down the conflict as being between capitalist powers and anti-imperial resistance (nationalist movements etc)
How true is this, however? Some disagree and say that the analysis is oversimplified and highly static. Most obviously, the are conservative theories which do not accept the underlying a priori assumptions of Marxism. However, because of this, they create competing theories and alternative, world embracing ideologies. Thats why the Left critique, the so-called New Marxism by authors such as Bill Warren make more detailed and concise analysis, because they agree with much of the axiomatic assumptions (not all though), of Marxism, yet come to a very different conclusion.
Warren's work, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism is many senses a “back to basics” of Marxist views of capitalism, namely that it is a successful and advanced system of economics. Rather than the one sided condemnation that have come down from Communist revolutionaries and state leaders, Warren reminds us that capitalism lays the groundwork for Communist revolution in the future, indeed, that it cannot happen without it, because it was a necessary phase.
Instead, capitalism, according to Warren, was fulfilling its historical role, by developing the periphery so that the means of production would be developed and lead to eventual socialism by creating an urban working class. An example he cited was India, though he deeply analyzed the history and development of colonialism as a whole. As Marx himself said, “England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating.” By the destruction of the pre-capitalist, feudalistic caste society, India was built up into an economic powerhouse, the effects of which can still be seen today, with India's industries competing with the best in the world. There were also improvements in education, healthcare and with greater access to consumer goods. Also noted was that education was so good that in fact the percentage of the population in the Third World outnumbered that in Europe.(5)
Essentially, the argument is that Imperialism is a necessary and often bloody step, which nonetheless improved life for many people in those countries that were conquered. Lenin confused the cause with effect, he thought capitalism lead to Imperialism, not the other way around. Even Lenin had admitted that “the export of capital influences and greatly accelerates the development of capitalism in those countries to which it is exported,“ in other words, the colonies.(6)
Warren also takes time to attack the related Core-Periphery theory, which is of course linked deeply to Lenin's work. He attacks that you can even argue that there is economic exploitation, when the “economic south” gains, even slightly, from the transaction. For it to be exploiting those states, it would have to be total exploitation, with no benefits for the periphery whatsoever. This based on the idea that there is a limited amount of prosperity in the world, that there is a limit to resources and how to create capital, therefore taking resources from one area to another necessarily results in impoverishment for some.
Dependency also fails to take into account how nations like Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and so on have grown to become “economic tigers” in world affairs, despite their dependent status throughout modern history. There is no explanation for how these countries have changed into successful, near industrial states. Clearly, this is a major flaw in the theory.
More importantly, the understanding of investment is too simplistically applied here. Dependency theory states that investment in only enclaves (such as oil, for an example) leads to backwardness in the state development. However, that the investment from that is coming in at all shows little exploitation. If one were to look at Saudi Arabia, for example, the problem there has been misuse of foreign investment to better other industries in the country. The United Arab Emirates, for example, has successfully made use of capital from foreign investors in oil to help build its now lucrative tourism industry. That the enclaves mentioned are the only area for investment is not the fault of the core states, they have no choice but to invest in those. The periphery state should have developed its industrial base further.
Apologists for Lenin have often pointed out that his work is only “A Popular Outline”. In fact, it was an attempt to synthesize different strands of Marxist thought to a contemporary situation. One of the many problems of the Soviet Union was the near deification of men such as Lenin, so that their word became immutable writ rather than understood in the context it was written. For the time it was written in, it is an empirically based and well written argument.
However, the context has changed. The reasons for the international rivalry among European states, which have gone through decolonization, are now gone. There are very few areas on the planet which are now part of a non-Capitalist system. It has even been argued that states such as North Korea and Cuba are engaging in state capitalism, rather than true Communism. China, the largest Communist state, is experimenting with a mix of capitalism and Maoist Marxism. With US dominance as a global hegemon, large scale wars such as WWI are unlikely anyway, as are attempts to capture colonies. Those empires held by Great Britain and France were given up because of resistance and difficulty in maintaining control of them. With advances in guerrilla warfare becoming apparent in places like Iraq and Nigeria, it would be of increased difficulty to manage today.
Also, what would the point be? Very few states are outside of the global capitalist system. Its cheaper and easier to use economic clout nowadays, in terms of loans, embargoes and so forth. Given US and European dominance in the IMF, World Bank and WTO, it is much easier to economically, than militarily coerce states. Its possible that Lenin's theories would shed further light on how these institutions operate.
In conclusion, Lenin's work was a compelling argument for its time period. While there have been many changes in the modern world, his work can still help us shed light on how institutions and practices may be working to the benefit of major powers and taking advantage of others. At the same time, Warren's work and critique is a reminder that even this can have its upside and benefits, for everyone involved.
Bibliography
Alright, I'm going to apologize right up. I was having problems finding some of the texts at the Library, so I took the liberty of reading online copies of Lenin's and Marx's work. Terrible I know, but I will cite them anyway, as they are their books, just in an online format.
(1)http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch01.htm#v22zz99h-196-GUESS Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin, Chapter I Concentration of Production and Monopolies
(2)http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/budget.htm
(3)http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2004/nr20040202-0301.html
(4)Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, vol. I, Academic Press Inc.(London) Ltd p 233.
(5)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/22.htm Marx, The Future Results of British Rule in India, 1853, taken from MECW Volume 12, p. 217
(6)http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch04.htm#v22zz99h-240-GUESS Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin, Chapter IV, Export of Capital.
(7)Baylis and Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 2001, p 216-219
For Lenin, as outlined in this book, imperialism was a new and distinct stage in capitalism. Essentially, he said that economic competition within countries had coalesced into national monopolies, where few national competitors fought each other for supremacy in the market. Specifically, the small businesses that had dominated Karl Marx's analysis had gone, replaced by these huge monopolies, there had been a “remarkably rapid concentration of production in ever-larger enterprises”(1). Because of this decreased competition on the national level, it became increasingly ferocious internationally.
Because businesses would rely on states to secure their vital interests and their organized power to protect them. An excellent example of this is the British Royal Navy. Britain was expanding via trade and the Navy was necessary for the protection of their merchant vessels on the open seas. This inevitably leads to military uses for economic gain, such as the acquisitions of territory in Africa that was done by Britain and France. The rational for such expansion could be explained as the export of surplus capital, an idea which was adapted from Hobson.
This theory of imperialism has been built upon and added and is still used today to explain military excursions by countries into other regions. Most commonly, it is applied to US foreign policy and the processes of globalization and integration of international markets into the world system (under the core-dependency theory). However, this claims need closer assessment and not just blind acceptance.
For example, the United States has the worlds largest and most powerful military. Its budget for 2005 it was $420.7 billion,(2) with the next largest spender, China, being at $29.9 billion.(3) However, we do not find the United States interests being dictated by purely economic means. In many wars, such as the Vietnam conflict, or the second Iraq war, it came out with a significant monetary loss, little capitalistic reason for being there in the first place and a distinct set of ideological/security assumptions that explain its presence in the region.
Furthermore, the world political situation under which Lenin wrote his work has changed drastically. Instead of there being a multipolar world of competing states (and therefore monopolies too), there is only one major power. In the past, several states were in competition, the UK, the French, Germany, Japan etc...However, if one looks, since WWII, these states have all received funding in large amounts from the USA, who nowadays has no enemy which can easily challenge it. Also, the vast majority of the worlds states are now integrated into a world capitalist economic system, which means that military expansion is far less likely, as investment can take place with few restrictions from foreign companies. The New York Times journalist and advocate, Thomas Friedman has simplistically referred to this as the “Golden Arches” rules, that any state with a MacDonalds (i.e; integrated into the capitalistic world economic system) have not gone to war with each other. Admittedly, this is based on Liberal, rather than Marxist notions, but the point is pretty clear. Where there is chance for investment, there is no need for imperialistic wars of profit.
Also of interest is how this applies to the Core-Periphery theory, often associated with the Latin American schools of Marxist thought. This theory is based around the assumptions that there exists and economic “core” of advanced industrial states and a “periphery” of less developed (particularly in transportation infrastructure), richer in resources and exploited by these Core states via the ruling classes and coercive work practices. The core takes the raw materials for relatively cheap prices, then manufactures and sells the material back at a greater cost, essentially leaving the country in relative poverty, dependent on core states it trades with for manufactured goods. Obviously under this system, its the Core states that benefit and so it appears to be another form of Imperialism. Immanuel Wallerstein, the outspoken and controversial World-System theory described eloquently when he said “The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed.”(4) As it was said by Lenin, the structure of capitalism leads to war. The difference is Wallerstein seems to mark down the conflict as being between capitalist powers and anti-imperial resistance (nationalist movements etc)
How true is this, however? Some disagree and say that the analysis is oversimplified and highly static. Most obviously, the are conservative theories which do not accept the underlying a priori assumptions of Marxism. However, because of this, they create competing theories and alternative, world embracing ideologies. Thats why the Left critique, the so-called New Marxism by authors such as Bill Warren make more detailed and concise analysis, because they agree with much of the axiomatic assumptions (not all though), of Marxism, yet come to a very different conclusion.
Warren's work, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism is many senses a “back to basics” of Marxist views of capitalism, namely that it is a successful and advanced system of economics. Rather than the one sided condemnation that have come down from Communist revolutionaries and state leaders, Warren reminds us that capitalism lays the groundwork for Communist revolution in the future, indeed, that it cannot happen without it, because it was a necessary phase.
Instead, capitalism, according to Warren, was fulfilling its historical role, by developing the periphery so that the means of production would be developed and lead to eventual socialism by creating an urban working class. An example he cited was India, though he deeply analyzed the history and development of colonialism as a whole. As Marx himself said, “England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating.” By the destruction of the pre-capitalist, feudalistic caste society, India was built up into an economic powerhouse, the effects of which can still be seen today, with India's industries competing with the best in the world. There were also improvements in education, healthcare and with greater access to consumer goods. Also noted was that education was so good that in fact the percentage of the population in the Third World outnumbered that in Europe.(5)
Essentially, the argument is that Imperialism is a necessary and often bloody step, which nonetheless improved life for many people in those countries that were conquered. Lenin confused the cause with effect, he thought capitalism lead to Imperialism, not the other way around. Even Lenin had admitted that “the export of capital influences and greatly accelerates the development of capitalism in those countries to which it is exported,“ in other words, the colonies.(6)
Warren also takes time to attack the related Core-Periphery theory, which is of course linked deeply to Lenin's work. He attacks that you can even argue that there is economic exploitation, when the “economic south” gains, even slightly, from the transaction. For it to be exploiting those states, it would have to be total exploitation, with no benefits for the periphery whatsoever. This based on the idea that there is a limited amount of prosperity in the world, that there is a limit to resources and how to create capital, therefore taking resources from one area to another necessarily results in impoverishment for some.
Dependency also fails to take into account how nations like Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and so on have grown to become “economic tigers” in world affairs, despite their dependent status throughout modern history. There is no explanation for how these countries have changed into successful, near industrial states. Clearly, this is a major flaw in the theory.
More importantly, the understanding of investment is too simplistically applied here. Dependency theory states that investment in only enclaves (such as oil, for an example) leads to backwardness in the state development. However, that the investment from that is coming in at all shows little exploitation. If one were to look at Saudi Arabia, for example, the problem there has been misuse of foreign investment to better other industries in the country. The United Arab Emirates, for example, has successfully made use of capital from foreign investors in oil to help build its now lucrative tourism industry. That the enclaves mentioned are the only area for investment is not the fault of the core states, they have no choice but to invest in those. The periphery state should have developed its industrial base further.
Apologists for Lenin have often pointed out that his work is only “A Popular Outline”. In fact, it was an attempt to synthesize different strands of Marxist thought to a contemporary situation. One of the many problems of the Soviet Union was the near deification of men such as Lenin, so that their word became immutable writ rather than understood in the context it was written. For the time it was written in, it is an empirically based and well written argument.
However, the context has changed. The reasons for the international rivalry among European states, which have gone through decolonization, are now gone. There are very few areas on the planet which are now part of a non-Capitalist system. It has even been argued that states such as North Korea and Cuba are engaging in state capitalism, rather than true Communism. China, the largest Communist state, is experimenting with a mix of capitalism and Maoist Marxism. With US dominance as a global hegemon, large scale wars such as WWI are unlikely anyway, as are attempts to capture colonies. Those empires held by Great Britain and France were given up because of resistance and difficulty in maintaining control of them. With advances in guerrilla warfare becoming apparent in places like Iraq and Nigeria, it would be of increased difficulty to manage today.
Also, what would the point be? Very few states are outside of the global capitalist system. Its cheaper and easier to use economic clout nowadays, in terms of loans, embargoes and so forth. Given US and European dominance in the IMF, World Bank and WTO, it is much easier to economically, than militarily coerce states. Its possible that Lenin's theories would shed further light on how these institutions operate.
In conclusion, Lenin's work was a compelling argument for its time period. While there have been many changes in the modern world, his work can still help us shed light on how institutions and practices may be working to the benefit of major powers and taking advantage of others. At the same time, Warren's work and critique is a reminder that even this can have its upside and benefits, for everyone involved.
Bibliography
Alright, I'm going to apologize right up. I was having problems finding some of the texts at the Library, so I took the liberty of reading online copies of Lenin's and Marx's work. Terrible I know, but I will cite them anyway, as they are their books, just in an online format.
(1)http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch01.htm#v22zz99h-196-GUESS Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin, Chapter I Concentration of Production and Monopolies
(2)http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/budget.htm
(3)http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2004/nr20040202-0301.html
(4)Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, vol. I, Academic Press Inc.(London) Ltd p 233.
(5)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/22.htm Marx, The Future Results of British Rule in India, 1853, taken from MECW Volume 12, p. 217
(6)http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch04.htm#v22zz99h-240-GUESS Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin, Chapter IV, Export of Capital.
(7)Baylis and Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 2001, p 216-219
Mar 3, 2006
The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
This is quite possibly the single most dangerous Bill to be put to Parliament since the Seven Seditious Acts back in the early nineteenth century. Essentially, under this Bill masses of power will be transferred from Parliament and to Ministers. This is as every bit as bad as the Enabling Act that put Hitler in power, in my opinion. It gives ministers complete powers to ignore laws and rewrite them to their own liking, with the only safeguard being their good will. Thats right, they can change laws without Parliamentary oversight, if this gets through.
Contact your MPs. Contact your local newspapers. Contact foreign embassies and check on their rules for becoming a citizen. Spread this to any and every group with a grudge against the government and anti-authoritarian leanings. Kick up a fuss. DO SOMETHING.
Links to explain the law:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,21129-2040625,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,59-2042165,00.html
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/regulation/bill/index.asp
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4683726.stm
http://www.cbi.org.uk/ndbs/press.nsf/0/47955ba090fb200d8025710d00513728?OpenDocument
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/09/nlaw09.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/02/09/ixhome.html
Contact your MPs. Contact your local newspapers. Contact foreign embassies and check on their rules for becoming a citizen. Spread this to any and every group with a grudge against the government and anti-authoritarian leanings. Kick up a fuss. DO SOMETHING.
Links to explain the law:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,21129-2040625,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,59-2042165,00.html
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/regulation/bill/index.asp
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4683726.stm
http://www.cbi.org.uk/ndbs/press.nsf/0/47955ba090fb200d8025710d00513728?OpenDocument
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/09/nlaw09.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/02/09/ixhome.html
Rewriting the City: Chapter 3
The bar was even darker then I had remembered. The only real light came from above the flickering neon tube behind the bar, which was little more then a slab of wood with some stools and drinks on top of it. I moved past the crowded tables to reach it, cutting through the curls of smoke that hung in the air.
Elbowing my way past the regulars probably wasn't the best idea, but I was in a hurry and didn't give a damn about them. Its not like anyone here would really want to kill me. Unless I knocked over a pint or something, but thats practically understandable. Anyway, I made it to the bar and managed to get the barmaid's attention. Taking a $20 note out of my wallet, I ordered a drink, then asked if the boss-man was available. She smiled briefly as I was given my drink and told me he'd be free in 5 minutes, in the first room on the left upstairs.
My time was up, I drained the last of my drink and ducked under the bar, heading for the stairs behind. Upstairs was pretty dark, as befitted the establishment. Rumour had it those shadows had hidden more than one assassin's knife or bullet, but I had no fear, as the boss was in, the meagre light coming from his office. I walked in, noting he was hunched over a bunch of papers, calculating figures on a small hand held device. Taking the seat opposite his desk, I spun it so the back faced him, then sat in it, arms crossed.
The silence continued for several seconds, his bald head hunched while I stared at an object several inches behind his left ear. I broke first. “Listen, I need The Hacker.”
Without even looking at me, he replied “go talk to Aini then Cain, I'm sure she'd be happy to help. Please close the door on the way out.”
“You know, I'm pretty sure I just spoke then, I recall my lips moving and everything. I didn't ask for Aini. She's good, a maths whiz for certain, but I don't need her skills. I want The Hacker. I need someone who was good enough to get into the Government Inc quantum databases first time around.”
“Alright then.” He opened a drawer and removed a piece of paper, putting it at the edge of the desk. “I'll assume this is Discordian-related business, shall I?”
I took the paper. “But of course. And thanks.”
“It'd better be. I pay my dues to you people, but if I find any of you abusing it, I wont hesitate to have you dragged out back and your knees broken. Don't forget that. Now get lost, its hard enough trying to cook the books 3 ways without you trying to read it upside down as well.”
The address was for a bar in an upscale part of town. The East Quadrant, to be exact. Nice sea views and uphill, both a plus for the landowners, bankers, record executives and other sorts of criminals. It must be something genetic in any ruling class, to flee away from the plebs to uphill, easily defended areas. Oh well. I ducked under the bar, before shoving through the crowd again to get out. Distracted, I was humming the tune in background and singing under my breath “back in the city again, I hope that you have been. The kind of poison, that you really oughta know...oh feels so good, I wish I could get this message over to you, now...”
I considered my options out on the street. No taxi was going to come in here, so I could either walk out and hope to find one, or go home for the evening. To hell with it, the night was still young and I had my legs. Making sure I had the piece of paper secure in my pocket, I started the hopefully not long walk. I didn't want to be exposed to the psychotecture for too long, insanity was an all too possible outcome.
20 minutes later, to my profound relief, I got my ride. Another 20 minutes passed and I was now a block away from the bar I needed to be at. I liked it around here. The streets were clean and the houses were well spaced and pleasing to the eye, the ones that could be seen at all, beyond the vast spaces and high hedges employed. This was an entertainment, not accommodation district, however. Expensive sounding and looking bars, restaurants and cinemas were the order of the day.
Mine was in fact just several feet away now. The cue was pretty small, as befitted the earliness of the night. I prepared to walk in as two mountains of men moved in front of me.
One of them rumbled “what do you think you're doing...sir?” with just the right amount of contempt. I sighed. I know I looked like a badly dishevilled detective, like a modern Columbo, but that was the sort of look I liked. It made deciding what to wear in the mornings so much easier.
“I'm trying to get in...but a pair of oafs are blocking me.” Before he could answer, I took two bills from my roll in my pocket and handed it to him before pushing past. I didn't stop to check, just assume it worked and keep walking.
Elbowing my way past the regulars probably wasn't the best idea, but I was in a hurry and didn't give a damn about them. Its not like anyone here would really want to kill me. Unless I knocked over a pint or something, but thats practically understandable. Anyway, I made it to the bar and managed to get the barmaid's attention. Taking a $20 note out of my wallet, I ordered a drink, then asked if the boss-man was available. She smiled briefly as I was given my drink and told me he'd be free in 5 minutes, in the first room on the left upstairs.
My time was up, I drained the last of my drink and ducked under the bar, heading for the stairs behind. Upstairs was pretty dark, as befitted the establishment. Rumour had it those shadows had hidden more than one assassin's knife or bullet, but I had no fear, as the boss was in, the meagre light coming from his office. I walked in, noting he was hunched over a bunch of papers, calculating figures on a small hand held device. Taking the seat opposite his desk, I spun it so the back faced him, then sat in it, arms crossed.
The silence continued for several seconds, his bald head hunched while I stared at an object several inches behind his left ear. I broke first. “Listen, I need The Hacker.”
Without even looking at me, he replied “go talk to Aini then Cain, I'm sure she'd be happy to help. Please close the door on the way out.”
“You know, I'm pretty sure I just spoke then, I recall my lips moving and everything. I didn't ask for Aini. She's good, a maths whiz for certain, but I don't need her skills. I want The Hacker. I need someone who was good enough to get into the Government Inc quantum databases first time around.”
“Alright then.” He opened a drawer and removed a piece of paper, putting it at the edge of the desk. “I'll assume this is Discordian-related business, shall I?”
I took the paper. “But of course. And thanks.”
“It'd better be. I pay my dues to you people, but if I find any of you abusing it, I wont hesitate to have you dragged out back and your knees broken. Don't forget that. Now get lost, its hard enough trying to cook the books 3 ways without you trying to read it upside down as well.”
The address was for a bar in an upscale part of town. The East Quadrant, to be exact. Nice sea views and uphill, both a plus for the landowners, bankers, record executives and other sorts of criminals. It must be something genetic in any ruling class, to flee away from the plebs to uphill, easily defended areas. Oh well. I ducked under the bar, before shoving through the crowd again to get out. Distracted, I was humming the tune in background and singing under my breath “back in the city again, I hope that you have been. The kind of poison, that you really oughta know...oh feels so good, I wish I could get this message over to you, now...”
I considered my options out on the street. No taxi was going to come in here, so I could either walk out and hope to find one, or go home for the evening. To hell with it, the night was still young and I had my legs. Making sure I had the piece of paper secure in my pocket, I started the hopefully not long walk. I didn't want to be exposed to the psychotecture for too long, insanity was an all too possible outcome.
20 minutes later, to my profound relief, I got my ride. Another 20 minutes passed and I was now a block away from the bar I needed to be at. I liked it around here. The streets were clean and the houses were well spaced and pleasing to the eye, the ones that could be seen at all, beyond the vast spaces and high hedges employed. This was an entertainment, not accommodation district, however. Expensive sounding and looking bars, restaurants and cinemas were the order of the day.
Mine was in fact just several feet away now. The cue was pretty small, as befitted the earliness of the night. I prepared to walk in as two mountains of men moved in front of me.
One of them rumbled “what do you think you're doing...sir?” with just the right amount of contempt. I sighed. I know I looked like a badly dishevilled detective, like a modern Columbo, but that was the sort of look I liked. It made deciding what to wear in the mornings so much easier.
“I'm trying to get in...but a pair of oafs are blocking me.” Before he could answer, I took two bills from my roll in my pocket and handed it to him before pushing past. I didn't stop to check, just assume it worked and keep walking.
Rewriting the City: Chapter 2
“Of course, he's a pretty hard person to forget.” His “shadow” as his nickname had been, was another private investigator, of sorts. He had the kind of skills you normally didn't see in most people, such as knowing how to pick locks, move very quietly and how to scale walls and bypass security systems with relative ease. He also had contacts everywhere, even in Government Inc. Chances were he was ex-DHS or something similar, though if you were really that “ex”, chances were you wouldn't be walking around or breathing. He wasn't exactly the sort of individual who you wouldn't turn your back on either.
“Yeah, I know of him” I replied. “Why, what has happened?”
“Well, its a rather long story. I heard from someone who worked at one of the labs in the city about a new drug that is being worked on. I'd come across its name before, in another of my cases, so I sent my Shadow to go find out what was going on. It made sense, what with his contacts. But a week or so later, I got this sent to me” he finished as he grabbed a slightly tattered sheet of paper which was folded inside his jacket pocket.
I looked at the picture in front of me, showing a grainy image of the Shadow coming out of a laboratory, with the date and time stamped in the corner. It was 10 days ago. “So you think he's sold out or turned and gone into the business for himself then?”
“Basically. He's had plenty of time to come forth with whatever he has, even if its nothing, and still hasn't. I tried to get a trace on who sent that, but unsurprisingly I was denied access to the post system. Someone there will know where its from, it got tagged so they have the reference number. I included that with the rest of the information.” With that he took a large envelope out of a pocket and handed it over. “Thats everything I have. Do you want the job or not?”
Well, it certainly had my interest, but there was one more criteria to fulfill. “How much can I expect to be paid?”
“Standard rates. I also know for a fact that the Shadow doesn't trust the banks and keeps his money as cash. I'm sure that extra incentive has its value to you.”
“Deal” I replied.
My first thoughts were to try and bribe, cajole or otherwise threaten some workers at the Post Office to find out who sent the picture. It would be nice to know who the unknown ally was and if they knew anything else. But it wasn't simply a matter of walking in and saying it was sent to the wrong address, could I have the return address please? They'd take it from me and process it, sending it back through the use of the reference number. That had been a nice little addition on the latest round of anti-terrorist legislation. Failing that, there were a few favours I could still call in. It'd probably be wise to do that, quite soon.
My first port of call had been my flat, where I picked up a few items and made a couple of calls. I didn't want to go to the Post Office until tomorrow, when I would be assured of large crowds. If someone from Government Inc and its various research labs had sent that picture, there would be questions asked and a crowd would make escape easier. I grabbed the old style Beretta pistol I kept in my safe and a couple of clips. I had meant to get one of the new neuro-disruptors, but the cost of those things was abominable. Plus they were apparently illegal or something, which probably explained the price. Nah, it would have to bit good old fashioned bits of fast moving metal, if diplomacy or cash failed. And since it was night time now, that possibility existed.
I made my way into the heartland of the City, the awful inner city that acted like a vortex for all the detritus of the surrounding area. Beggars and prostitutes mixed freely with thugs and drug runners here, the entrance to the slums of the City. Shacks were stacked precariously on top of each other, looking like they could crash down at any moment, taking large areas around with them. It was one giant festering rat hole, more tunnels than walkways which people traveled along in search of the next dollar, sexual conquest or high. In the small rooms the hastily constructed buildings here held, the widest ranges of narcotics, sex and valuable goods were sold. This chaotic nature was of course reflected in the Psychotecture, bringing it to a nightmarish fruition. I had found my destination. Walking to the nearest bar, I opened the door, hesitated for a moment, then dove into the darkness.
“Yeah, I know of him” I replied. “Why, what has happened?”
“Well, its a rather long story. I heard from someone who worked at one of the labs in the city about a new drug that is being worked on. I'd come across its name before, in another of my cases, so I sent my Shadow to go find out what was going on. It made sense, what with his contacts. But a week or so later, I got this sent to me” he finished as he grabbed a slightly tattered sheet of paper which was folded inside his jacket pocket.
I looked at the picture in front of me, showing a grainy image of the Shadow coming out of a laboratory, with the date and time stamped in the corner. It was 10 days ago. “So you think he's sold out or turned and gone into the business for himself then?”
“Basically. He's had plenty of time to come forth with whatever he has, even if its nothing, and still hasn't. I tried to get a trace on who sent that, but unsurprisingly I was denied access to the post system. Someone there will know where its from, it got tagged so they have the reference number. I included that with the rest of the information.” With that he took a large envelope out of a pocket and handed it over. “Thats everything I have. Do you want the job or not?”
Well, it certainly had my interest, but there was one more criteria to fulfill. “How much can I expect to be paid?”
“Standard rates. I also know for a fact that the Shadow doesn't trust the banks and keeps his money as cash. I'm sure that extra incentive has its value to you.”
“Deal” I replied.
My first thoughts were to try and bribe, cajole or otherwise threaten some workers at the Post Office to find out who sent the picture. It would be nice to know who the unknown ally was and if they knew anything else. But it wasn't simply a matter of walking in and saying it was sent to the wrong address, could I have the return address please? They'd take it from me and process it, sending it back through the use of the reference number. That had been a nice little addition on the latest round of anti-terrorist legislation. Failing that, there were a few favours I could still call in. It'd probably be wise to do that, quite soon.
My first port of call had been my flat, where I picked up a few items and made a couple of calls. I didn't want to go to the Post Office until tomorrow, when I would be assured of large crowds. If someone from Government Inc and its various research labs had sent that picture, there would be questions asked and a crowd would make escape easier. I grabbed the old style Beretta pistol I kept in my safe and a couple of clips. I had meant to get one of the new neuro-disruptors, but the cost of those things was abominable. Plus they were apparently illegal or something, which probably explained the price. Nah, it would have to bit good old fashioned bits of fast moving metal, if diplomacy or cash failed. And since it was night time now, that possibility existed.
I made my way into the heartland of the City, the awful inner city that acted like a vortex for all the detritus of the surrounding area. Beggars and prostitutes mixed freely with thugs and drug runners here, the entrance to the slums of the City. Shacks were stacked precariously on top of each other, looking like they could crash down at any moment, taking large areas around with them. It was one giant festering rat hole, more tunnels than walkways which people traveled along in search of the next dollar, sexual conquest or high. In the small rooms the hastily constructed buildings here held, the widest ranges of narcotics, sex and valuable goods were sold. This chaotic nature was of course reflected in the Psychotecture, bringing it to a nightmarish fruition. I had found my destination. Walking to the nearest bar, I opened the door, hesitated for a moment, then dove into the darkness.
Rewriting The City: Chapter 1
I made my way through the darkened streets to the Open Bar, clutching at the roll of money in my pocket tightly. I hated the City at this time of evening, just as the sun was setting. The street lights shone their awful orange light over the odd, mind-defying angles and corners, illuminating the semi-darkness that was around me in a way that was far worse then had it been just pitch black. Shapes stumbled around in the darkness as I gripped my roll of cash even harder. It had been a tough job, but worth it. The Presbyterian Church had paid well for their security upgrade in their headquarters and anything that upset the Lord's Brigades was well worth doing. It was strange, you'd think those two groups would get along, but the Presbyterians work among the City slums, plus their denunciations of the evils of capitalism, toned down lately of course, had made them enemies in very high places.
Ah, here I was. I looked up to the narrow door of the Open Bar. The taller buildings either side of the squat bar threw deeper shadows in the relative darkness, but here, a step away from the Bar, I could be more or less assured of safety. I swung the door inwards, savouring the bright, cheery light within, a stark comparison to the architects nightmare that lay outside.
Dying for a scotch, I moved my way up to the bar itself. It wasn't that busy this time of evening. Most of the people who came here didn't work “normal” office hours anyway, me among them, so the busy times were often random and unpredictable. Grabbing a stool and peeling a note from the roll, I said to Mangrove “some Glenlivet thanks. Actually, make it a double, with ice.” He came back swiftly with the drink, saying “its funny you should be in today. LMNO was asking about where you were.”
“Oh?” I replied, before taking a sip. “What was it about?”
“He said he may have a job for you, something that suited your particular skills, he said.”
“Oh dear, that never sounds good. He's pretty competent on his own, I can't see why he'd need me for anything.”
“Well, he has got this new client whose case is taking up a lot of his time...”
“Hmm, maybe I'll contact him and see whats happening. Thanks for the tip-off.”
“No problem” Mangrove replied as he went to serve another customer.
So, another job, I thought to myself as I sipped on the scotch. That could be useful. Ever since the “incident” 9 months ago, I had been more or less without steady employment. I mean, sure, it wasn't like there weren't jobs available. But working in a factory 11 hours a day until I was 70 just didn't have the appeal, nor did drug running for the Matarese or the Cosa Nostra or whoever had control of the trade, for that matter.
Finishing the drink, I grabbed my cell and made a call to LMNO's office. One ring...two rings..3...just as my thumb started to move to the hang up button, someone answered. “Hello?” LMNO's voice came, crystal clear down the line.
“Hi, its Cain here,” I answered, “I heard you had a job offer for me?”
“Yeah. Well, kind of. Its complicated.”
“We'll need to talk then. You name a time you're free.”
“We'll, I can be at the bar in, say 10 minutes? It'll have to be brief, as I've got a client to meet straight afterwards.
“That'll be fine”, I replied. “See you in ten.” The line went dead.
I enjoyed the rest of my drink, idly waiting. It wasn't like I had any pressing engagements, plus the Open Bar was very welcoming which was a nice change in the City. I had just finished the scotch and was about to go for another, when LMNO walked in and took a seat besides me.
“Hi, good to see you're here. You wanna know what this is about then?”
“Its a good place to start” I replied, turning on my stool to face him.
“OK, I'm going to have to be brief but I do have some additional information written down here. Basically, do you remember my business partner, the Shadow?”
Ah, here I was. I looked up to the narrow door of the Open Bar. The taller buildings either side of the squat bar threw deeper shadows in the relative darkness, but here, a step away from the Bar, I could be more or less assured of safety. I swung the door inwards, savouring the bright, cheery light within, a stark comparison to the architects nightmare that lay outside.
Dying for a scotch, I moved my way up to the bar itself. It wasn't that busy this time of evening. Most of the people who came here didn't work “normal” office hours anyway, me among them, so the busy times were often random and unpredictable. Grabbing a stool and peeling a note from the roll, I said to Mangrove “some Glenlivet thanks. Actually, make it a double, with ice.” He came back swiftly with the drink, saying “its funny you should be in today. LMNO was asking about where you were.”
“Oh?” I replied, before taking a sip. “What was it about?”
“He said he may have a job for you, something that suited your particular skills, he said.”
“Oh dear, that never sounds good. He's pretty competent on his own, I can't see why he'd need me for anything.”
“Well, he has got this new client whose case is taking up a lot of his time...”
“Hmm, maybe I'll contact him and see whats happening. Thanks for the tip-off.”
“No problem” Mangrove replied as he went to serve another customer.
So, another job, I thought to myself as I sipped on the scotch. That could be useful. Ever since the “incident” 9 months ago, I had been more or less without steady employment. I mean, sure, it wasn't like there weren't jobs available. But working in a factory 11 hours a day until I was 70 just didn't have the appeal, nor did drug running for the Matarese or the Cosa Nostra or whoever had control of the trade, for that matter.
Finishing the drink, I grabbed my cell and made a call to LMNO's office. One ring...two rings..3...just as my thumb started to move to the hang up button, someone answered. “Hello?” LMNO's voice came, crystal clear down the line.
“Hi, its Cain here,” I answered, “I heard you had a job offer for me?”
“Yeah. Well, kind of. Its complicated.”
“We'll need to talk then. You name a time you're free.”
“We'll, I can be at the bar in, say 10 minutes? It'll have to be brief, as I've got a client to meet straight afterwards.
“That'll be fine”, I replied. “See you in ten.” The line went dead.
I enjoyed the rest of my drink, idly waiting. It wasn't like I had any pressing engagements, plus the Open Bar was very welcoming which was a nice change in the City. I had just finished the scotch and was about to go for another, when LMNO walked in and took a seat besides me.
“Hi, good to see you're here. You wanna know what this is about then?”
“Its a good place to start” I replied, turning on my stool to face him.
“OK, I'm going to have to be brief but I do have some additional information written down here. Basically, do you remember my business partner, the Shadow?”
Assassin Theosophy
In common with other Shi’ite sects the Isma’ilis were not content to dwell on the surface meaning of the text but made use of a subtle and elaborate method of textual exegesis, called ta’wil. Every verse of the sacred book, indeed every word and even every letter, is found to have an esoteric significance, the batin, which is additional and complementary to the exoteric, surface, meaning, the zahir. This quest for inner meaning in sacred texts was, it is true, a widespread obsession in the Middle Ages, for example in the Qabbalah, and it can be found to some extent in Christianity as well, though it never became institutionalized among Christians as it did among the Isma’ilis.
More on ta'wil here http://www.quran.org.uk/articles/ieb_quran_tawil.htm
The Shi’ite writers speak of there being four levels of meaning in each verse of the Koran: the first is the surface meaning, the second is the level of allusion, the third is the occult sense, and the fourth is the level of spiritual teachings. These four levels are intended for different audiences: the first is for ordinary Muslims, the second is for the elite, the third is for the Friends of God (the ’Inner Circle’ of humanity), and the fourth is for the Prophets. A saying attributed to ’Ali, the First Imam, also gives four levels of meaning as contained in the Koran: the first is for oral recitation, the second is for interior comprehension, the third sets out those things that are allowed and those that are not, and the fourth indicates the effect that God intends to produce in man by the verse in question.
By a typically Isma’ili extension of the idea, the three levels of understanding also have a cosmological reference. The first level corresponds to the physical world and the earth element; the second level to the world of religion and to water; the third to the spiritual world and to air. But even this third level is concerned merely with knowledge of Reality, not with Reality itself; only prophets have access to Reality, through direct acquaintance with theMystery. This faculty depends on the immediate reception of divine inspiration via the brain and corresponds to the fire element, which is too burning for ordinary mortals to withstand.
The Arabic language, being the raw material, so to speak, out of which the Koran was constructed, also contained vital clues to the organization of the universe, and here the analogy with a cipher system is particularly close. for example, the Divine Command which gives rise to creation is represented by the Arabic letters kaf (k) and nun (n). Two letters are needed because all creatures come together in pairs in order to reproduce; this represents a fundamental law of the universe. The letters k and n are chosen because of their numerical values in the ’abjad’ system, according to which each letter in the Arabic alphabet is assigned a number equivalent. The value for k is 20 and that for n is 50, giving a total of 70 (10 x 7, the key Isma’ili number).
The symbolism can be extended further. Between kaf and nun in the alphabet come lam (l) and mim (m). K and n symbolize respectively the First and Second Intelligences (to be discussed shortly), from which proceed Matter and Form, symbolized by l and m. L and m can also symbolize the Prophet and the Imam, or emanation and the return to the source; the list of possible correspondences can easily be extended, but those I have mentioned will give an idea of the Isma’ili method of exegesis. Vital though it was, however, the search for occult significance in the Koran and in Nature was only one aspect of the Isma’ilis’ intellectual activity. Another was the attempt to formulate their insights philosophically, and for this they drew heavily on Neoplatonism.
Creation simply happens, by virtue of a Divine Command (amr) or Word (c.f. the Logos of the Fourth Gospel: ’In the beginning was the Word’). In so far as we can think about God at all, we are compelled to do so in terms of the Word.
A closely related concept is that of the First Intelligence, or Universal Reason. Many Isma’ili authors, in fact, seem to regard the Word and the First Intelligence as identical. The First Intelligence, therefore, is the link between the unknowable Absolute and the universe. But we must not forget that this statement contains a mystery and a paradox, for it is also true to say that no such link exists.
The First Intelligence is not part of creation; rather, it is the act of creation
itself, by virtue of which the universe comes into being. The first manifestation of the universe is the Second Intelligence, also known as the First Emanation and the Universal Soul. Below the Second Intelligence come further Intelligences, giving a total of 10 Intelligences (9 Emanations).
• First Intelligence (Command, Word) = Universal Reason
• Second Intelligence = Universal Soul = First Emanation
• Third Intelligence = Second Emanation
• Fourth Intelligence = Third Emanation
• Fifth Intelligence = Fourth Emanation
• Sixth Intelligence = Fifth Emanation
• Seventh Intelligence = Sixth Emanation
• Eighth Intelligence = Seventh Emanation
• Ninth Intelligence = Eighth Emanation
• Tenth Intelligence = Ninth Emanation
More on ta'wil here http://www.quran.org.uk/articles/ieb_quran_tawil.htm
The Shi’ite writers speak of there being four levels of meaning in each verse of the Koran: the first is the surface meaning, the second is the level of allusion, the third is the occult sense, and the fourth is the level of spiritual teachings. These four levels are intended for different audiences: the first is for ordinary Muslims, the second is for the elite, the third is for the Friends of God (the ’Inner Circle’ of humanity), and the fourth is for the Prophets. A saying attributed to ’Ali, the First Imam, also gives four levels of meaning as contained in the Koran: the first is for oral recitation, the second is for interior comprehension, the third sets out those things that are allowed and those that are not, and the fourth indicates the effect that God intends to produce in man by the verse in question.
By a typically Isma’ili extension of the idea, the three levels of understanding also have a cosmological reference. The first level corresponds to the physical world and the earth element; the second level to the world of religion and to water; the third to the spiritual world and to air. But even this third level is concerned merely with knowledge of Reality, not with Reality itself; only prophets have access to Reality, through direct acquaintance with theMystery. This faculty depends on the immediate reception of divine inspiration via the brain and corresponds to the fire element, which is too burning for ordinary mortals to withstand.
The Arabic language, being the raw material, so to speak, out of which the Koran was constructed, also contained vital clues to the organization of the universe, and here the analogy with a cipher system is particularly close. for example, the Divine Command which gives rise to creation is represented by the Arabic letters kaf (k) and nun (n). Two letters are needed because all creatures come together in pairs in order to reproduce; this represents a fundamental law of the universe. The letters k and n are chosen because of their numerical values in the ’abjad’ system, according to which each letter in the Arabic alphabet is assigned a number equivalent. The value for k is 20 and that for n is 50, giving a total of 70 (10 x 7, the key Isma’ili number).
The symbolism can be extended further. Between kaf and nun in the alphabet come lam (l) and mim (m). K and n symbolize respectively the First and Second Intelligences (to be discussed shortly), from which proceed Matter and Form, symbolized by l and m. L and m can also symbolize the Prophet and the Imam, or emanation and the return to the source; the list of possible correspondences can easily be extended, but those I have mentioned will give an idea of the Isma’ili method of exegesis. Vital though it was, however, the search for occult significance in the Koran and in Nature was only one aspect of the Isma’ilis’ intellectual activity. Another was the attempt to formulate their insights philosophically, and for this they drew heavily on Neoplatonism.
Creation simply happens, by virtue of a Divine Command (amr) or Word (c.f. the Logos of the Fourth Gospel: ’In the beginning was the Word’). In so far as we can think about God at all, we are compelled to do so in terms of the Word.
A closely related concept is that of the First Intelligence, or Universal Reason. Many Isma’ili authors, in fact, seem to regard the Word and the First Intelligence as identical. The First Intelligence, therefore, is the link between the unknowable Absolute and the universe. But we must not forget that this statement contains a mystery and a paradox, for it is also true to say that no such link exists.
The First Intelligence is not part of creation; rather, it is the act of creation
itself, by virtue of which the universe comes into being. The first manifestation of the universe is the Second Intelligence, also known as the First Emanation and the Universal Soul. Below the Second Intelligence come further Intelligences, giving a total of 10 Intelligences (9 Emanations).
• First Intelligence (Command, Word) = Universal Reason
• Second Intelligence = Universal Soul = First Emanation
• Third Intelligence = Second Emanation
• Fourth Intelligence = Third Emanation
• Fifth Intelligence = Fourth Emanation
• Sixth Intelligence = Fifth Emanation
• Seventh Intelligence = Sixth Emanation
• Eighth Intelligence = Seventh Emanation
• Ninth Intelligence = Eighth Emanation
• Tenth Intelligence = Ninth Emanation
HAIKUS FOR OPIEZ, BY CHEF
CLYDE'S RETIREMENT PLAN:
TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS WORTH OF
LOTTERY TICKETS.
NEIGHBORS OFFENDED
WHEN JAKE'S COUSINS USE HIS YARD
AS AN RV PARK.
AFTER CHILD SUPPORT,
CLETUS CAN EITHER PAY RENT
OR TRUCK PAYMENT.
PAM BLAMES PREGNANCY
ON FALLING ASLEEP BEFORE
BOYFRIEND COMES TO BED.
TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS WORTH OF
LOTTERY TICKETS.
NEIGHBORS OFFENDED
WHEN JAKE'S COUSINS USE HIS YARD
AS AN RV PARK.
AFTER CHILD SUPPORT,
CLETUS CAN EITHER PAY RENT
OR TRUCK PAYMENT.
PAM BLAMES PREGNANCY
ON FALLING ASLEEP BEFORE
BOYFRIEND COMES TO BED.
The Apocrypha to the Vengeful Testament of Eris Part 1
Dont ask where I got this, it mysertiously appeared in my wardrobe one day, after a drinking session and reading some Spike Milligan. Its a bitch to transcript too.
----------------------
The Apocrypha to the Vengeful Testament of Eris
I. An Account Of the Creation (compiled from eyewitness reports and press releases)
I. In the beginning was the Word.
II. And the word was “Damn!”
III. Verily, several other words followed, and they were “I’m sure that wasn’t meant to happen.”
IV. And thus the Universe was created.
V. And Eris said, “Let There Be Light” but woe there were brownouts in California.
VI. And Eris saw the light and it was good. Eris also saw the monthly bill quadruple after deregulation, and that was not good.
VII. And the Lady did say, “Let There Be Firmament”, and lo she did think, this colour does not go with my eyes well.
VIII. And Eris did bring forth dry land and did command the water to be gathered unto one place. And in London the land went at $6000 a square metre, and lo the water rarely stayed in on one place for long.
IX. And Eris did say “Let There Be Grass” and her followers smoke it unto this day in thanks.
X. And the Lady did say “Let There Be Light In Heaven to Give Light To Earth” and there were many reports of UFOs, except over England where autumnal weather meant it was overcast.
XI. And the Lady did say “Let The Sea Bring Forth Life” and it did, but EU fishing quotas did not stop over fishing there.
XII. And Eris blessed them, saying “Be Fruitful, Multiply and Fill the Sea, And Let Fowl Multiply On The Earth”, but lo, many of the fowl did catch bird flu and died.
XIII. And Eris did say, “Let The Earth Bring Forth Cattle and Creeping Things” and there came cows, and Republican Presidential candidates.
XIV. And Eris did say, “Let Us Make Man in Our Own Image”, but woe, creative differences caused the design team to pursue individual projects.
XV. And she said “Let Humanity Have Dominion Over Fish, Cattle, Fowl and Anything Else Stupid Enough To Follow them Around”.
XVI. And Eris said, “Behold, I Have Given Thee The First Of Free Yielding Seed” but Monsanto did copyright it and sell it for extortionate amounts.
II. On The Creation Of Man And Woman
I. And on the 6th day, Eris did rest from her labours, with full backing from the Fireman’s Union and a strike by the London Underground train drivers.
II. And every plant and herb was in the earth, for Eris had not caused it to rain, and Bob Geldolf had not yet pestered the G8 for their lack of action.
III. And the Lady did form man and woman out of dust of the ground and did breathe life into them, and they were thankful for the Lady attending that first aid course.
IV. The Lady planted a Garden in Eden and placed man and woman there, and to this day the residual memory rests with TV producers.
V. And out of the ground grew every tree that was pleasing to the Lady, but woe She had not counted on logging rights being granted in the region.
VI. And Eris did put man and woman in the Garden to dress and take care of it, but said on Her tax that they were part time labour and so did not come under a health plan.
VII. The Lady did say of any tree in the garden though may eat freely, but She was apprehended for inciting theft at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park.
VIII. But of the tree of Certainty and thou shall most surely die, for it was sprayed with DDT.
IX. And both man and woman were naked, and they were not ashamed. However, it did get somewhat nippy at night, and there were arrested for indecency at Euston Station.
----------------------
The Apocrypha to the Vengeful Testament of Eris
I. An Account Of the Creation (compiled from eyewitness reports and press releases)
I. In the beginning was the Word.
II. And the word was “Damn!”
III. Verily, several other words followed, and they were “I’m sure that wasn’t meant to happen.”
IV. And thus the Universe was created.
V. And Eris said, “Let There Be Light” but woe there were brownouts in California.
VI. And Eris saw the light and it was good. Eris also saw the monthly bill quadruple after deregulation, and that was not good.
VII. And the Lady did say, “Let There Be Firmament”, and lo she did think, this colour does not go with my eyes well.
VIII. And Eris did bring forth dry land and did command the water to be gathered unto one place. And in London the land went at $6000 a square metre, and lo the water rarely stayed in on one place for long.
IX. And Eris did say “Let There Be Grass” and her followers smoke it unto this day in thanks.
X. And the Lady did say “Let There Be Light In Heaven to Give Light To Earth” and there were many reports of UFOs, except over England where autumnal weather meant it was overcast.
XI. And the Lady did say “Let The Sea Bring Forth Life” and it did, but EU fishing quotas did not stop over fishing there.
XII. And Eris blessed them, saying “Be Fruitful, Multiply and Fill the Sea, And Let Fowl Multiply On The Earth”, but lo, many of the fowl did catch bird flu and died.
XIII. And Eris did say, “Let The Earth Bring Forth Cattle and Creeping Things” and there came cows, and Republican Presidential candidates.
XIV. And Eris did say, “Let Us Make Man in Our Own Image”, but woe, creative differences caused the design team to pursue individual projects.
XV. And she said “Let Humanity Have Dominion Over Fish, Cattle, Fowl and Anything Else Stupid Enough To Follow them Around”.
XVI. And Eris said, “Behold, I Have Given Thee The First Of Free Yielding Seed” but Monsanto did copyright it and sell it for extortionate amounts.
II. On The Creation Of Man And Woman
I. And on the 6th day, Eris did rest from her labours, with full backing from the Fireman’s Union and a strike by the London Underground train drivers.
II. And every plant and herb was in the earth, for Eris had not caused it to rain, and Bob Geldolf had not yet pestered the G8 for their lack of action.
III. And the Lady did form man and woman out of dust of the ground and did breathe life into them, and they were thankful for the Lady attending that first aid course.
IV. The Lady planted a Garden in Eden and placed man and woman there, and to this day the residual memory rests with TV producers.
V. And out of the ground grew every tree that was pleasing to the Lady, but woe She had not counted on logging rights being granted in the region.
VI. And Eris did put man and woman in the Garden to dress and take care of it, but said on Her tax that they were part time labour and so did not come under a health plan.
VII. The Lady did say of any tree in the garden though may eat freely, but She was apprehended for inciting theft at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park.
VIII. But of the tree of Certainty and thou shall most surely die, for it was sprayed with DDT.
IX. And both man and woman were naked, and they were not ashamed. However, it did get somewhat nippy at night, and there were arrested for indecency at Euston Station.
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