Tuesday, July 31, 2012

I thought love would keep us from pain. Had I been there? - George Michael

Friday, July 27, 2012

Built-in Obsolescence, or How Consumerism Beat Genius


Built-in Obsolescence, or How Consumerism Beat Genius
Candles are magical, but light bulbs have a magic that candles don’t have.  One never sees a cartoon with a candle symbolizing a person having a brilliant idea.  Light bulbs represent human genius.
But recently, as I watched the documentary Planned Obsolescence, aka The Lightbulb Conspiracy, I learned about a lightbulb that has been emitting light for over a century in California, and how it was designed by Adolphe Chailet prior to the year in the early 20th Century when the lightbulb cartel (yes, you happen to live on a planet that has a lightbulb cartel) gathered to decide that from then on, lightbulbs would have a short life of several years and that people would be forced to buy light bulbs again in spite of the fact that the technology existed to create lightbulbs that would function for a century.
There are no added benefits to new time-bomb light bulbs.  No innovation, no new technology that we should be grateful for.  The only reason for this shift was profit.
The technology to build the lightbulb that has been lit in a Livermore, California, fire station for over a century –whose 100th birthday was celebrated as an act of generating awareness, and more recently the 110th birthday– was either destroyed or has been kept secret all this time.  Those who stand to profit from sales of light bulbs make sure that no one is allowed to build lightbulbs of their original quality anymore.  As I understand it, General Motors headed this brilliant initiative to ban the better quality of the original.
The computer industry also plans and builds-in the obsolescence of its gadgets.  Oftentimes, the next great thing has already been planned years in advance, so that by the time we install Gadget 3.0, they already know what Gadget 5.0 will look like.  But there are fortunes to be made with each upgrade.
Obsolescence is not only functional, it can also be systemic.  A light bulb may explode like a time bomb … or a computer may simply no longer be compatible with many of the other gadgets that we use.  In all cases, the makers of these goods benefit handsomely from obsolescence.
This is not entirely bad: competition is better than monopoly … but the consumer who wishes to take advantage of a vast array of computer aps will probably have to own both Mac and PC.  We’ve all seen the Mac vs. PC commercials: here are two artificial brains that don’t like to talk to each other much.  Oftentimes competition takes precedence over pragmatic considerations.
Some consumers (particularly in developed countries) are so docile and so easy to manipulate that, lured by the commercials, they will happily buy two, three computers, just to have the latest updates whereas computer users in India and many of the poorer countries only buy a new computer as a last resource.  They always have computer geeks to fix and upgrade their gadgets at low cost or no cost.
Planned obsolescence has a huge environmental effect, adding millions of tons of trash in the developed world while in the third world people often would never think of throwing away an outdated computer.  Parts are recycled, and they’re very much in demand.
There needs to be a balance between competition and profit on the one hand, and pragmatism and inventiveness on the other.  I’m sure that, just as we have geek squads in every city who can fix almost any computer problem, somewhere, somebody knows how to make Chailet’s light bulb.  I wonder what would happen if he or she were to put it in the market …

Friday, July 13, 2012

I, Pet Goat II, Interpreted



The above short film has enough imagery and air of conspiracy to help people today understand more or less the effect that comparable documents like the Book of Revelation would have had in their day, except that the imagery is relevant to our generation.

It's a very well made film by Heliofant (whose name means The Shower of the Mysteries of the Sun, or of Light), which is a Canadian company.  I am reminded of the fact that Adbusters, the activist publication that kickstarted the Occupy movement, is also a Canadian publication.

The title of the film refers to a pet goat, and in my view represents the idea of the scapegoat, an innocent sacrificial animal on whom all the sins of others are transfered and who is sacrificed in order to pay for the sins of others.  It's interesting to note that sacrificial animals (and humans) were oftentimes sedated by their murderous priests in order to facilitate their immolation.

Some of my interpretation for the imagery is as follows:

An obscure puppet-master pulls the strings on US Presidents.

In the first scene, there are black and white tiles on the floor.  This is Masonic imagery.  President Bush is in a classroom, just as he was when 9-11 happened.  Behind them, there is a symbol of the Owl, which represents secret elite societies, in particular Bohemian Grove, to which President Bush has been linked.  We will see another symbol for a secret society, Skull and Bones, later in the film.

The map of the US has pins wherever there have been recent disasters, which proved much sinister when the weight of the presidential response to them was added: Katrina, the BP oil spill, 9-11.

A snow flake, perhaps code for the Sionist six-pointed star, also is represented.  We know that some of the wealthiest donors (or purchasers of his services, if you prefer to see it that way) of the current President are Sionists.

We also see a reference to evolution and a hanging figure -the possibility of failure to evolve- and we see a shark and a house burning down, most likely a reference to the banking cartel (loan sharks) and the mortgage industry collapse.  Just as the loan shark is waiting to prey on the housing collapse, there is a dragon (China) waiting for the split of what looks like two hemispheres of a brain, some speculate this is the two party system in the US.

The letters "F = -F" might indicate that, because the Presidents are puppets, it really does not matter who is in power.  The choice of this letter may be a symbol of failure, or falsehood.

A girl holds an apple, symbol of knowledge, but falls asleep and lets the apple fall at the feet of the President.  The mathematical formula "< C" appears at his feet, which indicates that the girl is smaller than, or less powerful than, the President with whom the letter C is linked.  In mathematics, C stands for calculus, for calculating.  The apple bears the fruit of a lotus flower, a symbol of illumination which appears throughout the entire film. Sweat flows from the brow of the President.

After this, a scene which is obvious reference to the collapse of the twin towers appears with the flying away of an American flag as a preamble.  A dancing clown figure, which is identified as L'enfant Bleu (the Blue Child) on Heliofant's website, commits suicide nearby.  This same figure will dance around a fire later.

We see what the ancient Egyptians would have called the Boat of a Million Years, which carried immortals through the orbits of the heavens.  The jackal head of Anubis, the Way Shower and God of embalming and funerals who showed the way to the West, which was Egypt's idea of the Other-world, leads the barque.  He is the Psychopomp, the Guide of Spirits.

We see a worshipful Osama Bin Laden and his followers under a blood-drench crescent (Islam)... with the symbol for the CIA on him.  We see oil drilling in the background in an icy, dark setting while blood drips on the ocean.  I am reminded not just of the wars for profit, but some of the many other crimes of the military industrial complex, including the oil spill in the Golf of Mexico.

We see Lady Liberty (named Lady Helotry by Heliofant on their webpage) emerging over the Sionist symbol, the Star of David, and its torch falling into the waters.  I am reminded of the Patriot Act, and the continued, sustained attack on our liberties that is being advanced by many in the Jewish lobby including Senator Lieberman who has recently called for emergency measures that would lead to a complete halting of our civil rights in the name of national security.

We see the Wizard, represented by a monitor with an eye, studying humans from before they are born.  His eye looks like a dragon's eye, perhaps a nod to the conspiracy theories about reptilian aliens, but most likely a reference to the draconian and orwellian nature of the Powers that would control humanity.

The heart of the shamanic Christ figure is burning.  The Sacred Heart of Jesus is a traditional symbol of love for humanity.  He appears in a trance.  The Wizard, still operating from within a monitor, has installed himself in the mind of a human child who lays in a state of semi-slumber, mindlessly uttering things, being programmed with Wall Street data and with pills and needles by his side.

We see what appears like an attack on a mosque, surely a reference to wars in the Middle East.  We then see a figure that looks like Mother Mary with Jesus in the Pietà scene, but this is the Mater Dolorosa who mourns and is wearing a black robe.  The Divine Feminine imagery is accentuated also by the fact that she lies on a shell in the waters, just as Aphrodite did when she was born from the foam of the seas.  She may also be a Middle Eastern mother who is crying with her dead child on her lap.  She holds her tears in a vessel from which fire seems to emerge, or a mushroom cloud, clear reference to Muslim retaliatory action.

The child lies in bandages, his eye swollen and bruised, and a beetle or scarab walks around its skin.  This may be a reference to Egypt's revolution, or to the idea of resurrection since the Scarab is a symbol of Khepri, an aspect of Lord Ra in Egyptian spirituality which represents the daily resurrection of the sun.  The child is therefore said to have been reduced to a pile of shit, since Khepri represents the dung beetle which lays its eggs on dung after rolling it into a ball and pushing it into its nest.

Let's not forget that the assumed name of the creators of the film is Heliofant, which is tied to the Egyptian mysteries of the sun.  Heliopolis, in ancient Egypt, was the center of the cult of Khepri or Kheper, whose name means The Becoming.

Add to the list of disturbing images that of a small African boy with tribal symbols on his skin who is carrying a rifle and amunition.  His eyes are red and he carries a lace, which is loosened by a figure that looks Egyptian wearing a Skull and Bones tatoo, which represents death and, of course, the elite fraternity that many Presidents (including Dubya Bush) have been members of, and therefore secret brotherhoods and elite conspiracies.

One interpretation of this lace is that it represents remembrance and that its removal represents forgetfulness. This might be true, but I believe it's likely that this is the AIDS solidarity ribbon, and that the child is an African AIDS orphan who, because of the discontinuity that exists in countries where the entire middle generation was wiped out by the plague, never met his parents and/or was raised without authority figures. These children, particularly when indoctrinated into cults like the Christian terrorist group infamously headed by Kony in Uganda and adjacent countries, can easily be turned into muderous armies.

I am reminded of the American Christian Right's meddling in Africa through abstinence-only sex education under the Bush regime, abstinence-only being a code for Christian indoctrination, which in Uganda led to the Kill the Gays Bill within a decade.  Abstinence-only education also carries with it the belief that AIDS is righteous punishment and that sexuality must be subjected to control by religious institutions.  We see a reference to Christian sexual repression later in the video.

The symbols of communism are buried in toxic waste or mud, along with what appears to be a Latin American worker. An army of tanks marches into a peace protestor wearing a tiger robe who is met by Lord Death.

The Christ figure, in trance, appears to be seeing all these things unfold, as the previously-shown child is accosted by the wizard form within the monitor, acting as a brain parasite.

With fire emerging from his mouth, and ablaze, the Christ figure enters a cave. What seems like a pituitary gland at the center of the brain, is activated and for a moment as he enters the brain-cavity, the Christ and Anubis figures aboard the Boat of a Million years are aligned with it.  This signals activation of the third eye and the beginning of illumination.

We see the Goddess Kali, Mother Time who is also Mother Death (for, as Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita, Time is swallowing us all), dancing. Kali's dance is associated with a Hindu myth about the destruction of the demon Mahisha.  Whenever Kali performs her dance of destruction, she is frenzied in her duty of killing demons.  Hindus also believe that we are living in the Age of Darkness, the Kali Yuga, and the end of this era precedes the beginning of a new awakening.

Fish leap into the shaman Christ's boat awaiting salvation, but he is in trance and ignores them.  The Age of Pisces is coming to an end.

There is an icy figure lying on the ice with an erect phallus with a cross on top of it. This, of course, represents the church. At the head of the icy phallus-tower lies an elderly woman imprisoned, and looking out from her window as if lovingly awaiting her rescuer or savior who never came.  She is no longer a Princess or a Maiden in her tower but has grown old and is now trapped inside the power structure of the church.

When illumination happens, although she is presumably in menopause, she is shown to have a menstrual cycle, she has life again. As the Christ crosses the river in the inner cavern of consciousness, things are crumbling. Kali dances.

Finally the Christ figure arises from under what seems like an icy army, and crushes it. The monitor that was used by the wizard flees and leaves the hypnotized child free to own his own head.

A whirling dervish figure, representative of the Sufi mystics, rises above the former mosque that had been destroyed.  He rises towards the heavens liberated. He dances as the upward spiral of the double helix of DNA announcing evolution, ascension. The bloody crescent moon that hovered above Osama Bin Laden is now replaced by a full moon.

A dancing figure (the Blue Boy again) around a fire wears the masks of the dragon, the bear and the eagle and his suit has what appears like a star, perhaps a symbol of nuclear fusion, of a nuclear war between China (dragon), Russia (bear) and America (eagle).  At the end of the dance, he regains his humanity.  The dancer might be a shaman, since the imagery deals with transformation into animal symbols.

The Christ figure finally emerges from the cavern out of a portal that is adorned with a devil's icon, perhaps symbolizing that he lacks the innocence that he came in with. Or perhaps symbolizing that he is now resurrect and transformed after having been to Hades.

He opens his eyes to see the sunrise before him and behind him the icy church structure crumbles. The Illuminati symbol of the pyramid is clearly seen on his forehead with the all-seeing eye at the base and not at the apex, as the elite would have it. This indicates the illumination and awakening of the masses of humanity. The Christian era has passed.

The sun rises again and its rays destroy the pyramids, the power structures that have stood until now, and their entire icy world will now melt under its rays.

This Heliofant.com page has a partial explanation of the imagery. Their interpretation of the wizard is as follows:
Drako, The Sorcerer, the unseen hand and spirit of madness seeking ever more control through trickery, lies, poisons, false-flag events, wars, and mountains of beauracratic and legal framework to siphon off the energy of the inhabitants of the earth. He fears the light of day as he fears life itself, and operates in the shadows. His greatest power is his hold on the issuance of the currency.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Other Countries Bailout Bankers, Iceland Jails Them

When we grow up we want to be Icelanders!
– one of the slogans of the Spanish M-15 Movement

Iceland is one of the most beautiful and strange looking places on Earth. Its scenery and natural phenomena like volcanoes and aurora borealis confer upon it an otherworldly aura and it’s no wonder most Icelanders still believe in elves and in little magical people. But the fairy-tale magic of Iceland was abruptly suspended in recent years when Icelanders felt the asfixiating effects of the banking crisis.

In other countries, high-end banker criminals walk the street with impunity and are in every way treated as royalty, as Matt Taibbi in his admirably honest Rolling Stones article Too Crooked to Fail attests. But not in Iceland: the small country has jailed some of the main bankers responsible for their current state of international debt.

Bloomberg.com reports that “Byr Savings Bank former Chairman Jon Thorsteinn Jonsson and the lender’s ex-Chief Executive Officer Ragnar Zophonias Gudjonsson were today found guilty of fraud and sentenced to four and half years in prison by Iceland’s Supreme Court.”

Icelandic journalists are even blaming the right culprits and have begun to speak of ‘inappropriate loans’ that were taken by their bankers! Haukur Holm, of AFP, reports:
… the publication last month of a parliamentary inquiry into the island nation’s profound financial and economic crisis signaled a turning of the tide, laying much of the blame for the downfall on the former bank heads who had taken “inappropriate loans from the banks” they worked for.
Imagine if we lived in a world where most journalists refered to IMF and World Bank loans as ‘inappropriate‘, accurately explaining how a small, corrupt elite of central bankers tend to lend huge sums of money to a small, corrupt elite of politicians and bankers in vulnerable countries … who profit from these transactions and then transfer the debt to their constituencies! This has happened for generations, time and time again, both in developed and in third world countries. But some small countries, like Iceland, are not built to, or willing to, endure this scheme.

In the midst of what had, for the most part, been mainstream media’s blackout of the events going on in Iceland, we have been getting mixed messages: some say an all-out revolution is taking place there, others refute it. October2011.org explains why Iceland has not been in the news:
An Italian radio program’s story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world.
Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion.
- Iceland’s On-going Revolution
The article then goes on to explain Iceland’s crisis in terms that the layman can understand, even claiming that the Icelandic people went through the process of rewriting their constitution online in a popular act of decentralized, participatory democracy never before seen in history.
To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the internet. The constituent’s meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape. The constitution that eventually emerges from this participatory democratic process will be submitted to parliament for approval after the next elections.
However many of the assertions of this article have been refuted. An Icelandic contributor to Dailykos.com said:
It’s true; we had a referendum to elect a Constitutional Assembly—a group of twenty-five people tasked with writing a new Constitution. But there were 500 plus candidates to choose from, and the results were nullified because proper election procedures weren’t followed.
Rather than hold another referendum, those individuals were ‘appointed’ to a Constitutional Committee. They have now submitted a ‘proposal’ for draft of our new Constitution, but we by no means have a new Constitution yet! This is definitely jumping the gun. Our old one still reigns supreme.
Having been asked to assume the responsibility to pay the debts of corrupt bankers and politicians, the people of Iceland opted against enslavement through debt at the mercy of the international bankers and even went as far as crafting a new constitution to guarantee their sovereignty in these dangerous globalized times we’re living through.

The reports may not be entirely clear on what’s going on in Iceland but whatever the case, we know that Iceland is jailing its corrupt bankers, popularly rejecting an immoral and unjust burden of debt that they did not in the first place assume, and ensuring the future preservation of their sovereignty through a constitutional process … and showing everyone else how it’s done.