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

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 …

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.

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.

The Epiphany

And during the days of the fall of the Great Empire, a story was told of the cult of a Swami Ayn Rand. It is believed that her spirit summoned her followers on a night of a dark moon as the wolves were howling. Haunted by their Guru and by the persistent wailing of the wolves, they traveled in packs to a sacred rock near the tomb of Swami Ayn Rand and they called her forth to ask her bidding. In an angry Russian accent, she immediately uttered:

"I am Ayn Rand, your beloved Master. Go unto the Great Mount and seek a vision from me there on the night of the next dark moon, but not without bringing with you my book on the Virtue of Selfishness. Mommie loves you all." (tender smile)

And just as the transmission finished beaming, the vision began to sink in. They were her chosen! They had to build her a church! And they did, and then they parted to the holy mount. Four Days and Five Nights they journeyed. They brought their Camels, their Horses, their Hundays, their Porsches, their aircars.  At the assigned time, they all met at the Great Mount.

There are four dead kings that rule this sacred mount. Their national cult is known as the Cult of the Presidents. The cult gathers in the vecinity of this sacred mountain to discuss cultish matters. After brief, friendly exchanges with the local cult, the AynRandites went up to the sacred mount and once again summoned their Guru. She simply appeared on their holyvision screen, which was generously provided by Spiritronics, Inc. and which contained an artificial brain that had been uploaded with the entirety of Ayn Rand's ideas and discussions.  She wore a head covering and tunic which should remind us of either Ghandi or Emperor Palpatine.  She looked about her age were she still alive.  Wide eyed, she uttered:

"And?"

"And we are here, as you requested."

Trying a bit not to be condescending, the swami said: "Did you all finish reading my book?"

The group hadn't thought about that one. They brought the book along, but they believed they were called to summon her, not to read her book.

"You're just like the Christians!", she replied in anger. "Read it and summon me then!"

This vision made the ardent followers into teachers of her Gospel. And so they spent nine days and ten nights reading and pondering the Virtue of Selfishness on the holy mount, and then they summoned her again and discussed philosophical matters for another ten days and nights. They recount these dialogues in one of their sacred texts, the Discussions of the AynRandites.

Near the place of her death, a stone church was built for her with the following message at the entrance:

Do not let the fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the net yet and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.

Ayn Rand

The Boycott: A Brief History of the Non Violent Resistance Movement

During the 1940′s, India was being exploited by its colonial overlord, Britain, and was fed up. Tired of being servants in their own land, they chose a pious Hindu as their revolutionary leader but he did not take up arms. He believed in Ahimsa, the doctrine of non violence, a pillar of Hindu ethics. Ahimsa teaches that one should not knowingly generate any kind of unnecessary suffering to other living beings, one should not harm them or kill them for food and one should be kind to all.

Before Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, hostile groups were used to solving their conflicts through submission or conquest, including genocide, but Ghandi exhibited moral superiority. He would not fight the British and he would also not submit to them: he would instead use the boycott as a non-violent tactic to bring his enemy to its knees.

The British empire was based on economic exploitation. With no participation by the wage slaves, there was no incentive, no production and it was indeed costly to keep the empire.

This way independence was won, not without internal violence – in spite of Ghandi – but much bloodshed was spared. He encouraged peaceful relations between Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians by inviting them to occupy the streets and pray together for independence and freedom following the tradition of Kabir, of Shirdi Sai Baba and others. He later created a secular state and abolished the caste system, believing only through secularism could sectarian violence be curbed.

Today, India is the largest democracy on Earth and the title Mahatma, or great soul, is reverently added to Ghandi’s name because he liberated India and inspired millions by exemplifying the doctrine of non-violence.

A generation later, the whole world knew of his feats and he was celebrated even on the other side of the globe. In Bahia, Brasil, a Ghandi brotherhood was created to promote peace and tolerance, and in the sixties another non-violent resistance movement spread: that led by Martin Luther King Jr. whose personal hero happened to be Ghandi. He fought segregation and racism through the exact same non violent tactics: there was a major boycott of all institutions and businesses that engaged in dehumanizing and racist practices.

Again, there was violence (and these two particular leaders were killed) but we must make note of a couple of things as we assess the history of the boycott as a revolutionary tactic for social change:

1. that these revolutions could have been much more violent,
2. and that both peaceful revolutions achieved their ultimate purpose: India got its independence and the U.S. got its Civil Rights Law enacted and was able to turn the page on an embarrassing chapter of its history.

All of this proves that the doctrine of non-violence can and has been efficiently applied to change an entire society and bring freedom to vast groups of people and that this has historically been accomplished via the tactic of boycotting the perpetrators, usually with the assistance of religious and community organizations that have the ability to mobilize a large number of consumers and workers.

We stand on the shoulders of those that came before us. - a Yoruba proverb

Anyone that considers the huge amount of unnecessary human suffering that was avoided through this proud tradition, inevitably ends up agreeing that supporting the boycott was a moral imperative of those generations.

But what about today? Is it not time to reactivate our army of non-violent non-consumers? We should carefully study the theory and practice of non-violent resistance. What we’re facing today in the world is a financial crisis whose perpetrators are also vulnerable to the same tactic. It should be applied intelligently so that it affects those in power and give the poor, middle class, and working class a stronger standing in the economy and more control of our fiscal lives.

Since we have seen that the charismatic leaders of past boycotts have been martyred, it can also be said that Occupy provides an ideal platform for a boycott due to it being a leaderless movement. We all share the sacrifices that must be made, and no one leader is targeted. We are a legion, each one a minor leader of a leaderless global campaign of conscious consumers.

Having said that, we should not underestimate how difficult it would be to implement an efficient boycott. In A Month Without Monsanto, April Dávila demonstrates how difficult it is to avoid Monsanto’s genetically modified crops and provides some guidelines on how to facilitate a lifestyle that does not support cancer, monocultures, obesity, destruction of biodiversity and of local farms, suicide by Indian farmers, genetically modified and interspecies foods and the many other evils that plague our planet due to companies like Monsanto.

Like the banking industry, Monsanto has its tentacles almost everywhere and it’s truly intimidating how much control they already exert over all of our lives. We should produce our own food whenever practical and possible, or at least buy them locally and organically. Most localities have food coops where local farmers may easily sell their goods to local consumers. We should support these initiatives.

For many years I’ve been critical of the Dalai Lama, who preaches ahimsa also, but has never tried to implement a boycott against China in order to liberate Tibet. He probably fears for his people, who are defenseless against China’s huge military.

Recent news about pills made in China from human fetuses, plus stories about lead and other toxic substances that have been found in Chinese-made toys that American children play with, should have raised awareness of the many, very serious problems associated with products made in foreign countries. There are many reasons to support products made in the USA.

Would it be possible to organize a decentralized boycott efficiently through social media and alternative media outlets? Maybe, maybe not. We’re creatures of habit and new patterns of consumption take time to develop but there does seem to be a massive awakening happening and a long journey always begins with one step.

In 21^st century America, most of us don’t expect to meet our maker in certain arcane ways: arrow wounds, say, or Viking maurauders. Or the Black Death. And yet a man in Oregon has contracted the most feared disease of medieval Europe and is in critical condition.

The unidentified Oregonian, in his 50s, fell ill from the disease on June 2 when he tried to grab a mouse away from a cat. It is unclear which of those two animals bit his hand.

The disease — technically, an infection by a strain of bacterium known as Yersinia pestis – is the same plague from the Middle Ages that you read about in high school. The Black Death spread through Europe from 1347 to 1351, killing an estimated 25 million people. It is still carried by fleas, and humans can contract the disease either through flea bites or contact with an animal infested with diseased fleas (such as a rodent). Four other people have been diagnosed with the plague in Oregon since 1995, all of whom people survived.

-Time.com article The Black Death Returns: Oregon Man in Critical Condition with the Plague