Note from the Future: I found I was washing a lot of very necessary minerals from my digestive track (probably Calcium most of all), which was giving me extremely low blood pressure and Night Cramps in my legs. So don't overdo those High Colonics and try to minimize the amount of water used in your enemas. Aim at only evacuating the lower colon. For the higher colon and the small intestines -- let them do their job of absorbing nutrients and minerals.
I once read a Study somewhere that stated that most men and many women die on the pot, struggling to the death with their bowel movements. The Public is kept in the dark about this Grave Danger because the doctors who determine Cause of Death, to save the families from embarrassment, write down that all these people died of Heart Attacks. Well, yes, technically speaking, their hearts did stop. But would the Heart Attack have occurred in the absence of some big and stubborn impacted turd? Likely not.
Oh, struggling with one’s bowel movements can lead to less dire consequences than an untimely death. A huge proportion of men, and even some women, eventually have to seek healthcare in regards to hemorrhoids. Now, nothing in this Paper pretends to any official medical authority… I am just a Blogger, and can’t even tell you exactly what a hemorrhoid is, or what piles are. But I have heard anecdotally of people virtually pooping their guts out – that the lower intestine actually projects out through the anus, their intestine being somewhat turned inside out. It is very tender tissue and is prone to bleeding. Of course, these people find it necessary to go to a Doctor. Certainly it is the best course of action… in every Civilized Country but America, where one would reasonably be afraid of alerting one’s Health Insurance Company that one might actually require Health Care, which could perhaps double one’s premium rates overnight. Oh, and once a health problem is declared, it becomes a Pre-existing Condition, and no longer the responsibility of the American Health Care System. It is a Wonderful System for the Capitalists and their Lap Dog Lobbyists and Politicians, all Democratically Elected which makes it all honest right and proper, the proper procedures being followed so that none of the millions of dollars changing hands constitutes Bribery, and none of the deliberate Harm being done to people constituting Criminal Misconduct or Treason. Thank God for Democratic Elections or all these people would be Crooks! You know, it is interesting what happens when the Foxes are so completely put in charge of the Hen Houses. The Health Insurance Companies have been allowed to make all of their own rules, and they virtually write their own oversight Regulations. It becomes almost Perfect, not at providing health care, but at accumulating profits. Just look at it – They Collect Premiums and ever evolve the System so they can approach the Perfect State of having to pay out absolutely nothing in return for all that money they collect. Its approaching Pure Profit. I suppose they can rationalize away any moral concern by telling themselves that the people are inevitably going to die anyway, so where’s the harm? Rich People can always afford to go to their Doctors, and so nobody of consequence is ever inconvenienced. Oh, and Obama, Our Blessed Savior, plans to make the System EVEN BETTER, by making EVERYBODY pay the Health Insurance Companies, for the Nothing that they will give back. You know, we must remember that all that Campaign Money Obama was tossing around must have come from somewhere. I would guess every health care insurance employee in America was pressured into funneling ‘company bonus checks’ to the Obama Campaign, in the same way as things are done by the Defense Industry in both America and Israel – bonus checks being handed out to employees just as Tables are set up everywhere manned with clerks ready to sign all this money over to the Chosen Lobbyist Organizations – Company Money all properly laundered through little individuals… just like the one’s that got Obama elected.
Anyway, enough with politics, and back to trying to stay alive despite not having Medical Care. So, there are probably many people who wonder what they can do about their guts hanging out of their butts if they cannot go to a Doctor about it. Well, again, I don’t mean to pretend any medical authority, but if one is not overly squeamish, one might consider simply stuffing the lower colon back in where it came from. Yes, once the intestine projects out of the anus, often it swells up and it would seem impossible to stuff it back. This is a real problem. Often the swelling is aggravated by bowel movement straining, sending more blood into the area. Anyway, the good news is that the swelling does go down, given enough time. Sometimes it takes hours. An astringent like Witch-hazel can often help with the swelling. Anyway, once the swelling goes down a bit, from what I have heard, the colon can be pushed back into where it came out from.
Well, that can take care of the problem at each time that it presents. But it is the straining to evacuate impacted feces that causes this problem and makes it chronic. What can be done about that?
My mother told me about Enemas. My impression was that enemas were disgusting things – invasive and humiliating. But my proud mother had found them necessary, and had even spoke of them, which would certainly be embarrassing for her, but she wanted me to have the information. That must have meant something.
Beginning to experience many of the above mentioned problems, I went on line and read about enemas, being forced by circumstances to give them some consideration. What I found was that many people use enemas in lieu of laxatives, even using them combined with intestinal irritants, the case being that most laxatives are really just intestinal irritants. But if one has hemorrhoids then many sites suppose it is extremely ill-advised to use intestinal irritants, as they would only intensify the urge to strain the bowels which make the hemorrhoids worse than before.
So the logic of the situation would indicate that enemas should not be used in conjunction with laxatives or intestinal irritants. Other sites propose additives to the enema water, which may help incrementally, but I have found that water additives only present one more complication to something that is complicated enough already and should be kept as easy as possible.
The pre-mixed enema bottles that one can buy are relatively small. I think the normal sized ones come in about 4.5 ounces, while the large extra-big sizes are about 7.5 ounces. The fluid that comes in them has a laxative effect. In its proper place it all may be quite good, but I would empty them out and save the squeeze bottles which can be reused and then use them with just plain old warm tap water.
How much water should one inject? I have heard of colonics and such, but have not found much solid information. When I started using enemas I started with a few bottles of water, but found that it was possible to fill up my bowels with about 8 bottles of the 7.5 ounce size. One quite feels when one is getting full of water. The instructions tell one that one can get down on one’s knees and learn forward, or lift up the left leg. I do that. I let the water swish around. I even jump up and down a bit to shake things loose. Soon enough there is the urge to evacuate it out.
Now, it does not all happen instantaneously. It may take about 6 to 10 minutes after one has sat down on the pot. There may be 3 or 4 periods of evacuation in addition to just instances where just water seems to come out. It is important not to strain. Just let it come and go as it will. Just sitting on the pot may not be the best thing to do, and sometimes standing up for a moment or two will bring on the next evacuation episode. Experience will tell you when you are finished.
My grandmother taught me a terribly harmful practice, that only seems to be very useful, and that is to massage the gut while taking a bowel movement, in such a way as to force the materials downward and outward. Yes, it apparently works, but the problem arises where this massaging gives one the urge to strain. Also there is often bleeding accompanying this kind of intestinal massage. I wondered what could cause the bleeding, and it occurred to me that if there were any fecal solids, or edgy contaminants (such as little woody sticks from the spice jar, or nuts that were not completely chewed), then the action of the intestinal massage would only push these hard and edgy materials into the delicate tissues of the lower intestine. Anyway, no matter what your Grandma taught you, DON’T massage your gut. Keep straining to a minimum. After 6 to 10 minutes, what wants to come out will come out, and you will feel finished. That’s fine. You don’t have to rush it.
If any of your bowel becomes distended, projecting out of your anus by a fraction of an inch or so, well, if you have managed not to strain, then it should not be all too swollen. Simply dab it with some toilet paper soaked in Witch-hazel, an astringent, and then push it back in where it came from. If one is squeamish about touching such a nasty part of one’s self, then one can use a delicate cotton handkerchief, maybe folded over once or twice and soaked in Witch-hazel, to push the projected intestine back where it belongs.
Are these enemas effective. I would decide yes. In just a few weeks while adopting these practices, all my problems ‘south of the border’ entirely disappeared, or became so manageable as to become hardly worth worrying about anymore.
Oh, enemas may seem to be inconvenient, but really they have an advantage. Now I hardly ever go to the bathroom out of the urge of necessity. Now it is largely a scheduled activity. I schedule my enemas for every two days. Now, this may vary from person to person. Myself, I do not eat a great deal. I am on a perpetual diet. I skip breakfast and lunch, only allowing myself an afternoon snack and an evening supper. People who are eating all the time may have to schedule their enemas more often. However, you can compare my schedule of enemas, once every two days, to what had been happening before when I relied only on the urge to have a Bowel Movement, when I averaged only about one and a half bowel movements per week. So of course the fecal material was impacting and solidifying.
Oh, I can guess from experience that Nature has its own way of dealing with impacted feces, and that is that after too long a time the fecal material actually rots and thereby liquefies, giving one symptoms akin to diarrhea. Of course, having rotten fecal material in your system would probably make you feel sick, and that in addition to perhaps making one’s general health turn toward the morbid side.
As for the scheduled bowel movements that enemas make possible, one feels clean afterwards. One has a certain sense of security that one can go out in public, without gassiness or the possibility of having the embarrassing interruption of having to go to the bathroom, even of stinking up somebody’s house. Only rarely am I ever confronted by that old urge to go to the bathroom.
I suppose in time one learns better and better to sense when there is fecal matter in the lower intestine which is when one can benefit by an enema. In time I suppose one could be so expert as to never be taken by surprise by the urge to have an unexpected bowel movement. I myself am getting better at appraising the gradations as the nice feeling of clean emptiness is replaced by the sense that there is something in there that could be flushed out. Keep in mind that there is fecal material in the lower colon long before there is the traditional Urge to evacuate.
Oh, in regards to gassiness. Yes, there may still be gas, but what I have found is that gas coming out of a cleaned out lower colon will not have a very strong odor. Apparently the truth of the matter is that a very strong odor from digestional gases comes from the smell of the feces with which it had just been in very close contact. The smell of strong gas is an indication that there is fecal matter in the lower intestine, that is, that it would be a good time to administer an enema. Oh, where does gassiness come from if there is no fecal matter in the intestines? It is an interesting question, and, remember, I am not a doctor, but I can guess that a certain amount of air is simply swallowed down during meals and during the day and must eventually go out from somewhere.
I wish I had known of enemas back in my old athletic days. I used to do amateur foot racing – 10K’s and Marathons and such, and it would have been perfect to have given myself enemas the night before a Race, to clean out all that useless… weight. I had once run a marathon, where more than a few contestants had to waste the time to wonder off the course to have emergency bowel movements in the bushes. A pre-race enema would have saved them the bother and would have significantly trimmed their final times.
Oh, I would not do an enema within just a few hours of a race. The process does take about 15 or 20 minutes and it makes one feel drained for awhile. I recommend doing one’s enemas in the evening. If one is to go out, then give one’s self a couple hours to recuperate… time for the exhausted and spent feeling to turn into a feeling of clean wellbeing.
Sometimes I do worry about whether I am allowing the large intestine to do all of its God-intended Duty, by flushing it out with these enemas. For instance, might the large intestine be intended to pull all possible useful fluids and minerals from the fecal material before it is evacuated? I have heard that people with chronic diarrhea present with deficiencies of potassium, and find their muscles cramping up. So I have taken to supplementing my minerals a bit.
Anyway, remember that all of this is coming only from a Blogger, who, living in America and not having access to Medical Advice, has to do the best he can with his own devices. But if you live in any other Civilized Country, please discuss all of this with a doctor before taking any of it too seriously.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
XP Service Pack 2 Without Crashing, After the Crash
I have been so much dreading doing my taxes this year. Anyway, there I was, laying on the futon with the kitties at 7:30 this morning. I thought that it would be a good time just to walk out to the computer and get the Turbo Tax thing done. I thought it was going to be easy… done in 20 minutes.
It didn't work out that way. I met a virtual alligator along the way.
“Turbo Tax cannot run because Windows XP Service Pack 2 has not been installed on your computer”.
Oh God! I had innocently tried to install Service Pack 2 years ago when it first popped up just the same as any ordinary Update. It crashed my computer and I lost six months of writing. And there it was facing me again.
At first I thought that I had a complete month to do my taxes, due April 15th of every year. I could take my computer into the shop and have the experts install Service Pack 2 or SP2 as they call it. I remember years before that some Blogger had said that installing XP SP2 was “easy”… you only had to remember to about 35 things first, followed by some incomprehensible Nerd List, telling me what sort of things to do, but supposing that ANYBODY would already know all of the specifics… file names to look for, ways to determine that specified conditions have been met. Of course there was no way, outside of attending 2 years of Nerd School that I could figure out what he had meant by any of it. Easy, yes, if you already knew everything you needed to know. I simply could not find out what I had to do to install that Thing safely. So I didn’t.
Comfortable years went by, with only occasional hints that I was not doing my duty by the defacto Lord of the Universe, Bill Gates... the same guy who failed to get Xp right the first time. Just because we are all quite used to his chronic stumbling, while taking our money, doesn't make it right. There should be a special Ring in Purgatory for a bastard like that.
But now it has been brought to issue. The World was now demanding me to do something about this SP2 Thing. I had to Comply or I would be exiled. If it were the Government we would all bitch like crazy. But thank God Corporations have the Freedom to screw over as many people as they like.
Anyway, with resistance being futile, I went back online searching for “Installing Service Pack 2 without crashing”, and found that relatively few people were reporting it nowadays, though I could easily suspect that Windows could have the wherewithal to cleanup the entire Internet of any reference to any severe difficulty with any of its products. The Truth is that Big Brother will NOT come from the Government but from some all-powerful Corporations… or the Russian Mafia. Louis the IVX was right, that our real fear should be about private Tyrants, from whom One Good Public Tyrant could protect us.
Continuing my searches, the only indications for possible trouble were about instances of Spy-ware or malicious software screwing up the Installation. Again, there is the warning but no solid information as to what to do about it. I could only guess about whether my machine was in compliance. My computer has McAfee anti-virus, and recently Windows has been issuing monthly Virus Eradication Updates. And I have been running them. And a few years back my ISP Company finally seemed to crack down on letting Viruses just slip through their systems completely unfiltered. You know, ISP’s can tell when a good many of their client computers have been hijacked, turned into Zombie Computers by some worm or virus, sending out thousands of spam emails and virus laden crap, all without the user’s least suspicion (outside of the computer seeming to act funny, but computers ALWAYS seem to act funny, no? In the Bill Gates Universe, when has a computer ever acted right? We simply have no standard of reference, no computer that has simply just worked right without sweat and tears and those annual expenses). Well, the ISPs finally seemed to do something about all those Zombie Attacks. Oh, I was even notified that my own computer had been a Zombie for awhile but was subsequently 'exorcised' or whatever they do to Zombies.
Anyway, 'no guts, no glory', and I decided to install the dreaded XP Service Pack 2. I made sure that the March Update for Virus Eradication had successfully run (from my ALL PROGRAMS, I clicked on Windows Updates which brought up the appropriate 'Wizards'), and I pushed the SP2 Go Button… and waited for almost two hours with bated breath. Scared a few times, once when it was almost completely installed it came up with an Error Notification “Service Pack 2 ran into a problem. Sorry for the inconvenience. Would you like to send a notification to Window’s so they can fix the problem (that has been sitting in the software for now going on 4 years)”. I thought that was that. I thought I would be left dead in the water. Its a good thing I didn't just exit out there, which might have really screwed me. But I hit YES, and then it allowed me to continue through, all the indications being that Service Pack 2 had successfully installed.
But then you have to do a restart. God! If only they can make movies that are so suspenseful. It seemed to take forever. To scare the crap out of people they made WAIT screens entirely of the same color Blue as the Crash Screen. Two or three times the screen went completely black. I tried to remember what had happened when I had crashed before. I think it was relatively early in the boot-up process. So maybe just getting the first WAIT screen, and then the WELCOME Screen… I don’t know when I was entirely safe. The last horror was when some strange box popped up about my Desktop, as though Windows was going to give me a new Desktop, leaving me lost to finding any of my old cluttered things, but even my old Desktop finally popped up.
Thank God! Where do I go to light a candle?
It didn't work out that way. I met a virtual alligator along the way.
“Turbo Tax cannot run because Windows XP Service Pack 2 has not been installed on your computer”.
Oh God! I had innocently tried to install Service Pack 2 years ago when it first popped up just the same as any ordinary Update. It crashed my computer and I lost six months of writing. And there it was facing me again.
At first I thought that I had a complete month to do my taxes, due April 15th of every year. I could take my computer into the shop and have the experts install Service Pack 2 or SP2 as they call it. I remember years before that some Blogger had said that installing XP SP2 was “easy”… you only had to remember to about 35 things first, followed by some incomprehensible Nerd List, telling me what sort of things to do, but supposing that ANYBODY would already know all of the specifics… file names to look for, ways to determine that specified conditions have been met. Of course there was no way, outside of attending 2 years of Nerd School that I could figure out what he had meant by any of it. Easy, yes, if you already knew everything you needed to know. I simply could not find out what I had to do to install that Thing safely. So I didn’t.
Comfortable years went by, with only occasional hints that I was not doing my duty by the defacto Lord of the Universe, Bill Gates... the same guy who failed to get Xp right the first time. Just because we are all quite used to his chronic stumbling, while taking our money, doesn't make it right. There should be a special Ring in Purgatory for a bastard like that.
But now it has been brought to issue. The World was now demanding me to do something about this SP2 Thing. I had to Comply or I would be exiled. If it were the Government we would all bitch like crazy. But thank God Corporations have the Freedom to screw over as many people as they like.
Anyway, with resistance being futile, I went back online searching for “Installing Service Pack 2 without crashing”, and found that relatively few people were reporting it nowadays, though I could easily suspect that Windows could have the wherewithal to cleanup the entire Internet of any reference to any severe difficulty with any of its products. The Truth is that Big Brother will NOT come from the Government but from some all-powerful Corporations… or the Russian Mafia. Louis the IVX was right, that our real fear should be about private Tyrants, from whom One Good Public Tyrant could protect us.
Continuing my searches, the only indications for possible trouble were about instances of Spy-ware or malicious software screwing up the Installation. Again, there is the warning but no solid information as to what to do about it. I could only guess about whether my machine was in compliance. My computer has McAfee anti-virus, and recently Windows has been issuing monthly Virus Eradication Updates. And I have been running them. And a few years back my ISP Company finally seemed to crack down on letting Viruses just slip through their systems completely unfiltered. You know, ISP’s can tell when a good many of their client computers have been hijacked, turned into Zombie Computers by some worm or virus, sending out thousands of spam emails and virus laden crap, all without the user’s least suspicion (outside of the computer seeming to act funny, but computers ALWAYS seem to act funny, no? In the Bill Gates Universe, when has a computer ever acted right? We simply have no standard of reference, no computer that has simply just worked right without sweat and tears and those annual expenses). Well, the ISPs finally seemed to do something about all those Zombie Attacks. Oh, I was even notified that my own computer had been a Zombie for awhile but was subsequently 'exorcised' or whatever they do to Zombies.
Anyway, 'no guts, no glory', and I decided to install the dreaded XP Service Pack 2. I made sure that the March Update for Virus Eradication had successfully run (from my ALL PROGRAMS, I clicked on Windows Updates which brought up the appropriate 'Wizards'), and I pushed the SP2 Go Button… and waited for almost two hours with bated breath. Scared a few times, once when it was almost completely installed it came up with an Error Notification “Service Pack 2 ran into a problem. Sorry for the inconvenience. Would you like to send a notification to Window’s so they can fix the problem (that has been sitting in the software for now going on 4 years)”. I thought that was that. I thought I would be left dead in the water. Its a good thing I didn't just exit out there, which might have really screwed me. But I hit YES, and then it allowed me to continue through, all the indications being that Service Pack 2 had successfully installed.
But then you have to do a restart. God! If only they can make movies that are so suspenseful. It seemed to take forever. To scare the crap out of people they made WAIT screens entirely of the same color Blue as the Crash Screen. Two or three times the screen went completely black. I tried to remember what had happened when I had crashed before. I think it was relatively early in the boot-up process. So maybe just getting the first WAIT screen, and then the WELCOME Screen… I don’t know when I was entirely safe. The last horror was when some strange box popped up about my Desktop, as though Windows was going to give me a new Desktop, leaving me lost to finding any of my old cluttered things, but even my old Desktop finally popped up.
Thank God! Where do I go to light a candle?
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Dreams of Escape From Spirituality
Dream of Escape From Spirituality
The other night I lost track of time and read and wrote until the sun had come up. I did not feel so very good the rest of the day and so I resolved to catch up upon my sleep and I did, so much so that I began to have some leisurely dreams.
In one dream I levitated, though not so spectacularly as when I was younger. Nowadays I am content to rise but imperceptibly above the ground and float along at sometimes great speeds without the strain or bother of even pretending to walk or run. One does not have to fly like a bird, and as far as ease of transportation goes, to rise up an inch is as good as a mile.
Then I had a dream that I was a prisoner in an old school – not a lavish old traditional school of brick and ivy, but only some run down single level cheaply fabricated school built by the lowest bidder to the County. But the Prison Routine was not very strict and the guards not plentiful or particularly observant. I soon discovered that outsiders would approach and pass keys in through the window, and those with these keys could escape with fairly minimal trouble or risk. So I effected an escape.
I took up residence in a building further up the hill. At first I passed my time in ease, but somehow I discovered that I could come by those Keys of Freedom, no, not very many at a time, but I could get such keys (keys that seemed sometimes keys and sometimes coins), and so I determined to become one of those people who would go down the hill below and pass keys through the window.
Then my mother came to me and was telling me that my brother was down the hill below and was a member of an Ashram. I looked out and saw the Ashram, and it was not quite the Old dilapidated School I had escaped from earlier, but some crudely nailed together single story dwellings, what they call Ranch Houses, all with cooking fires as I could see whiffs of smoke curling from chimney pipes popping out from the roofs. Against the minimalist desert landscape, this Ashram must have been about some kind of Spiritual Work, as nobody was there for the Aesthetics.
Well, I had been a member to several Ashrams and found the idea of my brother being an Ashram Member interesting… he did not seem the type, having taken an entirely different path in life from mine. As she elaborated, I found that the language of the Ashram was not Sanskrit, the Holy Language of the East, but some Native American Language, supposedly ancient. Well, I really did not know what to think about that.
Now that I review some of my readings, there was some rumors that the Native American’s at the time of the Spanish Invasion were responding to Prophecies that held them as Liberators who would free them from the Aztecs who they saw and suffered under as veritable devils who had stamped out the True Religion of the Mayans or whoever. And then the Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe was seen as the Prophesized reincarnation of some Merciful Feathered Snake God or whatever. It is remarkable that almost the entire population of tropical America converted en masse to this Religion of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and with hardly any official Catholic instigation, indeed, for the Spanish had to send off to Spain for reinforcements of Priests just to take care of finalizing the Conversions, where all the convincing propaganda was handled by the Natives themselves, in terms of the Old Legends and Prophecies (which the Catholic Priests were not overly curious about).
My mother has shown me some examples of this Native American Language, in writing. I wondered at the time whether its meaning was in any ways as sensible as spiritual Sanskrit. But I must admit that one can go through reams of old Sanskrit literature without finding anything particularly inspiring, as we Moderns have come to expect. And then we must wonder that after one has plucked the gems from the pages, what all the rest of it had to say. You see, while we may pick one phrase as a favorite and suppose the entire Religion is based upon that, well, some other group with another agenda of interest may pick something entirely different, something we dismissed for being too obviously mundane. Yes, Religions should keep themselves short and to the point, it being almost as important not to say the wrong thing as it is to say the right.
The importance of Viewpoint should not be forgotten in evaluating this Dream. I was up looking down on this Ashram, and so I should dismiss immediately the possibility that I might be missing something in not being a follower of this newly uncovered Field of Spirituality. And I need to remember that only moments before I was running Keys down that same Valley to help people escape from it.
Hmmmmm. Is there something inherent in much of Today’s Spirituality that one would consider imprisoning and where it could be thought a benefit to escape from it. Remember, in my dream, nothing was very strict in that Prison, and the guards were few and far between, and the Escape proved rather easy. And after the escape I did move up in the World, up the Hill to a Higher Level. All very symbolic, but how does it compare to the Real World?
Well, most Spiritual Organizations are wrong about something. They formed around some old political or economic agenda, in reaction to something, or for some interested end in itself. In those senses, of course they would be impure. Then there is the matter that most Spiritual Traditions are polarizing, as they set some Languages against others, some Countries against others. Sometimes it is only a matter of Accident, where the wrong People happen to be in charge – perfectly good spiritual organizations being contaminated by the Idiots in Charge.
Oh, this brings to mind the very importance of insisting that there is a Transcendent God above it all. While there is a Transcendent God to point to, albeit its Invisibility, then all the imperfections of the Spiritual Organization below can be somewhat allowed for, even forgiven some of its ineptitudes because, after all, the Organization is not really the center of focus – God is. But in cases where the Spiritual Organization sets up a Super Guru, a God on Earth, then we have the problem where any imperfection noted in the Guru disqualifies everything.
Indeed, all Religious Leaders should insist upon their own personal Imperfections… they should even Institutionalize their Imperfection by perhaps always wearing mismatched socks, or something. Wherever Religion Deifies its Leaders it comes to be a problem. Christianity Deified Paul and now has to live with a man’s doctrines as though they are God’s. Islam deified Mohamed and now they can never pry the Sword out of God’s Hand. The Mormons deified John Smith and so their God has a penis and a huge sexual appetite. God needs to be kept Transcendent.
Well, does there absolutely need to be a Spiritual Organization. In most cases a Civilization depends upon its concrete established Institutions. Organizations can be extremely important. But often enough great Influences on Society are not Institutionalized in the Organizational sense at all, or only peripherally. I can think of the influences of Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Yes, peripheral Institutions in Theatre and Publishing have contributed to the wide Influence of Shakespeare and Austen, but neither of them have an established Priesthood or a dedicated College. No one pretends to maintain purity of Doctrine. Here I am saying that if a Spiritual Influence were Culturally Powerful enough, it might be able to operate free of a Concretized Organization, or any one particular Organization, as I am sure there are any number of Shakespeare and Austen Reading Clubs, without the danger of any one Club creating an embarrassment large enough to humiliate the Whole.
What Spirituality and the Cause of Civilization needs Today is a Cultural Phenomena, and not just some new Organization.
The other night I lost track of time and read and wrote until the sun had come up. I did not feel so very good the rest of the day and so I resolved to catch up upon my sleep and I did, so much so that I began to have some leisurely dreams.
In one dream I levitated, though not so spectacularly as when I was younger. Nowadays I am content to rise but imperceptibly above the ground and float along at sometimes great speeds without the strain or bother of even pretending to walk or run. One does not have to fly like a bird, and as far as ease of transportation goes, to rise up an inch is as good as a mile.
Then I had a dream that I was a prisoner in an old school – not a lavish old traditional school of brick and ivy, but only some run down single level cheaply fabricated school built by the lowest bidder to the County. But the Prison Routine was not very strict and the guards not plentiful or particularly observant. I soon discovered that outsiders would approach and pass keys in through the window, and those with these keys could escape with fairly minimal trouble or risk. So I effected an escape.
I took up residence in a building further up the hill. At first I passed my time in ease, but somehow I discovered that I could come by those Keys of Freedom, no, not very many at a time, but I could get such keys (keys that seemed sometimes keys and sometimes coins), and so I determined to become one of those people who would go down the hill below and pass keys through the window.
Then my mother came to me and was telling me that my brother was down the hill below and was a member of an Ashram. I looked out and saw the Ashram, and it was not quite the Old dilapidated School I had escaped from earlier, but some crudely nailed together single story dwellings, what they call Ranch Houses, all with cooking fires as I could see whiffs of smoke curling from chimney pipes popping out from the roofs. Against the minimalist desert landscape, this Ashram must have been about some kind of Spiritual Work, as nobody was there for the Aesthetics.
Well, I had been a member to several Ashrams and found the idea of my brother being an Ashram Member interesting… he did not seem the type, having taken an entirely different path in life from mine. As she elaborated, I found that the language of the Ashram was not Sanskrit, the Holy Language of the East, but some Native American Language, supposedly ancient. Well, I really did not know what to think about that.
Now that I review some of my readings, there was some rumors that the Native American’s at the time of the Spanish Invasion were responding to Prophecies that held them as Liberators who would free them from the Aztecs who they saw and suffered under as veritable devils who had stamped out the True Religion of the Mayans or whoever. And then the Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe was seen as the Prophesized reincarnation of some Merciful Feathered Snake God or whatever. It is remarkable that almost the entire population of tropical America converted en masse to this Religion of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and with hardly any official Catholic instigation, indeed, for the Spanish had to send off to Spain for reinforcements of Priests just to take care of finalizing the Conversions, where all the convincing propaganda was handled by the Natives themselves, in terms of the Old Legends and Prophecies (which the Catholic Priests were not overly curious about).
My mother has shown me some examples of this Native American Language, in writing. I wondered at the time whether its meaning was in any ways as sensible as spiritual Sanskrit. But I must admit that one can go through reams of old Sanskrit literature without finding anything particularly inspiring, as we Moderns have come to expect. And then we must wonder that after one has plucked the gems from the pages, what all the rest of it had to say. You see, while we may pick one phrase as a favorite and suppose the entire Religion is based upon that, well, some other group with another agenda of interest may pick something entirely different, something we dismissed for being too obviously mundane. Yes, Religions should keep themselves short and to the point, it being almost as important not to say the wrong thing as it is to say the right.
The importance of Viewpoint should not be forgotten in evaluating this Dream. I was up looking down on this Ashram, and so I should dismiss immediately the possibility that I might be missing something in not being a follower of this newly uncovered Field of Spirituality. And I need to remember that only moments before I was running Keys down that same Valley to help people escape from it.
Hmmmmm. Is there something inherent in much of Today’s Spirituality that one would consider imprisoning and where it could be thought a benefit to escape from it. Remember, in my dream, nothing was very strict in that Prison, and the guards were few and far between, and the Escape proved rather easy. And after the escape I did move up in the World, up the Hill to a Higher Level. All very symbolic, but how does it compare to the Real World?
Well, most Spiritual Organizations are wrong about something. They formed around some old political or economic agenda, in reaction to something, or for some interested end in itself. In those senses, of course they would be impure. Then there is the matter that most Spiritual Traditions are polarizing, as they set some Languages against others, some Countries against others. Sometimes it is only a matter of Accident, where the wrong People happen to be in charge – perfectly good spiritual organizations being contaminated by the Idiots in Charge.
Oh, this brings to mind the very importance of insisting that there is a Transcendent God above it all. While there is a Transcendent God to point to, albeit its Invisibility, then all the imperfections of the Spiritual Organization below can be somewhat allowed for, even forgiven some of its ineptitudes because, after all, the Organization is not really the center of focus – God is. But in cases where the Spiritual Organization sets up a Super Guru, a God on Earth, then we have the problem where any imperfection noted in the Guru disqualifies everything.
Indeed, all Religious Leaders should insist upon their own personal Imperfections… they should even Institutionalize their Imperfection by perhaps always wearing mismatched socks, or something. Wherever Religion Deifies its Leaders it comes to be a problem. Christianity Deified Paul and now has to live with a man’s doctrines as though they are God’s. Islam deified Mohamed and now they can never pry the Sword out of God’s Hand. The Mormons deified John Smith and so their God has a penis and a huge sexual appetite. God needs to be kept Transcendent.
Well, does there absolutely need to be a Spiritual Organization. In most cases a Civilization depends upon its concrete established Institutions. Organizations can be extremely important. But often enough great Influences on Society are not Institutionalized in the Organizational sense at all, or only peripherally. I can think of the influences of Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Yes, peripheral Institutions in Theatre and Publishing have contributed to the wide Influence of Shakespeare and Austen, but neither of them have an established Priesthood or a dedicated College. No one pretends to maintain purity of Doctrine. Here I am saying that if a Spiritual Influence were Culturally Powerful enough, it might be able to operate free of a Concretized Organization, or any one particular Organization, as I am sure there are any number of Shakespeare and Austen Reading Clubs, without the danger of any one Club creating an embarrassment large enough to humiliate the Whole.
What Spirituality and the Cause of Civilization needs Today is a Cultural Phenomena, and not just some new Organization.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Joys of Being a Linguist
Joys of Being a Linguist
Now, adults are bombarded at every turn with the dubiously helpful insight that children are so much better at learning languages than are adults. Indeed, however, when the details of such findings are fully revealed, this Age of Susceptibility, this Window of Opportunity for Linguistic Achievement, is rather too small to be put to much practical use, beyond supposing that there might be some benefit in playing child’s games with more than one way to say “you’re it” or “naa na-na neh naa naa!” It may be that children can learn better only because they are content to learn less.
So let us put it out of our minds, that anxiety that learning another Civilized Language might be significantly harder than if we had set out to do it when we were three years old.
But now, why? Why learn another language? Particularly if one already knows English, which has become something of the Lingua Franca of the Modern World. Can’t one language really be enough?
Well, as in many other things, it is a matter of taste and inclination. Consider the case that one is really delighted in one’s Language, and had practically read everything, and, well, “heard it all” so to speak. Can one really continue to go back endlessly to one’s old favorite books? Many do. But many develop the urge to reach toward something more.
I have been gifted with a good memory. Many people have the vaguest memories of their childhood, but I remember a great deal. I remember being a very little boy uncertain of even my own Mother Tongue. I recall being in front of a door of a friends house, knocking, and wondering what on earth I was going to say to the mother who would open the door and enquirer as to what I wanted. Happily, when she did she knew somehow automatically that I was there to ask to play with the boy of the house, and that prescience of mind relieved me of the anxiety of having to find something intelligent to say. But Language continued to worry me. I then remembered my first years in school and how fussy teachers could be about spelling and pronunciation, and how I had to do much deliberate practice and study to keep from being put down with the stupid boys. Then I remembered the first books I actually enjoyed reading. Then I remembered the first books that I enjoyed despite their making me reach for dictionaries and grammars. I remember one teacher awkwardly suggesting I start upon Fine Literature, and I could see the doubt in her eyes as she wondered whether she was pushing too hard or two early. It was that look that sent me to the Library where I discovered the Great Literature of my Language. Then came the vocabulary notebooks. The Quote notebooks. Oh, I had other interests. There was plenty of stuff I was doing. But amidst it all was Language. And now that I am getting older, and sports, cars, girls and all those other interests recede, there still remains Language.
But the vocabulary notebooks, the quote notebooks… one can never return home again. Few new cards can be written. The cards, back then, well, they did their job. I now speak in Vocabulary Notebooks. And there are even moments, when I hit my stride, where I am even quotable. But those old joys of discovering English can not be run through again. The original wonder of a book can not be had on its tenth reading. So one looks to a New Language and a new Great Literature.
Now, even with my fine memory, I can’t remember the first moment I thought of learning French, to again break out the Vocabulary Notebooks and the Quotes, and the Verb Conjugation Charts that I had not even suspected, and the Grammars which are so necessary if only to make sense of some words which, despite their individual and separate meanings, when arranged together seem to make no sense at all. It is the colloquialisms, the mystery of the little words with their special funny meanings that I guess are so easy for the child but which pose such a problem for the adult. But since they are common, they are seen often and eventually the strange use of the little words becomes familiar.
It is all surprisingly quite fun. While Fast Cars and Pretty Young Women played such a large part in the first phase of my Mid-Life Crisis, now I find myself putting in a great deal of time studying Linguistics. It is certainly safer, far cheaper, and I get better sleep at night. What is not to like?
Oh, there are discouraging moments. When I first started it seemed like I was forever studying, going over vocabulary lists and reading, reading, reading and still it seemed as though I was always returning to a completely foreign language every time I unloaded my book bag. Then the day arrived where I read through my first entire French Paragraph without having to consult a dictionary or a grammar. I was stunned at first. I suspected it might have been a matter of lazy inattention and went back and re-read the paragraph, and, yes, while I knew some words had additional senses that had slipped my mind, I knew that as the words were used in this case, I knew what they meant. Wow! It was like a small Religious Experience, but a small one of those is better than none at all. A blip of Rapture!
Then one finds that one day one can actually begin using the Primary Language Dictionary, not having to ever resort to the English-French Cheater Dictionary. That was a strange and sneaky advance. It seemed like only the day before I could not understand nearly a thing of the pure French Dictionary, with the definitions giving me only more words to look up, with more words to look up after that, and never answering the original question… in most cases forgetting what the original question was. But then, one day the French-English Dictionary must have slid beyond my reach and I grabbed the Pure French instead, and I suddenly found I could read it, no, not completely, but enough to serve.
Finally there comes the moment when one actually enjoys a fine turn of phrase… not mistaking it for the ordinary usage of the Language, but actually being able to detect something special going on… some artful arrangement of the words and phrases that go way beyond what the grammar books would anticipate. All before that there was the Love of wanting to Fall in Love with the Language. But then to actually hear it and grasp it and appreciate it. To really feel the effect of the Fine use of a new Language… one is no longer a Virgin anymore.
Oh, there is a plodding and practical use for learning a New Language. One becomes so much more aware of one’s English… of its Grammar and usages. I had always wondered to myself why the English writers were so much better than the Americans. Well, of course, its because they all knew French.
Now, adults are bombarded at every turn with the dubiously helpful insight that children are so much better at learning languages than are adults. Indeed, however, when the details of such findings are fully revealed, this Age of Susceptibility, this Window of Opportunity for Linguistic Achievement, is rather too small to be put to much practical use, beyond supposing that there might be some benefit in playing child’s games with more than one way to say “you’re it” or “naa na-na neh naa naa!” It may be that children can learn better only because they are content to learn less.
So let us put it out of our minds, that anxiety that learning another Civilized Language might be significantly harder than if we had set out to do it when we were three years old.
But now, why? Why learn another language? Particularly if one already knows English, which has become something of the Lingua Franca of the Modern World. Can’t one language really be enough?
Well, as in many other things, it is a matter of taste and inclination. Consider the case that one is really delighted in one’s Language, and had practically read everything, and, well, “heard it all” so to speak. Can one really continue to go back endlessly to one’s old favorite books? Many do. But many develop the urge to reach toward something more.
I have been gifted with a good memory. Many people have the vaguest memories of their childhood, but I remember a great deal. I remember being a very little boy uncertain of even my own Mother Tongue. I recall being in front of a door of a friends house, knocking, and wondering what on earth I was going to say to the mother who would open the door and enquirer as to what I wanted. Happily, when she did she knew somehow automatically that I was there to ask to play with the boy of the house, and that prescience of mind relieved me of the anxiety of having to find something intelligent to say. But Language continued to worry me. I then remembered my first years in school and how fussy teachers could be about spelling and pronunciation, and how I had to do much deliberate practice and study to keep from being put down with the stupid boys. Then I remembered the first books I actually enjoyed reading. Then I remembered the first books that I enjoyed despite their making me reach for dictionaries and grammars. I remember one teacher awkwardly suggesting I start upon Fine Literature, and I could see the doubt in her eyes as she wondered whether she was pushing too hard or two early. It was that look that sent me to the Library where I discovered the Great Literature of my Language. Then came the vocabulary notebooks. The Quote notebooks. Oh, I had other interests. There was plenty of stuff I was doing. But amidst it all was Language. And now that I am getting older, and sports, cars, girls and all those other interests recede, there still remains Language.
But the vocabulary notebooks, the quote notebooks… one can never return home again. Few new cards can be written. The cards, back then, well, they did their job. I now speak in Vocabulary Notebooks. And there are even moments, when I hit my stride, where I am even quotable. But those old joys of discovering English can not be run through again. The original wonder of a book can not be had on its tenth reading. So one looks to a New Language and a new Great Literature.
Now, even with my fine memory, I can’t remember the first moment I thought of learning French, to again break out the Vocabulary Notebooks and the Quotes, and the Verb Conjugation Charts that I had not even suspected, and the Grammars which are so necessary if only to make sense of some words which, despite their individual and separate meanings, when arranged together seem to make no sense at all. It is the colloquialisms, the mystery of the little words with their special funny meanings that I guess are so easy for the child but which pose such a problem for the adult. But since they are common, they are seen often and eventually the strange use of the little words becomes familiar.
It is all surprisingly quite fun. While Fast Cars and Pretty Young Women played such a large part in the first phase of my Mid-Life Crisis, now I find myself putting in a great deal of time studying Linguistics. It is certainly safer, far cheaper, and I get better sleep at night. What is not to like?
Oh, there are discouraging moments. When I first started it seemed like I was forever studying, going over vocabulary lists and reading, reading, reading and still it seemed as though I was always returning to a completely foreign language every time I unloaded my book bag. Then the day arrived where I read through my first entire French Paragraph without having to consult a dictionary or a grammar. I was stunned at first. I suspected it might have been a matter of lazy inattention and went back and re-read the paragraph, and, yes, while I knew some words had additional senses that had slipped my mind, I knew that as the words were used in this case, I knew what they meant. Wow! It was like a small Religious Experience, but a small one of those is better than none at all. A blip of Rapture!
Then one finds that one day one can actually begin using the Primary Language Dictionary, not having to ever resort to the English-French Cheater Dictionary. That was a strange and sneaky advance. It seemed like only the day before I could not understand nearly a thing of the pure French Dictionary, with the definitions giving me only more words to look up, with more words to look up after that, and never answering the original question… in most cases forgetting what the original question was. But then, one day the French-English Dictionary must have slid beyond my reach and I grabbed the Pure French instead, and I suddenly found I could read it, no, not completely, but enough to serve.
Finally there comes the moment when one actually enjoys a fine turn of phrase… not mistaking it for the ordinary usage of the Language, but actually being able to detect something special going on… some artful arrangement of the words and phrases that go way beyond what the grammar books would anticipate. All before that there was the Love of wanting to Fall in Love with the Language. But then to actually hear it and grasp it and appreciate it. To really feel the effect of the Fine use of a new Language… one is no longer a Virgin anymore.
Oh, there is a plodding and practical use for learning a New Language. One becomes so much more aware of one’s English… of its Grammar and usages. I had always wondered to myself why the English writers were so much better than the Americans. Well, of course, its because they all knew French.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Chipping People the Latest Surveillance Technology
Chipping People the Latest Surveillance Technology
Some old friends in the Intelligence and Police Communities had been updating me on the latest Surveillance Technologies, covering Information and Communication, as well as the Iraqi Surge Secret Technologies, of using multi-spectrum satellite imagery to effectively ‘fingerprint’ identities and then using new Search Engine Information Technologies to effectively catalogue the vast amounts of Data into useful chunks of Intelligence Information… who to drop bombs on.
It is all very impressive. Yes, it all could have been done years ago. But before Terrorism there were only Criminals, and Governments had no interest in really doing anything about Criminals… you see, Criminals are such a tempting source of Cash Money Contributions. The mistake the Terrorists are making is that they are not paying anybody off. But since the Terrorists won’t behave reasonably within the Democratic World, hiring the compulsory Lobbyists, like the Israelis do in order to become Respectable, then they must be dealt with, and this requires real action. And we DO have some very capable people when it comes to implementing real action.
Anyway, I had written an essay before on the Surge Surveillance Secret Technology – the combination of Multi-Spectral Identity Certification with Mass Information Cataloguing. Everybody in the Community is still oowing and ahhing over that, but, then, especially from the Police, we hear the suggestion that using elaborate cameras that push out so much data and need so much computer bandwidth in order to be understood… that it is clumsy, even while being so impressive; but that it could all be done with so much less muss and fuss if everybody was simply required to carry a small Radio Transponder that would mark Identity and Location, that is, if everybody was CHIPPED. Oh, and If vehicles and significant pieces of mobile property were also required to be chipped.
Already all phones, websites and emails are surveilled. If we added this next step of being CHIPPED, then Terrorism would be, well, impossible. Using the Mass Information Cataloguing Technologies (derived from the Search Engine Wars… making Google the Father of Big Brother) the Law Enforcement and Intelligence Communities would have a complete map of everybody’s associates, everybody’s habits, comings and goings. Certainly most elaborate Terrorist Attacks could be nipped in the bud, well before execution, but certainly nobody would ever be able to get away with anything.
Oh, the only drawback is that anything used against Terrorism might be used against Crime. Right now the Terrorist’s greatest Ally in the West is Organized Crime. Most of the Propaganda in support of Privacy has been paid for by Organized Crime or those sympathetic to Crime (political Anarchists and destructive psychopaths), and every Politician asked to support more thorough Surveillance Technologies must contend with the anxieties of major criminal contributors… again, all in unmarked cash. It’s not the Declared Contributions we need to be worried about, but piles of cash money that can be shoved anywhere and certainly must have an influence on how Power is exercised.
Anyway, the same as how 9-11 did away with any effective opposition to complete monitoring of Email and Telephone Communications, when Criminal Organizations simply had to shut up about it and hope that their continued Pay Offs would protect them from Prosecution (and it has, hasn’t it?), so it is hoped that the Coordinated Terrorist Attacks in India will convince the Civilized World of the necessity for Chipping every Person, every vehicle, every important little thing.
We will live in a Safe World when we know where everybody and everything is, was and will be.
Some old friends in the Intelligence and Police Communities had been updating me on the latest Surveillance Technologies, covering Information and Communication, as well as the Iraqi Surge Secret Technologies, of using multi-spectrum satellite imagery to effectively ‘fingerprint’ identities and then using new Search Engine Information Technologies to effectively catalogue the vast amounts of Data into useful chunks of Intelligence Information… who to drop bombs on.
It is all very impressive. Yes, it all could have been done years ago. But before Terrorism there were only Criminals, and Governments had no interest in really doing anything about Criminals… you see, Criminals are such a tempting source of Cash Money Contributions. The mistake the Terrorists are making is that they are not paying anybody off. But since the Terrorists won’t behave reasonably within the Democratic World, hiring the compulsory Lobbyists, like the Israelis do in order to become Respectable, then they must be dealt with, and this requires real action. And we DO have some very capable people when it comes to implementing real action.
Anyway, I had written an essay before on the Surge Surveillance Secret Technology – the combination of Multi-Spectral Identity Certification with Mass Information Cataloguing. Everybody in the Community is still oowing and ahhing over that, but, then, especially from the Police, we hear the suggestion that using elaborate cameras that push out so much data and need so much computer bandwidth in order to be understood… that it is clumsy, even while being so impressive; but that it could all be done with so much less muss and fuss if everybody was simply required to carry a small Radio Transponder that would mark Identity and Location, that is, if everybody was CHIPPED. Oh, and If vehicles and significant pieces of mobile property were also required to be chipped.
Already all phones, websites and emails are surveilled. If we added this next step of being CHIPPED, then Terrorism would be, well, impossible. Using the Mass Information Cataloguing Technologies (derived from the Search Engine Wars… making Google the Father of Big Brother) the Law Enforcement and Intelligence Communities would have a complete map of everybody’s associates, everybody’s habits, comings and goings. Certainly most elaborate Terrorist Attacks could be nipped in the bud, well before execution, but certainly nobody would ever be able to get away with anything.
Oh, the only drawback is that anything used against Terrorism might be used against Crime. Right now the Terrorist’s greatest Ally in the West is Organized Crime. Most of the Propaganda in support of Privacy has been paid for by Organized Crime or those sympathetic to Crime (political Anarchists and destructive psychopaths), and every Politician asked to support more thorough Surveillance Technologies must contend with the anxieties of major criminal contributors… again, all in unmarked cash. It’s not the Declared Contributions we need to be worried about, but piles of cash money that can be shoved anywhere and certainly must have an influence on how Power is exercised.
Anyway, the same as how 9-11 did away with any effective opposition to complete monitoring of Email and Telephone Communications, when Criminal Organizations simply had to shut up about it and hope that their continued Pay Offs would protect them from Prosecution (and it has, hasn’t it?), so it is hoped that the Coordinated Terrorist Attacks in India will convince the Civilized World of the necessity for Chipping every Person, every vehicle, every important little thing.
We will live in a Safe World when we know where everybody and everything is, was and will be.
What To Do About Islam’s Violence
What To Do About Islam’s Violence
Yes, yes, one hears endlessly that the Muslim Mainstream is Peaceful. Of course they are. They are in business and have good jobs and Peace is what they mean when they are talking about ‘not rocking the boat’, ‘not killing the goose that is laying their Golden Egg’. Yes, Islamic History is full of repeated examples of their Educated Schools trying to make Doctrinal Islam worthy and supportive of their flourishing Civilizations by establishing Moral Doctrines and layering some soothing Interpretations over all the Seeping and Simmering Violence embedded within the Koran. All of this was Noble and Worthy. Good Men trying to do a Good Thing. Admirable.
However, every new wave of Barbarians coming out of the hinter-country Hills, who would learn the most basic Arabic from those who knew barely more than the most basic Arabic, would insist that they needed no Doctrine, they needed no Enlightened Interpretations. Indeed, they would not understand it anyway, as it was far beyond their simple Readings. But, they would insist that they could read with their own two eyes how Mohamed their Great Prophet hated everybody and wanted everybody dead… all except those Faithful willing to do all the Specified Killing. Their Mullahs would open the Koran and point to the passages. And, yes, the passages are there. I’ve looked. The Koran, with as much respect as one can summon to say so, has serious moral problems.
It does not help that Islam has no Official Organization. Islam is largely a great deal like American Protestantism, where Religious Leaders are, well, Self Appointed. Yes, it is in some manner Democratic, that every so called Religious Leader has power in proportion to the number of those he has been able to convert to his Cause. Unfortunately, history shows us that Opportunistic Religious Leaders have the most ease in ‘Converting’ those of the lowest Education, those most easily manipulated. Also there is the Matter of the Rich and Powerful being able to greatly influence the Doctrines of these Community Religious Leaders, as we see in America, where Rich Corporate Republicans effectively hire the services of Ministers who can control the vote and political leanings of the poorest parishioners … or those who simply follow their Christian Heroes via television.
Islam, and American Protestantism, for that matter, need to Organize and Solidify Doctrine, and to positively STOP all those who attempt to Resurrect justifications for Violence out of Scripture. This might imply a great Civil War within Islam. But yes, the World must Insist. If Islam will not clean up its own House, then the World owes it to its own Security and Safety to knock down that House that is proving to be such a General Threat to the World Community as a Whole.
Seriously, let any body of Historians take a look at Islamic History and it will be obvious that Islam can not be at Peace with the World or even at Peace with itself. Then let Theologians take over and look at the Koran and it might appear obvious to them that the greatest difficulty is in rehabilitating the Koran itself. It is simply too True that the Prophet fulminated too often, shook his fist too often, and bore the Sword too often, all to be a creditable Religious Leader in regards to any Doctrines of Peaceful Coexistence.
And it is not very encouraging that it takes years of University Training to see how Islam is really a Peaceful Religion, but that the Hinterland Mullahs need only a fiery Sermon or two, from straight out of the Koran, with Quotes and everything, to show a village full of men that the Koran is just some great Death Warrant to be assigned to any convenient Enemy.
Maybe Islam needs to take a page from Mormon History – as the Mormons have never hesitated to rewrite their Scripture, melting the plates of all prior editions, even replacing old Family Coffee Table Bibles, so Islam might consider putting the Koran through a major Editing. Take a Page from Jewish Screenwriters in Hollywood who are satisfied if their finished product is only BASED on the Original. It might fix all of Islam’s problems if they could only just update the Koran, and root out every old edition. Ask the Mormons how they did it. But, then again, Mormons don’t have to worry about what individuals think, as they have a very strict Centralized Organization. Mormons are told what to think and they think it, or they lose their jobs and privileges, and nobody wants to be a normal person in Utah, on non-union slave wages and no human rights… not being Mormon and all. You know, after the World deals with Islam, it should consider the attack coming from Mormonism… not to Kill us, but to enslave us, in a very real sense. If Mormons wish to Utahize the World, then everybody should be really worried.
Anyway, the World needs to decide what to do about Islam. The Answer might not be very nice. The Best Thing would be for Islam to foresee this eventuality and take care of their own Problems before more Responsible Bodies have to step in and do it for them.
Oh, and it is a mistake for America to suppose that they are indispensable. The Arab World has PLENTY of money, and doesn’t need American Soldiers pretending somehow that they are shooting Muslims all the way on the other side of the World for the sake of American Freedom. The Saudi Oil Billionaires could bring in Larger Armies, cheaper, from all over the Third World and establish an Pan-Arab Islamic Region with only One Acceptable View of Islam, and that a Peaceful one… or the World would have to step in.
Yes, while it is nice to be Open and Tolerant, the World does not NEED Islam, and if Islam insists upon being a continual, even eternal THREAT to World Peace, well, let the Solution be quick, and if done well, in a hundred years our Children will never know there even was ever a problem (like on the American East Coast where nobody ever speaks of Indian Tribes)… nobody will ever ask about Islam except maybe some future history scholar looking for something obscure enough that nobody has already done dozens of doctoral treatises on the subject already. What a wonderful Subject – “The Disappearance of Islam”.
Yes, yes, one hears endlessly that the Muslim Mainstream is Peaceful. Of course they are. They are in business and have good jobs and Peace is what they mean when they are talking about ‘not rocking the boat’, ‘not killing the goose that is laying their Golden Egg’. Yes, Islamic History is full of repeated examples of their Educated Schools trying to make Doctrinal Islam worthy and supportive of their flourishing Civilizations by establishing Moral Doctrines and layering some soothing Interpretations over all the Seeping and Simmering Violence embedded within the Koran. All of this was Noble and Worthy. Good Men trying to do a Good Thing. Admirable.
However, every new wave of Barbarians coming out of the hinter-country Hills, who would learn the most basic Arabic from those who knew barely more than the most basic Arabic, would insist that they needed no Doctrine, they needed no Enlightened Interpretations. Indeed, they would not understand it anyway, as it was far beyond their simple Readings. But, they would insist that they could read with their own two eyes how Mohamed their Great Prophet hated everybody and wanted everybody dead… all except those Faithful willing to do all the Specified Killing. Their Mullahs would open the Koran and point to the passages. And, yes, the passages are there. I’ve looked. The Koran, with as much respect as one can summon to say so, has serious moral problems.
It does not help that Islam has no Official Organization. Islam is largely a great deal like American Protestantism, where Religious Leaders are, well, Self Appointed. Yes, it is in some manner Democratic, that every so called Religious Leader has power in proportion to the number of those he has been able to convert to his Cause. Unfortunately, history shows us that Opportunistic Religious Leaders have the most ease in ‘Converting’ those of the lowest Education, those most easily manipulated. Also there is the Matter of the Rich and Powerful being able to greatly influence the Doctrines of these Community Religious Leaders, as we see in America, where Rich Corporate Republicans effectively hire the services of Ministers who can control the vote and political leanings of the poorest parishioners … or those who simply follow their Christian Heroes via television.
Islam, and American Protestantism, for that matter, need to Organize and Solidify Doctrine, and to positively STOP all those who attempt to Resurrect justifications for Violence out of Scripture. This might imply a great Civil War within Islam. But yes, the World must Insist. If Islam will not clean up its own House, then the World owes it to its own Security and Safety to knock down that House that is proving to be such a General Threat to the World Community as a Whole.
Seriously, let any body of Historians take a look at Islamic History and it will be obvious that Islam can not be at Peace with the World or even at Peace with itself. Then let Theologians take over and look at the Koran and it might appear obvious to them that the greatest difficulty is in rehabilitating the Koran itself. It is simply too True that the Prophet fulminated too often, shook his fist too often, and bore the Sword too often, all to be a creditable Religious Leader in regards to any Doctrines of Peaceful Coexistence.
And it is not very encouraging that it takes years of University Training to see how Islam is really a Peaceful Religion, but that the Hinterland Mullahs need only a fiery Sermon or two, from straight out of the Koran, with Quotes and everything, to show a village full of men that the Koran is just some great Death Warrant to be assigned to any convenient Enemy.
Maybe Islam needs to take a page from Mormon History – as the Mormons have never hesitated to rewrite their Scripture, melting the plates of all prior editions, even replacing old Family Coffee Table Bibles, so Islam might consider putting the Koran through a major Editing. Take a Page from Jewish Screenwriters in Hollywood who are satisfied if their finished product is only BASED on the Original. It might fix all of Islam’s problems if they could only just update the Koran, and root out every old edition. Ask the Mormons how they did it. But, then again, Mormons don’t have to worry about what individuals think, as they have a very strict Centralized Organization. Mormons are told what to think and they think it, or they lose their jobs and privileges, and nobody wants to be a normal person in Utah, on non-union slave wages and no human rights… not being Mormon and all. You know, after the World deals with Islam, it should consider the attack coming from Mormonism… not to Kill us, but to enslave us, in a very real sense. If Mormons wish to Utahize the World, then everybody should be really worried.
Anyway, the World needs to decide what to do about Islam. The Answer might not be very nice. The Best Thing would be for Islam to foresee this eventuality and take care of their own Problems before more Responsible Bodies have to step in and do it for them.
Oh, and it is a mistake for America to suppose that they are indispensable. The Arab World has PLENTY of money, and doesn’t need American Soldiers pretending somehow that they are shooting Muslims all the way on the other side of the World for the sake of American Freedom. The Saudi Oil Billionaires could bring in Larger Armies, cheaper, from all over the Third World and establish an Pan-Arab Islamic Region with only One Acceptable View of Islam, and that a Peaceful one… or the World would have to step in.
Yes, while it is nice to be Open and Tolerant, the World does not NEED Islam, and if Islam insists upon being a continual, even eternal THREAT to World Peace, well, let the Solution be quick, and if done well, in a hundred years our Children will never know there even was ever a problem (like on the American East Coast where nobody ever speaks of Indian Tribes)… nobody will ever ask about Islam except maybe some future history scholar looking for something obscure enough that nobody has already done dozens of doctoral treatises on the subject already. What a wonderful Subject – “The Disappearance of Islam”.
India Terror Prevented and People Should be Chipped
India Terrorism Prevented and People Should be Chipped.
India experienced coordinated terrorist attacks. The Terrorists must have made extensive use of Communication and Transportation resources. But nobody was looking and nobody was listening.
In India this may be a matter of pure Governmental Poverty, or perhaps Official Incompetence and laziness in the Intelligence and Police Communities. Or there may be some misguided Respect for Privacy Rights.
Well Edmund Burke, or was it Winston Churchill who had said “Privacy is the Darkness where Evil lurks”.
As in America, all phone calls, all emails, all computer traffic can be put under surveillance. Yes, it must be terribly expensive. All this communication traffic must be scanned for Code, that is, are speech patterns and narrative ‘real’ or artificial, and if ‘real’ is the content non-threatening. Logs must be kept of who is talking to whom, and who cares about what. On the Visual Surveillance side, a great deal of Computer Bandwidth is necessary, not only to store the vast amounts of visual imagery, but also in the Computer Capacity necessary to analyze and catalogue the Core Information – everyone’s comings and goings, habits, patterns, and especially in detecting when any group of known associates break out of their established patterns, as in the case of launching a Terrorist Attack.
All this Technology already exists. Simply ask about the Secret behind the Surge Strategy in Iraq. A few soldiers on the ground did not make all the difference. The progress made in Iraq was all about New Surveillance Technologies and advances in Computer Cataloging Technologies – whereby billions of bites of Data can be compressed and reduced to small packets of important and useable information. Surprisingly, it all sources back to all the Search Engine advances. Google is the Father of the New Big Brother. The Search for the Brave New World is over.
In addition, Modern Civilized States can take even further care, by insisting that every Citizen or Resident wear a short range Radio Transponder, to establish Identity, what we would call a Chip. Yes, I have heard rumors of Multi-Spectrum Photo Scanning, even from Satellites that can effectively ‘fingerprint’ Identities and thus positively track individuals from moment to moment, day by day without any such Chip. But the Bandwidth required to record and analyze such necessarily complex information must be prohibitively expensive. It would be so much more simple if everybody just ‘beeped’ a unique personal code and their position continuously recorded. Cameras could be used to identify Non-Chipped people walking or driving around, and Police could instantly be alerted to their presence.
This would be bad for Criminals. For instance, if anybody is mugged in a dark alley, then simply by consulting the Records it could be easily determined who was in that particular Alley at the time of the Illegal Infraction. Equally, on the other side of it, the Innocent could greatly benefit. How often do we hear the cry from the Jails and the Prisons of “It was not me!” “I didn’t do it”. Yes, so often people (victims and witnesses) miss-identify suspects… when both the Evening and the Suspect are dark, so to speak, nobody can be sure of what is really seen, and victims and corroborating witnesses assume that the Police are arresting suspects for good reasons and feel pressures not nullify the hard work of the Police by expressing such seemingly counterproductive doubts just when arrests can be made. So it is that the System sometimes strikes at Crime blindly, but only because it is kept in the Dark. But with Chip Tracking and Chip Identification every Innocent Person automatically will have an official alibi. This is especially good for people who live alone, who, under the Old Regime can be accused of anything, done anytime, done anywhere, because, until cats can talk, they would never be able to assert an alibi. In our Modern Societies where it is so often incumbent upon us to prove our own innocence, the Chip should be welcomed with open arms and dancing in the streets.
However, Privacy Fanatics might suppose that the World will break out in Bloody Protest before submitting to Identity Chipping, but it could very well be welcomed by most people when the benefits for themselves are pointed out. But I do realize that Popular Media Propaganda for close to a hundred years now have been heavily on the side of Criminality, Anarchy and Privacy. It seems that many of the People with the Most to Hide are very wealthy and have connections in Publishing, Movies, TV and Radio. We have been bombarded with totally Artificial Scenarios of how bad it would be if the Truth were Known about Things. We have been left to suppose that Governments would Naturally hold Goodness and Purity against us, and would persecute and prosecute us for merely being good and decent Human Beings and for minding our own businesses. The real fact of the Matter is that the Worst Criminal Elements have put forward this intensive Propaganda Campaign in order to maintain their Massive Criminal Enterprises in the Dark, maintaining Privacy as the First and Foremost Right within Liberal Democracy. But we should wake up to the Deceptions and Impositions and announce to ourselves and the World that finally there will be Light.
The Technology is already here. We can choose now to chase the Criminals and the Terrorists out of the Darkness of Institutionalized Privacy Rights.
India experienced coordinated terrorist attacks. The Terrorists must have made extensive use of Communication and Transportation resources. But nobody was looking and nobody was listening.
In India this may be a matter of pure Governmental Poverty, or perhaps Official Incompetence and laziness in the Intelligence and Police Communities. Or there may be some misguided Respect for Privacy Rights.
Well Edmund Burke, or was it Winston Churchill who had said “Privacy is the Darkness where Evil lurks”.
As in America, all phone calls, all emails, all computer traffic can be put under surveillance. Yes, it must be terribly expensive. All this communication traffic must be scanned for Code, that is, are speech patterns and narrative ‘real’ or artificial, and if ‘real’ is the content non-threatening. Logs must be kept of who is talking to whom, and who cares about what. On the Visual Surveillance side, a great deal of Computer Bandwidth is necessary, not only to store the vast amounts of visual imagery, but also in the Computer Capacity necessary to analyze and catalogue the Core Information – everyone’s comings and goings, habits, patterns, and especially in detecting when any group of known associates break out of their established patterns, as in the case of launching a Terrorist Attack.
All this Technology already exists. Simply ask about the Secret behind the Surge Strategy in Iraq. A few soldiers on the ground did not make all the difference. The progress made in Iraq was all about New Surveillance Technologies and advances in Computer Cataloging Technologies – whereby billions of bites of Data can be compressed and reduced to small packets of important and useable information. Surprisingly, it all sources back to all the Search Engine advances. Google is the Father of the New Big Brother. The Search for the Brave New World is over.
In addition, Modern Civilized States can take even further care, by insisting that every Citizen or Resident wear a short range Radio Transponder, to establish Identity, what we would call a Chip. Yes, I have heard rumors of Multi-Spectrum Photo Scanning, even from Satellites that can effectively ‘fingerprint’ Identities and thus positively track individuals from moment to moment, day by day without any such Chip. But the Bandwidth required to record and analyze such necessarily complex information must be prohibitively expensive. It would be so much more simple if everybody just ‘beeped’ a unique personal code and their position continuously recorded. Cameras could be used to identify Non-Chipped people walking or driving around, and Police could instantly be alerted to their presence.
This would be bad for Criminals. For instance, if anybody is mugged in a dark alley, then simply by consulting the Records it could be easily determined who was in that particular Alley at the time of the Illegal Infraction. Equally, on the other side of it, the Innocent could greatly benefit. How often do we hear the cry from the Jails and the Prisons of “It was not me!” “I didn’t do it”. Yes, so often people (victims and witnesses) miss-identify suspects… when both the Evening and the Suspect are dark, so to speak, nobody can be sure of what is really seen, and victims and corroborating witnesses assume that the Police are arresting suspects for good reasons and feel pressures not nullify the hard work of the Police by expressing such seemingly counterproductive doubts just when arrests can be made. So it is that the System sometimes strikes at Crime blindly, but only because it is kept in the Dark. But with Chip Tracking and Chip Identification every Innocent Person automatically will have an official alibi. This is especially good for people who live alone, who, under the Old Regime can be accused of anything, done anytime, done anywhere, because, until cats can talk, they would never be able to assert an alibi. In our Modern Societies where it is so often incumbent upon us to prove our own innocence, the Chip should be welcomed with open arms and dancing in the streets.
However, Privacy Fanatics might suppose that the World will break out in Bloody Protest before submitting to Identity Chipping, but it could very well be welcomed by most people when the benefits for themselves are pointed out. But I do realize that Popular Media Propaganda for close to a hundred years now have been heavily on the side of Criminality, Anarchy and Privacy. It seems that many of the People with the Most to Hide are very wealthy and have connections in Publishing, Movies, TV and Radio. We have been bombarded with totally Artificial Scenarios of how bad it would be if the Truth were Known about Things. We have been left to suppose that Governments would Naturally hold Goodness and Purity against us, and would persecute and prosecute us for merely being good and decent Human Beings and for minding our own businesses. The real fact of the Matter is that the Worst Criminal Elements have put forward this intensive Propaganda Campaign in order to maintain their Massive Criminal Enterprises in the Dark, maintaining Privacy as the First and Foremost Right within Liberal Democracy. But we should wake up to the Deceptions and Impositions and announce to ourselves and the World that finally there will be Light.
The Technology is already here. We can choose now to chase the Criminals and the Terrorists out of the Darkness of Institutionalized Privacy Rights.
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