A Genuine Revolution

We have plenty of fake revolts, and none of them will really make anything better.

Let’s establish one thing from the start: I don’t expect to lead a revolution in the usual sense of the word. Indeed, I proclaim loudly and repeatedly you can’t fix anything that way. All you are doing is replacing one bad government with another, which will eventually go bad in its own way. Most Westerners are so fixated on trying to stay within some mythical rules of democratic social structure, and a fantasy about the will of the people, as if this would fix anything. The definition of insanity includes refusing to recognize the problem is not a failed implementation, but a failed system which ignores reality.

I’ve written here often, sometimes at length, on what I insist is the only proper moral foundations for governing fallen humanity. I summarize the fundamental point of departure as: No one has any business poking around in your life who isn’t related to you by blood or covenant. The only government God approves of is your own family relations. This is particularly true regarding matters of social welfare. Thus, the proper academic label for my political agenda is “tribal.”

Without hashing once more what that means, if you are just now stumbling across this blog or you haven’t seen enough of my stuff to understand, you can find more in this overview, and this discussion of laws.

So let’s pretend we have a group of us who would like to implement some of this. Not because we are stupid enough to believe any significant portion of humanity will join a political movement, or that we could somehow create a foundation upon which to build a new nation, or anything so ambitious. All we want is just however much of the good life as is possible from the hand of God in our very real circumstances today. Yes, the West is crumbling, and as it does, there will be power vacuums of various types and sizes all over the place. When one oppressive and overbearing government run by psychopaths breaks down, you don’t have liberty, you have a fresh crop of psychopaths trying to seize the opportunity to create a new order to benefit themselves. They would be hindered by the rise of some other form of social order.

That’s our starting point: We are not trying to create a new government, but to prevent one. We are striving to weaken all governments because all governments likely, or even vaguely possible, will be inevitably evil. Granted, there has to be some sort of organizing principle of social order which would define resistance to bad government, but there need not be a government, per se, only something which prevents it by removing the need for it. Most emphatically, the current Western libertarian visions of orderly anarchy will not ever be possible with fallen man. Somebody has to be in charge, because it requires a warlord to resist threats. That’s purely human nature. If no one gives the battle order, there won’t be any resistance to the onslaught. Nor is it a question of how the resistance is organized and deployed, but what becomes the motivation to resist in the first place, and how that warlord is chosen, on what basis. It has to match the genuine needs of a very real human nature, not some imaginary construct, a silly Aristotelian dream.

What basic and fundamental human motive never fails, is always there, is the one which manifests when all else does fail? The tribe. Even the whiniest wimp will offer at least a token resistance for his tribe. See the news about the gang defying all sense in their fight with the police? That’s a tribe. It’s an artificial one, and it will come apart if you hit it long enough and hard enough, but it will take more than most governments are willing to do, or at least do well.

Take a hint: How did Hamas “take over” the Gaza Strip? You probably know Hamas arose from the murky political mists of the Islamic Brotherhood, a movement which is hardly easily defined, and not all that cohesive by Western standards. However, the driving force to make it into a viable political organization in Gaza was actually the funding and protection offered by Mossad, simply because it was a way of weakening Arafat and the PLO. The problem is, Hamas was pretty successful. Not just able to shoot more of their enemies than they lost in running gun battles, Hamas actually won the hearts and minds of a majority of voters. Nobody can dispute with any degree of rational seriousness that Hamas is truly the chosen government of a majority of those living in Gaza. It wasn’t through arm twisting, but through social welfare. Hamas earned the loyalty and trust of the people.

It won’t matter whose propaganda labels Hamas a “terrorist organization.” Hamas is the genuine, valid democratic choice of the residents of Gaza. It’s their government, the one they want. It’s democracy in action. Unless someone is willing to depopulate Gaza completely, Hamas will not be going away, so long as they continue the policies that got them in power. Israel is wholly unwilling to offer anything better. Most Gazans belong to the Hamas Tribe.

If you are going to rely on force against some group, which has occupied a territory long enough for them to believe they belong there, you have to go all the way, or don’t bother. It’s a very real fact of human nature the only way to really win a war is not remove the means to resist, but remove all resistance itself. Most of the time, that honestly means removing the people. As you might expect, I’m hardly in favor of that, but it’s the reality even I am forced to admit. Please note, resisting an occupier is a different game than conquering a resident population. Driving off an invader is always easier than conquest. Hamas only has to do what they do for their constituency; Israel would literally have to kill all of them.

The same goes for our idiocy in Afghanistan. Want to stop the Taliban? Kill them all, and anyone who shows the slightest inclination to support them. Once that’s done, it means colonizing the land with a different sort of people, folks who share the invaders’ culture. Of course, the US military lacks the intellectual honesty to adopt the tactics and strategy that would actually accomplish that. The other viable option is offering a better deal than the Taliban. Of course, that would require getting inside the heads of the Afghan population, knowing what they really want. It means offering the social stability and quality of life that would make the Taliban appear evil. I don’t have room to describe in detail what that requires, but it’s enough to note no one in the US government has a genuine intention of actually winning in Afghanistan. Our government’s intentions, a poorly kept secret the majority prefer to ignore, has nothing to do with making anything better for that population, nor the one here.

On a much smaller scale, if you were to see a genuine need to counter the predations of the current official system of government, and those which will arise when that government collapses in the near future, you would have to create a social stability currently missing. It really wouldn’t take that much in terms of resources, but it would be very time intensive. Do you want to lead such a move? You are probably morally unfit. Do you think it’s necessary, but are reluctant to get involved? Then you might be a good candidate. If you see it as the only way of protecting your own family from predators, you at least understand what’s at stake. Create your own tribe.

Not your own gang, and certainly not some neighborhood watch society or whatever — those are poor substitutes. You’ll have to toss in the trash everything you learned in Civics class, because the moment you organize in that fashion, you are ripe for hijacking. No, simply create a family bonding, a sense of kinship. It must be entirely voluntary. It is the ultimate in non-organizational bonding. The amount of time you must devote is staggering. You’ll have to be so very patient with everyone in all their vast array of differences, taking them where they are, offering only what they will accept, on whatever terms they accept it. They have to know more than anything else you actually love them, even if they don’t think in those terms. If you care, they’ll know at least subconsciously. That’s because the bond is not primarily conscious, but subconscious.

It has to be the sort of thing they’ll seize upon when they panic, when conscious intellect fails. Maybe you don’t have much of anything that helps them with their needs right now, but if you don’t establish the willingness to sacrifice what you do have, you can’t gain any ground at all. However much they open the door, come on in and pour out some genuine positive regard. Though you know sure as the world some of it will come back to you in one way or another, don’t ever think of it as an exchange. It’s all one way until the horrifying moment when they have no other place to turn.

If you are a Christian, that’s called “evangelism” as the Bible intended it. If you don’t embrace Christ, you can call it what you like. The underlying principle is the same; it’s something fundamental to human nature. All it takes initially is something like, “Howdy, neighbor!” Do it consistently. Smile, make jokes which poke fun at yourself only. Disarm their resistance, yet don’t ever be suckered by their games. At least one of my neighbors is a manipulative charmer, a fairly attractive divorcée two decades younger than me. She’s used to getting certain things certain ways; I doubt it’s entirely conscious on her part. She’s not evil, just very badly conditioned, having absorbed too much of the perverted modern American culture. I call her “neighbor” and try to help, but I consciously resist the charm stuff. It’s not in her best interest, and certainly not in mine. She knows consciously I’m a deeply religious man, that I am otherworldly, but probably not much more, and probably not interested. But when disaster strikes, she’ll know where to turn. That’s enough. There is no programmed plan to “convert” her, because I’m not selling my religion for rational consumption. When she needs my faith, she’ll be moved to ask, because she’ll need it on a level where it counts. Until then, she’s not capable of absorbing my faith.

Meanwhile, there is this matter of consciously working to resist bad government. There most certainly is a type of salvation which applies only on this level of existence. That’s what the word “religion” is really about. It’s the combined pattern of behaviors, along with a range of rituals and symbols and ideas, which together give shape to something which cannot be explained. My religion reflects my faith; they are not synonymous. You can adopt my religion without having any part of my faith, and it must of necessity be voluntary in the same way. In this case, my religion is this revolution I’ve been describing. The most revolutionary part is you take only as much as you can tolerate. Slice and dice; pick and choose. It works out the same for me any way at all, unless you become an outright enemy. As Jesus said, real religion is caring for those in need. I don’t want more of you than you think you can afford to offer at any given moment, and I don’t expect you to take more of me than you want. I don’t want control at all, and I don’t want anyone else to have it.

But it’s not the libertarian Nirvana of anarchy, either. You can give it whatever name you like, but by taking the initiative to show I care, the tribe is formed. It exists on a level no human government can touch. In case it didn’t occur to you, when I really need something from them, they’ll bring it if they know about the need. But as the external order weakens, the doorway for me is wider. It won’t be me taking charge; anyone who has the right answer can take charge for the moment of need. It’s not about me. It’s about surviving the disaster because someone has taken the time to build up the sense of community. The more I pursue this, the more others will do it, relating to each other independently of me. It’s all good; it doesn’t have to come through my hands. It’s not based on everyone being on the same sheet of music at all. There are no principles to teach; it’s entirely a matter of real human nature and instinct.

The genuine revolt is when nobody needs government.

Yet Another Opinionated Rant

In which I pontificate impotently about all manner of things I hardly understand…

The coup d’etat was when the globalist bankers subverted all the governments of the Western world. The same coup is still at work in the rest of the world. Everything going on right now as a revolt against the global banking system is simply an attempt to drive out the foreign occupiers. But rioting is not the same as revolt. We’ll see lots of the former, but I doubt the latter will happen.

Greece won’t revolt, not really. As I watch the protests, I don’t see sufficient strength of character to gather the power of the people and remove the leadership who sold them out. Given the high degree of corruption burned into the very culture of the nation, it really won’t matter who’s in charge. Right now, about the most interesting thing possible is for the unions to combine and take over the government, but that will only change who shows up for the protests, if that.

The Irish won’t revolt, either. All those truly willing to pull the trigger have been absorbed into the likes of the IRA, and they are run by a branch of the Illuminati, indirectly. Had they been truly serious about taking back Northern Ireland, they could have done it long ago. The IRA leadership betrayed them repeatedly, and will again. The whole idea was to keep things stirred up so the Irish could never recover their independence again. They have the cultural roots for effective independence, but their will has been sapped over too many generations.

Do you really think the British government could squash a genuine Irish revolt? Not for quite some time. It’s not about military power, not any more. The single greatest vulnerability of the British has always been the compliance of the population. There is no nation in the West more utterly servile and domesticated than the British. They lead the world in police state outrages. They’ll tolerate the most egregious blatant oppression, and when they get whipped on the field of battle, they surrender all proper and orderly. The Irish haven’t half tried to terrorize them, because it would have worked. A very large contingent of the Illuminati live in Greater London, so they protect themselves by ensuring their people are in charge of everything, including Britain’s enemies. Britain is so absurdly vulnerable, it simply demonstrates the effectiveness and efficiency of the Illuminati subversion. So far.

Iceland revolted successfully because their system remains fairly honest and uncorrupted. It didn’t require lots of bloodshed. There are moves now to disentangle more completely from the global banking system. They’ll suffer more for this than if they had agreed to bail out the bankers, but I sense it will pay off in the long run. I sincerely hope they stick to their guns.

The US won’t revolt, either. The people with the real money and power here are all Neo-Conservatives, servants of Zionism. They cynically manipulate a vast horde of evangelicals and related American Zionists, up through some truly powerful servants like Hagee, the Bushes, etc., and that class of elites. However, those who write the opinion pieces for the major outlets don’t care a whit about the future of the American people. It’s all a cynical ploy, using calls for American greatness, while recklessly blowing through vast piles of deficit spending, just to benefit Zionist policies. The liberals have a similar pro-Zionist leadership, though they focus more on keeping the liberal crowd fractured, stirred up over side issues. Every organization popping up to challenge the system will be hijacked, marginalized and scandalized, or simply destroyed. The real coup was to ensure America does only one thing, and that’s serve Israeli foreign policy. Once we are all used up, we’ll be tossed aside like an old whore.

There is a vast network of human and electronic intelligence carefully searching for any organizing of dissent. Once organized, it becomes a target for action by TPTB. If you manage to organize in your community to resist, say Agenda 21, look for thugs to vandalize, break in, threaten, even murder your leadership. Most of the big police-state dramas, the unconscionable violent action by authorities, are really about this very kind of thing. It’s not being honestly reported, not even by the alternative news writers. Nobody wants to give us the rest of the story. It’s really easy to shut down an honest and strong leader by destroying someone close to him who is more vulnerable. If they were psychopathic enough to not care, they would be in the current government or more mundane crime.

Leaderless Resistance is a great idea, but also “pie in the sky.” That is, it requires at least one full generation of careful strong education. It requires a level of commitment foreign to our culture. So the answer is creating a new culture. There is no shortcut, and we don’t have time to do much for our current problems. In other words, an effective armed revolt, an honest to goodness revolution, isn’t possible.

Again, it’s not because the Illuminati are demigods, or super-intelligent aliens, or anything like that. But if I can figure some of this stuff out, as can others from whom I get some of this, I’m pretty sure there are some evil geniuses who could work it all out before I was born. What began as simply making the most of a local situation by psychopaths becomes an opportunity to network with others in their locales so everyone gets better protection and more loot. It spreads like cancer. Yes, eventually the host will die. Eventually TPTB will run out of room to operate. The Illuminati will miscalculate because they clearly don’t understand everything.

This is where my rant gets most thoroughly opinionated, because everything I’ve seen shows the Illuminati — whomever they may be — are utterly Western, Aristotelian. They don’t reckon on the limitations of such an epistemology. They seem to ignore the vast thousands of years of human history which came before the last couple of millennia. In those uncountable millennia before that, a much broader view of things prevailed. That broader view is currently hemmed in by a feverish growth in technology, but not gone away. Once we finish destroying the Northern Hemisphere with the likes of nuclear volcanoes spewing radiation poisoning into the jet streams, those who hold that non-Western view will again dominate what’s left of the earth. Aside from the awful radioactive mess we leave behind, I doubt we’ll be long remembered, and the Illuminati will go down with us.

I Was Just Wondering…

I won’t pretend I’m being clever, because I’m not the first person to ask this question.

Here is an excellent review of recent noise about plans to land troops in Libya, and possibly Syria. It ends with a strong discount against the rumors:

Wawro says the looming specter of another Iraq means the US will not risk any type of deployment on the ground.

“The Syrian situation is analogous to Iraq in the sense that ‘if we break it, we own it,’ which is a burden that Washington won’t be eager to inherit. The sectarian differences in Syria are as deep as they are in Iraq. Decapitating the Assad regime might lead to a civil war. That is not an argument for supporting Assad, it is however an argument against an ‘Operation Syrian Freedom.’”

Okay, but a couple of what-ifs. (1) What if the orders are given through the CIA, so that the whole thing becomes a huge secret ops? (2) What if we have some sudden domestic disaster, like say, a nuke plant or storage site doing a Fukushima on us here in the US? You know, something really distracting. Would either of those alter the chances of a ground invasion in Libya, Syria, or both? Because the people pushing these military operations sure seem to think money is no object. (And I tend to think they would be real happy with Libyan style civil war in Syria.)

I was just wondering.

They Are Everywhere

No place is safe. Wherever you go in this world, some psychopath with very real power stands ready to destroy your life.

Right here in our own rural Eastern Oklahoma County, you can find them. On the surface, this is a great thing. Here you have men released from confinement officially labeled as “sex offenders”. Perhaps you are familiar with how impossible it is for such men to find a place they can live, and still have some hope of gainful employment. So this ministry pops up and actively recruits these personae non gratae, bringing them to the OKC area from other states. They are housed together, and if they can’t find a job, are given work. The guy running this ministry has no known credentials as a therapist, counselor, or even as an ordained minister. So far, all I see is a guy bumping up against prissy community fears.

Except, he’s a graduate of Tony Alamo’s ministry. As are some of his associates. Look, it’s one thing to be crucified on trumped up charges, and I haven’t seen the evidence nor read through all the court cases. That’s not what raises the red flags, it’s Alamo’s teachings. And then you’ll say maybe my stuff get’s labeled “heresy,” too. But look at this: It’a all about the money with Alamo. It always was.

For the record, I live just above the poverty line — intentionally, for this very reason. Were it not for the massive amounts and money and influence involved, it could be me accused of vicious and frightening crimes. I’m not a worthwhile target, so I get to continue teaching what I claim is the truth. What I own that could be confiscated isn’t worth the trouble of any single corrupt cop. With guys like Alamo, his crazy beliefs lead to horrific conduct. In the eyes of the government, it’s not really what he teaches that gets him in trouble, but failure to cut the right people in on the money.

Same with Nichols here in Choctaw. When a man’s teachings on the gospel message lead to extravagant creature comforts, I say there is something horridly wrong with his theology. Alamo was a showman, a con-man. Nichols appears the same, defrauding his donors and cheating on his taxes. What sickens me is Nichols takes advantage of some very vulnerable men who have nowhere else to go. Yes, surely some portion of them are just looking for their next victim, but by the same token, some would much rather recover from their problems and become human again. They might with Hand Up Ministries, but with Nichols working so hard to provoke the authorities, you have to wonder what his game is using these men. And when you chase down all the various false corporate fronts (why?) the same bunch of people Nichols works closely with owns a bunch of child day cares? Even if the clients from the two operations don’t mix, what does it say for the care and education of those kids? And why does it take a two-bit investigative reporting blog to find connections which the regulators should have already found?

But you check the background of a great many of those prosecuting Nichols and his friends, and you realize the only difference is who gets to wear the badge. Maybe you’ve heard of Stuart Greenberg, the much acclaimed forensic psychologist? Such a huge estate he left behind. Yeah, now they all say he was soooooo bad, but the system never bothered with fixing the problem until it was all too late. Greenberg’s case is not an anomaly; it’s the norm.

I’m sure you, dear reader, haven’t forgotten: Good moral people don’t want power and wealth. As soon as they get it, they parcel it out quickly. When your whole system is predicated on folks volunteering to assume roles with power and wealth, you will always get corruption and psychopaths. Some are really slick deceivers, as Greenberg himself noted, but if you bother to look closely enough, it’s what they do that explains everything. This is why we struggle so hard to be transparent, and to never care much about power over people or collections of stuff. There’s no truth in that path.

Kiss Your Future Goodbuy

No, it’s not a typo; the Illuminati are buying up all land and real assets at fire sale prices.

Fiat currency is debt by definition. Every US dollar created is a loan from the Federal Reserve, and the net owed to the Fed will always be greater than the amount of currency in circulation. This includes notional currency. Even if we simply shut down all borrowing and pay back every loan to every lender, the US would still owe the Fed interest on the existing number of dollars, with no means to pay. Let this soak in: Every dollar is a loan.

Part of pulling us into debt feudalism is taking complete ownership of all real property. Watch what happens in Greece. In the middle of the austerity is also the sale of national treasures in the form of real estate occupied by landmarks, particularly ancient structures. Greece will soon be literally owned by the bankers. TPTB are willing to wait for this, one or two nations at a time, collapsing under the impossible burden of debt. Once they hold title to the land, the people will also owe them all future productivity from labor.

Now notice the US federal government is currently offering to buy all that flooded farmland in the Mississippi and Missouri Valleys. Think about that. These people are completely vulnerable; they have more than one kind of flooding on their minds. They were already in debt, and barely keeping their heads above the debt flood by productivity and maintaining the value of their property. So this giant flood comes along and they lose it all. There won’t be much to go back to even after the water recedes later this year. So along comes the US government offering to buy out their holdings at distressed pricing. What choice would they have? If even a few of their neighbors sell, the leverage to simply take it under condemnation builds up.

Some are now asking whether that trick is being applied in the Gulf Coast area. Range land in the burning Southwest? I don’t know about any secret dealings, but I would hardly be surprised. There has been lots of forced buyouts all over the US in the past decade for so-called “wilderness lands.” This is nothing new. What would the US government use to pay down it’s incomprehensible debt to the Fed? The IMF is not big enough to bail out the US, but I keep watching for some other shadowy agency to arise with much greater capital. It could simply be the Fed itself, but I would expect a different name.

This is the typical Western Illuminati thinking showing through, the not-so-ancient Western Medieval Feudalism. As long as people actually believe in the principles of debt and land ownership on Western terms, they will enslave themselves. This is what’s behind a strong current among the alternative press to rant about the Rule of Law. TPTB don’t obey laws, but expect us to buy into that frame of reference. It’s not about stealing, as in taking by force or deception, but I promote a moral dismissal of the entire system which brought us to this place. It’s the fundamental sickness of believing a rule of laws is possible, while offering the false dichotomy that it’s either that or “might makes right.” Both are wrong.

While I do teach the only proper foundation is the ancient tribal social structure, I’m not foolish enough to believe there is some golden age yet ahead of us if only I could get everyone to see it my way. We won’t get there before The End of All Things. It’s only going to get worse until then. Once you realize there is no fix, you find yourself free to seek answers not tied to this plane of existence.

I nailed all that hope-in-a-better-world to the Cross a long time ago.

RHEL 6 for the Clueless: Intel Graphics

The special situation involving Intel graphics hardware requires a separate explanation. This applies to RHEL 6.x, Scientific Linux 6.x and the soon-to-be-released CentOS 6.x (something like 01 July).

During installation on a computer with Intel video, most often you will have to bypass the graphical installer by selecting the “Install with basic video driver” option. If you do, the installer will do two things you’ll need to consider fixing.

First, it will create an X.org config file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) calling for the VESA driver. This isn’t a bad thing in itself, but it will limit performance and create a few hassles with your display. Edit this file, which should have only a few lines in it. Look for the deeply indented line starting with Driver and replace “vesa” with “intel”.

Second, it will turn off kernel mode setting (KMS). Again, not a disaster, but you won’t get that nice graphical boot screen. The correction is editing /boot/grub/menu.lst (that’s LST lower case on the end of the file name). Scroll down until you see a deeply indented line which begins with “kernel /boot/vmlinuz...” and stretches quite long. Near the end of that line look for the word nomodeset and delete it. Save the file.

If you fix the KMS issue and not the driver issue, it won’t finish booting on some machines. So fix both and reboot, or fix neither.

No One Speaks for Me

There is a vast world of ordinary people out there who are used and abused, particularly in the world of computing.

When it comes to the very fundamental questions of life, I exempt no one from the duty to find your own way. If you are content with someone else’s religion package, I hold you in contempt to the degree you are willing to swallow the whole thing. This is too important for adults to just accept what someone passes your way.

With computers, it’s not the same. Sure, there are people for whom computer use is a religion. That includes most of the serious Open Source computer users. They aren’t part of this discussion. With computers, the whole point is we are looking at a consumer commodity that people use, not what they live and die for. The folks who produce the hardware and software are catering to an audience, a vast range of folks who simply cannot take the time and effort to become their own computer expert. The majority of users will never learn to code, nor even so much as learn my paltry collection of computer fixing skills. They’ll just use what they can get.

I remain entirely angry at the propaganda from the Open Source community. They lie; the make offers and promises on which they cannot deliver. They fool themselves, so it’s not quite evil, but it is a closed minded stupidity. They say Open Source is better, that it will set you free from the abuse of commercial interests and snooping manipulative advertisers, and giving you back control over your computer. The lie is you don’t really have control over either commercial or Open Source software. You have more options with Open Source, but only in theory. If you happen to be a coder, you have all the freedom in the world. If you were a coder, you wouldn’t need to hear their false promises. If you aren’t a coder, you are still stuck with someone else’s decisions.

Sometimes it works out okay. Sometimes a major element in the Open Source system of computer software development will listen when you say something makes you unhappy. Mostly they will not, but that’s the way it goes, since you aren’t paying for it. You most certainly can, and folks often do, pay someone a small amount to code a feature you like. It’s called “bounties.” Then again, some projects are hijacked by real jack-asses, like the GNOME Project. Years ago they voiced a sort of low-level hostility to user input. These days, it’s pretty overt, and downright ugly. You can get a taste of it by reading the comments to this blog post. It’s not as if to say you are stupid if you like GNOME and the current development trends. But if you do like it, count your blessings. If you don’t like it, you are out of luck. The GNOME developers have decided they know what you want, and if you happen to forget, they will quickly remind you that you don’t know what you want.

Some say the KDE Project folks, representing the primary alternative to GNOME, are listening. By comparison, they are, but on the broader scope, they are not. They consider you some kind of software pervert if you still think the previous series was better, but they won’t try to call the software police on you. It’s a friendlier grade of arrogance.

This is showing up in a great many projects. The old line coders were cranky at times, and might provoke you with ugly words, castigating you publicly in some online forum. The new generation carries an Uzi and grenades, and come looking for you if you happen to mention there might be something less than perfect with their software ideas. (Yes, a little hyperbole is good for the soul.)

If you go with commercial software, you have someone paying the jerk coders to build what sells and makes money. In Open Source, you have jerk coders doing what they please, coding to suit themselves. The coders who don’t happen to be jerks are so few, they are remarkable. Either way, no one actually codes for you. The commercial guys will sell your information and privacy for a quick buck, and won’t hesitate to create backdoors for their own convenience. They are quick to make all your investment in software obsolete, forcing you to upgrade or go with some competitor’s equally expensive and incompatible offerings. Migrate your data? They’ll sell you an extra package at a high price for that, and it might even work. All the good ethical software companies were bought out long ago.

So the point is this: Today you are either exploited for a profit or suckered for bragging rights. You can buy something developed to please a slimy marketer, or something developed to please no one but the arrogant developers. It’s not that nobody cares what you want; everyone is hostile to what you want. The white knights are so few, so rare, they are quickly destroyed by the other two groups. You can either pay lots of money for an individualized product, or pay the price of learning to make your own, in which case you don’t really need what someone else is offering. Becoming a developer these days is so very all-consuming just to get involved, you can’t do much of it as a hobby. The barriers are quite high.

As user, you don’t have any friends when it comes to computers.

Hack Everything!

The concept of hacking includes far more than poking around in other people’s computers.

This is more than a whine against the MSM for confusing the term “hacking” with “cracking.” Anyone who pays much attention to the MSM can’t be taken seriously. I realize that means most of our world, but that’s the reality. While I take seriously the genuine needs of every human alive, I don’t take seriously what they think and feel. No, this is about how those of us who know hacking means poking around in something to satisfy a curiosity, however much that curiosity may drive us to obsession. Nor does it matter how much skill and knowledge you bring to the hacking, but how it changes you.

By no means would I qualify as a computer hacker. Yes, I do poke at things related to computers, because inevitably the people who make the stuff and write the software are not interested in the same things which interest me. If I take the time to read all their stuff, I won’t know anything they didn’t intend me to consider. So I poke to discover what my own interests can extract from their work. Sometimes I’m just trying to find a fix which was not published, or not very well published. But mostly it’s not a question of how it works, but how I can use it. I’m just a hobbyist or perhaps a “power user” on computers, not a hacker. By sheer luck some of my uses resonate with the interests of others. Thus, I get a lot of hits on my computer related posts here.

This tells me there’s a lot more people interested in harnessing their computers than the other stuff I write about. I most certainly will claim to be a hacker of religion and morality. I’ve spent my life learning, poking and prodding what exists. In this case, it’s not just a question of how I can use it, but exploring the full depth of its nature, things the professional writers didn’t or couldn’t tell me. I’m not just prodding the software, or simply the OS, but I’m poking around in the hardware itself. I want to know human nature as it exists, and to discern things centuries of experts didn’t think about, and certainly didn’t talk about. Then I blather about it here, and a smaller groups seems to be interested. Again, by sheer luck, as it were, I’ve found some stuff other folks were looking for but may not have found by themselves.

A significant element in what I write is the underlying theme you can poke at just about any area of human knowledge. The recurring statements encouraging readers to challenge every authority on every issue which matters to them is the same hacker intelligence. The experts don’t know everything, and may not really know much of anything. Those who write the textbooks and whose ideas dominate the mainstream may be all wrong, trying to hide from you something which is your destiny. Everyone who seeks a place where they can anchor authority and whence they can gain leverage over others warrants the deepest suspicion of their motives. Good moral people do not want control over others. People who simply share what they know will always betray a willingness to hear conflicting notions, and won’t go ballistic because you dared question their personal orthodoxy.

Don’t swallow my religion. It’s not universal; it may not suit your needs. Take from what I write whatever you can use. Steal it! Poke and prod, examine and explore. Adapt it and make it your own. If you have time and inclination, tell me about your own resulting efforts. Maybe you’ll show me something I can use.

Hack everything.

Estimating Current World Events (June 2011)

When you permit a thought process and evaluation system not restricted to the commonly accepted Western analytical assumptions, you would expect to get different answers.

This is not about having a high degree of intelligence in the sense of IQ. I readily admit I’m not up there in the higher rankings, and would not even qualify for the likes of Mensa. I lack the arrogance necessary to challenge openly folks who have different ideas on these things, whatever their reputed intellect. I take no particular credit for coming up with some new form of brilliance, since I have long believed I’m simply using the same faculties available to anyone else. In the broadest sense, I give credit to my Lord and Savior for anything of value here, and take full blame for any mistakes.

We can’t presume to ever really understand it all. There is no simple formula, no all-encompassing revelation of conspiracy, no single plan of world domination. You can’t blame just any one group. Even when I use terms like “Illuminati,” it’s just a label for an ill-defined conspiracy which we must assume morphs over time. Single individuals may be included this year, excluded the next for some reason, and then work their way back into good graces, or maybe even usurp someone else’s place. These are mere humans, with their own internal politics. Not everything works out the way any single one of them, or any faction, or the whole herd, would like every time.

One of the primary reasons we study history or any of the other social sciences is so we can estimate in some useful fashion how we got where we are today, so we can estimate some sensible course for future actions. I’ll save you some time; my advice for future action hasn’t changed since before I started blogging here at WordPress. Prepare for the worst, even though we can expect to survive much of what’s coming our way. Collect stuff you know how to use and which can make life tolerable should there be a general failure of civilization itself. Prepare yourself even more, since events can lead to such catastrophic changes you’ll have only what you carry in your soul as you flee some disaster, or series of disasters. Decide now nothing on this planet really matters, not even life itself, only living as close as you can to truth.

To add some shape to that, read on.

The lineage of the Illuminati is pretty easy to trace. Sometime around 300 BC, the Hebrew religion of Moses was eclipsed by Hellenism, AKA Aristotelian epistemology. While Judaism retains trappings and content from Moses, it’s underlying framework is entirely Western. With that Hellenism infection came an incredible measure of arrogance previously lacking. No, I’m not saying they had none before, but the kind and quality of that arrogance radically changed with the introduction of Aristotle. When the real Messiah showed up, they simply did not have the Hebraic grasp to accept Him. Instead, they clung to a vision of global domination, along with a frame of reference which made it possible. When Judaism was adopted by the Kazakhs in 900 AD, this religious aspiration gained a warlike drive and intelligence it previously lacked. The question of DNA and discussions of Ashkenazim versus Sephardim miss the point. Nor is it really about Judaism, but how that religion contributed to something bigger — Zionism. The Illuminati were born in Zionism, but have sense escaped it, so that we now have a singular core identity which is no longer precisely Jewish, nor even Zionist, per se. And while Israel began as a central element in plans of global domination, I am convinced that nation is now disposable to the current planning. I think we can safely dismiss the popular mythology blaming Jews and Israel, noting simply it does include some people who own such labels.

Whatever it is we imagine the Illuminati to be — essentially global bankers and financiers with an intent to enslave as much of the human race as possible — they are rooted in Western Civilization as it now exists as a whole. Their aspirations and plans arise from that, so it’s no surprise all their expectations depend upon it. I frankly believe they are infected with the Aristotelian intellectual assumptions, and suffer from the failures of it. In due time, their plans will fail, right about the time it appears they have succeeded. That’s because their plans require destroying much of what Western Civilization has become, and I believe they suffer the same fundamental arrogance of Aristotelian epistemology, which presumes to be somehow fundamental to how the universe itself works.

They pretty much own Western Civilization, which they do understand all too well. The assumptions are utterly materialistic, so material aspirations are the whole thing. Thus, the demand for credit, banking and fiat currency to buy more stuff. The Russians are somewhat entangled in this, but capable of living without it. Thus, the Illuminati do have some limited control in Russia, which fluctuates more than it does in the wider West. They have very little control in China, but some presence. So when Russia and China’s economies suffer the normal degree of human corruption at the top, this does not automatically grant the Illuminati any leverage. Corruption is a universal human trait, part of the Fall. When the current economic system grinds to a halt and collapses, the West will for a time be totally under Illuminati control. Russia may not be fully sucked under by it, and China almost surely will not. Hurt, for sure, but China will not collapse so completely. Russia does not have to collapse, but escaping will require some very wise leadership, and I just can’t estimate that. In general, the great big bad stuff on the horizon will fall most heavily on the US, then the other English-speaking lands, then Europe.

Asian countries will suffer to the degree they are controlled by the Western banking system. Smart countries will use it, but never surrender totally, keeping some framework of economic planning which does not depend on fiat currency and global credit. Africa is similarly mixed, but frankly it’s the poorest third world countries which will suffer least, since not much will change for them. South America is probably the most complicated to estimate, since their politics can be quite volatile, and wholesale changes come from the smallest things. Each country seems to be on a totally independent track, and I admit I don’t know enough to say much more. So, while I can predict Argentina will recover control over their Malvinas (Falklands), that’s pushing what I can estimate.

Naturally, I am going to assert the Illuminati plans are morally unjust. I could say that about almost every government or would-be government, because almost no one does it right. Because of this vast global immorality, my estimation of things includes the expectation of many disasters. Most of them natural disasters, to be sure, but I believe God also uses human folly to magnify many of them. Thus, God provides the earthquake, but mankind provides the nuclear pollution from criminally negligent design and construction. So we have Fukushima, and maybe a few other plants set to spill their pollutants, the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, and perhaps in the near future some pipeline ruptures from all the stuff buried over the New Madrid Fault. We have truly vast flooding in the Missouri and Mississippi Valleys, as well as in China, wildfires all over the US Southwest, droughts in Russia, etc. I can’t even keep track of it all.

If that’s not bad enough, we have plenty of people who should know better lying about disasters that won’t come, but using the lies to create an even greater economic disaster — the so-called Global Warming scam. Sorry, but I refuse to grant any sincerity to folks pushing that lie; it’s not just flawed science, but anti-science. Further, it’s blasphemous to imagine humanity can change something God said bluntly would always remain in His control.

For those with a little education in economics, we note for the US, the government is taking over more and more of whatever economic activity exists. Unlike genuine planned socialism or communism, where the government actually participates in productivity, our government produces virtually nothing; it only consumes and commands. So even if the government shuts down, it won’t change the economy all that much, aside from a loss of regulatory enforcement. In other words, things will actually improve somewhat. The same goes for state and local governments who become insolvent, as some surely will, and soon. Thus, while some business will collapse because they simply can’t exist without massive government contracts, most businesses now open stand a good chance of surviving if they remain flexible.

In my own life here in Central Oklahoma, a lot of things depend on the current drama in the US Congress. Most of it is pure theater. I fully expect Congress to raise the government debt limit. If not, that simply means the plans to crush the economy are upon us. The business about Libya may be an actual dispute, though I doubt it. Some of the central plans by folks I presume to be at least a faction of the Illuminati call for converting Libya away from their relative banking independence, as part of the PNAC nonsense. Lots of references on alternative news sites will discuss the seven or so nations for which PNAC called for “regime change” all because of oil and banking. I’m not sure the current military operations are necessarily the only way to accomplish those goals, but I’m guessing the alternatives are much harder to pull off. So there will be lots of political pressure from the elites to counter the popular clamor to get out of Libya. I’m guessing lots of stuff isn’t working out quite as planned by the elites, and we see evidence of scrambling. There are multiple possible futures tracking out before us.

However, I still expect we’ll be expending big bunches of Department of Defense dollars in Lebanon, Syria, and eventually Iran. I expect a huge increase in crime and chaos in bigger cities and states. Indeed, economic crime is already on the rise across the board, but it’s always going to be worse where high populations must import everything necessary for life. Infrastructure will crumble even faster — roads, bridges, trains, electricity, water, natural gas — and whole cities will find themselves cut off. Sane people are already making an exodus from such places. Rural ghost towns will come back to life as people scatter to survive.

The average human life expectancy will plummet in the West, as it degrades into Third World status. What I cannot estimate is the time line. Welcome to the future!

Firefox: Anti-Business?

It appears Mozilla leadership is telling corporate partners to get lost.

I realize Ed Bott is a devoted worshiper of Microsoft. But that doesn’t mean he’s ignorant, nor especially dishonest, just biased. When he says Mozilla to enterprise customers: “Drop dead”, it appears he is simply crowing over what everyone should have already known. The Mozilla folks are not interested in the needs of corporate IT.

There was a time when Netscape, then Mozilla, then Firefox were avidly hoping to become the flagship browser of every corporate IT department. That was a sentiment held over from the days when everyone’s first contact with desktop PCs was in the workplace. There would have been no need to mass produce cheap knock-off “IBM compatible” PCs had folks not learned to see their value first by using the more expensive IBM systems their employer decided was necessary. Nowadays, the front wave of technology is not business and government, but the consumer. In this, Mozilla folks are probably correct.

But they are making at least one huge mistake: What happens when the economy regresses a bit and folks can’t get new systems, and businesses and government are the primary market again? Such is almost on top of us. Consider that average consumers now see the net through the tiny screens of mobile devices, while only those doing actual work keep the desktop market alive. Compare this with the Linux market itself, on which Mozilla is very largely dependent in some ways. Ubuntu leads the consumer-based expansion of Linux adoption, but Red Hat and friends dominate the corporate-government field. When times get tough and folks are stuck with using an older system they can’t afford to replace, they won’t be installing the latest fat Ubuntu release. They’ll be installing the long-term supported stable release of Red Hat and clones. Not because of advertising, but because if they find Linux worth using at all, it will be the reliable, stable thing which does not leave their aging hardware struggling to keep up.

Meanwhile, Red Hat and friends have dug in their heels on Firefox. When 5 was released, the Red Hat chain of updates gave us 3.6.18. That is, an update of the 3.6 series for security and bug fixes. If Mozilla drops this, either Red Hat will adopt it and backport fixes, or it will disappear from the system. The corporate clients of Red Hat won’t tolerate jumping major release numbers every six weeks.

For you, if you are a casual user, regardless of your OS I think you should stay loose on this. For God’s sake, DO NOT USE IE! It’s easily one the biggest security holes in an already unsecured operating system. If you like playing with frequent updates and eye-candy stuff, then chase Firefox. But be warned: Firefox is giving lots of folks big problems on lots of websites. I’ve seen plenty of computers which, for example, couldn’t browse and watch videos on YouTube for reasons I couldn’t discern when fixing their computers. Granted, there is a lot I don’t know, but the Net is loaded with complaints of that sort and no fixes even when real experts get involved. I tend to think Firefox does some really wonky things with networking protocols.

If you don’t care about tight control over how things run, just need it to work, use Chrome browser. It’s also running breakneck forward with new releases, but at least it works consistently.

If you need better control and security really matters, use Opera. All browsers stink, but Opera generally doesn’t choke you. It’s occasionally a little heavy on resource usage on Linux, but it’s tolerable so far, and improving. It’s the browser I’ve long used most, but it’s not for everyone. That is, the graphical browser I use most; I prefer to surf with Elinks and Lynx most of the time. But while Opera is only a tiny slice of the user pie on the Net, the company behind it will work rather hard with IT departments. If you tell them what you want, they’ll produce it if they can, even as they try to please the common consumer user base. I really like this company, and gain nothing by telling you that.

Most business folks are not nice people. Most companies are all about profit, and only by accident will they pay much attention to morals. When they are hungry, they tend to work harder, as Opera does. When they own the whole field, they only pretend at best, as does Microsoft. At MS, you are the product delivered to their corporate allies; Windows is the means of delivery. The vast number of doorways they leave open for their partners are what crackers exploit when they stumble across them. Open Source operations may decide whether they will serve IT, the consumer, or try to balance things. Most simply refuse to play at all, and serve only their internal interests. At best, they’ll play to the fanboy audience.

This is what we see happening at Mozilla. They pretend to play to the consumer, but it’s really the fanboy audience, which is not the same thing. The fanboy crowd lives in a fantasy world of new toys, and seldom do any real work on computers. They put all sorts of efforts working with computers; it’s a devotion to the thing itself, not what it does. In actuality, I believe Mozilla leaders are simply turning inward, listening to the strange, almost alien voices inside their developers’ minds. That’s what we expect from Open Source. Sometimes it works out okay, but the best Open Source products are those which filter through some packaging outfit who understands the real world of computer users, who understand using computers to do useful things, not chasing some ghostly dream of computer perfection.