“Kill one of us…

…and we’ll kill a hundred of you”. That's really what this recent conflict has been about. People witter about objectives, goals, stages, but in truth it boils down to the opening statement. That the Israelis will now ‘cease their fire’ is only because they feel they’ve killed enough to make their point. The underlying strategic and tactical objectives, despite what the pundits, politicos, etc might say, is simply this “Kill us, we’ll kill at a ratio of 100:1; if you’re happy with that, so are we”

After watching the Qatar conference on Al Jazeera…

…it’s so obvious what the fellows have to do. It’s been moot before, but the only weapon the collected possess is the ability to change the listing of oil from Dollars to Euros. This is the only weapon that is capable of being deployed, and they should not draw back from its use because of a regime change in the US.

Happy Birthday Cuba!!!!

Seems rude not to acknowledge the day that Cuba celebrates 50 years since its revolution. Not bad going to hold out against the most powerful nation in the last century. Let's hope this 50th year sees the standard of life improve.

Obadiah

Well what better time to bring our friend Kim to mind than on this New Year's Eve. While I was pottering around on the interweb when I came across an article by an ex KGB member who proclaimed the end of the US printed in the Wall Street Journal.

"For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S."

Tho' some might mock, it was Jules Verne who observed 'Tout ce qu'un homme est capable d'imaginer, d'autres hommes seront un jour capables de le réaliser.'

A new year, a new start...

I'm already fed up with Obama. While I understand he's a nice enough bloke, and that it's a watershed moment for a major sector of the American population, to be honest I wish McCain had won.

American politics is like the famous good cop, bad cop routine. Everyone will congratulate themselves that 'the wicked witch is dead', yet the truth remains that a strengthened America, is an America ripe for the next lunatic. Better to let the lunatics crack on, analogous to a fire that burns itself out.

I guess I have to spend the next years watching decent folk convince themselves everything is rosy; how annoying that's going to be...anymore logs???

An Dà Shealladh.

I used to quite often employ such a gift. I recall around my birthday one year, which falls on Samhain wouldn't you know, scrying family portraits of my then girlfriend, a countess of European ancestry. It was particularly interesting as I observed the faces change, male : female as what I perceived to be all the people present in the painted individual manifest through the artists craft. It was a little like that Godley and Creme video 'Cry' from the 80s...

So I thought I should perhaps add a scrying bowl to my tool collection. Not sure when and if I'll get around to using it anytime soon, but nice to have.

Settler Spirit

I was reading something last week which really put into perspective just why the US stands effectively behind everything the state of Israel does. It really should have been obvious to me on many occasions before. There is something inherent in the settler spirit that so defines the 'American' ideology, implicitly tied up with the American dream. It has deep roots with the arrival in a wild hostile land, and conflict with the indigenous people as somehow analogous with the struggle to survive natural obstacles. As the land is conquered, so are the 'natives'.

So then if we consider the birth of the American nation, we can see strong parallels with the creation of the Jewish state, with the native Americans replaced by what could loosely be described as the Palestinian people. Thus America really cannot be expected to question the legitimacy or validity of the Zionist dream, for it is a reflection of the very dream of the Americans themselves. America cannot question, cannot face the dissonance which would ensue, Israel, for such a question would be an enquiry as to their own right to exist as an entity.

"Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you you would cry..."

I'm currently undertaking an MSc in Medical Anthropology, and despite the subject being amazing, the academic staff truly literate and fluent in their subject, what a pain in the ass students are!!! As preparation for the coming modules I have have had to read a poem by W.H. Auden called 'Heavy Date'. Despite having spent much of my youth reading, I don't really like literature. I don't mind books that 'do' something, i.e. from scientific texts to social scientific narratives, but I can really find by chapter 2 of a book I am thinking 'Fuck this! Why should I indulge your vanity?

The poem did however make me think of the past term, and the words that Professor Chomsky once wrote to me 'It doesn't take a good education to see the truth, it takes a good education to miss it'

Thus was it in a particular lesson when I said that all children (I'm soon to welcome my fourth child into the world), were manipulative. This was met with horror by some of the students; I tried to explain that a baby has to manipulate as it has no way of achieving basic tasks by itself, i.e. nappy change, milk, blanket pulled up. One student pointed out to the class, that I was using the word with no negative connotation, something I would have thought was fucking obvious in the context of babies!!!! They didn't hear the words, they weighted what I said with their own understanding of the word. Manipulation, coming from the Latin manus, meaning to alter something in accordance  with desire as if that had been effected by the hand. Sure it has a negative aspect, but get over the knee jerk reaction to words that are weighted negatively in YOUR mind, not necessarily mine!!!!

I think CSN pretty much alluded to what I was saying in the chorus of 'Teach Your Children', 'Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you you would cry, so just look at them and sigh, and know they love you'.

Oh how profound!!!

Do you know I think I know an expression, posed as a question, that ranks amongst the most annoying that is put to me. It's not that its particularly annoying in and of itself, rather it's the smug air it is delivered with and the usual sense of profundity that accompanies it. It is the enquiry 'Well if God created the universe, who created God?'

I had the concept of branes brought to mind last night, by way of a particularly interesting episode of horizon (somewhat ironic in this instance), which posited that time as we know it, i.e. 13.7 billion ± 0.13 billion years old, might not have been the beginning of our uni/bubbleverse; rather the collision of branes within proto-time came to result in time as we are able to perceive it, or rather as our science may be able to quantify it.

So it would seem that science is able to perceive of time, and subsequently the space deriving from it rather than contrariwise, i.e time in our context as primary rather than quaternary, as having no beginning, and thus without beginning or end. However God must have a creator, as per original annoying statement. It is in this context I find the Islamic hadith transmitted through Bukhari of particular interest

'It is authentically reported on the authority of Abu Hurairah (ra) that the Prophet (saas) said: "Allah (swt), Most Blessed, Most High, says: "The son of Adam wrongs Me: He curses time, though I am time: In My Hands are all things and I cause the night to follow the day." In another narration, He (saas) says: "Do not curse time, for verily, time is Allah (swt)."'

"Still crazy after all these years..."

"Four in the morning
Crapped out, yawning
Longing my life a--way
Ill never worry
Why should I?
It's all gonna fade..."

So anyway, been away from blogging for a while. The last time I had a seriously surreal ASC was 2005. I guess it was all around the time I had some serious changes. I had started my BSc in September 2004, and then to accompany it a pretty much full time job, so all those changes and stresses certainly built up pressure, no doubt altering my neurochemistry; cheaper than DMT and less trouble to find than liberty caps. Added to this the whole password thing escaped me, but eventually I got around to it, and this new standalone MS Live writer thing seems great. So...as they say..."plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"

I've been trying to remember a poem I wrote, but can't...do however remember a keyword, and that is all that is needed...Nemesis.

Going to try and blogg more often, may as well, I seem to recall it was cathartic...

The Return of the Sun

Guess this guy...

...probably isn't on many people's christmas card list...

...well thank God the reporter didn't ask them about Jesus' lineage

(i.e. Mary and Joseph) nor his father let him out with an Uzi...

...still his English is pretty good...

The real shit...

...now I'm gonna betray something of my yout' but hey..

One State solution

"UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is in the region, said it was important to back people seeking a two-state solution"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6191751.stm

Laughable. Doesn't the wanker realise that he has used up any international political capital the UK had over the last few years. The UK is for all intents and purposes bankrupt on the international stage. So there is now to be a new vote presided over by the newest member of the Israeli state, Abbas. Bring on the election I say. Unless they rig it, which is highly possible, Hammas will win again. The natural inclination of the people of the region is resistance. So Blair calls out to moderates? Arsse kissers put into power post WWI, lets see if the Arabs are lambs to be herded by Bush and his poodle, or Lions and Eagles.

I think that the only thing that I agree with the fool about is that there is only one solution to the root of the regions problems. His proposal, a two state solution? Bollox! A one country solution! not Israel, not Palestine, Bilad as Sham.

Greys versus Blues

I was thinking about the Greys a few days ago. They may seem advanced, promising heaven or rather 'the heavens' but there's a reason they are in our locality unable to leave. The blues are obviously not the gods that those in the subcontinent think they are, but one thing is for sure, if the greys and their allies try to exit this stellar system the blues will be waiting.

Watch and shoot, watch and shoot.

Now I don't drink but make mine...

...a double whiskey, or to be precise Whiskey Whiskey. What makes me think about this is the repositioning of the political parties toward the centre ground. Now the party I vote for has always occupied that ground and we shall for want of a better term refer to them as Whigs, and for sure the emerging Conservative certainly has a patriarchal 'Wet' feel to it. So what I'm basically running through my head is the state of Parliament after the next election. Could we have a blended Whiskey Whiskey government or again a young and immature single malt?

CONTACT.

"Get ready to take a chance on something that just might end up being the most profoundly impactful moment for humanity, for the history... of history."

I recall some years ago I watched a movie adapted from a Carl Sagan book called 'Contact', as soon as I had finished watching the film I had an epiphany. I suppose the reason I feel the need to blog my thoughts at the time on 'loud' rather than the whisper I completed at the time is as a result of all the negative press Muhammad and Islam have been getting recently. This is a hypothesis, that we have indeed recieved, as in the film, a message from space/first heaven. So for the proposed experiment one will need a.) a/some powerful computational machine(s) b.) some advanced mathematical formula(e) preferably as pertaining to advanced physics (i.e. quantum theory) c.) a copy of the quran in Arabic and d.) the 'abjad' number system. Feed in the numbers generated from the arabic script of the quran in varying format i.e. 1.) Surah 2.) Ayat 3.) Infinite loop of whole and or parts. Feed in complex formula and leave computational computer to cycle to completion, for this if not in ownership of PhD in astrophysics, theoretical physics/maths, ask someone who is what would be the most likely equation that could act as a key to the number sequence. Upon completion, sit back and see Muhammad and Islam in it's true light.

Oh and the part of the film/book where they align the messages to give up a plan...Alif Lam Mim.

So now the Cameroon...

...says we have not to be anti-American. He speaks about the 'Atlantic' friendship, stuff that, the only connection I have with the US is no connection at all, let them stay in their lovely cuntinent, and we in ours. Speaking of connections, we'd be better placed to develop alliances with those a little closer to home, and actually connected by land mass, i.e. Europe, Asia, Africa. Of course the temptation upon the election of the next president, be that Mule or Elephant, will be to give them the benefit of the doubt, especially if they back track and seem reasonable. This cannot happen, they have made their bed, now they must lie in it or be made to lie in it, with no recourse. They set course now they must reach their final destination, check the hold for stowaways.

BBC REPORT

Stand too close to Goliath, and if he falls upon you, blame none but yourself.

(Post Speech: "Mr Cameron certainly has one eye on the way his words will be interpreted by the current and, more importantly, future Democrat or non-Bush Republican administration.")

BBC REPORT 2

In full: Cameron on foreign policy

Just been watching a report...

..on Vietnam. Really very interesting, it outlined the economic reforms that were put in place. Given that I bought Capital on my 18th birthday and read it cover to cover, accompanied by jumping back and forth, what has come to be known as 'Communism' is really a misnomer. I think there is an axiom that people like to quote to appear clever, it goes 'Communists have read Marx, Capitalists have understood him'. Well then perhaps in the truest sense they can maybe write a paper on the economic system of the future, let's say in 4000 words, '21st Century economics: Fluidity in the movement of Capital. Discuss.'. Must have issues would be the synthesis of Marxism and capitalism, given that the Marxist system is often called dialectic materialism, it seems quite a good proposition.

The programme focused on what would occur in staggered parallel between economics and politics. This is very interesting, and I'm sure that Vietnam is being closely watched by its larger brother, China. I find the whole region fascinating, as a westerner fixated with the Levant, the Orient proper holds many secrets and a truly ancient culture. It is alluded to by Muhammad himself, when he says 'Seek ye knowledge, even when it is in China'. There is of course an old Islamic tradition in China, which was recounted to me by some muslim elders I travelled with from the sub-continent, it is said that the emperor of China welcomed the muslim migrants saying 'There is no conflict between Islam and Confuciounism', who quickly became successful partcipants in the business and economic affairs of China.

I just can't help thinking that maybe Muhammad saw something during his journey on the night of ascension. After all we do not know how long he was actually gone, nor what he saw, tho' in the linear time of the life of the prophet it was merely a night. How is it said 'When they see the true reality it will be as if their whole life was the blinking of an eye', so plenty of time in a night to see what may come to pass....

You're on a crowded street....

...life or death decision...Q.) Which one looks suspicious????

A.) All of them.