Monday, November 22, 2010

The Coffee Rules > Falsity As Totality > The Big Nothing


Dad - "Sam and Marg are coming over so they'll probably want coffee."

Nobby - "Er... possibly... I guess."

Dad - "Well, is it alright if I have a coffee?"

Nobby (rolling eyes) - "Oh for fuck's sake. You don't have to ask permission to have a coffee. The coffee is in there, the pot is in there, you just go and make one. I've shown you how to do it any number of times. We don't need any silly games. I've told you, I don't care what you do - you may do anything you like, go make a coffee, whatever - but just include me out of the silly games."

Dad (with a look of cold hatred in his face) - "It's not a game."

Nobby - "It is a game. If it has rules and it has roles it's a game. What are the rules? Okay, here they are, I'll tell you - The Coffee Rules:

1. (nodding head with happy face): You really, really like having a coffee.
2. (shaking head with sad face): You can't make a coffee.
3. (nodding head): Nobby can make a coffee.
4. (shaking head): You can't ask Nobby for a coffee if it's only for you.
5. (nodding head): You can ask for a coffee if it's being made for other people.

"Thus (finger goes in the air as dominoes of realisation fall), if Nobby is making coffee for other people... it's alright for me to mention it... and since I am mentioning it, if I ask very, very politely and meekly so that no one could possibly object... and besides which, I'm not asking for me, I'm asking for other people... then I can have a coffee! Yay! Victory in the Pacific!

"God spare me. And that's the coffee game. It and a thousand other variations, always this way. And for yourself within the logic of the game, the question 'Is it alright if I have a coffee?' makes sense. But if you're me and you think the game is bullshit to begin with, the question is absurd. And it is absurd. It's precisely as absurd as 'Is it alright if I turn on the TV?', and 'Is it alright if I go to bed?', and 'Is it alright if I don't finish my meal?'. And we know it's absurd because: What if I was to answer no? No, you must stay up all night staring at a black television forcing yourself to eat the cold congealed remains of your dinner. Yeah right, what obvious bullshit.

"But never mind all that. I'm going to short circuit the game. Come with me, you're going to make yourself a coffee. You make yourself twenty cups of tea a day and making coffee is no different. You're perfectly capable. You can do one, you can do the other. Let's do it."


After a momentary pause wherein he wonders if he can sulk his way out of it without looking like a complete dickhead (and quickly deciding no), he gets up and under my instruction makes himself a coffee. It takes a couple of minutes and is slightly more complicated than turning on a light switch but not much.

Shortly thereafter Sam and Marg arrive, and with his coffee in front of him, and to prove he's not a bullshit artist and how necessary and right the game was, he makes a big fuss of asking them if they want a coffee. The prospect of further game playing and point scoring is cruelly crushed when they say no. Cue the eye-roll. And without looking, I know for a cold hard certainty that the old man's head is now running with pointless calculations for how he might have achieved the end result of having a coffee made for him in spite of no one else wanting one and all the while still conforming to the rules of the game. Games is all there is.


I also know with equal certainty that he will never make a coffee for himself ever again. Here, as in the real world, there is no greater crime than the calling of a game. The old man would rather do without coffee for the rest of his life, indeed never mention the accursed drink again, as long as we never go anywhere near a conversation that may involve his falsity being called out. The only thing that will put that look of hatred on his face is having a game named.

And in this regard he's nothing special. We see it all the time. Every idiotic charade will take place in order to preserve the sanctity of falsity uber alles. We will turn ourselves inside-out, say any idiotic thing, declare black to be white, whatever, and all to avoid acknowledging the mind buggering breadth and depth of the lie.

---

I realise now that when I wrote that Big Lie thing a while back I made a mistake. I declared that the great sin being protected in the bullshit discussion about Hitler and the Big Lie was usury. It isn't. Usury is merely a mechanism under the overarching ne plus ultra sin of falsity itself. The arse-about crap surrounding what we call Hitler's Big Lie exists in order to protect falsity as totality. This is the topic that may not be broached. Everything underneath it is effectively second fiddle. Even the sleek viciousness of usury must kneel at the altar of falsehood.


Whether you want to use the term or not, it's all about the continuum. That's the selfishness / selflessness continuum at the top of the page there. It's un-patented so anyone may feel free to steal it and do whatever they like with it. And ever predictable yours truly, there's nothing I like better than throwing the topic-du-jour up against the continuum to see which of them comes out of it alive.

Here we plunge into circular logic but never mind, let's just go with it. When juxtaposed against the unarguable rightness of selflessness, the concomitant 'wrongness' of selfishness becomes too obvious for itself. Further, as one travels in the wrong direction on the continuum the more obvious this becomes. Thus: the mind set that says that an accumulation of chateaux, yachts with helicopters, and under-age sex-slaves is more important than the right of entire towns not to be fire-bombed must come from a false view of the self. It must. And we're at a truly fundamental level here - the level of the self versus the not-self. This is the anti-buddha sure, and such an black beast must view himself, and everything not-him (which is to say 'all of creation') through a lens of falsity. Falsity comes first and foremost, the thing without which there is nothing, not even the definition.


It's not for no reason that one of Satan's titles is the Prince of Lies. Such a personification could never be called the Prince of Usury, or Theft, or any other lesser sin. Each of those is merely a mechanism under the totality of falsity, the falsity that comes with denying the continuum. And for anyone who wants to point to beasts and the reality of their behaviour, go and do that thing - tell yourself you're a beast and prove my point for me while you're at it. Back to Satan now: in naming the personification of evil, only one sin was ever going to cut the mustard and that was lying.

---

In the beginning was the word. Yeah, right. What are the odds that that word was a lie? With falsity at the heart of things I'd say it's somewhere in the vicinity of a certainty. And in today's discussion we take the word away (word = thought = conversation = philosophy = every goddamn thing) and what is there? What of a person is left? What of a people is left? With the lies so big, so numerous, so total, to call the lie leads where? A discussion like this of such a totality, whether for the macro or the micro, is a discussion of the self, an attack at the heart, a thing that cannot be permitted.

---

Let justice be done though the heavens fall. I admit that there's not much space in that expression for the micro but what if we substitute 'let the truth be told' for 'let justice be done'? That works doesn't it? So let's carry on - Why do we hear that phrase but never see it take place? Kevin Costner said it in JFK and what happened? Nothing - Tommy Lee Jones walked. Was anyone surprised? Of course not. The heavens cannot fall. Everything must be done to ensure that that doesn't happen.

Not forgetting the irony of course: there is no heaven. As if let justice be done though the heavens fall could escape the totality of the lie. In the beginning was the lie remember? The lie, the totality, cannot be called. God forbid. Without it we are nothing. Without it God is nothing. No word, no God, no nothing.

Excellent. Let's do it - Nothing Here We Come. There's no point being bloody-minded if you're not going to go all the way. Let's strip it to the core until nothing is left. Fuck heaven.

Everything is gonna burn.
We'll all take turns.
I'll get mine too.


Whatever the fuck it is, this thing we've constructed, this bullshit self, we'll burn it all away. Send that metaphoric monkey back to his bullshit heaven. Fingers crossed there's nothing left except for whatever there was before the word, before the lie. God knows what that'll look like. A man sitting under a Bodhi tree perhaps. Or is that too romantic? How about a burned out eucalyptus with the smell of charcoal hanging heavy?

The tax file number, the family name, the christian name, all gone with nobody recognisable left behind.

This is all bullshit of course. None of it makes a lick of sense. But since when did that ever stop anyone?

Friday, November 19, 2010

The Useful Person


"Did you enjoy the trip to Brisbane?"

"It was good. The high point was when we were sitting in the waiting area for the CT scan thingy at the hospital and the old man was filling out the form and he asked me what the date was. And it was funny he asked me that because when he's at home he asks me what day it is every single day. Sometimes several times a day. In spite of the fact that the newspaper is always right there in front of him face up with the date prominent, he never bothers looking. Instead he asks me what day it is and I always lean across and say, 'The newspaper's here. What does it say?' And I point at the date and say, 'Oh look it's Thursday.' And he always says, 'Oh right,' and there we are, another conversation dealt with.

"So we're in the reception area in the hospital and he's there filling out his form and he asks me the date. The day is one thing and the date is another - I never know what the date is. So I ask the receptionist and she tells us and he writes it down. And it was good that that happened because otherwise the 12 hours I spent in the ambulance and standing around at the hospital would have been a complete waste of time with me as the most superfluous man in the world. As it was it was a good thing I was there since I saved him having to ask the receptionist himself.

"And not only that, what was really brilliant was how it cast my whole life into stark relief. What with all those hours sitting in the ambulance staring out the window (with barely five words of conversation during the whole trip) I came up with a one-page Robert Crumb cartoon that describes my life.

"It involves a man at an information window (that would be me) and on the glass it says 'Ask me what day it is'. And above the glass is a huge LED sign, it's like 2m across in bright red and it has the day and date on it - Thursday 18th November 2010. And anyway, I'm standing at the window and an old man comes up and says, 'What day is it?' and I point up at the big LED sign and say, 'If you look just above your head there, there's a big sign with the day and date on it and it says that today is Thursday.' 'Thanks very much,' says the man and shuffles off. And the next day he comes back and asks me what day it is and I point up at the sign, 'If you look just above your head...' etc. etc. And we repeat that over and over until the page is full and then in the last panel someone comes along and says, 'You're doing a great job. The old man is very lucky to have you.' "

Monday, November 8, 2010

David Sassoon - a wikipedia whitewashing for the biggest drug dealer in history


David Sassoon is a most extraordinary character. During the nineteenth century he was the richest man in the world. It was said of him that "whatever moves over sea or land feels the hand or bears the mark of Sassoon and Company". And when you're that wealthy and that powerful, if a country like China declares your product of opium illegal then you merely get another country, like Great Britain, to declare war on them. Subsequently, all of that Chinese history: the Opium Wars, the theft of Hong Kong, the rampant looting and destruction of China's cultural treasures - variously depicted heroically in Hollywood pictures such as 55 Days in Peking and The Sand Pebbles, or through a lens of subjugation and humiliation in Chinese flicks like the Once Upon a Time in China series - all of that may be laid at the feet of the greatest drug kingpin in the history of the world, David Sassoon.

And astoundingly nobody has ever heard of him. He has no listing in Encyclopaedia Britannica at all - nothing, not a sausage. The only Sassoon they acknowledge is anti-war poet Siegfried Sassoon, whose idiot father got himself disinherited by the family for failing to marry a Jewess. Clearly Siegfried's dad also failed to teach his son the Talmud: "When you go to war do not go as the first, but as the last, so that you may return as the first." Oh well, never mind.

But it occurs to me that in some ways Sassoon's non-existence in the official records is par for the course. Fame in inverse proportion to wealth and power are how things are done at that level. Who was it that said, "Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws"? Who knows? Did anyone say it at all? It's not in wikiquotes so perhaps it never happened. Unsurprisingly, the Sassoons married into the family of whoever it was that didn't say that and who certainly don't control the monetary policy of almost every nation on earth.

Mind you, the from-on-high Britannica is one thing and the democratic Wikipedia is another. There, David Sassoon does have an entry. But the beauty of things democratic is the ease with which they may be subverted. And here (coming to the point at last) you may see that process take place right before your very eyes. The first entry here comes from my hard drive and I have it dated late 2007. This is immediately followed by wikipedia's current entry. See if you can spot the difference. Sorry, no brownie points because really it's too goddamn easy. However for those who need a hint - see if you can find the words 'opium wars' anywhere in amongst the second entry. NB. The so-called 'Legacy' section of each is a) identical, b) predictable, and, c) not worth reading, so feel free not to.*

BTW. Have a look at wikipedia's entry for the Sassoon family. See if you can spot the inbreeding. It seems the products of this inbreeding are all talmudic rabbis. Whilst I'm pretty sure you don't have to be inbred to be a scholar of the talmud, I suspect it helps.



- Wikipedia 2007 -

David Sassoon (1792 – 1864) was a prominent Bombay (now Mumbai) businessman of Jewish-Iraqi origin who is best known for monopolizing the opium trade into China and encouraging its use there.[citation needed] He was born in Baghdad into a family of Nasis, traditional leaders of the Jewish community. His father, Saleh Sassoon, was a wealthy banker and chief treasurer to the pashas, the governors of Baghdad, from 1781 to 1817. However, the Jews came under pressure from the Muslim Turkish rulers of Baghdad. Fleeing with his wife and family and a small part of the family's wealth, Sassoon arrived in Bombay in 1833.

He started business in Bombay with a counting house, a small carpet godown, and an opium business. He was soon one of the richest men in Bombay. He chose to follow the market, but he pursued all his enterprises better than his chief rivals, the Parsis. By the end of the 1850s, it was said of him that "silver and gold, silks, gums and spices, opium and cotton, wool and wheat - whatever moves over sea or land feels the hand or bears the mark of Sassoon and Company".

Role in the Opium War in China

In Bombay, David Sassoon established the house of David Sassoon & Co., with branches at Calcutta, Shanghai, Canton and Hong Kong. His business, which included a monopoly of the opium trade in China, (even though opium was banned in China) extended as far as Yokohama, Nagasaki, and other cities in Japan.

In 1836, the opium trade reached over 30,000 chests per annum and drug addiction in coastal cities became endemic. In 1839, the Manchu Emperor ordered that the opium smuggling be stopped. He named the Commissioner of Canton, Lin Tse-hsu, to lead a campaign against opium. Lin seized and destroyed 2,000 chests of Sassoon opium. An outraged David Sassoon demanded that China compensate for the seizure or Great Britain retaliate.[citation needed]

The Chinese Army, decimated by 10 years of opium addiction, proved no match for the British Army.[citation needed] The war ended in 1842 with the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. The "peace treaty" included these provisions:
1. Full legalisation of the opium trade in China
2. Compensation from the opium stockpiles confiscated by Lin of two million pounds
3. Territorial sovereignty for the British Crown over several designated offshore islands.

Legacy

Although David Sassoon did not speak English, he became a naturalised British citizen in 1853. He kept the dress and manners of the Baghdadi Jews, but allowed his sons to adopt English manners. His son, Abdullah changed his name to Albert, moved to England, became a Baronet and married into the Rothschild family. All the Sassoons of Europe are said to be descendants of David Sassoon.

He built a synagogue in the Fort (area) and another in Byculla, as well as a school, a Mechanics' Institute, a library and a convalescent home in Pune.

David Sassoon was conscious of his role as a leader of the Jewish community in Bombay. He helped to arouse a sense of Jewish identity amongst the Bene Israeli and Cochin Jewish communities. The Sassoon Docks (built by his son) and the David Sassoon Library are named after him. He also built a synagogue in Byculla.

David Sassoon died in his country house in Pune in 1864. His business interests were inherited by his son.

- Wikipedia 2010 -

David Sassoon (October 1792 – November 7, 1864) was the treasurer of Baghdad between 1817 and 1829 and the leader of the Jewish community in Bombay (now Mumbai).

Biography

Sassoon was born in Baghdad, where his father, Saleh Sassoon[1], was a wealthy businessman, chief treasurer to the pashas (the governors of Baghdad) from 1781 to 1817, and leader of the city's Jewish community.

The family were Sephardim with Spanish origins. His mother was Amam Gabbai. After a traditional education in the Hebrew language, Sassoon married Hannah in 1818. They had two sons and two daughters before she died in 1826. Two years later he married Farha Hyeem (who was born in 1812 and died in 1886). The pair had six sons and three daughters.

Following increasing persecution of Baghdad's Jews by Daud Pasha, the family moved to Bombay via Persia. Sassoon was in business in Bombay no later than 1832, originally acting as a middleman between British textile firms and Gulf commodities merchants, then investing in valuable harbour properties. His major competitors were Parsis, whose profits were built on their domination of the Sino-Indian opium trade since the 1820s.

When the Treaty of Nanking opened up China to British traders, Sassoon developed his textile operations into a profitable triangular trade: Indian yarn and opium were carried to China, where he bought goods which were sold in Britain, where he obtained Lancashire cotton products. He sent his son Elias David Sassoon to Canton, where he was the first Jewish trader (with 24 Parsi rivals). In 1845 David Sassoon & Sons opened an office in what would soon become Shanghai's British concession, and it became the firm's second hub of operations.

It was not until the 1860s that the Sassoons were able to lead the Baghdadi Jewish community in overtaking Parsi dominance. A particular opportunity was the American Civil War, during which turmoil American cotton exports declined. Lancashire factories replaced American cotton imports with Sassoon's Indian cotton

Legacy

Although David Sassoon did not speak English, he became a naturalised British citizen in 1853. He kept the dress and manners of the Baghdadi Jews, but allowed his sons to adopt English manners. His son, Abdullah changed his name to Albert, moved to England, became a Baronet and married into the Rothschild family. All the Sassoons of Europe are said to be descendants of David Sassoon.

He built a synagogue in the Fort (area) and another in Byculla, as well as a school, a Mechanics' Institute, a library and a convalescent home in Pune.

David Sassoon was conscious of his role as a leader of the Jewish community in Bombay. He helped to arouse a sense of Jewish identity amongst the Bene Israeli and Cochin Jewish communities. The Sassoon Docks (built by his son) and the David Sassoon Library are named after him.

David Sassoon died in his country house in Pune in 1864. His business interests were inherited by his son Sir Albert Sassoon; Elias David had established a rival firm.

---

*Sure enough, weathy Jews are always described as 'philanthropists' in spite of the fact that they only ever give to Jewish charities. The greatest criminal in Australian history, Dick Pratt, owner of packaging mega-corp Visy, was responsible for running a cartel that bilked customers of somewhere in the vicinity of a billion dollars. The corporate fine of $36M was the biggest in Australian history but actually represented 0.75% of Pratt's personal fortune. What with being terminally ill, all charges against Pratt as an individual were dropped, and that being the case, and he being such a fine contributor to charities (all Jewish) it was fitting and proper that he be publicly rehabilitated, with no less than that shit Johnny Howard donning a yamulka and declaring him the best thing since sliced bagels. No doubt his rehabilitation wasn't hurt by the the fact that he'd had half a dozen ex-prime-ministers and state premiers on the payroll with one, Bob Hawke (the man who publicly wept for Israel) receiving up to $8333.33 a month as 'consultation fees'.

Either way it's telling that we use the word 'philanthropist' in describing a person who only gives to Jewish charities. One would think that with the Greek base of philanthropy (γειά σου Hellene) being philos 'loving' and anthropos 'mankind', a fellow who only contributes to Jewish charities would not qualify. The mistake here of course is that, as anyone who's read the talmud would know, Jews are mankind. Everyone else (ie. we Goyim) isn't so much a human as 'a beast in human form' there to save the Jews from being served by, I don't know... donkeys or armadillos or something. Thus it is demonstrated that the description of wealthy Jews who contribute solely to Jewish charities (shabbat goy politicians notwithstanding) as 'philanthropists' is perfectly correct and proper.

PS. And one does love the irony that the very people who gave us the word anthropos, the ancient Greeks, should find themselves (along with everyone else) excluded from it. Never mind.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

shit or get off the pot


Craig Murray - a man who's not afraid to call a small potato, a small potato. The fans of small potatoes who populate his comments section love him for it, but me, I really have to wonder how Craig differs from a limited hangout spook. Anyway, I've been taking him to task.

Hullo Craig,

Apropos me raging at you over at a slightly earlier piece on this topic, would it be fair for me to summarise your position thus?

- Any number of tiny pissweak terrorist threats are faked (by peoples unnamed but presumably Western security services).

- That notwithstanding, the big events such as 911, the July 7 bombing, the Madrid bombing etc. are real and actually committed by real Muslim terrorists exactly as described by the same media that declares all the pissweak ones real too.

Is that right?

Because I have to tell you mate that that's an untenable position. Why would a SPECTRE/SMERSH style al qaeda carry out the biggest terrorist attacks in the history of the world and then fall down in between times thus requiring our opportunistic secret services to fill in the gaps?

It seems we're required to believe that the world's best funded, most professional security services are faking the chickenfeed stuff whilst the big stuff is done by the world's crummiest, most two-bit operation run out of caves in Afghanistan by blokes on donkeys. It's akin to having a class of eight year olds in charge of the moon programme whilst NASA gets to set off bottle rockets in the back yard. Honestly mate, it's that obvious.

C'mon Craig, seriously, when are you going to dump this unsustainable, logic-defying, wishy-washy bullshit? If you're not prepared to go full-tilt why not just pack it in? I get it that the spooks want everyone to know that David Kelly was whacked, and fair enough that you might be scared, but ditch the charade mate. As the Chinese say, 'shit or get off the pot'. Are you calling the fuckers out or aren't you?


Craig ignores me of course. And quite right too since that is the smart money. But were we face to face with him unable to run away, or change the subject or whatever, I expect I'd eat him alive. Last time, when I took him to task in that mental horse thing, he popped into the comments, cracked a lame gag, and took off. No surprises there since I completely monstered his idiotic argument of 'there's-no-way-911-was-a-conspiracy-since-there'd-be-too-many-people-and-someone-would-talk' and I doubt that there was a single germane thing he could have said that wouldn't have made him look idiotic.