ten short years

Lately it's all been about Russia. I shan't go into the Ossetia/Georgia thing. There's been tons written about it. It seems the thoughts run the gamut from it having been a neocon/Israeli trap for the Russians (that they fell into), to it being a huge misstep by the neocons with Putin tearing their playhouse down. I'm inclined to the latter but stand to be corrected. I don't think the Georgians did anything that they weren't meant to do. The slaughtering of the people of Tskhinvili was always the plan. It served no purpose at all beyond its role as provocation. Did the neocons/Israelis expect some different response from Russia? Or did Russia behave precisely as they expected? Frankly, I don't know.

But to hell with that. What struck me was the constant description (in all of the coverage, mainstream and alternative) of Russia as resurgent and newly powerful thanks to its oil revenue. Sorry, I'm going to have to call bullshit on this one.


The logic is that since oil prices have been high for the last couple of years, Russia's coffers are full and it can throw its weight around. But oil has always been a coffer-filler, recent bullshit prices or no. Were other oil rich countries poor ten years ago? Is oil a new thing in Russia? Did they only just discover it? Or perhaps they only just got round to refining and pipelining it? I'm being rhetorical, sure, since these questions have obvious answers.

The huge, glaring, and frankly unmissable difference between the Russia of ten years ago and today is who is running the joint. Ten years ago under the drunken Yeltsin, Russia was ruled by the Oligarchs, otherwise idiotically known as the Russian Mafia. I say 'idiotically' because to describe this Mafia as 'Russian' makes as much sense as describing the Mafia in the US as 'American'. Who does that? The Mafia in America is Italian and everyone knows it. Same-same in Russia where everyone knows that their Mafia was, and is, Jewish.

Of the seven oligarchs in Russia under Yeltsin, six were Jewish and the seventh wasn't worth tuppence ha'penny. In fact he was only on the list so that people could pretend it wasn't an all Jewish affair. (Much like how North Korea was only in the 'axis of evil' to hide the obviousness of a bunch of Jews telling us all our enemies are Muslims. Truth is, no one actually gives a toss about North Korea.)


Anyway, the big difference between Russia of ten years ago and today is the fact that Putin threw out the Jewish Mafia. It's so fucking obvious. And as ever, the bloc-media misses the elephant in the living room. Well, shit, eh? No surprises there. But never mind the media, the truly extraordinary thing here is that within the space of a mere ten years a country can go from bullshit to bullish.

Gosh! A light-bulb goes off in my head. Has this happened before? Has there been another country that went from basket-case to world power after deposing Jewish control of their economy? Anyone? Can we think of a country, a few decades back, that was busted on its arse with everyone taking their weekly pay home in a wheel-barrow, and a mere ten years later was strong enough to stand up for themselves? Might they, like the Russians, have insisted on the rights of their countrymen trapped behind arbitrary borders? Might they also, like those Russians again, have been depicted by the Jewish media as villains? Ha ha ha ha ha. Sorry, but with the shit we've been fed by the media all our lives, if you didn't laugh, you'd have to cry.


So it seems we have two recent examples of countries throwing off the yoke of bankers and money-men, and in the space of a mere ten years going from zero to a hundred. As a writer, I do detest presenting examples in pairs. Pairs are good for dichotomies and symmetries and such. But ordinarily, to prove a case it pays to present examples in threes. If you pay attention, you'll find I very rarely break this rule. Subsequently I racked my brains looking for a third example. And I couldn't think of any. Not in the past anyway. The future is another matter. What country has the potential to shed its busted-arse status and return to economic powerhouse (and complete my rule of three)?

Here is the salutary lesson - If a country throws off the yoke of Jewish control of its economy/money supply, it can rebuild itself in ten years. Roll that thought around in your head because it's a mind-fucker. Only ten years...


What one man can do, another can also. Is the US really incapable of doing what the Russians did? I don't see why not. If the US was to throw off the bankers, it would join Russia and China as a free sovereign nation. Could those who wrote the Protocols survive in the face of the biggest three powers in the world not being under their control? There's hope yet, you know.

I save Israel's bacon

My heart bleeds for Israel. And never more so than now. Israel currently faces a dilemma unlike any it has faced before. Previously Israel's enemies adopted various battlefield strategies, only to see them all fail. This is because they picked the wrong battlefields. Only one battlefield counted, and that was that of public perception.

Israel, by way of the Jewish bloc-media, always held that theatre. They set the terrain, made all the rules, and decided all the outcomes. Thus Israelis were ever the blameless victims whose evil enemies deserved whatever spectacular viciousness the Israelis inflicted upon them. The US congress would applaud and send yet more money in honour of Israel's plucky selfless gallantry.

But lately an extraordinary thing has taken place. The Israelis face a battlefield not of their own contrivance. They don't own the theatre anymore. A group called Free Gaza has seized the initiative. They will sail their boat 'The Free Gaza' into Gazan waters and deliver relief supplies to the Palestinians. The Israelis are faced with a situation that will attract world attention and in which they cannot cast themselves as victims. Regardless of what they do they will lose. Do they stop the boat, board it and arrest everyone? Do they let it sail on? It's the cleverest thing since Octavian sent Mrs Antony to visit Mr Antony at Cleopatra's Palace. The Israelis are, like Antony was, shit up a creek.

Of course this goes against God. It certainly goes against his chosen people. And God pity any people who have the temerity to deny Jewish people the right to control how others view them. Death is the least they deserve. With this in mind, and in a spirit of wishing to do my humble best for the greatness of the Jewish nation and people, I have come up with the following cunning plan. By my best count it is a three-fer and, by way of money, everyone should make out like bandits. Israel will sink the Free Gaza and blame it on Iran.

Here's the plan -

1 - Find an old F-14 Tomcat and transport it to a secure Israeli air-force base. Ideally it'll be in going condition. Paint it up in Iranian Air Force colours. This will be packed with explosives and flown into an Israeli coastal town after the attack. Make sure you have cameras on hand. This should provide spectacular footage.

2- Tell the Americans to provide two Stealth fighters to fly 'stealth' into Iran and 'non-stealth' out of it, crossing Iraq to coincide with the attack. They don't go anywhere near the ship and actually land in Israel. Find out what kind of payload a Stealth can carry. Perhaps you can use them to fly some drugs in? I'm just trying to maximise the profit aspect of each part of this exercise. Ideally each compartment will pay for itself. And when the US Air Force comes for free, so much the better.

3 - To ensure the stand-down of the US military, announce the first annual 'Israel Congratulates America' holiday and gala performance to fall on the day before the Free Gaza is to be sunk. This year's honorees are to be the brave US military personnel who've done so much to heroically bring freedom to the people of the Middle East. The US can fly them in from Iraq and any other places where they might be able to put a stopper in the plan. Organise a gala performance with Barbra Streisand and a host of A-listers. This will provide brilliant media footage of thousands of ecstatic US military personnel in full-dress rig waving Israeli flags. All military personnel are to be provided with a 'personal assistant' for the duration of their stay. I'm thinking the individual officers can fill out a preference questionaire beforehand asking about whether they prefer a male or female PA. The PA's will be responsible for the date-rape drugging of their charges who will then be photographed in bed with children. They'll each wake up to the news of the Iranian attack and a quicktime of their own personal child blowjob. Ever the loyal servants of Israel, they.

5 - Before the bombing, jam all the Free Gaza's radio frequencies. The Israeli Air Force now bombs the Free Gaza. The first target should be its communications ability. Then napalm the decks. Have helicopter gunships machine-gun the lifeboats and any survivors. Finally, fire a missile that will definitely sink it. Just in case it doesn't sink keep John McCain on hand to handle the cover up. His father did a cracking job last time round in '67.

6 - Launch an hysterical media campaign about Iran's shock sinking of the Free Gaza. The line will be - Iranian militants violently opposed to the Free Gaza's spirit of non-violent resistance, and in support of their terrorist Hezbolla allies, have sunk the Free Gaza killing all on board. One Iranian plane will be nominally shot down at sea by the Israeli Air Force, heroically doing the job that the Americans seemed incapable of doing. The pilot of the other F-14 will take the role of suicide bomber with his plane crashed by remote-control into an innocent Israeli town killing six million people (just joking. Would 600 people be about right? I'll go with your call on this.)

7 - Casus Belli Mission Accomplished! There's nothing for it now but to have Israeli kids write their cute messages of hate on the nosecones of the Iran-bound nukes.

And there you have it! A public relations disaster turned into a public relations victory. The battlefield initiative retaken. Those who thought they could take on the Jewish state in the theatre of public perception will have been taught a lesson. And anyone out there thinking they might do likewise, will know the price to be paid. And all it took was ambition to the point of hubris, a preparedness to kill innocents and sacrifice one's own people, a mastery of blackmail and it's subsequent control of a US military golem, a millenia-long superior ability to play the victim, and finally, the utter certainty that God's chosen people can do no wrong.

The Pedophocracy and the Media

God I hate the media. And sure enough, that was the angle I took when I wrote about this topic previously. The point of that piece was to wonder at the nature of the media's discussion of paedophilia. Did you get the gag in that sentence? It was the word 'discussion', ha ha ha. How droll I am. There is no discussion. Well, there might be, but who can hear it with all the high-pitch screaming?


I vaguely concentrated on the media's role in making us hysterical about penny-ante pervies (and particularly a famous non-pervy artist) whilst astoundingly having nothing to say about the plummeting age of pubescence amongst girls. And they do this whilst also encouraging these ever younger girls to dress and behave sexily. It struck me that they were simultaneously debauching the victims, and the victimisers, whilst having the rest of us lose our wits at the prospect of this debauchery. But what did it all mean? And to what end?


Certainly the media desires us all to be fearful. Between toilet germs, appearing uncool in the eyes of teenagers, and those foreigners who hate us for our freedom, there's a lot they'd have us fearful of. But in the fear stakes, paedophiles win. It's every parent's nightmare that their child might be taken. But truth be known - there are paedophiles, and there are paedophiles - if you can dig it.


It seems that lately, the most numerous targets of our fear (certainly in the news) are those sad fuckers with hard-drives full of jpegs and mpegs. Every couple of months there'll be a big bust and dozens of guys will be hauled away. We've no idea if these people ever actually get away from their computers and fiddle with kids for real. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. Who knows? Has anyone heard a 'discussion' by the media about paedophiles who started with computer porn and then progressed into sexual assault? If there were such creatures, could the media pass up an opportunity to crucify them in public?


The other targets are less numerous. They're those sad fuckers who probably don't know how to use a computer and are the traditionalist playground pervies. You've seen these people. The media loves to tell us where they live so we can go and burn their houses down. Keep in mind that the media does not distinguish between the traditionalists and the digitally literate. That's just me. Just like I'm the only guy who'll ask, how many of these old-fashioned street-wandering pervies are there in our communities? Half of fuck-all? Just curious.


Oh yeah. I nearly forgot. There's a third category. These are the basilisks - the monsters of our nightmares - those creatures that beggar the imagination. Like Mark Dutroux. What sets basilisks like Dutroux apart is the fact that he operated as part of a 'network'. Perhaps it was just me, but when the Dutroux story was on the news, I recall saying to whomever I was with, 'How do these guys meet each other?' It's a fair question. Can we imagine a social event where one fellow casually says he spent the weekend kiddy-raping and another fellow says, 'Hey, me too. We should hang out.' The best I could figure was that they might meet in jail. But Dutroux hadn't been in jail and somehow he knew a lot of people. How does this work? What the fuck is going on?


As ever, the man with the answers is the mighty Dave McGowan. Dutroux is not an anomaly. If anything he's a cog in a machine. And it's a big machine and has cogs beyond counting. This child-abduction ring is not only massive, which is to say, global - it is also untouchable. We know this because occasionally a local branch would be busted - Dutroux in Belgium, the 'Finders' in Florida and Washington DC, the McMartin pre-school scandal in New York, military child care centres in the Presidio and West Point, the Country Walk Babysitting Service in Florida, etc, etc, ad nauseam. These were too big for the media to avoid. McGowan follows the trajectory of the media coverage of each of these busts as they slowly but surely sink beneath the waves. With the utmost diligence, the media would ensure that trails were not followed, facts were not uncovered, and questions were not asked. All these stories disappeared with barely a trace. In the media, these rings were not interconnected. There were no links connecting the paedophiles with the local police and government, the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, or the Whitehouse. Same, same, internationally. There were no links between the US and Belgium or any other countries. Like the US News said, in discussing the 'Finders' - "The group's practices, the police said, were eccentric - not illegal.” Story? What story? Apart from some crazy parents led astray by crazy child therapists, nothing happened. None of it ever was.


In the face of this third category it seems like the first two are barely different at all. Fine, let's start again: there's two paedophilias. One's amateur, small-time and the subject of much media screaming. The other is huge, professional, sanctioned, and untouchable. Ideally, never the twain shall meet. Not in real life, not in the media. Further to these differences, the individual sad fuckers we see in the media do not grow their numbers. It's a movement almost completely incapable of self perpetuation, certainly not of flourishing. I'm guessing they'll never go beyond a tiny decimal point of the population. The Pedophocracy is something else. It can reproduce and swell its population. It has defence mechanisms to combat environmental depredations such as getting busted. Provided it stays in the dark, it fears nothing.


The media is an inverse perception machine. The tiny threat is made huge. The huge threat is shrunk down to nothing at all. If you want to know how big the pedophocracy is, you need merely look to its treatment in the media.

Are we suprised? Does any of this differ from other things?
-Muslims, a tiny 'threat', are enlarged into Al Qaeda. Zionists (Who? Aren't they, like, out of fiction or something?) perpetually pop up in all over the globe (Georgia, this week!) and yet seem not to exist. Small threat - Big. Big threat - non-existant.
-Small-time drug users and sellers get busted in huge numbers. Massive sanctioned drug operations, from the Sassoons of yore, to the 'Russian' mafia of today, carry on unconcerned about exposure. Small problem - Big. Big problem - non-existant.
-Taxpayer pennies for welfare mothers is ever the standby bogeyman while the staggering amounts of taxpayer bazillions as interest to privately-owned reserve banks are... are... what? What privately-owned Reserve Bank? Small money - Big. Big money - non-existant.


Is there a pattern here? Sure, of course. But the three examples immediately above make sense in terms of money, power, and geo-politics. Where's the logic in the pedophocracy? What purpose does this huge machine serve? How does raping kids further someone's agenda? Agenda for what? More kiddy raping? What's the point? And why does the media expend energy on the penny-ante end of paedophilia at all? Why not hush it all up? Why are there two parallel paedophilias? Why not have just one and keep it secret?


These are all good questions and I'm glad you asked them. But there are other questions too. Subsequently I've split this thing up into three. Next I'll have a go at the bigger picture of what purpose it all serves. Following that, I'll ask what it means in terms of Charles Darwin. You know the guy - beard, Beagle, behaviour. If a thing doesn't get his tick, it doesn't fly. Does paedophilia get a tick from Darwin? Really?

The Pedophocracy

Hi Folks - Sorry I've been slack and idle. I took a week off in honour of the Greek goddess Aergia.

But I'm on the job now and shall be back shortly to post a piece under the above title. If you want to get a headstart, read this. This gives you the first six chapters of Dave McGowan's Programmed to Kill, one of the most singular books ever written. I never tout things, but this is worth spending money on. It's on amazon.com.


These six chapters collectively titled 'The Pedophocracy' might just be the Rosetta Stone in explaining the means by which today's wickedness is conducted. Or that's my angle anyway. Back soon.

Dear Anonymous

An anonymous recently left this comment on the McGowan thing I wrote a little while ago. It struck a chord with me and I reprint it here with my thoughts on the matter following after.


Anonymous said...
I enjoy the works of McGowan very much and as an ex-southern fundamental christian, the more truth I find the better.

The sad truth about that for me is what difference can it make? I have no doubt that ALL religions are lies for the purpose of deceiving the masses and the few getting richer, but if there is no right or wrong, god or devil, why should any of this matter?

If I try to live and do good to my fellowman and someone else lives a life only to hate and destroy and we both get the same at death..nothing...what does it matter what we do?

Why should we try to make things better for the following generations if there is nothing beyond this life? We should steal, kill, lie or anything we can do to get all we can get while we are here!!!!

Hundreds of sweet precious children are abused mentally, emotionally and sexually almost every 30 seconds and few people care. What difference does that matter is there is nothing better beyond this life? If a man strives to do good and be kind to children and another man only lives to rape a child and yet they both get the same at the end of life why should we strive for the 'good'?

What kind of world is this and what does anything matter at all? Maybe this is the jumping off place of the universe but in the religious pious stupidity we are led to believe we are better! I want no part of any religion for as long as I draw breath.



Dear Anonymous,

Whatever pathetic consolation it may be, I know precisely how you feel. In fact, I suspect that most of the regulars here would be nodding their heads. Mate, you are not alone. A lot of us have been there. Everything that had once comprised the bedrock on which we based our understanding of ourselves and the world, has turned to shifting sand. Actually it was always thus. But now it's become so obvious that none of us can miss it. We've all learned that nothing was what we thought it was. And with nothing firm beneath our feet, it's hard to know who one should be.

It is my conceit here, to I think I have something to tell you. Maybe I do, maybe I don't. I'm going to write it regardless and hope that it's of some use. If it isn't, and you don't care for it, feel free to dismiss it. I will not take it personally.

Professionals might disagree, but I reckon you are undergoing a slo-mo variation of a nervous breakdown. I say this because your words were mine and 'nervous breakdown' was how I chose to define the complete disconnect I experienced. But don't be afraid of the word 'breakdown'. You may as well embrace it. When a thing is built wrong at a foundational level, invariably there's no point fiddling around the edges. You may as well break it down and start again. It is a good and necessary thing. And I'm not talking about society here. I'm talking about you.

If you're like me, your understanding of yourself was based majorly on your understanding of the world. And now you've realised you've been had. It was all a con, a load of shit designed by vicious greedy bastards. Religion is a con, banking is a con, tax is a con, the media is a con. All of these things told you who to be and what to do. And now the scales have fallen from your eyes and you know it's all bullshit. So! Who are you? Who should you be? How should you behave? Where is the firm ground on which you can say, 'This is who I am'?

Well, I hate to tell you that you will never find this firm ground - certainly not externally. The only firm ground you'll find will have to be yourself. That which is outside us, is not us, and nor should it define us. You say that there is no right and wrong. Actually there is, but so far you've pretty much let others define it for you. I'm not attaching any blame to you for this. You, me, we all did it. The main thing, in rejecting this definition-of-others, is that you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Which is to say, don't throw yourself out too.

Let's start with the wrong end of the stick. Clearly there is wrong behaviour. And you identified it quite eloquently. But rather than making sense of it with a thicket of complex rules, why don't we distil it into its single essence? All wrong behaviour is merely an expression of selfishness. Every 'sin' is only so, if it is carried out as an act of selfishness. All of the ten commandments can, believe it or not, be done selflessly - in which case they are no longer a 'sin'. Who knew?

Think of Robin Hood. He would lie, cheat, and steal, but all in a spirit of selflessness. Who cares what the reality was - he's mythologised for this selflessness. Had he robbed to enrich himself, there wouldn't be any myth. His heroic stature doesn't come from his breaking of the rules but from why he broke them. The rules were, and still are, bullshit. They were there to serve the selfish, which is to say, the wealthy and powerful. Forget the rules, the only thing that counts is the selflessness. The ten commandments, the seven deadly sins, whatever, only make sense in terms of their selflessness. If you view them in this fashion, idiotic discussions about white lies etc. are instantly resolved. Contradictions, clever tricks and self-serving loopholes all turn to a puff of smoke.

The rules are, and always were, bullshit. Given that the only certainty is change, they must fail. And they do. And you've seen it, you said so. So let's chuck them out. The only thing that counts is the question of 'for whom was the action done?' Did a person act out of narrow self-interest, or for the benefit of all?

It won't take much of a prompt from me to get you to wonder at the religious power structure of which you were a member, and why they never put things in terms of selflessness. Ha! The question answers itself. If an organisation was governed by the simple rubric of selflessness how, or why, would it's leaders amass all that power? How would they explain all those mansions with their hot and cold running blowjobs? These organisations, in refusing to discuss things in terms of selflessness, are telling you where the answer lies.

Let's not forget the government and the media. Of course the media tells you that greed is good. The media is run by the powerful and wealthy, which is to say selfish, and unsurprisingly they want you to revere the powerful and wealthy. Sure, of course. And here am I telling you, media-style, how to behave. But I'll also tell you - don't take my word for it. Do not believe me. Belief is what led you, and the rest of us, astray. Instead take this thought of selflessness (it's not mine you know. I merely echo others) and roll it around in your head. Apply it to anything you like. See for yourself if it makes sense.

For no particular reason, the Beatles song 'Money Can't Buy Me Love' came to mind. As did the old phrase, 'You can't buy happiness'. Wonder at these again. What are they apart form simple discussions of selfishness and selflessness? Simple things are easy to see. Complicated things are not so easy. This simple template of selflessness is not some magic key that will do your thinking for you. You've already had people hand you all the answers and you know what that's worth. Nothing.

You will have to be your own bedrock. You will have to struggle to embody what is right. Not only will you have to struggle to understand the right thing to do, you will have to struggle in the face of all those who will tell you that you are wrong. Stand firm. Don't be distracted by the selfish end of the continuum, regardless of how many people tell you that sins are virtues. Being distracted by the selfish and their selfish behaviour will serve no purpose. It's arguable that any religion (or society, same-same) basing itself on what one shouldn't do, was always doomed to failure. Forget what's wrong. Aim for what's right.

By defining yourself by what's best for others, you can find a strength that is unimpeachable. If a man cannot be accused of acting selfishly, he cannot be accused - period. He need not fear the lies of others. To shed fear is to shed the confusion and unhappiness that the lies are designed to instil. The selfish do not have this option. Those with the most to lose will live lives of fear. It stands to reason. And sure, they wish you to be fearful. Hell, do they ever! Reject them. Reject their falsehoods. Reject their fear. Turn away from all of it. Find yourself. You are all that you have and all that you need.

You have already come a long way. The path you are on is difficult. The main thing is that you knew to start it. I salute you. Here I will not discuss what I think you will find at the end of this journey. That would merely be my opinion, whatever that's worth. Not much, since I haven't found it yet. And I may never. But it doesn't really matter. With each step, one casts off fear and knows oneself better. The ground beneath one's feet become ever firmer and each footfall more confident. Eventually you will find the solid bedrock of yourself. Godspeed.

Me. Writing. The Cinema Blog.

There are a couple of things I've been wanting to say, but none of them deserved a whole piece. Then it occurred to me I could kill a couple of birds with one stone (common mynahs perhaps) and I wrote the following.


Me

Whilst I was reading Dave McGowan I appreciated it when he told his readers what he looked like. Whilst I have no desire to be famous, or recognised, or anything other such thing, (I don't call myself nobody for no reason) I can see how there's a lot to be said for a reader being able to attach an image or description to the fellow one's reading. The idea that people should communicate without knowing what the other party looks like is, in the span of human existence, absurdly recent, and as such vaguely unsatisfying. And far be it from me to go against a million years of human evolutionary psychology.

I also liked McGowan's means of doing this. He merely named the famous person whom he most closely resembled, that being Kevin Bacon. Funnily enough I've actually already written about the fellow whom I resemble with an in-joke that only I got - this being over at the cinema blog in my review of Blueberry. My precise words were, 'He is exactly that kind of cinematic French ugly'. Ha! I crack myself up! Anyway, the fellow I'm talking about is Vincent Cassel. Who? Exactly. Happily, hardly anybody has seen his films or noticed him when they did. But those who have, declare the resemblance spooky. Should M. Cassel ever appear in a movie playing some long-haired, ill-shaven variant of a hippy, switch the screen format into some kind of anamorphic squeeze so that he appears tall and skinny, and there you'll see yours truly.

You may also be interested to know that I have an indeterminate accent. It's not quite Australian and not quite English. It seems no one is able to place me. When they ask me where I'm from, I always answer, 'Nowhere in particular'. This is true of course, and sure enough I have the accent to prove it.


Writing

Writing here has been a very interesting exercise for me. I don't know about other people, but me, I love the actual physical act of it. One of the best things I ever did was to learn to touch type. I enjoy watching words appear on the screen without me giving the least thought to what my fingers are doing. As someone who spent most of his life working with his hands, this is as close as I get now. Actually that's kind of sad, but never mind.

To be honest, the physicality is the least of it. The biggest questions are: who am I writing for; and what point am I making. The first question is ever fluid. I hold no fixed position on this and will sometimes chop and change within a single piece. That light-as-a-feather 'Hitman 5' thing I wrote was a perfect case in point. That was simultaneously written for: unsuspecting gamers who dream of assassinating people; the game designers who train them to think this way; the ever lurking spooks; regular readers who hopefully will get the gag; and me, sure enough. Sometimes I declare who it is I'm addressing and sometimes I don't. I like to keep the ground shifting and it pays to be nimble.

Then there is the matter of what point I'm making. Sure enough, this depends on who I'm addressing, as in that Hitman thing - different points for different people. But if I'm in stentorian mode addressing the masses (ha ha ha, just for the record I now average 60-70 hits a day - masses indeed) I do attempt to focus on a single point (or view perhaps). Ideally I'll be running at 180º to conventional wisdom. I've no desire to write something we've all read a dozen times already. And sometimes I fail, sure. And sometimes I confuse people too. I'm rarely straightforward and embrace ambiguity and sideways attack. Sorry, but that is what it is.

Otherwise, for every piece I post, there'll be another rejected and consigned to the 'unfinished' folder on my hard drive. Some seem to go nowhere and some I just can't tie up in any kind of satisfying fashion. So I ditch 'em. And of what I do post, some fly off my fingers and some get torn down and rebuilt over and over. I prefer the former, sure enough. The latter are arduous. And sometimes they're worth it and sometimes they're not. Inspiration is a funny thing. Great ideas go nowhere and dull ideas round up nicely and get lots of comments. I'm always surprised by what does and doesn't inspire people to comment.


The Cinema Blog

For some reason the cinema blog gets about a tenth as many hits as the church blog. It's possible that this is because I post so sporadically. It's also possible that people don't groove on it. If it's the latter, I'll have to be honest and say, I don't get it. For mine, there's not much difference between the church and the cinema. In approximately half the reviews I write there, I barely talk about the film as such. Often as not the film is merely a prop or spur for some other point I want to make. Other times I address the context that surrounds the film. I do this because I'm bored to death with reviewers who discuss films in complete isolation from their sociological meaning, or intent, or impact. With this in mind, it's often a complete toss-up as to what blog I put it on. Annemarie (who's on sabbatical at the moment it seems) made exactly this point when I did The Ground Truth. She was probably right. I probably should have posted it here.

And so it is with the latest effort, Bloody Sunday. I bounced it backwards and forwards and in the end decided to write it for the cinema blog. Unsurprisingly I barely discuss the film itself. Instead I try to make a point about non-violence and also discuss the film that Bloody Sunday isn't - if that makes any sense.

Otherwise, I've seen a couple of flicks lately and they'll keep me over at the cinema blog for a bit. It's possible something will pop up and put a wild hair up my clacker in between times, and I'll be back here to have a spray. Um, believe it or not, that was the main point I wanted to say. For someone who doesn't have much to say, I do go on. I expect it's just the joy of the typing.

PS It seems African Warrior, apropos Bloody Sunday, is urging me to do 'better' movies. Like Dark Knight. Perhaps he's got a point.

a simple question and a simple answer

Here's a quote from Darryl Robert Schoon in Market Oracle -

"In but five decades, the US squandered not only its extraordinary patrimony (21,775 tons of gold), but the income and assets of future generations. Today US obligations, in excess of $70 trillion, are incapable of ever being paid back."

As I've said before, I have no time for impossible riddles. I view economics and monetarism as one of these riddles. Delving deeply into its intricacies will not lead anyone to enlightenment. The only way to get the true nature of the beast is to step back and ask simple questions.

The United States was the world's biggest economy. Its people all laboured mightily and produced untold amounts of everything - food, minerals, products and services. And yet inexplicably the whole enterprise seemed to go out backwards. Somehow all the labour and creativity of the American people left them worse off than when they started. Not only did they lose all that they possessed but they're now massively in hock. Does that make any sense at all?

If Americans had all sat on their arses doing nothing, I'd get it. But they didn't did they? They all worked like Trojans with only their lousy two weeks holiday a year. And now they're all in the hole. How the fuck does that work?

Obviously, labour and resources count for nothing in the face of the control of the notes of exchange. Forget all the gobbledegook, money is nothing more than a medium of exchange. In and of itself it's worthless - infinitely less useful than food, shelter, and tools. And yet magically everything is inverted. Bits of paper are all important and food and shelter has no value.

This is simple, simple stuff. As is the obviousness of the fact that the way things are currently arranged is bullshit. Monetarism is bullshit. It's a scam and we've all been had. Paying interest, which is to say more money, to those who already have all the money makes no sense. The rightness of our ancestors in viewing the usury of the goldsmiths as a sin, is made obvious once again. Clearly the whole system is fucked and there's only one thing for it. Burn it all down and start again.