President Bush hired an employee from the US consultancy firm Bearing Point Inc. over a year ago to advise the Iraq Oil Ministry on the drafting and passage of a new national oil law. As previously drafted, the law opens Iraq's nationalized oil sector to private foreign corporate investment, but stops short of full privatization
If these proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be privatized and opened to foreign firms, and in control of all of Iraq's oil wealth...
The Bush admin is invading the World one economy at a time..
"pragmatist" is the word most often used to describe Iraq Study Group co-chair James A. Baker III.
It is equally appropriate for Lawrence Eagleburger.
The term applies particularly well to each man's efforts to expand US economic engagement with Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Not only did their efforts enrich Hussein and US corporations, particularly oil companies, it also served the interests of their own private firms.
In July, US Energy Secretary Bodman had announced in Baghdad that senior US oil company executives would not enter Iraq without passage of the new law. Petroleum Economist magazine later reported that US oil companies put passage of the oil law before security concerns as the deciding factor over their entry into Iraq.
The oil companies are trying to get what they were denied before the war or at anytime in modern Iraqi history: access to Iraq's oil under the ground.
They are also trying to get the best deal possible out of a war-ravaged and occupied nation. However, waiting for the law's passage and the need to guarantee security of US firms once they get to work, may well be a key factor driving the one proposal by the Iraq Study Group that has received great media attention: extending the presence of US troops in Iraq at least until 2008
American oil companies have been busy under the occupation, and even before the US invasion, preparing for a major exploitation of Iraq's huge oil reserves.
Chevron, ExxonMobil and others are all set to go.
Four years of preparation are coming to a head now.
Iraq's new national petroleum law -- written in a place called Washington, DC -- is about to be implemented.
It will establish agreements with foreign oil companies, privatizing much of Iraq's oil reserves under exceedingly lucrative terms.
Security will be the only problem, protecting the oil companies' investments in a lawless country. For that they need the American military close by...oh look there they are
What a strange coincidence..
Monday, October 22, 2007
Australian interest rates and honest John's politik
Now when Australia saw an ad a fair while back with some politician telling them he'd "keep interest rates at record lows" they believed him.
But there's a little snag in this scenario.
Today we live in a global economy, international trade and what not has altered the economic envoironment to the point that it's basically a pendulum swinging on it's own, such is the nature of a capitalist economy.
What is rather suprising however, is the blind faith people put in the words of politicians when their actions indicate intentions of a completely different agenda.
Now everyone knows pollies lie, and yet still everyone votes based on these lies..
John Howard made a promise he could never keep, guaranteeing he'd keep interest rates lower than they were under labor when the fact is interest rates are quite frankly out of his control, a factor he forgets repeatedly, much like his memory interest rates under the Fraser Liberal gov. A visit to the Reserve Bank's historical interest rates page on its website reveals that the highest 90-day bank bill interest rate of 21.39 per cent occurred in April 1982 during the Fraser government with Mr Howard as treasurer...
The highest during the Hawke government was 19.56 per cent in December 1985. The highest under Paul Keating was 7.95 per cent in December 1994, which is only marginally higher than the highest under the Howard Government of 7.57 per cent in April 1996.
Howards habit of reverting to his economic stability arguement is becoming painfully thin.
What's even more infuriating is his own admission of just how little control he has over interest rates
People who thought Australia could reduce rates were crazy, Mr Howard said, because this would wreck Australia’s balance of payments and cause an economic crisis. He said that Australia could not have interest rates out of line with those in the United States because the world was economically interdependent and capital could flow from one country to another in a matter of minutes.
Whenever interest rates rose or fell sharply, Mr Howard explained it largely in terms of rises or falls in overseas rates.
But at other times Mr Howard argued (along with most money-market spokesmen) that the size of the Budget deficit or the size of the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement was the major influence over domestic interest rates.
Booms are invariably followed by busts and the bigger the boom, the bigger the bust, the housing market is no different.
Retiring baby boomers buying three investment properties each was the up slope...and now what?
The boom jacked prices up so much that first home buyers have no choice but to vote soley on interest rates.
Inflation is inevitable when rampant growth becomes the ends instead of the means to a stated objective.
Changes to the interest rate target are done in response to various market indicators in an attempt to forecast economic trends and in so doing keep the market on track towards achieving the defined inflation target and despite the uporoar of the last few days not everyone is reaching for the kleenex, while borrowers are worse off, savers are better off.
So eventually the impact of the higher interest rates take effect, spending slows, housing prices drop and first-home buyers are back in the game.
The modern economic pendulum swings on nothing more than speculation...such is the nature of the risky investments that perpetuate the cyclical capital flow that is apparently our objective.
John Howard is nothing more than a shrewd politician.
Poilitics is his life, but sadly his narrow minded focus on the political game itself has clouded his vision of the social impacts of the dodge the issue game he and the majority of pollies are so fond of playing, the one that puts them completely and utterly out of touch with society.
The only answer he can give to accusations that he lied when stating he could guarantee record low interest rates is to revert to his other standard mantras:
We have a 30-year low in unemployment. We have very strong business investment and consumers are very confident. (though how he knows of our confidene i am unsure)
and
housing interest rates now after the most recent increase this morning will still be lower than they were at any time in the 13 years of the Hawke and Keating governments when famously housing interest rates, or should I say infamously, hit 17 per cent.
Peter Costello was slightly more realistic about the situation:
The fact is that this decision will make household budgets tighter, but its important that we make sure that we keep economic growth continuing in this country
Though yet again there is no specific reason for economic growth, just that it's good.
The ironic thing is those most likely to suffer are the greedy and gullible get-rich-quick merchants who bought negatively geared investment properties far too late when the market was close to its peak, and people who took out "low doc" loans they couldn't repay from dubious non-bank lenders.
Is it any suprise that these are the people who took John Howard at his word without giving a thought to what he was actually saying?
Today Howard is attending a cabinet meeting that will discuss making energy and climate change the theme of next year's Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation jamboree in Sydney.
The symbolism of having the leaders of the United States, China and other Asia-Pacific nations in Sydney talking about environmentally and economically sustainable energy - including nuclear - weeks before Howard is expected to call the election speaks for itself.
But there's a little snag in this scenario.
Today we live in a global economy, international trade and what not has altered the economic envoironment to the point that it's basically a pendulum swinging on it's own, such is the nature of a capitalist economy.
What is rather suprising however, is the blind faith people put in the words of politicians when their actions indicate intentions of a completely different agenda.
Now everyone knows pollies lie, and yet still everyone votes based on these lies..
John Howard made a promise he could never keep, guaranteeing he'd keep interest rates lower than they were under labor when the fact is interest rates are quite frankly out of his control, a factor he forgets repeatedly, much like his memory interest rates under the Fraser Liberal gov. A visit to the Reserve Bank's historical interest rates page on its website reveals that the highest 90-day bank bill interest rate of 21.39 per cent occurred in April 1982 during the Fraser government with Mr Howard as treasurer...
The highest during the Hawke government was 19.56 per cent in December 1985. The highest under Paul Keating was 7.95 per cent in December 1994, which is only marginally higher than the highest under the Howard Government of 7.57 per cent in April 1996.
Howards habit of reverting to his economic stability arguement is becoming painfully thin.
What's even more infuriating is his own admission of just how little control he has over interest rates
People who thought Australia could reduce rates were crazy, Mr Howard said, because this would wreck Australia’s balance of payments and cause an economic crisis. He said that Australia could not have interest rates out of line with those in the United States because the world was economically interdependent and capital could flow from one country to another in a matter of minutes.
Whenever interest rates rose or fell sharply, Mr Howard explained it largely in terms of rises or falls in overseas rates.
But at other times Mr Howard argued (along with most money-market spokesmen) that the size of the Budget deficit or the size of the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement was the major influence over domestic interest rates.
Booms are invariably followed by busts and the bigger the boom, the bigger the bust, the housing market is no different.
Retiring baby boomers buying three investment properties each was the up slope...and now what?
The boom jacked prices up so much that first home buyers have no choice but to vote soley on interest rates.
Inflation is inevitable when rampant growth becomes the ends instead of the means to a stated objective.
Changes to the interest rate target are done in response to various market indicators in an attempt to forecast economic trends and in so doing keep the market on track towards achieving the defined inflation target and despite the uporoar of the last few days not everyone is reaching for the kleenex, while borrowers are worse off, savers are better off.
So eventually the impact of the higher interest rates take effect, spending slows, housing prices drop and first-home buyers are back in the game.
The modern economic pendulum swings on nothing more than speculation...such is the nature of the risky investments that perpetuate the cyclical capital flow that is apparently our objective.
John Howard is nothing more than a shrewd politician.
Poilitics is his life, but sadly his narrow minded focus on the political game itself has clouded his vision of the social impacts of the dodge the issue game he and the majority of pollies are so fond of playing, the one that puts them completely and utterly out of touch with society.
The only answer he can give to accusations that he lied when stating he could guarantee record low interest rates is to revert to his other standard mantras:
We have a 30-year low in unemployment. We have very strong business investment and consumers are very confident. (though how he knows of our confidene i am unsure)
and
housing interest rates now after the most recent increase this morning will still be lower than they were at any time in the 13 years of the Hawke and Keating governments when famously housing interest rates, or should I say infamously, hit 17 per cent.
Peter Costello was slightly more realistic about the situation:
The fact is that this decision will make household budgets tighter, but its important that we make sure that we keep economic growth continuing in this country
Though yet again there is no specific reason for economic growth, just that it's good.
The ironic thing is those most likely to suffer are the greedy and gullible get-rich-quick merchants who bought negatively geared investment properties far too late when the market was close to its peak, and people who took out "low doc" loans they couldn't repay from dubious non-bank lenders.
Is it any suprise that these are the people who took John Howard at his word without giving a thought to what he was actually saying?
Today Howard is attending a cabinet meeting that will discuss making energy and climate change the theme of next year's Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation jamboree in Sydney.
The symbolism of having the leaders of the United States, China and other Asia-Pacific nations in Sydney talking about environmentally and economically sustainable energy - including nuclear - weeks before Howard is expected to call the election speaks for itself.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Ghandi said it best
Today we live in a global system where the richest fifth consume 45% of all meat and fish, 58% of all energy used and 84% of all paper, has 74% of all telephone lines and owns 87% of all vehicles.
Globalisation has battered down international borders to the point of transnational companies exisiting beyond the scope of any one government.
Almost half of the world's six billion people now live on less than $2 a day, while 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day.
In addition, the gap between the richest 20% of the world's population and the poorest 20% has doubled in the past 40 years. The assets of the world's three richest billionaires exceed the gross national product of all 48 least developed countries and their 600 million people.
Under capitalism, a tiny minority own and control the economy. They run it, not to meet the needs of people or to maintain the environment, but to maximise their profits. The drive for bigger and bigger profits is the cause of the widening gulf between the rich and the poor. A majority of the world’s people live in dire poverty, while a tiny minority squander unprecedented wealth
There are no longer national identities..images are created by companies beyond the control of cultural divisions and the world exists electronically on an unprecedented level of instant interaction.
An investment decision made in London can spell unemployment for thousands in Indonesia, while a business decision taken in Tokyo can create thousands of new jobs for workers in north-east England.
While the world's economic output grew at an average 2.4% per year during the 1990s, global trade increased at well over twice that rate. The pattern is forecast to continue for the next 10 years too, with global trade growing at around 6.8% per year, more than double the projected growth in world output.
This increase in cross-border trade has been facilitated by international policy negotiations held under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the forum which has decided global trade rules since 1948.
The Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations, which was concluded in 1994, removed many barriers to 'free' trade, such as import tariffs and quotas. As a result, the volume of world trade has risen by over 50% in the space of just six years.
The globalisation of trade is the result not only of these new trade rules introduced by the world's governments. It is also dependent on two more concrete factors:
The development of communications technology, which allows orders to be relayed across the world in seconds
Cheaper transportation, which allows those orders to be fulfilled at greatly reduced cost. Sea freight unit costs have fallen by over 70 per cent during the past 20 years, while air freight costs have fallen by 3-4% year on year. (Though a third of global trade is just the international movement of goods between different parts of the same multinational.)
http://pilger.carlton.com/globalisation/economy
Multinational corporations can now set up factories in almost any country in the world, relying on increased levels of automation to take the place of the skilled workers who were formerly required to run the machines.
Robots are much more efficient than us you see.
War is capitalism with its gloves off, the logical result of a system driven by competition for control over resources and markets. It was not the madness of President George W. Bush that fuelled the war on Iraq, but US capitalists’ desperate drive to control the world’s oil.
The total expenditure on the war in iraq alone is probably enough to solve more than a substantial amount of the International inequality.
Advocates of globalisation argue that a rules-based system is needed to govern international trade. Many critics agree, but point out that the current rules serve the interests of multinational corporations, not the people of the world.
Fairer and more sustainable alternatives do not imply a return to the protectionism of previous eras. Nor should they be confused with the xenophobia of far right groups which adopt anti-globalisation rhetoric for purposes of their own. Whatever their eventual form, the alternative rules-based systems for globalisation must put the world's poorest people first.
Democracy under this system remains a charade. Where is the democracy when our government wages a war against the wishes of the majority of the people? When “regime change” and “liberation” mean bombing thousands of people and shooting peaceful demonstrators? Under capitalism, “democracy” at most means voting every three years or so for one or the other of the parties funded by corporations.
Using racism, nationalism, sexism and homophobia, the capitalist system aims to divide us.
Seven solutions put forward by John Pilger regarding the impact globalisation is having:
SEVEN SOLUTIONS
Put people first - WTO liberalisation agreements such as GATS and TRIPs must be reassessed on the basis of their impact on the poorest people, and the rules changed so that benefits from the global economy are shared fairly and evenly according to need.
Restore national control over development - Countries must be allowed to determine their own development paths, free from the ideological interference of the IMF and World Bank. Countries must be allowed to make performance requirements of multinationals investing in their territories.
End protectionism in the world's richest countries - The tariff barriers which block developing country exports to the markets of the rich world must be removed, and targeted support provided to workers in industrialised countries who are affected by the change. There needs to be fundamental reform of agricultural systems, with the aim of making food supply fairer to farmers in the Third World, as well as safer and more sustainable. In particular, European and US governments must end the agricultural subsidies which give their farmers an unfair advantage over producers in the developing world.
Give priority to the poor - The rules of globalisation should make more provision for the special needs of the world's poorest countries. The European Union's first step in promising duty-free access to exports from the 48 least developed countries should be extended to more countries and matched by all rich nations.
Make multinationals accountable - Companies have globalised, but the rules regulating their activities haven't. UN agreements contain sound rules on workers' rights, human rights, consumer protection, indigenous peoples and the environment. But there is no means for consistent enforcement of these standards. There should be a new international mechanism to regulate the activities of all multinationals across the world, with government enforcement supported by independent monitoring to ensure that they abide by it.
Build democratic space for genuine debate - All decisions at the IMF and World Bank are taken on the basis of 'one dollar one vote', which guarantees the world's richest countries an inbuilt majority. The WTO has acknowledged that it too has tended to marginalise the interests of the developing world. Without the democratic space to discuss alternatives to the free trade agenda, there will be little chance of making globalisation work in the interests of the poor.
Regulate capital markets - Financial markets must be regulated to ensure that the East Asian crisis of 1997-98 can never be repeated. In addition, mechanisms such as the Tobin Tax should be introduced: a small tax on all financial exchange transactions which would raise around $1 trillion each year for development purposes and reverse the current flow of finance from the developing to the developed world.
On his first visit to England in 1930, Mahatma Gandhi was asked: “What do you think of Western civilisation?”
He is said to have replied: “That would be a good idea”.
Sadly in my opinion it is one we have yet to bring to fruition.
Globalisation has battered down international borders to the point of transnational companies exisiting beyond the scope of any one government.
Almost half of the world's six billion people now live on less than $2 a day, while 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day.
In addition, the gap between the richest 20% of the world's population and the poorest 20% has doubled in the past 40 years. The assets of the world's three richest billionaires exceed the gross national product of all 48 least developed countries and their 600 million people.
Under capitalism, a tiny minority own and control the economy. They run it, not to meet the needs of people or to maintain the environment, but to maximise their profits. The drive for bigger and bigger profits is the cause of the widening gulf between the rich and the poor. A majority of the world’s people live in dire poverty, while a tiny minority squander unprecedented wealth
There are no longer national identities..images are created by companies beyond the control of cultural divisions and the world exists electronically on an unprecedented level of instant interaction.
An investment decision made in London can spell unemployment for thousands in Indonesia, while a business decision taken in Tokyo can create thousands of new jobs for workers in north-east England.
While the world's economic output grew at an average 2.4% per year during the 1990s, global trade increased at well over twice that rate. The pattern is forecast to continue for the next 10 years too, with global trade growing at around 6.8% per year, more than double the projected growth in world output.
This increase in cross-border trade has been facilitated by international policy negotiations held under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the forum which has decided global trade rules since 1948.
The Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations, which was concluded in 1994, removed many barriers to 'free' trade, such as import tariffs and quotas. As a result, the volume of world trade has risen by over 50% in the space of just six years.
The globalisation of trade is the result not only of these new trade rules introduced by the world's governments. It is also dependent on two more concrete factors:
The development of communications technology, which allows orders to be relayed across the world in seconds
Cheaper transportation, which allows those orders to be fulfilled at greatly reduced cost. Sea freight unit costs have fallen by over 70 per cent during the past 20 years, while air freight costs have fallen by 3-4% year on year. (Though a third of global trade is just the international movement of goods between different parts of the same multinational.)
http://pilger.carlton.com/globalisation/economy
Multinational corporations can now set up factories in almost any country in the world, relying on increased levels of automation to take the place of the skilled workers who were formerly required to run the machines.
Robots are much more efficient than us you see.
War is capitalism with its gloves off, the logical result of a system driven by competition for control over resources and markets. It was not the madness of President George W. Bush that fuelled the war on Iraq, but US capitalists’ desperate drive to control the world’s oil.
The total expenditure on the war in iraq alone is probably enough to solve more than a substantial amount of the International inequality.
Advocates of globalisation argue that a rules-based system is needed to govern international trade. Many critics agree, but point out that the current rules serve the interests of multinational corporations, not the people of the world.
Fairer and more sustainable alternatives do not imply a return to the protectionism of previous eras. Nor should they be confused with the xenophobia of far right groups which adopt anti-globalisation rhetoric for purposes of their own. Whatever their eventual form, the alternative rules-based systems for globalisation must put the world's poorest people first.
Democracy under this system remains a charade. Where is the democracy when our government wages a war against the wishes of the majority of the people? When “regime change” and “liberation” mean bombing thousands of people and shooting peaceful demonstrators? Under capitalism, “democracy” at most means voting every three years or so for one or the other of the parties funded by corporations.
Using racism, nationalism, sexism and homophobia, the capitalist system aims to divide us.
Seven solutions put forward by John Pilger regarding the impact globalisation is having:
SEVEN SOLUTIONS
Put people first - WTO liberalisation agreements such as GATS and TRIPs must be reassessed on the basis of their impact on the poorest people, and the rules changed so that benefits from the global economy are shared fairly and evenly according to need.
Restore national control over development - Countries must be allowed to determine their own development paths, free from the ideological interference of the IMF and World Bank. Countries must be allowed to make performance requirements of multinationals investing in their territories.
End protectionism in the world's richest countries - The tariff barriers which block developing country exports to the markets of the rich world must be removed, and targeted support provided to workers in industrialised countries who are affected by the change. There needs to be fundamental reform of agricultural systems, with the aim of making food supply fairer to farmers in the Third World, as well as safer and more sustainable. In particular, European and US governments must end the agricultural subsidies which give their farmers an unfair advantage over producers in the developing world.
Give priority to the poor - The rules of globalisation should make more provision for the special needs of the world's poorest countries. The European Union's first step in promising duty-free access to exports from the 48 least developed countries should be extended to more countries and matched by all rich nations.
Make multinationals accountable - Companies have globalised, but the rules regulating their activities haven't. UN agreements contain sound rules on workers' rights, human rights, consumer protection, indigenous peoples and the environment. But there is no means for consistent enforcement of these standards. There should be a new international mechanism to regulate the activities of all multinationals across the world, with government enforcement supported by independent monitoring to ensure that they abide by it.
Build democratic space for genuine debate - All decisions at the IMF and World Bank are taken on the basis of 'one dollar one vote', which guarantees the world's richest countries an inbuilt majority. The WTO has acknowledged that it too has tended to marginalise the interests of the developing world. Without the democratic space to discuss alternatives to the free trade agenda, there will be little chance of making globalisation work in the interests of the poor.
Regulate capital markets - Financial markets must be regulated to ensure that the East Asian crisis of 1997-98 can never be repeated. In addition, mechanisms such as the Tobin Tax should be introduced: a small tax on all financial exchange transactions which would raise around $1 trillion each year for development purposes and reverse the current flow of finance from the developing to the developed world.
On his first visit to England in 1930, Mahatma Gandhi was asked: “What do you think of Western civilisation?”
He is said to have replied: “That would be a good idea”.
Sadly in my opinion it is one we have yet to bring to fruition.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Understanding Hip hop and other sub cultures
As with pretty much everything, the small portion of this particular culture the mainstream media has chosen to run with is a grossly inaccurate picture of what said culture actually comprises...
Knowledge is growth
Wilful ignorance in the face of new information pisses me off
enjoy
Knowledge is growth
Wilful ignorance in the face of new information pisses me off
enjoy
The Big Bang of Human Consciousness
the dawning...
Until about 50,000–40,000 years ago the use of stone tools seems to have progressed stepwise: each phase (habilis, ergaster, neanderthal) started at a higher level than the previous one, but once that phase had started further development was slow. In other words, one might call these Homo species culturally conservative.
After 50,000 BP, what anthropologists characterize as a Great Leap Forward, human culture apparently started to change at much greater speed: "modern" humans started to bury their dead carefully, made clothing out of hides, developed sophisticated hunting techniques (such as pitfall traps, or driving animals to fall off cliffs), and made cave paintings.
This speed-up of cultural change seems connected with the arrival of modern humans, homo sapiens sapiens. Additionally, human culture began to become more advanced, in that, different populations of humans begin to create novelty in existing technologies. Artifacts such as fish hooks, buttons and bone needles begin to show signs of variation among different population of humans, something that has not been seen in human cultures prior to 50,000 BP.
Theoretically, modern human behaviour is taken to include four ingredient capabilities: abstract thinking (concepts free from specific examples), planning (taking steps to achieve a farther goal), innovation (finding new solutions), and symbolic behaviour (such as images, or rituals).
Among concrete examples of modern human behaviour, anthropologists include specialization of tools, use of jewelry and images (such as cave drawings), organization of living space, rituals (for example, burials with grave gifts), specialized hunting techniques, exploration of less hospitable geographical areas, and barter trade networks.
We began to produce regionally distinctive cultures, using new technologies, more efficient hunting techniques and having a more refined aesthetic sensibility...rapidly.
Now what could facilitate such creative evolution?
We know alcohol, nicotine, Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), heroin, cocaine, LSD, MDMA have a consciousness-changing effect...but we know none of these were present during the paleolithic period...
We know brain chemistry affects human consciousness.
We know brain chemistry affect emotions and I'm going to arrogantly assume the majority of the population is addicted to something, whether it be a substance, emotion or activity, because they don't know what else to do..and yet addictions cloud the consciouness.
It is a vicious cycle.
Human consciousness has evolved by Darwinian selection as an assembly machine of incomplete pieces of sensory information about the situation in the external world. The machine constructs a global picture that may be far from correct. Nevertheless this picture permits responses and actions that are more realistic then without it. This is the survival value of consciousness.
The neuro-psychologist Michael Gazzaniga has called this facility the "central interpreter - storyteller". The emotional puzzle assembler, because the global picture is like a puzzle assembled from pieces. Some are missing, others are made to fit by force. The assembler is "emotional", because the process is under the control of the basic survival will (in the brain stem) that is not rational, but instinctual, and the stories weaved have to have an emotional content, so that they can drive on to forceful action that insures survival.
This machine works according to principles known and well studied in self adapting artificial neural networks. Its working is associated with our inner experience of "being conscious". This experience is not different in principle from being hungry or cold, and as such can never be a subject of physics.
Only the underlaying physiology can be studied by methods of natural science. It will be substantiated that nothing supernatural need to be associated with the existence of consciousness, nor is it necessary to invoke some of the mysteries of modern quantum physics, as some noted physicists presently are doing.
They can only add to the prevailing confusion.
The most basic functional dynamic in all animal brains that have sprouted a neocortex is based on a "dualism" or "antagonism" between brain stem and neocortex.
This is a consequence of the fact that the brain stem was the much older and only organ of central control in early organisms. Here the responses were almost purely genetically determined and hardwired.
They were "instinctual". The neocortex, on the other hand, came into existence as an organ of individual adaptation to the concurrent external world. Thus the center of the "will" remained in the brain stem, "cognition" with its associated memory and adaptive intelligence, mainly happen in the neocortex.
Even though this is an antagonism natural, functional and healthy in all brains that have developed a neocortex, in modern humans the balance has radically tilted in favor of the neocortex, particularly of the left hemisphere consciousness.
This has happened because consciousness has become such an overwhelming success in mastering our physical environment through objective knowledge, tools and technology. We became entrapped by our own success and have lost the ability to properly reconnect to our inherited biological needs, hedonic wishes and instincts of the brain stem. As a result these remain in a state that is unmediated by reason and thus leads to chaos, violence and socio-cultural decline.
In present day cultural evolution this dualism is the most urgent problem of adaptation. It needs to be resolved before any further progress of humanity can begin. It also is the neurological key to an objective psychology of the future, to the understanding of what has driven human history to become that bloody medley of violence and arrogance, and to what drives all religions. Our technology driven, free market civilization is strongly reinforcing that dualism. What often is referred to as an inner void is caused by it, and very likely the frustration over not being able to bridge it, leads to apocalyptic beliefs.
The appearance of extreme religious sects is a direct indicator that the void is rapidly becoming unbridgeable in a significant part of the world's population.
Ever since the political theories of the enlightenment period, the most fundamental assumption about the nature of citizens forming the social contract was this: each individual is an autonomous, self responsible agent, possibly answerable to God only, whose will and pursuit of happiness has to be respected absolutely, as long as it is not harmful to others.
In my opinion this is an ignorant and flawed assumption.
We are far from being autonomous. Even though there is a certain genetically fixed inventory, upon whose fulfillment happiness depends, much of our wants are a result of programming of the neocortex by others, by common beliefs, state doctrines, advertising, technological super stimuli and the like.
Especially in modern technological "media culture" this influence has become excessive and contrary to the desired state of well being. "Pursuing happiness", as it was meant by the founding fathers, today can lead to self destruction.
In the current situation, without a determined and systematic communal pursuit of the cultivation of objective truth, esthetic taste, and an effective hygiene of values, we are condemned to an existence not much above the level of apes, worse: apes that have guns, atom bombs, poison gas, and who thoughtlessly multiply, destroying the planet.
The social contract between government and citizen has to be re-engineered, so as to better insure such systematic pursuit, and thus to protect and foster creative cultural development, positive education, and hence more happiness for all.
Currently in the USA such statements are political anathema. But some European countries have de facto moved in the indicated direction. They have proven to be more pragmatic than the oldest working democracy which continues to proudly suffer from much unexamined deadweight dogmatism, arrogance and corruption, much like Australia.
In spite of this I am sensing a shift in the prevailing paradigm.
The technological revolution of recent times is not without its advantages..information flies round the world at ridiculous speeds, cynical pre teens know they can't trust governments..drug use is rampant in all areas of society, especially the upper-middle classes.
There is a growing worldwide interest in spirituality and an ever increasing sense of people thinking of the 'why' aspect.
I don't have an answer, but I'm not done looking.
Are you?
Love
Written by Susanne Heart
(Evolving from being in Need to being in Love through the art of Surrendering) - Sept 2007
At one point in your evolution of consciousness you will probably discover that there is a life force flowing through all living things. When you first see this, it will be obvious to you. This life force you might call Life or God or Love. And you will see that it does not belong to any religious or new age systems. It just is...
No matter what you name it, the quality of the energy is what is important. If you look deep inside you will probably see that this is true. This great force is flowing like a river through our bodies, through nature, through all interactions, situations and experiences. It is the great Presence of Now. The flow of life. You cannot collect it, you cannot save it for later and you cannot make it yours. It is only Here and Now.
Discovering this in life is breathtaking. Discovering this in every moment – is Living. Is Being. After experiencing it once, life without it is dull. Being in this flow of Life makes you content – no matter what situation you are in. It fills you up with love. It makes you want to give your overflow of love to others. Just because it feels so natural.
Experiencing the flow of Live will make the cells in your body dance like the bubbles in champagne. And it will make you experience all of life effortlessly, with joy, inner peace and harmony.
Do you remember your first kiss? Did it not enter your whole body with its sweetness? After our “first” experiences, we think we know how things are. And we are not open anymore to experiencing it again as something new. We want to copy our good experience. At that point we have closed off the heart and gone into the mind and the illusionary world.
From Need to Love
When you are not in the flow of life, you will probably discover
that you need something from others. You need them to act a specific way or you want them to make you comfortable. You might even want others to fill your heart with love. You are not content with what is. We can say that needing is the opposite of Loving. Loving goes out of your body while needing tries to bring energies into your body to fill it up.
The needing comes from something we can call ”the black holes” created in your energy-body. These black holes suck light and have their own intelligence. At one point in time you probably made a decision about a feeling that did arise in you. It was too painful to experience fully so you put it on hold. To put it on hold you needed to distract or numb yourself. Later in life when the same feeling threatened to activate again in another situation, you had to distract yourself again. And then a pattern of avoiding situations that carried a risk for bringing up this feeling was created. And freedom to live in the flow and follow your heart was lost... or at best you could follow your heart only until a survival pattern was activated. Most of this happened on an unconscious level. You have most probably only felt like a victim and could not understand much of it.
The areas of hidden unexperienced pain create ”the black holes”. And the black holes eat life force or light from others in threatening situations because the flow in your own body is blocked. It learns how to suck energy and camouflage itself. Even when not activated, it can sneak into your everyday life to eat from others or drain your own system. These black holes is the neediness that keeps you away from fully experiencing a life in love. The pattern of avoiding situations also makes you into a puppet where others can pull your strings and push your buttons. Your reaction will be very predictable. To be free from this you have to invite in the original pain and experience it fully within you. Fully experienced it has no more control over you. It will disappear together with the black holes.
In our civilization we have accepted the neediness as natural just because it is so common. But the natural state is a state of love. Anything less is a hindrance for living your highest potential. It is time to evolve from being in Need to being in Love. Coming back to our natural state as beings in love. There is a way to cultivate this. Everybody can make the transition if they want to. But first we have to see that we are not that pain. It is just moving through us from the past.
The art of surrendering
A very powerful tool to enter the flow of life is to get to know the art of surrendering. I will call it an art because there is not a recipe for it. You will have to feel it within. Feel the quality of it. Most probably you will think you know what surrender means. There are so many interpretations of the word that has been stuck in our mind. Just forget what you already know. It is not surrendering to anyone or anything. It is surrendering to Life. I will try to explain with this example: You are in a situation that puts you in contact with a big sorrow. Tears are threatening to come out of your eyes and you hold it back so that nobody will see it. Holding it demands a lot of concentration and effort. The tears so much want to come out of you. It is most probably an old pain that has been put on hold many times. And now the pain wants to leave your body with the tears. And with your personal will you now put a lot of effort into stopping this flow of life. Because the feeling it brings along is too painful, too embarrassing. And then suddenly an inner voice tells you to just let go. To give up the fight. And in that very moment you surrender to that, without thinking. The tears flow from your body, with the pain, without resistance. At last. If you observe the energy-shift in your body in that moment, you will discover the quality of surrendering. Every muscle lets go, all stress disappears, and all tension is resolved. You feel like a drop of water falling to the earth. And it is so sweet. Afterwards you will feel lighter and more at ease in your body with a great increase of life force and joy. You have not done anything actively; you only surrendered to Life in the moment. Trusting and surrendering to the great flow of life like this will bring you to freedom very quickly. Life is so incredibly intelligent, it knows exactly what is the most efficient way for you to give up the struggle of holding on to old pain. It will show you very clearly if you listen. The hinder you have to pass is that of not knowing the specific outcome of situations. You can only trust that it serves your highest potential.
Life will give us opportunities to surrender to the flow of life constantly. Deep inside this is the most natural thing for us to do. For the time being, we are in a situation where we have collected far too much old pain in our bodies. We have put on hold a lot of experiences and now is the time to meet it and to let go of this baggage. A major cleansing is necessary. In this time of civilization we have forgotten how to surrender to life. So we have to get to know the art of surrendering again. The gateway to an easy and flowing way of living. From being in Need to being in Love.
The river of Grace
If you look at the life force as a river you might see more clearly why it serves you to surrender to life. So, imagine Life as this powerful river. You are in it. You float on it. It carries you on its enormous powers. Whether shallow and calm waters or waterfalls, it will hold you. You don’t have to do anything yourself. Many experiences will be presented to you on the way. You can just lean back and enjoy the ride. This is being in the flow of Life. Being held in Love.
On the other hand, if you had your own agendas on where to go based on needs, you would have to fight the power of the river to get where you wanted. This would make you exhausted very quickly. Almost all your resources would be occupied with fighting and there would hardly be any resources left to experience life. This is where most human beings are living their day-to-day reality. Can you accept that this is how you live your life? (Feel it deep inside. Defending or arguing will only delay the process even though you probably have really good arguments.)
The great life force is really so powerful and all it wants to do is to help you. Our small individual wills have really no power compared to this. Let life take you and see that it really carries your own true undiscovered power. An incredible opening that will make your life complete.
All of this is just words until you experience it yourself. And with words we can try to explain the same experience in many ways. For some it will click into place in the one story, for others in another other story. None of them will give the complete picture, but it can be used as inspiration for you to trust life and to get in contact with your own inner wisdom. If you feel anything touching your heart after reading this article, stay with that. See where you are and be brave. And please, do not believe in any of this with your mind. Only feel it within. You should be able to feel the important things for you in your own heart.
Walking towards the source
Another way of looking at what is happening with us in this time is the following.
In this specific time humanity has stretched the ego or the individuality towards maximum capacity. We carry no more fuel to continue the journey. The feeling of separation has made us live in fear of each other. Look at how we have systemized society to avoid each other. If the sun is the source of life, we have travelled like beams out from the sun. Discovering our individuality. Now we are so far away from the source we barely have more life energy left. We have tried stealing life energy from each other or at best exchanging with each other, but we are discovering that it does not really work. Time has come to travel back to the source to recharge and melt with the whole.
This might sound like a fairytale to you? But listen deep inside
and even deeper. At one point in your individual journey I guess it will ring true and become a reality to you. As humanity we are one even if there are small individual timings that are different. As I have been shown, we have all marched out there and away from the source to explore our individual self – even our individual spiritual selves. Some of us hit the ”wall” of depression and turned around. Some of us reached all our individual goals and experienced that happiness was not there after all so we turned around as well. Some of us needed an ”accident” or an illness to turn around. And some of us are still walking towards the individual success. We all need to experience for ourselves and it takes the time it takes. But from what I see humanity as one is now turning around towards the source again. If you are a teenager or are still exploring your individuality in life, keep on doing so. Just be open and listen to your heart when it is time. Then you might need these guidelines provided to you. Many people have already started the journey inwards and are very happy to be at service to make it easier for the rest. In this process helping another, from love (not from need), is really helping oneself.
From what I have seen we have been building our sets of personalities while walking on the individual paths out there. At one point we started identifying with these personalities. People around us has pointed towards us and told us who we are – and we believed them. Later those personalities have occupied our bodies and minds and they arise in different situations to feed and get stronger. They have their own life. By turning around towards the source again we start being confronted by the same personalities. They need to die. In the beginning it can seem like something is wrong because you feel truly threatened. That is because you are really identifying with these personalities. But soon you will see that it is only the personalities occupying your body and mind that feel threatened. It is not really you. By just staying in the feeling of pain without trying to change it, these occupants will leave your body one by one. Their “food” disappears. A feeling of threat is not the same as danger – it is only a feeling arising from past. Seeing this mechanism is beautiful and makes you inspired to continue. And after each dying you feel more free and charged with life energy.
Seeing this natural healing for what it is will make you welcome each old stored pain into your daily consciousness with open arms. You are walking towards the source and you get to meet your ”old self” in the doorway. It is like seeing your life in review – before you die physically. When the stored emotional pain arises into daily consciousness it looks like old pain from the past is taking you again. And it can, if you still believe you are that pain. Seeing that the pain is just travelling through your daily consciousness on its way out of your body and mind is essential. It knows it’s way out of you. It’s up to you not to stop it. If you don’t know how this process works you might believe in the emotions passing by and you will again be trapped in the drama. What happens then is that your journey back to the source is put on hold. Being trapped in old emotional pain again might make you go in loops and you will feel drained of energy. When daring to stay in the feeling of the pain you have an opportunity to pass one hindrance after the other.
We can say that surrendering to Life and letting personalities die, is the same thing. In both experiences you will first feel an inner conflict, and by staying in the feeling of the original pain and experiencing it fully, you will become free from it. For most of us this process will happen naturally. The longing in our hearts will guide us to meet the pain. We no longer want to live a life of compromises. If you are ready for this transformation, the following steps can be used as guidance. But listen to it only if it feels right in your heart.
Letting life guide you
You carry pain in your body and mind even if you are not aware of it. You might only see the result of it as a lack of flow and love in your life. The first step is to see and accept that you are where you are.
Second step is to ask Life to guide you back to your love and true power. This is what many people call praying. But the most important thing is that you feel the intensity of it deep inside. Feel that you really long for this guidance to happen. After ”praying” say and feel thank you as if it had already happened. The deeper you can feel this inside of you, the deeper you will experience your prayers being heard. This is how miracles can happen. Do not underestimate the power of your authentic prayer.
Third step is to wait. You do not need to do anything but keeping your eyes and awareness open. Life from now on will show you where you are not in the flow of Life. You will start to see that every time life is not in ease, you are fighting with the flow. It is very common that prior to seeing this, a frustration is building up inside of you. It can be an emotional, physical, or even a spiritual frustration. You might feel that you are doing the ”right” thing but still it is not working as you had wished. You have not done anything wrong; it is only Life showing you the way back to your true power. When a frustration like this rises to it’s maximum, you might feel huge pain with it. Then you know that the process is working, as it should. At one point you get to the place where you want to close off or numb yourself somehow. The feeling of need is very strong at this point. In the past you might have chosen your needs many times, as most of us have. This time you can try a new approach. This is where the fun starts.
So the forth step is to surrender to Life. Surrendering is not something you actively do. It just happens naturally if you don’t stop it. You see, the frustration that has built up inside you is the fuel for surrendering. When you hit the place where you see that you have no more solutions on how to try to solve your problem,
it is easy to give it up. Because you see that you cannot do anything more. When you feel the time is there, ”fall down on your knees” and give your burden up to Life. You can pray like this: ”I see that I cannot fix this myself, I give it all up to you Life. Thank you for showing me how to be free.”
If you really managed to surrender completely, you will now feel the burden being lifted off your shoulders. Now it is time to expect a miracle.
Continue to keep your eyes open and be aware of new opportunities for surrendering. After doing this for some time you will start to see what it does for you in your life. And as time passes you will be able to surrender more and more quickly and with less and less ”fuel” (frustration) as your awareness grows.
Making love with the Universe
It is important to know that the surrendering is all on the inside. You don’t have to surrender to any other person or situation. It is more like cutting a string of attachment to the outcome of situations. When you let your personal control of life go like that, life can more easily give you maximum benefits. Let the feeling of control go and see change happen on the outside just by itself.
The transition from being in Need to being in Love can be achieved very quickly through the art of surrendering. Every time you discover that you are being in Need, you can let yourself surrender to Life. But for most people it will be easier with a frustration build-up in the beginning. After you get the hang of it you can be in constant surrendering-mode every moment of the day, without doing anything. It is fun and life becomes a miracle itself. It feels like the whole Universe is backing you up – and it does!
And at one point in your evolution of consciousness you will probably discover that there is a life force flowing through all living things. That is when you just jump into the flow of life and let it love you completely. This flow knows exactly how to cleanse you and bring you to your full potential. Your contribution to it all is only to give yourself to it. The only constant thing in life – is change. May your journey be filled with joy and happiness forever and ever.
(Evolving from being in Need to being in Love through the art of Surrendering) - Sept 2007
At one point in your evolution of consciousness you will probably discover that there is a life force flowing through all living things. When you first see this, it will be obvious to you. This life force you might call Life or God or Love. And you will see that it does not belong to any religious or new age systems. It just is...
No matter what you name it, the quality of the energy is what is important. If you look deep inside you will probably see that this is true. This great force is flowing like a river through our bodies, through nature, through all interactions, situations and experiences. It is the great Presence of Now. The flow of life. You cannot collect it, you cannot save it for later and you cannot make it yours. It is only Here and Now.
Discovering this in life is breathtaking. Discovering this in every moment – is Living. Is Being. After experiencing it once, life without it is dull. Being in this flow of Life makes you content – no matter what situation you are in. It fills you up with love. It makes you want to give your overflow of love to others. Just because it feels so natural.
Experiencing the flow of Live will make the cells in your body dance like the bubbles in champagne. And it will make you experience all of life effortlessly, with joy, inner peace and harmony.
Do you remember your first kiss? Did it not enter your whole body with its sweetness? After our “first” experiences, we think we know how things are. And we are not open anymore to experiencing it again as something new. We want to copy our good experience. At that point we have closed off the heart and gone into the mind and the illusionary world.
From Need to Love
When you are not in the flow of life, you will probably discover
that you need something from others. You need them to act a specific way or you want them to make you comfortable. You might even want others to fill your heart with love. You are not content with what is. We can say that needing is the opposite of Loving. Loving goes out of your body while needing tries to bring energies into your body to fill it up.
The needing comes from something we can call ”the black holes” created in your energy-body. These black holes suck light and have their own intelligence. At one point in time you probably made a decision about a feeling that did arise in you. It was too painful to experience fully so you put it on hold. To put it on hold you needed to distract or numb yourself. Later in life when the same feeling threatened to activate again in another situation, you had to distract yourself again. And then a pattern of avoiding situations that carried a risk for bringing up this feeling was created. And freedom to live in the flow and follow your heart was lost... or at best you could follow your heart only until a survival pattern was activated. Most of this happened on an unconscious level. You have most probably only felt like a victim and could not understand much of it.
The areas of hidden unexperienced pain create ”the black holes”. And the black holes eat life force or light from others in threatening situations because the flow in your own body is blocked. It learns how to suck energy and camouflage itself. Even when not activated, it can sneak into your everyday life to eat from others or drain your own system. These black holes is the neediness that keeps you away from fully experiencing a life in love. The pattern of avoiding situations also makes you into a puppet where others can pull your strings and push your buttons. Your reaction will be very predictable. To be free from this you have to invite in the original pain and experience it fully within you. Fully experienced it has no more control over you. It will disappear together with the black holes.
In our civilization we have accepted the neediness as natural just because it is so common. But the natural state is a state of love. Anything less is a hindrance for living your highest potential. It is time to evolve from being in Need to being in Love. Coming back to our natural state as beings in love. There is a way to cultivate this. Everybody can make the transition if they want to. But first we have to see that we are not that pain. It is just moving through us from the past.
The art of surrendering
A very powerful tool to enter the flow of life is to get to know the art of surrendering. I will call it an art because there is not a recipe for it. You will have to feel it within. Feel the quality of it. Most probably you will think you know what surrender means. There are so many interpretations of the word that has been stuck in our mind. Just forget what you already know. It is not surrendering to anyone or anything. It is surrendering to Life. I will try to explain with this example: You are in a situation that puts you in contact with a big sorrow. Tears are threatening to come out of your eyes and you hold it back so that nobody will see it. Holding it demands a lot of concentration and effort. The tears so much want to come out of you. It is most probably an old pain that has been put on hold many times. And now the pain wants to leave your body with the tears. And with your personal will you now put a lot of effort into stopping this flow of life. Because the feeling it brings along is too painful, too embarrassing. And then suddenly an inner voice tells you to just let go. To give up the fight. And in that very moment you surrender to that, without thinking. The tears flow from your body, with the pain, without resistance. At last. If you observe the energy-shift in your body in that moment, you will discover the quality of surrendering. Every muscle lets go, all stress disappears, and all tension is resolved. You feel like a drop of water falling to the earth. And it is so sweet. Afterwards you will feel lighter and more at ease in your body with a great increase of life force and joy. You have not done anything actively; you only surrendered to Life in the moment. Trusting and surrendering to the great flow of life like this will bring you to freedom very quickly. Life is so incredibly intelligent, it knows exactly what is the most efficient way for you to give up the struggle of holding on to old pain. It will show you very clearly if you listen. The hinder you have to pass is that of not knowing the specific outcome of situations. You can only trust that it serves your highest potential.
Life will give us opportunities to surrender to the flow of life constantly. Deep inside this is the most natural thing for us to do. For the time being, we are in a situation where we have collected far too much old pain in our bodies. We have put on hold a lot of experiences and now is the time to meet it and to let go of this baggage. A major cleansing is necessary. In this time of civilization we have forgotten how to surrender to life. So we have to get to know the art of surrendering again. The gateway to an easy and flowing way of living. From being in Need to being in Love.
The river of Grace
If you look at the life force as a river you might see more clearly why it serves you to surrender to life. So, imagine Life as this powerful river. You are in it. You float on it. It carries you on its enormous powers. Whether shallow and calm waters or waterfalls, it will hold you. You don’t have to do anything yourself. Many experiences will be presented to you on the way. You can just lean back and enjoy the ride. This is being in the flow of Life. Being held in Love.
On the other hand, if you had your own agendas on where to go based on needs, you would have to fight the power of the river to get where you wanted. This would make you exhausted very quickly. Almost all your resources would be occupied with fighting and there would hardly be any resources left to experience life. This is where most human beings are living their day-to-day reality. Can you accept that this is how you live your life? (Feel it deep inside. Defending or arguing will only delay the process even though you probably have really good arguments.)
The great life force is really so powerful and all it wants to do is to help you. Our small individual wills have really no power compared to this. Let life take you and see that it really carries your own true undiscovered power. An incredible opening that will make your life complete.
All of this is just words until you experience it yourself. And with words we can try to explain the same experience in many ways. For some it will click into place in the one story, for others in another other story. None of them will give the complete picture, but it can be used as inspiration for you to trust life and to get in contact with your own inner wisdom. If you feel anything touching your heart after reading this article, stay with that. See where you are and be brave. And please, do not believe in any of this with your mind. Only feel it within. You should be able to feel the important things for you in your own heart.
Walking towards the source
Another way of looking at what is happening with us in this time is the following.
In this specific time humanity has stretched the ego or the individuality towards maximum capacity. We carry no more fuel to continue the journey. The feeling of separation has made us live in fear of each other. Look at how we have systemized society to avoid each other. If the sun is the source of life, we have travelled like beams out from the sun. Discovering our individuality. Now we are so far away from the source we barely have more life energy left. We have tried stealing life energy from each other or at best exchanging with each other, but we are discovering that it does not really work. Time has come to travel back to the source to recharge and melt with the whole.
This might sound like a fairytale to you? But listen deep inside
and even deeper. At one point in your individual journey I guess it will ring true and become a reality to you. As humanity we are one even if there are small individual timings that are different. As I have been shown, we have all marched out there and away from the source to explore our individual self – even our individual spiritual selves. Some of us hit the ”wall” of depression and turned around. Some of us reached all our individual goals and experienced that happiness was not there after all so we turned around as well. Some of us needed an ”accident” or an illness to turn around. And some of us are still walking towards the individual success. We all need to experience for ourselves and it takes the time it takes. But from what I see humanity as one is now turning around towards the source again. If you are a teenager or are still exploring your individuality in life, keep on doing so. Just be open and listen to your heart when it is time. Then you might need these guidelines provided to you. Many people have already started the journey inwards and are very happy to be at service to make it easier for the rest. In this process helping another, from love (not from need), is really helping oneself.
From what I have seen we have been building our sets of personalities while walking on the individual paths out there. At one point we started identifying with these personalities. People around us has pointed towards us and told us who we are – and we believed them. Later those personalities have occupied our bodies and minds and they arise in different situations to feed and get stronger. They have their own life. By turning around towards the source again we start being confronted by the same personalities. They need to die. In the beginning it can seem like something is wrong because you feel truly threatened. That is because you are really identifying with these personalities. But soon you will see that it is only the personalities occupying your body and mind that feel threatened. It is not really you. By just staying in the feeling of pain without trying to change it, these occupants will leave your body one by one. Their “food” disappears. A feeling of threat is not the same as danger – it is only a feeling arising from past. Seeing this mechanism is beautiful and makes you inspired to continue. And after each dying you feel more free and charged with life energy.
Seeing this natural healing for what it is will make you welcome each old stored pain into your daily consciousness with open arms. You are walking towards the source and you get to meet your ”old self” in the doorway. It is like seeing your life in review – before you die physically. When the stored emotional pain arises into daily consciousness it looks like old pain from the past is taking you again. And it can, if you still believe you are that pain. Seeing that the pain is just travelling through your daily consciousness on its way out of your body and mind is essential. It knows it’s way out of you. It’s up to you not to stop it. If you don’t know how this process works you might believe in the emotions passing by and you will again be trapped in the drama. What happens then is that your journey back to the source is put on hold. Being trapped in old emotional pain again might make you go in loops and you will feel drained of energy. When daring to stay in the feeling of the pain you have an opportunity to pass one hindrance after the other.
We can say that surrendering to Life and letting personalities die, is the same thing. In both experiences you will first feel an inner conflict, and by staying in the feeling of the original pain and experiencing it fully, you will become free from it. For most of us this process will happen naturally. The longing in our hearts will guide us to meet the pain. We no longer want to live a life of compromises. If you are ready for this transformation, the following steps can be used as guidance. But listen to it only if it feels right in your heart.
Letting life guide you
You carry pain in your body and mind even if you are not aware of it. You might only see the result of it as a lack of flow and love in your life. The first step is to see and accept that you are where you are.
Second step is to ask Life to guide you back to your love and true power. This is what many people call praying. But the most important thing is that you feel the intensity of it deep inside. Feel that you really long for this guidance to happen. After ”praying” say and feel thank you as if it had already happened. The deeper you can feel this inside of you, the deeper you will experience your prayers being heard. This is how miracles can happen. Do not underestimate the power of your authentic prayer.
Third step is to wait. You do not need to do anything but keeping your eyes and awareness open. Life from now on will show you where you are not in the flow of Life. You will start to see that every time life is not in ease, you are fighting with the flow. It is very common that prior to seeing this, a frustration is building up inside of you. It can be an emotional, physical, or even a spiritual frustration. You might feel that you are doing the ”right” thing but still it is not working as you had wished. You have not done anything wrong; it is only Life showing you the way back to your true power. When a frustration like this rises to it’s maximum, you might feel huge pain with it. Then you know that the process is working, as it should. At one point you get to the place where you want to close off or numb yourself somehow. The feeling of need is very strong at this point. In the past you might have chosen your needs many times, as most of us have. This time you can try a new approach. This is where the fun starts.
So the forth step is to surrender to Life. Surrendering is not something you actively do. It just happens naturally if you don’t stop it. You see, the frustration that has built up inside you is the fuel for surrendering. When you hit the place where you see that you have no more solutions on how to try to solve your problem,
it is easy to give it up. Because you see that you cannot do anything more. When you feel the time is there, ”fall down on your knees” and give your burden up to Life. You can pray like this: ”I see that I cannot fix this myself, I give it all up to you Life. Thank you for showing me how to be free.”
If you really managed to surrender completely, you will now feel the burden being lifted off your shoulders. Now it is time to expect a miracle.
Continue to keep your eyes open and be aware of new opportunities for surrendering. After doing this for some time you will start to see what it does for you in your life. And as time passes you will be able to surrender more and more quickly and with less and less ”fuel” (frustration) as your awareness grows.
Making love with the Universe
It is important to know that the surrendering is all on the inside. You don’t have to surrender to any other person or situation. It is more like cutting a string of attachment to the outcome of situations. When you let your personal control of life go like that, life can more easily give you maximum benefits. Let the feeling of control go and see change happen on the outside just by itself.
The transition from being in Need to being in Love can be achieved very quickly through the art of surrendering. Every time you discover that you are being in Need, you can let yourself surrender to Life. But for most people it will be easier with a frustration build-up in the beginning. After you get the hang of it you can be in constant surrendering-mode every moment of the day, without doing anything. It is fun and life becomes a miracle itself. It feels like the whole Universe is backing you up – and it does!
And at one point in your evolution of consciousness you will probably discover that there is a life force flowing through all living things. That is when you just jump into the flow of life and let it love you completely. This flow knows exactly how to cleanse you and bring you to your full potential. Your contribution to it all is only to give yourself to it. The only constant thing in life – is change. May your journey be filled with joy and happiness forever and ever.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Happy
It was nearly 2,000 years ago that Jesus Christ said: “A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” It is somewhat surprising then that it has taken until quite recently for economists to catch up. However, with recent publications from the Executive Director of the Australia Institute Clive Hamilton, Growth Fetish (Allen & Unwin, 2003) followed by his Affluenza (Allen & Unwin, 2005) and Lord Richard Layard’s, Happiness: Lessons from a new science (Penguin Press, 2005) it seems the point might be sinking in.
The point: wealth does not equal happiness.
Layard, in particular, not only demonstrates the feasibility of actually measuring happiness, but also examines the public policy implications of pursuing happiness rather than wealth. Perhaps not surprisingly, this leads to some policies that appear quite the reverse of those advocated by both major political parties in Australia.
Happiness, however elusive to achieve, is really quite simple to define. It is feeling good, as opposed to feeling bad. It can be measured in a couple of very different ways. First, people can simply be asked questions about how they feel. Such surveys might not sound very scientific but Layard describes various methods of independent verification that ensure these survey results can be considered quite robust. Second, advances in neuroscience allow researchers to measure happiness by types of brain activity. These measures have been shown to correlate well with measures obtained from psychological survey results.
These measures reveal that, in general, happiness in western countries has not increased despite significant increases in wealth since the end of World War II. Although increasing income does boost happiness for those living in poverty, this relationship breaks down once a certain level of wealth is achieved. In fact, comparing happiness across countries reveals that once incomes reaches around US$15,000 - 20,000 per capita, increased wealth has no impact on happiness.
So, for those of us in the prosperous west, what does impact on our happiness? Layard reports seven factors that large scale surveys have identified as affecting our happiness. These factors are:
family relationships;
financial situation;
work and job security;
community and friends;
health;
personal freedom (essentially civil liberties); and
personal values (a religious or spiritual aspect to life).
When the impact of these factors is measured qualitatively, the factors that have the largest negative impact on happiness are marriage breakdown, becoming unemployed, perceived poor health and low personal freedom (in that order).
It is now clear why increased wealth has not improved happiness. In the same period that average wealth has doubled, marriage breakdown has increased significantly. Community trust has decreased, job security has been sacrificed in favour of increased productivity and as people are flooded with media images of perfection, self perceptions of health and wellbeing have plummeted. Furthermore, once above the US$20,000 per capita income, it is wealth relative to peers that counts, not absolute wealth and this, of course, is a zero sum game.
As a consequence of this research, both Layard and Hamilton propose changing the objective of public policy from maximising GDP (a measure of wealth) to that of maximising happiness or wellbeing. Layard encourages the adoption of the underlying philosophic principle, promoted by 18th century lawyer, Jeremy Bentham, that society should aim at producing the greatest possible sum total of happiness.
Even more radical is Jesus Christ whose golden rule: “love your neighbour as yourself”
(do unto others..) applies at the level of each individual. Either approach would at the very least focus our attention on improving the lot of those at the bottom of our society. However, whatever the underlying philosophical or religious foundation, such an approach is now possible and produces quite different policy in a range of areas to that deriving from wealth maximisation.
One of the greatest impacts is on taxation policy. Traditionally taxation has been seen as a distorting influence, so carrying an assumption that lower tax is always desirable and therefore requiring a high level of justification.
However, Layard shows that higher incomes work against happiness in two ways. The first is related to rivalry. If one person’s income increases, their happiness increases, but that of their peers decreases by up to one-third as much because relatively, their peers are now worse off.
The second is what Layard calls habituation. That is, the increase in happiness from a rise in income reduces over time as people get used to the new living standard. For example, a new colour television resulted in significant happiness in 1975 but now only a plasma screen will do it. This habituation is unforeseen and therefore results in much wasted expenditure.
Layard estimates that up to 30 per cent of increases in income are wasted in such over-investment in material possessions.
Layard’s conclusion is that taxation is therefore corrective, not distorting. This is a fundamental challenge to conventional thinking. According to these (admittedly) approximate numbers, a top marginal taxation rate of 60 per cent would be a “neutral” figure. It is, in fact, the typical marginal tax rate in Europe, where happiness is generally greater than in the US or Britain. The decreasing positive impact of wealth increases on happiness also suggests a strongly progressive taxation rather than the flatter income tax regimes being pushed currently (not to mention the regressive GST).
As described above, job security is a major source of happiness and unemployment a major source of misery.
Under the proposed WorkChoices legislation, individuals should be able to trade security for income or other conditions. However, in practice, individuals do not have this choice: any such suggestion will cast doubt on one’s willingness to work.
It is clear therefore, that job security and additional time for family and community activities (key drivers of happiness) need to be negotiated collectively. The WorkChoices proposal, with its emphasis on flexibility and individual negotiation, may potentially increase productivity and therefore wealth, but is bound to decrease happiness.
While not going into detail, it is clear that policies relating to health, family and community are also key to promoting happiness. Layard reports that mental illness causes the most misery in society. However, a recent report (“Goverment program failing unemployed: report", SMH, October 25, 2005) concluded government programs were significantly under-funded and under resourced. To make significant inroads into unhappiness, the resources applied to mental health would need to be increased significantly.
One further policy area demands mention. Television creates discontent by bombarding us with images of perfection and promising that we can achieve these through increased consumption. These promises are of course false but the process increases feelings of discontent. Hence arguably television advertising directly reduces happiness. Both Layard and Hamilton recommend restrictions on advertising including bans in advertising to children under 12-years-old. Layard suggests that all advertising be limited to the provision of factual information while Hamilton goes even further. Such proposals may seem radical but only “radical” if society’s aim were to maximise wealth and not happiness.
Wealth and happiness are not necessarily mutually exclusive. However, for those of us in western countries, pursuit of one may lead to less of the other.
The current consensus is that wealth maximisation should be the goal of public policy. Richard Layard has now given us an alternative. The challenge now is to convince our major political parties that we would rather be happy than rich.
John Mckinnon
i was going to post a rant but i found the above whilst preparing said rant and figured it said what i would have only with less dribble...the phrase money doesnt buy happiness has been around forever.
what are peoples thoughts on this?
you're all aware that Australia is dealing with some issues at the moment
terrorism has taken over the lives of many..
huge unclear changes to employment legislation have left many in fear of their jobs..
a government with complete run of the sennate..not to mention the million problems going unnoticed due to the selective focus of the media..
if increasing productivity and thus economic growth is our continuous goal, surely the fact that automated processes are more productive than humans has crossed the minds of many at some point..even if it doesnt, we grow and then what?
according to the figures that measure "standard of living" America is second...though i dont think many Americans would agree...
Johnny dug a hole
its fillin with water
Here is a list of myths we need to abolish in order to make any progress..
• The myth that growth in GNP is a valid measure of human well-being and progress.
• The myth that free unregulated markets efficiently allocate a society's resources.
• The myth that growth in trade benefits ordinary people.
• The myth that economic globalization is inevitable.
• The myth that global corporations are benevolent institutions that if freed from governmental interference will provide a clean environment for all and good jobs for the poor.
• The myth that absentee investors create local prosperity.
The point: wealth does not equal happiness.
Layard, in particular, not only demonstrates the feasibility of actually measuring happiness, but also examines the public policy implications of pursuing happiness rather than wealth. Perhaps not surprisingly, this leads to some policies that appear quite the reverse of those advocated by both major political parties in Australia.
Happiness, however elusive to achieve, is really quite simple to define. It is feeling good, as opposed to feeling bad. It can be measured in a couple of very different ways. First, people can simply be asked questions about how they feel. Such surveys might not sound very scientific but Layard describes various methods of independent verification that ensure these survey results can be considered quite robust. Second, advances in neuroscience allow researchers to measure happiness by types of brain activity. These measures have been shown to correlate well with measures obtained from psychological survey results.
These measures reveal that, in general, happiness in western countries has not increased despite significant increases in wealth since the end of World War II. Although increasing income does boost happiness for those living in poverty, this relationship breaks down once a certain level of wealth is achieved. In fact, comparing happiness across countries reveals that once incomes reaches around US$15,000 - 20,000 per capita, increased wealth has no impact on happiness.
So, for those of us in the prosperous west, what does impact on our happiness? Layard reports seven factors that large scale surveys have identified as affecting our happiness. These factors are:
family relationships;
financial situation;
work and job security;
community and friends;
health;
personal freedom (essentially civil liberties); and
personal values (a religious or spiritual aspect to life).
When the impact of these factors is measured qualitatively, the factors that have the largest negative impact on happiness are marriage breakdown, becoming unemployed, perceived poor health and low personal freedom (in that order).
It is now clear why increased wealth has not improved happiness. In the same period that average wealth has doubled, marriage breakdown has increased significantly. Community trust has decreased, job security has been sacrificed in favour of increased productivity and as people are flooded with media images of perfection, self perceptions of health and wellbeing have plummeted. Furthermore, once above the US$20,000 per capita income, it is wealth relative to peers that counts, not absolute wealth and this, of course, is a zero sum game.
As a consequence of this research, both Layard and Hamilton propose changing the objective of public policy from maximising GDP (a measure of wealth) to that of maximising happiness or wellbeing. Layard encourages the adoption of the underlying philosophic principle, promoted by 18th century lawyer, Jeremy Bentham, that society should aim at producing the greatest possible sum total of happiness.
Even more radical is Jesus Christ whose golden rule: “love your neighbour as yourself”
(do unto others..) applies at the level of each individual. Either approach would at the very least focus our attention on improving the lot of those at the bottom of our society. However, whatever the underlying philosophical or religious foundation, such an approach is now possible and produces quite different policy in a range of areas to that deriving from wealth maximisation.
One of the greatest impacts is on taxation policy. Traditionally taxation has been seen as a distorting influence, so carrying an assumption that lower tax is always desirable and therefore requiring a high level of justification.
However, Layard shows that higher incomes work against happiness in two ways. The first is related to rivalry. If one person’s income increases, their happiness increases, but that of their peers decreases by up to one-third as much because relatively, their peers are now worse off.
The second is what Layard calls habituation. That is, the increase in happiness from a rise in income reduces over time as people get used to the new living standard. For example, a new colour television resulted in significant happiness in 1975 but now only a plasma screen will do it. This habituation is unforeseen and therefore results in much wasted expenditure.
Layard estimates that up to 30 per cent of increases in income are wasted in such over-investment in material possessions.
Layard’s conclusion is that taxation is therefore corrective, not distorting. This is a fundamental challenge to conventional thinking. According to these (admittedly) approximate numbers, a top marginal taxation rate of 60 per cent would be a “neutral” figure. It is, in fact, the typical marginal tax rate in Europe, where happiness is generally greater than in the US or Britain. The decreasing positive impact of wealth increases on happiness also suggests a strongly progressive taxation rather than the flatter income tax regimes being pushed currently (not to mention the regressive GST).
As described above, job security is a major source of happiness and unemployment a major source of misery.
Under the proposed WorkChoices legislation, individuals should be able to trade security for income or other conditions. However, in practice, individuals do not have this choice: any such suggestion will cast doubt on one’s willingness to work.
It is clear therefore, that job security and additional time for family and community activities (key drivers of happiness) need to be negotiated collectively. The WorkChoices proposal, with its emphasis on flexibility and individual negotiation, may potentially increase productivity and therefore wealth, but is bound to decrease happiness.
While not going into detail, it is clear that policies relating to health, family and community are also key to promoting happiness. Layard reports that mental illness causes the most misery in society. However, a recent report (“Goverment program failing unemployed: report", SMH, October 25, 2005) concluded government programs were significantly under-funded and under resourced. To make significant inroads into unhappiness, the resources applied to mental health would need to be increased significantly.
One further policy area demands mention. Television creates discontent by bombarding us with images of perfection and promising that we can achieve these through increased consumption. These promises are of course false but the process increases feelings of discontent. Hence arguably television advertising directly reduces happiness. Both Layard and Hamilton recommend restrictions on advertising including bans in advertising to children under 12-years-old. Layard suggests that all advertising be limited to the provision of factual information while Hamilton goes even further. Such proposals may seem radical but only “radical” if society’s aim were to maximise wealth and not happiness.
Wealth and happiness are not necessarily mutually exclusive. However, for those of us in western countries, pursuit of one may lead to less of the other.
The current consensus is that wealth maximisation should be the goal of public policy. Richard Layard has now given us an alternative. The challenge now is to convince our major political parties that we would rather be happy than rich.
John Mckinnon
i was going to post a rant but i found the above whilst preparing said rant and figured it said what i would have only with less dribble...the phrase money doesnt buy happiness has been around forever.
what are peoples thoughts on this?
you're all aware that Australia is dealing with some issues at the moment
terrorism has taken over the lives of many..
huge unclear changes to employment legislation have left many in fear of their jobs..
a government with complete run of the sennate..not to mention the million problems going unnoticed due to the selective focus of the media..
if increasing productivity and thus economic growth is our continuous goal, surely the fact that automated processes are more productive than humans has crossed the minds of many at some point..even if it doesnt, we grow and then what?
according to the figures that measure "standard of living" America is second...though i dont think many Americans would agree...
Johnny dug a hole
its fillin with water
Here is a list of myths we need to abolish in order to make any progress..
• The myth that growth in GNP is a valid measure of human well-being and progress.
• The myth that free unregulated markets efficiently allocate a society's resources.
• The myth that growth in trade benefits ordinary people.
• The myth that economic globalization is inevitable.
• The myth that global corporations are benevolent institutions that if freed from governmental interference will provide a clean environment for all and good jobs for the poor.
• The myth that absentee investors create local prosperity.
Do you Trip?
Everyone should be legally required to do this once every six months.
Not only for the deconditioning advantages and increased self awareness, but sometimes you just need a laugh
Doosh
ganoosh
Desmond Morris in the house
Now this...shit, this is kinda burly...
9 year olds...
If one is going to indulge they should wait till 18 at least to give the brain time to develop...
Who thinks there is psychoactive potential in this form on consciousness exploration and who thinks it's a bunch of tripping hippies just wanting to get wrecked?
Not only for the deconditioning advantages and increased self awareness, but sometimes you just need a laugh
Doosh
ganoosh
Desmond Morris in the house
Now this...shit, this is kinda burly...
9 year olds...
If one is going to indulge they should wait till 18 at least to give the brain time to develop...
Who thinks there is psychoactive potential in this form on consciousness exploration and who thinks it's a bunch of tripping hippies just wanting to get wrecked?
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Change in the winds, bye bye Johnny
So the pollies have returned.
And what a day it was..Howard has told government MPs that "history is on our side", despite opinion polls pointing to a Labor landslide election win.
Economic growth has spearheaded Howards career but anyone with half a brain knew he couldn't ride that wave forever...
Mr Howard told his parliamentary colleagues in their closed-door meeting yesterday that the Government would win this year's election if the Government played to its strengths: the economy and national security.
Ignore the resources boom and our up the ass deal with the U.S and play to the fears of the public, how delightfully sadistic.
Mr Howard told backbenchers that voters still had confidence in the government, despite a poll showing Labor's primary vote at a six-year high and a drop in coalition support.
The Prime Minister told his party room that no Australian government had lost an election since World War II unless voters had lost confidence in its ability to govern..finger on the pulse of society there Johnny.
Record petrol prices coincide with petrol companies recording record profits...$100 million propaganda campaign that left us more confused than before...
He won't stop until he has sunk the entire country deep into the pockets of those he admires...
Betting agency Centrebet still has the coalition as the $1.80 favourite to win, with Labor on $1.90.
And what a day it was..Howard has told government MPs that "history is on our side", despite opinion polls pointing to a Labor landslide election win.
Economic growth has spearheaded Howards career but anyone with half a brain knew he couldn't ride that wave forever...
Mr Howard told his parliamentary colleagues in their closed-door meeting yesterday that the Government would win this year's election if the Government played to its strengths: the economy and national security.
Ignore the resources boom and our up the ass deal with the U.S and play to the fears of the public, how delightfully sadistic.
Mr Howard told backbenchers that voters still had confidence in the government, despite a poll showing Labor's primary vote at a six-year high and a drop in coalition support.
The Prime Minister told his party room that no Australian government had lost an election since World War II unless voters had lost confidence in its ability to govern..finger on the pulse of society there Johnny.
Record petrol prices coincide with petrol companies recording record profits...$100 million propaganda campaign that left us more confused than before...
He won't stop until he has sunk the entire country deep into the pockets of those he admires...
Betting agency Centrebet still has the coalition as the $1.80 favourite to win, with Labor on $1.90.
Australia's Economic Future
So due to spending an absorbant amount of time focusing on issues over which they have no control, the coalition is faced with a few small obstacles in the near future...
Sadly Mr Howard has been made aware of Australia's ageing problem and over the past few years he has maintained his single minded financial approach in order to continuely secure the vote of the elderly.
When it was in cost-cutting mode, back in its first term, pensioners benefited massively from the decision to index pensions to male total average weekly earnings, rather than the consumer price index.
And when the spending floodgates were lifted ahead of the elections in 2001, the government’s consciousness of the growing electoral clout of the ‘grey vote’ was again apparent in the $600 cash bonus for pensioners, and in the decision to allow senior citizens to earn up to $32,612 before being required to pay income tax (compared with, say, $13,000 for a single-income family with a child under five).
As he seems so fond of doing Johnny hasn't really considered the sustainability of such policies...Australians aged 65 and over are expected to account for around 22 per cent of the population in forty year’s time, compared with just over 12 per cent today.
As a result, the cost of age pensions is projected (by the OECD) to rise from around 1½ per cent of GDP to around 4½ per cent; while total (public and private) health care costs could rise from the present 8½ per cent of GDP to around 15 per cent.
Other things being equal, an increase in the share of national income taken in taxes of between 7 and 8 percentage points would be required to meet the budgetary costs associated with such change..It's been suggested that required tax increases could be equivalent to tripling the GST..even if that is an exaggeration tax increases will still be required to deal with such an increase on the system.
So Johnny has a few options: increase tax so future retirees may enjoy equal public benefits to their predecessors, ie we pay more tax in order to secure the same value of senior life..
Or he can decrease funding originally intended for long term issues; the environment, the skills shortage or perhaps even the abhorrent inhumane treatment of asylum seekers...
Or he can begin to contemplate measures intended to slow the rate at which the ‘baby boom’ generation stakes an increasing claim on the public purse, and increasing the share of their lifestyle and health care costs which are met from their own resources...self funded retirement
Now naturally any kind of tax increase would undermine Australia’s economic growth rate, something Johnny is quite fearful of no doubt, it would accelerate the departure of talented Australians at the prime of their working lives, and act as a disincentive to capital investment..
Failing to tackle the environmental issues, or the skills shortage, will have seriously detrimental effects both socially and economically...
So what's left?
The recent trend towards allowing senior citizens more generous access to the public purse than either earlier generations of senior citizens enjoyed, or other citizens currently enjoy, though undoubtedly unpopular with at least some of their number, appears to have the fewest economic or social consequences beyond perhaps reducing the inheritances to which some of their dependants might otherwise be entitled...
The OECD has estimated that if tighter targeting of the age pension reduced eligibility to (say) 30 per cent of the elderly population from the present level of around 70 per cent, the cost of pensions would be roughly halved as a percentage of GDP by 2030.
Jolly good then, the age at which people become eligible for the pension – which, when it was set at 65 for males in 1909, was above the average life expectancy at birth – could be raised gradually, as it is being for women (from 60 to 65 by 2020) and as it is in countries such as Sweden and the United States.
The rate at which the ‘preservation age’ (the age at which superannuation savings can be accessed without foregoing concessional taxation treatment) is being raised from 55 to 60 (under present legislation, between 2015 and 2025) could be sped up..
The pension assets test could be amended to include the value of owner-occupied housing above a given value in determining the eligibility for pensions..
So yet again due to an apparent inability to forecast any kind of long term plan it seems the coalition has dug a hole..none of the above options are very positive, but when it comes down to figures it's pretty clear which choice Johnny is going to be leaning towards.
Now to be fair Johnny has made a few comments in regards to Australia's economic future..
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Thursday in Sydney that Australia regards China as crucial to Australia's economic future as China is rising as a major customer to Australia's exports.
He reiterated Australia's One China policy, saying "we have One China policy and we encourage everybody involved to settle outstanding differences in a harmonious, amicable fashion."
April 15, 2005
Looking at the global economic environment over the last few decades tells you Asia’s share of world output has risen noticeably, and that the share of the developed OECD countries has fallen.
Most of Asia's growth is directly attributable to China, and even with the Asian crisis the area still comes out on top.
So it's no suprise that's where Johnny is currently focused on the biggest growth area..perhaps forgetting he signed a bilateral preferential trade agreement (a trading bloc which gives preferential access to certain products from certain countries, like the effect of US agriculture subsidies on crops like corn, making US corn cheaper and more abundant, on the Mexican economy, leaving Mexicans worse off than before the agreement..)
In the year following the agreement, Australian exports to the U.S. declined, while U.S. exports to Australia increased. This followed the International Monetary Fund's prediction that the Australia-United States FTA would shrink the Australian economy marginally because of the loss of trade with other countries. The IMF estimated $US5.25 billion of extra U.S. imports entering into Australia per year under the FTA, but only $US2.97 billion of extra Australian exports to the U.S. per year..
The FTA improved the overall U.S. trade deficit situation with Australia creating a trade surplus with Australia which rose 31.7% in the first quarter of 2005, compared to the same timeframe in 2004. U.S. exports to Australia increased 11.7% in the first quarter of 2005 to nearly $3.7 billion for the quarter. Agriculture exports to Australia were up 20%...
The FTA is ridiculously one sided and it cemented our relationship with the bullies of the world, with whom China has a rather rocky relationship...
Destination of Australia’s Foreign Direct Investment
Per cent of total stock as at 30 June
1982 1992 1997 2002
US 13.1 26.3 28.0 47.8
European Union 17.2 34.9 37.4 22.2
Japan na 0.5 0.3 0.2
Non-Japan Asia 34.6 16.4 12.6 7.4
It seems we've made our intentions quite clear, despite Johnny saying something completely different as he is so fond of doing..
Sadly Mr Howard has been made aware of Australia's ageing problem and over the past few years he has maintained his single minded financial approach in order to continuely secure the vote of the elderly.
When it was in cost-cutting mode, back in its first term, pensioners benefited massively from the decision to index pensions to male total average weekly earnings, rather than the consumer price index.
And when the spending floodgates were lifted ahead of the elections in 2001, the government’s consciousness of the growing electoral clout of the ‘grey vote’ was again apparent in the $600 cash bonus for pensioners, and in the decision to allow senior citizens to earn up to $32,612 before being required to pay income tax (compared with, say, $13,000 for a single-income family with a child under five).
As he seems so fond of doing Johnny hasn't really considered the sustainability of such policies...Australians aged 65 and over are expected to account for around 22 per cent of the population in forty year’s time, compared with just over 12 per cent today.
As a result, the cost of age pensions is projected (by the OECD) to rise from around 1½ per cent of GDP to around 4½ per cent; while total (public and private) health care costs could rise from the present 8½ per cent of GDP to around 15 per cent.
Other things being equal, an increase in the share of national income taken in taxes of between 7 and 8 percentage points would be required to meet the budgetary costs associated with such change..It's been suggested that required tax increases could be equivalent to tripling the GST..even if that is an exaggeration tax increases will still be required to deal with such an increase on the system.
So Johnny has a few options: increase tax so future retirees may enjoy equal public benefits to their predecessors, ie we pay more tax in order to secure the same value of senior life..
Or he can decrease funding originally intended for long term issues; the environment, the skills shortage or perhaps even the abhorrent inhumane treatment of asylum seekers...
Or he can begin to contemplate measures intended to slow the rate at which the ‘baby boom’ generation stakes an increasing claim on the public purse, and increasing the share of their lifestyle and health care costs which are met from their own resources...self funded retirement
Now naturally any kind of tax increase would undermine Australia’s economic growth rate, something Johnny is quite fearful of no doubt, it would accelerate the departure of talented Australians at the prime of their working lives, and act as a disincentive to capital investment..
Failing to tackle the environmental issues, or the skills shortage, will have seriously detrimental effects both socially and economically...
So what's left?
The recent trend towards allowing senior citizens more generous access to the public purse than either earlier generations of senior citizens enjoyed, or other citizens currently enjoy, though undoubtedly unpopular with at least some of their number, appears to have the fewest economic or social consequences beyond perhaps reducing the inheritances to which some of their dependants might otherwise be entitled...
The OECD has estimated that if tighter targeting of the age pension reduced eligibility to (say) 30 per cent of the elderly population from the present level of around 70 per cent, the cost of pensions would be roughly halved as a percentage of GDP by 2030.
Jolly good then, the age at which people become eligible for the pension – which, when it was set at 65 for males in 1909, was above the average life expectancy at birth – could be raised gradually, as it is being for women (from 60 to 65 by 2020) and as it is in countries such as Sweden and the United States.
The rate at which the ‘preservation age’ (the age at which superannuation savings can be accessed without foregoing concessional taxation treatment) is being raised from 55 to 60 (under present legislation, between 2015 and 2025) could be sped up..
The pension assets test could be amended to include the value of owner-occupied housing above a given value in determining the eligibility for pensions..
So yet again due to an apparent inability to forecast any kind of long term plan it seems the coalition has dug a hole..none of the above options are very positive, but when it comes down to figures it's pretty clear which choice Johnny is going to be leaning towards.
Now to be fair Johnny has made a few comments in regards to Australia's economic future..
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Thursday in Sydney that Australia regards China as crucial to Australia's economic future as China is rising as a major customer to Australia's exports.
He reiterated Australia's One China policy, saying "we have One China policy and we encourage everybody involved to settle outstanding differences in a harmonious, amicable fashion."
April 15, 2005
Looking at the global economic environment over the last few decades tells you Asia’s share of world output has risen noticeably, and that the share of the developed OECD countries has fallen.
Most of Asia's growth is directly attributable to China, and even with the Asian crisis the area still comes out on top.
So it's no suprise that's where Johnny is currently focused on the biggest growth area..perhaps forgetting he signed a bilateral preferential trade agreement (a trading bloc which gives preferential access to certain products from certain countries, like the effect of US agriculture subsidies on crops like corn, making US corn cheaper and more abundant, on the Mexican economy, leaving Mexicans worse off than before the agreement..)
In the year following the agreement, Australian exports to the U.S. declined, while U.S. exports to Australia increased. This followed the International Monetary Fund's prediction that the Australia-United States FTA would shrink the Australian economy marginally because of the loss of trade with other countries. The IMF estimated $US5.25 billion of extra U.S. imports entering into Australia per year under the FTA, but only $US2.97 billion of extra Australian exports to the U.S. per year..
The FTA improved the overall U.S. trade deficit situation with Australia creating a trade surplus with Australia which rose 31.7% in the first quarter of 2005, compared to the same timeframe in 2004. U.S. exports to Australia increased 11.7% in the first quarter of 2005 to nearly $3.7 billion for the quarter. Agriculture exports to Australia were up 20%...
The FTA is ridiculously one sided and it cemented our relationship with the bullies of the world, with whom China has a rather rocky relationship...
Destination of Australia’s Foreign Direct Investment
Per cent of total stock as at 30 June
1982 1992 1997 2002
US 13.1 26.3 28.0 47.8
European Union 17.2 34.9 37.4 22.2
Japan na 0.5 0.3 0.2
Non-Japan Asia 34.6 16.4 12.6 7.4
It seems we've made our intentions quite clear, despite Johnny saying something completely different as he is so fond of doing..
Post Autistic Economics
"Modern economics is sick. Economics has increasingly become an intellectual game played for its own sake and not for its practical consequences for understanding the economic world. Economists have converted the subject into a sort of social mathematics in which analytical rigour is everything and practical relevance is nothing.” -Mark Blaug
PAE has challenged standard neoclassical assumptions and incorporated ideas from sociology and psychology into economic analysis. Specifically, the notions of utility theory, (consumer choice), production and efficiency theory (pareto optimality) as well as game theory have been criticised: one much discussed article read Is There Anything Worth Keeping in Standard Microeconomics?.
Other topics include "Gross National Happiness", realism vs. mathematical consistency, "Thermodynamics and Economics", or "Irrelevance and Ideology".
Theories, scientific and otherwise, do not represent the world as it is but rather by highlighting certain aspects of it while leaving others in the dark. It may be the case that two theories highlight the same aspects of some corner of reality but offer different conclusions. In the last century, this type of situation preoccupied the philosophy of science.
Quote:
Neoclassical economists have as a group deluded themselves into believing that all you need for an exact science is mathematics, and never mind about whether the symbols used refer quantitatively to the real world. What began as an indulgence became an addiction, leading to a collective fantasy of scientific achievement where in most cases none exists. To preserve their illusions, neoclassical economists have found it increasingly necessary to isolate themselves from non-believers.
Second, as Joseph Stiglitz has observed, economics has suffered “a triumph of ideology over science”.1 Instead of regarding their theory as a tool in the pursuit of knowledge, neoclassical economists have made it the required viewpoint from which, at all times and in all places, to look at all economic phenomena. This is the position of neoliberalism.
Third, today’s economies, including the societies in which they are embedded, are very different from those of the 19th century for which neoclassical economics was invented to describe. These differences become more pronounced every decade as new aspects of economic reality emerge, for example, consumer societies, corporate globalization, economic induced environmental disasters and impending ecological ones, the accelerating gap between the rich and poor, and the movement for equal-opportunity economies. Consequently neoclassical economics sheds light on an ever-smaller proportion of economic reality, leaving more and more of it in the dark for students permitted only the neoclassical viewpoint. This makes the neoclassical monopoly more outrageous and costly every year, requiring of it ever more desperate measures of defense, like eliminating economic history and history of economics from the curriculum.
http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/Introduction.htm
http://www.paecon.net/
PAE has challenged standard neoclassical assumptions and incorporated ideas from sociology and psychology into economic analysis. Specifically, the notions of utility theory, (consumer choice), production and efficiency theory (pareto optimality) as well as game theory have been criticised: one much discussed article read Is There Anything Worth Keeping in Standard Microeconomics?.
Other topics include "Gross National Happiness", realism vs. mathematical consistency, "Thermodynamics and Economics", or "Irrelevance and Ideology".
Theories, scientific and otherwise, do not represent the world as it is but rather by highlighting certain aspects of it while leaving others in the dark. It may be the case that two theories highlight the same aspects of some corner of reality but offer different conclusions. In the last century, this type of situation preoccupied the philosophy of science.
Quote:
Neoclassical economists have as a group deluded themselves into believing that all you need for an exact science is mathematics, and never mind about whether the symbols used refer quantitatively to the real world. What began as an indulgence became an addiction, leading to a collective fantasy of scientific achievement where in most cases none exists. To preserve their illusions, neoclassical economists have found it increasingly necessary to isolate themselves from non-believers.
Second, as Joseph Stiglitz has observed, economics has suffered “a triumph of ideology over science”.1 Instead of regarding their theory as a tool in the pursuit of knowledge, neoclassical economists have made it the required viewpoint from which, at all times and in all places, to look at all economic phenomena. This is the position of neoliberalism.
Third, today’s economies, including the societies in which they are embedded, are very different from those of the 19th century for which neoclassical economics was invented to describe. These differences become more pronounced every decade as new aspects of economic reality emerge, for example, consumer societies, corporate globalization, economic induced environmental disasters and impending ecological ones, the accelerating gap between the rich and poor, and the movement for equal-opportunity economies. Consequently neoclassical economics sheds light on an ever-smaller proportion of economic reality, leaving more and more of it in the dark for students permitted only the neoclassical viewpoint. This makes the neoclassical monopoly more outrageous and costly every year, requiring of it ever more desperate measures of defense, like eliminating economic history and history of economics from the curriculum.
http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/Introduction.htm
http://www.paecon.net/
Thursday, October 11, 2007
kids these days...
This one time at band camp there was a major fucking drought.
Nobody had anything. People were living on resin... -smoking the wood in their pipes for months. This chick had a bunch. And she's begging me to sell it.
So I told her I wasn't going to be Joe the potman anymore, but I would take a little bit and sell it to my close, close, close friends.
She agreed to that, said we'd keep the same arrangement as before; 10%, free pot for me, as long as I helped her out that weekend. She had a brick of weed she was selling, she didn't want to go to the buy alone. Her brother usually goes with her, but he's in county unexpectedly.
traffic tickets. Got a warrant. They stopped him for something, found warrants on him, took him to county.
Now she doesn't walk around alone with all that weed. I don't want to do this. I have a very bad feeling about it. But she keeps asking me, keeps asking me, keeps asking me, finally I said OK 'cause I'm sick of hearing it.
Now, we're picking the guy up at the train station...
So this dude gets in an he's all
yo we need some hash man the bionic, the bomb, the puff, the blow, the black, the herb, the sensie, the cronic, the sweet Mary Jane, the shit, Ganja, split, reefa, the bad, the buddha, the home grown, the ill, the maui-wowie, the method, pot, lethal turbo, tie, shake, skunk, stress, whacky, weed, glaze, the boot, dimebag, Scooby Doo, bob, bogey, back yard boogie.
The guy needed it right away.
Don't ask me why.
Anyway, we're get to the station and we're waiting for the guy. I'm carrying the weed in one of those little carry-on bags. I got to take a piss.
So I tell the connection I'll be right back, I'm going to the boys' room.
So I walk in the mens' room, and who's standing there? Four Los Angeles county sheriffs and a German shepherd.
One of em turns to me and just starts yelllin:
Sargassum, the weed of deceit.
Sargassum fish -- mighty hunter of the deep!
What an inspiration you have been in my plot! Your life of hiding, waiting... stalking your prey. At just the right moment... ATTACK! I love you. I hope I'll be a good imitator. And my friend, the shark. Cunning, swift... wretched humans, they're afraid of you! I admire you. Soon, I'll swim with you! They'll be afraid! Oh, mighty scorpion, dangerous beast of the ocean with your powerful daggers, and your camouflage... you have little to fear from other fish. They think I'm insane! THEY'RE the ones who are insane! Oh, my friends of the deep! This day, this very day, I'll become one of YOU! My family! And together we'll conquer the universe!
"....nah bro im straight" i said as i turned and left
so i get back outside and the chick with the weeds got herself a limo from somewhere, i dunno where the hell she got the thing but i got in and she slams the door behind me n jus pisses off
dude takes off n starts headin straight for the ghetto
Usually you want to know when you're going to a sketchy area, like, "I'm gonna see some wild shit, I gotta prepare myself to see something crazy
When you're taken its different. I had a limousine driver and it was like 3 in the morning. he's a nice guy, talking to me and shit'. He's like;Where you from, dog? Shire? Word. That's a rough city, man.
And his cellphone started ringing, he's like, "Hold one one second. Hello? Oh, what's up? What? What the fuck, slow down, what? What the fuck? No! No! No! Fuck it, I'm on my way!;
Hey, I gotta make a stop real quick. " At 3 o'clock in the morning, and I didn't know he was taking me to the ghetto at first. I started looking out the window, see gun store, gun store, liquor store, gun store, where the fuck you taking me? This don't look good.
He didn't say shit. He just pulled up in front of an old rickety building that looked like a project. I've never been there before, I'm not sure if it was a project, it certainly had all the familiar symptoms of a project. A fucking crackhead ran this way, tktktktktktk! Then another one jumped out of a tree and shit, tktktk! The guy said, ;I'll be right back
Fucking left me. Took the keys with him and just left me. At 3 o'clock in the morning, in front of a project, in a fucking limousine. This was not good. I was like, I gotta look around, find some landmarks, see if I can figure out where I'm at. I might have to escape on foot.; Now this is when I know I'm in a bad neighborhood, you only see this in the worst neighborhoods. Remember, this was 3 o'clock in the morning. I looked out the window, and there was a fucking baby standing on the corner.
A baby man!
And the baby didn't even look scared, he was just standing there. And it made me sad you know, because I wanted to help the baby. I was like, "Mm mm I don't trust you either, click! clllick! The old baby-on-the-corner trick, eh? Not gonna fall for that shit. where's this limo driver?
As time goes by I start feeling worse, I was like, What the hell is wrong with me, I'm scared of a baby! But this baby could be in trouble, he may need my help. I gotta do something." But I wasn't gonna get out of the car. I'm serious, man. I just cranked the window open a little bit. ";Hey baby! Baby, go home, man! It's 3 o'clock in the morning man, what the fuck are you doing up? The baby says, "I'm selling weed, bitch!'
...i sat shocked for a second then yelled ";Stop selling weed man, all right, you've got your whole life ahead of you.
He goes, Fuck you, bitch. I got kids to feed!
Kids these days man
definitely got some lip on em..
Anyway
the next day at band camp we're playing away the next day
i was on the tubamaba
word
and this bozo fuck trianglist gets up and just starts yellin at the top of his voice
"i'd like to thank everyone for having me here tonight, its such an honour after all these years to finally be acknowledged.
And now, on with the award
The nominees are... Buck Naked. Buck Naked is nominated for getting his best friend's girlfriend, Chesty Laroo pregnant, then tricking his best friend into raising the little bastard.
The next nominee is... Raw Pull. Raw Pull is nominated for calling the cops on his drug-dealing neighbors, not because it was the right thing to do, but just 'cause he was jealous of all the money they was makin'.
And the final nominee is... Silky Johnston. Silky Johnston is nominated for calling in a bomb threat at the Special Olympics.
And the winner is...."
"Hey Bobby man what the fuck are you talkin about?" questions a guitarist to his left
All of a sudden up jumps the camp director
"You come into camp, rent my lot, within six hours you blow in a guy's eye with Wild Bill Hickok backin' your play. Next day, I'm supposed to sell you the lot, put you in business, without askin' who the fuck you are or what the fuck you're doin' here?"
"jesus christ what the hell did he just say?"
people have stopped playing at are staring alternately at bobby the triangle player and the camp director who now seem to be engaged in a deep conversation, though as far as i could tell they were both covering different topics oblivious to the constant changes
" What about the time I chipped my tooth on the bathroom urinal? What the FUCK is so comical about that!" piped bobbytriangle
"WHAT is up Satan's ass? All he wants to do is fuck us up, the dicklicker! The lord said, "I am the light of the world." Now he could of easily have said, "I am King Shit of Fuck Mountain... Why would you FUCK with me?" I'm the only preacher with the fucking balls, and you know this, to say, "Satan I damn thee, you shit-eating, cock-sucking, mother-fucking son of a b!" Can I get a fuckin' a?" was the reply of the director
"holy shit dude someone's put acid in the punch again"
"oh shit............cool"
1st year bandmembers began to scatter in a mad panic whilst the rest of us sat back in agreeance with the above sentiments
meanwhile bobbytriangle and campdic are still spouting random thoughts at each other
"One of the weird things Houdini discovered is that some of these mediums actually slip into believing their own bullshit. They forget their own misses, or as John Edward, THE BIGGEST DOUCHE IN THE UNIVERSE, does, rewrite them as hits that we're just not able to recognize. Cold reading can be done accidently. That doesn't mean the psychic is a better person. Lying to themselves does not make lying to others ok. It can make intellectually lazy scumbags more convincing and dangerous. But even if these fucks know they're just making shit up and pushing people's buttons, they tell themselves, "At least I'm comforting the bereaved." WHO THE FUCK ARE THEY TO DECIDE THAT LYING ABOUT THE UNIVERSE AND A DEAD LOVED ONE IS WHAT THE BEREAVED NEEDS? That's condescending BULLSHIT!"
"Sick fuck. What the fuck's wrong with this country? In the old days, murder was murder. You killed someone, it was business. You sure as Christ didn't eat them."
"I've dealt with your damm advances for years now, and I'm sick of it! I'm sick of it, I'm straight, okay? You ever hear of sexual harassment? Ever hear of that? What do you take me for, I'm a punkass? Fuck you man, fuck you! [at this point campdic stood up and threw his whistle at b-triangle, it was awsome, like powersauce awsome] I can't believe this! I had shit to do today!"
"Seriously, is this the only part of the sketch I'm in? I spent an hour and 15 minutes in traffic getting here, it was great that I was in a Benz but this is horse shit! Oh, fuck you! You know what? I'm going home! Yeah, you can kiss my ass! I was in Garfield, you motherfucker!"
"The country runs better with a good looking man in the White House. I mean, look what happened with Nixon; no one wanted to fuck him, so he fucked everyone."
this was beginning to become a bit much for a few of us so we ventured outside into the woods for a bit of a wander
i can here Tim the trumphet man up ahead talking in an ironically profound tone considering the topic
"It's like when you have an orgasm on your own. Lyin there watching some porn movie you bought on a drunken, lonly night in SoHo. And you're lyin there, everything is really great. You're getting totally turned on by these absurdly graphic images. Everything seems so right, then Ppett. Bingo! You wake up. You're lyin there sweatin, despreatly lookin for the tissue, which you just know is still in your pocket. And the remote control which is somewhere on the floor. It's like walkin in on yourself. You know, and hey man what the fuck are you two doing?'
i looked down to see two lads merrily jibbering away
"Why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place?"
"Fuck Mickey Mouse! Fuck him in the ass with a big rubber dick! And then break it off and beat him with it!"
Sometimes my juices start to flow and I feel like a nymphoid barbarian in dinosaur hell ya know.
Fortunately, I'm adhering to a pretty strict, uh, drug, uh, regime to keep my mind, you know, uh, limber.
i mean afterall sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, well, he eats you.
but just look at George Washington Carver who made the first computer!
Out of a peanut!
A PEA-NUT!
too many Soul Train reject's with a Robin Hood complex thats the problem goddam it
What the Fuck?
Chief!
I've never seen these bitches in my agent classes!
I'm still paying the loans off, man!
I sleep on a pissy mattress!
I ain't got good food to eat!
I borrow money for my Weed!
You see what's happening, don't you? How we're being corrupted by their hipper-than-thou fashion and cool slang you can't help but use?
great odins raven something must be done!
and they've done studies, you know. Sixty percent of the time it works every time.
I would like to extend to you all an invitation to the pants party
coz son of a bee sting i love carpet
and i love lamp, i love lamp!
I ate fiberglass insulation.
It wasn't cotton candy like the guy said
Nobody had anything. People were living on resin... -smoking the wood in their pipes for months. This chick had a bunch. And she's begging me to sell it.
So I told her I wasn't going to be Joe the potman anymore, but I would take a little bit and sell it to my close, close, close friends.
She agreed to that, said we'd keep the same arrangement as before; 10%, free pot for me, as long as I helped her out that weekend. She had a brick of weed she was selling, she didn't want to go to the buy alone. Her brother usually goes with her, but he's in county unexpectedly.
traffic tickets. Got a warrant. They stopped him for something, found warrants on him, took him to county.
Now she doesn't walk around alone with all that weed. I don't want to do this. I have a very bad feeling about it. But she keeps asking me, keeps asking me, keeps asking me, finally I said OK 'cause I'm sick of hearing it.
Now, we're picking the guy up at the train station...
So this dude gets in an he's all
yo we need some hash man the bionic, the bomb, the puff, the blow, the black, the herb, the sensie, the cronic, the sweet Mary Jane, the shit, Ganja, split, reefa, the bad, the buddha, the home grown, the ill, the maui-wowie, the method, pot, lethal turbo, tie, shake, skunk, stress, whacky, weed, glaze, the boot, dimebag, Scooby Doo, bob, bogey, back yard boogie.
The guy needed it right away.
Don't ask me why.
Anyway, we're get to the station and we're waiting for the guy. I'm carrying the weed in one of those little carry-on bags. I got to take a piss.
So I tell the connection I'll be right back, I'm going to the boys' room.
So I walk in the mens' room, and who's standing there? Four Los Angeles county sheriffs and a German shepherd.
One of em turns to me and just starts yelllin:
Sargassum, the weed of deceit.
Sargassum fish -- mighty hunter of the deep!
What an inspiration you have been in my plot! Your life of hiding, waiting... stalking your prey. At just the right moment... ATTACK! I love you. I hope I'll be a good imitator. And my friend, the shark. Cunning, swift... wretched humans, they're afraid of you! I admire you. Soon, I'll swim with you! They'll be afraid! Oh, mighty scorpion, dangerous beast of the ocean with your powerful daggers, and your camouflage... you have little to fear from other fish. They think I'm insane! THEY'RE the ones who are insane! Oh, my friends of the deep! This day, this very day, I'll become one of YOU! My family! And together we'll conquer the universe!
"....nah bro im straight" i said as i turned and left
so i get back outside and the chick with the weeds got herself a limo from somewhere, i dunno where the hell she got the thing but i got in and she slams the door behind me n jus pisses off
dude takes off n starts headin straight for the ghetto
Usually you want to know when you're going to a sketchy area, like, "I'm gonna see some wild shit, I gotta prepare myself to see something crazy
When you're taken its different. I had a limousine driver and it was like 3 in the morning. he's a nice guy, talking to me and shit'. He's like;Where you from, dog? Shire? Word. That's a rough city, man.
And his cellphone started ringing, he's like, "Hold one one second. Hello? Oh, what's up? What? What the fuck, slow down, what? What the fuck? No! No! No! Fuck it, I'm on my way!;
Hey, I gotta make a stop real quick. " At 3 o'clock in the morning, and I didn't know he was taking me to the ghetto at first. I started looking out the window, see gun store, gun store, liquor store, gun store, where the fuck you taking me? This don't look good.
He didn't say shit. He just pulled up in front of an old rickety building that looked like a project. I've never been there before, I'm not sure if it was a project, it certainly had all the familiar symptoms of a project. A fucking crackhead ran this way, tktktktktktk! Then another one jumped out of a tree and shit, tktktk! The guy said, ;I'll be right back
Fucking left me. Took the keys with him and just left me. At 3 o'clock in the morning, in front of a project, in a fucking limousine. This was not good. I was like, I gotta look around, find some landmarks, see if I can figure out where I'm at. I might have to escape on foot.; Now this is when I know I'm in a bad neighborhood, you only see this in the worst neighborhoods. Remember, this was 3 o'clock in the morning. I looked out the window, and there was a fucking baby standing on the corner.
A baby man!
And the baby didn't even look scared, he was just standing there. And it made me sad you know, because I wanted to help the baby. I was like, "Mm mm I don't trust you either, click! clllick! The old baby-on-the-corner trick, eh? Not gonna fall for that shit. where's this limo driver?
As time goes by I start feeling worse, I was like, What the hell is wrong with me, I'm scared of a baby! But this baby could be in trouble, he may need my help. I gotta do something." But I wasn't gonna get out of the car. I'm serious, man. I just cranked the window open a little bit. ";Hey baby! Baby, go home, man! It's 3 o'clock in the morning man, what the fuck are you doing up? The baby says, "I'm selling weed, bitch!'
...i sat shocked for a second then yelled ";Stop selling weed man, all right, you've got your whole life ahead of you.
He goes, Fuck you, bitch. I got kids to feed!
Kids these days man
definitely got some lip on em..
Anyway
the next day at band camp we're playing away the next day
i was on the tubamaba
word
and this bozo fuck trianglist gets up and just starts yellin at the top of his voice
"i'd like to thank everyone for having me here tonight, its such an honour after all these years to finally be acknowledged.
And now, on with the award
The nominees are... Buck Naked. Buck Naked is nominated for getting his best friend's girlfriend, Chesty Laroo pregnant, then tricking his best friend into raising the little bastard.
The next nominee is... Raw Pull. Raw Pull is nominated for calling the cops on his drug-dealing neighbors, not because it was the right thing to do, but just 'cause he was jealous of all the money they was makin'.
And the final nominee is... Silky Johnston. Silky Johnston is nominated for calling in a bomb threat at the Special Olympics.
And the winner is...."
"Hey Bobby man what the fuck are you talkin about?" questions a guitarist to his left
All of a sudden up jumps the camp director
"You come into camp, rent my lot, within six hours you blow in a guy's eye with Wild Bill Hickok backin' your play. Next day, I'm supposed to sell you the lot, put you in business, without askin' who the fuck you are or what the fuck you're doin' here?"
"jesus christ what the hell did he just say?"
people have stopped playing at are staring alternately at bobby the triangle player and the camp director who now seem to be engaged in a deep conversation, though as far as i could tell they were both covering different topics oblivious to the constant changes
" What about the time I chipped my tooth on the bathroom urinal? What the FUCK is so comical about that!" piped bobbytriangle
"WHAT is up Satan's ass? All he wants to do is fuck us up, the dicklicker! The lord said, "I am the light of the world." Now he could of easily have said, "I am King Shit of Fuck Mountain... Why would you FUCK with me?" I'm the only preacher with the fucking balls, and you know this, to say, "Satan I damn thee, you shit-eating, cock-sucking, mother-fucking son of a b!" Can I get a fuckin' a?" was the reply of the director
"holy shit dude someone's put acid in the punch again"
"oh shit............cool"
1st year bandmembers began to scatter in a mad panic whilst the rest of us sat back in agreeance with the above sentiments
meanwhile bobbytriangle and campdic are still spouting random thoughts at each other
"One of the weird things Houdini discovered is that some of these mediums actually slip into believing their own bullshit. They forget their own misses, or as John Edward, THE BIGGEST DOUCHE IN THE UNIVERSE, does, rewrite them as hits that we're just not able to recognize. Cold reading can be done accidently. That doesn't mean the psychic is a better person. Lying to themselves does not make lying to others ok. It can make intellectually lazy scumbags more convincing and dangerous. But even if these fucks know they're just making shit up and pushing people's buttons, they tell themselves, "At least I'm comforting the bereaved." WHO THE FUCK ARE THEY TO DECIDE THAT LYING ABOUT THE UNIVERSE AND A DEAD LOVED ONE IS WHAT THE BEREAVED NEEDS? That's condescending BULLSHIT!"
"Sick fuck. What the fuck's wrong with this country? In the old days, murder was murder. You killed someone, it was business. You sure as Christ didn't eat them."
"I've dealt with your damm advances for years now, and I'm sick of it! I'm sick of it, I'm straight, okay? You ever hear of sexual harassment? Ever hear of that? What do you take me for, I'm a punkass? Fuck you man, fuck you! [at this point campdic stood up and threw his whistle at b-triangle, it was awsome, like powersauce awsome] I can't believe this! I had shit to do today!"
"Seriously, is this the only part of the sketch I'm in? I spent an hour and 15 minutes in traffic getting here, it was great that I was in a Benz but this is horse shit! Oh, fuck you! You know what? I'm going home! Yeah, you can kiss my ass! I was in Garfield, you motherfucker!"
"The country runs better with a good looking man in the White House. I mean, look what happened with Nixon; no one wanted to fuck him, so he fucked everyone."
this was beginning to become a bit much for a few of us so we ventured outside into the woods for a bit of a wander
i can here Tim the trumphet man up ahead talking in an ironically profound tone considering the topic
"It's like when you have an orgasm on your own. Lyin there watching some porn movie you bought on a drunken, lonly night in SoHo. And you're lyin there, everything is really great. You're getting totally turned on by these absurdly graphic images. Everything seems so right, then Ppett. Bingo! You wake up. You're lyin there sweatin, despreatly lookin for the tissue, which you just know is still in your pocket. And the remote control which is somewhere on the floor. It's like walkin in on yourself. You know, and hey man what the fuck are you two doing?'
i looked down to see two lads merrily jibbering away
"Why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place?"
"Fuck Mickey Mouse! Fuck him in the ass with a big rubber dick! And then break it off and beat him with it!"
Sometimes my juices start to flow and I feel like a nymphoid barbarian in dinosaur hell ya know.
Fortunately, I'm adhering to a pretty strict, uh, drug, uh, regime to keep my mind, you know, uh, limber.
i mean afterall sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, well, he eats you.
but just look at George Washington Carver who made the first computer!
Out of a peanut!
A PEA-NUT!
too many Soul Train reject's with a Robin Hood complex thats the problem goddam it
What the Fuck?
Chief!
I've never seen these bitches in my agent classes!
I'm still paying the loans off, man!
I sleep on a pissy mattress!
I ain't got good food to eat!
I borrow money for my Weed!
You see what's happening, don't you? How we're being corrupted by their hipper-than-thou fashion and cool slang you can't help but use?
great odins raven something must be done!
and they've done studies, you know. Sixty percent of the time it works every time.
I would like to extend to you all an invitation to the pants party
coz son of a bee sting i love carpet
and i love lamp, i love lamp!
I ate fiberglass insulation.
It wasn't cotton candy like the guy said
Mario gets busy
Now, it's entirely possible that this holds such special meaning due to my ingrained connection with the game, as anyone else who grew up with it would testify to...i will know it forever.
Never the less
this is still awesome
I felt it should be shared
Never the less
this is still awesome
I felt it should be shared
The Secret
Some Aussie lady has packaged the idea of mind over matter/positive thinking/buddhism/perception is reality into a nice little commercial dvd called The Secret.
Now if there were ever a way to alter the mainstream perception this is the kind of vehicle one would have to employ, it's the nature of our materialistic society.
One way or the other this is going to have an impact.
I'm hoping positive energy is what peeps are sending out...call it naive or whatever
the glass is still half fucking full
Now if there were ever a way to alter the mainstream perception this is the kind of vehicle one would have to employ, it's the nature of our materialistic society.
One way or the other this is going to have an impact.
I'm hoping positive energy is what peeps are sending out...call it naive or whatever
the glass is still half fucking full
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Are you cool?
Cool is about being true to yourself right?
WRONG MOTHERFUCKER
Cool means you have tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool/the internet/vice 'recognise cool and ridicule it a week later' magazine. (Though it is no longer recommended that one use the term "cool"; instead, say "deck." or " Gully")
The alpha walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. Enthusiasm is frowned upon as is body fat and last years jeans.
The more time you spend ensuring you look like you didn't spend any time on your appearance the better.
examples:
This guy is cool.
Should you have any trouble locating the items you require to be an individual please see the inventory list below and well be sure to send the required items out quick smart
Gully.
Purchase single vintage turntable and vinyls from Matador, DFA, Definitive Jux, Dischord, Warp, Thrill Jockey, Smells Like Records, and Drag City...purely for aesthetic purposes as the NOVA podcast is pumping through your ipod non-stop..
And do this alot:
"
But who am i to sit here and play the judgemental cynic?
Is that stereotype not just as played?
Of course it is, the internet has seen to that.
There are infinite pieces of semi-litterate literature all over the web berating any current trend, issue or situation, it is equally as played as the latest trend of the robotic sheep that comprise the 'marketplace' for the companies that push these idiotic patterns.
So who is more laughable i ask you?
The modern hipster, putting all their time and effort into ensuring they project an image of deck gully cool?
Or the modern cynic, putting all their time and effort into ensuring they project an image of a jaded and callous nature with little or no enthusiasm for anything except bellittling everyone else's enthusiasm?
WRONG MOTHERFUCKER
Cool means you have tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool/the internet/vice 'recognise cool and ridicule it a week later' magazine. (Though it is no longer recommended that one use the term "cool"; instead, say "deck." or " Gully")
The alpha walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. Enthusiasm is frowned upon as is body fat and last years jeans.
The more time you spend ensuring you look like you didn't spend any time on your appearance the better.
examples:
This guy is cool.
Should you have any trouble locating the items you require to be an individual please see the inventory list below and well be sure to send the required items out quick smart
Gully.
Purchase single vintage turntable and vinyls from Matador, DFA, Definitive Jux, Dischord, Warp, Thrill Jockey, Smells Like Records, and Drag City...purely for aesthetic purposes as the NOVA podcast is pumping through your ipod non-stop..
And do this alot:
"
But who am i to sit here and play the judgemental cynic?
Is that stereotype not just as played?
Of course it is, the internet has seen to that.
There are infinite pieces of semi-litterate literature all over the web berating any current trend, issue or situation, it is equally as played as the latest trend of the robotic sheep that comprise the 'marketplace' for the companies that push these idiotic patterns.
So who is more laughable i ask you?
The modern hipster, putting all their time and effort into ensuring they project an image of deck gully cool?
Or the modern cynic, putting all their time and effort into ensuring they project an image of a jaded and callous nature with little or no enthusiasm for anything except bellittling everyone else's enthusiasm?
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Changing Galactic Neighbourhood
2012 as indicated in the long count calendar illuminates the fact that the Precessional movement of the Winter Solstice Sun will gradually bring its position into alignment with the very center of our Galaxy.
For the Maya, it's like the last stroke of Midnight on New Year’s Eve, only in 2012 the New Year is the New Galactic Year of 26,000 solar years.
The Galactic Clock will be at zero point and a New Precessional Cycle will begin.
But the galactic center harbors a compact object of very large mass (named Sagittarius A*), strongly suspected to be a supermassive black hole.
Position A is where the December solstice sun was in relation to the Milky Way some 3,000 years ago. Position B is 1,500 years ago. And position C is "era-2012", when the December solstice sun has converged, as a result of the precession of the equinoxes, with the exact center-line of the Milky Way (the Galactic equator).
The article below is an interesting read
http://fourcornersmagazine.com/ISSUES/OCT_NOV05/PDF/FC%2004-5.pdf
We are part of a smaller galaxy that the Milky Way has put the 'come hither'
on and we are just now going to actually turn and join with the Milky way
after some 2 billion years of circling around it at a near right angle as
part of our parent galaxy called the Sagittarius Dwarf.
Sagittarius Dwarf is now so stretched out that it has lost gravitational
hold and cohesiveness to our solar system and we will finally join the
"sideways in the sky" Milky Way for the first time in our history. Our solar
system is apparently going to finally take a right angle turn for the first
time in history and start going around in the Milky Way whirlpool. How fast we turn and exactly where and how fast the changes are going to happen are simply not
predictable. We have never joined a new galaxy before as a solar system like
this.
GLOBAL CHANGE: A PERMANENT FACT OF LIFE HERE ON EARTH
Life on Earth has already managed to survive no less than eight passages
both around and through the higher energy equatorial plane of the Milky Way
according to the carbon dated historical time line, and the rather than
being something to fear -- we may actually have that to thank for providing
the building blocks of the tremendously rich diversities of evolving life
and species alive on Earth today. Primordial conditions may in fact have
been even somewhat accelerated due to the vastly greater spectrum,
quantities, and array of DNA mutating higher quantum energy harmonics as
well as the concentrations of rare primordial elements to be found therein.
There is so much that we don't know, but are clearly now on the road to find
out.
Studying the interaction between the heliosphere and interstellar space yields insights into phenomena that can affect Earth, such as galactic cosmic rays, points out Professor Randy Jokipii, with the University of Arizona in Tucson, in a related paper in Science.
All now points to the Milky Way where we even now are finally making our new
home in a grand reorganization into a new galactic neighborhood, beginning
with the global changes to the weather throughout the solar system, as well
as the temperature and currents of our oceans.
Life on Earth has already managed to survive no less than eight passages both around and through the higher energy equatorial plane of the Milky Way according to the carbon dated historical time line, and the rather than being something to fear -- we may actually have that to thank for providing the building blocks of the tremendously rich diversities of evolving life and species alive on Earth today. Primordial conditions may in fact have been even somewhat accelerated due to the vastly greater spectrum, quantities, and array of DNA mutating higher quantum energy harmonics as well as the concentrations of rare primordial elements to be found therein
http://www.http.com/:////astsun/.astro/.virginia/.edu///~mfs4n//sgr//
The overall biggest contributing cause to Global Warming, and the melting of the polar icecaps of -- both -- Earth and Mars is actually caused by our arrival down into the brighter, more energetic equator region of the Milky Way galactic disc as we are coming in from deeper space.
CHANGES-- FROM THE TOP DOWN:
While the rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels cyclically charted by such scientists and researchers as quoted by Al Gore are powerful indicators, and even possible contributors to the unmistakable levels of climate and other changes, and pollution from the choices man has made are an increasing burden to the ecosystem of the planet, the larger cause of global warming by far is the first time in history event of the permanent merging of Earth and the Solar System with the higher energy state equatorial-orbital-disc region of the spiral armed Milky Way Galaxy.
DISCOVERY OF NOVEMBER 30th 2006: The real reasons for both global warming and the ending of the Mayan calendar in 2012. We are part of a smaller galaxy that the Milky Way has put the 'come hither' on and we are just now coming down even with and going to actually turn and join with the spinning whirlpool Milky Way disc after some 2 billion years of circling around it at a near right angle as part of our parent galaxy called the Sagittarius Dwarf.
This grand turning is also the root cause for the discontinuation of the Mayan calendar (the most accurate on the planet) because the 'read-point' of the Pleiades star cluster from Earth the calendar was based upon could no longer be a constant as we begin to steer away from the earlier chart-ably predictable movement. This is a third discovery made 5 months after the first two, and possibly gives 2012 ancient prophesy issues a somewhat different perspective and footing.
"This first full-sky map of Sagittarius shows its extensive interaction with the Milky Way," Majewski said. "Both stars and star clusters now in the outer parts of the Milky Way have been 'stolen' from Sagittarius as the gravitational forces of the Milky Way nibbled away at its dwarf companion. This one vivid example shows that the Milky Way grows by eating its smaller neighbors."
"Astronomers used to view galaxy formation as an event that happened in the distant past," noted David Spergel, a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University after viewing the new finding. "These observations reinforce the idea that galaxy formation is not an event, but an ongoing process."
The study's map of M giants depicts 2 billion years of Sagittarius stripping by the Milky Way, and suggests that Sagittarius has reached a critical phase in what had been a slow dance of death.
"After slow, continuous gnawing by the Milky Way, Sagittarius has been whittled down to the point that it cannot hold itself together much longer," said 2MASS Science Team member and study co-author Martin Weinberg of the University of Massachusetts. "We are seeing Sagittarius at the very end of its life as an intact system."
Does this mean we are at a unique moment in the life of our galaxy? Yes and no.
"Whenever possible, astronomers appeal to the principle that we are not at a special time or place in the universe," Majewski said. "Because over the 14 billion-year history of the Milky Way it is unlikely that we would just happen to catch a brief event like the death of Sagittarius, we infer that such events must be common in the life of big spiral galaxies like our own. The Milky Way probably dined on a number of dwarf galaxy snacks in the past."
On the other hand, Majewski and his colleagues have been surprised by the Earth's proximity to a portion of the Sagittarius debris.
"For only a few percent of its 240 million-year orbit around the Milky Way galaxy does our Solar System pass through the path of Sagittarius debris," Majewski said. "Remarkably, stars from Sagittarius are now raining down onto our present position in the Milky Way. Stars from an alien galaxy are relatively near us. We have to re-think our assumptions about the Milky Way galaxy to account for this contamination."
The new findings will help astronomers measure the total mass of the Milky Way and Sagittarius galaxies, and probe the quantity and distribution of the invisible dark matter in these systems.
"The shape of the Sagittarius debris trail shows us that the Milky Way's unseen dark matter is in a spherical distribution, a result that is quite unexpected," Weinberg said.
"The observations provide new insights into the nature of the mysterious dark matter," said Princeton's Spergel. "Either our galaxy is unusual or the dark matter has richer properties than postulated by conventional models."
http://curezone.com/blogs/m.asp?f=1207&i=2
http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1942665.htm
For the Maya, it's like the last stroke of Midnight on New Year’s Eve, only in 2012 the New Year is the New Galactic Year of 26,000 solar years.
The Galactic Clock will be at zero point and a New Precessional Cycle will begin.
But the galactic center harbors a compact object of very large mass (named Sagittarius A*), strongly suspected to be a supermassive black hole.
Position A is where the December solstice sun was in relation to the Milky Way some 3,000 years ago. Position B is 1,500 years ago. And position C is "era-2012", when the December solstice sun has converged, as a result of the precession of the equinoxes, with the exact center-line of the Milky Way (the Galactic equator).
The article below is an interesting read
http://fourcornersmagazine.com/ISSUES/OCT_NOV05/PDF/FC%2004-5.pdf
We are part of a smaller galaxy that the Milky Way has put the 'come hither'
on and we are just now going to actually turn and join with the Milky way
after some 2 billion years of circling around it at a near right angle as
part of our parent galaxy called the Sagittarius Dwarf.
Sagittarius Dwarf is now so stretched out that it has lost gravitational
hold and cohesiveness to our solar system and we will finally join the
"sideways in the sky" Milky Way for the first time in our history. Our solar
system is apparently going to finally take a right angle turn for the first
time in history and start going around in the Milky Way whirlpool. How fast we turn and exactly where and how fast the changes are going to happen are simply not
predictable. We have never joined a new galaxy before as a solar system like
this.
GLOBAL CHANGE: A PERMANENT FACT OF LIFE HERE ON EARTH
Life on Earth has already managed to survive no less than eight passages
both around and through the higher energy equatorial plane of the Milky Way
according to the carbon dated historical time line, and the rather than
being something to fear -- we may actually have that to thank for providing
the building blocks of the tremendously rich diversities of evolving life
and species alive on Earth today. Primordial conditions may in fact have
been even somewhat accelerated due to the vastly greater spectrum,
quantities, and array of DNA mutating higher quantum energy harmonics as
well as the concentrations of rare primordial elements to be found therein.
There is so much that we don't know, but are clearly now on the road to find
out.
Studying the interaction between the heliosphere and interstellar space yields insights into phenomena that can affect Earth, such as galactic cosmic rays, points out Professor Randy Jokipii, with the University of Arizona in Tucson, in a related paper in Science.
All now points to the Milky Way where we even now are finally making our new
home in a grand reorganization into a new galactic neighborhood, beginning
with the global changes to the weather throughout the solar system, as well
as the temperature and currents of our oceans.
Life on Earth has already managed to survive no less than eight passages both around and through the higher energy equatorial plane of the Milky Way according to the carbon dated historical time line, and the rather than being something to fear -- we may actually have that to thank for providing the building blocks of the tremendously rich diversities of evolving life and species alive on Earth today. Primordial conditions may in fact have been even somewhat accelerated due to the vastly greater spectrum, quantities, and array of DNA mutating higher quantum energy harmonics as well as the concentrations of rare primordial elements to be found therein
http://www.http.com/:////astsun/.astro/.virginia/.edu///~mfs4n//sgr//
The overall biggest contributing cause to Global Warming, and the melting of the polar icecaps of -- both -- Earth and Mars is actually caused by our arrival down into the brighter, more energetic equator region of the Milky Way galactic disc as we are coming in from deeper space.
CHANGES-- FROM THE TOP DOWN:
While the rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels cyclically charted by such scientists and researchers as quoted by Al Gore are powerful indicators, and even possible contributors to the unmistakable levels of climate and other changes, and pollution from the choices man has made are an increasing burden to the ecosystem of the planet, the larger cause of global warming by far is the first time in history event of the permanent merging of Earth and the Solar System with the higher energy state equatorial-orbital-disc region of the spiral armed Milky Way Galaxy.
DISCOVERY OF NOVEMBER 30th 2006: The real reasons for both global warming and the ending of the Mayan calendar in 2012. We are part of a smaller galaxy that the Milky Way has put the 'come hither' on and we are just now coming down even with and going to actually turn and join with the spinning whirlpool Milky Way disc after some 2 billion years of circling around it at a near right angle as part of our parent galaxy called the Sagittarius Dwarf.
This grand turning is also the root cause for the discontinuation of the Mayan calendar (the most accurate on the planet) because the 'read-point' of the Pleiades star cluster from Earth the calendar was based upon could no longer be a constant as we begin to steer away from the earlier chart-ably predictable movement. This is a third discovery made 5 months after the first two, and possibly gives 2012 ancient prophesy issues a somewhat different perspective and footing.
"This first full-sky map of Sagittarius shows its extensive interaction with the Milky Way," Majewski said. "Both stars and star clusters now in the outer parts of the Milky Way have been 'stolen' from Sagittarius as the gravitational forces of the Milky Way nibbled away at its dwarf companion. This one vivid example shows that the Milky Way grows by eating its smaller neighbors."
"Astronomers used to view galaxy formation as an event that happened in the distant past," noted David Spergel, a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University after viewing the new finding. "These observations reinforce the idea that galaxy formation is not an event, but an ongoing process."
The study's map of M giants depicts 2 billion years of Sagittarius stripping by the Milky Way, and suggests that Sagittarius has reached a critical phase in what had been a slow dance of death.
"After slow, continuous gnawing by the Milky Way, Sagittarius has been whittled down to the point that it cannot hold itself together much longer," said 2MASS Science Team member and study co-author Martin Weinberg of the University of Massachusetts. "We are seeing Sagittarius at the very end of its life as an intact system."
Does this mean we are at a unique moment in the life of our galaxy? Yes and no.
"Whenever possible, astronomers appeal to the principle that we are not at a special time or place in the universe," Majewski said. "Because over the 14 billion-year history of the Milky Way it is unlikely that we would just happen to catch a brief event like the death of Sagittarius, we infer that such events must be common in the life of big spiral galaxies like our own. The Milky Way probably dined on a number of dwarf galaxy snacks in the past."
On the other hand, Majewski and his colleagues have been surprised by the Earth's proximity to a portion of the Sagittarius debris.
"For only a few percent of its 240 million-year orbit around the Milky Way galaxy does our Solar System pass through the path of Sagittarius debris," Majewski said. "Remarkably, stars from Sagittarius are now raining down onto our present position in the Milky Way. Stars from an alien galaxy are relatively near us. We have to re-think our assumptions about the Milky Way galaxy to account for this contamination."
The new findings will help astronomers measure the total mass of the Milky Way and Sagittarius galaxies, and probe the quantity and distribution of the invisible dark matter in these systems.
"The shape of the Sagittarius debris trail shows us that the Milky Way's unseen dark matter is in a spherical distribution, a result that is quite unexpected," Weinberg said.
"The observations provide new insights into the nature of the mysterious dark matter," said Princeton's Spergel. "Either our galaxy is unusual or the dark matter has richer properties than postulated by conventional models."
http://curezone.com/blogs/m.asp?f=1207&i=2
http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1942665.htm
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