Dogma Alert

Friday, May 27, 2005

Evangelicals Joining Gaza Pullout Protest

(05/27/2005)
Adam Dickter - Staff Writer

In what is likely the largest turnout against Sharon’s Gaza disengagement plan to date in the U.S., thousands jammed the streets around Baruch College Sunday blasting the prime minister’s pullout plan.

In an effort to reach beyond the Jewish community to gain traction in the fight against Israel’s Gaza disengagement, a major pullout opponent has signed up a group of Bible Belt Baptist ministers who see the plan as an affront to God’s will to join some 100 American Jews on a sojourn to Israel next week.

The ministers hope to spend three days with the soon-to-be-vacated Jewish settlers in Gaza on a mission organized by Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind to depart on June 5.

“The Bible says that land belongs to the Jews,” the Rev. James Vineyard of the Windsor Hill Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, said in an interview. “The Lord, God of Israel, is not going to look favorably on the giving-away of one grain of sand.”

Rev. Vineyard last month organized a demonstration in Crawford, Texas, against disengagement when President George W. Bush hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He belongs to a coalition of Jewish and Christian Zionists, Yedidim for Israel — or dear friends of Israel — that opposes all concessions to the Palestinians. Rev. Vineyard said he recently raised more than $50,000 to create a DVD for churches and synagogues explaining opposition to the Gaza plan.

After Hikind invited him to participate in the mission, Rev. Vineyard said he consulted with his friend, Benny Elon, a Knesset member who recently resigned as minister of tourism, and Elon encouraged him to go.

Also participating in the mission are Rev. Vineyard’s son, the Rev. Merle Vineyard, a missionary stationed on Africa’s Ivory Coast, as well as the Rev. Danny Dodson of Center, Texas; Pastor Cecil Ballard of Marion, Iowa; the Rev. Bryan Sharp of Pacific, Mo.; and the Rev. Joseph Buckly Consford.

The ministers’ move comes as thousands of Gaza pullout protesters jammed the streets Sunday around Baruch College on 23rd Street, where Sharon was addressing 1,500 Jewish leaders supporting the disengagement. It was the largest show of force to date by the anti-pullout movement in the United States, much of which is centered here.

Hikind said he was undaunted by the proselytizing activities of the Evangelical ministers, a source of concern to some Jewish organizations that are skeptical about fundamentalist Christian support for Israel.

“As far as I know they are not directly involved in [proselytizing],” Hikind said. “They are coming on this trip to show their support for Gush Katif [the settlers’ bloc in Gaza], and that’s the beginning or the end of the conversations I have had with him.”

Rev. Vineyard said that in 28 years at his 3,000-member congregation, he has “never had a Sunday when we haven’t had someone saved and somebody baptized.” But he said he had never baptized a Jewish proselyte.

“I don’t go to Israel to win souls,” he said. “I go to keep America from going down the tubes.

“If America causes Israel to give away Gush Katif, Israel goes down the tubes, and as goes Israel, so goes America.”


Rev. Vineyard said he believed that Sharon, about whom he had once spoken enthusiastically, has agreed to give up Gaza as part of a deal with left-wing politicians and judges in order to end an investigation into his campaign finances and business dealings that was aborted last year.

Speaking at Sunday’s protest rally, Hikind expressed frustration that more Jewish leaders had not signed on to his trip.

“It is easier for me to find Baptist ministers than rabbis,” he said in a booming voice. [...]

In addition to Hikind’s trip, Americans for a Safe Israel is planning a 10-day trip to Israel beginning Sunday to protest the disengagement. But it is not clear whether the Israeli army will allow the groups into Gaza after announcing that the area would be closed to non-residents after Passover.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

I Want My God-TV

"The medium is the message" ~ Marshall McLuhan

"Prayer is the last refuge of the scoundrel" ~ Lisa Simpson

"Television... the barbiturate of the masses" ~ Relic

Leave it to the producers at NBC to turn to the loyal boob-tube-watching fundamentalist bloc in a last ditch attempt to boost ratings of their otherwise dismal and pathetic network. It surely seems like a sad Sign of the Times when the rabid far-right bible thumpers dictate what is programmed on the mainstream networks.

The closer our world moves towards all-out entropy in these final days of the American empire, the chasm between the myopic and ideologically rigid true-believers and everyone else grows larger by the minute. If the networks want to squeeze every last penny out of their advertisers by appealing top the lowest common denominator of human thought, then I say let 'em.

Outside of CBC News, the Simpsons, and the Daily Show, I hardly watch the idiot box anymore. And that suits me just fine.

Stay tuned....


May 18, 2005
latimes

It's a story as old as St. Augustine: You revel in sexual depravity and wine, finding pleasure and profit in all kinds of heresies frowned on by the Parents Television Council, until one day you discover everything has spiraled out of control and your ratings among the 18-to-49 demographic have plummeted. So you get religion.

If it worked for Saul of Tarsus, Augustine of Hippo and George W. of Texas, then NBC must figure it'll work for a struggling TV network. Hence "Revelations," a biblically themed drama the network began airing in April. On Monday, when NBC previewed its fall slate for advertisers, it announced a new reality show called "Three Wishes," an inspirational hour to be hosted by Christian music superstar Amy Grant. Also coming this fall is a sitcom called "My Name Is Earl," which isn't overtly religious (its main character sees the light after winning the lottery, not finding Jesus) but has a theme any born-again Christian could embrace: An ex-con is determined to turn his life around and make amends to all the people he has wronged.

It's a bit of a switch for a network that soared to the top of the ratings with such racy fare as "Friends" and "Will & Grace." But NBC, like all the other broadcast networks, is struggling to find its way in an era of fierce competition from cable and the Internet, not to mention regulatory pressure from a Congress and Federal Communications Commission that seem to be taking their orders directly from Jerry Falwell. After years of dominance, NBC finds itself in fourth place in a four-way race for young adult viewers. As lost souls often do, it's putting its trust in God.

The strategy could work. The recent flexing of Christian political muscle shows there are a lot more believers out there than the mainstream media used to recognize. This audience is grossly underserved. Aside from "Joan of Arcadia" on CBS, in which the main character talks to God, it's tough to find Christian content on mainstream television. But then, there's probably a good reason for that; TV viewers, even devout Christian ones, want to be titillated when they turn on the tube. Sermons are for Sunday mornings, not prime time.

The most popular shows on TV tend to be the raciest. Most of last season's new sitcoms have tanked, with one notable exception: CBS' "Two and a Half Men," which spent much of the season as the top-rated comedy among young adults. The show is about a boozing womanizer (played with admirable realism by Charlie Sheen) forced to live with his uptight brother, who split with his wife after she began to suspect she was a lesbian. "Revelations," meanwhile, is struggling and may not return this fall.

The NBC slate hasn't attracted much good buzz at this week's "upfront" presentations to advertisers. But the New York Times' TV critic is slavering over "Beauty and the Geek," a coming reality show on the WB in which sexy airheads are matched with brilliant, hopeless nerds. Now that's television.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Bribing the Alterboy

Reflections of a Pragmatic Gnostic - part two

This a continuation of a series of my own personal experiences with spirituality, religion and the Church that I began in March. My next recollection of time spent in St. Joseph's Catholic Church was the time I was conned into signing up as an alterboy to help out the priests during Sunday services.

Before we were "allowed" to perform during an actual mass, we were forced to meet at the church several times after school to practice the appropriate rituals and movements. There were about half a dozen of us impressionable twelve year olds, 5 boys and 1 girl, and although my memory of these meetings are for the most part hazy, there are a couple incidents that stick out vivdly in my mind.

One is the "ringing of the bell" during certain points during the service whenever the Priest would hold up the communion host over his head and echoing Jesus's (supposedly) famous words... "do this in memory of me". Thinking back now, the only reason I volunteered to become an alterboy was to be the one who rang the bell, because for some reason I thought it would be cool to do so. So, when faced with weeks of practicing all these ridiculous stagnant rituals that seemed so nonsensical and devoid of life and passion, my entusiasm for the job quickly waned.

The kicker came one afternoon when the priest, giving us a pop quiz about some arcane fact or motion we were supposed to remember, said the person who got the answer right would be given a dollar bill as a reward. I had no idea what he was asking for, even though we'd been told probably a hundred times and I obviously wasn't paying attention. So, when the lone female of our group came up with the right answer and was given a dollar for her efforts, my alterboy experience became completely soured and I never went back.

The thought of this creepy priest dishing out money as a bribe to a 12 year old girl for remembering some inconsequential fact just turned me off to the whole experience even though at the time I couldn't really explain why. Needless to say, after that incident when we were finally allowed to go home, I walked out of the church into the bright sunlight and never regreted not finishing my training, nor ever having participated in a Catholic mass.

Hallelujah and praise Beezus for that!

The shadow people

John Kaminski has written yet another interesting essay that adds to his already voluminous and important body of work. Rather than taking his essay directly from his website, I've copied it from one of my favourite alternative news sources; the Signs of the Times, because I feel their comments are a necessary addition and clarification of his argument. It seems that John, as well meaning and insightful as he can be, still does not go far enough in recognizing the true terror of the situation in regards to the conditions of this planet as wrought by the soulless, hyperdimensional control system. So, without going into unnecessary detail, I will let the following essay and corresponding comments speak for themselves.

This mad fetish for war is really a case of blaming others for our own guilt, of our own unprocessed fear of death being projected outward into the world

By John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-But who is that on the other side of you?
- T.S. Eliot, "What the Thunder Said"


I resist the notion, now so popular among segments of our desperately flailing human intelligentsia, that beings from other worlds seeded our planet with life, or that these ETs abduct people for demonic Freudian experiments, or that mysterious dark forces, be they angels or aliens, control human destiny for their own petulant purposes.

It's all just too complicated, and it smacks of copping a plea, grasping for some lame excuse, or refusing to take responsibility for one's own actions. I mean, why ascribe evil to some esoteric mystical force when mindless savagery has always been a hallmark of typical human behavior? We need no additional motivation for depravity beyond the inner pit of our own personal darkness.

All these fantastic mythologies are clearly a case of trying to blame others for guilt that is our own.

Yet humanity continues to be imprisoned in the thrall of these supernatural shibboleths, whether the principal objects of our groveling fear reside in the cathedral or the cosmos.

The more conscious among us have always downgraded these sensationalized spirits - whether inspirational or injurious - into mere metaphors for life's natural processes.

But beyond trying to classify imaginary creations that are exclusively based on the unanswered questions about our own mortality looms an even more dangerous question: Why is it so popular to conclude that there appear to be two types of humans on this planet? I'm talking about the basic good and evil split: those who live by lies and relish war versus those who speak forthrightly and covet peace.

I was recently reminded of this dangerous classification trend during a small waterfall of hundred dollar bills that filled my mailbox with many unsigned letters (by readers who strive to keep me afloat for a few more months), by one reader who noted that my willingness to consider the possibility that there were people without souls, called by some "organic portals," was really no different from other discriminatory schemes concocted by the world's worst despots, whether it was - to cite two well known examples - the way Adolf Hitler regarded Jews or Ariel Sharon regards Arabs. (Two peas in a pod, you might say.)

Assigning fundamental differences to various perceived groups was really no different, he asserted. And no less toxic. After all, most of the world's wars have been waged on the claims of one group being somehow less human than another. And most of these slanderous campaigns have been staged as a cynical excuse to steal something valuable from the supposedly evil group. (As is so obvious today in what we call the Middle East.)

So I had to admit the validity of his point. It's simply damaging and potentially tragic to arbitrarily classify any group as somehow morally inferior or intrinisically more sinister than another, even though that's what every religion in the world does to every other group all the time.

But the big problem for me in accepting his routinely moral assertion was that decades of evidence - hey, just read the newspapers! - clearly shows that some hard-to-identify group was provoking all these conflicts throughout history for the express purpose of making large amounts of money from instigating wars.

When you really read the real history of the 20th century, you come to understand that one small group of very rich men has controlled both sides in all the major wars. And controls them still, always counting the cash, but never the bodies.

I don't know about you, but this is not the way my parents taught me to be. Hence, the temptation to contemplate theories that explain heartless avarice and mass murder without a second thought. I tell myself that this is something that I and my friends would not do. So, is there actually a different breed of cat, a darker pigmentation in some human hearts, that rules people differently from those I know and love? Are some people missing some essential biological ingredient of humanity?

The question is .... are there really shadow people? Judging by the behavior of American troops in Iraq, who murder innocent families as if they are only electronic silhouettes in some video game, or of Israeli soldiers, who make sport out of shooting Palestinian children for no reason other than their own Talmud-induced pathology of superiority, it appears that there really are.

I mean, what part of "Thou shalt not kill" - the central thesis of all religious thought - don't they understand? Everyone agrees there are no caveats to this. But in the space between agreement and practice lies the shadow. And tragedy. And very possibly the end of all life on this planet.

Let me take great care to define what I mean by shadow people.

I'm not talking about Art Bell's shadow people, which apparently are visual apparitions that appear when your eyes are focused in another direction, and are never there in the spot you thought you saw them when you actually fix your gaze on that spot. Nor am I talking about Carlos Castaneda's brujos, who apparently are people you talk to who later are proven not to really exist, which may actually have been a private joke about don Juan Matus himself.

I'm not talking about ghosts, spirits, time travelers, ectoplasmic wraiths, interdimensional beings, or people who reside in other physical realities like supposedly Nick Herbert.

I'm talking about people who say one thing and do another, people like George Bush and Dick Cheney (and Bill Clinton and Al Gore), people who mouth pleasant platitudes and then thoughtlessly commit atrocities, which they then spin as heroic deeds essential to your well-being (which presumably is why they always cost so much money).

Could it be true, as many people believe, that these belligerent cads were born without souls? Not likely, I suspect.

And I'm talking about Mr. Ordinary American, too, who, when you tell him that 9/11 was an inside job, his face goes slack and his mind goes blank. And when you present him with the mountains of evidence indicating the undeniability of your statement, he just quivers and turns away, muttering "our government would never do something like that" without daring to contemplate the reality that our leaders "do something like that" every day.

Yes, the fabled Mr. Ordinary American, who, when you tell him the 2004 election was fixed and that Kerry actually won it with a large margin of electoral votes except for the computer shenanigans that reversed the decision, accuses you being some kind of liberal delusionary, even when you explain you have utter contempt for both major candidates, and don't believe a thing either of them ever said.

Mr. Ordinary American, who can't hear a word when you say he threw away the lives of his own children on a war that was lie because he actually believed what he heard on television.

And beyond that, Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary Human Being, residing anywhere on the planet, who believe that some venerated superbeing, usually named God, controls their every movement, and that the God of their neighborhood is most definitely better than and superior to any other God that has ever been invented anywhere else.

What is wrong with all these people? And why are they in such a preponderant majority, so that the wars never cease, and lying for profit has always been the dominant way of life?

Well, I'm going to tell you now. I'm going to make it perfectly clear. I'm going to lay it all out in excruciating detail for you. And if you turn away and say, "That guy's wacked!", that means you're one of the shadow people, still controlled by a demon you dare not confront. But if you understand what I'm saying, well, that means there's still a faint ray of hope for this planet, dim though it may be.

We all carry with us the shadow of death. It is, as the natural scientists have said for a long time, what distinguishes humans from all of our fellow animal species. Foreknowledge of death. It rules every move we make.

To deny that we die, and invent some strategy that when our mortal bodies expire we either go to some cool place - to go bowling with the angels, just as an example - or get sucked into some ephemeral process that some people call the bardo (which is like some dark carnival funhouse where all these scary faces pop out at you, reminding you of every nasty thing you've done in your entire life) and therein choose the time and place (and parents) of your next incarnation - all these mental machinations are constructed to deny the obvious. That when our hearts stop and our brains cease all functions a few minutes later, that's the end of us as individuals. After that, we're mulch. Our contributions to the universe end there, and what we have done is all we will ever possess for all of eternity.

I know that this will come as a shock to many of you, and you will squirm and wriggle and deny with every fiber of your being that this is the case. Why? Simple. Our brains absolutely refuse to contemplate our own nonexistence. They fight with every fact at their disposal to create a scenario where this is not the case, because they are wired to survive, not to cease functioning. And yet they do.

Numerous philosophers have reflected that the human curse is having an infinite imagination trapped in a finite body. Based on the primary instinct to survive, the body's mind rejects the notion of a limited amount of life in time and finds a way to transcend it by any means possible. Logic, reality and reason become nonfactors and spirit is born. And the entire populace commits to the conspiracy, because it gives them the answer they sought. Spirit is born, and the soul is its offspring. And along with them form parasitic religions, which trade on and profit from the desire of people to avoid death by providing concocted formulas to do just that. None of these formulas actually work, but no one in the conspiracy will admit it, because that result is not desired. This is a clear case of reality is not desired. The illusion is more comfortable. Insecurity is eliminated by eternal life.

But because it is not real, the fear remains. The purpose of religion cannot be proven, it can only be believed. And since it is such an obvious lie, the honest mind eventually comes to know it is a lie, and begins to hate itself for lying, for being afraid of the ultimate truth, which is that we don't live forever, and have but a little time to make the most of what we have been given.

Given by whom? We can only guess. We call it God. But even the lamest cleric will admit we cannot know God in its entirety. God is only a word, after all. Some unfathomable process that we call God invented man, but man invented the word and concept of God in a feeble attempt to explain the unexplainable.

And what have we been given? Well, if you're lucky like me (and who knows why?), we have been given a slice of paradise, a sensual experience so astonishingly beautiful that we can make no other sense of it that to eventually believe that a seemingly omnipotent force has created the very conditions of heaven right on this little blue and green spheroid. That's why I always say, heaven is not something somewhere else to be sought, it is right here, and we're put here to make it what it is supposed to be - heaven!

But we - each of us - only get a little time to do it. And none of us every really succeeds, except in small ways, for the benefit of only a few people. But that in itself is exquisite proof that this really is heaven, if only we make it so.

For sure, thinking heaven is somewhere else and yearning for it is the surest way to make this place hell, which is exactly what we've done for the last 5,000 years, thanks in large part to believing that God is somewhere else and we want to go there rather than realizing God is right here, helping us all the time to make the Earth heaven. This has happened in large part BECAUSE religions have told us that heaven was somewhere else, instead of right here.

The only real fruits of religions can be seen flashing from the barrel of a gun, and heard in the moans of the innocent wailing for their unjustly murdered loved ones. This is what religions seek to accomplish, and they succeed, because people have decided not to understand what life is really about, or the true nature of the gift we have been given.

In being greedy and expecting to find a magic formula that will insulate us from the inevitability of death (can't you see it's the way the system works?), we trash the very things that give us life in the first place. And thanks to psychotic marching orders like the Book of Revelation, we are very likely to destroy the conditions that allow us this great gift of life simply because we refuse to accept the condition of our gift, that it does not last forever, that nothing lasts forever, not even our great and wild universe.

That's why I always say, without death, the possibility of goodness would not exist. When you have to sacrifice everything to achieve the right thing, that is love. If we lived forever, none of these things would matter, since we would have everything we wanted, and nothing would mean anything to us.

Therefore, believing that we have everything in the security of an eternal life is precisely what is causing us to trash our planet and murder innocent people with impunity, because the lies our minds know are lies but our mouths nevertheless say in order to vainly attempt to convince ourselves that we don't die are lashing out in unexpected ways.

We are blinded by this false light of our own creation, an inauthentic abomination that deep in our hearts and minds we know is a lie. Yet we are transfixed by this artificial light, because it keeps us from realizing our clock is ever ticking and our lease will be soon be up. (Any resemblance of this light to a TV screen is not purely coincidental.)

To really see, and to really know why we are here, we may not keep insisting that we will live forever by the power of magic incantations and formulas, but we must screw up our courage and wander into the darkness of our own shadows, and begin to understand how the seepage from this gigantic ontological lie is causing all this unnecessary death and destruction. We delude ourselves into thinking that killing enemies prolongs our own life, but that is only a fearful illusion.

Once upon a time I said, true warmth is found in the coldest dream. Now I would suggest that the brightest light is found confronting the deepest darkness.

It is not an exaggeration to say that everything depends on you understanding this. It will not take many more days of ignoring this problem for all of us to perish permanently in the abyss of our own self-deception, with no one left to say this was the epitaph of the shadow people, destroyed by their own fearful religions.

John Kaminski is a writer who lives near the eternal ocean in a fading paradise called Florida. His numerous Internet essays are for sale in anthologies at http://www.johnkaminski.com/

Comment (from Signs of the Times): Another thoughtful piece from John Kaminski. While there are many points with which we agree, our own experience has shown us that one must not throw out that ineffable something that becomes twisted and distorted when looked at through the lens of religion just because a corrupted mirror image of it has been used to justify war and the extermination of "non-believers". We agree completely with Kaminski's discussion of the use and consequences of religion in our world. We think, however, that there is a more sophisticated way of understanding the issues he is raising. He is getting rid of that element which makes the distinction between organic portals and others fundamental, understandable, and something more than the justification for criminal activity raised in the objection by one of his readers.

Kaminski, while accepting that there are two types of people in the world, is arguing that any and all belief in an afterlife or something greater than ourselves is a manipulation put in place by the "Shadow People" to keep us enslaved. He sums this up early in his piece when he writes:

All these fantastic mythologies are clearly a case of trying to blame others for guilt that is our own.

Rather than "guilt", we would use the word "responsibility", and while we put a higher probability on the existence of these other beings than Kaminski does, we are entirely in agreement with his analysis that many people use "fantastic mythologies" as a cop-out. "The Devil made me do it". "The Space Brothers will save us." "I killed for God."

Yet a belief in beings from other dimensions or even in some indescribable something that we unfortunately label God for lack of a better word or better understanding in no way lessens our responsibility for ourselves, our acts, and for our lives. Whether or not there is something greater than ourselves, this responsibility is our own, and we clearly live in a world where people do not accept that responsibility, sometimes because we fob it off on God and sometimes because we say there is no God. Both excuses work. In both cases, we justify the slaughter of others in the name of a higher good, be it religious or political or merely selfish.

The more conscious among us have always downgraded these sensationalized spirits - whether inspirational or injurious - into mere metaphors for life's natural processes.

Here we have more of a disagreement, especially with the use of the value judgment "the more conscious among us". Perhaps they are only "metaphors", but they may well not be. To ignore the potential of their reality, if they are in fact real, would be to fall into a dangerous trap. Perhaps Kaminski's problem is that he feels forced to choose only between the gods of organised religions, in whose names countless wars have been fought, and the anti-religion atheist stance which posits that there is nothing more than this life. Faced with choosing between such a limited pair of options, we can understand that Kaminski has opted for the atheist view. After all, no one ever fought a war over there being no god at all.

There is, however, a major assumption behind the belief that there is nothing more to life than physical reality: that mankind is the crown of creation.

When we look out onto the world, we see a vast array of life, from the smallest one-celled creatures up to Man. There it stops. Is it logical to assume that we are the top of the heap or is it simply a convenient belief because our telescopes have never revealed the existence of more highly evolved beings gazing back down upon us from the stars? [And here we exclude sightings of UFOs or the claims of remains from other civilisations on Mars for the case of this argument.] Many forms of life have only become known to us as our mechanical means of magnifying the very small have developed. It was the microscope that permitted us to see forms of life that we had never before imagined. Before that, we had no idea that one-celled creatures could exist.

Is it not reasonable to leave open the possibility that other forms of life might exist that are higher up on the evolutionary scale, or even the food chain, and that it is the means of perceiving them that are missing? Science would have us limit our tools for viewing such creatures to apparati with needles, gauges, read-outs, computer screens, and the like, tools that have been successful in identifying the extremely small.

But is that a reasonable limit to set?

In fact, many people claim they have seen other types of beings. There are stories that come down through history as myth and legend that describe interactions with them. Accounts from widely separated parts of the globe and widely removed periods of time have a remarkable similarity of detail and description of how these beings interact with humans. Often, as with Kaminski's argument, these accounts are dismissed. These encounters have been subsumed into different religions, and, having already dismissed these religions, the encounters are left by the wayside as well. They are reduced to the level of metaphor.

We think this is a mechanical reaction to the problem.

We think that a more productive approach does not throw out all the evidence but carefully and painstakingly sorts through the data, attempting to make sense of myth and legend by broadening the scope of science. Many physicists think that we must find a way to incorporate consciousness into the mathematical equations that describe both quantum and classical physics. The field has stagnated for many, many decades, and such a plan of research may be the way out. Of course, scientists who dismiss the idea of the ineffable out of hand, before the final Grand Unified Theory of physics is found, have already closed off what may well be the one fruitful path left open to us. Before we "know", they have already decided upon the limit of that which is, and is not, possible.

We think that John Kaminski makes the same mistake.

As our science progresses, perhaps we will discover that what we call "fantastic mythologies" is in fact a "natural process".

Discriminatory Schemes

Kaminski refers to a message he received from a reader who reduces the idea of the two types of humanity to the same argument used by the Nazis, or Sharon, or anyone who wishes to subjugate or eliminate an enemy. We see the pattern playing out in Iraq where many American troops consider the Iraqis or any Arab to be less than human. Kaminski's reader rejects the argument for 'organic portals' because it can be used as a way to draw differences than can justify repression.

Although Kaminski admits the validity of the argument, he goes on to say that the facts strongly suggest that there is indeed a group that is somehow different.

It is an argument that we have also heard against our analysis of the existence of 'organic portals'. At first glance, it may appear to have some foundation. However, when one looks at the details, we see that the theories and classifications that have in the past provided justification for the worst crimes against humanity are very different from the idea of 'organic portals'.

First, in our world, any theory that divides people into groups can be used by some sicko as a justification for oppression. That is the problem of life in a world where some people are driven by an overwhelming need to exert power over others. It doesn't matter what the specifics of difference may be; difference will always be used in a judgmental way to imply a relationship of superiority/inferiority. Differences exist. Should we, because of the danger that someone will use such divisionary tactics to oppress others, cease attempting to group similar things together? Comparing and contrasting are two powerful ways our reason works. To jettison them means we must rid ourselves of our capacity to reason.

But just as modern science and modern society often takes our reasoning abilities too far, that is, yanks them out of context and places them above our capacity to feel and intuit, our comparing and contrasting of individuals must remain in context.

What is that context?

Most schemes used to divide are based upon race, nationality, religion, colour, wealth, birth status, and so on. In other words, they are tied to elements that are part and parcel of the material world and its systems of power and control. In this way, leaders, and those above the leaders, can constantly set people against people in battles over those elements of life that are important in this world, those elements they need in order to maintain their control, their manipulations, their power.

The distinction that we raise between the 'organic portal' and the human has nothing to do with power in this world; it has to do with one's ability to perceive influences that come from that 'ineffable something'. Those who really see and understand the difference of which we speak, will have no interest in lording it over anyone in the here and now, while not acting upon the knowledge could have disastrous consequences for the evolution of their souls.

What is the nature of this action, this application of the knowledge? The finding of ways to conserve one's energy for doing the work necessary to growing the soul, to fusing the many 'Is' of the Personality into our one 'Real 'I'. We learn to stop 'dancing' with the 'organic portals' around us, to stop allowing them to set our agendas. In so doing, we become masters of ourselves, not of others.

Of course, this hypothesis can be used in deleterious ways, but this only shows that, those who do so, do not really understand of what we speak. Nor do they understand the far-reaching implications: that this world is as it is and cannot be changed because half of the people living here are incapable of the changes necessary to make it "heaven on earth". This is their world.

We get the impression that Kaminski has not really understood the implications of the existence of two types of humanity and has not followed through the argument to its logical consequences. The organic portal and the psychopath do what they do, not because they are "bad" but because that is who they are, the way a cat stalks a mouse because it is part of its "catness". These people could no more give up their need for ever greater power or material wealth and success than the cat could stop chasing after the mouse. It doesn't matter whether or not there is a hereafter or beings of a different consciousness than ours. You can factor out all the aspects Kaminski excludes in his argument, and the organic portal is still different, still has a different ontological reality than the person who, as Kaminski describes, would never commit mass murder or be driven by heartless avarice. It is not simply a different version of "cat", as Kaminski uses in his argument above; we are talking about a fundamental difference in nature or essence. Note that we said "difference", not "bad" or "lesser", just different.

Certainly, the question of death hangs heavily over us all. The idea of an afterlife where we are judged and condemned according to our sins is a very useful tool for managing society. It can drive people to sacrifice themselves and live in misery all of their lives for the hope of an eternal reward. It can also inspire people to be the best they can, to be giving, to care for others. Our work suggests an explanation for why some people go in one direction while others go in the opposite.

But again, we think that dismissing the possibility that life doesn't end at death because of the way this threat is held over us by the powers that control our world is too easy, too crude. It is a mechanical reaction, not a well-thought out and considered response. More than that, it may be the response that our controllers hope and plan for, counting on our mechanical nature to be reactive and not creative.

The Other Side

What if our idea is close to reality? What if there is some relationship between soul and genetics, between our genetic make-up and our ability to perceive what are called the 'B' influences? If so, then we must consider the possibility that those who do not have our interests, our real interests, at heart may also be aware of the importance of genetics and may well be doing research into understanding what those genes may be. They certainly have the money, the power, and the scientists to carry out such work. If they were ever to identify these genes, they could then produce weapons genetically targeted precisely at those individuals who had the potential for understanding the deepest truths about our world. In fact, you could almost bet that they would be doing such work.

The mechanical reaction to this knowledge would then drive us more deeply into the cords that bind us to a mechanical fate. We would remain a part of the machine rather than rising above it through the application of our creative potential. We would become its victims.

Our reading of this article suggests to us that John Kaminski has not yet come to grips with the true horror facing us. He still believes that there is some hope in this world, that this world can be changed, can be fixed. Perhaps he had a glimpse and has momentarily taken a step backwards. He would not be the first person to whom that has happened. It may even be worse. Having come to the threshold of understanding what may be the fundamental esoteric truth of our life here on this planet, Kaminski may be been bombarded with attention from the Masters he does not believe exist, or even from the "Shadow People" whose existence he does see. In the face of this ultimate horror, the mechanical force can set in and seek explanations that rid the knowledge of its core, turning it from its higher meaning to a strictly material meaning.

Without understanding the esoteric truth of the hypothesis of the organic portal, one will continue to fight the windmills and never come to see they are an illusion.

Friday, May 13, 2005

Sharon meets 'Jews for Jesus' follower

The Jerusalem Post

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, interested in shoring up his standing in the influential US Evangelical Christian community, met eight leading Evangelical figures Tuesday, including Jay Sekulow, a high profile Messianic Jew.

Sekulow, who runs a conservative civil liberties group called the American Center for Law & Justice that was set up by evangelist Pat Robertson, is considered close to US President George W. Bush and was one of three strategists charged by the White House with the task of getting Bush's controversial court nominees through the Senate.

An official in the Prime Minister's Office said Sharon was unaware of Sekulow's Jewish background.

"These are hard-core Republicans very supportive of Israel," the official said. "When they come here, we don't ask what their religion is. The man is willing to do a lot for the state of Israel."

Sekulow is also the host of a daily radio show aired on some 550 stations.

Among the others in the delegation were Paul Crouch, the founder and President of the world's largest Christian television network, the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), Michael Little, the President and Chief Operating Officer of The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

The meeting was very friendly, the officials said, with the delegation coming to "show solidarity for Sharon."

"We want you to know that we stand behind you in efforts to bring peace," an official in Sharon's office quoted Haggard as telling Sharon.

Haggard told Sharon that the official policy of the organization he represents is "to support the state of Israel come hell or high water. We are staunch supporters. We believe that you were chosen by God to lead the people of Israel in this difficult period. We fully support you, because we believe it is God's will."

He said that Bush used those exact words – support for Israel 'come hell or high water' – during a meeting the President had with Evangelical leaders prior to November's elections.

The main purpose of the delegation's visit, according to officials in the Prime Minister's Office, was to help market Israel to the enormous Evangelical community abroad. These officials noted Evangelical tourists continued to visit Israel through the recent violence, just as they did even when scud missiles wee falling during the first Gulf war.

Sharon, according to a spokesman, told the delegation to "keep praying, it seems to help."

Comment (from Signs of the Times): So how does one reconcile standing behind a known war criminal like Sharon in his efforts to bring peace (supposedly with the Palestinians) with supporting said war criminal "come hell or high water" and the belief that the war criminal was appointed by God? Clearly, these all-too-powerful American Christian fundies are desirous of only one thing: the return of "Jesus", which, according to their insane beliefs in a text (the bible) that is of wholly human origin, can only come about after the wars of "Armageddon" that will, we are told, take place in the Middle East when the forces of "the Lord" (Christian fundies) will defeat the forces of "darkness" (Muslims).

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Jesus Christ denied W. Va. driver's licence

May 10, 2005. 07:04 AM

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Even Jesus Christ can't circumvent the rules for getting a driver's licence in West Virginia.

Attempts to prove his name really is Christ have led the man born as Peter Robert Phillips Jr. through a lengthy legal battle and a recent victory in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

"This all started with him expressing his faith and his respect and love for Jesus Christ," attorney A.P. Pishevar told The Associated Press. "Now he needs to document it for legal reasons."

Described by his attorney as a white-haired businessman in his mid-50s, Christ is moving to West Virginia to enjoy a slower lifestyle. He bought property and has a U.S. passport, Social Security card and Washington driver's licence bearing the name Jesus Christ.

But he still falls short of West Virginia title and licence transfer requirements because his Florida birth certificate has his original name on it and he has been unable to obtain an official name change in Washington.

"We just need official documentation that that's his name," said Doug Stump, commissioner of the West Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles. "He will be treated no different than anybody else."

Christ applied for the legal name change in May 2003, but it was denied by District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Tim Murphy because "taking the name of Jesus Christ may provoke a violent reaction or may significantly offend people."

In his appeal, Christ's attorney argued that Phillips had changed his name to Jesus Christ 15 years earlier, and "has been using the name since then without incident."

The appeals court last month sent the name-change proposal back to the lower court, saying some required hearings in the case had not been held.

Any comment from the man in the middle of this legal tussle?

"Christ is not speaking to the press at this time," Pishevar said.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Deer in the headlights

Note: This latest essay by John Kaminski was also reprinted on Signs of the Times, War Folly, Uruket and Bella Ciao

Relic


Searching for the truth is ugly, frightening and dangerous
— and the only worthwhile choice


By John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net

Maybe I'm already sufficiently hunkered down; safely ensconced in my leaky trailer; barricaded against the onslaughts to come; insulated from the contrived catastrophes that get worse with each new assault; prepared for the biological barrage our masters have scheduled for us to cull this feckless human herd and make their sinister existences even more profitable; as fortified as I can be against the imminent financial collapse about to engulf us all, at least for someone who earns his meager coins by hurling reckless adjectives at all these endless crimes against humanity.

After all, they haven't come for me yet. But will they come next week?

Oh, I am so prudent. I remove the magnetic antiwar sticker from my trunk in certain rural parking lots so the rednecks won't trash my car. Mmm, such courage. And sagacity. And always the darting eyes of man hazardously at large in an alien world. Who the hell are all these people, and why are practically all of them fast asleep?

Never have I heard so much talk as over the past few years about people wanting to escape from warmongering America. I get postcards from Costa Rica, cryptic e-mails from Thailand, letters about how nice it is in Denmark or Portugal or Brazil, all from people who have shucked that furtive sense of panic that still grips many people with actually functioning souls who remain uneasily in their decaying United States.

Once I wrote that we shouldn’t run off to foreign places, that the best of us should stay and fight for what is truly ours. But who can blame those of us who are intimidated by the widespread lack of support for values and actions that are truly humane. What’s the score now? About six people in the entire Congress who are apt to tell the unvarnished truth about anything? And not a single newspaper.

To not be afraid is to be stupid.

I have already received several notes from people who journeyed to Oklahoma City recently especially to see me. I had volunteered to go and participate in the group analysis of a previous disaster, now several incidents removed from the current affront to all things decent and holy, which is of course the continuing massacre of innocents in a faraway country whose oil America wishes to steal.

Some of you may remember that I canceled my appearance, essentially because of three things: extreme poverty; disenchantment with the overly respectful (and hence, IMHO, futile) way the organizers of the event planned to discuss this clear case of mass murder of American citizens by the American government. And, of course, fear of flying. I love to fly. But I wish to avoid having my orifices scrutinized by minimum wage Homeland Security goons.

More to the point in my recent field of vision were the hundreds of letters that have recently blessed me with tokens of appreciation for my efforts at describing how so-called humans can be so inhuman. We're talking cold hard cash here, folks, and book orders. In between my scribbled rants that often show up in the most unexpected places, I eke out an austere living by selling my books, in which I have collected these very rants. I am always uneasy about asking for support, and always humbled by the sincere ways in which many people respond.

People (them again) always ask me, "How can you read all those horrible stories day after day and not be affected by them; how can you keep from slitting your wrists?" or something along those lines. It's a question I don't usually answer.

But when I try to, I think of that series of photos taken at a checkpoint in Iraq in which triggerhappy U.S. troops shot first and asked questions later, later to find six terrified and bleeding children in the car that rolled to a stop. I think of that little bleeding girl screaming over her butchered parents, and U.S. soldiers wearing masks to hide their identities from the photographer. That little girl is my boss. And the rage I feel at the people who put her in that position, I'm telling you, is simply more than you want to hear. Why do I do what I do, and how can I stand what I have to look at? I work for that little girl, and if you don't too, then you have a problem with me.

Because if you don't work for her, that means you're an accomplice to mass murder (which as Americans, we all are), and that means I'm going to seriously kick your ass if I get the chance, although as you have rightly guessed by now, it will only be verbally and from a distance.

Likewise, I work for the souls of those kids in that Murrah building daycare center so righteously snuffed out by all those federal employees who were warned not to go to work that day. Which is why I got somewhat upset by the relatively inferential (as opposed to confrontational) intent of the organizers who had chronicled the irrefutable evidence that the OKC attack on humanity was not about a renegade pseudopatriot with a truck bomb, but about a government conducting an experiment on its population’s social alienation from reality. Which spectacularly continues, meaning the experiment was a success.

I wrote a story for that group, but they didn't want it because they already had plenty of good ones (especially by Pat Shannan and Craig Roberts), and I know it's only a fool who quotes himself, but here's part of what I wrote:

Your silence guarantees
more phony disasters
American cowardice triumphs as the facts
of the OKC bombing remain concealed

They come into your town, commit some unpardonable crime, then disappear into the night.

The cops follow, explain the event in some way that absolutely does not make sense, some luckless patsy is put on trial, convicted by a judge who excludes most of the relevant evidence, and the patsy is executed.

Case closed, the government tells you.

The next day the ad-filled newspapers embellish the official version. Legislation is then passed to prevent the contrived atrocities they took such pains to explain.

But as you contemplate the blazing memory of the sight of your beloved children exploded into little bloody pieces or crushed by fallen debris, you wonder what you should say, what you can do.

When you attempt to express your doubts about what happened, you are looked upon with a nervous terror by your neighbors. You receive unmistakable messages that you really shouldn't go there, out of concern for your own health, your own future.

The messages include newspaper reports of others who didn't heed this advice and were discovered in some odd place after their puzzling and unexpected suicides.

So the message gets through to most, and a brittle silence engulfs the land.

After awhile, those who continue to speak about the incompatibility of what was written down and what they saw with their own eyes begin to be tolerated as amusing oddities, embarrassing gadflies, whimsical conspiracy theorists.

The voluminous dossiers of suppressed facts they have compiled are regarded as mere evidence of their quirkiness, and can never supplant the initial impression that the popular cover story has hazed over the general populace, anesthetizing the consensus thought process like some warm, familiar blanket, which most refuse to realize is permeated with a smallpox of the mind.

"Well, we know it was those damned terrorists," is the repeated mantra. "That's why we make war on them."

"You don't want to put yourself in a place you know you can't go," say others, reviving a variation of the old canard that you can't fight city hall, and thereby guaranteeing that the sudden act of vicious tragedy will happen again in some other town, and be followed by the same process of phony explanation, prosecuted patsy, and ultimately suppressed knowledge of what really happened.

It is the one consistent pattern of American history. The majority don't really know what happened, and are terrified to challenge the official version lest they be blackballed by their cowardly neighbors, or worse, ruined or killed by the same shadowy, unidentified forces who perpetrated the original crime and then covered it up.

For those who disregard the obvious dangers and continue to speak the truth as they perceive it, the rewards are bittersweet and intangible.

OK. Now, from that point on, I attempted to discuss specifics I had learned, mostly from organizers Charles Key and Chris Emery. The story gets pretty involved, and I had garbled some of those facts. So in the rush to put together their program, they didn't have time to instruct me on every point, and the story didn't get published. That’s OK by me. No biggie. Their task was humongous. The event was, according to some, a great success, in that at least California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is mulling over the possibility of reopening an investigation into allegations that McVeigh and Nichols were assisted in handling explosives by the FBI. But as I said before, it will accomplish nothing. Too many paid-off shills in the way. This a political sop. The OKC coverup continues.

And what is worse is that the confidence of some of us who care has been badly shaken, mostly by the decision to invite reactionary politician Bob Barr as the featured speaker at the OKC 10th anniversary probe and gathering. It comes to me as a terrible shock that the very center of the resistance movement to the government’s coverup in OKC may, in fact, be rotten to the core.

So I, in my own way, continue on my atrocity watch, not to dabble in the lurid and duplicitous for its own titillating sake, but to analyze the inexplicable self-destructive behavior of humans and perhaps by talking about it, ameliorating it. Perhaps by understanding it, detoxifying it.

I tend to link OKC and Waco together in my mind. They were both unexplained government atrocities in the early 1990s, and some people accepted the government’s phony aspersions about the Patriot movement doing OKC in retaliation for Waco. But just the other day, a dozen years after federal troops incinerated all those women and children in that farmhouse, I finally heard the most plausible story of what I think really happened.

Now, as many of you know, I tend to reject out-of-hand any contentions that we are ruled by supernatural forces, be they angelic or alien. In my simple mind, it just makes life too complicated. Yet, you must accept valid information where you find it, which is sometimes in unexpected places. And you can’t let your own paradigms and beliefs get in the way of hearing what you need to hear. The penalty for that is the ugly world we have now.

Over time, I have received many recommendations to check out a website that utilizes as its chief metaphorical theme communication with a group of extraterrestrials known as Cassiopaeans. Having seriously dabbled with many New Age subjects in the early ’90s and found the genre as riddled as the Patriot movement with creepy charlatans and egotistical psychos, I tend to dismiss such recommendations out-of-hand. But that is not to say it can all be dismissed in such a way. [SOTT NOTE: We do not in fact describe the Cassiopaeans as extraterrestrials, although Kaminski's misreading is understandable given the wide play given to ETs by other websites. The Cassiopaeans have described themselves to us as "We are you in the future". They may also simply be the expression of the subconscious of Laura Knight-Jadczyk. We do not know, nor do we take the information gathered from them at face value. Everything they tell us is then researched to be confirmed or refuted according to our own work on the subject. Those issues that cannot be evaluated based on our own research, such as information about things that happened thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, are treated as possibilities that may or may not be true.]

When you look at the work of Laura Knight-Jadczyk and her physicist husband Arkadius, fast-buck operators seeking to harvest cash from seances is not what you see. I’m not sure that sending you to http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/adventureindex.htm is the proper way into their insightful milieu, but it’s the way I went in. And I have no intention to commenting right now on the validity of the worth of their Quantum Future School or perceptions that are beyond the grasp of my own, but what I did find in their site at this very link — http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/organic_portals.htm — was a fascinating examination of the nature of psychopathy, which in my mind bears very directly on the situation we are all facing in this messed up world today.

I know this explanation is getting a little long, but bear with me. As you know, we all have been looking for a way to explain the behavior and the rude and rapacious men who run our world, who are running it into the ground. They are not like us (or, they are not like me, I don’t know about you, really).

One of the more fascinating and enigmatic explanations of what is actually happening in the world today is put forth by British phenom David Icke, whose many books and lectures have posited that the powers that be are actually reptilian shapeshifters, cold blooded in the truest sense. Many people find that assertion preposterous, and turn away. I’ve always related to it in a metaphorical sense, and in any case respect Icke for being one of the bravest men in the world for even attempting to tackle problems in the way he does.

But given my queasy uneasiness with such fanciful interpretations, I sometimes feel choosing to go to this level can be a distraction from the problems themselves. Not so with Laura Knight-Jadczyk’s explanation — the mask of sanity. And the assertion of the Quantum Future School that the official culture in America is a natural state of psychopathy. Hey! You only need to read a newspaper that the assertion is true. I highly recommend this information. Go to http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/psychopath.htm

But let me first synopsize my understanding of it, and tell you about the event that triggered Waco, because it bears on the tragedy and disappointing drive to unearth the truth about Oklahoma City. (I know this is convoluted; thank you for your patience.)

From one of Laura’s reviews of a book titled “The Mask of Sanity” by Hervey Cleckley comes this description:

... a person who is able to mimic the human personality, but who leaves the impression that something is not there. They have a personality structure which “functions in a manner apparently identical with that of normal, sane functioning” and yet when all is said and done, “we are dealing here not with a complete man at all but with something that suggests a subtly constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly” to the point that “no one who examines him in a clinical setting can point out in scientific or objective terms why, or how, he is not real.”


In my own search to identify who some have called “biorobots,” I find that when Knight-Jadczyk draws upon the work of Cleckley and the Russian exile Boris Mouravieff and labels half the human population “organic portals,” or people without souls, she is right on target in explaining why the newspaper headlines are the way they are these days, or have always been.

I know. It should come as no surprise to me that people don’t always to the right thing. But this line of investigation strikes me as the way to actually fix the problem, for all you out there who frequently suggest I complain too much and don’t do enough about proposing solutions. Understanding this concept is definitely the beginning of a solution to why the human race seems hellbent on destroying our planet.

The Jadczyks, as I understand it, have had a hard time with a fellow named Rick Ross, who once upon a time ran an outfit called the Cult Awareness Network, which supposedly rescued runaway teens who had been lured away from their parents by Moonies, Hare Krishnas and other exotic thought processes.

Yet it was Rick Ross and the Cult Awareness Network who told Janet Reno that David Koresh was abusing children at his Waco compound. And, of course, when you get into why he would do such a thing, and what it all means, you of course get into — you guessed it, Zionist influence, subterranean motivational activity that results in false flag operations like COINTELPRO, and worse (if there can be something worse than COINTELPRO?).

Observe, in this snippet lifted from <http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/rickross2.htm>

What a lot of people don't keep in mind is the fact that COINTELPRO also concentrated on creating bogus organizations through which hostile actions might be instigated and blamed on innocent third parties.

In other words, creating bogus Palestinian Terrorists to attack the World Trade Center is entirely within the tradition of COINTELPRO - and we have seen, over and over again, a string of incidents when purported "Islamic Terrorists" have been noted, but the FBI and CIA just simply turn their heads and order their agents to stand down! One then begins to wonder just WHO initiated the COINTELPRO idea in the FBI?


We, or some of you out there, desperately need to put the pieces together on all this. This describes Waco, Oklahoma City, and the 9/11 massacres. We as a nation and as a species need to see who is doing what to whom, to us, before it’s too late.

Now (don’t hit me!), I said all that to say this.

Or more precisely, to let someone else say this. One of the letters I received from someone who traveled to the disappointing Oklahoma City protest had this to say (I’m not sure if I should use his name or not, given the nature of the subject matter):

Beam me up, Scotty! Yeah, the Cognitive Dissonance is ringing in my ears, it's so strong. A Dallas-local NewAge-ey speaker gave a talk last year on America's Shadow, in which he pretty accurately (but not totally completely) laid out a list of "our" continuing atrocities, dating from the 1800s. Very interesting and informative, and right in line with what I had already discovered that had me disparaging my parents and grandparents for blindly and blithely ignoring in their time; going along to get along until it gets to me and its a steaming heap of manure so high it obscures the horizon.

By the time I've come to awareness of the depth of the problem and the real issues, its an un-winnable situation. The media's sewn up. The voting process is totally co-opted. Whistleblowers are regularly and severely dealt with. The economic situation is getting ratcheted down to where the "middle class" becomes a term applying to the 1950s through the '70s; a historical footnote. Yet there is still so much residual inflationary "prosperity" that anyone and their kid brother can still float a loan on a new SUV. An economic sugar cube trail into a box canyon with debt in hot pursuit!

But, John, I've crashed some of the Homey Land security meets and listened to talks that will never make the cyclops tube. There is no going back. Even your words so far, which will echo in cyberspace long after you've made your decision to stay and slug it out or bail — those will not be forgotten.

If you had made it to OKC to speak, you could have listened to Gen. Partin and seen a few charts he held up. He maintains it's the same plan being carried out here that's been done throughout the world. Cut to the chase — when control is really consolidated, when level Red is reached, it's round-up time. You, me, and anyone that cracked a joke at the wrong party, you're a marked man. Know it. Everything now is just marking time.

So, what to do? I'm probably the wrong person to offer an opinion, because I'm sitting here with two little scars on my chest ... the nearest guess I have is from a Taser hit 10 or 11 months ago. One of the wounds would not heal until I pulled a small piece of shirt material out with tweezers. I still have the shirt with the holes in it. Meanwhile, I developed a nice bruise over a vein inside my right elbow. I really wish they'd use the left, y'know. Hard to hide the bruise when you're shaking hands, etc. I'm missing no more than 3 to 5 hours of time I can't account for, but after all this time I've only got a vague memory of what transpired, and one or two faces I might recognize; nothing more. And I'm really hoping I'll recover the whole thing, but not successful so far. So much for being an objective journalist!

So, what was this? This is how Homeland Security develops witnesses for their secret courts. And this is why they cannot reveal their sources. They're using you, or in this case, me, as a witness against ourselves. That's my best guess. Payback for me getting too close.

Can I reasonably conclude different? If I had been involved in planning anything nefarious I am sure I wouldn't be typing this note to you now. As it is, I'm just a truth seeker who found enough to speak out occasionally. And because I have some moral sense, no, it is not okay what they have done and are doing to people. It is diabolical.

So, here's my challenge. Even if you decide to quit, can you, really?

After what I've been through, I can't. I'm still out there gathering crumbs dropped by the cryptocracy, trying to make sense of it. When I don't have "real" work, I paint houses; do deliveries; anything to keep the bill collectors at bay til I can get back to my real work, my passion. It's not dedication, per se.

When you truly understand what's coming, can you do anything else?

Can you?

So there I sat, and here I sit. I hear the train coming. I see the light of Code Red blazing deadly in the dreams of my vision. I see the psychopaths driving the train. I am not an Organic Portal, though they are. I am a deer in the headlights. And they are the hunters.

All I ever promised was to keep pounding on this keyboard until the very last moment.

John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, who makes his living writing stories like this one, which are seen on hundreds of websites around the world, and collected into anthologies which he sells on his website, http://www.johnkaminski.com/

Comment (from Signs of the Times): Indeed, an understanding of psychopathy and organic portals is crucial to understanding the mess we are in. When you understand and SEE that one half of humanity are quite content following the basic drives of sex, fear, and hunger in order to find satisfaction in their lives, and these drives are those that we share with animals, one's understanding is increased enormously and one sees how the playing field upon which we are obliged to live and act is so heavily tilted towards the other team.

When you really see it, as Kaminski obviously has, so much clicks into place that was incomprehensible before. You can never again look at the world with the same eyes. It all makes sense, the violence, the hypocrisy, the sense of a boundless horror lurking just below the mask of sanity.

One also understands why the world cannot be otherwise, and why, therefore, attempts to change it are doomed to failure.

These people are essentially in it for themselves and their demonstrations of altruism and empathy are usually masks for subtle methods of feeding off of those around them. They are incapable of feeling another's pain, of hurting for another person. However, they are very skilled in mimicking these empathetic behaviours so that people in their entourage, people who may well feel and hurt for another, will read their outward behaviour as reflecting the same internal experience as someone who is truly empathetic.

They may also appear to change their behaviour and adapt, leading one to believe that they have genuinely understood how they have hurt another. However, what has changed is only the programme they are running. They have adapted their software to the new situation. As they were unable to get what they wanted from the old programme/behaviour, they are forced to find a new way of preying upon the victim. It can take years of observation and study before seeing through the manipulations.

We have noticed one curious fact. Organic portals tend to appear in our lives at those moments when we are attempting to break out of the mold. We may end up in passionate love relationships at just those times, relationships that are completely based upon chemicals. They leave us feeling drained and emptied, unable to do our work. If we remember correctly, Kaminski himself was caught up in the snares of one such person about three years ago. He has written about the experience. It is by no means unique.

The difficulty is compounded by the fact that all of us are shaped by the same environment. The values and behaviours of the psychopath and the organic portal are the models for Western society as a whole. In order to succeed, one is obliged to internalise these ways of acting. Internalised for long enough, they become our way of being. We must never forget that we are all organic portals until we take a conscious decision to be otherwise.

The Signs team is currently preparing an expanded version of our original article on organic portals. It will include more material about psychopathy, as well as the results of our continued research into the subject. The book should appear in June.