Yeah, rock on!

Yessiree, LJ seems to keep lumbering along, eh? I wonder for how much longer?

Hey, btw, I ended up finally watching the whole of Zeitgeist last night.

What did you think?

Parts like the religion section were interesting to me. Other parts like the conspiracy of 'illuminati' / 'new world order' were less interesting.

Part of the reason I'm not so much for organized mass conspiracy ... life is too chaotic and uncontrollable for there to be an active and grand diabolical design over the world. If we can question the existence of intelligent design and/or god(s), then we can question the ability of people to actively organize maniacal designs over others even more so.

If there's anything resembling a secret order, then it almost seems more of a coincidental accident than anything else.

Take what's going on in the US and the economy right now, for example. There's a lot of furor in southern states over President Obama's National Health Care Act. Many companies are threatening to cut hours and jobs of their workforce as a result of this 'oppressive' act.

However, I noticed that most of the loudest complainers were companies who were headquartered south of the Mason-Dixon Line (the dividing line of traditional North and South, dating back to America's Civil War).

It made me wonder if the business practices of southern-hq'd companies were more cost-minded, or in my own description, costs cut to the quick ... meaning, where northern companies leave greater margins to absorb random costs and can weather a sudden change like the NHCA, southern companies, in comparison, were leaving thinner margins, and thus less prepared for changes to cost of operations.

In fact, most of the anti-union push in the States is largely divided by Red (GOP) states vs. Blue (Democrat) states. Red states often have "Right to Work" laws in place, meaning, unions don't have unchallenged authority to place workers into their fold. Unions being, of course, a major check against private sector, and by being as such, they're often targets of Red state officials who believe that private sector should be free from regulation and intrusion by government and union as possible.

As a result of Right to Work, unions often are unable to conduct business in such states, or if they have a presence, it's laughably limited.

All of this plays into the thinner margins that I assume southern hq'd companies organize themselves, compared to their northern counterparts. And most of the southern companies reside in firm Red states, so I see the connection between the Red-conservative pro-private sector areas of this country and their cheap-as-possible operating tendencies.

While cost effectiveness is a good thing, I find a lot of these companies in the Red category to be over-zealous in their cost-cutting. And too much of anything is generally bad.

Also, the Red states, especially in the southern region, have the stain of slavery in their history, and this is where my imagination begins to take off ... could southern regions be subconsciously acting and emulating the private plutocracy of their 19th Century past?

After all, the wages and protections on both workers and consumers in many of the southern US states lag way behind those of their northern counterparts. And you often hear people refer to themselves as being 'slaves to the grind' (clarification: obviously I am fully aware of the putrid nature of true slavery, and I'm in no way suggesting that a Wal-Mart worker is suffering just as much as any US ancestor who was a slave to southern plantations).

If there is such a conspiracy, either by emulation or desire, then it is probably NOT organized, but rather an instinctual or subconscious desire by the powers that be.

And I appreciated Zeitgeist for its big-picture suggestion that all these forces are in place to control the average people to fit and benefit the system, or be destroyed ... but if there's any truth to free will and lack of grand design that free will would suggest (loosely related to predestination and predetermination), then at best, these things are 'happy' accidents conducive with each other to present the appearance of such a great control, while actually being non-coordinated and coincidental in their similar effects.

Well, I thought it was pretty good, as far as these things go.

The religious part seemed to have very little bearing on the next parts; although, they tried to shoe horn it in as one of the aspects or institutions of control that are, like, keeping us down, man. However, very little was said or implied about any collusion between these corporate/banking people and the religious institutions.

I think the film did a really good job at putting forth, like, the 9-11 Truth, man. That was by far the best collection of archive clips I've seen--so much of the initial reports of bombs and such that were pulled almost immediately as the, like, real (*cough* "official") story was manufactured for public consumption, man.

Personally, I was suspicious of the whole September Eleventh attacks pretty much the day they happened. I mean, it was the initial impressions of suspicion that then later became more and more. I tend to believe it is likely it was a so-called "False Flag" attack: there're simply too many things that went right for a bunch of average goons with box cutters for the result to be the collapsing of three buildings via two airplanes.

Further, while I was watching Zero Dark Seven the other night, I commented to my friend, "Y'know, isn't it odd that some alleged terrorists managed to pull off that much destruction on one single day, and then pretty much never accomplished anything substantial thereafter?"

As far as "The Illuminati" goes, well, I don't recall the film ever using that term. I dunno' what to say about that side of things really, other than there is probably some degree of collusion between the top banks in their manipulation of economies. Whether they are actually having secret meetings in black robes and praying to Baphomet or alien lizards from another dimension, well, *shrug* I don't think that really matters.

I *do* think that steps are being taken to instigate more control over the populace of various countries, if for no other reason than the shit is going to really hit the fan--probably in our lifetimes--and the ruling institutions would probably like to have as much power to suppress an angry populace when people are, for example, rioting for food and fresh water.

I do think that, if that is how the money thing works, then, yeah, that's totally fucked and, indeed, we're slaves under such a system of instant debt. Of course, I've always pretty much felt that most occupations and work are a form of slavery, so that's really nothing new to my paradigm; rather, it's merely shocking to see how (again, if this is how it really works) a handful of individuals are given seemingly free license to make a bunch of money, appropriate the real wealth, and basically fuck everybody else six ways from Sunday, whenever, and however their greedy little agendas deem it the right time to do so.

Probably more people ought to view the film, but I get the feeling that it is simply too much for the majority of people to deal with, and would do nothing to persuade them, but, rather, it is likely that many would simply tuck into the security of their shells, deny that any such things could ever be possible, and proceed to turn on their televisions to watch their favourite shows.

Regardless of whether or not the whole of what is put forth in Zeitgeist is true, it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see that things have been getting steadily worse for most of the people in the world.

My solution to these sorts of problems--don't breed: there is no reason to bring forth more meat for the grinder.

As far as religion and the shoehorning, as far as I've noticed, in the US, among the religious, they tend to be conservative, and those people are a majority of GOP voters. The GOP is about little-to-no government, free markets with as little restriction as possible, and upholding religious / family values.

But the main bent of the power base among GOP ... it's clearly about money, making money, free reign on the land by private sector. Close 2nd priority is slashing government. And they talk a huge game about the Jesus and God Bless 'Murica, but the reality is, of the people who align themselves as conservative / GOP, a lot of them are strongly religious, but they're also the types who tend to be regular people, getting by from paycheck to paycheck, and not making a whole lot in terms of household income. So the GOP as far as I can tell only pays lip service to the Jesus part ... the elite, behind closed doors, tend to give little regard to that priority.

So it makes sense that it's kind of shoehorned, because the reality of the elite is that many of them tend not to give a flying fuck about religious issues. They only take that up to get the plebian voters, the types who cling to their Bibles.

I don't believe, however, that 9/11 was a US government conspiracy, not even in the slightest. One thing to understand leading up to that incident ... during the 90s, President (elder) Bush and President Clinton's administrations started to cut back on intelligence funding. Part of the reason was because the Cold War had just ended, and the GOP started to ramp up their "we're too bloated in government projects" chant that they are currently bringing to a crescendo. Clinton pretty much went too far with the cuts, probably as a measure on his part to compromise with the other party, but also because public opinion seemed to feel that there wasn't a need to keep such big budgets on departments like the CIA, and the FBI.

They kept cutting these budgets, despite the fact that terrorist activity started to rise during their era. Al Qaeda, the US's main target since 9/11, carried out more than a handful of bombings during the 90s, one of them being a '93 bombing of the World Trade Center that, long after the fact, the US found out that Bin Laden had provided funding for that particular assault.

It wasn't just Al Qaeda that started to cause trouble in the wake of intelligence cutbacks ... McVeigh, Nichols, and Fortier carried out that high-profile bombing of a US Fed building in Oklahoma City in '95. So the US had faulty control over its intelligence, both at home AND abroad.

Plus, right after 9/11, someone started sending weaponized anthrax through the mail. FBI was caught with its pants down, again.

9/11 conspiracies are not something that I believe at all, when people suggest that it was a false flag ... due to that short funding on intelligence. The US simply didn't have the proper levels of intelligence running for about a decade, and it made things like hijacking planes, bombing major buildings, and conducting such chaos much more possible.

As for Al Qaeda and similar groups being far less successful in terrorist acts after 9/11, well, you can bet the intelligence community got all the funding it could possibly want in wake of that day.

The one thing I will believe, related to Zero Dark Thirty (did you mean that film?), is that it took far too long to eliminate Bin Laden after 9/11. Once President Obama was elected, his administration located him rather quickly. I think Zeitgeist might have mentioned the connection between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family, but I can't remember because it's been a while since I've watched it. But I think that the reason it took so long to eliminate Bin Laden was because of the Bush and Bin Laden connection. As long as (younger) Bush was in office, he'd promise to get Osama of course, but that was never ever going to happen while he was in power.

(ctd)

Also, as of late, I think in September of last year, multiple news outlets covered just how much Bush knew about what Osama was planning to do ... his administration had more than minor details about the attack, is the long and short of that news report. So if there was any kind of inside job, maybe they're getting it from the fact that his administration had better details on what Osama was planning in the summer of '01, but to me that just reads like gross negligence more than actual conspiracy.

Of which, gross negligence isn't hard to believe. Younger President Bush really had more than a few of those moments in various arenas, during his run.

'Illuminati' is just one of those jargon words tossed around along with 'secret society' and 'new world order.' They all mean powerful rich folks getting together to pull the puppet strings on the world, more or less.

I'm not sure if films like Zeitgeist are too much for people to handle, at least, not anymore. People are, in a majority, really simple folks, and they can get lost and misunderstand lofty documentaries like this one rather easily (after all, these tend to be the same people who worship Christ, who preached forgiveness and tolerance, while condemning homosexuality and showing gross intolerance for anyone different from them). I do think, however, that if you write off the perpetual unwashed masses who don't get films like Zeitgeist and everything else for that matter ... the ones like you and me and anyone else who takes notice of the details, anyone who can critically think among that minority ... I think people are more prepared to handle 'the truth' / heavier ideas, more so than ever before.

You could take the solution of not breeding as a response to perceived evil elites controlling our every desire to rebel or dissent, but I think a better solution would be to breed smarter people. That solution isn't going very well in the US, at least ... our school systems are more disorganized than ever, pumping out less-than-stellar graduates in a large majority. There's so many fluffed degrees out there that it kind of makes everything below a Master's or PhD kind of worthless, actually.

But if I had a choice to fight such diabolical controls, I'd rather have a chance to bring up a kid who got the right answers faster than I did, provided he or she was born with enough smarts to distance themselves from the mediocre majority.

You're definitely right about things getting worse for the majority in the world, especially here in the US. Incomes have stagnated over the last 15 years, while costs have roughly tripled. Buying power is definitely much lower than it was when I was a teenager. Plus the world population keeps growing, so our entire designs on everything, from water systems, production of goods, services, all those ideas were made for a much smaller population. If we're going to keep this grand species going, we're going to have to adjust things to accommodate larger population numbers, and our old happy accidents, like sending young men in droves to die in major wars every 20 years or so, well, that's not going to cut it.

It's definitely time for new ideas.

It's wild, ain't it? I think I'm up to almost 12 myself. a good chunk of my life is documented here.

It's nice to look back and see ideas and stuff from years ago.