Sunday, April 22, 2012

Worlds In Collision (Sort Of)


This piece is an extrapolation of the possible consequences of  something called 'The Space Settlement Prize Act' which would in effect, grant rights to Billionaires, enabling them to buy property on other planets and the moon... and despite the title, at no times in this post (other than now) do I ever mention the name of Immanuel Velikovsky

The only problem is, that in order to purchase something, there needs to be an owner willing to sell. So if we assume here that the Billionaires are the buyers, then who are the sellers? Is this some kind of a roundabout admittance of the existence of extraterrestrial life?  I doubt it, but the undercurrent is based on the very presumptuous premise that unowned lands can be bought and sold. 

One could propose that the U.N. establish a governing body and treasury fund to become 'the seller' on behalf of all extra-terrestrial planetary bodies, lands, and resources. That might work marginally better than giving the money directly to the governments of Austria, Australia or to tribal elders in la République Gabonaise.

Unfortunately, this will likely lead to a situation (based on historical precedent) where the 'monies acquired' will become misappropriated and funnelled into some shady outfit like the World Bank, or if given to governments, justified for the facilitation of military ventures, instead of going directly into the pockets, and tummies, of the earth's six billions neediest people.

If the money went directly to the six billions least wealthy people in the world, bypassing the absurdly rich know-it-all political middlemen governing bodies, then I'd be all over it!

Think, we could use the money to buy mosquito nets and help curb insect borne diseases in sub-saharan Africa.  We could use the money to better redirect the global food surplus to feed hungry people in the third world who are currently in desperate need. Other money could go directly toward the sciences to help discover cures for diseases and make scientific breakthroughs…but I've heard all that before, did technology shorten the work week for chinese workers in massive manufacturing plants? Did computers in every home save us time and energy, and not encourage us to purchase evermore while living faster and busier lives?

Colonization
As for the billionaires themselves, they're probably just going to have to acquire, harvest, and defend their resources the ol' fashioned way, through a time honoured and ancient method known as 'Colonization' (by Milton Bradley). 

The Billionaires are going to have to build themselves the outer-space version of the Nina, Pinta, and The Santa-Maria, in order to stake their claim, and then perhaps a Martian Mayflower might even be in order. 

New Neighbours
Once landed, they will have to then deal with the nasty consequences of having disturbed any locals (whoever they may be) which will no doubt involve their displacement by the bulldozing of their homes, caves, or space pods, to create new colonized settlements. 


Next will no doubt come the justification and building of 'walls', the segregation of communities, all controlled of course, through the use of ID passes, under a policy of state sponsored humiliation and mistreatment of the locals by well paid 'control officers'. 

Eventually, when the locals rise up and ask for their land (and rights) back, the Billionaires will have to crush the insurrection using 'paid for godless mercenaries' who will in turn not hesitate to violate the Natural Law rights of the planets citizens and indigenous peoples.

All this will facilitate the Billionaires 'legal right' to profit from his purchase. The locals however, will be given a chance (the lucky and obedient ones that is) to work long hours on behalf of these Billionaires (at absurdly low wages of course) tilling the soil and working the lithium mines of a planet they had once claimed as their own. 

There will be some locals who will never accept this newfound form of serfdom, and the indignity of being treated as second class citizens on their own planet. These 'indignant ones'  will form secretive resistance organizations and begin to stir up, and foment all kinds of nasty shit. 

The Plan
The Billionaires will be unfazed though, after all, they will have expected this predictable reaction from the very onset, and will have certainly had a plan set in place to deal with the inevitability of any planetary insurrection. 

The plan the Billionaires will enact will be to pay certain locals handsome sums of money to infiltrate these organizations, by posing as dissenters themselves. These infiltrators or double-agents will rise to the top of the dissenting insurgencies and organizations, in order to potentially orchestrate and conduct 'controlled terrorist acts' and various other 'sting operations'.  Hopefully for the Billionaires, all this will be done in an orderly enough fashion as to convince, and not totally decimate, those employed, contented and relatively established locals, of the necessity for ever-tighter security measures. 

Much of the wealth of the planet will then be funnelled into a military and security industry at the expense of local taxpayers, all for the benefit of it's lucky wealthy shareholders. 

However, the planets insurgency problems will never be solved, for so long as the situation remains 'under control', the racket can be perpetuated indefinitely on behalf of the Billionaires personal interests.

At some point, the locals will demand a 'democratic' government, in order to make sure every citizen has their personal rights protected, and at that point,  they will be encouraged to elect well funded politicians who will later pass laws which have the dual purpose of serving the economic interest of the billionaires, while appeasing their paranoid security fears. 

Enter, The Politicians
These politicians, these champions of democracy, will no doubt run their campaigns based on promises of a better life for the planets indigenous peoples and other notable minorities, but once elected, these same politicians will break their campaign promises, and instead introduce laws and policies never before mentioned during the course of their election campaigns. 

At some point, there will certainly come wars with neighbouring planets, and these wars will of course always be about the Billionaires unfettered access to disputed resources.

The Billionaires, and their payed for politicians, will convince the locals to fight this outer-space aggressive adversarial menace from other planets on 'moral grounds', demonizing them in the media, by pointing out their undoubtably egregious abuses of it's citizen's personal dignity. This will then convince the simple folk to lay down their precious lives for the love of their home,  and now thoroughly owned, planet. 

Historical Nightmare
I don't know where I get my overactive imagination, or why I think that Billionaires owning extra-terrestrial planets for the purpose of extracting it's resources will end up playing out this way?  Is it because of the precedent already set by human history, or is it because of how I view our species, also known as humanity, and how after all these millennia, have not yet evolved past the greed/ fear level of consciousness?  Or maybe it's just another bad dream?!


Dirty CT   April 2012

Monday, April 16, 2012

Mucho Con-Dough


No Condo Dineiro!

Is your neighbourhood a formerly pleasant place which has recently spread it's legs and asphalt to embrace the loving energies of 21st century condo-construction?

If your neighbourhood looks anything like mine, then it is a collection of noble old buildings pockmarked with unrecognizable changelings occupying the space where noble old buildings once stood, but no longer do, suddenly having gone conspicuously and suspiciously AWOL!

"My Definition is this..."
Condos, as defined by Escape From The Abyss!  are essentially cheaply built units of drywall and M.D.F. designed to extract mortgage payments from the parents of young people who wish to build enough equity to hopefully one day move out of their cheaply built unit and into a 'real investment'. 

Soon after they're built, condos become temporary dwellings super-charged with transient energy, equipped to 'entice one thrice' with all the latest in up-to-date stainless steel appliances, and Ikea fixtures. 

These demonic dead zones are designed to get people to give their hard earned money to the banks, often three to four times of what the unit is actually worth, and who in turn give loans to massive building contractors, leaving the rest of their measly wages, to give to their local mega-municipality in the form of 'property taxes'.

The big bad banksters use the interest on the money they charge to compile it with other mortgages, and thus create those terminally toxic weapons of financial mass destruction, aka 'mortgage backed securities'. MBS's and other instruments not unlike them, look really sweet and safe in a growing vibrant economy, or at least one that doesn't disappear up it's own backside for any extended period.

Debt Sentence
After a few years living in these impersonal and inhuman urban box-units, the condo owner (at least in theory) can then fly the coop and live as human beings were intended to, in a living home of their own, one with history and land useful for growing food, flowers, or whatever ones basic needs may be.

Banks spoon-feed and mollycoddle choice developers and then encourage them to build as many of these presto-boxes as possible, with what can be best described as an almost 'chinese-factory like' determination.

Stroke and Broke!
City administrators and politicians love this symbiotic stroke-job because they bring in some much needed of that highly coveted and aforementioned tax revenue, which indefinitely delays the aforementioned officials 'official' tar and feathering… and yet despite this near perfect scheme and finely oiled machine, my city, like yours, is either broke, or damned close to it!

All this tells me one thing… that the money which comes in as taxes is used to pay the bare minimum payment on it's already X-class supernova of debt, delaying the city's inevitable bankruptcy just a teensy-weensy while longer. 

The desperate nature of it's unforgiving figurative financial obligations is causing cities to rubber-stamp the building of these ubiquitous condos. It is then politically justified as being a good way to keep unemployment figures down as the construction industry hires 'X' amount of workers and provides them with handsome salaries. This serves the purpose of keeping the beast satiated for at least one more day, sustaining the workers ability to meet their unforgiving figurative financial obligations, thus delaying their inevitable default and their filing for impersonal personal bankruptcy. 

Nutella Nutshell in 'Da Hood'
scrape this!
Many people now are just scraping by, (and I ain't just talkin' Nutella) and that wholesale pseudo-prosperity will quickly evaporate the moment the condo market begins to dry up.

My analysis is admittedly simplistic, but in a nutshell, I feel that's pretty much what's happening.

We, the residents within communities, are being forced to 'Ben Dover' and accept the neo-noisy and diabolically dusty disruption to our lives, for someones else's greater good?! 
Yes, there have been positives to the 'condo-boom', my neighbourhood has seen an influx of wealthier people, which in turn raises the quality of life down here in the 'da hood'. 

Tipping Point
There will come a point though, when greed will body-slam my community and yours the moment it become saturated with even more oppressively ugly shit-boxes, until that is, demand tapers off, and what then?  

At that point we'll probably begin to see owners renting out their condos to less than scrupulous individuals, either because they can't afford their premiums, or simply because they don't want to live in a cardboard box for the rest of their lives.  

When the Condo Over-Saturation Point (CO-SP) finally arrives (and it will, like all pernicious overkill in our culture) the blowback will be a rapid decline in building, not seen since the capstone was placed atop the great pyramid on the Giza plateau way back in the year 8008 b.c.e. (give or take a few thousand years)

Ancient Condos?

Enjoy the Decline
So enjoy this brief period, known as the halcyon days of deep pocket 'con-dough'. 

After the devaluation of the once mighty dollar by virtue of sustained cheap interest rates, the over non-printing of money (like a QE-15?) expect 'cheap credit' to whither with it. Normal life in major urban areas will probably then come to a grinding and greaseless halt, and pretty fucking quickly too. 


Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger!!!
Condos ultimately, are about as good for our economy as a truckload of cheap cheeseburgers are to a hungry and overweight middle aged man with stratospheric cholesterol levels… great for satiating the tummy tantrums of what may soon be the best fed man in his early grave.

Dirty CT   April 2012


The Late Great 'Ray Condo'/ Way Out There   Enjoy!

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Paradise Lost 2.0


Make it so!

This SHIT has GOT to go!  No, not some mobile-homes, tex-mex and cell-division kind of shit!  I'm talkin' 'bout mobile-phones, text message and cell-digital kind of shit?   


Save for a little divine intervention from the space brotherhood, or a surgical 'kill-shot' from an X-99 class solar flare, hand held digital communications devices will continue to eviscerate the soul of our society, encouraging us to march lockstep to consumerisms relentless drum beat. The whole thing has happened so damned fast, "Hey Apple, Blackberry, LG and Sony, I want my species back!"

An open letter to humanity: 
"My dear brothers and sisters of techno culture, I fear I've lost you, you've been absorbed. You've acquired everything you could have ever hoped or wished for, so what can I possibly offer you to counter 'paradise'?"  

Enter The Digimons
Who are "they", these aliens among us, these cyber-body snatchers, inhabiting the ranks of the digitally un-dead? "They" are "them", or The Digimons, real life western avatars of the dreaded Japanese Digimon. 

The Digimons are, or should I say were, human beings who have allowed this tsunami of new digital techno-toys to overwhelm and occupy their hapless and anemic souls. "They" are those contented individuals who stagger through the streets holding cheap chinese devices in the palm of their hand, with eyelids at half mast, functioning in a semi-conscious dream state known as RTM (rapid thumb movement). 

(RTM) 'Rapid Thumb Movement'
For those of us who either don't own, nor have little use for these insipid devices, to watch the transformation of society and the caustic effects it's had on our culture has been palpably horrifying. 

Resistance Fighters
Yet while peering into this why-fi world of spiritual decay, I also observe how there remains a small but noticeable resistance alive and still thriving, living among and within the ranks of The Digimons themselves. You know who you are, I need not call you out by name, it's those of you who vocally disapprove of these devices, yet use them nonetheless, endlessly apologizing mollycoddling and gently tapping at these digital distractions, yet justifying them as being 'a necessary evil'. 

Undivided Attention
Well let me tell you this: There's a special place in the bardo for you, just dial 1-800-purgatory 4-U.  You have sealed your own fate, and it is YOU who will forever be doomed to live alongside the Tylers, Dylans, Camerons, and Codys of life. Acting as courtiers to facilitate their every capricious whim and bratty little desire. History, my half-hearted friend, will not be kind to you and your ilk.  For you have brought them among us!  The Ascended Masters in the higher overtones of the twelfth dimension will judge you harshly, for having appeased and facilitated the will of The Digimons. 


Age of Revealing
The Digimons, these half-breeds, have waited their whole lives, and probably many past-lives, to finally experience this epic turning point in the destiny of humankind. Now with a few swipes of ones credit card, a person can absorb themselves in a glistening digital pseudo-reality, allowing them to be anywhere they want to be, except of course here.  As a Digimon, you may exist nowhere, yet never now, here!!

A fate worse than Digimon: 'The Others'
Being absorbed by The Digimon is not a spiritually enviable position, yet it's still somewhat better than the alternative, that of becoming one of 'The Others'. You know, 'The Others', those who've had little phones surgically grafted to the soft cartilage around their ear. But weep not for these diminutive souls, these wanker-phone drones were probably born with little more than an animal consciousness to begin with, so their passing into the nexus of The Digimons won't be missed all that much, fret not over their eternal absence from the vibrant thrusting and pulsing matrix of our conscious breathing universe.

Ladies First!
Sad, but still beautiful
Sadly though, I miss the Women most of all, in a world where Tess of the D'Ubervilles has become debased as Britney of the Blackberries, the hue of a harsh blue-screen light reflected upon the visage of a once beautiful woman has become, for better of for worse, 'the new look' of Digimon Zombie-chic 2.0!

Unfortunately our Women are the most vulnerable to the persuasive nature of The Digimons reality too, due to their natural heightened aptitude for advanced communication skills. The Digimons provide them with an opportunity to fulfill this desire, much as the rat is given the opportunity to pull the lever endlessly to obtain that sumptuous pellet of food, only in this case, the reward is 'gift-wrapped' as an instant text message, Facebook update, Trick or Tweet, YouTube upload, or iTunes download.

A Great Plague Cometh
The Digimons, like any plague of locust, have now expanded vastly in numbers, to the point where those who have not yet been absorbed into The Digimon continuum are looked upon with suspicion and even hostility.  But not unlike the ravenous locust, their end draws ever nearer though, as they collapse under the weight of their own insatiable appetite, they destroy the ecosystem they inhabit and thus the energy and nourishment they require to proliferate.

I remember how it used to be, in the beforetime, back in 'ye-olde nineties' before our paradise was lost, in that golden era of humanity which briefly preceded this 21st century invasion. I remember how we humans used to do silly things like make eye contact with one and other, way way back in those salad days of yore. In those naive and playful times, we were at least somewhat aware of our external surroundings and the needs of our fellow man. 

Watch your step bug brain!
Now The Digimons walk with their determined zombie-esque cadence through our cities and boroughs, staring blankly into and beyond their digital devices of dystopia, stimulating the immediate gratification centres of their insect brains forever and a day, bypassing the cozier magnocellular pathway, and instead taking the optical TGV along the parvocellular pathway, straight to pleasure ghettos of the left-hemisphere of the brain. 

End Game
The Digimons are now passing recklessly through our reality like some appallingly absentminded strain of asian drivers, cast out and swiftly banished from the Shambhala driving school. Whatever can stop them? not me, nor you. but they will be stopped, I assure it. So patience my friends, humanity's dignity will once again be restored, and when that time comes, remember to ask not "for whom the iPhone ring tones, the iPhone ring tones for thee".


Dirty CT   April 2012

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Soul Balance (Intensive Care part1)


artwork by PD Cafargo

This is an experimental 'Video Post' called Soul Balance, it's a spoken word piece, and is the first instalment in a series I'm calling: Intensive Care.

The purpose of this project is help explore ideas, and  ultimately emphasize the importance of humanity's capacity to care for ourselves, and others, and our world.

It's not totally philosophy, psychology nor spirituality, yet incorporates all three in a very personal attempt to understand selfhood and it's relationship to the planet we live on. 

I hope you enjoy it.

Soul Balance: Intensive Care (part1)


Dirty CT   April 2012