Blogcritics Author: Just Chris

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Judge to Google: No More Secrets

Just Chris — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 04:53:04 EST

A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over 50,000 web addresses to the government, in an effort to fight child pornography according to the Feds. MSN and Yahoo have already agreed to give over search information to the government. Indeed our privacy rights are being eroded, but it seems that everyone has something to hide. There are many people who have been lying to others for years about many, many things that they should have taken responsibility for a long time ago. People right now are lying about cheating on their spouses to their husband or wife. How many of you are living a lie right now?It's interesting why it is the government suddenly wants to keep everyone's secrets. Well, maybe we should ask old J. Edgar Hoover, a man who terrified just about everyone in Washington as head of the FBI for many years. He would invariably tell you that he that keeps the secrets is he that makes the rules. It's very interesting that the dark parts of everyone that no one wants to face may very well be in the hands of those who are offering so dutiful a service as to take our sins off our hands. For this reason the Church still takes confession, as an offer to take away our sins so they can become your keepers. Scared yet? I certainly hope so, because that is what happens when you don't take responsibility for cleaning up your own darkness.Maybe you need to go to your local government confessional and confess your sins. Or perhaps it's time you came clean on your own. That would require you to stop living a lie and start taking responsibility for yourself and what goes on in your world. And how willing to do that are you exactly? You all talk big, but who here has the guts to take responsibility for their own darkness? Soon the Feds will start asking Google to turn over all its searches on guns. How about knives? What about explosives? How about searches on Islam? Maybe you put Bin-Laden into your search engine last week to find an article on him. What about tax loopholes? How about environmental activism?Yes, once the Feds have secured rights to all the information about you, they can create a profile of your beliefs and life and can identify possible crimes you have committed. Anyone hear of the department of Pre-Crime? It's in the movie Minority Report. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. So who has something to hide? Do you really have a right to privacy? An interesting movie I watched when I was a teenager was called Sneakers. The movie was about a bunch of guys and gals who snuck around and stole info and other highly secure stuff from others. Basically the movie was about governments and espionage and lots of computer hacking. In the movie, they find an organization named SeaTech Astronomy, but the organization name is an anagram, it doesn't exist. The anagram when rearranged produces the words No More Secrets. I won't give away anymore, but suffice to say the idea is that when no one has any more secrets, the world is free of them but that means everyone, including the government, has to face up to the consequences of their lies.What we actually fear isn't necessarily that our lies will be revealed, it is that we will have to take responsibility for them and the consequences of avoiding the truth. Lies were invented to cover up the truth because no one wanted to take responsibility for the truth. So the Church came in and said, ok we will take your sins, and you can keep being bad, except nowadays instead of a Church they have an intelligence agency. What a deal, except now we have cameras and people's stuff isn't as hidden anymore as it used to be so the game can't be played like that anymore.Basically the idea that people can keep secrets from others is something that is slowly disappearing, and that means all the people who have been hiding from their responsibilities can't hide anymore. When there are no more secrets, we will know who lied to whom. When there are no more secrets, we will know where the bodies are buried. When there are no more secrets we will find out who is sleeping with whom. Sounds kind of exciting to me.Maybe Google should just publish the list of 50,000 websites for everyone to see and make up their own minds. How about they just publish all their information on everyone. I think it would be better that everyone be the keeper of everyone else's secrets rather than having one particular group get to keep those secrets for themselves. Someone's been sneaking naked girly pictures on the Web! In fact I even thought about starting a website where people could come and confess to the world. How's that for fun? There actually already is at least one out there.Why don't citizen journalists start going out taking pictures and camcorder images of everything that everyone else, especially authority figures, are up to? Let's make it all admissible in court, too. Better yet, let's set up websites and just post these delicious videos of intrigue. I think everyone should carry a wire and a video recorder just for the fun of it. Who's with me? Let's make everyone accountable for their actions.What happens then? It's possible that everyone will judge everyone else. But would that really be so bad? No one will be able to hide their darkness then, and everyone will make their loud opinion known that fill-in-the-blank is wrong. But, in the process I think we will all discover just what right and wrong really is for ourselves. How will you know if you don't go out and find out for yourself after all? Maybe you would like someone else, like the Church, to tell you.What about all those people with something serious to hide? Well, they are only hiding from themselves anyway, so it's just the universe's way of straightening out the liars. Someone has to make them accountable, and what better way to make someone accountable than by giving them a mirror. Right to privacy? What happens in Nantucket, stays in Nantucket. Well, not if you're online.But what if the government starts spying on people for looking up information about how to grow pot? Well, maybe it's time you voted the jerks out. Maybe it's time you started learning that the government cannot tell you what to do in the privacy of your home if what you do doesn't harm anyone else. You've avoided taking responsibility for changing the way government works, so now they have conveniently given you an opportunity to see what happens when you let others decide what is right for you and let them get away with it. So are you going to let them get away with it? Take charge of your world and your freedom, and stop avoiding your responsibility to change that world for the better. How many of you even voted last year? Even that isn't near close to what true citizenship stands for.And in another way, we might realize when everyone is spying on everyone else that it doesn't really matter what people think of you, so you can be free to be who you are wherever you are so long as you harm none. Now you've faced your fear, and it turns out, it was your fear of letting others know who you are and accepting the consequences that comes with just being yourself.You see, it's easy to take responsibility for yourself once you understand that what people think of you has nothing to do with you at all. Instead, who you are is defined by what you choose to do with the time you have. Now go out there and take responsibility for changing your world and stop blaming everyone else, including the government for what happens. The body of the people are the root of government, and a free country starts with active citizenship based on personal responsibility. When there are no more secrets, we have to take responsibility for our world, because the truth is that we only used the lies and secrets to avoid the responsibility of creating our own freedom to begin with. Once again, it was ourselves we were hiding from.

Chris is a 28 year old SWM that works and lives in Reno, NV. He currently is a casino dealer working on his way to get free of casino dealing. He has read a great deal on many subjects and currently writes articles on metaphysics, psychology, new age, politics, internet business and marketing, humor and other subjects. Some of his personal blogs are: The Orginazation of World Rulers (Metaphysics) <> Beyond Generation X (Politics)

Book Reviews: On Ramacharaka and Madame Blavatsky, Cores of the New Age Movement

Just Chris — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 11:46:33 EST

During the early years of the last century, ideas from India and the east began to permeate the western consciousness and created quite a stir among groups of intellectuals and early American mystic seekers of truth outside the realm of the official Christian Church doctrines. These "new thought" groups sprang up quite quickly, included among them theosophy founded by Madame Blavatsky a Russian noblewoman. Theosophy is considered by many to be the founding basis of the New Age movement in America and Blavatsky is often named as its founder. Other groups who did not follow the exact concepts of Blavatsky also appeared adding additional offshoots and countercurrents within the general movement of new thought at that time in history. These "new thought" groups can come under the general title esoteric eastern "wisdom" and eventually evolved into the core of the modern New Age movement you may be familiar with today.Anyone who wishes to understand the New Age movement and its philosophical roots should review several books from the major New Age teachers including Blavatsky and my favorite, Ramacharaka, a self-professed Western initiate and yogi who wrote the best introductory texts - simple and thorough. Those looking for the dark side of the New Age can easily see it in any of these books as well, though they are easier to spot in Blavatsky's material and others who followed her such as the Gnostic, Samuel Aun Weor, who writes some truly terrifying occult books showing the dangers of the collective unconscious for the unprepared and unaware. Ramacharaka is definitely the safest option here, but the darkness of the original founders of the New Age movement can be seen clearly even with him, especially when he occasionally mentions the "great white brotherhood", which I believe was at least partially a reference to secret societies that still subscribe to an unpleasant elitism, to say the least.Much secret society information was passed on openly to the public through the New Age movement. This information became part of the generally circulating literature of the modern Occult movements. A great deal of fear surrounds these subjects, not only because the Church denounced all such knowledge (while keeping extensive volumes of this and other knowledge secret in its archives in the case of the Vatican), but because of the general lack of awareness of the darkness in humanity as a whole made these subjects dangerous to those who entertained reading about them without a degree of protection and self-knowledge, especially the heavier, darker texts such as Aun Weor's books. This can be said of today's readers as well, and it would be well advised to breathe consciously and to have a practical understanding of how to deal with dark emotions before one attempts to digest much of the heavier New Age material such as Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine : The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy. That being said, Ramacharaka's books are written from a much lighter perspective, and there is a considerable degree of intellectual light to his writings evidencing at least to his own personal good intentions. Ramacharaka covers the span of different areas of Yoga that essentially are derived from the schools of Indian thought on these subjects. For a basic safe new age/occult education in the common terms and concepts that these mystic types study such as explanations of auras, personal magnetism, ancient civilizations, and the levels of the metaphysical self, Ramacharaka offers an easily read systematic overview of the entire subject. The first book that one should read is Fourteen Lessons in Yogi Philosophy, as it is the introduction to the basic concepts that one will encounter that will allow you to easily understand the basic New Age jargon and epistemology. Much of this book centers around explaining the various levels of the mind and the spirit as understood by New Agers including the aura, the instinctive mind, the emotional mind, and the spiritual mind, as well as the "I am" spirit which is called atman in Indian philosophy and is the seat of the ego. After this book, the Advanced Course in Yogi Philosophy covers deeper concepts and goes into a greater depth than the first book including covering the basics in regards to spiritual evolution and karma/dharma. These two books give one a sufficient background in the material to understand the basic theological and New Age worldview as well as a great deal about eastern religious mysticism. Beyond these two books, Ramacharaka wrote several subject specific books including Raja Yoga, which is the yoga of mental discipline and mental training. Gnani Yoga essentially covers the yoga of philosophy and reason as well as the Eastern cosmology which would correspond to western philosophy here in the west before modern science. Hatha Yoga: or the Yogi Philosophy of Physical Well-Being is a book that basically outlines what most westerners think of when they think of Yoga, which is physical yoga. Ramacharaka is highly critical of Western physical Yoga in this book and overviews the subject from an Indian perspective. Additional books by him are available, and I have read several of them, all of which I would recommend. The weakness of the entire New Age movement is very clear when seeing and reading the best and brightest of the New Age thinkers such as Ramacharaka. Essentially because of their focus on the left brain intellect, they ignore the feelings and emotions that are actually the source of wisdom and knowledge. Inserting intellectual systemology in place of intuitive sense and conscious breathe, the New Age movement has long been overly focused on intellect while the dark and light feelings remained hidden from the conscious mind. Essentially the conscious mind and the unconscious emotions/feelings were not integrated, creating confusion and idle intellectual speculation that failed to provide anything of substantive constructive personal use. Love, for instance, is something that can only be fully realized by feeling and overcoming the darkness of fear through courage and focused breath awareness.The understanding of those feelings and the proper use of those feelings while breathing consciously is the proper conduit for a full life and a healthy mind. It is essential for mental and emotional health that one understands the human emotional grid, a subject covered on my metaphysics website. Once you learn how to feel for yourself, you can move beyond learning by memorization and naked intellect, and can figure out for yourself what is true and what is false without relying on others to give you those answers simply by breathing and using your conscious feelings. That is the essence of New Consciousness of the One Spirit of the Earth and the One Human Spirit that is slowly, but surely, breaking out of its subconscious confines and into the light of the conscious mind. The new motto of the New Age might simply be Breathe, and Know Thy Self.

Iranian Oil Bourse Threatens U.S. Dollar and World Economy

Just Chris — Tue, 7 Mar 2006 03:41:34 EST

Iran has announced its intention to create an oil bourse (market) denominated in euros on its soil. The U.S. will likely not permit its creation if it can prevent it. This appears to be a last desperate effort on the part of the Iranian leadership to create an alternative to Anglo-American financial power in order to become the center of an anti-U.S. resistance worldwide and avoid having to stop their WMD program.This is a far greater threat to our stability than anything anyone else has come up with. It appears that rumors of a secret plan to attack Iran are largely centered around the U.S. perception of such a threat with the WMD issue being the core issue for which Iran has decided it needs to challenge U.S. power. I believe France's denouncements of Iran are largely being caused by the realization of just what a large threat this situation has become to the whole world.Iran has decided that is has enough power and balls to confront the entire Western world and the U.S. in particular with this plan of economic sabotage. I think that the new leader of Iran is a dangerous left-brain male infected with machismo and a god-complex who has probably lost his mind as I have stated before. He has not taken into account any of the effects of his actions on people worldwide, but then the Iranian leadership doesn't much care for any feelings except greed for power over their own people and the quite baffling belief that by acting tough and trying to blackmail other countries they are going to secure peace for their corrupted theocracy's continued oppressive existence. It is simply impossible for Washington planners to ignore this very real threat to American political and economic power at this point. Iran has chosen a suicidal confrontation with the Empire, as Antiwar.com so lovably calls it, because it's leaders refuse to negotiate. America is a convenient scapegoat to project their people's hatred against so that the stupid, irresponsible leadership of Iran can avoid being overthrown by their own people. Now they risk being overthrown by the Americans.The reason the U.S. dollar is threatened is because high demand for the U.S. dollar and Treasury Bills exist because foreigners need dollars to purchase resources in the primary markets for commodities, specifically oil. Because the U.S. and England, its subsidiary/sponsor, have controlled the major markets and denominated them in dollars, large numbers of dollars have been required to purchase oil and other commodities. If Iran establishes a successful foreign exchange system in euros, dollars will no longer be needed for international oil and presumably later commodities purchases, because these purchases could now be made in euros. These dollars would be repatriated into the U.S. economy causing massive inflation. We are talking in a range far in excess of the previous 1970's inflationary period when the full brunt of the currency readjustment gets into swing (see next paragraph and The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences and Cures, and this is a very tentative and conservative estimate. This is one of the reason our "patriotic citizens" Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have said they would sell out the dollar and I believe already have to some extent.The Chinese and Japanese who have kept high dollar reserves and intervened in the free market for their own currencies in order to support the dollar system would likely watch their exports market dry up or face unimaginable levels of currency intervention to save the trade system they have erected. In any case, they would be unable to create enough yuan and yen to do so without going bankrupt themselves. At some point they will have to give up their heroic efforts to save their American trade empire. We could be facing a disastrous total global economic failure. Americans will face massive hyperinflation, total economic collapse lead by housing and the stock market, which have been largely supported by inflows of these foreign dollars back into our banking system, allowing for the creation of the massive number of loans because of increased dollar reserves. Unemployment will skyrocket, and poverty will become endemic within a few years of the collapse due to foreclosures and layoffs.The Republican Party will be toast, and the Democrats will likely be toast as well if they don't offer some kind of real solution. The current Democrat leadership is likely to be changed at the least. To save their political futures, the Republican leadership and Neocons will possibly try to start a war with Iran if they can and seize their oil assets and destroy the idea of this market. If they don't, their political futures are nill. If they do, their political future is very likely also nil. In any case, the oil wars are about to begin in earnest it seems or perhaps some last minute negotiations can stave off disaster. It is clear that we are in a very precarious situation at best, and the best diplomacy would be to negotiate with Iran, though they appear to be non negotiable about WMD or oil bourses. If no negotiations can succeed, it would appear that the given the current administration and the current political situation in Washington, combined with Wall Street and the vast oil industrial government machine complex, that war is unavoidable unless the people decide to change their way of life.No politician has the guts to tell the people the truth about the sacrifices we need to make to avoid losing our humanity to our greed. We are always asked to sacrifice others for our own selfishness. The blood sacrifice of our children who go to war and the children of our human brothers and sisters in other nations to appease the great oil and machine daemon is denied and ignored by many who are either indifferent or drunk on conspicuous consumption based on the oil economy. We are all living on borrowed time from an Earth we have desecrated only to kill our brothers and sisters with Her fruits. It is will be a sad day for our world and species when our greed comes to this. I for one am sickened by this analysis, but its cold logic fits well with the left-brain fools that run our government, and I believe they will act on it because they have no knowledge of any other way to relate to humanity except this cold and inhuman violence. It cannot be said that the Iranian leadership has any more humanity than our own, and the people must always pay for the lies of the politicians and the vested money interests. So it will be until they awaken to the awful truth of our darkness, and finally become owners of the justice that must be done to undo all that has been done wrongly.It appears the choice is death or cake. I prefer cake. Let's hope the choice is for a peaceful negotiated resolution based on respect instead of violence and destruction. Demand for change begins at home, both in Iran and in the U.S., and if we want peace we are going to have to make an effort to create those conditions rather than just marching everywhere protesting, yet getting nothing effective done. It appears we are going to have to work for our cake, just as we should.