War Pigs

Generals gathered in their masses

Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of deaths construction
In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds, oh lord yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor

Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait till their judgement day comes, yeah!

Now in darkness, world stops turning
As the war machine keeps burning
No more war pigs of the power
Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees, the war pigs crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings
All right now!

Tigers

My life reminds me very much of a parable, or koyan, i heard once. It starts with a man walking along a path when a tiger sees him and attacks. The man runs away and ends up at a cliff, which he quickly starts climbing down because the tiger is right behind him. As he gets about half way down the cliff, he notices that a tiger is also waiting beneath him. So the man is stuck, clinging desperately, with a tiger above and a tiger below, he sees that the only thing that is supporting him is a very small strawberry bush, which he is holding onto for dear life. It is then that he notices that a single strawberry is ripe and right in front of his face. He figures he might as well eat it, stuck as he is, only to discover it to be the most delicious thing he has ever tasted. That is how I feel living my life everyday. Every second is sacred, to be cherished as if it were the last. Even though we may often forget it in our sterile consumer society, but we are ever walking the razors edge. History stretches out like an endless warning, telling us how close we always are to oblivion. Nietzsche once said that man was the rope between animal and ubermensch (over being). He had no certainty that we would ever cross this precarious bridge, and falling into the abyss is always just one fuck up away. It is important to remember that loosing our way may not consist of being reduced hitting each other with sticks and eating rats to survive. It seems to me that fate would be preferable to the shallow, hallow and undeniably pointless existence that has come into vogue in the USA. Every day I get to live as a free, happy and loving human being in a land full of sleep walking workers and arrogant ego maniacs I feel as if I'm digging my heels in against the relentless push of nihilistic capitalism. The tigers may gnash their teeth and roar mightily, but I still enjoy the little strawberries that can be picked amid all the endless noise and stupendous sights of our new era.

Gas Mask

New Polish riot police gear

The New Year

God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.

-Otto von Bismark

So here we are in a new year, nothing but possibilities and potential. Many humans will be struggling this year, others will consume vast amounts. What is commonly called Globalization is more and more revealing itself as a most ingenious tool of tyranny. It is the carrot and the stick combined in one clever contraption. We wily whites have exported the drudgery that is necessitated by mass consumption to the darker portions of the human race. Millions of Asians are under the yoke of the never ending work week, the endless days of monotony and suffering that an industrialized world causes. Yet for them, not starving is a strong enough incentive to make them donate their lives to the cause of Caucasian consumerism. And what, pray tell, happens to those whom make it their duty to resist the onslaught? It gives our people the chance to once again impress the world with our penchant for organized violence and cruelty. For the past several hundred years Europeans have imposed their will upon the peoples of the world, or in some cases, simply exterminated them. This trend has yet to abate, despite the massive lip service paid to the humanitarian cause; which when measured against our inequities barely even registers (here is a graph that shows military spending). Eduardo Galeano had this to say about the process and it's largest supporters- "The big bankers of the world, who practise the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings and field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no-one: they limit themselves to applauding the show." The combination of greed, hate, blind obedience, and a culture that has always glorified violence makes us feel that we are in the right. That somehow our position is not only justified, but the work of our own superior civilization.

Thanks Baby Jesus

One thing that people often forget about the story behind Christmas is that Mary and Joseph could not have been of more humble origins. In the Christian tradition, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, was born so impoverished that the only place available for Him to be born was in a barn. So it followed that He was born to poor teenage parents out of wedlock, lived a life of purpose and compassion, only to be betrayed then tortured to death. If there is any message to this story it is that God sent His son to live a life as wrought with pain and suffering as any human has had to endure, and it didn't break his love of humanity. As with all the greats in human history, as soon as they have died, every self-righteous power whore attempts to invoke their name to justify their own ends; and thus do we have people like GW calling himself a Christian. During the stirring rendition of Silent Night at the Christ Mass I attended this evening it came into my mind that perhaps the reason that Christianity has proven so popular is the universal appeal of redemption. Every day mankind moves closer and closer to the precipice from whence we may never return, yet we still yearn for the possibility that something greater than ourselves will save us. If we can take the story of Jesus just as it is presented to us in the Bible, it would not be inconsistent to view it as a lesson from God telling us all that even the seemingly helpless hold immeasurable potential to save us from our own wickedness. So the moral of the story is: we need to have faith in ourselves to deliver us from evil, just as Christ did some 2000 years ago.

This Week

The mind of mankind

"We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create." -José Ortega y Gasset
Is there any point to this hurricane of activity that is modern man? Some would argue that there is, others that there should be, and some still that there never has been nor never will be. I myself for one am completely undecided. I've done a lot of looking into the matter, and there is just too much passion and brilliance applied to the subject to ever come up with a definitive answer. What do we see when we look back in the social evolution as described in human history? In a word- conflict. Humans seem to know of no other way to develop and progress without coming into conflict with others. It has always been will, faith and passion that have driven us like a herd of cattle to our current impasse. Here we stand with all options open to us, every possibility a path, our tomorrows limited only by our capacity for imagination. Yet we still see the primordial engine of conflict driving humanity like some sadistic shepard. The wealthiest most powerful group of people on Earth is necessarily the most aggressive. Thus is it no surprise that even a country founded on the soundest of humanist principals has now become a force that the whole world must either follow or fear. It is the nature of human development for us to crash together like atoms, only to then find some new balance. I think suicide is nothing more than finding oneself in a situation were a lack of conflict externally leads to you waging war against yourself (this would be supported by the fact that mellow Sweden has the higest suicide rate). Every time I hear someone respond to an issue (newspeak for conflict) with 'I don't care, don't know or are too busy' it feels like having my faith in humanity bitch slapped. How is it even possible to delude yourself into thinking that a neutral possession is even possible? We stand in the dust of millions, with their war cries echoing in our ears, evidence of their struggles and achievements everywhere; yet we find the nerve to be disinterested! Were it not for the masses of the Global South, that are still beyond the reach of false learning, I would think that there was no hope. It is an immense comfort to me that some people still have a relationship to the earth, still value community over commodities, and still posses passion worthy of existence. I don't begrudge the Northern Peoples for their attempt at making the world suit their own needs, such was the way things played out and we must accept that if we ever seek to move beyond it. One thing that their new mode of conflict precipitated was to change the world from a series of small regional conflicts into one gigantic battle royal for the fate of mankind. Despite the 500 years of murder, rape and theft that defined it, we seem to have finally reached a plateau of understanding where we must admit that we are all in this together. The fates of us all have now become one, no need to argue about it, already done. Our fundamental need for conflict has propelled us into an era that has removed many of the cultural distinctions that was the basis for the enmity of the past. Scramble as the petty leftover leaders from the last century might, they have unleashed forces they can't possibly control, but can destroy. It all boils down to whether or not we have learned anything from what has and is taking place amongst us homo sapiens. Can we reconcile our capacity for creation with a proclivity for conflict, or have our tools become to terrible to control?
"Even if the whole world were to fall to pieces, the unity of the psyche would never be shattered. And the wider and more numerous the fissures on the surface, the more the unity is strengthened in the depths." -Carl Gustav Jung

Frenchsmell

So once more the streets of Paris have become a war zone in the never ending battle between entrenched authority and the fierce rushing of the mob. The things these old streets must have seen, so much passion and purpose breaking on those rues like waves upon cliffs. This report claims that the primarily Muslim rioters are actually using weapons and scenes of guerrilla warfare are once more being seen in the birthplace of modern revolution. Roughly 40 years earlier a generation of students and workers closed ranks and brought the mighty establishment of the French Republic to its knees. They had some rallying cries that I think still ring true today:
Dans une société qui a aboli toute aventure, la seule aventure qui reste est celle d'abolir la société.
In a society that has abolished all adventures, the only adventure left is to abolish society.
Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié ne font que se creuser un tombeau. Those who make revolutions by halves do but dig themselves a grave.