Thursday 27 April 2023

Latest Article Roundup By Ajax The Great (Pete Jackson)

By Ajax the Great (Pete Jackson)

(Originally posted on the True Spirit of America Party blog)

TOO BIG TO FAIL = TOO BIG TO EXIST 

Once again, the issue of "too big to fail" is in the foreground, as we have obviously learned NOTHING from the last financial crisis.  If there is ANY lesson that we must NEVER forget, it is this: "too big to fail (or jail)" is really too big to EXIST, period.  And here is what we absolutely MUST do going forward:  give all banks and corporations large enough to have "systemic risk" (that is, where them failing would literally bring the whole economy down) a choice between the following menu of options:

  1. Pay a prohibitive 90% marginal tax rate on all profits beyond the first billion, or,
  2. Break up into smaller, unaffiliated banks or companies, similar to what anti-trust laws require for monopolies, or,
  3. Full nationalization by the federal government, and (if already failed or failing) replacing the entire board of directors.
That's it.  That's the ONLY real solution. 

Of course, we also need to bring back the Glass-Steagall Act and pass a financial transactions tax and repeal the safe harbor provision of bankruptcy law and regulate derivatives better and stuff like that.

So what are we waiting for?

JUST SAY NO TO THE WHO PANDEMIC TREATY 

The TSAP has previously noted that the WHO Pandemic Treaty (currently pending ratification) is problematic at best, both in what it contains, as well as what it lacks.  Now we are learning even more about why the USA should NEVER sign onto it, especially the amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) in conjunction with it.  In classic textbook Orwellian doublespeak fashion, the text contains a very disturbing section that purports to preserve and honor national sovereignty, but actually ends up doing the exact opposite, as can be seen in the extremely elastic wording below:

4.3 of the Treaty
"3. Sovereignty – States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to determine and manage their approach to public health, notably pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery of health systems, pursuant to their own policies and legislation, provided that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to their peoples and other countries. Sovereignty also covers the rights of States over their biological resources."

Wow.  Read between the lines once again.  The part in bold is the absolute worst kind of Orwellian sophistry, in that all someone would have to do is argue in a tortured fashion that it is like having a "designated peeing section in a swimming pool" (apologies to the late George Carlin) for nations to refuse to implement WHO diktats including, but not limited to, travel restrictions, lockdowns, closures, mask mandates, or jab mandates/passports.  The Constitution be damned, of course, as this treaty doesn't even allow for the usual "subject to constitutional limitations" qualifiers found in typical international treaties.  And also the collateral damage to people from such measures would predictably be ignored by the powers that be.

To put it bluntly, if the USA does sign the treaty, then we as a nation would effectively be signing away our national sovereignty to the WHO.  And we must never do that.  Once we do, there is NO turning back!

At a minimum, the USA must add a reservation to the treaty striking the bold text entirely and adding "subject to constitutional limitations", as a condition for signing and ratification.  Better yet, the USA should denounce the treaty entirely and refuse to sign it.  

Worse still, as a News Uncut Substack article notes, "the proposed amendments remove an existing IHR paragraph which protects “respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of people.” Translated, that means you could lose liberty and bodily autonomy; anyone who refused a mandatory vaccine could be banned from travel, work or even shopping. No digital health passport, no life."

Very telling indeed.  All the more reason to reject this utterly terrible treaty wholesale, period.

STEPHEN HAWKING WARNED US ABOUT IT.  WE NEED TO LISTEN YESTERDAY!

Years ago when he was still alive, the late genius theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking made a terrifying prediction, namely that the prospect of uncontrolled superhuman artificial intelligence (AI) is at least as much of an existential threat to humanity as climate change.  And that really says something!

Alas, we still don't seem to be listening, let alone heeding his wise advice.  There is no way to sugar coat this hard-to-swallow pill.  If AI grows any more powerful than it currently is (that is, more powerful than GPT-4) before we learn how to fully control it, and it becomes uncontrollable, it would truly be an existential threat to humanity, civilization, and planet Earth (and possibly even beyond).  Not just in the distant future, but also sooner than one may think, at the rate things are currently going.  Even as a best case scenario, uncontrolled AI would make literally every single current problem in the world far worse before it would make it better.  I repeat, that's the best we could hope for, and it goes downhill from there.  I mean, once the genie is out of the bottle, it's not like anyone would be able to, you know, outsmart it any longer if it ultimately becomes orders of magnitude smarter than even Stephen Hawking himself.

The TSAP thus supports recent calls to put a minimum six month global moratorium on any further AI development beyond GPT-4, period, no exceptions.  And ideally, this moratorium would be indefinite, but six months would still buy us time.  THIS is what things like the precautionary principle and Pascal's Wager were literally designed for.  That is, we would be in a far less precarious position (by orders of magnitude) if we "overreact" and shut it down yesterday, than we would if we were to foolishly let AI get out of control and it becomes too late to control it.  There is literally no comparison between the two.

We ignore such risks at our peril.  Don't say we didn't warn you!

HOW TO REDUCE GUN VIOLENCE WITHOUT VIOLATING THE SECOND AMENDMENT 

How to reduce America's horrible gun violence problem without violating the Second Amendment?  Here is a partial list if ways to keep such dangerous weapons out of the wrong hands while respecting the rights of responsible gun owners all the same:

  • Do a massive, voluntary gun buyback program.  And yes, when done at a large enough scale and paying enough for it to be worth one's while, these things actually do work.
  • Follow something like the Massachusetts model on the federal level (things like gun licensing, universal background checks, red flag laws, and a reinstated assault weapons ban and high-capacity magazine ban).
  • Apply the RICO law to street gangs.
  • Additional penalties for gun carry during a felony.
  • Put a tax on bullets, like comedian Chris Rock advocated.  Expensive bullets = no innocent bystanders.
None of these things actually violate the letter or spirit of the Second Amendment in any way, by the way.  Remember, the best part of the Second Amendment is where it says, "well-regulated".

Of course, we all know that guns don't kill people.  MEN do.  That's the real elephant in the room.  But that said, guns falling into the wrong hands sure as hell do make them that much more dangerous than they would otherwise be. 

Saturday 8 April 2023

Neoliberalism: The Religion Of The World, Flesh, And Devil (Updated For 2023)

By Ajax the Great (Pete Jackson)

(Originally posted on The Chalice and the Flame blog)

Neoliberalism.  It is a rather obscure-sounding term with a somewhat nebulous meaning.  It's anonymity and vagueness shroud it in mystery.  And yet, it is the very ideology at the root of most, if not all, of the modern world's problems.

So what is it, exactly?  It is best defined as a dogmatic belief in the inherent superiority and supremacy of unfettered free markets and privatization (and commodification) of nearly every single thing in the Universe.  Inequality, however extreme, and even greed itself is recast as virtuous (think Gordon Gekko of Wall Street).  The rich and the poor deserve their lot in life, because reasons.  Or something.  Poverty is in fact a feature, not a bug, as the resulting desperation makes people that much easier to exploit.  People are just objects to be used, as are animals and Mother Nature herself.  Citizens are reduced to mere consumers and wage-serfs, if not full-blown slaves.  And like the robber barons of old, today's high priests of neoliberalism are totally fine with robbing from the poor, giving to the rich, and torpedoing what's left of the middle class.  The only difference is that nowadays they typically do it with a smile and a veneer of pseudo-progressivism, while laughing all the way to the bank.

Neoliberalism's warped and twisted code of pseudo-ethics harbors a massive, gaping void that is essentially a moral black hole, since this ideology lacks a truly moral and spiritual component underneath it all.  Its entire foundation is shaky, empty and morally bankrupt, totally rotten to the core.  And yet, it has such mass appeal on both the (pseudo-)left and right of the political spectrum that it transcends that very spectrum.  And while neoliberalism is clearly the darling brainchild of patriarchy, it is such a wily and devious shapeshifter that it even transcends patriarchy itself as well.

From Reagan to the Clintons, Thatcher to Blair, Milton Friedman to Thomas Friedman, Greenspan to Powell, Facebook to ExxonMobil, Purdue University to Perdue Chicken to Purdue Pharma, Trump to Trudeau, and Boris all the way to Natasha, it seems like no mainstream or pseudo-alternative politician, ideologue, technocrat, maven, or tycoon has been able to avoid being infected by neoliberalism to one degree or another, and sucked into its lifeless, soulless abyss.

(Trump, with the notable exception of opposing some of the "free trade" component of neoliberalism, otherwise supports essentially all of the rest of their evil and demonic agenda in practice, his disingenuous rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.  And ALL neoliberals, Trump included, are largely anti-union in practice, if not also in theory as well.)

Though secular in nature, neoliberalism has all of the zeal of a religion, even a fundamentalist one.  And its dogmas have basically become the new orthodoxy from about 1980 onwards.  And we can thus conclude that neoliberalism is essentially the religion of the world, the flesh, and the devil, filling the voids left by the implosion of the mainstream patriarchal religions.  One can even call it a cult as well.

In Christian theology, the "world, flesh, and devil" have traditionally been considered the three primary enemies of the soul, as a sort of "unholy trinity".  Now, I personally believe that there is some nuance to this in that the world is only evil because of who rules it (i.e. the devil who works through men, particularly the oligarchs and their sycophantic lackeys), and the flesh is only evil when we choose to make it that way, since matter is essentially just a slowed-down form of spirit.  Neither of these first two are inherently evil in themselves.  But under the current regime of patriarchy, living exclusively for these two things is believed to ultimately lead to the third member, the devil.  Or wetiko, if you prefer.  Whatever it is, it is pure evil energy that cannot ever be redeemed.  And neoliberalism, in its sheer vileness, vainglory, and wanton idolatry of money and worldly power above all else, effectively worships all three members of this unholy trinity.  There is really no denying that.

The rise of selected flavors of Christian (and other religious) fundamentalism since the 1980s has not stemmed the tide of neoliberalism, and the two increasingly seem to be joined at the hip nowadays.  And while patriarchy is currently in its death throes as we speak, the implosion of patriarchy and patriarchal religion is clearly non-linear, erratic, and chaotic.

And most notably, the recent rumors of neoliberalism's supposed death from the COVID-19 pandemic have been greatly exaggerated.  And by that, we mean that, if anything, neoliberalism has actually GAINED strength overall from the lockdowns and related restrictions which effectively robbed from the poor, gave to the rich, and torpedoed what was left of the already shrinking middle class.  And not only did these draconian measures not appreciably save lives in the long run, they actually cost lives, particularly among poorer people and people of color who got the brunt of both the virus itself AND the collateral damage disproportionately shunted onto them while the affluent got to "work from home".  There was certainly nothing genuinely leftist or progressive about doing that!  And the novel experimental gene therapies that self-identify as "vaccines" have been not only a major cash cow for the oligarchs, but also have been (via mandates, "passports", and segregation) an effective weapon of power and control over the masses, especially via divide-and-conquer.  Not to mention, dare I say, a bioweapon as well, given all of the excess deaths, injuries, and disabilities (sorry, "coincidences") that have resulted from these concoctions.

And, of course, Women have clearly gotten the brief end of the stick from the pandemic response as well.  Lockdowns have increased male-on-female domestic violence and Women have lost more jobs than men have as well.  Meanwhile, the majority of designated "essential" (read: expendable) workers have also been Women as well, especially in healthcare.  And school closures have also forced Mothers to either 1) stay home with the kids and lose income as a result, or else 2) take on a triple burden by trying to juggle it all at once.  It has led to nothing short of a collapse of Women's health and work.  Thus there is clearly nothing even remotely feminist about these toxic and illiberal policies, but rather these are things that neoliberalism salivates over the most.  The Rockefellers and their cronies must be grinning from ear to ear right now as we speak.

TO HELL WITH NEOLIBERALISM!

Friday 7 April 2023

New Face Book Group--Join!

 

Join & post on this new Group!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/901909581115283/permalink/902141401092101






































We've got a great new Face Book Group - Please join & post.  I see good ole' friend Steve Andrews is here!  William Bond, Pete, two of the greatest minds in the world are here......Say something about Mother God worship & about your own walk with God!

Thursday 6 April 2023

Priest Denounces Yoga

 

Priest Denounces Yoga – Fr. Chris Alar

 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZqFJoDlnQk&t=201s

 

          OK friends, the battle is on.  See my book:

 

https://www.lulu.com/shop/rasa-von-werder/secrets-of-yoga-and-christianity-are-they-compatible/ebook/product-19qnpzyv.html?page=1&pageSize=4

 






          Of all religions, Fr. Chris, you have to pick on Yoga?  And your synopsis of it is all wrong.

          It’s the Catholic Church, once again, wanting to control everyone & everything.

          Yes, there are things wrong with the world, crimes, drugs, bad religions, the Patriarchy, corrupt men running institutions, corrupt laws created by men, Satanic worship, hatred, violence, lots of bad things – but not Yoga.

          Yoga & Hinduism came out of ancient scriptures called the Vedas – which are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism.  They go back 1500 years before Jesus!

          Your assessment of what is taught in Yoga is wrong.  I have studied many yoga greats & had them as my gurus.  Ramakrishna, Baba Muktananda, Swami Nityananda & my last one Ramana Maharshi.









          They teach various styles of Union with God.  It’s nothing like what you describe, none of them teaches that.  And the lady who posted saying she was 26 years a yoga instructor I suspect of being a charlatan.

          The Catholic Church is claiming to be the one & only Church that represents God rightfully.

          But this cannot be said of any one Church.  Yes there are whackadoodle religions all over the world – I could name Mormons on top of that & Jehovah’s Witnesses.  There are some to stay away from.  The Catholic Church is great in many ways, not so great in others.

          The Christian Churches act like all of religion started after Jesus Christ.  I am a follower of Our Lord, but God happened before He did.  I mean, God is Infinite.  God – who is God?  What is God?  God created the entire Cosmos, it did not all start with Jesus Christ.

And as long as humans existed, even when they were still halfway monkeys, they wanted to worship something as a Creator or Source.  Religion is created to try to understand & relate to God.

But none of us knows all the answers or secrets of God, even if we see Her ‘face to face.’  We’re still tiny little creatures of Her & we look through a glass darkly on earth.  In Heaven we know this, that God is Love, & so are we.

Yoga is a terrific science or religion, choose what you want to call it.  It has many forms, we who seek God are all yogis.  There’s one I picked up from Muktananda, who said worship the Self, not the human self, but the God Self within.  Yes, Jesus said we are Gods.  Not the flesh, the Divine Nature, created in the image & likeness of God, & when we reach that consciousness or understanding or Union it is called Enlightenment.  This is not some sinister form of activity, it is the Highest Calling of our spiritual selves, to find Union with God.

          Now Christians have a special bond with Jesus.  It’s all about Him, & Him alone.  Not so with yoga.  We see all our great Gurus as God – we say, ‘The Guru is God.”  So yes, we see Jesus as God, but also other Gurus.  If they are really evolved, we call them Incarnations.

To us, Jesus was a reincarnated Hindu/yogic Guru.  The three wise men came from India, maybe Tibet, to see their Guru born again.  After Jesus survived the Cross He traveled to Tibet where He became an itinerant preacher – there are accounts of him as Issa in the monasteries.  I have the book, “The Life of Saint Issa” – The lost years of Jesus Christ in India & the East – by Nicholas Notovitch.

And there is the BBC documentary on You tube, “Jesus in Kashmir”.  He lived to age 81 & is buried there, there’s a Muslim saint on top of him & a small wooden building – yes it is known where Jesus’ remains are.

The message Jesus Christ taught to humanity was the same as Buddhism – he was a reincarnated Buddhist Guru, You have a problem with Buddhism also?










You also mentioned ‘Witchcraft.’  I thought the Inquisition was over.  The Catholics turned Wicca into a dirty word, associated with the demonic & evil spells – all lies against the Women of God who were the Healers, Shamans & Counselors of their day.  The Catholic Church put women out of business so they could control everything.  And you’re still picking on them?  The Pagans are a harmless agricultural, worship of God through Nature religion.  They are down to earth, Marija Gimbutas says even Lithuanians in her day would kiss the earth & thank Mother God in the Spring & during harvest. 

From Pete Jackson:

As for Fr. Chris Alar and the Catholic Church in general, they have a MAJOR blind spot in that regard, and they are very close-minded.  They really put the "dog" in "dogmatic", lol.  Tyrannical indeed, as though the evil Inquisition had never fully ended in their minds. In fact, it wasn't until very recently that the Vatican's "Office of the Inquisition" finally changed their name officially due to the obvious negative connotations.  Indeed, you should write a comment to set him straight. He probably won't listen, of course, but others who read the comment might nonetheless.

 

Rasa adds re the ‘new age’ realms: 

Some of these practices are nothing more than delving into one's unconscious mind: Like Tarot Cards. That's all it is. It is not sinister or evil. As far as 'opening portals' when innocent people inquire about things it does NOT automatically invite the demonic....We all have an unconscious, we all have inner senses, we all have some psychic abilities. These are not demonic. Unless the person has a bad heart & is evil, these are just natural things. Don't get hysterical about it. 

I might add, psychic things are to the male-dominated religions, evil & sinister because men have less of these abilities. It's more so women than men who are psychic. So of course, if it's a woman thing, it has to be bad, doesn't it - To the men as they can't do it. Since men denigrate, degrade & push down women, anything associated more with women becomes a 'bad thing.'