Antierra Manifesto – blog post #81

(Another segment that’s long overdue but I have a list of excuses in case anyone wants to know what the frib I’m up to these days. It’s called work, as in real work, the somewhat remunerative kind which can’t be passed up. Let’s see, how would this go: “Sorry sir but I’m behind in my blogging so I won’t be coming to work today, maybe not til next week.” I’m sure they’d be not only understanding but fully supportive… 🙂 )
_______________________________________

Two handlers approach to take me.  Suddenly every once of strength leaves me, the world around me turns black and I hear a noise as a great waterfall.  I am aware that I collapse and the handlers, instead of holding on to me let me fall into the sand. 

Even in the state I’m in I can understand their reluctance to touch me.  I’m a frightful mess and the smell of Warmo is all over me and how can they know it isn’t my smell?  They cannot even know for certain I’m still alive.

End blog post #80
_________________

Begin Blog post #81

Chapter 34 – Aftermath – Fear – Petition for Execution

When I come to from the blood-loss induced faint I’m lying on the gurney at the entrance to the auto-medic.  A female Cydroid in a green body suit is working on my ribcage.  I’m in excruciating pain and there doesn’t seem to be any part of me that’s exempt.  I’m not connected to IV tubes but I feel a throbbing at the side of my head and a wire lead dangles out there, leading to a shunt on a console by the Cydroid.  I remember the temple wound.  Obviously some internal damage was done there.  I hope it isn’t serious enough to make me “dikfol.”

I open my mouth and manage what sounds like the croak of a raven, “Yoba Five?”

She stops her work to look me full in the eyes.  “Yes – I’m your doctor today.  Don’t try to move, please.  Here, sip on this.”  She hands me a pink liquid in a flask with a bent straw sticking out of a stopper.  I suck greedily on what tastes like nectar and feel a bit better. 

“Balomo is with our King.  Your success has caused great consternation among the male aristocracy.  There is a Court group that is petitioning for your immediate execution.  They fear the power that destroyed Warmo.  He was akin to a Gray Eminence, a mad Rasputin if you will – I get these images from your mind – who had much influence over the real King and many of his courtiers.  It is believed that only a greater demonic force could have killed Warmo, especially without weapons.  As you know, they don’t believe in greater ‘angelic’ forces on this world.  There is evil and more evil, that’s all.  By simple reasoning, that makes you a greater demon than Warmo in their eyes.

“You wonder at the reason they acquiesced to his demands to fight you bare handed?  It’s simple: he convinced them your power was in blades, not in flesh.  He said in flesh he would defeat you and by drinking your blood he would absorb the power you have over the females.  Then he would be able to put more fear of men in them.  By defeating him you caused the opposite to happen.  The males now fear that somehow you have empowered the females and they will openly rebel against their slavery as your story spreads, not just here in the compound but out into Elbre and beyond.  You must realize the crisis you have precipitated here.  It’s the first time males have had any fear of women, except for those brief and useless moments in the arena when they are being killed by one.”

Still in great pain and with difficulty I ask, “So what do I do now?”

“There is nothing you can do.  Your body is still a serious mess and needs repairs.  I’m preparing you for a second round in the auto-medic and hope we have enough time.  Your pardon or sentencing should be coming in the next three or four hours.”

“How long have I been out, then?”

Compared to mine, her voice is that of an angel.  “This is the day after your fight.  You were in the auto-medic all night and it’s now 9:39 in the morning.  Time for your second treatment now.”

“Please promise me that if I’m to be executed, you stop the treatment immediately.  I don’t want to be feeling better just to be tortured to death.”

“I understand.  You have a Cydroid’s mind patterning!  I have to bring you out if you are to be terminated.  You can’t be found in that!”  She points to the auto-med.  “In any case, know this, that you have accomplished much during your years here, and especially yesterday.  This world will never be the same. 

“Bal will alert me by caller if he is returning with guards to take you away as I cannot be seen.  I will release you from the auto-medic, wheel you in the front office and leave you there.  Bal will explain to them that he left you on the table because you had fainted and he didn’t think you would make it anyway.  In case we cannot speak again let me wish you a straight, guilt-free journey to your home you call Altaria.  I’d like to accompany you there.”

“Thank you Yoba Five.  However it goes, we shall meet again.”

“I’ve calculated the possibility in the high percentile.”  And she smiles her beautiful smile.  Bless you, Yoba Five. 

As she attaches the gurney to the retracting mechanism of the auto-med I slip inside the open “mouth” of the A-M and it irises shut on me.  The world disappears and I’m put in anaesthetized trance.  Many lights flash on the boards as I’m being re-adjusted.  Music plays softly in my ears and messages pass by like the voices of distant angelic messengers.  A veritable litany of the many things wrong with my biology the auto-med enumerates for the record as it probes my battered body. 

“Make a mistake, Medic.  Terminate me now.”  I whisper.

End blog post #81

The Weaver of Peace

[I have known for many years that I would never be an author, nor think of myself as a writer. Actually, I am a story teller, that’s in. The following is another tale of Al’Tara’s universal wanderings as the Avatar of Compassion. Al’Tara is my cosmic alter ego until such time as I “graduate” to that position, that is.   Sha’Tara]

The Weaver of Peace
{a short story, by   ~burning woman~  }

I had heard of a particular human person on a world we call Harmony. If I were to write it the way the locals say it, it would sound like a line of ZZZZZ’s… but never mind that. I was in the neighbourhood, so to speak, just a few hundred light years away and between assignments I decided to meet this human person.

I was quite unprepared for what I saw when I met “Alice” as I shall call her. She was perhaps twenty Earth years of age and certainly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, if one stretches the word to the upper limits of its meaning.

I introduced myself as the avatar Al’Tara but she already knew of me and was pleased to meet me personally. In the grand scheme of things people like me do not have much free time so I asked Alice to tell me her story, explaining that what I’d heard left much to be desired.

I noticed (and felt) a great sadness emanating from her as she began.

“I was born one of those women to become a magnet for love and when I was fifteen I fell in love with a particular man. All men automatically “fell in love” with me but I managed to keep myself for that particular lover. Our attraction was beyond anything I could ever imagine. From the moment I met him, my heart only beat for him.

Then the unthinkable, in my way of thinking, happened: I discovered that he was cheating on me with a friend of mine. I went into a blind rage, then planned my revenge. Eventually I killed them both.”

“And what was your punishment?” I asked as innocently as possible, already knowing the answer.

“They didn’t punish me. The verdict from a judge and the families of those I killed was that I should live with my endless awareness of my guilt. They knew I had re-incarnated on their world from a past life on a world called Earth and they made allowances for my errant behaviour. ‘She hasn’t had time to lose the effects of her many lives on that world where her behaviour is considered normal. We must give her time to evolve to understand the two sides of love.’

“What did they mean by that, then?” I asked, again knowing the answer but eager to see if she understood.

“Love, and I understand this now, has two faces: one is jealous, the other is self-sacrificing.”

I saw tears pooling in her lovely dark eyes and flowing down her cheeks but made no comment on that. Instead I asked, “How old were you when you killed your lover?”

“I was seventeen then. I am twenty one now.”

“Your story has spread and when I heard it, I wanted to know how you have proceeded since that time, and how your understanding of love may have changed. You said it has a jealous face, which you’ve certainly experienced, and a self-sacrificing face. You say you understand this now, so what have you done to wear this self-sacrificing face?”

“I’ve made a decision that will give me that face. There is a primitive world recently discovered by the Supremacy that is ruled by what they call tribalism.  The people there are forever fighting feuds, duels and wars, committing genocides, enslaving each other and using women as war booty. It’s a free-for-all kind of place and if things continue as they are, it is believed that the inhabitants are going to destroy themselves. If they gain access to technology, the rate of attrition will rise exponentially.

“There has been discussions between representatives of the Supremacy and the more powerful war lords. They have an ancient law that if an individual gives himself up voluntarily and without any hesitation as a living sacrifice, the act, upon consummation, would force a hundred year truce. You know what my decision is don’t you, Avatar Al’Tara. I have decided to be their Weaver of Peace.”

“Please just call me Al’Tara, or Tara, we do not hold to titles. Yes, I understand that you wish to be this volunteer blood sacrifice to bring a hundred year peace to an entire world. Why do you feel this is for you?”

“Tara, you must know the weight of guilt I have been living under! Add to that, men still desire me and seek me, even knowing my story, and I cannot reciprocate. I’ve still only experienced but the one side of love. I need to complete my face. Consider also that I have so much to lose. I have physical beauty, youth and perfect health. Despite my horrible crime I am universally desired and lack for nothing. My sacrifice will be utter, complete.”

“Because these primitive War Lords, so-called, will not be able to barter for your sexual favours, and many of them will not want the truce you will be forcing upon them, they will pour their hate on you as their “Dedicated” and will insist that you suffer the pains of hell.  They will torture you in the most terrible ways before they allow you to die. You do know that?”

“Yes… yes, I do know that. It’s the price I must pay to earn the love this world has shown me and would give me if it could. I only need to move forward, neither fainting nor turning back.”

“You are a brave woman, Alice. Your commitment to your salutary purpose is honourable. Let me touch your mind and give you something to help you through your ordeal.”

“I wish for nothing. I was offered special surgery to deaden the pain but refused. I cannot accept.”

“This isn’t about deadening or lessening your pain; it’s to give you constancy and focus during your trial. What I give you will enhance your experience. Furthermore, if you ever dreamed of becoming an Avatar, I’m offering you a rare shortcut. I also offer to accompany you and to be there to ease your mind and guide your spirit when you leave you body. I know no one is allowed to accompany you but I will be invisible to all but you. I will stay with you and touch you but without distracting you from your purpose. Accept?”

“Oh, Tara! Now I know I can do this. Thank you.”

PS: I wanted to add a YouTube link to Kate Price’s “Weaver of Peace” which is my favourite Kate Price ballad. I couldn’t find any YouTube links for Kate Price, but here’s the link to the lyrics:

http://www.songlyrics.com/kate-price/peaceweaver-lyrics/

Guilt! Oh woe is me I can feel it!

[a bit of flossophy, by   ~burning woman~  ]

Is there a point to ever allowing ourselves to feel guilt about anything? Modern trends is to not just downplay feeling guilty for anything we may have thought, said or done, but to declare guilt a very bad thing. Hey come on kids, we’re here for a good time, not necessarily a long time and how can we enjoy ourselves fully and freely if we have to be bothered by guilt feelings?

If we want to take those modern “thinklings” further we could parrot New Age concepts drugged out of ancient philosophies that after all, nothing is real. If I harm or hurt someone, no big deal, none of it is real. I’m not really real, neither are you so if you feel pain when I beat up on you for my own enjoyment, it’s your problem for wrong thinking. Your pain is a figment of your undisciplined, unspiritual mind. It doesn’t exist, see?

The interesting part though, is that while my victim’s pain is a figment of his imagination, my pleasure from inflicting the pain is very real and I should treasure it. I’m expressing myself in ways my self appreciates and reciprocates by making me feel good. Contradiction here? Why should there be if I choose not to see it? I make my own reality.

Obviously if I create my own reality feeling guilty isn’t going to be high priority on the list of things to do. Primarily because it is an unpleasant thing to experience and in new-think, unpleasantness is politically incorrect. There are now mantras to counter all aspects of life that could give rise to unpleasantness. Some examples, feel free to expound.

“I am a positive thinking individual. I only engage positive thoughts about myself.” “I feel good and nothing can ever make me not feel good.” “If I start feeling bad it’s a negative thing I must get rid of.” “I am the best that I can be.” “I am the best of the best.” “My life is good, great, wonderful and nothing can change that.” “I am important, special and everybody who knows me likes me.” “I am exceptional. If anyone doesn’t think so they haven’t bothered getting to know me and they are jealous.” “If something bad happens and I’m blamed for it, it’s not my fault, well, of course it’s not. If you let me tell the facts of the case as I know them to be you’ll see it wasn’t my fault.” “If you blame me it only shows your prejudiced against me.” 

We could call that the Millennial gospel. Like any gospel, it looks good in words and it doesn’t follow in real life, whatever that is.

So getting back to that nasty feeling of guilt when something inside of you says you did a bad thing and you should be at least sorry, or maybe even ask forgiveness or try to remedy the situation if possible, what does that say? Is your system turning against you? Did your karma run over your dogma? (OK, old joke and my apologies to Swami Beyondanonda) No, it’s much simpler than that. It’s your conscience reminding you that it hasn’t totally atrophied.

Conscience? What in hell is that?

OK, if you’re a millennial, or if you think like one, you could not possibly know what a conscience is so let’s describe it in terms that were once common enough.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary (we’re still OK on what a dictionary is? If not ask Siri) Conscience definition is – the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one’s own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good. (Can you get past the politically incorrect verbiage there?)

That’s why we used to have a conscience. It’s how we used to tell when we did something right as opposed to something wrong. It used to be a good idea to know the difference between right and wrong. Then came political correctness. Right became, well, not… and wrong became, well, not also. It’s only confusing if you insist on thinking in terms of right and wrong but if that’s a problem, you can get prescription drugs to solve it for you. (Ask Cortana)

And please remember, you’re special, just like everyone else.

Purpose

[an essay, by   ~burning woman~ ] 

Until perhaps a decade of Earth years ago I had not yet realized that any intelligent, sentient, self aware life form needs a purpose in order to make sense of itself and to give itself direction. Without purpose such a life falls into an endless treadmill. How can any intelligent life with the ability to self propel move forward, or in any meaningful direction, without purpose?

Serving a purpose instead of just existing as asset, a “labour resource” or a consumer makes sense. But in a world teeming with billions of Earthians how can one develop a meaningful purpose? How can “I” make myself mean something outside the dictates of a system that by observation increasingly tends to go off the rails and doesn’t seem to have any meaning in itself?

That’s a legitimate question, I think. What is our civilization’s purpose? There was a time that “purpose” for Earthians was to serve the gods. For better or worse, we lost that, or deliberately turned against it. Not totally our fault since the gods, real or imagined, no longer responded to our prayers and left us to our own devices, lead by unabashedly greedy certifiable morons in the field of religion. It wasn’t long before the System offered a new type of belief I would call political atheism.

We were swayed by a new idea: evolution, or natural selection. Instead of gods, nature was the arbiter of everything that had ever been, was, or could be. To top that, man rediscovered himself to be a meaningless physical, finite entity with absolutely no hope of any future beyond his one pointless life. Essentially that is the atheist creed. Like belief in God, gods or whatever, belief in no hereafter is just another type of faith-based concept. The difference is that this belief does not exactly promote the seeking for greater purpose.

For an ISSA being, purpose can only be properly expressed in a mind conscious of existence beyond one physical lifetime. Purpose carries across time and space to encompass cosmic reality. Purpose means partnership with life and its creative force.

Purpose awareness brings one dangerously close to thinking like a god also, and that is a place one must shun with every part of one’s being.

We’ve done the god thing and all it has accomplished is help solidify a societal reality that is destroying us as a species. While pretending to worship some God or other Force, what we have done is create a civilization wherein we would rule the world as gods. In that we have been abject failures. Instead of developing purpose as self empowered individuals we have corralled all the available resources of the planet, human and non, to jerry build a mindless, directionless, self-defeating finite monstrosity that is ever poised to destroy itself through internecine warfare. Our civilization is a predatory Frankenstein without specific direction, without purpose. When we read the questionable records of its history the final question that remains is, what was the point? What’s the point? What comes after?

If we use the Pleasantville allegory as indicative of the development of civilization – and why not? – we end up with the same question: what comes next, once the Pleasantville illusion is shattered? In the movie the answer is we’re not supposed to know. The same answer you get if you do religion. “In my father’s house are many mansions.” Fine, well and good, but that is not an answer. The type and condition of life in the father’s house are never answered. Why not?

Neither religion nor its nemesis atheism, want, or can, give anyone purpose. Purpose relates to a “higher” type of thinking. Purpose shatters the programming of the Powers and sets the mind free to be itself. To develop its own thinking patterns. To see reality, not propaganda. To dare accept a knowledge once sought by mages, visionaries, dreamers. A knowledge ignored and despised in today’s academic and political circles.

Purpose takes us out of mindless existence on the wheel of fate, or karma, or dead-end as is the more common case today. Purpose is the action field where an individual practices living at the expense of her mere existence until all that’s left is life. Once one discovers life society and its manifold chaotic beliefs no longer hold sway.

I can think my own thoughts and know beyond any doubt that they are superior to any expressed by society and those who rule and ruin it to their own destruction. From purpose I can see the past and I can walk into the future, up to “the 13^th Floor” and beyond. Can you?  

 

 

 

 

Performative Oppression – George Monbiot

[The so exceptional, white, Christian west shows its true colours. European Nazism wasn’t defeated. It hid, morphed, recouped and here it is, rising up as surely as it did in the 1930’s and what will confront it and challenge it this time? There is nothing and hardly anyone left with a working conscience to be found. The western world has succumbed to the lowest common denominator of schadenfreud. – my comment.  Sha’Tara] 

Performative Oppression

Posted: 15 Nov 2019 10:37 AM PST

The government proposes the cultural cleansing of the Romani and Traveller life from Britain.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 13^th November 2019

This is how it begins: with a theatrical attack on a vulnerable minority. It’s a Conservative tradition, during election campaigns, to vilify Romani Gypsies and Travellers: it tends to play well on the doorsteps of Middle England. But what the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, proposed last week is something else. It amounts to legislative cleansing.

The consultation document she released on the last day of Parliament aims to “test the appetite to go further” than any previous laws. It suggests that the police should be able immediately to confiscate the vehicles of “anyone whom they suspect to be trespassing on land with the purpose of residing on it”. Until successive Conservative governments began working on it, trespass was a civil and trivial matter. Now it is treated as a crime so serious that on mere suspicion you can lose your home.

When I say “you”, obviously I don’t mean you, unless you are a Romani Gypsy, a traditional Traveller or a New Traveller. If you’re on holiday in your caravan, it does not affect you. It applies only if you have “intent to reside” in your vehicle “for any period”. In other words, it is specifically aimed at travelling peoples. It is clearly and deliberately discriminatory.

It’s true that some people have sometimes behaved appallingly, damaging places, leaving litter and abusing residents. But there are already plenty of laws to prosecute these crimes. The government’s proposal, criminalising the use of any place without planning permission for Romani and Travellers to stop, would exterminate the travelling life.

The consultation acknowledges that there is nowhere else for these communities to go, other than the council house waiting list, which means abandoning the key elements of their culture. During the Conservative purge in the late 1980s and early 1990s, two thirds of traditional, informal stopping sites for travellers, some of which had been in use for thousands of years, were sealed off. Then, in 1994, the Criminal Justice Act repealed the duty of local authorities to provide official sites.

Over the past few weeks in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, local people have been debating the merits of the council’s proposal for an official transit site for travelling people. According to one of the councillors, there have been threats to stone, bottle and petrol bomb anyone who uses it, if planning permission is granted. For centuries Romani and Travellers have been hounded from parish to parish, suffering prejudice and bigotry as extreme as any group faces. Now the government is stoking it.

Patel’s proposed laws belong to the most dangerous of all political categories: performative oppression. She is beating up a marginalised group in full public view, to show that she sides with the majority. I don’t know whether she really intends to introduce these laws, or whether this is empty electioneering. In either case, she is playing with fire. Already this month, three caravans in Somerset have been torched by suspected arsonists. Travelling peoples have been attacked like this for centuries, and sometimes murdered. In 2003, a 15-year-old Traveller child, Johnny Delaney, was kicked to death by a gang of teenagers. One of them is reported to have explained to a passer-by, “he was only a fucking Gypsy.”

I asked a traditional Traveller how Patel’s legislation would affect her. Briony (not her real name) told me she has ploughed her life savings into her motorhome, which she parks out of people’s way, beside roads within easy reach of her children’s school. She has good relations with local people, many of whom know her and see her as part of the community. But none of this will help.

If this proposal becomes law, “the police will have the power to kick my door in, take my home, arrest me and take the children into care. We won’t get them back because we won’t have a home. Because of my work, I can’t afford a criminal record. When I walk out of the police station, I will have no home, no assets, no children and no career.” It would also leave her without state protection. “Sometimes we’ve had to call the police when we’re on the receiving end of hate crimes. This legislation would mean we had to go under the radar.” Understandably, she is terrified.

She has nowhere else to go. “There’s one transit site half an hour away, but you can stay there only for 28 days a year. So my only option is roadside. Roadside is our cultural heritage.” Stopping by the road has already been made extremely stressful and precarious by existing laws. Patel’s proposal would stamp it out altogether. It would end a migratory tradition that’s as old as humanity.

As Briony points out, this is collective punishment. “The majority of us are minding our own business. We’re providing our own housing, not relying on the government. But everything I do that’s positive is lost in people’s minds. Most people I meet have no idea I’m a Traveller. We’re invisible until we do something wrong. Then people notice we’re Travellers.”

A week before Priti Patel launched her consultation, the Weiner Holocaust Library in London opened its exhibition on the Porajmos: the genocide of Roma and Sinti people carried out by the Nazis. It shows how ancient prejudices were mobilised to destroy entire peoples. I’m not saying that this is how the situation will unfold in this country, but the exhibition shows us the worst that can happen when the state sanctions the demonisation of an outgroup. First they came for the Travellers …

http://www.monbiot.com