House Passes CISPA

According to Politico, the US House of Representatives just passed CISPA (the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act). If you recall, SOPA and PIPA  are like boyscouts compared to the elite SAS that is CISPA. The bill passed 248 to 168 with 42 Dems voting for it and 28 Pubs voting against it, across party lines.



The New World Order is using fictitious "cyber terrorism" from North Korea to justify taking all of our rights away.




John Boner. Look at him. That smug son of a bitch. He disgusts me as much as a man can be disgusted by another man.



Speaker John Boner (and it is Boner, I don't care if he pronounces it Bayner, that's not how it's spelled) says "Slave, you will learn to submit!" While an unnamed person in the White House replied "CISPA would trample the privacy and consumer rights of our citizens while leaving our critical infrastructure vulnerable. We need Congress to address this critical national and economic security challenge [sic.] while respecting the values of freedom, privacy, openness and innovation so fundamental to our nation."



With proper activism we can kill this in the Senate. Don't give up just because you're tired. Don't give up just because defeating SOPA and PIPA have left you complacent. Keep fighting to protect our freedom.

The Conspiracy to Kill Jesus

Friday, 3 April AD 33. Jesus is tried by the Sanhedrin and sent to Pontius Pilate who asks him some questions and has Jesus beaten. The Sanhedrin does not relent. They demand Pilate execute Jesus. Pilate points to the Passover tradition of pardoning a criminal and lets the mob decide Jesus' fate and they choose to let Barabbas go free instead. Pilate washes his hands of the decision and the mob cries out that Jesus' blood will be on their hands and the hands of their descendants.

That's the story from the Gospels, but is it true? Is there really a conspiracy to kill Jesus and blame it on the Jews? The Gospel story has been used to justify antisemitism for over a thousand years, but is there a problem with the story?

To be sure the Sanhedrin wants Jesus dead. Jesus is challenging their claim to authority. The Sanhedrin wants people to believe that they are the only source of God's authority, the only mouthpiece for the Lord. They also want the vast sums of money worshipers spend at the Temple performing sacrifices and they like the cushy life they have in Rome's favour. However, as previously stated, just because the Sanhedrin wants Jesus dead does not mean the Jews want him dead. The people who benefited most from Jesus were the Jews, who had their hopes pinned to the coming Messiah. The Jews didn't like the status quo with Rome and the Sanhedrin, Rome's lapdog, keeping them under thumb.

What of Pilate? He cannot find fault in Jesus, right? Well, Pilate was a ruthless man who would find an excuse to kill Jesus if he wanted to. Pilate had no compunction killing Jews and Jesus was a Jew among many for Pilate. Worse still Jesus was a religious agitator. It didn't matter to Pilate if he was Messiah or not, as long as people believed he was that could lead to a rebellion and a rebellion would give Pilate a hard time. Pilate worked really hard rising the ranks to become prefect and he did everything he could to keep his job. Is it any wonder so many Messiah claimants ended up dead?

Didn't Pilate wash his hands of Jesus' death? Actually, no. That was a Jewish practice, not a pagan Roman practice. Pilate would not have washed his hands just like he would not have been circumcised just like he would not abstain from eating oysters (which Romans loved).

And the Passover pardon? Actually, there is no history of such a tradition outside the Gospels. Yes, a prefect did have the authority to pardon prisoners and there are sporadic examples of prefects who had pardoned prisoners, during Passover and other times throughout the year, but we have no evidence of a Passover tradition of pardoning someone. It appears nowhere in the Old Testament (so it wasn't a Jewish tradition), and it appears nowhere in Roman records, so it wasn't a Roman tradition. It's not in Josephus, or the Talmud, or in Philo. The idea of the pardon appears first in the Gospels associated with Pilate, and if we take into consideration Pilate's character we can doubt that a bloodthirsty man such as him would even consider pardoning a Jew at Passover. Remember, Pilate's job as prefect was to keep order, and part of keeping order is not to give in to the will of the mob. When there's a mob the prefect puts it down, he does not aquiesce to their demands. Pilate was recalled to Rome because of his brutality, not because he caved to the will of his subjects too often.

So Pontius Pilate does not free Barabbas and he does not wash his hands of the blood guilt, and it's not the Jews who hate Jesus but just the Sanhedrin. What in the world is going on?

We have to take two things into account, namely the time the Gospels were being written and the mindset of the Gospel writers. Mark, the first written canonical Gospel, was written in around AD 70, around the time of the Jewish revolt and the destruction of the Second Temple. Up until that time there was little difference between Jewish Christians and Christian Jews. The Gospel writers wanted to distance themselves from the Jews because the Jews were being systematically destroyed by the Romans at the time. There were far more Jews than Christians, so, as a matter of survival, the Gospel writers had to make the Jews look like the enemy and the good Roman Pontius Pilate look like he was reluctant to kill the Messiah. Jewish guilt was not created out of malice, but fear. Jesus' disciples hid and Peter in particular denied him three times out of fear of the Romans, and it was only witnessing the Resurrection that made them become fearless evangelists. The Gospel writers, living more than a generation after the Resurrection, had no such miracles to boost their confidence. Out of sheer pragmatism they tweeked the story of the trial of Jesus to try to keep Rome from lumping them in with the Jews.

Saying Pontius Pilate had much more to do with the death of Jesus and exhonorating the Jews does not mean what many people think it might mean. Saying the Gospel writers altered the true events of Jesus' life go without saying. Gospel means "good news" not "raw fact". There's no way the Gospel writers could have known what was said between Jesus and Pilate, the Sermon on the Mount is way too densely packed to have been delivered as a single sermon, and John even says at the end that he had to condense the material because Jesus did so much he couldn't fit it all. Saying that the Gospel writers were human and acted out of human motivation does not mean Jesus was fake and the Resurrection never happened - there is enough to say that the Gospels do point toward the truth, but a finger pointing toward the moon is not the moon. It also does not mean that the Gospel writers were acting sinisterly. They were making the story of the life of Jesus more accessible to a wider audience, and part of that includes maintaining the survival of the nascent movement that was Christianity in the First Century.

It is a double-edged sword. We can use the Gospels as a launching pad to grow in a relationship with Christ or we can use them to justify antisemitism. The choice, ultimately is up to us, and with the knowledge of history there is hope we can unravel the story of Jewish blood guilt and fix a wound that has festered for close to two thousand years. Then, at last, we can put this conspiracy to kill Jesus to rest.

States, Stages, and Shadow

Ken Wilber in his best video since I Am Bigmind discusses the Three S's that his Integral approach tries to get you in touch with: States (gross, subtle, causal, nondual, altered states, etc.), Stages (Red, Amber, Orange, Green, Teal, Turquoise, etc.), and the Shadow (the unconscious crap you haul around with you). Up until now no single tradition, no single practice, no single methodology dealt with all three. For as crappy a time as we are in right now we are truly blessed to be living when integration of the three major aspects of the mind has begun. Runs 14:41.

If I Were The Devil

Famous broadcaster Paul Harvey tells us what he would do to America if he were the Devil. When I first heard this it frightened me. Every single thing has already happened. Paul Harvey's Devil has already corrupted the country. Listen to a warning from history. (runs 3 minutes)




And now you know the rest of the story.

Dictator Obama

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

March 16, 2012

Executive Order -- National Defense Resources Preparedness



Obama has altered the 1950 Defense Production Act, which allowed the President to institute martial law incase of a direct attack from the Soviet Union, to include any emergency. Need I remind you that the United States has been in a state of emergency since 24 January 1995 when Clinton signed an executive order, then Bush continued it, and Obama continued it after him. The US has been in a perpetual state of emergency for 17 years now. Since we are officially in a state of emergency Obama can now, with this new executive order, declair martial law whenever he wants. He has just written himself permission to become dictator of the United States just like Julius Caesar did in Rome 2000 years ago.




Unless we do something this is the end of the United States.

A Timeline for Jesus

Using paleoastronomy, historical documentation, and the Gospel accounts here is my best guess at a reasonable chronology of the life of Jesus. People have been debating this for over a thousand years so I can't say this is complete with any finality, but it works for me so maybe it will work for you too. Jesus' own words are rendered here in red, as is tradition.

17 April 6 BC - Birth
Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great ("Great" for all the stuff he built; he was actually a lousy man), which was from roughly 37 to 4 BC, so Jesus could not have been born in 1 BC as was traditionally thought when the new Gregorian calender was constructed. Herod's reign falls within the Roman Warm Period. During this time global temperatures (not just European temperatures, we have climate records from China and Siberia too) show the Earth was 1-2 degrees warmer than it is today. Many people say that it would be too cold during Winter for shepherds to be grazing their flocks at night, as the Gospels say, but a much warmer climate might have allowed for that. What seems to seal the deal for me is the double occultation of Jupiter (the "star" of kings) by the Moon in the constellation Aires (sign of the Jews) in 6 BC. The Magi were astrologers and would be looking for stuff like this. Astronomer Michael Molnar explains this event in much more detail. Yes, he addresses the objection raised by the other wiki about the occultation happening near the sun.

The Bethlehem Jesus was born at was probably the one near Nazareth rather than the one near Jerusalem, which was much farther away.

Before December 6 BC - Flight to Egypt
Herod learns of the prophecy of the Magi and decides to kill any potential infant rival. He initiates the Massacre of the Innocents, killing all the male children in Bethlehem under age two (fewer than 100 in all). Receiving a warning from an angel Jesus' parents take him to Egypt. In Egypt they visited many holy sites marked by the Coptic Church, possibly including the then abandoned Jewish Temple at Elephantine Island near the border with Nubia (this temple is where the Ark was held after it was taken away from Jerusalem during the Babylonian invasion).

4 BC - Return to Nazareth
After Herod dies Jesus, now near age two (Herod is believed to have died between March and April), and his family return to Nazareth from Egypt. Not much is said about Jesus' childhood other than he lived in Nazareth and had many brothers and sisters (both from Joseph's previous marriage and his current marriage with Mary - I'm not convinced they never consummated their marriage and Mary was a virgin her whole life).

7 AD - Jesus at the Temple
The holy family visits Jerusalem for Passover and Jesus, age 12, wanders off. His parents find him after some time on the steps of the Temple discussing the Law with learned men, and impressing them with his own knowledge. This is the last event recorded in the Gospels before his Baptism as an adult.

8 AD - 25 AD - The Lost Years
Nobody knows what happened! Some people say he worked as a carpenter with his dad building ploughs and tables and other stuff. I can't see Jesus having a holy childhood and a holy ministry later in his life and yet spend 18 whole years as a normal person. He's always causing trouble for the establishment, no way he just layed low for close to two decades. I'm convinced that Jesus went to India.

26 AD - Jesus Returns!
Jesus, now age 31, returns to the Holy Land from whereever he was. He's spent his time finding himself and now he's grown the beard (figuratively and literally*) and he's back to stir things up with the Romans and the Jewish elite. When he comes back Jesus hears about John the Baptist, goes to meet him at the Jordan River, and is baptised there. The sky opens up and the Lord proclaims Jesus is His Son and he is very pleased. It was after late March, right after Pontius Pilate became Prefect of Judaea and when John began his ministry. Shortly thereafter Jesus meets two of John's disciples who will later become two of his own, Andrew and another man who is not identified.

Jesus then goes into the desert for 40 days and does battle with Satan. Just what the point of all this was we will never know. Satan knows how the story will end - with his own defeat - so he had to know he couldn't get Jesus to sin. What then was the point of the temptation in the desert? Maybe he was actually doing Jesus a favor by helping Jesus come to a better understanding of what his role would be in the coming years. It could have been a test, where if Jesus could sharpen his skills with the ultimate adversary before going head to head with the establishment. Satan demands Jesus prove he is the Son of God by turning stones into bread to relieve the hunger of his fast, to which Jesus replies that no one can live by bread alone, they need every word that God has spoken. Satan then takes Jesus to the highest spot on the Temple in Jerusalem and tells him to jump because scripture says angels will catch him and take him safely to the ground, to which Jesus replies that scripture also admonishes one not to test the Lord. Lastly Satan takes Jesus to a very high place (often a mountain) and shows him all the kingdoms of the world. Satan says that he will give Jesus dominion over all the world if Jesus will but kneel before him and worship him (a similar scene from the 2007 film 300 where a 9-foot-tall Xerxes says almost the same thing to Leonidas). Jesus demanded Satan leave him be and quoted scripture saying that God alone is to be worshiped and served.

27 AD - The Ministry Begins
Sometime in late 26, early 27, Jesus begins his own ministry. The Synoptic Gospels mention only one Passover (the Last Supper) but John mentions three, so Jesus' ministry lasted at least three years. In my chronology it lasts a total of six years. Jesus collects the twelve Apostles, feeds a lot of people, and gives the Sermon on the Mount, which was probably a Reader's Digest compilation of sayings from many sermons Jesus gave throughout his ministry (imagining anyone, let alone a huge group of people would sit through a very quick paced delivery of a whole lot of really heady stuff with no further explanation is unbelievable to me. Each of the beatitudes could be the topic of a discourse in itself. No one would have been able to understand it all at once.).

33 AD - Bringing It All Together
The last year of Jesus' time on Earth, now age 39, contains most of the important events in his life, beginning with the Transfiguration. Jesus and three apostles go to a mountain where Jesus rises up into the air. He glows brilliantly and Moses and Elijah appear beside him. Jesus is once again proclaimed to be Son of God (like the baptism) and the apostles are told to listen to him.

2 April 33 AD - The Last Supper
Thursday. Jesus and the apostles are gathered together to celebrate the Passover meal. It is here that he announces that one of them will betray him and that Peter will disown him three times that night. He begins the practice of the Eucharist. Jesus blessed the bread, broke it, and gave it to his apostles telling them eat, this is my body. Then he blessed the wine and gave it to them saying drink, this is my blood of the new covenant. Here he is reversing the traditional Passover order where whine is blessed before bread and he is instituting a new covenant, to replace the one with Abraham and Moses (which is why Gentiles can now become followers of Christ and not just Jews).

3 April 33 AD - The Crucifixion
Friday. Jesus is betrayed by Judas. He asks the Lord in a moment of weakness if it is not possible that he does not have to go through witht he crucifixion but then accepts his fate, saying Thy will be done, not my will be done. The Sanhedrin sets up a mock trial and convicts him. Pontius Pilate sends him to King Herod, son of the dead king also named Herod, who mocks Jesus and sends him back. Pilate has a tough time finding reason to condemn Jesus to death, giving him a savage beating at first, but gives in to the Sanhedrin's demands**. During this time we get the wonderful Latin anagram of Pilate's question "Quid est veritas?" (what is truth?), which becomes "Est vir qui adest" (it is the man who is here). Jesus and Pilate probably spoke Greek at the trial, not Latin.

Jesus is brought up to Golgotha in the morning after being beaten, where he is crucified. Above his head is a placard depicted with the inscription INRI, an acronym for the Latin "Jesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum," meaning "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" - his charge in the trial. He is being executed with two criminals. On the cross Jesus cries out Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, expressing his forgiveness of the people who crucified him. One of the criminals mocks Jesus but the other one pleads with him "Remember me when you come into your kingdom," to which Jesus replies truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. By Noon Jesus is exhausted. He asks aloud My God, why have you forsaken me? Three hours later, Feeling a great pain in his chest he groans, it is finished. Jesus cries out one last time before the crowd Father, into your hands I commit my spirit, and dies. A Roman soldier pierces his side with a spear. Blood and clear fluid, identified as water at the time, come out (the pericardium - the sac containing the heart - is filled with light-coloured fluid to cushion the heart. Great physical trauma can cause too much fluid to fill the pericardium and crush the heart. When this happens you know it, and you know you're moments away from death.) and drip into the soldier's eyes, curing his poor vision. The body is taken down, anointed and dressed quickly before the sabbath, and left in the unused tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

5 April 33 AD - The Resurrection
Sunday. Jesus conquers death. The guards at the tomb entrance are gone, the stone is rolled back, and the tomb is empty. The two Marys (Mary Jesus' mother and Mary Magdalene) go to do a proper job preparing Jesus' body and they're shocked to find it's gone! They then meet a man whom they do not recognise at first (it's Jesus) who tells them about the resurrection. They go back and tell the grieving apostles. This is important! The testimony of a woman was worthless in first century Judaea. To have the first witnesses to the resurrection be women is evidence for the event's historicity. If the resurrection were made up the Gospel writers would have put a man as the first witness, not two women. In time Jesus would appear before his apostles several times over the next 40 days, including before very large groups of people.

15 May 33 AD - The Ascension
Jesus rises up into Heaven before his apostles after telling them to go out and spread the Gospel. Jesus promises to return one day.






*"...the male beard communicates an heroic image of the independent, sturdy, and resourceful pioneer, ready, willing and able to do manly things."
You can buy a Jesus: Beard of Beards t-shirt for around $30 if you are an enthusiast of both Jesus and beards.

**Pilate had no compunction in killing Jews and was very successful in putting down revolts, so it doesn't matter how many Jews demanded Jesus be killed - if they started a riot Pilate would just slaughter them. Anyway, it was not the Jews who wanted Jesus killed, because Jesus was a Jew, his followers were Jews, and most of the people who benefited from his miracles were Jews. The Sanhedrin wanted Jesus killed probably for political reasons and used the religious crime of blasphemy as a cover, but saying the acts of the Sanhedrin condemns the Jews for Jesus' death is like saying the acts of Congress condemns all Americans for invading Iraq or Libya or insert negative event here. Why Pilate consented to the execution we will probably never know, but he may have had political reasons as well.

The Witness, the Ego, and the Shadow Walk into a Bar...

This is a bit personal, but it is actually really really good. I did a little (a lot actually) of introspection starting at around 10:50 PM yesterday and just finished up. It's sort of a dialogue between my normal personality and my more distant Witness. It's an integration (or an attempt at integration) between the Witness, the Ego, and the Shadow. I'm not saying I succeeded in much of anything but I am feeling a lot better now. The Ego and Witness do most of the talking (Witness is always in italics) and the Shadow chimes in some times. It can be a bit hard to follow. This is not as effective as the 3-2-1 technique I've done once before, but at the time I started I didn't really know what was going on.



Thinking Allowed



I was thinking about [Name Withheld] today. I'm dissatisfied with my otherwise boring life. I want one of those crazy drug and party lives.



Why?



Because self-destructive women have crazy drug and party lives.



Why should that matter?



Because I want a self-destructive woman.



Why the hell would you want that?



Because [Name Withheld] was a self-destructive woman and I want her back.



Why?



Because that part of my life, my being with her, if you can call it that, was a failure. She wounded me. I opened myself up to being wounded and I've been trying to remedy that ever since by finding a replacement for her whom I can conquer. I'm looking for a [Name Withheld] substitute because I want her.



I wanted to make her feel special. I wanted to make her feel loved. I wanted to hold her and protect her and just be with her – just the two of us. I'm full and she's empty and I want to empty myself into her.



I understand this is asinine on an intellectual level but it still hurts.



Is that okay?



I actually felt like crying but then I called myself a pussy so I didn't.



Do you really want her back?



What do you mean?



What is it that you really want? I mean, you weren't fulfilled when you were with her, were you?



I guess not.



So what is it that you really want if it's not to be back with her?



I don't know.



Maybe you were wounded before you met her? I'm not saying ending with her wasn't tough, but maybe you wanted someone who was damaged not because you had benevolent intentions, but because you wanted someone to shit on you. Maybe you wanted someone to check your anger. Anger is your sin, is it not? You set out to fail and you succeeded in that because you wanted to be shot down.



Why? Because I was angry with myself? Is that it? I was angry with myself and I wanted someone to tear my heart out?



I think so.



I feel powerless and that makes me angry. I focus my anger inward because I feel I should be more than this. It was different then – the specific conditions that is – but the feeling is still there. The feeling of powerlessness. This world has never made sense to me. It's always felt like exile. I'm here as penance. I left my eternal home, my ultimate freedom, my omnipotence, and I find myself in this tiny, limited, frightened body in this alien world and I don't know why and I want out. I look for what I am missing in myself out there, but I know it's not out there so I look for it in a way that I know I will fail to remind myself that the solution lies within, not without.



There is also the fullness and emptiness thing. I do want to fill what is empty, and empty what is full. I want to be empty. I want to return to emptiness. The ultimate effulgence wants to get out, to spread, to radiate on as many others as possible.



I guess I'm just lonely and I want someone to be lonely with? Is that it? I want to be with someone who is as confused as me, someone who is as lonely as me, as desparate for filling what is empty and emptying what is full as me. On one level I want to expand in love, which is my true nature, and since I can't do that to the fullest extent I get frustrated. On the other my little self wants validation in its state of confusion – in its state of being lost. It is the struggle between self and Self. I guess that doesn't go away.



No, it does not. Ego is always there at some level, and it's not bad either. Ego is just "I". Letting the Ego run around uncontrolled is bad, but when tamed it can be used for good. This is all a normal part of spiritual development.

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I was going to include a KW video on the Ego and the Witness but it seem to have been taken down, so here's something else.