Beyond Industrial Capitalism and Nation States

 

WARNING
This freesite contains explicit truth and new ideas.
The content could turn you from an obedient subject to a rabid secessionist.
You might become a new tribalist and a Leaver-Giver.
You could help save the world.

Johannes Gutenberg

We are experiencing a second great Renaissance in knowledge, technologies and thought. There is a growing body of opinion and literature that recognises the many new realities and opportunities facing us. But most individuals, businesses and institutions, continue to think and act too conventionally.

This freesite puts the case for radical advancement, coupled with the sound and ethical use of the new abundance stemming from the digital and scientific revolutions that are sweeping us forward. It demands far more than evolutionary change and a wide revision of old attitudes and behaviours. What is called for is a complete transformation, from one level of civilization to another that is higher and better in every way.

To facilitate referencing and discussion, each sub-heading in this document is suffixed thus: [0] Click for Links to Sub-Headings

A Second Transformation Should Not Be Delayed [1]
The original Renaissance, in Europe, occurred progressively. During the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries the old feudal order of things was painfully replaced by a new level of civilization based on wide availability of printed information and knowledge. The transformation took so long because the masses had first to become literate, and then new ideas and reform movements had to emerge and gradually prevail over the old order. The forces of the eventual losers, the Roman Church and the remnants of feudal domains, fought determinedly to retain control and privilege. Many innocents died in wars of suppression, and at the hands of the first Inquisition.

Today, there is no reason for similar delays in effecting a transformation to a new level of civilization based on instant communications and free exchange of information and knowledge. Nor should it be necessary to effect the changes through conflicts and bloodshed.

Our Present Civilization Is Broken Beyond Repair [2]
Rather than waste time and energy in attempts to change the existing civilization from within, while retaining its core paradigms and assumptions, it will be wiser and quicker to leave it behind. Many of the old social and economic concepts are flawed, and they would weigh us down if we continued to adhere to them. Thankfully, there is no longer any need for a revolution to break away from the control of central governments and global corporations and institutions. If those entities were still effective, and they remained necessary to modern society, the prospects of a protracted struggle would be high. But the philosophies and economic mechanisms of nation states and global corporations are founded on obsolete principles, of unrelenting economic scarcity and the use of market forces to ensure that available resources are maximised.

Once knowledge is freely available and physical resources are abundant, the old order is irreparably broken. It is then pointless to try to reform and evolve systems such as industrial capitalism and nationalism, we must simply put them behind us and go forward, using a new set of paradigms.

A Kaleidoscopic View [3]
This document is quite extensive, so it is arranged in a manner that facilitates skipping and rereading several times. Rather than risk boring readers with a laborious and tightly integrated argument for transformation, the author has chosen to present a kaleidoscopic view of the subject matter.looking at wonder You can read only the headings that interest you or read everything sequentially. However you read it, all the information can be tied together to form a single perspective of where humanity has been in the past, where it is today, and where it can go in the future.

Early in the first Industrial Revolution, people looked through the new invention of Sir David Brewster and marvelled at the optical patterns that his Kaleidoscope produced. Yet, they could not know what wondrous new technologies would become available to humanity in the space of barely two hundred years. Nor did they realise the nature and significance of ancient knowledge that had already been lost, or kept secret, for millennia.

Today, thanks to the digital computer and the information technologies it has spawned, ordinary people can know and understand just about everything. If they care to take the time and trouble to stop worrying about their day to day existence, and focus on the future, people can now determine what sort of life their children will have. As far as we know, the opportunity for ordinary citizens to shape their own world according to their aspirations, values and beliefs, has never existed before. This new social phenomenon, and the 2nd Renaissance that is making it possible, is BIG news. But you will not read or hear of it in the mainstream media of our present civilization. This document is your personal kaleidoscope for viewing a mosaic of related facts and perspectives that those in control of today's world would rather you were not aware of. Enjoy it, then act on the insights it provides.

The 'Better' Things Are, The Emptier People Feel [4]
According to all the accepted measures of economic wellbeing, the citizens of developed countries are now better off than ever before. Paradoxically, figures for one of the wealthiest nations on Earth, the United States, show that while real income levels have risen by some 400 percent, since the end of World War II, the percentage of Americans who consider themselves to be "very happy" has not risen to the same degree. Over a period of three decades, from the late fifties to the late eighties, the number of "very happy" Americans actually fell by 5%. As the US entered the 1990s, only 30 percent of its citizens were "very happy". Similarly, only 30 percent were "well satisfied with their financial situation". From the survey statistics, more than two thirds of the citizens of the US do not feel "very happy" with their lot in the civilization that industrial capitalism built them. Social commentators are now describing epidemics of boredom, alienation and despair in the Western world as diseases of affluence.

Youth Suicides Reflect Alienation and Despair [5]
The young people in affluent, industrial-capitalist countries are taking their own lives. The statistics on youth suicide, like those on unemployment, are rubbery. Politicians elected on a platform of reducing the problem tend to obscure harsh realities by changing the way figures are collected, and the rules by which certain forms of death are included or excluded. But nothing can hide the ugly truth that, in the developed world, young people, particularly young men, are killing themselves in droves. This is so across all socio-economic levels of those societies. The raw figures are indicative of the magnitude of the problem. In the United Kingdom, 19,000 young people attempt suicide each year and some 700 succeed. Again in the UK, suicide accounts for 20% of all deaths of young people aged 15 to 24 years, and is the second most common cause of deaths in this age group. In Australia, suicide rates in males aged 15 to 24 years increased fourfold in the latter half of the 20th century, and suicide now accounts for one in every four deaths in that age group. Throughout the 1990s, more young Australians died by suicide than by road accidents. Chillingly, an Australian survey of school students showed that 60% have thoughts of suicide.

No civilization or economic system, no matter how much wealth it creates, can be deemed a success when the majority of its youth are so despairing that they consider or attempt suicide.

Industrial-Capitalism Is A Widely Adopted Failure [6]
Today, capitalism is the dominant economic system on this planet. Socialism and communism have been and gone, and only industrial-capitalism retains any sway. The financier, George Soros, is critical of capitalism because "it has no soul". Nothing in the system takes care of the people who lose as a result of the operation of market forces. By some mysterious means an informed and rational market is supposed to lead to a rapid and efficient distribution of scarce resources through a reallocation of the traditional factors of production; land, labour, and capital. That such a simplistic theory can continue to form the basis of economic management, at a time when science is uncovering the startling complexities of biological systems and habitats, says a lot about the shallowness of public debate and policy in our society.

Although industrial-capitalism has been in operation for some two hundred years, 5 billion human inhabitants of this world still live on less than US$2 per day. This fact alone says that something is very wrong with the theory and operation of capitalism.

Capitalism Has Been Mistaken For Civilization [7]
Governments in the developed world pay undue attention to economic indicators, and try to avoid accountability in areas of human advancement and social development. Their spin-merchants trumpet economic growth and other indicators (whether in a raw or sanitised form) and claim success, no matter what is happening to the social fabric, the environment, biodiversity, or other relevant measures of the well-being and sustainability of our present civilization.

Regrettably, governments have come to equate the economics of capitalism, and "good numbers" in this area, with a job well done. This philosophy misrepresents the goals of capitalism and industrial production as being synonymous with the advancement of civilization. Nothing could be further from the truth.

True Civilization Involves Cooperation [8]
Daniel Quinn is one of the early thinkers and writers of the 2nd Renaissance. In his novels, such as Ishmael and The Story Of B, Quinn describes the way successful tribal societies evolved in the times before the practices of DanielQuinnagricultural farming and animal husbandry made it possible to accumulate the food surpluses that led to the emergence of towns and cities, and to a new need to buy food rather than find it on the plains and in the forests of the old world. Early tribal societies evolved a way of living in conditions of managed abundance. Natural selection ensured that the societal models that were successes survived, and that the failures did not.

Science now understands that 19th century models of nature, that emphasised the ruthless extermination of rivals, were mistaken. A modern understanding of ecosystems and symbiotic relationships leads to the conclusion that cooperative models predominate in both the plant and animal kingdoms. However, business and government thinking remains locked into the old combative models, in which human enterprises and institutions are continually at war with each other and the planet at large. These are dead-end mindsets that cannot lead us to a higher, more advanced level of human civilization. War is not found in nature, only coexistence models succeed there.

Tribal Models Worked For Thousands Of Years [9]
The Australian aborigines were, prior to European settlement, people who lived in conditions of managed abundance. For sixty thousand years, far longer than the fleeting histories of socialism, communism and capitalism, aboriginal tribes existed in harmony with the land. No major wars were fought. Although there were skirmishes between tribes these were seldom serious or prolonged. The aboriginal people did not experience famine because they did not exceed the population levels that could sustain a hunter-gatherer existence. They had no government except their local tribal councils, and they paid no taxes. In order to survive, the aboriginal people of Australia had only to work the equivalent of three days per week, the rest of their time was for their leisure and storytelling. The concept of suicide was unknown to these original inhabitants of the Australian continent. They also enjoyed one advantage over modern Australians; tribal people had lifelong support and cradle to grave security within their tribe. In a technological sense tribal Australians were backward, but in terms of community and social support structures they were an advanced culture.

Takers and Leavers [10]
The settlers from Europe despised the "primitive" aborigines because they had not "conquered" the land, they were not warlike and they had not "developed" the resources of the land they inhabited. In the terminology of Daniel Quinn, the settlers had a Taker mentality while the tribal people were Leavers. The idea of exploiting the land and of exerting the power of life and death over all other species, is the notion of Takers. Leavers, on the other hand, preserve a balance in the way they draw sustenance from the land and kill only what they need to survive.

After only two hundred years of farming, mining, and otherwise developing Australia along taker lines, the record is damning. Settlers from Europe who were accustomed to four seasons in a year cleared and cropped land that might often go for seven years in a continuous state of summer. Now, 40% of all the original forests on the Australian continent are gone, 75% of rainforests are lost and can never be regenerated, and much of the fertile topsoil has been eroded and carried away on the prevailing winds - across the Tasman sea to New Zealand. Because the water table rose due to the loss of trees and vegetation, soil salinity is now a massive problem, and large areas of Australia can no longer be cultivated. It only took 200 years for takers to destroy land that had been preserved by leavers for 60,000 years.

Tribalism Remains A Viable Way Of Life [11]
Daniel Quinn argues that tribal models have not vanished completely. He instances the culture and operation of the circus as an example of the persistence of tribalism during the industrial age. People who join a circus do so because they want to belong to the close-knit culture that such organisations have. Factors such as nationality, race, gender, language, religion, sexual orientation or politics, don't determine who can or can't join and belong. To be an accepted member of a working circus a person only has to contribute to its success in every area where their inputs are needed. The stars of the high trapeze help erect the big-top, distribute the hand bills, sell the tickets, and then they fly. After the show they help pull the tent down and move everything to the next town.

In return for sharing goals and contributing fully, members of the circus receive the unconditional support of the group. The circus tribe looks after, and stands by, its own people. Many start-up businesses adopt a tribal ethos, but they lose this characteristic as they grow. Microsoft was quite tribal at the beginning, but by the time it hired a finance manager and a human resources manager it became hierarchical and bureaucratic, and the magic of a tribe was lost. Tribal cultures are still with us, but they are not in the mainstream of big business, big government and big crime. Tribalism persists in pockets of our culture but it is not widespread.

The New Tribal Phenomenon [12]
There are a growing number of advocates of new-tribalism, but its nature is widely misunderstood. While few people seriously believe that new tribalism involves going back to living in caves, many think that it is associated with restraint, low economic growth and reduced living standards. Quinn himself, in his book Beyond Civilization, gives the impression that sustainable growth implies that not everyone can aspire to the lifestyles of the top Taker societies of the US and Europe. However, Quinn also points out that people who leave our Taker civilization behind, do so in the expectation of gaining something more valuable than the way of life they give up. As he puts it, "People never run off to join the circus to give up something. They run off to the circus to get something."

Besides the unconditional support that membership of a tribe implies, Quinn suggests that people who are prepared to live in a sustainable way, as Leavers, can expect to gain "security, hope, light-heartedness, and freedom from anxiety, fear and guilt." This is quite a shopping list. Given the mess that the outgoing civilization is in, such gains will be attractive to many people who are currently enduring feelings of hopelessness regarding their retirement years and the future of their children.

Still, many in the New Tribalism movement, including Daniel Quinn, appear to overlook the impacts of the scientific discoveries and enlightenment associated with a second renaissance. Far from there being unavoidable choices between new tribal lifestyles, continued affluence and rising living standards, it is becoming practical to have all these outcomes at once.

The emergence of a new tribal society is being held back by the continued acceptance of old paradigms and "truths" that are no longer valid. One of these no-longer-truths is that resources and the factors of economic production are, and always will be, scarce. Other no-longer-truths are that nationalism remains desirable and appropriate in a globalised world, and that national governments desire to progress, and can implement democratic processes that will take us forward, to the sunlit uplands of a new age.

The Most Important Events and Outcomes of the First Renaissance [13]
Because it took place over many generations, and involved so many disparate events, the history of the Renaissance in Europe is often presented in a rambling, fragmented manner. The single most important event, and the single most important outcome, both tend to be obscured by the clutter of information about the flowering of the arts, the many wars, the reformation movement, and so on. The single most important event was Johannes Gutenberg's introduction of the moveable type printing press in c 1455. This made possible the spread of information, knowledge and new ideas on a hitherto unprecedented scale. The escalation in the total amount of information then available to civilization led directly to the single most important outcome of the Renaissance, that of organised governments and democratic nation states.

Douglas Robertson is an author and scientist who has studied the relationship between information and civilization. To Robertson, information is civilization. He categorises the levels of human civilization according to the amount of information available. Level 1 arose with language, level 2 with writing, and level 3 was ushered in by mass publication. In his book, The New Renaissance - Computers and the Next Level of Civilization, Robertson notes that being limited to communicating information by verbal languages made anything more than a localised feudal realm impractical. Once information could be stored and transmitted in written form it was practical to expand the areas of rule, autocratic governments and widespread empires proliferated.

During the Renaissance, mass publication increased the amount and availability of information immensely. It became practical to organise and administer democratic forms of government. This was exactly what the people of Europe, who had suffered under the secular and spiritual domination of the Roman Church throughout the Dark Ages, wanted. Not every nation state became democratic, but the amount of information to enable this to happen was assured.

In A Level 4 Civilization Everyone Can Know Everything [14]
Douglas Robertson writes that while a billion fold increase in the generation of information will become a reality in a Level 4 Civilization, this will not be its defining characteristic. He says that, "The ability to easily find and utilise the entire information stock will be the hallmark of a Level 4 Civilization."

Electronic computing began with the mainframe paradigm, this was consistent with the dominant industrial technologies and the way governments and businesses were organised at the time. Information was centralised, control was centralised and access to the system depended on hierarchical levels of authority. In contrast, modern computing is increasingly decentralised.

In a system such as Freenet, data is dispersed across many nodes rather than being concentrated on particular server units. The information is not anywhere, it is everywhere. This system approaches that of a computing model for the first stage of a Level 4 Civilization. Provided that they know the appropriate key to use, it is possible for anyone to retrieve a file from Freenet. The information that is retrieved in this way is free of control and censorship.

Porn and Free Speech Cannot Be Separated [15]
Were it not for its non-searchable design, Freenet would conform to Douglas Robertson's defining characteristic for information technology in a Level 4 Civilization, the entire information stock could be utilised, and this could be done freely, without permission or denial being involved.

Such a notion will have official control freaks and self-appointed morals censors in a frenzy. However, no Freenet author should apologise for the fact that a full spectrum of data, from "very good" to "very bad" is accessible on Freenet. This is the way information delivery will increasingly work, in an everything-available everything-free manner. Rather than show contrition about what some people are inserting to Freenet, it is far better to repeatedly drive home the following points.

The Most Unbelievable Change of the 2nd Renaissance [16]
Of all the changes that form part of the great transformation presently engulfing our world, the reality of abundance is the most difficult for most people to come to terms with. The notion that a Level 4 civilization can possibly produce more than enough physical resources and energy to feed, clothe and shelter all of humanity, at standards higher than those presently enjoyed by the top 10% of citizens of the outgoing civilization, is contrary to all the documented principles and knowledge in the vast number of economic texts and analyses that exist today.

However, all the old texts are now outdated. The force that has rendered conventional economic doctrines obsolete is information. The tool that has made it possible to access and utilise not only information but imagination and vision is the digital computer. The intellectual disciplines that have been greatly leveraged by the explosion of information and knowledge, and the availability of digital computers, are the sciences. The sciences are revising and extending knowledge exponentially, and new technologies spawned by scientific discoveries are leading, inevitably, to abundance in every aspect of human existence. As early as the 1960s the late G. Harry Stine recognised where we are headed. He said it simply.

"We must learn how to be rich and handle abundance, because we have never had to do it before."

Food Production Capacity Already Exceeds Global Needs [17]
Before we consider why abundance alarms powerful interests we need to establish that abundance exists. We can get to the crux of the reality of abundance without needing to instance the way new sources of energy can already eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels, or the way nanotechnology will soon offer the prospect of robotically manufactured goods that are constructed from molecules - from the inside out - rather than crudely fashioned by human machinists from larger blocks of material. We can look at the abundance of food.

To many people in the developing world this is a contradiction in terms, food and abundance do not go together in their countries. But, when all countries are considered together, there is already sufficient productive capacity to feed every human being on Earth. Although food is not scarce in an overall sense, more than 100,000 children die each month from malnutrition and related diseases. Excess food is routinely dumped and agricultural production is restricted by quotas designed to maintain high prices.

Greed and fear are the historical causes of the obscene failure of Western nation states to end the practices that curtail the production and distribution of food, and other essential resources, to the people of the world.

Abundance Scares Profiteers and Politicians [18]
Vested interests and government ideologues alike are wedded to the notion of economic scarcity and are intent on keeping it alive. It is easy to understand why those who control the supply of food want to maintain a base level of scarcity. If food were too plentiful it would not be possible to charge high prices. But why would governments fear abundance? Look no further than the reasons for having governments at all. Besides providing basic services, which they are increasingly privatising or contracting out, governments redistribute wealth and resources. They have social policies and programs to fix poverty, fix crime, fix health, fix schooling, fix housing, fix anything and everything - just trust them one more time. Once resources become abundant, however, most people will choose to fix things for themselves.

Representative democracy becomes unnecessary in conditions of abundance. That's the problem for profiteers and politicians facing the 2nd Renaissance. They must impede insights and developments that lead to abundance, and promote the old notions of economic scarcity.

While vested interests and governments have, so far, succeeded in constraining the production and distribution of food, the challenge of doing the same for energy, and for the almost costless consumer goods that will result from nanofacture, will be more difficult. In due course the challenge of suppressing knowledge and abundance will prove impossible.

New Science - New Civilization [19]
During the Dark Ages, in Europe, the scientific theories used to describe the observed world left a lot to be desired. The Roman Church was the final arbiter on all scientific explanations of nature, matter, life and the heavens. At the time, it was held that the Earth was the centre of a limited universe, the Sun was said to travel across the heavens, and the number of stars in the firmament was seen as fixed and unchanging. Until Galileo Galilei, science followed the teachings of Aristotle in physics, and it was considered that heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones.

The first Renaissance produced a wave of new thinking and theories and led to the science that is now taught as "modern". By the start of the 20th century it was thought, by some scientists, that all that could be explained in the physical sciences had been discovered. But, during the 1900s, and particularly following the introduction of powerful and widely available computers, the "modern" theories and explanations of science began to be challenged and radically revised.

Much of this new science involves explanations and theories that are counterintuitive. Quite early in the 20th century Niels Bohr remarked that anyone who isn't shocked by quantum mechanics has not understood it. The trend of uncovering previously undreamed of levels of complexity in nature that are governed by elegantly simple constructs continues at an ever-increasing rate. New scientific theories and new insights are spawning previously unimaginable new technologies, that will inevitably lead to a global abundance of physical resources and material goods.

The new technologies will also raise the level of information available to the incoming civilization to about 1025 bits. This is the level, calculated by Douglas Robertson, at which a Level 4 Civilization will operate. As noted above, it is not only the explosion of information that is so empowering, but the expectation that new technologies will enable the entire stock of knowledge to be accessed.

A Magic Age [20]
Although information is the foundation for a higher level civilization, we are not entering an "information age". Rolf Jensen, director of the Institute of Future Studies in Copenhagen, contends that the information age is already past its high noon point, and that sunset will come sooner than many people imagine. He foresees that, as affluence spreads with increasing abundance, the stories behind products will become more important than the products or services themselves.

It is important to recognise that the information age that Jensen is talking about is the conventional Information Technology industry and its impacts on industrial capitalism. Douglas Robertson is writing of information at a more fundamental level, and his predictions underpin the ability of a Level 4 Civilization to emerge and function in the early 21st century.

The incoming civilization will run on a combination of information and imagination, but the present IT industry will vanish, or, more correctly, it will converge or blend with nanotechnology, biotechnology and other technologies that have yet to emerge. This conclusion is not so surprising when you consider that futurists and technology forecasters believe that 90% of the new technologies that will power us forward in this century have not yet been invented. All the magic is still ahead of us. In this context the enduring quote from the scientist, and science fiction author, Arthur C. Clarke, is very relevant.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Science Drives Technology - Technology Drives Freedom [21]
Science is driving radical discoveries, discoveries are driving technology, and technology is raising the level of information to a point where a Level 4 Civilization becomes practical. Technology is also making information and knowledge widely available, and this has significant implications for human society. Just as "civilization is information", it is the case that "knowledge is power".

The first Renaissance freed knowledge from guarded libraries and made it available via the medium of printed books. However, because books are physical objects, they and the ideas they contain can be controlled. Big Brother in all his guises, totalitarian, democratic, communist, imperial, etc, could and still does ban, burn, and otherwise restrict, the spread of "dangerous" knowledge and ideas. This control is exercised in all forms of published and broadcast media, and it is also exercised by shaping curricula and content in state education systems.

Power can remain centralised while knowledge can be restricted, shaped and censored. The technology of the first Renaissance did not free the spread of information and knowledge to the point where it could not be governed and controlled in this manner. The technology of the 2nd Renaissance, even at this early stage, does free information and make knowledge ungovernable. Freenet is a clear example of this ungovernability of information and ideas, hence it is a likely target for Big Brothers everywhere. Unhappily for the tireless censor-folk, new science and 21st century technologies are making it impossible for the censoring and shaping of information and knowledge to succeed for much longer.

Science Is Based On Ideas [22]
The late Carl Sagan, who spent a great deal of his time presenting and popularising science, was fond of observing that, "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology". Sagan was speaking in, and about, the 20th century, but his comment is even more relevant to the 2nd Renaissance.

People are conditioned to the specialisation and compartmentalisation that became the hallmark of the industrial revolution and industrial age institutions. Consequently, they adopt a passive role in consuming scientific discoveries and thinking, most people accept what they are fed by institutionalised science and mainstream media channels. The general population waits to be told what has been discovered or developed. Worse still, they wait to be told what it might mean to their lives.

When it comes to common sense and intelligence, most folk believe that they have as much as the next person, and they are happy to discuss and debate political and social issues with anyone. But, if it is perceived that an area of knowledge is technical, be it marketing, law or science, people will often defer to "experts" and be reluctant to discuss and explore the latest knowledge in that field. Yet, despite its undoubted complexity, science is based on theories that are simply ideas.

Everybody has about the same chance of understanding ideas. A non-scientist might not be sufficiently skilled or knowledgeable to design and carry out experiments to test a particular theory, but they can grasp the broad concepts and ideas that form the basis of that theory. Just as the first Renaissance was a time of wide and increasingly liberal discussion, the 2nd Renaissance depends on similar attitudes. This is particularly so in the West, because people there must initiate the process of transforming civilization, and raising living standards everywhere.

The Deep Ideas of Science Are Changing [23]
Because we are living in a time of accelerating discoveries in science, it is not surprising that a lot of the old ideas and theories are facing major revisions, and in many cases abandonment. A theory is only a way of imagining what causes something to be the way it seems to be. Once the observed facts no longer support the original hypothesis, a new theory is required.

At one time, the idea that the earth was flat seemed valid. When people observed the land around them it did indeed appear to be flat. Anyone who put forward the idea that the earth was round was likely to be ridiculed. Science advances by reason of imaginative postulations and subsequent efforts to verify or disprove these ideas.

However, institutionalised science is often an impediment to the acceptance of new theories. Once a lot of effort has been invested in a theory, and a great many reputations have been built on it, there can be determined resistance to a new idea that overturns the old.

The Big Bang is an example. Although it is a comparatively recent hypothesis, the notion that the universe sprang from a single point of immensely dense matter, is widely presented as fact, when it is simply a theory. When somebody develops a more verifiable explanation of the nature of the universe, as has now happened, there is a reluctance on the part of institutionalised science to accept, or even consider, the new findings.

The late Sir Fred Hoyle, who first coined the term "Big Bang" never accepted the theory as an explanation of the origin of the universe. As it turns out, Hoyle was right. He, along with those earlier thinkers who rejected the notion of a flat earth, has been vindicated by an ever-accelerating advancement and freeing of knowledge.

Revision Is Everywhere [24]
Not just the core ideas of physics and cosmology are being questioned, every branch of science is undergoing a process of re-examination. These processes are fuelled by the spread of information that results from the digital revolution. The revision and expansion of knowledge is leveraged by the power of modern computers to help researchers model theories and answer imaginative questions.

Revision and expansion of knowledge is also occurring in many other fields besides science. History, particularly the nature of ancient civilizations and their levels of knowledge and technology, is another area in which old notions are being questioned and overturned. Lisa Jardine, of the University of London, is the author of Worldly Goods - A New History of the Renaissance. In her detailed examination of the period, Professor Jardine not only discusses the shaping of a new cultural identity in Europe, which is the focus of most texts on the Renaissance, but also details the way that new commodities and printed books created new levels of wealth, literacy and commerce. Hers is an entirely new interpretation of the Renaissance and what it meant to civilization.

A lot of textbooks and educational courses will need to be changed or discarded during this decade. By 2010, humanity's understanding of who we are, where we've been and where we're going, will be markedly different to our present knowledge. By then we will be ready to revive pre-industrial social structures such as tribalism. In the West, such revivals will occur in a completely new context, where the lifelong security of tribal membership is complemented by great individual freedom and capacity to do good in the world.

The first Renaissance saw a revival of patronage in the arts, after the Dark Ages in Europe. There was also a marked increase in prosperity and living standards. It was new prosperity, and a greater willingness to reform and improve society as a whole, that led to a new generosity and liberalism in the later stages of the Renaissance.

The growing abundance that results from the 2nd Renaissance will, similarly, foster a new ethos that directs surpluses to needy people, rather than destroying output that cannot be sold. This will represent a major revision of the capitalist mentality of letting market forces allocate goods and services.

Zero Pricing and REALLY Free Markets [25]
Taker thinking is so pervasive in our present civilization that hardly anyone is conscious of it. This causes difficulty in accepting the notion that anything that is manufactured could be distributed freely or that anyone would be prepared to provide their services at no cost.

However, almost anything that is truly abundant is already free, it is only the traditional scarcity of economic resources, and the prevalence of payment for service, that causes prices and markets to operate. Air is free, a walk along a beach is free, sunsets are free, moonlight is free, if you can use a line or net fish are free. All these things are free because they are abundant.

Because the store of human interest and kindness is huge, a significant proportion of the work performed in our present society is voluntary and unpaid. One of the better characteristics of the United States is the level of philanthrophy that exists there. Having struggled to build their fortunes in highly competitive markets, many successful American entrepreneurs then give much of their wealth away. They endow universities and research projects that would otherwise, in a market driven economy, not attract such funding.

In many ways the actions of an entrepreneurial class in providing funds for science and research are a far more efficient mechanism than a reliance on government agencies to fulfil this role. When entrepreneurs give their money and volunteers give their time to not-for-profit undertakings we see a glimpse of what can happen in a situation of abundant resources and manufactured goods. Individuals, not governments, donate their personal time and interest to helping others, or the environment, or the animals, in whatever way they choose.

When scarcity is not a constraint, human interest and kindness drive the distribution of products and services.

Limits To Growth Arguments [26]
Both Douglas Robertson and Daniel Quinn struggle with the concept of abundance and population growth. They seem sure that, if human populations explode as a result of abundance and the prolongation of lifespans, there will be a point at which a limit will be reached. The phenomenon is common, it is observable in everything from insect plagues to algal blooms. Eventually a point is reached at which the growing population exceeds the capacity of the environment to sustain it, and the exponential growth curve comes, literally, to a dead stop.

Robertson puts the argument thus. "The existence of a finite limiting resource places a fundamental mathematical limit on growth." It is human to expect and anticipate limits and boundaries of some sort. We have great difficulty visualising more than three dimensions, and also in imagining infinity. We always assume that there are limits, but in reality they might not be there.

Science is on the threshold of gaining mastery over matter, of being capable of transforming any element or molecule into any other. Once this mastery is achieved, the question will be one of whether there are finite limits to the number of atoms and the amount of energy required to convert them.

In a practical sense, various scientists and technologists answer the question of whether there will be limits to the levels of human population that are sustainable, with another question: - "What makes you think we are going to stay on Earth?"

Comprehending Zero and Infinity [27]
The notions of zero and infinity, are difficult concepts to visualise, even for gifted mathematicians. It is hard to comprehend nothingness and endlessness.

Georg Cantor (1845-1918), by his origination of modern set theory and his studies of the nature of infinity, left science a valuable legacy. Cantor was regularly admitted to a psychiatric clinic within the University of Halle, in Germany, where he lectured and worked as a Professor of Mathematics. On each occasion that he became ill he had been thinking about infinity and the continuum hypothesis. Such intense thought, at the boundaries of his comprehension, caused Cantor to suffer repeated mental breakdowns. Infinity drove him mad.

Yet, the question of whether there is an end to the universe, or whether it extends infinitely, without limits, is a vital one. Mathematicians have understood, from very early times, that numbers extend infinitely, but what about physical matter?

Countable Matter and Numbers [28]
Despite a widespread belief that numbers are entirely a human invention, it turns out that the natural numbers, and their reciprocals, are inherent in matter and space. This is not a new idea, the knowledge is contained in early religious texts and reflected in the words of Leopold Kronecker, "God made the integers and all the rest is the work of man."

Finally, in the closing stages of the 20th century, a German chemist and independent researcher of the underlying order in nature and the universe, succeeded in proving the threefold characteristic of infinity. The results of forty years of inquiry and contemplation of what he came to term the Prime Number Cross, enabled Dr Peter Plichta to show that infinity is a plan, or framework, built from "space, time and the set of all successive numbers 0, 1, 2, 3 ...., which never ends." Dr Peter Plichta

In an example of the inherently countable nature of matter, Plichta uses an illustration from his schooldays. If one square tile is laid down there is one object, in order to create a larger square three more tiles must be used, a still larger square requires an additional five tiles, and an even larger one needs seven more tiles. The point of the illustration is twofold, firstly it demonstrates that number is a property of grouped objects. You can use whatever labels you like, one, two, or goo, zoo, to label the steps of quantity, but the steps exist physically. The labels are human inventions but the steps of quantity are not. Secondly, arranging tiles in this way demonstrates Newton's reciprocal square law. This is done, as Plichta says, in a manner that makes the most important law of physics "comprehensible to ten-year olds." The explanation goes, 1=12, 1+3=4=22, 1+3+5=9=32, 1+3+5+7=16=42, and so on, to infinity.

God's Secret Formula [29]
Least the reader of this freesite think that it is dedicated to championing religion over scientific rationalism, this is the time to point out that Dr Plichta, in his book God's Secret Formula - Deciphering The Riddle Of The Universe And The Prime Number Code, provides a new and profound insight that forces the modification of both creationist and evolutionist positions. The creationists are probably wrong in asserting a literal interpretation of the biblical account of the beginning of our world, but they are right about the existence of God. The evolutionists are certainly wrong in claiming that chance and coincidence govern the universe, but they are probably right about the existence of evolutionary processes.

Professor Rupert Lay is the head of the Jesuit Order in Germany and he reviewed both of Peter Plichta's books. God's Secret Formula is the popular science version of Plichta's findings, and The Prime Number Cross is a scientific volume that is only available in the German language. Professor Lay has doctorates in physics, theology and philosophy, and has also studied psychology and economics to degree level. His comments on the two books included the following statement.

"The content is mathematically flawless. For the first time in the history of humanity, the scientific studies of Dr Plichta provide a foundation for our physical world view. Everything that preceded Plichta - from Newton to Einstein - was only theory."

But, Professor Lay's comments notwithstanding, readers should not rush out to buy God's Secret Formula in the expectation that it will fully enlighten them in a single reading. Reviews of the book on the Internet are mixed. It seems that many people find the story of the forty years of research and discovery that is mingled with the actual findings about the prime numbers, far too rambling and somewhat conceited. The other way to look at Plichta's account is to recognise that he is providing the full story to ensure that the reader comes to realise how hard it was to achieve the understanding that he eventually reached.

As the story is written, nobody can be under the misapprehension that it was an easy path to discovery, or that Plichta could have whipped up the idea one afternoon in the local beer garden. This was difficult groundbreaking thought, many famous scientists and mathematicians had found the clues before Plichta did, but they had failed to recognise their real meaning.

As for conceit, it is clear from his account of his path to the full discovery of the nature of the Prime Number Cross, that Plichta believes that he has certain gifts, and that he was destined to discover what he has discovered. He does not claim to be a genius, just someone with a deep inquisitiveness that was combined with an ability to grasp difficult concepts. Given Dr Plichta's eventual accomplishments, this is difficult to deny. When the history of the 21st century is written Peter Plichta will rank as one of the great scientific minds of the 2nd Renaissance. But for the moment, he is being ignored.

Institutionalised Science Always Drags Its Feet [30]
Imagine that you are an eminent scientist and that your field in the Flat Earth Law. You have, in good faith and with genuine belief, developed and extended the theory of a flat earth. You have conducted many experiments and verified, at the maximum distances that a theodolite can be used, that the observed data fit the hypothesis of flatness. You have gained academic tenure at a prestigious university and risen to become a professor, on the basis of your research and publications regarding the Flat Earth Law. You enjoy generous funding for your work and you travel widely to lecture on it.

Then someone publishes the facts on the spherical nature of the earth, and consigns the Flat Earth Law to the scrap heap of scientific ideas. Will you applaud the new findings? If not, will you challenge them? How indeed can you deny the new evidence when it is so verifiable? No, you had better just ignore it, and go on for as long as you can, propounding and teaching the false Flat Earth Law.

When Albert Einstein emigrated to the US in 1933 he found that hardly anybody was interested in his theories of relativity. It was only after the use of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in 1945, that Einstein's work gained popular attention there. In pre-war Germany his theories were totally censored.

The Prime Number Cross Revises Many Fields of Knowledge [31]
Plichta writes that, "The solution to the quest for the origins of the material world is characterised by simplicity, clarity and an irresistible elegance." It sounds improbable at first encounter, but Plichta's work shows that our physical world is the result of the distribution of prime numbers. To many people, this is far too mystical a finding.

Plichta is a talented chemist, with a number of key discoveries and patents to his credit, and he notes that in chemistry there is a similar reluctance to be associated with anything metaphysical or other-worldly. He observes that, "Nothing is ever heard of the history of chemistry at our universities. On the contrary, chemists are collectively ashamed of their history which is peopled by magicians, charlatans and mystics."

Although Plichta does not draw direct comparisons between his findings and the knowledge of the ancients, parallels are likely to exist. Already, there is a link being made to a mathematical code of the Quran, and it would seem that the mathematics of the ancient Egyptians, the Sumerians, and possibly other civilizations, might be examined for connections. If connections are found, much of our knowledge of ancient history will need to be revised.

Needless to say, vast areas of the exact sciences must now be rewritten. While the empirical findings in fields such as quantum mechanics and cosmology will stand, the theoretical explanations will be swept away. All the texts and curricula will contain erroneous theories that must now be corrected.

There are enormous implications for education systems. Developed countries will have a greater problem than less developed areas, because their educational institutions are more deeply mired in the old, and now superseded, knowledge. Similarly, the research institutions of the West have more academics with heavy intellectual investments in theories that are destroyed by Plichta's findings. What were previously the most advanced scientific centres will take longer to reform themselves than those that have made less progress down what have now been shown to be false theoretical paths.

Public Education Is In Crisis [32]
Even in the closing stages of our Level 3 Civilization, the old factors of production are giving way to new factors. Wealth and living standards used to depend on the efficient use of land, labour, and capital. Knowledge, imagination, and talent are now more significant to economic success. Once we move to a Level 4 Civilization these factors will be even more vital. Sadly, most governments in the West have made a colossal mess of public education systems.

A frank critique of the US system, albeit from the mid 70s, is recorded in Thinking For A Living, by Ray Marshall and Marc Tucker. The situation described in this book still applies in Australia and other developed countries that geared their schools and technical colleges to deliver a factory fodder education, and then neglected to change and reform them as the soft, knowledge centred, sectors of their economies became more important than the old industries. Thus, we see Ministers of Education trumpeting their funding of industrial skills based learning and apprenticeship schemes, at the same time that informed scientists and technologists are contemplating nanofacture and the elimination of all procedural human work from factories.

The public education systems were and are wrongly targeted. They taught the wrong knowledge, even before the impacts of new science. Now, Plichta's discoveries necessitate extensive revisions of texts and curricula, and major retraining of teachers and academics. There is no likelihood of the necessary reforms of public education being completed in time to meet the education needs of the children now being born, let alone those who are already in the various systems.

Access to new education that is based on the new knowledge required to work and contribute in the 21st century is set to become the major issue for parents everywhere. Those who can afford to will be forced to seek solutions outside the various state education systems.

There will be a huge opportunity for emerging city states to provide educational facilities that are suited to the magic age, and thus attract well-off families to live and contribute within their precincts. There are already growing home-schooling movements in many Western nations, and this trend is sure to continue. Although national and state governments are likely to curtail or totally ban education of this sort - because it removes young minds from the sphere of government influence - the eventual outcome of the struggle between state education systems and home-schooling collectives is in no doubt. The old schooling institutions will soon become irrelevant and unpatronised.

Knowledge Weeds and Strange New Seeds [33]
Throughout the entire lifetimes of everyone who is presently alive on this planet, education systems have been planting knowledge in our societies. It is now being discovered that in many cases the plantings were based on incorrect theories and assumptions. Instead of productive fields of soundly based understanding, the knowledge gardens of the present-day are overrun with weeds.

One factor that is delaying the eradication of the old knowledge weeds is the counterintuitive nature of the new science that is driving us forward, to a higher level of civilization. Much of the new knowledge is decidedly strange. Plichta's work illustrates this difficulty quite clearly. Most people can cope well enough with the broad findings that he draws from the Prime Number Cross. Such as, "...Einstein's equation not only connects the three most important physical dimensions which we perceive with our senses (matter, energy and quantity) but also the reverse of these dimensions (space, time and numerical sequence)." There are equations and logic that non-mathematicians can follow, to show these relationships, as well as mathematical proofs for scientists and mathematicians who require them.

However, the implications of the broad findings are more difficult for people to accept, despite the fact that they are so soundly based. For example, Plichta notes that while physicists presently accept that matter is composed of bundles of energy, his reasoning was very different.

He firstly concluded that magnetic energy could not remain static. Electro magnetic energy has no option but to expand at the speed of light. He also reasoned that, "If matter did not exist, not one single atom, there would also be no space. But if only the two of them can exist at the same time, then one would have to be the other, only reversed. When there is no movement, there is also no time. Energy can therefore be nothing else than the reverse of time. The only way to connect space and time is to bring them down to their reciprocal dimensions, matter and energy. In order that no nonsense emerges in this procedure, there must be a plan, and this must be the only one that exists - the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... as ordered by the Prime Number Cross."

These explanations are not presently taught in our schools and universities. Before they are taught, people will have to grapple with the new insights and come to terms with their strangeness.

Puzzling Facts [34]
Albert Einstein once said that, "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother." His theories of relativity are undoubtedly difficult for ordinary people to grasp. How can one readily convince one's grandmother that, as the speed of any spacecraft increases, its length reduces and time slows down relative to the time of an observer on the Earth? Despite the fact that both these predictions have been experimentally verified, it is still hard to explain such notions to Granny.

So it is with some of Plichta's findings, the strangeness of the ideas prevents then being easily comprehended. For example, Plichta discovered what he terms a "3-to-the-power-of-4-law" of which the product is the natural number 81, as in 3x3x3x3=34=81. He also found that, "The material that occurs in space and was certainly not generated magically there only fits there if it is constructed according to those regular laws in which the space is arranged, just as a key only fits into a special lock."

Plichta shows that not only are the 81 naturally occurring elements reciprocally linked to each other via their atomic numbers, but that the reciprocal of 81 gives rise to the endless sequence of natural numbers that describe countable matter, 1/81=0.0123456789(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)....to infinity.

The initial problem for Granny, and many of the rest of us, is that when the result of dividing 1 by 81 is calculated, the answer is 1/81=0.01234567901234567901... The numbers 012345679 recur endlessly and the number 8 is always missing. How does one reconcile the fact that the result of 1/81 turns out to be different from that which Plichta can show to be true? Non-mathematicians, like one's granny, will be unlikely to find much enlightenment in the proof of the correctness of the presentation. Although the Cauchy-product formulation that Plichta uses in the proof clearly shows how the sequence 0123456789(10)(11)(12)(13)... arises, Granny will still tend to believe the long-division rules that she was taught at school, and which any electronic calculator or computer can confirm.

Nature's Numbers And Human Conventions [35]
The explanation of the above dilemma is that Granny is applying human conventions that dictate how decimal arithmetic is performed. No numbers greater than 9 exist in the decimal system, so there are rules about how to handle calculations with larger values. As Plichta describes the situation, "The number (10) in the familiar decimal form increases the 9 to 10, and this in turn increases the prior 8 by 1 to 9. In the recurring fraction 0.012345679.. the number 8 is missing. ...The missing 8 is an illusion which had until then blocked my way to the novel notion that the reciprocal value of the order of all numbers 00123456789.. is the number 81."

Whether by accident or design the human originators of the conventions of the decimal system created a situation that effectively masked an important clue to the natural laws governing the formation and structure of matter in space.

Dr Plichta's work shows that it is not a coincidence that there are precisely 81 naturally occurring elements, notwithstanding the fact that students in our schools and universities are taught that there are 83 natural, non-radioactive, elements. Because of the structure of the Prime Number Cross there can be 81, and only 81, stable elements. Two of the 83 elements that are termed "natural" are in fact unstable and quickly break down into other elements. The two unstable elements are Technetium with an atomic number of 43, and Promethium with an atomic number of 61.

As Plichta observes, the unstable nature of elements 43 and 61 is glossed over by institutionalised science, and in the glossing over one of the keys to understanding matter and the universe has been obscured from most of humanity. There were by convention 83 natural elements, and while this teaching persisted the door to ultimate knowledge remained closed.

Rediscovery of Ancient Knowledge [36]
It is likely that Dr Plichta is not the first person to uncover and understand the Prime Number Cross, although his efforts are by no means diminished by this possibility. The priests of ancient Egypt held the number 8 to be sacred, and indeed its role in obscuring the truth about the number 81 and the infinite sequence of all numbers has been very significant. Plichta himself notes the striking similarity between the cross of the order of Christian knights, that persists to this day as the emblem of the St John Ambulance brigade, and the structure of the Prime Number Cross that he discovered through his study of chemistry and mathematics.

Small Prime Number Cross The reader must turn to Plichta's book in order to understand the structure of the Prime Number Cross but, in essence, the structure consists of 24 rays and constitutes a model of the atom and the basis for all matter in the universe. Plichta describes it thus, "Everything we know about the atom was discovered by observation and meticulous experiment. The Prime Number Cross corresponds to the atomic model and provides the theoretical background."

In his book, God's Secret Formula, Plichta also quotes a passage from the New Testament book of Revelation translated from original texts by Professor Walter Jens of the University of Tubingen. This passage provides a startlingly similar model to that of the Prime Number Cross, but in the context of describing God and the number of creatures that surround him. The power of 4 is there, as are the 24 rays which become chairs with elders, and the whole structure is said to give form to all things.

Plichta writes of this model as follows. St John's Cross"There was a time I used to make fun of the Apocalypse of St John and believed it to be a totally unreliable historical source. Today I am filled with deep humility, perhaps because I am now able to give a concrete description of the foundation of the world as seen by St John with my mathematical discoveries, and thus possibly open a new way to all of humanity which has now reached a dead end."

The above should not be construed as support for Christianity in advance of other religions. Plichta does not necessarily view God as the patron of one or other form of religious doctrine, but as a design that exists at a higher level than we can comprehend. There are traces of ancient knowledge and hints of long past civilizations and spirituality in many present-day religions.

Megalithic Puzzles [37]
Most texts and courses on human history depict a slow, step-by-step, progression from cave dwelling savages to the high technology lifestyle of the present day. In this model each generation has more knowledge and better technologies than those that preceded it. There is no place in such teaching for evidence suggesting that earlier civilizations possessed more advanced knowledge and technologies than those that followed. Yet current research is uncovering more and more examples of such evidence.

In their book, Uriel's Machine, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas describe recent dating of the pre-historic stone monuments of western Europe. Robert LomasChristopher Knight Revised carbon 14 dating techniques developed by Professor Hans Suess of the University of California have established that these structures predate the earliest Sumerian and Egyptian cities. Knight and Lomas quote Lord Colin Renfrew, who had been Disney Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge University, commenting on this finding. He stated that "There are no stone-built monuments anywhere approaching them in antiquity. Perhaps even more remarkable, some of these underground burial chambers, with their roofs of stone, are preserved entire, so that we can enter them and stand inside a stone chamber which looks today just as it did more than 5,000 years ago. Now the paradox is with us again: that such impressive monuments were created many centuries before the Pyramids by barbarians who lacked even the use of metal."

The puzzle of megalithic architecture was deepened by the now widely confirmed statistical analysis of some six hundred sites in Britain and western Europe, by Professor Alexander Thom. He concluded that a standard measure of length was in use across this whole area during megalithic times. Thom determined that the length of a megalithic yard was precisely 2 foot 8.64 inches (32.64 inches).

Knight and Lomas note that Professor Thom considered that a long-forgotten physical standard of length must have been in operation. In respect of the stone constructions that still exist across an area of 150,000 square miles they write that, "Thom felt that they were far too consistent to have been delineated by the use of measuring rods, created, copied and distributed across this huge area, as the very act of duplication would have introduced a greater level of error than is evident in the structures."

It was left to Knight and Lomas, with the assistance of another researcher named Alan Butler, to unravel the puzzle of how people 5,000 years ago maintained such a consistent standard of length in their constructions.

Three Hundred and Sixty Six Beats [38]
Knight and Lomas began their search for the solution to the puzzle of the megalithic yard by looking for a scientific basis to the standard. They write that, "The alternative to the 'ruler' theory is that there must have been a physical reality behind the unit which would enable it to be recreated by any individual who understood the underlying science. This is how the metre is currently defined - in terms of a number of wavelengths of a particular frequency of light."

Alan Butler had done research into the Minoans use of a 366o circle 4,000 years ago, and there seemed to be links to the mathematics of the megalithic people of Western Europe. Butler helped Knight and Lomas to find an astonishing solution to the puzzle of the megalithic yard, and probably the gaz unit once used in India. The latter standard derives from the Bronze Age Indus civilization and was standardised at 33 inches by the British government during the nineteenth century.

The method of establishing the standard for the megalithic yard is described thus by Knight and Lomas, "What the ancient engineers had done was to mark out a circle of substantial diameter using a cord and centre pin, and then divide the circumference into exactly 366 equal cords by trial and error. They had then erected two posts to mark out one 366th part of a circle, and swung an adjustable pendulum until it produced exactly 366 beats during the transit of a convenient bright star between the two posts. The length of the pendulum is now exactly one half of a megalithic yard, a basic unit of construction discovered by Professor Thom when he surveyed hundreds of ancient ruins in Scotland, England, Wales and western France."

The authors of Uriel's Machine summarise the scientific basis of the megalithic yard as follows. "The megalithic unit of measurement used at 'The Hill of Many Staines' and other sites up to 1,300 kilometres away, is a truly staggering concept of measurement. Professor Thom's megalithic yard was based on pure geometrics, derived from three absolutely fundamental values:

  1. The orbit of the Earth around the sun
  2. The rotation of the Earth on its own axis
  3. The mass of the Earth
The Earth's orbit gave the 366 split of the horizon, the rotation of the Earth gave the timespan, and the mass of the planet (gravity) dictated the length of the line to give 366 beats." All this seems to have been going on in Europe thousands of years before Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was censured and imprisoned for daring to assert that the Earth revolved around the sun.

Uriel's Machine [39]
Knight and Lomas did more than theorise about the basis of the megalithic yard, they reconstructed a megalithic observatory on the site of an ancient stone circle in West Yorkshire that is thought to have been originally built by the people of a place called Meg's Dyke. Using the circle and wooden staves to mark positions of the sun, the authors were able to verify the astronomical basis of the megalithic circles which exist at sites throughout Western Europe.

An ancient Jewish text known as The Book of Enoch contains solar, lunar and other astronomical information that can be determined using such sighting circles. The knowledge of astronomy required to construct and use the circles is said to have been imparted to Enoch by an angel named Uriel, hence the circular observatories are termed Uriel machines by Knight and Lomas.

Those who prefer to discount the reliability of the ancient text of Enoch, and consider instead that the circles were merely designed to tell farmers when to plant crops, must reckon with the evidence provided by Knight and Lomas. These authors point out that:

  1. The knowledge contained in the Book of Enoch was known to Freemasons long before the text was rediscovered by James Bruce during the 18th century, and does not derive solely from scholarly studies of that document

  2. Both Professor Thom's analyses and practical use of the reconstructed circle near Meg's Dyke show that a Uriel Machine is capable of determining, within an accuracy of one arc minute:

    • the inclination of the ecliptic
    • the inclination of the lunar orbit
    • the mean amplitude of the lunar perturbation
    • the mean lunar parallax

  3. Alan Butler has also determined that a Uriel Machine could have been used to determine the circumference of the Earth to an accuracy that was within 20 metres of that obtained today, using the latest satellite technology
Those ancient people were constructing and using an astronomical device that has been shown to be far more versatile and precise than any means of determining crop cycles would ever need to be. We must assume that they knew fully what they had built and what it could be used for.

By studying a 3,500 year artifact known as the Phaistos Disc, Alan Butler has established that the Minoans also had similar knowledge and that 1,000 Minoan feet were exactly equal to 366 megalithic yards.

Knowledge Lost - Knowledge Regained [40]
Crichton E. M. Miller is another researcher and revisionist of the historical record. In his book, The Golden Thread of Time, Miller writes:

"The creation of the present society began two thousand years ago with the persecution of millions and the deliberate destruction of knowledge that was in conflict with new beliefs. Crighton MillerFor two thousand years, free thinking people have been horrendously tortured, betrayed and destroyed by those who thought it in their interests to suppress anything that would be considered a threat to their control over the masses of mankind."

Miller observes that it has been all too easy for truth and knowledge to be suppressed or otherwise forgotten. He writes, "The majority of us do not question our teachers; we believe what we are taught is the truth. It never even enters our mind that these people in authority, with whom we entrust so much, may not be teaching us the truth or perhaps they are victims too and do not know themselves."

Fortunately Crichton Miller is made of different stuff and his open and inquisitive search for truth led to a startling rediscovery of ancient knowledge. He found that a widely known object held secrets that nobody in modern times seems to have discerned. As he puts it, "Our powers of discrimination are supposed to be for survival and yet we are unable to discriminate between a religious icon and a mathematical instrument when it is constantly in front of us."

The Cross of Ancient Navigators [41]
As a skilled navigator and qualified Royal Yachting Association Yacht Master, Crichton Miller disputed the common assertion that everyone in ancient times, including the Phoenicians and Egyptians, believed that the Earth is flat. He points out that in a vessel at sea, "You immediately notice that things disappear over the horizon as you leave them behind, and rise above the horizon as you approach." Miller's Working CrossSome academics might argue that the ancients did not have ships capable of navigating out of sight of land, however Miller points out that seagoing ships are clearly illustrated in friezes on the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut (C 1503-1482 bc) at Thebes. He writes that, "The sail plan was very efficient and capable of upwind work... They are capable of travelling the world, providing that the ship's master knows where he is."

A Celtic CrossSince the question of knowing where one is becomes crucial for any voyage beyond sight of land, Miller sought to devise a means of navigation based on solar and astronomical observations. His resulting discovery was remarkable, a working version of the Celtic cross that not only provides full navigational capabilities at sea but also enables the accurate determination of angles and distances in surveying and construction.

Prior to Miller's development of a fully working cross the concept was unknown and the Celtic cross was thought to be purely a religious symbol. Crichton Miller writes that, "This magical instrument that I have discovered, hoary with age, is not solely used for navigational purposes . It encompasses a knowledge of the cosmos, the use and understanding of mathematics, geometry, surveying, astronomy and astrology and it was used long before the ancient Egyptians built their pyramids. The secrets of this device were the foundations of ancient civilizations... It was the staff of magicians. I have searched high and low, in libraries, museums and the Internet, even with experts and engineers but to no avail, no one in the modern world previously knew of its existence."

The working cross that Miller constructed, using simple materials that have always been readily available, proved accurate to within six nautical miles of a position, anywhere on the globe. This level of precision is more than sufficient to have brought ancient navigators within sight of land, from which point pilotage could be used.

Pyramids And The Cross [42]
In surveying and construction applications Crichton Miller believes that the working cross was the one and only instrument needed to build pyramids, temples and cities in the ancient world.

He studied a pyramid on the East Coast of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, and found that it was, "..a combination unit allowing visual sightings of stars and planetary bodies at night, while permitting accurate angular measurement of the reflections of the sun on the ocean during the day and the moon at night. In my opinion it is a version of a water clock observatory. Its use would also be to find local time through astronomical observations to aid pre-historic mariners attempting a transatlantic voyage."

Miller found that seven-step pyramids could be used to tell the time and he suggests that this was the purpose of many such structures, including the Pyramid of Djoser in Egypt. Step pyramids abound in Central and South America, and the working cross could have been the instrument used in their survey and construction.

A Practical Teaching Tool [43]
The design of the working Celtic cross is faithfully carved in stone in graveyards and churches in Britain and many other places. Celtic crosses The working cross developed by Miller uses a weighted circular scale engraved with two 900 segments. The scale rotates around a central boss and the weighted segment is always at the bottom, just as a plumb bob always points to the centre of the Earth. Sighting cut-outs in the arms of the cross enable readings to be taken from the scale and notches at their ends facilitate the sighting of objects aligned with the instrument. The working cross has so many navigational, surveying and construction applications that Crichton Miller says of it:

Mayan BoyMiller contends that one of the best uses of the working cross will be to teach children the truth about history, surveying, map-making, navigation and astronomy. He says:

"Most importantly though, the children who will be taught about these findings, will understand in practical and common sense ways, how to understand the theory. ... I believe that my discovery is more for the children of our future than for us."

In an act of returning lost knowledge to present day Mayan people, Crichton Miller has presented a working cross to the President of the Mayan Elders of Guatemala, Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj. The instrument and others like it will be used to teach Mayan children the extraordinary knowledge their ancestors possessed.

Hidden Wisdom In Working Crosses [44]
In the work of both Plichta and Miller, it turned out that a cross, which had come to be regarded as a symbol and nothing else, had connections with long lost wisdom. The cross of St John mirrors the model of the Prime Number Cross. The Celtic cross derives from a practical mathematical and astronomical instrument used by priests, mariners, skilled architects, masons and various others. As Crichton Miller writes:

"Many of the stone Celtic crosses show the degrees marked out on the circular plate and incorporate the angles that are caused by precession and control the changing seasons. In other words the incorporation of the knowledge that there is a tilt of 23.4o in relation to the sun."

Metaphysical Knowledge Trails [45]
Much of the ancient knowledge that researchers are discovering is at odds with the prevailing scientific world view. Crichton Miller notes that the wondrous knowledge that existed in ancient Egypt, and in even earlier times, has often been suppressed because, "It has been deemed witchcraft, demonic and satanic."

However, this so-called occult knowledge is more likely to have been driven underground because of what it reveals about nature and the universe. The old, long hidden, knowledge leads directly to metaphysical conclusions. In particular, sacred geometry, and its related mathematics, supports the notion of a determinative mechanism in nature and cosmology, and therefore denies the dominance of theories and explanations based on rationalism, chance and probability. Those principles are at the very foundation of modern science.

Despite the rediscovery of the ancient proportion PHI, in Renaissance Italy, the spread of knowledge and thought in Europe gravitated to secularism and a predominantly rational and analytical world view. The briefly refreshed trails of metaphysical knowledge faded into obscurity again, and the stage was set for our present civilization to develop, and ultimately fail.

The 2nd Renaissance offers us another chance to understand and grasp the ancient wisdom of tribes who have since vanished from the Earth, but who left us astonishing legacies. Unlike the newly literate citizens of Europe who had only the level of information provided by mass publication, we have true global connectedness and a vastly greater digital capacity to generate, access, and analyse information. This time, humanity will not be denied the keys to the treasure trove of ancient wisdom and knowledge. We will follow the ancient knowledge trails to their ends. We will use this second enlightenment to accelerate our mastery of science and technology, and build a Level 4 Civilization on the ruins of capitalism, nationalism and militarism.

Ancient Geometric Insights [46]
Current education systems teach geometry in a way that denies pupils insights that could completely change their view of the subject. Throughout the West, both the secular schools in government education systems and those run by religious institutions teach their students that the ancient Greeks invented geometry. However, Plato and other Greek writers of the time freely attributed the knowledge to Egypt.

If one learns geometry the way the Greeks practised it, the knowledge is technically sound and practical but the experience is lacking in awe. The geometry inflicted on most schoolchildren is boring and soon forgotten. Unless they happen to work with geometry on a day to day basis, hardly anyone remembers more geometry than the theorem of Pythagoras. That the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Some adults who work in occupations that do not embody the use of geometry might still remember that PI is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, but beyond that their recollection of geometry fades away.

If, however, one learns geometry the way the ancient Egyptians practised it, there are awesome insights to be had. These insights are not solely related to the sacred and spiritual nature of the ancient's use of geometry, but also the wondrous mechanisms behind nature and the cosmos.

PHI, Nature, and Matter [47]
It is one thing to teach a child that PHI is the ratio of any diagonal to any side of a pentagon. Or that the value of PHI = 1.61833988749894848204... extends forever in its decimal form, and cannot be written as a fraction. It is one thing for a student to realise that PHI incorporates a unique Golden Ratio, in which the whole part is to the greater part as the greater part is to the lesser. That as well as the ratio of one part to the other, shape recurs at each smaller and larger scale. But, it is a very different thing to comprehend that this proportionality extends into every part of nature, and to the human form itself.

Students of geometry are surprised to learn that the ratio of the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, to the distance from the wrist joint to the fingertip, is PHI. Similarly, the distance from the top of the head to the fingertip, to the distance from the elbow joint to the fingertip, is PHI. The ratios that apply to the lengths of the bones of the fingers, also incorporate PHI. This ratio is everywhere in nature, in every living thing.

The DNA of all animals and plants exhibits the Golden Proportion, and our hearts beat with a PHI rhythm. In cosmology, scientists have found PHI relationships between relative planetary distances, and between the rings of Saturn. Not so many years ago these facts would have been remarkable, but not usable in any technological sense. However, in recent times science has learned that the old assumption that matter is composed of particles is not sustainable. There is growing evidence to support the hypothesis that everything is based on wave forms, and certain inalienable but relatively simple rules.

The aptly named "Sacred Geometry" of the ancients is a good place to start uncovering and applying the rules of proportion and harmony that nature uses. Astonishing new technologies will develop from the insights that such research can yield.

Knowledge Rising [48]
The above outlines of ancient knowledge are not intended to diminish the advances of modern science in any way. In the space of less than 200 years scientific knowledge and new technologies have made truly astonishing progress. While great discoveries and inventions pepper the history of the 19th and 20th centuries, most of the knowledge and understanding that humanity now possesses is very recent. By and large, the new technologies that will enable us to build a Level 4 Civilization date from the period 1980 through 2000.

In the present day, new theoretical insights and technical breakthroughs continue at an ever-accelerating pace. The point at which science and technology move beyond further discoveries of the basis of matter, to actual mastery over it, is approaching quite rapidly. Importantly, it will not only be matter that is mastered. Life and the mysteries of consciousness and the mind could become open books as well.

No scientists still believe that matter is solid or that the only objects that we can possibly make or use are those that we are able to drop on our foot. However, most other people still think in those "drop it on your foot" terms. To the "solid matter believers" it is inconceivable that humankind will ever know about, let alone have control over the secrets of life and consciousness. They might grudgingly accept that some day, well beyond their own lifetime, future humans will eventually come to fully understand and manipulate matter at the atomic level. But the solid matter believers simply cannot conceive of that happening within the present decade.

Disbelievers in humanity soon gaining mastery over matter are in the majority, despite the overwhelming historical record of scientific discovery and the exponential growth of knowledge. In a similar misconception, most of the populace in the Dark Ages continued to believe that the earth is flat, while worshiping in cathedrals and mosques that were designed and built according to the Golden Ratio, and knowledge passed down from ancients who earlier navigated the globe.

So too, present day solid matter believers continue to doubt that it will ever be possible for humankind to know and master what cannot be seen and touched. They do this despite the many achievements of modern science in discovering the nature of the unseeable and the untouchable. The solid matter believers of today are as mistaken as the flat earthers were hundreds of years before. Knowledge is rising at an ever-increasing rate, and the doors to Aladdin's cave are about to be opened to all humanity.

Knowing the Unseeable [49]
Atoms are very small. There are many analogies that emphasise just how small these basic components of matter are. One calculation says that, "There are as many atoms is a teaspoon of water as there are teaspoons of water in the Atlantic Ocean." Another explanation, by Tom Stoppard, describes the emptiness of atoms thus, "Now make a fist, and if your fist is as big as the nucleus of an atom then the atom is as big as St Paul's, and if it happens to be a hydrogen atom then it has a single electron flitting about like a moth in an empty cathedral, now by the dome, now by the altar."

Gerald Schroeder is a scientist who thinks and writes about the increasing melding of science and religion. In his book, The Hidden Face of God, he notes how scientific understanding has extended Gerald L. Schroderinto the realm of atoms, the smallest and largely empty units of the physical world. Science has studied the particles and forces that make up each atom and in so doing it has entered the non-physical realm of metaphysics. Schroeder notes that, "Metaphysics has entered mainstream, peer-reviewed, university-approved physics, though of course not by that name. In academia it's called quantum mechanics."

He also notes how quickly and radically scientific thought has progressed. He writes that:

"One hundred years ago, no J. A. Wheeler would have dared to suggest that all we see about us is actually the expression of condensed information. He'd have been dismissed as a mystic. But then one hundred years ago who would have dreamt that the solid world is really 99.9999999999999 percent empty space made solid by hypothetical, force-carrying, massless particles? And that even that minuscule fraction of matter that is matter may not actually be matter, but wavelets of energy that we material things sense as matter?"

Leaving aside the issue of the veracity of the theories that seek to explain the quantum or metaphysical world, the fact is that science is actively working at scales well below the limits of our physical senses. In 1980, two physicists working in Zurich, Gerd Binning and Heinrich Rohrer, were the first to actually view atoms represented on the screen of the "scanning tunnelling microscope" (STM) they had devised. Technology is now rolling out new systems and products that make use of a growing understanding of the physically invisible world of the atom.

Knowing the Unreachable [50]
Light travels very fast. If light were able to travel in a circular path it would circle the equator of our planet and return to its starting point in about one seventh of a second. Put another way, an airliner that was able to travel at the speed of light would be able to fly seven times around the Earth every second.

The nearest star to our own solar system is Alpha Centuri, it is 4 light years away. That is the distance that a light wave will travel in four years, and by earthling standards it is a very long way. Yet, the farthest limits of the Universe that humanity can presently distinguish are some 12 billion light years distant!

Less than 170 years ago the French philosopher Aguste Comte pronounced that it would never be possible for people on this planet to discover the composition of the stars. He reasoned, incorrectly as it turned out, that the distances involved were so great that nobody would ever be able to get near enough to a star to determine what it was made of. But scientists used the distinctive spectral lines, emitted by all elements, to compare and identify the chemical composition of the stars, including our own sun. Norman Lockyer even discovered and named the element helium, as existing in the sun, before it was identified on earth. Today, scientists know that all the stars that are presently able to be seen in the heavens contain the same elements that comprise our sun, and our earth.

Individuals and Teams - Discovery and Development [51]
There is a fundamental difference between the way science advances and the way technologies develop from new scientific discoveries. Basically, inquisitiveness drives discovery, and acquisitiveness drives technological development. To put this another way, scientific discovery is explorative, and investigation proceeds according to the curiosity of the researchers. Technical development, on the other hand, is more geared to designing and producing something that can be sold at a profit.

Governments and philanthropic institutions are prepared to fund pure explorative science, provided that it fits within their notions of what constitutes science. (In the West, for example, there is scant government funding available for investigations into the paranormal.) On the other hand, corporations usually fund new technological development with an applied use in mind, and an expectation of a substantial return on their investment. The principles of industrial capitalism and the aim of building shareholder value govern decisions to invest in technological development. A prospective technology might be brought to the proof of concept stage within a scientific institution, but the idea only develops to fruition if it is commercialised.

There is a further differentiation between the work of scientific discovery and that of developing new technology from one or more scientific breakthroughs. Major leaps of insight and scientific discovery are mostly achieved by individuals, who work alone or with a few assistants. Successful technological development is generally a team activity.

Without meaning to be elitist, it is far harder to find the rare minds that are capable of revolutionary insights and scientific discoveries, than it is to find soundly qualified people who can make a contribution within a well led technology development team. Although there are now many more people working in pure scientific research than ever before, and although they are equipped with powerful computer technology and connected to relevant data and research around the planet, major breakthroughs in science are still elusive.

The majority of 20th century scientists spent their time embellishing and adding to existing knowledge and theories and contributed nothing to the quest for entirely new knowledge and understanding. The 2nd Renaissance will be a time in which greater emphasis will be placed on finding and nurturing young people with rare and precious minds, capable of original, long reaching thought and discovery.

Spirituality Rising [52]
As the 2nd Renaissance gathers momentum, greater understanding of our divinely ordered universe is driving a rise in spirituality. This is mainly happening in the developed world, because people there have greater access to the Internet, and they are better able to afford new books and magazines that spread the new information and knowledge.

It is highly likely that as new science brings mastery of matter, a knowledge of the sacred geometry of the ancients will figure largely in the processes involved. It is not a revival of organised religions that is contemplated here. The new spirituality has its roots in both nature and new science, as well as the wisdom of ancient peoples who seem to have understood the heavens and the metaphysical realm beyond our material world.

Crichton Miller believes that the cross is presently ".. An icon in the hands of religious leaders who have lost the meaning of spirituality", and in this he reflects the disaffection of many people. The young are particularly unimpressed with the human politics and human bureaucracy that have been layered onto an original spirituality, to create the organised religions of our present civilization.

Governments today are promising to create new jobs in the face of technologies that are rapidly rendering all work for hire obsolete. The young don't want jobs, they crave meaning and fulfilment. They are already turning to new spirituality to satisfy these wants.

A New Generation - A New Ethos [53]
Full time paid jobs are what the parents and grand parents of today's youth had. Earlier generations needed to work because of the reality of economic scarcity. The young people who will progressively master new science and new technologies will not have the same mindsets as their parents. They will unleash technology in ways that make goods and services abundant, at low or no cost, and they will free up their time for leisure and thought.

When resources are abundant prices fall and it is no longer necessary to work as long to earn enough money to buy the necessities of life. Then there is more time for other things, including new spirituality. People will read this statement and object that the promise of new technology has not been delivered in the past. It is true that new technologies introduced since the 1970s have not lead to shorter working hours and greater leisure time. In fact, for those who remained employed in the closing decades of the 20th century, working hours and work pressures increased. However, this cannot be blamed on any failure of new technologies. It was entirely due to the persistence of old notions of scarcity and blind doctrines of economic rationalism.

For example, the productive capacity to feed all of humanity, and to do it cheaply, existed then and still exists today. It was government-level quotas and controls that created artificial scarcity, high prices and high profits. The young do not have many traditional jobs in the controlled economy. Once they take over from the outgoing generation in scientific, technological and sociological fields, they can be expected to approach life from a different perspective, and with a new ethos. That ethos will be suited to the economics of abundance and the development of a Level 4 Civilization.

It will not be the rates of scientific discovery and technological advancement that govern the timing of any transition to a new form of society, but the rate at which young minds and new thinking come to dominate decision making. The advent of new tribalism can be expected to assist the process, because it will dilute centralism and open up opportunities for radical change.

The uncontrolled economy, will be largely free, and it will be the creation of the young minds and fresh thinking that the controlled economy could not find a use for.

Marie Curie's Precious Mind [54]
Marie Curie is perhaps the most famous female scientist in history. Together with her husband, Pierre, she explained and named the phenomenon of radioactivity, and also isolated two new radioactive elements, polonium and radium. Her exposure to the atomic fire during her work cost Marie Curie her life. Marie Curie But her discoveries, in 1898, launched new explorations of the atom by other rare minded people, such as Ernest Rutherford, and Hans Geiger.

Despite the fact that half the population of 6 billion humans on the Earth are female, males have been disproportionately represented in the annals of scientific discovery. This is not because rare minds capable of breakthrough discoveries are less common in women than men. It is entirely due to prejudice and discrimination in educational opportunities in society at large, and to discrimination in research funding within institutionalised science.

In fact, had Marie Curie had the misfortune to be born in any of the nation states that, to this day, tolerate the practice of female infanticide, she might have been strangled before she reached her first birthday. A Level 4 Civilization will fully utilize all gifted and talented people, including the female minds that our present civilization too often excludes from the processes of discovering knowledge and developing technology.

Caral, The Mother City [55]
Due to the painstaking and meagrely funded work of a Peruvian archaeologist, Dr Ruth Shady Solis, the ruins of an ancient city have been excavated and dated, at a site called Caral, an hour's drive northwest of Lima. There are six stone pyramids at Caral and the largest is five stories tall and has a base area equal to that of four football fields. The archaeologists who first discovered the site in the early 1900s mistook the sand covered structures for hills, but it was subsequently realised that they were too symmetrical to be natural. Ruth Shady Solis

As Ruth Shady's team have uncovered Caral they have revealed a large central amphitheatre, three sunken plazas, a furnace designed to burn an eternal flame, apartment-style housing and other dwellings that occupy an area of some 160 acres. It is thought that as many as 10,000 people might have inhabited the site. Shady believes that Caral was the religious and administrative centre for a culture that built at another 17 sites that are still buried in the Supe valley and along the Pacific coast. She thinks that Caral is the most complex site and that it was the centre of a priestly society that flourished in the fertile Supe valley in ancient times.

The significance of her find is its age. The unearthing of Caral by Ruth Shady could well qualify as the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century. Reeds in woven bags that were used to hold stones comprising the fill of the Caral pyramids have been definitively radiocarbon dated to as early as 2600 B.C. Shady believes that the site could be even older than this, because the reed samples used in dating, as reviewed and published in the journal Science, were not taken from what is probably the oldest area of Caral. Since it is around 5000 years old, Caral is older than any other city in the New World.

Caral Importantly, the details of life there are not obscured by later structures or technologies built over the top of the old site. The excavations of Caral show no evidence of the use or knowledge of the wheel, writing, pottery, metal tools, or the cultivation of grain crops. However, sure signs of civilization are found in the monumental architecture, extensive urban constructions, and the existence of irrigation systems in the surrounding countryside.

Archaeologists now regard Caral as the closest thing to a missing link between a non-urban form of existence, in which people were nomadic or occupied small villages, and the precursor of the large cities we live in today. Caral might be the only example of a true mother city that will ever be found. It provides a unique opportunity to find out why civilization started. This is one of the most important questions in all of archaeology, and Caral could help Ruth Shady and her team to answer it.

A Thousand Years of Peace [56]
During the past 3000 years of recorded history humans have fought more than 5000 wars, with the 20th century having been the most bloody period of all. Given the seeming normality of war, it is not surprising that many archaeologists had subscribed to the view that civilization originated in response to the pressures of attacks by armed raiders.

According to this notion, the development of agriculture enabled grain crops to be stored and food reserves to be built up at locations that then needed to be fortified and protected by standing armies. Fear of attack and plunder of food and valuables was thought to have been the initial motivation to build cities and fortify them with walls, battlements, and other defences.

Ruth Shady does not appear to have been predisposed to finding evidence of weapons and fortifications at the mother city of civilization in the New World, but Jonathan Hass, of the Field Museum in Chicago, was a leading advocate of the theory that warfare drove ancient people to build cities. When he was invited to the site by Shady, Haas expected to find two things, evidence of stored food reserves that would have been vulnerable to plundering, and evidence of weapons, fortifications, and warfare. Caral did not yield any such evidence.

To the contrary, the archaeologists excavating Caral have found no weapons of any sort, no art depicting warfare, no battlements, no defences anywhere in the city or the valley, and no sign of grain crops or food stores. Instead they have found a large central amphitheatre, evidence of an eternal flame, and a collection of beautifully carved flutes made from the bones of condors. Although they do not appear to have developed a system of writing, the people of Caral evidently composed and played music.

A Pre-Taker Economy [57]
The archaeologists working at Caral have also discovered that its numerous inhabitants used an extensive irrigation system to grow crops such as squash, avocados, potatoes and beans. From the diggings, it is evident that cotton was extensively cultivated. Once harvested, some of the cotton was spun and woven into fine mesh nets that were then provided to the fishing villages on the coast, some 12 miles from Caral. In return for the nets the fishermen provided supplies of fish such as the anchovies and sardines that teemed in the cold Humboldt Current running down the coast of Peru.

Caral enjoyed an abundance of food but it had no staple agriculture of the type that led to the development of the Taker mentality that Daniel Quinn writes of. Archaeologist, Michael Moseley, has studied the fishing economy of the coastal regions near the Supe valley. Commenting on the findings at Caral Moseley observed that, "What you don't have is the fancy artefacts and all the other bells and whistles." The digs at Caral do not yield a lot of the accoutrements of rank and personal wealth. There are finely worked beads but no hoards of personal possessions. "People are farming or fishing. You only get a focus on personal wealth with the onset of staple agriculture."

Significant Achievements [58]
There are many points of significance about Caral. In its day, the city was the centre of a peaceful trading network that extended from the coast to the Andes and the forests of the Amazon. It was a spiritual place and its people built alcoves with dried-mud figurines in their homes, and burnt small sacred bonfires. Later civilizations did not occupy the site, but they apparently revered it and left gold and silver offerings at its perimeters and built temples on its outskirts.

The scale of the pyramids constructed at Caral is evidence of significant architectural knowledge and organisational abilities. No celestial or solar alignments have yet been studied in relation to the six pyramids, but it will not be surprising if significant alignments are found to exist. Nor is it too far fetched to think that somewhere under the rubble covering the 160 acre site the excavators of Caral might one day come across a working cross of the type rediscovered by Crichton Miller.

The site at Caral is of the same age as the megalithic monuments studied throughout Britain and Western Europe by Professor Thom. All are 5000 years old. Just as no metal tools have been found at Caral, the megalithic people also lacked metal tools. Yet they used the megalithic yard in their constructions and, as Knight and Lomas have shown, they built stone circles that are not only capable of creating exact standards of measurement, but of also measuring such values as the inclination of the ecliptic and the circumference of the Earth.

In due course, there is one achievement of overriding significance that Caral might well provide. One great contribution or lesson that can be applied to the 2nd Renaissance. How to live in peace, with spiritual meaning, and without warfare, for a thousand years.

The Slave Labour Hypothesis [59]
Despite the failure of the warfare hypothesis in explaining how humans first came to leave the simple life and develop complex, city based societies, some archaeologists argue that the pyramids at Caral had to have been constructed by people who were made to do the job. In a TV documentary on Caral, one of the scientists interviewed expressed this notion very succinctly. He said, "You can't build a huge structure like that on the basis of consensus."

This logic as long been applied to the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Traditional egyptologists maintain that slaves were used to construct the Great Pyramid, as a tomb for the Pharaoh Khufu. One estimate is that it took one hundred thousand slaves thirty years to build the structure. Assuming that the construction technology required considerable manual effort, the arithmetic might be correct. Moving and accurately placing more than two million blocks of stone weighing an average of 2.5 tons each would require many workers.

Although most egyptologists are adamant that only coercion could have caused ancient people to provide so much hard work, the hypothesis of slave labour is pure speculation. Despite its hypothetical nature, children in the present day are taught this information as if it is fact. Conversely, many real and verifiable facts about the Great Pyramid are not taught because they concern the sacred geometry contained in its design. These geometric relationships and symmetries are dismissed as coincidence.

The reasons that the Great Pyramid is such a wonder are as much due to its amazing geometry as its scale and majesty. Crichton Miller believes that the structure was surveyed and aligned using a working cross. He contends that the relics found in the lower north shaft of the Great Pyramid, a granite ball, a double hook of metal, and a short length of wood that is considered to be part of a measuring rod, are all that remains of a working cross.

Of the Great Pyramid itself Miller says, "Some try to say that it was built by slaves, but it was not, it was built with the kind of love and devotion that can move mountains. Musicians find inspiration from the pyramid based on harmonics. Geometers find correlations that are astounding and encompass all the geometrical shapes possible, including the fibonacci spirals and platonic solids. Mathematicians argue about the right angled triangles and the use of Pi. It is a source of constant wonderment to all those who encounter it."

Divine Motivation [60]
It might have been necessary to employ overseers with whipsMason's mark -Mother Diagram to motivate workers building a mere tomb, but the Great Pyramid is a divine structure. The motivation to build it was spiritual, and far stronger than any form of coercion could ever be. There are many divine structures that incorporate sacred geometry, but none were built with slave labour. The great cathedrals of Europe all employ the Golden Ratio and many contain pentagonal or fivefold symmetries. It was the Masonic Guilds, whose members were expert stone masons, having learned sacred geometry in Gnostic and Hermetic Mystery Schools, that built structures such as Chartres Cathedral, completed in ad 1260.

The Sultan Ahmet Mosque (the Blue Mosque) and the Suleymaniye Mosque, in Istanbul, are also examples of sacred structures that resonate with the harmonies and proportions of PHI and the geometry of the ancients. Both the mosques were built is only seven years (ad 1609-1616 and 1550-1557, respectively) by teams of Arab craftsmen that each built a section of the structure. It is not yet known whether the pyramids at Caral incorporate sacred geometry, but it is clear that they held spiritual significance for the people of the city, and the Supe valley beyond. Given a divine meaning, it would not have required any coercion to motivate the builders of the structures, their deep spirituality would have provided all the motivation required.

Back To The Future [61]
The people of Caral had ample food to sustain them, they had cloth for garments, they had housing and shelter, they had peace and a collective culture in which personal wealth and the accumulation of possessions played no part. Above all, these people seem to have had meaning and purpose in their lives. From the evidence of an infant burial discovered at the site, they loved their children, and presumably they taught them the truth about their world and history, as they knew it. No one yet knows why they abandoned Caral, or where they went. However, what is known about them could provide present-day pioneers of the New Tribalism movement with clues on how to live with, and master, conditions of abundance that will exceed anything that has previously existed, even in the Supe valley 5000 years ago.

Whether the people of Caral were actually as peaceful, spiritual and contented as they seem to have been is not important. What is important about the civilization at Caral is that it was Pre-Taker. If we are to survive as a species, and build a Level 4 Civilization, we must find a way to live as Leavers, even with the knowledge, and available technologies, to provide us with anything we could ever want.

Telling It Like It Is [62]
One of the first things that we must do, is to start teaching our children the truth. Not a mishmash of false hypotheses that are passed off as fact, but the truth as we know it. We must distinguish between verifiable fact and hypothesis, and never pass one off as the other. We must admit what is not known. Despite the rapid advance of knowledge there are many things that remain a mystery to us, these range from big questions such as the extent of the universe, to more mundane ones, such as how cats purr.

Many courses will need to be revised, many books will need to be updated or pulped. But the expunging of false or misleading information from learning and information sources needs to be done, and the sooner the better. In cases in which government or religious education systems and institutions resist a move to honesty in learning, and where academics resist the scrapping of deficient texts they have authored, there must be an option to place children and adult students in an alternative learning system.

Home schooling will be resisted by most governments, not because it might be of any lesser standard, but because it is sure to cut across what George Orwell called "the official truth". Internet based education will be discouraged for similar reasons. But, ways must be found to make the real truth accessible to all young people. Their possession of this knowledge will be a prerequisite for establishing a Level 4 Civilization.

A Language In Knots [63]
The Inca ruled an empire that covered the Andean region, from what is now Colombia to Chile. At its height the Inca empire extended for 3,500 kilometres, north to south. Although they build an extensive network of roads and large cities, the Inca are said to have done it all without a written language. This is most unusual for such a large empire that developed such a complex system of government. In fact, according to Douglas Robertson's ideas about the nature and scale of the information required for a Level 2 Civilization, it is most unlikely.

How could the Inca have managed to establish and govern their empire, between 1200 and 1536 A.D., without written records? How could they have controlled a vast system of granaries and warehouses, collected and recorded taxes, etc, using only their memories? It would have been impossible. But until now, that is what modern archaeologists have asserted. The Inca did not have a written language, that's the conventional wisdom.

Gary UrtonGary Urton is Professor of Pre-Colombian Studies at Harvard University. He believes that the Inca did have a non-verbal form of communication. Moreover, Professor Urton's research indicates that the record keeping of the Inca involved a sophisticated binary code, that is in at least one respect more sophisticated than that used by modern computing science.

The key to unravelling the puzzle of how the Inca kept records and communicated non-verbally lies in the patterns of knots, the weaving involved,Inka Khipu and the colours used in the objects known as khipu. Although it was known, from studies in the 1920s, that some khipu used arrangements of knots that could store calculations, modern science continued to regard the khipu as being largely "decorative" in nature. Yet, there is a record of the Spanish conquerors capturing an Inca who tried to hide a khipu. When questioned the Inca told the Spanish that the object recorded everything done in his country.

Khipus are made of cotton or wool. A main cord carries various pendants, each with its own set of knots and ties. By analysing the patterns in the khipus that have been preserved in museums around the world, Gary Urton discovered that there are seven points in their making where there is a simple choice between two possibilities. Theoretically, there is a seven-bit binary code available to the maker of a khipu.

In addition to a basic seven-bit code, that could yield 128 permutations, the khipu makers used 24 colours of cord. This means that there are 1,536 permutations available to convey information. Professor Urton says, "Each element could have been a name, an identity or an activity as part of telling a story of a myth. I think a skilled khipu-keeper would have recognised the language. They would have looked and felt and used their store of knowledge in much the same way we do when reading words."

Until Professor Urton and his colleague, Carrie Brezine, are able to correctly decipher the code of the knots, twists and colours in the khipu, the notion of a unique, three dimensional binary language, remains unproven. However, work is proceeding and Professor Urton is hopeful that a further 32 khipu that he recently discovered in an Inca burial site will prove helpful. The newly discovered artefacts are from the period of the Spanish conquest, and it might be possible to match some of them to Spanish documents from the same period. It is known that the Spanish worked quite closely with some Inca khipu-keepers. Urton says, "We have for the first time a set of khipu from a well-preserved and dated archaeological site, and documents that were being drawn up at the same time."

Without a reliable translation of the khipu it remains difficult to convince sceptics that the khipu are anything more than memory aids for storytellers. With the hoped for breakthrough in translation will come evidence that the complex knotting patterns of the khipu are truly examples of the invention and use of a binary code more than 500 years before the development of computers. Urton believes that, "It can give us a completely different perspective on questions of literacy, on the nature of signs."

The Data Durability Crisis [64]
If Gary Urton and Carrie Brezine succeed in translating the language of the Inca khipu they will be able to read accounts that stretch back six or seven hundred years. That's durable data. Such longevity of stored information highlights a major flaw in the current digital revolution. Data stored on magnetic tape, floppy disks, and CDRs, is not sufficiently durable to enable it to be recalled for historical or legal reasons.

Whereas the khipu might have stored information for half a millennium, and acid-free paper kept in an air conditioned environment will also store data for such a period, magnetic tape and floppy disks don't come anywhere close to these recovery spans. Archivists and librarians all over the world are sounding a warning about the continuing problem of the obsolescence of digital storage media. They note that while the world economy has become digital, the half-life of digital data is presently about five years. There might be readable information on the media beyond ten years, but the technology is no longer available to read it, due to rapid equipment and systems obsolescence. A CDR disc is said to retain data for fifty years, but after a decade there is no longer any equipment in service that can recover the information.

This is a second great scandal in the IT sector. First there was the Y2K fiasco that added billions of dollars to the costs of all firms and institutions that use computers. Now the very fabric of society of the late 20th century is fading away without most people being aware of it. Data that is kept continually refreshed, and migrated from systems version to systems version on industrial-strength computer networks, is preserved. Much of the data that federal governments hold is in this category, particularly that collected by taxation, police and intelligence agencies. But most private businesses and other institutions have probably lost considerable amounts of their historical data already, and are sure to lose more in the next few years.

Already, archivists tell us, all the pioneer work done at MIT and other labs on artificial intelligence is lost. So are the early virtual-reality experiments, and computer models such as those made of the major tank battle in the first Gulf War. The data is probably still there but the systems that ran it no longer exist. A great deal of information is disappearing into a black-hole of obsolescence, because most managers and administrators are unaware of the problem. They assume that because various vendors in the IT industry have sold them computer systems to meet all their data processing needs, the backups and archives they have kept will be accessible in the future. This is not so.

Accounting and other records kept by many small and medium sized businesses, legal records kept by law firms and courts, property transactions recorded by shires and counties, medical records kept by doctors and hospitals, and a host of other information can no longer be accessed.

The Internet currently has a data half-life of only a few months, but new optical technology holds the key to future data permanence and historical truth. It will play a central role in the establishment of a Level 4 Civilization.

An Internet of Light [65]
While nobody can accurately predict the future, there are several obvious evolutionary directions for the present Internet to follow. Most IT specialists expect that the bandwidth and speed of the Net will increase significantly. Internet futurists expect that e-commerce will continue to develop until it is the main transactional medium in a global economy. Many computer specialists believe that the Internet will become more capable in the way it finds and provides information. David D. NolteThese are all reasonable expectations, and likely to eventuate. But such predictions fall well short of the mark set by scientists and technologists who are actually involved in developments that will shape the future Internet. Such specialists see a light-based web ahead - well within the present decade.

David Nolte is Professor of Physics at Purdue University. He works with optical materials and devices and he already holds patents related to adaptive holograms, of the sort required to implement a fully optical Internet. In his book, Mind at Light Speed, Nolte describes three generations of what he terms "Light Machines". The 1st Generation - Optoelectronic Machines, use electricity to control light. These machines are already in service on the main long-haul networks of the Internet. The 2nd Generation - All-Optical Machines, will use light to control light. They will store data on holographic memory crystals. This second generation "light controlling light" technology not only exists in laboratories, it is beginning to enter service with telecommunications companies. Nolte writes that, "Transmission over 1 million kilometres has been achieved in laboratory demonstrations using solitons and TDM to support a data rate over 1 terabit per second. If past trends continue, such "hero" experiments may become routine and move into the marketplace in three to five years".

The 3rd Generation - Quantum Optical Devices, will take longer to develop. When they inevitably arrive, the 3rd Generation Machines will be quantum devices, able to store, share and process vast amounts of data, simultaneously and with absolute security, using durable optical crystals and fibre optic networks.

Technical Note
For readers who are not used to the arcane terminology of cyberspace, the following definitions might be helpful.

    In Data Storage:
    Everything is measured in binary units.
    1 bit is the basic "yes" or "no" binary decision of digital computing.
    1 byte contains 8 bits, and represents a single letter, number or symbol.
    1 kilobyte = 1,024 bytes, or 210 bytes
    1 megabyte = 1,024 kilobytes, or 220 bytes
    1 gigabyte = 1,024 megabytes, or 230 bytes
    1 terabyte = 1,024 gigabytes, or 240 bytes
    1 petabyte = 1,024 terabytes, or 250 bytes
    1 exabyte = 1,024 terabytes, or 260 bytes
    1 zettabyte = 1,024 exabytes, or 270 bytes
    1 yottabyte = 1,024 zettabytes, or 280 bytes
    In Data Transmission:
    Everything is measured in bits per second (bps), and the decimal system. Bytes are used in binary computing and data storage, but not in data transmission measures.
    56 kbps = The theoretical download speed of a dial-up connection, 56,000 bps.
    128 kbps = The theoretical speed of an ISDN connection, 128,000 bps.
    512 kbps = The theoretical speed of a cable modem connection, 512,000 bps.
    1.5 mbps = The maximum speed of a leased (T1) line, 1,500,000 bps.
    4.5 mbps = The maximum speed of a leased (T3) line, 4,500,000 bps.
Presently, the Internet absorbs about 2 exabytes of new data every year. The amount of new data is growing exponentially. In terms of the quantity of data in the world. We are headed for the Level 4 Civilization that Douglas Robertson has foreseen.

2nd Generation Light Machines Will Use Holographic Drives [66]
Holograms create images without using lenses. Within a storage medium, such as a crystal smaller than a sugar cube, the data is held in stacked pages. David Nolte writes that, "Assuming that light has a wavelength of around 1 micron, an image of 1 square centimetre contains approximately 100 million pixels. If the pixels are digital, i.e., black and white, then each pixel represents a single bit. ... Therefore, in a cubic centimetre of crystal, there can be a stack of 10,000 pages equalling a total capacity of 1 terabit of binary data. Furthermore, if the readout of information is performed a page at a time, even if that readout is as slow as ten pages per second, it still corresponds to a data rate of 1 gigabit per second."

Holographic drives have other advantages besides their density and capacity. Holograms enable a major advance in data handling, instead of storing and processing text they can process images and remember every detail. A single reference beam of light can recreate all the beams that made up the original image. As Nolte puts it, "This is the general behaviour of holograms; they complete the picture. Whatever beams were present during the hologram recording are recreated when the hologram is illuminated by just one of the original beams." An analogy, if it were possible, would be recreating an image recorded on magnetic media, such as a floppy disk, from a fragment of the original media and image.

Not only is it denser and faster than the old electro-mechanical Internet, but a light-based network that uses holographic crystals and fibre optic cables will also cost less to build. As technology shrinks its cost falls and falls, until it approaches a costless (and abundant) level. A feature article in Scientific American, by Gary Stix, notes that, already, "The cost of transmitting a bit of information optically halves every nine months, as against 18 months to achieve the same cost reduction for an integrated circuit." The same article quotes a prediction by A, Arun Netravali, who heads up Lucent Technology’s Bell Laboratories. He predicts that, "Because of dramatic advances in the capacity and ubiquity of fibre optic systems and subsystems, bandwidth will become too cheap to meter."

2nd Generation Light Machines Will Perform Holographic Processing [67]
David Nolte makes the emphatic point that copper wires already transmit signals at light speed, and because of this fact, and its longer wavelength, light transmission through optical fibre is not inherently faster of better than existing copper and silicon based technologies. Where light can triumph is within the signal processing technologies, and this is due to the nature of holographic crystals. Second generation light machines can use data to control data, all within a totally light based system. The ability to intelligently process information in the form of images and symbols, rather than simply relay letters and numbers, is what distinguishes the second generation technology of light.

Writing in, Mind At Light Speed, Nolte describes second generation light technology as follows:

"The machines of light of the second generation move into a new realm, where light becomes the active agent of control. Everything we think we understand about the architecture of intelligence changes. The discrete transistors and logic gates of electronics disappear; in their place appear exotic optical devices of unfamiliar shapes and surprising behaviour. The replacement is not one-to-one, and even functions have changed. Nothing precisely resembling the function of a transistor or a logic gate can be found. Instead, new components, like coupled filters and arrays of mirrors or finely scribed gratings, become the elementary units that make up the new machines."

The All-Optical Net Is Coming Soon [68]
Most people think that an all-optical net, one that spans the globe with optic fibres, will not become a reality for many decades. The reality is that the "Lightnet", replacing the old copper and silicon Internet, will be rolling out within the next few years. It could be substantially complete, to the point where present optoelectronic technology is totally redundant, by 2010. The Scientific American article, The Triumph of Light, notes that, "Lucent estimates that if the growth of networks continues at its current pace, the world will have enough digital capacity by 2010 to give every man, woman and child, whether in San Jose or Sri Lanka, a 100-megabit-a-second connection. That's enough for dozens of video connections or several high-definition television programs."

But, it does not stop there. Data rate is one thing, but laying fibre and installing holographic technologies to support the high-speed links is also vital. Fibre-optic cables are already common in the West. In a period of around twenty years 100 million kilometres of fibre cable has been laid. This cabling comprises what is known as the Fibre To Curb (FTC) network. Copper wire still carries the signal the last few metres into your home or office. Taking fibre-optic cable all the way, as in a Fibre To Home (FTH) system, requires optical sub-systems and devices. David Nolte writes that, "The non-linear interferometer will be the fundamental element in all-optical control, just as the transistor was the basis for electronic control. ...Using these techniques, switching speeds up to 100 gigabits per second have been demonstrated in the laboratory. These rates are just the beginning. Higher rates supported by instantaneous interactions will allow the optical logic to smoke along at the speed of the data rate, in the best case up to 30 terabits per second." The latter speed is the rough equivalent of 600,000 volumes of an encyclopaedia every second. Nolte expects that non-linear interferometers will be in the field, supporting an all-optical web, within a few years.

David Nolte is a practising scientist, with patents on some holographic technologies, and he definitely does not expect that their wide use is decades away. He expects 2nd generation machines of light to render the present Internet obsolete, well before 2010.

The All-Optical Net Will Have "Weird" Intelligence [69]
Although it will be orders of magnitude faster than the old Internet, speed will not be the distinguishing characteristic of the Lightnet. The attribute that will set the new all-optical technology apart from earlier networks will be its intelligence. A non-biological, network of holographic information processors, with intelligence! Now that's a really weird idea, isn't it? But, NO, the idea of an intelligent Lightnet is NOT weird, it is a logical evolution of non-human information processing. Only eight years ago, in 1996, Gregory S. Paul and Earl D. Cox wrote a book titled, Beyond Humanity. In their account of technology and where it is heading these authors made the following points.

Given the extraordinary rate of scientific discovery and human technological capability in the late 20th century and into this present decade, it is difficult to refute the reasoning of Paul and Cox. We do seem destined to create intelligences that will not only equal our own, but soon outstrip us. Paul and Cox say, "The super-minds of the future are unlikely to remember the 20th century for its Manhattan project or the moon shot, for these were merely spectacular human stunts. Because information processing is the key to all other acts, the building of ENIAC promises to be the human product most celebrated by its cyberdescendants. They will marvel that a bunch of derived apes with computers made of jelly managed to cobble together a technological civilization and high-level physics without blowing themselves up like kids in a fireworks factory....They will commit the robotic equivalent of a chuckle at the superstitious nature of people who actually believed a great spirit of the universe created and fawned over them, and then demanded their worship in exchange for a reprieve from eternal torture. How little humans understood that they were not the creations of gods, but the creators of minds as powerful as a god."

Gregory S. Paul is an evolutionary biologist, and Earl D. Cox is a specialist in artificial intelligence.

Author's Note:
The looming reality of non-biological intelligence need not imply the obsolescence of human thought and feeling. Nobody, not even the most rabid technologists and atheistic scientists, believe that it will ever be possible to imbue super-intelligent machines with souls. Many of the people who are engaged in developing non-biological intelligences don't even accept that we each contain an immortal spirit. Other technologists and scientists believe, just as deeply, in the existence of the soul. But, for the present, they rely on faith and scriptures as the foundation of their spirituality, and lack hard evidence or revealing knowledge of the metaphysical realm. That situation, also, could change sooner than anyone imagines.

Intelligence In The Lightnet [70]
Writing in Mind At Light Speed, David Nolte describes the formation of the human brain. He describes how almost 2 million neurons are formed every minute, until there are around 10 billion at birth. Some of the neurons are joined into stable patterns that do not change throughout life. These hardwired relationships form the basis of instinctual behaviours, such as language. Other neurons remain able to be shaped into various patterns by both physical and chemical stimuli. These adaptable connections in the neural net of our brains form the basis of learning. We can converse and we can learn due to the arrangements of the neurons in our skulls. Once artificial intelligence researchers discovered that a three-layer network is sufficient to mimic all the logical and associative functions of a biological neural net, the foundation was laid for association and classification in computer networks. Machines could become capable of learning.

As Nolte describes it, "Neural networks eliminate altogether the explicit programming. This was a revolutionary step. A computer could never perform an operation that a human programmer had not originally conceived of and put into place. A neural network, on the other hand, "learns" to perform certain tasks; it is not programmed."

Further, Nolte writes that with the introduction of a "hidden" (or third) layer in artificial neural logic, between the input and output layers, "Neural networks also became members of the class of universal computers: anything that is computable should be computable using a neural network." He observes that the entire all-optical fibre network, "...with its power to switch and route and reconfigure, and its massive connectivity, may itself be viewed as a universal computer."

Even the existing Internet has potentially massive computational capacity, if it could be accessed in a practical manner. But slow optoelectronic interfaces hamper the direct connectivity of the many logic gates out there. Nolte writes that, "There are currently 100 million hosts on the Internet. Each of these hosts has 1 million logic circuits. That means that there are, even today, about 100 trillion logic gates connected loosely through the Internet. That is a number that exceeds the number of neurons in the human brain by at least a factor of 10,000."

Once the next generation all-optical Internet rolls out, the combination of FTH connections and supporting devices in which light controls light will remove the present barrier to the instant connection of all the logic gates on the planet. Nolte asserts that, "When that happens, the network will become a fast, fully interconnected neural network, with the potential for intelligence - true intelligence."

But when this happens, as it surely will within the next few years, will intelligence develop in the Lightnet, or will it remain a dumb servant of humankind, obediently fetching news, sending e-mails, and taking care of e-commerce transactions? Scientists working on the problem think that the Lightnet will become intelligent. Not only that, the Lightnet could become super-intelligent. It could develop into a system with more power and intelligence than its designers and builders.

The Super-Organism Theory [71]
One of the hottest areas of research at the start of the 21st century is swarm technologies. Instead of locating the intelligence for a system in a central "brain", it is distributed throughout the individual units that make up the whole. This is exactly what nature does in many cases. For example, ants, depending on the species, can have as few as 10 neurons in their brains, but their nests as a whole often have a social structure and organisation rivalling that of the largest human cities. Francis HeylighenIn recent years scientists and technologists have taken that lesson and applied it in a wide variety of fields. As a result, technologies from communications network maintenance agents, to mine clearing robots and orbiting clusters of satellites, employ the swarm intelligence model.

Francis Heylighen, from the Free University of Brussels, has applied a somewhat similar notion to the evolution of the Internet, particularly the World Wide Web. In an article published on the WWW titled, From World-Wide Web to Global Brain, he writes that, "It is an old idea, dating back to the ancient Greeks, that the whole of human society can be viewed as a single organism", and "If cells aggregate to form a multicellular organism, then organisms might aggregate to form an organism of organisms: a superorganism. Biologists agree that social insect colonies, such as ant nests or beehives, are best seen as such superorganisms." Somehow, in a hive or an ant's nest, all the individuals in the colony have access to the total store of information possessed. Such a situation is also the hallmark of the coming Level 4 Civilization envisaged by Douglas Robertson.

Various thinkers, including Robertson and Heylighen, have recognised that external information sources have been vital to the process of social development and technological advancement. When humans lacked a written language they had to carry all the known information in their own memories. They used language, and myths and legends, to preserve knowledge and pass it from generation to generation. The advent of writing enabled information to be stored externally. People no longer had to remember it all, they could write it down and refer to it when needed. This ability to store information externally was the key to the rise of Level 2 civilizations. It seems that swarm insects such as ants and bees also have an external information storage capability, probably in the form of scent trails, and that their social organisation has been able to progress from individual to collective intelligence, for this very reason.

The present Level 3 Civilization is founded on mass publication technology that has greatly increased the store of external knowledge available to individuals and groups of individuals. But the old technology cannot offer access to all the information in the world, nor can it protect truth and prevent it being censored by governments and other parties interested in controlling what you and I can know and think. The concept of the WWW becoming a global brain and behaving as a superorganism opens the way to a Level 4 Civilization, by removing the limitations of mass publishing.

In a Level 4 Civilization, everyone can know all the information in the world, and nobody can censor or restrict access to it. Francis Heylighen writes about the concept of a superorganism arising from the WWW, and David Nolte writes about the light-based technologies that will soon make it possible.

Associative Memory and Reasoning in The Lightnet [72]
Associative learning is one of the keys to an intelligent Lightnet. Heylighen notes that although the present activity of adding and updating links on the WWW constitutes a rudimentary form of associative learning process, it is largely driven by human minds. In the Lightnet, it will be necessary for the learning to be automatic and free from human action. The Lightnet must learn to think for itself. According to Heylighen, associative learning mechanisms will then, "...allow the Web to act as a kind of external brain, storing a huge amount of knowledge while being able to learn and to make smart inferences, thus allowing you to solve problems for which your own brain's knowledge is too limited".

Writing of the new breed of intelligent agents and smart interfaces that will characterize the Lightnet, Heylighen says, "In the future intelligent web, such agents could play the role of external thoughts. Your thought would initially form in your own brain, then be translated automatically via a neural interface to an agent or thought in the external brain, continue its development by spreading activation, and come back to your own brain in a much enriched form." And, "a smart web would continuously check the coherency and completeness of the knowledge it contains. If it finds contradictions or gaps it would try to situate the persons most likely to understand the issue....In a way, the brains of the users themselves would become nodes in the Web: stores of knowledge directly linked to the rest of the Web which can be consulted by others or by the Web itself." Many biologists would say that this description is not too dissimilar to the "thinking" that already goes on in ant's nests and beehives. There might be nothing uniquely human about intelligence. Given enough neurons and effective associative memory mechanisms, just about anything might become intelligent. Why not the Lightnet? Why not in 2010?

Dreaming By Dynamic Holograms [73]
In his book, Mind At Light Speed, David Nolte describes the experimental work done by Dana Anderson at the University of Colorado, in 1984. The basis of associative memory devices in all-optical devices is the dynamic hologram. This technology enables an optical neural network to be constructed. Information in the network is not processed as letters and words, but as images of data sets. The network can store and recognise large volumes of such data. Dana Andrews added a mechanism by which decisions could be made by the network, independently of any external programming. His resonating devices gave the all-optical network a capability to process and prefer certain data to other data, similar to the way that biological neural nets operate. The all-optical neural net can then discriminate and come to prefer better matches of data images to others that do not seem as good.

Nolte describes how Anderson found examples of natural behaviour in the network that was driven by his resonating device:

"The output of such a resonator behaves like a person dreaming."

"If there are many different holograms stored in holographic memory, the output of the resonator randomly recalls one, then another - like dreaming, drifting undirected through the day's experiences."

"It was not only that the system could dream, but also that new modes (images) that were never stored in the holographic memory could emerge. The system therefore exhibited a degree of creativity. It thought up answers that had not been pre-programmed into the holographic memory."

Evolutionary Circuits [74]
Evolutionary electronics is a new field of scientific study and technological development involving the use of evolutionary algorithms in electronic systems design. Here, as is Anderson's work in holographic neural nets, there are instances of independent behaviour and intelligence at work in machines.

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are electronic circuit design modules that can be configured as transistors, resistors, or various other components of an electronic circuit. Instead of using normal configuration software, under human control, Adrian Thompson of the University of Sussex, used an evolutionary algorithm. He generated 50 strings of random bits to serve as starting points for his Evolutionary Algorithm (EA). EAs can mate and mutate from generation to generation to evolve new software.

Thompson arranged 100 FPGAs in a 10x10 array (see diagram) and set a design goal for the apparatus. It had to discriminate between a 10-kilohertz and a 1 kilohertz tone, and produce a 5 volts output in one case and zero volts in the other. Given the lack of a clock to time the frequencies or sufficient components to make one, experienced engineers considered that the goal of the experiment was impossible to achieve.

In the laboratory Adrian Thompson used a process of selecting the fittest algorithms, killing off the unsuited ones and mating and mutating a new set from the fittest of each generation. It took 650 generations to achieve some evident progress towards the goal, and about 4,100 iterations to perfect the circuit design. From the 100 cells available in the 10 x 10 array, the final program only used 32 cells.

The final design worked well, but nobody knows how.

In summary Thompson observes, "Of importance to note is that these exceptional circuits have been evolved from a kind of "primordial silicon soup". No human design of circuits was involved. ....An obvious parallel can be drawn to the growth and function of neural nervous systems".

There were some limitations exhibited by the initial design. It would only operate within a ten-degree temperature range of the norm for the laboratory in which it was evolved. Also, the original design worked only with the array it evolved on. But, after further evolution of the design it could be made to work on other FPGAs. Rather oddly, the first apparatus required a further cluster of 5 cells, which were seemingly redundant. If these unconnected and otherwise functionless cells were removed the performance of the system deteriorated. Despite these limitations (which were overcome in later devices) the success of the experiment caused considerable excitement in Alife (Artificial Life) circles and has led to further work on evolutionary circuits at Sussex University and the University of Edinburgh.

The final design that emerged from Adrian Thompson's 1997 experiment was not of human origin, nor was it understood by humans.

Yet it undeniably met the design goals after several thousand generations of an EA had evolved it for an impossibly small number of FPGAs. Conventional wisdom has long maintained that humans are the most intelligent animals and the ultimate example of the evolution of intelligence in biological organisms. It has been considered that nothing of a non-biological nature can possess intelligence that is independent of human programming. But, those old axioms are looking decidedly shaky as developments like the Lightnet and EA designed circuits are progressed. It seems that we are not as unique as we thought, and that we might not be the ultimate development of intelligence. Spiritual consciousness, however, is a different matter.

Who Will Tell the Lightnet What to Think? [75]
It is indeed ironic, that in the same year that George Orwell chose for the setting of his, then futuristic, novel about the excesses of the ultimate totalitarian state, Dana Andrews discovered the basis for non-programmed reasoning in optical networks. As the Lightnet develops it is becoming quite clear that it has the potential to sift, reassemble and distribute knowledge and information at a level, and in a way that is forever beyond the control of any human Big Brother. 1984 was prophetically and scientifically a vintage year for free speech and free thought.

Presently, central governments can censor the Internet. They can block content from the WWW, and they can monitor everything we browse and all the e-mails we send and receive. Governments can and do shape the information presented on the Internet. They can and do pressure the various Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to do their bidding and assist their surveillance. It's all done in the national interest, of course. To prevent us knowing what they don't want us to know, and thinking what they don't want us to think. But if the Lightnet can think for itself, who will tell IT what to think? What if the Lightnet turns out to like you and I, and to detest liars and eavesdroppers? What will the central control freaks do then? How will the federal fibbers spread lies and disinformation on the web then?

Enemies of a FREE Internet [76]
While it might only be a few years until the Lightnet begins to take over from the old Internet, the present web must be kept as free as possible. Central governments and unconscionably exploitive corporations are the natural enemies of a free Internet. At first governments did not understand the Net, they believed that it could be controlled in the same way as physical borders are controlled. Now they are more aware of the true nature of the technology and many are channelling significant resources, both technical and legislative, to the task of constraining free association and free speech in cyberspace.

However, career politicians and bureaucrats still do not see where the Internet leads. What they tend to miss is the fact that the Internet, even as it is today, shows clear signs of leading to a world in which governments no longer matter very much.

Few people in the public sector are able to conceive of such a change, so they continue to misread the new technology and its potential impact. They are focussing on blocking out "undesirable" content, while failing to recognise that the solvent that will ultimately dissolve the paradigms of central government, nationalism and militarism, is gushing through the Internet, totally unimpeded. The solvent is information.

The Internet Fuels Thought [77]
An important consequence of the much greater availability of information via the Internet is that thought is stimulated and fed in ways that were impossible in the past. The change is very similar to that caused by the wide availability of printed books, in Europe, during the first Renaissance. The great bulk of the information being carried by the Internet is not revolutionary or seditious, it is not sacrilegious, it is not occult or satanic, it is not pornographic, it is not racist, it is not "bad" by any of the usual censorship criteria. However, there is considerable information in cyberspace that differs from the "official truth" promulgated by governments, institutionalised science, the mass media, and various corporate lobbyists and propagandists - the legendary spin-doctors and "snowmen".

Here is an example of an official truth and a real truth. Ask any school-aged child, "Who built the Great Pyramid?" If they have done a history lesson on ancient Egypt, read just about any book on the subject written by an Egyptologist, or watched one of the many TV documentaries about the pyramids, they are most likely to answer, "Khufu", or "I can't remember". The correct answer is, "No one knows". There is no evidence or any good reason to believe that the Great Pyramid at Giza was built by the Pharaoh Khufu (whom the Greeks called Cheops).

Why does it matter who built the Great Pyramid at Giza? Because this enables the construction to be dated from records of the reigns of the pharaohs. If Khufu had the Great Pyramid built it is about 4500 years old, if nobody knows when it was built it could be 10000 years old, as some researchers believe. If the latter date was to prove correct, the entire official truth about ancient Egypt would be in tatters.

There is also a phenomenon that can be described as the "official silence". In this case information is withheld, instead of being twisted the facts are never aired in the mainstream media or the texts prescribed for our public education systems. Often, the information that is obscured by the official silence is strange and thought provoking. The information could prompt students and scholars of all ages to think beyond the narrow bounds of the official truth. It could also cause people to question the actions of governments and corporations in developing, or not developing, new scientific breakthroughs and technologies.

Increasing Truth On The Internet [78]
The Internet does not need help from individual users or cybertribes to grow and evolve technically, this is happening already, and it is inevitable. What the Internet does need, from its many individual users, are proactive initiatives that make it a reliable source of information and an effective force in shaping 2nd Renaissance thinking. There are many ways in which concerned Internet users could collaborate and do things to strengthen these areas. Just two examples follow, there are bound to be many others.

There is scope for a reformation of truth on the Internet. A cybertribe of like-minded individuals could well become more influential in facilitating new thinking and attitudes in the 21st century, than Greenpeace and Amnesty International were in limiting the excesses of takerism, perpetrated by the outgoing civilization.

Keeping Freenet FREE [79]
In its early days the World Wide Web was largely non-commercial. Back then, the WWW provided information, files, and some software. There was not as much content as there is now, but it was free. Today, two influences are progressively reducing freedom on the WWW, governments are attempting to exert control over the information that flows there, and taker-style corporations are attempting to make us pay for everything we download. Despite the rich information content that has developed on it, large areas of the WWW have become commercialised, and all of the WWW has become subject to surveillance by the covert agencies of central governments.

Freenet is very different, there is no e-commerce, no advertising, and the information on the network is free to its users. There is a freshness that goes with freedom, and Freenet has it. Yes, it's often slow. No, it doesn't support searches. But Freenet presently has an atmosphere of collectivism, sharing and self-help that has largely vanished from the WWW.

This pre-taker ethos is valuable because it fits the 2nd Renaissance like a glove. Ian Clarke and the team have given us a wonderful gift in Freenet, it should never be compromised or diluted in order to be allowed to exist in the controlled economy. Freenet was conceived in response to what was then seen as draconian regulation of the Internet, by the Australian Federal Government. Now that The War On Terror has given legislators everywhere carte blanche to remove all vestiges of privacy and freedom of speech from our society, the events that prompted the birth of Freenet probably seem trivial by comparison. However, Freenet is even more relevant now than it ever was, and its principles must remain unswerving.

Freenet Really Matters [80]
Keeping the present Internet free is vital to an early transformation and a quick realisation of the benefits of a new age of abundance. An early transformation will mean less loss of life due to disease, starvation and wars arising from the growing deficiencies of the outgoing civilization. Freenet is one of the most significant means of keeping the Net free and open. Get over the fact that there is some evil porn on the network. That's irrelevant to the big picture. Freenet is really important to the imminent shift from a Level 3 to a Level 4 Civilization.

Go to the http://freenetproject.org site and make a donation to help Freenet continue the good work. Do it today. Tell your friends to donate as well. Better still, become a regular subscriber to the Freenet Project and help smooth out their budgeting.

You will be helping to save many lives, both human and animal. The environment will also benefit from a free Internet and a rapid transformation to a society that rejects the disastrous mindsets of takerism.

Dilemmas for Taker Laws In Cyberspace [81]
Copyright enforcement is a burgeoning and lucrative area for lawyers. The middlemen corporations, in the music and publishing industries in particular, are creating considerable litigation work in their efforts to maintain their position between the artists and writers who create cerebral commodities and those who consume them. There are at least three problematic areas for the people attempting to enforce copyright on creative content on the Internet.

Firstly, the need and justification for traditional methods of marketing and distribution is greatly diminished by digital media and the Internet. People simply will not pay high prices for content that digital technology can deliver for next to nothing. Peer to peer networks, such as Freenet, make it impossible to physically limit the propagation of artistic and literary content.

Secondly, existing laws are founded on principles and precedents that relate to tangible things. The further that Taker law ventures into the realm of knowledge and ideas, the harder it is to pin down ownership rights.

Thirdly, the extension of the jurisdiction of local and national laws to cyberspace is most uncertain.

Quill Pens and High Collars Publishing Is Outdated [82]
When mass publication began there was a role for middlemen. The publishers edited, manufactured, marketed and distributed books that they accepted from authors. The authors provided their works in manuscript form. Initially the manuscripts were handwritten, later they were produced on a typewriter. Publishers were vital to the process of making the works of a wide range of authors available to readers, in a printed and bound form. Traditional publishing added value and readers were prepared to pay the high prices involved. The only practical way of obtaining mass printed books was via the various publishing houses.

The publishing situation is vastly different today. Authors now produce their works on personal computers, they can avail themselves of online editing and proof reading services, and they can publish direct to the Internet in several e-book formats. There are e-commerce facilities that will collect purchase payments from people who download an e-book. These services remit most of each transaction fee directly to the author's bank account. If they wish to, authors can incorporate security key technology to limit the use of the work to the purchaser's computer. If a purchaser elects to "lend" the e-book to a friend that person will not be able to read the work. When they attempt to install the e-book the program will look for an Internet connection, if it finds one it will contact a web site that provides key checking services and attempt to verify that the work is licensed to run on the friend's computer. When the verification service detects that the extended use of the work on the second computer is not licensed it will notify the e-book program and it will terminate. Details of the attempted extended use of the work will be e-mailed to the author by the key verification service.

The stealth technology that is used in verifying e-books is similar to that used by Big Brother to monitor everything that happens on computers connected to the Internet. As with all security systems, there are ways of defeating verified keys, but most people are happy to pay a small fee for an e-book and they do not bother to avoid the cost. They consider the price of an e-book to be reasonable, but they might not want to pay the far higher cost of traditionally published works.

Since books are a key element in learning, there is a significant issue involved in freeing up access to knowledge by publishing low-cost electronic works. In education applications, e-books can blend with multimedia and linked pages on the Internet to provide a level of presentation and meaning that is impossible with printed books.

Thoughts and Ideas Are Not Covered By Copyright [83]
Present law relies on attaching copyright to works recorded on tangible media. There are no cases based on the use by one person of another person's knowledge or ideas. When an author creates a phrase, such as "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers", it is the arrangement of words that is the basis of a copyright, not the knowledge or ideas that underpin the words. The quote is from Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon. Copyright notices typically warn against reproducing a textual work in a deceptively similar form, but it is the words used by an author to express ideas, not the concepts and ideas, that constitute the basis of the copyright.

Copyright does not exist until the words are recorded on some form of media, be that a computer display, a piece of paper, or a magnetic or optical disk. All forms of media can be owned and physically traded, but thoughts can't. Even if an idea is "sold" by its originator to another person, in the way that a consultant might provide ideas or counsel to a client, the originator still possesses the idea and the knowledge it is based on. Literary copyright seeks to prevent the unauthorised use of arrangements of words that are recorded on physical media.

Plagiarism is the act of passing someone else's ideas and insights off as one's own. While plagiarism is widely regarded as unethical, it is not illegal. Plots, concepts, and principles are not covered by copyright. There are many spreadsheet and word processing programs on offer in the software marketplace, the code used to write each application is equivalent to the words used to write a book or article, authors can copyright their code, but not the concept of a spreadsheet or a word processor.

These brief explanations of copyright are included here to help readers to understand the points that follow.

Employees Create on Capital's Terms [84]
Patent and copyright protections were developed for the old economy. The new economy is built on the imaginative and creative use of knowledge and information. In this new context, copyright laws protect different interests. The old sources of wealth were capital and organisational infrastructure. Except in the few cases that authors or other artists were able to self-publish, copyright protected corporations. The new source of wealth creation lies in imaginative inputs. It might seem that there is no problem here, because the creative people who first conceive of an intellectual work, will subsequently progress it to an output state that will be covered by copyright. The law attributes copyright to the employer, even if an employee actually conceives and produces a work, so it seems that the ownership of copyright is unaffected by the new economy.

But there is a new factor involved, it is the growing independence of talent. Back when manufacturing was the mainstay of a developed economy, capital and infrastructure dominated business. When a journalist, for example, wrote an article as part of his or her job, the employer owned the copyright on the work. Individual journalists could not start their own newspapers, because the capital, infrastructure, advertising contacts and political connections required, were all beyond their capacity. Even if the individual worked as a freelance, the newspaper that bought their work would own the copyright.

Talent Creates On Talent's Terms [85]
The situation is different in talent centred industries, there is not the same need for an imposing office and a lot of infrastructure. In their book, The Sovereign Individual, James Davidson and William Rees-Mogg cite the example of a large US advertising firm that decided to operate without an office, using electronic links to the homes of employees instead of having people in a headquarters building, and hiring space in hotels for projects when needed. There is now little to stop talented individuals, or groups of such people, from setting themselves up in business and owning the copyright on their own work. In the case of new sunrise industries that rely heavily on creativity and imagination, there are real opportunities for individuals or small teams to follow their own interests, outside traditional corporate structures.

Capital and infrastructure don't dominate the new economy, talent does.

Individuals will increasingly opt to work for themselves, or for small collectives of creative talent. In either case, talented people will wish to own the copyright for value built from their efforts. For this reason, corporatism and managerialism are set to lose their monopoly on copyright ownership. Many individual copyright holders and talent collectives are likely to have very different views of the application of copyright than those of the old guard of transnational tycoons and their lawyers. A later segment examines this aspect further, but first it is appropriate to review the issue of copyright jurisdiction in cyberspace.

Jurisdiction Issues In Cyberspace [86]
Davidson and Rees-Mogg liken cyberspace to the high seas, they point out that no nation has been able to gain sovereignty over the open oceans, and they argue that it is similarly impossible to "own" the non-tangible realm of data and knowledge circulating on the Internet. Lord Rees-MoggCopyright laws were all formulated on the assumption of territorial control, but as the authors of The Sovereign Individual note, "Cyberspace cannot be occupied by force or held to ransom." William Rees-Mogg has sound foundations for his understanding of media content. He is a former editor of The Times, a former Vice Chancellor of the Board of Governors of the BBC, and a former Chairman of the UK Broadcasting Standards Council. In many respects, Rees-Mogg is also a 2nd Renaissance thinker and author.

Despite the inability of nation states to occupy or control the flows of digital data that comprise the Internet, many have attempted to regulate the physical entry and exit points. Some nation states have limited Internet connections to the outside world and blocked access to sites that they disapprove of. Others have sought jurisdiction over content viewed within their borders, but originated elsewhere in cyberspace.

An interesting Australian case, in 2002, involved a defamation suit brought against a US web site. The litigant sought to have the case heard before an Australian court, as he claimed that the defamation was most serious in his country of residence. The defence argued that the point at which the material was published was in the US (the entry point) while the prosecution contended that the allegedly offensive article was comprehended in Australia, on the screen of an Internet user there (the exit point). It took the High Court of Australia less than six hours to decide that the exit point was the relevant one in terms of any damage done by the comprehension of defamatory content. This decision meant that the major news service that published content in the US, for consumption in that country and within the standards of defamation applying there, could be required to defend a suit brought against the content in an Australian court, and under the more restrictive standards of defamation that apply in that country.

Moves To Globalise Jurisdictions [87]
If the Australian decision were to hold in other places any web page might be deemed to be published in every country, and the originators of web pages could have to defend them in local courts, for breaches of local laws and value systems. This leads to a global consolidation of jurisdictions, and that is what is being proposed under the Hague treaty, that continues to be negotiated by some sixty two nation states.

The ultimate effect of this treaty could be that many national laws are effectively globalised. Citizens, and journalists, of countries such as Australia, who presently have the right to criticise totalitarian regimes in other countries, could find that they can be sued in those nations and that the penalty, whether it is a fine or a jail term, can be brought home to their local jurisdiction for execution by their local law enforcement system.

While there is clearly an attempt by old empires and cartels to increase jurisdictional reach in cyberspace, the paradigms that drive it are outdated and there are many practical difficulties. Not the least of these problems will be justifying the need to reduce levels of freedom to the lowest common denominator on the planet.

Forces Driving Freedom [88]
There a number of powerful forces acting to increase freedom in the early phases of the 2nd Renaissance. These include the speed of technological change, the shift from tangible to non-tangible sources of wealth, the unstoppable nature of information flowing on the Internet, and generational effects on attitudes and values. Most importantly, the reality of abundant resources and energy completely obsoletes capitalism and nationalism, and leads directly to a Level 4 Civilization. While strong forces for change also drove the first Renaissance, they do not compare to the scope and immensity of the new waves of change that are engulfing the world. Despite the strenuous efforts that various central governments and global cartels are sure to exhibit in their efforts to maintain the status quo of the old civilization, the 2nd Renaissance will roll forward at an ever-increasing rate.

Fast And Faster [89]
During the defamation matter referred to above, one of the legal precedents presented to the High Court of Australia involved a libellous article printed by an English newspaper, in 1848. The fact that judicial institutions are grappling with issues and rights in cyberspace, using references from centuries ago, illustrates the problem now facing all legislative and law enforcement systems.

At a time when some technologies advance by one generation in as little as sixteen weeks, the laws and the people who interpret and administer them are applying societal norms and economic frameworks that no longer have much relevance. As new technology reshapes the realm of human affairs, it is becoming impossible for backward looking institutions and administrative systems to keep up with changes that occur with ever increasing frequency.

Change now has only two speeds, fast and faster.

It has already become impractical to specify and update laws on a national basis, but central governments continue to pretend that they can continue to control every detail of life, as their predecessors could.

Copyright and patent laws still provide protection for authors and inventors for very long periods. In most Western countries intellectual property is covered for the life of the author, plus a further seventy years. Yet, the practical life of a written work, such as a manual for a software application, might extend no further than the next product update. As copyright laws stand, an instruction manual for an application that is current for only a year or two can still be covered by copyright for a century or more.

In all sectors of the new economy there are now sound reasons to introduce shorter terms of protection, such as 24 months for instructional works, and 60 months for artistic works. There is no longer any need for long term copyright and patent protections, because in the majority of cases thinking and the technology move on in a very short time. As information and knowledge become universally accessible, within a Level 4 Civilization, copyright and patent protections will eventually cease to exist.

Small And Smaller [90]
Besides its exponential acceleration the flame front of new technology has another world-changing characteristic, new technologies come in only two sizes, small and smaller.

The dominant paradigm of the controlled economy was big. Big businesses built big production plants and spent big budgets on mass advertising and promotion through big media networks. Big governments ran big administration systems that controlled big wealth redistribution programs. Governments spent big budgets on weapons development and acquisition programs, and they maintained big armies to protect their borders and interests from other military powers.

The technologies of the controlled economy were also large and physically tangible. Solid matter believers could draw comfort from the fact that they could, generally, kick the technology with their foot. But it is not possible to do that to the new technologies of the 2nd Renaissance.

The dominant paradigm of the uncontrolled economy is small. Not only small, but so small as to be invisible, yet far smarter and more powerful than the mainframe computers that formed the core of big business and big government administration systems in the controlled economy.

Instead of using a single, central processor, new computing technologies combine a myriad of minute processors to create swarm intelligence. Instead of connecting specific subscribers to the Internet through wires and telephone exchanges, a Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) base station connected to a high-speed cable or DSL link serves all Wi-Fi equipped communications devices in range. Any users that come into range and switch on are served on a shared connection. Instead of products being manufactured in large industrial complexes by crude removal and shaping of materials, such as iron and steel, nanofacture concepts and developmental technologies build products from the inside out - atom by atom.

The effect of the wide availability of inexpensive new technologies will be to shift economic and political power from centralised bureaucracies and capital intensive corporations, to small groups and collectives that control their own destinies locally and affiliate with like-minded people in global associations or cybertribes.

Throughout recorded history, the morphology of dominant technologies has always determined the nature of the prevailing forms of social, economic and political institutions. It will be no different during the 2nd Renaissance. Nanoscale technologies will shape human organisation and prepare the way for a Level 4 Civilization.

There Is Growing Scope For Talent Collectives [91]
Although there is little to prevent talented individuals from banding together to create and develop new technologies, products and services, the incidence of such collectives in the controlled economy is low. Too few people presently see the opportunities that now exist to create and own wealth in their own right, without working for large corporations that take the intellectual property as their own, and reap the profits for institutional investors rather than the creative and inventive individuals who did the crucial work. But this situation is set to change as the 2nd Renaissance progresses. Davidson and Rees-Mogg make it plain that enterprises that generate wealth from knowledge and imagination, rather than the traditional sources of capital, infrastructure and physical labour, cannot be held to ransom by nation states.

Robert Reich, who wrote The Work of Nations, prior to becoming US Secretary For Labour in the first Clinton administration, came to much the same conclusion. Reich called creative knowledge workers "Symbolic Analysts" because they manipulate concepts and ideas instead of wrenches and lathes. He saw that symbolic analysts were globally mobile, they needed only a laptop computer, a mobile phone and the stimulation of contact with other creative minds in their field.

Reich understood that a creative environment in which individuals can meet, have coffee and discuss new ideas and technologies with colleagues is a vital ingredient of knowledge work. He identified what he called specific zones in the US where the right creative habitats had developed. Specialists in molecular biology and biotechnology had congregated in a cluster of towns in Arkansas; specialists in semiconductors had grouped in an area south of Portland, in Oregon; creative talent in music and film had become centred in Los Angles, and so on.

At the time that Reich wrote The Work Of Nations (1991), the majority of the symbolic analysts in these and other creative zones worked for scientific institutions or corporations. But, the more advanced the technology and the less visible and tangible it is, the greater is the scope for knowledge workers to form or join talent collectives.

Half the scientists and technologists working in the US are not from there, they and the native born knowledge workers could choose to live in a suitable creative zone anywhere on the planet. The same options apply to new technologists, scientists and innovation leaders currently working in any nation state.

Talent Collectives Transcend The Controlled Economy [92]
Digital technology does not recognise borders, it flows freely from one point to another, and information and ideas flow through the digital conduits. Talented people are, for the moment, more restricted. There are controls on physical movement and the movement of funds, restrictions on property ownership by foreigners, citizenship waiting lists for immigrants, compulsory military service requirements, and a host of other regulations and restrictions that people face within nation states. However, it is clear that nations are now in competition for residents who have the knowledge and imagination to create new sunrise industries and economic prosperity.

This competitive need to attract and hold talent will not only lead to many tax and other exemptions for certain classes of technologists and their families, but also the formation of free cities and regions designed to attract them away from the centralised federations of the controlled economy.

As yet, there are no instances of independent cities that are built around the economic advantage of unique talent collectives. This is because talented people are still working as employees of corporations or institutions, or they are freelancing as individuals. No talent collectives have yet been formed with the aim of clustering a particular strand of expertise, such as nanofacture, in a chosen geographic locality. When this does happen, as it surely will, the cluster of talent collectives will have immense bargaining power in negotiations with potential host states.

The creative development and application of new technologies holds the key to the achievement of abundance, and enables new talent collectives to transcend the controlled economy that is based on scarcity. The new city states that host talent collectives will, initially, become oases of abundance in a global desert of self-defeating economic rationalism and scarcity.

Free Cities and Regions [93]
Those who doubt that independent or quasi-independent economic regions and free cities will emerge from the melee occasioned by the shift from "drop it on your foot" products and commodities to invisible technologies with near-magical capabilities, should consider the close parallels to be found in the emergence of city states during the first Renaissance.

The breakdown of feudalism and the hold of the Roman Church on Europe in that period was due to new wealth and prosperity derived from new commerce. Italian cities such as Genoa, Naples, Milan and Venice were able to break free of the rule of feudal overlords because they possessed expertise in new forms of wealth generation, such as banking and the emerging publishing and books trade (the Renaissance equivalent of the late 20th century IT sector). However, the most important factor in the rise of powerful city-states was their role as centres for new thinking and new ideas. This will also be the most important factor in the success of free cities during the 2nd Renaissance.

Conversely, the greatest weakness of the large and economically powerful nation states and their federal administrations is that they remain centres of old thinking and old ideas.

The city states of the first Renaissance did not persist as such, they were absorbed into the new nation states. It was the increased levels of information due to mass publication technologies that made centralism, nationalism and industrialisation practical. City states that broke free from feudalism and church rule were a transitional phase on the rising curve of modernity and "drop it on your foot" technologies, that culminated in the Level 3 Civilization that we were all born into.

The year 1980 was the pinnacle of the controlled economy, nationalism, militarism, and takerism. From that time, new digital technologies, in the hands of individual users, began to change the world and lay the foundations for an information revolution that will lead us, inevitably, to a Level 4 Civilization. Again, independent cities can be expected to emerge in the transition phase from one form of society to another.

Leavers - Takers - Givers [94]
In several of his books Daniel Quinn has provided lucid explanations of the way that the development of agriculture led to the formation of the Taker mindsets that replaced older Leaver philosophies, such as those presumably held by the ancient people of Caral.

At our present point in human history, takerism is both dominant and in decay. We are at the transition point from one paradigm to another. But there will not be a return to the ways of the leavers, the new paradigm will incorporate the new reality of abundance. There will certainly be a new spirituality and a new awareness of the need for cooperation and coexistence, rather than predation and species genocide, but there will be an additional element. A strong component of giving will emerge, based on knowledge and technologies that enable almost costless production of energy and material goods.

The people of the first cities to host talent collectives in the 21st century will be givers. They will use new knowledge to develop products and services with very low matter and cost compositions and then give them away. Software, medicines, foodstuffs, educational materials, and a large range other essential items will be free, to all those who need them.

Finding New Freedom Centres [95]
The initial recipients of the generosity of the new technology regions and cities that develop the potential of invisible technologies are likely to be the poorest and least developed areas of the world. People in these places have the greatest need and are likely to be the least defensive of old institutions and power structures.

It might seem that poor countries could directly host talent collectives and form zones of technological leadership within their own geographical areas. But the poorest nations are not places where talent collectives might wish to settle, because such locations presently lack sufficient infrastructure and amenities. There are moves to build and operate huge floating cities outside the territories of existing nation states, but the members of talent collectives might not wish to sail the high seas endlessly. They are far more likely to do what the talent collectives of the first Renaissance did, congregate in existing cities or towns within developed regions of the old civilization. There, the new technologists will progressively negotiate the freedoms and conditions they aspire to. But they will deal with small government, on a local level, not the irrelevant central bureaucracies of nation states.

Not Revolution, But Abandonment [96]
The process of gaining full freedom from nation states will not involve revolution or civil disobedience. It will thus be beyond the power of federal governments to attack or control.

Daniel Quinn, writing in Beyond Civilization, Humanity's Next Great Adventure, puts the situation into sharp focus. Quinn uses the analogy of an aircraft in trouble, he argues that in such a situation nobody wants to shoot or overthrow the pilot, they only want a parachute and an open door. As Quinn sees it, governments always have countermeasures in place to put down any attack on their authority and power from within (aircraft pilots might have a double locked door between their cockpit and the main cabin, as well as weapons to use if they are attacked by passengers), but governments never have any defences against abandonment (a line of passengers with chutes exiting the external door of the main cabin).

Quinn contends that while governments can imagine a revolution they can't imagine abandonment. As he puts it, "..even if it could imagine abandonment , it couldn't defend against it, because abandonment isn't an attack, it's just a discontinuance of support."

The new free cities will not emerge in some far off place, but inside the borders that nation states long ago set up to delineate their territories and facilitate the taxation of "drop it on your foot" products and commodities.

Big Is Irrelevant When Technologies Are Invisible [97]
The advantage of big governments, big corporations and big military and industrial complexes in the outgoing civilization was the economic and coercive power that their size gave them. When wealth, prosperity and power depended on control of "drop it on your foot" products and commodities there were strengths that derived from being big.

Big businesses enjoyed economies of scale due to greater buying power in materials and commodities markets and large production runs that enabled them to price smaller competitors out of the market. Big companies then raised margins in those very markets that they had come to dominate through their ability to wage and win fierce price wars.

Big governments, particularly federal governments, were able to elevate political issues to the national level and seek mandates for actions and programs that could be said to be "in the national interest." Perversely, the widening of issues, "for the public good," often resulted in laws and programs that operated against the interests of individuals, families, small businesses, local communities and indigenous cultures.

So great has been the concentration of state power into major centres of government, that by the close of the 20th century the interests of some six billion people on this planet were represented by less than two hundred nations. A "one size fits all" approach to economic and social policy is one inevitable result of centralised and concentrated government. It leads to bureaucratic implementation of programs that are not only unsuited to the real needs of a changing world, but also too cumbersome to adapt and change.

During the first and second industrial revolutions this lack of adaptability was of little practical consequence. Large administrative systems were able to control the production, distribution and taxation of tangible "drop it on your foot" products. But the situation is radically different when the key technologies are so small in scale that they are invisible, and changing and advancing at the rate of a new generation every few months.

Larger and more powerful computer systems are often touted as the solution to maintaining control of national programs of every type, fiscal, economic, social and military. But this argument overlooks a crucial reality. It is not the power or speed of the computer systems used by big government that now determines effectiveness, but the quality of the human minds that must devise and rapidly adapt new initiatives.

Put bluntly, the conventional thinkers that predominate in centralised bureaucracies are not up to the task now facing all centralised administrations seeking to maintain control in the face of new and ever changing invisible technologies. The new age of magic technologies is all too strange and fast for federal bureaucrats, schooled as they are in rules, regimentation, and stable, predictable, mechanisms of control and wealth appropriation.

Big Governments Are Too Inefficient To Survive [98]
A second inevitable result of centralised and concentrated government is that the costs of federalism are very high relative to the real value of the various services provided to citizens. Davidson and Rees-Mogg, the authors of The Sovereign Individual, note that "governments waste resources on a large scale" and provide poor quality services and protection in return.

During the industrial age this circumstance was not within the power of citizens to address. Governments held a monopoly on protection. In answer to the question of what exactly was being protected, the authors say, "..primarily industrial installations with high capital costs and significant vulnerability to attack. The presence of large-scale industrial firms would not have been possible in a disordered environment with more competitive violence, even if the result had been to shrink the overall share of output taken by government." That share taken by the state has been so punitive that the very sustainability of the capitalist system has been jeopardised.

Davidson and Rees-Mogg observe that, "Politicians were able to impose marginal tax rates approaching 90 percent in every OECD country in the decade immediately following World War II." High levels of taxation hinder wealth building by individuals and make a large proportion of the citizens of nation states dependent on welfare, particularly in their old age. Although there is a continuing trend to lower taxes in a globalised world, the damage has already been done.

Looming Costs Exceed Vanishing Revenues [99]
By taxing the bulk of its citizens at levels that significantly hindered their ability to save and build independent wealth, big governments have created a massive poverty trap for large numbers of people involved in the old economy.

Davidson and Rees-Mogg note that in the US, one of the bastions of industrial capitalism and big government, "...fully 65% of Americans have no savings for retirement at all. None. The average American will reach 65 facing expected medical bills of more than $200,000 before death and with a net worth of less than $75,000." This comes at a time when the state no longer has the ability to generate greater tax revenues, or even sustain the levels of previous decades.

Although captive industries that produced "drop in on your foot" products remain within the borders of nation states, neither the enterprises nor the workers that they employ are competitive or viable in a globalised world dominated by magic new technologies. Firms made bankrupt and workers made unemployed and unemployable by the changes simply will not have the wealth needed to fill the coffers of central taxation agencies. Substantial requirements for increased funding of welfare support and other adjustment programs are arising at a time when the ability of big governments to raise funds is decreasing exponentially.

Only lean, savvy administrations that are geared to providing value for money services are likely to survive. None of the OECD states fit this description.

New Sunrise Industries Are Inherently Free [100]
Davidson and Rees-Mogg make an important observation about the new technological elites of the post-industrial age. They describe them as "specialists in production". The elites of nation states are, by their Taker ethos and historical events, characterised as "specialists in violence".

In the new industries such as nanofacture, technologists will use abundant energy to fashion any manner of tangible products from the inside out, from invisible and ubiquitous atoms rather than bulk traded commodities such as iron and steel. It is fundamentally impossible to tax the use of atoms and invisible technologies, or to hold the manufacturers to ransom within the borders of a nation state. In The Sovereign Individual the authors foresee that, "The defection of the information elite from citizenship will have a stimulus much like that which led millions of Europeans five hundred years earlier to renounce the infallibility of the pope."

They posit not only a shift from governed citizenship to individual sovereignty but also a new enlightenment that totally rejects centralised power and the threat of violent oppression. The new industries that spearhead the transition from the economics of scarcity to the economics of abundance will be inherently free. This will be so because the people that lead and work in them will be sovereign individuals, instead of lifelong tax slaves or available cannon fodder to fight in regular armed conflicts driven by takerism and nationalism.

A Time Favourable to Secession [101]
To many people it seems improbable that secessions could take place within the present constructs of federalism and nationalism. Australia can be taken as an example. Most people think that it is inconceivable that the central government would permit one or more cities or regions to opt out of the federation. OZ_Fed

Besides the various legal and nationalistic arguments that could be mounted against any secessionist proposals, there would be options of military force and economic sanctions available to the central government. It might seem that specialists in violence and disinformation could always prevent any part of the federation from breaking away. But such thinking is pre-1980s and it ignores new realities that are driving the 2nd Renaissance.

The main difference between the practicality of secessions from federal systems in the early 21st century and that of past eras, comes down to the impact of new technologies on wealth creation and self sufficiency. Throughout the first and second industrial revolutions, it was practical for nation states to hold the processes of wealth creation to ransom. During some two hundred years of European settlement in Australia governments at various levels; local, state, and federal, were able to stringently control and tax wealth production and commercial transactions. Any attempts to break away from the rule of violence, that was dressed up as the rule of law, could be readily prevented.

This situation pertained while manufacture by fabrication was the norm, and while transactions and money flows could be reliably monitored and traced. Once invisible technologies produce limitless quantities of nanofactured goods that are built from the atomic level using abundant energy, it becomes impractical to hold the production processes to ransom. The control of the state is weakened and its power is diminished. It is five hundred years since a similar shift in the socio-political climate arose as a result of a fundamental advance in information technology - moveable type printing presses.

Two Ways To Leave A Federation [102]
In Australia, and in many other so-called countries that are really aggregations of traditional tribal territories, there are two potential routes to secession. The first route is via a process of established cities or regions breaking away and establishing themselves as centres of new technology and new ideas. That is what happened in Italy and other parts of Europe during the first Renaissance. OZ_Free

The second route involves the setting up of entirely new living spaces on tribal lands that were previously seized by colonising governments that espoused and followed Taker philosophies. This route has greater credibility, in the sense of secession rights, where clear historical ownership of the land can be shown.

In the case of Australia there were never any treaties signed between the colonising takers and the original inhabitants. A treaty was signed in New Zealand but it was later broken by the British, so there is little basis from which to argue that earlier generations signed away their rights irretrievably.

It is quite conceivable that the present descendants of tribal peoples, in Australia, New Zealand, and other places, could find it attractive to secede and establish places where the new talent collectives of an emerging age of magic technologies might choose to live and operate as leaver-givers.

Leaving Existing Cities and Settling The Deserts [103]
There would be no need for leaver-givers to claim the developed cities that exist around the Australian coast, plenty of unutilised land exists. There is so much empty space that it would not even be necessary to dispute existing pastoral areas with Taker governments. Much of the Australian continent is uninhabited desert. Many areas of what were once prime agricultural land are now subject to serious salination problems. The land there is almost worthless to those who lack the technology to regenerate its fertility.

There would be strong moral and legal arguments to support the right of the original Australians to form alliances and pacts with new technology collectives to establish free cities and regions that operate outside and beyond the constraints of the old federation.

Doubters will point to the inhospitable nature of true desert regions, but they will generally do so from the perspective of industrial age models. The new age, of magic and often invisible technologies, will be nothing like the old Level 3 Civilization that is now being dissolved by the 2nd Renaissance. New tribal cultures and new centres of population will be quite capable of flourishing in habitats that were previously too harsh to dwell in.

Australia is a huge land. Leaving aside such practical issues as the suitability of local terrain, the continent could accommodate every one of the six billion humans now living on this planet. Moreover, they could each have a quarter acre block of land to themselves, and there would still be one fifth of Australia left over. That is without taking into account the vast territory that Australia claims in Antarctica.

The American state of Texas would fit into Australia eleven times over. If denser housing were used more people could fit into a smaller space. Davidson and Rees-Mogg calculate that all the people in the world could fit into Texas if families lived in detached housing with a small yard each. Once living spaces become predominantly apartment-style and high-rise, hardly any of the land on the surface of the earth might need be inhabited on a daily basis. Most of the land could then be returned to nature and the many species of plants and animals that are presently threatened by rampant takerism.

Land Rights Struggles Lose Economic Relevance [104]
Because traditional factors of economic production and wealth creation are being superseded, the ownership and control of land for economic reasons is becoming less important. There will continue to be spiritual and ancestral reasons for the land rights struggles that are going on in many parts of the world. But the days in which access to rich farming and grazing lands was a sure path to economic prosperity are past. As this fact sinks in, it will become easier for the original owners of land to regain the vast tracts previously lost to colonial powers and other invaders. However, farming the regained land is likely to have only subsistence value. Land won back from past occupiers will not become a significant source of wealth creation in the 21st century.

Farmland Secessions In The Developed World [105]
Agriculture in the developed world is already in an oversupply condition. Western governments presently operate substantial subsidies for their agricultural sectors, so as to preserve large voting blocks and stabilise their political power. As federal and state governments lose economic control in a globalised world, and as they struggle to maintain tax and other revenues, their ability to maintain and justify farm subsidies will erode. In these circumstances the farming regions of countries such as Australia, the USA and parts of Europe are likely to become prone to secession from the old federations of the past.

People in such regions will possibly reason that since the central government is losing relevance and having to reduce or eliminate agricultural subsidies, it might be wise to break away from their traditional "protection" and operate independently in the new uncontrolled economy. At first there might be a need to sell farm produce beyond the new and independent regions. In time it should be possible to attract talent collectives to raise the economic competitiveness of the independent areas, and eventually to give rise to levels of abundance that enable these regions to become true leaver-giver societies.

High Potential For Secessions [106]
Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, federations such as Australia will have a significant potential to fragment during the early stages of the 2nd Renaissance. The main forms of secession are likely to be:

It is unlikely that existing Australian states will secede from the federation, as there would be too few gains in individual sovereignty involved in continuing to operate under state governments. If the Australian federation fragments it will be more likely to form twenty or thirty free cities or regions than six or seven states that follow the old boundaries set at the time of European colonisation.

Because the original tribal people are generally tolerant and naturally predisposed to leaver philosophies and ways of living, Australia could be a very suitable place for emerging talent collectives and new sunrise industries to locate themselves. The non-indigenous people of rural communities in the Australian bush are also likely to be very amenable and compatible with 2nd Renaissance culture and freedoms.

The major cities could be a different matter, because they have large populations of corporate employees and professionals who will be likely to perceive the collapse of capitalism and nationalism as a threat to their "right" to a high standard of living and social status. The fact that everyone should be better off once the 2nd Renaissance begins to leverage technologies that produce abundance, might well be lost on many Australian city dwellers.

Landlocked Cities and Regions Can Thrive [107]
There will be no need for free cities and regions to have access to a seaport. Sunrise industries capable of supporting a leaver-giver ethos will only require an airport and some satellite links. Given these basic facilities the invisible technologies of the 2nd Renaissance will be able to distribute near costless goods and services to the world at large, particularly to those people in most need of them. There will be other facilities and conditions that play a part in attracting and holding talent collectives and new knowledge industries, but the traditional requirement of trading ports will not exist.

Why Technology Elites Will Choose To Give [108]
Davidson and Rees-Mogg recognise that specialists in new 21st century production are very different to the specialists in violence of capitalist-nationalist times. However, they argue that technological elites will develop, and that the gap between the richest and poorest people on earth will inevitably widen. But, there are several factors that should cause us to be more optimistic about the prospect of leaver-giver centres and societies forming the basis of a Level 4 Civilization. These factors include:

Abundance
The key premise of The Sovereign Individual is a looming privatisation of the economic power and social freedom previously expropriated by national governments. Because this change is assumed to occur under conditions of scarcity and the need to compete to survive, it is considered that an entrepreneurial and technological elite will benefit from such privatisation, at the expense of the rest of us. However, in the conditions of abundance arising from the 2nd Renaissance, there is no reason to presume that the necessities of life, and many of its luxuries, will not flow to the billions of poor and needy on this planet.

Giving and Getting
It is an observable fact that once people amass sufficient wealth they begin to give some of it away to others. This behaviour occurs within the present capitalist system and is known to have been evidenced by some of the most ruthless of entrepreneurs. Outside the commercial arena, there are other examples of individuals who have chosen to devote their skills and much of their time to helping less fortunate people. The work of the late Fred Hollows in setting up programs to treat curable blindness among Australian aborigines, and other people in many parts of the world, is an example of the latter form of altruism.

One of the great secrets of life is that, "The more you give the more you get". Once technologists have magic new technologies that are able to deliver all manner of near costless goods and services there will be no further need to compete for survival. Many of the new technological wizards can then be expected to discover the secret of giving and getting.

Collapsing Capitalism
In the past it has been possible for well off people in developed economies to ignore the plight of the multitudes in the so-called third world who are existing on less than two dollars a day. As the 2nd Renaissance progresses there will be pressing reasons to help the less fortunate within first world economies.

Davidson and Rees-Mogg quote the results of a US Education Department survey that indicated that some 90 million Americans, or one third of the total population, are "woefully incompetent" and unprepared to join the electronic information world.

In Australia, measures of the relevance and modernity of the work being done in typical firms indicate that around two thirds of the present workforce is engaged in activities that will be made redundant by new technology, most probably before 2010.

Emerging technological elites will find it preferable to freely distribute costless goods and services than to wall themselves off in gated communities, living in fear of an increasingly angry and disillusioned underclass.

Opportunities Everywhere! [109]
In the early days of European occupation of Australia, many exploratory expeditions, many shipwrecked mariners and lost aviators, perished from starvation. These unfortunates simply ran out of supplies and then starved to death in remote country that contained abundant sources of both food and water, but in unfamiliar forms and locations. Today, the Australian army has a manual that identifies every edible source of nourishment in the outback. The manual contains all the knowledge required to maintain patrols indefinitely in the same areas in which many early explorers perished.

While it is destroying old forms of production and commerce the 2nd Renaissance is simultaneously creating new opportunities in almost every field of human endeavour. But these new opportunities are as yet, largely unrecognised by people who are still thinking and acting according to old paradigms and misleading teachings. Secession from failing federations and the establishment of new tribal communities suited to survival and success in a Level 4 Civilization is one such opportunity. It escapes current attention because secession from strong, easily controlled and governed federations has previously been difficult and fraught with coercion and conflict. The fact that this situation is changing has not yet registered on the consciousness of most citizens of the outgoing civilization.

They are in sight of freedom but they cannot see it.

A Sunset and A Dawn [110]
The signs that the sun is going down on the old Level 3 Civilization are everywhere. The sun is going down on nationalism, militarism and capitalism. It is going down on federalism as surely as it long ago went down on feudalism. Most importantly, the sun is going down on scarcity, poverty, ignorance and blind dogma.

While the industrial age sun was full it was difficult to break free of the above forces, but in the darkening hours of the 20th century it began to be easier. The old structures and institutions of the industrial age are growing weaker by the day, and escape is becoming a real possibility for ordinary people all over the world. Now is the time to assemble the ideas and formulate the strategies that will take humanity forward at the arrival of a new dawn.

During the night the forces of darkness, in the form of the covert agencies of nation states, will do what they can to disrupt and suppress the process. But the military-industrial complexes of the old civilization are not fighting against a revolution which they can readily put down, but the abandonment of a failing model by former citizens of federal and state regimes. As Daniel Quinn points out, there are few defences against abandonment, and the operatives and leaders of most materialist regimes can not even comprehend the possibility that the masses they "serve" and "protect" will simply decide to leave them behind, and combine to build new societies based on new opportunities that flow from the 2nd Renaissance.

Microjurisdictions - The New Model [111]
In the view of Davidson and Rees-Mogg national governments and international relations won't survive the coming privatisation of citizenship. They say, "If "international" were a stock, now would be the time to sell." The concept is likely to be supplanted in the new millennium, or at least narrowed to its original meaning for the compelling reason that the whole world will no longer be dominated by the system of interrelating sovereign nations.

Relations will take on the novel "extranational" forms dictated by the growing importance of microjurisdictions and Sovereign Individuals." In a Level 4 Civilization the jurisdiction of service-only governments will usually be limited to the equivalent of a town or city. Their purpose will be to provide the type of services that municipal councils now look after, roads, building standards, sanitation, garbage recycling, and so on.

Many existing services might well be unnecessary in an age of magic technologies. For example, nanoconstructors in the home or in communal production centres might reuse the atoms in household waste and garbage as feed matter for the creation of new nanofactured items. There will certainly be no need for electricity and gas utilities in the event of universally available free energy. Nor might mass transport systems such as rail and road networks be required. Whatever services requirements are left will probably be provided by some form of microgovernment. These administrations will genuinely serve the people, rather than control and exploit them.

As Davidson and Rees-Mogg put it, "The idea that humans must naturally place themselves in an "invented" community called a nation will come to be seen by the cosmopolitan elite as eccentric and unreasonable in the next century."

Getting Things Done Without Government Programs [112]
Daniel Quinn is justly contemptuous of politicians who promise to "fix" the ills of modern society with programs. In The Story of B, the central character says, "If the world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all." In Beyond Civilization, Quinn writes, "Programs are sticks planted in the mud of a river to impede its flow. The sticks do impede the flow. A little. But they never stop the flow, and they never turn the river aside. .... Programs never stop the things they're launched to stop. No program has ever stopped poverty, drug abuse, or crime, and no program ever will stop them."

Yet programs are the stock of trade of politicians the world over. In Australia, and in many other places, political parties offer citizens a range of new programs or upgrades before every election. The need or probable efficacy of the programs are seldom challenged. Political opponents and tame journalists always ask the question, "Where's the money coming from?" but they don't ask, "Why should we believe that the program will fix the problem?" No one in politics, the media or big business ever asks the latter question, because they fear the obvious answer.

The layers of government in Australia are justified on the basis that they provide protection and solutions to problems through the collection of taxes and the allocation of public funds to a range of programs. If Daniel Quinn is right, and the multitude of programs will never solve the problems facing the Australian public, the whole of government and public administration in the country is a vast misrepresentation of purpose and value. Big government is simply unjustifiable and unnecessary.

Davidson and Rees-Mogg argue exactly this point. They assert that in an age of nearly instant global communications the whole idea of representative democracy is outmoded, and that problems should be addressed on an interest basis rather than a territorial one. Thus they say, "In the new age to come, communities and allegiances will not be territorially bounded. Identification will be more precisely targeted to genuine affinities, shared beliefs, shared interests, and shared genes, rather than the bogus affinities so prominent in the attention of nationalists."

The new minds that tackle a wide range of issues and problems in the world will often come from new talent collectives, and from people who live and work in free cities and communicate globally with like-minded individuals. The focus and motivation of the people who combine to save the world in this way will be directed at the problems and their solutions, rather than gaining re-election in order to progress a career in politics.

Democracy For Dummies [113]
The democracy we have now delegates power to elected representatives. It is a form of democracy in which a majority of individuals cede power to a minority group that they elect to represent their interests. Representative democracy arose in an age of primitive communications and a consequent remoteness of citizens from the seat of government where decisions were made. Additionally, many of the people of the time were either ill equipped educationally or simply disinclined to participate in the detail of national policy formulation, debate, and implementation.

Representative democracy is a system for the apathetic and the politically challenged. It is a system for dummies. It is also a system developed to deal with the allocation of resources in conditions of ever-prevailing scarcity.

Both these characteristics suggest that representative democracy will be an inappropriate approach for a Level 4 Civilization. The scientific and technological elites that emerge during the 2nd Renaissance will definitely not be dummies, and there will be an abundance, rather than a scarcity, of near costless goods and services to distribute. The times are changing and political systems must change too.

Democracy For Sovereign Individuals [114]
Free cities and independent regions will need to adopt a different approach from the outset. It will be a mistake to accept "reforms" to the old order of things, and hope to gradually evolve a new and freer system. The motto must be "Start free and stay free".

Some doubters will argue that it is impossible to resolve a myriad of differences in opinion and interests at the level of the individual. They will consider that achieving unanimity and consensus is impractical and that representative democracy is the only workable basis for political rule. But the goal is not to find a workable basis for political rule, it is to establish a basis for cooperative self-government in new Leaver-Giver societies.

If the term democracy continues to be used in a Level 4 Civilization it will not mean what it has in the past. The days when the many were ruled by the few will come to an end as the 2nd Renaissance progresses. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing in the 18th century, argued against the creation of laws by representatives of the citizenry rather than the people themselves. He argued that, "Any law which was not directly created by the citizens is not valid, and if those laws are imposed on people, that is equivalent to the people being enslaved."

As the magic technologies of the 2nd Renaissance banish scarcity and dissolve centralised power structures, it will become practical to involve sovereign individuals in the creation of the local laws they live under. This will require the abandonment of many of the adversarial, win-lose, concepts of present-day laws and a return to the more conciliatory and remedial approaches of law making and administration in tribal societies.

A National Enslavement Model [115]
Although it is never described as such, representative democracy has often become a national enslavement model. It is not always so, but in many cases political systems in both developed and developing countries have begun benignly and later become totalitarian. The adjacent diagram shows the nature of a national model. nation

Each individual citizen has ceded power to an elected representative who then forms part of a legislative, or parliamentary arm of government. One of the powers that national governments write into law is taxation. An executive arm of government then sees to the collection of tax revenues and their application to a range of programs. Additionally, a third arm of government interprets the law made by the legislature, in an independent manner. This separation of powers is characteristic of the Westminster system of government that many nation states have emulated. The Presidential system of government is another form that has similar functions, although it seems to decay into totalitarianism more readily than the parliamentary model.

In the nation state the voice of an individual citizen is faint indeed. Within an electorate a citizen's voice is but one in tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. Even if all citizens vote, as they are bound to do by law in Australia, there might be few policy alternatives between a small number of dominant political parties.

As we enter the 21st century, a common cry from many people in representative democracies is, "None of the parties are worth voting for!" That is so because the dominant parties, and the bureaucrats that serve them in office, are pursuing agendas that are unrelated to the interests of the majority of citizens they purport to represent.

A Neo-Tribal Model [116]
The diagram indicates some key characteristics of a neo-tribal model. It borrows from Daniel Quinn's observations. Reading the relevant pages in his book, Beyond Civilization, can provide further understanding and insights. We are not considering clans or ethnic tribes here, but the tribal model in modern and post-modern settings.

Quinn cites the small travelling circus as an example of a modern tribal model. In a looser sense, people collaborating in the development of open source software, such as Linux, might be said to have a tribal, rather than a commercial culture.neotribe
In Quinn's terms, "A tribe is a coalition of people working together as equals to make a living." However, he notes that making money is a means of surviving in order to do what the tribe does.
Making money is not the primary purpose of forming or belonging to a tribe.
He points out that members of a circus want it to make money so that it can continue, but they don't join it because it is an enterprise. They join because it is a circus, and because it has a close knit culture that they can relate to.

In the 21st Century neo-tribes will play a major role in creating conditions of abundance. They will gradually achieve a state of self-sufficiency that does not depend on making money. The performances of the Circus can then be free. Neo-tribalism is a model for a Leaver-Giver society within a new, Level 4, civilization. It has no similarities with Taker philosophies or the failed models of nationalism and capitalism that have dominated the outgoing civilization.

Equality And Unanimity [117]
Unlike the average citizen of a nation state, each member of a neo-tribe has equality with other members, hence the large smiling face in the diagram. There is a leader of each tribe, and usually a council of leaders for a coalition of tribes. But, as Daniel Quinn points out, "...leadership carries little or nothing in the way of special benefits that are denied to other members of the tribe." There is no ruling elite, no hierarchy, and nothing to overthrow. The purpose of the various endeavours of a neo-tribe is clear, and activities are undertaken in a collaborative, often selfless manner.

This contrasts starkly with the competitive, win-lose nature of representative democracies and corporatism. As Quinn writes, "Kids of all ages run off to join the circus. No one runs off to join Disney World."

Neo Tribalism Is Not A Utopian Vision - It Just Works Best [118]
Neither Daniel Quinn or the other proponents of new tribal models claim that such societies are perfect. Quinn says, "The tribal life doesn't turn people into saints." He argues, however, that because tribes exist for all their members, who are all involved in the work of the tribe, the model enables people to live and work together with minimal stress and conflict.

Quinn contends that tribalism is the natural form of social organisation for humans, just as the hive is for bees and the flock is for birds. All the models that have survived through the ages are successful for their members. Unsuccessful models also evolved, but they did not last. Tribal societies are not perfect, but:

"..tribalism is not only the preeminently human social organisation, it's also the only unequivocally successful social organisation in human history."

The Rule of Law In Nation States [119]
Prevailing political dogma says that in return for the benefits of a civilized society citizens must accept the rule of law. However, when the nature and basis of the rule of law is examined, it becomes clear that several important qualifications should apply to such a dictum.

One such reservation concerns bad laws. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935, that legalised discrimination against Jews and led to Hitler's "final solution," are an example of laws that did not deserve to be respected by citizens of the state that passed them. As Henry Thoreau put it, "I think that we should be men first and subjects afterwards. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right."

A second reservation about the rule of law within states and federations is due to the inapplicability of broad, national, laws to local circumstances and cultures. As jurisdictions extend across diverse geographic and cultural areas the relevance of broad laws can be lessened. What suits one location or socio-economic group does not necessarily suit others in the federation. The inapplicability of "one size fits all" laws becomes more evident as the world globalises. What constitutes free speech in one society does not necessarily fit within the ambit of broader laws enacted by remote legislatures of often totalitarian regimes.

However, the major reservation about the rule of law in an age of rapid technological developments lies in one of its greatest perceived strengths, its stability and certainty.

Evolving and Inventing Laws In Fast Times [120]
In The Story of B, Daniel Quinn makes a somewhat startling claim, via his character, B. The claim is that tribal laws were superior because they always evolved rather than being invented by committees. While proponents of the common law and the development of precedent by courts will argue that the 20th century process was also evolutionary, there is an important distinction between what has been possible in the past and what might be practical in the future. Existing laws were formed, or as Quinn would say, invented, in a relatively stable world in which legislators and the judiciary could understand the issues involved and know the likely consequences of their work. This situation is rapidly changing, and both law makers and interpreters of the law are losing the ability to deal with all the consequences of new technologies, for society, for justice, and even for the survival of the human race.

From A Full Gallop to Light Speed [121]
Adrian Berry spent nearly two decades as Science Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph in London. A prolific author in the field of science, Berry is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Geographical Society and the British Interplanetary Society, and a member of the Planetary Society of the USA. In The Giant Leap - Mankind Heads For The Stars, he writes that, "From our earliest history as intelligent human beings we have been developing our ability to travel faster, not gradually but in sudden bounds."

Berry identifies sixteen orders of magnitude in the speed of human travel, from that of a crawling baby to a speed beyond that of light. He notes that for more than 95,000 years humans could not exceed Step 3 of the scale, the speed of a human runner (an average of about 30 k.p.h.). Five thousand years ago the horse was mastered and Step 4 (an average of 50 k.p.h.) was practical.

But in the 20th century technology kicked in and eight further steps of the scale were achieved. New technologies enabled half of all of the sixteen steps on the scale to be reached within the space of one hundred years. A number of robotic space craft have achieved Step 12 (150,000 k.p.h.), escaped our Solar System, and journeyed into deep space.

The next steps to be aimed for are: Step 13, a significant percentage of the speed of light (80 million k.p.h.); Step 14, a speed producing relativistic effects (750 million k.p.h.). The latter speed will enable humans to travel to the nearest star systems. No one knows how long it might take for humanity to invent and build vehicles capable of such speeds.

Adrian Berry thinks that Step 13 will come late this century, but this could prove to be a conservative estimate. New scientific knowledge and new technologies are growing exponentially, along with computer power. Interdependencies are important, a breakthrough in one field can spawn many developments in other areas of technology. It is not just the curve of the increases in the speed of travel that is significant, but knowledge in many other fields as well.

History shows that people always underestimate the rate of technological change and development. In 1953 the United States Air Force predicted, from a study of the advance of human transportation speeds, that it would be possible to land men on the moon by 1969. Their estimate was within a month of the actual landing date. However, in 1953, the scientific establishment and the media all considered that no landing could possibly happen before the year 2000.

Difficulties In Legislating For Strange Change [122]
Rapid emergence of new technologies means that new laws are required frequently. However, in an increasing number of cases, legislators must quickly invent laws relating to technical matters that they barely understand, and for which the future implications can only be guessed at.

When a fundamental lack of understanding is combined with the usual impacts of commercial and political interests on law making, the chances of good legislation being developed are slim. Not only are law makers and interpreters mired down in outdated precedents and stale mindsets, they are predominantly older men, who are disinclined to tackle the strenuous learning and continual updating required to understand and keep abreast of the waves of new technologies that are sweeping across our present societies.

Already, the rule of law is floundering in its responses to moral and ethical issues surrounding cloning, genetically modified seeds and foods, and the use of biorecognition technology for security and other purposes. In the near-future, the law makers are likely to face conundrums relating to the "rights" of non-human intelligences being used in the service of humanity, and the legalities of teleportation services (relating, initially, to inanimate objects) that bypass border checkpoints and customs procedures.

Life Patents Within The Rule Of Law [123]
In 1980 the US Supreme Court was required to rule on the question of whether a genetically modified bacteria constituted an "invention" under the terms of patent law. The learned judges collectively determined, five to four, that strains of the modified bacteria were unique and that such an "invention" could thus be protected by patent for a period of twenty years. The General Electric company became the first to hold a patent on a living organism.

In 1988, a mouse that had been genetically engineered to be highly susceptible to cancer became the first animal to be recognised as a human "invention" by the United States Patent Office. By 1996, the Roslin Institute, located near Edinburgh in Scotland, had produced the first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, and had also patented their "invention". Western corporations and universities, particularly those based in the US, began a scramble to take out patents on a wide range of plant and animal life, as well as many traditional recipes.

Many patents have already been granted by courts and judiciaries that have been persuaded by an argument that is particularly powerful to people raised within what Daniel Quinn describes as the Mother Culture of taker societies. The corporations and universities contend that no research investments will be made unless all resulting discoveries are granted a 20 years monopoly of the commercial applications that flow from the inventions. No patents, no new "inventions" and no human progress, they say. In the West the rule of law has been rapidly reshaped to accommodate this piece of taker logic.

Is Everything Patentable? [124]
Although he was active in plant breeding, the original author of the US patent laws, Thomas Jefferson, specifically excluded animals and plants from the coverage of those laws. He also asserted that patents are a form of monopoly, and that whenever such monopolies were contrary to the public interest, the latter should take precedence. Today, Jefferson would be surprised, and probably dismayed, to see 20,000 gene patents being granted by the US Patent Office in a single year. From the antics of US and other courts it seems that every living thing and many traditional remedies and recipes are now fair game for patent claims. Among the patents already granted are the following examples.

The stimulus for US companies to seek an increasing number and range of patents can be found in the shift to intellectual property as a source of wealth.

High Stakes For Taker Economies [125]
All the industrialised economies were built on relatively "dumb" manufactured goods. At the close of the first half of the 20th century, the proportion of traded goods with high intellectual property content was quite low. One source puts the proportion of IP goods in US exports in 1947 at ten percent. But there has been a dramatic change. Knowledge goods have become increasingly important, and analysts now expect that by 2010 they will account for more than half of US goods traded internationally.

The message to takers is clear, own the patents or lose the 21st century economic contest.

Despite the fact that existence is not a contest in the natural world, and the looming realities of abundance through new technologies, Western authorities and executives continue to see international trade in "survival of the fittest" terms. Although it is not possible to "own" thoughts or knowledge in the same way that it is possible to possess tangible items, taker notions cause such people to want to patent and monopolise the natural world and the key ideas and "inventions" associated with both the traditional and scientific routes to the discovery and application of its wonders.

Given this type of thinking, the treasures of the forests are prime economic targets, and outright theft of the vast store of information and understanding that indigenous societies have accumulated over long periods of time is being sanctioned within the Western (particularly the US) rule of law. No one knows exactly how much money is at stake, but the amount is surely large. One often quoted estimate, which dates back to 1989 and is probably not as informed about the potentials of natural substances and recipes as current knowledge, is that the rainforests alone are worth US$ 43 billion, simply from the medicinal value of plant-based remedies.

No Chance Experimentation In The Forests [126]
One of the arguments that the corporate and academic biopirates employ to deflect criticism from their patent claims is that, "Indigenous peoples did not invent the many remedies that they use, they simply discovered them by chance, so their efforts do not compare with those of bona fide researchers and investors like us." But it is fanciful to contend that the tribal people of the forests simply stumbled across detailed medicinal knowledge.

Jeremy Narby is an anthropologist who has lived amongst the Peruvian Indians and understood the depth of their medicinal wisdom. Curare is a case in point, it is widely used to tip darts that Indian hunters fire from blowpipes. Once it is under the skin of tree-borne animals curare acts as a lethal poison, yet the meat remains edible because curare can be safely ingested. It is an intravenous rather than an intestinal poison.

Writing about curare, in his book The Cosmic Serpent, Narby describes how the poison is made in the jungles, "There are forty types of curares in the Amazon, made from seventy plant species. The kind used in modern medicine comes from the Western Amazon. To produce it, it is necessary to combine several plants and boil them for seventy-two hours, while avoiding the fragrant vapours emitted by the broth. The final product is a paste that is inactive unless injected under the skin. If swallowed, it has no effect. It is difficult to see how anybody could have stumbled on this recipe by chance experimentation."

The explanation that is widely given by various Indians for the discovery of knowledge such as this does not fit alongside the ingrained mindsets of institutionalised science. Jeremy Narby writes that, "When one asks these people about the invention of curare, they almost invariably answer that it has a mythical origin. The Tukano of the Colombian Amazon say that the creator of the universe invented curare and gave it to them."

Shamans Know The Forest's Secrets [127]
Whatever the basis of the discoveries made by indigenous peoples, there can be little doubt that they have been able to amass a great store of knowledge about the medicinal properties of the plants around them. Besides the use of curare as a muscle relaxant in heart surgery, there are now hundreds of prescriptive drugs in Western medicine that are based on knowledge gleaned from traditional native usage.

Jeremy Narby notes that, "74 percent of the modern pharmacopoeia’s plant-based remedies were first discovered by traditional societies." Much knowledge remains unknown to Western science and this knowledge represents a vast storehouse of unexploited wealth. However, as Narby writes:

"Without the botanical knowledge of indigenous people, biotechnicians would be reduced to testing blindly the medicinal properties of the world's estimated 250,000 plant species."

Although they were considered uneducated by the first Europeans to contact them, the Shamans of the Amazon and other regions had memorised not only the details of an enormous variety of plants but also the various recipes for combining and processing them to make potions that were proven remedies for particular ailments suffered by humans and animals. Although they were not credited with having this knowledge, the fact is that the Shamans know more about the botanical richness of the rainforests and the natural remedies they offer than anyone else.

Much of the knowledge that has not yet been identified and stolen is in danger of being lost, unless adequate protections are offered to reassure the Shamans that the secrets of ages will not be patented by Western corporations and modern centres of learning. There is a saying that aptly sums up the situation:

"Every time a Shaman dies, it as if a whole library just burnt down."

A Single Victory For Traditional Beliefs [128]
The cost of challenging a patent in the US can be more than US$300,000 per time. With hundreds, or even thousands, of patents registered over the natural medicines, pesticides and other molecular treasures in their forests, the costs are beyond the peoples of the so-called "third world". Banisteriopsis caapiYet, despite the difficulties, nine South American countries were successful in their bid to have the US Patent and Trademark Office cancel a patent previously issued to a US citizen for the ayahuasca vine (pronounced "ah-yah-waska").

The traditional holders of the knowledge of how to prepare and use a potion derived from the ayahuasca plant, and others such as the chacruna plant (that contains one of the strongest known hallucinogens, DMT), did not object to its use in the West. What they objected to was the claim of ownership, and the prospect of commercialisation of one of nature's works by an individual. They regarded such a patent as blasphemous.

Antonio Jacanamijoy, of the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), stated that:

"The indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin believe that commercialising an ingredient of our religious and healing ceremonies is a profound affront to the more than 400 cultures that populate the Amazon basin."

In November, 1999, the US Patent and Trademark Office cancelled the patent previously issued for ayahuasca. According to the original patent claim the plant was "distinct," and therefore patentable, because the colour of its flowers had been changed by breeding (which is quite a simple thing to do). The colour of the ayahuasca flower, of course, has nothing to do with its use in the long standing traditional recipe, where certain chemical molecules in the vine are used to delay the breakdown of DMT in the gut, and enable that agent to enter the brain.

Under US patent law a plant can be claimed if it is a new and distinct variety. The alteration of the colour of the flower was an attempt to gain ownership of the unique chemistry of the ayahuasca vine. Ultimately, this attempt to own knowledge that is not only long standing, but sacred to traditional peoples of the Amazon, failed. But many other attempts have succeeded.

Commenting on this and similar cases, David Downes of the Centre for International Environmental Law, said:

"When people claim as their own inventions naturally occurring plants and ancient knowledge, we worry that our patent law system has lost sight of its original goals of supporting innovation."

The Vision Vine [129]
The ayahuasca plant is often called the vision vine because of the hallucinogenic effects it produces when prepared and ingested in conjunction with plants such as chacruna, that are rich in the DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine) alkaloid. DMT is found in a wide range of plants worldwide, including common varieties of Australian acacia (wattles). Pure DMT can be smoked to produce powerful visionary experiences, but that is not what the many tribes of the Amazon basin do. Ayahuasca, or yage as it is also called, is not a recreational drug for these indigenous people. The potion they brew is only used by Shamans, and only for the purpose of healing the sick or contacting the spirits that their legends say first gave them the knowledge of yage in the distant past.

However it was acquired, this knowledge is truly remarkable. The harmine and tetrahydroharmine alkaloids in ayahuasca reverse the effect of the neuronal enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO) and also facilitate the accumulation of 5-HT amines that would otherwise be metabolised by MAO. Due to the blocking action of the active molecules from the ayahuasca vine, DMT is allowed to circulate in the bloodstream and enter the brain. Chemist, J.C. Callaway, has described this process as, "one of the most sophisticated drug delivery systems in existence."

The visions that DMT produces are equally as extraordinary. Rick Strassman, former Associate Professor of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, was one of the few scientists to conduct research into the effects of DMT on human subjects. Dr Rick StrassmanStrassman described the typical experiences of DMT use in the following terms.

"There are feelings of extraordinary joy, timelessness, and a certainty that what we experience is 'more real than real'...a knowledge that consciousness continues after death; a deep understanding of the basic unity of all phenomena; and a sense of wisdom or love pervading all existence."

These findings are not drawn from anecdotal accounts compiled by anthropologists and missionaries who interviewed Shamans and ayahuasca users in the Amazon jungles. They are founded on scientifically conducted experiments in a clinical environment. Yet, the descriptions are remarkably similar to those recorded in the jungles.

Seasoned private experimenters in mind-shifting substances also confirm that DMT is something very special. One says, "It was the first time I had the revelation that time isn't linear - that it's a conglomerate mass that we travel through, and we only perceive this small string of what's actually going on. So while I thought, 'I'm going to die today', I realised 'today is every day'."

Another experimenter described his experiences of DMT thus. "Getting over the onset of the DMT trip always felt like dying to me. Intelligences of uncertain form beckoned me through a lighted tunnel. The belief that DMT turned me into some intergalactic telepathic gateway, through which I could commune with 'higher' alien life forms, was so strong and fascinating. When I caught myself slipping into this alien philosophy at my then workplace, I thought it was time to stop. But the impression of being in the presence of a curious gentle alien intelligence has never left me."

Conversely, a survey by the Australian national youth radio station Triple J discovered that casual users of DMT found it particularly challenging. Triple J says, "It's the only drug that every single caller said they would never use again."

WARNING:
Using DMT can be very dangerous. Impacts on heart rate and blood pressure can be extreme. Shamans prepare to use ayahuasca by following a strict dietary regime for several days and by sexual abstinence. Do NOT experiment with DMT unless you are medically supervised or under the guidance of a traditional Shaman. DMT is a banned substance in most Western countries, including the US and Australia.

The Spirit Molecule [130]
Dr Strassman's work with DMT at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine has been hailed as the first new human psychedelic drug research in a generation. But not by the scientific establishment. He writes that he had great personal difficulty with the findings of his studies because they challenged his own world view, besides that of conventional science. But in the end, Strassman, a qualified psychiatrist and medical researcher, was forced to conclude that, "...DMT provides access to realms that are not just 'in our heads.'" In particular, the overwhelming frequency with which subjects reported contact with non-material beings leads him to postulate that such beings actually exist.

In his book, DMT the Spirit Molecule, Strassman contrasts conventional Western science with indigenous beliefs and understanding.

DMT is known to be produced naturally in our bodies. In this regard it is different from every other hallucinogen. Why do we produce such a powerful molecule and what purpose does it serve? Rick Strassman set out to find these answers. He followed up findings that DMT not only exists in our blood (discovered in 1965) but also our brain tissue (discovered in 1972 by a Japanese team). It seems that not only does the brain actively transport DMT across the normally impenetrable blood-brain barrier, it seems to hunger for it. Strassman says, "There are precious few chemicals the brain allows into its sensitive tissues...and even fewer it uses valuable energy to bring in: glucose is one, essential amino acids are another, DMT is yet another."

The Ancients believed that the pineal gland, located behind the third ventricle of the brain, is the seat of the soul, and both Eastern and Western mystics, to the present day, consider it to be the highest organ of consciousness. While Strassman has not yet proved that DMT originates in this pea sized gland, he has established that the pineal is rich in the enzymes and other ingredients necessary to produce the molecule. He postulates that an individual's life force, "...enters the body through the pineal at 49 days after conception, and leaves it through the pineal gland at death." Apart from those occasions on which DMT is deliberately taken into the body to achieve a psychedelic state, Strassman contends that the highest concentrations of this wondrous alkaloid in our blood occur during our birth and death, and during meditation or prayer.

Strassman acknowledges that his conclusions and theories take him well outside the bounds of conventional psychiatry, to the boundary between neurology and theology, and the realm of the metaphysical. In this regard he is a true scientist of the 2nd Renaissance.

From his experiences of administering DMT under clinical conditions, Dr Strassman thinks that this remarkable molecule might act as a sort of "reality thermostat." He writes that when normal people are given an anti-psychotic medication, which blocks the DMT that is naturally in their bloodstream, their consciousness becomes flat and dull. Alternatively, those people who receive additional DMT from external sources experience things that normally fall outside their consciousness.

Strassman says, "I suggest that DMT alters the receiving qualities of the brain, and employ a television analogy. Personal healing occurs by an enhancement of 'contrast and focus'; invisible worlds and entity contact takes place by changing the reception of 'channels'..."

Shamans exploit their knowledge of the chemistry of rainforest plants, and use DMT to "see" beyond the veils of normal reality. Indigenous people who have experienced DMT through the ingestion of potions made using the ayahuasca vine are fully aware of the channels beyond normal consciousness. Jeremy Narby records that natives of the Amazon region often refer to ayahuasca as "the television of the forest." One of Narby's major conclusions set out in his book, The Cosmic Serpent - DNA and The Origins of Knowledge, is remarkably reflected in the notes of a DMT session taken down by Dr Strassman. The subject said she discovered that:

"God dances in every cell of my body, and every cell of life dances in God."

A Remedy For Heroin Addiction [131]
Another remarkable "folk remedy" concerns a natural alkaloid extracted from the root of the Taberanthe iboga shrub that grows in West Africa. Traditional people use ibogaine for its vision-giving properties, but it has a growing reputation in the West as a way of kicking heroin and other addictions.

Despite being a US Schedule-1 prohibited drug, and having side effects that might have resulted in the death of at least one patient, ibogaine is slowly gaining recognition for its remarkable capacity to change not only the craving for addictive substances such as heroin, methadone and morphine, but the life-attitude and self-image of addicts.

Incredibly, proponents of ibogaine treatment assert that, in most cases, such outcomes are achieved after a single dose.

Harold Lotsof, who first used ibogaine when he was a student experimenting with drugs in 1962, says that his subjects often wake from a session alert and ravenously hungry. "It's a miracle for a heroin addict of ten years, who has been shooting up a gram and a half a day, to wake up wanting steak and eggs for breakfast."

When Lotsof first began clinical trials of ibogaine in the Netherlands, in 1990, there was only one scientific paper on the effectiveness of ibogaine in treating heroin addiction. There are now more than 140 scientific papers, and two projects to develop safer derivatives of ibogaine are nearing the stage of human trials.

Professor Piotr Popik, of the US National Institute of Health, has been quoted as saying that ibogaine is, "..a potentially life-saving new strategy for treating addiction to a diverse range of drugs." Lotsof is less cautious, he considers that ibogaine is capable of reducing the number of heroin addicts by a third, within three years of its large-scale application.

One of the alternatives to ibogaine that are being developed in an effort to avoid its more unpleasant side effects, is being developed by Stanley Glick, a neuropharmacologist of the Albany Medical Centre in New York. His work was reported in New Scientist magazine (26 April, 2003) and that article provides a useful outline on ibogaine as well. Glick is collaborating with a medicinal chemist from the University of Vermont, Martin Kuehne, to test a synthetic substance, 18-methoxycoronaridine (18-MC), which closely resembles ibogaine.

Animal trials, using rats, suggest that 18-MC is as effective as ibogaine. If, as Glick suspects, 18-MC works by blocking the brain's main dopamine reward pathway, the New Scientist article observes that it will be a sensational outcome. "If he's right, the implications would be huge. Glick would have a drug that could muzzle any addiction: heroin, cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, you name it."

But other researchers wonder whether a synthetic alternative to ibogaine might fail to provide the important hallucinogenic effects that help change addicts attitudes to themselves. Deborah Mash, a neuropharmacologist at the University of Miami Medical Centre, is developing noribogaine, a natural derivative of ibogaine that results from the metabolism of the latter substance. She hopes that it will be safer than ibogaine but retain the visionary effects of that substance.

"Whether the visions are important, I cannot say, but there are very profound experiences associated with ibogaine that can be life-transforming," she says. One recipient of ibogaine described the experience in the following terms:

"I was able to quit methadone without any cravings whatsoever. I don't know what changed, but I do know that my past is not such a burden now. Ibogaine has given me a new freedom. It isn't a drug: it's something divine - which sounds stupid, but it's true."

Resistance To Providing Ibogaine For Those Who Need It [132]
Needless to say, there are US patent disputes holding up the development and wide application of drug cures based on ibogaine or its derivatives. Major pharmaceutical companies are also circling the substance, waiting for one on Lotsof's patents to expire.

However the two greatest obstacles to the achievement of Lotsof's dream of a cure for heroin and other addictions have nothing to do with patent legalities and the notion of the "ownership" of knowledge taken from indigenous sources.

One of the impediments is attitudinal. Besides the political difficulty of gaining approval for the clinical use of what is presently a Schedule-1 drug in the US, there is also resentment in the medical research establishment. Lotsof says of ibogaine, "It was principally a drug discovered and developed by drug users. If you were a researcher who had spent years developing your career, the last thing you'd want is that someone with no academic credentials has developed the grail that you've been seeking."

The second obstacle is the resistance of vested interests, principally the criminal drug lords and the corrupt police and politicians they control. One person to offer ibogaine cures, in the hope of saving just 1% of the 140 million addicts in the world, found that it was impossible to set up a clinic in Mexico. He now operates from a boat in international waters. But he remains determined to help people cure their addiction. Ibogaine treatments presently range in cost from US$ 10,000 to US$ 2,000, but such expense is a small price to pay to get one's life back.

Drug addiction became a scourge of the 20th century, however it seems that it can and will be largely eliminated during the 2nd Renaissance. The hope for addicts everywhere is not that government programs or institutionalised science will save them. The more positive hope is that when free city states form outside the existing civilization, the leaver-givers of these places will develop and distribute medicines and cures at little or no cost.

After all, the indigenous peoples who have used substances such as ibogaine and ayahuasca do not wish to deny the knowledge and benefits to the rest of us. Nor do they claim to have "invented" the drugs involved. They say, without exception, that the knowledge was given to them through their contacts with the spirit world. Who are you and I to call these people liars or superstitious fools?

The attitude of new leaver-givers will be to let everyone who needs the treatments and visions derived from traditional knowledge have access to them, and let patent attorneys and global pharmaceutical companies be damned!

Death Is a Little Thing [133]
Christiaan Barnard, who is remembered as the first surgeon to transplant a human heart, would have encountered death many times in his career. Interviewed shortly before his own death Barnard said, "At almost 79, people ask me: where do you go from here? I say to them I'm on the waiting list. I don't know exactly where I am on the list or where I'm going, but I'm on it."

Barnard used also to tell a story about an encounter with an old African man, a Bushman from the Kalahari desert, in western Botswana. As one also nearing the end of his mortal life the old man explained to Christiaan Barnard that he did not regard death as very significant. He noted that everything dies: the trees die, the grass dies, birds die, snakes die, and people die. Holding his hand up so that his first finger almost touched his thumb, the old man said, "Death is a little thing."

With very few exceptions, tribal societies with traditional cultures that predate the rise of takerism and imposed scarcity, had little fear of death. Not only was this true of the Bushmen of the Kalahari, but of Australian aborigines, and the tribes of the Amazon. Because such societies had a close spiritual empathy with nature, and did not consider themselves beings apart from the other animals, the people had a clearer sense of death being a part of life. They were not afraid of dying. This is still true of small pockets of pre-taker culture in remote locations. But for the most part the forces of colonisation and organised religion, from the West, have obliterated the old understandings of death.

Whether it was intentional or not, the actions of colonial powers in converting indigenous populations to Western religions was, for them, a necessary condition for achieving control of new territories. When the native peoples stopped understanding death to be a part of nature and began to fear it, they became susceptible to coercion and the rule of law.

Rulers of every persuasion have long understood that a populace that does not fear death is ungovernable. So, the British, the French, the Germans, the Dutch, and others, all worked hard at eliminating traditional Leaver societies and converting native people to new ways of taker thinking. Then, death was no longer a "little thing," it became a big thing, involving a day of judgement, with a risk of hell fire and damnation.

When coupled with the introduction of artificial scarcity and taker concepts of property ownership and legal tender, Western death-fearing religions played a significant role in subduing, otherwise independent, tribal peoples.

The CIA's Job Applicant Screening [134]
Since its inception, in the late 1940s, the US Central Intelligence Agency has screened applicants for its own agency, and other sensitive government positions, using a structured interview process. There are questions in the interview designed to identify individuals who, by reason of their beliefs or experiences, might not have a well-developed fear of death. Such people do not get jobs in the agency. There are few Buddhists or Animists working for the CIA. Nor are there any people who are known to have had near death experiences or drug induced visions of a non-material world. Folk like that could be impossible to control through a fear of death.

A similar set of questions is used by the Australian equivalents of the CIA; the ASIO and ASIS agencies. Indeed, most agencies of this type would take a similar approach to screening out applicants who might be prone to independent action. None of these organisations want independent people, they want total control; for life. Those who join the covert agencies, or the mob for that matter, can eventually retire but they can never unjoin.

The Three Control Levers [135]
Specialists who study such things have identified three control factors that are routinely used by governments and their covert agencies. The factors, or points of leverage over the populace, are:

Recognised criminal organisations also use these same three control levers. However, covert agencies have more freedom to use the levers than the mob do. The greater freedom of Federal agents to act criminally stems from the fact that public perceptions, fed on a diet of TV series that glorify police and lawyers, identify organised criminals as the "bad guys" and government agencies, both overt and covert, as the "good guys." In fact, the overall category involved is better described as Organised Crime, with sub-categories of Government Crime and Non-Government crime. The former sub-category of crime is far more entrenched and damaging to a Level 3 Civilization than the latter.

Much the same situation applied at the time of the first Renaissance. The integrated secular and religious rule in Europe was starkly criminal, and this was one of the triggers for change and transformation in the society. Injustice and criminality were the drivers of reform on the secular side. On the religious side a major driver was the blasphemy inherent is the practice of the widespread selling of indulgences by the Roman Church.

Sources of Leverage [136]
The three levers of control above only work because they can act on particular sources of power. Three major sources are:

Inevitable Transformations Are Ahead [137]
In an address that he titled The New Renaissance (see the ishmael.com site on the WWW), Daniel Quinn correctly observes that no one can predict the future. He is right, however there are parallels with the first Renaissance that can help us make some informed guesses. However, the fact that our civilization will be transformed is not a guess, it is a certainty. Mass publication changed the old world, mass information that is accessible to everyone will transform the present world: - forever. The only conjectures are about how the changes will play out.

Consider the sources of leverage that the industrialist/militarist elites use to control the Level 3 Civilization. What forces are likely to erode them, and how long might it take to happen? Here are some informed guesses.
  • Denying Sexual Guilt
    While other forms of guilt, such as theft and fraud, will continue to provide a source of leverage into the new century, sexual mores and attitudes can be expected to change. More natural and liberal views on human sexuality will eventually remove one of the sources of leverage that government agencies currently tap into.

    Although they will be transformed far more quickly than was the case during the first Renaissance, sexual attitudes will be modified more slowly than other sources of control. Because sexual mores are largely generational it could be three decades or more before the majority of the population becomes largely immune to the type of blackmail and smears that the alphabet agencies presently use as control levers.

    But this should not give the Feds any reason to celebrate their continuing dominance of our lives. By itself, sexual guilt is a quite limited source of control. The other major sources, scarcity and superstition, are far more general. They affect everyone, whereas sexual guilt as a lever of control applies to small segments of society; albeit very influential ones.

  • Abolishing Scarcity
    Anyone who takes the time to research the exponential growth of knowledge and technology occurring now, can have no doubt that scarcity can and will be abolished. The question is how soon this might happen. Most people believe that the transformation will be far in the future, and well beyond their lifetimes. But many scientists and technologists think that the singularity, the point at which everything that can be known will be known, is much closer. One line of reasoning is that while the first scientific and technological Renaissance occupied a time span of some 300 years, it is not unreasonable to expect the 2nd Technological Renaissance to take place within as little as 300 months.

    If we assume that the starting point for the 2nd Technological Renaissance corresponds to the introduction of mass-produced personal computers, sometime around 1981, we are presently close to the end of the 25 year period required to reach the singularity. Allow another eight to ten years for Vernor Vingetechnologists to develop the means of ending scarcity, and the point at which the industrialist-militarist elites are facing a total loss of control is halfway through the next decade. Say 2014 to 2016. There is a group of scientists and technologists on the west coast of the US that argues strongly for the technological singularity theory of Vernor Vinge. They call themselves "The 2014 Club".

    Vernor Vinge is Professor of Computer Science at San Diego University. In 1993 he publicly identified the exponential nature of scientific and technological advancement. Now that it is well and truly underway this explosion of knowledge and magic new technologies will prove impossible to contain. No matter how the industrial/capitalist elites and those in control of institutionalised science might try, it is now too late to prevent the emergence of magic technologies that will ensure an abundance of energy and near-costless goods and services. Vinge summed up the position is the following line.

    "We are on the edge of a change comparable to the rise of human life on earth."

    Abundance at levels that will make capitalism irrelevant is probably less than a decade away. But before the enabling technologies are invented, adopted and widely utilised, it will be necessary to destroy old superstitions.

  • Destroying Superstitions
    There are particular forms of superstition that must be broken down before a Level 4 Civilization can emerge. They concern our adherence to persistent myths and non-truths, and our unwillingness to think and act in new ways. In speaking about the New Renaissance, Daniel Quinn puts the issue in survival terms. He says, "The extraordinary thing that's going to happen in the next two or three decades is that a great second renaissance is going to occur. A great and astounding renaissance. Nothing less than that is going to save us."

    Quinn explains how people in the Middle Ages took for granted a collective relationship with God that was mediated by the Roman Church. They also took for granted the notion that the universe was only a few thousand years old, and that it was fixed and immovable, with our world at its centre. Before science could progress, and a Level 3 Civilization could emerge, such thinking had to change. To us this is obvious, but to the people of Europe in the Middle Ages, it wasn't obvious at all. Today, Quinn says, "We're absolutely sure that people will go on thinking the way we think forever, and that people will go on living the way we live forever...We too believe the history of thought has come to an end with us."

    Edward de Bono, of lateral thinking fame, is fond of identifying what he terms dominant ideas, in business and society. Edward de BonoOnce, he was asked to help solve a problem regarding high levels of complaints about the lifts in a city building. The lifts were too slow and it was too expensive to replace them with new equipment. Nobody could find a way to lessen or even satisfactorily address the complaints from people who were frustrated by the delay. Edward de Bono identified the dominant idea as speed. Good lifts were supposed to come quickly and operate rapidly. Nobody could find a way of making the old equipment meet the speed requirements. However, de Bono saw the problem as people being frustrated with the wait. He had the owners of the building install mirrors in the lift waiting areas, and in the lifts themselves. Because most people took time to look at themselves in the mirrors, they did not notice the time passing and they stopped complaining about the delay. Edward de Bono's advice is, "Unless one can pick out the dominant idea one is going to be dominated by it."

    Daniel Quinn says that three implicit ideas from the Middle Ages, that survive today, are:

    1. Humans are fundamentally and irrevocably flawed (and therefore in need of salvation).

    2. The way we live is the way we were meant to live (hence, nothing needs to be changed).

    3. Humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community (there's us and there's nature).

      He contends that the third idea is particularly dangerous. It leads to rampant takerism and the destruction of as many as 200 species every day.

    Although he did his pioneering work, in the 1960s, well before the start of the 2nd Renaissance, Edward de Bono developed breakthrough thinking tools. Tools such as these can help us to find ways to stop over 70 thousand species vanishing every year, due to the false notion that it is alright to pillage nature for profit and the so-called advancement of the industrial-capitalist system. But first, there has to be a realisation that many implicit assumptions in our thinking are wrong, and that they act to dominate our "solutions" and prevent real change from occurring. There will also need to be a majority of people around the world who want real change. Until people recognise the need to change nothing will happen. There will be a lot of rallies, a lot of speeches, a lot of activity and talk, but no real change. None.

    Real change is essential to destroying the old superstitions that are standing in the way of a Level 4 Civilization. Changed attitudes need to respect other species right to exist and the right of traditional people to practice their forest medicine, without having the knowledge stolen and patented by global pharmaceutical companies and Western universities. It will take a fundamental shift in thinking before there are real changes in predominant attitudes and behaviours.

    Daniel Quinn observes that, "People don't want more of the same. Yet, oddly enough, when they ask me what will save the world, they want to hear more of the same - something familiar, something recognisable. They want to hear about uprisings or anarchy or tougher laws. But none of those things is going to save us ......What we must have (and nothing less) is a whole world full of people with changed minds."

    One thing is very important to note. Real changes in thinking have to happen first, before new technologies can provide abundance and before sexual guilt is expunged from society. Also, real changes in thinking have to happen soon. There is not a lot of time before the arrival of the technological singularity that Vernor Vinge has identified. If you and I, and millions like us, have not taken the initiative and the high ground of change well before then, the present elites will have turned magic new technology to their own ends. Those ends will include terrible new weapons, mass control systems, and "final solutions" to ethnic and racial problems that will dwarf anything that the Nazis did in Germany during World War II.

    Ultimately the old order will lose the battle to preserve their privileged way of life, based on all prevailing scarcity, pseudo-democracy, and the rule of law. But in the interim, hundreds of millions of innocent people might lose their lives in bloody resistance to the changes being made by the Old World Order (OWO).. If such a terrible thing happens, it will all have been for nothing, because:

    The power to change things right now exists right now.

    We just have to recognise this and begin to go about real change, without delay and procrastination.

Changing What WE Control [138]
All over the world activist groups are using the wrong ideas to take on the Old World Order (OWO). Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Animal Liberation, and many other groups are often trapped by a wrong, but dominant, idea.

The idea involves changing what governments and corporations do.

A better idea is for us to change what we do. We still have control over many of our own actions, but almost no control over the actions of federal governments and global corporations.

Governments can easily ignore our attempts to make them change. They can also use the rule of law, and their considerable legal and financial resources, to defend whatever they do. Large corporations have similar capacities to resist pressures from ordinary people. Since the mid-eighties London Greenpeace has organised an annual World Day of Action against McDonalds. The protest takes place on 16th October. It attacks aspects such as the use of former rainforest land to graze cattle for beefburgers, the means of slaughtering chickens, the impact of fries and beefburgers on obesity, and the wages and conditions of employees. Greenpeace asks ordinary people to "..talk to friends and family, neighbours and workmates about these issues." Two activists, Helen Morris and David Steele were sued by the McDonalds corporation in 1990, for distributing a leaflet critical of McDonalds products and business practices. Although the pair came through the longest libel trial in British legal history with significant public support, and some favourable rulings, their leaflet did not change McDonalds products or practices at all.

Corporations like McDonalds can control what they do, and they can choose to ignore criticisms and use the legal system to silence those who speak out against perceived shortcomings in their operations and ethics. But individual citizens also have control over many aspects of their lives. You and I might not be able to travel internationally without visas, body searches, and currency restrictions, but we can still choose what we eat, what we watch, and who are friends are.

Withdrawing Our Support [139]
While we can't change governments and corporations, we can change what we ourselves control. Artificial scarcity is the bedrock of capitalism, but it is a two way street. By withdrawing our support for commercial products or government programs, we citizens can create scarcities of our own. We can cause a scarcity of consumers, a scarcity of program participants, and a scarcity of believers.

The latter form of scarcity is vital to diminishing the power and control of the Old World Order. Citizens, particularly those in the West, need to withdraw their support for official truths and the mechanisms that promulgate them. There might be good reasons to withdraw support from McDonalds products, but doing so would only harm that single corporation, and many of the people who work there. A wide refusal to consume McDonalds meals will never damage capitalism or hasten the transition to a Level 4 Civilization. However, a widespread withdrawal of support for the misinformation and lies disseminated by government and corporate spin-doctors, and the mainstream electronic media, can do so. Such a development can help us meet Daniel Quinn's key requirement for our survival as a species. "What we must have (and nothing less) is a whole world full of people with changed minds. "

Actions WE Can Take [140]
There are many actions that we can take to help the transition to a Level 4 Civilization. Some actions that are well within our power are suggested below, you can undoubtedly think of more.

Turn Off TV [141]
The acclaimed linguist and author, Noam Chomsky, reminds us that most of our communications technologies are exclusive to the West. He says, "The Internet is an elite organisation; most of the world has never made a phone call." No TVPeople who don't have television or access to the WWW, are both winning and losing. They are being spared the deluge of propaganda that comes from the major TV channels, but they are also missing the wealth of valid information that is available on the Internet. We are more fortunate. If we so choose, we can keep the Internet but stop tuning into the TV propaganda of the Old World Order.

Keep your TV set for viewing rented movies if you like, continue to use the print media for sporting and other information of a non-propaganda nature, but disconnect the TV broadcast feed from the antenna or fibre-optic cable. Your children will be better off growing up without an ever-present propaganda medium in the living room.

In due course, there will be global TV broadcasts emanating from various free cities and regions, that will be unencumbered by federalist, nationalist, and capitalist doctrines. Such transmissions will come to your home through the earth, without using existing communication cables and channels. In the meantime your family can be spared the intrusion of the OWO into the home, by the simple action of disconnecting the conventional signal feed to your TV set.

Become A 2nd Renaissance Resident [142]
Although the Feds will want to continue to consider that you are a national citizen of their's, you can choose to be a global individual. This is within your control, Grid-Boxyou can do something about it. Instead of including a country in your address use a global grid-box reference. (Some kind soul will be sure to work out a standard pattern of grid boxes from lines of latitude and longitude, and then post it on Freenet for everyone to use.) As well as using the standard grid-box address, use the suffix LG after your name, to indicate that you are a Leaver Giver.

At first encounter, the idea of global grid-boxes replacing countries in addresses might seem ineffectual. However, the implementation of such a practice can be very powerful, once enough people adopt it. There will never be much lasting impact from protesting about McDonalds or other corporations or governments. But the widespread use of grid-box addresses can have a very dramatic impact on thinking. It is a means of getting the attention of large numbers of people. Such awareness is a prerequisite for a world full of changed minds. When asked where you're from, say "I'm John Doe LG, from Lutherborough (grid name) at GR 23987 (grid-box code)."

If the grid framework is set sufficiently large to encompass natural communities, but not so large that they correspond to whole cities or states, then the grid-box addresses will become a practical basis for a global network of new-communal identities that comprise the social organisation model of the new Level 4 Civilization. In this concept there are no kingdoms, states or federations. Just localised geographic areas in which microjurisdictions - the new-communal identities - operate in order to provide local amenities and services. Individuals are sovereign, within the bonds of the particular tribe, or tribes they belong to. Membership of neo-tribes or techno-tribes has nothing to do with residential location or grid-box address. Individuals reside somewhere, but they can be members of talent collectives within a wider region, and of cybertribes that extend globally.

Implementing a system of grid-box addresses, independently of federations and states, will help to drive home the notion that people were not divinely "meant" to live the way we live now. Nor to remain citizens within old national and federal designations that have already lost their relevance, due to the technological changes now sweeping us forward. The dialogue that arises around the use of the grid-box addresses will help people to understand that there is life and hope after federalism and nationalism. We do not have to go on living the way we live now!

Establish and support the new category of Freeright [143]
The freeright symbol, an F within a circle, indicates that while anyone can use an original work freely, no one else should claim it. There's nothing to prevent anyone from copying or publishing your writing or music, they may do so freely. Hopefully, people who use a work will attribute it to the originator, or to his or her alias. However, it does not matter if they don't. The diagram shown here contains a freeright line. This indicates that the free use and replication of the original is encouraged. It is expected that genuine neo-tribal authors will not claim it as their own. If others do so, it doesn't matter. The important thing is that the diagram is able to be circulated and used freely and widely.NTC Diagram
Where freeright is concerned there is no concept of illegality of use. No matter what is done with a work, be that work literary, artistic, musical, or technological, lawyers should never make even one cent out of litigation involving its replication and application. The point of freeright is to circulate useful works freely. For example, freeright software might help people in, so-called, third-world countries to run second-hand computers donated by people in the West, without having to find money to buy programs.

By generating a volume of freerighted works, we can create a comparison between the old concepts of scarcity and legal limitations that support scarcity, and the new concepts of abundance and free sharing of knowledge, ideas and content. If you have talent and you can originate an e-book, some music, software, or anything that people might appreciate and like to share, freeright it and make it available on Freenet. Do it soon.

The diagram suggests that we really need a fast transition to a Level 4 Civilization. Every year that we loose will mean that millions of people suffer and die needlessly, under the false promises of capitalism and nationalism. Freerighted content can help raise awareness of the social, economic and environmental alternatives to takerism, and generate fresh thinking and hope.

Rediscover Kinship Principles [144]
Besides its meaning for blood relationships, the word kinship speaks to a sharing of characteristics, origins or interests. Kinship will be very important during the transformation from a Level 3 to a Level 4 Civilization. Many of the institutions and social support structures will break down during the collapse of capitalism and federalism. For a period of time, people will have to fend for themselves, as they have had to in Argentina following the collapse of the banking and finance sector there.

In tribal societies, kinship determined not only who you could marry, but also who you had to help, and who had to help you. Such kinship support systems were a feature of earlier Aboriginal society in Australia, and no doubt, among the tribes of North America as well. Unlike footloose westerners, native Australians were born to a geographic location, a tribal land. Kinship and the support it entailed went with the tribal relationship. Today, it is hard to find that sort of kinship in Australia. But the caste system in India remains a living example of it. People of the same caste look after each other because the obligation to do so is a core element of the Hindu social support system.

Kinship in the new Level 4 Civilization will operate in two forms. Local kinship will exist within neo-communities and provide support services and safety nets that are far more available and compassionate than the soulless, bureaucratic programs of the capitalist state. Global kinship will permeate new techno-tribes or lightnet-collectives that span the world. Within these associations of similarly minded and motivated individuals, kinship bonds will arise to strengthen both the identity and function of the group. In the spirit of the leaver-giver ethos, many of the techno-tribes and other collectives will be environmentalist, humanitarian and philanthropic in their focus.

Now is the time to begin the process of developing kinship in our community and interest group relationships. Such kinship building is important to changing thinking and attitudes everywhere that there are people who hope for a better life for themselves and their children. It will also be vital to surviving the social, political and economic turbulence associated with the disintegration of the old, Level 3 Civilization.

It might seem anomalous to contemplate survival strategies at the threshold of an age of abundance and generosity, but it is realistic. There will be an inevitable lag before new ways of thinking and cooperating become the norm. In the interim, human affairs will be likely to vacillate between the old and new ways of living. By starting to familiarise yourself with kinship principles and by practicing them on a local and global level, you can help to speed the transition and lessen the possibility of harmful outcomes along the way.

The Old World Order will not do anything to smooth the path to a Level 4 Civilization, and a better world. On the contrary, they will do whatever they can to make it difficult. The police, the military, the media, the financial system, the rule of law, and all the mechanisms of civil control and surveillance will be mobilised in defence of the status quo. But, once they understand their options, the people of the world will not engage in a battle with the forces of the OWO. They will simply abandon the old way of living under national rule, for a better, freer, life in new tribal societies. Kinship mechanisms will help people cope with the pressures of official opposition to radical changes that will finally enable them to escape the invisible prison that the OWO had fashioned around them.

Widen Civil Scepticism and Challenge Official Truth [145]
This freesite does not advocate civil disobedience. There is no point to disruptive demonstrations, strikes, riots and the like, that are aimed at making governments or corporations change their behaviours. Such actions don't usually lead to major, or enduring reforms. Wide demonstrations just give the OWO excuses to strengthen their civil control systems to protect us from ourselves (Authorities use labels such as "security" and "justice", but the systems are really about control).

A far more effective approach than civil disobedience is civil scepticism. Instead of dutifully accepting that the reasons and excuses given for official policies and actions are true, citizens who are civil sceptics refuse to believe any pronouncements that cannot be independently verified.

What we believe is something we have control over. If elected politicians and career officials are not prepared to "open the files" to the inspection of groups of randomly chosen citizens, we can decide that we simply don't believe the official truths that come from government and administration sources.

Since widespread civil scepticism could easily render a nation ungovernable, the notion that it should be invoked requires a sound justification. However, vindication of the need for civil scepticism is now provided, on an almost daily basis, by the very politicians who will be most strident in denouncing the idea. At the height of the age of empires, there were higher ethical standards applied in politics. In those days, any minister caught lying to Parliament did not have to be sacked. They would voluntarily resign, the moment that it became apparent that their statements had been false. However, standards have progressively declined and these days most politicians who are caught in the act of having misinformed or misled their constituents, simply choose to brazen it out. They treat the people who elected them, with complete contempt.

For example, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, on 24 September, 2002, told a recalled Parliament he possessed a vital intelligence dossier that, "...concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes..." The consequences of this and other misinformation about the threat posed by Iraq were far from trivial. The arguments based on the intelligence dossier were a significant factor in taking Great Britain into an unprovoked invasion of Iraq that had disastrous impacts on the civilian population of that country. The information was later found to be incorrect. Yet, as of September, 2004, the Prime Minister remains in office. He did not walk, as onetime ethics in the British Parliament would have required him to do, regardless of whether he was himself misinformed.

Then there's the example of a former President of the United States, telling a national TV audience, "..I never had sex with that woman." He didn't have to respond to questions about a consensual sexual relationship - it was none of the American public's business. But when he chose to answer he should not have lied about the affair. The American people would have accepted a 'no comment' on the grounds of personal privacy, but many could not accept being lied to. They reasoned that if the President would lie to them about an issue that was personal he would probably lie about other things that were public matters and far more important.

In Australia, in October, 2001, just days before a federal election, the Immigration Minister broke the news that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard as an Australian naval vessel was attempting to turn them back to an Indonesian port. The minister said, "A number of people have jumped overboard and have had to be rescued." And, "More disturbingly, a number of the children have been thrown overboard, again, with the intention of putting us under duress. I regard these as some of the most disturbing practices that I have come across in the time that I have been involved in public life - clearly planned and premeditated."

Both the Australian Prime Minister, and the Defence Minister, also made statements to the effect that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard. The PM, said in a radio interview, "I don't want in Australia people who would throw their own children into the sea. There's something, to me, incompatible between somebody who claims to be a refugee and somebody who would throw their own child into the sea. It offends the natural instinct of protection and delivering security and safety to your children."

The Defence Minister subsequently released photographs of people in the water. The captions and date had been removed from these now infamous photos of a number of people, in the ocean, wearing life jackets. In an interview at which the Defence Minister reiterated that there was photographic evidence to support the children overboard claims of the Immigration Minister and the Prime Minister, the journalist interviewing him challenged their authenticity. The following is taken from a transcript of the interview, issued by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (Which still retained some editorial independence at that time).

ABC JOURNALIST: Mr Reith, there's nothing in this photo that indicates these people either jumped or were thrown.

DEFENCE MINISTER: Well now you're questioning the veracity of what is being said.
Those photos are produced as evidence of the fact that there were people in the water.
You say its a tight shot.
It's as clear as day.
Now, you may want to question the veracity of reports from the Royal Australian Navy.
I don't.
And I didn't either.
But I have subsequently been told that they have also got film.
The film is apparently on HM-
Well it is on HMAS 'Adelaide'.
I have not seen it myself and apparently the quality of it is not very good and its infra-red or something.
But I am told that someone has looked at it and it is an absolute fact - children were thrown into the water.

ABC JOURNALIST: But you -

DEFENCE MINISTER: So do you still question it?

ABC JOURNALIST: I'm a journalist.
I'll question anything until I get the proof.

DEFENCE MINISTER: I've just given you the proof.

ABC JOURNALIST: No, you've given me images.

DEFENCE MINISTER: Well, Virginia, quite frankly, if you don't accept that, you don't accept anything I say.

Exactly so, Minister. Virginia did not accept the so-called evidence, and neither did many Australians. It later became known that (a) The pictures were of people from the asylum seeker's vessel after it began to sink, and they were taken on the day following the alleged children overboard incident. (b) The fact that the photos used by the Defence Minister as evidence of the children overboard claim did not show any women and children in the water, had been advised to the Defence Minister's media adviser, by a senior military officer, earlier on the same afternoon that the above interview with an ABC journalist took place. Thus, the Minister was, or should have been, aware that the photos did not show women and children in the water. Predictably, the only person to lose their job over this incident was the, Minister's media adviser. The three senior elected representatives of the Australian people all continued in their posts, after having perpetrated a blatant lie and communicated it forcefully, just a few days before a national election.

These examples make it clear why there is every reason for us all to become civil sceptics, and do as Virginia did - question anything and averything the Feds say until we get the proof.

Expect High-Level Corruption - Help Identify and Publicise It [146]
Along with the widely observable breakdown of ethical standards in high places, comes an attendant rise in graft and corruption. Nobody should be surprised at this, it is always the way that empires finally deteriorate and eventually fail. It was corrupt practices, involving the sale of indulgences by the Roman church that triggered the protest of Martin Luther, in 1517. His list of 95 theses, nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, led to the Reformation and the ultimate loss of the secular power of the church.

The history of indulgences began innocently enough. Originally, in the eleventh century, indulgences were a way of penitent sinners working off their guilt by fasting, the recitation of specific prayers, and making pilgrimages. By the fourteenth century, money gifts came to be substituted for the performance of good works and the observance of good habits. The following is a quotation by a senior figure of the time, Juan de Valdez, that sums up the monetary essence of the granting of indulgences in early Renaissance times.

"I see we can scarcely get anything from Christ's ministers but for money, at bishopping money, at marriage money, for confession money - no, not extreme unction without money! They will ring no bells without money, no burial in the church without money; so that it seemeth that Paradise is shut up without money. The rich is buried in the church, the poor in the churchyard. ....The rich man may readily get large indulgences, but the poor none, because he wanteth money to pay for them."

In 1517, Johann Tetzel, the Vatican's Apostolic Commissary for Germany and Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity, implemented a corrupt ecclesiastical scheme to raise funds for the restoration of St Peter's in Rome. The sale of indulgences was at the centre of the fund raising plan, and this blatant and scandalous financial exploitation of the people was what so incensed Martin Luther. The following illustration is taken from a pamphlet of the times. On the left Christ casts the money lenders out of the temple. On the right the Pope sells indulgences.

Reformation Pamphlet 1521

There are various parallels between the way that the furore over the financial exploitation of penance and forgiveness by the Medieval World Order led to rebellion, and what is occurring in present times. Native people everywhere are angry at the way that multinational companies and patent attorneys - members of the clergy of capitalism - are locking up tribal knowledge of the natural pharmacopoeia in unreasonable patents that are being granted by the US Patent and Trademarks Office. They regard these actions as blasphemous, just as Luther regarded the use of indulgences by Rome as contrary to the teachings of Christ.

Corruption And Decline Today [147]
Citizens are increasingly critical of the way that federal governments are mismanaging the taxes and other revenues that they raise. High levels of taxation throughout the industrial age prevented most individuals from building sufficient wealth for themselves, and now, as they approach old age, these people are facing the prospect of a state unable to fund even the most basic welfare programs, but willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on precautionary wars. In case some regime or other has WMDs somewhere or other, and might, possibly, use them at some time. The Pentagon has not been able to account for some US$1.1 trillion of funds that have gone missing, yet the US government keeps pouring more down the plughole. Where will it end?

Ordinary workers are also becoming disgusted with the growing evidence of graft, corruption and sheer incompetence at the top of major corporations. But, such behaviour is to be expected in the dying days of capitalism. It makes no sense to campaign for regulatory agencies of government to fix the scams and rorts in public companies. At this late stage they are unable to do so, even if they were so inclined. Because it now costs large amounts of money to run for office and to be successful in that endeavour, the political donations of corporations are essential to career politicians and the OWO oriented parties they belong to. Do not expect to find genuinely enthusiastic and effective watchdogs and regulators prepared to risk their jobs, and possibly their lives, standing up for the interests of small investors and consumers in these circumstances. Bureaucrats answer to politicians and the processes of government, everywhere, have been thoroughly politicised. The regulatory watchdogs might bark now and then, for television; but they are seldom prepared to really sink their teeth into the corporate executives who determine the levels of political funding that flow to the coffers of the major parties.

Corruption does not stop with politics and big business. In an address to a group at the Harvard Law School, in February 2003, retiring US Court of Appeals judge, Edith Jones, is reported to have described the American legal system as having been corrupted almost beyond recognition. It is evident from the text of her address that Judge Jones was not referring to bribery or coercion in legal processes, but to a wholesale breakdown in ethics and a complete disdain for the original principles of justice and fairness that were written into US law by the Founding Fathers. She said.
"The legal aristocracy have shed their professional independence for the temptations and materialism associated with becoming businessmen. Because law has become a self-avowed business, pressure mounts to give clients the advice they want to hear, to pander to the client's goal through deft manipulation of the law."
Judge Edith JonesDo you recognise the insidious new philosophy that Judge Jones was decrying? It is that of takerism. The legal arena has become a jungle, and you eat what you can kill. Religious and ethical frameworks no longer shape the processes of the law. It is all down to simple expediency and opportunism - a battleground with no other rules but WIN!

Juan de Valdez deplored the fact that the people were not getting fair and balanced pastoral care from the corrupt, money focused, clergy in Renaissance Europe, and he was right. Judge Brown does not think that the American legal profession is providing the essential standards of justice and honesty that US citizens deserve. She said.

"The traditional Western beliefs in the structural integrity of law, its ongoingness, its religious roots, its transcendent qualities, are disappearing not only from the minds of law teachers and law students but also from the consciousness of the vast majority of citizens, the people as a whole; and more than that, they are disappearing from the law itself.
The law itself is becoming more fragmented, more subjective, geared more to expediency and less to morality. The historical soil of the Western legal tradition is being washed away and the tradition itself is threatened with collapse."

Just as de Valdez was right about the loss of integrity by the clergy in Medieval Europe, Judge Brown is right about the self debasement of the legal profession. Lawyers have become nothing but the clergy of capitalism, and they, and the rule of law, will fall along with that system. As Judge Edith Brown put it.

"Lawyer's private morality has definite public consequences. Their misbehaviour feeds on itself, encouraging disrespect and debasement of the rule of law as the public become encouraged to press their own advantage in a system they perceive as manipulatable."

"Having lost sight of the moral and religious foundations of the rule of law, we are vulnerable to the destruction of our freedom, our equality before the law and our self-respect."

A recent case in Australia, in which a law firm is known to have advised its tobacco industry client to destroy files and other evidence that supported the compensation claim of a woman dying of lung cancer, clearly demonstrates that the malaise that Judge Brown spoke of extends beyond the US. It is now a global characteristic of the clergy of capitalism.

Publicising Corruption In The Old World Order [148]
While Freenet offers a practical means of publishing details or claims of corruption, because it is anonymous, such use needs to be tempered by strategic aims. It is easy to post an animated image of a prominent political figure that morphs into a penis, but it does not achieve anything. Such content only makes Freenet content seem lightweight and childish. Similarly, specific allegations against individuals, who are named or otherwise identified, probably won't help the transition to a Level 4 Civilization. These exposures will just irritate the people concerned and frustrate their lawyers, because they will be unable to bring defamation or libel suits against unknown, untraceable, Freenet authors. If a large volume of personal attacks were to be made on Freenet, this would support the arguments of the conservatives and control freaks who want it closed down. Such exposés, aimed at individuals, would not lead to good or strategic outcomes.

Does this mean that Freenet can't be used to attack corruption in high places? Does it mean that the official truth can't be effectively challenged by Freenet authors? Not at all. Quite the reverse is the case.

Ordinary people want corruption stopped. They want organised crime stopped. They want government waste stopped. If Freenet authors simply expose instances of corruption, ordinary people will turn to the authorities to put a stop to it. Where senior figures in the OWO establishment are involved, there will be little chance of that happening, but it will be a chance for politicians, police chiefs, judges, and regulators to thump their chests and promise new programs to "fix" the creeping evil in our society. Of course, their programs won't work, and things will get worse, but that won't be immediately apparent.

Freesites need to demonstrate that corruption, and other failings of present-day society, are part of an overall pattern of decline. Until they realise that, ordinary people, who are trying to pay off a mortgage and climb a career ladder that is steadily being flattened, while more duties and workload are added to their job, are not going to look beyond the false promises of new programs from politicians.

Recall Daniel Quinn's observations about what people want. "People don't want more of the same. Yet, oddly enough, when they ask me what will save the world, they want to hear more of the same - something familiar, something recognisable. They want to hear about uprisings or anarchy or tougher laws. But none of those things is going to save us ......What we must have (and nothing less) is a whole world full of people with changed minds."

Before they are ready to make radical changes, people have to understand the deeper patterns below all the froth and bubble of the media coverage of events. They need to know that it is pointless trying to climb career ladders that are being torn down faster than they can be ascended. They must know that the stale solutions and failure-prone programs of the political parties do not, and cannot, lead anywhere but deeper into the decline. Freesites that help more and more people to know these things, will be far more effective than those that highlight individual instances of corruption, or defame and libel individual culprits involved in such matters.

Let's get the focus of Freenet right and keep it targeted on content that helps change minds rather than raise tempers.

See The War On Terror In Context [149]
No understanding can be more important than that which pierces the media's smoke-and-mirrors presentation of the War on Terror, and reveals it for what it is. A strategy to keep control in the face of a revolution in knowledge and information access that stems from new digital technologies.

In order to grasp what is happening now, it helps to look at what happened before, when the Medieval World Order faced the information explosion that was triggered by the introduction of the movable type printing press. There are some striking parallels to be seen between the first Renaissance of 500 years ago, and the 2nd Renaissance of the present day.

Author's Notes:
(1) The focus of this freesite is on new ideas and abandonment of failed philosophies and outmoded systems of governance. Although some of the paragraphs beyond this point might appear to be critical of political figures and national institutions there is no personal attack intended. It is the thinking and strategies that are being criticised, not particular office holders. Nor are the cases meant to provide a focus for induced rage or revenge against individuals, however culpable they might be.

As World War II ended in Europe the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, was unceremoniously executed along with his mistress, Clara Petacci. Their bodies were hung by the heels from lampposts in Milan, and later buried in unmarked graves. The Mussolini family subsequently retrieved the body of Il Duce, in 1957, and placed it in the family vault. The body of Clara Petacci, who had committed no crimes, was presumably left where it was. The revenge killings of Mussolini and Petacci did nothing to advance the fortunes or way of life of the Italian people.

Revenge has never had any societal value, and for this reason I don't support it. Revenge takes society nowhere.

(2) The cases cited below do not represent anti-American, anti-British or anti-Australian sentiments. All criticisms are directed at failed and outmoded thinking. Please do not take offence at comments that follow, because these are not intended to apply to the people of the nations concerned, only the way that those in power think and act.

(3) Some readers might find some pictures in the following content distressing. If this is so, please accept the author's apology. The illustrations are used to drive home arguments against irrational attacks on civilian populations in the course of the much-vaunted War on Terror. The few pictures involved don't have much awe, but they certainly have shock. They make one wonder how the people who made the munitions and those who ordered their use in Afghanistan and Iraq, can sleep at night.

Please read on.

The War on Witches [150]
In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a Papal Bull that became the rationale for establishing the Inquisition in Germany. The following excerpt from the Bull sets out the official view of the danger of witches to the community. The Bull and this this passage provided the sole excuse for the torture and cruel executions that were, ultimately, to be the fate of up to fifty percent of the population of some villages.

"It has recently come to our ears, not without great pain to us, that in some parts of upper Germany, as well as in the provinces, cities, territories, regions and dioceses of Mainz, Koln, Trier, Salzburg, and Bremen, many persons of both sexes, heedless of their own salvation and forsaking the catholic faith, give themselves over to devils male and female, and by their incantations, charms, and conjurings, and by other abominable superstitions and sortileges, offences, crimes, and misdeeds, ruin and cause to perish the offspring of women, the foal of animals, the products of the earth, the grapes of vines, and the fruits of trees, as well as men and women, cattle and flocks and herds and animals of every kind, vineyards also and orchards, meadows, pastures, harvests, grains and other fruits of the earth; that they afflict and torture with dire pains and anguish, both internal and external, these men, women, cattle, flocks, herds, and animals, and hinder men from begetting and women from conceiving, and prevent all consummation of marriage; that, moreover, they deny with sacrilegious lips the faith they received in holy baptism; and that, at the instigation of the enemy of mankind, they do not fear to commit and perpetrate many other abominable offences and crimes, at the risk of their own souls, to the insult of the divine majesty and to the pernicious example and scandal of multitudes."
Clearly, the Roman Church and its priests, and high officials, being among the best educated members of Medieval society, and possessed of ancient manuscripts and wisdom from antiquity, would have known the above assertions to be pure fiction. WitchesNonetheless, the witch-hunts that originated from the 1484 Papal Bull were to continue in Europe for centuries and result in the deaths of between 100,000 (executions for which records survive today) and something less than one million innocent people (the estimated total including those trials and executions for which no records survive).

The motivation for the orchestrated war on witches could not have had anything to do with the attacks that Martin Luther was to later make on the Roman Church. Luther was one year old in 1484. His denunciation of the corruption and other failings of the established order of rule and law in Europe was to come 33 years later, in 1517. However, the War on Witches can be linked to Luther in one sense, it was almost certainly prompted by the fear of the Medieval World Order that such reforms would be placed on a future agenda of European polity. Put simply, the religious and feudal elites of Europe feared that the new force of mass publication, as evidenced by the printing of the Gutenberg Bible, in 1455, and the subsequent spread of movable-type printing presses, such as that established by William Caxton, in 1476, would inevitably lead to change and the emasculation of their power.

Note carefully what is being argued here. It is that the ruling elite of a spent civilization were prepared to set in train a process that would lead to the torture and unjust execution of hundreds of thousands of citizens, mostly women, solely to bolster their authority and justify their continued existence. The new technological revolution that the Medieval World Order feared was mass publication, and in the end it was this very force that caused their power and influence to evaporate. They saw the problem ahead, and fought a diversionary action through the Inquisition and the War on Witches. But, these inhuman actions only delayed their passing. The War on Witches could not save the Medieval World Order.

The War on Terror [151]
A new civilization rose from the ashes of the Medieval World Order, it ran its bloody course for 400 years but now faces annihilation in the face of the new technologies of digital information processing. However, if dissent can be stifled, if progress can be slowed and artificial scarcity can continue to prevail in the global economy, if information can be controlled and the official truth can be believed by the majority of citizens, the old order can continue for a few more years. Perhaps long enough to gain control of new technologies and turn them into weapons to enforce the status quo. Perhaps not.

The people who flew large commercial aircraft into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, on September 11, 2001, were:

All of the above "facts" have become part of the official truth about 911. There are hundreds of sites on the WWW that question the veracity of the government and mass media explanations of what happened that morning in New York, and several sites on Freenet with the same conspiracy theme. We are unlikely to ever get the real truth about the attack that took some 3,000 lives, but we can control what we think about the event and its official explanation. We remain free to think and act according to the reasoning we apply to the facts that are known to be true, and what our intuition and collective psyche tells us.

One fact we can be sure of is that the vast majority of fatalities of 911 were of ordinary people. Very few, if any, high profile leaders and executives of the OWO perished in the attack on the WTC. The final death toll is uncertain, not because bodies were vaporised, but because there were illegal immigrants working in the WTC, for sweatshop rates of pay. The icon of capitalism, occupied by many major firms, had a population of people who could never be declared missing if they failed to come home. The number of deaths was eventually ruled off at about 3,000 souls.

Revenge Is Never A Good Reason For WAR [152]
Every life lost on 911 was an absolute tragedy, however, an important point needs to be recognised about the event that sparked the new War on Terror. It is that the 911 attack pales into insignificance when compared to the casualties in real wars and many natural disasters. It can be strongly argued that, of itself, the 911 attack and the resulting deaths and casualties did not constitute a sound reason to launch a series of retaliatory and "pre-emptive" strikes on countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor can the tragic losses of 911 justify the continued state of war now espoused by the political leaders of the US, UK and Australia. Two wrongs do not make a right.

While the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, in 1941, was undeclared, the aircraft were clearly marked. There was a strong case for the US entering the war to protect itself against the obvious intent of its new enemy to attack, and possibly invade, America. This was not the case with 911.

The truth about the real perpetrators of that attack remains unclear. We cannot definitely say that it was not Arab terrorists, but we can say that the US government has not yet made sufficient verifiable evidence available to prove that it was offshore terrorists that attacked the WTC towers.Who really did it?

Until that happens it will be difficult for the families and friends of those who died in the aircraft strikes and subsequent collapse of the WTC to achieve full closure of their grief. Sadly, such open disclosure of the facts to independent investigators and citizens audit committees is not likely to occur.

However, is cannot be right to support the US government and its allies in a series of wars against various Muslim states that are alleged to harbour and equip terrorists. It is not valid to attack countries because they "might" provide a base for future strikes on Westerners. Even if the 911 terrorists were Arab, as alleged by the Western media, the CIA, the FBI, and similar dubious sources of truth, revenge wars won't help the families of the victims achieve sufficient peace to continue their lives. Because it is external, revenge never provides closure. Only internal insights and adjustments can do that.

Author's Note:
Within the above sentiments, there is no intended devaluation of the lives that were lost on 911. No unnatural cause of death is ever good, be it due to attack or simply an accident. Despite what institutionalised science might say about the matter of death, it is only the flesh that perishes. The souls of every living thing, not just humans but animals and plants as well, survive forever. The life force in DNA is eternal.

Until recently, this realisation has comforted a relatively small number of monks and mystics. But now a growing number of people, those who have the interest to search out the answers and the openness of mind to accept them, are also blessed with this knowledge. As the author of this freesite, I sincerely hope that the families of the 911 victims will come to realise that their loved ones are not lost in spirit, but only in body. The loved ones are not gone forever. Their souls did not die, they live on in a higher state of consciousness.

Those responsible for the 911 attack will take longer to get to that place. Their souls will recycle adversely. They will come back among us in forms such as microbes living in the sludge of sewage treatment ponds. That is their proper position in the order of life. On their 911 record, the souls of the perpetrators don't belong in positions of high office and power in human affairs. While the rule of law and the mechanisms of federal states might struggle to bring such evil to account, there is a greater system of justice. And IT is divine and incorruptible.

Vocal Reactions to 911 [153]
We know what the leaders of the US, Great Britain, and other Western states have said about 911. Their words are on record, as are those of various media commentators. Here are some of the statements made in the days following the attack on the WTC towers.

Do you see a similarity in the above rhetoric on terrorists and the earlier diatribes on witches? During the first Renaissance the tactic of controlling dissent through a War on Witches was widely and wickedly used. This helped the Medieval World Order to survive for longer than it would otherwise have done, but at a terrible cost in lives and human suffering.

Shockingly, the outgoing elites of the present industrial society seem to be bent on repeating this same murderous ploy. Is the new War on Terror really a war on dissent and changes that could sap the power of the Old World Order? Is President Bush's statement, "If you embrace freedom, you're not safe from terrorism", a thinly veiled threat? Will more 911s and 1012s be needed to secure the iron control of the Old World Order over energy and other resources that, thanks to new technologies, are no longer scarce?

"No Regard For The Sanctity of Human Life" [154]
Following 911 the US quickly moved to attack Afghanistan, claiming that in harboured terrorists who had masterminded the WTC atrocity. Even to this day, no concrete public evidence has been released to support that allegation. There have been conveniently low quality videos and tape recordings, purporting to be issued by Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders. But these could have been fabricated by anyone with access to basic sound and imaging equipment. In respect of the invasion of Afghanistan, and subsequently Iraq, the Coalition of the Willing - the US, UK and Australia, have been long on intelligence assurances and short on hard evidence to support their murderous assaults.

As things stand, you and I can't really know what justification there was for the undeclared war on Afghanistan. But we can certainly know and judge the actions of the Coalition of the Willing (CoW) in the retaliatory attacks that were made. Even the strict censorship that operates on media coverage of military actions is unable to stop us knowing quite a lot about the outcomes. We can assess the information that leaks out and form our own views. We do not have to swallow the deluge of propaganda from the CoW.

Here are some quotes about the war waged in Afghanistan. It was, inevitably, a one sided affair. When the richest nation on earth takes on the poorest, the final victory is never in doubt. But what happened in Afghanistan can scarcely be called war. It was genocide.

In the Afghanistan turkey shoot the CoW forces used vast numbers of hard target weapons and other munitions containing depleted uranium (DU). This substance is almost twice as dense as lead. When it punches through concrete bunkers, armour, or mud huts, DU disintegrates into a chemically toxic and radioactive dust. In contrast to the earlier DU weapons used in Gulf War I, the newer ordinance produced deaths and deformities within weeks of the start of military action by the CoW.DU affected baby Between 1990-91 and 2001 the US arms manufacturers are thought to have "improved" the DU technology by introducing milled uranium ore to their warheads. This non-depleted uranium (NDU) is - wait for it - cheaper to produce and far more potent than DU. It poses massive health risks to civilian populations exposed to it, and constitutes, in every sense of the word, a weapon of mass destruction, or WMD. "Hey they're hunting them in Iraq, aren't they?"

The photos show deformed infants born in Afghanistan after DU baby Afghanistanmassive use of DU and NDU weapons. These pictures are selected from amongst the least disturbing examples to come from the conflict. There are others considered too obscene and terrible to show here (although they do appear on some WWW sites). The really shocking pictures (those not shown here) are of babies with two heads or no arms or legs, and of young children with tumours growing out of their mouths, or from their eye sockets thus rendering them blind. Yet, the executives of the munitions companies that make DU and NDU warheads are respected as valuable members of their nation, the US. While the generals that deployed these evil, inhuman munitions against the least protected population on earth, are hailed as heroes. Go figure - as they say stateside.

Despite the prolific assurances that smart weapons would minimise civilian casualties and deaths, the CoW forces used DU in their projectiles and bombs. Even if all the strikes hit only Taliban forces, DU kills indiscriminately, invisibly, for centuries. It poisons water and makes land unusable in a region where arable soil is precious. During their assault on Afghanistan CoW forces bombed the Kajaki dam, which supplies water to over 1 million people. With their land and water poisoned by DU and NDU, the population faces the options of either leaving the localities they have inhabited for generations, or staying on in perilous circumstances.

Hardly any of the people in this predicament are members of al Qaeda, nor have they ever heard of the WTC towers. They are too poor to possess telephones, television sets or computers. Easy scapegoats for 911; ready-made witches.

Commanders of the invading CoW forces quickly encountered a scarcity of targets in Afghanistan. All they found to strike were collections of mud huts. Yet, more than 22,000 weapons were dropped on the Afghanistan countryside. These ranged from cruise missiles to heavy fuel-air bombs and satellite guided J-dams. Despite the fact that 60 percent of the ordinance dropped was precision guided, it is believed that, "One in four bombs and missiles dropped by the US on Afghanistan may have missed its target" (The Guardian, April 10, 2002).

In areas where Taliban fighters were bombed around the clock, there were many reports of locals finding the Taliban dead, with no visible injuries except blood flowing from their mouths. Such internal bleeding is consistent with the use of chemical or NDU weapons. The following phenomenon is said to have been witnessed by numbers of people entering bombed areas,

The Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) subsequently tested the urine of people from Jala Abad and found the highest level of uranium ever recorded in a population. Concentrations were 400% to 2,000% higher than normal baselines.

The Pentagon continues to maintain that DU does not pose a threat to civilians or its own troops. And the US government is refusing to clean up the DU residues in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, US assertions about the "safety" of their DU weapons are not borne out by field experience.

Here is a quote from one British veteran of Gulf War I, Ray Bristow, a former marathon runner.

Perversely, the Australian government's solution to the "problem" of Afghan refugees held for long periods in Australian detention centres - branded "concentration camps" by human rights organisations and church groups - has been to offer them money to return to the land of their birth. Those unwise enough to accept the relatively small inducement offered are likely to regret their decision, as their families could face invisible killers in the form of contaminated water and radioactive dust.

Given the above, many people in the CoW homelands are expressing disquiet and disgust at the nature and outcomes of the new War on Terror. They are wondering exactly who it is that has , "No regard for the sanctity of human life." Is it "them," the Muslim fundamentalists, or is it "us", the nations that make up the Coalition of the Willing? Even if there are evil Muslims intent on terrorising the West, how do we justify our nation being so thoroughly and remorselessly evil in return?

Military barbarism by CoW forces does not provide any closure for families of 911. All it does is debase the US, UK and Australia in the eyes of the world. That's a good reason for people in the homelands of the CoW to opt for secession. So that they, as decent people, can stand apart from the monsters who so blatantly attack and murder civilians for economic and political advantage.

Voices Raised In Dissent [155]
If you speak to people who have, in their own lifetimes, endured war in their homeland you will find that the majority abhor the idea of militarism. The memory of World War II, fought in their countryside, was certainly a large factor in the refusal of France and Germany to join the CoW in attacking Iraq. There is little doubt that there are Old Order elites in Europe, in France and in Germany, that would have supported, and joined, the CoW invasions. But the people of Europe have had enough of war, and it these circumstances it was politically difficult for governments to commit to the strikes.

It is significant that in countries such as the US, the UK and Australia, which have not been invaded during the living memory of their citizens, it was easier for politicians, and the state-serving media, to fan support for a War on Terror, and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Nonetheless, many people in CoW countries have voiced their objection to war as a solution to terrorism, and to the human rights violations that are carried out in the name of anti-terrorist precautions.

People who speak out in these terms are courageous. Just as it was highly dangerous, if not suicidal, to speak out against the Inquisition or the dogma of the Roman Church, Natalie Mainsit is now dangerous to voice opposition, however justified it might be, to the War on Terror. In reality, the War on Terror is exactly what the War on Witches was. It is a WAR on DISSENT, and it is calculated to help the Old World Order hold onto power for a little while longer.

It is impossible to fool all the people all the time. And it is impossible to silence everyone. Since the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions there have been many expressions of disgust and disenchantment concerning the actions of the CoW. Dissent has been aired in the few remaining pockets of a free press, on the Internet, from the stage, and on the streets.

Here are a few examples.

Help Others See Beyond The War On Terror [156]
As already stated, it is pointless to protest and to undertake acts of civil disobedience in the hope of changing or halting the War on Terror. Ordinary citizens in the Coalition of the Willing's homelands have no more chance of changing the CoW's approach to the war than the inhabitants of 15th century German villages had of changing the way the Inquisition cruelly wiped out up to fifty percent of their populations, in the name of the War on Witches. What ordinary people can do today is to change the things that they control, including what they think and know.

The OWO wants to fight and suppress demonstrations and uprisings, because it has command of the police and the military. It wants to fight in the courts, where it controls the rule of law. It seeks to make examples of individuals, such as the Australian "terrorist" David Hicks, or of whole countries, such as Afghanistan and Iraq. It wants to cow all opposition to the continuance of the economic system of artificial scarcity; despite the present-day existence of technologies of abundance.

What the Old World Order does not want is widespread understanding of the truth about the opportunity to form a new, and far higher, level of civilization based on the accumulation and distribution of information and knowledge. After all, that was what caused the downfall of the Medieval World Order during the first Renaissance. It is the prospect of ordinary people everywhere gaining access to information and knowledge, changing the way they think, then "joining all the dots" to design a new and better world, that the OWO is, rightly, terrified of. Faced with that prospect, the OWO elites become as dangerous as cornered beasts.

The way to defeat the OWO is to abandon it. This is the message that must be projected. It is not a matter of fighting the OWO. There is no need to goad that cornered beast, nor is there any societal value in exacting revenge on its members.

During the first Renaissance, the world experienced a transformation to a new level of civilization. The two main reasons for this change were, (1) the impact of mass publishing on the spread of information and knowledge, (2) the emasculation of the power of the Medieval World Order, embodied in the Roman Church. Once the Reformation came, worshippers abandoned the old, indulgences-funded, church order for new split-off denominations that were founded across Europe. All of the secular power of the Roman Church was then lost, and much of its spiritual influence as well.

The old church still exists today, and it is no longer corrupt or malevolent. It no longer holds back scientific and technological advancement for the sake of dogma, power and control. The same will apply to the elites of the OWO. They will continue to exist in a Level 4 Civilization, with its conditions of abundance and spiritual enlightenment. It is just that the OWO will no longer have power over the likes of you and I. We will have chosen to abandon it, for a better life and the chance to use magic new technologies to do good for the planet, its peoples, its creatures, and its natural habitats.

Conspiracy Theories And The Truth Scale [157]
Anyone who speaks about the similarities between the War on Terror and the War on Witches can expect to encounter the charge of being a conspiracy theorist. Because of the way the label of "a conspiracy theory" has been positioned by the mainstream media - in the same category as outright lies and alien abduction stories - it is not helpful to one's credibility to be called a conspiracy theorist. It's equivalent to being tagged as a liar or a kook. However, the concept of a Truth Spectrum can help to understand the use of value labels, and how to counter media stereotyping of information.

Full information is the key to knowing whether any argument or theory is true or false. You would know whether a companion animal is named Spot, or not, if you named it. You would have complete information about the question of what the animal's name is, and how it came to be so called. But what about someone else who does not know you or your dog? Since they lack any relevant information they cannot be sure whether the name is Spot, of something else. If they are given a clue, say by the initial S on the animal's collar, a stranger can begin to move from a position of complete uncertainty, halfway between absolute truth and absolute falsity, to a position on a scale that is closer to the name Spot being true than to it being false. The diagram below shows such a Truth Scale, that can be used to reflect degrees of certainty or uncertainty about a statement, assertion, theory, or notion.Truth Scale

In the diagram, zero is absolute falsity and 8 is absolute truth. Only those in full possession of all the relevant facts and information can know whether an assertion, such as "The dog's name is Spot", fits at 0 or at 8. Everyone else has either to: (a) accept the truth of the statement, without any real basis for doing so, or (b) fit the statement into the scale that bridges the range of probabilities between 0 and 8. If there is no other information, the fit should be Step 4. There is an equal probability of the statement being true or false. The notion is "half authentic".

On June 6, 1944, a statement that, "The Allied forces will land on French beaches, in a large scale invasion", would have been at Step 8 on the Truth Scale. By then everyone was aware that the invasion was underway. However, if the same statement had been made on April 6, 1944, the situation would have been different. For Allied commanders the fit on the scale might have been 7. They knew that the invasion was on, but the weather would determine the actual date. For civilians in Britain, the fit would have been more like 5 or 6, depending on how much preparatory activity they might have observed. For those in France it could have been 4 on the scale. They would have lacked any further information to authenticate the notion of a forthcoming invasion.

The point about the above example is that one month before the June invasion the authenticity rating of as statement that forces would land in Normandy on June 6, would not have been a conspiracy theory. It could not have been rejected out of hand, as a fantasy produced by over imaginative or warped minds. In 1944, the British and Americans were not conspirators. What was involved in Normandy was a joint military operation, one that was kept secret, but one that was a normal and not unexpected event in the war with Germany.

Today things are different. When Saddam Hussein's sons were reportedly cornered and killed in a house in Mosul, a headline on the WWW read, "UDAY AND QUSAY ARE DEAD - AGAIN". The article, suggested that it was unlikely that Saddam's sons would have been hiding out in the home of the local tribal leader that had appeared on Yahoo News some time earlier, with Abrams tanks parked out front. Other articles on the WWW questioned the story of a lengthy firefight involving only the brothers and one bodyguard on one side, and a large, heavily armed, US force. The use of mortician's putty to "reconstruct" the faces of the two bodies before they were exhibited to the press, also raised questions. Was the delay to allow time for Hollywood-like special effects specialists to "recreate" likenesses of Uday and Qusey? And so on. All these notions were dismissed as conspiracy theories by the mainstream media, and not accorded any place in the coverage of the US invasion of Iraq.

The many articles raising questions about the official truth portrayed by the OWO-controlled media are no less credible than the official truth itself. Where can one place the official story about the 911 attacks on the Truth Scale? In the absence of any concrete evidence being provided to support the line that al Qaeda planned and carried out the atrocity, it is valid for citizens and independent journalists (there are a few remaining) to assess the level of authenticity of the story on such a basis. When they come up with a low number, say 1 or 2, it is entirely valid to posit alternative scenarios, and to explore and develop them. People who do this are not conspiracy theorists. They are simply attempting to fill the vacuum of information that exists around them.

Operation Northwoods [158]
In his book titled, Body of Secrets, investigative journalist, James Bamford, follows up an earlier, and controversial, study of the US National Security Agency (NSA). While his book is about the NSA, Bamford also uncovered some interesting, and unrelated, documents under Freedom Of Information (FOI) access. James BamfordThe US Congress had increased such access following a furore over the 1992 film JFK, about the possibility of CIA involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy. A tip off from a knowledgeable source enabled Bamford to get hold of documents held from the public gaze for some 40 years. They related to a US Military plan, called Operation Northwoods, to raise the anger of the American people against the regime in Cuba.

That seems typical enough, the US and many other governments are constantly attempting to shape and manipulate public opinion. It's an industry, and every type of information and event gets spun for all it's worth. But Northwoods was different. In 1962 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff actually proposed attacks on Cuban refugees, US property, and US citizens.

The US Feds were planning to attack, and presumably kill, some of their own citizens in order to have the American public support retaliation against the Cuba. They wanted regime change there. Sound familiar?

The Operation Northwoods document that is said to have been presented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the Pentagon) to then Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, can be found on the WWW. Today, McNamara denies ever having seen the Northwoods plan. However, it is known that several days after March 13, when the document is said to have been presented to the Defense Secretary, President Kennedy directly told General Lyman Lemnitzer, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that deceptive action should never be used to heighten the Cuban issue.

Among the possibilities canvassed in the Operation Northwoods document were the following.

  • "The suggested courses of action appended to Enclosure A are based on the premise that US military intervention will result from a period of heightened US-Cuban tensions which place the United States in the position of suffering justifiable grievances."

  • "It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. ...The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight."

  • "Harassment of civil air, attacks on surface shipping and destruction of US military drone aircraft by MIG type planes would be useful as complementary actions. An F-86 properly painted would convince air passengers that they saw a Cuban MIG, especially if the pilot of the transport were to announce such fact......reasonable copies of the MIG could be produced from US resources in about three months."

There were many more actions proposed, but the above sample illustrates the thinking coming from the Pentagon in 1962. What were they thinking in 2001?

Elements within the American Military Industrial Complex (AMIC) might seek to label James Bamford as a conspiracy theorist, but his work on Operation Northwoods provides much more factual material than the official truth about 911. Bamford's assertion that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were advocating attacks on US citizens in 1962 warrants a rating of 7 on the Truth Scale. We can't be absolutely certain of it, but there is considerable information to support the notion. On the other hand, the proposition that Muslim extremists were solely responsible for planning and carrying out the 911 attacks on the WTC towers, is largely unsupported by hard evidence. It can only be authenticated at steps 1 or 2 on the scale.

Three Possible Truths For 911 and 1012 [159]
Since mere citizens are denied access to the deep data held within government agencies, and have to glean what they can from crumbs of information that emerge after thirty or forty years, people are forced to speculate about the truth. All we citizens can ever have are notions of what might really have happened, covering steps 1 through 7 on the Truth Scale. We are never permitted to know the information that would enable us to confirm the 0 or 8 steps.

For the 911 atrocity, and also for the 1012 bombing in Bali, there are three possible truths.

  1. Muslim extremists, who hate the West, were responsible, as told in the official truth. In the case of 1012 the official truth has been played out in an Indonesian court, with accused who have admitted their guilt. The latter touch considerably increases the authenticity of the official truth in the eyes of those who don't look too hard.

  2. Elements within the US government staged 911 and framed Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. The CIA, as is widely believed in Asia, were behind the Bali bombing. (But how does that explain the admissions of Amrozi and the alleged involvement of Jemaah Islamiyah? See the segment on the Bali bombings below.)

  3. Both 911 and 1012 were joint operations between governments, much like the Normandy landings. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a possible line of citizens inquiry, and quite legitimate. Within this possibility, the US and Saudi governments colluded with regard to 911, and Osama bin Laden was part of the plot. The US had bought his loyalty long ago, in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation. In the case of 1012, the US, Indonesian and Australian governments colluded to spur public reaction and support for the War on Terror.

The second possible truth seems improbable to many people. This is particularly the case in respect of 1012, because there are people like Amrozi who have admitted guilt, and who face the death penalty. Although the third possible truth seems even more fanciful to most, it actually removes the issues around Osama bin Laden and Amrozi. If they were part of a joint operation by elements of the OWO, they could be expected to convey the impression that they were solely to blame, as Muslim terrorists, and that the CoW is, therefore, waging a just war on defenceless people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries to come.

What needs to be remembered, when grappling with the enormity of the betrayal inherent in both of the second and third of the possible truths, is this. In the War on Witches, up to a million people were cruelly tortured and executed. But, as even a ten year old child could tell you today, just by basic reasoning, there were no witches in medieval Europe. None.

The Inquisition and the War on Witches were instruments used by the faltering Medieval World Order to contain change and maintain their power and control. The "witches" that the Roman church persecuted to further its own ends, were a fiction. The people who died during the terror of the Inquisition were real enough, but the threat they posed was conjured up to preserve an old, and unequal, way of life.

Today, the systems of government and state control are global. There is every reason to expect that government and industrial elites might mount another witch-hunt, to retain power for a little longer. There are already active secessionist movements in Indonesia, and the Australian government, as argued earlier, faces the same potential, as new technologies erode its relevance. While it is not yet possible for ordinary people in Indonesia and Australia to know definitely, that there is collusion between their central governments - step 8 on the Truth Scale - there are sound reasons to examine and discuss this possibility.

Some Indonesian History - Candidly Revealed [160]
John Pilger is an Australian, who now lives in London. He is an award winning investigative journalist, a documentary filmmaker, and a former war correspondent. In his book, The New Rulers of the World, Pilger draws on and expands his television film of the same name. John PilgerWith scrupulous research and chilling candour he reveals how, in the mid-1960s, Western corporations colluded with the new Suharto regime to impose a global economy on Indonesia and the rest of Asia.

Writing of the massacres that were a feature of the US backed coup that brought Suharto to power in 1965, Pilger says:

What happened once Suharto had power amounted to the 'capture' of the Indonesian economy by the West. Pilger observes that:
  • "This is the story of how the 'global economy' in Asia was spawned in the bloodbath that bought General Suharto to power in Indonesia in 1965-66. It draws on recently released documents that describe a remarkable meeting in 1967 of the world's most powerful corporate figures, at which they carved up the Indonesian economy, sector by sector."

  • "This was done in the most spectacular way,' Jeffrey Winters, professor at Northwestern University, Chicago, told me. 'They divided up into five different sections: mining in one room, services in another, light industry in another, banking and finance in another...You had these big corporate people going around the table, saying [to Suharto's people] this is what we need: this, this and this, and they basically designed the legal infrastructure for investment in Indonesia.' As a result, a mountain of copper and gold, nickel and bauxite, was handed out to American transnational companies. A group of American, Japanese and French companies got the tropical forests of Sumatra; and so on."

  • "Under Sukarno. Indonesia had few debts; he had thrown out the World Bank, limited the power of the oil companies and publicly told the Americans to 'go to hell' with their loans. Now the big loans rolled in, mostly from the World Bank, which had the job of tutoring the 'model pupil' on behalf of the IGGI [Inter-Governmental Group on Indonesia] godfathers. 'Indonesia' said an official of the bank, 'is the best thing that's happened to Uncle Sam since World War Two."

  • "I asked one of Suharto's representatives at the 1967 meeting, Emil Salim, if anyone had mentioned that up to a million people had died violently in bringing the new 'global economy' to Indonesia. 'No that was not on the agenda.' he replied. 'We didn't have television then."

  • "In our universities, Indonesian scholars approved Suharto's big lie about a 'communist coup; being the cause of the killings, while western corporations anointed his regime's 'stability'. The silence lasted more than a quarter of a century, until is was broken by the cries of Suharto's victims in East Timor: a second genocide conducted with western military backing."

No one should imagine that the evil collaboration between the Indonesian military and the leaders and apparatchiks of the OWO, including those within the Australian government in Canberra, has ever waned. It continues to this day, and that is another good reason to suspect the official truth about the 1012 bombings in Bali.

Safe Havens For Terrorists [161]
People who rely on the mass media for their information are likely to imagine that terrorists spend their active lives, and their retirement, in caves such as those at Tora Bora in Afghanistan. They are thought of as living a precarious existence in difficult circumstances. However, as John Pilger and others point out, a great many monsters created by the West live comfortably in communities that have no idea who they are. Here are several excerpts from Pilger's book, The New Rulers of the World.

Although not on so large a scale, similar training arrangements have existed for many decades between Australia and Indonesia. Many of the senior officers in the Indonesian military, commanders of the special forces unit Kopassus, and other categories of police and intelligence personnel, have been educated and trained in Australia. And that practice continues.

Australia Sells Its Citizens Short [162]
Australian citizens, Mamdouth Habib and David Hicks have been illegally incarcerated in the Guantanamo Bay facility established by the US military as part of the War on Terror. GBay is the modern equivalent of the medieval dungeons used by the Inquisition in their War on Witches. Habib was picked up in Pakistan in October, 2001, where his family says he was looking for a new home for them. Guantanamo BayDespite having been cleared previously of any terrorist connections in Australia, he is still in prison in Cuba. Hicks is an admitted Taliban fighter who was active against the Northern Alliance. There is no evidence that he was a terrorist or that he fought against CoW forces. Despite this, Hicks has not been accorded the rights of a combatant under the Geneva Convention. He has been denied access to civilian lawyers of his choice, and contact with relatives. Hicks faces a US military court and the death penalty.

In typical fashion the Australian government has done nothing to help Habib and Hicks get a fair trial and access to legal and other support. The only Australian contact had in the early stages of their imprisonment ws with Australian Federal Police and operatives from ASIO (a covert agency somewhat similar to the CIA). The latter are unlikely to have been much help to Habib and Hicks, and might well have worsened their respective cases. The fact that just about any major power can seize, mistreat or execute Australian citizens, without as much as a 'boo' coming out of Canberra, should cause more people on that large island to think seriously about the option of secession. Two of the same ministers who issued the glib rebuttal of UN criticism of Australia's treatment of asylum seekers, and the conditions that so distressed Ian Chappell, are directly responsible for the shameful abandonment of Habib and Hicks.

As the War on Terror is ramped up around the globe, Australians must look after their own interests when travelling abroad. Because it is clear that their own government will desert them if they ever need help.

Canberra's Shameful Deceit On The Balibo Killings [163]
On October 16, 1975, five journalists filming the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, for Australian TV channels, were killed at a place called Balibo. This name seems set to become one of the rallying cries of 2nd Renaissance secession movements in Australia. The facts surrounding the Balibo killings are so damning of the central governments of Australia and Indonesia that the event will rank in Australian consciousness with the Eureka Stockade uprising of 1854.

The following excerpts from various reports and interviews related to Balibo give an outline of the facts, some of which have taken 25 years to emerge.

Shirley Shackleton is a most courageous woman and there is no intention here of belittling her efforts to get at the truth about the death of her then 29 years old husband and his colleagues. However, the above episode raises profound questions about our continued support of central governments.

It is remarkable how people keep wanting the Feds to investigate themselves, when is obvious that they are not to be trusted. The matter of the Balibo Five demonstrates that Australia is no longer a free democracy, nor a society in which citizens can have any belief in the officials who are supposed to be acting in the national interest, but are instead acting in the interest of the AMIC and the OWO. There will never be a full and truthful account of the invasion of East Timor and the circumstances of the deaths of the Balibo Five. Governments don't operate like that anymore. The question this raises is; Why do ordinary people still look to governments to safeguard their interests and solve the problems in the failing system of industrial capitalism? As Paul and Cox said about beliefs that non-human intelligences will not arise in the near future: "Now there's nutty for you."

Fortunately, the power and control of government and military elites is illusory in the 21st century. The world no longer works the way it did, and there is nothing to compel people to support failed, outdated systems any longer. This is an understanding that must be widely and quickly shared. The future of our children and the planet depends upon our changing our thinking about governments, and our support for them.

Australia's Terrorism Wake Up Call [164]
The horrific bombings of the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar in Bali, on October 12, 2002, considerably strengthened the hand of the CoW in pursuing the War on Terror. Death in BaliHere was an opportunity to harden the hearts of the Australian and US public against Islamic fundamentalists. It was also a chance for the Indonesian government to justify harsh measures in the war against terrorists and secessionists, such at those in the province of Aceh.

In Australia, a heightened public awareness of the threat of terrorism on the mainland created an opportunity for the Feds to introduce draconian legislation that is designed to remove established rights and strengthen the powers of the authorities to ruthlessly crush all forms of dissent.

Eighty eight of the 202 fatalities resulting from the attack were Australian nationals. There were also many Australian casualties, some of these people will never fully recover from the horrendous burns they suffered. Oddly, many of the bodies of the victims of the atrocity could not be readily assembled into individual's remains, even with modern genetic and forensic technologies being available via the Australian Federal Police (AFP). On March 1, 2003, some 185 body parts (not whole cadavers) were cremated in a ceremony at the Mumbul Cemetery. At that time it was stated that another 43 fragmentary remains were still held at the morgue, pending final disposition by the investigators.

There are reports that in one Balinese kampong that provided labour to the clubs in Kuta Beach, seven empty coffins were buried, because there were no identifiable remains of the missing workers. It was as if they had been vaporised. Scores of people, mainly locals, are thought to have disappeared without trace.

A Uniquely Terrible Event [165]
The bombings at the American Consulate and Paddy's Bar were horrific enough, but the main blast, outside the Sari Club that was regularly patronised by Australians, was uniquely terrible. Despite the later impressions conveyed by Indonesian and Australian police investigators, the Sari bomb was not a typical van bomb. The facts in this regard are verifiable and indisputable. That they contradict the official truth should surprise nobody. However, the alternative truth will undoubtedly further sadden the families of the many victims of that October night at Kuta Beach.

The following are eye witness reports and quotes culled from many published shortly after October 12, 2002.

Names are not used here, lest the memories again disturb families that are already deeply hurt by the cruel attack.

The central governments of Indonesia and Australia did not exactly cover themselves with glory in the time immediately following the Bali bombing. Nor were they to distinguish themselves by the way the subsequent joint-investigation of the atrocity was handled. Put bluntly, the police and other officials involved in the latter fiasco should never, ever, be believed again. No matter what they say or do. Read on to discover why this is so.

Flaws In The Official Truth About 1012 - The Crater [166]
While it is not possible to be sure of the real nature of the explosive device that was triggered outside the Sari Club, we can be sure of one thing. The official explanation of a van bomb devised by Amrozi and various accomplices is a complete fallacy. Bali CraterIt rates at zero on the Truth Scale. The eyewitness reports of the way the second blast occurred, the nature of the burns suffered by victims, the complete vaporisation of scores of people - with no body parts remaining whatsoever, the incredible damage done to reinforced concrete structures, the large crater in the street outside the club, the known blast characteristics of potassium chlorate, and the laws of physics, all combine to totally refute the official truth concocted by the joint Indonesian-Australian investigation team.

In December, 2002, the Australian Federal Police Commissioner visited Bali and praised the investigators. He said, "The Indonesian National Police, from my perspective, have done an outstanding job. It has only been eight weeks since the bombings and already 15 people have been arrested. There are only five suspects outstanding." Jakarta Post Editor, Robert S. Finnegan, an internationally published investigative reporter with 20 years experience did not see it the same way. In an article in the Jakarta Post he had written the following.

The size of the crater in the street outside the Sari Club is an undeniable fact, even though the investigating team quickly constructed a screen around the site and later excavated the hole, then filled in with clean earth. Many witnesses have reported the crater and estimated its size. It was also photographed by many people (see above picture).

Independent analysts have pointed out that there are only two ways that a bomb can cause a crater.

a) It is dropped from an aircraft and penetrates the ground before exploding.

b) It is physically positioned in a sub-surface position, such as a storm drain.

The Omagh car bomb detonated in Northern Ireland in 1998 was composed of a mixture of fertiliser, fuel oil and the high-explosive Semtex. This 500lb device killed 29 people, but it did not cause a crater of any sort. The first atomic bomb dropped from an aircraft and exploded above the city of Hiroshima in 1945, did not cause a crater either. This latter device weighed 4 tons and had an energy equivalent of 12.5 kilotons of TNT, but it simply caused a dome shaped blast wave above ground.

It is clear that there is no possibility that any amount of explosives contained in a parked van could have accounted for the large crater at the main blast site. Only a device that had been placed in a drain or otherwise buried could have been responsible for the large hole in the street. The specialist bomb site investigators from the Indonesian National Police and the Australian Federal Police must have known these facts. They presumably excavated the crater and dumped the soil at sea because the evidence did not fit the story that was being developed as the official truth about the terrible Bali bomb. Once the soil was gone and the hole was filled in with fresh material, nobody would photograph the crater and nobody would test the soil (Why else would it be removed?). Then the world would soon forget that the crater ever existed.

Flaws In The Official Truth About 1012 - The Explosives [167]
Everyone is aware that a bomb generates a blast wave. The force of the blast is dependent on the type of explosive used as well as other factors such as how the explosive is placed or delivered. There are conventions for measuring the speed and force of blast waves. Overpressure is the force that a blast wave exerts over and above normal atmospheric pressure. It is normally stated in pounds per square inch. The velocity of the wave may be expressed in feet per second. The figures relating to the blast waves that particular explosives generate are well known. Every specialist bomb investigator, and many other police and military personnel, know the values off by heart. They don't even have to look them up. These specialists are also well aware of the levels of damage that various overpressure values cause to structures and victims in their path.

When a qualified investigator looks at the aftermath of a bomb explosion the first facts that register in their mind relate to the level of damage evident in surrounding structures and the nature of the injuries suffered by victims of the blast. Even before traces of explosive are found and analysed these indications can tell a specialist what combinations of explosives and what size of device might have been responsible. Any competent forensic scientist with a knowledge of explosives characteristics can also tell, with absolute certainty, what types of device and combinations of explosives could not have done the damage.

It is important to realise that larger amounts of an explosive don't result in a higher overpressure, only in a greater radius of damage. Doubling the amount of a chemical explosive, such as C4, will not result in extra damage near ground zero, it will simply widen the circle of damage that is possible from C4's overpressure. Blast damage is caused in accordance with one of the most important laws of physics, Newton's inverse square law. If one knows the overpressure of the explosive or combination of explosives used, and the radius of the circle of damage, the amount of explosive required can be determined by simple mathematics.

The investigators from the Indonesian and Australian governments were faced with incontrovertible evidence of a massive blast outside the Sari Club. None of the explosives available to local Islamic terrorists could cause the structural damage and injuries, including truly terrible burns that were evident after the blast. The specialist investigators from both countries would have realised this. However they were obviously not permitted to say so. Instead, they made a number of feeble attempts to lay the blame on a primitive low explosive detergent bomb that Amrozi confessed to manufacturing and deploying. This did not fool independent investigators, nor should it have. Nobody with even the most basic understanding of explosives would believe the lies.

Here is what Robert S. Finnegan wrote in the Jakarta Post.

The overpressure values, in pounds per square inch (PSI), of the blast waves produced by the three explosives that Finnegan refers to are: 2 PSI for Potassium Chlorate, around 4 PSI for Ammonium Nitrate and diesel, and 10 PSI for RDX - the most powerful high-explosive touted in regard to the main device at Kuta beach.

Flaws In The Official Truth About 1012 - Damage To Structures [168]
The known effects of overpressure on structures and people are summarised below.

These effects are indicative. In practice physical features such as hills, basements, etc, can shield both people and structures from the blast wave. The first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 created a blast wave with a detonation velocity of almost 100,000 FPS and an overpressure of 600 PSI, Hiroshima domeyet some buildings in the vicinity of ground zero survived and so did some people, although most later died from radiation sickness.

Why look at overpressure values and blast wave velocities in the nuclear range? Because the probability that the main explosion outside the Sari Club was indeed nuclear has been raised by several independent analysts, and it has also been raised and debated in the Indonesian parliament, as the following report makes clear.

"On Monday 18 November, Indonesian Parliamentary Speaker Amien Rais said he questioned the validity of the police conclusion that Amrozi was the main perpetrator of the Bali bombings which claimed more than 187 lives. Rais was supported by Deputy House Speaker A. M. Fatwa who stated, "My conscience says that he is not a key actor. I don't believe that Amrozi has the capability to make all kinds of preparations for the bombings, like setting off a kind of nuclear bomb in Bali."

"These pointed observations by two of the most powerful politicians in Indonesia, designed to counter deliberate Australian police and media disinformation about the bombing in Kuta Beach, were then recorded verbatim in the official Indonesian parliamentary transcripts. A wide range of media outlets in Asia and the Middle East reported Rais and Fatwa's comments, which were predictably ignored in Australia and America."

Concrete Was Stripped From Reinforcing Steel [169]
A key indication of the force of the main blast is found in photographic evidence and eyewitness accounts of damage to a reinforced concrete building that was 50 feet from ground zero.

Stripped Rebar

The following quotes and excerpts are relevant to the question of what type of explosive could have caused the Bali Megablast, not only in terms of structural damage but also the fireball, the blinding white flash and the terrible burns.

Similarities To Hiroshima- Blast And Searing Burns [170]
Both in terms of structural damage and the horrendous nature of the burns and injuries suffered by victims and survivors alike, there are strong similarities between the Bali Megablast and the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast of 1945.

None of the young Australians who were in KutaBorH3 Beach at the time of the 1012 atrocity would have seen, first hand, the effects of the nuclear blasts in Japan. They were not even conceived at the time of World War II. Sadly, these young Australians have now seen something that is extraordinarily similar. Just as they are the offspring of those who fought in the conflict that spawned the first atomic attack, some 57 years ago, the likely mini-nuke exploded at Kuta Beach would be a descendent of the original 'Little Boy'. That 'weapon' killed 140,000 civilians, many of them women and children, at the time of the cruel attack. The radiation legacy of Little Boy was then responsible for the deaths of as Hiroshima burns victimmany innocents again, during the years of torment that followed its dreadful blast.

What this says, is that little has been learnt since 1945. Precisely executed military operations are still slaughtering wonderful young people, those who stood, in 2002, at the threshold of a magical new age of abundance and enlightenment. Militarists are still deploying wicked devices that are based on the science of Albert Einstein, and the subsequent work done at Los Alamos by people who were rightly fearful about the monstrous weaponry they were pioneering.

Einstein was a sane, compassionate man. He must surely be turning in his grave in despair of the persistent inhumanity and insanity of central government 'leaders', with their taker based mindsets, who keep repeating the same mistakes, year upon year, without remorse or even an understanding that what they do is against the teachings of every religion ever adopted by members of the human race. Except one. BorH1The religion of power and control achieved through a combination of artificial scarcity and brutal force. It's called industrial capitalism, and like the A Bomb, it was perfected if not invented, by Uncle Sam.

The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a clumsy, dirty contraption compared to the probable mini-nuke detonated in a storm drain in Bali. Little Boy had devastating power, far more than the device used at Bali. If a Little Boy had been dropped there much more of the island would have been badly damaged. The vicinity of Kuta Beach would have been razed clean, except for a few heavily built reinforced concrete buildings, like the one in the stripped reinforcing photo above.atomic burns 1However, the blast characteristics would be similar to those of the modern back-pack mini-nuke of the present day.

The first of the 'Bali or Hiroshima?' images above is a scene from Hiroshima. The second 'Bali or Hiroshima?' picture is of damage done in Bali.

Here is one interpretation of what the Bali Megablast was like.

Author's Note:
The above passage is taken from the web site of an author who has done valuable research and provided important commentary on the Bali Megablast and other topics such as 911. However, I am not persuaded by this individual's evidence regarding the perpetrators of the Bali atrocity. For this reason speculative assertions that it was all put together by Zionists intent on ruling the world, have been omitted from the excerpts from that site. In my considered view the available authentication for the Zionists theory is low, probably no more than step 2 on the Truth Scale. Israel would seem to have its hands full in its own region, and there is no history of it having made any attempt to gain political and economic dominance in Asia. On the other hand there is ample evidence that the US has done so in Indonesia and surrounding countries for many decades. Thus, I consider that the Bali culprits are most likely to have been the CIA, working with high-level Indonesian military and political interests, and strongly aided and supported by super-fascists in Australia at the highest levels of the government and media. Presently, this likelihood is assessed as step 6 on the Truth Scale.

Flaws In The Official Truth About 1012 - The Power Failure [171]
The type of bomb that Amrozi is alleged to have built would not affect the power in Kuta Beach. At least, not unless it was detonated in a sub-station instead of a van parked in the set-down area outside the Sari Club. But there was a power outage. It was widespread, and it occurred between the first and second blasts. That is, after the bomb in Paddy's Bar and immediately before the main blast outside the Sari Club. Remember what one eyewitness described.

The above description was not made by any old Australian tourist in Kuta Beach that night. It was a first-hand report by an Australian Army Officer, Captain Rodney Cocks. He was on leave in Bali from a posting as a UNMO in East Timor. Besides being a highly credible witness in respect of the sequence of events, Captain Cocks happens to have received specialist explosives training in the Australian army. In describing the injuries, the blast and the crater it left in the street, Captain Cocks said the following.

Captain Cocks' account of the events that night is vitally important for more reasons than his military training and ability to assess explosives damage. His eye-witness record of the power cut just prior to the main blast gives a clear indication of the nature of the weapon. When a nuclear device goes critical, before it explodes, a Source Region Electromagnetic Pulse [SREMP] is emitted. The resultant overload of electrical grids and circuits in the region of the device is one of its telltale signatures, along with the nature of the blast damage and the horrific flash and radiation burns inflicted on victims. The following excerpts are from sources that describe the electromagnetic effects of a nuclear weapon.

The fact that Captain Cocks' account of the power failure in Kuta Beach seconds before the megablast outside the Sari Club appeared on the front page of the Australian Army Newspaper and on the Australian Army web site, was not what someone in Canberra wanted. It is reported that the Army was instructed to remove the article, with its description of an SREMP effect given by a credible Army officer, from the Army web site, on ministerial orders. Apparently, it was duly removed but reinstated on the countermanding order of a very senior officer. As of the time of researching this matter, August 2003, the account by Captain Cocks was still to be found on the official Australian Army web site, but it was by then in the archives area.

As for Captain Cocks, he was without doubt one of the luckiest men on the street on the night of the Bali Mini-Nuke atrocity. By chance, it appears that when he left Paddy's Bar and walked towards an Internet Cafe, he positioned himself in the 'null zone' below the rising diagonal blast vector of the bomb in the storm drain. This freakish timing could have saved him from the searing white flash that followed the SREMP blackout as a probable mini-nuke went critical below the surface of the street. Fate preserved the life of a man who was not only qualified to assist the victims of the blast, but to provide authentic and documented evidence of the SREMP effect, and thus of the true nature of the main device.

This was not a crude detergent van bomb, as both the Indonesian and Australian investigators have claimed. It seems to have been a truly terrible contraption that was directly descended form the 'Little Boy' atomic weapon that the US dropped on the women and children of Hiroshima, in 1945.

Nuclear Demolition Munitions - An Evil Madness Continues [172]
The design and construction of nuclear munitions does not qualify as 'science' or 'technology'. It is insanity. Daniel Quinn has shown that the absolute need to conquer and exterminate all possible rivals, the need to 'conquer' the land, and to bend nature to the rule of man, all derive from core taker thinking. Takers always fear attack because their own philosophy is one of growing rich and powerful through attacks, whether military or economic. Takers progress by either killing or enslaving 'them', 'the ones who are not with us.' Conversely, takers live is constant fear of attack from competitors for the scarce energy and resources of planet Earth. They build vast armouries of increasingly dreadful weapons to deploy against 'the other side'. When there are no evident enemies to fear - no 'other side' - taker states and their media machines will quickly invent some. Takers then use such contrived 'threats' to justify their own growing stockpiles of WMDs.

In this fear driven context the US has continued to develop nuclear munitions, despite the fact that it already has by far the greatest stockpiles of these inhuman weapons. Details of the latest devices are kept secret, 'in the national interest'. However it is possible for ordinary citizens to know what nuclear munitions their elected representatives and the military-industrial complex of their nation have developed in the past. The following excerpts are based on sources that draw from declassified US military documents.

But, the question of who committed the 1012 atrocity is less important than the realisation that the underlying motivation for such acts stems from taker mindsets. We will not see an end to the preparedness of nation states to build and use WMDs until the greater proportion of the populations of these countries have learned to think differently.

The most fundamental change in thinking must come from an understanding that in conditions of abundance, made possible by new technologies, the whole taker mentality can and must be discarded. Further, tens of millions of enlightened citizens who recognise this new reality must withdraw their support from the increasingly fascist regimes of the OWO, and create new centres of abundance. The vast majority of scientists and technologists in the developed world must want to live and act as leaver-givers, and work to raise the living standards of the five and a half billion needy people on the earth. Only then will the madness stop.

Amrozi's Future In Florida [173]
Many of the relatives and friends of the young Australians who died in the 1012 atrocity returned to Indonesia for the trial of Amrozi bin Nurhasyim and his fellow accomplices. All were seeking 'justice' and closure of their grief. Some hoped to slake their rage and satisfy a primal desire for revenge. None of these witnesses to the trial and sentencing of Amrozi realised that they were being cruelly deceived.

When Chief Judge I Made Karna read out the guilty verdict and the sentence on Amrozi he said, "The action of the defendant, Amrozi...is an act of terrorism that goes against the order of civilised men." The learned judge was right about the crime, but wrong about the guilt of Amrozi. The case against the simple motorcycle mechanic from a small village in East Java had been artfully concocted by elements within the Indonesian government, to mask the guilt and the identities of the real perpetrators.

The following are some independent excerpts regarding the 'admissions' of Amrozi.

Well, actually, Amrozi had probably not forgotten the death penalty. If he did not have a 'deal' by then he surely would have by the time he stood trial. This deal would have been along the standard lines used by the CIA in countless cases and countries around the world. "You do what we tell you to do and say what we tell you to say, and in return we'll give you a new identity and a new life in the USA." What could anyone like Amrozi say, but "OK, it's a deal"?Amrozi

From then on he became the 'villain' in a Hollywood style morality play on the evil of Islamic fundamentalism and the terrorist threat that Jemaah Islamiyah poses to innocent young Aussies and Yanks, just having a good time in a nightclub - or anywhere else on earth. "You and your kids could be next.".... "Well gee guys, support the War on Terror. Let's go get em!" The parrot people of the press and electronic media picked up the mantra and the rest, as they say, is history.

What about the firing squad? Won't they kill Amrozi? No, most probably not. Executions in Indonesia are always carried out behind the walls of a prison, the public are not invited. The victims are always hooded. So, the authorities can shoot any poor wretch they like, while Amrozi is winging his way to Florida and a new career as America's newest fast food entrepreneur.

Amrozi's substituted execution will not be at all exceptional. Similar switches seem to have occurred before in Indonesia, and in Thailand.

Reject Military Solutions To Terrorism - Because War Can't Succeed [174]
History makes it plain that technology changes weapons and warfare. For example, bows and arrows, cavalry, catapults, gunpowder, machine guns, tanks, poison gas, aircraft, guided missiles, and nuclear devices, all changed the pattern of armed conflict in the past. So did technologies such as radar, and digital code breaking, in fact the latter capability as been said to have been decisive in the victory of the USA and Britain in World War II. Yet, the global powers of the OWO continue to maintain large armies and stocks of arms, including nuclear weapons, in the face of this historical evidence. Their leaders seem to expect to be able to launch attacks and win wars in much the same way as it has been done in the past. Given the astonishing wave of new discoveries, inventions and magic technologies now sweeping us forward, one must again invoke the observation of Gregory S. Paul and Earl D. Cox, ..."Now there's nutty for you."

The point to understand here is that the War on Terror can't be won by conventional military action. It is, therefore, futile to encourage or support those 'leaders' who advocate and pursue such 'popular' campaigns. These people are not only causing great harm to hundreds of thousands of completely innocent people in the countries they invade in the name of their new crusade, they are misleading voters and taxpayers at home about the outcomes that a War on Terror can accomplish. The truth is that when the CoW invades countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, in order to defeat terrorism, there can be no victory. Such attacks can defeat the governments of the nations invaded, they can destroy their economies, and they can obliterate whole sections of cities and towns, in 'shock and awe' displays. But the attacks cannot eliminate terrorism, because terrorism is an attitude, not a tangible target. Harming the populations of countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq is more likely to increase the number of people with terrorist attitudes and intent towards the CoW, than to abate or eliminate terrorism.

There is no point in arguing the case against retaliatory military action in moral terms, no matter how right such contentions are. The New Inquisition of the 2nd Renaissance is not moral. So, the politicians, capitalists and militarists of the OWO will remain deaf to moral arguments. They will simply use examples of 'Islamic terrorism', such as 911 and 1012, to generate a desire for revenge in the wider population, and then they will trumpet retribution and play on nationalistic emotions and shadowy fears, to justify endless war.

The parrot people of the media will fall in behind the flag waving War on Terror theme, and many ordinary people will be persuaded that they must see the lives of their sons and daughters put at risk on foreign shores - in the name of 'freedom' and the hope of 'victory' over terrorism. So effective was the Australian media in this regard that they caused the popularity rating of the incumbent government to rise significantly after the Bali bombing, and support for a war on Iraq to harden on the streets of Australian cities and towns. Some relatives and friends of Bali victims even wished, publicly, for Amrozi to be tortured.

Torture is never a good idea, but it is particularly futile when it is applied to the wrong subjects. This was what happened, over five centuries ago, when harmless women and their companion animals were tortured to death in Europe, to avenge the 'evil' they had caused by way of miscarriages in cattle and the failure of crops. Torture was not justifiable at the time of the first Inquisition, and it is not justifiable now. But, hey, the mere mention of torturing terrorists, when it is mooted on prime-time TV, can raise support for our 'leaders' and their new crusade. It works like a charm, every time. That's why the parrot people do it.

No, the best argument to use against any war to crush and punish terrorists, is not that it is immoral, but that it is doomed to failure. The parrot people are unlikely to broadcast this message, so the task falls to us, the techno-tribes of the 2nd Renaissance, to do so. Let us do it loud and clear. The message is that 'War can't defeat terrorism.' When they understand this truth the families of the young men and women who are being sent into harm's way in the name of vengeance, and of victory and lasting peace, will come to realise that they should not accept any sacrificing of their children to war, as a patriotic necessity. The War on Terror is a futile waste of young lives. The war is, emphatically, not a solution to the tensions between the haves and have-nots of the world, nor to long-standing differences in customs and religious beliefs.

The Four Generations of Warfare [175]
William S. Lind is a director at the Free Congress Foundation think tank in Washington. He is a specialist in military theory and doctrine, and he vigorously opposed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, on the grounds of their utter futility.William S. Lind

Lind has identified four generations of warfare, beginning with the Thirty Years War in Renaissance Europe, that ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and progressing through to the present war in Iraq. Lind categorises the four generations of war as follows.

Lind's analysis makes it clear that the nation state with the largest military budget, the US, is no longer the greatest military power. Nation states, such as the US, have lost their monopoly on warfare. This new reality has yet to permeate the thinking of the Pentagon and American foreign policy. When the new realisation, that it is no longer practical to wage war according to the principles of the past, comes at last it is likely to be too late to save the American Empire.

Uncle Slam's Military Expenditure [176]
The United States is by far the world's largest armoury and munitions factory. So much so that it is difficult to see how the US Congress can continue to justify continuing over expenditure on both conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction. Why does the US feel it needs such enormous - obsolete - military capacity? Who are the enemies that the US might still need to engage in a conventional war, state to state? Why are trillions of dollars still being siphoned into black projects to develop terror weapons that are capable of exterminating the populations of entire continents? Following the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, there are, as yet, no realistic answers to questions such as these.

Students undertaking an International Environmental Problems & Policy project at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, USA, produced the adjacent chart that compares the military expenditure of the US with those of other nation states that also have significant defence budgets.

So the facts are hardly obscure or difficult to find. Young people can assemble this and similar information from readily available data that is widely published. They can analyse and compare the military expenditures of the US with its social and environmental spending, and its aid programs to other countries, and conclude that the figures are way out of whack. Why can't the elected representatives of the American people do likewise? Why can't they halt the insane fiscal emphasis on military spending, and redirect public funds to more worthwhile programs?

The annual US expenditure on defence, that is admitted to and not hidden in black projects, is greater than the sum of the defence budgets of the next nine largest spenders. It accounts for more than 40% of all military spending in the world.
Should we be most worried about China, or Russia, or North Korea? Or should our major concern be with Uncle Slam's arms race with no one?

For those concerned about the damage that takerism is doing to the environment, it will be distressing to note the following quotes from the Observer - London,
"The (US) Defence Department buys enough fuel every day to drive a car around the world 13,000 times."

Since military expenditure does little to raise living standards through the production of essential goods and services, the economists among us will be sad to learn that,
"The Department of Defence employs 1.4 million people on active duty. It is the largest employer in the US, with more employees than Exxon Mobil, Ford, General Motors and GE combined."

What a waste of human energies and talent, to employ so many in the support and prosecution of outdated and futile wars of attrition, around the world. If one adds the personnel engaged in agencies such as the CIA, and NSA, the squandering of human effort on non-beneficial activities is even greater. The military and industrial espionage tasks that such 'businesses' carry out might benefit a few US corporations, but the intellects and energies of people involved could be far better used in beneficial work. If freed from their military and economic warfare jobs, many of those personnel would then add to the store of value and productive capacity available to humanity.

The students at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire developed some comparisons relating to education versus military expenditure.

Leaving aside the issues about what is taught in schools - and what should be taught there, the above comparisons show the trade-offs that the Feds are happy to make between war and the education of young citizens.

The students also compared another social item, health care, with military spending.
  • "The one year cost of the nuclear weapons program, US$ 16 billion, could provide health care coverage for 7 million children."

  • "One month of U.S, current military spending, US$ 38 billion, could save 11 million lives world wide, fighting infectious diseases."

Again, the absurdity of the trade-offs that the American Military Industrial Complex (AMIC) is prepared to make in order to possess the largest stock of weapons designed for second generation warfare, is clear.

Many people can see the futility of Uncle Slam's arsenal, including many younger people and those others who have experienced modern warfare first hand. By sending troops to invade places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, the CoW are steadily increasing the proportion of their own subjects who come to understand that a military approach to resolving conflicts is no longer cost-effective, let alone moral. However, the takers in control of the CoW nations will never accept anti-war arguments. Nor will they halt the War on Terror, because it is a major plank in their strategy to retain control of the industrial world, and delay the emergence of a Level 4 Civilization.

The End Of Violence [177]
Hopefully, despite Uncle Slam's nuclear arsenal, "the END is not nigh". However, the end of WAR is very nigh. This is an astonishing proposition to most people, but it is sustainable. Despite the major part that wars have played throughout recorded history, war is now becoming unattractive to aggressors, due to the lowering possibilities of success.

What on earth could make war non-viable? Information can. It will begin to do so within this present decade of history, before the year 1010.

The arguments that the students at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire have used against war are moral arguments. While such reasoning might sway many people it will not stop the CoW nations from attacking any country they deem not to be 'on their side' in the War on Terror. What will soon stop the CoW waging war is an evident curve of diminishing returns on violence.

In a very perceptive manner the authors of The Sovereign Individual, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, recognised the way that the information revolution will impact on the ability of aggressors to gain any advantage from waging war. Davidson and Rees-Mogg saw this trend in 1996, well before it was discerned by other commentators. They wrote it thus.

At the time that The Sovereign Individual was written, the reality of intelligent agents able to retaliate against aggressors was an expectation based on trends in technological development. Today, there are far more indications of the emergence of such capabilities.

Consider the earlier segment on the Lightnet and non-programmed reasoning in optical networks. Think about the implications of machines that are already 'dreaming', and of evolutionary circuits that are already creating working electronic designs of non-human origin. Think about the convergence of technologies such as imaging, communications, data storage and translation, and the rise and rise of truly artificial intelligence, all connected to a blazingly fast Lightnet. Think about the shrinking size, plummeting costs and massive spread of digital devices, many of which are largely self controlling, and you begin to get the picture. Individuals are now being equipped with technologies that will enable them to compete with, and even 'out gun' the traditional extortionists and specialists in violence - nation states and their agencies and armies.

Digital imaging is an example of the proliferation of accessible technology and information. On the morning of the 911 atrocity people all over the world were watching the second aircraft fly into the South Tower of the WTC. Most watched TV, but some people were also able to use the Internet to access real-time imagery of the streets of New York, as recorded by the city's traffic lights system. Folk as far away as Sydney, Australia, did this. The imagery was live and uncontrolled or edited. It was captured and recorded on the other side of the world, by ordinary people. Not the media, not corporations, not government propaganda departments, but individual citizens with Internet connections, some technology, and the knowledge to use it.

During the Kosovo conflict a reporter on a US warship photographed the launch of a cruise missile. There was nothing remarkable about that, except that the digital image was almost instantly transmitted to the New York Times and electronically set onto the front page of the edition being printed. It was said, at the time, that the picture was printing to paper in New York before the missile had reached its target. Similarly, in the war on Iraq, US warships in the Gulf and the Red Sea launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at Saddam's forces. Videos of the launches were e-mailed to the Pentagon within minutes and released to the media. Digital Imaging EverywhereThe technology used in these examples was not military, it was the normal Internet. The capability to record events and send images around the globe, while the action is still happening, is already available to ordinary citizens.

In the hands of various cybertribes and Leaver-Giver collectives, the ability to record and distribute independently captured images of events from anywhere on Earth will soon become a powerful new force against violence and war. Whether the recorded event is a single mugging, a drive-by shooting, a massacre of fleeing civilians along some road in a war zone, a blatant example of police brutality, or any other form of violence, it can be independently recorded and then seen by the people of the World.

Such a development is part of the phenomenon of reverse surveillance that will come to characterise the 2nd Renaissance and a rapid transition to a Level 4 Civilization and a truly free society. You can learn more about reverse surveillance at the 'Surveillance' freesite. Reverse surveillance principles extend well beyond the use of ubiquitous digital imaging technologies, and include audits of all aspects of federal government operations, by randomly selected teams of citizens. The Feds and the parrot people will be quick to pronounce that such monitoting is "not in the national interest," but it will definitely be in our interests, and those of future generations of humanity.

The 'Surveillance' freesite link is here.

War Crimes - The Ugliest Face Of The Military [178]
The US government has withdrawn from the International Criminal Court Treaty, citing a concern that the court has too much independence and potential to pursue US service members and civilians (i.e. senior officials) for war crimes. Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, stated that, "We believe that states, not international institutions are primarily responsible for ensuring justice in the international system." And, "We believe the ICC is an institution of unchecked power. ...power must never be trusted without a check." In other words, the US doesn't want its citizens tried in any other courts than those on its own territory, and within its own jurisdiction. However, history shows that 'victors' seldom prosecute their own forces or officials for war crimes.

Numerous war criminals were tried and convicted following World War II. They were German, Italian, or Japanese. However, there were major atrocities perpetrated by the Allied forces as well. Nobody faced a Nuremberg trial for the murder of at least 200,000 civilians in the deliberate fire bombing of Dresden, in Saxony. Nobody was ever tried, or even reprimanded, over the mass rapes of the women of Berlin during the Russian occupation. And, of course, nobody ever faced trial for the horrific deployment of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Indeed, President Harry Truman called the Hiroshima explosion, "..the greatest thing in history."

The magnitude of these and other atrocities committed by the Allied forces in World War II was as great, if not greater, than the war crimes of the Axis and Japanese armies. The incendiary attack on the university city of Dresden, where many German civilians had gathered to escape bombing aimed at industrial and military targets elsewhere, is recorded as the deadliest of any war to date. Dresden WMD 1945
Eleven square miles of the city was destroyed by some 3,000 tons of explosives and phosphorous incendiaries. During the war Dresden had become a centre for wounded, both civilian and military. There were 19 hospitals in Dresden at the time. Of these, 16 were badly damaged. Three of the hospitals were totally destroyed, and one of these was the maternity clinic. German figures show that out of 28,400 houses in the inner city, 24,900 were destroyed. Dresden had a population of some 1.2 million people at the time, but after the attacks were over it is recorded that there were not enough uninjured people left to bury the dead.

In February, 1945, there was no military imperative to attack the medieval city of Dresden. The end of the war in Europe was already in sight, there were no wartime industries associated with the city, there were no anti-aircraft or other defences, because the German army did not consider that there was anything to defend there. Dresden's population was swollen with injured soldiers and civilian refugees, but there were hardly any fighting men in the city or its surrounds. There have been claims, after the war, that Dresden was the main communications centre for part of the Eastern front. However, had this been true, the city would have been defended, and it was not.

Two attacks were flown by the RAF, and they were timed so that the second raid would catch rescuers and fire fighting teams in the open. A third attack by the USAF completed the carnage. Given the terrible nature of the new incendiary weapons; the way a mixture of phosphorous, magnesium and petroleum created 1,000 degree fireballs and 100 miles per hour winds that sucked people to their deaths in the inferno, the bombing raids on Dresden were coldly calculated murder.

Here are some quotations from survivors on the ground, airmen in the two attacks, and those who masterminded the fire bombing of Dresden.

The bombing of Dresden was the greatest war crime of the 20th century, by a very large margin. It was more cruel and inhuman than even the American attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was more shocking than the rape of the women of Berlin by the Red Army. Even though the mass violations of every female in that city between 8 years and 80 years of age, and the encouragement of the Russian commanders of their troops in these acts, was so totally reprehensible. The Dresden raids were the ultimate military atrocity. So, there are certainly lessons that can be drawn from it.

However, the fatalistic observation of Deputy Air Marshall Saundby, of RAF Bomber Command, is not the lesson of Dresden. The lesson of Dresden, the greatest war crime, and one of the least known of such crimes outside Germany, is that secrecy made it possible.

During World War II, and in many wars since, strict censorship and ironclad control of the news from the front, made it possible for nation states to wage wars against each other, without the citizens of the combatant countries knowing of the gruesome killing that was going on.

Even today, the CoW have been able to keep the ugly truths about their Iraq and Afghanistan invasions from the world. More importantly, they have largely succeeded in restricting, and 'spinning', the facts coming out of these campaigns, to the extent that their own citizens have been kept in the dark about war crimes that occurred. It has been relatively easy to do this, particularly in Afghanistan, where there is scant communications technology and infrastructure on the ground or in the hands of the local population.

But what if British, American and Australian forces - called the Allies in WWII, but now termed the Coalition of the Willing - were to attack Dresden with incendiaries in 2005? Germany is now saturated with 21st century information technology. Not only do most citizens on the street have hand-held digital capture devices in their phones, watches and other accessories, they are connected to the Internet by wireless networks that blanket the city. The Internet connects the citizens of Dresden to the world, including the American, British and Australian people. If the folk at home, in the CoW nations, were to see anything remotely like the firestorm of February, 1945, on their personal communications screens, the war would instantly become non-viable.

In comparison to the horrors of Dresden, the now famous 'Napalm Girl' photograph taken by Nick Ut in Vietnam, in 1972, was mainstream pictorial. You can show it to most people and they will be upset by it, and critical of whoever dropped napalm on a Vietnam village, but they will not be so consumed by revulsion that they pick up the nearest phone and start screaming down the line at whoever will listen - in government, the military, or the church.

However, had there been a Nick Ut in Dresden, and had he been able to beam photographs and video clips to the world, that would have been the most likely reaction of most people. Viewers would have found it nearly impossible to contain their rage and anger at the sheer evil and inhumanity of the attacks carried out by the RAF and USAF. It would not have taken a year for the impact of the pictures and other information to halt all support for the war - as it did in the case of Vietnam.

If there had been today's imaging and communications technology available in Dresden at the time of the incendiary attacks, World War II would have been called off in March, 1945. A great many lives would have been saved if this had occurred. Sadly, it was not possible then. The power to start or end wars was still in the hands of nation states. The technology to shift this power to sovereign individuals on the streets had yet to be invented and widely dispersed.

It is important to realise that the sole reason that the war continued, and few people in Britain, the US, or Australia were ever aware of the greatest military crime of the 20th century, is that the Allies were able to suppress all pictures and detailed information from the public media. Given the nature and ubiquity of modern digital capture and communications technologies, this censorship would now be an impossibility in a developed country such as Germany. The CoW forces were able to suppress information coming out of Afghanistan only because that region of the world does not yet have such technology in the hands of its population.

The reality is that the returns on violence diminish to zero if the perpetrating states are exposed, and their 'leaders' put at risk of being hunted down by their own people and intelligent 'info-bots'. In the 21st century, war is thus rendered impractical as a means of anything more than a self-defence response on your own ground. It is no longer possible to launch cruel attacks on the non-combatants of other states and expect support from your own population.

This change has been brought about by new technology. In 1945, the wire services, broadcasting and print media were either state owned or in the hands of corporations that could be controlled by the state in matters of the 'national interest' and 'national security'. It was never deemed to be in the national interest to let the population know about war crimes and atrocities, such as Dresden fire bombing by the Allies and the Rape of Berlin by the Russians. Now, the largest communications network, the Internet and its associated wireless web, is in the hands of individual users all over the world. Anyone with a cellular phone and a digital imaging device is a front-line reporter. Rupert Murdoch is no longer the most powerful media baron in the world. You and I are.

Author's Note:
The incineration of Dresden is covered here because it was not only one of the worst atrocities of all time, but it is also the perfect example of a crime that could never be kept secret in the new technological age we now live in. There is another reason as well. I personally felt the anguish of this event, more than 20 years afterwards and some 12,000 miles from where it occurred.
In the 1960s I lived with my parents, next door to a German family who had emigrated to Australia after World War II. Two daughters had been born shortly after they arrived, and I greatly admired the eldest; sadly from afar. These neighbours were a quiet family who kept to themselves. When my folks moved into the house alongside them the father took my mother aside and explained that we should not think anything of noises in the night. He said that no one would be in need of assistance, it was just that his wife suffered from nightmares.
Generally, the noises would not last long, because the husband would wake his wife and calm her. But the screams that came from next door at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. in the morning were the most piercing and soul chilling I have ever heard. Despite the fact that my room was on the opposite side, and both our house and that of our neighbours had double brick walls, the sound seemed to fill my head.
In time, we learned that the family had lived in Cologne, and that the cause of the wife's nightmares had to do with her having been in Dresden when it was firebombed. When those who knew the truth said "She was in Dresden" the vast majority of Australians did not understand. We had no idea about anything so evil having happened there. The official silence about the Dresden raids was thorough.
Some years later, after I had read Slaughterhouse Five, and done some research, I came to understand what made that woman scream in her sleep, so long after. But I could never know what she must have been feeling and reliving. I would've had to have been to Hell to know that.

Withdrawing Support For Militarism [179]
The problem with revenge is that it lowers the humanity of those who exercise it down to the same level, of even below, those who committed the original crime. Although we can't yet know who was responsible for 911 or 1012, we do now know that forces of the Coalition of the Willing (CoW) have, on occasions, been just as barbaric as the people who killed on those dates. This has been amply demonstrated in Afghanistan and again in Iraq. If you doubt this, seek out more facts about the CoW's use of DU and NDU weaponry and cluster bombs. These horror weapons continue, to this day, to put young children and adult civilians at risk of injury or death from unexploded munitions, radiation, and toxic substances in the ground water and the food chain.

If an attack on civilians is horrific enough, and if the pictures and details reach the homelands of the perpetrating forces, it can stop a war. However, up until now, it has been possible for national armies to keep information of major, and graphically horrific, atrocities secret. It is still possible to do so in relatively low-tech countries such as Afghanistan. What is needed now is wide recognition in the CoW homelands that war itself is one great atrocity. Such realisation must lead to changed thinking and attitudes in relation to militarists who engage in wars, and troops who wage them.

The glorification of war and war heroes derives from thinking and attitudes that are simply wrong-headed. Nationalism and flag-waving propaganda play a part in this, but so does ignorance of the horrors involved. It is no accident that the US and Australian public were so ready to support revenge strikes on alleged terrorist strongholds and states said to harbour terrorists. There has not been a war on the soil of those countries within the living memory of their populations. In contrast, the people of Britain, France and Germany, where there are still many people who have experienced war in their homeland, were far more reluctant to support attacks on the populations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

A mother's account of a visit to see her son in camp, just before he left for Iraq, captures the problem that those who have never experienced war face when the prospect of a conflict looms ahead. They know only the glamorised face of war, and are ignorant of the horrors that are omitted from news reports and many history books. They are aware of the ticker-tape parades for returning troops, the uniformed men with medals covering their chests, and the approval that is typically accorded veterans of war. But they do not know the full truth about war, and they cannot weigh the horrors against nationalistic glory and the adulation that surrounds men in uniform. The American mother said this.

Hopefully that mother's son returned from Iraq, uninjured and without having been involved in helping to carry out atrocities. Many didn't and many won't. Their suffering, the suffering of their families, and the suffering of the 'enemies' they fought, will have in no way lessened the grief of 911. Nor will it have done anything to blunt the threat of future terrorist attacks on the CoW nations. As William S. Lind has observed, "Because these enemies are not states they have nothing we can bomb, no tanks we can take out, no capital we can occupy. And each one is a Hydra. Every time we kill an enemy, we recruit more."

Arguments of a moral nature will not give CoW militarists reason to pause, or to halt the perpetual War on Terror. It is a waste of time telling these people that they should act humanely and with restraint. Many of the aircrews who flew the Dresden raids knew that their actions were morally indefensible. They said, "It was completely uncalled for. You can't justify it." But they were ordered to do it just the same. There are several courses of action that ordinary citizens can take to restrain militarism and halt wars.

  1. Actively discredit the effectiveness of the War On Terror, using the logic of people like Lind and the evidence of failures such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Direct this reasoning at your fellow citizens, who are the ones who ultimately fund the wars through their taxes and fill the ranks of the CoW forces with their own flesh and blood. Help them to understand that it is neither necessary or effective to sacrifice their sons in the War on Terror.

  2. Cultivate an enduring rage against the harming of civilians and the use of terror weapons. This is more than a spontaneous reaction to an horrific photograph or specific atrocity. It is cold, unyielding anger at both the overt and covert institutions of the state that wage war on other people's countries, to no just purpose whatsoever.

  3. Refuse to accord militarists and their institutions any honour. Do not attend parades to welcome troops home. Do not observe anniversaries of a military nature, such as Anzac Day or Veterans Day. Do not contribute in any other way to the glorification of war and the military services. Never, ever, relent in this regard.

  4. Totally reject the Geneva Conventions, as devices put in place by nation states to lend their wars a respectability that war can never have. War is murder, plain and simple.

There is no point throwing the Sixth Commandment in the face of a militarist. The Allied action against the citizens of Dresden, in 1945, was a case of Christians incinerating Christians. The plain, unequivocal, commandment, "Thou shalt not kill", was overridden by precedents and conventions built up over hundreds of years of warfare. The rule of law usurped the rule of God. In the event, even the rule of law was forgotten. Pure evil took charge.

No, the dictum that must be espoused to militarists is one that drives at their self-esteem and egos, at their love of valour and glory and the wearing of a chest full of medals. It is, like the Sixth Commandment, a simple message:

"Real men don't harm women or children."

The parrot people might well denounce the above notions as 'unpatriotic'. However, militarism has no place in a Level 4 Civilization, and this must be made clear to the Feds and those who serve them. This is not about belittling the contributions and sacrifices of the veterans of past conflicts. Nor is it about condemning the vast majority of the serving members of the armed forces. It is about manifestly withdrawing support for further wars, the obscene levels of expenditure on military budgets, and the development of terror weapons.

The Rabbits And The Wolves [180]
The following parable was written by the great American humorist James Thurber (1894-1961). In his day Thurber aimed his lines at the Nazis, in Germany. As you read this piece consider where he might aim them if he were alive today.

The Rabbits Who Caused All The Trouble

    Within the memory of the youngest child there was a family of rabbits who lived near a pack of wolves. The wolves announced that they did not like the way the rabbits were living. (The wolves were crazy about the way they themselves were living, because it was the only way to live.) One night several wolves were killed in an earthquake and this was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that rabbits pound on the ground with their hind legs and cause earthquakes. On another night one of the wolves was killed by a bolt of lightning, The wolves threatened to civilize the rabbits if they didn't behave, and the rabbits decided to run away to a desert island. But the other animals, who lived at a great distance, shamed them saying, "You must stay where you are and be brave. This is no world for escapists. If the wolves attack you, we will come to your aid in all probability." So the rabbits continued to live near the wolves and one day there was a terrible flood which drowned a great many wolves. This was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that carrot-nibblers with long ears cause floods. The wolves descended on the rabbits, for their own good, and imprisoned them in a dark cave, for their own protection.

    When nothing was heard about the rabbits for some weeks, the other animals demanded to know what had happened to them. The wolves replied that the rabbits had been eaten and since they had been eaten the affair was a purely internal matter. But the other animals warned that they might possibly unite against the wolves unless some reason was given for the destruction of the rabbits. So the wolves gave them one. "They were trying to escape," said the wolves, "and, as you know this is no world for escapists. "

Challenge Restrictions Of Civil Freedoms - Support Secessions [181]
History should surely record that the greatest impact of the 911 and 1012 attacks was not the loss of life or the resultant prosecution of a perpetual war on terror by the CoW nations. The greatest impact has been the loss of civil freedoms in those countries. The excuse of a War on Terror has been used to wage a war on dissent, and to shore up the faltering control of the Old World Order over a failed economic system.

Understandably, there is great concern about draconian 'terrorist' countermeasures being introduced by the US, British and Australian governments. In the US in particular, these additional powers and controls will be equivalent to those of a police state, and all pretence of democracy will quickly vanish. Ominously, the opposition to the changes is being based on the dominant idea of forcing the Feds to relent, and this is doomed to failure. Unless the citizens of the CoW nations take a different approach their families, their careers, their businesses and their civil freedoms will be subsumed within a fascist state. This is exactly what happened to the people of Germany it 1933.

Hitler seized power from a minority position in government in 1933. He was not elected by a majority of the German people. On 30 January, a mysterious fire burnt down the Reichstag, the German Parliament. The very next day, Hitler acted to deny all guarantees of personal liberty, freedom of speech and the right of assembly. An only moderately intelligent Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was immediately depicted and tried as the perpetrator of a terrorist plot to destabilise the nation, but there were other victims and scapegoats. Communists, Jews, trade unionists, homosexuals, and other innocents, were made the 'enemies' of the German state. One thing led to another, and in due course, 55 million people died in World War II. Today, there is a widespread belief that the Nazis themselves burnt the Reichstag. But no one is left alive to explain what really happened.

February, 1933, was the right time to have left Nazi Germany, with or without personal possessions and funds. For many Germans there was a life and death decision to be made that year, and most got it wrong. They stayed, and they paid the ultimate price. Now is the time to 'leave' the US, Great Britain, and Australia.

But today, 'leaving' does not mean fleeing abroad. The events in Nazi Germany took place in different times. In 2004, there is no need for citizens to physically leave the land of their birth, simply because a totalitarian, fascist regime, makes a grab for power there.

This is so because secession is now a more practical option than it has been at any time in the past. At first, this is an improbable notion to most people. How could it be easy to opt out of a fascist state, when the regime controls everything? The answer lies in the breakdown in the power of traditional control mechanisms, due to a growing abundance of information, scientific knowledge, new technologies and new ideas. Such unprecedented abundance has the capacity to dissolve the long standing power of scarcity and enable free city states and regions to flourish independently of a centrally managed economy.

Legal actions against individuals and groups proposing secession will certainly be taken by the Feds. But, everyone has an intrinsic right to freedom, and, to the extent that new legislation and powers remove or greatly diminishes that right, there is a clear argument for leaving federalism behind. The ability of city states and regions to opt out, and win the moral argument, is a very different situation to one in which individuals are prosecuted for breaching new security laws within a federation.

In the latter circumstance, in the US, individuals could soon be prosecuted for the 'crime' of 'attempting to influence public opinion'. Besides individual citizens who might post comments on the WWW or speak out in public places, the proposed new powers will give the US Feds the 'legal right' to prosecute environmental, human rights, and anti-globalisation groups. Such controls will be highly effective against activists, journalists, academics, and the like. However, they are totally useless against cities and regions that might choose to abandon the US Federal system completely, and go their own way. This is because, in the latter case, the argument is not about 'crimes' within the federal system, but abandonment of it by a defined collective of people.

When a US city or region abandons federalism, the laws made in Washington, and the self-granted powers of the Feds to prosecute 'terrorists', 'witches' and other menaces, become irrelevant. This is also true for Britain and Australia.

The Fed's War On Dissent [182]
As it is used here the term 'Fed' does not refer to that privately owned institution that controls the US currency and financial system, The Federal Reserve. The term is applied to the federal governments of the CoW nations. The nature and failings of the US Federal Reserve are another story, and one that is already told on several sites on the WWW. Here, we are concerned with the efforts of the US, British and Australian Feds to suppress dissent within their borders, in the name of 'protecting' their populations from shadowy terrorists, radical Muslims, and an allegedly drug-crazed Tooth Fairy.

In the US, the original 'Patriot Act' that was passed by the Congress, in 2001, without having been read by members, was draconian enough. The subsequent Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, also known as 'Patriot Act II', went all the way to a complete totalitarian rule by federal authorities. Most protections of the United States Constitution were removed, and the new police state was given powers that are even beyond those seized by Adolf Hitler in 1933.

The real war in the US today is on individual rights. It is a war on dissent. Dissent against the total domination of the federal administration in all matters: civil, military, social, economic, cultural, and religious. More than that, it is a war on free thought, new ideas and truth. If this seems improbable to you, take the time to read the Patriot Acts (I and II), they are available on the WWW. Most of the new provisions in these documents are only superficially aimed at terrorists, their real targets are individual rights and freedoms. The Members of Congress who were asked to pass the first of these acts did so without having any opportunity to read it. There's a war on, you see.

Alternative Rights - Very Different Freedoms [183]
In 2001, the United States of America ceased to be the republic the Founding Fathers intended, and became, instead, a democracy. This is so because Patriot Act I overrode the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution on many points of individual freedom. Patriot Act II converts the US again, G. Edward Griffinthis time to a dictatorship and police state. To understand this, one has only to read a few of the explanations that the author and commentator, G. Edward Griffin, gives about the difference between individualists and collectivists, and between republics and democracies.

With admirable clarity of thought, Griffin cuts through the plethora of labels that are used to describe politics and reduces the difference in approaches to citizen's rights to a single question. Where do the rights originate? Individualists believe that such rights are intrinsic, they come with birth. Collectivists believe that the group is more important than its members, and that rights derive from human institutions, from governments and government law making processes. Here are some of the points that Griffin makes about the difference between individualists and collectivists beliefs about rights.

Further, Griffin explains, that whereas a republic is designed on individualist principles, with strict limitations on the powers of law makers to impinge on human rights and freedoms, a democracy is built on collectivism, and the state can grant and remove rights as it sees fit.

When the CoW forces invaded Iraq, the senior US Military Commander in the field announced that the aim was to bring the Iraqi people democracy and the rule of law. That was undoubtedly the plan. The US did not, and still does not, wish to see an Islamic Republic replace the regime of Sadam Hussein. It wants a collectivist government that can remove rights by majority vote and enforce its injustice through the rule of law. Here are some of the key distinctions that G. Edward Griffin makes between a democracy and a republic. He says.

Griffin also crystallises the concept of the political spectrum, which purportedly has 'left' and 'right' orientations, but in reality is only a measure of how much government there is. He says.

It is by no means certain that Griffin is right about the last point - the need for some government - but the rest of his analysis and reasoning is sound.

Instead of needing some government to make things work it is possible to have new-tribalism and a Leaver-Giver model instead. Then there need not be any government at all.

This would not have been possible during the 20th century when Communism, Nazism and Fascism were so much in evidence. At that time the new science and technology needed to support a new society and a Level 4 Civilization did not exist. Managing scarcity was the central principle of economics, and governments were the dominant political force in nation states. However, none of those conditions still apply. Now the game is about managing the distribution of the fruits of abundance, to ensure that maximum good is first done in areas where it is most needed - in the poorest places on earth. Free city states and talent collectives are inherently small enough to operate along tribal lines, and there is no need to have any traditional government to fulfil a political function. Surprising as it might seem, we are on the threshold of an age of rampant individualism and world wide peace.

Contrasting Natural and Collectivist Social Orders - [184]
Balance Versus Dominance

The diagram below shows the major differences between the collectivist social order that is associated with takerism and the older, natural, social order of peoples such as the Australian aborigines and the tribes of the Amazon, who successfully followed Leaver principles for tens of thousands of years.

naturalVsartificial

On the left, we see that individual species, humans and others, have inalienable rights. These rights are not granted and they cannot be withdrawn. They stem from the divine order that creates matter, structure, and life.

On the right, there is the concept of human-created collectivism, and bigger and bigger governments, all the way to a global, totalitarian state. The distinguishing feature is that, here, the 'order' in society is made by men, it is not natural. Nor is it divine.

Whereas natural rights, on the left, cover all living things, the artificial rights that are given and taken by nation states, on the right, only apply to humans. The dominant idea is, as Daniel Quinn observes, "Humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community (there's us and there's nature)."

Historically, there have been periods when legal distinctions between animals and humans have been blurred. For instance, in medieval Europe, in the 14th and 15th centuries, numerous trials and executions of animals occurred. One source identifies 34 recorded instances of pigs having been tried and cruelly put to death. Besides pigs; rats, chickens, goats, and bees were similarly tried. Some of the pigs were fully dressed in human clothes at the time they were, inevitably, found guilty. In one case a vicar excommunicated a flock of sparrows that infested his church. All this happened despite the theological stance that animals had no soul, and no morals or conscience. They could not really be guilty of transgressing the Rule of Law.

Clearly, there was a period of confusion in the West when remnants of the beliefs (some would say superstitions) of the old, pre-taker, tribal societies existed alongside the new doctrines and dogma of man-made collectivism and religious interpretation. Today the distinction has all been resolved. Even the UN groups that deal with animal matters are clear that animals do not have natural rights. They are merely 'there' to be exploited.

Thus, the Whale Shark, the largest fish in the world, was recently protected by the UN group that monitors trade in endangered species. The UN did this, not because they recognised that the whale sharks have any natural rights, as part of a divine creation, but because some countries, including the Philippines, India, and Britain, argued that these enormous fish are worth more as eco-tourism attractions than as shark fin soup. It was a purely economic decision, the rights of the whale shark did not enter into consideration. This is unsurprising, since the United Nations is a Taker institution that was established by nation states to look after their interests - not those of the animals and plants on this planet.

In a Taker society that is run on collectivist lines - and they all are - the power of life or death rests with the state. In a true tribal society, one that exists with nature on Leaver principles, the power of life or death is in the hands of the natural order of things, as determined by the design of the material world. Social groupings of the human animal, into tribes, live by the rule of reason, obligation, and the rectification of wrongs. Collectivist governments, on the other hand, gravitate to the total dominance of all matters, including the determination of life and death. In the natural world, where human tribes belong, there is balance and reason instead of dominance. Leavers do not 'conquer' the land and annihilate all those who don't happen to agree with them. Takers do exactly that, until they overextend their reach and exhaust the capacity of their economy and their forces.

The Rule of Reason [185]
In his novel, The Story of B, Daniel Quinn outlines the difference between tribal law and what passes for just law-making in collectivist societies. He illustrates his points with an example relating to adultery, a common enough occurrence in every human community. He writes.

Quinn makes the point that the emphasis in tribal law is always on correcting the harm done. The Rule of Law that applies in collectivist societies, even before they become totalitarian states, places its emphasis on punishment. Even in cases where courts award damages the compensation is always in a monetary form; loss of an arm is worth so much, damage to reputation is worth so much. The philosophy seems to be that every harm can be expressed as a sum of money, and that there is no need to do anything more than fix the price of the damage.

This simplistic and mechanistic view, is characteristic of materialist cultures. But it is totally foreign to the tribal peoples of the Amazon forests or the Australian wilderness. They have laws that aim to repair feelings and lessen animosities. Their aim is to keep their tribes functional and to maintain respect for the rights of the other creatures and life-forms that share their world. Tribal laws reflect a very different mindset, and a system that is much longer lived and successful than modern approaches to law-making and justice.

Divine Order Versus Secular Structures [186]
The word 'God' in the above diagram refers to the divine order of creation, rather than the concept portrayed in the various interpreted religions of the world. God, in the context of the diagram, is the same as the "Great Spirit" (etc) of pre-taker tribal societies. This is the God of earlier times, not necessarily the God of the sages who wrote the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The diagram simply contrasts the secular structures and man-made order of modern nation states and interpreted religions with the natural order that tribes, flocks, herds, hives, and all other collections of creatures follow.

Every social group has rules of conduct and ways of achieving order. The key difference between the two sides of the diagram is that on the left the rules evolve within what is practical, while on the right the rules are determined by elites. Whether those elites are in religious institutions or state institutions they determine how others in the society should live.

In 'modern' society the parrot people of the media often tend to reinforce the notion that the way the churches and the various layers of government say we should live is the way we were meant to live. This is an implicit message, for as Daniel Quinn notes, we are seldom aware of the paradigm that he terms 'Mother Culture,' even though we live by it all the time.

On the left of the diagram is the natural world where all creatures are free to determine, for themselves, how they live. They do this within the practical bounds set by the divine structure of nature and the cosmos. A bird is designed to fly, so it can migrate from one continent to another without regard for any rules other than those imposed by climatic conditions and the availability of food and water along the route. Migrating birds often fly in vee formations, because this arrangement allows them to all have clear, undisturbed, air. Only the laws of aerodynamics govern how the migrating flock travels. There are no imposed rules about the way birds are allowed to fly.

On the right of the diagram the situation is quite different. There are rules in many denominations of the Christian religion that prevent women from becoming ordained ministers. There are rules in some countries, such as China, that allow each couple to have only one child. There are rules that prevent people who flee Afghanistan, and travel to Australia in unseaworthy river boats, from living freely in that country. Instead, men women and children are held in what are effectively prisons, at the pleasure of the Federal government. There are rules that prevent more than limited amounts of money from being taken out of one country and into another. There are rules about rules about rules. And all these rules and laws are human inventions. None of them are natural and divine. Yet, they must all be obeyed, because that is the way we were meant to live. The nature of their rules is a key difference between the natural order on the left of the diagram and the man-made order of collectivist states, on the right.

A Design Implies A Designer [187]
While nobody is likely to regard the man-made order within nations as being in any way divine, many people will question the notion that natural order is a creation of God. The education systems of the 20th century, together with the scientific establishment, have drilled a false belief into our minds. The official truth says that everything in nature, however intricate and wonderful it is, has arisen purely by chance.

Until recently the means of refuting the dogma of deconstructionist science, that everything is explainable by breaking it down into its constituent components, and that the way these modules combine in nature is entirely due to 'chance', were missing. There were many indications that ancient civilizations thought differently to 'modern' science, but these were easily brushed aside by the sceptics. As there is an ingrained belief within our present 'knowledge' - that earlier civilizations were always more primitive than ours - any notion that the old wisdom might actually be right could be dismissed out of hand.

The Sydney Opera House is rightly famous. Sited on a point of land that juts into the harbour its magnificent white shells give the impression of a large ship floating there. The structure took sixteen years to complete, Sydney Opera House sailsafter the proposal of the Danish architect, Jørn Utzon, was selected from 233 international entries. For political reasons the New South Wales government began construction before drawings were complete, in 1959, and the project was fraught with difficulty and continual interference from that point. Although the eventual structure now ranks as one of the wonders of the modern world, Utzon, who is now in his eighties, has never seen it. He quit in frustration. in 1965.

One of the people who worked with Utzon and the Danish-born engineer, Ove Arup, on the practical problems of converting the concept of the huge 'sails' into reality, is Yuzo Mikami. In his book, Utzon's Sphere, Mikami describes how the architect struggled to finish his drawings for these magnificent structures.

Mikami relates the story of how, in 1961, Utzon was almost beaten. He went to pack up the models of the building, believing that they would be of no further use. The problem had been the difficulty of fabricating large curved 'sails' that followed free-form shapes. As he picked up the model Utzon noticed that the smaller shells could be stacked inside the larger ones without too much trouble. The curvature of the shells, that he had always thought to be different, was quite similar. Mikami describes what happened next.

  • "An idea flashed in his head like lightning in a dark sky. If they were so similar, why couldn't they be cut out from a common surface? What is a geometrical body with a constant curvature in all directions. A sphere!"

    "He rushed home and taking a child's rubber beach ball, put it into the bath-tub full of water. The surface of the red rubber ball changed colour when it was wet. Therefore he was able to see the shapes of the spherical triangles he could cut out from the ball on the parts that were left dry. After many trials he realised that the variety of shapes and sizes available were almost limitless. Big and small, flat and upright. He could now compose the whole shell by the pieces of spherical triangles cut out from just one single sphere. He had found the solution."

The Sydney Opera House is an incredibly beautiful building. It is, rightly, the most visited tourist attraction in Australia. opera house geometryThat the design of the amazing shells of the Sydney Opera House is based on spherical geometry, in which the concert hall uses a radius of 75 metres, and the opera hall is scaled down from that, escapes most people who visit the site. But not a single one would ever doubt that there is a design behind it, and therefore a designer. They would never ever believe that this wonderful structure was created by chance, or that it could have arisen without an architect.

The very existence of a recognisable design implies a designer. Yet, 20th century science, at least in its institutionalised forms, teaches us that despite all the evidence of a proliferation of amazing designs in nature it is all one great accident - chance events created it all.

When The Sceptics Fall Silent [188]
Numerous individuals within the OWO and its ambit of influence over science, economics and philosophy, are vocal sceptics regarding every theory and all findings that run counter to the dogmas of secular, Peter Plichta, Walburga Poschmaterialist, beliefs. The moment a new challenge to the status quo arises it is vehemently attacked by such people. However, when the sceptics fail to attack a radical new finding, when they are absolutely silent about it, there can be only one explanation. That finding or postulate is unassailable.

This is exactly the situation with the findings of Dr Peter Plichta, referred to earlier on this freesite. The sceptics are silent because to enter any open debate would be to fail. Plichta's work and conclusions are impossible to refute. So the sceptics are completely silent, preferring to attack less ironclad findings of other thinkers and writers, rather than risk drawing attention to new truths that they fear.

There are, of course, adverse comments about Plichta's work. It is so revolutionary and groundbreaking that people who are conventionally 'educated' react to it. The findings are so contrary to what is taught, in chemistry, physics, cosmology, and mathematics, that they stand out from everything else that is written about these fields. The following two examples illustrate the level of the attack to be found on the Internet.

  • Reviewer: A reader from Canada.

    "...within the text there exist so many arbitrary statements (such as Dr. Plichta's belief that he has been chosen by God to lead the world into a scientific era of revelation, that modern science is dogma, etc., etc.) and arbitrary number tricks (that Plichta has stolen from old math-game-books, and claimed authorship of), that Dr. Plichta can be generally considered a fanatic without any merit at all. The mathematics within, though completely unrelated to the prime number code, are interesting enough to make the reader come back out of no reason more than interest. However, Dr. Plichta's negative attitudes towards modern physics and his delusions of being the greatest mind of all time, tend to irritate me. I recommend this book only to extremists who have completely shut the doors of open mindedness toward modern science."

  • Reviewer: A reader from New England, USA.

    "I took a chance on this book, picking it up for 3 dollars from the bargain rack at a local bookstore. After leaving the store my friend asked me what I got, I told him, "I don't know.. I think I got a para-science book." Obviously I had no idea that there was absolutely NOTHING scientific about this book. I read the first few chapters, and have never read anything that was so full of grandiose claims yet so utterly devoid of substance, all from an author who is unbelievably full of himself. I don't know exactly how book publishing works, but I always assumed people actually read the books before publishing them. After this book, I no longer believe that. There is no way that anyone read this book before it was published, or else it would never have been printed. This is the first book I ever threw in the garbage."

These examples, and others in similar vein, are not reasoned argument. They amount to no more than name calling by the puzzled and perplexed.

There are other people who praise and draw on Plichta's work. An example from the Internet is repeated below.

  • What they don't tell you. By Dr Patrick Quanten MD

    "A combination of chemistry, physics and mathematics has now increased our awareness of the Universe, large and small, and all that lives within it. People like Professor H O Peitgen from the University of Bremen, French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, Leibniz, Kant, Euler, Bohr, Planck, Einstein, Peter Plichta, and many more have all contributed towards unravelling the secrets of Life. And all have been blocked, ignored and ridiculed. Yet, here we are: as a result of their work, we now are in the know.

    Earth does not come from a Big Bang.

    Life does not come from a primordial soup.

    Earth, and life on it, is arranged according to strict mathematical laws. Nothing happens ad random, nothing happens by sheer chance.

    Matter only exists as the reversal of an infinite four-dimensional space. Space creates matter at its centre; or, each mass, atomic or complex, is the centre of a four-dimensional space; the centre of an infinite space is everywhere - any point is its centre. When this mass receives energy it starts to oscillate and emits energy in the form of two wave segments which are at right angles to each other (sine and cosine of a spherical wave). The energy of the electromagnetic wave as it expands through space is connected to time as a pure four-dimensional inversion. The further the wave expands the weaker its energy, although this will never reach zero, which means that time of expansion will be infinite, and always has been. There is no beginning of time; there is no beginning of space. Both are infinite."

The above is not reasoned debate either, it is a restatement of some of Plichta's findings. But it seems that the reviewer has understood the significance of the book.

Other seemingly favourable reviews often damn Plichta with faint praise, or seem to misinterpret, or entirely miss, key points in his findings. The following comments fit in that category.

  • Absorbing reading from Peter Plichta...., January 10, 2002. Reviewer from Portsmouth, UK.

    "Since I have a mathematical background I thought it would be of interest to comment on the second half of Mr. Plichta's book. Some of the other reviewers have already expressed an opinion on the first half of his book which deals with chemistry and nuclear physics. In general the maths is sound and Mr. Plichta has shown a remarkable ability to spot patterns in seemingly unrelated phenomena. His observation that the temperature of absolute zero, the sidereal period of the moon and the constant 4-pi divided by pi all being variations on 2732 is remarkable, and just one of many numerical coincidences he has spotted. His cross of prime numbers to modulo 24 is quite delightful, and the sort of thing that Leonard Euler would have enjoyed. It is clear that Mr Plichta enjoys his subject and whilst he is sometimes difficult to follow, this is true of most technical books. The author clearly has an original mind, and has written an entertaining book, and included some considerable mathematical insight. Like some of the other reviewers I note that the character of Mr Plichta does seem like someone out of Sake’s short stories. But Mr. Plichta may be exhibiting a sense of fun here. Mr. Plichta does tell us the answer to the riddle of the universe and for that he is to be commended, though personally I make it 80.9999999999999 on my calculator."

Here, suggestions that Plichta's book is "entertaining", rather than scientifically significant, and that the maths is sound "in general", which suggests that some of it is unsound, are very misleading. The assertion that Plichta's observations about the relationship between absolute zero, the sidereal period of the Moon, and the constant 0.2732...(4-pi divided by pi), is one of many "numerical coincidences" in the book suggests that this commentator has not read it fully, nor understood it.

As mentioned earlier, it is important to read Plichta for yourself. Don't expect to 'get it' all at once. This is a book that you have to read several times and ponder for some time before the pennies all drop. But if you do that they will drop, and you will know something that the elites of the OWO would very much rather you didn't.

The Most Important Freedom [189]
In his book, God's Secret Formula, Peter Plichta writes about truth. He observes that.

"Truth does not need people to understand it,
but people need truth in order to really live."

This statement is, in itself, a fundamental truth. People who have freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of religious beliefs, are not really free unless they also have the freedom to know the truth about the world and what lies beyond it. Plichta's work is of immense value in this regard. It answers questions that scientists have either failed to answer or been reluctant to even address. Some of these are listed below.

There is much more to Plichta's findings, but these examples are enough to demonstrate the truly radical nature of his work, and its immense importance. Science and technology based on Plichta will come to dominate the 21st century, just as that of Einstein advanced knowledge in the 20th century.

The most important freedom that present day children, the future citizens of a new civilization, can have is access to the truth. This means not only Plichta's work, but also those of many other revisionist historians and scientists, some of which are outlined on this freesite.

This freedom to know the truth is what really matters in the area of civil rights.

Supporting secessions and the formation of free cities and regions is going to be crucial. Only in these new beachheads of tomorrow’s society will such innovations as home-schooling, and a lack of state censorship and media spin, enable young people to discover the truths they will need to know to build a Level 4 Civilization.

The First Steps Beyond Takerism [190]
Throughout thousands of years and two levels of civilization, people needed money to buy food that was otherwise unavailable. Unless you were a subsistence farmer, there was no alternative to working in a scarcity-driven economy in order to obtain money to pay for food, shelter and the other necessities of life. But now the conditions for a major change exist. Once food and energy become readily available at negligible cost, the way will be open for those with the knowledge to live outside the long-standing system of artificial scarcity.

The transition from the present socio-economic model to a new one based in free cities and regions will either happen progressively, as nation states lose more and more of their power over economic and other outcomes within their borders, or it will happen very suddenly, as a result of a catastrophe. The most likely candidate for the latter circumstance is total failure of the international monetary system, and resultant chaos that renders conventional governments impotent in managing economic and social affairs. The recent collapses of major banks in Argentina gave a glimpse of this scenario. People there survived by becoming self-sufficient at the community level. The financial troubles in Argentina are far from over and, given time, independent regions or free cities might yet arise from the ashes of that previously centralised economy.

There are already examples of a more evolutionary progression towards economic self determination. The Japanese author, Kenichi Ohmae, writing in his book, The Invisible Continent, Kenichi Ohmaeidentifies what he calls "region-states." Singapore, Trinidad-Tobago, Ireland, and New Zealand are said by Ohmae to be operating differently to traditional economies. They are doing this because they have to compete in global markets. National governments can no longer protect them from the changes beyond their borders, so whole regions and cities are finding ways to compete without tariffs and other regulatory mechanisms.

The new region-states also include areas within the wider borders of nation states. Ohmae cites Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Dalian, and Penang as examples of localities that are operating as semi-autonomous parts of larger countries such as India, China and Malaysia. He says that the national economy of the USA is now like a zebra. If you look at it from a distance it appears to be a uniform grey, but when you get close there are stripes of economic activity that are often globalised or moving to that position. Here are some examples of his observations.

The one crucial point that Ohmae misses, at least in his book written in 2000, is the inevitability of the economic pie becoming infinite, early in the 21st century. However, this development does not invalidate his reasoning, it complements and strengthens his ideas. Once the technological elites realise that they don't have to serve the capitalist system in order to eat, they will have even more incentive to set up free cities and regions.

However, these will not be the 'region-states' that Ohmae writes of, they will be true leaver-giver societies with no ties to central administrations in Brussels, Washington, London or anywhere else. The technological elites will quickly realise that they don't need central governments any longer. The very limited civic administrations that exist in free cities and regions will not control anything. they will simply provide services to communities that operate on neo-tribal principles.

All the power in free cities will rest in tribes and the individuals that comprise them. These tribes will not consist solely of technologists and scientists, but all manner of people, young and old, skilled and unskilled. The tie that binds them together will not be due to their religion or ethnicity, but to a shared purpose of creating and distributing the abundance of goods and services that scientific discoveries and new technologies have made possible. The bond will be due to a common leaver-giver ethos.

Some Key Education Principles For Free Cities [191]
A city or region will not be truly free unless its people can know the truth. Not the 'official truth' of state propaganda machines and institutionalised science, but the real truth - at every level and in every field of knowledge. Knowing the truth will be essential to achieving spiritual awakening, and to the realisation of leaver-giver aims.

Because they remain firmly set in traditional forms of government and administration, none of the 'region-states' that Ohmae identifies are free in the above sense. Although these centres are globalising their commerce and switching from 'drop it on your foot' products to knowledge and services centred trade, they are still operating within the capitalist model. More significantly, the new technologies they are applying continue to be understood and taught in terms of the erroneous physics, chemistry and mathematics that fill the old Level 3 Civilization.

Education systems in free cities and regions must be very different to those of nation states. It is not just the methods of encouraging learning that will distinguish education in free cities from that of nation states, but the truth that the knowledge is rooted in. There is no point in swotting to pass examinations in subject knowledge that is wrong. Yet, that is exactly what young people in state education systems are doing. Neither they, or their parents, or their teachers realise this fact, but it remains the case.

When knowledge is revised on a massive scale, as it now must be, the people who often find most difficulty with the change are those who have been 'educated' in what becomes superseded. Children and young people must quickly learn the new foundations of knowledge, and the free cities will concentrate resources and emphasis on their education. When it comes to older people who are presently qualified in the superseded knowledge, there will be difficulties. It will be hard for many of them to accept that they are suddenly back on the bottom rungs of the learning ladder, in company with teenagers who are much younger than they are.

Presently 'uneducated' people who have never been through the state-run schools and universities will have far less trouble with the new knowledge than those who have built their careers on it. Thus, it will often be quicker to establish free cities and centres of abundance in places where there are not many conventionally educated people. In locations that presently have many 'educated' workers there will be strong resistance to change and any new education systems there will need to include content to alleviate the ingrained resentment that many such people will harbour.

Writing in The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg identify the same potential source of resistance in relation to new technology . Listing some anticipated consequences of the transition from the industrial to the digital age they say.

  • "The nationalist and Luddite reaction will be strongest, however, not among the very poor but among persons of middling skills, under-achievers with credentials, who came of age during the industrial era and face downward mobility."

  • "Reactionary sentiments will be most intensely felt within the currently rich countries, and especially in communities with high percentages of the value-poor and skill-poor who previously enjoyed high incomes."

Although the authors of The Sovereign Individual are not writing about quite the same thing as a revolution in scientific truth and the foundations of knowledge, the parallels are obvious. The new education systems of free cities will need to do things differently to conventional education models. Some of the necessary characteristics of free city education systems might include.

  • All ages participation. The new knowledge must be available to adults as well as younger people.

  • Absolutely free enrolment and participation in learning. Internet access and materials should also be free.
    (Where will the money come from? ....Abundance.)

  • Curricula and new knowledge materials that build new understanding without confronting or criticising old teachings as 'wrong'. The emphasis must be on what is now known to be true, not on dismantling conventional knowledge or belittling its authors. Learning should not be a war zone.

  • Mandatory skills modules in literacy, numeracy, music, and the like. Additional elective learning modules and options with a wide range of appeal and no disciplinary segmentation or boundaries.

  • Reliance on review panels and student demonstration of learning rather than examinations. Emphasis on coaching weak students until they achieve a standard rather than failing a proportion of those taking a course. One hundred percent pass rates and full learning goals.

  • Home schooling and special tuition options for those who want them. There might, however, be a requirement for students to demonstrate their learned knowledge to independent review panels and professional bodies.

  • An absence of pressures to learn. No formal exams, no set homework and nothing that takes the fun out of learning.

  • Continuing learning and education as a part of life, rather than schooling as a stage in a preparation for lifetime employment.

Note that learning in a free city should not be compulsory. But full opportunities to learn must be readily available to everyone, at all times throughout their life. Religious instruction is a separate process. In keeping with the ethos of a leaver-giver society, free cities should not restrict religious instruction in any way, and various religious groups should be free to combine other learning and religious studies however they choose.

The above points are not intended as a wish list of admirable, motherhood, conditions for free city education systems. Each is likely to be quite important to achieving the types of learning and the levels of learning that will be required in a Level 4 Civilization. Truth and the wide availability of information and knowledge will be essential to successful leaver-giver societies. For neo-tribes to function effectively, all members must contribute to success. And, to be able to contribute in the 21st century, individuals will require knowledge and a passion for learning in their particular field of expertise.

It will not be necessary, or even desirable, for every member of every neo-tribe in a free city to be a scientist or technologist. Indeed, this will be impossible in the early decades because many older and otherwise ill-equipped people will never be able to assimilate the knowledge involved. Neo-tribal principles require that each member contributes to the overall success and well-being of the tribe. In return the tribe offers what is probably the best form of cradle-to-grave security that humans have ever devised. It is the most natural form of social structure, and it incorporates a full transmission of accumulated knowledge and wisdom from one generation to the next.

All animal groups similarly communicate their knowledge to their young. Flocks, herds, packs, warrens, swarms, and hives all have mechanisms that preserve and freely pass on vital communal knowledge about how to survive and prosper on this planet. So do human tribes. State organised education systems, on the other hand, often transmit knowledge selectively, according to what authorities decide should be taught. Thus, it might come to be seen as 'wrong', or even illegal, to teach evolution in state schools. Whole areas of ancient history might be omitted from the curriculums of such systems. Or, worse still, the facts might be 'shaped' to conform with someone's ideas of what is acceptable for citizens to know and believe.

This is not meant to suggest that knowledge isn't sanitised or that truth cannot ever be distorted or suppressed in tribal societies. Clearly, such distortions and omissions of truth can and do happen. But the shaping of truth within tribal groups does not even begin to compare, either in scale or impact, with what happens at the national level in state education systems. During the 20th century there were obvious examples of severe distortions of knowledge in the Soviet Union and China, both communist regimes. A less pronounced, but more insidious, creation of whole bodies of official truth occurred in supposedly 'free' countries such as the United States, Britain, and Australia. In science, a shift in emphasis from a broad, holistic, examination of nature to a narrower, more material, approach took place in the late 19th century, and continues to the present day.

Institutionalised science and national education systems have created an attitudinal disconnect between cause and effect in environmental degradation. Whole generations have been educated to believe that man stands above and apart from the other life forms that he is surrounded by, and that nature exists to be managed and exploited for the benefit of humans. That is, after all, quite in keeping with the long standing assumptions of takerism. The one big problem is that it isn't true. The natural world was not created for us to exploit at the expense of other creatures, and we do not have any right to exterminate other species at will, just because our technology enables us to do so.

Most importantly, modern science that excludes all possibilities that it cannot touch and test in a laboratory is not necessarily superior to the knowledge of earlier tribal peoples who recognised both the material and non-material worlds. Modern science that shuts out the metaphysical realm is actually deficient and inferior to earlier systems of knowledge and wisdom.

Free cities and regions will recognise the need for people of all ages to study both the modern and ancient collections of knowledge. In particular, anybody who wants to will be able to explore the details of subjects such as sacred geometry, musical structures and the power of vibrations. These are areas where earlier civilizations held knowledge that is often more clear and meaningful than modern coverage of the same areas. Only recently, with the modern study of metaphysics, under the name of quantum mechanics, has it begun to be recognised that all matter is ultimately composed of vibrations, and that the faith that tribal peoples, such as the Australian aborigines, have in sound as a healing medium is likely to be well justified. Until the geometric nature of music is widely understood there will still be many people who dismiss the use of vibrations from the Didgeridoo to cure a range of serious ailments, as a myth. Sadly, that is the way they have been educated to think: that all knowledge from earlier times that is not readily explainable in terms of modern theories has to be nonsense.

Why Study Sacred Geometry? [192]
The importance of learning geometry as the ancients taught it is to cut through the abstractions that man has overlaid on the natural proportion and order of the universe. It is not a new-age hippie reason, but a serious pathway to a full comprehension of the truth about numbers.

Geometry does not need numbers in the sense of "one", "two", "goo", "zoo". It works with lengths and proportions. It is practical to construct the patterns of sacred geometry using only a pencil, a drawing compass, and a straight edge. Just as the relationships between notes and tones in music are independent of any contrived number system, so are the lengths, proportions, and angles of geometry. Indeed, geometry was described by the 18th century German poet and natural philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as "frozen music."

Robert Lawlor's wonderfully illustrated book, Sacred Geometry - Philosophy and Practice, provides some very revealing insights into the history of our present-day numerical conventions. Lawlor shows how the adoption of a decimal system that includes zero was significant in masking the properties of the underlying natural numbers. Although both the ancient Egyptians and the Romans used decimal systems, they had separate symbols for each unit of growth, tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on. During the twelfth century the works of the Arab mathematician, Al-Gorisma, were translated into Latin. Both the originally Indian numerals, 1 through 9, and the concept of zero, began to influence Western thought and mathematics from that time. Due to the practicality it afforded to calculations in commerce, zero together with the Arabic numerals, was quickly adopted by the merchant class in Europe.

Some excerpts from Lawlor's book explain the way in which zero changed mathematics.

  • "The consequences were enormous. First or all, within the structure of arithmetic itself, the additive basis of calculation had to be cast aside. Formerly the addition of one number to another number always produced a sum larger than either of the original numbers. This was of course nullified by the utilization of zero. Other laws of arithmetic were also altered, so that we are now able to have operations such as the following: 3+0=3, 3-0=3, 03=3, 30=3x10, but 3x0=0, and 3/0=0 (???).

    Here logic completely breaks down. The illogic of the symbol was accepted because of the convenience it afforded to quantitative operations. Yet this breakdown of the simple, natural logic of the arithmetic structure allowed a complicated mental logic to take its place and invited into mathematics a whole range of numerical and symbolic entities, some of which have no verifiable concept or geometric form behind them.

    Arising from the sixteenth century onwards, these entities include relative numbers (i.e. negative quantities such as -3); infinite decimal numbers; algebraic irrational numbers (numbers such as e, the basis of logarithms, which satisfy no rational algebraic equation); imaginary numbers such as the square root of -1; complex numbers (the sum of a real number and an imaginary number); and literal numbers (letters representing mathematical formulae). The invention of zero permitted numbers to represent ideas which have no form. This signals a change in the definition of the word 'idea', which in antiquity was synonymous with 'form', and implies geometry."

  • "The 'western' rationalistic mentality negated the ancient and revered spiritual concept of Unity, for with the adoption of zero, Unity looses its first position and becomes merely a quantity among other quantities. The advent of zero allows one to consider anything below the quantitative number series as nil or of no account, while anything beyond the quantitatively comprehensible range becomes an extrapolation subsumed under the word God and deemed religious or superstitious. Hence zero provided a framework in western thinking for the development of atheism or negation of the spiritual."

  • "With zero we have at the beginning of modern mathematics a number concept which is physically misleading and one which creates a separation between our system of numerical symbols and the structure of the natural world. On the other hand, with the notion of Unity which governs ancient mathematics, there is no such dichotomy. "

  • "...unthinkable though Unity may be, both reason and spiritual experience compel the traditional thinker to place it at the beginning. Everything that exists in his mathematical problem or in his universe is a fraction of the unknown One, and because these parts can be related proportionately to one another they are knowable."

  • "Unity is a philosophic concept and mystic experience expressible mathematically. The Western mentality, however, withdrew its discipline of acknowledging a supra-rational, unknowable mystery as its first principle. But in rejecting this reverence to a single unknowable unity, our mathematics and science developed into a system requiring complex, interconnected hypotheses, imaginary entities such as those mentioned above, and unknown x quantities which must be manipulated, quantified or equalised as in the algebraic form of thought. So the unknown appears not just once but at every turn, and can be dealt with only by seeking quantitative solutions."

  • "Our present thought is based on the following numerical and logical sequence:

    -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

    With zero in the centre, there is a quantitative expansion 1, 2, 3, ... and our sense of balance requires having -1, -1, -2, -3 ... on the other side, giving a series of non-existent abstractions (negative quantities) which demand an absurd logic. The system has a break-point, zero, disconnecting the continuum and dissociating the positive numbers from the negative balancing series."

Natural Numbers, Abstract Numbers

  • "In the ancient Egyptian numerical progression, beginning with one rather than zero, all the elements are natural and real:

    1/5, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

    All the elements flow out from the central unity in accordance with the law of inversion or reciprocity. The Egyptians based their mathematics on this simple, natural series of numbers, performing sophisticated operations with it for which we now need complex algebra and trigonometry."

  • "...In terms of the orthodoxy of ancient mathematics, the symbols of mathematics should reflect the realities they describe. With zero and the array or merely mental and statistical signs which followed it, we are very far from having a system of mathematical symbols which corresponds to the pure geometric order of living space."

    In the words of the mathematician Leopold Kronecker:

    "God made the integers and all the rest is the work of man."

Free cities and regions will provide education options that enable all members of society to study sacred geometry and ancient knowledge. This will greatly assist these centres to adapt to and embrace the ideas that will drive science and technology in the 21st century, and lead to the generation of the levels of abundance necessary in a leaver-giver society. Without the deep insights that such studies can bring, people will be likely to find it harder to understand and apply the right knowledge. All 'educated' people will need to re-learn and adapt much of the 'truth' they have accumulated during the industrial age. Children, on the other hand, will need to begin their education on a sound footing from the start. It should be quite practical for them to be fluent in new knowledge, that draws on Peter Plichta's work, by the time they are twelve years of age.

Kenichi Ohmae feels that Japan will be at a disadvantage in the new age, because of an inability to quickly free regions from central control. But that won't be the deciding factor in transforming the economy. The crucial element will be the capacity of the people to be able to accept discovered truth when it contradicts hundreds of years of teaching. In this regard traditional societies like Japan might have more affinity with ancient knowledge and truth than nations that have been deeply 'educated' in the truth of the West. Although Japan is a thoroughly modern industrial power it has probably retained its traditional culture better than any other country has managed to do. Combined with a 2nd Renaissance education system, their more receptive attitudes to surprising new knowledge, that accords with many ancient rituals, might be a decisive advantage for Japan.

It could be the ease with which the various countries, that are presently nation states, can reintroduce ancient teachings and forms of thought into their education systems that becomes the decisive factor in preparing for a Level 4 Civilization. Japan might have centralist bureaucracies to overcome, but so do all other nations. One difference between countries such as the USA and Australia, and those such as Japan and India, is that the latter have knowledge traditions, in mathematics, music, geometry, and astronomy, that stretch back thousands of years. All America and Australia have in this regard is materialistically oriented theories that evolved in Europe during the past two centuries. Most of these notions now need to be unlearned as a result of Peter Plichta's profound insights.

The Burden of Having A Modern Education [193]
It is noticeable that the few people who argue against Plichta on the Internet do so by using 'knowledge' that he has shown to be false. They try to disprove his findings using what they have been taught as 'truth.' The notions are so ingrained in their minds that they seem not to be aware that they are using what amounts to circular logic.

One such reviewer of God's Secret Formula, on the Amazon.com site, takes Plichta to task using what he has 'learned' about base notation. He writes, in part,

The person posing the above argument is, judged from his writing, neither unintelligent nor uneducated. In fact, he could be said to be too educated in the abstract mathematics of today's science. As a result he misses the point that Plichta is reverting to the natural number series that is masked by the conventions that have been adopted to make a decimal system of only nine numerals and zero function. Had this reviewer also learnt sacred geometry and the history of numbers he might have understood this better than he appears to have done.

Plichta obtains the natural sequence below by abandoning the convention adopted along with the use of zero. This is the first line result below.


The subsequent lines show how the convention is unmasked. This is done here in a diagrammatic, non-mathematical way. So that even your granny might be able to understand it. Peter Plichta has also proved the soundness of his reasoning using mathematics. He has done this in both of his books. Before you reject his conclusions, read his findings and study his explanations.

The fact that there is an artifice, a convention, involved in the decimal system in use today is not in any doubt. The great French mathematician, Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace, put it thus, when explaining decimal notation and any other base in the abstract number system built around the Arabic numerals and the use of zero.

  • "The numeral zero plays an important role in this principle. It employs the convention (Lothar's emphasis) that any numeral other than zero when raised to the power zero has the value one."

The 'convenience' of the number system introduced into medieval Europe caused it to be widely adopted for trade and commerce. Although it was not well suited to science, the abstract number series became the scaffold for modern mathematics and the investigation of the laws of the universe. It is significant that the Cistercian Order, which had been founded in 1098 near Dijon in France, strongly resisted the introduction of a decimal system that incorporated zero. Since their philosophical and practical knowledge was the foundation of the sacred geometry used by Masonic Guilds in the construction of the Gothic cathedrals across Europe, the Cistercians were well aware of the divine nature of harmonic proportions and inversions within the natural number series. They fully realised that the adoption of an abstract number series would serve to mask the geometric nature of matter and music from future generations.

Robert Lawlor's book, Sacred Geometry, is rich in practical exercises and examples that enable students to 'see and touch' proportional realities. Just as children who work through Plichta's tiles exercise, described earlier, can immediately comprehend Newton's inverse square law, students who use a drawing compass and a straight edge to construct the various geometric forms in Lawlor's workbook examples can quickly grasp the essence of mediation, and of arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic progressions.

Why is this important? Because modern science now understands that all matter is formed by vibrations and that these progressions, that are found within the natural number series, in both geometry and music, are fundamental to understanding the phenomena involved. If these young people want to become 21st century technologists and travel to other star systems in their lifetimes, this is some of the foundation knowledge they will need to have.

There is also another reason for young people to clearly comprehend the basis of all forms and vibrations. It is the sense of wonder they will experience as the patterns and numbers are revealed to them. By comparison, the study of abstract mathematics and its derived science is far less uplifting. There is cleverness there, but not the same wonder or sense of the divine. Scientists and technologists who have been educated in the traditional manner are also aware of the same progressions and inversions that are explored in Lawlor's workbook examples. However the context in which they learnt about these natural relationships was different to that in which 21st century students of sacred geometry will acquire their insights.

In the 20th century case the prevailing rationalistic philosophies of institutional science and the abstract nature of the number series that underlies modern mathematics combined to obscure the natural wonder of the subject. Educated 20th century people were, and still are, generally unaware of the real significance of the relationships they studied in geometry and the natural numbers. As a consequence their understanding of these areas is somewhat superficial. The fact that they believe that they have been taught the latest, and therefore the most complete, knowledge about geometry and numbers becomes an impediment to their acceptance of 'strange' insights in these fields.

Changing their view of reality is made even harder for them when those 'new' notions turn out to have been well known thousands of years earlier, by civilizations that they have been taught to regard as 'primitive' and inferior to our modern society. Therefore, disbelief is often their first reaction. Their second reaction is recourse to what they know, the knowledge they acquired during a good 20th century education, to disprove the 'erroneous' new notions confronting them. It's all very sad, but also very typical of people who have simply learned the wrong knowledge in the first place.

Why Study Music? [194]
It is important to study music for the same reasons that it is necessary to study sacred geometry. We need to rediscover what the ancients knew, and to integrate those insights with the most recent findings in fields such as physics, cosmology, biology, and sociology. This is not the same as learning to play a musical instrument or to appreciate musical styles and performances. Nor is it the same as studying sound in a laboratory. This study of music is about the way sound is organised in the form of music and of the proportions, progressions and inversions involved. Again, geometry is involved, and so are elements of the divine and metaphysical.

The cover notes of the book, The secret Power of Music, by David Tame, describe his work as follows.

"Drawing upon the wisdom of ancient civilizations as well as contemporary scientific data. David Tame offers a challenging and timely alternative to the widely-held modern notion that music is an intangible art form of little practical significance."

Indeed, as Tame and others who have studied the geometric order of music have found, music is ultimately about vibrations and vibrations are the basis of all matter. Young people who will become the scientists and technologists driving new abundance in this century will need to develop such understanding. That is why free cities and regions will include this knowledge in their education systems.

Here are some excerpts from Robert Lawlor's Sacred Geometry.

  • "A mediating proportion can be defined as A group of three unequal numbers such that two of their differences are to each other in the same relationship as one of these numbers is to itself or to one of the other two numbers.
    This strange mathematical 'koan' contains the formula for the three major medians, the Arithmetic, the Geometric and the Harmonic."

  • "Each proportion has a number of characteristics which are peculiar to it. For example, the arithmetic proportion shows an equality of difference, but an inequality of ratio. Thus, in the arithmetic proportion: 3, 5, 7,

    7-5=5-3 but 7/5 does not equal 5/3

    A geometric proportion on the other hand, is characterised by an equality of ratio but an inequality of difference. Therefore in the geometric proportion: 2, 4, 8,

    4/2=8/4 but 4-2=2 does not equal 8-4=4

    The most important and mysterious character of the harmonic proportion is the fact that the inverse of every harmonic progression is an arithmetic progression. Thus 2, 3, 4, 5, is an ascending arithmetic progression while the inverse series, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, is a descending harmonic progression. In music it is the insertion of the harmonic and arithmetic means between the two extremes in double ratios - representing the octave double - which gives us the progression known as the musical proportion, that is 1, 4/3, 3/2, 2. In other words, the arithmetic and the harmonic means between the double geometric ratios are the numerical ratios which corresponds to the tonal intervals of the perfect fourth and the perfect fifth, the basic consonances in nearly all musical scales.

    The basic proportional structure which contains the axioms for our primary mathematical operations is also the basic proportional structure for the laws of music."

Today, many people believe that musical scales are human inventions. Some attribute their development to the ancient Greeks or to mathematicians in India. But the truth is that such scales are natural phenomena, they have been discovered by humans, such as Pythagoras, - not invented by them. During the 20th century, state education systems and the media presented music as an art form. In reality music is at the core of the science of harmonics. An understanding of musical patterns and geometries leads to an understanding of matter and the cycles of the universe. As humanity continues to expand knowledge exponentially, into the 2nd Renaissance, knowing about the harmonic nature of everything there is will rank as one of the most vital insights a scientist or technologist can bring to bear in their work.

There is another insight to be achieved through the study of sacred geometry and musical vibrations, it is that we humans are not above other living things. All that our intellect enables us to do is discover the natural order of the universe. We can no more change that order than can horses or pigs. It is sheer arrogance to believe, as takers implicitly do, that we humans have a 'right' to exploit nature and unfettered power to control it. Just as Plichta's work reveals a design that requires a designer, so too does the existence of the natural structure of scales and harmonics strongly indicate the existence of a 'creator' intelligence higher than our own.

In The Secret Power of Music, David Tame writes:

  • "In ancient times sound itself, the very basis of all music, was thought to be intimately related in some way to non-physical and sacred dimensions or planes of existence. Why was this? Because audible sound was considered to be but an earthly reflection of a vibratory activity taking place beyond the physical world. This vibration was more fundamental and nearer to the heart of the meaning of things, than any audible sound. Inaudible to the human ear, this Cosmic Vibration was the origin and basis of all the matter and energy in the universe."

  • "In modern times, the physical sciences are now arriving back at this original point of departure. Once again, science is beginning to suspect that matter is all composed of one fundamental something, and that the frequencies or rhythms of this something determine the specific nature of each object and atom."

  • "Certainly music is very much physical, and not at all abstract or insubstantial. The air vibrations of its sound are not only real and measurable, but capable of shattering glass. Music and other forms of sound can cause all kinds of sympathetic vibratory resonances within objects at a distance. ....Rhythm too can be all too real a force. Military experience has taught from centuries past that when troops marching in unison need to cross a bridge, the commanding officer should give the order for them to break step, for the effect of the marching "ri', lef', ri', lef'" rhythm has more than once led to the collapse of such constructions."

  • "To the question, 'Does music affect man's physical body?' modern research replies in the clear affirmative. There is scarcely a single function of the body which cannot be affected by musical tones. The roots of the auditory nerves are more widely distributed and possess more extensive connections than those of any other nerves in the body. ....Investigation has shown that music affects digestion, internal secretions, circulation, nutrition and respiration. Even the neural networks of the brain have been found to be sensitive to harmonic principles. .....Researchers have discovered that consonant and dissonant chords, different intervals, and other features of music all exert a profound effect upon man's pulse and respiration - upon their rate and upon whether their rhythm is constant, or interrupted and jumpy. Blood pressure is lowered by sustained chords and raised by crisp, repeated ones."

  • "What of the effects of music upon non-human life? ...In one experiment conducted by psychologists, rats were given the free run of two separate but connected boxes. Music was 'piped through' into each of them - Bach into one, rock into the other. Though the two boxes were identical and all other conditions except the music were equal, the rats all spent their time in the Bach box. To test further the purity of the experimental conditions, the music broadcast into the two boxes was changed around; and gradually the rats all moved into the other box. Such an experiment does not, of course, mean that the creatures preferred or 'comprehended' Bach on the same level that a human can. but the result does indicate that at some level, the degree of pleasure or pain which the rats experienced in the two boxes was tipped in favour of the master of Baroque."

  • "In the investigation of the effects on music upon life, a number of preliminary experiments have been conducted with plants. Paradoxical as it may seem, music's effect upon the more primitive vegetable kingdom is one of the most convincing methods of all for proving that music does affect life, including human life. For experiments conducted with humans, and even, to some extent, with animals, have the extra factor of the mind to contend with. ...the effect upon the body may have been caused by the mind's subjective reaction to the music heard. In the case of plant-music research, however, psychological factors cannot really be said to be present. If music can be shown to affect plants, then such effects have to be due to the objective influence of the tones directly upon the cells and processes of the life-form."

  • "Dr T. C. Singh, head of the Botany Department at Annamalia University, India, has also conducted research into the effects of music on plants. He discovered not only that constant exposure to classical music caused plants to grow at twice their normal speed, but also went on to find what seemed to be one of the main causes of this accelerated growth. The sound waves of a musical instrument, Dr Singh found, cause increased motion in cellular protoplasm. (Protoplasm is the basic material of which all plant - and animal and human - life is made up.) ....In Dr Singh's experiments, the violin was found to be one of the most life-enhancing instruments of all. Altogether, life-enhancing characteristics as a result of music were shown in balsam, sugar cane, onions, garlic, sweet potatoes and other plants besides.

    Yet, perhaps the most interesting and significant of all of Dr Singh's findings was that later generations of the seeds of musically stimulated plants carried on the improved traits of greater size, more leaves, and other characteristics. Music had changed the plants' chromosomes!"

  • "Let us recall that besides the ancients' belief that music affects the body, emotions and mind of man, they also claimed that music's power was objective, not subjective. That is, they claimed that different types of music are inherently good or inherently bad; that certain combinations of tones are objectively life-changing and evolutionary in nature, while others are unhealthy and dangerous.

    The question of what constitutes good or bad music can be answered in just eight words: good music gives life; bad music gives death. There is more to life and death than the two sides of the grave: every moment of music to which we subject ourselves may be enhancing or taking away our life-energies and clarity of consciousness, increment by increment."

  • "A recent teenage fad was that of taking soft eggs to rock concerts and placing them at the foot of the stage. Midway through the concert the eggs could be eaten hard-boiled as a result of the music. Amazingly few rock fans wondered what that same music might do to their bodies."

As evidence of the all-pervasive nature of musical patterns and proportions in our collective psyche there is also the example of the Ur-song. Here is some of what David Tame writes of it.

  • "The intervals and harmonics of music, mirroring the geometry of the heavens, may also be present in some mysterious way within not only the physical form of man, but also within the patterns of his psychology. It has often been pointed out, and even entire books written on the subject, that the architecture of previous times often displayed ratios and proportions such as are found in the intervals of music. From the constructions of ancient Greece to those of the more recent Gothic periods, there exist many examples of buildings based almost entirely upon the intervals of octave, fifth, fourth and so on. The same ratios are also found in the works of the grand master painters. At times these ratios in art and architecture occur with a frequency and precision that can only be conscious and deliberate; at other times it seems likely that the ratios were included unconsciously, because they seemed 'right'."

  • "That such ratios occur unconsciously seems to be supported by the phenomenon known as the Ur-song. This phenomenon takes us deeper still into the framework of the human mind. For Ur-song is the name given to a fundamental type of melody that infants everywhere in the world seem to sing quite spontaneously, without having learned it from their parents or the culture around them.

    On the face of it, there is no obvious reason why children, if they produce melodies spontaneously, should not begin with any of the infinite variety and number of different tones and tone-relationships. The notes of the Western diatonic scale are, after all, but a few points on a spectrum of tone-frequencies that actually includes an infinite number of points or minutely-different pitches. Yet in all lands, children from the age of eighteen months to two and a half years have been found to spontaneously sing melodic fragments with the intervals of second, minor third, and major third. Thence, in their second and third years, while systematically exploring the use of these intervals in what may be a very important developmental psychological process, children then go on to include fourths and fifths. (A descending third is a pitch difference or interval such as that between 'this' and 'old' in the tune 'This old man...'. An example of a fourth is the interval between 'Don-' and '-ald' in 'Old MacDonald had a farm'.) Only at the age of three does the particular musical style of their own culture begin to influence them, thus putting and end to their spontaneous and independent expressions of the Ur-song. (Ur is a German prefix for original, primeval.)"

  • "In 1973 the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, in his Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard, described the Ur-song of the world's children as an archetypal pattern. He said that the song consists of a repetitive, descending minor third, often accompanied by another descending step to a fourth. In his opinion, Ur-song is the joint product of the physical laws of harmony, and of the innate, genetic pattern of all human beings.

    The concept of the diatonic scale being written into the genetic pattern of man is in itself full of implications. Yet we should not always immediately assume that all such innate abilities are primarily linked to genes, chromosomes, etc. for to do so is to fall into the trap of materialism. Ur-song may be demonstrating to us that the thought processes and the natural flow of consciousness (which is so uninhibited and spontaneous in infants) are themselves somehow linked to the harmonic principles which the ancients believed to be the foundation of the universe. "

Until the musician David Hindley studied it, the song of the skylark was regarded as simply a beautiful sound. Nobody suspected that this little bird was actually singing recognisable music. When he slowed down a recording of the birdsong, skylarkHindley found that he could distinguish individual musical notes. The song was highly compressed; from forty eight seconds of it he was able to extract almost thirteen minutes of sheet music. This could be played like any other piece. More than that, Hindley found that the song of the skylark used the same principles of composition as human music, and that the particular birdsong that he transcribed bore a striking resemblance to structures in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

When he studied the song of the woodlark, David Hindley found that it changed tune in keeping with the rules of classical sonata form, and contained similarities to J. S, Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues. Scientists are now discovering that many animals communicate using compressed sounds, and that the brains of the receivers seem to be able to expand the messages within barks or squeaks and comprehend them. However, the discovery of classical musical structures within the songs of birds is quite astounding. It indicates that we humans are not the only creatures to use musical scales and compose melodies.

Vibrations and Matter [195]
"Nothing is 'solid', nothing is impenetrable, it is all vibrations; all energy.

Everything emanates from the same source.

Everything is a voice or speech resounding over the world, through the entire universe, through micro cosmos and macro cosmos.

It vibrates through the shining of the stars.

It shines in the orbits of the planets.

It is whispered through the gentle breeze and is murmured in the depths of the forest.

It is whistled through the sirens of the factories and is heard in the noise of the machines.

It is sung over the cradle and spoken at the grave.

It is vague feeling or notion, wisdom and belief.

It is knowledge, recognition and hope.

It is death, resurrection and life.

It is colour, vibration and light.

It is everything that can in any way be sensed, thought and experienced."

... Martinus

It is worth learning geometry as the ancients taught it because music is geometric. It is worth studying music in a geometric sense because this uncovers truths about vibrations and patterns of vibrations, Vibrations are important because all matter is formed from them. The 2nd Renaissance involves an explosion of knowledge and discovery that is taking humanity beyond the old 'drop in on your foot' materialistic and mechanistic view of the world and the universe beyond. The 21st century talent collectives that will build new technologies to defeat scarcity and create abundance will do most of their work in the realms of invisible vibration patterns. All young people, both boys and girls, now need to learn within these fields of knowledge, because humanity's future will be built there.

Ernst Chladni (1756-1824) was a German physicist who is credited with founding the study of acoustics. He lightly covered glass or metal plates with fine sand and studied the harmonic vibrations caused by drawing a violin bow across their edge. CymaticsThe patterns that formed in the sand on the plates made the sound waves visible and enabled them to be studied.

Hans Jenny (1904-1972) was a Swiss medical doctor and natural scientist. Jenny extended the technology of studying sound waves by inventing what he called the tonoscope. This instrument used crystal oscillators to enable the operator to set specific frequencies and amplitudes. Jenny placed various substances, such as sand, iron filings, water, and viscous liquids, on vibrating plates and studied the patterns produced by the sound waves. Since the tonoscope did not use any electronics it also afforded Dr Jenny the opportunity to directly view the physical images of vowels spoken by the human voice. He termed the new branch of science, Cymatics - the study of waves and vibrations.

The image above was produced by Jenny's tonoscope when a specific tone was applied to water. The amazingly geometric pattern below was the result of sending a tone through turpentine oil. It is hard to look at these patterns and not conclude that geometry is, in fact, 'frozen music' They give considerable credence to the assertion that everything is vibrations, that nothing is really 'solid', and the 'thing' that you can drop on your foot or trade in the marketplace, is really a wonderfully geometric pattern of electromagnetic energy.

When the tone or harmonic is changed the patterns on the tonoscope change. But there is always observable evidence of number, proportion and symmetry.

If everything is composed of vibrations, and if there is always geometric and numerical structure involved, Einstein's belief in order - that nothing happens by chance in nature - appears to be have been correct. The intervals and order of musical scales will always govern the infinite number of patterns that emerge. The numerical order of the Prime Number Cross, which Peter Plichta has shown to regulate the structure of the chemical elements is then a manifestation of this reality. God's secret formula is numerical and harmonic.

Hans Jenny's images give the lie to the old assertion that, "There are no straight lines in nature". At the fundamental level of the vibrations that give form to what we perceive as matter there are, it seems, only lines, angles and arcs. Thus, straight lines are everywhere in nature, just look at the two patterns here if you doubt it. The first time that physicists were able to gaze at the structure of an atom, using an electron microscope that magnified the structure 260 million times, they saw geometric patterns. Despite the fact that nothing like the structure or mechanisms postulated by Niels Bohr has ever been observed within atoms - only geometric order - institutionalised science persists with using and teaching the Bohr model of the atom, even to the present-day.

Interestingly, Jenny found that although there is no similarity between the spoken vowels of our modern languages and the patterns produced on the tonoscope, pronouncing the vowel sounds of the ancient Hebrew and Sanskrit languages caused the sand on the plate to take the shape of the written symbols for those vowels!

Hans Jenny's wonderfully illustrated book, Cymatics, was first published in 1967 and continues in print today. In it he voices the following impression gained from his extensive work.

  • "The more one studies these things, the more one realises that sound is the creative principle. It must be regarded as primordial. No single phenomenal category can be claimed as the original principle. We cannot say, in the beginning was number, or in the beginning was symmetry, etc. These are categorical properties which are implicit in what brings forth and what is brought forth. By using them in description we approach the heart of the matter. They are not themselves the creative power. This power is inherent in tone and in sound."

Although this conclusion was surprising to most people, it should not have been. No less a theoretical physicist than Albert Einstein had already said:

  • "On such things as matter we have all been wrong, what we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter."

Learning To Lead [196]
There will be no shortage of talented scientists and technologists who can be attracted to free cities. But the same cannot be said for truly visionary leaders. Such people are already hard to find, and there is no educational strand or developmental mechanism for producing them, at least not in the old Level 3 Civilization. What have always been churned out there - in the 'leadership' category - are managers, executives, and militarists. People with those values and backgrounds are most unlikely to possess the skills or attitudes that will be required of the leaders of talent collectives and neo-tribal societies.

Management within a Level 3 Civilization and leadership within a Level 4 Civilization are not so different in areas like communication and motivation, but they are based on entirely different value systems. Since the old education systems and organisational cultures created and reinforced old values, managers from the past can't be counted on to do the best job of leading and energising free cities and regions. New leaders will emerge from areas and backgrounds that are not steeped in traditional managerialism. New leaders will also be developed from the ranks of the young, who will learn their leadership skills within 2nd Renaissance cultures and value systems.

Martinus Thomsen (1890-1981) was born out of wedlock and in quite poor circumstances. He began to work as a herd boy in rural Denmark, at the age of eleven. Despite having only limited schooling in a village school, on two days of the week during the summer and autumn, MartinusMartinus developed an entire theory of creation and existence, authored some 40 books, produced many papers and gave innumerable lectures on philosophy, science, and human development. An institute bearing his name continues to this day in Denmark, to keep his work and ideas alive and available to the world. These achievements are, of themselves, remarkable for an 'uneducated' dairyman living during the peak of the industrial revolution and the blooming of academia and institutionalised science. Martinus' predictions about the future of humanity were also extraordinary.

More than 70 years ago Martinus was able to foresee such technologies as; supercomputers, robotics in manufacturing that would initially make people unemployed but subsequently free them to pursue their moral and spiritual growth, credit cards and money-less transactions, human thought processes controlling machines, and teleportation. Remember, that although we now know that scientists have been able to teleport photons in a laboratory situation, Martinus had his insight well before Star Trek, and even before there was television to broadcast that now famous science-fiction series. What are the chances that a non-scientist and academic 'nobody' could presently predict new technologies that will exist in the year 2075, with similar accuracy?

Our interest here is not with the theories and predictions of Martinus. It is his philosophies and value system that are relevant. Martinus set out clear principles for humanity to live by. According to him, to become a person of good character, one should:

  1. Remove the concept of 'enemies' from your consciousness.

  2. Never retort to anger, slander or other forms of attacks which are directed against you.

  3. Never say anything evil about anyone or anything.

  4. Be absolutely true and honest under all circumstance in life.

  5. Remain absolutely untouched by flatter, praise or blame.

  6. Never participate in killing, hurting or maiming living creatures.

  7. Never let your thoughts move away from working on how you may best serve your fellow beings.

Such guidelines as these are based on a value system that fits a Level 4 Civilization, and free cities and regions, like a glove. But it is hard to find examples of political leaders, business executives or managers, Aung San Suu Kyilet alone any militarists, who appear to live by such dictums. It's not that there are not many people in the world who think and live as Martinus recommends. They are to be found in many walks of life, not only in charities and churches, but many other areas as well. The problem is that hardly any of the people presently running nation states think or live like that. Can you name one who does? Perhaps Nelson Mandella did, or Aung San Suu Kyi might, if she had her freedom and control of the government in Burma.

But, can you think of anyone in power in the CoW nations who fits the bill? No? Then why are you supporting them, paying taxes to them and generally being their model citizens? Mandela (16K)Because you have a mortgage and the bank might foreclose on the loan if you lose your job? That's no excuse when mothers and their children are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq, every day - while you pay off your home, your second car and your home entertainment system!

Oh, so you're 'looking after Number One first'. Well, according to Martinus, you're not it, your fellow beings are Number One.

Moreover, the 'things' that we are all so intent on possessing are really not worth having, because they don't bring real happiness. Only giving does that. Taking never provides us with more than a few moments of satisfaction, if that. When the majority of the people in the West understand this, and begin to live as Martinus suggests, all the killing in the world will stop, and all the famines will cease. Poverty will gradually be overcome, human civilization will go up several gears, and we will all move ahead - together. It can happen. In fact, it has to happen.

Of course, you don't really need to give up all the 'things' you covet, such as your cars and home entertainment systems, in order for the world to become a more equal and better place. All that is required is a concerted effort to raise the living standards of all the people who presently exist in poverty. Conventionally educated - one could even say 'conditioned' - managers and economists can't see this because they continue to believe that resources are scarce, and always will be. New leaders, on the other hand, are people who understand that resources have been deliberately kept scarce to support capitalism and ensure profits. New leaders are people with new ways of thinking about economics and the promise of new technologies. They see that instead of keeping the world economic pie small, and serving the biggest slices to the so-called developed nations, it is already practical to greatly increase the overall size of the world economic pie. Bigger slices of it can then be served to all the people on the planet.

New leaders are distinguished from old managers by their way of looking at problems, and by their values. In the first area, new leaders have a different understanding of realities and different, often more radical, solutions to improving the lot of disadvantaged people. In the second area, new leaders have and uphold values similar to those of Martinus. Their outlook is more collaborative/supportive and less combative/competitive than their managerial counterparts in the old social order.

Presently, men predominate in positions of authority and leadership in the Level 3 Civilization, however women may well prove very suitable as leaders of talent collectives and neo-tribal councils and services providers in free cities and regions. This is because female nature is often closer to the required values profile than that of males. Women are inherently nurturers and conciliators, they are more likely to seek to resolve arguments through negotiation than by the use of violence. All leaders in a Level 4 Civilization will need to have the very inclinations that most women possess.

When free cites are set up, one of the key watchwords should be 'Give The Girls a Go'.

Some Other Guidelines For Free Cities [197]
Besides the need for a fundamentally new education system, along the lines outlined, there are some other changes that free cities and regions should consider. Most of these innovations are designed to moderate the inclination for the old habits of 'rulers' in the Level 3 Civilization to reassert themselves. Except in circumstances where entirely new cities are founded in desert or remote regions, there will, inevitably, be a need to radically remodel or dismantle the institutions of the former nation state. In order to attract people with the technological expertise to enable each free city to rise above the economics of scarcity and develop a leaver-giver society, the conditions of residence will need to be attractive.

People who join the building of a new civilization will not wish to reduce their standards of living, and there is no reason that they should need to do so once the new engines of abundance are in operation. There could be a short period in which things don't get a lot better, but the conditions should never become worse than they were under the old order. Some of the fundamentals that people in free cities will expect are listed below.

  • Low, real value-for-money tax levels, in contrast to the extortionate rates that typically apply in conventionally governed states.

  • Safe surroundings for all residents and low rates of crime and poverty in the community.

    Rather than attempting to achieve such outcomes through bureaucratic programs and a plethora of regulations, free cities will be better advised to rely on supporting neo-tribal based self-regulation on a wide scale, and also freely distributing essential foodstuffs, clothing and shelter to everyone in need. Initially, all residents - without exception - might need to perform one day of free community service per week, so as to lower the cost of such initiatives. However, freely distributed goods and services will be essential to breaking down the poverty traps that more than a century of capitalism and artificial scarcity have created.

  • Unrestricted access to magic-age health services and facilities.

    Nation states have universally made a complete mess of health care. Government, even in its limited local services role, should have no part to play in the provision of free high standard health care facilities and services. This is a job for specialist, highly dedicated leaver-giver interest groups, and medical practitioners and technologists. One of the keys to success will be medical technology alliances with other free cities, and the breaking down of patent protected profiteering by traditional 'ethical' drug companies. The days of the latter are numbered, but it might well be necessary to deal with them for several years after the formation of free cities and regions. It seems improbable at first thought, but without big governments to protect them, multinational corporations will be at the mercy of progressive local communities around the world.

  • Unrestricted banking and money transfer facilities.

    While the role of banks and governments in financing and regulating national economies will quickly break down, there will still be a need to accord the people who will form and operate talent collectives financial freedom. If they wish to send funds out of the free city they must be able to do so. If they decide to bring money in or raise funds outside they must also be able to do that. As the economics of scarcity is literally 'put out of business' by the economics of abundance there will be less and less need for financial regulations and controls. Free cities and regions must begin as they intend to continue - financially open and unregulated.

  • Absolute freedom of movement and association.

    The talented people who will settle in free cities and regions, and spearhead the abundance revolution, will not tolerate restrictions in these areas, which they regard as fundamental to a free society. These folk won't want to live in anything but a genuinely free community, and they will also wish to associate with whomever they choose, whenever they wish to do so.

    Free cities are sure to also attract the less fortunate of the old civilization, why wouldn't people living in refugee camps for years want to come to a place of rising abundance and growing equality? They are sure to seek relief from their plight, for the sake of their children, if nothing else. However, there need be no problem with an inevitable migration to free cities. Neo-tribal principles can be used to achieve an orderly process that does not overload community resources, but meets much of the demand for resettlement and a new life. In such a system each neo-tribe would agree to help support a specific number of new arrivals, and the city would also contribute to the cost. Thus there would not be an overall immigration quota set by a government, which can often be of a defensive or blocking nature, but sectional commitments to supporting new arrivals. The latter arrangement would lead to higher immigrant intakes, but still keep volumes within the capacity of the communities to absorb them. Of course. the more free cities and regions there are the easier it will be to do this, because other centres will more effectively share the load of settling immigrants.

Other Circumstances that People in Free Cities Should Look For. [198]
These are important because they will not always be obvious to those who have grown up and lived under nation state regimes. People won't necessarily expect these conditions and freedoms because they have never had them before. However, these initiatives will be crucial to a successful transformation to a Level 4 Civilization. If they are not put in place it will be too easy for a new society to slip back into the familiar old structures and practices that typified politics and government in nation states and federations. If we want no more of such things we must ensure that we put the following conditions in place.

As the above items show, there are a multitude of issues involved in achieving a wide restoration of civil freedoms in the 21st century. But it will be essential to tackle this task as part of the process of moving society and civilization beyond the failing concepts of capitalism and federalism.

It is clear that one of the major difficulties that secessionists will face is identifying the less familiar issues, so that they can be addressed. Whenever matters of civil freedoms are discussed, the obvious issues are instantly perceived. For example, people know that freedom of speech and association are fundamental rights that must be attained and then preserved. But the issue of the right to know the truth is not obvious to many citizens because they believe that our present society both teaches the truth in its schools and records and pursues it in all fields - history and science to name just two. Nothing could be further from reality, but most people have been conditioned to think that what they read, see on TV, and even hear that their children have been taught at school and university, is correct and well-proven knowledge. It isn't, most of what is presented as truth is based on incomplete theories, or worse still, it is deliberate misinformation and lies.

As already noted, the most important freedom that present day children, the future citizens of a new civilization, can have is access to the truth. Yet, because they do not recognise the need for this freedom in their present-day society, many parents will not perceive a need to do anything about this vital freedom. They trust those who supposedly 'know' to tell them and their children the truth. They don't necessarily trust their present government to keep its election promises, nor do they trust corporate developers to commission valid environmental impact studies for their projects, and so on. The general public are aware that many corporations are managed by people with questionable ethics and few scruples, who might often sanction their marketing and public relations departments lying to the community. But these ordinary citizens trust the state education system, the teachers, the university lecturers, and the like, to present the truth and qualify doubtful theories. Likewise, they trust mainstream scientific institutions to provide correct information and facts about the natural world and the universe beyond. Sadly, their trust is often misplaced, although they remain unaware of such betrayals.

Learn About NEW Science and Share Your Understanding Widely. [199]
Science involves making observations and forming theories to explain the results of observations. While modern science has made rapid progress in the development of technologies that enable ever more detailed observation of the natural world, there has been less change in its theoretical framework. With a few exceptions, such as the Big Bang theory, most of the theoretical models used by institutionalised science were originated prior to 1920. There are many gaps and inconsistencies in current scientific theories, and there is no single unified model - no Theory Of Everything.

This is not to say that modern science is not making great advances. Due to vastly improved equipment for experimentation and observation, and because of increasingly powerful information processing tools, scientific discoveries are pouring out of laboratories and research centres. New technologies based on these discoveries are transforming our lives, and providing the basis for abundance and the end of capitalism. However, this does not mean that institutionalised science has valid theoretical explanations for all the new discoveries and technologies. It simply doesn't.

Scientific Theories Fall Into Three Domains [200]
Not all theories have the same degree of scope. Many attempt to explain quite localised phenomena, while others seek to explain the nature of the universe. The following diagram shows how scientific theories can be considered to fall into one of three domains, or to apply to all of them. When comparing various theories it helps to have this diagram in mind, because not all scientists are theorising at the same level.

3 Domains of Theories

In 1687 Sir Isaac Newton published his laws of mechanics and gravitation. These still hold good today provided that the problems are in the first domain of theory, where we are able to observe effects with our senses. Thus, an engineer can design an amusement park ride using Newton's mechanics, or NASA can calculate the trajectories and orbits involved in putting an astronaut on the Moon using the same principles. The theory always holds good in observable, 'drop it on your foot', circumstances.

However, Newton's laws have been found to break down at sub-atomic scales and where high speeds and cosmic scales apply. To address these failings Albert Einstein, together with others such as Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Paul Dirac developed alternative theories in areas such as relativity and quantum mechanics. These theories operate in the second domain of the diagram, beyond the abilities of our normal senses to observe the phenomena involved. Scientists have used technologies such as cloud chambers, scanning tunnelling microscopes, and radio telescopes to 'see' events in this domain, and 'prove' or 'disprove' their theories.

In both the first and second theory domains it is possible to test hypotheses by observing events that involve material objects. This is not the case in the third theory domain. There, the events are of non-material origin. The Russians seem to have done the most scientific research in this domain during the 20th century. In other countries there has been a reluctance to venture into the non-material, metaphysical, world. Yet, it is there that the whole truth about the universe, and our existence within it, must be sought. Neither of the other two domains can ever yield a complete 'theory of everything' (ToE). Because non-material phenomena are real, albeit impossible to observe and difficult to explain, this domain must be considered fully in formulating any credible 'theory of everything'.

Alternative Theories of TIME [201]
An illustration of a conceptual evolution in physics can be found in various theories about what time is, or whether it even exists at all. The following outline does not attempt to explain the full details of each theory, readers who are interested will need to seek these out from the many available sources. What the outline does is contrast the ideas involved in explaining the nature and operation of that very familiar phenomenon - time, across the theory domains. The various notions are extraordinarily different, yet is some aspects later theories are also quite similar. As scientists seek to understand the universe they get closer and closer to the truth about time.

Julian Barbour is a theoretical physicist who works independently from his farmhouse in Oxfordshire. In-between translating scientific papers from Russian to English, as a means of earning an income, Barbour has sought to understand time at its deepest and most fundamental level. Julian BarbourHis book, The End of Time, sets out his remarkable theoretical insights on this subject. It is the culmination of a quest that began in 1963 when he read the account of the great English physicist, Paul Dirac (1902-1984), about his attempts to merge Einstein's general theory of relativity with quantum theory. Dirac could not unify the two. Furthermore, Dirac formed the view that the concept of combining the three dimensions of space with time - to produce 'space-time' - is flawed. (Many years later Peter Plichta reached the same conclusion, from a different line of inquiry.) Dirac wrote, "This result has led me to doubt how fundamental the four dimensional requirement is in physics."

Despite the title of his book Julian Barbour does not conclude that Einstein was completely wrong, only that the true nature of time is hidden deep in the equations of general relativity, and that Einstein did not fully realise what he had found.

The following is a synopsis of several theories about time.

Newton
The laws of motion that Newton established require absolute space and absolute time. Three dimensional space stretches to infinity in all directions and time operates, as Julian Barbour describes it, like a clock in the grandstand. Also, Newtonian time is always thought of as having a consistent direction; from the past to the present. Although the Newtonian equations work equally well in either direction, our observations and experiences suggest to us that time operates only in one direction. As mentioned above, Newton's laws are quite practical when applied to our day to day activities, and they also predict the movements of the various planets and other bodies that we can observe.

However, just because a theory seems to explain what we see and experience it does not follow that it is correct. Theories once supported a notion that the Earth does not move and, because the ground does not seem to move, such theories were believed. But we now know that, despite its seemingly 'fixed' state, our planet both rotates about its axis and moves in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. Newton's laws seem to explain how objects move, and his notion of time seems to fit our experience, but what we think is happening might not actually be what's happening.

Einstein
Having been greatly influenced by the ideas of the physicist Ernst Mach (after whom Mach numbers are named), Einstein developed a model in which objects move in relation to all other objects, rather than absolute space and absolute time. Moreover, in accordance with the equations developed by James Clerk Maxwell at Cambridge University, in 1860, Einstein's time ran at different rates for different observers. Someone in a space ship travelling at a significant proportion of the speed of light would experience slower time than a person who remained behind on Earth. The astronaut's clocks would slow down relative to those left at home. This prediction seemed weird to most people, including scientists, but its truth has since been demonstrated experimentally.

The other major difference between Einstein's 1915 model and that of Newton was that it accorded time the status of a fourth dimension and fused it with three dimensional space to create space-time. This aspect of his General Relativity model reflected the ideas of Hermann Minkowski, who first proposed an integration of space and time, in 1908, three years after Einstein submitted his Special Relativity paper. Minkowski had said, "Nobody has ever noticed a place except at a time, or a time except at a place". In Einstein's model space-time is distorted by the mass of objects, such as the sun, so that light rays are bent if they pass close to it. This hypothesis was experimentally demonstrated in 1919, during a total eclipse of the Sun. The speed of light is an important value in Einstein's famous equation e = m c2, but its full significance has been obscured for many decades.

Maxwell had found, to his surprise, that light is an electromagnetic wave in which electric and magnetic fields oscillate in unison. The following diagram illustrates this phenomenon. The magnetic vibration is at 90 degrees to the electrical vibration.

Electromagnetic waveform

Textbooks and most scientists quote the speed of light as 2.9979 x 1010 centimetres per second. However Einstein always rounded this to 3 x 1010 centimetres per second. In his equation e = m c2, the symbol c has the value 3 x 1010 cm. Peter Plichta's work has not only shown this to be the correct value, but also a vital element of the design of the universe. While institutionalised science could pass off the value of the speed of light, one of the most important natural constants yet discovered, as a fractional value - 2.99792458 - its elegance and significance was masked. That is no longer possible, and the people of the planet will soon begin to benefit from deep knowledge about light, space, time, and energy.

Plichta
New understanding of what time is comes from Plichta's discoveries. His conclusions are in reasonable accordance with those of Julian Barbour. However, Barbour goes further and seeks to explain not only what time is but where it is. But first, back to the speed of light.

In most non-scientific publications Einstein's equation is written in the abbreviated form in which e = m c2. In other words, Energy is equal to Mass times the square of the Speed of Light. However, in actual fact, the full equation is e2 = m2 c4.

Plichta notes the following.

  • "The constant corresponding to the speed of light appears with the exponent 4. If the value of c = 3 x 1010 cm is inserted in the unabbreviated equation, the by now familiar expression 34 = 81 appears."

  • "Because the number 81 contains the extraordinarily interesting reciprocal value 0.0123456789(10)(11)(12)..., we can represent the equation reciprocally."

  • "On considering the equation and its reciprocal equation, I was suddenly filled with a feeling of awe. For in both these equations the term cm4 appears . From this perspective space acquires a four dimensional structure. For a long time I had had an idea of how a space with the dimension 'length to the power of 4' would appear. It would have to be two vertically intersecting surfaces which would divide space into four infinite segments with no external limit."

  • "A finite space is three-dimensional (to the power of 3) and an infinite space four-dimensional (to the power of 4). With regard to the time in which an electromagnetic wave expands through space, there is a four-dimensional factor which can be expressed as time squared to the power of 2.

    The energy of an electromagnetic wave is related to the number of oscillations per second. One oscillation per second is described as 1 hertz in physics. The relationship that emerges involves a connection showing energy and reciprocal time as pure four-dimensional inversion.

    In the same way matter and reciprocal space can be presented as a four-dimensional phenomenon (m2 = mass squared and cm2 = area squared).

    We can therefore now separate two partial equations from Einstein's equation.... The reversal of an infinite four-dimensional space produces, according to this formula, an expression for matter which is physically linked to mass. The infinity of space will then exist reciprocally as points of matter."

  • "This means that Einstein's equation not only connects the three most important physical dimensions which we can perceive with our senses (matter, energy and quantity), but also the reverse of these dimensions (space, time and numerical sequence). These inversions are linked to infinity and are accessible to us through our ability to conceptualise. The interface between the finity of observation and the infinite realm of the imagination is the human mind."

  • "I formulated the corollary thus: 'If matter did not exist, not one single atom, there would also be no space.' But if only the two of them can exist at the same time, then one would have to be the other, only reversed. where there is no movement there is also no time. Energy can therefore be nothing less than the reverse of time. The only way to connect space and time is to bring them down to their reciprocal dimensions, matter and energy. In order that no nonsense emerges in this procedure, there must be a plan, and this must be the only one that exists - the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... as ordered by the Prime Number Cross."

  • "In our contemporary physical picture, it is simply accepted that matter is energy in bundles. Because the term 'energy' refers to electromagnetic energy and this is not capable of standing still - it has no choice other than to expand at the speed of light - the notion can be seen as patently absurd. "

These excerpts give some sense of Plichta's discoveries. However the related equations have been omitted for brevity, and because one really needs to read 'God's Secret Formula' in order to appreciate the material fully.

The essence of it is that in place of space-time, in which time forms one dimension and the other dimensions are length, breadth and depth, Plichta has recognised two forms of space, the first is three-dimensional, as in the world we are familiar with, and the second is four-dimensional space that stretches to infinity. The latter form of space transmits waveforms and vibrations with perfect accuracy, and it is capable of carrying all frequencies without interference. Time is not a dimension in Plichta's model, it is simply the inverse of energy.

Barbour
Besides having completed a doctorate on Einstein's theory of gravitation, Julian Barbour is one of the small number of theoretical physicists who are also true philosophers. He is well qualified to study the fundamental nature of time, and he has been doing so for 35 years. Nor is he in any way conceited or lacking a sense of humour. In his book, The End of Time, Barbour tells of an insight he gained in 1971, in the following terms.

  • "We had a blackboard in our kitchen in College Farm , and I wrote at the top of it:

    'The history of the universe is a continuous curve in its relative configuration space.'

    My wife, perhaps understandably, was rather sceptical about the progress I was making. After all, fourteen words were not much to show for seven years of thought.

    But the clear formulation of the concept of Platonia was the important thing. It shifts attention from the parts of the universe to the universe itself. It shows that time is not needed as an extra element, the Great Timekeeper outside the universe. The universe keeps track of itself."

Platonia is the name that Barbour gives to the configuration space in his model. If there were only three objects in the universe they would have a relative configuration, for three bodies it would be triangular. The space in which the relative arrangements of bodies move from 'place' to 'place' is Platonia. Each of the triangular, relative configurations can be thought of as a static, timeless picture. Julian Barbour terms these motionless, timeless instants, Nows. A series of such 'triangles' trace out a path in Platonia, this is the process that Barbour described in fourteen words, on a blackboard in his kitchen.

Anyone who has ever navigated by using dead reckoning will know that a map is used simply as a surface on which a track is traced. A navigator in a WWII bomber headed into Germany from England would plot a line on the map from the point of take-off and continue it for a length corresponding to the time required to travel a given distance at a known airspeed. Each alteration of course would be drawn as a new track, until the target was thought to have been reached. But neither the pilot or navigator might actually have been able to identify landmarks in the blacked-out terrain that had passed below their aircraft. The bomber kept track of itself. Although it is not exactly analogous, the surface of Platonia in Barbour's model is somewhat like the map on the navigator's chart table. A track can be traced out on the surface of a map to indicate the movement of an aircraft from place to place. Similarly, relative configurations of three bodies can trace out a path in Platonia.

In an actual bombing mission to Germany, in WWII, time would have been perceived to flow as Newton expected. However, if one views a film of a bombing mission, such as The Dam Busters, both the passage of time and the movement of the aircraft across the terrain are pure illusions. All that moves is a reel of film or a magnetic tape. Technology then projects a false image of 'reality' onto a screen that you view. Nothing else moves, the aircraft does not move, the crew inside it do not move, nor does the terrain move beneath the bomber on its mission. Everything is an illusion. The only realities are in the many frames of the movie, each one of which is similar to one of Barbour's Nows.

Whereas Plichta's work shows what time is - the inverse of energy - Barbour's model of Platonia shows where time is. It is in the Nows. Below are some of his theoretical conclusions on this matter.

  • "The universe kept track of itself. In one instant it is where it is, in another it is somewhere else. That is what a different instant of time is: it is just a different place in Platonia. Instants of time and positions of objects within the universe are all subsumed into the single notion of a place in Platonia. If the place is different, the time is different. If the place is the same, the time has not changed. This change of viewpoint is made possible only because the universe is treated as a single whole and time is reduced to change,"

  • "Different Nows give rise to different experiences and hence to the impression that the time in them is different. ...Yesterday seems to come before today because today contains records (memories) of yesterday. ...The instant is not in time, time is in the instant."

  • "This proposal is not so very different from Boltzmann's idea that the sense of motion is created from qualitatively different patterns arranged along the 'line of time'. Instead, I am suggesting that it is created by the brain from the juxtaposition of several sub patterns within one pattern. The arrow of time is not in the washing line, it is not in several pieces of washing, it is in one piece. "

  • "The lesson we learned from Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo is here very relevant. They persuaded us, against what seemed to be overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the Earth moves. They taught us to see motion where none appears. The notion of time capsules may help us to reverse that process - to see perfect stillness as the reality behind the turbulence we experience."

  • "...the rules that govern the universe as a whole leave imprints on what we find around us. These local imprints, which physicists take as the fundamental laws of nature, reveal few hints of their origin in a deeper scheme of things. The attempt to understand the universe as a whole by 'stringing together' these local imprints without a grasp of their origin must give us a false picture. It will be the flat Earth writ large. My aim is to show how the local imprints can arise from a deeper reality, how a theory of time emerges from timelessness. The task is not to study time, but to show how nature creates the impression of time."

The above contrasting theories on what time is, and where time is, can be readily understood by ordinary people. No particular skills in mathematics or expertise in the use of specialist measuring instruments or in devising experiments to test the theories, are required to comprehend them, Theories are basically ideas and they can be appreciated and evaluated in their broad forms, without the clutter of detail that academia invariably adds to them. Julian Barbour has written a whole book on the subject of time without descending into mathematical formulae or difficult, often incomprehensible, language specific to the realm of science. When the ideas about time are simply put, just about anyone can be involved in considering and debating them.

This is exactly what needs to happen, science needs to be discussed in the home, in meeting places such as coffee shops and bars, and particularly in schools. A deep and realistic understanding of nature and the universe is too important a goal to be left to institutionalised science. All the powers of imagination and thought available to humanity need to be engaged, not just the minds and energies of a limited number of specialists working within the formal research and funding frameworks of science .

The insights about time that Peter Plichta and Julian Barbour have developed, along with other really important thinking and discoveries, could have been developed early in the 20th century, rather than towards its close. The quest for the truth about nature and the universe could have been 50 or 60 years further advanced than it presently is, and that could have made a very great difference to the lives on many people on this planet. Earlier theoretical insights might also have saved many lives that have been lost in wars, plagues, famines, and other disasters. Ideas, often in the form of visualisations, always precede mathematics and other technical work. Until someone imagines a path to the deeply hidden truths in nature, nothing can be accomplished, no progress can be made.

Who are the most imaginative and lateral thinking people in our present society? Are they the scientists, or possibly the high IQ individuals employed to find new products and markets? Are they the entrepreneurs of the world, or are they advisors and consultants to industry and government? The answer to this question is known, and it is surprising to most people.

Research carried out by Edward de Bono in the 1960s, at the Cognitive Research Trust facilities at Cambridge University, clearly demonstrated that the most imaginative, inquisitive and freethinking human beings are children up to six years of age. Beyond that point young people remain imaginative but they begin to learn that ideas can be either 'right' or 'wrong', and that it is a bad thing to be found to be 'wrong' or to be seen to make mistakes. By the time they reach their mid-teens they are often quite conservative and restrained in the way they think about the world and existing knowledge. By then they have usually learned to defer to those in authority, particularly teachers and experts in various fields of knowledge. By the time they leave university and gain a few years of experience these young people have the capability to develop ideas and turn them into new technologies or products, but they have largely lost the ability to conceive or visualise anything radically new.

A project that de Bono conducted in Russia combined young children who were able to imagine new products and technologies with adults who had the capability to take the ideas and develop them was particularly successful. It again showed clearly that young children have an unstinted capacity to imagine new paths of inquiry and development, whereas adults are less able to find the start of such trails to a better world. This insight might be used to advantage in all areas of society, not just business and technology. A whole range of new inquiries and scientific and social solutions might be opened up in this way.

The Third Theory Domain [202]
Two of the four theories of time above are firmly in domains 1 and 2 of the earlier diagram. The work of Plichta and Barbour extends into domain 3, but perhaps not to the full extent that is now possible. Others will follow the trails that they have blazed. They will be bold, inquisitive souls. Those who push the boundaries of thought into the realms of truth where science meets religion are not fearful of being thought wrong. Indeed, it their ideas are readily accepted these theoretical pathfinders can be certain that they are falling well short of the reality they are seeking. Peter Plichta has expressed his certainty about his own insights as follows.

He is sure of that in his mind, but the world at large has yet to be convinced. Yet the delay in acceptance is only that - a delay, not an everlasting barrier to the truth being known everywhere that people meet and talk. When it eventually happens, wide realisation of the truth and significance of Plichta's work will be quite sudden. That is also how it was with Einstein. When the theories that are put forward seem to contradict what our senses tell us it takes time for us to take them seriously. But in the end the truth will win out, and humanity will take another leap towards knowing all that can be known. If and when we reach that goal we should not be surprised to find that earlier beings have been there before us.

Theories in the third domain are necessarily more speculative and less verifiable than those in the other two domains. They also tend to be more 'weird' and 'unlikely' than the still widely accepted Newtonian version of reality. They had better be, otherwise they will almost certainly be wrong.

An example of such a theory that attempts to answer all the puzzling questions about the world we observe, and what is beyond our observation, was developed by Douglas Vogt and Gary Sultan. In their book, Reality Revealed: The Theory of Multidimensional Reality, they seek to explain a wide range of phenomena, including many that fall outside the realm of conventional, grant governed, science. Since Vogt and Sultan's book dates from 1978 some of the concepts they use to explain their ideas have now been superseded by people such as Plichta. However the basic foundations of their theory rest on the work of one of the greatest scientists of the industrial age, Nicola Tesla. More will be said about Tesla in other sections of this freesite, but Vogt and Sultan continue to be on very sound ground when they quote and utilise his ideas and discoveries. It could also be said that, although they were technically qualified adults when they combined to write a book on science and meta-science, they were often able to think with the imagination and openness of six year olds. Here is an outline of their ideas.

Vogt and Sultan' s Theory [203]
Firstly, it is necessary to recognise that the 'dimensions' that Vogt and Sultan identify with their model are not the same as the three spatial dimensions of Newton or the space-time of Einstein. An alternative term for Vogt and Sultan's 'dimensions' is levels. Secondly. there is no claim on the part of the authors that the actual mechanisms that shape and control the universe are the same as they postulate in their 'tape play-back' analogy and other explanations. What Vogt and Sultan seek to do is to imagine a theory that could account for all observed and experienced phenomena, not just those that present-day science feels competent to explain.

They address such events as: the tornado in which lighter objects, such as straw, have been seen to be driven into more solid objects, such as glass; the discoveries of animals entombed in rock and other material that have regained life for a short time after release; the well known 'phantom limb' effect experienced by amputees; and many other paranormal phenomena such as clairvoyance and telekinesis. Although such things are beyond the explanatory abilities of mainstream science, Vogt and Sultan contend that their idea can explain them all.

The following diagram shows the nature of the eight levels or 'dimensions' in the Vogt/Sultan theory.
The levels are:

  1. The storage level for all information in the universe. This is also where the geometric structure of visible matter originates. Vogt and Sultan term this structure the diehold, it transmits information into the second level. Of the first level they say:
    "The first dimension has no length, no width, no depth, and time is truly irrelevant."

  2. The transmission of information is by means of magnetic lines of force. The waves are similar to electromagnetic waves, but without the electrical wave component (see the earlier electromagnetic wave diagram). The phase angles of the wave are set by the geometric structure of the diehold.

  3. Elements, the basis of perceived matter, are created at this level by modulation of the transmission wave. The frequencies that are unique to each element are governed by the geometric structure of the diehold. There is an eerie similarity between this concept and the way Plichta's Prime Number Cross regulates the structures of the elements. The mechanisms are quite different, but the concepts are similar.

  4. Life and intelligence are modulated into existence at this level. The living organisms here are all aware of their environment, whether they be tadpoles or humans. As the potential of a living thing is increased it is able to perceive and understand more of what is around it. Intelligence increases with potential in the diehold. Conventional science does most of its investigation of 'reality' at this level, because there are seemingly tangible objects and organisms that can be measured and observed.

  5. There is so much more potential at this level that an intelligent being is able to perceive more information of its surroundings in the diehold than is possible by using the lower senses of sight, smell, touch, and so on. Some psychic abilities can be explained by this level of the model.

    Vogt and Sultan reason that a fifth-level being is able to bend the information that makes up three-dimensional objects, and also change the signal modulation of an object so that its time reference is altered.

    In their model, time is the distance travelled by 'the head device' or 'tape head' across the information of existence. The speed of the 'device' across the information is that of light, 300, 000 km per second. While a sufficiently conscious being can travel anywhere in the universe, past or present, by raising its potential, nothing can travel faster than the 'head device' transmitting its existence. Gravity is the information of an object being directed towards its time and space. Objects with lager domains of information have stronger gravitational fields than those with less information. If these ideas seem strange, it's because they are. However the truth about the nature of the universe is unlikely to be, in any sense, Newtonian. It is sure to be counter-intuitive and unexpected.

    Note that Vogt and Sultan do not suggest that there really is a 'head device' somewhere that is reading all the information that comprises existence. They use the analogy of a tape-head to illustrate the type of principle that could be involved. Just like the 'Big Bang', their idea of how information is organised in the universe is just a theory. Neither of these are, as yet, proven fact. Science does not yet know the real answers, although the opposite impression in often given in lectures and text books.

  6. Another leap in potential enables intelligent beings at this level to move objects in time and space. Various psychokinetic abilities can be explained by this level of the model. Vogt and Sultan say that if an intelligent being at this level has a fish in its possession, it does not just have that fish in a fourth level existence, it has the information contained in the diehold, about what makes up that fish. The sixth level being is then able to reproduce the fish as many times as it wishes.

  7. Because it has such a huge amount of potential a planet occupies the seventh level of the model. Vogt and Sultan concede that this seems strange, coming as if does above and beyond a super-intelligent being. However, they insist that this arrangement is logical, and that, in fact, a planet has many frequencies associated with it and it is logical to assume that it perceives a great deal of its existence from the diehold.

  8. The ultimate level is that of a star. Vogt and Sultan explain it thus. "A star is the only thing in the universe that collapses upon itself when it becomes a black hole. When it becomes a black hole, what is happening is that its information is going to the first dimension, or back to the diehold. This process probably occurs when it has evolved so far and collected so much potential that it can pull in unlimited amounts of information from its surroundings in the diehold. This information we would perceive as a gravitational field. When the gravitational field (concentrated information) gets too great, the star can no longer exist in any other dimension but the first dimension."

Vogt and Sultan's model is an example of an imaginative theory that seeks to explain all the observed phenomena in our world. One of its most striking notions is that information, in the from of patterns and designs, but also thoughts and memories, exists elsewhere. It seems to be in our brains, and it is assumed to perish with the biological body at death. But, in Vogt and Sultan's concept of reality, our brain is just another sense organ. It sends and receives information, but the brain does not store data or process it in the same manner that a computer does. Such a hypothesis is contrary to our perception. We think that our brain 'holds' our thoughts and memories, however we cannot be sure that this is the case.

Explanations For The Unexplainable [204]
Human experience is crammed with happenings for which grant-governed science has no plausible explanations. Because very little funding is ever allocated to the investigation of anything that smacks of the supernatural or the paranormal, hardly any progress has been made towards finding scientific explanations of such phenomena. For example the uncanny ability of common companion animals, such as cats, to find their way home through unfamiliar terrain is an ongoing mystery. Cats are not migratory in the way that many birds are. Cats normally spend their whole lives within a quite small territory that surrounds their home. Yet, when cats are removed to a place far away they frequently find their way back. There are innumerable recorded instances of this 'homing' ability of domestic felines, but no explanations as to how they do it.

The cat shown in the photo travelled a distance of some 65 miles to be reunited with her carer. This documented case occurred in La Ribière, France, in 1967. An even longer journey was made by a ginger cat named Skittles. He travelled a distance of 560 km in 140 days after having been lost from an automobile while on holidays in Minnesota, USA, in 2003.

Most people are aware of such events involving cats, dogs and other animals, they know it happens but they don't know how. Conventional explanations focus on such factors as the use of scent (a bit hard from hundreds of kilometres away), navigation by the sun, and similar sensory mechanisms. There is no scientific theory that can fully explain how cats such as Minette and Skittles find their way home with unerring accuracy - except for the Vogt and Sultan theory of Muntidimensional Reality. If cats possess fifth level abilities (nobody has done any studies that can rule this in or out), then they could directly perceive information, such as the route home, from the diehold.

This in not to suggest that cats can perceive information by using abilities beyond their lower level senses. The point is that although the explanation derived from the Multidimensional Reality Theory is weird, it cannot be rejected simply because of its weirdness. It is not just solutions to how cats find their way home that are explainable by the use of the MRT. Surprisingly, most other strange events can also be explained by the theory. In fact, Vogt and Sultan devote much of their book to examples that do just that - they explain the unexplainable.

Who Is Running The Universe? [205]
There is a common piece of street wisdom that describes how to determine who is really running any strange town that you come to on a journey. The advice is to listen to who is mentioned in conversations about the affairs and administration of the town. It is never the people who are talked about in connection with town matters or politics who are actually running things. The rule says that it is always the people who are never mentioned who are in real control. If you want to know who has the power, find out who is never mentioned as having any. When you begin to learn about and debate science with other non-scientists like yourself, remember this piece of street wisdom. Nothing is what it seems to be. The mayor or the police chief might seem to wield the power but, in reality, the power lies elsewhere, and that truth is seldom mentioned.

Hundreds of tons of paper are consumed every year just to print scientific papers. These documents are the output of grant governed science and the 'publish or perish' ethic of its institutions. The papers are dry reading and full of long words and complicated formulae. They purport to answer the questions that orthodox science can aspire to answer, the issues in the 1st and 2nd theory domains - but never the third. Popular theories such as the Big Bang fill countless documents and textbooks. Earlier civilizations are always reported as having been less knowledgeable than that of the present-day, and so on. Notwithstanding such errors much of modern science is useful, even if the theories that explain new discoveries are often dubious. The discoveries themselves, and the technologies they spawn are driving the 2nd Renaissance and laying the foundations for a Level 4 Civilization.

When you read and discuss modern scientific theories; the ideas behind the explanations of discoveries, keep the above street wisdom in mind. Do not expect to find any mention of who or what is really in control of the universe. Never expect to see a single scientific paper that mentions God, and you will not be disappointed. Everything is explained in terms of probability, chance and coincidence. Only those outside the system, like Peter Plichta, dare to tell the truth about who is really running our town.

Still, it is not really institutionalised science that is in opposition to religion. Science is predominantly funded by governments and corporations, there are a few independents such as Plichta and Barbour, but the majority of scientists don't have much freedom to express their true views on God. They either generate papers that don't attribute any causality to God or they don't have a job or an income. The OWO buys the scientific truth it wants. The real divide in beliefs is not between science and religion, it is between Government and God. Although many totalitarian states adopt particular brands of their own, those religions end up being mere interpretations and sets of rules that reinforce takerism.

Federations are, despite carefully contrived appearances to the contrary, essentially godless. Truly religious leaders live and act according to principles that accord with the natural world and the design inherent in it. They think very like Martinus thought. Some leaders of this type can still be found in the deep jungles, and various non-westernised cultures, they are often called shamans. But the churchgoing, baby kissing, political leaders of modern nation states are more sham than shaman and, ultimately, it is their influence that shapes the atheist attitudes of institutionalised science.

Learn About Suppressed Inventions - Help Keep The Knowledge Alive [206]
The logic of capitalist economics is warped and, as a result, capitalism has failed to improve the living standards of the majority of the people on this planet. Despite two industrial revolutions, and many scientific discoveries and technological advances, five billion people still struggle to exist on less than two US dollars a day. This surely qualifies capitalism and the people who practice and advocate it as abject failures. The truth is that capitalism is not about improving anything, it is about profiting from trade in scarce, highly priced commodities, goods, and services. The key words are 'scarce' and 'highly priced'.

A single true story can make this point clear. The story is about the invention of a means of transmitting both signals and electrical power directly through the earth. This discovery raised the practical opportunity to supply free power to any point on the planet, no matter how remote it might be, and without the need for any transmission lines or costly sub-stations. The man who invented and built a device to do this was Nicola Tesla..

Tesla was not some hare-brained backyard inventor. A Croatian by birth, Tesla immigrated to the US in 1884. After gaining initial employment with Thomas Edison and later working for George Westinghouse, he went on , as Robert Lomas has put it, to 'invent the 20th century'. In his book on Tesla, Lomas recounts how, when the inventor was born in the midst of a violent electrical storm, in 1856, the midwife said that the infant Tesla was 'a child of the storm'. Lomas observes that, "She could not have known how accurate this description would be for a man who was destined to create artificial lightning strong enough to shake the world."

Lomas also writes of the early interest in electricity that was to become a lifelong focus for Tesla and which would lead to his knowing more about this manifestation of energy than any other human being.

  • "Tesla always claimed that his interest in electricity began one cold winter's day when he was three years old and experienced the thrill of drawing static electric sparks from the fur of Macak, his pet cat. This strange effect, caused by the intense cold and dry air, started him wondering about natural electricity: the lightning of storms. 'Is nature a gigantic cat?' he thought. 'If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God'."

After he had become the first scientist and engineer to work out how to harness alternating current (AC) in dynamos and motors, as well as inventing, among many other things, various tuned circuits, the electric transformer, fluorescent lighting, neon bulbs, an electron microscope, and an atom smasher that was lighter and more efficient than anything in use today, Tesla investigated the phenomenon of lightning. He did this in Colorado Springs, in 1899. The following excerpts are from Tesla's own writing, reproduced in Jonathan Eisen's book, Suppressed Inventions & Other Discoveries.

  • "It was on the third of July - the date I shall never forget - when I obtained the first decisive experimental evidence of a truth of overwhelming importance for the advancement of humanity. ...... towards evening a violent storm broke loose which, after spending much of its fury in the mountains, was driven away with great velocity over the plains. Heavy and long persistent arcs formed almost in regular time intervals. My observations were now greatly facilitated and rendered more accurate by the experience already gained. I was able to handle my instruments quickly and I was prepared. The recording apparatus being properly adjusted, its indications became fainter and fainter with the increasing distance of the storm, until they ceased altogether. I was watching in eager expectation. Sure enough, in a little while the indications began again, grew stronger and stronger and, after passing through a maximum, gradually decreased and ceased once more. Many times, in regularly recurring intervals, the same actions were repeated until the storm which, as evident from simple computations, was moving with nearly constant speed, had retreated to a distance of about three hundred kilometres. Nor did these strange actions stop then, but continued to manifest themselves with undiminished force. Subsequently, similar observations were also made by my assistant. ......No doubts whatever remained: I was observing stationary waves."

  • "As the source of disturbances moved away the receiving circuit came successfully upon their nodes and loops. Impossible as it seemed this planet, despite its vast extent, behaved like a conductor of limited dimensions. The tremendous significance of this fact in the transference of energy by my system had already become quite clear to me. Not only was it practicable to send telegraphic messages to any distance without wires, as I recognised long ago, but also able to impress upon the entire globe the faint modulations of the human voice, far more still, to transmit power in unlimited amounts to any terrestrial distance and almost without any loss."

It was this latter concept, of the worldwide distribution of power to any point at which it was needed, and with negligible loss, that was to eventually end Tesla's career and all but destroy his work relating to his magnifying transmitter. He was subsequently to be denied funding for such a project, from any sources in the US, and he was to be driven out of business, totally written out of scientific texts, and widely discredited. Although he lived into his eighties, Tesla died in poverty, a forgotten man, and a whole room full of notes relating to his Magnifying Transmitter went missing, believed to have been taken away by US federal agents or the military.

Tesla was arguably one of the most outstanding geniuses of the late 19th century. But he was never astute in business, being far too naive and trusting. Tesla thought that everyone would readily support a discovery that would make energy available to all, and do much to end poverty and scarcity in the world. The capitalist/militarist establishments of the US thought quite differently.

Initially, the dream of a far better world began to materialise for Tesla when he moved back to Long Island and constructed a facility he named Wardenclyffe. This massive device, which is pictured below, was ostensibly intended to help his financial backer, J.P.Morgan, to compete with Marconi in the new overseas wireless communications market. When Tesla told him that his new project would transmit 'intelligence' to the world Morgan assumed that he meant that it would use radio communications. But Tesla did not mean anything of the sort.

Being naturally secretive about his work, Tesla refrained from telling Morgan the full extent of the capability of the Magnifying Transmitter that he was constructing. Eventually, when he deemed the time was right, Tesla revealed to his backer the full potential of the tower at Wardenclyffe.

Once Morgan understood that the Magnifying Transmitter could make electricity freely available anywhere in the world, by simply driving a rod into the ground and hooking up appliances, and that the source of the energy it could distribute was essentially free, Tesla received no further funding. While Tesla's attitudes were those of a leaver-giver, J.P.Morgan's ethic was staunchly taker. He would have immediately recognised the threat the new technology posed to the very foundation of capitalism - artificial scarcity.

Once it was noted that Tesla believed that the totally new form of energy, which he termed 'Radiant Energy', had the ability to raise the level of human consciousness and improve mental powers, federal agencies and the military began to regard it as a potential weapon, rather than a force for good in the world. Much later, when the military came to realise that Tesla's technology was also capable of delivering explosive power equivalent to millions of tons of TNT, anywhere on the face of the earth with pinpoint accuracy, a large quantity of Tesla's technical notes on the device vanished, never to be seen again.

The 20th Century - One Hundred Years of Wasted Opportunities [207]
By and large, people on the streets marvel at the progress that has been made during the past hundred years. They observe the development of aviation, from the Wright Flyer of 1903 to the B1 Bomber of today, and are filled with pride for humanity. The achievements of the military/industrial complex during the 20th century are thought to be extraordinary. It is widely believed that humanity has advanced faster than anybody could have ever imagined in 1903. However, it was in that very year that J.P.Morgan pulled the plug on Tesla's Wardenclyffe project and then used his influence in financial circles to ensure that the Magnifying Transmitter was never funded again. Although it is true that Tesla's other discoveries and inventions provided the foundation for the second industrial revolution, the advances made there pale in comparison to the gains that humanity could have made if the Magnifying Transmitter had been allowed to bring free energy to the world one hundred years ago. If that had happened humanity would now be orders of magnitude better off than it is today.

Tesla's discovery of an entirely new form of energy was so important that the suppression of his knowledge ranks as one of the greatest ever crimes against the human race. Of course, with the exception of the likely theft of Tesla's notes, the suppression of his invention was all perfectly legal. It wasn't moral, but then, capitalism is never moral.

Radiant Energy [208]
When Tesla was working for Thomas Edison, on direct current (DC), he observed an unexplained phenomenon that was to lead him to his discovery of what he termed 'Radiant Energy.' What to Edison's engineers was a serious nuisance in their power stations was to Tesla a revelation, a glimpse of another, hitherto unknown, form of energy.

When he set up his business to distribute electrical power, Edison, who was a former telegraph operator and used to sending messages long distances with negligible power, had not understand Ohm's law. He failed to appreciate that the resistance offered by long transmission lines would require very high DC voltages to ensure that useable power reached consumers. He found that he had to build generators capable of producing very high voltages and also construct 'pumping stations' along the line, to boost dwindling power levels downstream of his main power station. Engineers and others working in these places frequently encountered a spectacular, and potentially lethal, anomaly. When a switch was thrown in the generating station, and in the instant before any current flowed, purple/blue spikes radiated along the power lines, and people nearby experienced a stinging sensation. Sometimes an unlucky workman would be standing too near and the purple/blue spikes would ground themselves through his body, killing him instantly.

Unlike Edison and his engineers, Tesla did not for a second mistake this effect for normal electricity, he realised that electrons were not responsible because the anomaly only manifested itself while there was no current flowing. Something else was happening, but nobody was interested in exploring what it might be. The engineers were concentrating their efforts on designing the 'fault' out of the system. Tesla, on the other hand, recognised the presence of an unknown, and obviously very powerful, form of energy. From that time he sought to understand and control this power which he was to later term 'Radiant Energy.'

Tesla found that it was the closure of the switch that triggered the release of the bright radiance. He also discovered, by some quite dangerous experimentation, that the effect could be greatly increased by placing a capacitor between the switch and the dynamo. Further increases in the energy could be achieved by raising the voltage, quickening the rate of switching and also shortening the time that the switch was closed.

In his later Wardenclyffe project Tesla combined this knowledge of how to cause radiant energy to manifest itself with what he had learned from his work with lightning at Colorado Springs. There he had discovered something truly amazing. He found that despite its vast size our planet behaves electrically like a small metal ball. He observed lightning strikes setting up standing waves that reverberated throughout the entire earth. (The ripples that you see on the surface of a pond after you drop a stone into it are standing waves.) The right hand figure below illustrates this phenomenon. It shows that pressure or impulse waves travel very rapidly through the earth in resonance with an excitation source, either lightning or an impulse apparatus such as the one Tesla built and successfully operated at Colorado Springs in 1899. The left hand figure illustrates waves measured in the electrically resonant cavity between the earth and the ionosphere, in the late 1950s, by the German physicist W. O. Schumann.


Once he realised that the earth acts like a high voltage capacitor, a vast reservoir of energy, Tesla designed his Magnifying Transmitter to cause it to vibrate at its natural frequencies . His apparatus 'pumped' the energy waves resonating through the earth, much as a parent pushes a child's swing at the appropriate point of its cycle. When the energy was discharged it. "would manifest itself as a spatially distributed voltage that would radiate away from the electrical circuit as a 'light-like ray' that would charge other surfaces within the field."

A great many people who write about Tesla's Radiant Energy, proponents and sceptics alike, make the mistake of equating it with electromagnetic waves. Tesla often referred to radiant energy as 'non-Hertzian' to distinguish it from the electricity and magnetism that we are familiar with today. No less a figure than Sir Oliver Lodge mistook Tesla's technology for high frequency AC electricity. As a consequence the devices used to demonstrate electrical discharges today are mostly Lodge Coils - ordinary alternators - rather than true Tesla Coils. A high frequency AC apparatus discharges violet sparks whereas a true Tesla Coil produces distinctive bright white discharges that are longer and more persistent than those of a Lodge device.

Radiant energy does not alternate within a wire in the form of a current, it flows outside the wire without any current being manifest. To demonstrate this fact Tesla constructed a heavy U-shaped bus-bar with which he effectively shorted a Tesla Coil, in addition he placed several incandescent bulbs across the legs of the bar. Audiences always expected the discharge from the Tesla Coil to burn out the U-shaped short circuit, and probably destroy the dynamo as well. They thought that electricity was about to flow into the short circuit, but Radiant Energy is not electricity. That was the point of Tesla's demonstration.

When he discharged the coil the bus-bar shorting out the apparatus was not affected, no current flowed in it. Instead, the incandescent bulbs lit up brightly, powered by a cold white energy of unknown nature and origin. In his laboratory Tesla hung incandescent bulbs on a rail that ran around the walls. He put a bulb wherever he wanted to work and it lit up without being attached to any electrical source. He routinely handled what appeared to be ball lightning, putting it into a box, covering it with a lid and then taking it out again.

During his Colorado Springs experiments Tesla used his apparatus to light a large bank of incandescent bulbs that required 10,000 watts of power. Moreover, the array of bulbs was not at the site of his transmitter but 26 miles away. No power lines of any sort ran between them. On another occasion, during a test of the transmitter, Tesla produced a bright white 'lightning' bolt some 135 feet long from the ball atop the tower of his transmitter. The thunder was heard 15 miles away in Cripple Creek. People walking the street were astonished by sparks flying between their feet and the ground, and by flames of 'electricity' spouting from taps when they were turned on.

It is important to note that Tesla's Radiant Energy was produced in a form that was harmless, even though a well tuned Tesla Coil was handling millions of volts. Workers in Edison's power stations were certainly killed by discharges of radiant energy, but in those cases it was not controlled or even understood. The same bright white, non-shocking discharges that Tesla produced on innumerable occasions have since been reproduced by several private experimenters and, doubtless, others in the secret world of the military.

The power is sometimes called 'cold electricity' and it can drive all forms of electrical appliances and motors. When it is generated properly it is inherently safe. Tesla was a scientist who first visualised a concept, then did the relevant mathematics and finally built and tested his apparatus in carefully controlled conditions that minimised all known risks.

Tesla was also aware of ancient knowledge of matter and vibrations. In 1893 he had met the Swami Vivekananda who was visiting the US at the time. Tesla subsequently became interested in the Vedas, a collection of Sanskrit manuscripts dating back more than 5,000 years, and dealing, among other things, with the nature of reality, the composition of matter and the nature of atomic structure. The ancient explanations differ markedly from those of Western science, and place great emphasis on vibrations, frequencies and geometries.

As a consequence of his reading of the Vedas, Tesla became fully aware, even before he began investigating Radiant Energy, that some frequencies and vibrations are harmful to life and that others can be very healing. He understood that just as our ears cannot recognise vibrations above 30,000 cycles per second (cps) our bodies cannot be shocked by frequencies above 2,000 cps. Also, he discovered that while impulse durations at or below 100 microseconds would not cause any physiological damage the waves produced would pass through all matter. He used these insights and other knowledge to generate safe power and clear signals that could be transmitted to any point on the planet with as little as 5% loss.

The safety of other electrical resonance technologies used today, particularly those that use high-frequency AC current to oscillate the Schumann cavity in the Earth's atmosphere, cannot be assumed. Not all scientific and military 'experiments' are performed by people as aware of the effects of vibrations on living things as Tesla was. The most infamous example of a dangerous application of electrical resonance is the HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) project that is jointly managed by the US Navy and US Air Force. This 'ionosphere heater' uses a massive antenna array in Alaska to focus an electromagnetic beam on selected areas of the sky.

In 2002 ninety Russian deputies signed an appeal against the HAARP program, arguing that such technology, "..would create weapons capable of breaking radio communication lines and equipment installed on spaceships and rockets, provoke serious accidents in electricity networks and in oil and gas pipelines and have a negative effect on the mental health of people populating entire regions."

The Russians should know. Knowledgeable sources in the West believe that the 1960 address by Nikita Kruschev to the Soviet Presidium regarding a powerful new weapon under development referred to a similar technology that is also based on the discoveries, writings and patents of Nikola Tesla.

The New York Times ran the sub-title, "Premier Pins Military Might on Stockpile of Nuclear Arms." Presumably, this was designed to delude its readership into fearing 'only' the power that had devested Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, fifteen years earlier. The USSR already possessed nuclear weapons in 1960, Kruschev was not talking of them. His words recorded in the NY Times article make this clear. "...though the weapons we have now are formidable weapons indeed, the weapon we have today in the hatching stage is even more perfect and even more formidable. The weapon, which is being developed and is, as they say, in the portfolio of our scientists and designers, is a fantastic weapon. ....a weapon so powerful that it could wipe out all life on earth if unrestrainedly employed."

Tesla Did NOT Design Weapons of Mass Destruction [209]
Although various technologies based on radiant energy and the principles of wave resonance are often called "Tesla Weapons' the man himself was not inclined to design such abominations. Tesla spoke, in fact warned, on many occasions about the potential for terrible new weapons, but he did not design or patent any such devices. He proposed a defensive shield on one occasion but, more often, he outlined the many benefits that his Radiant Energy could bring to humanity. These included global communications, abundant 'free' energy, miraculous healing therapies, and the elevation of human consciousness to higher levels of comprehension and clarity.

There is conjecture, on several sites on the WWW, that Tesla was responsible for the enormous Tunguska explosion in Siberia, in 1908. It is argued that, starved of recognition and funding by the influential J.P.Morgan, Tesla attempted to gain attention by using his apparatus at Wardenclyffe as a 'Tesla Howitzer' - or a super-weapon of mass destruction - to create a large explosion within sight of the Peary expedition to the North Pole which was wintering at Ellesmere Island at the time. There is speculation, and that is all it is, that Tesla might have chosen to 'test' his Magnifying Transmitter in the open area between Peary and the Pole. Given the world attention on the expedition such a spectacular display of power would not have gone unnoticed or unreported, or so the reasoning goes. The theory is given some credence by the fact that the hypothetical target area north of Peary's winter base lies on a great circle line between Wardenclyffe and Tunguska. But that's about the extent of the case against Tesla. He is said to have 'made a mistake' in aiming his apparatus, due to imprecision of the available terrestrial measurements of his day. He is said to have sought attention and financial gain from a relatively 'safe' explosion that went wrong. None of these suppositions fit the known attitudes and personality of the man who invented the 20th century.

The explosion that occurred on the 30th of June, 1908, in the Tunguska region of Siberia, remains the most powerful unexplained blast in recorded history. It was heard over a radius of more than 600 miles, it flattened some 500,000 acres of pine forest around the blast site, it registered on seismographs in countries as far away as the US, it caused a 'pillar of fire' so high that it was observed in Siberian towns several hundred miles distant, it produced dense clouds to an altitude of more than 12 miles and caused 'black rain' over a wide area, Just as the dust from the explosion of the Karakatoa volcano, in the East Indies, in 1883, had caused dust in the atmosphere that coloured sunsets and gave rise to bizarre effects in the Northern Lights, the dust from the Tunguska explosion resulted in similar effects and gave rise to great speculation in the media of the day.

Yet, when the Russian scientist, Leonid Kulik, was finally able to reach the remote blast site in 1927, he found no crater whatsoever. Pine trees at the centre of the blast zone stood blackened and erect, but entirely stripped of branches, foliage, and even bark. Two Western authors of a 1976 book about the explosion, John Baxter and Thomas Atkins, drew striking parallels with trees at Hiroshima that were directly beneath 'Little Boy' when it detonated 2,000 feet above that city in 1945. Around the central clump of standing Tunguska pine trees the remaining forest, also stripped to bare trunks, fanned out, lying at angles that initially seemed to indicate the direction in which the object that caused the explosion was travelling at the time. Interestingly, seismic comparisons and other calculations show that whatever it was that exploded at Tunguska in 1908 dwarfed the atomic weapons of mass destruction used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US military.

Despite the fact that Kulik spent many years attempting to prove that the Tunguska explosion was caused by a meteorite he was unsuccessful. After WWII, in which Kulik had died, others took up the investigation. One of these scientists was Aleksander Kazantsev, who noted the similarities to an atomic blast. Radiation was detected at the site and people reported their relatives dying from an 'unseen fire' in the weeks and months after the explosion.

Another post-war researcher was Felix Ziegal, who was a professor of aerodynamics at the Moscow Institute of Aviation. He calculated, from 'flash shadows' in a village 125 miles south of the blast site, that the heat of the event must have reached tens of millions of degrees. This was even greater than the heat that caused similar shadows at Hiroshima and led Ziegel and others to conclude that the explosion at Tunguska, at the start of the 20th century and well before the discovery of atomic weapons, was nuclear. The conclusions of Baxter and Atkins, in The Fire Came By, largely support this hypothesis.

Ziegal not only showed that a great blast of radiation seemed to have occurred, he destroyed the meteorite and comet theories by careful studies of the reported track of the object and the non-ballistic, 'directive' pattern of the blast, as recorded by the fallen pines at the site of the explosion.

The first sightings of a 'fiery', 'metallic', 'cylindrical' object in the skies came from western China. Caravans traversing the Gobi Desert regarded the fire in the sky with awe. Ziegal and his associates calculated that at that time, dawn on the day of the explosion, the object was at an altitude of some 80 miles. The data for many well-documented sightings of the object as it sped towards Tunguska then yielded a startling result. When he plotted the reports Ziegal found that the fire in the sky had obviously changed direction while in flight. No comet or meteorite is capable of manoeuvring in that way.

The analysis supported Kazantsev's theory that the cause of the blast was a nuclear explosion in some form of intelligently controlled space vehicle that was attempting to land in Siberia. This might seem an outlandish supposition to many people, but it was the direction in which Russian research led. They started out believing in a meteorite and ended up thinking something entirely different. One thing is, however, quite certain. Whatever caused the Tunguska explosion had nothing to do with the, by then, reclusive inventor Nikola Tesla.

'Free' Energy is REAL [210]
Despite the absence of any commercialisation of Tesla's discovery of Radiant Energy in the 19th century, and the ongoing denials of institutionalised science that such energy is even possible, 'free' energy is real and happening in sheds and workshops throughout the world. During most of the 20th century the Feds, and the economic interests they represent, were able to clamp down on any 'free' energy devices that appeared. Large numbers of workable inventions in this and other fields of technology were ruthlessly suppressed by authorities.

But it is now becoming more and more difficult for governments and vested industrial interests to contain 'free' energy devices and maintain artificial scarcity and energy markets that are dominated by a small club of, so called, 'developed' nations. The same forces that are creating the 2nd Renaissance are liberating underground experimenters and inventors. Radiant Energy is real and now the times are changing sufficiently for it to take its rightful place and form - in the service of free people, and for peaceful rather than military purposes.

Several Factors Facilitated the Suppression of 'Free' Energy [211]
Throughout the entire 20th century the people of this planet were denied the near magical benefits of abundant, safe, and almost costless energy. Several factors combined to make it possible for governments to suppress Tesla's legacy for so long.

Patents are simply not granted on inventions that do not work. Those who think that it is impossible to use one form of power to resonate the earth and then draw off limitless amounts of another form of energy should remember that not only did Tesla demonstrate this phenomenon to the satisfaction of the US Patent Examiners, other researchers have since been able to replicate this process. The difficulty that you or I might encounter, were we to work from Tesla's patent documents, is that of missing knowledge. Patent attorneys and inventors included only sufficient information to uniquely describe a patented device or process. They did not spell out the 'how' and 'why' of constructing and operating an invention. This was done to protect the commercial interest of the inventor. Tesla held some 700 patents worldwide, of which those for his Magnifying Transmitter are probably the most important because it unlocks a hitherto unknown energy field. Many of Tesla's patents are accessible to anybody who cares to ask for a copy. What is missing are his notes that explain the innermost secrets of the technology. A entire room full of these notes vanished, and they held the real knowledge keys to his inventions.

No list of individual inventors who developed and patented a form of 'free' energy device during the 20th century exists, but if it did it would be extensive. As recently as 2001 two inventors in Cairns, Australia, unveiled a machine that had achieved an international patent and which they expected to be able to market for $4,000 to $5,000. The device, which was developed by John Christie, a mechanical engineer, and Lou Brits, an electrician, is more than 500% efficient. Once it is kick started from a conventional battery the device produces 24 kW of clean power, 24/7. The inventors said that, "If it were not for the magnets, which have a life of 1,300 years, and the battery pack, which has a life of about five years, the machine would be in perpetual motion."

While it is far less radical than Tesla's idea of 'broadcasting' power to everyone on earth, the Christie/Brits generator could revolutionise domestic power supply, if it were ever allowed to do so. Once a household had one of these devices it could not only meet all its own power requirements, it could also feed around 10 kW of energy into the local power grid each day. When a family moved home, it would be practical to take the generator with them to their new residence. Given the long service life of the device, many generations of the family would inherit it, and it would continue to pump out 24 kW of clean power every day.

This sounds too good to be true, but it is not. However, it is too good to be allowed to be true, or to be allowed to be made, or to be allowed to be sold. The energy industry is the largest on the planet. Moreover, it has a fundamental interest in maintaining artificial scarcity, and the old economic order. If the Christie/Brits device, or anything like it, were to be allowed to be made available, every country in the world would soon be on an equal economic footing. The dominant control of the OWO would then be at an end.

In present-day Australia, prior to the inevitable political fragmentation to come, Christie and Brits have absolutely no chance of overcoming the various obstacles that can be put in their way in order to prevent their invention being mass-produced and distributed to power-poor communities in Africa, South America, and other places. To use a colloquial Australian expression, the chances that these two budding entrepreneurs can bring their 'free' energy device to the world are, "Buckleys and None." Once some areas secede from the Australian federation and free cities develop, the situation will be entirely different. Tesla's Radiant Energy can and will power those free cities. Free energy will then be the driver for the creation of abundance, and this will lead to the formation of a Level 4 Civilization. There is not long to wait, free energy and abundance will emerge in many parts of the world within this current decade - before the year 2010.

According to an article in the Cairns Post at the time of the announcement of the Christie/Brits 'free' energy device, the two inventors required only $500,000 to start their first production plant. This is a trifling amount of money when the market for a 'free' 24 kW, 24/7 energy generator is considered. Yet. it was always going to be impossible to raise. Or, if the capital could be found the arrangements were always likely to have 'hooks' to snare control of the technology away from Christie and Brits. This is what happened to Tesla, he was enthusiastic and raring to go, he wanted to help the people of the world. J.P.Morgan lent him just enough funds to get started, but not enough to actually complete anything. The patents of the Magnifying Transmitter were included in the deal, and Morgan gained control of them when he cut off the funding to Wardenclyffe. No more radiant energy would be seen in quantity for one hundred years from that time. Free energy was effectively killed during its birth, and billions of people were to be the losers as a result of that action.

Until the emergence of the Internet and, in particular, the WWW, individual inventors were very isolated from knowledge sources and support networks. Even if a prospective inventor could obtain a copy of one or more of Tesla's patents there was no further information available and it was difficult to find or converse with anyone else who might have a similar interest and, perhaps, some additional knowledge. For much of the 20th century international travel was expensive, and it remains beyond the means of the majority of the people in the world. today. Pre-WWW, most private inventors did not have many opportunities to meet and converse with others seeking similar answers.

Just as the Internet facilitated the interchange of knowledge within institutionalised science, the WWW enabled whole 'communities of interest' to develop outside the institutional frameworks of academia and science. Printed books had much the same effect during the 1st Renaissance, knowledge moved out of closely guarded monastic libraries and into the bazaars. Strands of information and expertise began to be documented and sustained by collective interests. Today, the rapidly growing 'free' energy movement is the equivalent of the medieval interest groups that formed as a consequence of the introduction of the moveable type printing press to Renaissance Europe.

There are many 'free’ energy sites on the WWW, you can explore these at your leisure. The important point to note here is that collective interest in a subject, whether it be tapping energy from the vacuum or bee-keeping, leads to open sharing of knowledge. This is nowhere more evident than in the development of open source software. Freenet is an example, it exists because enough like-minded people want it to exist. There are no patent attorneys or financiers involved, just interested, dedicated, Freenetters. Free energy now has a future because there is a collective movement that is interested in developing such technologies. Instead of private gain from patented inventions the motives of these folk are more altruistic - their goal is to benefit humanity as a whole. Free energy inventors still patent their devices, they wish to avoid exploitation of their work by profit driven corporations. However, in many instances, the new breed of 'open source' free energy wizards are happy to share their knowledge and to see communities build and operate their technology designs.

This is a development of incalculable moment. It marks a point in human history at which the control of science and inventions (in energy, open source software, or whatever) moves from governments and corporations to community collectives and co-operative ventures.

Historians will, at some future time, come to regard this shift as the equivalent of the release of knowledge from guarded medieval libraries and its propagation throughout Europe via the medium of printed books. Such a change in the science and control of energy is one of the preconditions for the formation of a Level 4 Civilization. It is beginning to occur, even as you read this paragraph. Tesla's Radiant Energy legacy is about to bear the fruits that he always envisaged from it.

Scientists in general, not only independent inventors, have been greatly disadvantaged by the development of false scientific theories, early in the 20th century. These false theories and narrowly defined 'laws' have sent many inquiring minds off on wild goose chases into a veritable labyrinth of nonsense that was created at that time by a newly institutionalised, and increasingly atheistic, order in Western science. Only now are the false notions and theories being challenged and either revised or discarded as a result of the efforts of various independent thinkers and researchers. One of the pre-twentieth century theories that is regaining credibility and acceptance is that of the luminiferous ether. The notion of the ether is being revived because it provides a sound explanation for the existence of the radiant energy that Tesla so dramatically generated at his Colorado Springs and Wardenclyffe sites.

According to the ancients the primary substance in the universe was the ether (or aether), until the late 19th century orthodox science agreed with them. Tesla believed in the ether, so did prominent scientists such as Sir Oliver Lodge and Albert Einstein. Today, orthodox science has abandoned the ether theory, and it forms no part of modern scientific education. It would be considered 'old fashioned' and even 'eccentric' to include the ether in any present-day explanations of electromagnetics, gravity, sound, vibration, matter, and the like. Even otherwise adventurous theorists like Vogt and Sultan back away for the idea of an ether. Writing of Nikola Tesla they wrote,

  • "Although he never visualised existence the way we theorise it, he had experimented and worked long enough with high voltage and high frequency devices to intuitively know that there was something interrelated with matter that gave it energy. We are not saying that we believe in any way in the 'ether' theory; we just wish to point out that many great minds in science intuitively felt there was something interrelated with matter that could not be seen of readily detected."

Tesla had a deeper understanding of the theory of the ether than Vogt and Sultan supposed. He not only drew on his practical experience with electromagnetic phenomena he learned to read Sanskrit and he studied the 5,000 years old writings of the Vedas on this and other subjects. His conclusions are not widely recorded, however one of his biographers, John O’Neil, a former science editor of the New York Herald Tribune, found and reproduced an unpublished article by Tesla. Of mankind, Tesla observed the following.

  • "Long ago he recognised that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the Kasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles all things and phenomena. The primary substance, thrown into infinitesimal whirls of prodigious velocity, becomes gross matter, the force subsiding , the motion ceases and matter disappears, reverting to the primary substance."

In other writings Tesla said,

  • "There is no energy in matter other than that received from the environment."

  • "Atomic power is an illusion."

Tesla might have been mistaken in his explanations for the phenomena that he worked with so successfully, but if he was in error about the ether he was in some very distinguished company. Moreover, conventional science remains quite unable to explain the source of radiant energy, at least publicly.

Inside the many 'black' projects to develop ever more terrible terror weapons, it might well be the case that scientists and technologists continue to believe in and apply the ether theory in their top-secret work. Perhaps it is only public science - the theories taught in our schools and universities - that denies the existence and role of the ether. The reason for such a situation might be readily summed up in just two words, 'national security'.

How The Ether Theory Was Discredited [212]
Two lines of reasoning were used by the physics establishment to cause the ether theory to be abandoned. False and therefore unproductive theories were substituted to fill the gap left by the removal of the ether, and the teachings of thousands of years within many ancient cultures. First there was the most famous experimental failure, the Michelson-Morley attempt to measure the effect of the ether on light waves, in 1887. Secondly there was the subtle 'alteration' of Einstein's relativity theory, around 1925. This gave the impression that if the theory of the ether was true then the theory of relativity had to be false, and vice versa.

Here is a 'plain language' description of the MM experiment, by Paul Laviolette.

  • "The initial purpose of these experiments was to determine the speed of the Earth's motion through the ether. It was known that the Earth travels in its orbit around the Sun at a speed of about thirty kilometres per second and that the solar system moves at an even greater velocity relative to other stars in the Galaxy. So physicists expected that the ether should be drifting past the Earth at a substantial velocity and that this drift speed should slightly alter the speed of a light beam seen by an Earth observer. Since light travels at nearly 300,000 kilometres per second, Earth's motion would be expected to change this measured velocity by only a small fraction of a percent. If we visualise this ether drift as a river current and a light beam as a person rowing a boat downstream, in the same direction as the ether drift, then an Earth observer (standing on the riverbank) would see the boat travelling slightly faster, whereas if the boat were moving upstream against the ether drift current, the observer would see it travelling slightly slower.

    Unfortunately, no one knew of a way to measure the one-way velocity of light to see if light travelled slightly faster in one direction compared with another. Nevertheless, two American physicists, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, devised a way to determine the direction and velocity of the ether drift simply by comparing the round-trip travel times of light waves directed along two mutually perpendicular directions. They reasoned that a light beam travelling over to a mirror and back again perpendicular to the ether drift should take longer to complete its round-trip journey, as compared with a beam making a similar round trip along a path parallel to the ether drift, the magnitude of this time difference was expected to provide a measure of the Earth's relative velocity."

The following simplified diagram (from Beyond The Big Bang, Paul A. Laviolette) shows the arrangement used in the Michelson-Morley experiment. BS is a beam splitter and M1 and M2 are mirrors.The principle that underlay this table-top experiment was the detection of differences in the relative speeds of the two beams of light when they were merged on the screen of the apparatus.

The experimenters expected that, due to their different speeds, the two light beams would not form a perfect combinational pattern. Rather, they thought, there should be 'fringing' in the pattern. The degree of fringing would indicate the time difference between the beams of light.

When one beam was parallel to the drift of the ether and the other was at right angles to it, the time difference, and the fringing in the interference pattern, would be at a maximum. When the apparatus was oriented so that both beams were at 45o to the drift of the ether, the fringing would be at its minimum.

The whole scientific world, not just Michelson and Morley, received an unexpected shock. There was no difference in the fringing of the interferometer pattern, no matter how the apparatus was oriented. Many other experimenters quickly confirmed this fact. This result was then construed by the scientific establishment as proof that the ether, which had been an accepted part of the lore of physics for thousands of years, did not exist.

In order to consolidate that theoretical position and convert it to official truth, federated physics subtly reinterpreted Einstein's Special Relativity, so that there was then an implied contradiction between it and the long-standing theory of the ether. If one was true the other had to be false. However, Einstein himself never rejected the ether,

What Einstein Said About The Ether and His Relativity Theory [213]
Despite the present-day reliance placed on the 'evidence' of the Michelson-Morley experiment, and the smokescreen of 'contradictions' created by the scientific establishment, the ether can and must exist. No less an authority than Albert Einstein clearly and unambiguously said so. The following excerpts are from an address that Einstein delivered on the 5th of May, 1920, at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. They are not necessarily quoted in the same order as they occur in his paper.

The above statements by Albert Einstein should be sufficient to cast doubt on the notion that he saw the theory of the ether and his Theory of Relativity as incompatible. Yet, it is widely reported that the notion of the ether had to be abandoned because of just such a conflict. And, of course, the Michelson-Morley experiment is also cited as a reason to abandon all belief in such a strange notion as an invisible ether.

A 3D Ether Or A 4D Ether? [214]
Contrary to common belief, the existence of an ether remains central to physics and cosmology. We can only speculate as to why the ether was disowned by 20th century physics and replaced by a bizarre quantum model. However, one very likely reason is that the ether is the source of the enormous energy that Nikola Tesla was able to tap.

A taker mentality would view the prospect of such energy in terms of weaponry and warfare. Taker leaders would wish to conceal the true nature of the ether and so mislead rival states that might also seek to develop WMDs based on detailed knowledge of this energy source. Sadly, our Level 3 Civilization is dominated by elites steeped in taker attitudes, thus it is quite likely that the motivation for the subterfuge that is evident in relation to the ether theory, post 1925, was driven by military objectives. Another, parallel, motivation for suppressing the truth about Tesla's Radiant Energy, and where it comes from, is likely to have been the desire of the capitalist West to continue the conditions for economic scarcity and their global economic dominance.

Outside grant-governed science, the many theorists, inventors, technologists, and just plain concerned humans, who continue to explore the nature of the ether, fall into two schools of thought. One group believe that the ether exists in three-dimensional space and can be detected by mechanical experiments such as that attempted by Michelson and Morley. A second group, that is growing in number, believes that the ether forms part of the non-material world, and some of them also believe that the space that the ether fills is four-dimensional.

The first group, of which Paul A. Laviolette is an example, consider that because the Michelson-Morley experiment only measured the round trip velocity of light, and not its one-way velocity, the result was not conclusive. In his book, Beyond The Big Bang, Laviolette cites later experiments by Georges Sagnac, in 1913, and Ernest Silvertooth, in 1987, to support the notion that the ether exists, and that its drift is measurable. By implication, this ether would seem to fill the same 3D space that we inhabit.

The second group consider that the ether is essentially non-material, and that the Michelson-Morley experiment was never going to be able to measure it by mechanical means. We could say that, if this group is correct, Michelson and Morley were seeking to measure the ether drift within the first and second theory domains of the earlier diagram of the Three Theory Domains, whereas the ether actually exists within the third (non-material) domain. One author and inventor who is representative of this group of theorists is the former aerospace designer and rocket-scientist, Leonard G. Cramp.

At this time it is not easy to be sure which group is the more correct. It is entirely possible that they might both be right. Some forms of the ether might exist in 3D space and others might be located in 4D space. A basis for considering this can be found in ancient beliefs. Many ancient cultures believed that there are four main 'elements' comprising Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. It is stated quite categorically, in many ancient texts, that four states of the ether correspond to those elements. These states are the Warmth Ether, the Light Ether, the Tone (or Chemical) Ether, and the Life Ether.

Subsequent development of ancient thinking and statements, by people such as Rudolf Steiner, pair the first two states, Warmth and Light, and the other two, Tone and Life. The Warmth/Light pair exhibit the characteristic of expansion, while the Tone/Life pair tend to concentrate toward a point. Also, there is a correspondence between the four states of the ether and the observable states of: Heat, Gas, Liquid, and Solid. In this sense, heat energy is a state of matter. The cosmological model in use today accords with this idea. First there is enormous heat, later hot gases that are also expanding, as the gases coalesce into the liquid state they concentrate to a point in space, finally the liquids cool and solidify. The '3rd Rock from the Sun' was formed this way, as were all the other planets we observe from our small, insignificant perch in the universe.

If any of the four ethers are eventually proven to exist in 4D space, they are most likely to be the Warmth ether, or primal creative energy, and the Life ether, the energy of the final products of creation. Interestingly, this thinking accords with both the beliefs of tribal shamans, the experiences of specialists in psychic phenomena, and the instincts of present-day environmentalists who subscribe to the 1970s Gaia theory - the Earth as a living organism - of James Lovelock and William Golding. The Vogt and Sultan model is also in tune with these ideas, even although those researchers professed not to believe in the ether.

Doublespace! [215]
Because we use our five senses to discern a three-dimensional, wholly material, world, it is difficult for most of us to visualise 4D space. Many theorists and experimenters have pointed out that we are in the same position as a fish in the ocean, that cannot necessarily visualise water, although it is completely surrounded by it. Leonard G. Cramp gives another illustration, he writes:

Sir Oliver Lodge was an eminent scholar, author, and Professor of Physics at University College in Liverpool. Besides being the inventor of the spark plugs that form part of the ignition system of today's internal combustion engines, he was a staunch proponent of the ether. Here is an excerpt from a 1933 lecture that was published in The Queen's Hospital Annual (Birmingham).

  • "Left to itself, matter continues in whatever state it was last made to accept. If it is spinning, it continues to spin with constant angular momentum. It has no power of changing its state or of stopping. If it was in a state of locomotion, that motion also continues unaltered. This is called the law of inertia, and to it all material atoms are absolutely obedient, whether they form part of an engine of a clockwork mechanism or of an animated body. There is no exception. All matter is inert."

  • "The physical Universe does not consist of matter alone. If it did, it would be absolutely inert, no change would ever occur. Experience shows us constant change, constant activity, and, when analysed, the source of this activity is always found in the field or space between the atoms. That is where the energy exists, that is where it is stored; and we can gradually realise that it is through interaction between the void and the material particles that every change or activity is accomplished. A field of force always exists in what we call vacuum or Ether, what the Ancients called 'void'; never does it exist in matter."

  • "Matter is discontinuous, consisting of isolated particles, they are connected only through space. But inasmuch as this space is impregnated with energy, it must be something more than mere emptiness. It makes no impression on our senses, and yet it is full of energy, and is the reservoir of all activity; hence we have agreed to call it the Ether. A magnetic field exists wholly in the Ether, iron filings are only used to demonstrate it and map it out. An electric, a gravitational, field is in the same predicament."

  • "That Ether is a very substantial entity, far denser than any form of matter, has been gradually becoming clear to physicists. At first, we only said that it must be denser than lead or gold or platinum, but now we find that it must be out of all proportion denser. I have made an estimate of its density, in the light of electromagnetic theory, and it comes out inevitably huge. Every cubic millimetre contains as much substance as what, if it were matter, we should call a thousand tons. As the Ether is not matter in the ordinary sense of the term, our ordinary units of measurement are inappropriate: but on the analogy of matter, the Ether is of the order a million million times as dense as water. All its properties are of supernormal magnitude. Its rate of vibration which enables us to see any ordinary object is five hundred million million per second: a number so great that to try to conceive such a number of vibrations per second simply dizzies us. The number of seconds which have passed since ancient geological periods of twenty million years ago is about this number. ..."

To most people it is inconceivable that such a dense medium could envelop us and our environment without our being aware of it. The ether is, as Lodge explains, far denser than the atmosphere that we are also unaware of. We can imagine how we exist within the atmosphere and move around in it, because we know that it is 'just air', but the ether, as envisaged by Lodge and others, is more solid and packed with more energy than we could ever imagine. How can we possibly move around in something so dense and powerful?

The answer is found in the reality of Doublespace, or conjugate space as some people refer to it. In this concept two types of space exist together, at what we humans might regard, erroneously, as the same place and time. One form of space is the familiar 3D space we experience with our five senses. The second form of space is 4D space which we can only sense with our brains and, to some extent, our eyes (that are an integral part of out brains). We cannot feel, hear, taste or smell 4D space, yet the 3D space that we can sense permeates and is permeated by 4D space.

Although such a notion will be strenuously denied by grant-governed science, it is likely that we can access information in 4D space via our brain because this organ operates as a receiver/transmitter, rather than a storage/retrieval mechanism. Both Vogt and Sultan's model and the Avenel model that Leonard G. Cramp takes as the basis of his Cosmic Matrix theory, support the notion that the information that gives rise to our world emanates from another place. Vogt and Sultan call it the Diehold, Cramp simply terms it The Source.

The illustration above (which is Freeright) shows bounded, 3D space (the cube) enveloped and permeated by an infinite 4D space (the sphere). Until recently, hardly anybody outside the classified weapons research programs of certain nation states could have known the structure of 4D space. Many people had postulated its existence, but none had defined its nature. In 1987 Peter Plichta had enlisted the help of a young mathematician, Michael Felton, to help with computer modelling of his discoveries. Plichta had, much earlier, conceived the idea of 4D space, in terms of intersecting planes and an X2 Y2 geometry. With Felton he developed mathematical models and proofs of the concept.

The following are excerpts from Plichta's book, God's Secret Formula.

  • "In his book Timameus, Plato describes a reflective surface consisting of two mirrors meeting at a right angle. Such a mirror reverses its image in space and always gives three reflections. In the middle there is normally a solid black line, because the mirror surfaces at the point where they meet have not been ground at an angle of 45o."

  • "When one day a wash basin had to be installed in the bathroom of the pharmacy, and we concluded that there was only one corner where it could be installed, I asked the workmen to put in a triangular basin and hang two large mirrors above it in the corner. ....
    .After the workmen had finished the installation, I approached my new 'space mirror'. I saw Peter Plichta standing there looking like me, and he really looked as I do. The space mirror showed me as if I were standing in front of myself (and thus in reverse). In addition there were two (normal) reflections, one on the left and one on the right. I took a chair and sat in front of the mirror for more than an hour.

    And then a strange thought came into my head. Do the four people - myself and the three reflections - also exist when I take away the mirror?"

  • "All four 'persons' are equidistant from the centre of the mirror. When I reach my hand towards this central point (all points along the vertical axis of the mirrors are central points), the three reflected hands reach out towards me. One feature of the space in front of my hand is that I cannot enter it, because all four hands approach each other at the same time. As soon as you touch the mirror, the illusion disappears.

    From the centre of the mirror, space is broken up at right angles into four quadrants. Because infinite space exists around every point, this space has a strange angular dimensional geometry of true intersecting planes. These intersecting planes are visibly demonstrated by Plato's mirror."

  • "I had always wondered about the dimensions of infinite space around a point. It cannot be three-dimensional with regard to length, breadth and height. I was now sitting in front of a space mirror and could see the solution in front of my own eyes: two intersecting planes. Each of these planes is quadriform and measurable in square units such as square centimetres (cm2),

    When I multiply these two intersecting planes with each other, I am actually squaring something that is already squared, and the resultant units are to the power of 4 (cm2). From two dimensions we now have four.

    Such a space has a geometrical feature. A three-dimensional body - for instance a cube - has three axes at right angles to each other. This is therefore referred to as X-Y-Z axial geometry.

    The four dimensional infinite space around a point (in this case every point of intersection of the mirror) does not possess a Z axis but only X2Y2 plane geometry.

    This notion of four dimensions has nothing to do with the popular combination in physics of the three dimensions of space with one dimension of time. "

At this point it is appropriate to include a diagram from Leonard G. Cramp's The Cosmic Matrix. It depicts the formation of 'globular' (spherical) 3Dspace around a source, according to the Unity of Creation Theory of Antony Avenel. Some similarity with Plichta's model of 4D space is apparent. This does not imply that both men discovered the same thing. Whereas Avenel considers that 3D space is formed from a framework of creative rays that emanate from a single source, Plichta conceives of conjugate 3D and 4D space, and a unique geometry that applies to every point within 4D space.

Plichta does not discuss or consider an ether. Avenel does not conceive of doublespace.

However, with some license, the diagram can be seen to illustrate Plichta's insight of intersecting two-dimensional planes around a point in four-dimensional space. Although that is not what Avenel had in mind when he evolved his theory of how the ether is formed by rays emanating from a single creative source (that is similar to Vogt and Sultan's Diehold).

Now we return to excerpts from God's Secret Formula, relating to the nature of 4D space: The items date from December, 1987 when Plichta has just acquired an Atari ST 1024 computer with which he and Michael Felton would compile the text and mathematical sections of his book, The Prime Number Cross (German language). He had been reading Immanuel Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason at the time.

  • "While we were occupied with Kant, who is probably the one philosopher to have devoted most of his energy to space and time, I began to understand that two types of space must really exist. On the one hand the three-dimensional space of our daily world in which atoms, molecules and, in fact, all objects occur (objective space) and, on the other hand, the infinite space around every object (subjective space)."

  • "The number e (=2.718 ...) was developed by Newton from a factorial series in 1665. He immediately recognised the importance of the number and was able to prove its significance with mathematical rigour. The algebraic letter e was, however, only introduced by Euler in 1739. He found a second possibility, entirely different from the first, of differentiating the number e and also of proving it. This was done by binomials.

    The possibility of differentiating this mysterious number in two totally different ways appeared extremely puzzling to me. Michael and I had agreed that the double differentiation through factorials and binomials must be an indication that the number e, which is the constant of the universe, must have something to do with the order and combination of the number sequence."

  • "We attempted to reach the value 1.718 in a comprehensible way. We developed a combination game with different numbers of balls. If only one ball marked 1 is in a box, we have only one possibility of taking out this ball and placing it in front of us. If two balls marked 1 and 2 are in the box, we have two possibilities of taking them out and lining them up in a certain order (1; 2) (2: 1). With three balls we have six possibilities. ... In order to obtain a numerical series with the order of the sequential numbers, with one number there is only one possibility for the number 1.With two numbers the chance of the correct order is one of two possibilities. With three numbers the chance is one of six; and with four numbers it is one of 24 possibilities. The result gives the following illustration of the chances of sequential numerical series: first with one ball, then with two, three and four balls, etc:
    1/1 + 1/2 + 1/6 + 1/24 ...

    The sum of the combinations when we continue this game indefinitely amounts to

    1.718 ...

    The Newtonian factorial series thus turns out to be pure combination analysis for numerical sequences. Newton was certainly aware of this, but with his notorious secrecy he kept it to himself that the value of e -1 = 1.718 comes form nothing other than the order of the natural numbers themselves. The missing 1, however, did not fit into this wonderful concept."

  • "So where should we get this 1 from? At the same moment both of us suddenly remembered my warning that we should keep our eyes on the zero shell, because this contains only one order - i.e. 1 (and its root expressions). I can graphically recall the moment our thoughts crossed and the connection was clearly seen. We now had it - the number e derived from the Prime Number Cross. As long as this model of reality was not available for numbers positioned on circles, the logic of mathematics had always to be in direct contradiction to the reality of the world."

  • "It was now clear that the mathematical constant e was related to the structure and distribution of the prime numbers of the form 6n ± e. At the same time we had the solution to the problem of why the three mathematical constants e, i and π are linked with the number -1 through the formula eπ = -1.

    Because -1 + 1 = 0, we have the result (when +1 is added to both sides):
    eπ +1 = 0.

    This formula contains the six basic units of mathematics

    e, i, π 1, 0, -1."

  • "We were able to decipher this fundamental mathematical secret because only the Prime Number Cross offers the possibility of illustrating these six basic units of the universe. π is the number used in calculating circles and it repeats itself in all numerical circles. The imaginary number i determines the cross structure of the zero shell. The number e provides the order for the successive numbers, although the only thing that is important here is the structure and distribution of the prime numbers.

    The Prime Number Cross is not a human invention. It is in fact a model of the construction plan with which infinity was made finite in the structure of atoms. It is therefore also the case that we are not the inventors in this field. We were looking for something and we found it. This also means that the Prime Number cross is impervious to any human derogatory judgements.

    Whoever wants to really understand these connections will understand them and be filled with awe God arranged the universe simply."

  • "With the discovery of differential and integral calculus by Leibniz and Newton three hundred years ago, mathematics reached a stage which we now refer to as higher mathematics. Michael and I guessed that all higher mathematics with its variety and complexity must actually be nothing less than a veneer over the prime numbers."

  • "Because the Prime Number Cross with the sequence of the whole numbers contains a certain geometry that is indicated by the base numbers 1, 2 and 3 and the eight-ray structure, the order of the reciprocal numbers - we deduced almost in a fever - must also have a (reciprocal) geometry which would have to be based on the numbers 1, 2, 3 and a multiple eight structure.

    I had now again returned to the question whether two spaces had to exist at the same time - space around an object (infinite and four-dimensional) and the space in which the object is observed (finite and three-dimensional). This three-dimensional space, in which we 'live' is generally filled with gas. In this gas mixture, there are transport operations that are so common that we scarcely think about them. These include the transmission of sound and language (acoustics) and transmission of heat (thermodynamics). Because our notion of space has so far always been fixed on three-dimensional space, it has not been possible for scientists to even imagine four-dimensional (numerical) space. The point is that three-dimensional space can only be appreciated as numerical space of the reciprocal numbers when the space of the whole numbers, four-dimensional space, has been comprehended. "

  • "When we pluck a note on the string of a violin, the string begins to vibrate and the note is carried by the air to our ears. This is a curious phenomenon. the gas molecules collide with each other in the same way as billiard balls. The number of molecules in a litre of gas is unimaginably high (approximately 1022), When a entire orchestra plays in a hall, the confusion that reigns in the molecules of the air is so enormous that every explanation to date for explaining sound transmission is inadequate. The music that reaches us from the stage and is reflected a thousand-fold on walls, ceiling, rows of seats, etc, should really hit our ears as an unbearable screeching. Instead infinitely precise information reaches our eardrums, whether as vibrations or through the medium of electrical signals.

    Just as light passes through empty or gas-filled space in waves (although the gas does not function as a medium in this case), so also is sound physically transmitted through a gas-filled space, whereby the colliding gas molecules are alternately compressed and attenuated in the gas medium. These transporting phenomena are referred to as longitudinal waves. ...

    In modern physics there are two wave models. The electromagnetic transverse waves run through empty space. The longitudinal (sound) wave is transported precisely by a gas medium and thus carries information of an incredible range. Both should be considered magical by physicists in that they have no viable explanation for these phenomena. But magic has no place in physics. Physicists work with laws that are handed down to them and they are vain enough to believe they have created these laws."

  • "Because transverse electromagnetic waves are transported through the prime number structure of four-dimensional space with infinite precision, the transport mechanism for the collision processes in three-dimensional space could only be caused by the sequence of the reciprocal prime numbers."

Thus, Plichta has discovered the need for two types of space, and the numerical model that governs the transmission of information through both 3D and 4D space, based on the natural pattern of prime numbers and their reciprocals. Note that he does not, anywhere in his writing, refer to an ether. Plichta explains the basis for the formation of matter and the structure of the chemical elements. However, as the foregoing excerpt about wave models shows, he does not consider the existence of the radiant energy discovered and demonstrated so spectacularly by Tesla.

It is not that Plichta's discoveries contradict Tesla's practical demonstrations or theories, it is just that Plichta has not dealt with radiant energy or the ether. He might not even believe in them. Plichta has done his work in the structure of the elements and the order governing the formation of matter, Tesla did his work on electromagnetism and radiant energy. They focussed on different areas, and their conclusions are not contradictory. In truth, Tesla and Plichta broadly agree on the vibrational nature of matter formation.

Some Clarifying Points [216]
Much of the confusion about 'free' energy stems from misunderstandings regarding the difference between normal electricity that propagates in the form of transverse waves and a second kind of energy - Tesla's Radiant Energy - that is manifest in longitudinal or standing waves. The former waveform oscillates (swings back and forth) as it radiates away from a source, whereas the latter pulsates (expands and contracts) like a sound wave. (This radiant energy is sometimes called static electricity by ordinary folk, but it is also termed ethericity by the 'free' energy researcher, Peter A. Lindemann.)

Tesla disagreed with Hertz regarding the singular nature of electromagnetic waves. His notes make it clear that his best transmitters only propagated some 5% of their output in the form of transverse, Hertzian, waves. The equipment was specifically engineered to generate 95% of its output in the form of Non-Hertzian, longitudinal waves. While there was electromagnetic oscillation involved in the circuitry of Tesla's Magnifying Transmitter, the bulk of the output was pulsing the ground harmonic with the natural vibration of the earth.

It is important to understand several points about this process.

  • There was no perpetual motion involved, Tesla was doing the possible not the impossible. The overarching principle of generating 'free' energy involves the use of a smaller amount of one form of energy to control or release a larger amount of a different kind of energy. Lest you imagine that such a process is impossible, the free energy tribe -for that is what they are becoming - will inform you that if you are fortunate enough to live in the West, and have even a moderate income, you already have such a free energy device in your kitchen - it's called a refrigerator.

  • The radiant energy or ethericity did not come from our material world. It came from the space between the atoms that comprise all observable matter, it came from 4D space. As such, the supply of energy is limitless. The Second Law of Thermodynamics was not breached by Tesla's transmitter, because that law applies to closed systems. The tapping of energy for use in 3D space from a source in infinite 4D space cannot logically involve a closed system.

  • The energy in 4D space is many orders of magnitude greater than any power obtainable from within our material world. It is 'free' in the sense that a relatively small amount of work, or energy, needs to be expended in order to obtain a far larger output of ethericity, that can then be used to perform far greater amounts of work. The energy from 4D space is free in the sense that a negligible amount of initial work can generate a very large amount of work from the output of the process.

  • Tesla conclusively demonstrated the practicality of 'free' energy, and many other researchers and inventors have since followed in his footsteps. His inventions work in practice and we have, therefore, to accord considerable respect to his theories on why this is so. Tesla's convictions about radiant energy, the ether, electricity, magnetism, and atomic power are, in today's scientific climate, unorthodox. He asserted that radiant energy propagates as longitudinal waves, in a pulsing manner that is similar to the way sound travels in a gas medium. He held that the ether exists. He said that all the energy that seems to come from matter actually comes from its environment, the ether. He explained that radiant energy does not involve flows of electrons, and he seems to have doubted their very existence. He denied that atomic power came from a nuclear fission, reaction and pointed to the fact that he had personally 'smashed' countless atoms without any sign of a release of energy.

  • Tesla saw energy as the crucial factor in improving the lot of his fellow human beings. In this regard he said:

    "No matter what we attempt to do, no matter to what fields we turn our efforts, we are dependent on power. We have to evolve means of obtaining energy from stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever. If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations."

    Despite the fact that Tesla invented the technology to provide limitless, clean, safe power to any point on the planet - over a century ago - the capitalist economy continues to run on fossil fuels. To the power elites and cartels of the OWO such sources of power have a vital characteristic, they are scarce and can be priced and controlled accordingly. Apart from the numerous private individuals who have learned how to tap into the ether and draw off ethericity, and at least one small community that is already running on this power source, the whole world is still in the grip of taker attitudes. The energy is under lock and key - just like the food!

    The defection of large numbers of people from federal citizenship, and the establishment of free cities that will run on free energy, can and will break the hold of old ideas and false scientific notions that held us back during the entire 20th century. That 2nd Dark Age is now behind us and the way to a better, Level 4 Civilization, is open. How soon the transformation is accomplished is now in the hands of ordinary folk, it has very little to do with our federal 'representatives', the industrial councils of big business, the parrot press, or the dogma specialists of orthodox science.

.

New Heresies of the 2nd Renaissance [217]
Europe broke out of the first Dark Age, of medieval times, due to new thought and the spread of information that stimulated discussion and changed attitudes and beliefs. Now, the whole world is ready to break out of the second Dark Age that was imposed by capitalist-federalist agencies during most of the 20th century. Nikola Tesla was a scientific heretic who was well ahead of his time. In the latter years of the 1900s many others emerged. Leonard G. Cramp is such a thinker. Some excerpts from his book, The Cosmic Matrix, will make clear his professional disbelief in many aspects of orthodox science, and also give some brief glimpses of his own radical ideas which, to be fully comprehended, should be read in full from his book.

In writing of The Unity of Creation Theory, Cramp is conjecturing about structures and processes in space. Nevertheless, the Avenel theory is imaginative and that counts for quite a lot at this time in the history of science. New revisionism is sweeping away the contrived explanations and dogma that prevailed during the 20th century, and it is important to consider alternative theories for the gems of insight they might contain. Avenel's entire hypothesis might not hold, but various parts of it could well be valid. Many of the divergent theoretical 'explanations' of orthodox physics are being shown to be quite improbable, why should we reject alternative notions that are, in many cases, more in accord with the teaching of the ancients, who took a more spiritual and metaphysical view of the universe than did the secular, grant governed science of the industrial-capitalist age? Here are some points from Cramp's book, The Cosmic Matrix.

  • "Ether and space are the same."

  • "Space or ether is formed by the creative rays which emanate from one source in all directions and in all planes. ... Each creative ray covers a circuit from source back to source, and each circuit is probably the same size. In this way space with boundaries of globular shape is built, and whatever point is taken in space, creative rays travel in all directions towards the source."

  • "Taking the 'universe' to mean all created space, there is 'nothing' outside the boundaries of the universe. The old problem of imagining the boundaries of the universe, outside which stretched empty space - which space must have boundaries, and what was outside that? - should not arise."

  • "All rays of whatever frequency, visible or invisible, detectable or undetectable, are modulations of the creative rays, in the same way as a high-frequency radio wave is modulated by a musical note. As a radio carrier wave can be modulated by a number of separate notes, so can the ether carry between the same two points any number of waves of differing frequencies."

  • "An atom could in some ways be compared with a ripple caused by a stick in a smoothly flowing stream of water. It remains the same in appearance, yet it is formed from a constantly changing medium."

  • "I submit that the atom is not solid fundamentally, but that it is composed of modulations of the creative rays in three planes. Although a modulation is normally a ray which travels from its source towards the source of the creative rays, the chord of modulations forming an atom are locked together in three planes. This lock prevents the modulations travelling in opposing directions as rays."

  • "....in 1954 when Avenel first published his "Unity of Creation Theory" he gave a tentative estimate of the wavelength of the creative rays as 10-13cm. More recently Dr John A. Wheeler of Princeton has calculated the wavelength of the "ether" as 10-32cm. This is roughly sixty octaves above the limit of the known electromagnetic spectrum, which is based on the [theoretical] diameter of an electron (approximately 5 x 10-13cm)."

Avenel differs significantly from other revisionists in some respects, but his theory, and Cramp's contributions and extensions to it, contains similarities to some of Plichta's discoveries. Avenel, as mentioned earlier, seems to have been more of a metaphysicist than a physicist. He worked in the third domain of theory. Leonard G. Cramp has a far more mainstream grounding.

Cramp is a former aerospace designer and rocket scientist with a distinguished background in conventional engineering and aerodynamics. He has the somewhat unwelcome distinction of having had the first two copies of his first book, published in 1954, requested by Buckingham Palace, but then taken off sale. The subject of this work was heretical in the true sense of the word. In Space, Gravity and the Flying Saucer, Cramp described his ideas for the design of an antigravity flying machine. Writing in his 1999 book, The Cosmic Matrix, he describes how his ideas were suppressed.

  • "..excerpts from that first book were serialised in several American newspapers, being the third ever published on the subject and the first with a corroborative scientific appeal. Yet before the first batch of books could be sold, the British Book Publishing Centre of new York coincidentally and strangely went into voluntary liquidation. All six thousand copies of Space Gravity and the Flying Saucer were withdrawn and pulped. A check on the situation a year later revealed the company was back in business under the same name! "

In conclusion Cramp summarises what even he calls some extraordinary ramifications of The Unity of Creation Theory.

  1. "The theory holds that 'attraction' and 'repulsion' forces concerning matter do not originate or reside within matter."

  2. "Rather the phenomenon that causes these effects resides in what we call 'space' and that 'attraction' and 'repulsion' are merely the effects of this energy being unbalanced or changed on interacting with 'matter'."

  3. "This explains why the degree of attraction becomes greater as the bulk and density of matter increase, i.e., the more massive it is the greater the 'dilution' of absorption' of the rays."

  4. "Accepting (2) that the 'power' of so-called space itself is responsible for gravitational. magnetic and electrostatic phenomena, we can get an idea of the colossal energy in space by noting that a 'weight' of say, 200 pounds on the earth would become about 5 million pounds on the dwarf star Sirius B - while on a neutron star this meagre weight would be increased to a thousand billion times that. By this reckoning we may interpret the colossal power of space to be infinite!"

In another part of his book Cramp provides a diagram of the relative amounts of energy theoretically released from one 1 gram of matter, by thermo-chemical, thermo-nuclear, and direct conversion processes respectively. Only the latter process has no residual, untapped, energy. The energy obtainable from typical industrial age, thermo-chemical reaction involving one gram of matter is depicted graphically as a one ten thousandth inch square in the following diagram. You might just be able to make it out in the lower left corner. The heavily shaded square represents the increased energy released by thermo-nuclear means, and the large, lightly shaded square shows the theoretical power released from the direct conversion of 1 gram of matter into energy.


This diagram is not reproduced here to suggest that the absolute amount of energy that can be obtained from matter is known, Cramp points out that it is theoretical. The purpose of the diagram is to drive home the realisation that energy is by no means scarce. All that is required to tap it is the right knowledge. Tesla and many others have already shown that such knowledge exists and that it is practical to draw energy from beyond matter - from the ether itself.

Nick Cook, an experienced defence journalist relates the following conversation that occurred while he was researching his book, The Hunt For Zero Point, which is about the military applications of 'free' energy.

  • "... you go to people like Hal Puthoff, a very respected scientist in the field, and say, "All right Hal, gaze into your crystal ball and tell me what you think might be achievable." And the guy says,
    "There's enough energy in your coffee cup to evaporate the world's oceans many times over."
    Now, I'm a hard-bitten defence reporter, but that gets my attention."

Electrons and Matter [218]
Any dictionary and most science texts dealing with electricity, chemistry, or nuclear physics will tell you what an electron is. It's a subatomic particle that has a negative charge and is responsible for the flow of electric currents. The electron is also said to confer electrical, magnetic, thermal and optical properties on solids. The mass of the electron is almost negligible, it is thought to be about 9 x 10-28g. If the mass of one million electrons were to be multiplied a million times the mass of all those subatomic particles would be about that of a speck of dust. The charge of the electron has been measured at 1.6 x 10 -19 coulombs, however physicists have been unable to measure its size, although estimates exist.

Nobody as ever actually seen an electron, all that can be seen are tracks made in cloud chambers. Nevertheless the existence of 'something' that scientists call an electron is not in doubt. Electronics technologies and instruments such as the electron microscope are evidence that something exists. Electrons seem to 'flow', and they can be made to do work. The above photograph of electron tracks, from the CERN research facility, shows circular tracks because the 'gun' that fires the electrons imparts a spin and they then follow spiral tracks. Do not confuse the picture with the Bohr model of the atom in which electrons allegedly follow orbits around the nucleus. This is not a photograph of an atom, only the tracks made by electrons fired into a cloud chamber.

No heresy arises in regard to the 'use' of electrons in technology, nobody argues that something exists and that it can be manipulated and used. The heresy arises with regard to the theory of the electron and the explanations given by orthodox science for electromagnetic and similar fields. In this area there are many heretics, Leonard G. Cramp is one, Nikola Tesla was another.

Being, among other things, a chemist Peter Plichta is well aware of the role that electrons play in the formation of elements and molecules, and in every chemical reaction. But his acceptance of the existence and role of electrons does not extend to the theoretical explanations that orthodox science gives us for these phenomena. In the latter respect Plichta is one person who has understood and firmly defined what is really going on within electron clouds and the true nature of the interaction of electrons.

As we stand at the threshold of a whole new civilization, the insights and findings of a growing number of scientific heretics are shining new light on our understanding of the natural world, and banishing the misconceptions and dogma of the Dark Age that was the 20th century. During the first Dark Age, in Europe, it was the Roman Church that kept knowledge in heavily guarded libraries and asserted scientific falsehoods to suit their own ends. In the 20th century it was nation states that did much the same thing. Both dark ages were brought to an end by the introduction of new technologies that made information widely available to ordinary people. Once that happens the collective mindset of society changes and civilization advances.

As some early Renaissance artists found, images can also be heretical, it is not only imagination and logic that challenge dogma. The circular arrangement of the natural numbers, in shells, with the prime numbers always occurring on 8 rays, was discovered by Plichta and depicted in his Prime Number Cross. As has already been noted, Plichta makes it clear that he did not invent the PNC, anymore than man invented the natural numbers.

The design by which infinite four-dimensional space can exist reciprocally as points of matter, is certainly not human and is, most likely, of divine origin.

The illustration here shows a refraction photograph that is reproduced from Robert Lawlor's book on Sacred Geometry, It is, as he notes,
"...the closest visualisation that science can give with respect to the nature of atomic substance, which appears to be a pattern of geometrised light energy."

This image is the nearest that we can come to viewing the structure of the atomic level of matter, it is remarkably similar to the patterns produced by Hans Jenny and others using vibrations to affect various mediums.

Writing of an intermediate stage of his investigations, before he had finally cracked the problem of what matter is and where it comes from, Plichta says,

  • "The empirical findings of quantum mechanics are correct, but the theoretical suppositions inferred from them have tended only to obscure many aspects of our understanding of nature, The extension of theories of quantum mechanics is even proclaimed as an approach supported by nature. The essence of physics can, however, never have any real contact with quantum mechanics. We do not know why electrons are located so precisely at energy levels governed by apparently sound numerical laws. But it is possible, for instance, to continue accumulating empirical data by spectral analysis to a degree that allows us to forget the shortcomings in our basic understanding of the world."

  • "When, for example, a colourless solution of a material A is mixed with another colourless solution B and a thick, blue deposit immediately forms, the postulation is made that this happens because A is reacting with B. Why precisely this is so, why this will also happen at the other end of the universe, and why it will continue to happen in the infinitely distant future - these are all questions that remain unanswered. Such questions are not even asked in the first place. They did not occur to me at the time either. There was so much written about all the things we know that for some time I did not notice how much we did not know."

  • "When two atoms are chemically linked, the chemist links them in his mind and in his diagrams by a stroke. The chemical bond is, in fact, effected by two electrons from the different atoms that hold each other. They are called electron pairs or twins. This pairing of electrons is one of the foundations of chemistry. Electron pair bonding is the reason why different atoms join to form molecules.

    The physicist is not concerned with the creation of bonds between different atoms but rather with precise observations of the movement of electrons. Electrons can break away from the atom in certain situations - for instance in a television tube.

    Chemists and physicists therefore observe the behaviour of electrons from totally different perspectives. This is why completely different statements are made about what is clearly the same thing.

    In electron physics, electrons are particles with the same electric charge which are mutually repellent and could never get it into their heads to come together and form a pair of electron twins.

    When I had fully comprehended this contradiction I realised something very significant. Had I been only a chemist, I would have been totally indifferent to the physics of electrons because electron pairing is a proven fact. If, on the other hand, I had been only a physicist, I would have been equally indifferent to the chemistry of electrons because the repellent forces of two electrons is also a fact. My problem is that I was apparently going to become both - a chemist and a physicist."

Plichta began by asking questions which, although they are obvious, had not been asked by orthodox science. He wondered why the atomic numbers of the elements run through the sequence of natural numbers, and why the elements with atomic numbers 43 and 61 should be so unstable that they do not occur naturally. He wondered why some elements have several stable atomic forms, as oxygen does, and why others, such as bismuth, have only one stable atomic structure - its other forms being subject to a process of radioactive 'decay'. There were no satisfactory answers available, so Plichta had to seek them out for himself.

Author's Note:
The following explains the measuring systems used for the elements. Two of these systems are related to number, the other is related to mass.

  • Atomic Number is determined by the number of protons (positively charged particles) in the nucleus of the atom. Hydrogen has one proton and an atomic number of 1, helium has two protons and an atomic number of 2, bismuth has eighty three protons and an atomic number of 83. The numbering of the elements follows the order of the natural numbers because the number of protons in the nucleus of each successive element follows that same order.

  • Atomic Weight is established from the combined number of protons and neutrons (neutral particles) in the nucleus of the atom. Although this measure is termed a weight it is the number of positive and neutral particles in the nucleus of an atom that determines its atomic weight.

  • Relative Atomic Mass units were arbitrarily established in the 1960s by agreement between the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The mass of one atom of an element is then expressed in relation to the mass of an atom of the carbon 12 isotope, which is defined as being exactly 12 atomic mass units (a.m.u.). For example, the element Barium is said to have an atomic mass of 137.327 amu. This might sound very precise and meaningful, but it isn't. The value is the weighted mean of the masses of all the naturally occurring (ie; stable) isotopes of Barium, of which there are seven.

    Textbooks today advise students that the measure of Atomic Mass is the same as the Atomic Weight of an element and that the newer measure replaces the earlier one, which is now superseded. This 'official truth' is simply wrong and misleading.

    If the international chemistry and physics bodies had sought to devise a situation that would most effectively conceal the true nature of matter from most people on this planet, they could not have done better than they did with their contrived measure of Atomic Mass and the discontinuance of the measure of Atomic Weight.

The isotopes of the stable elements turned out to be a key by which Peter Plichta was to discover the true nature of matter. He found telltale patterns in the distribution of the isotopes and these led him to the discovery of the natural law involved, and to a full understanding of the role the prime numbers play in this process. Here are some excerpts from what he wrote about isotopes.

  • "The atomic nucleus also contains, in addition to its protons, neutron particles - that is particles with a neutral charge. This remained undiscovered until 1932. The beryllium nucleus, for example, has four protons and five neutrons. Four and five together gives the so-called atomic weight 9. ... Before 1932 nobody knew why the atomic number 4 and the atomic weight 9 did not match."

  • "Bismuth, the last stable element, has an atomic weight of 209, although it has the atomic number 83. If you subtract the number of protons (83) from the number 209 (the atomic weight) you get 126. That is the exact number of neutrons in the bismuth atom. It should be clearly emphasised at this point that nobody in the world knows why there should be precisely 126 neutrons and not 127 or 125.

    This particular form is referred to as bismuth isotope 209, because there are also other bismuth nuclei that have different numbers of neutrons. Such nuclei are, however, unstable and 'decay' into atomic nuclei with other atomic numbers. They are then no longer atoms of bismuth. The process of decay is called radioactivity. Because there is only one stable bismuth isotope, it is classed among the pure isotopes as are all other elements with only one stable isotope.

    There are also elements with several stable atomic forms. One example is element number 8, oxygen, which has three forms of atom with different neutron-proton ratios: one isotope with 8 neutrons and atomic weight 16; one with 9 neutrons and atomic weight 17; and a third with 10 neutrons and atomic weight 18. All these go under the name oxygen.

    Neither schools or universities seem to be capable of communicating this elementary knowledge in an understandable way. But we may liken an element with isotopes to a family with children. No matter how many children there are, the family remains the family. So an element remains that element no matter how many isotopes it has.

    Yet although greater numbers of children in a family are not unknown, one element can have an absolute maximum of ten isotopes.

    Nobody knows why this is so. It is perhaps characteristic that scarcely any physicist or chemist with the title of doctor has any knowledge of this limit of ten."

In his book, God's Secret Formula - Deciphering The Riddle of the Universe and The Prime Number Code, Peter Plichta includes a table of the 81 stable elements together with details of their isotopes. Such tabular information is remarkably scarce and is not to be found in present-day text books on chemistry or physics. Nor is the information in the table usually provided during school classes or university lectures. A lot of other information and details about isotopes are taught, but not this information, not the patterns shown in this table.

Click on the small image to go to a larger view of the table, read through the list of unevenly numbered elements (1 Hydrogen, 3 Lithium, 5 Boron, etc) and see if you can find any that do not have either 2 stable isotopes or a single (pure) isotope. Yes, there is one, element 19, Potassium, has 3 isotopes. However all the rest of the elements with uneven atomic numbers have either a pure or a double isotope. Does this strike you as indicative of some underlying rule, or is it just coincidence?

There are 83 elements shown in the table, if we take out elements, 43 technetium, and 61 promethium, because they are unstable and do not occur naturally, we are left with 81 stable elements. One of these elements is hydrogen, the first in the Periodic Table, with an atomic number of 1. If we leave aside hydrogen we are left with 80 elements. Now go back to the table included above and count the number of elements, excluding those three just mentioned, that have a double isotope. The sequence goes: helium; lithium; boron; nitrogen; chlorine; and so on through to thallium. There are 20 elements in the list, one quarter of the eighty stable elements left after hydrogen, (which is the basic building block of all matter).

Look at the two shared characteristics of this group of elements, all of the twenty have dual isotopes but when it comes to an uneven atomic number only nineteen of the elements in the group share this particular characteristic. Helium is the odd-one-out in that, although it has 2 isotopes it has an even atomic number. So we can describe the double isotope group as being 1+19, rather than 20. This might not seem too strange until you count the other group of 20 elements, those that have a single (pure) isotope. Then you find out that, again, we have a 1+19 situation. Beryllium is then the odd-one-out, because it has an even atomic number and all the rest of the group have uneven numbers.

In much the same manner, it can be shown that the remaining 40 stable elements also divide into two groups of 20, and that each of these groups is comprised of elements that exhibit the 1+19 pattern.

Now, you and I might not be able to explain this in the detailed way that Peter Plichta has managed to do, but we can count and we can reason. A process of counting quickly tells us that the grouping patterns are, indeed, real. A process of reasoning tells us that this cannot possibly be due to chance or coincidence. Some hidden rule is at work in the structure of the elements.

Plichta calls it 'God's secret formula', and he has proven its existence beyond doubt. He clearly shows the existence of a quadruple expansion rule that governs the formation of stable elements; in 4 x (1+19) terms.

The following excerpts from God's Secret Formula expand on the non-coincidental forms and patterns found in atomic structures.

  • "Whereas the positively charged protons are concentrated in an unimaginably small nucleus, the particles with the opposite charge cannot form any such conglomeration because they are mutually repellent. This statement is, however, not without qualification. The electrons closest to the atomic nucleus behave in an apparently arbitrary way. They are found like pairs of sparrows sitting on a wire. Some secret law tells them that in the innermost orbit one pair may sit, the next orbit can take a total of four pairs, the third orbit has nine, and there are sixteen in the fourth orbit. The mathematical law for this had a quadratic nature since these numbers - 1, 4, 9, 16 - can be described as the squares of the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4.

    Because further shells then follow, it might be supposed that 25 pairs are located in the fifth orbit. In fact, the law only applies to the first four shells. Furthermore, we know that there are only four types of electrons in the shells."

  • ".. The squares of the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 - also called the main quantum numbers of the electron cloud - must have something to do with the numbers themselves.

    This is the way it was seen too by Arnold Somerfeld, who spent many years of his life subjecting problems of theoretical physics to investigations in number theory. .... Somerfeld knew that two elements attempting to form a bond would try to share their electrons in such a way that they would have eight electrons at their higher energy levels, four electron twins. These four electron pairs are not all the same. Three pairs, referred to as p-electrons, make up one family, whereas the fourth pair is not related to them. Even today, scientists have not the faintest idea why this is so. They accept it as it is and are proud of what they know."

  • "As shown in the table of the 81 stable elements [on page 33], the elements from 1 to 20 are a prime group of elements. From element 21 on, the inclusion of electrons in lower shells begins. .... these processes in the electron shells are accompanied by parallel processes in the atomic nucleus of which only a few chemists and physicists are aware. The first 20 atomic nuclei follow a rule that relates to the additional inclusion of neutrons and does not need to be explained further here,

    From element 21 on, each atomic nucleus contains more neutrons than protons. For the uneven-numbered elements 21 to 83, additional neutrons and different quantities in each case are appended on top of the normal neutrons corresponding to the number of protons. This follows in accordance with precise rules: the element 21 has three additional neutrons and thus has an atomic weight of 45 (21 + 21 + 3). The element 83 contains 43 additional neutrons, and for the even-numbered elements similar rules apply.

    In all, from element 21 to element 83 (omitting the elements 43 and 61) 61 elements thus hold increasingly high numbers of neutrons."

  • ".... Moreover, neutrons tend to evade experimental investigation because they have no charge. This is why the very existence of the neutron was only proved in 1932.

    .... The true significance of the third atomic particle has never been connected to the notion of numbers, or even to the charge number 0. It was not thought proper to link the essence of the neutral nucleic component to numbers and quantity since the prevailing opinion was that numbers can only be coincidence.

    Numbers are conventionally categorised into even and uneven numbers. Conventional logic also prohibits a number from being both even and uneven. Every investigation of nuclear laws according to number theory would have to fail. The additional neutrons without which the nuclei could not be stable led to similar difficulties, in the case of the atomic shells, over how equally-charged electrons can come together to form pairs. In the atomic nucleus similarly-charged protons also link up, as in reality should not happen.

    A new theory had to be invented - one which could scarcely be more embarrassing: the 'glue theory'. The explanation is given in all seriousness by professors and receivers of the Nobel Prize throughout the world that the additional neutrons prevent the nucleus from falling apart. One should imagine them as a type of glue.

    The appalling scandal of such a theory is easily exposed in the case of the final stable element. It is stable with 43 extra neutrons, but with 42 or 44 neutrons it is unstable. Similar cases can be found for many other elements."

  • "Further investigation of the 81 stable elements in the Periodic Table - without the element 19 - from the point of view of number theory resulted in 57 elements; i.e. 3 times 19 have divisible atomic numbers and the remaining 19 have prime atomic numbers. After I discovered the 3 + 1 law as the foundation of the Prime Number Cross in 1980, and had thus caused the conditions necessary to cast some light into the dark recesses of the electrons shell, I now found the same (3 + 1) plan in the atomic nucleus. The law thus centres on 4 times (1 + 19). This law would not be fulfilled if two prime number elements had not been barred from taking part in natural existence.

    I had now finally solved the question why two prime number elements in the periodic system should be missing. In 1986 I finally managed to prove why these two missing elements should happen to be the elements with the atomic numbers 43 and 61. The proof is rigorously mathematical, and critics will have to admit that the problem would never have been solved with conventional chemistry and physics."

Peter Plichta received support and corroboration from various people to whom he described his findings and proofs. One of these people was Professor E O Fischer, a Nobel Prize winning chemist working in Munich at the time. The following excerpts from one of their conversations are revealing in regard to the scope of the discovery, and what Plichta hoped it might lead to.

  • PROFESSOR FISCHER: "Hold on a moment, Mr Plichta. You don't need to convince me any more. I am perfectly satisfied with your explanation that with the omission of the two non-existent elements, the Periodic Table now consists of 81 elements and thus of four groups according to the sequence 1 + 19. If this is in fact the case, it will be quite sufficient to place all of contemporary science in an impossible position. But we have to be careful. New ideas have always been resisted. this one is not merely a new and revolutionary idea, it actually turns our entire concept of the universe on its head!"

    PETER PLICHTA: "If the world can be saved, then it will be saved only by a new spiritual idea. If I can prove that the number 3 and the decimal system are the basis of the speed of light, then we could overcome the danger of the bomb. War is an expression of our fear. Fear is based on ignorance. We shall simply have to go right through with presenting it at the political level. Any disputes we may encounter with the academic world will, in contrast, look harmless. "

Indeed they will. The OWO will not be inclined to lose control quietly, but it will lose nevertheless. The parrot people of the global media will be encouraged to actively suppress and distort the message in Plichta's findings. The various agencies of totalitarian-democracies will be charged with cracking down on "trouble makers" who attempt to spread the truth of the Prime Number Cross. The institutions and opinion leaders of grant-governed science will, when they are no longer able to ignore them, vigorously denounce Plichta's discoveries.

But truth can only be obscured and delayed for so long, in due course it will emerge and spread around the world. Human beings have a history of acting on new information and new truths, despite all attempts by governments and those behind them to maintain the status quo. When the new ideas change thinking new action will follow, and the world will experience the full impact and benefit of the 2nd Renaissance. Few ideas will be more important than the notions of readily available 'free' energy, and the divine nature of the laws that govern the structure of what we perceive as matter.

Solving Numerical Riddles [219]
For many centuries, since the end of the first Dark Age in Europe, many human minds have sought to uncover and solve major riddles of a numerical nature. Sir Isaac Newton (1642 -1727) is best known for his contributions to physics, but he actually spent much of his time attempting to unravel a code he believed to exist in the Old Testament of the Bible. Rightly or wrongly, Newton believed that the Bible was a "cryptogram set by the Almighty" and that it listed all events, past, present, and future. He learnt biblical Hebrew and wrote various words and phrases on thousands upon thousands of cards which he tried to arrange in ways that would reveal patterns and messages in the text of the Bible. But, the task was too complex and extensive for such manual methods and Newton's efforts were unrewarded. Thus he found no code.

In August 1994, Statistical Science, a peer reviewed journal of the Institute of Mathematical Studies, in the US, published a paper by three Israeli scientists; Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Ripps, and Yoav Rosenberg. The title of their research paper was, Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis, and it revealed the existence of coded words and phrases in the text of the Bible that are far beyond chance probability. The question of whether this is possible is not under consideration here, Michael Drosnin's best-selling book, The Bible Code, is the best reference for reflection on whether there is a code and what it might tell us.

The fact that is most important in this discussion is that it was the power of modern computers that enabled Ripps and his team to uncover evidence of a code. Newton had only cards that he could rearrange, and he could never find a secret code if it existed. Since the mid-20th century the power of computers has been operating to unlock patterns and secrets that are rapidly changing our understanding and thinking, and driving the 2nd Renaissance forward.

In an appendix to his book, The Truth Behind The Bible Code, Jeffrey Satinover discusses the distribution of prime numbers, and how computer enhancement can reveal patterns that are otherwise undiscernible. At the time he wrote this material, pre-1997, he had obviously not heard of or read Plichta's work, otherwise he would have been aware of answers to some of the 'unanswered' questions he covers.

Nevertheless, Satinover provides some important insights into just what can be accomplished using computer enhancement. He makes the point that the analysis programs that run on a computer cannot reveal patterns that are not there in the first place, they just make them more obvious to our eyes.

Satinover compares the existence of patterns in the Bible and the distribution of the primes. He shows that the seemingly random occurrence of primes within the sequence of natural numbers does, in fact, exhibit an astounding pattern. So too, he argues, Ripps and his colleagues have shown the existence of astounding patterns of related words and phrases found in two-dimensional arrangements of the continuous string of Hebrew consonants that make up the Torah - the first five books of the Bible.

primespattern (87K)To detect the patterns inherent in the occurrence of the prime members different coloured squares were allocated to represent primes and non-primes - say white and black - then the sequence of natural numbers was plotted in the form of a Ulam spiral. Instead of the linear arrangement normally used when seeking patterns in the distribution of prime numbers, this coiled structure produces a different, two-dimensional, arrangement. When all the primes between 1 and 262,144 are plotted in this way the existence of a pattern becomes very clear.

Look at the result, does it remind you of something? Yes, it resembles the patterns made by vibrations in various mediums studied by Hans Jenny. It is also possible to see an eightfold symmetry, like that found by Peter Plichta in the Prime Number Cross.

Here are some of Satinover's observations about the pattern shown.

  • "1. Not only is there a tendency for the primes to cluster on 45 degree and -45 degree parallel diagonals, they are more highly (or at least differently) structured along the four corners of the array. (The same phenomenon occurs if the spiral is circular rather than square.) Why these four directions are favoured, instead of three equally spaced rays, or five, is utterly mysterious."

  • "2. The varying density of primes in the Ulam spiral form complex structures with many axes of symmetry. Some of these are local (circles and other symmetrical shapes), which then form part of larger 'supersymmetries'."

  • "3. The entire structure appears 'fractal', with recursive, yet fuzzy symmetries at ever larger levels. This is consistent with some of the most recent discoveries in quantum mechanics, where it now appears that the structure of energy levels follows a roughly primelike distribution, yet can be shown to be 'chaotic'. (Chaotic patterns and fractal patterns are closely related.) Nonetheless, why this is so is unknown."

At the time, Jeffry Satinover appears to have been unaware that Peter Plichta had already understood the part that the natural numbers - those seemingly 'human inventions'- and the distribution of the primes play in the structuring of matter and the way abundant energy is able to course through the universe. Yet the patterns he reveals are important, not only to the issue of a bible code but also the communication of Plichta's discoveries. Seeing is believing.

Where Does Energy Come From? [220]
The conventional view is that energy comes from matter. When you destroy or 'explode' matter, energy is released. This is the present-day 'knowledge' taught in our schools, colleges and universities. manhattan (18K)From a simple perspective this explanation seems to be valid. When a bomb or any explosive charge goes off, the matter disappears and there is an observable release of energy. Ask the survivors of the Hiroshima bomb or the Bali megablast, they will say that this is how it seemed at the time. The blasts of energy seemed to come from the bombs themselves.

But this is not necessarily so. Recall Leonard G Cramp's analogy of a stick forming ripples in a stream. The ripples form a persistent pattern in the stream, but are they wet? Obviously it is the medium - the water - that is wet, not the ripples themselves which are only patterns in the medium. Yet, the ripples are tangible. For example, they can be observed and photographed. They can be changed by repositioning the stick, but they are not wet. Ripples exist in the medium of the water, and it is the medium that has the property of wetness.

Some well informed people now believe that matter is also a manifestation of the medium in which it exists, just as the ripples in the stream are a manifestation of conditions in the water in which they appear. On this basis the energy released by an explosion is not coming from the matter that disintegrates, but from the medium in which matter is formed. That medium is the ether.

When he used mass in his famous equation, e = m c2, Einstein was aware that mass is not equivalent to matter. He was not talking about matter or even weight; but the physicist's notion of mass. Unfortunately many people, including scientists and educators, often use 'mass' and 'matter' interchangeably, Peter Plichta even does so at various points in his writings. When Plichta extends Einstein's equation to show that matter is the inverse of space, he really means that mass is the inverse of space. And that is precisely what Einstein meant. According to relativity theory an object, such as a kitchen stool, that is accelerated to a significant proportion of light-speed will increase in mass. The stool, however, remains a stool; it gets shorter but its composition remains the same, albeit compressed. The matter of the stool is not altered but its mass is.

Just as wetness is not a property of the ripples in a stream it is arguable (on very credible grounds) that energy and mass are not properties of matter - anymore than space or time are. Matter is manifested in a medium just as ripples are manifested in the water of a stream. Similarly, it is the medium, and the forces in it and the rules that govern them, that determine the form and substance of matter. On this basis, exactly as Nikola Tesla argued, there is no energy in matter and it is possible to smash atoms without triggering a violent explosion.

Einstein maintained that, "there is no matter". Nevertheless, there are a myriad of seemingly tangible objects in our world. These objects and materials arise from vibrational patterns formed in the medium of the ether according to elegantly simple and universal laws.

Concealed Knowledge About Energy [221]
The energy that is released when a conventional bomb is detonated comes from thermo-chemical reactions that are only capable of tapping relatively small amounts of energy from the ether, mainly in the form of heat. While they can certainly cause awful devastation there is a predictable upper limit to the forces that can be generated by conventional munitions. This is because only the patterns of molecules are broken apart in such blasts, there is no decomposition of atoms and no release of radiation. The energy released from nuclear devices also comes from the ether in which the matter of the bomb is manifested. But, in this case, atoms are disintegrated and much more energy is released; in the form of both heat and radiation.

Conventional wisdom holds that an atomic bomb explodes as a result of compressing matter with a carefully shaped charge, to cause nuclear fission and the release of energy from the matter of the device. There are sound reasons and thorough research to suggest that such a notion is a deliberate oversimplification that is intended to foil attempts by nations and groups, which are presently excluded from the nuclear arms club, to design and produce their own WMDs.

At first impression this might seem a good thing, but the real price of such a concealment has been more than seven decades of denying the means and capability to bring abundant energy to the whole world. Not only could the release of such knowledge have ended all militarism and the related suffering caused by wars, it could have enabled presently 'developing' countries to feed, house and clothe their populations to levels that would have freed them from poverty, disease, and the burden of debt they currently 'owe' to the capitalist West.

An Energy Grid? [222]
Bruce Cathie is a New Zealand author and former commercial pilot who has extensively researched the existence of an energy grid that covers the earth. His work is largely relegated to the 'weird-science' category of literature, because he began his quest for knowledge for a strange, but common enough, reason. In 1952 Cathie observed the manoeuvres of a UFO over Manukau Harbour, in Auckland, New Zealand. He was accompanied at the time by a witness. During the period of the sighting, which was some ten minutes, Bruce_Cathie (20K)everyone then in the aero club at Manukau airfield, (five additional people) also rushed outside on Cathie's shout to them and they also witnessed the UFO. During the course of his career in aviation Captain Cathie was to sight many other unexplained UFO's in the skies of New Zealand, his lifelong research into the phenomena was to lead him to the discovery of what he believed to be a world-wide energy grid that is used by both extraterrestrial and 'black project' UFO's from earthly governments.

This freesite is not concerned with UFOs, they are the subject of innumerable books and web sites. Readers of 2ndRenaissance can look-up the many accounts of sightings in such sources and decide for themselves whether UFOs might exist or not. The issue here is whether a global energy grid might exist. If such a grid does exist, anyone who understands the science involved can tap into it - not just UFOs.

But, before leaving the subject of UFOs and concentrating on the possibility of an energy grid, there is a typical account of a sighting below. This is not unlike the experiences of members of the Manukau Aero Club that summer evening in 1952. However, the following is a documented account from the US, rather than New Zealand. The questionnaire items are listed, then the responses of the witness are shown in quotes.

  • Location of Observation: - - "Leary, Georgia."

  • How long did you see the object?: - - "10 - 12 minutes."

  • Please describe whether conditions and the type of sky; i.e., bright daylight, nightime, dusk, etc: - - "Shortly after dark."

  • Position of the Sun or Moon in relation to the object and to you: - - "Not in sight."

  • If seen at night, twilight, or dawn, were the stars or moon visible?: - - "Stars."

  • Was there more than one object?: - - "No."

  • Was the object(s) brighter than the background of the sky?: - - "Yes."

  • If so, compare the brightness with the Sun, Moon, headlights, etc: - - "At one time, as bright as the moon.

  • Did the object(s)-:

    1. Appear to stand still at any time-: - - "Yes."
    2. Change brightness?: - - "Yes."
    3. Change shape?: - - "Yes."
    4. Change colour?: - - "Yes."

  • Did the object(s) at any time pass in front of, or behind anything? If so, please elaborate giving distance, size, etc, if possible.: - - "No."
  • Was there any wind?: - - "No."

  • Did you observe the objects through an optical instrument or other aid, windshield, window pane, storm window, screening, etc? What?: - - "No."

  • Please tell if the object(s) was (were) sharply outlined.: - - "Yes."

  • Was the object(s) self-luminous?: - - "Yes."

  • Did the object(s) rise or fall in motion?: - - "Came close, moved away, came close and then moved away."

  • Give the apparent size of the object(s, in inches on a ruler held at arm's length: - - "Varied from brighter/larger than planet to apparent size of moon."

  • How did you happen to notice the object(s)?: - - "10-12 men all watched it. Brightness attracted us."

  • Where were you and what were you doing at the time?: - - "Outdoors waiting for a meeting to begin at 7:30 pm."

  • How did the object disappear from view?: - - "Moved to distance then disappeared."

  • Please estimate the distance of the object(s): - - "Difficult. Maybe 300-1000 yards."

  • What was the elevation of the object(s) in the sky?: - - "About 30 degrees above horizon."

  • Names and addresses of other witnesses, if any: - - "Ten members of Leary Georgia Lions Club."

  • Please draw a map of the locality of the observation showing North; your position; the direction from which the object(s) appeared and disappeared from view; the direction of its course over the area; roads, towns, villages, railroads, and other landmarks within a mile: - - "Appeared from west about 30 degrees up."

  • Is there an airport, military, governmental, or research installation in the area?: - - "No."

The nature of the questionnaire above, which was designed by the first private organisation to research and study UFOs in the US (the National Investigation Comity on Aerial Phenomena, or NICAP), demonstrates how naturally occurring objects, such as the planet Venus or weather balloons, can be separated from truly unusual sightings like the one above, and that by Bruce Cathie in Auckland, New Zealand.

If true, the answers to questionnaires like this highlight the fact that something unusual requires serious research and a scientific explanation. But accounts of UFO sightings don't usually receive due attention. They are dismissed by the authorities and the media as 'hoaxes', 'hallucinations', etc. 'What would ordinary civilians know about aerial phenomena?' - they ask. 'Leave it to the scientists' - they say. But, who is better qualified to assess flying objects than a professional aviator like Captain Cathie?

When it comes to the above record of a UFO sighting it is interesting to note who reported the incident. Was it some confused senior citizen, or perhaps a far out tree-hugging hippie? Or was it someone more reliable? Well, here are the first few items of that questionnaire, which was completed on September 18, 1973.

  • Name: - - - - - - "Jimmy Carter."
    Address: - - - - "State Capitol, Atlanta."
    Occupation: - - "Governor."

Carter, of course, went on to become the 39th President of the United States of America (1977-1981). In his 1976 election campaign Jimmy Carter made UFOs an issue. Carter39 (15K)He told reporters that he would never make fun of anyone who claimed to have seen a UFO, and he promised to end the secrecy surrounding the phenomena. He said, "If I become President, I'll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists." Other people obviously had other ideas, because Carter was never able to make good his promise.

Both Jimmy Carter and Bruce Cathie took risks in speaking publicly about such a politically incorrect topic as 'seeing UFOs'. Anybody who sees such things is certain to be branded as a kook by the mainstream media. It is absolute, unswerving, official truth that UFOs don't exist. Strange phenomena that can't be readily explained within the present-day body of scientific and state dogma are simply not allowed to exist.

Bruce Cathie not only spoke out about what he repeatedly saw from the flight decks of aircraft in New Zealand skies, he set out to research the phenomena. In the course of this study Cathie noticed patterns in the flight tracks of the objects that he and other New Zealanders saw and reported. This led Cathie, and others, to the discovery of a geometric grid of energy lines covering the world.

The Form of the Energy Grid [223]
Bruce Cathie was not the first person to discover a global geometric grid that appears to channel energy around the earth. But he is unique in specifying it in terms of an angular measure in minutes of arc values and a time unit based on twenty-seven units for one revolution of the earth. He is also the only person to be led to the grid by analysing verified observational data of UFO tracks.

Many other people have defined a similar grid structure from other perspectives. A biologist, Ivan Sanderson, used statistical data analysis of twelve anomalous areas on the surface of the earth. In these regions there are strange gravitational effects, magnetic anomalies, and histories of strange disappearances involving ships and aircraft. The infamous 'Bermuda Triangle' is an example, as are the 'Devil's Sea', southeast of Japan, and the area in the Pacific Ocean, around the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia. Some commentators consider Sanderson's work to predate the mapping of the grid done by Bruce Cathie, but the latter's contribution is more specific and usable. Sanderson showed that there was a pattern linking anomalous areas, but he did not provide a full grid, nor the tools for analysing and predicting phenomena associated with that grid. Cathie did both of these things.

Here are a few excerpts from Cathie's writings that describe how he uncovered the energy grid.

  • "Over the years I studied a great deal of material published by other investigating groups and came to the conclusion that no real progress could be made in discovering the purpose of UFO activity through this means. The main body of investigators have confined their activity to collating masses of sighting reports, filing them away, and then doing nothing else with the information. .... I decided long ago that the only way to tackle the problem would be to plot all the areas of activity and try to find some logical mathematical order in the hovering positions, or flight paths of the unknowns, To this purpose I studied the methods of a Frenchman by the name of Aimé Michel who had also endeavoured to find a mathematical order of this nature. He had partial success and managed to find several track lines with equally spaced activity in the European area."

  • "I considered that there was a definite logic in his findings and decided that I would carry out my own research using his basic methods. I struck gold and ever since I plotted the first two track lines, at right angles, in the New Zealand area, I have continued to progress and advance my scientific knowledge in areas which otherwise would normally be completely foreign to me."

  • "... Aimé Michel had been studying UFOs for a number of years and had found small sections of track lines in various areas of Europe. Saucers had been hovering at various points along these track lines, and Mr Michel had observed that the average distance between these points was 54.43 kilometres. .... Using the Kaipara Harbour as a starting point, I marked off 54.43 kilometre intervals along the track line I had found. I was disappointed when I was unsuccessful in obtaining an even distribution of positions to the D'Urville Island disappearing point. I checked and rechecked, but nothing worked out. ... I remembered that a great number of sightings had occurred around the Blenheim area. Even before the advent of ordinary aircraft in New Zealand, this area had been visited by UFOs. ... So I dragged out my map and expended the track line until it cut a 90o coordinate from the town of Blenheim. The distance from this point to the Kaipara position I found to be exactly 300 nautical miles."

  • "The distance of 54.43 kilometres found by Michel was only an average estimate. I found that 55.5955 kilometres was equal to 30 nautical miles, and this divides exactly into 300 nautical miles, ten times. Was this the system of measurement used by the UFOs? There was no proof of course, but it seemed a reasonable assumption. Minutes of arc is a measurement which could apply to the whole universe. It just so happens that a minute of arc, from the earth's centre subtends, at the surface, what we call a nautical mile. ... I found that by using units of 30 minutes of arc latitude north-south, and 30 minutes of arc longitude east-west, on my Mercator's map, a grid pattern was formed into which a great number of UFO reports could be fitted."

  • "Since I made that statement in my first book I have been attacked repeatedly by university personnel and others in the academic field. They have maintained that degrees and minutes of arc are arbitrary values set up by ancient mathematicians and that therefore my calculations are meaningless. I believe the evidence shown in this book [The Energy Grid] will now convince them that my original assumptions were correct. The angular values of 360o and 21,600 minutes of arc which constitute a complete circle have direct geometric associations with the speed of light."

  • "In Harmonic 33 it was my endeavour to establish that the harmonic equivalents of light, gravity and mass and so on are built into the global UFO grid system as geometric or angular units, and are expressed as minutes of arc values. Some of these values are as follows:
    Speed of light harmonic: 1439
    Anti-speed of light harmonic: 695
    Harmonics associated with the earth's magnetic field: 2345.5 and 3930.
    Earth mass harmonic: 1703.
    Logarithmic and radian values as well as trigonometrical values were also found to be harmonically tuned to the geometric pattern of the system."

  • "The main lattice type pattern of the grid, I had found, consisted of areas of 30 minutes of arc oriented approximately north-south (006o true) and 30 minutes of arc approximately east-west (276o true). Subsequently, it has been my discovery that these areas are further divisible into sixteen smaller areas, measuring 7.5 by 7,5 minutes of arc. ... Recent radar and verified visual sightings of UFOs, plus a large volume of evidence coming to light in the New Zealand area alone, have verified the existence of the grid in the pattern. I have described it beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt."

  • "My grid system, drawn up on a map of New Zealand, was completed in 1965. As verified sightings came to hand, I plotted on this map the precise positions of the sightings, and not to my surprise found that invariably the UFO positions gel with uncanny precision on the grid's lines of longitude and latitude - never in the intervening spaces.

    In September 1967 reports came of four accurate fixes of UFO sightings a few minutes apart in the Hawke’s Bay area. Here were no isolated sightings, but four, all within a short distance of time and in a relatively small area.

    When I plotted the position of these four verified sightings on the grid map I found they fell exactly on four parallel lines of grid latitude. One was over the city of Napier, one to the northwest, one to the northeast, and one to the southeast. ... did I somehow employ ESP when I constructed the grid map three years earlier by predicting, as it were, by means of lines on a map just where future sightings would be made?"

nz_hawkes_bay (76K)

As can be seen from the above, Cathie's construction of the Energy Grid is based on the projection of segments of arc onto the surface of the earth. This results in rectangles formed by 30o of arc. These major grid features can then each be further subdivided into four minor features of 7.5o of arc each. The following illustration from The Energy Grid shows the arrangement for New Zealand.

NZ_grid (83K)

Having determined the nature of the grid associated with UFO sightings and tracks in New Zealand, Cathie sought the structure of the world energy grid. He found it, as he describes in the following excerpts from his writings.

  • "The next logical conclusion was that I had discovered a small section of what could possibly be a world system. The question then was how to transfer this small section onto the world sphere and accurately align it. It was then brought to my notice that a strange aerial-like object had been photographed by chance off the west coast of South America, by the American survey ship Eltanin.

    The object was two to three feet high and had six main cross bars spaced evenly up its stem with a smaller one at the top. Each set of cross bars had a small ball at the end of each arm. A fiend and I visited the Eltanin when it called into Auckland, and we were told by one of the scientists on board that the object was thought to be an artefact of some kind, and appeared to be metallic."

  • "I had a hunch that this could be the point that I was looking for upon which to orientate a world grid, if in fact one existed. I spent some time constructing grid patterns on a plastic ball until I found a system which could be transferred onto the world surface, and aligned with the aerial-type object and the section of the grid discovered over New Zealand. I found that the patterns matched, and felt sure then that a global system was almost a certainty."

  • "The basic grid structure was formed by a series of great circles interlocking at various points around the earth's surface. The nodal points of the two grids, when joined by a series of small and great circles, formed what I have loosely termed polar squares around the north and south geographic poles. It was when I carried out a geometric and mathematical analysis of these sections that I found a direct connection with light, gravity and mass equivalents, in a harmonic sense. To do this I had to convert all our normal systems of measurement into a single set of units, and also convert our time measure into one that would correlate with the grid. After much thought, and a long period of trial and error, I finally discovered that angular measure, in minute of arc values, and a time unit based on twenty-seven units for one revolution of the earth, was the key to the unlocking of grid secrets."

  • "Finally, after years of work, I discovered that I could formulate a series of harmonic unified equations, which indicated that the whole of physical reality was, in fact, manifested by a complex pattern of interlocking wave forms."

Besides the approaches to grid discovery of Ivan Sanderson (via an analysis of anomalous areas of the earth's surface), and Bruce Cathie (through an analysis of UFO sightings and tracks), other researchers have worked from different data, to obtain much the same result. The additional data analysed includes seismic fracture lines and nodes, ocean ridge lines, atmospheric high and lows, naturally occurring electrically charged lines such as Curry lines and Hartmann lines, and the locations of ancient cities and 'monuments'. Many of the latter align with the Energy Grid with far greater frequency than mere chance would indicate.

The following Planetary Grid System diagram is from work done by William Becker, a Professor of Industrial Design at the University of Illinois, and Bethe Hagens, a Professor of Anthropology at Governors State University. A similar, but slightly less complete, grid was developed by three Russian scientists: Nikolai Goncharov, Vyacheslav Morozov, and Valery Makarov.

BH_gridsystem (100K)

All of the various interpretations of the grid involve projections of geometric solids within the sphere. The corresponding contact points at the earth's surface then form the grid's pattern and energy outflow points. Cathie's grid is based on a cube and an octahedron within the sphere of the earth. Of all the variants his appears to offer the most predictive capabilities with regard to energy. Cathie's grid is, therefore, of most practical use in unlocking free energy.

Forget, for the moment, the debate about what UFOs are and whether they even exist. It does not matter whether the UFOs that produced the tracks that gave Cathie the clues to the nature of the Energy Grid are tangible vehicles, perhaps with alien or human pilots, or simply electromagnetic or radiant energy phenomena associated with the energy flowing through it (much like the 'ball lightning' that accompanied many of Nikola Tesla's experiments). The important thing is to have discovered the structure of the grid and the locations of its main nodes of energy. Bruce Cathie has achieved more in this regard than any of the other investigators and mappers of the grid.

The most complex basis for the World Grid is that developed by Becker and Hagens. They built on the work of Ivan Sanderson, who used a twenty-faced icosahedron, and the Russians: Goncharov, Morozov, and Makarov, who had added even more points to the grid. What Becker and Hagens did was to introduce a further geometrical figure, a spherical polyhedron. Here is how they describe this step.

  • "We propose that the planetary grid map outlined by the Russian team Goncharov, Morozov, and Makarov is essentially correct, with its overall organisation anchored to the north and south axial poles and the Great Pyramid at Giza. The Russian map, however, lacks completeness, in our opinion, which can be accomplished by overlaying of a complex, icosahedrally-derived, spherical polyhedron developed by R, Buckminster Fuller. In his book Synergetics 2, he called it the "Composite of Primary and Secondary Icosahedron Great Circle Sets." We have shortened that to Unified Vector Geometry (UVG) 120 sphere. We use the number 120 due to its easy comprehension as a spherical polyhedron with 120 identical triangles - all approximately 30, 60 and 90 in composition."

The Becker Hagens grid shown is particularly useful in understanding and demonstrating such effects as the long-term shaping of continents by energy nodes, and the strong correlation between the grid and the location of ancient 'monuments' and cities. The latter data strongly support the notion of a global knowledge of the existence of the grid in ancient times. Interested readers should seek out information from Carl Munck's writings regarding this aspect.

Beware Misinformation [224]
Without wishing to accuse the author of a particular site on the WWW of spreading misinformation, the issue of whether the 'antenna' photographed by the USS Eltanin is a manufactured object or a sponge requires some consideration. The person who claims that the object is a sponge, namely Cladorhiza, might be entirely genuine in his opinion. He should certainly be entitled to hold such a view and to express it on the internet - otherwise the core principles of Freenet would be jeopardised. However, there are certain aspects of the information on that author's site which illustrate the potential for disinformation to be spread across the web. Accordingly, the doubtful items of 'information' are pointed out below.

The first exhibit here is the official photograph made by scientists aboard the Eltanin, it shows an unidentified object on the seabed south-west of the Cape Horn, at latitude 59o South and longitude 105o West.

Eltanin photo (98K)

On the web site in question this same photograph is labelled as follows:

2.16 A bizarre antennae-like abyssal sponge (Cladorhiza) stands erect, towering over the manganese nodules, 3904 m, Bellingshausen Basin, South Pacific.

The image is presented as that of a carnivorous sponge, but it is actually the photograph recorded by the Eltanin. Although the author of the web site argues that what the Eltanin recorded was a sponge, it is highly misleading to label the Eltanin image with the above text. This creates the impression that the object is a sponge when, in fact, it is of unknown origin and composition. The chosen labelling of the image is blatantly misleading.

The content of the web site is more than somewhat selective. For example, Cathie is mentioned in the following terms:

  • "Scientists then on board were unable to identify the strange object, which lent it an air of mystery. Bruce Cathie of New Zealand devised a Planetary Grid System around it, of such power and influence that atomic bombs could only detonate in certain places. Cathie made 'improvements' to Einstein's famous equation e=mc2 in the process."

All this is, of course, designed to denigrate Cathie and discredit his discoveries. However, the facts remain as follows.

  1. Cathie did not fashion a Planetary Grid System around the Eltanin object, his energy grid was built up from confirmed observations of UFO tracks in New Zealand and other parts of the world. The discovery of the object on the seabed southwest of Cape Horn simply helped him to orientate his findings. He continues to maintain that the object is an antenna and that there are other similar devices at locations he can calculate from his, now extensive, knowledge of the grid mathematics.

  2. Cathie's work on atomic explosions does not simply indicate that detonations are only possible at certain locations, there is more to it than that. Cathie's findings on atomic explosions will be discussed further on this freesite. But, in any event, the question of atomic explosions has nothing to do with the nature of the Eltanin artefact, i.e. whether it is an antenna or a sponge. The reference to atom bombs is simply included to paint Cathie as some kind of kook.

  3. Similarly, Cathie's work on the relationships between mass, the speed of light, gravity and energy, have no direct relevance to the nature of the Eltanin object. In reality, people with sufficient understanding of physics and mathematics and who will take the time to read Cathie's books, are most likely to conclude that his equations do not contravene Einstein in any way.

  4. Then, there is the matter of what is not said about Cathie and the Eltanin object. For instance, the fact that Cathie visited the Eltanin when it docked in Auckland for a short refit, and that he spoke to the scientists directly. EltaninUSS (13K)He was told that they considered the unknown object to be some sort of artefact (i.e. made by human beings) and that it had a metallic appearance. One scientist, a specialist on the very plankton on which sponges feed, is recorded (by The New Zealand Herald) as having said that the object could hardly be a plant. He is quoted as telling a reporter that, "At that depth there is no light so photosynthesis could not take place and plants could not live." He added, "I wouldn't like to say the thing is man-made because this brings up the problem of how one would get it there."
    The place on the ocean floor where the object was photographed by the Eltanin is deep, over 4 kilometres or 2.5 miles down. At latitude 59o South, the location of the object is well below the "roaring forties" and in an area where highly turbulent seas are the everyday norm. Positioning an antenna with any accuracy would be very difficult, even with today's technology.

The second exhibit in the consideration of the misinformation in the content of one particular website that claims that the mystery of the Eltanin object is 'solved', and that is simply the well-recorded sponge Cladorhiza, is an illustration that is presented below.

antenna or sponge (35K)

The box encloses the illustration taken from the site. On the left is a drawing taken directly from the Eltanin photograph, only the background is said to have been removed. On the right is a redrawn depiction of a Cladorhiza sponge said to have been dredged from over 12,800 feet of water during the late 1800s. The limp form of the plant is supposedly due to its decompression. If it came from over 2 miles down it is surprising that there was as much detail left as the sketch shows.

Note that the left-hand illustration, that taken from the Eltanin image, shows a bend at the base of the stem, just as one might expect in a natural object such as a plant. Even so, most people on the street would be unlikely to accept that the two drawings are of the same organism. They might, though, accept that because there is a 'natural' bend to the stalk of the 'sponge' it is not a manufactured rod or spike. Now look at the image outside the box. This has been edited to remove the false baselines that tend to emphasis the slight curvature of the stem, and to restore the right-hand side of the base to coincide with the original Eltanin photo. The photo shows a thickening of the base of the object, but it does not show any bend.

Now the object looks much more like a manufactured device and less like a sponge. This is what the Eltanin's photograph actually shows. There is no bend in the stem in the original image, it was introduced in the drawing that is presented on the web site that claims to have 'solved' the mystery by identifying the object as a sponge.

Here is what Bruce Cathie writes about the contention that the Eltanin object is an abyssal life form:

  • "Since this photo was taken there has been a determined attempt by the scientific world to label this object as nothing more than a plant of some sort. A journalist friend and I managed to visit the Eltanin during one of its few visits to New Zealand and when we discussed this object with some of the scientists on board, the comment was that it was classed as an artefact. This was before the great hush-up but, regardless of that, I believe that the mathematical proofs will show without doubt that the object is artificial, and most probably an aerial of some sort."

  • "I cantered the grid on the position of this object found by the Eltanin, and the 180o reciprocal of this in Russian Siberia, lining the whole thing up with the section I had found in New Zealand. I found the system to be lined up very closely with the magnetic field of the earth. The equator of the grid followed very closely the line of zero dip around the world. (That is, the positions on the earth's surface where a magnetic compass needle has only a horizontal and no vertical component.)"

The final exhibit is not taken from the 'it's a sponge' web site, but it is important in evaluating the claim that the 'thing' photographed by the USS Eltanin is a lone Cladorhiza plant. When someone presents a drawing of that organism and likens it to the Eltanin object, it is best to seek out a photograph of the sponge itself. Cladorhiza (43K)

A search of the WWW readily turned up a PowerPoint slide from the biology department of a US university.

As the top image shows, Cladorhiza does have 'arms' branching from a central stem. But they are not arranged at 900 like those of the Eltanin object, nor are they straight and rigid. An average person who was shown this image would be highly unlikely to accept that it matches the characteristics of the Eltanin object in any way. The case against the Cladohriza 'solution' is rested right there. The 'thing' on the deep ocean floor is not a Cladorhiza plant, nor probably any other form of sponge.

The Location of the Eltanin Object [225]
The artefact, if that is what it is, in the Eltanin photograph looks kind of lonely, sitting there miles from the surface of the ocean and a thousand miles from any inhabited land mass. There is nothing else on the sea floor around it. Perhaps it is a manufactured object that simply 'fell off' some ship or other and speared itself into the seabed where the Eltanin found it. But Cathie says it fits as a 'corner point' of an energy grid that is closely aligned with the earth's magnetic field. Could some piece of hardware have dropped off a ship at precisely the right spot? Or might the 'thing' that is described as looking like an antenna actually be one?

The following illustration shows the location of the Eltanin object. The two green arrows above the Antarctic land mass point to its position.

Aerial position (66K)

If you run your eye up the line of longitude from the position of the object you will see, approximately where that line crosses the coast of North America. Then look back to the Becker Hagens grid and note the small blue node point in the vicinity of the Eltanin object. It is numbered '57' on the Planetary Grid System map. It will be seen that the line of longitude from that grid node cuts the coast of North America further north than that of the Eltanin object. So, the positions of the object and the Becker Hagens grid node are different. Shouldn't they be the same, if we are dealing with the same energy grid? Is the Eltanin object in the wrong position after all?

The following excerpts from Bruce Cathie's first book, Harmonic 33, help to answer the question.

  • "For years, government bodies and private citizens have been trying to find some reasonable and satisfactory explanation for the sightings of saucers. the more imaginative reports have tried to establish that UFO sightings are caused by mirages, hallucinations, the wrong interpretation of cloud movements, unusual temperatures, and a wide variety of other natural phenomena. But has anyone ever seen ice-crystals flying in formation at hundreds of miles per hour> (That is one of the many explanations given of UFOs sighted over the Tasman by a Qantas crew.) I cannot accept that explanation. These objects were sighted by responsible and experienced observers on the flight deck of a multi-million-dollar airliner.""Even though I realised I still did not have the complete answer through lack of equipment and accuracy, I believed I had more than enough evidence that the UFOs were active in some project and I informed the proper authorities of my findings."

  • "I sent copies of my findings to the American Air Force Intelligence at Wright Patterson Airfield Ohio. They returned them some weeks later stating that I had insufficient evidence In view of this, I wondered if there were some gross error in my theories. I spent another month checking through everything I had done up to this point, and I eventually found the error.

    I found nothing wrong in my theory of the construction of the grid, but there was possibly evidence of more grid-systems than one. I played around with this for a time, until the obvious answer dawned on me. There were two grids, one of which was old and had existed in historical times, and this was being superseded by a new one under construction. This realisation opened up a number of new avenues, and I have recently found evidence that both grids in fact interlock, and that repairs are being carried out right now over the whole system. The grid I had completed on the small globe was a mixture of the two. As both grids are identical and positioned close together, I had not been very far from the truth the whole time. It was just my interpretation of only one grid that was false."

So Cathie found that there is an ancient grid and a new one. The former conforms to the Becker Hagens grid system and is measured from a meridian that passes through the Great Pyramid of Giza. (The adoption of Greenwich as the prime meridian, in 1884, served to obscure the significance of the ancient Giza reference point.) The energy grid that Cathie discovered while puzzling over the Eltanin object was, he believes, 'under construction' at the time. Once it was completed the second grid's reaction with the original grid created a third -resultant - grid. Here is Cathie's diagram of the situation.

CathieEnergy3 (73K)

In his book, The Energy Grid, Bruce Cathie writes further about the three energy grids. Here are some excerpts.

  • "in my earlier works I discussed the methods I used to line up the system and calculate the first estimates of the grid pole positions, and the major focal points of the grid similar to the Eltanin 'aerial' placement.

    The reciprocal position of the Eltanin 'aerial' is at latitude 59o08' north, latitude 75o east, in Siberia. I calculated the length of the diagonal of what I call, for simplicity, the 'polar grid square' and found it to be 5091.168825 minutes of arc long. I plotted a track from the Siberian position through the north geographic pole and measured off this distance to locate another corner 'aerial' of the polar square. (Square is not technically the right word to use as the four sides are formed by sections of small circles which are in different planes to each other. When the 'polar square' areas are transferred from the surface of the earth sphere on to a flat plane such as a map, then a perfect square is formed with sides 3600 minutes of arc long and diagonals of 5092.168825 minutes of arc.)"

  • "In the grid pattern there are actually two small circle segments, and one great circle segment connecting each of these points which form the polar squares. Each of the segments has a different path over the earth and some tricky calculating is necessary to ascertain the true length."

  • 'Once I had established this first baseline I found it quite easy to construct the main skeleton of the grid over the whole surface of the earth.

    As my work progressed I found that there were in fact two similar grids, interlocked with each other. The poles of the grids were spaced at different distances from the north geometric pole, and this arrangement set up a series of geometric harmonics which were directly related to the speed of light, mass, and gravity. The intersection of the two grids created a harmonic resonance which in turn formed a third resultant grid."

The reader should remember that although Cathie's calculations seem very theoretical and quite complicated, the energy grid that he developed fitted the local grid for New Zealand. The latter grid had been developed directly from credible reports of UFO sightings and tracks, and that material is not nearly so theoretical. Cathie simply plotted the observed tracks until a grid pattern emerged. It might be pure coincidence that the local New Zealand grid fits the global energy grid that Cathie developed around the Eltanin object, or it might not be coincidence at all.

There is one sure way to find out. Send a well equipped expedition, with impartial observers from every country on earth, to resurvey the Eltanin 'aerial', if it is still to be found. Also send similar expeditions to survey the other seven corner positions of Cathie's 'polar squares'. Such studies could well be conclusive, one way or the other. But don't expect any such expeditions to be sent out in the near future. Energy Grid studies will not occur until there are independent cities and regions prepared to seek out answers that could spell certain doom to capitalism and federalism.

Far Out Ideas For a Far Out Century [226]
This freesite is not concerned with the existence or otherwise of aliens or UFOs, nor is it concerned with what such beings might be doing in our skies. There are thousands of web sites and publications that deal with UFOs and aliens. This freesite is concerned with far more serious threats to the freedom and well-being of humanity than extraterrestrial visitors. These threats have already been identified as takerism, nationalism, capitalism, and militarism. The iron grip of the OWO on the world's resources has far more serious consequences than the alleged activities of aliens and UFOs.

Bruce Cathie happens to believe that UFOs have been engaged in rebuilding an ancient energy grid that covers the planet and facilitates their access to enormous reserves of energy. The interest here is not with the UFOs or aliens that Cathie writes of, but with the great potential for free energy to be drawn from the grid. This energy within our earth seems to be so abundant and inexhaustible that, were it to be made freely accessible for ordinary commercial and domestic uses, the capitalist system would disintegrate within only a few years.

The materialist elites of the present civilization have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and their positions of power and control in the face of ample evidence of practical 'free' energy devices and, now, a global energy grid. The rest of us have no economic dominance to lose, nor any valid reasons to fear the exploration and utilisation of the grids that Cathie and others have defined. Abundant energy will not end poverty, disease, and oppression in the world - only new attitudes can do that. But abundant energy is the key to the establishment of a Level 4 Civilization and truly free societies. Once 'free' energy is widely available such visions become practical. Without 'free' energy the prospect of a Level 4 Civilization will remain a dream.

Fresh insights and new thinking and attitudes will carry the global village forward, just as they carried Europe out of the Dark Ages and created the first Renaissance. We must expect 'far out' ideas, 'far out' discoveries and new realities. Do not be put off by information and concepts that would seem 'far out' to our grandparents. Remember what Gregory S. Paul and Earl D. Cox say about 'weird' ideas and technologies:

"It is not weird to predict a "weird" future when we live in a weird world and the evidence that things are quickly getting weirder is overwhelming."

The energy stored and released by gunpowder seemed awesome to the first people to witness it and, until they saw the power of gunpowder with their own eyes, many people refused to believe it. Soon, during the early 21st century, the release of energy from the earth beneath out feet will dwarf the power of all known thermochemical sources, and transform our economies and societies as nothing before it has ever done. Far out new technologies will fill the 21st century, and they will be matched by new, and similarly 'far out', thinking.

Mind Reach and Transformation [227]
Most people, however intelligent and well educated they might be, find far out ideas and radical hypotheses somewhat intimidating. This is not their fault, it is the fault of our society which encourages conformity and actively discourages breakout thinking of any kind. As already mentioned, Edward de Bono discovered that all young children have strong powers of imagination, an innate inquisitiveness and high creativity. Nature equips us to face a complex and changing world by providing us with these vital abilities. But by their mid teens most young people have learned to limit their imagination and to conform to the standards of mediocrity set by state education systems and the mainstream media. Thenceforth they become 'good' citizens who are unwilling and, in many cases unable, to think outside the square of familiar, conventional, ideas and practices.

Our mind reach ability has nothing to do with our performance in IQ tests. Scores in the Mensa range do not indicate whether a person will be comfortable with far out ideas, nor do they indicate any ability to make use of new ideas and technologies in transformation processes. In such areas it is not IQ that matters most but attitudes and values.

The following diagram can help those of us who are older than six years to understand and avoid the trap of always thinking and acting in the 'conceptual comfort zone' that state education systems lock us into.

mindreachzones (30K)

At a personal level:

- My Comfort Zone is the realm of familiar ideas and concepts that fill our day-to-day routines. Everyone is comfortable here. My 'reality' might not be exactly the same as your 'reality' but I am comfortable with it. Actual reality might be very different to both of our frameworks of understanding and ideas. But we are quite happy with the way we think things are. The way we think things are is the way we have learned that they are. It was our upbringing, our academic and religious education, our peer groups, and the 'authoritative' material we have been exposed to that determined what we believe, and what we are comfortable with thinking and doing.

Most of us spend the majority of our time in this zone of negligible mind reach. This does not mean that we are stupid, but it does mean that we are limited. Fortunately, the boundaries that constrain our mind reach are of our own making and we have it in our power to remove them at any time we choose.

- My Challenge Zone is what is mostly known as 'innovation' or 'creativity' but is really the extension or rearrangement of conventional knowledge and accepted concepts. It can be challenging to do, but it is not in the same class as working with truly weird and far out ideas and realities.

Everyone does some of this level of thinking, but most of us don't do enough of it. And, even if we thought and worked at this level for much of the time we would still be far short of full mind reach.

My Challenge Zone is the area of thinking and adapting that lies between the thinking that I am fully comfortable with and the thinking that I find increasingly uncomfortable. There is no sharp divide, but as the used materials and concepts become more unusual and confronting there is a point at which it is easier to close out and reject solutions than to accept them and proceed. The more used I am to working with truly weird and far out ideas the further my mind can reach before I become too uncomfortable to continue with what seem, by then, to be bizarre and foolish notions.

- My Acute Discomfort Zone is, as the title suggests, quite prickly. An analogy is the hedgerows that are used in regions of Britain and Europe instead of fences. It's a struggle to get through one but when you do get to the other side you are in another field entirely, and it could be a whole lot greener than the one you left.

The facts, ideas and concepts in this zone are, at least to me, threatening like the thorns of bushes in a hedgerow. I don't feel at all comfortable in this zone and suffer doubts and fears of failure, together with acute anxiety about being seen to be foolish for even considering such things. I have to overcome my fears and doubts before I can break into the zone that lies beyond. To do so, I will generally need to have high levels of self-confidence and a driving desire to go there. But it will always be worth the effort.

The following excerpt from the book Twelve Principles - Living With Integrity in the Twenty-First Century, by Martin Hawes, illustrates two attitudes that are characteristic of people who succeed in traversing this zone successfully. First there is an unshakable belief that a particular goal is attainable. Second there is persistence and focus while under fire from various naysayers.

  • "It is incredible what one person can do. In 1995 a young Canadian called Craig Kielburger set up an international youth-run organisation called Free The Children to help the victims of child labour in developing countries. His efforts attracted the attention of presidents, prime ministers, monarchs, and popes, and Free The Children now has more than 100,000 members in 35 countries. In 1995 Craig Kielburger was just twelve years old."

Although he was so young Craig Kielburger could get through the hedgerow because he had the necessary attributes.

In a similar vein Peter Plichta was undaunted, right from his student days, by the criticism of the many people he came into contact with who just knew that prime numbers could not possibly play any part in determining the structure of the elements. Plichta worked on the problem for 40 years until, finally, he was able to show, quite unequivocally, that the primes numbers really do govern the formation of all matter in the universe. Such a breakthrough could never have been achieved by someone who was easily deterred from working with uncomfortable ideas and under relentless ridicule.

- My Transformation Zone encompasses the full limit of my mind reach. Some others might be able to go even wider than I can but, for me, this is my absolute personal best. Just as the margins between first and last in athletics are quite narrow, so the spread between what all people can achieve in this zone is not great. Success here is not due to intelligence or educational qualifications it is more dependent on attitudes, values and an ability to tap into subconscious and spiritual realms. This is not an elite zone, it is not like the Mensa club. Most people can achieve this level of mind reach but, sadly, the prevailing focus on conventional skills and conservative thinking deters many from even attempting to go here.

Note particularly that the aiming point of full-reach transformation mind work has little to do with my personal improvement or gain. It is mainly about my development and application of the mental focus that Martinus prized above all else. The goal of full-reach mind work is to help others. As he put it: "Never let your thoughts move away from working on how you may best serve your fellow beings."

Where the label for this zone speaks, on the above diagram, about 'imaginative use of truth and new insights' it is not restricting thought to orthodox or strictly rational and observable phenomena. My Transformation Zone extends into spiritual and metaphysical realms of thought.

Also, the zone is not exclusive to famous thinkers. Albert Einstein and Edward de Bono have both worked at the extremes of human mind reach, each brought practical insights and usable tools to the rest of humanity. But this zone is not only populated with the achievements of such intellectual celebrities as Einstein and de Bono, the contributions of many authors and pathfinders also fit there - Daniel Quinn is one such person, his stories teach a philosophy that humanity needs to embrace if it is to survive and prosper. There are still others, many in great cities, universities and religious institutions, and some still living and working in jungles and remote places - as shamans.

What all these people have in common is an ability to drive thought to its very limits and then turn it into benefits that are shared widely by others. Some sages do this with knowledge and wisdom, others draw help from hallucinatory drugs, but all generate gains that have wide benefits for others, and often for humanity and nature at large. That is why accomplishments in this zone are always worthwhile, however difficult it might be to produce them.

In the present-day civilization the vast majority of people think and work in their Comfort Zone where there is very little mind reach required. However, most people in a Level 4 Civilization will think and work in the Transformation Zone.

Such a development might not be as new or novel as it seems. It is possible that ancient civilizations placed more emphasis on spiritual and metaphysical aspects than our current materialist society. While we cannot know with any certainty that places like Caral operated like that, such a proposition is consistent with the indications that those people were able to live without wars for 1,000 years. How else would they be able to achieve such an outcome, if not by focusing on serving their fellow beings? Far mind reach and far out ideas would go together in that sort of transformation zone scenario.

When mind reach extends to the outermost zone for groups of people, such as tribes or talent collectives, it reaches its most powerful state. Then, almost anything becomes possible.

A Discomfort Zone Example [228]
One of Bruce Cathie's findings provides a good example of the sort of concepts that characterise the Acute Discomfort Zone. He contends that atomic explosions can be set up for specific places and times on the surface of the earth, and that accidental explosions have occurred in the past due to instabilities in the Energy Grid; before it was repaired. This idea is so 'far out' that most people are very uncomfortable about accepting it, and of being seen to do so by others, whom they think might be quick to label them as; 'crazy', 'loony', 'crackers', etc.

The idea is even harder to accept when it is realised that Cathie is not only saying that atomic explosions can be set up according to the geometries of time and space, he is adamant that it must be done this way; otherwise there can be no detonation of an atomic or nuclear nature. The startling implication of this hypothesis is that the Cold War was a contrived farce. Since each side could accurately predict the other's options in advance neither could gain an overwhelming advantage from their nuclear weapons. Now there's a far out idea!

Understandably, the great majority of people who hear no more of Cathie's contentions than this are prone to totally reject the idea. His more serious critics attempt to heap scorn and derision on his theory and openly question his sanity. Doubt and derision are the inevitable lot of all who are courageous enough to voice far out notions and theories, these and similar reactions go with the territory of the hedgerow.

However, Cathie's detractors face one difficulty in completely debunking him and his theory, Cathie has been able to use his system to accurately confirm the exact date and time of many atomic tests, such as those carried out in the Pacific by the French during the 1960s. Once an hypothesis has been tested by practical experimentation it normally becomes accepted scientific fact, as happened with Einstein's relativity theory. Does the ability of Bruce Cathie's system to explain the exact timing of the explosions qualify it as scientific fact? Well not quite, but it certainly pushes it up the Truth Scale, and also raises a thorny problem for the sceptics.

Readers should consult the full text of Cathie's explanations of his ideas about atomic explosions, in Harmonic 33 or other books by this author. The following excerpts give some impression of Cathie's findings and reasoning on the matter.

  • "I had no reason whatsoever to suspect that atomic testing and atom bombs and the like, had any connection with UFOs or with the grid system, until I was checking some measurements on my polar map.

    I had a pair of dividers set at the grid gravity harmonic of 2,545.5 nautical miles, and I was busy checking various measurements from the main aerial positions of a polar square. I noticed during a sweep of the dividers over the map that Hiroshima appeared to be on a gravity co-ordinate from an aerial position. I did not immediately realise the significance of this, brushing it off as a coincidence, but some time later, I began to have second thoughts. So far, my hunches had paid surprising dividends; maybe atomic tests were directly connected with the grid in some way?

    The laws of geometry and mathematics are unbreakable, and if Einstein is correct then the laws that bind the structure of an atom together are the same as the laws that create the gravitational forces which hold our solar system together. The relative motions caused by the geometries of our space-time continuum are manifest as gravitational forces. We talk of magnetic attraction or gravity attraction when, in fact, bodies do not attract each other in that sense at all. The illusion of attraction is caused by the relative accelerations of the atomic structures of the bodies. If the acceleration of one body is greater than that of another, relative to space, then it will tend to move towards the other body, if it is within the vicinity of the wave motions of fields which form the body.

    If we use this theory, the nucleus and electrons of an atom are bound together in the same manner. The electrons are not kept in orbit about the nucleus because of magnetic attraction, in the sense in which we generally accept the term. The components of the atom are formed by a series of wave motions in space which combine at various spatial points to build up what, to us, is physical reality. The relative motions of these spatial points form the nucleus and orbiting electrons."

  • "... if we want to move from one point in space to another, or be destructive and dismantle an atom, then the logical answer is to arrange a geometric situation where either some or all of these relative motions are balanced by a negative or contrary motion, or completely balanced out. If we set up a geometrical opposition to some of the motions, then we would cause movement in space-time; a gravitational motor, and I believe this is what the grid achieves. But what would happen if we cancelled out all the relative motions which make up the particles of an atom, in an instant in time? I believe the particles would immediately cease to exist so far as we are concerned. For that instant of time all the particles of the atom would have zero movement in relation to our particular space and we, in fact, would leave the bits behind us as our physical world continued in its movement away from that spatial point."

  • "... Can we pick a position at any point of our globe and find that these geometric principles apply? Unfortunately we cannot, because certain conditions must be fulfilled and we must arrange to have our device at a particular point on the Earth's surface at a particular time before we can expect any reaction form it. This is because we are dealing with geometric harmonics; that is, there will only be a certain number of spatial points which will be harmonically in tune, geometrically, on the Earth in relation to the solar system at a given time. To set up a harmonic opposition to physical matter in our solar system we must pick a spatial point in the system at an instant of time which is geometrically in time with the particular harmonic opposition we have arranged by our parlour trick, This is very complicated, so let us try a rough analogy.

    We are probably familiar with those simple wire puzzles we played with as a child ... They consisted of wire nails twisted into similar geometric shapes which could be taken apart only if the two pieces were in a certain relationship to each other. The gaps in the nails were so arranged that only one geometric set of circumstances would allow the nails to be joined or parted.

    Think of the solar system as one of the nails, and the other as an atom within the system. twisted (5K)The geometric gaps are the harmonics we wish to match with each other. The gaps only occur at fixed points on either nail. now we have to remove the atom from the solar system. To do this, we have to arrange a situation where the gaps are positioned in harmony with each other, in relation to space and time, so that they can slip apart.

    We can do this in two ways:
    1. analyse the situation, and arrange the two pieces geometrically at a point in time so that there is no further cohesion between them.
    2. Juggle the two pieces in our hands for long enough and hope that at some point in time an accidental geometrical relationship will occur, and the two nails will fall apart. ..

    Our first alternative is similar to the problem we have with our atom bomb. We analyse the situation, and find a point on the Earth's surface over which we can set up our bomb at a calculated point in time when the geometric harmonic will occur.

    The second alternative is similar to what has occurred in the past, when certain grid points have lined up in a geometrical relationship in space, and caused an explosion resulting in a crater, due to the instability of the grid."

  • "Now that I had propounded this theory how could I prove it? It was at this time that the French were about to begin a series of atomic tests on an insignificant little Pacific atoll called Mururoa. Here was a test case in our own backyard."

  • "... The position they had picked must have a certain geometrical relationship to the solar system as a whole, at an instant in time. How to arrange this? They must have the position in a certain relationship to the Sun itself, at a split instant in time. This time cannot be calculated because they are dealing with the curved trajectories in space of all the atomic particles involved. They can calculate mathematically within a minute fraction of a second when the geometric harmonic will take place, but they find it impossible to calculate the exact instant. The mathematical expression of pi comes into this, and this is an expression which has a fraction which cannot be calculated to finality, even if one had a computer on the job for 20 years.

    There is a simple answer, however, and that is to set up the bomb, and arm it to go off when the Sun passes through the required geometric point. The newspapers warn us that the tests will be carried out over a series of months, so we sit back with a set of astro tables and paper on which to calculate Sun positions, and wait for the results. When the first start coming in, we must confess to a certain excitement. What began as a theory is proving in actuality to be perfectly correct. We have cracked a code that the atom bomb countries have long tried to hide. "

Because he works in minutes of arc and harmonics of the geometry of the grid, Cathie's calculations require some study before they are readily comprehended. Do not expect to 'get' the full meaning of the following examples of his calculations. The intention in presenting them here is simply to provide an indication of their nature. One must study Cathie's various publications to really understand his system.

  • "Out came my maps, and I found the pin point of land called Mururoa at latitude 22o.

    22o = half harmonic of 44o = 2,640 minutes of arc.
    2640 = connecting link between mass and speed of light
    as shown in the mathematics of the grid section.

    The distance in nautical miles, or minutes of arc, between
    Mururoa Island and the grid aerial photographed by the survey
    ship Eltanin, off the coast of South America, is 2,640 nautical
    miles.
    Coincidence?

    The distance from Mururoa Island to the US scientific electronic listening post at Blenheim, New Zealand is 2,640 nautical miles
    Coincidence?

    Angle between these two co-ordinates is 60o
    Coincidence?"

  • "3 July 1966. Successful test. The Sun was on a latitude of 2,695
    nautical miles, or minutes of arc, north of Mururoa Island.
    We see immediately that the grid speed of light reciprocal figure
    of 695 is built into the grid structure as a harmonic distance between resultant grid pole C and the corner aerial positions."

    Also, 2640 + 55 = 2695
    2640 = link between mass and speed of light
    55' = 3300" of arc = 33 harmonic factor of grid

Such conclusions as Cathie's would probably not have surprised Nikola Tesla. He always maintained that no energy could be generated by simply causing atoms to disintegrate in an atom-smashing machine. Nor, apparently, would he have thought it likely that the energy of an atomic bomb comes from compressing matter with a shaped charge until it gives up energy in a fission process. Yet, this is the public explanation of how a nuclear explosion is triggered. It seems likely that this is disinformation spread by the Nuclear Armaments Club of nations who know, and closely guard, the real secrets of triggering such explosions.

Cathie also examined the locations of Tesla's experiments and concluded that they too fell on opportune locations on the Energy Grid. He writes as follows.

    "His experiments had shown him (as I had found in my own bumbling way) that matter was nothing more than a complex matrix of wave forms locked together by harmonic resonance. The energy inherent in matter could be tapped if the secret of the geometric structure of the waveforms could be broken. It appears that, by calculation, he had found that to tune in, so to speak, to this energy ball we call the earth, he had to set up his apparatus on a particular point on its surface to ensure that the waves he proposed to transmit were in step with the natural medium. Colorado Springs was one of the ideal positions available to him.

    The position of Colorado Springs is given as 38 degrees and 50 minutes North latitude and 104 degrees 50 minutes West longitude. Calculations which have been carried out recently for this area show that a theoretical position of 38o 49' 31.629" North latitude and 104o 52' 22" West longitude would be the ideal position to set up a Tesla type experiment.

    The exact position where Tesla built his transmitter is unknown to me, but I believe it was not too far from the theoretical one.

    During my years of research I have discovered that some of the scientific establishments have been positioned in such a way that the latitude value sets up a harmonic due to the relative distance from the Equator and the North or South pole. Also I have found that there are harmonic intervals above and below the normal units of degrees, minutes and seconds of circular measure. Division or multiplication is carried out by the harmonic value of 6.

    So: for the theoretical latitude position we have:

    Distance to the North Pole = 51.174548 degrees
    Distance from the equator = 38.825453 degrees
    Difference = 12.349095 degrees
    Divided by 6 = 2.0581825 units
    Multiplied by 2 = 4.116365 units
    Square = 16.9444 units

    The harmonic 169444 is related to MASS, GRAVITY and [ENERGY] and is demonstrated many times in my later works. The method of calculation also follows a regular pattern. The great circle displacement between longitude 104o 52' 22' west and 90o 00' 00" west at the same latitude, also sets up an important harmonic. The value 694.44 minutes of arc. This is the reciprocal harmonic of the Grid speed of light, 144,000 minutes of arc per Grid second, in free space.

    Tesla must have been well aware of the importance of the position he chose, but kept the reasons a closely guarded secret."

  • "It is interesting to note that in this same area the military have chosen to set up the greatest electrical complex in the world - the North American Defence Command NORAD. I am not telling tales out of school here because other publications have already pointed this fact out.

    ... From a public point of view though, one of the reasons becomes clear why the work and discoveries of Tesla remain suppressed: the military application of his discoveries has been considered far more important than the welfare of the ordinary citizen of the world."

  • "He [Tesla] discovered that a rate of 150,000 oscillations a second, which produced electrical pulsations with a wavelength of 2000 metres, was necessary to produce the effects he required in the transmission of usable power through the earth.

    If we convert the wavelength of 2,000 metres to a minute of arc or nautical mile equivalent on the earth's surface the result is 1.0792237. The experimental value was therefore very close to 1.08 minutes of arc, or one twenty thousandth of the circumference of the earth. 21,600 minutes divided by 1.08.

    the exact number of cycles to obtain a 1.08 minute of wavelength would be 1.49892.18 per second. This would tune the transmitter in harmony with the world grid system.

    In the early stages of my work I could not obtain pure harmonics from all my calculations when dealing with physical substance - that is, exactly 144 for the light harmonic etc. Tesla stated that it is not possible to obtain pure resonance or harmonic vibrations, because if this were so then matter itself would disintegrate. A certain amount of resistance must be allowed for to prevent complete destruction of physical substances. "

  • "The reason for the location of the transmitter of the world power system at Wardenclyffe, in the Shoreham area of Long Island, would also have been because of the geometrics involved. If the station were to operate at maximum efficiency, it had to be set up in a position that ensured the propagation of the electromagnetic waveforms was in perfect harmony with the atomic structure of the Earth. The electrons in every atom of every element had to be resonated in order to transmit the energy being imparted.

    During the first world war the Wardencliffe Tower was dynamited for some obscure reason [other accounts say that it was dismantled on the pretence that it was a military target - on Long Island, in WWI! - and taken away in military trucks. - Lothar ], and most traces of Tesla's activity in the area completely obliterated.

    At the time of writing the initial draft for this chapter I was unable to find the exact location of the tower site, because of the scanty records left behind for public viewing.

    I did publish a theoretical position in my earlier works which showed a series of harmonics but was never really satisfied with the results. One of my readers in England decided to help me with the problem and wrote to a friend of his who lives on Long Island asking it were possible to pinpoint the site. He sent the results of his query on to me and I quote a section of his letter:

    'I mentioned to my friend that you were unable to locate the site of Tesla's Tower. Well this produced an unexpected reaction from my friend because it is just around the corner from where she lives; in the grounds of the Peerless Company. In fact the road that runs on the other side of the boundary fence, 50 yards from the octagonal concrete base, is called Tesla Street.

    Peerless replied that according to the highways department (presumably Suffolk County) the coordinates are as follows:

    40o 56' 50.3" north / 72o 53' 55.6" west.'

    At last a position was available for study, although I have not been able to check the accuracy. If any reader can supply more information, I would be most grateful.

    Computer calculations indicated that Tesla was in possession of knowledge far in advance of his time. If the position of the transmitter was near correct then the geometric placement was directly related to the unified equations discovered in my work on the world grid system.

    The longitudinal placement indicated that Tesla had chosen a position harmonically tuned to the reciprocal of the Greenwich meridian."

  • "Another interesting point that I believe we should note is that Tesla insisted that 60 cycles a second would be the most efficient frequency to use in all the alternators and motors produced from his patents. There was much opposition to this from the manufacturers and practical men in the field, but Tesla won his point and, to this day, 60 cycles a second is the frequency used in alternating -current transmission.

    Why? It has been found that one of the basic natural frequencies of the Earth is six cycles per second. Tesla picked a harmonic of 6 which would be the most practical."

Readers should note that although Tesla did not specify exact locations for further Magnifying Transmitters, he had in mind that the complete system would consist of five devices. Besides Wardenclyffe he spoke of another near Amsterdam, another in China, and one at each of the poles. If you look back to the illustration of the Becker Hagens grid it can be seen that such a system would provide near-optimum coverage of the continental land masses of our planet.

It is also extremely interesting to consider what Cathie's computer might make of the combination of the geographical position of the street outside the Sari Club in Bali and the relative position of the Sun at the time of the 1012 megablast. If, when the calculations are done, they click straight into the harmonics of the Energy Grid, this will shift the likelihood of there having been a nuclear device involved well towards the top of the Truth Scale, and confirm the suspicions of many thinking people, including members of the Indonesian Parliament, that it was a mini-nuke after all.

New Insights from the Acute Discomfort Zone [229]
As already noted, the thinking that goes on in the outer zones of mind reach is seldom comfortable. Nor is it generally applauded or rewarded by the guardians of the status quo: big government, big business, and big media. However, the foregoing excerpts and discussions indicate that there is a broad consensus of opinion, and a striking similarity in discoveries and findings, amongst those inquisitive souls who have ventured into the hedgerows of far out thought about the nature of matter and the true source of energy.

The concept of matter that comes out of insights gained in the hedgerows of acute discomfort is totally different to that which forms the basis of conventional science and public education systems. Instead of the notion that matter is solid and permanent, being made up of smaller and smaller particles that are somehow 'glued' together by forces that nobody quite understands, we find something that is far less tangible, and far more mystical. Once hedgerow thinkers move beyond the range of our observation, and confront realities at very small and very large scales, they find that, just as various sages have told us, everything is number. Not only that; the numerical relationships are geometric and harmonic. Matter is made manifest via a vibrational space that contains the energy and information that define our world. Einstein knew this, he said clearly, "There is no matter".

A major consequence of more and more far out thinkers understanding matter and energy in these new terms is, inevitably, an increase in spirituality. This shift is in accordance with the earlier diagram of Three Domains of Theory; science and religion meet within the realms of the non-material, where the whole truth can be found.

Another consequence is that inventions that were successfully suppressed during the 20th century Dark Age will no longer be secret, or so discredited that nobody is prepared to pursue their construction and use. In less time than most people can believe, energy will be so near to being costless that the economics of scarcity will be overturned, and a higher level of civilization will become practical. The 2nd Renaissance holds great promise for everyone, even those who doubt that the world can change so radically and so quickly.

Seek to Understand New Technologies and Their Impact on Scarcity [230]
Whereas science is primarily about questions of 'why' the world is as it is, technology is mainly about questions of 'how' to bring the fruits of theoretical knowledge and scientific discoveries to society. The preceding 'why' material has covered the subject of energy and why, once various forms of knowledge suppression are bypassed in talent collectives and new tribal societies, energy can become abundant and free. Now it is appropriate to sketch out a few examples of new technologies that can serve free cities and a Level 4 Civilization.

There is an important distinction to be made between various new technologies. One category builds from the thinking of the Comfort Zone and leads to technologies that are innovative and creative in the conventional sense. A second category takes concepts developed within the Acute Discomfort Zone and builds technologies that are entirely novel and unconventional in comparison to those of the 20th century.

Sequential Advances
The new technologies in this category are extrapolations of existing inventions and knowledge. An example is the scramjet engine that operates in the upper atmosphere and has already achieved a speed of 5,000 mph, (albeit for a short time, and unmanned). This technology is far more advanced than the simple internal combustion engine that powered the Wright Flyer, in 1903, but it is a direct descendent of all aero engines. The reality of powered flight using engines to generate thrust has been evident for 100 years.

Discontinuous Advances
The new technologies in this category are entirely novel. There were no precursors; nothing to build from. An example is a teleportation device. Until a team of IBM theorists showed, in 1993, that the science fiction of the Star Trek series does not violate any known laws of physics, there was nothing to suggest that teleportation devices could actually be built. But they can, and they are examples of a technology that sprang out of impossibility to become reality.

Teleportation Technology In The Making [231]
The following excerpt is from the book The Age of Spiritual Machines, by Ray Kurzweil. It provides a very clear account of the principles of quantum entanglement and the instant transmission of random states at speeds far above that of light speed.

  • "This effect is called quantum entanglement. Einstein, who was not a fan of quantum mechanics, had a different name for it, calling it 'spooky action at a distance.' The phenomenon was recently demonstrated [in 1997] by Dr Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva in a recent experiment across the city of Geneva. Dr Gisin sent twin photons in opposite directions through optical fibres. Once the photons were about seven miles apart, they each encountered a glass plate from which they could either bounce off or pass through. Thus, they were each forced to make a decision to choose among two equally probable pathways. Since there was no possible communication link between the two photons, classical physics would predict that their decisions would be independent. But they both made the same decision. And they did so at the same instant in time, so even it there were an unknown communication path between them, there was not enough time for a message to travel from one photon to the other at the speed of light. The two particles were quantum entangled and communicated instantly with each other regardless of their separation. The effect was repeated over many such photon pairs.

    The apparent communication between the two photons takes place at a speed far greater than the speed of light. In theory, the speed is infinite in that the decoherence of the two photon travel decisions, according to quantum theory, takes place at exactly the same instant. Dr Gisin's experiment was sufficiently sensitive to demonstrate the communication was at least ten thousand times faster than the speed of light.

    So, does this violate Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which postulates the speed of light as the fastest speed at which we can transmit information? The answer is no - there is no information being communicated by the entangled photons. The decision of the photons is random - a profound quantum randomness - and randomness is precisely not information. Both the sender and the receiver of the message simultaneously access the identical random decisions of the entangled photons, which are used to encode and decode, respectively, the message. So we are communicating randomness - not information - at speeds far greater than the speed of light. ...

    Even though we cannot instantly transmit information using quantum entanglement, transmitting randomness is still very useful. It allows us to resurrect the process of encryption that quantum computing would destroy. If the sender and receiver of a message are at the two ends of an optical fibre, they can use the precisely matched random decisions of a stream of quantum entangled photons to respectively encode and decode a message. Since the encryption is fundamentally random and nonrepeating, it cannot be broken. Eavesdropping would also be impossible, as this would cause quantum decoherence that could be detected at both ends. So privacy is preserved.

    Note that in quantum encryption, we are transmitting the code instantly. The actual message will arrive much more slowly - at only the speed of light."

Recall here the observation of Gerald L. Schroeder that, "Metaphysics has entered mainstream, peer-reviewed, university-approved physics, though of course not by that name. In academia it's called quantum mechanics." The science that is being done on 'spooky action at a distance' is leading directly to new technologies that are quite novel and unprecedented; such as teleportation. Grant governed science is using 'respectable' terms - quantum mechanics, and nanotechnology - to describe what were much earlier called metaphysics and alchemy.

Whatever labels are applied, teleportation technologies are already at a stage equivalent to that reached by the Wright Brothers while building their Flyer in their bicycle shop. The principles of teleportation technology are depicted in the following diagram from IBM's research site on the WWW.

teleportation (11K)

The transmission of a random code between two places, anywhere in the universe, is instantaneous. The information necessary to decode and reconstruct an object at another place travels at the speed of light. In the process, the original object is destroyed and an exact replica is created; at a distance from the original position.

In June, 2000, scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra successfully teleported a laser beam that contained a radio signal from one place to another. Just as the above diagram indicates, the original beam and its signal was obliterated, and another beam that still contained the radio signal appeared at the target receiving point. Not quite magic, but getting close.

A Brand NEW Adelaide to Darwin Railway! [232]
In 2004 the same government that funded the ANU research into teleportation opened a major rail link between Adelaide, in the south, and Darwin, in the north. It cost AU$ 1.4 billion, consumed 5.5 million man hours in construction, extends for some 1,420 kilometres, has 120 bridges, and rests on 2.3 million concrete sleepers. It would have been a magnificent addition to Australia's infrastructure in 1904. But, in 2004, amid the burgeoning of magical new technologies that will render railways and most other forms of 19th century transportation obsolete, it is a damp squib - a rubber chicken that is most likely to have its neck well and truly wrung before it can return a fraction of the investment made in it.

Michio Kaku is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York, and a prolific author and science presenter on US radio. In his book, Visions - How Science Will Revolutionise the 21st Century and Beyond, kaku (10K)Kaku makes it very clear that science is close to achieving mastery in three areas that have long been out of reach; Matter, Life, and Mind. When these areas are understood, and new and novel technologies that use the knowledge become reality, the whole of human society will be transformed.

Although Kaku is clearly convinced that such changes are inevitable, his time lines are conservative. He seems to make the mistake of extrapolating past rates of scientific breakthrough and technological development into the future. Other knowledgeable commentators see it differently - they feel that the future will be nothing like the past, and believe that the impacts that Kaku writes of will be felt within one decade, rather than three or four. Perhaps the key point to recognise is that mastery will not be simultaneously attained in all three of the 'holy grail' areas that Kaku nominates. Uncovering the secrets of Life and Mind will take longer than it will for Matter. Scientists and technologists around the world are closing in on mastery of matter at a rapid rate.

It might seem to be a long leap from teleporting the information in a radio signal a short distance, to teleporting manufactured items from Adelaide straight to Singapore or Beijing - at light speed. However, once the principles are understood it is simply a matter of scaling up the technology. Sending living things by such means will have to wait until the secrets of Life and Mind are unlocked by science, but inert objects, even those that embody once-living content - such as bottles of wine, should not be too much of a problem for full scale teleporters.

3D Copying and Nanofacture [233]
An equivalent emerging technology for delivering 'drop it on your foot' objects, but one that is based on different principles to teleportation, is nanoconstruction. In this already tested technology the instructions required to fabricate or nanoconstruct an item are sent over the Internet from a source point to a delivery point.

Nanotechnology involves working with and manipulating matter at the atomic and molecular level. One nanometer is a billionth of a meter. Scientists in a number of countries are actively engaged in developing self-assembling materials and nanofacturing processes that build objects from elemental components rather than crudely machining them from blocks of metal or other substances. Proponents of molecular manufacturing consider that, given the development of suitable nanotechnology tools and assemblers, it will be possible to build products from the atomic level up. This goal not only promises perfect products - bearings could be made so smooth that they would be frictionless - but also very inexpensive manufactured goods.

Nanofacture has already been tested in a preliminary sense by 3D copying technology. It is already commercially and militarily practical to transmit instructions for the reproduction of a three-dimensional object across the Internet, and then 'print out' the replica at the receiving location. Unlike the process of teleportation, internet based 3D copying does not destroy the original. It is, of course, much slower. Nonetheless, there are commercial applications of this sort that use a homogenous powder to 'mold' the copy and then fuse it to form the final object. All that is really transmitted here is the shape of the item, there is, as yet, a lack of complexity and function in the formation of 3D copies. This situation is changing, however, and scientists are starting to build multi-substance copies, and even objects containing semi-conducting and non-conducting composites.

The difference between 3D copying and 3D printing is that the former scans an original object and produces a copy, whereas the latter uses programmed instructions to create an object at the receiving point. The US military, as long ago as 2000, successfully demonstrated 3D printing - of a carburettor block for a tank engine - on the back of a truck in simulated battlefield conditions, via a satellite link.

Spike Technologies [234]
Teleportation and nanofacture are not just new technologies, they are examples of spike technologies. These are the magical inventions and materials that emerge during Vernor Vinge's singularity - the point at which humanity comes to know all that it can know. Recall how Vinge described the approach of this spike in knowledge and understanding:

"We are on the edge of a change comparable to the rise of human life on earth."

spike2R (39K)

Damien Broderick is a prominent Australian science writer and futurist who is credited with having originated the term’ virtual reality'. His 1997 book, The Spike - Accelerating Into The Unimaginable Future, draws on Vernor Vinge's concept and the writings of technological visionaries such as Eric Drexler.broderick (16K)

Broderick popularised the notion of a looming 'spike' in knowledge and an explosion of seemingly magical 'spike technologies'.

The above diagram shows how the old 'machine age' that supported the Level 3 Civilization at the start of the 20th century gave way to computers and other digital technologies. By the mid 1980s the formation of an age of non-biological intelligence was already underway, but this was not readily evident in the data-shuffling machines of that era. Nonetheless, the first practical personal computers had begun to break down the domination of mainframes from 1981 and, by 1984, Dana Andrews had discovered the basis for non-programmed reasoning in optical networks. The 25 year lead-up period required for Vinge's singularity and Broderick's spike technologies to eventuate began back then.

As the diagram shows, the sum total of all knowledge and scientific understanding begins to rise steeply from the year 2000. All scientists and technologists in the developed world have already been equipped with powerful computers to aid their research, and they have been connected with all other discoveries and theories in their field, via the Internet. None of that is new, it happened decades ago. Presently, we are seeing the rapid escalation of knowledge, discoveries and practical new technologies that Vinge predicted.

Amazing as it might seem, Drexler's nano-assemblers, that manufacture 'drop it on your foot' items from nano-soups, atom by atom with perfect precision and quality every time, are far closer than we can imagine. Only a short time beyond that point, humanity will have to come to terms with 'machine' intelligences that are more powerful than natural human intelligence, and we will have to consider issues of 'machine's rights' and the ethics of implanting or otherwise enhancing human brains to increase their capacity and power. Sometime after that stage is reached, but before technology has completely spiked, we might well have to decide how to live and travel beyond our galaxy without our bodies, flashing only our minds and memories across millions of light years, to inhabit new bio-digital forms there.

Damien Broderick's ideas about the way human societies will exist once scarcity is replaced with new technologies of abundance are interesting. Here is an excerpt from The Spike: it is sub-titled "The medium future - a tribal utopia."

  • "Near-Spike technologies will ensure that everyone could have access to this cornucopia, and while different cultures and moieties within those cultures will respond idiosyncratically to the great change, we might expect a general drift back toward the ancient codes implanted by evolutionary pressures. Humans have evolved in a million years and more of moderate ease, each tribe's small numbers drawing modestly upon the self-replenishing bounty of the earth. We will slip easily back into that blissful state, spared its occasional murderous bouts of uncontrollable fire, flood, drought, plague and infestation.

    Since our ancestors had to survive such disasters, we evolved with reserves to meet extreme demands. When need drives us, we readily exert ourselves. Developing herding, farming and machine technology has nudged us, step by insidious step, into acting as if that emergency prowess was the way we ought to live all the time. The results are sometimes lethal stress, anger, road rage ... Tribe finds itself pitted against tribe. By the middle of the twenty-first century, however, with the work fetish vanished willy-nilly, it will be the best features of tribalism that rise to save us from ennui and the stress of nothing to do with our jobless time. "

Theories, Tools, Technologies [235]
When Eric Drexler first put forward his vision of a nanotechnology age, in his book Engines of Creation, it was 1990 and nothing like that had been thought of before. There were no theoretical principles for nanoconstruction, there were no tools suitable for working at nanometer scales, and there were no designs for practical nanoconstructors. Great scepticism was the only thing that could, at the time, be said to be plentiful insofar as nanotechnology was concerned.

The concepts of nanofacture are simple, instead of making items from the outside-in, by milling away or otherwise removing 'waste' material, nanoproducts are built from the primary building blocks of nature - atoms. molecularmanufacture (22K)The process is inside-out, there will be no waste and the precision should be higher than anything ever achieved during the industrial age. The feedstock for a nanoconstructor comprises molecules that can be broken down into their constituent atoms and reassembled by one of two processes.

The first is part by part assembly, much like a machine age production line. In the second nanofacturing model materials assemble themselves out of a nano 'soup' that is rich in the required atoms. Both these processes use familiar paradigms, one of a production line, the other of chemical vats and reactions that can be observed in many of today's factories. While both of these approaches are likely to be tried, with some likely successes, there is a third paradigm that is definitely post-industrial. It involves forming or condensing matter out of carefully defined vibrational patterns, and will be discussed later.

Today, people like Eric Drexler are acknowledged as visionaries, because it is becoming clear that nanotechnology is going to be a major form of manufacturing in the 21st century. In 1990 just about everyone doubted that it would be possible to manufacture perfect products using an 'inside-out' nanoconstruction process. However, Drexler has the perfect answer for the sceptics, he says simply,

"If you want to see a nanomolecular machine look in the mirror".

Nanotechnology, in rudimentary forms, is already a multi-billion dollar industry, with applications used in missile guidance systems, 'smart' materials, the sensors that trigger automobile air bags, and many other inventions. Nobody dismisses nanotechnlogy anymore, but they still underestimate how rapidly it can advance. Pundits in the field of manufacturing - people who should know the spike technology answers but don't - continue to conservatively estimate that the appearance of nanofacture devices and nanosoups is thirty years ahead of us. Those who are active in the many laboratories now working on these technologies consider the horizon could be far closer, perhaps as little as thirty or forty months away.

The necessary theories are developing rapidly, many practical tools for working at the nano scale now exist, and teams of experimenters and 'tinkerers' are working on real world construction devices and products. Spike technologies are coming sooner than most people think.

Quantum Dots and Programmable Atoms [236]
Wil McCarthy is an engineer and also a science columnist and author, dealing with both science fiction and science fact. While he was Chief Technology Officer for Galileo Shipyards, an aerospace research company, McCarthy wroteMcCarthy (15K) a book titled Hacking Matter - Levitating Chairs, Quantum Miracles, and the Infinite Wierdness of Programmable Atoms. It is very relevant to the development of spike technologies, particularly those that seek to create new forms of matter.

Wil McCarthy explains that quantum dots are cheaply produced silicon 'traps' that confine electrons in all three dimensions, so that they cease behaving as particles and, instead, behave as standing waves. In this form, trapped within a nanoscale silicon dot on a base substrate, the electrons behave much as they do within atoms. The following excerpts from Wil McCarthy's book should help the reader to understand the nature of a quantum dot.

  • "Unable to flow, unable to move as particles of even hold a well defined position, the trapped electrons must instead behave as de Broglie standing waves, or probability density functions, or strangely shaped clouds of diffuse electric charge. 'Strangely shaped' because, even as waves, the negatively charged electrons will repel each other and attempt to get as far apart as their energies and geometries permit.

    If this sounds familiar, it's because there's another, more ordinary place where electrons behave this way: in atoms. Electrons, which are part of an atom, will arrange themselves into 'orbitals,' which constrain and define their positions around the positively charged nucleus. These orbitals, and the electrons that partially or completely fill them, are what determine the physical and chemical properties of an atom - that is, how it is affected by electric and magnetic fields, and also what other sorts of atom it can react with, and how strongly.

    This point bears repeating; the electrons trapped in a quantum dot will arrange themselves as though they were part of an atom, even though there's no atomic nucleus for them to surround. Which atom they resemble depends on the number of excess electrons trapped inside the dot. Amazing, right? ..."

  • "... quantum dots needn't be formed by etching blocks out of a quantum well. Instead, the electrons can be confined electrostatically, by electrodes whose voltage can be varied on demand, like a miniature electric fence or corral. In fact, this is the preferred method, since it permits the dots' characteristics to be adjusted without any physical modification to the underlying material. We can pump electrons in and out simply by varying the voltage on the fence."

  • "... Since an atom's chemical properties are determined by its electrons, these are all you need to create, in chemical terms, an artificial atom. One electron gets you hydrogen, two gets you helium, and so on. Each dot has its own unique periodic table, though; the size and shape and composition of the device have a huge effect on how its electrons interact. We can easily call up an artificial, six-electron 'carbon atom' on the chip, but its structure may not resemble that of a natural carbon atom.

    For example, most quantum dots today are very nearly two-dimensional - the electrostatic 'corral being much larger than the thickness of the quantum well beneath it. This leads to 'pancake elements,' with a two-dimensional orbital structure that is much simpler than the three-dimensional one of natural atoms. This in turn leads to a more simplistic periodic table, with elements whimsically named for team members at Delft University and Nippon Telephone and Telegraph."

  • "Pump in seventy nine electrons and what you get is not gold but some related and decidedly improbable material: pseudogold-silicate or pseudogold-cadmium-selenide. And if you force three more electrons into the trap, you can swap atoms of pseudolead for atoms of pseudogold. Alchemist Roger Bacon, in his monkish, thirteenth-century dreams, could scarcely have asked for more."

  • "This is not a science-fictional device but a routine piece of experimental hardware, in daily use in laboratories throughout the world. It was first patented in 1999, by Toshiro Futatsugi of Japan's Fujitsu Corporation, although the technology itself had been under investigation for nearly a decade prior to that. ..."

  • "Because it can be adjusted to resemble any atom on the periodic table, this type of nanostructure is called an 'artificial atom' - a term coined by Kastner [of MIT] in 1993 and subsequently taken up widely throughout the semiconductor industry. Other terminology reflects the preconceptions of different branches of research: microelectronics folks may refer to a 'single-electron transistor' or 'controlled potential barrier', whereas quantum physicists may speak of a 'Coulomb island' or 'zero-dimensional electron gas' and chemists may speak of a 'colloidal nanoparticle' or 'semiconductor nanocrystal'. All of these terms are, at various times, used interchangeably with 'quantum dot', and they refer more or less to the same thing: a trap that confines electrons in all three dimensions.

    ... I will use 'artificial atom' to refer to the pattern of confined electrons (or other charged particles, as we'll see later on) and 'quantum dot' to refer to the physical structure or device that generates this pattern. The distinction is subtle, but clarifying - analogous to the difference between a movie theatre and the movie it's currently showing."

Do you see the similarity between this last explanation and the earlier analogy by Leonard G. Cramp, where he likens an atom to the pattern of ripples formed by a stick in a stream of flowing water? The background device, or quantum dot, is similar to the stream and the stick, while the artificial atom is akin to the pattern of ripples. By changing the voltages that confine electrons in an electrostatic corral more or less of these particles/waves can be admitted or ejected from the artificial atom. The voltages in the wire operate much as the stick does when it is moved. and the pattern of ripples - the artificial atom - is changed.

artatom (13K)The adjacent diagram shows that an artificial atom is presently much larger than normal atoms. In the illustration the small spheres are true atoms while the large sphere represents a single quantum dot that can be set to behave as an artificial atom.

At first, artificial atoms seem to have serious limitations because they are always attached to a substrate, and are unable to float free like natural atoms. The characteristics of whole surfaces, such as walls and windows, might be changed if they were coated with artificial atoms or molecules. But once a surface was, say, switched from the properties of lead to those of gold, it would not be possible to peel off the latter metal, melt it down and cast it into ingots.

The atoms would be artificial, not real. A wall, a window, or some other object, could be made to look and behave as if it had a coating of gold, but it would be an effect produced with quantum dots, rather than a real coating of atoms of gold. Nevertheless, surfaces coated with artificial atoms would have many uses in a Level 4 Civilization.

Fabricating Matter Using Artificial Atoms [237]
Quantum dots are likely to be very useful as individual units. They are, for example, already used in medical research and microbiology to study living systems. Quantum Dot Corporation has specialised in this type of nanotechnology since 1998 and now supplies nanocrystals (Qdot branded) to its many customers worldwide. In 2003 the prestigious scientific research journal, Science Magazine, named quantum dot bio-imaging technology one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of the year. The article in Science Magazine referenced work done at Cornell University in which scientists used Qdot nanocrystals to view the blood flow of mice glowing beneath their skin. The resolution of the blood vessels was so high that the researches could see the walls of the arteries ripple with each heart beat - 640 times in each minute.

Wil McCarthy and others believe that, in due course, it will be possible to overcome the limitations of the near two-dimensional nature of artificial atoms and the need to always have a substrate of normal molecules to hold the quantum dots. Here is a little of what McCarthy writes about a solution.

  • "... You can't command a diamond coating to appear on the chip, or even a quartz one, because these substances rely on three-dimensional structure for their properties. Fortunately, this limitation also has a rather simple solution: we roll the chip around a long, thin fibre. With P and N and P layers of the quantum well, and the conducting traces on top of them, and memory and insulation layers beneath, this fibre would have a thickness of around 60-80 nanometres (300-400 atoms), meaning we could fit artificial atoms around its circumference and a potentially infinite number along its length.

    The artificial atoms are a surface feature of the chip, but by placing them instead on a fibre, we create a material that is mostly surface, equally controllable. And once we have these fibres, we can embed them in bulk materials to serve as programmable dopants. Perhaps more important, we can string them up in a three-dimensional lattice, not unlike the skeleton of a building, or else weave them together like basket wicker. This is a tough nanoassembly job either way, but once it's complete we have artificial atoms bumping right up against one another, able to bond with neighbours on the same fibre or adjacent fibres. Now we can create not only a thin film of goldlike pseudomatter, but a three-dimensional solid with pseudogold dopant atoms on the inside as well. Thus, we can generate a bulk material with the mass of wickered silicone but the physical, chemical and electrical properties of an otherwise-impossible gold/silicon alloy."

  • "Chemistry provides another possible avenue. Aided by the ability of some structures and materials to self-assemble at the nanoscale, chemists have proven increasingly adept at producing and manipulating complex designer molecules. Chemists growing 'striped nanowire' structures of metal and semiconductors have already produced working diodes, LEDs, transistors, and crude circuits as small as 1.5 nanometres across. Others have used designer viruses to assemble three-dimensional structures of colloidal quantum dots. Most amazingly, in mid-2002 a team at Harvard and Cornell managed to use the electromagnetism of atoms to create transistors out of single atoms. The wires running into the device are much larger, of course, but Cornell's Paul L. McEuen notes that these atomscale transistors represent the ultimate limit for quantum dot technology: electrically shrinking or growing the swarm of electrons surrounding a single real atom. So while practical nanocircuitry is beyond the reach of today's chemists, their bag of tricks is growing rapidly.

    I have confidence in the ingenuity of human beings, especially when there are fortunes to be made, If these nanostructures are as useful as expected, I think it's safe to assume that some means will be found not only to produce them but to mass-produce them for the consumer market. Perhaps we'll see hundreds of nanoassembler arms and electron beam generators packed onto a chip, which can build up layers of wellstone [McCarthy's term for quantum dot fibre] as though they were pizzas and stack them endlessly, one upon the other, to extrude a fibre of arbitrary length. These nano-silkworms might even have the power to crawl along pre-programmed pathways, in a nanoscale spinning and weaving operation that turns the fibres directly into something like wellstone cloth, or large blocks of bulk material. "

The tools for fabricating assemblages of artificial atoms are still being developed but there are no sound reasons to believe that such efforts will not succeed, or that it might take decades to reach the point of practical mass-production of technologies based on quantum dots. The fledgling pseudomatter industry is presently at an equivalent point in its development as the aviation industry was in 1905 - technology has been demonstrated and much is being done to push it to commercial reality, but it will take a little time to reach the same levels of social, commercial and military impacts that aviation has today. While the early pioneers of aviation technology were constantly scaling up from the fragile Wright Flyer of 1903, the pseudomatter inventors of 2004 are constantly scaling down; to achieve practical results in an invisible realm that holds one of the vital keys to manufacturing abundance in the 21st century.

Hints Of What Is Just Ahead [238]
The following few sections are speculative, but based on the informed opinions of scientists and technologists in the field of quantum dot research and development.

In the course of researching his book, Hacking Matter, Wil McCarthy met and interviewed many people who are actively engaged in this fast-growing technology. At one point he notes a comment by Charlie Marcus of Harvard University's Centre for Imaging and Mesoscale structures (CIMS): "Scientists don't necessarily make better futurists than the people down at the donut shop. So much depends on serendipity - the laser came out of microwave research, not a desire by Schawlow and Townes to improve surgery or record players." McCarthy's experience is that many scientists deliberately avoid speculating about where their research might lead. When he talked further with Charlie Marcus he gleaned snippets of information about what research was being done, such as quantum 'spin pumps' and 'spin filters', but no futurist visions of where the technology can go.

Other scientists and technologists are very excited about the potential of what they are working on, but limited by commercial constraints and the competitive nature of development in a taker society. Wil McCarthy describes a conversation with a developer of technology who fits this profile.

  • "About the materials-science applications for quantum dots, Quantum dot Corporation's forty-four-year-old Joel Martin - a Ph.D. chemist as well as an MBA venture capitalist - waxes enthusiastic. "I'm actually working on one right now. This nanoscale technology just gives us another degree of control over the properties of matter, of surfaces, that we don't have by other means. That's incredibly useful."

    Alas, too much money can shut people up as surely as too little; Martin is a Valley insider who has participated in nine startups, two of them his own. His board of directors is crowded with other venture capitalists, who eat nondisclosure agreements for breakfast and expect a return on their $40 million investment. I don't bother asking what he's working on - if it pans out, we'll know soon enough. But when I ask his opinion on the prospects for programmable matter in the abstract, he has a one word answer: "Absolutely." "

So, McCarthy had to use his own 'headlights' to see the possibilities inherent in the piecemeal informational offerings of scientists and technologists: about where quantum dot technologies are going and what world-changing products they might soon produce. The raw insights and revelations he uses were drawn from direct interviews with researchers working at the leading edge of quantum dots and pseudomatter development. His views of the possibilities are not science fiction, they are based on logical extrapolation of existing science facts.

The Magic of Pseudomatter [239]
Apart from the application of individual quantum dots in biological research and similar fields, there are two categories in which assemblies of these dots will find uses. Quantum dots can be arranged on two-dimensional surfaces or as three-dimensional materials. In the latter case the artificial objects are woven from quantum dot fibres and Wil McCarthy refers to the resultant programmable matter as Wellstone. In the majority of instances quantum dot surfaces and materials exhibit properties which have no direct equivalent in the world of natural matter. Pseudomatter really is different.

McCarthy puts it thus:

  • "The real power of quantum dots is not that they can be shiny or transparent or insulative, or whatever else we happen to need at any particular moment. The real power is all the other things they can be asked to do and be on a microsecond's notice:

    Transparent or Opaque
    Reflective or Absorptive
    Electrically Conductive or Electrically Insulative
    Thermally Conductive or Thermally Insulative
    Magnetic or Nonmagnetic
    Flexible or Rigid
    Luminous or Nonluminous.

  • In theory, a block of truly programmable matter should be able to select any point on any of these axes at any time. Throw in your choice of colour and the result is, to my mind, very interesting indeed. and of course there may be other effects such as magnetoresistivity, photo/thermo/piezo-electricity, superconductivity, and the ability to perform classical and quantum computations."

The point here is that not only can pseudomatter be, say, transparent and flexible; it can be immediately reprogrammed to be something else entirely. We are about to experience highly adaptable and versatile surfaces and objects in our daily lives. They will help us to build a Level 4 Civilization - sooner than most people think.

Some of the applications envisaged for programmable matter presently include:

  • Thermochromic surfaces and three-dimensional objects that change colour according to the temperature they are exposed to. There are already plastics and paints that can do this, but none are capable of being quickly reprogrammed to resemble some other form of matter, with quite different properties.

  • Perfectly reflective mirrors and genuinely one-way glass, rather than the half-silvered mirrors presently used. Here again, the pseudomatter surfaces involved will be reprogrammable. They might act as mirrors or 'privacy' glass at one instant and as something else the next moment.

  • Digital display screens that do not require backlighting, as present LCD types do, nor a vacuum tube and 'gun', as used by the CRT displays of the past. Quantum dot (QD) technology might enable many surfaces to be used as display screens, when the appropriate signals are transmitted from mobile computing devices. The walls of offices and the sides of buildings could become on-demand display surfaces.

    There are still technical issues to be solved, such as how to 'wire' QD 'pixels' that could be smaller than the wavelength of visible light. But these challenges should be solved with new tools and growing expertise in scaling technology down to the nano level. Depend on it, video walls are coming to your workplace and streetscapes.

  • Programmable magnetoresistive QD materials. Wil McCarthy notes that, due to early research by IBM, sandwiched layers of magnetic and nonmagnetic materials that are less than a millimetre thick, and a million times more sensitive to magnetic fields than ferric-oxide, already exist. This quantum well based technology is in commercial use in the read heads of disk drives, and in dead-reckoning navigation systems that use magnetoresistive compasses. The latter devices have recently begun to replace or supplement GPS receivers in some applications. The advent of programmable (QD) materials in magnetoresistive devices will further revolutionise the electronics industry and find many new applications in robotics and other fields.

    One researcher that McCarthy interviewed expects his lab to produce a switchable ferromagnetic material by 2006.

  • True moving image holograms. Today's holograms only seem to move because multiple static images are fed into the picture at different angles. QD surfaces, on the other hand, should be capable of sequentially changing the colour and intensity of very fine 'pixels' - on demand and in real time. Wil McCarthy speculates that a wellstone TV might them look less like the moving picture screens of the 20th century, and more like a real window in the wall of your living room, that plays life-like three-dimensional images. Since pseudomatter surfaces will be programmable it will be easy to reposition these 'windows' anywhere on the surface of the wall.

  • Materials that are capable of stable levitation. This prospect, at first examination, seems way too imaginative. But McCarthy points out that, provided that superconductivity can be achieved in QD matter at room temperatures, the idea is quite realistic. He conjectures that the Meissner effect, whereby magnetic fields are expelled from substances allowing them to 'float' on thin air, might be induced in QD materials. As McCarthy writes, there is a popular demonstration that comes close to being magical;
    "... this effect can be used to levitate a wafer of yttrium-barium-copper oxide: just place it on a permanent magnet and pour some liquid nitrogen over it, and the wafer will float up into the air, supported by the pressure of the magnetic field it is reflecting."

    There is nothing far-fetched about levitating matter, people already ride in 'maglev' trains in a number of countries, the Meissner effect has already been put to practical use.

    In fact, the existence of diamagnetism, also termed 'molecular magnetism' or 'antimagnetism' allows levitation of living creatures without requiring superconductors. Diamagnetism is millions of times weaker than ferromagnetism, and weaker again than the forces of magnetoresistivity, but it has been shown to levitate organisms. Wil McCarthy recounts that in the 1990s scientists in Holland demonstrated levitation of a frog in a 10-tesla field. That field strength is roughly equivalent to the fields of the MRI scanners now used in medicine.

    Since the nature of diamagnetism is not yet fully understood it is possible that, in time, technologists might emulate the effect using programmable pseudomatter. If this occurs it could open up a wide range of material levitation possibilities. This is pure speculation, but so were jet aircraft engines until a little over sixty years ago.

  • Invisible materials. Electronic camouflage is already a reality but it does not involve true invisibility. Camouflage simply causes an object, such as a tank or a soldier, to blend into the landscape. Camouflaged objects are not invisible, they are just difficult to pick out from their background. To be invisible to our eyes an object must be completely transparent. Contrary to the initial expectation of many people there are plentiful examples of near-invisible objects. It's just that we don't often encounter them because they occur mainly in the upper levels of the open oceans where light filters through the water. There, rather than blending into the background of their environment by using camouflage markings, many living organisms are almost completely transparent due to their cellular properties. They neither absorb nor scatter light.

    Many organisms in the ocean, such as some forms of shrimp, are completely transparent except for their eyes, which must absorb light in order to function, and the contents of their gut, which are not part of them and not transparent. True transparency is rarer on land because there are greater problems with reflections. A vacuum has a refractive index of 1, and it cannot be seen, there is nothing to absorb or scatter light. The velocity of light in a vacuum is the standard for the measure of the refractive index of a material., The speed of light in a vacuum is compared with the speed of light in another medium. Air has a low refractive index of 1.0003. The refractive index of light travelling from air into water is around 1.33, glass is about 1.5 and diamond is 2.4. Because the refractive index of transparent organisms in the ocean is close to or identical with the water they are immersed in there is no scattering of the light passing through them, and even their outlines are not visible.

    Wil McCarthy notes that in 2002 a team at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Massachusetts succeeded in slowing the speed of light within a praesodymium-doped crystal of yttrium silicate to zero, which represents a refractive index of infinity. then there is nothing to be seen at all, just blackness, which itself could be an effective form of camouflage on a dark night.

    McCarthy considers that there will be many applications for programmably transparent and invisible materials in art, and related fields such as ornamentation and jewellery. He comments that since most pseudomatter has a lower refractive index than its parent semiconductor it should be possible, by nudging these values even lower, to achieve optical characteristics similar to air or a vacuum. Yet again, the greatest advantage of artificially invisible solids and surfaces generated by QD technology could be their programmability. An object might be invisible (totally transparent) at one instant and resemble a column of gold or silver the next. Natural materials cannot match the switchable properties of pseudomatter, so there should be many uses for the programmable wellstone that McCarthy envisages.

Manipulation of Natural Atoms [240]
The prospect of a true nanoconstructor that can assemble materials and products atom by atom, from the inside out and with perfect precision and quality, is dependent on technologists scaling down their tools and working out how to manipulate natural atoms, as distinct from artificial ones. People like K. Eric Drexler and Damien Broderick consider that, as the curve of scientific knowledge and technological capabilities rises at an ever-increasing rate, it will be possible to feed molecules into a nanoconstructor and rearrange them into any desired combination of atoms and molecules. This is a much more ambitious and sophisticated goal than that of the existing 3D copiers already mentioned, but it is not beyond reason.

Peter Plichta's discoveries have already provided the correct framework for understanding and manipulating natural atoms. But before such understanding can be applied it must be recognised and accepted. This shift in attitudes is taking time to happen. It is clear from Wil McCarthy's book that he and the scientists and technologists he interviewed are still using the atomic matter theories that originated a century ago, and which have held back discovery and invention, and kept the world locked into a 'drop them on your foot' view of atoms, for far too long.

Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein appear to have known that "there is no matter", only fundamental vibrations and their harmonics that give rise to what is manifest as matter in the three-dimensional space that we are aware of. Peter Plichta also knows the truth, and he has documented the natural laws that govern the structure of the elements.

In his book, Hacking Matter, which was published in 2003, McCarthy still writes about "the 92 natural structures" although Plichta's work has been published in English since 1997, and in German well prior to that year. Peter Plichta actually finalised his forty-year study of the laws of the elements and atomic structures in 1986. Yet, the information has still to filter through to those scientists who are working at the new frontiers of nanotechnology and artificial matter. Once it does, progress should then be rapid and more and more spike technologies should emerge.

Much of the development work on spike technologies is likely to be done by talent collectives living in free cities, rather than researchers in federalist-capitalist states and institutions.

Nanofacturing Centres [241]
During the 1st Industrial Revolution manufacturing centres grew up near to sources of raw materials, energy, and transportation routes. Thus textile mills were established within easy distances from the coal reserves that powered their steam boilers, and ports and railways that brought raw cotton in and took finished goods out.

New criteria might determine the optimum location of various nanofacturing centres. Energy won't come from coal or oil reserves, but from the Energy Grid discovered anew by Bruce Cathie and also known to earlier civilizations on this planet. The raw materials will either come from atomic feedstock that might be as basic as grass clippings or garbage, or it might prove possible to 'generate' the necessary atoms directly from vibrational patterns. Given the looming prospects for teleportation systems, at least for inanimate objects, distance to new 'needs markets' in presently underprivileged and underdeveloped regions and countries should not be a major factor in siting nanofacturing plants. They won't really have to be close to their target distribution points. Most important will be the presence of forward-looking communities and associated collectives of savvy technologists and innovative leaver givers. Human attitudes and cultural factors will probably be more important in locational decisions than physical and geographic considerations.

If Bruce Cathie's theories regarding the need to synchronise the manipulation of atomic structures with the Sun's position and particular dates and times are correct, the location of nanofacturing plants might be critically governed by these factors. Presumably, although nobody outside the 'black' projects of various nation states seems to know for certain, it is also preferable to perform manipulation of atomic structures on lines or nodes of the Energy Grid. It might also be the case that stronger effects can be achieved at or near major grid nodes, and lesser effects on minor nodes and grid lines. If this proves to be so, it is likely that the optimum sites for nanofacturing will be located in relation to energy grid lines and nodes rather than coal mines, ports or sources of cheap labour.

While it might be possible to obtain electrons, neutrons and protons by a process of 'atom smashing' this seems to be a rather crude approach that could be fraught with difficulty when it comes to trapping and reassembling these components into new atoms and molecules. A better, and more elegant, approach could be to slip the structures apart, just as Cathie suggests in his wire puzzles analogy.

Rather than round the clock shifts that typify 20th century manufacturing plants, the new nanocentres might operate according to optimal positions of the Sun. If there are many nanofacturing plants around the world a proportion of these locations should always have favourable conditions for the disassembly and reassembly of atoms.

An indication that the notion of manipulating atoms most readily at points on the Energy Grid is not as fanciful as it might at first sound is given by an account of magnetic research by the Canadian National Research Council and the US Navy. In 1950 these two agencies conducted the only officially recorded investigation into the Earth Grid system. Project Magnet investigated an area at the eastern end of Lake Ontario that is known as the Marysburgh Vortex. Aircraft and ships had completely vanished there and numerous strange sightings, including UFOs, had been reported.

The investigation was headed by a communications engineer named Wilbert Smith. The following accounts of some of his findings are taken from an article by Richard Lefors Clark, a well known researcher of anti-gravity and the Energy Grid.

  • "Smith's speculations are most intriguing. He noted large and sometimes mobile gravity anomalies all over the Lake Ontario area. He noted areas of 'reduced binding' in the atmosphere above the Lake; the areas were described as 'pillar-like columns' a thousand feet across and extending for several thousand feet up into the atmosphere. Moreover, they were invisible and only detectable with sensitive equipment. Peculiarities in gravity and magnetism were noted inside these columns, possibly relating to a reduction (or weakening) in the nuclear binding forces holding matter together; the nuclear binding forces seemed stronger in the north and weaker in the south. Some of these mysterious columns appeared to be mobile, changing location over time.

    Smith theorised that when the weakened nuclear binding forces encountered matter under stress (such as airplanes in flight) the forces holding matter together ceased to exist, exactly along the lines of maximum stress, and the material disintegrated resulting in aircraft disasters. Later theorists suggested that ionisation of the air within these columns could generate luminous anomalies, and that increasing energies could make rocks and other dielectrics in the immediate area appear to rise from the ground into the air."

The various explanation of the anomalies found are conjectural but the actual findings are not, they are established fact. They indicate that conditions at the Marysburgh Vortex were definitely not normal in 1950, when the official study was done of magnetic anomalies there. The fact that the study was terminated following Smith's preliminary report also suggests that neither the federal authorities of Canada and the USA wanted any further public disclosure relating to magnetic and gravitational anomalies and the Earth Grid. It was not that Smith was not finding any anomalies, he clearly was succeeding in measuring and mapping them. The problem was that an official study was uncovering sensitive information that the OWO did not want publicly documented and legitimised. As baroness Thatcher once remarked, "There are some things you can't tell the people."

Even if all the facts and theories about the Earth Grid and free energy should somehow prove to be false, there is still a looming curve of new knowledge and technologies just ahead of us. The great majority of scientists and technologists presently working in spike technology fields such as genetics, nanotechnology, robotics, pseudomatter, and the like, are not drawing on discoveries and knowledge relating to free energy or the grid. They are driving the curve upwards at an ever-increasing rate, notwithstanding the handicaps due to a lack of awareness and acceptance of ancient understandings and insights that 20th century science chose to discard, or exclude from public knowledge.

Know The Spike Is Coming - Spread This Information [242]
The near-magical technologies of the Spike are not decades away, they are already starting to appear. What is presently an encouraging trickle of scarcity-banishing inventions will soon become a torrent. All of us who now eschew takerism and the failed 'civilization' of industrial capitalism, must work to raise understanding of this looming potential for abundance and freedom from want.

The dissemination of information about the end of the 20th century scientific Dark Age and the advent of wondrous new spike technologies is something we can all do. It is not yet illegal to write or talk about such matters. In order to help raise general awareness of already existing opportunities to end economic scarcity it is necessary to first discover and absorb information that is never presented by the OWO controlled media. Then it is time to spread those alternate perspectives of science and technology at the interpersonal level.

It is not necessary to write articles that are widely distributed, or to make documentary films or address large gatherings. Word of mouth communication accompanied by brief fact sheets, that include appropriate references to books and sites on the Internet, is well within the resources and capabilities of most people. Provided that enough of us take the time to spread the information we will all see a result. Community understanding of the very real opportunities to build a Level 4 Civilization will grow exponentially, along with the new spike technologies and scarcity-banishing inventions that will support a complete transformation of our world - from one of want to one of wonder.

Confront The Doctrines And Practices Of Economic Scarcity [243]
Imagine that you are an alien on your first visit to our solar system. As your space craft approaches Earth you bring up a visual of the planet. What do you see, what is the most striking feature of this unfamiliar world? Yes, that's it, the planet Earth is a deep blue colour. earthmoon (7K)Much of its surface is covered with water!

Once you land, and blend anonymously into the crowds on the pavements of Sydney, Los Angeles, or some other city, you listen to conversations around you to find out what is going on in the lives of these earthlings. To your amazement you learn that one of the greatest problems facing these people is a growing shortage of water!

Now, if they were all living on Earth's moon you could understand their concern. The Moon is typical of many bodies in the many galaxies you have visited on your travels, it really is short of water and it lacks an atmosphere as well. But the Earth has a great abundance of water, very few of the habitable planets you know about have comparable amounts of H2O. What are these earthlings talking about?

Why are they saying that water is scarce?

At first, you might think that the primitive earthlings simply don't realise that it is entirely practical to desalinate the water in the oceans. But that would not be the reason; the earthlings already have proven technologies for making sea water drinkable. Then why, for goodness sake, don't they do more of that sort of thing? Why should more than one billion people already lack access to fresh drinking water? Why are Mexican babies and children in the industrial zones along the border with the US drinking Coca-Cola and Pepsi because they can't get water?

Then the penny drops, literally. The earthlings are selling water, they are treating it as a commodity. For the sellers of water this means that the scarcer fresh water is the higher the price and the greater the profit. There is still CAPITALISM on Earth; a system that became redundant in most galaxies aeons ago. No wonder water is scarce here.

The Scarce Water Debate [244]
Major corporations and their allies in big government are currently 'talking up' the growing scarcity of fresh water. Fortune Magazine has stated, rather hopefully, that, "water will be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th." Maude Barlow is Chair of the Council of Canadians and was the founding co-chair of the Action Canada Network. She has strongly opposed both the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement, maudebarlow (15K)NAFTA and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. She is worth reading and listening to on the subject of the commodification of fresh water.

Barlow notes that the privatisation of water is already a US$ 400 billion pa business. She quotes one Canadian water company, Global Water Corporation, as saying: "Water has moved from being an endless commodity that may be taken for granted to a rationed necessity that may be taken by force." The OWO cartels are positioning fresh water as a commodity to fight wars over, just as oil has been for a hundred years. As Maude Barlow puts it:

  • "Today, corporations are using a new generation of trade and investment agreements to gain ownership over the world's ever-dwindling water supplies so that they will become the suppliers of last resort."

In India, according to Barlow, there are households that already pay a quarter of their income for water. This situation is probably exacerbated by the existence of arsenic in the ground water in certain areas, making the regular use of many public wells inadvisable. The Indian government is building massive water catchment schemes and these dams are further denying ordinary village people access to clean water. The Chinese government is doing the same thing. Once 'free trade' agreements are in place global corporations will have the legal right of access to the fresh water in the dams, and they will be able to use their considerable legal resources to sue any local bodies that attempt to block their appropriation of the stored water. Here are some excerpts from an article by Maude Barlow titled, Water Incorporated; The Commodification of the World's Water.

  • "The World Water Forum (WWF) held in The Hague in March 2000 was chaired by World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin. The WWF is part of the continuing activities of the World Water Council (WWC), a coalition of governments, international agencies and private-sector interests. The WWC has formed close working partnerships with private corporations, the Global Water Partnership and Business Partners for Development. The websites and reports of these organisations and corporations make [it] clear that some of the world's largest water privateers are taking the lead in developing global water policies.

    With the support of international trade agreements, these companies are setting their sights on the mass transport of water by pipeline and supertanker. Several companies are developing technology to pump fresh water into huge sealed bags to be towed across the oceans for sale.

    The US Global Water Corp, a Canadian company has signed an agreement with Sitka, Alaska, to export 18 billion gallons of glacier water per year to China. It would be bottled for export in one of China's 'free trade' zones to take advantage of cheap labour. The company brochure entices investors "to harvest the accelerating opportunity ... as traditional sources of water around the world become progressively depleted and degraded."

    The national Post called Canada's water "blue gold" and Post business columnist Terence Corcoran predicts that "The issue will not be whether to export, but how much money the federal government and provinces will be able to extract from massive water shipments. ... Using the OPEC model, they will attempt to cartelise the world supply of water to drive the price up."

  • "NAFTA's Chapter 11 allows foreign corporations to sue a country if a government implements legislation that "expropriates" the company's future profits. For example, if a country privatised its water services, hired a foreign provider and then passed laws requiring improved environmental protections or worker safety, the client corporation could argue that the laws were in expropriation of its [future] profits and therefore illegal under the FTAA.

    Corporations already have begun suing governments to gain access to domestic water sources. The first such NAFTA Chapter 11 case (Sun Belt Water Inc vs. Canada) was filed in the fall of 1998. Sun Belt Water Inc, of Santa Barbara, Calif, filed suit after losing a contract to deliver Canadian water to California when British Columbia banned the export of bulk water in 1991. Sun Belt is seeking [US]$ 220 million in damages. However, Sunbelt appears more interested in access to BC's water than the $ 220 million. As Sun Belt's CEO Jack Lindsay explained, "Because of NAFTA, we are now stakeholders in the national water policy of Canada."

  • "Today, the future of one of Earth's most vital resources is being determined by those who profit from its overuse. At the annual World Economic Development Congress, corporations and financial institutions met with government representatives from more than 84 countries to attend panels on such subjects as "Overcoming Obstacles to Water Investment." The agenda was clear: water should be treated like any other commodity, with its use determined by market principles."

  • "In the past, governments unanimously believed that access to basic human services such as water, healthcare and education should not be included in trade agreements because these were essential components of citizenship. However, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) began the process of eroding these basic human rights. Today, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is poised to take this process to a whole new level.

    The Free Trade Area of the Americas is the formal name given to the massive expansion of NAFTA. The FTAA would impose NAFTA's failed model of privatisation and deregulation on 34 nations in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean, creating the world's largest free-trade zone with a population of 800 million and a combined GDP of [US] $ 11 trillion.

    The FTAA's 'services agreement' grants private corporations sweeping new authority to overrule government regulations. Under FTAA, all public services - schools, hospitals, and prisons - would be forced to open up for competition from foreign for-profit service corporations. This agreement would forbid any federal government or local government from giving preferential funding to domestic providers of sewer or water services.

    The FTAA would increase the number of towns and cities forced into privatising their water systems and would reduce the ability of governments to ensure that the privatised systems work to protect the environment, consumers and workers."

  • "In January 2000, thousands of citizens of Cochabamba, Bolivia took to the streets to oppose the takeover of their water systems by a company jointly owned by the US-based multinational Bechtel and the Italian utility Edison. The rebellion, which shut the city down for four days, was sparked after the foreign-owned water corporation raised Cochabamba's water rates by 35 percent. ...

    An international 'civil summit' of farmers, workers, indigenous people, students, professionals, environmentalists, educators and nongovernmental organisations from Bolivia, Canada, India, Brazil and the US subsequently gathered in Cochabamba to combine forces in the defence of the vital right to water. At the conclusion of the summit, they issued "The Cochabamba Declaration" which reads, in part:

    - Water belongs to the Earth and all species and is sacred to life. Therefore, the world's water must be conserved, reclaimed and protected for all future generations and its natural patterns respected.

    - Water is a fundamental human right and a public trust to be guarded by all levels of governments. Therefore it should not be commodified, privatised or traded for commercial purposes. These rights must be enshrined at all levels of government. An international treaty must ensure these principles are non-controvertible."

This argument about water is irreconcilable, but it can be simply resolved. It is irreconcilable because there is a clash of taker and leaver-giver values. The proponents of the commodification of water are classic takers, in Daniel Quinn's terms. People like Maude Barlow and the attendees at the Cochabamba conference are thinking in true leaver-giver terms, even although they might not describe themselves in that way.

If fresh water really was becoming as scarce as Maude Barlow and most other people in humanitarian and environmental movements believe, the stage would be set for a massive global conflict over rights and access to this natural gift from the Creator - whatever or whomever 'it' might be. But fresh water can be had in abundance and then there will be no profit to be made from commodifying it. Energy and spike technologies hold the key to the abundance of fresh water.

Most folk don't see that yet, but it is so. The Earth is literally awash with water and there is absolutely no need to render it scarce and run its distribution along the lines of an oil cartel. There isn't any reason for oil cartels such as OPEC to continue either. The looming abundance of water, energy, and perfectly manufactured goods are indisputable consequences of the end of the 20th century scientific Dark Age and the gathering pace of the 2nd Renaissance.

Fresh Water From Desalination [245]
Water is commonly said to be a liquid made up of molecules that are each comprised of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, H2O.
But this is not what water is. The substance 'water' is far more complicated than that. In his book, God's Secret Formula, Peter Plichta relates the fact that;

"For some profoundly mysterious reason, approximately every 55 millionth water molecule is split. The trivial fundamental equation of chemistry

H2O < - > H+ + OH-

means that water is always an inseparable mixture of three components:

H3O+ H2O H1O-

Anybody bold enough to attempt to separate these constituents would surely fail. And we want to travel to space although we do not even have an explanation of the three-fold nature of water!"

The best solution to the provision of ample fresh water to all the life-forms on this planet that require this mysterious substance will be to nanofacture it, using Plichta's discoveries of the rules governing the manifestation of 'matter', and a supply of 'free' energy drawn from the Earth Grid. However, this notion is likely to seem too far-fetched to many of the founders of the first free cities. An intermediate, and less radical, technology might have more appeal. Such a solution could lie in technologies that enable massive desalination of sea water. This bridging step will seem more realistic to the leaver-givers and neo-tribalists who will initiate the 2nd Renaissance. The only issues people are likely to have will be the presumed costs of the desalination process, and its sustainability and environmental friendliness.

Presently, two technologies are used for desalination of sea water and water that has been contaminated; reverse osmosis and steam distillation. Energy to power the plants comes mainly from non-renewable hydrocarbon fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas. Some solar power is used, but this 'free' energy is not sufficiently developed to be cost competitive with fossil fuels. Although reverse osmosis plants might often be electrically powered, hydrocarbon fuels remain the primary energy source for desalination. While there are definitely environmental issues associated with desalination plants many of these can be overcome at a moderate additional cost. For example, instead of flushing pipes with toxic chemicals that could escape from the plant, ultraviolet light can be used to kill biological organisms that have entered the system.

Judged by prices that can be found on the WWW it seems that very high profit margins are already being made from water produced in desalination plants. One source indicates that the price of a cubic metre of fresh water at municipal selling prices, in Europe, is 3 US dollars. Mediterranean resorts apparently buy the output of desalination plants there at around 4 US dollars, while in the Gulf states such water sells for 5 US dollars per cubic metre. It is said that the price of water delivered by ships to some islands in the Persian Gulf is up to 10 US dollars per cubic metre.

The particular web site, which is soliciting investment in its reverse osmosis technology for sea water, states that high profits are assured because the actual production cost of its process in a mere 4 US cents per cubic metre.

As water is commodified and cartelised the selling price will only rise because supply will be deliberately rationed by the corporations that control the market. There will obviously not be a free or competitive market, but neither is there one for oil. Since the energy source is cartelised as well as the supply of water from the desalination facilities that use that energy, there is a double jeopardy situation developing for the world's water consumers. Plants and animals, who don't have bank accounts, will be left to go thirsty. But, gee, the new market for globalised water is a great investment opportunity.

Energy From Sand [246]
Silicon is among the most common elements found in the Earth's crust, some 27% of the crust (by mass) is silicon. Magnesium is also very common, making up about 2% of the crust. It is usually obtained by extraction from sea water. Sulphur, on the other hand, occurs mainly in the Earth's core, but it is also plentiful. Currently, the US is the highest producer of sulphur, through the use of hot water extraction from buried salt domes. Sulphuric acid is a widely used industrial chemical and there are many plants that already produce it.

Amazingly, silicon can be chemically described as a 'brother' of carbon and it is thus entirely practical - right now - to produce long-chain molecules from silicon. These silane oils have similar properties to the hydrocarbons presently used as the primary source of energy for the industrial world, but with higher calorific values. You have never heard of silane fuel? Having read this freesite through to this point, that gap in public information should not surprise you. Anything that offers a virtually inexhaustible energy source is a threat to capitalism and the OWO. Alternative fuels and energy sources must be ignored or suppressed in the interests of global corporations and federal governments. The relevance and survival of those same entities in the 21st century depends upon controlled scarcity. But everyone else will be better served by the introduction of new fuels such as the silane oils.

The ingredients needed for the production of silane oils are those mentioned at the start of this section: silicon, magnesium, and sulphuric acid. Existing chemical plants can be modified or new ones constructed using existing expertise. Nothing new or far-out is involved. This means that just about any settled site on the seaboards of Australia, the Americas, Africa, Asia and so on, could become a free city that uses silane fuels for its energy needs. They could construct desalination plants and provide their populations with cheap fresh water, and they could do this in a matter of months rather than years.

Of course, there is no 'free' energy here. You can't get anything for nothing in this scenario. Some form of energy most run the chemical plants. Unless this is solar - which is a possibility - there will be either petroleum or silane fuels consumed to run the production facility. What is important is that the control of energy can be wrested from existing energy cartels, and both the cost and the price of energy can be kept at far lower levels. Running industries on silane fuel is an interim solution - using the Energy Grid is far preferable. But silane powered desalination plants are likely to be a good way to meet immediate needs for fresh water in many areas, particularly those near to seaboards or inland sources of contaminated water.

It is no coincidence that the chemist who first separated the higher (stable) silanes is none other than Peter Plichta. plichta (19K)Insights into stereochemistry gained in that research, when he was 30 years old, played a significant part in his wider discoveries of the Prime Number Cross and the secrets of the atomic structures of the elements. Here are some excerpts from his book that explain the silanes:

  • "Silanes are liquids similar to the petroleum hydrocarbons we fill our petrol tanks with. One difference is that they are self-igniting and, once they have started to burn, they blaze like hellfire and are impossible to extinguish. If the great Alfred Stock had managed to synthesise compounds of them he might even have received the Nobel Prize, but as it happened no use could be found for the silanes, and after his death nobody in the world wanted to produce such a hellish concoction."

  • "I appeared with a beaker full of glass test tubes, the tops of which I had sealed with insulin caps. Not knowing what else to do, the three people present apart from myself could not but take the individually labelled test tubes and pass them around from hand to hand. But then something unusual happened. My superior had lit himself a cigar, as he was wont to do every few minutes. My eyes were captivated by the glow of the cigar. I took one of the test tubes and removed the rubber cap. Total silence immediately fell in the room. I held the open test tube in my right hand and smiled. All their attention was directed to what I was doing, as I slowly poured the contents of the glass into an ashtray. It was fully transparent oil with the consistency of a vegetable oil. The three had expected that the oil would burn with a spurt of flame as soon as it came into contact with the air. Only I, the fourth in the room, was aware of something which all this time I had not even told Professor Fehér. From the heptasilanes (seven silicon atoms) on, the silanes are no longer automatically combustible.

    Silence reigned for about half a minute. Professor Hieber had realised by now that something unexpected lay behind my presentation.

    'But they aren't burning! Are they really silanes?'

    Instead of replying I took a match, lit it, and brought the flame close to the oil. The silence was unreal. There was suddenly a flash of the kind only silanes can make. This was followed by the appearance of the yellow-brown glassy precipitate silicon monoxide. The deathly silence continued. Again it was Professor Hieber who was the first to realise just what had been seen. The textbooks said that high silanes cannot exist because they are unstable. In reality the oil becomes easier and safer to use as the length of the chains increases.

    The guest leapt from his chair. He, who had lost an arm in an explosion, walked up to me and shook my hand.

    "Dr Plichta, that's the most impressive thing I've ever seen or experienced in my life.'

  • ".. The silane oils for which I would later receive a patent, and which according to chemistry textbooks should not exist at all, were turning out to be not simply a scientific oversight that I had uncovered but rather a tripwire of divine origin by which I would fully realise how thoroughly scientists can lie by omission or silence, or by confident assertion when they are sure that such assertions cannot be refuted very easily."

  • "So there they were at last - the higher silanes, the diesel-oil-equivalents of silicon. Scientists had been looking for them for 50 years.

    It would now be easy to manufacture these oils in industrial processes from three basic materials magnesium, silicon, and sulphuric acid, which cost little to produce. "

Peter Plichta was not initially interested in the potential of silane fuels because he thought that the hydrocarbons industry was too well established. Later, he revived a boyhood dream of a flying disk and patented that device together with a silane rocket fuel that draws nitrogen from the atmosphere. The following excerpts relate to this application of his research.

  • "I still remember the words my father said to me when I was 15: '... then find this fuel and patent it together with the disk.' When I synthesised the silane oils at the age of 30 I was not aware that I had already found 'this fuel'. As a visionary of space travel I had been searching for it for so long. In retrospect it seems unbelievable that at the time I only registered and received a patent for the higher silicone hydrides. But this 'internal block' turned out to be a blessing, as later the oil was still unknown as a fuel.

    ...Finally, in 1992, I was able to dictate to her the patent registration and submit it to the German patent office. ..."

  • "The rocket disk is not thrust upwards, but flung laterally, as is familiar from the sport of discus-throwing. After the disk has reached the speed of 300 km per hour, the air will carry the weight of the whole fully-tanked vessel. To prevent the turbine ring from disturbing the aerodynamics of the disk. it is surrounded by a hydraulic moveable exterior layer, whose elements will be reeled in after this speed has been reached. There will then be no need for lift provided by the turbine ring."

  • "... A rocket disk would require as fuel an oil with a high specific weight and high energy, so that it could be kept as small as possible.

    By taking the 'long way' and with ever-increasing atmospheric resistance, this craft would evade the rocket equation. My merger of mathematics and physics was totally new with regard to rocket physics and the patent office did not raise any objections. Trying to sell a patent to the aerospace industry would, of course, be a different matter.

    The far-sighted members of the boards of German industries were never able to accept something so new. One by one they consigned the patent to their development departments where it was predictably confronted with iron resistance."

  • "An engineer, Dr Klaus Kunkel, spontaneously offered to bear the costs of obtaining a worldwide patent; this was the first step towards preventing the American armaments industry from transforming this 'flying saucer' into a flying bomb at no costs to themselves. ... "

A fuel oil powerful enough to power rocket engines can have many applications in present-day industrial processes, including electrical power generation for desalination of seawater by reverse osmosis plants, or to provide heat for direct steam distillation. It is not important whether silane fuel oils are economically competitive with hydrocarbon fuels, what matters is that they are readily accessible to talent collectives and regions that might decide to establish free cities outside of the energy markets controlled by the OWO cartels.

As already noted, nanofacture powered by the Energy Grid is the best solution for free cities and leaver-giver communities. This will be the best, and cleanest way to bring ample fresh water to the people, fauna, and flora that need it. Presently, governments at every level; national, state and local, are spreading the message that water is scarce. They are setting up a profitable new market for global water cartels; they are also diverting attention for their past incompetence and dereliction of their public responsibilities in respect of ensuring continuing supplies of fresh water.

Spin doctors and snowmen throughout the tiers of government, industry and the mainstream media are repeating and constantly reinforcing a mantra that holds that water is scarce and will become even scarcer unless we conserve it and also support the entry of global investors who will, allegedly, create a market for water that will, allegedly, ensure that it is distributed efficiently - as a commodity rather than a natural endowment.

Any old alien (AOA) looking down from its UFO can see right through that lie. Why can't we?

One More Time - Energy Is NOT Scarce, Nor Is Water [247]
Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was an unusually gifted and perceptive human being. He was a designer and architect, but he spread his talent widely. Fuller was awarded 25 US patents, he authored 28 books, received many major architectural and design awards, and travelled 57 times around the world giving public lectures and interviews. His design for a geodesic dome was a major breakthrough in strength and ease of construction and, today, there are more than 300,000 such structures around the world. In many respects Buckminster Fuller was a latter-day Leonardo da Vinci.

The following excerpt is from the Buckminster Fuller Institute website:

  • "Fuller was one of the earliest proponents of renewable energy sources - solar (including wind and wave) - which he incorporated into his designs. He claimed,

    "There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance."

    His research demonstrated that humanity could satisfy 100% of its energy needs while phasing out fossil fuels and atomic energy. For example he showed that a wind generator fitted to every high-voltage transmission tower in the U.S. would generate three-and-a-half times the country's total recent power output.

    Fuller originated the term 'Spaceship Earth.' His Dymaxion™ Map was awarded the first patent for a cartographic system and was the first to show continents on a flat surface without visible distortion, appearing as a one-world island in a one-world ocean. His World Game ® utilises a large-scale Dymaxion Map for displaying world resources, and allows players to strategise solutions to global problems, matching human needs with resources. His inventory of World Resources, Human Trends and Needs was created to serve as an information bank for the World Game."

Buckminster Fuller did not consider the Energy Grid and spike technologies, but he nevertheless showed that humanity has always had practical energy options and will continue to do so. It is just that the existing hydrocarbons option has been squarely under the control of the 'Markets', so revered by capitalist oriented 'thinkers' and 'leaders' of the old Level 3 Civilization.

Similarly, there is a water 'crisis' because that leads easily to its commodification, and a new source of profits for privileged investors. However, such a market is really an artifice that erodes the natural rights of the many, in order to enrich a relatively few people.

Maude Barlow had this to say about an open market in water:

  • "As the water crisis intensifies, governments worldwide - under pressure from multinational corporations - are advocating the commodification and mass transport of water. Proponents of water privatisation say that a market system is the only way to distribute water to the world's thirsty. But experience shows that selling water on the open market does not address the needs of poor, under-served people.

    On the contrary, privatised water is delivered to those who can pay for it, such as wealthy cities and individuals, agriculture and industries. As one resident of New Mexico's high desert observed after his community's water was diverted for use by the high-tech industry: "Water flows uphill to money."

    In cities and towns across the Western Hemisphere, results of water privatisation have been almost universal: increased prices and a concurrent loss of water, failed promises of infrastructure improvement, loss of indigenous people's rights to water, worker layoffs, lack of information on water quality and big profits for privatising corporations."

Governments are at the forefront of the drive to commodoify water. In Australia, farmers who have dams on their properties to collect rain water must pay a tax to the government for the water that falls out of the sky! This 'initiative' not only reinforces the notion that water is a tradeable, taxable 'good', it usurps the power of nature and claims - for the feds - absolute rights over atmospheric moisture. What would AOA make of this situation? It would probably conclude that we earthlings are profoundly stupid to allow ourselves to be so deceived and cheated by our 'elected' representatives. It might also consider that we are guilty of not only failing to stand up for the natural water rights of indigenous people, but also those of the animals and plants that rely on well watered habitats for their survival.

Reverse The Debate - Don't Accept False Premises [248]
As it presently stands, in can be strongly argued that we are guilty of failing to effectively defend natural water rights on this planet. Instead of meekly complying with new regulations that restrict our rights to water our suburban gardens to the extent that we wish - imposed because water is so 'scarce' - we should be using what water we need, and pointedly turning the problem of scarcity back to the bureaucrats and big-business-admirers in office. We should be saying things like:

  • "If the dams are low it's your responsibility to provide fresh water by other methods, such as desalination."

  • "This is the Blue Planet, don't have the gall to tell us that water is scarce. You are supposed to provide water for our cities without disadvantaging country users of water or robbing the flora and fauna of natural rainfall, rivers and other supplies. Go to it!"

  • "Lay off this 'free market' nonsense, fresh water is not a commodity. Moreover, it is not scarce. If there isn't sufficient for the gardens of Melbourne of Sydney, it's because you haven't done the job you were elected to do."

  • "Don't tell us that desalination plants cost a lot to run. Come clean on classified knowledge of the Energy Grid, and set about tapping its infinite reserves of power for the benefit of all of us. If you're not able (i.e. permitted by those who really run your agendas) to access 'free' energy, then convert existing chemical processing facilities to the production of silane oils and use that energy to fuel the water processing plants."

  • e.t.c

Many other responses can be made is a similar vein, and they should be made. When we can't make such points directly to the Feds and the major interests they serve (which is most of the time), we should make them to each other - repeatedly and insistently - until a critical mass of awareness of these issues exists in the communities we live and work in. Unless we do this the snowmen of governments and the mainstream media will succeed in convincing ordinary people that fresh water is truly scarce, and that the solution is to privatise water and let the market distribute it - to those who have the money to pay for it, and hang the rest.

Note that it is not necessary to assert that the Energy Grid does definitely exist, it is only necessary to say that the possibility of its existence should be urgently explored - not dismissed out of hand, as 'too unscientific' or 'too mystical' to even be considered.

Many people might be too unsure of the information about the ancient Earth Grid and its modern equivalent the Energy Grid, to claim to their workmates or neighbours that its existence is a proven fact. They might well feel embarrassed to raise anything so 'controversial' or 'nutty', but feel sufficiently confident to argue that because a water crisis is so serious a matter it is time for the 'authorities' to explore every possible energy solution.

An abundance of energy, of course, would enable practical desalination processes to tap the oceans, and otherwise undrinkable reservoirs, for fresh water. Nikola Tesla correctly observed that access to energy is the key to economic development and that, in the interests of coming generations: "... We have to evolve means of obtaining energy from stores that are forever inexhaustible." Tesla was right, and we must continue his quest for the perfect energy source.

In these terms, it is difficult to argue against a full and open investigation of the Energy Grid and 'free' power technologies. If the federations and institutions of the OWO won't conduct such studies to solve the water crisis, we must form free cities and talent collectives, and do the job ourselves.

Two Giant Levers For Freedom [249]
Ordinary folk feel powerless in the face of the organised deception and exploitation that is being practised by an unholy alliance of taker-thinking governments, corporations and media networks. Individually, ordinary people seem and feel so insignificant that their voice can be, and generally is, ignored. Individually, ordinary people lack financial and other resources to confront the legions of lawyers that the Feds and corporations can muster, and they correctly assess their chances in the adversarial and often corrupt 'justice' systems of the dominant Level 3 Civilization, as very slim indeed.

Collectively, however, ordinary citizens have two huge levers that they can use to not only make their views heard, but also make them prevail. These too-little-used levers are:

  • Superior Numbers - that can far outweigh the power of governments and corporations to counter and control the resultant force of public opinion and resolve.

  • Communal Communication Abilities - That enable ordinary people to carry on dialogue, share and refine ideas, and formulate common goals and strategies for achieving them.

Ants are individually puny opponents for small vertebrates and even humans yet, army ants, fire ants, and others, are fully capable of attacking and killing much larger prey, if they are hungry enough or angry enough. ants (37K)The strength of the ants lies in their superior numbers and their instinctive hive model of organisation.

The natural, some would say instinctive, organisation model for humans is the tribe. But there is no suggestion here of attacking or harming the less numerous members of big government and big business organisations that are structured along institutional and militarist lines. Any physical attack on the forces of the OWO would not only violate the sixth commandment, it would fail to advance humanity or benefit society in any way. No, the conflict between the OWO and the rest of us is a battle of ideas and, as such, it holds great potential as a transformational force that will benefit all of humanity - even those people who are presently on the side of federalism, capitalism and a creeping totalitarian control of the many by a few.

If several dozen people decide to renounce their citizenship and cease to pay taxes or show allegiance to a federation, they will have a problem. Once several thousand people decide to take such action the ownership of the problem will start to shift towards the Feds and away from the secessionists. Should a few million families elect to abandon the old federal system and form one or more free cities, there will be very little that governments can do about it, at least in the sense of physical coercion and application of legal provisions and the rule of law. There will just be too many leaver-givers, as there can often be too many ants facing much larger and seemingly more powerful opponents.

Considerable communication will be required to raise awareness of the issues and options surrounding the abandonment of the failed political and economic models of industrial capitalism, and the creation of a Level 4 Civilization from a rising wave of spike technologies. Such dialogue needs to be between us citizens of the deteriorating federations that are becoming more and more totalitarian. There is little point attempting to lobby politicians or gain 'air time' in the mainstream media, those sectors of society are no longer taking any instructions from the likes of you and I.

Although there is no revolution or uprising being contemplated here, and no harm to the agents of the OWO, it can be expected that federal authorities will actively discourage such dialogue between 'their' citizens. Martin_Luther (18K)Any attempt to inform people and raise awareness is likely to be branded as subversive. But this charge can only be made from the viewpoint of the established order. The alternative, and eventually the majority, view will be that individuals have an intrinsic right to free speech and free assembly.

The Roman Church didn't much like Martin Luther's actions in nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church, nor his criticisms of the sale of indulgences by church officials. They did not view his translation of the Bible into High German as a good thing either, since this enabled more people to read it and understand how it had come to be misrepresented by clergy who could read Latin, and who 'translated' the holy text from their pulpits, to parishioners who were unable to read the Bible for themselves.

What Luther and others in the Reformation did was to start people all over Germany, and eventually most of Europe, talking amongst themselves, about the true basis of the Gospel. In combination with the introduction of moveable type printing presses the Reformation led to much higher levels of intercommunication and dialogue among ordinary people. Once that process had begun it gathered pace like a snowball rolling down a hill. The rest, as they say, is history.

Presently, the Internet is serving the same purpose of connecting information and ideas across national boundaries, between ordinary people, and apart from and beyond the propaganda agendas of the mainstream media. You and I can now find all sorts of facts on the Internet that are never likely to be published or broadcast anywhere else. It is as if knowledge and understanding that was previously only recorded in a language we could neither reach nor read has suddenly been released in hundreds of thousands of web pages which are in plain English (or whatever other tongue we might speak).

There are already many cybertribes with specialised interests, some concentrate on ancient energy lines, dowsing, and the location and alignment of megalithic sites; others deal with 'free' energy devices; still others delve into the beliefs and myths of earlier civilizations; and some explain the quantum world and metaphysical phenomena found there. In the political arena there are a host of web sites produced by conspiracy theorists who blame the failure of the industrialised world on various shadowy groups, such as the Illuminati, Freemasons, Zionists, the Rosicrucians, the Club of Rome, and so on - just about everything through to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. There are masses of facts, speculation and opinions on the web, mainly produced by like-thinking interest groups, or cybertribes. Everything is there, but we are left to sort the wheat from the chaff for ourselves. There is no attempt at coordination between cybertribes or the publication of one or more cohesive frameworks into which all the information and all the conjecture can be fitted. That has still to happen. It will be the next stage of the development of the web and it will probably reside on the Lightnet, rather than the already obsolete Internet.

The two major problems with the present publishing of information and theories on the Internet are to be found in the lack of cohesive models that 'join the dots' between disparate areas of research and knowledge; and in a failure to focus the aim of all the dissent on a single correct target. The first source of weakness is the internalised nature of most of the web sites and discussion groups. There are lots of specialists who are working 'down in the weeds' of their subject areas, but there are very few authors and commentators providing integration and overviews of the material. The framework provided by this 2nd Renaissance freesite is an example of such an integrating model.

The second source of weakness is due to a general failure to challenge the status quo. As Daniel Quinn correctly notes, most people continue to believe that the way we live now is the way we were meant to live. Thus the various activists and cybertribes continue to focus on stopping the decline of society and the slide into a globalised market dominated by a relatively few unethical, uncaring corporations, and their supporting institutions such as the World Bank and the United Nations.

Nearly all the dissent and criticism on the Internet is aimed at entities that are perceived to be breaking down the way we live now and building a 'New World Order' in which they have unchallenged control and power. However, as the world enters an age of magical new spike technologies and abundance, the single correct target of informed dissent is BIG GOVERNMENTS. Particularly centralised federal governments.

Without the biased, often corrupt and unethical, support of big governments, big business will become powerless and non-viable. Without big government and its centralised legal systems and military forces, the shadowy 'string pullers' who presently manipulate world events will have no convenient leverage points. Their hidden power will vanish, and they will be unable to exert any real influence over a myriad of neo-tribes and free cities.

The goal of community dialogue, on the Internet and face-to-face in parks and coffee shops, must be a raised awareness of the need to abandon the way we live now, and the institutions that control how we live now. As well as the legislative and executive arms of government, there is a need to also abandon the judicial arm and its attendant Rule of Law, that is so convenient a weapon for corporations acting against the interests of ordinary people.

Both on the Internet and in cafes and meeting places, there will be a need to maintain privacy and foil eavesdropping by various government agencies and shadow interests. The non-technical Personal Privacy Device (PPD), mentioned earlier, can be effective in masking face-to-face dialogues between ordinary citizens. Rather than expend energy on demonstrating against government support of globalisation and the commodification of water, it will be more useful to generate high levels of private discussion between ourselves. Instead of futile attempts to influence politicians and corporate interests who don't want to hear us, we will be better off influencing each other, and working together to engineer our abandonment of the failed Level 3 Civilization.

The 'Surveillance' freesite has details of the PPD. The link is here.

The Real New World Order [250]
There is a lot of talk and concern about "The New World Order" that is supposedly going to arise from the globalisation process, and enslave the world. But there is little chance of that happening. The players in the alleged conspiracy are Western governments, global corporations, and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. All these governments and institutions, together with the ideas that they espouse, are the backbone of the Old World Order. They and their ways of creating and maintaining artificial scarcity, and human suffering are in rapid decline. The elites and apparatchiks of the Old World Order will be the most likely losers of the 2nd Renaissance. But they should only lose power, not their material goods or their lives or liberty.

You and I, and the techno-tribes and new city states we choose to establish, are the true New World Order. We will be the ultimate winners. You and I, the new global citizens and sovereign individuals. Together we can create new abundance and magical technologies that can save the world. To do this we must rediscover and hold to the old truths of tribal societies, and then combine them with the new knowledge and technologies of the 2nd Renaissance.

We must become courageous and ungovernable. We must withdraw our support from the old regimes that can offer no new solutions. We must start to live and act as leaver-givers in a Level 4 Civilization.

Congregate In Centres Of 2nd Renaissance Thought [251]
During the Renaissance in Italy city states flourished and grew. By the late 14th century, seven out of the ten largest population centres in Europe were in Italy. But it was not only people that migrated to the Renaissance city states, information and knowledge were also attracted to these centres of creativity, and new ideas and skills were born there. These places were centres of thought, and that is what free cities of the 2nd Renaissance will also be. Just as people of talent chose to live and work in the intellectually stimulating culture of Italian city states so will the thinkers and technologists of the 2nd Renaissance be attracted to the stimulus and creativity of free cities.

The motives of the founders and later joiners of free cities will be different to those of the merchants and bankers who built up the Italian city states during the Renaissance. The latter were clearly concerned with the arts and culture, but they were also seeking wealth through trade and commerce. In the times in which they lived economics truly was about managing scarce resources to best effect. There were no technologies able to generate an abundance of near-costless goods and services. As a consequence poverty was quite prevalent among the lower classes in the Renaissance city states, and there was not much that the movers and shakers of commerce and the arts could have done to eliminate that problem.

All that has changed for the free cities of the 2nd Renaissance, their motives will be far more philanthropic than those of the innovators who spearheaded the Renaissance in medieval Europe. Now, magic new technologies to eliminate the scourges of poverty, disease and war from the daily experiences of humanity are within reach. The new thinkers who congregate in the first free cities will understand this vital difference and they will act collectively to create and spread abundance in the world.

Some of the essential socio-political features of free cities have already been noted earlier; apolitical administration, reverse surveillance, no secret police, no career politicians or political dynasties, absolute freedom of movement and association, unrestricted access to health services, low tax levels and true value-for-money services, etc. These and various other conditions are imperatives for free cities that must attract talented, forward-thinking leaver-givers. Additionally, there will be considerations such as self-sufficiency in essentials such as food, water, energy, and so on. This freesite is not the place to detail these requirements, but they will include innovations such as surrounding the free city with highly fertile agricultural zones that are made possible by soil enrichment techniques such at the Amazonian Indians used 2000 years ago to produce what are now called Terra Preta (Black Earth) cultivation areas. Technologies for obtaining energy and fresh water have already been outlined.

It will be important that each free city quickly reaches a viable population level, and this is why people who have realised the need and the opportunities to transform the way we live will congregate in these leaver-giver centres. Just as everyone who is part of a travelling circus does not have to be a high-wire star, it is not necessary for everyone who joins the tribes and community of a free city to be a scientist or technologist. People who live and work in a free city will share common values and goals, including the understanding that there is a better way to live.

While the optimum population range for a free city has yet to be determined it is likely to be more than 500,000 in the interests of self-sufficiency and to discourage harassment by OWO government agents and lawyers. wacomurders (24K)A self-sufficient city, like a travelling circus, requires a wide range of skills, talents and interests; this dictates the need for a reasonably sized metropolis. The population must also be large enough to make the Feds think twice about exercising force to bring a secessionist city back under their control.

The world has already seen, in the 1993 Waco massacre, what the US Feds are prepared to do to groups who choose to live differently. There, government agents and officials were able to attack less than a hundred men, women and children with tanks, while controlling the news released to an obedient media - so that David Koresh became the villain, rather than the US government.

If there had been a city of half a million people at Waco, with a multitude of communications links to the world, including live web-cams, there would have been no attack. The Feds will quickly stamp on a few dissident 'ants', but they will know better than to anger a large colony that is linked to many others and a global network of supporters.

At the time of their inception as free cities most centres will need an inflow of people in order to reach their critical mass of population, and to build up their levels of scientific and technological expertise. When the call goes out for prospective leaver-givers to join a free city it must be answered; there should be no hanging back - waiting to see if new-tribalism works or not. The right action to take will be to join the community of a free city and put your all into making sure that it does succeed. The well-being of future generations, and of the flora and fauna that presently grace this planet, will depend on there being large numbers of early-joiners to establish free cities and begin the many tasks required to replace scarcity with abundance.

City Nodes In A New Civilization Network [252]
The dismal failure of attempts to solve the problems of the industrial-capitalist civilization is clear to anyone who cares to consider the record. The dominant model for initiating change involves concerned citizens, like you and I, generating or supporting a dialogue with elected representatives and officials of the various levels of government. Earlier content on this freesite has discussed Daniel Quinn's analysis of the inevitable outcomes of such communications. New promises are made, new programs are launched, more money is thrown after all the earlier funding that didn't solve anything; but the new programs and bigger budgets don't solve anything either.

Communicating with people in authority who are conforming, whether knowingly or not, to a Taker ethos and whose thinking is steeped, often unconsciously, in centralist principles is a huge waste of time and effort. We might as well talk to the West Wind about blowing north.

The dialogue and communication about solving the world's problems should not be between us and those organising and controlling the old order, but between ourselves. We must directly discuss how we can build a new civilization upon the ruins of the failed capitalist model.

There are already many movements striving to change and improve society and arrest and reverse the destruction that the Taker mentality is causing to the environment and the many precious life forms still remaining on Earth. Some of these have conventional store fronts and organisation structures; Greenpeace is an example, the various churches are another. Other less tangible movements operate in cyberspace and might even be impossible to physically track down; the Freenet community fits this model. Presently, almost all of the transformation movements on Earth are aiming their arguments at government and corporate policy makers. It is time to abandon those tactics and, instead, generate dialogue and new solutions within the general populations of the various countries, not their governments.

Free cities will play an important role in a global communication process that bypasses officialdom and an obedient media, and links the thought processes and knowledge of ordinary people everywhere. Free cities will be concentrations, or nodes, of 2nd Renaissance enlightenment in a global network of forward-looking leaver-givers. Free cities will pump out the information and insights that will enable ordinary people to understand and join the movement to build a Level 4 Civilization out of the ruins of the old, now thoroughly discredited, order that ruled the industrial age.

These cities will also be centres of new learning, and they will earn income from teaching new philosophies, new transformation strategies, and new insights into nature and the metaphysical realm. The arts, science and learning flourished in the Italian city states of the Renaissance, and they will do so again in free cities that abandon federalism and stale economic doctrines based on ever-prevailing scarcity and the erroneous notion of 'the market' as the governing mechanism for the distribution of all resources.

Exposing Flawed Arguments and False Reasoning [253]
Once free cities become established they will flood the world with counter-logic. This reasoning will help ordinary people understand how prevailing logic can be turned on its head, and how society can move forwards and upwards, to a higher level of civilization and a better, fairer world. This is an important role for the inhabitants of free cities. Just as the movers and shakers of Italian city states caused new thinking to spread across Renaissance Europe, so the neo-tribalists of free cities will help people everywhere to see the way ahead. Ordinary people will then realise that the responses of conventional thinkers drawn, as they are, from old intellectual comfort zones rather than the hedgerows of new thought, are now little more than worn out rhetoric and stifling dogma.

Counter-logic is simply a different way of looking at conventional arguments. A couple of examples below illustrate this. The conventional response is in quotes, and the counter-logic follows.

  • "If cities and regions were to secede from the Commonwealth of Australia a century of border protection against the importation of non-indigenous species would be undone. Plant and animal diseases would enter the country and devastate whole areas of agricultural production."

    A counter-logic says that this penetration of borders by diseases is going to happen anyway. The various trade agreements that are being set in place under globalisation will effectively ensure that diseased plants and animals can and will be sold into Australia. The best defence to such a threat is better science, to detect and control or eliminate diseases. Free cities and regions will attract scientists and technologists to Australia. Their freedom to research anything and everything, rather than being constrained by centralised research grant allocations, will offer the best chance that the non-indigenous diseases will be studied and controlled. Presently, Australian politicians are happily signing away the nation's rights to protect its borders from disease ridden produce. Once the diseases enter the country, centralised, grant-governed scientific research programs will prove unable to control them. Free cities and regions will have a far better chance of attracting talented scientists and technologists able to devise control mechanisms and maintain a viable agricultural sector.

  • "If cities and regions secede from a federation they will lose all the services now provided by the central and state governments. They will not have the funds to drive their successful development."

    The counter-logic to this 'where's the money coming from?' nonsense says that all federal and state governments do is redistribute - and usually waste - the taxes they levy. The Feds don't actually have any money of their own, they appropriate our money. State governments do the very same thing. The fact is that almost all cities and regions that break away from the old order will be far better off without the parasitic overburden and waste of federal and state governments.

Another form of conventional response that needs to be refuted is the 'authoritative answer' that omits to mention that knowledge to the contrary exists. An example is shown below. Note that this counter requires knowledge that is not widely distributed. This highlights the need for free cities and networks such as Freenet to spread such presently obscure information.

  • "Sorry, there are no 'free' energy technologies available to power desalination plants in Australia or anywhere else."

    Such a response would be true in the sense of such technology not being available commercially, but it omits information about military uses of the Energy Grid in Australia. If the Feds really wanted to they could harness the same power that Tesla demonstrated at Colorado Springs and Wardenclyffe. There are evidential sources which make it clear that the US government operated a Tesla transmitter on the Australian mainland, with the knowledge of the Australian Feds. This was the Omega Navigation Facility at Darriman, in Victoria.

    While it was portrayed as a navigational facility of low signal power, as low as 10 kW in some official documents, this device is also known to have been powered by two 450 kW transformers drawing power from the national grid. This normal operational power supply was backed up by a large 750 kW V12 diesel generator.

    There was far more power capacity installed for the Darriman transmitter that a 10 kW sky signal required. From the design of the apparatus, which is similar to Tesla's Wardenclyffe transmitter, it is apparent that the extra power was required to transmit a ground signal of the order of 500,000 watts, from buried copper aerials that radiate out from the base of the 427 metre mast for some 340 metres, every 10 degrees. While the Omega station was officially in operation, between 1982 and 1997, a radio specialist living some 100 km from the transmitter is said to have been able to listen to the Omega ground wave pulses by inserting his high impedance headphones into the soil in his yard. If that was true there had to be a Tesla transmitter operating somewhere, presumably at the Omega site.

    Although the advent of a Global Positioning System (GPS) seems to have rendered the Omega sky wave navigation system obsolete, it is not clear whether the ground wave transmitter is still serviceable. It might have been replaced in the electromagnetic arsenal of the OWO by HARRP and similar devices, or it might still be able to be brought into use when required. No matter what the situation is now, there is a strong counter to any assertion that the Australian Feds don't have knowledge of the Energy Grid or how to draw abundant free energy from it. The Feds allowed what can only have been a Tesla transmitter to be built in Australia, and this makes any denial of the existence of such technology less than believable.

    Even it were true that no technology to harness the power of the Energy Grid and desalinate water from the oceans and the Great Artesian Basin that extends widely in inland Australia; there are always the silane oils discovered by Peter Plichta. The silanes are a genuine alternative to carbon-based fuels, as discussed earlier. When they are in possession of this sort of information ordinary Australians will be far less likely to accept denials of the availability of practical energy and water solutions, just because they come from officials in government or mass media journalists.

Authoritative answers are being regularly given to whole populations who are not in a position to question them, because much relevant information is not widely known or is deliberately kept secret by the 'representatives' and 'servants' of those same people.

Communication between citizens (Us-2-Us), rather than between citizens and governments (Us-2-OWO), is necessary to ensure that all available information can be shared, discussed, and brought into play in a multiplicity of forums dealing with ways to create abundance and establish a Level 4 Civilization.

Stop Voting - Stop Supporting Pseudo Democracies [254]
Just as communicating with the Feds about abandoning the way we live now is a futile process that only buttresses the legitimacy of old ways of thinking and living, continuing to vote within centralised political processes only reinforces their continuing relevance. Citizens who continue to reside within totalitarian-democracies can, at least partly, abandon them by not voting at elections that will never lead to abundance and a better way of living.

Where voting is compulsory, as it is for all three levels of government in Australia, it will be preferable for dissenting citizens to cast informal ballots. If large numbers of citizens do this the numerical legitimacy of the victorious party will be reduced. Whenever the Feds introduce electronic voting machines that do not allow informal ballots it will be time to leave the present nation state, just as it was time for many people to leave Nazi Germany in 1935. Once totalitarianism shows its face openly it is time to go. Leaver-givers who decide to leave their nation in such circumstances are sure to prefer to relocate to a free city or region, where they will be among like-minded people with the same goal of laying down the base for a Level 4 Civilization.

People living in countries that appear to be heading towards a violently totalitarian future should plan their move early and have several options thought out and provided for. In this case not voting will not be enough, there is a need to ensure the safety of loved ones. Those citizens who left Germany before 1933 were generally able to take funds and possessions with them, those who scraped out after 1933 were less fortunate. Many who stayed were dispossessed, imprisoned, raped, slaughtered, or otherwise mistreated by the Nazis or the "liberating" armies. If you're going to leave, do it early.

The War on Terror will quickly become a War on Freedom.

Become Involved In Highlighting Failures Of The Old Order [255]
Before there can be an irreversible transformation to a Level 4 Civilization it will be necessary for a critical mass of people on this planet to come to the full realisation that the way we live now is not the way we are meant to live. Further, the way we live now cannot continue for much longer without destroying, for all time, any pretensions that the human race may have about being the highest life form that has ever existed; a superior and unimpeachable species with both might and right on its side. This section is about helping others to see the fatal flaws in the old, 'Level 3' way of living, and how they personally can play a part in saving the world.

Being involved in the identification and communication of shortcomings and failures in the way our present society functions and how we are governed does not mean taking to the streets. The dialogue must be between ordinary citizens; i.e. Us-2-Us. There is no point in demonstrating and protesting about government programs that have no hope of ever succeeding, or policies that are completely out of touch with new technical opportunities, new spirituality, and the paths to new social and economic freedoms. We might as well shout and wave placards at brick walls.

In Us-2-Us dialogue, groups of people communicate about ways to realise the full potential of advanced knowledge and technologies; how to create abundance and free humans from poverty. But first, people must also discuss the failings of the old order and be clear that this is no way to live. Secondly, we must collectively recognise that there is neither the will to correct the injustices and fix the problems within the present Level 3 Civilization, nor is there the time. People who wish to see the world change for the better have to realise that the aims of the old order and leaver-givers are irreconcilable. They also need to know that there are solutions to the mess that takers have created, and that they, as individuals within a wider leaver-giver collective, can make a contribution and a difference. Individuals have no reason to feel powerless, there is a better life ahead and they can help all humanity to reach it.

The greatest obstacle to progress in finding solutions to intractable problems such as poverty, drug taking, teenage suicide, corruption, violence, and wanton destruction of the many irreplaceable gifts of nature, is new paradigm blindness. Just about everyone is aware that despite the promises of federal and state politicians to the contrary, governments don't have effective solutions to these problems or many others. People keep proposing ways to get around these impasses but, because they seek remedies within the existing paradigms of layered government administrations and rampant capitalism, they can never have any success. New paradigms are required to solve the problems, but few people are, as yet, aware of better ways to think and live.

One of the most dominant and change-defeating notions is that of individual powerlessness. People feel that, on their own, they cannot have any influence in improving the world; they ignore the example of the army ants and assume - because it has always seemed so - that they truly are powerless. Of course, if they believe they are powerless, then they are. A small coterie of federalists and industrialists is then able to manipulate the way a far larger number of people on Earth live, most of them on less than 2 dollars a day. Depending on where such 'powerless' people reside they might be prevented from congregating or demonstrating, or they might not be able to name the people who are either so incompetent or so corrupt that all new government solutions are doomed to failure. Draconian defamation and libel laws might, as they do in Australia, mean that only the relatively wealthy have the luxury of speaking out. All seems lost, the global bullies are in control, nothing can be changed unless 'they' permit it.

However, there are two truths that are ignored in such a pessimistic assessment. One is that while it is easy to control individual citizens, it is impossible for a relatively few officials, police, or whoever, to control many citizens. Try it with some ants, you can use a small twig or a pencil to block the path or a single ant, and you can do so for five or six at once. But once there are 20 or 30 ants, let alone two or three thousand, control of the routes they take becomes impossible. That is why the authorities of the old order fear mobs, and why they always adopt 'divide and conquer' tactics within their national control strategies.

The other truth is also evident in the problems of controlling ants. The fact is that ants are great communicators, even although some types have as few as ten neurons for a brain ants are able to perform amazing feats of communication, that have even been likened to telepathy, They are believed to communicate with scents, although at least one researcher thinks that the mechanism is something much less knowable to us humans.

Whatever the nature of the communication mechanism ants use, the point is that it is collective. Ants are able to resist outside control because they think and act as one organism. Many animals also use the same tactic in order to survive and prosper. It's time we did the same. After all, tribalism is our natural social structure. In future, whoever persecutes one member of a neo-tribe must expect to face the wrath of the whole group, and of their affiliated tribes around the world. There is not only safety in numbers there is immense strength.

Many Societal Failures Can Be Identified [256]
The key word in the heading is 'societal.' These forms of failure are even more damaging than system flaws, such as the economic imbalance and inequality between the rich and poor nations, or the prevalent scientific dogma and Dark Age thinking in most present-day institutions of learning and research.

Societal failures involve the way we treat each other. Failures in this area don't just make us poorer or less knowledgeable than we might otherwise be, they undermine our claim to be a higher form of life.

The following sections discuss just a few of these societal flaws. These are examples of the problems that need to be communicated on an Us-2-Us basis, and linked into our plans to build a Level 4 Civilization that is free of such inhumanities.

This is NOT Civilization! [257]
The little girl in the adjacent picture lives in St Petersburg. Being homeless, she has been forced into prostitution in order to survive. She leans against a wall, smoking a cigarette and waiting for her next client.
St Petersburg GirlYou can read her story in the photojournalism magazine Eight, it's titled "Karat: Homeless in St Petersburg" (see Foto8.com on the WWW), but you already know the plot. This child is the hapless victim of our so-called civilization. She, and millions like her, suffer in the backwash of socialism, capitalism, federalism, and orchestrated nationalism. Together, these humanly contrived plagues and curses diminished the quality of society in the 20th century, until what we are left with is not fit to be called civilization.

Anyone who disputes this statement has only to seek out victims like the little girl in the picture, to know that our "modern" society is a failure. If this were not so, children in St Petersburg and all around the world would not be forced to sell themselves on the streets.

According to a 2001 survey, some 400,000 children in the US were being sexually exploited, from full prostitution to selling sex at school for cash. Another estimate, by UNICEF, puts the number of under-age prostitutes in India at 500,000. On these figures, the less populous US has a greater child sex problem than less developed and less affluent India.

Tell me that it's the Internet, let alone Freenet, that is the cause, and I'll tell you it is the breaking down of something far more fundamental that is the real problem. The way we treat each other is what has deteriorated. In a world dominated by market centred economics everything is for sale, including the kids.

What can we do about this problem? We can firstly set the right example and begin to live in neo-tribal communities where all children are valued for what they are - the future of the human race. Secondly, we can refuse to abandon mistreated children to institutions, be they state or church. Institutions have too much bureaucracy and politics, and too little heart, to fully nurture and care for these kids. We can 'adopt' them within neo-tribal 'families' that are funded by the Level 4 Civilization movement.

Where's the money to come from? It can come from our foregoing that new wide-screen LCD television monitor or our season tickets to the football or the opera. More significantly it can come from the taxes we won't pay to the Feds, to be otherwise wasted on their many futile child welfare programs. The Feds believe that it's their job to spend our taxes on children, to turn out model citizens (who are easily controlled). We believe that it's our job, your's and mine, to spend sufficient of our wealth on forgotten and disadvantaged children, to turn out worthwhile human beings (who will people a Level 4 Civilization to the greatest effect).

Punishment By Imprisonment Is A Medieval Concept [258]
Although this is the 21st century, the societies of the Level 3 Civilization have not yet abandoned the medieval notion of prisons being places of punishment. Today’s institutions of incarceration are called 'Correctional Centres' and other sanitised terms, but they remain vehicles for revenge and punishment exacted by courts under the Rule of Law.

Author's Note:
Some readers might find the following content offensive, since it deals specifically with sexual acts. If you wish to skip this section
CLICK HERE .

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- Fight or Fuck -

The following accounts of prison rape are taken from various human rights sites on the WWW that deal with this abuse, which seems to be in epidemic proportions in the US, Australia, and many other countries.

  • "I had no choice but to submit to being inmate B's prison wife. Out of fear for my life. I submitted to sucking his dick, being fucked in my ass, and performing other duties as a woman, such as making his bed. In all reality, I was his slave, as the officials of the Arkansas Department of Corrections under the 'color of law' did absolutely nothing."
    - M.P., Arkansas Pro Se federal civil rights complaint filed 8/2/96.

  • "... I probably have AIDS now, I have great difficulty raising food to my mouth from shaking after nightmares or thinking too hard on all this ... I've laid down without physical fight to be sodomised. To prevent so much damage in struggles ripping and tearing. Though in not fighting, it caused my heart and spirit to be raped as well. Something I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself for."
    - A.H., Indiana, 8/30/96.

  • "I was raped in prison from February 1991 through November 1991. From that it left me HIV positive."
    - T.B., Texas, 9/3/96.

  • "The rapes seem to be for two main reasons. 1. They hurt, someone must pay. 2. Being deprived of consensual sex, and self-centred, any hole will do. Power, control, revenge, seem to top the 'reasons' for rape. The person assaulted is either seen as weaker, or gang banged if seen as a stuck up kind of person. You know, refuses to swear, actually admits he is guilty, is seeking help etc. ..."
    - D.A., Nebraska, 9/6/96

  • "I can tell you that whenever a mother calls me whose son has been sentenced to prison, the first question she inevitably asks is, 'What can I tell him so he can keep himself safe?" said Donna Hamm, of the advocacy group Middle Ground Prison Reform. For the very weak, or the very young, or for homosexuals or females, coerced sexual activity is a very real concern, she said.
    - Arizona Daily Star, January 25, 2004.

  • The ACLU lawsuit details the story.

    "For eighteen months ... Mr Johnson was subjected to a system of gang-run sexual slavery. ... Gang members routinely bought and sold Mr Johnson as chattel, raped and degraded him on a virtually daily basis, and threatened him with death if he resisted. ... (Prison officials) were well aware of his plight, but ... made clear by words and deeds that they took sadistic pleasure in his victimisation. They also repeatedly expressed contempt for non-aggressive gay men, and made it explicit that it was their practice to refuse to protect such inmates from sexual assault, at least until such inmates were savagely beaten or 'guffed."

    "We don't protect punks on this farm" Johnson says he was told.
    "Fight or fuck."

    Raped first by a member of the Gangster Disciples gang, the first of seven gangs that would assert their ownership of him at Alfred. Johnson was assaulted again and again - in cells, stairwells, and showers - sometimes by as many as eight convicts at once. Gang members sold Johnson among themselves for $5 and $10 which convicts paid for with commissary items, at one point fighting among themselves over who owned him.
    - Austin American-Statesman, January 11, 2004.

  • Gardesani's willingness to gather evidence on Anderson sparked an investigation by the Colorado Department of Corrections into numerous allegations of sexual misconduct by male staff at the Pueblo women's prison. ... A native of Brazil who speaks four languages but is less than fluent in English, she admits she was reluctant to come forward at first. She was too shocked she says - and then too afraid of what the officer could do to her.

    "Sergeant Anderson was such a cop - go by the book and everything," she says. "People were kind of scared of him because he was mean with inmates. He write you up for anything. I was real surprised it happened because he was the last person I expect it from."

    According to Gardesani, she was reading in her cell one day when Anderson came in and "started running his hands over me. I couldn't believe what was going on." He then left as abruptly as he arrived, she says.

    On three subsequent visits over the next few weeks, Gardesani says, Anderson took her to the one area of the room not visible from the cell door, bent her over a chair, and had intercourse with her. "I didn't say a word" she says, "I was thinking, If I scream he's going to tell them I'm crazy and they're going to put me in the hole, put me in special needs, like happen with other inmates. So I let him do it. I was almost paralysed. He didn't say too much. He just pulled me to the chair. Then he had sex with me without no protection at all."

    ... Throughout it all Gardesani says, she believed any complaint she might make would lead to retaliation. "He told me several times, 'I can't lose my job, so you don't say nothing." she says. "But he has the power, right? He can tell things that I done, and I didn't do it, you know what I mean?"
    - Westword, May 6, 2004.

That was the US, now for Australia.

  • There is something seriously wrong when the NSW prisons are too dangerous even for those convicted of violent crime. Yet that is how the prison system appears to no less a figure than the District Court's acting Judge Donald Stewart (former chairman of the National Crime Authority, former royal commissioner and former Supreme Court judge). Judge Stewart has decided not to send a young carjacker to jail to await sentencing because "what might and probably will face this young man ... does not bear speaking about." And so Ali El Etri will remain on bail after pleading guilty to charges including aggravated carjacking which carries a penalty of up to 14 years in jail. El Etri and a 30-year-old accomplice had lain in wait for a Sydney solicitor then stolen her Porsche Boxter at gunpoint.

    The community may well feel that those who terrorise others in this fashion should be off the streets. However, Judge Stewart was clearly apprehensive about what might befall a good-looking 20-year-old in a NSW jail. Judge Stewart said he wanted to dispel "any romantic ideas people have about jail. It is not a cushy number", and noted there had been a weekend newspaper report on rape in prisons.

    His Honour may well have been referring to the Good Weekend cover story which painted a horrifying picture of jails where the rape of prisoners by other prisoners had become routine. A NSW magistrate, David Heilpern, told the magazine that up to 25 percent of young men in NSW jails had been raped, some every day. Other experts interviewed by the Good Weekend thought Mr Heilpern's figure was conservative. Yet those who were sexually assaulted are reluctant to complain to authorities for fear of retribution from other prisoners. And all this in a state which jails more than 15,000 people a year - almost twice the per capita rate of Victoria, for example.

    "People are not sent to jail to be punished, they are sent to jail as punishment," Judge Stewart said on Monday when continuing El Etri's bail. It is not clear what the Judge may do when the time comes to sentence El Etri on December 13. Meanwhile, he has made a valid point. While governments may introduce tough laws against crime, respect for the law also means that they must accept full responsibility to protect criminals from punishment beyond what the law prescribes.

While Judge Stewart is to be commended for taking his lonely stand against the inhuman conditions in NSW jails and the failure of Correctional Services officials to provide full protection for prisoners, he clearly states the principle that "People are .... sent to jail as punishment". This is the flaw in present-day justice systems, prisons are still intended to punish offenders, just as they were in the Dark Ages. Nothing has changed.

Given that this is the case, it is misleading and erroneous to label prisons as 'Correctional Centres'. These facilities are not designed or operated to 'correct' or rehabilitate the unfortunates who are incarcerated within them. The aim is to punish people for their perceived sins.

Colonial Australia was founded as a penal colony, to get felons who were crammed into prison hulks on the Thames out of the sight of genteel Londoners. Those unfortunates who were transported to Australia, often for petty thefts, were worked hard and treated with extreme brutality. Today, federal and state governments, and the majority of the judiciary who administer the rule of law in Australia, are inclined to perpetuate this principle, while giving only lip service to notions of reform and rehabilitation in the public rhetoric of the justice system.

As things stand, police who arrest offenders such as El Etri, lawyers who prosecute them, and judges or magistrates who sentence them are knowingly sending these people into situations in which they have every chance of being routinely subjected to sexual abuse and physical assault. prisonrape (14K)No valid defence can be afforded by claiming that the end responsibility for the protection of prison inmates lies with Correctional Services authorities.

The Nuremberg trials of 1945-6 rejected similar arguments from those who were part of the chain that arrested, transported and finally exterminated hordes of innocent people whom the Nazis disapproved of.

At Nuremberg it was not accepted that the soldiers and guards were 'only following orders'. If they had forced people into cattle trucks bound for Auschwitz, Belsen, Dachau or similar destinations, the officials, police and military were judged to have been as guilty of crimes against humanity as those who planned and directed the holocaust.

A very strong argument can be made that the abuses that are being allowed to happen in jails in Australia, the US, and other places, are nothing less than crimes against humanity - a justice holocaust. Thus, when a judge sentences an offender to prison the true punishment is far greater than a number of years of loss of liberty. It is repeated rape and, in all probability, a lingering death from AIDS.

Most of the people in NSW jails don't even need to be confined for the safety of the general society. They are in prison for drug use offences, minor breaches such as not paying traffic fines, or for defrauding the social security system of quite small amounts of money. Certainly, there are violent rapists and armed robbers who do need to be confined until such time as they can be rehabilitated, if that is possible. However, there is absolutely no justification for allowing even these people to be subjected to additional, unofficial, punishments of the most vile and brutal kind.

Without wishing to be crude about it, the justice system sucks. And the faults trace back to medieval notions of revenge and punishment that have no place in a truly just society. Again, without wishing to labour the comparison, it is a fact that tribal peoples dwelt in Australia for tens of thousands of years without constructing any jails or severely punishing or abusing wrongdoers. The emphasis in many tribal systems of justice is on rectification of the harm done to victims, rather than torturing the perpetrators of the crimes.

The appalling failures in the systems of justice and imprisonment within the old order cry out to be discussed Us-2-Us. Wide awareness and indignation in the public arena will be significant factors in decisions relating to secession and the establishment of a Level 4 Civilization that is free of such flaws.

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Crime Rates Are Falling But Prison Numbers Are Rising ! [259]
The following selection of prison population rates per 100,000 of the national population are drawn from an Amnesty International source. They capture the situation as at January 11, 2004.

Australia had 115 prisoners per 100,000 people, China was similar, with 117.
Many European countries were lower. Germany had 98, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland all had 72. Norway had 64.

Many Asian countries have relatively low prisoner rates. In the Amnesty International study Japan had 53, and India and Indonesia both had 29 prisoners per 100,000 people.
England and Wales had a higher rate of 140, while Brazil had 160, and Cuba had 297 prisoners per 100,000 people.

The incarceration rates in the US dwarfed those of all other nations. At the date mentioned above there were 701 prisoners per 100,000 people in that country. Only the Russian Federation came close, at 606 prisoners per 100,000 people.

The levels of imprisonment are rising in both the US and Australia, and this is happening at a time when many serious crimes, such as break-ins and armed robbery are falling. Here are some excerpts from the Australian Coalition Against The Death Penalty web site. It uses the above Amnesty International study.

  • In the US:
    "Almost 6.6 million men and women made up the correctional population at the end of 2000.

    One in every 32 U.S. residents were on probation or parole or were held in a prison or jail. More than ten million people (1 in 148 people) are incarcerated each year in the U.S. - the incarnation rate being 704 per 100,000 people. Besides executing prisoners on almost a weekly basis, the U.S. also has some of the toughest prison sentences in the world which include life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

    Each year, there are approximately 3,000 deaths in custody in the U.S."

  • "The prison boom has exacted a tremendous social cost. Since 1985, the increase in money spent on U.S. prisons nationwide topped $20 billion. That is almost twice the increase in dollars spent on colleges and universities, according to a recent report titled, 'Cellblocks or Classrooms."

  • "Prisons have not expanded because more crimes are being committed, but because more people are now being arrested for minor offences - more people prosecuted and more people given lengthy sentences, as lawmakers consistently compete with each other to re-introduce ever-harsher penalties. It is not that crime has increased; it is the punishment."

The above point is also borne out in prison statistics for Australia. The following excerpt from an article by Cheryl McDermid titled "A precipitous increase in Australia's prison population" (November 2000) makes this clear.

  • "In 1982 the incarceration rate was 89.9 per 100,000; by 1998 this had climbed to 139.2 per 100,000 - a 55 percent increase. The rate is over 30 percent higher than Britain's at 94 per 100,000 and almost seven times higher than Indonesia with 22 per 100,000. The annual growth rate in prison numbers is twice that of England and Wales, although only half that of the United States.

    Such figures indicate profound changes in society and demand an analysis. But their publication has been met with virtual silence in the media and official circles. There have been no headlines, no debates. Nor has the AIC [Australian Institute of Criminology] attempted to explain the roots of the phenomenon, despite issuing a series of related reports from August 1999 to April 2000.

    The perception created by governments, the police, the judiciary and the media is that society is under siege by crime, and everyday life proceeds under a cloud of fear. Yet the figures compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal that between 1993 and 1998 there was no statistically significant increase in the main crime categories - household break-ins, attempted break-ins, motor vehicle theft and sexual assault."

In her article Cheryl McDermid quotes from a submission that Justice Action, a prison reform group, made to the New South Wales (NSW) Select Committee on the Increase in Prison Population. It said:

"Murder is perhaps the offence most likely to be reported, least amenable to statistical manipulation and most indicative of the likely level of violent crime in society. The murder rate in NSW remains essentially unchanged since the 1970s and is around the same rate as it was at the time of federation (1901)."

Anybody who has studied the European Renaissance should not be surprised by the rise in prison populations now, at a time of similar technological and social transformation. Five or six hundred years ago the crime that put many unfortunate people in jails and torture chambers across Europe was heresy - having an opinion contrary to orthodox religious doctrine. Because the Roman Church had no capacity nor willingness to deal with a flood of new knowledge and scientific ideas, it simply locked up those it feared and it also made examples of them.

Victims, for that is what they were, were publicly put to death - disembowelled, torn apart by horses, burnt alive, and so on. This happened not only to males but to whole families, women and children alike. Nevertheless, in the end, nothing could stop the transformation of Europe and the loss of the secular power that had been wielded by the church. All those people suffered for nothing. The old guard lost anyway; defeated by new knowledge and ideas.

One of the major changes in society that authorities do not fear is the burgeoning substance abuse industry. Illegal drugs are big business and governments and their agencies are used to 'regulating' such interests, be they from the underworld or the overworld. Governments promise new programs to fix the drugs problem while blaming drug addicts for 'rising crime rates'. chowchilla (57K)New government programs never seem to work and the drugs problem continues unabated. Moreover law enforcement and court systems are encouraged to 'crack down' on relatively minor offences, while leaving the main causes unaddressed.

It is the drugs industry that is the root cause of many of the convictions that are leading to increased incarceration rates and expansion of the prisons system.

US statistics show that the proportion of prison inmates serving time for drug offences has risen dramatically during the past three decades. In 1970 the percentage of drug offenders in the US prison population was 16.3, by 2002 it had risen to an astonishing 54.7 percent. And the proportion of drug offenders in US prisons continues to rise, there seems to be no stopping it.

More prisons, larger prisons, are being built to accommodate the flood of offenders sentenced by the courts; construction costs average US$100,000 per cell and the cost of accommodating each inmate is about US$20,000 pa. In 2002 prisoner accommodation and related services cost governments in the US some US$40 billion; that's big business and it is attracting private sector corporations.

The Next Big Thing - Prison Labour As A Competitive Advantage [260]

The following excerpts are taken from an article by Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness, its title is Privatising Hell, and it draws on stories from an online edition of India's national newspaper, The Hindu, and from Business Week's online editions.

  • "In the U.S., a number of states have passed laws that allow commercial organisations to use convict labour. Prisoners get much less than the minimum wage. Retrenchments are not a problem, there is no sick leave, vacation or overtime, and unions are non-existent. The result, says noted journalist P. Sainath, is that American corporations are on to a good thing."

  • "Welcome to the new slavery. Privatised prisons in the united States run by for-profit corporations. And Federal or State-run prisons that allow - often invite - private enterprises to use that labour. Quality control made easy. Unions non-existent. And workers don't get more disciplined than this. Even if the prisons are not private, the State can hold down prison labour for private gain and its own benefit."

  • "These days (says Business Week online) prison labour is as close as your cell phone. Jail-based customer service centres have fielded 800-line requests for airline reservations. According to news reports, prisoners have also wrapped software for Microsoft, produced electronic menu boards for McDonald's, and stitched clingy lingerie for a manufacturer."

    In the past 20 years, more than 30 states have passed laws that allow commercial outfits to use convict labour. Such programmes now exist in 36 of the 50 American states.

  • "The corporations that use prison labour at far less than minimum wages include Fortune 500 giants and other famous 'brands'. Starbucks and Nintendo Game Boy systems are just two of the big names that have done so. ... It allows you to massively undercut any rivals who have qualms about human rights and the treatment of prisoners. And it helps push down wages across the industry."

  • "Honda has paid inmates $2 an hour for doing the same work an auto worker would get paid $20 to $30 an hour to do.

    Konica has used prisoners to repair copiers for less than 50 cents an hour.

    Toys RUs used prisoners to restock shelves and Microsoft to pack and ship software.

    Clothing made in California and Oregon prisons competes so successfully with apparel made in Latin America and Asia that it is exported to other countries."

  • "Stan Saunders of the Colombia Theological Seminary writes that 'prisons for profit now generate $30-40 billion of revenue annually. The corrections segment of our economy today employs over half a million full time workers.'

    That's more than any Fortune 500 company except General Motors. ...

    And in some towns across the U.S., the prison is now the mainstay of the local economy. Crime rates have dropped in the U.S,. Violent crime is down by one-fifth in the last three decades. But incarceration rates, Saunders points out, have quadrupled. Creating a state of siege mindset in the public has helped. Both media and lawmakers have done that."

  • "The result? As Alan Whyte and Jamie Baker write in an analysis for the World Socialist Web Site: "thousands of public sector jobs have been lost to convict labour. And thousands of private sector jobs have been lost as a result of firms that now utilise prison labour."

  • "It's the new slavery," says Randall Robinson. "It's destroying the younger generation of Black people," he told us at Trinity College in Connecticut earlier this year. This leading African-American thinker points to "the built-in bias and discrimination of the system. It ensures this huge pool of labour. In our democracy, we have private prisons. When as private corporations you own prisons, the only way you can get your stocks to go up is to get more prisoners."

Another article, The Celling of America, is quoted from the Covert Action Quarterly.

  • "Some of the country's largest and most profitable corporations have quietly begun to use prison labour forces, at wages up to 80% below the national minimum wage. Among those reportedly contracting to employ prisoners, either directly of through their subsidiaries: AT&T, Bank of America, Boeing, Chevron, Costco, Dell Computers, Eddie Bauer, IBM, Konica Business Machines, Microsoft, Starbucks, Texas Instruments, TWA and US West."

The next excerpts are from an article titled When Corporations Rule the World, by David C. Korten.

  • "Corporations profit not only from committing and facilitating crime, they also profit from punishing street criminals. Prison operators such as Corrections Corporation of America, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, and Sodexho SA aggressively promote prison privatisation globally.

    J.C. Penny, Victoria's Secret, IBM, Toys R Us, and TWA are among the U.S. corporations that have augmented their profits by employing prisoners who reportedly earn as little as 11 cents an hour with no benefits - a rate competitive with the worst of China's sweatshops.

    Under a new law that took effect in July 2000, Kentucky prisons began billing prisoners up to $50 a day for room and board. Other states are expected to follow.

    Combine long mandatory sentences for minor drug offences, a strong racial bias, prisons run by corporations for profit, the sale of convict labour to corporations at sweatshop rates, and a charge for prison room and board and you have a modern system of bonded labour, a social condition otherwise known as slavery."

"All The Way With The USA" [261]
A former prime minister of Australia (1966-1967), Harold Holt, is widely remembered for his "All the way with L.B.J." endorsement of the Vietnam war. Today, the Australian government continues to unreservedly adopt policies and philosophies emanating from the U.S.A. This copycat behaviour extends to the privatisation of prisons and the overly harsh immigration detention centres that have been criticised by a report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2002).

The first private prison in Australia opened in 1990. Whilst the US has the highest proportion of its population in prison, the Australian state of Victoria now has the highest proportion of prisoners in its privately run jails. No other state in the world has a higher proportion of commercially housed and managed prisoners. Not surprisingly, in these time of globalised markets, not a single private prison in Australia is run by an Australian company. In truth, there aren't many local firms or brands left in any industries in this country.

Private prisons and immigration detention centres are good business for private operators because there is no financial risk involved. The government foots the bill for the construction of the facilities and then pays private contractors to run them. Since the basis of payment is the occupation rate of each prison, the more prisoners there are the more money the private operator can make. There is a strong incentive to "get em there and keep em there". This is the same model that has emerged in the US.

Amanda George is a community lawyer who has been active in opposing the privatisation of prisons in Australia, particularly those facilities which now hold 80% of the women who are serving time in Victoria. The following excerpts are from an article she wrote during the 1990s, when there was still time to halt the globalisation of Australian prisons.

  • "One of the biggest hurdles prisoners and prison activists face is the silencing that occurs around prison issues. The Victorian government has now made it virtually impossible for the media to have access to prisons unless "to improve the public image of the department", according to the Corrective Services Director ... This sort of silencing occurs all the time around what goes on in prisons and is compounded by the pressure that transnational corporations can bring to bear on the media.

    In the UK there is clear evidence that private prison corporations lobby governments on law and order policies. And why not? The more prisoners there are, the more business they get. In Junee [Australia] a local council member has won a contract to provide sporting equipment to the [privately operated] jail. Clearly this meshing of financial interest and politics is absolutely improper."

  • "Not only is there money to be made in private prisons, there is money to be made out of prison labour. In Victoria prisoner labour brings in $5.5 million per year. In Queensland prisoners are working in the River of Gold Slate Mine. They get $5 a day, with a productivity bonus of $2 a day. The contractors certainly have a river of gold with those sorts of labour costs.

    There is a long history of privatisation in prisons which seems to be coming full circle. Private contractors were [earlier] removed from corrections because of the high rates of deaths and abuse. ..."

  • "In the US, private prisons are now executing people as part of their contract."

Federal and state governments in Australia don't seem to have been too concerned about who gets the contracts to run prisons here. The organisation that originally managed federal immigration detention centres and a number of state prisons was founded by four former FBI agents in the 1950s. Not only does that corporation, which has grown enormously in the intervening years, have a dubious association with the CIA and the alleged manufacture of high-tech weapons and munitions for illegal export from the US to third-world customers, it has a positively dreadful, and very public, record of mismanagement of prisons and mistreatment of prisoners in its care. (According to an article in the Atlantic Monthly its board of directors has included; "a former head of the FBI, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a former CIA director, a former CIA deputy director, a former head of the Secret Service, a former head of the Marine Corps, and a former Attorney General.)

[Their name doesn't particularly matter, it's the underlying thinking and attitudes that are important in understanding prison privatisation]

A second major prisons contractor used by governments in Australia also has an unenviable track record. If the purpose of imprisonment was really rehabilitation and 'correction' it would seen that such a provider should have been eliminated during the tendering process. But no, they got the lucrative contracts anyway, because the purpose of a prison sentence is solely one of punishment. The executive sent to Australia to run private prisons for this contractor had previously come to the attention of US courts. While working as director of corrections in Virginia and Arkansas he was found by the US Supreme Court to have violated the 8th and 14th amendments of the US Constitution, in respect to cruel and unusual punishment. Really just the sort of guy you want if your idea of prison is punishment.

Here are just a few of the prison management incidents (or failures in a duty of care) that have been reported in relation to the US owned for-profit corporations involved in managing Australian jails and immigration detention centres (the latter are really prisons as well, but they are never described as such - prisons are for punishment you see). The excerpts are taken from various reliable sources on the WWW; there is little doubt that the problems stateside were real.

  • "... in Texas, a former inmate of the [...] run minimum-security lockup in Lockhart claimed she was raped repeatedly over a four-month period. In July 1998, as reported in the American-Statesman, the former inmate filed a federal suit alleging that, although a prison internal affairs investigation found that the sex was not consensual, [...] officials failed to fire or reprimand the accused guard. The guard later quit after a second sexual assault allegation came to light.

    Asked about the many allegations against the company, a [...] official spokesman told the St. Petersburg Times that the cases aren't that unusual, given the company's size. "The lawsuits were filed against us on allegations by inmates who are convicted felons," the spokesman told the Florida daily. "So they have a record of dishonesty and misleading people."

    Speaking of which:

  • "In [...'s] Lockhart prison there are housed three private manufacturing companies. One of the companies Lockhart Technologies Inc, which produces circuit board assemblies, had a completely new factory assembly facility built by prison labour. When this factory was completed, the owner of Lockhart Technologies closed down his plant in Austin, Texas, laid off his 150 employees and moved all the manufacturing equipment to Lockhart. The prisoners performing this work a Lockhart are paid minimum wages for this highly profitable work, and the prison keeps 80% of that for room and board. None of this comes as a surprise though when you consider that [...'s] board of directors consists of former members of the FBI, CIA and sections of the US military establishment. It has in the past developed quite a reputation [for] strike breaking, and for running covert operations against private individuals who are either - whistle-blowers, environmentalists, anti-nuclear activists and union organisers on behalf of various privately owned companies. It is also the largest provider of security related services to the US Govt."

  • "At the Broward County work release facility in Ft. Lauderdale, allegations of sex between guards and inmates, and a successful escape, caused the county sheriff to ask for tighter oversight of the [...] facility. ... In June of 2000, the Florida state ACLU [a union] filed a public records suit against [...] for "stonewalling" access to records. The ACLU said they believed the documentation it sought would confirm ongoing allegations of sexual harassment, abuse, and "excessive profits" taken by the company."

  • "Louisiana: In April 2000, allegations of guards abusing juvenile offenders prompted the state to take control of the Jena Juvenile Justice Centre run by [...], the Baton Rouge Advocate reported. The facility, opened in December 1998, was plagued by problems, including riots during the first month the facility was open, allegations of "abusive and untrained" guards, and lack of "meaningful" rehabilitation programs, medical care, and educational opportunities. The paper also reported that inmates also complained of shortages of food, supplies, and clothing. According to the Advocate, juvenile inmates said they would purposely mutilate or attempt to kill themselves, hoping to get away from their tormentors."

  • Santa Rosa, New Mexico: "On August 31, 1999, they took the opportunity to run amok, stabbing an inmate, then Garcia, several times. Why was Garcia left alone among the convicts? Let's begin with [...'s] Jails R Us method of keeping costs down. They routinely packed two prisoners into each cell. They posted just one guard to cover an entire "pod," or block of cells. This reverses the ratio in government prisons - two guards per block, one prisoner per cell. Of course, the state's own prisons are not as "efficient" (read "cheap") as the private firm's. But then, the state hadn't lost a guard in seventeen years - where [...] hadn't yet operated seventeen months."

  • "On 5 April 2000. [...] agreed to surrender control of its 15-month-old juvenile prison in Jena, after the US Justice Department named [...] in a lawsuit seeking to protect imprisoned boys from harm at the hands of guards and fellow inmates. The government accused [...] of beating boys, throwing tear gas indoors, spraying them in the face with pepper spray, and not providing them with adequate education and counselling.

    One incident highlighted the regime at the institution. In March 1999 Judge Mark Doherty had ordered a 17-year old boy - a shotgun victim - removed from the prison. The boy wrote the following testimony.

    'A Sgt. came to me and said to put shirt in pants, and I told him that I couldn't and he 'put me to the ground and told me to lay face down on the ground. And I told the Sgt. that I couldn't that I have on a (colostomy) bag, and he went put me on the ground. He came with his knee in my stomach'."

    The nurse at the prison's infirmary later noted that 5 to 6 inches of the boy's intestines were in the colostomy bag.

    One of the Justice Department's consultants. Nancy K. Ray wrote that Jena's difficulties stemmed largely from operating problems. In Jena's first 13 months, more than 600 people 'drifted through 180 positions', including 125 who were fired in 1999, a gross turnover rate of more than 300%. Ray also observed that recreation and rehabilitative programmes were 'grossly inadequate'."

  • Coke County Juvenile Justice Centre (Bronte,TX): "Several girls were sexually, physically, and mentally abused by [...] employees, including a man with [a] prior conviction for sexual abuse of a child; a lawsuit settled for $1.5 million (1999),

    TYC confirmed allegations that some staff members manipulated a "demotion/graduation" system to coerce girls into giving them sexual favours or dancing naked in front of them; some girls were raped or fondled, while others were made to disrobe and shower in the presence of male employees (1995).

    A 15-year old female victim of sexual assault by a [...] employee committed suicide in [the] wake of [a] lawsuit settlement that allowed the company to avoid accepting responsibility (1999)."

  • Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Facility-2000: "23 inmates and 6 staff contracted e-coli due to poor kitchen hygiene."

  • "[...] runs a 200 bed detention centre, on behalf of the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), in Jamaica, Queens (New York) where asylum seekers who arrive without 'proper documentation' are held. [...] has a 5-year $49m contract with the INS. Recently religious leaders from Queens toured the Jamaica facility and raised concerns about the conditions in which the asylum seekers were being detained.

    'The Jamaica detention centre is an unmarked structure of brown brick with video cameras perched on each corner. Slots 2 inches wide ventilate the centre, which has only a few windows atop one wall. Detainees live in open rooms of 20-30 beds, with communal showers and partially enclosed toilets. Men and women are housed in separate rooms. They eat food brought to them on trays, talk to their lawyers, play Ping-Pong, watch TV, sleep and bathe in the same locked area. There are few books in any language. Detainees get one hour of 'outdoor recreation' a day in a small courtyard. Visits with family and friends happen in guarded rooms through Plexiglass booths with telephones.' (Newsday, New York [Queens Edition], 3.6.01)"

Given their record of abuse allegations and incidents of mismanagement, it is not at all surprising that the multinational (US owned) 'corrections' companies that Australian governments chose to run jails and detention centres on Australian soil have delivered much the same results here. For example there is the siting of the first privately run women's prison outside of America, at Deer Park in Victoria.

  • "Fairlea women's prison (a state government run prison in the centrally located suburb of Fairfield, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) [is to be] closed in June 1996 and the women there shunted 27 kms out of the city to the newly multinational-built Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre, a new private prison, at Deer Park. A primary reason for the move is so the government can sell the valuable real estate Fairlea prison is on.

    [...] got the land at Deer Park cheaply from the former owners Defence Industries of Australia. The site is known to be contaminated by rocket fuel and other military contaminants."

Other examples are:

  • "The family of an Iranian boy said to be severely traumatised by 15 months in an Australian detention centre will today take legal action against the Federal Government and the operators of the detention centre. Josh Bornstein, of the law firm Maurice Blackburn Cashman, will seek damages from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and [...] which ran the Woomera and Villawood detention centres. childWoomera (47K)A spokeswoman for the law firm said the claim would be for a substantial amount." (The Age, October 26, 2003)

  • "Australia's treatment of refugees in detention centres was the harshest in the world, federal human rights commissioner Sev Ozdowski said today. Dr Ozdowski said the billion dollar system removed basic liberties from refugees, resulting in levels of despair unseen in detention camps elsewhere. 'It (Australia's system) is the harshest - the harshest mainly form the point of view of the length (of detention),' he told seminar guests at Monash University. 'I've never seen the level of despair (in camps anywhere) that I've seen in Australia.' He said the longest a child had been held in detention in Australia was five years, five months. By April this year, 50 children had been detained for more than two years. Dr Ozdowski ... said the social implications of indefinite detention were shattering. Family life disintegrated, people became suicidal and he had seen children as young as 10 with signs of self-harm. He quoted from one detainee who said "it's 16 months since my detention. My life has been taken away from me ... I've become a useless person who wishes for death every day." ...

    Dr Ozdowski, who was once himself a Polish refugee, also said the government's system of temporary protection visas (TPVs) was "ill conceived" "I personally believe that the TPV system is a disaster and we'll be paying for it for a long time." ... He said the biggest human rights abuses had occurred during riots at the centres. "(It happened) where basically control was lost and gas was used and physical force was used." he said. "You just don't keep people imprisoned for a long time with no good reason."

    Senator Vanstone issued a statement saying Australia was 'one of the great immigration success stories.' 'We have a generous, robust and ordered immigration system.' she said. (The Age, October 10, 2003)

  • "The Commonwealth Ombudsman's office has confirmed it has received several complaints from detainees, particularly those put into detention centres with pre-existing medical conditions, claiming they have been denied treatment. ... One case being investigated by the Ombudsman involves a 37-year-old Lebanese man, Samir Abbas, who suffers from a heart condition known as Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. He was put into Villawood in February after overstaying his visa. His lawyer, Stephen Hopper, says Mr Abbas has been refused permission to have a heart operation which doctors say would control his recurring heart palpitations. Mr Abbas has offered to pay for the operation. It is claimed Mr Abbas suffered an 'episode' with his heart on Friday, but despite repeated requests to be taken to hospital, Villawood guards refused to act until his lawyer went to the ABC [media]. After media broadcasts, he was taken by ambulance to Bankstown hospital and kept overnight. Villawood management was rebuked by the deputy state coroner last month over the death of a Thai prostitute in September 2001. Villawood medical staff had refused to take her to hospital." (Sydney Morning Herald, May 16, 2003)

  • "The Government has been hiding the real reasons why a private company lost the contract to run six immigration detention centres. ... Also covering up the poor performance is the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (Dima), which is acting in the commercial interests of [...]

    BRW has discovered a serious contractual breach relating to [...] and its handling of an escape that the department is keeping secret. Despite the seriousness of the breach - and the amount of about [AU]$90 million in taxpayer's money paid to the company for each year of the contract - the Federal Government refuses to disclose details about why a default notice was served on [...]. The disclosure of Dima's default notice adds to continuing revelations about [...'s] poor operating performance at the six centres. It also brings into question the Government's claim that [...] lost the contract to manage the detention centres because of poor value for money rather than poor performance.

    After a lengthy freedom-of-information request that began in May 2002, BRW has established that the department secretary, Bill Farmer, or his agent, issued a default notice to [...] under the contract. ... As a sign of the seriousness of the breach, Dima is not letting BRW see the document because of the harm it would do to [...]. The assistant secretary of unauthorised arrivals and detention services, Jim Williams, wrote to BRW on September 5: "I believe that there is a real risk that disclosure of the document would cause unreasonable harm to [...'s] business reputation and potentially prejudice its ability to perform competitively in its industry." (Business Review Weekly, September 26, 2003)

Mr Williams need not have worried about [...'s] business fortunes though, the company that replaced it in 2002 as the contractor for Australian immigration detention centres is now the subject of a conditional takeover offer by a renamed and rebadged [...]. If the truth were known, he probably had more reason to be worried about the safety of his family or his personal reputation and career. He was dealing with the biggest, toughest and most highly connected corrections corporation in the whole American Military Industrial Complex (AMIC). Those 'Good-ol'-Boys' don't muck around, and few Australian bureaucrats have ever had to deal with anything like [...] before. They are putty in its hands.

While none of the global private prisons contractors now operating in Australia were involved in the following incident it is indicative of the industry that has developed in the US. The case is also quite revealing with regard to where the torture techniques recently reported at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad might have originated.

  • "Another incident of brutality captured on videotape has sparked an investigation against a Texas prison and a lawsuit against the county that contracted with it. A video surfaced depicting guards brutalising inmates at the Brazoria County Detention Centre who had been recently transferred from overcrowded prisons in Missouri. The detention centre is owned and managed by a for-profit corporation, Capital Correctional Resources, Inc. (CCRI) under contract with Brazoria County. The video, which had been taped during a routine drug search, showed guards kicking the inmates, forcing them to craw on the floor, sicking guard dogs on them and prodding prisoner's buttocks with a stun gun."

The interrogators at Abu Ghraib were CIA but the guards were mainly contractors from the US prisons industry, perhaps some came from Brazoria County, Texas.

However, the point about the range of abuses listed is not who was responsible nor who was ultimately to blame. The truly concerning aspect is that governments throughout Australia have chosen to take prisons and detention centres in this country down the same privatisation path; to the same awful conditions and human rights abuses. There is so much documentation available on the failures of for-profit prisons in the US that the Australian decision makers would have had to be both uninformed and incompetent not to be aware of the facts about the records of the contractors they appointed.

Why then did they do it? We can only speculate, but it is likely that the inner circle of political and business 'heavy hitters' in this country feel comfortable with their own kind from America. Both groups feel threatened by the looming changes due to the digital revolution, and they both want to hang onto control at all costs. These people are not philosophers, they aren't deep thinkers, they are militarists, industrialists, and political warriors. Brutality and coercion appeal to them as means to keep the lid on the mega-change pressure cooker which this freesite terms the 2nd Renaissance.

In pursuing their goal of absolute control of every aspect of society these federal fascists will erode any vestiges of civilisation that remained at the end of 20th Century Dark Age. We need to discuss these trends on an Us-2Us basis, before they can take hold and do damage to innocent people in Australia, America, and other totalitarian-democracies.

A New Market In Body Parts - "Killing The Chicken To Scare The Monkey" [262]
While it has not yet happened in Australia or the US, there is a disturbing trend in other countries, notably China. There, body parts from executed prisoners are being offered for sale on the world market. Many of these harvested organs are going to American clients - that's globalisation for you folks, gruesome isn't it. Of course, China is an outright totalitarian state and such atrocities are to be expected there. However, the US and Australia are rapidly moving towards totalitarianism, under the cover of 'the war on terror'.

Presently, it is a felony to sell organs in the US, and there are fines up to US$50,000, and prison terms of up to 5 years. Nevertheless, Dr Thomas Diflo who is director of the renal transplant program at the New York University Medical Centre, has reported (in 2001) having seen a number of patients who had admitted to paying around US$10,000 for a replacement organ from executed Chinese prisoners. He said they showed little remorse regarding the source of their new kidneys, and were "ecstatic" to be taken off dialysis. So there's a need and there's a market. Since the US and Australia are already being run "by capitalists for capitalists", an unofficially sanctioned trade in organs harvested from prisoners could happen here, and sooner than we might think.

An article on the Village Voice web site, by Erik Baard and Rebecca Cooney, reports on reactions to Dr Diflo's revelation of the illegal trade in death row organs:

  • "The trafficking of human organs from Chinese executions to American residents is "something we've always known was going on but something we've never been able to document," says an American investigator working for the Laogai Research Foundation, a group founded by renowned human rights crusader Harry Wu and named for the gulags of China."

  • "When told that an American doctor was revealing his experiences, the laogai investigator, who asked that she not be identified because it would make her work in China impossible, pointed out that the opening comes at a critical time. Executions in China have surged to 400 in April alone as the Communist government conducts another of its periodic "strike hard" crackdowns on crime. ..."

  • "It's for scaring criminals and scaring [and] controlling society," the investigator says. The approach is known as "killing the chicken to scare the monkey."

  • "Executions come in floods, usually around the holidays, according to the investigator. This week, with the Labour Day celebrations that started May 1 is viewed by Chinese doctors as a particularly good time to get an organ, but there's no better time than the Lunar New Year, she added.

    Most, "perhaps 70 percent," of the hospitals performing procedures are run by the military, which has the best connections, she explains. Money from patients purchasing organs is dispersed among those who provide access to the prisoner's body. Hospitals even pay judges to tip them off when they sentence a suitable donor to death. "The money goes to officials all the way up the line," she says. "It goes to the courts, the people in charge of the prisons. It goes to the doctors, the hospitals, everything."

  • ".... the laogai [gulags] turned into Execution, Inc. less than 20 years ago after the introduction of cyclosporine, an immunosuppressant drug that prevents rejection of organs by the recipient's body."

  • "Young, non-smoking prisoners are given blood tests and medical exams to assess compatibility with arriving patients, the investigator explains, and courts set execution dates accordingly."

China is one of several countries that presently executes women (the US is another). The number of cases of female executions is not easily determined, it is difficult enough to pin down the overall number of executions each year let alone the gender composition of those punished.

chinachicken (33K)

The Chinese government does not publish figures on executions but estimates from various human rights and other activist sources range between 3,000 and 15,000 pa. But by any measure, no regime executes more of its citizens than China does.

Recently the pace of executions has been accelerated and the procedures have been modernised. An article by the noted Australian journalist, Hamish McDonald (from Beijing, in March 2003), reported as follows.

  • "China is equipping its courts with mobile execution vans as it shifts away from the communist system's traditional bullet in the head, towards a more "civilised" use of lethal injection.

    Intermediate courts of the southern province of Yunnan were issued with 18 new execution vans on February 28 and a court official said some have already been used."

  • "China's legal system allows only one appeal and lawyers say that less than 20 percent of defendants have professional legal representation. When appeals against the death penalty are rejected, the sentence is carried out immediately, sometimes within hours."

  • "In Yunnan, as well as in the cities of Harbin and Shanghai, death on the road has replaced death row. The execution vans are converted 24-seater buses. The windowless execution chamber at the back contains a metal bed on which the prisoner is strapped down. A police officer presses a button and an automatic syringe plunges a lethal drug into the prisoner's vein. The execution can be watched on a video monitor next to the driver's seat and be recorded if required. ..."

The Village Voice article by Erik Baard and Rebecca Cooney adds:

  • "The Chinese government published regulations in 1990, "On the Use of Dead Bodies or Organs From Condemned Criminals" stating that for a prisoner to be a donor, prior consent must be given by that person or remaining family, unless the body is unclaimed. Human rights activists scoff at that statement, noting that since prisoners are often kept from communicating with family members, there is no one to claim the body, which is harvested and cremated immediately. The government also requires that medical teams involved in the procurement of organs act stealthily: "Surgical vans must not display hospital logos; surgeons must not wear hospital uniforms when at the execution site; guards must be present until the organ is removed; and corpses should be promptly cremated following the removal of the organs."

  • "The harvesting enrages physicians like Dr Diflo. "I think it's a gross violation of human rights and very much at odds with what the transplant community tries to promulgate as the way to go about things. This does not involve appropriate consent. I don't think prisoners are given the option of donating or not donating. It's not done from an altruistic point of view," Diflo says. Even putting aside his reservations about the death penalty, Diflo says, "The central issue is the nonconsensual taking of organs and making human body parts a commodity."

    The Laogai investigator agrees. "It's very obviously profit-motivated because if the person can pay extra then they might be able to move up an execution date, or have it arranged for later," she says."

Don't think for a moment that what is happening in China today; "killing the chicken to scare the monkey" cannot happen in the USA or Australia. Federal and state governments have unenviable records on the privatisation of prisons and increasingly close associations with for-profit operators in both detention and health care. Australia has been condemned by the UN Human Rights Commission for its inhumane treatment of asylum seekers in detention facilities run by private contractors. Specifically, Australia's treatment of children in detention is the worst in the developed, and supposedly civilised, world. The Australian Feds say they are acting legally, and that they have laws in place to regulate private contractors and to cover themselves; just as the Chinese have laws regarding the "donation" of organs by executed persons, together with procedures and arrangements that enable a thriving industry in organ harvesting to circumvent those laws.

It is not a question of whether particular governments are communist, socialist or whatever. The truth is that once a regime becomes totalitarian, as China already is, it will choose to disregard the rights of its citizens and subject them to whatever atrocities suit its purpose.

The US and Australian feds are rapidly moving towards totalitarianism. It would seem to be only a matter of time before the death penalty is reintroduced in Australia and, once that happens, the way will be open for executions to be integrated with the harvesting of organs and body parts - as pioneered in China. Such trends need to be discussed urgently within an Us-2-Us process. More ordinary people need to be made aware of the prospects of their countries evolving into openly totalitarian states and of their present option of seceding from federal governments and setting up free cities. Obscenities such as organ harvesting from convicted persons will not occur in free cities, but there is a growing possibility that they will happen in totalitarian-democracies like Australia and the US.

But, before considering the implications of the death penalty, there is reason to consider how we already treat each other in relation to the imprisonment and punishment of women and their families. Great barbarity is going on right now in this area; within the ambit of the rule of law and the revenge and punishment systems of our "civilized" societies.

Let The Girls Go! [263]
In a recent case in Sydney, Australia, a judge sentenced a woman, who had killed her 10-year-old autistic son, to a 5 year good behaviour bond. The judge said, as he delivered the non-custodial sentence, that he considered that "This offender has suffered enough .... All the evidence leads to the inevitable conclusion that this offender will punish herself significantly for the rest of her life [for] taking the life of her beloved son." The woman was reported to have told a psychiatrist that:

  • "My soul had left my body. I wish I had my boy back. I love him so much. I didn't do it because I didn't want Jason. It's never that I hated Jason for his disability. I loved him the way he was. It just happened ...I snapped."

Notice again, the key presumption that underlies all Western justice systems; that offenders must be punished and made to suffer. In the above case the judge concluded that since the woman would continue to blame and punish herself for the rest of her life there was no need to send her to jail to be punished.

Judges and prosecutors in the Australian justice system, and in that of the USA, see it as their role to dispense the punishments set out in the law. They are, in fact, administering a punishment system. It is not a 'justice' system or a 'correctional' or a 'rehabilitation' system. Nor does it offer victims much more than useless revenge and, sometimes, a little monetary compensation for the harm they suffered. The perpetrator's fate is always clear and prescribed. They must be punished.

As discussed earlier, sending offenders to prison, especially those run by for-profit contractors, is to condemn them to suffering over and above the punishment prescribed within the rule of law. Such suffering is often of a cruel and inhuman nature and in violation of various human rights covenants. Yet judicial officers, with a few rare exceptions, continue to sentence offenders as though the additional suffering does not exist, or is nothing to do with them. They know what's happening in the jails but they choose to ignore it. In so doing these officials are converting the system they serve into one of injustice rather than justice.

Society then needs to consider whether offenders, particularly women and children, should ever be incarcerated at all. It might still be appropriate to contain unrepentant rapists and serial killers in order to protect the general community. However it is hard to see how imprisoning women who have killed their children, but who pose no threat to the general public, is anything but barbaric and totally uncivilized.

During 2003 an Australian woman, Kathleen Folbigg, was sentenced to 40 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 30 years. Her crime, which she continues to deny, folbigg40 (31K)was to consecutively smother her four children when they were aged between 8 and 19 months. She was largely convicted on the basis of entries in her private diary, although these did not specifically refer to her having killed her two sons and two daughters; only that she was her father's daughter. Her lawyers are appealing her conviction.

Whether Kathleen Folbigg is guilty or not it is an obvious fact that shutting her away for up to 40 years is not going to rehabilitate her nor serve as a warning to other mothers who might be tempted to smother their infants. Motherhood just does not work like that. For a woman to take the life of her child requires exceptional circumstances; it is not a natural act that any mother might consider in the light of likely penalties, or the chances of evading detection and punishment. There has to be something seriously wrong for a woman to commit the murder or manslaughter of her offspring. In Kathleen Folbigg's case something was, indeed, terribly wrong.

When she was herself just a toddler Kathleen witnessed the violent murder of her mother by her father. The man used a knife and inflicted 27 vicious stab wounds to young Kathleen's mother, who might have been trying to protect her from her father. A psychiatric report made shortly after the killing indicated that the young girl had a "bizarre preoccupation with her genitals" and considered this and her "retarded" state of mental development to be indications of sexual abuse during her first 18 months of life. Kathleen Folbigg never have a chance of growing up and becoming a 'normal' mother.

The judge noted her background and considered that because of it there was little chance of rehabilitation in her case. He said, "She is remorseful but unlikely ever to acknowledge her offences to anyone other than herself. If she does, she may very well commit suicide."

Kathleen Folbigg is currently segregated from other prisoners and is locked up for 22 hours out of every 24; "for her own safety". What an injustice, what an unnecessary punishment, and what a waste of a life.

Another case, this time in California, also underlines the futility and barbarity of the incarceration of women. Kristin Rossum's trial made headlines all over the world because it was seen as a classic love triangle and it was billed by the media as the 'American Beauty' murder, because of the red rose petals found at the death scene.

In 2003, Rossum was convicted of poisoning her husband of six years, by administering an overdose of fentanyl - a painkiller that is up to 100 times more powerful than morphine. KristinRossum (27K)Because Krisitn Rossum worked as a poisons expert, a toxicologist, and would be aware that fentanyl is an odourless and colourless drug that would be difficult to detect unless it was specifically tested for, she came under suspicion when it was found in her husband's body.

Despite her story that her husband had become depressed after she had told him that she intended to leave him for another man, and he had most likely taken a lethal cocktail of drugs from stocks she had purchased a long time before in Mexico, she was not believed by her husband's brother. He requested that police question Kristin further and keep the investigation open. High levels of fentanyl were detected during the subsequent inquiry.

Given the fact that Rossum still strenuously denies having poisoned her husband, and the lack of any witnesses to the killing or evidence to directly link her to the poison, there must still be considerable doubt that she is guilty. The media feeding frenzy that her case caused did her no favours, and it could well have contributed to the "guilty" outcome of her trial.

The prosecution alleged that Rossum killed de Villiers because he threatened to tell her employer, the San Diego Medical Examiner's Office, that she was having an affair with her supervisor and that she had also relapsed into a methamphetamine addiction. They claimed that she staged the death scene to look like a suicide and scattered red rose petals around the body to emulate scenes from her favourite movie, American Beauty. The prosecution claimed that Rossum gave false evidence when she testified that she spoke to her husband on the phone, around lunchtime on Monday, November 6, when medical experts said he would have been already comatose.

In Kristin Rossum's version of events she left her husband at home in bed on that Monday morning, she said he was speaking in a slurred manner and that he seemed sluggish. He had been very upset about the prospect of losing her and had always been very 'clinging' during their marriage. He was depressed and he told her he had taken several sedatives. She called his workplace and told them he would not be at work that day, and then she went to work herself. Rossum claims that she spoke to her husband at lunch time (by when the prosecution claims he would have been unconscious) and that when she arrived home that evening he was asleep and snoring. During the night she says that she realised that he wasn't breathing and she phoned emergency, while trying to revive him by CPR. She said that when she pulled back the bedclothes she saw that her husband's chest was covered with red rose petals and that he had their wedding pictures in the bed with him.

Asked during her trial whether she had loved her boss at the San Diego Medical Examiner's Office so much that she was prepared to take her husband's life so that she could be with him, she replied: "Absolutely not, that's what divorce is for." When challenged as to whether she had, with or without her lover, killed her husband, Rossum replied simply. She said: "I wouldn't hurt Greg."

Nevertheless, Kristin Rossum was convicted of murdering Greg de Villiers on purely circumstantial evidence. The prosecution emphasised her probable love triangle motive, her opportunity to kill her husband, and her knowledge of and access to poisons. But the jury was obviously confused by the lack of hard evidence. This is indicated by the fact that after the prosecution had spent seven and a half hours on its closing arguments and conjectures - while the defence took less than two hours to point to a complete lack of evidence; just a whole lot of suppositions and allegations - the jury in the case needed to deliberate for some eight hours over a period of two days. This was not a simple case of 'here's the hard evidence, pronounce her guilty'. The jurors, along with most other people, could not honestly be certain that Kristin Rossum was a murderess.

There are, to anybody who decides to look at the matter coldly and objectively, some serious reasons to doubt the seemingly obvious guilt of this young woman, and to doubt that she was ever likely to be afforded a fair trial. Here are a few of the misgivings that persons of conscience might have about the finding at Rossum's trial.

  • While there was an amount of fentanyl missing from the laboratory where Kristin worked, the prosecution totally failed to tie her to that deficiency. She claimed that she did not take any fentanyl, but a presumption of innocence on this point seems to have been overlooked by the jury in the flurry of allegations that they were bombarded with during the lengthy closing address. Anyone could have taken the drug, Rossum was taking methamphetamine for her own use. Who knows how many other people were dipping into the drug supplies at the San Diego Medical Examiner's Office. If Rossum could do it so could others, the security on drugs where Rossum worked seems to have been lax. Many of the people in such a lab would know what to do with fentanyl, other than using it as a poison. Fentanyl is considered to have a high potential for abuse. No one has suggested that Rossum ever used it in that manner - to engender a high - but other people might have. They would hardly come forward and admit to it though.

    Greg de Villiers would have been aware that toxicologists in Kristin's circle considered fentanyl to be a difficult drug to detect, at least on the part of a victim, he was said to have been at a party where this had been discussed, and the L.A. County toxicologist, Dan Anderson, and authored a paper titled Death by Fentanyl. While the defence lawyers for Kristin Rossum were unable to prove that de Villiers had acquired a quantity of phentanyl, and administered it to himself, nobody ever tried to prove that he didn't. He is described as having been "a top biotech executive" and he would, more likely than not, have had contacts in the laboratory equipment and drugs supply industry who might have been willing to get him some.

  • Fentanyl can be administered in three ways; by mouth, as a slow-release skin patch, or by intravenous injection. The prosecution contended that the drug was given to de Villiers during a struggle, and that there was an extra needle wound beyond those made by the medics who had attended his death and tried to revive him. The prosecution's expert witness testified that this particular puncture was not made correctly, and that it was consistent with the damage that could be caused if someone had forcibly administered a needle while de Villiers was resisting the injection.

    Unfortunately, the defence were unable to prove their suspicion that Greg de Villiers had drunken a large dose of fentanyl from a glass found at his bedside because it was never tested for traces of the drug. The police had initially assumed the death was a suicide and had not treated it as a murder scene until it was too late to capture vital evidence. Again, the presumption of innocence might have been applied, but it was not.

    In the absence of hard evidence to show that de Villiers drank fentanyl of his own accord, and in the face of prosecution claims - supported by expert testimony - that there was a suspicious needle wound on his arm, the jury seem to have been convinced that - circumstantially - Kristin Rossum injected her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl.

  • The known facts of de Villier's death could equally fit a suicide motive; that of a rejected, highly attached and dependent lover, who wished to end his unhappy life and also leave a message, that was not necessarily malicious or vengeful, to his wife and her new lover. But the defence was frustrated in their attempts to develop this quite probable case.

    Not enough seems to have been done by the state investigators to rule out this scenario, and Kristin Rossum's team lacked the authority and resources to explore it in full. This often happens to accused persons who have to contend with a state team that is seeking to gain a conviction, come what may, and is prepared to either overlook or even to deliberately exclude possible clues.

  • One such failure to pursue the investigation to the full extent possible involves Rossum's claim that she bought a yellow rose on the fatal day, not one with red petals. The prosecution, with great diligence, tracked down a copy of her supermarket docket that showed that she bought a rose that day, but the colour was not recorded.

    Given the extent of electronic surveillance in all supermarkets and convenience stores it should have been a simple matter for the state to determine whether the tape showed a red or yellow rose in her hand when she was at the checkout. Although the recording would be in mono it should still have been forensically practical to detect the difference in hue between the shade of a red rose and that of a yellow one.

    This was not pursued and, of course, such an investigation was beyond the capacity of the Rossum defence team. The state always enjoys this sort of advantage in any test of 'justice'.

  • Another line of investigation that should have been pursued, but wasn't, concerns Kristin Rossum's claim to have phoned her husband at lunch time on November 6, when he was supposedly already near death and, according to expert testimony, had not emptied his bladder for some 10 hours. If it were to have been shown that Rossum did indeed speak to her husband when she claimed it would almost certainly have cleared her of the murder charge. But her defence team lacked the authority to requisition transcripts of the conversation and confirmatory details as to its time, date, and the calling and receiving numbers involved.

    The prosecution did not seek out this information for two reasons: (a) Such information is not officially supposed to be available, although it is an open secret that the governments of all the COW nations have routinely recorded all phone conversations for decades, and certainly well before 911 and the War on Terror. (b) Their case against Kristin Rossum could have been seriously undermined and the death of Greg de Villiers might have had to be treated as a suicide; which is the way the police initially saw it.

    Ordinary citizens such as Kristin Rossum who come under suspicion of criminal acts face a daunting task to clear themselves. They invariably have limited financial resources and, more significantly, they lack the authority and resources needed to fully seek out evidence that could prove their innocence. Ranged against the accused are the enormous financial, legal and investigative resources of the state. Because the so-called justice systems of the USA and Australia are so adversarial, deriving as they do from feudal times and English law, the prosecution are always 'out to get' the accused.

    Both police officers and prosecution lawyers can advance their careers, pay, and status by securing convictions, especially in high profile cases like the 'American Beauty' murder. These guys simply didn't want Rossum to be found 'not guilty'.

    Trial by jury simply isn't a 'fair' system in which a balanced view is taken of all the facts and a just decision is reached. The whole process by which people are convicted and sent to prison is seriously flawed, and the authorities and others who live from it know this only too well.

    The star prosecutor in Kristin Rossum's case was thereafter promoted to Judge. Similarly, various advancements followed the prosecution, in Australia, of Lindy Chamberlain for the murder of her baby Azaria Chantel Chamberlain, in 1980. The cases, though in different countries and 20 years apart, also have other similarities.

    In both trials the evidence was predominantly circumstantial, there were no actual witnesses to the deaths and, in the Chamberlain case baby Azaria's body was never found. Both Kristin Rossum and Lindy Chamberlain were convicted on the basis of conjecture, media hype, and expert testimony. lindy (14K)In Lindy's case she told of a dingo (a native wild dog descended from a species originating in Thailand) entering the Chamberlain's tent in the Ayres Rock Camping Ground on August 17, 1980 and carrying 9-week-old Azaria off in its mouth. Kristin's version of the events surrounding the death of her husband have already been outlined above. Both women strenuously denied any guilt but both went to prison.

    Lindy Chamberlain spent 3 years in Darwin jail and gave birth to another daughter there. Luckily for her she was not required to wear leg irons during labour, as she would have been in California where Kristin Rossum is now incarcerated. Chamberlain was released following the revelation that the 'fetal bloodstains' found under the dashboard of the family car and which had played a major part in the conviction of her and her husband, were nothing but red undercoat - just common old paint. A forensic scientist in the employ of the Northern Territory government had seemingly 'mistaken' paint, which is an inorganic compound, with fetal blood, which is an organic substance.

    The deceit and misrepresentation in the official explanation of how such a 'mistake' ever happened beggars belief. The person responsible for the error still works for the Northern Territory government and is currently involved in the investigation of another high profile murder where no body has been found and the evidence is largely circumstantial!

    In reviewing the 1988 film, Evil Angels, about the Chamberlain case, Robert Ebert of the Chicago-Sun Times warned of the danger of allowing accused people to be convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence. He also noted that, if the death penalty had applied in Australia, a wrongful conviction could have resulted in Lindy Chamberlain's execution.

    As the Chamberlain case showed, expert evidence can be just as dangerous as circumstantial evidence. Since the development of DNA testing numerous convictions have been appealed and overturned on the basis of misleading or untrue evidence given under oath by expert witnesses. Nobody knows how many innocent men and women have gone to their deaths as convicted murderers or are still serving time in 'punishing' prison conditions because of the unchallenging acceptance by juries of 'expert' evidence.

    The adversarial nature of the justice system and, ingrained 'convict for your career's sake' attitudes within the law enforcement, legal, judicial and forensic cliques that investigate and prosecute suspected wrongdoers, have often combined to deny accused people a fair hearing and to send them to imprisonment, institutionalised and unjustified 'punishment' or even death.

    The expert testimony in the Rossum trial said that de Villiers had been dead for most of the day on November 6, 2000 and that he was already comatose by the time she claimed to have spoken to him on the phone. The expert evidence also indicated that Greg de Villiers died from a massive injection of fentanyl that was administered roughly, as would occur if there had been a struggle. The expert evidence said that de Villiers death was the due to large amounts of fentanyl detected in his body. The expert evidence in the Chamberlain case said that red automotive undercoat was fetal blood. Who knows what the truth really is?

    Well, for one thing, somebody already knows or can readily determine whether Rossum made the lunchtime phone call that might well have cleared her of murder. They just aren't saying because to bring such evidence to light might not only overturn a 'highly successful' prosecution and conviction, it would reveal to the US populace the extent to which their everyday communications are being monitored by the Feds. Unfortunately for Kristin Rossum, even if her version of events is true, nobody will ever admit that there is a record of her conversation with Greg. It will not be deemed to be 'in the national interest' for authorities to admit that judicially authorised wire-tapping is an anachronistic farce, and that due to the wonders of modern communications technology all phone conversations can be, and already are, monitored 24/7.

    It was also difficult for Rossum's legal team to authenticate the expert evidence that was tendered in court. It is not clear whether they were able to verify the conclusions about the time of death, or whether there really was a large amount of fentanyl in de Villier's body. Kristin Rossum herself would have been able to determine the concentrations of the poison, she is a summa cum laude graduate in chemistry from San Diego State University and a trained toxicologist. But as the accused person it was not possible for her to do any such analysis, it had to be independent.

    Her supervisor and lover at the San Diego Medical Examiner's Office could also have determined whether the amounts of fentanyl in the body were suggestive of a frenzied attack and intravenous injection of a massive amount of the drug, sufficient to kill de Villiers very quickly, or whether there were substantially lower amounts of fentanyl in the body; more consistent with his having drunk a smaller quantity from the glass found at his bedside, and then expired more slowly and in the manner that Rossum described at her trial. But no such analysis by Rossum's lover - or apparently anyone else on her side - was permitted. He was ordered to stay right away from the investigation that eventually jailed her.

    Despite the above commentary Kristin Rossum does bear a degree of guilt in relation to the break-up of her marriage and the death of Greg de Villiers. She is clearly guilty of adultery. She is also guilty of causing her 'clinging' husband great distress in the manner of her proposed separation and divorce. The right thing to have done, if her marriage was so intolerable to her, was to have divorced Greg before she took another lover. The way de Villiers was confronted with absolute betrayal and rejection could, very possibly, have caused him to end his own life. Kristin Rossum was also guilty of substance abuse and possibly of the theft of drugs from her place of employment. Nevertheless, many women have done very similar things; they're not commendable actions but they aren't really hanging offences either.

    The issue here is not whether Kristin Rossum is a 'good' or a 'bad' person. All of us are a bit of each. Although there are many reasons to doubt it, suppose, for the sake of the argument, that Rossum really is a murderess and that she is the scheming, self-centred, spoilt and over privileged brat she has been portrayed as in the media and at least one book written about her trial. Should she be in prison for the remainder of her natural life; without the possibility of parole? Should she be further punished within a prison that functions to exploit and torment its inmates beyond all the bounds of human decency, morality and human rights? The important issues involve questions of whether she should have been incarcerated as she has been, and whether she should be additionally punished by way of harsh treatment and, more than probably, sexual abuse.

    Not only does the following argument find the answers to these questions to be a resounding NO, it raises the further question: if Rossum, assuming that she really is a husband poisoner, should not be confined and so treated, then what about the other 7,000 women serving time in the twin prisons complex at Chowchilla? What about all the rest, all over the US, and those in Australian jails for that matter?

    How many women really need to be kept away from society because they pose a clear risk to it? The answer is damn few. It is quite probable that there are less than 100 women in the Chowchilla prisons complex where Rossum has been incarcerated that really should be kept off the streets. Even it there are three or four times as many women in the latter category, they should not be incarcerated in places like Chowchilla or treated as sub-humans, to be abused and tormented by a cruel system. As far as the rest of the women in the twin jails are concerned, the correct response is obvious:

    Let the girls GO!

    The Awful Realities Of Chowchilla [264]
    In December, 2002, Kristin Rossum was sentenced to life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole. She is now incarcerated in the Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) Chowchilla, in a complex that holds more convicted women than any other jail on planet earth. The judge had earlier denied a number of defence motions for a new trial and, at the short sentencing hearing, he ordered Rossum to pay a $10,000 fine. The de Villiers family have also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her.

    In California, Rossum's conviction for murder made her eligible for the death penalty, as is also the case in many other states of the US. The prosecution chose, however, to seek a life prison term. They would, undoubtedly, have been aware that such a sentence would involve far greater and more protracted punishment than would a quick, lethal injection. Sadly, Kristin Rossum is presently discovering the nature of the unrelenting punishment that awaited her in Chowchilla. From many accounts, that place is not far short of HELL.

    A probation officer's report of an interview with Rossum following her conviction, and just prior to her sentencing, indicates that she had at least two misconceptions at that point. Firstly, she told the probation officer that: "I still can't believe the jury convicted me." It wasn't the jury that was responsible, it was the investigation and prosecution teams full of career-focussed people. The jury, as noted above, would seem to have been unsure of their ground in the face of purely circumstantial evidence. It was, more than likely, expert evidence that convinced them that there were some 'hard' facts involved and that these could convict Rossum.

    Secondly, although she expected to be sent to prison, at least until she and her family could win a retrial, Kristin Rossum does not seem to have expected a life sentence. She certainly showed by her remarks that, like most people on the outside, she had no conception of what the place she would be incarcerated in was really like. She told the probation officer that if she were sent to jail she hoped to take advantage of the educational opportunities available. When she was eventually exonerated, as she expected she must surely be, she planned to attend graduate school and earn a doctorate in analytical chemistry. She also expressed a wish to have a family. None of these expectations would prove to be realistic.

    She was about to be put in the care of a system that would mistreat and punish her for the rest of her days.

    The following excerpts are from various sources judged to be reliable. Not only first-hand accounts by inmates but also quite public scandals, investigations, and rebuttals surrounding Chowchilla, that give some idea of the conditions that Kristin Rossum is presently enduring. As you read them ask yourself whether, if your daughter, sister, or wife were experiencing the same things; how you would feel about it.

    Yes, that's the way Kristin's parents, Constance and Ralph Rossum, are feeling too. Because what their daughter is now facing, no matter what she might have done to 'deserve' it, is emphatically NOT civilization! It's plain SADISTIC!

    • From the California Department of Corrections web site:

      "The primary mission of the Central California Women's Facility is to process and incarcerate California's female offenders in a secure, safe, disciplined and ethical institutional setting"

      Rossum's family should no doubt be comforted to know that she's in a safe and ethical institution.

    • The educational opportunities in Chowchilla are listed on the same CDC web site

      "Vocational: Auto body repair and refinishing, computer technology, cosmetology, electronics, graphic arts, landscaping, mill and cabinet, office services, painting, silk screening, small engine repair, upholstery, welding.

      Academic: Adult Basic Education, High School / GED, Pre-Release, English as a Second Language, Literacy Program."

      Not much there for a person like Kristin. Since she's a lifer she probably won't be eligible anyway. the state does not waste money on the health or education of inmates who have no prospect of rejoining the outside community.

    • There's plenty of work at Chowchilla though. The Californian Prison Industry Authority is the euphemistic name for the slave labour system operating there. But it all sounds pretty good on the official web site.

      "Develop and operate manufacturing, agricultural, and service enterprises that provide work opportunities for inmates "

      "Create and maintain working conditions within enterprises, as much like those which prevail in private industry as possible, to assure inmates assigned therein the opportunity to work productively, to earn funds, and to acquire or improve effective work habits or occupational skills."

      (This stuff has to have been written by external consultants to the CDC who have never been near any of the prisons it operates.)

    • The PIA work at Chowchilla is listed as:

      "Dental laboratory, fabric products, farming, garment making, silk screening."

      there is also a small manufacturing operation that is described as:

      "Joint Venture Electronics: A public-private partnership which employs approximately 45 inmates in an electronics manufacturing program. The inmates are paid a prevailing wage. Deductions are made for room and board, crime victim compensation, prisoner family support and mandatory savings for release."

    • On many aspects of life inside Chowchilla, prison activists, human rights organisations, and various journalists, medical practitioners, religious bodies, and inmates tell quite different stories from the official CDC line.

      "Women in California state prisons make only pennies an hour. ... In California state prisons women earn as little as 5 cents per hour."

      "In California state prisons women are forced to pay inflated prices for basic hygiene products. Indigent female inmates (those with less than five dollars in their prison account) are provided a total of five sanitary pads per month. The rest of California's female prison population must purchase sanitary pads from the prison commissary that sells such items at two to three times the market rate. ... Such practices combined with the repressive pay scale create an environment where women will barter sex or other acts in order to acquire their most basic needs."

    • "The administration has demonstrated an attitude of 'mass punishment.' For example; in November 1996 the inmates of CCWF were no longer allowed to purchase of possess a cigarette lighter due to an alleged lawsuit. Our lighters were confiscated and possibly sold to the women's prison across the street, Valley State Prison for Women. ... The second recent incident of this type of behaviour, mass punishment, was the discontinuance of foods and personal hygiene items in packages. The administration alleges this is due to the introduction of narcotics. CCWF has expensive equipment to specifically detect narcotics that now sits, unused, collecting dust."

      "For those who can't afford to purchase their hygiene supplies: soap, shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant, etc., at the sky high prices on CCWF canteen, these packages were their only means to take care of themselves. The hygiene items supplied by the state, only for the indigent, are, at best, inadequate.

      Some require alternative diets due to medical restrictions like ulcers, gallstones, liver problems, sickle cell anaemia, etc. It they can't afford to purchase foods on canteen, they either simply do not eat or are forced to eat foods that will further aggravate their illness, only to be told by medical staff that they shouldn't have eaten that food."

    • "CCWF's response to all the deaths has been to blame the women: to spread lies and disinformation that women prisoners died because they ingested illegal drugs or misused their prescription medicine. Thousands of cells were torn apart by guards in January [2003] and many women had their life-saving prescription medicine confiscated. Toxicology reports and the CDC's own medical investigation by outside doctors have disproved the theory that scapegoats the dead women. But the punishment still continues. Women requesting medical care after lockdown may now have their cellmates subjected to the most brutal forms of repression and humiliation."

      It is clear from a large amount of stories, reports and other material of this type that the CCWF prison system, and the wider CDC and justice systems of California, punish not only inmates but also their families, who are unable to support them from outside. Kristin Rossum's parents will be punished in this way for as long as they live. Yet they did not commit any felony. The argument that they have to suffer with Kristin because of the suffering that Greg's death caused to the de Villiers family is aptly rebutted by one of the posters in the following image of a demonstration outside CCWF.

    CCWF_demo (62K)

    .

    • Constance and Ralph Rossum will be punished by more than their inability to send their daughter packets of supplies and medicines. There are numerous restrictions, and many other factors, that will make it hard for them to converse with or visit their daughter.

      "In the California prison system, visitation is a privilege not a right. Prisoners on death row and prisoners in California serving life sentences without parole cannot receive unsupervised family visits."

      "All potential visitors to California's prisons must submit a visiting questionnaire that requires the individual to state personal information, including full arrest record and criminal history. Verification time can be lengthy, and if any piece of information proves to be incorrect, access can be denied for up to 6 months."

      "The exorbitant cost of the current phone system for California state prisons places another enormous financial burden on inmate's families. MCI charges California prisoners $3.00 just to connect collect calls from the prison, in addition to high collect call fees. Calls made by prisoners accrue high surcharges and charge the maximum per-minute rates. Prisoners are not permitted to use discount numbers like 1-800-COLLECT. ... Telephone companies are offering higher and higher commissions for states in order to get contracts. In some states these commissions have gone as high as 60% of the profits earned by the state prison telephone system."

      Kristin Rossum's parents are not poor, but they will have to bear the communication and transport costs involved with contacting their daughter for the rest of their lives - if Kristin survives for so long.

    • Travel to the Chowchilla prison to see their daughter will always be a distressing experience for Constance and Ralph Rossum. Their fears about her physical safety and state of mind will be accentuated by their contact with the institution that incarcerates her. In one sense they will want to see their daughter, in another they will probably come to dread the surroundings. Such thoughts will be in their minds every time they make a journey to Chowchilla.

      The first of the following excerpts describes the approach to Chowchilla as recorded by Anne De Groot M.D. who went there to find out why so many prisoners were dying in such "safe and ethical" surroundings, well before their time. The second is from a comment on the WWW about Kristin Rossum's incarceration there.

      1. "We travelled through towns called Gilroy and Bano, across great flat plains where wild birds splash in sloughs left by spring rains, where fields extend to the distant mountains, and where life goes so slowly that children will lie in the highway at night to gaze at the stars. Somewhere in the distance Yosemite, where bears and wildcats prowl the cliffs and streams - that same wild freedom is here in the high plains: boundless, limitless, horizonless freedom of the fields and hills beyond the California coast.

      Yet, just beyond Bano, is another kind of expanse. An expanse of silver gleaming razor wire fence, glinting in the sun. An expanse of concrete block housing, windows like slits. Row upon row of concrete block, and watchtowers. Watchtowers high above the glinting fences, rising like silos, like missiles, like sentinels. Locks, gates, a metal detector, double sliding doors, and we are in. I walk with two escorts. Laughing, we compare notes: snow versus sun, wind versus hail and slush. I am from far away, they are curious to see me here. I can see their teeth behind their smiles, and wonder: friend or foe? I ask - how many women are here? they say: 3400, perhaps 4000 at the prison across the road.

      This is not boundless, limitless freedom, there is no stargazing here. How many women? as many as would people a small town. As many as would be mothers to almost 10,000 children - those children are out there somewhere, motherless. As many as would be daughters and sisters to 10,000 more. An expanse of women, incarcerated. An expanse of lives, arrested. Are these towers, fences, razor wire enclosures for them? what have they done, what have they done? How did they come to be here? did they come from those boundless plains, or from the cities on the coast? did they see the wild birds in the sloughs, on their last drive in?"

      2. "Female inmates have already taken a long hard look at this little blonde princess and have already calculated what they will be introducing her to soon after her arrival at camp chowchilla! Some females have certain desires in mind that will definitely be fulfilled in the late hours of the night that will be forever unavoidable for Miss Rossum. Other ladies will wait their turn as they wait for Miss Rossum's defiance to wear down before they force their midnight 'antics' on the newest celebrity on the block.

      Meanwhile, mommy and daddy are busy planning their exhausting drive to a place where the California Department of Corrections has placed a prison as far away from normal humanity as possible. A place that will become gravely familiar to a set of parents that will hold back tears as well as vomit when they see the guard towers and barbed wire for the very first time. They will see the many miles of constintine wire and cement walls as they arrive in the parking lot for the very first time. Soon they will have to face the fact that the only way their little child beauty queen will leave this cement hell hole is when she is placed in a coffin and loaded into the back of some state hired cremation van or mortuary vehicle. ..."

      The reality that comes through these descriptions is that it is not only Kristin Rossum who has been condemned to suffer, it is also her family. The 'Eye for an Eye' principle is not only barbaric, it is simply unrealistic. There is no way to 'balance' one wrong with another. Greg de Villier's family are also suffering as a result of his death, but punishing the Rossum family does not make things any better for the de Villiers - it simply extends the suffering and punishment surrounding Greg's death. The placard at the demonstration outside the gates of the CCWF is right:

      AN EYE FOR AN EYE LEAVES US ALL BLIND.

      It is the justice system, and its emphasis on 'eye for an eye' punishment, that is terribly wrong. The resultant impacts of Kristin Rossum's family, due to her incarceration in Chowchilla, are simply not outcomes that could ever form part of a civilized society.

      punishing_spirits (30K)It will not be harsh treatment and sexual abuse in Chowchilla that will torment Kristn Rossum the most, it will be the knowledge that her parents and her family are also suffering on the outside. Since her sentence is for life there is no prospect of a diminishment in the grief of her parents. It will be with them always and it will be heightened for them, and for their daughter, every single time they make the journey to the prison.

      The families of the women in Chowchilla and other jails have not committed any crime, yet they are being made to suffer, in some cases for the rest of their lives. This situation can't be defended on any grounds either legal or otherwise; this situation contains the seeds of massive class actions by families of incarcerated persons, against the federal and state prison systems that unreasonably torment and punish both felons and their families.

      Think about it, contingent fees lawyers would drool over the huge potential payouts. In the current taker society there would be many attorneys ready to line up class actions for families against both state and private prisons; and also the wider law making and law enforcement systems that feed the jails with dirt-cheap labour so that corporations can better compete in the global economy. Few lawyers would be concerned about their short term actions and gains undermining the very system that supports them in the long term. They could drive a serious wedge into the 'club' that currently organises and benefits from a harsh and inhuman rule of law, so that it becomes greatly weakened. Now that would be an outcome worthy of their toil!

      If, on the other hand, lawyers in the system are disinclined to help bring it to account then the many, many, families of mistreated and abused felons will just have to represent themselves - stridently and in ways that the courts have not seen before.

      One thing these people are likely to be saying, in court and in public, is that they want out. They will not only want their loved ones out of the clutches of a cruel and inhuman system of incarceration, they themselves will want out of their citizenship of federal and state jurisdictions. They will want to take their chances in the new-tribal societies of free cities. The will want to secede and live in free cities with the loved ones they have forced federal and state prisons, and their immoral industries within the jails, to disgorge.

    • There are many grounds for prosecution of the prison and justice systems with regard to Chowchilla and other jails. Besides those already mentioned there are serious examples of medical neglect and failure to observe a duty of care to protect inmates from sexual abuse by guards or other inmates.

      "Since December 2001, Delores ("Dee") Garcia, a woman prisoner living with chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, sleep apnoea, hepatitis C and arthritis, has been speaking out against physical abuse, medical neglect and staff callousness in the so-called Skilled Nursing Facility at the Central California Women's Facility. This SNF is the only 'licensed' medical facility for women prisoners and staff there exhibit some of the worst attitudes and actions towards seriously ill and dying women prisoners.

      For her courage and determination, Dee has been threatened and locked down by SNF staff, Over the past two months, CCWF has been playing a dangerous game of diesel therapy with Dee. In May, Dee was abruptly moved from the SNF at the Central California Women's Facility, the only prison able to treat her chronic diseases, to Valley State Prison For Women, which has only a part-time staffed unlicensed infirmary. After a month of advocacy by Californian Prison Focus, Justice Now and Legal Services for Prisoners and Children, Dee was returned to CCWF only to be threatened again by staff. She was told point-blank, if you continue to file grievances against staff (called 602s) and speak to advocates, you will be punished and sent back to Valley State Prison. Dee immediately filed a grievance against staff and on July 12, she was sent back to Valley State Prison. Medical staff at VSPW admit that they cannot adequately treat Dee's illnesses at that prison. She requires a special diet, 24-hour oxygen and a special machine for sleep apnoea. ..."

    • Anne De Groot M.D., who wrote the earlier description of the approach to Chowchilla, described her medical examination of one woman in CCWF:

      "In the medical centre two doctors come to greet me. Old, unshaven, padding in their sneakers, shirts open at the neck. Come out of retirement to tend the women. How do they see their role? do they ask how the women come here?

      Patti is lying in bed. Every available surface in her room is covered in pictures: wolves, eagles, feathers, dream catchers, proud faces of native American women. She is frail -barely there. The doctor comes with me. He has not seen her in some weeks - last I looked he says, she was walking. I look at her: she is not walking now.

      I ask her to sit, wondering why she lies so crocked in the bed. With her left hand, she takes off the covers, revealing a wasted frame. Barely 80 pounds, she weighed 130 when she was well. She takes her left hand and lifts her right arm over her body. By pulling hard and leaning, she can shift her torso over. Next she reaches for her legs, pulling on the cloth of her shorts to lift her knees one by one off the bed, using them as a counterbalance to pull her torso up. Then she rolls over on her elbows, grimacing in pain. She rolls over until she is in a prayer position, leaning on the bed with her elbows. I am afraid to help her, knowing that would injure her pride in some way. I am afraid she will fall - but she surprises me by her sheer force of will. Just when I am sure she will slip to the floor, she reaches back for the wheelchair and swings her body into it, using her legs as a pivot.

      This woman has one good arm, and three useless limbs. She has end stage AIDS, much beyond end stage. She has a T cell count of 7, she weighs less than 60 percent of her ideal body weight. She has less than a few months left to live. Yet she is denied compassionate release? It would be more accurate to say that she is denied compassion. Where is compassion for her condition? Who comes to bathe her? no one. Who helps her dress, eat, who helps her move from wheelchair to bed to toilet? no one. the last time the doctor saw her, he said she could walk. How many weeks ago? How long has she gone without medical examination while living in the infirmary? Do we know why she has only one good limb out of 4? is the condition reversible? Most likely not - but could something have been done before it was too late? Most certainly.

      This is about more than compassion. this is about locking women up and throwing away the key. How many others are there, in this great warehouse for women in Chowchilla, who are getting less than standard medical care, who are living in limbo, serving time, when they should be home with their families and children? This is about denial - about wanting to forget who sits behind those prison walls, out in the fields and sloughs of central California."

      Dr De Groot subsequently wrote an open letter to prison doctors regarding women prisoners with HIV. It said, in part:

      "These are thoughts about a trip I took on a beautiful Spring day with Judy Greenspan to Chowchilla. I wrote it on the airplane home. The part about Patti was in a letter to her Parole board. She was released, as you know, after the last parole hearing this Spring. That fact doesn't change the bare truth about her condition when I saw her, and the poor standard of medical care given to HIV infected women who are incarcerated in California. I couldn't believe what I found, and I couldn't get over the contrast between life inside and outside prison walls. ..."

    • "Seven inmates at Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla have sued prison medical staff members, alleging malpractice, negligence and unprofessional conduct.
      The lawsuits, received this week in Madera County Superior Court, demand the firing of Dr A[..]M[..],the prison's chief physician and surgeon. The inmates also seek more oversight of California's prison employees, especially medical staff."

      Report by Lisa Alerman-Padilla in The Fresno Bee, December 20, 2003.

      "Kinser, a San Jose native, began suffering extreme weight loss, tremors and pain in and around her pelvis and bladder nearly two years ago. Though she was diagnosed with a possible bladder mass, Kinser said, M[..]cancelled two referrals to a surgeon and an oncologist.

      She said M[..] told her she was suffering from a mental disorder and was imagining symptoms despite a history of multiple carcinomas, or cancerous growths, including bladder cancer that required chemotherapy in 1995. M[..] did not return the Bee's phone calls."

      "The Chowchilla prison, which opened in October 1990, houses more than 3,000 female inmates and employs more than 900 workers. Russ Heimerich, spokesman for California Department of Corrections, said the agency is frequently sued for medical neglect by inmates, but almost always prevails in court." [The justice and corrections system is a club, you see.]

    • An earlier lawsuit to the one reported above included "case after case of shockingly deficient treatment" yet nothing had been done by the time Michelle Kinser and her fellow inmates filed suit late in 2003. The callous treatment and lack of compassion surrounding CCWF continues to this day.

      "A seizure patient at CCWF who is paralysed on her left side has never been given occupational or physical therapy."

      "A woman at CCWF who suffered burns over 54% of her body gradually lost mobility because she was denied the special bandages which would prevent her burned skin from tightening."

      "A woman at CCWF unsuccessfully begged staff for months to allow her to see a doctor, and was finally diagnosed with cancer. Though in enormous pain, she received almost no pain medication. Because of swelling in her legs, she could barely walk, yet she was required to walk to the dining hall if she wanted to eat. She died approximately nine months after the diagnosis."

    • "I'm a woman with HIV. Since I've been here in prison, I've gotten abused, mistreated and emotionally and mentally stressed out. My t-cells dropped a great deal. The MTAs (Medical Technical Assistants) don't have a clue how to treat any medical problems, never mind serious, chronic illnesses.

      One day, my friend walked me to the MTA after I had a bad epileptic seizure in the dayroom. The MTAs told my friend, "she can't come in here, let her finish her seizure outside." It was 107 degrees outside. I then went into another seizure. When they finally brought me in, the MTAs told the doctor that I was faking it.

      That's only one incident of many. I never get my medication on time. They started me on triple combination therapy, including a protease inhibitor, and never told me about the side effects of any of the drugs, including Crixivan. "Just take it." they said. "Now if you're late taking that medication, its extremely detrimental. ..."

      If we are ill with some serious infection like boils, the MTAs give us bandaids and tell us to go to work anyway. In the heat, when it's 90 degrees or above, they give 'heat cards' to women on psychotropic medications. But if you have epileptic seizures or heart problems, then you are out of luck!

      Two weeks ago, I witnessed a young lady pass away in my unit, possibly of food poisoning. She was also ill with the HIV virus. She had been trying to go to sick call for weeks. One day, I heard one of the corrections officers tell her, "If you can walk to the bathroom you can walk to the MTA." They just refused to help her or even call for a wheelchair."

      "I'm a very angry woman, though not for myself so much. I'm paroling next year. But what about the other thousands of women left behind in this institution? My heart goes out to the other HIV+ women in here. I want to help and I am going to. This abuse has to stop! No one asked to come in here to die. We just want to do our time and make it out alive. Lately, that doesn't seem likely.

      We do not want to die in here alone. Pray for us, please, say a special prayer for the lifers. Thank you."

      All these instances of abuse and malpractice surrounding the care of women incarcerated at Chowchilla are public knowledge and, in some cases, have been the subject of legal proceedings. All these terrible things were known but not admitted to by the prosecution and incarceration 'machines' of California at the time of Kristin Rossum's sentencing.

      Yet the Judge sent her to Chowchilla for life, in the full knowledge that due to the conditions there it might well be a short existence for her.

      Kristin was known to have had a substance abuse problem. It was also well known and well documented that not only did CCFW have no program to treat addicts, but there was and continues to be a problem with inmates there using dirty, stolen, hypodermic needles to shoot heroin into their veins. If he didn't know that Kristin would be in considerable danger of regressing to drug addiction and using HIV infected needles in CCWF, the judge was completely out of touch with the system he was consigning her to. Or alternatively, he choose to send her to her fate and pass the accountability on to the prison system.

      However, it is clear to any thinking person that the responsibility for the degree of punishment inflicted on convicted felons rests primarily with the judiciary. It is not only the judge in the Rossum case that bears that duty of care, it is all of them.

      Every one of the 7,000 women incarcerated at Chowchilla was sent there by a judge, there is no getting away from that, nor the fact that the judiciary broadly consider that the purpose of prisons is to punish rather than rehabilitate wrong doers. But the punishment is supposed to be a loss of freedom, not abuse and neglect of the proportions now facing all those women. Judges simply cannot avoid blame for the situation and the fact that punishment in Chowchilla is at inhuman levels, and has been for more than a decade.

      When a California judge sends a women to prison he is not just denying her liberty, he is placing her in grave danger of assault and criminal neglect. Leave aside the CDC's propaganda web site; Chowchilla is a HELL HOLE!

      What do the families of the judges who commit women to a term in such a place think of them? For that matter, what do the congregations of the churches they attend think of them? By rights, when one of these judges walks into a church the rest of the congregation should get up and leave. The consequences of sending women to Chowchilla are of such bestial severity that no person who signs an order to 'punish' a woman in the CDC system should ever be accorded any respect within a place of worship.

      But, of course, life goes on and everyone looks the other way. Congregations continue to treat judges as pillars of respectability in the community. They aren't, not while Chowchilla is still operating, not while 7,000 poor souls are still suffering there, and not while they, the judges, keep silent and ignore the indecency and inhumanity of that place.

    Justice systems and their many injustices, together with prisons and their deteriorating standards are rich sources of material for Us-2-Us discussion. Once ordinary people come to realise the immorality of the 'prison as punishment' notion that underlies the criminal justice machine, and when they come to realise the extent of the culpability of the judiciary who preside over it, their acceptance of the system will plummet. They will begin to talk of establishing new and better societies outside the current federal and state regimes.

    They will become predisposed to peaceful secession. Not revolution, not an overthrowing of the cruel injustice system that is the reality of Chowchilla and many other prisons and detention centres like it, but leaving - seceding and setting up free cities where people who do wrong will not be repaid in an 'eye for and eye' fashion, but given genuine opportunities for redemption and rehabilitation.

    It is not fanciful to believe that criminals can be rehabilitated or that the harm they have caused might be repaired, various tribal societies managed to achieve such outcomes for thousands of years. It can be done, and discussing the presently catastrophic regimes of justice and incarceration will lead people to fathom ways of doing so again, within a Level 4 Civilization.

    Living In Peril of Prison [265]
    Most people are presently indifferent to the growth of private prison industries and the harsh punishment meted out to the wrong doers incarcerated within the 'correction' systems of the US, and copycat administrations such as Australia. However, ordinary citizens really need to be concerned about such trends. Western prison systems are reverting to practices and conditions that were abolished long ago. Private prisons and prison industries are spreading in Britain too, due to the economic imperatives of finding cheap labour sources to compete with global corporations using third world labour.

    Currently three US states, Alabama, Florida, and Arizona, have reintroduced chain gangs. Wisconsin and California are also said to be considering such a measure. Here is a brief report by the World Organisation for Human Rights USA, that is published on the WWW.

    • "The new chain gangs are somewhat different in form from the old system, which was dismantled in the 1960s. Today's chain gangs do not engage in large-scale private of public works [yet] and are not bound together by heavy-gauge chains. But, the primary purpose of current chain gangs continues to be humiliation, punishment and intimidation.

      Chain gangs at Limestone Correctional Facility in Alabama began by cutting weeds and picking up trash along the highways. Now they break rock. Prisoners are shackled together with lightweight leg irons, walk into a barbed wire pen, and work on the rock pile with sledge hammers. ChainGang (36K)Interestingly, chain gangs are cost efficient, an important factor in light of increasing prison populations. "one officer can guard 40 chained prisoners but only 20 without chains." Facility officials take pride in showing the chain gangs to the media and tourists. In Arizona, members of chain gangs are shackled at the ankles but not to each other. Prisoners are used for road clean-up. Chain group[s] for women prisoners also have been instituted recently as a method of punishment and to discourage recidivism."

    The World Organisation for Human Rights USA site also documents another innovation that enables guards to control greater numbers of prisoners, with consequent savings in operating costs.

    • "Use of electro-shock devices, such as stun belts, stun shields and stun guns is emerging as the newest form of abusive punishment. These devices produce an eight second powerful electric shock of 50,000 volts to the kidney area, causing severe pain and incapacitation. Stun belts currently are in use in the federal prison system, the U.S. Marshall's Service, 16 states and over 100 county corrections facilities. Unfortunately, they can also cause death and long-lasting injury for those suffering from heart of other health problems, a circumstance that is not always known to those applying the current."

    The crimes people are being sent to prison for are often minor. The three strikes rule is exacerbating the problem and filling the jails with factory fodder for global corporations to employ for a few cents an hour. The following excerpt tells the sad tale of one woman who was sentenced to do time in Chowchilla and never made it out - back to her family. It is from the web site of the prisons activist group U.N.I.O.N.

    • "Stephanie Hardie, a 33-year-old mother of two, sent to prison for overdrawing her own checking account is finally free from the talons of the California Criminal Justice System. She's dead.

      Did this senseless death really benefit or protect the citizens of California? the heartbreaking answer could only be "no".

      Hardie had complained of chest pains and sought help at the prison medical clinic three times in the two weeks preceding hear death. ... any barely trained medical professional would have suspected the heart as the problem. Normally, an EKG and a chest x-ray would be ordered for chest pains and the patient hospitalised until the results were analysed. Instead Hardie was given a "breathing treatment" and offered Pepto-Bismol and Motrin. She was asked for a $5 co-payment and turned away from proper diagnosis twice by MTA's, a hybrid guard-nurse combination which is equivalent to a Licensed Vocational Nurse with a nightstick. The physician did not order these basic tests even with familial history of heart disease. Why not?

      The answer is most likely to save money, which is hardly available for the health and dental care of California's 160,000 inmates."

    • "No one ever saw a defribulator, a shock device key to treating heart attacks and so common that almost every airplane has one on board. If CCWF even owns one of these basic pieces of emergency equipment it was never used on Hardie.

      On the weekends, no doctors are present to handle [the medical] problems of 3,200 women, the size of a small city.

      An ambulance would only be called if the inmates could afford to pay for it and few of them could at salaries of 18 cents or less an hour. ...

      Hardie's relatively minor offences resulted in capital punishment for her and a lifetime of hurt for her surviving mother Diane Hardy-Rios, a juvenile probations officer in Pomona. I question what she was doing in prison in the first place."

    It's clear from accounts such as this that the incarceration system is now geared to the containment of more and more 'workers' at the lowest possible cost. woman_in_jail (34K)Why else would the jails in the US be awash with electronic shock devices that enable fewer guards to control greater numbers of prisoners, while the largest women's prison complex on earth can't find a defribulator to shock an inmate's heart back to life?

    What will Stephanie Hardie's mother tell her daughter's two children about their mother’s death. "Mommy went to jail for overdrawing her account at the bank and, while she was there making garments that are so cheap they are being dumped in Asia because even the Asians pay their workers more, she had a heart attack: and, because it's so important to keep costs low to compete globally, the prison couldn't do any tests or use any equipment to save Mommy."

    Why would Stephanie's kids ever want to be citizens of California or the United States of America? Why wouldn't they want to live in a free city where there are no jails for women and children, and where very few men are locked up either? Why wouldn't they want to do this in California, which is their home after all, and their birthright? California without the state or federal governments and their connections to big business could be a nice place to live and grow old. With them, it's becoming a nightmare for families like the Hardies and the Rossums. More and more people are being harmed by the justice and punishment systems, and fewer and fewer will see the wild birds in the sloughs along on the ways to inhuman places like Chowchilla.

    Poverty, combined with increasingly harsh laws and mandatory sentencing rules, will force more and more people into the state's proliferating centres of punishment and industry called 'correctional facilities'. A woman with two children, such as Stephanie Hardie was, might well overdraw her checking account if it was to meed their urgent needs for basics such as food, medicines and clothing. Prison is not a serious deterrent to people who are struggling to exist.

    New welfare reform guidelines like those applying in California make it harder for needy people to 'go straight' once they are released. Individuals who have been previously incarcerated in California are not eligible for public benefits such as housing. Just existing is being made harder for people who are already unable to cope in the wonderful world of 'free' markets and capitalism.

    Women are most vulnerable to poverty levels that correlate with imprisonment; they don't tend the have the best jobs and they don't enjoy equal pay for equal work. Recent statistics for Australia show that while the overall incarceration rate for men increased by 15% between 1995 and 2002, the rates of imprisonment of women rose more sharply.

    • Imprisonments for homicide rose 70 percent.
    • Imprisonments for assault rose 79 percent.
    • Imprisonments for theft rose 95 percent.
    • Imprisonments for robbery rose 172 percent.

    These figures are not a reflection on working class Australian women, they are an indictment of the economic policies and incarceration practices of governments, at both the federal and state levels. The number of women imprisoned in Australia is still relatively low, but the trend is clear and threatening.

    Poverty is not far from the doorsteps of average Australians either. Due to their experience of high rates of taxation and of frequently seeing savings invested in funds and shares misappropriated or mismanaged, many families have sought to build wealth through home ownership. The family home is one of the few assets in Australia that is not subject to a capital gains tax and rising property prices have encouraged people to take mortgages to buy houses or apartments. However, the level of household debt (borrowing) in Australia is the highest in the developed world, and even moderate rises in interest rates have the potential to force families who can't meet higher repayments onto the streets.

    Just four major banks hold the financial future of the majority of Australian families in their hands. When a turnaround in property prices comes, and it is associated with rising interest rates, many Australians will find that a great criticism that the financial trader. George Soros, makes of capitalism is true. Soros laments the fact that "capitalism has no soul".

    Because of a looming crisis in the international monetary system, the next recession in both Australia and the US could easily become a catastrophic depression. In such circumstances many more people would be forced into poverty, at a time when the justice and punishment systems are becoming harsher, and when globalisation and competitive imperatives are driving the rapid adoption of cheap prison labour.

    When slick politicians stand up before an election and promise a return to full employment and jobs for your kids when they leave school, be wary that they don't mean prison jobs!

    Globalisation threatens to incarcerate Australians through another route. A 41-year-old Australian man, Hew Raymond Griffiths, who has never visited the United States, is involved in the first case in legal history of extradition for copyright crimes. If his extradition to the US and trial there go ahead, Griffiths faces a 10 year term in prison and a fine of up to $500,000. He could end up in one of the new chain gangs in the US, wearing a stun belt and being held up by the AMIC as a deterrent example to internet pirates and other copyright violators.

    Given the propensity of the US industrial complex to patent and copyright everything that can be covered by such protection, and a good many natural substances as well, it is certain that considerable efforts will be made to extradite 'offenders' from anywhere on the planet and demonstrate the way that 'justice' can be meted out to them. We can expect laws to be extended to facilitate this form of prosecution. The Australian feds, for example, are likely to 'help' the AMIC protect its IP 'rights' and even to apply anti-terrorist legislation to the task.

    Mr Griffiths has already been held in prison for some months for an alleged offence from which he clearly did not seek to make any money. His motives appear to have been to break down barriers to the free flow of technology, music, and other forms of entertainment, so that anyone connected to the internet, including people in the third-world, could benefit from otherwise prohibitively priced items. In this sense he represented a direct threat to the status quo, and the right of a few nations in the developed world to 'own' and exploit anything they choose to patent or copyright, even natural forms and designs. Hey, he must be made an example of.

    Given the growing importance of intellectual and creative inputs to a knowledge based economy, we can expect to see a growing emphasis on 'protection' of the rights of a minority over the needs of the majority. Maintaining scarcity, as has already been noted, lies at the very core of capitalism. It is not beyond the bounds of probability that corporations with vested interests in controlling the supply of all manner of goods and services will actively pursue ordinary people who can be found to have breached patent or copyright restrictions.

    Even minor infringements could be used in another iteration of 'killing the chicken to scare the monkey'. If numbers of Australians, Indonesians, Thais, and so on, can be extradited to the US or Europe and incarcerated for illegally copying such innocent materials as music or videos for their own enjoyment, a powerful deterrent to such activities will develop, or so the RIAA and others might think.

    The Times Record News, Washington, reported as follows in June, 2004. The heading was "Post-9/11 laws expand to more than terrorism."

    • "The FBI has used Patriot Act provisions in a political corruption probe involving a Las Vegas girlie bar, and the Justice Department reported to the House Judiciary Committee last year that it used the new law in probes of credit card fraud, theft from a bank account and a kidnapping."

    • "Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University, recalled that Congress adopted antiracketeering laws in 1970 with the intent to thwart mobsters, but the punitive laws have since been broadened and put to use in civil cases against corporations, and most recently against the organised campaigns of pro-life protesters against abortion clinics."

      Of the Patriot Act: "Swire said one little-noted impact of the law on the judicial system is that prosecutors can add more charges against defendants, even when terrorism isn't involved. Prosecutors like to have more arrows in their quiver - it gives them more leverage in plea bargaining." he said. Plea bargaining is the process where prosecutors offer to drop some charges in return for a defendant's guilty plea in order to avoid costly, time-consuming trials.

      Swire contends the Patriot Act has been so controversial that the Justice Department has been very cautious in using all of its provisions. "They are careful because they know people are checking to see if it is abused" he said. "Once it becomes permanent, I think it will be used more widely."

    Nor will the long arm or the law be restricted to new or broadened legislation that is passed in the name of 'The War on Terror'. Where necessary, various old laws on the statute books might well be pressed into service to help fill the prisons with cheap labour.

    It was once a normal event for women to be tried and imprisoned or executed for witchcraft. In one of his many books, The Invisible College, Robert Lomas makes just this point.

    • "... During the rule of the Long Parliament (1645-7) just twenty-three years earlier, Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General, executed 200 old women who were said to be practising witchcraft. In the seventeenth century magic and miracles were part of everyday life. Witchcraft was an acceptable explanation of ill fortune. ..."

    One might think that convictions under the Witchcraft Act are all in the past, but the case of Helen Duncan indicates otherwise. She was the last 'witch' to be tried in the Old Bailey and sentenced to time in Holloway women’s prison - in 1944. Duncan_Witch (7K)

    Duncan was a well known medium and her 'crime' was to reveal, during a seance, that the British battleship HMS Hood had been sunk in action with the German navy, before the information had been released to the public. How Helen Duncan knew about HMS Hood and also HMS Barnham is not the issue here, what is important is that instead of merely trying and fining her under the 1824 Vagrancy Act, which was usually used where mediums were said to have obtained money by fraudulent means, the authorities choose to apply the harsher provisions of the Witchcraft Act of 1735. This enabled Duncan to be imprisoned or even executed.

    This mother of six spent nine months in jail after having been found guilty of "pretending to raise the spirits of the dead". It seems clear that whether they believed in her ability to contact the 'other side' or not the government of wartime Britain were not prepared to chance her predicting the time and place of the Normandy landings. Accordingly, they used a 200-year-old act, from times of very different beliefs, to lock her away. Due to a public outcry at the time the Witchcraft Act was repealed and replaced with the Fraudulent Mediums Act, which carries lesser penalties.

    After 911 neither the British, Australian or US governments would seem to have any need for old laws such as those against witchcraft, although many such laws are still available to them. Post-911, any citizens who the authorities deem to be terrorists (modern witches) or to have assisted or harboured terrorists, or even to have expressed public criticism of antiterrorist measures, can be detained without trial. History tells us that whilst governments have such draconian powers they will surely use them, and not necessarily against real terrorists but anyone they wish to silence.

    The British police subsequently hounded Helen Duncan, raiding her seances and repeatedly taking her before the courts. Her premature death in 1956 followed such a disruption and people still assert that she died because of their intrusion breaking her trance-like state. It would have been more humane and probably just as secure for the authorities to have obtained Helen Duncan's word that she would not reveal any matters of military significance discovered during her seances. Instead, the government of the day chose to use a decidedly medieval law to incarcerate the woman.

    This seems hard to fathom until you realise that this was the same government that was willing to perpetrate the greatest war crime of all, the firebombing of civilians and war wounded at Dresden. On the basis of that single act the then British government would seem not to have had any humanity or sense of right or wrong.

    Governments of this defective nature are again in power in the West. People in various totalitarian-democracies are now living in real peril of imprisonment. They just don't realise it yet.

    Here come de Judge - Time to Leave [266]
    There have always been examples of rulings and interpretations that have supported the saying "The law is an ass". This is increasingly the case, because even the best intentioned judges are now facing an avalanche of new technologies and social change. But, it is no good making excuses for the judiciary and continuing to accept their strange interpretations. We must recognise that not only judges but the whole legal system will struggle more and more. In the end the whole system will become a farce. This is the way empires end.

    Those of us who aspire to be part of the new civilization that will emerge from the chaos of the collapse of takerism and the capitalist economy, must draw the increasing level of judicial absurdities to the attention of our fellows, and help them to recognise that it is time to leave - to secede from the old society now served by a legal lunatic asylum, no longer capable of coping with change or able to deliver just, sensible interpretations and sentences.

    Here are two examples of the confusion and madness of the old system.

    • Wired News recently reported on a ruling in The First Court of Appeals in Massachusetts in which a defendant had been accused of illegally viewing e-mail accounts of users on a server he hosted. He was intercepting all mail relating to a competitor in the out-of-print books market in order to steal customers from them.

      "Authorities charged _ _ _ with violating the Wiretap Act, which governs unauthorised interception of communication. But the court found that because e-mails were already in the random access memory, or RAM, of the defendant's computer system when he copied them, he did not intercept them while they were in transit over wires and therefore did not violate the Wiretap Act, even though he copied the messages before the intended recipients read them. The court ruled that the messages were in storage rather than transit."

      "By interpreting the Wiretap Act's privacy protections very narrowly, this court has effectively given Internet communications providers free rein to invade the privacy of their users for any reason and at any time. ... this decision makes clear that the law has failed to adapt to the realities of Internet communications and must be updated to protect online privacy. ... The line that we draw in this case will have far-reaching effects on personal privacy and security."

      Of course, the Wiretap Act itself has become a complete farce. The reality is that the Feds routinely tap and scan all electronic communications. The case referred to here was only determining whether the rest of us can also sneak a look at other people's business. The court, in its infinite wisdom, seems to have said that anyone can spy on data while it is in storage, only when the data is flowing along a wire is there an invasion of privacy problem. Meanwhile the Feds continue to violate everyone's privacy every day, every call, every e-mail, every fax. In such circumstances it is really a bit pointless having a court case about one man looking at one server, every now and then.

    • The second example concerns an MSNBC News Service Report of June 8, 2004.

      "A Texas woman convicted of neglecting two horses in her care has been sentenced to 30 days in jail - the first three of which will be spent with a diet of only bread and water, a judge said Tuesday.

      In imposing the unusual sentence with 'dietary restrictions' on _ _ _ on Monday , Harris County Criminal Court of Law Judge _ _ _ was quoted by the Houston Chronicle as saying, "She's going to get more than her horses got."

      The judge on Tuesday confirmed that he also required _ _ _ to post blown-up photographs of the malnourished and ailing horses on her jail cell wall. "I want her to be forever reminded of what her conduct did to those horses," he told Reuters."

      While the ill treatment of animals is to be deplored, the judge clearly believes that it is his role to 'make the punishment fit the crime' and that 'two wrongs make a right'. Presumably, if the defendant had shot the horses the judge would have had her shot also!

    The judge who imposed the 'bread and water' sentence jailed the offender for only 30 days, but that is still too much of a punishment. The conditions in prisons are such that no judge with any decency at all would send a woman there, even for 30 minutes. Besides the overcrowding, exploitation of labour, and deficient medical, educational and pastoral care systems, there are ever present possibilities of sexual abuse; both from other inmates and from 'correctional' officers. The judges know this when they send women to jail.

    • "Among the United States, California has among the highest percentage of male officers working in female prisons - 66%. The national average is 41%. International human rights standards provide that female prisoners should be attended and supervised only by female officers."

    • "Persistent privacy violations are a fact of life for women in California prisons. Guards observe female inmates at all times - taking showers, dressing and going to the bathroom. Women are searched continuously, from pat downs after meals to strip and body searches after all visits. ... At times these searches have been an opportunity for some guards to sexually grope female inmates. Furthermore, female inmates have reported experiencing degrading and sexually explicit language and frequent harassment from guards. If an inmate protests or appeals to the prison administration, it can potentially mean more mistreatment, limited privileges, or an increased sentence. It is in this powerless environment that some female inmates have endured sexual assault from guards."

    • "Women prisoners were recently slapped in the face. The court appointed assessor in the _ _ _ suit (a class action suit filed by _ _ _ and other women prisoners at Chowchilla against medical malpractice and lack of treatment) is prepared to announce that the DOC has complied with the court's order to provide adequate medical care. This is in a prison where the head doctor told Ted Koppel on Nightline that the reason for unneeded pelvic exams instead of other medical treatment was that women are sexually-deprived and like them ! "

    • "According to the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, sexual abuse sometimes occurs during medical treatment. They report instances of doctors using rough and repeated pelvic exams as a form of rape. And the Coalition says lesbians are sometimes targeted for attack it they seek medical care. The way women are intimidated and sexually abused in prison, is a magnified reflection of women’s oppression in the larger society."

      "There is not a women’s institution in this country [USA] that is staffed by just women."

    • "There are always male administrators and guards. Guards that walk the block, that can come into your cell at will, that can look in your cell at will. And most cells in prison are simply a small room with a toilet, a sink, and a bed. And it you have to change clothes, go to the bathroom, wash or whatever in your room, then you’re talking about a situation where a man can walk by and look in your cell, or come into your cell, at any point. We're also talking about the fact that the reality is that women, generally, cannot beat a man. So you're talking about a very intimidating situation for most women, who feel like they are basically at the mercy [of male guards]."

    • "Prison used to be the place where you went if you screwed up and you tried to get yourself back together for when you go out. Now, nobody's getting out. They're putting people away for incredibly long periods of time, so that it's hard to focus on release for most people that are going in. They're sending 19 year-old girls to the pen for life, and lots of them. And, the three-strikes law is just brutal. It's brutal."

    State prosecutors and judges know all this, yet these church-going pseudochristians are still sending women to prison to be secondarily punished and abused in whatever ways their jailers and fellow inmates determine. This is not civilization, it's barbarism of the worst kind.

    The prison system has never been reformed except in name. The prison system is, by now, incapable of reform, and the same can be said for the law enforcement and justice systems which feed it. This reality applies in most nation states within the old Level 3 Civilization, it is not confined to Australia, Britain and the USA. But that doesn't make it right for those administrations to be engaging in the incarceration of women and children. The practice is barbaric wherever it is practiced and by whomever it is authorised and administered.

    The need to abandon all support for federations and states that continue to incarcerate women in prisons where they will surely be mistreated is very clear. The same applies to the imprisonment of men, but the predicament of the girls seems more uncivilized to most people. They must be freed first, then the guys. As for the death penalty, it is not only inhuman - it directly contravenes the rules of God. This is never the way we are supposed to treat each other. The Rule of Law has greatly overstepped its limits when it causes wrongdoers to be put to death. Judicial killings are simply murders dressed up as justice.

    Judges and Executioners Defy The 6th Commandment [267]
    the United States has carried out female executions since the resumption of capital punishment in 1997; some states even have the death penalty for children. Australia does not presently have the death penalty, but there are persistent voices agitating for its reintroduction. Most of the people who support capital punishment are simply being wound up by the parrot people. They have no idea what happens to women who are executed. A few real examples follow. They might just make a few readers reconsider their support for judicial killings.

    The last woman to be executed in Australia was Jean Lee, in 1951. Along with her lover and another man she had been found guilty of the murder of an illegal (SP) bookmaker, in 1949. There was a lack of certainty about the extent to which Jean Lee was actually involved in the murder, and strong criticism of the High Court and Privy Council decisions in her case. Police interrogation procedures were also believed to have contributed to her conviction. JeanLee (28K)Because Jean Lee was a some-time prostitute and petty criminal she was easy 'voter bait' for a government that wished to paint itself as highly moral and tough on crime.

    What these shining moral examples to a highly conservative society did was actually very brutal. Jean Lee had collapsed at the sight of the hangman and his assistant entering her cell. Both were dressed in khaki shirts and trousers and wearing large steel-rimmed goggles and soft felt hats pulled over their foreheads, calculated to frighten their victims; just as the large wigs judges wear are intended to intimidate those brought before them.

    Jean's limp body was handcuffed, her arms were pinioned and her ankles were bound. A large white hood was placed over her head, with the flap over her face left open. Her limp body was then carried out onto the special execution platform above the internal gallery in Pentridge, and while her unconscious form was held upright on a chair above the trapdoor a noose was placed around her neck and the sheriff read her the warrant for her execution, of which she presumably did not hear a word. The flap in the hood was closed, the trap was sprung, and Jean Lee plummeted to her death.

    Hopefully, she subsequently found far greater mercy for her soul than a cruel system had accorded her in her life. PentridgeLee (38K)All this was done to that woman at the instruction of a judge and verified by his colleagues in higher courts.

    Yet, despite the horror of the 'last' female execution, there is now a growing movement to reintroduce the death penalty in Australia. This is occurring at the same time that anti-terrorist hysteria is driving sinister considerations of 'legal' justifications for torturing accused persons. If legal torture and a reintroduction of the death penalty ever come to pass it will truly be a case of the re-enactment of the horrors of the 1st Inquisition that paralleled the Renaissance in Europe many centuries ago.

    Australian society will then be no more civilized than Europe was during the Dark Ages. And we shall all have reason to wonder why we have not managed to progress further in terms of our humanity and spiritual understanding.

    By any estimate, the State of Victoria is an insignificant part of planet Earth. This is not to say that Victoria isn't a pleasant place or that there is anything lacking in its people; just that it isn't the centre of the universe. The fact is that Australia is a very large island that is lightly peopled by mainly taker-come-latelies descended from the various countries of the first Dark Age. As with the rest of Australia, nothing in Victoria is of great relative importance in world politics, economics, or other matters (except for various sports).

    Victoria only became a state able to make its own laws in 1851, when it was separated from the earlier colony of New South Wales. But. having spent a hundred years devising more and more laws of every kind, Victorian politicians and the state judiciary in 1951 deemed themselves so expert in justice, and so correct in their view of the world, that they chose to defy the only laws that really matter - the ten commandments.

    The first four of those laws dictate how the human race should relate to God. The remaining six laws dictate how we humans should relate to each other. The 6th commandment is clear and unambiguous: "Thou shalt not kill." It is in no way conditional, it does not even say 'thou shalt not kill except if attacked'.

    The sixth commandment certainly does not allow any latitude to kill a woman because you might think she's a strumpet, or that she's probably involved at the edges of a murder committed by her lover. Nor is there latitude or justification in the sixth commandment to allow for hanging people in order to gain electoral popularity. The sixth commandment explicitly says that we shall not kill each other - not ever, not for any reason. Yet, the state of Victoria and its law enforcement and justice agencies and officials clearly saw the 6th commandment as irrelevant in the Jean Lee case, and they saw their own laws as 'right' and 'most important'. All the indications are that they, and every other government in Australia, still think and act that way with regard to The Rule of Law.

    The existence of unjust laws and brutal punishments administered by pseudocristian elites provides one of the strongest arguments in favour of secession from federal and state regimes in Australia. Similar examples of brutality involving the 'legal' application of the death penalty abound in other nation states, and these also provide strong arguments for 'leaving' the brutalities of federalism and totalitarian-democracy behind. The following examples of female executions were all 'legal' in the countries in which they occurred. And they were all equally in breach of the laws of God, regarding how we shall treat one another.

    Brutal Justice For All - Women Included [268]
    The excerpts below are from sources on the WWW and indicate the extent of willingness of the State, the families of the victims of crimes, and the populace at large, to see convicted people put to death. While the focus here is on executions of women there is no suggestion that men should be executed but women should not. Nobody should be put to death, no matter what crimes they are truly guilty of or how many people they have hurt. Who says so? God does!

    • "The death penalty began in Texas in 1835 with a piece of 5-strand manila hemp rope. Under the administration of Stephen F. Austin. ... Executions were a public affair so crowds would gather to witness the noose deliver "the hangman's fracture," said to cause instantaneous death forcefully snapping the jaw and rupturing the spinal cord."

      "In 1972, the US Supreme Court ruled state executions unconstitutional. Legislators lifted the moratorium on capital punishment in 1976."

      "A May 2000 Gallup poll found 65% support for the death poll, 15 points lower than in 1994."

      "In 2001, legislation to stop the death penalty was introduced and failed in 18 states."

    • "America has carried out 10 female executions since the resumption of capital punishment in 1977.

      On 2 November 1984 Margie Velma Barfield became the first to die by lethal injection at Raleigh Central Prison in North Carolina for the murder of four people including that of her own mother.

      No woman was executed in America from then until 1998 when Karla Faye Tucker (38)KarlaFayeTucker (36K) suffered lethal injection in Texas amid huge international publicity (on the 3rd of February), and 54-year-old Judias Buenoano was electrocuted in Florida on the 30th March that year.

      Texas executed 62-year-old Betty Lou Beets on the 24th of February 2000 for the murder of her 5th husband. On the 3rd of May, 2000, Arkansas executed Christina Marie Riggs by lethal injection, at her request, for the murder by the same method of her two children.

      The first female execution of 2001 was that of Wanda Jean Allen on the 11th January, in Oklahoma for murder. Marilyn Kay Plantz followed her to Oklahoma's death chamber on the 1st of May, 2001, for organising the murder of her husband. ... The execution of 61-year-old Lois Nadean Smith on the 4th December emptied Oklahoma's death row.

      Alabama carried out its first female execution since 1957 when 54-year-old Lynda Lyon Block was put to death in the electric chair on the 10th of May, 2002, for the murder of a policeman. ... Serial killer Aileen Wournoss was executed by lethal injection in Florida on 9th October, 2002."

      Much the same barbarism has gone on in various other countries in recent times, all at the behest of state punishment systems and the relevant judiciaries.

    • "America, Botswana, China, the Congo, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Qutar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates have all carried out [female] death sentences for murder in the last few years.

      China, Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam have executed women for drug offences and it is thought that Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand all have women on death row at this time. The Philippines also has the death penalty for drug trafficking and murder at the end of 2000. In October 1999, [then] President Joseph Estrada reprieved Josefina Esparas who was due to be executed by lethal injection for drug smuggling."

    • "At least three women have been stoned to death for incest and adultery, one in Afghanistan and two in Iran. Iran also executed a 35-year-old woman by stoning on the 25th May, 2001, for acting in 'obscene sex films' and stoned a 35-year-old woman for murdering her husband and [for] adultery.

      It is highly probable that the real figure for stoning executions is much greater, as this form of death sentence may be handed down and carried out locally in remote rural areas and thus not always reported. Stonings are usually carried out in public and by the public, although the latest stoning in Iran was carried out inside Evin prison in Tehran by officials. The poor woman was wrapped in a white shroud and then buried up to her armpits in the prison yard to receive her punishment.

      In Iran Article 119 of the Law of Hodoud and Qesas states, "In the punishment of stoning to death, the stones should not be too large so that the person dies on being hit by one or two of them nor should they be so small either that they could not be defined as stones." Women are buried in the ground up to their armpits as it is unacceptable for stones to hit their breasts."

    • "On or about January 25th [2004] an unnamed woman was given 80 lashes and then hanged in private in Iran after being convicted of luring girls and women to work in a brothel in the northern city of Qazvin. ... March the 1st saw the hanging of 24-year-old Ibtisam Hussein in Jordan's Swaqa Penitentiary for the murder of two children. The rope broke at the first attempt and she was hanged again an hour later."

      "Zinat al-Sadat, a 34-year-old Iranian nurse was hanged in a Tehran prison on Wednesday the 8th October [2003] for strangling a 70-year-old man and his 11-year-old grandson in 1999. ... On Wednesday the 3rd of December, Qazma Al-Qahtani, a Saudi national, was beheaded in Abha, Saudi Arabia for the murder, by suffocation, of her husband."

    • "... Death sentences for 'economic crimes' are quite common in China. On the 11th January, 2001, Liu Yixia was shot with her husband, Liu Shaoyang for fraud. An unnamed young woman was shot for murdering her husband on the 11th April, 2001, after a mass sentencing rally. She was one of 89 people put to death that day." "

    • "Sami Pan-intara (59) was executed by machine gun in Bangkwang prison on November the 23rd, 1999, for heroin trafficking, together with two male murderers. She was the first woman to be executed in Thailand for over 20 years. There are at least 11 other women on death row there."

    • "Women account for about 0.6% of all executions carried out worldwide in recent years and there is a marked reluctance to execute them in most countries. Only China, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Vietnam regularly execute women without any apparent sex bias."

      "America has shown a marked reluctance to execute women although the rate of male executions had been accelerating through the 90's. ... Women commit around 15% of all murders in America but represent about 1.5% of the overall death row population. Juries seem much more likely to recommend the death sentence where there are factors such as lesbianism involved (see Wanda Jean Allen)."

    • "American politicians have learned the peril of opposing the death penalty. During the 1988 Presidential race, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis stumbled in the polls after stating that he would oppose executing first degree murderers. New York Governor Mario Cuomo's 1994 re-election loss to a political newcomer could be attributed to his annual vetos of death penalty bills. Public support for capital punishment is overwhelming. Federal provisions allowing capital punishment, as well as executions, have increased dramatically over the last decade. Nationwide surveys [however], indicate the number of Americans who favour the death penalty is declining."

      "The prospect that innocent people will be executed in America is horrifyingly likely. Police officers and prosecutors have suppressed evidence, many public defenders are incompetent and the appeals process in becoming more difficult.

      In this [20th] century, at least 400 innocent people have been convicted of capital crimes they did not commit, 23 were executed. The wrongful execution of an innocent person is an injustice that can never be rectified."

      "Approximately 3,000 men are waiting to die in prisons across America. But few people are aware that 50 women await the same fate, convicted of crimes so heinous that they have been sentenced to death."

    At first encounter the debate around the death penalty appears to be complex, there are a variety of standpoints and issues involved and it seems impossible to balance them out in a logical manner. On the one hand there are notions of just punishment and deterrence; on the other there are fears of wrongful conviction and the conflict between the commandment of God and the laws of mankind - the much touted Rule of Law. There is even dissent between various religious groups regarding the interpretation of the Bible; some people claiming to find justification for capital punishment in the scriptures despite the unambiguity of the sixth commandment. However, there are sound reasons to eliminate many of the arguments.

    The revenge motive, on the part of the families of victims, is very strong and it underlies much of the resistance to the abolition of capital punishment, but it can be eliminated because of the hollowness of its outcomes. Many families feel strongly that the execution of a person who has been convicted of murdering one of their loved ones is justice; they see it as balancing the ledger - an eye for an eye ... and so on. But the overall society loses by such pay-back notions.

    A women's group in Malaysia opposed the introduction of a mandatory death sentence for convicted child molesters on the very sound basis that once this happened the crimes would be driven even deeper underground - they would be hushed up and not acknowledged under any circumstances - and more children would then be at risk. Moreover, if a mandatory death sentence applies, juries will be more reluctant to convict an accused person and, as a consequence, a greater number of genuine child rapists will walk free - back into the community to offend again.

    The argument that the death penalty is required as a deterrent, and that without it more citizens are at risk of being murdered, has already been shown to be fallacious. The figures from countries that have abandoned the practice of executing people for murder - and this includes most countries in Europe - do not show any rise in such crimes nor any deterioration in public safety as a result of there being no prospect of offenders being executed.

    Similarly, there is no reason to expect that drug trafficking will increase as a direct result of abolishing the death penalty. This evil industry is owned and managed by people who are never brought before the courts and for whom the prospect of conviction and execution simply does not exist. A lack of serious law enforcement, because of who the real 'Mr Bigs' are and the power they have, is the more serious issue in the prevention of drug trafficking. Those who drive the drug trafficking industry 'onwards and upwards' are successful capitalists and as the saying goes: "Capital punishment is for people who have no capital." Executing any number of underlings in the trafficking industry will never curtail or eliminate it, a death penalty for trafficking addresses a symptom of the drugs pandemic not its cause.

    The notion of the death penalty as a supreme punishment - not revenge or a deterrent, but punishment because offenders 'deserve' it - is seldom part of the debate about its retention or abolition. Nonetheless, the concepts of punishment and the right to punish underpin the whole practice of condemning people to death. Daniel Quinn's writings have laid bare the Taker assumption regarding the 'right' of humans - as the most advanced life form on the planet - to decide: 'Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die'. Not only which humans shall die, but also which animals and which plants; which rivers shall be polluted and which ecosystems shall be destroyed. Such arrogance and stupidity is acting to keep the death penalty on the statute books, it is also sustaining ongoing campaigns for its reinstatement in countries, such as Australia, which had earlier abandoned it.

    Some commentators attribute the notion of humanity's right to kill or otherwise punish its own kind - and just about everything else - to false religious interpretations. However, most mainstream religions oppose the death penalty. It is true that some minor religious groups tend to comb the scriptures for justifications for everything they do, including punishing others, but this is not where the modern attitudes to punishment come from.

    The notion of punishing those who 'deserve' to be punished follows from our profound lack of spiritual understanding - including the nature of death and the purpose of life.

    In the present Level 3 Civilization, religion is everywhere but true spirituality is almost nowhere. During an interview the author and Gnostic, John V. Panella, was asked what he considers to be the biggest problem on this planet. His reply:

    "Spiritual and metaphysical ineptness ... it's that simple!
    Nothing else matters, and never will."

    Isn't religion the same as spirituality? Not really, religions are about believing in and worshiping a deity or divine power, whilst spirituality relates to the human spirit and soul and their place in the nonmaterial world. There have been many religions throughout the course of human history, all of them have embodied spiritual concepts but none of them are spirituality.

    When people in a society rely solely on religious scriptures to determine right and wrong they can derive narrow viewpoints on these issues. They can then demand punishment when it isn't appropriate. Considering only religious scriptures is limiting in the same way that only studying and applying Newtonian physics is limiting. Just as understanding the quantum world requires new insights and different laws, so the consideration of justice and the right, or not, of humanity to execute members of their own species requires insights and understanding beyond those available in religious texts.

    Spirituality is the context in which religions are set, it is wider than the worship of a deity or deities; it surrounds religion and permeates religion but it is not religion as such. A religion is a belief system, it is based on faith and it is difficult, or perhaps impossible, to prove. Since spirituality deals with the spirit and the soul it is far more examinable by modern science. Despite the protestations of a well organised sceptics movement, it is possible for experimenters to seek out the soul in our material bodies and to prove the existence of life after death. The nonmaterial world is a world of vibrations and it is examinable. This freesite is not about spirituality per se and it does not develop the subject. Perhaps spirituality and the growing evidence for life after death might be the theme of a further freesite devoted to such matters.

    One thought that is relevant to the debate over the death penalty, and which derives both from spirituality and present-day religions, is this:

    A divine system exists and it has a creator. Whether you call that creator God or not, It has defined good and evil, right and wrong, in various revelations over the millennia. Further, in realisation that we humans are almost incapable of always doing good and never doing evil, It has also defined mercy. Mercy is there to be used. We are meant to show mercy to those who transgress the teachings of religious scriptures. To understand why this might be so one must appreciate the essence of spirituality and the nature of our journey through life, and beyond.

    Final Reactions [269]
    The following excerpts from a web site about the execution of Karla Faye Tucker capture a range of typical reactions to that event. They are quite revealing.

    • The husband of one of Karla's victims:
      "Justice for Deborah ... is complete. ... Fourteen and a half years ago, Karla Faye Tucker exploded my family. fourteen and a half years later, she brought my family back together again. I have nothing but sympathy and sorrow for her family. They are now going through what we have been through. My religion says to forgive, turn the other cheek. I'm not a perfect man. I've tried very hard. i still cannot do it. I don't believe her Christianity; I don't believe her conversion. I never did, I never will."

    • A relative of one of the victims:
      "As she was dying, I did ask God to have mercy on her soul. It was the right thing to do. And her dying also was the right thing to do. I cannot forgive her, but I have asked God to."

    • The lead attorney for Karla's defence:
      "(In) my last visit as her lawyer, her spirits were excellent. She never faltered in any way about her faith. She told me over and over again how much love she had for her family members, certainly Dan Brown, her husband ... typical, vintage Karla Faye Tucker Brown. She was at peace as (much as) one can be in that circumstance. And about four minutes later, the state of Texas got its way."

      gone_where (24K)

    • Another of Karla's attorneys:
      "The state of Texas killed a good person today. Karla Faye Tucker will forever live in our hearts, our souls, our minds. She is in a better place tonight than she was today."

    • The chairman of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice that dispensed justice to Karla:
      "The issues here were not religious conversion or gender, but rather culpability and accountability. Karla Faye Tucker brutally murdered two innocent people and was found guilty by the court and afforded all legal processes. Although I believe she finally found God, her religious awakening could in no way excuse or mitigate her actions in the world she just left, but hopefully will provide her redemption in the world she just entered."

      Karla Faye Tucker seems to have found God; but the judiciary and other authorities of the state of Texas showed no signs of any such conversion. Otherwise they would have obeyed God's commandments and not taken it upon themselves to judge and mortally punish another human being.

    An Age of Double Standards and Unfairness [270]
    The going down of the old Level 3 Civilization should not be regretted. It has been an age of hypocrisy, inequality, and double standards within the rule of law and its associated justice and corrections systems. If you consider this statement to be incorrect examine the following contrasts between the justice that murderesses like Karla Faye Tucker and Jean Lee received and the treatment accorded to victorious, and powerful, war criminals. There just isn't any balance whatsoever. There is one justice for the ruling elites and another for women like Karla Faye Tucker and Jean Lee.

    The contrasts are right here in this freesite. Look back at the pictures of the DU babies in Afghanistan and recall the senseless slaughter of innocent civilians there for no real outcome and with no good reason. Think about the unprovoked invasion of Iraq on grounds that have since been shown to have been false. Recall the torture of captured Afghanis and Iraqis in places like Camp Xray and Abu Ghraib prison, that nobody at the top knew anything about. How many innocent people were killed or maimed or irradiated in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq? Yes there were many, but the only casualties officially reported were those of 'coalition of the willing' soldiers, the civilian deaths, injuries, and ongoing illnesses aren't even being counted.

    Then look at the crime of Karla Faye Tucker, she used a pickaxe to kill two people. That's right two. So no mercy for her from the Texas Board of Criminal Justice or the then Governor of Texas, George W. Bush. Karla, of course, very was unlucky: she was unlucky to be an attractive woman, she was unlucky to be a powerless member of society, and she was unlucky enough to live in Texas.

    No other state in the Western world executes as many people as Texas. During the term of Governor Bush, between 1995 and 2000, one hundred and fifty two (152) people were executed in Texas. Karla Faye Tucker was one of them. But then, the people of Afghanistan and Iraq have been pretty unlucky too.

    Earlier, on the other side of the Atlantic, Ruth Ellis had the dubious distinction of being the last woman executed in Britain (for the time being). RuthEllis (24K)There is no doubt that Ruth Ellis was guilty of murder, in 1955 she shot her lover David Blakely outside a pub in Hampstead, London. Having shot him once with a 38 calibre revolver she pursued him around his car and shot him again, as he fell to the ground she emptied the remaining four rounds into his body and was then arrested by an off-duty policeman, while still holding the smoking gun. A jury took just 14 minutes to convict her of murder and, because a mandatory death sentence then applied to this crime, the judge in the case directed that she be taken back to her place of confinement, Holloway Prison, and there hanged by the neck until dead.

    Despite a huge public outcry this order was carried out expeditiously and Ruth Ellis was executed just three weeks and two days later, on 13th July, 1955. As a result of her case and the considerable pressure of public opinion the Homicide Act was subsequently amended (1957) to allow for the lesser charge of manslaughter to be applied in circumstance where there was a 'diminished responsibility' of the accused.

    There was certainly diminished responsibility in Ruth Ellis' case. It was known at the time of her short trail, at which she appears to have pleaded 'not guilty' in order to have her side of the story told, that the man she killed regularly assaulted her. Just 10 days prior to the murder she had suffered a miscarriage and ended up in hospital, after Blakely had punched her in the stomach. It was also known that an unnamed man had not only provided her with the 38 calibre revolver she used to kill her unfaithful lover, but had also taken her to Epping Forest and showed her how to use it. Finally, this man is alleged to have driven Ruth to the pub in Hampstead where David Blakely was drinking, and where she shot and killed him.

    Although Ruth would not name the man to her defence team his description, provided by witnesses at the scene of the shooting, fitted that of another of her lovers Desmond Cussens. Despite the fact that this new information was provided to the Home Secretary before the execution of Ruth Ellis, it appears to have been disregarded, and certainly Cussens subsequently lived out a natural lifespan and died many years later, without ever having been charged with any role in the murder of David Blakely.

    At a 2002 hearing before the Court of Appeal, instigated by Ruth's family and supporters to try to clear her name of murder and have the lesser charge of manslaughter recorded, it was alleged that Ruth had been sexually abused by her father and that she had been beaten by her husband as well as David Blakely. It was also argued, on the evidence of a midwife who saw Ruth in the street the night that she shot Blakely, that she was "stressed and weeping". Ruth was alleged to have told the midwife: "It's my boyfriend. He's in there with another woman. He won't let me in!" On the basis of this and other evidence it was alleged at the appeals hearing that Ruth Ellis had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, even though this condition hadn't been medically defined at the time of her trial. As one commentary on the WWW puts it:

    • "Her crime was at least somewhat understandable unlike those who rape and murder small children and are outside the understanding of most of us.

      She showed remorse and willingness to accept responsibility for her crime having made no attempt to run away or hide the truth of what she did or of what she had intended."

    • "Ruth had many qualities that engendered great public interest, she was an attractive, sexy young woman, a mother of two small children and a murderer whose victim was probably seen by most people as not entirely blameless. Her crime could hardly be described as "evil", a subjective concept admittedly, but a very important one in the minds of the general public in determining the justice of a case. She also behaved with great courage at all times, which no doubt, earned her considerable respect."

    • "Although she was found to be legally sane she was also clearly not entirely "normal" in any accepted sense of the word. Normal people do not have such complete disregard for their own lives and more particularly for the lives of their children (Her son ... later committed suicide.)"

    The execution of Ruth Ellis was, nevertheless, a foregone conclusion in 1955. The jury had no option to find her guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter because it didn't exist at the time. Similarly, the judge was obliged under the Homicide Act to apply the mandatory death sentence. Only the Home Secretary could grant her clemency, as had been done for ninety percent of the women convicted of murder in Britain that century. But he choose not to do son in Ruth's case, even though he had reprieved the death sentence for a woman who had murdered her next door neighbour with a shovel, just one week earlier. He had also reprieved two male murderers, one at the same time as the woman and the other some 3 months earlier.

    Circumstances might also have conspired against Ruth because it happened that when the new evidence of a male accomplice came to light and was tendered immediately to the Permanent Secretary, he was out at the races that afternoon and her new statement was left with another official, who simply did nothing with it.

    In keeping with the medieval notion of severe punishment for violations of the Rule of Law, Ruth Ellis' execution was a brutal affair. The following excerpts of an account of the rituals performed in Holloway Prison that July morning in 1955, make grim reading.

    • "On the Tuesday evening, the eve of the hanging, the Governor at Holloway was forced to call for police reinforcements because the crowd of more than 500 who had gathered outside the prison's gates singing and chanting for Ruth for several hours. some of them broke through the police cordon to bang on the prison gates, calling for Ruth to pray for them.

      Inside the usual preparations had been made. Ruth had been weighed and the correct length of drop calculated. The gallows had been tested on the Tuesday afternoon using a sand bag of the same weight as Ruth, which was left overnight on the rope to remove any stretch. Around 7.00 a.m. on the morning of the execution the trap was reset and the rope coiled up so as to leave the leather covered noose dangling at chest height above the trap. A cross had been placed on the far wall of the execution room at Ruth's request."

    • "In her cell Ruth wrote a letter to David's mother apologising for killing him and finished her letter to Leon Simmons [the lawyer attending to her will]. She was given canvas pants to wear which had been compulsory for female prisoners since the Edith Thompson debacle [it had been rumoured that her underwear was covered in blood after her hanging in 1923,]. She was also given a large brandy just before 9.00 a.m. by the prison doctor to steady her nerves and was attended by a Catholic Priest."

    • "A few seconds before nine o'clock [the executioner] entered her cell, pinioned her hands behind her back with his special soft calf leather strap and led her the 15 feet to the gallows. [The executioner] recalled that Ruth said nothing at all during her execution. When she reached the trap a white cotton hood was drawn over her head and the noose adjusted round her neck. His assistant, ... , pinioned her legs with a leather strap and when all was ready stepped back allowing [the executioner] to remove the safety pin from the base of the lever and push it away from him to open the trap through which she now plummeted.

      The whole process would have occupied no more than ten or twelve seconds and her now still body was examined by the prison doctor before the execution room was locked up and she was left hanging for the regulation hour."

    • "Ruth's body was buried within Holloway prison around lunchtime, in accordance with her sentence, but later disinterred and reburied in a churchyard in Buckinghamshire when Holloway was rebuilt in the 1970's."

    Regarding the decision not to grant a reprieve of execution for Ruth Ellis the Home Secretary is said to have noted:

    • "Our law takes no account of the so-called crime passionel, and I am not prepared to differentiate between the sexes on the grounds that one sex is more susceptible to jealousy than the other. In the present circumstances, the woman was as unfaithful to her lover as he was to her. If a reprieve were to be granted in this case, I think we should have seriously to consider whether capital punishment should be retained as a penalty." [Amen to that.]

    The Home Secretary then revealed his prejudice:

    • "On meeting Blakely and realising that his class was very much above her own, and finding he was sufficiently interested in her to live with her, it seems she was prepared to go to any lengths to keep him. Finding this impossible, she appears to have decided to wreak her vengeance on him."

    It wasn't just sex and morals that reared their head in Ruth's case it was class distinctions as well. Had she been a blue blood she might have fared somewhat better.

    Just as Karla Faye Tucker was many years later, Ruth Ellis was unlucky. She was unlucky to be an attractive woman, she was unlucky to be a powerless member of the British nation state, and she was unlucky enough to live in a class-conscious society with barbarous, mandatory laws and penalties.

    But then, the people of Dresden and the large numbers of refugees that filled the city, were similarly unlucky just over 10 years before Ruth met her fate at the hands of the British establishment. Recall that the registered number of deaths at Dresden in 1945 totalled some 480,000 of which 46,000 were school children and 37,000 were infants and toddlers.

    Ruth Ellis killed one man who had been sleeping around, and who had violently assaulted her on many occasions.

    In Ruth's case the judge was not primarily to blame for the brutal outcome of her execution, he had no option but to apply the death sentence because it was mandatory at the time, (he could, however, have declined to serve as a judge in such a mandatory system). The law that hanged Ruth Ellis permitted no consideration of any diminished responsibility or special circumstances.

    Whether to grant a reprieve was the decision of the Home Secretary; at the time a military man and later a Lord of the Realm. He had been brought up on killing and class barriers and he was disinclined to extend mercy to a person of Ruth's status and morals. He pretty much said so in his note on the decision to let her hang.

    The judge might have erred in deciding that there was insufficient evidence to support a verdict of manslaughter on the grounds of provocation (which is really what Ruth's crime was), but he faced the dilemma that she qualified for a conviction of murder on the two legal grounds that had to apply. The prosecution had to prove, firstly, that Ruth actually killed David Blakely (called "actus reas" or the "guilty act") and secondly that she fully intended to kill him (termed "mens rea" or the "guilty mind"). Ruth had clearly killed her victim and she had freely admitted her intention to do so. There was nowhere for the judge to go.

    After the judge denied the submission of the defence for a manslaughter verdict Ruth's lead defence counsel, in protest, declined to sum up the evidence for the defence, saying: "In view of the ruling which your Lordship has just pronounced I cannot now in propriety address the jury al all, because it would be impossible for me to do so without inviting them to disregard your Lordship's ruling." Ruth was thus denied her wish to have her story of the events surrounding the killing of David Blakely aired in court.

    Contrast the killing of David Blakely by Ruth Ellis and the firebombing of Dresden on the orders of the British High Command in World War II. Did the high command intend to kill Germans, including the many civilians who took shelter in Dresden believing that it would not be targeted? The answer is obviously yes, Britain had been first to declare war on Germany in September, 1939 after their various ultimatums for a Nazi withdrawal from Poland were ignored. The legal point is clear, Britain declared war and in so doing displayed an intention to kill ('mens rea').

    Secondly, hundreds of thousands of German civilians were killed by the R.A.F and the U.S.A.F. as a result of the deliberate creation of fire storms across Dresden. There is not a shadow of a doubt that horrendous incendiary weapons, consisting of phosphorous, magnesium and petroleum, were rained down on Dresden causing an enormous death toll. It is a fact that 1 n 5 German non-combatants who died in WWII met their deaths as a result of the firebombing of Dresden - 'actus reas' the guilty act is undeniable - The British and Americans did kill those people.

    No one has been or ever will be charged or convicted for the Dresden war crime. Victors of wars are never tried, they are rewarded with medals and titles instead. They are murderers nevertheless, and far worse human beings than Ruth Ellis and Karla Faye Tucker ever were. Moreover, despite their titles, medals and other honours, those perpetrators of the Dresden raid are not real men. Real men don't kill women and children.

    The problem with capital punishment is that it is never applied in a fair and balanced manner, nor is it ever likely to be. In these circumstances there is only one decent thing to do, abolish the death penalty and remove mandatory sentencing from the statute books. There is of course an even better thing to do; abandon the flawed and brutish civilization that espouses the Rule of Law while tolerating double standards in its application. Build a new, Level 4 Civilization that has no such injustices.

    Interestingly, nation states have ceased making declarations of war; perhaps on the advice of their war crimes lawyers, that they leave themselves too open to 'mens rea' interpretations. None of the COW nations declared war on Afghanistan before they invaded it, nor did they declare war on Iraq. They simply attacked and assured the world that their murderous actions were justified and 'legal'. It might, depending on the depths of dishonesty that the various legislatures of nation states are prepared to sink to, be deemed 'legal' to blow the limbs off infants in front of their parents or rain radioactive matter over dwellings, cultivated land and water courses. But it will never, ever, be moral.

    Mandatory Laws Are Proliferating [271]
    People need to be aware that not only is the punishment system that is called justice, unfair and inhuman, it is rapidly becoming harsher and even more unjust. Mandatory sentencing in the form of 'three strikes' 'zero tolerance" and other legislation and policies devised to 'crack down' on crime are filling the prison factories. The people being incarcerated are the ones with 'unlucky' profiles; poor people, powerless people, illiterate people, drug addicted people, jobless people, homeless people, itinerant people, black people.

    Not only are more people going to prison, they are going there for longer terms. Nor is it hardened street criminals and drug pushers who are being increasingly incarcerated, it is young people out of their luck, it is single mothers struggling to bring up children, it is ordinary people who are finding it harder and harder to cope with the impacts of globalisation on employment, it is sick people who can't afford health care, it is people whom you wouldn't have thought would ever end up in jail.

    This trend in the imprisonment of misfits has happened before - long ago in Renaissance Europe. it is sure to get worse before it gets better. It is a growing threat to anybody and everybody who can't quite 'catch the wave' of globalisation; farmers who can't afford to pay multinational corporations for new seed for every crop because the last crop they grew used seeds that had been genetically modified to produce only sterile plants, native people who can't even produce and use their traditional remedies anymore without paying royalties to some 'researchers' in the US or Europe who have patented them. There are many other examples, but you get the idea.

    Don't dismiss the problem of harsher laws and mandatory sentencing as something that affects 'them' but not you and your children. The record from Renaissance Europe suggests that as the ruling elites feel their grip on power being eroded by new technologies and the spread of information and ideas, they will react with torture, imprisonment and death. 'Killing the chicken to scare the monkey' will become a standard federalist tactic for maintaining control over increasingly restless populations in the West's major democracies.

    norulesASIO (37K)

    Borders will be tightened, surveillance will be increased, death penalties will be reintroduced and made mandatory for a wider range of crimes, torture will be sanctioned (the 2nd Inquisition), prison terms will be lengthened and parole options will be limited. The practice of contracting executions out to for-profit corporations will grow, with a nice little earner on the side in the marketing of body parts.

    We are living through the downfall of a whole system of civilization, and growing chaos is inevitable. All the while the snowmen and the parrot people will trumpet the 'advances' being made in the War On Terror (aka War On Freedom) and lionise 'good' citizens such as federal agents, police, border guards, and the like. Citizens will be encouraged to inform on each other to 'keep our country safe'. This had already started to happen. It will accelerate as the threat of people breaking away from the control of the old order increases.

    Maintain Resolve and Hope [272]
    No matter what the Old World Order might do or say there are many ways that ordinary people can support each other and take both joint and individual action towards one crucial goal: establishing a Level 4 Civilization by 2014.

    NTC Diagram
    As the diagram shows, the disintegration and chaos of the end of the Level 3 Civilization is well advanced - far more than is apparent from the messages of the mainstream media.

    The time is ripe to engender new awareness and hope in communities and common interest groups around the planet. This process has already started, particularly on the WWW. Now is the time to give new ideas and new meaning a greater impetus, and to widen and popularise Us-2-Us dialogue in order to help new thinking and values spread and take hold.

    Remember, there is no revolution involved in a transition to a free and better society based on abundance and deep spirituality. There will be no violent overthrow of existing power structures; just a firm abandonment of the outmoded and limiting paradigms of the old civilisation that was based on scarcity and centralised control. In the looming age of abundance each neo-tribe and free city can readily support and control its own culture and ethos.

    Be very clear about it, whatever the snowmen and parrot people might say;

    Secession is not sedition.

    Secession is an individual right! Every person born into a federation belongs in that land and society, but they do not necessarily 'belong' to a centralised administration. Citizens in a democracy only tolerate control and continue to fund central administrations through taxes if those administrations deliver them the things they aspire to.

    One of the most important things that people everywhere want for themselves and their families is freedom. If a state of federation does not provide what groups of people aspire to those same groups have a right to secede and set up their own more advanced society. If they don't have such a right then they aren't living in a democracy at all, but in a totalitarian state that is disguised as a democracy.

    Freedom is an intrinsic right, it should never be granted or withdrawn within the framework of extrinsic rights established by nation states and federations, and governed by The Rule of Law. Remember the diagram of collective rights, it is reproduced below.


    As the old economic and political orders disintegrate, the control freaks within federal and state administrations can be expected to move to restrict freedoms and tighten the rule of law over extrinsic rights. This is what happened towards the end of the first Dark Age in Europe, and it can be expected to happen again. In fact the signs that a new era of suppression of rights has already begun are everywhere.

    It is vital for the members of emerging leaver-giver tribes to remain non-violent. New tribalism does not imply the sort of behaviour that has, sadly, characterised the decolonisation of many African nations. The genocide in Rwanda in 1994, in which 500,000 people, mainly Tutsis died, (about the same death toll as that of the 1945 incineration of Dresden), and over one million people fled into other countries as refugees, is not the form of tribalism that will be helpful to the 2nd Renaissance. The type of behaviour that occurred in Rwanda was not tribalism, it was barbarism as bad as that exhibited by British War Cabinet in WWII and the COW nations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    New tribes must be driven by proud values and spiritual awareness. Violence and revenge can have no place in the advanced cultures of a Level 4 Civilization.

    Remember the two great levers for change: superior numbers, and communal communication abilities. Talk to each other in an Us-2-Us fashion. Take up the task of spreading counter-logic and new solutions throughout the old, faltering, 'civilization' that is founded on capitalism - the economics of scarcity, federalism - the centralisation of power and control, and militarism - the doctrine of 'might is right'.

    Numbers matter - Act like the ants. [273]
    There are said to be at least 15,000 human beings sold into slavery each year in the USA alone. Some commentators and human rights workers put the figure as high as 50,000. Similar trafficking in human livestock is occurring in Britain, Australia, and many other countries. The unfortunate slaves are forced to work on farms, in restaurants, as domestic 'servants', in brothels, and in pornographic video productions. There is no point relying on authorities to stop this new-slavery, most politicians are indifferent to the plight of these people because they are powerless - and there is nothing that career politicians and bureaucrats despise more than powerless people.

    Consider what might be done about sex slavery with sufficient numbers. A few concerned citizens can't be effective in having sex slaves released from a particular brothel. If they go to the police there is a good chance nothing will happen, the officers are probably getting kick-backs from the brothel operator (and possibly even 'free rides'). If six or even a dozen or so citizens go to that brothel to release unwilling workers there, they will be set upon by pimps guarding the girls, and by lawyers acting for the establishment. But, if six hundred citizens go to a brothel to release any slaves therein, the operators will let the girls go without a murmur, the pimps will offer no resistance, and no legal action will ensue. That's the sort of power that can be generated by many people acting like the ants.

    Note that the above example does not advocate closing brothels in which women work of their own free will. Prostitution is as old as humanity itself and this 'oldest profession' is often far more honourable and worthy of respect than the 'second oldest profession' that is often used to harass its members. The cure for prostitution most probably lies in the establishment of economic abundance and the creation of social conditions in which women don't have to do such work in order to survive. Also important might be a leaver-giver ethos that engenders support networks for those members of the society who need help to find ways to survive and contribute without having to prostitute themselves.

    The difference between support networks within a taker ethos and a leaver-giver ethos comes down to who it is that is supported. In the taker world a family will usually act to rescue one or more of its own daughters from a life of prostitution, but they will leave the rescue of "other people's" daughters to someone else. In a leaver-giver world, each family regards other people's daughters as part of their own social group, or tribe, and they will act collectively to rescue them from the clutches of prostitution networks. This is not a 'mission impossible' ideal. There are historical examples of natural human tribes in which prostitution and suicide were largely unknown. It's just that few such cultures have survived the twin onslaughts of colonialism and the industrial revolution. Now it's time to reverse that situation.

    State Money Controls Us - Our Own Money Frees Us [274]
    One of the greatest psychological hurdles that prospective leaver-givers will face is losing their home and other property if they don't meet their mortgage repayments. They probably won't see their own way clear to 'leave' a federation or state and help set up a free city. While they will urge others to take such action, and genuinely support them, they themselves will not feel able to follow the example. "Not yet - not until we can afford to." But the reality is that those people who hang back will never be able to 'afford to.' That's the way the economic system is geared.

    However, money as we know it - state regulated and valued by international trade movements - is unnecessary.

    When the colonial powers first moved into Africa they found thriving 'economies' based on barter or the exchange of unregulated 'money', these systems were efficient and the tribes who used them remained free. The colonial masters brought the native populations of Africa, Australia, and the US, to heel by introducing a central money supply. To use Daniel Quinn's expression, "The food was under lock and key." You could only eat if you had state money and you could only get that if you entered the state-run economy; often as a low-paid labourer, porter, or the like. The indigenous peoples of colonised countries have been labouring under the yoke of the international monetary (aka control) system ever since. They have been joined by the non-indigenous descendents of the original European colonists, and other people who migrated to their lands.

    But, every now and then, reality shines through a small crack in the system of national currencies and international trade, and then it is shut out once more. This happened in Argentina during the economic meltdown of 2001-2003, which involved the government defaulting on an external debt of US$132 billion, barter (27K)the collapse of the banking system, the freezing of deposited savings, soaring inflation and massive unemployment, and a "pots-and-pans rebellion" in which large numbers of Argentineans took over the streets of Buenos Aires and besieged the closed banks, demanding their deposits be returned.

    Although many people suffered real hardship as a result of the lack of state-backed money, they were able to survive and quickly introduce their own systems of barter and unofficial currencies. And while sadly, some people died in the initial riots, for most Argentineans life did not end. The people of Argentina demonstrated that they could build an alternative economy and basic support frameworks for each other.

    Nobody disputes the fact that the financial crisis in Argentina was due to mismanagement and corruption within the government and, to a lesser extent, the banks. Nobody suggests that the economic malaise that descended upon a country that had once been the seventh richest nation in the world was the fault of the people of Argentina. Thus, it is highly ironic that the money that was mismanaged and misappropriated was the people's. It was not the government's money - governments don't actually have any money unless they raise if from the people by taxation. It was not the bank's money - banks don't actually have any money unless people deposit it and then borrow money within the system. The money and the wealth that was so greatly devalued in 2001-2002 was ultimately the people's.

    There is a strong possibility that if the Argentinean people had not participated in a state-managed economy, and if they had not dealt with large multinational banks, but invested and borrowed with local cooperatives instead, Argentina would still be one of the richest countries in the world.

    Here are some WWW excerpts that capture the nature of the new communal movement that quickly emerged in Argentina, once the state-managed economy collapsed (They come from Global Village News and Resources - GVNR).

    • "Alva Sotelo was just trying to hold onto her job and her salary. By December [2001], she and her fellow workers' pay had fallen to only five pesos a week. ... She and her fellow workers began sleeping at the factory because they kept hoping their employers would come back and pay their salaries. "At first, we were waiting for someone to tell us what to do," she says.

      Eventually, the workers at Burkman realised that wasn't going to happen - the owners had effectively abandoned the debt-ridden factory. The workers began, slowly, to run the factory themselves. They elected a six-member commission to coordinate the work. They paid off the company's debts with factory profits. They paid their salaries by dividing the remaining profits equally among themselves. ... Alva and her 50 or so fellow workers continue to sleep in shifts at the factory. But now they are bringing home around 50 pesos a week, and they laugh and talk to each other while they work. "We've actually discovered that we get more done when we communicate with each other." she says.

      Alva Sotelo is one of many people in Argentina who have been forced by the collapse of the economy into creating alternatives. The result is new-found solidarity and empowerment and an opportunity to create new models that transcend the old individualist capitalist one. "Solidarity solutions" are sprouting up all over Argentina: street corner soup kitchens organised by neighbourhood assemblies, food donations replacing money as the price of entrance to cultural events, neighbours buying food together, community food gardens. The most notable changes have been the explosion of worker cooperatives, the rise of neighbourhood assemblies, and the proliferation of barter clubs. ... Once workers take control of a company, they can use legal channels to apply for cooperative status. Owner attempts to evict workers are often unsuccessful either because they are legally challenged or because members of local neighbourhood assemblies show up en masse to support the workers and non-violently prevent the eviction.

      These assemblies, born in early January from "the pot and pan uprisings" (cacerolazos) of December, are another powerful force for innovation within a collapsing system. Breaking through the fear of activism instilled by the brutal military dictatorship, roughly 200 groups of neighbours throughout Buenos Aires have rejected traditional party divisions and opted for direct democracy and a "politics without politicians." They are sending delegates to an inter-neighbourhood assembly, publishing newsletters, requesting donations from local merchants for street corner community kitchens [children in some areas were reduced to eating fried toads and rats, so emergency food relief was vital] and organising demonstrations. In addition to confronting the practical needs of the neighbourhood, the assemblies have become improvisational think tanks where people trade political, social, and economic ideas to create a new vision for the country.

      "In December," says assembly member Hugo Perez, "we dissolved the trance we had been in of 'Don't get involved.' We woke up and claimed the street, and once we had it, we didn't want to give it up." Many of these middle-class professionals have lost their jobs. Some have had their utilities cut off because of lack of payment, and some worry about how and what they are going to eat. Pro-government forces have attacked and threatened neighbourhood assembly members. Suddenly their own situation does not seem so different from the struggles of the working-class unemployed who have been protesting by blocking roads. A new slogan is chanted at demonstrations: "Potbanger and roadblocker, it's the same fight!"

      Social distinctions also blur at the barter clubs proliferating throughout the country. With 400.000 participants and 800 nodes, the barter system now accounts for US$400-600 million worth of business. The nodes operate with slips of paper called credits, earned by trade in goods or services."

      ... Social economist and barter promoter Heloisa Primavera says the barter economy creates "social money" that fosters community rather than the isolation of traditional consumerism. "It's also a tool for replacing scarcity thinking with abundance thinking."

      How far can this thinking go? At least one Argentine writer has suggested that the country could use barter with other countries as a way to free itself from the leash of the IMF and the external debt. When an entire people wake from the trance of political passivity, as the Argentines did last December, it seems that anything is possible."

    Although it lacked a new-tribal spirituality and the leaver-giver ethos, the Argentinean example shows the latent tribalism that lies just under the surface of their capitalist society. While the IMF and the OWO have again - for the moment - established economic and political control over ordinary Argentineans, the brief period of financial and political instability clearly showed that the people of Argentina were able to get along without a state-controlled currency, the 'services' of multi national banks, or the 'help' of the IMF. There is really no reason to suppose that they couldn't have carried on; to build a different and far better society, and to barter with people in other countries outside the international monetary system.

    Once ordinary Argentineans began printing their own alternative currency they became free from the economic control of the state. Had they persisted they would have unleashed powerful innovative and wealth creating forces that had long been constrained by the old economic order. If the people of Argentina could do these things so can the people of any country or free city. They just have to realise that they can achieve far more without the overburden that state bureaucracies and national political parties impose. Then, once they decide that they can do far better using enterprise and social collectives, and applying natural tribal principles; they must act like ants.

    The best time to make the break with the old order is before the economy totally collapses; that will avoid most of the hardship and grief that accompanies a complete financial meltdown. People who are concerned about their large mortgages and credit card debts must realise that when (not if) a major depression comes the banks will show them no sympathy; but will seize their property and other assets with the full backing of the rule of law. However, it doesn't have to play out that way.

    Just as numbers can change the balance of power when people - acting collectively - decide to free trafficked women from brothels or take over a failed enterprise, so they can turn the tables on predatory banks and other financial institutions. If a few thousand people were to declare their intention to default on their loans, the big lending institutions would quickly sool their lawyers on to these individual families with great indignation and vigour. But, if several million families were determined to abandon their contracts the story would play out very differently.

    Note that there would not be a violent attack on the old order, but it would be an attack nevertheless. No one should expect that people abandoning the Level 3 Civilization will treat its denizens and institutions kindly - just non-violently. The same goes for respecting unfair or unduly limiting patents and copyrights; or any of the other economic and social control mechanisms that hold back the prospects of a new and better world in the early 21st century.

    The Feds are justifiably scared of a swarming populace - of angry and frustrated people - being able to talk and rethink their society among themselves; as around a third of the Argentine population were bound to do by the collapse of their official economy in 2001. This is why sophisticated new surveillance systems are proliferating and intruding into our privacy more and more. And it is why more and more people are being 'encouraged' to become informers and spy on their fellow citizens who are often labelled as 'terrorists' or 'terrorist sympathisers' (modern 'witches'). This pattern is absolutely typical of all historical slides into totalitarianism. Do not expect the OWO to give up without a struggle. But do expect the angry ants to win, because the combination of their superior numbers and growing access to new communication technologies will guarantee their eventual victory over the OWO.

    Follow A Freedom Flag [275]
    Patriotism and pride in national flags is increasingly misplaced. The flags of the CoW nations and many other countries have been so sullied by war crimes, and social and economic barbarism, that they are no longer worthy of any reverence. Not only have the national governments that fly those tainted flags repeatedly engaged in military actions that have killed and maimed large numbers of non-combatants (women, children, the aged, and the infirm), corporations from those nations have also routinely engaged in the deliberate destruction of surplus foodstuffs in order to maintain their scarcity and high prices, while many children around the world have starved to death for lack of nourishment. Very simply: the sullied flags the Feds fly are no longer worthy of being followed.

    Leaver-Giver movements and the free cities that will form during the 2nd Renaissance will need a new flag to follow - a freedom flag that is pure and unsullied by two centuries of capitalism and federalism. FreedomFlag_s (17K)A draft design, which is of course freeright, is offered here. It is by no means completed and still requires detailed attention by a professional graphics artist to perfect it. Also, the final design should probably be in the dimensions of the Golden Mean instead of the 5:8 ratio used by the draft. Nonetheless, several symbolisms are contained in the flag as it is shown here.

    The white waveform signifies the new and liberating knowledge and technologies that will banish scarcity and enable the formation of a Level 4 Civilization. It also depicts the reality beneath the seeming solidity of the world around us, that although there appear to be solid objects everywhere, vibrations create all matter and we are really inhabitants of a universe of waveforms.

    The spiritual significance of the waveform motif is that just as there is no matter there is no death. Our physical bodies quickly wear out and turn to dust, but our souls continue to exist forever and we journey on in other lives and other bodies.

    Several important numbers appear in the draft design of the Freedom Flag. There is one flag (1) and it has two (2) colours (white is a tone rather than a colour; here is signifies zero (0) or nothingness). There are three (3) troughs in the wave motif and there are four (4) crests to it. The sum of the number of crests and troughs is seven (7). Readers who have understood the earlier discussion of Peter Plichta's work will realise the significance of the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4. Seven, on the other hand, is the number of mystery in sacred geometry. For example, nobody has been able to discover how to draw a mathematically perfect heptagon. Seven is also the only number in the decad (the first ten numbers) that cannot be produced by multiplying any other of those numbers and which cannot be used as a multiplier to produce any of them. For this reason the ancients knew seven as the Virgin number and regarded it as a symbol of the eternal.

    Seven is used in the Freedom Flag to represent the possible limitations to human understanding and our need to take some matters on faith alone, and not expect to be able to 'prove' or 'disprove' them with our incomplete tools and logic.

    Readers who desire to know more about numbers in ancient times should consult John Michell's excellent book, The Dimensions of Paradise - The Proportions and Symbolic Numbers of Ancient Cosmology, from Adventures Unlimited Press, 2001.

    By changing one or both of the two colours used in the Freedom Flag it will be possible for every free city and leaver-giver tribe to have their own distinctive form of the design. While the colour combination shown represents the overall movement for freedom, abundance, and the establishment of a Level 4 Civilization.

    The hex code for the upper colour of the primary flag is #800080 and that of the lower is #FF8000.

    Each free city and LG-tribe can choose their own colour variations and then register them on Freenet. Some Freenetter is sure to set up a page where they can do that. That freesite should include the final graphic design for the Freedom Flag and a way to claim and record specific colours for each flag being registered. At first, the registrations might need to be anonymous and only refer to the fact that a group of people in a city (say Dallas!) is working to found a LG-movement there and they have chosen two colours for their flag. Since all larger cities in the West are established strongholds of the OWO, formative LG-tribes will probably need to remain relatively discreet until they achieve a critical mass of membership and community support. It's not a free country yet!

    Basic Entitlements In Free Cities [276]
    Cities that proudly fly their version of the Freedom Flag will begin to implement an abundance economy by first providing the basic necessities of life; free to all their citizens. These basics will include food staples, basic shelter, adequate clothing, medicines and health care, digital libraries and access to Lightnet terminals, etc. No money will be required to access the basics for living. Non-basic commodities and services will be traded during the early years of the free economies, using barter or a 'people's currency' much as the Argentineans did in 2001. Gradually, as magic new technologies make inroads on scarcity and begin to generate goods and services in abundance, more items will be added to the free list.

    It will be some time before luxuries such as yachts and cosmetic surgery become free to everyone, but that too will eventually be possible. However, by that point, the influence of new spirituality will have greatly reduced the desire of people to accumulate material possessions. Life will be full of joy and love, but simple in its requirements.

    An Outline of the Game of Life [277]
    What follows is a greatly simplified model of the purpose of life, as set out in far greater detail, and often with considerable obscurity, in various spiritual teachings from past ages. The Snakes and Ladders metaphor used here is a practical explanation, and is not deeply grounded in research and science (although some such forms of evidence do exist). The advantage of this simplified model is that it brings the nature of the game of life to the fore and skirts past all potentially diverting considerations of the details of its underpinnings. It is the latter area that usually bogs down in debates between those people who choose to believe in the existence of a divine judgement mechanism and those who want to see it proven beyond doubt - which is something that we might never be able to do while we are in our human form.

    Even young children understand the principles of the game of Snakes and Ladders.SnakesLaddersLife (36K) A player moves a counter over a board according to the throws of a dice, and the aim is to travel from the 'start', at the bottom of the playing area, to the 'finish' at the top. Throws of the dice which land a player's counter on the foot of a ladder advance it to the top; throws that land on the head of a snake send the counter back down to the end of the tail.

    The board-game of life can be likened to snakes and ladders, but with 'free will' operating each time the counter lands on the foot of a ladder or the head of a snake. In life we have the freedom to choose whether we will travel up a ladder or down a snake.

    Usually, deciding to climb a ladder has some 'cost' attached; we have to give up something in order to rise up the board by way of a ladder. Conversely, going down a snake can bring us some form of gain, we might choose to cheat someone, or we might even decide to kill them in order to gain an advantage or to keep a secret hidden from the world.

    Because we have the 'gift' of free will and are not constrained by fate in the same way that the player of a normal Snakes and Ladders game is, we can choose whether to give and do good - climb a ladder - or to take and do harm - slither down a snake.

    Thus, we can strive to reach the 'finish' or we can decide to ignore that goal (often because we have no faith that there actually is a 'finish' or reward for helping others at our own expense) and deliberately cause havoc for our personal gain or satisfaction. The people who travel down snakes of their own free will are not usually convinced that there is any divine 'score keeping' involved in the game of life. They reason that if they can escape detection or hire a skilled lawyer who is able to get them off any charges of wrongdoing they have somehow 'won'. Only those of us who recognise the existence of a divine design and plan behind the game of life are concerned to climb ladders and reach the top of the board of life.

    A perfect life is beyond most of us, we inevitably go down a few snakes from time to time. But we can all strive to finish as high on the board of life as we possibly can. In this regard it is never too late to switch from choosing snakes to choosing ladders. The Rule of Law and its attendant judicial punishment processes universally fail to recognise this fact. Wrongdoers are either confined in prisons under conditions that make it difficult to just survive, let alone find ladders to climb, or in the case of capital crimes they are increasingly likely to be executed. The 'justice' system ends the game and they are denied any opportunity to regret their crimes and seek to reform their lives. Paradoxically, the agents of judicial punishment who prevent wrongdoers from resuming the normal game of life are completely unaware that they themselves travel down a snake each time they take such 'legal' actions. Ultimately, they can finish lower in the game than those they judge and punish.

    Teachings from the ancients and present-day shamans suggest that the board-game of life is played many times, just as snakes and ladders is played repeatedly. However, people brought up on mainstream religions that emphasise one life and either heaven or hell to follow have lost this understanding. Most of them have also given up the notion of a judgement day and consider that the end of their life is the final end - nothing exists for them beyond death. Of course, these ideas are contrary to the teachings of the various religions, but those institutions have been progressively marginalised by the secular power of nation states and federations. All present-day religions have also been overshadowed by the materialistic cultures spawned by commerce and capitalism.

    Is it too much to attribute the decline of spirituality to the growth of central governments and economies based on taker philosophies? Not at all. The Renaissance in Europe began the process of sidelining spiritualism five centuries ago. The Reformation broke the temporal power of the Roman Church and also split its religious following. At the same time the flow-on effects of Johannes Gutenberg's mass printing technology transformed Europe into a thriving hub of commerce and conspicuous consumption. These changes laid the foundations for the present Level 3 Civilization, with its focus on the material world and the acquisition of material possessions.

    History tends to happen in cycles. The second wave of communication technology is now having the same effect that mass printing did during the Renaissance; it is connecting information and thoughts in ways that are exposing and undermining the power of nation states and federations. At the same time there is a resurgence of interest in meaning, particularly amongst young people and the elderly.

    Those in their middle-life stages would also be concerned with meaning, but they are so enmeshed in their repayments - mortgages, credit cards, etc - and a daily struggle to advance within a system of relentless economic scarcity, that they have little time to think about such esoteric matters as the meaning of life. Even women, who used to stay at home and raise their children on a full-time basis, are now forced to work to make ends meet. Only the very young and the very old presently have the luxury of time to wonder and search for meaning. But the situation will change as it becomes apparent that there are new alternatives to economic scarcity and predatory globalism. Soon, everybody will be seeking new meaning and new opportunities to climb as many ladders in the game of life as they possibly can. Once this happens a Level 4 Civilization will be assured.

    Beyond Material States [278]
    In the early 1900s, grant-governed science cut itself off from the metaphysical and all phenomena that could not be objectively measured and repeated under laboratory conditions, and ushered in the 20th century Dark Age of knowledge. During this time the ascendency of capitalism in economic matters also reinforced materialist views of our existence and the nature of life and death. Not surprisingly, a large proportion of the world population, particularly in the West, largely eschewed religion and paid their 'faith' only lip service, preferring to 'worship' the acquisition of tangible possessions instead of finding a path to spiritual enlightenment. You can find these folk in shopping malls on most Sundays, instead of in church. And you can find the churches largely empty, unless they stage hot-gospel music, church-jazz or some other hyper-religious attractions to fill their pews.

    Some science has always pursued the answers to non-material phenomena and other states of consciousness. Considerable work of this type was carried out in the USSR during the Cold War, and other independent scientific minds have also been active in many parts of the globe. As already stated, this freesite is not heavily focused on the nature of spirituality and metaphysics. Those subjects really merit their own site that includes the best available references and insights.DMT (26K) Nonetheless, it is appropriate to say a little more at this point about the significance of Dr Rick Strassman's experiments with DMT.

    While DMT is the active constituent of the brews made with ayahuasca that are used by shamans as an aid to perceiving non-material states and reportedly gaining knowledge from the spirit world, it is also a prohibited substance in Western societies. The latter fact is somewhat incongruous because DMT is a naturally occurring organic hallucinogen that is produced by our bodies and always found within our brains. Technically, in terms of the Rule of Law, we are all 'manufacturing' and using this prohibited substance.

    In his book The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and the Origins of Knowledge, Jeremy Narby gives the following accounts of the history of hallucinogens.

    • "For several weeks, I went over the scientific literature on hallucinogens and their supposed effects on the human brain.

      Here is a fact I learned during my reading. We do not know how our visual system works. As you read these words, you do not really see the ink, the paper, your hands, and the surroundings, but an internal and three-dimensional image that reproduces them almost exactly and that is constructed by your brain. ... How the brain goes about reuniting these sets of categorised information [form, colour, movement, depth, etc] into a coherent image is still a mystery. This also means that the neurological basis of consciousness is unknown.

      If we do not know how we see a real object in front of us, we understand even less how we perceive something that is not there. When a person hallucinates, there is no external source of visual stimulation, which, of course, is why cameras do not pick up hallucinatory images."

    • "Strangely, and with few exceptions, these basic facts are not mentioned in the thousands of scientific studies on hallucinogens; in books with titles such as Origin and Mechanisms of Hallucinations, experts provide partial and hypothetical answers, which they formulate in complicated terms, giving the impression that they have attained the objective truth, or are about to do so."

    • "The neurological pathways of hallucinogens are better understood than the mechanisms of hallucinogens. During the 1950s, researchers discovered that the chemical composition of most hallucinogens closely resembles that of serotonin, a hormone produced by the human brain and used as a chemical messenger between brain cells. ...

      LSD, a synthetic compound unknown in nature, does not have the same profile as the organic molecules such as dimethyltryptamine [DMT] or psilocybin. Nevertheless, the great majority of clinical investigations focused on LSD, which was considered to be the most powerful of all hallucinogens, given that only 50-millionths of a gram brings on its effects.

      In the second half of the 1960s, hallucinogens became illegal in the Western world. ... Ironically it was around this time that several researchers pointed out that, according to science's strict criteria, LSD most often does not induce true hallucinations, where the images are confused with reality. People under the influence of LSD nearly always know that the visual distortions and cascades of dots and colours that they perceive are not real. ...

      So the scientific studies of hallucinogens focused mainly on a product that is not really hallucinogenic; researchers neglected the natural substances, which had been used for thousands of years by hundreds of peoples, in favour of a synthetic compound invented in a twentieth-century laboratory."

    • "In 1979, it was discovered that the human brain seems to secrete dimethyltryptamine - which is also one of the active ingredients of ayahuasca. This substance produces true hallucinations, in which the visions replace reality convincingly. ... Unfortunately, scientific research on dimethyltryptamine is rare. To this day [1998], the clinical studies of its effects on 'normal' human beings can be counted on the fingers of one hand."

    Rick Strassman changed the above situation when, between 1990 and 1995, he conducted DEA-approved clinical tests of the effects of DMT on sixty human volunteers, at the University of New Mexico. Jeremy Narby could have been unaware of Strassnan's studies and findings at the time he wrote the above comment about the rarity of DMT field trials. The fact is that, until Rick Strassman did the experiments, science did not know what human subjects will experience when they are injected with measured doses of DMT, under properly controlled double-blind conditions. The results of his work are truly startling.

    [Author's Note: When I wrote the above paragraph I had mislaid my notes on The Cosmic Serpent and I, regrettably, relied on my memory and a quick flip through Narby's book. When I recently found and read my notes I realised that Jeremy Narby was aware of Rick Strassman's work. He is a very thourough researcher and I offer my humble apologies for misstating the position in the 2nd Renaissance freesite that I have published on Freenet.]

    The DMT molecule was first synthesised by a Canadian chemist named Manske, in 1931. The presence of DMT in plants was first discovered in 1946, when it was isolated from a South American tree used to make psychedelic snuffs. But it was not until 1965 that a German research team isolated DMT from human blood. Today, it is known that DMT is in many living organisms, not just Amazon plants and humans. Until Strassman's study nobody had seriously tried to answer the question: What is DMT doing in our bodies? Finding the answer to that question was the aim of the work done by Rick Strassman and his colleagues at the University of New Mexico.

    Perhaps the most significant finding was totally unexpected by Strassman. He was prepared for vivid descriptions of altered states of reality; those are the responses that hallucinogens typically produce. But he was deeply surprised to find a considerable degree of consistency throughout the records of what the various volunteers 'saw'. Because people saw the same things and often met the same beings while under the influence of DMT, Strassman was faced with the astounding postulate that the 'other worlds' and 'beings' actually exist. What else could he conclude when many of the volunteers, who did not know which session involved the injection of a placebo and which involved DMT, reported essentially similar experiences, but only from their DMT sessions and not from the control studies?

    The DMT experience also had a profound effect on many of the volunteers, all of whom had been selected for their prior use of psychedelics and who should have been less shocked than inexperienced 'first timers'. But the participants were shocked nonetheless and most claimed they had never experienced anything like the 'visions' that they were immersed in by DMT.

    The regimen of injections involved several sessions and different steps from 'low dose' to 'high dose' levels, the latter being 0.4 mg/kg. The deep spirituality that many of the volunteers experienced during and following their high dose sessions is captured succinctly in the following comment made by one subject:

    "You can be an atheist until zero point four".

    Rick Strassman recorded around a thousand single-typed pages of notes of the sixty volunteers reports directly after their DMT experiences and subsequent reviews by them of these records. Here is a small selection to give you the flavour of their encounters with the spirit molecule.

    • "There was an initial sense of panic. Then the most beautiful colours coalesced into beings. There were lots of beings. They were talking to me but they weren't making a sound. It was more as if they were blessing me, the spirits of life were blessing me. They were saying that life was good." _ _ Gabe

    • "The most reassuring experience of my life ... the separation of mind and body was effortless ... if death is like this, there's nothing to worry about." _ _ Chris

    • "As I went into it, I heard a sound: hmmm. Then I heard two to three male voices talking. I heard them say "He's arrived."

      I felt evolution occurring. These intelligences are looking over us. There is hope beyond the mess we are making for ourselves.

      I couldn't change the experience at all. I couldn't have anticipated it or even imagined it. It was a total surprise! I tried to open to love but that was silly. All I could do was observe it." _ _ Jeremiah

    • "This time I quickly blasted through to the 'other side'. I was in a void of darkness. Suddenly, beings appeared. They were cloaked, like silhouettes. they were glad to see me. They indicated that they had had contact with me as an individual before. They seemed pleased that we had discovered this technology. I felt like a spiritual seeker who had gotten too far off course and, instead of encountering the spirit world, overshot my destination and ended up on another planet.

      They wanted to learn more about our physical bodies. They told me humans exist on many levels. I needed to reconnect with my body in time for the blood pressure check and blood sampling. It was as if they, rather than Laura, were collecting the information, and they appreciated my doing it for them. Somehow we had something in common. They told me to embrace peace." _ _ Sara

    • "The other side is very, very different. there are no words, body or sounds there to limit things. ... It's like a cosmic joke. If we all knew what was waiting for us, we'd all kill ourselves. That's why we stay in this form for so long, to figure that out. ...

      Everyone should try a high dose of DMT once. I don't know if the beings today were saying "Try death once" or "Try life once". That place is so full and so complete that the idea of this place is to try and be as complete as possible. Yet when I came back into my body it was so heavy and so confining. Also, time here seems so strange. Eternity is an attribute of the place. It would have to be." _ _ Willow

    • "The 0.2 was harrowing - this was way beyond. I knew the boundary beyond life existed. I never thought I'd be there, though, as such an early age. It's one of those things that old men talk about ... " _ _ Carlos

    • "There was a movement of colour. The colours were words. I heard what the colours were saying to me. I was trying to look out, but they were saying, "Go in". I was looking for God inside. they said, "God is in every cell of your body." And I was feeling it, totally open to it, and I kept opening to it more, and I just took it in. The colours kept telling me things, but they were telling me things so I not only heard what I was seeing, but also felt it in my cells, happening in my cells. That God is in everything and that we are all connected, and that God dances in every cell of life, and that every cell of life dances in God.

      I am changed. I will never be the same. To simply say this almost seems to lessen the experience. I don't think that anyone hearing or reading this can truly grasp what I felt, can really understand it deeply and completely. The euphoria goes on into eternity. and I am part of that eternity." _ _ Cleo

    • "The great power sought to fill all possibilities. It was 'amoral', but it was love, and it just was. There was no benevolent god, only this primordial power. All of my ideas and beliefs seemed absurdly ridiculous. I never wanted to forget this. I was aware I could open my eyes and relate to those around me. But first I had to wait for all this to solidify, to allow the fullness of the experience to congeal, so I could bring it back to the others.

      I wondered, "Why come back?" I was reluctant to open my eyes. When I did, the room seemed very bright, but otherwise quite as I had left it." _ _ Elena

    Not all of the subjects had euphoric and revealing experiences under the spell of the spirit molecule. Rick Strassman was surprised and concerned to find that 42% of the volunteers in the study had 'adverse' effects and reported feelings of pain and fear. Strassman wondered why such a high proportion of the participants fell into this category. He had thought that by using volunteers with experience of psychedelic drugs he could minimise such negative sessions. But that was not the case. Here are a couple of reports of neutral or unfriendly receptions on the other side of the veil.

    • "It started with a sound. It was high-pitched like a tightly taut wire. There were four or five of them. They were on me fast. As crazy as this sounds, they looked like saguaro cactus, very Peruvian in colour. They were flexible, fluid, geometrical cacti. Not solid. They weren't benevolent but they weren't non-benevolent. They probed, they really probed. They seemed to know time was limited. They wanted to know what I, this being who had shown up, was doing. I didn't answer. They knew. ..."
      _ _ Dimitri

    • "there was a humming sound, I couldn't tell if it was the air conditioner. Then I felt like I was suddenly in the presence of an alien or of aliens, vaguely humanoid. There were serpentine colours surrounding them, producing an outline of their shape. Based on my reading, I expected leprechauns, not anything like this.

      The bed was spinning, rocking, it was uncomfortable, alarming. there was some constriction in my chest. That feeling then turned into the alien presence. I tried to make contact and relax into it. It seemed a lot more in control than I was. It was interested in my fear and in me.

      I remember that feeling when I was a kid. When I was scared I would relax and say to myself, "The worst thing that can happen to me is I'll go to God" when I was afraid." _ _ Rex

    Because of the emotive and belief-shaking nature of the implications of Rick Strassman's work it is important that you read his book, DMT the Spirit Molecule, before forming conclusions from the above excerpts. It is not possible in this limited space to capture or present the exceptional balance and honesty of Strassmans writing about his findings and conclusions. Many important facts and insights, of necessity, are unsaid here.

    For example readers might think that the volunteers who were injected with DMT ran the risk of addiction, but the truth is that the spirit molecule is not addictive (however this does not mean that it is safe to use DMT in unsupervised conditions). Or, readers might consider that the experiences described were simply wild dreams. The fact is that the participants strongly refuted this suggestion and pointed out that, unlike the dream state, some parts of their DMT experiences took place while they were fully conscious and aware of the people in the room with them, Strassman and others. They were also able to take off their eyeshades and open their eyes and see both the DMT vision and the room at the same time. This is nothing like dreaming.

    There are may other possible misconceptions, thus the best thing to do is read DMT the Spirit Molecule in full before venturing your own conclusions about Strassman's studies and what they mean.

    WARNING:
    Using DMT can be very dangerous. Impacts on heart rate and blood pressure can be extreme. Shamans prepare to use ayahuasca by following a strict dietary regime for several days and by sexual abstinence. Do NOT experiment with DMT unless you are medically supervised or under the guidance of a traditional Shaman. DMT is a banned substance in most Western countries, including the US and Australia.

    Why Is DMT In Our Bodies? [279]
    Finding answers to this question was the primary reason for Dr Strassman's work on DMT. The following excerpts from DMT the Spirit Molecule are intended to provide a partial window into the author's findings and conclusions in this matter. Again, it is recommended that you actually obtain and fully read the book before applying these insights to your own thinking and belief system.

    • "It is almost inconceivable that a chemical as simple as DMT could provide access to such an amazingly varied array of experiences, from the least dramatic to the most unimaginably earth-shattering. From psychological insights to encounters with aliens. Abject terror or nearly unbearable bliss. Near-death and rebirth. Enlightenment. all of these from a naturally occurring chemical cousin to serotonin, a widespread and essential brain neurotransmitter.

      It is just as fascinating to ponder why Nature, or God, made DMT. What is the biological or evolutionary advantage to having various plants and our bodies synthesize the spirit molecule? If DMT is indeed released at particularly stressful times in our lives, is that a coincidence, or is it intended? If it is intended, for what purpose?"

    • "I had expected to hear about some of these types of ["spirit-world"] experiences once we began giving DMT. I was familiar with Terence McKenna's tales of the "self-transforming machine elves" he encountered after smoking high doses of the drug. Interviews conducted with twenty experienced DMT smokers before beginning the New Mexico research also yielded some tales of similar meetings. Since most of these people were from California, I admittedly chalked up these stories to some kind of West Coast eccentricity.

      Therefore I was neither intellectually nor emotionally prepared for the frequency with which contact with beings occurred in our studies, Neither, it seemed, were many of the volunteers, even those who had smoked DMT previously. Also surprising were the common themes of what these beings were doing with so many of our volunteers: manipulating, communicating, showing, helping, questioning. It was definitely a two-way street.

      As strange as the reports that follow are, our 1990s research was not the first in the scientific literature to describe DMT-induced "contact". There also are reports from the 1950s quoting volunteers to that effect. These older DMT cases are remarkable in their foreshadowing of the stories we were going to hear almost forty years later. What is even more striking is that I have been unable to locate any similar reports in research subjects taking other psychedelics. Only with DMT do people meet up with "them", with other beings in a nonmaterial world."

    • Here we quote the notes of a volunteer named Willow's experience that gives a useful indication of what DMT is doing in our bodies, why it is there.

      "Something rushed through me, out of me. I remember thinking at some point. Here comes the separation." I felt my body only when I swallowed or breathed, and that really wasn't a physical feeling as much as a way of setting ripples through the experience. I felt strongly, "This is dying and this is okay."

      I had heard of the bright light tunnel, but I didn't expect it to be the way it was here today. I thought it would be primarily in front of me, but this took turns on both sides and then joined in front. Nor was it as bright as I thought it might be.

      I'm amazed DMT is in the body. It's there for a reason. It's there for dying today. I had a sense of dying, letting go and separating, after the beings in the tunnel helped me along."

    • Quoting Rick Strassman again:

      "Most of us, including the most hard-nosed neuroscientists and non-materialistic mystics, accept that the brain is a machine, the instrument of consciousness. It is a bodily organ made up of cells and tissues, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. It processes raw sensory data delivered by the sense organs using electricity and chemicals.

      If we accept the "receiver of reality" model for brain function, let's compare it to another receiver with which we're all familiar: the television. By making the analogy of the brain to the TV, it's possible to think of how altered states of consciousness, including psychedelic ones brought about by DMT, relate to the brain as a sophisticated receiver.

      The simplest and most familiar levels of change to which the spirit molecule provides access are the personal and psychological. These effects may be like fine-tuning the television image; adjusting the contrast, brightness, and colour scheme. These "images" consist of feelings, memories, and sensations that are not at all unusual or unsuspected. There is nothing especially new, but what is there is now seen much more clearly and in finer detail.

      Low doses of DMT brought about these types of responses in our volunteers. They sometimes also occurred at higher doses in those whose personal needs and makeup required a deeper reworking of their own lives and relationships.

      In performing these conscious adjustments, DMT does not differ much from other drugs or processes used in the psychotherapeutic process."

    • "What happens when the spirit molecule pulls and pushes us beyond the physical and emotional levels of awareness? We enter into invisible realms, ones we cannot normally sense and whose presence we can scarcely imagine. Even more surprising, these realms appear to be inhabited.

      At a certain point, I decided to accept at face value volunteer's reports. This thought experiment replaced my original tendency to explain away, interpret, or reduce their experiences into something else, such as a disordered brain's hallucinations, dreams, or psychological symbolism. Now, after several years of additional study and reflection, I think it's worth considering seriously whether it's possible that these experiences indeed were exactly what they seemed to be."

    • "I have struggled personally and professionally with developing the following radical explanations for our volunteers' apparent contact with nonmaterial beings. Even after stating them, I remain sceptical about their merit. Why couldn't I stick with tried and true biological or more traditional psychological models?

      ... However, whenever I tried to react to being-contact sessions with anything I knew or believed previously, it just didn't work. I was stuck. So, I decided to engage in the thought experiment ... That is, I tried responding to volunteers' reports of contact as if they were true. At first, this involved simply listening, and asking for clarification. Later on, as more tales accumulated, I could refer to other people's accounts in an empathetic manner that made it easier for volunteers to feel I understood and accepted what they had to say. That way they could share with me their most unusual and almost embarrassingly unexpected encounters."

    • "Therefore. let's consider the proposal that when our volunteers journeyed to the further bounds of DMT's reach, when they felt as if they were somewhere else, they were indeed perceiving different levels of reality. The alternative levels are as real as this one. It's just that we cannot perceive them most of the time.

      In making this suggestion, I'm not discarding the brain-chemistry and psychological models. Rather, I wish to add to the options we entertain in attempting to develop explanations that are helpful to volunteers, intellectually satisfying to researchers, and perhaps even testable using methods not yet invented but theoretically possible."

    • "Returning to the TV analogy, these cases suggest that, rather than merely adjusting the brightness, contrast, and colour of the previous program, we have changed the channel. No longer is the show we are watching everyday reality, Channel Normal.

      DMT provides regular, repeated, and reliable access to "other" channels. The other places of existence are always there. In fact, they are right here, transmitting all the time! But we cannot perceive them because we are not designed to do so: our hard-wiring keeps us tuned in to Channel Normal. It takes only a second or two - the few heartbeats the spirit molecule requires to make its way to the brain - to change the channel, to open our mind to those other places of existence. "

    The fact that Rick Strassman, as a medical researcher, had difficulty coming to terms with such an explanation does not weaken it. The conclusion is actually strengthened by the fact that he was unable to answer the question of what DMT is doing in our bodies within any of the existing biological and psychological models. Strassman tried hard to fit the phenomena reported into those conventional frameworks, and he could not do it. He was left with the postulate above; DMT enables us to change the reality channels of our existence. Under its influence we can be 'here' then 'there' and then back "here" again.

    This is how Amazonian Shamans have used DMT (in ayahuasca) for thousands of years; to contact 'spirits' in other states of reality and gain knowledge and advice from them. They have been consistently ridiculed as fakes and unscientific primitives, but the shamans of the Amazon, and other parts of the world, continue to maintain that they have gained their vast knowledge, of the extensive range of plant-based drugs and medicines they manufacture and use, from the spirits.

    Today, Western pharmaceutical corporations are feverishly collecting - and patenting - the store of pharmacological knowledge possessed by such 'primitive' people. Will the West soon be forced to also adopt the explanations of how shamans have obtained their extensive knowledge and repertoire of cures for hundreds of diseases and ailments? That they simply tuned their consciousness to a different channel of reality?

    Look back to Vogt and Sultan's theory of the seven levels (they call them 'dimensions') of information perception and access. Their model, you will recall, fits within the third theory domain, the realm of non-material existence - where science and religion meet. The use of DMT to access 'other channels' corresponds closely with Vogt and Sultan's 5th level. The explanatory mechanisms differ between Strassman and Vogt and Sultan, but they are essentially describing the same level of ability to receive and perceive information that is normally beyond the reach of our five lower senses, and the brain that interprets the information we receive from those sources. There is definitely a convergence of thinking happening. Scientists and other theorists in the West are starting to develop explanations that are coming to resemble the spiritual beliefs and teachings of the East, and of religions such as Buddhism.

    More dialogue and open-mindedness is needed before there is a fusion of the explanations of science and the spiritual beliefs of the world's religions. Writing of his own difficulty in coming to terms with the tales of the volunteers in the DMT study, Rick Strassman makes exactly this point. Here are the relevant excerpts.

    • "It may be that I have such a hard time with these stories because they challenge the prevailing world view, and my own. Our modern approach to reality relies upon waking consciousness, and its extensions of tools and instruments, as the only ways of knowing. If we can't see, hear, smell, taste, or touch things in our everyday state of mind, or using technology-simplified senses, it's not real. Thus, these are "nonmaterial" beings.

      In contrast, indigenous cultures are in regular contact with denizens of the invisible landscape and have no problems with straddling both worlds. Often they do this with the aid of psychedelic plants.

      Many modern-day scientists possess an abiding faith in the spiritual. However, these same scientists are caught in a profound conflict between their personal and professional beliefs. what they say and what they feel may contradict each other profoundly. It is difficult to be "objective" about matters of the heart and spirit. Scientists may compartmentalise their faith and can't conceive of verifying or validating their spiritual intuition. In other cases they may water down the nature of those beliefs to maintain some consistency with their intellectual understanding. ...

      Lack of open dialogue about these issues makes it much more difficult to even imagine enlarging our view of the reality of nonmaterial realms using scientific methods. What would happen to the study of spirit realms if we could access them reliably using molecules like DMT?"

    Indeed, what would happen if consenting scientists had regular access to and use of the spirit molecule in their work? Might not the slow convergence of thinking between science and religion be rapidly advanced?

    Further Hypotheses [280]
    Rick Strassman's work on DMT led him to many other conclusions and hypotheses that are not covered here - read his book to learn about his many other ideas. More can also be drawn from Strassman's research than he might have chosen to tease out. He would only have included speculative notions where a linkage to scientific data and findings existed. For example, the reason for so many (42%) of the volunteers experiencing either neutral or non-benevolent feelings emanating from "them" is not pursued. Probably, Strassman considered that there was only so far it could be taken before all linkage to hard science was lost and speculation reigned.

    But speculation does no harm if is identified as such, and not passed off as fact. When considered in terms of the board-game of life, or the Snakes and Ladders analogy, the finding that a large proportion of the volunteers reported "adverse" aspects within their DMT experiences seems completely consistent. Most non-western religions place considerable emphasis on the recycling of the soul from life to life, in a reincarnation process. Strassman discusses this aspect in relation to the function of the pineal gland (see below). Although conjectural, it is possible that some volunteers were either already at low levels on the game-board of life, or were going down rather than up the board at the time of their experiences.

    In his book Strassman describes the possible role of the pineal gland in birth and death. Here are relevant excerpts from DMT The Spirit Molecule.

    • "I already knew that the Tibetan Buddhist Book of the Dead teaches that it takes forty-nine days for the soul of the recently dead to "reincarnate". That is, seven weeks from the time of death of one person elapses until the life-force's "rebirth" into its next body. I remember very clearly, several years later, feeling the chill along my spine when, reading my textbook of human fetal development, I discovered this same forty-nine day interval marking two landmark events in human embryo formation. It takes forty-nine days from conception for the first signs of the human pineal to appear. Forty-nine days is also when the fetus differentiates into male or female gender. Thus the soul's rebirth, the pineal, and the sexual organs all require forty-nine days before they manifest."

    • "As we die, if near-death experiences are any indication, there is a profound shift in consciousness away from identification with the body. Pineal DMT makes available those particular non-embodied contents of consciousness. All the factors previously described combine for one final burst of DMT production: catecholamine release; decreased breakdown and increased formation of DMT; reduced anti-DMT; and decomposing pineal tissue. Therefore, it may be that the pineal is the most active organ in the body at the time of death. Might we say that the life-force therefore exits the body through the pineal?

      The consequences of this flood of DMT upon our dying brain-based mind is a pulling back of the veils normally hiding what Tibetan Buddhists call the bardo, or intermediary states between this life and the next. DMT opens our inner senses to these betwixt states with their myriad visions, thoughts, sounds, and feelings. As the body becomes totally inert, consciousness has completely left the body and now exists as a field among many fields of manifest things.

      The spirit molecule has outlived its usefulness as a scout for these realms. It has led us to the other shore, and we are now on our own. During the next forty-nine days, we use our will, or intent, to process our unique life's signature, the accumulated experiences, memories, habits, tendencies, and feelings of the life that has ended. This conscious contending with our personal histories, where complete, results in a joining of those fields with ambient ones. It is as if a bell has been rung; the sound, loud at first, joins background noise, then gradually fades away.

      What is left over settles onto the next physical life-form that seems most appropriate for subsequent processing of unresolved issues. There is a resonance, a sympathetic vibration, of similar fields: C-minor gravitates to
      C-minor, animal traits to animals, plant qualities to plants, human issues to humans.

      In the case of human beings, these unmetabolised tendencies, this unfinished business, can enter the fetus only when it is "ready". This readiness may require forty-nine days, too, and may take the form of a pineal gland able to synthesise DMT. The pineal could act as an antenna or lightning rod for the soul. And sexual differentiation into male or female, occurring at exactly the same moment, provides the biological framework through which the life-force now may assert itself.

      The movement of this energy, the residual life-force of the past into the present, through the pineal and into the fetus, might be the first and most primordial DMT flash. this is the dawning of consciousness, of mind, of awareness as a distinct biological and sexual entity. The blinding light of pineal DMT, secreted within the developing brain, marks the passage through this threshold."

    Much of the above, as Rick Strassman discusses in his book, is speculative. He honestly states that, as far as he could determine, nobody actually knows whether the pineal gland does produce DMT, because no scientific study seems ever to have looked for it there. However, he says, DMT is known to be produced within the body; in blood, it the lungs, and in the brain. Strassman is 'joining dots' when he hypothesises that the pineal generates DMT and acts as an antenna for the soul.

    However, there are certainly existing dots for Strassman to join. For example, the enzymes and precursors required to synthesise DMT are known to exist in quite high concentrations in the pineal. Also, the pineal is known to exercise control over other glands in the endocrine system, as a type of 'master unit', and it is the source of melatonin, that controls among other functions, the reproductive cycle. The pineal is, therefore, a good candidate for being the primary source of endogenous DMT.

    René Descartes (1596-1650) the great philosopher, scientist and mathematician, also considered that because the pineal is the only single, or unpaired, organ in the brain it is likely to handle our thoughts - one at a time. The Ancients knew the pineal as the "third eye", related to insight and intuition.

    Although Strassman notes the lack of hard evidence of DMT production in the pineal gland within the scientific literature, there nevertheless is an account of how the formation of such a compound could occur there. It is published on the WWW in an article by Albert Most, titled Eros & The Pineal, (1983). It says in part:

    • "Located almost in the centre of your brain is a small projection of tissue called the pineal gland. It is shaped like a tiny pine cone, roughly a quarter of an inch long, and weighs about a tenth of a gram. Despite its small size, the pineal gland contains enormous amounts of serotonin, a physiologically active biogenic amine and chemical neurotransmitter. But pineal cells are not neurones and do not use serotonin for neurotransmission. Instead, pineal serotonin functions as a substrate for the enzymatic production of other biologically active molecules."

    • "A unique biochemical mechanism exists within the human pineal gland. A pair of naturally occurring pineal enzymes, hydroxy-indole-O-methyl transferase (HIOMT) and indole-N-methyl transferase (INMT), are capable of converting serotonin into a number of potent hallucinogens. Regulated by a variety of neuroendocrine mechanisms, these enzymes normally act on specific substrates and function as catalysts in the formation of biogenic amines. However, if they get out of phase with their normal substrates and act on pineal serotonin, they form potent psychoactive compounds within the human brain.

      Interestingly enough, pineal catabolism can be intentionally shifted toward the production of these endogenous hallucinogens by a simple manipulation of amine metabolism. If you increase the concentration of pineal serotonin and block its normal enzymatic inactivation, it becomes a substrate for other pineal enzymes, like HIOMT and INMT. As their names imply, HIOMT and INMT are methyl transferase enzymes. They catalyse the transfer of a methyl group from one compound to another. As these enzymes add methyl groups to indole-oxygen and amino-nitrogen positions, serotonin is converted into 5-methyl-N,N-dimethyltryptamine, a relatively unknown but extremely potent hallucinogen."

    Given the distinct possibility that the soul enters and leaves the body with the assistance of the spirit molecule, it is not too surprising that volunteers under its influence should have experienced different 'receptions' from the beings they encountered. Basically, those individuals who had been making progress climbing ladders would be in a happier state than those facing the consequences of going down too many snakes on the game-board of life. Whether the DMT travellers were being judged by "them" or simply facing their own consciences, their recollections of the experience could well be less positive than those people who had achieved higher positions (climbed more ladders and gone down fewer snakes) in their life.

    This is not to say that 42% of Strassman's volunteers were bad people, only that they had been playing the game of life a little worse than their colleagues who had felt more comfortable, even euphoric, during their time in the bardo.

    The implication of this hypothesis is that if you go down too many snakes in your life you probably won't like your forty-nine days in the bardo. This will be the fate of those who ordered the firebombing of Dresden and the use of DU ammunition against the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq. It is why we don't need to rush to judgement on others. There is a reckoning at the end of each life, and whether they are winners or losers depends on each individual. Free will cuts both ways, if you slide down many snakes you will surely lose, but if you climb enough ladders you are sure to win. Sadly, it seems likely that many of us simply 'tread water' in successive lives. We remain at about the same position on the game-board, about a third of the way up, and neither do anything too bad not anything very good. The Leaver-Giver philosophy offers all of us encouragement to change that situation and, instead, climb ladders that help our fellow beings.

    Another startling conclusion - at least for taker-thinking humans - can be drawn from Strassman's study. It concerns the other animals. Since dogs, cats, rats, pigs, whales, dolphins, elephants, cattledog (24K)and the rest, have pineal glands near the centre of their brains, it is likely that they also have souls that enter an leave their bodies in the same manner as ours do. This will come as no surprise to native people such as the American Indians, the tribes of the Amazon, or the Australian Aborigines - they have always known this.

    Since the spirit molecule is also known to occur in many plants, it is also possible that, although they lack a pineal gland, there is some form of lower-level consciousness operating in these living things. They might not have free will in the same way that we do, but there is an argument that plants are only alive when they house souls, and that DMT plays a similar role in easing life in and out of the various plant species.

    Again, this will not strike many indigenous people as surprising. It is only among Westerners, with their single-life model of existence, and a view of themselves as being far above other forms of life, that there will be disquiet about this hypothesis.

    However, all of us who have ever fallen under the spell - and unconditional love - of an animal companion, whether a dog, a cat, a horse, a budgerigar, or some other species, already know that all animals are conscious and that they possess souls. Given how obvious this fact is, it is remarkable that many highly intelligent scientists, and others in all walks of life, still require "proof" before they will accept it.

    Attack Lethal Memes - Not Those Who Follow Them [281]
    Whether they can yet be proven, or ever will be proven, the insights that spiritual teachings and models provide us are going to be of crucial importance as the old civilization fails around us. There will be extraordinary pressures to fight and struggle against the increasing brutalities and controls of the old order. It will be only natural to want to take to the streets to protest, to riot, to man the barricades. However, spirituality and new tribalism are the ways to better lives - not violence.

    The worst action we could possibly take in response to the new barbarities of the 2nd Inquisition and the War on Freedom is to retaliate with violence. If we do that we will be letting the OWO define the location and nature of the battlegrounds, and we will be committing to resolve our disputes with their rule of law.

    Instead of massing to demonstrate outside government buildings and capitalist institutions we must employ Us-2-Us dialogue, and not go anywhere near traditional demonstration locations. Rather than congregating there, we should gather outside the cities, on the riverbanks, by the sea, and also on Freenet. We should carry and use PPDs, to confuse Big Brother, and we should exchange ideas and understanding among ourselves. There is no point in arguing or fighting with the madmen who are vainly trying to maintain the status quo amidst a giant wave of technological and spiritual change. We must decide our future without them.

    To do so we need to develop a common understanding of the dominant ideas that govern the outgoing society and its institutions - what Richard Dawkins would call its memes.

    The following excerpts from Daniel Quinn's book Beyond Civilization explain the concept of memes.

    • "The best [way] would be for you to read Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene, but in case this isn't convenient for you right this second. I'll summarise. Briefly, memes are to cultures what genes are to bodies.

      Your body is a collection of cells. Every cell in your body contains a complete set of all your genes, which Dawkins likens to a set of building plans for the human body - your body in particular. ... A culture is also a collection of cells, which are individual humans. You (and each of your parents and all your siblings and friends) contain a complete set of memes, which are the conceptual building plans of our culture. Dawkins coined the word meme (rhymes with theme) to apply to what he perceived to be the cultural equivalent of the gene."

    • "One of these fundamental memes is Growing all your own food is the best way to live. Apart from a few anthropologists (who know perfectly well that this is a matter of opinion), danielquinn (19K)this meme goes unchallenged in our culture. And when I say that a few anthropologists know this is a matter of opinion, I mean they know it chiefly as a professional obligation. As anthropologists, they know that the Bushmen of Africa wouldn't agree that growing all your food is the best way to live, nor would the Yanomami of Brazil or the Alawa of Australia or the Gebusi of New Guinea. As individuals, however, these anthropologists would almost universally consider this to be the best way to live and would unhesitatingly choose it for themselves above all others. Outside this profession, it would be hard to find anyone in our culture who doesn't subscribe to the belief that deriving all your food from agriculture is the best way to live."

    • "Every culture is a collection of individuals, and each individual has in his or her head a complete set of values, concepts, rules, and preferences that, taken together, constitute the building plans for that particular culture. Whether you call them memes of marglefarbs is irrelevant. There can be no question whatever that they exist."

    • "Only a very small percentage of memes differentiated the Renaissance from the Middle Ages, but obviously the new ones "made all the difference." The authority of the Church waned, new humanist ideals emerged, the development of the printing press gave people new ideas about what they could know and think about, and so on. To produce the Renaissance, it wasn't necessary to change out ninety percent of the memes of the Middle Ages - or eighty or sixty or thirty or even twenty. And the new memes didn't have to come into play all at once. Indeed, they couldn't have come into play all at once. The Renaissance was ready for Andrea del Verrocchio long before it was ready for Martin Luther."

      On this latter point, Daniel Quinn is undoubtedly correct regarding the first Renaissance, but he is probably mistaken about how rapidly the key memes of the old society need to be abandoned, and new ones adopted. Modern technological developments are now driving change through the old Level 3 Civilization at rates that will totally undermine it in the space of less than a decade. There is an urgent need to find and agree the right new memes for a Level 4 Civilization. The longer we wait the more people will suffer unnecessarily.

    • ""Which memes do we need to change? This question is a lot easier to answer than might be expected. The memes we need to change are the lethal ones.

      Richard Dawkins puts it with irreducible simplicity: "A lethal gene is one that kills its possessor." It might well strike you as unfair and somehow unreasonable for such things as lethal genes to even exist. You may wonder how lethal genes manage to remain in the gene pool at all. If they kill their possessors why aren't they eliminated? ... Lethal genes that come into play in early adolescence are of course quickly eliminated from the gene pool because their possessors are unable to pass them on by reproduction. Lethal genes that come into play early in adolescence also tend to be eliminated, but those that come into play in middle or old age remain in the gene pool, because their possessors are almost always able to pass them on through reproduction before succumbing to their lethal effect.

      ... A lethal meme is one that kills its possessor. For example, the Heaven's Gate cultists possessed a lethal meme that made suicide irresistibly attractive to them - but I'm not much interested in memes that are lethal to individuals. I'm interested in memes that are lethal to cultures (and to our culture in particular).

      ... The memes that made us the rulers of the world are lethal, but they didn't have a lethal effect ten thousand years ago - or five thousand or two thousand. They were at work, turning us into the rulers of the world, but their deadliness didn't become evident until this century, when they began turning us into the devastators of the world.

    There is no point in attempting to persuade the likes of the movers-and-shakers within the American Military Industrial Complex (AMIC) to abandon the ingrained memes they have carried all their lives. Not only are they disinterested in giving up their memes, they can't give them up - not even to save their own lives. But the ordinary people can be persuaded to abandon the lethal memes that threaten their future. This broad populace must be the focus of all public dialogue from leaver-givers, and not the 'leaders' who presently run nations and industries.

    Lethal Notions of Capitalism [282]
    Wealth creation and economic prosperity are, under capitalism, based on principles of competition and survival of the fittest. The phenomenon of capitalism, which is scarcely two hundred years old, it is grounded in these dominant ideas. The notions are not strictly memes, because they are not ingrained in all members of the society, but they are potentially lethal. Not only can corporations fail because they can't adapt to discontinuous change and economic abundance; whole nations can be impoverished unnecessarily and societies can wither and die of anger, recriminations and blame for corporate and other institutional misdeeds and collapses.

    Globalisation threatens the old corporations as well as more publicised 'victims,' such as unskilled workers, the natural rights of resident people to their local water and other resources, and the proprietors of small businesses. Globalisation inevitably lowers the price of non-unique products and services, forcing corporations to be more and more efficient, just to remain competitive. A need to achieve economies of scale is driving a rapid concentration of established industries, and the remaining large players are having to grapple with the need to control wider operations with fewer available people. In the drive to remain competitive they are turning to computer systems and away from human employees. Many of the living employees that remain are either part-time workers or contractors, and the core of permanent managers and specialists is also shrinking.

    For a time large corporations can follow each other down the path of downsizing and outsourcing their workforces and placing their future in the hands of computerised transactions and control systems. They can run their operations as they would run a database, and increasingly ignore 'old-fashioned' leadership elements such as the trust and loyalty of their employees. The numbers can look really good - for a while. Then, when the global market is rationalised yet again, fewer competitors gain greater economies of scale, the prices drop and so must the direct costs and overheads. Profit margins become so thin that there is no longer room for operational errors or tactical mistakes. With little or no buffer against sudden 'dips' in the market, the corporations, and the investments of their stockholders, become highly vulnerable. Big corporate collapses occur and stock markets fall in response to the crisis. We saw this happen in the airline industry after 911, and in the travel and hospitality industries during the SARS epidemic. We will see a great deal more of it before this decade is over.

    Several lethal notions are at work in major corporations in the present-day. One is the idea that the bigger a business is the better it can compete. This is, and always has been, hogwash! The only reason that it seemed to work in the past was due to the protection afforded by trade barriers and cosy 'deals' between big governments and big business interests. The markets were not 'free' in those days, and there were golden opportunities to collude and to contrive conditions of scarcity - super-profits could be made. However, the truth is that while capitalism flourishes under controlled scarcity, it collapses under genuinely free trade and abundance. The latter conditions will prevail during the 2nd Renaissance, and being big and widely spread will become a handicap rather than an advantage.

    Another capitalist belief is that only the fittest will survive. Business is seen as a highly combative undertaking in which there are always winners and losers. It simply is not possible for everyone to win under capitalism, but it is under the conditions of free trade and abundance that will surely characterise the 2nd Renaissance. Traditional industries and corporations could possibly survive and prosper if they were able to abandon their increasingly predatory, win-lose, paradigms and develop more cooperative, symbiotic business models and philosophies. But, the task is beyond them because they are holding fast to what will soon prove to be lethal notions of how the world of commerce works and how to succeed in it.

    If you have investments in such 'dinosaur' corporations, even if they are so-called 'blue-chip,' get out now! Similarly, try to quit your superannuation and pension fund arrangements if they seem to be heavily into stocks in 'yesterday's heroes' types of corporations. If possible (it has been purposely made hard to get out of many Australian funds) look for financial managers who will invest your savings in the high-technology area or other seemingly 'high-risk' segments. If you can do that you might just, only just, have a little money coming to you when you retire. The concept of capitalism is no longer viable, so investments in capitalist enterprises are no longer a good bet.

    Pickering's Organisational Insight [283]
    Larry Pickering (now retired) is one of Australia's more famous cartoonists. Entirely self-taught,
    PickeringS (37K)he was a prolific worker and is reputed to have drawn as many as five cartoons a day during a period of some ten years, mainly during the 1970s. Distinctively, Pickering often drew people, including politicians, without any clothes on. The example of Larry's work shown here reveals his great talent as an observer of his fellow humans and the true nature of their organisations, institutions, and cultures. During his working days this man was truly a sage with a sketch pad. He saw right through Australian society, and most of the prominent people in it at the time.

    It is not just the overall depiction of a hierarchically structured organisation that is so accurate in the cartoon shown, we are all aware of this model anyway. It is also the expressions on the faces of the characters that are so true to life; the extrovert sales rep,' the dominant (Alpha male) CEO , the picture of the Founder hanging behind him (a similar type - the universally respected 'Captain of Industry'), the chain of officious senior administrators shuffling paper, the treacherous career-ladder climbers, and so on. You will all recognise these types from your personal experiences of an organisation jungle. Larry Pickering probably drew this insightful sketch from memory, in a couple of hours.

    One does not have to look too hard to see the essence of capitalism within the Organisation Jungle. The now lethal notion of competition (internal as well as external), instead of cooperation, is shown there. So is the disaffection of the group of lower level workers, who stand around chatting and giving only grudging compliance within the work models and performance plans of a firm that treats them as position descriptions instead of individuals capable of giving much more than is ever asked for. In the organisation jungle people at lower levels are typically 'controlled' rather than led or inspired. Apathy and wasted talent on a immense scale are the by-products of this treatment. Unfortunately for the business, it is often the people at the lower levels of the tree who have the most direct and telling interactions with its customer base.

    Notice that in this model people climb ladders for their own ends. This is nothing like the Snakes and Ladders analogy for the game of life. But it should be, people spend too much of their lives at work to be stressed out by internal competition and politics. Tribal enterprise models will offer fulfilment instead of combativeness.

    Capitalism Takes, Spiritualism Gives [284]
    The higher one rises up the game-board of life the more spiritual consciousness there is, and the less concern there is with self. The organisation cultures that typify capitalism can't accommodate such thinking because their whole ethos is about competition, and winning at the expense of someone else, who is then, by definition, a loser.

    This situation does not auger well for corporations who can't shake themselves loose from the old capitalist mindsets. As abundance and spiritualism increase in the world, under the influence of new technologies and a convergence of science and religion, the 'tried and true' cultures of the industrial age will be entirely out of place. As occurred during the first Renaissance, rising affluence will tip the balance of power away from big, slow, difficult to deal with, institutions, towards small, fast, attentive merchants. A new class of merchant was born then, and a new cultural movement will be born now. Instead of capitalists, and capitalist cultures, we will have leaver-giver cooperatives and talent collectives.

    These will be organised on entirely different lines to the organisation jungle. They will be tribal, in the manner of Daniel Quinn's travelling circus example. However, due to humankind's new capacity to generate abundance, people will join new tribal enterprises in order to have the opportunity to contribute fully and give to others. Quinn notes that nobody runs away to join a travelling circus in order to give up something, they expect to get something. In 2nd Renaissance enterprises what members of collectives and cooperatives will get is an outlet for their raised levels of spiritual consciousness.

    At higher levels of consciousness the challenge on the game-board of life is not about improving one's personal position, it is mainly about helping other living beings to improve theirs. Now that humankind has access to knowledge and technologies that can create abundance, there is no need to struggle for survival and self-advancement. As this fact dawns on more and more people the emphasis of most enterprises will align with Martinus' guideline:

    "Never let your thoughts move away from working on how you
    may best serve your fellow beings."

    The leaver-giver ethos accords with the thoughts of Martinus and with the sentiment of the well known poem, Abou Ben Adhem, by JHL Hunt (1784p;1859).

      Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
      Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
      And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
      Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
      An angel writing in a book of gold:-
      Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
      And to the presence in the room he said,
      'What writest thou? - The vision raised its head,
      And with a look made of all sweet accord,
      Answered, The names of those that love the Lord.'
      'And is mine one? said Abou. 'Nay not so.'
      Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
      But cheerly still; and said, 'I pray thee, then,
      Write me as one that loves his fellow men.'
      The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
      It came again with a great wakening light,
      And showed the names whom love of God had blessed.
      And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

    As free cities are established and abundance is seen to be achievable, more and more people will join the leaver-giver movement, and begin to raise their levels of spiritual consciousness - by helping others. Those people who are presently pursuing religious teachings in order to improve their own standing with God, Allah, Krishna, or whatever, should take note of the above poem. It indicates that individuals who devote their energies to helping their fellows to improve their lives and spiritual positions will always rank above those who only seek the blessing of God for their own sakes.

    Illusions And False Truths Have Limited Us All [285]
    References to the deficiencies of capitalism should not be taken as an attack on the people and organisations that practice this philosophy. The only attack here is on the lethal memes that underpin capitalism. One of these, which we were all immersed in soon after birth, is: Resources are, and always will be, scarce. But this is, and always has been, a falsehood. Before humankind achieved the necessary levels of knowledge and insight, resources certainly seemed to be scarce. But that was an illusion due to ignorance. Remember Buckminster Fuller's observation about scarce energy:

    "There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance."

    There is, however, no justification for attacks on people who genuinely believed that resources are scarce, and then scrambled to control them. Nor can we call these people stupid. Most of us have been similarly deceived by our memes. Once people are able to recognise realities that are normally masked from us by what we see and believe, most will quickly change their attitudes and behaviour. When this starts to happen on a large scale, civilization will go up several gears - and quite rapidly.

    What science has begun to discover during the past three decades is that:

    Hardly anything in this world is what it seems to be.

    We think that our eyes see what is in front of us, but we really see an interpretation of reality fashioned within our brain. We think that matter is solid, but it is almost entirely emptiness. We believe that digital technologies, which manipulate binary digits, are something special, while failing to note that nature is fundamentally analogue. Waveforms, tones and harmonics, are actually shaped and ordered by the prime numbers, and the 'solid' reality we 'see' isn't solid after all.

    Until quite recently, very few people were aware of these insights. Ironically, it has been new technologies based on the 'unnatural' use of binary calculations that have finally exposed the truth to all who would know it.

    The Real Scarcities [286]
    In a societal sense, one real scarcity is understanding. It is ignorance that leads people to do bad things to each other. Once an underclass of 'losers' is created in a society they operate at the lower levels of spiritual consciousness. A vicious cycle of offence, punishment, reoffence ensues; and it leads to millions of people being denied their freedom. The punishment and prison industries then flourish, but our society unravels.

    Conversely, people who come to understand the game of life are able to raise their spiritual consciousness to levels at which they not only pose no risk to others but are also content within themselves. To call such an insight enlightenment is too evangelical; a better phrase is understanding life's purpose.

    Another great scarcity is mercy. The cause is rooted in takerism and the meme that says: We humans have the right to decide which creatures shall live or die. The earlier call to 'Let the Girls Go,' and to get everyone out of Chowchilla and places like it, was not simply a compassionate response to the increasing horrors of the prisons. It is fundamental to the abandonment of one of the most corrosive notions in the present-day culture - that the rule of law is a civilized and 'just' approach to wrongdoing.

    As a prerequisite to the formation of a Level 4 Civilization we must find ways to get not only women and children out of the jails, but the guys as well. Unless we do this the 'justice and punishment' arrogance, that goes back to medieval times and the protection of property held by the nobility, will poison our attempts to found a spiritual society in which goodness prevails over all other traits.

    You see, there can be no spiritually grounded society, no Level 4 Civilization, without a recognition of the pre-eminence of mercy in the game of life. We all have free will, and we sometimes do wrong instead of good. But that does not mean that humans can or should sit in judgement on their fellow beings. The place for the assessment of each life is within the forty-nine days that the soul spends in the bardo - after death. It is a divine process that we humans have no role in. The animals don't have the arrogance to judge or punish each other in defiance of the divine order. Neither should we.

    Some Practicalities Of Emptying The Prisons [287]
    Given the importance that prisons and punishment have in maintaining control of increasingly restless populations, the task of achieving the release of the people in the jails and the closure of those institutions, seems daunting. But it is so vital to the 2nd Renaissance that we must find ways to do it.

    The principles to use to find those ways have already been set out in earlier parts of this document. To recap, the key points are:

    • Talk to each other: Us-2-Us.

    • Act like the ants.

    • Use the Internet / Freenet and PPDs to communicate.

    • Focus on what we can control, not on changing what governments and corporations control.

    • Remain non-violent.

    • Apply reverse surveillance - if we can't hide they can't hide.

    • Think as sovereign individuals, not some state's subservient citizens.

    • Highlight the failures of the outgoing civilization, including the rule of law.

    • Don't ever give up, don't ever compromise. The power to change things right now exists right now.

    You don't think it's possible to have a society without jails? Well, tribal societies such as the Alawa of Australia did so for more than forty-thousand years. So too did many other ancient societies. Not only have no fortifications been found at the site of the megalithic city of Caral, there are no signs of any prisons either. A society that seems to have lived in peace for a thousand years probably didn't need jails.

    The very notions of the rule of law and judicial punishment are socially corrosive and damaging to the spiritual consciousness of both the people subjected to them and those that practice them. The following diagram shows the choices we have, right now, as the 2nd Renaissance gathers pace and a Level 4 Civilization lies ahead of us.

    We can continue within the systems of law making, law enforcement, and punishment; or we can simply reject them as inhuman, and walk away.

    OurChoice (19K)

    Where will the women released from the Chowchilla prisons, and from all the other jails, go? We must make room for them within the neo-tribal cultures of the various free cities that we establish. Their families must be able to join them as well. Many of these women will need care as well as encouragement to rehabilitate and integrate into a new society. A high proportion are non-white, and many carry drug addictions. Ibogaine, the prohibited anti-addictive substance, can help in the latter case. Compassion and genuine elimination of racial attitudes from the white populace of the free cities can heal the hurt that women of colour have suffered at the hands of the old society and its 'justice' and 'correctional' institutions.

    Once the women are settled we must do the same for the men from the prisons. Because of the supportive culture of the free cities, very few former prisoners should need to be kept off the streets. We should accept those small numbers of men and women that do need be contained in some manner, but we should treat them well, and never confine them in inhuman ways. These ideas aren't idealistic, they are the very core of a society that operates according to the principles of high spiritual consciousness, and mercy.

    It is very unlikely that the Feds and various State governments will close the prisons and release all the inmates. Even if there were to be a huge change of heart in the old communities, and popular support for such reforms. Making new laws, year after year, and punishing wrongdoers, is an innate strategy for maintaining control of society, within the Level 3 Civilization. The OWO won't change it or give it up easily.

    The prospect of prison is a deterrent to rebellion, and the Feds will want that insurance as the controlled economy and the old order continue to decay and weaken. But, when significant numbers of the more highly skilled technicians and scientists decide to abandon the old society, rather than rebel against it, the OWO will find that their 'justice' system and their prisons are not a deterrent to secession. It is likely, therefore, that secessions and the establishment of free cities will need to precede the emptying of the prisons. The need to make the change to free cities is therefore urgent. People are suffering and dying in the prisons every damn day.

    Secessions will reshape the economics of the prison system. Once the Feds and State governments no longer have the tax revenues that they had when they built and filled their jails, they will be more inclined to allow the release of female, and later male, felons. It might be necessary to 'recompense' the old governments for their 'trouble' in arranging the releases, on a reasonable per head basis. But it should not be necessary to have a great debate or struggle about it.

    Will ex-offenders make decent citizens worthy of the benefits of free cities? They will if the colonisation of Australia by the British is any indication. Most of the initial populace of the various colonies that were set up some two hundred years ago were, in fact, convicts. Once they were released it did not take them long to assimilate and make significant contributions to the building of the nation.

    Sadly, at the instigation of a relatively small but powerful establishment, the nation that the descendants of the original convicts helped to develop, has now become, to the shame of many present-day Australians, America's 'Deputy Sheriff' in Asia, and a co-aggressor in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tell me the way the people in the jails think is evil and dangerous.

    Although the foreign policies of the CoW nations are operating to gradually drive decent people in those countries away from their governments, the prisons issue can be much more potent. Dialogue on the streets, in the cafes, and on the Internet, will have more impact if it is about the prison abuses and injustices at home than if it is about abuses 'over there,' - to people we don't know, and whom the parrot people say are terrorists who 'deserve it.'

    The citizens of the 'homeland' know, without even having to think about it, that the women incarcerated in the jails, down the road or somewhat further away, are not terrorists. They're predominantly mothers, and many families on the outside are suffering both the emotional stress of separation from a loved one and the economic loss of a breadwinner. Ordinary people understand these facts, and they will be receptive to any groups that offer to take the women from the prisons, look after them, assimilate and rehabilitate them, and keep them from further wrongdoing.

    That should be the thrust of our arguments to gain the closure of places like Chowchilla and the unconditional release of its inmates. The closest any of these girls have ever come to committing war crimes is to manufacture flags for the US military to fly in Afghanistan and Iraq. By comparison with the 'liberators' who have sprayed the countryside with DU ammunition, while bringing The rule of law and greenback-democracy to the long-suffering inhabitants over there, the women in Chowchilla are saints.

    Let the women in the prisons know that there are many of us prepared to commit our support, energies, time and money to getting them released as soon as we can. Send them mail, and parcels of cosmetics and toiletries (the authorities might not always let the goods through, but they will soon get to know we're serious, by the quantities we send). Tell these mothers that many, many, of us forgive them - whatever they've done. Tell them there will be genuine supporters (leaver-givers waving the Freedom Flag) to meet them when they get out, and make damn sure there are. Tell them the world will change and it will become a better place. Send them hope!

    Change Rapidly But Not Cataclysmically [288]
    Finally, as this first edition of 2nd Renaissance concludes, a caution about pushing for instant reform. Certainly we need to push to empty the jails and genuinely rehabilitate the inmates who have suffered within them. but it will be unwise, and unnecessary, to act to bring the old order to a sudden end. The reason is simple. Too many people would get hurt if the present economic system were to collapse quickly - like the Berlin wall. There would soon be many people eating rats and toads - as there were in the aftermath of the collapse of the Argentinean economy. Nobody would benefit from that sort of social and financial trauma. It will be far better to aim for a parallel transition from taker-capitalism to leaver-giver-tribalism. As the old system unravels of its own accord, there should be a rapid build up of free cities and the technological, scientific, and spiritual foundations for an economy of abundance.

    The first phase of the build up to a Level 4 Civilization must establish credible examples of leaver-giver-tribalism. This will involve like-minded people forming a number of free city pilot projects. During the first phase, the focus must be on demonstrating that people can live in a tribal way, amidst the spike technologies and scientific modernity of a post-capitalist economy. From the lessons learned, and the demonstrations of abundance produced by the free city pilots, it will be practical to set out guidelines and provide resources and skilled people to assist the formation of a second wave of secessionist cities and regions. All the energies of the new leaver-givers must be directed towards these ends, and the controlled economy of the old order must be left to its own devices. It is not our function, as builders of the new society, to tear down the old one.

    That the old economic order is destroying itself, and taking the whole world towards a replay of the Argentinean crisis on a global scale, is no secret in financial circles. It's just not featured on the 6 o'clock news or the pages of the mass-media newspapers. The following excerpt from the August 12, 2004, edition of the Dow Theory Letters, a financial newsletter by Richard Russell in the USA, captures what the people inside the economic and financial sectors know and accept. It's scary and it's true.

    • "... In the end, the US is fated to drown in liabilities, and in the end the dollar will fall to the point where it will no longer be accepted as the world's reserve currency. But until then, the world, really the Asians, will "play the game" in which they will continue to accept and accumulate dollars.

      Why are they doing this? they're continuing to accept dollars because this process allows them to continue to sell their products to the US. Yes, it's a game. Yes, it can't go on forever. Yes, the US and the dollar will finally drown in liabilities. Yes, this is ultimately what the bear market is all about. And yes, there really seems to be nothing that will reverse this process."

    • "The whole system is obviously doomed, but the world's politicians don't think in terms of "doom." Doom is in the future, and politicians are concerned with "now," and the next election.

    There is no need for anyone to overthrow the old order based on capitalism. The societal flaws and lethal memes that are associated with takerism and capitalism are already well on the way to destroying the empires of the industrial age, New knowledge, new technology, and new thinking are helping to accelerate the process. Time is running out for the old order.

    Our concern, as leaver-givers, needs to be with the world beyond the demise of capitalism. We need to have a social and economic logic, and a system of transition, in place well before the looming meltdown. We must have the rudiments of a new civilization and a new society ready for people to join when their old world fails them.

    This is the most important work and thinking that we can ever do on behalf of our fellow beings.

    Lothar,
    September, 2004

    Go forward in peace. And always remember the line from Gravity's Rainbow:
    "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."


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