A while ago I saw a documentary on electrodynamics and free energy, where Tom Bearden was interviewed explaining the concept behind free (or radiant) energy. The documentary is titled “Hidden electrodynamics and the final secret of free energy” and is the fifth part of the Energy from the Vacuum series. If you’ve never heard of this series, I highly recommend you check it out. In the interview Bearden explains how it’s possible to get energy out of the vacuum, seemingly out of nowhere, by creating a charge and having the environment (or vacuum) react to that essentially trying to neutralize that charge. It’s important to understand that this isn’t just theory anymore, as there are working concepts of machines that demonstrate how this works. All of this can be seen in the documentaries.

This knowledge exists for a long time now, ever since the time of Nikola Tesla. If Tesla could have had enough funding for his research, the world we live in today would have looked very different. Instead Tesla’s research was sabotaged and stopped because J. P. Morgan, who was financing most of Tesla’s research at the time, didn’t want free energy technology to become available to everyone. That would have been against his financial interests (see the movie “The Secret of Nikola Tesla” for more on this). So instead, all of this technology (free energy, anti-gravity etc.) was held back from reaching the public and today the world is being financially milked by those in control with alternative energy sources that are expensive, finite, pollute the planet and create artificial scarcity. Even today, as Bearden explains, people are experiencing all kinds of resistance when they try to research free energy and try to develop technology that makes use of free energy. It’s either difficult to get funding for it, or scientists end up missing or are assassinated. Meanwhile the entire population of this planet is being held back so that a small group that’s in control can profit. Millions of people are living in poverty and are dying because, supposedly, there are not enough resources to feed them and take care of them.

An electron surrounded by positively charged particles

But the reason I’m writing this is because I think the theory behind free energy, based on electromagnetism, can be used to explain the concept of karma and the way the universe works. I think the goal in this universe, or in nature, is to constantly have balance. If things aren’t balanced, then the universe reacts and makes sure balance is restored. So in the case of the theory behind free energy, as Bearden explains, once you’ve created a negative charge in a vacuum, seemingly out of nowhere positive particles appear and surround the negative charge. What was thought to be empty space around the negative charge, suddenly isn’t empty anymore. This process is called “broken symmetry,” particles that were previously not observable appear and are now observable. This is easier to understand once you realize that what we think of as empty space or vacuum really isn’t empty at all. The reality is that there’s a lot of matter even in what we think of as empty space, but we’re just not capable of seeing or detecting it. Consider that humans are only capable of seeing a fraction (3.5 x 10^-26 %) of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Imagine how much exists around us that our senses and our technology simply cannot detect (not unless it enters our range of observable reality).

So once a negative or positive charge exists, the universe responds by supplying the energy to bring back balance. And I believe that in our daily life this is also the case. I’ll try to explain this by using an simple example with two persons, person A and person B. Each person is made up of energy (we’re all essentially energy, positive and negative) and in an ideal situation there’s balance.

Balance

In their daily interactions person A and person B exchange energy with each other. Consider what happens when person A decides to do something negative to person B (for example misleading or hurting person B).

Person A does something negative to person B

By doing so, person A projects some of his negative energy onto person B. The result is that person A becomes positively charged (more positive energy present), and person B becomes negatively charged (more negative energy present).

Balance is lost, person A has more positive energy and person B has more negative energy

So you can probably imagine what happens next. Since the goal in the universe is to have balance, the universe responds to this situation by sending negative energy to person A and positive energy to person B.

The universe brings back balance

And that’s when what people refer to as ”karma” comes into play. If you project negative energy out onto people, you’re going to get negative energy back. If you do something bad to someone, you should expect to get it back. On the other hand, if you’re hurt or otherwise need help, the universe will respond by sending help. It’s difficult to say how fast the universe reacts, but usually it takes time and maybe things are brought back into balance by other events and other persons also interacting with person A and B even before the universe responds. It’s also important to note that things like conscience and intention may also play an important role in all of this. Whether or not the energy person A projects onto person B is negative or positive from the perspective of person A, may depend entirely upon person A’s intention and conscience. Was person A’s intention to really hurt person B, did he know the consequences? Or was it to help, or was person A not even aware of what was caused to person B? Similarly, the way person B perceives the energy projected onto him by person A may influence the way the universe responds to person B.

Consider what happens when person A projects positive energy onto person B from a neutral starting position, for example by helping person B or by giving something to person B.

Person A does something positive to person B

The result of that is that person A becomes negatively charged (more negative energy present) and person B becomes positively charged (more positive energy present).

The universe responds

The universe then responds to this by sending positive energy to person A and negative energy to person B in order to achieve balance. So for person A we see the concept of “do good and you will receive it back.” However, in this particular example, person B ends up with too much positive energy and even though he may have done nothing wrong, the universe sends negative energy his way. We could argue that since person B was in a neutral/balanced state before receiving positive energy from person A, person B didn’t really need it and should have declined. Or, person B could have accepted the positive energy, but then make sure that he gives back as much of it as possible to someone else who needs it instead of holding onto it.

And so what we see here is that if you think that you’re going take a lot more than you give in life things will get difficult for you. Life is about giving and receiving and the balance between those two. The universe will always try to maintain balance. So when it comes to giving and receiving, we all should strive to maintain a balanced life. Don’t take more than you need but also think of others. If you’re blessed with a lot of positive things in life, consider giving back to those who are in need.

This is exactly what happens if we go back and look at the example of the electron in a vacuum. Being negatively charged, the universe responds by surrounding this negative charge with positive particles. What happens, as Bearden explains, is that the electron continuously absorbs these positive particles but as soon as it has absorbed enough, it releases the absorbed energy again in the form of a photon. It keeps absorbing energy, but it also keeps giving back energy, at such a rate that everything appears to be balanced and static. In reality there’s a continuous process of give and take going on at incredible speed.

All the universe really wants is balance. It makes no distinction between positive and negative, or good and bad. Those are labels that we put on things depending on how we perceive them and depending on our understanding of our reality. To the universe everything just is. Nobody gets rewarded, and nobody gets punished. The universe doesn’t pick sides. The only thing that really matters is balance. This concept is also used in the Matrix movies, where the Architect character is tasked with maintaining balance in the Matrix:

In The Matrix Revolutions, the Oracle explains to Neo that the true purpose of the Architect is to balance the mathematical equations that make up the programming of the Matrix, and he is unable to see the world as anything beyond a series of equations. It is also because of this that he is unable to comprehend choice and free will and cannot see the results of such choices as they are no more than variable factors in an equation to him.

So karma is essentially just the universe trying to maintain internal balance of energy.

Picture of a deep part of the universe, taken by NASA.

The picture of the universe above shows us what is typical of such pictures: Little bits of light surrounded by a vast ocean of darkness. This picture tells us a lot more about the universe, about nature and about life in general, than most people will realize. One of the most important things to take away from this picture is that the universe is a LOT more about darkness than it is about light.

I wrote before about the fact that we’re living in a world of pain. Every day I look around me and I see lots of suffering and lots of pain. Sure, there are positive things happening here and there, but all of that is surrounded by and drowned in all the pain and suffering. It seems that anything positive doesn’t last for very long, and in fact, like I also wrote before, there can never really be lasting happiness in life. And if you look at the picture of the universe above, that is exactly what it is showing us. Small specks of light surrounded by an ocean of darkness. Small positive experiences surrounded by an ocean of negativity. Little bits of happiness surrounded by an ocean of pain and suffering. The little bits of happiness are like a small drop of water on a hot plate; in the end it really has no effect. This picture tells us what life in this universe is all about.

The universe is more about darkness than it is about light. It’s more about the dark experiences than it is about the pleasant experiences. It is more about the negative than it is about the positive. At its core, life is all about darkness, about pain and suffering, from the moment you’re born all the way up to the moment you die. You cry yourself into the world, you enter a constant struggle to stay alive in an environment filled with hostility and in the end you grow old and die anyway. In between you might experience moments of what most people refer to as “happiness,” but it will always be against the underlying purpose of constant struggle, pain and suffering. Again, a small drop of water on a hot plate. If there really is such a thing as a hell, the universe could certainly be classified as some kind of hell. It could be worse, but it’s pretty bad already as it is.

I’m not a religious person and I don’t think much of religion, but it’s interesting to note that even the bible mentions that in the beginning there was first total darkness until god created light. Darkness must have been the very first thing god created, for obvious reasons. And as you can see in the picture above, the light he supposedly created in the universe is almost nothing compared to the darkness that exists. In fact, all the light seems overwhelmed by darkness. It really doesn’t stand a chance. Stars come and go in this universe, but the darkness will always be there. Happy moments may enter your life to stay for a short period, but the only thing that always stays, whether you like to admit it or not, is the underlying purpose of pain and suffering.

And that sums up my experience with life nicely.

I mentioned this before on my blog here, but it looks like it just got worse.

In case you didn’t know, Al Gore, the man who would like you to use less energy, think of the environment and is scaring everyone with global warming bullshit, owns a house that uses 20 times more energy per month than an average home! Yes, that’s 20 times MORE energy than an average home.

Even after changing his home to become more energy-efficient and environment friendly, his power usage has actually GONE UP. Imagine that. How the hell is that possible? Just check this out:

NASHVILLE – In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”

In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.

In February 2007, An Inconvenient Truth, a film based on a climate change speech developed by Gore, won an Academy Award for best documentary feature. The next day, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research uncovered that Gore’s Nashville home guzzled 20 times more electricity than the average American household.

After the Tennessee Center for Policy Research exposed Gore’s massive home energy use, the former Vice President scurried to make his home more energy-efficient. Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home’s windows and ductwork, Gore now consumes more electricity than before the “green” overhaul.

Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month –1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations – at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.

In the wake of becoming the most well-known global warming alarmist, Gore won an Oscar, a Grammy and the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, Gore saw his personal wealth increase by an estimated $100 million thanks largely to speaking fees and investments related to global warming hysteria.

“Actions speak louder than words, and Gore’s actions prove that he views climate change not as a serious problem, but as a money-making opportunity,” Johnson said. “Gore is exploiting the public’s concern about the environment to line his pockets and enhance his profile.”

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a Nashville-based free market think tank and watchdog organization, obtained information about Gore’s home energy use through a public records request to the Nashville Electric Service.

Looks like spreading all the global warming bullshit is making Gore a richer man. Good business as usual, it seems.

Don’t forget to watch a documentery titled “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” which you can download here with Bittorrent. You might learn something from it.

St. Matheus

For most of my life, I knew there was something seriously wrong with religion. And I’m not the only one. There are many people around the world who have had the same feeling. If you just spent some time to think about it, a lot of things just didn’t make sense in all the religions of the world. So many contradictions and absurdities. In addition, while religion is supposed to be a good thing, when you do enough research you quickly find that religion is not only made up by people, but that it has consistently been used to manipulate, control and enslave people on earth for the benefit of the few who are in control. It has constantly been changed and interpreted differently based on the agenda of those who were in control and the situation during a specific moment in history.

Normally you wouldn’t need a lot of evidence to be able to see the many problems with religion. Just a little common sense and objectivity would be enough. But due to the massive brainwashing that has been going on for thousands of years around the world, it is very difficult for most people to break through all the programming they’ve had ever since their birth and see religion for what it really is. But when they break through the programming and are able to think and see clearly, suddenly they start to notice the problems. Suddenly they start to see that a lot of things that they accepted as being normal, or that they simply never noticed, are so absurd they wonder how come they never noticed it before.

Many people immediately act on their conscience when they find out about this. But a lot of people still desperately try to hold on to their beliefs, afraid of what it might mean when they accept the fact that their beliefs along with a lot of things they thought were normal have been wrong for many years. Indeed their whole life may have been based on their religion, and their entire belief system as well. Having to admit that their assumptions about life were wrong, means that they’re going to have to act on it if they want to maintain personal integrity, and that will undoubtedly lead to drastic changes in their lives. So most people still seem to take the easy way out, which is to desperately hold on to their current beliefs and ignore anything that may suggest otherwise. If they aren’t able to explain away the many problems with religion, they simply close their minds to it. In addition, religion readily provides “answers” to a lot of important questions in life, such as “Where do I come from?” and “What is the purpose of life?” These are very important questions, and as you can no doubt imagine, when you lack good answers to these questions, it can be very difficult to live your life not knowing where you’re heading. So most people will choose to believe in religion simply to make their life easier and because there is no better alternative. They’ll even believe in fairy tales if it will mean that they can enjoy their life that way.

The other option of course, is to not believe in religion and admit that you don’t have answers to many important questions in life. This is a more difficult road to take, but a more rewarding one for the long term. It is much better to admit when you don’t have the answers, instead of believing in improvable theories from others that require you to accept lots of things based on faith, because in the latter case you open yourself up to manipulation. And if you look around you, it’s not very difficult to see that this has been the case for many years around the world. People are being manipulated to go to war in the name of god. They’re being manipulated to do many questionable things in the name of god. Religions are being played out against each other for the benefit of the few in control behind the scenes. People are being manipulated into accepting a false reality. An example is the caste system in Hinduism, according to which you get born into a specific class of people in society and have to live your life according to all the rules and restrictions that apply to it, when in fact, everyone gets born a normal human being and should be able to freely live his life as he chooses to. It’s absurd to suggest that someone has to be an outcast simply because he was born in a specific class of society. And yet, millions of people still accept these ridiculous theories and live their whole life according to it, to the benefit of those in the higher classes who rule over the rest.

When you start to look into religion, you also find that hundreds of years ago, there were already people who could see through the absurdities and the manipulation. But somehow, their ideas never really caught on and never reached large parts of the public. Many rulers have also tried to destroy all the information that would lead people to find out about the truth. Books were burned on a large scale, certain information made illegal, inaccessible or was simply hidden from people. Still, there’s a lot of information out there and much more information is becoming available thanks to the many scholars and archeologists who are working on this subject. And because this information is now able to reach even more people, and more people are starting to wake up as a result, religion is starting to fall apart around the world. As this is happening, the few in control are already hard at work to find other means of controlling people and to find substitutes for religion to brainwash and enslave people on a large scale.

I’d like to suggest some books that you should read as soon as possible in order to have a better understanding of religion, it’s origins, the many issues with religions around the world, and how it’s being abused. These are essential reading:

• That Old time Religion – Jordan Maxwell
  Jordan Maxwell has done incredible research into many related areas, including religion. In this book he shows us the origins of many religions around the world, and how they’re all based on astrology. I also highly recommend all other books by Jordan Maxwell.
• Losing Faith in Faith - Dan Barker
  This book discusses the many problems with Christianity, the contradictions and the absurdities. Dan Barker tells us the story of how he turned from preacher to atheist. You’ll wonder how it’s possible that you read the bible and never noticed all the stupidity before.
• Jehovah Unmasked - Nathaniel Merritt
  Nathaniel Merritt brings to light even more stupidity in the bible in a very humoristic way. You’ll find it difficult to stop reading.
• The book your church doesn’t want you to read - Tim C. Leedom
  A compilation of works from various authors and researchers including Jordan Maxwell. When you read it, you’ll find out why it’s called “The book your church doesn’t want you to read.”
• The Christ Conspiracy: The greatest story ever sold - Acharya S
  Acharya S is one of the great scholars who has done lots of research into the subject of religion. In this book she mainly discusses the origins of Christianity. Highly recommended.
• Suns of God - Acharya S
  In this book Acharya S discusses the origins of Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. You’ll see the incredible similarities between the spiritual leaders of these religions, and get to know the fact that they were all based on stories that existed hundreds of years before in a wide variety of cultures. Highly recommended.

Update July 2nd, 2007: It appears Jordan Maxwell has part of the story that’s covered in his book “That Old Time Religion” up on his website. I also found some video’s on Google Video and Youtube that you should take a look at as soon as possible, featuring Jordan Maxwell:

• The Truth About the Jesus Myth: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
• Jordan Maxwell Exposes the Illuminati
• Jordan Maxwell Basic Slide Presentation

By now you’ve probably already heard of, and have likely already seen, the movie “The Secret.” If you haven’t yet seen it, the website for the movie is here. You should take a look for yourself in order to better understand what I’m going to talk about below.

The movie is put together really well visually, has nice directing and good marketing. It was designed to appeal to the masses. It attempts to make life look like a fairy tale, to make it seem like all can be nice and well if you just believe it to be so and want it badly enough. You don’t actually have to work for it, you see. All you have to do is forget about the bad or negative things in your life, just focus on what you like and have fun, and everything will magically take care of itself. Everything you need will automatically come your way. Yes, my dear reader, according to The Secret, you can even get rich that way. In fact, the central focus in The Secret is around how you can get rich easily.

But what this movie really is, is disinformation. While the movie does include common wisdom, and even mentions great people from the past like Albert Einstein in a way which would make you think Einstein actually endorses the message being communicated by the movie and agrees with it, it also contains lots of things that are just plain wrong and misleading. And that seems to be the purpose of the movie, to put people on the wrong path, to distract them by making them believe in things that lead to nowhere.

If you want to tell people a lie, and want to make it sound convincing so that they believe you, one way to do that is to mix a little bit of truth into your story together with the lies. That gives people bits of logic that they can hold onto as they follow your story from start to finish, accepting the lies in between as they go along. And if you can make the bits of truth seamlessly flow into the lies and back into the bits of truth, establishing a relationship between them in the process, it becomes even better and as a result a lot more difficult for someone to notice that something is wrong with your story. This is being done all the time these days to brainwash people on a large scale, and The Secret is merely an example.

Like I already said, The Secret exists to distract people from what really matters. To distract them from the things they should really be looking at. If you’re a leader bent on world domination, if you’re busy doing a lot of evil and causing loads of pain and destruction everywhere on the planet while you benefit from it, you’ll want people to ignore you and you’ll want them to look elsewhere for solutions to the problems you’re creating. You certainly don’t want them to focus on you! So what you do, is you pick up a small stone and throw it in a direction that is opposite of you as much as possible, and you send them on a wild goose chase while you continue making life worse for them. And that is exactly the purpose of The Secret. Most people have all kinds of issues in their lives these days which are mostly the result of policies which are decided by very few people who are in control and who benefit. Religion is falling apart right now, and doesn’t seem to be able to brainwash people anymore. A bit more time, and they’re actually going to wonder what the hell is going on and demand real answers. Those in control can’t let that happen. So what is the solution? Invent something new for them to believe in and hold onto, distracting them from what they should really be looking at to fix issues on this planet. Don’t let them look at the leaders who’re causing most of the problems, no no, let them focus on believing they can ignore that and have fun doing positive things and everything will be alright. Besides, they don’t want to focus on anything negative anyway, or anything that would require them to think about and to do tedious things. They want to focus on nice, easy, fun and positive things. So those in control give them that and keep them occupied with it, while they are free to do even more evil.

It’s sad but true. But what’s even sadder, is that most of the things discussed in The Secret are so obviously stupid, that I wonder how they’re still able to fool millions of people around the world with it. If you just look at it and ask some simple questions, it all falls apart in nanoseconds.

For example, the main concept being discussed in The Secret is “The Law of Attraction.” As described by Bob Proctor in the movie, “everything that comes into your life, you are attracting into your life.” And it appears that you do that largely by thinking about it, or desiring it so much, that the universe decides to give you what you want and creates situations for you which enable you to get what you need or desire. But let’s hold it right here. Does Bob Proctor want me to believe that those people in the Twin Towers who died on 9/11 all wished to die on that day under such terrible circumstances? Because it looks like the universe acted on their needs there, according to The Law of Attraction. Right? Bob wants me to believe those people attracted that horrible event into their lives. I find that a little hard to believe, Bob. And in the case of 9/11, we’re talking about 3000 people. Did the tens of thousands of people who died because of the tsunami in Asia a while ago also attract the tsunami into their lives? It’s kindof hard to imagine all those people wishing for death. There were tourists there from all over the world, Bob, and they were there to have fun! How the hell did they end up like that? Surely there had to be a big misunderstanding between them and the universe.

It’s so stupid it’s very disturbing to realize most people buy into this. According to The Law of Attraction, you should forget about your problems because if you think about them, you’ll only attract more problems into your life. But if there’s anything the universe or nature has taught us, it’s that opposites attract eachother. So if I think about my problems, shouldn’t I attract solutions? Strangely, The Law of Attraction wants us to think about positive things to change the negative things, and thus to create or attract positive things in our lives. But ofcourse, you can’t just think positive and hope to change something negative with it. If you want to turn a negative (bad) situation into a positive (good) one, you’re going to have to deal with the negative (bad) things and change them (make them positive (good)). You can’t ignore the negative things and just keep yourself busy with positive things and hope that the negative things will automatically turn positive. You’re going to have to concentrate or focus on them and put some effort into getting them positive. It’s just like in math, which is often called the language of nature. In math, you can’t multiply a negative number with a positive one, and hope to get a positive outcome. No no, you multiply the negative number by a negative number in order to get something positive out of it. This again shows that you’ll have to work with the negative to turn something negative to something positive. Now when you view the whole process, you might say that you’re overall doing something positive (good), because turning something negative (bad) to something positive (good) is a good (positive) thing to do. But take note of the fact that in the process, you’ll actually be focusing on the negative because that’s what you want to change. I wrote about this before.

Things like The Secret fool people into thinking that they can just focus on the positive things and all their problems (the negative things) will automatically take care of themselves and disappear, totally ignoring the fact that the only way to create something positive out of a negative situation, is to change the negative and thus, to focus on the negative. It’s the same thing as those who say “positive thinking” is the solution to all your problems. It’s brilliant disinformation. It keeps people looking for solutions to problems in the wrong places, or prevents them looking for solutions completely. And sadly most people buy into this stuff immediately, because it is the path of least resistance. “You mean I can just think positive, have fun and all my problems will go away automatically??? Wow! Awesome!!” Who wouldn’t love that? If it were really true, it wouldn’t surprise me that most people would rather choose to “think positive” instead of facing their problems and trying to solve them. This is one of the important reasons why the world is a complete mess today. People are too easy-going and don’t like to face problems. They’ll believe in fairy tales if it will allow them to ignore certain issues, to the advantage of those who create the issues and benefit from them.

That’s where things like The Secret come into play. To use the example I mentioned before: If you’re a leader bent on world domination, if you’re busy doing a lot of evil and causing loads of pain and destruction everywhere on the planet while you benefit from it, you’ll want people to ignore you (the negative) and you’ll want them to look elsewhere for solutions to the problems you’re creating by having them believe in The Secret and have them use that disinformation to pursue a better life (the positive) while they ignore you (the negative) so you can continue to do your thing in the background.

And that, my dear reader, is the REAL secret.

Anyway, if there really is such a thing as The Law of Attraction, the fact that nature has clearly shown us that opposites attract eachother means that according to The Law of Attraction you should be thinking about your problems in order for the universe to respond with solutions. You should be dissatisfied with your status quo and let that be known to the universe in order for the universe to respond with things that can help to get you satisfied. If you pretend to be satisfied, happy and think positive, which is what they encourage you to do in The Secret, the universe will respond by bringing negative things into your life. It’s all about maintaining balance in nature. If you’re leaning too much towards being dissatisfied and unhappy, the universe will try to get you more towards the side where you feel satisfied and happy. And the other way around. So the smart thing to do is to never be satisfied, think about your problems and deal with them in order for the universe to continue to respond with positive things in your life to help you improve.

I absolutely hate being wrong. This probably comes as no surprise to you, and I’m sure most people would agree with me on this. However, unlike most people out there I am quick to admit to it when I am, or have been, wrong. In fact, I’m constantly looking for things that prove me wrong. I’m constantly challenging myself, everything I know and everything I believe in. I even try my best to help people prove to me that I’m wrong. This is the important difference between me and most people. I hate being wrong, but I like finding out about it.

Like I wrote before, there’s nothing wrong with not liking when you’re wrong, but you have to know how to deal with it. It shouldn’t make you take the wrong decision, namely to refuse to admit to it and not taking the steps to do something about it. Often people refuse to even consider the fact that they might be wrong, let alone admitting to it. Even though you may not like the fact that you might be wrong, you should be willing to take a look at it and be able to admit to it the moment you start to realize you’re wrong and take appropriate actions immediately. This benefits not only you, but everyone else around you. And most of the time the biggest benefits are for you, especially for the long term.

Just think about it, the sooner you can find out that you were wrong and the sooner you admit to it, the sooner you can start to learn from your mistakes and improve yourself and your situation. This is one of the most important reasons why I love finding out when I’m wrong and even prefer to know this as soon as possible. It’s why I keep myself open to any information, suggestions, remarks etc. from anyone and anywhere, so that I can challenge myself with it as soon as possible. When you’re able to do this the right way (you have to be able to be very objective and have nothing to lose), you improve and grow much faster as a person compared to people who can’t. Those who can’t, stick with bad ideas and assumptions much longer with all the disadvantages that come with that, often not only for themselves but sadly also for people around them.

There are many reasons why people can’t easily admit when they’re wrong or simply refuse to even consider it. Often it’s just ego or fear for the consequences. Admitting that you’re wrong might mean losing an argument, having to change your beliefs about something, far reaching changes in your life and even losing important things that you may have. So it might not be very easy to admit to being wrong, but the benefits of doing it are always greater because of the simple fact that if you continue on the wrong path, it will only continue to get worse because of the snowball effect it will have. If you continue to hold on to the wrong assumptions for example, every decision you make based on that will likely be wrong, and anything you do based on those decisions will likely also be wrong and on and on it goes.

So in summary: Absolutely hate being wrong, but for that reason, love finding out about it as soon as possible. The sooner you correct yourself, the sooner you can start to improve. And to be able to correct yourself requires that you first realize and then admit that you’re wrong. To be able to realize when you’re wrong requires that you keep an open mind, be objective and willing to challenge yourself and your opinions at any time and have no fear of losing anything. And again, it’s not easy but for those who are able to do this the benefits are huge, especially for the long term.

In the last few days we’ve been given a clear sign that shows that things are going to get more serious faster from now on. And you can blame that on the progress the 9/11 Truth movement as a whole has been making so far. Before I continue, I want to bring the following quote to your attention:

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mohandas Ghandi

When we look at the progress 9/11 Truth has made, you’ll no doubt agree with me (if you don’t you will at the end of this post) that we’re now at the beginning of the “then they fight you” stage of Ghandi’s quote. Indeed, in the beginning most people, including the government, ignored the 9/11 “conspiracy theories” and pretended they didn’t exist at all. Then, when the movement started growing and credible people joined in, they started making fun of them. But as the movement keeps growing and the government can’t explain certain things without revealing things they want to keep secret, the need is growing for them to start fighting back.

And I’ve said in previous posts that first they will use more conventional ways to fight back, such as using their own institutions, such as NIST, to try and discredit the 9/11 Truth movement and cast doubt on their theories. Another thing is using the mainstream media, which they completely control, to either not publish anything on the 9/11 Truth movement (as they’ve been doing for a long while now), or using them to spread their side of the story and do damage control. This is what’s happening now. But as they probably are already finding out, that won’t work. And so what you should be expecting now is for them to use more powerful ways to keep control and protect themselves which will probably include more staged terror attacks to keep people afraid, war with Iran which will serve as a distraction among other things, creation of a police state and declaring martial law and the use of force.

This may sound crazy, but as you’ll see later in this post, even people who would previously never believe this are now saying it could happen, and indeed will happen if things continue to go the way they are now. And to be honest, I have no reason to believe things will change for the better. In addition, people around the world are also becoming aware of the fact that the US government lied about 9/11. There are reports of conferences and screenings in Italy, France, Brittain, 9/11 Truth documentaries being played on TV in Holland, in public busses in Chile, Japan, Mexico etc. etc. It’s all over the world now.

So let’s discuss some of the news that appeared in the last few days in the media. NIST recently published their answers to the growing scepticism on their website. Just a few days after that, Scholars for 9/11 Truth among many others, published their comments on the NIST publication. Here are some links to comments by ST911 members:

NIST’s World Trade Center FAQ: A Reply
Jim Hoffman

Why NIST hasn’t Answered its own Questions
Jim Fetzer

Why the NIST “Fact Sheet” Just Won’t Do
Sean Glazier

Responses to NIST’s FAQs
Kevin Ryan

NIST and “The Foot Of God”
Robert Rice

Experiments to test NIST “orange glow” hypothesis…
Steven E. Jones

That basically took care of the NIST FAQ.

Then the media started mentioning the fact that the government was finally responding to the “conspiracy theorists”, a move that shows that they can no longer just dismiss this group of people as nutcases.

From this article:

In the wake of growing skepticism, the U.S. government is taking the unusual step of responding to conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, headquartered in Gaithersberg, Md., investigated the causes of the collapse of the twin towers. Yesterday NIST announced it had posted a “fact sheet” addressing alternative theories about the World Trade Center fires and collapse.

The government’s response comes in response to accusations and suspicions of increasing numbers of Americans that the official explanation of the events of Sept. 11, 2001 ? that 19 Muslim terrorists hijacked four U.S. jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, with a fourth being downed in rural Pennsylvania ? are wrong. In fact, a shocking new Scripps Howard poll shows a third of Americans believe the U.S. government was complicit in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Someone from the New York Times also felt like writing about it:

NEW YORK Faced with an angry minority of people who believe the Sept. 11 attacks were part of a shadowy and sprawling plot run by Americans, separate reports were published this week by the State Department and a federal science agency insisting that the catastrophes were caused by hijackers who used commercial airliners as weapons.

The official narrative of the attacks has been attacked as little more than a cover story by an assortment of radio hosts, academics, amateur filmmakers and others who have spread their arguments on the Internet and cable television in America and abroad. As a motive, they suggest that the Bush administration wanted to use the attacks to justify military action in the Middle East.

…

Nevertheless, federal officials say they moved to affirm the conventional history of the day because of the persistence of what they call “alternative theories.” On Wednesday, the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a seven-page study based on its earlier 10,000-page report on how and why the trade center collapsed. The full report, released a year ago, and the synopsis, in a question and answer format, are available online at http://wtc.nist.gov.

And that’s not all, here’s another one:

As the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks looms, skepticism about the official version of the atrocities that day has gained traction in the minds of many Americans and among a small, but growing, number of academics.

…

Retired University of Minnesota Duluth philosophy Prof. James Fetzer is founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth. “What the government committed was shock and awe on American soil,” he said. “And all of their explanations are phony, a fraud, a hoax, a myth.”

Nuzi Haneef, a software engineer from Eagan, has organized the MN 9/11 Questions Meetup Group. It has attracted more than three dozen participants.

“The story about 9/11 that the government said is true is really not plausible,” she said. “When you put it all together … there’s obviously been a coverup.”

…

Often derided as fringe-dwellers, people pushing the 9/11 conspiracy turn out to have a lot of company.

A nationwide poll in July by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that 36 percent of respondents think the federal government either assisted in the attacks or allowed them to happen as a pretext to start a war in the Middle East.

The poll also found that 16 percent of respondents think the World Trade Center’s twin towers were toppled by hidden explosives and 12 percent think the Pentagon was hit by a U.S. cruise missile.

…

Federal officials, taken aback at the tenacity of the conspiracy theorists, published two reports last week that affirm the official version of the 9/11 attacks. But the doubters remain unconvinced.

The Washington Post also had this to say:

It was a year before David Ray Griffin, an eminent liberal theologian and philosopher, began his stroll down the path of disbelief. He wondered why Bush listened to a child’s story while the nation was attacked and how Osama bin Laden, America’s Public Enemy No. 1, escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora.

He wondered why 110-story towers crashed and military jets failed to intercept even one airliner. He read the 9/11 Commission report with a swell of anger. Contradictions were ignored and no military or civilian official was reprimanded, much less cashiered.

“To me, the report read as a cartoon.” White-haired and courtly, Griffin sits on a couch in a hotel lobby in Manhattan, unspooling words in that reasonable Presbyterian minister’s voice. “It’s a much greater stretch to accept the official conspiracy story than to consider the alternatives.”

Such as?

“There was massive complicity in this attack by U.S. government operatives.”

If that feels like a skip off the cliff of established reality, more Americans are in free fall than you might guess. There are few more startling measures of American distrust of leaders than the widespread belief that the Bush administration had a hand in the attacks of Sept. 11 in order to spark an invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

A recent Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll of 1,010 Americans found that 36 percent suspect the U.S. government promoted the attacks or intentionally sat on its hands. Sixteen percent believe explosives brought down the towers. Twelve percent believe a cruise missile hit the Pentagon.

Distrust percolates more strongly near Ground Zero. A Zogby International poll of New York City residents two years ago found 49.3 percent believed the government “consciously failed to act.”

…

Griffin took the podium and laid down his ideas with calm and cool. He concluded:

“It is already possible to know beyond a reasonable doubt one very important thing: The destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by domestic terrorists,” he says. “The welfare of our republic and perhaps even the survival of our civilization depend on getting the truth about 9/11 exposed.”

The audience rose and applauded for more than a minute.

That story was also on MSNBC by the way. A poll on MSNBC had the following result when I last checked:

Yes. The government has left many questions unanswered about that day. 57%

No. These theories are absurd and disrespectful — especially to those who lost their lives on 9/11. 37%

I’m not sure. 5.9%

And today, the Guardian had the following to say:

Two days before the fifth anniversary of the attacks, David Ray Griffin, emeritus professor of philosophy of religion and theology at Claremont graduate university, and author of The New Pearl Harbor and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, will ask his audience: “Was 9/11 an inside job?”

He will be joined on stage by the ex-MI5 officer David Shayler, who will introduce the talk, for which tickets have almost sold out. Prof Griffin is a founder member of the 9/11 Scholars for Truth movement in the US. He is joined by 75 academics who write in books, journals and essays that they have overwhelming evidence that shatters the official version of events on that September morning.

And it seems that a growing number of people are listening to them. A recent poll in the US found that 36% of Americans believed it “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that their government was involved in allowing the attacks or had carried them out itself. There are many people in the UK who agree with them.

Ofcourse, what’s not to agree with? It’s so clear I’m asking myself why even more people haven’t woken up yet from their sleep.

And here’s a translation of a story that appeared in a French newspaper. Some quotes:

…

It is in American universities that the documentary has excited the most interest, thanks to students spreading the word. Director of Scripps Survey Research Center Guido Stempel estimates that “the success of these theories is related to increasing mistrust with respect to the Bush government, its lack of credibility and its penchant for secrecy.”

…

“Once that you believe in it, there’s no going back, you devote your life to it” says Janette MacKinlay, a 58 year old artist. She lived across from the Twin Towers at the time of the attacks and regards herself as “a survivor.” She started to doubt in August 2004, at a meeting in San Francisco, by listening to two Members of the 9/11 Commission, created to shed light on the attacks. “They did not answer any questions. I had the impression it was a cover-up.” Se then read a book by David Ray Griffin, a theologian considered as a reference by the conspiracist movement, and “informed herself.” Since then, she is the one who has been organizing conferences. “I am a patriot,” she says. “I am trying to fight this policy of fear they’re subjecting us to.”

What is clear is that more and more people are starting to “inform themselves.” Indeed it is the only choice they have since they cannot possibly rely on the mainstream media anymore to do that for them. And like I wrote before, this is all possible and made much easier because of the Internet, which the government doesn’t yet control (but boy would they love to).

I also came across this article by Michel Chossudovsky. Here are some quotes:

?The Sunday Times views Israel’s war plans as legitimate acts of self defense, to prevent Tehran from launching an all out nuclear attack on Israel: “Iran and Syria have ballistic missiles that can cover most of Israel, including Tel Aviv. An emergency budget has now been assigned to building modern shelters.”

The fact that Iran does not possess nuclear weapons capabilities as confirmed by the IAEA report does not seem to be an issue for debate.

Media disinformation has contributed to creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. The announcement on August 10 by the British Home Office of a foiled large scale terror attack to simultaneously blow up as many as ten airplanes, conveys the impression that it is the Western World rather than the Middle East which is under attack.

Realities are twisted upside down. The disinformation campaign has gone into full gear. The British and US media are increasingly pointing towards “preemptive war” as an act of “self defense” against Al Qaeda and the State sponsors of terrorism, who are allegedly preparing a Second 911.

The underlying objective, through fear and intimidation, is ultimately to build public acceptance for the next stage of the Middle East “war on terrorism” which is directed against Syria and Iran.

…

The economic and political dislocations resulting from this military agenda are far-reaching.

If the attacks directed against Iran and Syria were to proceed, martial law and/or a state of emergency could be declared in the US and possibly Britain on the pretext that the homeland is under attack by Iran sponsored terrorists. The purpose of these measures would essentially be to curb the antiwar movement and provide legitimacy to an illegal war.

The Pentagon has intimated in this regard, in an official statement, that “another [9/11] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity to retaliate against some known targets [Iran and Syria]“. In a timely statement, barely a few days following the onslaught of the bombing of Lebanon, Vice President Cheney reiterated his warning: “The enemy that struck on 9/11 is fractured and weakened, yet still lethal, still determined to hit us again” (Waterloo Courier, Iowa, 19 July 2006, italics added).

…

Revealing the lies behind 911 would serve to undermine the legitimacy of the “war on terrorism”.

Without 911, the war criminals in high office do not have a leg to stand on. The entire national security construct collapses like a deck of cards.

No wonder the US government is now being forced to actively do something about the 9/11 Truth movement. And they’re going to fight the 9/11 Truth movement with everything they’ve got at their disposal. It’s like Griffin said in his recent interview about the Norad tapes, there is no limit to the amount of time, money and other resources that these people will use to keep control and protect themselves.

And with that in mind, Professor Steven Jones was recently put on “paid leave” by Brigham Young University (BYU) because of his views and research on 9/11 issues. They even took down his paper on the WTC Tower demolition from their website. Fortunately, his paper is now also published on Journal of 9/11 Studies and in David Griffin’s latest book called “9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out.” It would not surprise me one bit if the US government is behind this, forcing the head of the university to take action against Jones or else lose funding on research projects for the government, for example. There are many ways they can put pressure on BYU. Also consider that someone from the government had contacted Jones about 2 months ago and offered to pay for his research if he would “change the direction of his 9/11 research a little.” Jones, ofcourse, refused.

And it’ll only get worse. Michael Ruppert, author of “Crossing the Rubicon” where he exposes the role Cheney played on 9/11, was recently forced to move out of the US because his life was in danger. Even millionaire Jimmy Walters, who spent over 8 million dollars so far to promote 9/11 Truth, had to move out of the US because he was being harassed by the government and is now living somewhere in Europe. The New York Times even refused to take his money and publish an ad he wanted to place about 9/11 Truth.

The staged terror attack Alex Jones predicted would happen before the end of october all of a sudden doesn’t seem that crazy. It’s not hard to “predict” any of this stuff, folks, when you have the right knowledge and information, you can “predict” a lot of things others wouldn’t be able to see coming.

And finally, to get you really excited, here’s the latest on our good friend Osama:

Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan, press secretary to the president of Pakistan, tells ABC News that — if found — Osama bin Laden won’t be arrested, as long as he promises to behave like a “peaceful citizen.”

“If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden ‘would not be taken into custody,’ Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, ‘as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen,” report Brian Ross and Gretchen Peters at ABC’s blog, The Blotter.

Beautiful, isn’t it? Simply amazing. Keep in mind that Mehmood Ahmed, head of the ISI (Pakistan’s Intelligence Agency) on 9/11, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker, just days before the attacks on 9/11. Mr. Ahmed was also in the US on 9/11 meeting with US government, specifically the State Department, CIA and Pentagon. Lovely, isn’t it? Why the hell did the 9/11 Commission never investigate that?

But as for Osama, it seems they have no use for him now anymore. Even the FBI has admitted they have no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11. So hey, let him live a peaceful life in Pakistan, as long as he behaves. And when they need him again, he’ll be brought back in the news to scare people again. Remember that this was supposed to be the evil man Bush was after when 9/11 happened. It was why they invaded Afghanistan. Let me leave you now with the following quotes:

“The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It’s our number one priority, and we will not rest until we find him.” – George W. Bush, September 13, 2001.

“I don’t know where he is. I have no idea, and I really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.” – George W. Bush, March 13, 2002.

St. Joannes

I’m sure you’ve heard people say before, or perhaps you’ve thought (and maybe still think), that there is one god and that all religions we know today lead to him. Various paths, all leading to the same destination. But is this true? Can this be right? Is it really possible to have various religions, all leading to the same god?

Before you even look at choosing a religion, you have to believe first that there is such a thing as a god. So for the rest of this post I’m going to assume that we’re convinced of the fact that god exists.

Now, even if you were to assume that it’s possible that all religions lead to the same god, you’d have many other questions to answer, one of which would be: Why would god create all those different religions for people to worship him? And if he did, wasn’t he ever worried that it might cause a lot of confusion, among many other problems? Surely he would have been able to foresee that.

If there would merely be differences between all the religions existing today, it would help in trying to argue for the fact that all religions lead to the same destination. But that is not the case. Not only are there differences, but a lot of these differences are in contradiction with each other. Let me illustrate what I mean with a simple example:

Let’s say we have religion A and B. Religion A says that god has blue eyes and a white beard. Religion B says that god has blue eyes and wears a white robe. In this case, I could say that both religions could be true, since god could have blue eyes, a white beard and wearing a white robe.

But if we had a different situation where religion A said that god has blue eyes and a white beard, and religion B said that god has brown eyes and wearing a white robe, we’d have an issue. Obviously both cannot lead to the same destination, since both of them cannot be true. Religion A says that god has blue eyes, and religion B says that god has brown eyes. Both cannot be true. In this case, they are not merely different, but also contradicting. Which one is saying the right thing about god’s eyes?

And so when we look at the many religions we have today, not only are they different, but all of them have various things which are contradicting in relation with other religions. For example, in Christianity, you’re not allowed to worship objects like statues or pictures, and doing so is a sin. But in Hinduism that’s quite normal! In Islam, every person lives just once on earth and faces judgment after death. But in Hinduism, you have reincarnation. In Christianity, Jesus is the son of god and is of great importance, but in Islam, Jesus is just a prophet.

I could go on and on naming contradictions. And these are just obvious contradictions on the surface. When you look deeper, you’ll find even bigger contradictions. You will even find such black and white contradictions, where one religion says something is a sin, while the other encourages it! I gave an example of this in the previous paragraph.

So just look at that! Anyone having to make a choice between these religions faces an enormous problem. Making a bad choice can indeed be quite devastating for you in the end. It could mean choosing to do the right thing, or choosing to sin. If you make the wrong choice, you’re going to be sinning while you probably think you’re worshipping god the right way. For example, if you become a Hindu, you’ll be using statues and pictures while worshipping god, which is a sin in Christianity. And if it later turned out that Christianity was the true religion, that means that you’ve been sinning all your life, while you thought you were worshipping god!

Based on this very simple argument above, I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I conclude that because of the contradictions, some of which are very serious, there can only be one true religion.

But just when you thought it was over, you find out that it’s not.

You see, once you decide on a religion another surprise awaits you. Many of the big religions have sub-religions as well, each with their own interpretation of things, differences and contradictions. For example, in Christianity you have Catholics, Protestant Christians, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and many more. In Islam you have Sunnis and Shias. You have Orthodox and modern Jews. Even in Hinduism you have groups with their own differences.

How can you ever really know which one to choose? In addition it is impossible to be certain about any choice you make, since many differences are based on interpretation of words in holy books, interpretation of intentions, and sometimes even just belief. It’s impossible to make a choice based on any hard evidence, where things are verifiable and you can be 100% sure about your choice.

And remember that you get to deal with all of this after you’ve made a very important assumption first, namely, that god exists. So you begin with an assumption which cannot be verified in any way and which you just have to believe in based on faith. That already is a very weak beginning. And then, you go on to having to confront all of the issues above.

Isn’t it wonderful? A word of advice, if I may: Before you decide to take on this difficult task, you might want to consult your psychiatrist first. Just in case things get ugly.

The world is a mess, and as it seems, that includes religion.

Absence of Life

In March 2006 I got to know about a book by Sarah Menet called “There is no Death”. I went to do some research to find out what it was all about and found that it discussed some interesting topics and questions. Topics and questions that, like most people, keep me busy everyday. So I went ahead and bought a copy of the book. I felt that in my quest to find answers to certain questions, if this was one of the best experiences on this topic out there, I should at least have looked at it for my personal ‘research’ to be relatively complete in any way. In this post I will discuss a few things about the book and give a short review on it.

The story in this book is quite interesting. It’s about a woman, Sarah Menet, who had a very difficult life starting from her early childhood. While reading the book, you might find it hard to believe someone can go through all of those things and have so much bad luck in life. It’s just one bad event after another and it’s very depressing. At one point I even asked myself if this could be true, as it was hard to believe and comprehend the fact that someone’s life could have been the way she described it. In any case, things got worse until one day she decided to just commit suicide. And she then had a Near Death Experience (NDE), which is the most interesting part of this book. The reason for this is because she seems to have been able to remember quite a lot from her NDE in lots of details. I’ve never heard of such a detailed experience before.

But while her experiences are very nice and interesting, and while she attempts to provide answers to some important questions in life, there are a lot of unanswered questions and even contradictions in her story. Certain things are not very clear, and sometimes just don’t make sense. So after I read the book, I contacted her through email with some of the questions I had. I got a reply from her assistant (Sarah herself is now blind and cannot answer emails herself), and I was promised answers to my questions. That was in March 2006. I still haven’t heard from them yet. There could be various reasons for that, and I couldn’t wait much longer for answers, so I decided to put my thoughts about the book online and update it when I receive a response from Sarah in the future.

My overall impression of the book is that, just like religion in general, it serves to give people hope in life. It tries to show people that there is a purpose for life, and that even though they may be going through some difficult times, there are good things to look forward to. Ofcourse, only if you’ve been a good person. It also serves to give people some level of comfort in life. And as a result of this, it should be no surprise when people love the book and praise it. The things described in the book about Sarah’s NDE, are so beautiful, that most people will automatically believe it without any resistance at all. Most people might not give it any serious and critical thought at all. It’s all just so beautiful, seems correct and plausible, and is seemingly in line with Christian faith, that there’ll be little resistance to accepting it and believing it’s true.

But I think that once you start paying some careful attention to certain things, and once you apply some critical thinking to it, you find a lot of contradictions and unanswered questions. And I will discuss some of them below. Keep in mind that this is by no means a complete list of things I found questionable. There’s a lot more, but these are the more simple things that I can mention in the context of this book alone. When you would consider other things as well apart from the book, like religion in general, and put the book in greater context with those things, there are a lot more issues that come to mind.

One of the first things I want to mention is the following: When Sarah was in the spirit world, at some point she had a Q&A session, where she just stood somewhere in that world, and could think of any question she had and would immediately get the answers right into her mind (page 31). She described being able to ask hundreds of questions at the same time and the answers coming back instantly, and being able to comprehend them all perfectly. She described this as being the capabilities of the spirit-mind. That’s great, but then just a few pages later (page 40), she mentions seeing a library, a very large room with row after row of huge books. And she mentions people standing there studying and reading. So this begs the question: If one can easily ask questions and receive answers instantly, why do you need a library in the spirit-world? Why would people spend time there standing and reading, when they could simply ask questions and receive answers directly in their mind and comprehend them instantly as described earlier. Doesn’t make sense to me and is contradicting.

Secondly, Sarah describes (page 104) that before people come to earth, they lived as spirits in the spirit-world for a very long time. And the spirits in the spirit-world are given a choice to come live on earth as mortals. They are never being forced to do this, but can make their own choice to do so. When the choice is made to come to earth, we’re shown some of what our life on earth will be like. We’re given a small glimpse into our future life. God is able to look into the future somehow, and show us some of the joys, suffering and challenges we would face. What this means, is that all those millions of people suffering everyday in Ethiopia, knew they would come to earth and basically live in the dessert starving most of their lives. The children who get born there, knew they’d suffer from day 1, and die very young, possibly even as infants. This begs the question: What is the purpose of such a life? What can an infant possibly learn in such a situation and having died so young?

And I’m not done with this yet. What the above also means, is that spirits about to come to earth, can also see that they will be an evil person and have a very terrible life. Why on earth would they then still choose to come to earth to sin? For example, this means that Hitler knew beforehand what kind of a person he would be, because saw most of his life before he choose to come to earth. A drugdealer and leader of some crime network, can also see his life before he comes to earth. Why would he still choose to come to earth anyway and be such a bad person? Does this make sense to you? Not to me.

But wait, there’s still more. When spirits are able to see their future life on earth, and god is able to show them their future and the events that will take place, this implies that their lives are all planned. And indeed, Sarah mentions in various parts of her book that our lives are planned (page 115), and many things just don’t happen as coincidences. But then, she also mentions that we can change things and make our own decisions. We can also be influenced by good and evil spirits into taking certain actions. This begs the question: If our lives on earth are planned, and if indeed we can see certain events happen beforehand, how is it possible that we can still change things and be influenced to do certain things differently? Afterall, when you are able to view your life beforehand, it’s already pretty much set in stone how your life will be from beginning to end. Indeed, even the day you’ll die is planned, as spirits in the spirit-world are able to tell you when “it’s not your time yet”. When you’ve seen certain events that will happen, it would not make sense to say that you can change those. Afterall, then it would not have been your future and god would not have shown it to you. It would then also not make sense to say that your life is planned. So this is just another contradiction. Plus, if things are already planned, and the outcome is known, certainly to god because he is able to see the future and see our whole life, why do we still have to go through all of this? Why can we not just fast forward through this? The outcome is known and planned, so we can’t change it. And as a result, it doesn’t make sense to go through all of this. It’s not like we can change any major events that will take place. It’s all planned. This just doesn’t make sense.

And related to what I just talked about, Sarah also says (page 113) that “good wins in the end because god is in control.” Ofcourse, we must have a happy ending for there to be any hope and comfort from this story. This is similar to the bible. But I can’t help but wonder, again, what the purpose of going through all this is, when it is fairly clear, and indeed certain, that in the end good will win and god will destroy all evil? Take the bible for example. At the end there’s the book of revelations, where it is described how god will destroy all evil, including satan and his followers. Don’t you ever wonder if satan ever realizes that he has no chance? I’m assuming here that satan has got to be a lot smarter than me. Doesn’t he ever wonder, that if things are already planned and set in stone, and that it is already known that he will be destroyed, what the use is of going through all of this now? Put yourself in the position of satan for a moment. If you knew that it was quite certain that you would die at the end of this day, would you still go through this day as you normally would? No, you wouldn’t. If you were building a house, and you knew that as soon as it was finished, it would be destroyed whatever you did, would you build it anyway? What would be the use of that? If it is so certain that you will lose, and you simply know you can’t change that, why would you still want to fight? Don’t you think satan ever thought of this? Don’t you think satan is aware of the book of revelations? (I wrote a story about this before) This stuff just doesn’t make sense to me. Moreover, when it can be so clear to at least one party that he is destined to win, whatever happens, and is even in control, it does not seem like a fair fight to me, since it implies that the other party never stood a chance to begin with.

Sarah also mentions the mentally handicapped (page 108). She said that those people knew that they would be born with that challenge. Children born with those challenges are very special spirits who are the best and most noble of god’s children. They come to earth primarily to receive a body and help others to learn how to love and give service. When I see such people, not only do I feel sadness, but also lots of anger towards god. Why would he allows this kind of suffering? Like the children suffering in Iraq, who lose their arms and other bodyparts and their families because of others. If I, as an imperfect human being, can feel this much pain and sadness when seeing this, then what must god feel? As Sarah explains in her book, his love is supposed to be far greater than we can possibly imagine. How is he able to just watch and do nothing? Sarah also mentioned that god does not test us on purpose, and that bad things just happen because of our choices and because of bad people around us. So if god doesn’t test us on purpose, why then does he allow special spirits to get born as handicapped people to influence us? Another contradiction in her story.

Sarah also talks about dreams in her book (page 102) saying that one of the ways spirits can communicate with us is through dreams. How convenient. Why do they communicate through dreams when we are not very aware of what’s going on? Why can’t they just communicate with us when we’re awake and aware of what’s going on and are able to verify what we are experiencing? This just looks like a convenient way to make it appear like when we have certain dreams, it can really be a message from someone from the spirit-world instead of just something our brain made up while we were asleep. How can one ever be sure?

Throughout her book, she often mentions that people have to be good and make the correct decisions in order for them to receive god’s blessings and get rewarded. Even in the spirit-world, you only get things within the limits of what you have earned. You have to be able to forgive people to make yourself acceptable to god. Only if we can forgive people who did us harm, can we receive special blessings from god. So I can’t help but notice, that people are only encouraged to do the right thing because of some reward they will get in return. If people would only do good because of wanting or expecting to get rewarded, it only confirms the sad state in which humanity is today. And if god encourages this, it only shows that there is something seriously wrong with this theory. Furthermore, if people would only do good because they fear punishment from god, god is setting himself up for major problems. It also shows the rather sad state of those people. People should do good because they really want to, not because they fear punishment or expect rewards in return.

And finally, her book looks at things from the perspective of Christianity and as a result validates all Christian religions as being true. But she fails to answer an important question. How do we know that the Christian religions, or just Christianity, is the true religion? And furthermore, one of the questions I asked her and am still waiting for an answer on, is that assuming that god exists, why does he make it so difficult and confusing for us to find him and find what the truth is? There are so many religions, with so many different theories, there are so many confusing theories, how am I to know what is correct? Why doesn?t he at least make it easy for me to know what is correct and that he really exists and who he is etc. so that I can have no doubts? Why must it be a puzzle? Is it not difficult enough to, once you know which is the right one, to follow that path? Why does it also have to be a puzzle to find out which is the right path to begin with?

And so, what happens to people of different religions? What happens to those Indians deep inside the Amazon who never heard of Christianity? What about those African tribes? Surely it would not be fair if they get punished just because they never knew the right religion to begin with, and never even had a chance to learn of it.

In conclusion, the book is interesting, mostly if regarded as a work of fiction. When you want to treat it as something more serious, there are a number of issues like contradictions and unanswered questions, that just make it impossible to take it seriously. And since the book is supposed to be about a true story, that is a big problem. Very big.

I’m sure by now you’ve noticed that the costs of energy are going up, and will only continue to go up in the future. And this is true not only for oil, but also for other types of energy depending on oil and gas, such as electricity. All of this has to do with something most of the media is still in denial about, namely Peak Oil. While demand for oil is only increasing because of the growth of economies around the world and in particular China, oil production around the world seems to have reached its maximum and will be declining in the near future. Oil wells around the world are running out and it turns out that others contain less oil than was expected. And apart from the fact that it now becomes a lot more difficult to get oil from the remaining oil wells, the quality of the oil in those wells is also much lower. Indeed in many countries, oil production has peaked and companies are finding it difficult to maintain the amount of barrels produced daily, let alone increase production.

There are stories appearing everywhere about oil prices going up and energy shortages. And with demand growing, it can only get worse in the future. For a more in-dept analysis and details, you may want to read this article by Michael Ruppert.

We’ve recently also seen that Microsoft installed the largest solar panel system in Silicon valley at it’s Mountain View campus. While they seemed to put the emphasis on the need for being more environment friendly, it seems they’re also looking at alternative ways to satisfy their energy demands:

Rolling blackouts are sometimes mandated in Silicon Valley during the summer months when power consumption is at its highest. The system is designed to deliver maximum output when the local energy grid is under the greatest strain.

Yes, with less energy available and costs going up, solar energy seems to be one of the possible solutions. However, the important thing to note is that solar energy isn’t anywhere capable to completely satisfy the energy demand. They’re only using it to help provide part of the energy they need.

Another possible solution, is ethanol based energy. We’ve recently seen Bill Gates investing in Pacific Ethanol, a producer of corn-based fuel. You have to wonder why he’s doing that, when it is fairly known that you need more energy to produce ethanol than you can get out of it. Even Gates himself has admitted that once:

You know, there’s actually a lot of energy if we have those new techniques. Things like ethanol would actually cost you more energy than you’d get out of them, so you might not want to spend too much of your money on that, you know, that kind of approach.

So right now, it seems there are no alternative sources of energy to replace oil and natural gas. You’d think that based on this fact, companies would start producing more energy efficient hardware and equipment.

Which is one of the reasons why I recently lashed out at nVidia and ATI. While we should be looking at getting more performance out of hardware using less energy, they are manufacturing technology that needs absurd amounts of power to give you the performance you need.

Fortunately companies like AMD seem to be better aware of the need to produce power-efficient hardware. They currently have the lead when it comes to power consumption of CPUs, with their CPUs using less power while performing better than CPUs from Intel. This seems to be why Sun uses Opteron processors in their servers. For some nice detailed analysis between AMD and Intel, check out this article on Tom’s Hardware. And while the difference in costs for powerusage doesn’t seem that much for a single PC at home, remember than those costs are only going to become much more in the future. And for companies with lots of workstations and entire serverfarms, the difference in costs in a year could be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And with Windows Vista coming out soon, companies who will want to take advantage of that new OS and the new Aero interface will have to upgrade their workstations with 3D capable videocards which can provide a minimum level of performance in 3D. Here you can see the need once again for videocards that use little power while providing the performance you need. If not, companies upgrading to Windows Vista and wanting to use Aero will see an increase in costs for powerusage which could be significant depending on how many workstations they have.

We also need software that’s more aware of powerconsumption and efficiency. There are a lot of cool powermanagement features coming in Windows Vista, but we’ll need much more. Software will have to be engineered in such a way where it doesn’t unnecessarily consume CPU power with operations that aren’t needed, while it can perform needed operations as quickly and efficiently as possible. We also need software that’s smart enough to turn off hardware and disable software and background services that we don’t need at a given moment, and automatically turn them on when we need them. If you want an example of just how much power can be wasted on poorly written software, take a look at this article about how a bug in a driver from Microsoft was using up more than an hour of battery life.

Remember how in the old days programmers were using all kinds of tricks to make their programs as small as possible, run as fast as possible using less operations and consume little resources? The trend the last few years has been the opposite. There were increasingly more resources available, from CPU power to RAM to disk space and power (electricity). And as a result, software has become less efficient and more bloated, while also needing more resources (CPU power, RAM, diskspace etc.), often to be able to perform the same kind of tasks older software could do with less resources.

Just a few days ago I found a song titled “Satellite One” done by Jonne Valtonen (aka Purple Motion – Thanks Leslie!) back in the old days. You can download it here in S3M format, and you can play it with XMPlay. It’s about 40KB in size, and the music is great. Think of the skill and creativity that went into the creation of such content back in those days of computing. Today games come with megabytes of music data, while requiring much more resources for playback.

It seems to me that we’ll need that kind of skill and creativity again in the future.

It seems I’m a bit late in discovering this, but I found an article done by Dr. Krassimir Petrov a few days ago, where he provides a lot of insight into the economics behind the US dollar and the oil industry. It is a very good read.

The most important thing you’ll find, is Petrov’s suggestion that the US didn’t attack Iraq to control the oil wells there. The reason for the attack was to make sure that oil would be traded only in US dollars in Iraq, instead of Euros like Saddam Hussein wanted. And the reason for wanting this is to keep the demand for US dollars high throughout the world, since oil can largely only be bought in US dollars. So the US keeps printing US dollars without any kind of backing, like for example gold, which means that the inflation of the US dollars keeps going up. Essentially the US is now buying oil and other valuable goods from other countries for nothing, just pieces of paper which they can just print more of as long as they want to.

So, indeed, why would you want to control the oil in Iraq, when you can just keep printing more of your own money as much as you need and buy the oil from them? Clearly, there had to be another reason for invading Iraq. And that reason, as Petrov suggests, is to make sure that Iraq would trade its oil only for US dollars to keep demand for US dollars high. This means that other countries will have to sell valueable goods to the US in exchange for worthless paper (which the US can print more of at any time), so that they are able to buy oil with it. And the US itself can buy as much oil as it wants because they control their own currency, and can print as much as they need.

And here is where it becomes more interesting. What will happen in the future is that the inflation of the US dollar will become so high, that its value, especially since it is not backed by gold, will become very low to almost worthless. The value of all the US dollars other countries got from the US, in exchange for oil and other valuable goods, will become very low to almost worthless, making them much poorer in a very short amount of time, all while the US retains and continues to benefit from the value they got in exchange. They will then just introduce their next currency, like Petrov suggests. So in this process, the US retains their wealth, while the other countries lose all the wealth that was represented by the US dollars they have.

And what is even more interesting, is that this certainly is not the first time something like this is happening. It has been happening many times throughout history. It is the standard way for people who control money to get richer, while the people who don’t continue to get poorer. For more details, check out a documentary called “The Money Masters.” I highly recommend it.

If you’ve already seen the 9/11 Eyewitness video, you’ve already seen this footage a few times. When the WTC North Tower comes down, the central core columns are left standing a few second before they come down as well. If you look carefully, you will see a series of small flashes on the core columns before they fall down.

Those flashes are similar to the flashes you see when you look at those videos where they bring down a building in a controlled demolition. As explosives go off inside the building to take out the supporting structure, you see flashes through the windows of the building. An expert on controlled demolitions speaking on condition of anonymity has confirmed that the flashes seen in this video at the core columns of the North Tower are “similar to RDX-class cutting charges” which are used to cut through steel.

Also remember that many firefighters have testified that they saw flashes going around the building before they collapsed and that they also heard explosions inside the buildings. These testimonies have recently been released.

A lot of people seem to admit to the fact that you can learn something from anyone. But in reality, they don’t behave accordingly. It is nice to admit to this fact, but do you also realize what it really means and what it takes to be able to learn from anyone? It seems that a lot of people don’t know this.

To be able to learn something from anyone or anything means that you first have to be open to alternative information and possibilities. You can’t pretend that you already know everything about a subject or situation. You can’t simply brush off opinions or information coming from someone without making sure that you’ve carefully looked at it. You will have to open yourself up to all of the information coming towards you, look at it and carefully evaluate it against anything you think you know about the subject.

And this is not an easy thing to do because often it can take a lot of time. And apart from time and willingness to be open to the information, there are other difficulties as well. One of them is objectivity. It is not easy to be objective when you consider alternative information. And this can be because of various reasons. One of them is that looking at alternative information could mean that you can come to the conclusion that the information is correct, and that what you knew is wrong and that you will have to admit to this. And people don’t like to admit that they are wrong. If it was in a discussion or argument, it would mean losing the discussion or argument. And people don’t like this. There is ofcourse nothing wrong with not liking it, but you should not take the wrong decision because of that, namely lying and refusing to admit that you are wrong. I’ll write more on this in the future.

Another reason is that people may have certain prejudice towards something or someone. For example, they may hear someone who is considered to be a bad person, or someone they just don’t like, talk about something and without giving it some more thought, just automatically dismiss everything that person may have to say. Which ofcourse is a foolish thing to do, because that person, even if it is just for once, might be saying something good. Or they may think that the person giving their opinion on something can’t possibly be taken seriously because he has no experience, is too young, doesn’t have a degree in the subject, etc. In such a case, a teacher would never be able to learn from his students, and one could say that Hitler never did anything that we might positively learn from. Anyone has good and bad qualities, and anyone can be right or wrong. Nobody is perfect. The skill is the ability to be able to honestly identify the good things in a person, learn from those things and use them to your advantage.

Another reason can also be that when people would have to admit that alternative information is correct, this means that they would have to accept it, which could have an impact on a lot of other things that may affect their worldview and their lives. The implications can be so outrageous compared to what they are used to, or it can cause so many inconveniences, that their mind simply closes up to the possibilities the alternative information suggests, and as a result they can’t objectively evaluate it. In such a case it is much more convenient to just dismiss the information, pretend it doesn’t exist or simply deny that it is correct.

And there can be many other reasons still. I think that one of the most important things you can learn to do in life, is to be able to objectively evaluate an opinion, or information in general and once you’ve reached a conclusion, honestly act upon it. I don’t think I can ever completely describe the huge benefits that this gives you. Once you are able to do this, you can identify and take the good things around you from anything and anyone, learn from them and use them to your advantage (this includes finding out that you were wrong), while you eliminate or improve the bad things. It only makes you a better, smarter and stronger person.

For example, there may be someone you really don’t like. Perhaps you even hate that person. To be able to objectively evaluate something this person says that is contrary to your beliefs, and to be able to honestly admit that he or she is right, and that you were wrong is very powerful. Simply because not everyone can do this, and when you can, this gives you a powerful advantage. You will be able to learn much more much quicker compared to everyone else, because, while they can’t, you are able to consider any and all sources and identify the good things and use them to your advantage. And because you are open to alternative information and possibilities from anywhere, you are more likely to discover where you are wrong, and are more likely to act upon it which in turn helps to improve yourself much quicker and much more than anyone else. And the beautiful thing about this is that this benefits not only you, but everyone else around you.

Just think about.

This is the kind of headline that makes you pinch yourself a few times to make sure you’re not seeing things. But yes, it appears the Venezuelan government might launch their own international 9/11 investigation, and it’s about time. From the full article:

Billionaire philanthropist Jimmy Walter and WTC survivor William Rodriguez this week embarked on a groundbreaking trip to Caracas Venezuela in which they met with with the President of the Assembly and will soon meet with Venezuelan President himself Hugo Chavez in anticipation of an official Venezuelan government investigation into 9/11.

…

Upon visiting, Rodriguez said that the President of the Assembly, Nicolas Maduro’s home was brimming with books, videos and documents about the 9/11 cover-up. Maduro, Venezuela’s top legislator, intoned that he was ready to create an international investigative committee, looking into the “international crime scene” that is 9/11 and that this would be structured via Hugo Chavez’s government.

Hopefully that gets underway soon, so that the pressure on the US government can get much bigger.

And it’s not as if it isn’t getting bigger at the moment, on the contrary. If you were not able to tune in last night to the live broadcast of David Ray Griffin’s talk in Oakland, you can download a recording of it here. Griffin is kicking all kinds of ass. I highly recommend listening to it.

While reading this article, I was also surprised to find out that Griffin first did not doubt the official story on 9/11:

When David Ray Griffin, noted theologian and professor emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology, first heard someone say that Sept. 11 was an inside job, he scoffed.

“I can remember my exact words. … I said, ‘I don’t think that even the Bush administration could perpetrate such a thing,’ ” said Griffin, who has since written two books, “The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11″ and “The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions,” which dispute the official version of events. Specifically, Griffin believes that the U.S. government orchestrated the attacks.

Griffin began to delve into 9/11 conspiracy theories after looking at a time line of the events of Sept. 11, 2001 (by Paul Thompson, who later turned it into a book) on the Internet. He found himself swayed by the catalog of inconsistencies and strange coincidences.

It also appears that another Hollywood actor, Ed Asner, has joined Charlie Sheen in publicly doubting the official 9/11 story.

Update: You can also download an interview with Dr. James Fetzer of Scholars for 9/11 Truth here, and lectures by Kevin Ryan here and here. As you may know, Kevin Ryan was an executive at Underwriters Laboratory, where he got fired after questioning the official government story of why the WTC towers came down on 9/11.

David Griffin continues to kick serious ass with regards to exposing the truth behind the events surrounding 9/11. You can download and listen to an interview done with him on a program called “Guns and Butter”, where he talks about the 9/11 Oral Histories. I highly recommend it. You’ll hear about the testimonies done by firefighters which are to this day widely being ignored by the mainstream media, and even the 9/11 commission.

He also has a talk tonight at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, which will be streamed live via KMUD. Don’t forget to tune in.

In other news, the poll done on CNN which I mentioned in a previous post, closed at 83% out of a total of 53933 people voting that they agree with Charlie Sheen on the US government cover-up of 9/11. Meanwhile Charlie Sheen was discussed on CNN’s Showbiz Tonight a third and a fourth time and a second time with Alex Jones asking people to challenge him on the facts.

There’s also an interesting documentary available for download called “The great conspiracy: The 9/11 news special you never saw“, which as you might have guessed, you probably haven’t seen yet. So download it and check it out.

Charlie Sheen has recently been on Showbiz Tonight on CNN talking about his views on 9/11. You can download and view a recorded version of the show here, and a follow up with Alex Jones here. In a poll on CNN, which you can view here, as of this writing, 83% of the people who voted (17116), agreed with what he said about 9/11. You can also listen to an interview with Sheen by Alex Jones here. And not long ago Scholars for 9/11 Truth had a press conference in Alexandria, Va, which seemed to have gone really well.

It appears that information regarding the truth of what happened on 9/11 is reaching more and more people now. And everyday the number of people who question the official story released by the US government seems to be growing with some well known people like Sheen joining in.

I’ve recently downloaded a presentation by Professor David Ray Griffin, where he talks about the 9/11 Commission report and possible government involvement in the events on 9/11. You can download a copy of that presentation here. It was an amazing presentation to say the least. You just have to see it to understand me. Griffin’s presentation makes Fahrenheit 9/11 look like a romantic comedy.

That presentation goes well with a presentation done by Professor Steven Jones, which I mentioned in an earlier post. You can download it here. Most of the information discussed on the presentations can also be found in the peer reviewed papers I link to below, which I highly recommend you take a look at for more details:

• Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse? by Steven E. Jones, Ph.D.
• The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account Cannot Be True by David Ray Griffin, Ph.D.

What’s already clear to most people who choose to pay attention, is that there are just tons of things that are inconsistent, wrong or just plain don’t make sense with the official US government explanation of 9/11.

I posted links to some documentaries which can be downloaded using BitTorrent a while ago. In those documentaries many things are discussed which will undoubtedly make you ask a lot of questions. You may also wonder how most people can just ignore all of this and accept the official story. This kind of stuff just makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time.

I recently found another video online which focuses on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. The official government story is that the towers collapsed due to weakening of the steel structure as a result of the fires inside the buildings. In one of the previous documentaries I mentioned above, there are eyewitness accounts of firefighters who mentioned hearing many explosions before the towers came down, and who said that it almost seemed like a controlled demolition.

At that time there wasn’t a lot of proof for this, but this recent documentary contains footage where the explosions are all recorded. It also contains other analysis of the way the buildings collapsed. If the buildings would collapse by themselves, you would expect it to go much slower than what happened on 9/11. The debris falling from above would undoubtedly have been slowed down by the rest of the building below it, making the whole collapse much slower due to the resistance. However, during the collapse of the WTC buildings, the debris was free falling, almost like timed explosives were making sure parts of the building below the falling debris were blown up and started falling right before the debris on top would hit it, resulting in a smooth collapse of the entire structure.

What is also difficult to understand is what caused heavy steel debris to shoot UP from the middle of the building and fly to the sides of the buildings in a big arc during the collapse. You can see this very clearly in the videos. This stuff just doesn’t happen by itself.

You can download a torrent file for this documentary here. You’ll need a BitTorrent client to be able to open the torrent file to download the movie. The movie itself can be viewed using Windows Media Player. Make sure you also download and install the XVid codec which is needed to decode the video.

I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while now during my ‘what the hell am I (supposed to be) doing here, or, trying to figure out life’ thinking sessions, and I’ve come to the very painful and frustrating conclusion that I am a hypocrite. In the following I’ll try to explain why this is in fact true. If you’re a bit surprised reading this, and asking yourself who in their right mind would want to convince anyone they are a hypocrite, please don’t be. This is the least of your worries; you’re going to be much more surprised by what else you’re going to find out. So read on with great caution as you may find yourself looking at life a bit differently, and you might also find yourself as frustrated as I am right now, if not more frustrated. The presence of a physician while reading is strongly advised.

So let’s start with the following two scenarios:

Scenario 1: I am against terrorism. I have a friend who I lend money to. He uses that money to fund terrorism.

Scenario 2: I am against terrorism. I have a friend who I lend money to. He has a son who he supports financially. His son uses the money he gets from his dad to donate to some religious group. This religious group funds terrorism.

If I were to walk around and tell everyone how I am against terrorism and people knew about both scenarios I described above, you can easily see how they could say that I am a hypocrite. Afterall, I am against terrorism, but am in the first scenario almost directly funding it, and in the second scenario also helping to fund it even though it is more indirect. If these people wanted to be fair and reasonable, they would consider me a hypocrite only when they know that I know, in the first scenario, that I am helping a friend who funds terrorism, and in the second scenario, that I am helping a friend who’s using the money to support his son, who again is using the money to donate to a religious group who funds terrorism. If I knew what was happening in both scenario’s, and still kept lending money to my friend while I am against terrorism, that would make me a hypocrite.

But assuming that I don’t know what my friend does with the money, does that still make me a hypocrite? Does that still make me a bad person? Afterall, I didn’t know what he was going to do with the money. It in any case does not change the fact that I am, however indirect it may be, helping to support terrorism. I’ll come back to this later.

Let’s consider a real world example now. I am a strong supporter and fan of Microsoft as a company. I’ve always liked Microsoft. I love their technology, and use and prefer their technology to build software. I recommend them to friends and generally support them in various ways. Then I find out that Microsoft is using its powers to do something bad. For example, they use their technology and power to help the Chinese government restrict freedom of speech in China. I am against this. So right now, I find myself in the sad situation of becoming or being seen as a hypocrite. On the one hand I am against the Chinese government restricting freedom of speech, but on the other hand I am a supporter of the very same company that is helping to restrict freedom of speech. By supporting Microsoft, even in the most indirect way, I am helping them to restrict freedom of speech in China. By using their technology, by using Windows on my PC, by recommending them etc. I am giving them the power, supporting them financially and in many other ways to do what I am against. And the sad part is that I now realize and know this. And this makes me a hypocrite.

You could argue that I am not directly funding or supporting Microsoft to do bad things, but the many levels of indirection don’t change anything, similar to the second scenario I described above. The moment I realize what I am doing, or what I am helping to do, I should take action.

There are ofcourse many more examples. You can for example be against killing baby seals for their pelts, but continue to buy fur clothing in stores and help to create a demand for fur clothing, which in turn leads to a demand for more pelts and obviously to killing more baby seals. Buying fur clothing while you are against killing baby seals makes you a hypocrite.

You could go so far as to say that by simply paying taxes in the USA, even the people who are against the war in Iraq are supporting their government and enabling them to fund that very same war that they are against. Even though there are probably many levels of indirection between paying taxes and funding the war in Iraq, this does not eliminate the fact that by paying taxes, you help the government fund and wage war.

If you are the vice president at a company, and you know that some employees are being paid far less than they deserve or should be receiving, even though this may not have been your decision and you are against it, by staying at that company and not doing anything about it, you are supporting and helping that company to exploit those employees. Even if you can’t do anything about it, by staying there and watching as the exploiting continues, you are helping them and supporting them to do it. If you are truly against it and you cannot change it, you’d leave the company and not be a part of it and most certainly not stay to benefit from it yourself. Afterall, the (financial) benefits the company gets from exploiting those employees are directly or indirectly used to pay your high salary!

You can undoubtedly come up with many more examples yourself. And you can probably already see that when you start to look at things this way and that when you start to realize certain things, it becomes very difficult to function. All of a sudden you’ll start to see the way things work, you’ll start to see the interests that are at stake, and you’ll feel disgusted to be a part of it. You’ll feel even more disgusted if the situation is such that you are set up to benefit from it. As an outside supporter, I feel bad about Microsoft helping to censor information in China, but what if I was an employee at Microsoft? What if I was actually the one building the technology to help censor information at Microsoft, while I am against it? I can by the way use the same example for Google.

Another thing that I found is that there is very little you can do about this. If you view the world we live in as a system, there are certain rules according to which things seem to behave in that system. These rules seem to have been in place for centuries. It seems to be by design. So if you as a person would like to be a part of that system, that means that you are going to have to be, or become, compatible with that system in order to be able to function normally in it. This means that you will have to behave according to the rules in that system. If the system is evil, you’re going to have to be evil more or less, directly or indirectly, knowingly or unknowingly. If you don’t behave according to those rules or don’t accept them, sooner or later you will not be able to function well in that system, doors will close around you and you soon find yourself isolated. The very fact that you want to be a part of the system, means that you will sooner or later find yourself in conflicting and hypocritical situations if that is the nature of the system. The very fact that you want to be a part of the system, means that you will sooner or later, and possibly during most of your life, be supporting or helping bad things taking place inside that system, however indirectly it may be. You will be a part of it, and it won’t be easy to avoid it. In fact, if you want to be part of the system, then by definition it is impossible to avoid this.

Let me illustrate this with an example: The very fact that someone lives in the USA and is being a good citizen paying taxes, means that he is (however indirectly it may be) supporting the war in Iraq, even if he is against it. How easy is it to avoid this? Should he stop paying taxes? Should he move outside the USA, in order to get out of the system and stop supporting it in any way? It’s very difficult.

This is the sad, painful and frustrating reality. And there seems to be no practical solution. The only solution I can think of is a radical solution, which means to not be part of the system at all. While talking about this with a friend, he suggested that this is probably the reason why monks isolate themselves from everything, and seem to live far away from everything else. This is probably the only way to avoid being part of the system and to not depend on it. Afterall, if you know the system is evil, why want to be a part of it and depend on it? If you don’t want to be a bad and evil person, the mere fact that you are a part of the system makes you a hypocrite.

And if we look at it from the perspective of religion, how can god, assuming that he exists, expect us to really be good people in a system that is fundamentally flawed and evil by nature? How can you be expected to function in such a system without becoming flawed yourself? Again the only solution as I see it, is to live like the monks somewhere in the mountains in the middle of nowhere and isolate yourself from the system as much as possible.

At the beginning of this post I said I would come back to explain after the following:

But assuming that I don’t know what my friend does with the money, does that still make me a hypocrite? Does that still make me a bad person? Afterall, I didn’t know what he was going to do with the money. It in any case does not change the fact that I am, however indirectly it may be, helping to support terrorism.

One could argue that if one did not know about something, one can not be held accountable for it. So if I did not know my friend used my money to support terrorism, while I am against terrorism, people in all fairness could not call me a hypocrite. It becomes a totally different situation of I knew what he was doing with the money, and still gave it to him. So you can be a part of something while bad things take place without your knowing, but as soon as you know what’s happening, it becomes a different situation. You’re going to have to act on that knowledge. Will you remain part of the system while you know what’s going on?

So now that you’ve seen that the system we live in is fundamentally flawed and evil and that as a part of it, it forces us to support it however indirectly it may be, while we may know it or not, what will you do about it?

There is no such thing as free software. Period. It does not exist. Certainly not in this world where everything seems to come at a certain price. There is no such thing as a free product or a free service. Forget about it. The following comes from that Schwarzenegger movie called “Commando”, but it fits very well with the idea of “free” software: Somewhere, somehow, someone… is going to pay.

So they say it’s free software? Take a good look again. I’m sure you’ll find that somewhere, somehow, someone is actually paying for it. It might even be you! Yep, but ya just don’t realize it….yet. You see, it’s all about the business model. There can be many various ways you can choose to do business. But at the end of the day, someone is going to have to pay for it one way or the other, if you want to keep doing business. Some people may choose to tell their customers their product is actually “free”…..but that they need to pay for the service, or in other words, to be able to use it. Other people just charge a certain amount for their product……and that’s it. These are just two examples. And I don’t have a problem with either one of them. It’s just that the first example often gets abused by people to fool their customers. People always seem to like the idea of “free” stuff. And perhaps you can’t blame them, but it can get them into trouble when they later get confronted with the costs to be able to use their “free” product. This can cumulate to quite some cash after a while. And this is when, if they didn’t know about it before, they get introduced to the concept of Total Cost of Ownership. And if they already knew about it, they get to really know about it.

Take Google for example. Right now all of their services are “free”. That’s right, you can log onto the Internet and just start searching stuff on Google, use Gmail and many other Google services without paying anything. But is it really free? If it was, how would Google be able to make enough money to keep their servers running? How would they be able to make enough money to pay all those Ph.Ds? It’s not free, someone is paying. And in Google’s case, their advertisers are paying for it, and indirectly, you are too. You see, Google’s product isn’t search, or email or other services. Their product is viewers. And that’s what they are selling to advertisers. And every time you search for something on Google, you’re helping them, and in fact, working for them, to sell their product. So the fact that you think you’re using a free product is just an illusion.

Some mobile phone providers give their customers a “free” cell phone. Others throw in various other stuff like a “free” MP3 player, a “free” DVD player etc. Do you honestly think it’s free? Do you believe they are really giving away free stuff just because they want you as a customer? If you believe so, you’re naive, and chances are you’re often very happy in the world you live in. No my dear reader, it is not free. As soon as you sign up for their service, they’re making money on you and without you realizing it, you and many other customers are going to be paying for all the “free” stuff you got from them. In fact, they are going to be making muuuuch more than just the costs of the free stuff you got from them. And there are many more examples like this, I’m sure you can name a few yourself.

No business is going to be giving away things for free; you can bet they will be making money off of it somehow, somewhere. And someone is going to be giving that money to them.

Take Sun for example. Jonathan Schwartz, President and COO of Sun, would like nothing else than for you to believe that Sun is giving away free software and hardware. He writes:

Free is a compelling price to drive adoption. Best of all, it’s not subject to bizarre multipliers based on the number of cores or threads on a computer’s microprocessor.

And as much as my friend Linus helped change the world of operating systems, something tells me Postgres and MySQL are going to have an interesting blowback effect on the database marketplace – and JES (stay tuned for a momentum update) will bring the same to web application platforms.

After all, why spend money when the free stuff is setting performance records.

So tell me, Mr. Schwa…may I call you Jonathan? – thanks, so tell me, Jonathan, if nobody spends a single dime on all of this “free” software, one way or the other, how exactly are you going to keep that business running? How exactly does Sun make enough money to be able to pay you every month? What? Oh, you make money selling services based on the “free” software? Aaaah…I see. So that’s how people pay for your software. Do you think it’s really free software when you expect people to pay for the services? And he went on to say:

Do I worry about enterprises or corporate customers taking OpenSolaris and not acquiring a subscription to someone’s (hopefully our) service contract? No, not in the least. Do you really think a hospital, or an air traffic control authority or a Minister from an African nation would run their institution on unsupported software? No. No way.

I’m sorry, what? I thought you said a while ago: “After all, why spend money when the free stuff is setting performance records”. So do you think that the Minister from that African nation who is, like you said, likely to buy support for their “free” software, is not spending money doing so? Because I don’t understand why you ask “why spend money?” when you’re saying they will be spending money anyway. I’m confused.

Anyway, you see my good reader, how people can easily get fooled into thinking they are getting free stuff. Linux is just another example. A lot of people are going to want to make you believe all that open source software is free. It’s not. You’re going to be paying for it one way or the other, and often much more than their alternatives. How do you think Red Hat is making all that money right now if Red Hat Linux was really free?

You know, in an ideal world, most people would actually stop and think about it some more when someone tells them they can give them something for free. Especially when you know normally you’d have to pay for it. But not in this world, instead people often jump at any opportunity where they have the impression they are getting a good deal and free stuff. And a lot of people and businesses are abusing this.
Do you think customers will worry if businesses are able to make enough money to support themselves, when they can get free stuff from them? Most of them probably don’t even think about continuity. They don’t realize that if they don’t pay (enough) for the product, the manufacturer won’t be able to make enough money to be able to keep making the product and to support it. Frankly, they don’t even care about that or don’t realize it. The customer is always going to want to pay as little as possible, and they won?t care if they screw you over. They don’t realize that in the end, they’re going to lose as well.

In the world we live in, nothing seems to be free. Not even freedom is free. Everything comes at a price. And so does software. The sooner you realize this, and keep remembering it when you see the “free” software ads, the sooner you’ll be able to benefit from that knowledge. Just remember: Somewhere, somehow, someone is always paying.

Have you ever heard the phrase “The market decides the value of a product or service.” or something similarly stupid? You are not alone. The market can’t possibly decide for you what you should sell your product or service for. At most, the market can help you decide, or give you input on what they think of the value of your product or service. But if you let the market determine the value of your product or service for you, you are in serious trouble.

The reason why you can’t let the market decide for you is quite frankly because the market has no idea of the costs associated with manufacturing a product, or providing a service. If you ask someone what he would want to pay for something, he is going to give you his perception of the value of that item in the best case. And his perception will often not match with reality, unless he has certain knowledge about the item and the costs that go into making that item. In the worst case, he’ll not want to pay anything for the item, or something far too low.

So what you’re going to have to do when you want to offer a product is that you’re going to have to determine for yourself exactly what it costs you to make that product, what it will cost you to support that product and guarantee continuity if this is applicable, what the minimum amount is that you realistically expect to sell and the profit you would like to make based on where you want to take the product and your business in the future. The last thing is assuming you want growth and improvement in your current situation, because if you calculate the price of your product using the costs you have today, you’ll only be able to, perhaps barely, maintain your current situation. If you know where you want to be in the future, you are going to have to work with the costs you expect to have then, and calculate the price of your product accordingly. This will ensure that when you sell the product today, you will be making enough profit to grow to the situation you planned for the future.

The key thing is that you have to be very honest to yourself and to your potential customers about things. You should calculate the costs of making your product honestly, and not overestimate things. You should also not want to make absurdly large profits on your product, driving the price up unnecessarily. When you tell your potential customers what your product costs, you should be able to tell them with an honest face, and be able to look them in the eyes, be confident and explain exactly why your product costs what it costs. When they value your product or service too low, you’re going to have to work on educating them about your product, what goes into making that product or offering that service, and you’re going to have to communicate the value of your product or service to them.

When you’ve done all of that, and you find that there’s still nobody who would want to pay for your product, or that there are too few people who can pay for it, then you have to be honest enough to yourself to admit that there is no market for your product or service. And in that case, you can work on scaling back features of your product so it can become cheaper, or simply freeze the product or service until there is enough demand for it and do something else in the mean time.

If your product costs $200, and the customers insist on wanting to pay $100 for it, then you should have enough courage to walk away. You should have enough self respect to know the value of your product or service. You are the only one who can honestly know that. If you don’t know it yourself, nobody is going to know it for you. It is your job to honestly and realistically value your product and to communicate that to others. Others won’t do it for you. Others will want the best possible deal, and they won’t care if they screw you over in the process (they probably won?t realize this in the first place). If they can get it for free, they will take it. It is your own responsibility to know your value and that of your products and services.

For example, if my hourly rate for programming is $50, and someone thinks that is way too high and wants to pay no more than $10, I’m going to tell him that I could mow his lawn for $10 an hour, but I’m not going to do any programming work for him at $10 an hour. Once again, you have to know the value of the product or service you offer, you have to be very honest about it and make sure you get what is reasonable to you. In this case, if I would find that there isn’t a single person who would want to hire me for programming, I would in the worst case indeed choose to mow lawns at $10 an hour. If you give in to what others want to pay you, when you know that is far too low to cover your costs or that they simply value your product or service far too low, you’re responsible for your own failure and for others taking advantage of you. And the same applies to any business.

If you offer your product or service at too low a price, you may find that suddenly there are more people interested and you get loaded with work, but somehow you still don?t make enough money to cover all your expenses, let alone make a profit. In this case you are fooling yourself. You can boast about having a lot of work, many customers, but what does it bring you in the end when you work your ass off every day and can?t even make a profit? If you offer any product or service at an absurdly low cost, or even free, everyone will want it. This is stupid artificial market creation. You shouldn?t want everyone to want your product, you should want paying customers to want your product.

Keep in mind that when you go to a store somewhere to buy something, the price has already been decided for you as well. Nobody is going to want to know what you think the value of a plasma screen should be. They?ve already determined the price for you. You?re just going to have to accept that and decide whether you can afford it or not. You can?t go in and say “well you know, I?m part of the market and I say this plasma screen should cost $500 instead of $5000.” If they don?t immediately kick you out of the store, at least they?ll thank you for your time and walk away or laugh at you hysterically.
The same thing goes for everything you?ll need to be able to make your own product. Things cost money, and when you?ve developed your product, you should ask for it what is reasonable to you. Anything less should not be an option. It?s simply business. If someone wants your product, they should pay for it, otherwise you should not be interested in them as a customer. The only interesting customer is a paying customer.

There are ofcourse exceptions which can be based on what your goal is with a certain product or service. For example, are you simply interested in selling your product or service for what it?s worth and making a profit, or are you interested in gaining marketshare? When you?re as big as Microsoft for example, you can play with these options. Microsoft can afford to sell their Xbox console at a loss just to expand their marketshare on gaming consoles. Their priorities don?t currently lie in making a profit or covering costs, but just to gain marketshare. Once they have the marketshare, they have other interesting possibilities which are more important to them. But Microsoft is in the position to do this kind of thing, they have enough cash lying around from their sales of Windows and Office products, where they make exorbitant amount of profits. Smaller companies don?t have this luxury. In their case, their products have to cover costs and they have to make a profit to be able to look at future growth and possibilities.

But wait, what if there are others in the market who can offer the seemingly same product or service at a much lower price? Damn, then you?re in trouble, right? Wrong.
When you want to be a player in an existing market, you?re going to have to know your competitors, and you?re going to have to know them well. You?re going to have to know their products, the pros and cons of their products, the level of quality of their products, the features of their products, the quality of their support, their pricing etc.
Based on that information, you?re once again going to have to look at your own products and you?re going to have to be very honest to yourself and determine where your products stand compared to your competitor?s products. If you determine that you offer better products with regards to features, quality, support or anything else, you can value your products accordingly and should not be worried if the price of your product ends up being higher than your competitor?s product. You?re going to have to communicate this extra value in your products to your (potential) customers. You shouldn?t even worry when your customers actually go and buy your competitor?s product. If you are really better, sooner or later they will be coming to you when they discover the issues with your competitor?s products. And I speak from experience. I have seen this happening many times over and over again. And when these customers with their bad experiences come to you, and you actually offer something much better, you?ve locked them in for a long time to come. The key thing is once again to know your value, to be honest about the value you offer and be very confident about your products and your capabilities. If you don?t do it yourself, nobody is going to do it for you. If you don?t know your value, do you expect others to know it for you? If you value yourself too low, do you think others will give you a higher value? If you are not confident about your products, do you think others will be?

You may occasionally also find that there are competitors who offer the exact same product or service, but still at a much lower price compared to you. And you?ll be going crazy trying to find out how they can possibly be that much lower. You?re going to look at your development costs, try to see where you spend too much money, where you can cut costs, but you?ll find that you?re actually running very efficient. The price you determined is right. So how can your competitor be that much lower?? Fear not, unless it is due to a big secret advantage they have, they are probably just being that low to attract more customers for a while. They won?t be able to keep it up for long. Otherwise they?ll seize to exist, and you?ll still be around for your customers. I?ve seen this a few times with startups who think they can win marketshare quickly by being much lower in price and get projects at big customers to build up their portfolio and credibility. They don?t last very long, or they soon have to adjust to the hard reality. You shouldn?t worry about these types of competitors.
You should worry when it?s a company like Microsoft being much lower in price, but offering the same quality. Those kinds of companies have lots of cash and will stay lower until they beat you out of the market because you just can?t sell your products anymore.

The tactic you can use to fight against those kinds of competitors is to be smarter in terms of developing your products, introducing new features or capabilities unique to your product so that you can have a marketing advantage compared to them, and can be a few steps ahead. An example of this was the fight between Microsoft and Netscape. Microsoft released a free browser on the market which at first wasn?t very good compared to Netscape?s browser which wasn?t free. The danger came when Microsoft?s browser became as good as Netscape?s, and later even better. Netscape?s mistake was that they failed to improve their browser and add new features to differentiate and have a marketing advantage. In fact, their later releases of the browser were much worse because it became bigger and slower compared to Microsoft?s browser.
Now, when you look at the competition between Microsoft and Google these days, there are similarities. But the clear difference is that Google continues to innovate and make their products better. They continue to add new features and capabilities to their products, so it doesn?t matter if Microsoft?s products become as good. Google so far still manages to stay a step ahead.

If you just can?t possibly improve your product and lower costs compared to your competitors, you?ll just have to admit this to yourself and quit that market and do something else. Preferably something new and unique. Something where you have the advantage of being the first, where you can create the market, define the market and define the playing rules.

Have you ever sat down and looked around you, at all the wonderful things in nature, noticing the structure and order by which everything seems to behave? It’s all an illusion. We live in total chaos. Continue reading here to find out more.