Rest in Peace Octavia E. Butler 6/22/1947-2/26/2006

My all time favorite science fiction writer Octavia E .Butler passed away on Sunday. As I mourn her death, I celebrate what she has given to life. A Washington Post reviewer once described her as:

"A master storyteller who casts an unflinching eye on racism, sexism,
poverty, and ignorance and let’s the reader see the terror and the beauty of
human nature."

She did more than just write. She sounded the alarm regarding our enslavement and offered hope for freedom. She did it through her writings by examining the past and predicting the future of our reality. Those dark and ugly realities in her novels are present in our society now. Through her work we see how chaos is born from both the human and the alien or "other's" craving for control. The hope she offers isn't a watered down 'just believe in god and you'll be saved' kind of hope. It was always about the use of knowledge, which could only be gained by the will, intelligence and empathy of her heroines. This use allowed them to save themselves and others.

I suspect her main characters were always women because of an allusion to esoteric ideas regarding the feminine's direct connection to the creative aspect of the universe. They suffered yes, because as another of my favorite writers often talke about; conscious suffering has a place. Her characters also brought much to life in their creativity of thought and action. Many of us living in America suffer unconsciously. This not only cut us off from the creative life affirming aspect of existence, but through our choice of action or inaction allows for much death and suffering of others. Why? because there are always pathocrats willing to exploit our sleeping state. Octavia never shied away from presenting in the raw what her characters were up against in a pathocratic society. The terror of the situation can either wake you up or leave you like a deer caught in the headlights. Her characters never took the deer route even when they were as terrified as we are now.

I need not go on and on about her writings. I have previously reviewed her Parables series in terms of our enslaved status in USA and the world on this blog but the entire Butlerian oeuvre is worth reading. What I really wanted to say here is that she was well aware that her writings were a wake up call for unconscious sufferers. In one of her last interviews she spoke with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman about her work. She explains:

"I wrote the two Parable books back in the 1990s. And they are books about,
as I said, what happens because we don't trouble to correct some of the problems
that we're brewing for ourselves right now."

"I had been doing the two Parable books -- Parable of the Sower and Parable of the
Talents -- and they were what I call cautionary tales: If we keep misbehaving
ourselves, ignoring what we've been ignoring, doing what we've been doing to the
environment, for instance, here's what we're liable to wind up with"

She was eerily prescient because what we wind up with is here; War with Iran, Israel Marching, Civil War in Iraq, Life in the US, Internment camps and General Madness. My hope is that enough of us have the perspicacity of Octavia E. Butler's characters. It is the only way we will survive. First though, enough of us need to become conscious and her novels were dedicated to making us conscious. May she rest in peace.

Alito Confirmation Blues

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings
--------Dorothy Thompson


It seems the fuhrer's pick will be confirmed for his seat on the supreme court. It's another in a long list of signs that the fascist rulers no longer wish to do their dirty deeds undercover. Our enslavement is blatant and increasingly oppressive. I pray that the oppression
does not render us so weak that we keep choosing slavery. I am also beginning to see that answers to such prayers can only come from us deciding act by choosing truth, and being that truth. We must resist until our dying breath even when it appears that nothing can be done. They kill us regardless. If the killing isn't done directly, they use ponerological tools to keep us in place while cannibalizing us a little at a time. We do however have a choice even when they say otherwise. We can BE what the power elite fascists bunch cannot. Let us be representatives of truth and freedom. Let's study ponerology and learn how they enslave us. Then let's share what we learn so that we can become free.

I know at times like today when Alito's confirmation looms, it is easy to lose the courage necessary for doing this. The words of others can help. Words of those who choose to resist by documenting the lies of our enslavers are invaluable. Even if I don't agree with every single thing they write, the actions taken by those like Cindy Sheehan, Laura Knight-Jadczyk, Kurt Nimmo and John Kaminsky, Jeff Wells and others are necessary. They to put themselves on the line and stand up for truth. It means that we can and must do the same because they are fighting to be free so that we all can be free. As repayment they get lambasted by conscious and unconscious agents of COINTELPRO day in day out. Yet, they keep going. So I say when discouraged, get a dose of the objective reality to be found in their writings and keep going forward with the fight. As I've mentioned before in a slightly different way, it is up to each of us who wish to see truth prevail to do everything we can to make it so.

As Ms Jadczyk said:
"Just now, activists are the physicians of society. We can't do a thing
if we don't know the nature of the disease...."

Those people mentioned above including Ms Jadczyk can teach us a thing or two about the nature of the disease. To continue with some of her lessons:

...Modern COINTELPRO has been developed to an all new level of complexity and sophistication even if they still use many of the old tried and true methods of defamation and slander. After all, they have had access to some excellent talent to figure out how the human mind works and to know how to get to people and even to "trigger" them at a distance. I'm not talking about mysterious "mind control" experiments here, but simple psychological knowledge, though I won't discount the direct experimentation. After all, if you have some control over what kind of psychological "diet" is being fed to a society, you can pretty well set them up to do what you want right there in front of God and everybody. Education, religion, television, video games, control of the media for "ideological vectoring," etc. It's a pretty formidable array. But again, most of it is "terror tactics." We need to study it and find the curative means and employ them.

The science of evil-Ponerology

Do not honor our leaders, our military "geniuses," our captains of industry; they represent the most selfish faction among us. Many are sociopaths and the rest are mostly so; how else could they go through life choosing mass murder and oppression for greedy purpose? ----Chris Crittenden



Long time no blog. Been at the grind on this prison planet but I haven't forgotten the
struggle to break out. I've been studying the terrain that's all. A larg part of the terrain involves the problem of evil.

Often you hear this person is evil or that person is good. What makes a person evil and our world increasingly so? The psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski has spent considerable time researching the problem of evil and how it spreads in society. He calls this science ponerology. Although the linked article deals with political ponerology, it is interesting to see how evil invades all spheres of existence on our planet and how it is done through the psychopathic personality.

Many of the powerful used to care enough to pretend concern for others. In the process they sometimes serve others in a positive way. Lately however, the looking out for number one/self serving disregard for others displayed by leaders in all spheres of our society has been blatant to the point of the destruction of American society. This behavior has also trickled down to many of the prisioners on planet earth who take their cues from said leaders. At the other end are many others who don't take those cues but prefer to pretend these behaviors are not exhibited at all. These two issues I believe, and the author of ponerology indicates is at the essence of the problem of evi. Of the two, the latter is the most dangerous for it leaves us unprepared for dealing with the consequence of evil behavior.

For example, many refused to accept that our government would do some of the very things evidence is now showing it to be involved in. In fact many supported its activities and ostracized those who warned of the dangers a Bush government posed. Would the Bush government have been able to cause so much damage if enough Americans accepted its propensity for evil a long time ago?
Maybe it's time we all start learning about the nature of evil before it gets even worse. A good start is with studying psychopaths

Recommended reading:
The Sociopath Next Door -Martha Stout
Inside the Criminal Mind - Stanton Samenow
Antisocial Behavior-Benjamin B. Wolman
Trapped in the mirror-Elan Golomb
Unholy hungers-Barbara E. Hort
Without Conscience-Robert D. Hare
Mask of sanity- Hervey Cleckly found at http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/sanity_1.PdF
In sheep's clothing-George K. Simon
The cunning of history- Richard Rubenstein
By Way of Deception- Victor Ostrovsky