Why Robber Barons Love Building Dams... (repost)

The accursed Bakun Dam (brainchild of Mahathir and Daim) is doomed to fail.

Imagine we’re gathered in some holy place. An architectural wonder. Like St Paul’s Cathedral in Rome or the St Sophia Mosque in Instanbul. Or perhaps the Gateway of the Sun in Peru or the Giza Pyramid Complex in Egypt. And we’re here to knock this whole place down and build a megamall right here because it would make better economic sense.

Let's have Wal-Mart and McDonald's at this popular tourist location.

Imagine the tremendous outcry against such an outrage. We’re talking about demolishing a cultural and spiritual artifact – a monument to a whole religious tradition. We’re talking about trading in our prophets for profits. Absolutely unthinkable, right?

Now: imagine you’re living in a small house you built yourself, beside a clear stream in a beautiful, forested river valley. Your ancestors have lived here for a hundred generations. According to your folklore, the landscape is the living flesh of divine progenitors whose essence condensed to form familiar features - like the mountains, the rivers, the rocks and the trees - and who are integral aspects of a Great Spirit inhabiting all forms, a unity in astonishing diversity. To you, the fact that the land is sacred – endowed with meaning, significance, and intrinsic spiritual value – is so obvious, no one needs to put it into words.

Imagine we’re here to log this magnificent forest, blow up the hills, dig up the rocks, turn a green sanctuary into a giant construction site, seriously pollute the water basin, cause massive erosion in a water catchment area, and dam up one of the few remaining free-flowing rivers in the country. Why? Because economic growth demands greater water consumption - and water supply is a growth industry. And because we have been grossly insensitive in the way we use and manage our water resources.

Sungai Luit by Doreen Ong

A CLASH OF PERSPECTIVES

We are born into cultural perspectives that become imperceptible to us - until we find ourselves outside of them. Like fish that never wonder what water is, we grow up with assumptions about reality we rarely question. For instance, we rarely question the need for governments... or armies... or landlords... or caste systems (whether hereditary or monetary).

When we hear the word “development” we assume we know what it means. We experience the flow of time as linear, just as the world looks flat to a lowlander. When conversing with people from a different cultural and linguistic background, we assume they aren’t as clever as ourselves – because they’re not very fluent in our language.

When urbanites encounter country folk, they unconsciously assume an air of superiority. Surely our sophisticated way of life is far better than theirs! Surely they’re better off becoming more like us (no way they could ever become just like us, of course, since we have too far a headstart on them!)

Civilization creates art, it’s true, but art creates artifice and artificiality. Industrial man sees the wilderness as a vast resource that can be converted into private wealth. Recklessly, ruthlessly, we go about building our national aspirations by tearing down our natural heritage.

Morally, this is no different than a cannibal eyeing an infant as a delicious and convenient source of protein. The wilderness, like a baby, has only beauty and innocence as its defences. When Darwinian notions of “survival of the fittest” form the basis of modern society, the total extermination of entire species becomes justified in terms of Them or Us.

CONVERT OR DESTROY THE SAVAGES!

Unfortunately, some of us don’t truly appreciate anything until it’s gone forever. Hardwoods can be converted into hard cash. Ignorant savages can be converted into consumers, taxpayers, mindless believers, obedient slaves of the System.

Filthy heathens have no souls and feel no pain - unlike us civilized God-fearing folks.

Some of us have tried to warn the others about the folly of such shortsighted behavior – and the dangerous consequences lurking ahead. For the most part we have been ignored.

The Earth fights back by getting feverish. When her flesh is torn apart by man’s rapacious machines, she shudders and quakes and sweats profusely, releasing a deluge of mysterious plagues upon us.

The Earth coughs and we realize we're living on the back of a gigantic whale.

At the fountain of knowledge, we drank too thirstily, only to become drunk with a false sense of power. We thought we could manipulate the masses with fear and greed. But the fear and greed enslaved us instead. Now we find ourselves powerless to alter our destructive course. We’re on the fast track and can’t stop the mindless runaway train of economic growth. Our materialistic definition of growth has limited us to the physical world, and excluded us from the limitless realm of the metaphysical. This growth has now taken on the form of a cancer that is about to kill us all – unless we redirect our attention to growth in mental and spiritual terms.

Cash crops bring fast bucks - and fast bucks is what drives "progress."

For a start, we can apologize for the hideous damage we have inflicted on the wilderness and indigenous ways of life. Then we could focus our efforts on helping the wounds heal. Only in a quest for renewed wholeness can we find our collective way home. And only through the heart can we know the universal love that redeems tragedy and transforms it into a higher truth.

Damnation is the fate of those who would turn the Earth into a living hell where everything is measured in terms of buy and sell. Our salvation can only come from regaining our lost innocence and restoring the beauty of our wildernesses.


We don’t really have a choice: win-win or lose-lose are the only options left.

[Written in June 2001 in response to the Selangor Dam project; but still topical in view of all the destructive dams currently under construction, or under consideration. First posted 3 November 2009, reposted 30 June 2014 & 30 May 2019]

Commercial Break (repost)

THE PROMISED LAND

 

I have no idea who directed this hilarious ad but my friend Vernon forwarded it to me and I just wanted to share a good laugh with all of you. 

RURAL ATM

 

I believe this one was forwarded by my ersatz spouse Praemeenah all the way from Yugoslavia or wherever she happens to be right now. A killer!

[First posted 30 September 2008]

Meltdown: the men who crashed the world ~ from Al Jazeera (repost)

 

The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929.

But how did it all go so wrong?

Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place.

Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced 'light touch regulation' - giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace.

All this, and with key players making the wrong financial decisions, saw the world's biggest financial collapse.

In the first episode of Meltdown, we hear about four men who brought down the global economy: a billionaire mortgage-seller who fooled millions; a high-rolling banker with a fatal weakness; a ferocious Wall Street predator; and the power behind the throne.

[First posted 1 October 2011]

A PAIR OF DOGS AND TWO SHINY DIMES (revisited)

How clever can you get? A pair o’ dogs is a paradox. Two shiny dimes is the Cockney way of saying “new paradigms.” So this is “paradox and new paradigms” time, folks!

Quantum physicists report that electrons are both particles and waves; even coined a word for this paradoxical condition – wavicles!

Electrons are fundamental to our everyday world. They swirl around the nuclei of our very atoms, generating currents as they flow as electricity, and pass through integrated circuitry to produce the bedazzling wonders of electronics.

Electrons are like people

How so? Look at any big modern city from the air. The higher you go the more it resembles a microchip, but as you zoom back in, it transforms into one big printed circuit board with all these capacitors, resistors, diodes, and semiconductors sticking up like tiny erections: highrises, office complexes, shopping malls, stadiums, sprawling suburbs, road networks. All these cables, tubes, and colorful wires transporting electrons hither and thither, generating the humdrum hum of rush-hour traffic.

The moment you make the connection between micro and macro, you begin to comprehend this modified and updated adage: “As within, so without.” The esoteric insights gained by magicians and quantum physicists DO apply to our everyday lives, and the sooner we get comfortable with paradox, the less rigid our mindsets become. I’ve never known anybody to suffer from an overly flexible mindset, but those who cling to rigid perspectives and beliefs certainly cause a great deal of suffering, especially to their own loved ones.

Take the classic EITHER/OR stance for example. When you hear some buffoon saying, “You’re EITHER with me, OR against me” – watch out! He or she is attempting to box you in, leave you with another Hobson’s choice – which is really no choice at all. In life, it’s never black OR white, there’s always an entire spectrum of grays in between – not to mention the possibility of spontaneous rainbows of vivid colors from which to choose!

The antidote to either/or is BOTH/AND. Most times it’s BOTH this AND that, not either/or. You can apply this to just about any situation. Take the hullabaloo surrounding the issue of “moral policing”: you hear arguments on both sides, some advocating strict control over what young people do for fun, and others defending the individual’s right to define his or her own concept of “morality.”

I personally LOATHE the very idea of allowing the State to dictate social behavior; but that doesn’t mean I like the idea of my own teenage children frying their neural circuitry and thwarting their own potential with stupid-making drugs. So the real issue isn’t whether moral policing is okay or not okay – but, rather, why do we keep resorting to FORCE when attempting to deal with any situation? Who was it who said: “When you think like a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”?

I find it unfathomable that there are so many who actually believe they can change people’s behavior from outside - through coercion, intimidation, and threats. Sure, point a knife at someone’s throat and they’ll give you their money or do whatever you say – but when the State legitimizes the use of brute force, it reinforces the Criminal Element and compels it to retaliate even more brutally.

Most times there is really no solution required beyond looking hard into the mirror and acknowledging that we’ve not been giving our kids enough attention, affection, and appreciation – which is why they don’t enjoy hanging around the homestead. I’ve seen so many parents justify their workaholism by saying it’s all for their children’s sake; they want to accumulate as much as possible, so they can give their kids the best education money can buy, and so on. But what they’re overlooking is that every kid essentially wants their parents to love and befriend them – everything else follows from that; and “education” itself can easily be shown to be merely another profitable racket run by know-nothings who actually don’t give a hoot whether your kids can think for themselves, as long as they pay their tuition fees on time.

“It’s a competitive world,” I hear parents parrot, “and we want to equip our children with everything they need to compete successfully.” First of all, when you have even the slightest understanding of quantum mechanics and the concept of the superconscious plenum, you would know that this is indeed an “observer-created” universe. Which, in plain words, means we see what we believe – not the other way around!

In effect, if you BELIEVE the world is “competitive” you project around yourself a hostile, unfriendly environment... and then you pass that holographic hell to your children as a legacy. Now, if you LOVE your kids, WHY on earth would you want to inflict such a bleak scenario on them? After all, the “future” is really just a bunch of different scenarios we’re collectively scripting with our present beliefs and perceptions.

Disaster, catastrophe, eco-apocalypse, Armageddon, and the New World Order are only scenarios generated by the old paradigms of Darwinian survivalism and Malthusian not-enough-to-shareism. They have absolutely no basis in reality... despite what the Experts say.

To become an Expert you have to embrace and extol and perpetuate the old paradigms. However, by consciously opting to create entirely new paradigms wherein all life can blossom into greater joy, freedom, and limitless abundance – without doing so at the expense of any other lifeform – you are effectively bypassing all possibility of doomsday, futility, and despair. Ask yourself now, isn’t that something worth putting your energy into, rather than gossiping about other people’s sex life?

[Originally published in the June 2005 issue of VIDA! First posted 8 January 2007, reposted 15 November 2017 & 30 July 2018]

EXECUTIVE SOOT & A DOLLAR FOR DOLLAH ~ by Antares

EXECUTIVE SOOT

the funny man speaks through harmless lips. He
operates in the presentperfect sense of his
pastparticiple mind & occasionally wonders why
the future seems so tense. Serious
man almost funny busynessman
working honest hours &
dishonest lifetimes
racing rockinghorses
in the dark. Honest
workingman eats his lunch
crammed between punchclock &
traffic jam. Big
bossman does his algebra
(ma & pa said son you'll go far)
with profit&loss plan. Funny
money man who saves his honey
like a busy bee on dear ol'
Maggie's Farm

[1969]

A DOLLAR FOR DOLLAH

A dollar for Dollah
And two for Maniam
Ah Kow has three
Now he's a Tan Slee


Datuk, datuk on the dole
Why do you do only what you're told?
Shake your sarong, tap your feet
Nod your head and grab a seat!


Errand boy blue
Look what you've grown into
From errand boy to erring man
In just a year or two


Mommy says I'll grow up strong
If I don't hang around the grownups for too long
Daddy says I'll grow up rich
If I don't mind being a sonofabitch

[written in 1970, revised 1994; from MOTH BALLS (Magick River, 1994)]

Drawings by Antares

[First posted 20 September 2011]

How do we get off this nightmare train? (reprise)

"Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount." ~ Winston Churchill, quoting a Hindustani proverb

[From The Things Politicians Say About Things, compiled by K. Das; illustrated by Antares, 1987]

"Busynessmen, they drink my wine; plowmen dig my earth..."

ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER (by Bob Dylan, 1967)

There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth

No reason to get excited, the thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, their footservants too

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

A glimpse of what the new spiral of evolution looks like...

My friend Dervin Frank first alerted me to the 528 Hz phenomenon recently. I was already aware that there's a growing 432 Hz movement to liberate humanity from the 440 Hz trap the Rockefeller family got us into starting from 1926 - but now I find there has been a great deal of independent research into cymatics (the study of waveforms, and sound is all about waveforms). Resensitizing ourselves to sound waves and their effects on our cellular consciousness is a powerful key to freedom from New World Order mind control!



Charles Gilchrist's passion for sacred geometry is infectious. I haven't found a better introduction to this profound subject so far...



Information of this nature was once classified top secret - and was only revealed to high initiates of mystery schools. Today anyone can access it on YouTube - if they either chance upon it (like I did) or are given a heads up (that's why I'm blogging this material!)



It's so simple the mind boggles. The mystery of Creation itself... revealed in how a single point of Consciousness creates energy, motion and spacetime by dividing itself into two polarities, yin and yang... and then becomes multidimensional... by using the universal principles of pi, phi and the Fibonacci Sequence!




For Use with HEADPHONES! (A Theta/Isochronic and binaural entrainment audio program).

This video/audio file was formulated especially for those of you who are having a bad day. Having 10,000 thoughts exploding in your head all at once right now?

No Problem.

Put on a pair of GOOD headphones. Turn out the lights. Click on the Full Screen option and sit back and listen and watch.

I guarantee that after 20 Mins you will FEEL better.

Pictures are REAL GENUINE Unidentified Flying Phenomenon (Photos authenticated by Elvis and Bigfoot).

Enjoy!

[First posted 17 September 2011]

Drunvalo Melchizedek & The Maya of Eternal Time (14-part web broadcast)

Drunvalo Melchizedek introduces Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez and the Mayan Council of Elders who have a cogent and powerful message for the modern world. This easy-to-follow web broadcast in 14 parts was kindly brought to my attention by my starbrother Heiko Niedermeyer. Bookmark this and view the entire series at your own leisure - but do it soon!

Proceed to Part 2 on YouTube where you may view the rest without interruption.

Return of the Son of the Incurable Dr M? (recycled & updated)

TRICK OR TREAT? Saying "Hallo" To Changes On Halloween

ON OCTOBER 31ST, 2003, I awoke with a big bellyache – something I rarely experience as my guts are pretty resilient. I had to skip breakfast, my favorite meal of the day, and meditate on where the problem might have originated. Was it something I ate? I recall feeling a slight unease in the stomach area as early as yesterday morning but it subsided enough for me to ignore it.

Then I thought about the incurable Dr M. He’s scheduled to “retire” today... isn’t he? Hard to believe he won’t still be calling the shots from behind the curtains, he’s such a power junkie, we’ll have to watch this space.

And I remembered that not so long ago, a large number of us were real mad at him for sending his goon squads out to intimidate, beat up and incarcerate all those clamoring for political change by going out on the streets. Things got so heavy national laureate Shahnon Ahmad felt compelled to publish a novel called SHIT – a sort of post-colonic polemic against stubborn old turds that won’t make way for younger hotshits. I didn’t make it past the first chapter but the book was indeed a provocative artifact documenting the acute constipation of our political process. [Umno backbenchers raised a big stink and Parliament quickly passed a motion to revoke Shahnon Ahmad's national laureateship, which led to his joining PAS.]

Uneasy stomachs are an indication that something’s not quite right. Could it be simple greed? Did we eat too much junk food too fast? Perhaps the buffet wasn’t all that fresh? Did we eat the mussels – they looked so tasty – maybe they were a bit off? Did flies lay eggs on the sambal belacan? Did someone slip some arsenic into the nasi lemak?

The stomach is the seat of the solar plexus, home of the ego. When someone complains of sakit perut, the cause is often ego insecurity. Why should we be egoically insecure, just because our Great Leader has announced his departure from the prime ministership? Isn’t the ship of state in capable hands? Surely, the tragic tale of the Titanic isn’t about US?

Is it possible that a sizeable number of Malaysians support the status quo because we see in Dr M the sort of chest-thumping alpha-male gorilla we secretly want to be? He has been performing all his daredevil feats on the nation’s (or at least his sons’) behalf – frogmarching the economy out of the IMF’s way through the fiscal crises of 1997-98 while singlehandedly beating back the angry mobs marching out of mosque gates and into the streets, scaring shopkeepers, tourists, and Umnopotentiaries.

This sort of acrobatics certainly takes a whole lot of gall and sheer guts to pull off. Indeed, one is reminded of the Baobab in St Exupery’s Le Petit Prince which sucks up all the nutrients from the soil, so nothing can grow in its monstrous shadow except the most unscrupulous weeds.

Perhaps there have been moments when the indomitable Dr M was forced to wear adult diapers so no one would notice his nervous diarrhea: bringing Anwar Ibrahim to trial was indeed a hairy and scary affair. True, Mahathir had 17 years of political incumbency in his favor – plenty of time to create a whole generation of bureaucratic drones. Still, you had to have skin as tough and thick as a rhinoceros to call yourself a judge or attorney-general or the chief of police in Dr M’s regime. Even playing head of medical services required a stiff shot of Chivas three times a day after meals, what more being assigned the unenviable task of editor-in-chief of a national daily?

Never in the nation’s memory since 1969 has the horizon of decency been so totally obscure – and this isn’t something like the annual smog we can pin on the Indons. The moral murk simply won’t blow or wash away, despite disastrous flood-bringing monsoons. It’s something every proud Malaysian has had to accept and live with – if he or she isn’t particularly keen to have PAS rise to power and separate the sexes by hudud and turn the country into another Iran – thereby replacing a secular tyranny with a religious one, O the Irany of it all!

Then along came Dubya and the Neocon White House in 2000 - even as the world sighed in short-lived relief that we had rolled over into Y2K without apparent mishap or a cybernetic apocalypse. In very short order, the astonishing behavior of the world’s remaining superpower, New Rome aka the USA, began to eclipse financial and political improprieties closer to home.

But soon it began to dawn on a sleepy-eyed humanity that carpetbagging and skullduggery are as pivotal to power plays as Rodgers and Hammerstein or Lerner and Loewe to musical plays. With the benefit of hindsight and increased historical insight, we recognized that the inheritance and maintenance of earthly power has been an outrageous scam from the Year Dot, regardless of what costumes the players wear. Politically, the rakyat are still wearing balls and chains in Plato’s Cave, mesmerized by the wayang kulit extravaganza put on by a wily priesthood of black magicians, today known as doctors of spin (because they love making the masses dance to their tune).

Dr M’s pointed tirades against the Bush push for Global Empire were excellent PR. They served to distract local yokels from the stench of unwashed urinals at home and unify them against what was clearly seen as a larger threat – the Return of the Ugly American.

“We must outlaw war on earth,” the Brilliant Statesman declared to the international press on the eve of the barbaric bombing of Baghdad. And a week later he would mollify his discomfited generals with a fresh order of jetfighters or submarines.

“The Jews rule the world by proxy,” he would remark at the OIC conference with stunning political incorrectness, while throwing another rubber bone to the baying Ketuanan Melayu faction, to keep them from burning down the Chinese Assembly Hall (where industrious little yellow Jews are manufactured under licence from the Awakening Dragon).

And once again we have to admire, even if reluctantly, his absolute foxiness and firm grasp of statecraft. What better way to win hearts and consolidate the Islamic world at a time when most of us are speechless with horror at Ariel Sharon’s unimpeded Palestinian holocaust. For the first time in more than two decades, I find myself feeling almost proud that our beloved country has spawned such a feisty uncrowned monarch.

Now if his final act as prime minister is to unconditionally release Anwar Ibrahim from wrongful confinement in a gesture of clemency and reconciliation, even his worst detractors will soon stop calling him Mahafiraun Zalim (the Cruel Pharaoh) and regale his reign as one of monumental achievements amidst tumultuous uncertainties.

The good news is that I sometimes see myself in all these strutting and fretting manifestations of Macbeth – and therefore cannot persevere in my righteous indignation at their perceived misdemeanors. At the end of the day, they are no more inhuman than any of us who has ever been irritated to the point of destroying a particularly troublesome ant colony. For these are colossal, demiurgic egos who view the great unwashed as only good for casting ballots or shooting bullets at official enemies.

Well, here’s more good news: modern incarnations of ancient gods are a dying breed and will soon become extinct – unless they evolve into ethical aesthetes and use their innate charisma for artistic purposes, to produce beauty and truth – instead of more fear and greed and ecocide.

This Halloween, I make my peace with Dr Mahathir [again!]. For all the unsympathetic judgments I have passed on his actions as a prime minister - and for all the unkind thoughts I have held in my heart as regards his well-being - I privately and publicly apologize.* He has only tried, like his precedessors, to be a Father to the Nation; and, as is inevitably the case within every family, there will always be a rebellious son or daughter to contend with, who won’t buy Bapak’s little lies and who can see only his feet of clay.

My own dad used to think fluorescent tubes are a wonderful idea – I vigorously disagree. Some of my best friends are convinced that the 3D Matrix is all there is to existence – I absolutely disagree. Most of the world still believes that Time is Money and that Money is the Bottom Line. As for me, I stubbornly believe (like José Argüelles) that Time is Art and the Bottom Line is Truth – Truth tempered with Love.

There comes a time when every prodigal son or daughter becomes a parent in their own right – and we are suddenly confronted by a thousand grey areas, a million-and-one anxieties, an infinitude of conflicting agendas to balance and juggle against a tidal wave of unforeseen changes. Suddenly, we see the futility of blaming our parents for the way we turned out. We stop hating them for having been overly harsh, heavy-handed, too busy, too ignorant of or totally indifferent to our emotional needs.

Who we are and what we shall become are entirely in our own hands.

But it certainly helps to first reconcile, redeem and heal our past with compassion, understanding and non-judgmental love. Then it would no longer seriously concern us who’s steering the ship, driving the bus or piloting the plane – unless they happen to be power-drunk on duty and their bad performance puts us at risk, in which event it should be a simple matter to get them sacked at the earliest opportunity. Just as you don’t normally want to know the cabbie’s name unless he cheats you or is unacceptably rude, why should we worry whether the prime minister’s name is Anwar, Archibald, Balbir, Chee Cheong Fun, Dorairajah, Delilah, Elijah, or Nurul Izzah?**


Happy Halloween, folks! Don’t be so easily spooked. Remember, politics is just a bunch of rowdy kids in scary costumes out for some tricks or treats.

Antares
31 October 2003

-----
* Hard to keep my promise. That Metallic-voiced Megalomaniac is so goddamn irritating, I'll have to deliver one more tight slap before I apologize all over again.

** Notice I deliberately omitted the name Mukhriz. No way this land can survive being ravaged by TWO Mahathirs. And that smug-faced Son of the Monster Magnet doesn't have a single original idea in his head anyway.

[First published 31 October 2008, reposted 17 August 2013]

A TIME FOR MASSIVE CLEANSING AND CLEARING OF PSYCHIC TOXINS (repost)

On June 5th, 2009, I attended an 11:11 Activation Ceremony at a local healing center named "Eagle's Nest" in Sungai Penchala Village. It was a difficult spot to locate but scenic enough once I arrived. There were some really sweet folks already gathered there and it promised to be a memorable occasion.

The ceremony proceeded smoothly enough, though the energy was rather low-key throughout. For me the best part was an extended late night supper with three funky women afterwards.

A few days later, to my utmost surprise, both my legs began breaking out in boils. This was something I hadn't experienced in decades. I couldn't figure out what was happening in my body. Where was all this poison coming from?

It so happened that around this time my second daughter paid me one of her rare visits with an empath and energetic healer named Sandra Sweetman in tow. Sandra is extremely sensitive to magnetic fields and in the course of our conversation mentioned that she had recently been to the Eagle's Nest and felt troubled by what she experienced there. She said it was like the scene of a violent murder - the whole place was unsettled and rife with murky frequencies.

I couldn't say for sure that the toxins in my bloodstream erupting as boils on my legs came from the Eagle's Nest. But I had been walking around barefoot part of the time and might have absorbed some of the unwholesome exhalations from the earth. Nevertheless, I was aware that the area was charged with very primitive magic going pretty far back in time. There must have been a large enclave of bomohs (Malay witch-doctors) residing in Sungai Penchala within the last hundred years or so.

It was also clear that ruthless "development" over the last few decades had all but wiped out the original forest, including a thriving Orang Asli community in Bukit Lanjan, leaving tiny patches of green here and there. Perhaps the small hill upon which the Eagle's Nest had been built was the final refuge of all the nature spirits that had been rudely evicted from their forest home by a massive invasion of chainsaws and bulldozers?


A close friend who had been at the June 5th ceremony complained of acute lethargy and went for a medical check-up. It was discovered that she was suffering from severe bacterial infection and required a massive dose of antibiotics. She later had a session with clairvoyant healers who described her condition as a case of vampire attack. Apparently, her body was infested with astral parasites which had to be pulled out like ticks.

The clairvoyants were assisted by a shaman named Ishtar who told my friend he once lived in Sungai Penchala and on one of his walks around the area had noticed a disturbance in the magnetic field. On closer investigation he realized it was a dimensional crack through which many astral and elemental entities were emerging into the physical world. He immediately sealed the portal the best he could - but it appears to have been reopened since.

I tell this anecdote as an example of what happens when humans resort to primitive forms of sorcery to attain petty objectives, e.g., gaining political influence, securing the affections of a desired lover, or attracting heaps of money.

The entire Malay Archipelago is rife with ancient magic and mysterious phenomena. To attain and retain political power in their own countries, many have relied on occult help from professional mystics-for-hire. President Sukarno, for instance, was known to have consulted an old magician who lived in the Elephant Caves of Bali. Even Mahathir, a medical doctor by qualification, was widely rumored to be in possession of a powerful family toyol (gremlin) who did his bidding and protected him from psychic attacks.


By now it's common knowledge that Rosmah Mansor, the crime minister's larger-than-life wife, is particularly fond of magical talismans and charms and that she herself possesses a measure of witchy powers.


On 7 September 2008 I posted a story on my blog with the following commentary:

Oh dear, what is this country coming to? On the eve of the Permatang Pauh by-election, Malaysia Today featured a statutory declaration by one Thangarajoo a/l Thangavelu, former chauffeur of Datuk Kenneth Eswaran, close personal friend of DPM Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor, attesting that he had "on numerous occasions" driven a Hindu mystic named "Mr Ji" to the residence of Najib and Rosmah for the purpose of conducting Hindu prayer rituals "to ward off evil." Swamiji's magic is clearly potent, which might explain why neither Najib nor Rosmah has been subpoenaed to testify at the Altantuya murder trial, despite glaring evidence linking both to the crime.

As Raja Petra Kamarudin rightly pointed out, if what Mr Thangarajoo stated is true, it would totally invalidate Najib's widely publicized attempt to declare his innocence and non-involvement in the macabre Altantuya murder by swearing on the Koran before a mosque audience that he had "never met that Mongolian woman."


One cannot claim to be a bona fide Muslim and believe in Hindu ritual magic at the same time.

In any case, I must report that ever since the Permatang Pauh by-election which saw Anwar Ibrahim winning massively to become Parliamentary Opposition Leader, the psychic atmosphere in this country has become progressively denser and murkier. The astral gunk became even thicker towards the end of 2008 when Najib's ascension to power came under severe attack on all fronts.

Shortly before Najib took over as prime minister from Abdullah Badawi in April 2009, it was reported in the press that security personnel had stumbled on a mysterious object with Jawi letters written all over it hidden under the PM's chair. What does that mean? As to be expected, there was no follow-up to these reports.

However, I couldn't help but notice that petty squabbles soon began erupting from within the ranks of the Pakatan Rakyat - and every time there was a minor misunderstanding between PKR, DAP or PAS officials, the BN-controlled media would magnify it a hundred times, thereby creating the illusion that the Pakatan Rakyat was on the verge of disintegrating.


In the last few months the situation has further deteriorated with the onset of the annual smog caused by oil palm plantations (mostly owned by Malaysian tycoons and their cronies in Umno/BN). I myself have had to make a conscious effort to maintain my emotional equilibrium against a strong tendency towards general irritability, alternating with bouts of despair as I see the forces of darkness and injustice regain ground within the national psyche.

The fact that ever since the obscene Perak power grab people have mostly given up on the Malay rulers as bastions of justice and wisdom doesn't help either. Look around and you will notice that every public institution has been corrupted beyond redemption: first on the list, of course, would be the Polis Di Raja Malaysia, closely followed by the gestapo-like Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, the Judiciary (especially the so-called higher courts), and even the Malaysian Medical Council whose director-general, Ismail Merican, has shamelessly revealed himself as a political pawn of the ruling party, particularly over the controversial Saiful and Kugan cases.

Things came to a head in mid-July with the grotesque death-in-custody of Teoh Beng Hock, a fresh-faced young political secretary with the Democratic Action Party, who was hauled in for "questioning" by the MACC - and never left their premises alive. The inquest is ongoing, albeit at snail's pace.

One can easily conclude that the entire nation is now being mismanaged by black magic, just as Haiti was with the entry of the Duvalier family - or Uganda under Idi Amin and Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe.

What can we do to neutralize this extreme negativity?

The most effective method would be to pay close attention to our own personal integrity. Rid your hard drive of corrupted and useless files; uninstall programs you never use; and clear your computer system of any spyware that might have embedded itself in your root directory. In short, cleanse yourself of useless fears, prejudices, and antiquated beliefs.

If you fall ill, look upon it as the body's way of cleansing itself of toxins. I allowed the sores on my legs to run their course in order to rid my body of all the bacteria that had infiltrated my defences. I chose to view it as a special service I was performing for the residents of Eagle's Nest, helping them clear the space for healing.

Awaken the shamanic potential in yourself. Each of us is endowed with a certain amount of psychic sensitivity and the ability to heal ourselves. Now more than ever, these natural gifts are urgently needed - if we are to free ourselves and our beloved land of malignant and vicious parasites that have fattened themselves off our vital energy for generations.

[First posted 13 August 2009]

STRICTLY FOR PUSSY LOVERS (repost)

Cats are oh so dramatic...

Not roast chicken again!

Keeps the whiskers dry.

Erks!

Waterboarding a Taliban cat.

No Keep Off The Grass signs either...

Come on, let's do the penguin shuffle!

Bolero!

Alledgedly asleep...

Cat Stevens before he became a dog.

Pass me the monkey wrench, will you?

Federico Felini & Caterine Deneuve

Karate Kat

Late again... never date a Persian!

Jaws with paws.

Can you fetch the sunblock, honey?

Let this be a warning to you. No more street protests!

Merce Cunningham's cat.

Kung Fu Kat.

Suck my tail.

Oops... dropped the tampon!

Chinaman bite cat... not news.

Good to have some me-ow time.

This post is dedicated to 

the sweet furry memory of 

Solara's magickal cat,

Mari-Mari.

This bunk is taken. 

Hrrmmmmph.

[First posted 6 June 2012, reposted 5 August 2015]