Author: Keith Armstrong

I found myself being encouraged ‘you are shown something and then you teach it to others’. As if this was the Masonic way of assuring others ‘all was well’. It was accompanied by an image of a spear falling with a flaming tail to it.

I was troubled by this, as there was no room for question. You have been shown it, implying it is safe to use. I have had occasional encounters with some claiming to be Master Masons, down the years who were unscrupulous and seemed to consider that their path is universal and therefore covers all bases. I beg to differ. Not that I wish to tar all Masons with the same brush, but the depths of corruption run deep within the organisation. The double bluff, the shady deal. Masonism shares symbols common to humanity, since it traces the progress of the soul. This does not make it special, nor does it make it ‘above the law’. Negative Karmic Actions remain negative karmic actions with the penalties that incurs.

I saw another spear, heading ‘for the heart of Eden’. I seized it and held it in its course, parallel to the ground, but now no longer threatening.

Waking I wondered what this was about. Then recalled that ‘an eleventh hour agreement has been made, that is good for Britain’, as Ed Milliband put it following the conclusion of the COP29 summit this morning. I recalled the oil barrens trying to revoke agreements made at the last summit.

I don’t want to take anyone’s source of wealth from them but I do want others to appreciate that life on Earth is not the gift of endless millennia of mindless evolution, but a gift from Life herself and it is this that is being abused by those who wish to ensure profits keep flowing, while the entire world is drowning and burning about them.

We cannot replace a single species on the planet. Each is a gift from the Divine mother, whom I maintain is the Galaxy herself, though others may claim is the Great Earth Mother or use other terms. The Indigenous people know this. It is only the power brokers who ignore the obvious.

But living in such a secular age as this these comments will seem ridiculous or quaint. Not really relevant to today’s outlook, where money counts and everything is quantified, with no appreciation of quality, only price. Earth is treated like a garbage can, with the rats and vultures picking over the best bits for themselves.

So I address the world leaders and say – please respect the creatures you share this planet with. It is not a commodity which can be bought and sold, weighed and measured. It is an extraordinary gift for each of us. Don’t trash my life, and I will do my best not to trash yours.

We are at the end of the first quarter of the century, already we can feel the speed of change slowing down after the acceleration of the new millennium.

We return to a more familiar rate of change – the world as it always is. Business as usual. At least this is what the media inform us of. At the same time entertainment becomes more violent and grim, seemingly ignoring the propaganda aspect of teaching others how to commit crimes against one another.

At the same time Pluto – upheaval, thuggery, sexual power and gangsters – moves into Aquarius – place of the people, popularity, generational movements, technology, mental health, abuse of power, domination and revolution.

At the time of Pluto’s discovery in 1926 the world saw the invention of the atom bomb, economic collapse, the rise of gangsters in US, and fascism in Europe. Uranus, ruler of Aquarius, on discovery, heralded the French Reovultion, the American War of Independence, the beginning of the end of slavery and the rise in widespread education.

Those who cry for Republics and an end to Monarchy are blinded by the media which loves nothing more than creating a story out of nothing. The Washington Post is a fine example of spin over substance. Republics are so much easier to pervert, claiming democracy as their defence, where corrupt leaders succumb to bribes and push nations into deeper poverty driven by The World Bank. This we are assured is better than a monarchy with responsibilities across the whole nation. Rome and the Empire is a fine example of corruption and tyranny from history. It is not alone. There is a difference between a king who has lived his whole life learning to care for a nation, and an emperor (or President) who has pushed himself into place.

With the advent of Aquarius we already see technology advancing so fast no-one can keep up with it. This is giving massive opportunities to criminals, whether state sponsored or not, to exploit the rest of us. This includes sexploitation, not only in terms of children sending lurid pictures of themselves and falling prey to blackmailers, but also the disappearance of young persons to feed the sex machine. Not the rather sweet version of James Brown but the horrid version that shows ‘lovely Ukranian women want friendship’ and similar that adorn our screens. Behind these pictures of beauty is a world of criminality that deals in slave trading, rape, and organ transplants. Harvesting the organs of unknown or unattached people for profit. Already the media tell stories of such extreme behaviour. governments pass legislation to encourage the use of organs for transplant, not acknowledging the black market horror that this encourages.

As the speed of change slows, we come down off the high of ‘a New millenium’ and we can take stock of the world we are building. Water courses the world over poisoned by unprocessed excreta, both human and animal. Livestock kept in enclosed spaces crushed into tiny pens not seeing the Sun. The seas are dying as this effluent is poured into them. Fish stocks falling through commercial over-fishing. Forests disappearing to be replaced by plantations. Ecocide.

In place of responsibility and social concern we see the rise of extremism all over. Children with machetes killing others. Mass shootings in mindless blood baths. Nations encouraging this behaviour in their own destrcution of neighbouring cities and nations.

This ‘New Age’ is driven by the ‘Cult of the Personality’. Look at those who wage war around the world. Charismatic leaders who demand others obey their every whim.

Meanwhile the media promote the cult of the personality making celebrities out of issues, the same faces appearing again and again on tv to support their chosen cause, such that sight is lost of this disease or that, with fame and wealth taking pride of place. Every person for themselves; the cry that people are wicked; take what you want and never mind others. The grab and go society. Instant gratification. I want it now tantrums. Glamour, glitz, fame, wealth, the gods of mammon.

Children are given heroes to idolise and aspire to become the next world famous footballer, singer in a Boy Band, dancer on the fields of glamour, while the reality for most is homelessness, starvation and no way out of the trap placed upon them other than through some criminal activity. Shoplifting. Society is tearing itself apart as nurses and teachers, who are working, have to use food banks to find enough to feed their families. In place of responsible leaders, those who demand obedience to their decrees. They cannot control themselves and yet they demand that everyone else should praise their lack of self-control. Narcissistic to the max.

It is true we have come through an acceleration in time, but instead of taking advantage of it and growing, most have squandered it in looking for a good time for themselves. Self-empowerment being understood as demanding ‘rights’ heedless of duty or responsibilities. Misguided notions of loyalty. Their heroes demonstrate this and give no heed to those who are hurt by any excesses indulged.

The next time we will experience any sort of acceleration, and even so not on the same scale, will be towards the end of the century, if we have not destroyed ourselves and ruined the planet by then.

I see they’ve taken the rugby union away from the common man. They want a subscription of £100 for a three month tournament season. Maybe in South Wales it will be good for the hospitality sector, but for many people like myself living alone it is not affordable, at this time of financial crisis in every sector, not least my personal finances.

Today the rugby, tomorrow the tennis and the football. And so it goes on.

The Masai are being moved off their land to create a rich man’s playground. Like the Cherokee under Andrew Jackson’s greed for gold when he was in the White House. He sent them on the trail of tears for 1000 miles journey through a bitter winter to invade someone else’s land, and all because a girl had given a white man a love token of a nugget from the river which started U.S. America’s first gold rush. This is Johnny Cash’s telling of that woeful part of U.S. American history. https://youtu.be/aYJSdbBQLfM?si=OWVq_8m_-9Ffhuxp

The dream is simple. Too many people on Earth. We’ll set up a station on Mars and rule them from there. While here, on ground zero, people will fight and kill one another for a mouthful of clean water.

That’s not my dream, Buster 

Meanwhile the Labour government plays into the hands of the multinationals by abolishing family run farm holdings. 20% inheritance tax?

Really! Whose side are you on?

The farmers are custodians of the countryside. The supermarkets are guardians only of their profit levels. Mass food production will remove hedgerows, create extensive acres of monoculture and threaten the small remaining wildlife families.

No, I am afraid that is a misguided course of action, if ever there was one in the face of climate disaster and diminishing biodiversity. Time to think again.

Related to the Earthshot Prize article I wrote earlier another item on the news caught my attention. It concerned Biodiversity and spoke of huge sums of money that were to be spent protecting Biodiversity, specifically if I recall correctly, in the Amazon and South American coastlands.

This money will go on creating a genome library of all the species to be found there. This was heralded by the news reader as a huge investment in biodiversity. Not, as I heard it, a huge investment into industry to perfect techniques of genetic analysis.

What is the purpose of genetic analysis? Could it be to ‘breed the perfect human’? Nothing more than Eugenics and the perpetuation of the Nazi dream of a race superior?

Such money will be wasted on the academics who carry out the study while they watch the landscape about them and the forest decimated. To what end? So that in 30 years time when the forest has gone they can hold up an exhibit and declare that once it held all these species? The exhibit itself of course will be a long encoded list, with no living example to be studied.

While humanity ignores the role of culture among species other than humans it will believe it can reintroduce species at will. What is needed is for that money to be spent, not on developing careers for budding scientists, but defending the very forests they seek to study. I despair at the ignorance that currently besmogs the human race.

I was deeply let down by the presentation of the Earthshot prize on youtube I have just been watching. The first 10 minutes told me that Earthshot prize would be starting soon. This was followed by more time wasted on ‘lovely shots of Africa’ and finally I was greeted by presenters with smiles from armpit to armpit, gleaming white teeth and punchy delivery saying how honoured they were to be here. (They had to say that to make sure they got their next gig.) This was followed by a white screen saying Eathshot will be starting soon. Two minutes of presentation split between the three contestants in a certain category with the award going to the company addressing heat waste in industry – not to the Swedish entry building homes for poor people. More celebrities with over enthusiastic grins and pop presentation styles. Followed by another white screen saying your earthshot will start shortly.

I had to turn off and watch some garbage on Amazon Prime video. The purpose of the prize as I understood it was to promote awareness of the crisis industry – and money – has brought us into. Instead I saw another Olympic style razzmatazz with relatively little content and too much presentation.

I cannot speak for anyone but myself, nor would I wish to do so, but I have to say I was deeply disappointed that something which offers real hope for the future of life on Earth should be taken over by the ‘publicity machine’ which accompanies everything these days. Are we supposed to turn a blind eye to the corruption that guides such promotions? Are we gullible enough to believe that the millions of bucks that go on the ‘entertainment’ is not slipping through the cracks to line the pockets of the very people creating the problems we are facing?

Well I have said enough. Judge for yourself.

I noticed, with some concern, that Paypal had only taken part of my payment to them, last time I cleared the Paypal Credit account I have.

Let me explain. If I use the Credit side of Paypal, which I do on occasion, I try not to carry any debt into the next month. Prior to the Payment Due Date, on receiving income I will clear the entire debt.

However what happened last time was that I was left with a debt of £0.01p. I haven’t checked to see whether this was correct with my bank statement, but if so the error was not mine but that of the company. One is given the choice of paying off the current balance, a minimum payment or another amount.

In the past it has been a simple matter of choosing current balance and the payment goes through at midnight that night.

I had an email around the same time from Paypal saying ‘We will deduct £12 in the event of a missed payment.’ I felt it was a very sneaky way of increasing their income by leaving such a small amount owed as likely to be ignored. Elon Musk must be feeling the pinch like the rest of us. After all, those satellites and people he is putting into space is as costly business.

The current American election is based on a choice between the Old and the New Testament world views.

The Old Testament preaches blame and revenge. The New Testament preaches the very opposite. When Jesus said ‘Love your enemies as yourself’ he was teaching a profound truth. When life circumstances are seen as the result of personal actions and the impact of karma on an individual, then clearly the suffering one experiences is the result of limitations in oneself. These afflictions are the means whereby the Soul tears the coverings away from the Self to allow its free growth.

Yet today in America we see a struggle between two philosophies of life based on this juxtaposition. For Donald Trump it is someone else’s fault, and he has chosen the immigrants as the source of discomfort in the lives of Americans and speaks in the most disparaging terms of these economic migrants. Many Americans are so discomforted that they need to find someone else to blame and as always choose the foreigner. They do not look to the banks and the inequality of wealth in the nation. It is too hard for them to realise that the inequity of the system is the source of their discomfort. Despite the gazumping that went on even so recently as the 2008 land grab by the banks and estate agents. All that is forgotten, when it is easy to point the finger at the disenfranchised and declare they are the cause. It is this blame culture that Trump is exploiting.

By contrast Kamala Harris declares the right of the individual to control their own body. What could be more personal among freedoms than the right to control what happens to one’s body? There is no hint of ‘blame the other fellow’ in her presentation to the American people, and as she says, the election is a choice between two very different futures for America.

That choice is readily identifiable in the stance taken in the Old Testament – my God is a jealous God and he will smite mine enemies etc. etc., a vengeful approach to life – and the New Testament ‘do unto others as you would be done by’. One can only pray the American people choose a wiser course and direction than the heckling and shouting would seem to suggest.

I have just signed a petition calling on the members of COP16, which is shortly to gather in Colombia, to ban the idea of Offsetting biodiversity depletion by supporting biodiversity elsewhere. As the promoter of the petition declares ecosystems are not interchangeable.

The very idea of offset is a fallacy aimed to secure commercial enterprises – which means the big global corporations – the right to do whatever they choose wherever they want by allowing them to point to somewhere else where they are supporting one thing or another.

Carbon offset was the first to gain traction but it is clear that planting 20 acres of new forest to offset the 20 acres of old forest being cleared for gross profit is not like for like. It will take trees at least 30 years before they actually begin to sequester carbon in any degree. That’s 30 years of increasing Carbon dioxide production unaccounted for.

The destruction of Lake Baikal cannot be offset anywhere since the ecosystems that have developed over the million years of seclusion that inland sea has known cannot be reproduced elsewhere and unique life forms and the service that lake makes to the planet is lost through reckless harvesting of the forests around it.

We see the same excuses being made in the movement of indigenous populations to new locations to allow for the tourist industry. The Inuit of Canada have faced starvation due to the policies of government agencies to move the people to a location which is both foreign to them and does not supply them with the natural resources their traditional homes bore. Farley Mowatt has written extensively on the abuses of the Inuit people by the Canadian government.

A similar condition exists in Alaska when several generations ago by decree of Washington, the local population was moved from its land base to an island. Their traditions told them never to inhabit the islands. The government forced them to do so by founding a school on the island and threatening the parents with incarceration if they failed to send their children to school. Now the island is sinking beneath the rising waters caused by the careless industrialisation of the ‘developed world’ destabilising the climate. 2023, it was reported this morning, was the warmest year on record.

We must reject the myth of offset and seriously restrict commercial enterprises – from poaching to open cast mining – from hiding the true costs of their exploitation of the world’s resources. They must be held accountable for their actions. Like air and water the world’s resources do not belong to any nation, individual or enterprise They are common to us all and we all stand to lose if these resources are squandered.