PSYCHICBABBLEsm
by Marcy J. Gordon
New Moon in Sagittarius 1997 Issue
Hypocrisy and Chutzpah on Display
Introduction
Greetings USED KARMA readers! Please join me in celebrating USED KARMA's return to cyberspace and in congratulating publisher Tony Dickey on reincarnating the web's best astrology publication!!!
As most of you know, this column is written one month in advance to take advantage of the new moon energy (and to give my peer reviewers time to catch all the typos and mistakes). So as I write this the headlines are rife with news of the recent Hong Kong stock market crash and its repercussions worldwide, the American tour of Chinese president Jiang Zemin and the Justice Department's pursuit of $1 million a day fines from Microsoft for violating a consent decree.
This month's column will examine common themes of hypocrisy and chutzpah running through these much-hyped events, along with speculation on the larger karmic implications. Happy reading!
Big Surprise - The Corporate News Media Sucks Up to China
Those of you who read between the lines in the pabulum that passes for mainstream news were no doubt thoroughly disgusted by the coverage of President Jiang Zemin's recent visit to the United States. Particularly nauseating were the pictures of President Jiang wearing a tri-cornered hat at Williamsburg. Considering the fact that China is the most repressive country on the planet with respect to human rights, to see the person responsible for the horrors at Tiananmen Square cavorting around in the dress of the people who drafted the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights was downright macabre. In addition to its human desecration, China is also the largest polluter on the planet. Not only that, but China has just made a huge deal with the Russians for a pipeline to deliver oil from the Caspian oil fields to China so the Chinese can engage in environmental desecration on an even grander scale.
Equally disgusting are the cries of American big business that “we the people” should overlook China's environmental destruction and political and social oppression so that the American business community (the folks that buy our national political machinery lock, stock and barrel) can profit by export American goods to China and gorge themselves on cheap Chinese imports made by slaves, many of them children, laboring under truly horrific working conditions. The American press gleefully participated in furtherance of this madness by willfully underreporting the number of protesters appearing wherever President Jiang did.
However, despite these continuing atrocities the laws of karma are nonetheless still in effect. The Chinese rulership cannot continue to oppress its own people, destroy the Tibetan culture and people and rape the planet without suffering serious consequences for these actions. Right now it looks as if the Chinese can perpetuate their evils with impunity, especially with the United States sucking up to them for fun and profit. However, the game the Chinese are playing is almost over. The Chinese must make a choice to turn toward the light or be forever condemned to the darkness. At present, the Chinese leadership shows no signs of heading in the direction of truth and compassion.
This decision is truly unfortunate. Those of you who are regular readers of this column are aware that modern science has recently demonstrated what the indigenous peoples of the Earth have known since the dawn of time - that the Earth is a conscious being. The Earth's environment is a self-regulating mechanism. The Earth's adaptive capabilities are only possible through the existence of consciousness. The Earth loves us unconditionally and gives us life, but she is not a self-destructive being (as humans are). She is very patient, but She will take whatever steps are necessary to preserve herself and all the planetary lifeforms whose nourishment she is responsible for.
China is almost out of time. Unless a miracle of consciousness occurs in the Chinese leadership (and current events suggest the gross improbability of this event) the Earth will take drastic action to awaken the Chinese into a place of caring and compassion. The mechanism by which this will occur will be unpleasant, but effective. If the Chinese do not change their stand on human rights and develop respect for the Earth, there will be massive floods in 1998 that will eliminate one fourth of the Chinese population - over a quarter of a billion people. This devastation will force China to receive aid from the rest of the world in order to survive. Such aid will not be forthcoming to a country that continues to insist on oppressing its people, the Tibetan people and the Earth. This will be a sad lesson, but a necessary one. I continue to pray that China will see the light and avoid environmental disaster, but cleansing will come either through consciousness or through disaster.
Is Microsoft's Empire Headed for Collapse?
Most sensible and clear-thinking computer professionals have long loathed Microsoft for a variety of reasons. Microsoft's superior (and often pathological) marketing muscle, combined with the short-sightedness and arrogance of its technically superior competitor Apple, Microsoft has managed to make its products a standard. Thus many people who loathe Microsoft products for their inferior design, resource gluttony, numerous bugs, upgrade incompatibilities and other major annoyances are forced to use those products because their clients and vendors are using them. In addition, many industry professionals have long bemoaned Microsoft's hard-nosed and often anti-competitive business practices.
Many of us in the industry thought the 1995 consent decree Microsoft executed with the United States Justice Department was a joke. Evidently Microsoft did, too, as evidenced by their recent threat to computer manufacturers to put Microsoft's Internet Explorer icon on the desktop or forfeit the right to license the Microsoft operating system. I find it fascinating that the mainstream press, the trade press and numerous industry pundits and commentators have described this behavior as excessively hard-nosed, bullying and anti-competitive, yet none of them have described this behavior using the correct legal terms - commercial extortion and tortious interference with business relations. Perhaps they fear being sued by Microsoft's aggressive and downright nasty legal team. Or perhaps, as Bob Dylan so rightly pointed out, they are afraid to print the truth.
Perhaps it was to take media attention away from Janet Reno's other worries, but the Justice Department's attempt to seek $1 million per day in fines from Microsoft for violating the 1995 consent decree is a move in the right direction. It also speaks volumes about public pressure to control the Microsoft behemoth and reign in monopoly power in the operating system and applications software marketplace. The 1995 consent decree prevented Microsoft from illegal “tying” - that is, requiring consumers to buy a second product in order to use the first one. Microsoft's claim that its web browser, Internet Explorer, is an integral part of its operating system is but a specious attempt to drive Netscape, its chief competitor in the web browser marketplace, out of business.
Microsoft has been phenomenally savvy in grabbing commercial domination and keeping it, but its colossal chutzpah, so say nothing of its propensity for stretching the truth beyond recognition, may not survive the light of day in its present battle with the U.S. Justice Department. Microsoft has vowed to fight this one to the death. With Pluto in Sagittarius, the truth will be exposed, and the truth has never been a friend to Microsoft.
The Hong Kong Stock Market Crash and Other Mass Delusions
Anyone who knows anything about the business world knows that the stock market is a form of legalized gambling designed to screw the ordinary investor and benefit the rich. The value of a stock has absolutely nothing to do with the financial viability of a company (value of assets, profitability, return on investment) - it is all psychological manipulation of the public through the corporate media and insider trading by the wealthy. Some pundits were blaming the media for the market crash, but the media were not the one making the trades, were they? As usual in every stock market crash since the stock market's creation, ordinary investors lost their shirts while the rich came out fine in the end.
And exactly why are the Asian markets in such tough shape? Because they are making the mistakes of catering to the egos of the rich and powerful instead of taking care of their people. Thailand and Malaysia are in terrible shape because they have been borrowing money from western countries and putting it all into building large phallic monuments to their ruler's egos while wasting energy and creating pollution on a massive scale.
Why in the world does Kuala Lumpur need the world's tallest skyscraper? Yet there it is, half-empty, being kept company by numerous other construction projects that lay rotting and rusting half-completed because there is no money available for their completion now that Asian currencies are so substantially devalued. Why was it built? As a monument to the Malaysian ruler's ego in the heat of his delusion that the Malaysian economy would expand without end and rival western economies. This pipedream and others like it have left many Asian economies in ruins while wealthy western currency traders made a fortune watching the Asian economies collapse. Meanwhile the corporate media reports that all is fine because the American stock market regained much of its value immediately after the crash.
If any of this insanity makes sense to you, then please write and explain it to me. If not, then please join me in praying that the people of the world finally learn from history's mistakes instead of mindlessly repeating them. See you here next month.
Copyright 1997 Marcy J. Gordon. All rights reserved. The author wants you to know you are free to copy and distribute this article for noncommercial purposes, provided you reproduce it in its entirety and credit the author. For quotation permission, please contact the author at mgordon@pipeline.com.
“The naked truth is still taboo wherever it can be seen.” From Dirge, by Bob Dylan.