Initium, or how I learned to love the Kali-Yuga

I just picked up a rather old release from Earache Records, a DVD compilation of early 1990s Godflesh videos.
Titled, In All Languages, the disk was composed of 5 Songs, all simply crushing.
The videos are well choreographed, and the music well mastered. Each piece was visually interesting, while the sonic effect of the music was brutal. [...]

Remember when you were a kid, and you did something really naughty, your teachers used to always threaten you with:
“Now that’s going on your permanent record !”
Now here, I am dating myself a bit. I have no idea if teachers still say this, but the generation of schoolmarms, god bless their hearts, who first lay [...]

[ed. just correcting some typos. 5/2/2010]
I think that the notion of a power elite still has some validity, but in our post-democratic Western societies, it’s of a much different nature than people think when they think of terms like “The Establishment” or “the Elite”
Establishments exist, Europeans typically have a more realistic understanding of this, the [...]

Frithjof Schuon once wrote:
“…In principle, every man is capable of intellection, for the simple reason that man is man; but in fact, intellectual intuition — the “eye of the heart” — is hidden under a sheet of ice, so to speak, because of the degeneration of the human species. So we may say that pure [...]

“Kamal, that’s like totally boring !!!”
So, I am reading “Strategic Trends 2007-2036” a document of near future forecasts made by the UK’s Ministry of Defense DCDC Directorate General. I’m also reading a few other interesting bureaucratic pearls that I might post about later.
So, you should check it out. Why? Well, I find it to be [...]

Quoting the old man again:
“..he who would foresee what has to be, should reflect on what has been, for everything that happens in the world at any time has a genuine resemblance to what happened in ancient times…” - Machiavelli, in his Discourses
In other words, history matters. More than you could possibly imagine. History is [...]

I like listening to the BBC. Of course there’s the Internet, and NPR often broadcasts BBC’s World Service at night (and increasingly slipping in some BBC coverage during the day time, in the middle of All Things Considered. Truly… strange…) A decade ago, though, I saved up a couple of paychecks and bought a nice [...]

“..there are of course many exceptions, for real skill will get its reward, but in the long run it is inevitable that the lower types of labor will have an exceedingly precarious life.
One of the triumphs of our own golden age has been that slavery has been abolished over a great part of the [...]

Who remembers president Truman?
“There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.”
President Henry Truman.
And people wonder why I am such a history nerd.
Here is another quote. I think you’ve heard this one.
“Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est” “Knowledge itself is power” -Sir Francis Bacon
“..Overt and apparent virtues bring forth [...]

The question is not what you have to hide, after all everyone has something to hide. An affair, a betrayal, a personal matter. Social views, religious views,gender views, sexual views, racial views, political views, all of which may go against the grain of your corporate work culture, or your circle of friends, or people you [...]