I decided that I wasn't able to sustain the conversational style of writing I was doing before. Trying to get a point across within a written conversation, while creative and interesting, made the articles far too long. I've gone back to the normal article style of writing, as it's more succinct and to the point. Much better when you're trying to grab someone's attention and they might not have enough time.

If you think that life is a result of your thoughts manifesting into reality in order to help you grow spiritually, then this article is for you.

With your thoughts creating your reality, it's easy for you to think that what you want can be created, which is what the Law of Attraction is all about. You attract to yourself those things which are most on your mind, and thus create them from your mind.

This all happens inadvertently, and works on the principle of 'like attracts like' and, if we go a bit deeper, into the very fabric of reality itself.

We exist as energy in a universe of energy. That's a scientific fact, if you need one. It's indisputable. Everything is connected, and everything has an effect on everything else. As you move around your world, your influence causes a change on it; on the environment, the people around you, the events that you're part of. Everything changes because of you.

On a deeper level, changes occur not just because of your thoughts and your actions, but also your feelings. Have you noticed when you're angry about something, things happen that just make you more angry? When you're having a bad day, more things happen to make it even worse? And when you're having a good day, nothing can go wrong.

This is because your reality is also influenced by your feelings, not just your thoughts.

And your feelings can go pretty deep, along with the reasons for those feelings. There can be so much hurt and anger and sadness inside of you, all of it going back to some past event that you haven't resolved for yourself.

These feelings are part of your reality too! And by being part of your reality inside of you, they're manifest into your reality outside of you too. What is inside, is outside.

Anger, hurt, sadness... Any emotion you have inside of you is going to be manifested in the people around you. Many of the people that come into your life will have the same emotions as you, reflecting back to you what is inside of you.

In fact, you could quite easily work out what kinds of unresolved emotions and issues you have simply by looking at the people around you. They're reflecting you, in all your glory.

The feelings that they bring out in you are feelings that are yours. Not theirs. It's unwise of you to say something like, "I hate them because they do something I would never do!"

All that says is that you hate yourself because you actually do the same thing. What you hate in others is also what you hate in yourself, but you just don't acknowledge it!

And it's because the emotion is unacknowledged that it has to manifest outside of you, to make you aware of it. It needs acknowledgement before it can be healed, and so it needs to make you aware of it.

The funny thing is, the more you refuse to acknowledge that emotion within you, the more you'll see it manifesting in your life.

Here's an example...

I really despise how George Bush does things. I despise how his arrogance and ignorance have created a situation that has affected the entire world, plunging it into knee-jerk reactions based on fear. Not only is the world reflecting Bush's fears back to him, but Bush is reflecting to me my own frustrations with arrogance and ignorance inside of myself.

I don't like being arrogant and ignorant, and yet I see those qualities in me. When I see someone with the same qualities, it makes me very angry about how arrogant and ignorant they are. The problem is, all I'm really seeing are reflections of me!

In order for me to get past my own arrogance and ignorance, I need to become consciously aware of it. I need to acknowledge it. I need to apologise to myself for ignoring that part of me, and tell myself that I love me.

"I'm sorry, I love you."

That's what I need to say. That's what YOU need to say to all those emotions inside of you which are crying out for acknowledgement by manifesting themselves into the world around you.

And here's an interesting little side effect.

When you can heal the problem within you, then the manifesting of it will fade away. When you can heal your unresolved emotional issues, the triggers for those emotional issues will no longer be there.

When I can heal my own arrogance and ignorance, for example, then George Bush will cease to be the cause of such frustration in my life. In fact, George Bush himself will be healed of his own arrogance and ignorance, simply by not needing to manifest it for me any more!

At least, that's the way it'll seem in my reality. And you never know, it just might be the same in your reality.

So in order to heal those people around you, you need to heal yourself first by seeing them as manifestations of your own inner illness.

If someone you know is suffering from something, then it's the manifestation into your reality of something that you're suffering from.

Take cancer, for example. If you are close to someone who has cancer and is dying, you have the opportunity to heal them by recognising that there's something going on inside of you that's eating you up inside. By healing yourself, you have the power to heal others.

Try it, it does work. There are people who already make it work for themselves. You can too.

A very interesting article.  You should read it.

So it turns out that Arabs—or more broadly Muslims—can fight after all.

We may surmise that they now realize that fighting effectively requires that they do so on their own terms rather than mimicking the West. They don’t need and don’t want tanks and fighter-bombers. What many Westerners dismiss as “terrorism,” whether directed against Israelis, Americans, or others in the West, ought to be seen as a panoply of techniques employed to undercut the apparent advantages of high-tech conventional forces. The methods employed do include terrorism—violence targeting civilians for purposes of intimidation—but they also incorporate propaganda, subversion, popular agitation, economic warfare, and hit-and-run attacks on regular forces, either to induce an overreaction or to wear them down. The common theme of those techniques, none of which are new, is this: avoid the enemy’s strengths; exploit enemy vulnerabilities.

Since Wednesday last week, I've been sick as a dog, and have been off work since then. First I came down with flu symptoms, with everything aching, fever, chills... That went away by Thursday night, but that day I got a very sore throat. So sore it was actually painful to swallow, and my face was almost going into contortions with the effort to get food past the throat. Then the coughing started yesterday, around the same time that the soreness started to fade away a bit. I could swallow again without too much of a problem! Yay! But the coughing...

The coughing got worse today, and the painfully sore throat came back again late this afternoon. Along with the earache. By mid evening the earache was excruciating. It was obvious that my throat and sinuses were under a vicious assault by bacterial forces, and I was suffering dearly for it.

Deidre has just been awesome throughout. She's been there, looking after me, providing me with everything I could want and more, and being the nurse and loving partner that someone as sick as me needs right now. It's been so awesome to have someone looking after me who loves me so dearly, that I just can't describe what that means to me. Words aren't enough.

She came into the bedroom tonight and saw me holding my ear, which I was doing because it was so painful. The warmth of my hand seemed to be a little soothing, so she got a hot cloth for me to hold against it instead. That was nice. But then we decided that since things were so bad, and tomorrow I had to go back to work again, that it was time to go to the doctor. I agreed.

I don't like going to doctors unless I'm either disabled (like when I got a collapsed disc 13 years ago, and when my hip was somehow displaced 7 years ago) or having my life threatened by something (like when I got bitten by a white tailed spider about 2 and a half years ago). Those 3 times are the only times I've ever been to a doctor in at least the past 13 years. Anything outside of those conditions are something I've dealt with. Most flu and cold symptoms are over within 2-4 days at the most. This time, after 4 days, it seemed to be getting worse. I acknowledged I needed to go to the doctor.

So we went to an after hours surgery at 9pm. Thankfully no-one else was there, so we got into the doctor's straight away. I explained to him my symptoms over the past 4 days. He stuck a thermometer in my mouth while having a look in my ears and listening to my breathing. Then he had a look in my throat. This is where it got horrible.

I've got a horrible infection in the right ear, with lots of pus there. No wonder the damn thing is so sore and blocked. And then there's a lot of horrible pus stuff on my tonsils, in the back of my throat. I've got tonsilitis, he said.

I've never had tonsilitis before. I know people have that operated on, and get their tonsils removed, but I also know that only happens if they keep coming down with it. This is my first time, and I hope that it's not a repeat occurrence....

So now I'm off work until Thursday. A whole week off. That'd almost be YAY-worthy, but it's not very appealing to be stuck in bed for so long. I've already been here in bed for 4 days, taking it easy, and now I've got another 3 days of it to look forward to. Not.

But oh well, it's good to now have some antibiotic treatment for what I've got, which will hopefully get rid of this thing very soon.

My apologies for not having written so much. I haven't been much in the mood for it. What do you write about when you're stuck in bed feeling horrible? Nothing came to mind. So I played Eve Online instead. Building my corporation in the game, setting up a new website / forum for it, and just generally wasting time playing a game. Well, some people read books or sleep... I play games.

I'm sure I'll be back to normal over the next few days. There's some articles waiting to be written. :-)

Apologies to those that will be inconvenienced by this, but I've had a few abusive comments from anonymous users which I've deleted. As a result, I've decided to cancel the anonymous comment function. Anyone who wants to comment and isn't already a blogger member will have to sign up for a blogger account and use that. Anyone that wants to leave an anonymous and/or abusive comment aren't likely to go to this effort, and will decide not to bother. It's quick and easy, though, and you can use it to log in and comment in future.

Thanks for your understanding.

Last week we took Geisha in to the vet to get speyed. She wasn't happy, as you'd expect! Because she's such a manic kitten, hyperactive in a big way, she even surprised the vet. She'd just woken up from the op and was already trying to run around, even while groggy. We put her in her cat cage to take home and she was chewing at the cage door to try and get out. As a result, the vet suspected we might need a collar to prevent her from licking the surgery wound and removing the stitches. The vet was right.


As of this writing, the collar has come off and she's settled in to the idea of having stitches. It was touch and go for a while though, 'cause she managed to find a way to twist herself around so that she could still tug at the stitches even with the collar! We had to try and squirt her with the spray bottle of water every time she did this, but after a while she just ignored the spray and continued.

The collar had to be removed before it was time, because she was literally scratching holes in her neck to try and get it off. All her fur was gone at the scratch points.

Why did we have to get the craziest kitten in the city?

"I don't really understand what you meant with that commentary you wrote, where you were talking about the dots." Jake was scratching his head, looking at Alan's blog on the computer screen.

"What don't you understand about it?" Alan asked, putting his drink down.

"You're obviously referring to... what is it, psyops?" Alan nodded, and Jake continued. "So how can there be these psyops when it's obvious that the terrorists were engaging in a plot to down those planes? How do you connect the dots to find evidence of psyops?"

"Well, you need to look at the overall picture of what's going on around the world," Alan replied.

"So what picture are you presenting here? I'm not really seeing it."

"Ok, you know that there's a lot of political backlash around the world with Israel's actions against Lebanon, right?"

"Yeh, heaps."

"Israel doesn't want to stop fighting the Hezbollah, because that would show weakness. They're after a decisive victory. They can't afford to stop, or seek peace. They need to win, there are no other choices. But the rest of the world wants them to stop."

"That's right," Jake said. "Well, everyone except America...."

"Exactly," Alan smiled. "America supports Israel's actions, firstly because Israel is a major US ally, and secondly, the Israeli's are fighting in the 'war on terror'. America has to continue supporting Israel's actions, even against world opinion. So when America's citizens start protesting about Israel's actions and demanding that their government put a stop to it, then they need to be distracted from the Middle East, which eases the pressure on Israel and the demands for the Bush government to do something about it."

"So what you're saying is that all that political crap about Lieberman and Lamont is a distraction?"

"Think about it," Alan said to Jake while nodding his agreement. "There's a major crisis in the Middle East that the American people want resolved, and so the Bush government starts talking about how voting for peace is actually voting in favour of terrorism. As a result, the American people's attention is distracted from the Middle East and more focused on their own internal politics."

"When was wanting peace something that favoured terrorism?" Jake asked, frowning.

"When the Bush administration wants to divert attention from peace," Alan explained. "Not only do they create division within internal politics, they raise the terrorist threat alert as a result of the UK."

"Ok, so how is the UK terrorist threat part of psyops?"

"Well, don't you find it interesting that it happened at the same time as both Blair and Bush are facing challenges to their leadership?"

"Not really," Jake said, disagreeing. "I mean, it's a war after all, and acts of war happen all the time."

"Sure, but this isn't a war about gaining ground, like we've been used to in previous wars. Battles in this war aren't about territory. This is a psychological war, with the objectives being whose ideology is better."

"Ideology?"

"Let's look at it this way," Alan said. "According to Bush, the terrorists want to destroy freedom. That's fighting for an ideology."

"You said 'according to Bush'... you think the terrorists want something different?"

"Sure. The terrorists are fighting for their own freedom from America's oppression."

Jake frowned. "But how is America oppressing the terrorists? That doesn't make any sense."

"America isn't oppressing the terrorists... it's oppressing people of foreign nations through subversive influence, or actual invasions like Iraq, or supporting abusive nations like Israel. The people who are being affected by America's actions believe they're fighting for their freedom. They call themselves freedom fighters, while the oppressors call them terrorists - just like the English in the 1700's called the Americans' fight for independence acts of terrorism."

"So everyone is fighting for freedom then?"

"Well, that's one way of looking at it, but another way is to ask yourself this - if the terrorists are fighting for their freedom from American oppression, then what's America really fighting for?"

Jake thought for a few moments. "Well, if the terrorists are fighting for their freedom because of US influence in their countries, then I guess that means America is fighting to continue that oppression?"

Alan nodded. "When you have a government that's fighting to continue oppressing others, then it needs to engage in psychological warfare to convince its citizens that the fight is a good fight. It needs to convince them that any attempt at peace is an attempt at helping the terrorists win. It's not after peace, it's after continued oppression. It needs to create an environment of fear that forces its citizens to continue supporting war and violence."

"So how to you pick up on psychological operations? How do you know the difference between them and the real thing?"

"Think about the UK terrorist plot," Alan said. "There's no evidence whatsoever about anything real. It's all conjecture." Alan moved over to his computer and brought up the BBC website on it. "Have a look at this," he said, and Jake came over to look.

"Notice the wording? Here, let me point out a few things to you..."

• It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices...
• Police are searching premises...
• 'He said they were "confident"...
• ...the plot was thought to have involved a series of waves of simultaneous attacks...
• ...the alleged plotters had intended "mass murder on an unimaginable scale".
• "We are confident that we have disrupted a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction..."
• "We believe that the terrorists' aim was to smuggle explosives on to aeroplanes..."
• ...police sources had told him they had found "interesting items" which were being examined.

"Look at all the words they use that inspire fear and paranoia. That article was 3 days ago. If we look at one from today, we find this..."

• Those held are suspected of involvement in a plot to blow up airliners travelling from the UK to the US, possibly using liquid explosives hidden in hand luggage.

"Do you see what I'm seeing?"

"Well... I'm not really sure...." Jake was scratching his head again, and Alan sighed.

"They've got no evidence! All they're doing is talking about suspicions, beliefs, possibilities... and what's this crap about 'interesting item's!" Alan was obviously frustrated. "They're using words that elicit an emotional response - fear."

"Hmmm...." Jake wasn't convinced.

"Look, don't you think that if they found anything substantial, or even had anything to go on, that the wording would be different? Instead of 'interesting items' they'd be talking about the liquid explosives they found. Instead of talking about how the plot was thought to be this, that or the other, they'd actually know what it was? What the hell are they doing arresting people on suspicions? They either arrest them because of knowledge and evidence, or it's all bullshit."

"Oh, so you're saying they arrested people only on suspicion, and that the whole terrorist plot is a fabrication?"

"By jove, I think he gets it," Alan said, sitting back and smiling. "Anything that talks in loose terms that inspire emotional reactions is evidence more of a psyop than anything else. Over the next week, we'll find that there was no actual threat. Half the arrested people will be released, while investigations 'continue' into the remainder of the 'suspicious people'. Eventually all memory will be forgotten of this non-event, but the ongoing effects of it won't. As a result of this non-event, there's increased security, increased loss of freedom, and a greater demand from all those frightened people to have their liberties taken away from them. What better way to create a fascist dictatorship than to have the people so frightened that they actually ask for it?"

"Is that what you think this is?" Jake asked.

"The more these non-events occur, the more the people will demand extra restrictions on their own freedom. It's actually in the terrorists interests, in this war of ideas, not to do anything! If they don't do anything, they win."

"How does that work?" Jake was scratching his head again, confused.

"The people want peace. They want America to withdraw from the areas of conflict and to seek peace. It's in the terrorists interests to encourage the withdrawal of American and allied forces from the areas they're fighting for. So when the people want peace and military withdrawal, that's in alignment with the goals of the terrorists. Why would those terrorists then want to damage their potential victory by engaging in further acts of terrorism? It's only self-defeating."

"But doesn't that mean that the Bush administration is right when they say that supporting peace is supporting the terrorists?"

"You could certainly twist it that way," Alan admitted, "And that's exactly how it's being twisted. But in reality, supporting peace under these circumstances is about ending American occupation and influence in foreign countries. It's about giving those countries the right to determine their own future, and determine their own way of doing things, without such destructive US influence. It's about recognising the rights of all humans, not just American rights to continue oppressing others. You just can't win a war against an idea. All you can do is respect that idea's right to exist and evolve or collapse of its own accord. The more you fight the idea of 'freedom fighting', the more you'll inspire more people to take up the fight for their freedom."

"So if the terrorists are fighting a war of ideas, and that in order to win they have to get the support of the American people, then that would mean engaging in further acts of terrorism is against their interests?" Alan nodded, and Jake continued. "So... are you saying that continued acts of terrorism - or news about possible terrorism - are actually psychological operations by the US military to justify their continued war on terror?"

Alan leant back in his chair and smiled. "You just need to connect the dots..."

Do you remember playing 'join the dots' when you were a kid?  You got a whole bunch of dots and then drew lines between them, resulting in a picture forming.  The dots are all over the place, and don't mean anything - until you connect them.

Here's a few dots for you to consider.

• Joe Lieberman, a Democrat Senator who has been a vocal supporter of George Bush and the 'war on terror', lost a Democratic primary election to Ned Lamont, another Democrat. This is a major blow against the Bush Administration, losing a supporter of their policies.
• The UK arrests a number of people allegedly involved in a terrorist plot to down some planes.
  
• Lieberman uses the story to attack Ned Lamont, saying that Lamont's goals for ending the war in Iraq would constitute a 'victory' for terrorists.
• Terrorist alerts are raised to maximum level in both the UK and the US.

Meanwhile, over in the Middle East where the real shit is hitting the fan, we have these other dots.

• Israel has succeeded in cutting off Southern Lebanon from Beirut.  All roads and bridges have been made impassable.  All travel in and out of southern Lebanon has been cut.  All life-supporting infrastructure in and to southern Lebanon has been destroyed.  The Israelis can get there, but no one else can.  There's nowhere for the Lebanese to go.  Attacks are being conducted against them and they can't flee.  There's no infrastructure left to preserve life.  No electricity, no fuel, no life and rescue services.  Thousands are going to die from Israel's tactics.
• What news of Gaza?  No news.  And yet Israeli attacks are still continuing.  Napalm and other chemical weapons are being used by the Israelis, weapons that are banned under international law as 'weapons of mass destruction'.
• The US continues to support Israel by providing fuel for their jets and ammo for their weapons.

But back in the 'real world' we have heightened terror alerts, which are just awesome in their ability to deflect attention from the Middle East. 

The UK is talking about introducing security restrictions to prevent terrorist attacks, bringing them in line with the US Patriot Act.  'In order to preserve our freedom, we have to give it up to protect ourselves'.  How is that logical?  'In order to preserve our freedom we have to give up our freedom.'  Freedom can only be preserved by continuing to support freedom.  All that's being supported is a lack of freedom.  For everyone.

Isn't it interesting that there was more of a threat from the IRA over the past 20 or so years, than there has been from these new terrorists.  And yet, suddenly, the new war on terror means everyone has to give up their freedom in order to... preserve their freedom?

Blair and Bush are fascists who are leading manipulative events to create such incredible fear in their people that those people will agree to anything to 'protect themselves', including such protection as self-imprisonment through agreeing to such heavy security measures.

Look at the dots, and see for yourselves the manipulation of events that are occurring.  Distracting people's attention from the real issues, in order to raise their fear about 'what might happen', is a psyop strategy to increase the power and control of the leaders.

Psychological Operations (PSYOP [US] or PSYOPS [UK, GE, NATO]) are planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to specific foreign and (in certain countries) domestic audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. Sometimes combined with black operations or false flag tactics, the purpose of psychological operations is to induce or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to the originator's objectives. As such, there must always be sufficient truth to be credible.

This concept has been used by military institutions throughout history, but it is only since the twentieth century that it has been accorded the organizational and professional status it enjoys now.

Don't let yourself be a victim to psyop manipulation. Look for the dots and find the picture that's hidden.

When we went to Wanganui, we stayed at this very cool backpackers - the Anndion Lodge, run by... Ann and Dion. :-)

They don't make them like they used to, that's for sure. And it's great that they don't! Backpackers used to be almost run-down, with the only available beds being in dormitories, sharing with everyone else. Now, some of them are actually better than hotels, with some awesome features being available, and being able to share it with pleasant company.

We loved it so much, I had to do a bit of a write-up about it. The room was a huge, with a King size bed, cupboards, and a huge ensuite bathroom which could fit two people in the shower, quite easily... ;-)


The lounge room was extensive, split into two sections, with a full entertainment system as well as a pool table. If you put a video or DVD in, you could actually watch it from your bedroom on the tv in there, while anyone in the lounge room could watch TV or the same video/DVD.


As you can see, behind the second part of the lounge room, a hallway stretches away with lots of rooms off it. Our room was off behind another section, the dining room....


And then there was the kitchen, which was just HUUUGE! Everything that you could possibly want, was supplied. Not just the kitchen, but pretty much in every room of the place.


The kitchen had all the kitchen equipment and utensils you could need, along with dishwasher, fridge and freezer. The lounge room had the entertainment system as well as videos and DVDs, while the bedrooms (ours, at least) had full bedding supplied, TV, hairdryer for the ladies, mirrors, and the bathroom/s have showering supplies as well.

If you're after a stay in Wanganui, I recommend you look 'em up. I've linked to their website at the top of this post. :-)

I decided to do the photos the 'normal way'. Even though the previous post presented the photos in a way that's 'agreeable', I don't like the fact that viewing the photos actually takes you away from this blog. So I'll continue with how I've been doing them in the past. I'll leave the previous entry there, but show the photos here as normal. :-)

We went for a walk along the river bank...



Then we climbed a 176-step water tower / lookout to see the view of Wanganui and take some photos...




This was the inside of the 176-step tower we climbed up to take the previous photos. Going down was so much easier than going up...


These two photos show part of the main street of Wanganui...



Some snow-covered mountains we saw on our wilderness drive...


A bridge over troubled waters... signs of recent flooding. As we left the place the next day, after torrential rains, I'm sure the water was back up to the top of the debris you can see in the photo...

I'm trying a new way of showing photo albums... I use Picasa to work with my photos, and there's a new version that's come out recently that allows you to work with Picasa Web Albums. Part of the web album allows you to share it on your blog, which is what I'm doing now. Could you please let me know if you like this new style of slideshow, instead of all of them on the same page. If feedback is good, I'll keep doing it, otherwise, I'll go back to having them all showing, underneath each other down the page.

Wanganui Day 1

Aug 6, 2006 - 11 Photos

Unfortunately, I only found out about the smudge on the camera lens AFTER I'd uploaded the photos to the laptop at the end of the day. Sorry about that.

In order, the photos show some of the backpackers that we're staying at. It's REALLY HUGE, and really awesome (!), and the photos don't do it justice. I'll do some more later and show them in the next blog entry.

We went for a walk along the river that the backpackers is in front of, until we got to the bridge, and then we came back again. Then we went for a walk through the city centre, followed by a drive to a lookout and climbed 176 steps up inside an old water tower, to get to the top and take some photos of Wanganui and the river.

After that, we went for a drive around this Heritage Trail, which was supposed to take us only an hour. Well, that Heritage Trail can kiss my arse. Almost 3 hours later, we finally made our way back into civilisation. We found evidence of recent river flooding, and there were lots of slips all over the place. Luckily none of them were blocking the road. We tried passing a large truck, and the driver must've been bored 'cause he tried pushing us off the road. Seemed that way at least, when he came out into the middle of the road as we were passing him, and I had to go slightly off the road to continue unscathed. Arsehole.

And then the weather was just bucketing down with rain, which made the lonely road seem even lonelier. But we're back in the warm backpackers now, relaxing after a nice day.

More photos tomorrow... We're returning to Wellington tomorrow afternoon. It's been a nice mini-holiday so far. :-)

Deidre and I are off on a small holiday today, coming back in 2 days time.  I'll have details later, along with photos.  :-)

1. Auckland, New Zealand
2. London, United Kingdom
3. South Portland, United States
4. Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam
5. Sydney, Australia
6. Toronto, Canada
7. Vancouver, Canada
8. Perth, Australia
9. Melbourne, Australia
10. Canberra, Australia

13. Wellington, New Zealand

Thank you to all of you in those locations, for being regular visitors to this site. :-)

Jake turned away from the news on TV and said to Alan, "This war on terror they keep talking about. When do you think it'll end?"

"Not in our lifetime," Alan replied, looking up from the writing he was doing.

"Really? Why?"

"Think about it," Alan said. "Terrorism is a result of oppression, with displaced people feeling their only choice is to fight the oppressors. The oppressors call them terrorists, while the people those terrorists are fighting for call them freedom fighters. A few hundred years ago, the English used to call the Americans 'terrorists', while the Americans called themselves freedom fighters and patriots. They forget their own history, you see. They won independence by engaging in acts of terrorism against the occupying force - the English. Now, the more the Americans interfere in the destiny of another nation, whether through political or military means, the more the locals of those nations will resent their actions. The more people America kills in the fight against terrorism, the more people are going to rise up and fight the American oppressors."

"So that's why you think it'll never end, because as they kill terrorists, they're just helping create new terrorists?"

Alan nodded. "The more they kill, the more their families and their fellow countrymen will take up arms to avenge their deaths. Eventually you'll have the US fighting entire countries in their war on terrorism, as those countries take up arms to defend themselves. Look at Iraq. You have the Iraqi people themselves fighting the US, or helping their countrymen fight the US. There's so much anti-US hatred there, because of all those Iraqis that the US kills, abuses or tortures. It's not a fight against terrorism any more, it's a fight to suppress the entire country.

"Look at Israel and Lebanon. It's not a fight against the Hezbollah, it's an invasion and suppression of the Lebanese country. When it's the people of the country that are taking up terrorism to free themselves from oppression, then the only solution is to destroy the country. The war on terror is actually a war against every country that refuses to aid or support the US and its allies."

"Well, here in New Zealand, we don't aid or support the US...."

"Don't we? How much of our goods do we trade with the US? Sheep, and livestock, and even dairy products. We aid the US by helping to sustain them. They need us, just like we need them - that's how trade works. But if we decided to cut all trade in protest, and we decided to actively complain about their actions, even if we weren't actively supporting the 'terrorists', the US would claim we were. You remember the words of Bush: 'If you're not with us, then you're with them.' New Zealand becomes a terrorist-supporting country in the eyes of the US, and then we're considered terrorists ourselves if we support our government's stance. Terrorism is simply what those in control say it is, usually against those that resent the control of the oppressors."

"So the only solution really, for us, is to support the US and avoid supporting other terrorist-supporting countries?"

"That's not a solution," Alan replied. "That's hiding your head in the sand and hoping that 'the bad thing' doesn't see you. The only real solution is for the world to change its state of being into one of love, instead of fear and retaliation. But that's not going to happen." Alan smiled.

"Why not? Wasn't it Ghandi and Martin Luther King that started movements towards that end?"

"Sure, and they're dead - assassinated, even - and the world's worse off than it used to be. The world doesn't want peace and love. It wants violence and chaos. Most people exist in a state of fear, and all they want is to be protected from their fear. Fear breeds violence, and that's the way things are. The best we can do is seek peace in our own lives. There are countries in this world where peace exists. Those that want it will gravitate towards those countries. Those that don't, will gravitate towards war. It doesn't matter whether it's world war two or even three - somewhere, there will be a country untouched by war, and that's where the peaceful people will be."

"But every country is touched by war...."

"Sure, just like us. But are you engaging in violence? Is violence being perpetrated against you or someone you know, as a result of war?"

"Well, no..."

"Exactly. We are at peace, and that's the way I like it." Alan smiled.

"Back to the war on terror...."

Alan chuckled. "Sure. I think it'll never end, because terrorism and the fight against it only feeds itself. The more it's fought, the stronger it'll get. It can never end, UNLESS the US and its allies cease all foreign policy interventions, and foreign wars and occupations. And I think that's less likely than everyone in the world existing in a state of love. But all that matters to me is that I exist in a state of love towards those around me. We create peace individually, and we spread that peace to those we interact with, and that's how we have a peaceful life."

"But what about the snowball effect? The more people that practice peace, the more likely peace becomes?"

"This planet is a playground for us to experience all kinds of different games in," Alan said. "There is no experience that can't be had on this planet. Everything you can think of is here. It's simply a playground, and us children will play, and play all kinds of games. We're here because of what we can experience. We create it because we want to. It'll always be that way."

Jake nodded, thinking about that, and returned to watch the games on the news.