Sunday, December 3, 2006

Letter to the Dam Consortium (March 2004)

Bhavani Krishna Iyer
Manager, Public Relations
SPLASH SDN BHD
26 March 2004
(VIA EMAIL)

Dear Bhavani,

ARE LOGGERS NOW WELCOME IN THE SELANGOR DAM CATCHMENT ZONE?

The time has come for me to keep you in the loop about what's going on in Kampong Pertak. Logging towkays have been sniffing around the village and making tempting cash propositions to the Batin and several others - in the hope that the Orang Asli will support the latest scam engineered by the JHEOA in cahoots with a few RISDA officers, viz., to allow their ancestral durian and petai orchards to be clear-cut and replanted with rubber trees and/or oil palms.

Firstly, I understand that something like 19,500 hectares of forested area around the reservoir lake have been designated as a strictly no-logging/no-agriculture Catchment Zone. Is that not correct? This Catchment Zone would certainly include the steep hills around Kg Pertak, especially since acute erosion – in addition to the use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides - would be bad news indeed for the Selangor Dam in terms of massive silting and toxic contamination.

Could it be that the Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli have yet to read the Selangor Dam Project EIA Report? Perhaps they simply have never been taught these simple facts of ecosystemic preservation and know not the dire consequences of their actions. In any case, JHEOA officers have already convened two meetings at Kg Pertak in the past week urging the Orang Asli to endorse their proposal to convert X number of acres of secondary forest into rubber/oil palm plantations within the Catchment Zone.

Now, here is where my personal mission of safeguarding the natural beauty, integrity and health of one of Selangor's last and finest forest reserves coincides with Splash Sdn Bhd's genuine need to ensure that the functioning of the reservoir dam is not sabotaged. Shortsighted plantation schemes that mainly benefit the loggers (and their friends in the state bureaucracy) will certainly despoil the environs of the reservoir lake and ruin all prospects of future low-impact ecotourism projects.

Such a development will be yet another deathblow to the Orang Asli's cultural and spiritual uniqueness which has traditionally made them respectful of the forest that provides almost all their basic survival needs.

Furthermore, by issuing the relocated villagers with 99-year leases on their housing lots, the JHEOA - in concert with the Land Office - have effectively turned the Temuan into rent-paying tenants on land the tribe has inhabited for countless generations. Within another two generations, the fate of the Temuan tribe will reside in the hands of the Ulu Selangor Land Office, which is at liberty to terminate the lease when it expires.

Kg Pertak is seeing more and more visitors each week, seeking refuge from urban stress and pollution. Surely, the obvious way for the Orang Asli to benefit from their indigeneity is to encourage and help them to start small-scale hospitality services like setting up cafés and native-style accommodation for ardent nature-lovers. These activities have strong potential to generate a decent cash income for the local residents, and restore their dignity, self-esteem, adaptability and versatility in the long run - without in any way damaging the natural beauty, integrity, and health of the forest. Of course, this sort of "development" must be kept on a modest and manageable scale and closely monitored to maintain the pristine vitality and aesthetic value of this precious Green Sanctuary.

I urge that Splash Sdn Bhd lend its full support to the Orang Asli’s legitimate claim to the area long established as their customary lands, thus allowing them a sense of permanency and belonging. In time to come many will prove their aptitude as trek and kayaking guides, homestay operators, and as forest rangers assigned the task of protecting the Catchment Zone from poachers and loggers, and keeping it free from litter.

I trust that you will bring this serious matter to the attention of the Executive Management and keep me informed about their response.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Sincerely,
Antares

Where Darkness Still Rules


[Original email dated Sun, 16 Jan 2000]

I read a report in the Star (14 Jan 2000) on the media briefing convened by SPLASH - the company formed to build the Selangor Dam - in which their executive chairman, Tan Sri Wan Azmi Wan Hamzah, sneeringly dismissed dam-resisting nature lovers as "tree huggers".

Wan Azmi himself prefers chainsaws to hugs. His floundering company, Land & General, effectively logged half of Papua New Guinea before running into serious debt with a failed housing project called Lembah Beringin. As 40% shareholder in the RM2.1 billion Selangor Dam project, TSWA (Tan Sri Wan Azmi masquerading as The Sweet Water Alliance) stands to gain mightily in the dam scam (which ultimately includes 3 new dams in Pahang and 8 in Johore).

In April 1999 Tan Sri Wan Azmi paid a visit to Kg Orang Asli Pertak and we had a rare opportunity to converse for nearly two hours, seated on a rock overlooking the sun-splashed Sungai Luit. We were watched intently by the local Secret Police, but the dialogue flowed civilly and smoothly. Wan Azmi is definitely the most sophisticated entrepreneur I've encountered in a long time. He can make anyone feel rather naïve, so polished is his cynicism, so crisp his sense of paradox and irony, so weighty his affable worldliness.

Tan Sri Wan Azmi (right) impressed me as a highly cultivated urbane intelligence, articulate and aristocratic. After listening to me very attentively, he remarked that very few people on earth would understand what I had revealed to him - implying thereby that he was among the few. I do not doubt that he did indeed understand the full import of my friendly warning, and the fact that he has announced the commencement of the Selangor Dam project indicates that my estimation of his character was essentially correct.

Without wanting to condemn or judge a fellow human, I would describe Tan Sri Wan Azmi as someone to avoid sitting at the same table with at a Chinese dinner. Unless you are on a diet, of course. Nor would I entrust him with the future of our precious natural heritage. We shook hands as we parted, and I felt that he could so easily have turned out to be a true nobleman and patron of the arts - if it weren't for his beady eyes and pudgy fingers which gave me cause to suspect that he was, alas, another greedy little crony piggy fallen on lean times. They say our fate is written in our palms, but eternal optimist that I am, I say it's never too late to step out into the Light and redeem our destinies.

At the media briefing, Tan Sri Wan Azmi and Gamuda chairman Datuk Lin Yun Ling (left) were reportedly squirming in their seats when hit with pointed questions from members of the press. "I don't know why you guys are so suspicious," Wan Azmi was quoted as saying.

Shall we tell them the plain truth? At the risk of deflating their well-fed egos and foiling their best-laid schemes to replenish their private coffers at the public's and posterity's expense? Can we afford NOT to when so much natural beauty is at stake?

YOU MAY QUOTE ME

Today we find ourselves poised between two reality options, one culminating in the Military-Commercial-Industrial Vision that drives ambitious egos to pathological extremes of destructive behavior; the other a deep, nebulous yearning for Paradise Regained on an Earth Renewed, a glorious ecstatic age wherein logic is superseded by magick, money by manna, scarcity-conditioning by loving abundance for all. Where we focus our attention determines how the future will unfold. Let's keep a sharp eye on the weather and accept no peace that excludes freedom and justice.

- Antares
Ceremonial Guardian of Magick River

OCTOBER MANIFESTO (2002)

Photos courtesy of Sha'Tara
[This is a 1,700 word essay from 2002, originally posted to the Magick River Network, an interactive forum that has since been superseded by Facebook.]

I've been saving posts onto a floppy at the cybercafe and reading them offline at home. It's really frustrating not being able to shoot off articulate responses because time really goes three times faster when you're on a modem connection and paying for it by the half-hour. So I'm writing this “manifesto” in the comfort of my new study with a view to copy & paste when I next visit the cybercafe (it's true I've been going there every day and it's almost like a beer habit - except no beer belly!).

But since my old pal Paul H subbed in and initiated a new thread on the list, I haven't said very much about anything. Partly because I haven't anything to say that makes complete sense to myself, so much is shifting around us, there are so many ways of interpreting reality, my equilibrium changes from moment to moment; and partly because in recent weeks I've had to spend a good third of my precious online time deleting junk emails and virus attacks (the latest is called the W32Bugbear and the removal tool is downloadable at symantec.com, useful to keep on the hard drive just in case).

It's really tiresome that even the internet has been taken over by virtual rowdies who are either trying to sell you some dadfangled new species of snake oil or crash your hard drive and all its valuable contents. Doesn't that sound pretty much like what's going on in the "actual" world? Our public spaces are being invaded by pushy pedlars and heavily armed street gangs fighting over 3D turf. And they're all either on some corporate payroll or puppets in a hologram play scripted by our own darkest fears.

Well, this is as good a time as any to remind ourselves what the Magick River Network is all about. On the MRN homepage at Yahoogroups there is a statement to the effect that this list is for anyone who shares the vision and mission of co-creating heaven on earth.

I define heaven as limitless abundance and infinite possibilities for all beings - which is why I accept all viewpoints and terminologies without feeling the need to intervene or censor. Paul H has done us a big favor by speaking his truth - which is the same pragmatic truth espoused by a great many of my old schoolchums and rich cousins, uncles and aunts who are comfortably established in their own businesses or professions. They believe in the foundational principles of our so-called civilization: ACQUIRE (make money) & PROTECT (invest in insurance, security systems, secret police, and well-equipped fighting forces). If a bug flies into the room, spray it. To prevent bugs from flying into the room, cut down the jungle and fumigate the area with radioactive substances.

I fully appreciate the active participation of Sha'Tara whose crystalline intelligence, unique multidimensional experience, and amazing eloquence never fail to astound, no matter what she's ranting about. Even her emotional farts are distinctive and worth discussing at length, and I relish the stark images of the Hope River she sometimes posts.

Yes, I love the intense interplay of ideas that occasionally erupts on this list, and the fact that the membership has stayed more or less constant since we became an interactive list is heartwarming. I'm also grateful to have the incomparable Kate Daniels on board with her level-headed, open-hearted, straight-talking - and, of course, Bamboo Soo's sophisticated musings are always educational and provocative; while the Raven's caustic cawing sometimes raises a suspicion that the shade of Edgar Allan Poe may well be perched on a comfy rock on the riverbank.

Like everyone else, I've been watching the dramatic intensification of the Frequency Controls installed in the electromagnetosphere by powerful Cosmic Warlocks operating as the "powers and principalities" spoken of in arcane writings and sometimes fearfully referred to as "the Archons of Destiny." Recently I received a report stating that there are 72 of these Archons - and that 50 of them are Anunnaki operating on a secret agenda from the planet Nibiru. (Are these the creeps behind the New World Order scam? It’s hard to keep tabs on so many players in such a bewildering plethora of dimensional realities, it’s like playing hide and seek at a masked ball!)

For centuries we have called the Archons of Destiny "the Fates" or "the gods" - but never till very recently has enough information about them been revealed to give us a clearer picture of the true circumstances of our 3D existence. The science-fictionish ideas expressed in The Matrix only hint at the mind-boggling truth that our species has never really had a shot at "free will" - apart from a few scattered individuals who have broken through the invisible prison bars of their own primal fears and learnt to thumb their noses at the Fates. Such an “Orwellian” scenario has been hinted at from Plato’s allegory of the cave to C.S. Lewis’ Perelendra trilogy, Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld series, and Philip K. Dick’s inspired hallucinations in Valis.

One-third of humanity constitute what Drunvalo calls "the moderns" - a mutation of the Adamic human especially in the last 500 years into skin-encapsulated, ego-driven "individuals" with acute cosmological myopia and an insatiable lust for the trappings of material success. These are the anthropocentric apologists and defenders of the status quo, who have internalized Darwinian them-or-us notions of survival, and haven't yet released primordial trauma loops or scarcity conditioning in their genetic encoding. But they'll get "there" - sooner or later. Everyone does, eventually. There are no "losers" in the cosmic dance of eternal transmutation. Each of us is Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu all rolled into one. (And we’re all Buddha and Jesus too ☺)

Nevertheless, most of us monitoring the quickening of planetary awakening and ascension, are understandably outraged by the cruelty and destructiveness of "the military solution" planned by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Pentagonian hawks.

Our personal pain and suffering cease the instant we shake ourselves awake from "the nightmare of history" and attain a transpersonal perspective. However, savaging physical reality and human decency with greed-propelled ruthlessness CAN and MUST be stopped. It's the Final Test of our readiness to move onto a new evolutionary octave. But when I ask myself HOW to stop these dangerous fools, I must admit the answer has been elusive. A few years ago, it seemed so clear that the Light had won through and tipped the scales - but in August 1998, the "Dark Side" upped the empt, so to speak, and since then it seems to be getting harder to wake up and stay awake. One of my psychic friends, Selina Niedermeyer, reports that she has sensed thousands of sinister metallic ships hovering overhead, blocking us from direct contact with Source. Perhaps that’s how she visualizes what Susan Ferguson calls the Frequency Control Grid. Many of us are experiencing physical aches and pains, especially in the neck and chest areas, because our bodies are transmuting on the atomic and cellular levels in response to the increasing Schumann Resonance Frequency of the Earth and the intensity of the Coronal Mass Ejections from our Sun.

Recent messages from emissary of light, James Twyman, indicate that some immensely gifted psychic children are already in our midst, helping us transit from one evolutionary octave to another. So it’s not all bad news. Indeed, right where I am, I feel I’m already living heaven on earth (except when Anoora throws one of her famous jealous tantrums or Ahau wets the bed!)

Drunvalo has spoken at length about the Christ Consciousness Grid installed by Thoth (and other Ascended Beings) about 13,000 years ago with the Giza Pyramid Complex as its main anchor point. I have no problem with the idea of a mass awakening into Christ consciousness on a planetary level - but whether that will happen only AFTER a massive human and ecological disaster (triggered by mutually ruinous warfare on an unprecedented scale) as predicted by some - or BEFORE such a worst-case scenario is allowed to unfold, is beyond my power to predict. (A two-part summary of Drunvalo’s ‘Flower of Life’ teachings can be accessed here and here.)

I am flabbergasted by the hawkish sentiments of intelligent and ordinarily good-natured folks like Paul H and many of my old friends in the US - just as I'm stymied by the cynical pragmatism of many knowledgeable Malaysians who continue to endorse Mahathir as "the best leader we've ever had" - so what if he continues to imprison dissenters and oppositionists with his corrupt police and judiciary, destroy what's left of our precious rainforests, and poison the land with highly toxic industries to bail out an incompetent and greedy corporate elite? The only difference between the Bush, Blair & Co and Mahathir’s Mob is that they operate on different concepts of “turf” – America’s New Rome ambitions have taken on more than planetary proportions, while Mahathir is content, for the moment, to be Capo of the local Cosa Nostra.

In my own experience, when things are working out fine for me and I'm feeling competent and secure, I tend to gravitate to the right in my perceptions about those who are moaning and groaning and finding it hard to make ends meet. It's when I find myself furiously peddling water just to keep my chin above the raging waters that I feel a great deal more empathy with the oppressed and underprivileged of the earth. At such times, I am heartened by spontaneous displays of civil disobedience and non-compliance such as when thousands take to the streets to protest warmongering, megacorporatism, human rights abuses, and the WTO agenda.

Over the past decades I have learnt to accept occasional bouts of depression and spiritual paralysis as a way of compensating for my arrogant and megalomanic tendencies during periods when I'm functioning at peak. I'm glad to report that in the last 10 years or so I've been able to minimize my downtime to no more than a few minutes - or a few hours under extreme circumstances - whenever that ancient sense of futility rears its world-weary head and threatens to derail me from fulfilling my true destiny and potential – which is to reclaim the throne of my personal Ithaca by drawing the magical bow of Odysseus or the Pendragon’s sword from the stone, thereby restoring the balance and harmony of all worlds.

In the words of mythologist Joe Campbell, we are each of us “the hero with a thousand faces,” braver than Bond, tougher than Tarzan, handsomer than Han Solo (or, if you prefer, braver than Barbarella, tougher than Tina Turner, and sexier than Sade)!